needed some aid to make the difference between an old age of happiness and one of misery.  Some such cases had arisen before my retirement from business, and I had sweet satisfaction from this source.  Not one person have I ever placed upon the pension list[54] that did not fully deserve assistance.  It is a real roll of honor and mutual affection.  All are worthy.  There is no publicity about it.  No one knows who is embraced.  Not a word is ever breathed to others.

[Footnote 54:  This amounted to over $250,000 a year.]

This is my favorite and best answer to the question which will never down in my thoughts:  “What good am I doing in the world to deserve all my mercies?” Well, the dear friends of the pension list give me a satisfactory reply, and this always comes to me in need.  I have had far beyond my just share of life’s blessings; therefore I never ask the Unknown for anything.  We are in the presence of universal law and should bow our heads in silence and obey the Judge within, asking nothing, fearing nothing, just doing our duty right along, seeking no reward here or hereafter.

It is, indeed, more blessed to give than to receive.  These dear good friends would do for me and mine as I do for them were positions reversed.  I am sure of this.  Many precious acknowledgments have I received.  Some venture to tell me they remember me every night in their prayers and ask for me every blessing.  Often I cannot refrain from giving expression to my real feelings in return.

“Pray, don’t,” I say.  “Don’t ask anything more for me.  I’ve got far beyond my just share already.  Any fair committee sitting upon my case would take away more than half the blessings already bestowed.”  These are not mere words, I feel their truth.

The Railroad Pension Fund is of a similar nature.  Many of the old boys of the Pittsburgh Division (or their widows) are taken care of by it.  It began years ago and grew to its present proportions.  It now benefits the worthy railroad men who served under me when I was superintendent on the Pennsylvania, or their widows, who need help.  I was only a boy when I first went among these trainmen and got to know them by name.  They were very kind to me.  Most of the men beneficiaries of the fund I have known personally.  They are dear friends.

Although the four-million-dollar fund I gave for workmen in the mills (Steel Workers’ Pensions) embraces hundreds that I never saw, there are still a sufficient number upon it that I do remember to give that fund also a strong hold upon me.

CHAPTER XXI

THE PEACE PALACE AND PITTENCRIEFF

Peace, at least as between English-speaking peoples,[55] must have been early in my thoughts.  In 1869, when Britain launched the monster Monarch, then the largest warship known, there was, for some now-forgotten reason, talk of how she could easily compel tribute from our American cities one after the other.  Nothing could resist her.  I cabled John Bright, then in the British Cabinet (the cable had recently been opened):