CHAPTER XC.
WHY I AM AN AMERICAN.
I came to this country from England over fifty years ago, expecting to
stay for merely a short visit. I had barely learned the localities of
the public buildings and the principal streets, when I began to perceive
the possibilities that presented themselves to a young man, who had the
courage to push, to compete for a place in the race for wealth and
position. I liked the hustle and the bustle that contrasted so vividly
with the slow and easy style which prevailed in my native country. I
could not escape being drawn into the spirit which surrounded me, and I
made up my mind that I would make my stand in life in New York, and I
sought and found employment. Fortunately I had letters of introduction
to people of culture and refinement, so my social surroundings were both
attractive and beneficial. In a few years the Civil War broke out and
the leaven was thereby added to the liking I had for the flag which
floats for freedom, and I became a more ardent American than though this
had been my native soil. I had the good fortune to meet the great men of
those days and they whetted my appetite to rise to their level, and much
of my success is due to the quiet influence they exerted upon my young
mind. When I landed in New York, most o what is now the great West, was
boundless prairie or dense forest, but even then the indomitable spirit
of people around me yearned to subdue this wilderness and make it
blossom and bear fruit. Millionaires were few in those days and
truthfulness and honesty, combined with a willingness to work, were the
necessary requisites to enable a young fellow to succeed. The fact that
this was a government for the people, and by the people, did much to
determine me that here I had found the promised land. No aristocracy to
contend with but the aristocracy of brains and courage; no traditions of
centuries to hang between you and your right to toe the scratch with any
man. The country was growing beyond its population and immigration was
invited in such an attractive way that the desirable classes from all
over Europe were drawn to our shores. The fact that men born in humble
life had become some of the world’s leaders proved the possibilities
that might come to any one who cared to try and who had the courage not
to know when he was beaten. In this country Congress has always made,
and is still making, laws that benefit all kinds and conditions of men
who behave themselves. Before the law neither blue blood nor family tree
protects any man who violates the statutes, for all are free and equal.
This nation has never fought for conquest of territory and wherever our
flag floats it has a moral and undisputed right to do so.
The foregoing is but a summary of the volumes I might add to the reasons
why I am an American. One more is that I cannot help being an American
and I don’t want to.
HENRY CLEWS.
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CONCLUSION.
In conclusion I wish to ask public indulgence on account of omissions.
There are many brilliant financiers and skillful operators of the
younger generation in Wall Street who have thus far shown that they are
probably destined to a prosperous, and in some instances, an illustrious
career.
Again, there are others of various ages and long experience, whose
achievements have been of a quiet, unostentatious character and whose
business lives and operations have been conducted with great reserve,
yet with marked success.
Although these two classes have not yet done much to make their
existence conspicuous in the public eye, while some of them, through
excess of modesty, perhaps, have even shunned publicity, yet their lives
have been replete with noteworthy events and the acquisition of very
useful knowledge which, if preserved and recorded, would be highly
interesting in the present, and probably not unworthy of being
transmitted to the future.
I have a considerable number of these clever and worthy gentlemen in
“the volume of my brain,” for whom I have no space in this book, as it
has already exceeded the dimensions which I had originally designed, but
in an additional volume I intend that they shall be duly remembered
according to the best of my humble ability and my opportunities of
forming a just estimate of their deserts.
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● Transcriber’s Notes:
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Table of Contents.
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when a predominant form was found in this book.
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