The San Francisco call., 1904-04-17
The Life Labor
of Henry billiard

is a book of strong appeal. The
American loves TO read of a
successful fight, whether it be
against a foe in the field or a niggard-
ly and resisting fortune. Henry VII
lard. who came to the land Of promise
from his home in Germany a Door out
cast boy. sans purse and sans friend.
died a millionaire, the man of many
affairs. the captain of industry; that
was good fight. and that it is which
viii appeal to the restless. striving
American. But aside from this rec
ord of strenuous endeavor Wizards
posthumous memoirs have a value
from another point of view. Few peo-
pie know. perhans, that this builder Of
railroads and strong n an in Wall
street was upon the grounds when thf
tremendous history of the Civil War
was in the making. AS correspondent
for various New York papers, Willard
was in the thick OF the fighting from
Bull Run to Chattanooga. 1t is the
careful transcript from his personal
observation Of these great events, in
,corporated TO make the major part o.
his story. that gives his Memoirs" an
historical Importance.
Unfortunately for those who would
know thoroughly the~whole record Of
Wizards varied activities. the autobi-
ographer has chosen to dwell at great
length upon his early life and expert
OF much that would be fascinating
reading were he equally as cyclopedic
in recording the period of his financial
triumphs and his pioneering in West
ern railroads But i'll health intervene6
to prevent Wizards completion of his
memoirs upon the scale which he had
mapped out, and he was forced to
make only a compendium" Of his ac-
tivities from 1868 to 1s99-a brief 126
pages in which the writer drops the
ego which had made the previous
pages so absorbingly interesting and
writes from the distant Journalism Of
the third person. Notwithstanding the
fact that throughout the narrative we
are given pen pictures and personal
judgments of such men as Stephen A.
Douglas, Lincoln, Grant and Sherman,
Willard himself is the most command
ing figure in the book. Simple and
unassuming in his recOuntal of his life
struggle. free TO criticize and free to
acknowledge himself in error, seeming
TO view his remarkable achievements
rs.a1 -
finding in them something of interest
from a quantity objective standpoint,
Willard reveals himself without boast
ing-a character which strikes our i'm
aginatiOn and arouses our admiration.
Willard was born in Bavaria in 1895,
the son Of hard-headed Justice of the
Supreme Court. Hardly had young
Henrys gymnasium course been fin
ished when there arose between himself
and his father a dispute as TO what his
life work was to be. DesDairing Of
winning his father over to his way Of
thinking young Hilgard, or Willard, as
he called himself after leaving the
fatherland, left for America in 1858
without a groat in his pocket over and
above his passage money and with not
the slightest knowledge of the English
language. The space within which this
review must be confined does not per-
NIT OF a resume of the long series of
struggles which the boy made both in
New York and in the van towns of what
was then the West before he succeeded
in becoming the correspondent of the
New York Stats Zeituug 10 cover"
the Lincoln Douglas debates in Illinois.
Wizards accounts OF the historic de-
bates are somewhat meager. but the
picture he gives Of Lincoln as that
great man first impressed him is one
Of the most noteworthy things in the
book. With characteristic frankness
Willard says that the gawky, untutored
backwOodsman disguised him outright
with his provincial manners and coarse
speech.
AS far as all external conditions
were concerned there was nothing in
favor Of Lincoln" says Willard. He
had a lean, lank. indescribably gawky
figure. an odd-featured. wrinkled, in
expressive and altogether uncomeIy
face. He used singularly awkward, al
most absurd. up-and-down and side
Rise movements Of his body to givs
emphasis to his arguments. His voice
was naturally good, but he frequently
raised it to an unnatural pitch. Ye;
the unprejudiced mind felt at once that
while there was on the one side skill
full dialectician and debater arguing .
wrong and weak cause, there was or
the other a thoroughly earnest ant
truthful man, inspired by sound con
vlctions in cOnsonance with the tru,
spirit Of American institutions. Their,
was nothing in all Douglas powerful
effort that appealed to the higher in
stincts of human NATURE, while Lincoln
always touched sympathetic chords
Lincoln's speech excited and sustained
the enthusiasm of his audience to III
end"
So much for the Lincoln of the po
litical rostrum. AS to the man il
social converse. Willard is not at al
backward i'm expressing his convic
tioTs. Says he:
Il was introduced to Lincoln a
Freeport and met him frequentl,
afterward i'm the course of the cam
paign. / must say frankly that, al
though ] found him most approach