His interest in humanity was not limited by age or sex. He had a great tenderness for children and a power over their affections that was but another phase of his diverse nature. He made a capital playmate, as his own children well remember, and the serious concerns of the grown-up world never so shackled him that he could not shake them off for a romp, or a song, to invent a new game or to play some old favorite. Like many other men who have done big things, he never entirely lost a certain boyishness that cropped out occasionally in whimsical little pranks. One of these is so superior to the general run of practical jokes that it bears narrating.
It was in The Jewelers’ Weekly days. He was returning to New York from a trip to Albany and some friends had accompanied him to the train. While they were waiting, my father accidentally dropped a half-dollar and one of the young ladies, picking it up, vowed that she would keep it as a remembrance. My father pleaded with mock concern that he needed it to complete his fare, but she, disbelieving him, clung to it the more firmly. She was correct in her assumption that he had plenty of money with him, but on the train he decided that the fifty cents should earn him some fun and not be a total loss.
On arriving in New York, he went to his printer and had him strike off a mock newspaper clipping which narrated how a young man, giving his name as Alonzo Rothschild, had been ejected from the Chicago Limited because he lacked part of the fare; how he maintained that it had been stolen from him by a Miss L—— of Albany, and how he was last seen trudging toward New York.
Not only was the young lady contrite over her playful theft, but she was enraged at the newspaper that would print such a story about her, and for a long time she begged my father to divulge the name so that she might bring suit.
This story well illustrates the exuberant, playful humor that brightened his whole life and that made our dinner table more famous for puns, jokes, and repartee than for good cheer of the other sort. But there is another anecdote of this period which throws more light on his character.
One day a gentleman who knew the family was walking through Mount Morris Park, in New York, when he noticed a bareheaded young man seated on a park bench and absorbed in a book. Approaching along the path he was surprised to recognize my father, and on reaching the bench he was still more astonished to see that his forehead swarmed with mosquitoes.
“Didn’t expect to see you here, Lon,” he sang out. My father started at the unexpected sound of the voice as if he had been shot, and looked up. “Why, hello, Sid, I’m just studying,” he said. “It looks more as if you were mosquito farming,” his friend replied. “Why don’t you brush them off?” “Oh, I want them there,” my father answered. “I don’t concentrate the way I ought to and I’m learning how.”
The discipline must have been effectual, for while interruptions annoyed him exceedingly, the mere presence of people in the study while he worked never disturbed him. For years my youngest sister spent her mornings on the rug beside his desk, and while she cut out paper dolls and crooned to herself, he wrote.
My father was capable, not only of great concentration, but also of unity of purpose. Gifted with a variety of talents and innumerable opportunities to exercise them, he remained—save for unavoidable digressions—a one-job man. He consistently refused tempting offers to address audiences, to undertake other literary labors, or to go into politics, and always with the same answer, that he had a task to do and must not stop until he had finished. He could have made himself a prominent figure in the public eye, but he found greater satisfaction in quietly doing work of permanent value.
Singleness of purpose and concentration were only two of the several qualities that made Alonzo Rothschild a man of strength. What had been willful stubbornness in his childhood crystallized, later in life, into dogged persistence. How great a factor it was in his successes may be judged from his own words. Once in speaking of his past life he said, “I have never really wanted a thing without getting it.”