That story about how the stevedores on the docks in Liverpool turned and looked at Daniel Webster and said, "There goes the King of America," has been related of James Oliver. He was a commanding figure, with the face and front of a man in whom there was no parley. He was a good man to agree with. In any emergency, even up to his eightieth year, he would have at once taken charge of affairs by divine right. His voice was the voice of command.
So there at Chicago he was always the center of an admiring group. He was Exhibit A of the Oliver Plow Works Exhibition and yet he never realized it. One day, when he was in a particularly happy mood, and the Scotch bur was delightfully apparent, as it was when he was either very angry or very happy, an elderly woman pushed her way through the throng and seizing the hand that ruled the Oliver Plow Works in both of her own, said in ecstatic tones: "Oh! it is such a joy to see you again. Twenty years ago I used to hear you preach every Sunday!"
For once James Oliver was undone. He hesitated, stammered and then exclaimed in flat contradiction, "Madam, you never heard me preach!"
"Why, aren't you Robert Collyer—the Reverend Robert Collyer?"
"Not I, madam. My name is Oliver, and I make plows," was the proud reply.
That night Oliver asked his trusted helper, Captain Nicar, this question: "I say, Nicar, who is this man Collyer—that woman was the third person within a week who mistook me for that preacher. I don't look like a dominie, do I, Captain?"
And then Captain Nicar explained what Mr. Oliver had known, but which had temporarily slipped his mind—that Robert Collyer was a very great preacher, a Unitarian who had graduated out of orthodoxy, and who in his youth had been a blacksmith.
"Why didn't he stay a blacksmith, if he was a good one, and let it go at that?"
But this Nicar couldn't answer. However, the very next day Robert Collyer came along, piloted by Marshall Field, and Oliver had an opportunity to put the question to the man himself.
Robert Collyer was much impressed by Mr. Oliver, and Mr. Oliver declared that Mr. Collyer was not to blame for his looks. And so they shook hands.