Now we send a letter to Great Britain for two cents, or as cheaply as a letter can be sent from New York City to Yonkers. Through the influence of George Peabody, more than any other man of his time, the two great countries grew to understand each other.
The business of Peabody was to maintain the credit of America. To this end he made advances on shipments to the States. Where brokers had formerly charged ten per cent, he took five. And moreover, where he knew the American importer, he advanced to the full amount of the invoice.
He turned his money over four times a year, and thus got an interest on it of twenty per cent. His losses averaged only one-half of one per cent. When he wanted funds he found no difficulty in borrowing at a low rate of interest on his own paper. The business was simple, easy, and when once started yielded an income to Peabody of from three hundred thousand to a half-million dollars a year. And no one was more surprised than George Peabody himself, who had once worked for a certain Sylvester Proctor of Danvers for four years, and at the end of that time had been paid five dollars and given a suit of clothes!
Peabody lived and died a bachelor. Bachelors are of two kinds: There is the Rara Avis Other Sort; and the common variety known as the Bachelorum Vulgaris. The latter variety may always be recognized by its proclivity to trespass on the preserve of the Pshaw of Persia, thus laying the candidate open to a suit for the collection of royalties. Besides that, the Bachelorum Vulgaris is apt to fall into the poison-ivy, lose his hair, teeth, charm and digestion, and die at the top. The other sort is wedded to his work; for man is a molecule in the mass and must be wedded to something. To be wedded to your work is to live long and well.
For a man to wed a woman who has no interest in his work, and thus live his life in an orbit outside of hers, often causes the party to oscillate into the course followed by the Bachelorum Vulgaris and the Honorable Pshaw, known as the Devil and the Deep Sea, and thus he completes the circle, revealing the Law of Antitheses, that the opposites of things are alike. The ideal condition is to be a bigamist, and wed a woman and your work at the same time. To wed a woman and be weaned from your work is a tragedy; to wed your work and eliminate the woman may spell success. If compelled to choose, be loyal to your work. As specimens of those who got along fairly well without either a feminine helpmeet or a sinker, I give you Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Titian, Sir Isaac Newton, Herbert Spencer and George Peabody.
George Peabody was the true apostolic predecessor of Harry G. Selfridge, of Chicago and the round world, who has inaugurated American Merchandising Methods in London, selling to the swells of Piccadilly the smart suits created by Stein-Bloch.
Unlike most men of wealth and position, Peabody never assumed unusual importance nor demanded favors. In London, where he lived for thirty years, he resided in simple apartments, with no use for a valet nor the genus flunkey. He was grateful to servants, courteous to porters, thankful to everybody, always patient, never complaining of inattention. He grew to be a favorite among the bus men who came to know him and sought to do him honor. The poor of London blessed him as he walked by—with reasons, probably, not wholly disinterested.
He used no tobacco, never touched spirituous liquors, and at banquets usually partook of but a single dish.
His first great gift was three million dollars to erect model tenements for the poor of London. The Peabody Apartments occupy two squares in Islington and are worth a visit today, although they were built about Eighteen Hundred Fifty. The intent was to supply a home for working people that was sanitary, wholesome and complete, at a rental of exact cost. Peabody expected that his example would be imitated by the rich men of the nobility, and that squalor and indigence would soon become things of the past.