RELIGION AND HABITS.

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of love. Let my soul be with these Christians, wheresoever they are, and whatsoever opinions they are of." Nevertheless, he was zealous for what he believed to be fundamental truth; and once wrote Theodore Parker, expressing his deep "regret that on the great question of the Divine origin of the Bible and the Divine nature of Christ," the views of Mr. Parker "were so little in harmony with those of almost all who labor in the great cause of human enfranchisement and progress." All his years he was a quiet, unobtrusive worker in religious and benevolent enterprises, and gave to them freely. He did not confine his gifts to Protestant denominations, but with a large and sincere admiration for the Catholic Church, gave to Catholic charities also.

II. He was simple and inexpensive in his habits, and dressed with unvarying plainness. He disliked display of all kinds, and avoided crowds and noise, and preferred his home and library to all other places. He was habitually grave and reserved in demeanor; he did not often laugh, and had but a small appreciation of humor; he sometimes told a story, but rarely without spoiling it. He was fond of hospitality, and while he was Secretary of the Treasury kept an expensive establishment. It was a rare occasion upon which he did not have at his table others than the members of his own household. The consequence was, that when he retired from office he found himself in debt, and was compelled to sell real estate in Ohio to make up the deficiency between income from private sources and his salary, and the outgo incident upon a position, the dignity of which he thought it his duty to support even at a personal loss. However, he cared very little for the mere physical enjoyments of the table, but was fond of the table-talk; and, if it may be so expressed, had a happy dinner-table faculty, for, though men were not generally at ease in his presence, they were perfectly so then. He was pure in thought and speech; ribaldry in word and manner were alike hateful to him; and men felt this instinctively, and rarely offended in this respect in his presence, and he seldom had occasion to reprove any one, though when the occasion did arise he was prompt and decisive without affectation or prudery. He hated profanity, too. "He must be a bold man who could swear twice in his presence," writes Dema

rest Lloyd, "for the rebuke of his angry eye would shame the coolest or most flippant visitor into silence."

III. Modesty' was a conspicuous element in his character. "Those who believe that the greatest men are most sensible of their own defects, will be glad to think," says the same writer from whom I have just quoted, "that Mr. Chase's modesty was one of the signs of his greatness. There was no subject about which he talked less than himself; he rarely or never referred to

1 "Home-Life of Salmon Portland Chase," Atlantic Monthly, November, 1873. He constantly under-estimated himself and his public services. A notable instance of this happened when some gentlemen in Baltimore proposed to present him a very handsome house and grounds. He expressed his grateful appreciation of their friendship and intention, but very courteously declined the offer. However, he did accept Rembrandt Peale's magnificent bust-portrait of Chief-Justice Marshall, presented to him by sixty prominent citizens of New York, in 1867. But he regarded this more as a public trust than as a private gift, and, by will, bequeathed it to the Supreme Court of the United States; and it hangs in the court-room (the old Senate-chamber) at Washington. This noble picture was accompanied by an exceedingly interesting historical memorandum, which I append :

"This portrait of Chief-Justice Marshall was painted from life, by Rembrandt Peale, nine years before the death of the great jurist. It bears the signature of the artist, with the date of execution, and has never been copied. It is doubtless the last portrait of the Chief-Justice. The following history of the painting is in the handwriting of Mr. Peale: 'Washington, April 21, 1858. After my portrait of Washington was placed in the Senate-chamber, at the right hand of the Speaker, in a good light, on a projecting angle of the cornice, it appeared to me desirable to have a companion-picture on the left-hand corner. I therefore painted a portrait of Chief-Justice Marshall, as the most suitable. The picture corresponded with that of Washington, being a bust-portrait within an oval of massive stone-work. Washington's was encircled with the oak-leaf; Marshall's with the palm and olive: the key-stone in Washington's being the Phidian head of Jupiter; in Marshall's the head of Solon: the motto in Washington's Patriæ Pater, and in Marshall's Fiat Justitia.'

"The portrait of Washington being afterward removed to a central position, and placed in the dark, high over the Speaker's chair, I indulged in the thought that my portrait of Marshall might find an honorable location in the Supreme Court; but, perceiving that the room was small and unsuitable, I never mentioned my idea, and took no steps to dispose of the picture."

A short time before his death, Mr. Peale deposited this picture in the State Library at Richmond, whence it was sent by Governor Letcher and received in New York in February, 1861, not long before the secession of Virginia and the commencement of the hostilities of the rebellion, and thus narrowly escaped confiscation and possibly destruction.

The reader will observe that Mr. Peale's modestly-indulged thought, that his picture might find an honorable location in the Supreme-Court room, has been realized in a somewhat curious way. The donors to Mr. Chase paid the heirs of Mr. Peale $3,000 for the picture.

himself or his history in any way. There have been few men, with so much to remember, so little given to reminiscence. Not only would he seldom volunteer recollections, but it required skill even to draw them from him. His modesty as to the accuracy of his judgment led him always to speak carefully, and with provisos, where men of a tenth of his intellectual weight were dogmatic. It showed itself as much in his frankness in confessing lack of knowledge of various subjects as in any thing. He had none of that pretentiousness which claims all knowledge as its own. Even when questioned on subjects with which he might be expected to be familiar, his plain answer was, again and again, 'I don't know.'" But this frank "I don't know" was largely due also to a scrupulous adherence to truth even in trifles. Mr. Chase never said what he did not believe; he rarely made promises, and he made none that he did not fulfill if it were humanly possible to do so. Every one knew this; and hence it was that men sometimes sought to impose upon him by claiming promises he never had made. Soon after he became Secretary, he found it necessary to keep a brief record of visitors, in order to guard against impostors of this kind. The names of callers, unless official ones, were noted down in a book kept for the purpose, with the date of the call and its object. If any promise was made, it was carefully and exactly stated. This proved an efficient safeguard; though, possessing an excellent memory, Mr. Chase was not likely to be often deceived. However, he preferred the certainty of the record. He did not equivocate even in the commonest of equivocations, that of not being at home to unwelcome visitors. I knew him to border upon an equivocation once, and once only, while he was Secretary of the Treasury, and had the franking privilege. A gentleman came in one day and asked him to frank a letter. Mr. Chase did not frank even his own private correspondence, but paid the postage by stamps; and he was both surprised and annoyed by this request. He did not refuse, but what he did was this: he said, "Leave your letter, and I will see that it is sent." The significance of the answer attracted the gentleman's notice, but he was too much embarrassed to ask for the return of his letter. After he was gone, Mr. Chase put a stamp upon it. He did not like any thing

which involved deceit, even though it was in the nature of a "pious" one. When the Metropolitan Methodist Church, at Washington, was being built, an arrangement was made by which Daniel Drew, a gentleman of admitted extraordinary piety in New York, paid a contribution of ten thousand dollars toward it. Five thousand were set down as the gift of General Grant, and five thousand as that of Mr. Chase, but Mr. Chase wrote in his own hand, after his signature, "paid through the liberality of Daniel Drew," for it was not right, he said, that he should be credited with giving what he had not given, and what he could not afford to give, even to what was undoubtedly a worthy object. Others were not so scrupulous, however, and it was printed all over the country that he had subscribed five thousand dollars, nothing being said of the fact that Daniel Drew had paid the money; which Mr. Chase did not like, and was more than half-minded to rebuke. It can never be known how much of his success in financial matters, during the first few months of Mr. Lincoln's presidency, was due to confidence inspired among capitalists by faith in the absolute integrity of his word. An instance of this happened in November, 1861. There was a good deal of depression about war progress even at that early date. Much apprehension prevailed that the Army of the Potomac would go into winter quarters. At a meeting of capitalists in New York, about the middle of that November, Mr. Chase said that no such apprehension need be entertained; that the war would be prosecuted with prompt and decisive energy. This statement was everywhere received with confidence, for the reason that Mr. Chase had made it, and there was everywhere a revival of hope and expectation; which were both disappointed, however, but through no fault of the Secretary of the Treasury.

IV. To this love of truth Mr. Chase joined love of justice. He had a swift and towering temper which sometimes mastered him, notwithstanding a constant habit of watchfulness and repression. He was at all times a man of commanding presence, but when he gave way to anger, which, however, was not often, his was a front of majesty; and it is no exaggeration to say that men fled from his presence, as lesser animals take flight before a lion. He was irritable under interruption when em