than almost any other man to nominate and elect, and that he recoils from even contemplating such a contingency.

But the uncertainty of life makes it inevitable that other men should be thinking about the near

retary of legation and chargé d'affaires at Vienna for over a year, and then after a short interval going as secretary of legation to Spain for over a year; returning to become editorial writer on the New York Tribune for five years, during seven months of which he was editor-in-chief; taking an active part in the Presidential canvasses of 1876, 1880, and 1884; serving as Assistant Secretary of State from November 1, 1879, until May 3, 1881, and acting as president of the International Sanitary Congress; taking the chief place in our diplomatic service as ambassador to Great Britain, March, 19, 1897, and becoming Secretary of State September 20, 1898 -this bare outline of his public employments shows the unusual variety and importance of the experience he has had. He has been called the

favorite of fortune," and he would doubtless admit that he has had exceptional opportunities (indeed, he has laughingly said that he owes his success to persistent pursuit by the fickle jade), but he has certainly improved them all to the utmost. Although he has never served long in any one office, except the four years as assist

JOHN HAY IN 1861.

(Assistant secretary to President Lincoln.)

possibility that Secretary Hay, who began his public career as a young man in.the White House with President Lincoln, may end it in the White House as President himself.

No one since the early days of the republic, when the men who came to the Presidency were selected from a small class of specially trained leaders, has had such preparation for the duties of the Presidency as Mr. Hay-or rather Colonel Hay, to use the title conferred upon him by President Lincoln, which has so dominated the much greater titles received since that he is erally called Colonel Hay to this day.

gen

A man of great and varied abilities, graduating at Brown University at twenty, he began by studying law with Abraham Lincoln in Springfield; gaining admission to the bar of the Supreme Court of Illinois in 1861; coming iminediately to Washington as assistant secretary to President Lincoln, acting also as his adjutant and aid-de-camp and serving as his eyes and ears in the field for a time under Generals Hunter and Gillmore with the brevet of colonel; going, upon President Lincoln's death, as secretary of the legation at Paris for two years, then as sec

COLONEL HAY IN 1865.

ant secretary to President Lincoln, he has made his mark and added to his reputation by his thorough and skillful work in every post, official and professional, which he has held, so that although he is now only sixty-one, he has accom

Department, equipped with the invaluable experience and knowledge acquired at London, just as the United States, become a " world power, began to figure prominently in the diplomacy of the world. Colonel Hay has not worked harder than other men, but he has worked under favorable conditions which made all his work tell most effectively, and this is why it has not been necessary for him to serve long in any post in order to accomplish important results.

Colonel Hay's great good fortune, the cornerstone of his successful career, was his early association with Abraham Lincoln. He is the only survivor in prominent place of Lincoln's men, and is distinguished from other public men by the characteristics which he developed under Lincoln's training. What he learned from the first American" in the intimate association of the four most heroic years of our history has proved to be more important to him than all that he has learned from all other sources. The principles and methods, both in politics and statesmanship, which he learned from Lincoln have been of invaluable service to him, and in the almost filial relation existing between him and the martyr President Colonel Hay absorbed much of the spirit and character of his master, the greatest politician, the greatest statesman, the greatest man of his time.

first poetry, some of which was published afterward in the Pike County Ballads.' He was popular with the faculty and with the students, for then, as now, he had the attractiveness of vivacity, humor, and good manners.

It was characteristic of his well-balanced mind that when he graduated he inclined on one side to literature and on the other side to the law and of his Scotch practical wisdom that he decided for the law. Immediately, within a year after he left college and before he was twenty-one, he met the great opportunity of his life when he was introduced by his uncle, Malcolm Hay, to Abraham Lincoln, who took him into his law office at Springfield.

Mr. Lincoln, then the acknowledged leader of his profession and his party in the State of Illinois, and with an increasing national reputation, liked young Hay from the first. In spite of the disparity in age, temperament, and social and educational experiences, they had much in comFrom the first Mr. Lincoln must have found pleasure in the quick sympathies, the

mon.

Colonel Hay's paternal ancestors were, of course, Scotch, John Hay, the first in America, arriving in Virginia in the middle of the last century. His son Adam was a Revolutionary soldier and a friend of Washington, and his grandson, John Hay, was a lover of liberty, who left Kentucky, where his father had brought the family, for Illinois because he would not live in a slave State. Charles Hay, his son, and the father of Secretary Hay, was a well-to do physician in the little town of Salem, Ind., when he married the daughter of the Rev. David A. Leonard, a Rhode Island man of English ancestry. was natural that his mother's son should be sent to Brown University after receiving a good preparation at home in an atmosphere of real culture. In college young Hay did well, especially in English composition, writing his

It

sunny disposition, and the unswerving loyalty of the brilliant youth, and it is certain that they grew closer and closer together until they were parted by death. Mr. Lincoln learned to rely upon young Hay implicitly, and to depend upon him not only for service of all kinds and under all circumstances, but for such sympathy as he did not get from most of those around him. Mr. Hay's constant cheerfulness was especially grate

ful to the melancholy hero in the shadows of the great national tragedy which ended with his own assassination. Mr. Hay's ready appreciation of Mr. Lincoln's peculiar humor and of his favorite humorous writings was agreeable to Mr. Lincoln, when so many men, like Mr. Stanton, could not understand why Mr. Lincoln told or read funny things under the terrible ten

sion of waiting for battle

news.

National politics had already claimed Mr. Lincoln when young Hay entered his office, and the next year it became a headquarters of the Republican party, which had nominated him for the Presidency, so that Mr. Hay did not have much oppor tunity to learn law from his great preceptor, but he did learn enough to gain admission to the bar just before he started with Mr. Lincoln on his memorable journey to the White House. But Mr. Hay was learning larger lessons than the law could teach and developing more rapidly and perfectly than if he had been a mere law student. He was in the very heart of the remark. able campaign of 1860 mak

service in the field for several months, chiefly to obtain information for the President. The war over, the assassination came, cutting short all the plans of the great President and therefore of his private secretary. Although Colonel Hay was only twenty-six, he had had such an extraordinary training that he was recognized as well

fitted for the important diplomatic positions at Paris, Vienna, and Madrid, to which he was successively appointed after he had rendered his last service at the grave of his great captain.

It was while he was at Madrid that he wrote those delightful impressions of Spanish life which appeared in 1871 under the title of "Castilian Days," after he had returned to become an editorial writer on the New York Tribune. Pike County Ballads " were also published in 1871; the best of them, including "Little Breeches" and Jim Bludso," which won instant appreciation for their humor, pathos, and force, were written in about three weeks that year. They were handed with the others that he had written during his college years to James T. Fields, who liked them so much that he published them.

ing his start as a public writer and speaker, although his most important services were rendered privately. He not only found ample practice for his abilities, but he made the acquaintance of the leaders of the Republican party, and began to learn their motives and methods and the unwritten history of our politics. Like all his experiences, it was richly preparatory, and yielded fruits during the following four years in the White House and, indeed, ever since. Mr. Lincoln brought him to Washington as a matter of course, because he liked and needed him, and through all the storm and stress and labor that followed, Mr. Hay, vigorous in mind and body, cheerful and tactful, stood by Mr. Lincoln's side as though he had been his son. There were bright hours and pleasant incidents, of course; and it was at this time that Mr. Hay was introduced by Mr. Lincoln to Amasa Stone, of Cleveland, who had known Mr. Lincoln in Illinois, where he laid the foundation of his large fortune in building railroads, and whose beautiful and cultivated daugh ter ten years later married Mr. Hay.

As Colonel Hay the President's adjutant saw

Colonel Hay left the Tribune in 1875, having married Miss Stone and removed to the handsome home which Mr. Stone built for them on Euclid Avenue, in Cleveland. His marriage, which brought him wealth, made a great change in Colonel Hay's circumstances, but it made no change in the man himself. The virility of his character successfully resisted the temptation to become a dilletante or a mere society man. Colonel Hay has remained the energetic and ambitious, manly man that he was, neither weakened by luxury nor made snobbish by unconscious arrogance of conscious wealth " Although the spur of poverty was removed, he has worked as hard as ever, and has improved the new opportunities which his marriage brought of gratifying his literary, social, and political ambitions.

the

"The Life of Lincoln," written in collaboration with his fellow-secretary, Mr. Nicolay, which will be his literary monument, was perhaps made possible by the leisure of the first ten

years of his married life. It is said that "The Life of Lincoln " was not known in England before Mr. Hay went there as ambassador, the best English papers referring only to Pike County Ballads" and "Castilian Days" in enu merating his literary works, not knowing, of course, that he had also written The Breadwinners." But no modern historical work has been more successful in the United States than The Life of Lincoln," which secured at once a great circulation and the approval of the best

After all, Colonel Hay never practiced the profession he learned in Lincoln's law office, and has been a littérateur rather than a lawyer, although his real profession has been that of dip. lomat and statesman. He returned to Washington to serve for two years with his customary success as Assistant Secretary of State under President Hayes, and then, after presiding over the International Sanitary Congress, took the editorial direction of the New York Tribune during the exciting Blaine-Conkling controversy, which ended in the assassination of President Garfield, while Mr. Whitelaw Reid went on his wedding journey to Europe. Later on he changed his Later on he changed his residence from Cleveland to Washington, and has since made his permanent home in the beautiful house, one of the finest examples of Richardson's art in Washington, which he built on Lafayette Square, just north of the White House.

But

Until President McKinley, at the beginning of his administration, appointed Colonel Hay ambassador to Great Britain, he had not been conspicuous in public life for fifteen years. that was because, always unostentatious, and indeed retiring, he had avoided prominence, declined public office, and kept out of the newspapers. For during all those years, besides working in literature and meeting all social demands especially with a gracious hospitality, Colonel Hay was a power in politics, more, rather than less, important because he worked chiefly behind the scenes. He appeared from time to time on the Republican stump to make speeches notable for their cleverness, clearness, and cogency, but he was never conspicuous in conventions or hotel lobbies, at the White House, the Capitol, or the Cabinet offices. But in the inner councils of the Republican party his influence was potent, and the party managers knew how freely he gave his time, his efforts, and his money for the success of his principles and candidates. President McKinley was long his candidate for

the Presidency, and he thoroughly appreciated all that Colonel Hay did for him, and also the unusual fitness of Colonel Hay for public service. He would have made Colonel Hay Secretary of State at the beginning of his administration if he had not been constrained by circumstances to transfer Senator Sherman to the State Department. It was well. however, both for Colonel Hay and the administration, that he was sent just at that time as ambassador to Great Britain, for his public and private services there were of high order and great importance. In that propitious hour, when the interests of both countries drew them closer together to their mutual advantage, he did all that the American ambas sador could do to promote the friendliest relations and to secure our share of the benefits. The policy of benevolent neutrality which England followed to our advantage in the Spanish war was promoted by his efforts, and he utilized its influence in every possible way. Colonel and Mrs. Hay, blessed with fine social gifts and with the means to make them effective, made the best impression on English society. Colonel Hay's public addresses were models of their kind and examples of propriety which might well be followed by all our ambassadors. Colonel Hay made personal friends of most of the leading men of England, and through the opportunities of the embassy gained the friendship of many continental statesmen. When he returned to become Secretary of State, after less than eighteen months' service, he left behind him a shining reputation, and he brought back invaluable knowledge of the statecraft of every court in Europe.

Beginning his service as Secretary of State