t, in a Letter to President Grant_

[Illustration: A. T. STEWART]

When His Excellency Wu Ting Fang was asked what country he would live
in, if he had his choice, his unhesitating answer was, "Ireland!"

The reply brought forth another question, as his secretive and clever
Excellency knew it would, namely, "Why?" "Because Ireland is the only
country in the world in which the Irish have no influence." Also, it
might be stated, although it has nothing to do with the case, that the
Jews are very much more influential in New York City than they are in
Jerusalem. The Turk is to Palestine what the English are to Ireland.

The human product has to be transplanted in order to get the best
results, just as the finest roses of California are slipped near Powers'
Four Corners, Rochester, Monroe County, New York, and are then shipped
to the West. A new environment means, often, spiritual power before
unguessed. The struggle of the man to fit himself into a new condition
and thus harmonize with his surroundings, brings out his latent energies
and discovers for him untapped reservoirs.

It was Edmund Burke who said, "The Irish are all right, but you must
catch them young." When England wants a superbly strong man she has to
send to Ireland for him. Note Burke, her greatest orator; Swift, her
greatest satirist; Goldsmith, her sweetest poet; Arthur Wellesley, her
greatest fighter--not to mention Lord Bobs--all awfully Irish. And to
America comes Alexander Turney Stewart, aged twenty, very Irish, shy,
pink, blue of eye, with downy whiskers, intending to teach school until
he could prepare himself for the "meenistry."

It was the year Eighteen Hundred Twenty; and at that time the stars of
the Irish schoolmaster were in the ascendant. For a space of forty
years--say from Eighteen Hundred Five to Eighteen Hundred
Forty-five--eighty per cent of all graduates of Trinity College, Dublin,
came straight to America and found situations awaiting them.

Young Stewart had been at Trinity College two years, when by the death
of his grandfather he found himself without funds. His father died when
he was three years old, and his grandparents took him in charge. His
mother, it seems, married again, and was busy raising a goodly brood of
Callahans, several of whom in after-years came to New York, and were
given jobs at the A. T. Stewart button-counter.

Young Stewart could have borrowed money to keep him in college, for he
knew that when he wa