Page:Life of Isaiah V Williamson.djvu/6

vi that his writings should be of the moment for the moment. No man of his time had greater vision, and saw more clearly the future. But he lived day by day.

The character of John Wanamaker, coupled with the tremendous demands made upon his time each day, makes all the more remarkable the little biographical sketch of a friend which we are publishing five years after John Wanamaker's death, twenty years after the sketch was written, and nearly forty years after the death of its subject.

Isaiah V. Williamson was of the generation preceding John Wanamaker. But he honored the younger man with his friendship and trust, and the younger man admired him and saw the great soul of Williamson when others went no farther than to be amused about and criticize the old philanthropist's habits of economy. So much that was legendary grew up around the name of Isaiah V. Williamson that John Wanamaker determined to write the life of his friend. It was a big undertaking for a busy merchant. But he went about it with his usual thoroughness and patient attention to detail. Gradually the