Page:Men of Mark in America vol 1.djvu/358

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WILLIAM ELEROY CURTIS

can countries. He has been recognized as perhaps the most active apostle of the reciprocity policy of trade, and has written several volumes and has made innumerable public addresses upon that subject.

He organized the commission which directed a survey for an intercontinental railway through the American hemisphere to connect the railway systems of the several countries between the United States and the Argentine Republic.

No newspaper man in the country has ever published so many columns as Mr. Curtis, and, as one of his critics has said, they have seldom contained a dull line. His published writings would fill a set of volumes as large as the Century Dictionary. He is well known as a writer in Europe, Asia, Africa and South America as well as in the United States. Few men have had so extensive an acquaintance with notable characters of the different nations; few have enjoyed so many novel experiences, or have witnessed so many important events. He has been honored with the friendship and confidence of rulers, statesmen, generals, diplomatists, and other famous men of the Old World and of the Americas. He is a frequent contributor to magazines, a popular speaker on the lecture platform and an interesting figure in social life wherever he goes. In addition to the works already mentioned, he is the author of two novels, a series of handbooks to Venezuela and other South American republics, a diplomatic history of the United States; "The Life of Zachariah Chandler"; "The True Thomas Jefferson"; "The True Abraham Lincoln", "Reciprocity and Retaliation" (which was published by the House of Representatives); "The Turk and his Lost Provinces" "The Capitals of Spanish America"; The Yankees of the East" "The Land Nihihst"; "Between the Andes and the Ocean" "Denmark, Norway and Sweden" ; "Today in Syria and Palestine" "Modern India"; "Egypt, Burma, and the British East Indies," and other volumes of travel.

He is a member of the Phi Beta Kappa and the Alpha Delta Phi college fraternities; the Gridiron club, of which he has been president, and the Cosmos club, Washington, District of Columbia; the Press club, Chicago, of which he has been twice president; The Union League club of New York; the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Society of Americanists; the American Historical Association, and of many other learned societies,