Page:Famous Living Americans, with Portraits.djvu/235

 216 FAMOUS LIVING AMERICANS the City of New York, had discovered (unknown to Colonel Goethals) some interesting facts regarding the antecedents of the family. The name is ancient and honorable. An old French roster of the Crusaders in Mr. Burchard's possession mentions seven different noblemen, statesmen and scholars of the Goethals name who distinguished themselves in the early history of Flanders. One, Gerrem Goethals, known as the Lord of Mude, was a leader in the First Crusade. Another, Henri Goethals, was sumamed 'Hhe dignified doctor," and was one of the ** great geniuses of the thirteenth century,'* a pupil of Albertus Magnus and a fellow student of St. Thomas Aquinas. The family has been a prominent one in Holland ever since, noted alike for soldiers and scholars. Colonel Goethals has many relatives in Amsterdam and in Belgium, both French and Dutch speaking, tiiough he has never seen them. Such significance as one chooses may be drawn from the device on the Goethals arms: **In als goef (In all good). While it is interesting, and important, to know these facts relative to the blood of the family, it is certain that no boy or no man ever placed less dependence upon them than Colonel Goethals, if indeed he ever thought of them. He began work as an errand boy in a broker's office at eleven years of age. At fourteen he was a cashier and book- keeper for a man named Prentice who kept a market in the old part of New York at the comer of Bleecker and Thompson streets. Here young Goethals, beginning at a wage of five dollars a week, worked after school on week days and all day long on Saturdays. His pay gradually increased until he went to West Point, when he was earning fifteen dollars a week. At an age when most boys are playing baseball, young Goethals was not only taking his full allowance of schooling, but earning his own living. It was a hard experience, but it brought him close in touch with the real and deep things of life, and it gave him an understanding of the point of view of the under man, the worker, that has served him well in his duties at Panama. At fourteen he entered the College of the City of New York, then, as now, a remarkable institution. Its president at that