Mr. Carnegie as an Outdoor Man.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXV, Issue 23, 9 December 1905, Page 19

Mr. Carnegie as an Outdoor Man.

Mr IV. T. Stead contributes to “C. B. Fry’s Magazine” a sketch of Andrew Carnegie as an outdoor man. His health is attributed to the fact that he has

always spent a considerable portion of each day in the open air. From his boyhood upwards ho has never taken kindly to the confinement of the office, the mill, or the factory. When lie was a weaver’s bairn in Dumfermline Town, as now, when he is Laird of Skibo, he is most at his ease under the broad canopy of heaven.

From twelve to fifteen lie was in the bobbin factory; then he took to the open-air life of a telegraph boy; next he became clerk and operator on the Pennsylvania Railroad. Mr Stead says: “His duties caused him to be out and about a good deal, and he spent his Sundays in summer in wandering with his companions through the woods. It was on one of these Sunday afternoon strolls through the woods that the young Carnegie showed his boy companions the first cheque he ever received as interest, on capital. He cried, ‘Eureka!’ for be-

fore that n ■of them had received anything but v.sges from toil. ’How money could make money—how without any attention from me this mysterious golden visitor should come - led to much speculation. I had never received anything before for nothing, us it were.’ To a thorough-going Socialist that scene in the Pennsylvania forest makes a lat-ter-day up-to-date companion picture t<> the ‘Temptation in Eden.”’ Of his filler life Mr Stead says: “Mr ( aniegic has lieen all round the world ’-eeing things.* He has lieen in India, in Egypt, and knows more about the Biiti.-’.t Empire than most of the men who are g >•. •miiig it. He has driven, or been driven, in a four in-hand from Land's End to John o’ Groats, and has probably seen more of Britain and the Britons than any of our Home Secretaries.” Travel by land and sea lint brings him easily and rapidly to the centra of human interest is set down as tho chief outdoor amusement of Mr Carnegie. Mr Carnegie is said frankly to prefer his estate at Skibo to the Celestial City: “He ravels in the glimpses of moor and sky and the blue firth. He loves bis trees and his gardens. It is not exactly the delight of the poet in tho beauty of nature, who in eestney declares, ’My Father made them all.' Mr t ni'iiegis feels that, no doubt, but it is a comfort to him to reflect that, if God made them. Andy Carnegie helped to mind them.” He never smokes. No one but a duke or a king is aliened to smoke in Skibo Castle, lie neither plays cricket. nor football; he does not limit. Ila provides grouse-shooting only foe his guests. lie drives, he walks, he golfs, he fishes. Such are his outdo r amusements. Skibo is a great open -air toy', with which he is never tired of playing.