Early in the nineties, two companions might almost daily be seen on Lincoln’s downtown streets. Written and unwritten history traces their footsteps more minutely—into Don Cameron’s. Curious as to the sort of fame which perpetuated the name of Don Cameron we investigated and found that he was a restaurant keeper. The secret of his popularity and enduring memory seems to have been that he furnished a good meal for 25 cents.
Among the rising young men of Lincoln who found a good 25 cent meal important were these two companions. The shorter, darker of the two, who resembled a bundle of scantily padded charged wires, was Charles G. Dawes. The taller, fairer more reserved young man was John J. Pershing, then commandant at the university. In the restaurant, where they sat at a table with other young men who in the future would be Lincoln’s prominent citizens, they discussed many things, Dawes with animated forearms, Pershing more sedate but square-jawed and purposeful.
It was not until 1905, after he was gone from Lincoln, that Pershing married. A dozen years later his wife and three oldest children died in a California hotel fire. It was then that he established a home in Lincoln for his sister, Miss May Pershing, and his youngest child, Warren. This is still known as the Pershing home, and to it General Pershing has often returned for periods of visiting and rest. For the most part, this last great leader of the American Expeditionary forces of 1918 lives at Walter Reed hospital in Washington.
No. 49—Former Dawes home, 1301 H
From this house at 1301 H, little changed since the nineties, was Charles G. Dawes, later to be vice president of the United States and ambassador to Great Britain, catapulted daily by the boundless energy which eventually shot him up to the top in national affairs. Dawes lived in Lincoln only eight years (1887-1894), but he made a quite indelible impression, as will a red-hot little iron which a housewife goes off and leaves for a few minutes.
His mobile hands reached out, in many directions. Everything he touched seemed to thrive, his fingers being to many things what the green thumb is said to be to gardens. His first law suit in Lincoln won a case for some Nebraska farmers who believed they had been discriminated against in the matter of freight rates. Thus he gained the reputation of being an anti-monopolist—which he was not. Even in his twenties he was organizing utilities and starting banks and building a fortune, which eventually got up into the millions. He was a born financier and gained a wider reputation as such on becoming President McKinley’s comptroller of the currency.
For relaxation he loved to sit at the piano and improvise. He put on paper a number of piano and violin duets. The best known, “Melody in A Major” or something of the sort, became popular and often rolled out to meet him in great volume when he came back to Lincoln. Once—not in Lincoln—he had the whole Thomas orchestra come to his home so he could play along with it on the fife.
In a letter to The Journal Mr. Dawes once said that the eight years he lived in Lincoln he had always regarded as the most important in his life, and some of the friendships then contracted were most valued.