Random Reminiscences of Men and Events | Page 7

assume the burdens of the business which they were so
eminently qualified to conduct.
Of detail work I feel I have done my full share. As I began my business
life as a bookkeeper, I learned to have great respect for figures and
facts, no matter how small they were. When there was a matter of
accounting to be done in connection with any plan with which I was
associated in the earlier years, I usually found that I was selected to
undertake it. I had a passion for detail which afterward I was forced to
strive to modify.
At Pocantico Hills, New York, where I have spent portions of my time
for many years in an old house where the fine views invite the soul and
where we can live simply and quietly, I have spent many delightful
hours, studying the beautiful views, the trees, and fine landscape effects
of that very interesting section of the Hudson River, and this happened
in the days when I seemed to need every minute for the absorbing
demands of business. So I fear after I got well started, I was not what
might be called a diligent business man.
This phrase, "diligent in business," reminds me of an old friend of mine
in Cleveland who was devoted to his work. I talked to him, and no
doubt bored him unspeakably, on my special hobby, which has always
been what some people call landscape gardening, but which with me is
the art of laying out roads and paths and work of that kind. This friend
of thirty-five years ago plainly disapproved of a man in business
wasting his time on what he looked upon as mere foolishness.
One superb spring day I suggested to him that he should spend the
afternoon with me (a most unusual and reckless suggestion for a
business man to make in those days) and see some beautiful paths
through the woods on my place which I had been planning and had

about completed. I went so far as to tell him that I would give him a
real treat.
"I cannot do it, John," he said, "I have an important matter of business
on hand this afternoon."
"That may all be," I urged, "but it will give you no such pleasure as
you'll get when you see those paths--the big tree on each side and ----"
"Go on, John, with your talk about trees and paths. I tell you I've got an
ore ship coming in and our mills are waiting for her." He rubbed his
hands with satisfaction--"I'd not miss seeing her come in for all the
wood paths in Christendom." He was then getting $120 to $130 a ton
for Bessemer steel rails, and if his mill stopped a minute waiting for ore,
he felt that he was missing his life's chance.
Perhaps it was this same man who often gazed out into the lake with
every nerve stretched to try to see an ore ship approaching. One day
one of his friends asked him if he could see the boat.
"No-o, no-o," he reluctantly admitted, "but she's most in sight."
This ore trade was of great and absorbing interest at Cleveland. My old
employer was paid $4 a ton for carrying ore from the Marquette regions
fifty years ago, and to think of the wickedness of this maker of
woodland paths, who in later years was moving the ore in great ships
for eighty cents a ton and making a fortune at it.
All this reminds me of my experiences in the ore business, but I shall
come to that later. I want to say something about landscape gardening,
to which I have devoted a great deal of time for more than thirty years.
THE PLEASURES OF ROAD PLANNING
Like my old friend, others may be surprised at my claim to be an
amateur landscape architect in a small way, and my family have been
known to employ a great landscape man to make quite sure that I did
not ruin the place. The problem was, just where to put the new home at

Pocantico Hills, which has recently been built. I thought I had the
advantage of knowing every foot of the land, all the old big trees were
personal friends of mine, and with the views of any given point I was
perfectly familiar--I had studied them hundreds of times; and after this
great landscape architect had laid out his plans and had driven his lines
of stakes, I asked if I might see what I could do with the job.
In a few days I had worked out a plan so devised that the roads caught
just the best views at just the angles where in driving up the hill you
came upon impressive