s twenty-one he would come into an inheritance from
his father's estate. However, on an impulse, he just sold his books,
pawned his watch and bought passage for America, the land of promise.
The boy had the look of a scholar, and he had dignity, as shy folks
often have. Also, he had a Trinity College brogue, a thing quite as
desirable as a Trinity College degree. Later, A. T. Stewart lost his
brogue, but Trinity College sent him all the degrees she had, including
the LL. D., which arrived on his seventieth birthday.

The Irish built our railroads, but Paddy no longer works on the
section--he owns the railroad. Note the Harrimans, the Hanrahans, the
McCreas, the McDougalls, the O'Donnells, the O'Days, the Hills--all just
one generation removed from the bog, and the smell of peat-smoke still
upon them.

The Irish schoolmasters glided easily from taking charge of the school
into taking charge of our municipal affairs--for a consideration--and
their younger brothers, their cousins, their uncles and their aunts,
found jobs yawning for them as soon as they had pushed past the gates of
Castle Garden.

One year of schoolteaching in New York City, and A. T. Stewart reached
his majority. He had saved just two hundred dollars of his salary; and
he sailed away, back to Ould Ireland, a successful man. Now he would go
back to Trinity and complete his course, and be glorified. He had proved
his ability to meet the world on a fair footing and take care of
himself. All of which speaks well for young Misther Stewart, and it also
speaks well for his grandparents, who had brought him up in a good,
sensible way to work, economize and keep a civil tongue in his Irish
head. His grandfather didn't exactly belong to the gentry--it was better
than that: he was an Irish clerque who had become a scrivener, and then
risen to a professorship.

A. T. Stewart was heir to a goodly amount of decent pride, which always
kept him in the society of educated people, and made him walk with the
crown of his head high and his chin in. He thought well of himself--and
the world is very apt to take a man at his own estimate.

A year in "The States" had transformed the young man from a greenhorn
into a gentleman. The climate of the West had agreed with him. He
himself told how on going back to Belfast the city seemed to have grown
smaller and very quiet. He compared everything to Broadway, and smiled
at a jaunting-car compared to a 'bus.

When he went to Tri