ted hypocrisy, sham, pretense, and scorned the soft, the warm, the
pleasant, the luxurious. They liked stormy weather, the sweep of the
wind, the splash of the rain and the creak of cordage. They gloried in
difficulties, reveled in the opposition of things, and smiled at the tug
of inertia. In their natures was a granitic outcrop that defied
failure. It was the Anglo-Saxon, with a goodly cross of the Norse, that
gave them this disdain of danger, and made levitation in their natures
the supreme thing--not gravitation.

The stubbornness of the Scot is an inheritance from his Norse forebears,
who discovered America five hundred years before Columbus turned the
trick. These men were well called the "Wolves of the Sea." About the
year One Thousand, a troop of them sailed up the Seine in their rude but
staunch ships. The people on the shore, seeing these strange giants,
their yellow hair flying in the wind, called to them, "Where are you
from, and who are your masters?"

And the defiant answer rang back over the waters, "We are from the round
world, and we call no man master."

James Oliver called no man master. Yet with him, the violent had given
way to the psychic and mental. His battleground was the world of ideas.
The love of freedom he imbibed with his mother's milk. It was the thing
that prompted their leaving Scotland.

James Oliver had the defect of his qualities. He was essentially
Cromwellian. He too would have said, "Take away that bauble!" He did not
look outside of himself for help. Emerson's essay on "Self-Reliance"
made small impression upon him, because he had the thing of which
Emerson wrote. His strength came from within, not from without. And it
was this dominant note of self-reliance which made him seem indifferent
to the strong men of his own town and vicinity. It was not a contempt
for strong men: it was only the natural indifference of one who called
no man master.

He was a big body himself, big in brain, big in initiative, big in
self-sufficiency.

He could do without men; and there lies the paradox--if you would have
friends you must be able to do without them.

James Oliver had a host of personal friends, and he also had a goodly
list of enemies, for a man of his temperament does not trim ship. He was
a good hater. He hugged his enemies to his heart with hoops of steel,
and at times they inspired him as soft and mawkish concession never
could. And well could he say, "A little more grape, Cap