Accept my homage and my emotion.

VICTOR HUGO.




THE HABITS OF GREAT MEN.


"Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time."


Almost since the world began, people have been interested in and
entertained by gossip respecting the personal habits and individual
idiosyncrasies of popular writers and orators. It is a universal and
undying characteristic of human nature. No age has been exempt from it from
PLINY'S time down to BEECHER'S. It may suitably be called the scarlet-fever
of curiosity, and rash indeed must be the writer who refuses or neglects to
furnish any food for the scandal-monger's maw. While we deprecate in the
strongest terms the custom which persists in lifting the veil of
personality from the forehead of the great, respect for traditional usages
and obligation to the present, as well as veneration for the future, impels
us to reveal some things that are not generally known concerning the men
who are playing "leading business" on the world's great stage of to-day.