44 Life and Sport on the Pacific Slope 



other age. He has been compared to Bismarck, to 

 Napoleon, to Gladstone. He had enormous execu- 

 tive ability, stupendous capacity for work, a great 

 sane mind in a great sane body. I have had the 

 pleasure of chatting with him, and I recall without 

 effort his leonine head, his keen, kindly eyes, his 

 massive body, and the power and vigour that ema- 

 nated from it. Mr. Huntington could stand upon the 

 ragged edge of an abyss, and gaze undaunted into 

 frightful depths. There is said to be a line between 

 right and wrong. Mr. Huntington ploughed close 

 to the line, where the soil is richest ; some say 

 that he went beyond it. That line, most of us will 

 admit, is a meridian, variable and varying. Per- 

 haps when Mr. Huntington's figures are given to 

 the public, it will be agreed that his line has been, 

 after all, nicely computed. To most of us this same 

 line is a broad strip of debatable land upon which 

 we wander, poor vagabonds, asking of each other 

 where we are. To Mr. Huntington must at least 

 be given the credit of always knowing exactly 

 where he was. More, he showed others where and 

 what they were. He plucked the eagle's feathers 

 from many a daw ; he stripped many an ass of 

 his lion's skin. An octogenarian, he worked as 

 hard as any youth. Born in a small Eastern vil- 

 lage, he was essentially of the West. His life was 

 simple, primal even. By the sweat of brow and 

 brain he made himself — a Colossus. And you can- 

 not measure him with the foot-rule of pygmies. 



Of Mr. Huntington scores of stories are told. 

 One, pregnant with significance, is repeated from 

 Shasta to San Diego. The driver of a cab, recog- 



