Now and then a business proposition of minor importance would be submitted for Mr. Morgan’s approval, which was usually given or withheld after apparently cursory consideration. If the matter came up again months afterward, and there was any difference of opinion as to its details, the recollection of the senior partner, who had given the thing five minutes’ attention, was invariably found to be more nearly correct than that of the juniors, who had had the handling of the business. Once in a way, Mr. Morgan might have occasion to borrow a small coin. If so, the next time he met the lender, no matter how many weeks had elapsed, he would recall the occurrence and repay the loan, as surely as if the amount were a quarter of a million instead of a quarter of a dollar. A table or a chair not in its accustomed place attracted his attention; a picture hanging slightly askew disturbed him. For ten or fifteen years before his death, it was his habit to play solitaire for a while before going to bed, and he arranged the cards with the utmost neatness and precision. For his mind was nothing if not orderly, and disorder in exterior objects disturbed it. When great affairs occupied it, there was no room for petty details; but in the absence of matters of moment, its craving for activity had to satisfy itself with whatever came to hand.
Mr. Morgan’s delicate sense of the fitness of things is illustrated by an incident related by the young lady who rebound some of the choicest books in his library. One of these is Geoffrey Tory’s “Book of Hours” (1525). Into the cover design Miss Lahey wove Tory’s name, as he himself was in the habit of doing; but Mr. Morgan would not allow her to reproduce the emblem of a broken jug which the old French artist had adopted as his sign-manual, using it on every page of his illuminations. Mr. Morgan’s feeling was that this device was too personal to the artist himself to be used on any work but that of his own hands.
The public was surprised at the fervent declaration of religious belief with which Mr. Morgan’s remarkable document began. It almost appeared that he regarded his faith as a thing so real, not to say tangible, as to be transmissible by legal process. Certainly it was fundamental in his own nature, and as potent a force as any that shaped his actions. In a noteworthy tribute in the “Outlook,” a former partner and most intimate friend, Mr. Robert Bacon, late Ambassador to France, sums up the matter in these few words: “He was a man of faith; not only religious faith, but faith in the universe, in humanity, in his country, in his associates, and in the highest standards of honor in both his public and his private life.”
A giant frame, an iron will,
A mind that sped as lightning speeds,
Cleaving a way for wits less keen—
A man whose words were deeds.
Simple, sincere, accessible
To all that sought; but woe betide
Him who before those piercing eyes