In 1901 he was a delegate to the Anti-Imperialist Convention at Indianapolis, but barring this and occasional short business or pleasure trips, he spent his time quietly at “Brook Farm” educating his family; entertaining his friends; farming a little; helping those who turned to him for advice from all sides; and carrying on his work. In 1906 this study bore its first fruit in the volume Lincoln, Master of Men.
His premature death at the age of fifty-three prevented him from quite completing Honest Abe. Had he finished this book, however, he would merely have taken Lincoln a little further in his political career and added to proof that already amply sustains his thesis.
It is given to few to meet death so exquisitely as he did,—alone, without suffering, in the presence only of Nature. On the morning of September 29, 1915, after a game of tennis with my mother, he went down to the lake alone for a plunge. He was missed some hours later, and a search discovered him dead in the water—a victim of heart failure caused by the icy shock.
His life was a candle that, burning with an unusually generous and beautiful flame, consumed itself before the appointed hour.
One of my father’s friends used to say, “The real thing never looks the part.” Like most epigrams his is too inclusive. My father, for example, did most thoroughly look the part. Literary admirers who met him in the flesh were not disillusioned and those other persons who came in casual contact with him rarely hesitated to class him as a student,—though beyond that point opinions diverged. Some set him down for a physician, others for a lawyer, still others as a college professor, and a few of the keenest for what he really was,—a man of letters. His physical traits, clothes, and manner were—contrary to his friend’s epigram—true indices to his personality and occupation.
A trifle below the medium stature, my father had a distinction of air that many a taller man might have envied. That dignity—courtly at times—was due to a subtle blending of distinct characteristics. To say that he owed it to his well-built, muscular figure, or to his erect carriage, would be palpably inaccurate. Such a description might fit many a substantial bourgeois, whereas Alonzo Rothschild, despite his plain tastes, was far more the patrician. One would have had to imagine him with another head and other hands to consider him bourgeois. Such long, white, blue-veined hands belong to the proverbial gentleman; such delicate skin is an attribute of gentle birth; such a head is seen only on those who do the world’s thinking. Admirably moulded, it put one in mind of a well-built house,—good in its lines and roomy inside. The broad, dome-like forehead—exaggerated by partial baldness—and the full, gray-brown beard were almost unmistakable indications of the scholar. Yet quite as distinctly were the silkiness of his black hair, the well-set, finely cut features, the sparse eyebrows, and the curling nostrils, marks of the aristocrat. But it was the kindliness and swift intelligence of his hazel eyes that gave his face its mobility of expression. Passions and moods played across it as freely as the lights and shadows of the sky are reflected on the surface of a summer meadow.
As his appearance bespoke, my father was physically and nervously of delicate fiber. His sense of touch, for example, was hypersensitive, and it was amusing, at table, to see how gingerly he handled hot plates. He was, however, in no sense unmanly and too often suffered acutely in silence. In fact he could much better bear suffering himself than witness it in others. Not infrequently when some member of the family was in pain, he became similarly afflicted through sheer sympathy.
Sometimes his constitutional intensity manifested itself in quite a different manner. Ordinarily mild-tempered and patient, he was capable of a withering wrath. Relentless, and concentrating in itself all his physical and intellectual forces, it could flare up without warning, or wait years for an opportune moment, and then sweep upon the chosen enemy like a rain of fire. Crushing as the effect of such an outburst was upon its victim, it was hardly less disastrous in its physical reaction upon himself.
Irritability and violence of temper constituted in his case the enemy that every man carries within himself. It is evident that he recognized his cardinal fault, for he kept a little card perched on his inkstand bearing this proverb in his own handwriting: “Mensch ärger dich nicht.”
Usually people so highly organized are difficult to live with, but my father was a striking exception. Save for such occasional outbursts as have already been alluded to, he was of a sunny disposition and most considerate in his personal relationships. Those whose duty it was to minister to his comfort and physical well-being found him easy to please. He was austerely plain in matters of dress and neither knew nor cared what he ate. Indeed, when mentally absorbed, he forgot his meals, and it is said that while he was editing The Jewelers’ Weekly he ate lunch only if one of his friends came and dragged him out. Even had he been more exacting and given freer rein to his moods, his personal charm would have been sufficient counterbalance. His resonant voice, buoyancy, and ready sympathy would alone have made him a pleasant companion. Then, too, he had an almost magical influence over all who came within his range of acquaintance, stimulating the best that they had in them, and bringing it to the surface.