ns of my time
for many years in an old house where the fine views invite the soul
and where we can live simply and quietly, I have spent many delightful
hours, studying the beautiful views, the trees, and fine landscape
effects of that very interesting section of the Hudson River, and this
happened in the days when I seemed to need every minute for the
absorbing demands of business. So I fear after I got well started, I
was not what might be called a diligent business man.

This phrase, "diligent in business," reminds me of an old friend of
mine in Cleveland who was devoted to his work. I talked to him, and no
doubt bored him unspeakably, on my special hobby, which has always
been what some people call landscape gardening, but which with me is
the art of laying out roads and paths and work of that kind. This
friend of thirty-five years ago plainly disapproved of a man in
business wasting his time on what he looked upon as mere foolishness.

One superb spring day I suggested to him that he should spend the
afternoon with me (a most unusual and reckless suggestion for a
business man to make in those days) and see some beautiful paths
through the woods on my place which I had been planning and had about
completed. I went so far as to tell him that I would give him a real
treat.

"I cannot do it, John," he said, "I have an important matter of
business on hand this afternoon."

"That may all be," I urged, "but it will give you no such pleasure as
you'll get when you see those paths--the big tree on each side and
----"

"Go on, John, with your talk about trees and paths. I tell you I've
got an ore ship coming in and our mills are waiting for her." He
rubbed his hands with satisfaction--"I'd not miss seeing her come in
for all the wood paths in Christendom." He was then getting $120 to
$130 a ton for Bessemer steel rails, and if his mill stopped a minute
waiting for ore, he felt that he was missing his life's chance.

Perhaps it was this same man who often gazed out into the lake with
every nerve stretched to try to see an ore ship approaching. One day
one of his friends asked him if he could see the boat.

"No-o, no-o," he reluctantly admitted, "but she's most in sight."

This ore trade was of great and absorbing interest at Cleveland. My
old employer was paid $4 a ton for carrying ore from the Marquette
regions fifty years ago, and to think of the wickedness of this maker
of woodland paths, who in later years was m