Show written for this QU paper PAM OUR TWO CHIEF ambassadors IW IM bv bt frank Q G carpenter washington march irth 1897 WANT to tell you something about our two leading ambassadors bass adors colonel john hay is to be am ambassador bassal dor to great britain and general horace porter is to be our ambassador to france the ambassadors rank far above the ministers at mckinley mckinless McKin leys s inauguration the four ambassadors came into the senate first then ministers followed 41 gr e d the ambassadors sat side aide by side with presidents cleveland and mckinley vide vice president hobart was sworn the same way at london 1 it t will be ambassadors hay and ad paris fari S will take precedence pr 06 ot of the mintter other countries and they will from froin i fact command con imand as much respect i as mckinley himself was lotich h president their places they thearo go abroad as the 1 drives 0 of f the president himself chev can confer directly queen faure the I 1 president or secretaries of state lish and the french first calls up upon ont them bemand and their influence will be such that they can I 1 understand do much such for our country with the anten they both go abroad accomplishing more than our lian of ministers have 11 in a the past they realize sat this is a business administration do everything they bathey they intend to american business to the canto to push ush V apt goth both hay and porter are practical baness men they are both ol of a diplomatic turn and both ariy have had lives which fit them for the which they are now about to fill faaea seen a good deal of general I 1 horace porter during the past three weeks creeks he has been here in charge of the 00 iu inaugural gural parade and has been a itt art of nearly all the ceremonies connected with the introducing of president wig mckinley ley to the white house general porter is perhaps the finest looking man of the new administration he stands bully ox feet in his stockings and he is im erect today gi as he be was thirty seven he be graduated from when years vats ago rt west point one of the highest men in bo class he is broad shouldered and aipel beep crested and is so SD straight that a hue ar dropped d from the back of his well ZT bed IV head ad would just touch the heels adji dJ i P polished I 1 boots his face is a W randsome nand some one the forehead is high hisch and broad the eyes are bright and cheerful and the nose is just a little e inclined to the roman A above li ove all things he impresses you as being a gentleman he keeps himself well groomed he wears the best ot of clothes of the latest cut and he has th the quiet biet air of the new york club man me he is now sixty years of age but he does not look to be more than than fifty I 1 am told that he never worries and that he has accustomed himself to take things as they come and do them he says himself that he never goes in a spasm over anything and you can see by talking with him that he has himself well in hand some of horace porters experiences with general grant will stand him in in good stead at the court ot of paris every one knows that he was with grant during the war but lew few appreciate that he was to a large extent the confidential adviser of grant while he was president of the united states grant did not at first take to the idea of being president when his name was proposed by his friends he hung back and when he went into the white house he felt afraid of the change of life and duties As soon as ai ht was elected however he sent for general porter and told him that he must come with him into the white house and that he needed his assistance in what capacity said general porter 1 I 1 want you to come and take charge of things replied president grant 1 I have a sit set of clerks and secretaries here but I 1 dont know them they are not used to me I 1 need some one about me whom I 1 can trust and who will see that no mistakes are made in the carrying out of my orders I 1 want you to be my military secretary and I 1 will have the war department assign you to the white house to this general porter assented and became a sort of confidential adviser to general grant he was not a private secretary nor secretary t ta 3 the president but he was associated with him jn in many important mat ers of his administration he had bad a great deal to do with the fisheries commission of grants first term and also with the settlement of the ala bama claims by which we got from great britain iSSo oooo in this work general porter was able to be of the more advantage to general grant on account of his thorough kno knowledge wl of the french language he is a natural linguist and he can speak fre french and spanish quite as fluently as english he can make an after dinner speech in french and he is noted as being one of the best after dinner speakers of the united states being ranked by many higher in this regard than chauncey depew he is also a man of literary note he has the degree of kofl L L D and has written a number of books this fact will add to lus his standing at paris for the french have a high respect for literary characters his position as an army officer will also help him and the fact that he is a rich man is another important item the ambassadors from other countries will spend all the way from and upward a year in m entertaining general porter will pro probably babli do the same although his bis salary is he has made a fortune yo you know knowlin tin railroads and other investments he was for years manager of the pull man palace car company and he h has been the president and director of a number of the largest business enter arises of the united states he has made some inventions which have brought him in money and he under stands our business relations in their broadest sense gen porters business experience will at the start make him especially valuable as ambassador to france I 1 happen to know something about how he feels as to our business situation he believes that an enormous increase can be made in our foreign commerce and that the reciprocity feature may be e so developed in connection with certain products as will be of vast advant advantage aire to this country both he and the dent think that the national exposition at paris in can be used to treat advant advantage ige to us by proper american exhibits and gen porter goes abroad with the idea of pushing american industries dus tries at that tha t exposition he believes also that the consular service can be very much that our consuls should be to a urge large extent the advance agents of american business men they should devote their time to studying the foreign mar man ket where they are located and to find ing every loop hole possible tor for american manufacturers to come in just one word about gen porters family you can ter tell a good deal about a man from his ancestors horace porter has no reason to be ashamed of his his genealogical tree is a bigone big one one of its roots is found in john porter who won his spurs as a soldier at the battle of warwick under william tho the conqueror the first porter of this branch who came to this country was an irishman his name was robert and he had enough money to be able to buy some land in pennsylvania shortly alter after he landed this man was the great grandfather of our new dew a ambassador his son was andrew porter one of the most distinguished characters ot of the revolution andrew porter was a teacher ot of mathematics in Philadel philadelphia obia in 1776 congress made him the cap tain ot of the marines on oneff one of the frigates but he soon leit left the navy for foe the army before the revolutionary war was over he had risen to be a colonel at its close he retired to his bis farm refusing a professorship in the university ot of pennsylvania because as he said ait it did not look well for one who had been commanding comm am ding men to come down to flo flogging bo boys S this man you know was flo horace race porters porters grandfather he afterward became a brigadier general and he refused the place of secretary of war in president monroes monroen Mon roes cabinet he was ath a thrifty ritty man and thrift seems to be one odthe of the attributes of the porters this was the case with ith gen porters father whose name was david rittenhouse Ritten bouse porter and who was the first min man to put up anthracite furnaces at harrisburg and the first to engage in the manufacture of steel in this country I 1 we see that col john hay has already rented his house in london he has taken one of the most expensive establishments lish ments in the most fashionable part of the city and the dignity of the united states will be upheld without regard to cost colonel hay is also a very rich man he has made something of a fortune himself by his literary and other work but he became a millionaire when his father in law amasa stone died amasa stone was a massachusetts boy he developed a great capacity for railroad building he was the superintend eat of the new haven and hartford railroad before he was thirty and had bad shown remarkable talent as a bridge builder by the time he was out of his teens when he was still young youn ahe he came out to ohio and settled at beveland cleveland he built the cleveland columbus and cincinnati railroad from cleveland to columbus this is now a part of the big four system he built the chicago and milwaukee railroad and was for a long time manager of the lake shore road he made a great deal of money and when he died he left behind him a large variety of railroad and other interests president lincoln thought a great deal of amasa stone re he advised with him often as to railroad matters duri during na the war and he once offered to make mr stone a brigadier general if he would accept such an appointment mr stone however thought be was better fitted for business than for soldiering and he preferred to do his bis work for the union in a more quiet way he was often called to the white house and it was probably through his visits there that john hay became acquainted with him and his daughter at any rate mr hay married miss stone and at her fathers fathies death he became one of the executors of his great estate As such he has had to deal with some of the largest business interests of the country he fie has had bad to learn how such things are managed and today he be w is on this account the more fitted to go abroad as the representative of this business adminis tra tion there is no doubt but that john hay will make a good ambassador to england he had the advant advantage aFe of president lincoln Lincol ns Is tutorship while he was private secretary in the white house and lincoln it is now generally conceded was one of the greatest diplomats this country has produced As an illustration of his diplomacy I 1 heard heard the other day ot of a lesson which he is said to have given colonel hay when he be was private secretary at the white house A public man had acted rather offensively toward the president and lohn john hay so the story goes told the president that he expected to write a letter giving him a piece of his mind right said president lincoln do so give it to him write out just what you think john hay hay did so and he brought in the letter to the e president and read it to him As he read mr lincoln from time to time said good I 1 good that fixes him at its close mr hay said well he will get the letter tomorrow momin morning gand and we will sc see e what he be has to say in reply but returned president lincoln you dont intend to mail that letter I 1 wanted you to write it out because it helps one to ease case his feelings but you must not think of send ing it you would only make the man mad without doing good to yourself or the administration the result was the letter was never sent this incident it if true must have oc cured more than a generation ago and john hay has since shown himself to be one of the shrewdest diplomatists of this country he began his diplomatic career upon leaving the white house being first sent to paris here he kept secretary seward informed of the e schemes of maximilian and carlotta and enabled him to lay jay the plans which kept maximilian from succeeding in mexico I 1 have heard it said that had it not been for hay mexico might have become a monarchy instead of being one of the most thriving republics of spanish america leaving paris colonel hay was sent to vienna as secretary of legation here he was for a long time charge daf faires and he served so well that later on he was sent to spain he has also been one of the first assist ant secretaries of state and his life since he left the white house away back in 1865 has been largely made up of dip somatic work I 1 john hay will have the advantage of a good literary reputation abroad our literary men have been our best diplomats washington irving was an efficient minister to spain bayard taylor was one of our best ministers to berlin and the man who served with perhaps the greatest reputation in england was james russell lowell colonel hay during his stay in spain wrote his book entitled castilian days this ranks up well with the best books of travel he brought the manuscript home with him in his valise and arrived here just at the time when bret harte had made himself famous by writing his heathen chinee and other poems colonel hay wrote and published a number odthe of the same kind ot of poems the most of which are far better than bret hartes he entitled them the pike county ballads and among them were the famous poems of little breeches jim bladsoe Blud soe and others they took well and before he knew it he was famous as a dialect poet As soon as he realized his notor bety in this respect he regretted it for he told me once he was rather ashamed of having written little breeches I 1 be lieve be considers it below him and that he has always prided himself on do ing better work he can however write poems of a high order at the christian endeavor meeting here at washington not long ago he wrote the invocation hymn he is an earnest christian and the reading ot of this hymn may give you some idea ot of his character invocation gr lord defio from m far severed dimes climes we corre to meet at last in thee our home thou who hast bast been our guide and guard be stin still our hope out our rich reward defend us lord from every ill strengthen our hearts to do thy will in all we plan and all we do awa still keep us to thy my service true 0 let us hear the inspiring word which they of old at horeb hareb hearl heard breathe to our hearts the high com command ncr go onward and possess the landl thou who art light shine on each tiou thou who art truth each mind control open our eyes and nuke make us see the ne path which leads to heaven and thee signed JOHN OHN HAY john hay hays Is literary reputation how ever will rest more upon lincoln Lincol ns biography than anything else he wrote this you know in connection with joha joba G nicolay the two spending almost a quarter of a century in the preparation lor for the work col hay told me once that he and mr nicolay had bad read more than twelve hundred volumes before they began the real work of writing and that they had bad been making notes upon lincoln off and on for many yeam when col hay was writing at this life I 1 had a chat with him about his literary methods he has you know a in mag ent home here the library of which is one of the finest in washington this library is a luxurious place Itis it is walled and ceilea with oak it has many shelves filled with books costly rugs cover the floors floor and beautiful paintings look down upon you from over the bookcases it was not here however that col hay wrote it was away up in the ed on a straight back chair before a five dollar desk that he be penned panned the most of his manuscript he told me that he could not dictate and that he considered a thousand words a days work he |