John Anderson, the great tobacconist, millionaire and philanthropist, died recently; and that reminds me of some years since, and not so very long ago, but many livin’ men remember it, John Anderson, Ben Wood and Fernando Wood sat on the same bench together makin’ cigars. Anderson used to keep a cigar store on Broadway, opposite Pearl Street, near a big hospital with green shutters, that has long since moved uptown. But it was in a little store near Ann Street that he laid the beginning of his success.
Anderson’s big hit was made by his “Solace tobacco,” and this tobacco owes most of its luck to a name; and this name had its origin in the brain of an old New York bohemian called Williams–Thomas Williams–who was a very curious character, and had led an eccentric existence he was a big, fat fellow, very dignified and carried a heavy gold-headed cane. He was an Englishman; belonged to a “good family” and at one time had handled a good deal of money.
But he had two hobbies, both expensive one–the stage and the lottery. He was all the time following actresses about, and buying tickets in all sorts of schemes. He followed Mrs. Siddons all over England with some friends in a four-in-hand coach, always takin’ a private box at all the lady’s performances.
These two hobbies soon brought him to grief, and he came to this country to make a living with the only things he had left–his education and his brain. He got some translating to do, and he worked a while on a paper that was popular in its day, called Winchester’s New World.
One day he dropped in at Anderson’s shop and saw Anderson there. The two got talking, and Anderson said he had been tryin’ for some time to think of a nice name for some tobacco he wanted to introduce. “Can’t you think of a name for me,” he said to Williams. Williams tried the tobacco Anderson spoke of, liked it very much, and said he would take some of it to his rooms to serve him as a “solace in his lonely hours.”
“By the-by, Anderson,” he said, “I believe I have hit the very name you want–’solace.’ That’s it. Call your tobacco the ‘Solace’ tobacco.
Anderson did so and either the name or the tobacco made a tremendous hit.
About eighteen months afterwards Anderson met Williams on the street, and asked him to call at his store the next day. Williams, wonderin’ what was up, did so, and to his great surprise and no little gratification, Anderson handed him a check for five hundred dollars.
“What’s this for?” asked Williams.
“Why, it’s for one word,” answered Anderson.
“Five hundred dollars for a word, says Williams. “That’s mighty good pay.”
“Pshaw!” replied Anderson. “I have made over five thousand by it.”
And then he explained to Williams that this money was in return for the lucky idea that Williams had given him that day on the word “solace.”
John Anderson was always liberal. He never let a man do somethin’ for him for nothin’.
The Williams I have spoken of was probably the best judge of painting that ever visited New York. Several thousand dollars were pendin’ one day on a paintin’ bein’ all that was it was represented to be, an original by some well-known artist.
To decide the matter the paintin’ was submitted to Williams, who at first pronounced it genuine. The purchaser was then about payin’ over his money, when Williams suddenly cried, “Hold; I don’t believe this is the original after all for up there,” pointing to the corner of the canvas, “there was on the original a little birch tree which I don’t see here.”
The man who was tryin’ to sell the picture, and who really believed it to be what it he represented it to be, tried to pooh-pooh this little difference. But Williams stuck to his point and his “little birch tree.” Then they examined the canvas, and, lo and behold, just where the little birch tree ought to have been the canvas had been knocked about a little, and the little birch tree had been knocked out. If it hadn’t been for this fact that little birch tree would have lost the picture dealer several thousand dollars. They don’t have such art critics in New York nowadays.
The only time Williams ever won anythin’ in a lottery he did it by bein’ honest. He told a friend one day to buy a ticket for him in some drawin’, and then forgot all about it. One day his friend came up to him and said: “Williams, did you consider that you really bought through me a ticket in that lottery the other day?” “Certainly,” answered Williams, now remembering the occurrence. “I told you to buy a ticket for me and if you have done so, well I’ll pay you for the ticket now, though of course, with my usual blasted luck I haven’t drawn anythin’.”
The friend took Williams’s money for his ticket, and then said: “Yes, you have–you have drawn one of the big prizes. Several thousand dollars. I wanted to see if you were a man of your word. If you hadn’t been I should have taken the ticket and the prize myself.” Here was a case in which two men were “square.” I don’t know which deserves the most credit, Williams or his friend. Though in this case Williams got the cash.
Williams died in New York of fat. He became a regular Daniel Lambert. He tried to reduce himself by dietin’, but the less he ate, the fatter he got. For several months before his death he limited himself to one bowl of soup a day and one bit of bread. But he swelled terribly and finally died of obesity.
I mentioned Fernando Wood just now. The world owes it to him, as much almost as to Morse, that we have the telegraph workin’ to-day. Congress laughed at the telegraph, and wouldn’t do anything for Morse. But Fernando Wood was one of the few who saw somethin’ in Morse and his idea, and it was to Wood’s efforts that the appropriation of $30,000 made by Congress to give Morse a chance to carry out his idea was due.
Morse was well nigh tired of his life and all the “electricity” was out of him one morning, when he got up determined to leave Washington at once and give up botherin’ about the telegraph forever.
In a very blue mood he picked up a paper and the world fairly flashed upon him. Congress had granted an appropriation to him at last, late in the evenin’–the very last thing, in fact, done in the session of the day before.
All at once the “electricity” came back to Morse and he felt, as he said afterward to a minister, “what it was to be born again.”
But we can hardly realize nowadays how little people, even educated and influential, knew about Morse’s ideas and the general principle of the telegraph. Why one of the officials of the government at that time, the Hon. John C. Spencer, while lookin’ on at Morse gettin’ ready his wires and batteries for sending his first message, asked him “how on Earth he intended to send bundles of any size along that thing?” pointing to the telegraph wires.
“But, my dear sir,” said Morse to Spenser, “I intend to send messages, not bundles.”
“Oh, of course,” said Spencer, “Messages; but hang it, Morse, you will have to send your messages in bundles, won’t you?”
It took Morse some time to get it into Spencer’s head “how the thing worked,” and yet Spencer was a pretty smart man for his day and lived only a generation ago.
Morse was a great friend of one of the most prominent New Yorkers now alive, Cyrus W. Field. Field and Morse were together on board the U.S. frigate Niagara when they tried to lay the first cable.
No man who ever breathed worked harder, longer, or at a more severe strain for years than did Cyrus W. Field durin’ the early Atlantic Cable days. He made eighteen different voyages across the Atlantic on account of the cable, and five different times fixed up matters and overcame difficulties which, but for him, would have been fatal to the enterprise.
Once and once only he gave way to his feelin’s about the cable, and that was on one Monday on board the frigate Niagara when Morse was with him. They were trying to lay the first cable and the ship was two or three hundred miles out at sea.
Everythin’ so far had been working beautifully and Field and Morse were beginning to feel as happy as two school boys. But they watched everythin’ very carefully, though, and felt as if their very lives were hanging on the cable.
All of a sudden electric communication along the cable stopped, ceased in a second, as if it had never taken place at all. Do what they would, the apparatus wouldn’t work. It was dumb as an oyster or an obstinate woman when she won’t speak. “It seemed”, as one of the sailors remarked, “as if the lightning had given out.”
Field and Morse had been up all Saturday night and all Sunday night watchin’ the laying of the cable; they hadn’t taken a wink of sleep, hardly partaken of any refreshment. But all that didn’t weary ‘em or fall on them as hard as the first half hour durin’ which the communication along the cable ceased.
Morse took the matter as he had taken everythin’ else all his life, like a philosopher. But there wasn’t much of the philosopher about Field. He was too nervous for a philosopher. He walked up and down the deck of the Niagara like a lion or one of the champion pedestrians, and wrung his big hands every now and then and prayed–some fellows say, swore.
An hour passed. Every possible thing was done that Morse or anybody else could suggest, but the cable wouldn’t talk. An hour and a half, but the cable was still dumb.
Field stopped walkin’ about and went into the cabin looking black as a thundercloud.
“This is an utterly unexpected blow,” said Field to Morse. “I was prepared for any amount of trouble in the layin’ of the cable, but I was not prepared for any trouble in the workin’ of it. I’m willin’ to work years yet for it, but what can I do if it won’t work for itself?” Just at that minute the cable began to resume communication with the shore end. This communication was resumed as suddenly as it was stopped. Nobody to this day knows what made it either stop or resume.
And when Field got word that the cable was workin’ again he was so delighted–his mind was so relieved–that for the first and the last time he burst into tears.
When the first cable was abandoned he set to work and organized a second, and he never faltered in time, labor or pluck till the Atlantic Cable was what it will forever be, a bond of union between the Old and New worlds, and a monument to Cyrus W. Field forever.
