The age-herald., 1901-04-30
An Old Consul.

An Old Consul.
 Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rocke- feller were strong friends of the late James Douglas Reid. former United and first superintendent of a telegraph line or company who ever lived and the two millionaires undertook to give him a kind of sinecure in the New York office of the Standard Oii''Company should he get out of government employ, promise they kept, believe" said man yester- day who knew Mir. Reid and MT. Carr negie we'll
 'Mr. Reid was not rich. He was a young man of two and thirty when he taught twelve-year-old Andrew Carnegie the art of telegraphy and he was then the worlds first superintendent of tele- graph. That was fifty-three years ago.
 MT. Reid in effect turned over his saw ings of some few thousand dollars to John D. Rockefeller for investment. Rocke- Teller, invested the money in Standard oil stock and thereby did MT. Reid real benefit. Andrew Carnegie told Mir. Reid twelve years ago that he would make him a present of slO,OO0, but he hadn't done so up to four years ago, apparently having forgotten 1t. The consuship of Dumfermline which Mir Carnegie sue ceeded In getting for MT. Reid paid Mir Reid several thousand dollars year.
 MT. Carnegie made the present of the Presidents commission as consul to Mir. Reid the occasion for very hap py evening late in 1Ss9 Mir Reid never thought of the consuship. One day in New York Mir Reid received a formal invitation to dine with the Carnegies in their Fifth avenue mansion. When he arrived at the mansion he met Mr. Rock efeller and other men who were notori- ously rich The company sat down to more than princely dinner, which all en- joyed. When rare, old port was reached in. the courses Mir. Carnegie arose and said that he had bidden his other friends there to meet his old master. Mir. Reid, and to be witnesses to the presentation to MT. Reid of rich and honorable gift from the President of the United States. Thereupon he handed MT. Reid his com mission as consul. The dear old man couldn't speak, so overcome was he with astonishment and emotion. He wept MT. Carnegie had kept the State Department from announcing MT. Reid's appointment to the press In the usual way, so that he himself might have the happiness of giy- ing his old friend the glad news
 "Singularly enough that was precisely the course pursued when Lucien Julien Walker, whom MT Reid succeeded, was appointed consul at Dunfermline in 1885; Congressman Hilary A. Herbert of the second Alabama district, and afterwards secretary of the navy, having secured the Presidents commission for MT. Walk CT in order that he might privately have the pleasure of conveying the news to his young friend in Alabama, and having induced the State Department not to give out the appointment to the public.
 MT. Reid was one of the most lovable of all old men. He was little man, per- fectly erect in his carriage. with snow white beard and hair, and with gold trimmed spectacles adorning the most genial and benevolent of faces. The re- tiring consul remained in Dunfermline two months after MT. Reids arrival, hap py in giving the old man instructions in the duties of the consulate.
 MT. Reid had daughter who married a British nobleman, with whom she lived unhappily for several years, and was then driven to seek judicial separation on account of her lords cruelty. That deeply wounded the consul.
 After MT. Refds arrival in Dun fermline he took to golf like a duck to water, and every afternoon, rain or shine, he could be seen playing on the links down by the Firth of Earth where the famous Earth cantilever bridge spans that deep arm of the German ocean. Now and then he would give a cup to be striven for by his brother golfers.
 He was universally called the old Consul in contradistinction to his youth full predecessor, who is to this day re- ferred to in Fifeshire as the young con sul.' He was held in great esteem"