This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1911 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XV THE MAN HIMSELF IT is to J. Pierpont Morgan, of all living Americans, that the expression of a famous French historian is best applied--a force of nature; that is what he is, or, it may be better to say, that is what is in him; an immense and unruly power, which is only increased by the obstacles standing in its way. His personality is sometimes compared with that of Theodore Roosevelt, because both are masterful men, who overcome circumstances and silence opposition with crushing ease. Each has proved his possession of a mysterious force, an unconscious force, capable of producing tremendous results. But, after that, they really resemble each other as little as a journalist resembles a man of science, or an evangelist the merchants who are financing his campaign. All the personal expansiveness, the vanity, of the politician are replaced in the man of capital by an aloofness that is predetermined and an equally settled and ingrained habit of avoiding every opportunity of posing before the crowd. If there is a single man, woman, or child in the United States who has not held the hand of Colonel Roosevelt, it is not Colonel Roosevelt's fault. Everyone knows how approachable he is, how friendly; that he takes the same naive pleasure in saluting a Swedish emigrant woman at a backwoods railway station in Wisconsin as his friend, Jacob Riis, takes in returning the greetings of the children of the slum. The flash of pleasure and the look seem very personal; popularity follows the giver; and yet it needs not to be said that there are men who could not put on the free and easy manner if they would, and who would not if they could. It is not a question of calling. The late E. H. Harriman knew everybody in Wall Street, and everybody knew...