presiding over the Department of Labor in Roosevelt's Cabinet, but he had determined the "color" of the picture, he had set the "first firm line" on the canvas. He had already "a restless ambition to have a useful career," and in this environment his intellectual eagerness developed rapidly. He read widely in biography and history, which he then preferred, and still prefers, to fiction. He strove to excel in his studies, and was one of three nominated for the Alumni Prize, awarded to "the most deserving student in the graduating class." He records gleefully that he defeated Brander Matthews for the office of class poet. But perhaps the clearest premonitory sign of his diplomatic talent was his restoring to order an insubordinate class in the Evidences of Christianity—an incident which for inward sweetness is comparable only with the tumult of the bands playing "Onward, Christian Soldiers," at every town in New York where this progressive Jew spoke in his great campaign for Governor.
"The fervent aspiration" which animated him at Columbia was to devote his life to the nation. He had applied personally, with recommendations from President Barnard, to President Grant for an appointment to the United States Military Academy; but as these appointments were reserved for the sons of officers killed in the war he fortunately settled in his senior year upon the law as his vocation, and was graduated from the Columbia Law School in 1873. If one examines his photograph taken at about this period, with its thoroughly awakened,
