initial commit of ebook 22030HEADmain

1 files changed, 15166 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/22030.txt b/22030.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ed687ce
--- /dev/null
+++ b/22030.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,15166 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Memoirs, by Charles Godfrey Leland
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Memoirs
+
+
+Author: Charles Godfrey Leland
+
+
+
+Release Date: July 9, 2007  [eBook #22030]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MEMOIRS***
+
+
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1894 London William Heinemann edition by David
+Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
+
+{Charles G. Leland: p0.jpg}
+
+
+
+
+
+MEMOIRS
+
+
+BY
+CHARLES GODFREY LELAND
+(HANS BREITMANN)
+
+_WITH PORTRAIT_
+
+Second Edition
+
+LONDON
+WILLIAM HEINEMANN
+1894
+[_All rights reserved_]
+
+_FIRST EDITION_ (_2 Volumes_), _October_ 1893.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+It happened once in Boston, in the year 1861 or 1862, that I was at a
+dinner of the Atlantic Club, such as was held every Saturday, when the
+question was raised as to whether any man had ever written a complete and
+candid autobiography.  Emerson, who was seated by me at the right,
+suggested the "Confessions" of Rousseau.  I objected that it was full of
+untruths, and that for plain candour it was surpassed by the "Life of
+Casanova."  Of this work (regarding which Carlyle has said, "Whosoever
+has looked therein, let him wash his hands and be unclean until even")
+neither Emerson nor Lowell, nor Palfrey nor Agassiz, nor any of the
+others present seemed to have any knowledge, until Dr. Holmes, who was
+more adventurous, admitted he knew somewhat thereof.  Now, as I had read
+it thrice through, I knew it pretty well.  I reflected on this, but came
+to the conclusion that perhaps the great reason why the world has so few
+and frank autobiographies is really because the world exacts too much.  It
+is no more necessary to describe everything cynically than it is to set
+forth all our petty diseases in detail.  There are many influences which,
+independent of passion or shame, do far more to form character.
+
+Acting from this reflection, I wrote this book with no intention that it
+should be published; I had, indeed, some idea that a certain friend might
+use it after my death as a source whence to form a Life.  Therefore I
+wrote, as fully and honestly as I could, _everything_ which I could
+remember which had made me what I am.  It occurred to me as a leading
+motive that a century or two hence the true inner life of _any_ man who
+had actually lived from the time when railroads, steamboats, telegraphs,
+gas, percussion-caps, fulminating matches, the opera and omnibuses,
+evolution and socialism were quite unknown to his world, into the modern
+age, would be of some value.  So I described my childhood or youth
+exactly as I recalled, or as I felt it.  Such a book requires very
+merciful allowance from humane reviewers.
+
+It seemed to me, also, that though I have not lived familiarly among the
+princes, potentates, and powers of the earth, yet as I have met or _seen_
+or corresponded with about five hundred of the three thousand set down in
+"Men of the Time," and been kindly classed among them, it was worth while
+to mention my meetings with many of them.  Had the humblest scribbler of
+the age of Elizabeth so much as mentioned that he had ever exchanged a
+word with, or even looked at, any of the great writers of his time, his
+record would now be read with avidity.  I have really never in my life
+run after such men, or sought to make their acquaintance with a view of
+extending my list; all that I can tell of them, as my book will show, has
+been the result of chance.  But what I have written will be of some
+interest, I think--at least "in the dim and remote future."
+
+I had laid the manuscript by, till I had time to quite forget what I had
+written, when I unexpectedly received a proposal to write my memoirs.  I
+then read over my work, and determined "to let it go," as it was.  It
+seemed to me that, with all its faults, it fulfilled the requisition of
+Montaigne in being _ung livre de bonne foye_.  So it has gone forth into
+print.  _Jacta est alea_.
+
+The story of what is to me by far the most interesting period of my life
+remains to be written.  This embraces an account of my labour for many
+years in introducing Industrial Art as a branch of education in schools,
+my life in England and on the Continent for more than twenty years, my
+travels in Russia and Egypt, my researches among Gypsies and Algonkin
+Indians, my part in Oriental and Folklore and other Congresses, my
+discovery of the Shelta or Ogham tongue in Great Britain, and the long
+and very strangely adventurous discoveries, continued for five years,
+among _witches_ in Italy, which resulted in the discovery that all the
+names of the old Etruscan gods are still remembered by the peasantry of
+the Toscana Romagna, and that ceremonies and invocations are still
+addressed to them.  All this, however, is still too near to be written
+about.  But it may perhaps some day form a second series of reminiscences
+if the present volumes meet with public favour.
+
+As some of my readers (and assuredly a great many of the American) will
+find these volumes wanting in personal adventure and lively variety of
+experiences, and perhaps dull as regards "incidents," I would remind them
+that it is, after all, only the life of a mere literary man and quiet,
+humble scholar, and that such existences are seldom very dramatic.
+English readers, who are more familiar with such men or literature, will
+be less exacting.  What I have narrated is nowhere heightened in colour,
+retouched in drawing, or made the utmost of for effect, and I might have
+gone much further as regards my experiences in politics with the
+_Continental Magazine_, and during my connection with Colonel Forney, or
+life in the West, and have taken the whole, not more from my memory than
+from the testimony of others.  But if this work be, as Germans say, at
+first too subjective, and devoted too much to mere mental development by
+aid of books, the "balance" to come of my life will be found to differ
+materially from it, though it is indeed nowhere in any passage exciting.
+This present work treats of my infancy in Philadelphia, with some note of
+the quaint and beautiful old Quaker city as it then was, and many of its
+inhabitants who still remembered Colonial times and Washington's
+Republican Court; reminiscences of boyhood in New England; my
+revolutionary grandfathers and other relatives, and such men as the last
+survivor of the Boston Tea-party (I also saw the last signer of the
+Declaration of Independence); an account of my early reading; my college
+life at Princeton; three years in Europe passed at the Universities of
+Heidelberg, Munich, and Paris, in what was emphatically the prime of
+their quaint student-days; an account of my barricade experiences of the
+French Revolution of Forty-Eight, of which I missed no chief scene; my
+subsequent life in America as lawyer, man of letters, and journalist; my
+experiences in connection with the Civil War, and my work in the
+advancement of the signing the Emancipation by Abraham Lincoln;
+recollections of the Oil Region when the oil mania was at its height; a
+winter on the frontier in the debatable land (which was indeed not devoid
+of strange life, though I say it); my subsequent connection for three
+years with Colonel John Forney, during which Grant's election was
+certainly carried by him, and in which, as he declared, I "had been his
+right-hand man;" my writing of sundry books, such as the "Breitmann
+Ballads," and my subsequent life in Europe to the year 1870.
+
+I can enumerate in my memory distinctly half-a-dozen little-known men
+whom I have known, and could with time recall far many more, compared to
+whose lives my uneventful and calm career has been as that of the mole
+before the eagle's.  Yet not one of their lives will ever be written,
+which is certainly a pity.  The practice of writing real autobiographies
+is rapidly ceasing in this our age, when it is bad form to be egoistic or
+to talk about one's self, and we are almost shocked in revising those
+chronicled in the _Causeries de Lundi_ of Sainte-Beuve.  Nowadays we have
+good gossipy reminiscences of _other_ people, in which the writer remains
+as unseen as the operator of a Punch exhibition in his _schwassel_ box,
+while he displays his puppets.  I find no fault with this--_a chacun sa
+maniere_.  But it is very natural under such influences that men whose
+own lives are full of and inspired with their _own_ deeds will not write
+them on the model of Benvenuto Cellini.  One of the greatest generals of
+modern times, Lord Napier of Magdala, told me that he believed I was the
+only person to whom he had ever fully narrated his experiences of the
+siege of Lucknow.  He seemed to be surprised at having so forgotten
+himself.  In ancient Viking days the hero made his debut in every society
+with a "_Me voici_, _mes enfants_!  Listen if you want to be astonished!"
+and proceeded to tell how he had smashed the heads of kings, and mashed
+the hearts of maidens, and done great deeds all round.  It was bad
+form--and yet we should never have known much about Regner Lodbrog but
+for such a canticle.  If I, in this work, have not quite effaced myself,
+as good taste demands, let it be remembered that if I had, at the time of
+writing, distinctly felt that it would be printed as put down, there
+would, most certainly, have been much less of "me" visible, and the dead-
+levelled work would have escaped much possible shot of censure.  It was a
+little in a spirit of defiant reaction that I resolved to let it be
+published as it is, and risk the chances.  As Uncle Toby declared that,
+after all, a mother must in some kind of a way be a relation to her own
+child, so it still appears to me that to write an autobiography the
+author must say _something_ about himself; but it is a great and very
+popular _tour de force_ to quite avoid doing this, and all art of late
+years has run to merely skilfully overcoming difficulties and avoiding
+interesting _motives_ or subjects.  It may be, therefore, that in days to
+come, my book will be regarded with some interest, as a curious relic of
+a barbarous age, and written in a style long passed away--
+
+   "When they sat with ghosts on a stormy shore,
+   And spoke in a tongue which men speak no more;
+   Living in wild and wondrous ways,
+   In the ancient giant and goblin days."
+
+Once in my younger time, one of the most beautiful and intellectual women
+whom I ever knew, Madame Anita de Barrera--(Daniel Webster said she was
+beautiful enough to redeem a whole generation of blue-stockings from the
+charge of ugliness)--once made a great and pathetic fuss to me about a
+_grey hair_ which had appeared among her black tresses.  "And what
+difference," I said, "can one white hair make to any friend?"  "Well,"
+she replied, "I thought if I could not awaken any other feeling, I might
+at least inspire in you veneration for old age."  So with this work of
+mine, if it please in naught else, it may still gratify some who love to
+trace the footsteps of the past, and listen to what is told by one who
+lived long "before the war."
+
+Now for a last word--which involves the only point of any importance to
+me personally in this preface--I would say that there will be certain
+readers who will perhaps think that I have exaggerated my life-work, or
+blown my own trumpet too loudly.  To these I declare in plain honesty,
+that I believe there have been or are in the United States _thousands_ of
+men who have _far_ surpassed me, especially as regards services to the
+country during the Civil War.  There were leaders in war and diplomacy,
+editors and soldiers who sacrificed their lives, to whose names I can
+only bow in reverence and humility.  But as it was said of the great
+unknown who passed away--the _fortes ante Agamemnon_--"they had no poet,
+and they died."  These most deserving ones have not written their lives
+or set themselves forth, "and so they pass into oblivion"--and I regret
+it with all my soul.  But this is no reason why those who did something,
+albeit in lesser degree, should not chronicle their experiences exactly
+as they appear to them, and it is not in human nature to require a man to
+depreciate that to which he honestly devoted all his energies.  Perhaps
+it never yet entered into the heart of man to conceive how much has
+really been done by everybody.
+
+And I do most earnestly and solemnly protest, as if it were my last word
+in life, that I have said nothing whatever as regards my political work
+and its results which was not seriously said at the time by many far
+greater men than I, so that I believe I have not the least exaggerated in
+any trifle, even unconsciously.  Thus I can never forget the deep and
+touching sympathy which Henry W. Longfellow expressed to me regarding my
+efforts to advance Emancipation, and how, when some one present observed
+that perhaps I would irritate the Non-Abolition Union men, the poet
+declared emphatically, "But it is a great idea" or "a noble work."  And
+Lowell, Emerson, and George W. Curtis, Bayard Taylor, and many more,
+spoke to the same effect.  And what they said of me I may repeat for the
+sake of History and of Truth.
+
+The present work describes more than forty years of life in America, and
+it is therefore the American reader who will be chiefly interested in it.
+I should perhaps have mentioned what I reserved for special comment in
+the future: that during more than ten years' residence in Europe I had
+_one thing steadily in view all the time_, at which I worked hard, which
+was to qualify myself to return to America and there introduce to the
+public schools of Philadelphia the Industrial or Minor Arts as a branch
+of education, in which I eventually succeeded, devoting to the work there
+four years, applying myself so assiduously as to neglect both society and
+amusements, and not obtaining, nor seeking for, pay or profit thereby in
+any way, directly or indirectly.  And if I have, as I have read, since
+then "expatriated" myself, my whole absence has not been much longer than
+was that of Washington Irving, and I trust to be able to prove that I
+have "left my country for my country's good"--albeit in a somewhat better
+sense than that which was implied by the poet.
+
+And I may here incidentally mention, with all due modesty, that since the
+foregoing paragraph came to me "in revise," I received from Count Angelo
+di Grubernatis a letter, beginning with the remark that, in consequence
+of my _gentile ed insistence premura_, or "amiable persistence, begun
+four-years ago," he has at length carried out my idea and suggestion of
+establishing a great Italian Folklore Society, of which I am to rank as
+among the first twelve members.  This is the fourth institution of the
+kind which I have been first, or among the first, to found in Europe, and
+it has in every case been noted, not without surprise, that I was an
+American.  Such associations, being wide-reaching and cosmopolitan, may
+be indeed considered by every man of culture as patriotic, and I hope at
+some future day that I shall still further prove that, as regards my
+native country, I have only changed my sky but not my heart, and laboured
+for American interests as earnestly as ever.
+
+CHARLES GODFREY LELAND.
+
+BAGNI DI LUCCA, ITALY, _August 20_, _1893_.
+
+
+
+
+I.  EARLY LIFE.  1824-1837.
+
+
+My birthplace--Count Bruno and Dufief--Family items--General
+Lafayette--The Dutch witch-nurse--Early friends and
+associations--Philadelphia sixty years ago--Early reading--Genealogy--First
+schools--Summers in New England--English influences--The Revolutionary
+grandfather--Centenarians--The last survivor of the Boston Tea-party and
+the last signer of the Declaration--Indians--Memories of relations--A
+Quaker school--My ups and downs in classes--Arithmetic--My first ride in
+a railway car--My marvellous invention--Mr. Alcott's school--A
+Transcendental teacher--Rev. W. H. Furness--Miss Eliza Leslie--The
+boarding-school near Boston--Books--A terrible winter--My first poem--I
+return to Philadelphia.
+
+I was born on the 15th of August, 1824, in a house which was in
+Philadelphia, and in Chestnut Street, the second door below Third Street,
+on the north side.  It had been built in the old Colonial time, and in
+the room in which I first saw life there was an old chimney-piece, which
+was so remarkable that strangers visiting the city often came to see it.
+It was, I believe, of old carved oak, possibly mediaeval, which had been
+brought from some English manor as a relic.  I am indebted for this
+information to a Mr. Landreth, who lived in the house at the time. {1}
+
+It was then a boarding-house, kept by a Mrs. Rodgers.  She had taken it
+from a lady who had also kept it for boarders.  The daughter of this
+latter married President Madison.  She was the well-known "Dolly
+Madison," famous for her grace, accomplishments, and _belle humeur_, of
+whom there are stories still current in Washington.
+
+My authority informed me that there were among the boarders in the house
+two remarkable men, one of whom often petted me as a babe, and took a
+fancy to me.  He was a Swedish Count, who had passed, it was said, a very
+wild life as pirate for several years on the Spanish Main.  He was
+identified as the Count Bruno of Frederica Bremer's novel, "The
+Neighbours."  The other was the famous philologist, Dufief, author of
+"Nature Displayed," a work of such remarkable ability that I wonder that
+it should have passed into oblivion.
+
+My mother had been from her earliest years devoted to literature to a
+degree which was unusual at that time in the United States.  She had
+been, as a girl, a special _protegee_ of Hannah Adams, the author of many
+learned works, who was the first person buried in the Mount Auburn
+Cemetery of Boston.  She directed my mother's reading, and had great
+influence over her.  My mother had also been very intimate with the
+daughters of Jonathan Russell, the well-known diplomatist.  My maternal
+grandfather was Colonel Godfrey, who had fought in the war of the
+Revolution, and who was at one time an aide-de-camp of the Governor of
+Massachusetts.  He was noted for the remarkable gentleness of his
+character.  I have heard that when he went forth of a morning, all the
+animals on his farm would run to meet and accompany him.  He had to a
+miraculous degree a certain sympathetic power, so that all beings, men
+included, loved him.  I have heard my mother say that as a girl she had a
+tame crow who was named Tom, and that he could distinctly cry the word
+"What?"  When Tom was walking about in the garden, if called, he would
+reply "What?" in a perfectly human manner.
+
+When I was one month old, General Lafayette visited our city and passed
+in a grand procession before the house.  It is one of the legends of my
+infancy that my nurse said, "Charley shall see the General too!" and held
+me up to the window.  General Lafayette, seeing this, laughed and bowed
+to me.  He was the first gentleman who ever saluted me formally.  When I
+reflect how in later life adventure, the study of languages, and a French
+Revolution came into my experiences, it seems to me as if Count Bruno,
+Dufief, and Lafayette had all been premonitors of the future.
+
+I was a great sufferer from many forms of ill-health in my infancy.
+Before my second birthday, I had a terrible illness with inflammation of
+the brain.  Dr. Dewees (author of a well-known work on diseases of women
+and children), who attended me, said that I was insane for a week, and
+that it was a case without parallel.  I mention this because I believe
+that I owe to it in a degree whatever nervousness and tendency to
+"idealism" or romance and poetry has subsequently been developed in me.
+Through all my childhood and youth its influence was terribly felt, nor
+have I to this day recovered from it.
+
+I should mention that my first nurse in life was an old Dutch woman named
+Van der Poel.  I had not been born many days before I and my cradle were
+missing.  There was a prompt outcry and search, and both were soon found
+in the garret or loft of the house.  There I lay sleeping, on my breast
+an open Bible, with, I believe, a key and knife, at my head lighted
+candles, money, and a plate of salt.  Nurse Van der Poel explained that
+it was done to secure my rising in life--by taking me up to the garret.  I
+have since learned from a witch that the same is still done in exactly
+the same manner in Italy, and in Asia.  She who does it must be, however,
+a _strega_ or sorceress (my nurse was reputed to be one), and the child
+thus initiated will become deep in darksome lore, an adept in _occulta_,
+and a scholar.  If I have not turned out to be all of this _in
+majoribus_, it was not the fault of my nurse.
+
+Next door to us lived a family in which were four daughters who grew up
+to be famous belles.  It is said that when the poet N. P. Willis visited
+them, one of these young ladies, who was familiar with his works, was so
+overcome that she fainted.  Forty years after Willis distinctly recalled
+the circumstance.  Fainting was then fashionable.
+
+Among the household friends of our family I can remember Mr. John
+Vaughan, who had legends of Priestley, Berkeley, and Thomas Moore, and
+who often dined with us on Sunday.  I can also recall his personal
+reminiscences of General Washington, Jefferson, and all the great men of
+the previous generation.  He was a gentle and beautiful old man, with
+very courtly manners and snow-white hair, which he wore in a queue.  He
+gave away the whole of a large fortune to the poor.  Also an old Mr.
+Crozier, who had been in France through all the French Revolution, and
+had known Robespierre, Marat, Fouquier Tinville, &c.  I wish that I had
+betimes noted down all the anecdotes I ever heard from them.  There were
+also two old ladies, own nieces of Benjamin Franklin, who for many years
+continually took tea with us.  One of them, Mrs. Kinsman, presented me
+with the cotton quilt under which her uncle had died.  Another lady, Miss
+Louisa Nancrede, who had been educated in France, had seen Napoleon, and
+often described him to me.  She told me many old French fairy-tales, and
+often sang a ballad (which I found in after years in the works of
+Cazotte), which made a great impression on me--something like that of
+"Childe Roland to the dark tower came."  It was called _Le Sieur
+Enguerrand_, and the refrain was "_Oh ma bonne j'ai tant peur_."
+
+That these and many other influences of culture stirred me strangely even
+as a child, is evident from the fact that they have remained so vividly
+impressed on my memory.  This reminds me that I can distinctly remember
+that when I was eight years of age, in 1832, my grandmother, Mrs. Oliver
+Leland, told my mother that the great German poet Goethe had recently
+died, and that they bade me remember it.  On the same day I read in the
+_Athenaeum_ (an American reprint of leading articles, poems, &c., from
+English magazines, which grandmother took all her life long) a
+translation of Schiller's "Diver."  I read it only once, and to this day
+I can repeat nearly the whole of it.  I have now by me, as I write, a
+silver messenger-ring of King Robert, and I never see it without thinking
+of the corner of the room by the side-door where I stood when grandmother
+spoke of the death of Goethe.  But I anticipate.
+
+My father was a commission merchant, and had his place of business in
+Market Street below Third Street.  His partner was Charles S. Boker, who
+had a son, George, who will often be mentioned in these Memoirs.  George
+became in after life distinguished as a poet, and was Minister for many
+years at Constantinople and at St. Petersburg.
+
+From Mrs. Rodgers' my parents went to Mrs. Shinn's, in Second Street.  It
+also was a very old-fashioned house, with a garden full of flowers, and a
+front doorstep almost on a level with the ground.  The parlour had a
+large old fireplace, set with blue tiles of the time of Queen Anne, and
+it was my delight to study and have explained to me from them the story
+of Joseph and his brethren and AEsop's fables.  Everything connected with
+this house recurs to me as eminently pleasant, old-fashioned, and very
+respectable.  I can remember something very English-like among the
+gentlemen-boarders who sat after dinner over their Madeira, and a
+beautiful lady, Mrs. Stanley, who gave me a sea-shell.  Thinking of it
+all, I seem to have lived in a legend by Hawthorne.
+
+There was another change to a Mrs. Eaton's boarding-house in Fifth
+Street, opposite to the side of the Franklin Library.  I can remember
+that there was a very good marine picture by Birch in the drawing-room.
+This was after living in the Washington Square house, of which I shall
+speak anon.  I am not clear as to these removals.  There were some men of
+culture at Mrs. Eaton's--among them Sears C. Walker, a great astronomer,
+and a Dr. Brewer, who had travelled in Italy and brought back with him
+pieces of sculpture.  We were almost directly opposite the State House,
+where liberty had been declared, while to the side, across the street,
+was the Library founded by Dr. Franklin, with his statue over the door.
+One of his nieces often told me that this was an absolutely perfect
+likeness.  The old iron railing, now removed--more's the pity!--surrounded
+the Square, which was full of grand trees.
+
+It was believed that the spirit of Dr. Franklin haunted the Library,
+reading the books.  Once a coloured woman, who, in darkey fashion, was
+scrubbing the floor after midnight, beheld the form.  She was so
+frightened that she fainted.  But stranger still, when the books were
+removed to the New Library in Locust Street, the ghost went with them,
+and there it still "spooks" about as of yore to this day, as every negro
+in the quarter knows.
+
+In regard to Franklin and his apparition, there was a schoolboy joke to
+this effect: that _whenever_ the statue of Franklin over the Library door
+heard the clock strike twelve at night, it descended, went to the old
+Jefferson Wigwam, and drank a glass of beer.  But the sell lay in this,
+that a statue cannot hear.
+
+And there was a dim old legend of a colony of Finns, who, in the Swedish
+time, had a village all to themselves in Wiccacoe.  They were men of
+darksome lore and magic skill, and their women were witches, who at tide
+and time sailed forth merrily on brooms to the far-away highlands of the
+Hudson, where they held high revel with their Yankee, Dutch, and Indian
+colleagues of the mystic spell.  David MacRitchie, in a recent work, has
+made a note of this curious offshoot of the old Philadelphia Swedes.
+
+And I can also remember that before a marble yard in Race Street there
+were two large statues of very grim forbidding-looking dogs, of whom it
+was said that when there was any one about to die in the quarter, these
+uncanny hounds came down during a nightly storm and howled a death duet.
+
+And when I was very young there still lingered in the minds of those
+invaluable living chronicles (whether bound in sheepskin or in calf), the
+oldest inhabitants, memories from before the Revolution of the Indian
+market, when on every Saturday the natives came from their rural
+retreats, bringing pelts or skins, baskets, moccasins, _mocos_ or birch
+boxes of maple-sugar, feathers, and game for sale.  Then they ranged
+themselves all along the west side of Independence Square, in tents or at
+tables, and sold--or were sold themselves--in bargains.  Even now the
+Sunday-child, or he who is gifted to behold the departed, may see the
+ghostly forms of Red-men carrying on that weekly goblin market.  Miss
+Eliza Leslie's memory was full of these old stories, which she had
+collected from old people.
+
+As for the black witches, as there were still four negro sorcerers in
+Philadelphia in 1883 (I have their addresses), it may be imagined to what
+an extent _Voodoo_ still prevailed among our Ebo-ny men and brothers.  Of
+one of these my mother had a sad experience.  We had a black cook named
+Ann Lloyd, of whom, to express it mildly, one must say that she was "no
+good."  My mother dismissed her, but several who succeeded her left
+abruptly.  Then it was found that Ann, who professed to be a witch, had
+put a spell of death on all who should take her place.  My mother learned
+this, and when the last black cook gave warning she received a good
+admonition as to a Christian being a slave to the evil one.  I believe
+that this ended the enchantment.  There is or was in South Fifth Street
+an African church, over the door of which was the charming inscription,
+"Those who have walked in Darkness have seen a great light."  But this
+light has not even yet penetrated to the darksome depths of Lombard or
+South Streets, if I may believe the strange tales which I have heard,
+even of late, of superstition there.
+
+Philadelphia was a very beautiful old-fashioned city in those days, with
+a marked character.  Every house had its garden, in which vines twined
+over arbours, and the magnolia, honeysuckle, and rose spread rich perfume
+of summer nights, and where the humming-bird rested, and scarlet tanager
+or oriole with the yellow and blue bird flitted in sunshine or in shade.
+Then swallows darted at noon over the broad streets, and the mighty
+sturgeon was so abundant in the Delaware that one could hardly remain a
+minute on the wharf in early morn or ruddy evening without seeing some
+six-foot monster dart high in air, falling on his side with a plash.  In
+the winter-time the river was allowed to freeze over, and then every
+schoolboy walked across to Camden and back, as if it had been a
+pilgrimage or religious duty, while meantime there was always a kind of
+Russian carnival on the ice, oxen being sometimes roasted whole, and all
+kinds of "fakirs," as they are now termed, selling doughnuts,
+spruce-beer, and gingerbread, or tempting the adventurous with
+thimblerig; many pedestrians stopping at the old-fashioned inn on Smith's
+Island for hot punch.  Juleps and cobblers, and the "one thousand and one
+American fancy drinks," were not as yet invented, and men drank
+themselves unto the devil quite as easily on rum or brandy straight,
+peach and honey, madeira and punch, as they now do on more varied
+temptations.  Lager beer was not as yet in the land.  I remember drinking
+it in after years in New Street, where a German known as _der dicke
+Georg_ first dealt it in 1848 to our American public.  Maize-whisky could
+then be bought for fifteen cents a gallon; even good "old rye" was not
+much dearer; and the best Havanna cigars until 1840 cost only three cents
+a-piece.  As they rose in price they depreciated in quality, and it is
+now many years since I have met with a really aromatic old-fashioned
+Havanna.
+
+It was a very well-shaded, peaceful city, not "a great village," as it
+was called by New Yorkers, but like a pleasant English town of earlier
+times, in which a certain picturesque rural beauty still lingered.  The
+grand old double houses, with high flights of steps, built by the
+Colonial aristocracy--such as the Bird mansion in Chestnut Street by
+Ninth Street--had a marked and pleasing character, as had many of the
+quaint black and red-brick houses, whose fronts reminded one of the
+chequer-board map of our city.  All of this quiet charm departed from
+them after they were surrounded by a newer and noisier life.  I well
+remember one of these fine old Colonial houses.  It had been the old
+Penington mansion, but belonged in my early boyhood to Mr. Jones, who was
+one of my father's partners in business.  It stood at the corner of
+Fourth and Race Streets, and was surrounded on all sides by a garden.
+There was a legend to the effect that a beautiful lady, who had long
+before inhabited the house, had been so fond of this garden, that after
+death her spirit was often seen of summer nights tending or watering the
+flowers.  She was a gentle ghost, and the story made a great impression
+on me.  I still possess a pictured tile from a chimney-piece of this old
+mansion.
+
+The house is gone, but it is endeared to me by a very strange memory.
+When I was six or seven years of age, I had read Shakespeare's "Tempest,"
+and duly reflected on it.  The works of Shakespeare were very rare indeed
+in Quaker Philadelphia in those days, and much tabooed, but Mr. Jones,
+who had a good library in the great hall upstairs, possessed a set in
+large folio.  This I was allowed to read, but not to remove from the
+place.  How well I can remember passing my Saturday afternoons reading
+those mighty tomes, standing first on one leg, then on the other for very
+weariness, yet absorbed and fascinated!
+
+About this time I was taken to the theatre to see Fannie Kemble in "Much
+Ado About Nothing"--or it may have been to a play before that time--when
+my father said to me that he supposed I had never heard of Shakespeare.
+To which I replied by repeating all the songs in the "Tempest."  One of
+these, referring to the loves of certain sailors, is not very decent, but
+I had not the remotest conception of its impropriety, and so proceeded to
+repeat it.  A saint of virtue must have laughed at such a declamation.
+
+As it recurs to me, the spirit which was over Philadelphia in my boyhood,
+houses, gardens, people, and their life, was strangely quiet, sunny, and
+quaint, a dream of olden time drawn into modern days.  The Quaker
+predominated, and his memories were mostly in the past; ours, as I have
+often said, was a city of great trees, which seemed to me to be ever
+repeating their old poetic legends to the wind of Swedes, witches, and
+Indians.
+
+Among the street-cries and sounds, the first which I can remember was the
+postman's horn, when I was hardly three years old.  Then there were the
+watchmen, "who cried the hour and weather all night long."  Also a
+coloured man who shouted, in a strange, musical strain which could be
+heard a mile:
+
+   "_Tra-la-la-la-la-la-loo_.
+   Le-mon-ice-cream!
+   An'-wanilla-too!"
+
+Also the quaint old Hominy-man:
+
+   "De Hominy man is on his way,
+      Frum de Navy-Yard!
+      Wid his harmony!"
+
+   (Spoken) "Law bess de putty eyes ob de young lady!  Hominy's good fur
+   de young ladies!
+
+   "De Harmony man is on his way," &c.
+
+Also, "Hot-corn!"  "Pepper-pot!"  "Be-au-ti-ful Clams!" with the "Sweep-
+oh" cry, and charcoal and muffin bells.
+
+One of the family legends was, that being asked by some lady, for whom I
+had very little liking, to come and visit her, I replied with great
+politeness, but also with marked firmness, "I am very much obliged to
+you, ma'am, and thank you--but I _won't_."
+
+In Washington Square, three doors from us, at the corner of Walnut
+Street, lived Dr. George McClellan.  He had two sons, one, John, of my
+own age, the other, George, who was three years younger.  Both went to
+school with me in later years.  George became a soldier, and finally rose
+to the head of the army in the first year of the War of Rebellion, or
+Emancipation, as I prefer to term it.
+
+Washington Square, opposite our house, had been in the olden time a
+Potter's Field, where all the victims of the yellow fever pestilence had
+been interred.  Now it had become a beautiful little park, but there were
+legends of a myriad of white confused forms seen flitting over it in the
+night, for it was a mysterious haunted place to many still, and I can
+remember my mother gently reproving one of our pretty neighbours for
+repeating such tales.
+
+I have dreamy yet very oft-recurring memories of my life in childhood,
+as, for instance, that just before I was quite three years old I had
+given to me a copy of the old New England Primer, which I could not then
+read, yet learned from others the rhymes with the quaint little cuts.
+
+   "In Adam's fall
+   We sin-ned all."
+
+   "My book and heart
+   Shall never part," &c.
+
+Also of a gingerbread toy, with much sugar, colour, and gilding, and of
+lying in a crib and having the measles.  I can remember that I understood
+the meaning of the word _dead_ before that of _alive_, because I told my
+nurse that I had heard that Dr. Dewees was dead.  But she replying that
+he was not, but alive, I repeated "live" as one not knowing what it
+meant.
+
+I recollect, also, that one day, when poring over the pictures in a toy-
+book, my Uncle Amos calling me a good little boy for so industriously
+reading, I felt guilty and ashamed because I could not read, and did not
+like to admit it.  Whatever my faults or follies may be, I certainly had
+an innate rectitude, a strong sense of honesty, just as many children
+have the contrary; and this, I believe, is due to inherited qualities,
+though these in turn are greatly modified by early association and
+influences.  That I also had precocious talent and taste for the
+romantic, poetic, marvellous, quaint, supernatural, and humorous, was
+soon manifested.  Even as an infant objects of _bric-a-brac_ and of
+antiquity awoke in me an interest allied to passion or awe, for which
+there was no parallel among others of my age.  This was, I believe, the
+old spirit which had come down through the ages into my blood--the spirit
+which inspired Leland the _Flos Grammaticorum_, and after him John
+Leland, the antiquary of King Henry VIII., and Chrs. (Charles) Leland,
+who was secretary of the Society of Antiquaries in the time of Charles I.
+Let me hereby inform those who think that "Chrs." means Christopher, that
+there has been a Charles in the family since time immemorial, alternated
+with an Oliver since the days of Cromwell.
+
+John Leyland, an Englishman, now living, who is a deep and sagacious
+scholar, and the author of the "Antiquities of the Town of Halifax" (a
+very clever work), declares that for _four hundred years_ there has not
+been a generation in which some Leland (or Leyland) of the old Bussli de
+Leland stock has not written a work on antiquity or allied to
+antiquarianism, though in one case it is a translation of Demosthenes,
+and in another a work on Deistical Writers.  He traces the connection
+with his own family of the Henry Leland, my ancestor, a rather prominent
+political Puritan character in his time, who first went to America in
+1636, and acquired land which my grandfather still owned.  It was very
+extensive.
+
+There is a De la Laund in the roll of Battle Abbey, {13} but John says
+our progenitor was _De Bussli_, who came over with the Conqueror, ravaged
+all Yorkshire, killing 100,000 men, and who also burned up, perhaps
+alive, the 1,000 Jews in the Tower of York.  For these eminent services
+to the state he was rewarded with the manor of Leyland, from which he
+took his name.  The very first _complete_ genealogical register of any
+American family ever published was that of the Leland family, by Judge
+Leland, of Roxbury, Mass. (but for which he was really chiefly indebted
+to another of the name), in which it is shown that Henry Leland had had
+in 1847 fifteen thousand descendants in America.  In regard to which I am
+honoured with a membership in the Massachusetts Genealogical Society.  The
+crest of Bussli and the rest of us is a raven or crow transfixed by an
+arrow, with a motto which I dearly love.  It is _Cui debeo_, _fidus_.
+Very apropos of this crow or raven is the following: Heinrich Heine, in
+his "Germany" (vol. ii. p. 211, Heinemann's edition), compares the same
+to priests "whose pious croaking is so well known to our ears."  This is
+in reference to such birds which fly about the mountain of Kyffhauser, in
+which the Emperor Friedrich Barbarossa is sleeping, and where he will
+sleep till they disappear.  And then, praising himself, Heine adds: "But
+old age has weakened them, and there are good marksmen who know right
+well how to bring them down.  I know one of these archers, who now lives
+in Paris, and who knows how, even from that distance, to hit the crows
+which fly about the Kyffhauser.  When the Emperor returns to earth, he
+will surely find on his way more than one raven slain by this archer's
+arrows.  And the old hero will say, smiling, 'That man carried a good
+bow.'"  In my note to this I remarked that "the raven or crow transfixed
+by an arrow is the crest of the coat-of-arms of the name of Leland, or of
+my own.  I sincerely trust that Bussli, the first who bore it, did not
+acquire the right to do so by shooting a clergyman."  As a single crow is
+an omen of ill-luck, so the same transfixed signifies misfortune
+overcome, or the forcible ending of evil influences by a strong will.  It
+is a common belief or saying among all the Lelands, however widely
+related, that there has never been a convicted criminal of the name.  _Dii
+faxint_!
+
+At four years of age, while still living in Washington Square, I was sent
+to an infant school in Walnut Street, above Eighth Street, south side,
+near by.  It was kept by the Misses Donaldson.  We all sat in a row, on
+steps, as in an amphitheatre, but in straight lines.  Miss Donaldson,
+senior, sat at a desk, prim and perpendicular, holding a rod which was
+fifteen or twenty feet in length, with which she could hit on the head or
+poke any noisy or drowsy child, without stirring from her post.  It was
+an ingenious invention, and one which might be employed to advantage in
+small churches.  I can remember that at this time I could not hear a tune
+played without stringing my thoughts to it; not that I have any special
+ear for music, but because I am moved by melody.  There was a rhyme that
+was often sung to me to the tune of "Over the Water"--
+
+      "Charley Buff
+      Had money enough,
+   And locked it in his store;
+      Charley die
+      And shut his eye,
+   And never saw money no more."
+
+The influence of this and other tunes on my thought was so great, that I
+have often wondered whether anybody ever realised how much we may owe to
+metre acting on thought; for I do not believe that I ever penned any
+poetry in my life unless it was to a _tune_; and even in this prose which
+I now write there is ever and anon a _cadence_ as of a brook running
+along, then rising, anon falling, perceptible to me though not to you,
+yet which has many a time been noted down by critics speaking gently of
+my work.  This induced me to learn betimes an incredible number of songs;
+in fact, at the age of ten or eleven I had most of Percy's "Relics" by
+heart.  This naturally enough led me to read, and reading understand, an
+amount of poetry of such varied character that I speak with strictest
+truth in saying that I have never met with, and never even read of, any
+boy who, as a mere little boy, had mastered such a number and variety of
+ballads and minor poems as I had done--as will appear in the course of
+this narrative.
+
+While living at Mrs. Eaton's I was sent to a school kept by two very nice
+rather young Quaker ladies in Walnut Street.  It was just opposite a very
+quaint old-fashioned collection of many little dwellings in one (modelled
+after the Fuggerei of Augsburg?) known as the Quaker Almshouse.  One
+morning I played truant, and became so fearfully weary and bored lounging
+about, that I longed for the society of school, and never stayed from
+study any more.  Here I was learning to read, and I can remember "The
+History of Little Jack," and discussing with a comrade the question as to
+whether the word _history_ really meant _his_ story, or was ingeniously
+double and inclusive.  I also about this time became familiar with many
+minor works, such as are all now sold at high prices as chap-books, such
+as "Marmaduke Multiply," "The World Turned Upside Down,"
+"Chrononhotonthologos," "The Noble History of the Giants," and others of
+Mr. Newberry's gilt-cover toy-books.  All of our juvenile literature in
+those days was without exception London made, and very few persons can
+now realise how deeply Anglicised I was, and how all this reading
+produced associations and feelings which made dwelling in England in
+later years seem like a return to a half-forgotten home, of which we
+have, however, pleasant fairy-tale reminiscences.
+
+The mistress of the school was named Sarah Lewis, and while there,
+something of a very extraordinary nature--to me, at least--took place.
+One day, while at my little desk, there came into my head with a strange
+and unaccountable intensity this thought: "I am I--I am _Myself_--I
+myself _I_," and so on.  By forcing this thought on myself very rapidly,
+I produced a something like suspension of thought or syncope; not a
+vertigo, but that mental condition which is allied to it.  I have several
+times read of men who recorded nearly the same thing among their youthful
+experiences, but I do not recall that any of them induced this _coma_ by
+reflecting on the ego-ism of the I, or the me-ness of the Me. {16}  It
+often recurred to me in after years when studying Schelling and Fichte,
+or reading works by Mystics, Quietists, and the like.  At a very early
+age I was indeed very much given to indulging in states of mind
+resembling metaphysical abstraction--a kind of vague marvelling what I
+_was_ and what others were; whether they and everything were not spirits
+playing me tricks, or a delusion--a kind of psychology without material
+or thought, like a workman without tools.
+
+For a short time, while five or six years old, and living at Mrs.
+Eaton's, I was sent to a school of boys of all ages, kept by a man named
+Eastburn, in Library Street, whom I can only recall as a coarse, brutal
+fiend.  From morning to night there was not a minute in which some boy
+was not screaming under the heavy rattan which he or his brother always
+held.  I myself--infant as I was--for not learning a spelling-lesson
+properly, was subjected to a caning which would have been cruel if
+inflicted on a convict or sailor.  In the lower story this man's sister
+kept a girls' school, and the ruffian was continually being called
+downstairs to beat the larger girls.  My mother knew nothing of all this,
+and I was ashamed to tell that I had been whipped.  I have all my life
+been opposed to corporal punishment, be it in schools or for criminals.
+It brings out of boys all that is evil in their nature and nothing that
+is good, developing bullying and cruelty, while it is eminently
+productive of cowardice, lying, and meanness--as I have frequently found
+when I came to hear the private life of those who defend it as creating
+"manliness."  It was found during the American war that the soldiers who
+had been most accustomed to beating and to being beaten were by far the
+greatest cowards, and that "Billy Wilson's" regiment of pugilists was so
+absolutely worthless as to be unqualified for the field at any time.  One
+thing is very certain, that I have found that boys who attend schools
+where there is no whipping, and little or no fighting, are freest from
+that _coarseness_ which is so invariably allied to meanness, lying, and
+dishonesty.  I had about 2000 children in the _public schools_ of
+Philadelphia pass under my teaching, and never met with but one instance
+of direct rudeness.  There was also only one of dishonesty or theft, and
+that was by a fighting boy, who looked like a miniature pugilist.
+Philadelphia manners were formed by Quakers.  When I visited, in 1884,
+certain minor art-work classes established in the East End of London, Mr.
+Walter Besant said to me that I would find a less gentle set of pupils.
+In fact, in the first school which I examined, the girls had, the week
+before, knocked down, kicked, and trampled on an elderly lady who had
+come to teach them art-work out of pure benevolence.  I am often told
+that whipping put an end to garroting.  If this be true, which it is
+_not_ (for garroting was a merely temporary fancy, which died out in
+America without whipping), it only proves that the garotters, who were
+all fighting and boxing roughs, were mere cowards.  Red Indians never
+whip children, but they will die under torture without a groan.
+
+My parents were from Massachusetts, and every summer they returned to
+pass several months in or near Boston, generally with their relatives in
+Worcester county, in Dedham, in the "Hub" itself, or in Milford, Mendon,
+or Holliston, the home of my paternal grandfather, Oliver Leland.  Thus I
+grew to be familiar with New England, its beautiful scenery and
+old-fashioned Yankee rural ways.  Travelling was then by stage-coach, and
+it took two days to go from Philadelphia to Boston, stopping on the way
+overnight at Princeton, Perth Amboy, or Providence.  This is to me a very
+interesting source of reminiscences.  In Dedham, for three summers, I
+attended school.  I remember that we stayed with Dr. Jeremy Stimson, who
+had married a sister of my mother.  I studied French; and can recall that
+my cousins Caroline and Emily, who were very beautiful young ladies,
+generally corrected my exercises.  I was then seven or eight years of
+age.  Also that I was very much alone; that I had a favourite bow, made
+by some old Indian; that I read with great relish "Gil Blas" and "Don
+Quixote," and especially books of curiosities and oddities which had a
+great influence on me.  I wandered for days by myself fishing, strolling
+in beautiful wild places among rocks and fields, or in forests by the
+River Charles.  I can remember how one Sunday during service I sat in
+church unseen behind the organ, and read Benvenuto Cellini's account of
+the sorcerer in the Colosseum in Rome: I shall see his Perseus ten
+minutes hence in the Signoria of Florence, where I now write.
+
+Then there were the quiet summer evenings in the drawing-room, where my
+cousins played the piano and sang "The Sunset Tree," "Alknoomuk," "I see
+them on the winding way," and Moore's melodies.  _Tempi passati_--"'Tis
+sixty year's since."  Caroline meantime married a Mr. Wight, who had
+passed most of his life in England, and was thoroughly Anglicised.  There
+was also an English lady visiting America who stayed a while in Dedham to
+be with my cousin.  She was _jeune encore_, but had with her a young
+English gentleman relative who _would_ call her "Mamma!" which we thought
+rather _niais_.  From my reading and my few experiences I, however,
+acquired a far greater insight into life than most boys would have done,
+for I remembered and thought long over everything I heard or learned.
+Between my mother and cousins and our visitors there was much reading and
+discussion of literary topics, and I listened to more than any one noted,
+and profited by it.
+
+I was always reading and mentally reviewing.  If my mother made a call, I
+was at once absorbed in the first book which came to hand.  Thus I can
+remember that one summer, when we came to Dr. Stimson's, during the brief
+interval of our being shown into the "parlour," I seized on a Unitarian
+literary magazine and read the story of Osapho, the Egyptian who trained
+parrots to cry, "Osapho is a god!"  Also an article on Chinese
+acupuncture with needles to cure rheumatism; which chance readings and
+reminiscences I could multiply _ad infinitum_.
+
+My cousin Caroline, whom I remember as very beautiful and refined, with a
+_distinguee_ manner, had a small work-box, on the cover of which was a
+picture of the Pavilion in Brighton.  She spoke of the building as a
+rubbishy piece of architecture; but I, who felt it through the "Arabian
+Nights," admired it, and pitied her want of taste.  _Now_ I have lived
+altogether three years in Brighton, but I never saw the Pavilion without
+recalling the little yellow work-box.  In some mysterious way the picture
+seems to me to be grander than the original.  Dickens has expressed this
+idea.  I was too grave and earnest as a child to be called a cheerful or
+happy one, which was partly due to much ill-health; yet, by a strange
+contradiction not uncommon in America, I was gifted with a precociously
+keen sense of humour, and not only read, but collected and preserved
+every comic almanac and scrap of droll anecdote which I could get.  Thus
+there came into my possession half-a-dozen books of the broadest London
+humour of the time, all of which entered into my soul; such things as:--
+
+   '"Ladies in furs and gemmen in spurs,
+      Who lollop and lounge all day;
+   The Bazaar in Soho is completely the go,
+      Walk into the shop of Grimaldi."
+
+Reader mine, you can have no conception how deeply I, as a mere little
+boy, entered into and knew London life and society from such songs,
+sketches, anecdotes, books, and caricatures as I met with.  Others read
+and forget them, but I took such trifles deep into my soul and _dwelt_ on
+them.  It is only of late years, since I have lived in England, that I
+have learned how extensively--I may say incredibly well--I was informed
+for my age as to many phases of English life.  Few of us know what may be
+got out of reading the current light literature of the day, if we only
+read it _earnestly_ and get it by heart.  This I did to a great extent,
+as my reminiscences continually awakened in England prove.
+
+There was in Dedham a very old house of somewhat superior style, which
+had been built, if not in 1630, at least within a very few years after.
+It was inhabited by three sisters named Fairbanks, who were very peculiar
+indeed, and their peculiarity consisted in a strange devotion to the
+past, and above all to old _English_ memories of colonial times before
+the Revolution.  Even in England this resistance can hardly be understood
+at the present day, and yet it may still be found alive in New England.
+In the house itself was a well, dug to supply water when besieged by
+Indians, and the old ladies used to exhibit an immense old gun once used
+by Puritans, and an ox-saddle and other relics.  They had also a very
+ancient book of prayer of the Church of England, and an old Bible, and
+thereby hangs a tale.  They were all still living in 1849 or 1850, when I
+visited them with my very pretty cousin Mary Elizabeth Fisher, and as I
+professed the Episcopal faith, and had been in England, the precious
+relics were shown to me as to one of the initiated.  But they showed a
+marked aversion to letting Miss Fisher see them, as she was a Unitarian.
+So they went on, as many others did in my youth, still staunch adherents
+to England, nice old Tories, believers in the King or Queen, for whom
+they prayed, and not in the President.  I remember that Miss Eliza Leslie
+told me in later years of just such another trio.
+
+My grandfather in Holliston was, as his father and brothers and uncles
+had all been, an old Revolutionary soldier, who had been four years in
+the war and taken part in many battles.  He had been at Princeton (where
+I afterwards graduated) and Saratoga, and witnessed the surrender of
+Burgoyne to Gates.  I was principally concerned to know whether the
+conqueror had _kept the sword_ handed to him on this occasion, and was
+rather disappointed to learn that it was given back.  Once I found in the
+garret a bayonet which my grandma said had been carried by grandfather in
+the war.  I turned it with a broom-handle into a lance and made ferocious
+charges on the cat and hens.
+
+This grandfather, Oliver Leland, exerted an extraordinary influence on
+me, and one hard to describe.  He was great, grim, and taciturn to
+behold, yet with a good heart, and not devoid of humour.  He was gouty,
+and yet not irritable.  He continually recurs to me while reading
+Icelandic sagas, and as a kind of man who would now be quite out of the
+age anywhere.  All his early associations had been of war and a half-wild
+life.  He was born about 1758, and therefore in a rude age in rural New
+England.  He, I may say, deeply interested me.
+
+All boys are naturally full of the romance of war; the Revolution was to
+us more than the Crusades and all chivalry combined, and my grandfather
+was a living example and chronicle of all that I most admired.  Often I
+sat on a little cricket at his feet, and listened to tales of battles,
+scoutings, and starving; how he had been obliged to live on raw wheat,
+which produced evil results, and beheld General Washington and other
+great men, and had narrow escapes from Indians, and been at the capturing
+of a fort by moonlight, and seen thousands of pounds' worth of stores
+destroyed.  I frequently thought of old grandfather Oliver when "out"
+myself during the Civil War, and was half-starved and chilled when
+scouting, or when doing rough and tough in West Virginia.
+
+My grandfather often told me such stories of the war, and others of his
+father and grandfather, who had fought before him in the old French war
+in Canada, and how the latter, having gone up to trade among the Indians
+one winter, endeared himself so much to them that they would not let him
+go, and kept him a captive until the next summer.  I came across traces
+of this ancestor in an old Canadian record, wherein it appears that he
+once officiated as interpreter in the French and Indian tongues.  Whereby
+critics may remark that learning French and Algonkin runs in our blood,
+and that my proclivity for Indians is legitimately inherited.  I would
+that I knew all the folklore that my great-grandsire heard in the Indian
+wigwams in those old days!
+
+I can remember seeing my grandfather once sitting and talking with five
+other veterans of the war.  But I saw them daily in those times, and once
+several hundreds, or it may be thousands, of them in a great procession
+in Philadelphia in 1832.  And here I may mention that in 1834 I often saw
+one named Rice, whose age, as authenticated by his pension papers, was
+106, and that in 1835 I shook hands with Thomas Hughes, aged 95, who was
+the last survivor of the Boston Tea party.  He had come to visit our
+school, and how we boys cheered the old gentleman, who was in our eyes
+one of the greatest men alive!  But all the old folk in my boyhood could
+tell tales of the Revolution, which was indeed not very much older then
+than the Rebellion is to us now.
+
+I can also recollect seeing Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the last of
+the signers of the Declaration of Independence, though my memory of the
+man is now confused with that of a very perfect portrait which belonged
+to his granddaughter, Mrs. Jackson, who was a next-door but one neighbour
+in after years in Walnut Street, Philadelphia.  He was a very venerable-
+looking man.
+
+My father served for a short time in the war of 1812, and I have heard
+him relate that when the startling news of peace arrived in Boston, where
+he was, he at once took a sleigh and fast horses and drove full speed,
+being the first to disseminate the news in the country.  That was as good
+as Browning's "Ride to Ghent" in its way--_apropos_ of which Mr. Browning
+once startled me by telling me, "I suppose you know that it is an
+invention of mine, and not founded on any real incident."  But my
+father's headlong sleigh-ride--he was young and wild in those days--was
+real and romantic enough in all conscience.  It set bells to ringing,
+multitudes to cheering, bonfires a-blazing on hills and in towns, and
+also some few to groaning, as happened to a certain old deacon, who had
+invested his all in English goods, and said, when he heard the cheers
+caused by the news, "Wife, if that's war news, I'm saved; but if it's
+peace, I'm ruined!"  Even so it befell me, in after years, to be the
+first person to announce in the United States, far in advance of any
+others, the news of the French Revolution of 1848, as I shall fully prove
+in the sequence.
+
+It may be here remarked, that, though not "professionals," all of our
+family, without a break in the record, have successively taken turns at
+fighting, and earned our pay as soldiers, since time lost in oblivion;
+for I and my brother tried it on during the Rebellion, wherein he indeed,
+standing by my side, got the wound from a shell of which he eventually
+died; while there were none who were not in the old Indian wars or the
+English troubles of Charles the Second and First, and so on back, I dare
+say, to the days of Bussli de Leland, who laid all Yorkshire waste.
+
+My grandfather, though not wealthy, owned a great deal of land, and I can
+remember that he one afternoon showed me a road, saying that he owned the
+land on each side for a mile.  I myself, in after years, however, came to
+own in fee-simple a square mile of extremely rich land in Kansas, which I
+sold for sixteen hundred dollars, while my grandfather's was rather of
+that kind by which men's poverty was measured in Virginia--that is to
+say, the more land a man had the poorer he was considered to be.  It is
+related of one of these that he once held great rejoicing at having got
+rid of a vast property by the ingenious process of giving some person one
+half of it to induce him to take the other.  However, as there is now a
+large town or small city on my grandfather's whilom estate, I wish that
+it could have been kept.  _Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan_, or the
+ducats of Panurge?
+
+There was a "home-pasture," a great field behind my grandfather's house,
+where I loved to sit alone, and which has left a deep impression on my
+memory, as though it were a fairy-haunted or imagined place.  It was very
+rocky, the stones being covered with clean, crisp, dry lichens, and in
+one spot there was the gurgling deep down in some crevice of a mysterious
+unseen spring or rivulet.  Young as I was, I had met with a line which
+bore on it--
+
+   "Deep from their vaults the Loxian murmurs flow."
+
+And there was something very voice-like or human in this murmur or
+chattering of the unseen brook.  This I distinctly remember, that the
+place gave me not only a feeling, but a faith that it was haunted by
+something gentle and merry.  I went there many a time for company, being
+much alone.  An Indian would have told me that it was the _Un a games-
+suk_--the spirit-fairies of the rock and stream.  These beings enter far
+more largely, deeply, and socially into their life or faith than elves or
+fairies ever did into those of the Aryan races, and I might well have
+been their _protege_, for there could have been few little boys living,
+so fond as I was of sitting all alone by rock and river, hill and
+greenwood tree.  There are yet in existence on some of this land which
+was once ours certain mysterious walls or relics of heavy stone-work,
+which my friend Eben C. Horsford thinks were made by the Norsemen.  I
+hope that they were, for I have read many a saga in Icelandic, old
+Swedish, and Latin, and the romance thereof is deep in my soul; and as my
+own name is Godfrey, it is no wonder that the god Frey and his Freya are
+dear to me.  In my boyhood--and it may be still the case--the "Injuns"
+got the credit of having built these mysterious works.
+
+Not far from Holliston is Mendon, where I had an uncle, Seth Davenport,
+who had a large, pleasant, old-fashioned New England farm, which was more
+productive than my grandfather's, since there were employed on it sixteen
+men, three of whom were Natick Indians of the old local stock.  There
+were many of them when my mother was young, but I suppose that the last
+of the tribe has long since died.  One of these Indians, Rufus Pease, I
+can recall as looking like a dark-ruddy gypsy, with a pleasant smile.  He
+very was fond of me.  He belonged to a well-known family, and had a
+brother--and thereby hangs a tale, or, in this case, a scalp-lock.
+
+"Marm" Pease, the mother of Rufus, had on one occasion been confined, and
+old Doctor--I forget his name--who officiated at the birth, had been
+asked to give the infant a name.  Now he was a dry wag, of the kind so
+dear to Dr. Holmes, and expressed much gratification and gratitude at
+such a compliment being paid to him.  "He had long been desirous," he
+said, "of naming a child after his dear old friend, Dr. Green."  So the
+name was bestowed, the simple Indians not realising for some time after
+the christening that their youngest bore the name of Green Pease.  Whether
+he was ever called a duck, I know not.
+
+Everything about Uncle Seth and Aunt Betsy was, as I remember,
+delightfully comfortable, old-fashioned, and in a way beautiful.  There
+was their daughter Rebecca, who was pretty and gentle, so that several
+wild birds came every morning to feed from her hand and perch on her
+fingers.  Uncle Seth himself wore a scarlet waistcoat, and, as I recall
+him, seemed altogether in figure to belong to the time of Cromwell, or to
+earlier days.  There was a hall, hung round with many old family
+portraits in antique dresses, and an immense dairy--the pride of Aunt
+Betsy's heart--and a garden, in which I was once shown a humming-bird's
+nest; and cousin Rebecca's mantelpiece, over a vast old fireplace, heaped
+with mosses, birds' nests, shells, and such curiosities as a young girl
+would gather in the woods and fields; and the cider-press, in which Uncle
+Seth ground up the sixteen hundred bushels of apples which he had at one
+crop, and the new cider gushing in a stream, whereof I had a taste.  It
+was a charming, quiet old homestead, in which books and culture were not
+wanting, and it has all to me now something of the chiaroscuro and
+Rembrandt colour and charm of the _Mahrchen_ or fairy-tale.  The reality
+of this charm is apt to go out of life as that of literature or culture
+comes in.  To this day I draw the deepest impression or sentiment of the
+_pantheism_ or subtle spiritual charm of Nature far more from these early
+experiences of rural life than from all the books, poetry included, which
+I have ever perused.  Note this well, ye whose best feelings are only a
+_rechauffe_ of Ruskin and Browning--_secundem ordinem_--for I observe
+that those who do not think at second hand are growing rare.
+
+In the town of Milford lived my uncle, William Godfrey, with my aunt
+Nancy, and of them and their home I have many pleasant memories.  The
+very first of them all was not so pleasant to me at the time.  My parents
+had just arrived, and had not been ten minutes in the house ere a
+tremendous squall was heard, and my mother, looking from the window,
+beheld me standing in the open barn-door holding a tiny chicken in my
+right hand, while an old hen sat on my head flapping her wings and
+pecking me in wrath.  I, seeing the brood, had forthwith captured one,
+and for that was undergoing penance.  It was a beautiful tableau, which
+was never forgotten!  We went there on visits for many summers.  Uncle
+William was a kind-hearted, "sportive" man, who took _Bell's Life_, and I
+can remember that there was a good supply of English reading in the
+house.  My uncle had three sons, all much older than I.  The eldest,
+Stearns, was said to have first popularised the phrase "posted up," to
+signify well-informed.  The second, Benjamin, became in after years a
+great manufacturer and somewhat noted politician, and owner of a famous
+racehorse.  The third, Samuel, went into business in Philadelphia, and
+crossed the Atlantic with me.  He died quite young.  All of them, like
+their father and grandfather, were very good-natured or gentle, and men
+of perfect integrity.  The Lelands, however, were rather _dour_ and grim
+in their honesty, or more Northern than the Godfreys.  This was accounted
+for by the fact, that while my father's family was Puritan of the purest,
+and only intermarried with Puritan stock, the Godfreys had in Rhode
+Island received an infusion of French Huguenot blood, which was indeed
+very perceptible in their faces and lively pleasant manner.
+
+There was a strange tradition, to which my mother sometimes jestingly
+referred, that there had been among her Rhode Island ancestors a High
+German (_i.e._, not a Hollander) doctor, who had a reputation as a
+sorcerer or wizard.  He was a man of learning, but that is all I ever
+heard about him.  My mother's opinion was that this was a very strong
+case of atavism, and that the mysterious ancestor had through the ages
+cropped out again in me.  Something tells me that this was the High
+German doctor who, according to Washington Irving, laid the mystic spell
+on Sleepy Hollow, which made of it such a pleasant, ancient, dreamy fairy-
+land.  Whether his friendly spirit still watches over me, or whether I am
+the man himself, is a problem which I leave to my friend Francis Galton,
+who indeed personally often reminds me of Irving.  High German sorcerers
+were not common in those days north of Pennsylvania, so that I trow mine
+was the very man referred to by Geoffrey Crayon.  And it is true beyond
+all doubt that even in infancy, as I have often heard, there was a quaint
+uncanniness, as of something unknown, in my nature, and that I differed
+in the main totally from every relative, and indeed from any other little
+boy, known to anybody; though I was a perfect Godfrey in face when very
+young, as I am now a typical Leland.  I was always given to loneliness in
+gardens and woods when I could get into them, and to hearing words in
+birds' songs and running or falling water; and I once appalled a visitor
+by professing seriously that I could determine for him some question as
+to what would happen to him by divination with a bullet in an Indian
+moccasin.  We had two servants who spoke old Irish; one was an
+inexhaustible mine of legends, which she related to me--she surpassed
+Croker; the other, less versed, still knew a great deal, and told me how
+her own father, Jackey Mooney, had seen the fairies with his own eyes.
+Both of these sincerely and seriously regarded me as "gifted" or elfin-
+favoured, and the latter said in proof thereof, "Only listen to his
+voice; sure whin he spakes he'd while a burred aff a tree."  For my
+uncanny ways made a deep impression on them, as also on the darkies.
+
+Once I had a wonderful dream.  I thought that I was in Dr. Furness's
+chapel, but that, instead of the gentle reverend clergyman, the devil
+himself was in the pulpit preaching.  Feeling myself inspired, I went up
+into the pulpit, threw the Evil One out, and preached myself in his
+place.  Now our nurse had a dream-book, and made some pretence to mystic
+fairy knowledge learned in Kilkenny, and she interpreted this dream as
+signifying that I would greatly rise in this world, and do strange
+things.  But she was greatly struck with such a vision in such an infant.
+
+Now, I was a great reader of Scripture; in fact, I learned a great deal
+too much of it, believing now that for babes and sucklings about
+one-third of it had better be expurgated.  The Apocrypha was a favourite
+work, but above all I loved the Revelations, a work which, I may say by
+the way, is still a treasure to be investigated as regards the marvellous
+mixture of Neo-Platonic, later Egyptian (or Gnostic), and even Indian
+Buddhistic ideas therein.  Well, I had learned from it a word which St.
+John applies (to my mind very vulgarly and much too frequently) to the
+Scarlet Lady of Babylon or Rome.  What this word meant I did not know,
+but this I understood, that it was "sass" of some kind, as negroes term
+it, and so one day I applied it experimentally to my nurse.  Though the
+word was not correctly pronounced, for I had never heard it from anybody,
+its success was immediate, but not agreeable.  The passionate Irish woman
+flew into a great rage and declared that she would "lave the house."  My
+mother, called in, investigated the circumstances, and found that I
+really had no idea whatever of the meaning of what I had said.  Peace was
+restored, but Annie declared that only the divil or the fairies could
+have inspired such an infant to use such language.
+
+I was very fond of asking my nurse to sing in old Irish or to teach me
+Irish words.  This she did, but agreed with her sister Biddy that it was
+all very uncanny, and that there must have been a time when I was
+perfectly familiar with the owld language, as I had such unearthly
+fondness for it.
+
+I must have been about seven years old when my parents took a house in
+Arch Street, above Ninth Street, Philadelphia.  Here my life begins to be
+more marked and distinct.  I was at first sent, _i.e._, walked daily to
+the school of Jacob Pierce, a worthy Quaker, who made us call him Jacob,
+and who carefully taught us all the ordinary branches, and gave us
+excellent lectures on natural philosophy and chemistry with experiments,
+and encouraged us to form mineralogical collections, but who objected to
+our reading history, "because there were so many battles in it."  In
+which system of education all that is good and bad, or rather _weak_, in
+Quakerism is fully summed up.  Like the Roman Catholic, it is utterly
+unfit for _all_ the world, and incapable of grappling with or adapting
+itself to the natural expansion of science and the human mind.  Thus the
+Quaker garb, which was originally intended by its simplicity to avoid the
+appearance of eccentricity or peculiarity (most dress in the time of the
+Stuarts being extravagant), has now become, by merely sticking to old
+custom, the most eccentric dress known.  The school was in a very large
+garden, in which was a gymnasium, and in the basement of the main
+building there was a carpenter's shop with a turning-lathe, where boys
+were allowed to work as a reward for good conduct.
+
+I could never learn the multiplication table.  There are things which the
+mind, like the stomach, spasmodically rejects without the least
+perceptible cause or reason.  So I have found it to be with certain words
+which _will_ not be remembered.  There was one Arab word which I verily
+believe I looked out one hundred times in the dictionary, and repeated a
+thousand, yet never could keep it.  Every teacher should be keen to
+detect these antipathies, and cure them by gentle and persuasive means.
+Unfortunately no one in my youth knew any better way to overcome them
+than by "keeping me in" after school to study, when I was utterly weary
+and worn--a very foolish punishment, as is depriving a boy of his meals,
+or anything else levelled at Nature.  I think there must have been many
+months of time, and of as much vain and desperate effort on my part to
+remember, wasted on my early arithmetic.  Now I can see that by _rewards_
+or inducements, and by the very simple process of only learning "one time
+one is one" for the first lesson, and that and one line more for the
+second, I could have mastered the whole book in time.  But oh! the weary,
+dreary days, and the sad waste of time, and the anxious nervous
+suffering, which arithmetic cost me in my youth, and mathematics in after
+years!
+
+But there was one class at Jacob's in which I was _facile-princeps_ and
+habitual past-grand-master.  This was the class which was, like the
+professorship of Diogenes Teufelsdrockh, for Matters and Things in
+General.  That is to say, we read aloud from some book--it may have been
+selections from English writers--and then Jacob, picking out the hard
+words or facts or phrases, required of them definition or explanation.
+One day there arose in these questions a sum in arithmetic, when I shot
+down to the tail of the class as a plummet drops to the bottom of the
+well.  I shall never forget the proud fierce impatience which I felt,
+like an imprisoned chieftain who knows that he will speedily be delivered
+and take dire vengeance on his foes.  I had not long to wait.
+"'Refectory,' what is a 'refectory'?  Hillburn Jones, does thee know?
+Joseph Widdifield, does thee?"  But none of them knew till it came to me
+"down tail," when I cried "An oyster-cellar."  "That is quite right,
+Charley; thee can go up head," said Jacob, and as I passed Hillburn Jones
+he whispered, half in fun, half enviously, the "Kemble Refectory."  This
+was an oyster-cellar which had been recently opened under the Arch Street
+Theatre, and whence Hillburn and I had derived our knowledge of the word,
+the difference being that I remembered more promptly and risked more
+boldly.  But I missed it one day when I defined a _peasant_ as "a nest
+full of young birds;" the fact being that I recalled a picture in AEsop's
+fables, and confused _peasant_ with _pheasant_.  One day Jacob rebuked
+the class for letting me always be at their head, when Hillburn Jones,
+who was a very honest little boy, said, "Indeed, Jacob, thee must know
+that all that we do know, Charley tells us."  For I was already an
+insatiable reader, and always recalling what I read, and always
+communicating my knowledge to others in the form of small lectures.  I
+had a book of Scripture stories, with a picture of Pharaoh in his
+chariot, with the title, "Pharaoh's host sunk in the Red Sea."  Hence I
+concluded that a _host_ was a vehicle of a very superior description.  A
+carriage-builder in our neighbourhood had executed a chaise of very
+unusual magnificence, and as I stood admiring it I informed Hillburn that
+this was what was called by the learned a _host_, and that it was in such
+a host that Pharaoh perished.  I remember elevating my voice somewhat for
+the benefit of a bystander, being somewhat proud of this bit of
+knowledge.
+
+Unfortunately, not only my father, but also my teacher, and with them the
+entire population of North America, in those days regarded a good
+knowledge of arithmetic as forming nine-tenths of all that was most
+needful in education, while indulgence in a taste for general
+information, and "literature" especially, was glared at with a very evil
+eye indeed, as tending to injure a "practical business man."  That there
+could be any kind of profitable or respectable calling not based upon
+arithmetic did not enter into the heart of man to conceive, while among
+the bankers and merchants of Boston, New York, or Philadelphia there was
+a deeply-seated conviction that even a wealthy and successful editor,
+literary man, or artist, was really an inferior as compared to
+themselves.  As this sublime truth was severely rubbed into me several
+times daily during the greater portion of my youthful life, and as in its
+earlier stage I rarely met with a man grown who did not look down on me
+as an unfortunate non-arithmetical, unbusinesslike creature, and let me
+know it too, I very naturally grew up with a low estimate of my own
+capacities; and as I was proud and sensitive, this was to me a source of
+much suffering, which often became terrible as I advanced in years.  But
+at that time the position of the literary man or scholar, with the
+exception of a very few brilliant magnates who had "made money," was in
+the United States not an enviable one.  Serious interest in art and
+letters was not understood, or so generally sympathised with, as it now
+is in "Quakerdelphia."  There was a gentleman in Philadelphia who was a
+scholar, and who having lived long abroad, had accumulated a very curious
+black-letter and _rariora_ library.  For a long time I observed that this
+library was never mentioned in polite circles without significant smiles.
+One day I heard a lady say very meaningly, "I suppose that you know what
+kind of books he has _and how he obtained them_?"  So I inquired very
+naturally if he had come by them dishonestly.  To which the reply, half-
+whispered in my ear lest it should be overheard, was, "They say his books
+are all _old_ things, which he did not buy at any first-class stores, but
+picked up at old stalls and in second-hand shops at less than their
+value; in fact, _they did not cost him much_."
+
+Yet these remarks must not be regarded as too sweeping or general.
+Firstly, I am speaking of sixty years since.  Secondly, there were many
+people of literary tastes in Philadelphia--a little isolated, it is true;
+and finally, there was a great culture of science, founded by Franklin,
+and fostered by the medical schools.  I could cite a brilliant array of
+names of men distinguished in these matters.  What I am writing is simply
+a sincere record of my own--somewhat peculiar--or personal experiences.
+There are doubtless many who would write very differently.  And now times
+are _very_ greatly changed.
+
+I have again a quaint early reminiscence.  It would happen that now and
+then a new carriage, always of the same sober description, with two very
+good, but seldom showy, horses would appear in the streets.  Then its
+owner would be greeted on Market Street with the remark, "Well, Sammy, I
+see thee's got thee fifty thousand dollars."  This sum--ten thousand
+pounds--constituted the millionaireism or moneyed aristocracy of those
+days.  On it, with a thriving business, Samuel could maintain a family in
+good fashion, and above all, in great comfort, which was sensibly
+regarded as better than fashion or style.  Fifty thousand dollars
+entitled a man to keep a carriage and be classed as "quality" by the
+negroes.
+
+It may be worth noting that although the Quakers did not allow the piano
+in their families, as being too worldly, they compromised by having
+musical boxes.  And I have heard that in the country, where still older
+fashioned ideas prevailed, the one bit of finery allowed to a Quaker
+damsel was a red ribbon; but it must be red, not of any other colour.
+
+Let it be remembered that at this time Philadelphia, and even the world,
+were as yet to a great degree in the Middle Ages as compared to the
+present day.  We had few steamboats, and no railroads, or telephones, or
+percussion-caps, or a tremendous press, or Darwinism, or friction
+matches.  Even the introduction of ice-cream, and stone coal as fuel, and
+grates was within the memory of our elders.  Apropos of matches, the use
+of tinderbox and brimstone matches was universal; bold young men had
+tinder pistols; but the wood fire was generally kept under ashes all
+night, and I can well remember how our negro servants, when it had gone
+out, were used early on winter mornings to borrow a shovelful of coals
+from the cook of our next-door neighbour, and how it was handed over the
+garden fence, the recipient standing on our pump handle and the donor on
+hers.
+
+I forget in what year the railroad (with locomotives) was first built
+from Philadelphia to Columbia, a distance of sixty miles.  I believe it
+was the first real road of the kind in America.  On the day when the
+first train ran, the City Council and certain honoured guests made the
+journey, and among them was my father, who took me with him.  There were
+only a few miles of the road then completed.  It was a stupendous marvel
+to me, and all this being drawn by steam, and by a great terrible iron
+monster of a machine.  And there was still in all souls a certain
+unearthly awe of the recently invented and as yet rather rare steamboats.
+I can (strangely enough) still recall this feeling by a mental
+effort--this meeting the Horror for the first time!  My father
+remembered, and had been in the first steamboat which was a success on
+the Delaware.  I saw its wreck in after years at Hoboken.  The earlier
+boat made by John Fitch is still preserved in Bordentown.
+
+I can remember that when gas was introduced to light the city, it was
+done under a fearful opposition.  All the principal people signed a
+petition against it.  I saw the paper.  It would burst and kill myriads;
+it was poisonous; and, finally, it would ruin the oil trade.  However, we
+got it at last.  Somebody had invented hand gas-lamps; they were sold in
+the Arcade; and as one of these had burst, it was naturally supposed that
+the gasworks would do the same.
+
+The characteristics of old Philadelphia were in those days so marked, and
+are, withal, so sweet to the memory, that I cannot help lingering on
+them.  As Washington Irving says of the Golden Age of Wouter van Twiller,
+"Happy days when the harvest moon was twice as large as now, when the
+shad were all salmon, and peace was in the land."  Trees grew abundantly
+in rows in almost every street--one before every house.  I had two before
+mine till 1892, when the Street Commissioners heartlessly ordained that
+one must be cut down and removed, and charged me ten dollars for doing
+it.  It is needless to say that since Street Commissioners have found
+this so profitable, trees have disappeared with sad rapidity.  Then at
+twilight the _pea-ak_ of the night-hawk could be heard all over Arasapha,
+which is the Indian name for the place where our city stands; there were
+in Coaquannoc, or the Schuylkill, abundant gold fish and perch, of which
+I angled divers.  Yes, there was, and still is, a Fisher Club, which
+claims to be the oldest gentleman's club in Anglo-Saxony, and which has
+for two centuries brewed for itself a "fish-house punch" as delicious as
+that of London civic banquets.  There be no fish in the fair river now;
+they have all vanished before the combined forces of petroleum and the
+offal of factories and mines, but the Fish-House Club still has its merry
+banquets in its ancient home; for, as the French say, "_Chacun peche a sa
+maniere_."  In graveyards lone or over gardens green glittered of summer
+nights millions of fireflies; there was the scent of magnolias, roses,
+pinks, and honeysuckles by every house; for Philadelphians have always
+had a passion for flowers, and there never was a Quaker, much less a
+Quakeress, who has not studied botany, and wandered in Bartram's Garden
+and culled blue gentians in the early fall, or lilies wild in
+Wissahickon's shade.  There still remains a very beautiful relic of this
+olden time in the old Swedes Church, which every stranger should visit.
+It is a quaint structure of more than two hundred years, and in its large
+churchyard (which is not, like Karamsin's graves, "deserted and drear,"
+but charming and garden-like) one can imagine himself in rural England.
+
+In the spring of the year there was joyous activity on the Delaware, even
+in town; for, as the song hath it--
+
+   "De fishin' time hab come at last,
+   De winter all am gone and past;"
+
+and there was the casting of immense seines and the catching of myriads
+of shad, the typical fish or emblem of the Quaker Philadelphian, because
+in the profile outline of the shad people professed to discern the form
+according to which the Quaker coat was cut.  With the shad were many
+herring, and now and then a desperate giant of a sturgeon, who in his
+struggles would give those concerned enough to do.  Then the yells of the
+black fishermen, the flapping of the horny knife-backed prey--often by
+the flashing of a night-fire--formed a picture worthy of Rembrandt.
+Apropos of these sturgeon, the fresh caviare or roe (which has been
+pronounced at St. Petersburg to surpass the Russian) was always thrown
+away, as was often the case with sweetbreads, which were rarely eaten.
+But if the caviare or roe was really in those days "caviare to the
+general" multitude, the _nose_ of the fish was not, it being greatly
+coveted by us small boys wherewith to make a ball for "shinny," which for
+some occult reason was preferred to any other.  Old people of my
+acquaintance could remember when seals had been killed at Cape May below
+the city, and how on one or two occasions a bewildered whale of no small
+dimensions had found its way to Burlington, some miles above.
+
+Now and then there would be found in the bay below the city a tremendous,
+square-shaped, hideous, unnatural piscatorial monster, known as a devil-
+fish, or briefly devil.  It was a legend of my youth that two preachers
+or ministers of the Presbyterian faith once went fishing in those waters,
+and having cast out a stout line, fastened to the mast, for shark, were
+amazed at finding themselves all at once careering through the waves at
+terrible speed, being dragged by one of the diabolical "monsters of the
+roaring deep" above mentioned.  Whereupon a friend, who was in the boat,
+burst out laughing.  And being asked, "Wherefore this unrestrained
+hilarity?" replied, "Is it not enough to make a man laugh to see the
+Devil running away with two clergymen?"
+
+There was a very excellent and extensive museum of Matters and Things in
+General, founded by an ancient artist named Peale, who was the
+head-central charm and delight of all young Philadelphia in those days,
+and where, when we had been good all the week, we were allowed to repair
+on Saturday afternoons.  And here I may say by the way, that
+miscellaneous collections of "curiosities," oddities, and relics are far
+more attractive to children, and stimulate in them far more interest and
+inquisitiveness and desire for general information, than do the best
+scientific collections, where everything is ranked and numbered, and
+wherein even an Etruscan tiara or a Viking's sword loses much of its
+charm when placed simply as a "specimen" in a row of others of the kind.
+I am not arguing here in the least against scientific or properly
+arranged archaeologic collections, but to declare the truth that for
+_children_ museums of the despised curiosities are far more attractive
+and infinitely more useful.
+
+I owe so very much myself to the old Peale's Museum; it served to
+stimulate to such a remarkable degree my interest in antiquities and my
+singular passion for miscellaneous information, and it aided me so much
+in my reading, that I cannot pass it by without a tribute to its memory.
+How often have I paused in its dark galleries in awe before the
+tremendous skeleton of the Mammoth--how small did that of a great
+elephant seem beside it--and recalled the Indian legend of it recorded by
+Franklin.  And the stuffed monkeys--one shaving another--what exquisite
+humour, which never palled upon us!  No; _that_ was the museum for us,
+and the time will come when there will be such collections made expressly
+for the young.
+
+"Stuffed monkey" was a common by-word, by the way, for a conceited
+fellow.  Therefore the _Louisville Journal_, speaking of a rival sheet,
+said: "Reader, if you will go into the Louisville Museum, you will see
+two stuffed monkeys reading the _Courier_.  And if you will then go into
+the office of the _Louisville Courier_, you may see two living stuffed
+monkeys editing the same."  The beautiful sallies of this kind which
+appeared in these two newspapers for years would make a lively volume.
+
+Never shall I forget one evening alone in that Museum.  I had come with
+Jacob Pierce's school, and strayed off alone into some far-away and
+fascinating nook, forgetful of friends and time.  All the rest had
+departed homewards, and I sought to find them.  The dark evening shades
+were casting sombre tones in the galleries--I was a very little boy of
+seven or eight--and the stuffed lions and bears and wolves seemed looming
+or glooming into mysterious life; the varnished sharks and hideous shiny
+crocodiles had a light of awful intelligence in their eyes; the gigantic
+anaconda had long awaited me; the grim hyaena marked me for his own; even
+deer and doves seemed uncanny and goblined.  At this long interval of
+sixty years, I can recall the details of that walk, and every object
+which impressively half-appalled me, and how what had been a museum had
+become a chamber of horrors, yet not without a wild and awful charm.  Of
+course I lost my way in the shades, and was beginning to speculate on
+having to pass a night among the monsters, and how much there would be
+left for my friends to mourn over in the morning, when--Eureka!
+Thalatta!--I beheld the gate of entrance and exit, and made my latter as
+joyously as ever did the souls who were played out of Inferno by the old
+reprobate of the Roman tale.
+
+Since that adventure I never mentioned it to a living soul till now, and
+yet there is not an event of my life so vividly impressed on my memory.
+
+My father took me very rarely to the theatre; but my Quaker school-mates
+had never seen the inside of such places at all, and therefore listened
+greedily to what I could tell them of the sights.  One of the wonders of
+my youth was the seeing the great elephant Columbus perform in a play
+called "The Englishman in Siam."  It was indeed very curious, and it is
+described as such in works on natural history.  And I saw Edwin Forrest
+(whom I learned to know in later years) in "Metamora," and Fanny Kemble
+in "Beatrice," and so on.  As for George Boker, he went, I believe, to
+every place of amusement whenever he pleased, and talked familiarly of
+actors, some of whom he actually knew, and their lives, in a manner which
+awoke in me awe and a feeling as being humble and ignorant indeed.  As we
+grew older, Boker and I, from reading "Don Quixote" and Scott, used to
+sit together for hours improvising legends of chivalry and marvellous
+romances.  It was in the year when it first appeared that I read (in the
+_New Monthly_) and got quite by heart the rhyming tale of "Sir Rupert the
+Fearless," a tale of the Rhine, one of the Ingoldsby legends, by Barham.
+I can still repeat a great part of it.  I bore it in mind till in after
+years it inspired (allied to Goethe's _Wassermadchen_) my ballad of _De
+Maiden mit Nodings on_, which has, as I now write, been very recently
+parodied and pictured by _Punch_, March 18, 1893.  My mother had taught
+me to get poetry by heart, and by the time I was ten years of age, I had
+imbibed, so to speak, an immense quantity; for, as in opium-eating, those
+who begin by effort end by taking in with ease.
+
+There was something else so very characteristic of old Philadelphia that
+I will not pass it by.  In the fall of the year the reed-bird, which is
+quite as good as the ortolan of Italy, and very much like it (I prefer
+the reed-bird), came in large flocks to the marshes and shores of the
+Delaware and Schuylkill.  Then might be seen a quaint and marvellous
+sight of men and boys of all ages and conditions, with firearms of every
+faculty and form, followed by dogs of every degree of badness, in all
+kinds of boats, among which the _bateau_ of boards predominated,
+intermingled with an occasional Maryland dug-out or poplar canoe.  Many,
+however, crept on foot along the shore, and this could be seen below the
+Navy Yard even within the city limits.  Then, as flock after flock of
+once bobolinks and now reed-birds rose or fell in flurried flight, there
+would be such a banging, cracking, and barking as to suggest a South
+American revolution aided by blood-hounds.  That somebody in the _melee_
+now and then got a charge of shot in his face, or that angry parties in
+dispute over a bird sometimes blazed away at one another and fought _a
+l'outrance_ in every way, "goes without saying."  Truly they were
+inspiriting sights, and kept up the martial valour, aided by frequent
+firemen's fights, which made Philadelphians so indomitable in the
+Rebellion, when, to the amazement of everybody, our Quaker city
+manifested a genius or love for hard fighting never surpassed by mortals.
+
+There were, of course, some odd episodes among the infantry or gunners on
+foot, and one of these was so well described by my brother Henry in a
+poem, that I venture to give it place.
+
+
+
+REED-BIRDING.
+
+
+   Two men and a bull-dog ugly,
+     Two guns and a terrier lame;
+   They'd better stick out in the marsh there,
+     And set themselves up for game.
+
+   But no; I mark by the cocking
+     Of that red-haired Paddy's eye,
+   He's been "reeding" too much for you, sir,
+     Any such game to try.
+
+   "Now, Jamie, ye divil, kape dark there,
+     And hould the big bull-dog in;
+   There's a bloody big crowd of rade-birds,
+     That nade a pepperin'!"
+
+   _Ker-rack_! goes the single barrel,
+     _Flip-boong_! roars the old Queen Anne;
+   There's a Paddy stretched out in the mud-hole,
+     A kicked-over, knocked-down man.
+
+   "Och, Jamie, ye shtupid crature,
+      Sure ye're the divil's son;
+   How many fingers' load, thin,
+      Did ye putt in this d---d ould gun?"
+
+   "How many fingers, be jabers?
+      I nivir putt in a wan;
+   Did ye think I'd be afther jammin'
+      Me fingers into a gun?"
+
+   "Well, give me the powder, Jamie."
+      "The powder! as sure as I'm born,
+   I put it all into yer musket,
+      For I'd nivir a powder-horn!"
+
+Then we all had reed-bird suppers or lunches, eked out perhaps with
+terrapins and soft-shell crabs, gumbo, "snapper," or pepper-pot soup,
+peaches, venison, bear-meat, _salon la saison_--for both bear and deer
+roamed wild within fifty or sixty miles--so that, all things considered,
+if Philadelphians, and Baltimoreans did run somewhat over-much to eating
+up their intellects--as Dr. Holmes declares they do--they had at least
+the excuse of terrible temptation, which the men of my "grandfather-land"
+(New England), as he once termed it in a letter to me, very seldom had at
+any time.
+
+Once it befell, though a few years later, that one winter there was a
+broad fair field of ice just above Fairmount dam, which is about ten feet
+high, that about a hundred and fifty men and maidens were merrily skating
+by moonlight.  I know not whether Colonel James Page, our great champion
+skater, was there cutting High Dutch; but this I know, that all at once,
+by some strange rising of the stream, the whole flake of ice and its
+occupants went over the dam.  Strangely enough, no one was killed, but
+very few escaped without injury, and for some time the surgeons were
+busy.  It would make a strange wild picture that of the people struggling
+in the broken floes of ice among the roaring waters.
+
+And again, during a week on the same spot, some practical joker amused
+himself with a magic-lantern by making a spirit form flit over the fall,
+against its face, or in the misty air.  The whole city turned out to see
+it, and great was their marvelling, and greater the fear among the
+negroes at the apparition.
+
+Sears C. Walker, who was an intimate friend, kept a school in Sansom
+Street, to which I was transferred.  I was only seven years old at the
+time, and being the youngest, he made, when I was introduced, a speech of
+apology to his pupils.  He was a good kind man, who also, like Jacob,
+gave us lectures on natural philosophy and chemistry.  There I studied
+French, and began to learn to draw, but made little progress, though I
+worked hard.  I have literally never met in all my life any person with
+so little natural gift or aptitude for learning languages or drawing as I
+have; and if I have since made an advance in both, it has been at the
+cost of such extreme labour as would seem almost incredible.  I was
+greatly interested in chemistry, as a child would be, and, having heard
+Mr. Walker say something about the colouring matter in quartz, resolved
+on a great invention which should immortalise my name.  My teacher used
+to make his own ink by pounding nut-galls in an iron mortar.  I got a
+piece of coarse rock-crystal, pounded it up in the same mortar, pouring
+water on it.  Sure enough the result was a pale ink, which the two elder
+pupils, who had maliciously aided and encouraged me, declared was of a
+very superior quality.  I never shall forget the pride I felt.  I had,
+first of all scientists, extracted the colouring matter from quartz!  The
+recipe was at once written out, with a certificate at the end, signed by
+my two witnesses, that they had witnessed the process, and that this was
+written with the ink itself!  This I gave to Mr. Walker, and could not
+understand why he laughed so heartily at it.  It was not till several
+days after that he explained to me that the ink was the result of the
+dregs of the nut-galls which remained in the mortar.
+
+We had not many books, but what we had I read and reread with great
+assiduity.  Among them were Cooper's novels, Campbell's poems, those of
+Byron, and above all, Washington Irving's "Sketch Book," which had great
+influence on me, inspiring that intense love for old English literature
+and its associations which has ever since been a part of my very soul.
+Irving was indeed a wonderful, though not a _startling_ genius; but he
+had sympathised himself into such appreciation of the golden memories and
+sweet melodies of the olden time, be it American or English, as no writer
+now possesses.  In my eighth year I loved deeply his mottoes, such as
+that from Syr Grey Steel:--
+
+   "He that supper for is dight,
+   He lies full cold I trow this night;
+   Yestreen to chamber I him led,
+   This nighte Grey Steel has made his bed."
+
+Lang--not Andrew--has informed us that no copy of the first black-letter
+edition of Sir Grey Steel is known to exist.  In after years I found in
+the back binding of an old folio two pieces of it, each about four inches
+square.  It has been an odd fatality of mine that whenever a poet existed
+in black-letter, I was always sure to peruse him first in that type,
+which I always from childhood preferred to any other.  To this day I
+often dream of being in a book-shop, turning over endless piles of
+marvellously quaint parchment bound books in _letres blake_, and what is
+singular, they are generally works quite unknown to the world--first
+discoveries--unique!  And then--oh! then--how bitter is the waking!
+
+There was in Mr. Walker's school library a book, one well known as Mrs.
+Trimmer's "Natural History."  This I read, as usual, thoroughly and
+often, and wrote my name at the end, ending with a long snaky flourish.
+Years passed by, and I was at the University, when one evening, dropping
+in at an auction, I bought for six cents, or threepence, "a blind bundle"
+of six books tied up with a cord.  It was a bargain, for I found in it in
+good condition the first American editions of De Quincey's "Opium-Eater,"
+"The Rejected Addresses," and the Poems of Coleridge.  But what startled
+me was a familiar-looking copy of Mrs. Trimmer's "Natural History," in
+which at the end was my boyish signature.
+
+"And still wider."  In 1887 I passed some weeks at a hotel in Venice.  A
+number of Italian naval officers dined at our _table-d'hote_ every
+evening.  One of them showed us an intaglio which he had bought.  It
+represented a hunter on an elephant firing at a tiger.  The owner wished
+to know something about it.  Baron von Rosenfeld, a chamberlain of the
+Emperor of Austria, remarked at once that it was as old as the days of
+flint-locks, because smoke was rising from the lock of the gun.  I felt
+that I knew more about it, but could not at once recall what I knew, and
+said that I would explain it the next day.  And going into the past, I
+remembered that this very scene was the frontispiece to Mrs. Trimmer's
+"Natural History."  I think that some gem engraver, possibly in India,
+had copied it to order.  I can even now recall many other things in the
+book, but attribute my retention of so much which I have read _not_ to a
+good memory, such as the mathematician has, which grasps _directly_, but
+simply to frequent reading and mental reviewing or revising.  Where there
+has been none of this, I forgot everything in a short time.
+
+My father took in those years _Blackwood's_ and the _New Monthly
+Magazine_, and as I read every line of them, they were to me a vast
+source of knowledge.  I remember an epigram by "Martial in London" in the
+latter:--
+
+   "In Craven Street, Strand, four attorneys find place,
+   And four dark coal-barges are moored at the base;
+   Fly, Honesty, fly--seek some safer retreat,
+   For there's craft on the river, and craft in the street."
+
+I never pass by Craven Street without recalling this, and so it has come
+to pass that by such memories and associations London in a thousand ways
+is always reviving my early life in America.
+
+The _Noctes Ambrosianae_ puzzled me, as did the Bible, but I read, read,
+read, _toujours_.  My uncle Amos lent me the "Arabian Nights," though my
+father strictly prohibited it.  But the zest of the forbidden made me
+study it with wondrous love.  The reader may laugh, but it is a fact that
+having obtained "Mother Goose's Melodies," I devoured them with a strange
+interest reflected from Washington Irving.  The truth is, that my taste
+had been so precociously developed, that I unconsciously found a
+_literary_ merit or charm in them as I did in all fairy-tales, and I
+remember being most righteously indignant once when a young bookseller
+told me that I was getting to be too old to read such stuff!  The truth
+was, that I was just getting to be old enough to appreciate it as folk-
+lore and literature, which he never did.
+
+The great intellectual influence which acted on me most powerfully after
+Irving was an incomplete volume of about 1790, called "The Poetical
+Epitome."  It consisted of many of Percy's "Relics" with selections of
+ballads, poems, and epigrams of many eminent writers.  I found it a few
+years after at a boarding-school, where I continually read it as before.
+
+As I was backward in my studies, my parents, very injudiciously so far as
+learning was concerned, removed me from Mr. Walker's school, and put me
+under the care of T. Bronson Alcott, who had just come to Philadelphia.
+This was indeed going from the frying-pan into the very fire, so far as
+curing idleness and desultory habits and a tendency to romance and wild
+speculation was concerned.  For Mr. Alcott was the most eccentric man who
+ever took it on himself to train and form the youthful mind.  He did not
+really teach any practical study; there was indeed some pretence at
+geography and arithmetic, but these we were allowed to neglect at our own
+sweet will.  His forte was "moral influence" and "sympathetic
+intellectual communion" by talking; and oh, heaven! what a talker he was!
+He was then an incipient Transcendentalist, and he did not fail to
+discover in me the seeds of the same plant.  He declared that I had a
+marvellous imagination, and encouraged my passion for reading anything
+and everything to the very utmost.  It is a fact that at nine years of
+age his disquisitions on and readings from Spenser's "Faerie Queen"
+actually induced me to read the entire work, of which he was very proud,
+reminding me of it in 1881, when I went to Harvard to deliver the Phi
+Beta Kappa poem.  He also read thoroughly into us the "Pilgrim's
+Progress," Quarles's "Emblems," Northcote's "Fables," much Shakespeare,
+Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Milton, all of which sunk into my very soul,
+educating me indeed "ideally" as no boy perhaps in Philadelphia had ever
+been educated, at the utter cost of all real "education."  It was a great
+pity, and pity 'tis 'tis true.  The word _ideal_ was ever in his mouth.
+All of the new theories, speculations, or fads which were beginning to be
+ventilated among the Unitarian liberal clergy found ready welcome in his
+dreamy brain, and he retailed them all to his pupils, among whom I was
+certainly the only one who took them in and seriously thought them over.
+Yet I cannot say that I _really_ liked the man himself.  He was not to me
+exactly sympathetic-human.  Such training as his would develop in any boy
+certain weaknesses--and I had mine--which were very repulsive to my
+father, who carried plain common-sense to extremes, and sometimes into
+its opposite of unconscious eccentricity, though there was no word which
+he so much hated.
+
+Bulwer's "Last Days of Pompeii," "The Disowned," and "Pilgrims of the
+Rhine" made a deep and lasting impression on me.  I little thought then
+that I should in after years be the guest of the author in his home, and
+see the skull of Arbaces.  Oh, that by some magic power every author
+could be made to feel _all_ the influence, all the charm, which his art
+exerts on his readers, and especially the young.  Sometimes, now and
+then, by golden chance, a writer of books does realise this, and then
+feels that he has lived to some purpose.  Once it happened to me to find
+a man, an owner of palaces and millions, who had every facility for
+becoming familiar with far greater minds and books than mine, who had for
+years collected with care and read everything which I had ever written.
+He actually knew more about my books than I did.  I was startled at the
+discovery as at a miracle.  And if the reader knew _what_ a _melange_ I
+have written, he would not wonder at it.
+
+It is very probable that no man living appreciates the vast degree to
+which any book whatever which aims at a little more than merely
+entertaining, and appeals at all to thought, influences the world, and
+how many readers it gets.  There are books, of which a thousand copies
+were never sold, which have permeated society and been the argument of
+national revolutions.  Such a book was the "Political Economy" of H. C.
+Carey, of which I possess the very last copy of the first, and I believe
+the only, edition.  And there are novels which have gone to the three
+hundred thousand, of whose authors it may be said that
+
+   "Over the barren desert of their brains
+   There never strayed the starved camel of an idea,"
+
+and whose works vanish like wind.
+
+What is very remarkable is the manner in which even the great majority of
+readers confuse these two classes, and believe that mere popular success
+is correlative with genius and desert.  A great cause of this really
+vulgar error is the growing conviction that artistic skill alone
+determines merit in literature, and that intellect, as the French,
+beginning mildly with Voltaire and ending violently with Sainte-Beuve,
+assert is of far less importance than style.  "_Le style_, _c'est
+l'esprit du siecle_."  Apropos of which I remarked that in the warlike
+Middle Age in France the motto might have been "_L'homme c'est le_
+STEEL."  Then came the age of wigs, when the cry was, "_L'homme c'est le_
+STYLE."  And now we are in the swindling and bogus-company-promoting age,
+when it might be proclaimed that "_L'homme c'est le_ STEAL."
+
+There was another book which I read through and through in early
+childhood to great profit.  This was Cottle's "Alfred," an epic of some
+merit, but chiefly in this, that it sets forth tolerably clearly the old
+Norse life and religion.  George Boker owned and gave me some time after
+a book entitled "Five Norse Poems," in the original, and translated.  This
+with Grey's poems, which latter I possessed, laid the basis for a deep
+interest in after years in Northern antiquities; they were soon followed
+by Mallett; and if I have since read many sagas in Icelandic and studied
+with keenest interest the museums of the North, the first incentive
+thereto came from my boyish reading.  When I was sixteen I executed a
+poetic version of the "Death Song of Regner Lodbrog," which, though it
+was never published, I think was at least as good as any translation
+which I have since executed, "however that may be."  I very seriously
+connected this Norse spirit with my grandfather and his stern uncles and
+progenitors, who had fought in Canada and in the icy winters of New
+England; grim men they were all; and I daresay that I was quite right.  It
+always seems to me that among these alternately fighting and farming
+Icelanders I am among my Leland relatives; and I even once found Uncle
+Seth in his red waistcoat in the Burnt Njals saga to the life.  There was
+a paragraph, as I write, recently circulating in the newspapers, in which
+I was compared in appearance to an old grey Viking, and it gave me a
+strange uncanny thrill, as if the writer of it were a wizard who had
+revealed a buried secret.
+
+My parents, on coming to Philadelphia, had at first attended the
+Episcopal church, but finding that most of their New England friends held
+to the Rev. W. H. (now Dr.) Furness, an Unitarian, they took a pew in his
+chapel.  After fifteen years they returned to the Episcopal faith, but
+allowed me to keep the pew to myself for one or two years, till I went to
+college.  In Dr. Furness's chapel I often heard Channing and all the
+famous Unitarian divines of the time preach, and very often saw Miss
+Harriet Martineau, Dr. Combe, the phrenologist, and many other
+distinguished persons.  In other places at different times I met Andrew
+Jackson, Henry Clay, to whom I was introduced, Daniel Webster, to whom I
+reverently bowed, receiving in return a gracious acknowledgment, Peter
+Duponceau, Morton, Stephen Girard, Joseph Buonaparte, the two authors of
+the "Jack Downing Letters"; and I once heard David Crockett make a
+speech.  Apropos of Joseph Buonaparte, I can remember to have heard my
+wife's mother, the late Mrs. Rodney Fisher, tell how when a little girl,
+and while at his residence at Bordentown, she had run a race with the old
+ex-king of Spain.  A very intimate friend in our family was Professor
+John Frost, the manufacturer of literally innumerable works of every
+description.  He had many thousands of woodcut blocks, and when he
+received an order--as, for example, a history of any country, or of the
+world, or of a religion, or a school geography, or book of travel or
+adventure, or a biography, or anything else that the heart of man could
+conceive--he set his scribes to write, scissors and paste, and lo! the
+book was made forthwith, he aiding and revising it.  What was most
+remarkable was that many of these _pieces de manufacture_ were rather
+clever, and very well answered the demand, for their sale was enormous.
+He had when young been in the West Indies, and written a clever novelette
+entitled "Ramon, the Rover of Cuba."  Personally he was very handsome,
+refined, and intelligent; a man meant by Nature for higher literary work
+than mere book-making.
+
+Miss Eliza Leslie, the writer of the best series of sketches of American
+domestic life of her day, was a very intimate friend of my mother, and a
+constant visitor at our house.  She was a sister of Leslie, the great
+artist, and had been in her early life much in England.  I was a great
+favourite with her, and owed much to her always entertaining and very
+instructive conversation, which was full of reminiscences of
+distinguished people and remarkable events.  I may say with great truth
+that I really profited as much by mere hearing as many boys would have
+done by knowing the originals, so deep was the interest which I felt in
+all that I heard, and so eager my desire to learn to know the world.
+
+Then I was removed, and with good cause, from Mr. Alcott's school, for he
+had become so very "ideal" or eccentric in his teaching and odd methods
+of punishment by tormenting without ever whipping, that people could not
+endure his purely intellectual system.  So for one winter, as my health
+was bad and I was frequently ill, for a long time I was allowed to do
+nothing but attend a writing-school kept by a Mr. Rand.  At the end of
+the season, he sadly admitted that I still wrote badly; I think he
+pronounced me the worst and most incurable case of bad writing which he
+had ever attended.  In 1849 Judge (then Mr.) Cadwallader, with whom I was
+studying law, said that he admired my engrossing hand more than any he
+had ever seen except one.  As hands go round the clock, our hands do
+change.
+
+I was to go the next summer to New England with my younger brother, Henry
+Perry Leland, to be placed in the celebrated boarding-school of Mr.
+Charles W. Greene, at Jamaica Plains, five miles from Boston; which was
+done, and with this I enter on a new phase of life, of which I have very
+vivid reminiscences.  Let me state that we first went to Dedham and
+stayed some weeks.  There I found living with his father, an interesting
+boy of my own age, named William Joshua Barney, a grandson of the
+celebrated Commodore Barney, anent whom was written the song, "Barney,
+leave the girls alone," apropos of his having been allowed to kiss Marie
+Antoinette and all her maids of honour.  William had already been at Mr.
+Greene's school, and we soon became intimate.
+
+During this time my father hired a chaise; I borrowed William's shot-gun,
+and we went together on a delightful tour to visit all our relations in
+Holliston, Milford, and elsewhere.  At one time we stopped to slay an
+immense black snake; at another to shoot wild pigeons, and "so on about"
+to Providence and many places.  From cousins who lived in old farmhouses
+in wild and remote places I received Indian arrow-heads and a stone
+tomahawk, and other rustic curiosities dear to my heart.  At the Fremont
+House in Boston my father showed me one day at dinner several foreign
+gentlemen of different nations belonging to different Legations.  In
+Rhode Island I found by a stream several large pot-holes in rocks of
+which I had read, and explained to my father (gravely as usual) how they
+were made by eddies of water and gravel-stones.  One day my father in
+Boston took me to see a marvellous white shell from China, valued at one
+hundred pounds.  What was the amazement of all present to hear me give
+its correct Latin name, and relate a touching tale of a sailor who,
+finding such a shell when shipwrecked on a desert island, took it home
+with him, "and was thereby raised (as I told them) from poverty to
+affluence."  Which tale I had read the week before in a children's
+magazine, and, as usual, reflected deeply on it, resolving to keep my eye
+on all shells in future, in the hope of something turning up.
+
+I was _not_, however, a little prig who bored people with my reading, for
+I have heard old folk say that there was a quaint _naivete_ and droll
+seriousness, and total unconsciousness of superior information in my
+manner, which made these outpourings of mine very amusing.  I think I was
+a kind of little Paul Dombey, unconsciously odd, and perhaps innocently
+Quaker-like.  I could never understand why Aunt Nancy, and many more,
+seemed to be so much amused at serious and learned examples and questions
+which I laid down to them.  For though they did not "smile outright," I
+had learned to penetrate the New England ironical glance and satirical
+intonation.  My mother said that, when younger, I, having had a
+difficulty of some kind with certain street-boys, came into the house
+with my eyes filled with tears, and said, "I told them that they were
+evil-minded, but they laughed me to scorn."  On another occasion, when
+some vagabond street-boys asked me to play with them, I gravely declined,
+on the ground that I must "Shun bad company"--this phrase being the title
+of a tract which I had read, and the boys corresponding in appearance to
+a picture of sundry young ragamuffins on its title-page.
+
+My portrait had been admirably painted in Philadelphia by Mrs. Darley,
+the daughter of Sully, who, I believe, put the finishing touches to it.
+When Mr. Walker saw it, he remarked that it looked exactly as if Charley
+were just about to tell one of his stories.  At the time I was reading
+for the first time "The Child's Own Book," an admirable large collection
+of fairy-tales and strange adventures, which kept me in fairy-land many a
+time while I lay confined to bed for weeks with pleurisies and a great
+variety of afflictions, for in this respect I suffered far more than most
+children.
+
+
+
+AT SCHOOL IN NEW ENGLAND.
+
+
+Mr. Charles W. Greene was a portly, ruddy, elderly Boston gentleman of
+good family, who had been in early life attached in some diplomatic
+capacity to a Legation, and had visited Constantinople.  I think that he
+had met with reverses, but having some capital, had been established by
+his many friends as a schoolmaster.  He was really a fine old gentleman,
+with a library full of old books, and had Madeira in quaint little old
+bottles, on which, stamped in the glass, one could read GREENE 1735.  He
+had a dear little wife, and both were as kind to the boys as possible.
+Once, and once only, when I had really been very naughty, did he punish
+me.  He took me solemnly into the library (oh, what blessed beautiful
+reading I often had there!), and, after a solemn speech, and almost with
+tears in his eyes, gave me three blows with a folded newspaper!  That was
+enough.  If I had been flayed with a rope's end, it would not have had a
+greater moral effect than it did.
+
+Everything was very English and old-fashioned about the place.  The house
+was said in 1835 to be a hundred and fifty years old, having been one of
+the aristocratic Colonial manors.  One building after another had been
+added to it, and the immense elms which grew about testified to its age.
+The discipline or training was eminently adapted to make young gentlemen
+of us all.  There was almost no immorality among the boys, and no
+fighting whatever.  The punishments were bad marks, and for every mark a
+boy was obliged to go to bed an hour earlier than the others.  Extreme
+cases of wickedness were punished by sending boys to bed in the daytime.
+When two were in a room, and thus confined, they used to relieve the
+monotony of their imprisonment by fighting with pillows.  Those who had
+bad marks were also confined within certain bounds.  Good boys, or those
+especially favoured, were allowed to chop kindling wood, or do other
+light work, for which they were paid three cents per hour.
+
+The boy who was first down in the morning had an apple given to him.  This
+apple was greatly despised by the bolder spirits, who taunted those who
+arose promptly with a desire to obtain it.
+
+Candour compels me to admit that, as a teacher of learning, Mr. Greene
+was not pre-eminent.  He had two schoolrooms, and employed for each as
+good a teacher as he could hire.  But we were not at all thoroughly well
+taught, although we were kept longer in the schoolroom than was really
+good for us; for in summer we had an hour's study before breakfast, then
+from nine till twelve, and again from two to five.  In winter we had,
+instead of the early lesson, an hour in the evening.  Something was
+wanting in the system, and I believe that after a year and a half I knew
+no more, as regards studies, than I did when I first entered.
+
+When a boy's birthday came, he was allowed to have some special dainty
+for us all.  I was very much disgusted with the Boston boys when they
+selected pork and beans, which I loathed.  Some would choose
+plum-pudding, others apple-pies.  There were always two or three dishes
+for breakfast, as, for instance, fried potatoes and butter, or cold meat,
+or pan-dowdy--a kind of coarse and broken up apple-pie--with the tea and
+bread and coffee, but we could only eat of one.  There was rather too
+much petty infant-schoolery in all this, but we got on very well.  Pepper
+and mustard were forbidden, but I always had a great natural craving for
+these, and when I asked for them, Mr. Greene would shake his head, but
+always ended by handing them to me.  He was a _bon vivant_ himself, and
+sympathised with me.  There were one or two books also of a rather
+peppery or spicy nature in his library, such as a collection of
+rollicking London songs, at which he likewise shook his head when I asked
+for them--but I got them.  There I read for the first time all of Walter
+Scott's novels, and the Percy Ballads, and some of Marryatt's romances,
+and Hood's Annual, and Dr. Holmes's first poems.
+
+There was in Mr. Greene's library a very curious and now rare work in
+three volumes, published in Boston at some time in the twenties, called
+"The Marvellous Depository."  It consisted of old legends of Boston, such
+as the story of "Peter Rugg," "Tom Walker and the Devil," "The Golden
+Tooth," "Captain Kidd," "The Witch Flymaker," and an admirable collection
+of unearthly German tales, such as "The Devil's Elixir," by Hoffmann
+(abridged), "Jacob the Bowl," "Rubezahl," "Der Freyschutz," and many
+more, but all of the unearthly blood-curdling kind.  Singly, they were
+appalling enough to any one in those days when the supernatural still
+thrilled the strongest minds, but taken altogether for steady reading,
+the book was a perfect Sabbat of deviltry and dramatic horrors.  The
+tales were well told, or translated in very simple but vigorous English,
+and I pored over the collection and got it by heart, and borrowed it, and
+took it to Dedham in the holidays, and into the woods, where I read it in
+sunshine or twilight shade by the rippling river, under wild rocks, and
+so steeped my soul in the supernatural, that I seemed to live a double
+life.  As was natural, my schoolmates read and liked such tales, but they
+sunk into my very soul, and took root, and grew up into a great
+overshadowing forest, while with others they were only as dwarf bushes,
+if they grew at all.  All of this--though I did not know it--was
+unconsciously educating my bewitched mind to a deep and very precocious
+passion for mediaeval and black-letter literature and occult philosophy,
+which was destined to manifest itself within a few years.
+
+There was another book which greatly influenced my mind and life.  I have
+forgotten the title, but it was a very remarkable collection of
+curiosities, such as accounts of a family of seven children who had every
+one some strange peculiarity, dwarfs and giants, and mysteriously-gifted
+mortals, and all kinds of odd beings and inventions.  I obtained in a
+very mysterious way; for one day I found it in my desk, a blessed gift
+indeed from some unknown friend who had rightly judged of my tastes.  This
+work I literally lived upon for a long time.  Once a lady friend of my
+mother's came in winter and took me a-sleighing, but I had my dear book
+under my jacket, and contrived now and then to re-read some anecdote in
+it.  In after years I found a copy of it in the Mercantile Library,
+Philadelphia, but I have never seen it elsewhere. {56}  I had at Mr.
+Alcott's carefully studied all the Percy Anecdotes, and could repeat most
+of them when recalled by some association; also Goldsmith's "Animated
+Nature," the perusal of which latter work was to me as the waving of a
+forest and the sighing of deep waters.  Then, too, I had read--in fact I
+owned--the famous Peter Parley books, which gave me, as they have to
+thousands of boys, a desire to travel and see the world.  I marvelled
+greatly at finding that Peter Parley himself, or Mr. S. G. Goodrich, had
+a beautiful country-house very near our school, and his son Frank, who
+was a very pleasant and wonderfully polite and sunshiny boy, sat by me in
+school.  Frank Goodrich in after life wrote a novel entitled "Flirtation
+and its Consequences," of which my brother said, "What are its
+consequences, Frank; good rich husbands?  By no means."  I can remember
+being invited to a perfectly heavenly garden-party at the Goodrichs', and
+evening visits there with my mother.  And I may note by the way, that
+Frank himself lived abroad in after years; that his father became the
+American Consul in Paris, and that in 1848 he introduced to the
+_Gouvernement Provisoire_ the American delegation, of which I was one,
+and how we were caricatured in the _Charivari_, in which caricature I was
+specially depicted, the likeness being at once recognised by everybody,
+and how I knew nothing of it all till I was told about it by the
+beautiful Miss Goodrich, Frank's younger sister, on a Staten Island
+steamboat, many, many years after.  And as a postscript I may add, that
+it is literally true that before I was quite twenty-three years of age I
+had been twice caricatured or pictorially jested on in the Munich
+_Fliegende Blatter_ and twice in the Paris _Charivari_, which may show
+that I was to a certain degree about town in those days, as I indeed was.
+While I am about it, I may as well tell the Munich tale.  There was a
+pretty governess, a great friend of mine, who had charge of two children.
+Meeting her one day in the park, at a sign from me she pressed the
+children's hats down over their eyes with "Kinder, setzt eure Hute fester
+auf!" and in that blessed instant cast up her beautiful lips and was
+kissed.  I don't know whether we were overseen; certain it is that in the
+next number of the _Fliegende Blatter_ the scene was well depicted, with
+the words.  The other instance was this.  One evening I met in a
+_Bierhalle_ a sergeant of police with whom I fraternised.  I remember
+that he could talk modern Greek, having learned it in Greece.  This was
+very _infra dig._ indeed for a student, and one of my comrades said to me
+that, as I was a foreigner, I was probably not aware of what a fault I
+had committed, but that in future I must not be seen talking to a
+soldier.  To which I, with a terrible wink, replied, "Mum's the word;
+that soldier is _lieutenant of police in my ward_, and I have squared it
+with him all right, so that if there should be a _Bierkrawall_ (a drunken
+row) in our quarter he will let me go."  This, which appeared as a grand
+flight of genial genius to a German, speedily went through all the
+students' _kneipe_, and soon appeared, very well illustrated, in the "_F.
+B_."
+
+We were allowed sixpence a week spending-money at Mr. Greene's, two
+cents, or a penny, being deducted for a bad mark.  Sometimes I actually
+got a full week's income; once I let it run on up to 25 cents, but this
+was forbidden, it not being considered advisable that the boys should
+accumulate fortunes.  A great deal of my money went for cheap comic
+literature, which I carefully preserved.  In those days there were
+Crockett's almanacs (now a great fund of folk-lore), and negro songs and
+stories were beginning to be popular.  It is very commonly asserted that
+the first regular negro minstrel troupe appeared in 1842.  This is quite
+an error.  While I was at Mr. Greene's, in 1835, there came to Dedham a
+circus with as regularly-appointed a negro minstrel troupe of a dozen as
+I ever saw.  I often beheld the pictures of them on the bill.  Nor do I
+think that this was any novelty even then.  The Crockett almanacs greatly
+stimulated my sense of American humour (they do indeed form collectively
+a very characteristic work), and this, with some similar reading, awoke
+in me a passion for wild Western life and frontier experiences, which was
+fully and strangely gratified in after years, but which would certainly
+have never happened had it not been for this boyish reading.
+
+For I beg the reader to observe that it is a very deeply-seated
+characteristic that whatever once takes root in my mind invariably grows.
+This comes from the great degree to which I have always gone over,
+reviewed, and _reflected on_, or nursed everything which ever once really
+interested me.  And as I have thus far written, and shall probably
+conclude this work without referring to a note, the reader will have
+ample opportunity of observing how very strangely in all cases the phases
+of my life were predetermined long before by the literary education which
+I gave myself, aided very much by hereditary or other causes quite beyond
+my control.  Now, as the object of a _Life_ is to understand every cause
+which created it, and as mine was to a very unusual degree created by
+reading and _reflecting_, even in infancy, I beg the reader not to be
+impatient with me for describing so much in detail the books which made
+my mind at different times.  That is, I pray this much allowance and
+sympathy from possible readers and critics, that they will kindly not
+regard me as vain or thinking over-much of, or too much over, myself.  For
+to get oneself forth as one really is requires deep investigation into
+_every_ cause, and the depicting all early characteristics, and the man
+never lived who ever did this truly and accurately without much egoism,
+or what the ill-disposed may treat as such.  And I promise the possible
+reader that when this subjective analysis shall be fairly disposed of,
+there will be no lack of mere incident or event of objective nature and
+more general interest.
+
+My first winter at Jamaica Plains was the terrible one of 1835, during
+which I myself saw the thermometer at 50 degrees Fahrenheit below zero,
+and there was a snow-bank in the play-ground from October till May.  The
+greatest care possible was taken of us boys to keep us warm and well, but
+we still suffered very much from chilblains.  Water thrown into the air
+froze while falling.  Still there were some happy lights and few shadows
+in it all.  The boys skated or slid on beautiful Jamaica Pond, which was
+near the school.  There was a general giving of sleds to us all; mine
+broke to pieces at once.  I never had luck with any plaything, never
+played ball or marbles, and hardly ever had even a top.  Nor did I ever
+have much to do with any games, or even learn in later years to play
+cards, which was all a great pity.  Sports should be as carefully looked
+to in early education as book-learning.  I had also a pair of dear
+gazelle-skates given to me with the rest, but they also broke up on first
+trial, and I have never owned any since.  Destiny was always against me
+in such matters.
+
+The boys built two large snow-houses, roofed in or arched over with hard
+snow.  One was ingeniously and appropriately like an Eskimo hut, with a
+rather long winding passage leading into it.  Of these I wrote in the
+spring, when the sun had begun to act, "one is almost annihilated, and of
+the other not a _vestage_ remains."  I found the letter by chance many
+years later.
+
+There lived in Boston some friends of my mother's named Gay.  In the
+family was an old lady over eighty, who was a wonderfully lively spirited
+person.  She still sang, as I thought, very beautifully, to the lute, old
+songs such as "The merry days of good Queen Bess," and remembered the old
+Colonial time as if it were of yesterday.  One day Mr. Gay came out and
+took me to his house, where I remained from Saturday until Monday; during
+which time I found among the books, and very nearly read through, all the
+poems of Peter Pindar or Doctor Wolcott.  Precious reading it was for a
+boy of eleven, yet I enjoyed it immensely.  While there, I found in the
+earth in the garden an oval, dark-green porphyry pebble, which I, moved
+by a strange feeling, preserved for many years as an amulet.  It is very
+curious that exactly such pebbles are found as fetishes all over the
+world, and the famous conjuring stone of the Voodoos, which I possess, is
+only an ordinary black flint pebble of the same shape.  Negroes have
+travelled a thousand miles to hold it in their hands and make a wish,
+which, if uttered with _faith_, is always granted.  Its possession alone
+entitles any one to the first rank as master in the mysteries of Voodoo
+sorcery.  Truly I began early in the business!  I may here say that since
+I owned the Voodoo stone it has been held in several very famous and a
+few very beautiful hands.
+
+While I was at Mr. Greene's I wrote my first poem.  I certainly exhibited
+no great precocity of lyrical genius in it, but the reader must remember
+that I was only a foolish little boy of ten or eleven at the time, and
+that I showed it to no one.  It was as follows:
+
+   "As a long-bearded Sultan, an infidel Turk,
+   Who ne'er in his life had done any work,
+   Rode along to the bath, he saw Hassan the black,
+   With two monstrous water-skins high on his back.
+
+   "'Ho, Hassan, thou afreet! thou infidel dog!
+   Thou son of a Jewess and eater of hog!
+   This instant, this second, put down thy skin jugs,
+   And for my sovereign pleasure remove both the plugs!'
+
+   "The negro obeyed him, put both on the ground,
+   And opened the skins and the water flew round;
+   The Sultan looked on till he laughed his fill;
+   Then went on to the bath, feeling heated and ill.
+
+   "When arrived at the bath, 'Is all ready?' he cries.
+   'Indeed it is not, sire,' the bath-man replies;
+   'For to fetch the bath-water black Hassan has gone,
+   And your highness can't have it till he shall return.'"
+
+In after years my friend, Professor E. H. Palmer, translated this into
+Arabic, and promised me that it should be sung in the East.  It is not
+much of a poem, even for a boy, but there is one touch true to life in
+it--which is the _cursing_.  This must have come to me by revelation; and
+in after years in Cairo I never heard a native address another as
+"_Afrit_!  _Ya-hinzeer_--_wa Yahud_--_yin uldeen ak_?"--"curse your
+religion!"--but I thought how marvellous it was that I, even in my
+infancy, had divined so well how they did it!  However, now I come to
+think of it, I had the year before read Morier's "Haji-Baba" with great
+admiration, and I doubt not that it was the influence of that remarkable
+book which produced this beautiful result.  In after years I met with a
+lady who was a daughter of Morier.  Apropos of the _book_, it reminds me
+that I specially recall my _reviewing_ it mentally many times.
+
+I have reviewed my early life in quiet, old-fashioned, shaded
+Philadelphia and in rural New England so continually and carefully all
+the time ever since it passed that I am sure its minutest detail on any
+day would now be accurately recalled at the least suggestion.  As I shall
+almost certainly write this whole work without referring to a note or
+journal or other document, it will be seen that I remember the past
+pretty well.  What is most remarkable in it all, if I _can_ make myself
+intelligible, is that what between the deep and indelible impression made
+on my mind by _books_, and that of scenery and characters now passed
+away--the two being connected--it all seems to me now to be as it were
+vividly depicted, coloured, or _written_ in my mind, like pages in an
+illuminated or illustrated romance.  As some one has said that dreams are
+novels which we read when asleep, so bygone memories, when continually
+revived and associated with the subtle and delicate influences of
+_reading_, really become fixed literature to us, glide into it, and are
+virtually turned to copy, which only awaits type.  Thus a _scene_ to one
+highly cultivated in art is really a picture, to a degree which few
+actually realise, though they may fancy they do, because to actually
+master this harmony requires so many years of study and thought that I
+very rarely meet with perfect instances of it.  De Quincey and Coleridge
+are two of the best illustrations whom I can recall, while certain
+analytical character-sifters in modern novels seem the farthest remote
+from such genial naturalness.
+
+At the end of the first year my brother returned to Philadelphia.  I
+passed the summer at Dr. Stimson's, in Dedham, wandering about in the
+woods with my bow, fishing in the river, reading always whatever fate or
+a small circulating library provided--I remember that "The Devil on Two
+Sticks" and the "Narrative of Captain Boyle" were in it--and carving
+spoons and serpents from wood, which was a premonition of my later work
+in this line, and of my "Manual of Wood-Carving."
+
+At this time something took place which deeply impressed me.  This was
+the two hundredth anniversary of the building of the town of Dedham,
+which was celebrated with very great splendour: speeches, tents with pine-
+boughs, music-booths, ginger-beer, side-shows--in short, all the pomp and
+circumstance of a country fair allied to historic glory.  I had made one
+or two rather fast and, I fear me, not over-reputable acquaintances of my
+own age, with whom I enjoyed the festival to the utmost.  Then I returned
+to school, and autumn came, and then winter.  At this time I felt
+fearfully lonely.  I yearned for my mother with a longing beyond words,
+and was altogether home-sick.
+
+I was seated one Saturday afternoon, busily working in the drawing-class
+under a little old Englishman named Dr. Hunt, when there came the
+startling news that a gentleman had come to take me home!  I could hardly
+believe my senses.  I went down, and was presented to a man of about
+thirty, of extremely pleasant and attractive appearance, who told me that
+his name was Carlisle, that he was a friend of my father's, and that I
+was at once to return with him to Philadelphia.  I wonder that I did not
+faint with joy.  Mr. Carlisle was a man of very remarkable intelligence,
+kindness, and refinement.  Nearly sixty years have passed since then, and
+yet the memory of the delightful impression which he made on me is as
+fresh as ever.  My trunk was soon packed; we were whirled away to Boston,
+and went to a hotel, he treating me altogether like a young gentleman and
+an equal.
+
+It had been the dream and hope and wild desire of my life to go to the
+Lion Theatre in Boston, where circus was combined with roaring maritime
+melodramas, of which I had heard heavenly accounts from a few of my
+schoolmates.  And Mr. Carlisle took me there that evening, and I saw
+"Hyder Ali."  Never, never in my life before did I dream that dramatic
+art, poetry, and _mimesis_ could attain to such ideal splendour.  And
+then a sailor came on the stage and sang "Harry Bluff," and when he came
+to the last line--
+
+   "And he died like a true Yankee sailor at last,"
+
+amid thundering hurrahs, it seemed to me that romance could go no
+farther.  I do not think that Mr. Carlisle had any knowledge of boys,
+certainly not of such a boy as I was, but I am sure that he must have
+been amply repaid for his kindness to me in my delight.  And there were
+acrobatic performances, such as I had never seen in my life, and we
+returned to the hotel and a grand supper, and I was in heaven.
+
+The next morning Mr. Carlisle put into my hand, with great delicacy, such
+a sum as I had never before possessed, telling me that I "would need it
+for travelling expenses."  All the while he drew me out on literature.  On
+the Long Island Sound steamer he bade me notice a young gentleman (whom I
+was destined to know in after years), a man with curly hair and very
+foppish air, accompanied by a page "in an eruption of buttons," and told
+me that it was N. P. Willis.  And so revelling in romance and travel,
+with mince-pie and turkey for my daily food, my pocket stuffed with
+money, in the most refined and elegant literary society (at least it was
+there on deck), I came to Philadelphia.  I may here say that the memory
+of Mr. Carlisle has made me through all my life kinder to boys than I
+might otherwise have been; and if, as a teacher, I have been popular
+among them, it was to a great degree due to his influence.  For, as will
+appear in many passages in this book, I have to a strange degree the
+habit of thinking over marked past experiences, and drawing from them
+precedents by which to guide my conduct; hence it has often happened that
+a single incident has shown itself in hundreds of others, as a star is
+reflected in countless pools.
+
+
+
+
+II.  BOYHOOD AND YOUTH.  1837-1845.
+
+
+Return to Philadelphia at twelve years of age--Early discipline--School
+at Mr. C. Walker's--B. P. Hunt--My first reading of Rabelais--Mr. Robert
+Stewart--Hurlbut's school--Boyish persecution--Much strange
+reading--Francois Villon--Early studies in philosophy--Transcendentalism
+and its influence--Spanish--School of E. C. Wines--The French
+teacher--Long illness--The intelligent horse--Princeton University
+professors--Albert Dodd and James Alexander--College life--Theology--Rural
+scenes--Reading--My first essays--The Freshman rebellion--Smoking--George
+H. Boker--Jacob Behmen or Bohme--Stonington--Captain Nat Palmer and
+Commodore Vanderbilt--My graduation.
+
+How happy I was again to see my mother and father and Henry!  And then
+came other joys.  My father had taken a very nice house in Walnut Street,
+in the best quarter of the city, below Thirteenth Street, and this was a
+source of pleasure, as was also a barrel of apples in the cellar, to
+which I had free access.  They had been doled out to us very sparingly at
+school, and I never shall forget the delight with which I one day in
+December at Jamaica Plain discovered a frozen apple on a tree!  Then
+there was the charm of being in a great city, and familiar old scenes,
+and the freedom from bad marks, and being ruled into bounds, and sent to
+bed at early hours.  There is, in certain cases, a degree of moral
+restraint and discipline which is often carried much too far, especially
+where boys are brought up with a view to pushing themselves in the world.
+I was sixteen years of age and six feet high before I was allowed to
+leave off short jackets, go to a theatre, or travel alone, all of which
+was more injurious to me, I believe, than ordinary youthful dissipation
+would have been, especially in America.  Yet, while thus repressed, I was
+being continually referred by all grown-up friends to enterprising youth
+of my own age, who were making a living in bankers' or conveyancers'
+offices, &c., and acting "like men."  The result really being that I was
+completely convinced that I was a person of feeble and inferior capacity
+as regarded all that was worth doing or knowing in life, though Heaven
+knows my very delicate health and long illnesses might of themselves have
+excused all my failings.  The vast majority of Americans, however kind
+and generous they may be in other respects, are absolutely without mercy
+or common-sense as regards the not succeeding in life or making money.
+Such, at least, was my experience, and bitter it was.  Elders often
+forget that even obedience, civility, and morality in youth are luxuries
+which must be paid for like all other extravagances at a high price,
+especially in children of feeble constitution.  The dear boy grows up "as
+good as pie," and, being pious, "does not know one card from another,"
+nor one human being from another.  You make of him a fool, and then call
+him one--I mean, what you regard as a fool.  I am not at all sure that
+one or two cruises in a slaver (there were plenty of them sailing out of
+New York in those days) would not have done me far more good of a certain
+kind than all the education I had till I left college in America.  I am
+not here complaining, as most weak men do, as if they were specially
+victims to a wretched fate and a might-have-been-better.  The vast
+majority of boys have not better homes or education, kinder parents, or
+advantages greater than mine were.  But as I do not recall my boyhood's
+days or my youth till I left college with that _joyousness_ which I find
+in other men without exception, and as, in fact, there always seems as if
+a cloud were over it all, while from below there was a low continual
+murmur as of a patient soul in pain, I feel that there was something
+wrong in it all, as there indeed was--the wrong of taking all the starch
+out of a shirt, and then wondering that it was not stiff.  But I must
+say, at the same time, that this free expansion is not required by the
+vast majority of boys, who are only far too ready and able to spread
+themselves into "life" without any aid whatever.  What is for one meat
+may be for another poison, and mine was a very exceptional case, which
+required very peculiar treatment.
+
+My father had sold out his business in 1832 to Mr. Charles S. Boker, and
+since then been principally engaged in real estate and stock speculation.
+When I returned, he had bought a large property between Chestnut Market
+and Third Streets, on which was a hotel called Congress Hall, with which
+there were connected many historical associations, for most of the noted
+men who for many years visited Philadelphia had lived in it.  With it
+were stables and other buildings, covering a great deal of ground in the
+busiest portion of the city, but still not in its condition very
+profitable.  Then, again, he purchased the old Arch Street prison, a vast
+gloomy pile, like four dead walls, a building nearly 400 feet square.  It
+was empty, and I went over it and into the cells many times.  I remember
+thinking of the misery and degradation of those who had been confined
+there.  The discipline had been bad enough, for the prisoners had been
+allowed to herd freely together.  My father tore it down, and built a
+block of handsome dwelling-houses on its site.  As the _trottoir_ or side-
+walk was narrow, he, at a considerable loss to himself, made a present to
+the city of a strip of land which left a wide pavement.  I say "at a
+loss," for had the houses been deeper they would have sold for much more.
+The City Council graciously accepted the gift, with the special condition
+that my father should pay all the expenses of the transfer!  From which I
+learned the lesson that in this life a man is quite as liable to suffer
+from doing good as doing evil, unless he employs just as much foresight
+or caution in the doing thereof.  Some of the most deeply regretted acts
+of my life, which have caused me most sincere and oft-renewed repentance,
+were altogether and perfectly acts of generosity and goodness.  The
+simple truth of which is that a _gush_, no matter how sweet and pure the
+water may be, generally displaces something.  Many more buildings did my
+father buy and sell, but committed withal the very serious error of never
+buying a house as a permanent home or a country place, which he might
+have easily done, and even to great profit, which error in the long-run
+caused us all great inconvenience, and much of that shifting from place
+to place which is very bad for a growing family.  The humblest man in
+such case in a house of his own has certain great advantages over even a
+millionaire in lodgings.
+
+Mr. S. C. Walker had given over his school to a younger brother named
+Joseph, but it was still kept in the old house in Eighth Street, where
+also I had taken my lessons in the rudiments of Transcendentalism from
+the Orphic Alcott.  It was now a fairly good school as things went in
+those days, with the same lectures in Natural Philosophy and
+Chemistry--the same mild doses of French and Latin.  The chief assistant
+was E. Otis Kimball, subsequently a professor of astronomy, a very
+gentlemanly and capable instructor, of a much higher type than any
+assistant-teacher whom I had ever before met.  Under him I read
+Voltaire's "Charles the Twelfth."  George H. Boker, who was one year
+older than I, and the son of my father's old partner, went to this
+school.  I do not remember that for the first year or eighteen mouths
+after my return to Philadelphia there was any incident of note in my
+life, or that I read anything unless it was Shakespeare, and reviews
+which much influenced me.  However, I was very wisely allowed to attend a
+gymnasium, kept by a man named Hudson.  Here there was a sporting tone,
+much pistol-shooting at a mark, boxing and fencing, prints of
+prize-fighters on the wall, and cuts from _Life in London_, with copious
+cigar-smoke.  It was a wholesome, healthy place for me.  Unfortunately, I
+could not afford the shooting, boxing, &c., but I profited somewhat by
+it, both morally and physically.  At this critical period, or a little
+later, a few pounds a year judiciously invested in sport and
+"dissipation" would have changed the whole current of my life, probably
+much for the better, and it would certainly have spared my poor father
+the conviction, which he had almost to his death, that I was a sad and
+mortifying failure or exception which had not paid its investment; for
+which opinion he was in no wise to blame, it being also that of all his
+business acquaintances, many of whose sons, it was true, went utterly to
+the devil, but then it was in the ancient intelligible, common-sensible,
+usual paths of gambling, horsing, stock-brokering, selling short, or
+ruining all their relatives by speculating with their money.  However,
+there was also the--rather forlorn--hope ahead that I would do something
+in a profession.
+
+The school went on, Mr. Walker studying law meantime till he had passed
+his examination, when it was transferred to Mr. B. P. Hunt.  With this
+man, who became and remained my intimate friend till his death, thirty
+years after, came the first faint intimation of what was destined to be
+the most critical, the most singular, and by far the most important
+period of my life.
+
+Mr. Hunt was, as he himself declared to me in after years, not at all
+fitted to be a schoolmaster.  He lacked the minor or petty earnestness of
+character, and even the training or preparation, necessary for such work.
+On the other hand, he had read a great deal in a desultory way; he was
+very fond of all kinds of easy literature; and when he found that any boy
+understood the subject, he would talk with that boy about whatever he had
+been reading.  Yet there was something real and stimulative in him, for
+there never was a man in Philadelphia who kept school for so short a time
+and with so few pupils who had among them so many who in after life
+became more or less celebrated.  For he certainly made all of us who were
+above idiocy think and live in thought above the ordinary range of school-
+boy life.  Thus I can recall these two out of many incidents:--
+
+Finding me one day at an old book-stand, he explained to me Alduses, and
+Elzevirs, and bibliography, showing me several specimens, all of which I
+remembered.
+
+I had read Watson's "Annals of Philadelphia."  [By the way, I knew the
+daughter of the author.]  There was an allusion in it to Cornelius
+Agrippa, and Mr. Hunt explained and dilated on this great sorcerer to me
+till I became half crazy to read the "Occult Philosophy," which I did at
+a roaring rate two years later.
+
+One day I saw Mr. Hunt and Mr. Kendall chuckling together over a book.  I
+divined a secret.  Now, I was a very honourable boy, and never pried into
+secrets, but where a quaint old book was concerned I had no more
+conscience than a pirate.  And seeing Mr. Hunt put the book into his
+desk, I abode my time till he had gone forth, when I raised the lid, and
+. . .
+
+Merciful angels and benevolent fairies! it was Urquhart's translation of
+Rabelais!  One short spell I read, no more; but it raised a devil which
+has never since been laid.  Ear hath not heard, it hath not entered into
+the heart of man to conceive, what I felt as I realised, like a young
+giant just awakened, that there was in me a stupendous mental strength to
+grasp and understand that magnificent mixture of ribaldry and learning,
+fun and wisdom, deviltry and divinity.  In a few pages' time I knew what
+it all meant, and that I was gifted to understand it.  I replaced the
+book; nor did I read it again for years, but from that hour I was never
+quite the same person.  The next day I saw Callot's "Temptation of St.
+Anthony" for the first time in a shop-window, and felt with joy and pride
+that I understood it out of Rabelais.  Two young gentlemen--lawyers
+apparently--by my side thought it was crazy and silly.  To me it was more
+like an apocalypse.
+
+I am speaking plain truth when I say that that one quarter of an hour's
+reading of Rabelais--standing up--was to me as the light which flashed
+upon Saul journeying to Damascus.  It seems to me now as if it were the
+great event of my life.  It came to such a pass in after years that I
+could have identified any line in the Chronicle of Gargantua, and I also
+was the suggester, father, and founder in London of the Rabelais Club, in
+which were many of the best minds of the time, but beyond it all and
+brighter than all was that first revelation.
+
+It should be remembered that I had already perused Sterne, much of Swift,
+and far more comic and satiric literature than is known to boys, and,
+what is far more remarkable, had thoroughly taken it all into my _cor
+cordium_ by much repetition and reflection.
+
+Mr. Hunt in time put me up to a great deal of very valuable or curious
+_belletristic_ fair-lettered or black-lettered reading, far beyond my
+years, though not beyond my intelligence and love.  We had been
+accustomed to pass to our back-gate of the school through Blackberry
+Alley--
+
+   "Blackberry Alley, now Duponceau Street,
+   A rose by any name will smell as sweet"--
+
+which was tenanted principally by social evils.  He removed to the corner
+of Seventh and Chestnut Streets.  Under our schoolroom there was a
+gambling den.  I am not aware that these surroundings had any effect
+whatever upon the pupils.  Among the pupils in Seventh Street was one
+named Emile Tourtelot.  We called him Oatmeal Turtledove.  I had another
+friend who was newly come from Connecticut.  His uncle kept a hotel and
+often gave him Havanna cigars.  We often took long walks together out of
+town and smoked them.  He taught me the song--
+
+   "On Springfield mountains there did dwell,"
+
+with much more quaint rural New England lore.
+
+About this time my grandfather Leland died.  I wept sadly on hearing it.
+My father, who went to Holliston to attend the funeral, brought me back a
+fine collection of Indian stone relics and old American silver coins, for
+he had been in his way an antiquarian.  _Bon sang ne peut mentir_.  I had
+also the certificate of some Society or Order of Revolutionary soldiers
+to which he had belonged.  One of his brothers had, as an officer, a
+membership of the hereditary Order of the Cincinnati.  This passed to
+another branch of the family.
+
+For many years the principal regular visitor at our house was Mr. Robert
+Stewart, a gentleman of good family and excellent education, who had
+during the wars with Napoleon made an adventurous voyage to France, and
+subsequently passed most of his life as Consul or diplomatic agent in
+Cuba.  He had brought with him from Cuba a black Ebo-African slave named
+Juan.  As the latter seemed to be discontented in Philadelphia, Mr.
+Stewart, who was kindness itself, offered to send him back freed to Cuba
+or Africa, and told him he might buy a modest outfit of clothing, such as
+suited his condition.  The negro went to a first-class tailor and ordered
+splendid clothes, which were sent back, of course.  The vindictive Ebo
+was so angry at this, that one summer afternoon, while Mr. Stewart slept,
+the former fell on him with an axe and knife, mangled his head horribly,
+cut the cords of his hand, &c., and thought he had killed him.  But
+hearing his victim groan, he was returning, when he met another servant,
+who said, "Juan, where are you going?"  He replied, "Me begin to kill
+Mars' Stewart--now me go back finish him!"  He was, of course, promptly
+arrested.  Mr. Stewart recovered, but was always blind of one eye, and
+his right hand was almost useless.  Mr. Stewart had in his diplomatic
+capacity seen many of the pirates who abounded on the Spanish Main in
+those days.  He was an admirable _raconteur_, abounding in reminiscences.
+His son William inherited from an uncle a Cuban estate worth millions of
+dollars, and lived many years in Paris.  He was a great patron of
+(especially Spanish) art.
+
+So I passed on to my fourteenth year, which was destined to be the
+beginning of the most critical period of my life.  My illnesses had
+increased in number and severity, and I had shot up into a very tall weak
+youth.  Mr. Hunt gave up teaching, and became editor of _Littell's
+Magazine_.  I was sent to the school of Mr. Hurlbut--as I believe it was
+then spelled, but I may be wrong.  He had been a Unitarian clergyman, but
+was an ungenial, formal, rather harsh man--the very opposite of Mr. Hunt.
+My schoolmates soon found that though so tall, I was physically very
+weak, and many of them continually bullied and annoyed me.  Once I was
+driven into a formal stand-up fight with one younger by a year, but much
+stronger.  I did my best, but was beaten.  I offered to fight him then in
+Indian fashion with a hug, but this he scornfully declined.  After this
+he never met me without insulting me, for he had a base nature, as his
+after-life proved.  These humiliations had a bad effect upon me, for I
+was proud and nervous, and, like many such boys, often very foolish.
+
+But I had a few very good friends.  Among these was Charles Macalester.
+One day when I had been bullied shamefully by the knot of boys who always
+treated me badly, he ran after me up Walnut Street, and, almost with
+tears in his eyes, assured me of his sympathy.  There were two other
+intimates.  George Patrullo, of Spanish parentage, and Richard Seldener,
+son of the Swedish Consul.  They read a great deal.  One day it chanced
+that Seldener had in his bosom a very large old-fashioned flint-lock
+horse-pistol loaded with shot.  By him and me stood Patrullo and William
+Henry Hurlbut, who has since become a very well-known character.  Thinking
+that Seldener's pistol was unloaded, Patrullo, to frighten young Hurlbut,
+pulled the weapon suddenly from Seldener's breast, put it between
+Hurlbut's eyes and fired.  The latter naturally started to one side, so
+it happened that he only received one shot in his ear.  The charge went
+into the wall, where it made a mark like a bullet's, which was long
+visible.  George Patrullo was drowned not long after while swimming in
+the Schuylkill river, and Richard Seldener perished on an Atlantic
+steamer, which was never heard of.
+
+On the other hand, something took place which cast a marvellous light
+into this darkened life of mine.  For one day my father bought and
+presented to me a share in the Philadelphia Library.  This was a
+collection which even then consisted of more than 60,000 well-chosen
+volumes.  And then began such a life of reading as was, I sincerely
+believe, unusual in such youth.  My first book was "Arthur of Little
+Britaine," which I finished in a week; then "Newes from New Englande,
+1636," and the "Historie of Clodoaldus."  Before long I discovered that
+there were in the Loganian section of the library several hundred volumes
+of occult philosophy, a collection once formed by an artist named Cox,
+and of these I really read nearly every one.  Cornelius Agrippa and
+Barret's "Magus," Paracelsus, the black-letter edition of Reginald Scot,
+Glanville, and Gaffarel, Trithemius, Baptista Porta, and God knows how
+many Rosicrucian writers became familiar to me.  Once when I had only
+twenty-five cents I gave it for a copy of "Waters of the East" by
+Eugenius Philalethes, or Thomas Vaughan.
+
+All of this led me to the Mystics and Quietists.  I read Dr. Boardman's
+"History of Quakerism," which taught me that Fox grew out of Behmen; and
+I picked up one day Poiret's French work on the Mystics, which was quite
+a handbook or guide to the whole literature.  But these books were but a
+small part of what I read; for at one time, taking another turn towards
+old English, I went completely through Chaucer and Gower, both in black
+letter, the collections of Ritson, Weber, Ellis, and I know not how many
+more of mediaeval ballads and romances, and very thoroughly and earnestly
+indeed Warton's "History of English Poetry."  Then I read Sismondi's
+"Literature of Southern Europe" and Longfellow's "Poets and Poetry of
+Europe," which set me to work on Raynouard and other collections of
+Provencal poetry, in the knowledge of which I made some progress, and
+also St. Pelaye's, Le Grand's, Costello's, and other books on the
+Trouveurs.  I translated into rhyme and sent to a magazine, of which I in
+after years became editor, one or two _lais_, which were rejected, I
+think unwisely, for they were by no means bad.  Then I had a fancy for
+Miscellanea, and read the works of D'Israeli the elder and Burton's
+"Anatomy."
+
+One day I made a startling discovery, for I took at a venture from the
+library the black-letter first edition of the poems of Francois Villon.  I
+was then fifteen years old.  Never shall I forget the feeling, which
+Heine compares to the unexpected finding of a shaft of gold in a gloomy
+mine, which shot through me as I read for the first time these
+_ballades_.  Now-a-days people are trained to them through second-hand
+sentiment.  Villon has become--Heaven bless the mark!--_fashionable_! and
+aesthetic.  I got at him "straight" out of black-letter reading in
+boyhood as a find of my own, and it was many, many years ere I ever met
+with a single soul who had heard of him.  I at once translated the "Song
+of the Ladies of the Olden Time"; and I knew what _bon bec_ meant, which
+is more than one of Villon's great modern translators has done!  Also
+_heaulmiere_, which is _not_ helmet-maker, as another supposes.
+
+I went further in this field than I have room to describe.  I even read
+the rococo-sweet poems of Joachim du Bellay.  In this year my father gave
+me "The Doctor," by Robert Southey, a work which I read and re-read
+assiduously for many years, and was guided by it to a vast amount of odd
+reading, Philemon Holland's translation of Pliny being one of the books.
+This induced me to read all of Southey's poems, which I did, not from the
+library, but from a bookstore, where I had free run and borrowing
+privileges, as I well might, since my father lost 4,000 pounds by its
+owner.
+
+While at Mr. Greene's school I had given me Alsopp's "Life and Letters of
+Coleridge," which I read through many times; then in my thirteenth year,
+in Philadelphia, I read with great love Charles Lamb's works and most of
+the works of Coleridge.  Mr. Alcott had read Wordsworth into us in
+illimitable quantities, so that I soon had a fair all-round knowledge of
+the Lakers, whom I dearly loved.  Now there was a certain _soupcon_ of
+Mysticism or Transcendentalism and Pantheism in Coleridge, and even in
+Wordsworth, which my love of rocks and rivers and fairy lore easily
+enabled me to detect by sympathy.
+
+But all of this was but a mere preparation for and foreshadowing of a
+great mental development and very precocious culture which was rapidly
+approaching.  I now speak of what happened to me from 1838 to 1840,
+principally in the latter year.  If I use extravagant, vain words, I beg
+the reader to pardon me.  Perhaps this will never be published, therefore
+_sit verbo venia_!
+
+I had become deeply interested in the new and bold development which was
+then manifesting itself in the Unitarian Church.  Channing, whom I often
+heard preach, had something in common with the Quietists; Mr. Furness was
+really a thinker "out of bounds," while in reality as gentle and purely
+Christian as could be.  There was something new in the air, and this
+Something I, in an antiquated form, had actually preceded.  It was really
+only a _rechauffe_ of the Neo-Platonism which lay at the bottom of
+Porphyry, Proclus, Psellus, Jamblichus, with all of whom I was fairly
+well acquainted.  Should any one doubt this, I can assure him that I
+still possess a full copy of the "Poemander" or "Pimander" of Hermes
+Trismegistus, made by me in my sixteenth year, which most assuredly no
+mortal could ever have understood or made, or cared to make, if he had
+not read the Neo-Platonists; for Marsilius Ficinus himself regarded this
+work as a pendant to them, and published it as such.  Which work I
+declared was not a Christian Platonic forgery, but based on old Egyptian
+works, as has since been well-nigh proved from recent discoveries.  (I
+think it was Dr. Garnett who, hearing me once declare in the British
+Museum that I believed Hermes was based on an ancient Egyptian text, sent
+for a French work in which the same view was advanced.)
+
+The ignorance, narrow-mindedness, and _odium theologicum_ which prevailed
+in America until 1840 was worse than that in Europe under the Church in
+the Middle Ages, for even in the latter there had been an Agobard and an
+Abelard, Knight-Templar agnostics, and _illuminati_ of different kinds.
+The Unitarians, who believed firmly in every point of Christianity, and
+that man was saved by Jesus, and would be damned if he did not put faith
+in him as the Son of God, were regarded literally and truly by everybody
+as no better than infidels because they believed that Christ was _sent_
+by God, and that Three could not be One.  Every sect, with rare
+exceptions, preached, especially the Presbyterians, that the vast
+majority even of Christians would be damned, thereby giving to the devil
+that far greater power than God against which Bishop Agobard had
+protested.  As for a freethinker or infidel, he was pointed at in the
+streets; and if a man had even seen a "Deist," he spoke of it as if he
+had beheld a murderer.  Against all this some few were beginning to
+revolt.
+
+There came a rumour that there was something springing up in Boston
+called Transcendentalism.  Nobody knew what it was, but it was dreamy,
+mystical, crazy, and infideleterious to religion.  Firstly, it was
+connected with Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, and finally with
+everything German.  The new school of liberal Unitarians favoured it.  I
+had a quick intuition that here was something for me to work at.  I
+bought Carlyle's _Sartor Resartus_, first edition, and read it through
+forty times ere I left college, of which I "kept count."
+
+My record here as regards some books may run a little ahead; but either
+before I went to college or during my first year there (almost all before
+or by 1840-'41), I had read Carlyle's "Miscellanies" thoroughly,
+Emerson's "Essays," a translation of Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason,"
+the first half of it many times; Dugald Stewart's works, something of
+Reid, Locke, and Hobbes's "Leviathan"; had bought and read French
+versions of Schelling's "Transcendental Idealism" and Fichte's
+fascinating "Destiny of Man"; studied a small handbook of German
+philosophy; the works of Campanella and Vanini (Bruno much later, for his
+works were then exceeding rare.  I now have Weber's edition), and also,
+with intense relish and great profit, an old English version of Spinoza's
+_Tractatus Theologico-Politicus_.  In which last work I had the real key
+and clue to all German philosophy and Rationalism, as I in time found
+out.  I must here modestly mention that I had, to a degree which I
+honestly believe seldom occurs, the art of _rapid_ yet of
+carefully-observant reading.  George Boker once, quite unknown to me,
+gave me something to read, watched my eyes as I went from line to line,
+timed me by watch, and finally examined me on what I had read.  He
+published the incident long after, said he had repeated it more than once
+_a mon insu_, and that it was remarkable.
+
+Such a dual life as I at this time led it has seldom entered into the
+head of man to imagine.  I was, on the one hand, a school-boy in a
+jacket, leading a humiliated life among my kind, all because I was sickly
+and weak; while, on the other hand, utterly alone and without a living
+soul to whom I could exchange an idea, I was mastering rapidly and boldly
+that which was _then_ in reality the tremendous problem of the age.  I
+can now see that, as regards its _real_ antique bases, I was far more
+deeply read and better grounded than were even its most advanced leaders
+in Anglo-Saxony.  For I soon detected in Carlyle, and much more in
+Emerson, a very slender knowledge of that stupendous and marvellous
+ancient Mysticism which sent its soul in burning faith and power to the
+depth of "the downward-borne elements of God," as Hermes called them.  I
+missed even the rapt faith of such a weak writer as Sir Kenelm Digby,
+much more Zoroaster!  Vigourous and clever and bold writers they
+were--Carlyle was far beyond me in literary _art_--but true Pantheists
+they were _not_.  And they were men of great genius, issuing essays to
+the age on popular, or political, or "literary" topics; but
+_philosophers_ they most assuredly were _not_, nor men tremendous in
+spiritual truth.  And yet it was precisely as _philosophers_ and
+thaumaturgists and revealers of _occulta_ that they posed--especially
+Emerson.  And they dabbled or trifled with free thought and "immorality,"
+crying Goethe up as the Light of Lights, while all their inner souls were
+bound in the most Puritanical and petty goody-goodyism.  Though there
+were traces of grim Scotch humour in Carlyle, my patron saint and master,
+Rabelais, or aught like him, had no credit with them.
+
+They _paddled_ in Pantheism, but as regards it, both lacked the
+stupendous faith and inspiration of the old adepti, who flung their whole
+souls into God; and yet they sneered at Materialism and Science.
+
+I did not then see _all_ of this so clearly as I now do, but I very soon
+found that, as in after years it was said that Comteism was Catholicism
+without Christianity, so the Carlyle-Emersonian Transcendentalism was
+Mysticism without mystery.  Nor did I reflect that it was a calling
+people from the nightmared slumber of frozen orthodoxy or bigotry to come
+and see a marvellous new thing.  And when they came, they found out that
+this marvellous thing was that they had been _awakened_, "only that and
+nothing more"; and _that_ was the great need of the time, and worth more
+than any magic or theosophy.  But I had expected, in simple ignorant
+faith, that the sacred mysteries of some marvellous cabala would be
+revealed, and not finding what I wanted (though indeed I discovered much
+that was worldly new to me), I returned to the good old ghost-haunted
+paths trodden by my ancestors, to dryads and elves and voices from the
+stars, and the _archaeus_ formed by the astral spirit (not the modern
+Blavatsky affair, by-the-bye), which entyped all things . . . and so went
+elving and dreaming on 'mid ruins old.
+
+Be it observed that all this time I really did not know what I knew.  Boys
+are greatly influenced by their surroundings, and in those days every one
+about me never spoke of Transcendentalism or "Germanism," or even
+"bookishness," without a sneer.  I was borne by a mysterious inner
+impulse which I could not resist into this terrible whirlpool of _belles-
+lettres_, occulta, facetiae, and philosophy; but I had, God knows, little
+cause for pride that I read so much, for it was on every hand in some way
+turned against me.  If it had only been reading like that of other human
+beings, it might have been endured; but I was always seen coming and
+going with parchment-bound tomes.  Once I implored my father, when I was
+thirteen or fourteen, to let me buy a certain book, which he did.  This
+work, which was as dear to me as a new doll to a girl for a long time,
+was the _Reductorium_ or moralisation of the whole Bible by Petrus
+Berchorius, black-letter, folio, Basle, 1511.  It was from the library of
+a great and honest scholar, and, as the catalogue stated, "contained MS.
+notes on the margin by Melanchthon."
+
+Promising, this, for an American youth who was expected to go into
+business or study a profession!
+
+While at Hurlbut's school I took lessons in Spanish.  There was a Spanish
+boy from Malaga, a kind of half-servant, _half-protege_ in a family near
+us, with whom I practised speaking the language, and also had some
+opportunity with a few Cubans who visited our family.  One of them had
+been a governor-general.  He was a Gallician by birth, but I did not know
+this, and innocently asked him one day if _los Gallegos no son los
+Irlandeses d'Espana_?--if the Gallicians were not the Irish of
+Spain--which drew a grave caution from my brother, who knew better than I
+how the land lay.  I really attained some skill in Spanish, albeit to
+this day "Don Quixote" demands from me a great deal of dictionary.  But,
+as I said before, I learn languages with _incredible_ difficulty, a fact
+which I cannot reconcile with the extreme interest which I take in
+philology and linguistics, and the discoveries which I have made; as, for
+instance, that of _Shelta_ in England, or my labours in jargons, such as
+Pidgin-English, Slang, and Romany.  But, as the reader has probably
+perceived, I was a boy with an inherited good constitution only from the
+paternal side, and a not very robust one from my mother, while my mind,
+weakened by long illness, had been strangely stimulated by many
+disorders, nervous fevers being frequent among them.  In those days I
+was, as my mother said, almost brought up on calomel--and she might have
+added quinine.  The result of so much nervousness, excessive stimulating
+by medicine, and rapid growth was a too great susceptibility to poetry,
+humour, art, and all that was romantic, quaint, and mysterious, while I
+found it very hard to master any really dry subject.  What would have set
+me all right would have been careful physical culture, boxing, so as to
+protect me from my school persecutors, and _amusement_ in a healthy
+sense, of which I had almost none whatever.
+
+Hurlbut's became at last simply intolerable, and my parents, finding out
+in some way that I was worse for being there, removed me to a far better
+school kept by E. C. Wines, who had written books on education, and
+attained some fame thereby.  This was in 1839-'40, and I was there to be
+prepared for college.  We were soon introduced to an old French
+gentleman, who was to teach us, and who asked the other boys what French
+works they had read.  Some had gone through _Telemaque_, or _Paul et
+Virginie_, _Florian_, _etcetera_.  The good-goody nature of such reading
+awoke in me my sense of humour.  When it came to my turn, and I was
+asked, I replied, "_La Pucelle d'Orleans_ and _Dictionnaire
+Philosophique_ of Voltaire, the Confessions of Rousseau, the Poems of
+Villon, _Charles d'Orleans_, _Clotilde de Surville_, and more or less of
+Helvetius, D'Holbach, and Condillac."  Here the professor, feeling
+himself quizzed, cast forth his hands as in disgust and horror, and
+cried, "_Assez_! _assez_!  Unhappy boy, you have raked through the
+library of the devil down to the dregs!"  Nor was I "selling" him, for I
+certainly had read the works, as the records of the Philadelphia Library
+can in a great measure prove, and did not speak by hearsay.
+
+I had at this time several severe long attacks of illness with much pain,
+which I always bore well, as a matter of course or habit.  But rather
+oddly, while in the midst of my Transcendentalism, and reading every
+scrap of everything about Germany which I could get, and metaphysics, and
+study--I was very far gone then, and used to go home from school and
+light a pipe with a long wooden stem, and study the beloved "Critic of
+Pure Reason" or Carlyle's Miscellanies, having discovered that smoking
+was absolutely necessary in such reading--[De Quincey required a quart of
+laudanum to enable him to enjoy German metaphysics]--there came a strange
+gleam of worldly dissipation, of which I never think without pleasure.  I
+had passed one summer vacation on a farm near Philadelphia, where I
+learned something in wood-ranging about wild herbs and catching
+land-tortoises and "coon-hunting," and had been allowed to hire and ride
+a horse.
+
+I did not know it, but this horse had thrown over his head everybody who
+had ever mounted him.  He was a perfect devil, but also a perfect
+gentleman.  He soon took my measure, and resolved to treat me kindly as a
+_protege_.  When we both wanted a gallop, he made such time as nobody
+before had dreamed was in him; when he was lazy, he only had to turn his
+head and look at me, and I knew what that meant and conformed unto him.
+He had a queer fancy at times to quietly steal up and put his hoof on my
+foot so as to hurt me, and then there was an impish laugh in his eye.  For
+he laughed at me, and I knew it.  There is really such a thing as a horse-
+laugh.  One day we passed through a drove of sheep, and he did not like
+it--no horse does.  After a while I wanted to go by a certain road, but
+he refused sternly to take it.  I found soon after that if I had done so
+we must have met the sheep again.  He had, in fact, understood the route
+far better than I.  I once got a mile out of him in three minutes--more
+or less; but he had seen me look at my watch, and knew that I wanted to
+see what he could do.  He never did it again.  I _may_ have been mistaken
+here, but it was my impression at the time.  Perhaps if I had gone on
+much longer in intimacy with him I might have profited mentally by it,
+and acquired what Americans call "horse-sense," of which I had some need.
+It is the sixth--or the first--sense of all Yankees and Scotchmen.  When
+I returned to the city I was allowed to hire a horse for a few times from
+a livery stable, and went out riding with a friend.  This friend was a
+rather precociously dissipated youth, and with him I had actually now and
+then--very rarely--a glass at a bar and oysters.  He soon left me for
+wilder associates, and I relapsed into my old sober habits.  Strange as
+it may seem, I believe that I was really on the brink of becoming like
+other boys.  But it all faded away.  Now it became imperative that I
+should study in earnest.  I used to rise at three or four in the morning.
+What with hard work and great fear of not passing my matriculation, I
+contrived to get up so much Latin, Greek, and mathematics, that Mr. Wines
+thought I might attempt it, and so one fine summer day my father went
+with me to Princeton.  I was in a fearful state of nervous anxiety.
+
+
+
+COLLEGE LIFE.
+
+
+PRINCETON.
+
+
+We went to Princeton, where I presented my letters of introduction,
+passed a by no means severe examination for the Freshman's class, was
+very courteously received by the professors to whom I was commended, and,
+to my inexpressible delight, found myself a college student.  Rooms were
+secured for me at a Mrs. Burroughs', opposite Nassau Hall; the adjoining
+apartment was occupied by Mr. Craig Biddle, now a judge.  George H. Boker
+was then at the end of his Sophomore year, the term having but a few days
+to run.  He had rooms in college and lived in unexampled style, having
+actually a carpet on his floor and superior furniture, also a good
+collection of books, chiefly standard English poets.  He at once took me
+in hand and gave me a character.
+
+Princeton College was entirely in the hands of the strictest of "Old
+School" Presbyterian theologians.  Piety and mathematics rated
+extravagantly high in the course.  The latter study was literally
+reckoned in the grades as being of more account than all the rest
+collectively.  Thus, as eventually happened to me, a student might excel
+in Latin, English, and Natural Philosophy--in fact, in almost everything,
+good conduct included--and yet be the last in the class if he neglected
+mathematics.  There was no teaching of French, because, as was naively
+said, students might read the irreligious works extant in that language,
+and of course no other modern language; as for German, one would as soon
+have proposed to raise the devil there as a class in it.  If there had
+been an optional course, as at Cambridge, Massachusetts, by which German
+was accepted in lieu of mathematics, I should probably have taken the
+first honour, instead of the last.  And yet, with a little more Latin, I
+was really qualified, on the day when I matriculated at Princeton, to
+have passed for a Doctor of Philosophy in Heidelberg, as I subsequently
+accurately ascertained.
+
+There were three or four men of great ability in the Faculty of the
+University.  One of these was Professor Joseph Henry, in those days the
+first natural philosopher and lecturer on science in America.  I had the
+fortune in time to become quite a special _protege_ of his.  Another was
+Professor James Alexander, who taught Latin, rhetoric, and mental
+philosophy.  He was so clear-headed and liberally learned, that I always
+felt sure that he must at heart have been far beyond the bounds of Old
+School theology, but he had an iron Roman-like sternness of glance which
+quite suited a Covenanter.  The most remarkable of all was Albert Dodd,
+Professor of Mathematics and Lecturer on Architecture.  This man was a
+genius of such a high order, that had it not been for the false position
+in which he was placed, he would have given to the world great works.  The
+false position was this: he was the chief pulpit orator of the old
+school, and had made war on the Transcendentalist movement in an able
+article in the _Princeton Review_ (which, by the way, was useful in
+guiding me to certain prohibited works, before unknown to me).  But as he
+was a man of poetic genial feeling, he found himself irresistibly
+fascinated by what he had hunted down, and so read Plato, and when he
+died actually left behind him a manuscript translation of Spinoza's
+works!
+
+The reader may imagine what a marvellous _find_ I was to him.  George
+Boker, who was ages beyond me in knowledge of the world--man and
+woman--said one day that he could imagine how Dodd sat and chuckled to
+hear me talk, which remark I did not at all understand and thought rather
+stupid.  I remember that during my first call on him we discussed _Sartor
+Resartus_, and I expressed it as my firm conviction that the idea of the
+Clothes Philosophy had been taken from the Treatise on Fire and Salt by
+the Rosicrucian Lord Blaise.  Then, in all _naivete_ and innocence of
+effect, I discussed some point in Kant's "Critic," and a few other
+trifles not usually familiar to sub-Freshmen, and took my departure, very
+much pleased at having entered on a life where my favourite reading did
+not really seem to be quite silly or disreputable.  I remember, however,
+being very much surprised indeed at finding that the other students, in
+whom I expected to encounter miracles of learning, or youth far superior
+to myself in erudition and critical knowledge, did not quite come up to
+my anticipations.  However, as they were all far beyond me in
+mathematics, I supposed their genius had all gone in that direction, for
+well I knew that the toughest page in Fichte was a mere trifle compared
+to the awful terrors of the Rule of Three, and so treated them as young
+men who were my superiors in other and greater things.
+
+There were wearisome morning prayers in the chapel, and roll-call every
+morning, and then an hour of recitation before breakfast, study till ten
+or eleven, study and recitation in the afternoon, and evening prayers
+again and study in the evening.  The Sabbath was anything but a day of
+rest, for we had the same prayers; morning attendance at church;
+afternoon, the learning and reciting of _four chapters_ in the Bible;
+while we were expected in the evening to master one or two chapters in
+the Greek Testament.  I am not sorry that I used to read books during
+sermon-time.  It kept me from, or from me, a great deal of wickedness.
+_Videlicet_:
+
+The sermons consisted principally of assertion that man himself consisted
+chiefly of original sin.  As evil communications corrupt good manners, I
+myself, being young and impressionable, began to believe that I too was
+an awful sinner.  Not knowing where else to look for it, I concluded that
+it consisted in my inability to learn mathematics.  I do not distinctly
+remember whether I prayed to Heaven that I might be able to cross the
+Pons Asinorum, but "anyway" my prayer was granted when I graduated.
+
+Another stock-piece in the _repertoire_ consisted of attacks on Voltaire,
+Tom Paine, and other antiquated Deists or infidels.  I had read with
+great contempt a copy of "The Rights of Man" belonging to my genial uncle
+Amos.  I say with great contempt, for I always despised that kind of free
+thought which consisted chiefly of enmity to Christianity.  Now I can see
+that Voltaire and his followers were quite in the right in warring on
+terrible and immediate abuses which oppressed mankind; but I had learned
+from Spinoza to believe that every form of faith was good in its way or
+according to its mission or time, and that it was silly to ridicule
+Christianity because the tale of Balaam's ass was incredible.  Paine was
+to me just what a Positivist now is to a Darwinian or Agnostic, and such
+preaching against "infidels" seemed to me like pouring water on a drowned
+mouse.  There had always been in Mr. Furness's teaching a very decided
+degree of Rationalism, and I had advanced far more boldly on the track.  I
+remember reading translations from Schleiermacher and buying Strauss's
+"Life of Jesus" before I went to Princeton--I saw Strauss himself in
+after years at Weinsberg, in Germany--but at Princeton the slightest
+approach to explaining the most absurd story in the Old Testament was
+regarded as out-and-out atheism.  It had all happened, we were told, just
+as it is described.
+
+I may as well note here the fact that for many years in my early life
+such a thing as only reading a book through once rarely happened, when I
+could obtain it long enough.  Even the translations of the
+Neo-Platonists, with Campanella, Vanini, or the Italian naturalists, were
+read and reread, while the principal English poets, and such books as I
+owned, were perused daily.
+
+And here in this great infant arithmetic school I was in due time set
+down to study Paley's "Evidences of Christianity" and Locke on the
+Understanding--like Carlyle's young lion invited to a feast of chickweed.
+Apropos of the first, I have a droll reminiscence.  There had been in
+Philadelphia two years before a sale of a fine library, and I had been
+heart-broken because my means had not permitted me to buy the works of
+Sir Kenelm Digby.  However, I found them in the Princeton College
+Library.  The first thing I came to in Paley was his famous simile of the
+watch--taken bodily and without acknowledgment from Digby.  The theft
+disgusted me.  "These be your Christian champions!" I thought--
+
+   "Would any of the stock of infidels
+   Had been my evidence ere such a Christian!"
+
+And, moreover, Paley forgets to inform us what conclusion the finder
+might draw if he had picked up a badly made watch which did not keep good
+time--like this our turnip of a world at times!
+
+As we were obliged to attend divine service strictly on Sunday, I was
+allowed to go to the Episcopal church in the village, which agreed very
+well with my parents' views.  I quite fell into the sentiment of the
+sect, and so went to Professor Dodd to ask for permission from the
+Faculty to change my religion.  When he asked me how it was that I had
+renegaded into Trinitarianism, I replied that it was due to reflection on
+the perfectly obvious and usual road of the Platonic hypostases eked out
+with Gnosticism.  I had found in the College Library, and read with great
+pleasure almost as soon as I got there, Cudworth's "Intellectual System"
+(I raided a copy as _loot_ from a house in Tennessee in after years,
+during the war), and learned from it that "it was a religious instinct of
+man to begin with a Trinity, in which I was much aided by Schelling, and
+that there was no trace of a Trinity in the Bible, or rather the
+contrary, yet that it _ought_ consistently to have been there"--a
+sentiment which provoked from Professor Dodd a long whistle like that of
+Uncle Toby with Lilliburlero.  "For," as I ingeniously represented, "man
+or God consists of the Monad from which developed spirit or intellect and
+soul; for _toto enim in mundo lucet Trias cujus Monas est princeps_, as
+the creed of the Rosicrucians begins (which is taken from the Zoroastrian
+oracles)"--here there was another long subdued whistle--"and it is set
+forth on the face of every Egyptian temple as the ball, the wings of the
+spirit which rusheth into all worlds, and the serpent, which is the
+_Logos_."  Here the whistle became more sympathetic, for Egypt was the
+professor's great point in his lectures on architecture.  And having thus
+explained the true grounds of the Trinity to the most learned theologian
+of the Presbyterian sect, I took my leave, quite unconscious that I had
+said anything out of the common, for all I meant was to give my reasons
+for going back to the Episcopal Church.  As for Professor Dodd, he had
+given me up from the very first interview to follow my idols as I
+pleased, only just throwing in argument enough to keep me well going.  He
+would have been the last man on earth to throw down such a marvellous
+fairy castle, goblin-built and elfin-tenanted, from whose windows rang
+AEolian harps, and which was lit by night with undying Rosicrucian lamps,
+to erect on its ruin a plain brick, Old School Presbyterian slated
+chapel.  I was far more amusing as I was, and so I was let alone.
+
+I had passed my examination about the end of June, and I was to remain in
+Princeton until the autumn, reading under a tutor, in the hope of being
+able to join the Sophomore class when the college course should begin.
+There I was utterly alone, and rambled by myself in the woods.  I
+believed myself to be a very good Christian in those days; but I was
+really as unaffected and sincere a Poly-Pantheist or Old Nature heathen
+as ever lived in Etrusco-Roman or early German days.  A book very dear to
+my heart at that time was the _Curiositez Inouyes_ of Gaffarel (Trollope
+was under the impression that he was the only man in Europe who ever read
+it), in which there is an exquisite theory that the stars of heaven in
+their courses and the lines of winding rivers and bending corn, the
+curves of shells and minerals, rocks and trees, yes, of all the shapes of
+all created things, form the trace and letters of a stupendous _writing_
+or characters spread all over the universe, which writing becomes little
+by little legible to the one who by communion with Nature and earnest
+faith seeks to penetrate the secret.  I had found in the lonely woods a
+small pond by a high rock, where I often sat in order to attain this
+blessed illumination, and if I did not get quite so far as I hoped, I did
+in reality attain to a deep unconscious familiarity with birds and leafy
+shades, still waters, and high rising trees; in short, with all the sweet
+solemnity of sylvan nature, which has ever since influenced all my life.
+I mean this not in the second-hand way in which it is so generally
+understood, but as a _real_ existence in itself, so earnestly felt that I
+was but little short of talking with elfin beings or seeing fairies
+flitting over flowers.  Those who explain everything by "imagination" do
+not in the least understand how _actual_ the life in Nature may become to
+us.  Reflect for a minute, thou whose whole soul is in gossip and petty
+chronicles of fashion, and "sassiety," that in that life thou _wert_ a
+million years ago, and in it thou wilt be a million years hence, ever
+going on in all forms, often enough in rivers, rock, and trees, and yet
+canst not realise with a sense of awe that there are in these forms,
+passing to others--ever, ever on--myriads of men and women, or at least
+their _life_--_how_ we know not, as _what_ we know not--only this, that
+the Will or creative force of the Creator or Creating is in it all.  This
+was the serious yet unconscious inspiration of my young life in those
+days, in even more elaborate or artistic form, which all went very well
+hand in hand with the Euclid and Homer or Demosthenes and Livy with which
+my tutor Mr. Schenk (pronounce _Skank_) was coaching me.
+
+My reading may seem to the reader to have been more limited than it was,
+because I have not mentioned the historians, essayists, or belletrists
+whose works are read more or less by "almost everybody."  It is hardly
+worth while to say, what must be of course surmised, that Sterne,
+Addison, Goldsmith, Johnson, Swift, and Macaulay--in fine, the leading
+English classics--were really well read by me, my ambition being not to
+be ignorant of anything which a literary man should know.  Macaulay was
+then new, and I devoured not only his works, but a vast amount by him
+suggested.  I realised at an early age that there was a certain cycle of
+knowledge common to all really cultivated minds, and this I was
+determined to master.  I had, however, little indeed of the vanity of
+erudition, having been deeply convinced and constantly depressed or
+shamed by the reflection that it was all worse than useless, and
+injurious to making my way in life.  When I heard that Professor Dodd had
+said that at seventeen there were not ten men in America who had read so
+much, while Professor Joseph Henry often used words to this effect, and
+stern James Alexander in his lectures would make deeply learned allusions
+intended for me alone--as, for instance, to Kant's "AEsthetik"--I was
+anything but elated or vain in consequence.  I had read in _Sartor
+Resartus_, "If a man reads, shall he not be learned?" and I knew too well
+that reading was with me an unprofitable, perhaps pitiable, incurable
+mania-amusement, which might ruin me for life, and which, as it was, was
+a daily source of apprehension between me and my good true friends, who
+feared wisely for my future.
+
+I absolutely made James Alexander smile for once in his life--'twas
+sunshine on the grim Tarpeian rock.  I had bought me a nice English large
+type Juvenal, and written on the outside in quaint Elizabethan character
+form--I forget now the name of the author--the following:--
+
+   "Ay, Juvenall, thy jerking hande is good,
+   Not gently laying on, but bringing bloude.
+   Oh, suffer me amonge so manye men
+   To treade aright the traces of thy penne,
+   And light my lamp at thy eternal flame!"
+
+We students in the Latin class had left our books on a table, when I saw
+grim and dour James Alexander pick up my copy, read the inscription, when
+looking up at me he smiled; it was a kind of poetry which pleased him.
+
+I remember, too, how one day, when in Professor Dodd's class of
+mathematics, I, instead of attending to the lecture, read surreptitiously
+Cardanus _de Subtilitate_ in an old vellum binding, and carelessly laid
+it on the table afterwards, where Professor Dodd found it, and directed
+at me one of his half-laughing Mephistophelian glances.  Reading of
+novels in lectures was not unknown; but for Dodd to find anything so
+caviare-like as Cardanus among our books was unusual.  George Boker
+remarked once, that while Professor Dodd was a Greek, Professor James
+Alexander was an old Roman, which was indeed a good summary of the two.
+
+I have and always had a bad memory, but I continued to retain what I read
+by repetition or reviewing and by _collocation_, which is a marvellous
+aid in retaining images.  For, in the first place, I read entirely by
+GROUPS; and if I, for instance, attacked Blair's "Rhetoric," Longinus and
+Burke Promptly followed; and if I perused "Rambles in the Footsteps of
+Don Quixote," I at once, on principle, followed it up with "Spain in
+1830," and a careful study of Ford's Guide-Book for Spain, and perhaps a
+score of similar books, till I had got Spain well into me.  And as I have
+found by years of observation and much research, having written a book on
+Education partly based on this principle, ten books on any subject read
+together, profit more than a hundred at intervals.  And I may here add,
+that if this record of what I read be dull, it is still that of my real
+youthful life, giving the clue to my mind as it was formed.  Books in
+those days were the only events of my life.
+
+Long before I went to college I had an attack of Irish antiquities, which
+I relieved by reading O'Brien, Vallancey, the more sensible Petrie, and
+O'Somebody's Irish grammar, aided by old Annie Mooney, who always
+remained by us.  In after years I discovered an Ogham inscription and the
+famed Ogham tongue, or _Shelta_, "the lost language of the bards,"
+according to Kuno Meyer and John Sampson.
+
+During my first half-year a college magazine was published, and I, a
+Freshman, was requested to contribute to the first number.  I sent in an
+article on the history of English poetry.  Before I wrote it, the great
+man among the senior students asked leave to be allowed to write it with
+me.  I did not quite like the idea, but reflecting that the association
+would give me a certain prestige, I accepted his aid.  So it appeared;
+but it was regarded as mine.  Professor Dodd said something to me about
+the inexpediency of so young a person appearing in print.  I could have
+told him that I had already published several poems, &c., in
+Philadelphian newspapers, but reflecting that it was not kind to have the
+better of him, I said nothing.  From that time I published something in
+every number.  My second article was an essay on Spinoza, and I still
+think it was rather good for a boy of sixteen.
+
+There was the College and also a Society library, out of which I picked a
+great deal of good reading.  One day I asked Professor John MacLean, the
+college librarian, for the works of Condorcet.  His reply was, "Vile
+book! vile book! can't have it."  However, I found in the Society library
+Urquhart's translation of "Rabelais," which I read, I daresay, as often
+as any mortal ever did.  And here I have a word to say to the wretched
+idiots who regard "the book called Rabelais" as "immoral" and unfit for
+youth.  Many times did I try to induce my young friends to read
+"Rabelais," and some actually mastered the story of the goose as a
+_torche-cul_, and perhaps two or three chapters more; but as for reading
+through or enjoying it, "that was not in their minds."  All complained,
+or at least showed, that they "did not understand it."  It was to them an
+aggravating farrago of filth and oddity, under which they suspected some
+formal allegory or meaning which had perished, or was impenetrable.  Learn
+this, ye prigs of morality, that no work of genius ever yet demoralised a
+dolt or ignoramus.  Even the Old Testament, with all its stores of the
+"shocking," really does very little harm.  It requires _mind for mind_ in
+reading, and vice becomes unattractive even to the vicious when they
+cannot understand it.  I did understand Rabelais, and the _Moyen de
+Parvenir_, and the _Cymbalum Mundi_, and Boccaccio (I owned these books),
+and laughed over them, yet was withal as pure-minded a youth as could
+well be imagined without being a simpleton.  For, with all such reading,
+I best loved such a book as Bromley's "Sabbath of Rest," or sweet,
+strange works of ancient Mysticism, which bore the soul away to the stars
+or into Nature.  Such a combination is perfectly possible when there is
+no stain of dishonesty or vulgarity in the character, and I had escaped
+such influences easily enough.
+
+A droll event took place in the spring.  It had been usual once a year--I
+forgot on what occasion--to give to all the classes a holiday.  This year
+it was abolished, and the Sophomore, junior, and senior classes quietly
+acquiesced.  But we, the Freshmen, albeit we had never been there before,
+rebelled at such infringement of "our rights," and absented ourselves
+from recitation.  I confess that I was a leader in the movement, because
+I sincerely believed it to be a sin to "remove old landmarks," and that
+the students required more rest and holidays than were allowed them; in
+which I was absolutely in the right, for our whole life, except Saturday
+afternoons, was "one demnition grind."
+
+The feeling which was excited by this "Freshman's rebellion" was one of
+utter amazement, or awful astonishment tempered with laughter, not
+unmingled with respect.  It was the terrier flying at the lion, when the
+great mastiff, and bloodhound, and Danish dog had quietly slunk aside.
+There were in the class beside myself several youths of marked character,
+and collectively we had already made an impression, to which my intimacy
+with George Boker, and Professor Dodd, and the very _elite_ of the
+seniors, added not a little force.  We were _mysterious_.  Hitherto a
+Freshman had been the greenest of the green, a creature created for
+ridicule, a sort of "leathery fox" or mere tyro (_ty_--not a
+ty-pographical error--_pace_ my kind and courteous reviewer in the
+_Saturday_)--and here were Freshmen of a new kind rising in dignity above
+all others.
+
+Which reminds me of a merry tale.  It was usual for Freshmen to learn to
+smoke for the first time after coming to college, and for more advanced
+students to go to their rooms, or find them in others, and smoke them
+sick or into retreating.  I, however, found a source of joy in this, that
+I could now sit almost from morning till night, and very often on to
+three in the morning, smoking all the time, being deeply learned in
+Varinas, Kanaster, and the like; for I smoked nothing but real Holland
+tobacco, while I could buy it.  A party of Sophomores informed George
+Boker that they intended to smoke me out.  "Smoke _him_ out!" quoth
+George; "why, he'd smoke the whole of you dumb and blind."  However, it
+came to pass that one evening several of them tried it on; and verily
+they might as well have tried it on to Niklas Henkerwyssel, who, as the
+legend goes, sold his soul to the devil for the ability to smoke all the
+time, to whom my father had once compared me.  So the cigars and tobacco
+were burned, and I liked it extremely.  Denser grew the smoke, and the
+windows were closed, to which I cheerfully assented, for I liked to have
+it thick; and still more smoke and more, and the young gentlemen who had
+come to smother me grew pale, even as the Porcupines grew pale when they
+tried to burn out the great Indian sorcerer, who burned _them_!  But I,
+who was beginning to enjoy myself amazingly in such congenial society,
+only filled Boker's great meerschaum with Latakia, and puffed away.  One
+by one the visitors also "puffed away," _i.e._, vanished through the door
+into the night.
+
+"Shall I open the window?" asked George.
+
+"Not on my account," I replied.  "I rather enjoy it as it is."
+
+"I begin to believe," replied my friend, "that you would like it in
+Dante's hell of clouds.  Do you know what those men came here for?  It
+was _to smoke you out_.  And you smoked them out, and never knew it."
+Which was perfectly true.  As for smoking, my only trouble was to be able
+to buy cigars and tobacco.  These were incredibly cheap in those days,
+and I always dressed very respectably, but my smoking always cost me more
+than my clothing.
+
+When we Freshmen had rebelled, we were punished by being rusticated or
+sent into the country to board.  I went to Professor Dodd to receive my
+sentence, and in a grave voice, in which was a faint ring as of irony,
+and with the lurking devil which always played in his great marvellous
+mysterious black eyes, he said, "If you were any other student, I would
+not send you to the city, and so reward your rebellion with a holiday.
+But as I know perfectly well that you will go into the Philadelphia
+Library, and never stop reading till it is time to return, I will send
+you there."
+
+My parents were then absent with my younger sisters in New England, but I
+had unlimited credit at Congress Hall Hotel, which was kept by a Mr. John
+Sturdevant, and where I was greatly respected as the son of the owner of
+the property.  So I went there, and fared well, and, as Professor Dodd
+prophesied, read all the time.  One night I went into an auction of
+delightful old books.  My money had run low; there only remained to me
+one dollar and a half.
+
+Now, of all books on earth, what I most yearned for in those days were
+the works of Jacob Behmen.  And the auctioneer put up a copy containing
+"The Aurora or Morning Rednesse," English version (_circa_ 1636), and I
+bid.  One dollar--one dollar ten cents--twenty--twenty-five; my heart
+palpitated, and I half fainted for fear lest I should be outbid, when at
+the very last I got it with my last penny.
+
+The black eyes of Professor Dodd twinkled more elfishly than ever when I
+exhibited to him my glorious treasure.  He evidently thought that my
+exile had been to me anything but a punishment, and he was right.  For a
+copy of _Anthroposophos Theomagicus_ or the works of Robert Fludd I would
+have got up another rebellion.
+
+It was quite against the college regulations for students to live in the
+town, but as I never touched a card, was totally abstemious and "moral,"
+and moreover in rather delicate health, I was passed over as an odd
+exception.  Once or twice it was proposed to bring me in, but Professor
+Dodd interfered and saved me.  While in Princeton for more than four
+years, I never once touched a drop of anything stronger than coffee,
+which was a great pity!  Exercise was not in those days encouraged in any
+way whatever--in fact, playing billiards and ten-pins was liable to be
+punished by expulsion; there was no gymnasium, no boating, and all
+physical games and manly exercises were sternly discouraged as leading to
+sin.  Now, if I had drunk a pint of bitter ale every day, and played
+cricket or "gymnased," or rowed for two hours, it would have saved me
+much suffering, and to a great degree have relieved me from reading,
+romancing, reflecting, and smoking, all of which I carried to great
+excess, having an inborn impulse to be always doing something.  That I
+did not grapple with life as a real thing, or with prosaic college
+studies or society, was, I can now see, a _disease_, for which, as my
+peculiar tastes had come upon me from nervous and Unitarian and Alcottian
+evil influences, I was not altogether responsible.  I was a precocious
+boy, and I had fully developed extraordinary influences, which, like the
+seed of Scripture, had in my case fallen on more than fertile ground; it
+was like the soil of the Margariten Island, by Budapest, which is so
+permeated by hot springs in a rich soil that everything comes to maturity
+there in one-third of the time which it does elsewhere.  I was the last
+child on earth who should ever have fallen into Alcott's hands, or
+listened to Dr. Channing or Furness, or have been interested in anything
+"ideal"; but fate willed that I should drink the elfin goblet to the
+dregs.
+
+George H. Boker had a great influence on me.  We were in a way connected,
+for my uncle Amos had married his aunt, and my cousin, Benjamin Godfrey,
+his cousin.  He was exactly six feet high, with the form of an Apollo,
+and a head which was the very counterpart of the bust of Byron.  A few
+years later N. P. Willis described him in the _Home Journal_ as the
+handsomest man in America.  He had been from boyhood as precociously a
+man of the world as I was the opposite.  He was _par eminence_ the poet
+of our college, and in a quiet, gentlemanly way its "swell."  I passed a
+great deal of my time in his rooms reading Wordsworth, Shelley, and
+Byron, the last named being his ideal.  He ridiculed the Lakers, whom I
+loved; and when Southey's last poem, "On Gooseberry Pie," appeared, he
+declared that the poor old man was in his dotage, to which I assented
+with sorrow in my heart.  Though only one year older than I, yet, as a
+_Junior_, and from his superior knowledge of life, I regarded him as
+being about thirty.  He was quite familiar, in a refined and gentlemanly
+way, with all the dissipation of Philadelphia and New York; nor was the
+small circle of his friends, with whom I habitually associated, much
+behind him in this respect.  Even during this Junior year he was offered
+the post of secretary to our Ambassador at Vienna.  From him and the
+others I acquired a second-hand knowledge of life, which was sufficient
+to keep me from being regarded as a duffer or utterly "green," though in
+all such "life" I was practically as innocent as a young nun.  Now,
+whatever I heard, as well as read, I always turned over and over in my
+mind, thoroughly digesting it to a most exceptional degree.  So that I
+was somewhat like the young lady of whom I heard in Vienna in after
+years.  She was brought up in the utmost moral and strict seclusion, but
+she found in her room an aperture through which she could witness all
+that took place in the neighbouring room of a _maison de passe_; but
+being a great philosopher, she in time regarded it all as the "butterfly
+passing show" of a theatre, the mere idle play of foolish mortal
+passions.
+
+Even before I began my Freshman year there came into my life a slight but
+new and valuable influence.  Professor Dodd, when I arrived, had just
+begun his course of lectures on architecture.  To my great astonishment,
+but not at all to that of George Boker, I was invited to attend the
+course, Boker remarking dryly that he had no doubt that Dodd thanked God
+for having at last got an auditor who would appreciate him.  Which I
+certainly did.  I in after years listened to the great Thiersch, who
+trained Heine to art, and of whom I was a special _protege_, and many
+great teachers, but I never listened to any one like Albert Dodd.  It was
+not with him the mere description of styles and dates; it was a deep and
+truly aesthetic feeling that every phase of architecture mirrors and
+reciprocally forms its age, and breathes its life and poetry and
+religion, which characterised all that he said.  It was in nothing like
+the subjective rhapsodies of Ruskin, which bloomed out eight years later,
+but rather in the spirit of Vischer and Taine, which J. A. Symonds has so
+beautifully and clearly set forth in his Essays {98}--that is, the spirit
+of historical development.  Here my German philosophy enabled me to grasp
+a subtle and delicate spirit of beauty, which passed, I fear, over the
+heads of the rest of the youthful audience.  His ideas of the
+correspondence of Egyptian architecture to the stupendous massiveness of
+Pantheism and the appalling grandeur of its ideas, were clear enough to
+me, who had copied Hermes Trismegistus and read with deepest feeling the
+Orphic and Chaldean oracles.  The ideas had not only been long familiar
+to me, but formed my very life and the subject of the most passionate
+study.  To hear them clearly expressed with rare beauty, in the deep,
+strange voice of the professor, was joy beyond belief.  And as it would
+not be in human nature for a lecturer not to note an admiring auditor, it
+happened often enough that something was often introduced for my special
+appreciation.
+
+For I may here note--and it was a very natural thing--that just as Gypsy
+musicians always select in the audience some one who seems to be most
+appreciative, at whom they play (they call it _de o kan_), so Professors
+Dodd and James Alexander afterwards, in their aesthetic, or more erudite
+disquisitions, rarely failed to fiddle at me--Dodd looking right in my
+eyes, and Alexander at the ceiling, ending, however, with a very brief
+glance, as if for conscience' sake.  I feel proud of this, and it affects
+me more now than it did then, when it produced no effect of vanity, and
+seemed to me to be perfectly natural.
+
+I heard certain mutterings and hoots among the students as I went out of
+the lecture-room, but did not know what it meant.  George Boker informed
+me afterwards that there had been great indignation expressed that "a
+green ignorant Freshman" had dared to intrude, as I had done, among his
+intellectual superiors and betters, but that he had at once explained
+that I was a great friend of Professor Dodd, and a kind of marvellous
+_rara avis_, not to be classed with common little Freshmen; so that in
+future I was allowed to go my way in peace.
+
+A man of culture who had known Coleridge well, declared that as a
+conversationalist on varied topics Professor Albert Dodd was his
+superior.  When in the pulpit, or in the lengthened "addresses" of
+lecturing, there was a marvellous fascination in his voice--an Italian
+witch, or red Indian, or a gypsy would have at once recognised in him a
+sorcerer.  Yet his manner was subdued, his voice monotonous, never loud,
+a running stream without babbling stones or rapids; but when it came to a
+climax cataract he cleared it with grandeur, leaving a stupendous
+impression.  In the ordinary monotony of that deep voice there was soon
+felt an indescribable charm.  In saying this I only repeat what I have
+heard in more or less different phrase from others.  There was always in
+his eyes (and in this as in other points he resembled Emerson) a strange
+indefinable suspicion of a smile, though he, like the Sage of Concord,
+rarely laughed.  Owing to these black eyes, and his sallow complexion,
+his sobriquet among the students was "the royal Bengal tiger."  He was
+not unlike Emerson as a lecturer.  I heard the latter deliver his great
+course of lectures in London in 1848--including the famous one on
+Napoleon--but he had not to the same perfection the music of the voice,
+nor the indefinable mysterious charm which characterised the style of
+Professor Dodd, who played with emotion as if while feeling he was ever
+superior to it.  He was a great actor, who had gone far beyond acting or
+art.
+
+Owing, I suppose, to business losses, my father and family lived for two
+years either at Congress Hall Hotel or _en pension_.  I spent my first
+vacation at the former place.  There lived in the house a Colonel John Du
+Solle, the editor of a newspaper.  He was a good-natured, rather
+dissipated man, who kept horses and had a fancy for me, and took me out
+"on drives," and once introduced me in the street to a great actress,
+Susan Cushman, {101} and very often to theatres and coffee-houses and
+reporters, and printed several of my lucubrations.  Du Solle was in after
+years secretary to P. T. Barnum, whom I also knew well.  He was kind to
+me, and I owe him this friendly mention.  Some people thought him a
+rather dangerous companion for youth, but I was never taken by him into
+bad company or places, nor did I ever hear from him a word of which my
+parents would have disapproved.  But I really believe that I could at
+that time, or any other, have kept company with the devil and not been
+much harmed: it was not in me.  Edgar A. Poe was often in Du Solle's
+office and at Congress Hall.
+
+In the summer we all went to Stonington, Connecticut, where we lived at a
+hotel called the Wadawanuc House.  There I went out sailing--once on a
+clam-bake excursion in a yacht owned by Captain Nat. Palmer, who had
+discovered Palmer's Land--and sailed far and wide.  That summer I also
+saw on his own deck the original old Vanderbilt himself, who was then the
+captain of a Sound steamboat; and I bathed every day in salt-water, and
+fished from the wharf, and smoked a great deal, and read French books;
+and after a while we went into Massachusetts and visited the dear old
+villages and Boston, and so on, till I had to return to Princeton.  Soon
+after my father took another house in Walnut Street, the next door above
+the one where we had lived.  This one was rather better, for though it
+had less garden, it had larger back-buildings.
+
+_Bon an_, _mal an_, the time passed away at Princeton for four years.  I
+was often very ill.  In the last year the physician who tested my lungs
+declared they were unsound in two places; and about this time I was
+believed to have contracted an incurable stoop in the shoulders.  One day
+I resolved that from _that minute_ I would always hold myself straight
+upright; and I did so, and in the course of time became as straight as an
+arrow, and have continued so, I believe, ever since.
+
+I discovered vast treasures of strange reading in the library of the
+Princeton Theological College.  There was in one corner in a waste-room
+at least two cart-loads of old books in a cobwebbed dusty pile.  Out of
+that pile I raked the _thirteenth_ known copy of Blind Harry's famed
+poem, a black-letter Euphues Lely, an _Erra Pater_ (a very weak-minded
+friend _actually shamed_ me out of making a copy of this great curiosity,
+telling me it was silly and childish of me to be so pleased with old
+trash), and many more marvels, which were so little esteemed in
+Princeton, that one of the professors, seeing me daft with delight over
+my finds, told me I was quite welcome to keep them all; but I, who better
+knew their _great_ value, would not avail myself of the offer, reflecting
+that a time would come when these treasures would be properly valued.  God
+knows it was a _terrible_ temptation to me, and such as I hope I may
+never have again--_ne inducas nos in temptationem_!
+
+The time for my graduation was at hand.  I had profited very much in the
+last year by the teaching and friendly counsel of Professor Joseph Henry,
+whose lectures on philosophy I diligently attended; also those on
+geology, chemistry and botany by Professor Torrey, and by the company of
+Professor Topping.  I stood very high in Latin, and perhaps first in
+English branches.  Yet, because I had fallen utterly short in
+mathematics, I was rated the lowest but one in the class--or, honestly
+speaking, the very last, for the one below me was an utterly reckless
+youth, who could hardly be said to have studied or graduated at all.
+There were two honours usually awarded for proficiency in study.  One was
+the First Honour, and he who received it delivered the Valedictory
+Oration; the second was the Poem; and by an excess of kindness and
+justice for which I can never feel too grateful, and which was really an
+extraordinary stretch of their power under the circumstances, the Poem
+was awarded to me!
+
+I was overwhelmed at the honour, but bitterly mortified and cut to my
+heart to think how little I had deserved it; for I had never done a thing
+save read and study that which pleased me and was _easy_.  I wrote the
+poem (and I still think it was a good one, for I put all my soul into
+it), and sent it in to the Faculty, with a letter stating that I was
+deeply grateful for their extreme kindness, but that, feeling I had not
+deserved it, I must decline the honour.  But I sent them my MS. as a
+proof that I did not do so because I felt myself incapable, and because I
+wished to give them some evidence that they had not erred in regarding me
+as a poet.
+
+Very foolish and boyish, the reader may say, and yet I never regretted
+it.  The Faculty were not to blame for the system pursued, and they did
+their utmost in every way for four years to make it easy and happy for
+one of the laziest and most objectionable students whom they had ever
+had.  I have never been really able to decide whether I was right or
+wrong.  At liberal Cambridge, Massachusetts, neither I nor the professors
+would ever have discovered a flaw in my industry.  At the closely
+cramped, orthodox, hide-bound, mathematical Princeton, every weakness in
+me seemed to be developed.  Thirty years later I read in the _Nassau
+Monthly_, which I had once edited, that if Boker and I and a few others
+had become known in literature, we had done so _in spite of_ our
+education there.  I do not know who wrote it; whoever he was, I am much
+obliged to him for a very comforting word.  For, discipline apart, it was
+literally "in spite of our education" that we learned anything worth
+knowing at Princeton--as it then was.
+
+* * * * *
+
+From this point a new phase of life begins.  Prominent in it and as its
+moving power was the great kindness of my father.  That I had graduated
+at all under any conditions was gratifying, and so was the fact that it
+was not in reality without the so-called Second Honour, despite my low
+grade.  And the pitiable condition of my health was considered.  During
+the last year I had taken lessons in dancing and fencing, which helped me
+a little, and I looked as if I might become strong with a change of life.
+So my father took my mother and me on a grand excursion.  We went to
+Stonington, New York, and Saratoga, where I attended a ball--my first--and
+then on to Niagara.  On the way we stopped at Auburn, where there was a
+great State-prison, which I visited alone.  There was among its
+attractions a noted murderer under sentence of death.  There were two or
+three ladies and gentlemen who were shown by the warder with me over the
+building.  He expressed some apprehension as to showing us the murderer,
+for he was a very desperate character.  We entered a large room, and I
+saw a really gentlemanly-looking man heavily ironed, who was reading a
+newspaper.  While the others conversed with him, I endeavoured to make
+unobserved a sketch of his face.  The warder noticing this, called me to
+the front to make it boldly, and the prisoner, smiling, told me to go on
+with it; which I did, and that not so badly--at least, the sitter
+approved of it.
+
+So we went up the beautiful Hudson, which far surpasses the Rhine, and
+yields the palm only to the Danube, stopping at Poughkeepsie and Albany,
+and so on to Niagara Falls.  On the way we passed through a burning
+forest.  My awe at this wonderful sight amused some one present to whom
+it was a familiar thing.  Which reminds me that about the time when I
+first went to college, but while staying at Congress Hall, I there met a
+youth from Alabama or Mississippi, who was on his way to Princeton to
+join our ranks.  To him I of course showed every attention, and by way of
+promoting his happiness took him to the top of the belfry of the State
+House, whence there is a fine view.  While there I casually remarked what
+a number of ships there were in the river, whereupon he eagerly cried,
+"Oh, show me one!  I never saw a ship in all my life!"  I gazed at him in
+utter astonishment, as if I would say, "What manner of man art thou?" and
+then recalling myself, said, "Well, we are just equal, for you never saw
+a ship, and I never saw a _cotton-field_."  The young man smiled
+incredulously, and replied, "Now I know that you are trying to humbug me,
+for how _could_ you grow up without ever seeing cotton-fields?"
+
+We arrived at Niagara about noon, and I at once went to see the Falls.
+There was a very respectable-looking old gentleman, evidently from the
+far South, with two young ladies, one a great beauty, advancing just
+before.  I heard him say, "Now, keep your eyes closed, or look down till
+you can have a full view."  I did the same, and when he cried "Look up!"
+did so.  It was one of the great instants of my life.
+
+I know not how it was, but that first glance suggested to me something
+_chivalric_.  It may have been from Byron's simile of the tail of the
+white horse and the cataract, and the snow-white steed of that
+incarnation of nobility, Crescentius, and there rang in my memory a
+mystical verse--
+
+   "My eye bears a glance like the gleam of a lance
+      When I hear the waters dash and dance;
+   And I smile with glee, for I love to see
+      The sight of anything that's free!"
+
+But it was a mingled sense of nobility, and above all of _freedom_, which
+impressed me in that roaring mist of waters, in the wild river leaping as
+in reckless sport over the vast broad precipice.  It is usual, especially
+for those who have no gift of description, to say that Niagara is
+"utterly indescribable," and the Visitors' Book has this opinion repeated
+by the American Philistine on every page.  But that is because those who
+say so have no proper comprehension of facts stated, no poetic faculty,
+and no imagination.  Of course no mere description, however perfect,
+would give the same conception of even a pen or a button as would the
+_sight_ thereof; but it is absurd and illogical to speak as if this were
+_peculiar_ to a great thing alone.  For my part, I believe that the mere
+description to a _poet_, or to one who has dwelt by wood and wold and
+steeped his soul in Nature, of a tremendous cataract a mile in breadth
+and two hundred feet high, cleft by a wooded island, and rushing onward
+below in awful rocky rapids with a mighty roar, would, could, or should
+convey a very good idea of the great sight.  For I found in after years,
+when I came to see Venice and the temples on the Nile, that they were
+picturesquely or practically precisely what I had expected to see, not
+one shade or _nuance_ of an expression more or less.  As regards Rome and
+all Gothic cathedrals, I had been assured so often, or so generally, by
+all "intelligent tourists," that they were all wretched rubbish, that I
+was amazed to find them so beautiful.  And so much as to anticipations of
+Niagara, which I have thrice visited, and the constant assertion by cads
+unutterable that it is "indescribable."
+
+While at Niagara for three days, I walked about a great deal with a young
+lady whose acquaintance we had made at the hotel.  As she was, I verily
+believe, the very first, not a relative, with whom I had ever taken a
+walk, or, I may almost say, formed an acquaintance, it constituted an
+event in my life equal to Niagara itself in importance.  I was at this
+time just twenty-one, and certain I am that among twenty-one thousand
+college graduates of my age in America, of the same condition of life,
+there was not another so inexperienced in worldly ways, or so far behind
+his age, or so "docile unto discipline."  I was, in fact, morally where
+most boys in the United States are at twelve or thirteen; which is a very
+great mistake where there is a fixed determination that the youth shall
+make his own way in life.  We cannot have boys good little angels at home
+and devils in business abroad.--_Horum utrum magis velim_, _mihi incertum
+est_.
+
+
+
+
+III.  UNIVERSITY LIFE AND TRAVEL IN EUROPE.  1845-1848.
+
+
+Passage in a sailing ship--Gibraltar--Marseilles--Smugglers and a
+slaver--Italy--Life in Rome--Torlonia's balls and the last great Carnival
+of 1846--Navone, the chief of police--Florence--Venice--How I passed the
+Bridge of Sighs--The Black Bait--Slavery--Crossing the
+Simplon--Switzerland--Pleasing introduction to Germany--Student life at
+Heidelberg--Captain Medwin--Justinus Kerner--How I saw Jenny
+Lind--Munich--Lola Montez--Our house on fire--All over Germany--How I was
+turned out of Poland--Paris in 1847--The Revolution of 1848--I become
+conspirator and captain of barricades--Taking of the Tuileries--The
+police bow me out of Prance--A season in London--Return to America.
+
+After our return to Philadelphia something of great importance to me
+began to be discussed.  My cousin Samuel Godfrey, who was a few years
+older than I, finding himself threatened with consumption, of which all
+his family died, resolved to go to Marseilles on a voyage, and persuaded
+my father to let me accompany him.  At this time I had, as indeed for
+many years before, such a desire to visit Europe that I might almost have
+died of it.  So it was at last determined that I should go with "Sam,"
+and after all due preparations and packing, I bade farewell to mother and
+Henry and the dear little twin sisters, and youngest Emily, our pet, and
+went with my father to New York, where I was the guest for a few days of
+my cousin, Mrs. Caroline Wight, whom the reader may recall as the one who
+used to correct my French exercises in Dedham.
+
+We were to sail in a packet or ship for Marseilles.  My father saw me
+off.  He was wont to say in after years, that as I stood on the deck at
+the last moment and looked affectionately at him, there was in my eyes an
+expression of innocence or goodness and gentleness which he never saw
+again.  Which was, I am sure, very true; the great pity being that that
+look had not utterly disappeared years before.  If it only _had_ vanished
+with boyhood, as it ought to have done, my father would have been spared
+much sorrow.
+
+At this time I was a trifle over six feet two in height, and had then and
+for some time after so fair a red and white complexion, that the young
+ladies in Philadelphia four years later teased me by spreading the report
+that I used rouge and white paint!  I was not as yet "filled out," but
+held myself straightly, and was fairly proportioned.  I wore a cap _a
+l'etudiant_, very much over my left ear, and had very long, soft,
+straight, dark-brown hair; my dream and ideal being the German student.  I
+was extremely shy of strangers, but when once acquainted soon became very
+friendly, and in most cases made a favourable impression.  I was "neat
+and very clean-looking," as a lady described me, for the daily bath or
+sponge was universal in Philadelphia long ere it was even in England, and
+many a time when travelling soon after, I went without a meal in order to
+have my tub, when time did not permit of both.  I was very sensitive, and
+my feelings were far too easily pained; on the other hand, I had no trace
+of the common New England youth's vulgar failing of nagging, teasing, or
+vexing others under colour of being "funny" or "cute."  A very striking,
+and, all things considered, a remarkable characteristic was that I
+_hated_, as I still do, with all my soul, gossip about other people and
+their affairs; never read even a card not meant for my eyes, and detested
+curiosity, prying, and inquisitiveness as I did the devil.  I owe a great
+development of this to a curious incident.  It must have been about the
+time when I first went to college, that I met at Cape May a naval
+officer, who roomed with me in a cottage, a farm-house near a hotel, and
+whom I greatly admired as a man of the world and a model of good manners.
+To him one day I communicated some gossip about somebody, when he
+abruptly cut me short, and when I would go on informed me that he never
+listened to such talk.  This made a very deep impression on me, which
+never disappeared; nay, it grew with my growth and strengthened with my
+strength.  Now the New England people, especially Bostonians, are
+inordinately given to knowing everything about everybody, and to "tittle-
+tattle," while the Southerners are comparatively free from it and very
+incurious.  Two-thirds of the students at Princeton were of the first
+families in the South, and there my indifference to what did not
+personally concern one was regarded as a virtue.  But there is a spot in
+this sun--that he who never cares a straw to know about the affairs of
+other people, will, not only if he live in Boston, but almost anywhere
+else--Old England not at all excepted--be forced, in spite of himself,
+and though he were as meek and lowly as man may be, into looking down on
+and feeling himself superior unto those people who _will_ read a letter
+not meant for their eyes, or eavesdrop, or talk in any way about anybody
+in a strain to which they would not have that person listen.  Which
+reminds me that in after years I got some praise in the newspapers for
+the saying that a Yankee's idea of hell was a place where he must mind
+his own business.  It came about in this way.  In a letter to Charles
+Astor Bristed I made this remark, and illustrated it with a picture of
+Virgil taking a Yankee attired in a chimney-pot hat and long night-gown
+into the Inferno, over whose gate was written--
+
+   "Badate a vostri affari voi che intrate!"
+   (Mind your own business ye who enter here!)
+
+One day soon after my arrival at Princeton, George Boker laid on the
+table by me a paper or picture with its face down.  I took no notice of
+it.  After a time he said, "Why don't you look at that picture?"  I
+replied simply, "If you wanted me to see it you would have turned it face
+up."  To which he remarked, "I put it there to see whether you would look
+at it.  I thought you would not."  George was a "deep, sagacious file,"
+who studied men like books.
+
+My cousin who accompanied me had as a boy "run away and gone to sea" cod-
+fishing on the Grand Banks.  If I had gone with him it would have done me
+good.  Another cousin, Benjamin Stimson, did the same; he is the S. often
+mentioned in Dana's "Two Years Before the Mast."  Dana and Stimson were
+friends, and ran away together.  It was quite the rule for all my Yankee
+cousins to do this, and they all benefited by it.  In consequence of his
+nautical experience Sam was soon at home among all sailors, and not
+having my scruples as to knowing who was who or their affairs, soon knew
+everything that was going on.  Our captain was a handsome, dissipated,
+and "loud" young man, with rather more sail than ballast, but
+good-natured and obliging.
+
+"Come day, go day," we passed the Gulf Stream and the Azores, and had
+long sunny calms, when we could not sail, and lay about on deck, warm and
+lazy, and saw the Azores, and so on, till we were near the Spanish coast.
+One evening there clipped right under our lee a fisherman's smack.  "I
+say, Leland, hail that fellow!" said the captain.  So I called in
+Spanish, "Adonde venga usted?"
+
+"Da Algesiras," was the reply, which thrilled out of my heart the thought
+that, like the squire in Chaucer--
+
+   "He had been at the siege of Algecir."
+
+So I called, in parting, "Dios vaya con usted!"
+
+Sam informed me that the manner in which I hailed the fisherman had made
+a great impression on the captain, who lauded me highly.  It also made
+one on me, because it was the first time I ever spoke to a European _in
+Europe_!
+
+Anon we were boarded by an old weather-beaten seadog of a Spanish pilot,
+unto whom I felt a great attraction; and greeting him in Malagan Spanish,
+such as I had learned from Manuel Gori, as _Hermano_! and offering him
+with ceremonious politeness a good cigar, I also drew his regards; all
+Spaniards, as I well knew, being extremely fond, beyond all men on earth,
+of intimacy with gentlemen.  We were delayed for two days at Gibraltar.  I
+may here remark, by the way, that this voyage of our ship is described in
+a book by Mrs. Fanny Kemble Butler, entitled "A Year of Consolation
+Abroad."  She was on board, but never spoke to a soul among the
+passengers.
+
+I was never acquainted with Mrs. Butler, as I easily might have been, for
+we had some very intimate friends in common; but as a boy I had been
+"frightened of her" by certain anecdotes as to her temper, and perhaps
+the influence lasted into later years.  I have, however, heard her
+lecture.  She was a very clever woman, and Mr. Henry James, in _Temple
+Bar_ for March, 1893, thus does justice to her conversational power:
+
+   "Her talk reflected a thousand vanished and present things; but there
+   were those of her friends for whom its value was, almost before any
+   other, documentary.  The generations move so fast and change so much,
+   that Mrs. Kemble testified even more than she affected to do, which
+   was much, to ancient manners and a close chapter of history.  Her
+   conversation swarmed with people and with criticism of people, with
+   the ghosts of a dead society.  She had, in two hemispheres, seen every
+   one and known every one, had assisted at the social comedy of her age.
+   Her own habits and traditions were in themselves a survival of an era
+   less democratic and more mannered.  I have no room for enumerations,
+   which, moreover, would be invidious; but the old London of her
+   talk--the direction I liked is best to take--was, in particular, a
+   gallery of portraits.  She made Count d'Orsay familiar, she made
+   Charles Greville present; I thought it wonderful that she could be
+   anecdotic about Miss Edgeworth.  She reanimated the old drawing-rooms,
+   relighted the old lamps, retuned the old pianos.  The finest comedy of
+   all, perhaps, was that of her own generous whimsicalities.  She was
+   superbly willing to amuse, and on any terms; and her temper could do
+   it as well as her wit.  If either of these had failed, her
+   eccentricities were always there.  She had more 'habits' than most
+   people have room in life for, and a theory that to a person of her
+   disposition they were as necessary as the close meshes of a strait-
+   waistcoat.  If she had not lived by rule (on her showing) she would
+   have lived infallibly by riot.  Her rules and her riots, her
+   reservations and her concessions, all her luxuriant theory and all her
+   extravagant practice; her drollery, that mocked at her melancholy; her
+   imagination, that mocked at her drollery; and her wonderful manners,
+   all her own, that mocked a little at everything: these were part of
+   the constant freshness which made those who loved her love her so
+   much.  'If my servants can live with me a week, they can live with me
+   for ever,' she often said; 'but the first week sometimes kills them.'
+   A domestic who had been long in her service quitted his foreign home
+   the instant he heard of her death, and, travelling for thirty hours,
+   arrived travel-stained and breathless, like a messenger in a romantic
+   tale, just in time to drop a handful of flowers into her grave."
+
+There came on board of our boat a fruit-dealer, and the old pilot, seeing
+that I was about to invest a _real_ in grapes, said, "Let me buy them for
+you"; which he did, obtaining half-a-peck of exquisite large grapes of a
+beautiful purple colour.
+
+There was a middle-aged lady among the passengers, of whom the least I
+can say was, that she had a great many little winning ways of making
+herself disagreeable.  She imposed frightfully on me while on board,
+getting me to mark her trunks for her, and carry them into the hold, &c.
+(the sailors disliked her so much that they refused to touch them), and
+then cut me dead when on shore.  This ancient horror, seeing me with so
+many grapes, and learning the price, concluded that if a mere boy like me
+could get so many, she, a lady, could for four reals lay in a stock which
+would last for life, more or less.  So she obtained a bushel-basket,
+expecting to get it heaped full; but what was her wrath at only getting
+for her silver half-dollar just enough to hide the bottom thereof!  Great
+was her rage, but rage availed her nought.  She did not call old pilots
+"Brother," or give them cigars, or talk Malagano politely.  She was not
+even "half-Spanish," and therefore, as we used to say at college of
+certain unpopular people, was "a bad smoke."
+
+We went on shore on Sunday, which in those days always made Gibraltar
+literally like a fancy ball.  The first person whom I met was a pretty
+young lady in full, antique, rich Castilian costume, followed by a
+servant bearing her book of devotion.  Seeing my gaze of admiration, she
+smiled, at which I bowed, and she returned the salute and went her way.
+Such an event had never happened to me before in all my life.  I accepted
+it philosophically as one of a new order of things into which I was
+destined to enter.  Then I saw men from every part of Spain in quaint
+dresses, Castilians in cloaks, Andalusians in the jaunty _majo_ rig,
+Gallegos, Moors from the Barbary coast, many Greeks, old Jews in
+gabardines, Scotch Highland soldiers, and endless more--_concursus
+splendidus_--_non possum non mirari_.
+
+I felt myself very happy and very much at home in all this.  I strolled
+about the streets talking Spanish to everybody.  Then I met with a
+smuggler, who asked me if I wanted to buy cigars.  I did.  In New York my
+uncle George had given me a box of five hundred excellent Havanas, and
+these had lasted me exactly twenty days.  I had smoked the last twenty-
+five on the last day.  So I went and bought at a low enough figure a box
+of the worst cigars I had ever met with.  But youth can smoke
+anything--except deceit.
+
+Entrance to the galleries was strictly forbidden in those days, but an
+incorruptible British sergeant, for an incorruptible dollar or two,
+showed us over them.  There was, too, a remarkable man, a ship-chandler
+named Felipe, to whom I was introduced.  Felipe spoke twenty-four
+languages.  He boarded every ship and knew everybody.  Gibraltar was then
+a vast head-quarters of social evils, or blessings, and Felipe, who was a
+perfect Hercules, mentioned incidentally that he had had a new _maja_, or
+_moza_, or _muger_, or _puta_, every night for twenty years! which was
+confirmed by common report.  It was a firm principle with him to always
+_change_.  This extraordinary fact made me reflect deeply on it as a
+_psychological_ phenomenon.  This far surpassed anything I had ever heard
+at Princeton.  Then this and that great English dignitary was pointed out
+to me--black eyes ogled me--everybody was polite, for I had a touch of
+the Spanish manner which I had observed in the ex-Capitan-General and
+others whom I had known in Philadelphia; and, in short, I saw more that
+was picturesque and congenial in that one day than I had ever beheld in
+all my life before.  I had got into "my plate."
+
+From Gibraltar our ship sailed on to Marseilles.  The coasts were full of
+old ruins, which I sketched.  We lay off Malaga for a day, but I could
+not go ashore, much as I longed to.  At Marseilles, Sam and the captain
+and I went to a very good hotel.
+
+Now it had happened that on the voyage before a certain French lady--the
+captain said she was a Baroness--having fallen in love with the said
+captain, had secreted herself on board the vessel, greatly to his horror,
+and reappeared when out at sea.  Therefore, as soon as we arrived at
+Marseilles, the injured husband came raging on board and tried to shoot
+the captain, which made a great _scandal_.  And, moved by this example,
+the coloured cook of our vessel, who had a wife, shot the head-waiter on
+the same day, being also instigated by jealousy.  Sam Godfrey chaffed the
+captain for setting a bad moral example to the niggers--which was all
+quite a change from Princeton.  Life was beginning to be lively.
+
+There had come over on the vessel with us, in the cabin, a droll
+character, an actor in a Philadelphia theatre, who had promptly found a
+lodging in a kind of maritime boarding-house.  Getting into some
+difficulty, as he could not speak French he came in a great hurry to beg
+me to go with him to his _pension_ to act as interpreter, which I did.  I
+found at once that it was a Spanish house, and the resort of smugglers.
+The landlady was a very pretty black-eyed woman, who played the guitar,
+and sang Spanish songs, and brought out Spanish wine, and was
+marvellously polite to me, to my astonishment, not unmingled with
+innocent gratitude.
+
+There I was at home.  At Princeton I had learned to play the guitar, and
+from Manuel Gori, who had during all his boyhood been familiar with low
+life and smugglers, I had learned many songs and some slang.  And so,
+with a crowd of dark, fierce, astonished faces round me of men eagerly
+listening, I sang a smuggler's song--
+
+   "Yo que soy contrabandista,
+   Y campo a me rispeto,
+   A todos mi desafio,
+   Quien me compra hilo negro?
+      Ay jaleo!
+      Muchachas jaleo!
+   Quien me compra hilo negro!"
+
+Great was the amazement and thundering the applause from my auditors.  Let
+the reader imagine a nun of fourteen years asked to sing, and bursting
+out with "Go it while you're young!"  Then I sang the _Tragala_, which
+coincided with the political views of my friends.  But my grand _coup_
+was in reserve.  I had learned from Borrow's "Gypsies in Spain" a long
+string of Gitano or Gypsy verses, such as--
+
+   "El eray guillabela,
+      El eray obusno;
+   Que avella romanella,
+      No avella obusno!"
+
+   "Loud sang the _gorgio_ to his fair,
+      And thus his ditty ran:--
+   'Oh, may the Gypsy maiden come,
+      And not the Gypsy man!'"
+
+And yet again--
+
+   "Coruncho Lopez, gallant lad,
+      A smuggling he would ride;
+   So stole his father's ambling prad,
+   And therefore to the galleys sad
+      Coruncho now I guide."
+
+This was a final _coup_.  How the _diabolo_ I, such an innocent stranger
+youth, had ever learned Spanish _Gypsy_--the least knowledge of which in
+Spain implies unfathomable iniquity and fastness--was beyond all
+comprehension.  So I departed full of honour amid thunders of applause.
+
+From the first day our room was the resort of all the American
+ship-captains in Marseilles.  We kept a kind of social hall or exchange,
+with wine and cigars on the side-table, all of which dropping in and out
+rather reminded me of Princeton.  My friend the actor had pitched upon a
+young English Jew, who seemed to me to be a doubtful character.  He sang
+very well, and was full of local news and gossip.  He, too, was at home
+among us.  One evening our captain told us how he every day smuggled
+ashore fifty cigars in his hat.  At hearing this, I saw a gleam in the
+eyes of the young man, which was a revelation to me.  When he had gone, I
+said to the captain, "You had better not smuggle any cigars to-morrow.
+That fellow is a spy of the police."
+
+The next day Captain Jack on leaving his ship was accosted by the
+_douaniers_, who politely requested him to take off his hat.  He refused,
+and was then told that he must go before the _prefet_.  There the request
+was renewed.  He complied; but "forewarned, forearmed"--there was nothing
+in it.
+
+Captain Jack complimented me on my sagacity, and scolded the actor for
+making such friends.  But he had unconsciously made me familiar with one
+compared to whom the spy was a trifle.  I have already fully and very
+truthfully described this remarkable man in an article in _Temple Bar_,
+but his proper place is here.  He was a little modest-looking Englishman,
+who seemed to me rather to look up to the fast young American captains as
+types or models of more daring beings.  Sometimes he would tell a mildly-
+naughty tale as if it were a wild thing.  He consulted with me as to
+going to Paris and hearing lectures at the University, his education
+having been neglected.  He had, I was told, experienced a sad loss,
+having just lost his ship on the Guinea coast.  One day I condoled with
+him, saying that I heard he had been ruined.
+
+"Yes," replied the captain, "I have.  Something like this: My mother once
+had a very pretty housemaid who disappeared.  Some time after I met her
+magnificently dressed, and I said, 'Sally, where do you live now?'  She
+replied, 'Please, sir, I don't live anywhere now; I've been _ruined_.'"
+
+Sam explained to me that the captain had a keg of gold-dust and many
+diamonds, and having wrecked his vessel intentionally, was going to
+London to get a heavy insurance.  He had been "ruined" to his very great
+advantage.  Then Sam remarked--
+
+"You don't know the captain.  I tell you, Charley, that man is an old
+slaver or pirate.  See how I'll draw him out."
+
+'The next day Sam began to talk.  He remarked that he had been to sea and
+had some money which he wished to invest.  His health required a warm
+climate, such as the African coast.  We would both, in fact, like to go
+into the Guinea business.  [_Bozales_--"sacks of charcoal," I remarked in
+Spanish slaver-slang.]  The captain smiled.  He had apparently heard the
+expression before.  He considered it.  He had a great liking for me, and
+thought that a trip or two under the black flag would do me a great deal
+of good.  So he noted down our address, and promised that as soon as he
+should get a ship we should hear from him.
+
+After that the captain, regarding me as enlisted in the fraternity, and
+only waiting till 'twas "time for us to go," had no secrets from me.  He
+was very glad that I knew Spanish and French, and explained that if I
+would learn Coromantee or Ebo, it would aid us immensely in getting
+cargoes.  By the way, I became very well acquainted in after years with
+King George of Bonney, and can remember entertaining him with a story how
+a friend of mine once (in Cuba) bought thirty Ebos, and on entering the
+barracoon the next morning, found them all hanging by the necks dead,
+like a row of possums in the Philadelphia market--they having, with
+magnificent pluck, and in glorious defiance of Buckra civilisation,
+resolved to go back to Africa.  I have found other blacks who believed
+that all good darkies when they die go to Guinea, and one of these was
+very touching and strange.  He had been brought as a slave-child to South
+Carolina, but was always haunted by the memory of a group of cocoa-palms
+by a place where the wild white surf of the ocean bounded up to the
+shore--a rock, sunshine, and sand.  There he declared his soul would go.
+He was a Voodoo, and a man of marvellous strange mind.
+
+Day by day my commander gave me, as I honestly believe, without a shadow
+of exaggeration, all the terrific details of a slaver's life, and his
+strange experiences in buying slaves in the interior.  Compared to the
+awful massacres and cruelties inflicted by the blacks on one another, the
+white slave trade seemed to be philanthropic and humane.  He had seen at
+the grand custom in Dahomey 2,500 men killed, and a pool made of their
+blood into which the king's wives threw themselves naked and wallowed.
+"One day fifteen were to be tortured to death for witchcraft.  I bought
+them all for an old dress-coat," said the captain.  "I didn't want them,
+for my cargo was made up; it was only to save the poor devils' lives."
+
+If a slaver could not get a full cargo, and met with a weaker vessel
+which was full, it was at once attacked and plundered.  Sometimes there
+would be desperate resistance, with the aid of the slaves.  "I have seen
+the scuppers run with blood," said the captain.  And so on, with much
+more of the same sort, all of which has since been recorded in the
+"Journal of Captain Canot," from which latter book I really learned
+nothing new.  I might add the "Life of Hobart Pacha," whom I met many
+times in London.  A real old-fashioned slaver was fully a hundred times
+worse than an average pirate, because he _was_ the latter whenever he
+wished to rob, and in his business was the cause of far more suffering
+and death.
+
+The captain was very fond of reading poetry, his favourite being
+Wordsworth.  This formed quite a tie between us.  He was always rather
+mild, quiet, and old-fashioned--in fact, muffish.  Once only did I see a
+spark from him which showed what was latent.  Captain Jack was describing
+a most extraordinary run which we had made before a gale from Gibraltar
+to Cape de Creux, which was, indeed, true enough, he having a very fast
+vessel.  But the _Guinea_ captain denied that such time had ever been
+made by any craft ever built.  "And I have had to sail sometimes pretty
+fast in my time," he added with one sharp glance--no more--but, as Byron
+says of the look of Gulleyaz, 'twas like a short glimpse of hell.  Pretty
+fast!  I should think so--now and then from an English cruiser, all sails
+wetted down, with the gallows in the background.  But as I had been on
+board with Sam, the question was settled.  We _had_ made a run which was
+beyond all precedent.
+
+I fancy that the captain, if he escaped the halter or the wave, in after
+years settled down in some English coast-village, where he read
+Wordsworth, and attended church regularly, and was probably regarded as a
+gentle old duffer by the younger members of society.  But take him for
+all in all, he was the mildest-mannered man that ever scuttled ship or
+cut a throat, and he always behaved to me like a perfect gentleman, and
+never uttered an improper word.
+
+We had to wait one month till my cousin could get certain news from
+America.  We employed the time in travelling in the south, visiting
+Arles, Nismes, Montpellier, and other places.  An English gentleman named
+Gordon, whom I had met in Marseilles, had given me a letter of
+introduction to M. Saint Rene Taillandier in the latter place.  I knew
+nothing at all then about this great man, or that he was the first French
+critic of German literature, but I presented my letter, and he kindly
+went with me about the town to show me its antiquities.  I can remember
+discussing Gothic tracery with him; also, that I told him I was deeply
+interested in the Troubadours.  He recommended Raynouard and several
+other books, when finding that I was familiar with them all, he smiled,
+and said that he believed he could teach me nothing more.  I did not know
+it then, but that word from him would have been as good as a diploma for
+me in Paris.
+
+As for old Roman ruins and Gothic churches, and cloisters grey, and the
+arrowy Rhone, and castellated bridges--everything was in a more original
+moss-grown, picturesque condition then than it now is--I enjoyed them all
+with an intensity, a freshness or love, which passeth all belief.  I had
+attended Professor Dodd's lectures more than once, and illuminated
+manuscripts, and had bought me in Marseilles Berty's "Dictionary of
+Gothic Architecture," and got it by heart, and began to think of making a
+profession of it, which, if I had known it, was the very wisest thing I
+could have done.  And that this is no idle boast is clear from this, that
+I in after years made a design according to which a "store," which cost
+30,000 pounds, was built, my plan being believed by another skilled
+architect to have been executed by a "professional."  This was really the
+sad slip and escape of my lifetime.
+
+In those days, really _good_ red wine was given to every one at every
+table; savoury old-fashioned dishes, vegetables, and fruits were served
+far more freely and cheaply than they now are, when every dainty is sent
+by rail to Paris or London, and the drinking of Bordeaux and Burgundy did
+me much good.  Blessed days of cheapness and good quality, before
+chicory, the accursed poison, had found its way into coffee, or
+oleomargarine was invented, or all things canned--the world will never
+see ye more!  I have now lived for many months in a first-class Florence
+hotel, and in all the time have not tasted one fresh Italian mushroom, or
+truffle, or olive--nothing but tasteless abominations bottled in France!
+
+It was settled that my cousin should return from Marseilles to the United
+States, while I was to go on alone to Italy.  It was misgivingly
+predicted at home by divers friends that I would be as a lamb set loose
+among wolves, and lose all my money at the outstart.  Could they have
+learned that within a week after my arrival I had been regarded by
+Spanish smugglers as a brother, and tripped up a spy of the police, and
+been promised a situation as a slaver's and pirate's assistant, they
+might have thought that I had begun to learn how to take care of myself
+in a hurry.  As for losing my money, I, by a terrible accident, _doubled
+it_, as I will here describe.
+
+Before leaving home, a lady cousin had made for Samuel and me each a
+purse, and they were exactly alike.  Now by a purse I mean a real
+_purse_, and not a pocket-book, or a porte-monnaie, or a wallet--that is,
+I mean a long bag with a slit and two rings, and nothing else.  And my
+cousin having often scolded me for leaving mine lying about in our room,
+I seeing it, as I thought, just a few minutes before my departure, lying
+on the table, pocketed it, thanking God that Sam had not found it, or
+scolded me.
+
+I went on board the steamboat and set sail towards Italy.  I was sea-sick
+all night, but felt better the next day.  Then I had to pay out some
+money, and thought I would look over my gold.  To my utter amazement, it
+was _doubled_!  This I attributed to great generosity on Sam's part, and
+I blessed him.
+
+But, merciful heavens! what were my sensations at finding in the lower
+depth of my pocket _another purse_ also filled with Napoleons in
+rouleaux!  Then it all flashed upon me.  Samuel, the careful, had left
+_his_ purse lying on the table, and I had supposed it was mine!  I felt
+as wretched as if I had lost instead of won.
+
+When I got to Naples I found a letter from my cousin bewailing his loss.
+He implored me, if I knew nothing about it, not to tell it to a human
+soul.  There was a M. Duclaux in Marseilles, with whom we had had our
+business dealings, and from him Sam had borrowed what he needed.  I at
+once requested Captain Olive, of the steamer, to convey the purse and its
+contents to M. Duclaux, which I suppose was done _secundem ordinem_.
+
+Poor Sam!  I never met him again.  He died of consumption soon after
+returning home.  He was one of whom I can say with truth that I never saw
+in him a fault, however trifling.  He was honour itself in everything, as
+humane as was his grandfather before him, ever cheerful and kind, merry
+and quaint.
+
+The programme of the steamboat declared that meals were included in the
+fare, "except while stopping at a port."  But we stopped every day at
+Genoa or Leghorn, or somewhere, and stayed about fifteen hours, and as
+almost every passenger fell sea-sick after going ashore, the meals were
+not many.  On board the first day, I made the acquaintance of Mr. James
+Temple Bowdoin, of Boston, and Mr. Mosely, of whom I had often heard as
+editor of the _Richmond Whig_.  Mr. Bowdoin was a nephew of Lady Temple,
+and otherwise widely connected with English families.  He is now living
+(1892), and I have seen a great deal of him of late years.  With these
+two I joined company, and travelled with them over Italy.  Both were much
+older than I, and experienced men of the world; therefore I was in good
+hands, and better guides, philosophers, mentors, pilots, and friends I
+could hardly have found.  Left to myself, I should probably ere the
+winter was over have been the beloved chief of a gang of gypsies, or
+brigands, or witches, or careering the wild sea-wave as a daring
+smuggler, all in innocence and goodness of heart; for truly in Marseilles
+I had begun to put forth buds of such strange kind and promise as no
+friend of mine ever dreamed of.  As it was, I got into better, if less
+picturesque, society.
+
+We came to Naples, and went to a hotel, and visited everything.  In those
+days the beggars and pimps and pickpockets were beyond all modern
+conception.  The picturesqueness of the place and people were only
+equalled by the stinks.  It was like a modern realistic novel.  We went a
+great deal to the opera, also to the Blue Grotto of Capri, and ascended
+Mount Vesuvius, and sought Baiae, and made, in fact, all the excursions.
+As there were three, and sometimes half-a-dozen of our friends on these
+trips, we had, naturally, with us quite a _cortege_.  Among these was an
+ill-favoured rascal called "John," who always received a dollar a day.
+One evening some one raised the question as to what the devil it was that
+John did.  He did not carry anything, or work to any account, or guide,
+or inform, yet he was always there, and always in the way.  So John,
+being called up, was asked what he did.  Great was his indignation, for
+by this time he had got to consider himself indispensable.  He declared
+that he "directed, and made himself generally useful."  We informed him
+that we would do our own directing, and regarded him as generally
+useless.  So John was discarded.  Since then I have found that "John" is
+a very frequent ingredient in all societies and Government offices.  There
+are Johns in Parliament, in the army, and in the Church.  His children
+are pensioned into the third and fourth and fortieth generation.  In
+fact, I am not sure that John is not the great social question of the
+age.
+
+There was in Philadelphia an Academy of Fine Arts, or Gallery, of which
+my father had generously presented me with two shares, which gave me free
+entrance.  There were in it many really excellent pictures, even a first-
+class Murillo, besides Wests and Allstons.  Unto this I had, as was my
+wont, read up closely, and reflected much on what I read, so that I was
+to a certain degree prepared for the marvels of art which burst on me in
+Naples.  And if I was, and always have been, _rather_ insensible to the
+merits of Renaissance sculpture and architecture, I was not so to its
+painting, and not at all blind to the unsurpassed glories of its classic
+prototypes.  Professor Dodd had indeed impressed it deeply and specially
+on my mind that the revival of a really pure Greek taste in England, or
+from the work of Stewart and Revett, was contemporary with that for
+Gothic architecture, and that the appreciation of one, if _true_, implies
+that of the other.  As I was now fully inspired with my new resolution to
+become an architect, I read all that I could get on the subject, and
+naturally examined all remains of the past far more closely and
+critically than I should otherwise have done.  And this again inspired in
+me (who always had a mania for bric-a-brac and antiquity, which is
+certainly hereditary) a great interest in the characteristic _decoration_
+of different ages, which thing is the soul and life of all aesthetic
+archaeology and the minor arts; which latter again I truly claim to have
+brought, I may say, into scientific form and made a branch of education
+in after years.
+
+I think that we were a month in Naples.  I kept a journal then, and
+indeed everywhere for three years after.  The reader may be thankful that
+I have it not, for I foresee that I shall easily recall enough to fill
+ten folios of a thousand pages solid brevier each, at this rate of
+reminiscences.  As my predilection for everything German and Gothic came
+out more strongly every day, Mr. Mosely called me familiarly Germanicus,
+a name which was indeed not ill-bestowed at that period.
+
+From Naples we went to Rome by _vettura_, or in carriages.  We were two
+days and two nights on the route.  I remember that when we entered Rome,
+I saw the _douanier_ who examined my trunk remove from it, as he thought
+unperceived, a hair-brush, book, &c., and slyly hide them behind another
+trunk.  I calmly walked round, retook and replaced them in my trunk, to
+the discomfiture, but not in the least to the shame, of the thief, who
+only grinned.
+
+And here I may say, once for all, that one can hardly fail to have a mean
+opinion of human common-sense in government, when we see this system of
+examining luggage still maintained.  For all that any country could
+_possibly_ lose by smuggling in trunks, &c., would be a hundred-fold
+recompensed by the increased amount of travel and money imported, should
+it be done away with, as has been perfectly and fully proved in France;
+the announcement a year ago that examination would be null or formal
+having had at once the effect of greatly increasing travel.  And as there
+is not a custom-house in all Europe where a man who knows the trick
+cannot pull through his luggage by bribery--the exceptions being
+miraculously rare--the absurdity and folly of the system is apparent.
+
+We went to the Hotel d'Allemagne, where I fell ill, either because I had
+a touch of Neapolitan malaria in me (in those days the stench of the city
+was perceptible three miles out at sea, and might have risen unto heaven
+above and been smelt by the angels, had they and their home been as near
+to earth as was believed by the schoolmen), or because the journey had
+been too much for me.  However, an English physician set me up all right
+in two or three days (he wanted to sell us pictures which would have
+cured any one--of a love of art), and then there began indeed a glorious
+scampering and investigating, rooting and rummaging--
+
+   "'Mid deathless lairs in solemn Rome."
+
+Galleries and gardens, ruins and palaces, Colosseum and temples, churches
+and museums--ye have had many a better informed and many a more inspired
+or gifted visitor than I, but whether from your first Sabine days you
+ever had a happier one, or one who enjoyed you more with the simple
+enjoyment of youth and hope gratified, I doubt.  Sometimes among moss-
+grown arches on a sunny day, as the verd-antique lizards darted over the
+stones from dark to light, while far in the distance tinkled bells,
+either from cows or convents, and all was calm and sweet, I have often
+wondered if it could indeed be real and not a dream.  Life often seemed
+to me then to be too good to be true.  And there was this at least good
+in my Transcendentalism and Poly-Pantheism, that it quite unconsciously
+or silently gave me many such hours; for it had sunk so deeply into my
+soul, and was so much a real part thereof, that it inspired me when I
+never thought of it, in which I differed by a heaven's width from the
+professional Yankee Transcendentalists, Presbyterians, Methodists,
+AEsthetes, and other spiritualists or sorcerers, who always kept their
+blessed belief, as a holy fugleman, full in sight, to give them sacred
+straight tips, or as a Star-spangled Bannerman who waved exceedingly,
+while my spirit was a shy fairy, who dwelt far down in the depths of the
+all too green sea of my soul, where it seemed to me she had ever been, or
+ever a storm had raised a wave on the surface.  Antiquely verdant green I
+was, no doubt.  And even to this day the best hours of my life are when I
+hear her sweet voice 'mid ivy greens or ruins grey, in wise books, hoar
+traditions.  Be it where it will, it is _that_, and not the world of men
+or books, which gives the charm.
+
+It was usual for all who drew from Torlonia's bank not less than 20
+pounds to be invited to his soirees.  To ensure the expenses, the footman
+who brought the invitation called the day after for not less than _five
+francs_.  But the entertainment was well worth the money, and more.  There
+was a good supper--Thackeray has represented a character in "Vanity Fair"
+as devouring it--and much amusement.
+
+Now I had written my name _Chas._, which being mistaken for _Chev._, I in
+due time, received an invitation addressed to M. le Chevalier Godfrey de
+Leland.  And it befell that I once found a lost decoration of the Order
+of the Golden Spur, which in those days _was_ actually sold to anybody
+who asked for it for ten pounds, and was worth "nothing to nobody."  This
+caused much fun among my friends, and from that day I was known as the
+Chevalier Germanicus, or the Knight of the Golden Spur, to which I
+assented with very good grace as a joke.  There were even a few who
+really believed that I had been decorated, though I never wore it, and
+one day I received quite a severe remonstrance from a very patriotic
+fellow-countryman against the impropriety of my thus risking my loss of
+citizenship.  Which caused me to reflect how many there are in life who
+rise to such "honours," Heaven only knows how, in a back-stairs way.  I
+know in London a very great man of science, _nemini secundus_, who has
+never been knighted, although the tradesman who makes for him his
+implements and instruments has received the title and the _accolade_.
+_Fie_ at justitia!
+
+I saw at one of the Torlonia entertainments a marvellously beautiful and
+strange thing, of which I had read an account in Mme. de Stael's
+_Corinne_.  There was a stage, on which appeared a young girl, plainly
+dressed, and bearing a simple small scarf.  She did not speak or dance,
+or even assume "artistic positions"; what she did was far more striking
+and wonderful.  She merely sat or stood or reclined in many ways, every
+one of which seemed to be _perfectly_ natural or habitual, and all of
+which were incredibly graceful.  I have forgotten how such women were
+called in Italy.  I am sure that this one had never been trained to it,
+for the absolute ease and naturalness with which she sat or stood could
+never have been taught.  If it could, every woman in the world would
+learn it.  Ristori was one of these instinctive _Graces_, and it
+constituted nearly all the art there was in her.
+
+This was in 1846.  The Carnival of that year in Rome was the last real
+one which Italy ever beheld.  It was the very last, for which every soul
+saved up all his money for months, in order to make a wild display, and
+dance and revel and indulge in
+
+         "Eating, drinking, masking,
+   And other things which could be had for asking."
+
+Then all Rome ran mad, and rode in carriages full of flowers, or carts,
+or wheelbarrows, or triumphal chariots, or on camels, horses, asses, or
+rails--_n'importe quoi_--and merrily cast _confetti_ of flour or lime at
+one another laughing, while grave English tourists on balconies
+laboriously poured the same by the peck from tin scoops on the heads of
+the multitude, under the delusion that they too were enjoying themselves
+and "doing" the Carnival properly.  It was the one great rule among
+Italians that no man should in the Carnival, under any provocation
+whatever, lose his temper.  And here John Bull often tripped up.  On the
+last night of the last Carnival--that great night--there was the _Senza
+Moccolo_ or extinguishment of lights, in which everybody bore a burning
+taper, and tried to blow or knock out the light of his neighbour.  Now,
+being tall, I held my taper high with one hand, well out of danger, while
+with a broad felt hat in the other I extinguished the children of light
+like a priest.  I threw myself into all the roaring fun like a wild boy,
+as I was, and was never so jolly.  Observing a pretty young English lady
+in an open carriage, I thrice extinguished her light, at which she
+laughed, but at which her brother or beau did not, for he got into a
+great rage, even the first time, and bade me begone.  Whereupon I
+promptly renewed the attack, and then repeated it, "according to the
+rules of the game," whereat he began to curse and swear, when I, in the
+Italian fashion of rebuke (to the delight of sundry Italians), pointed my
+finger at him and hissed; which constituted the winning _point d'honneur_
+in the game.
+
+There, too, was the race of wild horses, right down through the Corso or
+Condotti, well worth seeing, and very exciting, and game suppers o'nights
+after the opera, and the meeting with many swells and noted folk, and now
+it all seems like some memory of a wild phantasmagoria or hurried magic-
+lantern show--galleries and ruins by day, and gaiety by night.  Even so
+do all the scenes of life roll up together at its end, often getting
+mixed.
+
+Yet another Roman memory or two.  We had taken lodgings in the Via
+Condotti, where we had a nice sitting-room in common and a good
+coal-fire.  Our landlady was lady-like and spoke French, and had long
+been a governess in the great Borghese family.  As for her husband, there
+were thousands of Liberals far and wide who spoke of him as the greatest
+scoundrel unhung, for he was at the head of the Roman police, and I
+verily believe knew more iniquity than the Pope himself.  It would have
+been against all nature and precedent if I had not become his dear friend
+and _protege_, which I did accordingly, for I liked him very much indeed,
+and Heaven knows that such a rum couple of friends as Giuseppe Navone and
+myself, when out walking together, could not at that time have been found
+in Europe.
+
+It may here be observed that I was decidedly getting on in the quality of
+my Mentors, for, as regarded morals and humanity, my old pirate and
+slaver friend was truly as a lamb and an angel of light compared to
+Navone.  And I will further indicate, as this book will prove, that if I
+was not at the age of twenty-three the most accomplished young scoundrel
+in all Europe, it was not for want of such magnificent opportunities and
+friends as few men ever enjoyed.  But it was always my fate to neglect or
+to be unable to profit by advantages, as, for instance, in mathematics;
+nor in dishonesty did I succeed one whit better, which may be the reason
+why the two are somehow dimly connected in my mind.  Here I think I see
+the unfathomable smile in the eye of Professor Dodd (it never got down to
+his lips), who was the incarnate soul of purity and honour.  But then the
+banker, E. Fenzi, who swindled me out of nearly 500 francs, was an
+arithmetician, and I write under a sense of recent wrong.  How this loss,
+and Fenzi's failure, flight, and the fuss which it all caused in
+Florence, were accurately foretold me by a witch, may be read in detail
+in my "Etrusco-Roman Remains in Tuscan Tradition."  London: T. Fisher
+Unwin.
+
+My landlady was a very zealous Catholic, and tried to convert me.  This
+was a new experience, and I enjoyed it.  I proved malleable.  So she
+called in a Jesuit priest to perfect the work.  I listened with deep
+interest to his worn-out _fade_ arguments, made a few points of feeble
+objection for form's sake, yielded, and met him more than half way.  But
+somehow he never called again.  _Latet anguis in herba_--my grass was
+rather too green, I suppose.  I was rather sorry, for I expected some
+amusement.  But I had been _too_ deep for the Jesuit--and for myself.
+
+The time came for my departure.  I was to go alone on to Florence, in
+advance of my friends.  Navone arranged everything nicely for me: I was
+to go by diligence on to Civita Vecchia, where I was to call on a
+relative of his, who kept a bric-a-brac shop.  I did not know how or why
+it was that I was treated with such great respect, as if with fear, by
+the conductor, and by all on the road.  I was _en route_ all night, and
+in the morning, very weary, I went to a hotel, called a commissionaire,
+and bade him get my passport from the police, and have it _visee_, and
+secure me a passage on the boat to Leghorn.  He returned very soon, and
+said with an air of bewilderment, "Signore, you sent me on a useless
+errand.  Here is your passport put all _en regle_, and your passage is
+all secured!"
+
+I saw it at once.  The kind fatherly care of the great and good Navone
+had done it all!  He had watched over me invisibly and mysteriously all
+the time during the night; on the road I was a pet child of the Roman
+police!  The Vehmgericht had endorsed me with three crosses!  Therefore
+the passport and the passage were all right, and the captain was very
+deferential, and I got to Florence safely.
+
+In Florence I went to the first hotel, which was then in what is now
+known as the Palazzo Feroni, or Viesseux's, the great circulating library
+of Italy.  It is a fine machicolated building, which was in the Middle
+Ages the prison of the Republic.  From my window I had a fine view of the
+Via Tornabuoni--in which I had coffee since I concluded the last line.
+There were but three or four persons the first evening at the
+_table-d'hote_.  One was a very beautiful Polish countess, who spoke
+French perfectly.  She was very fascinating, and, when she ate a salad,
+smeared her lovely mouth and cheeks all round with oil to her ears.  Some
+one said something to her about the manner in which the serfs were
+treated in Poland, whereupon she replied with great vivacity that the
+Polish serfs were even more degraded and barbarous than those of Russia.
+Which remark inspired in me certain reflections, which were amply
+developed in after years by the perusal of Von Moltke's work on Poland,
+and more recently of that very interesting novel called "The Deluge."  If
+freedom shrieked when Kosciusko fell, it was probably, from a
+humanitarian point of view, with joy.
+
+There was, however, at the same hotel a singular man, a Lithuanian Pole
+named Andrekovitch, with whom I became very intimate, and whom I met in
+after years in Paris and in America.  He had been at a German university,
+where he had imbibed most liberal and revolutionary ideas.  He
+subsequently took part in one or two revolutions, and was exiled.  He had
+read about Emerson in a French magazine, and was enthusiastic over him.
+In strange contrast to him was a handsome young man from the Italian
+Tyrol, who was, like the Pole and myself, full of literary longings, but
+who was still quite a Roman Catholic.  He knew about as much, or as
+little, of the world as I did, and was "gentle and bland."  When we bade
+farewell, he wept, and kissed me.  Andrekovitch was eccentric, wild, and
+Slavonian-odd to look at at any time.  One evening he came into my room
+clad in scarlet dressing-gown, and having altogether the appearance of a
+sorcerer just out of a Sabbat.  The conversation took a theological turn.
+Andrekovitch was the ragged remnant of a Catholic, but a very small one.
+He sailed close to the wind, and neared Rationalism.
+
+"But the Pope! . . ." exclaimed the Tyrolese.
+
+Andrekovitch rose, looking more sorcerer or Zamiel-like than ever, and
+exclaiming, "The Pope be--!" left the room.  The last word was lost in
+the slam of the door.  It was a melodramatic departure, and as such has
+ever been impressed on my memory.
+
+My father, while a merchant, and also my uncle, had done a very large
+business in Florentine straw goods, and I had received letters to several
+English houses who had corresponded with them.  I heard, long after, that
+my arrival had caused a small panic in Florence in business circles, it
+being apprehended that I had come out to establish a rival branch, or to
+buy at head-quarters for the American "straw-market."  I believe that
+their fears were appeased when I interviewed them.  One of these worthy
+men had been so long in Italy that he had caught a little of its
+superstition.  He wished to invest in lottery tickets, and asked me for
+lucky numbers, which I gave him.
+
+As I write these lines in Florence, I have within half-an-hour called for
+the first time on an old witch or _strega_, whom I found surrounded by
+herbs and bottles, and a magnificent cat, who fixed his eyes on me all
+the time, as if he recognised a friend.  I found, however, that she only
+knew the common vulgar sorceries, and was unable to give me any of the
+higher _scongiurazioni_ or conjurations; and as I left, the old sorceress
+said respectfully and admiringly, "You come to _me_ to learn, O Maestro,
+but it is fitter that I take lessons from you!"  Then she asked me for
+"the wizard blessing," which I gave her in Romany.  So my first and last
+experiences in the deep and dark art come together!
+
+I became acquainted in Florence with Hiram Powers, which reminds me that
+I once in Rome dined _vis-a-vis_ to Gibson and several other artists,
+with whom I became intimate as young men readily do.  I contrived to
+study architecture, and made myself very much at home in a few studios.
+The magnificent _Fiorara_, or flower-girl, whom so many will remember for
+many years, was then in the full bloom of her beauty.  She and others
+gave flowers to any strangers whom they met, not expecting money down,
+but when a man departed the flower-girls were always on hand to solicit a
+gratuity.  Twenty years later this same Fiorara, still a very handsome
+woman, remembered me, and gave my wife a handsome bouquet on leaving.
+
+I studied Provencal and Italian poetry in illuminated MSS. in the
+Ambrosian or Laurentian Library, and took my coffee at Doney's, and saw
+more of Florence in a few weeks' time than I have ever done since in any
+one of my residences here, though some of them have been for six and nine
+months.  As is quite natural.  Who that lives in London ever goes to see
+the Tower?  All things in Europe were so new and fresh and beautiful and
+wonderful to me then, and I had been yearning for them so earnestly for
+so many years, and this golden freedom followed so closely on the deadly
+_ennui_ of Princeton, that I could never see enough.
+
+If any of my readers want to know something of sorcery, I can tell them
+that among its humblest professors it is perfectly understood that
+pleasure or enjoyment is one of its deepest mysteries or principles, as
+an integral part of fascination.  So I can feel an _enchantment_,
+sometimes almost incredible, in gazing on a Gothic ruin in sunshine, or a
+beautiful face, a picture by Carpaccio, Norse interlaces, lovable old
+books, my amethyst amulet, or a garden.  For if you could sway life and
+death, and own millions, or walk invisible, you could do no more than
+_enjoy_; therefore you had better learn to enjoy much without such power.
+Thus endeth the first lesson!
+
+I arrived in Venice.  There had been a time in America when, if I could
+have truthfully declared that I had ever been in a gondola, I should have
+felt as if I held a diploma of nobility in the Grand Order of
+Cosmopolites.  Having been conveyed in one to my hotel on the Grand
+Canal, I felt that I at last held it!  Now I had really mastered the
+three great cities of Italy, which was the first and greatest part of all
+travel in all the world of culture and of art.  Fate might hurl me back
+to America, or even into New Jersey, but I had "swum in a gondola."
+
+I very soon made the acquaintance of two brothers from New York named
+Seymour, somewhat older than myself, and men of reading and culture.  With
+them I "sight-saw" the city.  I had read Venice up rather closely at
+Princeton, and had formed a great desire to go on the Bridge of Sighs.
+For some reason this was then very strictly forbidden.  Our Consul, who
+was an enterprising young man, told me that he had been for months trying
+to effect it in vain.  It at once became apparent to me as a piece of
+manifest destiny that I must do it.
+
+One day I had with me a clever fellow, a commissionaire or guide, and
+consulted him.  He said, "I think it may be done.  You look like an
+Austrian, and may be taken for an officer.  Walk boldly into the chief's
+office, and ask for the keys of the bridge; only show a little cheek.  You
+may get them.  Give the chief's man two francs when you come out.  At the
+worst, he can only refuse to give them."
+
+It was indeed a very cheeky undertaking, but I ventured on it with the
+calmness of innocence.  I went into the office, and said, "The keys to
+the bridge, if you please!" as if I were in an official hurry on State
+business.  The official stared, and said--
+
+"Do I understand that you formally demand the keys?"
+
+"_Ja wohl_, certainly; at once, if you please!"
+
+They were handed over to me, and I saw the bridge and gave the two
+francs, and all was well.  But it gave me no renown in Venice, for the
+Consul and all my friends regarded it as a fabulous joke of mine,
+inspired by poetic genius.  But I sometimes think that the official who
+yielded up the keys, and the man whom he sent with me, and perhaps the
+commissionaire, all had a put-up job of it among them on those keys, and
+several glasses all round out of those two francs.  _Quien sabe_?  _Vive
+la bagatelle_!
+
+We went on an excursion to Padua.  What I remember is, that what
+impressed me most was a placard here and there announcing that a work on
+Oken had just appeared!  This rather startled me.  Whether it was for or
+against the great German offshoot from Schelling, it proved that somebody
+in Italy had actually studied him!  _Eppure si muove_, I thought.  It
+cannot be true that--
+
+   "Padua! the lamp of learning
+   In thy halls no more is burning."
+
+I have been there several times since.  All that I now recall is that the
+hotel was not very good the last time.
+
+I met in Venice a young New Yorker named Clark, who had crossed with me
+on the ship.  He was a merry companion.  Sailing with him one morning in
+a gondola along the Grand Canal, we saw sitting before a hotel its
+porter, who was an unmistakable American man of full colour.  Great was
+Clark's delight, and he called out, "I say, Buck! what the devil are you
+doing here?"
+
+With a delighted grin, the man and brother replied in deep Southern
+accent--
+
+"Dey sets me hyar fo' a bait to 'tice de Americans with."
+
+I heard subsequently that he had come from America with his mistress, and
+served her faithfully till there came into the service a pretty French
+girl.  Great was the anger of the owner of the man to find that he had
+unmistakably "enticed" the maid.  To which he replied that it was a free
+country; that he had married the damsel--she was his wife; and so the
+pair at once packed up and departed.
+
+We used to hear a great deal before the war from Southerns about the
+devotion of their slaves, but there were a great many instances in which
+the fidelity did not exactly hold water.  There was an old Virginia
+gentleman who owned one of these faithful creatures.  He took him several
+times to the North, and as the faithful one always turned a deaf ear to
+the Abolitionists, and resisted every temptation to depart, and refused
+every free-ticket offered for a journey on "the underground railway," and
+went back to Richmond, he was of course trusted to an unlimited extent.
+When the war ended he was freed.  Some one asked him one day how he could
+have been such a fool as to remain a slave.  He replied--
+
+"Kase it paid.  Dere's nuffin pays like being a dewoted darkey.  De las'
+time I went Norf wid massa I made 'nuff out of him to buy myself free
+twice't over."
+
+Doubtless there were many instances of "pampered and petted" household
+servants who had grown up in families who had sense to know that they
+could never live free in the freezing North without hard work.  These
+were the only devoted ones of whom I ever heard.  The field-hands,
+disciplined by the lash, and liable to have their wives or children or
+relatives sold from them--_as happened on an average once at least in a
+life_--were all to a man quite ready to forsake "ole massa" and "dear ole
+missus," and flee unto freedom.  And what a vile mean wretch any man must
+be who would sacrifice his _freedom_ to any other living being, be it for
+love or feudal fidelity--and what a villain must the man be who would
+accept such a gift!
+
+I had never thought much of this subject before I left home.  I did not
+_like_ slavery, nor to think about it.  But in Europe I did like such
+thought, and I returned fully impressed with the belief that slavery was,
+as Charles Sumner said, "the sum of all crimes."  In which summation he
+showed himself indeed a "sumner," as it was called of yore.  Which cost
+me many a bitter hour and much sorrow, for there was hardly a soul whom I
+knew, except my mother, to whom an Abolitionist was not simply the same
+thing as a disgraceful, discreditable malefactor.  Even my father, when
+angry with me one day, could think of nothing bitterer than to tell me
+that I knew I was _an Abolitionist_.  I kept it to myself, but the reader
+can have no idea of what I was made to suffer for years in Philadelphia,
+where everything Southern was exalted and worshipped with a baseness
+below that of the blacks themselves.
+
+For all of which in after years I had full and complete recompense.  I
+lived to see the young ladies who were ready to kneel before any man who
+owned "sla-aves," detest the name of "South," and to learn that their
+fathers and friends were battling to the death to set those slaves free.
+I lived to see the roof of the "gentlemanly planter," who could not of
+yore converse a minute with me without letting me know that he considered
+himself as an immeasurably higher being than myself, blaze over his head
+amid yell and groan and sabre-stroke--
+
+   "And death-shots flying thick and fast,"
+
+while he fled for life, and the freed slaves sang hymns of joy to God.  I
+saw the roads, five miles wide, level, barren, and crossed with ruts,
+where Northern and Southern armies had marched, and where villages and
+plantations had once been.  I saw countless friends or acquaintances, who
+had once smiled with pitying scorn at me, or delicately turned the
+conversation when Abolition was mentioned in my presence, become all at
+once blatant "nigger-worshippers," abundant in proof that they had always
+had "an indescribable horror of slavery"--it was, in fact, so
+indescribable that (until it was evident that the North would conquer)
+none of them ever succeeded in giving anybody the faintest conception of
+it, or any idea that it existed.  I can still recall how gingerly and
+cautiously--"paw by paw into the water"--these dough faces became hard-
+baked Abolitionists, far surpassing us of the Old Guard in zeal.  I lived
+to see men who had voted against Grant and _reviled_ him become his most
+intimate friends.  But enough of such memories.  It is characteristic of
+the American people that, while personally very vindictive, they forgive
+and forget political offences far more amicably--very far--than do even
+the English.  However, in the case of the Rebellion, this was a very easy
+thing for those to do who had not, like us old Abolitionists, borne the
+burden and heat of the day, and who, coming in at the eleventh hour, got
+all the contracts and offices!  It never came into the head of any man to
+write a _Dictionnaire des Girouettes_ in America.  These late converts
+had never known what it was to be Abolitionists while it was
+"unfashionable," and have, as it were, live coals laid on the quivering
+heart--as I had a thousand times during many years--all for believing the
+tremendous and plain truth that _slavery_ was a thousand times wickeder
+than the breach of all the commandments put together.  It was so peculiar
+for any man, not a Unitarian or Quaker, to be an _Abolitionist_ in
+Philadelphia from 1848 until 1861, that such exceptions were pointed out
+as if they had been Chinese--"and d---d bad Chinese at that," as a friend
+added to whom I made the remark.  So much for man's relations with poor
+humanity.
+
+My old friend, B. P. Hunt, was one of these few exceptions.  His was a
+very strange experience.  After ceasing to edit a "selected" magazine, he
+went to and fro for many voyages to Haiti, where, singular as it may
+seem, his experiences of the blacks made of him a stern Abolitionist.  He
+married a connection of mine, and lived comfortably in Philadelphia, I
+think, until the eighties.
+
+I travelled with Mr. Clark from Venice to Milan, where we made a short
+visit.  I remember an old soldier who spoke six languages, who was
+cicerone of the roof of the Cathedral, and whom I found still on the roof
+twenty years later, and still speaking the same six tongues.  I admired
+the building as a beautiful fancy, exquisitely decorated, but did not
+think much of it as a specimen of Gothic architecture.  It is the best
+test of aesthetic culture and knowledge in the world.  When you hear
+anybody praise it as the most exquisite or perfect Gothic cathedral in
+existence, you may expect to hear the critic admire the designs of
+Chippendale furniture or the decoration of St. Peter's.
+
+So we passed through beautiful Lombardy and came to Domo d'Ossola, where
+a strange German-Italian patois was spoken.  It was in the middle of
+April, and we were warned that it would be very dangerous to cross the
+Simplon, but we went on all night in a carriage on sleigh-runners,
+through intervals of snowstorm.  Now and then we came to rushing mountain-
+torrents bursting over the road; far away, ever and anon, we heard the
+roar of a _lauwine_ or avalanche; sometimes I looked out, and could see
+straight down below me a thousand feet into an abyss or on a headlong
+stream.  We entered the great tunnel directly from another, for the snow
+lay twenty feet deep on the road, and a passage had been dug under it for
+several hundred feet, and so two tunnels were connected.  Just in the
+worst of the road beyond, and in the bitterest cold, we met a sleigh, in
+which were an English gentleman and a very beautiful young lady,
+apparently his daughter, going to Italy.  "I saw her but an instant, yet
+methinks I see her now"--a sweet picture in a strange scene.  Poets used
+to "me-think" and "me-seem" more in those days, but we endured it.  Then
+in the morning we saw Brieg, far down below us in the valley in green
+leaves and sunshine, and when we got there then I realised that we were
+in a new land.
+
+We had a great giant of a German conductor, who seemed to regard Clark
+and me as under his special care.  Once when we had wandered afar to look
+at something, and it was time for the stage or _Eilwagen_ to depart, he
+hunted us up, scolded us "like a Dutch uncle" in German, and drove us
+along before him like two bad boys to the diligence, "pawing up" first
+one and then the other, after which, shoving us in, he banged and locked
+the door with a grunt of satisfaction, even as the Giant Blunderbore
+locked the children in the coffer after slamming down the lid.  Across
+the scenes and shades of forty years, that picture of the old conductor
+driving us like two unruly urchins back to school rises, never to be
+forgotten.
+
+We went by mountains and lakes and Gothic towns, rocks, forests, old
+chateaux, and rivers--the road was wild in those days--till we came to
+Geneva.  Thence Clark went his way to Paris, and I remained alone for a
+week.  I had, it is true, a letter of introduction to a very eminent
+Presbyterian Swiss clergyman, so I sent it in with my card.  His wife
+came out on the balcony, looked coolly down at me, and concluding, I
+suppose from my appearance, that I was one of the ungodly, went in and
+sent out word that her husband was out, and would be gone for an
+indefinite period, and that she was engaged.  The commissionaire who was
+with me--poor devil!--was dreadfully mortified; but I was not very much
+astonished, and, indeed, I was treated in much the same manner, or worse,
+by a colleague of this pious man in Paris, or rather by his wife.
+
+I believe that what kept me a week in Geneva was the white wine and
+trout.  At the end of the time I set out to the north, and on the way met
+with some literary or professional German, who commended to me the
+"Pfisterer-Zunft" or Bakers' Guild as a cheap and excellent hostelry.  And
+it was curious enough, in all conscience.  During the Middle Ages, and
+down to a very recent period, the _Zunfte_ or trade-guilds in the Swiss
+cities carried it with a high hand.  Even the gentlemen could only obtain
+rights as citizens by enrolling themselves as the trade of aristocrats.  I
+had heard of the boy who thought he would like to be bound apprentice to
+the king; in Berne he might have been entered for a lower branch of the
+business.  These guilds had their own local taverns, inns, or _Herbergs_,
+where travelling colleagues of the calling might lodge at moderate rates,
+but nobody else.  However, as time rolled by, these _Zunfte_ or guild-
+lodgings were opened to strangers.  One of the last which did so was that
+of the _Pfister_ or bakers (Latin, _pistor_), and this had only been done
+a few weeks ere I went there.  As a literary man whom I met on the
+ramparts said to me, "That place is still strong in the Middle Age."  It
+was a quaint old building, and to get to my room I had to cross the great
+guild-hall of the Ancient and Honourable Society of Bakers.  There were
+the portraits of all the Grand Masters of the Order from the fourteenth
+or fifteenth century on the walls, and the concentrated antique tobacco-
+smoke of as many ages in the air, which, to a Princeton graduate, was no
+more than the scent of a rose to a bee.
+
+I could speak a little German--not much--but the degree to which I felt,
+sympathised with, and understood everything Deutsch, passeth all words
+and all mortal belief.  _Sit verbo venia_!  But I do not believe that any
+human being ever crossed the frontier who had thought himself down, or
+rather raised himself up, into Teutonism as I had on so slight a
+knowledge of the language, even as a spider throweth up an invisible
+thread on high, and then travels on it.  Which thing was perceived
+marvellously soon, and not without some amazement, by the Germans, who
+have all at least this one point in common with Savages, New Jerseymen,
+Red Indians, Negroes, Gypsies, and witches, that they by mystic sympathy
+_know those who like them_, and take to them accordingly, guided by some
+altogether inexplicable clue or _Hexengarn_, even as deep calleth unto
+deep and star answereth star without a voice.  Whence it was soon
+observed at Heidelberg by an American student that "Leland would abuse
+the Dutch all day long if he saw fit, but never allowed anybody else to
+do so."  The which thing, as I think, argues the very _ne plus ultra_ of
+sympathy.
+
+I found my way to Strasburg, where I went to the tip-top outside of the
+cathedral, and took the railway train for Heidelberg.  And here I had an
+adventure, which, though trifling to the last degree, was to me such a
+great and new experience that I will describe it, let the reader think
+what he will.  I went naturally enough first-class, so uncommon a thing
+then in Germany that people were wont to say that only princes,
+Englishmen, and asses did so.  There entered the same carriage a very
+lady-like and pretty woman.  The guard, seeing this, concluded
+that--whatever he concluded, he carefully drew down all the curtains,
+looking at me with a cheerful, genial air of intense mystery, as if to
+say, "I twig; it's all right; I'll keep your secret."
+
+It is a positive fact that all this puzzled me amazingly.  There were
+many things in which I, the friend and pupil of Navone, was as yet as
+innocent as a babe unborn.  The lady seemed to be amused--as well she
+might.  _Sancta simplicitas_!  I asked her why the conductor had drawn
+the curtains.  She laughed, and explained that he possibly thought we
+were a bridal pair or lovers.  Common sense and ordinary politeness
+naturally inspired the reply that I wished we were, which declaration was
+so amiably received that I suggested the immediate institution of such an
+arrangement.  Which was so far favourably received that it was sealed
+with a kiss.  However, the seal was not broken.  I think the lady must
+have been very much amused.  It is not without due reflection that I
+record this.  Kissing went for very little in Germany in those days.  It
+was about as common in Vienna as shaking hands.  But this was my first
+experience in it.  So I record it, because it seems as if some benevolent
+fairy had welcomed me to Germany; it took place just as we crossed the
+frontier.  However, I found out some time after, by a strange accident,
+that my fairy was the wife of a banker who lived beyond Heidelberg; and
+at Heidelberg I left her and went to the first hotel in the town.
+
+I had formed no plans, and had no letters to anybody.  I had read
+Howitt's "Student Life in Germany" through and through, so I thought I
+would study in Heidelberg.  But how to begin?  That was the question.  I
+went into a shop and bought some cigars.  There I consulted with the
+shopkeeper as to what I should do.  Could he refer me to some leading
+authority in the University, known to him, who would give me advice?  He
+could, and advised me to consult with the Pedell Capelmann.
+
+Now I didn't know it, but Pedell--meaning beadle, commonly called Poodle
+by the students--was the head-constable of the University.  In honest
+truth I supposed he must be the President or Pro-Rector.  So I went to
+Pedell Capelmann.  His appearance did not quite correspond to my idea of
+a learned professor.  He was an immensely burly, good-natured fellow, who
+came in in his shirt-sleeves, and who, when he learned what I wanted,
+burst out into a _Her'r'r' Gottsdonerrwetter_! of surprise, as he well
+might.  But I knew that the Germans were a very _sans facon bourgeois_
+people, and still treated him with deep respect.  He suggested that, as
+there were a great many American students there, I had better call on
+them.  He himself would take me to see the Herr O--, with whom, as I
+subsequently learned, he had more than once had discussions relative to
+questions of University-municipal discipline.  As for the startling
+peculiarity which attended my introduction to University life, it is best
+summed up in the remark which the Herr O. (of Baltimore) subsequently
+made.
+
+"Great God, fellows! _he made his first call on old Capelmann_!!"
+
+He took me to the Herr O. and introduced me.  I was overwhelmed with my
+cordial reception.  There was at once news sent forth that a new man and
+a brother fellow-countryman had come to join the ranks.  "And messengers
+through all the land sought Sir Tannhauser out."  I was pumped dry as to
+my precedents, and as I came fresh from Princeton and had been through
+Italy, I was approved of.  The first thing was a discussion as to where I
+was to live.  The Frau Directorinn Louis in the University Place had two
+fine rooms which had just been occupied by a prince.  So we went and
+secured the rooms, which were indeed very pleasant, and by no means dear
+as it seemed to me.  I was to breakfast in my rooms, dine with the family
+at one o'clock, and sup about town.
+
+Then there was a grand council as to what I had better study, and over my
+prospects in life; and it was decided that, as the law-students were the
+most distinguished or swell of all, I had better be a lawyer.  So it was
+arranged that I should attend Mittermayer's and others' lectures; to all
+of which I cheerfully assented.  The next step was to give a grand supper
+in honour of my arrival.  After the dinner and the wine, I drank twelve
+_schoppens_ of beer, and then excused myself on the plea of having
+letters to write.  I believe, however, that I forgot to write the
+letters.  And here I may say, once for all, that having discovered that,
+if I had no gift for mathematics, I had a great natural talent for
+Rheinwein and lager, I did not bury that talent in a napkin, but, like
+the rest of my friends, made the most of it, firstly, during two
+semesters in Heidelberg:
+
+   "Then I bolted off to Munich,
+      And within the year,
+   Underneath my German tunic
+      Stowed whole butts of beer;
+   For I drank like fifty fishes,
+      Drank till all was blue,
+   For whenever I was vicious
+      I was thirsty too."
+
+The result of which "dire deboshing" was that, having come to Europe with
+a soul literally attenuated and starved for want of the ordinary gaiety
+and amusement which all youth requires, my life in Princeton having been
+one continued strain of a sobriety which continually sank into subdued
+melancholy, and a body just ready to yield to consumption, I grew
+vigorous and healthy, or, as the saying is, "hearty as a buck."  I
+believe that if my Cousin Sam had gone on with me even-pace, that he
+would have lived till to-day.  When we came abroad I seemed to be the
+weakest; he returned, and died in a few months from our hereditary
+disease.  How many hecatombs of young men have been murdered by
+"seriousness" and "total abstinence," miscalled _temperance_, in our
+American colleges, can never be known; perhaps it is as well that it
+never will be; for if it were, there would be a rush to the other
+extreme, which would "upset society."  And here be it noted that, with
+all our inordinate national or international Anglo-Saxon sense of
+superiority to everybody and everything foreign, we are in the _main_
+thing--that is, the truly rational enjoyment of life and the art of
+living--utterly inferior to the German and Latin races.  We are for the
+most part either too good or too bad--totally abstemious or raving
+drunk--always in a hurry after excitement or in a worry over our sins, or
+those of our neighbours.  "Rest, rest, perturbed Yankee, _rest_!"
+
+My rooms were on the ground-floor, the bedroom looking into the
+University Square and my study into a garden.  Next door to me dwelt
+Paulus, the king of the Rationalists.  He was then, I believe, ninety-
+four years of age.  He remained daily till about twelve or one in a
+comatose condition, when he awoke and became lively till about three,
+when he sank into sleep again.  His days were like those of a far
+Northern winter, lit by the sun at the same hours.
+
+The next morning a very gentlemanly young man knocked at my door, and
+entered and asked in perfect English for a Mr. Bell, who lived in the
+same house.  I informed him that Mr. Bell was out, but asked him to enter
+my room and take a chair, which he did, conversing with me for half an
+hour, when he departed, leaving a card on a side-table.  In a few minutes
+later, O., who was of the kind who notice everything, entered, took up
+the card, and read on it the name and address of the young Grand Duke of
+Baden, who was naturally by far the greatest man in the country, he being
+its hereditary ruler.
+
+"Where the devil did you get this?" asked O., and all, in amazement.
+
+"Oh," I replied, "it's only the Duke.  He has just been in here making a
+call.  If you fellows had come five minutes sooner you'd have seen him.
+Have some beer!"
+
+The impression that I was a queer lot, due to my making my first call on
+Capelmann _et cetera_, was somewhat strengthened by this card, until I
+explained how I came by it.  But as Dr. Johnson in other words remarked,
+there are people to whom such queer things happen daily, and others to
+whom they occur once a year.  And there was never yet a living soul who
+entered into my daily life who did not observe that I belong to the
+former class.  If I have a guardian angel, it must be Edgar A. Poe's
+Angel of the Odd.  But he generally comes to those who belong to him!
+
+It was a long time before I profited much by my lectures, because it was
+fearful work for me to learn German.  I engaged a tutor, and worked hard,
+and read a great deal, and talked it _con amore_; but few persons would
+believe how slowly I learned it, and with what incredible labour.  How
+often have I cursed up hill and down dale, the Tower of Babel, which
+first brought the curse of languages upon the world!  And what did I ever
+have to do with that Tower?  Had I lived in those days, I would never
+have laid hand to the work in merry, sunny, lazy Babylon, nor contributed
+a brick to it.  By the way, it was a juvenile conjecture of mine that the
+Tower of Babel was destroyed for being a shot-tower, in which ammunition
+was prepared to be used by the heathen.  Which theory might very well
+have been inspired by a verse from the old Puritanical rendering of the
+Psalms:--
+
+   "Ye race itt is not alwayes gott
+      By him who swiftest runns,
+   Nor ye Battell by ye Peo-pel
+      Who shoot with longest gunnes."
+
+Even before I had gone to Princeton I had read and learned a great deal
+relative to Justinus Kerner, the great German supernaturalist, mystic,
+and poet, firstly from a series of articles in the _Dublin University
+Magazine_, and later from a translation of "The Seeress of Prevorst," and
+several of the good man's own romances and lyrics.  I suppose that, of
+all men on the face of the earth, I should have at that time preferred to
+meet him.  Wherefore, as a matter of course, it occurred that one fine
+morning a pleasant gentlemanly German friend of mine, who spoke English
+perfectly, and whose name was Rucker, walked into my room, and proposed
+that we should take a two or three days' walk up the Neckar with our
+knapsacks, and visit the famous old ruined castle of the Weibertreue.  My
+mother had read me the ballad-legend of it in my boyhood, and I had
+learned it by heart.  Indeed, I can still recall it after sixty years:--
+
+   "Who can tell me where Weinsberg lies?
+      As brave a town as any;
+   It must have sheltered in its time
+      Brave wives and maidens many:
+   If e'er I wooing have to do,
+   Good faith, in Weinsberg I will woo!"
+
+"And then, when we are there," said Rucker, "we will call on an old
+friend of my father's, named Justinus Kerner.  Did you ever hear of him?"
+
+Did a Jew ever hear of Moses, or an American of General Washington?  In
+five minutes I convinced my friend that I knew more about Kerner than he
+himself did.  Whereupon it was decided that we should set forth on the
+following morning.
+
+Blessed, beautiful, happy summer mornings in Suabia--green mounts and
+grey rocks with old castles--peasants harvesting hay--a _Kirchweih_, or
+peasant's merry-making, with dancing and festivity--till we came to
+Weinsberg, and forthwith called on the ancient sage, whom we found with
+the two or three ladies and gentlemen of his family.  I saw at a glance
+that they had the air of aristocracy.  He received us very kindly, and
+invited us to come to dinner and sup with him.
+
+The Weibertreue is an old castle which was in or at the end of Dr.
+Kerner's garden.  Once, when all the town had taken refuge in it from the
+Emperor Conrad, the latter gave the women leave to quit the fort, and
+also permission to every one to carry with her whatever was unto her most
+valuable, precious, or esteemed.  And so the dames went forth, every one
+bearing on her back her husband.
+
+In the tower of the castle, or in its wall, which was six feet thick,
+were eight or ten windows, gradually opening like trumpets, through which
+the wind blew all the time, and pleasantly enough on a hot summer day.  In
+each of these the Doctor had placed an AEolian harp, and he who did not
+believe in fairies or the gentle spirit of a viewless sound should have
+sat in that tower and listened to the music as it rose and fell, as in
+endless solemn glees or part-singing; one harp stepping in, and pealing
+out richly and strangely as another died away, while anon, even as the
+new voice came, there thrilled in unison one or two more Ariels who
+seemed to be hurrying up to join the song.  It was a marvellous strange
+thing of beauty, which resounded, indeed, all over Germany, for men spoke
+of it far and wide.
+
+Quite as marvellous, in the evening, was the Doctor's own performance on
+the single and double Jew's harp.  From this most unpromising instrument
+he drew airs of such exquisite beauty that one could not have been more
+astonished had he heard the sweet tones of Grisi drawn from a cat by
+twisting its tail.  But we were in a land of marvels and wonders, or, as
+an English writer described it, "Weinsberg, a place on the Neckar,
+inhabited partly by men and women--some in and some out of the body--and
+partly by ghosts."  There were visions in the air, and dreams sitting on
+the staircases; in fact, when I saw the peasants working in the fields, I
+should not have been astonished to see them vanish into mist or sink into
+the ground.
+
+And yet from the ruined castle of the Weibertreue Kerner pointed out to
+us a man walking along the road, and that man was the very incarnation of
+all that was sober, rational, and undream-like; for it was David Strauss,
+author of the "Life of Jesus."  And at him too I gazed with the awe due
+to a great man whose name is known to all the cultured world; and to me
+much more than the name; for I had read, as before mentioned, his "Life
+of Jesus" when I first went to Princeton.
+
+Dr. Kerner took to me greatly, and said that I very much reminded him, in
+appearance and conversation, of what his most intimate friend, Ludwig
+Uhland, had been at my age; and as he repeated this several times, and
+spoke of it long after to friends, I think it must have been true,
+although I am compelled to admit that people who pride themselves on
+looking like this or that celebrity never resemble him in the least,
+mentally or spiritually, and are generally only mere caricatures at best.
+
+On our return we climbed into an old Gothic church-tower, in which I
+found a fifteenth-century bell, bearing the words, _Vivas voco_, _mortuos
+plango_, _fulgura_ _frango_, and much more--
+
+   "The dead I knell, the living wake,
+   And the power of lightning break!"
+
+which caused me to reflect on the vast degree to which all the minor uses
+and observances of the Church--which are nine-tenths of all their
+religion to the multitude--were only old heathen superstitious in new
+dresses.  The bell was a spell against the demons of lightning in old
+Etrurian days; to this time the Tuscan peasant bears one in the darkening
+twilight-tide to drive away the witches flitting round: in him and them
+"those evening bells" inspired a deeper sentiment than poetry.
+
+In a village, Rucker, finding the beer very good, bought a cask of it,
+which was put on board the little Neckar steamboat on which we returned
+to Heidelberg.  And thus provided, the next evening he gave a "barty" up
+in the old castle, among the ruins by moonlight, where I "assisted," and
+the _lager_ was devoured, even to the last drop.
+
+I soon grew tired of the family dinners with the Frau Inspectorinn and
+the Herr Inspector with the _one_ tumbler of Neckar wine, which I was
+expected not to exceed; so I removed my dining to the "Court of Holland,"
+a first-class hotel, where O. and the other Americans met, and where the
+expectation was not that a man should by any means limit himself to one
+glass, but that, taking at least one to begin with, he should
+considerably exceed it.  This hotel was kept by a man named Spitz, who
+looked his name to perfection.
+
+   "Er spitzt betrubt die Nase,"
+
+as Scheffel wrote of him in his poem, _Numero Acht_, the scene of which
+is laid in the "Court of Holland."  Here a word about Scheffel.  During
+the following semester he was for months a daily table-companion of mine
+at the Bremer-Eck, where a small circle of students--_quorum pars
+fui_--met every evening to sup and _kneip_, or to drink beer and smoke
+and sing until eleven.  Little did I dream in those days that he would
+become the great popular poet of his time, or that I should ever
+translate his _Gaudeamus_.  I owe the "Court of Holland" to this day for
+a dinner and a bottle of wine.  It is the only debt I owe, to my
+knowledge, to anybody on earth.
+
+It was resolved among the Americans that we should all make a
+foot-excursion with knapsacks down the Rhine to Cologne.  It was done.  So
+we went gaily from town to town, visiting everything, making excursions
+inland now and then.  We had a bottle or two of the best Johannisberg in
+the very Schloss itself--_omne cum praetio_--and meeting with such
+adventures as befell all wandering students in those old-fashioned, merry
+times.  The Rhine was wild as yet, and not paved, swept, garnished and
+full of modern villas and adornment, as now.  I had made, while in
+America, a manuscript book of the places and legends of and on the Rhine,
+with many drawings.  This, and a small volume of Snow's and Planche's
+"Legends of the Rhine," I carried with me.  I was already well informed
+as to every village and old ruin or tower on the banks.
+
+So we arrived at Cologne, and saw all the sights.  The cathedral was not
+then finished, and the town still boasted its two-and-seventy stinks, as
+counted by Coleridge.  Then we returned by steamer to Mainz, and thence
+footed it home.
+
+Little by little I rather fell away from my American friends, and began
+to take to German or English associates, and especially to the company of
+two Englishmen.  One was named Leonard Field, who is now a lawyer in
+Lincoln's Inn Fields; the other was Ewan P. Colquhoun, a younger brother
+of Sir Patrick Colquhoun, whom I knew well, and as friend, in after
+years, until his recent death.  I always, however, maintained a great
+intimacy with George Ward, of Boston, who became long after a banker and
+Baring's agent in America.  In one way and another these two twined into
+my life in after years, and led to my making many acquaintances or
+friends.
+
+I walked a great deal all about Heidelberg to many very picturesque
+places, maintaining deep interest in all I saw by much loving reading of
+_Des Knaben Wunderhorn_ and Uhland's collection of old German songs--his
+own poems I knew long before--the _Nibelungen_ and _Hero-Book_, and a
+great variety of other works.  I had dropped the Occulta, and for a year
+or two read nothing of the kind except casually the works of
+Eckhartshausen and Justinus Kerner.  I can now see that, as I became
+healthy and strong, owing to the easy, pleasant existence which I led, it
+was best for me after all.  "Grappling with life" and earnestly studying
+a profession then might have extinguished me.  My mental spring, though
+not broken, was badly bent, and it required a long time to straighten it.
+
+Colquhoun was only eighteen, but far beyond his years in dissipation, and
+well-nigh advanced to cool cynicism.  With him I made many an excursion
+all about the country.  Wherever a _Kirclweih_ or peasants' ball was to
+be held, he always knew of it, and there we went.  One morning early he
+came to my rooms.  There was to be a really stunning duel fought early
+between a Senior and some very illustrious _Schlager_, and he had two
+English friends named Burnett who would go with us.  So we went, and
+meeting with Rucker at the _Pawkboden_, it was proposed that we should go
+on together to Baden-Baden.  To which I objected that I had only twenty
+florins in my pocket, and had no time to return home for more.  "Never
+mind," said Colquhoun; "Rucker has plenty of money; we can borrow from
+him."
+
+We went to Baden and to the first hotel, and had a fine dinner, and saw
+the Burnetts off.  Then, of course, to the gaming-table, where Colquhoun
+speedily lost all his money, and I so much that I had but ten florins
+left.  "Never mind; we'll pump on Rucker," said Colquhoun.
+
+We went up to visit the old castle.  While there, Rucker took off his
+overcoat, in which he had his pocket-book, and laid it over a chair.  When
+we returned to the hotel the pocket-book was gone!  There we were, with a
+hotel-bill to pay and never a cent wherewith to pay it.  I had, however,
+still ten florins.  Colquhoun suddenly remembered that he had seen
+something in the town, price ten florins, which he _must_ buy.  It was
+something which he had promised to buy for a relative in England.  It was
+a very serious case of necessity.
+
+I doubted my dear friend, but having sworn him by all his gods that he
+would _not_ gamble with the money, I gave it to him.  So he, of course,
+went straight to the gaming-table, and, having luck, won enough to pay
+our debt and take us home.
+
+I should mention that Rucker went up to the castle and found his pocket-
+book with all the money.  "For not only doth Fortune favour the bold," as
+is written in my great unpublished romance of "Flaxius the Immortal,"
+"but, while her hand is in, also helps their friends with no unsparing
+measure, as is marvellously confirmed by Machiavelli."
+
+Vacation came.  My friends scattered far and wide.  I joined with three
+German friends and one Frenchman, and we strapped on our knapsacks for a
+foot-journey into Switzerland.  First we went to Freiburg in Baden, and
+saw the old Cathedral, and so on, singing, and stopping to drink, and
+meeting with other students from other universities, and resting in
+forests, amid mountains, by roaring streams, and entering cottages and
+chatting with girls.  _Hurra_! _frei ist der bursch_!
+
+One afternoon we walked sixteen miles through a rain which was like a
+waterfall.  I was so drenched that it was with difficulty I kept my
+passport and letter of exchange from being ruined.  When we came out of
+the storm there were _six_ of us!  Another student had, unseen, joined
+our party in the rain, and I had never noticed it!
+
+We came to a tavern at the foot of the Rigiberg.  My pack was soaked.  One
+friend lent me a shirt, another a pair of drawers, and we wrapped
+ourselves in sheets from the beds and called for brandy and water hot--a
+pleasing novelty to the Germans--and so went to bed.  The next day we
+ascended the Rigi; found many students there; did not see the sun rise in
+the morning, but still a mighty panorama, wondrous fair, and so walked
+down again.  And receiving my carpet-bag at Lucerne, whither I had had
+the precaution to send one, I dressed myself again in clean linen and
+went back to Germany.  I meant to travel more in Switzerland, but it was
+very rainy that year, and, as it proved, I did wisely.
+
+I returned to Spitz, but his house was full of English, and he informed
+me, rather exultantly and foolishly, that he had no room for me, and
+could not tell me where to go, "every place was full."  As I had spent
+money freely with him I did not like it.  The head-waiter followed me out
+and recommended the Black Eagle, kept by Herr Lehr.  There I went, got a
+good room, and for months after dined daily at its _table-d'hote_.  I
+sent friends there, and returned to the house with my wife twenty years
+later.  My brother also went there long after, and endeared himself to
+all, helping Herr Lehr to plant his vines.  In after years Herr Lehr had
+forgotten me, but not my brother.  Lehr's son was a gentlemanly young
+fellow, well educated.  He became a captain, and was the first officer
+killed in the Franco-German war.
+
+Vacation passed, and the students returned and lectures were resumed.
+There was a grand _Commers_ or students' supper meeting at which I was
+present; and again the duelling-ground rang with the sound of blades, and
+all was merry as before.  Herr Zimmer, the University dancing-master,
+gave lessons and cotillion or waltzing-parties thrice a week, and these I
+regularly attended.  Those who came to them were the daughters of the
+humbler professors and respectable shopkeepers.  During the previous
+session I had taken lessons from a little old Frenchman, who brought his
+fiddle and a pretty daughter twice a week to my room, where, with Ward,
+we formed a class of three.
+
+This gentleman was a perfect type--fit to be staged without a touch of
+change--of the old _emigre_, who has now vanished, even from among the
+French.  His bows, his wit--_la grace extra'ordinaire_--the intonations
+of his voice, and his vivacity, were beyond the art of any actor now
+living.  There were many more peculiar and marked types of character in
+the last generation than now exist, when Everybody is becoming Everybody
+else with such fearful rapidity.
+
+There were four great masked balls held in Heidelberg during the winter,
+each corresponding to a special state of society.  That at the Museum or
+great University Club was patronised by the _elite_ of nobility and the
+professors and their families.  Then came the _Harmonie_--respectable,
+but not aristocratic.  Then another in a hotel, which was rather more
+rowdy than reputable; not really outrageous, yet where the gentlemen
+students "whooped it up" in grand style with congenial grisettes; and,
+finally, there was a fancy ball at the Waldhorn, or some such place, or
+several of them, over the river, where peasants and students with maids
+to match could waltz once round the vast hall for a penny till stopped by
+a cordon of robust rustics.  We thought it great fun with our partners to
+waltz impetuously and bump with such force against the barrier as to
+break through, in which case we were not only greatly admired, but got
+another waltz gratis.  We had wild peasant-dancing in abundance, and the
+consumption of wine and beer was something awful.
+
+One morning a German student named Gruner, who had been at Jena, came to
+my room with a brilliant proposition.  We should go to Frankfort and hear
+Jenny Lind sing in her great _role_ of Norma.  I had already heard her
+sing in concert in Heidelberg--where, by the way, the students rushed
+into her room as soon as she had left, and tore to strips the bed in
+which she had slept, and carried them away for souvenirs, to the great
+amazement of an old Englishman who had just been put into the room.
+(_N.B._--I was not in the party.)  I objected that it was getting to the
+end of the month, and that I had not money enough for such an outing.  To
+which he replied, that we could go on to Homburg, and make money enough
+at _rouge-et-noir_ to cover all expenses.  This obvious and admirable
+method of raising funds had not occurred to me, so I agreed to go.
+
+We went to Frankfort, and heard the greatly overrated Jenny Lind, and the
+next day proceeded to Hamburg, and at once to the green table.  Here I
+lost a little, but Gruner made so much, that on returning to the table I
+took from it a sufficient sum to cover all our expenses, and told him
+that, come what might, it must remain untouched, and gave him the
+remainder.  That afternoon I played for five-franc pieces, and at one
+time had both my side-pockets so full that they weighed very heavily.  And
+these again I lost.  Then Gruner lost all his, and came imploring me for
+more, but I would not give him a _kreutzer_.  Matters were beginning to
+look serious.  I had a reserved fund of perhaps fifty napoleons, which I
+kept for dire need or accidents.  That evening I observed a man who had
+great luck, winning twice out of three times.  I watched his play, and as
+soon as he lost I set a napoleon--by which I won enough to clear my
+expenses, and buy me, moreover, a silver-headed cane, a gold watch-chain,
+and two Swiss watches.  I may mention by the way, that since that day I
+have never played at anything, save losing a ten-franc piece in after
+years at Wiesbaden.
+
+There dined very often at our _table-d'hote_ in the Adler an old German
+lady named Helmine von Chezy, who had a reputation as a poetess.  With
+her I sometimes conversed.  One day she narrated in full what she
+declared was the true story of Caspar Hauser.  Unto her Heine had
+addressed the epigram--
+
+   "Helmine von Chezy,
+   Geborene Klencke,
+   Ich bitte Sie, geh' Sie
+   Mit ihrer Poesie,
+   Sonst kriegt Sie die Kranke!"
+
+   "Helmine von Chezy,
+   Born Klencke, I pray
+   With your pestilent poems
+   You'll hasten away."
+
+There was also an elderly and very pleasant Englishman, with whom I
+became rather intimate, and who was very kind to me.  This was the well-
+known Captain Medwin, who had known so well Byron, Shelley, Trelawny, and
+their compeers.  He was full of anecdotes, which I now wish that I had
+recorded.  He introduced me to Lady Caroline de Crespigny, who was then
+living permanently in Heidelberg.  This lady, who was said to be then
+fifty years of age, was still so young-looking and beautiful, that I
+cannot remember in all my life to have ever seen such an instance of time
+arrested.  I also made the acquaintance of Professor Creutzer, author of
+the _Symbolik_, a work of vast learning. {156}  And I went to balls, one
+at Professor Gervinus's.
+
+I entered myself with the great Leopold Gmelin for a course of lectures
+on chemistry, and worked away every morning with the test-tubes at
+analytical chemistry under Professor Posselt, at which I one day nearly
+poisoned myself by tasting oxalic acid, which I did not recognise under
+its German name of _Kleesaure_.  I read broad and wide in German
+literature, as I think may be found by examining my notes to my
+translation of Heine's works, and went with Field several times to
+Frankfort, to attend the theatre, and otherwise amuse ourselves.  There I
+once made the acquaintance of the very famous comic actor Hasselt.  He
+was a grave, almost melancholy man when off the stage, very fond of
+archaeology and antiquities.
+
+The winter drew to an end.  I had long felt a deep desire to visit
+Munich, to study art, and to investigate fundamentally the wonderful and
+mysterious science of AEsthetics, of which I had heard so much.  So I
+packed up and paid my bills, and passing through one town where there was
+in the hotel where I stopped, the last wolf ever killed in Germany, and
+freshly killed (I believe he has been slain two or three times since),
+and at another where I was invited to see a criminal beheaded by the
+sword--which sight I missed by over-sleeping myself--I came through
+Stuttgart, Ulm, and Augsburg to the German Athens.
+
+I went to the Hotel Maulick, where I stayed a week.  Opposite to me at
+table every day sat the famous Saphir, the great Vienna wit and licensed
+joker.  Of course I soon became acquainted with some students, and was
+entered at the University, and got the card which exempted me from being
+arrested by any save the University beadles.  I believe that we even had
+our own hangman, but as none of my friends ever had occasion for his
+services I did not inquire.  The same ticket also entitled me to attend
+the opera at half-price, and if it had only included tobacco and beer
+gratis, it would have been the means of vast economies.
+
+I entered myself for a course of lectures by Professor Friedrich Thiersch
+on AEsthetics.  He it was who had trained Heine to art, and I venture to
+say that in my case the seed fell on good ground.  I took in every
+thought.  His system agreed, on the whole, perfectly with that advanced
+in after years by Taine, and marvellously well with that set forth in the
+"Essays, Speculative and Suggestive," of J. A. Symonds--that is, it was
+eclectic and deductive from historical periods, and not at all
+"rhapsodical" or merely subjective.  I bought the best works, such as
+Kugler's, for guides, and studied hard, and frequented the Pinacothek and
+Glyptothek, and I may say really educated myself well in the history of
+art and different schools of aesthetics.  My previous reading, travel,
+and tastes fitted me in every way to easily master such knowledge.  I
+also followed Becker's course on Schelling, but my heart was not in it,
+as it would have been two years before.  The lectures of Professor Henry
+and Gmelin and true Science had caused in me a distrust of metaphysics
+and psychological systems and theories.  I began to see that they were
+all only very ingenious shufflings and combinations and phases of the
+same old cards of Pantheism, which could be made into Theism, Pietism,
+Atheism, or Materialism to suit any taste.  I was advancing rapidly to
+pure science, though Evolution was as yet unknown by the name, albeit the
+Okenites and others with their _Natur-philosophie_ were coming closely to
+it.
+
+In fact, I think it may be truly said that, as regarded deducing man and
+all things from a _prima materia_ or protoplasm by means of natural
+selection and vast study of differentiation, they were exactly where
+Darwin, and Wallace, and Huxley were when we began to know the latter.  I
+do not agree with Max Muller in his very German and very artfully
+disguised and defended theory that the religious idea originated in a
+vague sense of the Infinite in the minds of savages; for I believe it
+began with the bogeys and nightmares of obscure terror, hunger, disease,
+and death; but the Professor is quite right in declaring that Evolution
+was first created or developed in the German _Natur-philosophie_, the
+true beginning of which was with the Italian naturalists, such as Bruno
+and De Cusa.  What is to be observed is this, yet few understand it, nor
+has even Symonds cleared the last barrier--that when a Pantheist has got
+so far as to conceive an identity between matter and spirit, while on the
+other hand a scientific materialist rises to the unity of spirit and
+matter, there is nothing to choose between them.  Only this is true, that
+the English Evolutionists, by abandoning reasoning based on Pantheistic
+poetic bases, as in Schelling's case, or purely logical, as in Hegel's,
+and by proceeding on plainly prosaic, merely material, simply scientific
+grounds after the example of Bacon, swept away so much rubbish that
+people no longer recognised the old temple of Truth, and really thought
+it was a brand new workshop or laboratory.  But I can remember very
+distinctly that to me Evolution did _not_ come as if I had received a new
+soul, or even a new body, but had merely had a bath, and put on new
+garments.  And as I became an English Evolutionist in due time, I had
+this great advantage, that by beginning so young I succeeded in doing
+very thoroughly what Symonds and Maudsley and many more clearly
+understand is _most_ difficult--that is, not merely to accept the truth,
+but to get rid of the old _associations_ of the puzzle of a difference
+between spirit and matter, which thing caused even the former to muddle
+about "God," and express disgust at "Materialism," and declare that there
+is "an insoluble problem," which is all in flat contradiction to pure
+Evolution, which does not meddle with "the Unknowable."
+
+There was a Jewish professor named Karl Friedrich Neumann, who was about
+as many-sided a man as could be found even in a German university.  He
+was a great Chinese scholar--had been in China, and also read on
+mathematics and modern history.  I attended these lectures (not the
+mathematics) and liked them: so we became acquainted.  I found that he
+had written a very interesting little work on the visit recorded in the
+Chinese annals of certain Buddhist monks to Fusang--probably Mexico--in
+the fifth century.  I proposed to translate it, and did so, he making
+emendations and adding fresh matter to the English version.
+
+Professor Neumann was a vigorous reader, but he soon found that I was of
+the same kind.  One day he lent me a large work on some Indian subject,
+and the next I brought it back.  He said that I could not have read it in
+the time.  I begged him to examine me on it, which he did, and expressed
+his amazement, for he declared that he had never met with anything like
+it in all his life.  This from him was praise indeed.  Long after, in
+America, George Boker in closer fashion tested me on this without my
+knowing it, and published the result in an article.
+
+I became acquainted with a learned writer on art named Foerster, who had
+married a daughter of Jean Paul Richter, and dined once or twice at his
+house.  I also saw him twenty years later in Munich.  George Ward came in
+from Berlin to stay some weeks in Munich.  I saw Taglioni several times
+at the opera, but did not make her acquaintance till 1870.  The great,
+tremendous celebrity at that time in Munich was also an opera-dancer,
+though not on the stage.  This was Lola Montez, the King's last
+favourite.  He had had all his mistresses painted, one by one, and the
+gallery was open to the public.  Lola's was the last, and there was a
+blank space still left _for a few more_.  I thought that about twenty-
+five would complete the collection.
+
+Lola Montez had a small palace, and was raised to be the Countess of
+Landsfeldt, but this was not enough.  She wished to run the whole kingdom
+and government, and kick out the Jesuits, and kick up the devil,
+generally speaking.  But the Jesuits and the mob were too much for her.  I
+knew her very well in later years in America, when she deeply regretted
+that I had not called on her in Munich.  I must have had a great moral
+influence on her, for, so far as I am aware, I am the only friend whom
+she ever had at whom she never threw a plate or book, or attacked with a
+dagger, poker, broom, chair, or other deadly weapon.  We were both born
+at the same time in the same year, and I find by the rules of sorcery
+that she is the first person who will meet me when I go to heaven.  I
+always had a great and strange respect for her singular talents; there
+were very few indeed, if any there were, who really knew the depths of
+that wild Irish soul.  Men generally were madly fascinated with her, then
+as suddenly disenchanted, and then detracted from her in every way.
+
+There were many adventuresses in later years who passed themselves about
+the world for Lola Montez.  I have met with two friends, whom I am sure
+were honest gentlemen, who told me they had known her intimately.  Both
+described her as a large, powerful, or robust woman.  Lola was in reality
+very small, pale, and thin, or _frele_, with beautiful blue eyes and
+curly black hair.  She was a typical beauty, with a face full of
+character, and a person of remarkably great and varied reading.  One of
+her most intimate friends was wont to tell her that she and I had many
+very strange characteristics in common, which we shared with no one else,
+while we differed utterly in other respects.  It was very like both of
+us, for Lola, when defending the existence of the soul against an
+atheist, to tumble over a great trunk of books of the most varied kind,
+till she came to an old vellum-bound copy of Apuleius, and proceed to
+establish her views according to his subtle Neo-Platonism.  But she
+romanced and embroidered so much in conversation that she did not get
+credit for what she really knew.
+
+I once met with a literary man in New York who told me he had long
+desired to make my acquaintance, because he had heard her praise me so
+immeasurably beyond anybody else she had ever known, that he wanted to
+see what manner of man I could be.  I heard the same from another, in
+another place long after.  Once she proposed to me to make a bolt with
+her to Europe, which I declined.  The secret of my influence was that I
+always treated her with respect, and never made love or flirted.
+
+An intimate of both of us who was present when this friendly proposal was
+made remarked with some astonishment, "But, Madame, by what means can you
+two _live_?"  "Oh," replied Lola innocently and confidingly, "people like
+us" (or "who know as much as we") "can get a living anywhere."  And she
+rolled us each a cigarette, with one for herself.  I could tell a number
+of amusing tales of this Queen of Bohemia, but Space, the Kantean god,
+forbids me more.  But I may say that I never had more really congenial
+and wide-embracing conversations with any human being in my life than
+with Her Majesty.  There was certainly no topic, within my range, at
+least, on which she could not converse with some substance of personal
+experience and reading.  She had a mania for meeting and knowing all
+kinds of peculiar people.
+
+I lived in the main street near the Karlsthor, opposite a tavern called
+the Ober-Pollinger, which was a mediaeval tavern in those days.  My
+landlady was a nice old soul, and she had two daughters, one of whom was
+a beauty, and as gentle and Germanly good as a girl could be.  Her face
+still lives in a great picture by a great artist.  We lived on the third
+floor; on the ground was a shop, in which cutlery and some fireworks were
+sold.  It befell that George Ward and I were very early in the morning
+sitting on a bench before the Ober-Pollinger, waiting for a stage-coach,
+which would take us to some place out of town; when bang! bang! crack! I
+heard a noise in the firework shop, and saw explosions puffing smoke out
+of the bursting windows.  Great God! the front shop was on fire; it was
+full of fireworks, such as rockets and crackers, and I knew there was a
+barrel of gunpowder in the back-shop!  I had found it out a few days
+before, when I went there to buy some for my pistols.  And the family
+were asleep.  In an instant I tore across the street, rushed screaming
+upstairs, roused them all out of bed, howling, "It burns!--there's
+gunpowder!"  Yet, hurried as I was, I caught up a small hand-bag, which
+contained my money, as I got the girls and their mother downstairs.  I
+was just in time to see a gigantic butcher burst open the two-inch door
+with an axe, and roll out the barrel containing two hundred pounds of
+gunpowder, as the flames were licking it.  I saw them distinctly.
+
+It was the awful row which I made which had brought the people out
+betimes, including the butcher and his axe.  But for that, there would
+have been a fearful blow-up.  But the butcher showed himself a man of
+gold on this occasion, for he it was who really saved us all.  A day or
+two after, when I was jesting about myself as a knightly rescuer of
+forlorn damsels, in reply to some remark on the event, George Ward called
+me to order.  There was, as he kindly said, too much that he respected in
+that event to make fun of it.
+
+George Ward is deeply impressed on my memory.  He was a sedate young
+fellow, with a gift of dry humour, now and then expressed in quaint
+remarks, a gentleman in every instinct, much given to reading and
+reflecting.  When he said anything, he meant it, and this remark of his
+struck me more than the event itself had done.
+
+And to think that I quite forgot, in narrating my Princeton experiences,
+to tell of something very much like this incident.  It was in my last
+year, and my landlady had just moved into a new house, when, owing to
+some defect in the building, it caught fire, but was luckily saved after
+it had received some damage.  I awoke in the night, flames bursting into
+my room, and much smoke.  It happened that the day before a friend in
+Alabama had sent me eleven hundred dollars wherewith to pay for him
+certain debts.  My first thought was for this money, so I hurried to get
+the key of the secretary in which it was--keys never can be found in a
+hurry--and when found, I could not find the right one in the bunch.  And
+then it stuck in the lock and would not open it, till finally I succeeded
+and got the money out.  And then, not finding myself quite dead, I in a
+hurry turned the contents of three drawers in my bureau and my linen on
+to the bed, threw on it my coats and trousers, tied the four corners of a
+sheet together in one bundle, caught up my boots, fencing-foils, &c., to
+make another, and so rescued all I had.  I verily believe I did it all in
+one minute.  That day the President, old Dr. Carnahan, when I plead "not
+prepared" for failing at recitation, excused me with a grim smile.  I had
+really that time some excuse for it.  During the Munich incident I
+thought of the sheets.  But I had gunpowder and two girls to look after
+in the latter place, and time and tide--or gunpowder and girls--wait for
+no man.
+
+And so, with study and art and friends, and much terrible drinking of
+beer and smoking of Varinas-Kanaster, and roaming at times in gay
+greenwoods with pretty maids alway, and music and dancing, the Munich
+semester came to an end.  I proposed to travel with an English friend
+named Pottinger to Vienna, and thence by some adventurous route or other
+through Germany to Paris; which was a great deal more to undertake in
+those days than it now is, entailing several hundred per cent. more pain
+and sorrow, fasting, want of sleep and washing, than any man would
+encounter in these days in going round the world and achieving _la grande
+route_; or the common European tour, to boot.  For it befell me ere I
+reached my journey's end to pass eighteen nights in one month in Eilwagen
+or waggons, the latter being sometimes without springs.  And once or
+twice or thrice I was so utterly worn and wearied that I slept all night,
+though I was so tossed about that I awoke in the morning literally
+bruised from head to foot, with my chimney-pot hat under my feet; which
+was worse than even a forced march on short commons--as I found in after
+years--or driving in a Russian _telega_, or jackassing in Egypt, or any
+other of the trifles over which pampered tourists make such heart-rending
+howls now-a-days.
+
+So we went to Prague, and thence to Vienna, which, in the year 1847, was
+a very different place indeed to what it is at present; for an unbounded
+gaiety and an air of reckless festivity was apparent then all the time to
+everybody everywhere.  Under it all lurked and rankled abuses, municipal,
+social, and political, such as would in 1893 be deemed incredible if not
+unnatural (as may be read in a clever novel called _Die schone
+Wienerinn_), but on the surface all was brilliant foam and sunshine and
+laughing sirens.  What new thing Strauss would play in the evening was
+the great event of the day.  I saw and heard the great Johann
+Strauss--this was the grandfather--and in after years his son, and the
+_schone Edie_ his grandson.  Everywhere one heard music, and the Prater
+was a gay and festive paradise indeed.  There was no business; the town
+lived on the Austrian, Hungarian, Bohemian, Russian, and other nobility,
+who in those days were extravagant and ostentatious to a degree now
+undreamed of, and on strangers.  As for free and easy licentiousness,
+Paris was a trifle to it, and the police had strict orders to encourage
+everything of the kind; the result being that the seventh commandment in
+all its phases was treated like pie-crust, as a thing made to be broken,
+the oftener the better.  Even on our first arriving at our hotel, our
+good-natured landlord, moved by the principle that it was not good for a
+young man to be alone, informed us that if we wished to have damsels in
+our rooms no objection would be interposed.  "Why not?" he said; "this is
+not a church"; the obvious inference being that to a Viennese every place
+not a church must necessarily be a temple to Venus.  And every Wiener,
+when spoken to, roared with laughter; and there were minstrels in the
+streets, and musicians in every dining-place and cafe, and great ringing
+of bells in chimes, and 'twas merry in hall when beards wagged all, and
+"the world went very well in those days."  Vienna is a far finer town
+now, but it is a Quaker meeting-house compared to what it was for gaiety
+forty years ago.
+
+This change of life and manners has spread, and will continue to spread,
+all over the world.  In feudal times the people were kept quiet by means
+of holidays, carnivals, processions, fairs, fairy-tales, treats, and
+indulgences; even the common childish instinct for gay dress and
+picturesqueness of appearance was encouraged, and at high tides everybody
+was fed and given to drink: so that if the poor toiled and fasted and
+prayed, it might be for months, they had their joyous revellings to
+anticipate, when there were free tables even for strangers.  In those
+days--
+
+   "A Christmas banquet oft would cheer
+   A poor man's heart for half the year."
+
+This Middle Age lasted effectively until the epoch of the Revolution and
+railroads, or, to fix a date, till about 1848.  And then all at once, as
+at a breath, it all disappeared, and now lives, so to speak, only in
+holes and corners.  For as soon as railroads came, factories sprang up
+and Capital began to employ Labour, and Labour to plot and combine
+against Capital; and what with scientific inventions and a sudden
+stimulus to labour, and newspapers, the multitude got beyond fancy
+dresses and the being amused to keep them quiet like children, and so the
+_juventus mundi_ passed away.  "It is a perfect _shame_!" say the dear
+young lady tourists, "that the peasantry no longer wear their beautiful
+dresses; they ought to be _obliged_ to keep them up."  "But how would
+_you_ like, my dear, if you were of the lower orders, to wear a dress
+which proclaimed it?"  Here the conversation ceaseth, for it becomes too
+deep for the lady tourist to follow.
+
+How it was we wandered I do not distinctly remember, but having visited
+Nuremberg, Prague, and Dresden, we went to Breslau, where a fancy seized
+us to go to Cracow.  True, we had not a special _vise_ from a Russian
+minister to enter the Muscovite dominions, but the police at Breslau, who
+(as I was afterwards told) loved to make trouble for those on the
+frontier, bade us be of good cheer and cheek it out, neither to be afraid
+of any man, and to go ahead bravely.  Which we did.
+
+There was a sweet scene at the frontier station on the Polish-Russian
+line at about three o'clock in the morning, when the grim and insolent
+officials discovered that our passports had only the police _vise_ from
+Breslau!  I was asked why I had not in my native country secured the
+_vise_ of a Russian minister; to which I replied that in America the very
+existence of such a country as Russia was utterly unknown, and that I
+myself was astonished to find that Russians knew what passports were.
+Also that I always supposed that foreigners conferred a great benefit on
+a country by spending their money in it; but that if I could not be
+admitted, that was an end of it; it was a matter of very trifling
+consequence, indeed, for we really did not care twopence whether we saw
+Russia or not; a country more or less made very little difference to such
+travellers as we were.
+
+Cheek is a fine thing in its way, and on this occasion I developed enough
+brass to make a pan, and enough "sass" to fill it; but all in vain.  When
+I visited the Muscovite realm in after years I was more kindly received.
+On this occasion we were closely searched and re-searched, although we
+were not allowed to go on into Russia!  Every square inch of everything
+was examined as with a microscope--even the small scraps of newspaper in
+which soap or such trifles were wrapped were examined, a note made as to
+each, and all put under paper-weights; and whatever was suspected--as,
+for instance, books or pamphlets--was confiscated, although, as I said,
+we were turned back!  And this robbery accomplished, we were informed
+that the stage-coach, or rather rough post-waggon, in which we came,
+would return at five o'clock P.M., and that we could in it go back to
+Dresden, and might pass the time till then on a bench outside the
+building--reflecting on our sins!  I had truly some papers about me which
+I did not care to have examined, but these were in my cravat, and even
+Russian ingenuity had not at that time got beyond picking pockets and
+feeling the linings of coats.  It has since been suggested to me by
+something which I read that I was under suspicion.  I had in Munich aided
+a Swiss student who was under police surveillance for political
+intriguing to escape, by lending him money to get away.  It is probable
+that for this my passport was marked in a peculiar manner.  My companion,
+Pottinger, was not much searched; all suspicion seemed to fall on me.
+
+The stage went on, and Pottinger and I sat on the bench in a mild drizzle
+at half-past three in the morning, with as miserable a country round
+about as mortal man ever beheld.  By-and-bye one of the subs., a poor
+Pole, moved by compassion and the hope of reward, cautiously invited us
+to come into his den.  He spoke a very little German and a little Latin
+(Pottinger was an Oxford man, and knew several heavy classics, Greek and
+Latin, perfectly by heart).  The Pole had a fire, and we began to
+converse.  He had heard of America, and that Polish exiles had been well
+treated there.  I assured him that Poles were admired and cherished among
+us like pet lambs among children, and the adored of the adored.  Then I
+spoke of Russian oppression, and the Pole, in utmost secrecy, produced a
+sabre which had been borne under Kosciusko, and showed us a silver
+coin--utterly prohibited--which had been struck during the brief period
+of the Polish revolution.
+
+The Pole began to prepare _his_ coffee--for one.  I saw that something
+must be done to increase the number of cups.  He took up his book of
+prayers and asked of what religion we were.  Of Pottinger I said
+contemptuously, "He is nothing but a heretic," but that as for myself, I
+had for some time felt a great inclination towards the _Panna_--Holy
+Virgin--and that it would afford me great pleasure to conform to the
+Polish Catholic Church, but that unfortunately I did not understand the
+language.  To which he replied, that if _he_ were to read the morning
+service in Polish and I would repeat it word by word, that the _Panna_
+would count it to my credit just as if I had.  And as I was praying in
+good earnest for a breakfast, I trust that it was accepted.  Down on our
+knees we went and began our orisons.
+
+"Leland! you --- humbug!" exclaimed Pottinger.
+
+"Go away, you infernal heretic, and don't disturb Christians at their
+devotions!" was my devout reply.  So, prayers concluded, there _was_
+coffee and rolls for three.  And so in due time the coach returned.  I
+rewarded our host with a thaler, and we returned to Breslau, of which
+place I noted that the natives never ate anything but sweet cakes for
+their first morning meal.
+
+We stopped at Gorlitz, where I asked a woman standing in the half-doorway
+of the house of Jacob Bohme if that was his house.  But she had never
+heard of such a man!
+
+Dresden we thoroughly explored, and were at Leipzig during the great
+annual fair.  These fairs, in those days, were sights to behold.  Now
+they are succeeded by stupendous Expositions, which are far finer and
+inconceivably greater, yet which to me lack that kind of gypsy,
+side-show, droll, old-fashioned attraction of the ancient gatherings,
+even as Barnum's Colossal Moral Show of half-a-dozen circuses at once and
+twenty-five elephants does not _amuse_ anybody as the old clown in the
+ring and one elephant did of yore.
+
+Thence to Berlin, where we were received with joy by the American
+students, who knew all about one another all over Germany.  I very much
+enjoyed the great art gallery, and the conversation of those who, like
+myself, followed lectures on AEsthetics and the history of art.  Thence
+to Magdeburg and Hanover, Dusseldorf--to cut it short, Holland and the
+chief cities in Belgium.
+
+I noted one little change of custom in Berlin.  In South Germany it was a
+common custom for students, when calling on a friend, to bring and leave
+generally a small bouquet.  When I did this in Berlin my friends were
+astonished at it.  This was an old Italian custom, as we may read in the
+beautiful One Hundred and Fifty _Brindisi_ or Toasts of Minto.
+
+   "Porto a voi un fior novello,
+   Ed, oh come vago e bello!"
+
+In 1847 even a very respectable hotel in Holland was in any city quite
+like one of two centuries before.  You entered a long antiquely-brown
+room, traversed full length by a table.  Before every chair was placed a
+little metallic dish with hot coals, and a churchwarden pipe was brought
+to every visitor at once without awaiting orders.  The stolid, literal,
+mechanical action of all the people's minds was then _wonderful_.  An
+average German peasant was a genius compared to these fresh, rosy-fair,
+well-clad Hollanders.  It was to me a new phase of human happiness in
+imbecility, or rather in undisturbed routine; for it is written that no
+bird can fly like a bullet and doze or sleep sweetly at the same time.
+Yet, as from the Huns, the most hideous wretches in the world, there
+arose by intermixture the Hungarians, who are perhaps the handsomest, so
+from the Knickerbocker Dutch sprang the wide-awake New Yorkers!  The
+galleries in Holland and Belgium were to me joys unutterable and as the
+glory of life itself.  Munich and Thiersch still inspired me; I seemed to
+have found a destiny in aesthetics or art, or what had been wanting in
+Princeton; that is, how the beautiful entered into life and was developed
+in history and made itself felt in all that was worth anything at all.
+Modern English writers on this subject--with exceptions like that of J.
+A. Symonds, whose Essays I cannot commend too highly--are in the same
+relation to its grand truth and higher inspiration as Emerson and Carlyle
+to Pantheism in its mightiest early forms.  For several years the actual
+mastery of aesthetics gave me great comfort, and advanced me marvellously
+in thought to wider and far higher regions.
+
+I forget where I parted with Pottinger; all that I can remember was, that
+early in November I arrived alone in Paris, going to some small hotel or
+other, and that as all the fatigues of the past many weeks of weary
+travel seemed to come upon me all at once, I went to bed, and never left
+the house till four o'clock P.M. the next day.  On the next I found my
+way into the Latin Quarter, and secured a _not_ very superior room in the
+Place Saint-Michel, near the Ecole de Medecine, to which I moved my
+luggage.
+
+I was very much astonished, while sitting alone and rather blue and
+overcast in my room, at the sudden entrance of a second cousin of mine
+named Frank Fisher, who was studying medicine in Paris.  He had by some
+odd chance seen my name registered in the newspapers as having arrived at
+the hotel, and lost no time in looking me up.  He lived on the other side
+of the Seine in the Boule Rouge, near the Rue Helder, a famous happy
+hunting-ground for _les biches_--I mean kids or the very dear.  I must go
+forthwith to his quarters and dine, which I did, and so my introduction
+to Paris was fairly begun.
+
+I attended at the College Louis le Grand, and at the Sorbonne, all or any
+lectures by everybody, including a very dull series on German literature
+by Philarete Chasles.  I read books.  _Inter alia_, I went through
+Dante's "Inferno" in Italian aided by Rivarol's translation, of which I
+possessed the _very copy_ stamped with the royal arms, and containing the
+author's autograph, which had been presented to the King.  I picked it up
+on the Quai for a franc, for which sum I also obtained a first edition of
+_Melusine_, which Mr. Andrew Lang has described as such a delightful
+rarity.  And I also ran a great deal about town.  I saw Rachel, and
+Frederic Lemaitre, and Mlle. Dejazet, and many more at the great
+theatres, and attended assiduously at Bobinot's, which was a very small
+theatre in the Quartier Latin, frequented entirely by students and
+grisettes.  I went to many a ball, both great and small, including the
+masked ones of the Grand Opera, and other theatres, at which there was
+dissipation and diablerie enough to satisfy the most ardent imagination,
+ending with the _grande ronde infernale_.  I made many acquaintances, and
+if they were not by any means all highly respectable, they were at least
+generally very singular or notorious.  One day I would dine at a place
+outside the Barrier, where we had a plain but fairly good dinner for a
+franc, _vin compris_, and where the honoured guest at the head of the
+table was the _chef des claqueurs_ or head of the paid applauders at all
+the theatres.  Then it would be at a private _table-d'hote_ of
+_lorettes_, where there was after dinner a little private card-playing.  I
+heard afterwards that two or three unprincipled gamblers found their way
+into this nest of poor little innocents and swindled them out of all
+their money.  When I was well in funds I would dine at Magny's, where, in
+those days, one could get such a dinner for ten francs as fifty would not
+now purchase.  When _au sec_, I fed at Flictoteau's--we called him
+_l'empoisonneur_--where hundreds of students got a meal of three courses
+with half a bottle of ordinaire, and not so bad either, for thirty sous.
+
+It happened one night at Bobinot's that I sat in the front row of the
+stage-box, and by me a very pretty, modest, and respectable young girl,
+with her elder relations or friends.  How it happened I do not know, but
+they all went out, leaving the young lady by me, and I did not speak to
+her.
+
+Which "point" was at once seized by the house.  The pit, as if moved by
+one diabolical inspiration, began to roar, "_Il l'embrassera_!" (He will
+kiss her), to which the gallery replied, "_Il ne l'embrassera pas_."
+
+So they kept it up and down alternately like see-sawing, to an
+intonation; and be it remarked, by the way, that in French such a
+monotonous bore is known as a _scie_ or saw, as may be read in my romance
+in the French tongue entitled _Le Lutin du Chateau_, which was, I regret
+to say, refused by Hachette the publisher on account of its freedom from
+strait-laced, blue-nosed, Puritanical conventionalism, albeit he praised
+its literary merit and style, as did sundry other French scholars, if I
+may say it--who should not!
+
+I saw that something must be done; so, rising, I waved my glove, and
+there was dead silence.  Then I began at the top of my voice, in
+impassioned style in German, an address about matters and things in
+general, intermingled with insane quotations from Latin, Slavonian,
+anything.  A change came o'er the spirit of the dream of my auditors,
+till at last they "took," and gave me three cheers.  I had _sold_ the
+house!
+
+There was in the Rue de la Harpe a house called the Hotel de Luxembourg.
+It was the fragment of a very old palace which had borne that name.  It
+had still a magnificent Renaissance staircase, which bore witness to its
+former glory.  Washington Irving, in one of his earlier tales, describes
+this very house and the rooms which I occupied in it so accurately, that
+I think he must have dwelt there.  He tells that a student once, during
+the Revolution, finding a young lady in the street, took her home with
+him to that house.  She had a black ribbon round her neck.  He twitched
+it away, when--off fell her head.  She had been guillotined, and revived
+by sorcery.
+
+I soon removed to this house, where I had two very good-sized rooms.  In
+the same establishment dwelt a small actress or two, and divers students,
+or men who were extremely busy all the winter in plotting a revolution.
+It was considered as a nest of rather doubtful and desperate characters,
+and an American _carabin_ or student of medicine told me of another who
+had fled from the establishment after a few days' experience, "for fear
+lest he should have his throat cut."  But this was very silly, for none
+of us would have cut anybody's throat for any consideration.  Some time
+ago I read the "Memoirs of Claude," who was the head of police in Paris
+during my time, and I was quite startled to find how many of the
+notorieties chronicled in his experiences had been known to me
+personally.  As, for instance, Madame Marie Farcey, who he declares had a
+heart of gold, and with whom I had many a curious conversation.  She was
+a handsome, very ladylike, suave sort of a person, who was never known to
+have an intrigue with any man, but who was "far and away" at the very
+head of all the immorality in Paris, as is well known to everybody who
+was deeply about town in the Forties.  Claude himself I never knew, and
+it was to his possible great loss; for there came a time when I could,
+had I chosen, have given him information which would have kept him in
+office and Louis Philippe on the throne, and turned the whole course of
+the events of 1848, as I will now clearly and undeniably prove.
+
+I did not live in the Hotel de Luxembourg for nothing, and I knew what
+was going on, and what was coming, and that there was to be the devil to
+pay.  Claude tells us in his "Memoirs" that the revolution of February 24
+took him so much by surprise that he had only three hours' previous
+notice of it, and really not time to remove his office furniture.  Now,
+_one month_ before it burst out I wrote home to my brother that we were
+to have a revolution on the 24th of February, and that it would certainly
+succeed.  Those who would learn all the true causes and reasons of this
+may find them in my forthcoming translation of "Heine's Letters from
+Paris," with my notes.  The police of Paris were very clever, but the
+whole organisation was in so few hands, and we managed so well, that they
+never found us out.  It was beyond all question the neatest, completest,
+and cheapest revolution ever executed.  Lamartine himself was not allowed
+to know anything about it till he was wanted for President.  And all over
+the Latin Quarter, on our side of the river, in cafes and balls and in
+shops, and talking to everybody, went the mysterious dwellers of the
+Hotel de Luxembourg, sounding public opinion and gathering signs and
+omens, and making recruits and laying trains, which, when fired, caused
+explosions all over Europe, and sounds which still live in history.  And
+all the work was duly reported at head-quarters.  The great secret of the
+success of the revolution was that it was in the hands of so few persons,
+who were all absolutely secret and trustworthy.  If there had been a few
+more, the police would have found us out to a certainty.  One who was
+suspected was "squared."
+
+At last the ball opened.  There was the great banquet, and the muttering
+storm, and angry mobs, and small _emeutes_.  There is a mere alley--I
+forget its name--on the right bank, which runs down to the Seine, in
+which it is said that every Paris revolution has broken out.  Standing at
+its entrance, I saw three or four shots fired and dark forms with guns
+moving in the alley, and then came General Changarnier with his cavalry
+and made a charge, before which I fled.  I had to dodge more than one of
+these charges during the day.  Before dark the rioting was general, and
+barricades were going up.  The great storm-bell of Notre Dame rung all
+night long.
+
+The next morning I rose, and telling Leonard Field, who lived in the same
+hotel with me, that I was going to work in earnest, loaded a pair of
+duelling-pistols, tied a sash round my waist _en revolutionnaire_, and
+with him went forth to business.  First I went to the Cafe Rotonde, hard
+by, and got my breakfast.  Then I sallied forth, and found in the Rue de
+la Harpe a gang of fifty insurgents, who had arms and a crowbar, but who
+wanted a leader.  Seeing that I was one of them, one said to me, "Sir,
+where shall we make a barricade?"  I replied that there was one already
+to the right and another farther down, but that a third close at hand was
+open.  Without a word they handed me the crowbar, and I prized up the
+stones out of the pavement, while they undertook the harder work of
+piling them up.  In a few minutes we had a solid wall eight feet high.
+Field had on light kid gloves, which formed an amusing contrast to his
+occupation.  Then remembering that there was a defenceless spot somewhere
+else, I marched my troop thither, and built another barricade--all in
+grim earnest without talking.
+
+I forgot to say that on the previous day I had witnessed a marvellously
+dramatic scene in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, by the market-house.  There
+was across it an immense barricade, made of literally everything--old
+beds, waggons, stones, and rubbish--and it was guarded by a dense crowd
+of insurgents, armed or unarmed, of whom I was one.  All around were at
+least three thousand people singing the _Marseillaise_ and the _Chant des
+Girondins_.  There was a charge of infantry, a discharge of muskets, and
+fifteen fell dead, some almost touching me, while the mob around never
+ceased their singing, and the sounds of that tremendous and terrible
+chorus mingled with the dying groans and cries of the victims and the
+great roar of the bell of Notre Dame.  It was like a scene in the opera.
+This very barricade has been described by Victor Hugo in detail, but not
+all which took place there, the whole scene being, in fact, far more
+dramatic or picturesque than he supposed it to have been.
+
+It seemed to be predestined that I should see every great event in that
+drama, from the charge of Changarnier down to the very end, and I hereby
+declare that on my honour I set forth exactly what I saw with my own
+eyes, without a shade of colour off the truth.
+
+There was a garcon named Edouard, who always waited on me in the Cafe
+Rotonde.  While I was working for life at my second barricade, he came
+out holding a napkin, and examining my labour critically, waved it,
+exclaimed approvingly, "_Tres bien_, _Citoyen Charles_--_tres bien_!"  It
+was his little joke for some days after to call me Citoyen Charles.
+
+Returning down the Rue de la Harpe before our house my landlady exclaimed
+to me in alarm, "Hide your pistols! there is a _mouchard_ (spy of the
+police) following you."  I believe that I, my blood being up, said
+something to the effect that if she would point him out I would shoot him
+forthwith, but the _mouchard_ had vanished.  We had all got into cool
+earnestness by that time as regards shooting, having been in it
+constantly for three days.
+
+Over the barricade came sprawling a tall ungainly red-haired Yankee, a
+student of medicine, whom I had met before, and who began to question me
+as to what I was doing.  To which I replied, "What the devil do you want
+here, anyhow?" not being in a mood to be trifled with.  To which he
+replied, "Nawthin', only a kinder lookin' reound.  But what on airth--"
+"But are you for us, or against?" I cried.  "Wall, I ain't on no side."
+"See here!" I cried in a rage; "those who are not for us are against us.
+Any one of those fellows you see round here would shoot you at once if I
+told him to, and if you don't clear out in double quick time, by God I
+will!"  And at this he made himself scarce forthwith, "nor does he come
+again into this story."
+
+Then I went down the street, and as a large supply of ammunition came to
+us from our friends, with the aid of a student of the Ecole
+Polytechnique, I distributed it to the mob.  I had principally boxes of
+percussion-caps to give.  I mention this because that young man has gone
+into history for it, and I have as good a right to a share in this
+extremely small exploit as he.  Besides, though not wounded by the foe, I
+got a bad cut on my hand from a sharp paving-stone, and its scar lasted
+for many years.
+
+I had that day many a chance to knock over a _piou-piou_ or shoot a
+soldier, as Field said, but I must confess that I felt an invincible
+repugnance to do so.  The poor devils were, after all, only fighting
+unwillingly against us, and I well knew that unless they came over to our
+side all would be up with us.  Therefore it was our policy to spare them
+as much as possible.  I owe it to Field to state that through all the
+stirring scenes of the Revolution he displayed great calmness and
+courage.
+
+All at once we heard a terrible outcry down the street.  There was a
+tremendous massing of soldiers there, and to defend that barricade meant
+death to all defenders.  I confess that I hesitated _one instant_, and
+than rushed headlong to join the fight.  Merciful God! the troops had
+fraternised with us, and they were handing over their muskets to the mob,
+who were firing them in the air.
+
+The scene was terribly moving.  My men, who a minute before had expected
+to be shot, rushed up, embraced and kissed the soldiers, wept like
+children--in short, everybody kissed and embraced everybody else, and all
+my warriors got guns, and therewith I dismissed them, for I knew that the
+war was now about at an end.
+
+There was a German-French student named Lenoir, and he, with Field and I,
+hearing that there was sharp work at the Tuileries, started thither in
+haste.  And truly enough, when we got there, the very devil was loose,
+with guns firing and the guard-house all in a blaze.  The door was burst
+open, and Field and I were among the very first who entered.  We behaved
+very well, and did not steal anything.  I remember that there was a great
+pile of plate and jewellery soon laid by the door.
+
+I went into the throne-room.  There was a great silver inkstand on the
+table, paper and pens, and we wrote, "Respect Property!"  "Liberty for
+Italy and Hungary!" and hung the papers up around the room.  I wrote one
+or two myself, and _touched_ the inkstand for luck, in case I should ever
+write about the event.
+
+It was a great and indeed a very touching and beautiful sight, for all
+present were inspired with a feeling like that of men who have passed a
+terrible, racking crisis.  _Nous avons vaincu_!  Yes, we had conquered.
+And the Revolution had marched sternly on through years of discontent
+unto the year of aggravation, Forty-Eight, when there was thunder all
+round in Europe--and after all, France at one desperate bound had again
+placed herself in the van!  And it was first decided by the taking of the
+Tuileries!
+
+Let me dwell an instant on some minor incidents.  Many of the insurgents
+had been all night without food.  The royal dinner was cooking in the
+kitchen, and it was droll to see the men helping themselves and walking
+off with the chickens and joints on their bayonets.  I had never seen a
+royal kitchen before.  Soon all along the street loafers were seen with
+jars of preserved cherries, &c., emptying them into their caps.  I went
+into the burning guard-house.  A savage fellow offered me a great tin
+pail, containing about two gallons of wine, which he offered me to drink.
+I was very thirsty, but I had a scruple against plunder.  Grasping his
+sword, he cried, "_Buvez_, _citoyen_; _c'est du vin royal_."  Not wishing
+to have a duel _a l'outrance_ with a fellow-patriot, and, as I said,
+being thirsty, I took a good long pull.  We mutually winked and smiled.
+He took a pull also to my health and Liberty.  We both "pulled."
+
+I forgot to mention how my cohort had partially armed themselves that
+morning.  They burst into every house and carried off all the arms they
+could find, and then wrote in chalk over the doors--"_Armes donnees_."
+The Musee Cluny was very near my hotel and I saw it plundered.  Such a
+sight!  I saw one vagabond on a fine stolen horse, with a mediaeval
+helmet on his head, a lance in his hand, and a six-feet double-handed
+sword or flamberg hanging behind his back.  He appeared to be quite
+drunk, and reared about in eccentric _gambades_.  This genius of Freedom
+reappeared at the Tuileries.  Mortal man was never under such temptation
+to steal as I was--just one fifteenth-century poignard as a souvenir--from
+that Museum--in fact, it was my _duty_ at that instant to do so,
+whispered the tempter in my ear.  But I resisted; and lo! it came to pass
+in later years that I became possessed, for a mere trifle, in Dresden, of
+the court dagger, in exquisite carved ivory, which was originally made
+for Francis II. of France, and which has been declared by competent
+authority to be authentic.  Owing to his short reign there are very few
+relics of this monarch.
+
+Some of the blackguards in the mob drew out the royal carriages, set fire
+to them, and rolled them gaily along the _quai_.
+
+A noble-looking very old gentleman in military costume spoke to me before
+the Tuileries, and saying that he had seen all of the old Revolution and
+Napoleon's wars, actually with tears in his eyes implored me to use my
+influence to prevent any plundering.  "_Respectez la properte_."  There
+were very few gentlemen indeed among the insurgents.  I only observed two
+or three in our quarter, and they were all from our hotel, or rather
+lodgings.  But the next day every swell in Paris came out as an
+insurgent.  _They_ had all worked at barricades--so they said.  I
+certainly had not seen any of them at work.
+
+That afternoon I strolled about with Field.  We came to a barricade.  A
+very pretty girl guarded it with a sword.  She sternly demanded the
+parole or countersign.  I caught hold of her and kissed her, and showed
+my pistols.  She laughed.  As I was armed with dirk and pistols, wore a
+sash, and was unmistakably a Latin Quarter _etudiant_, as shown by long
+hair, rakish cap on one side, red neck-tie, and single eyeglass, I was
+everywhere treated as a man and brother, friend and equal, warrior,
+and--by the girls--almost like a first-cousin.  Field shared the glory,
+of course.  And we made a great deal out of it, and were thought all the
+more of in consequence.  _Vive la jeunesse_!
+
+Coming to a corner, we heard three or four musket-shots.  We turned the
+corner, and saw a man lying dead or dying in the last quiver, while at
+his head there was at once placed a stick with a paper on it, on which
+was written with lead-pencil, "_Mort aux voleurs_!"
+
+The day before, one insurgent had offered me a beautiful old
+silver-mounted sword for one of my pistols, fire-arms being so much in
+demand, but I declined the offer.
+
+The day after, I went into a cafe.  There were some students there who
+had laid their arms on a table.  There was a very notorious little
+_lorette_, known as Pochardinette, who was so called because she was
+always half-tipsy.  She was even noted in a popular song as--
+
+   "La Pochardinette,
+   Qui ne sait refuser
+   Ni la ponche a pleine verre,
+   Ni sa bouohe a baiser."
+
+Pochardinette picked up a horse-pistol, when its owner cried, "Let that
+be!  That is not the kind of weapon which _you_ are accustomed to
+manage!"  I stared at him with respect, for he had actually translated
+into French an epigram by Jacopo Sannazar, word for word!
+
+I should here mention that on the 24th there was actually a period of two
+hours during which France had no Government--that is, none that it knew
+of.  Then there appeared on the walls all at once small placards giving
+the list of names of the _Gouvernement Provisoire_.  Now, during this
+period of suspense there appeared at the Hotel de Ville a mysterious
+stranger; a small, bustling, active individual, who came in and announced
+that a new Government had been formed, that he himself had been appointed
+Minister, that France expected every man to do his duty, and that no one
+should lose their places who conformed to his orders.  "I appoint," he
+said, "So-and-so to take command of Vincennes.  Here, you--_Chose_!
+notify him at once and send orders.  I believe that _Tel-et-tel_ had
+better take Marseilles.  Do any of you fellows know of a good governor
+for Mauritius?"  So _he_ governed France for half-an-hour and then
+disappeared, and nobody ever knew to this day who this stupendous joker
+was.  A full account of it all appeared some time after, and the cream of
+the joke was that some of his appointed ones contrived to keep their
+places.  This brief dynasty has not been recorded in any work save this!
+
+It was a droll fact that I had, the year before, at Heidelberg, drawn a
+picture of myself as an insurgent at a barricade, and written under it,
+"The Boy of the Barricades."  I had long had a strange presentiment as to
+this event.  I gave the picture to Peter A. Porter, then a student, and
+owner of a singular piece of property--that is, Niagara Falls, or at
+least Goat Island and more or less of the American side.  Some time after
+the 24th he showed me this picture in Paris.  He himself, I have heard,
+died fighting bravely in our Civil War.  His men were so much attached to
+him that they made, to recover his body, a special sally, in which twelve
+of them were killed.  He was _bon compagnon_, very pleasant, and gifted
+with a very original, quaint humour.
+
+If our ungrateful temporary stepmother, France, did not know it, at least
+the waiters in the cafes, shopkeepers, and other people in the Latin
+Quarter were aware that Field and I were among the extremely small and
+select number of gentlemen who had operated at the barricades for the
+health of Freedom, and for some time we never entered a restaurant
+without hearing admiring exclamations from the respectful waiters of
+"_Ces sont les Americains_!" or "_Les Anglais_."  And indeed, to a small
+degree, I even made a legendary local impression; for a friend of mine
+who went from Philadelphia to Paris two years later, reported that I was
+still in the memory of the Quarter as associated with the Revolution and
+life in general.  One incident was indeed of a character which French
+students would not forget.  I had among my many friends, reputable and
+demi-reputable, a rather remarkable _lorette_ named Maria, whose face was
+the very replica of that of the Laughing Faun of the Louvre--or, if one
+can conceive it, of a very pretty "white nigger."  This young lady being
+either _ennuyee_ or frightened by the roar of musketry--probably the
+former--and knowing that I was a Revolutionist and at work, conceived the
+eccentric idea of hiring a coach, just when the fighting was at the
+worst, and driving over from the Rue Helder to visit me.  Which she
+actually did.  When she came to a barricade, she gave five francs to the
+champions of liberty, and told them she was bearing important political
+orders to one of their leaders.  Then the warriors would unharness the
+horses, lift the carriage and beasts somehow over the barricade,
+re-harness, hurrah, and "_Adieu_, _madame_!  _Vive la liberte_!"  And so,
+amid bullets and cheers, and death-stroke, and powder-smoke--_hinc et
+inde mors et luctus_--Maria came to my door in a carriage, and found me
+out with a vengeance--for I was revelling at the time in the royal halls
+of the Bourbons, or at least drinking wine out of a tin pail in the guard-
+house, whereby I escaped the expense of a truffled champagne dinner at
+Magny's--while the young lady was about fifty francs out of pocket by her
+little drive, probably the only one taken that day in Paris.  But she had
+a fearfully jolly time of it, and saw the way that guns were fired to
+perfection.  This, too, became one of the published wonders of the day,
+and a local legend of renown.
+
+Of course all these proceedings put an end to lectures and study for the
+time.  Then Mr. Goodrich, our Consul, as I have before said, organised a
+deputation of Americans in Paris to go and congratulate the new
+_Gouvernement Provisoire_ on the new Republic, of which I was one, and we
+saw all the great men, and Arago made us a speech.  Unfortunately all the
+bankers stopped paying money, and I had to live principally on credit, or
+sailed rather close to it, until I could write to my father and get a
+draft on London.
+
+But when the Revolution of June was coming, I determined to leave Paris.
+I had no sympathy for the Socialists, and I knew very well that neither
+the new Government, nor the still newer Louis Napoleon, who was looming
+up so dangerously behind it, needed _my_ small aid.  There was a
+regulation in those days that every foreign resident on leaving Paris
+must give twenty-four hours' notice to the police before he could obtain
+his passport.  But when I applied for mine, it was handed out at once
+"over the counter," with a smile and a wink, as if unto one who was
+merrily well known, with an intimation that they were rather glad that I
+was going, and would do everything to facilitate my departure.  I suspect
+that my _dossier_ must have been interesting reading!  M. Claude, or his
+successor, was probably of the same mind regarding me as the old black
+preacher in Philadelphia regarding a certain convert, "De Lawd knows we
+don' want no sitch bredderin in _dis_ congregation!"
+
+So I went to Rouen and saw the cathedral and churches--it was a very
+quaint old town then--and thence to Havre, where I took passage on a
+steamboat for London.  The captain had a very curious old
+Gnostic-Egyptian ring, with a gem on which were four animal heads in one,
+or a chimaera.  I explained what it was, and that it meant the year.  But
+the captain could not rest till he had got the opinion of a fussy old
+Frenchman, who, as a doctor, was of course supposed to know more than I.
+He looked at it, and, with a great air, remarked, "_C'est grecque_!"  Then
+the captain was _quite_ satisfied.  It was Greek!
+
+I went in London to a very modest hotel, where I was, however, very
+comfortable.  In those days a bottle of the very vilest claret
+conceivable, and far worse than "Gladstone," cost four or five shillings;
+therefore I took to pale ale.  Ewan Colquhoun soon found me out, and,
+under his guidance, and that of two or three others whom I had met, I
+soon explored London.  Firstly, he took me daily to his house in St.
+James Street, where I can recall his mother, Mrs. Colquhoun, and father,
+and brothers, Patrick and James.  Patrick was a remarkable young man.  He
+had graduated at Cambridge and Heidelberg and filled diplomatic
+capacities in the East, and was familiar with many languages from Arabic
+to Gaelic, and was the first amateur light-weight boxer in England, and
+first sculler on the Thames, and had translated and annotated the
+principal compendium of Roman law.  He took me to see a grand rowing
+match, where we were in the _Leander_ barge.  So here and there I was
+introduced to a great many people of the best society.  Meanwhile, with
+Ewan, I visited the Cider Cellars, Evans', the Judge and Jury Club,
+Cremorne, and all the gay resorts of those days, not to mention the
+museums, Tower, and everything down to Madame Tussaud's.  I went down in
+a diving-bell in the Polytechnic, and over Barclay and Perkins' Brewery.
+
+One night Colquhoun and I went to Drury Lane, and, after hearing Grisi,
+Mario, and Lablache together, saw the great _pas de quatre_ which became
+a historical marvel.  For it was danced by Taglioni, Cerito, Carlotta
+Grisi, and Lucile Grahn.  In after years, when I talked with Taglioni
+about it, she assured me that night I had witnessed what the world had
+never seen since, the greatest and most perfect execution conceivable.
+For the four great artists, moved by rivalry, were inspired to do their
+best before such an audience as was seldom seen.  Colquhoun kept pointing
+out one celebrity after another to me; I verily believe that I saw most
+of the great men and women of the time.  And afterwards I saw a great
+number in Parliament.
+
+There was a rather distinguished-looking Frenchman very much about town
+in London while I was there.  He was always alone, and always dressed in
+a long, light overcoat.  Wherever I went, to Cremorne or the Park, there
+he was.  When Louis Napoleon came up in the world and I saw his
+photograph, I at once recognised my Frenchman.
+
+There roomed next to me in our hotel a German from Vienna named Becker.
+He was an opera-singer, and the newspapers said that he was fully equal
+to the first baritone of the day.  I forget who that was: was it Pischek?
+I liked him very much; he was always in my room, and always singing
+little bits, but I was not much impressed by them, and once told him that
+I believed that I could sing as loudly as he.  He never said a word, but
+at once let out his whole voice in a tremendous _aria_.  I clapped my
+hands to my ears; I verily believed that he would shatter the windows!  I
+have heard of a singer who actually broke a goblet by vibration, and I
+now believe that it is possible.  I was once shown in the Hague Museum a
+goblet which rang marvellously in accompaniment when one sang to it, and
+have met with others like it.
+
+I was invited by a young friend named Hunt (a son of the great Chartist),
+who had been a friend of mine in Heidelberg, where he had taken his
+degree as doctor of Philosophy, to pass a week in the country at a
+charming old Elizabethan place, said to have been the original Bleak
+House.  Everything there was perfectly delightful.  There were two or
+three charming young ladies.  I remember among them a Miss Oliphaunt.
+There was a glorious picnic, to which I and all walked eight miles and
+back.  I admired on this occasion for the first time the pedestrian
+powers of English girls.
+
+I visited Verulamium and St. Alban's Abbey, not then "restored," and
+other beautiful places.  It all seemed like a fairy-tale, for the charm
+of my early reading came over me like enchantment.  One night Hunt and I
+went into a little wayside inn.  There were assembled a number of
+peasants--hedgers and ditchers, or such like.  We treated them to ale,
+and they sang many strange old songs.  Then I was called on, and I sang
+"Sir Patrick Spens," which was well received.
+
+I returned to London, and found, to my dismay, that I had not enough
+money to take me home!  I had received a bill of exchange on a merchant
+in London, and, in my innocence, never dreamed that it constituted no
+claim on him whatever for a further supply.  I called at his office, saw
+his son, who naturally informed me that they could advance me no more
+money, but referred me to his father.  The old gentleman seemed to be
+amused, and questioned me all about myself.  When he found that his
+Philadelphia correspondent was very well known to my father, and that the
+son of the correspondent was a fellow-student of mine at Heidelberg and
+Paris, he asked me how much I wanted.  When I replied, "Only enough to
+pay my passage," he replied, "Is that all?" and at once gave me the
+money.  Then he questioned me as to my friends in London, and said, "You
+have seen something of the aristocracy, I would like you to see some of
+the business people."  So he invited me to a dinner at the Reform Club,
+to meet a few friends.  Among these was a Mr. Birch, son of the
+celebrated Alderman Birch.  He had directed the dinner, being a famous
+_gourmet_, and Soyer had cooked it.  That dinner cost my host far more
+than he had made out of me.  We had six kinds of choicest wines, which
+impressed me _then_.
+
+Mr. Birch was a man of literary culture, and we went deeply into books.
+The next day he sent me a charming work which he had written on the
+religious belief of Shakespeare, in which it was fairly proved that the
+immortal bard had none.  And I was so well pleased with England, that I
+liked it better than any country I had ever visited.
+
+In 1870, when I came to London, and found my character of "Hans
+Breitmann" on three stages at once, I received, of course, a great deal
+of attention.  Somebody said to me, "Oh, of course; you come here well
+known, and are made a great deal of."  I replied, "Twenty years ago I
+came to London without a single letter of introduction, and had only two
+or three student friends, and received just as much kind hospitality."  I
+think that like generally finds its like, so long as it is honest and can
+pay its bills.
+
+I left Portsmouth for New York in a sailing-vessel or packet.  I could
+have returned by steamer, but preferred the latter, as I should now, if
+there were any packets crossing the ocean.  In old times travel was a
+pleasure or an art; now it is the science of getting from place to place
+in the shortest time possible.  Hence, with all our patent Pullman cars
+and their dentist's chairs, Procrustean sofas, and headlong passages, we
+do _not_ enjoy ourselves as we did when the coach went on the road so
+slowly as to allow us to see the country, when we halted often and long,
+many a time in curious old villages.  But "the idea of dragging along in
+that way!"  Well, and what, O tourist, dost thou travel _for_?
+
+There was on the vessel in which I sailed, among the few passengers, Mrs.
+and Mr. John Gilbert, a well-known dramatic couple, who were extremely
+agreeable and genial, the husband abounding in droll reminiscences of the
+stage; a merry little German musician named Kreutzer, son of the great
+composer; and a young Englishwoman with a younger brother.  I rather
+doubted the "solidity" of this young lady.  By-and-bye it was developed
+that the captain was in love with her.  Out of this, I have heard, came a
+dreadful tragedy; for the love drove him mad, the insanity developing
+itself on the return voyage.  The captain had to be imprisoned in his own
+state-room, where he committed suicide in a terrible manner by tearing
+his throat open with the point of a candlestick or sconce.  The second
+mate, who was as coarse a brute as a common sailor could be, took
+command, and as he at once got drunk, and kept so, the passengers rose,
+confined him, and gave the command to the third, who was very young.
+
+   "Thus woman is the cause of fearful deeds."
+
+However, I freely admit that this incident resulted from a long voyage,
+for we were thirty-five days in going from port to port.  In only a week,
+with three or four days' preliminary sea-sickness, there is hardly time
+for "flirtation and its consequences."  Nor was it so much a stormy trip
+as one with long sunny calms.  Then we hauled up Gulf-weed with little
+crabs--saw Portuguese men-of-war or sea-anemones sailing along like
+Cleopatra's barges with purple sails, or counted flying-fish.  Apropos of
+this last I have something to say.  During my last trip I once devoted an
+afternoon to closely observing these bird-like creatures, and very
+distinctly saw two cases in which the fish turned and flew against the
+wind or tacked--a fact which has been denied.
+
+One day I saw a few rudder-fish playing about the stern.  They weigh
+perhaps some six or seven pounds; so, standing on velvet cushions in the
+cabin, I fished out of the stern-window.  Then came a bite, and in a
+second I had my fish flapping about on the carpet under the table, to the
+great amazement of the steward, who had probably never had a live fish
+jump so promptly before into his hands.  And we had it for dinner.  One
+day a ship made to us a signal of distress, and sent a boat, saying that
+they were completely out of fuel; also that their passengers consisted
+entirely of the celebrated Ravel troupe of acrobats and actors.  It would
+have been an experience to have crossed in that packet with their chief,
+Gabriel!
+
+Gabriel Ravel--it is one of my brother's published tales--was a good
+boxer as well as a marvellous acrobat, and he could _look_ like what he
+pleased.  One morning a muscular and vain New York swell saw in a
+gymnasium one whom he supposed to be a very verdant New Jersey rustic
+gaping about.  The swell exhibited with great pride his skill on the
+parallel bars, horizontal pole, _et cetera_, and seeing the countryman
+absolutely dumbfounded with astonishment, proposed to the latter to put
+on the gloves.  "Jersey" hardly seemed to know what gloves were, but with
+much trouble he was got into form and set to milling.  But though he was
+as awkward as a blind cow, the swell pugilist could not for a very long
+time get in a blow.  Jersey dodged every hit "somehow" in a manner which
+seemed to be miraculous.  At last one told on his chest, and it appeared
+to be a stunner, for it knocked him into the air, where he turned a
+double somersault, and then fell on his feet.  And it seemed as if,
+during this flight, he had been suddenly inspired with a knowledge of the
+manly art, for on descending, he went at the swell and knocked him from
+time.  It was Gabriel Ravel.
+
+We saw an iceberg far away, and lay off on the Grand Banks (where our
+steerage passengers caught cod-fish), and beheld a water-spout--I once
+saw two at a time in the Mediterranean--and whales, which were far
+commoner then than now, it being rumoured that the one, and no more,
+which is regularly seen by passengers now is a tame one belonging to the
+White Star or some other line, which keeps him moored in a certain place
+on exhibition; also that what Gulf-weed there is left is grown near New
+York and scattered by night from certain boats.  It may be so--this is an
+artificial age.  All that remains is to learn that the flying-fish are
+No. 3 salt mackerel set with springs, and I am not sure that I should
+doubt even _that_.
+
+
+
+
+IV.  THE RETURN TO AMERICA.  1848-1862.
+
+
+   Home--Studying law with John Cadwallader--Philadelphia as I found
+   it--Richard B. Kimball--"Fusang"--Literal reporting in German--First
+   experiences in magazines and newspapers--Father Matthew--Dr. Rufus
+   Griswold--Engaged to be married--A journey North--Colonel Cotl and
+   pistol-practice with him--Alfred Jaell--Editor of Barnum's
+   _Illustrated News_--Dr. Griswold and his MS.--Bixby's--Mr. Barnum--My
+   first books--New York society in the early Fifties--Alice and Phoebe
+   Carey--Washington Irving--Bayard Taylor--N. P. Willis--J. G. Saxe--H.
+   C. Carey--Emily Schaumberg--I become assistant-editor of the
+   _Bulletin_--George H. Boker--Cremation--Editorial life--Paternal
+   enterprise--My father renews his fortune--I am married--The Republican
+   Convention--First great dissension with the South--Translating
+   Heine--The lady in the burning hotel--The writing of "Hans Breitmann's
+   Barty"--Change to New York--Appletons' _Cyclopaedia_--G. W. Ripley and
+   Charles A. Dana--Foreign editing of _New York Times_--"Vanity
+   Fair"--The Bohemians--Artemus Ward--Lincoln's election--The Civil
+   War--My political work in the _Knickerbocker_--Emancipation--I become
+   sole editor of the _Continental Magazine_--What I did in 1862 and 1863
+   in aid of the Union cause.
+
+So we arrived in New York, and within an hour or two after my arrival I
+was in the train _en route_ for Philadelphia.  On the way, I intrusted a
+newsboy with an English shilling to go and get me change.  I still await
+that change.  And in Philadelphia the hackman who drove me to my father's
+house, as soon as the trunks were removed, departed suddenly, carrying
+away with him a small hand-bag containing several valuable objects, which
+I never recovered.  I began to think that if the object of travel be to
+learn to keep one's eyes open and avoid being swindled, that I had better
+have remained at home.
+
+My father had removed to another house in Walnut Street, below Twelfth
+Street.  After this he only changed dwellings once more before his death.
+This constant change from one rented house to another, like the changes
+from school to school, is very unfortunate, as I have before said, for
+any family.  It destroys all the feeling and unity of character which
+grow up in a settled _home_.
+
+I pass over the joy of again seeing my parents, the dear sisters, and
+brother Henry.  I was soon settled down, soon visiting friends, going to
+evening parties, making morning or afternoon calls, and after a little
+while was entered as a law-student in the office of John Cadwallader in
+Fourth Street.
+
+I cannot pass over the fact, for it greatly influenced my after life,
+that though everybody was very kind to me, and I was even in a small way
+a kind of lion, the change from my late life was very hard to bear.  I
+have read a wonderful story of a boy who while at a severe school had a
+marvellous dream.  It seemed to last for years, and while it lasted, he
+went to the University, graduated, passed into diplomatic life, was a
+great man and beloved; when all at once he awoke and found himself at
+school again and birchable.  After the freedom of student life in
+Heidelberg and Munich and Paris, and having been among the few who had
+carried out a great revolution, and much familiarity with the most
+cosmopolite type of characters in Europe, and existing in literature and
+art, I was settled down to live, move, and have all being henceforth and
+perhaps for ever in Philadelphia!  Of which city, at that time, there was
+not one in the world of which so little evil could be said, or so much
+good, yet of which so few ever spoke with enthusiasm.  Its inhabitants
+were all well-bathed, well-clad, well-behaved; all with exactly the same
+ideas and the same ideals.  A decided degree of refinement was everywhere
+perceptible, and they were so fond of flowers that I once ascertained by
+careful inquiry that in most respectable families there was annually much
+more money expended for bouquets than for books.  When a Philadelphian
+gave a dinner or supper, his great care was to see that everything _on
+the table_ was as good or perfect as possible.  I had been accustomed to
+first considering what should be placed _around_ it on the chairs as the
+main item.  The lines of demarcation in "society" were as strongly drawn
+as in Europe, or more so, with the enormous difference, however, that
+there was not the slightest perceptible shade of difference in the
+intellects, culture, or character of the people on either side of the
+line, any more than there is among the school-boys on either side of the
+mark drawn for a game.  Very trifling points of difference, not
+perceptible to an outsider, made the whole difference between the
+exclusives and the excluded; just as the witch-mark no larger than a
+needle-point indicates to the judge the difference between the saved and
+the damned.
+
+I had not been long engaged in studying law when I made the acquaintance
+of Richard B. Kimball, a lawyer of New York, who had written a few novels
+which were very popular, and are still reprinted by Tauchnitz.  He knew
+everybody, and took a great interest in me, and opened the door for me to
+the _Knickerbocker Magazine_.  To this I had contributed articles while
+at Princeton.  I now sent it my translation of Professor Neumann's
+"Chinese in Mexico in the Fifth Century."  I forget whether this was in
+1849 or 1850.  In after years I expanded it to a book, of which a certain
+Professor said, firstly in a paper read before the American Asiatic
+Society, and secondly in a pamphlet, that there was nothing of any
+importance in it which had not already appeared in Bancroft's work on the
+Pacific.  I wrote to him, pointing out the fact that Bancroft's work did
+not appear till many years after my article in the _Knickerbocker_.  To
+which the Sinologist replied very suavely and apologetically indeed that
+he was "very sorry," but had never seen the article in the
+_Knickerbocker_, &c.  But he did not _publish_ the correction, as he
+should have done.  For which reason I now vindicate myself from the
+insinuated accusation that I borrowed from Bancroft.  I had, indeed,
+almost forgotten this work, "Fusang," when, in 1890, Prince Roland
+Bonaparte, at a dinner given by him to the Congres des Traditions
+Populaires, startled me by recurring to it and speaking of it with great
+praise.  For it vindicates the claim of the French that Desguignes first
+discovered the fact that the Chinese were the first to discover America.
+If any one doubts this, let him read the truly great work of Vinton on
+the whole.  Prince Roland had been in China and earnestly studied the
+subject.  Von Eichthal had endorsed my views, and wrote to me on Fusang.
+I have been for many years well acquainted with his nephew, Baron von
+Eichthal, and his remarkably accomplished wife, who is expert in all the
+minor arts.
+
+My father's resources became about this time limited, and I, in fact,
+realised that he had taxed himself more than I had supposed to maintain
+me abroad.  His Congress Hall property did not pay much rent.  For my
+position in the world, friends, studies, and society, I found myself very
+much and very often in great need of money.  As at that time we were
+supposed to be much richer than we really were, this was an additional
+source of trial.  I began to see clearly that in the law, as in all
+business or professions, I should have to wait for years ere I could make
+a living.  For the instances are very few and far between in which a
+young man, who has not inherited or grown up to a practice, can make one
+himself at once.
+
+More than this, I was not fitted for law at all.  From my birth I had
+absolutely one of those peculiar temperaments which really disqualify men
+for "business."  If I had entered a law-office in which there was much
+office-work or practice, I might have acquired a practical interest in
+the profession, but of this there was in ours literally none whatever.  I
+had a great fondness for copying deeds, &c., but Mr. Cadwallader, though
+he very much admired my quaint round hand, being the very soul of honour,
+observing that I was eager for such work, would not give me much of it
+though it would have been to his profit, because, as he said, "students
+who paid should not be employed as clerks only, much less as copying
+machines."  As it had always been deeply impressed on my mind by every
+American friend that I had "no business capacity," and, moreover, as I
+greatly dreaded speaking in court, I had from the beginning a great fear
+that I could never live by the law.  I mention this because there are
+many thousands of young men who suffer terribly from such apprehension,
+and often ruin life by it.  A few months' practice in a mercantile
+college will go far to relieve the first apprehension, while as regards
+_stage fright_, it can be easily educated out of anybody, as I have since
+those days educated it out of myself, so that rising to debate or speak
+inspires in me a _gaudium certaminis_, which increases with the certainty
+of being attacked.  Let the aspirant begin by reading papers before, let
+us say, a family or school, and continue to do so frequently and at as
+short intervals as possible before such societies or lyceums as will
+listen to him.  Then let him speak from memory or improvise and debate.
+This should form a part of all education whatever, and it should be
+_thorough_.  It is specially needed for lawyers and divines, yet a great
+proportion of both are most insufficiently trained in it; and while I was
+studying law it was never mentioned to me.  I was never so much as once
+taken into court or _practically_ employed in any manner whatever.
+
+I remember an amusing incident in the office.  Mr. Cadwallader asked me
+one day to call, returning from my lunch, on a certain Mr. Dimpfel, one
+of his clients, leave a certain message and his request as follows:--"I
+want you, Mr. Leland, to be _very careful_.  I have observed that you are
+sometimes inaccurate in such matters, therefore be sure that you give me
+Mr. Dimpfel's _very words_."  Mr. Cadwallader knew French and Spanish
+perfectly, but not German, and was not aware that I always conversed with
+Mr. Dimpfel in the latter language.  When I returned my teacher said--
+
+"Now, Mr. Leland, can you repeat accurately _word for word_ what Mr.
+Dimpfel said?" I replied:
+
+"Yes.  _Der Herr Dimpfel lasst sich grussen und meldet das er Montag
+kommen wird um halb drei_.  _Und er sagt weiter_ . . . "
+
+"That will do," cried Mr. Cadwallader; "you must give it in English."
+
+"I beg your pardon," was my grave reply, "but you asked for his very
+words."
+
+I began to write for publication in 1849.  Mr. John Sartain, a great
+engraver, established a magazine, to which I contributed several articles
+on art subjects, subsequently many more on all subjects, and finally
+every month a certain number of pages of humorous matter.  A man named
+Manuel Cooke established in Philadelphia a _Drawing-Room Journal_.  For
+this I wrote a great deal for a year or two.  It paid me no money, but
+gave me free admission to theatres, operas, etc., and I learned a great
+deal as to the practical management of a newspaper.
+
+The first summer after my return we went to Stonington, and thence to
+visit our friends in New England, as of yore.  At Dedham I had an attack
+of cholera; my uncle, Dr. Stimson, gave me during the night two doses of
+laudanum of fifty drops each, which cured me.  Father Matthew came to
+Dedham.  I went with a very pretty young cousin of mine named Marie
+Lizzie Fisher, since deceased, to hear him preach.  After the address,
+meeting the Father, I went boldly up and introduced myself to him, and
+then Miss Fisher.  I think that his address must have deeply affected me,
+since I was obliged to stop on my way home to take a drink to steady my
+nerves.  It was against the law at that time to sell such "poison," so
+the hotel-keeper took me and my paternal uncle, George, who treated, down
+into the cellar, where he had concealed some Hollands.  I can remember
+that that pleasant summer in Dedham I, one Sunday morning in the church
+during service, composed a poem, which in after years even found its way
+into "The Poets and Poetry of America."  It began with the words--
+
+   "O'er an old ruined doorway
+      Philosophus hung,
+   And madly his bell-cap
+      And bauble he swung."
+
+It was a wild mixture of cosmopolitanism and Hamletism, and it indicates
+accurately the true state of my _cor cordium_ at that time.  Earnest
+thought, or a yearning for truth, and worldly folly, were playing a game
+of battledore and shuttlecock, and I was the feathered cork.  There is a
+song without words by Mendelssohn, which sets forth as clearly as
+Shakespeare or Heine could have done in words, deep melancholy or
+unavoidable suffering expressing itself merrily and gaily in a manner
+which is both touching and beautiful, or sweet and sad.  Without any self-
+consciousness or display of sentimentalism, I find deep traces of this in
+many little poems or sketches which I wrote at that time, and which have
+now been forgotten.  I had been in Arcadia; I was now in a very pleasant
+sunny Philistia; but I could not forget the past.  And I never forgot it.
+Once in Paris, in the opera, I used in jest emphatically the Russian word
+_harrascho_, "good," when a Russian stranger in the next box smiled
+joyously, and rising, waved his glove to me.  Once in a brilliant soiree
+in Philadelphia there was a Hungarian Count, an exile, and talking with
+him in English, I let fall for a joke "_Bassama terem-tete_!"  He grasped
+my hand, and, forgetting all around, entered into a long conversation.  It
+was like the American who, on finding an American cent in the streets in
+Paris, burst into tears.  So from time to time something recalled Europe
+to me.
+
+I went now and then to New York, which I liked better than Philadelphia.
+I was often a guest of Mr. Kimball.  He introduced me to Dr. Rufus
+Griswold, a strange character and a noted man of letters.  He was to his
+death so uniformly a friend to me, and so untiring in his efforts to aid
+me, that I cannot find words to express his kindness nor the gratitude
+which I feel.  He became the editor of a literary magazine which was
+really far in advance of the time.  It did not last long; while it
+endured I supplied for it monthly reviews of foreign literature.
+
+There were not many linguists on the American press in those days, and my
+reviews of works in half-a-dozen languages induced some one to pay a high
+compliment to the editor.  It was Bayard Taylor, I believe, who, hearing
+this, declared honestly, and as a friend, that I alone deserved the
+credit.  This was repeated by some one to Dr. Griswold in such a form
+that he thought _I_ had been talking against him, though I had never
+spoken to a soul about it.  The result was that the Doctor promptly
+dismissed me, and I felt hurt.  Mr. Kimball met me and laughed, saying,
+"The next time you meet the Doctor just go resolutely at him and _replace
+yourself_.  Don't allow him a word."  So, meeting Dr. Griswold a few days
+after in Philadelphia, I went boldly up and said, "You must come at once
+with me and take a drink--immediately!"  The Doctor went like a lamb--not
+to the slaughter, but to its milk--and when he had drunk a comforting
+grog, I attacked him boldly, and declared that I had never spoken a word
+to a living soul as to the authorship of the reviews--which was perfectly
+true, for I never broke the golden rule of "contributorial anonymity."  So
+the Doctor put me on the staff again.  But to the end of his life I was
+always with him a privileged character, and could take, if I chose, the
+most extraordinary liberties, though he was one of the most irritable and
+vindictive men I ever met, if he fancied that he was in any way too
+familiarly treated.
+
+Kossuth came to America, and I was almost squeezed to death--right
+against a pretty German girl--in the crowd at his reception in
+Philadelphia.  At the dinner in New York I met at Kimball's house Franz
+Pulszky, and sat by his wife.  I have since seen him many times in Buda-
+Pest.
+
+There lived in Philadelphia a gentleman named Rodney Fisher.  He had been
+for many years a partner in an English house in Canton, and also lived in
+England.  He had long been an intimate friend of Russel Sturgis,
+subsequently of "Baring Brothers."  He was a grand-nephew of Caesar
+Rodney, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and a son
+of Judge Fisher, of Delaware.  He was a man of refined and agreeable
+manners and an admirable relater of his innumerable experiences in Europe
+and the East.  His wife had been celebrated for her beauty.  When I first
+met her in her own house she seemed to me to be hardly thirty years of
+age, and I believed at first she was one of her own daughters.  She was
+without exception the most amiable, I may say lovable person whom I ever
+met, and I never had a _nuance_ or shade of difference of opinion with
+her, or know an instant during which I was not devoted to her.  I visited
+his house and fell in love with his daughter Belle, to whom I became,
+after about a year, engaged.  We were not, however, married till five
+years after.  Thackeray, whom I knew well, said to a Mr. Curtis Raymond,
+of Boston, not long before leaving for England, that she was the most
+beautiful woman whom he had seen in America.  I cannot help recording
+this.
+
+I need not say that, notwithstanding my terrible anxiety as to my future,
+from this time I led a very happy life.  There was in Philadelphia a very
+wealthy lady called its Queen.  This was Mrs. James Rush.  She had built
+the finest house in our city, and placed in it sixty thousand dollars'
+worth of furniture.  "_E un bel palazzo_!" said an Italian tenor one
+evening to me at a reception there.  This lady, who had read much, had
+lived long in Europe and "knew cities and men."  To say that she was kind
+to me would feebly express her kindness.  It is true that we were by much
+mutual knowledge rendered congenial.  She invited me to attend her weekly
+receptions, &c., with Miss Fisher.  There we met and were introduced to
+all the celebrated people who passed through Philadelphia.  One evening I
+had there, for instance, a conversation in German with Mme. Sontag, the
+great singer, as with Jerome Bonaparte, the nephew.
+
+When the summer came I joined Mr. Fisher and his two daughters--the
+second was named Mary--in a tour.  We went to New York, thence up the
+Hudson, and eastward to Boston.  After a day's travel we came to a town
+on the frontier line, where we had to stop for two hours.  Mr. Fisher and
+I, being very thirsty and fatigued, went into a saloon in which were two
+bars or counters.  Advancing to the second of these, I asked for brandy.
+"We don't sell no brandy here," replied the man.  "This is in
+Massachusetts: go to the other bar--that is in New York."  In an instant
+we left New England for the Middle States, and refreshed ourselves.
+Thence we went to Springfield and saw the armoury, where guns are made.
+Thence to Boston, where we stopped at a hotel.  I went with Miss Belle
+Fisher for a day's excursion to Dedham, where my mother and sisters were
+on a visit.  It was very pleasant.
+
+From Boston we went to Newport, and stayed at the Ocean House.  There I
+found Milton Sanford, a connection of mine and a noted character.  He had
+lived in Florence and known Browning and his wife.  He was, I believe,
+uncle of Miss Kate Field.  He introduced me to Colonel Colt, the
+celebrated inventor or re-discoverer of the revolver; to Alf. Jaell, a
+very great pianist; and Edward Marshall, a brother of Humphrey Marshall.
+Sanford, Colt, Marshall, and I patronised the pistol-gallery every day,
+nor did we abstain from mint-juleps.  I found that, in shooting, Colonel
+Colt could beat me _at the word_, but that I always had the best of it at
+a deliberate "take-your-time" shot.  There, too, were the two brothers
+Burnett, whom I had met long before in Heidelberg.  What with drives and
+balls and other gaiety, the time passed pleasantly enough.
+
+As I spoke German, I became intimate with Jaell.  He could not sing at
+all.  Once I suggested to him that he should compose variations on an
+air, a German popular song.  For a day or two he hummed it as well as he
+could.  On the third morning he took me into a room where there was a
+piano, and asked me to sing while he played accompaniments.  All at once
+he said, "Stop! I have got it!" and then he played the air with
+marvellously beautiful variations.  He was a great genius, but I never
+heard him play in public as he played then.  He was in a "high hour."  It
+was wonderful.  I may here say that in after years, while living at a
+hotel, I became well acquainted with Thalberg, and especially with Ole
+Bull, the violinist, who told me much about Heine.
+
+So time rolled on for three years.  I passed my examination and took an
+office in Third Street, with a sign proclaiming that I was attorney-at-
+law and _Avokat_.  During six months I had two clients and made exactly
+three pounds.  Then, the house being wanted, I left and gave up law.  This
+was a very disheartening time for me.  I had a great many friends who
+could easily have put collecting and other business in my hands, but none
+of them did it.  I felt this very keenly.  Quite apart from a young man's
+pushing himself, despite every obstacle, there is the great truth that
+sometimes the obstacles or bad luck become insuperable.  Mine did at this
+time.
+
+The author of "Gossip of the Century" has well remarked that "it has been
+said that however quickly a clever lad may have run up the ladder,
+whether of fame or fortune, it will always be found that he was lucky
+enough to find some one who put his foot on the first rung."  Which is
+perfectly true, as I soon found, if not in law, at least in literature.
+
+I went more than once to New York, hoping to obtain literary employment.
+One day Dr. Rufus Griswold came to me in great excitement.  Mr.
+Barnum--the great showman--and the Brothers Beech were about to establish
+a great illustrated weekly newspaper, and he was to be the editor and I
+the assistant.  It is quite true that he had actually taken the post, for
+which he did not care twopence, only to provide a place for me, and he
+had tramped all over New York for hours in a fearful storm to find me and
+to announce the good news.
+
+Then work began for me in tremendous earnest.  Let the reader imagine
+such a paper as the London _Illustrated News_ with one editor and one
+assistant!  Three men could not have read our exchanges, and I was
+expected to do that and all the minor casual writing for cuts, or cutting
+down and occasional outside work.  And yet even Mr. Barnum, who should
+have had more sense, one day, on coming in, expressed his amazement on
+seeing about a cartload of country exchanges which I had not opened.  But
+there was something in Philadelphia which made all work seem play to me,
+and I long laboured from ten in the morning till midnight.  My assiduity
+attracted attention.
+
+Dr. Griswold was always a little "queer," and I used to scold and reprove
+him for it.  He had got himself into great trouble by his remarks on
+Edgar A. Poe.  Mr. Kimball and others, who knew the Doctor, believed, as
+I do, that there was no deliberate evil or envy in those remarks.  Poe's
+best friends told severe stories of him in those days--_me ipso
+teste_--and Griswold, naught extenuating and setting down naught in
+malice, wrote incautiously more than he should.  These are the words of
+another than I.  But when Griswold was attacked, then he became savage.
+One day I found in his desk, which he had committed to me, a great number
+of further material collected to Poe's discredit.  I burnt it all up at
+once, and told the Doctor what I had done, and scolded him well into the
+bargain.  He took it all very amiably.  There was also much more matter
+to other men's discredit--_ascensionem expectans_--awaiting publication,
+all of which I burned.  It was the result of long research, and evidently
+formed the material for a book.  Had it ever been published, it would
+have made Rome howl!  But, as I said, I was angry, and I knew it would
+injure Dr. Griswold more than anybody.  It is a pity that I had not
+always had the Doctor in hand--though I must here again repeat that, as
+regards Poe, he is, in my opinion, not so much to blame as a score of
+writers have made out.  The tales, which were certainly most authentic,
+or at least apparently so, during the life of the latter, among his best
+friends regarding him, were, to say the least, discreditable, albeit that
+is no excuse whatever for publishing them.  I have always much disliked
+the popular principle of judging men's works entirely by their lives, and
+deciding against the literary merit of _Sartor Resartus_ because Carlyle
+put his wife's money to his own account _in banco_.
+
+And it is, moreover, cruel that a man, because he has been a poet or
+genius or artist, must needs have every weakness (real or conjectured) in
+his life served up and grinned at and chatted over, as if he forsooth
+were a clergyman or some kind of make-believe saint.  However, the more
+vulgar a nature is the more it will gloat on gossip; and herein the most
+pretentious of the higher classes show themselves no better than the
+basest.
+
+I lived at Dan Bixby's, at the corner of Park Place and Broadway, where I
+came very near being shot one night by a man who mistook me, or rather my
+room, for that of the one below, in which his wife was, or had been, with
+another person.  Being very tipsy, the injured individual went one storey
+too high, and tried to burst in to shoot me with a revolver, but I
+repelled him after a severe struggle, in which I had sharp work to avoid
+being shot.  I would much rather fight a decent duel any time than have
+such a "hog-fight."  I only had a loaded cane.  The worst of it was that
+the injured husband, having traced his wife, as he erroneously thought,
+to my room, went to Bixby and the clerk, and asked who lived in it.  But
+as they were my friends, they dismissed him gruffly, yet believed all the
+same that _I_ had "a petticoat in my wardrobe."  Hence for a week all my
+friends kept making cruel allusions in my presence to gay deceivers and
+Don Juan _et cetera_, until in a rage I asked what the devil it all
+meant, when there was an explanation by a clergyman, and I swore myself
+clear.  But I thought it was hard lines to have to stand the revolver,
+endure all the scandal for a week, and be _innocent_ all the time withal!
+That was indeed bitter in the cup!
+
+Apropos of this small affair, I can recall a droll scene, _de eodem
+genere_, which I witnessed within a week of the other.  There was a
+rather first-class saloon, bar, and restaurant on Broadway, kept by a
+good-looking pugilistic-associated individual named George Shurragar.  As
+he had black eyes, and was a shoulder-hitter, and as the name in Romany
+means "a captain," I daresay he was partly gypsy.  And, when weary with
+editorial work, I sometimes dropped in there for refreshment.  One night
+an elderly, vulgar individual, greatly exalted by many brandies, became
+disorderly, and drawing a knife, made a grand Malay charge on all
+present, _a la mok_.  George Shurragar promptly settled him with a blow,
+disarmed him, and "fired him out" into outer darkness.  Then George
+exhibited the knife.  It was such a dirty, disreputable-looking
+"pig-sticker," that we were all disgusted, and George cast it with
+contempt into the street.  Does the reader remember the scene in "The
+Bohemian Girl" in which the dandy Count examines the nasty knife left
+behind by the gypsy Devilshoof?  It was the very counterpart of this, the
+difference being that in this case it was the gypsy who despised the
+instrument.
+
+Such trivial amusing incidents and rencontres as these were matters of
+almost daily occurrence to me in those days, and I fear that I incur the
+reproach of padding by narrating these.  Yet, as I write this, I have
+just read in the "Life of Benvenuto Cellini" that he too omits the
+description of a lot of exactly such adventures, as being, like the
+darkey's imprisonments for stealing, "not worf mentionin'"--and confess I
+felt great regret that he did so; for there is always a great deal of
+local and temporal colour in anything whose proper _finale_ should be in
+a police-court.
+
+Hawthorne used to stay at Bixby's.  He was a moody man, who sat by the
+stove and spoke to no one.  Bixby had been a publisher, and was proud
+that he had first issued Hayward's "Faust" in America.  He was also proud
+that his hotel was much frequented by literary men and naval officers.  He
+was very kind to me.  Once when I complained to the clerk that the price
+of my rooms was too high, he replied, "Mr. Leland, the prices of all the
+rooms in the house, excepting yours, were raised long ago, and Mr. Bixby
+charged me strictly _not to let you know it_."  Uncle Daniel was a
+gentleman, and belonged to my club--the Century.  When he grew older he
+lived on an annuity, and was a great and privileged favourite among
+actresses and singers.  Thirty years later I called with him in New York
+on Ada Cavendish.
+
+After a fortnight or so, Dr. Griswold began to be very erratic.  He had a
+divorce case going on in Philadelphia.  He went off, assuring me that
+everything was in order, and never returned.  The foreman came to me
+saying that there was no copy, and nothing ready, and everything needed.
+Here was indeed a pretty kettle of fish!  For I at that time absolutely
+distrusted my own ability to do all the work.  I flew to Kimball, who
+said, "Just put it through by strong will, and you'll succeed."
+
+Then I went to Mr. Barnum--Uncle Barnum--who was always "as good as gold"
+to me.  I burst out into a statement of my griefs, mentioning
+incidentally that I really could not go on as full editor, and do such
+fearful work on the salary of an office-boy.  He listened to it all, I am
+sure with amusement, and placing his hand kindly on my shoulder as we
+walked up and down the hall of the Museum, said, "You _sha'n't_ go.  Don't
+get into a funk.  I know that you can do the work, and do it _well_.  And
+the salary shall be doubled--certainly!"
+
+So the paper was brought out after all.  I had great trouble for some
+time to learn to write editorials.  I used to go to the office of a
+Sunday morn, and sit sometimes from ten till two turning over the
+exchanges, and seeking for ideas.  It was a dreadful ordeal.  In fact, in
+after times it was several years before I could seize a pen, rattle up a
+subject and dash off a leader.  _Now_ I can write far more easily than I
+can talk.  And it is a curious fact that soon after I became really
+skilled at such extempore work in the opinion of the best judges, such as
+Raymond, I no longer had any opportunity to practice it.
+
+I had worked only a week or two when a rather queer, tall, roughish
+Yankee was brought into the office.  He worked for a while, and in a day
+or two took possession of my desk and rudely informed me that he was my
+superior editor and master there.  He had, as many men do, mistaken
+amiable politeness for humility.  I replied, knowing that Mr. Beech, out
+of sight, was listening to every word, that there was no master there but
+Mr. Beech, and that I should keep my desk.  We became affable; but I
+abode my time, for I found that he was utterly incompetent to do the
+work.  Very soon he told me that he had an invitation to lecture in
+Philadelphia.  I told him that if he wished to go I would do all his work
+for him.  So he went, and Mr. Beech coming in, asked where Mr. --- was.  I
+replied that he had gone away to lecture, and that I was to do his work
+during his absence.  This was really too much, and the Yankee was
+dismissed "in short order," the Beeches being men who made up their minds
+promptly and acted vigorously.  As for me, I never, shirked work of any
+kind.  A gentleman on a newspaper never does.  The more of a snob a man
+is, the more afraid he is of damaging his dignity, and the more desirous
+of being "boss" and captain.  But though I have terribly scandalised my
+chief or proprietor by reporting a fire, I never found that I was less
+respected by the typos, reporters, and subs.
+
+I had before leaving Philadelphia published two books.  One was "The
+Poetry and Mystery of Dreams," which I dedicated to my fiancee, Miss
+Belle Fisher.  The other was an odd melange, which had appeared in
+chapters in the _Knickerbocker Magazine_.  It was titled _Meister Karl's
+Sketch-Book_.  It had no great success beyond attaining to a second
+edition long after; yet Washington Irving praised it to everybody, and
+wrote to me that he liked it so much that he kept it by him to nibble
+ever and anon, like a Stilton cheese or a _pate de foie gras_; and here
+and there I have known men, like the late Nicolas Trubner or E. L.
+Bulwer, who found a strange attraction in it, but it was emphatically
+caviare to the general reader.  It had at least a _style_ of its own,
+which found a few imitators.  It ranks, I think, about _pari passu_ with
+Coryatt's "Crudities," or lower.
+
+There were two or three salons in New York where there were weekly
+literary receptions, and where one could meet the principal writers of
+the time.  I often saw at Kimball's and other places the Misses
+Wetherell, who wrote the "Wide, Wide World" and "Queechy."  They were
+elderly, and had so very little of the "world" in their ways, that they
+occurred to me as an example of the fact that people generally write most
+on what they know least about.  Thus a Lowell factory-girl likes to write
+a tale of ducal society in England; and when a Scotchman has less
+intelligence of "jocks" and "wut" than any of his countrymen, he
+compiles, and comments on, American humorists.
+
+Once there was a grand publishers' dinner to authors where I went with
+Alice and Phoebe Carey, who were great friends of mine.  There I met and
+talked with Washington Irving; I remember Bryant and N. P. Willis, _et
+tous les autres_.  Just at that time wine, &c., could only be sold in New
+York "in the original packages as imported."  Alice or Phoebe Carey
+lamented that we were to have none at the banquet.  There was a large
+dish of grapes before her, and I said, "Why, there you have plenty of it
+in the original packages!"
+
+At that time very hospitable or genial hosts used to place a bottle of
+brandy and glass in the gentlemen's dressing-room at an evening's
+reception, and I remember it was considered a scandalous thing when a
+certain old retired naval officer once emptied the whole bottle single-
+handed.
+
+Of course I was very intimate with Clark of the _Knickerbocker_, Fred
+Cozzens, John Godfrey Saxe, and all the company of gay and festive
+humorists who circled about that merry magazine.  There was never
+anything quite like the _Knickerbocker_, and there never will be again.
+It required a sunny, genial social atmosphere, such as we had before the
+war, and never after; an easy writing of gay and cultivated men for one
+another, and not painfully elaborating jocosities or seriosities for the
+million as in--But never mind.  It sparkled through its summer-time, and
+oh! how its readers loved it!  I sometimes think that I would like to
+hunt up the old title-plate with Diedrich Knickerbocker and his pipe, and
+issue it again every month to a few dozen subscribers who loved quaint
+odds and ends, till I too should pass away!
+
+It was easy enough to foresee that a great illustrated weekly, with
+actually one young man, and generally no more, to do all the literary
+work could not last long.  And yet the _New York Times_, or some such
+journal, said that the work was very well done, and that the paper did
+well until I left.  Heaven knows that I worked hard enough on it, and,
+what was a great deal to boast of in those days, never profited one
+farthing beyond free tickets to plays, which I had little time to use.
+And yet my pay was simply despicably small.  I had great temptations to
+write up certain speculative enterprises, and never accepted one.  Our
+circulation sometimes reached 150,000.  And if the publishers (excepting
+Barnum) had ever shown me anything like thanks or kindness for gratuitous
+zeal and interest which I took, I could have greatly aided them.  One
+day, for instance, I was asked to write a description of a new ferry.  I
+went there, and the proprietor intimated that he would pay a large sum
+for an article which would point out the advantage or profit which would
+accrue from investing in his lots.  I told him that if it were really
+true that such was the case, I would do it for nothing, but that I never
+made money behind my salary.  I began to weary of the small Yankee greed
+and griping and "thanklessness" which I experienced.  There were editors
+in New York who, for less work, earned ten times the salary which I
+received.  I was not sorry when I heard that some utterly inexperienced
+New England clergyman had been engaged to take my place.  So I returned
+to Philadelphia.  The paper very soon came to grief.  I believe that with
+Barnum alone I could have made it a great success.  We had Frank Leslie
+for chief engraver, and he was very clever and ambitious.  I had a
+knowledge of art, literature, and foreign life and affairs, which could
+have been turned, with Leslie's co-operation, to great advantage.  I
+needed an office with a few books for reference, at least three or four
+literary aids, and other ordinary absolutely necessary facilities for
+work.  All that I literally had was a space half-portioned off from the
+engine-room, where a dozen blackguard boys swore and yelled as it were at
+my elbow, a desk, a chair, and a pair of scissors, ink, and paste.  This
+wretched scrimping prevailed through the whole business, and thus it was
+expected to establish a great first-class American illustrated newspaper.
+It is sometimes forgotten in the United States that to make a vast
+success, something is requisite beyond enterprise and economy, and that
+it is a very poor policy to screw your _employes_ down to the last cent,
+and overwork them, and make business needlessly irksome, when they have
+it in their power to very greatly advance your interests.  I dwell on
+this because it is a common error everywhere.  I have in my mind a case
+in which an employer, who lived "like a prince," boasted to me how little
+he paid his men, and how in the long-run it turned out bitterly to his
+loss in many ways.  Those who had no principle robbed him, while the
+honest, who would have made his interests their own, left him.  I have
+seen business after business broken up in this way.  While the principal
+is in vigour and life, he may succeed with mere servants who are poorly
+paid; then, after a time, some younger partner, who has learned his
+morals from the master, pushes him out, or he dies, and the business is
+worthless, because there is not a soul in it who cares for it, or who has
+grown up with any common sense of interest with the heirs.
+
+I remember one day being obliged in New York to listen to a conversation
+between two men of business.  One owed the other a large sum, honestly
+enough--of that there was no question between them; but he thought that
+there was a legal way to escape payment, while the other differed from
+him.  So they argued away for a long time.  There was not a word of
+reproach; the creditor would have cheated the debtor in the same way if
+he could; the only point of difference was whether it could be done.  An
+_employe_ who can remain in such surroundings and be honest must be
+indeed a miracle of integrity, and, if he do not over-reach them in the
+long-run, one of stupidity.  I might have made "house and land" out of
+the newspaper had I been so disposed.
+
+Of all the men whom I met in those days in the way of business, Mr.
+Barnum, the great American humbug, was by far the honestest and freest
+from guile or deceit, or "ways that were dark, or tricks that were vain."
+He was very kind-hearted and benevolent, and gifted with a sense of fun
+which was even stronger than his desire for dollars.  I have talked very
+confidentially with him many times, for he was very fond of me, and
+always observed that to engineer some grotesque and startling paradox
+into tremendous notoriety, to make something _immensely_ puzzling with a
+stupendous _sell_ as postscript, was more of a motive with him than even
+the main chance.  He was a genius like Rabelais, but one who employed
+business and humanity for material instead of literature, just as Abraham
+Lincoln, who was a brother of the same band, employed patriotism and
+politics.  All three of them expressed vast problems, financial,
+intellectual, or natural, by the brief arithmetic of a joke.  Mr. Barnum
+was fearfully busy in those days; what with buying elephants, wooing two-
+headed girls for his Grand Combination, laying out towns, chartering
+banks, and inventing unheard-of wonders for the unrivalled collection of
+one hundred and fifty million unparalleled moral marvels; but he always
+found time to act as unpaid contributor to a column of humorous items
+which I always published.  I have said that I had no assistant; I forgot
+that I always had Mr. Barnum as assistant humorous editor for that
+department.  All at once, when least expected, he would come smiling in
+with some curiosity of literature such as the "reverse"--
+
+   "Lewd did I live & evil I did dwel,"
+
+or a fresh conundrum or joke, with all his heart and soul full of it, and
+he would be as delighted over the proof as if to see himself in print was
+a startling novelty.  We two had "beautiful times" over that column, for
+there was a great deal of "boy" still left in Barnum; nor was I by any
+means deficient in it.  One thing I set my face against firmly: I never
+would in any way whatever write up, aid, or advertise the great show or
+museum, or cry up the elephant.  I was resolved to leave the paper first.
+
+On that humorous column Barnum always deferred to me, even as a small
+school-boy defers to an elder on the question of a game of marbles or hop-
+scotch.  There was no affectation or play in it; we were both quite in
+earnest.  I think I see him now, coming smiling in like a harvest-moon,
+big with some new joke, and then we sat down at the desk and "edited."
+How we would sit and mutually and admiringly read to one another our
+beautiful "good things," the world forgetting, by the world forgot!  And
+yet I declare that never till this instant did the great joke of it all
+ever occur to me--that two men of our experiences could be so simply
+pleased!  Those humorous columns, collected and republished in a book,
+might truly bear on the title-page, "By Barnum and Hans Breitmann."  And
+we were both of the opinion that it really would make a very nice book
+indeed.  We were indeed both "boys" over it at play.
+
+The entire American press expected, as a matter of course, that the
+_Illustrated News_ would be simply an advertisement for the great
+showman, and, as I represented to Mr. Barnum, this would ere long utterly
+ruin the publication.  I do not now really know whether I was quite right
+in this, but it is very much to Mr. Barnum's credit that he never
+insisted on it, and that in his own paper he was conspicuous by his
+absence.  And here I will say that, measured by the highest and most
+refined standard, there was more of the gentleman in Phineas T. Barnum
+than the world imagined, and very much more than there was in a certain
+young man in good society who once expressed in my hearing disgust at the
+idea of even speaking to "the showman."
+
+Henry Ward Beecher was a great friend of Barnum and the Beaches, of which
+some one wrote--
+
+   "No wonder Mr. Alfred Beach
+      Prefers, as noblest preacher,
+   A man who is not only Beach,
+      But even more so--Beecher."
+
+He came very frequently into our office; but I cannot recall any saying
+of his worth recording.
+
+There was also a brother of H. W. Longfellow, a clergyman, who often
+visited me, of whom I retain a most agreeable recollection.
+
+The newsboys who clustered round the outer door were divided in opinion
+as to me.  One party thought I was Mr. Barnum, and treated me with
+profound respect.  The other faction cried aloud after me, "Hy! you ---
+---!"
+
+Mr. Barnum wanted me to write his Life.  This would have been amusing
+work and profitable, but I shrunk from the idea of being identified with
+it.  I might as well have done it, for I believe that Dr. Griswold
+performed the task, and the public never knew or cared anything about it.
+But my jolly companions at Dan Bixby's used to inquire of me at what hour
+we fed the monkeys, and whether the Great Gyascutus ever gave me any
+trouble; and I was sensitive to such insinuations.
+
+At this time Mr. Barnum's great moral curiosity was a bearded lady, a
+jolly and not bad-looking Frenchwoman, whose beard was genuine enough, as
+I know, having pulled it.  My own beard has been described by a French
+newspaper as _une barbe de Charlemagne_, a very polite pun, but hers was
+much fuller.  It was soft as floss silk.  After a while the capillary
+attraction ceased to draw, and Mr. Barnum thought of an admirable plan to
+revive it.  He got somebody to prosecute him for false pretences and
+imposture, on the ground that Madame was a man.  Then Mr. Barnum had,
+with the greatest unwillingness and many moral apologies, a medical
+examination; they might as sensibly have examined Vashishta's cow to find
+out if it was an Irish bull.  Then came the attack on the impropriety of
+the whole thing, and finally Mr. Barnum's triumphant surrebutter, showing
+he had most unwillingly been _goaded_ by the attacks of malevolent
+wretches into an unavoidable course of defence.  Of course, spotless
+innocence came out triumphant.  Mr. Barnum's system of innocence was
+truly admirable.  When he had concocted some monstrous cock-and-bull
+curiosity, he was wont to advertise that "it was with very great
+reluctance that he presented this unprecedented marvel to the world, as
+doubts had been expressed as to its genuineness--doubts inspired by the
+actually apparently incredible amount of attraction in it.  All that we
+ask of an enlightened and honest public is, that it will pass a fair
+verdict and decide whether it be a humbug or not."  So the enlightened
+public paid its quarters of a dollar, and decided that it _was_ a humbug,
+and Barnum abode by their decision, and then sent it to another city to
+be again decided on.
+
+I returned to Philadelphia, and to my father's house, and occupied myself
+with such odds and ends of magazine and other writing as came in my way,
+and always reading and studying.  I was very much depressed at this time,
+yet not daunted.  My year in New York had familiarised me with
+characteristic phases of American life and manners; my father thought I
+had gone through a severe mill with rather doubtful characters, and once
+remarked that I should not judge too harshly of business men, for I had
+been unusually unfortunate in my experience.
+
+A not unfrequent visitor at our house in Philadelphia was our near
+neighbour, Henry C. Carey, the distinguished scholar and writer on
+political economy, who had been so extensively robbed of ideas by
+Bastiat, and who retook his own, not without inflicting punishment.  He
+was a handsome, black-eyed, white-haired man, with a very piercing
+glance.  During the war, when men were sad and dull, and indeed till his
+death, Mr. Carey's one glorious and friendly extravagance was to assemble
+every Sunday afternoon all his intimates, including any distinguished
+strangers, at his house, round a table, in rooms magnificently hung with
+pictures, and give everybody, _ad libitum_, hock which cost him sixteen
+shillings a bottle.  I occasionally obliged him by translating for him
+German letters, &c., and he in return revised my pamphlet on
+Centralization _versus_ State Rights in 1863.  H. C. Baird, a very able
+writer of his school, was his nephew.  The latter had two or three
+sisters, whom I recall as charming girls while I was a law-student.  There
+were many beauties in Philadelphia in those days, and prominent at the
+time, though as yet a schoolgirl, was the since far-famed Emily
+Schaumberg, albeit I preferred Miss Belle Fisher, a descendant maternally
+of the famous Callender beauties, and by her father's side allied to Miss
+Vining, the American Queen of Beauty during the Revolution at
+Washington's republican court.  There was also a Miss Lewis, whose great
+future beauty I predicted while as yet a child, to the astonishment of a
+few, "which prophecy was marvellously fulfilled."  Also a Miss Wharton,
+since deceased, on whom George Boker after her death wrote an exquisite
+poem.  The two were, each of their kind, of a beauty which I have rarely,
+if ever, seen equalled, and certainly never surpassed, in Italy.  How I
+could extend the list of those too good and fair to live, who have passed
+away from my knowledge!--Miss Nannie Grigg--Miss Julia Biddle!--_Mais ou
+sont les neiges d'antan_?
+
+Thus far my American experiences had not paid well.  I reflected that if
+I had remained in Paris I should have done far better.  When I left, I
+knew that the success of Louis Napoleon was inevitable.  Three newspapers
+devoted to him had appeared on the Boulevards in one day.  There was
+money at work, and workmen such as lived in the Hotel de Luxembourg,
+gentlemen who could not only plan barricades but fight at them, were in
+great demand, as _honest_ men always are in revolutions.  Louis Napoleon
+was very anxious indeed to attach to him the men of February, and many
+who had not done one-tenth or one-twentieth of what I had, had the door
+of fortune flung wide open to them.  My police-_dossier_ would have been
+literally a diploma of honour under the new Empire, for, after all, the
+men of February, Forty-eight, were the ones who led off, and who all bore
+the highest reputation for honour.  All that I should have required would
+have been some ambitious man of means to aid--and such men abound in
+Paris--to have risen fast and high.  As it turned out, it was just as
+well in the end that I neither went in as a political adventurer under
+Louis Napoleon, nor wrote the Life of Barnum.  But no one knew in those
+days how Louis would turn out.
+
+I have but one word to add to this.  The secret of the Revolution of
+February had been in very few hands, which was the secret of its success.
+Any one of us could have secured fortune and "honours," or at least
+"orders," by betraying it.  But we would as soon have secured orders for
+the pit of hell as done so.  This was known to Louis Napoleon, and he
+must have realised who these men of iron integrity were for he was very
+curious and inquiring on this subject.  Now, I here claim it as a great,
+as a surpassing honour for France, and as something absolutely without
+parallel in history, that several hundred men could be found who could
+not only keep this secret, but manage so very wisely as they did.  Louis
+Blanc was an example of these honest, unselfish men.  I came to know him
+personally many years after, during his exile in London.
+
+One morning George H. Boker came to me and informed me that there was a
+writing editor wanted on the Philadelphia _Evening Bulletin_.  Its
+proprietor was Alexander Cummings.  The actual editor was Gibson
+Bannister Peacock, who was going to Europe for a six months' tour, and
+some one was wanted to take his place.  Mr. Peacock, as I subsequently
+found, was an excellent editor, and a person of will and character.  He
+was skilled in music and a man of culture.  I retain grateful
+remembrances of him.  I was introduced and installed.  With all my
+experience I had not yet quite acquired the art of extemporaneous
+editorial composition.  My first few weeks were a severe trial, but I
+succeeded.  I was expected to write one column of leader every day,
+review books, and "paragraph" or condense articles to a brief item of
+news.  In which I succeeded so well, that some time after, when a work
+appeared on writing for the press, the author, who did not know me at
+all, cited one of my leaders and one of my paragraphs as models.  It
+actually made little impression on me at the time--I was so busy.
+
+I had been at work but a short time, when one day Mr. Cummings received a
+letter from Mr. Peacock in Europe, which he certainly had hardly glanced
+at, which he threw to me to read.  I did so, and found in it a passage to
+this effect: "I am sorry that you are disappointed as to Mr. Leland, but
+I am confident that you will find him perfectly capable in time."  This
+gave me a bitter pang, but I returned it to Mr. Cummings, who soon after
+came into the office and expressed frankly his great regret, saying that
+since he had written to Mr. Peacock he had quite changed his opinion.
+
+I enjoyed this new life to the utmost.  Mr. Cummings, to tell the truth,
+pursued a somewhat tortuous course in politics and religion.  He was a
+Methodist.  One day our clerk expressed himself as to the latter in these
+words:--"They say he is a Jumper, but others think he has gone over to
+the Holy Rollers."  The Jumpers were a sect whose members, when the Holy
+Spirit seized them, jumped up and down, while the Holy Rollers under such
+circumstances rolled over and over on the floor.  We also advocated
+Native Americanism and Temperance, which did not prevent Mr. Peacock and
+myself and a few _habitues_ of the office from going daily at eleven
+o'clock to a neighbouring lager-beer _Wirthschaft_ for a refreshing glass
+and lunch.  One day the bar-tender, Hermann, a very nice fellow, said to
+me, "I remember when you always had a bottle of Rudesheimer every day for
+dinner.  That was at Herr Lehr's, in Heidelberg.  I always waited on
+you."
+
+Whoever shall write a history of Philadelphia from the Thirties to the
+end of the Fifties will record a popular period of turbulence and
+outrages so extensive as to now appear almost incredible.  These were so
+great as to cause grave doubts in my mind whether the severest despotism,
+guided by justice, would not have been preferable to such republican
+license as then prevailed in the city of Penn.  I refer to the absolute
+and uncontrolled rule of the Volunteer Fire Department, which was divided
+into companies (each having clumsy old fire apparatus and hose), all of
+them at deadly feud among themselves, and fighting freely with pistols,
+knives, iron spanners, and slung shot, whenever they met, whether at
+fires or in the streets.  Of these regular firemen, _fifty thousand_ were
+enrolled, and to these might have been added almost as many more, who
+were known as runners, bummers, and hangers-on.  Among the latter were a
+great number of incendiaries, all of whom were well known to and
+encouraged by the firemen.  Whenever the latter wished to meet some rival
+company, either to test their mutual skill or engage in a fight, a fire
+was sure to occur; the same always happened when a fire company from some
+other city visited Philadelphia.
+
+This gave occasion to an incredible amount of blackmailing, since all
+house-owners were frequently called on to contribute money to the
+different companies, sometimes as a subscription for ball-tickets or
+repairs.  It was well understood, and generally pretty plainly expressed,
+that those who refused to pay might expect to be burned out or neglected.
+The result of it all was a general fear of the firemen, a most degrading
+and contemptible subservience to them by politicians of all kinds, a
+terrible and general growth and spread of turbulence and coarse vulgarity
+among youth, and finally, such a prevalence of conflagration that no one
+who owned a house could hear the awful tones of the bell of Independence
+Hall without terror.  Fires were literally of nightly occurrence, and
+that they were invariably by night was due to the incendiary "runner."  A
+slight examination of the newspapers and cheap broadside literature of
+that time will amply confirm all that I here state.  "Jakey" was the
+typical fireman; he was the brutal hero of a vulgar play, and the ideal
+of nineteen youths out of twenty.  For a generation or more all society
+felt the degrading influences of this rowdyism in almost every circle--for
+there were among the vast majority of men not very many who respected,
+looked up to, or cared for anything really cultured or refined.  I have a
+large collection of the popular songs of Philadelphia of that time, in
+all of which there is a striving downwards into blackguardism and
+brutality, vileness and ignorance, which has no parallel in the
+literature of any other nation.  The French of the _Pere Duchene_ school
+may be nastier, and, as regards aristocrats, as bloody, but for general
+all-round _vulgarity_, the state of morals developed among the people at
+the time of which I speak was literally without its like.  It is very
+strange that Pliny also speaks of the turbulence or rowdyism of the
+firemen of Rome.
+
+I remember that even in Walnut Street, below Thirteenth Street, before my
+father's house (this being then by far the most respectable portion of
+Philadelphia), it happened several nights in succession that rival fire-
+companies, running side by side, fought as they ran, with torches and
+knives, while firing pistols.  There was a young lady named Mary Bicking,
+who lived near us.  I asked her one day if she had ever seen a man shot;
+and when she answered "No," I replied, "Why don't you look out of your
+window some night and see one?"
+
+The southern part of the city was a favourite battleground, and I can
+remember hearing ladies who lived in Pine Street describe how, on Sunday
+summer afternoons, they could always hear, singly or in volleys, the
+shots of the revolvers and shouts of the firemen as they fought in
+Moyamensing.
+
+Every effort to diminish these evils, or to improve the fire department
+in any way whatever, was vigorously opposed by the rowdies, who
+completely governed the city.  The first fire-alarm electric telegraphs
+were a great offence to firemen, and were quietly destroyed; the steam-
+engines were regarded by them as deadly enemies.  But the first great
+efficient reform in the Philadelphia fire department, and the most
+radical of all, was the establishment of a fire-detective department
+under a fire-marshal, whose business it was to investigate and punish all
+cases of incendiarism.  For it was simply incendiarism, encouraged and
+supported by the firemen themselves, which caused nineteen-twentieths of
+all these disasters; it was the _fires_ which were the sole support of
+the whole system.
+
+I was much indebted for understanding all this, and acting on it boldly,
+as I did, to the city editor and chief reporter on the _Evening
+Bulletin_, Caspar Souder.  The Mayor of the city was Richard Vaux, a man
+of good family and education, and one who had seen in his time cities and
+men, he having once in his youth, on some great occasion, waltzed with
+the Princess--now Queen--Victoria.  Being popular, he was called _Vaux
+populi_.  I wrote very often leaders urging Mayor Vaux by name to
+establish a fire-detective department.  So great was the indignation
+caused among the firemen, that I incurred no small risk in writing them.
+But at last, when I published for one week an article every day
+clamouring for a reform, Mayor Vaux--as he said directly to Mr. Souder,
+"in consequence of my appeals"--vigorously established a fire-marshal
+with two aids.  By my request, the office was bestowed on a very
+intelligent and well-educated person, Dr. Blackburne, who had been a
+surgeon in the Mexican war, then a reporter on our journal, and finally a
+very clever superior detective.  He was really not only a born detective,
+but to a marked degree a man of scientific attainments and a skilled
+statistician.  His anecdotes and comments as to pyromaniacs of different
+kinds were as entertaining and curious as anything recorded by Gaboriau.
+Some of the most interesting experiences of my life were when I went with
+Dr. Blackburne from place to place where efforts had been made to burn
+houses, and noted the unerring and Red-Indian skill with which he
+distinguished the style of work, and identified the persons and names of
+the incendiaries.  One of these "fire-bugs" was noted for invariably
+setting fire to houses in such a manner as to destroy as many inmates as
+possible.  If there were an exit, he would block it up.  Dr. Blackburne
+took me to a wooden house in which the two staircases led to a very small
+vestibule about three feet square before the front door.  This space had
+been filled with diabolical ingenuity with a barrel full of combustibles,
+so that every one who tried to escape by the only opening below would be
+sure to perish.  Fortunately, the combustibles in the barrel went out
+after being ignited.  "I know that fellow by his style," remarked the
+Doctor, "and I shall arrest him at four o'clock this afternoon."
+
+This fire-detective department and the appointment of Blackburne was the
+real basis and beginning of all the reforms which soon followed, leading
+to the abolition of the volunteer system and the establishment of paid
+_employes_.  And as I received great credit for it then, my work being
+warmly recognised and known to all the newspaper reporters and editors in
+the city, who were the best judges of it, as they indeed are of all
+municipal matters, I venture to record it here as something worth
+mentioning.  And though I may truly say that at the time I was so busy
+that I made no account of many such things, they now rise up from time to
+time as comforting assurances that my life has not been quite wasted.
+
+This reminds me that I had not been very long on the newspaper, and had
+just begun to throw out editorials with ease, when Mr. Cummings said to
+me one day that I did not realise what a power I held in my hand, but
+that I would soon find it out.  Almost immediately after, in noticing
+some article or book which was for sale at No. 24 Chestnut Street, I
+inadvertently made reference to 24 Walnut Street.  Very soon came the
+proprietor of the latter place, complaining that I had made life a burden
+to him, because fifty people had come in one day to buy something which
+he had not.  I reflected long and deeply on this, with the result of
+observing that to influence people it is not at all necessary to argue
+with them, but simply be able to place before their eyes such facts as
+you choose.  It is very common indeed to hear people in England, who
+should have more sense, declare that "nobody minds what the newspapers
+say."  But the truth is, that if any man has an eye to read and memory to
+retain, he _must_, willy-nilly, be influenced by reading, and selection
+from others by an able editor is often only a most ingenious and artful
+method of arguing.  It has very often happened to me, when I wanted to
+enforce some important point, to clothe it as an anecdote or innocent
+"item," and bid the foreman set it in the smallest type in the most
+obscure corner.  And the reader is influenced by it, utterly
+unconsciously, just as we all are, and just as surely as all reflection
+follows sensation--as it ever will--into the Ages!
+
+There was much mutual robbing by newspapers of telegraphic news in those
+days.  Once it befell that just before the _Bulletin_ went to press a
+part of the powder-mills of Dupont Brothers in Delaware blew up, and we
+received a few lines of telegram, stating that Mr. Dupont himself had
+saved the great magazine by actually walking on a burning building with
+buckets of water, and preventing the fire from extending, at a most
+incredible risk of his life.  Having half-an-hour's time, I expanded this
+telegram into something dramatic and thrilling.  A great New York
+newspaper, thinking, from the shortness of time which elapsed in
+publishing, that it was all telegraphed to us, printed it as one of its
+own from Delaware, just as I had written it out--which I freely forgive,
+for verily its review of my last work but one was such as to make me
+inquire of myself in utter amazement, "Can this be I?"--"so gloriously
+was I exalted to the higher life."  The result of this review was a sworn
+and firm determination on my part to write another book of the same kind,
+in which I should show myself more worthy of such cordial encouragement;
+which latter book was the "Etruscan Legends."  I ought indeed to have
+dedicated it to the _New York Tribune_, a journal which has done more for
+human freedom than any other publication in history.
+
+I do not know certainly whether the brave Dupont whom I mentioned was the
+Charley Dupont who went to school with me at Jacob Pierce's, nor can I
+declare that a very gentlemanly old Frenchman who came to see him in 1832
+was his father or grandfather, the famous old Dupont de l'Eure of the
+French Revolution.  But I suppose it was the latter who carried and
+transformed the art of manufacturing moral gunpowder in France to the
+making material explosives in America.  Yes, moral or physical, we are
+all but gunpowder and smoke--_pulvis et umbra sumus_!
+
+There was a morning paper in Philadelphia which grieved me sore by
+pilfering my news items as I wrote them.  So I one day gave a marvellous
+account of the great Volatile Chelidonian or Flying Turtle of Surinam, of
+which a specimen had just arrived in New York.  It had a shell as of
+diamonds blent with emeralds and rubies, and bat-like wings of iridescent
+hue surpassing the opal, and a tail like a serpent.  Our contemporary,
+nothing doubting, at once published this as original matter in a letter
+from New York, and had to bear the responsibility.  But I did not invest
+my inventiveness wisely; I should have shared the idea with Barnum.
+
+There was in Philadelphia at this time a German bookseller named
+Christern.  It was the thought of honourable and devoted men which
+recalled him to my mind.  I had made his acquaintance long before in
+Munich, where he had been employed in the principal bookseller's shop of
+the city.  His "store" in Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, became a kind of
+club, where I brought such of my friends as were interested in German
+literature.  We met there and talked German, and examined and discussed
+all the latest European works.  He had a burly, honest, rather droll
+assistant named Ruhl, who had been a student in Munich, then a
+Revolutionist and exile, and finally a refugee to America.  To this shop,
+too, came Andrekovitch, whom I had last known in Paris as a speculator on
+the Bourse, wearing a cloak lined with sables.  In America he became a
+chemical manufacturer.  When at last an amnesty was proclaimed, his
+brother asked him to return to Poland, promising a support, which he
+declined.  He too was an honourable, independent man.  About this time
+the great--I forget his name; or was it Schoffel?--who had been President
+of the Frankfort Revolutionary Parliament, opened a lager-beer
+establishment in Race Street.  I went there several times with Ruhl.
+
+George Boker and Frank Wells, who subsequently succeeded me on the
+_Bulletin_, would drop in every day after the first edition had gone to
+press, and then there would be a lively time.  Frank Wells was, _par
+eminence_, the greatest punster Philadelphia ever produced.  He was in
+this respect appalling.  We had a sub-editor or writer named Ernest
+Wallace, who was also a clever humorist.  One day John Godfrey Saxe came
+in.  He was accustomed among country auditors and in common sanctums to
+carry everything before him with his jokes.  In half-an-hour we
+extinguished him.  Having declared that no one could make a pun on his
+name, which he had not heard before, Wallace promptly replied, "It's
+_axing_ too much, I presume; but did you ever hear _that_?"  Saxe owned
+that he had not.
+
+George H. Boker, whose name deserves a very high place in American
+literature as a poet, and in history as one who was of incredible
+service, quietly performed, in preserving the Union during the war, was
+also eminently a wit and humorist.  We always read first to one another
+all that we wrote.  He had so trained himself from boyhood to
+self-restraint, calmness, and the _nil admirari_ air, which, as Dallas
+said, is "the Corinthian ornament of a gentleman" (I may add especially
+when of Corinthian brass), that his admirable jests, while they gained in
+clearness and applicability, lost something of that rattle of the
+impromptu and headlong which renders Irish and Western humour so easy.  I
+recorded the _bon mots_ and merry stories which passed among us all in
+the _sanctum_ in articles for our weekly newspaper, under the name of
+"Social Hall Sketches" (a social hall in the West is a steamboat smoking-
+room).  Every one of us received a name.  Mr. Peacock was Old Hurricane,
+and George Boker, being asked what his pseudonym should be, selected that
+of Bullfrog.  These "Social Hall Sketches" had an extended circulation in
+American newspapers, some for many years.  One entirely by me, entitled
+"Opening Oysters," is to be found in English almanacs, &c., to this day.
+
+It was, I think, or am sure, in 1855 that some German in Pennsylvania,
+instead of burying his deceased wife, burned the body.  This called forth
+a storm of indignant attack in the newspapers.  It was called an
+irreligious, indecent act.  I wrote an editorial in which I warmly
+defended it.  According to Bulwer in the "Last Days of Pompeii," the
+early Christians practised it.  Even to this day Urns and torches are
+common symbols in Christian burying-grounds, and we speak of "ashes" as
+more decent than mouldering corpses.  And, finally, I pointed out the
+great advantage which it would be to the coal trade of Pennsylvania.  A
+man of culture said to me that it was the boldest editorial which he had
+ever read.  Such as it was, I believe that it was the first article
+written in modern times advocating cremation.  If I am wrong, I am
+willing to be corrected.
+
+To those who are unfamiliar with it, the life in an American newspaper
+office seems singularly eventful and striking.  A friend of mine who
+visited a sanctum (ours) for the first time, said, as he left, that he
+had never experienced such an interesting hour in his life.  _Firstly_,
+came our chief city reporter, exulting in the manner in which he had
+circumvented the police, and, despite all their efforts, got, by ways
+that were dark, at all the secrets of a brand-new horrible murder.
+_Secondly_, a messenger with an account of how I, individually, had
+kicked up the very devil in the City Councils, and set the Mayor to
+condemning us, by a leader discussing certain municipal abuses.
+_Thirdly_, another, to tell how I had swept one-half the city by an
+article exposing its neglect, and how the sweepers and dirt-carts were
+busy where none had been before for weeks, and how the contractor for
+cleaning wanted to shoot me.  _Fourthly_, a visit from some great
+dignitary, who put his dignity very much _a l'abri_ in his pocket, to
+solicit a puff.  _Fifthly_, a lady who, having written a very feeble
+volume of tales which had merely been gently commended in our columns,
+came round in a rage to shame me by sarcasm, begging me as a parting shot
+to at least _read_ a few lines of her work.  _Sixthly_, a communication
+from a great New York family, who, having been requested to send a short
+description of a remarkable wedding-cake, sent me _one hundred and fifty
+pages_ of minute history of all their ancestors and honours, with strict
+directions that not a line should be omitted, and the article printed at
+once most conspicuously. {225}  _Seventhly_, . . . but this is a very
+mild specimen of what went on all the time during office-hours.  And on
+this subject alone I could write a small book.
+
+Now, at this time there came about a very great change in my life, or an
+event which ultimately changed it altogether.  My father had, for about
+two years past, fallen into a very sad state of mind.  His large property
+between Chestnut and Bank Streets paid very badly, and his means became
+limited.  I was seriously alarmed as to his health.  My dear mother had
+become, I may say, paralytic; but, in truth, the physicians could never
+explain the disorder.  To the last she maintained her intellect, and a
+miraculous cheerfulness unimpaired.
+
+All at once a strange spirit, as of new life, came suddenly over my
+father.  I cannot think of it without awe.  He went to work like a young
+man, shook off his despair, financiered with marvellous ability, borrowed
+money, collected old and long-despaired of debts, tore down the old hotel
+and the other buildings, planned and bargained with architects--it was
+then that I designed the facade before described--and built six stores,
+two of them very handsome granite buildings, on the old site.  In short,
+he made of it a very valuable estate.  And as he superintended with great
+skill and ability the smallest details of the building, which was for
+that time remarkably well executed, I thought I recognised whence it was
+that I derived the strongly developed tendency for architecture which I
+have always possessed.  I have since made 400 copies of old churches in
+England.
+
+This was a happy period, when life was without a cloud, excepting my
+mother's trouble.  As my father could now well afford it, he made me an
+allowance, which, with my earnings from the _Bulletin_ and other
+occasional literary work, justified me in getting married.  I had had a
+long but still very happy engagement.  So we were married by the
+Episcopal ceremony at the house of my father-in-law in Tenth Street, and
+a very happy wedding it was.  I remember two incidents.  Before the
+ceremony, the Reverend Mr., subsequently Bishop Wilmer, took me, with
+George Boker, into a room and explained to me the symbolism of the
+marriage-ring.  Now, if there was a subject on earth which I, the old
+friend of Creuzer of Heidelberg, and master of Friedrich's _Symbolik_,
+and Durandus, and the work "On Finger-Rings," knew all about, it was
+_that_; and I never shall forget the droll look which Boker threw at me
+as the discourse proceeded.  But I held my peace, though sadly tempted to
+set forth my own archaeological views on the subject.
+
+The second was this: Philadelphia, as Mr. Philipps has said, abounds in
+folk-lore.  Some one suggested that the wedding would be a lucky one
+because there was only one clergyman present.  But I remarked that among
+our coloured waiters there was one who had a congregation (my wife's
+cousin, by the way, had a coloured bishop for coachman).  However, this
+sable cloud did not disturb us.
+
+We went to New York, and were visited by many friends, and returned to
+Philadelphia.  We lived for the first year at the La Pierre Hotel, where
+we met with many pleasant people, such as Thackeray, Thalberg, Ole Bull,
+Mr. and Mrs. Choteau, of St. Louis, and others.  Of Thalberg I have
+already remarked, in my notes to my translation of Heine's _Salon_, that
+he impressed me as a very gentlemanly, dignified, and quietly remarkable
+man, whom it would be difficult to readily or really understand.  "He had
+unmistakably the manner peculiar to many great Germans, which, as I have
+elsewhere observed, is perceptible in the _maintien_ and features of
+Goethe, Humboldt, Bismarck," and Brugsch, of Berlin (whom I learned to
+know in later years).  Thalberg gave me the impression, which grew on me,
+of a man who knew many things besides piano-playing, and that he was born
+to a higher specialty.  He was dignified but affable.  I remember that
+one day, when he, or some one present, remarked that his name was not a
+common one, I made him laugh by declaring that it occurred in two pieces
+in an old German ballad:--
+
+   "Ich that am BERGE stehen,
+      Und sohaute in das THAL;
+   Da hab' ich sie gesehen,
+      Zum aller letzten mal."
+
+   "I stood upon the _mountain_,
+      And looked the _valley_ o'er;
+   There I indeed beheld her,
+      But saw her never more."
+
+Thalberg's playing was marvellously like his character or himself: Heine
+calls it gentlemanly.  Thackeray was marked in his manner, and showed
+impulse and energy in small utterances.  I may err, but I do not think he
+could have endured solitude or too much of himself.  He was eminently
+social, and rather given at times to reckless (not deliberate or
+spiteful), sarcastic or "ironic" sallies, in which he did not, with
+Americans, generally come off "first best."  There was a very beautiful
+lady in Boston with whom the great novelist was much struck, and whom he
+greatly admired, as he sent her two magnificent bronzes.  Having dined
+one evening at her house, he remarked as they all entered the
+dining-room, "Now I suppose that, according to your American custom, we
+shall all put our feet up on the chimney-piece."  "Certainly," replied
+his hostess, "and as your legs are so much longer than the others, you
+may put your feet on top of the looking-glass," which was about ten feet
+from the ground.  Thackeray, I was told, was offended at this, and showed
+it; he being of the "give but not take" kind.  One day he said to George
+Boker, when both were looking at Durer's etching of "Death, Knight, and
+the Devil," of which I possess a fine copy, "Every man has his devil whom
+he cannot overcome; I have two--laziness, and love of pleasure."  I
+remarked, "Then why the devil seek to overcome them?  Is it not more
+noble and sensible to yield where resistance is in vain, than to fight to
+the end?  Is it not a maxim of war, that he who strives to defend a
+defenceless place must be put to death?  Why not give in like a man?"
+
+I had just published my translation of Heine's _Reisebilder_, and Bayard
+Taylor had a copy of it.  He went in company with Thackeray to New York,
+and told me subsequently that they had read the work aloud between them
+alternately with roars of laughter till it was finished; that Thackeray
+praised my translation to the skies, and that his comments and droll
+remarks on the text were delightful.  Thackeray was a perfect German
+scholar, and well informed as to all in the book.
+
+Apropos of Heine, Ole Bull had known him very well, and described to me
+his brilliancy in the most distinguished literary society, where in
+French the German wit bore away the palm from all Frenchmen.  "He flashed
+and sprayed in brilliancy like a fountain."  Ole Bull by some chance had
+heard much of me, and we became intimate.  He told me that I had
+unwittingly been to him the cause of great loss.  I had, while in London,
+become acquainted with an odd and rather scaly fish, a German who had
+been a courier, who was the keeper of a small cafe near Leicester Square,
+and who enjoyed a certain fame as the inventor of the _poses plastiques_
+or living statues, so popular in 1848.  This man soon came over to
+America, and called on me, wanting to borrow money, whereupon I gave him
+the cold shoulder.  According to Ole Bull, he went to the great
+violinist, represented himself as my friend and as warmly commended by
+me, and the heedless artist, instead of referring to me directly, took
+him as impresario; the result being that he ere long ran away with the
+money, and, what was quite as bad, Ole Bull's prima-donna, who was, as I
+understood, specially dear to him.  Ole Bull's playing has been, as I
+think, much underrated by certain writers of reminiscences.  There was in
+it a marvellous originality.
+
+While I was there, in the La Pierre Hotel, the first great meeting was
+held at which the Republican party was organised.  Though not an
+_appointed_ delegate from our State, I, as an editor, took some part in
+it.  Little did we foresee the tremendous results which were to ensue
+from that meeting!  It was second only to the signing of the Declaration
+of Independence, and on it was based the greatest struggle known to
+history.  I could have, indeed, been inscribed as a constitutional member
+of it for the asking or writing my name, but that appeared to me and
+others then to be a matter of no consequence compared to the work in
+hand.  So the _Bulletin_ became Republican; Messrs. Cummings and Peacock
+seeing that that was their manifest destiny.
+
+From that day terrible events began to manifest themselves in American
+politics.  The South attempted to seize Kansas with the aid of border
+ruffians; Sumner was caned from behind while seated; the Southern press
+became outrageous in its abuse of the North, and the North here and there
+retaliated.  All my long-suppressed ardent Abolition spirit now found
+vent, and for a time I was allowed to write as I pleased.  A Richmond
+editor paid me the compliment of saying that the articles in the
+_Bulletin_ were the bitterest and cleverest published in the North, but
+inquired if it was wise to manifest such feeling.  I, who felt that the
+great strife was imminent, thought it was.  Mr. Cummings thought
+differently, and I was checked.  For years there were many who believed
+that the fearfully growing cancer could be cured with rose-water; as, for
+instance, Edward Everett.
+
+While on the _Bulletin_ I translated Heine's _Pictures of Travel_.  For
+it, poetry included, I was to receive three shillings a page.  Even this
+was never paid me in full; I was obliged to take part of the money in
+engravings and books, and the publisher failed.  It passed into other
+hands, and many thousands of copies were sold; from all of which I, of
+course, got nothing.  I also became editor of _Graham's Magazine_, which
+I filled recklessly with all or any kind of literary matter as I best
+could, little or nothing being allowed for contributions.  However, I
+raised the circulation from almost nothing to 17,000.  For this I
+received fifty dollars (10 pounds) per month.  When I finally left it,
+the proprietors were eighteen months in arrears due, and tried to evade
+payment, though I had specified a regular settlement every month.  Finally
+they agreed to pay me in monthly instalments of fifty dollars each, and
+fulfilled the engagement.
+
+Talking of the South, I forget now at what time it was that Barnum's
+Museum in Philadelphia was burned, but I shall never forget a droll
+incident which it occasioned.  Opposite it was a hotel, and the heat was
+so tremendous that the paint on the hotel was scorched, and it had begun
+to burn in places.  By the door stood a friend of mine in great distress.
+I asked what was the matter.  He replied that in the hotel was a Southern
+lady who would not leave her trunks, in which there were all her diamonds
+and other valuables, and that he could not find a porter to bring them
+down.  I was strong enough in those days.  "What is the number of her
+room?"  "No. 22."  I rushed up--it was scorching hot by this time--burst
+into No. 22, and found a beautiful young lady in dire distress.  I said
+abruptly, "I come from Mr. --- ---; where are your trunks?"  She began to
+cry confusedly, "Oh, you can do _nothing_; they are very heavy."
+
+Seeing the two large trunks, I at once, without a word, caught one by
+each handle, dragged them after me bumping downstairs, the lady
+following, to the door, where I found my friend, who had a carriage in
+waiting.  From the lady's subsequent account, it appeared that I had
+occasioned her much more alarm than pleasure.  She said that all at once
+a great tall gentleman burst into her room, seized her trunks without a
+word of apology, and dragged them downstairs like a giant; she was never
+so startled in all her life!  It was explained to me that, as in the
+South only negroes handle trunks, the lady could not regard me exactly as
+a gentleman.  She was within a short ace of being burnt up, trunks and
+all, but could not forget that she was from the "Sa-outh," and must needs
+show it.
+
+Apropos of this occurrence, I remember something odd which took place on
+the night of the same day.  There was a stylish drinking-place, kept by a
+man named Guy, in Seventh Street.  In the evening, when it was most
+crowded, there entered a stranger, described as having been fully _seven_
+feet high, and powerful in proportion, who kept very quiet, but who, on
+being chaffed as the giant escaped from Barnum's Museum, grew angry, and
+ended by clearing out the barroom--driving thirty men before him like
+flies.  Aghast at such a tremendous feat, one who remained, asked, "Who
+in God's wrath are you?--haven't you a name?"
+
+"Yes, I _have_ a name," replied the Berserker; "_I'm_ CHARLES LELAND!"
+saying which he vanished.
+
+The next day it was all over Philadelphia that I had cleared out John
+Guy's the night before, _sans merci_.  True, I am not seven feet high,
+but some men (like stories) expand enormously when inflated or mad; so my
+denial was attributed to sheer modesty.  But I recognised in the Charles
+Leland a mysterious cousin of mine, who was really seven feet high, who
+had disappeared for many years, and of whom I have never heard since.
+
+While editing _Graham's Magazine_, I had one day a space to fill.  In a
+hurry I knocked off "Hans Breitmann's Barty" (1856).  I gave it no
+thought whatever.  Soon after, Clark republished it in the
+_Knickerbocker_, saying that it was evidently by me.  I little dreamed
+that in days to come I should be asked in Egypt, and on the blue
+Mediterranean, and in every country in Europe, if I was its author.  I
+wrote in those days a vast number of such anonymous drolleries, many of
+them, I daresay, quite as good, in _Graham's Magazine_ and the _Weekly
+Bulletin_, &c., but I took no heed of them.  They were probably
+appropriated in due time by the authors of "Beautiful Snow."
+
+I began to weary of Philadelphia.  New York was a wider field and more
+congenial to me.  Mr. Cummings had once, during a financial crisis,
+appealed to my better feelings very touchingly to let my salary be
+reduced.  I let myself be touched--in the pocket.  Better times came, but
+my salary did not rise.  Mr. Cummings, knowing that my father was
+wealthy, wanted me to put a large sum into his paper, assuring me that it
+would pay me fifteen per cent.  I asked how that could be possible when
+he could only afford to pay me so very little for such hard work.  He
+chuckled, and said, "That is the way we make our money."  Then I
+determined to leave.
+
+Mr. George Ripley and Charles A. Dana, of the _Tribune_, were then
+editing in New York _Appletons' Cyclopaedia_.  Mr. Ripley had several
+times shown himself my friend; he belonged to the famous old band of
+Boston Transcendentalists who were at Brook Farm.  I wrote to him asking
+if I could earn as much at the _Cyclopaedia_ as I got from the
+_Bulletin_.  He answered affirmatively; so we packed up and departed.  I
+had a sister in New York who had married a Princeton College-mate named
+Thorp.  We went to their house in Twenty-second Street near Broadway, and
+arranged it so as to remain there during the winter.
+
+In the _Cyclopaedia_ rooms I found abundance of work, though it was less
+profitable than I expected.  For after an article was written, it passed
+through the hands of six or seven revisers, who revised not always
+wisely, and frequently far too well.  They made their objections in
+writing, and we, the writers, made ours.  I often gained a victory, but
+the victory cost a great deal of work, and of time which was not paid
+for.  Altogether, I wrote about two hundred articles, great and small,
+for the _Cyclopaedia_.  On the other hand, there was pleasant and
+congenial society among my fellow-workmen, and the labour itself was
+immensely instructive.  If any man wishes to be well informed, let him
+work on a cyclopaedia.  As I could read several languages, I was
+additionally useful at times.  The greatest conciseness of style is
+required for such work.  In German cyclopaedias this is carried to a
+fault.
+
+After a while I began to find that there was much more money to be made
+outside the _Cyclopaedia_ than in it.  William H. Hurlbut, whom I had
+once seen so nearly shot, had been the "foreign editor" of the _New York
+Times_.  Mr. Henry Raymond, its proprietor, had engaged a Mr. Hammond to
+come after some six months to take his place, and I was asked to fill it
+_ad interim_.  I did so, so much to Mr. Raymond's satisfaction, that he
+much regretted when I left that he had not previously engaged me.  He was
+always very kind to me.  He said that now and then, whenever he wanted a
+really superior art criticism, I should write it.  He was quite right,
+for there were not many reporters in New York who had received such an
+education in aesthetics as mine.  When Patti made her _debut_ in opera
+for the first time, I was the only writer who boldly predicted that she
+would achieve the highest lyrical honours or become a "star" of the first
+magnitude.  Apropos of Hurlbut, I heard many years after, in England,
+that a certain well-known _litterateur_, who was not one of his admirers,
+having seen him seated in close _tete-a-tete_ with a very notorious and
+unpopular character, remarked regretfully, "Just to think that with one
+pistol-bullet _both_ might have been settled!"  Hurlbut was, even as a
+boy, very handsome, with a pale face and black eyes, and extremely
+clever, being _facile princeps_, the head of every class, and extensively
+read.  But there was "a screw loose" somewhere in him.  He was subject,
+but not very frequently, to such fits of passion or rage, that he
+literally became blind while they lasted.  I saw him one day in one of
+these throw his arms about and stamp on the ground, as if unable to
+behold any one.  I once heard a young lady in New York profess unbounded
+admiration for him, because "he looked so charmingly like the devil."  For
+many years the _New York Herald_ always described him as the Reverend
+Mephistopheles Hurlbut.  There was another very beautiful lady who
+afterwards died a strange and violent death, as also a friend of mine, an
+editor in _New_ York, both of whom narrated to me at very great length "a
+grotesque Iliad of the wild career" of this remarkable man.
+
+It never rains but it pours.  Frank Leslie, who had been with me on
+Barnum's _Illustrated News_, was now publishing half-a-dozen periodicals
+and newspapers, and offered me a fair price to give him my mornings.  I
+did so.  Unfortunately, my work was not specified, and he retained his
+old editors, who naturally enough did not want me, although they treated
+me civilly enough.  One of these was Thomas Powell, who had seen a great
+deal of all the great English writers of the last generation.  But there
+was much rather shady, shaky Bohemianism about the frequenters of our
+sanctum, and, all things considered, it was a pity that I ever entered
+it.
+
+_Und noch weiter_.  There was published in New York at that time (1860)
+an illustrated comic weekly called _Vanity Fair_.  There was also in the
+city a kind of irregular club known as the Bohemians, who had been
+inspired by Murger's novel of that name to imitate the life of its
+heroes.  They met every evening at a lager-beer restaurant kept by a
+German named Pfaff.  For a year or two they made a great sensation in New
+York.  Their two principal men were Henry Clapp and Fitz-James O'Brien.
+Then there were Frank Wood and George Arnold, W. Winter, C. Gardette, and
+others.  Wood edited _Vanity Fair_, and all the rest contributed to it.
+There was some difficulty or other between Wood and Mr. Stephens, the
+_gerant_ of the weekly, and Wood left, followed by all the clan.  I was
+called in in the emergency, and what with writing myself, and the aid of
+R. H. Stoddard, T. B. Aldrich, and a few more, we made a very creditable
+appearance indeed.  Little by little the Bohemians all came back, and all
+went well.
+
+Now I must here specify, for good reasons, that I held myself very
+strictly aloof from the Bohemians, save in business affairs.  This was
+partly because I was married, and I never saw the day in my life when to
+be regarded as a real Bohemian vagabond, or shiftless person, would not
+have given me the horrors.  I would have infinitely preferred the poorest
+settled employment to such life.  I mention this because a very brilliant
+and singular article entitled "Charles G. Leland _l'ennemi des
+Allemands_" (this title angered me), which appeared in the _Revue des
+Deux Mondes_ in 1871, speaks of me by implication as a frequenter of
+Pfaff's, declaring that I there introduced Artemus Ward to the Bohemian
+brotherhood, and that it was entirely due to me that Mr. Browne was
+brought out before the American World.  This is quite incorrect.  Mr.
+Browne had made a name by two or three very popular sketches before I had
+ever seen him.  But it is very true that I aided him to write, and
+suggested and encouraged the series of sketches which made him famous, as
+he himself frankly and generously declared, for Charles Browne was at
+heart an honest gentleman, if there ever was one; which is the one thing
+in life better than success.
+
+Mr. Stephens realising that I needed an assistant, and observing that
+Browne's two sketches of the Showman's letter and the Mormons had made
+him well known, invited him to take a place in our office.  He was a
+shrewd, naif, but at the same time modest and unassuming young man.  He
+was a native of Maine, but familiar with the West.  Quiet as he seemed,
+in three weeks he had found out everything in New York.  I could
+illustrate this by a very extraordinary fact, but I have not space for
+everything.  I proposed to him to continue his sketches.  "Write," I
+said, "a paper on the Shakers."  He replied that he knew nothing about
+them.  I had been at Lenox, Massachusetts, where I had often gone to New
+Lebanon and seen their strange worship and dances, and while on the
+_Illustrated News_ had had a conference with their elders on an article
+on the Shakers.  So I told him what I knew, and he wrote it, making it a
+condition that I would correct it.  He wrote the sketch, and others.  He
+was very slow at composition, which seemed strange to me, who was
+accustomed to write everything as I now do, _currente calamo_ (having
+written all these memoirs, so far, within a month--more or less, and
+certainly very little more).  From this came his book.
+
+When he wrote the article describing his imprisonment, there was in it a
+sentence, "Jailor, I shall die unless you bring me something to eat!"  In
+the proof we found, "I shall die unless you bring me something to
+_talk_."  He was just going to correct this, when I cried, "For Heaven's
+sake, Browne, let that stand!  It's best as it is."  He did so, and so
+the reader may find it in his work.
+
+Meanwhile the awful storm of war had gathered and was about to burst.  I
+may here say that there was a kind of literary club or association of
+ladies and gentlemen who met once a week of evenings in the Studio
+Buildings, where I had many friends, such as Van Brunt, C. Gambrell,
+Hazeltine, Bierstadt, Gifford, Church, and Mignot.  At this club I
+constantly met General Birney, the great Abolitionist, whose famous
+charge at Gettysburg did so much to decide the battle.  Constant
+intercourse with him and with C. A. Dana greatly inspired me in my anti-
+slavery views.  The manager of _Vanity Fair_ was very much averse to
+absolutely committing the journal to Republicanism, and I was determined
+on it.  I had a delicate and very difficult path to pursue, and I
+succeeded, as the publication bears witness.  I went several times to Mr.
+Dana, and availed myself of his shrewd advice.  Browne, too, agreed
+pretty fairly with me.  I voted for Abraham Lincoln at the first election
+in New York.  I voted _on principle_, for I confess that every
+conceivable thing had been said and done to represent him as an ignorant,
+ungainly, silly Western Hoosier, and even the Republican press had little
+or nothing to say as to his good qualities.  Horace Greeley had "sprung
+him" on the Convention at the eleventh hour and fifty-ninth minute as the
+only available man, and he had been chosen as our candidate to defeat
+Douglas.
+
+Let me here relate two anecdotes.  When my brother heard of Lincoln's
+"candidacy" he said--
+
+"I don't see why the people shouldn't be allowed to have a President for
+once."
+
+A Copperhead friend of mine, who was always aiming at "gentility,"
+remarked to me with an air of disgust on the same subject--
+
+"I do _wisht_ we could have a gentleman for President for _oncet_."
+
+The said Copperhead became in due time a Republican office-holder, and is
+one yet.
+
+Lincoln was elected.  Then came the storm.  Our rejoicings were short.
+Sumter was fired on.  Up to that time everybody, including President
+Lincoln, had quite resolved that, if the South was resolved to secede, it
+must be allowed to depart in peace.  There had been for many years a
+conviction that our country was growing to be too large to hold together.
+I always despised the contemptible idea.  I had been in correspondence
+with the Russian Iskander or Alexander Herzen, who was a century in
+advance of his time.  He was the real abolisher of serfdom in Russia, as
+history will yet prove.  I once wrote a very long article urging the
+Russian Government to throw open the Ural gold mines to foreigners, and
+make every effort to annex Chinese territory and open a port on the
+Pacific.  Herzen translated it into Russian (I have a copy of it), and
+circulated twenty thousand copies of it in Russia.  The Czar read it.
+Herzen wrote to me: "It will be pigeon-holed for forty years, and then
+perhaps acted on.  The Pacific will be the Mediterranean of the future."
+With such ideas I did not believe in the dismemberment of the United
+States. {237}
+
+But Sumter was fired on, and the whole North rose in fury.  It was the
+silliest act ever committed.  The South, with one-third of the votes, had
+two-thirds of all the civil, military, and naval appointments, and every
+other new State, and withal half of the North, ready to lick its boots,
+and still was not satisfied.  It could not go without giving us a
+thrashing.  And that was the drop too much.  So we fought.  And we
+conquered; but _how_?  It was all expressed in a few words, which I heard
+uttered by a common man at a _Bulletin_ board, on the dreadful day when
+we first read the news of the retreat at Bull Run: "It's hard--but we
+must buckle up and go at it again."  It is very strange that the South
+never understood that among the mud-sills and toiling slaves and factory
+serfs of the North the spirit which had made men enrich barren New
+England and colonise the Western wilderness would make them buckle up and
+go at it again boldly to the bitter end.
+
+One evening I met C. A. Dana on Broadway.  War had fairly begun.  "It
+will last," he said, "not less than four years, but it may extend to
+seven."
+
+Trouble now came thick and fast.  _Vanity Fair_ was brought to an end.
+Frank Leslie found that he no longer required my services, and paid my
+due, which was far in arrears, in his usual manner, that is, by orders on
+advertisers for goods which I did not want, and for which I was charged
+double prices.  Alexander Cummings had a very ingenious method of
+"shaving" when obliged to pay his debts.  His friend Simon Cameron had a
+bank--the Middleton--which, if not a very wild cat, was far from tame, as
+its notes were always five or ten per cent. below par, to our loss--for
+we were always paid in Middleton.  I have often known the clerk to take a
+handful of notes at par and send out to buy Middleton wherewith to pay
+me.  I am sorry to say that such tricks were universal among the very
+great majority of proprietors with whom I had dealings.  To "do" the
+_employes_ to the utmost was considered a matter of course, especially
+when the one employed was a "literary fellow" of any kind or an artist.
+
+I should mention that while in New York I saw a great deal of Bayard
+Taylor and his wife.  I had known him since 1850 and was intimate with
+him till his death.  He occupied the same house with the distinguished
+poet R. H. Stoddard.  I experienced from both much kindness.  We had
+amusing Saturday evenings there, where droll plays were improvised, and
+admirable disguises made out of anything.  In after years, in London,
+Walter H. Pollock, Minto (recently deceased), and myself, did the same.
+One night, in the latter circle, we played _Hamlet_, but the chief
+character was the Sentinel, who stared at the Ghost with such open-jawed
+horror--"_bouche beante_, _rechignez_!"--and so prominently, that poor
+Hamlet was under a cloud.  Pollock's great capuchon overcoat served for
+all kinds of mysterious characters.  We were also kindly entertained many
+a time and oft in New York by Mr. and Mrs. Charles A. Dana.
+
+My engagement expired on the _Times_--where, by the way, I was paid in
+full in good money--and I found myself without employment in a fearful
+financial panic.  During the spring and early summer we had lived at the
+Gramercy Park Hotel; we now went to a very pleasant boarding-house kept
+by Mrs. Dunn, on Staten Island.  My old friend, George Ward, and G. W.
+Curtis, well known in literature and politics (who had been at Mr.
+Greene's school), lived at no great distance from us.  The steamboats
+from New York to Staten Island got to racing, and I enjoyed it very much,
+but George Ward and some of the milder sort protested against it, and it
+was stopped; which I thought rather hard, for we had very little
+amusement in those dismal days.  I was once in a steamboat race when our
+boat knocked away the paddle-box from the other and smashed the wheel.
+From the days of the Romans and Norsemen down to the present time, there
+was never any form of amusement discovered so daring, so dangerous, and
+so exciting as a steamboat race, and nobody but Americans could have ever
+invented or indulged in it.
+
+The old _Knickerbocker Magazine_ had been for a long time running down to
+absolutely nothing.  A Mr. Gilmore purchased it, and endeavoured to
+galvanise it into life.  Its sober grey-blue cover was changed to orange.
+Mr. Clark left it, to my sorrow; but there was no help for it, for there
+was not a penny to pay him.  I consented to edit it for half ownership,
+for I had an idea.  This was, to make it promptly a strong Republican
+monthly for the time, which was utterly opposed to all of Mr. Clark's
+ideas.
+
+I must here remark that the financial depression in the North at this
+time was terrible.  I knew many instances in which landlords begged it as
+a favour from tenants that they would remain rent-free in their houses.  A
+friend of mine, Mr. Fales, one day took me over two houses in Fifth
+Avenue, of which he had been offered his choice for $15,000 each.  Six
+months after the house sold for $150,000.  Factories and shops were
+everywhere closing, and there was a general feeling that far deeper and
+more terrible disasters were coming--war in its worst forms--national
+disintegration--utter ruin.  This spirit of despair was now debilitating
+everybody.  The Copperheads or Democrats, who were within a fraction as
+numerous as the Republicans, continually hissed, "You see to what your
+nigger worship has brought the country.  This is all your doing.  And the
+worst is to come."  Then there was soon developed a class known as
+Croakers, who increased to the end of the war.  These were good enough
+Union people, but without any hope of any happy issue in anything, and
+who were quite sure that everything was for the worst in this our most
+unfortunate of all wretched countries.  Now it is a law of humanity that
+in all great crises, or whenever energy and manliness is needed,
+pessimism is a benumbing poison, and the strongest optimism the very
+_elixir vitae_ itself.  And by a marvellously strange inspiration (though
+it was founded on cool, far-sighted calculation), I, at this most
+critical and depressing time, rose to extremest hope and confidence,
+rejoicing that the great crisis had at length come, and feeling to my
+very depths of conviction that, as we were sublimely in the right, we
+must conquer, and that the dread portal once passed we should find
+ourselves in the fairy palace of prosperity and freedom.  But that I was
+absolutely for a time alone amid all men round me in this intense hope
+and confidence, may be read as clearly as can be in what I and others
+published in those days, for all of this was recorded in type.
+
+Bayard Taylor had been down to the front, and remarked carelessly to me
+one day that when he found that there was already a discount of 40 per
+cent. on Confederate notes, he was sure that the South would yield in the
+end.  This made me think very deeply.  There was no reason, if we could
+keep the Copperheads subdued, why we should not hold our own on our own
+territory.  _Secondly_, as the war went on we should soon win converts.
+_Thirdly_, that the North had immense resources--its hay crop alone was
+worth more than all the cotton crop of the South.  And _fourthly_, that
+when manufacturing and contract-making for the army should once begin,
+there would be such a spreading or wasting of money and making fortunes
+as the world never witnessed, and that while we grew rich, the South,
+without commerce or manufactures, must grow poor.
+
+I felt as if inspired, and I wrote an article entitled, "Woe to the
+South."  At this time, "Woe to the North" was the fear in every heart.  I
+showed clearly that if we would only keep up our hearts, that the utter
+ruin of the South was inevitable, while that for us there was close at
+hand such a period of prosperity as no one ever dreamt of--that every
+factory would soon double its buildings, and prices rise beyond all
+precedent.  I followed this article by others, all in a wild,
+enthusiastic style of triumph.  People thought I was mad, and the _New
+York Times_ compared my utterances to the outpourings of a fanatical
+Puritan in the time of Cromwell.
+
+But they were fulfilled to the letter.  There is no instance that I know
+of in which any man ever prophesied so directly in the face of public
+opinion and had his predictions so accurately fulfilled.  I was _all
+alone_ in my opinions.  At all times a feeling as of awe at myself comes
+over me when I think of what I published.  For, with the exception of
+Gilmore, who had a kind of vague idea that he kept a prophet--as Moses
+the tailor kept a poet--not a soul of my acquaintance believed in all
+this.
+
+Then I went a step further.  I found that the real block in the way of
+Northern union was the disgust which had gathered round the mere _name_
+of Abolitionist.  It became very apparent that freeing the slaves would,
+as General Birney once said to me, be knocking out the bottom of the
+basket.  And people wanted to abolitionise without being "Abolitionists";
+and at this time even the _New York Tribune_ became afraid to advocate
+anti-slavery, and the greatest fanatics were dumb with fear.
+
+Then I made a new departure.  I advocated emancipation of the slaves _as
+a war measure only_, and my cry was "Emancipation for the sake of the
+White Man."  I urged prompt and vigorous action without any regard to
+philanthropy.  As publishing such views in the _Knickerbocker_ was like
+pouring the wildest of new wine into the weakest of old bottles, Gilmore
+resolved to establish at once in Boston a political monthly magazine to
+be called the _Continental_, to be devoted to this view of the situation.
+It was the only political magazine devoted to the Republican cause
+published during the war.  That it fully succeeded in rapidly attracting
+to the Union party a vast number of those who had held aloof owing to
+their antipathy to the mere word abolition, is positively true, and still
+remembered by many. {242}  Very speedily indeed people at large caught at
+the idea.  I remember the very first time when one evening I heard
+Governor Andrews say of a certain politician that he was not an
+Abolitionist but an _Emancipationist_; and it was subsequently declared
+by my friends in Boston, and that often, that the very bold course taken
+by the _Continental Magazine_, and the creation by it of the
+Emancipationist wing, had hastened by several months the emancipation of
+the slaves by Abraham Lincoln.  It was for this alone that the University
+of Cambridge, Massachusetts, afterwards, through its president, gave me
+the degree of A. M., "for literary services rendered to the country
+during the war," which is as complete a proof of what I assert as could
+be imagined, for this was in very truth the one sole literary service
+which I performed at that time, and there were many of my great literary
+friends who declared their belief in, and sympathy with, the services
+which I rendered to the cause.  But I will now cite some facts which
+fully and further confirm what I have said.
+
+The _Continental Magazine_ was, as I may say, a something more than semi-
+official organ.  Mr. Seward contributed to it two anonymous articles, or
+rather their substance, which were written out and forwarded to me by
+Oakey Hall, Esq., of New York.  We received from the Cabinet at
+Washington continual suggestions, for it was well understood that the
+_Continental_ was read by all influential Republicans.  A contributor had
+sent us a very important article indeed, pointing out that there was all
+through the South, from the Mississippi to the sea, a line of mountainous
+country in which there were few or no slaves, and very little attachment
+to the Confederacy.  This article, which was extensively republished,
+attracted great attention.  It gave great strength and encouragement to
+the grand plan of the campaign, afterwards realised by Sherman.  By
+_official request_, to me directed, the author contributed a second
+article on the subject.  These articles were extensively circulated in
+pamphlet form or widely copied by the press, and created a great
+sensation, forming, in fact, one of the great points made in influencing
+public opinion.  Another of the same kind, but not ours, was the famous
+pamphlet by Charles Stille, of Philadelphia, "How a Free People Conduct a
+Long War," in which it was demonstrated that the man who can hold out
+longest in a fight has the best chance, which simple truth made, however,
+an incredible popular impression.  Gilmore and our friends succeeded, in
+fact, in making the _Continental Magazine_ "respected at court."  But I
+kept my independence and principles, and thundered away so fiercely for
+_immediate_ emancipation that I was confidentially informed that Mr.
+Seward once exclaimed in a rage, "Damn Leland and his magazine!"  But as
+he damned me only officially and in confidence, I took it in the
+Pickwickian sense.  And at this time I realised that, though I was not
+personally very much before the public, I was doing great and good work,
+and, as I have said, a great many very distinguished persons expressed to
+me by letter or in conversation their appreciation of it; and some on the
+other side wrote letters giving it to me _per contra_, and one of these
+was Caleb Cushing.  Cushing in Chinese means "ancient glory," but Caleb's
+renown was extinguished in those days.
+
+I may add that not only did H. W. Longfellow express to me his sympathy
+for and admiration of my efforts to aid the Union cause, but at one time
+or another all of my literary friends in Boston, who perfectly understood
+and showed deep interest in what I was doing.  Which can be well believed
+of a city in which, above all others in the world, everybody sincerely
+aims at culture and knowledge, the first principle of which--inspired by
+praiseworthy local patriotism--is to know and take pride in what is done
+in Boston by its natives.
+
+
+
+
+V.  LIFE DURING THE CIVIL WAR AND ITS SEQUENCE.  1862-1866.
+
+
+Boston in 1862--Kind friends--Literary circles--Emerson, O. W. Holmes,
+Lowell, E. P. Whipple, Agassiz, &c.--The Saturday dinners--The printed
+autograph--The days of the Dark Shadow--Lowell and Hosea Biglow--I am
+assured that the _Continental Magazine_ advanced the period of
+Emancipation--I return to Philadelphia--My pamphlet on "Centralisation
+_versus_ States Rights"--Its Results--Books--Ping-Wing--The Emergency--I
+enter an artillery company--Adventures and comrades--R. W. Gilder--I see
+rebel scouts near Harrisburg--The shelling of Carlisle--Incidents--My
+brother receives his death-wound at my side--Theodore Fassitt--Stewart
+Patterson--Exposure and hunger--The famous bringing-up of the
+cannon--Picturesque scenery--The battle of Gettysburg--The retreat of
+Lee--Incidents--Return home--Cape May--The beautiful Miss Vining--Solomon
+the Sadducee--General Carrol Tevis--The Sanitary Fair--The oil mania--The
+oil country--Colonel H. Olcott, the theosophist--Adventures and odd
+incidents in Oil-land--Nashville--Dangers of the road--A friend in need--I
+act as unofficial secretary and legal adviser to General Whipple--Freed
+slaves--_Inter arma silent leges_--Horace Harrison--Voodoo--Captain
+Joseph R. Paxton--Scouting for oil and shooting a brigand--Indiana in
+winter--Charleston, West Virginia--Back and forth from Providence to the
+debated land--The murder of A. Lincoln--Goshorn--Up Elk River in a dug-
+out--A charmed life--Sam Fox--A close shot--Meteorological sorcery--A
+wild country--Marvellous scenery--I bore a well--Robert Hunt--Horse
+adventures--The panther--I am suspected of being a rebel spy--The German
+apology--Cincinnati--Niagara--A summer at Lenox, Mass.--A MS. burnt.
+
+We went to Boston early in December, 1861, and during that winter lived
+pleasantly at the Winthrop House on the Common.  I had already many
+friends, and took letters to others who became our friends.  We were very
+kindly received.  Among those whom we knew best were Mrs. and Mr. H.
+Ritchie, Mrs. and Mr. T. Perkins, Mrs. H. G. Otis, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe,
+Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Ward--but I must really stop, for there was no end to
+the list.  Among my literary friends or acquaintances, or "people whom I
+have very often met," were Emerson, Longfellow, Dr. O. W. Holmes, J. R.
+Lowell, E. P. Whipple, Palfrey, G. Ticknor, Agassiz, E. Everett--in a
+word, all that brilliant circle which shone when Boston was at its
+brightest in 1862.  I was often invited to the celebrated Saturday
+dinners, where I more than once sat by Emerson and Holmes.  As I had been
+editor of the free lance _Vanity Fair_, and was now conducting the
+_Continental_ with no small degree of audacity, regardless of friend or
+foe, it was expected--and no wonder--that I would be beautifully cheeky
+and New Yorky; and truly my education and antecedents in America,
+beginning with my training under Barnum, were not such as to inspire
+faith in my modesty.  But in the society of the Saturday Club, and in the
+very _general_ respect manifested in all circles in Boston for culture or
+knowledge in every form--in which respect it is certainly equalled by no
+city on earth--I often forgot newspapers and politics and war, and lived
+again in memory at Heidelberg and Munich, recalling literature and art.  I
+heard, a day or two after my first Saturday, that I had passed the grand
+ordeal successfully, or _summa cum magna laude_, and that Dr. Holmes, in
+enumerating divers good qualities, had remarked that I was modest.  Every
+stranger coming to Boston has a verdict or judgment passed on him--he is
+numbered and labelled at once--and it is really wonderful how in a few
+days the whole town knows it.
+
+I had met with Emerson many years before in Philadelphia, where I had
+attracted his attention by remarking in Mrs. James Rush's drawing-room
+that a vase in a room was like a bridge in a landscape, which he recalled
+twenty years later.  With Dr. Holmes I had corresponded.  Lowell! "that
+reminds me of a little story."
+
+There was some "genius of freedom"--_i.e._, one who takes liberties--who
+collected autographs, and had not even the politeness to send a written
+request.  He forwarded to me this printed circular:
+
+   "DEAR SIR: As I am collecting the autographs of distinguished
+   Americans, I would be much obliged to you for your signature.  Yours
+   truly, --- ---"
+
+While I was editing _Vanity Fair_ I received one of these circulars.  I
+at once wrote:--
+
+   "DEAR SIR: It gives me great pleasure to comply with your request.
+   CHARLES G. LELAND."
+
+I called the foreman, and said, "Mr. Chapin, please to set this up and
+pull half-a-dozen proofs."  It was done, and I sent one to the autograph-
+chaser.  He was angry, and answered impertinently.  Others I sent to
+Holmes and Lowell.  The latter thought that the applicant was a great
+fool not to understand that such a printed document was far more of a
+curiosity than a mere signature.  I met with Chapin afterwards, when in
+the war.  He had with him a small company of printers, all of whom had
+set up my copy many a time.  Printers are always polite men.  They all
+called on me, and having no cards, left cigars, which were quite as
+acceptable at that time of tobacco-famine.
+
+Amid all the horrors and anxieties of that dreadful year, while my old
+school-mate, General George B. McClellan, was delaying and demanding more
+men--_mas y mas y mas_--I still had as many happy hours as had ever come
+into any year of my life.  If I made no money, and had to wear my old
+gloves (I had fortunately a good stock gathered from one of Frank
+Leslie's debtors), and had to sail rather close to the wind, I still
+found the sailing very pleasant, and the wind fair and cool, though I was
+_pauper in aere_.
+
+Mrs. Harrison Gray Otis held a ladies' sewing-circle to make garments for
+the soldiers, at which my wife worked zealously.  There were many social
+receptions, readings, etc., where we met everybody.  It was very properly
+considered bad form in those early days of the war to dance or give grand
+dinners or great "parties."  It was, in fact, hardly decent for a man to
+dress up and appear as a swell at all anywhere.  Death was beginning to
+strike fast into families through siege and battle, and crape to blacken
+the door-bells.  There was a dark shadow over every life.  I had been
+assured by an officer that my magazine was doing the work of two
+regiments, yet I was tormented with the feeling that I ought to be in the
+war, as my grandfather would surely have been at my age.  The officer
+alluded to wrote to me that he on one occasion had read one of my
+articles by camp-fire to his regiment, who gave at the end three
+tremendous cheers, which were replied to by the enemy, who were not far
+away, with shouts of defiance.  As for minor incidents of the war-time, I
+could fill a book with them.  One day a young gentleman, a perfect
+stranger, came to my office, as many did, and asked for advice.  He said,
+"Where I live in the country we have raised a regiment, and they want me
+to be colonel, but I have no knowledge whatever of military matters.  What
+shall I do?"  I looked at him, and saw that he "had it in him," and
+replied, "New York is full of Hungarian and German military adventurers
+seeking employment.  Get one, and let him teach you and the men; but take
+good care that he does not supplant you.  Let that be understood."  After
+some months he returned in full uniform to thank me.  He had got his man,
+had fought in the field--all had gone well.
+
+I remember, as an incident worth noting, that one evening while visiting
+Jas. R. Lowell at his house in Cambridge, awaiting supper, there came a
+great bundle of proofs.  They were the second series of the Biglow Papers
+adapted to the new struggle, and as I was considered in Boston at that
+time as being in my degree a literary political authority or one of some
+general experience, he was anxious to have my opinion of them, and had
+invited me for that purpose.  He read them to me, manifested great
+interest as to my opinion, and seemed to be very much delighted or
+relieved when I praised them and predicted a success.  I do not
+exaggerate in this in the least; his expression was plainly and
+unmistakably that of a man from whom some doubt had been banished.
+
+My brother Henry had at once entered a training-school for officers in
+Philadelphia, distinguished himself as a pupil, and gone out to the war
+in 1862.  The terrible ill-luck which attended his every effort in life
+overtook him speedily, and, owing to his extreme zeal and over-work, he
+had a sunstroke, which obliged him to return home.  He was a
+first-lieutenant.  The next year he went as sergeant, and was again
+invalided.  What further befell him will appear in the course of my
+narrative.
+
+The _Continental Magazine_ had done its work and was evidently dying.  I
+had never received a cent from it, and it had just met the expenses of
+publication.  It had done much good and rendered great service to the
+Union cause.  Gilmore had very foolishly yielded half the ownership to
+Robert J. Walker, of whom I confess I have no very agreeable
+recollections.  So it began to die.  But I have the best authority for
+declaring that, ere it died, it had advanced the time of the Declaration
+of Emancipation, which was the turning-point of the whole struggle, and
+all my friends in Boston were of that opinion.  This I can fully prove.
+
+The summer of 1862 I passed in Dedham, going every day to my office in
+Boston.  We lived at the Phoenix Hotel, and occupied the same rooms which
+my father and mother had inhabited thirty-five years before.  We had many
+very kind and hospitable friends.  I often found time to roam about the
+country, to sit by Wigwam Lake, to fish in the river Charles, and explore
+the wild woods.  I have innumerable pleasant recollections of that
+summer.
+
+I returned in the autumn with my wife to Philadelphia, and to my father's
+house in Locust Street.  The first thing which I did was to write a
+pamphlet on "Centralisation _versus_ States Rights."  In it I set forth
+clearly enough the doctrine that the Constitution of the United States
+could not be interpreted so as to sanction secession, and that as the
+extremities or limbs grew in power, so there should be a strengthening of
+the brain or greater power bestowed on the central Government.  I also
+advocated the idea of a far greater protection of general and common
+industries and interests being adopted by the Government.
+
+There was in the Senate a truly great man, of German extraction, named
+Gottlieb Orth, from Indiana.  He was absolutely the founder of the
+Bureaus of Education, &c., which are now nourishing in Washington.  He
+wrote to me saying that he had got the idea of Industrial bureaus from my
+pamphlet.  In this pamphlet I had opposed the commonly expressed opinion
+that we must do nothing to "aggravate the South."  That is, we should
+burn the powder up by degrees, as the old lady did who was blown to
+pieces by the experiment.  "Do not drive them to extremes."  I declared
+that the South would go to extremes in any case, and that we had better
+anticipate it.  This brought forth strange fruit in after years, long
+after the war.
+
+While I was in Boston in 1862, I published by Putnam in New York a book
+entitled "Sunshine in Thought," which had, however, been written long
+before.  It was all directed against the namby-pamby pessimism, "lost
+Edens and buried Lenores," and similar weak rubbish, which had then begun
+to manifest itself in literature, and which I foresaw was in future to
+become a great curse, as it has indeed done.  Only five hundred copies of
+it were printed.
+
+I was very busy during the first six months of 1863.  I wrote a work
+entitled "The Art of Conversation, or Hints for Self-Education," which
+was at once accepted and published by Carleton, of New York.  It had, I
+am assured, a very large sale indeed.  I also wrote and illustrated, with
+the aid of my brother, a very eccentric pamphlet, "The Book of
+Copperheads."  When Abraham Lincoln died two books were found in his
+desk.  One was the "Letters of Petroleum V. Nasby," by Dr. R. Locke, and
+my "Book of Copperheads," which latter was sent to me to see _and
+return_.  It was much thumbed, showing that it had been thoroughly read
+by Father Abraham.
+
+I also translated Heine's "Book of Songs."  Most of these had already
+been published in the "Pictures of Travel."  I restored them to their
+original metres.  I also translated the "Memoirs of a Good-for-Nothing"
+from the German, and finished up, partially illustrated, and published
+two juvenile works.  One of these was "Mother Pitcher," a collection of
+original nursery rhymes for children, which I had written many years
+before expressly for my youngest sister, Emily, now Mrs. John Harrison of
+Philadelphia.  In this work occurs my original poem of "Ping-Wing the
+Pieman's Son."  Of this Poem _Punch_ said, many years after, that it was
+"the best thing of the kind which had ever crossed the Atlantic."  Ping-
+Wing appeared in 1891 as a full-page cartoon by Tenniel in _Punch_, and
+as burning up the Treaty.  I may venture to say that Ping-Wing--once
+improvised to amuse dear little Emily--has become almost as well known in
+American nurseries as "Little Boy Blue," at any rate his is a popular
+type, and when Mrs. Vanderbilt gave her famous masked ball in New York,
+there was in the Children's Quadrille a little Ping-Wing.  Ping travelled
+far and wide, for in after years I put him into Pidgin-English, and gave
+him a place in the "Pidgin-English Ballads," which have always been read
+in Canton, I daresay by many a heathen Chinese learning that childlike
+tongue.  I also translated the German "Mother Goose."
+
+And now terrible times came on, followed, for me, by a sad event.  The
+rebels, led by General Lee, had penetrated into Pennsylvania, and
+Philadelphia was threatened.  This period was called the "Emergency."  I
+could easily have got a command as officer.  I had already obtained for
+my brother an appointment as major with secretary's duty on Fremont's
+staff, which he promptly declined.  But it was no time to stand on
+dignity, and I was rather proud, as was my brother, to go as "full
+private" in an artillery company known as "Chapman Biddle's," though he
+did not take command of it on this occasion. {252}  Our captain was a
+dealer in cutlery named Landis.
+
+After some days' delay we were marched forth.  Even during those few
+days, while going about town in my private's uniform, I realised in a
+droll new way what it was to be a _common_ man.  Maid-servants greeted me
+like a friend, other soldiers and the humbler class talked familiarly to
+me.  I had, however, no excuse to think myself any better than my
+comrades, for among the hundred were nearly twenty lawyers or
+law-students, and all were gentlemen as regards position in society.
+Among them was R. W. Gilder, now the editor of the _Century_, who was
+quite a youth then, and in whose appearance there was something which
+deeply interested me.  I certainly have a strange Gypsy faculty for
+divining character, and I divined a genius in him.  He was very brave and
+uncomplaining in suffering, but also very sensitive and emotional.  Once
+it happened, at a time when we were all nearly starved to death and worn
+out with want of sleep and fatigue, that I by some chance got a loaf of
+bread and some molasses.  I cut it into twelve slices and sweetened them,
+intending to give one to every man of our gun.  But I could only find
+eleven, and, remembering Gilder, went about a long mile to find him; and
+when I gave it to him he was so touched that the tears came into his fine
+dark eyes.  Trivial as the incident was, it moved me.  Another was
+Theodore Fassitt, a next-door neighbour of mine, whose mother had
+specially commended him to me, and who told me that once or twice he had
+stolen ears of maize from the horses to keep himself alive.  Also Edward
+Penington, and James Biddle, a gentleman of sixty; but I really cannot
+give the roll-call.  However, they all showed themselves to be gallant
+gentlemen and true ere they returned home.  The first night we slept in a
+railroad station, packed like sardines, and I lay directly across a rail.
+Then we were in camp near Harrisburg for a week--_dans la pluie et la
+misere_.
+
+We knew that the rebels were within six miles of us, at Shooter's Hill--in
+fact, two of our guns went there.  Penington was with them, and had a
+small skirmish, wherein two of the foemen were slain, the corporal being,
+however, called off before he could secure their scalps.  That afternoon,
+as I was on guard, I saw far down below a few men who appeared to be
+scouting very cautiously, and hiding as they did so.  They seemed mere
+specks, but I was sure they were rebels.  I called on Lieutenant Perkins,
+who had a glass, but neither he nor others present thought they were of
+the enemy.  Long after, this incident had a droll sequel.
+
+Hearing that the rebels were threatening Carlisle, we were sent thither
+on a forced march of sixteen miles.  They had been before us, and
+partially burned the barracks.  We rested in the town.  There was a large
+open space, for all the world like a stage.  Ladies and others brought us
+refreshments; the scene became theatrical indeed.  The soldiers, wearied
+with a long march, were resting or gossipping, when all at once--_whizz-
+bang_--a shell came flying over our heads and burst.  There were
+cries--the ladies fled like frightened wild-fowl!  The operatic effect
+was complete!
+
+About ten thousand rebel regulars, hearing that we had occupied Carlisle,
+had returned, and if they had known that there were only two or three
+thousand raw recruits, they might have captured us all.  From this fate
+we were saved by a good strong tremendous lie, well and bravely told.
+There was a somewhat ungainly, innocent, rustic-looking youth in our
+company, from whose eyes simple truth peeped out like two country girls
+at two Sunday-school windows.  He, having been sent to the barracks to
+get some fodder, with strict injunction to return immediately, of course
+lay down at once in the hay and had a good long nap.  The rebels came and
+roused him out, but promised to let him go free on condition that he
+would tell the sacred truth as to how many of us Federal troops were in
+Carlisle.  And he, moved by sympathy for his kind captors, and swearing
+by the Great Copperhead Serpent, begged them to fly for their lives; "for
+twenty regiments of regulars, and Heaven only knew how many, volunteers,
+had come in that afternoon, and the whole North was rising, and trains
+running, and fresh levies pouring in."
+
+The rebels believed him, but they would not depart without giving us a
+touch of their quality, and so fired shell and grape in on us till two in
+the morning.  There were two regiments of "common fellows," or valiant
+city roughs, with us, who all hid themselves in terror wherever they
+could.  But our company, though unable to fire more than a few shots,
+were kept under fire, and, being all gentlemen, not a man flinched.
+
+I did not, to tell the truth, like our captain; but whatever his faults
+were, and he had some, cowardice was not among them.  Some men are
+reckless of danger; he seemed to be absolutely insensible to it, as I
+more than once observed, to my great admiration.  He was but a few feet
+from me, giving orders to a private, when a shell burst immediately over
+or almost between them.  Neither was hurt, but the young man naturally
+shied, when Landis gruffly cried, "Never mind the shells, sir; they'll
+not hurt you till they hit you."
+
+I was leaning against a lamp-post when a charge of grape went through the
+lamp.  Remembering the story in "Peter Simple," and that "lightning never
+strikes twice in the same place," I remained quiet, when there came at
+once another, smashing what was left of the glass about two feet above my
+head.
+
+Long after the war, when I was one day walking with Theodore Fassitt, I
+told him the tale of how I had awakened the family at the fire in Munich.
+And Theodore dolefully exclaimed, "I don't see why it is that _I_ can
+never do anything heroic or fine like that!"  Then I said, "Theodore, I
+will tell you a story.  Once upon a time there was a boy only eighteen
+years of age, and it happened in the war that he was in a town, and the
+rebels shelled it.  Now this boy had charge of four horses, and the
+general had told him to stay in one place, before a church; and he
+obeyed.  The shells came thick and fast--I saw it all myself--and by-and-
+bye one came and took off a leg from one of the horses.  Then he was in a
+bad way with his horses, but he stayed.  After a while the general came
+along, and asked him 'why the devil he was stopping there.'  And he
+replied, 'I was ordered to, sir!'  Then the general told him to get
+behind the church at once."
+
+"Why!" cried Theodore in amazement, "_I was that boy_!"
+
+"Yes," I replied; "and the famous Roman sentinel who remained at his post
+in Pompeii was no braver, and I don't think he had so hard a time of it
+as you had with that horse."
+
+I was put on guard.  The others departed or lay down to sleep on the
+ground.  The fire slackened, and only now and then a shell came with its
+diabolical scream like a dragon into the town.  All at last was quiet,
+when there came shambling to me an odd figure.  There had been some
+slight attempt by him to look like a soldier--he had a _feather_ in his
+hat--but he carried his rifle as if after deer or raccoons, and as if he
+were used to it.
+
+"Say, Cap!" he exclaimed, "kin you tell me where a chap could get some
+ammynition?"
+
+"Go to your quartermaster," I replied.
+
+"Ain't got no quartermaster."
+
+"Well, then to your commanding officer--to your regiment."
+
+"Ain't got no commanding officer nowher' this side o' God, nor no
+regiment."
+
+"Then who the devil are you, and where do you belong?"
+
+"Don't belong nowher'.  I'll jest tell you, Cap, how it is.  I live in
+the south line of New York State, and when I heard that the rebs had got
+inter Pennsylvany, forty of us held a meetin' and 'pinted me Cap'n.  So
+we came down here cross country, and 'rived this a'ternoon, and findin'
+fightin' goin' on, went straight for the bush.  And gettin' cover, we
+shot the darndest sight of rebels you ever _did_ see.  And now all our
+ammynition is expended, I've come to town for more, for ther's some of
+'em still left--who want killin' badly."
+
+"See here, my friend," I replied.  "You don't know it, but you're nothing
+but a bushwhacker, and anybody has a right to hang or shoot you out of
+hand.  Do you see that great square tent?"  Here I pointed to the
+general's marquee.  "Go in there and report yourself and get enrolled."
+And the last I saw of him he was stumbling over the sticks in the right
+direction.  This was my first experience of a real _guerillo_--a
+character with whom I was destined to make further experience in after
+days.
+
+An earlier incident was to me extremely curious.  There was in our
+battery a young gentleman named Stewart Patterson, noted for his
+agreeable, refined manners.  He was the gunner of our cannon No. Two.  We
+had brass Napoleons.  At the distance of about one mile the rebels were
+shelling us.  Patterson brought _his_ gun to bear on theirs, and the two
+exchanged shots at the same instant.  Out of the smoke surrounding
+Patterson's gun I saw a sword-blade fly perhaps thirty feet, and then
+himself borne by two or three men, blood flowing profusely.  The four
+fingers of his right hand had been cut away clean by a piece of shell.
+
+At the instant I saw the blade flash in its flight, I recalled seeing
+precisely the same thing long before in Heidelberg.  There was a famous
+duellist who had fought sixty or seventy times and never received a
+scratch.  One day he was acting as _second_, when the blade of his
+principal, becoming broken at the hilt by a violent blow, flew across the
+room, rebounded, and cut the second's lip entirely open.  It was
+remarkable that I should twice in my life have seen such a thing, in both
+instances accompanied by wounds.  Long after I met Patterson in
+Philadelphia, I think, in 1883.  He did not recognise me, and gave me his
+left hand.  I said, "Not that hand, Patterson, but the other.  You've no
+reason to be ashamed of it.  I saw the fingers shot off."
+
+But on that night there occurred an event which, in the end, after years
+of suffering, caused the deepest sorrow of my life.  As we were not
+firing, I and the rest of the men of the gun were lying on the ground to
+escape the shells, but my brother, who was nothing if not soldierly and
+punctilious, stood upright in his place just beside me.  There came a
+shell which burst immediately, and very closely over our heads, and a
+piece of it struck my brother exactly on the brass buckle in his belt on
+the spine.  The blow was so severe that the buckle was bent in two.  It
+cut through his coat and shirt, and inflicted a slight wound two inches
+in length.  But the blow on the spine had produced a concussion or
+disorganisation of the brain, which proved, after years of suffering, the
+cause of his death.  At first he was quite senseless, but as he came to,
+and I asked him anxiously if he was hurt, he replied sternly, "Go back
+immediately to your place by the gun!"  He was like grandfather Leland.
+
+A day or two after, while we were on a forced march to intercept a party
+of rebels, the effect of the wound on my brother's brain manifested
+itself in a terrible hallucination.  He had become very gloomy and
+reserved.  Taking me aside, he informed me that as he had a few days
+before entered a country-house, contrary to an order issued, to buy food,
+he was sure that Captain Landis meant as soon as possible to have him
+shot, but that he intended, the instant he saw any sign of this, at once
+to attack and kill the captain!  Knowing his absolute determined and
+inflexibly truthful character, and seeing a fearful expression in his
+eyes, I was much alarmed.  Reflecting in the first place that he was half-
+starved, I got him a meal.  I had brought from Philadelphia two pounds of
+dried beef, and this, carefully hoarded, had eked out many a piece of
+bread for a meal.  I begged some bread, gave my brother some beef with
+it, and I think succeeded in getting him some coffee.  Then I went to
+Lieutenant Perkins--a very good man--and begged leave to take my
+brother's guard and to let him sleep.  He consented, and my brother
+gradually came to his mind, or at least to a better one.  But he was
+never the same person afterwards, his brain having been permanently
+affected, and he died in consequence five years after.
+
+I may note as characteristic of my brother, that, twelve years after his
+death, Walt Whitman, who always gravely spoke the exact truth, told me
+that there was one year of his life during which he had received no
+encouragement as a poet, and so much ridicule that he was in utter
+despondency.  At that time he received from Henry, who was unknown to
+him, a cheering letter, full of admiration, which had a great effect on
+him, and inspired him to renewed effort.  He sent my brother a copy of
+the first edition of his "Leaves of Grass," with his autograph, which I
+still possess.  I knew nothing of this till Whitman told me of it.  The
+poet declared to me very explicitly that he had been much influenced by
+my brother's letter, which was like a single star in a dark night of
+despair, and I have indeed no doubt that the world owes more to it than
+will ever be made known.
+
+During the same week in which this occurred my wife's only brother,
+Rodney Fisher, a young man, and captain in the regular cavalry, met with
+a remarkably heroic death at Aldie, Virginia.  He was leading what was
+described as "the most magnificent and dashing charge of the whole
+campaign," when he was struck by a bullet.  He was carried to a house,
+where he died within a week.  He was of the stock of the Delaware
+Rodneys, and of the English Admiral's, or of the best blood of the
+Revolution, and well worthy of it.  It was all in a great cause, but
+these deaths entered into the soul of the survivors, and we grieve for
+them to this day.
+
+Our sufferings as soldiers during this Emergency were very great.  I
+heard an officer who had been through the whole war, and through the
+worst of it in Virginia, declare that he had never suffered as he did
+with us this summer.  And our unfortunate artillery company endured far
+more than the rest, for while pains were taken by commanding officers of
+other regiments, especially the regulars, to obtain food, our captain,
+either because they had the advance on him, or because he considered
+starving us as a part of the military drama, took little pains to feed
+us, and indeed neglected his men very much.  As we had no doctor, and
+many of our company suffered from cholera morbus, I, having some
+knowledge of medicine, succeeded in obtaining some red pepper, a bottle
+of Jamaica ginger, and whisky, and so relieved a great many patients.  One
+morning our captain forbade my attending to the invalids any more.
+"Proper medical attendance," he said, "would be provided."  It was not;
+only now and then on rare occasions was a surgeon borrowed for a day.
+What earthly difference it could make in discipline (where there was no
+show or trace of it) whether I looked after the invalids or not was not
+perceptible.  But our commander, though brave, was unfortunately one of
+those men who are also gifted with a great deal of "pure cussedness," and
+think that the exhibiting it is a sign of bravery.  Although we had no
+tents, only a miserably rotten old gun-cover, and not always that, to
+sleep under (I generally slept in the open air, frequently in the rain),
+and often no issue of food for days, we were strictly prohibited from
+foraging or entering the country houses to buy food.  This, which was a
+great absurdity, was about the only point of military discipline strictly
+enforced.
+
+At one time during the war, when men were not allowed to sleep in the
+country houses (to protect their owners), the soldiers would very often
+burn these houses down, in order that, when the family had fled, they
+might use the fireplace and chimney for cooking; and so our men,
+forbidden to enter the country houses to buy or beg food, stole it.
+
+I can recall one very remarkable incident.  We had six guns, heavy old
+brass Napoleons.  One afternoon we had to go uphill--in many cases it was
+_terribly_ steep--by a road like those in Devonshire, resembling a ditch.
+It rained in torrents and the water was knee-deep.  The poor mules had to
+be urged and aided in every way, and half the pulling and pushing was
+done by us.  All of us worked like navvies.  So we went onwards and
+upwards for sixteen miles!  When we got to the top of the hill, out of
+one hundred privates, Henry, I, and four others alone remained.  R. W.
+Gilder was one of these, besides Landis and Lieutenant Perkins--that is
+to say, we alone had not given out from fatigue; but the rest soon
+followed.  This exploit was long after cited as one of the most
+extraordinary of the war--and so it was.  We were greatly complimented on
+it.  Old veterans marvelled at it.  But what was worse, I had to lie all
+night on sharp flints--_i.e._, the slag or _debris_ of an iron smeltery
+or old forge out of doors--in a terrible rain, and, though tired to
+death, got very little sleep; nor had we any food whatever even then or
+the next day.  Commissariat there was none, and very little at any time.
+
+From all that I learned from many intimate friends who were in the war, I
+believe that we in the battery suffered to the utmost all that men can
+suffer in the field, short of wounds and death.  Yet it is a strange
+thing, that had I not received at this time most harassing and
+distressing news from home, and been in constant fear as regards my
+brother, I should have enjoyed all this Emergency like a picnic.  We
+often marched and camped in the valley of the Cumberland and in Maryland,
+in deep valleys, by roaring torrents or "on the mountains high," in
+scenery untrodden by any artist or tourist, of marvellous grandeur and
+beauty.  One day we came upon a scene which may be best described by the
+fact that my brother and I both stopped, and both cried out at once,
+"Switzerland!"  The beauty of Nature was to me a constant source of
+delight.  Another was the realisation of the sense of duty and the
+pleasure of war for a noble cause.  It was once declared by a reviewer
+that in my Breitmann poems the true _gaudium certaminis_, or enjoyment of
+battle, is more sincerely expressed than by any modern poet, because
+there is no deliberate or conscious effort to depict it seriously.  And I
+believe that I deserved this opinion, because the order to march, the
+tramp and rattle and ring of cavalry and artillery, and the roar of
+cannon, always exhilarated me; and sometimes the old days of France would
+recur to me.  One day, at some place where we were awaiting an attack and
+I was on guard, General Smith, pausing, asked me something of which all I
+could distinguish was "Fire--before."  Thinking he had said, "Were you
+ever under fire before?" and much surprised at this interest in my
+biography, I replied, "Yes, General--in Paris--at the barricades in Forty-
+eight."  He looked utterly amazed, and inquired, "What the devil did you
+think I said?"  I explained, when he laughed heartily, and told me that
+his question was, "Has there been any firing here before?"
+
+Two very picturesque scenes occur to me.  One was a night before the
+battle of Gettysburg.  The country was mountain and valley, and the two
+opposing armies were camped pretty generally in sight of one another.
+There was, I suppose, nearly half a cord of wood burning for every twelve
+men, and these camp-fires studded the vast landscape like countless
+reflections of the stars above, or rather as if all were stars, high or
+low.  It was one of the most wonderful sights conceivable, and I said at
+the time that it was as well worth seeing as Vesuvius in eruption.
+
+Henry had studied for eighteen months in the British Art School in Rome,
+and passed weeks in sketching the Alhambra, and, till he received his
+wound, took great joy in the picturesque scenery and "points" of military
+life.  But it is incredible how little we ate or got to eat, and how hard
+we worked.  It is awful to be set to digging ditches in a soil
+nine-tenths _stone_, when starving.
+
+As we were raw recruits, we were not put under fire at Gettysburg, but
+kept in Smith's reserve.  But on the night after the defeat, when Lee
+retreated in such mad and needless haste across the Potomac, we were
+camped perhaps the nearest of any troops to the improvised bridge, I
+think within a mile.  That night I was on guard, and all night long I
+heard the sound of cavalry, the ring and rattle of arms, and all that
+indicates an army in headlong flight.  I say that they went in needless
+haste.  I may be quite in the wrong, but I have always believed that
+Meade acted on the prudent policy of making a bridge of gold for a
+retreating enemy; and I always believed, too, that at heart he did not at
+all desire to inflict extreme suffering on the foe.  Had he been a
+General Birney, he would have smote them then and there hip and thigh,
+and so ended the war "for good and all," like a Cromwell, with such a
+slaughter as was never seen.  I base all this on one fact.  At two
+o'clock on the afternoon before that night I went to a farmhouse to
+borrow an axe wherewith to cut some fuel; and I was told that the rebels
+had carried away every axe in great haste from every house, in order to
+make a bridge.  Now, if I knew that at two o'clock, General Meade, if he
+had any scouts at all, _must_ have known it.  But--_qui vult decipi_,
+_decipiatur_.
+
+That ended the Emergency.  The next day, I think, we received the welcome
+news that we were no longer needed and would soon be sent home.  On the
+way we encamped for a week at some place, I forget where.  There was no
+drill now--we seldom had any--no special care of us, and no "policing" or
+keeping clean.  Symptoms of typhoid fever soon appeared; forty of our
+hundred were more or less ill.  My brother and I knew very well that the
+only way to avert this was to exercise vigorously.  On waking in the
+morning we all experienced languor and lassitude.  Those who yielded to
+it fell ill.  Henry was always so ready to work, that once our sergeant,
+Mr. Bullard, interposed and gave the duty to another, saying it was not
+fair.  I always remembered it with gratitude.  But this feverish languor
+passed away at once with a little chopping of wood, bringing water, or
+cooking.
+
+One more reminiscence.  Our lieutenant, Perkins, was a pious man, and on
+Sunday mornings held religious service, which we were obliged to attend.
+One day, when we had by good fortune rations of fresh meat, it was cooked
+for dinner and put by in two large kettles.  During the service two
+hungry pigs came, and in our full sight overturned the kettles, and,
+after rooting over the food, escaped with large pieces.  I did not care
+to dine, like St. Antonio, on pigs' leavings.  My brother finding me,
+asked why I looked so glum.  I replied that I was hungry.  "Is that all?"
+he replied.  "Come with me!"  We went some distance until we came to a
+farmhouse in the forest.  He entered, and, to my amazement, was greeted
+as an old friend.  He had been there in the campaign of the previous
+year.  I was at once supplied with a meal.  My brother was asked to send
+them newspapers after his return.  He never sought for mysteries and
+despised dramatic effects, but his life was full of them.  Once, when in
+Naples, he was accustomed to meet by chance every day, in some retired
+walk, a young lady.  They spoke, and met and met again, till they became
+like friends.  One day he saw her in a court procession, and learned for
+the first time that she was a younger daughter of the King.  But he never
+met her again.
+
+There were two or three boys of good family, none above sixteen, who had
+sworn themselves in as of age--recruiting officers were not
+particular--and who soon developed brilliant talents for "foraging,"
+looting, guerilla warfare, horse-stealing, pot-hunting rebels, and all
+those little accomplishments which appear so naturally and pleasingly in
+youth when in the field.  For bringing out the art of taking care of
+yourself, a camp in time of war is superior even to "sleeping about in
+the markets," as recommended by Mr. Weller.  Other talents may be
+limited, but the amount of "devil" which can be developed out of a
+"smart" boy as a soldier is absolutely infinite.  College is a Sunday-
+school to it.  One of these youths had "obtained" a horse somewhere,
+which he contrived to carry along.  Many of our infantry regiments
+gradually converted themselves into cavalry by this process of
+"obtaining" steeds; and as the officers found that their men could walk
+better on horses' legs, they permitted it.  This promising youngster was
+one day seated on a caisson or ammunition waggon full of shells, &c.,
+when it blew up.  By a miracle he rose in the air, fell on the ground
+unhurt, and marching immediately up to the lieutenant and touching his
+hat, exclaimed, "Please, sir, caisson No. Two is blown to hell; please
+appoint me to another!"  That oath was not recorded.  Poor boy! he died
+in the war.
+
+There was one man in our corps, a good-natured, agreeable person, a
+professional politician, who astonished me by the fact that however
+starved we might be, he had always a flask of whisky wherewith to treat
+his friends!  Where or how he always got it I never could divine.  But in
+America every politician always has whisky or small change wherewith to
+treat.  _Always_.  Money was generally of little use, for there was
+rarely anything to buy anywhere.  I soon developed here and there an
+Indian-like instinct in many things, and this is indeed deep in my
+nature.  I cannot explain it, but it is _there_.  I became expert when we
+approached a house at divining, by the look of waggons or pails or
+hencoops, whether there was meal or bread or a mill anywhere near.  One
+day I informed our lieutenant that a detachment of rebel cavalry had
+recently passed.  He asked me how I knew it.  I replied that rebel
+horses, being from mountainous Virginia, had higher cocks and narrower to
+their shoes, and one or two more nails than ours, which is perfectly
+true.  And where did I learn that?  Not from anybody.  I had noticed the
+difference as soon as I saw the tracks, and guessed the cause.  One day,
+in after years in England, I noticed that in coursing, or with beagles,
+the track of a gypsy was exactly like mine, or that of all Americans--that
+is, Indian-like and _straight-forward_.  I never found a Saxon-Englishman
+who had this step, nor one who noticed such a thing, which I or an Indian
+would observe at once.  Once, in Rome, Mr. Story showed me a cast of a
+foot, and asked me what it was.  I replied promptly, "Either an Indian
+girl's or an American young lady's, whose ancestors have been two hundred
+years in the country."  It was the latter.  Such feet _lift_ or leap, as
+if raised every time to go over entangled grass or sticks.  Like an
+Indian, I instinctively observe everybody's _ears_, which are unerring
+indices of character.  I can sustain, and always could endure, incredible
+fasts, but for this I need coffee in the morning.  "Mark Twain"--whom I
+saw yesterday at his villa, as I correct this proof--also has this
+peculiar Indian-like or American faculty of observing innumerable little
+things which no European would ever think of.  There is, I think, a great
+deal of "hard old Injun" in him.  The most beautiful of his works are the
+three which are invariably bound in silk or muslin.  They are called "The
+Three Daughters, or the Misses Clemens."
+
+It occurred to me, after I had recorded the events of our short but truly
+vigorous and eventful campaign, to write to R. W. Gilder and ask
+him--_quid memoriae datum est_--"what memories he had of that great war,
+wherein we starved and swore, and all but died."  There are men in whose
+letters we are as sure to find genial _life_ as a _spaccio di vino_ or
+wine-shop in a Florentine street, and this poet-editor is one of them.
+And he replied with an epistle not at all intended for type, which I
+hereby print without his permission, and in defiance of all the custom or
+courtesy which inspires gentlemen of the press.
+
+   "_May_ _8th_, _1893_.
+   "EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT, THE CENTURY MAGAZINE,
+   "UNION SQUARE, NEW YORK.
+
+   "MY DEAR LELAND: How your letter carries me back!  Do you know that
+   one night when I was trudging along in the dark over a road-bed where
+   had been scattered some loose stones to form a foundation, I heard you
+   and another comrade talking me over in the way to which you refer in
+   your letter?  Well, it was either you or the other comrade who said
+   you had given me something to eat, and I know that I must have seemed
+   very fragile, and at times woe-begone.  I was possibly the youngest in
+   the crowd.  I was nineteen, and really enjoyed it immensely
+   notwithstanding.
+
+   "I remember you in those days as a splendid expressor of our miseries.
+   You had a magnificent vocabulary, wherewith you could eloquently and
+   precisely describe our general condition of starvation, mud,
+   ill-equippedness, and over-work.  As I think of those days, I hear
+   reverberating over the mountain-roads the call, 'Cannoneers to the
+   wheels!' and in imagination I plunge knee-deep into the mire and grab
+   the spokes of the caisson. {266a}
+
+   "Do you remember the night we spent at the forge?  I burnt my knees at
+   the fire out-doors, while in my ears was pouring a deluge from the
+   clouds.  I finally gave it up, and spent the rest of the night
+   crouching upon the fire-bed of the forge itself, most uncomfortably.
+
+   "You will remember that we helped dig the trenches at the fort on the
+   southern side of the river from Harrisburg, {266b} and that one
+   section of the battery got into a fight near that fort; nor can you
+   have forgotten when Stuart Patterson's hand was shot off at Carlisle.
+   As he passed me, I heard him say, 'My God, I'm shot!'  That night,
+   after we were told to retire out of range of the cannon, while we were
+   lying under tree near one of the guns, an officer called for
+   volunteers to take the piece out of range.  I stood up with three
+   others, but seeing and hearing a shell approach, I cried out, 'Wait a
+   moment!'--which checked them.  Just then the shell exploded within a
+   yard of the cannon.  If we had not paused, some of us would surely
+   have been hit.  We then rushed out, seized the cannon, and brought it
+   out of range.
+
+   "By the way, General William F. Smith (Baldy Smith) has since told me
+   that he asked permission to throw the militia (including ourselves)
+   across one of Lee's lines of retreat.  If he had been permitted to do
+   so, I suppose you and I would not have been in correspondence now.
+
+   "You remember undoubtedly the flag of truce that came up into the town
+   before the bombardment began.  The man was on horseback and had the
+   conventional white flag.  The story was that Baldy Smith sent word
+   'that if they wanted the town they could come and take it.' {267}  I
+   suppose you realise that we were really a part of Meade's right, and
+   that we helped somewhat to delay the rebel left wing.  Do you not
+   remember hearing from our position at Carlisle the guns of that great
+   battle--the turning-point of the war? {268}
+
+   "I could run on in this way, but your own memory must be full of the
+   subject.  I wish that we could sometime have a reunion of the old
+   battery in Philadelphia.  I have a most distinct and pleasant
+   remembrance of your brother--a charming personality indeed, a handsome
+   refined face and dignified bearing.  I remember being so starved as to
+   eat crackers that had fallen on the ground; and I devoured, too, wheat
+   from the fields rubbed in the hands to free it from the ear. . . .
+
+   "Sincerely,
+   R. W. GILDER.
+
+   "_P.S._--I could write more, but you will not need it from me."
+
+Truly, I was that other comrade whom Gilder overheard commending him, and
+it was I who gave him something to eat, I being the one in camp who
+looked specially after two or three of the youngest to see that they did
+not starve, and who doctored the invalids.
+
+I here note, with all due diffidence, that Mr. Gilder chiefly remembers
+me as "a splendid expressor of our miseries, with a magnificent
+vocabulary" wherewith to set forth fearful adversities.  I have never
+been habitually loquacious in life; full many deem me deeply reticent and
+owl-like in my taciturnity, but I "can hoot when the moon shines," nor is
+there altogether lacking in me in great emergencies a certain rude kind
+of popular eloquence, which has--I avow it with humility--enabled me
+invariably to hold my own in verbal encounters with tinkers, gypsies, and
+the like, among whom "chaff" is developed to a degree of which few
+respectable people have any conception, and which attains to a refinement
+of sarcasm, _originality_, and humour in the London of the lower orders,
+for which there is no parallel in Paris, or in any other European
+capital; so that even among my earliest experiences I can remember, after
+an altercation with an omnibus-driver, he applied to me the popular
+remark that he was "blessed if he didn't believe that the gemman had been
+takin' lessons in language hof a cab-driver, _and set up o' nights to
+learn_."  But the ingenious American is not one whit behind the vigorous
+Londoner in "de elegant fluency of sass," as darkies term it, and it
+moves my heart to think that, after thirty years, and after the
+marvellous experiences of men who are masters of our English tongue which
+the editor of the _Century_ must have had, he still retains remembrance
+of my oratory!
+
+At last we were marched and railroaded back to Philadelphia.  I need not
+say that we were welcome, or that I enjoyed baths, clean clothes, and the
+blest sensation of feeling decent once more.  Everything in life seemed
+to be _luxurious_ as it had never been before.  Luxuries are very
+conventional.  A copy of Praetorius, for which I paid only fifteen
+shillings, was to me lately a luxury for weeks; so is a visit to a
+picture gallery.  For years after, I had but to think of the Emergency to
+realise that I was actually in all the chief conditions of happiness.
+
+Feeling that, although I was in superb health and strength, the seeds of
+typhoid were in me, I left town as soon as possible, and went with my
+wife, her sister, and two half-nieces, or nieces by marriage, and child-
+nephew, Edward Robins, to Cape May, a famous bathing-place by the ocean.
+One of the little girls here alluded to, a Lizzie Robins, then six years
+of age, is now well known as Elizabeth Robins Pennell, and "a writer of
+books," while Edward has risen in journalism in Philadelphia.  There as I
+walked often eighteen or twenty miles a day by the sea, when the
+thermometer was from 90 to 100 degrees in the shade, I soon worked away
+all apprehension of typhoid and developed muscle.  One day I overheard a
+man in the next bathing-house asking who I was.  "I don't know," replied
+the other, "but if I were he, I'd go in for being a prize-fighter."
+
+Everybody was poor in those days, so we went to a very cheap though
+respectable hotel, where we paid less than half of what we had always
+given at "The Island," and where we were in company quite as happy or
+comfortable as we ever had been anywhere, though the death of her brother
+weighed sadly on my poor wife, and her dear good mother, whom I always
+loved tenderly, and with whom I never had a shade of difference of
+opinion nor a whisper of even argument, and to whom I was always devoted.
+I seem to have been destined to differ from other mortals in a few
+things: one was, that I always loved my mother-in-law with whole heart
+and soul, and never considered our _menage_ as perfect unless she were
+with us.  She was of very good and rather near English descent, a
+Callender, and had been celebrated in her youth for extraordinary beauty.
+Her husband was related to the celebrated beauty Miss Vining, whom Maria
+Antoinette, from the fame of her loveliness, invited to come and join her
+court.  At the beginning of this century no great foreigner travelled in
+America without calling on Miss Vining in Delaware.  There is a life of
+her in Griswold's "Republican Court."  It is without any illustrative
+portrait.  I asked Dr. Griswold why he had none.  He replied that none
+existed.  I said to him severely, "Let _this_ be a lesson to you never to
+publish anything without submitting it first to _me_.  I have a
+photograph of her miniature."  The Doctor submitted!
+
+This summer at Cape May I made the acquaintance of a very remarkable man
+named Solomon.  He was a Jew, and we became intimate.  One evening he
+said to me: "You know so much about the Jews that I have even learned
+something from you about them.  But I can teach you something.  Can you
+tell the difference between the _Aschkenazim_ and the _Sephardim_ by
+their eyes?  No!  Well, now, look!"  Just then a Spanish-looking beauty
+from New Orleans passed by.  "There is Miss Inez Aguado; observe that the
+corners of her eyes are long with a peculiar turn.  Wait a minute; now,
+there is Miss Lowenthal--Levi, of course--of Frankfort.  Don't you see
+the difference?"
+
+I did, and asked him to which of the classes he belonged.  He replied--
+
+"To neither.  I am of the sect of the ancient Sadducees, who took no part
+in the Crucifixion."
+
+Then I replied, "You are of the _Karaim_."
+
+"No; that is still another sect or division, though very ancient indeed.
+We never held to the Halacha, and we laugh at the Mishna and Talmud and
+all that.  We do not believe or disbelieve in a God--Yahveh, or the older
+Elohim.  We hold that every man born knows enough to do what is right;
+and that is religion enough.  After death, if he has acted up to this, he
+will be all right should there be a future of immortality; and if he
+hasn't, he will be none the worse off for it.  We are a very small sect.
+We call ourselves the _Neu Reformirte_.  We have a place of worship in
+New York."
+
+This was the first agnostic whom I had ever met.  I thought of the woman
+in Jerusalem who ran about with the torch to burn up heaven and the water
+to extinguish hell-fire.  Yes, the sect was very old.  The Sadducees
+never denied anything; they only inquired as to truth.  Seek or _Sikh_!
+
+I confess that Mr. Solomon somewhat weakened the effect of his grand free-
+thought philosophy by telling me in full faith of a Rabbi in New York who
+was so learned in the Cabala that by virtue of the sacred names he could
+recover stolen goods.  Whether, like Browning's sage, he also received
+them, I did not learn.  But _c'est tout comme chez nous autres_.  The
+same spirit which induces a man to break out of orthodox humdrumness,
+induces him to love the marvellous, the forbidden, the odd, the wild, the
+droll--even as I do.  It is not a fair saying that "atheists are all
+superstitious, which proves that a man must _believe_ in something."  No;
+it is the spirit of nature, of inquiry, of a desire for the new and to
+penetrate the unknown; and under such influence a man may truly be an
+atheist as regards what he cannot prove or reconcile with universal love
+and mercy, and yet a full believer that magic and ghosts may possibly
+exist among the infinite marvels and mysteries of nature.  It is admitted
+that a man may believe in God without being superstitious; it is much
+truer that he may be "superstitious" (whatever that means) without
+believing that there is an anthropomorphic _bon Dieu_.  However this may
+be, Mr. Solomon made me reflect often and deeply for many a long year,
+until I arrived to the age of Darwin.
+
+I also made at Cape May the acquaintance of a very remarkable man, whom I
+was destined to often meet in other lands in after years.  This was
+Carrol (not as yet General) Tevis.  We first met thus.  The ladies wanted
+seats out on the lawn, and there was not a chair to be had.  He and I
+were seeking in the hotel-office; all the clerks were absent, and all the
+chairs removed; but there remained a solid iron sofa or settee, six feet
+long, weighing about 600 pounds.  Tevis was strong, and a great fencer;
+there is a famous _botte_ which he invented, bearing his name; perhaps
+Walter H. Pollock knows it.  I gave the free-lance or _condottiero_ a
+glance, and proposed to prig the iron sofa and lay waste the enemy.  It
+was a deed after his Dugald Dalgetty heart, and we carried it off and
+seated the ladies.
+
+In the autumn there was a vast Sanitary Fair for the benefit of the army
+hospitals held in Philadelphia.  I edited for it a daily newspaper called
+_Our Daily Fare_, which often kept me at work for eighteen hours per
+diem, and in doing which I was subjected to much needless annoyance and
+mortification.  At this Fair I saw Abraham Lincoln.
+
+It was about this time that the remarkable oil fever, or mania for
+speculating in oil-lands, broke out in the United States.  Many persons
+had grown rich during the war, and were ready to speculate.  Its extent
+among all classes was incredible.  Perhaps the only parallel to it in
+history was the Mississippi Bubble or the South Sea speculations, and
+these did not collectively employ so much capital or call out so much
+money as this petroleum mania.  It had many strange social developments,
+which I was destined to see in minute detail.
+
+My first experience was not very pleasant.  A publisher in New York asked
+me to write him a humorous poem on the oil mania.  It was to be large
+enough to make a small volume.  I did so, and in my opinion wrote a good
+one.  It cost me much time and trouble.  When it was done, the publisher
+_refused to take it_, saying that it was not what he wanted.  So I lost
+my labour or _oleum perdidi_.
+
+I had two young friends named Colton, who had been in the war from the
+beginning to the end, and experienced its changes to the utmost.  Neither
+was over twenty-one.  William Colton, the elder, was a captain in the
+regular cavalry, and the younger, Baldwin, was his orderly.  It was a man
+in the Captain's company, named Yost, who furnished the type of Hans
+Breitmann as a soldier.  The brothers told me that one day in a march in
+Tennessee, not far from Murfreesboro', they had found petroleum in the
+road, and thought it indicated the presence of oil-springs.  I mentioned
+this to Mr. Joseph Lea, a merchant of Philadelphia.  He was the father of
+Mrs. Anna Lea Merritt, who has since become a very distinguished artist,
+well known in England, being the first lady painter from whom the British
+Government ever bought a picture.  Mr. Lea thought it might be worth some
+expense to investigate this Tennessee oil.  I volunteered to go, if my
+expenses were paid, and it was agreed to.  It is difficult at the present
+day to give any reader a clear idea of the dangers and trouble which this
+undertaking involved, and I was fully aware beforehand what they would
+be.  The place was on the border, in the most disorganised state of
+society conceivable, and, in fact, completely swarming with guerillas or
+brigands, _sans merci_, who simply killed and stripped everybody who fell
+into their hands.  All over our border or frontier there are innumerable
+families who have kept up feuds to the death, or _vendettas_, in some
+cases for more than a century; and now, in the absence of all civil law,
+these were engaged in wreaking their old grudges without restraint, and
+assuredly not sparing any stranger who came between them.
+
+I had a friend in C. A. Dana, the Assistant-Secretary of War, and another
+in Colonel Henry Olcott, since known as the theosophist.  The latter had
+just come from the country which I proposed to visit.  I asked him to aid
+me in getting military passes and introductions to officers in command.
+He promised to do so, saying that he would not go through what I had
+before me for all the oil in America. {274}  And, indeed, one could not
+take up a newspaper without finding full proof that Tennessee was at that
+time an _inferno_ or No-man's Land of disorder.
+
+I went to it with my eyes wide open.  After so many years of work, I was
+as poor as ever, and the seven years of harvest which I had prophesied
+had come, and I was not gathering a single golden grain.  My father
+regarded me as a failure in life, or as a literary ne'er-do-weel,
+destined never to achieve fortune or gain an _etat_, and he was quite
+right.  My war experience had made me reckless of life, and speculation
+was firing every heart.  I bought myself a pair of long, strong, overall
+boots and blanket, borrowed a revolver, arranged money affairs with Mr.
+Lea, who always acted with the greatest generosity, intelligence, and
+kindness, packed my carpet-bag, and departed.  It was midwinter, and I
+was destined for a wintry region, or Venango County, where, until within
+the past few months, there had been many more bears and deer than human
+beings.  For it was in Venango, Pennsylvania, that the oil-wells were
+situated, and Mr. Lea judged it advisable that I should first visit them
+and learn something of the method of working, the geology of the region,
+and other practical matters.
+
+My brother accompanied me to the station, and I left at about 8 p.m.
+After a long, long, weary night and day, I arrived at an oil town, whose
+name I now forget.  By great good fortune I secured a room, and by still
+greater luck I got acquainted the next morning at breakfast with three or
+four genial and gentlemanly men, all "speculators" like myself, who had
+come to spy into the plumpness and oiliness of the land.  We hired a
+sleigh and went forth on an excursion among the oil-wells.  It was in
+some respects the most remarkable day I ever spent anywhere.
+
+For here was oil, oil, oil everywhere, in fountains flowing at the rate
+of a dollar a second (it brought 70 cents a gallon), derricks or
+scaffoldings at every turn over wells, men making fortunes in an hour,
+and beggars riding on blooded horses.  I myself saw a man in a blue
+carter's blouse, carrying a black snake-whip, and since breakfast, for
+selling a friend's farm, he had received 1250,000 as commission (_i.e._,
+50,000 pounds).  When we stopped to dine at a tavern, there stood behind
+us during all the meal many country-fellows, all trying to sell
+oil-lands; every one had a great bargain at from thirty or forty thousand
+dollars downwards.  The lowest in the lot was a boy of seventeen or
+eighteen, a loutish-looking youth, who looked as if his vocation had been
+peddling apples and lozenges.  He had only a small estate to dispose of
+for $15,000 (3,000 pounds), but he was very small fry indeed.  My
+companions met with many friends; all had within a few days or hours made
+or lost incredible sums by gambling in oil-lands, borrowing recklessly,
+and failing as recklessly.  Companies were formed here on the spot as
+easily as men get up a game of cards, and of this within a few days I
+witnessed many instances.  Two men would meet.  "Got any land over?"
+(_i.e._, not "stocked").  "Yes, first-rate; geologer's certificate; can
+you put it on the market?"  "That's my business.  I've floated forty oil
+stocks already, terms half profits."  So it would be floated forthwith.
+Gambling by _millions_ was in the air everywhere; low common men held
+sometimes _thirty companies_, all their own, in one pocket, to be
+presently sprung in New York or elsewhere.  And in contrast to it was the
+utterly bleak wretchedness and poverty of every house, and the miserable
+shanties, and all around and afar the dismal, dark, pine forests covered
+with snow.
+
+I heard that day of a man who got a living by spiritually intuiting oil.
+"Something told him," some Socratic demon or inner impulse, that there
+was "ile" here or there, deep under the earth.  To pilot to this "ile" of
+beauty he was paid high fees.  One of my new friends avowed his intention
+of at once employing this oil-seer as over-seer.
+
+We came to some stupendous tanks and to a well which, as one of my
+friends said enviously and longingly, was running three thousand dollars
+a day in clear greenbacks.  Its history was remarkable.  For a very long
+time an engineer had been here, employed by a company in boring, but bore
+he never so wisely, he could get nothing.  At last the company, tired of
+the expenditure and no returns, wrote to him ordering him to cease all
+further work on the next Saturday.  But the engineer had become
+"possessed" with the idea that he _must_ succeed, and so, unheeding
+orders, he bored away all alone the next day.  About sunset some one
+going by heard a loud screaming and hurrahing.  Hastening up, he found
+the engineer almost delirious with joy, dancing like a lunatic round a
+fountain of oil, which was "as thick as a flour-barrel, and rising to the
+height of a hundred feet."  It was speedily plugged and made available.
+All of this occurred only a very few days before I saw it.
+
+That night I stopped at a newly-erected tavern, and, as no bed was to be
+had, made up my mind to sleep in my blanket on the muddy floor,
+surrounded by a crowd of noisy speculators, waggoners, and the like.  I
+tell this tale vilely, for I omitted to say that I did the same thing the
+first night when I entered the oil-country, got a bed on the second, and
+that this was the third.  But even here I made the acquaintance of a nice
+Scotchman, who found out another very nice man who had a house near by,
+and who, albeit not accustomed to receive guests, said he would give us
+two one bed, which he did.  However, the covering was not abundant, and
+I, for all my blanket, was a-cold.  In the morning I found a full supply
+of blankets hanging over the foot-board, but we had retired without a
+light, and had not noticed them.  Our breakfast being rather poor, our
+host, with an apology, brought in a great cold mince-pie three inches
+thick, which is just the thing which I love best of all earthly food.
+That he apologised for it indicated a very high degree of culture indeed
+in rural America, and, in fact, I found that he was a well-read and
+modest man.
+
+It was, I think, at a place called Plummer that I made the acquaintance
+of two brothers named B---, who seemed to vibrate on the summit of
+fortune as two golden balls might on the top of the oil-fountain to which
+I referred.  One spoke casually of having at that instant a charter for a
+bank in one pocket, and one for a railroad in the other.  They bought and
+sold any and all kinds of oil-land in any quantity, without giving it a
+thought.  While I was in their office, one man exhibited a very handsome
+revolver.  "How much did it cost?" asked B.  "Fifty dollars" (10 pounds).
+"I wish," replied B., "that when you go to Philadelphia you'd get me a
+dozen of them for presents."  A man came to the window and called for
+him.  "What do you want?"  "Here are the two horses I spoke about
+yesterday."  Hardly heeding him, and talking to others, B. went to the
+window, cast a casual glance at the steeds, and said, "What was it you
+said that you wanted for them?"  "Three thousand dollars."  "All right!
+go and put 'em in the stable, and come here and get the money."
+
+From Plummer I had to go ten miles to Oil City.  If I had only known it,
+one of my very new friends, who was very kind indeed to a stranger, would
+have driven me over in his sleigh.  But I did not know it, and so paid a
+very rough countryman ten dollars (2 pounds) to take me over on a
+_jumper_.  This is the roughest form of a sledge, consisting of two
+saplings with the ends turned up, fastened by cross-pieces.  The snow on
+the road was two feet deep, and the thermometer at zero.  But the driver
+had two good horses, and made good time.  I found it very difficult
+indeed to hold on to the vehicle and also to keep my carpet-bag.
+Meanwhile my driver entertained me with an account of a great misfortune
+which had just befallen him.  It was as follows:--
+
+"Before this here oil-fever came along I had a little farm that cost me
+$150, and off that, an' workin' at carpentrin', I got a _mighty_ slim
+livin'.  I used to keep all my main savin's to pay taxes, and often had
+to save up the cents to get a prospective drink of whisky.  Well, last
+week I sold my farm for forty thousand dollars, and dern my skin ef the
+feller that bought it didn't go and sell it yesterday for a hundred and
+fifty thousand!  Just like my derned bad luck!"
+
+"See here, my friend," I said; "I have travelled pretty far in my time,
+but I never saw a country in which a man with forty thousand dollars was
+not considered rich."
+
+"He may be rich anywhere else with it," replied the _nouveau riche_
+contemptuously, "but it wouldn't do more than buy him a glass of whisky
+here in Plummer."
+
+Having learned what I could of oil-boring, I went to Cincinnati, and then
+to Nashville by rail.  It may give the reader some idea of what kind of a
+country and life I was coming into when I tell him that the train which
+preceded mine had been stopped by the guerillas, who took from it fifty
+Federal soldiers and shot them dead, stripping the other passengers; and
+that the one which came after had a hundred and fifty bullets fired into
+it, but had not been stopped.  We passed by Mammoth Cave, but at full
+speed, for it was held by the brigands.  All of which things were duly
+chronicled in the Northern newspapers, and read by all at home.
+
+I got to Nashville.  It had very recently been taken by the Federal
+forces under General Thomas, who had put it under charge of General
+Whipple, who was, in fact, the ruling or administrative man of the
+Southwest just then.  I went to the hotel.  Everything was dismal and
+dirty--nothing but soldiers and officers, with all the marks of the field
+and of warfare visible on them--citizens invisible--everything
+proclaiming a city camp in time of war--sixty thousand men in a city of
+twenty thousand, more or less.  I got a room.  It was so cold that night
+that the ice froze two inches thick in my pitcher in my room.
+
+I expected to find the brothers Colton in Nashville.  I went to the
+proper military authority, and was informed that their regiment was down
+at the front in Alabama, as was also the officer who had the authority to
+give them leave of absence.  I was also informed that my only chance was
+to go to Alabama, or, in fact, into the field itself, as a civilian!  This
+was a dreary prospect.  However, I made up my mind to it, and was walking
+along the street in a very sombre state of mind, for I was going to a
+country like that described in "Sir Grey Stele"--
+
+   "Whiche is called the Land of Doubte."
+
+And doubtful indeed, and very dismal and cold and old, did everything
+seem on that winter afternoon as I, utterly alone, went my way.  What I
+wanted most of all things on earth was a companion.  With my brother I
+would have gone down to the front and to face all chances as if it were
+to a picnic.
+
+When ill-fortune intends to make a spring, she draws back.  But good
+fortune, God bless her! does just the same.  Therefore _si fortuna
+tonat_, _caveto mergi_--if fortune frowns, do not for that despond.  Just
+as I was passing a very respectable-looking mansion, I saw a sign over
+its office-door bearing the words: "Captain Joseph R. Paxton, Mustering-
+in and Disbursing Officer."
+
+Joseph R. Paxton was a very intimate friend of mine in Philadelphia.  He
+was still a young man, and one of the most remarkable whom I have ever
+known.  He was a great scholar.  He was more familiar with all the
+_rariora_, _curiosa_, and singular marvels of literature than any body I
+ever knew except Octave Delepierre, with whose works he first made me
+acquainted.  He had translated Ik Marvel's "Reveries of a Bachelor" into
+French, and had been accepted by a Paris publisher.  He had been a
+lawyer, an agent for a railroad, and had long edited in Philadelphia a
+curious journal entitled _Bizarre_, and written a work on gems.  His
+whole soul, however, was in the French literature of the eighteenth
+century, and he always had a library which would make a collector's mouth
+water.  Had he lived in London or Paris, he would have made a great
+reputation.  And he was kind-hearted, genial, and generous to a fault.  He
+had always some unfortunate friend living on him, some Bohemian of
+literature under a cloud.
+
+I entered the office and found him, and great was his amazement!  "_Que
+diable_, _mon ami_, _faistu ici dans cette galere_?" was his greeting.  I
+explained the circumstances in detail.  He at once exclaimed, "Come and
+live here with me.  General Whipple is my brother-in-law, and he will be
+here in a few days and live with us.  He'll make it all right."  "Here,
+Jim!" he cried to a great six-foot man of colour--"run round to the hotel
+and bring this gentleman's luggage!"
+
+There I remained for a very eventful month.  Paxton had entered with the
+conquerors, and had just seized on the house.  I may indeed say that _we_
+seized on it, as regards any right--I being accepted as hail-fellow-well-
+met, and as a bird of the same feather.  In it was a piano and a very
+good old-fashioned library.  It was like Paxton to loot a library.  He
+had had his pick of the best houses, and took this one, "niggers
+included," for the servants, by some odd freak, preferred freedom with
+Paxton to slavery with their late owner.  This gentleman was a Methodist
+clergyman, and Paxton found among his papers proofs that he had been
+concerned in a plot to burn Cincinnati by means of a gang of secret
+incendiaries.
+
+Whenever the blacks realised the fact that a Northern man was a
+_gentleman_--they all have marvellous instincts for this, and a respect
+for one beyond belief--they took to him with a love like that of bees for
+a barrel of syrup.  I have experienced this so often, and in many cases
+so touchingly, that I cannot refrain from recording it.  Among others who
+thus took to me was the giant Jim, who was unto Paxton and me as the
+captive of our bow and spear, albeit an emancipated contraband.  When the
+Southerners defied General Butler to touch their slaves, because they
+were their "property" by law, the General replied by "confiscating" the
+property by what Germans call _Faustrecht_ (or fist-right) as "contraband
+of war."
+
+This Jim, the general waiter and butler, was a character, shrewd, clever,
+and full of dry humour.  When I was alone in the drawing-room of an
+evening, he would pile up a great wood-fire, and, as I sat in an
+arm-chair, would sit or recline on the floor by the blaze and tell me
+stories of his slave life, such as this:--
+
+"My ole missus she always say to me, 'Jim, don' you ever have anything to
+do with dem Yankees.  Dey're all pore miserable wile wretches.  Dey lib
+in poverty an' nastiness and don' know nothin'.'  I says to her, 'It's
+mighty quare, missus.  I can't understan' it.  Whar do all dem books come
+from?  Master gits em from de Norf.  Who makes all our boots an' clothes
+and sends us tea an' everythin'?  Dey can't all be so pore an' ignoran'
+ef dey writes our books an' makes everythin' we git.'  'Jim,' she says,
+'you're a fool, an' don' understan' nothin'.'  'Wery good, missus,' says
+I, but I thinked it over.  All we do is to raise cotton, an' dey make it
+into cloff, which we hav'n't de sense to do."
+
+I believe that I give this word for word.  And Jim, as I found, was a
+leading mind among the blacks.
+
+I had a letter of introduction from Mr. Lea to Horace Harrison, who was
+the State Attorney for Tennessee.  At this time his power was very great,
+for he had in his hands the disposition of all the estates of all the
+rebels in Tennessee.  He was the type of a Southwestern gentleman.  He
+reminded me very much of my old Princeton friends, and when I was in his
+office smoking a pipe, I felt as if I were in college again.  I liked him
+very much.  One morning I called, and after some deliberation he said,
+"You are a lawyer, are you not?" I replied that I had studied law under
+Judge Cadwallader.
+
+"Then I should like to consult with you as a lawyer.  I have a very
+difficult case to deal with.  There is a law declaring that all property
+belonging to rebels shall be seized and held for one year.  Now, here is
+a man whose estate I have held for six months, who has come in and
+declared his allegiance, and asks for his lands.  And I believe that
+before long, unless he comes in now, they will be almost ruined.  What
+shall I do?"
+
+"It appears to me," I replied, "that if the disposal of these lands is in
+your hands, you must be supposed to exert some will and discretion.  _Stat
+pro ratione voluntas_ is a good axiom here.  We are not at all _in statu
+quo ante bellum_--in fact, the war is not at an end, nor decided.  Your
+duty is to act for the good of the country, and not simply to _skin_ the
+enemy like a bushwhacker, but to pacify the people.  _Victor volentes per
+populos dat jura_--laws should always be mildly interpreted.  In your
+case, considering the very critical condition of the country, I should in
+equity give the man his property, and take his oath of allegiance.  Severe
+measures are not advisable--_quod est violentum_, _non est durabile_."
+
+This is, I believe, pretty accurately what I said.  That evening, as I
+was sitting with General Whipple, he amazed me by addressing me exactly
+as Mr. Harrison had done in the morning.
+
+"I say, Leland, you're a lawyer, and I want your advice.  There are six
+warehouses here, and I want them badly for military stores.  But Horace
+Harrison says that I can't have them, because he holds them for the
+United States.  What am I to do?"
+
+"General Whipple," I replied, "is this town under military occupation in
+time of war, or is it not?"
+
+"Most decidedly it is."
+
+"So I should think from the way your patrols bother me.  And if such is
+the case, all things must yield to military wants.  Where we have no
+legal principles or courts to decide, we must fall back on legal axioms.
+And here the law is clear and explicit, for it says, _Inter arma leges
+silent_--the laws are suspended in warfare."
+
+"A magnificent saying!" exclaimed the General admiringly.  "Ah! you ought
+to be in the Supreme Court."  And seizing a pen he wrote to the State
+Attorney:--
+
+   "SIR: This town, being but recently captured from the enemies of the
+   United States, is, of course, under military occupation, which renders
+   absolutely necessary for military purpose many temporary seizures and
+   uses, such as that of the six warehouses referred to in our late
+   correspondence.  As regards legal precedent and principle, I need not
+   remind one of your learning that--(I say, Leland, how do you spell
+   that Latin?--_I-n-t-e-r_--yes, I've got it)--_Inter arma silent
+   leges_."
+
+I am afraid that Horace Harrison, when he got that letter, suspected that
+I had been acting as counsel for both sides.  However, as I took no fee,
+my conscience was at rest.  I think that I was of great use to General
+Whipple at that time, and, as he said one day, an unofficial secretary.
+Great and serious matters passed through our hands (for the General and
+Harrison were taking the lead in virtually reforming the whole frontier
+or debatable land), and these grand affairs were often hurried through
+"like hot cakes."  My slender legal attainments were several times in
+requisition on occasions when the head of the Supreme Court would have
+been a more appropriate referee.  I discovered, however, that there was
+really a department of law in which I might have done good work.
+Questions of very serious importance were often discussed and disposed of
+among us three with very great economy of time and trouble.  And here I
+may say--"excuse the idle word"--that I wonder that I never in all my
+life fell into even the most trifling diplomatic or civil position, when,
+in the opinion of certain eminent friends, I possess several
+qualifications for such a calling--that is, quickness in mastering the
+legal bearings of a question, a knowledge of languages and countries,
+readiness in drawing up papers, and an insatiable love of labour, which
+latter I have not found to be _always_ possessed by the accomplished
+gentlemen whom our country employs abroad.
+
+I may here narrate a curious incident which touched and gratified me.
+When all the slaves in Nashville were set free by the entrance of our
+troops, the poor souls, to manifest their joy, seized a church (nobody
+opposing), and for three weeks held heavy worship for twenty-four hours
+per diem.  _But not a white soul was allowed to enter_--the real and
+deeply-concealed reason being that Voodoo rites (which gained great
+headway during the war) formed a part of their devotion.  However, I was
+informed that an exception would be made in my case, and that I was free
+to enter.  And why?  Had Jim surmised, by that marvellous intuition of
+character which blacks possess, that I had in me "the mystery"?  Now, to-
+day I hold and possess the black stone of the Voodoo, the possession of
+which of itself makes me a grand-master and initiate or adept, and such
+an invitation would seem as natural as one to a five-o'clock tea
+elsewhere; but I was not known to any one in Nashville as a "cunjerer,"
+and the incident strikes me as very curious.
+
+Apropos of marvels, many of the blacks can produce in their throats by
+some strange process sounds, and even airs, resembling those of the
+harmonicon, or musical box, one or the other or both.  One evening in
+Nashville, in a lonely place, I heard exquisite music, which I thought
+must be that of a superior hand-organ from afar.  But, to my amazement, I
+could discover none; there were only two black boys in the street.  Alexis
+Paxton, the son of my host, explained to me that what I heard was
+unquestionably music made by those ebony flutes of boys, and that there
+were some wonderful performers in the city.  I have listened to the same
+music at a public exhibition.  I greatly wonder that I have never heard
+of this kind of music in Europe or the East.  It is distinctly
+_instrumental_, not vocal in its tones.  It has the obvious
+recommendation of economy, since by means of it a young lady could be
+performer and pianoforte all in one, which was indeed the beginning of
+the invention in Syrinx, who was made into a pan-pipe, which as a piano
+became the great musical curse (according to Heine) of modern times, and
+by which, as I conjecture, the fair Miss Reed or Syrinx revenges herself
+on male humanity.  By the way, the best singer of "_Che faro senza
+Euridice_" whom I ever heard was a Miss Reed, a sister of Mrs. Paran
+Stevens.
+
+I had a very pleasant time with Paxton, and I know right well that I was
+no burden on him, but a welcome friend.  _Au reste_, there was plenty of
+room in the house, and abundant army stores to be had for asking, and one
+or two rare acquaintances.  One of these was a Southern officer, now a
+general, who had come over to our side and fought, as the saying was,
+with a rope round his neck.  He was terribly hated by the rebels, which
+hate he returned with red-hot double compound interest--for a renegade is
+worse than ten Turks.  He was the very type of a grim, calm old Border
+moss-trooper.  He lived in his boots, and never had an ounce of luggage.
+One evening General Whipple (always humane and cultivated, though as firm
+as an iron bar) said to him before me, "I really don't know what to do
+with many of my rebel prisoners.  They dress themselves in Federal
+uniforms for want of other clothes; they take them from the dead on the
+battlefield, and try to pass themselves off for Federals.  It is very
+troublesome."
+
+"No trouble to me," replied the other.
+
+"And how do you do with them?"
+
+"Shoot them as _spies_.  Why, only last week I got four dozen of them,
+and in less than four minutes I had them all laid out stiff in the road."
+
+The reader need not imagine that the general here romanced or
+exaggerated.  At that very moment the massacres and murders which were
+going on within three miles of us were beyond belief.  The bands of
+_guerillas_ or bushwhackers which swept the country murdered in cold
+blood all who fell into their hands, and the Confederate soldiers often
+did the same.  There resulted, of course, a deadly hatred on both sides,
+and the most unscrupulous retaliation.
+
+I could fill a book with the very interesting observations which I made
+in Nashville.  And here I call attention to a very strange coincidence
+which this recalls.  During the previous year I had often expressed a
+great desire to be in some State during its transition from Confederacy
+to Unionism, that I might witness the remarkable social and political
+paradoxes and events which would result, and I had often specified
+Tennessee as the one above all others which I should prefer to visit for
+this purpose.  And I had about as much idea that I should go to the moon
+as there.  But prayers are strangely granted at strange hours--_plus
+impetravi quam fuissem ausus_--and I was placed in the very centre of the
+wheel.  This very remarkable fulfilment of a wish, and many like it,
+though due to mere chance, naturally made an impression on me, for no
+matter how strong our eyesight may be, or our sense of truth, we are all
+dazed when coming out of darkness into light, and all the world is in
+that condition now.  No matter how completely we exchange the gloom of
+supernaturalism for the sunlight of science, phantoms still seem to flit
+before our eyes, and, what is more bewildering still, we do not as yet
+know but what these phantoms may be physical facts.  Perhaps the Voodoo
+stone _may_ have the power to awaken the faith which may move the vital
+or nervous force, which may act on hidden subtler forms of electricity
+and matter, atoms and molecules.  Ah! we have a great deal to learn!
+
+Through General Whipple's kind aid the brothers Colton were at once
+brought up from the front.  With them and Captain Paxton we went to
+Murfreesboro, and at once called on the general in command, whose name I
+have forgotten.  He struck me as a grim, brave old commander, every inch
+a soldier.  While we conversed with him a sergeant entered, a man who
+looked as if he lived in the saddle, and briefly reported that a gang of
+guerillas were assembled at a certain place some miles away--I forget how
+far, but the distance was traversed in an incredibly short time.  The
+general issued orders for a hundred cavalry to go at once and "get" them.
+They "got" them, killing many, and the next morning, on looking from my
+window, I saw the victors ride into the courtyard, many of them with
+their captives tied neck and heels, like bags of corn, over the cruppers
+of the horses.  A nice night's ride they must have had!  But the choice
+was between death and being cruppered, and they preferred the latter to
+coming a cropper.  Strange that the less a man has to live for the more
+he clings to life.
+
+The general thought that if he gave us a corporal and four men, and if we
+were well armed, that we _might_ go out on the Bole Jack road and return
+unharmed, "unless we met with any of the great gangs of bushwhackers."
+But he evidently thought, as did General Whipple, who did not heed a
+trifle by any means, that we were going into the lion's jaws.  So the
+next morning, _equo iter ingredi_, I rode forth.  I had some time before
+been appointed aide-de-camp to Governor Pollock, of Pennsylvania, with
+the rank of colonel, and had now two captains and a corporal with his
+guard.  It was a rather small regiment.
+
+We heard grim stories that morning as to what had taken place all around
+us within almost a few hours.  Three Federal pickets had been
+treacherously shot while on guard the night before; the troops had
+surprised a gang of bushwhackers holding a ball, and firing through the
+windows, dropped ten of them dead while dancing; two men had been
+murdered by --- --- and his gang.  This was a noted guerilla, who was
+said to have gone south with the Confederate army, but who was more
+generally believed to have remained in hiding, and to have committed most
+of the worst outrages and murders of late.
+
+At the first house where we stopped in the woods there lay a wounded man,
+one of the victims of the dance the night before.  The inmates were
+silent, but not rude to us.  I offered a man whisky, but he replied, "I
+don't use it."  We rode on.  Once there was an alarm of "bushwhackers."  I
+should have forgotten it but for the memory of the look of Baldwin
+Colton's eyes, the delighted earnestness of a man or of a wild creature
+going to fight.  He and his brother had hunted and fought guerillas a
+hundred times, perhaps much oftener, for it was a regular daily service
+at the front.  Once during a retreat, Baldwin (eighteen or nineteen years
+of age) fell out of rank so often to engage in hand-to-hand sword
+conflicts with rebel cavalrymen, that his brother detached four to take
+him prisoner and keep him safe.  Daring spirits among our soldiers often
+became very fond of this kind of duelling, in which the rebs were not a
+whit behind them, and two of the infantry on either side would, under
+cover of the bushes, aim and pop away at one another perhaps for hours,
+like two red Indians.
+
+I have forgotten whether it was with extra whisky, coffee, or money that
+we specially gratified our corporal and guard; but Baldwin, who was "one
+of 'em," informed me that they enjoyed this little outing immensely, just
+like a picnic, and had a good time.  From which it may be inferred that
+men's ideas of enjoyment are extremely relative.  It could not have been
+in the dodging of guerillas--to that they were accustomed; perhaps it was
+the little extra ration, or the mystery of the excursion, for they were
+much puzzled to know what I wanted, why I examined the road and rocks,
+and all so strangely, and went into the very worst place in all the land
+to do so.  Baldwin Colton himself had been so knocked about during the
+war, and so starved as a prisoner in Southern hands, that he looked back
+on a sojourn in that _ergastulum_, Libby Prison, as rather an oasis in
+his sad experiences.  "It wasn't so bad a place as some, and there was
+good company, and always _something to eat_."  The optimist of Candide
+was a Mallock in mourning compared to this.
+
+That night we came to somebody's plantation.  I forget his name, but he
+was a Union man, probably a _very_ recent acquisition, but genial.  He
+had read the _Knickerbocker_, and knew my name well, and took good care
+of us.  In the morning I offered him ten dollars for our night's lodging,
+which was, in the opinion of my two captains, stupendously liberal, as
+soldiers never paid.  Our host declined it like a Southern planter, on
+the ground that he never sold his hospitality.  So I put the money into
+the hand of one of his pretty children as a present.  But as we rode
+forth we were called back, and reminded that we had forgotten to pay for
+the _soldiers_!  I gave another five-dollar greenback and rode away
+disgusted.  And at the gate a negro girl begged us to give her a "dalla"
+(dollar) to buy a fish-line.  It all came from my foolish offer to pay.
+Gratitude is a sense of further benefits to be bestowed.
+
+The place where the oil had been seen was near a conical rocky hill
+called Grindstone Knob.  We examined carefully and found no trace of it.
+The geology of the country was unfavourable, much flint and conglomerate,
+if I remember, and wanting in the signs of coal, shales, &c., and
+"faults" or ravines.  I may be quite wrong, but such was my opinion.  No
+one who lived thereabout had ever heard of "ile."  Once I asked a rustic
+if any kind of oil was found in the neighbourhood in springs.  His reply
+was, "What! _ile_ come up outer the ground like water!  H---!  I never
+heard of sitch a thing."  _There was no oil_.
+
+At the foot of Grindstone Knob was a rather neat, small house, white,
+with green blinds.  We were somewhat astonished to learn from a negro
+boy, who spoke the most astonishingly bad English, that this was the home
+of Mas' --- ---.  Yes, this was the den of the wolf himself, and I had no
+doubt that he was not far off.  There was a small cotton plantation round
+about.
+
+We entered, and were received by a good-looking, not unladylike, but
+rather fierce-eyed young woman and her younger sister.  It was Mrs. ---.
+The two had been to a lady's seminary in Nashville, and played the piano
+for us.  I felt that we were in a strange situation, and now and then
+walked to the window and looked out, listening all the time suspiciously
+to every sound.  It was easy enough for Mrs. ---, the brigand's wife, to
+perceive from my untanned complexion that I had not been in the field,
+and was manifestly no soldier.  "_You_ look like an officer," she said to
+Captain Colton, "and so does _that_ one, but what is _he_?" meaning me by
+this last.  We had dinner--roast kid--and when we departed I gave the
+dame five dollars, having the feeling that I could not be indebted to
+thieves for a dinner.
+
+We had gone but a little distance when we saw two bushwhackers with guns,
+and gave chase, but they disappeared in the bushes, much to the grief of
+our men, who would have liked either to shoot them or to bring them in.
+Then the corporal told us that while we were at dinner's "faithful
+blacks" had informed his men that "Mas' had been at home ever since
+Crismas"; that at eleven o'clock every night they assembled at the house
+and thence went out marauding and murdering.
+
+I paused, astonished and angry.  It was almost certain that the
+bushwhacker had been during dinner probably in the cellar under our feet.
+The guerillas had great fear of our regular soldiers; two of the latter
+were a match at any time for half-a-dozen of the former, as was proved
+continually.  Should I go back and hang --- up over his own door?  I was
+dying to do it, but we had before us a very long ride through the Cedar
+Barrens, the sun was sinking in the west, and we had heard news which
+made it extremely likely that a large band of guerillas would be in the
+way.
+
+That resolve to go actually saved our lives, for I heard the next day
+that a hundred and fifty of these free murderers had gone on our road
+just after us.  This fact was at once transferred to the Northern
+newspapers, that "on --- a hundred and fifty bushwhackers passed over the
+Bole Jack road."  Which was read by my wife and father, who knew that on
+that very day I was on that road, to their great apprehension.
+
+I never shall forget the dismal appearance of the Cedar Barrens.  The
+soil was nowhere more than two inches deep, and the trees which covered
+it by millions had all died as soon as they attained a height of fifteen
+or twenty feet.  Swarms of ill-omened turkey-buzzards were the only
+living creatures visible "like foul _lemures_ flitting in the gloom."
+
+Riding over the battlefield the Coltons and Paxton pointed out many
+things, for they had all been in it severely.  At one place, Major
+Rosengarten, a brother of my old Paris fellow-student, had had a sabre-
+fight with a rebel, and they told me how Rosengarten's sword, being one
+of the kind which was issued by contract in the earlier days of the war,
+bent and broke like a piece of tin.  Hearing a ringing sound Baldwin
+jumped from his horse, picked up a steel ramrod and gave it to me for a
+cane.
+
+As we approached Murfreesboro' I met a genial, daring soldier, one Major
+Hill, whom I had seen before.  He had with him a hundred and fifty
+cavalry.  "Where are you going so late by night?" I said.
+
+He replied, "I am after that infernal scoundrel, --- ---.  My scouts have
+found out pretty closely his range.  I am going to divide my men into
+tens and scatter them over the country and then close in."
+
+"Major," I replied, "I will tell you just where to lay your hand at once,
+heavy on him.  Do you know Grindstone Knob and a white house with green
+windows at its foot?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"Well, be there at exactly eleven to-night, and you'll get him.  I have
+been there and learned it from the niggers."
+
+"Well, I declare that you are a good scout, Mr. Leland!" cried the Major
+in amazement.  "What can I do to thank you?"
+
+"Well, Major Hill," I said, "I have one thing to request: that is, if you
+get ---, don't parole him.  _Shoot him at once_; he is a red-handed
+murderer."
+
+"I _will_ shoot him," said the Major, and rode forth into the night with
+his men.  But whether he ever got --- I never knew, though according to
+the calculations of the Coltons, who were extremely experienced in such
+matters, "Massa ---" had not more than one chance in a thousand to
+escape, and Hill was notoriously a good guerilla-hunter and a man of his
+word.
+
+I believe that at the plantation our men had camped out.  At
+Murfreesboro' we returned them to the general, and I took the Coltons to
+a hotel, which was so very rough that I apologised for it, while Baldwin
+said it seemed to him to be luxurious beyond belief, and that it was the
+first night for eighteen months in which he had slept in a bed.  In the
+morning I wanted a spur, having lost one of mine, and there was brought
+to me a large boxful of all kinds of spurs to choose from, which had been
+left in the house at one time or another during the war.
+
+I did not remain long in Nashville after returning thither.  I had
+instructions to go to Louisville, Kentucky, and there consult with a
+certain merchant as to certain lands.  General Whipple accompanied me to
+the "depot," which was for the time and place as much of an honour as if
+Her Majesty were to come to see me off at Victoria Station.  There was
+many and many a magnate in those days and there, who would have given
+thousands to have had his ear as Paxton and I had it.
+
+One night we were in the side private box at the theatre in Nashville.
+Couldock, whom I had known well many years before, was on the stage.  The
+General was keeping himself deeply in the shade to remain unseen.  He
+remarked to Paxton that he wanted a house for his family, who would soon
+arrive, and could not find one, for they were all occupied.  This one
+remark shows the man.  I wonder how long General Butler would have
+hesitated to move anybody!
+
+Captain Paxton knew everything and everybody.  With a quick glance from
+his keen dark eyes he exclaimed--
+
+"I've got it!  Do you see that fat man laughing so heartily in the pit?
+He has a splendid house; it would just suit you; and he's a d---d old
+rebel.  I know enough about him to hang him three times over.  He has"
+(here followed a series of political iniquities).  "_Voila votre
+affaire_."
+
+"And how is it that he has kept his house?" asked the General.
+
+"He sent the quartermaster a barrel of whisky, or something of that
+sort."
+
+The General looked thoughtfully at the fat man as the latter burst into a
+fresh peal of laughter.  I thought that if he had known what was being
+said in our box that laugh would have died away.
+
+I do not know whether the General took the house.  I think he did.  I
+left for Louisville.  There I saw the great merchant, who invited me to
+his home to supper and consulted with me.  His daughters were rebels and
+would not speak to me.  He had a great deal of property in Indiana, which
+_might_ be oil-lands.  If I would visit it and report on it, he would
+send his partner with me to examine it.  I consented to go.
+
+This partner, Mr. W., was a young man of agreeable, easy manners.  With
+him I went to Indianapolis, and thence by "stages," waggons, or on
+horseback through a very dismal country in gloomy winter into the
+interior of the State.  I can remember vast marshy fields with millions
+of fiddler crabs scuttling over them, and more mud than I had ever seen
+in my life.  The village streets were six inches deep in soft mud up to
+the doors and floors of the houses.  At last we reached our journey's end
+at a large log-house on a good farm.
+
+I liked the good man of the house.  He said to us, after a time, that at
+first he thought we were a couple of stuck-up city fellows, but had found
+to his joy that we were old-fashioned, sensible people.  There was no
+sugar at his supper-table, but he had three substitutes for
+it--"tree-sweetnin', bee-sweetnin', and sorghum"--that is, maple sugar,
+honey, and the molasses made from Chinese maize.  Only at a mile's
+distance there was a "sugar-camp," and we could see the fires and hear
+the shouts of the people engaged night and day in making sugar from the
+trees.
+
+He told me that on the hills in sight a mysterious light often wandered.
+During the Revolutionary war some one had buried a barrelful of silver
+plate and money, and over it flitted the quivering silver flame, but no
+one could ever find the spot.
+
+The next day I examined the land.  There was abundance of fossiliferous
+limestone, rich in petrifactions of tertiary shells, also cartloads of
+beautiful _geodes_ or round flint balls, which often rattled, and which,
+when broken, were encrusted with white or purple amethystine crystals.  I
+decided that there were places where oil might be found, though there was
+certainly no indication of it.  I believe that my conjecture subsequently
+proved to be true, and that Indiana has shown herself to be a wise virgin
+not without oil.
+
+On the afternoon of the next day, riding with my guide, I found that I
+had left my blanket at a house miles behind.  I offered the man a large
+price to return and bring it, which he did.  While waiting by the wood,
+in a dismal drizzle, I saw a log cabin and went to it for shelter.  Its
+only inmate was a young woman, who, seeing me coming, hastily locked the
+door and rushed into the neighbouring woods.  When the guide returned I
+expressed some astonishment at the flight; _he_ did not.  With a very
+grave expression he asked me, "Don't the gals in _your_ part of the
+country allays break for the woods when they see _you_ a-coming?"
+"Certainly not," I replied.  To which he made answer, "Thank God, our
+gals here hev got better morrils than yourn."
+
+We returned to St. Louis.  There I was shown the immensely long tomb of
+Porter the Kentucky giant.  This man was nine feet in height!  I had seen
+him alive long before in Philadelphia.  I made several interesting
+acquaintances in St. Louis, the Athens of the West.  But I must hurry on.
+
+I went to Cincinnati, where I found orders to wait for Mr. Lea.  A
+syndicate had been formed in Providence, Rhode Island, which had
+purchased a great property in Cannelton, West Virginia.  This consisted
+of a mountain in which there was an immense deposit of cannel coal.
+Cannelton was very near the town of Charleston, which is at the junction
+of the Kanawha (a tributary of the Ohio) and Elk rivers.
+
+I waited a week at the hotel in Cincinnati for Mr. Lea.  It was a weary
+week, for I had no acquaintances and made none.  Never in my life before
+did I see so many Sardines, or Philistines of the dullest stamp as at
+that hotel.  But at last Mr. Lea came with a party of ladies and
+gentlemen.  A small steamboat was secured, and we went up the Ohio.  The
+voyage was agreeable and not without some incidents.  There was a freshet
+in the river, and one night, taking a short cut over a cornfield, the
+steamboat stuck fast--like Eve--in an apple-tree.
+
+One day one of the party asked me what was the greatest aggregate deposit
+of coal known in England.  I could not answer.  A few hours after we
+stopped at a town in Kentucky.  There I discovered by chance some old
+Patent Office reports, and among them all the statistics describing the
+coal mines in England.  When we returned to the boat I told my informant
+that the largest deposit in England was just half that of Cannelton, and
+added many details.  Mr. Lea was amazed at my knowledge.  I told him that
+I deserved no credit, for I had picked it up by chance.  "Yes," he
+replied, "and how was it that you _chanced_ to read that book?  None of
+us did.  Such chances come to inquiring minds."
+
+It also chanced that this whole country abounded in signs of petroleum.
+It was found floating on springs.  The company possessed rights of
+royalty on thousands of acres on Elk River, which was as yet in the
+debatable land, harassed by rebels.  These claims, however, were "run
+out," and needed to be renewed by signatures from the residents.  They
+were in the hands of David Goshorn, who kept the only "tavern" or hotel
+in Charleston, and he asked $5,000 for his rights.  There was another
+party in the field after them.
+
+I verily believe that David Goshorn sold the right to me because he
+played the fiddle and I the guitar, and because he did not like the
+rival, who was a Yankee, while I was a congenial companion.  Many a
+journey had we together, and as I appreciated him as a marked character
+of odd oppositions, we got on admirably.
+
+In Cannelton I went down into a coal mine and risked my life strangely in
+ascending a railway.  The hill is 1,500 feet in height, and on its face
+is a railway which ascends at an angle of 15 degrees, perhaps the
+steepest in America.  I ascended in it, and soon observed that of the two
+strands of the iron cable which drew it one was broken.  The very next
+week the other broke, and two men were killed by an awful death, they and
+the car falling a thousand feet to the rocks below.
+
+The next week we returned to Cincinnati, and thence to Philadelphia.  On
+my way from New York to Providence I became acquainted in the train with
+a modest, gentlemanly man, who told me he was a great-grandson or
+descendant of Thomson who wrote the "Seasons."  I thought him both great
+and grand in an incident which soon occurred.  A burly, bull-necked
+fellow in the car was attacked with an epileptic fit.  He roared, kicked,
+screamed like a wildcat; and among fifty men in the vehicle, I venture to
+say that only Thomson and I, in a lesser degree, showed any plain common
+sense.  I darted at the epileptic, grappled with him, held him down by
+what might be called brutal kindness, for I held his head down, while I
+sat on his arm and throttled him _sans merci_--I avow it--and tore off in
+haste his neckcloth (his neck was frightfully swelled), while Thomson
+brought cold water from the "cooler," with which we bathed his face
+freely, and chafed his pulse and forehead.  Little by little he
+recovered.  The other passengers, as usual, did nothing, and a little old
+naval officer, who had been fifty years in service (as Thomson told me),
+simply kicked and screamed convulsively, "Take him away! take him away!"
+The epileptic was George Christy, the original founder of the Christy
+Minstrels.  I can never think of this scene without exclaiming, "_Vive_
+Thomson!" for he was the only man among us who displayed quiet
+self-possession and _savoir faire_.  As for me, my "old Injun" was up,
+and I had "sailed in" for a fight by mere impulse.  _Vive_ Thomson!  _Bon
+sang ne peut mentir_.
+
+I went to Providence, where I was empowered to return to Cannelton to pay
+Goshorn $5,000, and renew the leases on Elk River.  I should have to
+travel post to anticipate the Yankee.  It was not concealed from me that
+even if I succeeded, I had before me a very dangerous and difficult task.
+But after what I had already gone through with I was ready for anything.
+I was really developing rapidly a wild, reckless spirit--the "Injun" was
+coming out of me.  My old life and self had vanished like dreams.  Only
+now and then, in the forests or by torrents, did something like poetry
+revisit me; _literature_ was dead in me.  Only once did I, in a railway
+train, compose the "Maiden mit nodings on."  I bore it in my memory for
+years before I wrote it out.
+
+I arrived in Philadelphia.  The next morning I was to rise early and fly
+westward.  No time to lose.  Before I rose, my sister knocked at the door
+and told us the awful news that President Lincoln had been murdered!
+
+As I went to the station I saw men weeping in the streets, and everybody
+in great grief, conversing with strangers, as if all had lost a common
+relation.  Everywhere utter misery!  I arrived in Pittsburg.  It was
+raining, and the black pall of smoke which always clothes the town was
+denser than ever, and the long black streamers which hung everywhere as
+mourning made the whole place unutterably ghastly.  In the trains nothing
+but the murder was spoken of.  There was a young man who had been in the
+theatre and witnessed the murder, which he described graphically and
+evidently truthfully.
+
+I reached Cincinnati, and as soon as possible hurried on board the
+steamboat.  We went along to Charleston, and it will hardly be believed
+that I very nearly missed the whole object of my journey by falling
+asleep.  We had but one more very short distance to go, when, overcome by
+fatigue, I dropped into a nap.  Fortunately I was awakened by the last
+ringing of the bell, and, seizing my carpet-bag, ran ashore just as the
+plank was to be withdrawn.
+
+I went directly to Goshorn's hotel.  He was a stout, burly man, shrewd in
+his way, good-natured, but not without temper and impulses.  He looked
+keenly after business, played the fiddle, and performed a few tricks of
+legerdemain.  He had a ladylike wife, and both were very kind to me,
+especially after they came to know me pretty well.  The lady had a nice,
+easy horse, which ere long was lent me freely whenever I wanted to ride.
+One day it was missing.  The master grieved.  They had named it after me
+in compliment.  "Goshorn," I said, "in future I shall call _you Horse-
+gone_."  But he was not pleased with the name.  However, it was recovered
+by a miracle, for the amount of horse-stealing which went on about us
+then was fabulous.
+
+After a few days Goshorn and I prepared to go up Elk River, to renew the
+leases of oil and coal lands.  Now I must premise that at all times the
+man who was engaged in "ile" bore a charmed life, and was venerated by
+both Union men and rebels.  _He_ could pass the lines and go anywhere.  At
+one time, when not a spy could be got into or out of Richmond to serve
+us, Goshorn seriously proposed to me to go with him into the city!  I had
+a neighbour named Fassit, an uncle of Theodore.  He had oil-wells in
+Virginia, and when the war begun work on them was stopped.  This dismayed
+the natives.  One morning there came to Mr. Fassit a letter imploring him
+to return: "Come back, o come agin and bore us some more wels.  We wil
+protec you like a son.  We dont make war on _Ile_."  And I, being thus
+respected, went and came from the Foeman's Land, and joined in the
+dreadful rebel-ry and returned unharmed, leading a charmed if _not_
+particularly charming life all winter and the spring, to the great
+amazement and bewilderment of many, as will appear in the sequence.
+
+The upper part of Elk River was in the debatable land, or rather still in
+Slave-ownia or rebeldom, where a Union man's life was worth about a
+chinquapin.  In fact, one day there was a small battle between me and
+home--with divers wounds and deaths.  This going and coming of mine,
+among and with rebels, got me into a droll misunderstanding some time
+after.  But I think that the real cause lay less in oil than in the
+simple truth that these frank, half-wild fellows _liked_ me.  One said to
+me one day, "You're onlike all the Northern men who come here, and we all
+like you.  What's the reason?"  I explained it that he had only met with
+Yankees, and that as Pennsylvania lay next to Virginia, of course we must
+be more alike as neighbours.  But the cause lay in the _liking_ which I
+have for Indians, gypsies, and all such folk.
+
+Goshorn began by buying a dug-out poplar canoe sixty-four feet in length,
+and stocking it with provisions.  "Money won't be of much use," he said;
+"what we want chiefly is whisky and blue beads for presents."  He hired
+two men who had been in the Confederate army, but who had absented
+themselves since the proceedings had become uninteresting.  These men
+took to me with a devotion which ended by becoming literally
+superstitious.  I am quite sure that, while naturally intelligent,
+anything like a mind stored with varied knowledge was something _utterly_
+unknown to them.  And as I, day by day, let fall unthinkingly this or
+that scrap of experience or of knowledge, they began to regard me as a
+miracle.  One day one of them, Sam Fox, said to me meaningly, that I
+liked curious things, and that he knew a nest where he could get me a
+young _raven_.  The raven is to an Indian conjuror what a black cat is to
+a witch, and I suppose that Sam thought I must be lonely without a
+familiar.  Which recalls one of the most extraordinary experiences of all
+my life.
+
+During my return down the river, it was in a freshet, and we went
+headlong.  This is to the very last degree dangerous, unless the boatmen
+know every rock and point, for the dugout canoe goes over at a touch, and
+there is no life to be saved in the rapids.  Now we were flying like a
+swallow, and could not stop.  There was one narrow shoot, or pass, just
+in the middle of the river, where there was exactly room to an inch for a
+canoe to pass, but to do this it was necessary to have moonlight enough
+to see the King Rock, which rose in the stream close by the passage, and
+at the critical instant to "fend off" with the hand and prevent the canoe
+from driving full on the rock.  A terrible storm was coming up, thunder
+was growling afar, and clouds fast gathering in the sky.
+
+The men had heard me talking the day before as to how storms were formed
+in circles, and it had deeply impressed them.  When Goshorn asked them
+what we had better do, they said, "Leave it all to Mr. Leland; he knows
+everything."  I looked at the moon and saw that the clouds were not
+driving dead against it, but _around_ while closing in, and I know not by
+what strange inspiration I added, "You will have just time to clear King
+Rock!"
+
+It was still far away.  I laid down my paddle and drew my blanket round
+me, and smoked to the storm, and sang incantations to myself.  It was a
+fearful trial, actually risking death, but I felt no fear--only a dull
+confidence in fate.  Closer grew the clouds--darker the sky--when during
+the very last second of light King Rock came in sight.  Goshorn was ready
+with his bull-like strength and gave the push; and just as we shot clear
+into the channel it became dark as pitch, and the rain came down in a
+torrent.  Goshorn pitched his hat high into the air--_aux moulins_--and
+hurrahed and cried in exulting joy.
+
+"Now, Mr. Leland, sing us that German song you're always so jolly
+with--_lodle yodle tol de rol de rol_!"
+
+From that hour I was _Kchee-Bo-o-in_ or Grand Pow-wow to Sam Fox and his
+friends.  He believed in me, even as I believe in myself when such mad
+"spells" come over me.  One day he proved his confidence.  It was bright
+and sunshiny, and we were paddling along when we saw a "summer duck"
+swimming perhaps fifty yards ahead.  Sam was sitting in the bow exactly
+between me and the duck.  "Fire at it with your revolver!" cried Sam.
+
+"It is too far away," I replied, "and you are right in the way."
+
+Sam bent over sideways, glaring at me with his one strange eye.  It was
+just about as close a shot as was William Tell's at the apple.  But I
+knew that reputation for nerve depended on it, so I fired.  As the duck
+rose it dropped a feather.
+
+"I knew you'd hit!" cried Sam triumphantly.  And so I had, but I should
+not like to try that shot again.
+
+Reflex action of the brain and secondary automatism!  It must be
+so--Haeckel, thou reasonest well.  But when the "old Injun" and my High-
+Dutch ancestor are upon me, I reason not at all, and then I see visions
+and dream dreams, and it always comes true, without the _least_
+self-deception or delusion.
+
+It is a marvellous thing that in these canoes, which tip over so easily,
+men will pass over mill-dams ten or twelve feet high, as I myself have
+done many a time, without upsetting.  The manner of it is this.  The
+canoe is a log hollowed out.  This is allowed to pass over till it dips
+like a seesaw, or falls into the stream below.  It is a dangerous,
+reckless act, but generally succeeds.  One day Sam Fox undertook to shoot
+our dug-out over a fall.  So he paddled hard, and ran the canoe headlong
+to edge, he being in the bow.  But it stuck halfway, and there was my
+Samuel, ere he knew it, high in the air, paddling in the atmosphere, into
+which thirty feet of canoe was raised.
+
+Meanwhile, the legal business and renewal of the leases and the payment
+of money was performed accurately and punctually.  Talk about _manna_ in
+the wilderness! _money_ in the wilderness came to the poor souls
+impoverished by the war as a thousandfold nicer.  But over and above
+that, half a pound of coffee or a drink of whisky would cause a thrill of
+delight.  One day, stopping at a logger's camp, I gave a decent-looking
+man a tin cup full of whisky.  The first thing he did was to put it to
+the mouth of a toddling two-year-old child and it took a good pull.  I
+remonstrated with him for it, when he replied, "Well, you see, sir, we
+get it so seldom, that whisky is a kind o' _delicacy_ with us."
+
+Sometimes the log huts were twenty miles apart.  In such isolation there
+is no rivalry of ostentation, and men care only to _live_.  One day we
+came to a log house.  The occupant had several hundred acres of very good
+land, and only a half acre under cultivation.  He was absent at a county
+court for amusement.  All that I could see in the cabin was a rude seat,
+an iron pot and spoon, and a squirrel-gun.  There were two cavities or
+holes in the bare earth floor, in which the old man and his wife slept,
+each wrapped in a blanket.  Even our boatman said that such carelessness
+was unusual.  But all were ignorant of a thousand refinements of life of
+which the poorest English peasant _knows_ something, yet every one of
+these people had an independence or pride far above all poverty.
+
+One night we stopped at the house of a man who was said to possess
+$150,000 (30,000 pounds) worth of land.  The house was well enough.  His
+two bare-legged daughters, girls of seventeen or eighteen, lounged about
+smoking pipes.  I gave one a cigar.  She replied, "I don't keer if I do
+try it.  I've allays wanted to know what a cigar smokes like."  But she
+didn't like it.  Apropos of girls, I may say that there is a _far_ higher
+standard of morals among these people than among the ignorant elsewhere.
+
+It was indeed a wild country.  One day Goshorn showed me a hill, and a
+hunter had told him that when standing on it one summer afternoon he had
+seen in a marshy place the very unusual spectacle of forty bears, all
+wallowing together in the mud and playing at once.  Also the marks of a
+bear's claws on a tree.  Game was plenty in this region.  All the time
+that I stayed with Goshorn we had every day at his well-furnished table
+bear's meat, venison, or other game, fish, ham, chickens, &c.
+
+There was a great deal of very beautiful scenery on Elk River, and some
+of its "incidents" were marvellously strange.  The hard sandstone rocks
+had worn into shapes resembling castles and houses, incredibly like
+buildings made by man.  One day I saw and copied a vast square rock
+through which ran to the light a perfect Gothic archway sixty feet high,
+with a long wall like the side of a castle, and an immense square tower.
+There are the most natural-looking houses and Schlosser imaginable rising
+all alone in the forest.  Very often the summits of the hills were
+crowned with round towers.  On the Ohio River there is a group of these
+shaped like segments of a truncated cone, and "corniced" with another
+piece reversed, like this:
+
+{Round tower: p304.jpg}
+
+These are called "Devil's Tea-tables."  I drew them several times, but
+could never give them the appearance of being _natural_ objects.  It is
+very extraordinary how Nature seems to have mocked man in advance in
+these structures.  In Fingal's Cave there is an absolutely original style
+of architecture.
+
+The last house which we came to was the best.  In it dwelt a gentlemanly
+elderly man with two ladylike daughters.  His son, who was dressed in
+"store clothes," had been a delegate to the Wheeling Convention.  But the
+war had borne hard on them, and for a long time _everything_ which they
+used or wore had been made by their own hands.  They had a home-made loom
+and spinning-wheel--I saw several such looms on the river; they raised
+their own cotton and wool and maple sugar, and were in all important
+details utterly self-sustaining and independent.  And they did not live
+rudely at all, but like ladies and gentlemen, as really intelligent
+people always can when they are _free_.  The father had, not long before,
+standing in his own door, shot a deer as it looked over the garden gate
+at him.  Goshorn, observing that I attached some value to the horns (a
+new idea to him), secured them for himself.
+
+A day or two after, while descending the river, we stopped to see an old
+hunter who lived on the bank.  He was a very shrewd, quaint old boy,
+"good for a novel."  He examined Goshorn's spectacles with so much
+interest, that I suspect it was really the first time in his life that he
+ever fully ascertained the "true inwardness and utilitarianism" of such
+objects.  He expressed great admiration, and said that if he had them he
+could get twice as many deer as he did.  I promised to send him a pair.  I
+begged from him deer-horns, which he gave me very willingly, expressing
+wonder that I wanted such rubbish, and at my delight.  And seeing that my
+companion had a pair, he said scornfully:
+
+"Dave Goshorn, what do _you_ know about such things?  What's set _you_ to
+gittin' deer's horns?  Give 'em to this here young gentleman, who
+understands such things that we don't, and who wants 'em fur some good
+reason."
+
+I will do Goshorn the justice to say that he gave them to me for a
+parting present.  My room at his house was quite devoid of all
+decoration, but by arranging on the walls crossed canoe-paddles, great
+bunches of the picturesque locust-thorn, often nearly a foot in length,
+and the deer's horns, I made it look rather more human.  But this
+arrangement utterly bewildered the natives, especially the maids, who
+naively asked me why I hung them old bones and thorns up in my room.  As
+this thorn is much used by the blacks in Voodoo, I suppose that it was
+all explained by being set down to my "conjurin'."
+
+The maid who attended to my room was a very nice, good girl, but one who
+could not have been understood in England.  I found that she gathered up
+and treasured many utterly worthless trifling bits of pen-drawing which I
+threw away.  She explained that where she came from on Coal River,
+anything like a picture was a great curiosity; also that her friends
+believed that all the pictures in books, newspapers, &c., were drawn by
+hand.  I explained to her how they were made.  When _I_ left I offered
+her two dollars.  She hesitated, and then said, "Mr. Leland, there have
+been many, many gentlemen here who have offered me money, but I never
+took a cent from any man till _now_.  And I _will_ take this from you to
+buy something that I can remember you by, for you have always treated me
+kindly and like a lady."  In rural America such girls are really lady-
+helps, and not "servants," albeit those who know how to get on with them
+find them the very best servants in the world; but they must be treated
+as _friends_.
+
+I went up Elk River several times on horse or in canoe to renew leases or
+to lease new land, &c.  The company sent on a very clever and intelligent
+rather young man named Sandford, who had been a railroad superintendent,
+to help me.  I liked him very much.  We had a third, a young Virginian,
+named Finnal.  At or near Cannelton I selected a spot where we put up a
+steam-engine, and began to bore for oil.  It was very near the famous gas-
+well which once belonged to General Washington.  This well gave forth
+every week the equivalent of _one hundred and fifty_ tons of coal.  It
+was utilised in a factory.  After I sunk our shaft it gave out; but I do
+not believe that we stopped it, for no gas came into our well.  Finnal
+was the superintendent of the well.  One day he nearly sat down--_nudo
+podice_--on an immense rattlesnake.  He had a little cottage and a fine
+horse.  He kept the latter in a stable and painted the door _white_, so
+that when waking in the night he could see if any horse-thief had opened
+it.  Many efforts were made to rob him of it.
+
+At this time Lee's army was disbanded, and fully one-half came straggling
+in squads up the valley to Charleston to be paroled.  David Goshorn's
+hotel was simply crammed with Confederate officers, who slept anywhere.
+With these I easily became friends; they seemed like Princeton Southern
+college mates.  Now I have to narrate a strange story.  One evening when
+I was sitting and smoking on the portico with some of these _bons
+compagnons_ I said to one--
+
+"People say that your men never once during the war got within sight of
+Harrisburg or of a Northern city.  But I believe they did.  One day when
+I was on guard I saw five men scout on the bank in full sight of it.  But
+nobody agreed with me."
+
+The officer laughed silently, and cried aloud to a friend with a broken
+arm in a sling, who lay within a room on a bed, "Come out here, L---.
+Here is something which will interest you more than anything you ever
+heard before."
+
+He came out, and, having heard my story, said--
+
+"Nobody ever believed your story, nor did anybody ever believe mine.  Mine
+is this--that when we were at Sporting Hill a corporal of mine came in
+and declared that he and his men had scouted into within full sight of
+Harrisburg.  I knew that the man told the truth, but nobody else would
+believe that any human being dared to do such a thing, or could do it.
+And now you fully prove that it was done."
+
+There came to Goshorn's three very interesting men with whom I became
+intimate.  One was Robert Hunt, of St. Louis.  He was of a very good
+Virginia family, had been at Princeton College, ran away in his sixteenth
+year, took to the plains as a hunter, and for twenty-three years had
+ranged the Wild West from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific.  At the end
+of the time an uncle in the Fur Company had helped him on, and he was now
+rich.  He was one of the most genial, gay, and festive, reckless yet
+always gentlemanly men I ever knew.  He expressed great astonishment, as
+he learned gradually to know me, at finding we were so congenial, and
+that I had so much "real Injun" in me.  His eyes were first opened to
+this great fact by a very singular incident, of which I can never think
+without pleasure.
+
+Hunt, with two men who had been cavalry captains all through the war, and
+his friend Ross, who had long been an Indian trader, and I, were all
+riding up Elk Valley to look at lands.  We paused at a place where the
+road sloped sideways and was wet with rain.  As I was going to remount, I
+asked a German who stood by to hold my horse's head, and sprang into the
+saddle.  Just at this critical instant--it all passed in a second--as the
+German had not heard me, my horse, feeling that he must fall over on his
+left side from my weight, threw himself _completely over backward_.  As
+quick as thought I jumped up on his back, put my foot just between the
+saddle and his tail, and took a tremendous flying leap so far that I
+cleared the horse.  I only muddied the palms of my gloves, on which I
+fell.
+
+The elder cavalry captain said, "When I saw that horse go over backwards,
+I closed my eyes and held my breath, for I expected the next second to
+see you killed."  But Robert Hunt exclaimed, "Good as an Injun, by God!"
+And when I some time after made fun of it, he shook his head gravely and
+reprovingly, as George Ward did over the gunpowder, and said, "It was a
+_magnificent_ thing!"
+
+That very afternoon Hunt distinguished himself in a manner which was
+quite as becoming an aborigine.  I was acting as guide, and knowing that
+there was a ford across a tributary of the Elk, sought and thought I had
+found it.  But I was mistaken, and what was horrible, we found ourselves
+in a deep quicksand.  On such occasions horses become, as it were,
+insane, trying to throw the riders and then jump on them for support.  By
+good luck we got out of it soon, but there was an _awful_ five minutes of
+kicking, plunging, splashing, and "ground and lofty" swearing.  I got
+across dry by drawing my legs up before me on the saddle, _a la_ tailor,
+but the others were badly wet.  But no sooner had we emerged from the
+stream than Robert Hunt, bursting into a tremendous "_Ho_! _ho_!" of deep
+laughter, declared that he had shown more presence of mind during the
+emergency than any of us; for, brandishing his whisky flask, he declared
+that while his horse was in the flurry it occurred to him that the best
+thing he could do was to lighten the load, and he had therefore, with
+incredible presence of mind, drunk up all the whisky!
+
+However, he afterwards confessed to me that the true reason was that,
+believing death was at hand, and thinking it a pity to die thirsty, he
+had drained the bottle, as did the old Indian woman just as she went over
+the Falls of Niagara.  Anyhow, the incorrigible _vaurien_ had really
+emptied his flask while in the "quick."
+
+Though I say it, I believe that Hunt and I were a pretty well matched
+couple, and many a wild prank and Indian-like joke did we play together.
+More than once he expressed great astonishment that I, a man grown up in
+cities and to literary pursuits, should be so much at home where he found
+me, or so congenial.  He had been at Princeton, and, _ex pede Herculem_,
+had a point whence to judge me, but it failed. {309}  His friend Ross was
+a quiet, sensible New Englander, who reminded me of Artemus Ward, or
+Charles Browne.  He abounded in quaint anecdotes of Indian experiences.
+
+As did also a Mr. Wadsworth, who had passed half his life in the Far West
+as a surveyor among the Chippeways.  He had written a large manuscript of
+their legends, of which Schoolcraft made great use in his _Algic_ book.  I
+believe that much of Longfellow's _Hiawatha_ owed its origin thus
+indirectly to Mr. Wadsworth.  In after years I wrote out many of his
+tales, as told to me, in articles in _Temple Bar_.
+
+The country all about Charleston was primitively wild and picturesque,
+rocky, hilly, and leading to solitary life and dreams of _sylvani_ and
+forest fairies.  There were fountained hills, and dreamy darkling woods,
+and old Indian graves, and a dancing stream, across which lay a petrified
+tree, and everywhere a little travelled land.  I explored it with
+Goshorn, riding far and wide into remote mountain recesses, to get the
+signatures in attestation of men who could rarely write, but on the other
+hand could "shoot their mark" with a rifle to perfection, and who would
+assuredly have placed such signature on me had I not been a holy
+messenger of _Ile_, and an angel of coming moneyed times.
+
+One day we stopped at a farm-house in a wild, lonely place.  There was
+only an old woman there--one of the stern, resolute, hard-muscled
+frontier women, the daughters of mothers who had fought "Injuns"--and a
+calf.  And thereby hung a tale, which the three men with me fully
+authenticated.
+
+The whole country thereabouts had been for four years so worried,
+harried, raided, raked, plundered, and foraged by Federals and
+Confederates--one day the former, the next the latter; blue and grey, or
+sky and sea--that the old lady had nothing left to live on.  Hens, cows,
+horses, corn, all had gone save one calf, the Benjamin and idol of her
+heart.
+
+One night she heard a piteous baaing, and, seizing a broom, rushed to the
+now henless hen-house, in which she kept the calf, to find in it a full-
+grown panther attacking her pet.  By this time the old lady had grown
+desperate, and seizing the broom, she proceeded to "lam" the wild beast
+with the handle, and with all her heart; and the fiend of ferocity,
+appalled at her attack, fled.  I saw the calf with the marks of the
+panther's claws, not yet quite healed; I saw the broom; and, lastly, I
+saw the old woman, the mother in Ishmael; whose face was a perfect
+guarantee of the truth of the story.  One of us suggested that the old
+lady should have the calf's hide tanned and wear it as a trophy, like an
+Indian, which would have been a strange reversal of Shakespeare's
+application of it, or to
+
+   "Hang a calf-skin on those recreant limbs."
+
+Then there came the great spring freshet in Elk River, which rose
+unusually high, fifty feet above its summer level.  It had come to within
+an inch or two of my floor, and yet I went to bed and to sleep.  By a
+miracle it rose no more, for I had a distinct conviction it would not,
+which greatly amazed everybody.  But many were drowned all about us.  The
+next day a man who professed bone-setting and doctoring, albeit not
+diplomaed, asked me to go with him and act as interpreter to a German
+patient who had a broken thigh.  While felling a tree far away in the
+forest, it thundered down on him, and kept him down for two or three days
+till he was discovered.  To get to him we went in a small canoe, and
+paddled ourselves with shingles or wooden tiles, used to cover roofs.  On
+the way I saw a man on a roof fiddling; only a bit of the roof was above
+water.  He was waiting for deliverance.  Many and strange indeed were all
+the scenes and incidents of that inundation, and marvellous the legends
+which were told of other freshets in the days of yore.
+
+I never could learn to play cards.  Destiny forbade it, and always
+stepped in promptly to stop all such proceedings.  One night Sandford and
+friends sat down to teach me poker, when _bang_, _bang_, went a revolver
+outside, and a bullet buried itself in the door close by me.  A riotous,
+evil-minded darkey, who attended to my washing, had got into a fight, and
+was forthwith conveyed to the Bull-pen, or military prison.  I was afraid
+lest I might lose my shirts, and so "visited him" next day and found him
+in irons, but reading a newspaper at his ease.  From him I learned the
+address of "the coloured lady" who had my underclothing.
+
+The Bull-pen was a picturesque place--a large log enclosure, full of
+strange inmates, such as wild guerillas in moccasins, grey-back
+Confederates and blue-coat Federals guilty of many a murder, arson, and
+much horse-stealing, desolate deserters, often deserving pity--the
+_debris_ of a four years' war, the crumbs of the great loaf fallen to the
+dirt.
+
+Warm weather came on, and I sent to Philadelphia for a summer suit of
+clothes.  It came, and it was of a _light grey colour_.  At that time
+Oxford "dittos," or a suit _pareil partout_, were unknown in West
+Virginia.  I was dressed from head to foot in Confederate grey.  Such a
+daring defiance of public opinion, coupled with my mysterious stealing
+into the rebel country, made me an object of awe and suspicion--a kind of
+Sir Grey Steal!
+
+There was at that time in Charleston a German artillery regiment which
+really held the town--that is to say, the height which commanded it.  I
+had become acquainted with its officers.  All at once they gave me the
+cold shoulder and cut me.  My friend Sandford was very intimate with
+them.  One evening he asked their Colonel why they scorned me.  The
+Colonel replied--
+
+"Pecause he's a tamned repel.  Aferypody knows it."
+
+Sandford at once explained that I was even known at Washington as a good
+Union man, and had, moreover, translated Heine, adding other details.
+
+"Gott verdammich--_heiss_!" cried the Colonel in amazement.  "Is dot der
+Karl Leland vot dranslate de _Reisebilder_?  Herr je!  I hafe got dat
+very pook here on mein table!  Look at it.  Bei Gott! here's his name!
+_Dot_ is der crate Leland vot edit de _Continental Magazine_!  Dot moost
+pe a fery deep man.  Und I dink _he_ vas a repel!"
+
+The next morning early the Colonel sent his ambulance or army waggon to
+my hotel with a request that I would come and take breakfast with him.  It
+was a bit of Heidelberg life over again.  We punished Rheinwein and lager-
+beer in quantities.  There were old German students among the officers,
+and I was received like a brother.
+
+At last Sandford and I determined to return to the East.  There was in
+the hotel a coloured waiter named Harrison.  He had been a slave, but "a
+gentleman's gentleman," was rather dignified, and allowed no ordinary
+white man to joke with him.  On the evening before my departure I said to
+him--
+
+"Well, Harrison, I hope that you haven't quite so bad an opinion of me as
+the other people here seem to have."
+
+He manifested at once a really violent emotion.  Dashing something to the
+ground, he cried--
+
+"Mr. Leland, you _never_ did anything contrary to a gentleman.  I always
+maintained it.  Now please tell me the truth.  Is it true that you're a
+great friend of Jeff Davis?"
+
+"Damn Jeff Davis!"  I replied.
+
+"And you ain't a major in the Confederate service?"
+
+"I'm a clear-down Abolitionist, and was born one."
+
+"And you ain't had no goings on with the rebels up the river to bring
+back the Confederacy here?"
+
+"Devil a dealing."
+
+And therewith I explained how it was that I went unharmed up into the
+rebels' country, and great was the joy of Harrison, who, as I found, had
+taken my part valiantly against those who suspected me.
+
+There was a droll comedy the next day on board the steamboat on which I
+departed.  A certain Mr. H., who had been a rebel and recanted at the
+eleventh hour and become a Federal official, requested everybody on board
+not to notice me.  Sandford learned it all, and chuckled over it.  But
+the captain and mate and crew were all still rebels at heart.  Great was
+my amazement at being privately informed by the steward that the captain
+requested as a favour that I would sit by him at dinner and share a
+bottle of wine.  I did so, and while I remained on board was treated as
+an honoured guest.
+
+And now I would here distinctly declare that, apart from my political
+principles, from which I never swerved, I always found the rebels--that
+is, Southern and Western men with whom I had had intimate
+dealings--without one exception _personally_ the most congenial and
+agreeable people whom I had ever met.  There was not to be found among
+them what in England is known as a prig.  They were natural and
+gentlemanly, even down to the poorest and most uneducated.
+
+One day Sam Fox came to me and asked me to use my influence with the
+Cannelton Company to get him employment at their works.
+
+"Sam," I replied, "I can't do it.  It is only three weeks now, when you
+were employed at another place, that you tried to stuff the overseer into
+the furnace, and if the men had not prevented, you would have burned him
+up alive."
+
+"Yes," replied Sam, "but he had called me a -- son --- of ---."
+
+"Very good," I answered; "and if he had called me _that_, I should have
+done the same.  But I don't think, if I _had_ done it, I should ever have
+expected to be employed again on another furnace.  You see, Samuel, my
+son, that these Northern men have very queer notions--_very_."
+
+Sam was quite convinced.
+
+At Cincinnati a trifling but droll incident occurred.  I do not set
+myself up for a judge of wines, but I have naturally a delicate sense of
+smell or _flair_, though not the extraordinary degree in which my brother
+possessed it, who never drank wine at all.  He was the first person who
+ever, in printed articles or in lectures, insisted that South New Jersey
+was suitable for wine-growing.  At the hotel Sandford asked me if I could
+tell any wine by the taste.  I replied No, but I would try; so they gave
+me a glass of some kind, and I said that honestly I could only declare
+that I should say it was Portugal common country wine, but I must be
+wrong.  Then Sandford showed the bottle, and the label declared it to be
+grown in Ohio.  The next day he came to me and said, "I believe that
+after all you know a great deal about wine.  I told the landlord what you
+said, and he laughed, arid said, 'I had not the American wine which you
+called for, and so I gave you a cheap but unusual Portuguese wine.'"  This
+wine is neither white nor red, and tastes like sherry and Burgundy mixed.
+
+At Cincinnati, Sandford proposed that we should return by way of Detroit
+and Niagara.  I objected to the expense, but he, who knew every route and
+rate by heart, explained to me that, owing to the competition in railway
+rates, it would only cost me six shillings ($1.50) more, _plus_ $2.50
+(ten shillings) from New York to Philadelphia.  So we departed.  In
+Detroit I called on my cousin, Benjamin Stimson (the S. of "Two Years
+before the Mast"), and found him a prominent citizen.  So, skirting along
+southern Canada, we got to Niagara, and thence to Albany and down the
+Hudson to New York, and so on to Philadelphia.
+
+It seems to me now that at this time all trace of my former life and self
+had vanished.  I seemed to be only prompt to the saddle, canoe-paddle,
+revolver, steamboat, and railroad.  My wife said that after this and
+other periods of Western travel I was always for three weeks as wild as
+an Indian, and so I most truly and unaffectedly was.  I did not _act_ in
+a foolish or disorderly manner at all, but Tennessee and Elk River were
+in me.  Robert Hunt and Sam Fox and many more had expressed their
+amazement at the amount of extremely familiar and congenial nature which
+they had found in me, and they were quite right.  Sam and Goshorn
+declared that I was the only Northern man whom they had ever known who
+ever learned to paddle a dug-out _correctly_; but as I was obliged to do
+this sometimes for fifteen hours a day _nolens volens_, it is not
+remarkable that I became an expert.
+
+As regards the real unaffected feeling of wildness born to savage nature,
+life, and association, it is absolutely as different from all civilised
+feeling whatever as bird from fish; and it very rarely happens that an
+educated man ever knows what it is.  What there is of it in me which
+Indians recognise is, I believe, entirely due to hereditary endowment.
+
+   "Zum Wald, zum Wald, steht mir mein Sinn.
+      So einzig, ach! so einzig hin.
+   Dort lebt man freundlich, lebt man froh,
+      Und nirgends, nirgends lebt man so."
+
+It does not come from reading or culture--it comes of itself by nature,
+or not at all; nor has it over-much to do with thought.  Only in
+something like superstition can it find expression, but that must be
+childlike and sweet and sincere, and without the giggling with which such
+subjects are invariably received by ladies in society.
+
+I went with my wife and her mother and sister to pass some time at
+Bethlehem, in Pennsylvania, which we did very pleasantly at a country
+inn.  It is a very interesting town, where a peculiar German dialect is
+generally spoken.  There was a very respectable wealthy middle-aged lady,
+a Pennsylvanian by birth, who avoided meeting us at table because she
+could not speak English.  And when I was introduced to her, I made
+matters worse by speaking to her naturally in broad South German,
+whereupon she informed me that she spoke _Hoch_-Deutsch!  But I made
+myself popular among the natives with my German, and our landlord was
+immensely proud of me.  I wasn't "one of dem city fellers dat shames
+demselfs of de Dutch," not I.  "Vy, I dells you vot, mein Gott! he's
+_proud_ of it!"
+
+I ended the summer at beautiful Lenox, in Massachusetts, in the charming
+country immortalised in "Elsie Venner"; of which work, and my letter on
+it to Dr. Holmes, and my conversation with him thereanent, I might fill a
+chapter.  But "let us not talk about them but pass on."  I returned to
+Philadelphia and to my father's house, where I remained one year.
+
+I had for a long time, at intervals, been at work on a book to be
+entitled the "Origin of American Popular Phrases."  I had scissored from
+newspapers, collected from negro minstrels and Western rustics, and
+innumerable New England friends, as well as books and old songs and comic
+almanacs and the like, a vast amount of valuable material.  This work,
+which had cost me altogether a full year's labour, had been accepted by a
+New York publisher, and was in the printer's hands.  I never awaited
+anything with such painful anxiety as I did this publication, for I had
+never been in such straits nor needed money so much, and it seemed as if
+the more earnestly I sought for employment the more it evaded me.  And
+then almost as soon as my manuscript was in the printer's hands his
+office was burned, and the work perished, for I had not kept a copy.
+
+It was a great loss, but from the instant when I heard of it to this day
+I never had five minutes' trouble over it, and more probably not one.  I
+had done my _very best_ to make a good book and some money, and could do
+no more.  When I was a very small boy I was deeply impressed with the
+story in the "Arabian Nights" of the prisoner who knew that he was going
+to be set free because a rat had run away with his dinner.  So I, at the
+age of seven, announced to my father that I believed that whenever a man
+had bad luck, good was sure to follow, which opinion he did not accept.
+And to this day I hold it, because, reckoning up the chances of life, it
+is true for most people.  At any rate, I derived some comfort from the
+fact that the accident was reported in all the newspapers all over the
+Union.
+
+About the 1st of July, 1866, we left my father's house to go to Cape May,
+where we remained for two months.  In September we went to a very good
+boarding-house in Philadelphia, kept by Mrs. Sandgren.  She possessed and
+showed me Tegner's original manuscript of "Anna and Axel."  I confess
+that I never cared over-much for Tegner, and that I infinitely prefer the
+original Icelandic Saga of Frithiof to his sago-gruel imitation of strong
+soup.
+
+
+
+
+VI.  LIFE ON THE PRESS.  1866-1869.
+
+
+I become managing editor of John W. Forney's _Press_--Warwick the King-
+maker--The dead duck--A trip to Kansas in the old buffalo days--Miss
+Susan Blow, of St. Louis--The Iron Mountain of Missouri--A strange
+dream--Rattlesnakes--Kaw Indians--I am adopted into the tribe--Grand war-
+dance and ceremonies--Open-air lodgings--Prairie fires--In a dangerous
+country--Indian victims--H. M. Stanley--Lieutenant Hesselberger--I shoot
+a buffalo--Wild riding--In a herd--Indian white men--Ringing for the
+carriage with a rifle--Brigham the driver--General and Mrs. Custer--Three
+thousand miles in a railway car--How "Hans Breitmann's" ballads came to
+be published--The publisher thinks that he cannot sell more than a
+thousand of the book--I establish a weekly newspaper--Great
+success--Election rioting--Oratory and revolvers--How the meek and lowly
+Republicans revolvered the Democrats--The dead duck and what befell him
+who bore it--I make two thousand German votes by giving Forney a lesson
+in their language--_Freiheit und Gleichheit_--The Winnebago Indian
+chief--Horace Greeley--Maretzek the Bohemian--Fanny Janauschek and the
+Czech language--A narrow escape from death on the Switchback--Death of my
+father--Another Western railway excursion--A quaint old darkey--Chicago--I
+threaten to raise the rent--General influence of Chicago--St. Paul,
+Minnesota--A seven days' journey through the wilderness--The
+Canadian--Smudges--Indians--A foot journey through the woods--Indian pack-
+bearers--Mayor Stewart--I rifle a grave of silver ornaments--Isle
+Royale--My brother, Henry Perry Leland--The press--John Forney carries
+Grant's election, and declares that I really did the work--The weekly
+press and George Francis Train--Grant's appointments--My sixth
+introduction to the General--Garibaldi's dagger.
+
+We had not lived at Mrs. Sandgren's more than a week when George Boker,
+knowing my need, spoke to Colonel John Forney, who was at that time not
+only Secretary of the Senate of the United States, but the proprietor of
+the _Chronicle_ newspaper in Washington, of the _Press_ in Philadelphia,
+"both daily," as the Colonel once said, which very simple and commonplace
+expression became a popular by-word.  Colonel Forney wanted a managing
+editor for the _Press_, and, as I found in due time, not so much a man of
+enterprise and a leader--that _he_ supplied--nor yet one to practically
+run the journal--that his son John, a young man of eighteen, supplied--so
+much as a steady, trustworthy, honest _pivot_ on which the compass could
+turn during his absences--and that _I_ supplied.  I must, to explain the
+situation, add gently that John, who could not help it considering his
+experiences, was, to put it mildly, a little irregular, rendering a
+steady manager absolutely necessary.  It was a great pity, for John the
+junior was extremely clever as a practical managing editor, remembering
+everything, and knowing--what I never did or could--all the little
+tricks, games, and wiles of all the reporters and others employed.
+
+Colonel Forney was such a remarkable character, and had such a great
+influence for many years in American politics, that as I had a great deal
+to do with him--very much more than was generally known--at a time when
+he struck his greatest political _coup_, in which, as he said, I greatly
+aided him, I will here dwell on him a space.  Before I knew him I called
+him Warwick the King-maker, for it was generally admitted that it was to
+his intense hatred of Buchanan, added to his speech-making, editing, and
+tremendously vigorous and not always over-scrupulous intriguing, that
+"Ten-cent Jimmy" owed his defeat.  At this time, in all presidential
+elections, Pennsylvania turned the scale, and John Forney could and did
+turn Pennsylvania like a Titan; and he frankly admitted that he owed the
+success of his last turn to me, as I shall in time relate.
+
+Forney's antipathies were always remarkably well placed.  He hated
+Buchanan; also, for certain personal reasons, he hated Simon Cameron; and
+finally it came to pass that he hated Andrew Johnson with a hatred of
+twenty-four carats--an _aquafortis_ detestation--and for a most singular
+cause.
+
+One night when this "President by the pistol, and smallest potato in the
+American garden of liberty," was making one of his ribald speeches, after
+having laid out Horace Greeley, some one in the crowd cried--
+
+"Now give us _John Forney_!"
+
+With an air of infinite contempt the President exclaimed--
+
+"I don't waste _my_ powder on dead ducks."
+
+He had better have left that word unsaid, for it ruined him.  It woke
+Colonel John Forney up to the very highest pitch of his fighting "Injun,"
+or, as they say in Pennsylvania, his "Dutch."  He had always been to that
+hour a genial man, like most politicians, a little too much given to the
+social glass.  But from that date of the dead duck he became "total
+abstinence," and concentrated all his faculties and found all his
+excitement in vengeance hot and strong, without a grain of sugar.  In
+which I gladly sympathised and aided, for I detested Johnson as a
+renegade Copperhead, or rather venomous toad to the South, who wished
+with all his soul to undo Lincoln's work and bring in the Confederacy.
+And I believe, on my life and soul, that if John Forney had not defeated
+him, we should have had such disasters as are now inconceivable, the
+least of them being a renewal of the war.  Johnson had renegaded from the
+Confederacy because, being only a tailor, he had ranked as a "low white,"
+or something despised even by "quality" negroes.  The Southern
+aristocracy humbugged him by promising that if he would betray the Union
+he should be regarded as one of themselves, by which very shallow cheat
+he was--as a snob would be--easily caught, and in due time cast off.
+
+I had been but a few weeks on the _Press_, and all was going on well,
+when one morning the Colonel abruptly asked me if I could start in the
+morning for Fort Riley, of which all I knew was that it constituted an
+extreme frontier station in Kansas.  There was to be a Kansas Pacific
+railway laid out, and a large party of railroad men intended to go as far
+as the last surveyor's camp.  Of course, a few editors had been invited
+to write up the road, and these in turn sent some one in their place.  I
+knew at once that I should have something like the last year's wild life
+over again, and I was delighted.  I borrowed John Forney's revolver,
+provided an agate-point and "manifold paper" for duplicate letters to our
+"two papers, both daily," and at the appointed hour was at the railway
+station.  There had been provided for us the director's car, a very large
+and extremely comfortable vehicle, with abundance of velvet "settees" or
+divan sofas, with an immense stock of lobster-salad, cold croquettes,
+game, with "wines of every fineness," and excellent waiters.  The
+excursion, indeed, cost 1,000 pounds; but it was made to pay, and that to
+great profit.
+
+We were all a very genial, congenial party of easy-going geniuses.  There
+was Hassard, the "day editor" of the _New York Tribune_, who had been
+with me on the _Cyclopaedia_, and to whom I was much attached, for he was
+a gentlemanly scholar, and withal had seen enough of life on the
+_Tribune_ to hold his own with any man; and Captain William Colton, who
+had been with me in Tennessee; Robert Lamborn, who had studied science in
+Germany, and was now a railroad man, and many more who are recorded in my
+pamphlet, "Three Thousand Miles in a Railway Car," and my old associate,
+Caspar Souder, of the _Bulletin_.  This excursion was destined, in
+connection with this pamphlet, to have a marvellous effect on my future
+life.
+
+In every town where we paused--and our pauses were frequent, as we
+travelled very much on the "go-as-you-please" plan--we were received by
+the authorities with honour and speeches and invited to dinners or
+drinks.  Our conductors were courtesy itself.  One afternoon one of them
+on a rough bit of road said, "Gentlemen, whenever you wish to open a
+bottle of champagne, please to pull the cord and stop the train.  You can
+then drink without spilling your wine."
+
+So we went to Chicago and St. Louis, where we were entertained by Mr.
+Blow, and where I became acquainted with his daughter Susan.  She was
+then a beautiful blonde, and, as I soon found, very intelligent and
+cultured.  She was long years afterwards busy in founding philanthropic
+schools in St. Petersburg, Russia, when I was there--a singularly noble
+woman.  However, at this time neither of us dreamed of the school-keeping
+which we were to experience in later years.  At this soiree, and indeed
+for the excursion the next day, we had as a guest Mr. Walter, of the
+London _Times_.
+
+The next day we had a special train and an excursion of ladies and
+gentlemen to visit the marvellous Knob or Iron Mountain.  This is an
+immense conical hill with a deep surrounding dale, beyond which rise
+other hills all of nearly solid iron.  Returning that evening in the
+train, a very strange event took place.  There was with us a genial,
+pleasant, larky young fellow, one of the famous family of the MacCooks.
+When the war came on he was at college--went into the army, fought
+hard--rose to be captain, and then after the peace went back to the
+college and finished his studies.  This was the "event."  We were telling
+stories of dreams; when it came to my turn I said:--
+
+"In 1860 I had never been in Ohio, nor did I know anything about it.  One
+night--it was at Reading, Pennsylvania--I fell asleep, I dreamed that I
+_woke up_, rose from the bed, went to the match-box, struck a light, and
+while it burned observed the room, which was just the same as when I had
+retired.  The match went out.  I lit another, when what was my amazement
+to observe that _everything in the room had changed its colour to a rich
+brown_!  Looking about me, I saw on a kind of _etagere_ scores of half-
+burned candles in candlesticks, as if there had been a ball.  I lighted
+nearly all of them.  Hearing a sound as of sweeping and the knocking of a
+broom-handle without, I went into the next room, which was the hall where
+the dance had been held.  A very stupid fellow was sweeping it out.  I
+asked him where I was.  He could not reply intelligently.  There came
+into the hall a bustling, pleasant woman, rather small, who I saw at a
+glance was the housekeeper.  She said something to the man as to the
+room's being dark.  I remarked that there was light enough in my room,
+for I had lit all the candles.  She cried, laughing, 'What extravagance!'
+I answered, 'My dear little woman, what does a candle or two signify to
+you?  Now please tell me where I am.  Last night I went to sleep in
+Reading, Pennsylvania.  Where am I now?'  She replied (and of this word I
+was not sure), 'In _Columbus_, Ohio.'  I asked if there was any prominent
+man in the place who was acquainted with Philadelphia, and who might aid
+me to return.  She reflected, and said that Judge _Duer_ and his two
+daughters (of whom I had never heard) had just returned from the East."
+
+Here MacCook interrupted me eagerly: "You were not in Columbus, but in
+_Dayton_, Ohio.  And it was not Judge Duer, but Judge _Duey_, with his
+two daughters, who was that summer in the East."  I went on:--
+
+"I left the room and went into the hall.  I came to the front door.  Far
+down below me I saw a winding river and a steamboat."
+
+Here MacCook spoke again: "That was _surely_ Dayton.  I know the house
+and the view.  But it could not have been Columbus."  I went on:--
+
+"I went downstairs too far by mistake into the cellar.  There I found a
+man sawing wood.  I went up again.  [Pray observe that a year _after_,
+when I went West, this very incident occurred one morning in Cincinnati,
+Ohio.]  I found in the bar-room three respectable-looking men.  I told
+them my story.  One said to the others, 'He is always the same old
+fellow!'  I stared at him in amazement.  He held out one hand and moved
+the other as if fiddling.  Monotonous creaking sounds followed, and I
+gradually awoke.  The same sounds continued, but they were caused by the
+grasshoppers and tree-toads, who pipe monotonously all night long in
+America."
+
+Nothing ever came of the dream, but it all occurred _exactly_ as I
+describe it.  I have had several quite as strange.  Immediately after I
+had finished my narration, some one, alluding to our party, asked if
+there was any one present who could sing "Hans Breitmann's Barty," and I
+astonished them not a little by proclaiming that I was the author, and by
+singing it.
+
+We went on to Leavenworth, where we had a dinner at the hotel which was
+worthy of Paris.  We had, for example, prairie pullets or half-grown
+grouse, wild turkeys and tender venison.  Thence to Fort Riley, and so on
+in waggons to the last surveyor's camp.  I forget where it was on the
+route that we stopped over-night at a fort, where I found some old
+friends and made new ones.  A young officer--Lieutenant Brown, I
+think--gave me a bed in his cabin.  His ceiling was made of canvas.  For
+weeks he had heard a great rattlesnake moving about on it.  One day he
+had made a hole in the ceiling and put into it a great fierce tom-cat.
+The cat "went for" the snake and there was an awful row.  After a time
+the cat came out looking like a devil with every hair on end, made
+straight for the prairie, and was never heard of again.  Neither was the
+snake.  They had finished one another.  On another occasion, when sitting
+in a similar cabin, my gentle hostess, an officer's wife, whom I had
+known a few years before as a beauty in society, remarked that she had
+two large rattlesnakes in her ceiling, and that if we would be silent we
+might hear them crawling about.  They could not be taken out without
+rebuilding the roof.
+
+Captain Colton had just recovered from a very bad attack of fever and
+ague, and, being young, had the enormous appetite which follows weeks of
+quinine.  I saw him this day eat a full meal of beefsteaks, and then
+immediately after devour another, at Brown's, of buffalo-meat.  The air
+of the Plains causes incredible hunger.  We all played a good knife and
+fork.
+
+About twilight-tide there came in a very gentlemanly Catholic priest.  I
+was told that he was a roving missionary.  He led a charmed life, for he
+went to visit the wildest tribes, and was everywhere respected.  I
+conversed with him in French.  After a while he spread his blanket, lay
+down on the floor and slept till morning, when he read his prayers and
+departed.
+
+The next day the fort square was full of Kaw Indians, all in savage
+array, about to depart for their autumnal buffalo-hunt.  I met one
+venerable heathen with his wife and babe, with whom I made genial
+acquaintance.  I asked the wife the name for a whip; she replied
+_B'meergashee_; a pony was _shoonga_, the nose _hin_, and a woman _shimmy-
+shindy_!  I bought his whip for a dollar.  The squaw generously offered
+to throw in the baby, which I declined, and we all laughed and parted.
+
+I went to the camp, and there the whole party, seeing my curious whip,
+went at the Kaws to buy theirs.  Bank-bills were our only currency then,
+and the Indians knew there were such things as counterfeits.  They
+consulted together, eyed us carefully, and then every man as he received
+his dollar brought it to me for approval.  By chance I knew the Pawnee
+word for "good" (_Washitaw_), and they also knew it.  Then came a strange
+wild scene.  I spoke to the chief, and pointing to my whip said,
+"_B'meergashee_" and indicating a woman and a pony, repeated, "_Shimmy-
+shindy_, _shoonga-hin_," intimating that its use was to chastise women
+and ponies by hitting them on the nose.  Great was the amazement and
+delight of the Kaws, who roared with laughter, and their chief curiously
+inquired, "_You_ Kaw?"  To which I replied, "_O_, _nitchee_, _me_ Kaw,
+_washita_ good Injun me."  He at once embraced me with frantic joy, as
+did the others, to the great amazement of my friends.  A wild circular
+dance was at once improvised to celebrate my reception into the tribe; at
+which our driver Brigham dryly remarked that he didn't wonder they were
+glad to get me, for I was the first Injun ever seen in that tribe with a
+whole shirt on him.  This was the order of proceedings:--I stood in the
+centre and sang wildly the following song, which was a great favourite
+with our party, and all joining in the chorus:--
+
+   I slew the chief of the Muscolgee;
+   I burnt his squaw at the blasted tree!
+   By the hind-legs I tied up the cur,
+   He had no time to fondle on her.
+
+   _Chorus_.
+
+   Hoo! hoo! hoo! the Muscolgee!
+   Wah, wah, wah! the blasted tree!
+
+   A faggot from the blasted tree
+   Fired the lodge of the Muscolgee;
+   His sinews served to string my bow
+   When bent to lay his brethren low.
+
+   _Chorus_.
+
+   Hoo! hoo! hoo! the Muscolgee!
+   Wah, wah, wah! the blasted tree!
+
+   I stripped his skull all naked and bare,
+   And here's his skull with a tuft of hair!
+   His heart is in the eagle's maw,
+   His bloody bones the wolf doth gnaw.
+
+   _Chorus_.
+
+   Hoo! hoo! hoo! the Muscolgee!
+   Wah, wah, wah! the blasted tree!
+
+The Indians yelled and drummed at the Reception Dance.  "Now you good
+Kaw--Good Injun you be--all same me," said the chief.  Hassard and
+Lamborn cracked time with their whips, and, in short, we made a grand
+circular row; truly it was a wondrous striking scene!  From that day I
+was called the Kaw chief, even by Hassard in his letters to the
+_Tribune_, in which he mentioned that in scenes of excitement I rode and
+whooped like a savage.  It _may_ be so--_I_ never noticed it; perhaps he
+exaggerated, but I must admit that I do like Indians, and they like me.
+We took ambulances or strong covered army-waggons and pushed on.  We were
+now well out on the plains.  All day long we passed prairie-dog villages
+and saw antelopes bounding afar.  At night we stopped at the hotel _Alla
+Fresca_, or slept in the open air.  It was perfectly delightful, though
+in November.  Far in the distance many prairie fires stretched like miles
+of blazing serpents over the distance.  I thought of the innumerable camp-
+fires before the battle of Gettysburg, and determined that the two were
+among the most wonderful sights of my life.  We rose very early in the
+morning, by grey light, and after a drink of whisky pushed on.  I may
+here mention that from 1863 for six years I very rarely indeed tasted any
+intoxicant.
+
+So we went on till we reached the last surveyor's camp.  We had not been
+there half an hour before a man came in declaring that he had just saved
+his scalp, having seen a party of Apaches in their war-paint, but luckily
+hid himself before they discovered him.  It was evident that we had now
+got beyond civilisation.  Already, on the way, we had seen ranches which
+had been recently burned by the Indians, who had killed their inmates.
+One man, observing my Kaw whip, casually remarked that as I was fond of
+curiosities he was sorry that he had not kept six arrows which he had
+lately pulled out of a man whom he had found lying dead in the road, and
+who had just been shot by the Indians.
+
+Within this same hour after our arrival there came in a Lieutenant
+Hesselberger, bringing with him a Mrs. Box and her two daughters, one
+about sixteen and the other twelve.  The Indians had on the Texas
+frontier murdered and scalped her husband before her eyes, burned their
+home, and carried the three into captivity, where for six months they
+were daily subjected to such _incredible_ outrages and cruelty that it
+was simply a miracle that they survived.  As it was, they looked exactly
+like corpses.  Lieutenant Hesselberger, with bravery beyond belief,
+having heard of these captives, went alone to the Indians to ransom them.
+Firstly, they fired guns unexpectedly close to his head, and finding that
+he did not start, brought out the captives and subjected them to the
+extremes of gross abuse before his eyes, and repeatedly knocked them down
+with clubs, all of which he affected to disregard.  At last the price was
+agreed on and he took them away.
+
+In after years, when I described all this in London to Stanley, the
+African explorer, he said, "Strange!  I, too, was there that very day,
+and saw those women, and wrote an account of it to the _New York
+Herald_."  I daresay that I met and talked to him at the time among those
+whom we saw.
+
+Not far from our camp there was a large and well-populated beaver-dam,
+which I studied with great interest.  It was more like a well regulated
+town than is many a western mining village.  I do not wonder that Indians
+regard _Quahbeet_, the beaver, as a human being in disguise.  N.B.--The
+beaver always, when he cuts a stick, sharpens it like a lead-pencil--which
+indicates an artistic nature.
+
+It was now resolved that a number of our party should go into the Smoky
+Hill country to attend a very great Indian council, while the rest
+returned home.  So I joined the adventurers.  The meeting was not held,
+for I believe the Indians went to war.  But we rode on.  One morning I
+saw afar a few black specks, and thought they were cattle.  And so they
+were, but the free cattle of the plains, or buffaloes.  That evening, as
+we were out of meat, Colton and others went out to hunt them, and had a
+fine chase, but got nothing.
+
+The next morning Colton kindly gave me his chance--that is, he resigned
+to me a splendid black horse used to the business--and most of us went to
+the field.  After a while, or a four miles' run, we came up with a
+number.  There was a fine cow singled out and shot at, and I succeeded in
+putting a ball in just behind the shoulder.  Among us all she became
+beef, and an expert hunter with us, whose business it was to supply the
+camp with meat, skinned and butchered her and cooked a meal for us on the
+spot.  The beef was deliciously tender and well flavoured.
+
+Now, before this cooking, in the excitement of the chase, I had ridden on
+like an Indian, as Hassard said in his letter, whooping like one all
+alone after the buffalo, and in my joy forgot to shake the spent
+cartridge out of my Spenser seven-shooter carbine.  All at once I found
+myself right in the herd, close by a monstrous bull, whose height at the
+instant when he turned on me to gore me seemed to be about a hundred and
+fifty feet.  But my horse was used to this, and swerved with incredible
+tact and swiftness, while I held on.  I then had a perfectly close shot,
+not six feet off, under the shoulder, and I raised the carbine and pulled
+trigger, when it--_ticked_!  I had forgotten the dead cartridge, and was
+not used to the arm which I carried.  I think that I swore, and if I did
+not I am sorry for it.  Before I could arrange my charge the buffaloes
+were far away.
+
+{Stairs of rock: p329.jpg}
+
+However, we had got our cow, and that was more than we really needed.  At
+any rate, I had shot a buffalo and had a stupendous run.  And here I must
+mention that while racing and whooping, I executed the most insanely
+foolish thing I ever did in all my life, which astonished the hunter and
+all present to the utmost.  I was at the top of a declivity from which
+there descended a flight of natural stairs of rock, but every one very
+broad, like the above sketch.
+
+And being inspired by the devil, and my horse not objecting at all, I
+clattered down over it at full speed _a la_ Putnam.  I have heard that
+Indians do this very boldly, declaring that it is perfectly safe if the
+rider is not afraid, and I am quite sure that mine must have been an
+Indian horse.  I hope that no one will think that I have put forward or
+made too much of these trifling boyish tricks of recklessness.  They are
+of daily occurrence in the Wild West among men who like excitement, and
+had Robert Hunt been among us there would have been fun indeed.
+
+So we turned homewards, for the Indian Conference had proved a failure.
+We had for our driver a man named Brigham, to whom I had taken a great
+liking.  He had lived as a trader among the wildest Indians, spoke
+Spanish fluently, and knew the whole Western frontier like his pocket.
+The day after we had seen Mrs. Box come in, I was praising the braveness
+of Lieutenant Hesselberger in venturing to rescue her.
+
+"It isn't all bravery at all," said Brigham.  "He's brave as a panther,
+but there's more in it than _that_.  There is about one man in a hundred,
+and not more, who can go among the most God-forsaken devils of Injuns and
+never get hurt.  The Injuns take to them at a glance and love 'em.  _I'm_
+such a man, and I've proved it often enough, God knows!  Lieutenant
+Hesselberger is one, and," he added abruptly, "Mr. Leland, _you're_
+another."
+
+"What makes you think so?" I said, greatly surprised.
+
+"'Cause I've watched you.  You've got Injun ways that you don't know of.
+Didn't I notice the other day, when the gentlemen were buying the whips
+from the Kaws, that every Injun took a squint, and then came straight to
+_you_?  Why didn't they go to one of the other gentlemen?  Because
+they've got an instinct like a dog for their friends, and for such as
+_we_."
+
+We were coming to Fort Harker.  I forget how it all came about, but we
+found ourselves afoot, with a mile or two to walk, carrying our guns,
+carpet-bags, and _petites bagages_, while about fifty yards ahead or more
+there was Brigham driving on merrily to the fort, under the impression
+that we had secured other conveyance.
+
+Captain Colton fired his carbine.  It made about as much noise as a
+percussion-cap, and the wind was from Brigham toward us.  Carried away by
+an impulse, I caught Colonel Lamborn's light rifle out of his hand.
+
+"Great God!" he cried, "you don't mean to shoot at him?"
+
+"If you'll insure the mules," I said, "I will the driver."  My
+calculation was to send a bullet so near to Brigham that he could hear it
+whizz, but not to touch him.  It was not so dangerous as the shot I had
+fired over Sam Fox, and the "spirit" was on me!
+
+But I did _not_ know that in the covered waggon sat Hassard talking with
+Brigham, their faces being, as Hassard declared, just about six inches
+apart.  I fired, and the bullet passed just between their noses!
+
+Hassard heard the whizz, and cried, "What's that?"
+
+"_Injuns_, by God!" roared Brigham, forgetting that we had left the
+Indian country two days behind us.  "Lie down in the waggon while I
+drive."  And drive he did, till out of gunshot, and then putting his face
+out, turned around, and gave in full desperate cry the taunting war-whoop
+of the Cheyennes.  It was a beautiful sight that of Brigham's broad red
+face wild with rage--and his great gold earrings and Mexican
+sombrero--turning round the waggon at us in defiance like Marmion!
+
+But when he realised that _we_ had fired at him, just as a pack of d---d
+Apaches might have done, for fun, to stop the waggon, his expression
+became one of utter bewilderment.  As I came up I thought there might be
+a shindy.
+
+"Brigham," I said in Spanish, "_es la mano o el navajo_?"  [Is it to be
+hand, or knife?]
+
+Brigham was proud of his Spanish; it was his elegant accomplishment, and
+this was a good scene.  Grasping my hand cordially, he said, "_La mano_."
+Like a true frontiersman, he felt in a minute the _grandeur_ of the joke.
+There was, if I may so vulgarly express myself, an _Indian-uity_ in it
+which appealed to his deepest feelings.  There was a silence for several
+minutes, which he broke by exclaiming--
+
+"I've driven waggons now this twelve years on the frontier, but I never
+heard before of tryin' to stop the waggon by shootin' at the driver."
+
+There was another long silent pause, when he resumed--
+
+"I wish to God there was a gulch (ravine) between here and the fort!  I'd
+upset this crowd into it d---d quick!"
+
+That evening I took leave of Brigham.  I drank healths with him in
+whisky, and shook hands, and said--
+
+"I did a very foolish and reckless thing to-day, Brigham, when I shot at
+you, and I am sorry for it, and I beg your pardon.  Here is a dagger
+which I have had for twenty-five years.  I carried it all over Europe.  I
+have nothing better to give you; please take it.  And when you stick a
+Greaser (Mexican) with it, as I expect you will do some day, then think
+of me."
+
+The tears rose to his eyes, and he departed.  I never met him again, but
+"well I wot" he ever had kindly remembrance of me.  We were to be guests
+of General Custer at the fort, and I was rather shy of meeting the
+castellan after firing at his driver!  But he greeted me with a hearty
+burst of laughter, and said--
+
+"Mr. Leland, you have the most original way of ringing a bell when you
+want to call a carriage that I ever heard of."
+
+As for Hassard, when he witnessed my parting with Brigham, he said--
+
+"This is all mighty fine! daggers and whisky, and all kinds of beautiful
+things flying around for Brigham, but what am _I_ to have?"
+
+"And what dost thou expect, son Hassard?" I replied.
+
+Holding out both his hands, he replied--
+
+"Much tobacco! much tobacco!"
+
+This was in allusion to a story told us by Lieutenant Brown.  Not long
+before, the Lieutenant, seeing, as he thought, a buffalo, had fired at
+it.  But the buffalo turned out to be an Indian on a pony; and the Indian
+riding fiercely at the Lieutenant, cried aloud for indemnity or the
+"blood-fine" in the words, "Much tobacco!"  And so I stood cigars.
+
+Life is worth living for--or it would be--if it abounded more in such
+types as Mrs. General Custer and her husband.  There was a bright and
+joyous chivalry in that man, and a noble refinement mingled with constant
+gaiety in the wife, such as I fear is passing from the earth.  Her books
+have shown that she was a woman of true culture, and that she came by it
+easily, as he did, and that out of a little they could make more than
+most do from a life of mere study.  I fear that there will come a time
+when such books as hers will be the only evidences that there were ever
+such people--so fearless, so familiar with every form of danger,
+privation, and trial, and yet joyous and even reckless of it all.  Good
+Southern blood and Western experiences had made them free of petty
+troubles.  The Indians got his scalp at last, and with him went one of
+the noblest men whom America ever brought forth. {333}
+
+That evening they sent for a Bavarian-Tyroler soldier, who played
+beautifully on the cithern.  As I listened to the _Jodel-lieder_ airs I
+seemed to be again in his native land.  It was a pleasure to me to hear
+from him the familiar dialect.
+
+At St. Louis we were very kindly entertained in several distinguished
+houses.  At one they gave us some excellent Rhine wine.
+
+"What do you think of this?" said Hassard, who was a good Latinist.
+
+I replied, "Vinum Rhenense decus et gloria mense."
+
+In the next we had Moselle wine.  "And what of this?"
+
+I answered, "Vinuin Moslanum fuit omne tempore sanum."
+
+And here I would say that every memory which I have of Missouri (and
+there are more by far than this book indicates), as of Missourians, is
+extremely pleasant.  The State is very beautiful, and I have found among
+my friends there born such culture and kindness and genial hospitality as
+I have never seen surpassed.  To the names of Mary A. Owen, {334}  Blow,
+Mark Twain, and the Choteaus I could add many more.
+
+So we jogged on homeward.  I resumed my work.  I had written out all the
+details of our trip in letters to the _Press_.  They had excited
+attention.  The Pennsylvania Railroad Company suggested that they should
+be published in a pamphlet.  I did so, and called it "Three Thousand
+Miles in a Railroad Car."  They offered to pay me a very good sum for my
+trouble in so doing.  I declined it, because I felt that I had been amply
+paid by the pleasure which I had derived from the journey.  But I
+received grateful recognition subsequently in another form.  The pamphlet
+was most singular of its kind.  It was a full report of all the
+statistics and vast advantages of the Kansas Pacific Road.  It contained
+very valuable facts and figures; and it was all served up with jokes,
+songs, buffalo-hunting, Indians, and Brigham.  It was a marvellous
+farrago, and it "took."  It was sent to every member of Congress and
+"every other man."
+
+Before it appeared, a friend of mine named Ringwalt, who was both a
+literary man and owner of a printing-office, offered me $200 if I would
+secure him the printing of it.  I said that I would not take the money,
+but that I would get him the printing, which I easily did; but being a
+very honourable man, he was led to discharge the obligation.  One day he
+said to me, "Why don't you publish your 'Breitmann Ballads?'  Everybody
+is quoting them now."  I replied, "There is not a publisher in America
+who would accept them."  And I was quite right, for there was not.  He
+answered, "I will print them for you."  I accepted the offer, but when
+they were set up an idea occurred to me by which I could save my friend
+his expenses.  I went to a publisher named T. B. Peterson, who said
+effectively this--"The book will not sell more than a thousand copies.
+There will be about a thousand people who will buy it, even for fifty
+cents, so I shall charge that, though it would be, as books go, only as a
+twenty-five cent work."  He took it and paid my friend for the
+composition.  I was not to receive any money or share in the profits till
+all the expenses had been paid.
+
+Mr. Peterson immediately sold 2,000--4,000--I know not how many
+thousands--at fifty cents a copy.  It was republished in Canada and
+Australia, to my loss.  An American publisher who owned a magazine asked
+me, through his editor, to write for it a long Breitmann poem.  I did so,
+making, however, an explicit verbal arrangement _that it should not be
+republished as a book_.  It was, however, immediately republished as
+such, with a title to the effect that it was the "Breitmann Ballads."  I
+appealed to the editor, and it was withdrawn, but I know not how many
+were issued, to my loss.
+
+I had transferred the whole right of publication in England to my friend
+Nicolas Trubner, whom I had met when he had visited America, and I wrote
+specially for his edition certain poems.  John "Camden" Hotten wrote to
+me modestly asking me to give _him_ the sole right to republish the work.
+He said, "I hardly know what to say about the price.  Suppose we say _ten
+pounds_!"  I replied, "Sir, I have given the whole right of publication
+to Mr. Trubner, and I would not take it from him for ten thousand
+pounds."  Hotten at once published an edition which was a curiosity of
+ignorance and folly.  There was a blunder on an average to every page.  He
+had annotated it!  He explained that _Knasterbart_ meant "a nasty
+fellow," and that the French _garce_ was _gare_, "a railway station!"
+Trubner had sold 5,000 copies before this precious affair appeared.  After
+Hotten's death the British public were informed in an obituary that he
+had "_first_ introduced me" to their knowledge!
+
+Hans Breitmann became a type.  I never heard of but one German who ever
+reviled the book, and that was a Democratic editor in Philadelphia.  But
+the Germans themselves recognised that the pen which poked fun at them
+was no poisoned stiletto.  Whenever there was a grand German procession,
+Hans was in it--the indomitable old _Degen_ hung with _loot_--and he
+appeared in every fancy ball.  Nor were the Confederates offended.  One
+of the most genial, searching, and erudite reviews of the work, which
+appeared in a Southern magazine (De Bow's), declared that I had truly
+written the Hudibras of the Civil War.  What struck this writer most was
+the fact that I had opened a _new_ field of humour.  And here he was
+quite right.  With the exception of Dan Rice's circus song of "Der goot
+oldt Sherman shentleman," and a rather flat parody of "Jessie, the Flower
+of Dumblane," I had never seen or heard of any specimen of Anglo-German
+poetry.  To be _merely original_ in language is not to excel in
+everything--a fact very generally ignored--else my Pidgin-English ballads
+would take precedence of Tennyson's poems!  On the other hand, very great
+poets have often not made a new _form_.  The Yankee type, both as regards
+spirit and language, had become completely common and familiar in prose
+and poetry, before Lowell revived it in the clever _Biglow Papers_.  Bret
+Harte's "Heathen Chinee," and several other poems, are, however, _both_
+original and admirable.  Whatever the merits or demerits of mine were--and
+it was years ere I ever gave them a thought--the public, which is always
+eager for something new, took to them at once.
+
+I say that for years I never gave them a thought.  All of the principal
+poems except the "Barty" and "Breitmann as a Politician," were merely
+written to fill up letters to C. A. Bristed, of New York, and I kept no
+copies of them--in fact, utterly _forgot_ them.  _Weingeist_ was first
+written in a letter to a sister of Captain Colton, with the remark that
+it was easier to write such a ballad than any prose.  But Bristed
+published them _a mon insu_ in a sporting paper.  Years after I learned
+that I published one called "Breitmann's Sermon" in _Leslie's Magazine_.
+This I have never recovered.  If I write so much about these poems now, I
+certainly was not vain of them when written.  The public found them out
+long before I did, and it is not very often that it gets ahead of a poet
+in appreciating his own works.
+
+However, I was "awful busy" in those days.  I had hardly begun on the
+_Press_ ere I found that it had a weekly paper, made up from the daily
+type transferred, which only just paid its expenses.  Secondly, I
+discovered that there was not a soul on the staff except myself who had
+had any experience of weekly full editing.  I at once made out a
+schedule, showing that by collecting and grouping agricultural and
+industrial items, putting in two or three columns of original matter, and
+bringing in a story to go through the daily first, the weekly could be
+vastly improved at very little expense.
+
+Colonel Forney admired the scheme, but asked "who was to carry it out."  I
+replied that I would.  He remonstrated, very kindly, urging that I had
+all I could do as it was.  I answered, "Colonel Forney, this is not a
+matter of time, but _method_.  There is always time for the man who knows
+how to lay it out."  So I got up a very nice paper.  But for a very long
+time I could not get an agent to solicit advertisements who knew the
+business.  The weekly paid its expenses and nothing more.  But one day
+there came to me a young man named M. T. Wolf.  He was of Pennsylvania
+German stock.  He had lost a small fortune in the patent medicine
+business and wanted employment badly.  I suggested that, until something
+else could be found, he should try his hand at collecting "advers."
+
+Now, be it observed, as Mozart was born to music, and some men have a
+powerful instinct to study medicine, and others are so unnatural as to
+take to mathematics, Wolf had a grand undeveloped genius beyond all
+belief for collecting advertisements.  He had tried many pursuits and
+failed, but the first week he went into this business he brought in $200
+(40 pounds), which gave him forty dollars, and he never afterwards fell
+below it, but often rose above.  "Advers." for him meant not adversity.
+It was very characteristic of Colonel Forney, who was too much absorbed
+in politics to attend much to business, that long after the _Weekly
+Press_ was yielding him $10,000 a year _clear profit_, he said to me one
+day, "Mr. Leland, you must not be discouraged as to the weekly; the
+clerks tell me in the office that it _meets its expenses_!"
+
+There was abundance of life and incident on the newspaper in those days,
+especially during election times in the autumn.  I have known fights,
+night after night, to be going on in the street below, at the corner of
+Seventh and Chestnut, between Republicans and Democrats, with revolver
+shots and flashes at the rate of fifty to a second, when I was literally
+so occupied with pressing telegrams that I could not look out to see the
+fun.  One night, however, when there were death-shots falling thick and
+fast, I saw a young man make a most _incredible_ leap.  He had received a
+bullet under the shoulder, and when a man or a deer is hit there he
+always leaps.  I heard afterwards that he recovered, though this is a
+vital place.
+
+It happened once that for a week the Republicans were kept from resisting
+or retaliating by their leaders, until the Democrats began to disgrace
+themselves by excesses.  Then all at once the Republicans boiled over,
+thrashed their foes, and attacking the Copperhead clubs, threw their
+furniture out of the window, and--inadvertently perhaps--also a few
+Copperheads.  Just before they let their angry passions rise in this
+fashion there came one night a delegation to serenade Colonel Forney at
+the office.  The Colonel was grand on such occasions.  He was a fine,
+tall, portly man, with a lion-like mien and a powerful voice.  He began--
+
+"My friends, fellow-citizens and Republicans, you have this week acted
+nobly."
+
+Cries from the crowd, "_We hev_! _we hev_!"
+
+"You, when smitten on the right cheek, turned unto the oppressor the
+left."
+
+"We did! we _did_!"
+
+"You are beyond all question models--I may say with truth, paragons of
+patience, long-suffering, and humility.  You are--Christian gentlemen!"
+"We air! we _air_!"
+
+While this was passing, a great gloomy thundercloud of the Democratic
+enemy gathered on the opposite sidewalk, and as the Colonel lifted his
+voice again, there came a cry--
+
+"Shut up, you d---d old Republican dead-duck!"
+
+That word was a spell to raise the devil withal.  Bang! bang! bang! went
+the revolvers of the Union men in a volley, and the Democrats fled for
+their lives down Seventh Street, pursued by the meek, lowly, and long-
+suffering Christians--like rabbits before wolves.
+
+The enemy at last resolved to attack the _Press_ and burn the building.
+Then we had one hundred and fifty policemen sent to garrison and guard.
+There was a surging, howling mob outside, and much guerilla-shooting, but
+all I can remember is my vexation at having so much to disturb me in
+making up the paper.
+
+I never went armed in my life when I could help it, for I hate
+_impedimenta_ in my pockets.  All of us in the office hung up our coats
+in a dark place outside.  Whenever I sent an assistant to get some papers
+from mine, he said that he always knew my coat because there was no
+pistol in it.
+
+Scenes such as these, and quite as amusing, were of constant occurrence
+in those days in Philadelphia.  "All night long in that sweet little
+village was heard the soft note of the pistol and the dying scream of the
+victim."  Now, be it noted, that a stuffed dead duck had become the
+_gonfalon_ or banner of the Republicans, and where it swung there the
+battle was fiercest.  There was a young fellow from South Carolina, who
+had become a zealous Union man, and who made up for a sinful lack of
+sense by a stupendous stock of courage.  One morning there came into the
+office an object--and such an object!  His face was all swathed and
+hidden in bloody bandages; he was tattered, and limped, and had his arm
+in a sling.
+
+"In the name of Heaven, who and what are you?" I exclaimed.  "And who has
+been passing you through a bark-mill that you look so ground-up?"
+
+In a sepulchral voice he replied, "I'm ---, and last night _I carried the
+dead duck_!"
+
+Till I came on the _Press_ there was, it may be said, almost no community
+between the Germans of North Philadelphia and the Americans in our line.
+But I had become intimate with Von Tronk, a Hanoverian of good family, a
+lawyer, and editor, I believe, of the _Freie Presse_.  I even went once
+or twice to speak at German meetings.  In fact, I was getting to be
+considered "almost as all de same so goot ash Deutsch," and very
+"bopular."  One day Von Tronk came with a request.  There was to be an
+immense German Republican _Massenversammlung_ or mass-meeting in a great
+beer-garden.  "If Colonel Forney could only be induced to address them!"
+I undertook to do it.  It was an entirely new field to him, but one
+wondrous rich in votes.  Now Colonel Forney, though from Lancaster County
+and of German-Swiss extraction, knew not a word of the language, and I
+undertook to coach him.
+
+"You will only need one phrase of three words," I said, "to pull you
+through; but you must pronounce them perfectly and easily.  They are
+_Freiheit und Gleichheit_, 'freedom and equality.'  Now, if you _please_,
+_fry-height_."
+
+The Colonel went at his lesson, and being naturally clever, with a fine,
+deep voice, in a quarter of an hour could roar out _Freiheit und
+Gleichheit_ with an intonation which would have raised a revolution in
+Berlin.  We came to the garden, and there was an immense sensation.  The
+Colonel had winning manners, with a manly mien, and he was duly
+introduced.  When he rose to speak there was dead silence.  He began--
+
+"Friends and German Fellow-citizens:--Yet why should I distinguish the
+words, since to me every German is a friend.  I am myself, as you all
+know, of unmingled German extraction, and I am very, very proud of it.
+But there is one German sentiment which from a child has been ever in my
+heart, and from infancy ever on my lips, and that sentiment, my friends,
+is _Freiheit und Gleichheit_!"
+
+If ever audience was astonished in this world it was that of the
+_Massenversammlung_ when this burst on their ears.  They hurrahed and
+roared and banged the tables in such a mad storm of delight as even
+Colonel Forney had never seen surpassed.  Rising to the occasion, he
+thundered on, and as he reached the end of every sentence he repeated,
+with great skill and aptness, _Freiheit und Gleichheit_.
+
+"You have made two thousand votes by that speech, Colonel," I said, as we
+returned.  "Von Tronk will manage it at this crisis."  After that, when
+the Colonel jested, he would called me "the Dutch vote-maker."  This was
+during the Grant campaign.
+
+Droll incidents were of constant occurrence in this life.  Out of a
+myriad I will note a few.  One day there came into our office an Indian
+agent from the West, who had brought with him a Winnebago who claimed to
+be the rightful chief of his tribe.  They were going to Washington to
+enforce the claim.  While the agent conversed with some one the Indian
+was turned over to me.  He was a magnificent specimen, six feet high,
+clad in a long trailing scarlet blanket, with a scarlet straight feather
+in his hair which continued him up _ad infinitum_, and he was straight as
+a lightning rod.  He was handsome, and very dignified and grave; but I
+understood _that_.  I can come it indifferent well myself when I am "out
+of my plate," as the French, say, in strange society.  He spoke no
+English, but, as the agent said, knew six Indian languages.  He was
+evidently a chief by blood, "all the way down to his moccasins."
+
+What with a few words of Kaw (I had learned about a hundred words of it
+with great labour) and a few other phrases of other tongues, I succeeded
+in interesting him.  But I could not make him smile, and I swore unto
+myself that I would.
+
+Being thirsty, the Indian, seeing a cooler of ice-water, with the daring
+peculiar to a great brave, went and took a glass and turned on the
+_spicket_.  He filled his glass--it was brim-full--but he did not know
+how to _turn it off_.  Then I had him.  As it ran over he turned to me an
+appealing helpless glance.  I said "_Neosho_."  This in Pottawattamie
+means an inundation or overflowing of the banks, and is generally applied
+to the inundation of the Mississippi.  There is a town on the latter so
+called.  This was too much for the Indian, and he laughed aloud.
+
+"Great God! what have you been saying to that Indian?" cried the agent,
+amazed.  "It is the first time he has laughed since he left home."
+
+"Only a little pun in Pottawattamie.  But I really know very little of
+the language."
+
+"I have no knowledge of the Indian languages," remarked our city editor,
+MacGinnis, a genial young Irishman, "least of all, thank God! of
+Pottawattamie.  But I have always understood that when a man gets so far
+in a tongue as to make _puns_ in it, it is time for him to stop."
+
+Years after this I was one evening in London at an opening of an
+exhibition of pictures.  There were present Indian Hindoo princes in
+gorgeous array, English nobility, literary men, and fine ladies.  Among
+them was an unmistakable Chippeway in a white Canadian blanket-coat,
+every inch an Indian.  I began with the usual greeting, "_Ho nitchi_!"
+(Ho, brother!), to which he gravely replied.  I tried two or three
+phrases on him with the same effect.  Then I played a sure card.  Sinking
+my voice with an inviting wink, I uttered "_Shingawauba_," or whisky.
+"Dot fetched him."  He too laughed.  _Gleich mit gleich_, _gesellt sich
+gern_.
+
+While living in New York, and during my connection with the _Press_, I
+often met and sometimes conversed with Horace Greeley.  Once I went with
+him from Philadelphia to New York, and he was in the car the observed of
+all observers to an extraordinary degree.  He sat down, took out an
+immense roll of proof, and said, "_Lead pencil_!"  One was immediately
+handed to him by some stranger, who was by that one act ennobled, or,
+what amounts to the same thing in America, grotesquely _charactered_ for
+life.  He was the man who gave Horace Greeley a lead pencil!  I, as his
+companion, was also regarded as above ordinary humanity.  When the proof
+was finished "Horace" said to me--
+
+"How is John Forney getting on?"
+
+"Like Satan, walking to and fro upon the face of the earth, going from
+the _Chronicle_ in Washington one day to the _Press_ in Philadelphia on
+the next, and filling them both cram full of leaders and letters."
+
+"Two papers, both daily!  I tell Forney that I find it is all I can do to
+attend to one.  Tell him not to get too rich--bad for the constitution
+and worse for the country.  Any man who has more than a million is a
+public nuisance."
+
+Finally, we walked together from the ferry to the corner of Park Place
+and Broadway, and the philosopher, after minutely explaining to me which
+omnibus I was to take, bade me adieu.  I do not think we ever met again.
+
+In the summer Colonel Forney went to Europe with John the junior.  When
+he left he said, "I do not expect you to raise the circulation of the
+_Press_, but I hope that you will be able to keep it from falling in the
+dead season."  I went to work, and what with enlarging the telegraphic
+news, and correspondence, and full reports of conventions, I materially
+increased the sale.  It cost a great deal of money, to be sure, but the
+Colonel did not mind that.  At this time there came into our office as
+associate with me Captain W. W. Nevin.  He had been all through the war.
+I took a great liking to him, and we always remained intimate friends.
+All in our office except myself were from Lancaster County, the
+birthplace, I believe, of Fitch and Fulton.  It is a Pennsylvania German
+county, and as I notoriously spoke German openly without shame ours was
+called a Dutch office.  Once when Colonel Forney wrote a letter from
+Holland describing the windmills, the _Sunday Transcript_ unkindly
+remarked that "he had better come home and look after his own Dutch
+windmill at the corner of Seventh and Chestnut Streets."
+
+I had at this time a great deal to do with the operas and theatres, and
+often wrote the reviews.  After a while, as Captain Nevin relieved me of
+a great deal of work, and I had an able assistant named Norcross, I
+devoted myself chiefly to dramatic criticism and the weekly, and such
+work as suited me best.  As for the dignity of managership, Captain Nevin
+and I tossed it from one to the other like a hot potato in jest, but
+between us we ran the paper very well.  There was an opera impresario
+named Maurice Strakosch, of whom I had heard that he was hard to deal
+with and irritable.  I forget now who the prima donna in his charge was,
+but there had appeared in our paper a criticism which might be
+interpreted in some detail unfavourably by a captious critic.  One
+afternoon there came into the office, where I was alone, a gentlemanly-
+seeming man, who began to manifest anger in regard to the criticism in
+question.  I replied, "I do not know, sir, what your position in the
+opera troupe may be, but if it be anything which requires a knowledge of
+English, I am afraid that you are misplaced.  There was no intention to
+offend in the remarks, and so far as the lady is concerned I shall only
+be too glad to say the very best I can of her.  _Comprenez_, _monsieur_,
+_c'est une bagatelle_."  He laughed, and we spoke French, then Italian,
+then German, and of Patti and Sontag and Lind.  Then I asked him what he
+really was, and he replied, "I do not believe that you even know the name
+of my native tongue.  It is Czech."  I stared at him amazed, and said--
+
+"Veliky Bog!  Rozprava pochesky?  Nekrasneya rejece est."
+
+The Bohemian gentleman drew a handsomely bound book from his pocket.
+"Sir," he said, "this is my album.  It is full of signatures of great
+artists, even of kings and queens and poets.  There is not a name in it
+which is not that of a distinguished person, and I do not know what your
+name is, but I beg that you will write it in my book."
+
+Nearly the same scene was repeated soon after, with the same words, when
+the great actress Fanny Janauschek came to Philadelphia.  At that time
+she played only in German.  Her manager, Grau, introduced me to her, and
+she complimented me on my German, and praised the language as the finest
+in the world.
+
+"Yes," I replied, "it _is_ certainly very fine.  But I know a finer,
+which goes more nearly to the heart, and with which I can move you more
+deeply."
+
+"And what is that?" cried the great artist astonished.
+
+"It is," I replied, in her native tongue, "_Bohemian_.  That is the
+language for me."
+
+Madame Janauschek was so affected that she burst out crying, though she
+was a woman of tremendous nerve.  We became great friends, and often met
+again in after years in England.
+
+I have seen Ristori play for thirty nights in succession, {346} and
+Rachel and Sarah Bernhardt; but as regards true genius, Janauschek in her
+earlier days was incomparably their superior; for these all played from
+nerves and instinct, but Janauschek from her brain and intellect.  I
+often wondered that she did not write plays.  It is said of Rachel that
+there was once a five-act play in which she died at the end of the fourth
+act.  After it had had a long run she casually asked some one _how it
+ended_.  She had never read the fifth act.  Such a story could never have
+been told of Janauschek.
+
+In the summer there were one or two railroad excursions to visit new
+branch roads in Pennsylvania.  While on one of these I visited the
+celebrated Mauch Chunk coal mines, and rode on the switchback railway,
+where I had a fearfully narrow escape from death.  This switchback is a
+_montagne Russe_ coming up and down a hill, and six miles in length.  Yet,
+though the rate of speed is appalling, the engineer can stop the car in a
+few seconds' time with the powerful brake.  We were going down headlong,
+when all at once a cow stepped out of the bushes on the road before us,
+and if we had struck her we must have gone headlong over the cliff and
+been killed.  But by a miracle the engineer stopped the car just as we
+got to the cow.  We were saved by a second.  Something very like it had
+occurred to my wife and to me in 1859.  We were going to Reading by rail,
+when the train ran off the track and went straight for an embankment
+where there was a fall of 150 feet.  It was stopped just as the
+locomotive protruded or looked over the precipice.  Had there been the
+_least trifle_ more of steam on at that instant we must all have
+perished.
+
+In November of this my second year on the _Press_ my father died.  One
+thing occurred on this sad bereavement which alleviated it a little.  I
+had always felt all my life that he had never been satisfied with my want
+of a fixed career or position.  He did not, I think, _very_ much like
+John Forney, the audacious, reckless politician, but he still respected
+his power and success, and it astonished him a little, and many others
+quite as much, to find that I was in many respects Forney's right-hand
+man, and manager of a bold political paper which had a great influence.  A
+day or two before he died my father expressed himself kindly to the
+effect that I had at last done well, and that he was satisfied with me.
+At last, after so many years, he felt that I had _etat_--a calling, a
+definite position.  In fact, in those days it was often said that Forney
+could make himself President, as he indeed might have done but for
+certain errors, no greater than have been committed by more successful
+men, and a stroke of ill-luck such as few can resist.
+
+The winter passed quietly.  I was extremely fond of my life and work.
+Summer came, and with it a great desire for a change and wild life and
+the West, for I had worked very hard.  A very great railway excursion,
+which was destined to have a great effect, was being organised, and both
+my wife and I were invited to join it.  Mr. John Edgar Thompson, the
+president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, Mr. Hinckley, of the Baltimore
+road, President Felton, Professor Leidy, Robert Lamborn, and a number of
+other notables, were to go to Duluth, on Lake Superior, and decide on the
+terminus of the railroad as a site for a city.  Mrs. John E. Thompson had
+her own private car, which was seventy feet in length, and fitted up with
+every convenience and luxury.  To this was added the same directors' car
+in which I had travelled to Minnesota.  There were to be in all ten or
+twelve gentlemen and ten ladies.  There was such efficient service that
+one young man, a clerk, was detailed especially to look after our
+luggage.  As we stopped every night at some hotel, he would inquire what
+we required to be taken to our rooms, and saw that it was brought back in
+the morning.  I went off in such a hurry that I forgot my Indian blanket,
+nor had I any revolver or gun, all of which, especially the blanket, I
+sadly missed ere I returned.  I got, before I left, a full white flannel
+or fine white cloth suit, which was then a startling novelty, and wore it
+to the Falls of the Mississippi.  Little did I foresee that ere it gave
+out I should also have it on at the Cataracts of the Nile!
+
+So we started and after a few hours' travel, stopped at Altona.  There I
+was very much amused by an old darkey at the railway-station hotel, who
+had, as he declared, "specially the kyar of de ladies an' quality."  He
+had been a slave till the war broke out, and had been wondrously favoured
+by visions and revelations which guided him to freedom.  "De Lawd he
+'pear to me in a dream, an' I hyar a vi'ce which cry, 'Simon, arise an'
+git out of dis, an' put fo' de Norf as fass as you kin travel, fo' de day
+of de 'pressor is at an end, an' you is to be free.'  So I rosed an'
+fled, hardly a-waitin' to stuff my bag wid some corn-dodgers an' bacon,
+an' foller de Norf Star till I git confused an' went to sleep agin, wen,
+lo, an angel expostulated hisself befo' my eyes in a wision, an' say,
+'Simon, beholdes' dou dat paff by de riber?  Dat's de one fo' you to
+foller, ole son!'  So I follers it till I git on de right trail.  Den I
+met anoder nigger a-'scapin' from the bon's of captivity, an' carryin' a
+cold ham, an' I jined in wid him--you bet--an' so we come to de Lawd's
+country."
+
+And so gaily on to Chicago.  We went directly to the first hotel, and as
+soon as I had toiletted and gone below, I saw on the opposite building a
+sign with the words _Chicago Tribune_.  This was an exchange of ours, so
+I crossed over, and meeting the editor by chance in the doorway, was
+welcomed and introduced to Governor Desbrosses, who stood by.  Then I
+went to a telegraph office and sent a despatch to the _Press_.  The man
+wanted me to pay.  I told him to C. O. D., "collect on delivery."  He
+declined.  I said, "Your principal office is in Philadelphia, is it
+not?--Third and Chestnut Streets.  Just send a telegram and ask the name
+of your landlord.  It's Leland, and _I'm the man_.  If you make me pay,
+I'll raise your rent."  He laughed heartily and let me off, but not
+without a parting shot: "You see, Mr. Leland, there are so many
+scallawags {349} from the East come here, that we are obliged to be a
+little particular."
+
+I returned to the hotel, and was immediately introduced to some one
+having authority.  I narrated my late experience.  He looked at me and
+said, "How long have you been in Chicago?"  I replied, "About thirty
+minutes."  He answered gravely, "I think you'd better _stay_ here.  You'll
+suit the place."  I was beginning to feel the moral influence of the
+genial air of the West.  Chicago is emphatically what is termed "a
+place," and a certain amount of calm confidence in one's self is not in
+that city to any one's discredit.  Once there was an old lady of a "hard"
+type in the witness-box in an American city.  She glared round at the
+judge, the jury, and the spectators, and then burst out with, "You
+needn't all be staring at me in that way.  I don't keer a --- for you
+all.  I've lived eleven years in Chicago, and ain't affeard of the
+devil."  Chicago is said in Indian to mean the place of skunks, but
+calling a rose a skunk-cabbage don't make it one.
+
+Walking on the edge of the lake near the city, the waters cast up a good-
+sized living specimen of that extraordinary fish-lizard, the great
+_menobranchus_, popularly known as the hell-bender from its extreme
+ugliness.  Owing to the immense size of its spermatozoa, it has rendered
+great aid to embryology, a science which, when understood _au fond_, will
+bring about great changes in the human race.  We were taken out in a
+steamboat to the end of the great aqueduct, which was, when built,
+pronounced, I think by the London _Times_, to be the greatest engineering
+work of modern times.
+
+In due time we came to St. Paul, Minnesota.  We went to a very fair hotel
+and had a very good dinner.  In the West it is very common among the
+commonalty to drink coffee and milk through dinner, and indeed with all
+meals, instead of wine or ale, but the custom is considered as vulgar by
+swells.  Having finished dessert, I asked the Irish waiter to bring me a
+small cup of black coffee and brandy.  Drawing himself up stiffly, Pat
+replied, "We don't serve caafy at dinner in _this_ hotel."  There was a
+grand roar of laughter which the waiter evidently thought was at _my_
+expense, as he retreated smiling.
+
+We were kindly received in St. Paul by everybody.  There is this immense
+advantage of English or American hospitality over that of all other
+countries, that it introduces us to the _home_, and makes us forget that
+we are strangers.  When we were at the end of the fearfully wearisome
+great moral circus known as the Oriental Congress, held all over
+Scandinavia in 1890, there came to me one evening in the station a great
+Norseman with his friends.  With much would-be, ox-like dignity he began,
+"You ha-ave now experienced de glorious haspitality off our country.  You
+will go oom and say--"
+
+"Stop a minute there!" I exclaimed, for I was bored to death with a show
+which had been engineered to tatters, and to half defeating all the work
+of the Congress, in order to glorify the King and Count Landberg.  "I
+have been here in your country six weeks, and I had letters of
+introduction, and have made no end of acquaintances.  I have been shown
+thousands of fireworks, which blind me, and offered dozens of champagne,
+which I never touch, and public dinners, which I did not attend.  But
+during the whole time I have never once seen the inside of a Swedish or
+Norwegian house."  Which was perfectly true, nor have I ever seen one to
+this day.  There is a kind of "hospitality" which consists of giving
+yourself a grand treat at a tavern or _cafe_, and inviting your strangers
+to it to help you to be glorified.  But to very domestic people and utter
+Philistines, _domestic_ life lacks the charm of a brass band, and the
+mirrors and gilding of a restaurant or hotel; therefore, what they
+themselves enjoy most, they, with best intent, but most unwisely, inflict
+on more civilised folk.  But in America and England, where home-life is
+_worth_ living and abounding in every attraction, and public saloons are
+at a discount, the case is reversed.  And in these Western towns, of
+which many were, so to speak, almost within hearing of the whoop of the
+savage or the howl of the wolf (as Leavenworth really was), we
+experienced a refinement of true hospitality in homes--kindness and tact
+such as I have never known to be equalled save in Great Britain.  One
+evening I was at a house in St. Paul, where I was struck by the beauty,
+refined manners, and agreeableness of our hostess, who was a real
+Chippeway or Sioux Indian, and wife of a retired Indian trader.  She had
+been well educated at a Canadian French seminary.
+
+We were taken over to see the rival city of Minneapolis, of which word my
+brother Henry said it was a vile grinding up together of Greek and
+Indian.  _Minne_ means water; _Minne-sota_, turbid water, and
+_Minne-haha_ does not signify "laughing," but _falling_ water.  This we
+also visited, and I found it so charming, that I was delighted to think
+that for once an Indian name had been kept, and that the young ladies of
+the boarding-schools of St. Paul or Minneapolis had not christened or
+devilled it "Diana's Bath."
+
+We were received kindly by the Council of the city of Minneapolis.  Half
+of them had come from the East afflicted with consumption, and all had
+recovered.  But it is necessary to remain there to live.  My wife's
+cousin, Mr. Richard Price, who then owned the great saw-mill next the
+Fall of St. Anthony, came with this affliction from Philadelphia, and got
+over it.  After six years' absence he returned to Philadelphia, and died
+in six weeks of consumption.  Strangely enough, consumption is the chief
+cause of death among the Indians, but this is due to their careless
+habits, wearing wet moccasins and the like.
+
+Now a great question arose.  It was necessary for the magnates of our
+party to go to Duluth, and to do this they must make a seven days'
+journey through the wilderness, either on a very rough military road cut
+through the woods during the war, or sometimes on no road at all.  Houses
+or post-stations, often of only one or two rooms, were sometimes a day's
+journey apart.  The question was whether delicate ladies, utterly
+unaccustomed to anything like hard travel could take this trip, during
+which they must endure clouds of mosquitos, put up with camp-cooking, or
+often none, and otherwise go through privations such as only an Indian or
+a frontiersman would care to experience?  The entire town of St. Paul,
+and all the men of our party, vigorously opposed taking the ladies, while
+I, joining the latter, insisted on it that they could go; for, as I said
+to all assembled, where the devil is afraid to go he sends a woman; and I
+had always observed that in travelling, long after men are tired out
+women are generally all right.  They are never more played out _than they
+want to be_.
+
+   "Femme plaint, femme deult,
+   Femme est malade quand elle veult,
+   Et par Sainte Marie!
+   Quand elle veult elle est guerye."
+
+And of course _we_ carried the day.  Twelve men, even though backed up by
+a city council, have no chance against any ten women.  To be sure women,
+like all other savages, require a male leader--I mean to say, just as
+Goorkha troops, though brave as lions, must have an English captain--so
+they conquered under my guidance!
+
+Having had experience in fitting out for the wilderness, I was requested
+to see to the stores--so many hams to so many people for so many days, so
+much coffee, and so forth.  I astonished all by insisting that there
+should be one _tin cup_ to every traveller.  "Every glass you have will
+soon be broken," I said.  And so it was, sooner than I expected.  As tin
+cups could not be found in St. Paul, we bought three or four dozen small
+tin basins of about six inches diameter at the rim, and when champagne
+was served out it was, _faute de mieux_, drunk from these eccentric
+goblets.
+
+In the first waggon were Mr. and Mrs. Thompson and Mrs. Leland.  Their
+driver was a very eccentric Canadian Frenchman named Louis.  He was to
+the last degree polite to the ladies, but subject to attacks of Indian
+rage at mere trifles, when he would go aside, swear, and destroy
+something like a lunatic in a fury, and then return quite happy and
+serene.  I was in the second waggon with three ladies, a man being wanted
+in every vehicle.  Our driver was named George, and he was altogether
+like Brigham, minus the Mexican-Spanish element.  George had, however,
+also lived a great deal among Indians, and been at the great battle of
+the Chippeways and Sioux, and was full of interesting and naive
+discourse.
+
+Of course, we of the two leading waggons all talked to Louis in French,
+who gave himself great airs on it.  One morning George asked me in
+confidence, "Mr. Leland, you're not all French, are you?"  "Certainly
+not," I replied; "we're from Philadelphia."  "Well," replied George, "so
+I told Louis, but he says you _are_ French, like him, and shut me up by
+askin' me if I hadn't heard you talkin' it.  Now what I want to know is,
+if you're _not_ French, how came the _whole_ of you to know it?"  I
+explained to George, to his astonishment, that in the East it was usual
+for all well-educated persons, especially ladies, to learn it.  I soon
+became as intimate with George as I had been with Brigham, and began to
+learn Chippeway of him, and greet the Indians whom we met.  One day
+George said--
+
+"Of course you have no Indian blood in you, Mr. Leland; but weren't you a
+great deal among 'em when you were young?"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because you've got queer little old Injun ways.  Whenever you stop by
+the roadside to talk to anybody and sit down, you always rake the small
+bits of wood together and pull out a match and make a _smudge_" (a very
+smoky fire made by casting dust on it), "just like an Indian in an Injun
+kind of way."  (In after years I found this same habit of making fires of
+small bits of wood peculiar to old English gypsies.)
+
+The smudge is the great summer institution of Minnesota.  It is the
+safeguard against mosquitos.  They are all over the State in such numbers
+that they constitute a plague.  We all wore all the time over our faces
+and necks a kind of guard or veil, shaped exactly like an Egyptian
+_fanous_ or folding lantern.  It is cylindrical, made of _tulle_ or
+coarse lace, with rings.  At every house people sat in the porticos over
+a tin bucket, in which there was a smudge--that is to say, in smoke.  In
+the evening some one goes with a tin or iron pail containing a smudge,
+and fills the bedrooms with dense smoke.  One evening Mr. Hinckley and
+another of our party went fishing without veils.  They returned with
+their necks behind swollen up as if with _goitres_ or _Kropfe_.  I knew a
+young Englishman who with friends, somewhere beyond Manitoba, encountered
+such a storm of mosquitos that their oxen were killed, and the party
+saved themselves by riding away on horseback.  So he told me.
+
+At the stations--all log-houses--the ladies collected pillows and buffalo
+blankets, and, making a great bed, all slept in one room.  We men slept
+in waggons or under a tent, which was not quite large enough for all.  The
+Indian women cut spruce twigs and laid them over-lapping on the ground
+for our bed.  By preference I took the outside, _al fresco_.  One night
+we stayed at a house which had an upper and a lower storey.  The ladies
+camped upstairs.  In the morning, when we men below awoke, all took a
+drink of whisky.  There entered a very tall Indian, clad in a long black
+blanket, who looked on very approvingly at the drinking.  I called to my
+wife above to hand me down my whisky flask.  "There is a big Indian here
+who wants a drink," I remarked.  "I think I know," she replied, "who that
+big Indian is," but handed down the flask.  "Don't waste whisky on an
+_Indian_" said one of my companions.  But I filled the cup with a
+tremendous slug, and handed it to the Objibway.  He took it down like
+milk, and never a word spoke he, but when it was swallowed he looked at
+me and winked.  Such a wink as that was!  I think I see it now--so
+inspired with gratitude and humour as to render all words needless.  He
+had a rare sense of tact and gratitude.  Soon after I was sitting out of
+doors among a few ladies, when the Indian, who had divined that I was
+short of Chippeway and wished to learn, stalked up, and pointing to our
+beauty, said gravely, _squoah_--_i.e._, woman.  Then he indicated several
+other articles, told me the Indian name for each and walked away.  It was
+all he could do.  The ladies, who could not imagine why this voluntary
+lesson was given to me, were much amused at it.  But I understood it; he
+had seen the Injun in me at a glance, and knew what I wanted most!
+
+One night we stopped at a place called Kettle River.  It was very
+picturesque.  Over the rushing stream the high rocky banks actually
+overhung the water.  I got into a birch canoe with my wife, and two
+Indian boys paddled us, while others made a great fire on the cliff
+above, which illuminated the scene.  Other Indian youths jumped into the
+water and swam about and skylarked, whooping wildly.  It reminded me
+strangely of the Blue Grotto of Capri, where our boatmen jumped in and
+swam in a sulphur-azure glow, only that this was red in the firelight.
+
+Our whisky ran short--it always does on all such excursions--and our
+drivers in consequence became very "short" also, or rather unruly.  But
+_bon chemin_, _mal chemin_, we went on, and the ladies, as I had
+predicted, pulled through merrily.
+
+One day, at a halt, I found, with the ladies, in the woods by a stream, a
+pretty sight.  It was a wigwam, which was very open, and which had been
+made to look like a bower with green boughs.  When I was in the artillery
+I was the only person who ever thus adorned our tent in Indian style.  It
+is very pleasant on a warm day, and looks artistic.  In the wigwam sat a
+pretty Indian woman with a babe.  The ladies were, of course, at once
+deeply interested, but the Indian could not speak English.  One of the
+ladies had a common Japanese fan, with the picture of a grotesque god,
+and I at once saw my way to interest our hostess.
+
+I once read in the journal of a missionary's wife in Canada that she had
+a curious Malay or Cingalese dagger, with a curved blade and wooden
+sheath, while on the handle was the figure of an idol.  One day she
+showed this to an Indian, and the next day he came with five more, and
+these again with fifteen, till it seemed as if the whole country had gone
+wild over it.  Very much alarmed at such heathenism, the lady locked it
+up and would show it no more.  Ere she did so, she asked an old Indian
+how it was possible to make a scabbard of one piece of wood, with a hole
+in it to fit the blade.  This man, who had been one of the most devoted
+admirers of the deity on the handle, saw no puzzle in this.  He explained
+that the hole was burned in by heating the blade.
+
+I showed the god on the fan to the Indian woman, and said,
+"_Manitu_--_ktchee manitu_" ("a god--a great god").  She saw at once that
+it was heathen, and her heart went out unto it with great delight.  With
+a very few Chippeway words and many signs I explained to her that forty
+days' journey from us was the sea, and forty days beyond another country
+where the people had this _manitou_.  I believe that the lady gave her
+the fan, and it may be that she worships it to this day.  How absurd it
+is to try to force on such people Catholic or Protestant forms, which
+they do _not_ understand and never will, while their souls take in with
+joy the poly-pantheistic developments of supernaturalism, and that which
+suits their lives.  Like the little boy who _thought_ he would like to
+have a Testament, but _knew_ he wanted a squirt, the Indian, unable to
+rise to the grandeur of monotheistic trinitarianism, is delighted with
+goblins, elves, and sorcery.  He can manage the squirt.
+
+At Fond-du-Lac I became acquainted with a Mr. Duffy, a very genial and
+clever man, a son of a former governor of Rhode Island.  He had an Indian
+wife and family, and was looked up to by the Indians as _Kitchimokomon_,
+"the white man."  That he was a gentleman will appear from the following
+incident.  There was one of our party who, to put it mildly, was not
+remarkable for refinement.  A trader at Fond-du-Lac had a very remarkable
+carved Indian pipe, for which he asked me fifteen dollars.  It certainly
+was rather a high price, so I offered ten.  Immediately the man of whom I
+spoke laid down fifteen dollars and took the pipe.  He was _dans son
+droit_, but the action was churlish.  It seemed so to Duffy, who was
+standing by.  After I had returned to Philadelphia, Mr. Duffy sent me a
+very handsome pipe for a present, which he assured me had been smoked at
+two grand councils.  He was indeed a "white man."
+
+There was an old Indian here whose name in Indian meant "He who changes
+his position while sitting," but white people called him Martin "for
+short."  He was wont to smoke a very handsome pipe.  One day, seeing him
+smoking a wretched affair rudely hewn, I asked him if he had not a
+better.  He replied, "I had, but I sold it to the _kcheemo-komon
+iqueh_"--the long-knife woman (_i.e._, to a white lady).  Inquiry proved
+that the "long-knife woman" was Miss Lottie Foster, a very beautiful and
+delicate young lady from Philadelphia, to whom such a barbaric term
+seemed strangely applied.  As for me, because I always bought every stone
+pipe which I could get, the Indians called me _Poaugun_ or Pipe.  Among
+the Algonkin of the East in after-days I had a name which means _he who
+seeks hidden things_ (_i.e._, mysteries).
+
+We came to Duluth.  There were in those days exactly six houses and
+twenty-six Indian wigwams.  However, we were all accommodated somehow.
+Here there were grand conferences of the railroad kings with the
+authorities of Duluth and Superior City, which was a few miles distant,
+and as the Dulutherans outbid the Father Superiors, the terminus of the
+road was fixed at Duluth.
+
+It was arranged that the ladies should remain at Duluth while we, the
+men, were to go through the woods to examine a situation a day's march
+distant.  We had Indians to carry our luggage.  Every man took a blanket
+and a cord, put his load into it, turned the ends over the cord, and then
+drew it up like a bag.  They carried very easily from 150 to 250 lbs.
+weight for thirty miles a day over stock and stone, up and down steep
+banks or amid rotten crumbling trees and moss.  Though a good walker, I
+could not keep up with them.
+
+I had with me a very genial and agreeable man as walking companion.  His
+name was Stewart, and he was mayor, chief physician, and filled half-a-
+dozen other leading capacities in St. Paul.  Our fellow-travellers
+vanished in the forest.  Mayor Stewart and I with one Indian carrier
+found ourselves at two o'clock very thirsty indeed.  The view was
+beautiful enough.  A hundred yards below us by the steep precipice rushed
+the St. Lawrence, but we could not get at it to drink.
+
+Stewart threw himself on the grass in despair.  "Yes," he cried, "we're
+lost in the wilderness, and I'm going to die of thirst.  Remember me to
+my family."  "I say," he suddenly cried, "ask that Injun the name of that
+river."
+
+I asked of the Indian, "_Wa go nin-iu_?" ("How do you call that?")
+Thinking I wanted to know the name for a stream, he replied, "_Sebe_."
+This is the same as _sipi_ in Missis-sippi.
+
+"I knew it," groaned Stewart.  "There is no such river as the _Sebe_ laid
+down on the map.  We're lost in an unknown region."
+
+"It occurs to me," I said, "that this is a judgment on me.  When I think
+of the number of times in my life when I have walked past bar-rooms and
+neglected to go in and take a drink, I must think that it is a
+retribution."
+
+"And I say," replied Stewart, "that if you ever do get back to
+civilisation, you'll be the old --- toper that ever was."
+
+When we came to the camp we found there by mere chance a large party of
+surveyors.  As there were thirty or forty of us, it was resolved, as so
+many white men had never before been in that region, to constitute a
+township and elect a member to the Legislature, or Congress, or
+something--I forget what; but it appeared that it was legal, and it was
+actually done--I voting with the rest as a settler.  I, too, am a
+_Minnesot_.
+
+We railroad people formed one party and sat at our evening meal by
+ourselves, the surveyors made another, and the Indians a third _table-
+d'hote_.  An open tin of oysters was before us, and somebody said they
+were not good.  One only needs say so to ruin the character of an
+oyster--and too often of "a human bivalve," as the Indiana orator said.
+We were about to pitch it away, when I asked the attendant to give it to
+the Indians.  It was gravely passed by them from man to man till it came
+to the last, who lifted it to his mouth and _drank off the entire quart_,
+_oysters and all_, as if it had been so much cider.  Amazed at this, I
+asked what it meant, but the only explanation I could get was, "He like
+um oyster."
+
+This was a charming excursion, all through the grene wode wilde, and I
+enjoyed it.  I had Indian society, and learned Indian talk, and bathed in
+charming rushing waters, and saw enormous pine trees 300 feet high, and
+slept _al fresco_, and ate _ad libitum_.  To this day its remembrance
+inspires in me a feeling of deep, true poetry.
+
+I think it was at Duluth that one morning there was brought in an old
+silver cross which had just been found in an Indian grave on the margin
+of the lake, not very far away.  I went there with some others.  It was
+evidently the grave of some distinguished man who had been buried about a
+hundred years ago.  There were the decayed remains of an old-fashioned
+gun, and thousands of small beads adhering, still in pattern, to the
+_tibiae_.  I dug up myself--in fact they almost lay on the surface, the
+sand being blown away--several silver bangles, which at first looked
+exactly like birch-bark peelings, and, what I very much prized, two or
+three stone cylinders or tubes, about half an inch in diameter, with a
+hole through them.  Antiquaries have been much puzzled over these, some
+thinking that they were musical instruments, others implements for
+gambling.  My own theory always was that they were used for smoking
+tobacco, and as those which I found were actually stuffed full of dried
+semi-decayed "fine cut," I still hold to it.  I also purchased from a boy
+a red stone pipe-head, which was found in the same grave.  I should here
+say that the pipe which had been bought away from me by the man above
+mentioned had on it the carving of a _reindeer_, which rendered it to me
+alone of living men peculiarly valuable, since I have laboured hard, and
+subsequently set forth in my "Algonkin Legends" the theory that the
+Algonkin Indians went far to the North and there mingled with the
+Norsemen of Greenland and Labrador.  The man who got the pipe promised to
+leave it to me when he died, but he departed from life and never kept his
+word.  A frequent source of grief to me has been to see objects of great
+value, illustrating some point in archaeology, seized as "curiosities" by
+ignorant wealthy folk.  The most detestable form of this folly is the
+buying of _incunabula_, first editions or uncut copies, and keeping them
+from publication or reading, and, in short, of worshipping anything, be
+it a book or a coin, merely because it is _rare_.  Men never expatiate on
+_rariora_ in literature or in china, or talk cookery and wines over-much,
+without showing themselves prigs.  It is not any beauty in the _thing_,
+but the delightful sense of their own culture or wealth which they
+cultivate.  When there is nothing in a thing but mere _rarity_ and cost
+to commend it, it is absolutely worthless, as is the learning and
+connoisseurship thereupon dependent.
+
+Business concluded, we took a steamboat, and were very sea-sick on Lake
+Superior for twenty-four hours.  Then we went to the Isle Royale, and saw
+the mines, which had been worked even by the ancient Mexicans; also an
+immense mass of amethysts.  The country here abounds in agates.  At
+Marquette there was brought on board a single piece of pure virgin copper
+from the mine which weighed more than 4,000 pounds.  There it was, I
+think, that we found our cars waiting, and returned in them to
+Philadelphia.
+
+It was at this time that my brother Henry died, and his loss inflicted on
+me a terrible mental blow, which went far, subsequently, to bring about a
+great crisis in my health.  My dear brother was the most remarkable
+illustration of the fact that there are men who, by no fault of their
+own, and who, despite the utmost honour or integrity, deep intelligence,
+good education, and varied talents, are overshadowed all their lives by
+sorrow, and meet ill-luck at every turn.  He went at sixteen as _employe_
+into a Cuban importing house, where he learned Spanish.  His principal
+failed, and thence he passed to a store in New York, where he worked far
+too hard for $600 a year.  His successor, who did much less, was
+immediately paid $2,500 per annum.  Finding that his employer was being
+secretly ruined by his partner, he warned the former, but only with the
+result of being severely reprimanded by the merchant and my father as a
+mischief-maker.  After a while this merchant was absolutely ruined and
+bankrupted by his partner, as he himself declared to me, but, like many
+men, still kept his _rancune_ against my poor brother.  By this time the
+eyesight and health of Henry quite gave out for some time.  Every effort
+which he made, whether to get employment, to become artist or writer,
+failed.  He published two volumes of tales, sporting sketches, &c., with
+Lippincott, in Philadelphia, which are remarkable for originality.  One
+of them was subsequently written out by another distinguished author in
+another form.  I do not say it was after my brother's, for I have known
+another case in which two men, having heard a story from Barnum, both
+published it, ignorant that the other had done so.  But I would declare,
+in justice to my brother, that he told this story, which I am sure the
+reader knows, quite as well as did the other.
+
+He travelled a great deal, was eighteen months in Rome and its vicinity,
+visited Algeria, Egypt, and Cuba and the West, always spending so little
+money that my father expressed his amazement at it.  I regret to say that
+in my youth I never astonished him in this way.  But this morbid
+conscientiousness or delicacy as to being dependent did him no good, for
+he might just as well have been thoroughly comfortable, and my father
+would never have missed it.  The feeling that he could get no foothold in
+life, which had long troubled me, became a haunting spectre which
+followed him to the grave.  His work "Americans in Rome" is one of the
+cleverest, most sparkling, and brilliant works of humour, without a trace
+of vulgarity, ever written in America.  It had originally some such title
+as "Studios and Mountains," but the publisher, thinking that the
+miserable clap-trap title of "Americans in Rome" would create an
+impression that there was "gossip," and possibly scandal, in it, insisted
+on that.  It was published in the weary panic of 1862 in the war, and
+fell dead from the press.  Though he never really laughed, and was
+generally absolutely grave, my brother had an incredibly keen sense of
+fun, and in conversation could far outmaster or "walk over the head" of
+any humorist whom I ever met.  He was very far, however, from showing off
+or being a professional wit.  He was very fond, when talking with men who
+considered themselves clever, of making jests or puns in such a manner
+and in such an unaffected ordinary tone of voice that they took no note
+of the _quodlibets_.  He enjoyed this much more than causing a laugh or
+being complimented.  But taking his life through, he was simply
+unfortunate in everything, and his worst failures were when he made
+wisely directed energetic efforts to benefit himself or others.  He
+rarely complained or grieved, having in him a deep _fond_ of what I, for
+want of a better term, call _Indian nature_, or stoicism, which is common
+in Americans, and utterly incomprehensible to, or rarely found in, a
+European.
+
+The death of my father left me a fifth of his property, which was
+afterwards somewhat augmented by a fourth share of my poor brother's
+portion.  For one year I drew no money from the inheritance, but went on
+living as before on my earnings, so that my wife remarked it really took
+me a year to realise that I had any money.  After some months I bought a
+house in Locust Street, just opposite to where my father had lived, and
+in this house I remained six months previously to going to Europe in
+1869.  We had coloured servants, and I never in all my life, before or
+since, lived so well as during this time.  The house was well furnished;
+there was even the great luxury of no piano, which is a great condition
+of happiness.
+
+This year I was fearfully busy.  As I had taken the dramatic criticism in
+hand, for which alone we had always employed a man, I went during twelve
+months 140 times to the opera, and every evening to several theatres, _et
+cetera_.  Once I was caught beautifully.  There had been an opera bouffe,
+the "Grande Duchesse" or something, running for two or three weeks, and I
+had written a criticism on it.  This was laid over by "press of matter,"
+but as the same play was announced for the next night with the same
+performers, we published the critique.  But it so chanced that the opera
+by some accident was not played!  The _Evening Bulletin_, my old paper,
+rallied me keenly on this blunder, and I felt badly.  John Forney, jun.,
+however, said it was mere rubbish of no consequence.  He was such an
+arrant Bohemian and hardened son of the press, that he regarded it rather
+as a joke and a feather in our caps, indicating that we were a bounding
+lot, and not tied down to close observances.  Truly this is a very fine
+spirit of freedom, but it may be carried too far, as I think it was by a
+friend of mine, who had but one principle in life, and that was _never_
+to write his newspaper correspondence in the place from which it was
+dated.  It came to pass that about three weeks after this retribution
+overtook the _Bulletin_, for it also published a review of an opera which
+was not sung, but I meanly passed the occurrence by without comment.  When
+a man hits you, it is far more generous, manly, and fraternal to hit him
+back a good blow than to degrade him by silent contempt.
+
+The Presidential campaign between Grant and Johnson was beginning to warm
+up.  Colonel Forney was in a cyclone of hard work between Washington,
+Pennsylvania, and New York, carrying on a thousand plots and finely or
+coarsely drawn intrigues, raising immense sums, speaking in public, and,
+not to put it too finely, buying or trading votes in a thousand tortuous
+or "mud-turtlesome and possum-like ways"--for _non possumus_ was not in
+his Latin.  Never shall I forget the disgust and indignation with which
+the great Republican champion entered the office one evening, and,
+flinging himself on a chair, declared that votes in New Jersey had gone
+up to sixty dollars a head!  And I was forced to admit that sixty dollars
+for a Jerseyman did seem to be an exorbitant price.  So he went forth on
+the war-path with fresh paint and a sharp tomahawk.
+
+It often happened to me in his absence to have very curious and critical
+decisions in my power.  One of these is the "reading in" or "reading out"
+of a man from his party.  This is invariably done by a leading political
+newspaper.  I remember, for instance, a man who had been very prominent
+in politics, and gone over to the Democrats, imploring me to readmit him
+to the fold; but, as I regarded him as a mere office-hunter, I refused to
+do it.  _Excommunicatus sit_!
+
+There was a _very_ distinguished and able man in a very high position.  To
+him I had once addressed a letter begging a favour which would have been
+nothing at all to grant, but which was of great importance to me, and he
+had taken no notice of it.  It came to pass that we had in our hands to
+publish certain very damaging charges against this great man.  He found
+it out, and, humiliated, I may say agonised with shame and fear, he
+called with a friend, begging that the imputations might not be
+published.  I believe from my soul that if I had not been so badly
+treated by him I should have refused his request, but, as it was, I
+agreed to withdraw the charges.  It was the very best course, as I
+afterwards found.  I am happy to say that, in after years, and in other
+lands, he showed himself very grateful to me.  I am by nature as
+vindictive as an unconverted Indian, and as I am deeply convinced that it
+is vile and wicked, I fight vigorously against it.  In my _Illustrated
+News_ days in New York I used to keep an old German hymn pasted up before
+me in the sanctum to remind me not to be revengeful.  Out of all such
+battling of opposing principles come good results.  I feel this in
+another form in the warring within me of superstitious _feelings_ and
+scientific convictions.
+
+It became apparent that on Pennsylvania depended the election of
+President.  The State had only been prevented from turning Copperhead-
+Democrat--which was the same as seceding--by the incredible exertions of
+the Union League, led by George H. Boker, and the untiring aid of Colonel
+Forney.  But even now it was very uncertain, and in fact the election--on
+which the very existence of the Union virtually depended--was turned by
+only a few hundred votes; and, as Colonel Forney and George H. Boker
+admitted, it would have been lost but for what I am going to narrate.
+
+There were many thousand Republican Clubs all through the State, but they
+had no one established official organ or newspaper.  This is of vast
+importance, because such an organ is sent to doubtful voters in large
+numbers, and gives the keynote or clue for thousands of speeches and to
+men stumping or arguing.  It occurred to me early to make the _Weekly
+Press_ this organ.  I employed a young man to go to the League and copy
+all the names and addresses of all the thousands of Republican clubs in
+the State.  Then I had the paper properly endorsed by the League, and
+sent a copy to every club at cost price or for nothing.  This proved to
+be a _tremendous_ success.  It cost us money, but Colonel Forney never
+cared for that, and he greatly admired the _coup_.  I made the politics
+hot, to suit country customers.  I found the gun and Colonel Forney the
+powder and ball, and between us we made a hit.
+
+One day Frank Wells, of the _Bulletin_ (very active indeed in the Union
+League), met me and asked if I, since I had lived in New York, could tell
+them anything as to what kind of a man George Francis Train really was.
+"He has come over all at once," he said, "from the Democratic party, and
+wishes to stump Pennsylvania, if we will pay him his expenses."  I
+replied--
+
+"I know Train personally, and understand him better than most men.  He is
+really a very able speaker for a popular American audience, and will be
+of immense service if rightly managed.  But you must get some steady,
+sensible man to go with him and keep him in hand and regulate expenses,
+&c."
+
+It was done.  After the election I conversed with the one who had been
+the bear-leader, and he said--
+
+"It was an immense success.  Train made thousands of votes, and was a
+most effective speaker.  His mania for speaking was incredible.  One day,
+after addressing two or three audiences at different towns, we stopped at
+another to dine.  While waiting for the soup, I heard a voice as of a
+public speaker, and looking out, saw Train standing on a load of hay,
+addressing a thousand admiring auditors."
+
+There are always many men who claim to have carried every Presidential
+election--the late Mr. Guiteau was one of these geniuses--but it is also
+true that there are many who would by _not_ working have produced very
+great changes.  Forney was a mighty wire-puller, if not exactly before
+the Lord, at least before the elections, and he opined that I had secured
+the success.  There were _certainly_ other men--_e.g._, Peacock, who
+influenced as many votes as the _Weekly Press_, and George Francis
+Train--without whose aid Pennsylvania and Grant's election would have
+been lost, but it is something to have been one of the few who did it.
+
+When General Grant came in, he resolved to have nothing to do with
+"corrupt old politicians," even though they had done him the greatest
+service.  So he took up with a lot of doubly corrupt young ones, who were
+only inferior to the veterans in ability.  Colonel Forney was snubbed
+cruelly, in order to rob him.  Whatever he had done wrongly, he had done
+his _work_ rightly, and if Grant intended to throw his politicians
+overboard, he should have informed them of it before availing himself of
+their services.  His conduct was like that of the old lady who got a man
+to saw three cords of wood for her, and then refused to pay him because
+he had been divorced.
+
+I had never in my life asked for an office from anybody.  Mr. Charles A.
+Dana once said that the work I did for the Republican party on _Vanity
+Fair_ alone was worth a foreign mission, and that was a mere trifle to
+what I did with the _Continental Magazine_, my pamphlet, &c.  When Grant
+was President, I petitioned that a little consulate worth $1,000 (200
+pounds) might be given to a poor Episcopal clergyman, but a man
+accustomed to consular work, who spoke French, and who had been secretary
+to two commodores.  It was for a small French town.  It was supported by
+Forney and George H. Boker; but it was _refused_ because I was "in
+Forney's set," and the consulate was given to a Western man who did not
+know French.
+
+If John Forney, instead of using all his immense influence for Grant, had
+opposed him tooth and nail, he could not have been treated with more
+scornful neglect.  The pretence for this was that Forney had defaulted
+$40,000!  I know every detail of the story, and it is this:--While Forney
+was in Europe, an agent to whom he had confided his affairs did take
+money to that amount.  As soon as Forney learned this, he promptly raised
+$40,000 by mortgage on his property, and repaid the deficit.  Even his
+enemy Simon Cameron declared he did not believe the story, and the engine
+of _his_ revenge was always run by "one hundred Injun power."
+
+I had "met" Grant several times, when one day in London I was introduced
+to him again.  He said that he was very happy to make my acquaintance.  I
+replied, "General Grant, I have had the pleasure of being introduced to
+you _six times_ already, and I hope for many happy renewals of it."  A
+week or two after, this appeared in _Punch_, adapted to a professor and a
+duchess.
+
+When the Sanitary Fair was held in Philadelphia in 1863, a lady in New
+York wrote to Garibaldi, begging him for some personal souvenir to be
+given to the charity.  Garibaldi replied by actually sending the dagger
+which he had carried in every engagement, expressing in a letter a hope
+that it might pass to General Grant.  But a warm partisan of McClellan so
+arranged it that there should be an election for the dagger between the
+partisans of Grant and McClellan, every one voting to pay a dollar to the
+Fair.  For a long time the McClellanites were in a majority, but at the
+last hour Miss Anna M. Lea, now Mrs. Lea Merritt, very cleverly brought
+down a party of friends, who voted for Grant, secured the dagger for him,
+and so carried out the wish of Garibaldi.  Long after an amusing incident
+occurred relative to this.  In conversation in London with Mrs. Grant, I
+asked her if the dagger had been received.  She replied, "Oh, yes," and
+then added naively, "but wasn't it really _alt a humbug_?"
+
+The death of my father and brother within a year, the sudden change in my
+fortunes, the Presidential campaign, and, above all, the working hard
+seven days in the week, had been too much for me.  I began to find,
+little by little, that I could not execute half the work to which I was
+accustomed.  Colonel Forney was very kind indeed, and never said a word.
+But I began to apprehend that a break-down in my health was impending.  I
+needed change of scene, and so resolved, finding, after due
+consideration, that I had enough to live on, to go abroad for a long
+rest.  It proved to be a very wise resolve.  So I rented my house, packed
+my trunks, and departed, to be gone "for a year or two."
+
+I would say, in concluding this chapter, that Colonel John Forney was
+universally credited, with perfect justice, as having carried Grant's
+election.  When Grant was about to deliver his inaugural speech, a
+stranger who stood by me, looking at the immense expectant crowd,
+remarked to a friend, "This is a proud day for John Forney!"  "Yes,"
+replied the other, "the Dead Duck has elected Grant."  But Forney
+cheerfully and generously declared that it was the _Weekly Press_ which
+had carried Pennsylvania, and that I had managed it entirely alone.  All
+these things were known to thousands at the time, but we lived in such
+excitement that we made but little account thereof.  However, there are
+men of good repute still living who will amply confirm all that I have
+said of my work on the _Continental Magazine_; and that Abraham Lincoln
+himself did actually credit me with this is proved by the following
+incident.  Because I had so earnestly advocated Emancipation as a war
+measure at a time when even the most fiery and advanced Abolition papers,
+such as the _Tribune_, were holding back and shouting _pas trop de
+zele_--and as it proved wisely, by advocating it publicly--_merely as a
+war measure_--the President, at the request of George H. Boker, actually
+signed for me fifty duplicate very handsome copies of the Proclamation of
+Emancipation on parchment paper, to every one of which Mr. Seward also
+added his signature.  One of these is now hanging up in the British
+Museum as my gift.  I perfectly understood and knew at the time, as did
+all concerned, that this was a recognition, and a very graceful and
+appropriate one, of what I had done for Emancipation--Harvard having
+A.M.'d me for the same.  The copies I presented to the Sanitary Fair to
+be sold for its benefit, but there was not much demand for them; what
+were left over I divided with George Boker.
+
+
+
+
+VII.  EUROPE REVISITED.  1869-1870.
+
+
+Voyage on the _Pereire_--General Washburne--I am offered a command in
+another French Revolution--Paris--J. Meredith Read and Prevost Paradol--My
+health--Spa--J. C. Hotten--Octave Delepierre--Heidelberg--Dresden--Julian
+Hawthorne and G. Lathrop--Verona--Venice--Rome--W. W.
+Story--Florence--Lorimer Graham--"Breitmann" in the Royal Family--Tuscany.
+
+We sailed on the famed _Pereire_ from New York to Brest in May, 1869.  We
+had not left port before a droll incident occurred.  On the table in the
+smoking-room lay a copy of the "Ballads of Hans Breitmann."  A fellow-
+passenger asked me, "Is that your book?"  I innocently replied, "Yes."
+"Excuse me, sir," cried another, "it is _mine_."  "I beg your pardon," I
+replied, "but it is really mine."  "Sir, I _bought_ it."  "I don't care
+if you did," I replied; "it is mine--for I wrote it."  There was a roar
+of laughter, and we all became acquainted at once.
+
+General Washburne was among the passengers.  He had been appointed
+Minister to France and was going to Paris, where he subsequently
+distinguished himself during the siege by literally taking the place of
+seven foreign Ministers who had left, and kindly caring for all their
+_proteges_.  It never occurred to the old frontiersman to leave a place
+or his duties because fighting was going on.  I had a fine twelve-feet
+blue Indian blanket, which I had bought somewhere beyond Leavenworth of a
+trader.  When sitting on deck wrapped in it, the General would finger a
+fold lovingly, and say, "Ah! the Indians always have good blankets!"
+
+We arrived in Brest, and Mrs. Leland, who had never before been in
+Europe, was much pleased at her first sight, early in the morning, of a
+French city; the nuns, soldiers, peasants, and all, as seen from our
+window, were indeed very picturesque.  We left that day by railway for
+Paris, and on the road a rather remarkable incident occurred.  There was
+seated opposite to us a not very amiable-looking man of thirty, who might
+be of the superior class of mechanics, and who evidently regarded us with
+an evil eye, either because we were suspected _Anglais_ or aristocrats.  I
+resolved that he should become amicable.  Ill-tempered though he might
+be, he was still polite, for at every stopping-place he got out to smoke,
+and extinguished his cigar ere he re-entered.  I said to him, "Madame
+begs that you will not inconvenience yourself so much--pray continue to
+smoke in here."  This melted him, as it would any Frenchman.  Seeing that
+he was reading the _Rappel_, I conversed "liberally."  I told him that I
+had been captain of barricades in Forty-eight, and described in full the
+taking of the Tuileries.  His blood was fired, and he confided to me all
+the details of a grand plot for a Revolution which he was going up to
+Paris to attend to, and offered me a prominent place among the
+conspirators, assuring me that I should have a glorious opportunity to
+fight again at the barricades!  I was appalled at his want of discretion,
+but said nothing.  Sure enough, there came the _emeute_ of the
+plebiscite, as he had predicted, but it was suppressed.  George Boker
+wrote to me: "When I heard of a revolution in Paris, I knew at once that
+you must have arrived and had got to work."  And when I told him that I
+knew of it in advance, and had had a situation offered me as leader, he
+dryly replied, "Oh, I suppose so--as a matter of course."  It was
+certainly a strange coincidence that I left Paris in Forty-eight as a
+Revolutionary _suspect_, and re-entered it in 1870 in very nearly the
+same capacity.
+
+We found agreeable lodgings at the Rond Point of the Champs Elysees.  The
+day after our arrival I determined to arrange the terms of living with
+our landlord.  He and his wife had the reputation of being fearful screws
+in their "items."  So he, thinking I was a newly arrived and perfectly
+ignorant American, began to draw the toils, and enumerate so much for the
+rooms, so much for every towel, so much, I believe, for salt and every
+spoon and fork.  I asked him how much he would charge for everything in
+the lump.  He replied, "_Mais_, _Monsieur_, _nous ne faisons pas jamais
+comme cela a Paris_."  Out of all patience, I burst out into vernacular:
+"_Sacre nom de Dieu et mille tonnerres_, _vieux galopin_! you dare to
+tell _me_, a _vieux carabin du Quartier Latin_, that you cannot make
+arrangements!  _Et depuisse-quand_, _s'il vous plait_?" {372}  He stared
+at me in blank amazement, and then said with a smile: "_Tiens_!  _Monsieur
+est donc de nous_!"  "That I am," I replied, and we at once made a
+satisfactory compromise.
+
+We had pleasant friends, and saw the sights and shopped; but I began to
+feel in Paris for the first time that the dreaded break-down or collapse
+which I had long apprehended was coming over me.  There was a very clever
+surgeon and physician named Laborde, who was called Nelaton's right-hand
+man.  I met him several times, and he observed to a mutual friend that I
+was evidently suffering seriously from threatening nervous symptoms, and
+that he would like to attend me.  He did so, and gave me daily a
+teaspoonful of bromide of potassium.  This gave me sleep and appetite;
+but, after some weeks or months, the result was a settled, mild
+melancholy and tendency to rest.  In fact, it was nearly eighteen months
+before I recovered so that I could write or work, and _live_ as of old.
+
+I had inherited from both parents, and suffered all my life fearfully at
+intervals, from brachycephalic or dorsal neuralgia.  Dr. Laborde made
+short work of this by giving me appallingly strong doses of _tincture of
+aconite and sulphate of quinine_.  Chemists have often been amazed at the
+prescription.  But in due time the trouble quite disappeared, and I now,
+_laus Deo_! very rarely ever have a touch of it.  As many persons suffer
+terribly from this disorder, which is an _aching_ in the back of the head
+and neck accompanied by "sick headache," I give the ingredients of the
+cure; the proper quantity must be determined by the physician. {373}
+
+We dined once with Mr. Washburne, who during dinner showed his extreme
+goodness of heart in a very characteristic manner.  Some foolish American
+had during the _emeute_--in which I was to have been a leader, had I so
+willed--got himself into trouble, not by fighting, but through mere
+prying Yankee "curiosity" and mingling with the crowd.  Such people
+really deserve to be shot more than any others, for they get in the way
+and spoil good fighting.  He was deservedly arrested, and sent for his
+Minister, who, learning it, at once arose, drove to the _prefecture_, and
+delivered his inquisitive compatriot.  On another occasion we were the
+guests of J. Meredith Read, then our Minister to Athens, where we met
+Prevost Paradol.  But at this time there suddenly came over me a distaste
+for operas, theatres, dinners, society--in short, of crowds, gaslight,
+and gaiety in any form, from which I have never since quite recovered.  I
+had for years been fearfully overdoing it all in America, and now I was
+in the reaction, and longed for rest.  I was in that state when one could
+truly say that life would be tolerable but for its amusements.  It is
+usual for most people to insist in such cases that what the sufferer
+needs is "excitement" and "distraction of the mind," change of scene or
+gaiety, when in reality the patient should be most carefully trained to
+repose, which is not always easily done, for so very little attention has
+been paid to this great truth, that even medical science as yet can do
+very little towards calming nervous disorders.  In most cases the trouble
+lies in the presence, or unthinking heedless influence, of other people;
+and, secondly, in the absence of interesting minor occupations or arts,
+such as keep the mind busy, yet not over-excited or too deeply absorbed.
+An important element in such cases is to interest deeply the patient in
+himself as a vicious subject to be subdued by his own exertions.  No one
+who has _never_ had the gout severely can form any conception of the
+terribly arrogant irritability which accompanies it.  I say _arrogant_,
+because it is independent of any voluntary action of the mind.  I have
+often felt it raging in me, and laughed at it, as if it were a chained
+wild beast, and conversed with perfect serenity.  Unfortunately, even our
+dearest friends, generally women, cannot, to save their very lives and
+souls, refrain from having frequent piquant scenes with such tempting
+subjects; while, on the other hand, the subjects are often led by mere
+vanity into exhibiting themselves as something peculiar.  Altogether, I
+believe that where there is no deeply seated hereditary or congenital
+defect, or no displacement or injury from violence or disease, there is
+always a cure to be hoped for, or at least possible; but this cure
+depends in many cases so very much upon the wisdom and patience of
+friends and physicians, that it is only remarkable that we find so many
+recoveries as we do.  Where the patient and friends are all really
+persons of superior intelligence, almost miraculous cures may be
+effected.  But unfortunately, if it be not born in us, it requires a
+great deal of genius to acquire properly the real _dolce far niente_.
+
+From Paris we went to Spa in the Ardennes.  In this very beautiful place,
+in a picturesque land of legends, I felt calmer and more relieved.  I
+think it was there that for the first time I got an inkling that my name
+was becoming known in Europe.  There was a beautiful young English lady
+whom I occasionally met in an artist's studio, who one day asked me with
+some interest whom the Leland could be of whom one heard sometimes--"he
+writes books, I think."  I told her that I had a brother who had written
+two or three clever works, and she agreed with me that he must be the
+man; still she inclined to think that the name was not Henry, but
+Charles.
+
+Mr. Nicolas Trubner, whom I had not seen since 1856, came with his wife
+and daughter to Spa, and this was the beginning of a great intimacy which
+lasted to his death.  Which meeting reminds me of something amusing.  I
+had written the first third of "Breitmann as a Politician," which J.
+"Camden" Hotten had republished, promising the public to give them the
+rest before long.  This I prevented by copyrighting the two remaining
+thirds in England!  Being very angry at this, Hotten accused me in print
+of having written this conclusion expressly to disappoint and injure
+_him_!  In fact, he really seemed to think that Mr. Trubner and I were
+only a pair of foreign rogues, bound together to wrong Mr. J. C. Hotten
+out of his higher rights in "Breitmann."  I wrote a pamphlet in which I
+said this and some other things very plainly.  Mr. Trubner showed this to
+his lawyer, who was of the opinion that it could not be published because
+it bore on libel, though there was nothing in it worse than what I have
+here said.  However, Mr. Trubner had it privately printed, and took great
+joy, solace, and comfort for a very long time in reading it to his
+friends after dinner, or on other occasions, and as he had many, it got
+pretty well about London.  I may here very truly remark that Mr. Hotten,
+in the public controversy which he had with Mr. Trubner on the subject of
+my "Ballads," displayed an effrontery absolutely without parallel in
+modern times, apropos of which _Punch_ remarked--
+
+   "The name of Curll will never be forgotten,
+   And neither will be thine, John Camden Hotten."
+
+From Spa we went to Brussels, where I remember to have seen many times at
+work in the gallery the famous artist without arms who painted with his
+toes.  What was quite a remarkable was the excellence of his copies from
+Rembrandt.  Nature succeeded in his case in "heaping voonders oopen
+voonders," as Tom Hood says in his "Rhine."  I became well acquainted
+with Tom Hood the younger in after years, and to this day I contribute
+something every year to _Tom Hood's Annual_.  At Brussels we stayed at a
+charming old hotel which had galleries one above the other round the
+courtyard, exactly like those of the White Hart Inn immortalised in
+"Pickwick."  There was in Philadelphia a perfect specimen of such an inn,
+which has of late years been rebuilt as the Bingham House.  While in Spa
+I studied Walloon.
+
+From Brussels to Ghent, which I found much modernised from what it had
+been in 1847, when it was still exactly as in the Middle Age, but
+fearfully decayed, and, like Ferrara, literary with grass-grown streets.
+_Und noch weiter_--to Ostend, where for three weeks I took lessons in
+Flemish or Dutch from a young professor, reading "Vondel" and
+"Bilderdijk," who, if not in the world of letters known, deserves to be.
+I had no dictionary all this time, and the teacher marvelled that I
+always knew the meaning of the words, which will not seem marvellous to
+any one who understands German and has studied Anglo-Saxon and read
+"Middle or Early English."  Then back to Spa to meet Mr. and Mrs. Trubner
+and her father Octave Delepierre, who was a great scholar in _rariora_,
+_curiosa_, and old French, and _facile princeps_ the greatest expert in
+Macaronic poetry who ever wrote.  May I here venture to mention that he
+always declared that my later poem of "Breitmann and the Pope" was the
+best Macaronic poem which he had ever read?  His reason for this was that
+it was the most reckless and heedless or extravagant combination of Latin
+and modern languages known to him.  I had, however, been much indebted to
+Mr. Oscar Browning for revising it.  And so the truth, which long in
+darkness lay, now comes full clearly to the light of day.
+
+Thence to Liege, Amsterdam, the Hague, Haarlem, and Leyden, visiting all
+the great galleries and many private collections.  At Amsterdam we saw
+the last grand kermess or annual fair ever held there.  It was a Dutch
+carnival, so wild and extravagant that few can comprehend now to what
+extremes "spreeing" can be carried.  The Dutch, like the Swedes, have or
+had the strange habit of bottling up their hilarity and letting it out on
+stated occasions in uproarious frolics.  I saw _carmagnoles_ in which men
+and women, seized by a wild impulse, whirled along the street in a
+frantic dance to any chance music, compelling every bystander to join.  I
+heard of a Prince from Capua, who, having been thus _carmagnoled_,
+returned home in rags.
+
+In Leyden I visited the Archaeological Museum, where I by chance became
+acquainted with the chief or director, who was then engaged in
+rearranging his collections, and who, without knowing my name, kindly
+expressed the wish that I would remain a week to aid him in preparing the
+catalogue.  As there are few works on prehistoric relics which I do not
+know, and as I had for many years studied with zeal innumerable
+collections of the kind, I venture to believe that his faith in my
+knowledge was not quite misplaced.  Even as I write I have just received
+the _Catalogue of Prehistoric Works in Eastern America_, by Cyrus
+Thomas--a work of very great importance.
+
+Thence we went to Cologne, where it was marvellous to find the Cathedral
+completed, in spite of the ancient legend which asserts that though the
+devil had furnished its design he had laid a curse upon it, declaring
+that it should never be finished.  Thence up the Rhine by castles grey
+and smiling towns, recalling my old foot-journey along its banks; and so
+on to Heidelberg, where I stayed a month at the Black Eagle.  Herr Lehr
+was still there.  He had grown older.  His son was taking dancing lessons
+of Herr Zimmer, who had taught me to waltz twenty years before.  One day
+I took my watch to a shop to be repaired, when the proprietor declared
+that he had mended it once before in 1847, and showed me the private mark
+which he put on it at the time.
+
+There were several American students, who received me very kindly.  I
+remember among them Wright, Manly, and Overton.  When I sat among them
+smoking and drinking beer, and mingling German student words with
+English, it seemed as if the past twenty years were all a dream, and that
+I was a _Bursch_ again.  Overton had the reputation of being _par
+eminence_ the man of men in all Heidelberg, who could take off a full
+quart at one pull without stopping to take breath--a feat which I had far
+outdone at Munich, in my youth, with the _horn_, and which I again
+accomplished at Heidelberg "without the foam," Overton himself, who was a
+very noble young fellow, applauding the feat most loudly.  But I have
+since then often done it with Bass or Alsopp, which is much harder.  I
+need not say that the "Breitmann Ballads," which had recently got among
+the Anglo-American students, and were by them greatly admired, did much
+to render me popular.
+
+I found or made many friends in Heidelberg.  One night we were invited to
+a supper, and learned afterwards that the two children of our host,
+having heard that we were Americans, had peeped at us through the keyhole
+and expressed great disappointment at not finding us _black_.
+
+In November we went to Dresden.  We were so fortunate as to obtain
+excellent rooms and board with a Herr and Madame Rohn, a well-to-do
+couple, who, I am sure, took boarders far more for the sake of company
+than for gain.  Herr Rohn had graduated at Leipzig, but having spent most
+of his life in Vienna, was a man of exuberant jollity--a man of gold and
+a gentleman, even as his wife was a truly gentle lady.  As I am very
+tall, and detest German small beds, I complained of mine, and Herr Rohn
+said he had another, of which I could not complain.  And I certainly
+could not, for when it came I found it was at least eight feet in length.
+It seems that they had once had for a boarder a German baron who was
+_more than seven feet_ high, and had had this curiosity constructed; and
+Herr Rohn roared with laughter as I gazed on it, and asked if I would
+have it lengthened.
+
+We remained in Dresden till February, and found many friends, among whom
+there was much pleasant homelike hospitality.  Among others were Julian
+Hawthorne and sisters, and George Parsons Lathrop.  They were young
+fellows then, and not so well known as they have since become, but it was
+evident enough that they had good work in them.  They often came to see
+me, and were very kind in many ways.  I took lessons in
+porcelain-painting, which art I kept up for many years, and was, of
+course, assiduous in visiting the galleries, Green Vault, and all works
+of art.  I became well acquainted with Passavant, the director.  I was
+getting better, but was still far from being as mentally vigorous as I
+had been.  I now attribute this to the enormous daily dose of bromide
+which I continued to take, probably mistaking its _influence_ for the
+original nervous exhaustion itself.  It was not indeed till I got to
+England, and substituted _lupulin_ in the form of hops--that is to say,
+pale ale or "bitter"--in generous doses, that I quite recovered.
+
+So we passed on to Prague, which city, like everything Czech, always had
+a strange fascination for me.  There I met a certain Mr. Vojtech
+Napristek (or Adalbert Thimble), who had once edited in the United States
+a Bohemian newspaper with which I had exchanged, and with whom I had
+corresponded, but whom I had never before seen.  He had established in
+Prague, on American lines, a Ladies' Club of two hundred, which we
+visited, and was, I believe, owing to an inheritance, now a prosperous
+man.  Though I am not a Thimble, it also befell me, in later years, to
+found and preside over a Ladies' Art Club of two hundred souls.  At that
+time the famous legendary bridge, with the ancient statue of St. John
+Nepomuk, still existed as of yore.  No one imagined that a time would
+come when they would be washed away through sheer neglect.
+
+So on to Munich, where, during a whole week, I saw but one _Riegelhaube_,
+a curious head-dress or chignon-cover of silver thread, once very common.
+Even the old Bavarian dialect seemed to have almost vanished, and I was
+glad to hear it from our porter.  Many old landmarks still existed, but
+King Louis no longer ran about the streets--I nearly ran against him
+once; people no longer were obliged by law to remove cigars or pipes from
+their mouths when passing a sentry-box.  Lola Montez had vanished.  _Mais
+ou sont les neiges d'antan_?
+
+So we went over the Brenner Pass, stopped at Innspruck, and saw the
+church described by Heine in his _Reisebilder_, and came to Verona, the
+Bern of the _Heldenbuch_.  "_Ich will gen Bern ausreiten_, _sprach
+Meister Hildebrand_."
+
+It was a happy thought of the Italians to put picturesque Verona down as
+the first stopping-place for Northern travellers, and I rather like
+Ruskin's idea of buying the town and keeping it intact as a piece of
+_bric-a-brac_.  He might have proposed Rome while he was about it;
+"anything there can be had for money," says Juvenal.
+
+When we arrived at the station I alone was left to encounter the fierce
+douaniers.  One of them, inquisitive as to tobacco, when I told him I had
+none, laid his finger impressively on the mouthpiece of my pipe,
+remarking that where the tail of the fox was seen the fox could not be
+far off.  To which I replied that I indeed had no tobacco, but wanted
+some very badly, and that I would be much obliged to him if he would give
+me a little to fill my pipe.  So all laughed.  My wife entering at this
+instant, cried in amazement, "Why, Charles! where did you ever learn to
+talk Italian?"  Which shows that there can be secrets even between
+married people; though indeed my Italian has always been of such inferior
+quality that it is no wonder that I never boasted of it even in
+confidence.  It is, in fact, the Hand-organo dialect flavoured with
+Florentine.
+
+There was an old lady who stood at the door of a curiosity-shop in
+Verona, and she had five pieces of bone-carvings from some old _scatola_
+or marriage-casket.  She asked a fabulous price for them, and I offered
+five francs.  She scorned the paltry sum with all the vehemence of a
+susceptible soul whose tenderest feelings have been outraged.  So I went
+my way, but as I passed the place returning, the old lady came forth,
+and, graciously courtesying and smiling, held forth to me the earrings
+neatly wrapped in paper, and thanked me for the five francs!  Which
+indicated to me that the good small folk of Italy had not materially
+changed since I had left the country.
+
+We came to Venice, and went to a hotel, where we had a room given to us
+which, had we wished to give a ball, would have left nothing to be
+desired.  I counted in it twenty-seven chairs and seven tables, all at
+such a distance from one another that they seemed not to be on speaking
+terms.  I do not think I ever got quite so far as the upper end of that
+room while I inhabited it--it was probably somewhere in Austria.  I have
+spoken of having met Mr. Wright at Heidelberg.  He was from Wilkesbarre,
+Pennsylvania.  The next day after my arrival I found among the names of
+the departed, "Signore Wright-_Kilkes_, from Barre, Pennsylvania,
+America."  This reminded me of the Anglo-American who was astonished at
+Rome at receiving invitations and circulars addressed to him as
+"Illustrissimo Varanti Solezer."  It turned out that an assistant,
+reading aloud to the clerk the names from the trunks, had mistaken a very
+large "WARRANTED SOLE LEATHER" for the name of the owner.
+
+And this on soles reminds me that there was a _femme sole_ or lone
+acrimonious British female at our hotel, who declared to me one evening
+that she had _never_ in all her life been so _insulted_ as she was that
+day at a banker's; and the insult consisted in this, that she, although
+quite unknown to him, had asked him to cash a cheque on London, which he
+had declined to do.  I remarked that no banker who did business properly
+ever ought to cash a cheque from a total stranger.
+
+"Sir," said the lady, "do _I look_ like an impostor?"
+
+"Madame," I replied, "I have seen thieves and wretches of the vilest type
+who could not have been distinguished from either of us as regards
+respectability of appearance.  You do not appear to know much about such
+people."
+
+"I am happy to say, sir," replied the lady with intense acidity, "that
+_I_ do _not_."  But she added triumphantly, "What do you say when I tell
+you that I had my _cheque-book_?  How could I have possessed it if I had
+not a right to draw?"
+
+"Any scamp," I replied, "can deposit a few pounds in a bank, buy a cheque-
+book, and then draw his money."
+
+But the next day she came to me in radiant sneering triumph.  She had
+found another banker, who was a gentleman, with a marked emphasis, who
+had cashed her cheque.  How many people there are in this world whose
+definition of a gentleman is "one who does whatever pleases _us_!"
+
+In Florence we went directly to the Hotel d'Europe in the Via
+Tuornabuoni, where my Indian blanket vanished even while entering the
+hotel, and surrounded only by the servants to whom the luggage had been
+confided.  As the landlord manifested great disgust for me whenever I
+mentioned such a trifle, and as the porter and the rest declared that
+they would answer soul and body for one another's honesty, I had to grin
+and bear it.  I really wonder sometimes that there are not more boarders,
+who, like Benvenuto Cellini, set fire to hotels or cut up the bedclothes
+before leaving them.  That worthy, having been treated not so badly as I
+was at the Hotel d'Europe and at another in Florence, cut to pieces the
+sheets of his bed, galloped away hastily, and from the summit of a
+distant hill had the pleasure of seeing the landlord in a rage.  Now
+people write to the _Times_, and "cut up" the whole concern.  It all
+comes to the same thing.
+
+In Florence I saw much of an old New York friend, the now late Lorimer
+Graham.  When he died, Swinburne wrote a poem on him.  He was a man of
+great culture and refined manner.  There was something sympathetic in him
+which drew every one irresistibly into liking.  It was his instinct to be
+kind and thoughtful to every one.  He gave me letters to Swinburne, Lord
+Houghton, and others.
+
+I made an acquaintance by chance in Florence whom I can never forget: for
+he was a character.  One day while in the Uffizi Gallery engaged in
+studying the great Etruscan vase, now in the Etruscan Museum, a stranger
+standing by me said, "Does not this seem to you like a mysterious book
+written in forgotten characters?  Is not a collection of such vases like
+a library?"
+
+"On that hint I spake."  "I see," I replied, "you refer to the so-called
+Etruscan Library which an Englishman has made, and which contains only
+vases and inscriptions in that now unknown tongue of Etruria.  And
+indeed, when we turn over the pages of Inghirami, Gherard, and Gori,
+Gray, or Dennis, it does indeed really seem--But what do you really think
+the old Etruscan language truly was?"
+
+"Look here, my friend," cried the stranger in broad Yankee, "I guess I'm
+barkin' up the wrong tree.  I calculated to tell _you_ something, but
+you're ahead of me."
+
+We both laughed and became very good friends.  He lived at our hotel, and
+had been twenty-five years in Italy, and knew every custode in every
+gallery, and could have every secret treasure unlocked.  He was perfectly
+at home about town--would stop and ask a direction of a cab-driver, and
+was capable of going into an umbrella-shop when it rained.
+
+We went on to Rome, and I can only say that as regards what we saw there,
+my memory is confused literally with an _embarras de richesses_.  The
+Ecumenical Council was being held, at which an elderly Italian gentleman,
+who possibly did not know oxygen from hydrogen, or sin from sugar, was
+declared to be infallible in his judgment of all earthly things.
+
+While in Rome we saw a great deal of W. W. Story, the sculptor, and his
+wife and daughter, Edith, for whom Thackeray wrote his most beautiful
+tale, and I at my humble distance the ballad of "Breitmann in Rome,"
+which contained a remarkable prophecy, of the Franco-German war.  At
+their house we met Odo Russell and Oscar Browning, and many more whose
+names are known to all.  It was there also that a lady of the Royal
+English household amused us very much one evening by narrating how the
+"Breitmann Ballads," owing to their odd mixture of German and English,
+were favourite subjects for mutual reading and recitation among the then
+youthful members of the Royal family, and what haste and alarm there was
+to put the forbidden book out of the way when Her Majesty the Queen was
+announced as coming.  I also met in Rome the American poet and painter T.
+Buchanan Read, who gave me a dinner, and very often that remarkable
+character General Carroll Tevis, who, having fought under most flags, and
+been a Turkish bey or pacha, was now a chamberlain of the Pope.  In the
+following year he fought for the French, behaved with great bravery in
+Bourbaki's retreat, and was decorated on the field of battle.  Then
+again, when I was in Egypt, Tevis was at the head of the military
+college.  He had fairly won his rank of general in the American Civil
+War, but as there was some disinclination or other to give it to him, I
+had used my influence in his favour with Forney, who speedily secured it
+for him.  He was a perfect type of the old _condottiero_, but with Dugald
+Dalgetty's scrupulous faith to his military engagements.  The American
+clergyman in Rome was the Rev. Dr. Nevin, a brother of my friend Captain
+Nevin.  There was also Mrs. John Grigg, an old Philadelphia friend (now
+residing in Florence), to whom we were then, as we have continually been
+since, indebted for the most cordial hospitality.
+
+Through the kind aid of General Tevis we were enabled to see all the
+principal ceremonies of the Holy Week and Easter.  This year, owing to
+the Council, everything was on a scale of unusual magnificence.  I can
+say with Panurge that I have seen three Popes, but will not add with him,
+"and little good did it ever do me," for Mrs. Leland at least was much
+gratified with a full sight and quasi-interview with His Holiness.
+
+There was a joyous sight for a cynic to be seen in Rome in those days--in
+fact, it was only last year (1891) that it was done away with.  This was
+the drawing of the lottery by a priest.  There was on a holy platform a
+holy wheel and a holy little boy to draw the holy numbers, and a holy old
+priest to oversee and _bless_ the whole precious business.  The blessing
+of the devil would have been more appropriate, for the lotteries are the
+curse of Italy.  What the Anglo-American mechanic puts into a savings
+bank, the Italian invests in lotteries.  In Naples there are now fourteen
+tickets sold per annum for the gross amount of the population, and in
+Florence twelve.
+
+One day I took a walk out into the country with Briton Riviere and some
+other artists.  I had a cake or two of colour, and Riviere, with wine for
+water, at a _trattoria_ where we lunched, made a picture of the attendant
+maid.  He pointed out to me on the road a string of peasants carrying
+great loaves of coarse bread.  They had walked perhaps twenty miles to
+buy it, because in those days people were not allowed to bake their own
+bread, but must buy it at the public _forno_, which paid a tax for the
+privilege.  So long as Rome was under Papal control, its every municipal
+institution, such as hospitals, prisons, and the police, were in a state
+of absolutely incredible inhuman vileness, while under everything ran
+corruption and dishonesty.  The lower orders were severely disciplined as
+to their sexual morals, because it was made a rich source of infamous
+taxes, as it now is in other cities of Europe; but cardinals and the
+wealthier priests kept mistresses, almost openly, since these women were
+pointed out to every one as they flaunted about proudly in their
+carriages.
+
+From Rome we passed into Pisa, Genoa, Spezzia, and Nice, over the old
+Cornici road, and so again to Paris, where we remained six weeks, and
+then left in June, 1870, just before the war broke out.  While in the
+city we saw at different times in public the Emperor and Empress, also
+the Queen of Spain.  The face of Louis Napoleon was indeed somewhat
+changed since I saw him in London in 1848, but it had not improved so
+much as his circumstances, as he was according to external appearances
+and popular belief now extremely well off.  But appearances are
+deceptive, as was soon proved, for he was in reality on the verge of a
+worse bankruptcy than even his uncle underwent, for the nephew lost not
+only kingdom and life, but also every trace of reputation for wisdom and
+honesty, remaining to history only as a brazen royal adventurer and
+"copper captain."
+
+In Rome our dear old friend Mrs. John Grigg showed us, as I said, many
+kind attentions, which she has, in Florence, continued to this day.  This
+lady is own aunt to my old school friend General George B. McClellan.  At
+an advanced age she executes without glasses the most exquisite
+embroidery conceivable, and her heart and intellect are in keeping with
+her sight.
+
+
+
+
+VIII.  ENGLAND.  1870.
+
+
+The Trubners--George Eliot and G. H. Lewes--Heseltine--Edwards--Etched by
+Bracquemond and Legros--Jean Ingelow--Tennyson--Hepworth Dixon--Lord
+Lytton the elder--Lord Houghton--Bret Harte--France, Alsace, and
+Lorraine--Samuel Laing--Gypsies--The Misses Horace Smith--Brighton and
+odd fish--Work and books--Hunting--Dore--Art and
+Nature--Taglioni--Chevalier Wykoff--Octave Delepierre--Breitmann--Thomas
+Carlyle--George Borrow--A cathedral tour round about England--Salisbury,
+Wells, and York.
+
+It is pleasant being anywhere in England in June, and the passing from
+picturesque Dover to London through laughing Kent is a good introduction
+to the country.  The untravelled American, fresh from the "boundless
+prairies" and twenty-thousand-acre fields of wheat, sees nothing in it
+all but the close cultivation of limited land; but the tourist from the
+Continent perceives at once that, with most careful agriculture, there
+are indications of an exuberance of wealth, true comfort, and taste
+rarely seen in France or Germany.  The many trees of a better quality and
+slower growth than the weedy sprouting poplar and willow of Normandy; the
+hedges, which are very beautiful and ever green; the flowerbeds and walks
+about the poorest cottage; the neatly planted, prettily bridged side
+roads, all indicate a superiority of wealth or refinement such as
+prevails only in New England, or rather which _did_ prevail, until the
+native population, going westward, was supplanted by Irish or worse, if
+any worse there be at turning neatness into dirty disorder.
+
+That older American population was deeply English, with a thousand rural
+English traditions religiously preserved; and the chief of these is clean
+_neatness_, which, when fully carried out, always results in simple,
+unaffected beauty.  This was very strongly shown in the Quaker gardens,
+once so common in Philadelphia--and in the people.
+
+We arrived in London, and went directly to the Trubners', No. 29 Upper
+Hamilton Terrace, N.W.  The first person who welcomed me was Mr.
+Delepierre, an idol of mine for years; and the first thing I did was to
+borrow half-a-crown of him to pay the cab, having only French money with
+me.  It was a charming house, with a large garden, so redolent of roses
+that it might have served Chriemhilda of old for a romance.  For twenty
+years that house was destined to be an occasional home and a dwelling
+where we were ever welcome, and where every Sunday evening I had always
+an appointed place at dinner, and a special arm-chair for the
+never-failing Havannah.  Mrs. Trubner had, in later years, two boxes of
+Havannahs of the best, which had belonged to G. H. Lewes, and which
+George Eliot gave her after his death.  I have kept two _en souvenir_.  I
+knew a man once who had formed a large collection of such relics.  There
+was a cigar which he had received from Louis Napoleon, and one from
+Bismarck, and so forth.  But, alas! once while away on his travels, the
+whole museum was smoked up by a reckless under-graduate younger brother.
+_In fumo exit_.
+
+How many people well known to the world--or rather how few who were
+not--have I met there--Edwin Arnold, G. H. Lewes, H. Dixon, M. Van der
+Weyer, Frith the artist, Mrs. Trubner's uncle Lord Napier of Magdala,
+Pigott, Norman Lockyer, Bret Harte, "and full many more," scholars,
+poets, editors, and, withal, lady writers of every good shade, grade, and
+quality.  How many of them all have passed since then full silently into
+the Silent Land, where we may follow, but return no more!  How many a
+pleasant smile and friendly voice and firm alliances and genial
+acquaintances, often carried out in other lands, date their beginning in
+my memory to the house in Hamilton Terrace!  How often have I heard by
+land or sea the familiar greeting, "I think I met you once at the
+Trubners'!"  For it was a salon, a centre or sun with many bright and
+cheering rays--a civilising institution!
+
+Mrs. Trubner was the life of this home.  Anglo-Belgian by early relation
+and education, she combined four types in one.  When speaking English,
+she struck me as the type of an accomplished and refined British matron;
+in French, her whole nature seemed Parisienne; in Flemish, she was
+altogether Flamande; and in German, Deutsch.  If Cerberus was three
+gentlemen in one, Mrs. Trubner was four ladies united.  Very well read,
+she conversed not only well on any subject, but, what is very unusual in
+her sex, with sincere interest, and not merely to entertain.  If
+interrupted in a conversation she resumed the subject!  This is a
+remarkable trait!
+
+The next day after our arrival Mrs. Trubner took Mrs. Leland, during a
+walk, to call on George Eliot, and that evening G. H. Lewes, Hepworth
+Dixon, and some others came to a reception at the Trubners'.  Both of
+these men were, as ever, very brilliant and amusing in conversation.  I
+met them very often after this, both at their homes and about London.  I
+also became acquainted with George Eliot or Mrs. Lewes, who left on me
+the marked impression, which she did on all, of being a woman of genius,
+though I cannot recall anything remarkable which I ever heard from her.  I
+note this because there were most extraordinary reports of her utterances
+among her admirers.  A young American lady once seriously asked me if it
+were true that at the Sunday afternoon receptions in South Bank one could
+always see rows of twenty or thirty of the greatest men in England, such
+as Carlyle, Froude, and Herbert Spencer, all sitting with their
+note-books silently taking down from her lips the ideas which they
+subsequently used in their writings!  There seemed, indeed, to be afloat
+in America among certain folk an idea that something enormous,
+marvellous, and inspired went on at these receptions, and that George
+Eliot posed as a Pythia or Sibyl, as the great leading mind of England,
+and lectured while we listened.  There is no good portrait, I believe, of
+her.  She had long features and would have been called plain but for her
+solemn, earnest eyes, which had an expression quite in keeping with her
+voice, which was one not easily forgotten.  I never detected in her any
+trace of genial humour, though I doubt not that it was latent in her; and
+I thought her a person who had drawn her ideas far more from books and an
+acquaintance with certain types of humanity whom she had set herself
+deliberately to study--albeit with rare perception--than from an easy
+intuitive familiarity with all sorts and conditions of men.  But she
+worked out _thoroughly_ what she knew by the intuition of genius, though
+in this she was very far inferior to Scott.  Thus she wrote the "Spanish
+Gypsy," having only seen such gypsies two or three times.  One day she
+told me that in order to write "Daniel Deronda," she had read through two
+hundred books.  I longed to tell her that she had better have learned
+Yiddish and talked with two hundred Jews, and been taught, as I was by my
+friend Solomon the Sadducee, the art of distinguishing Fraulein Lowenthal
+of the Ashkenazim from Senorita Aguado of the Sephardim _by the corners
+of their eyes_!
+
+I had read more than once Lewes's "Life of Goethe," his "History of
+Philosophy and Physiology," and even "written him" for the Cyclopaedia.
+With him I naturally at once became well acquainted.  I remember here
+that Mr. Ripley had once reproved me for declaring that Lewes had really
+a claim to be an original philosopher or thinker; for Boston intellect
+always frowned on him after Margaret Fuller condemned him as "frivolous
+and atheistic."  I remember that Tom Powell had told me how he had dined
+somewhere in London, where there was a man present who had really been a
+cannibal, owing to dire stress of shipwreck, and how Lewes, who was
+there, was so fascinated with the man-eater that he could think of
+nothing else.  Lewes told me that once, having gone with a party of
+archaeologists to visit a ruined church, he found on a twelfth-century
+tombstone some illegible letters which he persuaded the others to believe
+formed the name Golias, probably having in mind the poems of Walter de
+Mapes.  When I returned from Russia I delighted him very much by
+describing how I had told the fortunes by hand of six gypsy girls.  He
+declared that telling fortunes to gypsies was the very height of
+impudence!
+
+   "A hundred jests have passed between us twain,
+   Which, had I space, I'd gladly tell again."
+
+A call which I have had, since I wrote that last line, from John Postle
+Heseltine, Esq., reminds me that he was one of the first acquaintances I
+made in London.  Mr. E. Edwards, a distinguished etcher and painter, gave
+me a dinner at Richmond, at which Mr. Heseltine was present.  In Edwards'
+studio I met with Bracquemond and Legros, both of whom etched my portrait
+on copper.  Mr. Heseltine is well known as a very distinguished artist of
+the same kind, as well as for many other things.  Edwards was very kind
+to me in many ways for years.  Legros I found very interesting.  There
+was in Edwards' studio the unique _complete_ collection of the etchings
+of Meryon, which we examined.  Legros remarked of the incredibly long-
+continued industry manifested in some of the pictures, that lunatics
+often manifested it to a high degree.  Meryon, as is known, was mad.  I
+had etched a very little myself and was free of the fraternity.
+
+Within a few days Mr. Strahan, the publisher, took me to Mr. (now Lord)
+Tennyson's reception, where I met with many well-known people.  Among
+them were Lady Charlotte Locker and Miss Jean Ingelow.  These ladies,
+with great kindness, finding that I was married, called on Mrs. Iceland,
+and invited us to dine.  I became a constant visitor for years at Miss
+Ingelow's receptions, where I have met Ruskin, Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall
+(whom I had seen in 1848), Calverly, Edmund Gosse, Hamilton Aide, Mr. and
+Mrs Alfred Hunt.  I conversed with Tennyson, but little passed between us
+on that occasion.  I got to know him far better "later on."
+
+I here anticipate by several years two interviews which I had with
+Tennyson in 1875, who had _ad interim_ been deservedly "lauded into
+Lordliness," and which, to him at least, were amusing enough to be
+recalled.  The first was at a dinner at Lady Franklin's, and her niece
+Miss Cracroft.  And here I may, in passing, say a word as to the
+extraordinary kindly nature of Lady Franklin.  I think it was almost as
+soon as we became acquainted that she, learning that I suffered at times
+from gout, sent me a dozen bottles of a kind of bitter water as a cure.
+
+There were at the dinner as guests Mr. Tennyson, Sir Samuel and Lady
+Baker, Dr. Quain, and myself.  There was no lack of varied anecdote,
+reminiscences of noted people and of travel; but by far the most
+delightful portion of it all was to watch the gradual unfreezing of
+Tennyson, and how from a grim winter of taciturnity, under the glowing
+influence of the sun of wine, as the Tuscan Redi hath it--
+
+   "Dell' Indico Oriente
+   Domator glorioso il Dio di Vino . . .
+   Di quel Sol, che in Ciel vedete . . ."--
+
+he passed into a glorious summer of genial feeling.  I led unto it
+thus:--My friend Professor Palmer and I had projected a volume of songs
+in English Romany or Gypsy, which is by far the sweetest and most
+euphonious language in Europe.  My friend had translated "Home they
+brought her warrior dead," by Tennyson, into this tongue, and I had the
+MS. of it in my pocket.  Tennyson was very much pleased at the
+compliment, and asked me to read the poem, which I did.  The work was by
+permission dedicated to him.  At last, when dinner was over, Tennyson,
+who had disposed of an entire bottle of port, rose, and approaching me,
+took me gaily-gravely by both sides, as if he would lift me up, and
+drawing himself up to his full height, said, "I like to see a poet a full-
+sized substantial man," or "tall and strong," or words to that effect.  I
+replied that it was very evident from the general appearance of
+Shakespeare's bust that he was a very tall man, but that though the
+thunder of height had hit twice--the Poet Laureate being the second
+case--that I had been very slightly singed, tall as I was.  _Enfin_, some
+days after, Tennyson in a letter invited me to call and see him should I
+ever be in the Isle of Wight; which took place by mere chance some time
+after--in fact, I did not know, when I was first at the hotel in
+Freshwater, that Tennyson lived at a mile's distance.
+
+I walked over one afternoon and sent in my card.  Mr. Hallam Tennyson,
+then a very handsome young man of winsome manner, came out and said that
+his father was taking his usual _siesta_, but begged me to remain, kindly
+adding, "Because I know, Mr. Leland, he would be very sorry to have
+missed you."  After a little time, however, Tennyson himself appeared,
+and took me up to his den or studio, where I was asked to take a pipe,
+which I did with great good-will, and blew a cloud, enjoying it greatly,
+because I felt with my host, as with Bulwer, that we had quickly crossed
+acquaintanceship into the more familiar realm where one can talk about
+whatever you please with the certainty of being understood and getting a
+sympathetic answer.  There are lifelong friends with whom one never
+really gets to this, and there are acquaintances of an hour at _table-
+d'hotes_, who "come like shadows, so depart," who talk with a touch to
+our hearts.  Bulwer and Tennyson were such to me, and _apre miro zi_, as
+the gypsies say--on my life-soul!--if I had talked with them, as I did,
+without knowing who they were, I should have recalled them with quite as
+much interest as I now do, and see them again in dreams.  And here I may
+add, that the common-place saying that literary men are rarely good
+talkers, and generally disappointing, is not at all confirmed by my
+experiences.
+
+After burning our tobacco, in Indian fashion, to better acquaintance (I
+forgot to say that the poet had two dozen clay pipes ranged in a small
+wooden rack), we went forth for a seven miles' walk on the Downs.  And at
+last, from the summit of one, I pointed down to a small field below, and
+said--
+
+But first I must specify that the day before I had gone with a young lady
+of fourteen summers named Bee or Beatrice Fredericson, both of us bearing
+baskets, to pick blackberries for tea, and coming to a small field which
+was completely surrounded by a hedge, we saw therein illimitable
+blackberries glittering in the setting sunlight, and longed to enter.
+Finding a gap which had been filled by a dead thorn-bush, I removed the
+latter, and, going in, we soon picked a quart of the fruit.  But on
+leaving we were met by the farmer, who made a to-do, charging us with
+trespassing.  To which I replied, "Well, what is to pay?"  He asked for
+two shillings, but was pacified with one; and so we departed.
+
+Therefore I said to Tennyson, "I went into that field yesterday to pick
+your blackberries, and your farmer caught us and made me pay a shilling
+for trespassing."
+
+And he gravely replied, though evidently delighted--"Served you right!
+What business had you to come over my hedge into my field to steal my
+blackberries?"
+
+"_Mea culpa_," I answered, "_mea maxima culpa_."
+
+"Mr. Leland," pursued Tennyson, as gravely as ever, grasping all the
+absurdity of the thing with evident enjoyment, "you have no idea how
+tourists trespass here to get at me.  They climb over my gate and look in
+at my windows.  It is a fact--one did so only last week.  But I declare
+that you are the very first poet and man of letters who ever came here--to
+steal blackberries!"  Here he paused, and then added forcibly--
+
+"I _do_ believe you are a gypsy, after all."
+
+Then we talked of the old manor-houses in the neighbourhood, and of the
+famous Mortstone, a supposed Saxon rude monolith near by.  I thought it
+prehistoric, because I had dug out from the pile of earth supporting and
+coeval with it (and indeed only with a lead-pencil) a flint flake chipped
+by hand and a bit of cannel coal, which indicate dedication.  My host
+listened with great interest, and then told me a sad tale: how certain
+workmen employed by him to dig on his land had found a great number of
+old Roman bronze coins, but, instead of taking them to him, had kept
+them, though they cared so little for them that they gave a handful to a
+boy whom they met.  "I told them," said Tennyson, "that they had been
+guilty of malappropriation, and though I was not quite sure whether the
+coins belonged to me or to the Crown, that they certainly had no right to
+them.  Whereupon their leader said that if I was not satisfied they would
+not work any longer for me, and so they went away."  I had on this
+occasion a long and interesting discussion with Mr. Tennyson relative to
+Walt Whitman, and involving the principles or nature of poetry.  According
+to the poet-laureate, poetry, as he understood it, consisted of elevated
+or refined, or at least superior thought, expressed in melodious form,
+and in this latter it seemed to him (for it was very modestly expressed)
+that Whitman was wanting.  Wherein he came nearer to the truth than does
+Symonds, who overrates, as it seems to me, the value, as regards art and
+poetry, of simply _equalising_ all human intelligences.  Though I never
+met Symonds, there was mutual knowledge between us, and when I published
+my "Etrusco-Roman Remains in Popular Traditions," which contains the
+results of six years' intimacy with witches and fortune-tellers, he wrote
+a letter expressing enthusiastic admiration of it to Mr. T. Fisher Unwin.
+Now all three of these great men are dead.  I shall speak of Whitman
+anon, for in later years for a long time I met him almost daily.
+
+I can remember that during the conversation Tennyson expressed himself,
+rather to my amazement, with some slight indignation at a paltry review
+abusing his latest work; to which I replied--
+
+"If there is anything on earth for which I have envied you, even more
+than for your great renown as a poet, it has been because I supposed you
+were completely above all such attacks and were utterly indifferent to
+them."  Which he took amiably, and proceeded to discuss ripe fruit and
+wasps--or their equivalent.  Yet I doubt whether I was quite in the
+right, since those who live for fame honourably acquired must ever be
+susceptible to stings, small or great.  An editor who receives abusive
+letters so frequently that he ends by pitching them without reading into
+the waste-basket, and often treats ribald attacks in print in the same
+manner--as I have often done--has so many other affairs on his mind that
+he becomes case-hardened.  But I have observed from long experience that
+there is a Nemesis who watches those who arrogate the right to lay on the
+rod, and gives it to them with interest in the end.
+
+It was very soon after my arrival in London that I was invited to lunch
+at Hepworth Dixon's to meet Lord Lytton, or Bulwer, the great writer.  His
+works had been so intensely and sympathetically loved by me so long, that
+it seemed as if I had been asked to meet some great man of the past.  I
+found him, as I expected, quite congenial and wondrous kind.  I remember
+a droll incident.  Standing at the head of the stairs, he courteously
+made way and asked me to go before.  I replied, "When Louis XIV. asked
+Crillon to do the same, Crillon complied, saying, 'Wherever your Majesty
+goes, be it before or behind, is always the first place or post of
+honour,' and I say the same with him," and so went in advance at once.  I
+saw by his expression that he was pleased with the quotation.
+
+We were looking at a portrait of Shakespeare which Dixon had found in
+Russia.  Lord Lytton asked me if I thought it an original or true
+likeness.  I observed that the face was full of many fine seamy lines,
+which infallibly indicate great nervous genius of the highest
+order--noting at the same time that Lord Lytton's countenance was very
+much marked in a like manner.  The observation was new to him, and he
+seemed to be interested in it, as he always was in anything like
+chiromancy or metoscopy.  A few days later I was invited to come and pass
+nearly a week with Hepworth Dixon at Knebworth, Lord Lytton's country
+seat.  It is a very picturesque _chateau_, profusely adorned with
+fifteenth-century Gothic grotesques, with a fine antique hall, stained
+glass windows, and gallery.  There is in it a chamber containing a
+marvellous and massive carved oak bedstead, the posts of which are human
+figures the size of life, and in it and in the same room Queen Elizabeth
+is said to have slept when she heard of the destruction of the Spanish
+Armada.  It was the room of honour, and it had been kindly assigned to
+me.  It all seemed like a dream.
+
+There was in the family of the late Lord Lytton his son, who made a most
+favourable impression on me.  I think the first _coup_ was my finding
+that he knew the works of Andreini, and that it had occurred to him as
+well as to me that Euphues Lily's book had been modelled on them.  There
+was also his wife, a magnificent and graceful beauty; Lord Lytton's
+nephew, Mr. Bulwer; and several ladies.  The first morning we all fished
+in the pond, and, to my great amazement, Lord Lytton pulled out _a great
+one-eyed perch_!  I almost expected to see him pull out Paul Clifford or
+Zanoni next!  In the afternoon we were driven out to Cowper Castle to see
+a fine gallery of pictures, our host acting as cicerone, and as he soon
+found that I was fairly well educated in art, and had been a special
+pupil of Thiersch in Munich, and something more than an amateur, we had
+many interesting conversations.  I think I may venture to say that he did
+_not_ expect to find a whilom student of aesthetics, art-history, and
+Philosophy in the author of "Hans Breitmann."  What was delightful was
+his exquisite tact in never saying as much; but I could detect it in the
+sudden interest and involuntary compliment implied in his tone of
+conversation.  In a very short time he began to speak to me on all
+literary or artistic subjects without preliminary question, taking it for
+granted that I understood them and chimed in with him.  I was with every
+interview more and more impressed with his _culture_--I mean with what
+had resulted from his reading--his marvellous tact of kindness in small
+things to all, and his quick and vigorous comparing and contrasting of
+images and drawing conclusions.  But there was evidently enough a firm
+bed-rock or hard pan under all this gold.  I was amazed one day when a
+footman, who had committed some _bevue_ or blunder, or apprehended
+something, actually turned pale and stammered with terror when Lord
+Lytton gravely addressed a question to him.  I never in my life saw a man
+so much frightened, even before a revolver.
+
+But Lord Lytton was beyond all question really interested when he found
+me so much at home in Rosicrucian and occult lore, and that I had been
+with Justinus Kerner in Weinsberg, and was familiar with the forgotten
+dusky paths of mysticism.  He had in his house the famous Earl Stanhope
+crystal, and wished me to sleep with it under my pillow, but I was so
+afraid lest the precious relic should be injured, that I resolutely
+declined the honour, for which I am now sorry, for I sometimes have
+dreams of a most extraordinary character.  This Stanhope crystal is not,
+however, the great mirror of Dr. Dee, though it has been said to be so.
+The latter belonged to a gentleman in London, who also offered to lend it
+to me.  It is made of cannel coal.  That Lord Lytton made a very
+remarkable impression on me is proved by the fact that I continued to
+dream of him at long intervals after his death; and I am quite sure that
+such feeling is, by its very nature, always to a certain slight degree
+reciprocal.  He had a natural and unaffected _voice_, yet one with a
+marked character; something like Tennyson's, which was even more
+striking.  Both were far removed from the now fashionable intonation,
+which is the admiration and despair of American swells.  It is only the
+_fin de siecle_ form of the _demnition_ dialect of the Forties and the
+_La-ard_ and _Lunnon_ of an earlier age.
+
+Lord Lytton was generally invisible in the morning, sometimes after
+lunch.  In the evening he came out splendidly groomed, fresh as a rose,
+and at dinner and after was as interesting as any of his books.  He had
+known "everybody" to a surprising extent, and had anecdotes fresh and
+vivid of every one whom he had met.  He loved music, and there was a lady
+who sang old Spanish ballads with rare taste.  I enjoyed myself
+incredibly.
+
+I may be excused for mentioning here that I sent a copy of the second
+edition of my "Meister Karl's Sketch-Book" to Lord Lytton.  No one but
+Irving and Trubner had ever praised it.  When Lord Lytton published
+afterwards "Kenelm Chillingly," I found in it _three_ passages in which I
+recognised beyond dispute others suggested by my own work.  I do not in
+the least mean that there was _any_ borrowing or taking beyond the mere
+suggestion of thought.  Why I think that Lord Lytton had these hints in
+his mind is that he gave the name of Leland to one of the minor
+characters in the book.
+
+When I published a full edition of "Breitmann's Poems," he wrote me a
+long letter criticising and praising the work, and a much longer and
+closely written one, of seven pages, relating to my "Confucius and Other
+Poems."  I was subsequently invited to receptions at his house in London,
+where I first met Browning, and had a long conversation with him.  I saw
+him afterwards at Mrs. Proctor's.  This was the wife of Barry Cornwall,
+whom I also saw.  He was very old and infirm.  I can remember when the
+"Cornlaw Rhymes" rang wherever English was read.
+
+As I consider it almost a duty to record what I can remember of Bulwer, I
+may mention that one evening, at his house in London, he showed me and
+others some beautiful old brass salvers in _repousse_ work, and how I
+astonished him by describing the process, and declaring that I could
+produce a _facsimile_ of any one of them in a day or two; to which
+assertion hundreds to whom I have taught the art, as well as my "Manual
+of Repousse," and another on "Metal Work," will, I trust, bear witness.
+And this I mention, not vainly, but because Lord Lytton seemed to be
+interested and pleased, and because, in after years, I had much to do
+with reviving the practice of this beautiful art.  It was practising
+this, and a three years' study of oak-wood carving, which led me to write
+on the Minor Arts.  _Mihi aes et triplex robur_.
+
+Lord Lytton had the very curious habit of making almost invisible
+hieroglyphics or crosses in his letters--at least I found them in those
+to me, as it were for luck.  It was a very common practice from the most
+ancient Egyptian times to within two centuries.  Lord Lytton's were
+evidently intended to escape observation.  But there was indeed a great
+deal in his character which would escape most persons, and which has not
+been revealed by any writer on him.  This I speedily divined, though, of
+course, I never discovered what it all was.
+
+Lord Houghton, "Richard Monckton Milnes," to whom I had a letter of
+introduction from Lorimer Graham, was very kind to me.  I dined and
+lunched at his house, where I met Odo Russell or Lord Ampthill, the Duke
+of Bedford, the Hon. Mrs. Norton, W. W. Story, and I know not how many
+more distinguished in society, or letters.  At Lord Lytton's I made the
+acquaintance of the Duke of Wellington.  I believe, however, that this
+meeting with Lord Houghton and the Duke was in my second year in London.
+
+The first English garden-party which I ever attended was during this
+first season, at the villa of Mr. Bohn, the publisher, at Twickenham.
+There I made the acquaintance of George Cruikshank, whom I afterwards met
+often, and knew very well till his death.  He was a gay old fellow, and
+on this occasion danced a jig with old Mr. Bohn on the lawn, and joked
+with me.  There, too, we met Lady Martin, who had been the famed Helen
+Faucit.  Cruikshank was always inexhaustible in jokes, anecdotes, and
+reminiscences.  At his house I made the acquaintance of Miss Ada
+Cavendish.
+
+To revert to Mr. Trubner's, I may say that one evening after dinner,
+when, genial though quiet, Bret Harte was one of the guests, he was asked
+to repeat the "Heathen Chinee," which he could not do, as he had never
+learned it--which is not such an unusual thing, by the way, as many
+suppose.  But I, who knew it, remarked, "Ladies and gentlemen, it is
+nothing to merely _write_ a poem.  True genius consists in getting it by
+or from heart [_from_ Bret Harte, for instance], and repeating it.  This
+genius nature has denied to the illustrious poet before you--but not to
+me, as I will now illustrate by declaiming the 'Heathen Chinee.'"  Which
+performance was received with applause, in which Harte heartily joined.
+But my claim to possess genius would hardly have borne examination, for
+it was years before I ever learned "Hans Breitmann's Barty," nor would I
+like to risk even a pound to one hundred that I can do it now without
+mixing the verses or committing some error.
+
+Once during the season I went with my wife and Mr. W. W. Story to Eton,
+where we supped with Oscar Browning.  We were taken out boating on the
+river, and I enjoyed it very much.  There is a romance about the Thames
+associated with a thousand passages in literature which goes to the very
+heart.  I was much impressed by the marked character of Mr. Browning and
+his frank, genial nature; and I found some delightful old Latin books in
+his library.  May I meet with many such men!
+
+This year, what with the German war and the Trubner-Hotten controversy,
+my "Breitmann Ballads" had become, I may say, well known.  The character
+of Hans was actually brought into plays on three stages at once.
+Boucicault, whom I knew well of yore in America, introduced it into
+something.  I had found Ewan Colquhoun--the same old sixpence--and one
+night he took me to the Strand Theatre to see a play in which my hero was
+a prominent part.  I was told afterwards that the company having been
+informed of my presence, all came to look at me through the curtain-hole.
+There were some imitations of my ballads published in _Punch_ and the
+_Standard_, and the latter were so admirably executed--pardon the vain
+word!--that I feared, because they satirised the German cause, that they
+might be credited to me; therefore I wrote to the journal, begging that
+the author would give some indication that I had not written them, which
+was kindly done.  Finally, a newspaper was started called _Hans
+Breitmann_, and the Messrs. Cope, of Liverpool, issued a brand of Hans
+Breitmann cigars.  Owing to the resemblance between the words Bret and
+Breit there was a confusion of names, and my photograph was to be seen
+about town, with the name of Bret Harte attached to it.  This great
+injustice to Mr. Harte was not agreeable, and I, or my friends,
+remonstrated with the shop-folk with the to-be-expected result, "Yes-sir,
+yes-sir--very sorry, sir--we'll correct the mistake, sir!"  But I don't
+think it was ever corrected till the sale ceased.
+
+I was sometimes annoyed with many imitations of my poems by persons who
+knew no German, which were all attributed to me.  A very pious
+Presbyterian publication, in alluding to something of the kind, said that
+"Mr. Leland, _because he is the author of Bret Harte_, thinks himself
+justified in publishing any trash of this description."  I thought this a
+_very_ improper allusion for a clergyman, not to say libellous.  In fact,
+many people really believed that Bret Harte was a _nom de plume_ or the
+title of a poem.  And I may here say by the way that I never "wrote
+under" the pseudonym of Hans Breitmann in my life, nor called myself any
+such name at any time.  It is simply the name of one of many _books_
+which I have written.  An American once insisting to me that I _should_
+be called so from my work, I asked him if he would familiarly accost Mr.
+Lowell as "Josh Biglow."  If there is anything in the world which denotes
+a subordinate position in the social scale or defect in education, it is
+the passion to call men "out of their names," and never feel really
+acquainted with any one until he is termed Tom or Jack.  It is doubtless
+all very genial and jocose and sociable, but the man who shows a tendency
+to it should _not_ complain when his betters put him in a lower class or
+among the "lower orders."
+
+Once at a reception at George Boughton's, the artist, there was, as I
+heard, an elderly gentleman rushing about asking to see or be introduced
+to _Hart Bretmann_, whose works he declared he knew by heart, and with
+whom he was most anxious to become acquainted.  Whether he ever
+discovered this remarkable conglomerate I do not know.
+
+I once made the acquaintance of an American at the Langham Hotel who
+declared that I had made life a burden to him.  His name was H.
+Brightman, and being in business in New York, he never went to the Custom-
+House or Post-Office but what the clerks cried "Hans Brightman! of
+course.  Yes, we have read about you, sir--in history."
+
+But even in this London season I found more serious work to attend to
+than comic ballads or society.  Mr. Trubner was very anxious to have me
+write a pamphlet vindicating the claim of Germany to Alsace and Lorraine,
+and I offered to do it gladly, if he would provide all the historical
+data or material.  The result of this was the _brochure_ entitled
+"France, Alsace, and Lorraine," which had a great success.  It at once
+reappeared in America, and even in Spanish in South America.  The German
+Minister in London ordered six copies, and the _Times_ made the work,
+with all its facts and figures, into an editorial article, omitting, I
+regret to say, to mention the source whence it was derived; but this I
+forgive with all my heart, considering the good words which it has given
+me on other occasions.  For the object of the work was not at all to
+glorify the author, but to send home great truths at a very critical
+time; and the article in the _Times_, which was little else but my
+pamphlet condensed, caused a great sensation.  But the principal result
+from it was this: I had in the work discussed the idea, then urged by the
+French and their friends, that, to avoid driving France to "desperation,"
+very moderate terms should be accepted in order to conciliate.  For the
+French, as I observed in effect, will do their _very worst in any case_,
+and every possible extreme should be anticipated and assumed.  This same
+argument had previously been urged in my "Centralisation _versus_ States
+Rights."
+
+When Prince Bismarck conversed with the French Commissioners to arrange
+terms of peace, he met this argument of not driving the French to
+extremes with a phrase so closely like the one which I had used in my
+pamphlet, that neither Mr. Trubner nor several others hesitated to
+declare to me that it was beyond all question taken from it.  Bismarck
+had _certainly_ received the pamphlet, which had been recognised by the
+_Times_, and in many other quarters, as a more than ordinary paper, and
+Prince Bismarck, like all great diplomatists, _prend son bien ou il le
+trouve_.  In any case this remains true, that that which formed the
+settling argument of Germany, found at the time expression in my pamphlet
+and in the Chancellor's speech.
+
+We made soon after a visit to the Rev. Dean and Mrs. Carrington, in
+Bocking, Essex.  They had a fair daughter, Eva, then quite a girl, who
+has since become well known as a writer, and is now the Countess
+Cesaresco Martinengro--an Italian name, and not Romany-Gypsy, as its
+terminations would seem to indicate.  There is in the village of Bocking,
+at a corner, a curious and very large grotesque figure of oak, which was
+evidently in the time of Elizabeth a pilaster in some house-front.  My
+friend Edwards, who was wont to roam all over England in a mule-waggon
+etching and sketching, when in Bocking was informed by a rustic that this
+figure was the image of Harkiles (Hercules), a heathen god formerly
+worshipped in the old Catholic convent upon the hill, in the old times!
+
+From London we went in August, 1870, to Brighton, staying at first at the
+Albion Hotel.  There, under the influence of fresh sea-air, long walks
+and drives in all the country round, I began to feel better, yet it was
+not for many weeks that I fairly recovered.  A chemist named Phillips,
+who supplied me with bromide of potass, suggested to me, to his own loss,
+that I took a great deal too much.  I left it off altogether,
+substituting pale ale.  Finding this far better, I asked Mr. Phillips if
+he could not prepare for me _lupulin_, or the anodyne of hops.  He
+laughed, and said, "Do you find the result required in ale?"  I answered,
+"Yes."  "And do you like ale?"  "Yes."  "Then," he answered, "why don't
+you _drink_ ale?"  And I did, but before I took it up my very vitality
+seemed to be well-nigh exhausted with the bromide.
+
+Samuel Laing, M.P., the chairman of the Brighton Railway, had at that
+time a house in Brighton, with several sons and daughters, the latter of
+whom have all been very remarkable for beauty and accomplishments.  In
+this home there was a hospitality so profuse, so kind, so brilliant and
+refined, that I cannot really remember to have ever seen it equalled, and
+as we fully participated in it at all times in every form, I should feel
+that I had omitted the deepest claim to my gratitude if I did not here
+acknowledge it.  Mr. Laing was or is of a stock which deeply appealed to
+my sympathies, for he is the son of the famous translator of the
+_Heimskringla_, a great collection of Norse sagas, which I had read, and
+in which he himself somewhat aided.  Of late years, since he has retired
+from more active financial business, Mr. Laing has not merely turned his
+attention to literature; he has deservedly distinguished himself by
+translating, as I may say, into the clearest and most condensed or
+succinct and lucid English ever written, so as to be understood by the
+humblest mind, the doctrines of Darwin, Huxley, and the other leading
+scientific minds of the day.  Heine in his time received a great deal of
+credit for having thus acted as the flux and furnace by which the ore of
+German philosophy was smelted into pure gold for general circulation; but
+I, who have translated all that Heine wrote on this subject, declare that
+he was at such work as far inferior to Samuel Laing as a mere verbal
+description of a beautiful face is inferior to a first-class portrait.
+This family enters so largely into my reminiscences and experiences, that
+a chapter would hardly suffice to express all that I can recall of their
+hospitality for years, of the dinners, hunts, balls, excursions, and the
+many distinguished people whom I have met under their roof.  It is worth
+noting of Mr. Laing's daughters, that Mary, now Mrs. Kennard, is at the
+head of the sporting-novel writers; that the beautiful Cecilia, now Mrs.
+MacRae, was pronounced by G. H. Lewes, who was no mean judge, to be the
+first amateur pianiste in England; while the charming "Floy," or Mrs.
+Kennedy, is a very able painter.  With their two very pretty sisters,
+they formed in 1870 as brilliant, beautiful, and accomplished a quintette
+as England could have produced.
+
+One day Mr. Laing organised an excursion with a special train to Arundel
+Castle.  By myself at other times I found my way to Lewes and other
+places rich in legendary lore.  Of this latter I recall something worth
+telling.  Harold, the conquered Saxon king, had a son, and the conqueror
+William had a daughter, Gundrada.  The former became a Viking pirate, and
+in his old age a monk, and was buried in a church, now a Presbyterian
+chapel.  There his epitaph may be read in fine bold lettering, still
+distinct.  That man is dear to me.
+
+Gundrada married, died, and was buried in a church with a fine Norman
+tombstone over her remains.  The church was levelled with the ground, but
+the slab was preserved here and there about Lewes as a relic.  When the
+railway was built, about 1849, there was discovered, where the church had
+been, the bones of Gundrada and her husband in leaden coffins distinctly
+inscribed with their names.  A very beautiful Norman chapel was then
+built to receive the coffins, and over them is placed the original
+memorial in black marble.  There is also in Lewes an archaeological
+museum appropriately bestowed in an old Gothic tower.  All of which
+things did greatly solace me.  As did also the Norman or Gothic churches
+of Shoreham, Newport, the old manor of Rottingdean, and the marvellous
+Devil's Dyke, which was probably a Roman fort, and from which it is said
+that fifty towns or villages may be seen "far in the blue."
+
+One day I went with my wife and two ladies to visit the latter.  The
+living curiosity of the place was a famous old gypsy woman named Gentilla
+Cooper, a pure blood or real _Kalorat_ Romany.  I had already in America
+studied Pott's "Thesaurus of Gypsy Dialects," and picked up many phrases
+of the tongue from the works of Borrow, Simson, and others.  The old dame
+tackled us at once.  As soon as I could, I whispered in her ear an
+improvised rhyme:--
+
+      "The bashno and kani,
+      The rye and the rani,
+   Hav'd akai 'pre o boro lon pani."
+
+Which means that the cock and the hen, the gentleman and the lady, came
+hither across the great salt water.  The effect on the gypsy was
+startling; she fairly turned pale.  Hustling the ladies away to one side
+to see a beautiful view, she got me alone and hurriedly exclaimed,
+"_Rya_--master! _be_ you one of our people?" with much more.  We became
+very good friends, and this little incident had in time for me great
+results, and many strange experiences of gypsy life.
+
+There live in Brighton two ladies, Miss Horace Smith and her sister Rosa,
+who were and are well known in the cultured world.  They are daughters of
+Horace Smith, who, with his brother James, wrote the "Rejected
+Addresses."  Their reminiscences of distinguished men are extremely
+varied and interesting.  The elder sister possesses an album to which
+Thackeray contributed many verses and pen-sketches.  Their weekly
+receptions were very pleasant; at them might be seen most of the literary
+or social celebrities who came to Brighton.  A visit there was like
+living a chapter in a book of memoirs and reminiscences.  I have had, if
+it be only a quiet, and not very eventful or remarkable, at least a
+somewhat varied life, and the Laings and Smiths, with their surroundings,
+form two of its most interesting varieties.  I believe they never missed
+an opportunity to do us or any one a kindly act, to aid us to make
+congenial friends, or the like.  How many good people there really are in
+the world!
+
+Of these ladies the author of "Gossip of the Century" writes:--
+
+   "Horace Smith's two daughters are still living, and in Brighton.  Their
+   very pleasant house is frequented by the best and most interesting
+   kind of society, affording what may be called a _salon_, that rare
+   relic of ancient literary taste and cementer of literary intimacies--a
+   salon which the cultivated consider it a privilege to frequent, and
+   where these ladies receive with a grace and geniality which their
+   friends know how to appreciate.  It is much to be regretted that
+   gatherings of this description seem to be becoming rarer every year,
+   for as death disturbs them society seems to lack the spirit or the
+   good taste, or the ability, to replace them."
+
+Brighton is a very pleasant place, because it combines the advantages of
+a seaside resort with those of a clean and cheerful city.  Walking along
+the front, you have a brave outlook to the blue sea on one hand, and
+elegant shop-windows and fine hotels on the other.  A little back in the
+town on a hill is the fine old fifteenth-century church of St. Nicholas,
+in which there is perhaps the most curious carved Norman font in England;
+but all this is known to so few visitors, that I feel as if I were
+telling a great secret in letting it out.  Smith's book-store on the
+Western Road, and Bohn's near the station, are kept by very well-informed
+and very courteous men.  I have been much indebted to the former in many
+ways, and found by his aid many a greatly needed and rare work.
+
+When I first went to Brighton there was one evening a brilliant aurora
+borealis.  As I looked at it, I heard an Englishman say, to my great
+amazement, it was the first time he had ever seen one in his life!  I
+once saw one in America of such extraordinary brilliancy and duration,
+that it prolonged the daylight for half an hour or more, till I became
+amazed, and then found it was a Northern Light.  It lasted till sunrise
+in all its splendour.  I have taken down from Algonkin Indians several
+beautiful legends relating to them.  In one, the Milky Way is the girdle
+of a stupendous deity, and the Northern Lights the splendid gleams
+emitted by his ball when playing.  In another, the narrator describes him
+as clad in an ineffable glory of light, and in colours unknown on earth!
+
+And this reminds me further that I have just read in the newspapers of
+the death of Edwin Booth, who was born during the famous star shower of
+1833, which phenomenon I witnessed from beginning to end, and remember as
+if it were only yesterday.  Now, I was actually dreaming that I was in a
+room in which _cigars_ were flying about in every direction, when my
+father came and woke me and my brother Henry, to come and see an
+exceeding great marvel.  There were for a long time many thousands of
+stars at once in the sky, all shooting, as it were, or converging towards
+a centre.  They were not half so long as the meteors which we see; one or
+two had a crook or bend in the middle, _e.g._
+
+{The meteor pattern: p409.jpg}
+
+The next day I was almost alone at school in the glory of having seen it,
+for so few people were awake in sober Philadelphia at three in the
+morning that one of the newspapers ridiculed the whole story.
+
+I can distinctly recall that the next day, at Mr. Alcott's, I read
+through a very favourite work of mine, a translation of the German _Das
+Mahrchen ohne Ende_--"The Story without an End."
+
+All kinds of odd fish came to Brighton, floating here and there; but two
+of the very oddest were encountered by me in it on my last visit.  I was
+looking into a chemist's window, when two well-dressed and decidedly
+jolly feminines, one perhaps of thirty years, and the other much younger
+and quite pretty, paused by me, while the elder asked--
+
+"Are you looking for a hair-restorer?"
+
+"I am not, though I fear I need one much more than you do."
+
+"The search for a good hair-restorer," she replied in Italian, "is as
+vain as the search for happiness."
+
+"True," I answered in the same tongue, "and unless you have the happiness
+in you, or a beautiful head of hair like yours already growing on you,
+you will find neither."
+
+"What we _forget_," added the younger in Spanish, "is the best part of
+our happiness."
+
+"_Senorita_, _parece que no ha olvidado su Espanol_--The young lady
+appears not to have forgotten her Spanish--I replied.  (Mine is not very
+good.)
+
+"There is no use asking whether _you_ talk French," said the elder.
+"_Konnen Sie auch Deutsch sprechen_?"
+
+"_Ja wohl_!  Even worse than German itself," I answered.
+
+Just then there came up to us a gypsy girl whom I knew, with a basket of
+flowers, and asked me in Gypsy to buy some; but I said, "_Parraco pen_,
+_ja vri_, _mandy kams kek ruzhia kedivvus_"--Thank you, sister, no
+flowers to-day--and she darted away.
+
+"Did you understand _that_?" I inquired.
+
+"No; what was it?"
+
+"_Gitano_--gypsy."
+
+"But how in Heaven's name," cried the girl, "could she _know_ that _you_
+spoke Gitano?"
+
+"Because I am," I replied slowly and grimly, "the chief of all the
+gypsies in England, the _boro Romany rye_ and President of the Gypsy
+Society.  Subscription one pound per annum, which entitles you to receive
+the journal for one year, and includes postage.  Behold in me the gypsy
+king, whom all know and fear!  I shall be happy to put your names down as
+subscribers."
+
+At this appalling announcement, which sounded like an extract from a
+penny dreadful, my two romantic friends looked absolutely bewildered.
+They seemed as if they had read in novels how mysterious gypsy chiefs
+cast aside their cloaks, revealing themselves to astonished maidens, and
+as I had actually spoken Gitano to a gypsy in their hearing, it must be
+so.  They had come for wool with all their languages, poor little souls!
+and gone back shorn.  The elder said something about their having just
+come to Brighton for six hours' frolic, and so they departed.  They had
+had their spree.
+
+I have often wondered what under the sun they could have been.  Attaches
+of an opera company--ladies'-maids who had made the grand tour--who
+knows?  A mad world, my masters!
+
+I can recall of that first year, as of many since at Brighton, long
+breezy walks on the brow of the chalk cliffs, looking out at the blue sea
+white capped, or at the downs rolling inland to Newport, sometimes alone,
+at times in company.  On all this chalk the grass does not grow to more
+than an inch or so in length, and as the shortest, tenderest food is best
+for sheep, it is on this that they thrive--I believe by millions--yielding
+the famous South Downs mutton.  In or on this grass are incredible
+numbers of minute snails, which the sheep are said to devour; in fact, I
+do not see how they could eat the grass without taking them in, and these
+contribute to give the mutton its delicate flavour.  Snails are curious
+beings.  Being epicene, they conduct their wooings on the mutual give and
+take principle, which would save human beings a great deal of spasmodic
+flirtation, and abolish the whole _femme incomprise_ business, besides a
+great many bad novels, if we could adopt it.  When winter comes, half-a-
+dozen of them retire into a hole in a bank, connect themselves firmly
+into a loving band like a bunch of grapes by the tenderest ties, and stay
+there till spring.  Finally, in folk-lore the snail is an uncanny or
+demoniac being, because it has horns.  Its shell is an amulet, and the
+presentation of one by a lady to a gentleman is a very decided
+declaration of love, especially in Germany.  _Sed mittamus haec_.
+
+At this time, and for some time to come, I was engaged in collecting and
+correcting a book of poems of a more serious character than the
+"Breitmann Ballads."  This was "The Music Lesson of Confucius and other
+Poems."  Of which book I can say truly that it had a _succes d'estime_,
+though it had a very small sale.  There were in it ten or twelve ballads
+only which were adapted to singing, and _all_ of these were set to music
+by Carlo Pinsutti, Virginia Gabriel, or others.  There was in it a poem
+entitled "On Mount Meru."  In this the Creator is supposed to show the
+world when it was first made to Satan.  The adversary finds that all is
+fit and well, save "the being called Man," who seems to him to be the
+worst and most incongruous.  To which the Demiurgus replies that Man will
+in the end conquer all things, even the devil himself.  And at the last
+the demon lies dying at the feet of God, and confesses that "Man, thy
+creature hath vanquished me for ever--_Vicisti Galilaee_!"  Some years
+after I read a work by a French writer in which this same idea of God and
+the devil is curiously carried out and illustrated by the history of
+architecture.  And as in the case of the letter from Lord Lytton Bulwer,
+warm praise from other persons of high rank in the literary world and
+reviews, I had many proofs that these poems had made a favourable
+impression.  The only exception which I can recall was a very sarcastic
+review in the _Athenaeum_, in which the writer declared his belief that
+the poems or Legends of Perfumes in the book were originally written as
+advertisements of some barber or tradesman, and being by him rejected as
+worthless, had been thrown back on my hands!  Other works by me it
+treated kindly--so it goes in this world--like a recipe for a cement
+which I have just copied into my great work on "Mending and Repairing"--in
+which vinegar is combined with sugar.
+
+While at Brighton we met Louis Blanc, whom we had previously seen several
+times at the Trubners', in London.  In Brighton he heard the news of the
+overthrow of the Empire and departed for Paris.  At Christmas we went to
+London to visit the Trubners, and thence to the Langham Hotel, where we
+remained till July.  I recall very little of what I witnessed or did
+beyond seeing the Queen prorogue Parliament and translating Scheffel's
+_Gaudeamus_, a little volume of German humorous poems.  Scheffel, as I
+have before written, was an old _Mitkneipant_, or evening-beer companion
+of mine in Heidelberg.
+
+In July we made up a travelling party with Mrs. S. Laing and her
+daughters Cecilia and Floy, and departed for a visit to the Rhine--that
+is to say, these ladies preceded us, and we joined them at the Hotel des
+Quatre Saisons in Homburg.  It was a very brilliant season, for the
+German Emperor, fresh with the glory of his great victory, was being
+_feted_ everywhere, and Homburg the brilliant was not behind the German
+world in this respect.  I saw the great man frequently, near and far, and
+was much impressed with his appearance.  _Punch_ had not long before
+represented him as Hans Breitmann in a cartoon, deploring that he had not
+squeezed more milliards out of the French, and I indeed found in the
+original very closely my ideal of Hans, who always occurs to me as a
+German gentleman, who drinks, fights, and plunders, not as a mere rowdy,
+raised above his natural sphere, but as a rough cavalier.  And that the
+great-bearded giant Emperor Wilhelm did drink heavily, fight hard, and
+mulct France mightily, is matter of history.  This was the last year of
+the gaming-tables at Homburg.  Apropos of these, the roulette-table was
+placed in the Homburg Museum, where it may be seen amid many Roman
+relics.  Two or three years ago, while I was in the room, there came in a
+small party of English or Yankee looking or gazing tourists, to whom the
+attendant pointed out the roulette-table.  "And did the old Romans really
+play at roulette, and was _that_ one of their tables?" said the leader of
+the visitors.  This ready simple faith indicates the Englishman.  The
+ordinary American is always possessed with the conviction that everything
+antique is a forgery.  Once when I was examining the old Viking armour in
+the Museum of Copenhagen, a Yankee, in whose face a general vulgar
+distrust of all earthly things was strongly marked, came up to me and
+asked, "Do you believe that all these curiosities air _genooine_?"  "I
+certainly do," I replied.  With an intensely self-satisfied air he
+rejoined, "I guess you can't fool _me_ with no such humbug."
+
+There was a great deal of cholera that year in Germany, and I had a very
+severe attack of it either in an incipient form or something thereunto
+allied: suffice it to say that for twelve hours I almost thought I should
+die of pure pain.  I took in vain laudanum, cayenne pepper, brandy,
+camphor, and kino--nothing would remain.  At last, at midnight, when I
+was beginning to despair, or just as I felt like being wrecked, I
+succeeded in keeping a little weak laudanum and water on my stomach, and
+then the point was cleared.  After that I took the other remedies, and
+was soon well.  But it was a crisis of such fearful suffering that it all
+remains vividly impressed on my memory.  I do not know whether any
+sensible book has ever been written on the moral influence of pain, but
+it is certain that a wonderful one might be.  So far as I can understand
+it, I think that in the vast majority of cases it is an evil, or one of
+Nature's innumerable mistakes or divagations, not as yet outgrown or
+corrected; and it is the great error of Buddhistic-Christianity that it
+_accepts_ pain not merely as inevitable, but glorifies and increases it,
+instead of making every conceivable exertion to _diminish_ it.  Herein
+clearly lies the difference between Science and Religion.  Science
+strives in every way to alleviate pain and suffering; erroneous
+"Religion" is based on it.  During the Middle Ages, the Church did all in
+its power to hinder, if not destroy, the healing art.  It made anatomy of
+the human body a crime, and carried its precautions so far that, quite
+till the Reformation, the art of healing (as Paracelsus declares) was
+chiefly in the hands of witches and public executioners.  _Torturers_,
+chiefly clergymen such as Grillandus, were in great honour, while the
+healing leech was disreputable.  It was not, as people say, "the age"
+which caused all this--it was the result of religion based on crucifixion
+and martyrdoms and pain--in fact, on that element of _torture_ which we
+are elsewhere taught, most inconsistently, is the special province of the
+devil in hell.  The _cant_ of this still survives in Longfellow's "Suffer
+and be strong," and in the pious praise of endurance of pain.  What the
+world wants is the hope held out to it, or enforced on it as a religion
+or conviction, that pain and suffering are to be diminished, and that our
+chief duty should consist in diminishing them, instead of always praising
+or worshipping them as a cross!
+
+We left our friends and went for a short time to Switzerland, where we
+visited Lucerne, Interlaken, Basle, and Berne.  Thence we returned to
+London and the Langham Hotel.  This was at that time under the management
+of Mr. John Sanderson, an American, whom I had known of old.  He was a
+brother of Professor Sanderson, of Philadelphia, who wrote a remarkably
+clever work entitled _The American in Paris_.  John Sanderson himself had
+contributed many articles to Appletons' _Cyclopaedia_, belonged to the
+New York Century Club, and, like all the members of his family, had
+culture in music and literary taste.  While he managed the Langham it was
+crowded during all the year, as indeed any decent hotel almost anywhere
+may be by simple proper liberal management.  This is a subject which I
+have studied _au fond_, having read _Das Hotel wesen der Gegenwart_, a
+very remarkable work, and passed more than twenty years of my life in
+hotels in all countries.
+
+I can remember that during the first year of my residence in England I
+tried to persuade a chemist to import from South America the _coca_ leaf,
+of which not an ounce was then consumed in Europe.  Weston the walker
+brought it into fashion "later on."  I had heard extraordinary and
+authentic accounts of its enabling Indian messengers to run all day from
+a friend who had employed them.  Apropos of this, "I do recall a wondrous
+pleasant tale."  My cousin, Godfrey Davenport, a son of the Uncle Seth
+mentioned in my earlier life, owned what was regarded as the model
+plantation of Louisiana.  My brother Henry visited him one winter, and
+while there was kindly treated by a very genial, hospitable neighbouring
+planter, whom I afterwards met at my father's house in Philadelphia.  He
+was a good-looking, finely-formed man, lithe and active as a panther--the
+_replica_ of Albert Pike's "fine Arkansas gentleman."  And here I would
+fain disquisit on Pike, but type and time are pressing.  Well, this
+gentleman had one day a difference of opinion with another planter, who
+was, like himself, a great runner, and drawing his bowie knife, pursued
+him on the run, _twenty-two miles_, ere he "got" his victim.  The
+distance was subsequently measured and verified by the admiring
+neighbours, who put up posts in commemoration of such an unparalleled
+pedestrian feat.
+
+When I returned to Brighton, after getting into lodgings, I began to
+employ or amuse myself in novel fashion.  Old Gentilla Cooper, the gypsy,
+had an old brother named Matthias, a full-blood Romany, of whom all his
+people spoke as being very eccentric and wild, but who had all his life a
+fancy for picking up the old "Egyptian" tongue.  I engaged him to come to
+me two or three times a week, at half-a-crown a visit, to give me lessons
+in it.  As he had never lived in houses, and, like Regnar Lodbrog, had
+never slept under a fixed roof, unless when he had taken a nap in a
+tavern or stable, and finally, as his whole life had been utterly that of
+a gypsy in the roads, at fairs, or "by wood and wold as outlaws wont to
+do," I found him abundantly original and interesting.  And as on account
+of his eccentricity and amusing gifts he had always been welcome in every
+camp or tent, and was watchful withal and crafty, there was not a phase,
+hole, or corner of gypsy life or a member of the fraternity with which or
+whom he was not familiar.  I soon learned his jargon, with every kind of
+gypsy device, dodge, or peculiar custom, and, with the aid of several
+works, succeeded in drawing from the recesses of his memory an
+astonishing number of forgotten words.  Thus, to begin with, I read to
+him aloud the Turkish Gypsy Dictionary of Paspati.  When he remembered or
+recognised a word, or it recalled another, I wrote it down.  Then I went
+through the vocabularies of Liebrich, Pott, Simson, &c., and finally
+through Brice's Hindustani Dictionary and the great part of a much larger
+work, and one in Persian.  The reader may find most of the results of
+Matty's teaching in my work entitled "The English Gypsies and their
+Language."  Very often I went with my professor to visit the gypsies
+camped about Brighton, far or near, and certainly never failed to amuse
+myself and pick up many quaint observations.  In due time I passed to
+that singular state when I could never walk a mile or two in the country
+anywhere without meeting or making acquaintance with some wanderer on the
+highways, by use of my newly-acquired knowledge.  Thus, I needed only
+say, "Seen any of the Coopers or Bosvilles lately on the drum?" (road),
+or "Do you know Sam Smith?" &c., to be recognised as one of the grand
+army in some fashion.  Then it was widely rumoured that the Coopers had
+got a _rye_, or master, who spoke Romany, and was withal not ungenerous,
+so that in due time there was hardly a wanderer of gypsy kind in Southern
+England who had not heard of me.  And though there are thousands of
+people who are more thoroughly versed in Society than I am, I do not
+think there are many so much at home in such extremely _varied_ phases of
+it as I have been.  I have sat in a gypsy camp, like one of them, hearing
+all their little secrets and talking familiarly in Romany, and an hour
+after dined with distinguished people; and this life had many other
+variations, and they came daily for many years.  My gypsy experiences
+have not been so great as those of Francis H. Groome (once a pupil and
+_protege_ of Benfey), or the Grand Duke Josef of Hungary, or of Dr.
+Wlislocki, but next after these great masters, and as an all-round gypsy
+rye in many lands, I believe that I am not far behind any _aficionado_
+who has as yet manifested himself.
+
+To become intimate, as I did in time, during years in Brighton, off and
+on, with all the gypsies who roamed the south of England, to be beloved
+of the old fortune-tellers and the children and mothers as I was, and to
+be much in tents, involves a great deal of strangely picturesque rural
+life, night-scenes by firelight, in forests and by river-banks, and
+marvellously odd reminiscences of other days.  There was a gypsy child
+who knew me so well that the very first words she could speak were "_O
+'omany 'i_" (O Romany rye), to the great delight of her parents.
+
+After a little while I found that the _Romany_ element was spread
+strangely and mysteriously round about among the rural population in many
+ways.  I went one day with Francis H. Groome to Cobham Fair.  As I was
+about to enter a tavern, there stood near by three men whose faces and
+general appearance had nothing of the gypsy, but as I passed one said to
+the other so that I could hear--
+
+"_Dikk adovo rye_, _se o Romany rye_, _yuv_, _tacho_!"  (Look at that
+gentleman; he is a gypsy gentleman, sure!)
+
+I naturally turned my head hearing this, when he burst out laughing, and
+said--
+
+"I told you I'd make him look round."
+
+Once I was startled at hearing a well-dressed, I may say a gentlemanly-
+looking man, seated in a gig with a fine horse stopping by the road, say,
+as I passed with my wife--
+
+"_Dikk adovo gorgio adoi_!" (Look at that Gentile, of no-gypsy!)
+
+Not being accustomed to hear myself called a _gorgio_, I glanced up at
+him angrily, when he, perceiving that I understood him and was of the
+mysterious brotherhood, smiled, and touched his hat to me.  One touch of
+nature makes the whole world grin.
+
+But the drollest proposal ever made to me in serious earnest came from
+that indomitable incarnate old _gypssissimus Tsingarorum_, Matthew
+Cooper, who proposed that I should buy a donkey.  He knew where to get
+one for a pound, but 2 pounds 10s. would buy a "stunner."  He would
+borrow a small cart and a tent, and brown my face and hands so that I
+would be dark enough, and then on the _drum_--"over the hills."  As for
+all the expenses of the journey, I need not spend anything, for he could
+provide a neat nut-brown maid, who would not only do all our cooking, but
+earn money enough by fortune-telling to support us all.  I would be
+expected, however, to greatly aid by my superior knowledge of ladies and
+gentlemen; and so all would go merrily on, with unlimited bread and
+cheese, bacon and ale, and tobacco--into the blue away!
+
+I regret to say that Matthew expected to inherit the donkey.
+
+About this time, as all my friends went hunting once or twice a week, I
+determined to do the same.  Now, as I had never been a good rider, and
+had anything but an English seat in the saddle, I went to a riding-school
+and underwent a thorough course both on the pig-skin and bare-backed.  My
+teacher, Mr. Goodchild, said eventually of me that I was the only person
+whom he had ever known who had at my time of life learned to ride well.
+But to do this I gave my whole mind and soul to it; and Goodchild's
+standard, and still more that of his riding-master, who had been a
+captain in a cavalry regiment, was very high.  I used to feel quite as if
+I were a boy again, and one under pretty severe discipline at that, when
+the Captain was drilling me.  For his life he could not treat his pupils
+otherwise than as recruits.  "Sit up straighter, sir!  Do you call _that_
+sitting up?  _That's_ not the way to hold your arms!  Knees in!  Why,
+sir, when I was learning to ride I was made to put shillings between my
+knees and the side, and if I dropped one _I forfeited it_!"
+
+Then in due time came the meets, and the fox and hare hunting, during
+which I found my way, I believe, into every village or nook for twenty
+miles round.  By this time I had forgotten all my troubles, mental or
+physical, and after riding six or seven hours in a soft fog, would come
+home the picture of health.
+
+I remember that one very cold morning I was riding alone to the meet on a
+monstrous high black horse which Goodchild had bought specially for me,
+when I met two gypsy women, full blood, selling wares, among them woollen
+mittens--just what I wanted, for my hands were almost frozen in Paris
+kids.  The women did not know me, but I knew them by description, and
+great was the amazement of one when I addressed her by name and in
+Romany.
+
+"_Pen a mandy_, _Priscilla Cooper_, _sa buti me sosti del tute for adovo
+pustini vashtini_?"  (Tell me, Priscilla Cooper, how much should I give
+you for those woollen gloves?)
+
+"Eighteen pence, master."  The common price was ninepence.
+
+"I will _not_ give you eighteen pence," I replied.
+
+"Then how much _will_ you give, master?" asked Priscilla.
+
+"_Four shillings_ will I give, and not a penny less--_miri pen_--you may
+take it or leave it."
+
+I went off with the gloves, while the women roared out blessings in
+Romany.  There was something in the whole style of the gift, or the
+_manner_ of giving it, which was specially gratifying to gypsies, and the
+account thereof soon spread far and wide over the roads as a beautiful
+deed.
+
+The fraternity of the roads is a strange thing.  Once when I lived at
+Walton there was an old gypsy woman named Lizzie Buckland who often
+camped near us.  A good and winsome young lady named Lillie Doering had
+taken a liking to the old lady, and sent her a nice Christmas present of
+clothing, tea, &c., which was sent to me to give to the Egyptian mother.
+But when I went to seek her, she had flown over the hills and far away.
+It made no difference.  I walked on till I met a perfect stranger to me,
+a woman, but "evidently a traveller."  "Where is old Liz?" I asked.
+"Somewhere about four miles beyond Moulsey."  "I've got a present for
+her; are you going that way?"  "Not exactly, but I'll take it to her; a
+few miles don't signify."  I learned that it had gone from hand to hand
+and been safely delivered.  It seems a strange way to deliver valuables,
+to walk forth and give them to the first tramp whom you meet; but I knew
+my people.
+
+I may here say that during this and the previous winter I had practised
+wood-carving.  In which, as in studying Gypsy, I had certain ultimate
+aims, which were fully developed in later years.  I have several times
+observed in this record that when I get an idea I cherish it, think it
+over, and work it up.  Out of this wood-carving and _repousse_ and the
+designing which it involved I in time developed ideas which led to what I
+may fairly call a great result.
+
+We remained at Brighton until February, when we went to London and stayed
+at the Langham Hotel.  Then began the London life of visits, dinners, and
+for me, as usual, of literary work.  In those days I began to meet and
+know Professor E. H. Palmer, Walter Besant, Walter H. Pollock, and many
+other men of the time of whom I shall anon have more to say.  I arranged
+with Mr. Trubner as to the publication of "The English Gypsies."  I think
+it was at this time that I dined one evening at Sir Charles Dilke's,
+where a droll incident took place.  There was present a small Frenchman,
+to whom I had not been introduced, and whose name therefore I did not
+know.  After dinner in the smoking-room I turned over with this gentleman
+a very curious collection of the works of Blake, which were new to him.
+Finding that he evidently knew something about art, I explained to him
+that Blake was a very strange visionary--that he believed that the
+spirits of the dead appeared to him, and that he took their portraits.
+
+"_C'etait donc un fou_," remarked the Frenchman.
+
+"_Non_, Monsieur," I replied, "he was not a madman.  He was almost a
+genius.  Indeed, _c'etait un Dore manque_" (he was all but a Dore).
+
+There was a roar of laughter from all around, and I, innocently supposing
+that I had said something clever unawares, laughed too.
+
+After all had departed, and I was smoking alone with Sir Charles, he
+said--
+
+"Well, what did you think of Dore?"
+
+"Dore!" I replied astonished, "why, I never saw Dore in all my life."
+
+"That was Dore to whom you were talking," he answered.
+
+"Ah! well," was my answer, "then it is all right."
+
+I suppose that Dore believed that I knew at the time who he was.  Had he
+been aware that I did not know who he was, the compliment would have
+seemed much stronger.
+
+I have either been introduced to, conversed with, or been well acquainted
+at one time or another with Sir John Millais, Holman Hunt, the Rossettis,
+Frith, Whistler, Poynter, Du Maurier, Charles Keene, Boughton, Hodges,
+Tenniel (who set my motive of "Ping-Wing," as I may say, to music in a
+cartoon in _Punch_), the Hon. John Collier, Riviere, Walter Crane, and of
+course many more--or less--here and there in the club, or at receptions.
+Could I have then foreseen or imagined that I should ever become--albeit
+in a very humble grade--an artist myself, and that my works on design and
+the minor arts would form the principal portion of my writings and of my
+life's work, I should assuredly have made a greater specialty of such
+society.  But at this time I could hardly draw, save in very humble
+fashion indeed, and little dreamed that I should execute for expensive
+works illustrations which would be praised by my critics, as strangely
+happened to my "Gypsy Sorcery."  But we never know what may befall us.
+
+   "Oh, little did my mother think,
+      The day she cradled me,
+   The lands that I should travel in,
+      Or the sights that I should see;
+   Or gae rovin' about wi' gypsy carles,
+      And sic like companie."
+
+As the _Noctes_ varies it.  For it actually came to pass that a very well-
+known man of letters, while he, with the refined politeness
+characteristic of his style, spoke of mine as "rigmarole," still praised
+my pictures.
+
+In April we went to Leamington to pay a visit to a Mr. Field, where we
+also met his brother, my old friend Leonard Field, whom I had known in
+Paris in 1848.  During this, journey we visited Kenilworth, the town and
+castle of Warwick, Stratford-on-Avon, and all therewith connected.  At
+the Easter spring-tide, when primroses first flush by running waters, and
+there are many long bright sunny days in the land, while birdes' songs do
+ripple in the aire, it is good roaming or resting in such a country,
+among old castles, towers, and hamlets quaint and grey.  To him who can
+think and feel, it is like the reading of marvellously pleasant old
+books, some in Elizabethan type, some in earlier black letter, and
+hearing as we read sweet music and far-distant chimes.  And apropos of
+this, I would remark that while I was at Princeton an idea fixed itself
+so firmly in my mind that to this day I live on it and act on it.  It is
+this:--There is a certain stage to be reached in reading and reflection,
+especially if it be aided by broad aesthetic culture and science, when
+every landscape, event, or human being is or may be to us exactly the
+same as a _book_.  For everything in this world which can be understood
+and felt can be described, and whatever can be described may be written
+and printed.  For ordinary people, no ideas are distinct or concentrated
+or "literary" till they are in black and white; but the scholar or artist
+in words puts thoughts into as clear a form in his own mind.  Having
+deeply meditated on this idea for forty years, and been constantly
+occupied in realising it, I can say truly that I _often_ compose or think
+books or monographs which, though not translated into type, are as
+absolutely _literature_ to me as if they were.  There is so _much_ more
+in this than will at first strike most readers, that I can not help
+dwelling on it.  It once happened to me in Philadelphia, in 1850, to pass
+_all_ the year--in fact, nearly two years--"in dusky city pent," and
+during all that time I never got a glimpse of the country.  As a director
+of the Art Union, I was continually studying pictures, landscapes by
+great artists, and the like.  The second year, when I went up into
+Pennsylvania, I found that I had strangely developed what practically
+amounted to a kind of pseudophia.  Every fragment of rural scenery, every
+rustic "bit," every group of shrubs or weeds, everything, in fact, which
+recalled pictures, or which could itself be pictured, appeared to me to
+be a picture perfectly executed.  This lasted as a vivid or real
+perception for about a week, but the memory of it has been in my mind
+ever since.  It was not so much the beautiful in all Nature which I saw,
+as that in Nature which was within the power of the skilled artist to
+execute.  In like manner the practised reflector and writer reads books
+in everything to a degree which no other person can understand.
+Wordsworth attained this stage, and the object of the "Excursion" is to
+teach it.
+
+In the "Letters of James Smetham" there is a passage to the effect that
+he felt extremely happy among English hedgerows, and found inexhaustible
+delight in English birds, trees, flowers, hills, and brooks, but could
+not appreciate his little back-garden with a copper-beech, a weeping-ash,
+nailed-up rose trees, and twisting creepers.  After I had made a habit,
+till it became a passion, of seeking decorative motives, strange and
+novel curves--in short, began to detect the transcendent alphabet or
+written language of beauty and mystery in every plant whatever (of which
+the alphabet may be found in the works of Hulme), I found in every growth
+of every kind, yes, in every weed, enough to fill my soul with both art
+and poetry; I may say specially in weeds, since in them the wildest and
+most graceful motives are more abundant than in garden flowers.  Unto me
+_now_ anything that grows is, in simple truth, more than what any
+landscape once was.  This began in youth in much reading of, and long
+reflection on, the signatures, correspondences, and mystical fancies of
+the Paracelsian writers--especially of Gaffarel, of whom I have a Latin
+version by me as I write--and of late years I have carried its
+inspiration into decorative art.  I have said so much of this because, as
+this is an autobiography, I cannot omit from it something which, unseen
+in actions, still forms a predominant motive in my life.  It is something
+which, while it perfectly embraces _all_ landscaping or picture-making or
+dainty delicate cataloguing in poetry, _a la_ Morris at times, or like
+the Squyre of Lowe Degre, in detail, also involves a far more earnest
+feeling, and one which combines thought or _religion_ with emotion, just
+as a melody which we associate with a beautiful poem is worth more to us
+than one which we do not.  Burne Jones is a higher example of this.
+
+During this season we met at Mrs. Inwood Jones'--who was a niece of Lady
+Morgan and had many interesting souvenirs of her aunt--several people of
+note, among whom was Mme. Taglioni, now a very agreeable and graceful
+though naturally elderly lady.  I was charmed with her many reminiscences
+of well-known characters, and as I had seen her as well as Ellsler and
+all the great _ballerine_ many times, we had many conferences.  Somebody
+said to her one day, "So you know Mr. Leland?"  "Yes," replied Taglioni
+in jest, "he was one of my old lovers."  This was reported to me, when I
+said, "I wish she had told me that thirty years sooner."  In 1846
+Taglioni owned three palaces in Venice, one of them the Ca' d'oro, and in
+1872 she was giving lessons in London.  At Mrs. Frank Hill's I made the
+acquaintance of the marvellously clever Eugene Schuyler, and at Mr.
+Smalley's of the equally amazingly cheeky and gifted "Joaquin" Miller.
+Somewhere else I met several times another curious celebrity whom I had
+known in America, the Chevalier Wykoff.  Though he was almost the type
+and proverb of an adventurer, I confess that I always liked him.  He was
+gentlemanly and kind in his manner, and agreeable and intelligent in
+conversation.  Though he had been Fanny Ellsler's agent or secretary, and
+written those two curiously cool works, "Souvenirs of a Roving
+Diplomatist" (he had been employed by Palmerston) and "My Courtship and
+its Consequences" (in reference to his having been imprisoned in Italy
+for attempting to carry off an elderly heiress), he was also the author
+of a really admirable work on the political system of the United States,
+which any man may read to advantage.  A century ago or more he would have
+been a great man in his way.  He knew everybody.  I believe that as
+General Tevis formed his bold ideal of life from much reading of
+_condottieri_ or military adventurers, and Robert Hunt from Cooper's
+novels, so Wykoff got his inspiration for a career from studying and
+admiring the diplomatic _parvenus_ of Queen Anne's time.  These
+_Bohemiens de la haute volee_, who drew their first motives from study,
+are by far more interesting and tolerable than those of an illiterate
+type.
+
+One summer when I was at Bateman's, near Newport, with G. H. Boker,
+Robert Leroy, and our wives, Leroy reported one day that he had seen
+Wykoff, Hiram Fuller, a certain very dashing _prima donna_, and two other
+notorieties sitting side by side in a row on the steps of the Ocean
+House.  I remarked that if there had only been with them the devil and
+Lola Montez, the party would have been complete.  Leroy was famous for
+his quaint _mots_, in which he had a counterpart in "Tom Appleton," of
+Boston, whom I also knew very well.  The Appletoniana and Leroyalties
+which were current in the Sixties would make a lively book.
+
+I remember that one evening at a dinner at Trubner's in this year there
+were present M. Van der Weyer, G. H. Lewes, and M. Delepierre.  I have
+rarely heard so much good talk in the same time.  Thoughts so gay and
+flashes so refined, such a mingling of choice literature, brilliant
+anecdote, and happy jests, are seldom heard as I heard them.  _Tempi
+passati_!
+
+Apropos of George H. Boker and Leroy, I may here remark that they were
+both strikingly tall and _distingue_ men, but that when they dressed
+themselves for bass-fishing, and "put on mean attire," they seemed to be
+common fisher-folk.  One day, while fishing on the rocks, there came up
+the elegant _prima donna_ referred to, who, seeing that they had very
+fine lobsters, ordered them to be taken to the hotel for her.  "Can't do
+it, ma'am," answered Leroy brusquely; "we want them for bait."  The lady
+swept away indignantly.  To her succeeded Ralph Waldo Emerson, who did
+not know them personally, and who began to put to Mr. Boker questions as
+to his earnings and his manner of life, to all of which Mr. Boker replied
+with great _naivete_.  Mr. B., however, had on his pole a silver reel,
+which had cost 30 pounds ($150), and at last Mr. Emerson's eye rested on
+that, and word no more spoke he, but, with a smile and bowing very
+politely, went his road.  _Ultimam dixit salutem_.
+
+One evening I was sitting in the smoking-room of the Langham Hotel, when
+an American said to me, "I hear that Charles Leland, who wrote
+'Breitmann,' is staying here."  "Yes, that is true," I replied.  "Could
+you point him out to me?" asked the stranger.  "I will do so with
+pleasure--in fact, if you will tell me your name, I think I can manage to
+introduce you."  The American was very grateful for this, and asked when
+it would be.  "_Now_ is the time," I said, "for I am he."  On another
+occasion another stranger told me, that having heard that Mr. Leland was
+in the smoking-room, he had come in to see him, and asked me to point him
+out.  I pointed to myself, at which he was much astonished, and then,
+apologetically and half ashamed, said, "Who do you really suppose, of all
+the men here present, I had settled on as being you?"  I could not
+conjecture, when he pointed to a great broom-bearded, broad-shouldered,
+jovial, intemperate, German-looking man, and said, "There!  I thought
+that must be the author of 'Hans Brietmann.'"  Which suggested to me the
+idea, "Does the public, then, generally believe that poets look like
+their heroes?"  One can indeed imagine Longfellow as Poor Henry of the
+"Golden Legend," but few would expect to find the counterpart of Biglow
+in a Lowell.  And yet this belief or instinct is in every case a _great_
+compliment, for it testifies that there is that in the poem which is
+inspired by Nature and originality, and that it is not all mere art-work
+or artificial.  And it is true that by some strange law, name, body, and
+soul generally do preserve some kind of unity in the realm of literature.
+There has never been, as yet, a really great Gubbins or Podgers in
+poetry, or Boggs in romance; and if literature has its Hogg, let it be
+remembered that the wild boar in all Northern sagas and chronicles, like
+the Eber in Germany, or the Wolf, was a name of pride and honour, as seen
+in Eberstein.  The Whistler of St. Leonard's is one of the most eccentric
+and original of Scott's characters, and the Whistler of St. Luke's, or
+the patron saint of painting, is in no respect deficient in these noble
+qualifications.  The Seven Whistlers who fly unseen by night, ever piping
+a wild nocturne, are the most uncanny of birds, while there is, to my
+mind, something absolutely grotesquely awful (as in many of "Dreadful
+Jemmy's" pictures) in the narration that in ancient days the immense army
+of the Mexican Indians marched forth to battle all whistling in
+unison--probably a symphony in blood-colour.  Fancy half a million of
+Whistlers on the war-path, about to do battle to the death with as many
+Ruskins--I mean red-skins!  _Nomen est omen_.
+
+One of the most charming persons whom I ever met in my life was the Hon.
+Mrs. Caroline Norton, and one of the most delightful dinners at which my
+wife and I were ever present was at her house.  As I had been familiar
+with her poems from my boyhood, I was astonished to find her still so
+beautiful and young--if my memory does not deceive me, I thought her far
+younger looking than myself.  I owe her this compliment, for I can recall
+her speaking with great admiration of Mrs. Leland to Lord Houghton and
+"Bulwer."
+
+Mrs. Norton had not only a graceful, fascinating expression of figure and
+motion, but narrated everything so well as to cast a peculiar life and
+interest into the most trifling anecdote.  I remember one of the latter.
+
+"Lord Houghton," she said, "calls you, Mr. Leland, the poet of jargons."
+(He indeed introduced me to all his guests once by this term.)  "Jargon
+is a confusion of language, and I have a maid who lives in a jargon of
+ideas--as to values.  The other day she broke to utter ruin an antique
+vase"--(I do not accurately recall what the object was)--"which cost four
+hundred pounds, and when I said that it was such a grief to me to lose
+it, she replied, while weeping, 'Oh, do not mind it, my lady; _I'll_ buy
+you just such another,' as if it were worth tenpence."
+
+Mrs. Norton had marvellously beautiful and expressive eyes, such as one
+seldom meets thrice in a life.  As a harp well played inspires tears or
+the impulse to dance, so her glances conveyed, almost in the same
+instant, deep emotion and exquisite merriment.  I remember that she was
+much amused with some of my American jests and reminiscences, and was
+always prompt to respond, _eodem genere_.  So nightingale the wodewale
+answereth.
+
+During this season in London I met Thomas Carlyle.  Our mutual friend,
+Moncure Conway, had arranged that I should call on the great writer at
+the house of the latter in Chelsea.  I went there at about eleven in the
+morning, and when Mr. Carlyle entered the room I was amazed--I may say
+almost awed--by something which was altogether unexpected, and this was
+his _extraordinary_ likeness to my late father.  A slight resemblance to
+Carlyle may be seen in my own profile, but had he been with my father,
+the pair might have passed for twins; and in iron-grey grimness and the
+never-to-be-convinced expression of the eyes they were identity itself.
+
+I can only remember that for the first twenty or thirty minutes Mr.
+Carlyle talked such a lot of skimble-skamble stuff and rubbish, which
+sounded like the very _debris_ and lees of his "Latter-Day Pamphlets,"
+that I began to suspect that he was quizzing me, or that this was the
+manner in which he ladled out Carlyleism to visitors who came to be
+Carlyled and acted unto.  It struck me as if Mr. Tennyson, bored with
+lion-hunting guests, had begun to repeat his poetry to them out of sheer
+sarcasm, or as if he felt, "Well, you've come to _see_ and _hear_ me--a
+poet--so take your poetry, and be d---d to you!"  However, it may be I
+felt a coming wrath, and the Socratic demon or gypsy _dook_, which often
+rises in me on such occasions, and never deceives me, gave me a strong
+premonition that there was to be, if not an exemplary row, at least a
+lively incident which was to put a snapped end to this humbugging.
+
+It came thus.  All at once Mr. Carlyle abruptly asked me, in a manner or
+with an intonation which sounded to me almost semi-contemptuous, "And
+what kind of an American may you be?"  (I _think_ he said "will you be?")
+"German, or Irish, or what?"
+
+To which I replied, not over amiably:--
+
+"Since it interests you, Mr. Carlyle, to know the origin of my family, I
+may say that I am descended from Henry Leland, whom the tradition
+declares to have been a noted Puritan, and active in the politics of his
+time,' and who went to America in 1636."
+
+To this Mr. Carlyle replied:--
+
+"I doubt whether any of your family have since been equal to your old
+Puritan great-grandfather" (or "done anything to equal your old Puritan
+grandfather").  With this something to the effect that we had done
+nothing in America since Cromwell's Revolution, equal to it in importance
+or of any importance.
+
+Then a great rage came over me, and I remember _very_ distinctly that
+there flashed through my mind in a second the reflection, "Now, if I have
+to call you a d---d old fool for saying that, I _will_; but I'll be even
+with you."  When as quickly the following inspiration came, which I
+uttered, and I suspect somewhat energetically:--
+
+"Mr. Carlyle, I think that my brother, Henry Leland, who got the wound
+from which he died standing by my side in the war of the rebellion,
+fighting against slavery, was worth ten of my old Puritan ancestors; at
+least, he died in a ten times better cause.  And" (here my old "Indian"
+was up and I let it out) "allow me to say, Mr. Carlyle, that I think that
+in all matters of historical criticism you are principally influenced by
+the merely melodramatic and theatrical."
+
+Here Mr. Carlyle, looking utterly amazed and startled, though not at all
+angry, said, for the first time, in broad Scotch--
+
+"Whot's _thot_ ye say?"
+
+"I say, Mr. Carlyle," I exclaimed with rising wrath, "that I consider
+that in all historical judgments you are influenced only by the
+melodramatic and theatrical."
+
+A grim smile as of admiration came over the stern old face.  Whether he
+really felt the justice of the hit I know not, but he was evidently
+pleased at the manner in which it was delivered, and it was with a deeply
+reflective and not displeased air that he replied, still in Scotch--
+
+"Na, na, I'm nae _thot_."
+
+It was the terrier who had ferociously attacked the lion, and the lion
+was charmed.  From that instant he was courteous, companionable, and
+affable, and talked as if we had been long acquainted, and as if he liked
+me.  It occurred to me that the resemblance of Carlyle to my father
+during the row was appalling, the difference being that my father _never_
+gave in.  It would have been an awful sight to see and a sound to hear if
+the two could have "discussed" some subject on which they were equally
+informed--say the American tariff or slavery.
+
+After a while Mr. Froude the historian came in, and we all went out
+together for a walk in the Park.  Pausing on the bridge, Mr. Carlyle
+called my attention to the very rural English character of a part of the
+scenery in the distance, where a church-spire rises over ranges of tree-
+tops.  I observed that the smoke of a gypsy fire and a tent by a hedge
+was all that was needed.  Then we began to talk about gypsies, and I told
+Mr. Carlyle that I could talk Romany, and ran on with some reminiscences,
+whereat, as I now recall, though I did not note it then, his amusement at
+or interest in me seemed to be much increased, as if I had unexpectedly
+turned out to be something a little out of the ordinary line of tourist
+interviewers; and truly in those days Romany ryes were not so common as
+they now are.  Then Mr. Carlyle himself told a story, how his father--if
+I remember rightly--had once lent a large sum to or trusted a gypsy in
+some extraordinary manner.  It befell in after days that the lender was
+himself in sore straits, when the gypsy took him by night to a hut, and
+digging up or lifting the _hard-stane_ or hearth-stone, took out a bag of
+guineas, which he transferred to his benefactor.
+
+We parted, and this was the only time I ever conversed with Mr. Carlyle,
+though I saw him subsequently on more than one occasion.  He sent word
+specially by Mr. Conway to me that he would be pleased to have me call
+again; but "once bitten twice shy," and I had not so much enjoyed my call
+as to wish to repeat it.  But I believe that what Mr. Carlyle absolutely
+needed above all things on earth was somebody to put on the gloves with
+him metaphorically about once a day, and give and take a few thumping
+blows; nor do I believe that he would have shrunk from a tussle _a la
+Choctaw_, with biting, gouging, tomahawk and scalper, for he had an
+uncommonly _dour_ look about the eyes, and must have been a magnificent
+fighter when once roused.  But though I had not his vast genius nor wit,
+I had the great advantage of having often had very severe differences
+with my father, who was, I believe, as much Carlyled by Nature as Carlyle
+himself, if not more so, whereas it is morally impossible that the Sage
+of Chelsea could ever have found any one like himself to train under.  But
+to Carlyle people in conversation requires constant practice with a
+master--_consuetudine quotidiana cum aliquo congredi_--and he had for so
+long a time knocked everybody down without meeting the least resistance,
+that victory had palled upon him, and he had, so to speak, "vinegared" on
+himself.  With somebody to "sass him back," Carlyle would have been cured
+of the dyspepsia, and have lived twenty years longer.
+
+Carlyle's was and ever will be one of the greatest names in English
+literature, and it is very amusing to observe how the gossip-makers, who
+judge of genius by tittle-tattle and petty personal defects, have
+condemned him _in toto_ because he was not an angel to a dame who was
+certainly a bit of a _diablesse_.  Thus I find in a late very popular
+collection the remark that--
+
+"It is curious to note in the 'Life and Correspondence of Lord Houghton'
+the high estimation in which Carlyle was held by him.  His regard and
+admiration cannot but seem exaggerated, now that we know so much of the
+Chelsea philosopher's real character."
+
+This is _quite_ the moral old lady, who used to think that Raphael was a
+good painter "till she read all about that nasty Fornarina."
+
+There was another hard old character with whom I became acquainted in
+those days, and one who, though not a Carlyle, still, like him, exercised
+in a peculiar way a great influence on English literature.  This was
+George Borrow.  I was in the habit of reading a great deal in the British
+Museum, where he also came, and there I was introduced to him.
+
+He was busy with a venerable-looking volume in old Irish and made the
+remark to me that he did not believe there was a man living who could
+read old Irish with ease (which I now observe to myself was "fished" out
+of Sir W. Betham).  We discussed several gypsy words and phrases.  I met
+him in the same place several times.  He was a tall, large, fine-looking
+man, who must have been handsome in his youth.  I knew at the time in
+London a Mr. Kerrison, who had been as a very young man, probably in the
+Twenties, very intimate with Borrow.  He told me that one night Borrow
+acted very wildly, whooping and vociferating so as to cause the police to
+follow him, and after a long run led them to the edge of the Thames, "and
+there they thought they had him."  But he plunged boldly into the water
+and swam in his clothes to the opposite shore, and so escaped.
+
+   "For he fled o'er to t'other side,
+      And so they could not find him;
+   He swam across the flowing tide,
+      And never looked behind him."
+
+About this time (1826?) George Borrow published a small book of poems
+which is now extremely rare.  I have a copy of it.  In it there is a
+lyric in which, with his usual effrontery, he describes a very clever,
+tall, handsome, accomplished man, who knows many languages and who can
+drink a pint of rum, ending with the remark that he himself was this
+admirable person.  As Heine was in England at this time, it is not
+improbable that he met with this poem; but in any case, there is a
+resemblance between it and one of his own in the _Buch der Lieder_, which
+runs thus:--
+
+   "Brave man, he got me the food I ate,
+   His kindness and care I can never forget,
+   Yet I cannot kiss him, though other folk can,
+   For I myself am this excellent man!"
+
+It came to pass that after a while I wrote my book on "The English
+Gypsies and their Language," and sent a note to Mr. Borrow in which I
+asked permission to dedicate it to him.  I sent it to the care of Mr.
+Murray, who subsequently assured me that Mr. Borrow had actually received
+it.  Now Mr. Borrow had written thirty years before some sketches and
+fragments on the same subject, which would, I am very certain, have
+remained unpublished to this day but for me.  He received my note on
+Saturday--never answered it--and on Monday morning advertised in all the
+journals his own forthcoming work on the same subject.
+
+Now, what is sincere truth is, that when I learned this I laughed.  I
+thought very little of my own work, and if Mr. Borrow had only told me
+that it was in the way of his I would have withdrawn it at once, and that
+with right goodwill, for I had so great a respect for the Nestor of
+gypsyism that I would have been very glad to have gratified him with such
+a small sacrifice.  But it was not in him to suspect or imagine so much
+common decency in any human heart, and so he craftily, and to my great
+delight and satisfaction, "got ahead" of me.  For, to tell the truth of
+truth, I was pleased to my soul that I had caused him to make and publish
+the work.
+
+I have said too hastily that it was written thirty years before.  What I
+believe is, that Mr. Borrow had by him a vocabulary, and a few loose
+sketches, which he pitchforked together, but that the book itself was
+made and cemented into one with additions for the first time after he
+received my note.  He was not, take him altogether, over-scrupulous.  Sir
+Patrick Colquhoun told me that once when he was at Constantinople, Mr.
+Borrow came there, and gave it out that he was a marvellous Oriental
+scholar.  But there was great scepticism on this subject at the Legation,
+and one day at the _table-d'hote_, where the great writer and divers
+young diplomatists dined, two who were seated on either side of Borrow
+began to talk in Arabic, speaking to him, the result being that he was
+obliged to confess that he not only did not understand what they were
+saying, but did not even know what the language was.  Then he was tried
+in Modern Greek, with the same result.  The truth was that he knew a
+great deal, but did all in his power to make the world believe it was far
+more--like the African king, or the English prime minister, who, the
+longer his shirts were made, insisted on having the higher collars, until
+the former trailed on the ground and the latter rose above the top of his
+head--"when they came home from the wash!"
+
+What I admire in Borrow to such a degree that before it his faults or
+failings seem very trifling, is his absolutely vigorous, marvellously
+varied originality, based on direct familiarity with Nature, but guided
+and cultured by the study of natural, simple writers, such as Defoe and
+Smollett.  I think that the "interest" in or rather sympathy for gypsies,
+in his case as in mine, came not from their being curious or dramatic
+beings, but because they are so much a part of free life, of out-of-doors
+Nature; so associated with sheltered nooks among rocks and trees, the
+hedgerow and birds, river-sides, and wild roads.  Borrow's heart was
+large and true as regarded English rural life; there was a place in it
+for everything which was of the open air and freshly beautiful.  He was
+not a view-hunter of "bits," trained according to Ruskin and the
+_deliberate_ word-painting of a thousand novels and Victorian picturesque
+poems; but he often brings us nearer to Nature than they do, not by
+photography, but by casually letting fall a word or trait, by which we
+realise not only her form but her soul.  Herein he was like Washington
+Irving, who gives us the impression of a writer who was deeply inspired
+with calm sweet sunny views of Nature, yet in whose writings literal
+description is so rarely introduced, that it is a marvel how much the
+single buttercup lights up the landscape for a quarter of a mile, when a
+thousand would produce no effect whatever.  This may have possibly been
+art in Irving--art of the most subtle kind--but in Borrow it was
+instinct, and hardly intentional.  In this respect he was superior even
+to Whitman.
+
+And here I would say, apropos of Carlyle, Tennyson, Irving, Borrow,
+Whitman, and some others whom I have met, that with such men in only one
+or two interviews, one covers more ground and establishes more intimacy
+than with the great majority of folk whom we meet and converse with
+hundreds of times.  Which fact has been set forth by Wieland in his work
+on Democritus or the Abderites so ingeniously, as people expressed it a
+century ago, or so cleverly, as we now say, or so sympathetically, as an
+Italian would say, that my pen fails to utter the thoughts which arise in
+me compared to what he has written.
+
+When the summer came, or on the 1st of August, we started on a grand tour
+about England.  First we went to Salisbury.  I was deeply interested in
+the Cathedral there, because it is possibly the only great Gothic
+structure of the kind in Europe which was completed in a single style
+during a single reign.  Stonehenge was to me even more remarkable,
+because it is more mysterious.  Its stupendous barbarism or archaic
+character, involving a whole lost cycle of ideas, contrasts so strangely
+with the advanced architectural skill displayed in the cutting and
+fitting of the vast blocks, that the whole seems to be a mighty paradox.
+This was the work of many thousands of men--of very well directed labour
+under the supervision of architects who could draw and measure skilfully
+with a grand sense of _proportion_ or symmetry, who had, however, not
+attained to ornament--a thing without parallel in humanity.  This is
+absolutely bewildering, as is the utter want of all indication as to its
+real purpose.  The old British tradition that the stones were brought by
+magic from Africa, coupled with what Sir John Lubbock and others declare
+as to similar remains on the North African coast, suggest something, but
+what that was remains to be discovered.  Men have, however, developed
+great works of the massive and simple order in poetry, as well as in
+architecture.  The Nibelungen Lied is a Stonehenge.  There are in it only
+one or two similes or decorations.  "Simplicity is its sole ornament."
+
+From Salisbury we went to Wells.  The cathedrals of England form the
+pages of a vast work in which there is written the history of a paradox
+or enigma as marvellous as that of Stonehenge; and it is this--that the
+farther back we go, even into a really barbarous age, almost to the time
+when Roman culture had died and the mediaeval had not begun, the more
+exquisite are the proportions of buildings, the higher their tone, and,
+as in the case of Early and Decorated English, the more beautiful their
+ornament.  That is to say, that exactly in the time when, according to
+all our modern teaching and ideas, there should have been _no_
+architectural art, it was most admirably developed, while, on the
+contrary, in this end of the nineteenth century, when theory, criticism,
+learning, and science abound, it is in its lowest and most depraved
+state, its highest flights aiming at nothing better than cheap imitation
+of old examples.  The age which produced the Romanesque architecture,
+whether in northern Italy, along the Rhine as the Lombard, or in France
+and England as Norman, was extremely barbarous, bloody, and illiterate;
+and yet in the noblest and grandest conceptions of architectural art it
+surpassed all the genius of this our time as the sun surpasses a star.
+While we _know_ that man has advanced, it still remains true that the
+history of architecture alone for the past thousand years indicates a
+steady retrogression and decay in art, and this constitutes the
+stupendous paradox to which I have alluded.  But Milton has fully
+explained to us that when the devils in hell built the first great temple
+or palace--Pandemonium--they achieved the greatest work of architecture
+ever seen!
+
+York Cathedral made on me a hundred times deeper and more sympathetic
+impression than St. Peter's of Rome.  There is a grandeur of unity and a
+sense of a single cultus in it which the Renaissance never reached in
+anything.  Even from the days of Orcagna there is an element of mixed
+motives and incoherence in the best of Italian architecture and
+sculpture.  It requires colour to effect that which Norman or Gothic art
+could produce more grandly and impressively with _shade_ alone.  It is
+the difference between a garden and a forest.  This is shown in the
+glorious mediaeval _grisaille_ windows, in which such art proves its
+absolute perfection.  While I was looking at these in rapt admiration, an
+American friend who did not lack a certain degree of culture asked me if
+I did not find in them a great want of colour!
+
+I made in York the acquaintance of a youth named Carr, son of a former
+high sheriff, who, by the way, showed us very great hospitality whenever
+we visited the city.  This young man had read Labarthe and other writers
+on archaeology, and was enthusiastic in finding relics of the olden time.
+He took me into a great many private houses.  I visited every church, and
+indeed saw far more than do the great majority of even the most inquiring
+visitors.  The Shambles was then and is still perhaps one of the most
+curious specimens of a small mediaeval street in the world.  I felt as if
+I could pass a life in the museum and churches, and I did, in fact, years
+after, remain there, very busy, for three weeks, sketching innumerable
+corbels, gargoyles, goblins, arches, weather-worn saints and sinners.  And
+in the Cathedral I found the original of the maid in the garden a-hanging
+out the clothes.  She is a fair sinner, and the blackbird is a demon
+volatile, who, having lighted on her shoulder, snaps her by the nose to
+get her soul.  The motive often occurs in Gothic sculpture.
+
+We may trace it back--_vide_ the "Pharaohs, Fellahs, and Explorers" of
+Amelia B. Edwards (whom I have also met at an Oriental Congress)--to
+Roman Harpies and the Egyptian _Ba_, depicted in the "Book of the Dead"
+or the "Egyptian Bible."
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+Footnotes:
+
+
+{1}  As I was very desirous of learning more about this celebrated
+fireplace, I inserted a request in the _Public Ledger_ for information
+regarding it, which elicited the following from some one to me unknown,
+to whom I now return thanks:--
+
+   "MR. CITY-EDITOR OF THE _Public Ledger_,--In your edition of this
+   date, I notice a communication headed 'To Local Antiquarians.'  Without
+   any well-founded pretensions to the designation 'Antiquarian,' as I
+   get older I still take a great interest in the early history of our
+   beloved city.  I remember _distinctly_ the fact, but not the date, of
+   reading a description of the 'mantelpiece.'  It was of wood,
+   handsomely carved on the pillars, and under the shelf, and on the
+   centre between the pillars, was the following quaint and witty
+   _hieroglyphic_ inscription:--
+
+   When the grate is M. T. put:
+   When it is . putting:
+
+   which is a little puzzling at first sight, but readily translated by
+   converting the punctuation points into written words.
+
+   SENIOR.
+
+   "_Frankford_, _May 24_, _1892_."
+
+I can add to this, that the chimney-piece was originally made for wood-
+fires, and that long after a grate was set in and the inscription added.
+
+{13}  Also given as Delaund or Dellaund in one copy.  De Quincey was
+proud of his descent from De la Laund.  I may here say that John Leyland,
+who is a painstaking and conscientious antiquarian and accomplished
+genealogist, has been much impressed with the extraordinary similarity of
+disposition, tastes, and pursuits which has characterised the Lelands for
+centuries.  Any stranger knowing us would think that he and I were nearly
+related.  It is told of the manor of Leyland that during the early Middle
+Ages it was attempted to build a church there in a certain place, but
+every morning the stones were found to be removed.  Finally, it was
+completed, but the next dawn beheld the whole edifice removed to the
+other spot, while a spirit-voice was heard to call (one account says that
+the words were found on a mystic scroll):
+
+   "Here shall itt bee,
+   And here shall itt stande;
+   And this shall bee called:
+   Ye Churche of Leyland."
+
+{16}  A similar incident is recorded in _Kenelm Chillingly_.  I had long
+before the publication of the work conversed with Lord Lytton on the
+subject--which is also touched on in my _Sketch-Book of Meister Karl_, of
+which the illustrious author had a copy.
+
+{56}  Since writing the foregoing, and by a most appropriately odd
+coincidence or mere chance, I have received with delight a copy of this
+work from Jesse Jaggard, a well-known dealer in literary curiosities in
+Liverpool, who makes a specialty of _hunting up_ rarities to order, which
+is of itself a quaint business.  The book is entitled "Curiosities for
+the Ingenious, Selected from the Most Authentic Treasures of Nature,
+Science and Art, Biography, History, and General Literature.  London:
+Thomas Boys, Ludgate Hill, 1821."  Boys was the publisher of the
+celebrated series of "The Percy Anecdotes."  I should here, in justice to
+Mr. Jaggard, mention that I am indebted to him for obtaining for me
+several rare and singular works, and that his catalogues are remarkably
+well edited.
+
+{98}  May I be pardoned for here mentioning that Mr. Symonds, not long
+before his death, wrote a letter to one of our mutual friends, in which
+he spoke "most enthusiastically" of my work on "Etruscan Roman Traditions
+in Popular Tradition."  "For that alone would I have writ the book."
+
+{101}  "Susan Cushman was extremely pretty, but was not particularly
+gifted; in personal appearance she was altogether unlike Charlotte; . . .
+the latter was a large, tall woman" ("Gossip of the Century," vol. ii.).
+John Du Solle took me for the first time to see Charlotte Cushman, and
+then asked me what I thought she looked like.  And I replied, "A bull in
+black silk."
+
+{156}  He was the real head, and the most sensible, of that vast array of
+wild antiquaries, among whom are Faber, Godfrey Higgins, Inman, Bryant,
+and several score more whom I in my youth adored and devoured with a
+delight surpassing words.
+
+{225}  (Here I forgot myself--this occurred in New York.)
+
+{237}  Herzen once sent me a complete collection of all his books.
+
+{242}  Abraham Lincoln once remarked of the people who wanted
+emancipation, but who did not like to be called Abolitionists, that they
+reminded him of the Irishman who had signed a temperance pledge and did
+not like to break it, yet who sadly wanted a "drink."  So going to an
+apothecary he asked for a glass of soda-water, adding, "an', docther
+dear, if yees could put a little whisky into it _unbeknownst_ to me, I'd
+be much obliged to yees."  I believe that I may say that as Mr. Lincoln
+read all which I published (as I was well assured), I was the apothecary
+here referred to, who administered the whisky of Abolition disguised in
+the soda-water of Emancipation.
+
+{252}  Chapman Biddle himself was a very remarkable man as a lawyer, and
+a person of marked refinement and culture.  He became my friend in after
+years, as did his son Walter.  Both are now departed.  I wrote and
+publicly read an "In Memoriam" address and poem on his death, in
+delivering which I had great pains to refrain from weeping, which was
+startling to me, not being habitually expressive of emotion.
+
+{266a}  In reference to "heaving out" by main force, cannon from some
+deep slough, perhaps of stiff clay, which holds like glue, or, what I
+think far more wearisome, urging them along for miles over the heaviest
+roads or broken ways, when the poor exhausted mules have almost given
+out.  Though, as he says, he was only nineteen and seemed very fragile,
+the indomitable pluck and perseverance of Gilder in all such trials were
+such as to call special commendation from my brother Henry, who was not
+habitually wasteful of praise.
+
+{266b}  "Well do I remember" also what accursed work it was, the ground
+consisting chiefly of broken stone, and how a number of Paddies, who were
+accustomed to such labour, assembled above and around us to enjoy the
+unusual sight of "jontlemen" digging like "canawlers," and how I, while
+at my spade, excited their hilarity and delight by casting at them scraps
+of "ould Eerish," or Irish.  The fight of the section here alluded to
+was, I believe, rather of the nature of an improvised rencontre, albeit
+two or three rebels were killed in the artillery duel.  Corporal
+Penington was, I believe, as usual, the inspiring Mephistopheles of the
+affair.
+
+{267}  This reply, which is much better in every respect than that of
+"The old guard dies but never yields," was made in the face of far more
+overwhelming numbers, and has few parallels for sheer audacity, all
+things considered, in the history of modern warfare.  It passed into a
+very widely-spread popular _mot_ in America.  It is more than an _on
+dit_, for I was nearly within ear-shot when it was uttered, and it was
+promptly repeated to me.  Yet, if my memory serves me right, there is
+something like this, "Come and take it!" recorded in the early Tuscan
+wars in Villari's introduction to the "Life of Machiavelli," translated
+by his accomplished wife.  I have, as I write this note, just had the
+pleasure of meeting with the Minister and Madame Villari at a dinner at
+Senator Comparetti's in Florence, which is perhaps the reason why I
+recall the precedent.  And I may also recall as a noteworthy incident,
+that at this dinner Professor Milani, the great Etruscologist and head of
+the Archaeological Museum, congratulated me very much on having been the
+first and only person who ever discovered an old Etruscan word still
+living in the traditions of the people--_i.e._, _Intial_, the Spirit of
+the Haunting Shadow.  This is a little discursive--_mais je prends mon
+bien ou je le trouve_, and it is all autobiographic!  "It is all turkey,"
+as the wolf said when he ate the claws.
+
+The proposal of General Smith to resist with us alone the tremendous
+maddened rush of half of Lee's veterans has its re-echo in my ballad,
+where Breitmann attempts with his Bummers to stem the great army of the
+South.  The result would have probably been the same--that is, we should
+have been "gobbled up."  But he would have undoubtedly tried it without
+misgiving.  I have elsewhere narrated my only interview with him.
+
+{268}  The thunder of the artillery at Gettysburg was indeed something to
+be long and well remembered.  It was so awful that on the field wild
+rabbits, appalled by the sound, ran to the gunners and soldiers and tried
+to take refuge in their bosoms.  Those who have only heard cannon fired
+singly, or a single discharge of cannon, can have no conception of what
+such sounds when long sustained are like.
+
+{274}  Apropos of Olcott he did good and noble work in the war, in the
+field, and also out of it as a Government detective, and I am very far
+from being ashamed to say that I aided him more than once in the latter
+capacity.  There was a lady in Philadelphia who availed herself of a
+distinguished position in society so as to go and come from Richmond and
+act as spy and carry letters between rebel agents.  I knew this and told
+Olcott of it, who put a stop to her treason.  I also learned that a
+rascally contractor had defrauded Government with adulterated chemicals.
+Olcott had him heavily fined.
+
+{309}  The reader may find some interesting references to Robert Hunt in
+the Introduction by me to the _Life of James Beckwourth_, the famous
+chief of the Crow Indians.  London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1893.
+
+{333}  "CUSTER was the life and soul of the greatest hand-to-hand victory
+ever gained over the Indians of the Plains--except Patsy Connor's Bear
+River Fight."--_The Masked Venus_, by RICHARD HENRY SAVAGE.
+
+{334}  Miss Owen is well known to all folk-lorists as the first living
+authority on _Voodoo_.
+
+{346}  I am revising this MS. in the beautiful palazzo built for Ristori,
+22 Lung Arno Nuovo, Florence.  It is now the Pensione Pellini.  On the
+ground floor are statues representing Ristori in different parts.
+
+{349}  Scallawag, from the Gaelic _scallag_, a vagabond.--_D.
+MacRitchie_.
+
+{372}  For _depuisse-quand_, _vide_ Paul de Kock.
+
+{373}  On due reflection, I believe that I have here had a slip of
+memory.  I was not till after a year, when returning from Italy, that
+these incidents occurred.  But as it is all strictly true in every
+detail, I let it remain, as of little consequence.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MEMOIRS***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 22030.txt or 22030.zip *******
+
+
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/2/0/3/22030
+
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://www.gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit:
+http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+