Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1897-04-24


feet that. upon the whole. he regards his
home as a sort Of Arcadia, the serenity of
which he cannot permit to be impaired by
the introduction Of business Of any nature.
Eleven Hours a Day.
Gen. Alger often cuts a deep hole in his
immense mass of private business CORE
spondence between the hours of and 0
o'clock in the morning, during which time
he has to heavily weight the papers on
his War Department desk to protect them
from the swishing assaults of the char
women who dust Office furniture between
those hours. Promptly at o'clock in the
afternoon he knocks Off the consideration
of governmental business by the mere act
of changing his seat from his Secre-
tary of Wars desk to his private
citizens desk, half dozen steps dis
tant, In corner Of his ofiice-which.
and ornstely fixtured of all the cabinet
ministers offices. At this Uttered, never
cleared desk until z. and even until 6,
o'clock Gen. Alger often sits, beating down
daily tide of letters and reports germane
to business interests as wide the hemi
sphere. But he religiously adheres to his
determination made at the beginning of
his incumbency, that his private business
shall not conflict with his public business;
and from 9 o'clock in the morning until
o'clock In the afternoon he is the Secretary
of War.
ne Is military secretary OF w ar. he
knows the army of the United States on
its peace and on its war footing. Today he
can maneuver with the eclat and the pre-
cision of tactician any body of troops
from platoon to brigade. soldier, he
Is known and respected by the old SOL
diers, now general officers, by whom he is
surrounded and assisted. He knows what
an American military post is like, and he
knows the daily routine of the private as
well as the commanding officer. He could
serve as the quartermaster of regiment,
or he could direct the operations of a regi-
ment OF cavalry securing the yellow noun
tains OF Arizona for the Apache Kid; SO
that at his desk as Secretary of War he
is as man at home in his smoking
jacket. AT the very outset OF his term a
heavy problem was thrust at him, and he
handled it like a general in the field When
the Mississippi floods first became menac-
ing, and the general government was ap-
pealed to, 1t was Gen. Alger's own instant
suggestion that the submerged districts
should be mapped off into sections, each
section to be the territory of responsible
officer of the army for the mitigation of
danger and the distribution of relief. The
War Department had often before held up
of flood; but this eminently military plan
of organization in dealing with the jeop-
ardy of swelling waters had never before
been thought of, much less carried out.
At His Desk.
At his Secretary Of Wars desk he is the
general in his tent, and you unconsciously
look around for his orGerlies and hearken
for trumpet calls. He has the curious,
characteristic habit of an old-time army
officer of not looking up from his desk
when he is addressed, and of yet seeing
everything. The faculty has been called
telepathic. An official enters the Secre-
tary of Wars room. The Secretary of War
Is carefully scrutinizing some papers OH his
desk, with his head bowed low over them.
Yet he cordially calls the official by name,
before the latter has spoken, and old Off
Gals OF the department, who were down at
the front during the war, declare that,
somehow or another, they never enter Sec
rotary Ayers room that their right hands
do not give an involuntary preliminary
twitch toward the execution of number
four" salute. General Alger implanted
surprise in the bOsoms Of num-
Der OF the younger army Off
GERS whom he sent to the submerged Mis-
sissippi river districts, when they returned
to Washington to make their personal re-
ports to him. He put them on their mettle
with half a dozen questions, and they
quickly discovered that they were under
the cross-examination of civilian who
had not always been a civilian. He quizzed
them on some points of engineering that
made them bark back to their West Point
examinations; and they soon understood
that their temporary relationship to the
Secretary Of War was as that of staff aids
to field general.
The right hand of any Secretary of War
is the army's adjutant general. But Adjt.
Gen. George D. Ruggles is peculiarly the
guide. philosopher and friend of Secretary
Alger. The two men are old chums, and
when they met in the Secretary's office on
the day that Gen. Alger reported for
duty" there was half hours bandying of
"reminiscences such as can only ensue be-
tween a pair of distinguished gentlemen
who, though somewhat separated by
division of interests, have known all about
a fnrfv
years. The adjutant generals office is the
clearing house of the army establishment
in matters of personnel, and Secretary AL
ger and his friend, the adjutant general,
have already gotten into the stride of tam
dem working that clatters business" They
spend from one to two hours together every
day. Gen. Ruggles carries to tine Secre-
tary's room q big Russia leather portfolio
SO stuffed with documents that they con-
stantly drop out on his passage along the
corridors, to be picked up by relays of
messengers, and then Stenographer Gay,
appearing with a batch of clean notebooks
there is a cracking of papers and a rata
plan of dictation that quickly knocks the
formida ble-looking Russia leather portfolio
kite-high.
As Dictator.
"Rataplan OF dictation''-that is an ex-
act term. Secretary Alger is said to be
the warmest dictator of stenographic notes
that ever came to Washington as a cabi-
sidered one Of the most expert jotters of
Pitman pot-hooks in the service of the
government; and although Secretary Alger
has not yet succeeded in putting his short
hand man to the guessing point, he has
certainly tried hard enough to do So 1t
is a common thing for him to dictate let
tiers, both official and private, at a rate
of nearly 175 words a minute; and there
are not many stenographers who can han
die that rate of dictation when the die
tator has confirmed habit of running his
letters right into each other, as Secre
tary Alger has. 1t requires bit of men,
DRY to write twenty or thirty sizabe let
tiers in the course of hours parade
back and forth in an Office room, without
the use Of q single note of reference, and
this is General Ayers manner of disposing
of his correspondence. With his hands be-
hind his back, and his eyes fastened upon
the carpet, he strides back and forth
through his own office and that of his
private secretary, emitting a fanfaronade
of well-considered and well-constructed
speech that makes his stenographer dig
around in his memory for all the word
signs he has ever mastered. He no sooner
appends the conventional truly yours
to one letter than he juts out the name and
address CT the next correspondent, and
plunges right along without a break, as
the whole dictation was to be comprised
In oNa letfc. Whap ho copSjdarc fhot no