great attraction, and it wasn't solely
because he was a rich man. He supplied texts, and he supplied voltage.
Most men put on a pious manner and become hypocritically proper when a
preacher joins a group, but not so Philip Armour. If he used a strong
word, or a simile uncurried, it was then. They liked it.

"Mr. Armour, you might use a little of your language for fertilizer, if
times were hard," once said Robert Collyer. He answered, "Robert, I'm
fertilizing a few of your fallow acres now, as any one who goes to hear
you preach next Sunday will find out, if they know me."

A committee of four preachers once came to him from a country town a
few miles out of Chicago, asking him to pay off the debt on their
churches. It seems they had heard of the Armour benevolence and decided
to beard the lion in his den. He listened to the plea, and then figured
up on a pad the amount of the debt. It was fifteen hundred dollars. The
preachers were encouraged--they had the ejaculation, "God bless you!" on
tap, when Mr. Armour said: "Gentlemen, four churches in a town the size
of yours are too many. Now, if you will consolidate and three of you
will resign and go to farming, I'll pay off this debt now." The offer
was not accepted.

When Armour was asked to subscribe one thousand dollars to a fund to
provide an auditorium and keep Professor Swing in Chicago, Swing having
just been tried for heresy, he said: "Chicago must not lose Swing--we
need him. If I had a few of his qualities, and he had a few of mine,
there would be two better men in Chicago today. Yes, we must keep Swing
right here. Put me down for a thousand. I don't always understand what
Swing is driving at, but that may be my fault. And say, if you find you
need five thousand from me, just let me know, and the money is yours."

There is no use trying to work the apotheosis of Philip D. Armour: he
was in good sooth a man. "I make mistakes--but I do not respond to
encores," he used to say. When a man told of spending five thousand
dollars on the education of his son, Armour condoled with him thus:
"Oh, never mind, he'll come out all right--my education is costing me
that much every week."

One of the Big Boys at Armour's is a character called "Alibi Tom." Time
has tamed Alibi, but when he was twenty-two--well, he was twenty-two.

Now Philip Armour was an early riser, and at seven o'clock he used to be
at the office ready for business, the office opening at eight. Sometimes