The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1891-10-18
CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW
Gossip About the Great After
Dinner Orator.
HOW MILLIONAIRES
LUNCH
Noble Foreigners as Chauncey Sees Them-New
Stories of Lincoln-Depew's Speech on
Henry Ward Beecher, Etc.

NEW YORK, Oct. Especial CORES
pondence, SUNDAY HERALD. IL had long
chat to-day with Chauncey M. Depew on
after-dinner speaking. He is the greatest
after-dinner orator in the United States
and after all, he is one of the most re-
markable men in this country As a
lawyer, he stood for years at the head of
the New York bar and as attorney for the
Nanderbilts and for other great corpora
tons he has held his own against such men
as Roscoe Conkling, William NJ. Evarts,
David Dudley Field and the other great
lights Of this the strongest legal center of
the union. as president of the New York
Central railroad he has for many years
managed one of the biggest corporations
In the country and as leading New York
politician, he has refused the United States
Senatorship and has declined the request
OF the Republican party of his state to
have his name put before its national con-
ventions as its candidate for the presi-
dency. Chauncey Depew has ali his life
been associated with monopolists and CAPT.
talists, still the masses and the laboring
men look upon him as their friend and
though he is a strict Republican, the
Democrats delight TO listen to his speeches
he Is one of the busiest men in the
United States and apparently the
one OF our greatest business men
having the most leisure. He attends more
dinners perhaps than any other great rail-
road president in the country and makes
more speeches than any professional lee
turer or noted statesman. He receives ten
q nsll 4 a
reply TO speeches and toasts and he told
me this afternoon that he made more than
three speeches every week, year in and
year out, and that his average had been
moro than hundred speeches per aunum
for years. In these speeches., Mr. Depew
never repeats himself. The charge that he
retans his own stories until they become
chestnuts, is not true for all of his
speeches are published and he speaks again
and again year after year TO the same asso-
Citations, and Of course has to have q new
speech every time. How he does il. is a
worder to everyone. The only explanation
OF IL Is that be Is a genius aud that he
knows how to work his genius so that it
viii produce the greatest results.
TIRE PRESIDENT OF TIE NEW YORK CENTRAL.
The daily life of man like this ought to
be interesting. l have had some chance to
study Mr.. Depew's habits today. l called
ehAo 44OA AALb dI kL6 NEW OK Central
offices and spent part of the dsy watching
the presidents work, noting the stream of
callers which howed almost constantly il
ana out OF his room and chatting with his
private secretary, Mr.. DuvaL about him.
1ou reach these offices by narrow, iron
stairs. a forbidding looking negro. as
black as Erebus, opens the door of the
presidents room, and your card must pass
from him to Mr.. Duval before tgets to Mr..
Depew. MIR. Duvsls room is about six feet
wide and twenty feet long, and the desk in
the centre OF II runs almost across the
width OF the room, and in front and behind
this are doors which lead into the Office of
the president of the New York Central.
This office is perhaps twenty-five feet
square. Its finishing is Of black walnut and
1t has on three sides walls of glass ex-
fendlg 'hye feet from the ceiling down TO
where they meet the main walls of walnut
or plaster. The room is simply furnished.
At 4 rolling top desk in the center sits Mr.
Depew, and at some distance away are
tables occupied by his two stenographers.
MIR. Depew's desk is Uttered with papers
and you note by the postage stamps on his
letters that his mail comes from all parts
of the world. Here are cables from Eng
land and France, there is package of So
cial letters and before HIM lies a tabulated
statement showing the working and prog
ress OF some of his latest railroad manipu-
ian average of fifty personal letters a day
and his business mail runs Up into
the hundreds. Some of his mail he never
sees, part OF IL is answered by stenogra-
piers, but the most of his personal letters
receive replies in his own handwriting
he Is very rapid writer, is rarely at a
loss Tor word to express his meaning
and he dictates quite as readily as he
writes. He gets TO his Office between 9
and 10 o'clock every morning, ard first
takes up his mail and newspaper clippings
He is probably IS much quoted as any
man In the country, and he receives
comments upon his work from newspapers
both in this country and in Europen He
is a patron of the Clipping bureau, and Mr.
Duval says that he often pays these bu-
reaus as high as 500 a month for the news
paper cuttings which they send him con-
corning himself, and that these cuttings
number from $50 to 800 day. These clip
pings come from foreign papers as well as
from American journals, and YESTERDAY
one was received from a London news
paper which severely criticized Mr.. De-
pew's remarks on Whitechapel, and which
In reply quoted a Chicago newspaper cor
respondent who stated that Chicago sur
passed Whitechapel in vice.
As soon as Mr.. Depew gets to the Office
his callers begin to come. They basjeoe
him at his residence before he starts. down
town, and they are here in force bv the
time he arrives. The number waiting for
him ranges from ten to fifty according tn
tho times, and he receives ali who have anv
business with him. He is in fact one O. the
most accessible men in New York, and he
IL so even tempered that he remains cool