The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1891-04-30
HELPED BY THEIR WIVES.
Well Known Men Who Owe Much TO
Their Happy Marriages.

Solomon has written "a good wife
is better than rubies,n and Of all the
thought pearls which have fallen
from the pen of that wisest of men
none is truer or more aptly expressed.
However dependent woman may be
upon man, there can be no question
that she is his chief incentive and in
spiration. Take, for example, a few
of the men who have been and are
among the best known of our own
time.
Probably there have been few whose
lives were more directly influenced or
who were more directly indebted for
their real success in life to their wives
than the late General Grant. When
after four years Of married life, from
1S4S to 1852, during which, as a Lieu
tenant in the Regular Army, he was
located at Jefferson Barracks, Mis-
souri,, Grant was assigned TO a post in
far away, then almost unknown,
Oregon Territory, he took his wife
and children with him. The over
whelming loneliness OF a little fort on
the frontier was oon more
| l1idu Mis-. oIdJb OOaA4 SeAi
and it was at her earnest
solicitation that he resigned his COM
mission in the army, and returning
to st. Louis, took up his residence on
the farm of Mrs. Grants parents, her
father having given her eighty acres
and four slaves. ltseems curious that
the maj who, next to Abraham Lin
coin, was most active in destroying
slavery, should once have been a
STAKEHOLDER himself. When he re-
moved from Missousi to Illinois to be-
come Superintendent Of bis fathers
tannery, he could not take his slaves
with him into the latter State, 81 he
gave them to one John Il. Long. 1t
was after having failed to achieve ma
teriai success, first as a farmer, then
as q real estate agent and lastly as a
tanner, that he began to seriously
question whether he should ever get
on very well in any a~vocation.
Then the war broke out, and the
brave young wife, who had desired
her husband to give up soldering
when it was nothing but idling life
YEARLY away in a little frontier stock
AIDE, was the first to recognize hat his
country called him and to grid about
him that sword which a few years be-
fore she had persuaded him to change
for q ploughshare and q pruning hook.
At the same time, discerning with the
unerring instinct of a true wife the
great soldier, by qualities of the man,
She predicted for him a bright and
glorious career in fighting the battles
of his country.
(. Noone who has been admitted tothe
home circle of John ID. Rockefellow,
the great oil king and magnate OF the
Standard Oil Company, ever won
ders, as do all others, that the man
who has the heavy responsibility of
immense business interests and a vast
fortune of 800, 600, 900 constantly
weighing upon him, should always
preserve such a calm, unruffied exter-
Tor and such a remarkable appear
ance of complete freedom from care.
The good wife, who sits by the
hearthstone, is the talisman that
soothes his cares and banishes them
from his mind with n glance of her
calm, mild eyes. No man was ever
/ more blest in his domestic relations
than he who is fast becoming, IL, in
/ deed, he is not already, the richest
man In America. Mrs. Rockefellow
, is the veritable model wife whom
! Solomon has described at length in
! his proverbs. 1t is to her habit of
/ keeping a complete expense book in
which the smallest purchase is noted.
and to the consequent avoidance OF
all wasteful expenditure that Mrs.
Rockefeller attributes the accumula-
= ton of the first small nucleus OF his
great fortune when he and his young
wife were waging a bitter fight with
poverty in the days long gone.
OF all the many people ia this coun-
try and Europe who have admired
: the rare girlish beauty of Nina Miller,
who, though now only t~wenty-siS
years of age, has been for five years
the wife of the famous inventor,
Thomas A. Edison, few are aware
0 that she is herself an inventor of nc
mean ability. Singularly unassum-
ing and retiring as Mrs. Edison is ii
everything, she Is especially reticent
. about her inventive genius, and il
d~ispleased when her husband states
confidentially to some intimate frienc
! what is q fact; that the suggestion
!. for many OF the most remarkable an6
I profitable of his inventions of the pas
few years have been obtained from
Q his wife. Mrs. Edison inherits tn
1 inventive genius, for her father, Levi
, Miller, the Akron, o., millionaire,
! the originator Of several successful
Z inventions.
a Grover Cleveland was one of tn
few OF our Presidents who confided al
!. important questions OF state to tn
women of his household, and tool
: counsel with them prior TO any decis
!. i've action. During the time that hi
sister. Rose Elizabeth. was mistress o
the White House, she was always hi
most Trusted assistant. and when sh