Although now in his sixtieth year, Ericsson has the appearance of a man of forty. He is in the very maturity of a vigorous manhood, and retains all the fire and enthusiasm of youth. He has a frame of iron, cast in a large and symmetrical mould. His head and face are indicative of intellectual power and a strong will. His presence impresses one, at the first glance, as that of an extraordinary man. His bearing is dignified and courteous, with a touch perhaps of military brusquerie in his mode of address. He has a keen sense of humor, a kindly and generous disposition, and a genial and companionable nature. He is a "good hater" and a firm friend. Like all men of strong character and outspoken opinions, he has some enemies; but his chosen friends he "grapples to his heart with hooks of steel."
He is not a mere mechanician, but has great knowledge of men and of affairs, and an ample fund of information on all subjects. His conversation is engaging and instructive; and when he seeks to enlist coöperation in his mechanical enterprises, few men can withstand the force of his arguments and the power of his personal magnetism.
Although his earnings have sometimes been large, his heavy expenditures in costly experiments have prevented him from acquiring wealth. Money is with him simply a means of working out new ideas for the benefit of mankind; and in this way he does not scruple to spend to the utmost limit of his resources. He lives freely and generously, but is strictly temperate and systematic in all his habits.
The amount of labor which he is capable of undergoing is astonishing. While engaged in carrying out his inventions, it is a common thing for him to pass sixteen hours a day at his table, in the execution of detailed mechanical drawings, which he throws off with a facility and in a style that have probably never been surpassed. He does not seem to need such recreation as other men pine after. He never cares to run down to the seashore, or take a drive into the country, or spend a week at Saratoga or at Newport. Give him his drawing-table, his plans, his models, the noise of machinery, the clatter of the foundry, and he is always contented. Week in and week out, summer and winter, he works on and on,—and the harder he works, the more satisfied he seems to be. He is as untiring as one of his own engines, which never stop so long as the fire burns. Endowed with such a constitution, it is to be hoped that new triumphs and many years of honor and usefulness are yet before him.
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MOVING.
Man is like an onion. He exists in concentric layers. He is born a bulb and grows by external accretions. The number and character of his involutions certify to his culture and courtesy. Those of the boor are few and coarse. Those of the gentleman are numerous and fine. But strip off the scales from all and you come to the same germ. The core of humanity is barbarism. Every man is a latent savage.
You may be startled and shocked, but I am stating fact, not theory. I announce not an invention, but a discovery. You look around you, and because you do not see tomahawks and tattooing you doubt my assertion. But your observation is superficial. You have not penetrated into the secret place where souls abide. You are staring only at the outside layer of your neighbors; just peel them and see what you will find.
I speak from the highest possible authority,—my own. Representing the gentler half of humanity, of respectable birth, tolerable parts, and good education, as tender-hearted as most women, not unfamiliar with the best society, mingling, to some extent, with those who understand and practise the minor moralities, you would at once infer from my circumstances that I was a very fair specimen of the better class of Americans,—and so I am. For one that stands higher than I in the moral, social, and intellectual scale, you will undoubtedly find ten that stand lower. Yet through all these layers gleam the fiery eyes of my savage. I thought I was a Christian, I have endeavored to do my duty to my day and generation; but of a sudden Christianity and civilization leave me in the lurch, and the "old Adam" within me turns out to be just such a fierce Saxon pirate as hurtled down against the white shores of Britain fifteen hundred years ago.
For we have been moving.