Twenty Years in Europe: A Consul-General's Memories of Noted People, with Letters From General W. T. ShermanByers, S. H. M. (Samuel Hawkins Marshall)
History
Twenty Years in Europe: A Consul-General's Memories of Noted People, with Letters From General W. T. Sherman
Byers, S. H. M. (Samuel Hawkins Marshall)
Europe -- Description and travel
Colonel John W. Forney we also met again in Philadelphia, though I
had known him in London. He was a man of great intellectual vigor, of
magnificent presence. I once heard a Londoner say, “Your Colonel Forney
is the finest looking American I ever saw.” He, too, like Horatio King,
knew everybody. He had been Secretary of the Senate and was a famous
newspaper man, who in his day ranked with Greeley and Raymond and
Bennett. His self-possession was wonderful, his talk enthralled, and
he had a heart kind as a woman’s. Our Government sent John W. Forney
abroad as a Commissioner, just to “talk Europe into showing her wares
at Philadelphia,” some one said. A better talker could not have been
found between the two oceans. He was emphatically, too, a “woman’s
man,” and he knew how to influence the public men through their better
natures--their wives.
In December, at New York, we visited at the home of Mr. Christopher
Robert, who, as already mentioned, built “Robert College” at
Constantinople. He was a retired millionaire, and his home life must
have been a contrast to the lives of most New York money men. It was
the life of one of the patriarchs, not on a desert among his flocks,
but in a luxurious home, in a fashionable quarter of New York City.
He was a splendid looking “old-time gentleman” of seventy-five years.
I never saw white hair so becoming and honorable to a man as his was,
not seventy-five years carried so upright and with so much dignity. His
large, smooth-shaven face was as rosy as a child’s, his eye clear as a
boy’s of twenty.
He had earned money in his life, and he used it in doing good. His
house was a sort of religious Mecca, where a poor man could go and
be sure of help. His daily life was that of a Christian gentleman.
Mornings, after breakfast, a bell rang, when every member of the
family, guests and servants, were expected to assemble in a room for
devotion. In a fine, clear voice, Mr. Robert read the Scriptures, and
though surrounded by wealth, dilated on the littleness of riches and
the greatness of a true heart. Then he prayed. It was like a morning
mass. And I thought what a city New York would be, were it filled
with rich men like to Mr. Robert. His zeal for sowing good seed was
boundless. No man hung an overcoat in that luxurious house entrance,
but on going away would discover the pockets filled with sensible
pamphlets appealing for a higher life.
Evenings, there were always a number of pleasant people at dinner, and
some delightful music. I recall an evening there with the Reverend
Doctors Taylor and Ormiston.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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