Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie

Mr. Arnold was desirous of hearing how the lecturer held his audiences.

"Well," he said, "you mustn't keep them laughing too long, or they will think you are laughing at them. After giving the audience amusement you must become earnest and play the serious rôle. For instance, 'There are two things in this life for which no man is ever prepared. Who will tell me what these are?' Finally some one cries out 'Death.' 'Well, who gives me the other?' Many respond—wealth, happiness, strength, marriage, taxes. At last Josh begins, solemnly: 'None of you has given the second. There are two things on earth for which no man is ever prepared, and them's twins,' and the house shakes." Mr. Arnold did also.

"Do you keep on inventing new stories?" was asked.

"Yes, always. You can't lecture year after year unless you find new stories, and sometimes these fail to crack. I had one nut which I felt sure would crack and bring down the house, but try as I would it never did itself justice, all because I could not find the indispensable word, just one word. I was sitting before a roaring wood fire one night up in Michigan when the word came to me which I knew would crack like a whip. I tried it on the boys and it did. It lasted longer than any one word I used. I began: 'This is a highly critical age. People won't believe until they fully understand. Now there's Jonah and the whale. They want to know all about it, and it's my opinion that neither Jonah nor the whale fully understood it. And then they ask what Jonah was doing in the whale's—the whale's society.'"

Mr. Shaw was walking down Broadway one day when accosted by a real Westerner, who said:

"I think you are Josh Billings."

"Well, sometimes I am called that."

"I have five thousand dollars for you right here in my pocket-book."

"Here's Delmonico's, come in and tell me all about it."

After seating themselves, the stranger said he was part owner in a gold mine in California, and explained that there had been a dispute about its ownership and that the conference of partners broke up in quarreling. The stranger said he had left, threatening he would take the bull by the horns and begin legal proceedings. "The next morning I went to the meeting and told them I had turned over Josh Billings's almanac that morning and the lesson for the day was: 'When you take the bull by the horns, take him by the tail; you can get a better hold and let go when you're a mind to.' We laughed and laughed and felt that was good sense. We took your advice, settled, and parted good friends. Some one moved that five thousand dollars be given Josh, and as I was coming East they appointed me treasurer and I promised to hand it over. There it is."

The evening ended by Mr. Arnold saying:

"Well, Mr. Shaw, if ever you come to lecture in England, I shall be glad to welcome and introduce you to your first audience. Any foolish man called a lord could do you more good than I by introducing you, but I should so much like to do it."

Imagine Matthew Arnold, the apostle of sweetness and light, introducing Josh Billings, the foremost of jesters, to a select London audience.

In after years he never failed to ask after "our leonine friend, Mr. Shaw."

Meeting Josh at the Windsor one morning after the notable dinner I sat down with him in the rotunda and he pulled out a small memorandum book, saying as he did so:

"Where's Arnold? I wonder what he would say to this. The 'Century' gives me $100 a week, I agreeing to send them any trifle that occurs to me. I try to give it something. Here's this from Uncle Zekiel, my weekly budget: 'Of course the critic is a greater man than the author. Any fellow who can point out the mistakes another fellow has made is a darned sight smarter fellow than the fellow who made them.'"

I told Mr. Arnold a Chicago story, or rather a story about Chicago. A society lady of Boston visiting her schoolmate friend in Chicago, who was about to be married, was overwhelmed with attention. Asked by a noted citizen one evening what had charmed her most in Chicago, she graciously replied:

"What surprises me most isn't the bustle of business, or your remarkable development materially, or your grand residences; it is the degree of culture and refinement I find here." The response promptly came:

"Oh, we are just dizzy on cult out here, you bet."

Mr. Arnold was not prepared to enjoy Chicago, which had impressed him as the headquarters of Philistinism. He was, however, surprised and gratified at meeting with so much "culture and refinement." Before he started he was curious to know what he should find most interesting. I laughingly said that he would probably first be taken to see the most wonderful sight there, which was said to be the slaughter houses, with new machines so perfected that the hog driven in at one end came out hams at the other before its squeal was out of one's ears. Then after a pause he asked reflectively:

"But why should one go to slaughter houses, why should one hear hogs squeal?" I could give no reason, so the matter rested.

Mr. Arnold's Old Testament favorite was certainly Isaiah: at least his frequent quotations from that great poet, as he called him, led one to this conclusion. I found in my tour around the world that the sacred books of other religions had been stripped of the dross that had necessarily accumulated around their legends. I remembered Mr. Arnold saying that the Scriptures should be so dealt with. The gems from Confucius and others which delight the world have been selected with much care and appear as "collects." The disciple has not the objectionable accretions of the ignorant past presented to him.

The more one thinks over the matter, the stronger one's opinion becomes that the Christian will have to follow the Eastern example and winnow the wheat from the chaff—worse than chaff, sometimes the positively pernicious and even poisonous refuse. Burns, in the "Cotter's Saturday Night," pictures the good man taking down the big Bible for the evening service:

"He wales a portion with judicious care."

We should have those portions selected and use the selections only. In this, and much besides, the man whom I am so thankful for having known and am so favored as to call friend, has proved the true teacher in advance of his age, the greatest poetic teacher in the domain of "the future and its viewless things."

I took Arnold down from our summer home at Cresson in the Alleghanies to see black, smoky Pittsburgh. In the path from the Edgar Thomson Steel Works to the railway station there are two flights of steps to the bridge across the railway, the second rather steep. When we had ascended about three quarters of it he suddenly stopped to gain breath. Leaning upon the rail and putting his hand upon his heart, he said to me:

"Ah, this will some day do for me, as it did for my father."

I did not know then of the weakness of his heart, but I never forgot this incident, and when not long after the sad news came of his sudden death, after exertion in England endeavoring to evade an obstacle, it came back to me with a great pang that our friend had foretold his fate. Our loss was great. To no man I have known could Burns's epitaph upon Tam Samson be more appropriately applied:

"Tam Samson's weel-worn clay here lies:
Ye canting zealots, spare him!
If honest worth in heaven rise,
Ye'll mend or ye win near him."

The name of a dear man comes to me just here, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, of Boston, everybody's doctor, whose only ailment toward the end was being eighty years of age. He was a boy to the last. When Matthew Arnold died a few friends could not resist taking steps toward a suitable memorial to his memory. These friends quietly provided the necessary sum, as no public appeal could be thought of. No one could be permitted to contribute to such a fund except such as had a right to the privilege, for privilege it was felt to be. Double, triple the sum could readily have been obtained. I had the great satisfaction of being permitted to join the select few and to give the matter a little attention upon our side of the Atlantic. Of course I never thought of mentioning the matter to dear Dr. Holmes—not that he was not one of the elect, but that no author or professional man should be asked to contribute money to funds which, with rare exceptions, are best employed when used for themselves. One morning, however, I received a note from the doctor, saying that it had been whispered to him that there was such a movement on foot, and that I had been mentioned in connection with it, and if he were judged worthy to have his name upon the roll of honor, he would be gratified. Since he had heard of it he could not rest without writing to me, and he should like to hear in reply. That he was thought worthy goes without saying.

This is the kind of memorial any man might wish. I venture to say that there was not one who contributed to it who was not grateful to the kind fates for giving him the opportunity.

CHAPTER XXIII

BRITISH POLITICAL LEADERS

IN London, Lord Rosebery, then in Gladstone's Cabinet and a rising statesman, was good enough to invite me to dine with him to meet Mr. Gladstone, and I am indebted to him for meeting the world's first citizen. This was, I think, in 1885, for my "Triumphant Democracy"[63 - Triumphant Democracy, or Fifty Years' March of the Republic. London and New York, 1886.] appeared in 1886, and I remember giving Mr. Gladstone, upon that occasion, some startling figures which I had prepared for it.

I never did what I thought right in a social matter with greater self-denial, than when later the first invitation came from Mr. Gladstone to dine with him. I was engaged to dine elsewhere and sorely tempted to plead that an invitation from the real ruler of Great Britain should be considered as much of a command as that of the ornamental dignitary. But I kept my engagement and missed the man I most wished to meet. The privilege came later, fortunately, when subsequent visits to him at Hawarden were made.

Lord Rosebery opened the first library I ever gave, that of Dunfermline, and he has recently (1905) opened the latest given by me—one away over in Stornoway. When he last visited New York I drove him along the Riverside Drive, and he declared that no city in the world possessed such an attraction. He was a man of brilliant parts, but his resolutions were

"Sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought."

Had he been born to labor and entered the House of Commons in youth, instead of being dropped without effort into the gilded upper chamber, he might have acquired in the rough-and-tumble of life the tougher skin, for he was highly sensitive and lacked tenacity of purpose essential to command in political life. He was a charming speaker—a eulogist with the lightest touch and the most graceful style upon certain themes of any speaker of his day. [Since these lines were written he has become, perhaps, the foremost eulogist of our race. He has achieved a high place. All honor to him!]

One morning I called by appointment upon him. After greetings he took up an envelope which I saw as I entered had been carefully laid on his desk, and handed it to me, saying:

"I wish you to dismiss your secretary."

"That is a big order, Your Lordship. He is indispensable, and a Scotsman," I replied. "What is the matter with him?"

"This isn't your handwriting; it is his. What do you think of a man who spells Rosebery with two r's?"

I said if I were sensitive on that point life would not be endurable for me. "I receive many letters daily when at home and I am sure that twenty to thirty per cent of them mis-spell my name, ranging from 'Karnaghie' to 'Carnagay.'"

But he was in earnest. Just such little matters gave him great annoyance. Men of action should learn to laugh at and enjoy these small things, or they themselves may become "small." A charming personality withal, but shy, sensitive, capricious, and reserved, qualities which a few years in the Commons would probably have modified.

When he was, as a Liberal, surprising the House of Lords and creating some stir, I ventured to let off a little of my own democracy upon him.

"Stand for Parliament boldly. Throw off your hereditary rank, declaring you scorn to accept a privilege which is not the right of every citizen. Thus make yourself the real leader of the people, which you never can be while a peer. You are young, brilliant, captivating, with the gift of charming speech. No question of your being Prime Minister if you take the plunge."

To my surprise, although apparently interested, he said very quietly:

"But the House of Commons couldn't admit me as a peer."

"That's what I should hope. If I were in your place, and rejected, I would stand again for the next vacancy and force the issue. Insist that one having renounced his hereditary privileges becomes elevated to citizenship and is eligible for any position to which he is elected. Victory is certain. That's playing the part of a Cromwell. Democracy worships a precedent-breaker or a precedent-maker."