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From this house at 1301 H, little changed since the nineties, was
Charles G. Dawes, later to be vice president of the United States and
ambassador to Great Britain, catapulted daily by the boundless energy
which eventually shot him up to the top in national affairs. Dawes lived
in Lincoln only eight years (1887-1894), but he made a quite indelible
impression, as will a red-hot little iron which a housewife goes off and
leaves for a few minutes.
His mobile hands reached out, in many directions. Everything he touched
seemed to thrive, his fingers being to many things what the green thumb
is said to be to gardens. His first law suit in Lincoln won a case for
some Nebraska farmers who believed they had been discriminated against
in the matter of freight rates. Thus he gained the reputation of being
an anti-monopolist—which he was not. Even in his twenties he was
organizing utilities and starting banks and building a fortune, which
eventually got up into the millions. He was a born financier and gained
a wider reputation as such on becoming President McKinley’s comptroller
of the currency.
For relaxation he loved to sit at the piano and improvise. He put on
paper a number of piano and violin duets. The best known, “Melody in A
Major” or something of the sort, became popular and often rolled out to
meet him in great volume when he came back to Lincoln. Once—not in
Lincoln—he had the whole Thomas orchestra come to his home so he could
play along with it on the fife.
In a letter to The Journal Mr. Dawes once said that the eight years he
lived in Lincoln he had always regarded as the most important in his
life, and some of the friendships then contracted were most valued.