The Americanization of Edward Bok Part 23

"J. A. Early."

Bok wrote to Eugene Field, once, asking him why in all his verse he had never written any love-songs, and suggesting that the story of Jacob and Rachel would have made a theme for a beautiful love-poem. Field's reply is interesting and characteristic, and throws a light on an omission in his works at which many have wondered:

"Dear Bok:

"I'll see what I can do with the suggestion as to Jacob and Rachel.

Several have asked me why I have never written any love-songs. That is hard to answer. I presume it is because I married so young. I was married at twenty-three, and did not begin to write until I was twenty-nine. Most of my lullabies are, in a sense, love-songs; so is 'To a Usurper,' 'A Valentine,' 'The Little Bit of a Woman,' 'Lovers' Lane,'

etc., but not the kind commonly called love-songs. I am sending you herewith my first love-song, and even into it has crept a cadence that makes it a love-song of maturity rather than of youth. I do not know that you will care to have it, but it will interest you as the first....

"Ever sincerely yours,

"Eugene Field."

During the last years of his life, Bok tried to interest Benjamin Harrison, former President of the United States, in golf, since his physician had ordered "moderate outdoor exercise." Bok offered to equip him with the necessary clubs and b.a.l.l.s. When he received the b.a.l.l.s, the ex-president wrote:

"Thanks. But does not a bottle of liniment go with each ball?"

When William Howard Taft became President of the United States, the impression was given out that journalists would not be so welcome at the White House as they had been during the administration of President Roosevelt. Mr. Taft, writing to Bok about another matter, asked why he had not called and talked it over while in Was.h.i.+ngton. Bok explained the impression that was current; whereupon came the answer, swift and definite!

"There are no _personae non gratae_ at the White House. I long ago learned the waste of time in maintaining such a cla.s.s."

There was in circulation during Henry Ward Beecher's lifetime a story, which is still revived every now and then, that on a hot Sunday morning in early summer, he began his sermon in Plymouth Church by declaring that "It is too d.a.m.ned hot to preach." Bok wrote to the great preacher, asked him the truth of this report, and received this definite denial:

"My Dear Friend:

"No, I never did begin a sermon with the remark that "it is d--d hot,"

etc. It is a story a hundred years old, revamped every few years to suit some new man. When I am dead and gone, it will be told to the rising generation respecting some other man, and then, as now, there will be fools who will swear that they heard it!

"Henry Ward Beecher."

When Bok's father pa.s.sed away, he left, among his effects, a large number of Confederate bonds. Bok wrote to Jefferson Davis, asking if they had any value, and received this characteristic answer:

"I regret my inability to give an opinion. The theory of the Confederate Government, like that of the United States, was to separate the sword from the purse. Therefore, the Confederate States Treasury was under the control not of the Chief Executive, but of the Congress and the Secretary of the Treasury. This may explain my want of special information in regard to the Confederate States Bonds. Generally, I may state that the Confederate Government cannot have preserved a fund for the redemption of its Bonds other than the cotton subscribed by our citizens for that purpose. At the termination of the War, the United States Government, claiming to be the successor of the Confederate Government, seized all its property which could be found, both at home and abroad. I have not heard of any purpose to apply these a.s.sets to the payment of the liabilities of the Confederacy, and, therefore, have been at a loss to account for the demand which has lately been made for the Confederate Bonds.

"Jefferson Davis."

Always the soul of courtesy itself, and most obliging in granting the numerous requests which came to him for his autograph, William Dean Howells finally turned; and Bok always considered himself fortunate that the novelist announced his decision to him in the following characteristic letter:

"The requests for my autograph have of late become so burdensome that I am obliged either to refuse all or to make some sort of limitation.

Every author must have an uneasy fear that his signature is 'collected'

at times like postage-stamps, and at times 'traded' among the collectors for other signatures. That would not matter so much if the applicants were always able to spell his name, or were apparently acquainted with his work or interested in it.

"I propose, therefore, to give my name hereafter only to such askers as can furnish me proof by intelligent comment upon it that they have read some book of mine. If they can inclose a bookseller's certificate that they have bought the book, their case will be very much strengthened; but I do not insist upon this. In all instances a card and a stamped and directed envelope must be inclosed. I will never 'add a sentiment'

except in the case of applicants who can give me proof that they have read all my books, now some thirty or forty in number.

"W. D. Howells."

It need hardly be added that Mr. Howells's good nature prevented his adherence to his rule!

Rudyard Kipling is another whose letters fairly vibrate with personality; few men can write more interestingly, or, incidentally, considering his microscopic handwriting, say more on a letter page.

Bok was telling Kipling one day about the sc.r.a.pple so dear to the heart of the Philadelphian as a breakfast dish. The author had never heard of it or tasted it, and wished for a sample. So, upon his return home, Bok had a Philadelphia market-man send some of the Philadelphia-made article, packed in ice, to Kipling in his English home. There were several pounds of it and Kipling wrote:

"By the way, that sc.r.a.pple--which by token is a dish for the G.o.ds--arrived in perfect condition, and I ate it all, or as much as I could get hold of. I am extremely grateful for it. It's all nonsense about pig being unwholesome. There isn't a Mary-ache in a barrel of sc.r.a.pple."

Then later came this afterthought:

"A n.o.ble dish is that sc.r.a.pple, but don't eat three slices and go to work straight on top of 'em. That's the way to dyspepsia!

"P. S. I wish to goodness you'd give another look at England before long. It's quite a country; really it is. Old, too, I believe."

It was Kipling who suggested that Bok should name his Merion home "Swastika." Bok asked what the author knew about the mystic sign:

"There is a huge book (I've forgotten the name, but the Smithsonian will know)," he wrote back, "about the Swastika (p.r.o.nounced Swas-ti-ka to rhyme with 'car's ticker'), in literature, art, religion, dogma, etc. I believe there are two sorts of Swastikas, one [figure] and one [figure]; one is bad, the other is good, but which is which I know not for sure.

The Hindu trader opens his yearly account-books with a Swastika as 'an auspicious beginning,' and all the races of the earth have used it. It's an inexhaustible subject, and some man in the Smithsonian ought to be full of it. Anyhow, the sign on the door or the hearth should protect you against fire and water and thieves.

"By this time should have reached you a Swastika door-knocker, which I hope may fit in with the new house and the new name. It was made by a village-smith; and you will see that it has my initials, to which I hope you will add yours, that the story may be complete.

"We are settled out here in Cape Town, eating strawberries in January and complaining of the heat, which for the last two days has been a little more than we pampered folk are used to; say 70 at night. But what a lovely land it is, and how superb are the hydrangeas! Figure to yourself four acres of 'em, all in bloom on the hillside near our home!"

Bok had visited the Panama Ca.n.a.l before its completion and had talked with the men, high and low, working on it, asking them how they felt about President Roosevelt's action in "digging the Ca.n.a.l first and talking about it afterwards." He wrote the result of his talks to Colonel Roosevelt, and received this reply:

"I shall always keep your letter, for I shall want my children and grandchildren to see it after I am gone. I feel just as you do about the Ca.n.a.l. It is the greatest contribution I was able to make to my country; and while I do not believe my countrymen appreciate this at the moment, I am extremely pleased to know that the men on the Ca.n.a.l do, for they are the men who have done and are doing the great job. I am awfully pleased that you feel the way you do.

"Theodore Roosevelt."

In 1887, General William Tec.u.mseh Sherman was much talked about as a candidate for the presidency, until his famous declaration came out: "I will not run if nominated, and will not serve if elected." During the weeks of talk, however, much was said of General Sherman's religious views, some contending that he was a Roman Catholic; others that he was a Protestant.

Bok wrote to General Sherman and asked him. His answer was direct:

"My family is strongly Roman Catholic, but I am not. Until I ask some favor the public has no claim to question me further."

When Mrs. Sherman pa.s.sed away, Doctor T. DeWitt Talmage wrote General Sherman a note of condolence, and what is perhaps one of the fullest expositions of his religious faith to which he ever gave expression came from him in a most remarkable letter, which Doctor Talmage gave to Bok.

"New York, December 12, 1886.

"My Dear Friend:

"Your most tender epistle from Mansfield, Ohio, of December 9 brought here last night by your son awakens in my brain a flood of memories.

Mrs. Sherman was by nature and inheritance an Irish Catholic. Her grandfather, Hugh Boyle, was a highly educated cla.s.sical scholar, whom I remember well,--married the half sister of the mother of James G. Blaine at Brownsville, Pa., settled in our native town Lancaster, Fairfield County, Ohio, and became the Clerk of the County Court. He had two daughters, Maria and Susan. Maria became the wife of Thomas Ewing, about 1819, and was the mother of my wife, Ellen Boyle Ewing. She was so staunch to what she believed the true Faith that I am sure that though she loved her children better than herself, she would have seen them die with less pang, than to depart from the "Faith." Mr. Ewing was a great big man, an intellectual giant, and looked down on religion as something domestic, something consoling which ought to be encouraged; and to him it made little difference whether the religion was Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist, or Catholic, provided the acts were 'half as good' as their professions.

"In 1829 my father, a Judge of the Supreme Court of Ohio, died at Lebanon away from home, leaving his widow, Mary Hoyt of Norwalk, Conn.

(sister to Charles and James Hoyt of Brooklyn) with a frame house in Lancaster, an income of $200 a year and eleven as hungry, rough, and uncouth children as ever existed on earth. But father had been kind, generous, manly with a big heart; and when it ceased to beat friends turned up--Our Uncle Stoddard took Charles, the oldest; W. I. married the next, Elisabeth (still living); Amelia was soon married to a merchant in Mansfield, McCorab; I, the third son, was adopted by Thomas Ewing, a neighbor, and John fell to his namesake in Mt. Vernon, a merchant.

"Surely 'Man proposes and G.o.d disposes.' I could fill a hundred pages, but will not bore you. A half century has pa.s.sed and you, a Protestant minister, write me a kind, affectionate letter about my Catholic wife from Mansfield, one of my family homes, where my mother, Mary Hoyt, died, and where our Grandmother, Betsey Stoddard, lies buried. Oh, what a flood of memories come up at the name of Betsey Stoddard,--daughter of the Revd. Mr. Stoddard, who preached three times every Sunday, and as often in between as he could cajole a congregation at ancient Woodbury, Conn.,--who came down from Mansfield to Lancaster, three days' hard journey to regulate the family of her son Judge Sherman, whose gentle wife was as afraid of Grandma as any of us boys. She never spared the rod or broom, but she had more square solid sense to the yard than any woman I ever saw. From her Charles, John, and I inherit what little sense we possess.

"Lancaster, Fairfield County, was our paternal home, Mansfield that of Grandmother Stoddard and her daughter, Betsey Parker. There Charles and John settled, and when in 1846 I went to California Mother also went there, and there died in 1851.