Mr. Plant’s Industry and Power to Endure Continuous Strain—Labor of Examining and Answering his Enormous Mail—Letter from Japan—Mail Delivered Regularly to him at Home and Abroad—His Private Car, its Style, Structure, Hospitality, and Cheering Presence—Numerous Calls—The Secret of his Endurance—The Esteem and Love of the Southern Express Company for its President—Mr. Plant Enjoys Social Life—He is a Great Lover of almost all Kinds of Music—Mr. Plant a Medical Benefactor—Some of the Progress Made in the Healing Art—Bishop of Winchester’s High Estimate of the Value of Health—Dr. Long’s Opinion of the Gulf Coast as a Health Restorer—Unrecognized Medicines in Restoring Lost Health—Nervousness among the American People—The Soothing and Strengthening Effect of Florida Climate—Mr. Plant’s Part in Facilitating Travel and Providing Comfortable Accommodations for the Invalid.
MR. PLANT’S industry and power of endurance are a marvel to those around him in office work. Over five hundred letters a week received is no unusual thing. These are read to him by his private secretary, and answered under his direction or dictation. They come from the three different departments of the Plant System, which extends over many thousands of miles, by land and by sea, and in its Express department forwards goods over a mileage greater than the circumference of the globe.
Some of these letters require deliberation, skill, care, and sound judgment in replying to the many complex questions of such a large and important business as the Plant System covers. Others are less complicated and more easily disposed of, while many are of a social character, from Mr. Plant’s numerous friends scattered, I might say, over the world. One day while sitting in his office at Tampa Bay Hotel, he said: “I had a very pleasant letter this morning from Japan. Some lady missionaries there write me of an excursion I once gave them in Florida, which afforded them much enjoyment and of which they write in enthusiastic appreciation though it occurred many years ago, and I had forgotten all about it.”
This large mail is a matter of daily occurrence. No day in the whole week is free from its arrival. If he travels, as he often does in his own elegant private car, his mail is delivered at important stations all along the road. Being in constant communication with all departments of the System by telegraph, telephone, or messenger, his mail is forwarded to him promptly at all railroad stations named for its delivery, is examined and replied to as readily as if in his main office in New York City, for he has an office, desk, and all needed facilities in his car for sending out telegrams, letters, or messages from the different stations by the way. His car is a model of convenience, comfort, and elegance in all its appointments. It is finished in richly carved mahogany, upholstered and curtained in rich blue velvet, with numerous windows and mirrors of heavy French plate glass. It is numbered “100,” and known all over the South. Its entrance at any station causes sunshine to break on every face, and the old colored men who come, bucket in hand, to wash and polish it where it happens to remain over a night or a day at the station, are fairly beaming when they greet “Massa Plant” and are always paid back in their own coin with United States currency added. Every old “uncle” at the railroad stations in the Cotton States knows “Car 100,” and asks no better holiday than to “shine her.”
To return to the enormous office work of the President of this great system of transfer and traffic, it is a marvel how he has stood it all these years. It is no unusual thing for him at Tampa to spend two hours in hard work in examining his mail before breakfast, then till luncheon, with perhaps an hour’s intermission, and then work until late in the afternoon. His numerous calls from all sorts and classes of people, are a constant strain upon brain and nerve, not to say heart at times. The secret of this endurance of long and fatiguing work, is found in the fact that to a sound constitution, inherited from a hardy, thrifty ancestry, Mr. Plant has added a temperate life and great moderation in the use of stimulants. While a man of quick intuition and keen sensibility, he has shown the most wonderful self-control in the most trying circumstances. When others would be agitated and wholly thrown off their balance Mr. Plant would remain calm, quiet, cool, and clear-headed to a degree that stilled the tempest all around, and effected an amicable adjustment of matters most important as they were most complicated and difficult of settlement. This self-control is joined with great fertility of resources, great charity for the peculiarities of men, and withal a kindliness of nature, a disposition not to hurt any one, that have enabled him to render services to his associates and to his country that may not now be told, and perhaps will never be known until the great day when the “cup of cold water” shall be rewarded. Mr. Plant is never in a hurry, much less is he ever flurried, chafed, or worried about anything. All he does is done deliberately, systematically, easily, and once done it seldom or never has to be gone over again. “Make the best of everything,” is his motto.
A gentleman occupying a prominent position in the express department of the Plant System writes:
“It affords me great pleasure to acknowledge the esteem and love of the Southern Express Company’s employees, known to me, for Mr. Plant, who has favored us so often with his kindness, liberality, and mercy even when we were at fault. My knowledge extends back about thirty years, having commenced with the Southern Express Company in North Carolina in 1866, and having worked in Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, Kentucky, and Mississippi since that time, mingling very freely and socially with my fellow-employees. I have never heard one word of condemnation of Mr. Plant during all that time but, on the contrary, a hearty, free expression of respect and affection for the man who, by divine aid, had done so much for the whole South as well as the great number of employees in the Southern Express.
“Faithfully
“I. S. S. A.”
In long years of intimate association with Mr. Plant I have never heard him utter a profane word or a bitter expression against any one.
“Greater is he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city,” said the wise man. Mr. Plant has told me himself that if he learned of any one made unhappy by anything he had ever done or said, or if any misunderstanding should arise, he could not rest until all was settled to mutual satisfaction, and that, too, just as speedily as possible. “Charity for all, malice toward none,” briefly expresses the spirit, tone, and temper of this great and good man. Hence he has been saved the consuming force of friction and hatred which grind and wear out so many before their time. The young men now entering public life will find most valuable suggestion even in this brief record of a life so large, useful, and honored, through a period of our country’s history the most intense as it has been the most important since the days of the Revolution and the formation of a free and independent republic.