Title: Memoirs
Author: Leland, Charles Godfrey, 1824-1903
Language: English
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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.





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