ers are not to be slighted.

[Illustration: Gerrit Smith]

GERRIT SMITH.

For many years we were in the habit of hearing, now and then, of a
certain Gerrit Smith, a strange gentleman who lived near Lake Ontario,
where he possessed whole townships of land, gave away vast quantities of
money, and was pretty sure to be found on the unpopular side of all
questions, beloved alike by those who agreed with him and those who
differed from him. Every one that knew him spoke of the majestic beauty
of his form and face, of his joyous demeanor, of the profuse hospitality
of his village abode, where he lived like a jovial old German baron, but
without a baron's battle-axe and hunting spear.

He was indeed an interesting character. Without his enormous wealth he
would have been, perhaps, a benevolent, enterprising farmer, who would
have lived beloved and died lamented by all who knew him. But his wealth
made him remarkable; for the possession of wealth usually renders a man
steady-going and conservative. It is like ballast to a ship. The slow
and difficult process by which honest wealth is usually acquired is
pretty sure to "take the nonsense out of a man," and give to all his
enterprises a practicable character. But here was a man whose wealth was
more like the gas to a balloon than ballast to a ship; and he flung it
around with an ignorance of human nature most astonishing in a person so
able and intelligent. There was room in the world for one Gerrit Smith,
but not for two. If we had many such, benevolence itself would be
brought into odium, and we should reserve all our admiration for the
close-fisted.

His ancestors were Dutchmen, long settled in Rockland County, New York.
Gerrit's father owned the farm upon which Major Andre was executed, and
might even have witnessed the tragedy, since he was twelve years old at
the time. Peter Smith was his name, and he had a touch of genius in his
composition, just enough to disturb and injure his life. At sixteen this
Peter Smith was a merchant's clerk in New York, with such a love of the
stage that he performed minor parts at the old Park theatre, and it is
said could have made a good actor. He was a sensitive youth, easily
moved to tears, and exceedingly susceptible to religious impressions.
While he was still a young man he went into the fur business with John
Jacob Astor, and tramped all over western and northern New York, buying
furs from the Indians, and becoming intimate