Lives of Poor Boys Who Became Famous Part 14

"Torpedoes."

The supreme moment had come for decision. The grand old admiral offered up this prayer in his heart, "O G.o.d, direct me what to do. Shall I go on?" And a voice seemed to answer, "Go on!"

"Go ahead!" he shouted to his captain on the _Hartford_; "give her all the steam you've got!" And like a thing of life she swept on over the torpedoes to the head of the fleet, where she became the special target of the enemy. Her timbers crashed, and her "wounded came pouring down,--cries never to be forgotten." Twice the brave admiral was lashed to the rigging by his devoted men, lest in his exposed position he fall overboard if struck by a ball. The fleet lost three hundred and thirty-five men, but Farragut gained the day. When all was over, and he looked upon the dead laid out on the port side of his s.h.i.+p, he wept like a child. The prisoners captured in the defences of Mobile were one thousand four hundred and sixty-four, with one hundred and four guns.

On his return to New York he was welcomed with the grandest demonstrations. Crowds gathered at the Battery, a public reception was given him at the Custom House, and fifty thousand dollars with which to buy a house in New York. Congress made him Vice-Admiral. Prominent politicians asked him to become a candidate for the Presidency; but he refused, saying, "I have no ambition for anything but what I am,--an admiral. I have worked hard for three years, have been in eleven fights, and am willing to fight eleven more if necessary, but when I go home I desire peace and comfort."

At Hastings-on-the-Hudson, the streets were arched with the words "New Orleans," "Mobile," "Jackson," "St. Philip," etc. Boston gave him a welcome reception at Faneuil Hall, Oliver Wendell Holmes reading a poem on the occasion. At Cambridge, two hundred Harvard students took his horses from the carriage, and attaching ropes to it, drew him through the streets. On July 25, 1866, the rank of admiral was created by Congress, and Farragut was appointed to the place. Honors, and well-deserved ones, had come at last to the brave mids.h.i.+pman.

The next year, in command of the European squadron, accompanied by Mrs.

Farragut, who went by special permission of the President, he visited France, Russia, and other countries.

Napoleon III. welcomed him to the Tuileries; the Grand Duke Constantine of Russia, Duke of Edinburgh, and Victor Emmanuel each made him their guest; he dined with the King of Denmark and the King of Greece, and Queen Victoria received him at the Osborne House. Two years later he visited the navy yard on the Pacific Coast, which he had established years before.

He died Aug. 14, 1870, at the age of sixty-nine, universally honored and regretted. Congress appropriated twenty thousand dollars for his statue on Farragut Square, Was.h.i.+ngton, and the work has been executed by Vinnie Ream Hoxie.

Success was not an accident with the Christian admiral. It was the result of devotion to duty, real bravery, and a life distinguished by purity of character and the highest sense of honor.

EZRA CORNELL.

In the winter of 1819 might have been seen travelling from New Jersey to De Ruyter in New York, a distance of two hundred and fifty miles, some covered emigrant wagons, containing a wife and six children in the first, and household goods and farming utensils in the others. Sometimes the occupants slept in a farmhouse, but usually in their vehicles by a camp-fire in the woods.

For two weeks they journeyed, sometimes through an almost uninhabited wilderness and over wellnigh impa.s.sable roads. The mother, with a baby in her arms,--her oldest child, Ezra, a boy of twelve,--must have been worn with this toilsome journey; but patient and cheerful, no word of repining escaped her lips. Elijah Cornell, a frank, n.o.ble-hearted Quaker, was going West to make his living as a potter and farmer combined.

Like other pioneers, they made ready their little home among the sterile hills; and there, for twenty years, they struggled to rear a family that grew to eleven children, instead of six. The boys of the family were taught the simple mysteries of pottery-making early in life, and thus formed habits of industry, while their limited income necessarily made them economical.

[Ill.u.s.tration: EZRA CORNELL.

(From his Biography, by Gov. A. B. Cornell.)]

The eldest boy, Ezra,--now sixteen,--was growing anxious to be something more than a potter. He was nearly six feet tall, thin, muscular, and full of energy. He was studious, reading every book within his reach, and desirous of an education, which there was no money to procure.

Determined, if possible, to go to the common school one more winter, he and his brother, fifteen years of age, chopped and cleared four acres of heavy beech and maple woodland, plowed, and planted it to corn, and thus made themselves able to finish their education.

Soon after the father engaged a carpenter to build a large pottery. Ezra a.s.sisted, and began to think he should like the trade of a carpenter.

When the structure was completed, taking his younger brother to the forest, they cut timber, and erected for their father's family a two-story dwelling, the best in the town. Without any supervision, Ezra had made the frame so that every part fitted in its exact place. This, for a boy of seventeen, became the wonder of the neighborhood.

Master-builders prophesied a rare carpenter for posterity.

It was evident that the quiet town of De Ruyter could not satisfy such a lad, and at eighteen he started away from his affectionate mother to try the world. She could trust him because he used neither liquor nor tobacco; was truthful, honest, and willing to work hard. If a young man desires to get his living easily, or is very particular as to the kind of work he undertakes, his future success may well be doubted. Ezra found no carpentering, as he had hoped; but in the vicinity of Syracuse, then a small village, he engaged himself for two years, to get out timber for s.h.i.+pment to New York by ca.n.a.l. The following year he worked in a shop making wool-carding machinery, and being now only twenty miles from De Ruyter, he walked home every Sat.u.r.day evening and back Monday morning. Twenty miles before a day's work would have been too long for most boys. There was no danger that Ezra would grow tender, either of foot or hand, through luxury.

Hearing that there was a good outlook for business at Ithaca, he walked forty miles thither, with a spare suit of clothes, and a few dollars in his pocket. Who would have said then that this unknown lad, with no capital save courage and ambition, would make the name of Ithaca, joined with that of Cornell, known round the world?

He obtained work as a carpenter, and was soon offered the position of keeping a cotton-mill in repair. This he gladly accepted, using what knowledge he had gained in the machine-shop. A year later, Colonel Beebe, proprietor of a flouring and plaster mill, asked young Cornell to repair his works; and so pleased was he with the mechanic that he kept him for twelve years, making him his confidential agent and general manager. When a tunnel was needed to bring water from Fall Creek, Cornell was made engineer-in-chief of the enterprise; when labor-saving machinery was required, the head of the enterprising young man invented it.

Meantime he had married, at the age of twenty-four, an intelligent girl, Mary Ann Wood, four years his junior, the second in a family of eleven children. As the young lady was not a Quaker, Cornell was formally excommunicated from his church for taking a person outside the fold. He was offered forgiveness and re-instatement if he would apologize and show proper regret, which he refused to do, feeling that the church had no right to decide upon the religious convictions of the person he loved.

He soon purchased a few acres of land near the mill, and erected a simple home for his bride. Here they lived for twenty years, and here their nine children were born, four of whom died early. It was happiness to go daily to his work, receive his comfortable salary, and see his children grow up around him with their needed wants supplied. But the comfortable salary came to an end. Colonel Beebe withdrew from active business, the mill was turned into a woollen factory, and Cornell was thrown out of work. Business depression was great all over the country.

In vain for months he sought for employment. The helpless family must be supported; at the age of thirty-six matters began to look serious.

Finally, he went to Maine in the endeavor to sell the patent right of a new plow, recently invented. He visited the "Maine Farmer," and met the editor, Hon. F. O. J. Smith, a member of Congress, who became much interested. He tried also to sell the patent in the State of Georgia, walking usually forty miles a day, but with little success. Again he started for Maine, walking from Ithaca to Albany, one hundred and sixty miles in four days, then, going by rail to Boston, and once more on foot to Portland. He was fond of walking, and used to say, "Nature can in no way be so rationally enjoyed, as through the opportunities afforded the pedestrian."

Entering the office of the "Maine Farmer" again, he found "Mr. Smith on his knees in the middle of his office floor, with a piece of chalk in his hand, the mould-board of a plow lying by his side, and with various chalk-marks on the floor before him."

Mr. Smith arose and grasped him cordially by the hand, saying, "Cornell, you are the very man I want to see. I have been trying to explain to neighbor Robertson a machine that I want made, but I cannot make him understand it. I want a kind of sc.r.a.per, or machine for digging a ditch for laying our telegraph pipe under ground. Congress has appropriated thirty thousand dollars to enable Professor Morse to test the practicability of his telegraph on a line between Was.h.i.+ngton and Baltimore. I have taken the contract to lay the pipe at one hundred dollars a mile."

Mr. Cornell's ready brain soon saw what kind of a machine was needed, and he sketched a rough diagram of it.

Without much hope of success, Smith said, "You make a machine, and I will pay the expense whether successful or not; if successful, I will pay you fifty dollars, or one hundred, or any price you may name."

Mr. Cornell at once went to a machine shop, made the patterns for the necessary castings, and then the wood-work for the frame. The trial of the new machine was made at Mr. Smith's homestead, four yoke of oxen being attached to the strange-looking plow, which cut a furrow two and one-half feet deep, and one and one-fourth inches wide, and laid the pipe in the bottom at the same time. It worked successfully, and Mr.

Cornell was asked to take charge of the laying of the pipe between Baltimore and Was.h.i.+ngton. He accepted, for he believed the telegraph would become a vast instrument in civilization. The loss of a position at the Beebe mill proved the opening to a broader world; his energy had found a field as wide as the universe.

It was decided to put the first pipe between the double tracks of the Baltimore and Ohio railroad. With an eight-mule team, horses being afraid of the engines, nearly a mile of pipe was laid each day. Soon Professor Morse came hurriedly, and calling Mr. Cornell aside, said, "Can you not contrive to stop this work for a few days in some manner, so the papers will not know that it has been purposely interrupted? I want to make some experiments before any more pipe is laid."

Cornell had been expecting this, for he knew that the pipes were defective, though other officials would not permit Morse to be told of it. Replying that he would do as requested, he stepped back to his plow, and said, "Hurrah, boys, whip up your mules; we must lay another length of pipe before we quit to-night." Then he purposely let the machine catch against a point of rock, making it a perfect wreck.

Mr. Cornell began now, at Professor Morse's request, to experiment in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the Patent Office at Was.h.i.+ngton, studying what books he could obtain on electrical science. It was soon found to be wise to put the wires upon poles, as Cooke and Wheatstone had done in England. The line between Baltimore and Was.h.i.+ngton proved successful despite its crudities; but what should be done with it? Government did not wish to buy it, and private capital was afraid to touch it.

How could the world be made interested? Mr. Cornell, who had now put his heart into the telegraph, built a line from Milk Street, Boston, to School Street, that the people might see for themselves this new agent which was to enable nations to talk with each other; but n.o.body cared to waste a moment in looking at it. They were more interested in selling a piece of cloth, or discovering the merits of a dead philosopher. Not delighted with the indifference of Boston, he moved his apparatus to New York in 1844, and constructed a line from opposite Trinity Church on Broadway, to near the site of the present Metropolitan Hotel; but New York was even more indifferent than Boston.

The "Tribune," "Express," and some other newspapers gave cordial notices of the new enterprise, but the "Herald" said plainly that it was opposed to the telegraph, because now it could beat its rivals by special couriers; but if the telegraph came into use, then all would have an equal opportunity to obtain news! During the whole winter Mr. Cornell labored seemingly to no purpose, to introduce what Morse had so grandly discovered. A man of less will and less self-reliance would have become discouraged. He met the fate of all reformers or inventors. n.o.body wants a thing till it is a great success, and then everybody wants it at the same moment.

Finally, by the hardest struggle, the Magnetic Telegraph Company was formed for erecting a line between New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Was.h.i.+ngton, and Mr. Cornell for superintending it was to receive one thousand dollars per annum. So earnest was he for the matter that he subscribed five hundred dollars to the stock of the company, paying for it out of his meagre salary! Such men,--willing to live on the merest pittance that a measure of great practical good may succeed,--such men deserve to win.

The next line was between New York and Albany, and Mr. Cornell, being the contractor, received his first return for these years of labor six thousand dollars in profits. The tide had turned; and though afterward various obstacles had to be met and overcome, the poor mechanic had started on the high-road to fame and fortune. He next organized the Erie and Michigan Telegraph Company, supposing that the Western cities thus benefited would subscribe to the stock; but even in Chicago, which now pays three thousand dollars daily for telegraphic service, it was impossible to raise a dollar.

A year later, the New York and Erie telegraph line was constructed through the southern part of New York State. Mr. Cornell, believing most heartily in the project, obligated himself heavily, and the result proved his far-sightedness. But now ruinous compet.i.tion set in. Those who had been unwilling to help at first were anxious to share profits.

To save all from bankruptcy in the cutting of rates, Mr. Cornell and a few others consolidated the various interests in the Western Union Telegraph Company, now grown so large that it has nearly five hundred thousand miles of wire, employs twenty thousand persons, sends over forty-one million messages yearly, and makes over seven and one-half million dollars profits.

For more than fifteen years he was the largest stockholder in the company; it was not strange therefore, that middle life found Ezra Cornell a millionnaire. This was better than making pottery in the little town of De Ruyter. It had taken work, however, to make this fortune. While others sauntered and enjoyed life at leisure, he was working early and late, away from his family most of the time for twelve years.

In 1857, when fifty years of age, he purchased three hundred acres near Ithaca, planted orchards, bought fine cattle and horses, and moved his family thither. He was made president of the County Agricultural Society, and in 1862 was chosen to represent the State Agricultural Society at the International Exposition in London. Taking his wife with him, they travelled in Great Britain and on the Continent, enjoying a few months of recreation, for the first time since, when a youth, thirty years before, he had walked into Ithaca.

During the war he gave money and sympathy freely, being often at the front, in hospitals, and on battle-fields, caring for the wounded and their families, and aiding those whom the war had left maimed or impoverished. For six years he served acceptably in the State Legislature. Self-reliant, calm, unselfish, simple in dress and manner, he was, alike the companion of distinguished scholars, and the advocate of the people.

The great question now before his mind was how to spend his fortune most wisely. He recalled the days when he cleared four acres of timber land, that he might have three months of schooling. He had regretted all his life his lack of a college education. He determined therefore to build "an inst.i.tution where _any_ person can find instruction in _any_ study."

Preparatory to this he built Cornell Library, costing sixty-one thousand dollars. A workman, losing one of his horses by accident in the construction of the edifice, was called upon by the philanthropist, who, after inquiring the value of the animal, drew a check and handed it to the man, remarking, with a kind smile, "I presume I can better than you afford to lose the horse." A man with money enough to build libraries does not always remember a laborer!

Mr. Cornell's first gift toward his university was two hundred acres of his cherished farm, and five hundred thousand dollars in money. The inst.i.tution was formally opened in 1868, Hon. Andrew D. White, a distinguished graduate of Yale and of the University of Berlin, being chosen president. Soon over four hundred students gathered from over twenty-seven States. Mr. Cornell's gifts afterward, including his saving the Land Grant Fund from depreciation, amounted to over three million dollars. A wonderful present from a self-made mechanic! Other men have followed his ill.u.s.trious example. Henry W. Sage has given three hundred thousand dollars for the building of Sage College for women, and the extensive conservatories of the Botanical Department. Hiram Sibley, of Rochester, has given fifty thousand dollars for the College of Mechanic Arts, and John McGraw, one hundred thousand for the library and museum.

Cornell University is now one of the most liberally endowed inst.i.tutions in the country, and has already sent out over one thousand graduates.

Mr. Cornell did everything to enrich and develop his own town. He brought manufactories of gla.s.s and iron into her midst, held the presidency of the First National Bank for a dozen years, made her as far as possible a railroad centre, and gave generously to her churches of whatever denomination. The first question asked in any project was, "Have you seen Ezra Cornell? He will take hold of the work; and if he is for you, no one will be against you, and success is a.s.sured, if success be possible."

Dec. 9, 1874, at the age of sixty-seven, scarcely able to stand, he arose from his bed and was dressed that he might attend to some unfinished business. Shortly after noon, it was finished by an unseen hand. His body was carried to Library Hall, and there, the Cornell Cadets standing as guard of honor, thousands looked upon the renowned giver. The day of the funeral, public and private buildings were draped, shops were closed, and the streets filled by a saddened throng. The casket was borne into the cemetery between lines of students, who owed to his generosity their royal opportunities for scholars.h.i.+p. Various societies in various cities pa.s.sed resolutions of respect and honor for the dead.

Froude, the English historian, well said of him, "There is something I admire even more than the university, and that is the quiet, unpretending man by whom the university was founded. We have had such men in old times, and there are men in England who make great fortunes and who make claim to great munificence, but who manifest their greatness in buying great estates and building castles for the founding of peerages to be handed down from father to son. Mr. Cornell has sought for immortality, and the perpetuity of his name among the people of a free nation. There stands his great university, built upon a rock, built of stone, as solid as a rock, to endure while the American nation endures. When the herald's parchment shall have crumbled into dust, and the antiquarians are searching among the tombstones for the records of these departed families, Mr. Cornell's name will be still fresh and green through generation after generation."