410 FAMOUS LIVING AMERICANS topics. His Forest Hill grounds are always open to visiting organizations or distinguished visitors, but he never shows himself during these inspection trips. The Rockefeller tendency toward friendliness with the world these later years is no more a pose than his philanthro- pies are a salve to public opinion. He is by nature frank and friendly, a courteous, kindly gentleman. There is no hint of arrogance in his make-up. Popular opinion of the man has been created by what has been written about him, and almost without exception this has been markedly unfriendly. He has been pictured as cold, grasping, avaricious and unrelentingly predatory. No man who has ever spent an afternoon with him will agree with this estimate. His philanthropies, culminating in the Rockefeller Founda- tion, are the final perfect development of a boyhood inclina- tion. Soon after he began attending the old Baptist Mission Sunday School in Cleveland at the age of sixteen he displayed this instinct for systematic giving, though necessarily in a lim- ited way. Earning at that time only fifty or sixty cents a day, he set apart a specified amount regularly for charities. like- wise the tendency to lead was manifest. About that time, or possibly a year later, it developed that the church was in finan- cial difficulties. One of the deacons held a $2,000 mortgage upon the building and threatened to foreclose it after repeated promises from the congregation had failed to materialize sub- stantially. Rockefeller, boy as he was, slipped to the front door after the service at which the minister had explained the situation, and solicited financial pledges from each member of the congregation as they passed out. Eventually he succeeded in securing pledges to cover the entire amount, and, more to the point, he collected the money. **That was a proud day,*' he says in his memoirs, "when the debt was extinguished.** Band Deacon Sked, one Sunday morning nearly sixty years ago, welcomed a new member to his class in this Baptist Mis- sion Sunday School. The newcomer was a slim slip of a boy, bright faced and clear eyed, with a skin fair as a girl's and a shy diffidence of manner which betokened a newness to city ways. Under the influence of the deacon's benevolent smile
