How to Get Strong and How to Stay So (1899)/Chapter 12
Chapter XII
Great Men's Bodies
"Every man may profit by the example of truly great men, if he is bent on making the most of himself and his circumstances. It is altogether a delusion to measure the greatness of men by the greatness of the stage on which they act."—Professor Blackie, in Self Culture.
"The heights by great men reached and kept,
Were not attained by sudden flight;
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upward in the night."
—Longfellow.
"Every person has two educations, one which he receives from others; and one, more important, which he gives himself."
"Difficulties and conflicts are the school of heroic virtues."—Only by Struggle.
"The force of the understanding increases with the health of the body; when the body labors under disease, the mind is incapacitated for thinking."—Democritus.
"The nerve that never relaxes; the eye that never blanches; the thought that never wanders;—these are the masters of victory."—Burke.
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time."
—A Psalm of Life.
"Ease makes children; it is difficulty that makes men. Many persons owe their good-fortune to some disadvantage under which they have labored, and it is in struggling against it that their best faculties are brought into play."
"A strong man breasts the tide; a great man turns it."—Angus Kennedy.
It may not be out of place to look at some of the world's greatest men; and see what kind of bodies they had; and if they did not aid them in reaching the lofty places.
The difference between great men and ordinary men is, in many ways, small. But it is there. Races are won by only a little; sometimes by a bare head. But a head is enough. A generation ago it was a fast horse that could pace or trot a mile in two minutes forty seconds. Now it is done in less than two minutes; and $125,000 has been paid for a horse of this class.
Then the Britannic crossed the Atlantic in seven days twelve hours. Now the Lucania or Campania finds five days and seven hours enough. The Britannic was 425 feet long; the Lucania is 629 feet.
The Oceanic is 704 feet. In five years, a hundred hours from New York to London, in a thousand-foot steamer; will no doubt be in order. The elements that make the horse, or steamship, or man win, are many. But they are known; and they are inevitable. Every horse-trainer, and ship-builder, and coach knows the folly of expecting a second-class horse, or ship, or man to keep up with a first-class one.
So in the deeds of great men; they will be found, generally—not always—to have had racing-bodies, as well as racing-heads; bodies that helped them to outstay other men; and to carry through great purposes where a weak man would have failed.
Moses (1571–1451 B.C.)
Born under strange circumstances; his life hunted before his eyes were open; hidden three months because his parents saw he was a proper child-was Moses. Reared in a palace; trained in the University of Egypt; favored alike with chance for careful study and for profound reflection; he ripened into a man "of calmness; disinterestedness; patience; perseverance; meekness; coupled with keen energy; rapidity of action; unfailing courage; wisdom in council; and boldness in war"; the chosen captain of God's chosen people, in the longest and most trying expedition this world has ever seen. Leader; legislator; commander; liberator; law-giver; historian; he has left a name, great and imperishable.
MOSES
(From Michael Angelo's statue in the Vatican at Rome)
other athlete in all the world's history can show such a finish as that?
In Michael Angelo's renowned statue we see a man of towering size and almost colossal strength. His body even looking large for his head; but the most remarkable feature of that body is the enormous forearm and wrist. Indeed the fore-arm looks as large as the upper arm itself, which is not in accord with the idea so general now among athletic men, that the upper arm flexed should be about a fifth larger than the forearm in its greatest girth. It will also be observed, as in most of the famous statues, that there is little or no spare flesh anywhere. But the whole is made of excellent material; of bone and sinew; of power which lifts and carries; not of freight which has to be lifted and carried.
DAVID (1015 B.C.)
He fostered navigation and trade; taught his people art; organized them into provinces; appointed governors to oversee and report to him their condition; impressed all with the importance of law and order; established superior and inferior courts of justice; and secured the stability of his power by the formation of a large standing army. He was exceedingly careful of both invididual and national religion; appointed priests, and singers, and poets for religious service; and gathered a vast amount of money and material to erect a great religious temple. If, in a life in the main grand and noble, his mighty passions at times drove him into excesses; no man could be franker or swifter to own that he had done wrong; or to deeply repent of it. Poet and sweet singer of rare power; few men have ever written that which has brought solace to the afflicted and tried, in all ages since, as has this man.
A generation ago, in a beautiful Virginia valley, two great armies met. The night before the Northmen lay on their arms upon Kolps Hill and Cemetery Ridge; Little Round Top and Round Top; on the opposite hill-side, upon Seminary Ridge, lay the Southrons. Each side was 90,000 strong, and was well led; each knew that a struggle was near, so mighty that the fate of a great nation depended on it; and the whole civilized world looking on tried to name the winner. And the "Wheat Field," piled shoulder-high with bodies; and the Devil's Den, where buzzards afterwards, in the crannies of the rocks, picked clean the bones of Southern sharp-shooters, who there in turn had picked off men on Round Top; these, and graceful shafts; and monuments in stone and bronze; and stands of arms; and many a simple slab tell of the three long days of bloody struggle that turned that peaceful valley of Gettysburg into one great slaughter-house—but saved a nation.
Ages ago in another valley, hostile armies met; and again the fate of two nations hung in the balance. A man nearly twice as tall as Bismarck; twice as big-chested as Sullivan; clad in mail strode forward into the open; and thundered out that he would fight any man on the other side. Whoever won, his nation, from then on should be masters; and the loser and his people, their slaves. All heard him. That was easy to do. But no one hurried forward. The king himself was a goodly man—head and shoulders even above the people. But what could he do against a man of almost twice his size? So he refrained. And they all refrained. And they kept up the refrain for some days. When the big man saw this his voice resounded more than before But he spoke once too often. For a short, beardless, red-haired youth who had come up to camp upon an errand, heard him. At once he asked what was the prize. He was told the hand of a princess. He asked to see her; seemed satisfied; and said he was ready; though he did not look to have any tools with him. When the big man saw him, he swore harder than ever, possibly referring to the color of his hair; then asked him if he, the big man, was a dog. No direct reply is recorded. But the next minute, before the heavy-weight could square off; the little fellow made an impression—a lasting one—on the big man's forehead. The rout of the enemy and other pleasing results followed. And the stripling who had scored so well at the start, proved many a time afterwards to be a good one. For, like his fellow left-handed Benjamites, he could not only sling a stone at a hair's-breadth, and not miss (what a baseball pitcher he would have made!), but he was "fair of eyes"; "comely"; "goodly"; well made; and "of immense strength and agility; his swiftness and activity made him like a wild gazelle."
"His feet were like hinds' feet"; and his arms were strong enough to break a bow of steel. In his early days, before entering upon a public career, he also had a personal interview with a lion; and another with a bear; at a time when both animals were hungry. And they remained hungry. Nowadays, our football captains would have sent a delegation clear to Jerusalem for him. Our colleges would have had a new Special student on the team in almost no time; and his board and tuition would have cost him nothing at all.
PAUL
All over Asia Minor; in the neighboring islands; hurrying to Macedonia; then to Athens; now rousing men with truths such as they had never heard before, to stop all else, till they had saved their souls; founding churches; encouraging the elders; binding together a young church founded in his time by a greater than he, which has grown so mightily in all the centuries since that it wields greater power to-day than any other agency ever known; or than all others put together. Summoned before Seneca's brother, Gallio, Proconsul of Corinth; carried off on an Alexandrian corn-ship to Italy, only to be wrecked on the way at Malta; chained to a soldier for two long years in a Roman prison; yet writing letters as brave and inspiring as ever came from human hand since men first learned the art of putting words together. Beheaded at last by the greatest brute that ever sat on a throne; who could fiddle while the foremost city in the world was burning.
And what sort of a body had this king of a man; who from that foul, gloomy dungeon, waiting for death, sure but doubly terrible, from his not knowing when it would come; could yet write that he had learned, in whatsoever state he was, therewith to be content; that he knew both how to be abased and how to abound!
Surely he cannot be made to tell how a good body helped him to do that giant-work. Why, he says himself that his "bodily presence was weak, and his speech contemptible!"
No, he does not say that.
What he said was that "They say that his bodily presence was weak and his speech contemptible." But, because he was not a big man; and the Corinthians liked bulk; is no sign that he was weak.
How could a weak man have gone all those years of intense, activity; "now minded himself to go afoot from Troas to Assos"; having, no doubt, to do most of his going in that way? No weak man could have "five times received forty stripes save one; been thrice beaten with rods; once stoned; thrice suffered shipwreck; been a night and a day in the deep; in journeyings often; in perils of waters; in perils of robbers; in perils by his own countrymen; in perils by the heathen; in perils in the city; in perils in the wilderness; in perils in the sea; in perils among false brethren; in weariness and painfulness; in watchings often; in hunger; and thirst; in fastings often; in cold and nakedness."
Just try one or two of these, and see if they are easy, you who feel strong, and all right. There may be more to this "weak bodily presence" than you perhaps ever thought of. Let your nearest blacksmith, for instance, lash your back thirty-nine times with a horsewhip. Or try a night and a day in the deep.
And was his speech contemptible, when a mob had him in its clutches; and all the city was moved; and the people ran together; and they took Paul, and drew him out of the temple; and were about to kill him; and he was borne of the soldiers, for the violence of the people? Yet who could stand right there on the stair; hold the rioters at bay; and, in that memorable "Men, brethren, and fathers" speech, force them to hear the truth, with such skill and power that they could stand it no longer; but shrieked out, "Away with such a fellow from the earth; for it is not fit that he should live!"
No—they had awakened the wrong man. Then, the next day, could, with a few bold words, split their great council into two factions; then face the Governor, who held his life in his power; and stretching forth his hand amid all "the great pomp; and among the chief captains and principal men of the city" so charm them with his speech, that the king himself could not resist him; but broke out right there before them all, "Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian!" Do you call that speech contemptible? Just name some other speech, made by any man of this century that will live like that! No—he might not have had as sonorous a voice; or as imposing mien; as some of those low Corinthians; but no other man in all that age has left a speech that can match this one for power.
And something is known of his body too. Malala, or John of Antioch, wrote of Paul that "He was short of stature, bald and grayish as to the hair of the head and of the chin; of a good nose and light blue eyes with the eyebrows knit together; of a fair and ruddy complexion, and graceful beard; of benevolent expression; of sound judgment, gentle, affable, of pleasing manner; and glowing with the fervor of the Holy Spirit."
Evidently a live, active man; ruddy complexions do not belong to sick people; but to those in sound health, whose rich, good blood talks in the face itself; none but a man of exceeding toughness of body could have ever done or borne what Paul did.
SOCRATES (468-399 B.C.)
"Plain old uncle as he was, with his great ears; an immense talker; the rumor ran that on one or two occasions, in the war with Bœotia, he had shown a determination which had covered the retreat of a troop. And again a courage in the city government, in opposing singly the popular voice, which had wellnigh ruined him. He is very poor, but then he is hardy as a soldier, and can live on a few olives;—usually in the strictest sense, on bread and water, except when entertained by his friends. His necessary expenses were exceedingly small; and no one could live as he did. He wore no under-garment; his upper garment was the same for summer and winter; and went barefooted. Under his hypocritical pretence of knowing nothing, he attacks and brings down all the fine speakers, all the fine philosophers of Athens, whether natives or strangers from Asia-Minor and the Islands. No one can refuse to talk with him, he is so honest and really curious to know. A pitiless disputant who knows nothing, but the bounds of whose conquering intelligence no man had ever reached; whose temper was imperturbable; whose dreadful logic was leisurely and disportive; so careless and ignorant as to disarm the wariest, and draw them in the pleasantest manner into horrible doubts and confusion. But he always knew the way out; knew it, yet would not tell it. The rare coincidence in one ugly body of the droll and the martyr; the keen street and market debater, with the sweetest saint known to any history at that time, forcibly struck the mind of Plato, so capacious of these contrasts."
Professor Harrison says: "With the exception of One, Socrates was perhaps the greatest teacher that ever lived. His school was the workshop; the gymnasium; the market-place; the street. Eminently a preparer, he was the first and fiercest foe of cram in all its shapes and forms. If he could make people think, he was perfectly satisfied, and walked away happy. Everywhere the broad mouth, snub nose, and bald head of this reformer produced dismay; for the people knew the volley of questions sure to come. His ambition was to plant seeds of moral and intellectual reform everywhere. With the ugliest face, he combined the most beautiful soul in the world; so pure and noble that he might have been honored as a saint. The Greeks loved him for three things: First, his touching poverty; cheerfulness; self-denial; his equanimity, which nothing could overthrow; his public talks, in which he strove to better his people; to influence young men for good; and to set a lofty example of robust poverty, in the midst of a luxurious and sensual generation. Second, because he believed he had a special religious mission. Third, his great intellectual originality; the novelty of his talk; the unusualness of his method; the oddity of his subject; his power of stirring and quickening the thought. No great poet, historian, ox statesman of Greece equalled in influence the talking 'tramp' Socrates; who simply talked, talked, ever divinely; and left not a line behind him. Yet talk that called into existence the great philosophical school of Plato, Euclid, Aristippus, and Diogenes."
And had he, with this rare power of mind and character, a good body also? Read and see.
"He could bear the longest fasts; and the soldier's plain fare. Cold and heat were alike to him. Against the extremes of both the same clothing was a sufficient defence; and with bare feet he trod the ice of Thrace. In battle he quitted himself as a true Athenian should; and, even amid the wreck of a routed army, he bore himself so nobly, that the pursuers did not venture to attack him. He surpassed all men in physical endurance.
So Plato makes his tent-mate, Alcibiades, describe him. And he well might; for when wounded at the battle of Potidæa, Socrates took him up on his shoulders, and carried him to a place of safety. He also rescued Xenophon at the battle of Delium.
"He had immense strength and health."—Harrison's Story of Greece, p. 433.
Page 67: "Socrates was forty when he fought at Potidæa and rescued Alcibiades. At this period he was most distinguished for his physical strength and endurance. A brave, patriotic soldier, insensible to heat and cold, and temperate. His powerful physique and sensual nature inclined him to indulgence; but he early learned to restrain both appetites and passions."
He had three sons. His wife, Xantippe, is well known also as quite a talker. Indeed, he says so himself; says, in fact, that she talked "like thunder." However, other men have said that of their wives. He also said that he married and endured her for self-discipline. But she did not put it that way. Very likely she was not a Mrs. Jellaby. No doubt she asked him now and then how she was to dress; and shoe; and feed; and house those boys, and herself, on fifty dollars a year. And because he could wear an old coat forever; and live on olives; and not care; it did not follow that she would not like a new gown, at least every ten years—possibly a hat, too. Yet, somehow, notwithstanding her talk, he got fat on it; and loafed around, down-town, all day; while Mrs. S. had to do the washing and ironing; perhaps now and then telling him he might at least raise a few potatoes and cabbages for her in the back yard. And yet this same corner loafer, his perfect good-nature unruffled by these little home thoughts, could out-think and under-think any man in Athens.
PLATO (430–347 B.C.)
After referring to the then known wisdom and its sources, Emerson continues: "At last comes Plato the distributor; he can define. He leaves with Asia the vast and superlative; he is the arrival of accuracy and intelligence. This defining is philosophy. In him the freest abandonment is united with the precision of a geometer. His daring imagination gives him the more solid grasp of facts; as the birds of highest flight have the strongest alar bones. His patrician polish, his intrinsic evidence, edged by an irony so subtle that it stings and paralyzes, adorns the soundest health and strength of frame. According to the old sentence, 'If Jove should descend to the earth, he would speak in the style of Plato.' He has a probity, a native reverence for justice and honor; and a humanity which makes him tender for the superstitions of the people. He has finished his thinking before he brings it to the reader; and he abounds in the surprises of a literary master. He has the opulence which furnishes at every turn the precise weapon he needs. As the rich man wears no more garments, drives no more horses, sits in no more chambers, than the poor, but has that one dress or equipage or instrument, which is fit for the hour and the need; so Plato in his plenty, is never restricted, but has the fit word.
"There is, indeed, no weapon in all the armory of wit which he did not possess and use,—epic, analysis, mania, intuition, music, satire, and irony, down to the customary and polite. His illustrations are poetry, and jests illustrations. He is a great average man—one who to the best thinking adds a proportion and equality to his faculties, so that men see in him their own dreams and glimpses made available, and made to pass for what they are. A great common-sense is his warrant and qualification to be the world's interpreter. What a price he sets on the feats of talent! What a value he gives to the art of gymnastics; what to geometry; what to music; what to astronomy, whose appeasing and medicinal power he celebrates!"
As we have already seen (page 11), Plato held him or her who was educated in mind and moral nature only, and not in body, also a cripple. But he lived up to his preaching.
"His name was at first Aristocles; and was changed to Plato because of the breadth of his shoulders; or of his style; or of his forehead.… That he wrestled well."—Encyclopædia Britannica.
"Besides the ordinary training in the gymnasium, grammar and music; he was a pupil of Socrates during the last eight or nine years of that great reformer's life."—Ibid.
"Endowed with a robust physical frame, and exercised in gymnastics not merely in one of the Palæstræ of Athens (which he describes graphically in the Charmides), but also under an Argeian trainer, he attained such force and skill as to contend (if we may credit Dikæarchus) for the prize wrestling among the boys at the Isthmian festival."—Grote's Plato and Other Companions of Socrates, p. 115.
"A robust young citizen like Plato."—Ibid., p. 117.
So this mighty mind was no cripple; but lived in a fit house—an educated body. Such a man could hardly help taking sensible care of his body. Gladstone, axeman and long-distance walker, has partially developed his body and limbs. But Plato—the wrestler—and one of the best boy wrestlers in all athletic Greece—that tells the story. There never was a great wrestler yet who was not an unusually strong man. It could not take this grand mind long to see that, of all the tests of the palæstra, wrestling called for—and made—the strongest man—and, as in everything else, he never spared himself till he was at the head. What a treat to have known such a man! Sandwiched in as he was between two of the greatest minds the world has ever seen—Socrates his teacher, and Aristotle his pupil. And he the equal of either. And with such a native outfit as his, what a chance he had! And how he improved it!
ARISTOTLE (384–322 B.C.)
"Philip of Macedon thanked the gods, at the birth of Alexander; not so much for their having blessed him with a son as for the son's being born at a time when Aristotle was living to superintend his education."—McCormick's Burke (1798), p. 6.
Born at Stagira 384 B.C.; of a famous medical family; a great dissector of animals—as well as of arguments; pupil of Plato; at fifty opening his famous lyceum near the temple of Apollo Lyceius, walking up and down the garden as he lectured; and so called Peripatetic; tutor of Alexander the Great; after the latter's death, a hostile, party coming into power, he fled to Chalcis, in Eubœa, and died at sixty-two. Ruling the world of thought for 1500 years down to the time of Bacon; one writer says that his intellectual power "was owing in a large degree to the harmonious education in which the body shared as well as the mind. That no dyspepsia broke the harmony of his thoughts, and no neuralgia twinged his system with agony." And, by-the-way, does it not seem as if the most learned and intelligent ought to know how to take at least fair care of their own bodies?
And then ought to do it? Yet how many do?
Many of our towns to-day have their Lyceums; but here was the great parent one of them all, with this great man at its head; and ever since, in all lands, his work and words have been taught in the same schools.
And why have we dropped the Peripatetic feature?
And with such a master, did he, could he, omit to train his body?
Small and slender in person, and part of the time of feeble health, Aristotle accomplished in his day the task of a giant.
Then he was weak, after all?
Look at his statue, the well-known sitting one (of which there is a copy in the Metropolitan Museum in New York City). Deep, close thought in each line of that fine face. But see those legs,—a rare pair. Go to the next athletic meet, and find better if you can. That foot; that leg, had seen much work.
It says so all over them. Those hours and days and years of Peripatetic work had carved their story; and his legs talk as well as his face—a clean-cut, closely knit, wiry man.
ALEXANDER (356–323 B.C.)
President Garfield once said that Mark Hopkins upon one end of a bench and you upon the other meant a liberal education.
But upon a bench in old time sat a greater teacher than President Hopkins; and beside him a greater man than Garfield. Son of a famous soldier-king; of a mother fiery and ambitious; he early showed the traits of both in boundless ambition, coupled with sober wisdom in dealing with whatever arose. His father secured as his tutor the renowned Aristotle, who "withdrew him to a distance from the Court, and instructed him in every branch of human learning, especially what relates to the art of government; while, at the same time he disciplined and invigorated his body by gymnastic exercises." (And, by-the-way, how could Aristotle teach him gymnastics, if he did not know them himself?)
In recent years, we have seen a small band of Japs going where they liked in mighty China; and her hundreds of millions could not stop them. So this lad, with scarce 35,000 men, went through army after army; and province and satrapy and nation; bearing all before him, till at thirty-two, he had conquered not one nation; or one continent only; but the whole known world; and sighed because he had not more worlds to conquer. Who before or after him ever did that?
And did the body of this war-genius match his mind? It must have, or he could not have stood the pace. And it did. He was a boy of extraordinary promise. He said himself: "I am not one of those who will look on at the struggle. But I am one of those who will perform valiant deeds at the contest. And though I be little and short in stature; yet I am mighty in chariot-races, and I will defeat the proud."
And he did. For out of nine starters, one was a King—Nicolaus—who gave him a hot fight all over the track, but he won. "In sports and gymnastics he easily excelled all."
"He was fair in complexion and ruddy; of sweet odor, and agreeable in person; above the average height, though not tall, his presence was commanding; his beauty kingly."
"Alexander was active, and able to endure cold, hunger, and thirst; trial and fatigue beyond even the strongest." "His strength and courage were altogether exceptional."
Quintus Curtius says that he saved his father's life in a mutiny among the Triballi, when a mere lad, by his sole personal gallantry. He was invincible to those things which terrify others. His bravery did not only excel that of other kings; but even that of those who have no other virtue. He was never known to change countenance at wounds.—Dodge's Alexander, III., pp. 182–651.
"The Mallian arrow which had penetrated his lung was cut out without a motion on his part.
"He was exceedingly swift of foot; but when young, would not enter the Olympic games, because he had not kings' sons to compete with. An athlete himself, he disliked professional athletes,—saying that they ought to place their strength at the service of the country. He was always glad to incur hardship and danger in hunting; and is related to have slain a lion, single-handed, when in Bœotia. He kept his body in good training. On the march he was habituated to shoot from his horse or chariot for practice; and to mount and dismount when at full speed. He frequently marched on foot with his troops, rather than make use of horse or chariot. Naturally disposed to sleep but little, he increased his watchfulness by habit. In an iron body dwelt both an intellect clear beyond compare; and a heart full of generous impulses. He was ambitious, but from high motives. His desire to conquer the world was coupled with a purpose of furthering Hellenic civilization. His instincts were keen, his perception remarkable; his judgment all but infallible. As an organizer of an army he was unapproachable; as a leader unapproachable. 'That the soul of this king was fashioned on a superhuman pattern,' says Polybius, 'all men agree.'"
Dodge says: "His bodily strength and activity were matched only by his extraordinary courage."
Aristotle had done his work well, and with good material.
Lamar, Henry Ward Beecher the Second, DeSaulles in the pinch and crisis of a great football-fight each did brilliant work, and won fame. But which one of them was as good a man as this little Macedonian? Teach him the game—and he would have grasped it at once—and who of his size—or of any other size—in America or England to-day would be his peer?
DEMOSTHENES (385–322 B.C.)
Hearing the orator Callistratus plead an important case, he applied himself with great assiduity to declaiming, and bade adieu to his other studies and exercises. Then he attacked his guardians and, as Thucydides says, "he had great opportunity to exercise his talent for the Bar." It was not without much pains and some risk that he gained his cause. But he had a weakness and stammering in his voice and a want of breath that caused such a distraction in his discourse that it was difficult for the audience to understand him. Immediately afterwards, wandering in a dejected condition in the Piræus, he was met by Eunous, who said: "You have a manner of speaking very like that of Pericles; yet you lose yourself out of mere timidity and cowardice. You neither bear up against the tumults of a popular assembly, nor prepare your body by exercise for the labor of the rostrum; but suffer your parts to wither away in negligence and indulgence."
Plutarch says that "Upon this he built himself a subterraneous study, which remained to our times. Thither he repaired every day, to form his action and exercise his voice. And he would often stay there for two or three months together, shaving one side of his head, that if he should happen to be ever so desirous of going abroad, the shame of appearing in that condition might keep him in.… As to his personal defects, Demetrius the Phalærean gives us an account of the remedies he applied to them, and he says he had it from Demosthenes in his old age.
"The hesitation and stammering of his tongue he corrected by practising to speak with pebbles in his mouth; and he strengthened his voice by running or walking uphill, and pronouncing some passage in an oration of a poem during the difficulty of breath which that caused.
"About this time the affair concerning the Crown came upon the carpet—it was the most celebrated cause that ever was pleaded."
Though he stammered and could not pronounce his Rs; though he was "constitutionally feeble, so that he shrank from the vigorous physical training, deemed so essential in a Greek education; yet" (as Professor Mathews well says) "regarding oratory as an art; and as an art in which proficiency can come only by intense labor; he" (like Sir Henry Irving) "left nothing to chance which he could secure by forethought and skill; nothing to the inspiration of the moment which deliberate industry could make certain." And his walking uphill, and running; his practice in that subterranean study, his following the sound advice of Eunous and preparing his body by exercise, were evidently attended to; or he never could have done what he did; or have spoken as he did until, one writer—after defining force to be "partly a physical product and partly mental"; it is the life of oratory which gives it breath and fire and power; it is the electrical element, that which smites, penetrates, and thrills"—says: "Demosthenes, if we may judge by an oft-quoted saying of an enemy, must have had an almost superhuman force." "What!" exclaimed Æschines to the Rhodians, when they applauded the recital of the speech which caused his banishment—"what if you had heard the monster himself?" President Bashford, of Ohio Wesleyan University, testifies to the great labor Demosthenes must have bestowed upon his speeches in these apt words: "When I began the study of Demosthenes oration on the Crown, I had the vague impression that eloquence was an unearthly quality, gained by some sort of magnetism. I was astonished to find this speech so packed with knowledge with the subject in hand that Demosthenes seemed to know all about the theme; and his view appeared to be the only correct opinion. In the next place, I was equally astonished to find the argument stated so simply that even a child could not fail to understand it.
And that the body of Demosthenes was a good one, and equal to the great demands he made upon it, is seen from the celebrated full-length statue in the Vatican, not deep-chested like Webster, but a tall, lean, muscular man, of strong, wiry, Gladstone-like arms, cordy neck, erect, masculine-looking trunk, and strong, well-set legs. Æschines called him a monster. Monsters are not feeble folk. It takes force to make a monster; and the almost superhuman force of this matchless orator, noted beyond all speakers of ancient time for his force and "action," came from a body educated by the severe ordeal of his youth, and by his special training for the great work which has left him imperishable fame.
HANNIBAL (247–183 B.C.)
And he knew how to care for his body; and he had a noble one, a potent factor in winning all his victories. Gilman's Hannibal, p. 181, says: "The very model of a soldier; he was bold, but never rash; cool in the presence of danger, and infinitely fertile of resource." But to fatigue he seemed insensible. He could bear heat and cold equally well. Of food and drink he cared only to take so much as satisfied the needs of nature. To sleep he gave such time as business spared him; and he could take it anywhere and anyhow. Many a time he could be seen lying on the ground, wrapped in his military cloak among the sentries and pickets. About his dress he was careless; it was nothing better than that of his humblest comrades. But his arms and horses were the best that could be found. He was an admirable rider; a skilful man at arms; and as brave as he was skilful."
If Vincenz Pils's conception of his physique was correct, his body was a fit home for that great mind. Look at his statue and find a weak spot. On the contrary, where do you find such a powerful man to-day? No wonder that with that head and that spirit, and that rare training, he did wondrous work, when he had such a body as that to call on as he liked!
CICERO (109–43 B.C.)
The same gifts and severe labor that gave us this great master of prose made him an orator—witty, refined, brilliant, elevated—of a "true appreciation of the needs of his time." Quintilian says: "He knew that he had wholly devoted himself to the imitation of the Greeks; to uniting the force of Demosthenes; the copiousness of Plato; the charm of Isocrates; and not only has he made what is best in each of these great men his own; but, with the happy fertility of an immortal genius, has developed from himself most, or rather all excellences."
In his own view of Demosthenes, he tells us of himself: "He attains much, while I attempt much. He has the power, I the will, to speak as every occasion requires. He is great, for great orators preceded him, and were his contemporaries. I, too, might have done something great, if I had been able to attain the goal of my efforts, in a city in which, as Antonius says, 'No real orator had ever been heard before.'"
But Jerome put it in this way: "Demosthenes has wrested from you, Cicero, the honor of being the first orator; you from him that of being the only one." Really great orators seem to have been as rare then as now. The New York World, speaking of the Socialist Deputy Jaures' famous speech, said: "Yesterday's despatches, telling of the impression created by a single able speech of Deputy Jaures show that eloquence has lost none of its power over the human mind. Although the last decade has been marked by the almost total disappearance of the orator; during the past thirteen years France has had no great orator, and consequently no great speech. We are fully as badly off in this country."
"The period of his birth was one of marked national prosperity. He was well born, but not of noble ancestors. The great peculiarity of his youth was his precocity. He was an intellectual prodigy, like Pitt, Macaulay, and Mill.
"Like them he had a wonderful memory. He early mastered the Greek language. He wrote poetry; studied under eminent professors; frequented the forum; listened to the speeches of different orators; watched the posture and gesture of actors; and plunged into the mazes of literature and philosophy. He was conscious of his marvellous gifts; and was, of course, ambitious of distinction. There were only three ways at Rome in which a man could rise to eminence and power. One was by making money, like army-contractors and merchants; such as the Equites, to whose ranks he belonged; the second was by military service; and the third by the law—an honorable profession. Like Cæsar, a few years younger than he, Cicero selected the law. But he was a new man, not a Patrician as Cæsar was,—and had few powerful friends. Hence his progress was not rapid in the way of clients. He was twenty-five years of age before he had a case."
But he had another drawback, one of which he was soon conscious, and like a man of sense, he set about curing it. As Dr. Lord says: "Cicero was not naturally robust. His figure was tall and spare; his neck long and slender; and his mouth anything but sensual. Impetuous, ardent, fiery, his health could not stand the strain on his nervous system; and he was obliged to leave Rome for recreation. He remained in Greece and Asia Minor for two years—and at thirty returned, and attended upon his profession." But his life abroad was not only for recreation.
"Cicero was of a lean and slender habit, and his stomach was so weak that he was obliged to be very sparing in his diet, and not to eat till a late hour in the day. His voice, however, had a variety of inflections, but was at the same time harsh and unformed. He went to Athens and heard Antiochus, and was charmed with the smoothness and grace of his elocution. He spent some time there. His body by this time was strengthened by exercise, and brought to a good habit. His voice was formed, and at the same time that it was full and sonorous had gained a sufficient sweetness and was brought to a key which his constitution could bear.
"He had a handsome country-house at Arpinum, a farm near Naples, and another at Pompeii, but they were not very considerable. Upon these he lived in a genteel, and at the same time a frugal, manner, with men of letters, both Greeks and Romans, around him. He rarely took his meal before sunset; not that business or study prevented his sitting down to table sooner—but the weakness of his stomach, he thought, required that regimen. Indeed, he was so exact in all respects in the care of his health that he had his stated hours for rubbing, and for the exercise of walking. By this management of his constitution, he gained a sufficient stock of health and strength for the great labors and fatigues he afterwards underwent."
Could he have done a more sensible act? Had he not built up his body as he did in his youth, you and I would never have heard of Cicero.
CÆSAR (100–45 B.C.)
Plutarch says that in less than ten years in Gaul he took 800 cities by assault; conquered 300 nations; and fought pitched battles at different times with 3,000,000 men; 1,000,000 of whom he cut in pieces; and made another million prisoners.
In civil life equally successful: Quæstor; Edile; Pontifex Maximus; Proconsul; Consul; Dictator—all that Rome could offer, this man won. Shakespeare makes Antony, as he stood over his dead body, say: "Thou art the ruins of the noblest man that ever lived in the tide of times!"
And what sort of a looking man was he; and in what kind of a house dwelt this mighty spirit? A poor, half-trained affair, allowed to grow up as most of our bodies to-day grow up,—just anyhow? And looking as if they had grown up anyhow? Hear Mr. Froude: "In youth he was an athlete; admirable in all manly sports; and especially skilled in the use of the horse." As to his personal characteristics, Plutarch says that his soldiers were astonished at his patience under toil, so far in all appearance above his bodily powers; for he was of a slender make, fair, of a delicate constitution, and subject to violent headache and epileptic fits. He had the first attack of the falling-sickness at Corduba. He did not however make these disorders a pretence for indulging himself. On the contrary, he sought in war a remedy for his infirmities, endeavoring to strengthen his constitution by long marches; by simple diet; by seldom coming under covert. Thus he contended with his distemper and fortified himself against its attacks.
He was a good horseman in his early years; and brought that exercise to such perfection by practice that he could sit a horse at full speed with his hands behind him. He also accustomed himself to dictate letters as he rode on horseback; and found sufficient employment for two secretaries at once; or, according to Oppius, for more.
In Scribner's for January, 1887, John C. Ropes says of the Toga Statue (p. 132): "We might, I think, consider this as the earliest of all his likenesses. Cæsar is represented in the attitude of an orator, with the right arm 
JULIUS CÆSAR
(From the marble bust in the British Museum)
(Published by the courtesy of Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons)
extended. The head is well covered with hair; and the whole appearance is that of a man of about thirty-five years of age." Mr. Ropes Judges the British Museum full-face bust of Cæsar to be of him when he was about forty-three. He says—p. 135: "In this head we see the effect of several years' hard campaigning upon Cæsar's features. The severe lines of the mouth, and the sternness of the expression, show the indomitable resolution of the Conqueror of Gaul."
Referring to the plaster-casts in the Boston Athenæum, he says of the larger one: "It seems to be unmistakably the head of a great man. The extraordinary vigor, alertness, energy, and determination shown upon the rugged features of a man long past his bodily prime, never failed to make me pause and admire."
Dr. Lord says that he "received a good education, but was not precocious like Cicero. There was nothing remarkable about his childhood. He was a tall and handsome man, with dark, piercing eyes, sallow complexion, large nose, full lips, refined and intellectual features, and thick neck."
Professor Ward Fowler, of Oxford, says: "He was tall for a Roman; but the Italian standard of height was probably then, as now, considerably below that of the Northern races. His complexion was pale, or fair; his eyes black and lively; his mouth somewhat large; the lips, as they are represented in the coins and busts, being firmly set together, with the corners slightly drawn downwards. His forehead was high, and appeared still higher in consequence of a premature baldness, which he is said to have tried to hide by combing his hair forwards. His nose was aquiline and rather large. The contour of his head, as represented in the well-known marble in the British Museum, is extremely massive and powerful, and the expression of the face is keen, thoughtful, and somewhat stern.
"It is the likeness of a severe school-master of the world, whose tenderer side, with its capability of affection for friends and devotion towards women, is hardly traceable in the features. His health was good, though late in life he was subject to some kind of seizure. He was capable of the most unremitting activity; his limbs were big and strongly made. Suetonius tells us that he was an extremely skilful swordsman and horseman, and a good swimmer. All his contemporaries agree that he was very abstemious in regard to wine.…
"All were also agreed as to the steadiness and coolness of his temper; and the courteousness of his manner and bearing; indicating the possession of that high breeding which the Romans aptly termed 'humanitas.' On the whole, we may picture him to ourselves as a man the dignity of whose bodily presence was in due proportion to the greatness of his mental powers.…
"Such was the man who from his first campaign in Gaul to the end of his life, during fifteen years of continual labor, whether military or administrative, was always learning, noting, and advancing. No one can doubt this who reads his Commentaries carefully; with the object of discovering something of the nature of the man who wrote them."…
His "one leading characteristic as a man of action was that he never put his hand to a piece of work without carrying it through to the end; work was to him so absorbing and so necessary that he could entertain no visionary plans while it was still unfinished, and was content to let things take their course elsewhere, provided he himself were allowed to go through with what was before him." A grand characteristic for any man to have—or to teach his son.… Who taught the world that "for averting a panic there is nothing so good as hard work."
But he was not only a man of action. He could speak too.
Quintilian says: "If Julius Cæsar had only found leisure for the forum, he would be the one we should select as the rival of Cicero. He has such force, point, and vehemence of style that it is clear that he spoke with the same mind that he warred. Yet all is covered with a wonderful elegance of expression, of which he was peculiarly studious."
And a neighbor and friend of us all says:
"… 'A wonderful man was this Cæsar!
You are a writer, and I am a fighter, but here is a fellow
Who could both write and fight, and in both was equally skilful!'*******
Better be first, he said, in a little Iberian village,
Than be second in Rome, and I think he was right when he said it.
Twice was he married before he was twenty, and many times after;
Battles five hundred he fought, and a thousand cities he conquered;
He, too, fought in Flanders, as he himself has recorded;
Finally he was stabbed by his friend, the orator Brutus!
Now, do you know what he did on a certain occasion in Flanders
When the rear-guard of his army retreated, the front giving way too,
And the immortal Twelfth Legion was crowded so closely together,
There was no room for their swords?
Why, he seized a shield from a soldier,
Put himself straight at the head of his troops, and commanded the captains,
Calling on each by his name, to order forward the ensigns;
Then to widen the ranks, and give more room for their weapons.
So he won the day, the battle of Something-or-other.
That's what I always say; if you wish a thing to be well done,
You must do it yourself; you must not leave it to others!'"
Not many days of Cæsar's life were wasted. Not many hours even. One writer says that had an angel told Napoleon beforehand of the great career in store for him, he could not have worked harder than he did. And he could have said the same of this Roman man and gentleman—this master of the world—and of himself.
MOHAMMED (570–632 A. D.)
And he whose followers to-day thus number two hundred millions was no weakling in body.
"Mohammed was of middle height, and of a strongly built frame; his head was large; his eyes were coal-black and piercing in their brightness; his hair curled slightly, and a long beard added to the general impression of his appearance. His step was quick and firm, like that of one descending a hill.[1] He was of middle height, rather lean, but broad shouldered and altogether of strong build."[2]
CHARLEMAGNE (748–814)
Lo! there uprose a cloud, a black and threatening cloud,
Out of whose bosom flashed the light of arms;
Upon the people pent up in the city,
A light more terrible than any darkness;
And Charlemagne appeared;—a Man of Iron!"
—Longfellow.
"At twenty-six he became the monarch of the greater part of modern France and the Rhine provinces. By unwearied activity in successive conquests he increased his inheritance, till no so great an empire has ever been ruled by any one man in Europe since the fall of the Roman Empire from his time to ours.
"Of his fifty-three expeditions, eighteen were against the Saxons. The fame of Cæsar rests chiefly on his eight campaigns in Gaul. But Cæsar had the disciplined Legions of Rome to fight with. Charlemagne had no such disciplined troops. Yet he had as many difficulties to surmount as Cæsar. Charlemagne fought the Saxons for thirty-three years; and though he never lost a battle they still held out. Every one makes mistakes, however great his genius. Alexander made the mistake of pushing his arms into India; and Napoleon made a great blunder in invading Russia. Charlemagne's fame is steadily gaining after a lapse of a thousand years. His active mind gave attention to all matters great and small. His untiring diligence; his surpassing swiftness in apprehension and decision, enabled him to despatch an amount of business perhaps never undertaken by another monarch; unless by Frederick II. of Prussia; or by Napoleon Bonaparte.
"He liked to have learned men about him, and made some progress himself in several branches of literature. He spoke Latin as fluently as his own German; had a fair knowledge of Greek; studied theology, astronomy, grammar, rhetoric, and logic; was a great collector of national ballads. The conquests of the great Karl are by no means his only title to admiration and respect. That which raises him above all the monarchs of his age is the wisdom of his laws; whereby he replaced anarchy by order; and bound together in one a multitude of races, differing in origin, language, laws, and religion. Fully aware that education is the best method of civilizing a people; he used all his endeavors to introduce among his subjects a taste for literature and the fine arts; in which commendable labor he was greatly aided by Alcuin, a native of York, and disciple of the Venerable Bede. Many new subjects of study were introduced in this reign. Hitherto almost the only literature of the empire consisted of sermons, legends, and morals. Alcuin introduced rhetoric, grammar, jurisprudence, astronomy, natural history, chronology, mathematics, poetry, and Scripture comments. His elementary treatises on philosophy, rhetoric, philology, grammar, and mathematics are still extant.
"In eating Charlemagne was almost abstemious; and still more so in drinking. Drunkenness he abhorred; and banquets were his abomination. His table was rarely served with more than four dishes. He preferred roast meat to boiled; and at his noon day meal his attendant brought him up his favorite roast on a spit, hot from the fire. After dinner he took a little fruit; and then a nap for about two hours.
"In dress he was most simple. His clothes were made in the plainest fashion, differing very little from those worn by the common people. His undergarments were linen; his waistcoat and tunic were edged with silk; his trousers reached to his ankles; and fitted tight to the legs. His feet were covered with boots; and his ankles bound with linen sandal-straps, somewhat like those of a Scotch costume.
"In winter he wore over his chest an ermine or otter's skin; and a loose cloak, fastened at the right shoulder with a gold or silver clasp. Only on two occasions could he be induced to put on robes of State. They were in compliment to Pope Adrian, and his successor, Pope Leo III.
"He was mild in temper, courteous and sociable; most just and liberal, vigilant and industrious, magnanimous and self-denying. Hating luxury; a despiser of flattery; and without a tinge of vanity. Extremely charitable; a great cultivator and most liberal promoter of the arts; a noble patron of learning; easy of access; delighting in strangers of eminence; and patient in hearing suitors. Like all really great men, he had an untiring vigor of mind, which seemed to grasp everything, from universal empire to the common people. No amount of labor wearied him; nothing was too great, nothing too little, to engage his attention. He felt an interest in mending a broken toy, or soothing a fretful child; as well as in the hurly-burly of a battle-field.
"His whole appearance was manly, cheerful, dignified. His countenance reflected a childlike serenity. He was of the few men like David, who was not spoiled by war and flatteries.
"Yet greater than the conquests of Charlemagne was the greatness of his character. He preserved simplicity and gentleness amid all the distractions attending his government.
And marvellous was his body.
"His early life was spent amid the turmoils and dangers of camps; and as a young man he was distinguished for precocity of talent and manly beauty; and gigantic physical strength. He was a type of chivalry before chivalry arose.
"His chief delight was horsemanship. He was passionately fond of hunting, and, next to hunting, swimming, in which he was wholly unrivalled. He loved the German spas; and freely used the hot mineral waters.
"When Charlemagne mounted the throne, he was twenty-four years of age; in the strength and prime of his youth. His person was huge and strong; combining the presence and muscular powers of the heroes of song; so that he found it sport to fight with the gigantic bulls in the forest of Ardennes.
"He was a man of gigantic stature, rising over seven feet in height, and somewhat corpulent; but so well proportioned that his great size was scarcely noticed, except when others stood beside him. His head was round; the expression of his face, open, benevolent, and cheerful; his neck, short and thick; his eyes large, quick, and lustrous; his nose was what is called 'the conqueror's nose'—that is, prominent, straight, and rising at the bridge; his hair was of a brownish hue, fine, thick, and flowing; his step firm; his hand so strong that it could straighten three horseshoes at once; his voice clear, but somewhat shrill; his deportment dignified and manly; his health excellent.
"He takes rank among the extraordinary men who, from time to time, appear to change the face of the world; and to inaugurate a new era in the destinies of mankind."
Dr. Lord says: "He recognized that Christianity is the mightiest power in the world.
"He died uttering the words, 'Lord, into Thy hands I commend my spirit.' He was seventy-two years of age when he died, and had reigned forty-six years.
"One hundred and eighty years after his death, Otho III., at the close of the tenth century, opened his tomb in the chapel he had built at Aix-la-Chapelle, and found him seated on his throne, sceptre in hand, his crown on his skull, and his royal mantle clinging to his shoulder, as so finely portrayed by Gustave Doré; and two hundred years later Frederick Barbarossa found his bones in the same position."
Sound, good bones were those; eloquent of the vigor and stanch material of which this great German giant was made and of the right life he led; doing wonderful good in the world with such light as he had.
ALFRED (819–901 A.D.)
And he had the good sense to take care of his body.
Hume says that he "usually divided his time into three portions: one was devoted to sleep, food, and exercise; one to study and devotion; a third to business.
"Tom Brown" says that Alfred was not unmindful of the culture of his body; was a zealous practiser of hunting in all its branches, and hunted with great perseverance and success.
Though afflicted in youth with an ailment usual only among the sedentary when well on in years; he did not let this keep him from daily exercise. But in that way so built up his general health that he was able to stand the unusual strain.
At his death he said: "So long as I have lived, I have striven to live worthily."
And who will not agree with him? And that he succeeded too? Is it not strange that he a thousand years ago took better care of his body—did more each day to put and keep it in good working order—than we with all our enlightenment do now?
WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR (1027–1087 A.D.)
"Fitting out a fleet of several hundred vessels, he sailed with an army of fifty thousand archers and cavalry, and defeated and slew Harold in the decisive battle of Hastings; advanced upon London, which opened her gates and surrendered without a blow; gave that city her charter, now seen in Guildhall; and upon Christmas Day, 1066, was anointed and crowned in Westminster Abbey. Taking from the upper classes all offices of church and state; imposing new and heavy taxes; confiscating the lands, and turning them over to his own Norman Barons; erecting fortresses and garrisons all over the country; he reduced the Saxons almost to slavery. Yet he kept off foreign invaders; built the Tower of London; castles, monasteries, churches, and cathedrals rose everywhere; made the Great Survey of almost every foot of land in England outside of London; keeping the records of it in the famous Doomsday Book; summoned every noble, and landholder, and vassal to meet him upon Salisbury Plain; and made them swear allegiance to him. For England, drifting into anarchy and chaos, his coming was a good thing. It brought her into closer contact with the civilization of the Continent; made her more progressive; improved her language; built noble edifices of stone, in place of decaying wood; developed the feudal system; defined the relation of church and state; established a strong monarchy; and compelled strict obedience to the laws."
Freeman, the English historian, says: "A foreign conqueror, veiling his conquest under a legal claim; the hour and the man were alike needed. The man, in his own hour, wrought a work, partly conscious, partly unconscious. The more clearly a man understands his conscious work; the more sure is his unconscious work to lead to further results, of which he dreams not. So it was with the Conqueror of England. His purpose was to win and to keep the Kingdom of England; and to hand it on to those who should come after him, more firmly united than it had ever been before.… It was his policy to disguise the fact of conquest; to cause all the spoils of conquest to be held, in outward form, according to the ancient law of England. The fiction became a fact; and the fact greatly helped in the process of fusion between Normans and English. William founded no new state; no new nation; no new constitution. He simply kept what he found; with such modification as his position made needful; and his work determined the later course of English history; and determined it to the lasting good of the English nation.… As far as mortal man can guide the course of things when he is gone, the course of our national history since William's day has been the result of William's character, and of William's acts. Well may we restore to him the surname that men gave him in his own day. He may worthily take his place as William the Great, alongside of Alexander, Constantine, and Charles. They may have wrought in some sort a greater work; because they had a wider stage to work on. But no man ever wrought a greater and more abiding work, on the stage that fortune gave him than he—qui dux Normannis, qui Cæsar praefuit Anglis. Stranger and conqueror, his deeds won him a right to a place among English statesmen; and no man that came after him has won a right to a higher place."
And he had a body. Green's History of the English People thus draws his picture: "The very spirit of the sea-robbers from which he sprung seemed embodied in his gigantic form; his enormous strength; his savage countenance; his desperate bravery; the fury of his wrath; the ruthlessness of his revenge. No Knight under heaven, his enemies confessed, was William's peer. No man could bend William's bow. His mace crashed through a ring of English warriors to the foot of the standard. He rose to his greatest heights in moments when other men despaired." No man who ever sat upon the throne of England was this man's match. Name your man who even came near him in bodily prowess! Princes and Kings are so beset with all forms of temptation that the wonder is that they come through and do as well as they do. We may later find an American ruler who might have bothered him—and bent his bow besides. And a Scotchman—one Wallace—would no doubt have liked a try with him. And we have two big Germans who also might have entered.
WALLACE (1270–1305 A.D.)
"The independence of Scotland appeared to be completely destroyed; the great nobles were reduced to a state of submission, if not of servility; and the power of the King of England was firmly rooted throughout the country. But a change was at hand; and the slumbering fires of patriotism were soon to be kindled into a blaze. The man who was destined to rouse his countrymen from their apathy; and work out the freedom of his native land; was at these times engaged in roaming the hills of Renfrewshire, at the head of a petty band of marauders; and he was that Sir William Wallace, famed through successive ages in song and story.… In those stormy times bodily strength and valor in the field were the first qualities necessary to success; and the strength of Wallace is described as having been prodigious. His size was gigantic; and as he grew towards manhood, there were few men who could meet him in single combat. He was a man of violent passions; and strong hatred of the English; which was evinced by him in early life, and was fostered by those with whom he came in contact. After driving the English from the castles of Brechin, Forfar, Montrose, and other fortresses north of the Forth; he was engaged in the siege of the Castle of Dundee; when he received news of the advance of the English army. Raising the siege, he marched his forces, consisting of 40,000 men, in haste to Stirling, where he arrived before the English army. Wallace took up a favorable position on the banks of the Forth, and a portion of his troops were concealed by the hills. The Earl of Surrey, in command of 50,000 foot and 1000 horse, soon afterwards appeared on the other side of the river; and on observing the strong position of Wallace, he thought it prudent to negotiate with him; and sent messengers to him proposing to treat. The reply of Wallace was bold and decided: 'Return,' he said, 'to those who sent you; and say that we are not here to waste words; but to maintain our rights; and give freedom to Scotland. Let them advance, and we will meet them, beard to beard.'"—Cassell's History of England, I., p. 534.
As we have seen, "his size was gigantic," and "few men could meet him in single combat."
Sir Walter Scott's Tales of a Grandfather, p. 61, says: "He was very tall and handsome; and one of the strongest and bravest men that ever lived. He was particularly dexterous in the use of all weapons which were then employed in battle."
"Wallace's favorite weapon appears to have been a long and ponderous two-handled sword,[3] which his prodigious strength enabled him to wield with the greatest ease." An eye-witness says: "Bruce was a man beautiful and of a fine appearance; and his strength was so great that he could easily have overcome any mortal man of his time. But in so far as he excelled other men; he was excelled by Wallace both in stature and in bodily strength; For in wrestling Wallace could overcome two such men as Bruce was."—Constable's Table Misc.
ROBERT THE BRUCE (1274–1329 A. D.)
The most heroic of the Scottish Kings; at twenty-two as Earl of Carrick he swore fealty to Edward I.; soon after with his men, joined the cause of Scotch independence, retiring after the English had won; next made one of the four Regents who ruled the Kingdom. "In less than two years, he wrested from England nearly the whole of Scotland." As soon as Edward III. came to the throne, hostilities again commenced, resulting in the Scots being again victorious and a final treaty being made at Northampton, recognizing the independence of Scotland and Bruce's right to the throne. Dying at fifty -five; his heart, embalmed, was taken to Palestine and buried in Jerusalem, and was afterwards dug up and buried at Melrose, Scotland.
We have just heard how his body compared with the great Wallace's.
Sir Herbert Maxwell quotes the Historia Majoris Britanniae thus: "His figure was graceful and athletic, with broad shoulders; his features were handsome; he had the yellow hair of the Northern race, with blue and sparkling eyes, his intellect was quick; and he had the gift of fluent speech in the vernacular delightful to listen to.… Supposing the remains exhumed at Dunfermline to have been King Robert's, which is very far from improbable; he must have stood about six feet high. In days when deeds of arms formed as much of the every-day life of gentlemen as politics do their modern counterparts; the union of a powerful body with a strong intellect was sure to bring a man to distinction; provided he escaped a violent death on the field or on the scaffold."
"Robert the Bruce was a remarkably brave and strong man; there was no man in Scotland that was thought a match for him except Sir William Wallace; and now that Wallace was dead, Bruce was held the best warrior in Scotland."—Tales of a Grandfather, p. 78.
COLUMBUS (1446–1506).
MARTIN LUTHER
Sailors have good bodies anyway; they have to have; and Columbus was no exception.
Adam's Columbus, page 248, says: "Trevison, after meeting him in 1501, says of him, 'He was a robust man; with a tall figure, ruddy complexion, and a long visage.' Oviedo, who knew him with some intimacy, says: 'Of good figure and a stature above the medium; Columbus had strong limbs and a well-proportioned body; very red hair, and complexion that was a little ruddy and marked with freckles.'"
LUTHER (1483–1546 A.D.)
A bulwark never failing."
—Luther.
This was just what he wanted. He went, taking his life in his hand; and so bore himself that he not only took back no word, but his "Here I stand. I cannot otherwise. God help me. Amen!" won the hearts of all Germany then; and of hundreds of millions since. Seized by his friend, the Elector of Saxony, he was hid in a castle. Marrying a nun, Catherine von Bora,—a superior woman,—he lived so happily with her and their children that he said, "I would not exchange my poverty with her for all the wealth of Crœsus without her!" Of tireless activity in many fields; now engaged in famous conferences with Zwingli, and other Swiss divines; writing many books, partly in Latin, partly in German; his "Table-Talk, Letters, and Sermons" being well known even today; the world has not often seen such a worker.
Dr. Lord says of him: "It was Catherine von Bora who sustained Luther in his gigantic task. Among great benefactors Martin Luther is one of the most illustrious. He headed the Protestant Reformation; and was just the man for the work. Sprung from the people, poor, popular, fervent, educated among privations; religious by nature, yet with exuberant animal spirits; dogmatic, boisterous, intrepid; with a great insight into realities; practical, untiring, learned, generally cheerful and hopeful, progressive in spirit; lofty in his character; earnest in his piety; believing in the future and in God.
"Not so learned as Erasmus; not so logical as Calvin; nor so scholarly as Melancthon; nor so broad as Cranmer; he was not a polished man; he was rude, brusque, not modest and humble, intellectually proud and disdainful, and, when irritated, sometimes abusive. Bold, audacious, with deep convictions; rapid intellectual processes; prompt, decided, kind-hearted, generous; in sympathy with the people; eloquent; Herculean in energies; with an amazing power for work; electrical in his smile and his words; always ready for emergencies. Had he been more polished, more of a gentleman; more scrupulous, more ascetic, more modest; he would have shrunk from his task; he would have lost the elasticity of his mind; he would have been discouraged. He was a sort of converted Mirabeau. He loved the storms of battle; he impersonated revolutionary ideas. He was a man of thought, as well as a man of action.
"What he thinks the most of is the circulation of the Scriptures among plain people; so he translates them into German,—a gigantic task; and this work, almost single-handed, is done so well that it becomes the standard of the German language; as the Bible of Tindale helped to form the English tongue; and it has remained the common version in use throughout Germany. Moreover, he finds time to make liturgies and creeds and hymns; to write letters to all parts of Christendom—a kind of Protestant pope, to whom everybody looks for advice and consolation. No wonder the Germans are so fond of him, and so proud of him;—a Briareus, with a hundred arms; a marvel; a wonder; and prodigy of nature; the most gifted, versatile, hard-working man of his century."
And did this giant do his mighty work with only a weak or even ordinary body?
Let Dr. Lord tell: "He is an executive and administrative man, for which his courage, insight, will, and Herculean physical strength wonderfully fit him. A man for the times—a man to head a new movement; the forces of an age of protest and rebellion and conquest."
Not unusual strength merely; not great strength merely; "Herculean physical strength!" Like that of Zeus's famous son,—the strongest man of all mythology. Look at the face; the jowl; the neck; the way the head is set upon the shoulders; the deep, massive shoulders themselves; that chest; and the vast back-head. In some portraits, his head and that of Tom Sayers, one of the greatest and bravest prize-fighters England ever had, are almost alike. An ugly man to run up against.
And was not Luther a prize-fighter? Is not every man, worth calling a man, a prize-fighter? Just who has ever fought for a greater prize than did Martin Luther? Do you know of any one? Has Germany ever had a greater son than he? Where would you and I be to-day but for Martin Luther?
SHAKESPEARE (1564–1616)
"No estimate of Shakespeare's genius can be adequate. In knowledge of human character; in wealth of humor; in depth of passion; in fertility of fancy; in soundness of judgment; and in mastery of language, he has no rival. His language and versification adapt themselves to every phase of sentiment; and sound almost every note in the scale of felicity.
"It is the versatile working of Shakespeare's intellect that lenders his supremacy unassailable. His mind, as Hazlitt suggested, contains within itself the germs of every faculty and feeling. He knew intuitively how every faculty and feeling would develop, in every conceivable change of fortune. Men and women, good or bad old or young, wise or foolish, merry or sad, rich or poor, yielded their secrets to him; and his genius illumined in turn every aspect of humanity that presents itself on the highway of life. Each of his characters gives thought to voice or passion, with an individuality and a naturalness that rouses in the intelligent playgoer and reader the illusion that they are overhearing men and women speak unpremeditatingly among themselves; rather than that they are reading speeches; or hearing written speeches recited. The more closely the words are studied, the completer the illusion grows.… So mighty a faculty sets at naught the common limitations of nationality; and in every quarter of the globe to which civilized life has penetrated Shakespeare's power is realized. All the world over, a language is applied to his creations that ordinarily applies to beings of flesh and blood.
"Hamlet and Othello; Lear and Macbeth; Falstaff; Brutus; Romeo and Shylock; are studied in almost every civilized tongue, as if they were historic personalities; and the chief of the impressive phrases that fall from their lips are rooted in the speech of civilized humanity."—Lee's Dictionary of National Biography.
"Shakespeare, the greatest of dramatic poets by the voice of the whole civilized world; his name is the first in all literature. In imagination; in fancy; in knowledge of man; in wit; in humor; in pathos; in strength; in versatility; in felicity of language; in the music of his verse; and in that mysterious power which fuses all
SHAKESPEARE
MacMonnies's Statue in the Congressional Library at Washington
these separate parts into one; he stands unapproached; and seemingly unapproachable."—American Encyclopædia.
He had a helpful body too; as not only every portrait and statue says; but his training as a youth, odd as it was, helped to develop it.
John Aubrey, in his manuscript in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, says: "Mr. William Shakespeare was born at Stratford-on-Avon, in the county of Warwick; his father was a butcher; and I have been told heretofore by some of his neighbors that when he (William) was a boy, he exercised his father's trade; but when he killed a calf, he would do it in a high style, and make a speech.… He was a handsome, well-shapt man."
By-the-way, what a pity that those speeches were not kept till now! And in his pictures the face, neck, and shoulders are those of a vigorous man; while the fulness of the upper chest is noticeable and unusual. And look at his legs! For here is the MacMonnies statue from the Congressional Library. Strong, full, well made everywhere—a fit pair for this matchless man.
CROMWELL (1599–1658)
"Hope shone in him 'as a pillar of fire,' when the light had gone out in all other men. He came to the front rank from the moment when debating was over, and the time arrived for organizing. From the first he rightly conceived the condition of success; a soldiery of yeomen—fearing God; fearing nothing else—submitting themselves, for the sake of their cause, to a rigid discipline, as the only match for the impetuous chivalry of the Cavaliers; and his conception was embodied in the Ironsides. Marston crowns the first period of his career. It was won by the discipline of his men.… Naseby was won by him with his new model army. It made him the first man in England; though, since Marston, the adverse factions had been viewing his rising greatness with a jealous eye; and vainly plotting his overthrow.
"Then came the captivity and death of the King, with the interlude of Hamilton's Scotch invasion, and the victory of Preston, gained in Cromwell's fashion; which was not to manœuvre; but to train his men well; march straight to his enemy; and fight a decisive battle;—a fashion natural perhaps to one who had not studied the science of strategy; but at the same time merciful; since no brave men perished otherwise than in fight, the loss of life was comparatively small; the result immense. Cromwell is now the General of the Commonwealth; he conquers Ireland; he conquers Scotland; the 'crowning mercy' of Worcester puts supreme power within his grasp. After a pause, he makes himself Protector."
And never was Englishman safer than under this same Protector. "Under Cromwell's rule, swift retribution followed any indignity or injury to Englishmen, no matter by whom or where perpetrated; and religious persecutors on the Continent in terror stayed their bloody swords on the stern summons of the Lord Protector."
Great Englishmen are liable to have good bodies. Did you ever see one who had not? And this rare man was no exception. Indeed, he began to toughen his body early.
"Cromwell was more famous for his exercises in the fields than in the schools; being of the chief of the matchmakers and players at foot-ball, codggels, or any other boisterous sports."—Heath's Flagellum.
"Throughout his life Cromwell retained a strong taste for field-sports. His accident when driving the six horses 
CROMWELL
(From the celebrated painting by Benjamin West, now in the possession of Earl Grosvenor)
(Published through the courtesy of Messrs. Frederic Keppel & Co.
sent him by the Duke of Oldenburg was celebrated by Wither and Denham: Denham's 'The Jolt' and Wither's 'Vaticinium Casuale.'"—Lee's Dictionary of National Biography.
Of Cromwell's person the best description is that given by Maidstone, the steward of his household: "His body was well compact and strong; his stature under six feet, I believe about two inches; his head so shaped as you might see a storehouse and shop, both of a vast treasury and natural parts." Many men shrink as they come up to middle life. But some keep on developing.
Frederic Harrison says: "Of few persons in history has the portraiture been preserved in a way more perfect and authentic. He had a tall, powerful frame, strong of limb; well knit; somewhat heavy. A large, square head; and a countenance massive and far from refined, his enemies said swollen and red. No human countenance recorded is more familiar to us than that broad, solid face with a thick and prominent red nose; the heavy, gnarled brow, with his historic wart; eyes firm, penetrating, sad; square jaw and close-set mouth; scanty tufts of hair on lip and chin; long nose; brown locks, flowing down in waves on the shoulder. His whole air breathing energy, firmness, passion, pity, and sorrow."
"His face
Deep scars of thunder had intrencht; and care
Sat on his faded cheek. But under brows
Of dauntless courage."
The Warwick Memoirs speak of "Cromwell's great and majestic presence" as Protector.
And if you would like to see how he would look in a football suit, just observe him in the great Benjamin West's famous picture with his canvas jacket already on, or something very much like one. The boots would do all right—but he could omit the lace at the knees—likely would before the end of the first half.
MILTON (1608–1674)
Born in London, Milton was sent to St. Paul's School, London, and afterwards to Christ's College, Cambridge; giving up the idea of following divinity or law, he went to his father's house at Horton, in Buckinghamshire, and in the next five years, reading Greek and Latin poets; he composed "Comus," "Lycidas," "Arcades," "L'Allegro," and "Il Penseroso." Then in Italy he became acquainted with Grotius and Galileo, returned, took an active part to the controversies of the times; writing many treatises, till at the execution of Charles I. he was appointed Latin Secretary to the Council of State. "In his new position his pen was as terrible as Cromwell's sword"; overwhelming his enemies with such a storm of abuse that one of them, Saumaise, was believed to have lost his life through chagrin; at least Milton flattered himself with having "killed his man." In 1643 he married Mary Powell; who left him in a few weeks, which led to his four treatises on divorce, although he afterwards became reconciled to her. Unceasing study had affected his eyesight, and at forty-six he became totally blind. After the Restoration he retired from affairs; married his third wife, removed to London, and wrote "Paradise Lost," which he thought first of treating as a drama, but finally resolved to write an epic. For this poem he received £5, and promise of another £5 when 1300 copies should have been sold; at sixty-four he published his History of England, and next year "Paradise Regained," and "Samson Agonistes." He was buried in St. Giles's Church.
"Milton was nicknamed the 'lady' at college, from his delicate complexion and slight make. He was, however, a good fencer; and thought himself a match for any one.… The elder nephew now came to board with him also; and the household became an 'example of hard study and spare diet.'… He devoted himself to carrying out the system of education described in his treatise of that subject—(Letters to Hartleb, published in June, 1644). He gives a portentous list of books to be read; and his pupils are to be trained in athletics and military sports.… Milton's appearance and manners are described with little difference by Aubrey, Phillips, and Richardson. He was rather below the medium height, but well made; with light brown or auburn hair, and delicate complexion; he was stately and courteous."—Dictionary of National Biography, 1897.
Dr. TV. G. Anderson, of Yale, says: "According to Milton, the first step in the education of pupils is to make them 'despise and scorn all their childish and ill-taught qualities, to delight in manly and liberal exercises, to infuse into their young hearts such ingenious and noble ardor as will not fail to make many of them renowned and matchless men.' It will be noticed also that with Milton amusement, emulation, bodily skill, cheerfulness of bright companionship, are all associated with physical training. He recommended 'the art of the sword, to guard, to strike safely with edge or point, to practise in all the locks and grips of wrestling, which exercises will keep pupils healthy, strong, and well in heath. It is also the likeliest means to make them grow large, tall, and to inspire them with a gallant and fearless courage."
PETER THE GREAT (1672–1725)
"That which characterized him was a remarkable precocity, greater than that of anybody of whom I have read. At eighteen he was a man with a fine physical development, and great beauty of form, and entered on absolute power as Czar of Muscovy. At Holland he dressed like a common carpenter, and learned the trade of a ship-carpenter. He was a marked personage, a tall, robust, active man of twenty-five, with a fierce look and curling brown locks."
PETER THE GREAT
(From the engraving by Henrique Dupont)
throne to-day would always have to be reckoned with when danger menaced his land, and would certainly be heard from when the time came. What greater monarch is now alive? Or who as great?
JOHN WESLEY (1703–1791)
Of his personal appearance Dr. Kennicott says: "At forty-one Wesley was neither tall nor fat." Tyerman says: "In person Wesley was rather below the middle size, but beautifully proportioned, without an atom of superfluous flesh, yet muscular and strong, a bright, penetrating eye and a lovely face, which retained the freshness of his complexion to the latest period of his life. As a preacher he was calm, graceful, natural, and attractive, his voice was not loud, but clear and manly. His preaching was remarkable for unction, compactness, and transparency of style, clear and sharply defined ideas, power over the conscience, impressiveness and authority."
There was the trained body forever in condition; and the fresh complexion that always means sound health; while the life of ceaseless activity, largely out-of-doors, kept him ever ready for each demand of his high calling. And how gladly he did his work may be told from the fact that, when they were celebrating the Wesley Centennial in 1891, great stress was laid upon the fact that this little man had almost more than anything else taught the world "the Gospel of Cheerfulness."
FRANKLIN (1706–1790)
And who does not know his body? In his Autobiography, he says that "his father had an excellent constitution of body; was of middle stature; but well set and very strong."
He tells of a walk that he himself took from Amboy to Burlington, New Jersey, when he was seventeen years old, and although it was stormy, and, as he says, "I was thoroughly soaked, and by noon a good deal tired"; yet he managed to cover the distance of fifty miles in about two days. He also tells that while in a boat on the Delaware with other young men, one of them threatened to throw him overboard; but that he instead caught the other up bodily, and threw him overboard.
His familiar statue in Printing-house Square in New York tells better than any description could of his superb physique; of medium height and sturdy, evidently like his father. He is a noticeably deep-chested, strong-legged, thick-necked, almost stalwart man, looking to have had, as his life's work showed that he did have, great physical reserve; while calmness is written all over his face and figure. Of the Boston statue, in front of the City Hall, one writer says: "The attitude of the figure is easy, and yet exhibits a firm and manly form. Under the left arm is held a Continental hat; while the right hand holds a representation of the old crab-tree walking-stick which Franklin bequeathed to Washington with such honorable mention in his last will." The form is taken from the original bust by Houdon now in the Boston Athenæum.
SAMUEL JOHNSON (1709–1784)
Born at Lichfield, England; two years in his father's book-store. "At Oxford University he spent probably the most unhappy period of his unhappy life. Overpowered by debts, difficulties, and religious doubts, he became a prey to the morbid melancholy of his constitution. Poverty prevented him from taking his degree." His father dying insolvent, he became usher of a school at Bosworth, then worked for a bookseller at Birmingham; became acquainted with Garrick, and a contributor to the Gentleman's Magazine; then began to publish poems, satires, and to report Parliamentary debates. Wrote the life of Richard Savage, the Vanity of Human Wishes, and an imitation of the "Tenth Satire of Juvenal"; and conducted the Rambler for two years; then the Idler for two years; and in 1759 wrote Rasselas, to pay the expenses of his mother's funeral. Then he emerged from obscurity, and through Lord Bute obtained a pension of £300 a year. The next year met Boswell, whose life of Dr. Johnson is probably more imperishable than any of the Doctor's own writings; became intimate with Thrale; visited the Highlands with Boswell; then wrote his Lives of the Poets; was buried in Westminster Abbey.
A writer in Chambers's Cyclopædia says: "While struggling for a living, one publisher, noticing his burly frame, advised him to buy a porter's knot.… He was sometimes dinnerless; we hear of his walking round St. James's Square with Savage all one night for want of a lodging. But he bore all with a splendid courage. There is no more heroic figure in the history of our literature. Meanwhile, in spite of circumstances, he was becoming the foremost writer of his time."
"Johnson had a tall, well-formed, and massive figure, indicative of great physical strength, but made grotesque by a strange infirmity. Madame D'Arblay speaks of his vast body in constant agitation, swaying backward and forward,'
"In spite of his infirmities, he occasionally indulged in athletic performances. Mrs. Piozzi says that he sometimes hunted with Thrale. He understood boxing, and regretted the decline of prize-fighting; jumped, rowed, and shot, 'in a strange and unwieldy way, to show that he was not tired after a fifty-mile chase'; and, according to Miss Reynolds, swarmed up a tree; and beat a young lady in a foot-race when over fifty. Langton described to Best how, at the age of fifty-five, he had solemnly rolled down a hill. His courage was remarkable. He separated savage dogs; swam into dangerous pools; fired off an overloaded gun; and defended himself against four robbers single handed."—Dictionary of National Biography, p. 44.
An all-round heavy-weight,—mentally and physically.
PATRICK HENRY (1736–1799)
"He was passionately addicted to the sports of the field. When the hour of school arrived he was scarcely ever to he found. He was in the forest with his gun; or over the brook with his angle rod. He would spend whole days and weeks in this occupation. His person is represented as having been coarse; his manner uncommonly awkward; his conversation very plain; his aversion to study invincible. No persuasion would bring him either to read or to work. On the contrary, he ran wild in the forest, like one of the aborigines of the country."—Wirt's Henry.
One of the best places to train sound, hardy, self-reliant, manly men; fit to face any difficulty, any danger; and to lead men against even a haughty nation. Plainly that life trained his body. It could not help it.
JEFFERSON (1743–1826)
Born at Shadwell, Virginia; at twenty a member of the Assembly, active in the steps which created the Continental Congress; sent a delegate to it, he drafted the Declaration of Independence. Governor of Virginia; in 1784 Minister to France; 1789 Secretary of State, appointed by Washington; led the State Rights party against the Federalists; 1797 Vice-President; 1800 President, and Aaron Burr Vice-President; purchased Louisiana from France; published Notes on Virginia in 1782; died July 4, 1826; as did John Adams.
"Jefferson appears to have been sensibly brought up, getting as good an education as was possible in Virginia, and paying also due regard to his physical training. He grew to be a slender and sinewy young man, six feet two and one -half inches tall; with hair variously reported as red, reddish, and sandy, and with eyes mixed of gray and hazel.… He is said to have improved in appearance as he grew older, and to have become 'a very good-looking man in middle age, and quite a handsome old man.' He was athletic; fond of shooting; and a skilful and daring horseman, even for a Virginian."—Morse's Jefferson, p. 5.
"Jefferson was a stripling of seventeen, tall, rawboned, freckled, and sandy-haired, when in 1760 he came to Williamsburg from the far west of Virginia to enter the College of William and Mary. With his large feet and hands, his thick wrists, and prominent cheek-bones and chin, he could not have been accounted handsome or graceful. He is described, however, as a fresh, bright, healthy-looking youth, as straight as a gun-barrel, sinewy and strong, with that alertness of movement which comes with early familiarity with saddle and gun and canoe and minuet and contra-dance—that sure, elastic tread and ease of bearing which we still observe in country-bred lads, who have been exempt from the ruder toils of agriculture while enjoying in full measure the freedom and the sports of the country.
"Though his mother had been the tenderest of women, his father had strength to match her tenderness. Tradition current in the country where he lived; gathered by Mr. Randall, whose extensive and sympathetic work must remain the great reservoir of information respecting Jefferson, reports Peter Jefferson a wonder of physical force and stature. He had the strength of three strong men. Two hogsheads of tobacco, each weighing a thousand pounds, he could raise at once from their sides, and stand them upright. When surveying in the wilderness he could tire out his assistants; and tire out his mules; then eat his mules, and still press on; sleeping alone by night in a hollow tree to the howling of the wolves till his task was done."—Parton's Jefferson.
Good timber that to come from; and the son was evidently a chip of the old block.
ANDREW JACKSON (1767–1845)
"One desperate man is a majority."
A Scotchman's son; born in North Carolina; intended for the Church; enlisted at thirteen; fought till the end of the war; at seventeen studied law; at twenty Solicitor for what is now Tennessee; in 1796 elected Representative and Senator, and Judge of the Supreme Court; and Major-General of militia; in 1813 with 3000 men defeated the Creek Indians; in 1814, Major-General of United States Army, he defeated the British at New Orleans; after Spain ceded Florida to the United States, was appointed its Governor; then chosen United States Senator from Tennessee; elected President of the United States in 1828; and again in 1832, by large majorities; vetoed a bill rechartering the United States Bank, worked for a specie currency and independent treasury; and remained popular till his death.
Not much doubt about his body. "When first elected to Congress, he rode on horseback eight hundred miles from Tennessee to Washington. He was twenty years of age when he finished the preliminary part of his education at Salisbury. He had grown to be a tall fellow. He stood six feet and one inch in his stockings. He was remarkably slender for that robust age of the world; but he was also remarkably erect; so that his figure had the effect of symmetry without being symmetrical. His movements and carriage were graceful and dignified. In the accomplishments of his day and sphere he excelled the young men of his own circle; and was regarded by them as their chief and model. He was an exquisite horseman; as all will agree whoever saw him on horseback. Jefferson tells us that General Washington was the best horseman of his time. But he could scarcely have been a more graceful or a more daring one than Jackson. One who knew him said: "Andy was a wild, frolicsome, wilful, mischievous, daring, reckless boy, generous to a friend, but never content to submit to a stronger enemy. He was passionately fond of those sports which are mimic battles; above all, wrestling. Being a slender boy, more active than strong, he was often thrown. I could throw him three times out of four; but he would never stay thrown. He was dead game even then; and never would give up. He was exceedingly fond of running foot-races; of leaping the bar; and jumping, and in such sports he was excelled by no one of his years. To younger boys, who never questioned his mastery, he was a generous protector. There was nothing he would not do to defend them. His equals and superiors found him self-willed; somewhat overbearing; easily offended; very irascible; and, upon the whole, 'difficult to get along with.' One of them said, many years after, in the heat of controversy, that of all the boys he had ever known, Andrew Jackson was the only bully who was not also a coward."—Parton's Life of Jackson.
A greyhound's body, with the tenacity of a bulldog.
CHARLES JAMES FOX (1749–1806)
Desultory and ineffective till he warmed; he did best when he was provoked or excited; he required the kindling pulse, the explosive spark; always happiest in reply; if interrupted by cries of "Order!" he pressed home his arguments with increasing vehemence; with redoubled blows and repeated bursts of extemporaneous declamation almost overpowered the audience; and effectually checked all further interruption. Fox had not the teeming knowledge, the broad, sweeping view, the marvellous forecast, the prophetic vision of Burke; but he surpassed him as an orator, because he had more tact; and kept to the topics of the hour; until Burke himself said that he was "the most brilliant and accomplished debater the world ever saw."
And this Eton boy and Oxford man, entering the House of Commons at nineteen, in defiance of all rules—a skilful mathematician; critical classical scholar; master of French; fascinator alike of his school-fellows in youth, and of all men in manhood; during his whole life passionately in love with the great authors of antiquity, whose companionship he kept up at every moment snatched from Parliamentary duty; in private theatricals distinguishing himself alike in tragedy and in high comedy; with a keen relish for Italian literature; this man of varied talents and rare activity needed a good body to stand all he put himself to do.
And he had it. If you think statesmen need to have weak legs, look at his; his fiery, high-pressure brain, with all its ceaseless activity, did not seriously rob his legs, as any of us would have found out had we gone with him on a fifty-six-mile tramp. You, so satisfied because you have occasionally made a century run on your bike; just try for a change a fifty-six-mile walk in a day; and such fare as you are able to pick up by the way-side; and you will find even crackers and cheese at the finish more delicious than the richest and most toothsome viands you have ever tasted.
CHARLES JAMES FOX
(From a painting published by Reynolds in London in 1802)
cost him, he left his gold watch in pawn with the innkeeper.… During the tour in Kerry, he swam twice around the Devil's Punch-Bowl. The health which he began with was wonderful; a spoonful of rhubarb, he cheerfully boasted, cured all the ills to which his flesh was heir; although the maladies which his careless but laborious mode of life too early brought upon him, ere long required sterner remedies. He would gladly have been thinner, but he was too much of a man to be ashamed of a misfortune which he did his utmost to correct; for, in whatever pastime he was engaged, he always contrived to get out of it the greatest practicable amount of bodily exercise:"—Trevelyan's Early History of Charles James Fox.
JOHN MARSHALL (1755–1835)
"He was about six feet high, straight and rather slender, of dark complexion—showing little, if any, rosy red, yet of good health, the outline of the face nearly a circle, and within that eyes dark to blackness, strong and penetrating, beaming with intelligence and good-nature; an upright forehead, rather low, was terminated in a horizontal line by a mass of raven-black hair of unusual thickness and strength.
"The features of the face were in harmony with this outline, and the temples fully developed. The result of this combination was interesting and very agreeable. The body and limbs indicated agility rather than strength, in which, however, he was by no means deficient. Never did man possess a temper more happy, or if otherwise, more subdued or better disciplined.
"Such is the life-like picture which a contemporary and kinsman has left of the Chief Justice as he appeared upon the threshold of early manhood. One cannot help being struck with its truthfulness and simplicity;—a walk of ten miles from Oak Hill in a blue hunting-shirt and Bucktail cockade—a frank, friendly, and hearty greeting with his comrades—a drill in the 'manual exercise'—a familiar talk about the war; foot-races, and a game of quoits at which 'there was no betting,' make up the prominent points of the picture. And it may here be added that this admirable simplicity of manners—nay, the very tastes and habits of his early manhood, remained with him through life. Thus he never lost his fondness for those field-sports and athletic exercises which in youth laid the foundation of that robust health which he continued to enjoy to a green old age; nor did he disdain his favorite game of quoits, even when he had been placed at the head of the federal judiciary. Even at this day the imagination can paint the tall form of the young provincial lieutenant—not as it appeared more than half a century later, in its dignified repose on the bench, robed in the judicial gown and slightly bent with the weight of years—but, animated with the enthusiasm of the soldier, erect, vigorous, and athletic, rising above those frail breastworks, and urging on thy bravest of the troops to defend their position against the assault of the enemy.… His professional reputation at this period was very high. He found himself engaged in all the leading causes in the State and national tribunals; and by a course of profound study and culture, of severe mental training and of successful practice at the bar, he gradually matured and developed those great powers which shed lustre around that higher and more honorable career on the bench upon which he was about to enter."[4] And the good education of that wiry body, as well as its native material, showed in the way it lasted through a life of incessant toil among most involved and difficult problems clear up not to seventy, but to eighty.
HAMILTON (1757–1801)
Like most men of great talents and strong will, Hamilton had a large measure of self-confidence. The greater the odds the more defiantly and the more confidently he faced opposition. Ambrose Spencer, the distinguished judge, said: "Alexander Hamilton was the greatest man this country ever produced. I knew him well. I was in situations often to observe and study him. I saw him at the bar and at home. He argued cases before me while I sat as judge on the bench—Webster has done the same. In power of reasoning Hamilton was the equal of Webster, and more than this can be said of no man. In creative power Hamilton was infinitely Webster's superior. It was he more than any other that thought out the Constitution of the United States and the details of the government of the Union; and, out of the chaos that existed after the Revolution, raised a fabric every part of which is instinct with his thought. I can truly say that hundreds of politicians and statesmen of the day get both the web and woof of their thought from Hamilton's brains. He more than any man did the thinking of the times."
"I have very little doubt," says Chancellor Kent, "that if General Hamilton had lived twenty years longer he would have rivalled Socrates or Bacon or any of the sages of ancient or modern times in researches after truth. Benevolent to mankind; the active and profound statesman; the learned and eloquent lawyer would probably have disappeared in a great degree before the character of the sage philosopher, instructing mankind by his wisdom; elevating his country by his example."—Lodge's Life of Hamilton.
And yet things did not always go as he wanted, judging from the following: "Alexander Hamilton wrote thus to John Laurens, September 12, 1780:
"'With one set I am considered as a friend to military pretensions, however exorbitant; with another, as a man who, secured by my situation from sharing the distress of the army, am inclined to treat it lightly. The truth is, I am an unlucky, honest man that speak my sentiments to all and with emphasis. I say this to you because you know it, and will not charge me with vanity. I hate Congress; I hate the army; I hate the world; I hate myself. The whole is a mass of fools and knaves; I could almost except you and me. Adieu.
"'A. Hamilton.
"'My ravings are for your own bosom. The General and family send you their love.
"'Newbridge, September 12, 1780.'"
—Bulletin of the New York Public Library, February 28, 1898.
"In person Hamilton was well made, of light and active build, but very small, much below the average height. His friends were wont to call him the 'little lion'; and it is somewhat remarkable that his stature seems to have interfered so slightly, if at all, with his success as an orator.
"Inches of stature and of girth were lacking, but he was none the less full of dignity. In this, of course, his looks helped him. His head was finely shaped, symmetrical, massive, and unusually large. His eyes were dark, deep-set, and full of light and fire. He had a long, rather sharp nose, a well-shaped, close-set mouth, and a firm jaw. The characteristics of the spare, cleancut features are penetration and force."—Lodge's Life of Hamilton.
Too busy a worker to ever get any flesh, this precocious financier, soldier, statesman, jurist, patriot, belonged physically to the same class as Paul, Wesley, Napoleon, Grant, and the others of medium height—not little men at all—with the heads of big men and bodies of steel wire, tireless when hard work is on hand, outlasting all around them. Had he been a better shot; had the duel gone the other way; his name, great as it is, might have been among those which have filled the chair of our Chief Executive.
ROBERT BURNS (1759–1796)
"A man's a man for a' that."—Burns.
Born of poor peasant parents, near Ayr, Scotland; by rare self-denial they gave him the rudiments of education; working on the farm, he snatched such time as he could for reading the Bible, Mason's Collection of Prose and Verse; the life of Hannibal and of Sir William Wallace; The Spectator; Pope; and Shakespeare; first wrote poetry at sixteen: "A Bonnie, Sweet Sonsie Lass," he wrote to Moore, "who was coupled with him in the labors of the hay-harvest," awakening his early inspirations; employed by his father as a day-laborer till nineteen at £7 a year, during which period he wrote "John Barleycorn," the "Dirge of Winter," and other poems. At twenty-two learned the flax-dresser's trade; next year hired a farm, and at intervals wrote many poems, among them "To a Mountain Daisy," "The Cotter's Saturday Night," and numerous love songs; failed at farming, and was about starting for Jamaica, but his published poems brought him applause, money, and a year of fêting in London drawing-rooms; returned to his farm; was made collector of excise, which, with his convivial habits, so interfered with his farming that he gave it up. Intemperance, exposure, and disappointment undermined his constitution, and he died at thirty-seven, a vast multitude attending his funeral.
"A song-writer must always be a warm-hearted man. A cold song is inconceivable; but he is not always a strong man—he may be weak with all his warmth. Not so Burns. He was emphatically a strong man; there was, as Carlyle says of him, 'a certain ragged, sterling worth about him' which makes his songs as good as sermons sometimes, and sometimes as good as battles. And it was this notable amount of backbone, and force of arm, sensibly felt in his utterances, which gave to him pathos; and his tenderness such healthy grace, and such rare freedom from anything that savored of sentimentality. In Burns the most delicate sensibility to beauty was harmoniously combined with the firmest grip, and the most manly stout-heartedness.… He was a man of good personal aspect and manly presentment. He had none of the pale cast of countenance that men of action expect to find in the poet and the philosopher; He was healthy and robust, and could handle the plough or the flail as vigorously as the pen. Then again his general vigor of mind was as notable as his vigor of body; he was as strong in thought as intense in emotion. If inferior to Coleridge in ideal speculation, to Wordsworth in harmonious contemplation, and to Southey in book-learning; in all that concerns living men, and human life, and human society, he was extremely sharp-sighted; and not only wise in penetrating to the inmost springs of human thought and sentiment; but, in the judgment of conduct, eminently shrewd and sagacious; gifted, in the highest degree, with that fundamental virtue of all sound Scotsmen—common-sense, without which great genius in a full career is apt to lead a man astray from his surroundings, and make him most a stranger to that with which in common life he ought to be most familiar."—Professor W. G. Blaikie's Burns.
Alexander Smith says of Burns: "The frame of this young farmer was originally powerful."
NAPOLEON (1769–1821)
And he had just the body for his work.
Dr. Sargent says that long-bodied, short-legged men have unusual vitality; and Napoleon was unusually long-bodied and short-legged, and of the right material too.
Lockhart says: "At sixteen his figure was short, but slim, active, and perfectly knit."
Emerson again says: "He was a man of stone and iron, capable of sitting on horseback sixteen or seventeen hours; of going many days together without rest or food, except by snatches; and with the speed and spring of a tiger in action; a man not embarrassed by any scruples. Compact, instant, selfish, prudent. He sees where the matter hinges, throws himself on the precise point of resistance, and slights all other considerations. He never blundered into victory; but won his battles in his head, before he won them on the field. Having decided what was to be done, he did that with might and main. He put out all his strength. He risked everything, and spared nothing; neither ammunition; nor money; nor troops; nor generals; nor himself. Before he fought a battle he thought little about what he should do in case of success; but a great deal about what he should do in case of reverse of fortune. His achievement of business was immense; and enlarges the known powers of man. The principal works that have survived him are his magnificent roads."
Englishmen are good judges of how a man is, as they say, "put up." John C. Ropes, in Scribner's Magazine, of July, 1887, says: "Upon the 15th of July, 1815, Napoleon surrendered himself on board the British man-of-war Bellerophon. Of his appearance and bodily condition during the two months of his stay on this vessel we have an interesting account in the narrative of Captain Maitland, who commanded the ship. Maitland describes him as a remarkably strong, well-built man, about five feet seven inches high, with limbs particularly well formed; with a fine ankle and very small foot, of which he seemed rather vain, as he always wore, while on board the ship, silk stockings and shoes. His hands were also very small, and had the plumpness of a woman's rather than the robustness of a man's. His eyes light gray; his teeth good.… His hair was of a very dark brown, nearly approaching to black, and though a little thin on the top and front, had not a gray hair amongst it. His general appearance was that of a man rather older than he was.'"
WELLINGTON (1769–1852)
"Undoubtedly Wellington taught himself more than he ever learned from his tutors. It is the only explanation of that marvellous breadth of knowledge he displayed when called, quite early in life, to deal with great affairs. We have it from his own lips, moreover, that before he went to India he had made it his invariable rule to read for several hours daily; and that he never gave up the practice. His rare powers; his quick appreciation and strongly retentive memory, soon stored his mind. Like other great soldiers, he had laid to heart early the lessons contained in the works of military writers; had digested their plans of campaign; the movements and operations of famous generals; and thus acquired clear ideas of conduct; fostering the faculty of command; the power to control complicated situations, and solve difficulties in the field with promptitude and propriety.
"After Flanders Wellington was nearly lost to the army. Straitened means, debts contracted in Dublin, 'circumstances, necessities' as he himself described them, induced him to seek civil employment, 'some post in the Revenue or under the Treasury; something more lucrative, in short, than the command of a regiment.' He did so with reluctance. It was departing from a life he preferred, but he was driven to it by the seeming hopelessness and narrowness of his military prospects. Yet, within a couple of years the wheel of fortune lifted him into a position of splendid opportunity. The Thirty-third went to India; he followed it to arrive almost simultaneously with his brother, Lord Mornington. One Wellesley was but a simple colonel of a regiment; the other was Governor-General.
"Almost at once, although but twenty-eight, he was called upon to consider matters the most varied and momentous. He became the confidant and trusted counsellor of men who wielded the highest authority, and were weighted with the heaviest responsibilities; the most burdensome and anxious cares. His brother, the Governor-General; the Governor of Madras; the military commander-in-chief; officials high and low, referred their difficulties to Wellesley; and gladly took his advice. He had a rare faculty of going to the very heart of things. The papers and minutes he drew up on subjects the most diverse and intricate contained sound, sagacious opinions, couched in clear language, based upon wide, deep knowledge; and brimful of common-sense. His correspondence, at that early period, on the very threshold of his career, is perhaps the most interesting part of all his voluminous despatches." It demonstrates "his soldierly qualities; his fortitude under adverse circumstances; his coolness and self-possession; his unwearied patience when waiting on events, many of which he had slowly prepared; his prompt, unerring decision when the time for action had arrived. Harassed with doubts; tormented with difficulties; but ever sanguine; self-reliant; self-contained.
"'Lord Wellington,' said Larpent, 'reads and looks into every-thing. He hunts almost every other day; and then makes up for it by great diligence and instant decision in the intermediate days. He works until about 4 p.m., and then for an hour or two parades with any one he wants to talk to, in his gray coat.'…
"Here was a spare hour to be utilized by this man of iron nerves in restoring his jaded mental and physical faculties. The advancing French must cover yet a couple of miles before they were in striking distance. 'I shall have a little rest. Watch the French through your glass,' he said to his faithful Fitzroy Somerset. 'When they reach yonder copse, near the gap in the hills, wake me.' And wrapping himself in his cloak lay down behind a furze bush and was soon sound asleep. At the appointed moment he was aroused, refreshed and alert for the fight.
"'I have done, according to the very best of my judgment,' he once said, 'all that can be done; therefore I care not either for the enemy in front; nor for anything they may say at home.'
"He reached London on the 23d of June, immediately after Toulouse. He was the great hero of the hour. The mob dragged his carriage through the streets. He was the chosen honored companion of the allied sovereigns, just then the guests of England. Now he took his seat in the House of Lords—passing through every grade of the peerage at one and the same time—saluted in succession 'Baron,' 'Viscount,' 'Earl,' 'Marquis,' and 'Duke.' He received the thanks of the Commons, clad in the full dress of a Field - Marshal; and was presented with the noble gift of four hundred thousand pounds; last of all carried the sword of State at the public thanksgiving in St. Paul's.
"The startling news of Napoleon's return from Elba after the capitulation of Paris in 1814 was everywhere received with indignation and alarm. England, Russia, Austria, and Prussia bound themselves by solemn treaty to furnish each one hundred and fifty thousand men; and to remain under arms till the great object of the war had been attained. All eyes were turned on Wellington; and it is reported that the Czar Alexander said to him as he placed his hand familiarly upon his shoulder, 'C'est pour vous encore sauver le monde.' Vast preparations were at once set on foot. Austria slowly collected a gigantic host upon the Rhine frontier. Russia called out a quarter of a million men to act in support of Austria. England and Prussia, concentrating more rapidly, soon filled Belgium, 'the cock-pit of Europe,' with troops. By the end of May, Wellington had under his orders a mixed force of one hundred thousand men with one hundred and ninety-four guns. Marshal Blucher commanded an army of one hundred and twenty thousand, all Prussian, and with three hundred guns.…
"A keen judge of character, possessing an almost intuitive penetration, he reckoned men up quickly at their exact value.
"How true it is that in all military operations time is everything. In all great actions there is risk.
"A bête noire of his was the making of difficulties. 'Never let me hear of them about anything.' He wished to banish such words as 'difficult,' 'responsibility,' from his vocabulary. He was so full of ingenuity and resource himself that he expected others to be the same. He conquered everything by his ready adaptability of the circumstances as he found them to the ends he had in view.
"Few could tell a good story better; few enjoyed one more. Rogers, in his Recollections, records that the Duke had great gayety of mind. 'He laughs at almost everything, if it serves to divert him.… His laugh is easily excited, and it is very loud and long, like the whoop of a whooping-cough often repeated. He did not care for the show and glitter, the pomp and circumstance of his rank. He was not without a certain amount of personal vanity. Although by no means a handsome man, he thought a good deal of his outward appearance, and was always extremely natty and particular about his dress.' Larpent tells us of the chief's fondness for well-fitting breeches and well-made hessians, or hunting boots. Yet beyond liking his clothes well made, so as to show his then youthful figure to best appearance, it cannot be said that he cared for gaudy uniforms, and he was best known in the field by the plain blue coat, and sometimes a white overcoat and a cocked hat without feathers.
His speaking on one occasion of the quality of the horse which he had ridden will convey a notion of his staying powers as a horseman. "'Remember, gentlemen,' said the Duke, 'he had been out with me on his back for upwards of ten hours, and had carried me eight-and-twenty miles besides.' And he rode him all through the battle from dawn to dark next day.
"'I never was so pleased,' says Napoleon, at St. Helena, 'as when I saw Wellington intending to "fight" at Waterloo. I had not a doubt of annihilating his army.'
"The first gun was fired at twenty minutes past eleven.
"The greatest commander has been well defined as he who makes fewest mistakes. 'There can be no doubt,' says Shaw-Kennedy, 'that so long as history is read the battle of Waterloo will be much and eagerly discussed. The blunders and looseness of Napoleon's movements on the 16th, 17th, and 18th of June were surpassingly great and numerous, while Wellington acted with unerring energy, firmness, and decision.'
"'People ask me to describe Waterloo,' he said to Sir John Malcolm, in Paris, soon after the battle. 'I tell them it was hard pounding on both sides, and we pounded the hardest. There was no manœuvring. Bonaparte kept up his attacks, and I was glad to let it be decided by the troops.' 'It was a battle of giants,' he said, on another occasion. 'Many of my troops were new; but the new fight well—though they manœuvre ill—better perhaps than many have fought and bled. As to the way in which some of our ensigns and lieutenants braved danger—the boys just come from school—it exceeds belief. They ran as at cricket. Again 'Waterloo was won in the playing-fields at Eton.'
"At the summit of his career, immediately after Waterloo, his popularity was unbounded. In Paris crowds followed him and almost kissed the ground at his horse's feet. He was all powerful in councils of the nations. The arbiter of France's fate. In politics he was never a party-leader; he was no party-man. He was ever guided by large principles of duty, disinterestedness, and perfect honesty. And he could never subordinate these to political exigencies. He was pre-eminently a great national servant, always intent on promoting what, according to his cool judgment, was best for the commonweal.
"He rode twenty miles after a hard day's fighting to visit the bedside of a wounded aide, the son of his dearest friends, and stood there affected to tears when the case seemed hopeless. Of all likenesses he preferred Count D'Orsay's, 'who always made him look like a gentleman.' To be an English gentleman was in Wellington's mind the highest title of honor. It was his religion almost, and he adhered most scrupulously to the rules of conduct that guided the class in his days. He absolutely worshipped punctuality, and prided himself on never being late for a train. To the last the Duke retained his fondness for field-sports and life in the open air. The general would ride to hounds as his chief relaxation in Spain. He hunted regularly in England whenever and wherever he could. He was very fond of shooting, and a good shot. He walked a good deal, even when infirm and at a very advanced age.
"There can be no doubt that the Duke owed immunity from serious illness, and his longevity, to these active habits. He benefited largely by his systematic, resolute employment of the simplest and best means of keeping up his condition. He was exceedingly temperate and abstemious, a very small eater—too small, his friends sometimes said, for health. When he paid the great debt at last he had reached the long age of eighty-three. His end was peaceful; he passed away quietly, painlessly, mourned by the whole nation."
"The nation agreed with Queen Victoria when she said: 'He was the pride and genius, as it were, of the country.'"
"In person the Duke was of middle height; strongly built; with keen gray eyes; a long face; an aquiline nose; and a cheerful countenance."—American Encyclopædia.
Tennyson touches upon some of the physical characteristics of "The Iron Duke":
Mourn for the man of long-enduring blood,
The statesman-warrior, moderate, resolute,
Whole in himself, a common good.
Mourn for the man of amplest influence,
Yet clearest of ambitious crime,
Our greatest yet with least pretence,
Great in council and great in war,
Foremost captain of his time,
Rich in saving common-sense,
And, as the greatest only are,
In his simplicity sublime.
O good gray head which all men knew,
O voice from which their omens all men drew,
O iron nerve to true occasion true,
O fall'n at length that tower of strength
Which stood four-square to all the winds that blew!
Such was he whom we deplore.
The long self-sacrifice of life is o'er.
The great World-victor's victor will be seen no more. But while the races of mankind endure,
Let his great example stand
Colossal, seen of every land,
And keep the soldier firm, the statesman pure;
Till in all lands, and thro' all human story
The path of duty be the way to glory."
SCOTT (1771–1832)
Born at Edinburgh; attended the high-school there; three years at the university, an articled apprentice to his father, and his clerk till twenty-one, then admitted to the Bar; fairly successful; marrying a lady of French birth; made sheriff-deputy of Selkirkshire, with three hundred pounds a year and not much to do; at twenty-five he published a translation of Bürger's ballads, Lenore, and the Wild Huntsman, then a translation of one of Goethe's dramas; then the border minstrelsy, Sir Tristram; and in 1805 The Lay of the Last Minstrel, and "became at a bound the most popular author of his day." During the next ten years, besides a mass of miscellaneous work, he gave to the world Marmion, The Lady of the Lake, The Vision of Don Roderick, Rokeby, The Lord of the Isles, and The Field of Waterloo. Then Waverley in 1814, the first of a new and more splendid series of triumphs. Guy Mannering, The Antiquary, The Black Dwarf, Old Mortality, Rob Roy, and The Heart of Midlothian rapidly followed; and the "Great Unknown," as he was called, became the idol of the hour. He was made a Baronet as a special mark of the royal favor. Financial misfortune led him to redouble his efforts, and he literally wrote for money. He produced upwards of twenty novels in the next ten years, and the strain was terrific. In 1830 he was smitten down with paralysis, from which he never thoroughly rallied. It was hoped that the climate of Italy might benefit him, and the government placed a frigate at his disposal on which to proceed thither. But in Italy he pined for his home. Died at Abbotsford in 1832, and was buried beside his wife in the old abbey of Dryburgh.
And rich was he in body.
"In spite of his lameness, he early taught himself to clamber about with an agility that few children could have surpassed, and he was always in the thick of the 'bickers,' or street-fights, with the boys of the town.… The masculine side of his life appeared to predominate a little too much in his school and college days. And he had such vast energy, vitality, and pride that his life at times would have borne a little taming under the influence of a sister thoroughly congenial to him. At sixteen he had an attack of hemorrhage, no recurrence of which took place for some forty years; but which was then the beginning of the end. No amount of drudgery or labor deterred Scott from any undertaking on the prosecution of which he was bent.… Above everything he was high spirited, a man of noble, and at the same time of martial, feelings. In his youth he often accomplished walks of thirty miles a day, which the lame lad yet found no fatigue to him."—Hutton's Life of Scott.
The following extract from Rab and his Friends will testify to the exuberant robustness of Scott's nature: "… The third was the biggest of the three, and though lame, he was nimble and all rough and alive with power. Had you met him anywhere else you would have said he was a Liddlesdale store-farmer come of gentle blood. 'A stout, blunt carle,' he says of himself; with the swing, and the stride, and the eye of a man of the hills—a large, sunny, out-of-door air all about him. On his broad and somewhat stooping shoulders was set that head which, with Shakespeare's and Bonaparte's, is the best known in all the world.
"He was in high spirits, keeping his companions and himself in roars of laughter; and every now and then seizing them and stopping, that they might take their fill of the fun. There they stood shaking with laughter, 'not an inch of their body free' from its grip. He was now at his own door—Castle Street, No. 39. He opened the door, and went straight to his own den; that wondrous workshop where in one year—1823 when he was fifty-two, he wrote Peveril of the Peak, Quentin Durnin, and St. Ronan's Well; besides much else."
MANSFIELD (1705–1793)
The first Scotchman who reached eminence at the English Bar was William Murray, afterwards Lord Mansfield, fourth son of Lord Stormont. A graduate of Oxford, he rose to be the most distinguished advocate in England. "He was the rival of Lord Chatham, the greatest Parliamentary orator England has ever produced—prior, at any rate, to Mr. Gladstone; highest criminal judge of the realm; over and over refusing to be Lord Chancellor; and finally Chief Justice of the King's Bench. Without political office, he directed the measures of successive cabinets; and (that far truer glory) he framed the commercial code of his country." In his Short Studies of Great Lawyers, Irving Browne says: "To him we owe the settled form and principles of the law of negotiable paper and of insurance. He was accused by some of his contemporaries of confounding equitable with legal principles; and certainly he did brush away the artificial and trivial notions of old time with unsparing hand. But he cast the legal future of England in a grand horoscope. He judged rightly of the necessities of a more modern state of society; and of the rapidly growing grandeur of his country's commerce. He built for the future, as well as for the then present; and we, in our day, have not outgrown or distanced his wise provisions. Only two of his decisions were reversed during his tenure of judicial office; and his authority is higher to-day than it then was.… Of Mansfield's oratory and style there has been but one opinion. In the judicial and senatorial manner of speaking, he is conceded to have had no equal in modern times. His eloquence mingled persuasion with manly reason; and carried conviction from which, in cooler moments, the auditor never recoiled."
And he had a helpful body, a tireless servant in his great life's work, fit companion for that mighty mind.
"Being remarkably well formed and athletic, he was enlisted when very young as private in a small body of halberdiers, all of gentle blood, known as the Bodyguard of James VI. His closest friend was Alexander Pope. Cowper says: 'He was wonderfully handsome.'"
JOHANN WOLFGANG GOETHE (1749–1832)
"He was not only the greatest poet of Germany; he was one of the greatest poets of all ages. Posterity must decide his exact precedence in that small and chosen company which contains the names of Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare. He was the apostle of self-culture."—Encyclopædia Britannica.
Precocious, handsome, lively, sensitive; before he was ten he wrote in several languages, meditated poems, and invented stories.
"The foremost poet of Germany; born at Frankfort-on-the-Main, August 28, 1749; of a wealthy and highly respectable family; his father proud and pedantic; his mother bright, quick-witted, decided, deeply sympathetic, and dreading her husband; very carefully and widely educated, largely by his father; defective in his religious impressions; knowing the Bible well, but intellectually only; profoundly impressed by the Seven Years' War; at sixteen entered the University of Leipzig; read law; wrote lyrical poems and critical dramas; at twenty-four published his drama 'Götz von Berlichingen'; at twenty-five his famous novel, Werther's Leiden, works of rare artistic truth and magical vividness of picture; not only writing them out of his own heart, but out of the heart of his time, which was the secret of the immense success of his works. No poet has ever reached Goethe in the magic of his representations. Every sentence in his dramas is charged with color. Everybody who reads Werther's Leiden reads something of himself. Napoleon read it over and over again. At twenty-six he went to live with Charles Augustus, the Duke of Saxe-Weimar, at his Court, occupying many different positions in the ducal government which his great administrative talent and business tact enabled him to do well; made a severe study of botany, comparative anatomy, mineralogy, and optics; and great men gathered around the Court at Weimar till it became a German Athens. From twenty-five to thirty-five he did not write much though he made great preparations; at thirty-six, wrote Egmont; at thirty-seven, Iphigenie; at thirty-nine, Römische Elegien; at forty, Tasso; at forty-one, Faust; at forty-seven, Wilhelm Meister and Hermann und Dorothea. The variety of these works is not more astonishing than their perfection; at forty-five began an intimacy with Schiller which lasted till the death of the latter, eleven years later; and this friendship was the baptism of Schiller's genius. His studies were comprehensive and assiduous; his critical sallies on the extravagances of his own pupils were most effective; and through his direction of the ducal theatre at Weimar he exercised a lasting and ennobling influence on the theatrical art of Germany; at fifty-seven he married Christiane Vulpius.
"Goethe had now ceased to be merely an influence; he had become an authority. Civilized life in Germany, and in foreign countries too, was deeply indebted to him. He had loosened the narrow ties of the old order, and in the wild fermentation of all the elements of civilization he had established a law which prevented chaos from breaking in. He had brought another conception of freedom into the German civilization. There was in German life and character a hardness and narrowness which, although intimately allied to energy and honesty, hindered the free movement of human nature, and constrained it within the boundaries of the most singular prejudices. These were melted down by Goethe's influence, and human nature breathed more freely; to his time his was a gospel of freedom, progress, power, and happiness. It will hold a certain authority in every age, because it contains a certain proportion of truth. Its effect on civilized life was most wonderful; it gave much more than it promised. Thus it was quite natural that the whole age bowed to its bringer with the deepest gratitude and reverence.
"Outside of his autobiography, he wrote little in his later life, giving it up to practical business and scientific research. He died at Weimar in his eighty-third year."— Johnston's Universal Cyclopædia.
And this noble soul, to whom Napoleon said, when he saw him, "You are a man," lived in a noble temple. Indeed it would be strange if it had done otherwise.
"Personally the young Goethe made a most extraordinary impression. His bearing in his student days was reserved, and at times a little haughty; but the beauty of his countenance was so irresistible, and the impression of courage, independence, nobleness, and kindness so powerful, that when he entered an inn conversation would stop; and the guests look surprised at each other.
"In his youth, in spite of some occasional rashness and arrogance, he quite intoxicated people with the richness, originality, and grasp of his ideas; the wonderful freshness and enchanting enthusiasm of his feelings. Everybody expected that something great would come from him.
"Goethe was a man of noble bodily presence both in youth and age. His influence has affected every civilized people, and is still on the increase. His teaching has been styled the creed of self-culture."—Chambers's Encyclopedia.
At fourteen, probably, he "began lessons in fencing and riding; for this father would have his son early skilful in all bodily exercises. He, like the Duke (of Weimar), was content to sleep on a sheet spread over a straw mattress, with a light bed-covering. He loved cold-water bathing even in winter; thus we find him in February, 1779 (at thirty), bathing with Fran von Stein's boys. Then, too, he delighted in exercise, at first chiefly on horseback; afterwards on foot; and he did not neglect fencing, and other physical accomplishments."—Duntzer's Life of Goethe.
LORD ERSKINE (1750–1823)
Gilbert Clark says: "He was engaged in the court-martial of Lord Keppel; in the defence of Lieutenant Bourne, of the navy, for challenging Sir James Wallace; the Motherill case; the defence of Lord Gordon, charged with high treason; the Dean of St. Asaph for seditious libel; the Stockdale case, growing out of the Hastings impeachment, his speech being the finest ever delivered at the English Bar, winning a verdict which forever established the freedom of the press; the Horne Tooke case; Hardy for treason; the Thelwell case; the Stone case; and the prosecution of Williams for publishing Paine's Age of Reason. Perhaps his greatest display was the defence of Hadfield for attempting the life of George III."
Nothing can be added to Lord Campbell's estimate: "As an advocate in the forum he was without an equal in ancient or modern times." He was of medium height, slender, quick and nervous, handsome and magnetic.
Irving Browne, in his Short Studies of Great Lawyers, says: "It is a proud boast for Scotland that the greatest of judges and the greatest of advocates were Scots. Mansfield and Erskine—names which cause the blood to glow in the veins of every lawyer who cherishes a high ideal of his profession—what other country can boast two such? Dr. Johnson, who heartily hated the Scotch, admitted that much might be done with a Scotchman, if caught young. But Erskine was not precocious. He presents the anomaly of a late and instantaneously brilliant entrance into the profession. Admitted to practice at the age of twenty-eight, he gained the height of legal fame, not by slow and toilsome steps, but at one bound; he burst upon the world, a star of the first magnitude, and of unfailing radiance. His eloquence, which, like the lyre of Orpheus, might have won a soul from the shades, was the companion of a solid and unerring judgment; a charming wit; a consuming sarcasm; an exquisite tact; an intuitive knowledge of mankind; and an inexorable and pervasive logic worthy of St. Paul."
Lord Campbell says: "He displayed genius united with public principle; he saved the liberties of his country; he was the brightest ornament of which the English Bar could boast. Without the invaluable assistance of Erskine, as counsel for the Dean of St. Asaph, the Star Chamber might have been re-established in this country." Brougham says: "He was an undaunted man; he was an undaunted advocate." The author of The Bar thus concludes his eloquent tribute:
"Yet long as liberty the soul delights,
And Britons cherish and maintain their rights;
Long as they love their country's sacred cause,
And prize the safest bulwarks of their laws;
So long shall be with freedom's loud acclaim
'Trial by jury' linked with Erskine's name."
"From the moment of undertaking a cause, until its conclusion, he forgot himself, and bent every energy towards winning a verdict. He was steadily proof against the strongest temptation with which a successful lawyer has to contend, that of exciting admiration of his own powers at the expense of his case. He rigidly abstained from all that might endanger the cause at hand; resisted every temptation to mere declamation, which his exuberant fancy threw in his path; and won his verdicts not more by what he said than by what he refrained from saying.
"Ceaseless and unremitting study of the English classics has given him a style most felicitous."
"Nor were the charms of an elegant physique and an attractive personal appearance wanting. His form was peculiarly graceful, slender, and supple; yet when warmed with an address, quivering with the public excitement of the occasion, his features, regularly beautiful, were susceptible of an infinite variety of expression, and at times lighted up by a smile of surpassing sweetness. There was a magnetism in his eye which few could withstand; and it was a common remark that his look was irresistible to a jury. There have been profounder jurists; there have been abler judges; there have been wiser statesmen; but as a forensic orator he stands without a rival and without a peer.
"Never a profound jurist; he enjoyed perfect health. During twenty-seven years of practice, indisposition never caused him a single day's absence at Court. His figure was elastic and erect; and his eye brilliant and captivating; his movements rapid; his voice sharp and clear, and without a trace of Scotch accent."
LORD ELDON (1751–1838)
Irving Browne says: "This great lawyer, sprung from a humble lineage, held the Seals of Great Britain under two kings; and his decisions, filling upwards of thirty volumes, extend over a period of almost a quarter of a century. During this long period he administered the intricate equity law of the wealthiest kingdom on earth so faithfully and intelligently that only two of his decisions were ever reversed. As a judge he was remarkable for his patience, courtesy, and candor; his integrity; and his profound learning. He was doubtless the most patient man who ever sat on the English bench.… Personally pure in the administration of equity, his decisions breathed and elevated morality.… He was by far the most learned of the English chancellors. He surpassed every other judge in his familiarity with equitable principles; and the proper method of applying them. He knew not only what ought to be done, but how to do it.… The decisions of Lord Eldon may be compared to a mine of legal lore; while those of Lord Hardwicke are a mint."
Mr. Eden, in dedicating I. Eden's Reports to him, says: "None of those who have themselves been witnesses of your sagacity, your patience, your energy; of your unwearied diligence, your equal temper, of your gentle and condescending manners; can form a complete idea of the transcendent merits of your judicial character. The union of many great and rare excellences present in your Lordship, the truly virtuous and exemplary magistrate; the consistent politician; and the most profoundly learned and accomplished Lawyer of ancient or modern times; one of the greatest, wisest, and best men of the age."
Lord Campbell says: "In his person Lord Eldon was about the middle size; his figure light and athletic; his features regular and handsome; his eyes bright and full; his smile remarkable, benevolent; and his whole appearance prepossessing.
"The advance of years rather increased than detracted from these personal advantages. As he sat on the judgment seat, the deep thought, betrayed in his brow, large eyebrows, overhanging eyes that seemed to regard more what was taking place than what was around him—his calmness that would have assumed a character of sternness but for its perfect placidity—his dignity, repose, and venerable age tending at once to win confidence and inspire respect."
And as seen in his portraits, his figure in later years became hearty and robust, looking the picture of health and vigor, able to easily stand as he did an unusually long life of arduous toil and vast responsibilities.
THOMAS CHALMERS (1780–1847)
Born at Edinburgh; son of a ship-owner and merchant. At St. Andrews University at twelve; devoted there to mathematics, ethics, and political economy; licensed to preach at nineteen; preaching and lecturing on mathematics and chemistry, and winning fame as a savant. When Napoleon threatened England, enlisting as a lieutenant and chaplain; a frequent writer for the magazines; at first on economical and other scientific subjects; then upon religious themes; attracting hearers from great distances by his eloquence in the pulpit; writing his Evidences of Christianity; organizing many Bible and missionary societies; at the Tron Parish Church, of Glasgow, enjoying unrivalled renown as an orator; delivering weekly Astronomical Discourses, which were published, and met with wide sale; invited to London in a time of high political excitement, when all parties thronged to hear him; and Canning, disappointed at first, at the end of the sermon, said to Wilberforce: "The tartan beats us; we have no preaching like that in England!" looking after the interests of the poor; reviving the parochial system of Scotland; taking charge of two thousand poor families in his parish with highly gratifying results, including personal visits to every family by his agents and teachers; accepting a call to the chair of Moral Philosophy at St. Andrews'; then the Chair of Divinity at Edinburgh; where he remained fifteen years; appointed Royal Chaplain; "carrying his eloquence into the class-room, which was filled, not with students alone; but with clergymen of various denominations, and eminent literary and scientific
THOMAS CHALMERS
(From an autograph copy of an original portrait owned by Dr. John Brown, author
"Rab and His Friends," and presented by him to Rev. Dr. Theodore I.
Cuyler, by whose courtesy it is presented here)
One writer says of him: "A child-like, guileless, transparent simplicity; the utter absence of everything factitious in matter or manner—a kindliness of nature that made him flexible to every human sympathy—a chivalry of sentiment that raised him above the petty jealousies of public life—a firmness that made vacillation a thing almost impossible; a force of will and general momentum that carried all that was movable before it—a vehement utterance and overwhelming eloquence that gave him the command of the multitude; a scientific reputation that won for him the respect and attention of the more educated; a legislative faculty that framed measures upon the broadest principles; a practical sagacity that adapted them to ends they were intended to realize; a genius that in new and different circumstances could devise; coupled with a love of calculation; a capacity for business details, and administrative talent that fitted him to execute; a purity of motive that put him above all suspicion of selfishness; and a piety, unobtrusive but most profound, simple; yet intensely ardent."
And he was an orator.
J. G. Lockhart says: "Most unquestionably I have never heard, whether in England or in Scotland, or in any other country, any preacher whose eloquence is capable of producing an effect so strong and irresistible as his." Lord Jeffrey remarks: "I know not what it is; but there is something altogether remarkable about that man. It reminds me more of what one reads of as the effect of Demosthenes than anything I ever heard." Robert Hall, the greatest pulpit orator of England, wrote to him: "It would be difficult not to congratulate you upon the unrivalled and boundless popularity which attended you in the Metropolis.… The attention which your sermons have excited is probably unequalled in modern literature."
In his Oratory and Orators, Professor Mathews says: "What ruler of men ever subjugated them more effectually by his sceptre than Chalmers, who gave law from his pulpit for thirty years? Who drew tears from Dukes and Duchesses, and made the Princes of the blood and bishops start to their feet, and break out into rounds of the wildest applause? It would be hard to name an orator of equal fame who had so few of the usual external helps and ornaments of eloquence; and hence the first feeling of almost every hearer whom his fame had attracted was a shock of disappointment. As he rose to speak, and the hearer contrasted with his ideal of an orator, or with his preconceived notions, the middle-sized and somewhat strange and uncouth figure before him, with its broad but not lofty forehead, its prominent cheek-bones, and its drooping, lack-lustre eyes; as he observed the abrupt and awkward manner, apparently indicating embarrassment or irreverence, or both; and listened to the harsh croaking tones of the broad Fifeshire tongue, while the speaker bent over his manuscript, and following it with his finger, read every word like a school-boy;—it seemed incredible that this could be the man who had stormed the hearts of his countrymen for more than thirty years; and whose published discourses had rivalled in their sale the productions of the great Wizard of the North. All this, however, was but the gathering of the clouds as a prelude to dazzling and flashing outbursts of lightning, and to the reverberating thunder-peals in the heavens. Gradually the great preacher would unveil himself; the ungainly attitude, the constraint and awkwardness, the vacant look and feebleness of voice and manner would be cast aside, or, if in some degree retained, would be overlooked by the hearer in the deepening interest of the theme; the voice, though still harsh and unmusical, would ring out and shrill like a clarion; the eye, which was so dull and half closed, would be lighted up with intelligence; the breast would heave, and the body sway to and fro with the tumult of the thought; voice and face would seem bursting with the fury of excitement; while his person was bathed with perspiration; the words, before so slow, would leap forth with the rapidity and force of a mountain torrent; argument would follow argument, illustration would follow illustration, and appeal would follow appeal in quick succession, till at last all hearts were subdued and carried captive by the flood of an overwhelming and resistless eloquence.… Another writer was so struck with his prodigious energy, his native feral force, that he declares that, had it not been intellectualized and sanctified, it would have 'made him, who was the greatest of orators, the strongest of ruffians, a mighty murderer upon the earth.'"
And this man, who grappled with the management of ten thousand poor in his parish—quite a parish—and whom Professor William Garden Blaikie considered "intellectually and morally the grandest man that ever lived," had, as his picture shows, the very body he needed for his titanic work. Professor Blaikie, in his Famous Scots Series, says: "Of Chalmers as a school-boy the testimony is that he was one of the idlest, strongest, merriest, and most generous-hearted boys in Anstruther School."
"One boy above the rest seeming about ten or twelve years of age, who is the leader in their sports—strong, active, merry, and boisterous, with big head, matted dark hair, large plain features, broad shoulders, well-proportioned, but brawny limbs, his laugh always loudest, and his figure always foremost at foot-ball and the other games in which they were contending.—Thomas Chalmers, a Biographical Study, by James Dodge.
When appointed assistant professor of mathematics, Mrs. Oliphant said of him: "The life and energy of a robust young man, full of ambition, and eager for achievement, was in all his veins."
And Professor Mathews says of him, when he had fully matured and was "in all" his "glorious prime," that "Chalmers had a large frame, with a ponderous brain, and a general massiveness of countenance which suggested great reserve strength, and reminded those who watched him in repose of one of Landseer's or Thorwaldsen's lions."
With such a body, such a mind—and such a soul—and with a clear, definite, lofty aim drawing out his great abilities to the utmost, such a man could not help being a leader in any land. What other son of Scotland would you rate greater than he?
CHIEF JUSTICE SHAW (1781–1861)
Gilbert Clark says that Lemuel Shaw was for thirty years Chief Justice of Massachusetts. He was born at Barnstable, Massachusetts; was a graduate of Harvard; member of both Houses of the Legislature, from 1811 to 1830, and of the convention for revising the State laws in 1820. Daniel Webster, who urged his appointment as Chief Justice, said he had laid the people of Massachusetts under lasting obligations to him by inducing the appointment. Before his accession to the bench—a three-thousand-dollar position—he had a practice of nearly twenty thousand dollars a year. He united learning and common-sense in a degree seldom found in one man, so that the law became with him the perfection of human reason. He adapted old rules to new conditions; and is undoubtedly the greatest common-law judge New England ever produced; and it is doubtful whether America has produced a greater, if we except Marshall. He had a patient ear, yet he was firm—no lawyer, however audacious, presuming to trench on the dignity of his Court. He held the scales of justice with an even hand. His charges to a jury were simple and clear, yet covered the question in controversy. His character and integrity were unquestioned. Chief Justice Bigelow said of him: "No subject was so great as to be beyond the reach of his comprehensive grasp; no distinction so minute as to elude his discriminating observation."
Webster said to Governor Lincoln, when consulted by him: "Appoint Lemuel Shaw by all means." "But he won't take it," said the Governor. "We must make him take it," said Webster. Webster then approached Mr. Shaw upon the subject. He was almost offended at the suggestion. "Do you suppose," said he, "that I am going, at my time of life, to take an office that has so
CHIEF JUSTICE LEMUEL SHAW
(Published by permission of the proprietor of The Green Bag)
much responsibility attached to it, for the paltry sum of three thousand dollars a year?" "You have some property," replied Webster, "and can afford it." "I shall not take it under any circumstances," was his answer. Said Webster: "I used every argument I could think of. I plied him in every possible way, and had interview after interview with him. He smoked and smoked; and as I entreated, and begged, and expostulated, the smoke would come thicker and faster. Sometimes he would make a cloud of smoke so thick that I could not see him. He would groan and smoke. I guess he smoked a thousand cigars while he was settling the point. Although he accepted the office with the greatest reluctance, he has filled it with unsurpassed ability; there is not in the world a more upright, conscientious, and able judge than Chief Justice Shaw. He is an honor to the ermine. For that I repeat that the people of Massachusetts owe me a debt of gratitude, if for nothing else."—Harvey's Reminiscences of Webster.
Rufus Choate addressed him in his own way: "In coming into the presence of your Honor, I experience what a Hindoo does when he bows before his idol—I know that you are ugly, but I feel that you are great." But the Chief Justice got back at him. When he heard that a new edition of Worcester's Dictionary had twenty-five hundred new words in it, he exclaimed: "For Heaven's sake, don't let Choate get hold of it!"
And look at that body! Its wonderful breadth, its great depth; the almost huge neck; the large hands; everything suggestive of uncommon vitality and unusual physical vigor. No wonder he lived to be eighty, and worked at a great pace all the time, and on the most abstruse and important questions. No feeble body could have ever stood what he went through. It would have given out many years before.
JOHN BANNISTER GIBSON (1780–1853)
"His opinions are found in no fewer than seventy volumes—from 2 Sergeant and Rawle to 7 Harris. He settled the law of riots in Pennsylvania, in Donahue vs. The County, 2 Barr., 230. His great decision is that of Ingersoll vs. Sergeant, 1 Wharton, 336, on the statute 'Quia Emptores,' and rent-charge and rent-service.
"He was upwards of six feet high, strong, muscular, and attractive. A born musician, his favorite recreation through life was the violin. He was a connoisseur in painting and sculpture, a master of English, French, Italian, and classic literature; had a sound knowledge of medicine, which he had carefully studied in youth; an adept at mechanics, a successful dentist, and tuned a piano perfectly. His language was saturated with Shakespeare, epigrammatic, paradoxical, and could never after be paraphrased. Said United States Attorney-General Jeremiah S. Black: 'In some points of character he had not his equal on earth. Such vigor, clearness, and precision of thought were never united with the same felicity of diction.' And adds Matthew H. Carpenter: 'His opinions, thoroughly understood, would make any man a profound lawyer.'"—Clark's Sketches of Eminent Lawyers.
"In person the Chief Justice is above the common stature; and has always been distinguished by extraordinary vigor of health and frame. His tempers are eminently social; and among all classes of society throughout the State he is ever greeted as a welcome guest. His hearty health; his fresh and genial taste; and his devotion to judicial labors indicate a man on whose vigorous power age has made no mark."—United States Monthly Law Magazine.
CHIEF JUSTICE GIBSON
His enormous head is referred to elsewhere (page 362). But, as his portrait shows, there was ample body to sustain the great intellect, and to carry him through more than seventy years of vigorous, active life.
CORNELIUS VANDERBILT (1791–1877)
Physically he was a splendid man. "He was tall, athletic, and brave; not very fond of books; but devoted to open-air life and sports; a fine swimmer; and a good oarsman and horseman; at the age of six he had already driven a race-horse at full speed; a fact to which he often referred in later years. In the quiet life of the farm, the sailing of boats, fishing, and other amusements, the future railroad-president gained the physical and mental vigor which, added to his striking appearance and sturdy, resolute character, made him a prince among men. He was a man of great physical vigor and striking personality; six feet tall; handsome; and with clear complexion. He was a man of few words. Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress was one of his favorite books, and "There is Rest for the Weary" his favorite hymn. Politics did not interest him. He was fond of driving fine horses; he gave one million to Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee. He had thirteen children by his first wife."
Among many stories of his daring in storm and danger, this may be told here: In a sailing-race from Staten Island to a buoy five miles out in the Bay, and return; the favorite was a costly and handsome sloop, which could easily outsail Vanderbilt's periagua—this very boat he had earned. Upon the day of the race it blew a gale. Nothing could suit Vanderbilt better. Though he pressed the sloop hard, she rounded the stake first, and was evidently winning as she liked. But the finish-line had been placed just in front of and too near a stone-dock. The sloop, as she neared the finish, began to shorten sail, to avoid the danger. "Corneel" cracked on every stitch he had; shot over the line a winner; crashed into the dock; his boat sank; he shinned up the mast, won the prize; and a few dollars soon patched the boat, and made her all right.
In all his life he never laid on flesh; but muscular, erect, and commanding, he was one of the finest-looking men in the United States. He drove almost daily; not cooped up in a closed carriage, but he did the driving, and behind the fleetest pair of horses that money could buy. And woe be to your wheel if you got in his way. But no blooded horse he ever drove had more of the true racing-spirit in him than did this modern viking and railroad king, who made an average of a million a year for eighty years—one of the strongest, manliest, and greatest men America has yet produced.
HENRY CLAY (1777–1852)
He was six feet one inch high, erect, and commanding; with high forehead, prominent nose, blue eyes, large mouth, and a powerful, melodious voice. The North American Review, for January, 1866, says: "In no man of our knowledge has ever been combined so much of the forest-chief with so much of the good of the trained man of business as in Henry Clay. This was the secret of his power over classes of men so diverse as the hunters of Kentucky and the manufacturers of New England." Of typical Southern make, long-barrelled, tall, wiry, alert, daring, that seething brain kept the body too active to ever let it get far out of condition.
DANIEL WEBSTER (1782–1852)
"'While Mr. Webster, as a politician and a statesman,' says Mr. Everett, 'has performed an amount of intellectual labor sufficient to form the sole occupation of an active life; there is no doubt that his arguments to the Court, and his addresses to the jury in important suits of law, would, if they had been reported like his political speeches, have filled a much greater space.' And his friend might have added that the labor bestowed in the examination and general treatment of his cases cost him real toil, and required a more thorough employment of his transcendent talents than the preparation of all his arguments, addresses, and speeches, legal and political. The professional work actually performed by his mind during the forty-five years of his public life, if given at the same length as his published efforts, could scarcely have been printed in less than several scores of volumes. And then, when it is considered how that work was performed; how every part of it was executed; what perfection and power were stamped upon all of it, the mind almost staggers at the contemplation. Or, if the mind of any will go on with
DANIEL WEBSTER
(From the celebrated painting by Chester Harding)
the contemplation of this almost inconceivable succession of intellectual labors of the highest order, and of the grandeur and glory to which it all tended, and unto which it finally attained; it can hardly do so in better terms, or under a better guide than that furnished in the language of one whom it is scarcely possible not to quote upon this subject. 'There presents itself,' says Mr. Choate, 'on the first, and to any observation of Mr. Webster's life and character, a twofold eminence—eminence of the very highest rank in a twofold field of intellectual and public display—the profession of the law, and the profession of statesmanship, of which it would not be easy to recall any parallel in the biography of illustrious men. Without seeking for parallels, and without asserting that they do not exist, consider that he was, by universal designation, the leader of the general American Bar; and that he was also, by an equally universal designation, foremost of her statesmen living at his death; inferior to not one who has lived and acted since the opening of his own public life. Look at these aspects of his greatness separately; and from opposite sides of the surpassing elevation. Consider that his single career at the Bar may have seemed to have been enough to employ the largest faculties without repose for a lifetime; and that, if then and thus the infinitus forensium rerum labor should have conducted him to a mere professional reward—a Bench of Chancery, or the law—the crown of the first of advocates—juris peritorium eloquentissimus—to the pure and mere honors of a great magistrate; that that would be as much as is allotted to the ablest in the distribution of fame. Even at heart, if I may say so—of his illustrious reputation—how long to win it—how worthy of all that labor!'"—Tefft's Webster and His Masterpieces.
United States Senator Lodge says: "His great success Mr. Webster owed solely to his intellectual power, supplemented by great physical gifts. No man ever was born into the world better formed by nature for the career of an orator and statesman. He had everything to compel the admiration and submission of his fellow-men. But the imposing presence was only the outward sign of the man. Within was a massive and powerful intellect, not creative or ingenious, but with a wonderful vigor of grasp; capacious, penetrating, far-reaching. Mr. Webster's strongest and most characteristic mental qualities were weight and force. He was peculiarly fitted to deal with large subjects in a large way."
Mr. Morse says: "In the immediate effect of Mr. Webster's speeches was the physical influence of the man himself. We can but half understand his eloquence and its influence if we do not carefully study his physical attributes; his temperament and disposition. In face, form, and voice, Nature did her utmost for Daniel Webster. No envious fairy was present at his birth to mar these gifts by her malign influence. He seemed to every one to be a giant; that at least is the word we most commonly find applied to him; and there is no better proof of his enormous physical impressiveness than this well-known fact; for Mr. Webster was not a man of extraordinary stature. He was five feet ten inches in height; and, in health, weighed a little less than two hundred pounds. These are the proportions of a large man, but there is nothing remarkable about them. We must look elsewhere than to mere size to discover why men spoke of Webster as a giant. He had a swarthy complexion and straight black hair. His head was very large, the brain weighing, as is well known, more than any on record, except those of Cuvier; and of the celebrated bricklayer. At the same time his head was of noble shape; with a broad and lofty brow; and his features were finely cut, and full of massive strength. His eyes were extraordinary. They were very dark and deep-set; and, when he began to rouse himself to action, shone with the deep light of a forge-fire, getting ever more glowing as excitement rose. His voice was in harmony with his appearance. It was low and musical in conversation; in debate it was high but full, ringing out in moments of excitement like a clarion; and then sinking to deep notes with the solemn richness of organ-tones; while the words were accompanied by a manner in which grace and dignity mingled in complete accord. The impression which he produced upon the eye and ear is difficult to express. There is no man in all history who came into the world so equipped physically for speech. In this direction Nature could do no more. The mere look of the man and the sound of his voice made all who saw and heard him feel that he must be the embodiment of wisdom, dignity, and strength; divinely eloquent, even if he sat in dreamy silence, or uttered nothing but heavy commonplaces.
"It is commonly said that no one of the many pictures of Mr. Webster gives a true idea of what he was. We can readily believe this, when we read the descriptions which have come down to us. That indefinable quality which we call personal magnetism, the power of impressing by one's personality every human being who comes near, was at its height in Mr. Webster. There have been few instances in history where there is such constant reference to merely physical attributes as in the case of Mr. Webster. His general appearance and his eyes are the first and last things alluded to in every contemporary description. Every one is familiar with the story of the English navvy who pointed at Mr. Webster in the streets of Liverpool and said, 'There goes a king.' Sidney Smith exclaimed when he saw him, 'Good heavens; he is a small cathedral by himself!'"
Carlyle, no lover of America, wrote to Emerson: "Not many days ago I saw at breakfast the notablest of all your notabilities, Daniel Webster. He is a magnificent specimen. You might say to all the world, 'This is our Yankee Englishman; such limbs we make in Yankee-land.' As a logic-fencer, or Parliamentary Hercules, one would incline to back him at first sight against all the extant world. The tanned complexion; that amorphous, crag-like face; the dull black eyes under the precipice of brows, like dull anthracite furnaces, needing only to be blown; the mastiff-mouth accurately closed; I have not traced so much of silent Berserker rage that I remember of, in any man. I guess I should not like to be your nigger! Webster is not loquacious, but he is pertinent, conclusive; a dignified, perfectly bred man, though not English in breeding; a man worthy of the best reception among us, and meeting such, I understand." Such was the effect produced by Mr. Webster when in England; and it was a universal impression. Wherever he went men felt in the depths of their being the amazing force of his personal presence. He could control an audience by a look; and could extort applause from hostile listeners by a mere glance.
His personal friend, Peter Harvey, in his Life of Webster, tells us more about his wonderful physique. He says: "As he matured in life he grew stronger. His early indulgence in field-sports confirmed his health; and provided him at last with unusual physical vigor and strength. He was a capital wrestler; and often, when his two sons had become men, he would challenge them to wrestle; and could readily throw either of them. The habit of out-door recreation was continued throughout his life. Of Mr. Webster's daily habits, when free from all restraints of company, I think I may say, without egotism, that I know as much as any man; for I was with him a great deal; and of course my presence imposed no restraint upon him. During the heated controversy about nullification, they usually became personal in their debates. Sometimes violence was threatened to individuals. Many armed themselves to repel an assault if they should be attacked. His son once asked him why he, too, did not arm himself. His reply was: 'My son, I war with principles, not with men. I give no occasion for a personal assault. Besides,' he added, drawing himself up to his full height, 'few men would venture to assail me in the street; if one should, he would probably be put to rest for a fortnight for his temerity.' Webster certainly was not a handsome man; but he was tall, with a chest like a Hercules; a magnificent head, with beetling brows, and cavernous, melancholy black eyes of the most searching and significant expression. No other human eye was ever like his."
They put men to sleep in the prize-ring. But it is only for a few minutes, or even seconds. But Webster's plan was to make it so effectual that it would last a fortnight. Fowler, the famous phrenologist, used to say that Webster's chest girthed forty-five inches. If so, for a five-foot-ten man he was a wonder. Certainly he had a vast chest—at once a mighty factory and storehouse of vitality, worthy to feed such a colossal brain. And to do such a gigantic life-work. And he held his chest as a man ought to do; and with the very effect so holding such a chest will always bring—an effect well told by Finck: "An arched chest imparts to man's whole figure an aspect of physical perfection, not to say sublimity, as may be seen in the ancient statues of gods, in which the chest is intentionally made more prominent than it can ever be in a man; presumably in order to weaken the impression of the chest's more animal neighbor, the abdomen. There is a deep meaning in our phraseology which localizes courage, boldness, martial valor, in a man's vigorous breast."
And did they not often call him the Jove-like Webster? What other man in Senate or House of Representatives; in the House of Lords or Commons; in the Reichstag; the Chamber of Deputies, or the Cortes, has such a magnificent chest and mighty presence to-day as had this same "Parliamentary Hercules"? Well does one writer put it, "The grandest presence seen since Charlemagne!"
RUFUS CHOATE (1790–1859)
"Choate's first appearance at the Bar was the signal for much laughter and ridicule. His advent was regarded by the lawyers and suitors of his day very much as the appearance of Pegasus would be received by the steady-going, earth-born equine, if he should descend and assume the rôle of a cart-horse. His ways were not their ways. His eccentricities and his struggles to carry his burden aloft into his native element excited much merriment. But soon it was found that Pegasus drew his load better than any of them, despite his antics and his curvetings. Men soon came to acknowledge that here was a new and legitimate style of advocacy; and although it proved inimitable, yet it soon secured ungrudging admiration; and to the new-comer was accorded the leadership which his unique genius demanded. From then until his death he was as much sovereign in the Boston court-house as Webster was in Faneuil Hall.
"His voice, which naturally was rich, grand, and melodious, he frequently urged to its highest key; he shrieked; he raved; he tore a passion to tatters; he swung his fists; he ran his trembling fingers through his long, curling locks, dripping with perspiration; he shook his head like a lion's mane; he raised his body on his toes, and brought his weight down on his heels with a force that shook the court-room; he paused for two or three seconds, threw back his head, swept the jury with a terrific glance, and violently inhaled his breath through his nostrils with a snuffing that was heard all over the court-room; his weird eyes glared like a maniac's; his wrinkled face assumed a hundred unnatural corrugations; in short, his speech tore his frame, and his body was convulsed like that of the Delphic priestess in her moments of inspiration. All this seems very ridiculous in the description. It is not singular that it sometimes excited derision. But derision was short-lived. Once when a party to the suit in progress laughed at Choate's extravagance the advocate crushed him by advancing on him with a thundering 'let those laugh who win.'"
Choate's personal appearance was as remarkable as his oratory. Above six feet in height, with a powerful chest and shoulders, a gaunt frame, huge hands and feet; a rolling, lumbering sort of gait, a bilious, coffee-colored complexion; his face deeply corrugated with profound wrinkles and hollows and seamed with powerful lines; his head deep, rather than wide, and completely covered with luxuriant black curly hair, scarcely tinged with gray at the day of his death; mouth large, and lips thin and tremulous; his eyes large, deep-set, and black, with a weird, far-away expression in quiet; but a terrible burning intensity in excitement a face noticeable in a throng of a thousand, with intellect looking out at every point;—a most haggard, woe-begone, fortune-telling countenance; his person arrayed in slouching, ill-fitting garments, including always several coats of various and indescribable hues, which he doffed or donned in the progress of a cause, according to the amount of perspiration which he was secreting; and a cravat which has been said "to meet in an indescribable tie, which seems like a fortuitous concurrence of original atoms. He possessed a wonderful capacity for labor and study; but was a martyr to sick-headaches all his life."
And no one looking into his habits of ceaseless over-study will wonder that he had sick-headaches. For he used the means which bring them and neglected the things which prevent them. Naturally strong, he seems to have had no regular—or irregular—habits of exercise, nothing to relieve a congested brain.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN (1809–1865)
Sagacious, patient; dreading praise,—not blame.'"—
Lowell.
"Born in Hardin County, Kentucky, in extreme poverty; His father unable to read or write; unaided by his parents; only a year at school; never for a day master of his time till twenty-one; in the Illinois Legislature at twenty-five; a lawyer at twenty-seven; in Congress at thirty-seven; meeting Stephen A. Douglas in the famous squatter-sovereignty debates; President of the United States at fifty. A many-sided man; he was successively boatman, axeman, hired-laborer, clerk, surveyor, captain, legislator, lawyer, postmaster, orator, politician, statesman, President, and martyr. In youth he read Æsop; Robinson Crusoe; Pilgrim's Progress; a United States history; Weems's Washington; and the Bible; later some philosophy, science, and literature—especially Shakespeare. 'In all the elements that constitute a great lawyer,' said Judge David Davis, of the United States Supreme Court, 'he had few equals.' When he had attacked meanness, fraud, or vice, he was powerful—merciless in denunciation. He said: 'All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel-mother—blessings on her memory.' He used no stimulants—or oaths. In 1864 he said he had never read a novel. Yet he had the capacity of patience beyond any precedent on record. One of his mottoes was, 'Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time.'"—Morse's Life of Lincoln.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
helped him to do a life's work of vast importance to mankind.
"Leonard Swett says: 'During Lincoln's youth he had everywhere been distinguished as the crowning athlete in the neighborhoods in which he lived. Everywhere along the frontier, since that frontier has marched from the east westward, some fellow has been "cock of the walk" who could out-wrestle and out-run, and out-jump everybody. Lincoln was that person wherever he lived. He was that boy when young in Indiana; and afterwards in New Salem he made a hero of himself, wrestling, running, jumping, lifting, and in other innocent amusements of that character. He was six feet three and a half inches tall; long-armed; long-limbed; brawny-handed; with no superfluous flesh; toughened by labor in the open air; of perfect health; and his grip was like the grip of Hercules. Together with the talk of organizing a company in New Salem began the talk of making Lincoln the captain of it. His characteristics as an athlete had made something of a hero of him. Turning to me with a smile at the time, he said: "I cannot tell you how much the idea of being the captain of that company pleased me."'—Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, by Allen Thorndike Rice.
"His agility and strength were remarkable, and no one in the vicinity could throw him in a wrestling-match. He is said to have been able to carry a load which three men could hardly lift; and he once picked up a hen-house weighing over six hundred pounds and carried it a considerable distance. He could strike a maul a heavier blow than any other man. He could sink an axe deeper into the wood than any other man I ever saw."—French's Lincoln.
"The Clary's Grove boys (roughs) at New Salem twice a week had horse-play. They would nail any stranger in a hogshead, and roll him down-hill. Lincoln's reputation for strength and courage at first kept them off; but Armstrong, the leader of the gang, was put on to wrestle him. Seeing that he could not manage the tall stranger, his friends, by kicking and tripping, nearly got him down. Putting forth his whole strength, he held the pride of Clary's Grove in his arms like a child, and almost choked the exuberant life out of him. For a moment a general fight seemed inevitable; but Lincoln, standing undismayed, with his back to the wall, looked so formidable in his defiance that honest admiration took the place of momentary fury, and his danger was over. The verdict of Clary's Grove was that he was the cleverest fellow that ever broke into the settlement. As to Armstrong, he was Lincoln's friend and sworn brother, as soon as he recovered the use of his larynx; and the bond thus created lasted through life. Lincoln made ample amends for the liberty he had taken with Jack's throat by saving in a memorable trial his son's neck from the halter."—Nicolay and Hay's Life of Lincoln.
"Lincoln was believed to be the strongest man in his regiment; and no doubt was. He was certainly the best wrestler in it, and after they left Beardstown no one ever disputed the fact. He is said to 'have done the wrestling for the company.' And one man insists that he always had a handkerchief tied around his person, in readiness for the sport. For a while it was firmly believed that no man in the army could throw him down. His company confidently pitted him 'against the field'; and were willing to bet all they had on the result. At length one Mr. Thompson came forward and accepted the challenge. He was, in fact, the most famous wrestler in the western country. It is not certain that the report of his achievements had ever reached the ears of Mr. Lincoln or his friends. But, at any rate, they eagerly made a match with him as a champion not unworthy of their own. Thompson's power and skill, however, were as well known to certain persons in the army as Mr. Lincoln's were to others. Each side was absolutely certain of the victory, and bet according to their faith. Lincoln's company and their sympathizers put up all their portable property; and some, perhaps, not their own, including 'knives, blankets, and tomahawks'; and all the most necessary articles of a soldier's outfit. When the men first met, Lincoln was convinced that he could throw Thompson. But after tussling with him a brief space, in presence of the anxious assemblage, he turned to his friends and said: 'This is the most powerful man I ever had hold of. He will throw me, and you will lose your all, unless I act on the defensive.' He managed, nevertheless, 'to hold him off some time'; but at last Thompson got the crotch-hoist on him; and although Lincoln attempted, with all his wonderful strength, to break the hold by 'sliding away,' a few moments decided his fate. He was fairly thrown. As it required two out of three falls to decide the bets, Thompson and he immediately came together again; and with nearly the same result. Lincoln fell under; but the other man fell too. There was just enough of uncertainty about it to furnish a pretext for a hot dispute, and a hot fight. Accordingly Lincoln's men instantly began the proper preliminaries to a fracas. 'We were taken by surprise,' says Mr. Greene, and 'being unwilling to give up our property, and lose our bets, got up an excuse as to the result. We declared the fall a kind of dog-fall; did so apparently angrily.' The fight was coming on apace, and bade fair to be a big and bloody one, when Lincoln rose up and said: 'Boys, the man actually threw me once fair—broadly so; and the second time, this very fall, he threw me fairly, though not so apparently so.' He would countenance no disturbance, and his unexpected and somewhat astonishing magnanimity ended all attempts to raise one."—Lamon's Lincoln.
And this "boatman, axeman, and hired-laborer," who made such an imperishable record in our history, thus described himself: "If any personal description of me is thought desirable, it may be said, I am in height six feet four inches, nearly; lean in flesh; weighing on an average one hundred and eighty pounds; dark complexion; with coarse back hair and gray eyes."—People's Cyclopaedia.
Just which of your neighbors could have handled Abraham Lincoln?
WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE (1809–1898)
WILLIAM E. GLADSTONE
the disestablishment of the Irish State Church; then the bill for the reform of the Irish land laws, both of which were carried; six years out of politics, he occupied himself very largely with literary and historical studies; in 1880 Prime Minister a second time, with South Africa, Soudan, Egypt, and Ireland uniting with domestic questions in keeping him busy; in 1885 carrying through his great scheme of Parliamentary reform, arranging the constituencies in more nearly proportionate divisions; cutting off insignificant boroughs, and adopting a near approach to universal suffrage; temporarily defeated on other questions; in 1885 he was a third time made Prime Minister by his party, the Liberals, who were overwhelmingly victorious in the election; in 1886, his bill for an Irish Parliament made him many enemies and brought him defeat; then for six years the persistent advocate of Irish autonomy, he was in 1892 triumphantly returned to power, and a fourth time made Prime Minister; his speech, February 13, 1893, for Irish self-government being a masterpiece. His pen, never idle, has also found time to produce "Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age" (1838), "Juventus Mundi" (1869), "The Vatican Decrees" (1874), "Gleanings of Past Years" (1879), and "The Irish Question" (1886).
"Mr. Gladstone's intellect is massive; powerful; brilliant and acute; his capacities are of the most ample description, broad as well as deep; and his stores of learning extraordinary; and his activity and versatility are a standing menace to his contemporaries."— Brooks's Gladstone.
One of his biographers, G. Barnett Smith, says: "There has rarely, if ever, been witnessed in statesmanship so singular a combination of qualities and faculties, without being possessed of the highest of all gifts, absolutely the informing genius. He has perhaps every endowment save that."
Of his rare bodily powers we often hear. W. T. Stead, Editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, in an article in the New York Sun, said of him at eighty-six: "Mr. Gladstone started well. He was born of healthy stock in comfortable circumstances. He had enormous driving-power and physical energy, the evidence of which may still be seen, palpable to all men, in the massive formation of the back of his head.[5] From his parents he had every advantage of heredity and environment from youth up. Over the mantel-piece in his bedroom there is emblazoned a text which explains a good deal of the tranquillity which has saved Mr. Gladstone from nervous exhaustion. The text runs: 'Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee.' Mr. Gladstone's simple but fervent religious faith is the first element of the secret of his continued and continuing vigor; the second place must be awarded to the happy influence of a fortunate marriage. Mrs. Gladstone held the view that it was the wife's duty to make life as 'cushiony' as possible. She would display a world of patience and cunning diplomacy to keep any disagreeable thing out of his way; even to the extent of sitting down upon the Times for a whole evening, if it should contain an article that was calculated to ruffle his equanimity. Besides these two, his religion and his wife; two outside influences which kept him in perennial youth by minimizing the worry of life; throughout the whole of his life he has had sleep at instant command; and, what is more remarkable, wakes up bright and fresh within ten minutes of going to sleep. He has always been a famous sleeper. His nightly allowance of sleep is fixed at seven hours. His methodical regularity, his horror of unpunctuality; his saying that every piece of meat should be bitten thirty-two times; his not using tobacco; his rare concentration on whatever work he is at, taking such hold of him that he has to be aroused from it, as most men are aroused from sleep, making him totally indifferent to his surroundings; his keen enjoyment of his rural life at Hawarden; his always having lived a country-life when he could; his famed habit of felling trees; and his always being a great walker—are pointed out as causes of his rare staying power and surpassing accomplishments."
"Friends and foes alike are marvelling over the magnificent speech with which Mr. Gladstone (at eighty-three) brought the debate on the second reading of the Home Rule Bill to a close; and over the matchless eloquence of its delivery. It was a far finer effort than the speech with which he introduced the bill a few weeks ago. It is, indeed, pronounced by competent opinion to be the greatest utterance of Mr. Gladstone's life, both in matter and in manner. The moment he took the floor, the great and Grand Old Man seemed to feel that the climax of his life had come. His years dropped from him like a cloak. His voice was like a deep-toned bell, clear and clarion. Not for a moment did it fail him during the hour that he held the House under the absolute spell of his eloquence. Not a single oratorical arrow was absent from his quiver, and he used them all. Wit, satire, invective, logic, pleading, scorn, and denunciation followed each other in overwhelming succession. Mr. Gladstone in oratorical passion is magnificent and terrible. Last night he was vengeance incarnate. Words that were blows fell upon his enemies with a fury that made the great gladiator seem something more than a human antagonist. At the same time it was a scene and a speech which made it more evident than any previous event in his career that Mr. Gladstone, at the present moment, embodies greater power in personal leadership than any man of his time."—New York Sun, February 4, 1893.
A pretty good man that at eighty-three, surely!
"Mr. Gladstone never appears to greater advantage than when taking a walk in the country with a congenial friend whose physical powers are equal to the task of keeping up with a pedestrian whom no distance could tire. It was not until he was well advanced in life that he took, partly as an amusement and partly for exercise, to the practice of felling trees. In this difficult art he attained a skill which was the marvel of professional woodsmen; and of which the muscles of his arm, wiry and spare, like the rest of his body, gave little promise. In his youth he often spoke of himself as being good upon any day for a forty-mile walk, and, although he never accomplished the feat performed more than once by his second son, the Rev. Stephen Gladstone, of walking up from Oxford to London in a day (fifty-six miles); it 
CYRUS H. McCORMICK
(Published through the courtesy of the N. Y. Tribune)
was from no deficiency of pedestrian endurance. No ordinary frame was, indeed, requisite to carry Mr. Gladstone through the superhuman labors which he imposed upon himself. 'Gladstone,' remarked Sir James Graham, in 1852, 'can accomplish in four hours what it takes me sixteen to do, and he works for sixteen hours every day.'"—New York World, March 25, 1894.
At seventy-seven. Sir Thomas Brassey having landed him from his yacht, The Sunbeam, at a point on the Norway coast which did not just suit him, he is said to have walked eighteen miles into town. At about eighty, on a September afternoon, a multitude of persons saw him chop down an oak four feet thick. How many of us can do that now; no matter about our age?
If any man ever taught the wisdom of daily care of the body by daily exercise, so as to always have it ready for all demands, no matter how exacting, that man was Gladstone.
CYRUS HALL McCORMICK (1809–1884)
And he had a grand body. One look at it shows that it was a fit companion of that powerful mind. One who knew him well says: "Endowed with a strong constitution, inheriting from both parents a large frame, he worked on his father's farm till nearly twenty-five; working, as he did at everything else, with all his might." His native outfit; that blacksmith-shop; that farm-work; and ceaseless labor afterwards, rounded this master-mechanic into a man of immense shoulders and great chest; with head and neck set on them as if of Hercules—a roomy, capable, powerful man of the large, well-put-together type, to whom the tasks of ordinary men are light and easy; and who happily found a field worthy of his great ability and energy, and one which he not only filled, almost as no other could have done, but in which he became one of the world's benefactors as well. No wonder America is proud of such sons.
BISMARCK
"If you trust in God and yourself, you can surmount every obstacle."—Bismarck.
(From "Two German Giants")
(Published by permission of Messrs. Fords, Howard & Hulbert)
Some idea of the body of this giant—"he of the iron hand and lion heart"—and of his combativeness, may be gathered from the fact that during this time (his university life at Göttingen) he fought no fewer than twenty-eight duels; in each of which, being tall and keen of sight, he drew blood from his opponent; while only once did he receive a scar, still visible on the left cheek, by the accidental breaking of his adversary's blade.
But before his body, let us look for a moment at the head that did such great deeds. As already seen, Mr. Lowe says that a Berlin hatter once related, as the result of his phrenological experience, that "Of all German tribes the Mecklenburgers had the biggest heads; But that no Mecklenburger ever required so large a hat as the Lord of Varzin."[6]
"A celebrated sculptor at Berlin (Professor Fritz Schaper) has modelled the Chancellor's bust according to accurate measurements taken. He says the most striking of all is the massive, clean-cut chin, which seems capable of splitting iron.… What strikes one chiefly about Moltke's head is its beautifully symmetrical form and perfect poise; while that of Bismarck is mainly remarkable for its rugged bulk and strength; and for its abnormal breadth above the ears. But the body matched the head—as it ought to do in every man—and woman, and child.
Mr. Low, in his Prince Bismarck, Vol. II., p. 484, says of him in 1886 that "It is not too much to say that, in spite of all the qualities lodged in this wonderful head of Bismarck, he never could have accomplished his work without that Herculean frame and iron constitution which have carried him beyond the allotted span of human life, and while so many of his subordinates have been literally crushed to death by the burden of Empire-making. Minister after minister has gone to the wall; diplomatists have died of softening of the brain; and overwork has carried off many of his mere mechanical helpers; but, after a long life of superhuman care and toil, the master still walks erect; and is still ever found in the thickest of the fray. No one of his age has emerged from the political battles of the last five-and-twenty years so unscathed and unconsumed as Himself."
Dr. Busch says: "In April, 1878, he said, 'I have always lived hard and fast; by hard, I mean that I always did what I had to do with all my might; whatever really succeeded, I paid for with my health and strength.'"
Mr. Low continues: "There have been men of higher intellectual powers than Prince Bismarck; and men of greater physical endowment; but surely there never was any man in whom the mental and the physical were so largely and so equally developed as in the Unifier of Germany. What impresses every one on seeing him for the first time is his air of vast bodily strength. Appearances are never more deceitful than when Bismarck and Moltke, the two main pillars of the Empire, are seen together. A stranger who had merely read of their respective achievements, without deriving from art some familiarity with their features, would, on first beholding them, infallibly mistake the diplomatist for the soldier. In the tall figure, the broad shoulders; the thick neck; the grisly mustache, the bushy eyebrows, and the grim, determined look of the Prince, he would at once be sure of the victory in three unparalleled campaigns.… And not only has Bismarck the body, but also the spirit of a soldier.… Largely inheriting the instincts of a warrior-ancestry and a military nation. Prince Bismarck is a soldier by nature; a statesman only by chance; and even his statesmanship is of a military order. Above all things, his figure is that of a very powerful fighting man, a William Wallace, or a Wallenstein; and no more perfect idea could be got of a mediæval knight in armor, terrible to foes, than when the Chancellor appears, mounted on a heavy charger, in his shining cuirass and eagle-crested Helm. There is no Prussian officer who does not feel proud of him as a comrade; for taken all around, there is probably no man of finer physique in all the German army. At a Court where the Princes are all tall, and some of the Generals look like giants; there is no one who overtops or outweighs the Honorary Colonel of the Magdeburg Cuirassiers. He stands six feet two in his boots[7]—and, though a septuagenarian, as straight as an iron rod—is broad in proportion, and when heaviest (in 1879), scaled close upon twenty stone (two hundred and eighty pounds).
"In 1883 a Kissingen newspaper published the following statistics of the Chancellor's weight as taken during the few previous years at that watering-place: in 1874, 207 lbs.; 1876, 219 lbs.; 1877, 230 lbs.; 1878, 243 lbs.; 1879, 247 lbs.; 1880, 237 lbs.; 1882, 232 lbs.; 1883, 202 lbs. (German). The English pound is equal to about one and one-tenth times as much as the German pound."
And how he educated that body let Mr. Low tell. In Vol. I., p. 15, he says: "But while he had thus been favored with the very best preparatory education procurable; care was also taken to preserve in him that healthy equilibrium, between the mental and physical powers, the neglect of which causes the ordinary German school-boy to resemble a sickly hot-house plant. Devoted to all manly sports, he was a swift runner; and a capital jumper; and he learned to swim; to fence; to row; to ride; and to shoot. With his rifle he could decapitate a duck at one hundred paces; and in revolver-practice also his aim was deadly. In particular he was taught to ride like a centaur, an accomplishment in which he was peculiarly fitted by nature to excel; and so well did he attend to the precepts of his father in this respect that the old Rittmeister, when especially pleased with the equestrian feats of his daring son, used to remark that he had a seat like Pluvenal, Master of the Horse to Louis Quatorze; or like Hilmar Cura—who had been riding-master to Frederick the Great. He has himself recorded that if he has fallen from his horse once, he must have done so fifty times. Even in later days he broke three of his ribs thus at Varzin. 'Once before,' said Bismarck, 'during the French war, I had a remarkable fall. I was on the road, and we were riding as fast as the horses would go. Suddenly my brother, who was a little in front, heard a frightful crack. It was my head, which had knocked on the road. On another occasion, too, I had such a serious fall from my horse that when the doctor examined my hurts, he said that it was contrary to all professional rules that I had not broken my neck.'"
And besides laying his hand occasionally upon a nation, he seems to have known how to use it when the need arose—not in German, but in American and British fashion—on an individual. For he thus describes his contact with one who tried to pick a quarrel with him: "I was quietly drinking my beer." (The other party, a stranger, had already absorbed his.) "My being so quiet vexed him; so he began to taunt me. I sat still, and that made him only the more angry and spiteful. He went on taunting me louder and louder. I did not wish for a 'row,' but I would not go, lest they" (the stranger's friends) "should think I was afraid. At last his patience seemed exhausted; he came to my table, and threatened to throw the jug of beer into my face; and that was too much for me. I told him he must go, and when he then made a gesture as if to throw it, I gave him one under the chin, so that he measured his length on the floor, smashed the chair and the glass, and went clean to the wall. The hostess came in, and I told her she might make herself quite easy, as I would pay for the broken articles. To the company I said: 'You see, gentlemen, that I sought no quarrel; and you are witnesses that I restrained myself as long as I could; but I was not going to let him pour a glass of beer over my head, because I had been quietly drinking mine. If the gentleman has lost a tooth by it, I am sorry. But I acted in self-defence. Should anybody want more, here is my card.'" There is no record that any one called for more. Yet this great man, whom no man could master, bears equally clear testimony to his reverence for his Master. For once during the Franco-German war, he used these words: 'If I were not a Christian I would not continue to serve the King another hour. Did I not obey my God, and count upon Him, I should certainly take no account of earthly masters. I should have enough to live upon, and occupy a sufficiently distinguished position. Why should I incessantly worry myself, and labor in this world; exposing myself to embarrassments, annoyances, and evil treatment, if I did not feel bound to do my duty on behalf of God? Were I not a stanch Christian; did I not stand upon the miraculous basis of religion; you would never have possessed a Federal Chancellor in my person. Find me a successor animated by similar principles, and I will resign on the spot. How gladly would I retire from office! I delight in country-life, the woods and nature. Sever my connection with God, and I am the man to pack my trunks to-morrow, and be off to Varzin to reap my oats."
A mighty all-round man this,—fit companion for his great countryman,—Charlemagne; able, like him, to create a Germany; able to do more than he, though it was no fault of Charlemagne's—to make one that will stay.
VON MOLTKE (1800–1891)
Naturally delicate, till his friends feared consumption, he educated his body, too.
The London Times says: "Moltke's iron constitution, unhurt by unbroken work, long withstood the impress of time. Tall of stature and somewhat lean, he rode well, and was always well mounted. Cool in battle, whenever requisite he freely exposed himself to danger, but with a modest calm, devoid of all desire of effect. To observe the disposition of the enemy at Königgratz, he rode among the advanced line of skirmishers in the wood of Sadowa. The motto that he took for his coat-of-arms, when he was made Count, instead of his old family device of 'Candide et caute,' 'Erst wägen, dann wagen!' (First weigh, then wage!), well points his military policy. His plans were well weighed—his warfare was waged boldly, sternly, and decisively. Long and carefully he calculated; but when his decision was once made, he rushed straight on to his objective point."
None but an extraordinarily tough, enduring body could have stood the work that that man did; and then have outlasted nine hundred and ninety-five men out of every thousand, clear on to ninety-one years of age.
SAMUEL FREEMAN MILLER (1816–1890)
MR. JUSTICE MILLER, OF THE U. S. SUPREME COURT
(From a photograph by Bell, of Washington)
In the words of Charles Lamb, descriptive of an old Bencher: "His step was massive and elephantine; his face square as the lion's; his gait peremptory and path-keeping, indivertible from his way as a moving column." A common saying with him was: "The true lawyer is seized of an estate as secure and venerable as an estate in lands; its income, better than rents; its dignity, higher than ancestral acres." "Sublime, moral courage was the most marked characteristic of his nature."
At his death Mr. Evarts said of him: "The great traits, the great elements of his power and his character for a judge, were great breadth of understanding; great solidity of judgment; great severity of temper; and rapid and penetrating perception of legal relations." He himself wrote Judge Dillon, November 16, 1885: "The convincing power of the opinion or decision in a reported case must depend very largely on the force of the reasoning by which it is supported; and of this every lawyer and every Court must of necessity be his and its own judge."
And a glance at his picture will show that he had simply a stalwart body. No dress shows a man's figure like an evening suit. At the reception given by the New York Bar Association to the Presiding Justice, Noah Davis, and Mr. Justice Van Vorst, on their retirement from the Bench, we saw Justice Miller in such a costume. Of about Sullivan's height, we called the attention of a friend at the time to the uncommon depth of chest and massiveness of make of this great jurist, and to the fact that he was built more like Sullivan than almost any other man we ever saw.
At the time of his death the press called attention to the fact that he had, for many years, been in the habit of taking deep, slow breaths, and his capacious chest looked as if that habit must have been born with him. Taller men have sat upon that august tribunal; but none so sturdy for his height as Mr. Justice Miller, probably none who—each at his prime—could have laid him on his back in a wrestle. The body matched the mind, and shared its strength and sturdiness.
CHARLES O'CONOR (1804–1884)
"As a lawyer, he stood in the foremost place. His devotion to the law and his clients amounted to an overmastering passion. Although not a general reader, he was deeply read in law, but held that an hour's thinking is worth many hours of reading. His life was pure and spotless, his manner quiet, almost icy at times. He was a master special pleader, wonderfully self-possessed, a dogged worker, and understood every detail of his case. 'Possessed,' said Samuel J. Tilden, 'a more perfect knowledge of law than any lawyer in this country or abroad.'"—Life Sketches, Thoughts, Etc., of Eminent Lawyers, by Gilbert J. Clark, Vol. II.
"When he started to practise he did not own a single law-book. A merchant endorsed his note for three hundred and twelve dollars for one hundred and fifty-six law books at two dollars each. For thus befriending him, he left to the merchant's granddaughter one-third of his estate at death."—Scott's Distinguished Lawyers.
Perhaps no man was better placed to know and qualified to speak of Mr. O'Conor than Mr. James C. Carter, the present leader of the American Bar. At the time of his death, he said: "Impressive and powerful in his oral efforts, he yet appeared, as I think, at his best in his written or printed briefs. Upon the composition of these he lavished all the resources of his skill and acquirements. He had much imaginative power; and had gained a familiar acquaintance with the best things in literature, especially in philosophy, history, and Old English poetry. He had acquired, or created, an English style of marvellous purity and precision; and when his briefs finally left his hands, they were, indeed, masterpieces. They were not swollen with redundant learning; but exhibited the choice results of blended thought and learning; all arranged with infinite art; with resistless logic; and redolent with a fine breath of philosophy, satire, wit, and eloquence. As he appeared in these compositions, he might be described almost without exaggeration in the lines once applied to Lord Bacon:
"'Deep, comprehensive, clear,
Exact, and elegant; in one rich soul
Plato, the Stagirite, and Tully joined.'
But with all his ceaseless study, his rare experience in important cases, and his great attainments, he took wise care of his body. He knew its value too well, and it had served him too faithfully to allow him to neglect it. Six feet high; erect; dignified; and of noble mien; he was so fond of foot-work, that, when far past sixty he was very frequently seen walking either from his home at Mount Washington to his office—nearly ten miles—or from his office to his home. The professional man could scarcely keep in better trim for real work than he did. The following letter from one who for years knew him intimately, and had rare opportunity to judge, will serve to give some idea of the fibre and matchless spirit of this the greatest lawyer that New York has ever produced:
"Library of the New York Law Institute,
"Post Office Building, December 11, 1897.
"My dear Blaikie,—The substance of our conversation in writing, as requested, and confining myself to the O'Conor items, is briefly this: Charles O'Conor, the famous New York lawyer, was a man of exceptionally fine physique, and with his venerable appearance, pale, scholarly face, and piercing black eyes, possessing chameleon-like power, in anger, of changing their color, he drew to him at once a stranger's attention and interest.
"In height he probably measured nearly six feet. His bearing was noticeably erect, and it often occurred to me that if a mantle were thrown over him, covering head and chest, the rest of his person might easily be mistaken for the graceful proportions of an active athletic youth of eighteen.
"His appearance of vigor and activity was not illusive by any means; and I shall only mention in illustration one or two instances of the many, which came under my observation, at a time when this white-souled man, with record at the bar the purest and cleanest of any advocate of any age, was closely approximating to his eightieth year.
"He had occasion to use our library during several wintry nights in succession, in preparing for an argument in an important case in the United States Supreme Court. The last evening, after finishing his labors, which had lasted well on to the midnight hour, with no fear apparently of the increasing rigor and roughness of the night, he entertained me in his peculiar and quaint phraseology with an interesting talk as to his early professional career; his estimates of the early leaders of the New York bar, Thomas Addis Emmet, Aaron Burr, John Wells, Ogden Hoffman, and of other artists in legal word-craft whose portraits graced the library walls; with touching incidents in his own professional life; his ideas as to the qualities and endowments which constitute a great lawyer; his youthful favorites at the bar, etc.
"When, past midnight, we left the building and walked to the depot in the cold, cutting wind and blinding snow-storm, I marvelled to see him walking with the upright gait and alert step of a vigorous young man.
"He and General Sherman must have resembled each other in their strong and hardy ways; just as, in these fancied resemblances, we might perhaps believe that Mr. Evarts, in his sterling honesty, kindness of heart, and keen sense of humor, was a college-bred counterpart of Abraham Lincoln.
"On another occasion, and on perhaps the worst day ever seen in New York, excepting Blizzard day, he came into the library-rooms about ten o'clock in the morning, after walking from the depot in West Thirtieth Street (about four miles).
"He was fairly covered with snow-flakes and clinging icicles. His greeting was pleasant, and he really appeared more like a thinly carved Santa Claus than the great leader of the American bar.
"To my remonstrances that it was a shame for a person of his venerable years to expose himself in the pitiless storm, and that he should have remained in-doors at home, he replied, laughingly: 'Mr. Winters, this is nothing. When I have work to do elsewhere, it would take more than an earthquake to keep me at home.'
"To those who knew Brady, O'Conor, Evarts, and Field, it would seem that their worldly success was as much due to their marvellous physical health and perfection as to school discipline or mental culture.
"William H. Winters,
"Librarian New York Law Institute."
No man who ever saw Mr. O'Conor could soon forget his lofty bearing; his searching eye; his manly, straightforward action, and the ease and dignity of his every movement. Irishmen are proud of him, because, a lineal descendant of the last of the Irish kings, he added lustre to their fair name. Americans are proud of him, because he is one of the typical men whom Americans delight to honor; who, starting poor, with only two months' schooling, without money, without influence, entering one of the most intricate and difficult of the learned professions, by the sheer force of his own ability and unaided efforts he rose by successive steps—and every step an honorable one—to the first rank in that profession, the peer of Ireland's greatest sons—O'Connell, Burke, and Wellington; an American king, ranking with Washington and Franklin, Lincoln and Edison, and her other national benefactors—world's benefactors—each one a self-made man. Asked once if he thought he would have succeeded as well in any of the other professions, he promptly answered "Yes"; and to the inquiry how he would have done it, he said, "By study." Could there have been a battle of giants, involving questions of the greatest difficulty and highest moment, between the best lawyers Great Britain has ever produced and the best America has known—with each at their prime—England would likely have chosen Lord Erskine and Sir Samuel Romilly; yet Charles O'Conor and Daniel Webster would not only have taken absolute care of America's interests; but before the battle was over they would have made it clear to all intelligent observers that the great Britons were at last fairly outmatched.
LORD TENNYSON (1809–1892)
The London Times, October 7, 1892, said: "The death of Lord Tennyson extinguishes the most brilliant light in English literature—a light which has shone to the last with unwaning lustre. He linked us with the golden age of the famous poets of the beginning of the century; and his loss, following on that of his old friend Browning, leaves a blank we can scarcely hope to fill. Though the late Laureate had kept his powers and much of his energy to the last; he has died in the fulness of years as of fame. He lived to a good old age; he did great and imperishable work; his name had long been a charmed household-word around the hearths and in the hearts of his admiring countrymen; for he was eminently the poet of the feelings and of the affections; and if he cared for lower honors and for more riches, he had won enough of both to satisfy his ambition. The greatest or most conspicuous men are often the least to be envied; but we should say that few lots were more enviable than his. The son of a clergyman in affluent circumstances, life from the first was made smooth and pleasant to him. . . . When most boys are still drudging at the gradus, or beginning to labor over the grindstone of Latin verse, he wrote flowing poetry which is readable, and was full of promise for the future. . . . His genius ripened steadily and surely. His reputation increased with the appreciative and sympathetic, as his popularity was widely extended among the crowd. . . . In the enjoyment of ample means; absolute master of his time and of his arrangements, he made his favorite recreation his regular occupation, writing just as much or as little as he pleased. He led the easy life of a country gentleman, as he understood it; drawing inspiration for his scenery and his minutely exquisite painting of nature from the lanes and downs that surrounded his dwellings.
He was born on August 5, 1809. His father was rector of Somersby, Lincolnshire, and remarkable for bodily strength and stature; which may help to explain his son's longevity, and the perennial vigor of mind which prolonged his powers of giving pleasure beyond reasonable expectation."
So he came honestly by a strong body; and he had it, as his good old age well proved. For in Professor J. S. Blackie, His Sayings and Doings (p. 291), occurs the following passage: "In a letter written to his sister, in 1864, describing a visit to Alfred Tennyson, at Farringford, he says: 'He is a big, strong-built fellow, dark and sallow, more like a Spanish captain of privateers, or an Italian brigand, than like a hilarious John Bull, blushing with health and activity and port wine; with a grand Ionian head and Herculean shoulders. In manners he is plain, simple, natural, and rather quiet. He is no match for me in play of tongue; and I presume a hundred small wits from town would dominate over him in this way; but what he says is significant, and he gives you an impression of thorough honesty, thoughtfulness, and truthfulness. He has the common faults of the poetic temperament; that is, he is apt to be moody, and sometimes makes himself miserable with odious trifles which a practical man would skip over.'"
And here is Carlyle on his personal appearance: "Tennyson is one of the finest-looking men in the world; a great shock of rough, dusty, dark hair; bright, laughing, hazel eyes; massive aquiline face; most massive, yet most delicate; of sallow, brown complexion, almost Indian-looking; clothes cynically loose, free, and easy; smokes infinite tobacco; his voice is musical metallic—fit for loud laughter and piercing wail, and all that may be between speech and speculation free and plenteous. I did not meet in these last decades such company over a pipe."—Review of Reviews, December, 1892.
CHARLES DICKENS (1812–1870)
COLLIS P. HUNTINGTON
one of the severest tests of the brain and nerves, and takes a deal out of a man. Medical men say that a few hours of it a day is enough. Yet here this marvellous man, not content with calling on his genius daily for what would be rational and ample, forces through a maze of work in his great thought-factory, so connected, varied, and intricate that it seems almost incredible that one man could have done it all, even in a hundred years. And then on top of it he takes the very hour set apart for change and recreation, and studying every odd character and strange sign and queer freak wherever he goes, gives himself, in all probability, double work through nearly all of it. Now if that hour had been on the golf-links, or at the sculls, or chasing a fox, or swinging Gladstone's axe, his mind would have had a real rest—a scour. He would have inhaled twice as much air; would have given his arms, shoulders, neck, chest, and back considerable to do—would have unbent the bow—and would have gone back to his work refreshed, recreated, remade, and ready for it, as Gladstone, with a better method, has kept his mental powers in great working- order for high-class and endless work, not up to fifty-eight, like Dickens, but clear up to eighty-eight—and he not naturally strong at that. Is it not unfortunate that Schiller (composing far into the night), Scott, and Dickens did not see how their breakneck pace and lack of sensible, regular, vigorous play—with brain-work shut off at least one hour a day—would have likely saved them each for many more years?
COLLIS P. HUNTINGTON
"The faith of the four men, Huntington, Hopkins, Stamford, and Crocker, is illustrated by the characteristic way in which they solved the first problem of construction, when they agreed to pay personally for the labor of eight hundred men on the road for one year, and pledged their private fortunes to meet the obligations they assumed. The construction-race with the Union Pacific, which was rushed westward, while the Central Pacific was pushed eastward, created unbounded excitement and enthusiasm as the wires flashed across the continent daily the progress made. The tremendous strain, the anxieties and difficulties of this construction, can never be adequately told. Freights, prices of material, and wages rose enormously, and the necessity of paying in gold coin in California at a time when gold was at a high premium was an aggravating feature of these difficulties. A hundred discouraging problems arose, under the burdens of which the builders, had they been ordinary men, must have been crushed; but with Mr. Huntington, an unlimited capacity for work, natural powers which had never been impaired by the use of tobacco or liquors, and the rugged, physical vitality which was the outgrowth of heredity and early training carried him safely through the ordeal.
"He next built the Southern Pacific Railroad; meantime he had acquired lines through east from it, connecting it with New Orleans. He then, to unify the operations of this vast system of transportation lines, organized the Southern Pacific Company of Kentucky, which consists of twenty-six distinct corporations, comprises 8024 miles of railroad, and 4976 miles of steamship lines in the United States, and 573 miles of railroad in Mexico. President of the Guatemala Central Railroad and of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, he built at Newport News, Virginia, and owns the best-appointed ship-yard in the United States. He has also provided his native town with a beautiful church.—America's Successful Men.
No one who ever saw him need be told that, bodily, he is a man in a thousand, and that the hard farm-work of youth has done its work.
One look at him—one shake of his hand—will tell any one that here is an unusual man, six feet high, broad, deep, massive, weighing, apparently, about two hundred and forty pounds; his grip, even at seventy-six, was stronger than that of most men of any age. Not only did his rugged, physical vitality carry him through the mighty ordeal just named, but through all his long life of vast responsibility. Owner of tens of millions, he is said to have once remarked that high living was what had killed several of his chief contemporaries; and that bread and milk had always been good enough for him, and is so still.
ULYSSES S. GRANT (1822–1885)
Adam Badeau, his private secretary, who knew him intimately, said of him: "Not a particle of subtleness or suppleness in his nature; and quite as little power or orderly effort in detail. This limitation of his ability extended to his knowledge of character. He selected generals with an acumen and accuracy never surpassed, but in his appreciation of men outside of war he was often at fault. He knew a Sherman or a Sheridan by instinct; but he was at the mercy of Ferdinand Ward; and seemed to lose almost his common-sense when pitted against schemers in any sphere. It was when overwhelming effort became indispensable, instant decision, firmness, and breadth of judgment, whether in government or war, that he rose to pre-eminence. He needed, however, to be supreme. All his successes in the field were without the supervision of a superior; he must have not only emergency but responsibility to bring out this quality; but when these were combined he seldom failed."
"He always did the best he could with such men as he had. In small affairs he was an ordinary man. In momentous affairs he attacked as a giant."—General Horace Porter, at the Inauguration of the Brooklyn Statue, April 25, 1896.
Garland says: "At Shiloh, he did not shout, vituperate, or rush aimlessly to and fro; he had no vindictiveness. His anxiety and intensity of mental action never passed beyond his perfect control. He fought best and thought best when pushed hard. No noise of confusion of line, no delay or mistake of commanders, no physical pain could weaken or affright him. His coolness, his alertness, his perfect parity of vision, under the appalling strain evidenced the great commander of men."
His son, Colonel Fred. Grant, said of him: "He always did his best. He did as much his best when he was a farmer as when he was Lieutenant-General, and he never saw that doing your best in one position in life was any different from doing it in another. For instance, he would never look upon one particular achievement and say: 'That was my brilliant deed.' He never looked at things that way. He used to say that he had done all that he could, taken all the pains he could about everything, and if one thing turned out better than another it was because he had more and better information to act upon. No, he never felt one responsibility more than another. He felt it his duty to do his best under all circumstances, and after that he did not care. So he never thought that he did one thing better than another. It was the duty-idea that ruled him."
And thus wrote General Sherman to him: "Dear General,—You do yourself injustice and us too much honor in assigning to us too large a share of the merits which have led to your high advancement. You are Washington's legitimate successor, and occupy a place of almost dangerous elevation; but if you can continue, as heretofore, to be yourself, simple, honest, and unpretending, you will enjoy through life the respect and love of friends and the homage of millions of human beings that will award you a large share in securing them and their descendants a government of law and stability.… I knew wherever I was that you thought of me, and if I got in a tight place you would come if alive."
General Horace Porter tells us how he looked while doing his great work: "Many of us were not a little surprised to find in him a man of slim figure, slightly stooped, five feet eight inches in height, weighing only a hundred and thirty-five pounds, and of a modesty of mien and gentleness of manner which seemed to fit him more for the court than for the camp. His mouth, like Washington's, was of the letter-box shape, the contact of the lips forming a nearly horizontal line. The firmness with which the General's square-shaped jaws were set when his features were in repose was highly expressive of his force of character and the strength of his will-power. His eyes were dark gray. His hair and beard were of a chestnut-brown color. His face was not perfectly symmetrical, the left eye being a very little lower than the right. His brow was high, broad, and rather square, and was creased with several horizontal wrinkles, which helped to emphasize the serious and somewhat careworn look which was never absent from his countenance."—Century Magazine, November, 1896.
And General Ingalls, who saw his West Point life, says of him at that time: "Grant was such an unassuming fellow when a cadet that nobody would have picked him out as one who was destined to occupy a conspicuous place in history.… And at cavalry drill he excelled every one in his class. He used to take great delight in mounting and breaking-in the most intractable of the new horses that were purchased from time to time and put in the squad. He succeeded in this, not by punishing the animal he had taken in hand, but by patience and tact and his skill in making this creature know what he wanted to have it do. He was a particularly daring jumper. In jumping hurdles, when Grant's turn came, the soldiers in attendance would, at an indication from him, raise the top bar a foot or so higher than usual, and he would generally manage to clear it."—Porter's Campaigning with Grant.
Lieutenant-Colonel Church, editor of the Army and Navy Journal, in his Life of Grant, says: "When the regular services were completed, the class, still mounted, was formed in a line through the centre of the hall. The riding-master placed the leaping-bar higher than a man's head, and called out 'Cadet Grant.' A clean-faced, slender, blue-eyed young fellow, weighing about one hundred and twenty pounds, dashed from the ranks on a powerfully built chestnut-sorrel horse, and galloped down the opposite side of the hall. As he turned at the farther end and came into the stretch across which the bar was placed, the horse increased his pace, and, measuring his strides for the great leap before him, bounded into the air, and cleared the bar, carrying his rider as if man and beast had been welded together. The spectators were breathless.
"'Very well done, sir!' growled old Herchberger, the riding-master, and the class was dismissed and disappeared; but 'Cadet Grant' remained a living image in my memory.
"A few months before graduation one of Grant's class-mates, James A. Hardie, said to his friend and instructor: "Well, sir, if a great emergency arises in this country during our lifetime, Sam Grant will be the man to meet it.' If I had heard Hardie's prediction I doubt not I should have believed it, for I thought the young man who could perform the feat of horsemanship and who wore a sword could do anything.
"A leap of five feet six and one-half inches made by Cadet Grant on Old York, a horse that no one else dared ride, still holds the record at West Point for high jumping. To a companion who said, 'Sam, that horse will kill you some day,' Ulysses replied: 'Well, I can die but once.'…
"Though, too good-tempered to be betrayed into a quarrel, it is told of him that when an undersized cadet he was compelled to take a beating from some larger cadet. He went into training and tried it again, with the same result. A third time he failed, but in his fourth fight with the same youth, some months later, he was the victor, and gave his antagonist an illustration of the maxim that perseverance conquers all things."
General Longstreet, one of his most persistent foes on the field of battle, says, in his Reminiscences: "General Grant had come to be known as an all-round fighter seldom if ever surpassed; but the biggest part of him was his heart."
So this unassuming hundred and thirty-five pound, five-foot-eight man was the most daring horseman and skilful horsebreaker of his class where all were trained men kept in fine condition all the time. If he was not an athlete, and an uncommonly good one—what would you call him? And that was the sort of body that stood him in such stead when he filled the great place where every one else had failed.
SIR ARCHIBALD L. SMITH
"In his early days Sir Archibald was a cricketer of considerable renown; and he has maintained his enthusiastic interest in the world of bats and balls. Now he derives his pleasure from the pursuit of the gentle pastime; he has delivered the sentence of death upon many a salmon in the rivers of Scotland."
But they have left out part of the story. The record of the 'Varsity races will tell it, and it is good reading here:
"April 4, 1857, over the four-mile three-furlong course, from Putney to Mortlake, A. L. Smith, of First Trinity College, rowed No. 4 in the Cambridge eight in the 'Varsity race, and lost. March 27, 1858, he rowed No. 2 in the Cambridge eight in the 'Varsity race over the same course, and won. April 5, 1859, he rowed No. 3 in the Cambridge eight in the 'Varsity race, same course, and lost. His racing-weight was 158 lbs."
So the hard worker on the Bench of to-day learned how to work hard forty years ago—on the thwart of his University's pride—the best eight out of the thousands of her athletic sons."
MR. JUSTICE DENMAN
Of another, the son of a judge of great name, the famous Lord Denman, the Law Gazette, September 17, 1891, says: "To see Mr. Justice Denman in court disposing of the business before him with the rapidity and ease which pay an eloquent tribute to the endurance of his exceptional mental, as well as his remarkable physical powers, is to derive, without further knowledge, no idea of the length of his career. His years sit lightly on him; the strong, handsome face does not proclaim his age; nor his robust form the fact that he is the senior Judge of the Queen's Bench Division. He is truly a veteran in the ranks of lawyers. He began his legal career in 1846. He has been on the Bench nineteen years; and from the time that he made his first appearance in wig and gown, he has labored hard in his vocation. Son of the first Lord Denman, eighteen years Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench; born in 1819; graduating in Cambridge; in his career at the Bar he gained a reputation for sound learning and unceasing industry. He has in a high degree the power of expressing very clearly his views; his grasp of facts being exceptionally firm; but he never was an eloquent speaker, though his voice is one of the finest heard in the courts. His judicial career is admired by every one acquainted with it. He has always been a most excellent judge in his knowledge of the world, as well as of the law."
A scholar and a poet, he trained his body too.
"At Cambridge he was one of the best-known men in the University; and Trinity College was justly proud of him; for in the realms of learning and in the arena of athletics he greatly distinguished himself. His achievements with the oar have caused his name to he enshrined in the athletic annals of the University. He rowed twice in the Cambridge eight, and did much to advance its reputation. He has presided over the dinner held after the great race more often than any living man; and a better chairman could not be imagined; his love of the river and his literary power rendering his speeches little gems of their kind."
And they had to row in that day, as we shall see in Lord Esher's case.
"TOM BROWN OF RUGBY"
"Blessed is the man who has the gift of making friends, for it is one of God's best gifts. It involves many things, but above all is the power of going out of one's self and seeing and appreciating whatever is noble and loving in another man."—Thomas Hughes.
"There are few men on the Bench more widely known or more popular than his honor Judge Hughes—popular with the entire community, and as much loved and respected in America as he is at home. All through his career, Judge Hughes has endeared himself by his thoughful and earnest interest in social problems, tending to advance the happiness and well-being of the bulk of the people. Born in 1823; at Rugby a firm and lasting friendship sprang up between Dr. Arnold and Thomas Hughes, which helped largely to mould the latter's character; and which led young Hughes to consider the well-being of the masses as the highest care of an English gentleman. At Oxford, the spark that Dr. Arnold had aroused into activity gradually grew into a sturdy flame; 'Hughes of Oriel' winning much repute as an earnest student; holding strong liberal views; and one who would do and dare much and raise the democracy to his standard of purity and excellence. Successful at the Bar and in politics 'It is, however, as an author that Mr. Hughes owes his wide popularity.' His Tom Brown's School-Days, published in 1856, at once brought him the most sincere congratulation, and to this day is the school-boy's classic as a source of pleasure. It has passed through very many editions, and has been reproduced in many languages.
"The Scouring of the White Horse; Tom Brown at Oxford; Layman's Face; The Cause of Freedom, and the Manliness of Christ; and many articles of his 'have evoked warm praise from the most capable critics at home, in America, and on the Continent. And, when the Lord Chancellor raised Mr. Hughes to the County Court Bench, in 1882, it was felt that his appointment was alike a compliment to literature as to law. As a judge, his honor is urbane, punctiliously polite, painstaking, and most anxious to be just.'"—Law Gazette, August 26, 1893.
And rightly does he refer to America's respect and love for Tom Brown of Rugby. What other hand, American or British, has ever so read a boy's mind; so seen with a boy's own eyes; so touched his heart; so traced his course on from boyhood to manhood; with all its doubts and vexations and disappointments; its pleasures and hopes and fears; its eager ambition, of which he seldom speaks, to one day be somebody himself? That fight of Tom with big Slogger Williams for bullying little Arthur Stanley touched a chord responsive in a million hearts. No manly man or boy likes a bully. But they love him who faces one—bigger than himself—and fights him to a finish. And they love him even more when, in the temptations that come to all boys at times to go wrong, he won't go—and doesn't go. Sturdy splendid John Hardy—a strong all-round man, morally, mentally, and physically—was Tom's best teacher. And he has had hundreds of thousands of other willing pupils too. "Tom" told the writer once that he had two men in mind whom he fused into a Hardy. What a grand thing it would be for every boy to have one such a friend! And once, when a boxing-master was bullying his pupil, the story goes that "Tom" asked the former to let a stranger put them on; and, on the favor being granted, thrashed him soundly, a good lesson.
SIR JOSEPH CHITTY
"It is, however, as an athlete that he is best known outside the law. At Eton he excelled as a cricket and foot-ball player; and at Oxford he gained a distinction as an oarsman that has certainly never been surpassed. At Putney and Henley, between 1849 and 1852, his unrivalled success was truly marvellous; 'Joe Chitty,' as his friends have always affectionately called him, was such a hero as Oxford has seldom seen. As everybody knows, for many years he acted as umpire of the University race until, indeed, he was promoted to the Bench, in 1881. Sitting in his court on a hot June afternoon, and looking at the massive shoulders which proclaim his great physical strength, it is impossible to prevent one's thought from wandering from the detail of the complicated marriage settlement being discussed to the picturesque reaches of the river, where the Judge was wont to show his prowess with the oar. Even as he delivers one of his remarkably clear decisions,
"'On the ear
Drops the light drip of the suspended oar.'
"In society his conversational powers are very highly esteemed. Sir Joseph's popularity is as wide as his acquaintanceship and fame. Everywhere Mr. Punch's refrain may be heard:
"'All hail, Joe Chitty; fortune favors pluck—
A stroke of genius, and a stroke of luck;
In Boat, at Bar, on Bench, you are and were
By all acknowledged "fairest of the fair."'"
—Law Gazette, June 4, 1891.
So this splendid man, "whose power of work was a wonder, and the pride of Lincoln's Inn"—this captain, and winning captain, of his 'Varsity cricket eleven 5 stroke-oar and captain of his winning 'Varsity eight; rowing at No. 3 in the Oxford 'Varsity eight, March 29, 1849, and losing; rowing the race over December 15, 1849, and winning; and rowing stroke at Henley in the winning eight, June 17, 1851; rowing stroke in the 'Varsity eight, April 3, 1852, and winning—has taught all men how a powerful body wedded to a powerful mind and an exalted character makes a grand man.
LORD ESHER
"At the 'Varsity young Brett was exceedingly popular all round; and on the river, particularly getting his colors and rowing in the 'Varsity crew. His prominence as an oarsman is still the theme of many a college yarn. Caius men, whenever they hear reference to the Rolls, take care to ejaculate: 'Oh yes; Brett was one of our Blues!'—a College and 'Varsity honor surpassing in undergraduate eyes even the dignity of Master of the Rolls."—Law Gazette, June 16, 1893.
"Writing of Lord Esher's rumored retirement, an evening paper remarks: 'Lord Esher's knowledge of the world is in striking contrast to the guilelessness of some of his colleagues. In his early days he was a noted athlete. Three times he rowed in the Cambridge eight and was one of the victorious crew. Since then he has been a lively figure in society—also a prominent one—thanks to his six feet of robust manhood, and his large development of the humorous faculty.
"'And it took good men to row a 'Varsity race in that day, when dainty shells were unknown; outriggers, too; and when the boat weighed nearly, or quite, twice as much as a racing eight does now. We seriously debate to-day whether, with frail shell, sliding seats, spoon-oars, great expense of preparation, and all, four miles is not too far; and too hard on the men; and if three will not do. But see what this lusty Master of the Rolls and his men did in their big boat in their day.
"'The official record says:
"'1839—Wednesday, April 23.
Course, Westminster to Putney. Distance, 5 miles 3 furlongs.
Cambridge wins. Oxford loses.
Won by 1 minute 45 seconds. Time, 31 minutes.'"
—Law Gazette, January 13, 1894.
No mere four-mile race there. No little dainty paper shells, with skeleton outriggers and spoon-oars. Boats, no doubt, twice as heavy as those of to-day, cumbrous, slow, and rowed probably on the gunwale. It took good men to row such a race, and under such conditions.
SIR RICHARD WEBSTER
"At Trinity College, Cambridge, whither he went after leaving Charterhouse, Sir Richard Webster was the most popular man of his time. He gained his popularity not by means of any extraordinary display of learning such as the scholarship of Mr. Justice Romer. His university attainments consisted of the thirty-fifth position in the list of Wranglers; and a third class in the Classical Tripos. It is not too much to say that Sir Richard Webster is one of the most versatile men of his time. He is equally at home in the Courts and in a Sunday-school; in the House of Commons and at a meeting of the Society of Arts; in a gymnasium and in a church choir; in defending the Pelican Club (of boxers) from the charge of being a nuisance and in presiding over an anti-gambling demonstration. He is popular among all classes, being genial and respectful towards all men.
"But he never hesitates to express his thoughts, and his sincerity has made him enemies. The Attorney-General possesses all the qualities that make a good judge. He always forms an independent opinion; and his judgment, though never hasty, is not slow. He is courteous to the humblest member of his profession; and
SIR RICHARD WEBSTER,
Attorney-General of England
every barrister and solicitor will be willing to congratulate him when he is promoted to the highest position in the land.
"Although one of the wealthiest among the rich men of the Bar—and all his riches have been earned—he still works with the passion of youth. Nearly every morning he is at work before six o'clock; mastering the details of some complicated case, and enjoying the cup of coffee he prepares with his own hands.
"Unlike Sir Charles Russell, who works late at night, the Attorney-General believes that the morning is the best time to work; the mind and body then being fresh and free; and many a morning the sun has appeared above the house-tops at Kensington to find Sir Richard deep in the mysteries of a patent."—Law Gazette, 1891.
But the Gazette continues: "It was as an athlete that he distinguished himself above all his fellows. In his palmy days he was the smartest runner either Cambridge or Oxford has produced. His equal has never been seen in the two-mile inter-university race. The great physical strength which made him Popular at Cambridge has made him successful in the Temple. Only a man of exceptional power of endurance could have done the work the Attorney-General has been called upon to do. It is easy to see, as he walks along one of the corridors in the courts, or across the lobby of the House of Commons to his private room, that he possesses a frame of extraordinary power. The broad shoulders the well-proportioned body, narrowing at the loins; the massive features furrowed by responsibility and thought, and bearing the unmistakable stamp of ceaseless intellectual activity, tell their tale with ease."
"Such is the man whose income from his profession each year is thirty thousand pounds, the fees marked on some of his briefs being enormous—his practice being confined to commercial law, railroads, and patents."—Law Gazette, August, 1892.
Gilbert Clark says: "As Attorney-General, his income was seventy thousand dollars a year. He is said to have received one hundred thousand dollars for his services in the Parnell commission and the Times libel matter. He earned, during the legal year which closed last August, about forty thousand pounds (two hundred thousand dollars), the largest figure even his great professional income has ever reached. His fees in four days at the summer assizes amounted to three thousand pounds. Sir Richard has certainly made more money at the Bar than any man of his time; and few have ever equalled him."
JAMES C. CARTER
Mr. Clark rightly says that Mr. Carter retains his old-time vigor and earnestness. No man who has met him at the Bar, in conflict, needs any proof of that. Five feet nine inches in height; strong-legged; square-waisted; deep-chested; full-blooded; ruddy and vigorous, but carrying no freight; easy of movement; and strong of grip; he has to this day kept up an eager interest in sport, and loves out-of-door life. Naturally a strong man; in that same great Jumel will case, his running-mate, Mr. O'Conor, so forced the pace that it took his junior off his feet; and, breaking down with nervous exhaustion, he left the active practice of the law for some four years; and, like the sensible man he is, devoted himself to thoroughly regaining the health that intense and unremitting over-work, for a quarter of a century, had so impaired. He "shot ducks from Currituck to Eastport," as he once said; and at his charming home by the sea, directly under the light of one of the great light-houses of Long Island, where he spends his summers, his neighbors delight to tell of his athletic doings. One of them says that in the teeth of a gale, when Shinnecock Bay is a mass of foaming whitecaps, "Judge" Carter—as they love to call him—takes his boat alone, and rows right into the very roughest water he can find; his body seeming to have the same characteristic as his mind, when hard questions are to be dealt with. And as one neighbor tersely put it: "A duck has very hard work to pass Judge Carter," which is not bad shooting for a man over seventy, and looking to have at least ten good years in him yet.
JOHN PIERPONT MORGAN
Born in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1837; son of Junius S. Morgan, the eminent London banker; "a graduate of the Boston English High School; of the University of Göttingen; entering the New York banking-house of Duncan, Sherman & Co. at twenty; in 1860 made American agent of George Peabody & Co., of London; maintaining a similar relation since with J. S. Morgan & Co.; in 1864 a member of Dabney, Morgan & Co.; in 1871 of Drexel, Morgan & Co. By the death of the older members, he has now risen to the head of the greatest private bank in America and one of immense influence in the country's financial progress. Reorganization of railroads, negotiation of large loans, and the establishment and conduct of enormous trusts have been carried on by Mr. Morgan and his present firm to an extent never before approached, scarcely conceived of; and with uniform and marvellous success. Cæsar and Napoleon's greatest and most lasting bequests to their nations were their roads. In her grandest day, when the Roman Empire extended from Scotland to the Sahara, from the Pillars of Hercules to the Euphrates, she was justly proud of her magnificent system of roads, which, starting from the famous Golden Milestone in the very heart of her great capital, stretched in all directions to the farthest confines of her mighty empire. But Mr. Morgan controls over fifty thousand miles of road to-day—more than these two men, or any other two men, ever controlled in the world's history—and better roads besides; and is said to have the controlling vote on over a billion dollars' worth of stock.
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON
From an etching by Leon Richeton)
perhaps, any man now living. And the son inherits his father's fine presence and massive physique; a large, sturdy, strong man—fit for great and protracted labor with mind, and nerve, and will, and every faculty. Rothschild said it takes great courage to make a fortune; and ten times as much judgment and courage to keep it. Many times undertakings of vast magnitude have depended upon the judgment and nerve of this one man. But no one ever heard of his not being equal to every demand. A weak, timid, or unhealthy man could never have done what he has done. He would have broken down by fifty. But Mr. Morgan bids fair to even outlast his famous father's seventy-seven—possibly to control all the railroads in America besides. Not a month, hardly a week, passes but the press tells of some new and mighty combination of capital involving tens of millions, and putting the control in a few hands; and almost as invariably you find the brains and financier of the project, and almost a sure guarantee of its success, the name of J. Pierpont Morgan. The duties of the Secretary of the Treasury would be light beside what this American Rothschild performs self-imposed. And he finds time to think of others, too, giving a million dollars for a hospital with as little ostentation as if he was buying a newspaper.
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON (1834–1892)
And this—after Chalmers—greatest preacher Europe has seen in this century, who said: "I think I am bound never to preach a sermon without preaching to sinners. I do think that a minister who can preach a sermon without addressing sinners does not know how to preach;"—was his a delicate, half-developed, hap-hazard, neglected sort of a body? Look him over a little and see. Power—broad, square, deep—written all over him. The mighty chest that made his clear, vigorous voice go easily to all those six thousand and more who packed that Tabernacle Sundays; the thick neck; the set, determined, forceful-looking head and eye; the general massiveness; and everything he did and did not do showing that that is just what he was—massive. Another of the great divines like Luther, Chalmers, Guthrie, Beecher, Hall, Moody, specially fitted by nature to deal with great assemblies, and move them as he liked.
PROFESSOR JOHN STUART BLACKIE (1809–1895)
In a charming little book, Blackie's Sayings and Doings, his nephew, Mr. Angus Kennedy, says:
"Few men had such a brilliant list of visitors and correspondents— Gladstone; Carlyle; Ruskin, 'a small edition of Carlyle, but a delicate and dainty edition'; Browning; Froude; Max Müller; F. W. Newman, and his brother the Cardinal; Bunsen; the Duke of Argyll; Lord Rosebery, 'the wise young Laird of Dalmeny'; Sir David Brewster; Sir William Hamilton; Dean Ramsey; Cardinal Manning; Kingsley; Guthrie; Macleod; Blaikie; 'Christopher North'; Dr. Trench; Lord Neaves; Mrs. Bishop; Sir Noel Paton; Sir George Reid; Sir Henry Irving; Miss Mary Anderson; and his neighbor, Principal Rainy, 'a fellow incapable of talking nonsense'—these are a few of the names.
"One curious but inevitable result of the English style of teaching Greek is that our great Greek scholars, when they visit Greece, cannot even make themselves understood. It is said that Mr. Gladstone himself had to fall back on Italian, while his friend Blackie could chat away with the Athenians in their own language as comfortably as with the Aberdonians in theirs."A capital body had this light-hearted Scot; reformer of classical education in Scotland; the best friend her crofters ever knew, raising a large amount of money for their relief—just the body for a scholar. And all his life a walker. It was from Oban that Blackie used to go off for a fortnight's walk on what he called "the one-shirt expedition." There was not a high mountain in Scotland that he did not get to the top of at some time or other, and The Lays of the Highlands and Islands, which he published, with some instruction on geology and other useful matters, for the benefit of tourists, were composed, he tells us, "With no conscious purpose at all; but merely to pour forth the spontaneous happy moods of my own soul, as they came upon me during many years rambling the Bens and Glens of my Scottish fatherland." It was he who had walked so much in Germany, and all over Greece and Scotland. And not only did he take these fortnightly tramps when he was in the sixties; but he continued a spry, light, staying walker far on into old age, always carrying a stick, but no man ever saw him leaning on it. A fresh-faced, healthy, fine-grained man.
Punch missed him, too, as well as all Great Britain, for on March 9, 1895, it added its tribute:
How much of light with thee's departed?
Philosopher, yet full of fun,
Great humorist, yet human-hearted;
A Caledonian, yet not dour;
A scholar, yet not dry-as-dusty;
A pietist, yet never sour!
O, stout and tender, true and trusty. "Octogenarian optimist,
The world for thee seemed aye more sunny;
We loved thee better for each twist;
Which streaked a soul as sweet as honey.
We shall not see thy like again!
We've fallen on times most queer and quacky;
And oft shall miss the healthy brain,
And manly heart of brave old Blackie!"
HENRY WARD BEECHER (1813–1887)
Son of Lyman Beecher—himself a great divine; born at Litchfield, Connecticut; he attended the Boston Latin School; graduated at Amherst in 1834; then at Lane Seminary two years, his father being President; in 1836, Editor of the Cincinnati Journal; pastor at Lawrenceburg, Indiana, 1837–9; at Indianapolis till 1847, when he was installed as pastor of Plymouth Congregational Church, Brooklyn, and preached there till his death, forty years later, his genius and remarkable eloquence attracting one of the largest audiences in the United States. Equally successful as a lecturer and a popular orator; in 1861, editor of the Independent; in 1863 he made five great speeches in England in behalf of the North during the Civil War; prominent anti-slavery advocate; temperance reformer, and upholder of the rights of women; in 1872–4 delivered three courses of lectures on Preaching at the Yale Divinity School on the "Lyman Beecher Foundation"; in 1850 delivered and published Lectures to Young Men; in 1855, Star Papers; 1858, Life Thoughts; 1864, Royal Truths; and wrote Norwood (a novel); 1871, Life of Christ (Vol. I.); 1884, Evolution and Revolution; 1885, Sermons on Evolution and Religion; and about twenty other volumes of sermons; 1870–1881, founder and editor-in-chief of the Christian Union; a frequent contributor to the New York Ledger; editor of the Plymouth Collections of Hymns and Tunes; and of Revival Hymns. Numerous compilations of his utterances have been published, including Prayers from Plymouth Pulpit; Notes from Plymouth Pulpit; Sermons from Published and Unpublished Discourses; Morning and Evening Devotional Exercises; Comforting Thoughts, and many others.
This many-sided, rarely gifted teacher, preacher, editor, moral reformer, lecturer, author, orator, patriot, "so active, so intense,
HENRY WARD BEECHER
and so outspoken in times of heated debate, could not but make many and bitter enemies. Throughout half a century of public life Mr. Beecher was a target of innumerable attacks from men who either from self-interest feared, or from conservative considerations dreaded, the effect of his teaching." Only one of these attacks ever cast any shadow on his name—and in the greatest scandal ever known in America, where a gifted rival did all he could do to ruin him, he so bore himself that "the largest Congregational council ever convened, which included representative men from all sections of the country, and all schools of thought; after a week spent in thorough scrutinizing inquiry, in the course of which Mr. Beecher was himself submitted to a searching cross-fire of questions from the members of the council in an open session, extended to him, without a dissenting voice, the Christian fellowship and sympathy of the churches, and expressed the confidence of the entire council in his integrity."
One writer well says: "Mr. Beecher's genius was distinctively that of an orator. He showed no power in executive or administrative functions. As an editor he shaped and inspired the journals with which he was connected, but never administered them; as a preacher and pastor, he filled his audience with his never-failing enthusiasm, but did not attempt to allot to them individual work; as a public reformer, he touched the hearts and consciences of the nation, but took no part in the administration of either political, moral, or missionary organizations. But as a preacher, whether measured by the power of his utterances, or by the variety of his pulpit themes, he was certainly without a peer in the American pulpit, and probably without a superior in the history of the Christian church."
Few who ever heard him will question this; or will forget as long as memory lasts the mighty power of this man in the pulpit; holding his audience in the hollow of his hand; doing with it, and with every member, whatever he wished to do; and doing it with an ease denied to most men from the beginning of the world till now.
And lavish as Nature had been with this man—with his wonderful imagination, unequalled power of illustration, and creative mind, never yet approached in American pulpit, and almost upon American platform—she gave him also the inevitable magnificent body.
We have already seen from his pen (page 83) the value he put upon health and the important part it must ever play in all great performances; and in a life of tireless activity in great fields, from the small beginning at Lawrenceburg, at three hundred dollars a year, till, by tongue and pen, he is estimated to have earned and collected in all his life far over a million of dollars; no man knew better than he what a priceless ally health is, and how crippled and helpless he would have been without it. He wrote his grandson—a growing boy at school: "Don't he tempted to give up the wholesome air-bath, the good walk, the skate, the ride every day. It will pay you back over your books by freshness, elasticity, and clearness of mind. I have noticed that lessons which require acuteness and memory both, are best gotten by studying them the last thing before going to bed; and then taking hold again early in the morning.… Take care of health. Learning, in a broken body, is like a sword without a handle; like a load in a broken-wheeled cart; like artillery with no gun-carriage." And at thirty-two he wrote on a fly-leaf of an educational agricultural book, begun January 10, 1845: "It is my deliberate conviction that physical labor is indispensable to intellectual and moral health; that the industrial and producing interests of society are powerful conservators of morals. Especially do I regard the tillage of the soil as conducive to life, health, morals, and manhood."
And from childhood on he practised what he preached. His brother, Rev. Thomas K. Beecher, says: "Ed was a man like father. But Henry and Charles were heroes doing things. How they could jump! How they whirled around the horizontal bar!"
While a student at Amherst, offered ten dollars to deliver a lecture at Brattleboro, Vermont, he walked there, lectured, and walked back, covering about one hundred and fifty miles in the tramp. His wife, son, and son-in-law. Rev. Dr. Scoville, in his biography, say: "In his younger days his farming and gardening experiences were intimately associated with hard physical work." Lewis Tappan says of him while at college: "He joined a club of eight, who boarded a mile from college, that the going and returning from their meals might give them six miles of exercise a day. This was done in part to save expense, board being cheaper at that distance from the village. He also walked from college to Boston, more than one hundred miles, for the same reason."
Look at the make of the man. No one who ever saw him soon forgot the great bead; the sixteen-and-a-half-inch neck (see page 203); the massive shoulders; the capacious chest; the stalwart legs; the fresh, blooming complexion; the double set of splendid teeth; the powerful action; the exhaustless vitality of this grandfather of Henry Ward Beecher the Second—the latter one of the most renowned foot-ball players in the annals of American great athletic contests. And he came honestly by his mighty wealth of vigor. For in speaking of his ancestors his biographers say: "Apparently of more than the average intellectual ability, there was one feature in which the men whom we have described markedly excelled—namely, in physical strength. The standard of measurement was peculiar in those early days, and may not be as well understood by us; but, even now, conveys the idea of great stalwartness. David (Henry Ward's grandfather), it was said, could lift a barrel of cider, and carry it into the cellar. Nathaniel, his (David's) father, was not quite as strong. Yet he could throw a barrel of cider into a cart; while Joseph (Nathaniel's father) exceeded them all—for he could lift a barrel, and drink out of the bung-hole!"
Just try any one of these three feats at some time when you are feeling fine. You may learn something; or name some man among the three and a half millions of people in New York City, or of the four and a half millions in London, who can do what Joseph Beecher did. Not only is a cider-barrel a clumsy, unwieldy thing; but you have to hold it at arms-length, and with a poor grip; so that, even empty, it is no plaything. But full, it weighs about four hundred and fifty pounds; and, barring Sandow, and a very few others, the world has scarcely a man in it to-day who can do what Joseph Beecher did. David, the grandfather, was a blacksmith—about the strongest kind of mechanic—and Henry got a deal of strength there. But wherever he got it, it stood out all over him.
JOSEPH HODGES CHOATE
Connecting early with the foremost law firm in America and now its head, his career has been like that of a "Limited Express" with the right of way clear, and everything- telling to help his great abilities in enabling him to become a very great lawyer. It is often asked how Webster would have stood at the present Bar. In the amount and quick despatch of work, Mr. Choate would have likely passed him; for Webster was slow to start, and in small or moderate-sized cases was often beaten. But when once aroused, and he shook off his lethargy, and had a great question to deal with,—this and every other land has yet to match him. Comparison between these two men was much heard when Mr. Choate tried for a seat in the United States Senate. But he had a professional against him; and met with the result usual in all trials when an amateur runs foul of a professional. But Mr. Choate did not try to enter public life till past sixty; while Webster began at twenty-eight. Mr. Choate is a gifted and charming speaker. Webster's Dartmouth College argument; his addresses at Plymouth Rock; at Bunker Hill; on the Foot Resolution in reply to Hayne— are part of our country's history; and of the outfit of our brighter school-boys; and will last for centuries. But which speech of Mr. Choate is destined to outlast him? Connected with more important cases than any other American lawyer now living, it has not fallen to him to have part—save in the Income-tax case—in one of great national or international importance. A man of lofty character, with the respect and affection of the Bar; refusing the most exalted judicial position upon the face of the earth; it is unfortunate that, instead of confining himself to his private practice, he does not let his countrymen enjoy him more, and have his services. Fit to range up alongside of Gladstone, why not take the steps—which he could if he would—to win power and influence for good in our land equal to Gladstone's in his?
Chancellor Kent said of Hamilton: "I have very little doubt that if General Hamilton had lived twenty years longer he would have rivalled Socrates or Bacon, or any of the sages of ancient or modern times in researches after truth. Benevolent of mankind! the active and profound statesman! the learned and eloquent lawyer would probably have disappeared before the character of the sage philosopher, instructing mankind by his wisdom; elevating his country by his example." If this could be said of Hamilton at forty-seven, why is it not true of Choate—a greater lawyer than Hamilton—at sixty-six? with a mind of marvellous readiness; opulent in equipment; trained by long and exceptional experience to deal with large subjects in a large way; with the most profitable practice—save one[8]—probably of any man in America; pressing close on Mr. Horace Davy's twenty-three thousands pounds, or Sir Richard Webster's thirty thousand pounds, a year in England—if not passing them; why should not his countrymen, instead of merely his private clients, profit by his great abilities?
Physically the youngest-looking man of his age at the New York Bar; scarcely gray yet—a characteristic he has in common with his renowned relative—youthful and sunny of disposition; six feet high, not erect, of good frame and breadth; but lacking depth of chest—look at Webster's mighty vital-house if you want to see a deep chest—a great chest, worthy of Ajax or Agamemnon—he has many good years in him yet; and the country ought to own them. He would make, as did Mr. Webster, a great Secretary of State—a great Attorney-General—or a great anything else where ability of the highest order is demanded. His body does not look as if it had ever seen much real work; or been at all educated, as it might have been—as Mr. Justice Chitty's; or Lord Esher's; or Sir Richard Webster's; or George Washington's; or Abraham Lincoln's were educated. If he thinks it is too late now, let him look at the daily habits of Gladstone; or of the young lad of eighty referred to on page 160; or of a charming Philadelphia lady of ninety-two there mentioned; and see whether, if he will, he may not yet have the force and lung-power, and power of voice, that can fill a mighty hall of his delighted countrymen so easily, when a great theme is up, as Daniel Webster could; as Mr. Gladstone did at eighty-five; as Bourke Cockran can; and as Mr. Choate cannot—yet. The field is ample. Once in every four years this entire land is turned into a vast debating club; and, when the struggle is at white heat, men go about—demagogues rather—arraying class against class; fomenting envy, and jealousy, and hate; asking the poor what right others have to live in fine houses, though bought and paid for with money, every dollar of it honestly earned; telling men that they can borrow a dollar; then vote a half dollar to be a dollar; pay the debt with it; and still be honest. What a power men like Gladstone and Choate could be at such a time! They would strike a chord responsive in the heart of every man fit to be a citizen of this Republic. Or in greater questions, when there is a foreign foe; for the American heart in America's quarrel is always true; and will stand, as it ever has stood, every test that comes.
And how such men would own, and rightly, the hearts of the people!
"For Romans in Rome's quarrel
Spared neither land nor gold;
Nor son nor wife, nor limb nor life,
In the brave days of old.
Then none was for a party;
Then all were for the State;
Then the great man helped the poor,
And the poor man loved the great;
Then lands were fairly portioned;
Then spoils were fairly sold;
The Romans were like brothers,
In the brave days of old."
PAUL KRUEGER
"The greatest statesman in Africa; one of more native ability, Bismarck says, than any other man, of any tongue, he ever met—Paul Krueger. 'Oom' Paul needs no introduction. Let his own chief justice, Kotzé, speak. In the Saturday Review he is thus quoted: 'Krueger's great qualities of heart and character entitle him to be regarded as the father of his people. He is the greatest man whom the Boers have yet produced; and though I stood against him for the presidentship, in 1892–3, I was not sorry when he was re-elected, and I have since supported him loyally, my judgment being in agreement with him on the general lines of policy. Krueger loves the truth; you need not be afraid to speak your mind freely, even if what you say runs counter to his most cherished convictions, and annoys and angers him. He will hear you and answer you; and in his heart of hearts think the more of you for your outspokenness.'
"As I looked about me, President Krueger came into the room with a sort of business-like haste. He walked heavily, I noticed, like a man with more strength than elasticity, the result of age, I suppose (the president is over seventy), for the chief had told me that Krueger had been a famous athlete in his youth, and had been noted for speed of foot as well as for strength. Krueger himself, it appears, in exemplification of his belief in the superiority of the white over the black races even in physique, loves to tell of how he once ran against three Zulu runners; and beat the best of them by some ten miles in the twenty-four hours, which, for an untrained man, must be regarded as an extraordinary feat. Krueger stands now about five feet eight inches; in youth he was probably about five feet nine inches. His shoulders are very broad; his frame at once square and deep, his great size and length of body render him ungraceful, almost uncouth."
Another John L. Sullivan body (see page 207), big enough for a much taller man, under a great head; born great; and made greater by the only true developer of power—intelligent hard work!
And he seems to have been rather handy with his hands as well as with his feet. For Joseph Vande Heuvel, a purchasing agent, living in Bay City, Michigan, an old comrade in arms of Krueger, told the correspondent of the Boston Transcript this of the great Boer:
"'Oh, Krueger was a good man!' 'Good how?' I asked. 'Oh! every way; brave; kind; generous—everything! He'd give a friend his last kreutzer, or risk his life a hundred times over for him; but he was a terribly hard hater, too, and couldn't very easily forget an insult.'
"'Was he skilled in the use of arms?' 'You bet,' replied he; 'he was the best rifle and pistol shot and the best swordsman I ever saw. You ought to have seen him!' and the old trooper caught up my cane, stepped to the middle of the room, and gave a capital exhibition of thrust and stroke, guard and point. 'Why,' he resumed, 'Krueger wasn't afraid of anything on earth. I've seen him shoot a hungry lion dead right in the air, when it was springing straight at him; and he was no more excited than if it had been a rabbit. And I saw him once kill fifteen men with a sabre.' 'Fifteen men with a sabre!' I echoed. 'You had no bloody wars in Holland, I think?'
"'No, it wasn't exactly war. It was a big meeting of one wing of a foot-regiment. What caused it I could not, for my life, make out. Well, when this meeting broke out, the two troops he and I belonged to were sent out one morning to quell it, and arrest the leaders. Just outside the barracks we met about four hundred of the mutineers, who were all armed with muskets and bayonets, but had not been able to get any cartridges. We had not been allowed to bring our fire-arms, so carried only sabres, the authorities thinking we would overawe the rioters at once. Our colonel, riding to the front, ordered the fellows to stack their arms, and give up their leaders; and I think they would have done it if one giant of a man hadn't stepped out and made a fiery speech, telling them that they were more than double our numbers; that we had no revolvers, and at last ordering them to fix bayonets and drive us off the field. We were formed into a long line two files deep, and the moment these threatening words were uttered the colonel shouted, "Draw swords! Trot! Gallop! Charge!" and we swept down on them like a whirlwind before they could form square.
"'In an instant their ranks were broken, but they neither ran nor surrendered. Every man fought savagely; and several of our horses had been killed by bayonet-thrusts; when Krueger, his eyes blazing with fury, rode straight at the big man who had spoken, parried his fierce lunges, and, with a side-long stroke, cut the top of his head clean off. But the next moment, while each one of us was busy defending himself, more than twenty of the mutineers surrounded Krueger, some striking with gun-butts; others tried to run him through; and others again trying to pull him off his horse. His uniform was torn and pierced in a dozen places; and how he escaped instant death is a miracle. Like circular lightning-flashes his sabre whirled around his head, or darted out like a tongue of flame from side to side; and, wherever it struck, there lay a dead man.
"'After fighting desperately for ten minutes or so, seeing that the game was lost, they threw down their arms and cried for quarter. Then, when all the survivors had been properly surrounded by guards, it was found that Krueger had, single-handed, killed no fewer than fifteen men, while neither he nor his horse had received a serious wound. That was why I said he was a great swordsman.'
"'What kind of a looking man is President Krueger?' I asked. 'He is about five feet nine tall, and when I last saw him, twenty-three years ago, he had dark hair, and weighed about one hundred and sixty-five pounds. I really can't tell the color of his eyes; but they were pleasant to look at, except when he was angry; then they had a sort of stony glare that wasn't very nice to face. He was very muscular, and a great deal stronger than many men fifty pounds heavier. When he'd once made up his mind about anything, he was as obstinate as a mule, and would take his own course in spite of all opposition. If any power wants to get possession of the Transvaal, he, and a good many more like him, must be first killed off; for he will fight to the death for what he thinks his rights.'"
Not very much doubt as to the bodily equipment of this God-fearing, but not man-fearing, Boer statesman.
HORACE GREELEY (1811–1872)
"But probably the most powerful of all the influences Mr. Greeley exerted was in politics. This began in the old log-cabin days, and lasted as long as he lived—longer, for the Tribune is still what he made it. At first a Whig, when the Whig party died out, the Tribune almost formed the Republican party, which it has stanchly supported ever since; it has been one of the longest and greatest advocates of the protective tariff that the country has ever had. In the Kansas war it was all Kansas"—in the war against slavery it was all anti-slavery. "If he was not always right on current questions, nor always free from the impetuosity which too often mars the efforts of reformers; he discussed those questions with a vigor and intelligence not often shown by the conductors of political journals in his day. A high moral purpose was at the bottom of every form of political and social activity to which he lent his support; and few men, especially such a strong partisan, have ever enjoyed in a higher degree than himself the respect and confidence of his political opponents.
"The Weekly Tribune has always been of even greater importance than the daily edition. From the first its contents have been clean, interesting, instructive, and of first-class literary merit. It established the club-system now used by many publishers; and by many clever schemes pushed its circulation into almost every Republican family in the country.
"Author of Recollections of a Busy Life, a well-known lecturer on social and political reforms, and on agricultural and manufacturing interests, in this way, and in the columns of the Tribune, he did more than almost any other man of his time to promote the development of the great interests of the people.
"Defeated as Liberal Republican candidate for President in 1872, bitterly accused by old friends, severe illness, and the death of his wife made his last days very sad. But 'when it was too late his countrymen awoke to an expression of how they admired and loved him.' Few in the world have been greater in journalism, 'one whose name will live long after many writers and statesmen of greater pretensions are forgotten.'"—One Hundred Famous Americans.
Coupled with marked intellectual force, his face had such an innocent, child-like expression that many thought him a soft, muscleless man. But listen to what he did—as told by himself—and see if that roomy, hearty body was not made of good material—better, indeed, than the bodies of ninety-five out of every hundred indoor men in our land to-day:
In his Recollections of a Busy Life (page 76), Mr. Greeley says: "It was on this visit that I made my best day's walk—from Fredonia, New York (in 1830), through Maysville and Mina to my father's, which can hardly be less than forty miles now, and by the zigzags we then made must have been considerably farther. I estimated the route I travelled at forty-five miles of bad road would be equal to fifty of good.…
"Beginning at twenty-five miles per day, walking slowly but keeping pretty constantly in motion, you may add two or three miles per day till you have reached forty. All above that I judge must, for most persons, involve exhaustive fatigue.… The railroads have nearly killed pedestrianism, and I regret it. A walk of two or three hundred miles in a calm, clear October is one of the cheap, wholesome luxuries of life, as free to the poor as to the rich."
He had equally strong views about another kind of exercise, for he says (page 303): "The axe is the healthiest implement that man ever handled, and is especially so for habitual writers and other sedentary workers, whose shoulders it throws back, expanding their chests and opening their lungs. If every youth and man from fifteen to fifty years old could wield an axe two hours per day, dyspepsia would vanish from the earth, and rheumatism become decidedly scarce. I am a poor chopper; yet the axe is my doctor and my delight. Its use gives the mind just enough occupation to prevent its falling into revery or absorbing trains of thought; while every muscle in the body receives sufficient, yet not exhausting exercise. I wish all our boys would learn to love the axe."
Sometime when you are run down, and think you must go to Europe, spend a thousand dollars, hanging around spas and other loafing-places, and imagine this will rebuild you; try instead a month swinging an axe with the lumbermen of Maine or Wisconsin—earning money instead of spending it—and you will get a vigor that will do you good for a whole year afterwards.
CHARLES A. DANA (1819–1897)
"There has never lived in the United States a more genuine American than Charles A. Dana. Never has our commonwealth boasted of a citizen who was more deeply impregnated, by birth and education, with the spirit of our institutions, or more thoroughly and fruitfully conversant with their workings and their transformations during the last fifty years. From this point of view he has been, at times, compared with Horace Greeley. It is certain, however, that Mr. Dana's mental training in early life was much more rigorous and stimulative, and that his stores of knowledge were far ampler and more various than those of the elder journalist. Yet Greeley himself was not more purely and unmistakably a product of this country, of its traditions, and of its atmosphere. His stalwart and uncompromising Americanism was the outcome of ante-natal prepossessions as well as of life-long associations. Charles A. Dana was of Puritan stock, and to this fact, doubtless, we should attribute the sturdy reliance on his own conclusions, and the readiness to defy the world on their behalf, which were among his most striking characteristics. He differed from Greeley not only by virtue of a more virile temperament and much greater moral steadiness; but in this significant particular, that a far wider and deeper intellectual culture had given him more unerring intuitions, greater breadth of vision and of sympathy, and a more powerful logical faculty. He had none of Greeley's premature cocksureness; and none of his ill-timed irresolution after the die was cast.
"As regards the scope and thoroughness of his literary accomplishments, he has never had an equal in this country within his own profession. Literature, however, represented only one side of his equipment. He was one of the few men who, despite the cares of business and the constant labors of an arduous profession, was able to keep pace with the current of scientific research and speculation; with the biological, botanical, astronomical, dynamical, and philosophical discoveries and tendencies of his own day.
"Once free to embody his view of the aims and standards of journalistic work, Mr. Dana produced a newspaper which, in this country, had no prototype in respect of keenness, comprehensiveness, and trustworthiness of observation; breadth and accuracy of knowledge; luminous and truthful scholarship; soundness of reasoning, and matured good sense. He justified the title of his journal, for in it he offered a daily conspectus of all that meets the solar rays. He believed that, not only as regards local incidents and local politics, but as regards the personages, events, movements, discoveries, and discussions of the world at large, the newspaper ought to be the abstract and brief chronicle, and we may add expounder, of the time. Besides discharging its former function, he thought that a daily journal should supplant the lecture-room, supplement the pulpit, and absorb the old-fashioned magazine and quarterly review.
"It was a position of unique distinction which Charles A. Dana occupied at the head of a profession to which he gave unprecedented dignity and a limitless horizon. He was, above most of his contemporaries, the man who should have been selected by wise citizens to serve the State. He would have had nothing to gain, however, by exchanging for a seat in the Senate, House, or in the White House, a desk which, for prestige and influence, might well be likened to a throne.—Mayo W. Hazeltine."
And Mr. Dana did other great work most helpful and attractive, too, to the entire community—work of lasting value. For, beside, his signal service to the country in the War Office; he and George Ripley edited the American Cyclopædia, which has long been, and is likely to remain, a standard and an authority.It was next to impossible for a man of that stamp not to have had a body which, instead of hindering, constantly helped him in accomplishing his great life's work. And the most casual look at his body showed that this was true. Listen to one who knew him for many years, and had rare opportunity in his later life for judging of his physical as well as other equipment. For he says:
"New York, April 14, 1898.
"In reply to your note of March 30th concerning Mr. Dana's physique:
"He was one of the most symmetrically formed men I ever saw. He had the best of health I ever knew. Throughout his entire life he was absolutely free from moments which are generally called 'ailing.' He never felt unwell, or had a headache, or a derangement of the stomach. He was strong, and could endure fatigue. When he was a boy he worked on a farm; but the only exercise I ever knew him to take was riding on horseback and breaking his horses in the high-school. In that he was thoroughly trained. He never raised his hand for exercise. He never walked for exercise. He was no athlete. He had absolutely no athletic accomplishments. He never played any athletic games in my time" (the second half of his life), "and the only thing I ever heard him speak of of the sort was kicking foot-ball on the Harvard delta.…
"Although of great physical vigor and without ever a trace of nervousness in mind or body, he could not drink coffee, except when engaged in such out-door work as being with the army. He never smoked; and his use of alcohol, while always free, was always extremely moderate. I looked upon him as a unique case of physical and mental perfection."
And well he might. For the rich native outfit; the steady habits; the work on that farm; the handling of horses; and the years of army-life; would readily help to bring that "great physical vigor" and that physical perfection which were such invaluable aids to this wonderfully useful life.
JOHN HALL
"There will pass from the field of active metropolitan service a minister than whom none who has ever preached here has had a wider fame; and the Presbyterian Church at home and abroad will lose perhaps its most distinguished clerical figure.
"John Hall is one of the long generation of Scotch and Scotch-Irish divines whose racial and individual traits equipped them for stalwart work in the pulpit. Many of them New York has called to the charge of churches. He was one of the first to find his mission here, and for thirty years his personality has been a connecting link between the Presbyterian bodies of the old and new worlds, more direct than is always supposed. In the strongholds of that church in the British Isles his name is as familiar as it is here.
"To the metropolis Dr. Hall is known as the head of the most conspicuous church of his great denomination, as the pastor of one of the largest and wealthiest congregations in the county, as the active friend of charitable and benevolent agencies, and as the public-spirited citizen who studiously refrained from partisanship, while his influence always made itself felt, powerfully if unobtrusively, on the right side.
"Further evidence of his industry is seen in his activity in pastoral work. The charge of a congregation numbering between three thousand and four thousand, and containing more than two thousand six hundred communicants, is itself, without the burden of preaching and outside writing, a task of great dimensions. But no minister in the city has been more assiduous than Dr. Hall, and no year has passed without at least one visit from him in every family of the congregation. It is his custom to have announced each week the streets in which he will make pastoral calls. His day begins at nine o'clock in the morning, when he is ready to receive visitors. Every hour until a bedtime not of the earliest has its duties and demands.
"In the pulpit Dr. Hall's predominant characteristics are his sincerity, lucidity, and simplicity of thought. The structure of his sermons shows that progress so vital to entertaining discourse. The manner is like the matter and the man. It is strong and simple and direct, with the charm of a rich, deep voice, in whose accents some discover a trace of the land which gave him birth. His language is the purest Anglo-Saxon. Although he preaches without notes or manuscript of any kind, yet his sermons are all carefully written out before their delivery."
The New York Sun of February 2, 1898, said: "The Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, throughout the thirty years of Dr. Hall's pastorate, has been the richest of the Presbyterian churches in this country, if not in the world. At one time its eligible pews were sold at prices equal to the cost of a very considerable house, and the salary of Dr. Hall was among the greatest ever paid to a Christian minister."
One glance at his body will satisfy any one as to where he gets his vigor; and he trained it by years of out-of-door life; for, "When John Hall was a young man and had the care of a thriving congregation at Armagh, in the north of Ireland, many of his people lived on farms three and four miles away from the town. In pastoral calls it was his custom to have a conveyance take him in the morning to the home of his most remote parishioner. There he would dismiss it and set forth on his round of calls, zigzagging afoot across the countryside. It would be evening before he had walked into town again, with more miles to his credit than most men would care to negotiate between daylight and dark, and generally having conducted a service and preached at the house of one of his parishioners. In his trips abroad he still likes to walk about the scenes of his youth, as well as to stroll through the stores and book-stalls of the English cities."
One of the grandest-looking men to-day in New York; indeed in America; about six feet two inches high; weighing nearly three hundred pounds, and carrying it with great ease; erect and noble of bearing. The account continues: "Still a twelvemonth and over this side of three-score-and-ten, John Hall's appearance of manly vigor is such as to make the stranger stand and gaze when he passes on the street. His stature, almost that of a giant, bespeaks a reserve of physical strength on which, as the unaided pastor in a charge that would make exacting demands of any one, he has made frequent drafts. A ruddy and kindly face framed in white hair surmounts his broad shoulders."
One does not need to study that great head and body long to see that he has indeed "a reserve of physical strength "; and what a factor it must have been in his extraordinary success in this great field?
And fortunately we have the great divine's own word as to the aid his splendid body has been to him, for on May 18, 1898, he wrote thus: "There is good reason for my gratitude to God for health of body, so that for forty-nine years I have been permitted to labor as a minister, without any interruption such as I have just passed through. Abstinence from tobacco and stimulants was taught me from my boyhood, and open-air exercise in the discharge of my duties has no doubt contributed to bodily vigor."
DWIGHT L. MOODY
The Christian Advocate attempts an analysis of "Moody and his Power" thus: "The Evening Post says it is rather remarkable that Mr. Moody's influence has told more powerfully among college students than any other class of men. This statement is indubitable. Oxford and Cambridge students heard him with delight; and many of them are said to have entered upon the Christian life under his appeals.
"But though remarkable, it is explicable. Practical sense, unaffected and direct style, self-confidence induced by success, immense physical vigor, predominance of Anglo-Saxon in his speech, shrewd, management of crowds, keeping on the best terms with the press, plentiful use of illustrative facts personally attested, and the element of surprise to college students growing out of the contrast with the didactic discourses to which they are accustomed; and the fact that those who delivered said discourses seem to sit at the feet of this untutored man, are among the natural elements of his power.
"Besides, he has accumulated a vast amount of knowledge, and obviously has a well-defined theory of human nature and how to mould it. To this must be added great earnestness and his constant declaration that the sole source of his reliance is the Holy Spirit. If he were mistaken, the earnestness that results from his faith and the utterances spoken of would be a powerful agency; but Christians believe that he is not mistaken; that the Holy Ghost does move upon the hearts of men; and the crowds of Christian people anxious for his success and looking with tearful solicitude upon their friends who they hope will be affected favorably, are a source of power which transcends every other and increases the influence of all. The Holy Spirit attends every sermon and every religious service in the world where the truth is preached. Without it the results of all other agencies might be visibly great, but certainly would be transient in their influence.
"It should not be forgotten, too, that Mr. Moody stirs up Christians to work, and that he gives more attention to this form of agitation than ever before."
And who has not seen him—this giant of the pulpit? About five feet eight inches high, about four feet around the chest, with neck and waist to match. His Napoleonic head—Napolean-like in energy and administrative power—is set on his great trunk as sturdily as Luther's. What other living man has talked to as many hundreds of thousands—yes, millions? And so strong and vigorous is he that it no more wears him out than it did John Wesley. No one ever thinks of a man like him breaking down. He is too strong an all-round man; is built too massively out of long-toughened material; and takes too sensible care of himself to be likely to break down for many a year yet. And no one interested in Christianity can fail to hope that he will not.
EDWIN LAWRENCE GODKIN
"Mr. Godkin's judgment, in any summing up of his characteristics, stands at the head. But, prompt and certain as it is, it has, perhaps, not been unparalleled; whereas his humor is sui generis; and it was this that startled the shams, charlatans, and knaves, together with the fossils, whom the Civil War left in possession of the political field. Made editor-in-chief of the Evening Post in 1881, he not only enlarged his constituency, but immensely strengthened his local influence in a city where, as editor of the Nation, he was comparatively a stranger. To this Tammany, at least, can testify."
And it has testified; and has put the testimony on record by arresting him over and over and over for talking too plainly; till at one time it became almost a daily occurrence; and merely for holding, now this leader, now that, up in such a glare of light that the strain was too strong for him—the strain of truth; and until they fear his pen almost as much as Tweed and his Tammany men did Nast's pencil, when they got thirteen million dollars for building a court-house of miserable, make-believe marble, already reeking with rotten iron-juice; and so dark, ill-ventilated, and unhealthy that judges forced to sit within its walls wither and droop and die; until the higher branch of the court would stand it no longer, and went bodily away to quarters wholesome, attractive, and a worthy home for men to whom such great powers are intrusted. No other great editor whom America has yet produced can so quickly throw his ablest rivals off their guard, till they descend to the resort of most people who run out of argument—personal abuse. Always master of his case; buttressing it with clear, ringing arguments, drawn from a marvellous storehouse of knowledge, both of the present and of the past, pressed home with relentless logic; despising all private gain and emolument; whoever differing, faces him, knows that he will have all the fighting he wants, and the fighting always of a gentleman. No man has crossed swords with him oftener than Mr. Dana—(two rare, strong men). But when, in one of his many arrests for his fearless denunciation of some political though popular malefactor, he was coarsely, wellnigh brutally, treated; Mr. Dana sprang to his defence, and insisted that such work cease. And it did. The swiftest of our editors to see whether some cause—for the moment popular, and carrying the people away by impulse—is right; the foremost, if it is wrong, to dash to the front—often to the lonesome front—and to say so; he has almost uniformly the sweet satisfaction that Emerson says it takes reformers generally twenty years to get, namely, of seeing many, if not most, men come around to him later. Utterly free from sensation, this worthy occupant of Bryant's chair so guides his editorial page that it is doubtful if any other journal to-day has greater or even equal weight with the ablest men in charge either of large private affairs or of the affairs of the nation.
And bodily he is splendidly equipped for hard work. No shallowness of chest; no thin legs; no suggestion of weakness anywhere. But, on the contrary, a five-foot-nine compact man, built from the ground up like a wrestler; square-sided, deep-chested, strong-necked, and uncommonly well-legged—a hearty, vigorous, manly, well-balanced man, whose sturdy port, and gait, and entire presence tell of present strength; and of one who in his youth must have been an unusually good one. At nearly seventy a well-known wheelman, he could probably duplicate his long horseback trip through the South almost as easily as he made it long ago. For many years used to much daily club-swinging, fond of walking, his stout stick and sensible walking-shoes, his easy swing and his evident enjoyment of all the footwork he can get show that, if he does not care to excel in parade, and in the feats of the French "Bicepsmen," of whom he has written so instructively; he is not unmindful of the more sensible daily training of his illustrious predecessor Bryant; and knows, as he knew, the value of systematic, sensible, muscular exercise to sedentary brain-workers.
CHARLES H. VAN BRUNT
"Judge Van Brunt is a unique personage in this community. Although he has been sitting continuously on the Bench of the highest courts of New York for more years than most of the younger lawyers have lived who were in his court yesterday, he has barely passed the three-score-year mark. He has probably heard more appeals argued than any other of our living judges; but he is to-day a closer student than ever. At the Bar he had the reputation of being a hard fighter—aggressive, indomitable, intrepid; and, as a judge, these qualities have manifested themselves in fearless courage in following his positive convictions. He has performed many unpopular judicial acts; but no one has doubted his sincerity of purpose. Before he became a judge he had shown a strong and active interest in politics; as Presiding Justice his judgments have quite as frequently, and quite as severely, defeated the claims of his former associates as of their adversaries. He has been as raggedly honest as he has been blunt."—New York Tribune, June 9, 1897.
One of his associates, Mr. Justice Barrett, referring to the portrait of the Presiding Justice, said: "It speaks to us of a masterful mind in a giant frame; of extraordinary capacity for work; of great integrity of mind; of natural ability of a high order; of sound common -sense; and, above all, of ingrained fairness. A man of vigor and commanding personality. That face, gentlemen, is no respecter of persons. That hand—that powerful hand—that seems so well fitted to wield the sword of justice; is it a hand in which you would put a Damascus blade; or would you not rather fit it adequately with one of the great rapiers wielded by one of the giants of the past?"—New York Law Journal, June 9, 1897.
And strength, sturdiness, virility to match that hand are written all over him—a man full of vitality, stronger of make than ninety-five out of every hundred, no matter what their work may be; on the judgment-seat at Athens, with Socrates before him discussing death by the hemlock; or Demosthenes arguing some question of lasting concern to the nation; he would have looked as much at home, and a born judge, as any of his august associates.
And we are fortunate in having from his own pen a suggestion of some of the means by which this masculine man has kept up the unusual vigor with which he was born, and which is written all over others near of kin to him. For, in reply to our inquiry as to what he had done to so maintain his vigor, he wrote as follows:
"Supreme Court, Appellate Division,
"First Department.
"New York, March 9, 1898."Mr. William Blaikie:
"Dear Sir,—…I never received any special physical training. I have always taken considerable exercise; but I think that I have been able to do my work because I never took it to bed with me. And I have always kept Saturday as a day of recreation, and have also had a good amount of sleep. I believe that more harm is done than a little because men think of their work in bed instead of sleeping.
Yours very truly,
"C. H. Van Brunt."
And what a valuable suggestion—going right to the heart of the subject, as he about always does! No man of much experience at the New York Bar, and doubtless at those involving large interests elsewhere over the land, does not know of some brother professional man, who, from neglect of this one simple but surpassingly important practice of Judge Van Brunt's, has either broken down, and gone the rest of his way in nerve and effectiveness a cripple—or who, long before his time, has actually died from precisely that neglect. And many more are following to-day exactly the same course. In some way the Duke of Wellington learned to go to sleep when and where he would, night or day, in the stillness of his own chamber, or amid the thunder of battle. General Butler, it was said, could do the same. Mr. Gladstone, as already seen, followed inexorably Judge Van Brunt's rule. And Mr. Beecher did even more—just the thing for us intense, nervous Americans to know—and to do. For almost every afternoon, soon after dinner, he would have his nap. And who will say that that quieting of heart, and whole machinery; that resting of brain and nerve and muscle, for ever so few minutes, when half-way down the burden and heat of the day—that giving digestion a good chance—did not enable him to do the second half of the day's work with renewed vigor—and so did not prolong life? The writer, once hearing his father mention that he had seen his grandfather (of the Cameron clan, in Scotland) chopping trees at one hundred; and that he lived to be one hundred and three; asked if he could recall any habit that he thought might have aided him in thus completing his century-run. After a little reflection, he said: "Nothing, outside of the regular habits of a farmer, save that he always took a nap soon after dinner." Well may all who are bearing the heavier burdens,
"Men in the middle of life,
Austere and grave of deportment,"
heed this sage advice from one of the foremost judges in the world to-day, the Presiding Justice of the highest tribunal in the world's greatest city save one; whose labor, for more than a quarter of a century, in questions of endless variety, of great moment, and often of vast responsibility, has been unceasing, of lasting importance, and more extensive even than was that of Chief Justice Marshall in the early days of the Republic. And that, "I have always kept Saturday as a day of recreation," thus getting two whole days of rest together each week—what a wise thing!—and a thing that many men can do if they will—at any rate, can get half of Saturday; they will do more work each week, and live a longer life by simply following these two habits, which this eminent jurist not only prescribes, but practises; and which happily promises to retain for the public his great services for many years to come—of which fact that public, always knowing a good man when it sees him, promptly availed itself by all parties uniting, at the last election, to keep him on the Bench for fourteen more years, by the greatest vote ever given to one man for any office in the City of New York!
And what a cloud of other witnesses! Look at the masculine, clearly chiselled face and muscular neck of Dante—poet of marvellous power, soldier, scholar, citizen, ruler, ambassador, exile, dependent, he who knew riches and festivities; and who also knew poverty and the salt bread of other men's tables.
At Byron, though so lame from birth that he could only walk on his toes; yet of "good figure, broad chest, and amazing length of arms, playing cricket in the match against Eton," though he had to have another fellow to run for him: fighting Lord Calthorpe for calling him an atheist; boxing, riding, swimming matches; swimming three miles on the Thames; and across the Hellespont.
At Selwyn, Gladstone's friend; till sixty-nine Bishop of New Zealand, "of great versatility, courage, and energy; mastering navigation and becoming his own sailing-master in his mission-work in the dangerous waters of the South Pacific." At Eton distinguished both as a scholar and as an athlete; rowing No. 7 in the Cambridge losing eight in the first 'Varsity race, in 1829, against Bishop Wordsworth, rowing at No. 4 in the Oxford winning eight; who, when a footpad once met him on a lone road and demanded his watch and money, took off his coat and vest, with his valuables in the pockets of the latter, laid them on the ground, and told his accostant to whip him and he could have them; an interview at once ensued—a touching interview—in which the ground flew up and hit the stranger in the back of the head, the garments resuming their wonted place on the back of the divine-and so (once again) the church militant became the church triumphant.
At Scotland's gifted son, descendant of the great Marquis of Montrose—John Wilson, "Christopher North," carrying off many prizes at Glasgow University; editor of Blackwood's; elected over Sir William Hamilton to the Edinburgh chair of moral philosophy; "of a wonderful power of stimulating the enthusiasm of his students"—perhaps if all our professors had vigorous bodies they also would stimulate more—whose Noctes Ambrosianæ delighted all Scotland; at Oxford, in 1803, "noted alike for the splendor of his intellectual gifts and for his supremacy in athletic sports—boxing, rowing, running, riding, swimming—a six-foot Apollo, he leaped the Cherwell (twenty-three feet wide); walked forty miles in eight hours; walked from London to Oxford—fifty-six miles—in a night"; now winning the Newdigate prize by his poem, "The Study of Greek and Roman Architecture"; now, jostled by a famous prize-fighter on London Bridge, thrashing the latter then and there; and, finding his identity known by the alternative remark from the bruiser, "You are either Jack Wilson or the devil," soothing the latter with a mug of porter; close friend of Wordsworth, Southey, Coleridge, De Quincey; and loving to match himself against the Cumberland wrestlers, one of whom has left it on record that he was "a vera bad un to lick."
At Sir Robert Peel, who in boyhood trained his memory till it was as extraordinarily capacious and tenacious as Macaulay's; of whom it was said that "What most impressed those who knew him was his unvarying sense of public duty, which was carried by an iron will into every detail of action." Of whom Wellington said, "I never knew a man in whose truth and justice I had a 
PROFESSOR JOHN WILSON
("Christopher North.")
more lively confidence"; and who, oarsman, cricketer, horseman, had just the body for great work; "a tall and commanding figure, and a frame so strong as to endure the labors of a Prime Minister at the rate of sixteen hours a day."
At Lord Palmerston, for sixty years a statesman of mighty power in England, and in all Europe; bright, sunny, buoyant, self-reliant, athletic, always owning many good horses; riding to hounds with the neighboring packs; and in his later years sure of his daily ride on his old gray, whose personality was almost as familiar to Londoners as his own; whose pet saying was, "Every other abstinence will not make up for abstinence from exercise."
Ask Agassiz, naturalist, zoologist, geologist, explorer of the natural wealth of the Amazon, "not merely a scientific thinker, but a scientific force; and no small portion of the immense influence he exerts is due to the energy, intensity, and geniality which distinguish his nature"; a broad-chested, deep-chested, stalwart, sunny-natured, wonderfully magnetic man, and a dangerous fencer and swordsman.
Ask Charles Sumner,[9] jurist, senator, statesman, an organizer of the Free-soil party; orator; leader of the Abolitionists in the councils of the nation—and such a leader! "There is no other side!" he said to a friend, with fervor; "and Cromwell's Ironsides did not ride into the fight more absolutely persuaded that they were doing the will of God than did Charles Sumner." Of commanding presence; six feet two inches high; broad-shouldered, and of noble mien; a tireless walker; and the best boxer in Harvard University.
Or his renowned compeer, Wendell Phillips, agitator, abolitionist, polished, matchless orator, of whom at twenty-six, in a great meeting at Faneuil Hall (to protest against the work of a mob who had dragged William Lloyd Garrison almost naked through the streets with a rope around his waist, ready to strangle him, which he barely escaped), it was said, as he stepped upon the platform, his manly beauty, dignity, and perfect self-possession won instant admiration; and whose stinging words swept the house, as an autumn gale sweeps the leaves of the forest; tall and superb of figure; who among his many rare gifts and accomplishments was the most skilful fencer of his day in Harvard University.
Look at Mr. Justice Gray, Reporter of the Massachusetts Supreme Court Reports, when ex-President Benjamin Harrison was of those of Indiana, and Senator Chandler of those of New Hampshire; Associate Justice and Chief Justice of that Court; then and ever since Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States; a grand presence, six feet four inches high; broad, deep, almost imperious in bearing, clear-skinned, and healthy—a magnificent specimen of a man.
At his brother Associate Justice Harlan, one of Kentucky's greatest two living sons, scarcely shorter, and even sturdier, than Justice Gray, racing him, if not passing him, upon the scales; for he comes from a State pre-eminent for racing and passing everything in sight, and longing for more; a brace of giants ceaselessly wrestling with, and steadily mastering, great problems involving now enormous property; now the welfare of millions; 
WENDELL PHILLIPS
(From Austin's "Life of Phillips." Published by permission of Messrs. Less & Shepard)
now human life itself; yet when did you ever hear of either of these men losing a day, or not being up to his work? Like nearly all our judiciary, inadequately paid; upon a basis of many years ago, when our population was much smaller and poorer; while their work has increased vastly in volume, magnitude, difficulty, and importance; receiving but a fifth as much, for instance, as the Lord Chancellor of England; yet holding more responsible positions than his—dealing with a wider range of questions—a seriously unfair and unjust way to treat men of whom seventy-five million people expect and demand the essence of justice. Do you get the best work out of the most skilled men in your employ by squeezing them down to half pay? Do you or I do our best work when he for whom we do it tries to get off with only partly paying for it? Is or is not the workman "worthy of his hire"? And will you name men whose lives are fuller of more important and more exacting, never-ceasing labor than our judiciary? When the fate of vast railroad properties, or of a mighty city even, hangs trembling in the hands of a mob; and the nation watches breathless to see if law and order and right shall prevail; and the very integrity of our institutions even is in jeopardy; does or does not he by the single stroke of whose pen the danger may grow, or may cease, need the knowledge and the wit to see, and the nerve to do exactly right? It is a national loss when men like Chief Justice Cooley can no longer stand the ceaseless, mighty strain; and give way under it. Chief Justice Shaw saw better than Mr. Webster himself did, what a sacrifice he was asking him to make; and yielded to the giant onslaught of that compelling mind only after the most stubborn resistance. Our law-makers should see to it at once that this glaring evil is remedied; and in a way worthy of the dignity and resources of a great and mighty nation.
Look at Agassiz, the younger, and likewise distinguished, naturalist, zoologist, ichthyologist, coast surveyor, metallurgist, president of the richest copper mines in the world—the far-famed Calumet and Hecla—an athlete, tough, skilful, fearless, and a stayer; bow oarsman of the first but one, and of the victorious Harvard University crew; exacting their best of others, and equally unsparing of himself.
Or at President Eliot, who, taking the President's chair of the oldest and most illustrious university in America when still a young man, has for more than a quarter of a century filled it with signal success; keeping it the leader, in the van of American institutions of learning; rowing an oar in the 'Varsity crew of' 58; and only prevented from racing Yale by the sad death of his stroke-oar, Dunham, who was drowned at Springfield just before the race-day.
Or at Sir Charles Dilke, critic, journalist, statesman, author of Greater Britain, which, passing through many editions, elected him to Parliament; a violent Republican, yet re-elected; Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs; member of the Cabinet; again in Parliament; proprietor of the Athenæum; author of The Present Position of European Politics; The British Army; and Problems of Greater Britain; pronounced by Bismarck the ablest statesman in England after Gladstone; personal friend of the Prince of Wales, and perhaps to be his first prime minister; of whom it was said, in a New York paper, that he "has been astonishing Paris by his prowess with the foils; that, though in his fifty-fourth year, he showed an agility and alertness, and, above all, a suppleness, that would have done honor to any young athlete of twenty; and carried everything before him; defeating several of the most celebrated maîtres d'armes, or professionals, who were simply staggered by the rapidity of his manœuvres, especially with his trick of changing his foil from hand to hand. For a quarter of a century scarcely a day has passed where the Baronet has not devoted an hour to this branch of sport; and it is to this in particular that must be attributed the preservation of his physical and mental faculties. He is likewise a splendid oarsman, and at home in the saddle."[10]
Or at McBurney, the foremost surgeon in America today, if not in the world, in certain fields, notably in appendicitis; losing only two patients out of a hundred with this dread disease, which has of late become so alarmingly common; performing two operations for appendicitis, and delivering a lecture, all within one hour; rowing four thousand miles in his four years at Harvard; bow oar of her Freshmen crew; of her winning Sophomore crew; of her losing 'Varsity crew, junior year; and of her winning 'Varsity crew, senior year; and one of the coolest, nerviest men in danger that ever sat in a boat; his nerve and splendid arms to-day the delight of thousands of his students; and that same nerve undoubtedly a potent factor in his success in saving life itself so often in his matchless operations.
Or at Commodore Dewey, assigned to uninviting duty at the other end of the world where there seemed no hope of active service; yet going with alacrity, and in the dead of night sailing his ships into the jaws of death, over a magazine about sure at any moment to send him and every soul with him into eternity; fighting a fleet of twice his numbers backed up by bristling land batteries; yet working so effectively that he coolly suspends the battle for twenty minutes till his men have breakfast; and then makes such thorough work of it that the whole civilized world looks on in amazement; and he awakens to the satisfaction that he has done more than any other man in this century to knit the hearts of his fellow-countrymen together as one man. And he, the New York Herald says, at sixty-one "one of the finest-looking men in the navy, which is saying a great deal; known as 'Gentleman George.' A great club-man and a huntsman of no mean repute; in riding to the hounds he has often distinguished himself, while as a daring horseman he probably has no superior in this country. He is also an all-round athlete."
But we need not offer more proof, save one instance—a more magnificent one in some respects than any of the rest. A man whose virtues we know; whose life we know; whose work we know; but whose preparation for that work, in the field now under consideration, is not generally known.
WASHINGTON (1732–1799)
"At eleven years old left an orphan to the care of an excellent but unlettered mother, he grew up without learning. Of arithmetic and geometry he acquired just knowledge enough to be able to practise measuring land; but all his instruction at school taught him not so much as the orthography or rules of grammar of his own tongue. His culture was altogether his own work, and he was in the strictest sense a self-made man; yet from his early life he never seemed uneducated. At sixteen he went into the wilderness as a surveyor, and for three years continued the pursuit where the forests trained him in meditative solitude to freedom and largeness of mind. In his intervals from toil he seemed
WASHINGTON
(From a copy of Trumbull's famous portrait now in the City Hall, New York City)
From nineteen to twenty-six in the French and Indian War, rising to the rank of Colonel; the only aide of General Braddock who escaped from the disastrous ambuscade at Fort Duquesne; in constant danger in treacherous Indian warfare; always in the thickest of the fight; horses shot under him; his clothing riddled, Indian braves doing their utmost to kill him; till his escape at times seemed miraculous; then a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses till forty-three; and Patrick Henry says that for solid information and sound judgment he was easily the peer of any man in all that distinguished body; a member of the Continental Congress; then made commander-in-chief of the American forces; "Compelled by superior forces at times to retreat, and reduced to the most desperate straits by disaffection, lack of men and supplies, and even cabals against his authority; approached by the enemy with bribes; yet by his mildness, calm courage, prudence, firmness, and perseverance he brought the war, with the aid of powerful allies, to a successful termination; and the independence of the thirteen colonies achieved, he retired from the army to Mount Vernon, which he had, during the eight years of war, but once visited. He refused to accept pay, but kept a minute account of his personal expenses, which were reimbursed by Congress; in 1784 planned the James River and Potomac canals; gave the shares voted him by the State to endow Washington College, at Lexington, Virginia, and for a University; proposed conventions for commercial purposes, which led to the Convention of 1787, of which he was a member, which formed the present Fedderal Constitution, considered by him as the only alternative to anarchy and civil war; elected first President of the United States, April 30, 1789; at the next election he desired to retire, but yielded to urgent general solicitation; in 1796 he positively declined a third term, and returned to Mount Vernon, to the quiet of home-life, where he died, December 14, 1799, of acute laryngitis, his last words being, 'I die hard, but am not afraid to go.'"
"Mr. Depew says that Mr. Gladstone told him: 'Sixty years ago I read Chief Justice Marshall's life of Washington, and I was forced to the conclusion that he was quite the greatest man that ever lived. The sixty years that have passed have not changed that impression; and to any Englishman who seeks my advice in the line of his development and equipment, I invariably say, "Begin by reading the life of George Washington"'"—New York Tribune, February 15, 1895.
Of whom Charles James Fox, in the British House of Commons, when Lord North was doing all he could to keep us from being free, rose and said of Washington: "He derives honor less from the splendor of the situation than from the dignity of his mind; before whom all borrowed plumage sinks into insignificance, and all the potentates of England seem little and contemptible."
To whom Thomas Erskine—the greatest forensic orator England ever saw—wrote in 1796: "I have a large acquaintance among the most valued and exalted classes of mankind. You, sir, are the only human being for whom I ever felt an awful reverence. I sincerely pray God that He may grant a long and serene evening to your life, which has been so gloriously devoted to the universal happiness of the world."
Here is the estimate of one who knew him intimately: "Perhaps the strongest feature in his character was prudence, never acting until every circumstance, every consideration, was maturely weighed; refraining if he saw a doubt, but, when once decided, going through with his purpose, whatever obstacles opposed. His integrity was most pure, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known, no motives of interest or consanguinity, of friendship or hatred, being able to bias his decision. He was, indeed, in every sense of the words, a wise, a good, and a great man."—Thomas Jefferson.
The Expounder of the Constitution tells us how he regarded this great man: "That name was of power to rally a nation in the hour of thick-thronging public disasters and calamities; that name shone, amid the storm of war, a beacon to light, to cheer, and guide the country's friends; it flamed, too, like a meteor, to repel her foes. That name, in the days of peace, was a loadstone, attracting to itself a whole people's confidence, a whole people's love, and the whole world's respect. That name, descending with all time, spreading over the whole earth, and uttered in all the languages belonging to the tribes and races of men, will forever be pronounced with affectionate gratitude by every one in whose breast there shall arise an aspiration for human rights and human liberty."—Daniel Webster.
And his greatest successor adds his fitting tribute: "Washington is the mightiest name on earth. Long since mightiest in the cause of civil liberty; still mightiest in moral reformation. On that name no eulogy is expected. It cannot be. To add brightness to the sun or glory to the name of Washington is alike impossible. Let none attempt it. In solemn awe pronounce the name, and in its naked, deathless splendor leaving it shining on."—Abraham Lincoln.
When he took command of the Continental Army, Bancroft says: "Washington was then forty-three years of age. In stature he a little exceeded six feet; his limbs were sinewy and well proportioned; his chest broad; his figure stately, lending dignity of presence with ease. His robust constitution had been tried and invigorated by his early life in the wilderness; his habit of occupation out-of-doors; and his rigid temperance; so that few equalled him in strength of arm, or power of endurance. His complexion was florid; his hair dark-brown; his head in its shape perfectly round. His broad nostrils seemed formed to give expression to scornful anger.… Courage was so natural to him that it was hardly spoken of to his praise; no one ever at any moment of his life discovered in him the least shrinking in danger; and he had a hardihood of daring which escaped notice, because it was so developed by superior calmness and wisdom.
"His passions, which had the intensest vigor, owned allegiance to reason; and with all the fiery quickness of his spirit, his impetuous and massive will was held in check by consummate judgment.
"He had in his composition a calm which gave him, in moments of highest excitement, the power of self-control, and enabled him to excel in patience; even when he had most cause for disgust. He might be described as the best specimen of manhood as developed in the South. But his qualities were so faultlessly proportioned that his countrymen felt that he was the best type of America; and rejoiced in it; and were proud of it."
The Rector of his parish, Rev. M. L. Weems, says: "Lord Fairfax readily engaged George as a surveyor, and sent him into the backwoods to work. He continued in his lordship's service till his twentieth year, closely pursuing the laborious life of a woodsman. In Frederick he boarded in the house of the widow Stevenson, generally pronounced Stinson. This lady had seven sons—William and Valentine Crawford by her first husband; and John, and Hugh, and Dick, and Jim, and Mark Stinson by her last husband. These seven young men, in Herculean size and strength, were equal perhaps to any seven sons of any one mother in Christendom. This was a family exactly to George's mind, because promising him abundance of that manly exercise in which he delighted. Upon the fine extended green, several hundred yards long, in front of the house, every evening when his daily toils of surveying were ended, George—like a young Greek training for the Olympic Games—used to turn out with his sturdy young companions 'to see,' as they termed it, 'which was the best man' at running, jumping, and wrestling; and so keen was their passion for these sports, and so great their ambition to outdo one another, that they would often keep them up, especially on moonshiny nights, till bedtime.
"The Crawfords and Stinsons, though not taller than George, were much heavier men, so that at wrestling, and particularly the close or Indian hug, he seldom gained much matter of triumph. But in all trials of agility they stood no chance with him."
George Washington Parke Custis, Martha Washington's son, who lived with him, must have known him intimately. He says: "The last time he weighed was in the summer of 1799, the year of his death, when, having made the tour of his farm accompanied by an English gentleman, he called at his mill and was weighed. The writer placed the weight in the scales. The Englishman, not so tall, but stout, square-built, and fleshy, weighed heavily; and expressed much surprise that the General had not outweighed him; when Washington observed that the best weight of his best days never exceeded from two hundred and ten to two hundred and twenty pounds. In the instance alluded to he weighed a little rising two hundred and ten pounds.
"Of the portraits of Washington, the most of them give to his person a fulness that it did not possess, together with an abdominal enlargement greater than in the life; while his matchless limbs have, in but two instances, been faithfully portrayed: in the equestrian portrait by Trumbull, of 1790, a copy of which is in the City Hall, New York; and in an engraving by Loisier from a painting by Cogniet, a French artist of distinguished merit. The latter is not an original painting, the head being from Stuart; but the delineation of the limbs is the most perfect extant. General Washington in the prime of life stood six feet two inches, and measured precisely six feet when attired for the grave. From the period of the Revolution there was an evident bend in that frame, so passing straight before. But the stoop is attributable rather to the care and toils of that arduous contest than to age; for his step was firm, and his carriage noble and commanding, long after the time when the physical properties of man are supposed to be on the wane.
"To a majestic height was added a correspondent breadth and firmness; and his whole person was so cast in nature's finest mould as to resemble the classic remains of ancient statuary, where all the parts contribute to the purity and perfection of the whole.
"Washington's powers were chiefly in his limbs; they were long, large, and sinewy. His frame was of equal breadth from the shoulders to the hips. His chest though broad and expansive, was not prominent; but rather hollowed in the centre. He had suffered from a pulmonary affection in early life, from which he never entirely recovered.
"His frame showed an extraordinary development of bone and muscle. His joints were large, as were his feet; and could a cast have been preserved of his hand to be exhibited in these degenerate days, it would be said to have belonged to the being of a fabulous age.
"During Lafayette's visit to Mount Vernon, in 1825, he said to one writer: 'I never saw so large a hand on any human being as the General's.'
"And that writer adds: 'I saw this remarkable man four times. It was in the month of November, 1798.… I was so fortunate as to walk by his side, and had a full view of him. He was six feet one inch high; broad and athletic, with very large limbs; entirely erect, and without the slightest tendency to stooping. His hair was white, and tied with a silk string; his countenance lofty, masculine, and contemplative; his eye light gray. He was dressed in clothes of a citizen, and over them a blue surtout of the finest cloth. His weight must have been two hundred and thirty pounds, with no superfluous flesh. All was bone and sinew; and he walked like a soldier.'
"Whoever has seen in the Patent Office at Washington the dress he wore when resigning his commission as Commander-in-Chief in December, 1783, at once perceives how large and magnificent was his frame.
"During the parade, he saw something at a distance. His eye was instantly lighted up as with the lightning's flash. At this moment I see its marvellous animation, its glaring fire; exhibiting strong passion, controlled by deliberate reason.
"Rickets, the celebrated equestrian, used to say, 'I delight to see the General ride; and make it a point to fall in with him when I hear that he is abroad on horseback. His seat is so firm, his management so easy and graceful, that I, who am a professor of horsemanship, would go to him and learn to ride.'
"Bred in the vigorous school of the frontier warfare; the earth his bed, his canopy the heavens, he excelled the hunter and woodman in their athletic habits; and in the trials of manhood which distinguished the hardy days of his early life.
"He was amazingly swift of foot; and could climb the mountain-steep and not a sob confess his toil.
"In person, Washington, as we have said, was unique. He looked like no one else. To a stature lofty and commanding he united a form of the manliest proportions; limbs cast in nature's finest mould; and a carriage the most dignified, graceful, and imposing. No one ever approached the pater patriæ that did not feel his presence.
"While several pictures and sculptures are excellent likenesses of his physiognomy, in various stages of life, there has been a general failure in the delineation of his figure. His manliness has been misrepresented by bulkiness; while his vigorous, elastic frame, in which so many graces combined, has been drawn from the model of Ajax, when its true personification should be that of Achilles.
"With all its development of muscular power, the form of Washington had no appearance of bulkiness; and so harmonious were its proportions that he did not appear so passing tall as his portraits have represented. He was rather spare than full during his whole life."
Mr. Sullivan, in his Familiar Characters (1834), says: "The following are recollections of Washington derived from repeated opportunities of seeing him during the last three years of his life. He was over six feet in stature, of strong, bony, muscular frame, with fulness of covering, well formed and straight. He was a man of most extraordinary physical strength. At the age of sixty-five time had done nothing towards bending him out of his natural erectness."
Look over all the men whom you have ever known, or of whom you have ever heard, in private or in public, obscure or famous. Yes, blacksmiths, athletes, and all you like; put in Adirondack guides, too, and say which of them, on the whole, was more agile, stronger, and more enduring—a better all-round man—physically than Washington. Bancroft says: "Few equalled him in strength of arm, or power of endurance"; and among the sixty thousand men of the Continental Army there must have been hundreds of picked men of rare strength and lasting power—out-door men as well as he—more, relatively to population, than this country has ever seen since. For the work of nearly all of them, at clearing land; at farming; hunting; fishing; surveying; felling forests; opening up new territory; and long experience in Indian warfare; with simple habits and frugal living, had built a hardy, splendid race; fit founders of a mighty nation. Yet, of all these, the famous historian says, "Few equalled him in strength of arm or power of endurance."
Sandow is stronger in his arms. But for endurance; striding through forests; over hill and mountain; fording streams; and on all variety of ground; from early dawn to nightfall; ceaselessly trailing the dusky red-man to his lair; nothing in Sandow's record shows that Washington would not, by sundown, have left him miles behind. For he not only equalled, "he excelled the hunter and the woodman in their athletic habits."
"He looked like no one else; rather spare than full; lofty and commanding"; he said himself that the best weight of his best days was between two hundred and ten and two hundred and twenty pounds; indeed, he once wrote his step-brother Lawrence: "Without a pound of superfluous flesh, I weigh two hundred and thirteen pounds"; and one artist, who saw him stripped to the waist, says: "He was literally thews and sinews; in the prime of his life he stood six feet two inches; broad and athletic, with very large limbs."
With a hand of fabulous size; his powers chiefly in his limbs, which were very large and sinewy; and so superb a horseman that a celebrated riding-master said that he would go to Washington to learn to ride. The range of athletic contests in his day, while narrower than now, included searching tests; the one of a man's agility, the other of his strength and lasting power—namely, jumping[11] and wrestling; and in each of these Washington was king.
For not only was he, as Custis says, a runner, and "amazingly swift of foot," but tradition says that of the best jumpers of his day, Nathan Hale—at the running broad jump, of course—did twenty feet; that Lindley Murray, the grammarian, jumped twenty-two feet; but that Washington, beating him, did twenty-three. Not knowing just where to find verbal evidence or record of this, there is proof, in Hale's case and in Washington's, eloquent and wellnigh decisive. Look again at Hale's statue (p. 1). Notice the sinewy, clean-cut, uncommonly developed calves; indeed, every part of the legs. No fat; nothing soft there; nothing superfluous; but just where a jumper needs unusual development; there Hale had it.
Clearly he was a good one. To-day he would have made the 'Varsity crew surely; or the foot-ball team;—or both; as Chitty did the crew and the 'Varsity eleven at cricket. But Washington was a better; and had still better legs. Look at them and see. For here is a copy of the very picture from the City Hall, of which Custis said: "His matchless limbs have in but two instances been faithfully portrayed. In the equestrian portrait by Trumbull, of 1790, a copy of which is in the City Hall, New York," etc. Scrutinize it closely at foot and ankle; at calf and knee and thigh; at hips and waist; chest, arms, shoulders, and neck, and say if, taken altogether, you ever saw, physically, a better man, or as good a man. We took one of Harvard's most famous coaches—an oarsman of record and renown—in there one day; a master in the art of choosing men for strength, speed, stay, and fitness for arduous struggle combined; and asked him what he thought of him. He looked at the picture long and earnestly. Again we asked the verdict. He said: "That's the best-built man I ever saw!" And he has seen the best athletes that Cornell, Harvard and Yale, Columbia, Princeton, and the University of Pennsylvania have ever turned out; not a few of the best of Oxford and Cambridge as well, and about all of America's leading professional oars, including Hanlan, Courtney, and the three famed families of professionals— the Wards, the Biglins, and the Ten Eycks. And not only were Washington's legs almost massive, yet with not even a faint suggestion of fat, or of anything but clear spring and lifting-power; and Custis says that "Washington's powers were chiefly in his limbs"; but he adds, "His frame was of equal breadth from the shoulders to the hips." Nothing more significant than this occurs in any description. It means power, precisely where one kind of athlete, the highest kind, the strongest man, wants it—namely, the wrestler. There never was, there never will he, a great wrestler weak in the sides. Power must be there, or he who has it will throw him. But was Washington a wrestler? The rector of his parish, Rev. Mr. Weems, has just answered that. One would think that all day, tramping through forest, with gun, and axe, and theodolite, surveying for Lord Fairfax, would entitle a youth of seventeen or eighteen to sit down when evening came, and take a rest. But not so Washington, with seven such big, good men staring him in the face. He must have a fall out of them; or they should out of him. Often he went down; for those sons of Titan, tugging and twisting, and forging the Father of the Republic into shape for his mighty task, ought to down one who was scarcely more than a growing boy, though large for his years. But he kept them busy. And then, for seven years, in the French and Indian War, hardly sitting down all day, save in the saddle; constantly exposed to privation, hardship, or danger; always in the thickest of the fight; horses shot under him; his clothes riddled till he seemed to lead a charmed life; and Bancroft well said: "No one ever, at any moment of his life, discerned in him the least shrinking in danger; and he had a hardihood in daring which escaped notice, because it was so developed by superior calmness and wisdom." This was the training of Washington. No wonder he had square sides. That wrestling; that running, jumping, hard riding, and Indian-fighting would help square any man's sides. Those ten years made George Washington; and no college or university in this land has ever turned out his equal physically, of whose deeds there is any Record. Had the best sparring-master of to-day spent those three years there, with Washington and the Stevensons, and taught them his art until they had mastered it; as Washington always mastered everything he touched; and could Washington at twenty-six have met John L. Sullivan at twenty-six in a finish glove-contest, the chances are at least even that the winner would not have been Sullivan. Include wrestling as well as boxing; and long before the end of the bout, as he felt those mighty legs—better ones than his—twine around him, and found his feet—put them where he would—somehow always slipping out from under him; he would very likely have asked the Father of his Country if he had not once told people to "beware of entangling alliances"; and have concluded that he had better do something in this line himself. For Washington had greater height; weight; reach; and sounder judgment than Sullivan, who never began to have ten years of such seasoning, and superb preparation for a supreme effort like this, as those ten years of Washington's, absolutely free from every known form of dissipation, or anything that could undermine and destroy a man.
A fashionable New York tailor, as his books will no doubt show, one day, when Sullivan was at his best, and before he grew so fat, measured him for a suit of clothes. He made the largest girth of his chest, directly under the arms, forty-two and a half inches. Men know that a tailor will not let a man inflate his chest when he is being so measured, but makes him hold it naturally. A shirt-maker, upon the same day, measured him for shirts; and the chest-girth was again forty-two and a half inches; our informant in each case being a gentleman who was measured at each place upon the same day when Sullivan was; and he had these facts from the tradesmen themselves. Custis says that "Whoever has seen, in the Patent Office at Washington, the dress he wore when resigning his commission as Commander-in-Chief, at once perceives how large and magnificent was his frame." Some years ago, at our request, a banker in Washington prevailed upon the Curator of the Patent Office to measure this identical suit. The waist-girth of the vest was thirty-seven and a half inches; But the chest-girth, directly under the arms, was forty-four and a half inches. This made him almost exactly half as many inches around the waist as he was inches high, and about three-fifths as many inches about the chest as he was high. And every inch and ounce of that man was of the highest quality.
Justly proud as are his countrymen of his exalted character, his unerring judgment, his success unsurpassed in the world's history in battling for eight long years with a mighty nation, with a comparative handful of men; and in bringing into existence what in scarce one short century has become one of the greatest nations of the earth; they will find, the more they know him, that Mr. Gladstone's remarkable estimate of him is a just one; and that in all respects the verdict of his contemporaries is true to-day, and will remain true as long as our nation lives, that he was, indeed, "First in war; first in peace; and first in the hearts of his countrymen."
- ↑ Smith's Mohammed and Mohammedanism, p. 107.
- ↑ People's Cyclopædia.
- ↑ The great sword now in Stirling Castle is commonly supposed to have been Wallace's. But perhaps he had two. At any rate, hear Mr. McTavish: "It is the popular belief in Scotland that the sword of William Wallace, the friend of Bruce and the hero par excellence of Scottish romance, lies, with other relics, in Stirling Castle. This, according to the story of Duncan McPherson McTavish, of East Girard Avenue, is a popular mistake. He alone has the sword of the Scottish warrior, and he says that it has been handed down from sire to son in the McTavish clan for centuries. The sword which the esteemed Highlander proudly exhibits to his friends is a most formidable weapon. It is exactly six feet four inches in length, and weighs somewhat over twenty-seven pounds. No ordinary man can hold it out at arm's length, and not even Sandow could wield it for five minutes. It is made, Mr. McTavish asserts, of the finest Damascus steel, and he adds that but one head of his clan—his great-great-great-great-grandfather, Ian Dhu McTavish—could use it in battle, and his strength was so great that, with this terrible weapon, he could cut right through an armed knight from the helmet to the saddle of his horse. Mr. McTavish talks a great deal of his famous ancestor, especially after dinner, and the stories he relates of his physical prowess are somewhat wonderful."—Philadelphia Times, quoted in the New York Evening Sun, April 21, 1898.
- ↑ Van Santvoord's Lives of the Chief Justices.
- ↑ If a great back-head thus means "enormous driving-power and physical energy," there is a rich field for study in the heads of the very men referred to in this chapter; for, judging from the best statues, models, portraits, and descriptions of them extant, Socrates, Plato, Alexander, Demosthenes, Hannibal, Charlemagne, Wallace, Luther, Cromwell, Peter the Great, O'Connell, Chalmers, Goethe, Wellington, Napoleon, Franklin, Washington, Webster, Beecher, Spurgeon, Bismarck—indeed nearly every one of all these mighty men; and, if the marble busts in the Astor Library in New York are correct, Solon, Seneca, Pompey, Alcibiades, Themistocles, Antony, nearly all men of but moderate forehead, had enormous back-heads; while the calipers show the back-head of Julius Cæsar to have been simply colossal—the largest diameter just above and back of the ears, to be twice as great as that of the forehead; and the Farnese bust of him in the Museum at Naples has a back-head of a breadth absolutely phenomenal; while as to Bismarck, as seen on page 362, a Berlin hatter once related, as the result of his phrenological experience, that "of all German tribes the Mecklenburgers had the biggest heads; but that no Mecklenburger ever required so large a hat as the Lord of Varzin." And Professor Fritz Schaper, of Berlin, the sculptor who has modelled the Chancellor's bust according to accurate measurements taken, says that "the head of Bismarck is mainly remarkable for its rugged bulk and strength, and for its abnormal breadth above the ears."
- ↑ Nelson Sizer, who has studied heads more carefully, perhaps, than any other man in America, says: "All really great men have great heads—merely smart ones, or those great only in certain faculties or specialties of character, not always. Byron's hat was small, doubtless because his brain was conical and most developed in the base; but its great weight establishes its size. Only men with great heads are commanding; are the men for great occasions, and have that giant force of intellect which moulds and sways nations and ages. Quality is more important than quantity; but true greatness requires both cerebral quantity and quality. Napoleon wore a very large hat—one that passed clear over the head of Lehmenowski, one of his body-guard, whose head measured 23½ inches; so that Bonaparte's head must have measured nearly, or quite, 24 inches; Webster's head was massive, measuring over 24 inches; and Clay's 23½; Chief Justice Gibson's—the greatest jurist in Pennsylvania—24½; and Hamilton's hat passed over the head of a man whose head measured 23½. Burke's head was immense; while Franklin's hat passed over the ears of a 24-inch head. Washington's head was also very large." (Look at it in the statue in front of the Sub-Treasury on Wall Street, New York City, as compared with the body.)
- ↑ "On one of the posts of the door of the study at Friedrichsruh, the height of each member of the Chancellor's family was solemnly registered on the last day of 1880 by the Prince himself; and the pencilled inscriptions which are still to be seen there are as follows; the measurements being taken in centimetres: Prince Bismarck, 6 feet 2 inches; Count Herbert (his elder son), 6 feet 1½ inches. Count William (his second son), 6 feet and ½ inch."
- ↑ "Mr. John E. Parsons, whose friends say that he is fond of the repute which he has of having the finest practice of the English-speaking Bar."—Philadelphia Press.
- ↑ "So when a great man dies,For years beyond our ken,
The light he leaves behind him lies
Upon the paths of men."
—Longfellow, on Sumner. - ↑ We put him in a wherry once at Harvard, in 1866; and he made her gallop.
- ↑ The following is taken from the New York Daily News, June 8, 1894:
"A WASHINGTON LEGEND
"how the father of his country came to make his famous jump
"In your last Sunday's Courier, on the editorial page, you refer in a short article to having heard about George Washington jumping, and you also state that you 'have not been able to find any evidence of the accuracy' of the story. The writer, when a boy, read a historical article about the jump that George Washington made when he was a young man, and the story is as follows, as the writer now remembers it: "It was during the French and Indian War. Washington was a colonel in the British Army, and was in Virginia at the time, and was, or had been, on some military errand, and was returning from the same on horseback. The road upon which he was travelling led him through a small village, or hamlet, and as he drew near the village green, which was bounded upon one side by the road, he noticed a number of young men jumping, and being fond of athletic sports of that character, he rode to the place where they were, and asked one of the young men that stood there, why, or for what, they were jumping. The gentleman of whom Washington made the inquiry told him the reason, which was as follows:"It seems that a well-to-do farmer had had a haying-bee that day, and he had told the young men in the morning that if they would finish that afternoon early enough, he would go down to the village green with them, and they could jump for the hand of his daughter, who was the belle of the county. At that time she was betrothed to a young man by the name of Henry Carroll, who was quite an athlete, and was one of the young men at the bee. Washington asked if the contest was open to strangers, and on being told that it was, and that he could jump if he desired, he waited until they all had jumped, including this Carroll, who cleared twenty-one feet and seven inches in his leap, which surpassed all the others. Washington dismounted, tightened his belt and jumped twenty-two feet and one inch, beating Carroll, the next to him, by six inches. Of course Carroll and the young lady—who witnessed it—were very much chagrined at having a stranger stop and out-jump all others. After making the jump Washington stepped up, stood alongside of the young lady for a few moments, said a few words to all that were there, and then handed her over to Carroll, mounted his horse, and rode away. No one there knew him, and they all wondered who it was that could make such a leap. Time rolled on, and during one of Washingington's campaigns in Virginia, Carroll, who had become acquainted with Washington during this war, invited him and some of his generals to his home near by for supper. While they were at supper Carroll noticed his wife closely watching Washington, and he asked her if she was ailing. Then Washington spoke up, and said that she undoubtedly recognized that, by warfare's usage, they would not be able to jump twenty-two feet one inch that night for a lady's hand. This was the first time that Carroll knew that Washington was the man who had made the jump years before upon the village green."—Dilworth M. Silver, in Buffalo Courier.