How few men know their riches! What is ours is ours only in so far as we are conscious of it, and so that which we accept without thought, which has no especial meaning to us, is not a real possession. You may have three or four hundred leaves of paper, covered with rows of printed characters and bound together between boards of leather, and yet you may not own a book.Do you look upon the mountain and the stream and exclaim: "These are mine!" If not, then you have ignored Nature's dower to you. Do you realize that your individual possession in art is as broad as art itself? If not, you are refusing man's free gift to man. It is easy for almost any man or woman to be rich; the only thing that is hard is to learn to know real gold when you see it.The most sensible will ever written was made by an insane man. He was Charles Lounsberry, once a prominent member of the Chicago bar, who in his later years lost his mind and was committed to the Cook County Asylum, at Dunning, where he died penniless. If he had lost his mind, he had kept his heart, or at least in his last moments he was endowed with a lucidity that was higher than logic. For this strange man, penniless though he was, knew that he was yet rich, and he made a will which, as the ChicagoRecord-Heraldsaid, was "framed with such perfection of form and detail that no flaw could be found in its legal phraseology or matters."Inasmuch as poor, mad Charles Lounsberry knew gold from dross, we here reprint his curious and interesting will.
How few men know their riches! What is ours is ours only in so far as we are conscious of it, and so that which we accept without thought, which has no especial meaning to us, is not a real possession. You may have three or four hundred leaves of paper, covered with rows of printed characters and bound together between boards of leather, and yet you may not own a book.Do you look upon the mountain and the stream and exclaim: "These are mine!" If not, then you have ignored Nature's dower to you. Do you realize that your individual possession in art is as broad as art itself? If not, you are refusing man's free gift to man. It is easy for almost any man or woman to be rich; the only thing that is hard is to learn to know real gold when you see it.The most sensible will ever written was made by an insane man. He was Charles Lounsberry, once a prominent member of the Chicago bar, who in his later years lost his mind and was committed to the Cook County Asylum, at Dunning, where he died penniless. If he had lost his mind, he had kept his heart, or at least in his last moments he was endowed with a lucidity that was higher than logic. For this strange man, penniless though he was, knew that he was yet rich, and he made a will which, as the ChicagoRecord-Heraldsaid, was "framed with such perfection of form and detail that no flaw could be found in its legal phraseology or matters."Inasmuch as poor, mad Charles Lounsberry knew gold from dross, we here reprint his curious and interesting will.
How few men know their riches! What is ours is ours only in so far as we are conscious of it, and so that which we accept without thought, which has no especial meaning to us, is not a real possession. You may have three or four hundred leaves of paper, covered with rows of printed characters and bound together between boards of leather, and yet you may not own a book.Do you look upon the mountain and the stream and exclaim: "These are mine!" If not, then you have ignored Nature's dower to you. Do you realize that your individual possession in art is as broad as art itself? If not, you are refusing man's free gift to man. It is easy for almost any man or woman to be rich; the only thing that is hard is to learn to know real gold when you see it.The most sensible will ever written was made by an insane man. He was Charles Lounsberry, once a prominent member of the Chicago bar, who in his later years lost his mind and was committed to the Cook County Asylum, at Dunning, where he died penniless. If he had lost his mind, he had kept his heart, or at least in his last moments he was endowed with a lucidity that was higher than logic. For this strange man, penniless though he was, knew that he was yet rich, and he made a will which, as the ChicagoRecord-Heraldsaid, was "framed with such perfection of form and detail that no flaw could be found in its legal phraseology or matters."Inasmuch as poor, mad Charles Lounsberry knew gold from dross, we here reprint his curious and interesting will.
How few men know their riches! What is ours is ours only in so far as we are conscious of it, and so that which we accept without thought, which has no especial meaning to us, is not a real possession. You may have three or four hundred leaves of paper, covered with rows of printed characters and bound together between boards of leather, and yet you may not own a book.Do you look upon the mountain and the stream and exclaim: "These are mine!" If not, then you have ignored Nature's dower to you. Do you realize that your individual possession in art is as broad as art itself? If not, you are refusing man's free gift to man. It is easy for almost any man or woman to be rich; the only thing that is hard is to learn to know real gold when you see it.The most sensible will ever written was made by an insane man. He was Charles Lounsberry, once a prominent member of the Chicago bar, who in his later years lost his mind and was committed to the Cook County Asylum, at Dunning, where he died penniless. If he had lost his mind, he had kept his heart, or at least in his last moments he was endowed with a lucidity that was higher than logic. For this strange man, penniless though he was, knew that he was yet rich, and he made a will which, as the ChicagoRecord-Heraldsaid, was "framed with such perfection of form and detail that no flaw could be found in its legal phraseology or matters."Inasmuch as poor, mad Charles Lounsberry knew gold from dross, we here reprint his curious and interesting will.
How few men know their riches! What is ours is ours only in so far as we are conscious of it, and so that which we accept without thought, which has no especial meaning to us, is not a real possession. You may have three or four hundred leaves of paper, covered with rows of printed characters and bound together between boards of leather, and yet you may not own a book.
Do you look upon the mountain and the stream and exclaim: "These are mine!" If not, then you have ignored Nature's dower to you. Do you realize that your individual possession in art is as broad as art itself? If not, you are refusing man's free gift to man. It is easy for almost any man or woman to be rich; the only thing that is hard is to learn to know real gold when you see it.
The most sensible will ever written was made by an insane man. He was Charles Lounsberry, once a prominent member of the Chicago bar, who in his later years lost his mind and was committed to the Cook County Asylum, at Dunning, where he died penniless. If he had lost his mind, he had kept his heart, or at least in his last moments he was endowed with a lucidity that was higher than logic. For this strange man, penniless though he was, knew that he was yet rich, and he made a will which, as the ChicagoRecord-Heraldsaid, was "framed with such perfection of form and detail that no flaw could be found in its legal phraseology or matters."
Inasmuch as poor, mad Charles Lounsberry knew gold from dross, we here reprint his curious and interesting will.
I,Charles Lounsberry, being of sound and disposing mind and memory, do hereby make and publish this, my last will and testament, in order, as justly as may be, to distribute my interest in the world among succeeding men.
That part of my interest, which is known in law and recognized in the sheep-bound volumes as my property, being inconsiderable and of none account, I make no disposition of in this, my will. My right to live, being but a life estate, is not at my disposal, but these things excepted, all else in the world I now proceed to devise and bequeath.
Item: I give to good fathers and mothers in trust for their children, all good little words of praise and encouragement, and all quaint pet names and endearments, and I charge said parents to use them justly, but generously, as the needs of their children shall require.
Item: I leave to children inclusively, but only for the term of their childhood, all and every, the flowers of the fields, and the blossoms of the woods, with the right to play among them freely according to the customs of children, warning them at the same time against thistles and thorns. And I devise to children thebanks of the brooks and the golden sands beneath the waters thereof, and the odors of the willows that dip therein and the white clouds that float high over the giant trees. And I leave to children the long, long days to be merry in, in a thousand ways, and the night, and the moon, and the train of the Milky Way to wonder at, but subject, nevertheless, to the rights hereinafter given to lovers.
Item: I devise to boys jointly, all the useful, idle fields and commons where ball may be played; all pleasant waters where one may swim; all snow-clad hills where one may coast; and all streams and ponds where one may fish, or where, when grim winter comes, one may skate, to have and to hold these same for the period of their boyhood. And all meadows, with the clover blossoms and butterflies thereof; the woods with their appurtenances, the squirrels and the birds and echoes and strange noises, and all distant places which may be visited, together with the adventures there found. And I give to said boys each his own place at the fireside at night, with all the pictures that may be seen in the burning wood, to enjoy without let or hindrance, and without any encumbrance of care.
Item: To lovers, I devise their imaginary world with whatever they may need, as the stars of the sky, the red roses by the wall, the bloom of the hawthorn, the sweet strains of music, and aught else they may desire to figure to each other the lastingness and beauty of their love.
Item: To young men, jointly, I devise and bequeath all boisterous, inspiring sports of rivalry, and I give to them the disdain of weakness and undaunted confidence in their own strength. Though they are rude, I leave to them the power to make lasting friendships, and of possessing companions, and to them exclusively, I give all merry songs and brave choruses to sing with lusty voices.
Item: And to those who are no longer children, or youths, or lovers, I leave memory, and I bequeath to them the volumes of the poems of Burns and Shakespeare and of other poems, if there be others, to the end that they may live the old days over again, freely and fully without title or diminution.
Item: To our loved ones with snowy crowns, I bequeath the happiness of old age, the love and gratitude of their children until they fall asleep.
The laugh of a child will make the holiest day more sacred still. Strike with hand of fire, O weird musician, thy harp strung with Apollo's golden hair, fill the vast cathedral aisles with symphonies sweet and dim, deft toucher of the organ keys; blow, bugler, blow, until thy silver notes do touch and kiss the moonlit waves, and charm the lovers wandering 'mid vine-clad hills. But know your sweetest strains are discords all, compared with childhood's happy laugh—the laugh that fills the eyes with light and every heart with joy.O rippling river of laughter! Thou art the blessed boundary line between the beasts and men, and every wayward wave of thine doth drown some fretful fiend of care.O Laughter, rose-lipped daughter of Joy! there are dimples enough in thy cheeks to catch and hold and glorify all the tears of grief.
The laugh of a child will make the holiest day more sacred still. Strike with hand of fire, O weird musician, thy harp strung with Apollo's golden hair, fill the vast cathedral aisles with symphonies sweet and dim, deft toucher of the organ keys; blow, bugler, blow, until thy silver notes do touch and kiss the moonlit waves, and charm the lovers wandering 'mid vine-clad hills. But know your sweetest strains are discords all, compared with childhood's happy laugh—the laugh that fills the eyes with light and every heart with joy.
O rippling river of laughter! Thou art the blessed boundary line between the beasts and men, and every wayward wave of thine doth drown some fretful fiend of care.
O Laughter, rose-lipped daughter of Joy! there are dimples enough in thy cheeks to catch and hold and glorify all the tears of grief.
Robert G. Ingersoll.
Sightless but Courageous Men and Women Who Became DistinguishedProfessors, Authors, Inventors, Soldiers and Athletes—OneServed as Postmaster-General of Great Britain.
JOHN MILTON ON HIS BLINDNESS.When I consider how my light is spentEre half my days in this dark world and wide,And that one talent which is death to hideLodged with me useless, though my soul more bentTo serve therewith my Maker, and presentMy true account, lest He returning chide;"Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?"I fondly ask. But Patience, to preventThat murmur, soon replies, "God doth not needEither man's work or His own gifts. Who bestBear His mild yoke, they serve Him best. His stateIs kingly; thousands at His bidding speed,And post o'er land and ocean without rest;They also serve who only stand and wait."
JOHN MILTON ON HIS BLINDNESS.When I consider how my light is spentEre half my days in this dark world and wide,And that one talent which is death to hideLodged with me useless, though my soul more bentTo serve therewith my Maker, and presentMy true account, lest He returning chide;"Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?"I fondly ask. But Patience, to preventThat murmur, soon replies, "God doth not needEither man's work or His own gifts. Who bestBear His mild yoke, they serve Him best. His stateIs kingly; thousands at His bidding speed,And post o'er land and ocean without rest;They also serve who only stand and wait."
JOHN MILTON ON HIS BLINDNESS.When I consider how my light is spentEre half my days in this dark world and wide,And that one talent which is death to hideLodged with me useless, though my soul more bentTo serve therewith my Maker, and presentMy true account, lest He returning chide;"Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?"I fondly ask. But Patience, to preventThat murmur, soon replies, "God doth not needEither man's work or His own gifts. Who bestBear His mild yoke, they serve Him best. His stateIs kingly; thousands at His bidding speed,And post o'er land and ocean without rest;They also serve who only stand and wait."
JOHN MILTON ON HIS BLINDNESS.When I consider how my light is spentEre half my days in this dark world and wide,And that one talent which is death to hideLodged with me useless, though my soul more bentTo serve therewith my Maker, and presentMy true account, lest He returning chide;"Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?"I fondly ask. But Patience, to preventThat murmur, soon replies, "God doth not needEither man's work or His own gifts. Who bestBear His mild yoke, they serve Him best. His stateIs kingly; thousands at His bidding speed,And post o'er land and ocean without rest;They also serve who only stand and wait."
JOHN MILTON ON HIS BLINDNESS.
When I consider how my light is spentEre half my days in this dark world and wide,And that one talent which is death to hideLodged with me useless, though my soul more bentTo serve therewith my Maker, and presentMy true account, lest He returning chide;"Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?"I fondly ask. But Patience, to preventThat murmur, soon replies, "God doth not needEither man's work or His own gifts. Who bestBear His mild yoke, they serve Him best. His stateIs kingly; thousands at His bidding speed,And post o'er land and ocean without rest;They also serve who only stand and wait."
Miss Helen Keller's attainments, her emergence from a life in which there was neither light nor sound to a communicative relationship with others, are a marvel of the present day. The best things have all become hers through the single medium of touch. The compound obstacles which she has had to overcome make her case, perhaps, the most remarkable on record.
There have been, however, many famous blind persons in history. Stengel mentions a young cabinet-maker of Ingolstadt, who, having lost his sight, amused himself by carving wooden pepper-mills, using a common knife. His want of sight seemed to be no impediment to his manual dexterity.
Sir Kenelm Digby has given particulars about a gifted blind tutor. He surpassed the ablest players at chess; at long distances he shot arrows with such precision as almost never to miss his mark; he constantly went abroad without a guide; he regularly took his place at table, and ate with such dexterity that it was impossible to perceive that he was blind; when any one spoke to him for the first time he was able to tell with certainty his stature and the form of his body; and when his pupils recited in his presence he knew in what situation and attitude they were.
Uldaric Schomberg, born in Germany toward the beginning of the seventeenth century, lost his sight at the age of three years; but as he grew up he applied himself to the study ofbelles-lettres, which he afterward professed with credit at Altorf, at Leipsic, and at Hamburg.
Bourcheau de Valbonais, born at Grenoble in 1651, became blind when very young—soon after the naval combat at Solbaye, where he had been present. But this accident did not prevent him from publishing the "History of Dauphiny," in two volumes, folio. He had made profound researches into the history of his province.
Dr. Nicholas Sanderson, Lucasian Professor of Mathematics in the University of Cambridge, was one of the mostremarkable men of his time. Born in 1682, at a small town in the County of York, he died at Cambridge in 1739, at the age of fifty-six years. He invented a table for teaching arithmetic palpably to the blind.
Dr. Henry Moyes professed the Newtonian philosophy, which he taught with considerable success as an itinerant lecturer. He was also a good chemist, a respectable mathematician, and a tolerable musician.
Herr Phefel, of Colmar, who lost his sight when very young, composed a great deal of poetry, consisting chiefly of fables, some of which were translated into French. Among the pupils of this learned blind man were Prince Schwartzenberg and Prince Eisemberg. He died at Colmar, 1809.
Weissemburgh, of Mannheim, became blind at the age of seven years. He wrote perfectly, and read with characters which he had imagined for his own use. He was an excellent geographer, and composed maps and globes, which he employed both in studying and teaching this science. He was the inventor of an arithmetical table differing but little from that of Sanderson.
The blind man of Puiseaux must be known to all who read Diderot's celebrated "Lettres sur les Aveugles." He was the son of a professor of philosophy in the University of Paris, and had attended with advantage courses of chemistry and botany at the Jardin du Roi. After having dissipated a part of his fortune, he retired to Puiseaux, where he established a distillery, the products of which he came regularly once a year to dispose of.
There was an originality in everything that he did. His custom was to sleep during the day, and to rise in the evening; he worked all night, "because," as he himself said, "he was not then disturbed by anybody." His wife, when she arose in the morning, used to find everything perfectly arranged.
To Diderot, who visited him at Puiseaux, he put some very singular questions as to the transparency of glass, and as to colors, and other facts and conditions which could be recognized only through sight. He asked if naturalists were the only persons who saw with the microscope, and if astronomers were the only persons who saw with the telescope; if the machine that magnified objects was greater than that which diminished them; if that which brought them near were shorter than that which removed them to a distance. He believed that astronomers had eyes of different conformation from those of other men, and that a man could not devote himself to the study of a particular science without having eyes specially adapted for that purpose.
"The eye," said he, "is an organ upon which the air ought to produce the same effect as my cane does upon my hand." He possessed the memory of sounds to a surprising degree, and recognized by the voice those whom he had only heard speak once.
He could tell if he was in a thoroughfare or in acul-de-sac, in a large or in a small place. He estimated the proximity of fire by the degree of heat; the comparative fulness of vessels by the sound of the liquor in falling; and the neighborhood of bodies by the action of the air on his face. He employed characters in relief, in order to teach his son to read, and the latter never had any other master than his father.
M. Huber, of Geneva, an excellent naturalist, and author of a treatise on bees and ants, was blind from infancy. In executing his great work he had no other assistance than what he derived from his domestic, who mentioned to him the color of the insects, and then he ascertained their size and form by touch, with the same facility he would have recognized them by their humming in the air. This laborious writer also published a valuable work on education.
Francis Lesueur, born of very poor parents at Lyons, in 1766, lost his sight when six weeks old. He went to Paris in 1778, and was begging at the gate of a church when M. Hauy, discovering in the young mendicant some inclination to study, received him, and undertook the task of instructing him, at the same time promising him a sum equal to that which he had collected in alms.
Lesueur began to study in October, 1784. Six months later he was able to read, to compose with characters in relief, to print, and in less than two years he had learned the French language, geography, and music, which he understood very well. It is painful to add that he proved ungrateful to his benefactor to whom he owed everything.
Avisse, born in Paris, embarked when very young on board a vessel fitted out for the slave trade, in the capacity of secretary or clerk to the captain; but on the coast of Africa he lost his sight from a violent inflammation. On his return his parents procured his admission into the institution for the blind, where, in a few years, he became professor of grammar and logic.
He produced a comedy in verse, in one act, entitled "La Ruse d'Aveugle," which was performed; and several other pieces, which were all printed in one volume, in 1803. He died before he had completed his thirty-first year, at the very time when the high hopes entertained of him were being realized.
Although blind from birth Robert Wauchope became not only a priest but the Archbishop of Armagh. It was he who, in 1541, introduced Jesuits into Ireland. In 1543 he was appointed Archbishop by Paul III; he attended the Council of Trent in 1547.
Richard Lucas, D.D., called the blind prebendary of Westminster, was another prominent blind churchman. He was the author of several well-known books on religious subjects. He lived from 1648 to 1715.
A more recent case was that of the Rev. William Henry Milburn, who died in 1903 after many years' service as chaplain of the United States Senate.
John Ziska, the famous Hussite general, was born near Budweis, Bohemia, in 1360. From childhood he was blind in one eye, and later he lost the other in battle, but that did not interfere with his aggressive and determined spirit, for after gaining several victories over the Emperor Sigismund, that monarch early in 1424 proposed a meeting at which Ziska was granted full religious liberty for his followers, and was appointed governor of Bohemia and its dependencies. Unfortunately, the old warrior did not live long enough to enjoy his well-earned peace, for he died of the plague October 11, 1424.
There were several blind poets, of whom Milton is, of course, the most famous; he became totally blind in May, 1652, being then forty-one years of age. A large number of his works, "Paradise Lost" among others, were written after his misfortune. He lived in darkness for twenty-two years, dying November 8, 1674.
Homer was known as "the blind bard of Chio's rocky isle," but he did not become blind until late in life—if indeed he was a real person at all.
Another blind poet of note was Luigi Grotto, an Italian, known as "Il Cieco d'Adria." He lived from 1541 to 1585.
Giovanni Gonelli (1610-1664) was a noted Tuscan sculptor, and much of his work may be seen to-day. Though totally blind, he made admirable likenesses, and his portrait bust of Pope Urban VIII is very celebrated.
In more modern times we have the late Henry Fawcett, of Salisbury, England. Born in 1833, he was graduated from Cambridge in 1856. In 1858 he became totally blind, through an accident while hunting. This terrible misfortune at the outset of a promising career would have been enough to daunt most men, but in spite of it Fawcett soon became an authority on economic and political subjects, and in 1863 he was made a professor of political economy at the University of Cambridge. He was elected to the British House of Commons, and in 1880 he entered the cabinet as postmaster-general of England, in which position he proved himself an active and efficient minister. He died in 1884.
Another notable modern example is the great yacht designer, John B. Herreshoff. Although he became blind at fifteen, he has built up and managed the successful business that bears his name—the Herreshoff Manufacturing Company, builders of several defenders of the America Cup. In spite of his blindness, he is perfectly at home in his shops or on board ship.
By EDWARD EVERETT.
The man who stands upon his own soil, who feels that, by the law of the land in which he lives, he is the rightful and exclusive owner of the land which he tills, feels more strongly than another the character of a man as the lord of an inanimate world. Of this great and wonderful sphere, which, fashioned by the hand of God, and upheld by His power, is rolling through the heavens, a part ishis—his from the center to the sky! It is the space on which the generation before moved in its round of duties, and he feels himself connected by a visible link with those who follow him, and to whom he is to transmit a home.
Perhaps his farm has come down to him from his fathers. They have gone to their last home; but he can trace their footsteps over the scenes of his daily labors. The roof which shelters him was reared by those to whom he owes his being. Some interesting domestic tradition is connected with every enclosure. The favorite fruit-tree was planted by his father's hand. He sported in boyhood beside the brook which still winds through the meadow. Through the field lies the path to the village school of earlier days. He still hears from the window the voice of the Sabbath-bell, which called his fathers to the house of God; and near at hand is the spot where his parents lay down to rest, and where, whenhistime has come, he shall be laid by his children.
These are the feelings of the owners of the soil. Words cannot paint them—gold cannot buy them; they flow out of the deepest fountains of the heart; they are the very life-springs of a fresh, healthy, and generous national character.
Edward Everett was an American of culture, of elegance, of scholarship, at a time when culture and elegance and scholarship were not commonly met with in America. He was clergyman, professor, public lecturer, diplomat, statesman; he held positions as eminent yet as separated as president of Harvard College and Secretary of State, and at other times between his birth, in 1794, and his death, in 1865, he was editor of theNorth American Review, member of Congress and of the Senate, Governor of Massachusetts, minister to Great Britain. This is the man who pronounced so moving a panegyric on the life of the farmer.
Brief Biographies of Successful Men Who Have Passed Throughthe Crucible of Small Beginnings and Won Out.
Compiled and edited forThe Scrap Book.
Farmer's Son Organized the First JapaneseNational Bank and Aided in EstablishingHis Country's Industries.
"Baron Shibuzawa," says Jihei Hashiguchi, "is called the J.P. Morgan of Japan. But he is more important to Japan's industry than Mr. Morgan is to that of the United States, for the industry of the United States can in a sense get along without J.P. Morgan. The industry of Japan cannot do without Baron Shibuzawa."
The man who has been the industrial and financial savior of Japan was born near Tokyo in 1840. His father was a farmer of slender resources, and supplemented the small earnings of the farm by the cultivation of silkworms and the manufacture of indigo. The boy was lazy—the laziest boy in the empire, he was called—and he spent most of his time in reading fiction, studying the history of his country and China, and familiarizing himself with the Japanese and Chinese classics. Fencing also was one of his diversions, and when he was fourteen years old he swore allegiance to one of the feudal lords at Kioto, the ancient capital of Japan.
In 1853 Commodore Matthew C. Perry visited Japan, and his visit paved the way for the opening up of the country to foreigners as well as for a revolution in the social and industrial conditions of the island empire.
Three years after Perry's visit, the Shogun, hereditary commander-in-chief of the Japanese armies and head of the powerful clan of Minamoto, assumed the title of Tycoon. At one time the Shogun rivaled and even surpassed the Mikado in power. But his influence was rapidly declining. Shibuzawa knew this, yet he entered the service of the Tycoon, and in 1867 he accompanied the brother of the latter on a political mission to France.
Up to that time Shibuzawa had been nothing more than an ordinary member of the Samurai. The contrast between conditions in Europe and in Japan affected him deeply.
The first thing he did was to have his topknot cut off, discard the Japanese dress and two swords, clothe himself in ordinary European costume and have his picture taken. He sent copies of the photographs home, and his family, friends, and official superiors were shocked at his apostasy. He knew that would be the effect, and to prepare himself for the storm that would greet him on returning he put in all his time studying European institutions, and in acquiring the rudiments of French and English.
When he arrived home in 1868 the revolution that ended forever the power of the Shogun, abolished the Samurai, and vastly curtailed the privileges of the nobility had begun. He remained true to the Shogun, but after the utter defeat of the latter before the walls of Kioto he entered the service of the Mikado, and his knowledge was of vast importance in the reorganization and rebuilding that came after the revolution had done its work.
In 1870 he was appointed assistant vice-minister of finance, and in that position he undertook to place the currencyof the country on a firm basis. Japan was flooded with depreciated paper money, with a face value of so much rice. This was steadily called in and more stable money issued.
This same year the first railroad in Japan—the Tokyo-Yokohama, twenty miles long—was constructed, and Shibuzawa aided in the work to the full extent of his power. Higher political offices were open to him, but he decided he could be of more use to his country as a business man than as an official, so in 1873 he resigned office.
"I realized," he said, "that the real force of progress lay in actual business, not in politics, and that the business element was really the most influential for the advancement of the country. I soon came to the conclusion that the capital of an individual was not enough to accomplish very much, and I then became the means of introducing the company system into Japan. The idea was successful, and the government approved it. Since then, I may say, every industry in the country has increased—some twenty times, some ten times, and none less than five times."
His first act was to establish a national bank, modeled on the national banks of the United States, and two years later he organized the Tokyo Chamber of Commerce, modeled also on American chambers of commerce, and of this became president. The extension of railroads, the establishment of gas companies, pulp-mills, cotton-mills, iron-foundries, shipyards, and steamship lines next occupied his attention, and he was successful in all of them. The amount of money he made personally was not great, but he placed Japan on a sound, modern commercial basis.
The results of his work were seen first in the Chinese-Japanese War of 1894 and 1895, and later in the war between Japan and Russia. Japan was ready, financially, for these conflicts. It was possible for the Japanese mills and factories to furnish much of the equipment for the Japanese armies.
The advice of Shibuzawa constantly had been:
"Get in line with progress. Be as modern in all things as the rest of the world."
He had to go against ancient prejudices, shatter ancient customs, and shock conservative people, as he did when he cut off his topknot and replaced his Japanese garb with modern European clothing. But his advice was good, and, it having been heeded, Japan profited not a little.
Massachusetts Senator, Though Neitheran Orator Nor an Author, Is aHighly Successful Statesman.
Winthrop Murray Crane, who succeeded George Frisbie Hoar as United States Senator from Massachusetts, is not an author, orator, or scholar, but Massachusetts is as proud of him as of the other distinguished Senators she has furnished. Senator Crane was born in Dalton, Massachusetts, in 1853. His grandfather had started a small paper-mill in a valley among the Berkshire hills, more than fifty years before that date, and Crane's father, in turn, had taken up the business and continued it. Still, while it gave a fair living, it did little more, and was of no greater consequence than hundreds of other little industries in the State.
Young Crane was educated at Williston Academy, Easthampton. He showed no fondness for books and study, and made no attempt to get a college education. At seventeen he left school, put on overalls and started in to learn the paper-making business in his father's mill. Methods were still crude and the production of the mill was small.
When Crane had learned all the mill could teach him he began to look beyond it for improved methods, for a greater outlet for the product, and for increased capacity. He speedily found ways to reach all three, and the little mill began to take on importance.
In 1879 he learned of a new method of running silk threads through paper, and he was convinced that this was an important advantage in the making of paper for currency, as it would render counterfeiting more difficult. He madeup some samples of the new paper and took them to Washington. Those whom he saw were not at first impressed, and he was referred from one official to another, back and around the whole line, spending several weeks in fruitless endeavor.
The case of the red-threaded paper seemed hopeless, but he stuck persistently to the task, and brought the paper so often to the notice of the authorities that at last they consented to look at it. Then its advantages were evident, and the Crane Brothers' paper-mills got a contract to furnish a lot of bond-paper for the printing of government notes. They have held the contract ever since, and all the paper on which United States money is printed comes from the paper-mills in Dalton.
Crane made his first appearance in politics in 1892 as a delegate to the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis, when Harrison was renominated, and later, in 1896, he was a delegate to the St. Louis convention where McKinley was nominated. It was in 1896, too, that he ran for office for the first time and was elected Lieutenant-Governor of his State. He made no speeches and issued no political documents during this time, nor did he when he ran on two subsequent occasions for Lieutenant-Governor, nor in 1899 when he ran for Governor.
The earliest document to bear his signature was his first message as Governor of Massachusetts. It was the shortest ever submitted at the opening of the Great and General Court, but its terse, straightforward, businesslike statements, utterly devoid of rhetoric, fully acquainted the members with the views of the Governor and outlined the work necessary to be done.
The messages he subsequently sent were of the same nature, and, besides being simple, they were short and to the point. They were unique also in the fact that each recommendation they contained was afterward enacted into law. The great work of his administration was the freeing of the State from the expense and inefficiency of a multitude of boards and committees. Such action was businesslike and pleased the people, but it made the politicians shudder.
Besides the paper-making business, Crane is interested in various other big enterprises. Crane Brothers hold the largest block of stock in the American Bell Telephone Company, for they were among the first to recognize the importance of the new invention, and they went in at a time when the company was struggling for life.
Senator Hoar died in 1904, and former Governor Crane was the only man suggested as his successor. Governor Bates made the appointment and Mr. Crane reluctantly left business again and took up his duties at the national capital. There is little probability of his making any speeches, or of writing any literature while he is a member, but his work will be felt in legislation as forcefully as it was while he was Governor of Massachusetts.
Son of a Washerwoman DeterminedlyTrod Thorny Paths Until He Becamea British Cabinet Minister.
John Burns, president of the Local Government Board in the Liberal Cabinet of Premier Campbell-Bannerman, has been for many years the principal representative of labor unionism in the British House of Commons. In that capacity he received no compensation from the government. His salary now amounts to ten thousand dollars a year, and the administration expenses of the department of which he is the head amounts to one million two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year.
Many years ago, one bitterly cold winter night, or morning, for it was then nearly one o'clock, a puny boy of eight was helping his mother carry a big basket full of washing. At the bottom of the basket there was a lot of broken food that had been given to her by persons who knew the cruel struggle she had to support not only the little boy with her, but his several brothers.
The thought of the food and the feast he would have strengthened him to the heavy task for a while, but at last it proved too much for him and he staggered so that the basket had to be put down on the sidewalk, and he sat on it to rest. They were then near the houses of Parliament, and the boy choked back a sob as he shivered, looking up at the building.
"Mother," he said at last, "if ever I have the health and strength, no mother will have to work as you do; and no child shall do what I have to do."
The boy was John Burns.
Between the time he helped carry home the washing and his elevation to the cabinet there intervened years of the hardest kind of work, and his mother did not live to see his triumph in the end. Almost as soon as he could walk young Burns began to help with such work as could be done at home. At the age of ten he went to work in a candle-factory and received seventy-five cents a week for his labor. That was followed by a short term as pot-boy in an inn and as a "boy in buttons."
Such work did not suit him, and he went as rivet-boy in the Vauxhall Ironworks, and when he was fourteen he became apprentice to an engineer. He had had little schooling, and before he began his apprenticeship he had begun to educate himself.
While he was an apprentice he taught himself French, and laid the foundation of a good reading knowledge of German. He also began public speaking at out-of-door meetings, and it was at these meetings, with their constantly shifting crowds, with innumerable interruptions, and almost continual opposition, that he developed readiness in debate and coolness while under a hot fire of questions.
At nineteen his apprenticeship was finished and he went to South Africa as foreman-engineer on some work being done at the delta of the Niger. Burns, alone of all the white men there, passed through the year the work lasted without a day of serious sickness.
"That's because I don't smoke and don't drink," he said. "I found I couldn't do such things and continue work."
It was while employed in South Africa that Burns unearthed a copy of Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations," from beneath a pile of sand and rubbish where it had been thrown by some predecessor on the work. This was the only book he had for several weeks of his stay, and he read it and studied it until he practically committed it to memory.
The battered old copy of "The Wealth of Nations" found there in South Africa forms one of the treasures of Burns's library, and there are in England few private libraries that can equal his in the department of economics and sociology.
The courage Burns subsequently displayed in political fights was shown in a physical way during his South African period. On one occasion a sick man fell into a river swarming with water-snakes and crocodiles. Burns, without an instant's hesitation, jumped in and rescued him.
On another occasion the propeller blades of the steam-launch which the men were using worked loose and sunk to the muddy bottom of the river. The water was thick and filthy with rank, decaying vegetable matter, and there was an added source of danger in the venomous creatures that might be lurking there.
The skipper of the launch was preparing to dive for the blades when Burns stopped him:
"Don't try it," he said. "You're married and I'm not, so there won't be so much at stake if I do it."
He dived in the reeking water for an hour and in the end fished up the blades.
He returned to Europe with a few pounds, and he used all of this in taking a six months' tour of the Continent, devoting his whole attention to the study of social conditions. Burns's real work as an agitator began on his return to England. He had settled down to work as an engineer, but he gave all his spare time to organizing the working people, both into trade-unions and into a new political party. The result was that he lost his job, and for seven weeks he tramped through the country looking for another one.
Shortly after this he was arrested forthe part he took in the unemployed agitation, but he conducted his case with such skill that he went free.
The following year, 1887, he was arrested again because of his work during the demonstration of the unemployed, and was sentenced, together with Cunninghame Graham, to six weeks' imprisonment for rioting in Trafalgar Square.
In 1889 the great dock strike occurred, and the part Burns took in it made him known on both sides of the Atlantic. During January of that year he was elected to the London County Council, and two years later he entered Parliament.
Burns's whole work in Parliament was devoted to those subjects with which he was thoroughly acquainted, and his readiness in debate and his willingness to force the issue jarred the dignity of some of the older members.
"The honorable member is not in the London County Council now," suggested a well-known horse-owner and racing enthusiast who had been worsted in argument. "Nor is the right honorable gentleman on Newmarket Heath," replied Burns.
After that the right honorable race-track patron let him alone.
At the last election the Liberal and Labor parties swept everything before them, and Burns was selected from among the Laborites for a place in the cabinet. He had said on one occasion, while a member of the London County Council:
"No man is worth more than five hundred pounds a year." His salary as president of the Local Government Board is two thousand pounds.
"What about that 'ere salary of two thousand pounds?" one of his Battersea constituents asked.
"That is the recognized trade-union rate for the job," Burns answered. "If I took less I would be a blackleg."
"What are you going to do with the fifteen hundred too much?" persisted the questioner.
"Well," answered Burns, "for details about that you'll have to ask the missus."
The coming of Burns into office shook things up considerably. The Local Government Board has to deal with the Poor Law administration, public health, and the general control of the authorities established by the Local Government Act. There were several purely ornamental posts, at good salaries, on the board, and there were plenty of inefficients holding office. The first day of Burns's tenure he called his private secretary, a man holding office from the previous administration, and started to dictate letters.
"You're going much too fast," the man protested, "I really can't keep up with you."
"How many words do you write a minute?" Burns asked.
"Words a minute?" echoed the man in a puzzled voice. "Really, I never counted."
"You don't mean to say you're not a stenographer!"
The man was shocked to think that he should be looked upon as a stenographer. He was private secretary to the president of the Local Government Board, and nothing else.
"See here," said Burns, "this office has work to do, and you won't be of much use to me unless you know shorthand. I'll give you every afternoon off to learn it. I expect that it will take you three months. Till then I suppose I'll have to put up with slower methods."
Scottish-American Inventor Had HardWork to Convince Them the TelephoneWas Anything More than a Toy.
Alexander Graham Bell, whose discoveries contributed largely to the commercial success of the telephone, had been known only as a teacher of deaf-mutes previous to the time he took out his telephone patents. He had been a teacher in Scotland, his native country, and when he emigrated to America it was with the intention of continuing to teach here. The system he used was one of his own, and from the first he got good results from the most difficult cases.
Important as this work was, he could earn nothing more than a scanty living.Soon even this income was threatened, for he began to devote more and more time to the study of sound-transmission, and in order to make a living at all by teaching it was necessary to devote his entire time to it.
At the Centennial Exhibition, in Philadelphia, he showed a crude model of a telephone, but it attracted only passing notice from capitalists, though eminent scientists predicted a future for it. The results were not what Bell looked for, but he took up the work again, made some improvements, and took out patents covering the principal features of the telephone as it is to-day.
Three hours after he filed his application Elisha Gray filed a caveat for his telephone.
On February 1, 1877, Bell went to Salem, Massachusetts, and gave his first public exhibition and lecture. It aroused some curiosity, but drew no financial backing. On May 10 he lectured before the Boston Academy, and there, apparently, the results were little more encouraging than they had been at Salem.
The general opinion expressed was that the telephone was a remarkably clever toy, but that it was nothing more. Investors took this view of it, and Bell, who had been reduced to poverty by the expenses of his experiments, went from one financier to another offering stock in the company he had formed, but everywhere he met with rebuffs. Financiers did not care to have anything to do with a machine designed to accomplish the impossible feat of making audible the voice of a person many miles away.
The reception he met with did not in the least shake Bell's faith in his work, but he was sorely in need of money. He resolved on a desperate move, and he went to Chauncey M. Depew and offered him a one-sixth interest in the company if he would loan ten thousand dollars to put the company on its feet. Depew took a week to consider the proposition. At the end of the week he wrote back that the incident might be considered closed. The telephone was a clever idea, but it was utterly lacking in commercial possibilities, and ten thousand dollars was far too big a sum to risk in marketing an instrument that at best could never be more than a plaything.
Thus Depew let slip an opportunity to acquire for ten thousand dollars an interest that to-day could not be bought for less than twenty-five millions.
Bell was being hard pushed, and he determined to make a last offer. Don Cameron, of Pennsylvania, was then one of the leading figures in the United States Senate, and his influence throughout the country was very great. Bell went to him and offered him, for nothing, one-half interest in the invention if he would endeavor to have it introduced to the public.
Cameron would not even consider the proposition, and gave orders "that Bell and his fool talking-machine be thrown out" if he again attempted to get an interview.
While Bell was ineffectually struggling in this direction, a few men in Boston, who had been interested by the exhibition before the Boston Academy, determined to give the telephone a thorough test. A line three miles long was built from Boston to Somerville, and this proved so unequivocally the utility of the telephone that there could no longer be any question of its success.
The pioneer line, three miles long, cost a few hundred dollars. In less than thirty years the number of miles of wire has increased to nearly four million, and thirty thousand persons are regularly employed by the telephone companies.
Soon after the Somerville demonstration, the tide turned in Bell's favor. Capital, which had previously fought shy of the talking-machine, rushed boldly in, and the inventor who had been turned away from office-doors and denied access to the presence of politicians was offered fabulous prices for part interest in his company.
Small investors clamored to get their money down, and big capitalists fought for control of the invention that promised such great things. Within a few weeks Bell, who couldn't give a half interest in his invention to Don Cameron, and who couldn't raise a ten-thousand-dollar loan from Depew, was in a position to turn millions of money away, and there was no more begging for a few dollars to give the telephone a try-out.
By Horace Seymour Keller.