GOLF FINDS PRESIDENT HARDING APPRECIATIVE

Like the two Presidents who immediately preceded him, President Harding finds in golf his chief physical recreation. It is said, however, that he is the first President to present the title cup to the winner of the National open golf championship-this year James Barnes, the professional of Pelham, New York. In the picture President Harding has just delivered this cup, and is holding in his hand, preparatory to delivering it to Jock Hutchison, likewise an American professional, the cup denoting the winning of the British championship

THE PRESIDENT IN THE SADDLE

A VERY

AMERICAN SETTING FOR A DISTINCTLY AMERICAN PRESIDENT

Few things have caused so wide a stir in England as the appearance of the American Ambassador on the golf links without his coat. One of those few things was the appearance of the American Ambassador in a top hat on the streets of London driving his own flivver. Both events were accepted by the British people as quite racily American. It may be presumed, therefore, that this picture of the American President seated in company with the inventor of the flivver would be regarded all over the world as unmistakably American. Henry Ford is at the left of this camping scene near Hagerstown, Maryland, and next to him in order are Thomas A. Edison, the President, and Harvey S. Firestone. The semi-tropical heat of July this year has done much to justify the American summer costume

(c) Harris & Ewing

BY LYMAN ABBOTT

N the State of New York, running approximately parallel to the Cats

I

kill range of mountains, is a long and narrow range with elevations varying from six hundred feet to twelve or fifteen hundred feet above the valleys on either side. This is known as the Shawangunk Mountains, locally pronounced Shongum. At a point in this range, about fifteen miles from the Hudson River at Poughkeepsie, is a spot of peculiar romantic beauty. A cliff here rises about one hundred feet above the mountain edge, and at the foot of this cliff is a small lake, perhaps half a mile long and an eighth of a mile wide, which bears the Indian name of Mohonk -Lake of the Sky. At this point the mountain is composed of enormous rocks piled on each other in great confusion, as though some grotesque Thor had thrown them up in sheer joyous exhibition of his strength, leaving them to lie there as they had fallen. It is reported that adventurous boys in times past have made their way down through the crevices of these rocks from the summit to the valley below. A geological friend of mine said to a local resint, acting as his guide, "I wonder by

what great upheaval did nature produce this wonderful rock pile." The guide rebuked his ignorance: "What!" said he; "have you never read how at the Crucifixion the earth did quake and the rocks were rent?" He regarded the earthquake at the Crucifixion as a worldwide phenomenon, as some scholars in past times regarded the Deluge as a world-enveloping flood.

In 1869 there stood on the shore of this lake and under the shadow of this cliff a cabaret with a barroom, a dancehall, and ten bedrooms with bunks for beds and straw mattresses and one quilt each for bedding. When a visitor demanded dinner, the Irish boy would catch a chicken, kill it in front of the house, and pass it over to the woman to cook.. There were some fish in the lake and some small game in the woods. How far the fish and game, how far the barroom and its contents, were the attraction for the picnic parties that patronized the place the reader must be left to judge.

One day in 1869 Mr. Alfred Smiley, who was then living near Poughkeepsie, took a day for an excursion to the top of the mountain to see the lake, which

had already acquired a considerable local reputation. The natural beauty of the scene captivated him; he persuaded his twin brother, Alfred, then conducting a very successful school at Providence, Rhode Island, to come to Poughkeepsie and share with him the joy of his discovery. As a result of that visit Mr. Albert Smiley put all the money he had, with a considerable sum that he borrowed, into a purchase of the place, with approximately three hundred acres of wild mountain and forest land. The original proprietor, doubtless, considered himself lucky to find a purchaser fool enough to take this unpromising place off his hands. He is quoted as saying: "I suppose that the Creator made everything for some use; but what in the world he ever made this pizen laurel for I can't see. It never grows big enough for firewood and the cattle won't eat it."

From the beginning the brothers Smiley believed that there were people in America who wanted to get away from the excitements of society as well as from the entanglements of business. From the first, therefore, the new hotel was administered on Quaker principles and pervaded by a Quaker spirit. When I visited it in 1872, Mr. Albert Smiley was still carrying on the school at Providence; the hotel was in charge of his brother Alfred. The barroom and the dance-hall had been abolished; beds had taken the place of bunks, a readingroom had been substituted for the barroom, and entertainments provided by the guests themselves had been substituted for the dance-hall. The house had been enlarged to accommodate about forty guests; the atmosphere of the house was that of a home, not that of a cabaret; there was a service of worship in the parlor on Sundays and morning prayers for such as cared to attend them during the week. It was understood that cards, dancing, and drinking were prohibited; but there were not then, and there never have been, printed rules or regulations; the prohibition is enforced by common consent, and it is very rarely the case that even to-day, in a hotel with accommodations for upwards of four hundred, any other enforcement is required.

The beauty of the place and the home atmosphere of the hotel so impressed me that the following year I returned with an artist to obtain sketches for an illustrated article which was published in the "Illustrated Christian Weekly," of which I was then editor.

When I next visited Lake Mohonk, in 1884, Mr. Albert Smiley had left his school and had come to make Lake Mohonk his home. The boarding-house had become a hotel capable of accommodating some three hundred guests; the estate had been increased by succes

sive purchases to one of over a thousand acres; miles of roads had been built within the estate and innumerable footpaths had been opened through the woods and among the rocks. Mr. Albert Smiley, having left Providence, had changed the profession of teacher for the profession of hotel-keeper. Mr. Alfred Smiley had purchased a similar estate seven miles distant upon the same range and erected a hotel upon the shore of a lake which gave its name of Minnewaska to the twin enterprise.

Who that has ever read "Nicholas Nickleby" did not regard the Cheeryble Brothers as a pretty fancy of an often extravagantly fanciful novelist: "What was the amazement of Nicholas when his conductor advanced and exchanged his warm greeting with another old gentleman, the very type and model of himself the same face, the same figure, the same coat, waistcoat, and neckcloth, the same breeches and gaiters-nay, there was the very same white hat hanging against the wall!" But it is an old saying that fact is stranger than fiction; which is only another way of saying, cynics to the contrary notwithstanding, that life furnishes illustrations of ideas which surpass those of the novelist. The portrait of the Smiley brothers is !est given in the words of Mr. Albert Smiley:

of

When my brother Alfred and I were born we were so much alike that our mother tied ribbons on either our arms or legs. I do not remember which, to distinguish us. None our neighbors or teachers knew us apart; we always worked together, walked together, slept together, had measles, mumps, and whooping-cough together; never had a single article of clothing or money or anything else separate for twenty-seven years. In the morning we jumped into the first suit of clothes that came in our way, no matter who wore it the day before. All our studies and reading were from one set of books, reading and studying simultaneously. Until we were twenty-seven years old, when my brother married, we had never had anything to be called mine, but always ours. At my brother's marriage we had to divide clothing and some other things, but till his death, four years since, we had many of our interests in common.

In 1884 this identity of appearance still continued. Strangers could not easily tell the brothers apart when they were together, and when they were not together never could tell which was Albert and which was Alfred. Even the brothers could not always tell. They once made an appointment to meet in a hotel in New York. Albert arrived first; walking down a corridor, he saw his brother approaching; reached out his hand to grasp the outstretched hand of his brother, with the greeting, "Are you here already?" and found that he was addressing his own image in a mirror.

They were as much alike in spirit and temperament as in appearance. The same simplicity which characterized the boarding-house with forty guests charac

terized the twin hotels. The same sane piety characterized both men, the same liberty under law characterized both hotels. If I write here only of Mr. Albert Smiley, it is because he is the only one I at all intimately knew.

Some men are distinguished from their fellows by the possession of one characteristic in an abnormal degree. I was told a few years ago of a little girl, not yet in her teens, who came into the laboratory of her scientific grandfather with an insect for his inspection. "He is a very naughty fly," she said, "he keeps biting me." When she opened her closed fist, she disclosed a wasp. She was a born scientist. Investigation was to her a passion. But some men are made great by the possession of seemingly contradictory qualities harmoniously working in a well-balanced character. Such was the greatness of Mr. Albert Smiley. He was a man of vision. At the first sight of Lake Mohonk he perceived the possibilities of a great estate; but he was also a man of practical judgment and did not retire from his successful school until he had laid up enough money to take with safety the hazard of abandoning a profession with which he was familiar for one of which he knew nothing. He was cautious, always looked before he leaped; but when he had looked he did not hesitate to leap. When he once clearly saw the ideal of a summer rest for persons likeminded with himself, free alike from the entanglements of business and the excitements of pleasure, and weighed the difficulties to be encountered and conIcluded that they could be overcome, he devoted himself to the realization of that ideal with a steadfastness of purpose which nothing could discourage. Whatever interfered with that purpose he set himself to put out of the way. When a railway proposed to build a branch to the foot of the mountain, he discouraged the proposal; it might bring him customers, but it would hazard the repose which he wished to provide. When an inn just beyond the bounds of his estate threatened that repose, he bought the inn. He was a lover of liberty; therefore he put up few signs which indicated restraints on liberty. The only such signs to be seen are some scattered through the woods to protect the trees and flowers and one at every entrance of his grounds forbidding the use of automobiles.

But when enforcement of the common law of his estate was required he did not lack the courage to enforce it. A wealthy guest came with a large party prepared to spend a considerable time and a great deal of money; assuming that because of his patronage the hotel would not enforce against him the rule prohibiting the use of liquor, he brought down his bottle with him to the dinner table. Mr. Smiley said nothing until the dinner was over, and then notified his would-be guest that the rooms assigned to him were no longer to be at his service; that he was, in short, an "undesirable citizen." Another

man of the same type, disregarding a sign at the gateway that automobiles were not allowed, drove up in his touring car to the door. Mr. Smiley ordered the automobile to be driven by a special road to the nearest entrance. After dinner, he provided a carriage to carry the unwelcomed guest and his family to the same entrance and refused to take any pay for the dinner which the guests had received. Such incidents get promptly into wide circulation and serve quite adequately as law enforcements.

When depredations were committed by barbarians possessing the appearance but not the reality of civilization, he neither submitted to the destruction of his property, nor issued new prohibitions to protect it, nor called on the officers of the law for protection. He appealed, and not unsuccessfully, to the conscience of the community and to the depredators themselves. He provided a Picnic Lodge with grounds surrounding it for the free use of picnic parties, and then sent a courteous letter to the newspaper press in which he narrated some of the abuses which had been perpetrated and prescribed certain rules which all picnic parties should observe. The letter was very widely published and editorially commended. "I must ask," he said, "my friends and neighbors and all who bring or send parties here to see that no damage is done to property of any kind," and he added: "Unless the few can be prevented from damaging property it will become positively necessary to exclude all picnic parties from the estate." This appeal to the public and the picnickers themselves was sufficient; at least in my riding and walking about the grounds to-day (June, 1921) I see no signs of depredations against which in 1906 Mr. Smiley very justly protested.

Under the administration of Mr. Albert Smiley and his younger brother Daniel who with his wife had been active partners with Mr. Albert Smiley since 1890, and are with their sons carrying on the enterprise in the same spirit since the death of Mr. and Mrs. Albert Smiley, the Lake Mohonk House has been more than a home of rest for the overworked and the brain-weary; it has been a nesting-place for reform movements. But the readers of The Outlook have been made acquainted from year to year with the two Conferences held annually at the Lake Mohonk House-one concerning "The Indian Race and Other Dependent Peoples," the other concerning "International Arbitration"-and there is therefore no occasion to attempt here the impossible task of condensing into a paragraph a record of the work of those Conferences and the influence they have exerted on both National and international affairs. All I have attempted to do in this article is to introduce to my readers two "lovers of hospitality" who have created a new type of hotel in America and by their success have proved that by so doing they have discovered and provided for a long-felt want.

A

S the events connected with the translation of Japan from mediævalism to modernity recede into history it naturally happens that the number of those who can distinctly remember the Japan that was becomes smaller and smaller. Men able to recall the restoration are to-day about as rare as those who, in this country, recall the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, which occurred in the same year; and men who played important parts in the restoration are of course rarer still; while as for those old enough to remember Commodore Perry's visit, there is but a handful of them left.

It so happens, however, that in Japan several very remarkable men have survived to a great age. The three most powerful figures in politics are the octogenarian noblemen known as the genro, or Elder Statesmen: Field Marshal Prince Yamagata, Marquis Matsukata, and Marquis Okuma. Prince Yamagata as a soldier took an active part in the civil warfare attending the restoration. Both he and Marquis Okuma were born in 1838, seven years before Texas was admitted to our Union as the twentyeighth State, and Marquis Matsukata was born in 1840.

Of these venerable statesmen Prince Yamagata and Marquis Matsukata figure as great unseen influences; but Marquis Okuma, while perhaps not actually more active than his colleagues of the genro. appears frequently in public and has been more of a popular idol. In politics he has long been known as a great fighter and an artful tactician; also he is sympathetically regarded because, many years ago, he was the victim of a bomb outrage in which he lost a leg.

In view of the comparisons often made between Imperial Japan and the Imperial Germany that used to be, it is worth remarking that the three Elder Statesmen are without exception selfmade men. None of them was born with a title; all were members of modest samurai families; all rose through ability.

H

AD not the honorary title "Grand Old Man of Japan" already been conferred on Marquis Okuma, and had I been invited to make a nomination, I should have gone outside the realm of politics and nominated Viscount Eiichi Shibusawa, another of the nation's venerable gentlemen.

Viscount Shibusawa has had probably as extraordinary a career as any man alive. In saying this I am taking into ac count the fact that he distinctly remembers the Japan that existed prior to the arrival of Commodore Perry in 1853-4, that he was Minister of the Treasury to the last Shogun, that he later started the first modern bank in Japan, that he became a great financier and a great

BY JULIAN STREET

philanthropist. In other words, he has seen a transition practically as great as that pictured by Mark Twain in his fantastic story "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court."

The Japan of Viscount Shibusawa's youth and early manhood was divided into some three hundred feudal districts, each ruled by a daimyo, or chieftain, having his castles, his court, his concubines, his retainers; among the latter, soldiers in armor, wearing hideous masks calculated to terrify the foe and equipped only with swords, spears, and bows and arrows.

These chiefs had absolute power over the people and lands in their domains. They could make laws, issue paper money, lay taxes, impose labor and punishment on the people, or arbitrarily take from them property or life itself.

It was a land without railways, without steam power, without window glass; a land in which nobles journeyed by the highroads in magnificent processions, surrounded by their soldiers, mounted and afoot, their lacquered palanquins, their coolie bearers; a land in which, when great lords passed, humble citizens fell to their knees and touched their foreheads to the ground; a land of duels, feuds, vendettas, clan wars; a land in which the samurai, or gentry, alone were allowed the privilege of wearing swords, in which a plebeian could be struck down by a samurai for the most trifling reason, and in which one of the privileges most highly prized by samurai was the right of one holding that rank to die by his own hand if condemned to death, instead of by the hand of the public executioner. In volved with this privilege of hara-kirior, as the Japanese prefer to call it, seppuku-was a property right. The property of a man beheaded by the executioner was confiscated, whereas one committing seppuku could leave his estate to his family.

Think of a man having started life as a country boy under conditions such as these and now, at eighty-three, being known widely as a financier, a director in companies, and a great organizer and supporter of such modern charities as poorhouses, orphanages, homes for mental defectives, free tuberculosis sanitariums, reform schools, and the like!

The Viscount was so good as to spend the better part of two days in telling me the story of his experiences in connection with the restoration. We talked in a pretty brick bungalow in his garden in Tokyo, our entire conversation being conducted through an interpreter, and being pleasantly punctuated by the appearances of serving-maids bearing cups of pale-green tea.

He was dressed in the silken robes which Japanese gentlemen wear at home for comfort. Short, stocky, en

ergetic, with a strong neck and a large round head, the face seamed with deep wrinkles, he was one of the most extraordinary looking men I have ever met. He radiated force, honesty, kindliness. Long ago I knew a Sioux chief who had a face like his, even to the color and to the deep wrinkles of humor about the mouth and eyes. Nor in either case did the humorous promise of those wrinkles fail.

When, having likened the Viscount to an Indian chief, I liken him also to a barrel-bodied British squire of the John Bull type I may put some strain upon the reader's credulity; yet there was in him as much of the one as of the other.

"I

WAS a boy of fourteen," he said, "when your Commodore Perry came to Japan. At that time, and for a considerable period afterwards I was 'anti-foreigner' that is, I was opposed to the abandonment of our old Japanese isolation and to the opening of relations with foreign Powers.

"The majority of thoughtful men felt as I did. Our trouble with the Jesuits, in the latter part of the sixteenth and early part of the seventeenth century, came about through a fear which grew up among us that they were trying to get political control of Japan. This fear resulted in their expulsion from the country, as well as some persecution of themselves and their converts, and it was then that our policy of isolation began. More lately we had seen the Opium War in China, and that had added to our conviction that in attempting to open relations with Far Eastern countries foreign Powers were merely seeking territory, and that they were utterly unscrupulous.

"When I reached the age of twentyfive, I became a retainer of Yoshinobu Tokugawa, a powerful prince and kinsman of lyemochi Tokugawa, who was then Shogun. Not being of noble family, I did not belong to Prince Yoshinobu's intimate circle, but was a member of what might be termed the middle group at his court.

"He was then acting as intermediary between the Shogun and the Imperial Court at Kyoto-for, though the Shogun then ruled the land, as shoguns had for centuries, there was maintained a fiction that he did so by Imperial consent.

"When Iyemochi died, the powerful daimyos nominated my lord, Prince Yoshinobu, to succeed him. I was opposed to his accepting the office, for the country was then in a very unsettled condition, and I felt sure that the next Shogun, whoever he might be, would have serious difficulties to encounter; especially with the important question of foreign relations to the fore, and with such powerful lords as those of Satsuma, Choshu, Tosa, and Hizan becom