en reading. What puzzled
him was how it could be that the masonry of a fifth floor or sixth
story was often finished before the third or fourth. This I explained,
much to his satisfaction. In getting to the bottom of things he was
indefatigable.

Mr. Morley (although a lord he still remains as an author plain John
Morley) became one of our British friends quite early as editor of the
"Fortnightly Review," which published my first contribution to a
British periodical.[67] The friendship has widened and deepened in our
old age until we mutually confess we are very close friends to each
other.[68] We usually exchange short notes (sometimes long ones) on
Sunday afternoons as the spirit moves us. We are not alike; far from
it. We are drawn together because opposites are mutually beneficial to
each other. I am optimistic; all my ducks being swans. He is
pessimistic, looking out soberly, even darkly, upon the real dangers
ahead, and sometimes imagining vain things. He is inclined to see
"an officer in every bush." The world seems bright to me, and earth
is often a real heaven--so happy I am and so thankful to the kind
fates. Morley is seldom if ever wild about anything; his judgment is
always deliberate and his eyes are ever seeing the spots on the sun.

[Footnote 67: _An American Four-in-Hand in Britain._]

[Footnote 68: "Mr. Carnegie had proved his originality, fullness of
mind, and bold strength of character, as much or more in the
distribution of wealth as he had shown skill and foresight in its
acquisition. We had become known to one another more than twenty years
before through Matthew Arnold. His extraordinary freshness of spirit
easily carried Arnold, Herbert Spencer, myself, and afterwards many
others, high over an occasional crudity or haste in judgment such as
befalls the best of us in ardent hours. People with a genius for
picking up pins made as much as they liked of this: it was wiser to do
justice to his spacious feel for the great objects of the world--for
knowledge and its spread, invention, light, improvement of social
relations, equal chances to the talents, the passion for peace. These
are glorious things; a touch of exaggeration in expression is easy to
set right.... A man of high and wide and well-earned mark in his
generation." (John, Viscount Morley, in _Recollections_, vol. II, pp.
110, 112. New York, 1919.)]

[Illustration: _Photograph from Underwood & Underwood, N.Y._

VISCOUNT MORLEY OF BLACKB