celebrated here, on this very spot. I see him now, as he stood
here years ago, when the corner-stone of this magnificent building
was laid, and when, owing to his friendly invitation, I enjoyed
the privilege of taking part in the dedication ceremonies, I
see him, his face beaming with joy over the good that had been
accomplished, and with glad anticipation of the greater good still
to be done, for his whole heart was in this noble work. And here,
where his monument stands--not a mere monument of stone or brass,
but a living monument in grateful human hearts--here, where he
still lives and will not die, the lessons of his life may be most
worthily learned, not to be forgotten.
"Indeed, the legacy not only of benefactions, but of lessons which
that life has left behind it, may be, especially to the young
among us, if they understand well and treasure them up to inspire
and guide their hearts and minds, of far greater value than any
amount of his money that Jesse Seligman might have bequeathed to
them. Some of us may, perhaps, have envied him while he lived, as
an eminently successful man. But do we consider him worthy of envy
now, since he is dead? Why do we honor his memory, and wish that,
when we shall be gone, we should, in many respects, be remembered
as he is? Because he was a rich man? Certainly not; for that is
in itself nothing to be proud of. The ambition to be merely rich
is only a small and vulgar ambition. It may be gratified by the
accident of birth or of good fortune; it may be gratified by the
diligent and constant exertion of faculties, which do not by any
means belong to the higher attainment of human nature. Of those
who, in the history of mankind, left most fragrant memories behind
them, only very few were distinguished by great wealth, and the
mere possession of that wealth never constituted their title to
affection and reverence.
"Are we honoring Jesse Seligman because he was a successful,
self-made man? This is especially in our country of great
opportunities, not in itself a distinction deserving uncommon
esteem. I know, and no doubt you know, self-made men so
inordinately puffed up with their own success, so forgetful of the
merits of others in comparison with their own, so oppressive with
the ostentations and unceasing display of their riches as their
self-appreciation, that they rank among the most disagreeable
members of human society, making us wish that they had made
anything else but themselves.
"Or do we admire Jesse Seligman above others because he was a
patriotic man? No, for under ordinary circumstances it is only
a natural thing to be patriotic. Especially a citizen of this
Republic is more apt to attract attention and to be blamed when he
is not patriotic, than to be praised when he is.
"All these things, therefore, are in themselves not sufficient to
make a life valuable as a memory, and as an inspiration. Jesse
Seligman's life, as we look back upon it, is such a valuable memory
and inspiring lesson because he was above the ordinary level of the
merely rich, self-made, liberal and patriotic men.
"The ideal rich man is he, who not only has come by his wealth
honestly, but who uses his riches in such a fashion as to silence
the voice of envy, and to make those who knew him glad and grateful
that he was rich. To reach this ideal completely is given to but
few. But it may truly be said that Jesse Seligman approached it.
No doubt, he wished to be rich and worked for it. He valued the
acquisition of wealth, but he valued it most as the acquisition
of opportunities for something larger and nobler. He saw his
business success but not his higher ambition and his happiness in
his balance sheets. He felt himself greater and happier in this
orphan-home than in his bank. He made his wealth a blessing to
others; he enjoyed it the more, the greater the blessing to others
it became, and there were many who wished him to be much richer,
knowing that his greater wealth would only have become to many
others greater relief and comfort. He was such a self-made man as
it is a joy to meet. In a high degree he had the self-made man's
virtues and was remarkably free from his faults. He never forgot
his lowly beginnings, but never boasted of them, to contrast his
success with other people's failures. His recollections only
stimulated his sympathy with those less fortunate than himself.
He did not in his affluence affect the rough simplicity and
contempt of refinement in which upstarts sometimes demonstratively
please themselves and which is only a coarse form of vanity; and
still less was he an ostentatious swaggerer bent upon letting
the world perceive that he possessed his millions. He lived with
his family in a style becoming his means, but with the modesty
becoming a gentleman. There was no gaudy display of riches, no
obtrusive flashing of diamonds on hotel piazzas, and no flaring
exhibition in opera boxes. But there was nothing mean about him or
his. The hospitality of his house was hearty and most generous,
but it abstained from anything that might have made one of his
guests feel poor or small. Nor was there anything in him of that
superciliousness not unfrequently met with in rich men which claims
for them much wisdom, because they have much money.
"In all my experience I have never met a rich man, more modest,
more generous more tolerant of adverse opinion, or a self-made man
less overbearing, less vain-glorious, and less conceited, more
sympathetic and more helpful. As a matter of fact, he was thought
much richer than he really was--richer not because of his display,
but because of his benefactions. To judge from the good he did,
his wealth should have been much greater. He was a liberal giver,
but he gave much more than money. That rich man only manifests
the true spirit of benevolence who not only gives to the needy,
but who also thinks for them and works for them. It was by this
that Jesse Seligman proved the genuine gold of his humanity, and
nowhere did this gold shine more brightly than on this very spot.
There was indeed no charitable enterprise within his reach that did
not feel the generosity of his open hand, and, when needed, the
kindly thoughtfulness of his counsel, from the hospital and the
home for the aged up to that remarkable triumph of wisely directed
energy, the Hebrew Technical Institute, which not only successfully
demonstrates that the Jew, when well guided, will take to skilled
handicraft with enthusiasm and with the whole force and ingenuity
of his nature, but which also in its plan, organization and conduct
may serve as a noble model of its kind to the educators of any
country and of any creed.
"All such endeavors could count upon Jesse Seligman's bountiful
aid; and when his last will was opened and the community saw
the list of the benevolent institutions to which he had left
bequests, without regard to religion or nationality, with
unsurpassed catholicity of spirit, people asked with wonder, not
what opportunities for doing good he had thought of, but whether
there was any he had failed to remember. It was, however, here
in the Orphans' Home that his heart found its favorite field for
beneficent work. Here he lived on the best of his nature. It was
truly touching to see this man, loaded down with the enormous
responsibilities and cares of a vast financial business, at least
once a week, every Sunday morning, wend his way to this house,
forget all about bonds and stocks and syndicates and chances of
gain and financial crises in which fortunes might be lost, and to
give all his thoughts to the little ones who are cast upon the
mercy of the world, and study and scheme and work--as indeed he
did often also when he was not here to turn sunshine upon their
bereaved existence--to arm them for the struggles of life, and to
enable them to become useful, self-reliant, self-respecting and
happy citizens of a free country. This was the work he loved most,
which satisfied his fondest ambition and in which he found the most
genuine happiness. In the best sense of the word he was the father
of the fatherless and it was his active, untiring and unceasing
care for the welfare of these children, more than any other of his
benefactions, that stamped him as a truly benevolent man, a genuine
friend of humanity and therefore this is the noblest and most
enduring of his monuments.
"He was a patriotic man--not in the sense merely that he cheerfully
performed all his duties as a citizen, or that he gave the
government valuable advice and aid as a financier whenever called
upon--but that he ardently loved his adopted country, was proud of
it and was not only willing but eager to serve it. Some gentlemen
of high standing among us here have in their published tributes to
Jesse Seligman's memory, regretfully mentioned the fact that he
and his son, too, have been struck at by anti-Semitic hostility,
by that narrow-minded, contemptible spirit which revived the
prejudices of dark ages and which seeks in barbarous persecution
the remedy for evils, for which popular ignorance, sloth and
improvidence are in the largest manner responsible; a spirit so
utterly abhorrent to justice and enlightened reason, that it is
difficult to understand how a person of self-respect can share it
or behold it in others without shame and indignation.
"I have heard it said that a Jew cannot be a patriot because he
has no fatherland. Those who say so do not want the Jew to have a
fatherland and would, if they had their way, make it impossible
for him to be a patriot. A country can hardly expect those of its
inhabitants to be ardent patriots whom it treats as aliens or
outcasts. In the same measure as an anti-Semitic spirit prevails,
a Jew is a patriot under difficulties. If he is a patriot under
anti-Semitic persecution, that patriotism is in him a virtue of
especial merit. And this virtue Jesse Seligman possessed in the
highest degree. I saw him and spoke with him when the smart he had
suffered was fresh. I know how keenly he felt it, but I know also
that had at that moment the country, or what he understood to be
the public interest, demanded of him any service or any sacrifice
he would have offered it with the same enthusiastic devotion that
ever had animated him. He would have remained a patriot in spite
of any difficulty--a shining example for his own race to follow,
putting to shame its revilers; indeed, an example to every citizen
of whatever creed or origin.
"And now he lies in an honored grave, and by it stand with sadness,
but also with pride, his dear ones whom he loved so much, and who
so warmly returned his love. And you all have come, rich and poor,
native and foreign born, Christian and Jew and Gentile, with hearts
full of respect and affection for the man who understood the great
truth, and whose life has taught the greatest lesson, that our
truest and most enduring happiness springs from the contributions
we make to the happiness of others--a lesson that every one may
follow according to his means and opportunities, each in his sphere
and in his way, to win the same happiness and to deserve the same
honor. It may well be said that he had not lived in vain whose life
has left its mark in the advanced well being of his kind; and there
are multitudes of human beings whose tears he has dried, whose
distress he has relieved, whom he has helped to make strong for
the struggle of life who now and ever will gratefully affirm and
proclaim that Jesse Seligman has surely not lived in vain, and who
will never cease to bless his memory."
* * * * *
Ex-Postmaster General Thomas E. James, President of the Lincoln
National Bank of New York City, wrote the following graphic and
affecting tribute:--
"I have received the news of the death of Jesse Seligman with the
shock which comes only with the announcement of the sudden loss
of an old and valued friend. My acquaintance with him commenced
away back in the sixties; and I dearly learned to value his
sturdy honesty, his integrity, untiring industry, and his genial,
warm-hearted friendship. Moreover, I was impressed, in those dark
days when I first knew him, with his sterling patriotism, he being
one of those men of foreign birth who seemed to go beyond those of
us of native birth, in the all-consuming zeal and devotion for our
common flag. I think that is what particularly attracted me towards
Mr. Seligman; and I soon found that he really did understand more
fully and completely, perhaps, than many of us did, what the war
meant and what the result would be. He was one of those men, too,
who, when some were anxious, speaking hesitatingly about the
outcome, gave by his courageous faith and heroic example, a grand
impulse of which we afterwards saw the results in that impressive
tender by the financiers of New York of their credit and their gold
to the government in its extremity.
"He had undying faith in General Grant, too, in those dark hours.
He was one of the few men in New York who knew him personally,
and he never wavered in his confidence in the great commander's
ability to carry the war through to a successful issue. Later on we
learned the grounds of his faith; for he was probably the oldest
acquaintance of General Grant in New York, having become acquainted
with him in Watertown, N. Y., where Grant was then stationed as a
Second Lieutenant; and he had afterwards renewed the friendship,
when General Grant was sent as First Lieutenant to the Pacific
Coast, where he found his old friend Seligman one of the argonauts
of California.
"It was given to me, in an especially affecting and touching
manner, to see some of those traits in Mr. Seligman's inner life
and his family surroundings, which made his home one of the most
delightful in New York, and gave to him unusual charms in social
and friendly intercourse. I saw those qualities displayed in that
sad, sad summer of 1881, when General Garfield, stricken with an
assassin's bullet, lay on his deathbed, in a cottage at Elberon.
Mr. Seligman's summer home was at Long Branch; and, with that
thoughtful consideration and tenderness which distinguished the man
he showed the official family of the dying President courtesies
and kindnesses that were very grateful and which can never be
forgotten. A more pleasant family circle than Mr. Seligman's I
never met; and I will never cease to remember the charm of that
fireside. There, perhaps, Mr. Seligman was seen in the highest
display of the beautiful qualities of head and heart that made him
not only foremost as a great financier, but as a faithful friend....
... "Of course, I do not need to speak of his genius as a
financier. His name and fame in that particular are secure; and
his achievements will become traditions in the history of those
influences which have made this country the great financial power
among the nations of the earth."
* * * * *
Ex-Judge Noah Davis wrote as follows:
"By the death of Jesse Seligman our country loses a loving and
faithful citizen and friend. He loved America, though not his
native land, with all the ardor of a native, enhanced by a keen and
tender sense of gratitude for what it had done for his race and for
him and his brothers ever since they became its adopted sons.
"I have never met any foreign-born American citizen more prompt to
express warmly and gratefully this sentiment; and yet it will be
rare to find one who has so amply and generously repaid it. His
gratitude was not confined to words. His deeds preceded his words;
and if it had ever been necessary, he would have staked his whole
fortune and his life as well, for our country and its institutions.
"I recall an occasion, when he and I left the Union League Club
together, at a late hour one evening, and walked arm in arm up
the avenue to our homes. I listened as he gave me some happy
reminiscences of his busy life. When we reached the street, I
stopped to part with him. "No," said he, "I will walk further with
you," and he kept on till he reached my home on 50th street. "Now,"
I said, "it is my turn to walk with you, sir," and we walked slowly
back to his own street, where we compromised by his walking half
way back with me. In that delightful walk he developed to me his
loving nature toward our country, its government and its people. I
was chiefly a listener, but a deeply interested and pleased one,
for I could see and feel that a pure-hearted and patriotic man was
talking from the inmost bosom of a noble and tender nature.
"A few days before General Grant sailed on his tour around the
world, the brothers Seligman gave him a farewell dinner at
Delmonico's. There were forty or fifty people present. General
Grant was then fully relieved from all public cares, and felt that
the honors shown him on that occasion were the tribute of pure and
disinterested esteem and affection. He talked with me as I sat
near him of the services his hosts had rendered the government
during the war and to himself during his administration, with a
warm sense of what was due to their genuine patriotism. It happened
afterwards, and after his return from his Eastern tour, that I met
with General Grant in Paris. He spoke on that occasion of that
dinner and his great enjoyment of the evening, and gave a warm
expression of his esteem for the Seligmans and for their services
to the country and himself.
"It was a merited tribute of a noble man to worthy citizens and
friends, and I am glad to lay it now where General Grant would have
placed it--on the bier of Jesse Seligman, his devoted friend....
... "With all his skill, ability and success in business, with
all his love for his country, his devotion to order and good
government, his deep and tender attachment to his family and
friends, I think his chief virtue was 'Charity,' and that most
comprehensive and beautiful word should be inscribed on his tomb."
* * * * *
From General Horace Porter:
"The news of the death of Jesse Seligman has fallen upon many of
the most prominent business men in New York with something akin
to the quiet of a personal bereavement. Few of our citizens have
been more generally known or more highly esteemed. His sudden
removal from the company of his friends and from the active walks
of business life brings a deep regret to many hearts and recalls
the admirable traits which adorned his character. My personal
acquaintance with him began a few years after the war. I had before
that time heard officers of the army and others speak in admiring
terms of him during his sojourn on the Pacific Coast, where he had
displayed so much public spirit and such indomitable courage at the
time the law-abiding citizens were trying to redeem that community
from the domination of the criminal class. I found him displaying
the same qualities in the metropolis which had commended him to his
fellow-citizens in the West. He had been loyally devoted to the
cause of the Union in the great struggle for the preservation of
its integrity, and was always an ardent laborer in all great works.
He was never known to be anything but fearless in the advocacy of
the principles he believed to be right, and always manifested his
faith by his works.
"His death removes a foremost figure in our national and business
life; and we shall long look for one to take the place of this
man, Who by his genius as a financier, his broad liberal charity,
and his loving kindness towards suffering humanity, will long be
remembered; for Mr. Seligman's life and work have made him one of
the benefactors of mankind."
* * * * *
From F. B. Harper, President Mutual Reserve Fund Life Association:
"Few names in the financial and business world of New York are
better known than that of Jesse Seligman, financier, banker,
philanthropist, and citizen. It may truly be said of Mr. Seligman
that he attained one of the highest positions of good citizenship
in the metropolis of the nation. While, strictly speaking, a
financier, he was ever ready to bring capital, business experience
and financial ability into the broader industrial enterprises of
the nation which, in their building up, employ labor, pay out vast
sums in wages, add comfort to the masses, and bring prosperity
to the country. He was not a mere banker, but closely identified
with sound enterprises, which have built up the Empire State
and developed the resources of the republic. He was a man to be
respected, to be looked up to, and his career, as it seems to
me, is one that may well be studied to advantage by the youth of
his race and his country. The Hebrew race has undoubtedly given
to the world more of the most extraordinary instances of great
wealth, but at the same time it has produced many of the greatest
philanthropists the world has ever known.
"It is difficult to sum up in a few words such men as Mr. Seligman.
He was a man who, by his example, as well as his action benefitted
the community of which he was an honored member, and his death will
be greatly regretted, not only by those who knew him intimately,
but the whole community, because his demise will be a real loss to
them. Our wealth of humanity is not so great, even in this great
city, that we can afford to lose many such citizens."
* * * * *
From Henry G. Marquand, Esq., President, Metropolitan Museum of Art:
"I was not brought in contact with the late Jesse Seligman as often
as some others, but during twenty years or more I saw enough of
him to form a very high opinion of his work as a citizen of this
republic. His views were always of the broad and generous stamp.
They were not confined to the various schemes of philanthropy, but
extended to the enterprises relating to high culture at home and
abroad, and by contact with him it was easy to see how quickly his
sympathies were aroused in favor of everything good...."
* * * * *
Ex-Mayor Abram S. Hewitt, expresses himself as follows:
"The story of Jesse Seligman's life should be produced as the best
commentary on his career, and as an encouragement to all young men
who are starting out on the journey of life. * * * Perhaps the most
admirable point of his character was his catholic charity for the
opinion of others and his willingness to co-operate in every great
movement without regard to creed or race."
* * * * *
From Cornelius N. Bliss:
... "No truer friend, once in Jesse Seligman's confidence did
man ever have. With his partners, his brothers, he has been of
inestimable service to the United States Government from the time
of the Civil War.
"A believer in Republican principles, he was a quiet but
all-important influence in the councils of his party. Sagacious
in counsel, always for peace and unity, liberal in view,
rendering to all their just dues, he will be sorely missed in all
circles--social, charitable, business and political."
* * * * *
The foregoing may be fitly supplemented by the following extract from
a sermon delivered by the late Henry Ward Beecher, June 14, 1877.
Mr. Beecher's pointed references to the absurd prejudices which so
frequently manifest themselves at summer resorts have not yet lost
their force or application:
"I have the pleasure of the acquaintance of the gentleman whose
name has been the occasion of so much excitement--Mr. Seligman. I
have summered with his family for several years. I am acquainted
with him, with his honored wife, and with his sons and daughters;
and I have learned to respect and love them. During weeks and
months I was with them at the Twin Mountain House; and not only did
they behave in a manner becoming Christian ladies and gentlemen,
but they behaved in a manner that ought to put to shame many
Christian ladies and gentlemen. They were my helpers and they were
not only present at the Sunday services at the Twin Mountain House,
but they were present at the daily prayer meetings on week days,
volunteering services of kindness. I learned to feel that they were
my deacons and that in the ministration of Christian service they
were beyond the power of prejudice and did not confine themselves
to the limitations which might be prescribed by their race."