St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1893-12-17

TO pay his way at school. And it is told
that the neighbors put SO much work on
the shy boy that he had but little time
left fer study. Strange what a remark
able group of men, or rather boys, he
was born among. To say nothing of
soldiers, senators and so on, there were
p. I. Barnum, Brigham Young, Joseph
Smith and such like strong natures. No,
don't deSpise Barnum. A man who has
made millions of little ones happy is
neither knave nor fool. Brigham
Young? He built a city in the heart of
1.-THE Great American Desert" as it was
then called, that is a marvel, and
Prophet Smith furnished the material.
This man of iron has probably built
more miles of railroad than any other
ten men living or dead. Yet who ever
heard of him or about him as long as he
could hide himself and his marvellous
works behind others? 1t was only when
Hopkins, Crocker and Stanford fell
from the front and left him standing all
alone that we began TO see 1.-THE power
behind the throne"
If he had done nothing else but bore
that hole through the Sierra Nevadas
and cross the sands of the continent, he
would have had fame enough and
fortune enough, and it is a fact that the
either three great builders wanted to
stop there and then, but the greater
e0rce of this one man bore down all
others, II he began building from
Sacramento to the sea at once and from
Arizona to Oregon.
Have you ANY idea what that irstroad
cost? The people laughed: the press of
the Pacific coast jeered, derided. hOwIed,
and, being disappointed in their prophe-
cies, are still howhng, j%eering, deriding.
Huntington sat with his finger on the
financial pulse of the world. Cr0cker,
at the head of construction, kept right
with his men in the mountains day and
might. He. too, had been a day laborer
in his youth, and he knew what toll
was. He once told me that for years he
tOiled so hard and necessarily that he
scarcely had time or strength to throw
off his clothes at night, but he fell on
his blankets and slept as he fell. When
mis- tunnel was half through the mount
aims, he tapped it from the top, drew
up his thousand tons of track and ran
the rails away down the mountains in
grooves of wood.
The other day a lady writer came to
me, as they come to all scribes, | reckon,
and begged me to tell her how to make
some money with her pen. She had a
fine article on Huntington; better than
/ could do: dainty, delicate and so SEN
sible that even the most shy man could
not be afraid of it. Take that to
Huntington or to his wife. lnever saw
and scarce know him." said |, land get
MS permission to publish it as %authentic;
then | will give you a letter TO a maya
CINE"
She came back in a few DAYS.
"Well?"
$50"
Fifty dollars! Gee! Where do you
want to publish it?:"
publish it! He gave me the $50 to
burn it up!"
But this young woman had dug up a
fact that /, as a Californian, don't care
to have burned. To make certain of il
1 went TO a certain man. l said, Look
here, Huntington is the richest man in
the United States-and closest, eh?"
''Sir, he may not be the richest, but
he is the freest-handed of all the MANY
f~ree-handed men in California. Why,
Sir, his benefactiOnS are like a brook
they go on forever"
And then this certain man. who has
charge of his charities, wheeled about
an his Indignation at what | had said
and took an hour and a half to tell what
he had done only the last month.
THANK you" l SAID; lust the thing
] wanted"'
what? What do you mean?"
"Well, it won't hurt Huntington to
publish IT,"
"Hurt? Ii will enrage him, and it will
Euin me, for he knows that l am the only
one who could know all this, and he Is a
man who literally will not let his one
hand know what the other does" So |
am silenced OF that.
The one other notable thing about this
great Californian that distinguishes him
from all the railroad builders on the
other side Of the Rocky mountains. liv.
ing or dead, is the fact that he is. was
and ever has been from the first a build
er from the ground up"
Other men bought bankrupt or
wrecked roads. You may put your
finger on some who even made a profess
sion Of wrecking roads in order to buv
them and build UP their fortunes on the
ruins of others. But G.. p. Huntington.
II you except MS road from Newport
News 10 Huntington, KY. took his
ground fresh from the hand of God and
Gurned the grass, roots and daisies