24 JANUARY 1903, Page 3

We record with great regret the death of Ex-Mayor Hewitt,

one of New York's leading citizens. In spite of Mr. Hewitt's great age, he retained his vigour, both of mind and body, almost to the end, and his memory, stored with remi- niscences of all the great men, not only of America but of England, even in the last few months of his life seemed never at fault. During the period of the Civil War Mr. Hewitt did the State great service by putting the resources of his ironworks at the disposal of Mr. Lincoln. He manufactured carriages, or rather, beds, for a battery of mortars in about a quarter of the time that the State arsenal named as the quickest possible. Mr. Hewitt's account of the interview in which Mr. Lincoln acknowledged his work and thanked him for what he had done showed the great President in an aspect eminently characteristic and delightful. " Why, Mr. Hewitt, I thought you were about eight feet high," were, if we remember rightly, the President's words, meaning that a man who had done such big things must be a big man. America is always believed to have no great resident landowners, but Mr. Hewitt possessed and lived on some twenty-two thousand acres of land not much more than an hour's journey from New York, —an estate of " woods, waters, and wastes," where a chain of lakes surrounded with forest-clad hills seemed to the British visitor more appropriate to Scotland than to the environs of the second greatest city in the world.