Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made

by James Dabney McCabe

"About that time," said he, in relating his early life to the Rev. Dr. Bellows, some years ago, "looking around anxiously for the means of living, I fell in with a worthy man, a clock-maker and organ-builder, who was willing to employ me to collect bad debts in the country. He put me on an old horse which had one very bad fault. He was afflicted with what the Western people called the 'swaleys,' and could not go downhill. I frequently had to dismount and back him down, as the only way of getting along. The road often lay through forests and clearings, in mire, and among the roots of the beeches, with which my poor beast was constantly struggling. I would sometimes emerge from a dark wood, five miles through, perhaps, and find myself near a clearing where the farmer's house I was seeking lay, half a mile off the road. Picking up a stout club to defend myself against the inevitable dog, which, in the absence of men-folks, guarded every log-house, I plodded across the plowed field, soon to be met by the ferocious beast, who, not seeing a stranger more than once a month, was always furious and dangerous. Out would come, at length, the poor woman, too curious to see who it was that broke up her monotonous solitude, to call off the dog, who generally grew fiercer as he felt his backer near him, and it was commonly with a feeling as of a bare escape of my life that I finally got into the house. It was sad enough, too, often to find sickness and death in those fever-stricken abodes—a wan mother nursing one dying child, with perhaps another dead in the house. My business, too, was not the most welcome. I came to dun a delinquent debtor, who had perhaps been inveigled by some peddler of our goods into an imprudent purchase, for a payment which it was inconvenient or impossible to make. There, in the corner, hung the wooden clock, the payment for which I was after, ticking off the last minutes of the sick child—the only ornament of the poor cabin. It was very painful to urge my business under such circumstances. However, I succeeded, by kindness, in getting more money than I expected from our debtors, who would always pay when they could. I recollect, one night, almost bewailing my success. I had reached the entrance of a forest, at least nine miles through, and finding a little tavern there, concluded it was prudent to put up and wait till morning. There were two rough-looking fellows around, hunters, with rifles in their hands, whose appearance did not please me, and I fancied they looked at each other significantly when the landlord took off my saddle-bags and weighted them, feeling the hundred dollars of silver I had collected. I was put into the attic, reached by a ladder, and, barricading the trap-door as well as I could, went to sleep with one eye open. Nothing, however, occurred, and in the morning I found my wild-looking men up as early as I, and was not a little disturbed when they proposed to keep me company across the forest. Afraid to show any suspicion, I consented, and then went and looked at the little flint-pistol I carried, formidable only to sparrows, but which was my only defense.

"About two miles into the wood, my fierce-looking friends, after some exchange of understanding as to their respective ways and meeting-point, started off on different sides of the road in search of game, as they said, but, as I feared, with the purpose of robbing and perhaps murdering me at some darker spot in the forest. I had gone perhaps two miles farther, when I heard the breaking of a twig, and, looking on one side, saw a hand signaling me to stop. Presently an eye came out behind the tree, and then an arm, and I verily thought my hour had come. But, keeping straight on, I perceived, almost instantly, to my great relief, two fine deer, who appeared not at all disturbed by a man on horseback, though ready enough to fly from a gun, and began to suspect that the robber I was dreading was, after all, only a hunter in the honest pursuit of his living. The crack of the rifle soon proved that the deer, and not my saddle-bags, were the game aimed at, and I found my imagination had for twelve hours been converting very harmless huntsmen into highwaymen of a most malicious aspect."

His employer was so well pleased with the success of his young collector that he offered to give him a place in the factory, saying there would always be plenty of rough work at which an inexperienced hand could employ himself. "I could refuse no proposition that promised me bread and clothes," said he, "for I was often walking the streets hungry, with my arms pressed close to my sides to conceal the holes in my coat sleeves." His first task was to thin down with a file some brass plates which were to be used as parts of the stops of an organ. Powers was expected to do merely the rough work, after which the plates were to pass into the hands of the regular finisher. His employer, knowing that the task was one which would require time, told him he would look in in a few days, and see how he had succeeded. The young man's mechanical talent, on which he had prided himself when a boy in Vermont, now did him good service, and he applied himself to his task with skill and determination. When his employer asked for the plates, he was astonished to find that Powers had not only done the rough work, but had finished them much better than the regular finisher had ever done, and this merely by his greater nicety of eye and his undaunted energy. He had blistered his hands terribly, but had done his work well. His employer was delighted, and, finding him so valuable an assistant, soon gave him the superintendence of all his machinery, and took him to live in his own family.

As has been stated, his employer's business was the manufacture of organs and clocks. Powers displayed great skill in the management of the mechanical department of the business, and this, added to the favor shown him by the "boss," drew upon him the jealousy of the other workmen. There hung in the shop at this time an old silver bull's-eye watch, a good time-piece, but very clumsy and ungainly in appearance. Powers was anxious to become its owner. Being too poor to buy it, he hit upon the following expedient for obtaining it. He had carefully studied the machine used in the shop for cutting out wooden clock wheels, and had suggested to his employer several improvements in it. The workmen, however, had ridiculed his suggestions, and had denounced as the most barefaced presumption his belief that he could improve a machine which had come all the way from Connecticut, where, they said, people were supposed to know something about clocks. Nevertheless, he maintained his opinions, and told his employer that if he would give him the silver watch, he would invent a much better machine. His offer was accepted, and in ten days he produced a machine, not only much simpler than the old one, but capable of performing twice as much and better work. The workmen promptly acknowledged his success, and his employer gave him the watch. "The old watch," said he, a few years ago, "has ticked all my children into existence, and three of them out of this world. It still hangs at the head of my bed."

About this time, in a chance visit to the Museum in Cincinnati, he saw a plaster cast of Houdon's "Washington." It was the first bust he had ever seen, and he says it moved him strangely. He had an intense desire to know how it was done, and a vague consciousness that he could do work of the same kind if he could find an instructor. The instructor he soon found in a German living in the city, who made plaster casts and busts, and from him he learned the secret of the art. He proved an apt pupil, and surprised his teacher by his proficiency. His first effort at modeling from life was the bust of a little daughter of Mr. John P. Foote. She sat to him during the hours he could spare from his regular work. His model was made of beeswax, as he was afraid that clay would freeze or stiffen. His success encouraged him very greatly. "I found I had a correct eye," said he, "and a hand which steadily improved in its obedience to my eye. I saw the likeness, and knew it depended on the features, and that, if I could copy the features exactly, the likeness would follow just as surely as the blood follows the knife. I found early that all the talk about catching the expression was mere twaddle; the expression would take care of itself if I copied the features exactly."

The true principles of his art seemed to come to him naturally, and having the genius to comprehend them so readily, he had the courage to hold on to them often in the face of adverse criticism. While conscious of having a perfectly correct eye, however, he did not scorn the humbler method of obtaining exactness by mathematical measurement. The following incident, which he related to Dr. Bellows, illustrates this:

"One of the first busts I ever made was of an artist, a Frenchman, who came over with Mrs. Trollope. He proposed to paint my picture, while I was to make his bust. He was older, and considered himself much my superior, and, indeed, undertook to be my instructor. I was to begin. His first canon was that I was to use no measurements, and he quoted Michael Angelo's saying—'A sculptor should carry his compasses in his eyes, not in his fingers,' I humbly submitted to his authority, and finished the bust without a single measurement. He was very triumphant at what he called the success of his method. I begged permission of him, now that the bust was completed, to verify my work by the dividers. He graciously consented, and I was pleased to find how nearly I had hit the mark. A few imperfections, however, appeared, and these, in spite of his objections, I corrected without his knowledge, for I was determined to have the bust as near right as I could make it. It had taken me, however, at least five times as long to measure the distances with my eyes as it would have done to measure them with the calipers, and I saw no advantage in the longer and more painful effort. The measurements are mere preparations for the artist's true work, and are, like the surveyor's lines, preparatory to the architect's labor. When my subject, in his turn, undertook my portrait, he was true to his own principles, and finished it without measurements. I then, though with some horror at my temerity, asked permission to verify his work with the dividers, and found at the first stroke a difference of at least half an inch in the distance between the eyes. He looked very much mortified, but said that it was done to 'give the effect.' I have had no misgivings since about the economy and wisdom of using the calipers freely. To be useful, they must be applied with the greatest precision—so small are the differences upon which all the infinite variety in human countenances depends. With the aid of my careful measurements, I do in one day what it would cost me a week or two's work to accomplish without, and I am then able to give my exclusive attention to the modeling."

He did not regularly devote himself to his art, however, but remained in the employment of the organ and clock maker for some time longer, giving his leisure hours to constant practice. When he was about twenty-three years old, a Frenchman named Herview opened in Cincinnati a museum of natural history and wax figures. The latter had been very much broken and disfigured in transportation, and their owner, in despair, begged Powers to undertake the task of restoring them. The figures were representations of distinguished men and women, and as Powers readily saw that it would be impossible to repair them without having proper likenesses as his guides, he proposed to the Frenchman to make an entirely new composition of the old materials, and one which should attract attention by its oddity. This was agreed to, and the result was a hideous and ungainly figure, which Powers proposed should be called the "King of the Cannibal Islands," but to his amazement the Frenchman advertised it as the embalmed body of a South Sea man-eater, "secured at immense expense." Powers declared to his employer that the audience would discover the cheat and tear down the museum; but the "man-eater" drew immense crowds, and was regarded as the most wonderful natural curiosity ever seen in the West. The Frenchman was so well pleased with it that he employed the artist permanently as inventor, wax-figure maker, and general mechanical contriver in the museum.