THE SUBJECT OF OUR FRONTISPIECE

The readers of this magazine are familiar with the interesting career of the great lawyer, who was also the many-sided, public-spirited citizen, whose portrait forms the frontispiece to the current issue. It has been said of the late Mr. Barlow that his gifts, acquirements, and activities were so numberless and varied that it was difficult to classify him; but it is safe to predict that he will be longest remembered through his historical scholarship and the critical taste and judgment with which he brought together one of the most extensive, rare, admirably selected, and valuable libraries of Americana on this continent. A few years since he edited in connection with Henry Harrisse a work of exceeding importance to all who would understand the biography and bibliography of the discoverer of America, entitled "Notes on Columbus." His wide learning in the domain of history, obtained through close study aided by a powerful memory, was unquestionably the secret of many of his most brilliant successes in life. He was a very prominent and unique figure in the legal profession of the last few decades, an expert in business affairs, influential in politics, conspicuous in the social world, and a generous supporter of every public enterprise. As a lawyer he was rarely seen in court, and yet he was concerned in more legal contests of magnitude probably than any other member of the bar of his time. He bridged over some of the most difficult transition eras in railroad management and litigation, conducted innumerable cases involving the interests of great corporations and the management of enormous estates, and his dash and sagacity in emergencies rose to the dignity of genius. His mind was stored with rich experiences; he possessed the rare knowledge of knowing what to avoid; and he would seize as if by intuition the essential point of a dispute, and with magnetic force capture and hold the situation, reconciling the contestants and bringing harmony to all. The true story of many of his larger suits would read like veritable fiction.

Samuel Latham Mitchill Barlow was born in Granville, Massachusetts, in 1826, and died at his beautiful Glen Cove country home on Long Island, July 10, 1889. His winter residence was in Madison Square, New York. He was not a seeker after popularity, and yet no citizen of the metropolis for more than a quarter of a century was more popular; he was not a philanthropist in the usual understanding of the term, while few men of wealth ever responded more promptly to calls from the

victims of privation and disaster, or gave more substantial encouragement and aid to struggling talent of every kind. In an infinite number of ways he revealed the richness and strength of a nature that had in it far more tenderness and sentiment than the world dreamed. He was a member of several clubs, lavish in private hospitalities, and at his dinners and entertainments he was a fascinating talker and a most charming host.

It is said that Mr. Barlow had for thirty or forty years kept a press copy of almost every important letter that he wrote, whether of business or friendship. His intimate friend, George Ticknor Curtis, whose poetic tribute to his worth graces another page, says: "He wrote with greater rapidity, facility, and accuracy than any person I ever knew. More than fifty years' practice have enabled me to write with some ease to myself, if I have not written with profit to others. But Barlow wrote and transacted business at the same time, and almost at the same instants of time; and he never wrote inaccurately or obscurely, but always in a flowing and correct style, and he rarely changed a word, and did not often revise what he had written. He very seldom dictated anything; it was easier for him to use his pen, and he would have gained no time by dictating. I have many times entered his room, and, sitting down at the end of his writing table, have waited until he should look up from his paper. He did not do so until he had finished the sentence. Then he would look at me with a smile, and without changing his attitude and still keeping his pen poised over the paper he would say: 'How are you-what's the news?' I knew perfectly well that he would not be interrupted, and I said briefly what I came for, and on he would go writing, and answering me between his sentences as they flowed upon the sheet before him. When his letter or note was ended he would sign it, touch his bell, and the clerk would take the original to the press to make the copy in the letter-book, and into the mail went the original without a moment's delay. I have seen him answering a pile of letters in this way that would have required an ordinary man's consideration for hours, and in thirty or forty minutes the whole accumulation would be disposed of. In the mean time I have seen persons come in and speak to him on business, receive replies, always patient, courteous, clear, and to the point, and there was no fretting and no hurry. I have often thought that if he had ever been a minister of state, and he might more than once have been in a President's Cabinet if he would have accepted such a place, he would have despatched business to the greater satisfaction of all who resorted to him than is recorded of any man who has ever held such an office, and have done it all to the great benefit of his country."

DISCOVERY OF AMERICA BY COLUMBUS

BOSTON AND NEW YORK CELEBRATIONS ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO

THE TAMMANY SOCIETY'S ILLUMINATED MONUMENTS

The following account of the brilliant festivals in Boston and New York in honor of the three hundredth anniversary of the discovery of America by Columbus, written by the accomplished historic scholar Dr. George H. Moore of Lenox library, appeared in the New York Times of August 4, 1889. It will be current news to many that the famous Tammany society of New York erected an illuminated monument fourteen feet high to Columbus on that memorable occasion in 1792.

"John Quincy Adams, at the celebration of the fortieth anniversary of the New York Historical Society in 1844, claimed for Jeremy Belknap of Massachusetts the distinction of having been the founder of the first historical society ever established, and so the author of all such institutions. The fact is, however, that the idea originated with John Pintard of New York, who not only suggested it to Dr. Belknap, but urged it so earnestly that it was put into practical shape in Boston, by the organization of the institution now so well and widely known as the Massachusetts Historical Society, in 1791. Yet there was here in New York before that date an association whose professed design embraced all that is implied in the distinctive name of a historical society, and which had already begun its work of collecting the materials for American history and had established its repository for them under the name of the American Museum. Of that association John Pintard was one of the first members; and it never has had a worthier name on its rolls, in its best days long past crowded with names synonymous with personal integrity and civic virtue, which made those rolls truly rolls of honor.

That association was the Tammany society or Columbian order. There had been more than one society under the patronage of that famous American Indian saint before this organization; and the certificate of John Pintard as a member of the society of the Sons of St. Tammany is No. 1, bearing date at Jersey Camp, the 1st day of May, in the year of our Lord, 1781. The new organization, however, had a wider scope. It was coeval with the government of the United States under the federal constitution, and made its first public appearance and display a few days after

the inauguration of Washington in 1789. It was still the Tammany society, but added in its new departure the title of the Columbian order, to commemorate the Novus ordo sæclorum' which the American states in union had so happily begun.

The name of Columbus, which had been struggling in poetical obscurity for several years before, just then broke out all over the country, and nowhere more conspicuously than in New York, where it found its first place in legislation in 1784. The name and fame of Christopher Columbus resounded throughout the land, and as the third century after his great achievement drew near to its close a keen sense of the world's injustice to the memory of one of the greatest of the sons of man pervaded the whole community. The meagre columns of the contemporary press bear witness to the growing public sentiment, which speedily took definite shape in proposals to celebrate the third centenary of the discovery of America. A writer in a New York journal on the 18th of August, 1792, quotes a Philadelphia paper as saying: 'The 12th of October next will complete three centuries since the immortal Columbus put foot on the new world,' and emphasizing the 'propriety of celebrating the Columbian centuary anniversary.' The same paper two weeks later, August 29, 1792, reports:

'On the 3d of August inst., being precisely three hundred years since the departure of Columbus from Palos, in Spain, a gentleman of Maryland had the corner-stone laid of an obelisk in one of the gardens of a villa near the town of Baltimore, in commemoration of that great undertaking. . . . Suitable inscriptions, on metal tables, are to be affixed to the pedestal of the obelisk on the 12th of next October, etc.'

Abundant prose suggestion and poetical effusion appear on the prolific theme, which was copiously celebrated all over the country.

The earliest formal proposition to celebrate the anniversary of the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus which I have met with was that of the Rev. Dr. Belknap, the correspondent of Mr. Pintard. It was made in one of the early meetings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, on the 23d of December, 1791, when it was

Voted, That the consideration of Mr. Belknap's proposal for the celebration of the centenary anniversary of the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus on the 12th of October, 1492, be postponed to the next meeting, and that the recording secretary notify the absent members accordingly in his next notification.

At the next meeting, on January 31, 1792, a proposal made at a former meeting for celebrating the memorable epoch of the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus on the 12th of October, 1492, was considered at the meeting, whereupon it was—

Voted, To celebrate the centenary by a public discourse, and that Mr. Belknap be desired to prepare for that occasion, and that Mr. Thacher and Mr. Eliot be desired to perform the other parts of the exercise.'