A MEMOIR OF JOHN D. CRIMMINS. BY EDWARD J. MCGUIRE, ll. d. John Daniel Crimmins, who was President-General of the American Irish Historical Society during the years 1901 and 1902 died at his home, 40 East Sixty-eighth Street, Manhattan, New York City, on November 9, 1917. He had been ill for only a few days although for some considerable time the burden of advancing years had compelled him to limit his many activities. However he never had withdrawn from the interests and labors that had occupied him during his long and useful life. In fact it was but a few weeks before that he had busied himself with important work for our own Society. He remembered it generously in his will. He gave it the Irish books out of his richly stored library and in this way rendered a true service to the Society. In connection with his legacy, he asked that it would set up a fixed habitation for itself where it might properly care for his bequest and the similar ones which it is to receive in the future. Out of this has come a plan now on the way to completion from which great things for the Society and its work are surely to follow. Mr. Crimmins was a remarkable man. He was of the sort who could not go unnoticed in any company. His entrance into a work was like the attaching of an electric battery to an idle or weak wire. It was vitalized and made potent. He had a genius for organization and for efficiency in the performance of work. It was long ago that the secret of great success in business was found. One of the greatest merchants America, or in fact the world, has ever known, the late Mayor William R. Grace of New York, phrased it this way: To have great success the captain of the work needs to know what is to be done and then he must work hard himself but above all he must have the ability to put at work many efficient men who can do things as well if not better than he himself. Mr. Crimmins was generally admired and respected. He had a multitude of friends. Like every strong man he had among his acquaintances some who may not have been fond of him but this was due to a failure at times to know and appreciate his motives and his character. He was not magnetic as that term is used respecting men yet perhaps no man of his generation held a |