The chairman said, and very truly, that the most lasting thing in the hands of man are the roads which Caesar built, and it is true that he built a lot of them; and they are there yet.

Yes, Caesar built a lot of roads in England, and you can find them.  But Rogers has only built one road, and he hasn’t finished that yet.  I like to hear my old friend complimented, but I don’t like to hear it overdone.

I didn’t go around to-day with the others to see what he is doing.  I will do that in a quiet time, when there is not anything going on, and when I shall not be called upon to deliver intemperate compliments on a railroad in which I own no stock.

They proposed that I go along with the committee and help inspect that dump down yonder.  I didn’t go.  I saw that dump.  I saw that thing when I was coming in on the steamer, and I didn’t go because I was diffident, sentimentally diffident, about going and looking at that thing again —­that great, long, bony thing; it looked just like Mr. Rogers’s foot.

The chairman says Mr. Rogers is full of practical wisdom, and he is.  It is intimated here that he is a very ingenious man, and he, is a very competent financier.  Maybe he is now, but it was not always so.  I know lots of private things in his life which people don’t know, and I know how he started; and it was not a very good start.  I could have done better myself.  The first time he crossed the Atlantic he had just made the first little strike in oil, and he was so young he did not like to ask questions.  He did not like to appear ignorant.  To this day he don’t like to appear ignorant, but he can look as ignorant as anybody.  On board the ship they were betting on the run of the ship, betting a couple of shillings, or half a crown, and they proposed that this youth from the oil regions should bet on the run of the ship.  He did not like to ask what a half-crown was, and he didn’t know; but rather than be ashamed of himself he did bet half a crown on the run of the ship, and in bed he could not sleep.  He wondered if he could afford that outlay in case he lost.  He kept wondering over it, and said to himself:  “A king’s crown must be worth $20,000, so half a crown would cost $10,000.”  He could not afford to bet away $10,000 on the run of the ship, so he went up to the stakeholder and gave him $150 to let him off.

I like to hear Mr. Rogers complimented.  I am not stingy in compliments to him myself.  Why, I did it to-day when I sent his wife a telegram to comfort her.  That is the kind of person I am.  I knew she would be uneasy about him.  I knew she would be solicitous about what he might do down here, so I did it to quiet her and to comfort her.  I said he was doing well for a person out of practice.  There is nothing like it.  He is like I used to be.  There were times when I was careless—­careless in my dress when I got older.  You know how uncomfortable your wife can get when you are going away without