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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/22030-h.zip b/22030-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..acae435 --- /dev/null +++ b/22030-h.zip diff --git a/22030-h/22030-h.htm b/22030-h/22030-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d386300 --- /dev/null +++ b/22030-h/22030-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,17459 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>Memoirs</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4 { + text-align: left; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + TD { vertical-align: top; } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .pagenum {position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: smaller; + text-align: right; + color: gray;} + + .citation {vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: none;} + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<h2> +<a href="#startoftext">Memoirs, by Charles Godfrey Leland</a> +</h2> +<pre> +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*** +</pre> +<p><a name="startoftext"></a></p> +<p>Transcribed from the 1894 London William Heinemann edition by +David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/p0b.jpg"> +<img alt="Charles G. Leland" src="images/p0s.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<h1>MEMOIRS</h1> +<p style="text-align: center">BY<br /> +CHARLES GODFREY LELAND<br /> +(<span class="smcap">hans breitmann</span>)</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><i>WITH PORTRAIT</i></p> +<p style="text-align: center">Second Edition</p> +<p style="text-align: center">LONDON<br /> +WILLIAM HEINEMANN<br /> +1894<br /> +[<i>All rights reserved</i>]</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><!-- page ii--><a +name="pageii"></a><span class="pagenum">p. ii</span><i>FIRST +EDITION</i> (<i>2 Volumes</i>), <i>October</i> 1893.</p> +<h2><!-- page iii--><a name="pageiii"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. iii</span>PREFACE.</h2> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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, <i>everything</i> which I could remember +<!-- page iv--><a name="pageiv"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +iv</span>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 <i>any</i> 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>seen</i> 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.”</p> +<p>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 <i>ung livre de bonne foye</i>. So it +has gone forth into print. <i>Jacta est alea</i>.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page v--><a +name="pagev"></a><span class="pagenum">p. v</span>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 <i>witches</i> 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Continental +Magazine</i>, 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 <!-- page +vi--><a name="pagevi"></a><span class="pagenum">p. vi</span>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.</p> +<p>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 +<i>Causeries de Lundi</i> of Sainte-Beuve. Nowadays we have +good gossipy reminiscences of <i>other</i> people, in which the +writer remains as unseen as the operator of a Punch exhibition in +his <i>schwassel</i> box, while he displays his puppets. I +find no fault with this—<i>à chacun sa +manière</i>. But it is very natural under such +influences that men whose own lives are full of and inspired with +their <i>own</i> deeds will not write them on the model of +Benvenuto Cellini. One of the greatest generals of modern +<!-- page vii--><a name="pagevii"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +vii</span>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 “<i>Me +voici</i>, <i>mes enfants</i>! 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 <i>something</i> about +himself; but it is a great and very popular <i>tour de force</i> +to quite avoid doing this, and all art of late years has run to +merely skilfully overcoming difficulties and avoiding interesting +<i>motives</i> 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—</p> +<blockquote><p>“When they sat with ghosts on a stormy +shore,<br /> +And spoke in a tongue which men speak no more;<br /> +Living in wild and wondrous ways,<br /> +In the ancient giant and goblin days.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Once in my younger time, one of the most beautiful and +intellectual women whom I ever knew, Madame Anita de +Barréra—(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 <!-- page viii--><a name="pageviii"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. viii</span>a <i>grey hair</i> 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.”</p> +<p>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 <i>thousands</i> of +men who have <i>far</i> 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 <i>fortes ante +Agamemnon</i>—“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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- +page ix--><a name="pageix"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +ix</span>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>one thing +steadily in view all the time</i>, 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.</p> +<p>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 +<i>gentile ed insistence premúra</i>, 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 <!-- page x--><a name="pagex"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. x</span>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.</p> +<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Charles Godfrey +Leland</span>.</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Bagni di Lucca</span>, <span +class="smcap">Italy</span>, <i>August 20</i>, <i>1893</i>.</p> +<h2><!-- page 1--><a name="page1"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +1</span>I. EARLY LIFE. 1824-1837.</h2> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 mediæval, 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. <a name="citation1"></a><a href="#footnote1" +class="citation">[1]</a></p> +<p><!-- page 2--><a name="page2"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +2</span>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 +<i>belle humeur</i>, of whom there are stories still current in +Washington.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 +<i>protégée</i> 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 <!-- page 3--><a name="page3"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 3</span>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p><!-- page 4--><a name="page4"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +4</span>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 +<i>strega</i> or sorceress (my nurse was reputed to be one), and +the child thus initiated will become deep in darksome lore, an +adept in <i>occulta</i>, and a scholar. If I have not +turned out to be all of this <i>in majoribus</i>, it was not the +fault of my nurse.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 5--><a +name="page5"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 5</span>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 <i>Le Sieur +Enguerrand</i>, and the refrain was “<i>Oh ma bonne +j’ai tant peur</i>.”</p> +<p>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 <i>Athenæum</i> (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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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, <!-- page 6--><a name="page6"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 6</span>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 +Æsop’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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>In regard to Franklin and his apparition, there was a +schoolboy joke to this effect: that <i>whenever</i> the statue of +<!-- page 7--><a name="page7"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +7</span>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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, <i>mocos</i> 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Voodoo</i> still prevailed +<!-- page 8--><a name="page8"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +8</span>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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 9--><a +name="page9"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 9</span>“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 <i>der dicke Georg</i> +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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>The house is gone, but it is endeared to me by a very <!-- +page 10--><a name="page10"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +10</span>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!</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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:</p> +<blockquote><p>“<i>Tra-la-la-la-la-la-loo</i>.<br /> +Le-mon-ice-cream!<br /> +An’-wanilla-too!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p><!-- page 11--><a name="page11"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +11</span>Also the quaint old Hominy-man:</p> +<blockquote><p>“De Hominy man is on his way,<br /> + Frum de Navy-Yard!<br /> + Wid his harmony!”</p> +<p>(Spoken) “Law bess de putty eyes ob de young lady! +Hominy’s good fur de young ladies!</p> +<p>“De Harmony man is on his way,” &c.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Also, “Hot-corn!” +“Pepper-pot!” “Be-au-ti-ful Clams!” +with the “Sweep-oh” cry, and charcoal and muffin +bells.</p> +<p>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 <i>won’t</i>.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<blockquote><p>“In Adam’s fall<br /> +We sin-nèd all.”</p> +<p><!-- page 12--><a name="page12"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +12</span>“My book and heart<br /> +Shall never part,” &c.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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 +<i>dead</i> before that of <i>alive</i>, 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.</p> +<p>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 +<i>bric-à-brac</i> 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 <i>Flos +Grammaticorum</i>, 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>four hundred years</i> there has not been a generation in +which <!-- page 13--><a name="page13"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 13</span>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.</p> +<p>There is a De la Laund in the roll of Battle Abbey, <a +name="citation13"></a><a href="#footnote13" +class="citation">[13]</a> but John says our progenitor was <i>De +Bussli</i>, 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 +<i>complete</i> 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 <!-- page 14--><a name="page14"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 14</span>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 <i>Cui debeo</i>, +<i>fidus</i>. 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 Kyffhäuser, 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 +Kyffhäuser. 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. <i>Dii faxint</i>!</p> +<p>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 <!-- +page 15--><a name="page15"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +15</span>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”—</p> +<blockquote><p> “Charley Buff<br /> + Had money enough,<br /> +And locked it in his store;<br /> + Charley die<br /> + And shut his eye,<br /> +And never saw money no more.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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 <i>tune</i>; and even in this prose which I now write there is +ever and anon a <i>cadence</i> 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.</p> +<p>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. <!-- +page 16--><a name="page16"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +16</span>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 <i>history</i> really meant <i>his</i> 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.</p> +<p>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 +<i>Myself</i>—I myself <i>I</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 <i>coma</i> by reflecting on the ego-ism of the +I, or the me-ness of the Me. <a name="citation16"></a><a +href="#footnote16" class="citation">[16]</a> It often +recurred to me in after years when studying Schelling and <!-- +page 17--><a name="page17"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +17</span>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 <i>was</i> +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.</p> +<p>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 <i>coarseness</i> which is so +invariably allied to meanness, lying, and dishonesty. I had +about 2000 children in the <i>public schools</i> of Philadelphia +pass under my teaching, and never <!-- page 18--><a +name="page18"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 18</span>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 <i>not</i> (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.</p> +<p>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 +<!-- page 19--><a name="page19"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +19</span>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.</p> +<p>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. <i>Tempi +passati</i>—“’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 +<i>jeune encore</i>, but had with her a young English gentleman +relative who <i>would</i> call her “Mamma!” which we +thought rather <i>niais</i>. 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>ad infinitum</i>.</p> +<p>My cousin Caroline, whom I remember as very beautiful and +refined, with a <i>distinguée</i> manner, had a small +work-box, <!-- page 20--><a name="page20"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 20</span>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. <i>Now</i> 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:—</p> +<blockquote><p>‘“Ladies in furs and gemmen in +spurs,<br /> + Who lollop and lounge all day;<br /> +The Bazaar in Soho is completely the go,<br /> + Walk into the shop of Grimaldi.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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 <i>dwelt</i> 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 <i>earnestly</i> and +get it by heart. This I did to a great extent, as my +reminiscences continually awakened in England prove.</p> +<p>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 +<!-- page 21--><a name="page21"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +21</span>named Fairbanks, who were very peculiar indeed, and +their peculiarity consisted in a strange devotion to the past, +and above all to old <i>English</i> 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.</p> +<p>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 +<i>kept the sword</i> 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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- +page 22--><a name="page22"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +22</span>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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!</p> +<p>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 <!-- page +23--><a name="page23"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +23</span>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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—<i>apropos</i> 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.</p> +<p><!-- page 24--><a name="page24"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +24</span>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.</p> +<p>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. <i>Mais où sont +les neiges d’antan</i>, or the ducats of Panurge?</p> +<p>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—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Deep from their vaults the Loxian murmurs +flow.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>And there was something very voice-like or human in this <!-- +page 25--><a name="page25"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +25</span>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 <i>Un +à games-suk</i>—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 +<i>protégé</i>, 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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 <!-- page 26--><a name="page26"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 26</span>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.</p> +<p>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 +<i>Mährchen</i> 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 <i>pantheism</i> 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 +<i>rechauffé</i> of Ruskin and Browning—<i>secundem +ordinem</i>—for I observe <!-- page 27--><a +name="page27"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 27</span>that those +who do not think at second hand are growing rare.</p> +<p>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 <i>Bell’s Life</i>, +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 <i>dour</i> +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.</p> +<p>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>i.e.</i>, not a Hollander) doctor, +who had a reputation as a sorcerer or wizard. <!-- page +28--><a name="page28"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 28</span>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.</p> +<p>Once I had a wonderful dream. I thought that I was in +Dr. Furness’s chapel, but that, instead of the gentle +reverend <!-- page 29--><a name="page29"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 29</span>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>I must have been about seven years old when my parents <!-- +page 30--><a name="page30"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +30</span>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>i.e.</i>, 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 +<i>weak</i>, in Quakerism is fully summed up. Like the +Roman Catholic, it is utterly unfit for <i>all</i> 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>will</i> 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 <!-- page 31--><a +name="page31"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 31</span>as much vain +and desperate effort on my part to remember, wasted on my early +arithmetic. Now I can see that by <i>rewards</i> 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!</p> +<p>But there was one class at Jacob’s in which I was +<i>facile-princeps</i> and habitual past-grand-master. This +was the class which was, like the professorship of Diogenes +Teufelsdröckh, 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 <i>peasant</i> as “a nest full of +young birds;” the fact being that I recalled a picture in +Æsop’s fables, and confused <i>peasant</i> with +<i>pheasant</i>. One day Jacob rebuked the class for +letting me <!-- page 32--><a name="page32"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 32</span>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 +<i>host</i> 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 +<i>host</i>, 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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 33--><a +name="page33"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 33</span>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 <i>rariora</i> +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 <i>and how he +obtained them</i>?” 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 <i>old</i> 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, +<i>they did not cost him much</i>.”</p> +<p>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 +<i>very</i> greatly changed.</p> +<p>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, <!-- page +34--><a name="page34"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 34</span>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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, <!-- page +35--><a name="page35"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 35</span>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>pea-ak</i> 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 <!-- page +36--><a name="page36"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +36</span>“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, “<i>Chacun péche à sa +manière</i>.” 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.</p> +<p>In the spring of the year there was joyous activity on the +Delaware, even in town; for, as the song hath it—</p> +<blockquote><p>“De fishin’ time hab come at last,<br +/> +De winter all am gone and past;”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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 <!-- page 37--><a +name="page37"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 37</span>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 <i>nose</i> 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.</p> +<p>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?”</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 38--><a +name="page38"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 38</span>the +kind. I am not arguing here in the least against scientific +or properly arranged archæologic collections, but to +declare the truth that for <i>children</i> museums of the +despised curiosities are far more attractive and infinitely more +useful.</p> +<p>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; <i>that</i> was the museum for us, and the +time will come when there will be such collections made expressly +for the young.</p> +<p>“Stuffed monkey” was a common by-word, by the way, +for a conceited fellow. Therefore the <i>Louisville +Journal</i>, speaking of a rival sheet, said: “Reader, if +you will go into the Louisville Museum, you will see two stuffed +monkeys reading the <i>Courier</i>. And if you will then go +into the office of the <i>Louisville Courier</i>, 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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 39--><a +name="page39"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 39</span>awaited me; +the grim hyæna 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>New Monthly</i>) 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 <!-- page 40--><a name="page40"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 40</span>can still repeat a great part of +it. I bore it in mind till in after years it inspired +(allied to Goethe’s <i>Wassermädchen</i>) my ballad of +<i>De Maiden mit Nodings on</i>, which has, as I now write, been +very recently parodied and pictured by <i>Punch</i>, 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>bateau</i> 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 <i>mêlée</i> 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 +<i>à l’outrance</i> 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.</p> +<p>There were, of course, some odd episodes among the infantry or +gunners on foot, and one of these was so well <!-- page 41--><a +name="page41"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 41</span>described by +my brother Henry in a poem, that I venture to give it place.</p> +<h3>REED-BIRDING.</h3> +<blockquote><p>Two men and a bull-dog ugly,<br /> + Two guns and a terrier lame;<br /> +They’d better stick out in the marsh there,<br /> + And set themselves up for game.</p> +<p>But no; I mark by the cocking<br /> + Of that red-haired Paddy’s eye,<br /> +He’s been “reeding” too much for you, sir,<br +/> + Any such game to try.</p> +<p>“Now, Jamie, ye divil, kape dark there,<br /> + And hould the big bull-dog in;<br /> +There’s a bloody big crowd of rade-birds,<br /> + That nade a pepperin’!”</p> +<p><i>Ker-rack</i>! goes the single barrel,<br /> + <i>Flip-boong</i>! roars the old Queen Anne;<br /> +There’s a Paddy stretched out in the mud-hole,<br /> + A kicked-over, knocked-down man.</p> +<p>“Och, Jamie, ye shtupid crature,<br /> + Sure ye’re the divil’s son;<br /> +How many fingers’ load, thin,<br /> + Did ye putt in this d---d ould gun?”</p> +<p>“How many fingers, be jabers?<br /> + I nivir putt in a wan;<br /> +Did ye think I’d be afther jammin’<br /> + Me fingers into a gun?”</p> +<p>“Well, give me the powder, Jamie.”<br /> + “The powder! as sure as I’m born,<br /> +I put it all into yer musket,<br /> + For I’d nivir a powder-horn!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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, <i>salon la saison</i>—for both bear and deer +roamed wild within fifty or sixty miles—so that, all things +considered, if Philadelphians, <!-- page 42--><a +name="page42"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 42</span>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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, <!-- page 43--><a name="page43"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 43</span>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>startling</i> 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:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“He that supper for is dight,<br /> +He lies full cold I trow this night;<br /> +Yestreen to chamber I him led,<br /> +This nighte Grey Steel has made his bed.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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 +<!-- page 44--><a name="page44"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +44</span>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 <i>letres blake</i>, 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!</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“And still wider.” In 1887 I passed some +weeks at a hotel in Venice. A number of Italian naval +officers dined at our <i>table-d’hôte</i> 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 <!-- page +45--><a name="page45"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 45</span>so +much which I have read <i>not</i> to a good memory, such as the +mathematician has, which grasps <i>directly</i>, but simply to +frequent reading and mental reviewing or revising. Where +there has been none of this, I forgot everything in a short +time.</p> +<p>My father took in those years <i>Blackwood’s</i> and the +<i>New Monthly Magazine</i>, 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:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“In Craven Street, Strand, four attorneys +find place,<br /> +And four dark coal-barges are moored at the base;<br /> +Fly, Honesty, fly—seek some safer retreat,<br /> +For there’s craft on the river, and craft in the +street.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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.</p> +<p>The <i>Noctes Ambrosianæ</i> puzzled me, as did the +Bible, but I read, read, read, <i>toujours</i>. 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 <i>literary</i> 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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 46--><a name="page46"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 46</span>epigrams of many eminent +writers. I found it a few years after at a boarding-school, +where I continually read it as before.</p> +<p>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 +<i>ideal</i> 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 <!-- page 47--><a +name="page47"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 47</span>took them in +and seriously thought them over. Yet I cannot say that I +<i>really</i> 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>all</i> 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 <i>what</i> a +<i>mélange</i> I have written, he would not wonder at +it.</p> +<p>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</p> +<blockquote><p><!-- page 48--><a name="page48"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 48</span>“Over the barren desert of +their brains<br /> +There never strayed the starved camel of an idea,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>and whose works vanish like wind.</p> +<p>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. “<i>Le style</i>, +<i>c’est l’esprit du siècle</i>.” +Apropos of which I remarked that in the warlike Middle Age in +France the motto might have been “<i>L’homme +c’est le</i> <span class="smcap">steel</span>.” +Then came the age of wigs, when the cry was, +“<i>L’homme c’est le</i> <span +class="smcap">style</span>.” And now we are in the +swindling and bogus-company-promoting age, when it might be +proclaimed that “<i>L’homme c’est le</i> <span +class="smcap">steal</span>.”</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 49--><a name="page49"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 49</span>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.</p> +<p>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 +<!-- page 50--><a name="page50"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +50</span>made forthwith, he aiding and revising it. What +was most remarkable was that many of these <i>pièces de +manufacture</i> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>I was to go the next summer to New England with my younger +brother, Henry Perry Leland, to be placed in the <!-- page +51--><a name="page51"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +51</span>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p><!-- page 52--><a name="page52"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +52</span>I was <i>not</i>, however, a little prig who bored +people with my reading, for I have heard old folk say that there +was a quaint <i>naïveté</i> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<h3><!-- page 53--><a name="page53"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +53</span>AT SCHOOL IN NEW ENGLAND.</h3> +<p>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 <span +class="smcap">Greene</span> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p><!-- page 54--><a name="page54"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +54</span>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>bon vivant</i> 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.</p> +<p><!-- page 55--><a name="page55"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +55</span>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 mediæval and +black-letter literature and occult philosophy, which was destined +to manifest itself within a few years.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 56--><a +name="page56"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 56</span>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. <a +name="citation56"></a><a href="#footnote56" +class="citation">[56]</a> 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 <!-- page +57--><a name="page57"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 57</span>in +Paris, and that in 1848 he introduced to the <i>Gouvernement +Provisoire</i> the American delegation, of which I was one, and +how we were caricatured in the <i>Charivari</i>, 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 +<i>Fliegende Blätter</i> and twice in the Paris +<i>Charivari</i>, 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 Hüte 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 <i>Fliegende +Blätter</i> the scene was well depicted, with the +words. The other instance was this. One evening I met +in a <i>Bierhalle</i> a sergeant of police with whom I +fraternised. I remember that he could talk modern Greek, +having learned it in Greece. This was very <i>infra +dig.</i> 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 +<i>lieutenant of police in my ward</i>, and I have squared it +with him all right, so that if there should be a +<i>Bierkrawall</i> (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’ +<i>kneipe</i>, and soon appeared, very well illustrated, in the +“<i>F. B</i>.”</p> +<p>We were allowed sixpence a week spending-money at Mr. <!-- +page 58--><a name="page58"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +58</span>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>reflected on</i>, +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 <i>Life</i> is to understand every cause which created it, and +as mine was to a very unusual degree created by reading and +<i>reflecting</i>, even in infancy, I beg the reader not to be +impatient with me for describing so much in detail the <!-- page +59--><a name="page59"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 59</span>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 <i>every</i> +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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page +60--><a name="page60"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 60</span>other +not a <i>vestage</i> remains.” I found the letter by +chance many years later.</p> +<p>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 <i>faith</i>, 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.</p> +<p>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:</p> +<blockquote><p>“As a long-bearded Sultan, an infidel +Turk,<br /> +Who ne’er in his life had done any work,<br /> +Rode along to the bath, he saw Hassan the black,<br /> +With two monstrous water-skins high on his back.</p> +<p><!-- page 61--><a name="page61"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +61</span>“‘Ho, Hassan, thou afreet! thou infidel +dog!<br /> +Thou son of a Jewess and eater of hog!<br /> +This instant, this second, put down thy skin jugs,<br /> +And for my sovereign pleasure remove both the plugs!’</p> +<p>“The negro obeyed him, put both on the ground,<br /> +And opened the skins and the water flew round;<br /> +The Sultan looked on till he laughèd his fill;<br /> +Then went on to the bath, feeling heated and ill.</p> +<p>“When arrived at the bath, ‘Is all ready?’ +he cries.<br /> +‘Indeed it is not, sire,’ the bath-man replies;<br /> +‘For to fetch the bath-water black Hassan has gone,<br /> +And your highness can’t have it till he shall +return.’”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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 +<i>cursing</i>. This must have come to me by revelation; +and in after years in Cairo I never heard a native address +another as “<i>Afrit</i>! +<i>Ya-hinzeer</i>—<i>wa Yahud</i>—<i>yin uldeen +ak</i>?”—“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 <i>book</i>, it +reminds me that I specially recall my <i>reviewing</i> it +mentally many times.</p> +<p>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 <i>can</i> +make myself intelligible, is that what between the deep and +indelible <!-- page 62--><a name="page62"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 62</span>impression made on my mind by +<i>books</i>, 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 <i>written</i> 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 +<i>reading</i>, really become fixed literature to us, glide into +it, and are virtually turned to copy, which only awaits +type. Thus a <i>scene</i> 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.</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 63--><a name="page63"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 63</span>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>mimesis</i> 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—</p> +<blockquote><p>“And he died like a true Yankee sailor at +last,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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, <!-- +page 64--><a name="page64"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +64</span>such as I had never seen in my life, and we returned to +the hotel and a grand supper, and I was in heaven.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<h2><!-- page 65--><a name="page65"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +65</span>II. BOYHOOD AND YOUTH. 1837-1845.</h2> +<p>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—François +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 Böhme—Stonington—Captain Nat Palmer and +Commodore Vanderbilt—My graduation.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page +66--><a name="page66"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 66</span>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 <i>joyousness</i> +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 <!-- page 67--><a +name="page67"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 67</span>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>trottoir</i> 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, +<!-- page 68--><a name="page68"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +68</span>were altogether and perfectly acts of generosity and +goodness. The simple truth of which is that a <i>gush</i>, +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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Life in London</i>, 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 <!-- page 69--><a +name="page69"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 69</span>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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:—</p> +<p><!-- page 70--><a name="page70"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +70</span>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 +. . .</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- +page 71--><a name="page71"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +71</span>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>cor cordium</i> by much repetition and +reflection.</p> +<p>Mr. Hunt in time put me up to a great deal of very valuable or +curious <i>belletristic</i> 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—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Blackberry Alley, now Duponceau Street,<br +/> +A rose by any name will smell as sweet”—</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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 Tourtelôt. 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—</p> +<blockquote><p>“On Springfield mountains there did +dwell,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>with much more quaint rural New England lore.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page +72--><a name="page72"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +72</span>Indian stone relics and old American silver coins, for +he had been in his way an antiquarian. <i>Bon sang ne peut +mentir</i>. 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>raconteur</i>, +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.</p> +<p>So I passed on to my fourteenth year, which was destined <!-- +page 73--><a name="page73"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +73</span>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 <i>Littell’s +Magazine</i>. 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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 74--><a +name="page74"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 74</span>swimming in +the Schuylkill river, and Richard Seldener perished on an +Atlantic steamer, which was never heard of.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 +mediæval 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 +Provençal poetry, in the knowledge of which I made some +progress, and also St. <!-- page 75--><a name="page75"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 75</span>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 <i>laïs</i>, 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.”</p> +<p>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 +François 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 +<i>ballades</i>. Now-a-days people are trained to them +through second-hand sentiment. Villon has +become—Heaven bless the mark!—<i>fashionable</i>! and +æsthetic. 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 <i>bon bec</i> meant, +which is more than one of Villon’s great modern translators +has done! Also <i>heaulmière</i>, which is +<i>not</i> helmet-maker, as another supposes.</p> +<p>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 by its +owner.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 76--><a name="page76"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 76</span>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 <i>soupçon</i> 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.</p> +<p>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 +<i>sit verbo venia</i>!</p> +<p>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 <i>rechauffé</i> 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 <!-- page 77--><a +name="page77"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 77</span>text, sent +for a French work in which the same view was advanced.)</p> +<p>The ignorance, narrow-mindedness, and <i>odium theologicum</i> +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 <i>illuminati</i> 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 <i>sent</i> 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Sartor Resartus</i>, first edition, +and read it through forty times ere I left college, of which I +“kept count.”</p> +<p>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 +<!-- page 78--><a name="page78"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +78</span>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 <i>Tractatus Theologico-Politicus</i>. 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 <i>rapid</i> 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 <i>à mon +insu</i>, and that it was remarkable.</p> +<p>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 +<i>then</i> in reality the tremendous problem of the age. I +can now see that, as regards its <i>real</i> 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 <i>art</i>—but true Pantheists they were +<i>not</i>. And they <!-- page 79--><a +name="page79"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 79</span>were men of +great genius, issuing essays to the age on popular, or political, +or “literary” topics; but <i>philosophers</i> they +most assuredly were <i>not</i>, nor men tremendous in spiritual +truth. And yet it was precisely as <i>philosophers</i> and +thaumaturgists and revealers of <i>occulta</i> 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.</p> +<p>They <i>paddled</i> 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.</p> +<p>I did not then see <i>all</i> 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 +<i>awakened</i>, “only that and nothing more”; and +<i>that</i> 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 +<i>archæus</i> 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.</p> +<p>Be it observed that all this time I really did not know what I +knew. Boys are greatly influenced by their surroundings, +<!-- page 80--><a name="page80"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +80</span>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 <i>belles-lettres</i>, occulta, +facetiæ, 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 <i>Reductorium</i> 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.”</p> +<p>Promising, this, for an American youth who was expected to go +into business or study a profession!</p> +<p>While at Hurlbut’s school I took lessons in +Spanish. There was a Spanish boy from Malaga, a kind of +half-servant, <i>half-protégé</i> 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 <i>los Gallegos no son los Irlandeses +d’España</i>?—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 <i>incredible</i> +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 +<i>Shelta</i> in England, or my labours in jargons, such as +Pidgin-English, Slang, and <!-- page 81--><a +name="page81"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 81</span>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 <i>amusement</i> +in a healthy sense, of which I had almost none whatever.</p> +<p>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 +<i>Telémaque</i>, or <i>Paul et Virginie</i>, +<i>Florian</i>, <i>etcetera</i>. 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, “<i>La Pucelle +d’Orleans</i> and <i>Dictionnaire Philosophique</i> of +Voltaire, the Confessions of Rousseau, the Poems of Villon, +<i>Charles d’Orleans</i>, <i>Clotilde de Surville</i>, 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, “<i>Assez</i>! <i>assez</i>! 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.</p> +<p><!-- page 82--><a name="page82"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +82</span>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.</p> +<p>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 +<i>protégé</i>. 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 +<!-- page 83--><a name="page83"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +83</span>could do. He never did it again. I +<i>may</i> 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.</p> +<h3>COLLEGE LIFE.</h3> +<h4>PRINCETON.</h4> +<p>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 <!-- page +84--><a name="page84"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 84</span>good +collection of books, chiefly standard English poets. He at +once took me in hand and gave me a character.</p> +<p>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 naïvely 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>protégé</i> 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 <!-- +page 85--><a name="page85"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +85</span>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 <i>Princeton Review</i> (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!</p> +<p>The reader may imagine what a marvellous <i>find</i> 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 <i>Sartor +Resartus</i>, 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 <i>naïveté</i> 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.</p> +<p>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 +<!-- page 86--><a name="page86"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +86</span>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 <i>four chapters</i> 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. <i>Videlicet</i>:</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>Another stock-piece in the <i>repertoire</i> 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—<!-- +page 87--><a name="page87"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +87</span>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Would any of the stock of infidels<br /> +Had been my evidence ere such a Christian!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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!</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 88--><a name="page88"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 88</span>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 <i>loot</i> +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 <i>ought</i> 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 <i>toto enim in mundo lucet Trias cujus +Monas est princeps</i>, 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 <i>Logos</i>.” 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 +Æolian harps, and which was lit by night with undying +Rosicrucian lamps, to erect on its ruin a plain brick, Old School +Presbyterian slated <!-- page 89--><a name="page89"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 89</span>chapel. I was far more amusing +as I was, and so I was let alone.</p> +<p>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 <i>Curiositez Inouyes</i> 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 <i>writing</i> +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 <i>real</i> 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 <i>actual</i> 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 <i>wert</i> a +million years ago, and in it thou wilt be a million <!-- page +90--><a name="page90"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 90</span>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 +<i>life</i>—<i>how</i> we know not, as <i>what</i> 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 <i>Skánk</i>) was coaching +me.</p> +<p>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 +“Æsthetik”—I was anything but elated or +vain in consequence. I had read in <i>Sartor Resartus</i>, +“If a man reads, shall he not be learned?” and I knew +too well that reading was with me an unprofitable, perhaps +pitiable, <!-- page 91--><a name="page91"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 91</span>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.</p> +<p>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:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Ay, Juvenall, thy jerking hande is good,<br +/> +Not gently laying on, but bringing bloude.<br /> +Oh, suffer me amonge so manye men<br /> +To treade aright the traces of thy penne,<br /> +And light my lamp at thy eternal flame!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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.</p> +<p>I remember, too, how one day, when in Professor Dodd’s +class of mathematics, I, instead of attending to the lecture, +read surreptitiously Cardanus <i>de Subtilitate</i> 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.</p> +<p>I have and always had a bad memory, but I continued to retain +what I read by repetition or reviewing and by <i>collocation</i>, +which is a marvellous aid in retaining images. For, in the +first place, I read entirely by <span +class="smcap">groups</span>; 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 <!-- page +92--><a name="page92"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 92</span>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Shelta</i>, “the lost +language of the bards,” according to Kuno Meyer and John +Sampson.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page +93--><a name="page93"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 93</span>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 <i>torche-cul</i>, 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 <i>mind for mind</i> in reading, and vice becomes +unattractive even to the vicious when they cannot understand +it. I did understand Rabelais, and the <i>Moyen de +Parvenir</i>, and the <i>Cymbalum Mundi</i>, 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.</p> +<p>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, <!-- page 94--><a +name="page94"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 94</span>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.”</p> +<p>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 <i>élite</i> of the seniors, added not +a little force. We were <i>mysterious</i>. Hitherto a +Freshman had been the greenest of the green, a creature created +for ridicule, a sort of “leathery fox” or mere tyro +(<i>ty</i>—not a ty-pographical error—<i>pace</i> my +kind and courteous reviewer in the <i>Saturday</i>)—and +here were Freshmen of a new kind rising in dignity above all +others.</p> +<p>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 <i>him</i> 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 <!-- page 95--><a name="page95"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 95</span>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 <i>them</i>! 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>i.e.</i>, vanished through the door into the +night.</p> +<p>“Shall I open the window?” asked George.</p> +<p>“Not on my account,” I replied. “I +rather enjoy it as it is.”</p> +<p>“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 <i>to smoke you out</i>. 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.</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 96--><a +name="page96"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 96</span>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.</p> +<p>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 (<i>circa</i> 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.</p> +<p>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 +<i>Anthroposophos Theomagicus</i> or the works of Robert Fludd I +would have got up another rebellion.</p> +<p>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 <!-- +page 97--><a name="page97"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +97</span>life as a real thing, or with prosaic college studies or +society, was, I can now see, a <i>disease</i>, 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Home Journal</i> 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 <i>par éminence</i> 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 +<i>Junior</i>, 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 +<!-- page 98--><a name="page98"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +98</span>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 <i>maison de +passe</i>; 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>protégé</i>, 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 æsthetic 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 <a +name="citation98"></a><a href="#footnote98" +class="citation">[98]</a><!-- page 99--><a +name="page99"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 99</span>—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.</p> +<p>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 <i>dé o kān</i>), so Professors +Dodd and James Alexander afterwards, in their æsthetic, 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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 100--><a name="page100"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 100</span>that I was a great friend of +Professor Dodd, and a kind of marvellous <i>rara avis</i>, not to +be classed with common little Freshmen; so that in future I was +allowed to go my way in peace.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>Owing, I suppose, to business losses, my father and family +lived for two years either at Congress Hall Hotel or <i>en +pension</i>. 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 <!-- page 101--><a name="page101"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 101</span>“on drives,” and once +introduced me in the street to a great actress, Susan Cushman, <a +name="citation101"></a><a href="#footnote101" +class="citation">[101]</a> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p><i>Bon an</i>, <i>mal an</i>, the time passed away at +Princeton for four years. I was often very ill. In +the last year the physician <!-- page 102--><a +name="page102"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 102</span>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 <i>that minute</i> +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.</p> +<p>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 +<i>thirteenth</i> known copy of Blind Harry’s famed poem, a +black-letter Euphues Lely, an <i>Erra Pater</i> (a very +weak-minded friend <i>actually shamed</i> 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 +<i>great</i> 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 <i>terrible</i> +temptation to me, and such as I hope I may never have +again—<i>ne inducas nos in temptationem</i>!</p> +<p>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, <!-- page 103--><a name="page103"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 103</span>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!</p> +<p>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 <i>easy</i>. 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Nassau Monthly</i>, which I had once +edited, that if Boker and I and a few others had become known in +literature, we had done so <i>in spite of</i> 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.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * * * *</p> +<p>From this point a new phase of life begins. Prominent +<!-- page 104--><a name="page104"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +104</span>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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 105--><a +name="page105"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 105</span>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 +<i>cotton-field</i>.” The young man smiled +incredulously, and replied, “Now I know that you are trying +to humbug me, for how <i>could</i> you grow up without ever +seeing cotton-fields?”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>I know not how it was, but that first glance suggested to me +something <i>chivalric</i>. 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—</p> +<blockquote><p>“My eye bears a glance like the gleam of a +lance<br /> + When I hear the waters dash and dance;<br /> +And I smile with glee, for I love to see<br /> + The sight of anything that’s free!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>But it was a mingled sense of nobility, and above all of +<i>freedom</i>, 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 <i>sight</i> thereof; <!-- page 106--><a +name="page106"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 106</span>but it is +absurd and illogical to speak as if this were <i>peculiar</i> to +a great thing alone. For my part, I believe that the mere +description to a <i>poet</i>, 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 <i>nuance</i> 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.”</p> +<p>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.—<i>Horum utrum magis velim</i>, <i>mihi incertum +est</i>.</p> +<h2><!-- page 107--><a name="page107"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 107</span>III. UNIVERSITY LIFE AND +TRAVEL IN EUROPE. 1845-1848.</h2> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>We were to sail in a packet or ship for Marseilles. My +<!-- page 108--><a name="page108"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +108</span>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 <i>had</i> vanished with boyhood, as it +ought to have done, my father would have been spared much +sorrow.</p> +<p>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 <i>a l’étudiant</i>, 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 <i>hated</i>, 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 <!-- page 109--><a +name="page109"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 109</span>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 <i>will</i> 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—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Badate a vostri affari voi che +intrate!”<br /> +(Mind your own business ye who enter here!)</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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 <!-- page 110--><a +name="page110"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 110</span>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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?”</p> +<p>“Da Algesiras,” was the reply, which thrilled out +of my heart the thought that, like the squire in +Chaucer—</p> +<blockquote><p>“He had been at the siege of +Algecir.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>So I called, in parting, “Dios vaya con +usted!”</p> +<p>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 <i>in Europe</i>!</p> +<p>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 <i>Hermano</i>! and offering him with ceremonious <!-- page +111--><a name="page111"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +111</span>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Temple +Bar</i> for March, 1893, thus does justice to her conversational +power:</p> +<blockquote><p>“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, <!-- page 112--><a +name="page112"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 112</span>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.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>There came on board of our boat a fruit-dealer, and the old +pilot, seeing that I was about to invest a <i>real</i> 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.</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>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 <!-- +page 113--><a name="page113"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +113</span>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 <i>majo</i> rig, Gallegos, +Moors from the Barbary coast, many Greeks, old Jews in +gabardines, Scotch Highland soldiers, and endless +more—<i>concursus splendidus</i>—<i>non possum non +mirari</i>.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>maja</i>, or <i>moza</i>, or <i>muger</i>, or <i>puta</i>, +every night for twenty years! which was confirmed by common +report. It was a firm principle with him to always +<i>change</i>. This extraordinary fact made me reflect +deeply on it as a <i>psychological</i> 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 <!-- page 114--><a +name="page114"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 114</span>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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>scandal</i>. 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>pension</i> 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.</p> +<p>There I was at home. At Princeton I had learned to play +the guitar, and from Manuel Gori, who had during all his <!-- +page 115--><a name="page115"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +115</span>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—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Yo que soy contrabandista,<br /> +Y campo a me rispeto,<br /> +A todos mi desafio,<br /> +Quien me compra hilo negro?<br /> + Ay jaleo!<br /> + Muchachas jaleo!<br /> +Quien me compra hilo negro!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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 <i>Tragala</i>, +which coincided with the political views of my friends. But +my grand <i>coup</i> was in reserve. I had learned from +Borrow’s “Gypsies in Spain” a long string of +Gitano or Gypsy verses, such as—</p> +<blockquote><p>“El eray guillabela,<br /> + El eray obusno;<br /> +Que avella romanella,<br /> + No avella obusno!”</p> +<p>“Loud sang the <i>gorgio</i> to his fair,<br /> + And thus his ditty ran:—<br /> +‘Oh, may the Gypsy maiden come,<br /> + And not the Gypsy man!’”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>And yet again—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Coruncho Lopez, gallant lad,<br /> + A smuggling he would ride;<br /> +So stole his father’s ambling prad,<br /> +And therefore to the galleys sad<br /> + Coruncho now I guide.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>This was a final <i>coup</i>. How the <i>diabolo</i> I, +such an innocent stranger youth, had ever learned Spanish +<i>Gypsy</i>—the least knowledge of which in Spain implies +unfathomable iniquity <!-- page 116--><a name="page116"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 116</span>and fastness—was beyond all +comprehension. So I departed full of honour amid thunders +of applause.</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>The next day Captain Jack on leaving his ship was accosted by +the <i>douaniers</i>, who politely requested him to take off his +hat. He refused, and was then told that he must go before +the <i>préfet</i>. There the request was +renewed. He complied; but “forewarned, +forearmed”—there was nothing in it.</p> +<p>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 <i>Temple Bar</i>, 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.</p> +<p><!-- page 117--><a name="page117"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +117</span>“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 +<i>ruined</i>.’”</p> +<p>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—</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>‘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. [<i>Bozales</i>—“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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page +118--><a name="page118"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +118</span>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.</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>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 <i>was</i> the +latter whenever he wished to rob, and in his business was the +cause of far more suffering and death.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 119--><a name="page119"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 119</span>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 <i>Guinea</i> +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 <i>had</i> made a run which was +beyond all precedent.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 +René 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 <!-- page 120--><a +name="page120"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 120</span>from him +would have been as good as a diploma for me in Paris.</p> +<p>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, 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.</p> +<p>In those days, really <i>good</i> 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!</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 121--><a +name="page121"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 121</span>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, <i>doubled it</i>, as I will here +describe.</p> +<p>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 <i>purse</i>, 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.</p> +<p>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 +<i>doubled</i>! This I attributed to great generosity on +Sam’s part, and I blessed him.</p> +<p>But, merciful heavens! what were my sensations at finding in +the lower depth of my pocket <i>another purse</i> also filled +with Napoleons in rouleaux! Then it all flashed upon +me. Samuel, the careful, had left <i>his</i> purse lying on +the table, and I had supposed it was mine! I felt as +wretched as if I had lost instead of won.</p> +<p>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 <i>secundem +ordinem</i>.</p> +<p>Poor Sam! I never met him again. He died of +consumption <!-- page 122--><a name="page122"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 122</span>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Richmond Whig</i>. 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.</p> +<p>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 Baiæ, and made, in +fact, all the excursions. As there were three, and +sometimes <!-- page 123--><a name="page123"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 123</span>half-a-dozen of our friends on these +trips, we had, naturally, with us quite a +<i>cortége</i>. 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.</p> +<p>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, <i>rather</i> +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 +<i>true</i>, 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 <!-- page 124--><a +name="page124"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 124</span>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-à-brac and +antiquity, which is certainly hereditary) a great interest in the +characteristic <i>decoration</i> of different ages, which thing +is the soul and life of all æsthetic archæology 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>From Naples we went to Rome by <i>vettura</i>, or in +carriages. We were two days and two nights on the +route. I remember that when we entered Rome, I saw the +<i>douanier</i> 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>possibly</i> 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 <!-- page 125--><a name="page125"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 125</span>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.</p> +<p>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—</p> +<blockquote><p>“’Mid deathless lairs in solemn +Rome.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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, Æsthetes, +and other spiritualists or sorcerers, <!-- page 126--><a +name="page126"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 126</span>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 +<i>that</i>, and not the world of men or books, which gives the +charm.</p> +<p>It was usual for all who drew from Torlonia’s bank not +less than £20 to be invited to his soirées. To +ensure the expenses, the footman who brought the invitation +called the day after for not less than <i>five francs</i>. +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.</p> +<p>Now I had written my name <i>Chas.</i>, which being mistaken +for <i>Chev.</i>, 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 <i>was</i> 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, <i>nemini secundus</i>, who has never +been knighted, although the tradesman who <!-- page 127--><a +name="page127"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 127</span>makes for +him his implements and instruments has received the title and the +<i>accolade</i>. <i>Fie</i> at justitia!</p> +<p>I saw at one of the Torlonia entertainments a marvellously +beautiful and strange thing, of which I had read an account in +Mme. de Staël’s <i>Corinne</i>. 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 +<i>perfectly</i> 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 <i>Graces</i>, and it constituted nearly all +the art there was in her.</p> +<p>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</p> +<blockquote><p> “Eating, +drinking, masking,<br /> +And other things which could be had for asking.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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—<i>n’importe +quoi</i>—and merrily cast <i>confetti</i> 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 <!-- page 128--><a name="page128"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 128</span>the last Carnival—that great +night—there was the <i>Senza Moccolo</i> 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 <i>point +d’honneur</i> in the game.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>protégé</i>, which I did +accordingly, for I liked him very much <!-- page 129--><a +name="page129"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 129</span>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>fade</i> 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. <i>Latet +anguis in herba</i>—my grass was rather too green, I +suppose. I was rather sorry, for I expected some +amusement. But I had been <i>too</i> deep for the +Jesuit—and for myself.</p> +<p>The time came for my departure. I was to go alone on to +Florence, in advance of my friends. Navone arranged <!-- +page 130--><a name="page130"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +130</span>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-à-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 <i>en +route</i> 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 <i>visée</i>, 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 <i>en +règle</i>, and your passage is all secured!”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>table-d’hôte</i>. 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 <!-- page 131--><a name="page131"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 131</span>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.</p> +<p>There was, however, at the same hotel a singular man, a +Lithuanian Pole named Andrékovitch, 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. +Andrékovitch 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. Andrékovitch was the ragged +remnant of a Catholic, but a very small one. He sailed +close to the wind, and neared Rationalism.</p> +<p>“But the Pope! . . .” exclaimed the Tyrolese.</p> +<p>Andrékovitch 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.</p> +<p>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.” +<!-- page 132--><a name="page132"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +132</span>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.</p> +<p>As I write these lines in Florence, I have within half-an-hour +called for the first time on an old witch or <i>strega</i>, 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 +<i>scongiurazioni</i> or conjurations; and as I left, the old +sorceress said respectfully and admiringly, “You come to +<i>me</i> 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!</p> +<p>I became acquainted in Florence with Hiram Powers, which +reminds me that I once in Rome dined <i>vis-à-vis</i> 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 <i>Fiorara</i>, 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.</p> +<p>I studied Provençal 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 <!-- page 133--><a name="page133"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 133</span>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 +<i>ennui</i> of Princeton, that I could never see enough.</p> +<p>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 <i>enchantment</i>, 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 <i>enjoy</i>; therefore you had better +learn to enjoy much without such power. Thus endeth the +first lesson!</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p><!-- page 134--><a name="page134"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +134</span>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.”</p> +<p>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—</p> +<p>“Do I understand that you formally demand the +keys?”</p> +<p>“<i>Ja wohl</i>, certainly; at once, if you +please!”</p> +<p>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. <i>Quien +sabe</i>? <i>Vive la bagatelle</i>!</p> +<p>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! <i>Eppure si muove</i>, I +thought. It cannot be true that—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Padua! the lamp of learning<br /> +In thy halls no more is burning.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>I have been there several times since. All that I now +recall is that the hotel was not very good the last time.</p> +<p>I met in Venice a young New Yorker named Clark, who <!-- page +135--><a name="page135"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +135</span>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?”</p> +<p>With a delighted grin, the man and brother replied in deep +Southern accent—</p> +<p>“Dey sets me hyar fo’ a bait to ’tice de +Americans with.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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—</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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 <!-- page +136--><a name="page136"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +136</span>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—<i>as +happened on an average once at least in a life</i>—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 +<i>freedom</i> 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!</p> +<p>I had never thought much of this subject before I left +home. I did not <i>like</i> 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 <i>an Abolitionist</i>. 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.</p> +<p>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 +“slä-äves,” 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—</p> +<blockquote><p>“And death-shots flying thick and +fast,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p><!-- page 137--><a name="page137"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +137</span>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 <i>reviled</i> +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 +<i>Dictionnaire des Girouettes</i> 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 <i>slavery</i> 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 +<i>Abolitionist</i> 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 +<!-- page 138--><a name="page138"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +138</span>friend added to whom I made the remark. So much +for man’s relations with poor humanity.</p> +<p>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 Haïti, 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.</p> +<p>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 æsthetic 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>lauwine</i> 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 <!-- +page 139--><a name="page139"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +139</span>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Eilwagen</i> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p><!-- page 140--><a name="page140"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +140</span>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 <i>Zünfte</i> 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 <i>Herbergs</i>, +where travelling colleagues of the calling might lodge at +moderate rates, but nobody else. However, as time rolled +by, these <i>Zünfte</i> or guild-lodgings were opened to +strangers. One of the last which did so was that of the +<i>Pfister</i> or bakers (Latin, <i>pistor</i>), 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.</p> +<p>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. <i>Sit verbo venia</i>! 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 <!-- page 141--><a name="page141"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 141</span>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 <i>know those who like them</i>, and take to +them accordingly, guided by some altogether inexplicable clue or +<i>Hexengarn</i>, 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 <i>ne plus ultra</i> of sympathy.</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>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. <i>Sancta simplicitas</i>! 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 <!-- page 142--><a +name="page142"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 142</span>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Her’r’r’ Gottsdonerrwetter</i>! of +surprise, as he well might. But I knew that the Germans +were a very <i>sans façon bourgeois</i> 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 <!-- page +143--><a name="page143"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +143</span>which attended my introduction to University life, it +is best summed up in the remark which the Herr O. (of Baltimore) +subsequently made.</p> +<p>“Great God, fellows! <i>he made his first call on old +Capelmann</i>!!”</p> +<p>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 Tannhäuser 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>schoppens</i> 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:</p> +<blockquote><p>“Then I bolted off to Munich,<br /> + And within the year,<br /> +<!-- page 144--><a name="page144"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +144</span>Underneath my German tunic<br /> + Stowed whole butts of beer;<br /> +For I drank like fifty fishes,<br /> + Drank till all was blue,<br /> +For whenever I was vicious<br /> + I was thirsty too.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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 <i>temperance</i>, 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 <i>main</i> 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, <i>rest</i>!”</p> +<p>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, <!-- page +145--><a name="page145"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +145</span>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“Where the devil did you get this?” asked O., and +all, in amazement.</p> +<p>“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!”</p> +<p>The impression that I was a queer lot, due to my making my +first call on Capelmann <i>et cetera</i>, 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!</p> +<p>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 <i>con amore</i>; 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 <!-- page +146--><a name="page146"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +146</span>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:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Ye race itt is not alwayes gott<br /> + By him who swiftest runns,<br /> +Nor y<sup>e</sup> Battell by y<sup>e</sup> Peo-pel<br /> + Who shoot with longest gunnes.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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 <i>Dublin University Magazine</i>, 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 Rücker, 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:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Who can tell me where Weinsberg lies?<br /> + As brave a town as any;<br /> +It must have sheltered in its time<br /> + Brave wives and maidens many:<br /> +If e’er I wooing have to do,<br /> +Good faith, in Weinsberg I will woo!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>“And then, when we are there,” said Rücker, +“we will call <!-- page 147--><a name="page147"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 147</span>on an old friend of my +father’s, named Justinus Kerner. Did you ever hear of +him?”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>Blessed, beautiful, happy summer mornings in +Suabia—green mounts and grey rocks with old +castles—peasants harvesting hay—a <i>Kirchweih</i>, +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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 Æolian 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.</p> +<p><!-- page 148--><a name="page148"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +148</span>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>On our return we climbed into an old Gothic church-tower, in +which I found a fifteenth-century bell, bearing the words, +<i>Vivas voco</i>, <i>mortuos plango</i>, <i>fulgura</i> +<i>frango</i>, and much more—</p> +<blockquote><p>“The dead I knell, the living wake,<br /> +And the power of lightning break!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p><!-- page 149--><a name="page149"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +149</span>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.</p> +<p>In a village, Rücker, 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 <i>lager</i> was devoured, even to the last drop.</p> +<p>I soon grew tired of the family dinners with the Frau +Inspectorinn and the Herr Inspector with the <i>one</i> 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.</p> +<blockquote><p>“Er spitzt betrübt die Nase,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>as Scheffel wrote of him in his poem, <i>Numero Acht</i>, 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—<i>quorum pars fui</i>—met every evening to +sup and <i>kneip</i>, 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 <i>Gaudeamus</i>. I owe the “Court of +Holland” to this day for a dinner and a bottle of +wine. <!-- page 150--><a name="page150"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 150</span>It is the only debt I owe, to my +knowledge, to anybody on earth.</p> +<p>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—<i>omne cum prætio</i>—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 Planché’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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Des Knaben Wunderhorn</i> and <!-- page +151--><a name="page151"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +151</span>Uhland’s collection of old German songs—his +own poems I knew long before—the <i>Nibelungen</i> and +<i>Hero-Book</i>, 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Kirclweih</i> 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 <i>Schläger</i>, and he had two English friends +named Burnett who would go with us. So we went, and meeting +with Rücker at the <i>Pawkboden</i>, 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; “Rücker has plenty of money; we can borrow +from him.”</p> +<p>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 Rücker,” said Colquhoun.</p> +<p>We went up to visit the old castle. While there, +Rücker 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 <!-- page 152--><a name="page152"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 152</span>had seen something in the town, +price ten florins, which he <i>must</i> buy. It was +something which he had promised to buy for a relative in +England. It was a very serious case of necessity.</p> +<p>I doubted my dear friend, but having sworn him by all his gods +that he would <i>not</i> 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.</p> +<p>I should mention that Rücker 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.”</p> +<p>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. <i>Hurra</i>! <i>frei ist +der bursch</i>!</p> +<p>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 <i>six</i> +of us! Another student had, unseen, joined our party in the +rain, and I had never noticed it!</p> +<p>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 <!-- page +153--><a name="page153"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 153</span>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.</p> +<p>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 +<i>table-d’hôte</i>. 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.</p> +<p>Vacation passed, and the students returned and lectures were +resumed. There was a grand <i>Commers</i> 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.</p> +<p>This gentleman was a perfect type—fit to be staged +without a touch of change—of the old <i>emigré</i>, +who has now vanished, even from among the French. His bows, +his wit—<i>la </i><!-- page 154--><a +name="page154"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 154</span><i>grace +extra’ordinaire</i>—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.</p> +<p>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 <i>elite</i> of nobility and the professors and +their families. Then came the +<i>Harmonie</i>—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.</p> +<p>One morning a German student named Grüner, 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 +<i>rôle</i> 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. (<i>N.B.</i>—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 <i>rouge-et-noir</i> to cover +all expenses. <!-- page 155--><a name="page155"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 155</span>This obvious and admirable method of +raising funds had not occurred to me, so I agreed to go.</p> +<p>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 Grüner 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 +Grüner lost all his, and came imploring me for more, but I +would not give him a <i>kreutzer</i>. 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.</p> +<p>There dined very often at our <i>table-d’hôte</i> +in the Adler an old German lady named Helmine von Chézy, +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 Häuser. Unto her Heine +had addressed the epigram—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Helmine von Chézy,<br /> +Geborene Klencke,<br /> +Ich bitte Sie, geh’ Sie<br /> +Mit ihrer Poésie,<br /> +Sonst kriegt Sie die Kränke!”</p> +<p>“Helmine von Chézy,<br /> +Born Klencke, I pray<br /> +With your pestilent poems<br /> +You’ll hasten away.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p><!-- page 156--><a name="page156"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +156</span>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 +<i>Symbolik</i>, a work of vast learning. <a +name="citation156"></a><a href="#footnote156" +class="citation">[156]</a> And I went to balls, one at +Professor Gervinus’s.</p> +<p>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 +<i>Kleesäure</i>. 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 archæology +and antiquities.</p> +<p>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 Æsthetics, 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, <!-- page 157--><a +name="page157"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 157</span>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.</p> +<p>I went to the Hôtel 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.</p> +<p>I entered myself for a course of lectures by Professor +Friedrich Thiersch on Æsthetics. 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 +æsthetics. 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 <!-- page 158--><a +name="page158"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 158</span>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 +<i>Natur-philosophie</i> were coming closely to it.</p> +<p>In fact, I think it may be truly said that, as regarded +deducing man and all things from a <i>prima materia</i> 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 Müller 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 <i>Natur-philosophie</i>, 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 <i>not</i> 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 <!-- +page 159--><a name="page159"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +159</span>by beginning so young I succeeded in doing very +thoroughly what Symonds and Maudsley and many more clearly +understand is <i>most</i> difficult—that is, not merely to +accept the truth, but to get rid of the old <i>associations</i> +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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 +<!-- page 160--><a name="page160"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +160</span>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 <i>for a few more</i>. I thought +that about twenty-five would complete the collection.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>fréle</i>, 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, <!-- +page 161--><a name="page161"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +161</span>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>live</i>?” +“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.</p> +<p>I lived in the main street near the Karlsthor, opposite a +tavern called the Ober-Pollinger, which was a mediæval +tavern in those days. My landlady was a nice old soul, and +she had two daughters, one of whom was a beauty, and as <!-- page +162--><a name="page162"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +162</span>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 163--><a +name="page163"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 163</span>said +anything, he meant it, and this remark of his struck me more than +the event itself had done.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 164--><a +name="page164"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 164</span>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 <i>la grande route</i>; 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 <i>telega</i>, or jackassing +in Egypt, or any other of the trifles over which pampered +tourists make such heart-rending howls now-a-days.</p> +<p>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 <i>Die +schöne Wienerinn</i>), 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 +<i>schöne Edie</i> 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 <!-- page 165--><a name="page165"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 165</span>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 café, 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.</p> +<p>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—</p> +<blockquote><p>“A Christmas banquet oft would cheer<br /> +A poor man’s heart for half the year.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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 +<!-- page 166--><a name="page166"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +166</span>children, and so the <i>juventus mundi</i> passed +away. “It is a perfect <i>shame</i>!” say the +dear young lady tourists, “that the peasantry no longer +wear their beautiful dresses; they ought to be <i>obliged</i> to +keep them up.” “But how would <i>you</i> 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>visé</i> 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>visé</i> from +Breslau! I was asked why I had not in my native country +secured the <i>visé</i> 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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 167--><a name="page167"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 167</span>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 <span +class="smcap">p.m.</span>, 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.</p> +<p>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, <!-- page 168--><a +name="page168"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 168</span>and showed +us a silver coin—utterly prohibited—which had been +struck during the brief period of the Polish revolution.</p> +<p>The Pole began to prepare <i>his</i> 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 +<i>Panna</i>—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 <i>he</i> were to read the morning service in +Polish and I would repeat it word by word, that the <i>Panna</i> +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.</p> +<p>“Leland! you --- humbug!” exclaimed Pottinger.</p> +<p>“Go away, you infernal heretic, and don’t disturb +Christians at their devotions!” was my devout reply. +So, prayers concluded, there <i>was</i> 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.</p> +<p>We stopped at Görlitz, where I asked a woman standing in +the half-doorway of the house of Jacob Böhme if that was his +house. But she had never heard of such a man!</p> +<p>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 <i>amuse</i> anybody <!-- +page 169--><a name="page169"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +169</span>as the old clown in the ring and one elephant did of +yore.</p> +<p>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 +Æsthetics and the history of art. Thence to Magdeburg +and Hanover, Dusseldorf—to cut it short, Holland and the +chief cities in Belgium.</p> +<p>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 <i>Brindisi</i> or Toasts of Minto.</p> +<blockquote><p>“Porto a voi un fior novello,<br /> +Ed, oh come vago e bello!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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 <i>wonderful</i>. 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; <!-- page 170--><a name="page170"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 170</span>I seemed to have found a destiny in +æsthetics 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 æsthetics gave me great comfort, and advanced me +marvellously in thought to wider and far higher regions.</p> +<p>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 <span class="smcap">p.m.</span> the next day. +On the next I found my way into the Latin Quarter, and secured a +<i>not</i> very superior room in the Place Saint-Michel, near the +Ecole de Médecine, to which I moved my luggage.</p> +<p>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 <i>les biches</i>—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.</p> +<p>I attended at the Collége Louis le Grand, and at the +Sorbonne, all or any lectures by everybody, including a very dull +series on German literature by Philarete Châsles. I +read books. <i>Inter alia</i>, I went through Dante’s +“Inferno” in Italian aided by Rivarol’s +translation, of which I possessed <!-- page 171--><a +name="page171"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 171</span>the <i>very +copy</i> 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 <i>Melusine</i>, which Mr. +Andrew Lang has described as such a delightful rarity. And +I also ran a great deal about town. I saw Rachel, and +Frédéric Lemaitre, and Mlle. Déjazet, 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 <i>grande ronde infernale</i>. +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, +<i>vin compris</i>, and where the honoured guest at the head of +the table was the <i>chef des claqueurs</i> or head of the paid +applauders at all the theatres. Then it would be at a +private <i>table-d’hôte</i> of <i>lorettes</i>, 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 <i>au sec</i>, I fed at +Flictoteau’s—we called him +<i>l’empoisonneur</i>—where hundreds of students got +a meal of three courses with half a bottle of ordinaire, and not +so bad either, for thirty sous.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p><!-- page 172--><a name="page172"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +172</span>Which “point” was at once seized by the +house. The pit, as if moved by one diabolical inspiration, +began to roar, “<i>Il l’embrassera</i>!” (He +will kiss her), to which the gallery replied, “<i>Il ne +l’embrassera pas</i>.”</p> +<p>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 <i>scie</i> or saw, as may be read +in my romance in the French tongue entitled <i>Le Lutin du +Château</i>, 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!</p> +<p>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 +<i>sold</i> the house!</p> +<p>There was in the Rue de la Harpe a house called the +Hôtel 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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- +page 173--><a name="page173"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +173</span>all the winter in plotting a revolution. It was +considered as a nest of rather doubtful and desperate characters, +and an American <i>carabin</i> 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.</p> +<p>I did not live in the Hôtel 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, <i>one month</i> 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 <!-- page 174--><a name="page174"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 174</span>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 cafés and balls and +in shops, and talking to everybody, went the mysterious dwellers +of the Hôtel 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.”</p> +<p>At last the ball opened. There was the great banquet, +and the muttering storm, and angry mobs, and small +<i>émeutes</i>. 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 +Nôtre Dame rung all night long.</p> +<p>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 +<i>en révolutionnaire</i>, and with him went forth to +business. First I went to the Café 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 <!-- page 175--><a name="page175"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +175</span>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Marseillaise</i> and +the <i>Chant des Girondins</i>. 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>There was a garçon named Edouard, who always waited on +me in the Café Rotonde. While I was working for life +at my second barricade, he came out holding a napkin, and <!-- +page 176--><a name="page176"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +176</span>examining my labour critically, waved it, exclaimed +approvingly, “<i>Très bien</i>, <i>Citoyen +Charles</i>—<i>très bien</i>!” It was +his little joke for some days after to call me Citoyen +Charles.</p> +<p>Returning down the Rue de la Harpe before our house my +landlady exclaimed to me in alarm, “Hide your pistols! +there is a <i>mouchard</i> (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 <i>mouchard</i> had vanished. +We had all got into cool earnestness by that time as regards +shooting, having been in it constantly for three days.</p> +<p>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. +“Wäll, 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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>I had that day many a chance to knock over a <i>piou-piou</i> +or shoot a soldier, as Field said, but I must confess that I felt +an invincible repugnance to do so. The poor devils <!-- +page 177--><a name="page177"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +177</span>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>one instant</i>, 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>touched</i> the inkstand for +luck, in case I should ever write about the event.</p> +<p>It was a great and indeed a very touching and beautiful sight, +for all present were inspired with a feeling like that <!-- page +178--><a name="page178"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 178</span>of +men who have passed a terrible, racking crisis. <i>Nous +avons vaincu</i>! 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!</p> +<p>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, “<i>Buvez</i>, <i>citoyen</i>; <i>c’est du vin +royal</i>.” Not wishing to have a duel <i>à +l’outrance</i> 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.”</p> +<p>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—“<i>Armes +données</i>.” The Musée 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 mediæval +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 +<i>gambades</i>. 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 +<i>duty</i> at <!-- page 179--><a name="page179"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 179</span>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.</p> +<p>Some of the blackguards in the mob drew out the royal +carriages, set fire to them, and rolled them gaily along the +<i>quai</i>.</p> +<p>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. “<i>Respectez la +properté</i>.” 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. <i>They</i> had all worked at +barricades—so they said. I certainly had not seen any +of them at work.</p> +<p>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 <i>étudiant</i>, 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. +<i>Vive la jeunesse</i>!</p> +<p>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 <!-- +page 180--><a name="page180"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +180</span>stick with a paper on it, on which was written with +lead-pencil, “<i>Mort aux voleurs</i>!”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>The day after, I went into a café. There were +some students there who had laid their arms on a table. +There was a very notorious little <i>lorette</i>, known as +Pochardinette, who was so called because she was always +half-tipsy. She was even noted in a popular song +as—</p> +<blockquote><p>“La Pochardinette,<br /> +Qui ne sait refuser<br /> +Ni la ponche a pleine verre,<br /> +Ni sa bouohe à baiser.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Pochardinette picked up a horse-pistol, when its owner cried, +“Let that be! That is not the kind of weapon which +<i>you</i> 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!</p> +<p>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 <i>Gouvernement Provisoire</i>. Now, during +this period of suspense there appeared at the Hôtel 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—<i>Chose</i>! notify him at once +and send orders. I believe that <i>Tel-et-tel</i> had +better take Marseilles. Do any of you fellows know of a +good governor for Mauritius?” So <i>he</i> governed +France for half-an-hour and then disappeared, and nobody ever +knew to this day who this stupendous joker was. <!-- page +181--><a name="page181"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 181</span>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!</p> +<p>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 <i>bon +compagnon</i>, very pleasant, and gifted with a very original, +quaint humour.</p> +<p>If our ungrateful temporary stepmother, France, did not know +it, at least the waiters in the cafés, 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 “<i>Ces sont +les Américains</i>!” or “<i>Les +Anglais</i>.” 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 <i>lorette</i> 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 +<i>ennuyée</i> or frightened by the roar of +musketry—<!-- page 182--><a name="page182"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 182</span>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 “<i>Adieu</i>, <i>madame</i>! +<i>Vive la liberté</i>!” And so, amid bullets +and cheers, and death-stroke, and powder-smoke—<i>hinc et +inde mors et luctus</i>—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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Gouvernement Provisoire</i> 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>my</i> small aid. There was a regulation <!-- +page 183--><a name="page183"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +183</span>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 <i>dossier</i> 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 <i>dis</i> congregation!”</p> +<p>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 chimæra. 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, +“<i>C’est grecque</i>!” Then the captain +was <i>quite</i> satisfied. It was Greek!</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 184--><a name="page184"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 184</span>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 <i>Leander</i> +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.</p> +<p>One night Colquhoun and I went to Drury Lane, and, after +hearing Grisi, Mario, and Lablache together, saw the great <i>pas +de quatre</i> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page +185--><a name="page185"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +185</span>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 <i>aria</i>. 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 186--><a +name="page186"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +186</span>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 +<i>gourmet</i>, 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 <i>then</i>.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 +<!-- page 187--><a name="page187"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +187</span>their dentist’s chairs, Procrustean sofas, and +headlong passages, we do <i>not</i> 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 <i>for</i>?</p> +<p>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.</p> +<blockquote><p>“Thus woman is the cause of fearful +deeds.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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 <!-- page 188--><a +name="page188"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 188</span>saw two +cases in which the fish turned and flew against the wind or +tacked—a fact which has been denied.</p> +<p>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!</p> +<p>Gabriel Ravel—it is one of my brother’s published +tales—was a good boxer as well as a marvellous acrobat, and +he could <i>look</i> 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, <i>et cetera</i>, 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.</p> +<p>We saw an iceberg far away, and lay off on the Grand <!-- page +189--><a name="page189"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +189</span>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 <i>that</i>.</p> +<h2><!-- page 190--><a name="page190"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 190</span>IV. THE RETURN TO +AMERICA. 1848-1862.</h2> +<blockquote><p>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 +<i>Illustrated News</i>—Dr. Griswold and his +MS.—Bixby’s—Mr. Barnum—My first +books—New York society in the early Fifties—Alice and +Phœbe Carey—Washington Irving—Bayard +Taylor—N. P. Willis—J. G. Saxe—H. C. +Carey—Emily Schaumberg—I become assistant-editor of +the <i>Bulletin</i>—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’ <i>Cyclopædia</i>—G. W. +Ripley and Charles A. Dana—Foreign editing of <i>New York +Times</i>—“Vanity Fair”—The +Bohemians—Artemus Ward—Lincoln’s +election—The Civil War—My political work in the +<i>Knickerbocker</i>—Emancipation—I become sole +editor of the <i>Continental Magazine</i>—What I did in +1862 and 1863 in aid of the Union cause.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>So we arrived in New York, and within an hour or two after my +arrival I was in the train <i>en route</i> 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 <!-- page 191--><a +name="page191"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 191</span>eyes open +and avoid being swindled, that I had better have remained at +home.</p> +<p>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 <i>home</i>.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 192--><a name="page192"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 192</span>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 <i>on the table</i> was as +good or perfect as possible. I had been accustomed to first +considering what should be placed <i>around</i> 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.</p> +<p>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 +<i>Knickerbocker Magazine</i>. 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 +<i>Knickerbocker</i>. To which the Sinologist replied very +suavely and apologetically indeed that he was “very +sorry,” but had never seen the article in <!-- page +193--><a name="page193"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +193</span>the <i>Knickerbocker</i>, &c. But he did not +<i>publish</i> 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 +Congrès 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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. <!-- page 194--><a name="page194"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 194</span>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 <i>stage +fright</i>, 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 <i>gaudium certaminis</i>, 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 <i>thorough</i>. 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 <i>practically</i> employed in any +manner whatever.</p> +<p>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 <i>very careful</i>. I have observed that you +are sometimes inaccurate in such matters, therefore be sure that +you give me Mr. Dimpfel’s <i>very words</i>.” +Mr. Cadwallader knew French and Spanish perfectly, but not +German, and was <!-- page 195--><a name="page195"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 195</span>not aware that I always conversed +with Mr. Dimpfel in the latter language. When I returned my +teacher said—</p> +<p>“Now, Mr. Leland, can you repeat accurately <i>word for +word</i> what Mr. Dimpfel said?” I replied:</p> +<p>“Yes. <i>Der Herr Dimpfel lässt sich +grüssen und meldet das er Montag kommen wird um halb +drei</i>. <i>Und er sagt weiter</i> . . . ”</p> +<p>“That will do,” cried Mr. Cadwallader; “you +must give it in English.”</p> +<p>“I beg your pardon,” was my grave reply, +“but you asked for his very words.”</p> +<p>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 <i>Drawing-Room Journal</i>. +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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 196--><a +name="page196"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 196</span>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—</p> +<blockquote><p>“O’er an old ruined doorway<br /> + Philosophus hung,<br /> +And madly his bell-cap<br /> + And bauble he swung.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>It was a wild mixture of cosmopolitanism and Hamletism, and it +indicates accurately the true state of my <i>cor cordium</i> 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 <i>harrascho</i>, “good,” when a Russian +stranger in the next box smiled joyously, and rising, waved his +glove to me. Once in a brilliant soirée in +Philadelphia there was a Hungarian Count, an exile, and talking +with him in English, I let fall for a joke “<i>Bassama +terem-tete</i>!” 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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- +page 197--><a name="page197"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +197</span>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.</p> +<p>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>I</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 <i>replace yourself</i>. +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.</p> +<p>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 +<!-- page 198--><a name="page198"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +198</span>I met at Kimball’s house Franz Pulszky, and sat +by his wife. I have since seen him many times in +Buda-Pest.</p> +<p>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 +Cæsar 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 <i>nuance</i> 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.</p> +<p>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. “<i>E un bel palazzo</i>!” 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 <!-- +page 199--><a name="page199"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +199</span>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>at the word</i>, 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 <!-- page 200--><a +name="page200"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 200</span>drives and +balls and other gaiety, the time passed pleasantly enough.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Avokat</i>. +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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>I went more than once to New York, hoping to obtain literary +employment. One day Dr. Rufus Griswold came to <!-- page +201--><a name="page201"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 201</span>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.</p> +<p>Then work began for me in tremendous earnest. Let the +reader imagine such a paper as the London <i>Illustrated News</i> +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.</p> +<p>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—<i>me ipso teste</i>—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—<i>ascensionem expectans</i>—awaiting +publication, all of which I <!-- page 202--><a +name="page202"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +202</span>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 <i>Sartor Resartus</i> +because Carlyle put his wife’s money to his own account +<i>in banco</i>.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 203--><a +name="page203"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 203</span>him +gruffly, yet believed all the same that <i>I</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 <i>et cetera</i>, 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 <i>innocent</i> all the time withal! +That was indeed bitter in the cup!</p> +<p>Apropos of this small affair, I can recall a droll scene, +<i>de eodem genere</i>, 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, <i>à la mok</i>. 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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 204--><a +name="page204"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 204</span>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 +<i>finale</i> should be in a police-court.</p> +<p>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 <i>not to let you know it</i>.” +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.</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>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 +<i>sha’n’t</i> go. Don’t get into a +funk. I know that you <!-- page 205--><a +name="page205"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 205</span>can do the +work, and do it <i>well</i>. And the salary shall be +doubled—certainly!”</p> +<p>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. <i>Now</i> 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.</p> +<p>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, <!-- page +206--><a name="page206"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 206</span>I +never found that I was less respected by the typos, reporters, +and subs.</p> +<p>I had before leaving Philadelphia published two books. +One was “The Poetry and Mystery of Dreams,” which I +dedicated to my fiancée, Miss Belle Fisher. The +other was an odd mélange, which had appeared in chapters +in the <i>Knickerbocker Magazine</i>. It was titled +<i>Meister Karl’s Sketch-Book</i>. 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 <i>paté de foie gras</i>; +and here and there I have known men, like the late Nicolas +Trübner 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 <i>style</i> of its own, which found a few +imitators. It ranks, I think, about <i>pari passu</i> with +Coryatt’s “Crudities,” or lower.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>Once there was a grand publishers’ dinner to authors +where I went with Alice and Phœbe Carey, who were great +friends of mine. There I met and talked with Washington +Irving; I remember Bryant and N. P. Willis, <i>et tous les +autres</i>. Just at that time wine, &c., could only be +sold in New York “in the original packages as +imported.” Alice or Phœbe Carey lamented that +we were to have none at the <!-- page 207--><a +name="page207"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +207</span>banquet. There was a large dish of grapes before +her, and I said, “Why, there you have plenty of it in the +original packages!”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>Of course I was very intimate with Clark of the +<i>Knickerbocker</i>, 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 +<i>Knickerbocker</i>, 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!</p> +<p>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 <i>New York +Times</i>, 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 <!-- page 208--><a +name="page208"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 208</span>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 <i>employés</i> 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 <!-- page 209--><a +name="page209"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 209</span>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>employé</i> 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>immensely</i> puzzling with a stupendous <i>sell</i> +as postscript, was more of a motive with him than even the main +chance. He was a genius like Rabelais, but one <!-- page +210--><a name="page210"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +210</span>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”—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Lewd did I live & evil I did +dwel,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 211--><a name="page211"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 211</span>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.</p> +<p>The entire American press expected, as a matter of course, +that the <i>Illustrated News</i> 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.”</p> +<p>Henry Ward Beecher was a great friend of Barnum and the +Beaches, of which some one wrote—</p> +<blockquote><p>“No wonder Mr. Alfred Beach<br /> + Prefers, as noblest preacher,<br /> +A man who is not only Beach,<br /> + But even more so—Beecher.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>He came very frequently into our office; but I cannot recall +any saying of his worth recording.</p> +<p>There was also a brother of H. W. Longfellow, a clergyman, who +often visited me, of whom I retain a most agreeable +recollection.</p> +<p>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 --- ---!”</p> +<p>Mr. Barnum wanted me to write his Life. This would <!-- +page 212--><a name="page212"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +212</span>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>une +barbe de Charlemagne</i>, 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 <i>goaded</i> 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 <i>was</i> a humbug, and Barnum +abode by their <!-- page 213--><a name="page213"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 213</span>decision, and then sent it to +another city to be again decided on.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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, <i>ad +libitum</i>, 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 <i>versus</i> 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 <!-- page 214--><a name="page214"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 214</span>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!—<i>Mais où +sont les neiges d’antan</i>?</p> +<p>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 Hôtel de +Luxembourg, gentlemen who could not only plan barricades but +fight at them, were in great demand, as <i>honest</i> 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-<i>dossier</i> 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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 215--><a +name="page215"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 215</span>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.</p> +<p>One morning George H. Boker came to me and informed me that +there was a writing editor wanted on the Philadelphia <i>Evening +Bulletin</i>. 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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 216--><a +name="page216"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +216</span>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>habitués</i> of the office from going +daily at eleven o’clock to a neighbouring lager-beer +<i>Wirthschaft</i> 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.”</p> +<p>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, <i>fifty thousand</i> were enrolled, and +to these might have been added almost as many more, who were +known as runners, <!-- page 217--><a name="page217"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 217</span>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Père Duchêne</i> school may be nastier, +and, as regards aristocrats, as bloody, but for general all-round +<i>vulgarity</i>, the state <!-- page 218--><a +name="page218"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 218</span>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.</p> +<p>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?”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>fires</i> which were the sole support of the whole +system.</p> +<p>I was much indebted for understanding all this, and acting on +it boldly, as I did, to the city editor and chief reporter <!-- +page 219--><a name="page219"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +219</span>on the <i>Evening Bulletin</i>, 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 <i>Vaux populi</i>. 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 <!-- page 220--><a +name="page220"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 220</span>that fellow +by his style,” remarked the Doctor, “and I shall +arrest him at four o’clock this afternoon.”</p> +<p>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 +<i>employés</i>. 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>must</i>, +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 <!-- page 221--><a +name="page221"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 221</span>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!</p> +<p>There was much mutual robbing by newspapers of telegraphic +news in those days. Once it befell that just before the +<i>Bulletin</i> 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 +<i>New York Tribune</i>, a journal which has done more for human +freedom than any other publication in history.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 222--><a +name="page222"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 222</span>in +America. Yes, moral or physical, we are all but gunpowder +and smoke—<i>pulvis et umbra sumus</i>!</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 Andrékovitch, 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 +Schöffel?—who had been President of the Frankfort +Revolutionary Parliament, opened a lager-beer establishment in +Race Street. I went there several times with Ruhl.</p> +<p>George Boker and Frank Wells, who subsequently succeeded <!-- +page 223--><a name="page223"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +223</span>me on the <i>Bulletin</i>, would drop in every day +after the first edition had gone to press, and then there would +be a lively time. Frank Wells was, <i>par +éminence</i>, 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 <i>axing</i> too much, I presume; but +did you ever hear <i>that</i>?” Saxe owned that he +had not.</p> +<p>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 <i>nil admirari</i> 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 <i>bon mots</i> and +merry stories which passed among us all in the <i>sanctum</i> 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.</p> +<p>It was, I think, or am sure, in 1855 that some German in <!-- +page 224--><a name="page224"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +224</span>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.</p> +<p>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. <i>Firstly</i>, 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. <i>Secondly</i>, 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. <i>Thirdly</i>, +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. <i>Fourthly</i>, a visit +from some great dignitary, who put his dignity very much +<i>à l’abri</i> in his pocket, to solicit a +puff. <i>Fifthly</i>, 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 <i>read</i> a few lines of her +work. <i>Sixthly</i>, a communication from a <!-- page +225--><a name="page225"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +225</span>great New York family, who, having been requested to +send a short description of a remarkable wedding-cake, sent me +<i>one hundred and fifty pages</i> 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. <a name="citation225"></a><a href="#footnote225" +class="citation">[225]</a> <i>Seventhly</i>, . . . 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 façade 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.</p> +<p>This was a happy period, when life was without a cloud, <!-- +page 226--><a name="page226"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +226</span>excepting my mother’s trouble. As my father +could now well afford it, he made me an allowance, which, with my +earnings from the <i>Bulletin</i> 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 <i>Symbolik</i>, and Durandus, and the work +“On Finger-Rings,” knew all about, it was +<i>that</i>; 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 +archæological views on the subject.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Salon</i>, 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 <i>maintien</i> and features of Goethe, +Humboldt, Bismarck,” and Brugsch, of <!-- page 227--><a +name="page227"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 227</span>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:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Ich that am <span +class="smcap">Berge</span> stehen,<br /> + Und sohaute in das <span +class="smcap">Thal</span>;<br /> +Da hab’ ich sie gesehen,<br /> + Zum aller letzten mal.”</p> +<p>“I stood upon the <i>mountain</i>,<br /> + And looked the <i>valley</i> o’er;<br /> +There I indeed beheld her,<br /> + But saw her never more.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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 Dürer’s +etching <!-- page 228--><a name="page228"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 228</span>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?”</p> +<p>I had just published my translation of Heine’s +<i>Reisebilder</i>, 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.</p> +<p>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 café near Leicester Square, and who enjoyed a +certain fame as the inventor of the <i>poses plastiques</i> 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 <!-- page 229--><a +name="page229"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +229</span>Bull’s playing has been, as I think, much +underrated by certain writers of reminiscences. There was +in it a marvellous originality.</p> +<p>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 <i>appointed</i> 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 <i>Bulletin</i> became Republican; Messrs. Cummings and +Peacock seeing that that was their manifest destiny.</p> +<p>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 +<i>Bulletin</i> 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.</p> +<p>While on the <i>Bulletin</i> I translated Heine’s +<i>Pictures of Travel</i>. 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, <!-- page 230--><a name="page230"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 230</span>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 <i>Graham’s Magazine</i>, 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) 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>nothing</i>; they are very heavy.”</p> +<p>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; <!-- page +231--><a name="page231"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +231</span>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>seven</i> +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?”</p> +<p>“Yes, I <i>have</i> a name,” replied the +Berserker; “<i>I’m</i> <span class="smcap">Charles +Leland</span>!” saying which he vanished.</p> +<p>The next day it was all over Philadelphia that I had cleared +out John Guy’s the night before, <i>sans merci</i>. +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.</p> +<p>While editing <i>Graham’s Magazine</i>, 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 +<i>Knickerbocker</i>, 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 <i>Graham’s Magazine</i> and <!-- page 232--><a +name="page232"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 232</span>the +<i>Weekly Bulletin</i>, &c., but I took no heed of +them. They were probably appropriated in due time by the +authors of “Beautiful Snow.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>Mr. George Ripley and Charles A. Dana, of the <i>Tribune</i>, +were then editing in New York <i>Appletons’ +Cyclopædia</i>. 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 <i>Cyclopædia</i> as +I got from the <i>Bulletin</i>. 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.</p> +<p>In the <i>Cyclopædia</i> 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 <i>Cyclopædia</i>. On the +other hand, there was pleasant and congenial society among my +fellow-workmen, <!-- page 233--><a name="page233"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 233</span>and the labour itself was immensely +instructive. If any man wishes to be well informed, let him +work on a cyclopædia. As I could read several +languages, I was additionally useful at times. The greatest +conciseness of style is required for such work. In German +cyclopædias this is carried to a fault.</p> +<p>After a while I began to find that there was much more money +to be made outside the <i>Cyclopædia</i> than in it. +William H. Hurlbut, whom I had once seen so nearly shot, had been +the “foreign editor” of the <i>New York +Times</i>. 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 <i>ad interim</i>. 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 æsthetics as +mine. When Patti made her <i>début</i> 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 <i>litterateur</i>, who was not one of his admirers, +having seen him seated in close +<i>tête-à-tête</i> with a very notorious and +unpopular character, remarked regretfully, “Just to think +that with one pistol-bullet <i>both</i> might have been +settled!” Hurlbut was, even as a boy, very handsome, +with a pale face and black eyes, and extremely clever, being +<i>facile princeps</i>, 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 <!-- +page 234--><a name="page234"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +234</span>unbounded admiration for him, because “he looked +so charmingly like the devil.” For many years the +<i>New York Herald</i> 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 <i>New</i> York, both of whom +narrated to me at very great length “a grotesque Iliad of +the wild career” of this remarkable man.</p> +<p>It never rains but it pours. Frank Leslie, who had been +with me on Barnum’s <i>Illustrated News</i>, 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.</p> +<p><i>Und noch weiter</i>. There was published in New York +at that time (1860) an illustrated comic weekly called <i>Vanity +Fair</i>. 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 <i>Vanity Fair</i>, and all the rest +contributed to it. There was some difficulty or other +between Wood and Mr. Stephens, the <i>gérant</i> 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 <!-- page 235--><a name="page235"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 235</span>appearance indeed. Little by +little the Bohemians all came back, and all went well.</p> +<p>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 <i>l’ennemi des Allemands</i>” (this title +angered me), which appeared in the <i>Revue des Deux Mondes</i> +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.</p> +<p>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, naïf, 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, <!-- page 236--><a +name="page236"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 236</span>and while +on the <i>Illustrated News</i> 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, <i>currente calamo</i> (having +written all these memoirs, so far, within a month—more or +less, and certainly very little more). From this came his +book.</p> +<p>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 +<i>talk</i>.” 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Vanity Fair</i> 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 <i>on principle</i>, 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 <!-- page 237--><a +name="page237"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 237</span>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.</p> +<p>Let me here relate two anecdotes. When my brother heard +of Lincoln’s “candidacy” he said—</p> +<p>“I don’t see why the people shouldn’t be +allowed to have a President for once.”</p> +<p>A Copperhead friend of mine, who was always aiming at +“gentility,” remarked to me with an air of disgust on +the same subject—</p> +<p>“I do <i>wisht</i> we could have a gentleman for +President for <i>oncet</i>.”</p> +<p>The said Copperhead became in due time a Republican +office-holder, and is one yet.</p> +<p>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. <a name="citation237"></a><a +href="#footnote237" class="citation">[237]</a></p> +<p><!-- page 238--><a name="page238"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +238</span>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 <i>how</i>? It was all +expressed in a few words, which I heard uttered by a common man +at a <i>Bulletin</i> 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.</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>Trouble now came thick and fast. <i>Vanity Fair</i> 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 +<i>employés</i> to the utmost was considered a matter of +course, especially when <!-- page 239--><a +name="page239"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 239</span>the one +employed was a “literary fellow” of any kind or an +artist.</p> +<p>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 <i>Hamlet</i>, but the chief character was the Sentinel, +who stared at the Ghost with such open-jawed +horror—“<i>bouche béante</i>, +<i>rechignez</i>!”—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.</p> +<p>My engagement expired on the <i>Times</i>—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 <!-- page +240--><a name="page240"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +240</span>race, and nobody but Americans could have ever invented +or indulged in it.</p> +<p>The old <i>Knickerbocker Magazine</i> 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>elixir vitæ</i> +itself. And by a marvellously strange inspiration (though +it was founded on cool, far-sighted calculation), <!-- page +241--><a name="page241"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 241</span>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.</p> +<p>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. <i>Secondly</i>, as the war went on we +should soon win converts. <i>Thirdly</i>, that the North +had immense resources—its hay crop alone was worth more +than all the cotton crop of the South. And <i>fourthly</i>, +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.</p> +<p>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 <i>New York Times</i> compared +my utterances to the outpourings of a fanatical Puritan in the +time of Cromwell.</p> +<p><!-- page 242--><a name="page242"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +242</span>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 <i>all alone</i> 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>name</i> 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 <i>New +York Tribune</i> became afraid to advocate anti-slavery, and the +greatest fanatics were dumb with fear.</p> +<p>Then I made a new departure. I advocated emancipation of +the slaves <i>as a war measure only</i>, 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 +<i>Knickerbocker</i> 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 +<i>Continental</i>, 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. <a name="citation242"></a><a href="#footnote242" +class="citation">[242]</a> Very speedily <!-- page 243--><a +name="page243"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 243</span>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 +<i>Emancipationist</i>; and it was subsequently declared by my +friends in Boston, and that often, that the very bold course +taken by the <i>Continental Magazine</i>, 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.</p> +<p>The <i>Continental Magazine</i> 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 +<i>Continental</i> 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 <!-- page 244--><a +name="page244"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 244</span>to the +grand plan of the campaign, afterwards realised by Sherman. +By <i>official request</i>, 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 <i>Continental Magazine</i> “respected at +court.” But I kept my independence and principles, +and thundered away so fiercely for <i>immediate</i> 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 <i>per contra</i>, and one of these +was Caleb Cushing. Cushing in Chinese means “ancient +glory,” but Caleb’s renown was extinguished in those +days.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<h2><!-- page 245--><a name="page245"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 245</span>V. LIFE DURING THE CIVIL WAR +AND ITS SEQUENCE. 1862-1866.</h2> +<p>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 <i>Continental +Magazine</i> advanced the period of Emancipation—I return +to Philadelphia—My pamphlet on “Centralisation +<i>versus</i> 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—<i>Inter arma silent +leges</i>—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.</p> +<p>We went to Boston early in December, 1861, and during that +winter lived pleasantly at the Winthrop House on the <!-- page +246--><a name="page246"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +246</span>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 <i>Vanity Fair</i>, and was now conducting the +<i>Continental</i> 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 <i>general</i> 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 <i>summa cum magna +laude</i>, 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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 247--><a +name="page247"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +247</span>later. With Dr. Holmes I had corresponded. +Lowell! “that reminds me of a little story.”</p> +<p>There was some “genius of +freedom”—<i>i.e.</i>, 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:</p> +<blockquote><p>“<span class="smcap">Dear Sir</span>: As I +am collecting the autographs of distinguished Americans, I would +be much obliged to you for your signature. Yours truly, --- +---”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>While I was editing <i>Vanity Fair</i> I received one of these +circulars. I at once wrote:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“<span class="smcap">Dear Sir</span>: It +gives me great pleasure to comply with your request. <span +class="smcap">Charles G. Leland</span>.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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—<i>mas y mas y +mas</i>—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 <i>pauper in +ære</i>.</p> +<p>Mrs. Harrison Gray Otis held a ladies’ sewing-circle to +make garments for the soldiers, at which my wife worked +zealously. <!-- page 248--><a name="page248"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 248</span>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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page +249--><a name="page249"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 249</span>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>The <i>Continental Magazine</i> 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.</p> +<p>The summer of 1862 I passed in Dedham, going every day to my +office in Boston. We lived at the Phœnix 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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- +page 250--><a name="page250"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +250</span><i>versus</i> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 +<!-- page 251--><a name="page251"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +251</span>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 <i>and return</i>. It was much thumbed, showing that +it had been thoroughly read by Father Abraham.</p> +<p>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 <i>Punch</i> 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 <i>Punch</i>, 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.”</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 252--><a name="page252"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 252</span>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. <a name="citation252"></a><a href="#footnote252" +class="citation">[252]</a> Our captain was a dealer in +cutlery named Landis.</p> +<p>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 <i>common</i> 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 <i>Century</i>, 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 <!-- page 253--><a +name="page253"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 253</span>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—<i>dans la pluie et la misère</i>.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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—<i>whizz-bang</i>—a shell came +flying over our heads and burst. There were cries—the +ladies fled like frightened wild-fowl! The operatic effect +was complete!</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 254--><a +name="page254"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 254</span>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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p><!-- page 255--><a name="page255"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +255</span>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>I</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.”</p> +<p>“Why!” cried Theodore in amazement, “<i>I +was that boy</i>!”</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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 <i>feather</i> in his +hat—but he carried his rifle as if after deer or raccoons, +and as if he were used to it.</p> +<p>“Say, Cap!” he exclaimed, “kin you tell me +where a chap could get some ammynition?”</p> +<p>“Go to your quartermaster,” I replied.</p> +<p>“Ain’t got no quartermaster.”</p> +<p>“Well, then to your commanding officer—to your +regiment.”</p> +<p><!-- page 256--><a name="page256"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +256</span>“Ain’t got no commanding officer +nowher’ this side o’ God, nor no regiment.”</p> +<p>“Then who the devil are you, and where do you +belong?”</p> +<p>“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 <i>did</i> 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.”</p> +<p>“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 <i>guerillo</i>—a +character with whom I was destined to make further experience in +after days.</p> +<p>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 <i>his</i> 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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- +page 257--><a name="page257"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +257</span>as <i>second</i>, 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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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, <!-- page 258--><a name="page258"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 258</span>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- +page 259--><a name="page259"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +259</span>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>At one time during the war, when men were not allowed to sleep +in the country houses (to protect their owners), the <!-- page +260--><a name="page260"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +260</span>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>terribly</i> 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>i.e.</i>, the slag or +<i>débris</i> 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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page +261--><a name="page261"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +261</span>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 <i>gaudium certaminis</i>, 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?”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 +<!-- page 262--><a name="page262"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +262</span>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 <i>stone</i>, when starving.</p> +<p>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, <i>must</i> have known +it. But—<i>qui vult decipi</i>, +<i>decipiatur</i>.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 263--><a name="page263"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 263</span>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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, <!-- page 264--><a name="page264"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 264</span>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.</p> +<p>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. +<i>Always</i>. 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 +<i>there</i>. 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 <!-- page 265--><a +name="page265"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 265</span>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 <i>straight-forward</i>. 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 <i>lift</i> or leap, as if raised +every time to go over entangled grass or sticks. Like an +Indian, I instinctively observe everybody’s <i>ears</i>, +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.”</p> +<p>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—<i>quid memoriæ datum +est</i>—“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 +<i>life</i> as a <i>spaccio di vino</i> 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.</p> +<blockquote><p style="text-align: right"><!-- page 266--><a +name="page266"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +266</span>“<i>May</i> <i>8th</i>, <i>1893</i>.<br /> +“<span class="smcap">Editorial Department</span>, <span +class="smcap">The Century Magazine</span>,<br /> +“<span class="smcap">Union Square</span>, <span +class="smcap">New York</span>.</p> +<p>“<span class="smcap">My Dear Leland</span>: 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.</p> +<p>“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. <a name="citation266a"></a><a +href="#footnote266a" class="citation">[266a]</a></p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>“You will remember that we helped dig the trenches at +the fort on the southern side of the river from Harrisburg, <a +name="citation266b"></a><a href="#footnote266b" +class="citation">[266b]</a> and that one section <!-- page +267--><a name="page267"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 267</span>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.</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>“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.’ <a +name="citation267"></a><a href="#footnote267" +class="citation">[267]</a> I suppose you realise that we +were really a part of Meade’s <!-- page 268--><a +name="page268"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 268</span>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? <a +name="citation268"></a><a href="#footnote268" +class="citation">[268]</a></p> +<p>“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. . . .</p> +<p style="text-align: right">“Sincerely,<br /> +<span class="smcap">R. W. Gilder</span>.</p> +<p>“<i>P.S.</i>—I could write more, but you will not +need it from me.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 269--><a name="page269"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 269</span>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, <i>originality</i>, 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, <i>and set up o’ nights to +learn</i>.” 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 +<i>Century</i> must have had, he still retains remembrance of my +oratory!</p> +<p>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 +<i>luxurious</i> as it had never been before. Luxuries are +very conventional. A copy of Prætorius, 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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page +270--><a name="page270"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +270</span>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° 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.”</p> +<p>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 +<i>ménage</i> 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 <i>this</i> be +a lesson to you never to publish anything without submitting it +first to <i>me</i>. I have a photograph of her +miniature.” The Doctor submitted!</p> +<p>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 <!-- page +271--><a name="page271"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +271</span>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 +<i>Aschkenazim</i> and the <i>Sephardim</i> 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 Löwenthal—Levi, of course—of +Frankfort. Don’t you see the difference?”</p> +<p>I did, and asked him to which of the classes he +belonged. He replied—</p> +<p>“To neither. I am of the sect of the ancient +Sadducees, who took no part in the Crucifixion.”</p> +<p>Then I replied, “You are of the +<i>Karaim</i>.”</p> +<p>“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 <i>Neu Reformirte</i>. We have a place of +worship in New York.”</p> +<p>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 <i>Sikh</i>!</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 272--><a +name="page272"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 272</span>them, I did +not learn. But <i>c’est tout comme chez nous +autres</i>. 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 <i>believe</i> 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 <i>bon Dieu</i>. +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.</p> +<p>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 <i>botte</i> which he +invented, bearing his name; perhaps Walter H. Pollock knows +it. I gave the free-lance or <i>condottiero</i> 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Our Daily Fare</i>, which often kept +me at work for eighteen hours per diem, and in doing <!-- page +273--><a name="page273"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +273</span>which I was subjected to much needless annoyance and +mortification. At this Fair I saw Abraham Lincoln.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>refused to take it</i>, saying that it was not what +he wanted. So I lost my labour or <i>oleum perdidi</i>.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page +274--><a name="page274"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +274</span>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, <i>sans merci</i>, 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 <i>vendettas</i>, 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.</p> +<p>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. <a +name="citation274"></a><a href="#footnote274" +class="citation">[274]</a> And, indeed, one could not take +up a newspaper without finding full proof that Tennessee was at +that time an <i>inferno</i> or No-man’s Land of +disorder.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 275--><a +name="page275"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 275</span>a failure +in life, or as a literary ne’er-do-weel, destined never to +achieve fortune or gain an <i>état</i>, 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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>i.e.</i>, £50,000). 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 <!-- page 276--><a +name="page276"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 276</span>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), 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>i.e.</i>, 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 <i>millions</i> was in the air everywhere; low common +men held sometimes <i>thirty companies</i>, 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>must</i> +succeed, and so, unheeding orders, he bored away <!-- page +277--><a name="page277"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +277</span>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 278--><a +name="page278"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 278</span>did it +cost?” asked B. “Fifty dollars” +(£10). “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.”</p> +<p>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) to take me over on a +<i>jumper</i>. 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:—</p> +<p>“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 <i>mighty</i> 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!”</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“He may be rich anywhere else with it,” replied +the <!-- page 279--><a name="page279"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 279</span><i>nouveau riche</i> contemptuously, +“but it wouldn’t do more than buy him a glass of +whisky here in Plummer.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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”—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Whiche is called the Land of +Doubte.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p><!-- page 280--><a name="page280"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +280</span>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.</p> +<p>When ill-fortune intends to make a spring, she draws +back. But good fortune, God bless her! does just the +same. Therefore <i>si fortuna tonat</i>, <i>caveto +mergi</i>—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.”</p> +<p>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 <i>rariora</i>, +<i>curiosa</i>, 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 <i>Bizarre</i>, 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.</p> +<p>I entered the office and found him, and great was his +amazement! “<i>Que diable</i>, <i>mon ami</i>, +<i>faistu ici dans cette galère</i>?” 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 <!-- page +281--><a name="page281"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +281</span>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!”</p> +<p>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 <i>we</i> 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.</p> +<p>Whenever the blacks realised the fact that a Northern man was +a <i>gentleman</i>—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 +<i>Faustrecht</i> (or fist-right) as “contraband of +war.”</p> +<p>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:—</p> +<p><!-- page 282--><a name="page282"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +282</span>“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.”</p> +<p>I believe that I give this word for word. And Jim, as I +found, was a leading mind among the blacks.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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?”</p> +<p>“It appears to me,” I replied, “that if the +disposal of these lands is in your hands, you must be supposed to +exert <!-- page 283--><a name="page283"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 283</span>some will and discretion. +<i>Stat pro ratione voluntas</i> is a good axiom here. We +are not at all <i>in statu quo ante bellum</i>—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 <i>skin</i> the enemy +like a bushwhacker, but to pacify the people. <i>Victor +volentes per populos dat jura</i>—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—<i>quod est violentum</i>, +<i>non est durabile</i>.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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?”</p> +<p>“General Whipple,” I replied, “is this town +under military occupation in time of war, or is it +not?”</p> +<p>“Most decidedly it is.”</p> +<p>“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, <i>Inter arma leges +silent</i>—the laws are suspended in warfare.”</p> +<p>“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:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“<span class="smcap">Sir</span>: 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. <!-- page 284--><a +name="page284"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 284</span>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>I-n-t-e-r</i>—yes, I’ve got +it)—<i>Inter arma silent leges</i>.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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 <i>always</i> possessed by the accomplished gentlemen +whom our country employs abroad.</p> +<p>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. <i>But +not a white soul was allowed to enter</i>—the real and +deeply-concealed reason being that Voodoo rites (which <!-- page +285--><a name="page285"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +285</span>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.</p> +<p>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 +<i>instrumental</i>, 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 “<i>Che faro +senza Euridice</i>” whom I ever heard was a Miss Reed, a +sister of Mrs. Paran Stevens.</p> +<p>I had a very pleasant time with Paxton, and I know right well +that I was no burden on him, but a welcome friend. <!-- +page 286--><a name="page286"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +286</span><i>Au reste</i>, 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.”</p> +<p>“No trouble to me,” replied the other.</p> +<p>“And how do you do with them?”</p> +<p>“Shoot them as <i>spies</i>. 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.”</p> +<p>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 <i>guerillas</i> 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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 287--><a +name="page287"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 287</span>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—<i>plus impetravi quam fuissem +ausus</i>—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 <i>may</i> 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!</p> +<p>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 <!-- +page 288--><a name="page288"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +288</span>latter to coming a cropper. Strange that the less +a man has to live for the more he clings to life.</p> +<p>The general thought that if he gave us a corporal and four +men, and if we were well armed, that we <i>might</i> 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, <i>equo iter ingredi</i>, 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 289--><a +name="page289"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 289</span>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>ergastulum</i>, 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 <i>something to eat</i>.” The +optimist of Candide was a Mallock in mourning compared to +this.</p> +<p>That night we came to somebody’s plantation. I +forget his name, but he was a Union man, probably a <i>very</i> +recent acquisition, but genial. He had read the +<i>Knickerbocker</i>, 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 <!-- page 290--><a name="page290"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 290</span>the <i>soldiers</i>! 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.</p> +<p>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! <i>ile</i> come up outer the ground like +water! H---! I never heard of sitch a +thing.” <i>There was no oil</i>.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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. “<i>You</i> look like an officer,” +she said to Captain Colton, “and so does <i>that</i> one, +but what is <i>he</i>?” meaning me by this last. We +had dinner—roast kid—and when we departed I gave the +dame five dollars, having <!-- page 291--><a +name="page291"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 291</span>the feeling +that I could not be indebted to thieves for a dinner.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>lemurés</i> flitting in the +gloom.”</p> +<p>Riding over the battlefield the Coltons and Paxton <!-- page +292--><a name="page292"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +292</span>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>“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?”</p> +<p>“I do.”</p> +<p>“Well, be there at exactly eleven to-night, and +you’ll get him. I have been there and learned it from +the niggers.”</p> +<p>“Well, I declare that you are a good scout, Mr. +Leland!” cried the Major in amazement. “What +can I do to thank you?”</p> +<p>“Well, Major Hill,” I said, “I have one +thing to request: that is, if you get ---, don’t parole +him. <i>Shoot him at once</i>; he is a red-handed +murderer.”</p> +<p>“I <i>will</i> 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.</p> +<p>I believe that at the plantation our men had camped out. +<!-- page 293--><a name="page293"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +293</span>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.</p> +<p>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 +“depôt,” 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.</p> +<p>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!</p> +<p>Captain Paxton knew everything and everybody. With a +quick glance from his keen dark eyes he exclaimed—</p> +<p>“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). “<i>Voilà votre +affaire</i>.”</p> +<p>“And how is it that he has kept his house?” asked +the General.</p> +<p><!-- page 294--><a name="page294"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +294</span>“He sent the quartermaster a barrel of whisky, or +something of that sort.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>might</i> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>He told me that on the hills in sight a mysterious light often +wandered. During the Revolutionary war some one <!-- page +295--><a name="page295"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +295</span>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.</p> +<p>The next day I examined the land. There was abundance of +fossiliferous limestone, rich in petrifactions of tertiary +shells, also cartloads of beautiful <i>geodes</i> 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.</p> +<p>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; <i>he</i> did +not. With a very grave expression he asked me, +“Don’t the gals in <i>your</i> part of the country +allays break for the woods when they see <i>you</i> +a-coming?” “Certainly not,” I +replied. To which he made answer, “Thank God, our +gals here hev got better morrils than yourn.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- +page 296--><a name="page296"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +296</span>near the town of Charleston, which is at the junction +of the Kanawha (a tributary of the Ohio) and Elk rivers.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 +<i>chanced</i> to read that book? None of us did. +Such chances come to inquiring minds.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 +<!-- page 297--><a name="page297"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +297</span>companion. Many a journey had we together, and as +I appreciated him as a marked character of odd oppositions, we +got on admirably.</p> +<p>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°, 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>sans merci</i>—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, “<i>Vive</i> Thomson!” for he was the +only man among us who displayed quiet self-possession and +<i>savoir faire</i>. As for me, my <!-- page 298--><a +name="page298"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 298</span>“old +Injun” was up, and I had “sailed in” for a +fight by mere impulse. <i>Vive</i> Thomson! <i>Bon +sang ne peut mentir</i>.</p> +<p>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; <i>literature</i> 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.</p> +<p>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!</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page +299--><a name="page299"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +299</span>ringing of the bell, and, seizing my carpet-bag, ran +ashore just as the plank was to be withdrawn.</p> +<p>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 <i>you Horse-gone</i>.” 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.</p> +<p>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. <i>He</i> 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 <i>Ile</i>.” 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 <i>not</i> particularly charming life all winter and the +spring, to the great amazement and bewilderment of many, as will +appear in the sequence.</p> +<p>The upper part of Elk River was in the debatable land, or +rather still in Slave-ownia or rebeldom, where a Union <!-- page +300--><a name="page300"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +300</span>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 <i>liked</i> 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 <i>liking</i> +which I have for Indians, gypsies, and all such folk.</p> +<p>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 <i>utterly</i> 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 <i>raven</i>. 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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page +301--><a name="page301"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +301</span>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>around</i> while +closing in, and I know not by what strange inspiration I added, +“You will have just time to clear King Rock!”</p> +<p>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—<i>aux moulins</i>—and hurrahed and +cried in exulting joy.</p> +<p>“Now, Mr. Leland, sing us that German song you’re +always so jolly with—<i>lodle yodle tol de rol de +rol</i>!”</p> +<p>From that hour I was <i>Kchee-Bo-o-in</i> 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 <!-- page 302--><a name="page302"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 302</span>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.</p> +<p>“It is too far away,” I replied, “and you +are right in the way.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“I knew you’d hit!” cried Sam +triumphantly. And so I had, but I should not like to try +that shot again.</p> +<p>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 <i>least</i> self-deception or +delusion.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>Meanwhile, the legal business and renewal of the leases and +the payment of money was performed accurately and +punctually. Talk about <i>manna</i> in the wilderness! +<i>money</i> 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 <!-- page 303--><a name="page303"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 303</span>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’ <i>delicacy</i> with us.”</p> +<p>Sometimes the log huts were twenty miles apart. In such +isolation there is no rivalry of ostentation, and men care only +to <i>live</i>. 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 <i>knows</i> something, +yet every one of these people had an independence or pride far +above all poverty.</p> +<p>One night we stopped at the house of a man who was said to +possess $150,000 (£30,000) 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 <i>far</i> higher +standard of morals among these people than among the ignorant +elsewhere.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page +304--><a name="page304"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +304</span>well-furnished table bear’s meat, venison, or +other game, fish, ham, chickens, &c.</p> +<p>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 +Schlösser 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:</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/p304.jpg"> +<img alt="Round tower" src="images/p304.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>These are called “Devil’s Tea-tables.” +I drew them several times, but could never give them the +appearance of being <i>natural</i> 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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 305--><a +name="page305"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 305</span>borne hard +on them, and for a long time <i>everything</i> 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 <i>free</i>. 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.</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>“Dave Goshorn, what do <i>you</i> know about such +things? What’s set <i>you</i> 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.”</p> +<p>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. <!-- +page 306--><a name="page306"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +306</span>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’.”</p> +<p>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>I</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 <i>now</i>. And I <i>will</i> 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 <i>friends</i>.</p> +<p>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 <i>one hundred and fifty</i> 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—<i>nudo podice</i>—on an +immense rattlesnake. He had a little cottage and a fine +horse. He <!-- page 307--><a name="page307"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 307</span>kept the latter in a stable and +painted the door <i>white</i>, 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>bons compagnons</i> I said to one—</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>He came out, and, having heard my story, said—</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 308--><a +name="page308"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 308</span>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>completely over backward</i>. 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>magnificent</i> +thing!”</p> +<p>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 <i>awful</i> five minutes of kicking, plunging, <!-- page +309--><a name="page309"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +309</span>splashing, and “ground and lofty” +swearing. I got across dry by drawing my legs up before me +on the saddle, <i>à la</i> tailor, but the others were +badly wet. But no sooner had we emerged from the stream +than Robert Hunt, bursting into a tremendous “<i>Ho</i>! +<i>ho</i>!” 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!</p> +<p>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 <i>vaurien</i> had really emptied his flask +while in the “quick.”</p> +<p>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, <i>ex pede +Herculem</i>, had a point whence to judge me, but it failed. <a +name="citation309"></a><a href="#footnote309" +class="citation">[309]</a> 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Algic</i> book. I believe that +much of Longfellow’s <i>Hiawatha</i> owed its origin thus +indirectly <!-- page 310--><a name="page310"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 310</span>to Mr. Wadsworth. In after +years I wrote out many of his tales, as told to me, in articles +in <i>Temple Bar</i>.</p> +<p>The country all about Charleston was primitively wild and +picturesque, rocky, hilly, and leading to solitary life and +dreams of <i>sylvani</i> 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 <i>Ile</i>, +and an angel of coming moneyed times.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 +<!-- page 311--><a name="page311"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +311</span>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</p> +<blockquote><p>“Hang a calf-skin on those recreant +limbs.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>bang</i>, <i>bang</i>, 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.</p> +<p>The Bull-pen was a picturesque place—a large log +enclosure, full of strange inmates, such as wild guerillas in +<!-- page 312--><a name="page312"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +312</span>moccasins, grey-back Confederates and blue-coat +Federals guilty of many a murder, arson, and much horse-stealing, +desolate deserters, often deserving pity—the +<i>débris</i> of a four years’ war, the crumbs of +the great loaf fallen to the dirt.</p> +<p>Warm weather came on, and I sent to Philadelphia for a summer +suit of clothes. It came, and it was of a <i>light grey +colour</i>. At that time Oxford “dittos,” or a +suit <i>pareil partout</i>, 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!</p> +<p>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—</p> +<p>“Pecause he’s a tamned repel. Aferypody +knows it.”</p> +<p>Sandford at once explained that I was even known at Washington +as a good Union man, and had, moreover, translated Heine, adding +other details.</p> +<p>“Gott verdammich—<i>heiss</i>!” cried the +Colonel in amazement. “Is dot der Karl Leland vot +dranslate de <i>Reisebilder</i>? Herr je! I hafe got +dat very pook here on mein table! Look at it. Bei +Gott! here’s his name! <i>Dot</i> is der crate Leland +vot edit de <i>Continental Magazine</i>! Dot moost pe a +fery deep man. Und I dink <i>he</i> vas a repel!”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>At last Sandford and I determined to return to the East. +<!-- page 313--><a name="page313"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +313</span>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—</p> +<p>“Well, Harrison, I hope that you haven’t quite so +bad an opinion of me as the other people here seem to +have.”</p> +<p>He manifested at once a really violent emotion. Dashing +something to the ground, he cried—</p> +<p>“Mr. Leland, you <i>never</i> 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?”</p> +<p>“Damn Jeff Davis!” I replied.</p> +<p>“And you ain’t a major in the Confederate +service?”</p> +<p>“I’m a clear-down Abolitionist, and was born +one.”</p> +<p>“And you ain’t had no goings on with the rebels up +the river to bring back the Confederacy here?”</p> +<p>“Devil a dealing.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page +314--><a name="page314"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +314</span>whom I had had intimate dealings—without one +exception <i>personally</i> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“Yes,” replied Sam, “but he had called me a +-- son --- of ---.”</p> +<p>“Very good,” I answered; “and if he had +called me <i>that</i>, I should have done the same. But I +don’t think, if I <i>had</i> 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—<i>very</i>.”</p> +<p>Sam was quite convinced.</p> +<p>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 <i>flair</i>, 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 +<!-- page 315--><a name="page315"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +315</span>gave you a cheap but unusual Portuguese +wine.’” This wine is neither white nor red, and +tastes like sherry and Burgundy mixed.</p> +<p>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, <i>plus</i> $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.</p> +<p>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 +<i>act</i> 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 <i>correctly</i>; but as I was +obliged to do this sometimes for fifteen hours a day <i>nolens +volens</i>, it is not remarkable that I became an expert.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<blockquote><p><!-- page 316--><a name="page316"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 316</span>“Zum Wald, zum Wald, steht mir +mein Sinn.<br /> + So einzig, ach! so einzig hin.<br /> +Dort lebt man freundlich, lebt man froh,<br /> + Und nirgends, nirgends lebt man so.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 +<i>Hoch</i>-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 <i>proud</i> of +it!”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 317--><a name="page317"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 317</span>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>very best</i> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<h2><!-- page 318--><a name="page318"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 318</span>VI. LIFE ON THE PRESS. +1866-1869.</h2> +<p>I become managing editor of John W. Forney’s +<i>Press</i>—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—<i>Freiheit und +Gleichheit</i>—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.</p> +<p>We had not lived at Mrs. Sandgren’s more than a week +when George Boker, knowing my need, spoke to Colonel <!-- page +319--><a name="page319"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +319</span>John Forney, who was at that time not only Secretary of +the Senate of the United States, but the proprietor of the +<i>Chronicle</i> newspaper in Washington, of the <i>Press</i> 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 +<i>Press</i>, and, as I found in due time, not so much a man of +enterprise and a leader—that <i>he</i> 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 <i>pivot</i> on which the compass could turn +during his absences—and that <i>I</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.</p> +<p>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 <i>coup</i>, 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.</p> +<p>Forney’s antipathies were always remarkably well +placed. He hated Buchanan; also, for certain personal +reasons, he <!-- page 320--><a name="page320"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 320</span>hated Simon Cameron; and finally it +came to pass that he hated Andrew Johnson with a hatred of +twenty-four carats—an <i>aquafortis</i> +detestation—and for a most singular cause.</p> +<p>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—</p> +<p>“Now give us <i>John Forney</i>!”</p> +<p>With an air of infinite contempt the President +exclaimed—</p> +<p>“I don’t waste <i>my</i> powder on dead +ducks.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>I had been but a few weeks on the <i>Press</i>, 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 <!-- page +321--><a name="page321"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +321</span>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; but it was made to pay, and that to +great profit.</p> +<p>We were all a very genial, congenial party of easy-going +geniuses. There was Hassard, the “day editor” +of the <i>New York Tribune</i>, who had been with me on the +<i>Cyclopædia</i>, and to whom I was much attached, for he +was a gentlemanly scholar, and withal had seen enough of life on +the <i>Tribune</i> 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 <i>Bulletin</i>. This +excursion was destined, in connection with this pamphlet, to have +a marvellous effect on my future life.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 322--><a +name="page322"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 322</span>bottle of +champagne, please to pull the cord and stop the train. You +can then drink without spilling your wine.”</p> +<p>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 soirée, and indeed for the excursion the next day, +we had as a guest Mr. Walter, of the London <i>Times</i>.</p> +<p>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:—</p> +<p>“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 <i>woke +up</i>, 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 <i>everything +in the room had changed its colour to a rich brown</i>! +Looking about me, I saw on a kind of <i>étagère</i> +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 <!-- page 323--><a +name="page323"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 323</span>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 <i>Columbus</i>, 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 <i>Duer</i> and his two daughters +(of whom I had never heard) had just returned from the +East.”</p> +<p>Here MacCook interrupted me eagerly: “You were not in +Columbus, but in <i>Dayton</i>, Ohio. And it was not Judge +Duer, but Judge <i>Duey</i>, with his two daughters, who was that +summer in the East.” I went on:—</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>Here MacCook spoke again: “That was <i>surely</i> +Dayton. I know the house and the view. But it could +not have been Columbus.” I went on:—</p> +<p>“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 <i>after</i>, 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 <!-- page 324--><a +name="page324"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 324</span>sounds +continued, but they were caused by the grasshoppers and +tree-toads, who pipe monotonously all night long in +America.”</p> +<p>Nothing ever came of the dream, but it all occurred +<i>exactly</i> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- +page 325--><a name="page325"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +325</span>causes incredible hunger. We all played a good +knife and fork.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>B’meergashee</i>; +a pony was <i>shoonga</i>, the nose <i>hin</i>, and a woman +<i>shimmy-shindy</i>! 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.</p> +<p>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” (<i>Washitaw</i>), and they also knew +it. Then came a strange wild scene. I spoke to the +chief, and pointing to my whip said, +“<i>B’meergashee</i>” and indicating a woman +and a pony, repeated, “<i>Shimmy-shindy</i>, +<i>shoonga-hin</i>,” 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, “<i>You</i> +Kaw?” To which I replied, “<i>O</i>, +<i>nitchee</i>, <i>me</i> Kaw, <i>washitá</i> 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 <!-- page 326--><a +name="page326"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 326</span>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:—</p> +<blockquote><p>I slew the chief of the Muscolgee;<br /> +I burnt his squaw at the blasted tree!<br /> +By the hind-legs I tied up the cur,<br /> +He had no time to fondle on her.</p> +<p><i>Chorus</i>.</p> +<p>Hoo! hoo! hoo! the Muscolgee!<br /> +Wah, wah, wah! the blasted tree!</p> +<p>A faggot from the blasted tree<br /> +Fired the lodge of the Muscolgee;<br /> +His sinews served to string my bow<br /> +When bent to lay his brethren low.</p> +<p><i>Chorus</i>.</p> +<p>Hoo! hoo! hoo! the Muscolgee!<br /> +Wah, wah, wah! the blasted tree!</p> +<p>I stripped his skull all naked and bare,<br /> +And here’s his skull with a tuft of hair!<br /> +His heart is in the eagle’s maw,<br /> +His bloody bones the wolf doth gnaw.</p> +<p><i>Chorus</i>.</p> +<p>Hoo! hoo! hoo! the Muscolgee!<br /> +Wah, wah, wah! the blasted tree!</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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 +<i>Tribune</i>, in which he mentioned that in scenes of +excitement I rode and whooped like a savage. It <i>may</i> +be so—<i>I</i> never noticed it; perhaps he exaggerated, +but I must admit that I do like <!-- page 327--><a +name="page327"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 327</span>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 +<i>Alla Fresca</i>, 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>incredible</i> 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 <!-- +page 328--><a name="page328"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +328</span>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>New York Herald</i>.” I +daresay that I met and talked to him at the time among those whom +we saw.</p> +<p>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 +<i>Quahbeet</i>, 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 329--><a name="page329"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 329</span>cooked a meal for us on the +spot. The beef was deliciously tender and well +flavoured.</p> +<p>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—<i>ticked</i>! 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.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/p329b.jpg"> +<img alt="Stairs of rock" src="images/p329s.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>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 <!-- page +330--><a name="page330"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +330</span>from which there descended a flight of natural stairs +of rock, but every one very broad, like the above sketch.</p> +<p>And being inspired by the devil, and my horse not objecting at +all, I clattered down over it at full speed <i>à la</i> +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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“It isn’t all bravery at all,” said +Brigham. “He’s brave as a panther, but +there’s more in it than <i>that</i>. 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>I’m</i> such a man, and I’ve proved it often +enough, God knows! Lieutenant Hesselberger is one, +and,” he added abruptly, “Mr. Leland, +<i>you’re</i> another.”</p> +<p>“What makes you think so?” I said, greatly +surprised.</p> +<p>“’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 <i>you</i>? 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 +<i>we</i>.”</p> +<p><!-- page 331--><a name="page331"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +331</span>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 <i>petites +bagages</i>, 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“Great God!” he cried, “you don’t mean +to shoot at him?”</p> +<p>“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!</p> +<p>But I did <i>not</i> 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!</p> +<p>Hassard heard the whizz, and cried, “What’s +that?”</p> +<p>“<i>Injuns</i>, 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!</p> +<p>But when he realised that <i>we</i> 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.</p> +<p><!-- page 332--><a name="page332"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +332</span>“Brigham,” I said in Spanish, “<i>es +la mano o el navajo</i>?” [Is it to be hand, or +knife?]</p> +<p>Brigham was proud of his Spanish; it was his elegant +accomplishment, and this was a good scene. Grasping my hand +cordially, he said, “<i>La mano</i>.” Like a +true frontiersman, he felt in a minute the <i>grandeur</i> of the +joke. There was, if I may so vulgarly express myself, an +<i>Indian-uity</i> in it which appealed to his deepest +feelings. There was a silence for several minutes, which he +broke by exclaiming—</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>There was another long silent pause, when he +resumed—</p> +<p>“I wish to God there was a gulch (ravine) between here +and the fort! I’d upset this crowd into it d---d +quick!”</p> +<p>That evening I took leave of Brigham. I drank healths +with him in whisky, and shook hands, and said—</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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—</p> +<p>“Mr. Leland, you have the most original way of ringing a +bell when you want to call a carriage that I ever heard +of.”</p> +<p>As for Hassard, when he witnessed my parting with Brigham, he +said—</p> +<p>“This is all mighty fine! daggers and whisky, and all +<!-- page 333--><a name="page333"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +333</span>kinds of beautiful things flying around for Brigham, +but what am <i>I</i> to have?”</p> +<p>“And what dost thou expect, son Hassard?” I +replied.</p> +<p>Holding out both his hands, he replied—</p> +<p>“Much tobacco! much tobacco!”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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. +<a name="citation333"></a><a href="#footnote333" +class="citation">[333]</a></p> +<p>That evening they sent for a Bavarian-Tyroler soldier, who +played beautifully on the cithern. As I listened to the +<i>Jodel-lieder</i> airs I seemed to be again in his native +land. It was a pleasure to me to hear from him the familiar +dialect.</p> +<p><!-- page 334--><a name="page334"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +334</span>At St. Louis we were very kindly entertained in several +distinguished houses. At one they gave us some excellent +Rhine wine.</p> +<p>“What do you think of this?” said Hassard, who was +a good Latinist.</p> +<p>I replied, “Vinum Rhenense decus et gloria +mense.”</p> +<p>In the next we had Moselle wine. “And what of +this?”</p> +<p>I answered, “Vinuin Moslanum fuit omne tempore +sanum.”</p> +<p>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, <a +name="citation334"></a><a href="#footnote334" +class="citation">[334]</a> Blow, Mark Twain, and the +Choteaus I could add many more.</p> +<p>So we jogged on homeward. I resumed my work. I had +written out all the details of our trip in letters to the +<i>Press</i>. 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.”</p> +<p><!-- page 335--><a name="page335"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +335</span>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>that it should +not be republished as a book</i>. 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.</p> +<p>I had transferred the whole right of publication in England to +my friend Nicolas Trübner, 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 <i>him</i> the sole right to republish +the work. He said, “I hardly know what to say about +the price. <!-- page 336--><a name="page336"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 336</span>Suppose we say <i>ten +pounds</i>!” I replied, “Sir, I have given the +whole right of publication to Mr. Trübner, 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 +<i>Knasterbart</i> meant “a nasty fellow,” and that +the French <i>garce</i> was <i>gare</i>, “a railway +station!” Trübner 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 +“<i>first</i> introduced me” to their knowledge!</p> +<p>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 <i>Degen</i> hung with +<i>loot</i>—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 <i>new</i> 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 +<i>merely original</i> 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 <i>form</i>. 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 +<i>Biglow Papers</i>. Bret Harte’s “Heathen +Chinee,” and several other poems, are, however, <i>both</i> +original <!-- page 337--><a name="page337"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 337</span>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>forgot</i> them. +<i>Weingeist</i> 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 +<i>à mon insu</i> in a sporting paper. Years after I +learned that I published one called “Breitmann’s +Sermon” in <i>Leslie’s Magazine</i>. 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.</p> +<p>However, I was “awful busy” in those days. I +had hardly begun on the <i>Press</i> 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>method</i>. 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 <!-- page 338--><a +name="page338"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 338</span>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.”</p> +<p>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), 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 <i>Weekly Press</i> was yielding him $10,000 +a year <i>clear profit</i>, 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 <i>meets its +expenses</i>!”</p> +<p>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 +<i>incredible</i> 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.</p> +<p>It happened once that for a week the Republicans were kept +from resisting or retaliating by their leaders, until the <!-- +page 339--><a name="page339"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +339</span>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—</p> +<p>“My friends, fellow-citizens and Republicans, you have +this week acted nobly.”</p> +<p>Cries from the crowd, “<i>We hev</i>! <i>we +hev</i>!”</p> +<p>“You, when smitten on the right cheek, turned unto the +oppressor the left.”</p> +<p>“We did! we <i>did</i>!”</p> +<p>“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 +<i>air</i>!”</p> +<p>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—</p> +<p>“Shut up, you d---d old Republican dead-duck!”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>The enemy at last resolved to attack the <i>Press</i> 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.</p> +<p>I never went armed in my life when I could help it, for I <!-- +page 340--><a name="page340"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +340</span>hate <i>impedimenta</i> 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>gonfalon</i> +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.</p> +<p>“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?”</p> +<p>In a sepulchral voice he replied, “I’m ---, and +last night <i>I carried the dead duck</i>!”</p> +<p>Till I came on the <i>Press</i> 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 <i>Freie Presse</i>. 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 <i>Massenversammlung</i> 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, <!-- page 341--><a +name="page341"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 341</span>knew not a +word of the language, and I undertook to coach him.</p> +<p>“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 <i>Freiheit und +Gleichheit</i>, ‘freedom and equality.’ Now, if +you <i>please</i>, <i>fry-height</i>.”</p> +<p>The Colonel went at his lesson, and being naturally clever, +with a fine, deep voice, in a quarter of an hour could roar out +<i>Freiheit und Gleichheit</i> 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—</p> +<p>“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 <i>Freiheit und Gleichheit</i>!”</p> +<p>If ever audience was astonished in this world it was that of +the <i>Massenversammlung</i> 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, <i>Freiheit und Gleichheit</i>.</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 342--><a name="page342"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 342</span>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 <i>ad infinitum</i>, and he was straight +as a lightning rod. He was handsome, and very dignified and +grave; but I understood <i>that</i>. 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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>spicket</i>. He filled his glass—it +was brim-full—but he did not know how to <i>turn it +off</i>. Then I had him. As it ran over he turned to +me an appealing helpless glance. I said +“<i>Neosho</i>.” 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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“Only a little pun in Pottawattamie. But I really +know very little of the language.”</p> +<p>“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 <!-- page 343--><a name="page343"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 343</span>understood that when a man gets so +far in a tongue as to make <i>puns</i> in it, it is time for him +to stop.”</p> +<p>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, “<i>Ho nitchi</i>!” (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 “<i>Shingawauba</i>,” or whisky. +“Dot fetched him.” He too laughed. +<i>Gleich mit gleich</i>, <i>gesellt sich gern</i>.</p> +<p>While living in New York, and during my connection with the +<i>Press</i>, 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, “<i>Lead pencil</i>!” 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 <i>charactered</i> 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—</p> +<p>“How is John Forney getting on?”</p> +<p>“Like Satan, walking to and fro upon the face of the +earth, going from the <i>Chronicle</i> in Washington one day to +the <i>Press</i> in Philadelphia on the next, and filling them +both cram full of leaders and letters.”</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>Finally, we walked together from the ferry to the corner of +Park Place and Broadway, and the philosopher, after <!-- page +344--><a name="page344"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +344</span>minutely explaining to me which omnibus I was to take, +bade me adieu. I do not think we ever met again.</p> +<p>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 <i>Press</i>, 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 <i>Sunday Transcript</i> +unkindly remarked that “he had better come home and look +after his own Dutch windmill at the corner of Seventh and +Chestnut Streets.”</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 345--><a +name="page345"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 345</span>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. <i>Comprenez</i>, +<i>monsieur</i>, <i>c’est une bagatelle</i>.” +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—</p> +<p>“Veliky Bog! Rozprava pochesky? Nekrasneya +rejece est.”</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“Yes,” I replied, “it <i>is</i> certainly +very fine. But I know a finer, which goes more nearly to +the heart, and with which I can move you more deeply.”</p> +<p>“And what is that?” cried the great artist +astonished.</p> +<p>“It is,” I replied, in her native tongue, +“<i>Bohemian</i>. That is the language for +me.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p><!-- page 346--><a name="page346"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +346</span>I have seen Ristori play for thirty nights in +succession, <a name="citation346"></a><a href="#footnote346" +class="citation">[346]</a> 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 <i>how it ended</i>. She had never +read the fifth act. Such a story could never have been told +of Janauschek.</p> +<p>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 <i>montagne Russe</i> +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 <i>least +trifle</i> more of steam on at that instant we must all have +perished.</p> +<p>In November of this my second year on the <i>Press</i> my +father died. One thing occurred on this sad bereavement +which alleviated it a little. I had always felt all my <!-- +page 347--><a name="page347"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +347</span>life that he had never been satisfied with my want of a +fixed career or position. He did not, I think, <i>very</i> +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 +<i>état</i>—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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 348--><a +name="page348"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 348</span>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!</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>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 <i>Chicago +Tribune</i>. 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 <i>Press</i>. 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>I’m the man</i>. If you +make me <!-- page 349--><a name="page349"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 349</span>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 <a name="citation349"></a><a href="#footnote349" +class="citation">[349]</a> from the East come here, that we are +obliged to be a little particular.”</p> +<p>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 <i>stay</i> 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>menobranchus</i>, 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 <i>au fond</i>, 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 <i>Times</i>, to be +the greatest engineering work of modern times.</p> +<p>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, <!-- page 350--><a +name="page350"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 350</span>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 <i>this</i> hotel.” There was a +grand roar of laughter which the waiter evidently thought was at +<i>my</i> expense, as he retreated smiling.</p> +<p>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 +<i>home</i>, 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—”</p> +<p>“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 <i>café</i>, and inviting your +strangers to it to help you to be glorified. But to very +domestic people and utter Philistines, <i>domestic</i> 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 <!-- page +351--><a name="page351"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +351</span>more civilised folk. But in America and England, +where home-life is <i>worth</i> 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.</p> +<p>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. <i>Minne</i> means water; +<i>Minne-sota</i>, turbid water, and <i>Minne-haha</i> does not +signify “laughing,” but <i>falling</i> 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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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, <!-- +page 352--><a name="page352"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +352</span>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 <i>than they want to +be</i>.</p> +<blockquote><p>“Femme plaint, femme deult,<br /> +Femme est malade quand elle veult,<br /> +Et par Sainte Marie!<br /> +Quand elle veult elle est guerye.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>And of course <i>we</i> 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!</p> +<p>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 <i>tin +cup</i> 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, <i>faute de mieux</i>, drunk from these eccentric +goblets.</p> +<p><!-- page 353--><a name="page353"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +353</span>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 naïve discourse.</p> +<p>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 <i>are</i> 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 <i>not</i> French, how came the <i>whole</i> 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—</p> +<p>“Of course you have no Indian blood in you, Mr. Leland; +but weren’t you a great deal among ’em when you were +young?”</p> +<p>“Why?”</p> +<p>“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 <i>smudge</i>” (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 <!-- page 354--><a name="page354"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 354</span>making fires of small bits of wood +peculiar to old English gypsies.)</p> +<p>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 <i>fanous</i> or folding +lantern. It is cylindrical, made of <i>tulle</i> 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 <i>goitres</i> or +<i>Kröpfe</i>. 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.</p> +<p>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, <i>al +fresco</i>. 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 +<i>Indian</i>” said one of my companions. But I +filled the cup with a tremendous slug, and handed it <!-- page +355--><a name="page355"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 355</span>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, <i>squoah</i>—<i>i.e.</i>, +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!</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>Our whisky ran short—it always does on all such +excursions—and our drivers in consequence became very +“short” also, or rather unruly. But <i>bon +chemin</i>, <i>mal chemin</i>, we went on, and the ladies, as I +had predicted, pulled through merrily.</p> +<p>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 +<!-- page 356--><a name="page356"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +356</span>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>I showed the god on the fan to the Indian woman, and said, +“<i>Manitū</i>—<i>ktchee manitū</i>” +(“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 <i>manitou</i>. 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 <i>not</i> 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 <i>thought</i> he would like +to have a Testament, but <i>knew</i> 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.</p> +<p><!-- page 357--><a name="page357"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +357</span>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 <i>Kitchimōkomon</i>, “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 +<i>dans son droit</i>, 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.”</p> +<p>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 +<i>kcheemo-komon iqueh</i>”—the long-knife woman +(<i>i.e.</i>, 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 <i>Poaugun</i> or Pipe. Among the +Algonkin of the East in after-days I had a name which means <i>he +who seeks hidden things</i> (<i>i.e.</i>, mysteries).</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 358--><a +name="page358"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 358</span>as the +Dulutherans outbid the Father Superiors, the terminus of the road +was fixed at Duluth.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>I asked of the Indian, “<i>Wa go nin-iu</i>?” +(“How do you call that?”) Thinking I wanted to +know the name for a stream, he replied, +“<i>Sebe</i>.” This is the same as <i>sipi</i> +in Missis-sippi.</p> +<p>“I knew it,” groaned Stewart. “There +is no such river as the <i>Sebe</i> laid down on the map. +We’re lost in an unknown region.”</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“And I say,” replied Stewart, “that if you +ever do get <!-- page 359--><a name="page359"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 359</span>back to civilisation, you’ll +be the old --- toper that ever was.”</p> +<p>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 +<i>Minnesot</i>.</p> +<p>We railroad people formed one party and sat at our evening +meal by ourselves, the surveyors made another, and the Indians a +third <i>table-d’hôte</i>. 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 <i>drank off the entire +quart</i>, <i>oysters and all</i>, 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.”</p> +<p>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 <i>al fresco</i>, +and ate <i>ad libitum</i>. To this day its remembrance +inspires in me a feeling of deep, true poetry.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page +360--><a name="page360"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 360</span>in +pattern, to the <i>tibiæ</i>. 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 <i>reindeer</i>, 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 archæology, seized as +“curiosities” by ignorant wealthy folk. The +most detestable form of this folly is the buying of +<i>incunabula</i>, 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 +<i>rare</i>. Men never expatiate on <i>rariora</i> in +literature or in china, or talk cookery and wines over-much, +without showing themselves prigs. It is not any beauty in +the <i>thing</i>, but the delightful sense of their own culture +or wealth which they cultivate. When there is nothing in a +thing but mere <i>rarity</i> and cost to commend it, it is +absolutely worthless, as is the learning and connoisseurship +thereupon dependent.</p> +<p>Business concluded, we took a steamboat, and were very <!-- +page 361--><a name="page361"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +361</span>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>employé</i> 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 <i>rancune</i> 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, <!-- page 362--><a name="page362"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 362</span>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.</p> +<p>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 +<i>quodlibets</i>. 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 <i>fond</i> of what I, for want of a better term, +call <i>Indian nature</i>, or <!-- page 363--><a +name="page363"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 363</span>stoicism, +which is common in Americans, and utterly incomprehensible to, or +rarely found in, a European.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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, <i>et +cetera</i>. 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 <i>Evening Bulletin</i>, 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 +<i>never</i> to write his newspaper correspondence in the place +from which it was dated. It <!-- page 364--><a +name="page364"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 364</span>came to +pass that about three weeks after this retribution overtook the +<i>Bulletin</i>, 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.</p> +<p>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 +<i>non possumus</i> 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.</p> +<p>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. +<i>Excommunicatus sit</i>!</p> +<p>There was a <i>very</i> 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 <!-- page +365--><a name="page365"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +365</span>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 <i>Illustrated News</i> 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 +<i>feelings</i> and scientific convictions.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Weekly +Press</i> 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 <!-- page +366--><a name="page366"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +366</span>every club at cost price or for nothing. This +proved to be a <i>tremendous</i> success. It cost us money, +but Colonel Forney never cared for that, and he greatly admired +the <i>coup</i>. 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.</p> +<p>One day Frank Wells, of the <i>Bulletin</i> (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—</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>It was done. After the election I conversed with the one +who had been the bear-leader, and he said—</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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 <i>not</i> 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 <i>certainly</i> other +men—<i>e.g.</i>, Peacock, who influenced as many votes as +the <i>Weekly Press</i>, <!-- page 367--><a +name="page367"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 367</span>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.</p> +<p>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 +<i>work</i> 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Vanity Fair</i> alone was worth a foreign +mission, and that was a mere trifle to what I did with the +<i>Continental Magazine</i>, my pamphlet, &c. When +Grant was President, I petitioned that a little consulate worth +$1,000 (£200) 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 <i>refused</i> because I was “in +Forney’s set,” and the consulate was given to a +Western man who did not know French.</p> +<p>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, <!-- page 368--><a +name="page368"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 368</span>and repaid +the deficit. Even his enemy Simon Cameron declared he did +not believe the story, and the engine of <i>his</i> revenge was +always run by “one hundred Injun power.”</p> +<p>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 <i>six times</i> already, and I hope for many happy +renewals of it.” A week or two after, this appeared +in <i>Punch</i>, adapted to a professor and a duchess.</p> +<p>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 naïvely, +“but wasn’t it really <i>alt a humbug</i>?”</p> +<p>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, +<!-- page 369--><a name="page369"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +369</span>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.”</p> +<p>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 <i>Weekly Press</i> 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 <i>Continental +Magazine</i>; 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 <i>Tribune</i>, were holding back and +shouting <i>pas trop de zèle</i>—and as it proved +wisely, by advocating it publicly—<i>merely as a war +measure</i>—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.</p> +<h2><!-- page 370--><a name="page370"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 370</span>VII. EUROPE REVISITED. +1869-1870.</h2> +<p>Voyage on the <i>Pereire</i>—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.</p> +<p>We sailed on the famed <i>Pereire</i> 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 <i>mine</i>.” +“I beg your pardon,” I replied, “but it is +really mine.” “Sir, I <i>bought</i> +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.</p> +<p>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 <i>protégés</i>. +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!”</p> +<p><!-- page 371--><a name="page371"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +371</span>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 <i>Anglais</i> 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 <i>Rappel</i>, 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 +<i>émeute</i> 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 +<i>suspect</i>, and re-entered it in 1870 in very nearly the same +capacity.</p> +<p>We found agreeable lodgings at the Rond Point of the Champs +Elysées. The day after our arrival I determined to +<!-- page 372--><a name="page372"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +372</span>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, “<i>Mais</i>, <i>Monsieur</i>, <i>nous ne faisons +pas jamais comme cela à Paris</i>.” Out of all +patience, I burst out into vernacular: “<i>Sacré nom +de Dieu et mille tonnerres</i>, <i>vieux galopin</i>! you dare to +tell <i>me</i>, a <i>vieux carabin du Quartier Latin</i>, that +you cannot make arrangements! <i>Et depuisse-quand</i>, +<i>s’il vous plait</i>?” <a name="citation372"></a><a +href="#footnote372" class="citation">[372]</a> He stared at +me in blank amazement, and then said with a smile: +“<i>Tiens</i>! <i>Monsieur est donc de +nous</i>!” “That I am,” I replied, and we +at once made a satisfactory compromise.</p> +<p>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 <i>live</i> +as of old.</p> +<p>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 <i>tincture of aconite and sulphate +</i><!-- page 373--><a name="page373"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 373</span><i>of quinine</i>. Chemists +have often been amazed at the prescription. But in due time +the trouble quite disappeared, and I now, <i>laus Deo</i>! very +rarely ever have a touch of it. As many persons suffer +terribly from this disorder, which is an <i>aching</i> 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. <a +name="citation373"></a><a href="#footnote373" +class="citation">[373]</a></p> +<p>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 +<i>émeute</i>—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 +<i>prefecture</i>, 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 +<!-- page 374--><a name="page374"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +374</span>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 <i>never</i> had the gout +severely can form any conception of the terribly arrogant +irritability which accompanies it. I say <i>arrogant</i>, +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 <i>dolce far niente</i>.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 375--><a +name="page375"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 375</span>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.</p> +<p>Mr. Nicolas Trübner, 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 +<i>him</i>! In fact, he really seemed to think that Mr. +Trübner 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. Trübner +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. Trübner 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. Trübner on the subject of my “Ballads,” +displayed an effrontery absolutely without parallel in modern +times, apropos of which <i>Punch</i> remarked—</p> +<blockquote><p>“The name of Curll will never be +forgotten,<br /> +And neither will be thine, John Camden Hotten.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>From Spa we went to Brussels, where I remember to have seen +many times at work in the gallery the famous artist <!-- page +376--><a name="page376"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +376</span>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 <i>Tom Hood’s Annual</i>. 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.</p> +<p>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. <i>Und noch weiter</i>—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. +Trübner and her father Octave Delepierre, who was a great +scholar in <i>rariora</i>, <i>curiosa</i>, and old French, and +<i>facile princeps</i> 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.</p> +<p><!-- page 377--><a name="page377"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +377</span>Thence to Liége, 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 <i>carmagnoles</i> 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 +<i>carmagnoled</i>, returned home in rags.</p> +<p>In Leyden I visited the Archæological 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 +<i>Catalogue of Prehistoric Works in Eastern America</i>, by +Cyrus Thomas—a work of very great importance.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 378--><a +name="page378"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 378</span>declared +that he had mended it once before in 1847, and showed me the +private mark which he put on it at the time.</p> +<p>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 +<i>Bursch</i> again. Overton had the reputation of being +<i>par éminence</i> 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 <i>horn</i>, 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>black</i>.</p> +<p>In November we went to Dresden. We were so fortunate as +to obtain excellent rooms and board with a Herr and Madame +Röhn, a well-to-do couple, who, I am sure, took boarders far +more for the sake of company than for gain. Herr Röhn +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 Röhn 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 <!-- page 379--><a +name="page379"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 379</span>who was +<i>more than seven feet</i> high, and had had this curiosity +constructed; and Herr Röhn roared with laughter as I gazed +on it, and asked if I would have it lengthened.</p> +<p>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 <i>influence</i> for the original +nervous exhaustion itself. It was not indeed till I got to +England, and substituted <i>lupulin</i> in the form of +hops—that is to say, pale ale or +“bitter”—in generous doses, that I quite +recovered.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p><!-- page 380--><a name="page380"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +380</span>So on to Munich, where, during a whole week, I saw but +one <i>Riegelhaube</i>, 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. <i>Mais où sont les neiges +d’antan</i>?</p> +<p>So we went over the Brenner Pass, stopped at Innspruck, and +saw the church described by Heine in his <i>Reisebilder</i>, and +came to Verona, the Bern of the <i>Heldenbuch</i>. +“<i>Ich will gen Bern ausreiten</i>, <i>sprach Meister +Hildebrand</i>.”</p> +<p>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 <i>bric-à-brac</i>. +He might have proposed Rome while he was about it; +“anything there can be had for money,” says +Juvenal.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>There was an old lady who stood at the door of a +curiosity-shop in Verona, and she had five pieces of +bone-carvings <!-- page 381--><a name="page381"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 381</span>from some old <i>scatola</i> 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.</p> +<p>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-<i>Kilkes</i>, 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 “<span class="smcap">Warranted Sole +Leather</span>” for the name of the owner.</p> +<p>And this on soles reminds me that there was a <i>femme +sole</i> or lone acrimonious British female at our hotel, who +declared to me one evening that she had <i>never</i> in all her +life been so <i>insulted</i> 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.</p> +<p>“Sir,” said the lady, “do <i>I look</i> like +an impostor?”</p> +<p><!-- page 382--><a name="page382"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +382</span>“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.”</p> +<p>“I am happy to say, sir,” replied the lady with +intense acidity, “that <i>I</i> do <i>not</i>.” +But she added triumphantly, “What do you say when I tell +you that I had my <i>cheque-book</i>? How could I have +possessed it if I had not a right to draw?”</p> +<p>“Any scamp,” I replied, “can deposit a few +pounds in a bank, buy a cheque-book, and then draw his +money.”</p> +<p>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 <i>us</i>!”</p> +<p>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 <i>Times</i>, and “cut up” the whole +concern. It all comes to the same thing.</p> +<p>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 <!-- +page 383--><a name="page383"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +383</span>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.</p> +<p>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?”</p> +<p>“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?”</p> +<p>“Look here, my friend,” cried the stranger in +broad Yankee, “I guess I’m barkin’ up the wrong +tree. I calculated to tell <i>you</i> something, but +you’re ahead of me.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>We went on to Rome, and I can only say that as regards what we +saw there, my memory is confused literally with an <i>embarras de +richesses</i>. 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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page +384--><a name="page384"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +384</span>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 <i>condottiero</i>, +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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page +385--><a name="page385"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +385</span>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>bless</i> 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.</p> +<p>One day I took a walk out into the country with Briton +Rivière and some other artists. I had a cake or two +of colour, and Rivière, with wine for water, at a +<i>trattoria</i> 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 <i>forno</i>, 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.</p> +<p>From Rome we passed into Pisa, Genoa, Spezzia, and Nice, over +the old Cornici road, and so again to Paris, where <!-- page +386--><a name="page386"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 386</span>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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<h2><!-- page 387--><a name="page387"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 387</span>VIII. ENGLAND. +1870.</h2> +<p>The Trübners—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—Doré—Art and +Nature—Taglioni—Chevalier Wykoff—Octave +Delepierre—Breitmann—Thomas Carlyle—George +Borrow—A cathedral tour round about +England—Salisbury, Wells, and York.</p> +<p>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 <i>did</i> prevail, +until the native population, going westward, was supplanted by +Irish or worse, if any worse there be at turning neatness into +dirty disorder.</p> +<p><!-- page 388--><a name="page388"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +388</span>That older American population was deeply English, with +a thousand rural English traditions religiously preserved; and +the chief of these is clean <i>neatness</i>, 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.</p> +<p>We arrived in London, and went directly to the +Trübners’, 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. Trübner 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 <i>en souvenir</i>. 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. <i>In fumo exit</i>.</p> +<p>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. +Trübner’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 +<!-- page 389--><a name="page389"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +389</span>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 Trübners’!” For it was a salon, a +centre or sun with many bright and cheering rays—a +civilising institution!</p> +<p>Mrs. Trübner 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. Trübner 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!</p> +<p>The next day after our arrival Mrs. Trübner 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 Trübners’. 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, <!-- page +390--><a name="page390"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +390</span>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 <i>thoroughly</i> 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 Fräulein Löwenthal +of the Ashkenazim from Senorita Aguado of the Sephardim <i>by the +corners of their eyes</i>!</p> +<p>I had read more than once Lewes’s “Life of +Goethe,” his “History of Philosophy and +Physiology,” and even “written him” for the +Cyclopædia. 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 <!-- page 391--><a +name="page391"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 391</span>could think +of nothing else. Lewes told me that once, having gone with +a party of archæologists 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!</p> +<blockquote><p>“A hundred jests have passed between us +twain,<br /> +Which, had I space, I’d gladly tell again.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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 <i>complete</i> collection of +the etchings of Méryon, 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. Méryon, as is known, was mad. I had +etched a very little myself and was free of the fraternity.</p> +<p>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), <!-- page 392--><a +name="page392"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 392</span>Calverly, +Edmund Gosse, Hamilton Aïdé, 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.”</p> +<p>I here anticipate by several years two interviews which I had +with Tennyson in 1875, who had <i>ad interim</i> 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.</p> +<p>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—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Dell’ Indico Oriente<br /> +Domator glorioso il Dio di Vino . . .<br /> +Di quel Sol, che in Ciel vedete . . .”—</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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 <!-- page 393--><a +name="page393"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +393</span>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. <i>Enfin</i>, 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.</p> +<p>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 +<i>siesta</i>, 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 <i>table-d’hôtes</i>, who “come like +shadows, so depart,” who talk with a touch to our +hearts. Bulwer and Tennyson were such to me, and +<i>apré miro zī</i>, 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.</p> +<p><!-- page 394--><a name="page394"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +394</span>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—</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>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?”</p> +<p>“<i>Mea culpa</i>,” I answered, “<i>mea +maxima culpa</i>.”</p> +<p>“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—</p> +<p>“I <i>do</i> believe you are a gypsy, after +all.”</p> +<p>Then we talked of the old manor-houses in the neighbourhood, +and of the famous Mortstone, a supposed Saxon rude <!-- page +395--><a name="page395"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +395</span>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 <i>equalising</i> 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.</p> +<p>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—</p> +<p><!-- page 396--><a name="page396"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +396</span>“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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page +397--><a name="page397"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +397</span>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 <i>château</i>, 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.</p> +<p>There was in the family of the late Lord Lytton his son, who +made a most favourable impression on me. I think the first +<i>coup</i> 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 <i>a great one-eyed perch</i>! 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 <i>not</i> expect to find a whilom +student of æsthetics, 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 <!-- page +398--><a name="page398"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +398</span>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 +<i>culture</i>—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 +<i>bévue</i> 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.</p> +<p>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 +<i>voice</i>, 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 +<i>fin de siècle</i> form of the <!-- page 399--><a +name="page399"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +399</span><i>demnition</i> dialect of the Forties and the +<i>La-ard</i> and <i>Lunnon</i> of an earlier age.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 +Trübner had ever praised it. When Lord Lytton +published afterwards “Kenelm Chillingly,” I found in +it <i>three</i> passages in which I recognised beyond dispute +others suggested by my own work. I do not in the least mean +that there was <i>any</i> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>repoussé</i> work, and how I astonished him by +describing the process, and declaring that I could produce <!-- +page 400--><a name="page400"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +400</span>a <i>facsimile</i> 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 Repoussé,” 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. <i>Mihi æs et triplex robur</i>.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page +401--><a name="page401"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +401</span>inexhaustible in jokes, anecdotes, and +reminiscences. At his house I made the acquaintance of Miss +Ada Cavendish.</p> +<p>To revert to Mr. Trübner’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 <i>write</i> a poem. +True genius consists in getting it by or from heart [<i>from</i> +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.</p> +<p>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!</p> +<p>This year, what with the German war and the +Trübner-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 <!-- page 402--><a +name="page402"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 402</span>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 <i>Punch</i> and the +<i>Standard</i>, 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 +<i>Hans Breitmann</i>, 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.</p> +<p>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, <i>because he +is the author of Bret Harte</i>, thinks himself justified in +publishing any trash of this description.” I thought +this a <i>very</i> improper allusion for a clergyman, not to say +libellous. In fact, many people really believed that Bret +Harte was a <i>nom de plume</i> 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 +<i>books</i> which I have written. An American once +insisting to me that I <i>should</i> 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 <!-- page 403--><a name="page403"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 403</span>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 <i>not</i> complain when his betters put him in a +lower class or among the “lower orders.”</p> +<p>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 <i>Hart Bretmann</i>, 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.</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>But even in this London season I found more serious work to +attend to than comic ballads or society. Mr. Trübner +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 <i>brochure</i> +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 <i>Times</i> 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 +<i>Times</i>, which was little else but my pamphlet condensed, +caused a great sensation. But the principal result from it +was this: <!-- page 404--><a name="page404"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 404</span>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 <i>very worst in any +case</i>, and every possible extreme should be anticipated and +assumed. This same argument had previously been urged in my +“Centralisation <i>versus</i> States Rights.”</p> +<p>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. Trübner +nor several others hesitated to declare to me that it was beyond +all question taken from it. Bismarck had <i>certainly</i> +received the pamphlet, which had been recognised by the +<i>Times</i>, and in many other quarters, as a more than ordinary +paper, and Prince Bismarck, like all great diplomatists, <i>prend +son bien où il le trouve</i>. 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.</p> +<p>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 Harkilés (Hercules), a heathen god formerly worshipped +in the old Catholic convent upon the hill, in the old times!</p> +<p>From London we went in August, 1870, to Brighton, staying <!-- +page 405--><a name="page405"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +405</span>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 +<i>lupulin</i>, 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 <i>drink</i> +ale?” And I did, but before I took it up my very +vitality seemed to be well-nigh exhausted with the bromide.</p> +<p>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 <i>Heimskringla</i>, 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 +<!-- page 406--><a name="page406"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +406</span>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 407--><a name="page407"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 407</span>coffins, and over them is placed the +original memorial in black marble. There is also in Lewes +an archæological 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.”</p> +<p>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 +<i>Kalorat</i> 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:—</p> +<blockquote><p> “The bashno and +kāni,<br /> + The rye and the rāni,<br /> +Hav’d akai ’pré o boro lon +pāni.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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, +“<i>Rya</i>—master! <i>be</i> 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.</p> +<p>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. <!-- +page 408--><a name="page408"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +408</span>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!</p> +<p>Of these ladies the author of “Gossip of the +Century” writes:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“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 <i>salon</i>, 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.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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 <!-- +page 409--><a name="page409"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +409</span>in many ways, and found by his aid many a greatly +needed and rare work.</p> +<p>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!</p> +<p>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 <i>cigars</i> 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, <i>e.g.</i></p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/p409.jpg"> +<img alt="The meteor pattern" src="images/p409.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Das Mährchen ohne +Ende</i>—“The Story without an End.”</p> +<p><!-- page 410--><a name="page410"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +410</span>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—</p> +<p>“Are you looking for a hair-restorer?”</p> +<p>“I am not, though I fear I need one much more than you +do.”</p> +<p>“The search for a good hair-restorer,” she replied +in Italian, “is as vain as the search for +happiness.”</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“What we <i>forget</i>,” added the younger in +Spanish, “is the best part of our happiness.”</p> +<p>“<i>Señorita</i>, <i>parece que no ha olvidado su +Español</i>—The young lady appears not to have +forgotten her Spanish—I replied. (Mine is not very +good.)</p> +<p>“There is no use asking whether <i>you</i> talk +French,” said the elder. “<i>Können Sie +auch Deutsch sprechen</i>?”</p> +<p>“<i>Ja wohl</i>! Even worse than German +itself,” I answered.</p> +<p>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, +“<i>Parraco pen</i>, <i>jā vrī</i>, <i>mandy +kāms kek ruzhia kedívvus</i>”—Thank you, +sister, no flowers to-day—and she darted away.</p> +<p>“Did you understand <i>that</i>?” I inquired.</p> +<p>“No; what was it?”</p> +<p>“<i>Gitano</i>—gypsy.”</p> +<p>“But how in Heaven’s name,” cried the girl, +“could she <i>know</i> that <i>you</i> spoke +Gitano?”</p> +<p>“Because I am,” I replied slowly and grimly, +“the chief of all the gypsies in England, the <i>boro +Romany rye</i> and President of the Gypsy Society. +Subscription one pound per annum, which entitles you to receive +the journal for one year, <!-- page 411--><a +name="page411"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 411</span>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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>I have often wondered what under the sun they could have +been. Attachés of an opera +company—ladies’-maids who had made the grand +tour—who knows? A mad world, my masters!</p> +<p>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 +<i>femme incomprise</i> 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 <!-- page 412--><a +name="page412"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 412</span>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. +<i>Sed mittamus hæc</i>.</p> +<p>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 +<i>succès d’estime</i>, though it had a very small +sale. There were in it ten or twelve ballads only which +were adapted to singing, and <i>all</i> 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—<i>Vicisti +Galilæe</i>!” 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 +<i>Athenæum</i>, 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 <!-- page 413--><a +name="page413"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 413</span>and +Repairing”—in which vinegar is combined with +sugar.</p> +<p>While at Brighton we met Louis Blanc, whom we had previously +seen several times at the Trübners’, 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 Trübners, 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 <i>Gaudeamus</i>, a little volume of +German humorous poems. Scheffel, as I have before written, +was an old <i>Mitkneipant</i>, or evening-beer companion of mine +in Heidelberg.</p> +<p>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 <i>fêted</i> +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. +<i>Punch</i> 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 <!-- +page 414--><a name="page414"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +414</span>pointed out the roulette-table. “And did +the old Romans really play at roulette, and was <i>that</i> 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 <i>genooine</i>?” +“I certainly do,” I replied. With an intensely +self-satisfied air he rejoined, “I guess you can’t +fool <i>me</i> with no such humbug.”</p> +<p>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 <i>accepts</i> +pain not merely as inevitable, but glorifies and increases it, +instead of making every conceivable exertion to <i>diminish</i> +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 <!-- page 415--><a +name="page415"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 415</span>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. <i>Torturers</i>, 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 <i>torture</i> which we +are elsewhere taught, most inconsistently, is the special +province of the devil in hell. The <i>cant</i> 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!</p> +<p>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 <i>The American in Paris</i>. John +Sanderson himself had contributed many articles to +Appletons’ <i>Cyclopædia</i>, 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 <i>au +fond</i>, having read <i>Das Hotel wesen der Gegenwart</i>, a +very remarkable work, and passed more than twenty years of my +life in hotels in all countries.</p> +<p>I can remember that during the first year of my residence in +England I tried to persuade a chemist to import from <!-- page +416--><a name="page416"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +416</span>South America the <i>coca</i> 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 <i>replica</i> 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, <i>twenty-two +miles</i>, 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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 417--><a name="page417"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 417</span>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 <i>rye</i>, 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 +<i>varied</i> 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 <!-- page 418--><a +name="page418"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 418</span>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 <i>protégé</i> 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 <i>aficionado</i> who has +as yet manifested himself.</p> +<p>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 +“<i>O ’omany ’i</i>” (O Romany rye), to +the great delight of her parents.</p> +<p>After a little while I found that the <i>Romany</i> 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—</p> +<p>“<i>Dikk adovo rye</i>, <i>se o Romany rye</i>, +<i>yuv</i>, <i>tàcho</i>!” (Look at that +gentleman; he is a gypsy gentleman, sure!)</p> +<p>I naturally turned my head hearing this, when he burst out +laughing, and said—</p> +<p>“I told you I’d make him look round.”</p> +<p>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—</p> +<p>“<i>Dikk adovo gorgio adoi</i>!” (Look at that +Gentile, of no-gypsy!)</p> +<p>Not being accustomed to hear myself called a <i>gorgio</i>, I +glanced up at him angrily, when he, perceiving that I understood +<!-- page 419--><a name="page419"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +419</span>him and was of the mysterious brotherhood, smiled, and +touched his hat to me. One touch of nature makes the whole +world grin.</p> +<p>But the drollest proposal ever made to me in serious earnest +came from that indomitable incarnate old <i>gypssissimus +Tsingarorum</i>, Matthew Cooper, who proposed that I should buy a +donkey. He knew where to get one for a pound, but £2 +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 +<i>drum</i>—“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!</p> +<p>I regret to say that Matthew expected to inherit the +donkey.</p> +<p>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 <i>that</i> sitting up? +<i>That’s</i> not the way to hold your arms! Knees +in! <!-- page 420--><a name="page420"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 420</span>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>I forfeited it</i>!”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“<i>Pen a mandy</i>, <i>Priscilla Cooper</i>, <i>sa buti +me sosti del tute for adovo pustini vashtini</i>?” +(Tell me, Priscilla Cooper, how much should I give you for those +woollen gloves?)</p> +<p>“Eighteen pence, master.” The common price +was ninepence.</p> +<p>“I will <i>not</i> give you eighteen pence,” I +replied.</p> +<p>“Then how much <i>will</i> you give, master?” +asked Priscilla.</p> +<p>“<i>Four shillings</i> will I give, and not a penny +less—<i>miri pen</i>—you may take it or leave +it.”</p> +<p>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 <i>manner</i> 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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 421--><a +name="page421"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 421</span>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>repoussé</i> and +the designing which it involved I in time developed ideas which +led to what I may fairly call a great result.</p> +<p>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. +Trübner 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 <!-- page 422--><a +name="page422"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 422</span>Blake was a +very strange visionary—that he believed that the spirits of +the dead appeared to him, and that he took their portraits.</p> +<p>“<i>C’était donc un fou</i>,” +remarked the Frenchman.</p> +<p>“<i>Non</i>, Monsieur,” I replied, “he was +not a madman. He was almost a genius. Indeed, +<i>c’était un Doré manqué</i>” +(he was all but a Doré).</p> +<p>There was a roar of laughter from all around, and I, +innocently supposing that I had said something clever unawares, +laughed too.</p> +<p>After all had departed, and I was smoking alone with Sir +Charles, he said—</p> +<p>“Well, what did you think of Doré?”</p> +<p>“Doré!” I replied astonished, “why, I +never saw Doré in all my life.”</p> +<p>“That was Doré to whom you were talking,” +he answered.</p> +<p>“Ah! well,” was my answer, “then it is all +right.”</p> +<p>I suppose that Doré 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.</p> +<p>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 +<i>Punch</i>), the Hon. John Collier, Rivière, 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 <!-- page 423--><a name="page423"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 423</span>would be praised by my critics, as +strangely happened to my “Gypsy Sorcery.” But +we never know what may befall us.</p> +<blockquote><p>“Oh, little did my mother think,<br /> + The day she cradled me,<br /> +The lands that I should travel in,<br /> + Or the sights that I should see;<br /> +Or gae rovin’ about wi’ gypsy carles,<br /> + And sic like companie.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>As the <i>Noctes</i> 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.</p> +<p>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 æsthetic culture and science, when every landscape, +event, or human being is or may be to us exactly the same as a +<i>book</i>. 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 +<!-- page 424--><a name="page424"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +424</span>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 <i>often</i> compose or think books or monographs which, +though not translated into type, are as absolutely +<i>literature</i> to me as if they were. There is so +<i>much</i> 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 <i>all</i> 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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page +425--><a name="page425"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 425</span>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 <i>now</i> 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 <i>all</i> landscaping or picture-making or +dainty delicate cataloguing in poetry, <i>à la</i> 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 <i>religion</i> 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>ballerine</i> 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 <!-- page 426--><a +name="page426"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 426</span>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 <i>condottieri</i> or military +adventurers, and Robert Hunt from Cooper’s novels, so +Wykoff got his inspiration for a career from studying and +admiring the diplomatic <i>parvenus</i> of Queen Anne’s +time. These <i>Bohémiens de la haute +volée</i>, who drew their first motives from study, are by +far more interesting and tolerable than those of an illiterate +type.</p> +<p>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 +<i>prima donna</i>, 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 <i>mots</i>, 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.</p> +<p>I remember that one evening at a dinner at +Trübner’s in <!-- page 427--><a +name="page427"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 427</span>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. <i>Tempi +passati</i>!</p> +<p>Apropos of George H. Boker and Leroy, I may here remark that +they were both strikingly tall and <i>distingué</i> 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 <i>prima donna</i> 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 <i>naïveté</i>. Mr. B., +however, had on his pole a silver reel, which had cost £30 +($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. <i>Ultimam dixit salutem</i>.</p> +<p>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. “<i>Now</i> 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 <!-- page 428--><a name="page428"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 428</span>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 +<i>great</i> 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! <i>Nomen est omen</i>.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 429--><a +name="page429"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 429</span>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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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>I’ll</i> buy you just such another,’ as if it were +worth tenpence.”</p> +<p>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, <i>eodem genere</i>. So nightingale the wodewale +answereth.</p> +<p>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 <i>extraordinary</i> likeness to my late <!-- page +430--><a name="page430"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +430</span>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>débris</i> 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 <i>see</i> and <i>hear</i> 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 <i>dook</i>, 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>think</i> he said “will you +be?”) “German, or Irish, or what?”</p> +<p>To which I replied, not over amiably:—</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>To this Mr. Carlyle replied:—</p> +<p>“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 <!-- page 431--><a +name="page431"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 431</span>something +to the effect that we had done nothing in America since +Cromwell’s Revolution, equal to it in importance or of any +importance.</p> +<p>Then a great rage came over me, and I remember <i>very</i> +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 <i>will</i>; but I’ll be even with +you.” When as quickly the following inspiration came, +which I uttered, and I suspect somewhat energetically:—</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>Here Mr. Carlyle, looking utterly amazed and startled, though +not at all angry, said, for the first time, in broad +Scotch—</p> +<p>“Whot’s <i>thot</i> ye say?”</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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—</p> +<p>“Na, na, I’m nae <i>thot</i>.”</p> +<p>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 <i>never</i> <!-- +page 432--><a name="page432"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +432</span>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>hard-stane</i> or hearth-stone, took out a bag of +guineas, which he transferred to his benefactor.</p> +<p>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 <i>à la Choctaw</i>, with +biting, gouging, tomahawk and scalper, for he had <!-- page +433--><a name="page433"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 433</span>an +uncommonly <i>dour</i> 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—<i>consuetudine quotidiana +cum aliquo congredi</i>—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.</p> +<p>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 <i>in toto</i> because he +was not an angel to a dame who was certainly a bit of a +<i>diablesse</i>. Thus I find in a late very popular +collection the remark that—</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>This is <i>quite</i> the moral old lady, who used to think +that Raphael was a good painter “till she read all about +that nasty Fornarina.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p><!-- page 434--><a name="page434"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +434</span>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.</p> +<blockquote><p>“For he fled o’er to t’other +side,<br /> + And so they could not find him;<br /> +He swam across the flowing tide,<br /> + And never looked behind him.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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 +<i>Buch der Lieder</i>, which runs thus:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Brave man, he got me the food I ate,<br /> +His kindness and care I can never forget,<br /> +Yet I cannot kiss him, though other folk can,<br /> +For I myself am this excellent man!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>It came to pass that after a while I wrote my book on +“The English Gypsies and their Language,” and sent a +note <!-- page 435--><a name="page435"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 435</span>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>table-d’hôte</i>, 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 +<!-- page 436--><a name="page436"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +436</span>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!”</p> +<p>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 <i>deliberate</i> +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.</p> +<p><!-- page 437--><a name="page437"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +437</span>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>proportion</i> 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.”</p> +<p><!-- page 438--><a name="page438"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +438</span>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 mediæval 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 <i>no</i> 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 <i>know</i> 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!</p> +<p>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 +<!-- page 439--><a name="page439"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +439</span>or Gothic art could produce more grandly and +impressively with <i>shade</i> alone. It is the difference +between a garden and a forest. This is shown in the +glorious mediæval <i>grisaille</i> 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!</p> +<p>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 archæology, 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 +mediæval 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.</p> +<p>We may trace it back—<i>vide</i> the “Pharaohs, +Fellahs, and Explorers” of Amelia B. Edwards (whom I have +also met at an Oriental Congress)—to Roman Harpies and the +Egyptian <i>Ba</i>, depicted in the “Book of the +Dead” or the “Egyptian Bible.”</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">the +end</span>.</p> +<h2>Footnotes:</h2> +<p><a name="footnote1"></a><a href="#citation1" +class="footnote">[1]</a> As I was very desirous of learning +more about this celebrated fireplace, I inserted a request in the +<i>Public Ledger</i> for information regarding it, which elicited +the following from some one to me unknown, to whom I now return +thanks:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“<span class="smcap">Mr. City-Editor of +the</span> <i>Public Ledger</i>,—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 <i>distinctly</i> 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 +<i>hieroglyphic</i> inscription:—</p> +<p>When the grate is M. T. put:<br /> +When it is . putting:</p> +<p>which is a little puzzling at first sight, but readily +translated by converting the punctuation points into written +words.</p> +<p style="text-align: right"><span +class="smcap">Senior</span>.</p> +<p style="text-align: right">“<i>Frankford</i>, <i>May +24</i>, <i>1892</i>.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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.</p> +<p><a name="footnote13"></a><a href="#citation13" +class="footnote">[13]</a> 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):</p> +<blockquote><p>“Here shall itt bee,<br /> +And here shall itt stande;<br /> +And this shall bee called:<br /> +Ye Churche of Leyland.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p><a name="footnote16"></a><a href="#citation16" +class="footnote">[16]</a> A similar incident is recorded in +<i>Kenelm Chillingly</i>. I had long before the publication +of the work conversed with Lord Lytton on the subject—which +is also touched on in my <i>Sketch-Book of Meister Karl</i>, of +which the illustrious author had a copy.</p> +<p><a name="footnote56"></a><a href="#citation56" +class="footnote">[56]</a> 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 <i>hunting up</i> 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.</p> +<p><a name="footnote98"></a><a href="#citation98" +class="footnote">[98]</a> 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.”</p> +<p><a name="footnote101"></a><a href="#citation101" +class="footnote">[101]</a> “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.”</p> +<p><a name="footnote156"></a><a href="#citation156" +class="footnote">[156]</a> 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.</p> +<p><a name="footnote225"></a><a href="#citation225" +class="footnote">[225]</a> (Here I forgot myself—this +occurred in New York.)</p> +<p><a name="footnote237"></a><a href="#citation237" +class="footnote">[237]</a> Herzen once sent me a complete +collection of all his books.</p> +<p><a name="footnote242"></a><a href="#citation242" +class="footnote">[242]</a> 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 <i>unbeknownst</i> 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.</p> +<p><a name="footnote252"></a><a href="#citation252" +class="footnote">[252]</a> 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.</p> +<p><a name="footnote266a"></a><a href="#citation266a" +class="footnote">[266a]</a> 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.</p> +<p><a name="footnote266b"></a><a href="#citation266b" +class="footnote">[266b]</a> “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.</p> +<p><a name="footnote267"></a><a href="#citation267" +class="footnote">[267]</a> 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 <i>mot</i> in America. It +is more than an <i>on dit</i>, 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 Archæological 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>i.e.</i>, <i>Intial</i>, +the Spirit of the Haunting Shadow. This is a little +discursive—<i>mais je prends mon bien où je le +trouve</i>, and it is all autobiographic! “It is all +turkey,” as the wolf said when he ate the claws.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p><a name="footnote268"></a><a href="#citation268" +class="footnote">[268]</a> 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.</p> +<p><a name="footnote274"></a><a href="#citation274" +class="footnote">[274]</a> 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.</p> +<p><a name="footnote309"></a><a href="#citation309" +class="footnote">[309]</a> The reader may find some +interesting references to Robert Hunt in the Introduction by me +to the <i>Life of James Beckwourth</i>, the famous chief of the +Crow Indians. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1893.</p> +<p><a name="footnote333"></a><a href="#citation333" +class="footnote">[333]</a> “<span +class="smcap">Custer</span> 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.”—<i>The Masked Venus</i>, by <span +class="smcap">Richard Henry Savage</span>.</p> +<p><a name="footnote334"></a><a href="#citation334" +class="footnote">[334]</a> Miss Owen is well known to all +folk-lorists as the first living authority on <i>Voodoo</i>.</p> +<p><a name="footnote346"></a><a href="#citation346" +class="footnote">[346]</a> 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.</p> +<p><a name="footnote349"></a><a href="#citation349" +class="footnote">[349]</a> Scallawag, from the Gaelic +<i>scallag</i>, a vagabond.—<i>D. MacRitchie</i>.</p> +<p><a name="footnote372"></a><a href="#citation372" +class="footnote">[372]</a> For <i>depuisse-quand</i>, +<i>vide</i> Paul de Kock.</p> +<p><a name="footnote373"></a><a href="#citation373" +class="footnote">[373]</a> 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.</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MEMOIRS***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 22030-h.htm or 22030-h.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. 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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. 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