ABSTRACT
Consider the life of a certain American of the late- 19th and early 20th centuries: He was born in 1848; rose to ample prosperity in the far West; married a mercantile heiress in an unbroken union of five decades; hobnobbed with governors, senators, millionaires and movie stars; was idolized by the youthful minister who went on to found America’s most exclusive private school; spent his last years in southern California; was a lifelong, conservative member of the Republican Party; and at his death in 1929 had his funeral sermon preached by the pastor of the fashionable Wilshire Congregational Church of Los Angeles.
