Page 14 - John Anderson

&KDSWHU5HYHLOOH0LGGD\DQG6XQVHW6DOXWH

His filial devotion was strong, bestowed as a debt, not grudgingly or
of necessity, and the intimate association between him and his
honored father, in the latter’s declining years, was that of a strong
man bestowing his respectful homage to a senior. Living in the single
state, as John Anderson did, without the associations of wife or
children, he made his friends a part of his household wherever he
was. Too often the single life tends to atrophy of the emotions to
develop the selfish qualities and lead the individual toward isolation
and the pursuit of personal comforts and habits to the despair of his
associates. Not so with John Anderson. Well on to threescore years of
a life partly passed in the exhausting regions of a sub-tropical
climate, where he lived as a pioneer, developing the resources of the
soil, he yet retained to the end a youthful buoyancy of spirit, a hearty,
genuine sentiment of frankness that made his outward greeting an
echo of the big, joyous heart that throbbed within.”

It would be said of John Anderson many years later that: “The two
marked factors of Mr. John Anderson’s character were, first, an
ardent and inspiring love of the big out-of-doors world with an eager
desire to develop its riches and resources wherever he came in touch
with it; and, second, a deep-seated sympathy for human wants that
led him to respond to need whenever and wherever the appeal made
itself known. To his thinking the universe, as he saw its oceans and
rivers, forests and heavens, was wonderful enough and splendid
enough to call out the best in every man who lived in it and on the
other hand, no world could be too good for an honest and upright
man. He was never a person of theories who indicated courses of
procedure and then got others to follow them. He did and got done
pieces of concrete work. He himself saw that things were forwarded
and achieved. He was able, as has been well said, to endow a
movement with a definite policy and force. He had indeed more than
a predilection for an out-of-doors environment, he liked the real labor,
a liking that made him join the working men at their tasks, swinging
the axe, wielding the grubbing hook and hewing his way through the

2