Life — February 7, 1907 — page 20: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

“LIFE: ee ——— Colonel Higginson’s New Niche OLONEL THOMAS Wentworth Higginson re- cently celebrated a birthday in Cambridge, and the city duffed in and helped him celebrate it —not by Bacchie pro- cession of Harvard men and Radcliffe maidens, but by the soldier trib- uts of a bronze tablet in the Pub- ’ lic Library and y a) the dedication of a GTP “Thomas Went- worth Higginson Alcove,” in which the published words of this lead- ing citizen are to be all brought together for the enjoyment and edi- fication of his fellow- townsmen, present and future. Doubt- less the Cambridge Library (as would have been the case with any other similar institution, for that matter), took greater joy in arranging this programme, because Colonel Higginson has written so much and yet never produced that anxious con- sternation which stirs the Public Library bosom when the too boldly written word threatens to flush the timid cheek of innocence. HE honor of having a bronze tablet erected to one’s good deeds while still able to pat- ter about on two feet and look at it is surely uncommon. Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, whose name is written in bronze in the Boston Public Library, may enter _The Fiuman Zee ) 4 somewhat into the honorable satisfaction with which the Colonel probably spells out his name on his new tablet, but even she has no alcove. As for those individ- uals who attempt to encompass a like satisfaction by the practical method of erecting their own monuments, the trib- ute is a strictly private enterprise meeting with little outside approvation, except that of the young reporter who discovers it on a day when he is short of copy. But if this plan is good for Cambridge, as we believe, and good for Colonel Hi; ginson, as we are quite certain, why shouldn’t it establish a precedent’ for other libraries? It is, after all, a modest kind of temple of fame, yet of high honor, and the distinction could always be awarded late enough in life to eliminate the danger of undue self-importance. Colonel Higginson, for instance, cele brated his first birthday eighty-three years ago, and there is no danger that even so unusual an honor will now tum his head. It’s a poor Hearst that doesn’t work both ways. The race is always to the Mabel Gil man. Harriman OST financial wolves come out o/ the rural regions, lean, empty, keen and hungry. The aptly named Harri- man didn’t. He was to the manner born, of the Wall Street wolf pack, suckled in its traditions, trained in its ethics. Wall Street has neither religion nor soul; its creed is cash, its practice the transmigra- tion of roles, its progression being the spider, the fox, the wolf and the man-eat- ing tiger. Recent years have added an- other to the roll, a combination of teeth, appetite and digestion, with the arms and reach of the octopus, the mouth and floor space of the anaconda. Some designed to call this new type the Jawndee; but exact science has named it the Harry-Man. ‘Though men are known by the com- pany they keep, it is difficult to classify Harriman, since he has kept every com- pany heever laid hisfingers on. Hesquats like a benevolent spider in his continent- eM al web, trapping, annexing, absorbing, spoiling, digesting railroads, steamboats, mines, mills, plants, senates, legislatures, banks, insurance companies, everything rich, juicy, squeezable, transforming the owners into serfs and suckers, hirelings and has-beens, laughing at law, jeering at justice, mocking at morals and pounding the slats of that patient ass, the Public. comicbooks.com