As critic, Stedman had the rare gift of the impressionist. He could with a single touch present a portrait not only recognizable at sight, but pleasantly recalled long afterward. For example, he pictures Walter Savage Landor at ninety as a "monarch of the forest, most untamed when powerless." Of Halleck, he says: "He was a natural lyrist, whose pathos and eloquence were inborn." Of Bryant he says: "He did not give himself to poetry, but added poetry to his ordinary life and occupation." He pictures the dualnatured Lowell as "wearing his Arcadian garb, yet hastening to throw aside his crook at the sound of the trumpet.

While Stedman the author overshadows Stedman the banker, the man's success in finance goes far to disprove the too hastily-accepted conclusion that success in literature is necessarily at the expense of business success. of business success. As a broker on the New York Stock Exchange, alone and unaided, he twice amassed a moderate fortune. His judgments as to the future of stocks were remarkably clear. From 1864, when he bought a seat in the Stock Exchange, until 1890, the date of his retirement, he was in constant and close relations with "the Street." His first fortune was swept away by an unfortunate investment; but he resolutely set himself to the task of acquiring another.

In this he was so successful that, in his sixty-seventh year, he felt himself abundantly able to retire and give himself up to literary pursuits.

His death brings to mind the beautiful and deeply suggestive sonnet contributed by him to the "Century Magazine" of April, 1894, entitled "Mors Benefica":

Give me to die unwitting of the day,

And stricken in Life's brave heat, with senses clear:
Not swathed and couched until the lines appear

Of Death's wan mask upon this withering clay,

But as that old man eloquent made way

From Earth, a nation's conclave hushed anear;
Or as the chief whose fates, that he may hear
The victory, one glorious moment stay.

Or, if not thus, then with no cry in vain,

No ministrant beside to ward and weep,
Hand upon helm I would my quittance gain

In some wild turmoil of the waters deep,

And sink content into a dreamless sleep

(Spared grave and shroud) below the ancient main.

IN

XVIII

LEWIS V. F. RANDOLPH

1838

N the year 1901 appeared a modest little book of poems entitled "Survivals," by L. V. F.

Randolph, then president of the Atlantic Trust Company, New York, later president of the Consolidated Exchange, New York, and a director in many large corporations. Mr. Randolph began his business career in 1854, in the American Exchange Bank, New York; and from a successful banker in time became a financier of large means and extended influence. His advent into the literary world after attaining his first half-century brought to the front the fact that, like Halleck of old New York, he had early in life secretly and oft indulged in wrestlings with the muse, hence the title of his book of verse. Of the several survivals, perhaps the most notable is the "Song for the Mercantile Library Dinner," in 1868.

That the poet in the man of affairs has evolved from youth to age is evident from the fact that the best poem in the ninety pages of Mr. Randolph's verse is "The Man with the Hoe," a soul-stirring reply to Edwin Markham's

famous poem. Here is the opening stanza:

Who least requires the pity of his kind—

Who least desires your condescending aid?

He who with plow and hoe has conquered Earth,
Piled high her treasures, gathered by his toil,
Then sent them far to fill his fellow-men

With cheer and strength in every walk of life.

The poet here joins the man of affairs in sounding the note of alarm:

Shall we be blameless if we warm and nurse

The serpent Anarchy to work our woe?

The concluding lines embody an eloquent tribute to Labor-not the degraded creature pictured by Markham, but the inspirer of men, the achiever, the attainer:

Patience shall conquer all--not fierce recoil!

When man shall reach the topmost peaks of joy,
And in serenest mind look back on life,

Shall Dread Destruction or Impatience stand
The Almoner of grace and goodly gifts?
Nay, rather, shall a stately, Christly form
Emerge upon the path so bravely trod,
And, with a voice of gracious dignity,
Proclaim-I, Labor, am the Friend of Man,
His Teacher, Guard, Companion to the end:
By me his great achievements all are won,
By me his feet have gained supernal heights.

N°

XIX

KENNETH GRAHAME

1856

one who has enjoyed the humor, goodnatured satire and general outdoor breeziness of Kenneth Grahame's books would ever suspect the man behind the book to be a prisoner at the desk like the rest of us, a man of facts and figures, whose findings affect every banker and business man in the commercial world. Mr. Grahame, whose "Golden Age" and "Dream Days" delight thousands who have not forgotten they once were children, is none other than the presumably staid and sedate secretary of the Bank of England! His several books appeared in the following order: "Pagan Papers," 1893; "The Golden Age," 1895; "Dream Days" and "The Headswoman," 1898. "Wind in the Willows" is the author's latest production, and is convincing proof that his heart like "the land," as Grover Cleveland once put it, "remains in its place." Mr. Grahame was married, in 1899, to a daughter of the late Robert Thompson, of Edinburgh. Speaking of the first acceptance of his literary work by the astute Henley, he says: "One of my little meteorites, whirling around in edi