Not long ago, within half an hour of each other, I stumbled over two great railroad lawyers, Clark Bell and Chauncey M. Depew, the latter gettin’ ready to take his annual trip to Europe. It is a rather curious fact that these two railroad lawyers are perhaps the two very best after-dinner speakers in New York, and are as much sought after socially as they are professionally.
Clark Bell used to be the life and soul of the Pallette Club, which went to pieces when he left it, and he has been for years the stand-by of the Saturday Night Club. One would never think, seeing him with his jolly-lookin’ figure and English whiskers and fine clothes, that he was once an apprentice to a blacksmith.
The story of Clark Bell’s start in life is rather interestin’ and characteristic. His father was a farmer, and a shrewd, hard-workin’ Scotch-Irishman, of the same stock as A. T. Stewart came from. Clark was a delicate little boy and his father never thought he would amount to much. “The boy ain’t strong enough for a farmer, nor smart enough for a trade,” he said to the lad’s mother, “so I guess we’ll have to make a lawyer of him.” So he was sent to school to get a preparatory education.
But just then he wasn’t even “strong enough” for a student, and his health gave way. The doctor examined him, said he must stop his studies and prophesied an early death, which came about as true as most prophecies. But his father didn’t take any stock in the doctor and took a way of his own to restore his son to health–a way which might be oftener tried with advantage. He apprenticed his son to a blacksmith and made him work in a smithy. He was too weak to study, so they made him work at the forge and bellows and hit at the anvil and shoe horses.
His family was opposed to all this sort of thing. His mother cried over it, and as for Bell, he didn’t like it at all. But his father was one of the old-fashioned men, very old-fashioned nowadays, who was really the head of his own household, and who actually ruled the people he supported. His will was law, and so little Clark Bell, the future after-dinner swell and pet lawyer of the Union Pacific Railroad, became a little blacksmith.
He was such a weaklin’ just then that they had to make special arrangements for him at the blacksmith shop. They built a platform to make him even with the anvil, and they got him a very small sledge-hammer made to order. With this apparatus he pounded away, and although he didn’t do much good to the blacksmith, he did a deal of good to himself. The blacksmith’s shop proved better than the drug shop and saved him from the undertaker.
At first Clark didn’t take kindly to work in the forge, but he was one of those chaps that if he had to do a thing at all he did it the best it could be done. So finally he gave his mind as well as his hands to it and became an out-and-out young blacksmith. He developed a special knack for fixin’ carriages and got an offer from a carriage maker.
But still the boy had never given up his intention to study, of which he was very fond, and as soon as he got strong enough by blacksmithin’ he resumed his books and soon got to be a better young lawyer even than a young blacksmith or young carriage maker. He got up in the mornin’ at four o’clock and worked till breakfast at his law books. Then after breakfast he was a blacksmith and then after dinner he was a carriage maker; then in the evenin’ he was a lawyer again.
His father liked the blacksmith and carriage makin’ part of the day, but didn’t approve at all of the lawyer part. His father had a prejudice against lawyers and thought that they were all liars. By the by, was this a prejudice? So he thought he would fix things so that the lad would have to give up law without his seemin’ directly to oppose him. So he arranged with the blacksmith to engage the services of his son at a stated sum, and he demanded just that sum from his son as an equivalent for his board and lodgin’ at home. The father’s idea, of course, was that it would take so much of Clark’s time at the blacksmith shop to earn his board and lodgin’ that he wouldn’t have any time left to fool with law. But smart as the father thought he was, the son was smarter, and got up a plan to euchre to his own dad.
Time rolled on, and although young Bell was supposed to be workin’ hard the greater part of his time at the blacksmith’s shop, he managed to be studyin’ law harder than ever, and his father began to wonder how the deuce he managed to do both. He went and inquired of the blacksmith, but the latter said he was very well satisfied with Clark, that he was the best workman he had and all that. Still there seemed to be some mystery, and one day the secret leaked out by accident.
Young Clark Bell found that he could pick up more money by hangin’ around the law courts and using what law knowledge he had already, as opportunity presented, than he could get from the blacksmith. So he went to the blacksmith and arranged with him to pay him instead of bein’ paid by him, provided the blacksmith would call it square and tell his father it was all right.
The blacksmith of course was willin’ to take in money instead of puttin’ it out, and said it was all right, which it was–to him. So the blacksmith told the father Clark Bell was really “the best (payin’) workman he had.” This arrangement gave Bell his entire time to either practicin’ law or studyin’ it, and offered him all the advantages of bein’ a real lawyer as well as a nominal blacksmith.
But his father (when he found this out) began to think that his son was gettin’ too smart for him. So Clark made a new deal. He let the old man off of his board altogether and went and boarded at the village tavern, on his own account. He had been engaged in over five hundred law cases before he was even admitted to the bar. No wonder before he was thirty-five years of age the Union Pacific Railroad wanted him.
As for Chauncey Depew, he had a very different experience from Clark Bell. He was born with a silver spoon, and as he got older exchanged it for a gold one. He used to be in the lobby at Albany, and he told such good stories and was such a jolly good fellow, although apparently so dignified, that he became very popular, and made his popularity of account.
Old Commodore Vanderbilt met him one day in the street at Albany. “Sonny,” said the Commodore, goin’ up to him. “I think the New York Central road wants you.”
“Wants me?” said Depew, highly delighted but outwardly highly dignified. “Why would the New York Central road want me?”
“Well, sonny,” replied the old Commodore. “I have noticed that you can get more out of the legislators around here with less muss than any other chap that has struck these parts. Other men have to give them money or stock, but you give them jokes and stories, and these are a good deal cheaper. I think the New York Central has a place for a man like you.”
And it had, and it has had a place for him ever since, at a salary bigger than that of the President of the United States. No wonder he can afford to make such capital after-dinner speeches.
[Editor’s notes: Clark Bell likely learned much about public speaking from his Union Pacific Railroad partner, George Francis Train–perhaps the most famous dinner speaker of the 19th century.]
