Twenty Years in Europe - A Consul-General's Memories of Noted People, with Letters

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Title: Twenty Years in Europe - A Consul-General's Memories of Noted People, with Letters - From General W. T. Sherman
Author: Byers, Samuel H. M.
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Twenty Years in Europe - A Consul-General's Memories of Noted People, with Letters - From General W. T. Sherman" ***

TWENTY YEARS IN EUROPE.

[Illustration: Heidelberg Castle.]

Twenty Years in Europe

A CONSUL-GENERAL’S MEMORIES
OF NOTED PEOPLE, WITH LETTERS
FROM GENERAL W. T. SHERMAN

S. H. M. BYERS,
_U. S. Consul-General to Switzerland and Italy_,

AUTHOR OF

“SHERMAN’S MARCH TO THE SEA,” “THE HAPPY ISLES,”
“SWITZERLAND AND THE SWISS,” ETC.

_PROFUSELY ILLUSTRATED._

[Illustration]

CHICAGO AND NEW YORK:
RAND, McNALLY & COMPANY,
PUBLISHERS.

INSCRIBED
TO
MARGARET GILMOUR BYERS.

Time robs us all of some things we would keep,
And favoring winds to-morrow may forsake;
But, joyous thought--O! Future! Smile or weep,
The happy years behind us none can take!

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR.

While staying in Switzerland and Italy as a consular officer, during a
period of well on to twenty years, I kept a diary of my life. Without
being a copy of the diary, this book is made up from its pages and
from my own recollections of men, scenes, and events. It was during an
interesting period, too. There were stirring times in Europe. Two great
wars took place; one great empire was born; another became a republic;
and the country of Victor Emmanuel changed from a lot of petty dukedoms
to a free Italy. It seemed a great period everywhere, and everything of
men and events jotted down at such a time would of necessity have its
interest. This book is not a history--only some recollections and some
letters.

Among the letters are some fifty from General Sherman, whose intimate
friendship I enjoyed from the war times till the day of his death. They
are printed with permission of those now interested, and they may be
regarded as in a way supplementary to the series of more public letters
of General Sherman printed by me in the North American Review during
his lifetime. They possess the added interest that must attach to the
intimate letters of friendship coming from a brilliant mind. Their
publication can only help to lift the veil a little from a life that
was as true and good in private as it was noble in public.

S. H. M. BYERS.

ST. HELENS, DES MOINES.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

1869. PAGE.

A Little White Card with President Grant’s Name on It--A
Voyage to Europe--An English Inn--Hear Gladstone Speak--
John Bright and Disraeli. 15

CHAPTER II.

1869.

In Switzerland--The Alps--Embarrassment in Not Knowing
the Language--Celebrated Exiles Meet in a Certain Café--
Brentano--Wagner--Kinkel--Scherr--Keller and Others. 20

CHAPTER III.

1870.

In the Orsini Café--Great News from France--What the Exiles
Think--Letter from General Sherman--I Get Permission to Go
and Look at the War--In the Snow of the Juras--Arrested--
The Surrender of the 80,000--Zurich in the Hands of a Mob--
Friendly Hint. 27

CHAPTER IV.

1871.

The Paris Horrors--Some Excursions with Literary People--Beer
Gardens--A Characteristic Funeral--Funeral of a Poet’s
Child--Caroline Bauer, the Actress--A Polish Patriot--
Celebrating the Fourth of July at Castle Rapperschwyl--The
St. Bernard--The Mules and Dogs--On a Swiss Farm--For
Burning Chicago. 34

CHAPTER V.

1872.

Louis Blanc, the Statesman--His Novel Courtship--His
Appearance--Invites Us to Paris--Just Miss Victor Hugo--
His Speech at Madame Blanc’s Grave--Letter from Louis
Blanc--Alabama Arbitrators--See Gambetta and Jules Favre. 42

CHAPTER VI.

1872.

William Tell--The Rigi in the Good Old Times--Pilatus--Rose
Bushes for Fuel. 48

CHAPTER VII.

1872.

General Sherman Visits Us at Zurich--Letters from Him--Swiss
Officers Entertain Him--His Lake Excursion--He Explains His
Greatest Campaign to Them--He is Entertained at the Swiss
Capital--Letter from General Dufour. 52

CHAPTER VIII.

1872.

Letter from General Sherman--Visit America--Sands of Bremen--
Storms at Sea--Elihu Washburne--Banquet to Him on Ship--
I am a Guest at the Sherman Home--Mrs. Sherman--Arrange
to Take Miss Sherman to Europe--Meet Mr. Blaine--My Song
Sung in the Sherman Home--Conversations with Sherman--Meet
President Grant--How I Happened to Be in the Rebel Army
Once--Letters from General Sherman. 61

CHAPTER IX.

1873.

Letter from General Sherman--Loss of the “Atlantic”--The
Boyhood Home of Napoleon III and of His Mother, Queen
Hortense--A Companion Tells of the Prince’s Pranks and
Studies--Josephine’s Harp--Arenaberg Full of Napoleon
Relics--We Have a Long Interview with the Ex-Empress
Eugenie--Letter from Sherman--Speaks of Thiers. 77

CHAPTER X.

1873.

The Source of the Rhine--Strange Villages There--A Republic
Four Hundred Years Old--The “Gray League”--“The League of
the House of God”--Louis Philippe’s Hiding Place--A Tour in
the Valley of the Inn--Letter from General Sherman--Regrets
His Career Seems Over. 86

CHAPTER XI.

1874.

Sherman on Cuba--Visit Italy--Garibaldi’s Wonderful Reception
at Rome--The Artist Freeman--First American Painter to
Live in Rome--Rome in 1840--See Victor Emmanuel--Joaquin
Miller--His Conversation and Appearance--New Swiss
Constitution--More Letters from General Sherman--Too Many
Commanders in Washington for Him--Will Go to St. Louis--His
Views of War Histories. 95

CHAPTER XII.

1875.

Letters from Mrs. Sherman and the General--He Tells Me He
is Writing His Life--The Negro Question--A Chateau by
Lake Zurich--I Write a Book on Switzerland--Also Write a
Play--A City of Dead Kings--Go to London--Meet Colonel
Forney--Dinner at George W. Smalley’s--Kate Field--Visit
Boucicault--Conversations with the Newer Shakespeare--The
Beautiful Minnie Walton--Breakfast at Her Home--Professor
Fick--His Home Built in the Old Roman Wall--Lectures--
Holidays at the Consulate--Mrs. Congressman Kelley--A
Student Commerz--Beer Drinking--Dukes of the Republic--
Duels--Letter from General Sherman--Prussian Army
Maneuvers. 104

CHAPTER XIII.

1876.

Storm in the Alps--Mr. Benjamin--Kate Sherwood Bonner--
Icebergs--A Scotch Poet--Horatio King’s Literary Evenings--
Colonel Forney--Mr. Robert--A New York Millionaire’s Home--
A Christmas Night Hurricane at Sea--The Tilden-Hayes Fight--
Civil War Feared in Washington--Dennison, the Inventor--A
Strange Murder--The Wreck of the Schiller and Loss of Miss
Dimmick. 119

CHAPTER XIV.

1877.

General Grant Visits Lake Luzern--Conversations with Him--
How I Brought the Good News of Sherman’s Successes in the
Carolinas to General Grant at Richmond--Grant’s Simplicity
in His Travels--A Strange Experience on the Rigi--London
Papers Amazed at the Population of the United States--First
Telephone. 128

CHAPTER XV.

1877.

General Grant and the Swiss President--Banquet to Grant at
Bern--Good Roads--Am Chargé d’Affaires for Switzerland--
Writing for the Magazines. 134

CHAPTER XVI.

1877.

Franz Liszt at Zurich--Swiss Great Lovers of Music--Wagner
Once Lived Here--His Singular Ways--Dr. Willi--Madame
Lucca’s Villa--Liszt’s Kissing Bees--Jefferson Davis’
Daughter--A Laughable Mistake. 140

CHAPTER XVII.

1878.

Some Recollections of Mine about General Grant in the War--
Grant at Champion Hills--Sherman’s Letter on Confiscation by
Taxation in America--Grant at Ragatz--I Give a Banquet in
His Honor at Zurich. 145

CHAPTER XVIII.

1878.

The St. Gothard Tunnel--I Describe It for Harper’s Magazine--
Its Cost--A Great Scare in the Tunnel. 153

CHAPTER XIX.

1879.

American Artists at Munich--I Meet Mark Twain--Take Him to
an Artists’ Club--Conversations with Him--Beer Drinking--
He Reads the Original of “What I Know about the German
Language”--We Entertain the Americans at Zurich--A Letter
from General Sherman--Confederates More Popular than Union
Men--Sherman Ready to Surrender 157

CHAPTER XX.

1879.

A Trip Through the Black Forest--Stein on the Rhine--A Famous
Castle--“All Blown Up”--Good Roads--Fox Hunting. 165

CHAPTER XXI.

1879.

Bret Harte--Letters from Him--Visits Us--Stay at Bocken--
Conversations--Mrs. Senator Sherman--Evenings at Bocken--
We All Go to the Rigi--How We Got the “Prince’s” Rooms--
Harte Goes with Us to Obstalden in the Alps--Very Simple
Life--A Strange Funeral--Harte Finds His Stories in a
Village Inn--More Letters--We Visit the Moselle River--
Finer than the Rhine--A Wonderful Castle of the Middle
Ages--All Furnished and Fresh as When New--The French Did
Not Find It When They Were Demolishing German Castles--An
Exquisite Gothic Church Five Hundred Years Old--Wonderful
Roman Ruins at Treves--More Letters from Bret Harte--A
Happy Man. 170

CHAPTER XXII.

1880-1881.

A Little Stay by the Mediterranean--Am Offered a Position
in China--An Article on the Swiss Rhine--Also One on My
Experiences in the Rebel Army--Two Letters from General
Sherman--Grant and the Presidency--Says the Bare Narrative
of My Escape from Prison Would Be an Epic--Banquet at
the Legation--I Write for the New York Tribune an Exposé
of How Certain European Communities Sent Paupers to the
United States--Am Violently Attacked for It by Many
American Journals and Reprimanded by State Department--
Swiss Government Complains--Investigation Follows--I Am
Justified--Letter from Sherman as to His Son Tom--Visit
America--Secretary Blaine Compliments Me--The Press Changes
Its Tone and New Laws Are Adopted as to Immigration in United
States and Switzerland--Tribune Says Editorially, “Mr. Byers
Deserves the Thanks of the American People”--A Little Visit
to the Poet Longfellow, and the Alcotts; also to the Author
of “America.” 189

CHAPTER XXIII.

1881.

Elm and All Its People Destroyed by an Avalanche--A Foot
Trip in Ireland--Fenians--Red Coats--Poverty--The
Queen Hooted--Out of Jail and a Hero--Muckross Abbey by
Moonlight--An Irish Funeral--A Duplicate Blarney Stone--
Letters from General Sherman--The Duke of Wellington--The
Assassination of President Garfield. 205

CHAPTER XXIV.

1882-1883.

Visit Northern Italy--American Indians in Zurich--Death of
the Poet Kinkel--Letters from Carl Schurz and the Poet’s
Wife--Letter from Sherman as to the Bounteous Mississippi
Valley--A Second Letter from Sherman--The Presidency--
Conversations with Scherr, the Writer--The Poet Kinkel’s
Son--His Powerful Memory--We Visit Berlin--Minister
Sargent’s Trouble with Prince Bismarck over American Pork--
Sargent Is Appointed to St. Petersburg--Indians Again--Baby
Lions--Visit America Again--Funeral of the Author of “Home,
Sweet Home”--Swiss National Exhibition--The Swiss War
Minister Visits Me--We Had Been Comrades in Libby Prison--
Trouble with Fraudulent Invoices--Origin of Expert System
at Consulate--I Succeed in Stopping the Frauds--My Action
is Reported at Washington as Saving a Million Dollars to the
Government--Another Letter from General Sherman--His Coming
Retirement from the Army. 216

CHAPTER XXV.

1884.

Some Interesting Letters from General Sherman--Requests for
Souvenirs--His “Flaming Sword”--One on the Presidency--
I Am Appointed Consul General for Italy--An American
Fourth of July Picnic on Lake Zurich--Lord Byron’s Home in
Switzerland--Some Old Letters about His Life There--The
Lake Dwellings of Switzerland--Keller, the Antiquarian--
Power of Swiss Torrents. 225

CHAPTER XXVI.

1884.

Start for Italy--The Cholera--Ten Days in Quarantine on
Lake Maggiore--A Heroic King--We Are Presented to Queen
Margaret--American Artists in Rome--The Royal Balls--
Receptions and Parties--Meet Many People of Note--The
Hills of Rome--Minister Astor and His Home--Hugh Conway--
Ibsen--Marion Crawford--One of the Bonapartes--Keats’
Room--The Cardinals--Ischia Destroyed--Christmas in Rome--
Letter from General Sherman--His Views of Rome--Cleveland’s
Election--Franz Liszt Again. 244

CHAPTER XXVII.

1885.

Still in Rome--Presented to Pope Leo XIII--Story, the Poet
Sculptor--Randolph Rogers--Tilton--Elihu Vedder--Astor
Resigns--Secretary of Legation Dies with Roman Fever--I
Am Put in Charge of Legation--Capri--Governor Pierpont--
Things Supernatural--Talk against Gladstone--Shakespeare
Wood--Senator Moleschott, a Remarkable Man--Interesting
Letters from General Sherman--Party Stronger than
Patriotism; My Recall--Money Lending and Taxes--Keep Out of
Debt. 261

CHAPTER XXVIII.

1886.

The North American Review Engages Me to Edit Several Chapters
of the Sherman Correspondence--Sherman Writes as to
Magazines and His Book--The General Invites Me to Come and
Stay at His Home in St. Louis--He Offers Me the Use of All
His Papers--I Publish Also in the Review a Prose Narrative
of the March to the Sea--Mrs. Sherman Reads It to the
General--Buffalo Bill--General Gives Me His Army Badge--
Nights in Sherman’s Office--Conversations with Him--Life
in the Sherman Home--The General’s Complete Reconciliation
with His Son Tom--Interesting Letters from Sherman as to
Magazines--His Forthcoming Book--Farms and Taxes--War
Histories--Grant’s Book--Newspapers--Christmas Letter. 274

CHAPTER XXIX.

1887-1890.

An Interesting Letter from General Grant--Sherman Living
in New York--His Immense Popularity with All Americans--
Letters from Him--Exhibited Like a Circus--No Union Man
Left in Foreign Service by Cleveland--He Writes for the
Magazines--Magazines Again--Approves My Article in the
North American Review on the March to the Sea--Humblest
Union Man Better Patriot than the Proudest South Carolina
Rebel--Sheridan Dying--Congress Should Make Rank of
Lieutenant General Permanent--His Reception at Columbus--
Death of Mrs. Sherman--About His Memoirs--No Profit--The
Army of the Tennessee at Cincinnati--My Poem There--An Odd
Interview at the White House--Conversations with Secretary
Blaine--Death of the Great General--Speeches About Him in
the Senate--I Am Again Appointed to Switzerland. 287

CHAPTER XXX.

1891.

Go to Switzerland as Consul General--An Ocean Voyage Then and
Now--A Glimpse of Burns’ Home--The Highest City in Europe--
A Novel Republic--Life in the Higher Alps--Headquarters for
Embroidery--Princess Salm-Salm--An Open Air Parliament--
The Upper Rhine--At Hamburg--A Summer on the Baltic--
Interview with Prince Bismarck. 304

TWENTY YEARS IN EUROPE

CHAPTER I

1869

A LITTLE WHITE CARD WITH PRESIDENT GRANT’S NAME ON IT--A VOYAGE
TO EUROPE--AN ENGLISH INN--HEAR GLADSTONE SPEAK--JOHN BRIGHT
AND DISRAELI.

In the State Department at Washington, there is on file a plain little
visiting card, signed by President U. S. Grant. That card was the
Secretary’s authority for commissioning me Consul to Zurich. “I would
much like to have that little card,” I said to an Assistant Secretary,
long years afterward. “Most anybody would,” replied the official,
smiling. “You may copy it, but it can not be taken from the files.”

That card, in its time, had been of consequence to me. It took me from
a quiet little Western town to a beautiful Swiss city, where I was to
spend many years of my life, and where I was to meet people, look on
scenes and experience incidents worth telling about. And now it has led
to my writing down the recollections of them in a book.

I had served four years, that were full of incident, in the Civil War.
At its close the opportunity was mine to enter the regular army with
a promotion; but many months in Southern prisons had nearly ruined my
health and I declined the proffered commission.

“You did well,” wrote General Sherman to me, “to prefer civil to
military pursuits; and I hope you will prosper in whatever you
undertake. You now know that all things resulted quite as well as we
had reason to expect” (referring to the Carolina campaign), “and now,
all prisoners are free--the war over.”

The years immediately following the war were spent in efforts to get
well, and now when this offer to go to Switzerland, with its glorious
scenery and salubrious climate, came, I was overjoyed.

On the 23d of July, 1869, my newly wedded wife and I were standing on
the deck of an ocean steamer in the harbor of New York. It was the
“City of London.”

As the sun went down in the sea that night, many stood on the deck
there with us, straining their eyes at a long, low strip of land
bordering the horizon, now far behind them. It was America. Some were
looking at it for the last time. My wife and I were not to see it
again, except on flying visits, for sixteen years. The gentle breeze,
the summer twilight, the vast and quiet ocean, the limitless expanse,
the silence, save the panting of the engines, the white sails and
the evening light of distant ships passing, gave us a feeling of
far-offness from all that belonged to home.

Shortly the great broad moon, apparently twice its usual size, quietly
slipped up out of the sea. At first we scarcely realized what it was,
it was so great, so splendid, so unexpected. Moonlight everywhere is
calming and impressive to the senses, but at sea, spread out over the
limitless deep--with the great starlit tent of the heavens reaching
all around and down to the waters, it touches the heart to its very
depths. We scarcely slept that night--the sea and the moonlight were
too beautiful. We walked the deck and built air castles.

_August 3, 1869._--Yesterday our ship entered the Mersey and turned
in among a wilderness of masts in front of Liverpool. We walked
about some in the city of Gladstone’s birth, and that night had our
first experience of the quiet comforts of a little English inn.
The gentility, the welcome, the home snugness, the open fireplace,
the teakettle, the high-posted, curtained beds, all contrasted
strongly with a noisy, American tavern, with its loud talk and dirty
tobacco-spitting accompaniments. The enormous feet of the Liverpool
cart-horses also impressed us.

This morning we called at the American Consulate. The clerk said the
Consul was away at the bank. Possibly like Hawthorne, one of his
predecessors, he found nothing to do here but look after his salary.
Anyway this Consulate is one of the best things in the gift of the
President. In Hawthorne’s time, the pay was four times that of a
Cabinet officer. Some years, the fees equaled the President’s own
salary.

_August 10._--The sights we had most wanted to see in London were the
Tower, the Abbey, the Fish Market, the docks, and the fogs; these and
Mr. Gladstone. The fogs we did not need to see; we could _feel_ them
in our very bones. It was fog everywhere. Three people were reported
killed the very day we got here--run over by wagons and omnibuses,
plowing through the murky thickness. Street lamps are burning in the
middle of the afternoon.

Billingsgate Fish Market was not half so wicked as I had heard. It is
said to be two hundred years old. It smells as if it were a thousand.
There is possibly nothing so interesting to an American elsewhere on
English earth, as the “Poets’ Corner” in Westminster Abbey, and, next
to that, the Tower of London.

The opulence of the London docks also simply amazed us. Imagine an
underground wine vault, seven acres in extent. The total vaults of the
Eastern Dock Co. measure 890,000 square feet. The St. Catherine Docks
cost nine millions of pounds.

John Lothrop Motley, the historian, is American Minister at London.
We called. Found him a tall, aristocratic, consumptive-looking man,
apparently not over glad to see traveling Americans. He had in his
youth been a fellow student of Bismarck. Later, his daughters married
Englishmen. Mr. Motley, like some other Americans sent to high office
in London, is not extremely popular among his own countrymen. Neither
did Grant approve him; but removed him later, spite of his backing by
Charles Sumner.

The Secretary of Legation kindly got me a ticket to the gallery of
the House of Parliament. It seemed extraordinary good luck, for whom
else should I hear speak, that very afternoon, but John Bright, Mr.
Gladstone and the future Lord Disraeli. I looked for oratory in Mr.
Gladstone and saw none, either of voice, manner or word. The subject
possibly required none. It was the Scotch Education Bill. The tall,
grave, spare-looking man stood there with papers in his hand, talking
in the most commonplace manner. Often he turned to some colleague
and looked and waited as if expecting an explanation. At last he sat
down suddenly, as if he had got up out of time. Mr. Disraeli had been
sitting there, writing something on the top of his hat, which he had
just taken off for the purpose. There seemed to be no desks. When I
first noticed numbers of the members with their hats on, I wondered
if the session had begun. What I noticed about Mr. Disraeli was the
long legs he stretched out before him, the dark, intellectual face,
the large features, the yellow skin, the long black hair, the Jewish
expression. He followed Mr. Gladstone, but in a voice so subdued that
I, in the gallery, did not understand a word he said. Burly John
Bright, with his noble face and sturdy mien, followed. He looked like
the typical Englishman. He spoke to the bill in an earnest voice and
loud enough, but said nothing that I remember. A Scotch member then
rose in confusion, mumbled a few words, got scared, mixed up, turned
red and sat down. And this is English oratory, I meditated, and called
to mind the names of Douglas and Webster and Lincoln and Blaine. I
suppose I was simply there on the wrong day.

_Sunday._--We spent a rainy Sunday in London, walking about the
deserted streets. Every blind was down--there was silence everywhere.
We seemed the only people alive in great London town. Our melancholy
was added to by having, through misunderstanding, missed a train that
was to take us to a friend in the country, where a hot dinner and
English hospitality had awaited us.

_At the Channel._--Up to this time there had been nothing so
interesting and romantic to me in English scenery as the big castle
above the white cliffs of Dover. There was the high, sloping, green
plateau and the grey old Castle a thousand feet above us--below it was
the sea--across the Channel, only thirty miles away, lay sunny France.

CHAPTER II

1869

IN SWITZERLAND--THE ALPS--EMBARRASSMENT IN NOT KNOWING
THE LANGUAGE--CELEBRATED EXILES MEET IN A CERTAIN CAFE--
BRENTANO--WAGNER--KINKEL--SCHERR--KELLER--AND OTHERS.

We stayed in Paris for a week. Then, one night, we crossed the plains
of France, and at daylight saw with beating hearts the Jura Mountains.
They were as a high wall of cliff and forest, green, deep valleys
and running rivers, between France and the land of William Tell. The
afternoon of that day saw us at our journey’s end. We were in beautiful
Zurich. “Next to Damascus,” said Dixon, the English traveler, “I adore
Zurich.”

That day the Glarus Alps, that usually shine so gloriously in front of
the city, were obscured with clouds. But the beautiful lake was there,
and old walls, and ivy-covered towers, and all the story of a thousand
years.

[Illustration: Zurich.--_Page 20._]

Zurich was half a mediæval city in 1869. Years have since changed
it; its walls and towers have been torn down, and granite blocks
and fashionable modern streets take the place, in part, of its
picturesqueness, as we saw it at that time.

Pretty soon I was, in a way, representing my country in a republic five
times as old as our own. My predecessor recognized that he had been
“rotated” out of office. He knew American party customs and turned
over to me a few chairs, a desk, some maps, a flag, some books, some
accounts and an enormous shield that hung over the door with a
terrible-looking eagle on it, holding a handful of arrows. This was the
coat of arms.

Living was cheap in Switzerland in the seventies. For one whole year we
stayed in the “Pension Neptune,” a first-class place in every sense.
Our apartment included a finely furnished salon, a bedroom, and a large
room for the consulate. For these rooms, with board for two persons,
we paid only $3.00 per day. Just outside the pension, workmen were
laying street pavements of stone. They worked from daylight till dark,
for forty cents a day. The servants in the pension were getting ninety
cents a week and board. The clerk in the consulate was working for $300
a year, without board. Good wine, and we had it always at dinner, was a
franc a bottle. Things have changed since then. Switzerland is a dear
country to live in now.

In the “Neptune” we found the interesting family of Healy, the American
artist. He had painted half the famous men of Europe, even then. There,
too, was the family of Commander Crowninshield, distinguished of late
days as an adviser of the President in the Spanish War.

What we were to do now, was to learn the French and German languages.
Good teachers received but two francs, or forty cents, a lesson, and
the necessity of the situation impelled us to hard study.

One evening, shortly after our arrival at Zurich, we were out boating
with some friends, on the beautiful lake. There were myriads of pretty
water-craft, filled with joyous people, circling all about. On a
floating raft near by, a band of music was playing airs from Wagner.
Zurich was a Wagner town. It was nearing sunset, when suddenly I
happened to cast my eyes away from the people and the boats toward the
upper end of the lake. “Look at the beautiful clouds,” I exclaimed. My
companion smiled. “They are not clouds,” said he. “They are the Glarus
Alps.” It was the fairest sight I ever beheld in my life. Some clouds
on the horizon had suddenly floated away, and the almost horizontal
rays of a setting summer sun were shining on the white snowfields and
ice walls of the mountains, turning them into jasper and gold. “That
is what we call the ‘Alpine glow,’” continued my friend. “It is like
looking at the walls of Paradise,” I exclaimed. Pretty soon the sun
went down behind the Zurich hills, the jasper and the gold faded from
the ice and the rocks of the distant mountains, a cold gray-white,
striving to keep off the coming darkness, fell upon the scene. It was
the mountains putting on their robes of night. These were the scenes
that I was now to live among. Music, they say, takes up the train of
thought, where common words leave off. That night, by the waters of
Lake Zurich, the soft strains of well-tuned instruments expressed a
delight for me that tongue could not utter or pen describe.

Switzerland is full of scenes as glorious as this Glarus range, but
this scene here, we were to have from our dining-room window always.

_September 5._--The consul of the French Empire called to-day to
pay his respects to the consul of the great republic. My consular
experiences were about to commence. I was in a dilemma. My Swiss clerk,
who spoke six languages for twenty-five dollars a month, had stepped
out. I, a plain American, spoke no language except my own.

“Bonjour, Monsieur,” cheerily chirped the Frenchman. I advanced, and,
seizing his neatly gloved hand, said “Good morning” in the plainest
American. “What! Monsieur, you no parlez Francais? Ah! certainlee.
Monsieur he parle Allemand. Monsieur speak a leetle Dutch?” he
continued, bowing and smiling. “I am sorry,” I interrupted in
embarrassment. “No Dutch--no Francais.” “Oh! Monsieur no understand.
No, no. Ah, si, Monsieur, he speak Spanish, certainlee--Spanish
better--Spanish better--very fine--Americans all speak Spanish--veree.”
Again I shook my head, and again the consul bowed, and I bowed, and
we both bowed together; and, after a few more genuflections and
great embarrassment, he smiled and went backward out of the room.
The situation was absurd. Then the Italian consul called, and then
the Austrian consul, and similar scenes occurred. The same nonsense,
without understanding a word.

I saw at once what was necessary for me to do. Solid months, years,
day and night almost, were to be spent learning the language of the
people among whom I was to live. Of course, Americans are not born with
a knowledge of international law and an ability to speak half a dozen
foreign languages.

The routine work of legalizing invoices, attending to passports,
getting foolish fellow-countrymen out of jail, and helping others who
were “strapped” to get to the nearest seaport, went on. Then there was
the doing the polite thing generally by American travelers who called
at the office to pay their respects to the consul.

There were many Americans abroad even then. The Swiss hotels reaped
great harvests from the rich American and English nabobs who traveled
about, displaying themselves and throwing away money.

“I have special charges for all these fine fellows,” said the landlord
of the Bellevue to me. “Indeed, I have three rates, one for the Swiss,
a higher one for foreigners, and a still higher one for the Americans
and English. The rooms are the same, the dinners are the same, the
wines the same; but the bills--ah, well, I am very glad they come.”

Soon I commenced writing reports for our Government. They were asked
for on every conceivable subject, from sewer building to political
economy. Every American who has a hobby, writes to his Congressman to
know what they do about such things in Europe. The Congressman asks the
State Department and the State Department asks the consul. _He_ must
answer in some way.

In this way, and in guarding against frauds on the customs, the time
passed.

In the meantime my official position secured me the entrée into Swiss
society. It enabled me at last to know Swiss life and to meet men and
women worth the knowing. Many of them living in Zurich, or passing
there, had European reputations, for the city, like Geneva, had that
about it that attracted people of intellect. Zurich is called the Swiss
Athens. Novelists, poets, historians, statesmen and renowned professors
occupied chairs in the great University, or whiled away pleasant
summers among the glorious scenery of the Alps near by.

[Illustration: Lorenzo Brentano.--_Page 24._]

_August 10, 1870._--On this day I made the acquaintance of a remarkable
man. It was Lorenzo Brentano of Chicago. He called at the consulate,
and, after first greetings, I found out who he was. It was that
Brentano who had been condemned to death after the Revolution of 1848
in South Germany. He had been more than a leader; he had been elected
provisional president of the so-called German Republic. When the cause
failed on the battlefield, he fled to America, and there, for many
years, struggled with voice and pen for the freedom of the slaves, just
as he had struggled in Germany for the freedom of his countrymen. The
seed he helped to sow in Germany, at last bore fruit there, and he also
lived to see American slavery perish. He was a hero in two continents.
He had made a fortune in Chicago and was now educating his children
in Zurich. His son is now an honored judge of the Superior Court of
Chicago, a city Brentano’s life honored. He was also at this time
writing virile letters for European journals, moulding public opinion
in our favor as to the Alabama claims. We needed his patriotism.
Americans will never know the great help Brentano was to us, at a
time when nine-tenths of the foreign press was bitterly against us. I
once heard a judge on the bench ask Brentano officially if he wrote
the letters regarding America. “Yes,” said Brentano, who was trying a
case of his own, and was a witness, “I wrote them.” “Then that should
be reckoned against you,” said the judge, so bitter and unjust was
the feeling abroad concerning our country, especially among Englishmen
traveling or living on the Continent at this time. A kind word for
America or Americans was rare.

Through Brentano’s friendship, I secured many notable acquaintances.
The Revolution of 1848 in Germany was led by the brightest spirits
of the country. Its failure led to death or flight. Many had crossed
into the Republic of Switzerland and formed here in Zurich a circle
of intellectual exiles. They were authors, musicians, statesmen,
distinguished university professors. Brentano naturally stood high
among them all.

[Illustration: Johannes Scherr.--_Page 24._]

_The Orsini Cafe._--Around a corner, and not a block away from our
home, stood a dingy, old building, known as the Cafe Orsini. Every
afternoon at five, a certain number of exiles, and their friends,
among them men of culture and European fame, met and drank beer at an
old oak table in a dark corner of the east room. It was the room to
the right of the entrance hall. Many people frequented the Orsini,
for it was celebrated for its best Munich beer, and they could catch
there glimpses sometimes of certain famous men. Johannes Scherr, the
essayist and historian, called the “Carlyle of Germany,” came there,
and Brentano, the patriot. So did Gottfried Keller, possibly the
greatest novelist writing the German language, though a Swiss. There
was Gottfried Kinkel, the beloved German poet, whom our own Carl Schurz
had rescued from death in a German prison, now a great art lecturer at
the University. Beust, the head of the best school without text-books
in the world; Fick, the great lawyer and lecturer, and sometimes Conrad
Meyer, the first poet of Switzerland. Earlier, Richard Wagner was
also among these exiles at the Orsini, for he, too, had been driven
from his country. That was in the days when the celebrated Lubke, the
art writer, was lecturing at the Zurich University, together with
Semper, the architect. Often the guests around the little table were
noted exiles, who, even if pardoned, seldom put a foot in the German
fatherland. The lamp above the table was always lighted at just five in
the evening, and the landlord’s daughter, in a pretty costume, served
the beer. It was my good fortune, through Mr. Brentano, to join this
little German Round Table often, to listen to conversations, that,
could they be reported now, would make a volume worth the reading.

[Illustration: Gottfried Kinkel.--_Page 25._]

[Illustration: Richard Wagner.--_Page 25._]

Almost nightly, in the winter, at least, the little circle came
together, shook hands, and sat around that table. Each paid for his
own beer. To offer to “treat” would have been an offense. “How many
glasses, gentlemen?” the pretty waitress would ask. Each told what
he had drunk and how much cheese or how many hard-boiled eggs he had
added; the pretzels were free. “Gute Nacht, meine Herren, und baldiges
Wiedersehen,” called out the little waitress, as they would again shake
hands and go out into the fog and darkness. For years that little
waiting-girl lighted the lamp over the table, served us the beer, and
found a half-franc piece under one of the empty glasses. She knew what
it was for. Had she been a shorthand reporter, she could have stopped
passing beer long ago, and the Orsini Café might have been her own.

CHAPTER III

1870

IN THE ORSINI CAFE--GREAT NEWS FROM FRANCE--WHAT THE EXILES
THINK--LETTER FROM GENERAL SHERMAN--I GET PERMISSION TO GO
AND LOOK AT THE WAR--IN THE SNOW OF THE JURAS--ARRESTED--
THE SURRENDER OF THE 80,000--ZURICH IN THE HANDS OF A MOB--A
FRIENDLY HINT.

_August 15, 1870._--At six in the evening of this day I was sitting
with these other friends in the little corner of the Orsini, when a boy
called out:

“Great news from France!”

Yesterday (August 14, 1870) was a day to be forever remembered in
history, the day that was to begin the foundation of the German Empire.
Louis Napoleon had declared war against Prussia. The news came into
our little corner of the Orsini like a clap of thunder--but the exiles
around that table went right on drinking beer. Pretty soon, grave
Johannes Scherr, the historian, spoke: “It is good-by to Napoleon’s
crown, that.” “They don’t know Bismarck in Paris yet,” said Beust.
Beust did not like Bismarck very much either. “And what can we do?”
said another. “Nothing,” replied Brentano. “Look on. We are exiles.”
They all loved Germany.

Twenty years they had been waiting in Switzerland, to see what would
happen. A new war tocsin was now really sounding. One empire was
dying--great, new Germany was about at its birth. Almost that very
night the strongest-souled, most dangerous man in modern times was
playing his cards for empire. Even then, in a little German town,
Bismarck was manipulating telegrams, deceiving the people, “firing the
German heart,” deceiving his own Emperor, even. That was diplomacy. A
hundred thousand men were about to die! What of it? Get ready, said
the man of blood, dig their graves. The hour for Prussian vengeance on
the name of Napoleon had arrived. “We are ready for war, to the last
shoe-buckle,” wrote the French war minister to Louis Napoleon. Bismarck
knew that to be a lie. His spies and ambassadors in Paris had not spent
their time simply sipping wine on the boulevards. They had been seeing
things, and he knew ten times more about the shoe-buckles of the French
army than the French themselves did.

The next morning (August 16) things sounded strange enough to American
ears in Zurich. A trumpeter rode through every street, blowing his
bugle blasts between his cries for every German in Zurich to go home
and fight for fatherland. But the exiles were not included and the
little meetings in the Orsini went on. Then came a note from Napoleon
to the Swiss government: “Can you defend your neutrality?” If not,
he would instantly surprise Bismarck and Von Moltke by overrunning
Switzerland and suddenly pour his armies all over South Germany. Then
the Rhine would be behind him, not in front.

Switzerland saw her own danger. Permit this once, and her name would be
wiped from the map of Europe. She knew that. A few days’ hesitancy and,
for her, all would have been lost. That night at midnight the Swiss
drums beat in every valley of the Alps. Twenty-three thousand men,
with a hundred cannon, were thrown into the fastnesses and passes of
the Jura Mountains, on the French frontier, inside of three days. That
was the answer to Napoleon’s note, and it changed the destinies of the
war. That prompt deed of the Swiss _made the German Empire_. Had the
French army got possession of the Alpine passes once, and the Rhine,
they would have taken Berlin. The backbone of the German minister at
London was what brought on the war at last. England had proposed to
join France in requesting the King of Prussia to promise that no German
prince should aspire to the Spanish throne. The German minister at St.
James indignantly declined to even report the British suggestion to
his government. Had he reported England’s wishes, Bismarck, possibly,
fearing two against him now instead of one, would have given that one
little promise, and then the war would not have taken place.

The Americans had the war news by cable almost as soon as the Swiss,
who were in sound of the guns.

Shortly I received a little note from General Sherman:

“WASHINGTON, D. C., Aug. 19, 1870.

“DEAR BYERS: Consul H. did not hand me your letter of May 1 st
until to-day, else it should have been answered earlier. I was
very glad to see that your health was improved by the change of
climate and country, and that you had entered on your new career
with zeal and interest. So interesting a country as Switzerland,
topographically and historically, cannot but prove of inestimable
value to you, in whatever after career you may engage, and I feel
certain that you will profit by the opportunity.

“At this moment we are all on tiptoe of expectation to hear of
the first events of the war begun between France and Prussia.
The cause assigned for this war seems to us in this distance so
trivial that we take it to be a mere pretext, and that the real
cause must lie in the deeper feelings of the two countries. You
are so near and so deeply concerned in the lines of traffic that
must cross the paths of the contending armies that you cannot
escape the consequences. Many Americans will go abroad to see
these armies, and as much of the war as will be permitted them,
and it may be that you will see at Zurich some of our soldiers.
General Sheridan proposes to start at once, and one of my aids,
Colonel Audenreid, begs to go along. If Sheridan wishes it I will
let Audenreid go, and I will remind him that you are at Zurich,
and he may drop in on you, and you can talk over events. You will
remember him as one of my aids at Columbia, S. C.

“Always wishing you honor and success, I am truly your friend,

W. T. SHERMAN.”

With almost unbroken success for the Prussians, the dreadful war went
on all that autumn. The Swiss were neutral and their sympathies were
divided, or, if one-sided, they were with the Germans; at least, until
that terrible Sedan day, when the Emperor himself fell a prisoner. Then
Bismarck wanted more. It was Paris, and French humiliation, he wanted.
He had tasted blood, and was he never to have enough? The war went on
into the cold and storm of winter. Troops were nearly freezing to death
in both armies in the east of France, and half the Swiss people were
changing their minds. France was down, and Bismarck must not play the
monster.

_December, 1870._--I had been a soldier four years in our own great
war, and was anxious to see European armies on a battlefield. The
commander of the Swiss troops gave me a letter to the leader of the
German army next the frontier, and got me passes. It was midwinter,
and fearfully cold, and the snow was two feet to three feet deep when
I went into the camp of the Swiss, away up in the Jura Mountains. None
but well-clad, well-fed men could stand guarding the passes in such
weather. What must the French army be doing, not far away, in their
worn-out shoes and ragged overcoats? The German army lay not far from
Montbeliard, when one cold evening I passed the frontier, and on foot,
in the snow, wended my way to a deserted French hamlet. The village
just beyond was occupied by a squadron of German Uhlans. Now all was
new to me. Not far away that evening I heard the constant thundering
of the cannon at Belfort. At the place where I stayed, an attack
by the French could be expected any moment in the night. Shortly I
saw captains of Uhlans ride to every house in the village and put a
chalk-mark on the door, designating what companies were to take it for
quarters. There was no room left anywhere, and one could freeze out of
doors, unless hugging a camp-fire. An officer of Uhlans took me in and
shared his bed on the floor of a cabin. We had a cup of coffee, a glass
of brandy and some rations. Nobody knew that night what would happen
out in the snow before morning. Next day I could get no horse; but if
I could get to General Manteuffel at the next village, I would be all
right. On I trudged afoot, but the advanced pickets outside the village
could not read my French papers. They fearing me to be a French spy, I
was arrested and jogged about very unceremoniously. The General was out
somewhere with the troops, and it was hours before I was released. All
this time I was kept in a little café that was full of Uhlans carousing
and drinking, and acting as if they would like to make short work of
me. On the General’s return, I was marched up to headquarters, followed
by a number of idle soldiers, who anticipated a drumhead court-martial
and a little shooting. Of course, I was promptly released with an
apology. But there I was, on foot, in the snow, and not a horse to
be had, had the King himself wanted it; for the French army, 80,000
strong, was making for a battle, or else for the Swiss frontier. It was
the frontier. That very night, Bourbaki, the French commander, shot
himself, and the whole army, 80,000 strong, tumbled, pell-mell, into
Switzerland, and surrendered. That was January 31st.

It was a sad-looking army that gave itself up to Switzerland. Their red
trousers were worn, dirty and black, their shoes were almost gone. Some
wore wooden sabots, some had their feet wrapped in rags. Their faces
and hands were black as Africans’, from close huddling over scanty
camp-fires, to keep from freezing. All were discouraged, disgraced,
many boiling over with wrath at their incompetent leaders. And these
leaders, hundreds of them, were followed by courtesans of Paris, in
closed carriages. That was a spectacle for the gods; this host of
poor, ragged, freezing privates, wading through the snow of the Alps,
followed by a procession of gilded carriages, filled with debauched
women, drunken officers and costly wines.

The surrender there in the snow included the whole army of 80,000 men,
284 cannon, 11,000 horses and 8,000 officers’ swords.

In a week’s time the Swiss had this great army of Frenchmen quartered
at the different cities. Zurich had 11,000 of them. They were a happy
lot of men, to be out of a dreadful war, and in the hands of a people
who bestowed on them every kindness. Many never left Switzerland, but
settled among their sympathizers and benefactors for the remainder of
their lives.

The war went on. Paris, for months, lay besieged and starving. Then the
end came.

[Illustration: Tower in Old Zurich.]

At Zurich, the friends of Germany now undertook to celebrate the close
of hostilities. Speeches and a banquet were to be had one night at the
great Music Hall on the lake. Some consuls were invited to take a part,
myself among the number. I was to be asked to send a telegram to our
President. At four o’clock of the afternoon a man called at my office
and whispered in my ear, “Stay away from that banquet; something is
to happen.” I remained at home. That night, just as the toast to the
new German Emperor was being read, and at a preconcerted signal, every
window in the vast hall was smashed in. Stones and clubs were hurled
at the banqueters. A large and excited mob of French sympathizers and
French prisoners, with side-arms, surrounded the building. Many dashed
into the galleries, waved French flags, struck people down with sabers
and fired revolvers. The banqueters were in terror till, led by the
courageous among them, they broke their five hundred chairs into
clubs and drove the rioters from the hall. A few had been killed, a
number injured. All the night the mob stayed outside and howled. The
police fled for their lives. The militia, called out, stood in line,
but when the order to fire on the mob was given, threw down their arms.

Inside the hall, the banqueters stood with clubs in their hands till
the grey of morning, waiting the attack. The women, alarmed and
terrified, were hidden under the tables, or in corners.

Zurich seemed in the throes of a revolution. The bad elements of every
kind joined in the mob, and the Socialists and Anarchists cried out:
“This is the people, striking for their rights.”

Ten thousand troops were hurried into Zurich from other cantons. Cannon
bristled at the street corners, and placards warned the people to stay
in their houses. A battery was posted in the street in front of our
door. Climbing up on to the terrace by the minster, I saw a terrible
mob below, and watched a cavalry squadron ride through it with drawn
sabers. The mob gave way, and the alarm was at an end. Murders had
been committed, and many men were arrested and punished. The man who
had kindly whispered to me to keep away from the banquet, fled. He was
afterward condemned, and is to this day a fugitive in England.

CHAPTER IV

1871

THE PARIS HORRORS--SOME EXCURSIONS WITH LITERARY PEOPLE--BEER
GARDENS--A CHARACTERISTIC FUNERAL--FUNERAL OF A POET’S
CHILD--CAROLINE BAUER, THE ACTRESS--A POLISH PATRIOT--
CELEBRATING THE FOURTH OF JULY AT CASTLE RAPPERSCHWYL--THE ST.
BERNARD--THE MULES AND DOGS--ON A SWISS FARM--FOR BURNING
CHICAGO.

_June, 1871._--Horrible news continues to come of the atrocities of the
“Communists” in Paris. The most beautiful city of the world is half
burned up by its own children. Hundreds of innocent people have been
slaughtered. Nobody here understands wholly what it is these Paris
murderers want. It looks as if all the criminals and their ten thousand
abettors were simply avenging themselves on civilization.

Europe looks on with horror. The world did not know that it contained
a whole army of such wretches in one single city. Yet New York has
just as many, if they were let loose. There are men right here in
Switzerland, the kindliest governed state in the world, who are walking
around the streets, quietly thanking God for all the indescribable
things at Paris. There was a man in France once (Madame Roland’s
husband), who killed himself, rather than live longer in a land so
given over to dastards. The Paris anarchists will again, and soon
enough, have made suicide sweeter than living there. That is what they
want. Anarchists would rejoice if all the decent people in the world
would kill themselves and get out of it.

This summer of 1871 we made many little foot excursions with the
Brentanos, the Kinkels, or the Scherrs. The whole party was always more
or less literary. Even Mrs. Scherr had written her book, much liked by
German housewives. These afternoon walks have been to points along the
beautiful lake or to some near valley, and often to the Uetliberg or to
Rüssnacht. We always turned up at some simple country beer garden, with
its quiet tables under shady bowers, where the beer and the pretzels
were good, and the view fine of lake and mountain.

What delightful times we have had with our cheap lunches of black
bread, beer and cheese and much talking! We walked home by dusk, always
stopping at many a vantage point, to look in wonder at the sunset and
the gorgeous glow on the Alps. I never saw these sunsets in the Alps
without thinking of another world. They seemed to belong to something
more beautiful, more lasting than our mere lives. If I spoke of it,
however, Scherr would shrug his shoulders and say, “Ich glaub’ es
nicht. Wir werden es nur hoffen,” and once he added: “The whole world
is but a graveyard. Above the door is written _The End_.” Mrs. Scherr
always smiled and said, “No, it is not so, what he says. What is all
that grandeur that you see over there in the mountains for? Surely
not only for a little party like us to gaze on, of an afternoon, and
then say good-by to, forever. No, it is not true. I expect to see the
beautiful mountains, and with these friends, too, a thousand years from
now.”

Alas! sooner than we knew, she was to look beyond these Alps. A heart
trouble, aggravated by the _deeper_ heart trouble of a mother, through
a wayward son, suddenly terminated her life. Just after leaving our
home, one day, where she had been calling, she fell dead upon the steps
of St. Peter’s church.

I was present at this friend’s funeral, conducted in accordance with
German Swiss custom.

An old woman had carried the funeral notices to the friends. They were
printed on large, full sheets of paper, with black edges an inch wide.
The woman, in delivering these messages, was in full black, and carried
with her an enormous bunch of flowers, apparently a symbol of her
office. At the appointed hour I found all our male friends at the house
of mourning. It was designated by a broad, black cloth stretched across
the front of the building and running up the stairway. Here, in a room
denuded of all carpet and furniture, I found Prof. Scherr, waiting to
receive the condolence of the invited friends.

“To the left,” said the old messenger woman, who had brought the death
notices. She stood in the hall, beside an urn, into which friends
put their black-edged cards. Again she held a bunch of flowers. All,
as they entered the room, turned to “the left,” where they silently
grasped the Professor’s hand a moment, and then took their places,
standing in a line along the four walls of the room. No one spoke.
There was utter silence. All had tall hats and wore black gloves. Those
who had not been invited by card, remained in the street, to join
the procession as it left the house. There was not a woman in sight
anywhere, save the old messenger. Just as the church bells were ringing
the hour, the messenger called in at the open door: “Gentlemen, it
is three o’clock,” and the little procession of friends followed the
Professor down to the rear of the hearse. There had been no ceremony.
The body, during the waiting, lay in a plain coffin in the lower hall.
The day before, we had called to have a last look at our friend. To
us, accustomed to American ostentation over the dead, the extreme
simplicity seemed shocking. She was in a plain, white cotton robe. The
coffin, or pine box, was not even painted. But it was not indifference
nor littleness, this simplicity. It was a custom. A hundred years ago
in Switzerland, people were buried in sheets, and without any coffins.
Our friend was borne to the chapel in the graveyard, followed by many
people, all on foot. There was no carriage, save the hearse. There was
a short address in the chapel, no singing or prayers; then the body
was carried out to the grave. Each of us threw a spray of evergreen,
or a bit of earth, into the grave. When the friends had mostly gone,
the Professor looked long and sadly into the grave, lifted his hat to
her who had been his helpmeet, and silently and alone walked away. The
funeral had been characteristic of the country; plain, and simple, and
impressive. To the Swiss, the ostentation and the gorgeous casket at
American funerals are not only unbecoming, but a sacrilege and sin.
“What good can we do the poor dead bodies?” said Kinkel to me one night
at the Round Table in the Orsini. “If you have something to do for a
man, do it for him while he lives, and not to his poor, senseless dust.”

Kinkel carried out his theory when his beloved daughter died. They
came first to my wife, to have her select them a little black
crepe--that was all--and a plain board coffin, and some flowers. All
her schoolmates must be invited to come and stand by her grave. When
the coffin containing his most loved of earth was lowered, the good,
gray-haired poet bared his head, stepped to the side of the grave,
and, with eyes full of tears, made a touching speech. It was about the
child’s goodness in life, its sweetness and sunshine, and its father’s
and mother’s loss. Deep emotion filled all present. The children sang a
song, and then strewed many flowers upon the grave.

“I will never see her again,” he said to me long days afterward. “Like
all beautiful, changing things, she has become a part of the beautiful
universe. I know her breath will be in the perfume of the flowers, and
she will linger in the summer wind.” He spoke in sincerity, but the
beauty and poetry of his belief had little comfort for us, who also
had lost, but with an absolute faith that we should find our buried one
again.

In one of our little excursions, Professor Kinkel took us to see the
celebrated actress, Caroline Bauer, now the Countess Plater. She and
her husband, a rich Pole, who has good claims on the throne of Poland,
live on an estate overlooking Lake Zurich. They received us all with
great courtesy, and insisted on our having lunch with them on the
terrace. The whole estate, not large, is surrounded by a high stone
wall, and inside of that a line of trees and hedges higher still. The
Countess is seventy, white haired, good looking, genial and happy as
a girl. She played several airy things on the piano for us, and would
have danced a jig, I think, had Professor Kinkel but said the word.
In her heyday of beauty and fame she was the morganatic wife of the
King of Belgium. But little was thought of that, for she showed us
his picture hanging in the drawing-room, with pride. She and Kinkel
talked and laughed much about things that were Greek to us. When we
were leaving, the white-haired old beauty followed the white-haired old
poet out to the garden gate, and gave him a good-by kiss. It was, in
fact, a pretty and touching scene. The Count owns the great Castle of
Rapperschwyl at the end of the lake. It contains a Polish museum. One
Fourth of July, later, he invited all the Americans to celebrate the
day there, and sent a steamer, with music and flags, to carry us up to
his banquet. The flags of lost Poland were intertwined with the flags
of the United States.

_August, 1871._--Next to Westminster Abbey, in London, I have always
wanted to see the St. Bernard pass, with its hospice and its dogs. At
Martigny, the other day, my wife and I hired a man and a mule to help
us up the pass that gave Bonaparte so much trouble. The man’s name was
“Christ.” He often addressed the mule as “you diable.” We walked,
rode and climbed past the most poverty-stricken villages in the Dranse
valley I ever saw in my life. This should be called the valley of human
wretchedness. We reached the famous stone hospice on the top of the
pass late at night, in a storm of sleet, and tired to death. We had
overtaken a German student on the way, and our poor mule had to drag or
carry four of us up the worst part of the pass. The thunderstorm also
made us overdo ourselves. My wife sat on the saddle; the student hung
to the mule’s tail; I hung to one stirrup, and Christ to the other.
I am glad it was dark, for the scene was not heroic, like that of
Napoleon leading his army over the mountains.

The monks met us at the hospice entrance, and gave us places to rest
for an hour. To me, who was utterly exhausted and used up, they gave
drams of good, hot whisky.

An hour later they took us down to the Refectory, where we had a
substantial supper of hot soup, bread, potatoes, omelets, prunes, and
also wine. A fire blazed in the immense fireplace, for it is chilly and
cold up here even in August. A wind was now blowing outside, and it was
very dark. We were glad to sit around the fire with some of the monks
and tell them strange things about the country we came from. One of
them spoke English, a few of them German.

These zealous monks live up in this inhospitable pass solely to rescue
and aid lost travelers. Thousands of poor men, seeking labor in better
climates, walk over this pass to Italy every season. Many lose their
way and are hunted up by the noble St. Bernard dogs; many freeze to
death, and the monks have piled their unidentified bodies up out there
in the stone dead-house. There is not enough soil on this rocky height
for a grave. And the air is so rarefied that graves are not needed;
the dead simply dry away at last, or, in their half-frozen condition,
remain like unembalmed mummies. The high air is ruinous to health, and
the monks after a few short years go down into the Rhone valley to die,
while others for another little space take their places.

The next morning I climbed through an open window into the dead-house.
The dead found on the pass during twenty years either lay on the floor
or stood against the wall. It was a hideous spectacle, and yet numerous
of the bodies were lifelike in every feature. They were placed in there
just as they were found. All have the clothes on they wore when they
were lost. Many are in the same attitude of despair and agony they had
when the storm closed them in its icy embrace. I saw a man with form
bent and arms extended as if groping to find his way. A dead woman sat
in the corner with her frozen child in her arms. She has been there
these dozen years. Some of the faces could yet be recognized had any
friend in the world come to look at them.

After breakfast we had a play with a number of the noble dogs that have
saved human lives on this pass, time and again. They were very large,
mostly tawny colored, extremely intelligent and kind.

The devoted lives of these monks, and these dogs, is something
pathetically noble.

A pretty chapel or church is built on to the hospice, and in there one
sees a fine marble statue of Marshal Saxe, the hero of Marengo, put
there by the order of Napoleon.

* * * * *

There are few large farms in Switzerland. Yet, we stayed last week at
one that would do credit in size even to the United States--a couple
of hundred acres, mostly given up to grass and stock; every foot as
carefully looked after as if it were a gentleman’s lawn in London.
The owner is what they call a rich Bauer. He is a romantic-looking
character, the red-cheeked, burly man, as he goes about among his
hired people in the picturesque costume of other days. His wife and
daughter also dress in unique costume. They all look very striking on
the green meadows away up here on a mountain side, half as high as the
Rigi. All this peasant’s immediate ancestors were born in this old
stone house, and, though he has grown rich here, his life is unchanged
from theirs. There are many long, round-paned windows to the rooms,
through which the sun pours in and warms the bright-colored flowers
with which the window shelves are filled. An old eight-day clock of his
grandfather’s stands in the corner counting the seconds for these two
hundred years. There is not a carpet or a table cloth in the house, but
in their stead are old chests, wardrobes and chairs of rare carving,
and queer pewter mugs of another age are on the walls.

Their lives are very simple. At dinner they gather around an uncovered
pine table, and the family dip soup from the same big bowl. They have
an abundance of sour wine, black bread, and such butter, cheese and
milk as would make an epicure glad.

The high mountain air about them is bracing; they seem happy and
healthful, and, more than most peasants, enjoy the grand scene of Alps
and lakes around them.

They set a little side table for us in another room, where we had all
the good things a farm affords for two francs a day. Over on the Rigi,
just across the lake from us, the tourists and the fashionables are
paying ten to twenty francs for food not so wholesome.

_October 9, 1871._--“Chicago has burned to the ground and all your
houses are burned with it,” was the telegram that came to me for
Brentano three nights ago. I went to his house at midnight, but he was
gone to Freiburg. When he came back, he simply telegraphed, “Commence
to rebuild at once.” The Americanism of the order set all his Swiss
friends to talking. “Had Chicago burned up in Europe,” they said, “we
would have spent a year mourning over it. Over there they simply
rebuild the same day and say nothing.”

I commenced a subscription list to help the unfortunate of Chicago,
two weeks ago. I have raised 60,000 francs in sums as low as two
cents each. I think no town of its population in Europe has given so
liberally. To-morrow the cash goes on.

CHAPTER V

1872

LOUIS BLANC, THE STATESMAN--HIS NOVEL COURTSHIP--HIS
APPEARANCE--INVITES US TO PARIS--JUST MISS VICTOR HUGO--HIS
SPEECH AT MADAME BLANC’S GRAVE--LETTER FROM LOUIS BLANC--
ALABAMA ARBITRATORS--SEE GAMBETTA AND JULES FAVRE.

_May 9, 1872._--On this day Louis Blanc, the French statesman and
historian, called. It was to thank me for a favor I had done on a time
for his nephew, but the visit resulted in a friendship that lasted till
his death, ten years later.

Louis Blanc had been to the old French Republic (1848) what Brentano
had been to the revolution of South Germany. At one time he was the
most powerful member of the French Assembly. His writings, more than
all things else, brought about the revolution that for a time made him
President. In this 1872, he is again in the Assembly of a new republic.

While he stayed at Zurich, we came to know his friend, the vivacious
English writer and traveler, Hepworth Dixon. We met often. Once Louis
Blanc gave us all a dinner in the Neptun, and Dixon kept the table in
a roar, telling of his ridiculous experiences in American overland
coaches, in Texas and elsewhere. Of Texas, he had views alarmingly like
those of Sheridan. If he owned hell and Texas, he certainly would rent
out Texas and live in hell. “And do you tell us _that_ is manners down
South in the United States?” queried Mr. Louis Blanc, in the naivest
manner. “Indeed I do; surely, surely,” said the traveler, glancing
at Mrs. Blanc, “I saw it a hundred times. Pistols, bowie-knives and
swearing. Nothing else in Texas.” The kind Frenchman believed it
all, for he believed all men honest as himself; only at the close
of the dinner did Mr. Dixon let him know that part of his talk was
good-natured champagne chaff.

Louis Blanc was the smallest big man I ever saw. He was only five feet
high. His head was big enough for Alexander the Great. He was only
fifty-nine years old now, but it seemed to me his life and actions went
back to the Revolution. His hair was long and black and straight as an
Indian’s. He had no beard. His face was rosy as a girl’s. His little
hands were white as his white cravat; his feet were like a boy’s;
his eyes brown, large, and full of kindness; his voice sweet as a
woman’s. He dressed in full black broadcloth and wore a tall silk hat.
He looked, when walking in the street, like a rosy-faced boy in man’s
clothes.

His little stature and apparent innocence of half that was going on
about him, kept Madame Blanc in a constant worry for fear he would be
run over by passing wagons when we were out walking together. “Now run
over here quick,” she would say to him at a crossing. “Do, my dear,
be careful. See the horses coming.” Out of doors, or on our little
excursions to the mountains, he was perpetually and literally under her
wing. She knew the treasure she had in him.

I constantly thought of the story of his past; for was not this little,
low-voiced man, walking with us, he who had written “The Ten Years”
that had helped destroy Louis Philippe; was not this the same voice
that had enchained assemblies, and led France?

Once in a little log schoolhouse in the backwoods of the West, where,
as a young fellow, I was teaching, I had read some of his books. Poor
as I was, I would have given a month’s salary then, to have taken
Louis Blanc by the hand. How little I dreamed that some day I should
not only take him by the hand, but have his warm friendship.

Louis Blanc’s head was all there was to him--that and a great heart.

His marriage to Madame Blanc was a marvel. They met in London. She was
German and could speak no French. He was French and could speak no
German. He courted her in broken English; and he did well, for a better
woman never lived.

Victor Hugo, standing at her grave years later, pronounced one of his
noblest eulogies to womanhood. It was an outburst of remembered oratory.

[Illustration: Gambetta.--_Page 45._]

We were glad of the friendship of such a man as Louis Blanc. He wrote
me many letters and invited us to Paris, where we spent some delightful
days. His brother Charles was the director of Fine Arts and Theaters
there. We had invitations to the best operas and plays. One night I had
the pleasure of hearing Gounod lead the Grand Opera House orchestra in
his own “Faust.” Monsieur Blanc also took us out to see the National
Assembly sitting at Versailles, where he was a senator. By good luck
we saw and heard Gambetta and Jules Favre. There was no disorder that
day, at least, and the speaking was moderate in tone. It was no noisier
than our own senate. Louis Blanc also spoke a few words in a quiet way.
He wished them to move the Assembly into Paris. “It is all nonsense,”
he said to me, “this pretense of fearing a Paris mob. ‘Do right,’ I
might have said to them, ‘and the mob will let you alone. Do wrong,
and--well, it is not far from Paris to Versailles, and there was a time
when a mob could escort a king even, from the one place to the other.’”
He meant Louis XVI. and his queen, whom the mob led from this same
palace to the Paris scaffold.

That evening we went late to dinner. The Blanc’s lived on an upper
floor of house No. 96, on the Rue du Rivoli. It was rather far. “But
why didn’t you come earlier?” said Mrs. Blanc, meeting us at the door.
“You can’t guess who was here.” It was Victor Hugo. How sorry we were
to have missed the opportunity of seeing the most famous man in France.

It happened later that I was in Paris the day after Victor Hugo’s
funeral. Everybody said it was like the funeral of a great king. I went
up to the “Arc de Triomphe.” The great monument built by Napoleon, in
his own honor, was covered with wreaths in honor of Victor Hugo. Which
man, I thought, does France, in her inmost heart, revere the most--the
poet, or the conqueror?

I do not recall much that Louis Blanc said to me that first time in
Paris, but something he said in reply to some words of Mr. Dixon’s, at
the banquet, I wrote down. Dixon was chaffing, in an exaggerated way,
about the patriot’s idea of liberty. “Ah!” replied Louis Blanc, quoting
from another Frenchman, “there is but one thing only, which dreads not
comparison with Glory; that is Liberty.”

The nephew whom I had obliged, and through whom our friendship with the
statesman came about, fell ill in Paris, and Louis Blanc wrote me this:

“PARIS, 96 Rue du Rivoli, Dec. 21, 1871.

“DEAR SIR: It grieves me to the very heart to have to say that
my nephew is most dangerously ill. He has now been in bed for
about a month, and his precarious state keeps both my poor wife
and myself in a state of unspeakable anxiety. This domestic
affliction, added to the necessity I am under to spend the whole
of my time at Versailles, where the Assembly is now residing
and threatens to _settle_, has as yet prevented me from seeing
Mr. Washburne. But I have not lost sight of my promise, which I
hope I shall be able to fulfill before long. Many thanks for the
photographs. That of Mrs. Byers is very far, indeed, from doing
her justice. We wish we had a better one. I will write to you
soon. In the meantime, accept, my dear sir, our most cordial
thanks for the kindness you and your dear wife have shown to our
nephew and to ourselves. With my wife’s best regards to Mrs.
Byers and yourself, I remain, very truly yours,

LOUIS BLANC.”

The youth got well, but he did not take much to the Zurich schools
after all. He had gone home again, and the uncle decided on letting him
go to sea.

“PARIS, 96 Rue du Rivoli, July 14, 1872.

“MY DEAR SIR: Many thanks for your very kind letter. Our nephew
is quite recovered, and more than ever determined to be a sailor;
so much so, that we have made up our minds to let him go as a
midshipman. He will probably start in a month or two.

“My wife and myself speak often of you both and of the friendly
reception we met at your hands. May we indulge the hope of
returning it soon, on your visit to Paris?

“I would have been glad to make General Sherman’s acquaintance,
but, unfortunately, I found no opportunity to do so.

“Mrs. Louis Blanc and nephew unite with me in kindest regards to
Mrs. Byers and yourself. Most sincerely yours,

“LOUIS BLANC.”

_September, 1872._--All this past summer the international arbitrators
at Geneva have been trying to settle our difficulty with England over
the Alabama pirate business. Our Mr. Evarts has won great honor in his
management of our side of the matter. Still we have virtually lost the
case. A few days ago, the 14th, the treaty was signed. True, it gives
us fifteen millions, but we set out with claiming two hundred and fifty
millions. What a bagatelle to have to accept after that. The testimony
really tends to show that the Rebels never hurt the North with their
cruisers a hundredth part as much as everybody supposed they had. It
was only a little Captain Kidd sea robbery after all.

It is something, however, to make England come to time, if only a
little, for only the other day a London paper declared England will
never pay the Yankees a dollar, no matter what the arbitrators say. We
shall see.

CHAPTER VI

1872

WILLIAM TELL--THE RIGI IN THE GOOD OLD TIMES--PILATUS--ROSE
BUSHES FOR FUEL.

We spent this summer of 1872 at beautiful Bocken, an old castle-like
chateau, sitting high above the lake, ten miles out from the city. It
was once the home of the Zurich burgomasters, at the time when they
exercised the authority of petty kings. The scene from Bocken is very
grand. The chateau, with its big hall of knights, its old oak-paneled
dining-room, its brick-paved corridors and leaded, round-paned windows,
is very interesting. Paid 600 francs for the use of rooms all summer,
and reserved the right to return other summers. The days were fair,
and it seemed to me I had never seen so many clear, moonlight nights.
The lake, shining in the clear moonlight, lay 1,000 feet below us,
and, at times in the night, we could even faintly see the snow-covered
mountains of Glarus. It was a delightful summer at Bocken, and our joy
was doubled by the coming of our firstborn.

[Illustration: Bocken.--_Page 49._]

More than one of this summer’s excursions was to the scene of the
Tell legends on Lake Luzern. I knew the legends were already being
doubted, even by some of the Swiss, but I hoped, by diligent searching
among certain half-forgotten archives in the old arsenal at Altorf,
to find something new. I was not wholly disappointed; I saw a musty
document there that told of the building of the chapel to Tell on the
“Axenstrasse.” That was in 1388, only _thirty-one years after Tell’s
death_. The document gave the amount of wages paid to hands, the amount
of wine furnished the workmen, and a statement that one hundred and
fourteen persons who had known Tell were present at the dedication. On
the supposed spot of Tell’s birth, another stone chapel was erected in
1522. There is also in this museum a copy of a proclamation of four
hundred and ninety-four years ago, by the Council of Uri, ordering all
good Christians and patriots to make yearly pilgrimages to Burglen,
because it was the birthplace of William Tell. This document was
discovered in 1759, but was burned up in a fire at Altorf, about 1779.
The copy, however, is regarded as genuine. The question arises, why
did a poor little village community ever go to the expense of building
these chapels, if they had no certain knowledge of the existence of
their hero, and why were the citizens making these excursions to Tell’s
birthplace at that early time?

[Illustration: Buerglen, Tell’s Birthplace.--_Pages 50 and 191._]

In this old arsenal at Altorf are preserved the battle flags borne
by the Swiss at Morgarten in 1315, only eight years after the death
of Tell. The genuineness of these flags historians have not doubted.
Neither is the old Swiss story of that battle in dispute. If the
ancient Swiss could know of this battle, and save their flags, why
should they not also know the facts as to Tell, at the time they were
building chapels to him? If they do not, these chapels remain as
monuments to the utter foolishness of a people.

The tradition as to his shooting an apple from his boy’s head is of
no earthly consequence; true or untrue, it has no more to do with the
Swiss patriot’s having served his country than the story of the cherry
tree has to do with the patriotism of Washington. Tyrants, compelling
enemies to tests of archery under great risks, were nothing uncommon
in even other lands than Switzerland, and even this little incident
in Tell’s life may have been true. For myself, I am satisfied that a
patriot named William Tell existed, and that his hot-headed love of
freedom, and his recklessness, precipitated a revolution in the Alps.
In these later days his killing even a tyrant would probably brand him
as a common freak or an assassin. Time and history mollify many things.

The chapel at the Axenstrasse was about to fall into the lake, while
I was in Switzerland. Its restoration was decided on. Knowing that I
had interested myself in the Tell traditions, and at my request, the
authorities allowed me to take away the stone step in front of the
old altar, to place in the Washington monument. I secured official
testimony as to the block, had a proper inscription put on it, and sent
it to Washington as a souvenir of Switzerland’s greatest tradition. It
is now in the Smithsonian Institution, being regarded too valuable a
relic to hide away in the monument.

Now that we could speak the language, we made delightful excursions to
the mountains. I had determined to write a book on Switzerland,[1] and
regarded it necessary to see, not only the Alps, but Alpine village
life, and everything characteristic of the country. The result was
that we went on foot to almost every valley and village, and climbed
not a few of the famous mountains. I now became a member of the Alpine
Club. The Rigi we climbed oftenest of all. There was no such thing as
riding up, no easy railway carriages, then. People climbed mountains on
foot, and the names burned on our Alpine stocks had a meaning. Many and
many a Saturday noon we took the train at Luzern, climbed up the Rigi
through the woods alone, on the Arth side, and stayed there till Monday
morning. We usually got to the top in three hours. Daylight of Sunday
saw us out on the high plateau, looking at that great sight, the rising
of the sun in the Alps.

Living among the mountains was glorious then, and _cheap_. Many a time,
in those days, we have had lodgings and meals at four francs a day,
at the Rigi Staffell, where once the poet Wordsworth tarried. And at
Michaels Kreutz, a height near by, two and one-half francs for pension
was our usual expense. We traveled much in second-class cars. Everybody
did this, and we were in the mode. Often when I was alone in the
mountains, I went third-class even, and was as well off for sightseeing
as I would have been in a Pullman palace car.

The Alpine views from the Rigi in good weather are almost beyond
description. One must see them to realize their splendor. Chains of
snow mountains are in the distance, and thirteen blue lakes shining at
the Rigi’s foot. It is only six thousand feet high, but unsurpassed as
a point for seeing Swiss scenery.

Sometimes I went up Pilatus alone. It is higher than the Rigi, and
near by. The climb was five hours, and I always slept in the little
Senn hut, with the cowboys. The cattle, with their tinkling bells,
occupied half the stone building. Cool autumn nights I have sat there
till midnight, talking with the cowboys, before a big fire made of
dried Alpine rose bushes. There were simply acres of roses on Pilatus
then, and the Senns were glad to get rid of the shrubs by burning them.
I never felt in such perfect health in my life, as in the bracing air
on Pilatus Mountain, and the fact that tourists never knew the way up
there made life among the goats and the roses immensely enjoyable. For
years, ever since my imprisonment in the South, I had suffered horrors
with headaches and migraine. These frequent stays in the air of the
higher Alps were slowly curing them.

CHAPTER VII

1872

GENERAL SHERMAN VISITS US AT ZURICH--LETTERS FROM HIM--SWISS
OFFICERS ENTERTAIN HIM--HIS LAKE EXCURSION--HE EXPLAINS HIS
GREATEST CAMPAIGN TO THEM--HE IS ENTERTAINED AT THE SWISS
CAPITAL--LETTER FROM GENERAL DUFOUR.

_August, 1872._--General Sherman had written me late in the previous
Autumn of his intention to visit Europe. Admiral Alden was appointed to
the command of our squadron at Villa Franca, and invited the General
to sail with him in his flagship, the “Wabash.” They left on Nov. 11,
1871. In his note he had said, “I am certainly hoping to arrange my
route so as to pay you a visit.” This rejoiced us greatly. I heard
nothing more till January 16th, when he sent me another little note
from Marseilles:

“MARSEILLES, FRANCE, Jan. 14, 1872.

“DEAR BYERS: You will have seen in the public journals that I am
adrift. Of course, during my travels I intend to come to Zurich
to see you, but the time when is uncertain. Now the season is
not favorable, and I find it to my interest to stay near the
Mediterranean till spring. I left my ship at Gibraltar near a
month ago. Have been through Spain and the south of France, and
am now on my way to rejoin the ship at Nice. We expect to spend
all of February in Italy, March in Egypt and the East, April
in Prussia, and I expect to swing round by Dresden, Vienna and
Munich to Zurich in May. I hope then to find you in good health.
Should you have occasion to write me, a letter to the care of
the United States Consul at Nice will be forwarded. With great
respect, your friend,

W. T. SHERMAN.”

In a month he wrote again, this time from Italy. On Feb. 8th I had
written him of an intended military demonstration on the part of the
authorities, in his honor, when he should come to Zurich. This he was
adverse to, as his note indicates:

“NAPLES, Feb. 28, 1872.

“DEAR BYERS: I have received yours of Feb. 8th, and avail myself
of about the last chance to write in reply. It will be some time
before we can possibly approach Zurich from the direction of
Vienna, and I suppose by that time I will be pretty well used
up; yet, if I can do anything to please you, will do my best.
Please say to the gentlemen of Zurich that when I reach Zurich,
the less display of even a volunteer or militia force, the
better; but I will leave it to your own good sense to do what is
best for them, and for me. Maybe it would be better to postpone
all preliminaries till you hear from me at Vienna. We embark
to-morrow for Malta and Alexandria, Egypt, and it will be some
time before we turn up again in the direction of Moscow and St.
Petersburg. Our aim is to cross the Caucasus to the Caspian, to
Astrachan by the Volga, to Nishni, and so on to Moscow; so, you
see, I have a good, long journey yet before me. Meantime, I hope
you will continue well. As ever, your friend,

W. T. SHERMAN.”

Again there was a silence till spring. General Sherman did not carry
a newspaper reporter around with him, to report his journeys and his
doings. He was traveling as a private gentleman, seeing, and not being
seen. At least, this was what he wished. He had gone to the far East,
had come back to Constantinople and crossed the Caucasus Mountains. In
May he wrote again from St. Petersburg:

“ST. PETERSBURG, May 30, 1872.

“DEAR BYERS: My party is now reduced to myself and Colonel
Audenried, Fred Grant having gone to Copenhagen to see his
aunt, Mrs. Cramer, who is now on the point of going to America.
I don’t now know whether Grant will rejoin me at Vienna or go
direct to Paris, to see his sister Nellie, and await us there.
At all events, Audenried and I start at noon to-day for Warsaw,
then Berlin, Dresden, Vienna, etc., to Zurich, where we ought to
arrive between the 15th and 20th of June. I prefer much not to
be complicated with private engagements or displays of any kind,
for it takes all my time to see the country, and it is awfully
tiresome to be engaged day and night in receiving and returning
calls. I hope you will appreciate this, and have no preparations
made till we arrive, and then if I can do you any service by
seeing your friends, I will do my best. Truly your friend,

W. T. SHERMAN.”

Early in August he and Colonel Audenried were with us in Zurich. No
public demonstration took place on his arrival. It was as he had
wished. We took him out to Bocken, our home on the lake, and had a few
delightful days with him there.

I recall that on the first day we had dinner spread underneath the
trees, out on the terrace of Bocken. The blue lake lay a thousand feet
below us, the white mountains shone in the distance, behind us were
high hills covered with evergreen forests. About the chateau were
bright meadows and rich vineyards. There is scarcely a scene more
beautiful in this world. Yet, I was surprised how little it affected
him. In the presence of such grandeur, he seemed at that moment
unimpressionable. He was a man of moods. I called his attention to the
glorious view. “Not more beautiful,” he said at last, “than the lakes
near Madison. I think of them when I see this. I like American scenery
better than any of it. It is the real, native thing in our country.
Man has done nothing there. Here, in Europe, so much is artificial.”
Yet there was nothing artificial around him here; unless it were the
much-vaunted, little, red, wooden-looking Swiss strawberries on the
table. He wondered how we could adopt the Swiss way of pouring wine on
them, instead of cream and sugar. The big cake in the center of the
table was decorated with preserved fruits. “How singular that is, isn’t
it?” he said; “real Dutch.” But he liked it for all that. He liked,
too, our simple table, though an American dish or two had been prepared
in his honor; and he had a relish for good wine, but was moderate in
its use. When we had the champagne, I proposed his health. “No,” said
he, gallantly, rising to his feet, “we drink the health of Mrs. Byers.”
“Both together then,” I said.

He was happy when I gave him a cigar. The scene began to have some
interest for him. It was finer than Madison after all. I think the
dinner increased his appreciation. The practical side of what he saw
was always in his mind. He measured the near hills with his eye and
guessed their height. “North must be right over there,” he said,
pointing, though the sun was not shining. The snow mountains were
twenty miles away--not thirty, as we had stated. He was sure he “never
missed on distances.” But he did this time. He climbed up to the
winemill in the barn loft, examined the presses below, took hold of
the queer scythes of the mowers, and undertook to describe an American
mowing machine to a peasant, who did not understand a word of English.
In an hour or so he was acquainted with everything practical about the
place.

At supper he ridiculed the American ways of traveling abroad.
“‘Tourists’ is the right word for them,” he said. “They are not
observing travelers at all. Their time and money is thrown away.”
He told of an American girl who rode one hundred miles in a railroad
car with him, through the most interesting part of Spain, and read a
yellow-backed novel all the way. “I never go to a new place, but I
know all about it,” he said; “its topography, geography, history. A
thousand times my habit of observing has afterward been of use to me.”
He told how, when he was a young lieutenant in the army, stationed
in Georgia, his comrades spent their leisure Sundays reading novels,
card playing, or sleeping, while he himself went riding or walking
everywhere, exploring every creek, valley, hill, mountain, in the
neighborhood. “_Twenty years later the thing that most helped me to
win battles in Georgia was my perfect knowledge of the country, picked
up when I was there as a boy._ I knew more of Georgia than the rebels
themselves did.” He insisted on our acquiring a habit of observing
everything, learning everything possible. “You don’t know how soon you
will have use for the seemingly useless thing that you can pick up by
mere habit.” He related how, when he captured a train and telegraph
station down South once--[It happened that I had been present on the
occasion]--he called for some one among the privates to try to take off
messages. His own operator was not at hand. A young soldier, who had
once picked up a little telegraphing as an amusement, stepped forward
and took a rebel message from the wire that turned out to contain
information of vast importance to the whole army.

_August 4._--Yesterday, to make him more comfortable, Mrs. B. had had
a bed placed for the General in our little front salon. “I won’t have
it there at all,” he said. “There shall be no trouble for me. Back it
goes into the bedroom. Give me a cot in the hall--that’s what soldiers
like.” The bed went back.

At noon, a very swell company of cadets came up from Horgen to do the
General a little honor. I happened to be away, and, as the captain
could speak no English, and the General no German, a funny scene
followed. They drew up in line and saluted, and the General saluted in
return. Then he made a good-natured, funny, little speech in English.
They all laughed, and seemed to think it good, gave him a cheer, fired
their guns and went back to the lake. The captain afterward asked me
what it was the General said. I told him that he praised their company
as being one of the nicest he ever saw, and said if they would stack
guns and come to the house, they should drink to his health in some
good champagne. “Mein Gott! and did he say _that_,” said the captain;
“and we, big fools, just walked off and missed it all.”

General Sherman’s memory for names, places and incidents was certainly
phenomenal. He had never been in Russia before, yet, in telling us of
his delightful trip over the Caucasus Mountains, he recalled all the
nearly unpronounceable names of villages and mountains along his route.
He had seen and investigated everything along his way, and talked with
half the people he met, whether they understood him or not. He was so
kindly in his ways, so sincere, no one ever took his addressing him
amiss. I could not help at times comparing him in my mind with what I
had read of the Duke of Wellington.

Colonel Audenried amused us not a little, by telling, _confidentially_,
at the supper table, of the great excursion the General and his
party had tendered them by the Sultan on the Black Sea. The Sultan’s
magnificent private yacht, manned by sailors in gilt jackets, carried
them everywhere. Wines and lunches and dinners were only to command.
It was a beautiful, oriental time; but, when they got back, a bill of
$600, I think, was presented to the General, on a silver platter. He
gracefully paid it, and said nothing.

_August 5._--To-day there was a flowing of champagne, in _fact_. The
army officers, at Zurich and in neighboring towns, chartered a steamer
and arranged for a banquet in the General’s honor at the Castle of
Rapperschwyl, at the upper end of the lake. The day was beautiful, and
it was a fair sight, as the steamer, decorated with Swiss and American
flags, filled with officers in gay uniforms, and with music playing,
turned into Horgen, the landing nearest to Bocken. The villagers
fired cannon, waved flags and cheered, as General Sherman, in full
American uniform, went down from Bocken to the landing. A naturalized
Swiss-American kept a restaurant near to the landing. He had had an
enormous American flag especially made, to hang out as the General went
past his place to the steamer. The General took off his hat to it,
called a pleasant word to the owner of the flag, and the man was happy.
Years afterward he kept that flag as the one the great General had
greeted. He hung it out only on great occasions. I doubt not it will be
wrapped about him at his grave. How easy it is for the great to make
men happy.

The excursion on the lake, and the banquet, were delightful. In the
shadow of the old castle, the talk and the toasts were about two
Republics. The name of William Tell was being spoken with the name
of Washington. The Swiss Dufour and the American Sherman were linked
together, as the Swiss officers touched glasses. It is an international
episode like this that helps, more than all the tricky diplomacy of the
world, to give peoples a kind understanding of each other.

Sherman was amazed to find out that these officers, all the preceding
winter, had (at their officers’ school) been studying his campaigns.
Every move about Kenesaw Mountain, every day of his assaults on
Atlanta, were as familiar to these men as to members of his own staff.
I never in my life saw a more interesting scene than when, under an
awning, on the deck of the steamer, these Swiss officers stood around
him, while, with a big military map before him, he traced for them
the route of the “March to the Sea.” It was a picture for an artist.
It was as if Napoleon had described to a listening group of American
officers, the campaign of Italy. All were greatly impressed with the
great simplicity of his talk, his kindness of manner, as with pencil he
marked for them each interesting spot of the campaign. It was a great
thing to have the most famous march of modern times explained to them
in so friendly a way, by the commander himself.

“I will never forget this day,” said more than one officer to me, as we
left the steamer that evening.

They drew lots for the possession of the map with the General’s pencil
marks, and it fell to Colonel Schindler, the Consul for Austria. “It
shall be an heirloom forever in my family,” said the Colonel to me one
evening at his tea table.

_August 6, 1872._--In the evening, my wife and I gave a reception to
General Sherman at the rooms of the Bellevue hotel in the city. It was
attended by our personal friends, by Americans then in the city, by a
number of officers and by many prominent people. The General was in
full uniform. Numbers spoke English with him, and with others he spoke
tolerable French, that he had learned, probably at West Point.

On the next day it rained, but he was off for the St. Gotthard pass. We
protested against his starting in bad weather. “Weather never holds me
back from a journey,” he said. “If it is raining when I am starting, it
is almost sure to clear up on the way, and when I most need it.”

We were again out at Bocken. He had changed his mind about the scene.
It was the finest view he ever saw. On leaving, he gave my wife an
affectionate kiss, and said, “May God take care of you.” It was to be
years before she would see him again.

* * * * *

_August 20._--Horace Rublee, our minister at Bern, gave a public
reception to General Sherman at the capital the other night. I was
invited to attend. It was a rather elaborate affair, in the Bernerhof.
Outside a band came and serenaded the General, playing some American
airs very poorly. The General was in full uniform. Most of the
prominent people of Bern and many public officials were present. The
General, I noticed, talked quite a little French with some of the
ladies. Nothing of note occurred at this reception, but there was a
fine time, and the General enjoyed himself.

The next day was spent in seeing the sights of the city. At noon I
saw a bit of Sherman’s well-known gallantry for women. Numbers of us,
mostly young men, were standing with him in the Bernerhof corridor. An
elderly lady, alone, passed us and started up the grand stairway. She
was half way up when Sherman’s eye caught her. Instantly he sprang up
the steps and offering his arm escorted her to her room. The rest of us
looked on a little abashed that we had not thought to do this.

* * * * *

While in Switzerland the General had met the famous old Dufour,
the Wellington of the Swiss army, who had so promptly put down the
Rebellion of 1847. With his 100,000 men and his 300 cannon he did more
in a month than most generals do in a year. General Sherman sent him,
through me, a map of his own campaigns. It gratified the old Swiss
warrior greatly and elicited the following reply to me:

“GENEVE, 23rd Janv., 1873.

“MONSIEUR LE CONSUL: J’ai reçu en parfait état le rouleau que
vous m’avez fait l’honneur de m’annoncer par votre lettre du 21.
Je vous en remercie.

“Cette carte est un précieux document pour éclairer l’histoire
des glorieux événements de la dernière guerre d’Amerique.

“Je suis bien redevable a Mons. le Général Sherman d’avoir pensé
à moi en cette circonstance et je vous prie de lui en exprimer
toute ma reconnaissance quand vous aurez l’occasion de lui écrire.

“Agréez, monsieur le Consul, l’assurance de ma considération
distinguée.

G. H. DUFOUR, Général.”

CHAPTER VIII

1872

LETTER FROM GENERAL SHERMAN--VISIT AMERICA--SANDS OF BREMEN--
STORMS AT SEA--ELIHU WASHBURNE--BANQUET TO HIM ON SHIP--I AM
A GUEST AT THE SHERMAN HOME--MRS. SHERMAN--ARRANGE TO TAKE
MISS SHERMAN TO EUROPE--MEET MR. BLAINE--MY SONG IS SUNG IN
THE SHERMAN HOME--CONVERSATIONS WITH SHERMAN--MEET PRESIDENT
GRANT--HOW I HAPPENED TO BE IN THE REBEL ARMY ONCE--LETTERS
FROM GENERAL SHERMAN.

_October, 1872._--As I had now been absent from home just three years,
I secured a few weeks’ leave to visit the United States. Dr. Terry was
to go along. I arranged to sail on the “Deutschland,” from Bremen, Oct.
10th. Early in September General Sherman wrote me from Ireland, asking
me to bring his daughter Minnie (now Mrs. Fitch) back with me to Europe.

“DUBLIN, Sunday, Sept. 1, 1872.

“DEAR BYERS: As you can well understand, I have been kept busy
and have not had a chance to write letters, save to my home. My
trip is now drawing to a close, and by Thursday next we will
be at Queenstown ready to take the steamer Baltic for home. I
have letters from my family by which I learn that my daughter
Minnie is very anxious to spend the winter in Europe. I remember
that you proposed to come to Washington about this time, and if
you have gone this letter will not find you at Zurich, and I
shall hear of you on our side; but if this letter reaches you,
please write me at Washington, as I would prefer she should make
the trip across with you, and remain with you until she finds
General and Mrs. Graham, who are somewhere in Italy. I know you
would do this for me, and it only depends on your coming and the
conclusion Minnie arrives at after I reach home. I am perfectly
willing she should spend a winter in Europe, and only desire that
she have the personal supervision of some friend of mine. She
could easily join some party in New York, but she desires to stop
long enough in some place to perfect herself in French, and to
observe the customs and manners of strangers.

“I hope ere this Mrs. Byers has passed the first dread ordeal of
mother, and that you have now a child to think of and dream about.

“Please give her my best congratulations and wishes for her
continued health. Believe me, always your friend,

“W. T. SHERMAN.”

When I went through the flat, sandy region of North Germany, to take
the Bremen steamer, I thought I had never seen so desolate a country in
my life. It was a rainy, windy day, and the train was slow, the scene
sad; everybody looked poor. Women by hundreds, with red handkerchiefs
on their heads, were out in the fields, digging potatoes in the rain
and wind. The villages were sorry-looking places. Some day, when the
Mojave desert in America has villages scattered all over it, and a poor
American peasantry, the descendants of our children, dig potatoes from
the drifting sand, the scene will be like that long stretch of ugliness
in the rear of Bremen.

Our steamer stopped at Southampton for a day and a night. So Dr. Terry
and I took a run over to the Isle of Wight. To this hour, I think, I
never saw so lovely an island or a place where I should so like to
live. Its clean roads and pretty hedges and beautiful trees, its quiet
English villages, its rambles, interested us much. And then there
was the blue sea beating all around it, and, passing it in the near
distance, the ships of all nations. At the point was the lighthouse
and the rocks, and nearer, the noble downs. Here were the rocks and
the waves that Tennyson had looked at and walked beside for half his
life--the scenes that made his poetry. Not far away was Farringford,
the poet’s home. The whole island, that sunny day, seemed like a dream.

The next evening, at twilight, on our vessel’s deck, far out at sea, I
lingered and looked at the Isle of Wight, the lighthouse and the dim,
gray crags, with the waves beating against them.

We were twelve days reaching New York, and had storms and hurricanes
half the way over. The “Deutschland” survived them all, only to go to
the bottom, on a later voyage, with three hundred people. That was in
the Channel. One day, on this, our New York voyage, everything seemed
to be going to pieces, and for an hour or so I knew how it felt to be
very close to death. I was more alarmed than I had ever been in any
battle. In war, one expects death almost. Here it was different. Not
a human being could keep his feet a moment. There was more than one
said good-by to comrades that day, as he supposed, forever. I had but
one friend on board, Dr. C. T. Terry of New York, who lived in Zurich
for many years, and with whom I had made hundreds of foot excursions
in the mountains. He was a dentist, possibly in his calling not second
to Dr. Evans in Paris. He had come to Switzerland a poor youth, and,
by honor, skill and diligence, had amassed a fortune. He, like myself,
had left a wife and child behind in Zurich. In the midst of the
hurricane, we shook hands, and in a few words agreed what should be
done, should either survive. Had that ship gone down, I would certainly
not be writing here. No lifeboat there but was being torn to pieces;
nothing of human hands could have withstood that sea’s fury another
hour. But it was a grand sight spite of the terror. It was ten in the
morning, snowing, and the sun shining, every minute, turn about.

As the hurricane eased up, I hung on to a rope by the bridge, and miles
away could see lofty white-caps, their shining crowns lighted by the
sun, lift themselves and thunder together, or roll on toward us till
they would strike the ship. The sea was rolling in deep, green valleys,
and, as the ship would leap across these watery gorges, the view right
and left was indescribably grand. I looked at the awful ocean, and
thought of Switzerland. It was as if the valleys of the Alps had turned
to green, rushing waters, and the mountains had commenced falling. I
would almost take the risk again, to see so grand a sight.

_October, 1872._--The morning after the storm, the sea was still
running high, but passengers could keep their feet and, if well enough,
talk together.

Pretty soon, a very large, grand-looking man, with a sea cloak about
him, came on deck. “And who is he?” I said to the captain. “Why, that’s
your _greatest_ American,” he replied. “That’s the man who cared for
the Germans in the siege of Paris. That’s Minister Washburne, the
friend of Germany.” Sure enough, on a day’s notice, Mr. Washburne had
come aboard when we touched at Southampton. He had been sick in his
cabin till this moment. He guessed the storm had shaken the bile out
of him, he said, when I introduced myself to him. He had been too sick
to know the danger we had been in. Now he stayed on deck and was well.
Mr. Washburne was General Grant’s first and truest friend. Without
his tireless support, from Galena to Appomattox, the name of General
Grant had not gone farther than his father’s tannery. Genius must have
somebody to open the door for it. Washburne did it for Grant. John
Sherman, in the House and Senate, did it for his illustrious brother.
Barras did it for Napoleon. Even a cannon ball, rolling down hill, has
to be started by somebody.

* * * * *

It is the last day of the voyage. The captain gave a banquet last night
to Mr. Washburne. All Germans are deep in their gratitude to him for
his work in Paris.

Many speeches were made at the table, many toasts drunk. When Mr.
Washburne rose to speak, he looked like the picture of Daniel Webster.
The same large head, the same intellectual countenance. He looked like
a statesman, not a politician. He was of the kindest manners, and loved
to talk of the people he had known. I had the pleasure of walking for
hours daily with him, up and down the deck, sometimes far into the
night. He had been Lincoln’s friend, as well as Grant’s, and there was
no end to the incidents he could tell of the great President. I regret
now that I did not write them down. He also talked of the Commune
in Paris, whose horrors he had witnessed. He believed socialism and
mobism a disease. In Paris it was infectious. He told me much of his
youth out West. He went to Galena a poor boy, and when he studied law
in an office, making fires as pay for use of books, he had nothing
but a buffalo robe to sleep on, spread on the office floor. Later,
he was a Cabinet Minister. He was a true Republican, through and
through. Hobnobbing with the nobility of France had made no snob of
him. He asked me to make him acquainted with Terry. “I like and honor
such men,” he said; “they are the salt of the earth, these self-made
Americans. They are what makes a republic possible.”

A very rich American lady on the steamer with us was carrying in her
trunks several dozen kid gloves, and asked him to help her get “easy”
through the Custom House. He refused indignantly, adding, “And what
right have you, a rich woman, madame, more than my wife, who never
owned so many gloves in her whole life, to slip things through the
custom-house? The law expects, compels, her to pay duty on her two or
three pairs, and, trust me to see to it, you shall pay duty on your
trunk full.” She left him in high dudgeon, when he turned to me and
said: “It is just such rich, ostentatious people evading law that is
making the poorer classes mad and discontented with government.”

“Lincoln,” he said, “has been the people’s friend more than any other
man since Jesus Christ.”

On reaching New York, Mr. Arthur and others of the custom-house came
out with a tug to meet him, and take him ashore. I was asked to go
along in the tug.

Mr. Washburne went to the Fifth Avenue Hotel. “Now don’t you go because
I do,” he said to me. “It is a useless waste of money. I go because I
have to. Come and see me there to-morrow.” I went on the morrow and
was introduced to Mr. Blaine, who had, I thought, the most magnetic
personality of any man I ever saw. I thought, when he grasped my hand,
he had mistaken me for some old-time friend, but shortly I saw the same
hearty good-will toward all who entered the room. He knew how to make
friends, and to keep them. What a golden secret! I never forgot that
handshake.

_November, 1872._--For a week or so now I was in Washington, a guest in
General Sherman’s home, then on I Street, corner of 3rd. He and Mrs.
Sherman cordially insisted that whenever I came to Washington, I should
make their house my home. This I often did, not at Washington only, but
later at St. Louis and New York as well. Mrs. Sherman was always one of
my sincerest and firmest friends.

[Illustration: General Sherman.--_Page 67._]

[Illustration: Mrs. General Sherman.--_Page 67._]

“Don’t talk religion with her, though,” said the General to me one
morning in his study, after breakfast. “She is a very zealous Catholic,
and you----” “I am a zealous nothing,” I interrupted. “I like Catholics
the same as other good Christians, and have gotten over the notion that
all the salt of the earth is in the creed I accidentally was born in.”
“Then you are all right. As for myself, it’s no difference,” he went
on. “Why, I guess, I don’t believe in anything; so in this room talk
as you please.” Mrs. Sherman was a thousand times more than a good
Catholic. She was in every sense a good woman. Here, as at her other
later homes, she had a little room arranged as an office, where she
worked and studied out plans for helping the poor. Probably no woman in
the United States ever spent more time and money in doing good. Few had
more true friends. Her religious zeal was well known, and never abated.
She thoroughly believed the Catholic church the best church.

She was extremely bright and kind in her ways. The army officers all
liked her, and her house stood open to every friend.

I recall one evening how she and the General gave a supper to the
staff. All were in uniform. She had not invited them to come; she had
just _told_ them to come, and they came with their wives. Two or three
civilians were present, Mr. Church, a famous war-song singer, and
myself among them. After the supper there was some instrumental music
in the drawing-room. “And now,” said Mrs. Sherman, “Mr. Church is going
to honor us with a song.” My verses, “Sherman’s March to the Sea,” were
still popular in the country, being sung everywhere. Mr. Church stepped
to the front of the piano and sang the song in such a voice as I had
never heard it sung in before. The splendid rendering of the music,
his great, fine, patriotic tones, that sounded like the coming of an
army with banners, moved everyone in that room deeply. For a moment, I
entirely forgot that the words were my own. All applauded, so did I;
why not? So did the General. Then a guest stepped forward and made a
little speech. “I am happy,” said he; “I speak for all. What a pleasure
we have had--the first song of the war, sung by the first war-song
singer in the land, in the presence of the one who wrote it, and in the
home of the Commander who made the March.”

General Sherman, too, made a little speech, praising the music, the
words, the singer, and then he added: “Without this song, the campaign
never would have had its picturesque name. Now,” said he, “I want Mr.
Church to sing that other favorite song of mine, ‘Old Soldier, You’ve
Played Out Your Time.’”

They were rugged verses Mr. Church now sang, and striking music, but,
privately, I almost thought it a little cynical in the General to agree
with the words that declared an unknown grave in a ditch a desirable
ending for the true soldier. “But that’s it, that’s it,” said the
General. “Do your duty, have a good time and win glory, but don’t kick
when the end comes. That song is the true picture of a soldier’s life.”

It was a memorable evening, but, I fear, not half a dozen of that happy
company are on earth now. Yet it seems so few years back. The voices
of all of them still seem to sound in my ear. I write down the little
record before the last memory fades. That night at General Sherman’s
house was an echo of the war days.

When the company left that night, the General asked me up to his little
room. He was smoking constantly. The conversation turned on the origin
of the “March to the Sea.” “Yes, I know,” he said, “some of Grant’s
friends are claiming that he suggested that, but no one ever heard
Grant himself utter one word to claim it. True, he was chief commander
over all the armies, when I cut loose for the South; but it would be
just as senseless to attribute it to the President, who was over all
of us, as to attribute it to Grant. Lincoln’s letter to me, after the
event, shows how completely he knew who originated the idea of my
changing base and putting my army down by the ocean; and a letter from
Lee, written after the war, shows what _he_ thought of the importance
of my getting this water base, and of its sequence, the march north in
the Carolinas. ‘The moment he reaches the Roanoke,’ said Lee, ‘Richmond
is untenable, and I leave it.’”

One May morning (1864), away back by Chattanooga, a certain General
Warner asked General Sherman, privately, what he was going to do when
he got his army away down to Atlanta, without supplies, and with a
lot of rebels behind. General Sherman suddenly stopped his pacing the
floor, knocked the ashes from his cigar, and said, “_Salt water._” “Do
you mean Savannah or Charleston?” said the astonished staff officer.
“_Yes_,” replied Sherman, “I do.” _That_ was the origin of the “March
to the Sea.”

General Warner related the whole details of this conversation, in a
letter to General Sherman’s wife. Lincoln congratulated the great
leader, and added, “_None of us, I believe, went further than to
acquiesce._” One of the interesting autograph letters of the war is
that one to Sherman, saying: “I congratulate you on the splendid
results of your campaign, the like of which is not heard of in past
history. (Signed) U. S. Grant.”

“Well,” said the General at last, laughing, as he gave the fire a great
stir with the poker: “I suppose they won’t hardly doubt as to who
really _made_ the march.”

* * * * *

_November, 1872._--Went out to my home in Iowa and visited my
relatives. While there, received a couple of notes from General
Sherman, saying Miss Sherman was getting ready to join me on my trip
back to Europe, the 14th of December, by the “Celtic.”

“WASHINGTON, D. C., Nov. 5, 1872.

“DEAR BYERS: I wrote to Mr. Sparks, agent, of the White Star
Line, soon after you left us, but he had gone out on the plains.
He is just back, and writes me promptly, offering the most
liberal terms, more than I deem it prudent to accept. He offers
the best rooms in any of his ships, and ‘to accept your ticket on
the Bremen Line in exchange.’ I knew he would be glad to favor
me, but I always prefer to pay the usual price, and to accept
as a favor ‘preferable accommodations.’ Now, I have written to
Sparks that I prefer to pay full passage for Minnie, and merely
suggest for you that he charge you the usual fare to Paris, $95,
and take your ticket at its cost, $63. This would leave you $32
to pay, and this will embrace railroad tickets from Liverpool to
Paris. I also named the ‘Celtic,’ the finest ship afloat, which
sails Dec. 14, and I guarantee she will put you in Liverpool in
8-1/2 days, and in Paris Dec. 24, giving you barely time to take
Christmas dinner with Mrs. Byers at Zurich. Write me as soon as
you can that I may close the bargain. We will expect you to come
to stay with us as long as you please before starting.

“I take it for granted you vote to-day, and will then have a full
month to see your folks and come to us. Of course, I don’t like
to hurry you, but this programme seems so fair I trust it will
suit your convenience.

“My best regards to your father.

Truly yours,

“W. T. SHERMAN.”

* * * * *

“WASHINGTON, D. C., Nov. 22, 1872.

“DEAR BYERS: I now have a letter from Mr. Sparks, agent of the
White Star Line, saying he has all ready for your and Minnie’s
most comfortable passage in the ‘Celtic.’ Dec. 14, next. So I
shall expect you here by the 10th of December, and will accompany
you to New York and see you off.

“He also reports that the ‘Celtic’ has just made the run from
New York to Queenstown in 8 days and 12 hours, with bad coal. So
you may safely count on reaching Paris inside of ten days. Truly
yours,

W. T. SHERMAN.”

Shortly, I went back to the General’s home at Washington. He took me
to see President Grant. He seemed to have free access wherever he
pleased to go, for, although others were waiting in the reception-room,
he passed them with a bow, and conducted me into the cabinet-room.
General Grant sat quite alone at the end of the historic table. The
warmth of his reception showed very quickly how intimate the two great
leaders were.

* * * * *

The President asked me some questions about the service abroad, and my
replies seemed to gratify him. Then there was a hint that Mr. Horace
Rublee, the American Minister at Bern, was about to resign and come
home. I had known that from Mr. Rublee direct, and I had quite an
ambition to secure the place. Why not? I had performed the duties more
than once in the Minister’s absence, and the proposed promotion seemed
perfectly natural. General Grant gave me every encouragement to believe
that I should shortly have the post.

Shortly the President arose and asked General Sherman to let him know
at once when the resignation of Rublee should be sent in. He saw no
reason why I should not be promoted to the post.

“It looks like a very sure thing,” said the General to me as we left
the White House.

Alas, and alack! Mr. Rublee went home on a leave, found his affairs
different from what he had anticipated, and did not resign at all. He
simply got his leave extended and extended, and drew the pay, nearly to
the end of Grant’s term. My best good chance was gone.

_December 9, 1872._--Went with the General and Mrs. Sherman to hear
McDonald, the Scotch novelist, lecture on Burns. General Sherman
introduced the speaker, and, in a little speech, showed his own
familiarity with the Scotch bard. I knew this well enough, for I had
seen him reading Burns by the hour. McDonald commenced with great
feeling and enthusiasm. Once I had heard Charles Dickens read, but it
seemed to me here, to-night, was a man more sincere with his subject.
There was no effort at effect. I recall Dickens in his dress suit, his
enormous white shirt front, his big, red rose on his lapel, his dainty,
foppish movements on the stage, his undisguised pauses and signals for
applause, as much as to say: “That is good; now clap your hands.” With
McDonald, all was different, all sincere. Burns seemed to be there in
person that night.

After the lecture we sat up till midnight, telling reminiscences of
the war. The year before, in our home at Zurich, we had spoken of an
escape I had once made from the prison pen at Macon, and of how near I
had come to changing the whole siege of Atlanta. He asked me for some
more of the details. I had been captured from his army in the assault
on Missionary Ridge, and had endured many months of imprisonment at
Libby. When they put us in the stockade at Macon, I resolved on getting
away. The first time I tried it, the guards fired and killed another
officer, who happened to be near me, in the dark. Then, by hook and
crook, I got hold of a gray rebel uniform, and in this disguise, one
bright July morning, walked over the dead line, past the guards, and,
eventually, got off into the rebel army at Atlanta, a hundred miles
away. For ten days I walked up and down among the troops, the forts,
observing the position of the besieged army. I dared not stop, or
rest, or sleep. If spoken to, or stopped, I was forever just going to
the Ninth Alabama, where I claimed to belong. Naturally, I never went
near that regiment. My intent was to collect all information possible
concerning the rebel troops and forts, and then, in the excitement of
the first battle, escape through the lines. I well knew the value my
knowledge now could be to Sherman. I had dozens of incidents every day
that for a moment put my life in peril. Once I saw the lines of the
enemy so thinned, Sherman’s army could have entered almost without a
shot. Then came the terrible battle of the 22d of July. I followed the
Rebel troops in the attack on Sherman’s rear, but failed to make my
escape. The next morning I changed my course, and, passing their left
flank, and down close by the Chattahoochie river, there in the woods,
within sight of the Union banners, was captured as a spy. Every stitch
of my clothing was searched. I was brutally treated and sent to Hood’s
headquarters for trial. Unfortunately for me, some of the very officers
who captured me had seen me in one of the forts the preceding Sunday.
Army headquarters were fixed on the green lawn of a city mansion. The
officers’ desks were out on the grass, and the papers describing me
as a dangerous spy were put into one of the pigeonholes. These had
been shown to me on my way to headquarters by a foolish guard. All
was excitement, for fighting was still going on. As for me, I was put
into a little tent, with two deserters, who were to be shot the next
morning. During the night, one of these condemned boys got out of the
tent on some pretext, and, when morning came, and I was brought out
for a hearing, all the incriminating papers were gone. There was not
a particle of proof as to who I was. I instantly acknowledged myself
to be a Union soldier, and claimed the rights of a prisoner of war.
The astonished officials reminded me that they had a right to shoot
me, I being discovered inside their lines in their uniform; that only
a few months previous our General Rosecrans had shot two Southern
officers for doing what I was now doing. I was in great peril, when
a Colonel Hill, Chief Provost Marshal of their army, said, for the
present, anyway, I should be put back among the prisoners at Macon.
Almost the same night, I was selected, with some two hundred others, to
be taken to Charleston, to be put under the fire of the Yankee fleet,
then bombarding the city. The barbarism of the act, the excitement and
confusion soon following, led to a complete forgetfulness of me. I
never heard again of the charges against me.

General Sherman had listened to the story in perfect silence. Then
rising and giving the coals in the fire a violent stir with the poker,
he exclaimed: “By God! that was an experience. Had you gotten through
the lines that day, it might have changed everything. It might have
saved ten thousand lives.”[2]

_Christmas Eve._--The voyage on the “Celtic” is over, and to-night
finds Miss Sherman and myself in Merry England.

I soon left Miss Sherman with friends in Paris, and hurried home to
Switzerland. Later, after some rambling in Italy, she came and spent a
month with us in our home by the lake. Two or three letters from her
father at this time, though purely personal, are not without interest:

“WASHINGTON, D. C., Jan. 3, 1873.

“DEAR BYERS: We have all written to Minnie several times, but, I
fear, we have overlooked the fact that you must have separated
in Paris soon after Christmas, but I hope she was thoughtful
enough to write you our several general messages of respect and
fond wishes. I was in New York last Monday, Dec. 23d; called at
the office of the White Line, and got the agent, Mr. Sparks,
to promise to give me the first possible news of the ‘Celtic.’
That night I was at the New England dinner at Delmonico’s, and
received a note from Sparks saying the ‘Celtic’ was reported off
Queenstown that night at 10:30, and that is all I know of her,
and of the details of your passage, up to the present moment.
The next morning I telegraphed to Mrs. Sherman here, and to your
father at Oskaloosa. All the ships that came over at the same
time report heavy westerly weather, so I suspect you had a rough
passage after passing the banks of Newfoundland, though the
westerly wind rather favored your speed. My supposition is that
you did not enter Queenstown, but put the mails on some tug that
went outside, and that you put into Liverpool the 24th, too late
for London or Paris for Christmas Day, and I hope you found out
General Fairchild and spent the day with him and Mrs. Fairchild.
We will begin to look for letters from Minnie about Monday
next--this is Thursday. The weather in all North America has been
severe since you left us, except for two or three days after you
sailed. The ground is covered with heavy snow. Yesterday (New
Year’s) was, however, strictly observed, and we had a full house
of visitors all day.

“All my folks are well, and send to you and Mrs. Byers and the
baby all sorts of messages of love and respect. Yours truly,

W. T. SHERMAN.”

* * * * *

“WASHINGTON, D. C., Jan. 21, 1873.

“DEAR BYERS: I was very glad to receive your letter of Dec. 29,
from Zurich, and I see why you were unusually anxious to reach
Zurich, with a clerk deranged, and short in his accounts. I am
glad, of course, his deficiency has been so promptly covered by
his father, as I suppose you are personally liable for his act.

“We have several letters from Minnie, telling us of her voyage
and safe arrival in Paris.

“The weather all December was so bad here that we feared you had
a hard time, but, on the whole, ten days was a good trip at that
season, and you were especially fortunate in having so smooth a
passage of the straits at Dover. Minnie is beginning to figure on
her trip to Italy, and is already in communication with General
and Mrs. Graham at Florence. I suppose she will go there in
February, and I hope a month or so there will satisfy her, and
then she will turn toward Switzerland. I think she has secured
the services of a most excellent French maid, who will enable her
to travel with great ease and comfort. At this distance I cannot
well advise her, and think it best to let her shape her own
course.

“All things in Washington remain as you left them. A little more
visiting and more dinners, and this will continue till after the
inauguration of the 4th of March, when we will settle down to our
chronic state again.

“I propose to remain quietly at home till the North Pacific Road
has progressed far enough to justify me in crossing the continent
by that line.

“Give my best love to your wife, and believe me always, your
friend,

W. T. SHERMAN.”

* * * * *

“WASHINGTON, D. C., March 7, 1873.

“DEAR BYERS: I have your letter of Feb. 11, and can see you and
your little family settled down in your quaint home by Zurich’s
fair waters.

“We have letters from Minnie at Florence, and she is now with
our old friends, General and Mrs. Graham, and we feel absolute
confidence. She says they go to Rome about the 1st of March,
and she proposes to spend March and April there and at Naples,
and their project is to go to Vienna via Venice and Trieste. It
certainly will be a happy incident if you can go along and take
her to Zurich. I am afraid she will find less time to settle
down to her French studies and music at Zurich than she first
proposed. But let time settle that. She is now on the right
track, and will have her whole summer to put in in the Swiss
cantons. There is no good reason why she should come home till
October.

“We have just got through the ceremonies of inauguration, and, as
all the papers are filled with it, I feel certain you will get
some by telegraph, and the whole details by the New York papers.
Thus far no changes have been made in the Consular or Foreign
appointments. The senate is in extra session, and if General
Grant proposes to make any material changes he must do so within
a few days, but of this you will also learn by telegraph. He
surely keeps his council well, as his most intimate friends do
not know his purpose.

“I think the Washington bonds are good, as the debt is limited to
ten per cent of the aggregate value of taxable property.

“Master Cumpy still flourishes, and asks innumerable questions of
Europe, Asia and America. At present rate he will know geography
before he reads.

“Present my kindest regards to your good wife, and believe me
always anxious to hear from you and to serve you. Sincerely,

W. T. SHERMAN.”

CHAPTER IX

1873

LETTER FROM GENERAL SHERMAN--LOSS OF THE “ATLANTIC”--THE BOYHOOD
HOME OF NAPOLEON III. AND OF HIS MOTHER, QUEEN HORTENSE--
A COMPANION TELLS OF THE PRINCE’S PRANKS AND STUDIES--
JOSEPHINE’S HARP--ARENABERG FULL OF NAPOLEON RELICS--WE HAVE
A LONG INTERVIEW WITH THE EX-EMPRESS EUGENIE--LETTER FROM
GENERAL SHERMAN--SPEAKS OF THIERS.

_May Day, 1873._--The terrible wreck of the White Star Liner
“Atlantic,” took place two weeks since. Five hundred souls lost. I had
secured passage for our young friend, Hirzel. He writes how he clung
to the rigging that cold morning, and witnessed poor human beings
gradually freezing, letting loose their hold, and dropping from the
rigging down into the sea. He was almost the last one taken off on to
the rocks.

General Sherman speaks of this disaster, as well as of the Modoc war:

“WASHINGTON, D. C., April 24, 1873.

“DEAR BYERS: Your last letter came promptly, and I have sent it
out to Mrs. Sherman, who is on a visit to Ohio, and, of course,
demands prompt notice of everything concerning Minnie. We get
from her letters regularly and promptly, the last being dated
at Castellamare, near Naples. She seemed unusually well, and
said she would soon return to Rome, and then begin her northward
progress. The Grahams will probably move slower than she wants
to, and she will probably catch a favorable opportunity to reach
you in Switzerland. I advise her to take this course; get near
you, and then maneuver from that as her base for the summer. She
does not seem very anxious to go to Vienna, though I advise it
for no other reason than to see the Fair and the city, and also
to see the family of our Minister, Mr. Jay. I want her to come
home in September or October, and to arrange for her passage
as early as possible, for there will be a rush in the autumn
westward. Notwithstanding the loss of the ‘Atlantic,’ I have not
lost faith in the White Star Line. It was not the fault of the
ship that she was foundered on the rock at a twelve-mile speed.
No ship could stand that; still, if she is afraid, then the
Cunard Line will be preferable.

“Our spring has been very backward, indeed, but the trees are
trying now to blossom and to leaf. The grass is very green, and I
hope that winter is past. The President is away at the West and
the Secretary of War in Texas, so times here are dull, although
we find the Indians are trying their annual spring business; not
very peaceful. You will have heard of the killing of General
Canby, and the treacherous conduct of the Modocs. I hope the
last one of them will be hunted out of their rocks and killed.
I have not heard of the actual coming of Mr. Rublee, but notice
that Consul Upton of Geneva has been named as chargé during his
(Rublee’s) absence. If I hear of his resignation, I will endeavor
to remind the President of your claims, but must warn you that
against political combinations I find my influence very weak.

“Present me kindly to Mrs. Byers, and, believe me, truly your
friend,

W. T. SHERMAN.”

The home of Queen Hortense, Napoleon’s stepdaughter, is on the Rhine,
only a couple of hours’ ride from Zurich. One of our delightful
excursions was to go and see the falls at Schaffhausen, and then
take a little steamer up the river to “Arenaberg,” the beautiful
chateau where the Queen lived for twenty years, and where she died.
Here, too, her son, Napoleon III., lived, as a youth. In the stable
building, close to the chateau, were his sleeping-rooms and study.
Louis Napoleon once said he would rather be a fine country gentleman
than Emperor of France. He got his tastes for the beautiful in nature
in this boyhood home. The chateau sits above the Rhine, with beautiful
hills behind it, and the historic lake of Constance close by. It is
on Swiss territory, and is a spot of perfect loveliness. It is the
one spot where Napoleon’s days were all happy days, and the one spot
where Queen Hortense led a happy life. The scene is so perfectly
enchanting, any one, not burdened with a crown, should find delight
in just existing there. The Queen’s room, in the upper corner of the
villa and overlooking the river and the lake, and with ravishing vistas
beyond, is just as she left it at her death. There are her harp and her
paint-brushes and her table. In this room she wrote the famous song of
“Partant Pour la Syrie,” that moved all France. Walter Scott translated
it into exquisite English.

[Illustration: Napoleon III.--_Page 81._]

[Illustration: Empress Eugenie.--_Page 81._]

I went often to Constance, and among my acquaintances was one who had
been a boyhood friend of the Emperor. It was Dr. J. Marmor, a retired
linen merchant in the town. He still corresponded with France’s
ex-ruler, for Sedan’s day was over, as was the terrible scene in that
little farmhouse by Donghery. Dr. Marmor showed me his letters from
Napoleon, and gave me the wax impress of his private seal from one,
together with some writing of the Emperor’s.

No one in Constance will forget the day when Napoleon, at the height
of his power, came from Paris, to visit the home of his childhood.
What grand preparations there were, what decorations, banners,
bands, cannon; what a gilded equipage, for the Emperor to head the
procession in! Suddenly the train whistle shrieks. “The Emperor! The
Emperor!” cries the crowd, as he descends to the carpeted platform.
The big, gilded carriage and the flunkies wait. “Where is my friend,
Dr. Marmor?” asks the Emperor. He is sitting out there, in his old,
one-horse buggy, looking at the scene, hoping for just a glance
at Napoleon, as he will pass among the self-appointed bigwigs and
flunkies. Suddenly the Emperor sees him, grasps him by the hand, and,
springing into the old buggy, cries: “Drive on. To-day I ride with
Marmor.” Then Marmor’s one-horse chaise, with nobody in it but the
Emperor and himself, heads the procession through the city. At first,
everybody stared, and then everybody cheered. Marmor, in five minutes,
had become the first man in Constance. That incident has been his pride
ever since.

When I called on him, and told him I wanted to write for a magazine
something about Napoleon’s boyhood, he gave himself wholly to my
service, went with me everywhere, and told of a hundred frolics he and
the young prince had had in the neighborhood. Prince Napoleon would
have been a poor secretary for the Y. M. C. A. He was an awfully fast
boy, according to one who “had been there” and knew all about it. Some
other old folks whom I met in Constance, knew things also peppery to
relate, were they more than big pranks, or worth the writing down.

Hortense’s chateau is two miles or so outside the town. “Many a time,”
said Marmor, “after half a night’s frolic with a few of us here in
town, have I galloped with him out home, yelling half the way. It must
have been the beer. When we got there, I slept till morning with him
in the barn, the place where he had his study. He studied, too, spite
of his fastness,” said the doctor. “How he read books! just as people
nowadays read newspapers. He read everything, and he remembered it
all. He was a generous soul, too; everybody said that. He was a famous
youth for his kindness to the poor, just like his mother; only she
was better. What a swimmer he was, what a wrestler, what a horseman,
what a rake! As to horses,” the doctor went on, “why it was a common
habit of his to mount, not by the stirrup, but by a single bound over
the crupper and into the saddle.” It is curious now to know that Louis
Napoleon once was a captain of militia here, and also a member of the
school board. “Bismarck never hatched out more schemes in Berlin, than
the young prince did out there in the barn, over the horses. In his
mind’s eye, he was Emperor of France a dozen times out there. I guess
all men do that, who have ambition,” continued the doctor, “and he
was the most ambitious boy I ever knew. But nobody thought he had any
chance for anything.”

The attendants showed us all the rooms in the Queen’s villa. Here, in
the upper east corner, is the one she died in, in 1837. The sun comes
into it, and it has enchanting views. At the end of the room stands,
not only her harp, but, near by it, the harp of Josephine. The villa
is full of souvenirs of the great Napoleon, too; the clock that stood
still the night he died at St. Helena; swords, banners, presents from
kings, etc. In the garden, in a chapel, is a white marble figure of
Hortense, kneeling before the altar. It is one of the beautiful things
of Europe.

The Empress Eugenie comes here summers. No wonder; all is so
enchanting. All except the memories. Right over there, almost in sight,
on an island in the lake, is a castle, the summer home of the old
German Emperor, who crushed out her husband’s life. Greatness must all
be paid for.

* * * * *

What we had seen, made us now the more anxious to see the ex-Empress
herself. Sometimes she was here at the chateau; oftener, at the little
watering place of Baden, half an hour from Zurich.

Our chance came. Miss Sherman, the daughter of General Sherman, was
visiting for a month at our home by the lake (July and August, 1873).
She was a good Catholic, and her mother was the only American woman on
whom the Pope had conferred the order of the “Golden Rose.” Eugenie,
also, was a zealous Catholic. Would she receive the daughter of General
Sherman, and the Consul and his wife? The Duke Bassano arranged it all.
“Her majesty will receive you on Tuesday morning, at ten o’clock,”
said a little perfumed note in French. We were not so sure of our
Gallic verbs and pronouns; still, we could speak some French, and
would risk the visit. Tuesday morning found us in our best toilettes,
waiting in a little anteroom, at the annex of the Hotel in Baden. It
was a simple enough old stone house, half of it built by the Romans,
in the times when they, too, came to these springs for their aches
and pains. In a few minutes, the friendly old Duke Bassano came in to
announce that all was ready. Major Cunningham and his wife were with
us. “And how shall we address her,” we innocently inquired of the Duke,
remembering that the Emperor was dead, and France a republic. “Oh, as
her majesty, of course, only as her majesty.” He opened the door to a
small, simply furnished sitting-room, and we entered. Almost at the
same moment, Eugenie entered from an adjoining apartment. She walked
to the center of the room, took each of us by the hand, and bade us a
cordial welcome. She was dressed in full black, partly décolleté and
trimmed with some white lace. She motioned us to some chairs arranged
in a semi-circle, in front of a little divan. On this sofa she seated
herself, and possibly never looked more beautiful on the throne of
France.

“And now what language shall we speak in?” she smilingly asked in
the most perfect English. “Your majesty’s perfect accomplishment in
our own tongue, settles that,” one of our party answered. “Good. Oh,
yes, I learned English in school, you know, after I left Madrid as a
girl; and my master was Scotch; and then I lived a time in London,
too. I like the English, and I like the English people; but I like
the American people just as well, only I never knew why your country
kept slaves, and had no respect for black people. I am sure color
makes no difference, if it is only a good man. Would you not invite a
black man to your table? I am sure I would, and did; and once, when a
diplomat who was dining with me also, objected a little to my courtesy
to a ‘negro,’ as he called him, I gave him quickly to understand that
possibly the negro was better than he was.”

Then she talked to Miss Sherman (now Mrs. Fitch) about her mother, of
whose Catholic zeal and perpetual charity to the poor she had heard so
much.

To each one in turn she addressed some pertinent word, and then,
laughing, turned to me as a representative of my country, and exclaimed
numerous things not very complimentary to our system of high tariff.

“Why, we make the most beautiful things in the world in Paris; you
Americans all say so, and yet you won’t let your people buy them
without paying twice what they are worth, by your fearful custom-house
rules.

“Americans are so clever; they ought to know they hurt their own
people, and they hurt us in Paris, too. Our poor work for such small
wages, and would always be happy, if you would only let them sell to
you; and, after all, your rich importers just add your tariff fees on
to the price of our goods, and who has the benefit?”

I answered: “Ours is a prosperous country, with our protective tariff
system.” “Yes, I know, in _spite_ of your tariff. I have heard that, a
hundred times. Some day, you will be just like us, and get where you
can get the cheapest. You don’t think making things dear helps anybody,
do you?” Politeness prevented much discussion. It was all one way.
Besides, was it not to hear her talk, not ourselves, that we were there?

She went back to the black man, or the black woman rather. “I had a
good laugh on my dear husband, the Emperor, once. He lived in your
country awhile, you know, and he was always fancying your pretty women.
One day at New Orleans he saw a beautiful female form ahead of him in
the street. It was all grace of movement, and elegance of apparel. He
was struck by the figure. I think he was half in love. ‘I must see
her face,’ he exclaimed to his companion. ‘I must see her. She is my
divinity, running away.’ He hurried his pace, passed her, and the
moment politeness would permit, glanced back. It was a ‘mulatto.’ I
don’t think he always regarded black people quite in the light I did.”

Shortly we proposed to go, though she made no sign that the interview
was at an end. “No,” she said. “Wait; I have leisure, nothing but
leisure and rheumatism.” But she had no rheumatic look; a more
charming-looking woman of fifty, I never saw. Her bright eyes were as
blue as the sky, her complexion exceeding fair, her hair still golden,
her vivacity of manner and cleverness of speech surprising beyond
measure; and then her kindness made us feel that we were talking with a
friend. All of us were led on to say much, and the visit lasted for two
hours. Much of the talk was about Switzerland and health resorts, and
so much at random as not to be remembered or noted down.

When at last we arose to go, she again came to the middle of the room
and took us each by the hand. And then I asked her a word about her
future plans. “There are none,” she said. “All is over. I have only
my son, and he and I will spend our lives in quiet and peace.” Alas!
only a few years went by and that son was lying dead in an African
cornfield, his body pierced by Zulu lances.

* * * * *

In June General Sherman has written again about Miss S.’s travels, and
also something about the French Republic, and the Modoc War:

“WASHINGTON, D. C., June 9, 1873.

“DEAR BYERS: I am just in receipt of your letter of May 20. Mr.
Rublee was here not long since en route for Rome, and from what
he said I think he has made no business arrangements, and that he
will stay there his full term.

“We have letters from Minnie up to May 20, at Rome, at which time
she had joined the Healys, and will accompany them to Venice,
Milan, Nice and Pau, France, a route that takes her well away
from Zurich, but she begs to be allowed to remain abroad longer,
say till next spring, so as to enable her to have more time to
stay with you and to visit England and Ireland. I suppose she
ought to reach Switzerland in July or August and stay with you
a month or more. I have given her my consent, and hope before
she reaches you you will have all our letters on the subject. If
she stays beyond October, she had better not attempt a winter
passage, but wait till April or May. This will make a long visit,
but I suppose it will be the only chance she will ever have, and
she might as well profit by it.

“Mrs. Sherman did intend to take the family to Carlisle for the
summer, but the season is so pleasant here that she has almost
concluded to remain at home and make short excursions. So that we
will be here in Washington all summer.

“I rather like the change in France, and I think General McMahon
will make a better president than Thiers, for he can keep out of
the corps legislatif, which Thiers could not do. If France can
stand a republic she must endure such presidents as time offers.
It is easier to get a good president than a good dynasty.

“Our Modoc war is over, and soon the principal chiefs will be
hung by due course of law (military), and the balance of the
tribe will be dispersed among other tribes easily watched. We
always have something of this sort every spring. Give my best
love to Mrs. Byers, and believe me always your friend,

W. T. SHERMAN.”

CHAPTER X

1873

THE SOURCE OF THE RHINE--STRANGE VILLAGES THERE--A REPUBLIC
FOUR HUNDRED YEARS OLD--THE “GRAY LEAGUE”--“THE LEAGUE OF THE
HOUSE OF GOD”--LOUIS PHILIPPE’S HIDING PLACE--A TOUR IN THE
VALLEY OF THE INN--LETTER FROM GENERAL SHERMAN--REGRETS HIS
CAREER SEEMS OVER.

This summer we determined to see the source of the River Rhine. For all
that tourists seemed to know, it was only a mist among the clouds. It
was far away in the upper and unfrequented Alps. We went on foot, and
found all the upper Rhine scenery ten times as grand as anything below
Schaffhausen and the Falls. Except the classic scenery from Bingen to
Coblenz no scene there is to be at all compared with a hundred places
on the Rhine, among the Swiss Alps. What is called the German Rhine,
is far less striking. It is the Swiss Rhine, far above where it flows
through Lake Constance, that is truly picturesque. At Chur, we turned
to the right, into the mountains, and followed up the branch known as
the “Vorder Rhine.”

Every morning at the sunrise, we were trudging along the way with our
knapsacks and staffs, with the wildest mountain scenery all about
us. We passed many ruins of castles, and numerous picturesque little
villages--Reichenau, Ilianz, Trois, Disentis.

We always rested a few hours in the middle of the day, slept awhile,
and had simple dinners of trout and bread, with honey and wine.

[Illustration: Rich Peasant’s House.--_Page 89._]

Right and left the scenery is gorgeous, certainly, but this grand
nature is also man’s enemy in these higher Alps. Flood and avalanche
are forever threatening; the fields produce little, the villages are
poor and wretched, and we ask ourselves, why do people seek such places
to live in?

The answer is, they can’t get away; they are too poor. Besides, here
is where their ancestors lived always; why should they not live here,
too, they answer. Years later, a girl from one of these places came
and lived in our home as a domestic; but she was forever lamenting her
mountains and her wretched village, spite of the fact that it had been
three times overwhelmed by avalanches. That was the town of Selva.

Near to this Selva, is the hamlet of Gesten, and there eighty-four
souls were lost by an avalanche in a single night. The big grave
containing them all was shown to us, outside of the village.

Tourists who travel by coach and railway in Switzerland, have little
conception of what real, Swiss, Alpine scenery or Alpine life is like.
It is just judging the moon by looking through a telescope. Life in
these almost unknown valleys, differs from all the rest of Switzerland.
Here the commune is the government. Of national laws, or presidents and
parliaments, the people know nothing. The village mayor is the king.
Not many years ago, these mayors and their village advisers in the
Vorder Rhine countries, could hang men and women of their own accord.

The people are a species of Italian and speak an Italian dialect. Five
hundred years ago, they had petty republics up here. Here were the
“Gray League,” the “Ten Jurisdictions” and the “House of God.”

In 1396, the liberty-loving people of the high Rhine valleys fought
for liberty, and founded a little nation called Rhaetia, that lasted
four hundred years, when it became united to Switzerland. Ilanz, their
old capital, stands here still, a novel picture of past ages. The
snow-capped mountains, the fine forests, the picturesque river Rhine,
are there as they were then, and the sons and daughters of these old
liberty athletes have changed almost as little as the scene of their
fathers.

We walked on to Selva and spent the night. I could have thought myself
living among Roman peasants in the time of Julius Cæsar. Everything
was antique, simple, different from the nineteenth century. Corn grows
up there, but the people live mostly from their flocks. I noticed the
men wore earrings, and men and women, with their ruddy, brown faces
and black hair, look like a better class of Southern gipsies. They
have almost no books, few schools, and only a single newspaper in the
whole valley. No human being, outside of the Upper Rhine, would think
of calling that journal a newspaper. The houses are built of hewn logs,
turned brown as a Cincinnati ham, and the clapboard roofs are held on
by big stones.

Spite of their surroundings, these peasants and villagers are happy,
and sing and dance as did their ancestors on the plains of Tuscany.

They fear the avalanches every night. They call them “The White Death,”
and look on them as sent by spirits.

They know little, and care less, about what is going on in the world,
and would give more to wake up any morning, and find a new kid or lamb
born, than to hear of the discovery of a new continent. Their only
ambition is to get their cribs full for the winter, and at last to mix
their bones with the dust of their fathers, beyond the village church.

Near to one of these villages, and farther down the valley, is the tiny
lake of “Tama,” and there the river Rhine begins. The natives here
call it “_Running Water_.” The stream is dark and green, and the lake
is surrounded by dreary rocks and ice-clad mountains. It is 7,690 feet
above the sea. Tourists on the palace steamers of the Rhine, down by
the sands of Holland, should see the historic river at its cradle, if
they would have memories to last forever.

We followed another branch of the Rhine that joins this one at
Reichenau. It, too, is born among the grand mountain scenes, and sweeps
through deep gorges, among them the famous Via Mala. Here at Reichenau,
too, is the first bridge over the united Rhine. It is of wood, eighty
feet high and 238 feet long, in a single arch.

Near it, we were shown a little, old castle that has become historic.
There was a school kept there upon a time. One October evening of 1793,
a wandering pilgrim, with a pack on his back, knocked at the door and
begged the old schoolmaster to give him work. He could cipher and talk
French, and write a decent hand. For many months, the humble stranger
helped to teach the boys, and earned his daily bread. No one troubled
himself to find out who he was. He signed his name Chabourd Latour.
One evening, the boys saw the undermaster in tears. He was reading a
newspaper, wherein was the account of his father’s being beheaded on a
Paris scaffold. The secret of the poor teacher was soon out. It was not
Latour, but Louis Philippe, a coming king of France. He had wandered
everywhere in disguise, for after his escape from banishment, no nation
had dared give him a resting place.

This little Rhine valley had no more romantic story.

* * * * *

One evening after we were back at Zurich a kindly faced gentleman
called at the consulate. The fatal card hung on the door, “Office
closed till 9 to-morrow.” I was in the court below, with just ten
minutes between me and train time. I was to hurry out home to a party
by the lake. I saw the look of disappointment on the man’s face, and
something told me I ought to stop. The gentleman was a traveling
American. Some papers of importance had to be signed by him immediately
before a consul. Of course I missed the party, but I made a friend. It
was Mr. A. D. Jessup, a Philadelphia millionaire. He lingered about
Zurich a few days, and we met and talked together often. Sometimes
we had our lunch and beer together at the famous little café Orsini.
Then Mr. Jessup said good-by and left on his travels. A month from
then a telegram came from him at Paris. It was an invitation to be his
guest on a ten days’ drive in the Austrian Tyrol, with a wind-up at
the World’s Fair in Vienna. He was a friend of President Grant’s, the
message continued, and he could arrange for my leave of absence.

A few mornings later a four-horse carriage halted by the consulate
and we started for the Engadine, that lofty Alpine valley that is
coursed for a hundred miles by the river Inn. This is not a valley of
desolation. It is broad and productive, and once had many people and
a little government of its own. To-day there are pretty villages at
long distances and Insbruck is a picturesque and historic town. But
the Inn valley is sky high compared with other rich valleys of Europe.
We had bright sunshine and a delicious mountain air all the way. The
Inn is rapid and beautiful, and right and left, for twenty miles at a
stretch, rise high green hills, or else abrupt and lofty mountains,
with sometimes bold and almost perpendicular crags. If we saw a rock
that looked extraordinarily picturesque, away up toward the blue sky,
there were sure to be also there the romantic ruins of some old castle.
It seemed that we passed a hundred of these lofty ruins, with broken
towers and fallen walls, through whose tall arches we sometimes saw
patches of blue sky. Eagles soared around many of these lofty and
deserted ruins. As we two drove for miles and miles along the white
winding road by the river we constantly looked up at the romantic
heights, and in our minds re-peopled the gray old castles and thought
of the time, a thousand years ago, when all the peasantry of the rich
valley were the serfs of masters who reveled in these castles built
with the toil of the poor. A time came when the enslaved rose and all
these castles were overthrown or burned and left as they are to-day.
There are ruins high up above this Inn valley that, doubtless, have not
been visited by a human footstep in a hundred years. Most of them are
inaccessible. The former roads cut up the rocky mountain sides to them,
are gone and forgotten, and the heights with their awful ridges against
the sky look as desolate as the desert.

We closed our delightful journey with a visit to the World’s Fair
at Vienna. Barring the Swiss National Exhibition, I have never seen
anything so fine.

On my return I found this letter from General Sherman waiting me. In
it, he expresses regret that his active career seems over:

“WASHINGTON, D. C., July 14, 1873.

“DEAR BYERS: I received your letter some days ago and sent it
from my office to the house, for the perusal of Mrs. Sherman,
therefore it is not before me now. I take it for granted that
Minnie is, or must be, at Zurich or near there. Since she has
been traveling from Italy her letters have been less frequent,
and I fear some of our letters to her have miscarried, or been
delayed. It is now pretty well determined that she will remain
over the winter, so that she will have plenty of time to see
all things that can be of interest. I hope that she will give
Switzerland a good long visit, and that from there she will
make the excursions that are so convenient. We all write to her
often, so she must feel perfectly easy on our behalf. Instead of
going to Carlisle, as Mrs. S. first intended, the family have
remained here in Washington, and I see no cause to regret it,
for we have had but little oppressive weather, and our house is
so large and airy that I doubt if any change would be for the
better. Of course, all the fashionable people, including most of
the officers, have gone to the seashore or mountains, so that
Washington is comparatively dull, but the many changes here in
the streets, and abundance of flowing water have added much to
the comfort of those who remain and can’t get away.

“Elly and Rachel, the two smaller girls, who were at school
when you were here, are now at home, and are busy all day with
their companions, playing croquet in our yard. Tom is putting
in his vacation by riding horseback with two of his companions
up through Pennsylvania. At last date he was near Altoona, and
will be gone all of July and part of August. I suppose the
return of Minister Rublee to his post has disappointed you, but
you must have patience and do well that which is appointed for
you, leaving for time that advancement which all ambitious men
should aim for. I sometimes regret that I am at the end of my
rope, for it is an old saying that there is more real pleasure
in the pursuit than in reaching the goal. Although you may hear
of cholera in this country, I assure you that it is not serious.
I suppose the same is true of Europe, though it is reported the
Shah of Persia declined to visit Vienna on account of cholera. I
think Minnie ought to visit Vienna, if only for a week, to see
that really beautiful city, and to visit Mr. Jay’s family. My
best love to Mrs. Byers. Truly your friend,

W. T. SHERMAN.”

CHAPTER XI

1874

SHERMAN ON CUBA--VISIT ITALY--GARIBALDI’S WONDERFUL RECEPTION
AT ROME--THE ARTIST FREEMAN--FIRST AMERICAN PAINTER TO LIVE
IN ROME--ROME IN 1840--SEE VICTOR EMMANUEL--JOAQUIN MILLER--
HIS CONVERSATION AND APPEARANCE--NEW SWISS CONSTITUTION--
MORE LETTERS FROM GENERAL SHERMAN--TOO MANY COMMANDERS IN
WASHINGTON FOR HIM--WILL GO TO ST. LOUIS--HIS VIEWS OF WAR
HISTORIES.

A hint once that if I preferred to be in the Army instead of the
Consular service the matter could be arranged, led me to think of one
of the Paymasterships then being created by Congress. The General wrote
me as to these plans. His letter has value only because of the prophecy
as to Cuba.

“WASHINGTON, D. C., Nov. 28, 1873.

“DEAR BYERS:--I was very glad to get your letter of November 12th
this morning, as it reminds me of a duty neglected to write you,
renewing my thanks to you for your extreme kindness to Minnie.
She arrived home about the 1st of November perfectly well, and
she has been quietly at home ever since. The winter season is
about to begin, and she must do her share in society. We begin
to-night by a large reception at Mr. Fish’s, and I suppose must
keep it up through the winter. I suppose that Mr. Rublee will
remain where he is, and the Department regarding you as fixed,
will not voluntarily promote you to a larger Consulate.

“As to the Army, things are somewhat confused. There is a law
forbidding any appointments or promotions in the staff corps and
Departments, including the Paymasters. Of these there are for
duty about forty-seven, and I understand the Paymaster-General,
Alvord, says he must have fifty-three to do the necessary work.
And in his annual report to be submitted to Congress next Monday
he will ask for that number, and I believe the Secretary of War
and the President both approve, but for these six places there
are more than a hundred conspicuous applicants. Yet I will
submit your letter, or so much of it as refers to that subject,
to General Belknap, who knows you and whose recommendation will
be conclusive. Of course I, too, will endorse. But don’t build
any castles on this, for I know what a rush there will be on the
first symptom of Congress opening the subject. Everybody here is
on the qui vive for Cuba, but I don’t get excited, for I believe
the diplomatists will settle it, but sooner or later Cuba will
cause trouble in that quarter. I will give your message to Mrs.
Sherman, to Lizzie, Minnie, etc., and will always be glad to hear
such good news of the baby and Mrs. Byers. Give them my best
love, and believe me,

“Truly, etc.,

W. T. SHERMAN.”

_March, 1874._--Went to Italy for a month, via the Mont Ceni. I was
surprised at the beauty of the river boulevard in Pisa, for travelers
rarely mention it. To my mind, it is finer than the Lung Arno of
Florence. Besides, it is something to see a big bridge made wholly of
marble.

The one man of all men in Italy I hoped to see, was Garibaldi, the
Ulysses of the modern world.

He was not to be seen; but I tried to console myself by looking over to
his little island of Caprera, near the Sardinian coast. Dumas’ Life of
Garibaldi set my mind on fire with the story of this man. My inn-keeper
at Naples, too, had been with the patriot in all his campaigns.
Listening to him talk was as entertaining as reading Homer.

[Illustration: Garibaldi.--_Page 96._]

[Illustration: King Victor Emmanuel.--_Page 96._]

The scene, when Garibaldi came to Rome from the solitude of his little
island, to enter parliament the next year, was worthy the brush of
a great artist. The Italy that he had made, and presented to Victor
Emmanuel, had seemed to have forgotten the old man of Caprera. He
was feeble and poor and rheumatic. Suddenly all Italy, _his_ Italy,
remembered him. The King sent a gilded chariot drawn by six white
horses, to take him through the streets of Rome. As the old cripple,
wearing his Garibaldi mantle, limped into the Parliament house, every
member rose to do him honor. I would rather have been Garibaldi in Rome
that day, than to have been Cæsar, riding along the same streets, with
slaves and subjugated peoples in his train.

_March 5._--Looked at numbers of the historic Roman palaces. The one
that affected me most was the dingy and neglected old building in the
Ghetto, where the Cenci lived. This immense and half-empty pile, in an
obscure part of Rome, would attract nobody, save for the story of a
beautiful girl, immortalized by the pencil of Guido Reni. All the time
I was within the building, my mind was on a scene in a prison, where
this same girl hung in torments before her cruel tormentors, crying to
be let down, and she “would tell it all”--the killing of her own father.

And then came that morning before daylight, the morning of her
execution. Herself and an artist are in a cell. A little candle burns,
the executioners wait outside the door, and Guido Reni, to make her
picture striking, drapes a sheet about her head and shoulders, while
all the time she is waiting there for death. Saddest tale of Rome!

Next morning I called at the American Legation. Mr. W----, the
secretary, affected the utmost ignorance and indifference as to who I
was, or whether my card would finally reach Mr. Marsh, our Minister.
I asked him to hand the card back to me, and walked over to the
Rospigliosi palace, where Mr. Marsh promptly received me, and in the
kindest manner. I was in the presence of a statesman and a scholar--not
a snob.

Mr. Marsh had followed the Italian court all about Italy--to Turin,
Florence, Rome. He stood high in the estimation of the Italian court
and foreign diplomats. His genius and scholarship were now casting
luster on the American name.

“Don’t tell anybody at home what a palace I live in,” he said to me,
jocosely. “They will think me an aristocrat over there, whereas I am
the plainest of republicans. Here in Rome a palace is just as cheap as
anything. Everybody lives in a palace here.”

In another part of the palace, I saw Guido’s great picture of Aurora.
I noticed the mark of the French cannon ball that went through it when
Garibaldi was defending Rome.

Bought a copy of Guido’s Cenci, and then went and looked at the Angelo
bridge, where they cut off the head of Beatrice.

I went often to Mr. Freeman’s studio. He was the first American painter
to live in Rome. He was, too, the first U.S. Consul to Italy, and he it
was who protected Margaret Fuller, on a time, from the danger of a mob.
It was at the time the French forced their way into Rome. He planted
the Stars and Stripes on her balcony, and the mob fell back. That was
in 1849.

Freeman painted a picture for me that has inspired a poem by J.
Buchanan Read. It was “The Princess.” The model was a blonde, with hair
like gold. Freeman corrected my notion that there were no blondes in
Italy. There are many, just as there were in the time of the earlier
masters. Yellow was Titian’s favorite color.

Freeman told me much of Rome, as it was when he first went there, in
1840. He lived there under three popes, Gregory, Pius IX and Leo XIII.

Rome was entirely different from to-day. The houses had open entrances,
or, where there were doors, they swung outward to the street, like
American barn doors. There were almost no sidewalks, and the few seen
were only wide enough for one person. The streets were dimly lighted by
occasional oil lamps, great distances apart. Of course, assassination
in such streets was of common occurrence. The water spouts of the
houses were so projected as to empty themselves in cataracts on the
heads of passers-by.

The pavements were made of cobble stones, that had to be covered with
straw or earth when the Pope went abroad in his grandeur.

The city was full of foreign artists, along in the fifties, as now.
Among them were Crawford and Greenough, Story and _West_, whom Byron
called “_Europe’s worst painter and poor England’s best_.”

The fact is, West was a Pennsylvania Quaker, though he became King
George’s court artist, and at last got buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral.

I went often to the Vatican, not to see the palace itself, for that
impressed me not at all, or only as a great and miscellaneous pile,
but to see a certain picture there. The artist who made it was but
thirty-seven years old when he died. Yet, it has been said that in the
“Transfiguration” one sees “the last perfection of art.” This picture
seems to be one of those things that no one ever thinks to try to
emulate. Like the Iliad and Paradise Lost, nothing of their kind came
before them, and nothing is looked for to follow them.

One morning I was drinking my coffee in a little den in the Via
Condotti. A very singular-looking man came in and sat down at the
little table next to mine. Hearing me speak English with a friend, he
addressed me. “You are the Consul at Zurich, are you not? You were
pointed out to me the other day in the street. I am Joaquin Miller of
California. Let us get acquainted.” I moved my chair and coffee over
to his table. I was greatly gratified at meeting a poet who seemed to
me to have some of the genius of Byron. His “Songs of the Sierras”
have the ring of the master. Last summer I read them in Switzerland.
Their freshness, their flavor of the prairie and the mountain, their
passionate utterance, took me by storm. What the English said of him,
in their extravagant joy at “discovering” a live genius in the wilds of
the United States, did not affect me, it was the stirring passion of
the verse itself. The buffalo, the Indian scout, the burning prairie,
the people of the desert, the women with bronzed arms and palpitating
hearts, the men in sombreros, with brave lives, and love worth the
dying for--that was what he was writing about, and they were all alive
before me.

Sitting here at the little white marble table of an Italian café, he
seemed all out of place. There was nothing in the surroundings of which
this half-wild looking poet-scout of the prairies was a part. His
yellow locks, flashing blue eyes, stormy face, athletic form, careless
dress, and broad-brimmed hat on the floor by his feet, all told of
another kind of life.

Much of his talk was cynical in the extreme. He was ridiculing
everything, everybody, even himself, and he looked about him as if
constantly thinking to grab his hat, bound for the door, and rush over
the Tiber with a yell. He hated restraint of any kind whatever--dress,
custom, language.

Miller was now writing in some little attic in Rome, but none of his
friends knew where. He would not tell them; he wanted to be alone.

A boy brought us the morning journal, and we talked of newspapers. I
asked him what English and American papers he read. He smiled, and
answered ironically: “When I want _seriousness_, I read the London
_Punch_, and for _truth_, I take the New York _Herald_.”

There was no talk that morning with him about poetry, but he was jocose
and cynical.

He asked me what I was doing. I told him I was getting ready to try my
hand at a drama. “Don’t do it--all damned nonsense!” he cried. “Dramas
worth anything are not wanted, and if you write in blank verse, as you
say you propose, not one actor in five hundred knows how to recite the
lines. It must be _mighty plain prose_ for these wind sawyers.”

Just then a tall, fine looking young man came and sat down by our
table. Mr. Miller nudged me, and whispered, “Bingen on the Rhine.”
“That is young Norton, son of the woman who wrote ‘Bingen on the
Rhine.’” I looked at him with interest; but he was English, and I was a
stranger, so conversation at that particular table suddenly stopped.

It was on this visit to Rome that I often saw Victor Emmanuel, Italy’s
first King. Every Sunday afternoon he drove on the Pincian Hill. The
extreme Catholics of Rome, the Pope’s party, paid him little or no
attention, and scarcely greeted him when he passed; but all the rest
of Rome and all Italy nearly worshiped the “Re Galantuomo.” He was a
stout, dark looking man, with black eyes and a mustache like a horse’s
mane. He was fifty-six years old then, and had been twelve years King
of Sardinia, and sixteen years King of Italy.

At this time our Minister, Mr. Marsh, arranged to have a friend and
myself presented to Pope Pius IX, but a sudden attack of Roman fever
deprived me of the pleasure.

Two men have existed in my life-time whom I should have given much
to know,--Mr. Gladstone and Abraham Lincoln. Once I was a bearer of
dispatches to Mr. Lincoln, but illness led me to hurry away, after
giving the trust to General Grant. It has been the regret of my life
that I missed grasping the hand of, possibly, the greatest man that
ever lived.

BACK IN SWITZERLAND. Great excitement on this May Day, 1874, for on the
19th of last month, by a popular vote, the people changed the Swiss
Constitution. Instead of twenty-two little cantons, doing just as they
pleased, they will now have a centralized republic, more like the
United States.

Some interesting features of the new Swiss system are these: The
President is chosen for but a year, and can not succeed himself in
office. No military surrender is allowed. The post and telegraph and
telephone belong to the government, which also controls all railroads
and owns some. Schools are free and compulsory. Salt and gunpowder
are government monopolies, and factories are under national control
or regulation. Abuse of the freedom of the press may be punished by
the general council. Supreme Court Judges are elected, but from the
legislative body. National laws must be submitted to popular vote if
demanded by 30,000 people. The President must be chosen by the Assembly
from among its own members. Members of the Cabinet have seats and votes
in the Assembly.

_August 18, 1874._--Had a long letter some time since from General
Sherman. He says: “Don’t rely too much on my influence here in
Washington. Privately, we feel here that President Grant has somewhat
gone back on his old friends, in trying to make alliances with new
ones. Besides, I am compelled to endorse a good many on their war
record, and would not like to be found to choose among them.” He also
says that this fall he will probably move to St. Louis. “There are too
many commanding officers here in Washington.”

On the 7th he writes interestingly about the histories of the war.

“WASHINGTON, D. C., August 7, 1874.

“DEAR BYERS:--I was glad to receive your letter of the 19th of
July, and, with you, think the Centennial of Philadelphia will
prove a lamentable failure. Congress will not probably adopt it
as a national affair, and it will degenerate into a mere state or
city affair.

“Economy is now the cry here, and it may be that it is forced on
us by the vast cost of the Civil War, which was bridged over by
paper money, that now calls for interest and principal. As in
former years, the first blow falls on the Army and Navy, that are
treated as mere pensioners, and every cent is begrudged.

“No one who was an actor in the Grand Drama of the Civil War,
seems willing to risk its history. I have endeavored to interest
Members of Congress in the preliminary steps of preparing and
printing in convenient form the official dispatches, but find
great opposition, lest the task should fall on some prejudiced
person who would in the preparation and compilation favor
McClellan or Grant or some one party.

“All histories thus far, of which Draper’s is the best, are based
for facts on the newspaper reports, which were necessarily hasty
and imperfect. Till the official reports are accessible, it would
be unsafe for any one to attempt a narration of events beyond his
personal vision, and no single person saw a tenth part of the
whole. I have some notes of my own part in manuscript, and copies
of all my reports and letters, but am unwilling to have them
printed lest it should involve me in personal controversies.

“Minnie will be married Oct. 1st, and we will all remove to St.
Louis soon thereafter.

“All send you and Mrs. Byers the assurance of their affection.
Believe me always your friend,

“W. T. SHERMAN.”

CHAPTER XII

1875

LETTERS FROM MRS. SHERMAN AND THE GENERAL--HE TELLS ME HE IS
WRITING HIS LIFE--THE NEGRO QUESTION--A CHATEAU BY LAKE
ZURICH--I WRITE A BOOK ON SWITZERLAND--ALSO WRITE A PLAY--
A CITY OF DEAD KINGS--GO TO LONDON--MEET COLONEL FORNEY--
DINNER AT GEO. W. SMALLEY’S--KATE FIELD--VISIT BOUCICAULT--
CONVERSATIONS WITH THE NEWER SHAKESPEARE--THE BEAUTIFUL MINNIE
WALTON--BREAKFAST AT HER HOME--PROF. FICK--HIS HOUSE BUILT
IN THE OLD ROMAN WALL--LECTURES--HOLIDAYS AT THE CONSULATE--
MRS. CONGRESSMAN KELLEY--A STUDENT COMMERS--BEER DRINKING--
DUKES OF THE REPUBLIC--DUELS--LETTER FROM GENERAL SHERMAN--
PRUSSIAN ARMY MANEUVERS.

_March 24, 1875._--Received a welcome and gossipy letter from Mrs.
General Sherman. It reads:

“ST. LOUIS, MO., March 12, 1875.

“MY DEAR MAJOR:--Your welcome letter would have been answered
immediately, but I have not been well. My general health is very
good, but the weather this Winter has been exceptionally cold.

“Minnie and her good husband, with whom she is very happy, live
a few squares from us, and we see them every day; Minnie having
learned to be a great walker, during her sojourn in Europe. We
find our circle of friends and acquaintances very large, and we
find that almost as much time has to be devoted to visiting
here as in Washington. We are delightfully situated in the home
we occupied for several years, before we removed to Washington,
and which belongs to us. We have plenty of spare room for
friends, and shall certainly claim a good, long visit from you
and Mrs. Byers and the children, when you return to your own
country. Should the next Administration be Democratic, that may
not be very long hence. Pray remember that I shall expect you.

“I have seen, and admire very much, your poem on ‘The Sea’ in the
‘Navy Journal.’

“I am very glad you were gratified to receive the pretty copy of
your grand song, ‘When Sherman Marched Down to the Sea.’ I shall
have something else to send you soon. The General’s Memoirs are
in the hands of the publishers, Appleton & Co., of N. Y., and
will be out in May. It will be in two volumes, excellent print,
and I am sure you will find it entertaining. I will see that
you get an early copy. Please write to me when you receive it,
without waiting to read it, because I shall be anxious to know
if it has gone safely. Should you not receive it by the last of
May, let me know. Do not buy a copy, for I wish to send you one.
The book begins in 1846 and extends to the close of the war. The
chapters that I have read are _highly interesting_.

“The General seems to be growing older in appearance, but his
health is good, and his spirits are the same; his vivacity has
not sensibly diminished. To-night he is off to the theater, to
see Charlotte Cushman, who makes her last appearance in St.
Louis to-morrow. We have had a great many attractive actors and
actresses here this Winter, and we have yet in store a greater
treat than all. Ristori is playing in New York and will be here
some time during the Spring. The General and Lizzie both admired
Albani exceedingly, and think her a superior actress to Nielson
and as good a singer. I did not see her, as the weather was bad
and my cold was severe during her stay here.

“St. Louis is a city of great commercial enterprise and has a
wonderful future before her. Perhaps you will select this as a
place of residence on your return home. We would be very glad to
have you here.

“I hope Mrs. Byers and the children are well and that your own
health grows stronger. Lizzie joins me in best love to all. She
and I are alone to-night. Elly and Rachel are away at school,
Minnie in a home of her own, and Cumpsy in bed.

“Believe me very truly and warmly your friend,

“ELLEN EWING SHERMAN.”

I find this in my diary. On returning from Italy, we went over to
“Wangensbach” by Kussnacht, on Lake Zurich, to live for a Summer or
two. Wangensbach is an old chateau, or half castle-place, built by the
Knights of St. John in the long, long ago. The walls are three feet
thick, in places more, and there are all sorts of vaulted wine cellars
and mysterious, walled-in places, under the building. The view from the
windows and terrace, of blue lake and snowy mountains, is superb in the
extreme. The chateau is now owned by Conrad Meyer, the Swiss poet and
novelist. It is six miles to my office in the city, and I walk in and
out daily, though I could go on the pretty steamers for a sixpence.
Here, on a May day, “Baby Hélène” came into the world, to gladden eight
sweet years for us.

[Illustration: Wangensbach.--_Page 106._]

Spite of Joaquin Miller’s prognostications at Rome about plays, I was
foolish enough to go ahead, and write a melodrama in blank verse.
Schultz-Beuthen, a friend of Liszt and follower of Wagner, wrote
delightful music for its songs. I went up to Mannheim, and attended the
plays in the old theater where Schiller was once a director, and where
some of his best plays were brought out.

Miller wrote me about this little play of mine as follows:

“N. Y. HOTEL, N. Y., U. S. A., Feb. 11, 1879.

“MY DEAR MR. BYERS:--I remember you with pleasure, remember the
compliment you paid me in preferring a visit to me before the
good Pope.

“I have read your pretty play with pleasure, and have the opinion
of able managers. And I am bound to say, my dear boy, that it is
for the leisure, not for the stage. Like all your work, it is
well done, verses _especially_, but how on earth do you expect
to present five scenes in one act in this swift modern day? All
modern plays have, as a rule, but one scene to the act. Then you
have almost altogether omitted _humor_. Try again. By the by, I
last night brought forth a play. See enclosed bill. It was most
emphatically _damned_. Write me if I can do ought for you, and
believe me

Truly yours,

J. W. MILLER.”

My libretto and the music had pleased Minnie Hauk, the singer, and she
herself thought of using it, but the objection to the Wagner kind of
music came up. Her husband, Count Wartegg, wrote me from Paris: “The
libretto is very interesting, so original, and so well written that its
success is assured.”

[Illustration: Minnie Hauk.--_Page 107._]

Minnie Hauk was just now at the height of her fame. In Scotland and
England she was very popular. At Edinburg the college students one
night, at the close of the opera, unhitched the horses from her
carriage and pulled her to the hotel themselves. I knew her quite
well in Switzerland. In fact, her secret marriage with Count Wartegg
had taken place in my office, and I had been a part of the little
adventure. She was a wife for years before the public found it out. Her
husband had an historic old castle over in the mountains of the Tyrol.

In the meantime I had prepared another little play, and Miss Kate Field
had given them both to Genevieve Ward, who sent me this about them:

“232 RUE DE RIVOLI, PARIS, 26 Dec., 1875.

“DEAR SIR:--I received the plays you confided to Miss Field, and
read them with much pleasure. Pocahontas should be very popular
in America, and I trust you will be fortunate in having it well
produced. The sympathies of the public should also be warmly
enlisted for the ‘Princess Tula,’ a charming character, which
requires delicate handling. Miss Clara Morris would personate it
most charmingly. I regret that they are both lighter than my line
of business, which is the heaviest. I feel none the less honored
that you should have sent them to me, and again thanking you, and
wishing you every success, I remain

Yours truly,

“GENEVIEVE WARD.”

The second drama was not offered to the managers at all, and the two
plays were laid away forever.

While on the Rhine I also visited Speyer, “The City of Dead Kings.” In
one crypt seven German monarchs lie side by side. Next to Westminster
Abbey in London, and the Capuchin Church in Vienna, no one spot can
show so much royal dust, and nowhere on earth can one feel so much the
fleeting littleness of man as in these three places.

* * * * *

I had spent much time in preparing my book, called “Switzerland and the
Swiss.” Now when I asked permission of our State Department to print it
they promptly telegraphed me a refusal.

A Consul, not long before, had published a book on Turkey that was not
liked by some of the satraps of the Sultan. So a veto was put on all
books by Consuls.

My book was then printed anonymously, but received most favorable
comment. “Whoever the author is,” said the “Zurcher Zeitung,” the
principal Swiss journal, “he has shown more thorough knowledge of the
Swiss people than any foreigner who has written about us.” The large
edition was sold, spite of its being published anonymously.[3]

The London papers have much to say now about the mixed condition of
party affairs in America. Yesterday I had a letter from General Sherman
bearing on the same subject. It also tells me he is writing a history
of his life. It also gives his views of negroes voting.

“ST. LOUIS, MO., Jan. 26, 1875.

“DEAR BYERS:--Your letter of Nov. 21st, sending a copy of the
London Saturday Review, has been in my pigeon hole ‘For answer’
so long that I am ashamed. I have always intended to avail myself
of the opportunity to write you a long, gossipy letter, but have
as usual put it off from day to day, so that now I hardly know
what to tell you. We are now most comfortably established in St.
Louis, a large, growing and most dirty city, but which in my
opinion is a far better place for the children than the clean and
aristocratic Washington. Minnie, also, is domiciled near us in a
comfortable home, whilst her husband seems busy on his new work
in connection with a manufactory of wire.

“I have no doubt that General Grant and the Cabinet think me less
enthusiastic in the political management than I ought to be. And
they may be right. In some respects they have been selfish and
arrogant, and are fast losing that hold on public respect they
used to enjoy, and there is now but little doubt but that they
have thrown the political power into an opposition that the old
Democratic party will utilize for itself. The mistake began in
1865 when they gave votes to the negroes, and then legislated so
as to make the negro dominant at the South where the old Rebel
whites represent eight millions to the four of the blacks, and
the first have united solidly into a dangerous opposition. In our
form of Government, when the majority rules in local Government,
it is hard for the National Government to coerce this majority to
be docile and submissive to a party outside, however respectable.

“I had seen that article in the Review, as also many others
of mine which, on the whole, are flattering. I have, after
considerable hesitation, agreed to publish the whole, of which
that one was the conclusion. The book, still in manuscript, is
estimated to make two octavo volumes of about four hundred pages
each, and I have given the manuscript of the first volume to the
Appletons of New York, and will send the balance this week. The
whole should be out in about three months, when I trust it will
afford you a couple of days of pleasant reading. Thus far the
public has no knowledge of this thing, but I suppose I can not
conceal it much longer.

“We are all well. Give our best love to Mrs. Byers, and believe
me truly your friend,

“W. T. SHERMAN.”

After a while the book appeared, and again the General wrote about it.

“ST. LOUIS, MO., Aug. 31, 1875.

“MY DEAR FRIEND:--I have received your welcome favor of July
31st. Mrs. Sherman has since got one of later date, in which you
acknowledge the receipt of the Memoirs. I am glad, of course,
that they pleased you in form and substance. Such is the general
judgment of those who embraced the whole book, whilst others,
picking out a paragraph here and there, find great fault. When
I had made up my mind to publish, I prepared myself for the
inevitable consequences of offending some. I tried to make a
truthful picture of the case, as it was left in my mind, without
fear, favor or affection, and though it may cause bad feelings
now, will in the end be vindicated. I want no friend to eulogize
or apologize, but leave the volumes to fight out their own battle.

“We are all now at home except Minnie, who has her own home not
far from us. Her baby is growing and beginning to assume the
form of humanity, recognizing objects and manifesting a will and
purpose of his own.

“Early in September all the children will resume their
schools--Tom at Yale, Elly at Manhattanville, N. Y., the rest
here in St. Louis. With the exception of some minor excursions
I will remain close at home. Our annual meeting of the Army of
the Tennessee will be at Des Moines this year--Sept. 29-30. We
don’t expect much, only to keep it alive. We look for a stormy
political Winter, and next year another of the hurricanes that
test our strength every four years.

“My best love to Mrs. B. and the children.

“Yours,

W. T. SHERMAN.”

_January, 1875._--I went to London to see about my play. Stopped at
10 Duchess Street. General Schenck was our Minister then, and he and
Colonel John W. Forney gave me letters to theatrical people. Mr. Geo.
W. Smalley was also polite to me.

It was a nice American dinner-party I participated in at Mr.
Smalley’s home, and while there was a little air of stiffness in the
white-gloved, side-whiskered waiters, it was a hospitable, jolly
occasion. Among the guests were Kate Field, Col. Forney, Secretary
McCullough, and some English literary people. Kate Field was wide
awake, and she, and Col. Forney, one of the best talkers and best
informed men I ever knew, kept things lively till midnight. Col. Forney
was one of the handsomest men I ever met, and was loyally faithful to
friends.

One of my letters was to Dion Boucicault, the actor, probably the
biggest dramatic plagiarist since Shakespeare. His name was to about
two hundred plays, of which he certainly never wrote a dozen complete.
He was of immense talent in the way of absorbing, or transposing, or
cribbing outright other people’s work, without their even knowing it.
In a sense, he did make things his own. If what he afterward said to me
about there not being an absolutely new idea in the world is true, then
he was not a stage plagiarist, as much as a first class boiler-over.

In this Winter of 1874-5 he was the most popular actor in London, and
Joe Jefferson was playing there too, as was Henry Irving. At Drury
Lane theater, there was nothing but standing room, day or night, when
Boucicault was on the boards. His wife was playing with him. Several
times I stood up among a crowd of Londoners whose hands were too
pressed in to clap, but they made it up in crying or laughing. It was
melodrama in perfection. All the immense crowd felt themselves actual
participants in the play. What a bag full of money the English-American
must have lugged home this winter.

One evening a note came for me to call on him at his house, at 9
o’clock next morning. It was foggy and almost dark on the streets when
I rang the door bell. I was shown into a drawing room dimly lighted,
where, sitting in the half dark, by a low open fire, was a man I could
have taken for William Shakespeare. The lofty brow, the intellectual
face, the partly bald head, looked like no other. He did not see me
as I entered, nor did he turn around, but went on looking into the
fireplace. I looked at him a moment sitting there, and then said good
morning. “Ah,” he said, looking up as calmly as if his whole attitude
had been affected. “Good morning, take a seat. I read your play, it
is melodrama, it is no account; that is, as it stands, you know. You
had best hire a good stage man to go over it for you. You haven’t
studied the stage, that’s clear, and that is what is the matter of
our countrymen, Mr. ---- and Mr. ----. They can write, but they know
no more about the stage plays than new-born babes.” I sat there and
listened to him in astonishment.

He talked much of himself, and related some of his methods of making
plays _play_. But the real secret, he could not translate for me
further than to say, “The way to write a play, is to _write a play_.”

I could not help thinking, as I sat there listening to the voice by the
firelight, of the time when Boucicault had to sell a play for from $200
to $300, and of that later time when a play with his name to it brought
him almost $50,000.

I took his advice as to my melodrama and had a playwright go through it
with pencil and shears.

When I got home to Zurich a telegram asked that I forward the music at
once. A London theater had accepted my play. Shortly the theatrical
hard times set in; my theater closed doors, and that was the last of
“Pocahontas,” a melodrama.

Thomas’ orchestra took some of the music later, and played it with
success at the Philadelphia Centennial.

[Illustration: Minnie Walton.--_Page 113._]

One morning when in London, I was invited to breakfast with Minnie
Walton, the actress. She was at the “Hay-market,” playing with Byron,
I think. She was noted then as the most beautiful actress in London.
At the appointed hour I was at her house, but she was still in bed.
I entertained myself in the drawing room for half an hour with her
two pretty children. Then she herself came in, and I certainly saw a
brilliantly beautiful woman. Her features were smooth and perfect,
her complexion very fair, and her manners most captivating. She wore
a white morning dress with network bodice that outlined a form as
beautiful as her face. She had no wonderful reputation as an actress,
but her beauty attracted many Londoners to the theater. Everywhere in
the shop windows, one saw pictures of “The pretty Minnie Walton.” She
had a power in London, all her own. It was “the fatal gift of beauty,”
but a gift more attractive to women than birthrights and coronets.

_November, 1875._--Upon my return from London, we went back into town
for the winter. House rent has doubled here in four years. We now
pay 2,500 francs for a centrally located apartment of seven rooms.
Everything has grown dearer. The pension where we used to live for four
francs a day now charges seven and eight and nine francs.

Zurich too is becoming a fine, modern, commercial city. The railway
station is almost the finest in the world, and big, granite business
blocks are building, that would do credit to New York or London. Where
the city moat and a graveyard used to be, is now one of the finest
short streets in Europe.

Almost the only house on this street, left of the olden time, is the
“Ringmauer,” the home of our friend, Prof. Fick. Its front is an
absolute wall of ivy, from the pavement to the gables. The whole front
wall of the house is a part of the ancient city wall itself, built
possibly by the Romans. The rooms are low, and the windows used to be
ironed like a prison. Near by, still stands one of the old wall towers.
Inside this ivy-covered old domicile, we have spent many happy hours.
Many a time, over the walnuts and the wine, with the genial Professor
and his family, we have sat far into the night and conjured up the
people who were wining and dining here in this same room, may be a
thousand years ago. Fick, a brother-in-law of Frankland, the English
scientist, was a distinguished law professor in the University. He
originated the Swiss railroad law, and knew more of American affairs
than any German I met abroad.

In late years, he suffered horribly with rheumatism, and he had a queer
habit, when severe attacks came on, of sitting down and comparing the
severity of each attack with one in some previous month. He kept his
watch lying open before him, and carefully recorded each twang and
pain in a diary.

Spite of my sympathy for his suffering, I could at times hardly refrain
from smiling, on hearing him exclaim: “Ah! that was a whacker, that
catch was--must write that down. Let me see--lasted two minutes, pulse
80; this day, last year, minute and a half, pulse 100.” So for an hour
he would sit, his feet wrapped in flannel, and his mind occupied in
measuring and timing his pains.

“What do you do that for, Professor?” I asked him once. “My God!” he
replied, “it helps busy my mind. I would die without this watch and
diary.”

In the afternoon the attack would cease, and in the evening the
students would see the loved Professor delivering his lecture as
smilingly as if he had never had a pain in his life.

_December, 1875._--Through Fick, Kinkel, Scherr and others of our
friends among the University professors, we had free entrée to lectures
when we pleased; could come or go. Scherr’s on France, and Kinkel’s on
art, we heard throughout, as also Henne’s on Swiss history. There were
numbers of American students too in the Polytechnic and University, so
that our relations with teachers and taught were very friendly. The
American students were always at our home on all American holidays,
when the Consulate and our apartment were opened up together and
decorated with our national colors. Speeches were made, toasts drunk,
and a general good American time had. We ourselves greatly enjoyed
these reunions on a foreign soil, and the students and American
residents gave many proofs that they enjoyed them too.

I recall how just before one Christmas, Mrs. Kelley, wife of
Congressman Kelley, of Philadelphia, who was then living in Zurich,
asked me to go with her to help select a picture for an American
friend. I felt honored that she should consult my taste. A very fine
and expensive engraving of Dante at Florence was selected.

What was my surprise, on Christmas evening, to see her head the
American party to our house, with this picture and a speech to the
Consul.

The treasured gift hangs in my Iowa home, but the kind words of that
Christmas evening are stored away in the depths of our hearts. It was
the sign, not the gift itself, that gratified us most.

Most of us mortals are so constituted that to have the esteem of our
fellow beings gives us a most comfortable feeling _here_, anyway,
whatever it may do for us _hereafter_.

_December 7._--Last night Prof. Kinkel invited me to attend a Students’
Commers or festival. There must have been a thousand students present
in the big skating rink. They sat at long tables; the corps students
in high boots, and wearing their corps caps, badges and ribbons. In
front of every one stood a mighty schooner of beer. All smoked, and
the narcotic cloud was so dense I could scarcely see to the stage.
There were decorations everywhere, and a band of music in the gallery.
There were sentinels outside at the door, and whenever a particularly
popular professor was about to enter, signals were waved along the
tables and to the band. Then, as he walked blushing through the aisles
to the stage, pandemonium itself was let loose in the way of clanging
glasses, band playing, pounding tables, hurrahing and singing, until
the conquering hero was seated on the platform. It was a great time
for the professors. Lunge, the chemist; Kinkel, the poet; Hermann, the
physiologist; Scherr, the historian; Meyer, the chemist; Klebs, the
bacteriologist, and other men with names that sound all over Europe,
were literally carried to the stage on the wings of noise, smoke, music
and lager beer.

These great Zurich professors are the men whom Hepworth Dixon calls
the “Dukes of the Republic.” They are the only people in Switzerland
appointed to their places for life.

Students near me got away with a dozen and more schooners of Munich’s
best. I don’t know where it went to, but they have been known to drink
twenty glasses at a sitting. For myself, to keep up appearances I did
away with three glasses and a half, and absorbed smoke enough, without
touching a cigar, to give me the headache for a week.

Here, as at the German Universities, the corps students fought duels.
The most self-important young man in the city is the one with the
little red corps cap, the big top boots, the ribbon across his breast,
and the fresh patch of muslin on his nose, showing a recent engagement.

If the duelist has attended still other universities, he will probably
have a half a dozen welts and scars across his face. He may not know
much about text-books, but these unseemly welts on the face are signs
of great honor; and as the man of danger struts down the street with a
big-mouthed bull-dog in tow, he is a spectacle to behold. His greatest
happiness in life is to have some passer-by turn and gaze on him.

And this was what Bismarck was doing at twenty; this, and shooting off
pistols in his bedroom!

These University warriors are not so dangerous as their slit-up noses
indicate. I have known of fifty duels in the past few years and not a
soul, save one, was badly hurt. He _did_ get really killed.

The offenses for which the students bleed and die are all petty,
fanciful, and even provoked. Sometimes corps members are simply
compelled by their different societies to go out and seek a fight and
try their mettle. Ill feeling or enmity, I have noticed, has not of
necessity anything to do with student dueling.

* * * * *

_November 20._--Had this from General Sherman:

“WASHINGTON, D. C., Nov. 9, 1875.

“DEAR BYERS:--I am indebted to you two letters, the last one
enclosing the comments on the Prussian Army as developed in
the Autumn maneuvers in Silesia. There is no doubt Prussia,
otherwise the German Empire, is determined to keep up the
physique, organization and instruction to meet any possible
conflict, thus necessitating much loss of labor, and constant
trouble in furnishing arms and food. We cannot attempt to follow
her example, though of course we can learn much from their
experience. General Meigs was present on the occasion of these
maneuvers and will on his return make an official report which
will be in book form, easy of preservation.

“Republican successes here this fall make the officials feel
better, but the fact that the House of Representatives is
Democratic will cause much confusion and heartburning this
Winter, and until the nominations are made next Summer.

“My best love to Mrs. Byers.

“Yours truly,

W. T. SHERMAN.”

CHAPTER XIII

1876

STORM IN THE ALPS--MR. BENJAMIN--KATE SHERWOOD BONNER--
ICEBERGS--A SCOTCH POET--HORATIO KING’S LITERARY EVENINGS--
COL. FORNEY--MR. ROBERT--A NEW YORK MILLIONAIRE’S HOME--A
CHRISTMAS NIGHT HURRICANE AT SEA--THE TILDEN-HAYES FIGHT--
CIVIL WAR FEARED IN WASHINGTON--DENNISON, THE INVENTOR--A
STRANGE MURDER--THE WRECK OF THE SCHILLER AND LOSS OF MISS
DIMMICK.

_September 1._--Spent a day or so of each week this summer up at the
Alpine hamlet, Obstalden, where we could look down a thousand feet into
a blue lake, or up five thousand to the tops of snow peaks. Tried to
read Milton up there on the green grass above the lake; stopped when
half way through. I got it into my head that it was only a poetical
paraphrase of the Bible. That is what Goethe thought once of doing,
turning parts of the Holy Book into verse; but as the Bible is already
done well, why not let it alone? Where is there anything in Goethe,
or Milton either, to compare with the magnificent language of the
Scriptures, and no human being would _dare_ to change the _thought_.
Curious, Byron, too, thought of putting Job into verse. Is not the book
of Job already the grandest poem of the world? When among the Alps,
I never cared to read anybody’s description of them; language is too
weak, unless the language were Lord Byron’s.

One night near Obstalden, a terrible storm of thunder and lightning
was leaping back and forth across the lake, and at moments every peak
was illuminated. In the darkness the lake was at an immeasurable depth
below us; a clap of thunder, a flash, and it seemed for an instant a
bright mirror shining in the air. We had been coming down the path from
Amden and had lost our way in the darkness, and when the lightning
flashed, it was so vivid, we were afraid to go ahead. We took shelter
under a projecting rock there on the mountain side, and watched the
spectacle. All the artificial things that man ever dreamed of would be
nothing in the presence of these elements, battling with each other
over the mountain tops.

From peak to peak, the rattling crags among
Leaps the live thunder. Not from one lone cloud,
But every mountain now hath found a tongue,
And Jura answers, through her misty shroud,
Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud.

It was nearly morning before we could find the way down the rocky path
to our little inn; but anyway we had seen a storm in the higher Alps.

A pretty little incident occurred here one day with our children. My
wife, Helen and Lawrence were at dinner out under the castanien trees
on the terrace above the lake. Two strangers got out of a rickety old
chaise that had brought them up the mountain. “May we eat dinner here
with you under the trees?” said the eldest of the strangers, a kindly
faced, white-haired gentleman, to the children. Extra plates were
brought by the landlady of the inn, and the children and the strangers
had a good time together.

“And your name is Helen,” said her new friend at parting. “Yes, and
what is your name?” answered the little girl. “Just Albert, please,”
said the man, smiling. “Good-bye, little folks,” he called as he
climbed into his one-horse wagon. “Good-bye, Mr. Albert,” called out
the little girl, waving her hands, “Aufwiedersehen.”

[Illustration: The Frau Minster, Zurich.]

In a few moments a rider hurrying up from the lake told the landlady
in bated breath that it was Albert, King of Saxony, she had been
entertaining. He was traveling in the Alps incognito. “Good gracious,”
cried the landlady, “had I known that, what a different charge I might
have made.”

_September 25, 1876._--We are in the middle of the Atlantic. On the
16th, we left London on the Anglia. Mr. Benjamin, the marine artist
(afterward Minister to Persia), is among the passengers. He made sea
sketches, all the way. Kate Sherwood Bonner, a Southern literary woman,
who put staid old Boston in an uproar last year by stirring up some
of the effete clubs of culture that did not cultivate, is also on
board. She is bright and beautiful, with her golden hair, and has the
fairest white hands imaginable. A strange incident made us acquainted.
She mentioned her home in Holly Springs, Mississippi, and in a moment
I knew that once in the war times I was a sick soldier in that very
house. I saw death scenes in its elegant chambers, in her own boudoir,
of friend and foe, too horrible to relate.

The weather is perfect. We sail to Canada. There is not a sick soul
on board. Everybody knows everybody, and there are concerts and
recitations and fun in the cabin every night. All the day we play games
on the deck. Nobody wants this journey to come to an end.

We saw an iceberg, and we saw a whale (yesterday). We offered the
Captain $20 to stop the ship, put us down in life boats and let us row
close to the iceberg. He refused. “Company at London would raise a
row,” he said. We were so close, however, we could see beautiful little
inlets and bays worn in among the high walls of the crystal island,
against which the sea was dashing. The ice was several hundred feet
high, clear blue-green, and the sight, with the evening sun striking
it, was altogether novel and beautiful. We stood on the deck and
watched it for twenty miles. When we were near to it, the Captain said
there was a terrible drop in the temperature of the sea water. We were
sixteen days reaching New York.

_October 4._--Visiting the Centennial. By mere accident, found
telegrams telling us of the sudden death of my wife’s father, while
we have been having so long a voyage at sea. He was buried the day we
reached New York. Owing to the length of the voyage they had given up
finding us. William Gilmour was an educated Scotchman and a noble man,
from near Burns’ home, where his brother John had been one of Scotia’s
young bards.

In October, we visited home friends in the West, and returning East,
staid a time in Washington, visiting at the home of General Sherman and
elsewhere.

Horatio King, then having weekly “Literary Evenings” at his home,
invited us often. These evenings did more to enliven a taste in
Washington society for books and high culture than any other one
thing in that whirl of politics and pretentiousness. King had been
President Buchanan’s Postmaster-General. He knew almost everybody in
art and literature in the country, and the people one met at his home
were always interesting. I regarded it a great pleasure to go to his
“Evenings.” He was growing older, but his intellect was bright as in
youth, and his young wife attracted people of taste into their charming
circle.

Colonel John W. Forney we also met again in Philadelphia, though I
had known him in London. He was a man of great intellectual vigor, of
magnificent presence. I once heard a Londoner say, “Your Colonel Forney
is the finest looking American I ever saw.” He, too, like Horatio King,
knew everybody. He had been Secretary of the Senate and was a famous
newspaper man, who in his day ranked with Greeley and Raymond and
Bennett. His self-possession was wonderful, his talk enthralled, and
he had a heart kind as a woman’s. Our Government sent John W. Forney
abroad as a Commissioner, just to “talk Europe into showing her wares
at Philadelphia,” some one said. A better talker could not have been
found between the two oceans. He was emphatically, too, a “woman’s
man,” and he knew how to influence the public men through their better
natures--their wives.

In December, at New York, we visited at the home of Mr. Christopher
Robert, who, as already mentioned, built “Robert College” at
Constantinople. He was a retired millionaire, and his home life must
have been a contrast to the lives of most New York money men. It was
the life of one of the patriarchs, not on a desert among his flocks,
but in a luxurious home, in a fashionable quarter of New York City.
He was a splendid looking “old-time gentleman” of seventy-five years.
I never saw white hair so becoming and honorable to a man as his was,
not seventy-five years carried so upright and with so much dignity. His
large, smooth-shaven face was as rosy as a child’s, his eye clear as a
boy’s of twenty.

He had earned money in his life, and he used it in doing good. His
house was a sort of religious Mecca, where a poor man could go and
be sure of help. His daily life was that of a Christian gentleman.
Mornings, after breakfast, a bell rang, when every member of the
family, guests and servants, were expected to assemble in a room for
devotion. In a fine, clear voice, Mr. Robert read the Scriptures, and
though surrounded by wealth, dilated on the littleness of riches and
the greatness of a true heart. Then he prayed. It was like a morning
mass. And I thought what a city New York would be, were it filled
with rich men like to Mr. Robert. His zeal for sowing good seed was
boundless. No man hung an overcoat in that luxurious house entrance,
but on going away would discover the pockets filled with sensible
pamphlets appealing for a higher life.

Evenings, there were always a number of pleasant people at dinner, and
some delightful music. I recall an evening there with the Reverend
Doctors Taylor and Ormiston.

Knowing Mr. Robert to be a man of deep sincerity and thought, I once
asked him “if he thought the dead ever returned to be near us?” This
was when out walking in the fields of Switzerland. “Most assuredly I
do,” was his answer. “My lost ones are near me now--there in those
roses, in the sweet grass, in all beautiful things. They come near to
us when we are in a mood to want them to come. They don’t speak--but
they hear our inward breathings--and when we worship beautiful nature,
we are talking with them.”

I could not help thinking of that beautiful custom in certain parts of
India, where at funerals a vacant place is left in the procession for
the dead one who is supposed to be invisibly walking along with them.

_On December 16_, we had left New York on the “Elysia” and had tempests
all the way across the ocean. On Christmas night, a hurricane set in,
such as is not seen outside of the Indian seas. Everything on the
outside of the ship was torn to pieces--not a life boat, nor bridge,
nor boom pole, nor sail left. Everything gone. We were blown back
thirty miles towards New York. The sea was churned into mountains of
milk, and the thunder and lightning at midnight was something perfectly
terrific. The ship’s hatches were all battened down with tarpaulins,
and we were fastened in below. Spite of the precautions, water rushed
down the ship’s stairways by hogsheads full. Two or three passengers
lost their minds. Many said farewell to each other, including the
ship’s officers, and we all thought ourselves lost.

_On New Year’s Day_ we reached England, just ahead of another storm
such as Britain had not seen in a hundred years. Hundreds and hundreds
of coast vessels went to the bottom, carrying unnumbered British
sailors and passengers with them.

As we passed the great pier of Dover, we saw how the mighty rocks
composing it had been hurled in vast piles by the storm, as if they
were boxes made of straw. The work of the engineers had been as nothing.

Man marks the earth with ruin; his control
Stops with the shore.

* * * * *

While I had been in Washington, the contest was going on over the
election of Governor Hayes and Samuel Tilden to the Presidency.

In official circles at Washington, the fear of disorder, rebellion,
revolution, was extremely grave. Troops were being silently, secretly
slipped to Washington. Many looked for an immediate storm. General
Sherman told me privately he was preparing for it the best he could.
“If a civil war breaks out,” said he, “it will be a thousand times
_worse_ than the other war. It will be the fighting of neighbor against
neighbor, friend against friend.” He grew almost pessimistic in his
views for the future of our country. “It is only a question of time,”
said he, “till the politicians will ruin all of us. _Partisanship is a
curse._ These men are not howling for their country’s good, but their
own political advantage, and the people are too big fools to see it.
We are liable to smash into a thousand pieces every time we have an
election.” He was greatly moved, and almost wept at the thought of what
would happen, were the violence then threatened really to break out.

_January 4, 1877._--Again in Zurich. When we reached our home, we found
the servants had returned, the house was warmed for us, and everything
was in place as if we had not been gone a day; yet we had traveled
13,000 miles. Above the hall door, in evergreen and holly, were the
words--“Welcome Home!”

How many of our American servants think of such a pretty, feeling act
as that, for their employers!

* * * * *

Some of our first Winter evenings here we spent in playing whist at
the Dennison home. They are worth mentioning, for the people who
played with us, and the story of some of them. Mr. Dennison had once
been manager of the Waltham Watch Works, and it was he who _invented_
watch making by machinery. He is called the “father of American watch
making.” He is a tall, fine looking gentleman of seventy, with kind
eyes, pleasant speech, modest manners, and universal genius. He seemed
to know everything that concerns the working of a machine.

Our best whist-player at the table was Mr. Sadler, a kind old English
gentleman who brought Christmas cake to my wife, regularly as the
holiday came. He kept the story of his life secret. He was a mystery,
and no one dared to pry into his past. We knew him to be rich, though
he lived like a poor man in an obscure pension.

One day, just as I was in Liverpool on my way home from New York, he
was murdered in a quiet park; no soul suspects by whom. Then we found
out that he had been a member of the English Parliament, who for
some mysterious misdemeanor, in association with his brother, also
in Parliament, had to fly England. He got away by feigning sickness
and death, having himself carried out of the hospital in a coffin.
His wife, of whom we had never heard before, appeared suddenly at
his death, like a specter. She claimed his money, which can not be
found, though I personally knew he had thousands, and as suddenly and
specter-like departed. It is all mystery, even to-day. His banker,
shortly after the murder, received a mysterious and unsigned telegram
from New York City, saying: “Give yourself no trouble as to who killed
Sadler. He will not be found.” The murderer had not had time to reach
New York. Who sent the telegram?

Another of that card quartette was the lovely Miss Dimmick, of Boston,
a medical student at the University here. She was the first young lady
graduate at Zurich, and she finished with great honors. Then she went
home on a visit. On her return, we arranged to meet her in Paris, but
one morning came the shocking news that she and five hundred others had
drowned at the wreck of the “Schiller.”

Early one morning, in a terrible fog, the steamer Schiller struck a
rock off the Scilly isles. Almost everybody was lost. The last seen
of Miss Dimmick she was on the deck, kneeling in her night robe, her
hands clasped, her face turned to heaven in prayer. When the peasants
of the island found her body, there was a beauty and a peace in her
countenance that touched them, and moved them to treat her tenderly.
They placed her by herself, and when the officers came later to take
some of the bodies away, they prayed permission to bear her coffin on
their shoulders to the ship.

Boston City Hospital voted some money and named one of the free ward
beds in honor of Miss Dimmick.

Now I recall those little card evenings at the Dennison’s with strange
feelings.

CHAPTER XIV

1877

GENERAL GRANT VISITS LAKE LUZERN--CONVERSATIONS WITH HIM--
HOW I BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS OF SHERMAN’S SUCCESSES IN THE
CAROLINAS TO GENERAL GRANT AT RICHMOND--GRANT’S SIMPLICITY IN
HIS TRAVELS--A STRANGE EXPERIENCE ON THE RIGI--LONDON PAPERS
AMAZED AT THE POPULATION OF THE UNITED STATES--FIRST TELEPHONE.

_July 1, 1877._--Last week there was some talk among the prominent
people here, including the few Americans, of having a public reception
for General Grant. Knowing that he was stopping at Luzern, I went to
see him for the committee. In a little lake-excursion near to the Rigi,
it happened that I was on the same boat with him. The seats on the
deck of the steamer were filled with tourists, gazing in wonder at the
inspiring scenery we were passing in the bay of Uri. The water is two
thousand feet deep, the lake a wonderful blue, and the dark, majestic
mountains near by, a contrast to the slopes of snow and the ice fields
a little further off.

It was summer, but the day was dark and cool. “Where is the General?” I
said to General Badeau, who was traveling with him.

[Illustration: Lake Luzern--Tell’s Chapel.--_Pages 49 and 128._]

“Do you see that man sitting down there at the right, alone, with his
coat collar turned up?” I went nearer, and recognized the familiar
features. But to me, he looked none at all like the General Grant of
war times, the one I had seen on critical battlefields. He wore a black
cylinder hat, his overcoat collar, turned up, hid half his face, he
sat earnest and speechless with arms folded, apparently barely glancing
at the mighty scenes the vessel was hurrying past--scenes that were
exciting exclamations of wonder from half the people on the deck.

General Badeau pronounced my name, but General Grant did not, at
first, remember me. When I recalled the time I brought the dispatches
from Sherman to City Point, and the long talk we had together in the
little back room of his cabin, about Sherman’s army, he brightened up,
interested himself, and seemed glad to talk of old war days.

I think not one reference was made to the scenery we were passing. I
must think, too, he was getting tired of all the attentions heaped upon
him by European cities, for he preferred, when I spoke of it, that the
Zurich people should do nothing in the way of receiving him.

“Look at that great, foolish lot of people hurrying to be first at the
gangway,” he remarked to me, as the steamer turned landwards at Luzern.
“They might as well sit still; nine times out of ten, hurry helps
nobody--the boat stays at the landing, everybody will get off, and
to-morrow it will be all the same who is off first.”

I have often thought of that remark. His taking time for things may
have been one of the keys to his success.

We were the very last to go ashore. That evening at the Schweizerhof, I
had some pleasant conversation with him again.

He regretted that he was not at the White House, just a few hours,
to put the deserved quietus on the strikers in Pennsylvania who were
shamelessly destroying other people’s property. One hundred and
twenty-five locomotives and ten million dollars worth of railroad stock
were destroyed at Pittsburg in one night. “That is what an army will be
wanted for yet, in our country,” he added, “an army to make ourselves
behave.”

He spoke of silver and free coinage. I admitted my ignorance of the
whole subject. “I don’t understand subjects on which the experts
themselves differ,” I said. “It is simple enough,” he replied. “I can
explain some things that will make it clear to you;” and he asked me to
come and be seated on a garden bench, on the terrace overlooking that
wonderful lake.

It was 9 o’clock at night. Behind us, in zigzag lines, were the
picturesque city walls and towers, built in the Middle Ages. The lights
from the quays and bridges reflected themselves on the lake; not far
away stood the eternal mountains. The scene, the time, seemed all out
of keeping with talks on politics. But General Grant lighted a cigar
and gave me more clear-headed notions about what makes money than I
had learned from listening to, or reading, the buncombe of half the
politicians in the country. It was because he was simple, and honest,
and sincere, and because he knew what he was talking about. I had, in
some way, long before concluded that Grant was only a military man.
That night’s conversation led me to think him also a statesman. Any
way, he was sincere.

After smoking quite a little time in silence, he said, abruptly: “I was
just thinking of the letters you brought me that time from Sherman.
How did you get to me at City Point? Sherman must have been entirely
cut off from the North.” I told him, in a few words, how I had long
been a prisoner of war, how I had escaped my captors at Macon, and my
experiences in the Rebel Army at the battle of Atlanta; my recapture,
my escape again at Columbia, South Carolina, and my being appointed to
a place on General Sherman’s staff at the time; how one morning General
Sherman ordered me to get ready to run down the Cape Fear River in the
night, to carry dispatches to General Grant and the President; how half
a dozen of us got aboard a tug, covered its lights and its engine with
cotton bales, and passed down the river in the darkness, without a shot
being fired at us; how I reached City Point in a quick ocean steamer,
and his reception of me in the little back room; the excitement of
General Ord at the news I brought. It was the first news that the North
had of Sherman, after he entered the swamps of the Carolinas.

All at once, the whole incident came back to General Grant’s mind, for
there in his cabin that time, many years before, he had questioned
me about the details of my final escape from prison, and my means of
reaching him in the North.[4]

“Yes,” he said, “I remember it all now. You had a letter, too, from
Sherman to Mr. Lincoln, who came down from Washington that very night.
We were all tremendously moved and gratified by the news you brought of
Sherman’s constant successes.

“Many of my generals feared always that Lee might slip away from me,
and jump on to Sherman down about Raleigh. I had, myself, more fears of
that, than I had about my ability to take Richmond, if Lee would only
stay there and fight me.”

Pretty soon, a steamer landed with a lot of passengers, and I walked
with the General back into the hotel. We found General Badeau deep in
newspapers, and Jesse, the General’s son, playing billiards and smoking.

The next morning, after an early breakfast, I visited Mrs. Grant and
the General in their rooms. Mrs. Grant was as kindly mannered as
the General himself. One would not have thought them fresh from the
attentions of princes and potentates. They told me in an enjoyable
way, much about their travels. The General dropped some remarks, too,
showing me that the grand scenery he had passed the day before had been
noticed very closely by him, silent though he had been.

The contrast between these simple, great people, upstairs in the
hotel, and some of the great people downstairs, was very impressive to
me. There was not one particle of stiffness or formality in General and
Mrs. Grant’s reception of me. It was as if his rank were no greater
in the world than my own; simply as if he and his wife had met an
unpretentious man to whom they liked to talk, and who would go away
feeling that they were friends.

All over Europe, I understand, General Grant and his wife have
impressed people in the same way. In every sense, they were preserving
their unostentatious, homely American ways.

“Certain comforts and things, I want in traveling, just as at home,”
said the General. “I want my little sitting room. I want my ham and
eggs for breakfast--and nothing is so hard to get cooked right in
Europe, as just these ham and eggs.”

* * * * *

I had a strange trip down the Rigi last Monday morning. I had been
staying at the Staffel over Sunday. At ten of Monday, I was to be in
Luzern, as an official, to help marry a couple, one of whom was an
American. Long before daylight, I was starting down the steep path.
It was starlight overhead, and a warm summer morning. Down below,
however, the whole valley and all the lakes and hills seemed hidden
by a mantle of fog. Every few moments we heard a clap of thunder away
down there, or saw a flash of lightning dart along the gray surface.
My wife urged me not to descend into clouds that looked so dangerous;
but my presence in Luzern was a necessity, and I went ahead. For half
an hour my path down the mountain side was dry and beautiful. It was
just breaking dawn, when suddenly, and within a few feet distance, I
stepped down into a cloud full of water. Instantly I was in a perfect
Noah’s flood, and yet I knew a hundred feet above me the stars were
shining. The peals of thunder soon seemed to shake the mountains, and
the lightning became terrific. A few moments’ walk had brought me out
of a dry atmosphere and a quiet morning, into this storm of the Alps. I
tried to get back and up the mountain, but I was fairly washed from my
feet and the path. In five minutes I was completely lost, and, fearing
to tumble off some precipice, I stood stock still. I had reached what
seemed a level plateau of tall grass. There I stood till daylight came,
and the storm went partly by, when, to my horror, I saw that had I
walked another dozen steps I would have gone over a cliff and fallen a
thousand feet.

I caught a steamer, however, and reached the city, where the groom
divided some of his drier garments with me, and the wedding went
merrily on.

* * * * *

Some of the London newspapers are in great wonder over the United
States census. A country only a hundred years old, and yet mustering
thirty-eight and a half millions of people!! Few European states so
large, and none of them so rich and great.

* * * * *

Our friend, Mr. Witt, had a telephone put up in his house yesterday. It
is probably the first one in the country. Great curiosity and interest
is manifested here in this invention of a talking apparatus, by which
the human voice may be carried a hundred miles.

CHAPTER XV

1877

GENERAL GRANT AND THE SWISS PRESIDENT--BANQUET TO GRANT AT
BERN--GOOD ROADS--CHARGE D’AFFAIRES FOR SWITZERLAND--WRITING
FOR THE MAGAZINES.

_July 27, 1877._--General Grant arranged to visit the Swiss capital
on the 24th. Our minister being absent, I, as senior consul, went up
to Bern to offer him the courtesies of the legation. Quite a crowd of
people surrounded him as he came in at the station, and we drove to the
Bernerhof hotel. General Adam Badeau was with him, as was also his son
Jesse.

At 10 o’clock of the morning of the 25th, I had the pleasure of
presenting General Grant to the Swiss President, at the palace.
President Heer spoke but little English, and General Grant no German at
all, so it devolved on me to act as interpreter during the half hour’s
conversation. The Swiss Parliament house, called the palace, is a very
noble structure, standing on a commanding height, with the Bernese snow
mountains spread out in perfect view from windows and terrace.

The reception of General Grant was simple in the extreme. A common
business interview between two or three private gentlemen could hardly
be more devoid of official airs.

President Heer himself is a simple, kindly man, a statesman loved
by his people, and very well acquainted with the affairs of other
countries. He had evidently “read up” on General Grant, for he had
kept track of his travels, and referred to some incidents of his
life in the war. As ex-President of the United States, General Grant
was just as simple and kindly as was his Swiss entertainer. Each
expressed gratitude at meeting here on Republican soil. “We are not so
great as you Americans,” said the President, “but we are a much older
Republic.” They referred to the fact that the system of a second house
in Parliament was adopted from the American plan. They talked about the
advantages of two houses a little, and then the General was asked to go
and look at the view from the window. There is not another view like
that from any other executive mansion on earth.

The Swiss President does not live here. It is the official business
building of the government. An American would be surprised to see
President Heer’s own little private home in the suburbs of the city.

“I will return this call, General Grant, in just an hour,” said the
President. So we went back to the Bernerhof and waited.

The return call was as simple as the first. It lasted but a few
minutes, and ended in General Grant’s accepting an invitation to a
banquet that the President would give in his honor that evening. I had
the honor to be included in the invitation. General Badeau and Mr.
Jesse Grant were also to take part.

The afternoon of that day was dark and rainy; still I went walking far
outside the suburbs of the town.

Near to an old bridge, I came across a man standing absolutely alone,
in the rain, carefully examining the queer structure. It was General
Grant.

He did not observe me, and I, believing that he wished to be alone,
went my way down a different path.

It was fully an hour before he returned to the hotel, wet and muddy.
That evening at the dinner, I heard him telling a cabinet officer of a
delightful walk he had in the outskirts of the city.

There was no little surprise to know that the world’s guest, instead of
being escorted around by committees and brass bands, had spent half
the afternoon out on a country road alone in the rain.

General Grant had no reputation as an after-dinner speaker, but he made
two little speeches on this occasion, one in reply to the toast of
the President to the distinguished visitor, and a longer one, when he
himself proposed “Switzerland.”

The dinner was in a private room of the Bernerhof hotel. Besides those
already mentioned, the Vice President and the Cabinet were at the
table, and all made short speeches. Short speeches were also made by
General Badeau, by Jesse Grant and by myself. Nearly all spoke, or at
least understood, English, so the toasts were in our own tongue. Only
the President spoke in German, thanking General Grant for the honor
he had done the sister republic, by leaving his resting place in the
mountains and coming to the capital. There was general good feeling and
plenty of hilarity about the board. The Swiss understand the art of
having a good time at the table. Save a few words concerning the Darien
Canal and the Pennsylvania strike, no politics and no high affairs were
touched on that night.

When some specially fine cigars were passed along the table, General
Grant helped himself, and smiled in a way that said, “Now I am indeed
happy.”

At midnight, the guest rose and made a move as if about to speak again.
The President rapped on his wine glass for attention. “Hear, hear,”
said one or two guests, and every eye turned to where General Grant
was standing. To our surprise, he simply bowed to the President, said
goodnight, and quietly walked out of the room.

[Illustration: Chateau, Neuchatel.]

_August, 1877._--Bankruptcy seems to be threatening everywhere in
Switzerland this summer; not here only, but everywhere else. The worst
times, the people say, in a hundred years. To make it ten times worse,
the horrible war between Russia and Turkey is developing into Turkish
massacres of innocent people. There is nothing in Swiss newspapers
now save war news, and on the streets men talk of little else, fearing
all Europe may yet explode. It is the sentiment here that this war,
with all its atrocities, can be laid at England’s door, that it is from
her that Turkish assassins get their encouragement and help.

_December, 1877._--The reports of losses in the war continue fearful.
Seven thousand men were destroyed at Plevna, in thirty-five minutes.
Our American armies knew little of such sudden destruction. Fifty
thousand and more on both sides were shot at Gettysburg, but the fight
lasted two or three days. At Iuka, my own regiment (the Fifth Iowa)
lost _217_ out of only _482_ engaged, pretty nearly every other man
killed or wounded, in an hour. Plevna was not much worse than that. One
cannot help, too, thinking of the English at Jellabad, where only one
man out of sixteen thousand got away alive. No wonder the better sense
of a people opposes war.

_Christmas, 1877._--Like everybody else in Switzerland, we had a
“_tree_” last night. Twenty children besides our own little ones, and
some Swiss friends, were present. Naturally all was done in the Swiss
way. The tree, immense in size, had its one hundred and one candles,
its drooping chains of silver and gold tinsel, its little gorgeous
colored ornaments of metal and glass, and its white cotton snowflakes.
The tree stood in the consulate. The folding doors to our apartment
opened up for the purpose. Nothing is on the tree but ornaments and
lights. The gifts are on a side table. The bell rings; Kris Kringle,
robed, and jingling with bells, bounds in. The children are absolutely
in a paradise of joy, and the joy of the grown folks, on hearing the
exclamations of delight, is scarcely less. The servants get a great
proportion of the presents, for these gifts are a part of the wages.
Pretty soon all join hands, grown folks and children and servants, and
circle about the tree singing

“Christ is born,
Christ is born.”

What a happy time it is! It is Christmas night all the time for a week,
in Switzerland. There is nothing but good times and joy. Families come
together, and far-wandering sons come home for the glad reunion. I have
known young men to cross the Atlantic from New York, just to be in the
dear, old home for a week in the Christmas time.

The Christmas lights shine in every house, the villa of the rich, the
cottage of the poor. A Christmas tree is in every home. No rich man
would go to bed and sleep, knowing some poor child had no Christmas
tree. The public squares and side streets are filled with green trees
for sale. A happy smile is on every face, and a “Gott grüss euch,” on
every lip.

That one week of comradeship and kindly feeling does as much to bring
peace on earth and goodwill to men, in Switzerland, as does the church
itself. It is religion mixed with joy.

* * * * *

We are back on the lake again at Küssnacht, and such moonlight
nights! Occasionally American friends come out by boat, to see us
at Wangensbach, and walk home, the six miles, in the moonlight. The
little, white, clean roads along the lake shore are perfect, and a
delight to walk on. Will America ever know what a road is? We excel in
almost everything else, why cannot we do this one thing? Nothing to-day
would make the American people so happy, so prosperous, as good roads.
People of Switzerland save millions and millions yearly by their fine
turnpikes.

The other day I got orders from Washington to go to Bern and take
charge of the legation as acting Chargé d’Affaires, during the absence
of Mr. Nicholas Fish, going home on a furlough. Mr. Fish is a son of
Grant’s Secretary of State, Hamilton Fish, and is as accomplished and
zealous in affairs of diplomacy as his father is in statesmanship.

I have an American friend who calls at the office at 2 P.M. every
day now, to tell me in detail all the war news that I have just
finished reading in the papers. It requires an hour, but he does it up
thoroughly, and this, of all things, has made me wish the war would
hurry to a close. But are not _Consuls_ paid to _listen_ to their
countrymen sometimes?

While at home last winter, I arranged to continue writing articles for
some of the magazines, and the labor makes pleasant employment for
leisure hours. Many reports for the Government, too, on all conceivable
subjects, continue to be asked for and are printed as fast as sent in.
They are the result of a good deal of careful looking about.

CHAPTER XVI

1877

FRANZ LISZT AT ZURICH--SWISS, GREAT LOVERS OF MUSIC--WAGNER
ONCE LIVED HERE--HIS SINGULAR WAYS--DR. WILLI--MADAME
LUCCA’S VILLA--LISZT’S KISSING BEES--JEFFERSON DAVIS’
DAUGHTER--A LAUGHABLE MISTAKE.

_September, 1877._--The Swiss have almost as much love for music as
the Italians, though they have no composers of great reputation. Every
city, town, and hamlet has its Music Guilds and clubs. The whole male
population seems to sing. There are many fine instrumental performers
among the women, but few good singers. The male bird is the vocalist
here. Zurich is a center for great concerts, oratorios, etc., where
Europe’s greatest artists appear. The “Tonhalle” orchestra is one of
the best in Europe. These are the men who first rehearsed and played
Wagner’s earlier operas. Seven years of Wagner’s life were spent in
Zurich, in exile. The people here still talk of his singular ways as a
citizen. Zurich was then, as now, a Wagner-music loving place, even at
a time when London and Paris would not listen to a Wagner opera.

My friend here, Schulz-Beuthen, himself a composer, is the happy
possessor of Wagner’s old piano, at which he composed some of his
immortal works.

Wagner was poor when in Zurich, and lived by writing musical
criticisms. For his own music, there was no sale. He had one or two
rich friends here, however, notably the Wiesendoncks and the Willis,
who encouraged not only his music, but a most singular method he had of
getting rid of debts. It was a pretty way he had of calling on these
opulent friends and, by the merest accident, leaving his grocer’s,
tailor’s or hostler’s bills lying on the drawing-room table. His kind
friends naturally discovered the missives, and quietly _paid_ them. It
was a little joke whispered about that the number of Wagner’s calls at
rich men’s houses was entirely numbered by the bills he was owing. All
the same, he had rather good times by the beautiful lake.

Dr. Willi had Wagner one whole season at his lakeside home. Just across
the lake was the villa of the Wiesendoncks, and Wagner kept a little
boat very busy, carrying his operatic “Motives” back and forth between
his kind musical patrons.

Every now and then the “Tonhalle” has a red letter day. It is when
artists like Sarasate play the violin, or when Franz Liszt or
Rubinstein is at the piano.

Last week Franz Liszt was here. It was a great occasion, though not his
first visit. At the close of the afternoon concert, I noticed many of
the ladies gathered about him to have him kiss them, as he stood down
in an aisle among the seats, holding an impromptu reception. Pretty
soon they had him seated. They could get at him better that way. The
men had little chance that afternoon, though in the evening I was one
of those who had the honor of being presented to him. He received me
very kindly, and spoke of certain clever Americans who had been pupils
of his.

I had had a glimpse of him the morning before. Being an early riser,
I was, as usual, down walking by the lake, near to the celebrated
Baur-au-lac hotel. I happened to glance toward a window of the hotel
that I heard open. I saw an astounding looking figure in a white night
dress, leaning far out of the window, looking at the mountains. It was
a great, smooth, ash-colored face that might have represented Charity
in marble, set in a frame of long, white, silken hair. I knew from
pictures that it was Franz Liszt, and so stopped and gazed.

I never saw so striking a picture of a human being before. His figure
in its loose gown nearly filled the window. His great eyes seemed to be
shining a “good morning” to the lake and the mountains. It was the face
of genius, illuminated and happy by the beauty of the morning and the
glory of the scene.

I should like to have heard Franz Liszt sit down and improvise a
fantasia at the piano, the moment he left that window. I am sure there
would have been tones born of the morning, for his whole face reflected
the powerful emotion within him. I wondered to myself that evening,
when he was holding the vast audience in the charm of his music, if he
were not thinking of that fair scene from his window in the morning.

When the concert was over the other night, a few friends gathered with
Franz Liszt in a little back room of the “Tonhalle.” There was a little
dinner and much champagne. And there was much bowing and kissing and
getting down before this king of the piano. Men and women absolutely
got down on their knees and kissed his hand, as if he were an object of
adoration.

It was not exactly getting down before a “totem pole,” though almost
as extravagant, for there were nobler ways of worshiping the genius
of music than by being ridiculous. The great master, though, was used
to that sort of thing--in fact, rather liked it--and so went on with
his wine and his kisses till midnight, adding to the delight of his
worshipers by at last seating himself at the piano and playing one of
his own compositions.[5]

Another artist with world-wide reputation, who summers about Lake
Zurich even now, is Madame Lucca, the prima donna. She owns beautiful
Villa Goldenberg at the upper end of the lake. I often see her about
town, on foot, shopping.

One day as I was passing “Goldenberg” on the steamer, I pointed to it,
remarking to a fine-looking German with whom I was conversing, that it
was “one of the prettiest spots of all.” “Yes,” he answered, “I have
never regretted owning it.” “Owning it,” I exclaimed; “why Madame Lucca
lives there, and I supposed _she_ owned it.” “So she does,” he answered
smilingly, as he gave me a little nudge; “so she does, but I own _her_.
I am her husband.”

I meet many well-known characters in my frequent trips up and down the
lake.

One evening lately, as I sat on the steamer deck, nearing my home at
Küssnacht, a rather prepossessing young lady inquired of me in English
if that were the home of William Tell. After a little conversation she
walked to the bow of the boat, and the middle-aged lady who seemed to
be her companion, said to me: “Do you know who that is you were talking
with? That is the daughter of Jefferson Davis.”

Pretty soon the girl came back, and I had the pleasure of communicating
a bit of news to her that must have been of interest. I had read in the
telegrams, that very day, of some famous admirer in America presenting
to her father the magnificent estate of Bellevoir, on the Mississippi.

Amusing incidents occur, too, almost daily, from American travelers,
going up and down the lake, supposing me to be a native, not acquainted
with the American tongue. They are sometimes very free in their remarks
about people they see on the boat.

The other evening, while sitting on the deck on my way home, I noticed
a little party of three ladies and a gentleman, excitedly wringing
their hands, talking English, and wondering what on earth they would
do. They had lost the name of the place they were going to, and could
not tell even how to get home again. Not a soul on the boat spoke a
word of English; they were sure of that.

“Notice that man sitting there with a newspaper,” said the gentleman
of the party, indicating myself. “Kate, you talk a little German,” he
went on; “try your Dutch on him.” “Not for the world,” answered the
lady appealed to. “That might be a prince, or a baron, or somebody.”
“Well, his clothes don’t look like it, anyway,” chirped in a second of
the young ladies. “Did you ever see such an unfashionable necktie in
your life?” “An odd looking genius that, anyway. I would not be afraid
of him.” “Go right up to him and blurt it out; he’s good natured, I’ll
bet a dollar,” chimed in the gentleman. “Never mind his necktie; it’s
information we’re after.” “Yes, but my German--I don’t know,” said
the lady; “I don’t know three words, and you _know_ I don’t.” “Oh! go
on--nonsense--walk right up to him, and see how pretty he’d smile on
you,” said all three.

She cleared her throat, and approached me, and in a few unintelligible
words of bad German, spoke. I did smile, and answered her in plain
American English, remarking that I had noticed that her party were
Americans.

There was a sudden collapse of spirits, a queer winking and nudging of
each other, and an inclination to walk away to the other end of the
boat.

As I was leaving the steamer, the gentleman returned to me. “Excuse
me, sir,” said he, “but you astonished our little party. May I not ask
where on earth you, a Swiss, learned such perfect English? It is almost
American.” “Oh! in knocking about the country here,” I answered, “and I
see lots of Americans on the steamer and, when they talk, especially if
it is about me, I always listen to them. Goodnight.”

I suppose that little quartette still think about the Swiss they met,
with the queer necktie, who spoke the American English.

[Illustration: Lake Geneva.--_Page 143._]

CHAPTER XVII

1878

SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF MINE ABOUT GENERAL GRANT IN THE WAR--
GRANT AT CHAMPION HILLS--SHERMAN’S LETTER ON CONFISCATION BY
TAXATION IN AMERICA--SILVER NO “CURE ALL”--GRANT AT RAGATZ--I
GIVE A BANQUET IN HIS HONOR AT ZURICH.

_January, 1878._--To-day made New Year’s calls on some American
friends; but it is not customary among the Swiss.

Received copies of my “Recollections of Grant and Sherman,” printed in
the Philadelphia _Times_. It so happened that I had seen General Grant
often in the Vicksburg campaign, and he personally directed a charge
made by our brigade at the battle of Champion Hills. The battle had
been going on for some time, when he rode up close behind the line of
my regiment. He dismounted from his bay horse and stood within a few
yards of where I was in the line, leaning on my gun. He was under a
heavy fire of musketry, and we boys all feared for his life. There was
some suspense, before the order to “charge” was given. My company stood
there in line on the green grass, just as it did on the village green
in Newton, the morning we started for the war. Grant leaned against his
horse and smoked, and looked simply as a man would, who had a little
piece of tough business before him to consider. Aides rode up to him
and rode away. He spoke to them in a low voice, that even I, who was
so close to him, could not hear. The awful musketry rattle of terrific
combat was a little to the left and right of us, and there was no great
noise immediately in our front; but well we all knew that ten thousand
rebels were over there in the timber, waiting our advance. There was no
cannonading of our line, as we stood there unresistingly, feeling the
shots from their rifles, and firing not a shot in return. Grant was not
quite ready. I saw him glance, I thought half pityingly, at a few of
our wounded who were carried back past him, and he looked very close
at one man near me who was shot in the leg and who limped past him
to the rear. I think he recognized his face, but he did not speak to
him. He spoke to none of us; there was no posing, no sword waving, or
hat swinging. I have almost forgotten if he even had a sword on. None
but those near by knew that he was within a mile of us. It was just a
little plain business he was then looking after, but I know some of us
wished he would go out of range of the bullets.

Shortly I saw our colonel walk back to him. There were a few nods and
low words, and as the colonel passed me returning, he said to me: “I
want you to act as Sergeant Major.” (I was with Company B). “Run to
the left of the regiment and yell, ‘Fix bayonets.’” I ran as ordered,
crying all the time “Fix bayonets.” Glancing back, I saw Grant mounting
his horse. That instant I heard all the officers yelling, “_Double
quick!_”--“_Charge!_”

We went into the woods and over the rough ground on the run, the
bullets of the enemy all the time coming into us like hail. Suddenly,
there was in front of us and all around us, a terrific roar of cannon.
For nearly two mortal hours, we stood in battle line in that wood, and
emptied our rifles into the rebel line of gray as fast as we could load
them. They did not seem 200 yards away, though the battle smoke soon
partly hid them. We carried muzzle-loading Whitney rifles and forty
cartridges. In my regiment, every man’s cartridge box was emptied, and
some of us took cartridges from the bodies of the dead. A third of my
command were shot.

When it was all over and nearly dark, we were out on the Black river
road, resting. General Grant came riding up to where our flags hung on
the guns, and stopped. We all jumped up out of the dust to cheer; some
one caught up the flag and held it in front of his horse. He simply
smiled, and said to the colonel, “Good for the Fifth Iowa,” and then
rode off into the darkness.

_February, 1878._--Hard times is still the cry everywhere in Europe.
A letter from General Sherman shows that now at last our people are
finding out what the Civil War cost us, in the way of dollars and cents.

“WASHINGTON, D. C., Jan. 17, 1878.

“DEAR BYERS:--I have just received your letter of January 3d,
with your clipping from the London _News_, for which I am much
obliged. I had previously received the letter of December 28th,
which I had taken down to my rooms for the perusal of Mrs.
Sherman, who is a more reliable correspondent than I am. She
and Elly are here from St. Louis for a visit, and will probably
remain all of February, to enjoy the social advantages of the
capital, now at their height. Though everybody is crying at the
hard times, yet extravagance in dress and living has not received
a quietus. I wish it was otherwise, but no single man, or set of
men, can change the habits of a people in a day or a season.

“Those who clamor for a silver coinage think it will cure all
evils, but I am sure no measure that can be concocted by our
legislators can change the state of facts, which is the necessary
result of the war. Wages and prices of all things necessary, rose
to a standard far above the real value. Now all must come down,
and each class struggles to go right along as before, demanding
that others must make the necessary sacrifices. Meantime also
states, counties and municipalities have ‘improved’ by spending
borrowed money, which must now be paid, principal or interest.
The cost of Government, like all other things, has increased.
Local taxation, to meet this cost and interest, is a burden
heavier than property can bear, so that real property now
everywhere, instead of being a source of income, is the very
reverse, and I do not know but that all real property in this
great land is ‘confiscate.’ I know that all my property that used
to pay me some revenue is now unable to pay its own taxes. I do
not see how silver coinage is going to mend this, but such is now
the cry, and in some form or other the experiment will be tried.
Our papers keep us well advised as to the progress of the war in
Turkey, and I have a good map at hand, which enables me to follow
the movements of the several columns pretty well.

“I am glad to learn that Mrs. Byers is in better health, and that
you content yourself with what you have, for want of better. I
hope ere your return to us, things will mend and prosperity once
more return to Iowa and the West.

“As ever your friend,

W. T. SHERMAN.”

_September 21, 1878._--Yesterday, while up on the Rigi, I received this
telegram from General Grant:

“I accept your invitation for Monday.

“GRANT.”

It was in reply to an invitation of mine to a dinner party that I
wished to give in his honor at Zurich. He had been stopping at Ragatz
for some weeks, that beautiful resort on the upper Rhine.

A Swiss paper had this little item the other day: “Among the crowd of
fashionables at the resort of Ragatz, one does not notice a certain
smallish, plain looking, sturdy man, who takes long walks alone, and
who lives the simplest, least conspicuous life of any one there. No
wonder few know who the quiet gentleman is. His name, possibly, is not
even on the hotel register, but he is the first man in the great sister
Republic beyond the sea. It is U. S. Grant.”

_September 25, 1878._--Had another telegram from General Grant on the
22d, saying he would reach Zurich at 12:36 next morning. I took train
and met him at Horgen. Mr. Corning, the Vice Consul, went with me. Mrs.
Grant was with her husband. No one on the train seemed to know of their
presence. We found them sitting alone in a little, first class coupé.
I had flowers for Mrs. Grant, and they both received us very kindly.
We rode together to Zurich and talked only about Ragatz and the pretty
scenes they had just passed. Mrs. Grant was especially enthusiastic
over the picturesque journey.

A great crowd assembled about the station where we entered. General
Grant took my arm and walked to the carriage. Mr. Corning escorted
Mrs. Grant. Just as the General was stepping into the carriage, a
rough-looking fellow suddenly ran up, caught the General’s arm and
cried out, “You are going to speak to me, hain’t you?” There was a
momentary fright, and thought of assassination, among all of us. A
policeman jumped forward, swinging a club, to arrest him. “Don’t you
never mind,” the man cried out in English to the policeman. “I’m one of
Grant’s old soldiers.” The policeman halted, seeing the General smile
and reach his hand to the apparent ruffian. “Yes, General, I was with
you and Johnny Logan at Vicksburg,” the excited man exclaimed, “and
look _here_.” He commenced rolling up his sleeve and showed a wrist
shot half in two. The sight of that soldier’s wound sent a quick thrill
through every one of us. “The past of the nation was speaking there.”

The ceremony of the occasion was all forgotten. Had there been room,
Mrs. Grant would have taken him into the carriage. For myself, I could
have gladly walked, to let this wounded hero ride with his General.
“Come and see me at my hotel,” said General Grant, “and we will talk it
all over.” Again, he shook the stranger soldier’s hand, and the horses
started.

“Three cheers for General Grant,” cried the soldier, swinging his hat
to the crowd, that answered in a loud Swiss huzza.

In the afternoon, Mr. Nicholas Fish, the American Minister, who
had come down from the capital to be at my dinner, went with me to
the hotel, and we took the General driving about the town. Mrs.
Grant preferred to rest. We went up on the terrace in front of the
University, where is spread out to view one of the fairest sights in
the world. The city lay below us, in front the chain of the Albis
hills, to the left the blue lake, and beyond it the snow mountains.

The General was impressed with the view, but he was getting used to
grand scenes in Switzerland; they are everywhere. He looked in silence.
Shortly, he commenced talking about the spires and towers of the city
below us; asked the name of almost every one of them, and spent a
long time studying out the meaning of certain big, red letters on the
roof of an orphan asylum under the terrace. He would not give that
up. He asked the different German names for such things, how they
were spelled, and finally guessed the riddle that neither I nor Mr.
Fish (both knowing German) had been able to explain. This noticing
everything and trying to solve it, is even to a greater extent a trait
of General Sherman’s. May it not be genius’ method of intuitively
making things its own?

He examined carefully the architecture of the University building, and
talked with Mr. Fish about his father, the ex-Secretary of State. There
was also a little reference to his own youth at West Point, not far
away from the Fish’s country home.

We went down the terrace steps. Now I noticed that Grant was growing
old. His elasticity of movement was all gone. He was getting stoop
shouldered, too.

He told me of a stone quarry he had, I think in Jersey. “On the
continued profits of that,” he said, “depends whether I shall stay very
long abroad, or go back home.”

To the dinner that night, I had invited some representative members of
the Swiss army, press, learned professions, etc. Colonel Voegli was
there; Dr. Willi, the friend of Wagner; Gottfried Kinkel, the professor
and poet; Orelli, the banker; Feer, of the Swiss Senate; Vogt, the
journalist; Mr. Fish, the American Minister; Mayor Roemer and others.

It was a gentlemen’s dinner. Mrs. Grant remained in her room, after a
brief glance at the table and the flowers downstairs.

It was an ideal place for a happy party. Inside the room the Swiss
and American colors were blended, and some of the French dishes were
rebaptized with American names for the occasion.

Outside, the almost tropical garden reached out into the lake. There
was no music in the rooms, but almost every one present made a little
speech. General Grant not only answered to the toast in his honor,
but in a second speech proposed Switzerland, and especially Zurich,
which he had heard spoken of as a “Swiss Athens.” At no time did I
ever see him in such good spirits. The table was not so large but
all could plainly hear. Numbers of the guests addressed remarks and
inquiries about our country to General Grant. He answered kindly, and
proposed many questions of his own, until conversation became extremely
lively. In short, his reputation for being no talker was smashed all
to pieces that evening. He talked much, and he talked well, and was
very happy; so were all of us. The two Republics were one around that
table, and we were all democrats. General Grant drank wine with the
rest of us, but with moderation. President Hayes, he related to me,
had a great reputation for drinking absolutely nothing but water. “It
is a mistake,” said the General, and he told me how at a dinner at
the White House, the night before the inauguration, President Hayes
emptied his wine glass very much in the way that all other people did,
who had no reputations for total abstinence. He was amused at some of
the French-American names on the menu at his plate. I interpreted some
of them for him, and, after the dinner, put his menu with its pretty
picture of the lake into my breast pocket, as a little souvenir of the
occasion.

We separated at midnight, and the next morning some of the same guests
and myself escorted him and Mrs. Grant to their train for Paris.

CHAPTER XVIII

1878

THE ST. GOTHARD TUNNEL--I DESCRIBE IT FOR HARPER’S MAGAZINE--
ITS COST--A GREAT SCARE IN THE TUNNEL.

_October, 1878._--The great tunnel through the St. Gothard Alps is
reaching completion. Nothing like it was ever accomplished before in
the world. It happens that Mr. Hellwag, the chief engineer of the
stupendous undertaking, is a personal friend, and he gave me every
facility for visiting it. His courtesy and hints have helped me in
preparing my article for Harper’s (October) Magazine. Hellwag is
already famous as the builder of the tunnels for the Brenner pass. He
is also the inventor of the Auger, or Spiral tunnel system, by which
railway trains reach high elevations up tunnel slopes, winding around
and up the inside of mountains. He gave me letters and permits to go
everywhere, and, so far as I know, I am the first American to have been
inside the tunnel.

The undertaking of this tunnel is something vast. It takes the surplus
cash of three governments to build it, Italy, Germany and Switzerland.

The line reaches from Lake Luzern in Switzerland to Lake Maggiore in
Italy, one hundred and eight miles. One hundred and twenty thousand
feet of this is tunneled through mountains of granite. The longest
tunnel in the series is 48,936 feet. Few of the smaller tunnels are
less than 7,000 feet long.

It was thought one hundred and eighty-seven million francs would pay
for it, but two hundred and eighty-nine millions are now required.
It is the usual blundering in figures that comes with most public
enterprises. This particular blundering has bankrupted thousands of
innocent people who have bought shares. The extra money is now raised,
however, and the awful barrier of granite peaks and fields of snow and
ice, between Italy and Switzerland, is to be overcome by skill of man.

There was no road over the Gothard for five hundred years, and not
until a century ago was a vehicle of any kind ever seen up there.
Even now, the wagon road is one of great peril, as I have myself
experienced, a whole sledge load of us once barely missing being
overwhelmed by an avalanche that fell a hundred feet ahead of us. There
were granite boulders in that slide of snow, big as our horses, and the
thing fell without a warning, and with a crash that was stupendous.
Many lives have been lost in this pass; half the year, even now, it
is abandoned entirely to the winds that howl among its mountains of
desolation.

The tunnel was not quite finished when I was there. The boring
machines inside are worked by compressed air, furnished by enormous
air compressors outside. These also force air in for ventilation. They
compress air also for the peculiar locomotives that are moved by air,
not steam.

My guide and I got on the front platform of one of these air engines,
and were shot into the tunnel for miles through a black cloud of smoke
and gas that I thought would kill me, or cause me to fall off the
engine. It was Cimmerian darkness. The engineer said: “You shall now
see a glimpse of the bowels of hell.” I saw nothing for miles, and
then suddenly we came to the weird lights, the big air machines boring
into the granite walls, and the half-naked workmen. It was a gruesome
picture in there, with the yellow lights, the racket of the machines,
and the occasional explosion of dynamite. The water in places burst
from the rocks in streams as big as my arm, and with force enough to
knock the workmen from their feet. At one spot, the torrent broke
through fine crevices, at the rate of four thousand gallons a minute. A
special canal was made under the railroad tracks, to carry this river
of water out of the tunnel.

I was greatly impressed, not only by the scene inside, but to think
that at that moment avalanches were falling five thousand feet above
our heads, storms were raging among the cold peaks up there, and a
rapid mountain river was rushing right along over us. It seemed a
perilous place. Indeed, it was often feared that some mighty torrent
might be struck suddenly, some day, and destroy every life in the
tunnel.

Far in, where the compressed air left the pipes, the ventilation seemed
better, but it would kill most men to stay in there at all for any
length of time. It is well known that the health of these unfortunate
workmen is being ruined. An early death stares every one of them in the
face.

Something is always threatening to happen, and my conductor relates an
incident that shows how easily alarm sets in. He was one day walking
along in the half darkness, inspecting something near the mouth of the
tunnel, when he heard far behind him what sounded like the tramping of
a herd of buffalo, or the bursting of a torrent. Suddenly, he saw quick
moving lights and heard human voices. Whatever it could be, exploding
gas, demons, or torrent, it was rushing towards him like an avalanche.
He jumped into a niche at the side of the tunnel, to save his life.
Then he heard the cry, “The _mine_, the _mine!_ run for your life!”
He, too, then ran till he broke down and saw the terrible army of
half-naked, begrimed men, with the coal lamps on their heads, rush by
him in terror. A jutting rock had saved his life, but the herd of men,
still screaming “gas,” “the mine,” “run, run!” tumbled over each other
and tramped each other down, till the mouth of the tunnel was reached.

When my informant picked himself up, and went down to the company’s
offices, he found the whole crowd gesticulating and talking loudly.
There had been no “explosion”--no “mine”--no “gas.” It was simply a
_strike_. The leaders had adopted this plan to scare everybody out of
the tunnel.

The next day, and the next, the strikers refused to either work or
disperse. They were trying “the dog in the manger” system of the United
States strikers, neither working nor letting work. A regiment of
militia was sent there, and, unlike American militia, did their duty.
A very few musket volleys, and the poor, deluded strikers went away,
though a good many staid there in their blood.

CHAPTER XIX

1879

AMERICAN ARTISTS AT MUNICH--I MEET MARK TWAIN--TAKE HIM TO
AN ARTISTS’ CLUB--CONVERSATIONS WITH HIM--BEER DRINKING--
HE READS THE ORIGINAL OF “WHAT I KNOW ABOUT THE GERMAN
LANGUAGE”--WE ENTERTAIN THE AMERICANS AT ZURICH--A LETTER FROM
GENERAL SHERMAN--CONFEDERATES MORE POPULAR THAN UNION MEN--
SHERMAN READY TO SURRENDER.

_February 1, 1879._--Spent part of January in Munich, and very much of
the time among the studios of the American artists. There are not less
than fifty of our countrymen here, either practicing art or learning it.

Frank Duveneck (later widely known) had a large class of devoted
students, who were also his followers in a style of painting peculiar
to himself. There was a strong belief that he was a man of genius,
but he spent much time teaching, when he ought to have been painting.
Duveneck’s students followed him later to Florence, where I saw them
again.

Chase was also at Munich at this time. I can imagine no city more
desirable for a student of art. The social atmosphere breathes of
art; the galleries, of course, are unsurpassed. There are plenty of
teachers--and models are plenty, and all very cheap.

I was introduced to Carl Piloty, head of the Academy of Arts. It was on
the street a friend and I met him. The day was cold, the wind blowing.
There could be little conversation. He wore a big paletot wrapped about
him, and his face and head were so covered that I could not tell
what he looked like. Saw him the same evening on the platform in the
academy, posing models for the students. There was great enthusiasm for
him.

Like most strangers, we visited the famous breweries, and at the “Hof
Brauerei” waded around over the wet, stone floors and helped ourselves
to beer, as was the custom. The place was full of loud-talking people,
with many soldiers among them, some sitting at tables with schooners of
beer before them, others carrying their beer glasses about with them as
they gesticulated together in groups. A band played all the time. It
was to me a wet, noisy, half-lighted, disagreeable place; but it was
“the thing” to go there and help yourself to the world-renowned beer.

This brewery, too, is a great place, where one can see German types of
many curious kinds, and know what German beer-drinking really is. As we
came out into the court, we were near being drowned by some careless
employee’s turning loose several barrels of dirty water, from a spout
over the doorway. Some soldiers in the vicinity laughed at the speed
with which we escaped the flood of beer and water.

Out in the street we noticed a not uncommon Munich sight. It was a
little parade of University students in open carriages. They wore
their corps uniforms of high boots, jaunty caps, and ribbon across the
breast. Some of them held aloft a schooner of beer. The front seat,
or the place of honor, in each carriage was occupied by a stately
bull-dog, arrayed in ribbons and brass collar.

The great bronze foundry was a place that entertained us greatly. The
method of casting statues and monuments was explained to us, and the
copies of noted American figures they had cast at different times, now
in the exhibition room, made us feel very proud.

It was a group of great men who long ago won for our country the
respect of the world. There is not a spot in America, or elsewhere,
where one can see more of American genius represented in one room than
is seen here in the museum of this foundry.

The sights of the city were not so different from the sights of
other cities. King Otto drove by us a time or two on his way to that
wonderful palace of his, with its gardens and lake and swans, and all
that, up in the top of the building.

One of his Cabinet had spent a summer with us at Obstalden, in
Switzerland. His family invited us to a little lunch, where we could
talk much about the King; but it had to be in a complimentary way, for
these good people saw nothing of what everybody else saw--that is,
that he was a very unique personage, and probably going crazy. All the
world, though, has been glad that he was sane enough to give it Wagner,
for without Otto’s long and splendid patronage, Wagner’s music would
still have been “a music of the _future_.”

One of King Otto’s freaks is his wonderful fairy castle, built high
up in the Bavarian Alps. When the snow is deep on the mountains,
and the wind blows, he goes sleigh-riding late at night, and quite
alone, in his wonderful sleigh. This sleigh is a gorgeous little coupé
on runners. Inside, it is all cushions, luxury and shining lights.
Outside, it is illuminated too, and when the mountaineers hear the
jingling of bells late at midnight, and see the apparition passing,
they cross themselves, and say: “God keep King Otto in his right mind.”

We heard Wagner’s operas given by his own trained orchestra, almost
nightly. They were so long as to be absolutely fatiguing, and made me
wonder if this craze for his music is not in part affectation. Enough
is enough of anything. We went to bed nights, tired to death; but “it
was the thing” to hear Wagner to the end, so we heard.

I think few things interested me so much in Munich as to stand and look
at the river Iser. It was full, and dark, and rapid, and great cakes
of broken ice floated past. I thought of that night at Hohenlinden

When dark as Winter was the flow
Of Iser rolling rapidly.

Later, as a souvenir of the visit, we bought a little painting by Wex,
representing a pretty scene on the upper Iser River.

One of the pleasant incidents of the Munich visit was the meeting with
Mark Twain. I copy a few lines from my diary:

Saw Mark Twain several times, and one night had the pleasure of taking
him to the American Artists’ Club. The young men had insisted on my
asking him to come and make a speech. I went to his apartments, near my
own, and together we walked clear across the city. It must have been
miles, but I was glad of it. He talked all the way, not with the humor
that has made him famous, but in an earnest, thoughtful, sincere mood.
He told me how he did his literary work, when in Munich. “I hire a
room,” said he, “away off in some obscure quarter of the town, far away
from where we live; where no one, not even Mrs. Clemens, could find me.
The people who let the room do not know who I am. I go there mornings,
stay all day, and work till evening. When at my book-writing, I never
sleep a wink, no matter how many days or weeks the undertaking. It is
now two weeks since I have slept one single hour.” I wondered such a
life was not killing him.

As we trudged along under the lamp lights of the streets, we had much
small talk of the West, of the time when he was young and when he
was “roughing it.” I amused him by relating how I kept a copy of his
“Roughing It” at the consulate, to lend to travelers who came along
with the “hypo” and like afflictions.

[Illustration: Castle Chillon.]

Something was said of certain American writers, recently sprung to
fame. I mentioned a letter Charles Dickens, just before his death,
wrote to Bret Harte. The letter, in fact, only reached Harte after
Dickens’ death, and was followed by Harte’s beautiful verses, “Dickens
in Camp.”

“Dickens could well afford to write nice letters to Bret Harte,” said
he, “for he has no more faithful admirer and student, and he has
adopted the Englishman’s style. Why not? He could not find a better
model, and even as great a genius as Balzac boasted of his dependence
on the style of Victor Hugo. Solomon, when he said there was nothing
new, meant also there were no new literary styles under the sun,
either.”

My own belief is that Bret Harte’s short California sketches are better
than anything Dickens ever wrote.

When we reached the new art room that night, the artists and students
were already assembled, and were sitting at a couple of long tables,
drinking beer and smoking. An enormous schooner full of beer stood at
every plate, and the smoke in the room was almost thick enough to slice
up and carry out.

The students all rose as we entered, and gave Mark Twain a little
cheer. As he hung his overcoat up in the corner, he took from the
pocket an enormous roll of manuscript. The young men saw it, and
possibly began to tremble a little. “Don’t be alarmed,” he cried out,
holding the mighty roll up to their view. “I don’t intend to read
all this.” The place of honor at the center of one of the tables was
waiting him, and the largest beer schooner of all stood in front of it.
I was amazed to see him empty it almost before he sat down. “Let’s have
some beer, gentlemen,” he said laughing, and schooner after schooner
came and disappeared.

The paper was “What I Know About the German Language.” It was the first
time this now famous bit of humor saw the light. It did not seem to me
so very funny in itself, but his way of reading it made it exceedingly
droll.

When he had finished, every one had something equally ridiculous to
tell of the bulls and blunders of ignorant Teutons writing English.
Some had received wonderful letters that bordered on uttermost farce.
Mark Twain begged possession of all these fool epistles, and possibly
made his paper funnier than before from their contents.

The smoke, and the beer, and the jokes went on till midnight. In
fact, these beer drinking Americans could beat a Heidelberg students’
“Kneipe” all to pieces, and Mark Twain did not propose to be left
wholly in the rear.

At last, we all shook hands and started homewards. It was a good hour’s
walk he and I had before us, but the cool night air was refreshing.
For my own part, I was glad to get out of the dense smoke, and have a
chance to talk alone with the humorist.

I liked Mark Twain. He is a small, slight man, with big, blue eyes and
a great shock of reddish hair. He has a habit of saying “Thank you
kindly.” He has youth yet, lots of money and a very pretty wife.

_February 23._--On coming back from Munich, wrote a paper about the
Iser. Also wrote for the Atlantic Monthly the account of my experiences
inside Atlanta.

Last evening we had all the Americans who are in town at our home,
celebrating Washington’s birthday. A few Swiss and German friends were
also with us--among the Germans the family of Director Witt. These were
among our first and truest friends abroad. We have spent whole summers
together at Bocken, Wangensbach and elsewhere, and we are god parents
to one of the little girls. Numbers of guests made speeches last night.
Sure it is, the flag never seems so dear to Americans as when they can
touch it with their hands in a foreign land. Kinkel, the poet, and his
wife and son also, were present.

_April, 1879._--There are a million Northern soldiers still living in
the United States who were true to the Union, and yet the United States
Senate elects a clerk whose principal recommendation is disloyalty to
his country. It seems to me a nation is in danger of collapse that can
not tell its friends from its enemies.

General Sherman writes thus of the situation:

“WASHINGTON, D. C., March 22, 1879.

“DEAR BYERS:--I was glad to receive your letter this morning, and
have sent it down to Mrs. Sherman, who is always glad to see your
letters. And now without waiting, will answer your inquiries. We
are still here in Washington at the Ebbitt House, Mrs. Sherman,
Elly, Rachel and I. Cumpsey is at Baltimore at school, and Mrs.
Sherman goes over quite often to look after him. Minnie lives in
St. Louis, and at this minute of time Lizzie is there also on a
visit. I took Elly and Lizzie with me South, but on our return,
as I was somewhat in a hurry and could not well take St. Louis in
my route, Lizzie switched off in West Tennessee and went straight
to St. Louis. We hear from her daily. All are well there. I
suppose you, in common with others, may have seen reports of
the illness and death of General and Mrs. T. W. Sherman, but I
suppose you recognized the difference of initials. It was another
General Sherman, who was on the Army Retired List, who died
last week at Newport, R. I. Politics are now awfully mixed. We
have an extra session of Congress in which the Democrats have
majorities in both branches, and the Southern members, mostly all
Confederate officers, are in the majority of the Democrats, and
thus rule all. So at this minute the rebels have conquered us,
and we are at their mercy. Who would have thought this in 1865?
Our paper announced yesterday the election of a clerk of the
Senate, with the recommendation that ‘he had served _faithfully_
on Lee’s staff.’ Little by little it has come about, and we find
that it is popular to have belonged to the Confederate Army, and
correspondingly suspicious to have served in the Union Army.
Popular revolutions are hard to comprehend. For this reason I
hold myself ready to surrender when called on, which may be at
any day.

“My trip South was pleasant and I am glad I made it. Of course I
confined myself to purely social matters. Love to Mrs. Byers and
the children.

“Yours truly,

W. T. SHERMAN.”

CHAPTER XX

1879

A TRIP THROUGH THE BLACK FOREST--STEIN ON THE RHINE--A FAMOUS
CASTLE--“ALL BLOWN UP”--GOOD ROADS--FOX HUNTING.

_June 4, 1879._--Two weeks since, friends invited us to accompany them
on an extended drive through the Black Forest. Such a drive, through
charming scenery, and with perfect June weather, was a pleasure nobody
thought of declining.

We entered the Black Forest at Stein on the Rhine, and staid all
night there. The scenery of the fair Rhine, the ancient castles, the
picturesque hills, and the little town with its architecture of an
age long past, gave us great enjoyment. The still perfect castle of
Hohenklingen, far up on the rocks above us, is a thousand years old.
This would be a spot for romance and poetry.

Long years ago I was here in Stein, but passing years make no change in
the perfectly romantic appearance of the place.

Very shortly we were in the midst of what in earlier times was only a
vast forest, dangerous for travelers to enter. Even now, away from the
old towns and villages, the clean, white highway winds among forests of
pine trees whose resinous odor is delightful to the senses. The woods
are full of game, and at rare intervals we see a fox.

Parts of these vast woods are owned by rich landlords who hold them as
“game preserves,” and who lease them out to lovers of the hunt in the
cities of Switzerland and Germany.

Many a delightful and exciting time have I had with my friends, the
Witts or the Schwarzenbachs, hunting foxes and deer in those same Black
Forest woods.

Usually we came with our guns on the train, to the hamlet of Singen.
The gamekeeper would meet us at the station, and the next morning he
had a dozen peasants beating the bush for us, while we stood like
sentinels, at obscure hidden pathways in the woods, waiting to fire on
the fleeing game. Those who could shoot at all, had good luck always.
At noon, servants would bring baskets of lunch, including good wine,
from the village to us. A rousing fire was made of brushwood, the
slaughtered hares, deer, pheasants and foxes were put in piles to look
at, and then a picnic was enjoyed such as only hunters with appetites
dream of. There was more chasing again in the afternoon. Often a friend
who owned an old-time castle on the hills near by took us home with
him, when a night was made of it--such a night as must have made some
of his ancestors (whose bones lay under the floor at our feet, in the
big hall) wish themselves alive again.

Our friends took us from Stein to Hohentwyl, one of the greatest castle
ruins in the world. It must have been an imposing sight in the Middle
Ages. It sits like a high and isolated island on the level land in the
Duchy of Baden. Yet it belongs to another kingdom (Würtemberg). Once,
at the close of a war, the conqueror left it to the conquered, just for
sweet honor’s sake, and for the brave fighting of its defenders.

One wonders now how the princes and peasants of these valleys were rich
enough to build such stupendous affairs. The peasants are poor here,
now. What were they in the Middle Ages, with a baron and his castle
sitting on every hill?

This particular castle, however, dating from the ninth century, was
built and owned by rich German lords. Once it was the home of the
beautiful Duchess Hadwig, the heroine of “Ekkehard,” that most
beautiful of German novels.

I must relate a joke. Mrs. C---- and my wife had been conducted over
the vast ruins one forenoon. In the afternoon, I climbed on to the
rocky height where the castle sits. When I rang at the castle door,
the guide who came seemed to have spent his last pourboire for whisky.
He showed me to the main tower, remarking in bad and muddled Dutch
that it was once great, but the “French Army had blown it all up--all
up.” He walked ahead of me, constantly smoking and muttering to
himself--“Yes--Ja, by Gott! blown up--all blown up.” Each wall or tower
or room he conducted me to, was “great,” but he quickly added “blown
up.” I wondered where the ladies were, and inquired of my maudlin guide
if he had seen two women that afternoon, with dark dresses and white
parasols. “Ja,” he answered, “saw them”--paused a moment, took his cob
out of his mouth and continued--“_all blown up_.”

The French invasion of some old century had been too much for him.
He had talked of it and the exploded castle until he could think of
nothing else, and as he closed the door behind, looking at the little
coin I had dropped into his hand, I heard him mutter, “Ja--_all blown
up_.”

_June 8._--As we drive through out of the way places, and to
unfrequented hamlets in the Black Forest, far away from railroads, we
find a simplicity of life that possibly has changed little in centuries.

Living is very cheap. We never pay more than twenty cents for
breakfast. The brooks are all full of delicious trout, and at wayside
inns they take them right out of the brook for us, and charge but a
trifle for all we can eat.

The scene is everywhere entirely different from Switzerland; yet the
green hills, the great woods, the white roads, the flash of hundreds
of bright waterfalls, the village church towers, with a stork’s nest
on the top of every one, are almost as interesting to us as the Alps
themselves.

Often when our showy equipage passed some farm, the peasants stopped
work and stood stock still, leaning on their hoes and looking at us.
Many men doff their caps and the women courtesy, guessing no doubt,
from the showy four-horse drag, it was the Kaiser himself passing.

The seclusion of the old, old hamlets in the woods, the quiet
everywhere, almost makes us lonesome.

Yesterday we were invited to visit a big farmhouse a little distance
from the road. The owner was a rich bauer--“very rich,” his neighbors
said. Yet, his big, good-looking daughter in wooden shoes and _very_
short petticoats, was engaged in cleaning out the stables. She came to
us with the big stable fork in her hand, and in the most agreeable way
showed us about the place. She was all smiles and jokes and good humor.
She was “smart” too. I thought of “M’liss” in one of Bret Harte’s
stories.

We saw an enormous fire-place in the kitchen, without any chimney.
The smoke simply ascended, or tried to ascend, through a pyramid of
boards. The room was too much for us. “Don’t the smoke hurt your eyes
terribly?” said my wife to the girl’s mother, as she wiped the tears
away and tried to get her breath. “Oh! yes,” answered the good woman,
“it’s terrible on the eyes, but just splendid for smoking hams.”

At many places along the country roads, we passed children with
baskets, gathering the manure up from the highways. This they carry
into their father’s fields. But every twig, stick or stone that can
deface a white smooth road, is gathered up and taken away. Each farmer,
for certain fixed distances along the highway, is a “care taker” of
the road, and his little income from his farm is increased by a small
allowance from the public treasury.

In the vicinity of Friberg, with its wonderful waterfalls and green
mountains, we see as beautiful scenery as the heart could wish.

Little of the Black Forest life or scenery is even guessed at by a
traveler on the train. The characteristic things of continental life in
general are no longer on the routes of public travel.

CHAPTER XXI

1879

BRET HARTE--LETTERS FROM HIM--VISITS US--STAY AT BOCKEN--
CONVERSATIONS--MRS. SENATOR SHERMAN--EVENINGS AT BOCKEN--WE
ALL GO TO THE RIGI--HOW WE GOT THE “PRINCE’S” ROOMS--HARTE
GOES WITH US TO OBSTALDEN IN THE ALPS--VERY SIMPLE LIFE--A
STRANGE FUNERAL--HARTE FINDS HIS STORIES IN A VILLAGE INN--
MORE LETTERS--WE VISIT THE MOSELLE RIVER--FINER THAN THE
RHINE--A WONDERFUL CASTLE OF THE MIDDLE AGES--ALL FURNISHED
AND FRESH AS WHEN NEW--THE FRENCH DID NOT FIND IT WHEN THEY
WERE DEMOLISHING GERMAN CASTLES--AN EXQUISITE GOTHIC CHURCH
FIVE HUNDRED YEARS OLD--WONDERFUL ROMAN RUINS AT TREVES--MORE
LETTERS FROM BRET HARTE--A HAPPY MAN.

_May 30._--One day I was wandering quite alone in the Jura Mountains.
I had little with me save my umbrella, my overcoat, and a pocket copy
of Bret Harte’s poems. When I rested, here and there, under a tree
at the roadside, I read the poems--all of them; but “John Burns of
Gettysburg,” “Dickens in Camp,” “The Reveille” and “Her Letter,” I read
often, and felt them to be the rarest verses any American had ever
written.

His “Heathen Chinee” had given him fame, while these other great things
were but little known.

I believe I had never asked a man for an autograph in my life, but I
did want Bret Harte’s own name at the foot of “Burns of Gettysburg;”
for I had read it with a thrill, and with tears. I sent him the very
same little book I had carried around with me.

He returned the copy with these words written on the margin:

“Phrases such as camps may teach,
Sabre cuts of Saxon speech.”

He also wrote me. He was now U. S. Consul at Crefeld, near the lower
Rhine.

“UNITED STATES CONSULATE, CREFELD, May 28, 1879.

“MY DEAR MR. BYERS:--I have written my name in your book, and
return it to you by to-day’s post. I beg you to believe that I
have never performed that simple act with more pleasure. I only
regret that the quality of the paper on page 91 rather limited
the legible expression of my good will, and that I could not show
as clearly as I would like my thanks to one who has written so
appreciatingly of my hero.

“I might have added ‘fellow soldier’ to the inscription, but I
fear that my year’s service against the Indians on the California
frontier, when the regular troops were withdrawn to Eastern
battlefields, would scarcely justify me in taking that title. But
I want you to believe that my knowledge of men and camps enabled
me to praise a hero understandingly.

“If you still feel under any obligation to me, you can discharge
it very easily. I am anxious to know something about your
vicinity, and the prices and quality of accommodations to
be found there this summer. My doctor has ordered me to the
mountains, for my neuralgia and dyspepsia, and I can procure
a leave of absence of three or four weeks. I have thought of
going to Switzerland with a member of my family who is studying
painting in Düsseldorf, and I should therefore prefer some
locality where she can sketch from nature. I want some quiet,
pretty place, away from the beaten track of tourists--some little
pension, not too expensive. Can you give me some information
regarding prices, localities, etc., etc., and how early in the
season it would be advisable to come?

“I shall look forward confidently to your telling me something as
soon as you can.

“Yours very truly,

BRET HARTE.”

This letter gratified me, as I now looked forward to the pleasure of
having Mr. Harte with us in Switzerland. He wished a quiet place. Where
in all the world was there so quiet and so lovely a spot as our own
“Bocken,” on the lake, with the green hills about it and its views of
snow mountains, and all close to beautiful Zurich. We were to spend our
third summer there. So I proposed “_Bocken_” and also “Obstalden,” a
hamlet we often went to in the higher Alps.

He took up with Bocken, however, and wrote:

“June 19, 1879.

“MY DEAR MR. BYERS:--Let me thank you for your two welcome
letters and your book on Switzerland. You could not have sent
me a volume more satisfactory to my present needs, nor one that
could give me so strong a desire to know more of the author. My
good genius evidently joined hands with the State Department in
sending you to Switzerland ten years before me.

“Make the best arrangements you can for me at Bocken for about
the 7th of July, the exact date you shall know later. You can, if
you think it better, keep some hold on Obstalden. Dr. Van K----
yields his favorite Rigi, and thinks I can get strong at Bocken
or Obstalden; such was the power of your letters on the highest
medical wisdom of Düsseldorf.

“Nothing could be kinder than your invitation, but I fear that
neither my cousin nor myself can permit you to add to our great
obligations this suggestion of coming to you as guests. Let us
come to Bocken like any other tourists, with the exception that
we know we have already friends there to welcome us. My cousin,
Miss C----, desires to thank your wife for her good intentions,
and hopes to have the pleasure of sketching with her.

“I sent you yesterday the only book of mine that I could lay my
hands on, a little volume in return for ‘Switzerland.’ There is
something about mountains in it, but I fear your book is the more
reliable and interesting.

“My cousin was greatly pleased with your suggestion of your
wife’s sketching and aiding her in pursuit of the picturesque.

“Very truly,

BRET HARTE.”

Delays set in, and he wrote again.

“July 23, 1879.

“MY DEAR BYERS:--Are you losing your patience and beginning to
believe that B. H. is ‘a light that never was on land or sea.’

“For the last week I have been trying to assist somebody, who has
come out from the Custom House in N. Y., duly certified to by the
State Department, and is ‘wanting to know, you know’ all about
‘market prices and prices current.’ But I think I should have
scarcely staid for him, if the weather had not been at its worst,
blowing a stiff gale for forty-eight hours at a time, and raining
in the intervals.

“My present intention is to leave here Saturday, or Sunday, the
26th, but of course will telegraph you exactly when and how.

“Yours hopefully,

BRET HARTE.”

At last, he and his cousin, Miss C----, a charming woman, who soon
joined my wife in sketching excursions, reached Bocken. Bocken has
enough big rooms for old knights of ye olden time to carouse in, but
very few bedrooms for real folks to sleep in. So Mr. Harte and I, for
a time, occupied a bedroom together in the annex. I was a gainer by
the arrangement, for we sometimes lay awake half the night and more,
whilst he related to me reminiscences of his early life in California
and his literary and other experiences. They would fill a book, but I
forbear. This much only I copy from my diary of the time.

_August 8, 1879._--Bret Harte and his cousin reached us some days ago.
He seems a sick man. He looks nothing like the pictures I had conjured
up of him. He is forty-one years old, of medium height, strongly built,
legs like an athlete, weighs about one hundred and seventy-five pounds,
has fine head, a big nose, clear-cut features, clear good eyes, hair
cropped short and perfectly gray, face full and fine; in short a very
handsome man, and an exquisite in dress. He is neatness personified,
and he seems to have brought a whole tailor’s shop of new clothes with
him to this simple place, as he appears in a different suit daily,
sometimes semi-daily.

There is little at the pension table that he can eat, for he has
dyspepsia. So, as we have our own cook and kitchen, we have of late
invited him and his cousin to dine with us. At noon, our table is set
under the chestnut trees out on the terrace overlooking the blue lake.
He can eat here. It is a wonderful spot to dine at with such a view
before us.

We have our breakfast in the corner room of the chateau, where the
famous tile stove stands, with its pictures of Swiss history. The walls
of the room have massive panels of old oak, and around them are low
seats that open like chest lids. From the big, leaded windows of the
room the view is as fine as on the terrace. Joining this corner is an
immense banquet room--the knights’ hall of the olden times.

While sitting at the old, old table, sipping our coffee, we see the
pretty steamers pass on the lake far below us, and towards Glarus we
see the snowy Alps reflecting the morning sun.

Plain old Chateau Bocken was built centuries ago as a country home for
the Burgomasters of Zurich. Those fellows of the olden time knew where
the beautiful spots of earth were. I often think Bocken, in summer, the
loveliest spot on earth. I am sure it is, for me. Evenings after supper
on the terrace, we sit out there at the table with the lamps burning
till bedtime. We have good times in talk and reminiscences. Harte is
as fine a conversationalist as I ever knew. He uses the most choice
and elegant language possible. This surprises one, on recalling that
his famous California stories are so often in the dialect of the gold
mines. His voice is fine, his speech extremely taking, and I think he
has a good heart. When feeling well, he is a delightful companion--an
interesting man--apart from his work and fame.

These evenings out on the terrace, we talk of the poets too. Each
expresses his preference. Harte said almost the finest poem in the
language is Browning’s “Bringing the Good News From Ghent to Aix.” He
recited it with splendid feeling.

To me, Browning’s “Napoleon at Ratisbon” seemed almost equally good--a
whole drama in a dozen lines or so.

I spoke of Harte’s own poem, the “Reveille.” His recital to us of how
it was produced in San Francisco was in itself a picture of old war
times, exciting in the extreme.

A great mass meeting was to be held in San Francisco one evening. Men
were wanted to enlist--to go out and _die_ for their country, in fact.
Somebody must write a poem, said the Committee, and Thomas Starr King,
the patriot orator, suggested the name of a young man employe at the
Government mint. It was Bret Harte. The day of the evening came, and,
with fear and doubting, Mr. Harte read his little poem to Mr. King. “I
am sure it won’t do--It is not good enough,” he added deprecatingly,
and with self-disappointment. “You don’t know,” answered Mr. King.
“Let _me_ read that poem aloud to you once.”

In his great, fine voice, he rendered the verses, till Harte himself
was astonished with his own lines. Still, the judgment of a friend
could be over partial.

Harte was almost afraid to go to the hall that night; but he went and
crept up into the gallery. All San Francisco seemed to be present. It
was a terribly exciting time. Would California rise up and be true to
the Union, or only half true?

“I will read a poem,” said the magnificent King, after a while. “It is
by Mr. Harte, a young man working in the Government mint.”

“Who’s Harte?” murmured half the audience. “Who’s he?”

The orator commenced, and ere he reached that great line, “For the
great heart of the Nation, throbbing, answered, ‘Lord, we come,’” the
entire audience were on their feet, cheering and in tears.

It was too much for the young poet to stay and witness. He thought he
would faint. He slipped down the back stairs and out into the dark
street, and walking there alone, wondered at the excitement over verses
he had that morning feared to be valueless.

One can imagine a young man out there alone in the dark, for the first
time hearing Fame’s trumpet sounding to him from the crowded theater.

_August 15._--The days were passing in delight at Bocken. I come out
from the consulate early in the afternoon. Occasionally I stay here all
day, and then with Harte and his cousin we have little excursions in
the vicinity.

Yesterday, I helped Mr. Harte read over the proof-sheets of his “Twins
of Table Mountain.” We lay in hammocks and read. I do not think it
approaches some of his former stories.

Miss C---- copies much for him, and he also occasionally dictates to
her. I wonder that any one can write in that way.

The other afternoon I took him in to consult Dr. Cloetta, a
distinguished professor and physician. The good doctor, who speaks but
little English, put him on a lounge, examined him carefully, and said,
“Mr. Harte, I think you got _extension_ of the stomach.” Coming back on
the boat, Harte laughed a good deal about this; cursed a little too.

_August 18._--Mrs. Senator Sherman, of Washington, and two of her
nieces, are stopping for a while in this part of Switzerland. A
lieutenant of the navy is also with them. The other day we all took a
notion to cross the country in a post diligence, and turn up at the
Rigi.

We started from Bocken early in the morning. The driver was jolly and
we had much fun. I only fear some of the peasants thought us tipsy, as
we passed through their villages singing “Shoo Fly, Don’t Bother Me,”
and like joyous American ditties. We had a big, red umbrella fastened
above the diligence, and when we came to a hamlet the driver put his
horses on the gallop and blew his bugle. Mrs. Sherman looked a bit
serious over it all, but the noisier ones of the party were in command.

The hotel on the Rigi had not a single bed for us that night. “May we
sleep on the hall floor?” innocently inquired Mr. Harte. “No,” answered
the landlord. “Perhaps out on the doorsteps then?” continued Mr. Harte.
“Just as you please,” said the keeper of the hostelry, crustily. “My
beds, I tell you, are taken. I can do nothing for you.” “Yes, but--”
went on Mr. Harte, with a knowing smile--“it is awfully cold and dark
out there--suppose our little party orders a good champagne supper,
with lots of chicken and etceteras, and sits at the table here all
night. You wouldn’t mind that would you?” The landlord coughed a little
cough.

The supper was ordered, and before it was half over our host bethought
himself. He said he had just got a telegram from Prince ---- and his
suite, who had engaged the four finest rooms in the house. The Prince
could not come. We could have the Prince’s rooms, all of them. “Hurrah
for the Prince of----,” we all cried, clinking our glasses to him. The
fact was, and we knew it, the telegraph office had not been open since
6 o’clock. All the same, we had the finest rooms and a moderate bill.
And the next day one of the nieces was engaged to the young lieutenant.
So a good deed prospers.

“You will not mind telling us why you did not give us the rooms in the
first place, will you?” said Mr. Harte to the host next morning, as he
settled the bill for the party. “We know, you know, that you got no
telegram at all from the Prince.” “Frankly,” said the landlord, “it was
because Americans don’t often order wine. My _profit’s_ in my _wine_
and if none is ordered, better the rooms remain empty. But you folks
are not Americans, I know by the _many bottles_.” Nevertheless, it was
Mr. Harte’s good nature that won the day for us, or rather the night.

We were up too late for the “Sunrise on the Rigi” next morning; but the
splendid view of a dozen blue lakes and snow white mountains all around
us, repaid the party for the trip.

Mrs. Sherman liked the Rigi for its own lonesome heights. Mr. Harte
praised the whole wonderful scene; the Lieutenant looked into the blue
eyes of Miss----, and all were satisfied.

[Illustration: Obstalden.--_Page 178._]

_August 30, 1879._--When we got back from the Rigi to Bocken, Mr. Harte
proposed that we go for a week to Obstalden, that picturesque hamlet
hung above the Wallensee. We ourselves had spent parts of three summers
there. It is indeed a characteristic Alpine village. It is on the side
of a mountain. The wonderful little Wallensee, blue as a summer’s sky,
lies 2,000 feet below it. Behind it rise majestic mountains. It is all
green grass up there, even up to the very doors and windows of the
brown, hewn log houses. A little white highway winds up to the village
from the lake, while the rest of the roads are simple, narrow goat
paths. They lead about over the grass from house to house, and from the
village up to the higher Alps, where the village boys herd goats and
cows from sunrise till evening. The peasant women all weave silk, and
this necessitates the great number of long windows in their ham-brown
cabins. The men are almost as brown as their houses, and live to be a
hundred years old. I never saw so many _very_ old people in my life.
They live on bread and milk and cheese, with a little sour wine. Some
of these centenarians are Alpine guides, and I have had them carry
my overcoat and haversack and escort me up high mountains with the
nimbleness of a boy of twenty. I was ashamed to have them lug things
for me, a member of the Alpine Club, but they insisted.

American tourists don’t find Obstalden. The hamlet is kept a close
secret among a few Swiss and Germans, who want only picturesque scenes
and _very_ simple life. It was a great favor that a friend told me
about it, and got the little village inn to always give me the refusal
of a room or two.

I had learned Mr. Harte’s tastes, after his coming to Bocken. They were
not for the _utterly_ simple life of mountain villages, after all, and
my wife and I protested against his going to Obstalden. But go he would
and we had to accompany him.

When we got there, the little hotel was overflowing with people. It
held but a dozen guests. The keeper of the inn offered to sit up that
night, and let Miss C---- and my wife have his room. But at last he
thought of the village pastor’s wife, and she took in the two ladies.
He tried to get a room in a peasant’s house for Mr. Harte and me. It
was impossible. We could walk about all night, at the imminent risk of
falling off a couple of thousand feet or so, or we could sleep in a
peasant’s hayloft.

Many of Mark Twain’s famous “Chamois” were likely to be hopping around
in that little hayloft. Mr. Harte hesitated a little--wished he had
never heard of Obstalden. He wore one of his newest, swellest suits,
and the situation “gave him pause.” At last he nimbly climbed up the
ladder. I followed, and without much undressing in the dark, we were
soon under a big coverlet, where to me, for a novelty, the sweet hay
was better than any sheets ever made.

Mr. Harte found it all “mighty tough” and “mighty rough.” He had
wanted, he said in his letter “a little inexpensive simplicity,” but
this was too much for anything--a couple of representatives of the
_great_ United States, and one of them a New York exquisite, tucked
away in a hay mow above the goats and cattle. Obviously, he had not
been a mountaineer, fine as had been his tales of the rough life in
California.

That was something I always wondered at--how Bret Harte could write
such splendid touching tales of “hard cases,” being himself so much the
reverse of all the characters he depicted. It was the genius of his
character that had done it all. Some men take in at a glimpse, and can
perfectly describe what others must experience for a lifetime, to be
able to tell anything about.

We lay awake much of that summer night, in the hay mow, but the
“poetry” of the thing was all wasted on Mr. Harte. We heard the
solitary watchman of the village, who with his lantern walked about in
the darkness, cry to the sleepers: “Twelve o’clock, and all is well.”
That solitary watchman’s occupation did touch Mr. Harte. It is indeed
a singular life, going around there alone all the night, the towering
pinnacles of the rocks on one hand, the depths of the valley and the
lake below on the other, the flash of waterfalls close by, the thunder
of distant falling avalanches. Never a night in three hundred years but
some watchman has gone about the byways of Obstalden with his lantern,
calling aloud the hours.

A tin cup, and a little mountain rill that laughed its way through
the village, afforded Mr. Harte and myself our opportunities for
morning toilettes. Mr. Harte’s new clothes had been _pressed_ in the
hay-mow, but not always in the right direction. We met the ladies at
the breakfast table of the inn. Mr. Harte’s narrative to them of the
adventures of the night made a hearty laugh. Never did a breakfast of
brown bread and butter, with good coffee, hot milk and wild honey,
taste better. The table was set out on the terrace. The blue lake was
far, far below us. On its opposite shore, the perpendicular rocks, a
mile high, shut in the loveliest water in Switzerland.

Up on top of those walls of rock, on a little green plateau, we could
see the town of Amden. Nothing like it in the world. Not a horse nor a
carriage up there. It is reached by a stone stairway, zigzagging along
the face of the rocks. Everything the people buy or sell is lugged up
and down this wonderful stairway on peasants’ shoulders.

In the afternoon, Mr. Harte’s attention was riveted on a curious
procession of row boats, slowly crossing the lake in our direction. One
of the boats was entirely covered with garlands and white flowers. It
was a village funeral, said our landlord. They don’t have ground enough
for a graveyard up there in Amden; so they bury their people this side
of the lake.

“There is your story,” I said to Mr. Harte--“the wonderful
stairway--the lake funeral--the town on the high rocks.”

“Yes--all right,” he answered; “but, somehow, I never have luck with
material I don’t find out for myself. I must suggest it myself.” I
recalled Bayard Taylor’s saying, “there is no satisfaction in even a
pint of hot water which has been heated by somebody else.” I am afraid
I heated this water, not very hot. The story will never be written.

That evening we visited the “goat village,” not far away, and watched
hundreds and hundreds of goats, led by a young mountaineer, with a
great bunch of Alpine roses tied to his staff, and a wreath of roses on
his hat. He was coming down from the grassy slopes of a mountain. He
was whistling and singing all the way. It was a picturesque sight. The
“goat village” is composed of scores of little huts or pens, each one
big enough for a single goat. It was interesting to see how each goat
knew its own hut among the many, and hurried into it to be milked.

In a very few days Mr. Harte had had enough of Alpine simplicity,
though we had secured a room in the inn.

Far down below us on the lake lay pretty Wesen. It looked more
civilized, and he would try it there. When he was shown his room in
the Wesen inn, and strolled into the little drawing-room, what was his
surprise to notice lying among the books on the table, “the _Works of
Bret Harte_.”

This was fame--away off in an Alpine village of Switzerland to find his
name was known, his books read.

When he told me, I recalled that other first night in San
Francisco--the applauding assembly--the unknown poet out in the street
in the dark.

Mr. Harte soon came back to us at Bocken, and on the 26th we
accompanied him on his way to his home in Germany, as far as the Falls
of the Rhine.

But we stopped first in Zurich. As it was his birthday, we had a little
good-bye dinner together in the Tonhalle by the lake, and did all we
could for his “health” with a bottle of “Mumm’s extra dry.”

That he might be right over the Rhine Falls by moonlight, the host of
the Laufen Castle gave him the room with the balconies above the water.
It was beautiful, but the noise of the falls kept Harte awake all night.

In the morning we said good-bye and parted, he for Crefeld via the
Black Forest, and we for Bocken.

Yesterday I got this letter from him:

“CREFELD, Aug. 27, 1879.

“MY DEAR MR. BYERS:--We arrived here safely last night. _Of
course_, the railways did not connect as you said they would, and
_of course_, we did not go where you promised we should, but we
got to Düsseldorf within twelve hours of the schedule time set
and are thankful. Only let me beg you to post yourself a little
on Swiss railroads before you travel _yourself_. Your knowledge
does well enough for a guide to old experienced travelers _like
us_!!! but it won’t do for a simple, guileless, believing nature
like your own. And don’t let the landlord of the Chateau ‘Laufen’
cook up a route for you.

“Our ride through the Black Forest was a delicious revelation.
I should say it was an overture to Switzerland, had I entered
Switzerland from its borders, but coming _from_ Switzerland,
I could not but think it was really _finer_ than the Alps in
everything that makes the picturesque, and that Switzerland
would have been a disappointment afterwards. It was very like
the California ‘foothills’ in the mountain ranges, and the long
dashes of red soil and red road--so unlike the glare and dazzle
of the white Swiss turnpikes--were very effective. I wanted much
to stop at Freiberg, still more at a certain ruined castle and
‘pension’ called Hombeck, which was as picturesque as Castle
Laufen, minus the noise of ‘factory wheels and fulling mills’
from these awful rapids. Heidelberg was a sensation, with its
castle that quite dwarfs the Rhine River (as all these things do
by comparison when one travels) and we could have stayed here two
or three days and enjoyed ourselves.

“The weather has changed back to the old wet season that we
thought we had left behind us when we turned our faces Southward.
It is dull and rainy. Nevertheless as soon as I get some work off
my hands that has accumulated here I shall try the seaside for my
hoped-for rehabilitation.

“My cousin sends her regards. I suppose she will write or
has written to Mrs. Byers. I hope you will not give up your
Rhine trip (with a suitable guide) and that we may see you in
Düsseldorf soon.

“With my best regards to Mrs. Byers,

“Very truly yours,

BRET HARTE.”

_September 29, 1879._--We are just home from a ten days’ trip up and
down the Moselle River, that neglected Cinderella sister of the Rhine.
It is more beautiful than the Rhine itself. It has more pretty hills
and mountains on its shores; its villages are more picturesque; its
ruins of castles more numerous; its wines as good. Parts of our journey
we went in a row boat, often we walked along the shores. At Cochem, we
visited friends and had a good time. We also went to the magnificent
“Elz,” the only German castle Louis XIV’s invaders failed to find and
destroy. It is among the dark wooded hills, miles back from the Moselle
River. Nothing like it to-day in Germany. Heidelberg is a ruin. Elz is
a perfect castle of the Middle Ages. Portcullis, gate, tower, moat,
walls and halls, stone floors, fireplaces, tapestries and furniture, as
they were centuries ago. Everything has been left, and the owner of Elz
keeps all the surroundings in the spirit of the olden time, even to the
troops of hounds.

To wander through this castle is like reading Scott’s novels, only
here all is old German. No wonder the French never found the castle.
Even we, with a guide, blundered right on to it, before we knew we
were within miles of it. We heard dogs baying, looked, and there among
the rocks and woods saw the lofty walls and towers. We had no passes
allowing us to enter, but our guide had a brother among the men in
charge, and we were shown across the bridge and moat.

I know no spot, castle, or ruin, in Europe, where one feels himself so
absolutely back in the Middle Ages. While in there, I forgot there were
such things as gunpowder, railways, gas and cannon. The walls were hung
with spears, swords, bows and battle clubs.

Another of the perfect works of olden times visited by us on the
Moselle was the ancient gateway at the City of Treves. This “Porta
Nigra” impressed me much. I think there is nothing to equal it, even
in Rome. Many of the works of the Romans, built in this German town,
are in better preservation than anything in the “Eternal City.” Some
of them are just as grand. The town itself is only a feeble reminder
of the great, old times, when seven different Roman Emperors made this
town their residence.

There is one church here, the “Liebfrauen Kirche,” exquisite in its
beauty, that stands as the most perfect specimen of Gothic architecture
remaining in the world. It is indeed “a thing of beauty” and a “joy;”
if not forever, for at least five hundred years, and it may last a
thousand years to come. The “Holy Coat of Christ” is kept here in the
Cathedral. It is claimed to have been brought here by Helena, the
mother of Constantine. I can see no reason why this may not be true.
Relics of a million times’ less significance have been preserved by men
for ages. Nothing would be so easily traced and cared for, from century
to century, as a relic that half mankind revered as holy.

_November, 1879._--We are again at our home in Zurich, 7 Centralhof. We
are anxious for a long visit to Italy, and I have asked for a leave.
Mr. Harte thinks to go along with us.

“November 9, 1879.

“MY DEAR MR. BYERS:--I have your welcome letter of the 7th, and
hasten to say that two words by telegraph from Mr. Seward give me
my leave of absence. With this in my pocket, I am in no hurry,
knowing that I can rush off at any moment, when Crefeld becomes
unbearable. When the Rhine fog gathers thickest, and the office
lights are lit at 3 P. M. and neuralgia becomes lively, I clutch
the telegram and smile a ghostly smile.

“And we may meet, after all, where the sun shines. The doctor
here tells me I must go to upper Italy, say Bellagio on the Lake
of Como. But there is a time to think of that. Let me know _when_
you get your leave. You will get it _of course_.

“My cousin had a dismal voyage home, tempestuous weather and
seasickness nearly all the time. She writes rather sadly from New
York, where she has found her brother-in-law hopelessly ill, and
her sister in great distress. Her quiet life in Düsseldorf makes
that busy city seem strange to her, and I hope when she gets to
Washington she may shake off her sadness. I have written to her
urging her, if she have the slightest feeling of ‘homesickness’
for Europe again, to start off with her sister Jessie and come
back to me at once. I hope she certainly will in the spring, for
it is terribly lonely here.

“Tell Mrs. Byers to stop this shooting of Parthian arrows from
Obstalden. I am not so very particular, but if we travel in Italy
together, we must certainly have more than _one_ bedroom for us
_three_. I know I am fastidious as to location, but I’d let that
go. I’d stick out for _two_ bedrooms, if we had to telegraph a
week ahead. If Mrs. Byers and myself are to quarrel in this way
we must all have separate apartments, and two wash bowls.

“I forgot to ask you to procure me a book of Swiss photographic
views for about eight or ten francs. It is for a child’s present
and I leave the selection entirely to yourself. Will you charge
your soul with it, and credit me with the enclosed.

“Yours ever,

B. H.”

And later he writes:

“November 23, 1879.

“MY DEAR MR. BYERS:--A line to thank you for the album. It was a
great bargain at 10 R. M. And yet people talk of the impractical,
unbusiness-like character of the literary mind.

“I am still here, but knowing that I can go when I can stand
things no longer, I put up with an india-ink washed sky, a dismal
twilight that lasts eight hours, and stands for ‘day’ to the
Rhenish perception, and find some work. I have just ‘turned off’
a story longer than the ‘Twins,’ and did it in spite of neuralgia
and _’extension_.’

“I see by a telegram to the Daily London News that Mr. Seward
has resigned, and Colonel John Hay takes his place as Assistant
Secretary of State. Hay is a good fellow, was in the diplomatic
service once, is an accomplished, well-mannered gentleman of whom
any American might be proud, and only a few years ago earned his
bread by literary labors as editorial writer on the Tribune,
besides being the author of ‘Jim Bludsoe’ and ‘Little Breeches,’
as you, of course, know. He married a rich wife and is quite
independent of the office.

“All this ought to presage some _intellectual discrimination_
of the deserts and needs of _certain other literary men in the
service_. But we shall see. Certainly you will get your leave of
absence now.

“When you have made up your mind to go, let me know. Meantime
give my best regards to your wife.

“Yours ever,

BRET HARTE.”

* * * * *

_July 1, 1879._--The business of the Consulate goes smoothly on. I have
good assistants and no little leisure. Besides, Zurich is so centrally
located that in a few hours I can travel to the most interesting
spots of Europe. Germany, France, Italy are only a little journey
off, the first but a couple of hours’ ride away. The scenery here is
delightful, the climate moderate.

“What would you like if you could choose,” said a Swiss to me at my
tea table the other night. “Nothing,” I replied, “only to stay here
forever.” “You are content,” he answered. “I envy you--you are a happy
man--the first one I ever saw!”

CHAPTER XXII

1880-1881

A LITTLE STAY BY THE MEDITERRANEAN--AM OFFERED A POSITION
IN CHINA--AN ARTICLE ON THE SWISS RHINE--ALSO ONE ON MY
EXPERIENCES IN THE REBEL ARMY--TWO LETTERS FROM GENERAL
SHERMAN--GRANT AND THE PRESIDENCY--SAYS THE BARE NARRATIVE
OF MY ESCAPE FROM PRISON WOULD BE AN EPIC--BANQUET AT THE
LEGATION--I WRITE FOR THE NEW YORK TRIBUNE AN EXPOSE OF
HOW CERTAIN EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES SENT PAUPERS TO THE UNITED
STATES--AM VIOLENTLY ATTACKED FOR IT BY MANY AMERICAN JOURNALS
AND REPRIMANDED BY STATE DEPARTMENT--SWISS GOVERNMENT
COMPLAINS--INVESTIGATION FOLLOWS--I AM JUSTIFIED--LETTER
FROM SHERMAN AS TO HIS SON TOM--VISIT AMERICA--SECRETARY
BLAINE COMPLIMENTS ME--THE PRESS CHANGES ITS TONE AND NEW
LAWS ARE ADOPTED AS TO IMMIGRATION IN UNITED STATES AND
SWITZERLAND--TRIBUNE SAYS EDITORIALLY, “MR. BYERS DESERVES
THE THANKS OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE”--A LITTLE VISIT TO THE POET
LONGFELLOW, AND THE ALCOTTS; ALSO TO THE AUTHOR OF “AMERICA.”

_March, 1880._--During a recent leave of absence I saw the Italian
cities for the second time. We also spent some weeks at San Remo,
by the Mediterranean, taking little foot excursions to Monte Carlo
and Nice over the celebrated Cornici road. This lofty highway of
Napoleon’s, above the sea, is the finest foot excursion in Italy.

[Illustration: Olive Trees by the Mediterranean.--_Page 189._]

[Illustration: Monaco and Monte Carlo.--_Page 189._]

While at Florence I wrote “Philip,” and at Prato I secured the
beautiful censer described in the verses. The days now go by quickly
enough, as many reports are asked for by the department, and the
leisure goes in writing verses or articles for the magazines.

March 30 had this from General Sherman:

“WASHINGTON, D. C., March 17, 1880.

“DEAR BYERS:--I was glad to receive your interesting letter from
San Remo, Italy, a place I well remember on our drive from Nice
to Genoa. I remarked the same thing that you did, that gorgeous
scenery of sea and shore, of sheltered vales and olive-clad
hills, with the snow-capped Pyrenees behind, seemed lost on the
dirty, beggarly natives. Were it not for the English and American
traveler, the Corniche would be poor indeed. All accounts from
Europe and California describe the past winter as very severe,
whilst here in Washington and indeed in all the country east of
the Mississippi there has been no winter at all. January and
February were like the same months in Louisiana. We had last week
a little spurt of snow, but now the sun shines warm and bright,
the grass is green, and the trees begin to show leaves, whilst
crocuses and lilacs are almost purple with their buds. I fear
we have not had winter enough to make a healthy and profitable
summer.

“Elly will be married to Mr. Thackera, of the Navy, in May, and
Minnie will come on the first time since her marriage. She now
has four children, two boys and two girls, all healthy, strong
children. For some years she has occupied a suite of rooms at
Windsor Flats in the city of St. Louis, but she has just removed
to a house I possess in the suburbs, with five acres of lawn,
orchard and garden. She writes that they are very comfortable,
and I propose to go out and see for myself about April 1. The
rest of our family is here, Tom alone excepted, and we continue
about as usual.

“Politics are beginning to buzz. Grant is still in Mexico, but
will return via Texas next week. I suppose we may assume that he
wants to be President again, and will probably be the Republican
candidate. Whom the Democrats will choose, is hard to guess.

“I will look to the article you name in Harper’s. Mrs. Sherman
always reads your letters.

“Ever your friend,

W. T. SHERMAN.”

This month’s Harper has my article on “The Swiss Rhine,” illustrated by
Mrs. Byers, and the May Atlantic will have my “Ten Days in the Rebel
Army.” This is the story of the time I escaped from the Macon prison,
and went into the Rebel Army in disguise. The desperate venture came
near costing me my life when I was taken, as our own generals had been
executing rebels for similar action in our own army a short time before.

This is my eleventh year in the foreign service. I like the life and
the duties, and the country I happen to be stationed in. It is also a
gratification to have it said that I stand well with the Department
at Washington. This is indicated by my being offered other and better
posts than this. A recent letter tells me, if I wish it, I may have my
choice of General Consulates in China or Japan. My preferences are for
life in Europe; besides, we now have our friends here, and know the
people, the language, and the customs.

_June 14._--Our anniversary. Celebrate it by going to Bürglen, the
birthplace of William Tell. Made sketches and had a good time.

A cottage inn stands on the spot where Tell was born. I asked the young
woman who answered the door bell if Mr. Tell were at home. She laughed
and answered, “No, but I am Mrs. Tell.”

An American friend joined us there, and, with “Mrs. Tell,” we all sang
songs and waltzed half the night to the music of a cracked piano,
played by one of “Mrs. Tell’s” sisters.

* * * * *

Received a letter last week from General Sherman. He regrets Grant’s
having to scramble for the Presidency.

“WASHINGTON, D. C., May 11, 1880.

“DEAR BYERS:--I received in good time your kind letter of April
3, and laid it one side for attention after Elly’s wedding.
Meantime, the clock came all safe and right, and I acknowledged
its receipt of the merchant in New York through whom it came.

“The wedding came off all right at the appointed time, Wednesday,
May 5th, and the young couple are now at Niagara, and will return
next week via Boston and Philadelphia. Mr. Thackera is a fine
young naval officer of excellent reputation, and Elly is the best
of my children for such a vagrant life.

“I know that you receive the papers and telegrams and that it
would be idle for me to attempt any news of public events. We
are, as you well know, in the very throes of a Presidential
canvass, which in itself constitutes a revolution. Grant is still
a candidate, but instead of being nominated by acclamation, will
have to scramble for it, a thing I cannot help but regret, as
his career heretofore is so splendid that I cannot help feeling
it impaired by common politics. He could so nobly rest on his
laurels, but his family and his personal dependents prod him on,
and his best friends feel a delicacy about offering advice not
asked.

“We are now residing in a rented house--No. 817--Fifteenth
Street, in the best possible neighborhood, and at rates better
than to purchase. I look on St. Louis as my ultimate home, and
don’t want to be embarrassed with property here. I own two most
excellent houses in St. Louis. One is now occupied by Minnie and
her family, and the other is leased to good tenants who will
take good care of it till we need it.

“We are all in good health, that is, all my immediate family, but
my aide, Colonel Audenreid, whom you must well remember, is at
this moment dangerously ill of some liver complaint. The doctor
assures me that we ought not to be alarmed, but I cannot help
it, for he has been a month in bed, and I discover no signs of
reaction.

“My best love to Mrs. Byers and the children. My aide, Colonel
Tourtelotte, is now abroad and will see you.

“Yours truly,

W. T. SHERMAN.”

_August 15._--Another interesting letter from General Sherman came
to-day:

“WASHINGTON, D. C., Aug. 1, 1880.

“DEAR BYERS:--I was absent all of July, making a tour to the
Northwest as far as Bismarck. On my return I found your two
letters. One about Colonel Audenreid’s death, which I have put
into an envelope along with many others of the same kind for
poor Mrs. Audenreid, when she is in a condition to be comforted
by the sympathy of friends. The other letter of July 13 is now
before me for answer. I really don’t know where to look for that
pamphlet about the burning of Columbia, when you and I testified,
and this being midsummer, everybody is out of town, and I am at
a loss whom to consult to hunt it up. Was it the Committee on
the Conduct of the War in session as the war closed, or later?
I have a faint memory of testifying, but must beg you to write
your article absolutely fresh, just as it remains in your mind,
or as noted in any memoranda you possess. I am sure you could
make a magazine article of infinite interest, painting your
individual capture, imprisonment, hopes, fears, numerous escapes,
concealment, etc., etc., the arrival of my army in Columbia,
and your supreme joy both for yourself and country, at so happy
a termination of your imprisonment. The bare narrative would
be an epic, but you can dress it up without risking errors or
controversy. Contemporaneous documents, of which thousands exist,
will always take precedence of magazine articles at this late
day, but Homer’s Iliad is as fresh to-day as when penned, so of
Robinson Crusoe. If I can find what you want I will send, but beg
you not to wait. I must go September 1, with the President and
a select party, to California, Oregon, etc., to be gone all of
October, so I will have little time.

“I don’t observe the least possible excitement about the
Presidential election, and hope, as you say, one candidate or
the other will obtain a decisive majority with as little force
or fraud as possible. Hancock’s nomination by the Democrats
gives assurances that even if the Democrats succeed, the Union
will be safe. He is unquestionably patriotic, and has a stronger
character and more ability than political enemies concede.
Garfield is a man of unquestioned ability and force.

Yours,

W. T. SHERMAN.”

_October 19, 1880._--Two days ago Mr. Nicholas Fish, our Minister,
invited us to a diplomatic dinner at Bern. The Spanish Minister and his
wife were present, as also one or two gentlemen of the Swiss Cabinet,
and all the Consuls in Switzerland.

The Fish family live in a pretty villa in the outskirts of the
capital, with splendid views from their terrace. The Minister is the
ideal diplomat, trained by long service, accomplished, cautious and
conservative. The standing of the family at the Swiss capital is very
high.

Before the banquet, two sweet children came into the drawing-room for
awhile, a boy and a girl of the family.[6]

Spent Sunday also with Mr. Fish’s family, and drove about the queer
old town with its arcades, its bear pit, its rushing waters and its
glorious mountain views from the terrace.

_October 24._--For years I have been observing the character of the
immigration from Europe to the United States. Much of it is very
bad. It came to my certain knowledge, too, that hundreds of paupers,
drunkards, criminals and insane people were absolutely being taken
out of workhouses and jails at different places on the continent, and
shipped across the sea to us at the expense of local authorities, who
found it cheaper to send them to America than to provide for them at
home. It did not seem possible, but a very little investigation proved
its truth. As if by accident, numerous cases happened right within my
own district. I protested, and, in some cases, compelled the return
of paupers after they had reached the sea coast. But the traffic went
right on, and every day’s investigation revealed more of the extent
of the imposition on the American Government. Our country is rapidly
filling up with the off-scourings of Europe. There are plenty of good
emigrants, but also an awful population of thriftless beggars and
tramps invading the United States. Worst of all, nobody in America
seems to believe a word of it. Our Government looks on supinely, our
people welcome emigration of course, little dreaming of the chaff and
the straw that come with the wheat. Nobody’s attention can be secured
to what is going on. Some weeks since I determined to make a public
statement.

_November 30, 1880._--Every mail, these days, brings me marked
American newspapers, with articles abusing me for my exposé of pauper
immigration, in the New York _Tribune_ of November 12, 1880. It seems
the larger part of the American press regards me as misrepresenting
facts, and as a common disturber.

Dozens of letters filled with violent abuse, also come to me, and from
Chicago come letters even threatening my life, should I ever put foot
in the United States.

Even the conservative State Department has been influenced to send me
what the newspapers call “a severe reprimand” and threatens my removal
from office.

Nothing but my past good record saved me. “In a Consul of less
meritorious services,” says the official dispatch, “it would be
considered sufficient cause for removal.”

Committees went to the Secretary of State, and demanded my dismissal,
anyway. It seems I have brought enmity on my head from every direction.

The Swiss papers have copied the American attacks, and join in the
malicious abuse and misrepresentation. My article is misrepresented,
and I am regarded an enemy of Switzerland. Some of the German
press join in the howl, and even Bismarck has been asked to make
representations to our Government.

The Swiss representative at Washington complains to his government
about me, and asks investigation. The Swiss government in quick time
entered its complaint. This is my chance, for I have only told the
truth, and have in my hands a hundred things to prove it, though at the
present moment they have made me the most disliked man in Switzerland.
There seems simply to be no “let up” to the misrepresentations
concerning this article. Those who know the inside facts, are naturally
indignant that I have exposed them.

I have gone on accumulating testimony, showing how scandalously our
American hospitality has been abused by certain communities shipping
their paupers and scoundrels to us.

Yesterday an emigration agent offered to furnish me the names of four
hundred paupers whom he alone had been hired to ship to the United
States.

In Italy, the other day, a great train load of poverty-stricken and
perfectly ignorant immigrants were started off for the United States.
They numbered one thousand. There was not a dollar apiece in the whole
crowd.

_February 9, 1881._--Here and there, a Swiss newspaper has looked into
the matter of my _Tribune_ letters for itself, and with shame admits
that the leading charges in my _exposé are true_.

Our Minister, Mr. Fish, at the request of the Department, also
investigates me and my exposé, and a few days ago announced to
Washington “that the statements made by Consul Byers, and objected to
by the Swiss Government, _are correct_.”

So all this storm of abuse has been unwarranted. Mr. Fish did me the
compliment to add in his dispatch “that instead of being unfriendly to
the Swiss, he (Mr. Byers) has done much to encourage and cherish good
relations between the two countries. He is one of the ablest and most
experienced consular officers in the service and has for nearly twelve
years performed his duties with integrity, ability and faithfulness.”

This report of me from a superior officer is a little set-off to the
“reprimand” and to the five hundred howling newspapers in the United
States.

I am now getting letters of thanks from many people who appreciate my
trying to do my country an honest service. Many of the newspapers, too,
both at home and abroad, have commenced seeing “a new light,” now that
overwhelming evidence as to the facts is printed in pamphlet form by
Minister Fish, and submitted to Congress.

Many that attacked me a month or so ago, now praise. The New York
_Tribune_ has stood by me through it all, and now editorially says: “He
deserves the thanks of the American people.”[7] What a change from a
few weeks ago!

_January 17._--General Sherman writes me an interesting letter about
his son Tom, and regrets that he is not in an active career.

“WASHINGTON, D. C., Jan. 2, 1881.

“DEAR BYERS:--I was very glad to receive yours of November 25,
for it assured me of your general well-being, that your family
enjoyed health and a fair share of this world’s blessings, and
that your thoughts and feelings turned toward this, your native
land. Our newspapers are so full of current news and gossip, and
the telegraph so swift, and steamers so regular that letters are
stripped of the interest they once possessed. I cannot hope to
tell you of anything public, and in private everything seems to
me so commonplace that I imagine you can, without being told,
know that I and my family continue pretty much as when you were
last with us. My daughter Elly is married to Lieutenant Thackera,
of the Navy, now on duty in Boston, supervising the construction
of modern guns. I was there last week to visit her, and instead
of the child I am wont to consider her, I found her a full
developed woman. Minnie is at St. Louis with four children, one
of them staying with us here in Washington, and all my girls are
grown. The youngest boy, now fourteen, is tall, slender, red
haired, and is said to resemble me in form and quality. My oldest
son, Tom, is also here with us on a New Year’s visit. He is some
sort of a Catholic divine, not a priest, but employed in one of
the Catholic educational establishments near Baltimore. This is
all directly antagonistic to my ideas of right. He ought to be in
some career to assist us, and to take part in the great future
of America. I feel as though his life were lost, and am simply
amazed he does not see it as I do. Mrs. Sherman and the rest are
as well as usual, and we are drifting along with public events
toward that end which we now can foresee. If you come back I hope
to see you often, and hope you, too, will sooner or later embark
in the live questions of the future. Anything which comes from
you I always read with interest, whether a letter or magazine
article. Give my best love to Mrs. Byers, and believe me always,

“Affectionately, your friend,

“W. T. SHERMAN.”

_March, 1881._--On the 11th of last month, we left Zurich for
Liverpool, and sailed to New York on the 15th. Reached Washington in
time to see the inauguration of President Garfield. It snowed on the
night of the 3d, and the Washington streets were cold and miserable
on the evening of the 4th. There were great crowds of people at the
East front of the Capitol, and everybody was touched when the oath was
taken, as Garfield turned around and kissed his aged mother.

The street parade was fine, but the weather cold. Thousands probably
died from diseases contracted while viewing the ceremonies.

* * * * *

Yesterday evening, was taken to see Mr. Blaine, the new Secretary
of State. His selection is regarded as adding great power to the
administration.

I went with General Sherman to Blaine’s home on Fifteenth Street. He
entered the dooryard just as we came, and greeted us on the steps. I
was in great doubt as to how he would receive me, knowing the attacks
on me in the press, and the “reprimand” from his own department.

“You have been giving our country some information on the emigration
question,” he said to me, as he hung his overcoat up in the hall.

This was followed by an ominous silence, and we all walked into the
drawing-room, and were presented to Mrs. Blaine, who was just leaving.
The Secretary walked to the open fire-place, turned his back to it,
and, addressing me, said: “Mr. Byers, I want you to understand that I
consider that in this pauper emigration matter you have done a good
thing--and I am going to support you in it.”

“You can give me the information I want,” he continued, later in the
conversation, and invited me to come and see him on the following
Monday.

I think the conversation helped Mr. Blaine to make up his mind to send
a certain strong letter abroad.

* * * * *

_May, 1881._--When at Washington, I was invited to prepare the
Decoration Day poem. I wrote “The Nation’s Dead.” The President and
many distinguished people were present at its recital.

As I could not be present to read my poem personally, some one
suggested that the distinguished Robert Ingersoll should be invited
to read it. General Sherman, in a letter to me, objected in strong
language. Ingersoll was a friend of his, but he regarded it manifestly
improper for an infidel to be delivering poems over the graves of
American soldiers.

* * * * *

Before sailing, I visited at the Allen home and school, West Newton.
James T. Allen had been one of my best friends in Europe. The school
was somewhat on the plan of the celebrated Beust school at Zurich; that
is, fewer textbooks and better teachers.

I had a letter to the poet Longfellow, and Mr. Allen suggested that
we go over to Cambridge on Sunday afternoon. My letter was from Mr.
Longfellow’s nephew.

The poet came into the little drawing-room with a full blown red rose
in his buttonhole. He took me by the hand and welcomed me very kindly.
I commenced to apologize for coming on Sunday. “Tut--tut,” said he, “no
apology; I hope we are not so puritanical as not to want to see our
friends on a Sunday.” And then we sat down and talked about his nephew
who had been in Switzerland. His language was vivacious, his eye clear,
his cheeks rosy, his hair perfectly white. I was surprised to see how
small was his figure, for I had always thought of Longfellow as a tall
man with a great Leonine head; his pictures make him so.

[Illustration: Vecchio Palace, Florence.]

I could not wholly help a glance around the famous room. I am sure
he saw it, for he offered to show me some of the things that he knew
I had read about. They were not bought bric-a-brac, but souvenirs, or
else things his poetry and life had immortalized. Somehow he seemed to
me a man to love--simple, pure and beautiful as his verses.

I also had letters to Mr. Bronson Alcott, the transcendentalist
philosopher. He received me one morning in a very cordial manner. It
was in his library. We talked of books and something of his life. I had
just been out to the battlefield of Lexington, looked at the bronze
monument of the “Minute Man” there, and was so struck with the verse
on it as to commit it to memory. “And Mr. Emerson wrote it,” I said,
somewhat uncertain as to my memory. “Certainly, certainly,” said Mr.
Alcott. “Of course, that is Mr. Emerson’s. We Americans don’t half
know what a poet we have in Mr. Emerson.” He went to the book shelves
and brought a volume of Emerson’s poems, presented to him, with this
particular poem marked in it, and showed it with evident pride.

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.

Shortly, he proposed to take a walk. He would show me the town, the old
elms, the old, old graveyard and the famous Lecture Hall, “and then,”
said he, “we will swing around and call on Mr. Emerson.”

He showed me all about, talking, as only Mr. Alcott could talk. When
we reached the unpretentious frame building called the Lecture Hall,
in the edge of the bushes, I reflected what great things had been said
there, what ideas given wing, and now I felt sure I was about to be
overwhelmed with deep philosophy. Nothing of the kind. He spent a full
half hour telling me about the cost of the wooden structure and its
course of building, from the underpinning to the top of the chimney.
I was anxious to move on and be sure to have our call on Mr. Emerson.
We really started once, but immediately Mr. Alcott recalled something
about the wonderful “Hall” he had not shown me, and we went back.

At last we started in earnest, and reached the white frame house that
neighbors and friends of Mr. Emerson had built in place of the one
destroyed by fire.

“Mr. Emerson is at home, I suppose,” said Mr. Alcott to the girl who
answered the door bell. “Yes,” said she, “that is, he has just this
moment left for Boston.” I was a bit disappointed, and I think Mr.
Alcott was, but he made up for it in fine and kindly talk, and we went
back to the library. There was an invitation to stay to lunch, but
the hour for my train back to Newton interfered. He gave me a fine
photograph of himself. Mr. Alcott was a great and powerful looking man.
He had an immense head and face, shaggy eyebrows, and clear deep eyes.
He was tall and large in body. His voice was gentle and his manners
were delightful and simple.

“Now, is there nothing I can do for you?” he said, as I was about to
take my leave. “Thank you, Mr. Alcott,” I answered, “and yet it would
be a pleasure if I could have the honor of meeting your daughter.”

“Bless me,” he cried, jumping up; “don’t you know Louise? Louise!” he
called out at the top of his voice, “Louise, come in here.” There was
no answer. “Come on,” he said; “we’ll hunt her up,” and away we started
through the rooms of the house on a chase for the famous woman.

We found her in morning gown, with carpet sweeper in hand, dusting one
of the chambers. She was as kindly and simple as her father. She could
not hear well, but she was very vivacious and full of fun. She asked
me to go with her all about the house, looking at this souvenir and
that, as if she herself were not at that moment the greatest sight of
all. She dwelt especially on some pictures on the wall that a sister
had painted in Paris. My stay abroad must have fitted me to know about
paintings, she insisted. These were indeed interesting and good.

As we were talking, two young fellows ran over the stile and out into
the street. Mr. Alcott gleefully nudged me on the arm, and said, “Look,
the ‘little men.’” We all looked. Miss Alcott smiled and said, “Yes,
they are the boys.”

The train was just starting as I reached it at the station, and there
I had a glimpse of a tall, intellectual-looking man crossing the
platform, apparently looking for some other train. He carried a little
hand bag. I heard a passenger next me say, “There is Mr. Emerson.”

* * * * *

Mr. Allen took me to Newton Center, to see the famous Dr. Smith, author
of the song “America.” It was dark when we called. His daughter went to
fetch matches, and was no little surprised on coming back to find the
gas burning brightly. Mr. A. had lighted a match on his shoe and found
the gas lamp. Shortly, Dr. Smith came in. Though old and partially
deaf, his face was kind and his eyes bright. He liked to talk with us
about his past, and told us much concerning the origin of his famous
song. I thought his home old and dingy for so famous a man. The people
of America could well afford to give him a palace. His song has done
more to preserve the American Union than any army ever did. He was
interested about music in Switzerland, and asked me to tell him what
effect the mountains have on the Swiss character. I told him to judge
by their songs. No country in the world has so many music festivals,
so many singing clubs. “And the songs they sing?” inquired the doctor.
“They are mostly about their country, their mountains, their lakes,
their rivers,” I answered. At a great musical contest last year,
attended by ten thousand people, forty-six songs were sung in chorus.
Nineteen of these were about the Alps, or hymns to nature. Seven were
about Switzerland, two or three about the Rhine, and ten were love
songs.

It was a Sunday evening and we feared to prolong our visit.

* * * * *

After I had reached my post at Zurich, a New Yorker wrote me to send
him a book printed in the Swiss language. I had seen but few. There
is a Swiss language, all the uneducated speak it; so do many of the
cultivated, when among themselves, but not among strangers. It is also
spoken much in the family circle. It has many dialects, and some of
them are older than the German language itself. An occasional newspaper
is printed in these dialects, but books rarely.

CHAPTER XXIII

1881

ELM AND ALL ITS PEOPLE DESTROYED BY AN AVALANCHE--A FOOT TRIP
IN IRELAND--FENIANS--REDCOATS--POVERTY--THE QUEEN HOOTED--
OUT OF JAIL AND A HERO--MUCKROSS ABBEY BY MOONLIGHT--AN
IRISH FUNERAL--A DUPLICATE BLARNEY STONE-LETTERS FROM GENERAL
SHERMAN--THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON--THE ASSASSINATION OF
PRESIDENT GARFIELD.

_September, 1881._--It is a year now since pretty Elm and all its
people were buried in an avalanche.

Only a few days before, we had climbed over one of the obscure bridle
paths from the Rhine valley to Elm. The path led over a glacier and was
9,000 feet high. All that summer night in Elm we heard the avalanches
fall in the neighborhood, for we were in the higher Alps; lofty and
awful pyramids of eternal rock and snow were all about us.

Right behind the little inn, where we staid that night, frowned a
threatening, almost perpendicular mountain, 12,000 feet high. What if
that dark pile should tumble over on the village, we thought, as we
looked out into the moonlight. How little we dreamed what was about
to happen. We were hardly back in our home in Zurich, when a telegram
announced that the mountain had fallen, that Elm and all the people had
been destroyed.

Shortly, Consul Mason, of Basel, and myself hurried by rail to
Schwanden, and in a little wagonette went up the comparatively easy
valley road to what was once Elm. The sight was terrific. A part of the
mountain overhanging the village slipped off on Sunday, just as the
people had returned from afternoon church services. The mighty debris
of rock and earth overwhelmed and buried the pretty village. It filled
the valley for half a mile. Mason and I climbed over granite boulders
and broken rocks as big as a house. Nothing of the town was to be seen,
the houses had been torn to pieces and buried fifty feet below. Nearly
everybody had been killed. There were no funerals, for till this day
the peasants of Elm sleep under the mountain that overwhelmed them.
The few who had escaped, by being on hillsides or out looking at their
herds on the higher fields, wandered about as if dazed. They shed no
tears. To them, the end of the world had come. Some of them told me,
without a tremor in their voices, how they stood on some high place
and saw their wives, their fathers or their children first thrown into
the air by the awful concussion and then buried with their houses. The
keeper of the little inn where we stopped that night had been spared,
and told us how he saw the big iron bridge across the river Sernf
tossed a hundred feet into the air, twisted like a straw, and thrown
against a hillside.

The river bed had been dammed up by the falling rock, and the waters
now wandered aimlessly over the ocean of debris above the people’s
homes. It is all silent now, up there in the Alps where Elm stood,
silent save where the winds from the mountain peaks on moonlight nights
moan a requiem to the sleeping dead.

_September 20._--President Garfield died yesterday at 5 A. M. (Swiss
time), and all the world went into mourning. I draped the flag here,
and put it out at the consulate. Many people called to express their
sorrow. A more unprovoked murder of a ruler never occurred. The
President’s agony since July 2d has been terrible, and his courage to
bear it has been tremendous.

Early this month, I made a little foot tour in Ireland. Everybody
said, “Don’t go!” Even in Dublin, a friend warned me, saying: “It is
a terrible time in Ireland. Landlords are being murdered and farmers
locked up in prison. You are a stranger here. The English soldiers, on
the watch everywhere, will take you for an American Fenian. The Irish
will take you for an English spy.”

It was all a mistake, as to myself at least. I went everywhere
unmolested. True, the tourists were frightened out of the country.
British redcoats were being sent up and down the island looking for
“boycotters” and assassins. The people everywhere were sullen, and
ominous silence reigned in many places. The country seemed to be
sitting on a volcano. I often walked miles on country roads without
meeting a soul, and nobody at all dared to be abroad at night. At
little country inns where I stopped, people did not talk about the
situation. I suppose they dared not.

By accident I picked up a newspaper one day and read a warning signed
by New York Fenians against any one’s traveling to Europe on an English
steamer. “They would blow them all up.” To my horror another item told
how an “infernal machine” was believed to have been put on board the
“Adriatic,” that had sailed on the 8th. This might go off in mid-ocean
and destroy the ship. My wife and two children were on board that
vessel, and the ship had sailed. There was nothing to do but wait,
and fear. Besides, it did not seem possible to me that the friends of
Ireland could resort to such crimes. In Ireland itself, however, there
was little respect for law, and for England none at all.

Once I was on a railroad train near Mallow. I was in the third class,
because there I could see the common people. A Fenian, out of jail that
very morning, sat next to me. He would not talk about the government,
but constantly asked me to “look out at the green fields”--they were so
beautiful to him after months of imprisonment.

Many redcoat soldiers, in charge of prisoners wearing handcuffs, were
on the train. The prisoners yelled: “Down with England! Hurrah for free
Ireland!” and sang the “Wearing of the Green.” The soldiers could not
help themselves and simply laughed.

The train stopped at a little country village and I saw a great mass of
people running towards us. The soldiers said they were coming to stone
the train. I wished now that I had listened to the “warnings.” Instead
of stoning us, however, the mob rushed into the car where I was, seized
the man by my side and bore him out on their shoulders. The men hugged
him, the women kissed him, and everybody cried for “free Ireland.” It
was his welcome home from prison. The redcoats said nothing and did
nothing. As the train moved on, I could see the mob still carrying the
man up the street, while the village band marched at their head.

I wanted to go to Limerick for the races next day, but I saw a train
with three hundred armed and uniformed policemen going to the same
place, so I stayed away, and took to the quiet and safer country roads.

I passed lovely scenes in the neighborhood of Killarney. The lakes
equal the Swiss lakes in beauty; there are bright waterfalls there,
groves, grand estates, ruined castles, and wretched poverty.

Saw Muckross Abbey by moonlight--nothing more romantic conceivable.
The grand old trees, the broken arches, the ivy-covered walls, the
graveyard with its bones of long-dead Irish kings, all silent and lone
under the soft light of a summer moon, impressed me.

A young Irishman and his newly wedded wife, stopping at the inn, had
joined me in the wish to see Muckross by moonlight. We walked down
the road to the entrance of the ground. The care taker at the gate
was upstairs in the lodge in bed. When we called to him to unlock the
gate, he poked his head out of a window and ordered us away instantly.
We offered him good pay to come down and let us into the grounds. “Not
for a dozen pounds would I come down there,” he yelled back at us. “How
do I know what you are or who you be, tramping around the roads this
time of night. You might be going to blow the top of the head off of
me. I tell you go along wid you.” We went along further down the road,
climbed over into the enclosure, and without blowing off tops of heads
of anybody, had a good time. We knew the man would not venture from his
lodge. His fear showed the kind of times Ireland was living in.

The next day I saw an Irish funeral at Muckross Abbey. The coffin was
borne on men’s shoulders, at first. When they passed out of Killarney
village, they put it on top of an immense hearse, the shape of an
omnibus, and behind it capered along a company of old women and girls,
groaning, bawling and shrieking by turns. Occasionally, on seeing a
friend at the roadside, these hired mourners rested themselves a moment
and greeted the friend with a grin. It seemed a hideous performance.
The grave was not dug when the procession reached the abbey, and there
was nothing to do but wait till some one came with shovel and spade. In
the meantime I slipped away.

I had many long walks through the country as I footed it off towards
Cork. Most of the peasants seemed sticking close to their wretched
little hovels, called houses. Excepting an occasional magnificent
estate that I saw walled in at the country roadside, all seemed
wretchedness. In a hundred miles I did not see a farmhouse that an
American would regard as anything more than a barn or pig sty. These
huts are of stone, one or one and a half stories high, covered with
straw, and no floor but the ground.

Wherever I talked, pitiable tales were told of bad living, high rents,
extortionate landlords. In the midst of all the wretchedness and the
present danger (and danger there is, for arrests and murders and crimes
are going on all the time), the peasants seem rather jovial and cheery,
though not contented. It is amazing where they get the money to pay
the landlords. One man told me he paid thirty dollars a year for a
dirty little hut without a foot of ground or garden. It was all the
house would sell for. “Yes,” said the man, “and I would be tumbled
into the road in six minutes if my rent were not paid; that’s what
all them constables are hanging around for.” I went into many of the
little dark farmhouses. All I saw was wretchedness--a pig or two, a few
chickens--maybe a cow staked outside--some dirty children--a woman,
cheery in spite of it all.

At one little hut a peasant woman asked me to stay and see what her
dinner was. Shortly she gave a call and the “brats” came running in.
She took a pot from the fire and gave to each a few potatoes, some salt
and a piece of bread, nothing more. The boys took their dinners in
their caps.

I was affected to tears, when the good woman put some potatoes on a
plate and offered to divide with me, as I stood looking on in the
doorway. “Oh, sir,” she said, and even cheerfully, “there are many
worse off than we. We cannot complain.” The husband was off at the
coast at work. On Sundays, he brought home a part of his wages to pay
the rent and part of the wages he spent for drink. He brought a little
coarse fish with him, too.

In some houses no meals were had. The potato pot hung by the fire, and
each helped himself out of it, whenever he felt hungry.

And that was peasant life in Ireland.

Potatoes and bread, with a bit of meat or fish on Sundays, seem to be
the regular rations of the family. What would have happened had Sir
Walter Raleigh never introduced the potato there? And what did the
people live on before they had potatoes?

The Irish are full of hope, and all the people look to the new “Land
Bill” to save them. But it won’t do it!

One day I overtook two Americans who, like myself, were wandering about
Ireland on foot. We went together to Blarney Castle. We did not see the
herd of white cows that rise up out of Blarney Lake at night, but we
climbed to the top of the castle tower (120 feet), where the youngest
of the party caught hold of an iron bar at a window and let himself
down outside the tower until he could reach the Blarney stone. Few ever
venture so foolhardy a feat, or have the muscle to hang on by one hand
at so perilous a height. The rest of us thought him a dead man. No
wonder the ancient Irish firmly believed that if one could kiss this
stone it would give him eloquence, because they knew it _could not_ be
kissed, not by one mortal in a million.

The old poet was safe in saying:

“There is a stone there
That whoever kisses,
Oh, he never misses
To grow eloquent.”

There is a kind of duplicate “Blarney stone” placed at a convenient and
easy spot on the castle for kissing, and the old woman in charge smiles
as she pockets the tourist’s shilling, turns the key in the door and
says to herself: “Lord, what fools these mortals be!”

At Queenstown I met my wife and two little ones returning from America,
the little girl suffering with a pain that shortly took her sweet life
away from us.

* * * * *

At the request of the Harper’s Magazine editor for something of the
kind, I have written an article called “My Farm in Switzerland.” My
wife has illustrated it, as well as the one on “The Swiss Rhine.”

The farmers here seem to be doing as well on ten acres as our people do
on quarter sections. There is the same complaint about mortgages and
all that, of course; but with it all, at the end of the year, the Swiss
peasant, like the American farmer, has made a living.

The investigation necessary for this paper showed me two things. First,
the Swiss are better farmers than the Americans. Second, they are ten
times as economical, else they would starve to death. Economy is a
fine art here. There is no other way to explain how it is a Swiss
lives, even poorly, on ten acres, while the Yankee requires one hundred
and sixty. Grass land here costs $200 an acre, grape land $1,000. Big
farms are impossible at such prices.

Suppose the Swiss has five acres of grape and garden land and ten of
pasture and meadow. His investment is $7,000. He lives from it with
less hard work than the American has, who owns one hundred and sixty
acres, worth $60 an acre or $9,600. The American’s investment is much
more than that of the Swiss, his labor must be double, his income the
same--a _living_. What is the matter? It is this. The one _saves_; the
other _wastes_. Expensive farm machinery does not lie around the fields
rusting to pieces in Switzerland. Horses and cattle are not thinned
down and killed off by exposure to bad weather. Care for what you have
earned, is the Swiss peasant’s motto. Waste everything you get, is
the practice of the American. After a while, careful foreigners will
own all the farms in America, and the American farmer will be loafing
around village stores, starving. Swiss economy applied to American land
culture, would enrich every farmer in America. Economy is the thing
that keeps the Swiss farmer from the poor-house.

* * * * *

I give two letters from General Sherman; the first, with something
about the Duke of Wellington, and the science of war; the second, about
President Garfield’s assassination. The little girl, referred to in the
first letter, was our little Helen, now drifting away from us, although
we did not think it.

“WASHINGTON, D. C., October 4, 1881.

“DEAR BYERS:--I have your good letter of September 21, with the slip
from the London _Times_, which I have read with profit. The English
cannot discuss any proposition without bringing in the Duke of
Wellington. No man, if living, would be quicker to avail himself of
improved transportation and communication than the Duke, but it would
astonish the old gentleman to wake up and read in the _Times_ of all
events in America and Asia the same day of their occurrence.

“The science of war, like that of natural philosophy, chemistry, must
recognize new truths and new inventions as they arise, and that is all
there is of change in the science of war since 1815. Man remains pretty
much the same, and will dodge all the risks of war and danger if by
electricity and nitroglycerine he can blow up his enemy ten miles off.
Nevertheless, manhood and courage will in future wars be of as much use
as in the past, and those who comprehend the object and come to close
quarters will win now as before.

“I am very sorry to hear that your little girl is in such precarious
health, and hope with you that the complete change in surroundings may
bring her back to her wonted health. All my flock is about as well
as usual, but now scattered. I expect Rachel home from Europe by the
Celtic, which leaves Queenstown October 21. My aide McCook lost his
wife at Salt Lake City and Bacon lost both his children, boys, this
summer.

“We all feel the effect of Garfield’s death yet, but next week the
called session of the Senate will meet, and then the political pot will
begin to boil and bubble. The telegraph keeps you so well advised that
it seems useless to attempt anything by letter.

“Give my best love to your wife and family and believe me as always,

“Your friend,

W. T. SHERMAN.”

* * * * *

“WASHINGTON, D. C., Dec. 14, 1881.

“DEAR BYERS:--I have owed you a letter for a long while, and though
we have had enough in all conscience here to furnish fit topics for
letters, I have known that the telegraph would be a long way ahead.
In Europe you know as much of the tragedy of Garfield’s shooting and
death as our own people in the interior, and many returned travelers
describe the intense interest of all classes in Garfield’s fate, as
long as he clung to life. The patient submission of our people, and
their continued endurance of the brutal Guiteau till he shall have had
a fair trial, is most honorable to us as a law-abiding people, but even
I am sometimes impatient at the law’s dallying, as this trial draws its
slow length along. I think the court means to make the trial so full,
and so perfect, that all the world will be convinced of the justice of
the sentence of death. So intense is public feeling that if the fellow
was turned loose, he would be stoned to death by the boys.

“The transition of power from Garfield to Arthur has been so regular,
so unattended by shock, that it proves the stability of the Government.
I have never known a time when there was so little political
excitement, or when the machinery of government worked more smoothly
than now. There is the same outward pressure for place, but President
Arthur fends it off with the skill of an old experienced hand. So I
infer there will be as few changes as possible. Blaine goes out to-day
and Frelinghuysen in, but it makes no more noise than a change of
bank presidents. In the army the same general composure prevails, and
we believe Congress will give us our 30,000 men, which will increase
the strength of companies and thereby increase the efficiency of the
establishment.

“All my family continues _statu quo_, reasonably well, in our house on
Fifteenth Street. Our season also seems mild for December, for this far
we have had no signs of winter.

“With my best love to all your folks, I am as ever,

“Your friend,

W. T. SHERMAN.”

On Sunday, as often happens after church here, the people were at
the polls, voting as to the adoption or rejection of a batch of laws
that had been adopted by the parliament. This is the “Referendum”
in action. Absolute order and decency prevailed, and there were no
intriguing ward politicians hanging around the polls, to buttonhole
voters. Voting is a responsible, dignified act with the Swiss. A
majority of the people seem to think the “Referendum” operates well
enough with a people so intelligent and patriotic as themselves, and in
so small a country. Yet, thousands here ridicule the idea of submitting
great questions of state to be voted on by the intelligent and ignorant
alike. In great cities, the world over, the ignorant and vicious are in
the majority, and the laws would all be bad if such citizens had the
decision of them. My own observation is that even the Swiss misuse this
Referendum and adopt just as many bad laws as they do good ones.

CHAPTER XXIV

1882-1883

VISIT NORTHERN ITALY--AMERICAN INDIANS IN ZURICH--DEATH OF THE
POET KINKEL--LETTERS FROM CARL SCHURZ AND THE POET’S WIFE--
LETTER FROM SHERMAN AS TO THE BOUNTEOUS MISSISSIPPI VALLEY--
A SECOND LETTER FROM SHERMAN--THE PRESIDENCY--CONVERSATIONS
WITH SCHERR, THE WRITER--THE POET KINKEL’S SON--HIS POWERFUL
MEMORY--WE VISIT BERLIN--MINISTER SARGENT’S TROUBLE WITH
PRINCE BISMARCK OVER AMERICAN PORK--SARGENT IS APPOINTED TO
ST. PETERSBURG--INDIANS AGAIN--BABY LIONS--VISIT AMERICA
AGAIN--FUNERAL OF THE AUTHOR OF “HOME, SWEET HOME”--SWISS
NATIONAL EXHIBITION--THE SWISS WAR MINISTER VISITS ME--WE
HAD BEEN COMRADES IN LIBBY PRISON--TROUBLE WITH FRAUDULENT
INVOICES--ORIGIN OF EXPERT SYSTEM AT CONSULATE--I SUCCEED IN
STOPPING THE FRAUDS--MY ACTION IS REPORTED AT WASHINGTON AS
SAVING A MILLION DOLLARS TO THE GOVERNMENT--ANOTHER LETTER
FROM GENERAL SHERMAN--HIS COMING RETIREMENT FROM THE ARMY.

_January, 1882._--The lake and the mountains and the white city do not
seem so beautiful to us to-day, for the little girl who loved them most
of all, lies in the next room covered with flowers.

[Illustration: Juliet’s Tomb, Verona.]

* * * * *

All was changed to us this past summer. In October we made a fourth
trip to Italy; this time to the lake regions at the foot of the Alps.
There is something about life in Northern Italy that seems to make
a stay there almost more desirable than in other places in the world.
The scenery is still Alpine, but it is the Alps with perpetual sunshine
on them, and warm laughing lakes about them. I think the peasants
more picturesque here than elsewhere. They carry red umbrellas, and
the peasant women wear short skirts, showing bright stockings of red
or white or blue. The low, white wooden sandals, with the red leather
band over the instep, worn by the women, are very pretty, too. Only
one wonders how they keep them on their feet. With every step the
sandals go click, clack, up and down, at the heels. The headgear of
the girls is a bit of black lace thrown over the head and hanging down
behind. The whole outfit, with the pretty black eyes of the girls, the
bright faces, and the merry demeanor, make one think that here, in the
sunshine of North Italy, is a happy peasantry. The men also wear bright
colors; the poorest has at least a cravat of blue and a red band on his
roguish soft felt hat.

The soft Italian language, and the singers with their guitars in the
moonlight by the lakes, add to the real romance of the scene.

The people of the lake regions are rather poor, spite of the rich
productiveness of the soil. There are too many of them, and too many
rocky heights, and mountains and lakes. The little stone-built villages
cling to some of these heights like crow nests on tree tops, but
somewhere, near to every height, on some spot of land beautiful as
Eden, we see the gardens and villas of the rich. These are the summer
homes of the aristocrats of Milan and cities farther south.

Villa Carlotta on Lake Como, sitting among the lemon trees, its gardens
washed by the blue waters, its halls and salons filled with the works
of genius, could tempt one to want to live there always.

And Villa Giulia, on that fair promontory running out into Lake Lecco
at Bellagio, seen of a summer evening with the deep blue waters on
either side, the snow white Alps in front of it, and groves of citron
and boxwood and lemon behind it, wakes the feeling in one that here
indeed is the fairest scene of all; here one could be happy.

* * * * *

The other morning the staid old city of Zurich was suddenly awakened by
the whoop of a band of American Indians. Had a cloud fallen, some of
the people could not have been more stirred up. The wild men were the
genuine article, in war paint and feathers. Not one Swiss in a thousand
had ever seen a real Indian before. It was part of a band of Chippewas,
being carried around Europe for exhibition. The show was a great
success. Everybody went to see it, and even followed the strangers
about the streets in crowds. The Indians had their difficulties,
however. An occasional one with too much “fire water” lay prone on the
sidewalk or rested in the lockup. They also had quarrels with their
manager, and daily for a time this painted band of my fellow countrymen
came to the consulate and held pow wows on the floor of the office.
They were a helpless lot of human beings there alone, knowing nothing
of the language, with a manager supposed to be robbing them. I got them
out of the lockup, and out of their other many difficulties as best I
could, and won their esteem and gratitude.

_November 16, 1882._--Three days ago the great Gottfried Kinkel was
carried to the graveyard out by the foot of the mountains. He had been
a warm friend since the day we came to Zurich. He was passionately fond
of the Swiss mountains, and we have had delightful little excursions
together. His death was sudden. One day he was stricken with apoplexy
and could not speak. He motioned his wife to help him to the window,
where he could once more look out at the beautiful mountains. He looked
long and wistfully at them and then waving them a farewell with his
hand went to his bed and died. Poetry and art and all things beautiful
wept when Kinkel died. His funeral was the greatest ever seen in
Zurich. He was buried by torchlight by the students of the University.
When the grave was closed and the great procession of uniformed corps
students with badges, flags and torches came back into the city, they
marched to a public square, formed an immense circle and, casting their
torches into a great funeral pile in the center, watched them burn to
ashes.

_December 14._--Our American statesman, Carl Schurz, had been a friend
of the poet, patriot Kinkel in the revolutionary times, and had also
rescued him from prison and death.

I wrote him a description of the funeral and received his reply to-day.

“Dec. 4, 1882.

“MY DEAR SIR:--I have just received your very kind letter of
November 21st in which you describe Kinkel’s funeral, and I thank
you most sincerely for it. His sudden death had been reported by
cable, but your letter gave me the first information about the
last days of his life, the circumstances of his death and the
touching demonstration of popular feeling at his funeral. The
letter will appear as a special correspondence in the Evening
_Post_ to-morrow.

“I enclose a letter of condolence to Mrs. Kinkel, which I shall
be greatly obliged to you for delivering or forwarding. I venture
to ask this favor of you as I do not know whether, after Kinkel’s
death, Mrs. Kinkel remained at Zurich or not. I have no doubt you
know where she is, and where the letter will reach her.

“Believe me, dear sir,

“Very truly yours,

C. SCHURZ.”

The sweet singer had now gone to be absorbed into the beautiful nature
of which he had talked to me when his daughter died. They were to be
one with the flowers and the sunshine, but without identity.

Mrs. Kinkel, a woman bright and talented, had ideas not greatly
different from her husband about this mystery called death. Once,
later, I sent her my poem of “Baby Helene,” and this was her answer:

“UNTERSTRASSE, DEN 25, 1858.

“GEEHRTER HERR CUNSUL:--Meine Freude beim Empfang Ihres Buches
war wirklich aufrichtig, und ich hatte Ihnen so gleich meinen
Dank dafür gesagt, wenn ich nicht von einem und dem andern
Gedicht so angezogen worden wäre, dass ich über das Lesen das
Schreiben zurücksetze. Die Gedichte an das liebe Helenchen haben
mich tief gerührt. Nur wer einen gleichen Verlust hatte, fühlt so
ganz den wehen Schmerz, der sich darin ausspricht mit Ihnen.

“Wie beneide ich Sie um die Hoffnung sie dereinst wiederzusehen.
Mein Trost allein ist, einstmals ewig vergessen zu können.

“‘Auf Wiedersehen’ hebe ich nur noch hervor von den vielen,
die mir besonders noch gefielen. Erst durch Sie bin ich darauf
aufmerksam gemacht dass das in englischer Sprache fehlt. Wie viel
Gutes verdanke ich nicht schon den Dichtern.

“Hoffentlich ist Ihnen die Ausfahrt mit Lawrence am Sonnabend gut
bekommen. Ich erkannte Sie leider erst im letzen Augenblick, als
das Schiff schon in Bewegung war.

“Grüssen Sie Mrs. Byers und Lawrence sehr von mir, und seien Sie
ueberzeugt, dass Sie mir mit dem Buch eine grosse Freude gemacht
haben.

“Mit vorzüglichster Hochachtung

“ergebenst

M. KINKEL.”

* * * * *

_November, 1882._--Have an interesting letter from General Sherman on
politics and farming.

“WASHINGTON, D. C., Nov. 7, 1882.

“DEAR BYERS:--Time and distance seemingly do dull the edge of
correspondence, if not of friendship. Your letter of October 22d
is received, has been seen by Mrs. Sherman, and shows that too
long an interval has passed since we have written you, but you
may rest assured that our friendly interest in you and yours is
in no way lessened, and that news from you is always most welcome
to me and mine. We still remain in Washington, except Minnie at
St. Louis, Elly at Philadelphia and Tom at Woodstock, but all
reasonably well. Last Summer Minnie lost two of her children,
both girls, one two years and eight months old, the other an
infant in arms. Both came East for health and change, though all
were as healthy as kittens. Mrs. Sherman had taken a furnished
house at Oakland on the very top of the Alleghanies, where all
the family was assembled, but the cold nights and warm days were
too much for the little ones, caused congestion of the stomach,
followed quickly by dysentery and death. I have recently been
to St. Louis and found Minnie well, and her three remaining
children, two boys and one girl, in strong vigorous health.

“I am now beginning to think of my own course of action when the
law compulsorily retires me at 64 years, viz.: Feb. 8, 1884. We
have all agreed to return to our old home at St. Louis, and as
February is a bad month for moving, I will in all probability
anticipate the time by a couple of months--move the family
in October and follow myself in November or December. So the
probability is, if you give up the Consulate and turn your
attention to your Iowa farm, I will be your neighbor and rival,
for I too own a farm in Illinois nineteen miles out from St.
Louis.

“The present has been probably the most fruitful year ever
experienced in America, all parts alike sharing the general
abundance. Of all this you are probably as well informed as I am,
but when I remember that the gold crop of California at its best
only equaled sixty-five millions a year, I am amazed to think of
a wheat crop valued at five hundred millions, and a corn crop of
eighteen hundred millions of bushels at 65 cents a bushel; other
crops in like proportion, and cotton estimated at six millions
of bales of 450 pounds each at 12 cents a pound. I am especially
glad of this, for some years, as you well know, land was held at
a discount, all persons having money preferring to buy stocks
or bonds which promised an income. Now the farming class is so
comfortable, with bounteous crops, and good homes, that the
country will draw from the crowded cities and towns the redundant
population. The farming class never give the trouble which the
manufacturing and mercantile are always threatening.

“To-day is the great election day of the country, more excited
than usual by reasons of feuds and dissenters among the
Republicans, which will enable the Democrats to elect their
candidates. Apprehension is felt that the next Congress will be
Democratic, but long heads say that success now, means defeat
next time, when another President is to be elected. Washington
goes right along improving and embellishing all the time, and I
really believe we now have the cleanest, if not the handsomest
city in the world, not excepting Paris. Of course we have no Alps
or lakes like yours at Zurich, but the Potomac when walled in and
its marshy banks converted into clean grass plots and parks will
approximate in beauty even the Rhine. But the old Mississippi
and Missouri, dirty and foul, will ever be the land of bounteous
plenty, and will in time hold the population and political
control of this continent. We will have plenty to eat and can
afford to travel to see beautiful mountains and lakes.

“Accept this in its length, not substance, as a measure of my
love and respect, and believe me always,

“Truly yours,

W. T. SHERMAN.”

One of our interesting visitors and friends these evenings is young
Dr. Kinkel, son of the great poet. He is renowned in the city for his
marvelous learning and memory. All that he has ever read, and he is
a high classical scholar, he seems to know by heart. He is writing a
history of the Byzantine Empire, and his studies for this are enormous.

I tested his memory a little last night by questions on the Life of
Washington. He answered as if the book had been open before him. Every
detail and date that he has accidentally learned as to the lives of his
friends, he can instantly recall. What was said of Macaulay could be
said of him, “He is a book in breeches.”

_December 23._--To-day I have a letter from General Sherman. He speaks
of the Presidency. Mrs. Sherman, I know, is just as much opposed to his
entering politics as is he himself.

“WASHINGTON, D. C., Dec. 12, 1882.

“DEAR BYERS:--I have just received your letter enclosing your
lines to your daughter Helen, composed to the same measure as
‘Sherman’s March to the Sea,’ and have sent both to Mrs. Sherman
for perusal.

“Congress is now in session, and the effect of the last election
is manifest. Though the Democrats have gained a large majority
for the next Congress, they recognize that their victory is
a dangerous one, for it seems to be more a rebuke to the
Republicans for the very sins of political government, which the
Democrats long since inaugurated and will carry into practice
the moment they gain power, than a victory to the Democrats.
No single man can handle the affairs of this country without
the agency of a strong well organized party, and all political
parties are about the same.

“As to my ever consenting to the use of my name as a Presidential
candidate, that is entirely out of the question. I recall too
well the personal experience of Generals Jackson, Harrison,
Taylor, Grant, Hayes and Garfield to be tempted by the siren
voice of flattery. It is too like the case of the girl who
marries a drunken lover in the hopes to reform him. It never has
succeeded and never will; the same of any individual trying to
reform the government, he will be carried along and involved in
its scandals and unavoidable sins. No, I am going back next fall
to St. Louis to spend the remainder of my days in comparative
peace and comfort.

“Wishing you and yours all the happiness possible in your sphere
of action,

“I am as always your friend,

W. T. SHERMAN.”

* * * * *

Was with Professor Scherr and others last night at the Orsini again.
Scherr is not only a literary man, he is an educated German thinker.
I was interested in some things he said about human existence. “Nine
men,” said he, “were born to serve a tenth. It never was otherwise;
it never would be otherwise; it never could be otherwise.” “Education
of the masses is all a mistake,” he continued. “Education only makes
them discontented, and humanity is not bettered.” I wondered to myself
if this were true. In America, I reflected, the masses are educated.
They are, too, the most discontented people on earth. Nobody ever
saw an American quite satisfied with his condition. I observed to
Prof. Scherr that in certain Italian districts where the people were
wholly illiterate and poor, I had noticed many signs of happiness.
“Exactly,” replied the Professor. “They don’t hear constantly of what
somebody else has got, and so believe they have got it all. This belief
satisfies them, they want nothing more; their ignorance is their
greatest blessing.”

“The Swiss, though,” I said, “are all educated and are happy.” “Not
a bit of it,” he answered, “they are growing more discontented every
day. They were happy till they got free schools and education, and till
they saw your rich American and English tourists living in luxury
and scattering gold like French compliments. No, education without
talent, is a curse. The first social revolution in Europe will be here
within a gun shot of where we are sitting, here in so-called educated
Switzerland.”

_January, 1883._--Spent the holidays at Berlin visiting in the home of
Mr. Sargent, our American Minister.

Mr. Sargent had for weeks been in a stew with the German Government
on account of their prohibiting our American meats. The same kind of
trouble was had in Switzerland; but when it happened that I was able to
prove that the American hams in which trichina were _officially found_,
were _Antwerp_ hams “fixed up” and stamped “American,” the ban on
American meats to Switzerland was raised.

Germany, however, for her own reasons, intended fight, and press and
Government opposed Mr. Sargent and the American exporters’ rights.
In the train on our way to Berlin, a German newspaper happened to
fall into my hands that told, not intending it, the whole story of
Bismarck’s opposition to Mr. Sargent and the American pig. On his
great estates he had pigs himself to sell, so said the newspaper. I
translated this article and put it in Mr. Sargent’s hands at once.

In a secret official dispatch to Washington, he quoted this German
newspaper as to Bismarck’s pigs, and put it in quotation marks. By some
means the dispatch was given to the public by the Department, and the
quotation marks of Mr. Sargent left out. The newspapers printed it as
an official declaration by the American Minister at Berlin. Bismarck
and his followers naturally were soon furious, and a course of action
was adopted that should be as offensive as possible to Americans.

We reached the capital one morning before daylight. Mr. Sargent met us,
sent us to his house in his carriage, and hurried off to report our
names to the Chief of Police. We had a great laugh over it all at the
breakfast table, when he came back. There is a fine of many marks for
taking people to one’s house in the German capital, without letting the
police know who they are. It is by such means that Germany keeps track
of everybody.

[Illustration: Kaiser Wilhelm.--_Page 226._]

Our Minister’s home was close to the Thiergarten, and there we saw the
old Emperor William, the Crown Prince Frederick and others of the royal
family, walking or driving daily. They were simple enough and were not
run after in their walks. I was told that every time the Emperor leaves
the palace for a drive, the fact is telephoned to every police station
in the city, and that extra officials and detectives in civilian dress
are abroad everywhere in parks and public places. It seemed to me that
on all occasions in Berlin half the people we met were soldiers or
policemen.

The history of the German capital is of more interest than the city
itself. One wonders that the Germans had courage to build a city on
this great ugly sand plain, nor can one think of comparing Berlin for
beauty with Paris or Florence, Vienna, Dresden or Washington. But
Berlin is a great city and its collections and museums are among the
greatest in the world.

At one of these museums we saw the golden necklaces, and rich headgear
of Helen of Troy. Dr. Schliemann, the explorer, had presented them to
the German Government. They are of immense interest and enormous value.
Every night the case containing them is let down into a great vault
under the museum. The elaborate gold work of Helen’s arm bands is as
fresh and bright as if made yesterday.

At Potsdam nothing interested us so much as “Sans Souci,” and
especially the chair that Frederick the Great was sitting in when he
died. We also stood by Frederick’s coffin under the pulpit of the old
Garrison Church.

Our conductor let me have a candle that burned above the coffin. I
thought of the time when Napoleon stood in this little dark chamber by
the body of one as great in Germany as he himself was in France. But
both the great men did their countries more harm than good.

Mr. Sargent gave one or two large dinners while we were at his house.
There was little talk of interest, but plenty of good music, and
plenty of good wine, which in a German company, might have stimulated
to notable sayings. Perhaps there were too many American teetotalers
present for a good time. I notice a few turn their glasses upside down,
in a sort of “I am better than you” fashion. Had they quietly allowed
their glasses to be filled, nobody would have asked why they did not
empty them. I have noticed always at German and Swiss dinners how the
talk sparkled with the wine, and how the witty things said were in some
way a test of the quality of the stuff in the decanter.

We went with the Sargents to the circus and saw the Crown Prince
Frederick and his boys and girls in a box. The Prince had a singular
and delicate way of applauding softly, with the palm of one gloved hand
on the back of the other. His children were all glee at the antics of
the performers, and expressed their joy in a much more boisterous way.

An enormous closed cage of wild lions was hauled into the arena, and
when the boards were let down and they saw the blinding lights and the
crowds of people their roaring was terrific.

A big African armed with a shotgun was let into the cage from an iron
hood suspended against the doors. There was the greatest excitement.
Many people instantly rose and left, fearing to see the man killed
before their eyes. We kept our seats. There was no performing with the
lions; it was simply a dare-devil venture to go among them, for they
were absolutely untamed. The African had serious difficulty in getting
back into his hood. It was his last act but one; the next night he was
torn in pieces.

In one of the public halls of Berlin, we recognized to our surprise a
party of American Indians performing war dances. They were the same
Indians who had been at Zurich and whom I had helped out of serious
difficulties, as their manager, it was claimed, had broken his contract
and left the poor barbarians stranded. They said then they would never
forget me. On seeing my wife and myself in the Berlin hall, they
suddenly stopped their dancing and to the astonishment of the assembled
spectators leaped from the platform, grasped me by the hand and called
to each other: “It is Mr. Byers! It is Mr. Byers!” They were overjoyed
at seeing some one in all Europe who had been kind to them.

A little later, in March, these Indians took passage home on the
steamer from Bremen. The vessel was wrecked, still in sight of land,
and every soul of them drowned. I, too, had engaged passage on the
steamer, but business detained me in Zurich till the next boat.

On Sunday morning we went to the Zoölogical Gardens, where one of the
keepers pleased my wife by raking a baby tiger and a baby lion out of
their cages and giving them to her to hold in her arms. The lion was a
chubby, woolly little fellow, the size of a cat and very cunning. While
we had it in our hands, the mother stood perfectly quiet and glared
at us as much as to say: “Hurt it, and these iron bars won’t hold me
a moment.” She manifested great joy when the little fellow was passed
back into the cage. The action of the tiger mother was not different,
except that she gave a revengeful growl when she got her baby back.

Several times in going to the city, I passed the home of Bismarck. It
was an unpretentious place, but armed sentinels walked up and down the
pavement in front of it.

At noon one day, I noticed hundreds of people standing in front of the
Emperor’s palace. I stopped to see what was the matter. The increasing
crowd stood there in the rain. “There he is,” I heard some one cry out,
and there was a doffing of hats. “There’s who?” I asked of a man near
me. “Why, don’t you see him at the window?” he answered. It was the old
Emperor standing there, smiling.

Once a day all Berlin can look on their Kaiser, and once a day the
Kaiser interrupts his Cabinet council, steps to the front window and
looks upon his people. It is much better than the crazy hand-shaking of
the mob at the White House.

On our way back to Switzerland, we stopped at beautiful Dresden. One
night at the opera we saw a white-haired old gentleman in a box,
closely following the libretto and the singers, whose face seemed
familiar to my wife. It was the King of Saxony--kind old Albert who,
incognito, had played with our children that day in the mountains, and
to whom our little girl had cried as he left, “Good-bye Mr. Albert.”

* * * * *

Our Minister’s difficulties at Berlin increased. The matter of American
pig, or no pig, became a battle between German and American newspapers.
Correcting the false statement and the misrepresentations as to Mr.
Sargent’s Washington letter, helped none at all. The German newspapers
simply did not want American meat. To American farmers and shippers, it
meant hundreds of millions of dollars. Mr. Sargent stuck to his post
and did his duty, and in a way, our Government supported him. One night
Bismarck gave a grand diplomatic dinner. How could he receive Sargent
socially when turning the cold shoulder to him officially? The press
wondered what would happen. Of course our Minister had to be invited,
and of course he had to go, or else show the white feather. Mr. Sargent
was not the white feather kind, and he went. “Things went smoothly
enough,” he wrote me, “and the newspapers got no sensation to report.
It was a very quiet and rather tame party. Of course Bismarck and I did
not spend the entire evening talking together. He didn’t effuse and I
didn’t effuse. That was all there was of it.”[8]

Our Government approved his course at Berlin by appointing him Minister
to St. Petersburg, but he declined.

Sargent, on coming home, was talked of for the Presidency. An abler
man, a purer patriot, a clearer headed statesman, is not often thought
of for that exalted post.

_June 30, 1883._--On the 29th of March I went to America on the
“Wieland.” Had thirteen days at sea and twelve of them storm and
hurricane. The ship was an old rat trap, on her last voyage before
repairs. I did not know this until we were in the middle of the ocean.

A young German, a gilded youth, the son of Prince ----, was on board
with me, proposing to try gay life a few years in America. One day he
asked me if the American shop girls were all “fast,” as in certain
continental cities, and if young men were interfered with for ruining
them. I observed that there was a difficulty; these girls mostly had
brothers who would shoot such a scoundrel on sight. The princelet
became pensive all at once, and seemed to be reflecting that his
visions of fun in the United States were turning all to fog.

* * * * *

Just before my return to Switzerland, I happened to be in Washington
again. It was the day set for the public funeral of the author of
“Home, Sweet Home.” Corcoran, the Washington banker, was paying all
the expenses, and a warship had brought the poet’s remains home from
Africa. The President and the Cabinet and all the dignitaries in
Washington, as well as many invited guests, took part. Howard Payne had
been a consul at the time of his death. I was asked to participate
in the ceremony, and went as one of the staff of General Hancock. The
ceremonies commenced in the Corcoran Art Gallery. It was an impressive
occasion. I felt very strange, standing there close by the little white
coffin that contained all that was left of the sweet singer. President
Arthur was one of the pall bearers. At the cemetery there were long
rows of elevated seats for the participants. I recall sitting beside
General Hancock and looking with interest on the magnificent figure
of the Gettysburg hero. He certainly was the most splendid looking
military man I ever saw anywhere. A statue of Payne was unveiled at the
grave, and a chorus of five hundred voices sang “Home, Sweet Home.” A
storm was threatening and black clouds hung over the scene. Just as
the flag was being drawn aside from the marble face, the sun suddenly
came out through a rift in the clouds, while at the very same instant a
myriad of yellow butterflies fluttered and clustered about the poet’s
face. The vast multitude present saw it, and were moved to exclamations
of delight.

I visited my home out West, and returned on the “Hammonia.” My old
school-fellow, J. D. Edmundson, went along. We had then, and more than
once afterward, good times together, excursioning among the Swiss Alps.

His was a case of American pluck. When we left school neither of us
had a penny. I soon went to the war, and he to a Western town to earn
a fortune. Not twenty years went by when the penniless youth, a banker
now, traveled the world over, with his check good for half a million,
and his mind stored from books and travel.

_September, 1883._--The Swiss National Exhibition is open all this
summer. Though small, the finest in detail I ever saw anywhere. Never
saw so much of real beauty arranged together. The location, too, in a
great park between two rapid running rivers, is romantic. It is in view
of the Alps and the beautiful lake.

On “Newspaper Day” I had the honor, for the want of a better, to reply
to the toast, “The American Press.”

I also wrote reports of the successful exhibition to our Government.

The Hon. Emil Frey, Swiss Cabinet Minister, now visited us out on
the lake. Col. Frey had been a soldier in our army, was captured and
suffered, with me, many horrid months in Libby prison. Our reunion
under such different scenes will never be forgotten. He is a great big,
generous man in body, mind, and heart. Because of his deserts, there
is no post in Switzerland he can not have for the asking. In fact, he
don’t have to ask. He is one of Shakespeare’s men who achieve honor and
also have honor thrust upon them.

He was later elected President of Switzerland.

_January, 1884._--These were the days when certain unscrupulous silk
shippers were robbing the United States Treasury of almost millions
yearly by undervaluation of invoiced goods. Honest importers were
nearly driven out of the market. There was a constant warfare between
the consul and the undervaluer. At last I succeeded in my own district,
by employing (at my own expense) trained silk experts. The plan worked
well, and Uncle Sam soon employed experts at many of the leading
consulates. There was tremendous profit in it for the Government.
For my zeal in stopping the frauds, and because of my long service,
President Arthur promoted me. A little later, an Assistant Secretary
of the Treasury reported officially that Consul Byers had saved the
Government in his own district not less than a million dollars, or
enough to support the whole consular service for years. He urged a
recognition of these services. General Sherman, too, had joined in
asking my advancement. One day, later, I saw this little note among the
Department files:

“22nd January, 1881.

“DEAR MR. SECRETARY:--I commend Mr. Byers to the President’s
most favorable notice. He was one of my soldier boys, whom I
released from prison at Columbia. He is now at Zurich, is a real
poet, a good writer, and is one of the most modest, unselfish,
and zealous men I ever knew. His promotion would be a beautiful
recognition of past services.

W. T. SHERMAN.”

_November 10._--Yesterday I received the following letter from General
Sherman:

“WASHINGTON, D. C, Oct. 24, 1883.

“DEAR BYERS:--I received in due season your valued letter of
September 30th, enclosing the editorial of the London _Times_,
which I had seen, but am none the less obliged for the thought
which suggested your action. The time is now near at hand when
I shall return to St. Louis, where my family is already happily
domiciled. I have never known Mrs. Sherman more content, for
she never regarded Washington as a home, but she recognizes her
present house as a real home. The girls seem equally satisfied.
The actual date of my retirement is Feb. 8, 1884, but I thought
it right to allow Sheridan to come in at an earlier date so as
to make any recommendations he chose for the action of the next
Congress, and I asked of the President an order to authorize me
to turn over the command on the first day of November, which he
did in a very complimentary way on that day. I will turn over my
office to Sheridan with as little fuss or ceremony as a Colonel
would do in transferring his Regt. to the Lt. Col.

“I will then pay a visit to Elly at Philadelphia, afterward New
York and then St. Louis. My address there will be Number 912
Garrison Avenue, a house you must remember. I have had it fitted
up nicely. We are all very well, and I am especially so.

“I do not feel the least slighted in this whole business, for
Congress has acted most liberally with me.

“I am constantly asked how I shall occupy my active mind and
body. I postpone all thought of this till the time come, but I am
resolved not to be tempted into politics, or to enter into any
employment which could bring money liability.

“I hope you also will get your promotion, and then come home and
settle on your Iowa farm. We should then be neighbors. Love to
Mrs. Byers and the family.

“Your friend,

W. T. SHERMAN.”

CHAPTER XXV

1884

SOME INTERESTING LETTERS FROM GENERAL SHERMAN--REQUESTS FOR
SOUVENIRS--HIS “FLAMING SWORD”--ONE ON THE PRESIDENCY--I AM
APPOINTED CONSUL GENERAL FOR ITALY--AN AMERICAN FOURTH OF JULY
PICNIC ON LAKE ZURICH--LORD BYRON’S HOME IN SWITZERLAND--
SOME OLD LETTERS ABOUT HIS LIFE THERE--THE LAKE DWELLINGS OF
SWITZERLAND--KELLER, THE ANTIQUARIAN--POWER OF SWISS TORRENTS.

In a recent volume of my poems, some little change had been made in the
stanzas of “The March to the Sea.” General Sherman did not like these
changes, and wrote me that in his opinion “no writer, having once given
a thing to the public, had any right to change it.”

He refers again to his preference in the following letter:

“ST. LOUIS, MO., Feb. 24, 1884.

“DEAR BYERS:--Yours of Feb. 6th is received. I had previously
noticed that in the printed volumes there were variations,
especially in the ‘March to the Sea.’ And I had simply noted on
the margin of my copy that I liked the old version the best.
Indeed, I think that Minnie has the original which was handed me
at Columbia, which you remember was beautifully written. I have
no doubt you will have occasion to enlarge your volume in time,
and the last edition will always be accepted as the standard.

“We have had universally a hard winter, with storms and flood,
of which you have doubtless heard as much at Zurich as if you
were living in Iowa. The winter now begins to break, we have more
sunshine, the grass begins to grow a green tint, and even the
bark of the trees shows signs of a change. A hard winter makes a
good summer, and I shall expect a pleasant summer.

“I find not the least trouble in putting in my time. Everybody
supposes that I have nothing to do, and writes to me for tokens
of remembrance, from a baby whistle for a namesake, to the
‘flaming sword’ I carried aloft at the South, to decorate his or
her library. To comply with their kind messages, I would need
a fortune and an arsenal. In fact and truth, we have a good
comfortable home, and by economy we can live out our appointed
time, and I do aim to manage so that my children will not have
to beg of Government some pitiable office. I will build a neat
cottage on my Illinois farm, and two good dwelling houses for
rent on some lots we have around here for a long time, on which
we have been paying taxes.

“In August, I will go to Minnetonka, to attend the meeting of the
Army of the Tennessee.

“We are all reasonably well and are always glad to hear from you.
Give my best love to Mrs. Byers, and congratulate her on the
development of that boy of yours.

“Ever yours,

W. T. SHERMAN.”

_July 3._--Received a most interesting letter from General Sherman
telling of his opposition to the use of his name for the Presidency.

“ST. LOUIS, MO., June 21, 1884.

“DEAR BYERS:--I received your letter of June 1st some days ago,
and would have answered earlier, but had to go down to Carthage,
Joplin, etc., in Southwest Missouri, to see a district of country
settled up in great part by our old soldiers, who have made it
a real garden, with nice farms, pretty houses, with churches,
schools, etc., resembling New England, North Ohio, etc., rather
than old Missouri, for which the Creator has done so much and
man so little. So after all, we at St. Louis must look for
civilization and refinement to come as a reflex wave from the
West.

“We are now established in the very house in which you found us
in 1875-6, in good condition, and with employment sufficient for
recreation, diversion, etc.

“Last night I had to make a sort of an address to the Grand Army,
in presenting the portrait of Brig. Gen. T. E. G. Ransom, after
whom the post is named, and if printed, I may send you a copy. I
do all that I can to keep out of the newspapers, but they keep
paid spies to catch one’s chance expressions, to circulate over
the earth as substantial news. Recently I was informed by parties
of National fame that in the Chicago Republican Convention, in
case of a dead-lock between Blaine and Arthur, my name would be
used. I begged to be spared the nomination but was answered that
no man _dared_ refuse a call of the people. I took issue that a
political party convention was not the people of the U. S., and
that I was not a bit afraid and would decline a nomination in
such language as would do both myself and the convention harm.
Fortunately Blaine and Logan were nominated, and they are fair
representatives of the Republican party. Next month another set
of fellows will meet at Chicago and will nominate Jeff Davis,
Ben Butler, Tilden, Cleveland or some other fellow--no matter
whom--and the two parties can fight it out. Fortunately, and
thanks to the brave volunteer soldiers and sailors, the ship
of state is now anchored in a safe harbor, and it makes little
difference who is the captain. Our best Presidents have been
accidents, and it is demonstrated by experience that men of
prominent qualities cannot be elected. Therefore I will take
little part, sure that whoever occupies the White House the next
four years, will have a hard time of it, and be turned out to
grass by a new and impatient, disappointed set. Meantime all
the fertile spots of a vast domain are being occupied by an
industrious class, who will produce all the food needed by our
own population and the rest of the world, and will buy what they
need, including the silks of France and Switzerland. Of course
you do right in watching the invoices to see that the revenues
of Uncle Sam are not defrauded, but if you expect to attract the
notice of the State Department or the country, I fear you will be
disappointed.

“I will go up to Minnesota about the middle of July to attend an
encampment of the Grand Army of the Republic, and will wait over
at Minnetonka till the middle of August, for a meeting of the
society of the Army of the Tennessee, after which I will return
to St. Louis till mid-winter, when I will go East for social
engagements and the meetings of the Regents of the Smithsonian of
which I retain membership. Marriages and deaths and the hundreds
of incidents in every community, occupy my time so that thus far
I have not been oppressed by ennui. I recall perfectly the house
in Bocken in which I saw you in 1873, and sometimes doubt if you
will be able to content yourself equally well in Iowa when the
time forces itself on you; but the world moves right along, and
we must conform.

“I am as always your friend,

W. T. SHERMAN.”

_July 4._--To-day, joined by all the Americans we could muster, and a
few Swiss and English friends, we chartered a pretty steamer and went
to the Island of Ufenau. It was a nice sight to see the boat sailing
along the Zurich waters, covered with American flags. The Swiss band
could play none of our American airs, but “God Save the Queen” did just
as well.

“She’s nothing but an old granny, though, and everybody laughs at her,
privately,” exclaimed an English lady to me as the band struck up the
tune. This want of respect for the Queen is not so uncommon among
English living on the continent as one would imagine.

Gladstone, too, whose name I honor, comes in for any amount of bullying
and abusing among traveling Englishmen. “He simply ought to be hung,
that’s what ought to happen to him,” I heard one Englishman bawl out to
another Englishman once. I was not so especially surprised. For some
reason or other, most of the English we meet shake their heads, when
we praise the great Christian statesman. I wonder if only the jingo
English are rich enough to travel. Gladstone’s friends, if any abroad,
are dreadfully silent.

We had a fine picnic on the island to-day, with the blue waters of
the lake about us and white Alps right in front of us. One American
signalized himself by getting drunk. We left him in a farmhouse on the
island.

Came home with a glorious sunset turning the Alps into crimson and
gold. One view like this evening would repay for a journey over the
ocean, and we have had it almost daily for fifteen years.

On reaching Bocken I found a cablegram from Senator Wilson saying I had
been promoted to be Consul General at Rome. I was happier that the news
came on this particular day. When I went out on the terrace though, and
looked at the beautiful and familiar scenes around me that I must leave
forever, the pleasure over my promotion was almost turned into a pang.

* * * * *

A few weeks ago, Cupples, Upham & Co., in Boston, printed the first
edition of my volume of poems called “The Happy Isles.” They are now
sending me reviews and notices of the book. They are as good as I could
wish. It was pleasant to-day, too, to receive a warm letter commending
my poems from Oliver Wendell Holmes. Some of them “had brought the
tears to his eyes.” To me this was sweeter praise than anything the
reviewers could possibly say. Whittier, too, wrote a pretty little
Quaker letter, full of kind praise. One of the poems, “The Marriage of
the Flowers,” he had picked out as the best of all. I hear it is being
much copied. “If You Want a Kiss, Why Take It” also seems to please the
editors. A friend writes “they are copying it, everywhere.”

* * * * *

Recently we went to see Byron’s home, villa “Diadati,” a few miles out
from Geneva. It is a handsome house with windows and balconies opening
on to the lake. Here he wrote “Manfred,” “The Dream,” parts of “Childe
Harold” and “Darkness.”

[Illustration: Byron’s Home on Lake Geneva.--_Page 240._]

I could not help thinking of him and Shelley and Shelley’s wife,
sitting out there on the veranda nights, telling ghost stories. I came
across some letters the other day, long out of print, written by a
Swiss, who also was whiling his days away on this lake in 1816. The
first one says, “Last night I met Lord Byron at Madame de Stael’s. I
can compare no creature to him. His tones are music, and his features
the features of an angel. One sees, though, a little Satan shining in
his eyes which, however, is itself half pious. The ladies are mad after
him. They surround him like little bacchantes, and nearly tear him to
pieces. I hold him as the greatest living poet. Every stormy passion
is witnessed in his glance. One sees the corsair in his look, which,
though, often is good, tender, and even melancholy.”

I also have followed Byron’s footsteps in his trips in the higher
Alps. He went up into the Simmenthal to Thun, to Interlacken, and the
heights near to the Jungfrau. “These scenes,” he wrote, “are beyond all
description or previous conception.”

My boy made a picture of the old ruin of a tower near Interlacken,
pointed out as the scene where the “Manfred” of the poem struggled with
the spirits. Manfred was Byron’s best work, but the printers left the
best line of it out, by accident. What would Tennyson nowadays say to a
publisher’s leaving the best line out of his best poem?

Byron liked the Jungfrau better than Mt. Blanc, and the scenes about
the upper end of Lake Geneva inspired him. “All about here,” he
exclaimed once, “is a sense of existence of love in its most extended
and sublime capacity, and of our participation of its good and its
glory.”

His trip among the grandeur of the higher Alps did not tear him away
from his wretched self. He could not forget that he was Byron, and his
“Manfred,” arguing with ghosts in the old ruin by Lake Thun, might have
been a photograph of himself. That’s what Goethe believed it to be,
anyway.

Last week, Professor Ferdinand Keller, the Swiss antiquarian, asked
me to visit the Lake Dwelling excavations at Robenhausen. This is
an excavated village of the stone age, 5,000 years old, the experts
think--maybe older still. The famous Keller himself is a marvel, and
might be out of some other age. He is eighty or ninety years old, a
little, short man, with white hair standing straight on end, shaggy
eyebrows, perfectly immense in their projection above a pair of eyes
that burn like stars. Spite of his many years, he is bright, cheery and
active, and capable of labor as a boy of thirty. His face is as well
known in Zurich as one of the city monuments. The young people think he
has walked the streets always, and nobody expects him ever to die.

His antiquarian rooms look out over the lake. Indeed the old stone
Helmhouse is built in the lake, and it contains the greatest
curiosities of the world. One day Keller was looking out of his
window and observed some queer shadows of things down in the water.
Investigation proved these “things” to be piles, on which in some
remote age, houses and towers had been built. Shortly, the shallow
inlets of half the lakes of the country were found to have once been
the abode of peoples. The oldest of all, like Robenhausen, were of the
age of stone. I was glad of a chance to go, and excavate a little for
myself in these towns that were old and forgotten a thousand years
before Pompeii was even born. This particular village has been perhaps
twelve hundred feet square and stood on a platform supported by 100,000
piles. It was three hundred feet from the shore and was once connected
with the mainland by a bridge. In some of the villages once lived a
people possibly as much civilized as the Mexican of to-day. This is
proved by the relics found in the later ones of looms and cloth, and
swords and jewelry of lovely patterns. At Robenhausen life had been
simple, but I myself dug out specimens of good cloth. There is nothing
to see at Robenhausen save the myriad of rotting piles where the turf
bed that took the place of what was once a lake has been removed. All
the belongings of the village are buried in mud and water. The cedar
and beech poles on which the town once stood had been sharpened by fire
before driving. They were twelve feet long and eighteen inches around
and stood in regular rows. The huts on the platform (two or three
complete ones have been found) were one story high, twenty-two feet
wide and twenty-seven feet long, built of upright poles matted together
with willows and plastered with clay inside and out. The floors, too,
were plastered and the roofs were made of rushes. The remains of
grinding stones and mills have been found in every cabin. Not the sign
of a hieroglyphic or an alphabet has ever been found, to show who those
people were.

I prepared for Harper’s Magazine a paper called “The Swiss Lake
Dwellers,” describing the excavations at all the Swiss lakes up to the
present time. A Swiss artist illustrated it for me.[9]

* * * * *

We hear much of the awful force of Swiss mountain torrents. The other
day I saw what is ordinarily a brook suddenly rise and sweep thousands
of tons of huge rocks on to farms in the valley. The debris of rock
and granite was from three to ten feet deep for a mile. The force of
these streams is simply tremendous beyond belief--the fall is so great;
even the wide river Reuss falls 5,000 feet in thirty miles.

It is a constant wonder why people build homes and hamlets in the way
of these awful torrents when their destruction some day is almost
certain. However, it is on a par with their building villages on
mountain crags and on almost unapproachable slopes when there is plenty
of level land in the word.

* * * * *

Yesterday Koller, the animal painter, asked us to take tea in his
studio. Congressman Lacey and his wife went with us. Koller is
pronounced, by the Swiss at least, to be the greatest animal painter
living. He had a splendid harvest scene on the easel--storm coming up,
peasants hurrying to get the hay on the wagon, the threatening sky, the
uneasy horses, their tails and manes, like the dresses of the girls,
blown aside with the wind. It seemed to me I never saw so much action
in a picture. Koller was threatened with blindness not long ago, when
the prices of his pictures went sky high. Agents were sent out of
Germany to buy them up at whatever figure. His great painting of the
St. Gothard diligence crossing the Alps is famous. Nothing finer in
the way of galloping horses and mountain pass scenery can be imagined.
His home and studio are on a little horn of land running out into the
lake. He keeps a herd of his own cattle for painting, and every day
these beautiful dumb helpers of his are seen in the shallow water of
the lake. Mrs. Koller poured the tea for us. She looks like an artist’s
wife. Koller is a big, full-bearded German-looking Swiss, seventy years
old, who is beloved all over the little republic for his supreme art.
Switzerland has four great names in art: Calame, Stückelberg, Böcklin,
Koller.

CHAPTER XXVI

1884

START FOR ITALY--THE CHOLERA--TEN DAYS IN QUARANTINE ON
LAKE MAGGIORE--A HEROIC KING--WE ARE PRESENTED TO QUEEN
MARGARET--AMERICAN ARTISTS IN ROME--THE ROYAL BALLS--
RECEPTIONS AND PARTIES--MEET MANY PEOPLE OF NOTE--THE HILLS
OF ROME--MINISTER ASTOR AND HIS HOME--HUGH CONWAY--IBSEN--
MARION CRAWFORD--ONE OF THE BONAPARTES--KEAT’S ROOM--THE
CARDINALS--ISCHIA DESTROYED--CHRISTMAS IN ROME--LETTER FROM
GENERAL SHERMAN--HIS VIEWS OF ROME--CLEVELAND’S ELECTION--
FRANZ LISZT AGAIN.

_August 4._--Sunday evening I walked from Bocken to Zurich to take
the train for my new post at Rome. Walked along the Albis hills above
the lake, ten miles. It was a delightful summer evening and the view
of mountains and lake seemed finer than ever before. I could not help
stopping many times to turn round and drink in the glorious scene,
possibly for the last time. It was the only time I ever shed tears on
leaving a scene of beauty. Besides I was leaving Switzerland, where I
had had fifteen happy years.

It was a dangerous time to go to Italy. The cholera was raging in
Spezia not less than in Marseilles and Toulon. Many Italians were
flying home from the scourge-stricken districts, and at the last
moment I learned that a quarantine had been established on the Italian
frontier. I hoped, however, to get through at a little village on Lake
Maggiore. To my surprise all the lake region was filled with guards
and I was soon arrested and cooped up with a thousand others at an old
sawmill by the lake.

For ten long days I walked alone up and down the upper floor of that
big sawmill, every hour expecting the cholera to break out among the
crowd of refugees down in the yard. Once a day a guard was sent to
conduct me down to the lake, where I could go in and swim. What a treat
that was for me! The guard stood on the shore with fixed bayonet,
watching that I did not swim out too far and get away. Mrs. Terry,
our good American friend, happened to be spending the summer in the
mountains near by. She heard of me and, like a good Samaritan, brought
me grapes and other delicacies. We could only stand and talk to each
other at a distance with the line of guards between us.

One morning I received a great big document, it looked like a college
diploma, saying that I had finished with the quarantine and could
proceed on my way.

In the early morning twilight I crossed beautiful Lake Maggiore in a
row boat, and like a bird let loose from its cage flew away to Rome.

Once on a time when my wife and I had been in Rome visiting, a lady
friend said to us just as we were about leaving: “Come first with me
to the fountain of Trevi, throw a penny into the water, and you will
return to Rome.” We went one beautiful moonlight night and tossed our
coins into the fountain. And now, sure enough, here I was again in the
Eternal City.

The officials of the consulate met me at the train. I went through
another terrible fumigation for the cholera, and was soon settled down
to live in Italy. The office was at once moved to Palazzo Mariani, 30
Via Venti Settembre, and there later we made our home, when it was safe
for my family to follow me.

My friends, Congressman Lacey and wife, who seemed to be about the only
strangers in Rome, also met me. We stopped at the great, big, empty
“Hotel di Roma.” We had it all to ourselves, and we had much amusement
with the waiter, who understood none of our lingo, nor we his, further
than the word “ancora” (more). The little mugs of milk he brought us
for our figs, were but spoonfuls, so we constantly cried “ancora!”
He smiled, and the mugs came almost by the dozen. I was no little
surprised to see on my bill a long list of repeated charges, sometimes
written out, sometimes dotted down, for half a yard. It was the word
“ancora,” at a half a franc apiece.

The Laceys left Rome, after taking one long, last look at me at the
station, for they believed they were leaving me there to die of the
cholera.

Rome was as silent as a grave that summer. Everybody seemed seized
with a panic, and fled to the sea or the mountains. I was indeed
lonesome, and with just half of an attack of cholera would have
probably succumbed. I saw little but closed shop windows, silent
streets, and men going about the alleys and corners scattering lime and
disinfectants. Everybody I knew or met carried a bottle of “cholera
cure” in his coat pocket for there was danger any moment of tumbling
over in the street. Away from the office I scarcely met a soul I could
talk with. Suddenly I bethought myself of my friend Frank Simmons, the
sculptor, and was at once ensconced with him in the rooms above his
studio. When not busy at the consulate I could spend my time watching
him turn his live models into clay and marble, and in the beautiful
summer nights we sat up in his rooms and talked of art, and America,
till midnight.

Mr. Hooker, the banker, (what American that ever went to Rome in
the last twenty-five years did not know him?) invited Mr. Simmons
and myself to supper. He lived in the palace once owned by Madame
Bonaparte, the mother of Napoleon. Here she died. The chambers were
still filled with paintings and sculpture and other souvenirs of the
Napoleon family. That night Mr. Hooker, Mr. Simmons and myself sat
till towards the morning round the little table in the very room where
Napoleon’s mother spent her evenings thinking of her eight children,
seven of whom were kings.

In a few weeks, the scare over, the people commenced returning. Then
the cholera broke out in Italy sure enough. It was at Naples now, and
with horrible fatality.

The brave King Humbert took train and went there to help and to
encourage the afflicted. He went into the hospitals everywhere, took
the sick by the hand, and possibly helped many a dying one to take
courage and live. He took his own provisions with him, even drinking
water, from Rome, and whenever he went among the sick he smoked
constantly. His staff complained he was leading them all to death, but
they had to follow into dens and holes and hospitals more dangerous
than a battle field.

[Illustration: King Humbert.--_Page 247._]

[Illustration: Queen Margherita.--_Page 247._]

_September._--My family have come, and now we are all living at the
Consulate, Via Venti Settembre 30.

The King came back to Rome from cholera-stricken Naples a day or
two ago. He has become the greatest hero in Italy. I never saw such
a reception. The main streets of Rome were packed solid with human
beings, trying to touch the King’s extended hand, his horses, the
wheels of the carriage. The beautiful Queen Margaret sat at his side
smiling and bowing right and left. The young Crown Prince sat on the
front seat. I did not know a King could be loved so by his people. But
this King was a hero.

The Van Marters had asked me to view the procession from their balcony
on the Via Nazionale. They had hung out American flags. The King saw
the colors, took off his hat and profoundly greeted them as he passed.

I never saw a President receive half the ovation that this King did,
riding through Rome with his Queen and son, and without any escort or
signs of royalty whatever. The vast crowd were simply mad with pride,
enthusiasm and love for their King and Queen Margaret.

_October._--It is easy enough to get acquainted in Rome, at least for
an official; besides, there are many of one’s countrymen living here,
and parties and receptions are the order of the day and night through
the entire social season. The members of the consular and diplomatic
corps we soon met, and then there are so many American artists here
worth knowing whose studios are open to all lovers of the beautiful.
We made immediately the acquaintance of U. S. Minister and Mrs. W.
W. Astor at their home in the Rospigliosi palace. There we met many
interesting people.

Mrs. Astor is a young and very beautiful woman, and very charming in
her manners. They have two pretty children. Mr. W. Waldorf Astor,
though a multi-millionaire, personally leads a simple life in Rome.
He is a close student. Every bright morning sees him riding with
an antiquarian among the outskirts and ruins of the city. He is an
acknowledged authority in kindred matters and his papers on the
discoveries in Yucatan and elsewhere, read before one of the learned
societies here, attracted attention. He is not playing ambassador as
an amusement. His legation business is as closely attended to as if
he were a poor, hard-working clerk in need of a salary. There is no
ostentation about him personally. Officially, he attends to it that the
social position of the United States Minister is what it should be.

One night at a dinner party he was relating the incident of a Union
soldier who had donned a gray uniform once and entered the Rebel army
at Atlanta. He had read a description of this soldier’s experiences
and hairbreadth escapes in the Atlantic Monthly, and had been
extraordinarily impressed. The soldier’s name, as he remembered it, was
the same as my own. Could we be related? I astonished him by saying
that I was more than related, that I was the soldier myself, and the
article in the Atlantic was my own. Mr. Astor grasped my hand,
saying he had thought of that soldier’s action a hundred times. My
narrative had made Mr. Astor a friend. He rarely introduced me to a
friend after that without adding: “He is the man who went into Atlanta.”

The palace where Mr. Astor lives is the same that our Minister Marsh
occupied when I was here some years ago. It is built on the ruins of
the Baths of Constantine.

I have looked everywhere trying to find the “hills” of Rome, but almost
in vain. They can barely be located, and are not half as defined as the
hills of Boston.

* * * * *

Yesterday I went to look at the apartment where the consulate used to
be by the Spanish stairway. The consul’s little back room is where
the Poet Keats died. I could think I saw him lying there waiting for
beautiful death to come, and I seemed to hear him say to his friend
Severn: “I already feel the flowers growing over me.” And I saw Severn
too, forgetting his easel, to sweep and cook and wait and watch all the
nights alone, till the beautiful soul of Keats should take its flight.
The room is a poorly lighted common little bedroom where the poet
died, but it will be visited many a day in memory of one who lived,
not between brick walls, but in high imaginations. We also went to the
poet’s simple grave, as we had often done before, and looked at the
green sod above one who

Had loved her with a love that was his doom.

It was the love for Fannie Brawn and not the bitter pens of the
Quarterlies, that killed John Keats after all. Severn found that out
only six short years ago, when the love letters from Keats to Fannie
Brawn were placed in the now old man’s hands.

_December 28._--Spite of bad weather we are having some wonderful
sunsets lately, and strangers in Rome linger long on the Spanish
stairway to enjoy a scene they have so often heard of--a sunset by the
Tiber.

Last night Madame Bompiani invited us to tea with her. She lives at
the Hilda’s tower palace, celebrated by Hawthorne, in the “Marble
Faun.” Her husband is a well-known Roman lawyer, and she herself writes
interesting letters to the Chicago _Interior_. We learned much about
things in Rome direct from him, and after the supper we were taken up
to the tower.

One of the guests was Madame Guyani, a sister of the hostess. She was
a fine conversationalist and interested us much. Only a few months ago
she was a sufferer in the terrible earthquake at Ischia. She is still
lame as a result of the experiences of that fearful night. She told us
all about the earthquake. The night of the disaster she wandered or
crept about the fields till morning. The parts of the island which were
nothing short of an earthly paradise in the evening were only piles of
ruins and dead people in the morning. It was as if Eden had been struck
by a thunderbolt, only here there was a happy, unsuspecting people to
be suddenly hurled out of existence.

_Sunday._--Instead of going to church I stay in Mr. Franklin Simmons’
studio and watch him making a bust of Marion Crawford, the novelist. He
has a good subject, for Marion Crawford is a large, handsome man with a
fine figure and a genial face. There was a joking dialogue going on as
to whether it is the great novelist now sitting to the sculptor Simmons
or the great sculptor Simmons doing the face of a novelist, each
modestly insisting the other only had claims on immortality. I liked
Crawford and his genial ways. I had just finished reading his “Roman
Singer.”

Frank Simmons seems to me to be the best sculptor in Rome, though he
is not yet the most celebrated. He does not seem to try to seek fame;
but lets it seek him, which it is doing. Marion Crawford, too, I know,
regarded Simmons as the best sculptor living, and some day he will
make him the hero of a great novel.

Italy is called the land of art and yet curiously there are few great
Italian artists. Its galleries sometimes seem to me like opened
coffins, where one beholds among the bones the jewel work of some
dead age. I feel here much as I felt in Berlin when looking on the
golden necklaces of Helen of Troy, dug up by Schliemann. All the fine
paintings and marbles here in Rome seem like the ruins, relics of
another time. Foreign artists by the hundred, live and work here for
the inspiration they get from the fragments of the past. They taste the
wine made good with age and mix some of it in the bottles of new wine
of their own making. There are more imitators in Rome than anywhere
else in the world.

* * * * *

The duties of the consulate here are nothing compared with Zurich
or with any other commercial consulate. The office is often full of
callers, but their errands are visits of courtesy or to have passports
issued and the like. The trade of Rome with America is insignificant.

There are two regular consular clerks here, burdened with nothing
to do. The laws provide for some thirteen of these “regulars” in
the consular service, who hold their places for life. They are
rarely promoted, and grow gray doing little. One good, hired clerk
whose staying in depends on his zeal and fitness and not on his
self-importance, is worth a dozen of them. They should be made
responsible to somebody. The salary of the Consul General does not pay
his expenses in Rome.

Palazzo Mariani, where we live, is a very magnificent structure
outside, with great white marble stairways within, leading from floor
to floor. But it is cold as a sepulcher. No stoves and no fire-places
save one little niche in the wall, where a few burning fagots scarcely
change the temperature.

At night we come home (very late, as parties only begin at nine or so),
and go to bed in a big cold bedroom with a brick floor. Our so-called
cook stove is a little iron box heated with charcoal, in a kitchen
about five feet square, but Antoinette seems to know how to broil a kid
on it every day.

Our drawing-room is heated (?) by the fagots in the niche in the wall;
but even this is _too warm_ for our Italian friends, who, when they
call, apologize and go and sit in the back end of the room as far from
the so-called fire as possible.

We have our furniture here from Switzerland, and to us that is a
comfort. Occasionally a couple of priests come into our house without
asking and walk about through all the rooms, sprinkling holy water
on the beds as is a custom here. On going out, they indicate their
willingness for a fee, which is not surprising in a land where feeing
is universal.

Like most modern houses in Rome, our big palace is built on top of a
series of old arches that once supported the houses of ancient Rome.
From our cellar we can prowl around unknown distances through these
mysterious chambers.

The water for the house is still conducted from the Alban hills in one
of the old Roman aqueducts. It is a queer combination, this old and new
in Rome.

* * * * *

Mr. Astor had written me that last night my wife and I were to be
presented at court. At ten we were climbing the magnificent stairs
of the Quirinal palace to be presented to Queen Margaret. Gorgeously
uniformed sentinels stood on the stairway left and right. We were
shortly escorted to one of the great drawing-rooms of the palace, where
we found other ladies and gentlemen also waiting to be presented. In
a little while we were all directed to stand in line around the walls
of the drawing-room. A dead silence ensued, and then the Queen of
Italy entered at our right, escorted by the Marchesa Villa Marina,
who had in her hand a list of all of our names. A few moments before
she had passed along the line whispering to each of us and confirming
the correctness of her list. Queen Margaret turned to her left as she
passed in and very graciously greeted a young Italian lady, whom she
seemed to know personally. She extended her hand to the young lady,
who, greatly honored, blushed and looked very pretty. This was the only
instance where the Queen gave her hand that evening. As she started
along the line toward us she halted before each one. The Marchesa
promptly made the presentation, when the Queen bowed very sweetly and
made some remarks. I noticed that in each case she spoke the language
of the lady or gentleman presented. I could hear her speaking German,
Italian, French. Certainly she cannot speak English, I meditated, but
in a moment our turn came. Our names were pronounced, and the Queen
commenced in very agreeable English. Her manner was extremely winning,
kind and simple. She “knew we would like Rome,” she said. “Everybody
did, and she hoped our stay would be long and very happy.” She wore
an elegant gown, cut extremely low, revealing a fine form. Around her
neck was the famous pearl necklace, to which the King adds a string of
pearls every birthday. She carried an enormous white fan of ostrich
plumes which she constantly waved while she talked with us. She looked
the queen, and I thought more German than Italian. Her whole bearing
was graciousness. Her smile seemed as sincere as beautiful, and no one
but would call her a happy, beautiful woman.

The presentation over, we will now be entitled to invitations to the
palace balls and other public functions. There is an American lady
here at court whom we knew in Switzerland. It is the Countess Ginotti,
formerly Miss Kinney, of Washington. Her husband is a court official
and is entrusted with important duties.

Last night we went to our second court ball at the Quirinal. A week
following our presentation we had had the customary invitation to
the first. We go at ten at night, ascend the same brilliantly lighted
stairway as at the presentation, and even more gorgeously uniformed
sentinels line the way on left and right.

The dress is prescribed; gentlemen in evening attire of course--there
is nothing else a man can do but dress himself in mourning and call
it festive; but so many ladies, in their elegant, light gowns and
extremely low bodices, with swan white necks and shining diamonds, made
a lovely scene. We shortly found ourselves seated among five hundred
other guests in a brilliant ballroom of the palace. A raised dais and
a royal chair stood at the end in front of us. There was a little
gossip with each other, a little wondering at the gorgeous gowns, when
suddenly the music from a lofty gallery proclaimed the coming of the
court. Instantly, side doors unfolded, and King Humbert with Queen
Margaret on his arm, marched toward the raised platform, followed by
the court officials and all the Ambassadors in Rome in gala attire.
We all rise, the ladies courtesying and the men bowing, as the King
gracefully swings Queen Margaret into her seat and takes his place,
standing beside her chair. There is some more bowing and smiling and
courtesying. The music changes for the dance and the guests look on
while the Queen and the Ambassadors and their wives dance the royal
cotillon. The Ambassador of Germany, the head of the diplomatic corps,
dances with Queen Margaret. It is all very lovely, though some of us
guests feel we could beat the dancing all to pieces. In a few moments
the Queen is back on the dais talking with the ladies privileged to
surround her. The music has changed and some of the five hundred
present are swinging in the waltz.

All has been simple and beautiful. Such a ball might take place in the
extremest republic in the world. Some formality, some etiquette, there
must be everywhere. While the others dance, the Queen and the King talk
with the ladies, with the Ministers, and the Ambassadors. I was close
to the King at different times in the evening. He was as unpretending
as any other gentleman in the room. He seemed to have a bad cough, and
his great eyes sometimes glanced around in a strange way. His mustache
is almost as big and bristling as was his father’s, Victor Emmanuel.
He has a kindly, earnest look, and Italy has in him a patriotic King.
At midnight everybody repaired to little marble tables in an adjoining
room, where most expensive refreshments were served. Every one seemed
to have a bottle of champagne to himself. I never saw such a flowing of
wines, yet all managed to keep sober. The ball souvenirs presented to
every guest were all made in Paris and of every conceivable and lovely
design.

* * * * *

We are not far from the “Porta Pia,” and often go out walking or
driving on the Campagna. Much of this barren land was a graveyard once,
and splendid broken marble tombs still stretch away for miles. One
can guess at the enormous wealth of the old city by walking for hours
among the fallen columns and broken tombs of the rich out here on the
Campagna. It is as if a wilderness of marble trees had at some past
time been torn down by a whirlwind, and only the debris left behind.

The most impressive scene about Rome is the great aqueducts by
moonlight, as they stretch across this waste of the Campagna. They are
one hundred feet high and built on immense arches. One gets an idea
of what the population of Rome must have been, on reflecting that at
one time there were twenty-four of these canals through the air for
carrying water into the city, and that fifty million cubic feet of
water a day flowed into Rome through them. I was surprised to learn
that hundreds of miles, too, of these aqueducts were built under
ground. A tunnel a few thousand feet long we regard as a wonder at
home, but some of these aqueducts were thirty-six miles at a stretch,
under ground.

The Campagna was honeycombed in all directions by these strange canals,
and the miles of arches above ground to-day impress one more than does
the Coliseum.

However desolate the Campagna to-day, in the olden time it must have
been a wonder with its catacombs and canals under ground and its
magnificent tombs, pillars and aqueducts above ground.

Evenings when the weather is fine we see the Cardinals with their
cassocks and hats of flaming red, taking the air. They drive over from
the Vatican in closed carriages and when once on the Campagna get out
and walk about.

Next to the Cardinals, these Campagna shepherds are picturesque and
interesting. They wear leather leggings, sheepskin jackets, goatskin
breeches with the long hair outside, a red sash and a rakish hat. They
look very much like stage villains, which they are not. When they ride
into town, two or three on the same donkey, they make a remarkable
figure; but a very miserable one, when the one behind is seen jabbing
the donkey with an awl to make him go faster with his load of vagabonds.

_January, 1885._--Christmas Day we went to see the magnificent
ceremonies in the church called the Santa Maria Maggiore. Its forest
of vast marble columns was wrapped in hangings of crimson and gold.
The priests, bishops, cardinals and other dignitaries wore the most
gorgeous regalia of the church.

At the height of the ceremony a part of the Holy Manger in a crystal
chest was borne up and down the aisles, among the kneeling, praying
multitudes. Whatever the history of this relic, I think it was regarded
that day by every one present as very sacred. I never saw a multitude
so impressed with one thought. To many present, death itself could not,
I think, have caused deeper emotion.

Great church ceremonies are all the time going on in Rome, and as there
are more than three hundred church buildings, one can go to a different
place every day in the year. Not at the Sistine Chapel alone, with
its “Last Judgment” scenes, its moving music and officiating Pope, need
one be interested; in dozens of churches great things are always going
on.

* * * * *

A few evenings ago we were invited to a party at the Danish consul’s.
Met a number of interesting people, but the lion of the evening was
Ibsen, the great dramatic writer. He is a little short man with a big
head, a great shock of white hair, and twinkling eyes. I talked with
him some in English. Famous as his dramas are, I knew little about
them, and our few minutes’ talk was on indifferent subjects, not
worth remembering or jotting down; only he talked like a very genial,
open-hearted man.

The next day there was an afternoon reception at our own home, and
among our guests was Hugh Conway, the author of “Called Back.” He
went with me to a little corner in the dining-room, where we had a
chat about his famous story, his own past, and his future hopes. He
had been an auctioneer in England, and on trying his hand at stories
was astonished to find himself suddenly famous. He was simple, kind
and communicative as a child. Shortly his wife joined us, agreeable
as himself, and they were promising much to themselves from another
season, which they intended spending in Rome. And we were going to be
friends. He told me of their children in England. We emptied a glass
to the children’s health, and the next day they started for Nice. He
took a cold on the way, and a little later came the sad news that the
lovable man was dead.

Almost every day, afternoon or evening, we go to receptions. Half the
Americans living here give them, to say nothing of those given by the
English, French and other foreign residents whom one happens to know.
One meets a sprinkling of Italians at all of them, but this is by no
means Roman society. That is something that few foreigners know very
much about. The receptions are all about alike, though differing in
interest of course, according to the personality of the entertainers.
People come to them and stand up and gossip a little; some pretty
girls pour tea, and occasionally there is a song by some visiting
celebrity. Getting a “celebrity” to be at one’s receptions and parties,
by the way, is a part of a society woman’s bounden duty in Rome.
What lions have we not met at these delightful afternoon and evening
affairs--Liszt, Crawford, Ibsen, Rogers, Fargus, Bonaparte, Houghton,
the Trollopes, Wallace, and how many others less great. One meets most
of them just long enough for a cup of tea together, or a glass of wine,
a hand shake, a few words, and then “au revoir.” Yet the memory of it
all remains.

Rome is always full of great people and they all seem to like to be
lionized. Then there are the distinguished artists of many countries
who live here by the hundred, and who honor the hostess and sometimes
themselves, by dropping in at these receptions for a stand-up cup of
tea and a general hand shake.

We have attended three, four, even half a dozen receptions the same
day. If ever I go into business in Rome it will be to sell tea to
people who give receptions. A man of war could float in the tea poured
out here by pretty girls every afternoon.

Some of the artists also, like Ezekiel, the sculptor, give unique
little receptions in their picturesque studios. These are almost the
best of all.

* * * * *

Had an interesting letter from General Sherman yesterday.

“ST. LOUIS, MO., Nov. 14, 1884.

“DEAR BYERS:--I was very glad to receive your letter of October
28, from Rome, telling us that you are now fairly established
in the Eternal City. Somehow that renowned city did not make
the impression on me that its fame warranted, but I was told
that it grew upon every man who dwelt there long enough. I
hope you will experience that result, and realize not only
contentment, but gather much material for future literary work,
because I fear your diplomatic career is drawing to a close.
It now seems almost certain that all the little petty causes
of discontent and opposition inside the Republican party have
united with the Democrats and elected Cleveland President. When
installed next spring he will be a stronger man that he has
credit for, if he can resist the pressure sure to be brought on
him, and consulships will be in great demand, for distance lends
enchantment, and exaggerates the value of such offices. I have
no fear of violence, and believe that Cleveland will not allow
the solid South to dictate to him. If he does, and the old Rebels
show the cloven foot, the reaction four years hence will be
overwhelming.

“We are all very well in St. Louis, and the autumn has been
beautiful, crops good and bountiful, general business dull by
reason of apprehended change of tariff, but the country growing
steadily all the time. My daughter Rachel is in Maine on a visit
to the Blaines, at this critical period. Mrs. Sherman is at
Philadelphia on a short visit to our daughter Elly, so that the
family here is small. I expect to make a short visit to New York
and Washington about Christmas, with which exception I propose to
remain quiet. Time, with me, glides along smoothly and I am amply
convinced that I was wise in retiring just when I did. I don’t
believe the Democrats will materially hurt the army, but they
will make Sheridan’s place uncomfortable. I visited Des Moines in
September and found it a prosperous, fine city. I should suppose
you might make it your home, devote your time to literature,
and give general supervision to your farm. I’m afraid, however,
that you have been so long abroad that it will be hard to break
yourself and family into the habits of Iowa farmers. Give to Mrs.
Byers and son the assurance of our best love.

“Your friend,

W. T. SHERMAN.”

The other night we were at a private musicale, next door to one of the
hotels. Some girls, and a certain princess, played and sang extremely
well. In the midst of the evening the door opened and who should walk
in? It was Franz Liszt. He was in his slippers just as he had been in
his room next door. He had heard the music and had just dropped in.
Quite a little emotion was created among us all, when after standing
and listening a little bit, he went straight over to the young girl
at the piano and put a rousing kiss on her forehead. She blushed, and
was stamped for immortality. To her last hour she will remember that
approving kiss of the master.

After the musicale I was presented and was glad he remembered me so
well from Zurich. He recalled a kissing scene that I had witnessed
there as well, and laughed heartily about it.

But Liszt is getting old. He has had his day of great life. What genius
and a great deal of work can do for a man in this world anyway! Liszt,
with his genius, worked too at the piano like a galley slave, years
before any soul applauded.

* * * * *

Yesterday, one of the Bonapartes came to the office on some business.
It was Napoleon Charles. He owns the villa Bonaparte and is a rich man,
for his villa grounds are to be sold off at great prices for the new
Rome rapidly building. I observed him closely because I had been told
that his is the real Bonaparte face. He is taller than was the First
Consul. His family name is still a power in Rome. It interested me to
see one who is closely connected with the Great Napoleon. He wrote me a
pretty French note of thanks, and that is pasted in among my autograph
letters from interesting people.

CHAPTER XXVII

1885

STILL IN ROME--PRESENTED TO POPE LEO XIII--STORY, THE POET
SCULPTOR--RANDOLPH ROGERS--TILTON--ELIHU VEDDER--ASTOR
RESIGNS--SECRETARY OF LEGATION DIES WITH ROMAN FEVER--I AM
PUT IN CHARGE OF LEGATION--CAPRI--GOVERNOR PIERPONT--THINGS
SUPERNATURAL--TALK AGAINST GLADSTONE--SHAKESPEARE WOOD--
SENATOR MOLESCHOTT, A REMARKABLE MAN--INTERESTING LETTERS FROM
GENERAL SHERMAN--PARTY STRONGER THAN PATRIOTISM; MY RECALL--
MONEY LENDING AND TAXES--KEEP OUT OF DEBT.

_February, 1885._--On Sunday morning we (myself, wife and son)
together with others, were presented to the Pope, Leo XIII. The card
of notification told us how we should dress. Full evening suit, with
black cravat and black gloves for the gentlemen; black silk dress for
the ladies, with black lace veils over the head, instead of bonnets.
Our carriage entered the court yard at a private entrance, where
dismounting we entered at a side door and went up the Bernini stairway.
The Swiss guards, glad to hear their own tongue spoken, were very
polite to us. Colonel Schmidt, their commander, is also a personal
friend, who had visited us in Switzerland. He soon turned us over to
the Pope’s personal body guard. These are young Roman nobles. We were
led through a labyrinth of apartments, and put in charge of some of the
court officers at the reception room.

[Illustration: Pope Leo XIII.--_Page 261._]

“The reception will take place in just thirty minutes,” said one of the
officials, and this gave us time to look out of the window, and wonder
what part of the enormous pile called the Vatican, we were in.

Outside, the four thousand room building, with its two hundred
stairways, looks like an ugly collection of big yellow factories.
Inside, it is all magnificence. We were standing in rooms where the
Popes ruled Rome, at a time when Rome ruled the world. The history of a
thousand years was made and written under this roof. The genius of many
ages found a resting place here. Here for centuries God, himself, was
supposed to have his only agent on earth.

Just as we were meditating on all this, a rustle of officers entering
the room is heard. We are placed in a line, single file, around the
walls of the apartment. “You will all kneel,” whispers an official, “as
his Holiness enters.” That moment the door opened, and Leo XIII, robed
in scarlet, entered the room. Everybody knelt. As he passes the door an
attendant draws the scarlet robe away, and he stands before us in white
and gold. He is a very old man, tall and thin, colorless in face, and
with silvery hair; there is a soft, sad smile on his lips; his clear,
steady eyes look out of a kindly face. He motions us all to rise, and
then slowly walks around the room, speaking a gracious word to each as
presented. An official walks with him carrying a list of our names.
The Pope’s half-gloved hand with the signet ring, is held forward for
us to kiss. His words are kindness itself. I never saw so saintly a
face before. I do not wonder that many in the room are weeping. They
are faithful Catholics and this moment is the event of their lives.
Some have traveled ten thousand miles to have that white hand placed on
their heads with a blessing. To them, the doors of paradise are this
moment visibly opening.

Everybody, Catholic or not, was affected. Shortly the kindly voice
comes to us, “And you are from America--America--good, far off
America,” he says in English, and then changes to French, and Italian.
He placed his hand on our heads and blessed us--and, believing or
disbelieving--a feeling of a holy presence moved us.

Shortly, a signal indicated that all should come to the center of the
room and kneel, and then a blessing was asked on the lands from which
we came. It was an impressive moment. Numbers kneel down and kiss the
gold cross on his embroidered slipper. An attendant enters, throws the
scarlet robe gently over his shoulders again. There are some kindly
smiles, a bow, and the Pope leaves the room. Our reception at the
Vatican was over.

* * * * *

Last evening visited Mrs. Greenough, wife of the celebrated sculptor.
They have lived here many years. She is an interesting woman, but
delicate as a lily. She talked much of Margaret Fuller, whom she had
known well for many years.

We find many self-expatriated Americans here, first-class snobs, mostly
a rich and terribly stuck-up gentry, hanging around the edge of Italian
society, watching opportunity to pick up an alliance with somebody with
some sort of a title. They are usually ashamed of their own countrymen,
even those of them who are here, and regard themselves entirely too
good to be Americans. It is a great pity in their minds that they
were born in the United States at all, where, likely as anyway, their
fathers made their fortunes selling hides and hominy.

* * * * *

_March 21._--Spent last evening till very late, sitting on the steps
of Frank Simmons’ studio, talking with W. W. Story, sculptor and poet.
He is the finest talker I ever heard. Of course, he knows everything
about Italy; he has lived here most of his life, and his “Roba di Roma”
tells more worth knowing about Rome than any similar book ever written.
We talked, too, of America. He lamented that he had never achieved
distinction in the United States as a poet. That, not sculpture, had
been his first ambition. I told him he did not know how many loved his
name at home for the poetry he had written. On my last trip over the
sea, a young and discriminating newspaper man had envied me that I was
going where I would know Story, the _poet_. He had committed “Antony
and Cleopatra” to memory, repeated it to me walking on the ship deck
one evening, and said it was the “best American poem.” The incident
gratified Mr. Story very much, as it should.

We spoke of the Washington monument at the capital. “It is nothing
but a great, high smoke stack,” he said. “There was a design offered,
for a monument, that had some taste, art, grandeur about it, but the
mullet-headed politicians, knowing nothing, and thinking they knew
everything, naturally threw that aside.”

There was but little outlook, he said, for any immediate realization of
true art in America. “There was but one god there--money getting.”

I liked Mr. Story’s generosity of speech concerning other sculptors
less famous than himself, and for poets with less renown than he
believed he had. He is altogether one of the most agreeable men I ever
knew. His studio is full of fine work that brings great prices, but it
does not seem to me greater than the work of Frank Simmons, or even
some of the statues of Ives and Rogers. There is a sea nymph at Ives’
studio more beautiful than anything else I ever saw in marble.

We often go to the studio and the home of Randolph Rogers. He is an
invalid, has been paralyzed, and sits most of his time in his chair;
but he has a great, big, joyous heart, and is happy at seeing his
friends. His fame is very wide. His “Blind Nydia” is one of the great
things in marble. Very many copies of it have been made. They are
everywhere. “Nydia” and his bronze doors at the Capitol in Washington,
more than all else, made his reputation.

I have met no one in Rome who seemed to retain his real, joyous,
bluff Americanism as Mr. Rogers does. He knows his art, but he has not
forgotten his country.

His home is one of the most delightful here. He is justly proud of his
wife, as she is proud of his art. “She must have been very beautiful in
her youth,” said an American innocently. “Yes,” replied Mr. Rogers, “my
wife is beautiful now.”

The other morning occurred the wedding of his daughter to a worthy and
handsome officer of the Italian army. Every hour he is expecting orders
to go to Africa to help avenge the massacre of a lot of his countrymen.

Mr. Tilton, the American painter, showed us a Venetian scene yesterday
of supreme loveliness, as most of his water scenes are. I never saw so
much delicious coloring as is always in his pictures of the Adriatic.

He sells mostly to the English, and at great prices. He showed me his
selling book, and I was astounded at what he got. It was pounds, where
others of our artist friends got dollars.

Went to Elihu Vedder’s studio. He received me very coolly at first,
because he thought I mispronounced his name; a very important matter.
Afterward, he took some pains to show me his work. It is certainly
characteristic, at least, and original, and nobody ever misses guessing
whose picture it is, if it should be from his brush.

_March 25._--Mr. Pierpont, the Secretary of Legation, is down with the
Roman fever. Strong and young and handsome as he was, constant late
hours and cold stone floors were too much for him. He may never recover.

His coming here was almost a sensation, and no one ever got into “good
society” in Rome so promptly. His handsome face, genial ways, good
family and fine talents have made him welcome everywhere. He is a son
of Attorney General Edwards Pierpont, of New York, once Minister to
England.

They have taken him to the German hospital up by the Capitol. What
makes his illness worse just now is that Mr. Astor, the Minister, has
sent in his resignation and will go home at once.

_April, 1884._--Went to the Island of Capri, only a couple of hours’
sail from the most beautiful bay in the world. This is the spot where
the Garden of Eden ought to have been.

Went to the Blue Grotto--wonderful! While floating about there in a
little boat, I thought of T. Buchanan Read’s lines:

Oh, happy ship to rise and dip
With the blue crystal at your lip

Just mere common existence ought to be a delight on Capri. The
combination of romantic scene, delicious air, blue sky, and almost
bluer sea, make it adorable.

One should need little to live on here, and I think the peasants indeed
have little aside from fruits and olive oil and wine. The young women
are strikingly beautiful.

Tiberius, when he built his palace up on top of this wonderful Isle of
the Sea, at least knew where to find the beautiful.

Ischia, even more beautiful, if possible, is close by, and we look over
and think of the terrible fate of its people only a few months ago.

In front of us is Naples, and, in sight, Vesuvius sullenly smokes away
as if to remind us of the eternal peril to all who stay among these
loveliest scenes of earth.

[Illustration: Naples.--_Page 266._]

We visited Pompeii, with its lifted mantle of ashes and cinder, that
have helped mankind to patch out history. I was impressed by the
extreme smallness of the Pompeiian houses. They look like little stone
kitchens. Everything in the excavated city seems in miniature. One
could think of a toy town built of stone, but supplied with everything
wonderful of art and luxury.

I fail to see anything wonderful in unearthing Pompeii. It was easy to
dig it out of its ashes. There is no lava there. And it would seem a
question if two dozen people ever lost their lives in the disaster. It
simply snowed ashes for a day or so, and why should people deliberately
sit there and smother!

[Illustration: Paestum.--_Page 267._]

From the top of Capri we fancied we could almost see the temples of
Paestum by the other bay, those temples without a history--those
grandest ruins on the earth.

They want no history--their’s a voice
Forever speaking to the heart of man.

And we thought of the Paestum roses, too, of indescribable fragrance,
that bloom twice a year, and that have flourished there on the sickly
desert a thousand years. No story like this in all the floral world.

* * * * *

One time lately my wife admired very much a little water color of Mr.
Tilton’s. This morning he carried it up to her as a present from the
artist. It will long be treasured as a remembrance of one of the most
genial men in Rome, and of a delightful artist.

_April 19._--Young Mr. Pierpont died two days ago, and that before his
father and mother could reach him. They are still at sea. Yesterday
afternoon he was buried from St. Paul’s church in the Via Nazionale.
The sorrow for his premature death was very sincere. Dr. Nevin read the
service, assisted by the Master of Rugby School, and the pall bearers
were the ambassadors of Austria, Germany and Belgium, with myself
representing the United States. King Humbert was represented by the
Duke of Fiano. The Italian Foreign Minister was also a pall bearer.
There were many beautiful flowers by the casket. It was a sad burial,
this putting into the grave a youth to whom the future had beckoned
with such golden hand.

* * * * *

Mr. Pierpont’s death, and the resignation of Mr. Astor, put the affairs
of the Legation into my care. The archives have been moved to the
Consulate General, on Via Venti Settembre.

* * * * *

_April 25._--Governor and Mrs. Pierpont came yesterday, and I took them
out to the Protestant Cemetery to look at the casket containing their
son. It stood in a receiving vault covered with roses. It was a sad day!

This afternoon Governor Pierpont talked with me about supernatural
things. He doubted them himself, and yet, he said that when he was
Minister to London he rarely was at a dinner in England when some one
at the table did not relate of something supernatural that had occurred
to himself or else to some trustworthy friend. This fact must put
people to thinking. Possibly there was something in it after all. Get
it out of the hands of charlatans, and possibly we could lift the veil
a little more than we imagine. If there is another world, spiritual, it
need not be very far away.

* * * * *

_April 20._--The parties and the receptions and the balls go on this
winter, just as if all Rome had nothing to do but have a good time.

The Journalists’ ball the other night was most striking for its
elegance, its diamonds, gowns, and its beautiful bejeweled women.

The German artists’ masquerade ball was also beautiful. We went to both
the same night.

The Roman theater is good, and spectacular opera is given this winter
with great effect. “Excelsior” is the most gorgeously gotten up
spectacle of dance and scenery I ever beheld. Its ballet possibly has
never been approached.

A funny story is told here of Joaquin Miller. One afternoon he attended
a reception at Miss B.’s. Two old maids, Italians, asked to be seated
next the lion of the Sierras. They listened in utter astonishment,
but with perfect gullibility, while he wickedly regaled them with
immense stories of how he had galloped over the plains of his native
country on the backs of wild buffaloes, how he had fought prairie
fires, slain Indians and rescued maidens from captivity. The women were
amazed, and with grateful hearts thanked their hostess for introducing
them to so great a hero. The party over, all are gone, and Miss B.
looks about the house. To her astonishment, the wild-eyed poet is there
yet, standing alone by the dining-room table. She gently draws the
portiere aside to look. He holds a glass of wine in his hand, and, as
he balances it, and looks upon its color, he smiles and exclaims to
himself, but in tones heard behind the curtain, “Holy Moses, how I did
lie to those women.

* * * * *

_April 22._--Went to a party at Shakespeare Wood’s the other night. He
is correspondent of the London _Times_, and is an important man among
foreigners in Rome. They say his salary is as good as a Minister’s.
I fear that is a mistake. Saw many noted people at his house--Lord
Houghton, the poet and critic, the Trollopes and others.

Heard much talk against Gladstone. One English gentleman said, with
apparent approval of a little group of English listeners, “The man
ought to be shot for the good of England.” It seemed inexplicable,
impossible--so much hatred of the world’s best Christian statesman.

Lord Houghton is a good, gray, old man, full of vivacity and with
opinions of his own. He has renown in Italy, for he has been a
great friend in the country’s struggle for liberty, and his life of
literature has had great reward.

Shakespeare Wood knows more about Rome and Italy than half the Italians
themselves, and is besides an artist and an antiquarian.

Last evening I was invited to dine at the home of the celebrated
Professor Moleschott. He is a distinguished author and a Roman Senator,
though a born German. My invitation came as a result of a letter to
him from my friend Johannes Scherr, the German author. Moleschott had
once lived in Zurich.

This was an “evening” for certain delegates to a World’s Congress of
scientific and medical men. Dr. Sternberg, of Washington, was there.
Few of the guests understood Italian. Moleschott seemed able to speak
with each in his own tongue. Scherr’s letter caused him to pay me no
little attention, and he chatted with me considerably. He is the most
remarkable looking man I ever saw. Has a head like a lion. He is short,
stout, broad faced, and has big eyes, and low side whiskers. I asked
him how on earth he could learn so many languages in addition to his
enormous duties as a scientific writer, a constant lecturer, and an
Italian Senator. “I don’t learn them,” he said; “I must absorb them.
I have no time to learn them.” “But you must have studied _English_,”
I replied. “You are too much of a master there, to be merely an
absorber.” “Well, yes, a little bit,” he answered. “That is, I laid
your English grammar on my dressing case mornings for a few weeks, and
while I walked up and down the room putting on my clothes I got hold of
your language.”

He was one of the rare men we meet who seem to know everything.
Observation great, memory powerful. What would the world be, if all men
had Moleschott’s intellect. Like Goethe, he has universal knowledge.

He passes our door daily in an open cab, and is always sitting with an
open volume in his lap, and yet he sees and greets people and goes on
with his reading.

[Illustration: House of Gold, Venice.]

_May 1, 1885._--I have this entry in my diary: “This day I resigned my
post as Consul General of Italy and will soon leave the service, after
many years of constant and faithful duty. These last weeks I have also
had charge of the diplomatic affairs of our country here, and it is
gratifying to receive, by the same mail that brings a letter asking
my resignation, another letter expressing appreciation of some of my
recent services.”

On my arrival home in America, I found the following letter waiting me
from General Sherman:

“ST. LOUIS, MO., June 29, 1885.

“DEAR BYERS:--I have your letter written at sea, in which you
give me the first information I had received that you had been
displaced at Rome. I knew, of course, it was bound to come, for
party allegiance with us is stronger than patriotism, and the
pendulum of time was bound to swing against us, and we will be
lucky if we are not indicted for horse stealing and for the
murder of men who resorted to arms to destroy the very Government
of which now they are the main supporters. Of course, in due time
the pendulum will swing back, but meantime, we must lie low, else
history will record Jeff Davis the patriot, and Mr. Lincoln the
usurper.

“I am glad to know that you propose to settle at Des Moines. It
is a beautiful and seemingly prosperous place, and if you can
engage in any business there, you will soon have reason to feel a
sense of security in not being the slave of the State Department.

“We are all here now, but in a short time Mrs. Sherman and all
the family will go to Lake Minnetonka for the summer. I have
some business which will detain me here a while, when I will
follow, but I have a positive engagement at Mansfield, Ohio,
August 15; New York, August 20, and Chicago, September 9 and 10.
So you see I am kept busy. I have long experience and declare
that it is harder for me to maintain a modern family with fifty
dependents and a thousand old soldiers claiming of right all I
possess, than to command a hundred thousand men in battle. Still
I expect to worry along a few years, till summoned to a final
rest. I now merely write to welcome you back to your native land,
and to express the hope that Mrs. Byers will soon regain her
wonted health, and that you, too, will settle down with as much
contentment as you can command, after your long sojourn abroad.
Hoping you will notify me of your arrival at Oskaloosa and Des
Moines, I venture to send you this to New Wilmington, Pa.

“Sincerely your friend,

W. T. SHERMAN.”

Another letter of interest came from him:

“ST. LOUIS, MO., Sept. 30, 1885.

“DEAR BYERS:--Now I shall know where to find you. You are fully
competent to manage your own interests, and I shall not commit
the foolish mistake of proffering advice where it is not asked. I
remember when money was worth 3 per cent a month (in California).
It broke both lender and borrower, for the borrower simply gave
up the houses and land mortgaged, and the lenders themselves
became borrowers for the taxes. To-day money in the United States
is worth 3 per cent per annum, and all over that rate is ‘risk,’
_not_ interest. If I had money to lend, which I have not, I would
not lend it on an Iowa farm at 8 per cent, but on a Government
bond at 3 per cent, because I would conclude sooner or later I
would have to take the Iowa farm, which would be an elephant. A
farm is a good thing for a farmer, but a bad thing for an owner.
Still I have good faith in the ultimate value of good farm land,
because it yields annual crops, whereas mines and manufactories
play out. My heavy expenses still go on. In St. Louis, we pay
as taxes, full rent, and have to pay the objects of taxation
direct. Thus our taxes are $2.50 on a full valuation, and we
must in addition pay for watering the streets, for street-paving
and improvements, for special police, for the militia and for
schools. I can manage to make ends meet, but I wonder how a
man can, in business, make profit enough to cover his family
expenses. These economic questions will become the questions of
the future.

“Mrs. Sherman is absent at the East, to visit Elly and Minnie.
The rest of us are here. Love to all.

“Your friend,

W. T. SHERMAN.”

In October he writes again:

“ST. LOUIS, MO., Oct 23, 1885.

“DEAR BYERS:--I feel easier on your account, since you tell me
that you find the business in which you were about to embark,
overdone. Nearly all the calamities which have overtaken families
in America, can be traced to the credit system, which necessarily
prevails. I had enough experience in it to put me on my guard,
and I am firm in my faith in Shakespeare’s ‘Neither a borrower
nor a lender be.’ And the consequence is that to-day I owe no
man a cent, and have no incidental obligations as indorser or
bondsman. All my children know this, and while I give them
liberally of what I have, they never dream of asking me to borrow
or indorse.

“There is a great deal of wisdom in Dickens’ character of
Micawber. ‘Income, £100; expenses, £99.19.6--result, happiness.
Income, £100; expenses, £101.4.3--result, misery.’ I quote from
memory.

“If you and Mrs. Byers will be content with what you have, and
live within your income, whether $1,800 or $6,000, your days
will be long in the land of the living. Now, surely, even in Des
Moines, you can supplement your income by the sale of occasional
articles from your pen, which will add to your frugal fund most
of the luxuries of life.

“In any and every event, I beg you will keep me advised of your
progress, so long as I travel in this world of woe and mystery.

“Mrs. Sherman is now back from her visit to our married children
at the East and I think we shall remain unchanged all winter. I
have numerous calls, but generally answer that I am entitled to
rest and mean to claim it.

“My best compliments to your good wife and son.

“Your friend,

W. T. SHERMAN.”

CHAPTER XXVIII

1886

THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW ENGAGES ME TO EDIT SEVERAL CHAPTERS OF
THE SHERMAN CORRESPONDENCE--SHERMAN WRITES AS TO MAGAZINES
AND HIS BOOK--THE GENERAL INVITES ME TO COME AND STAY AT HIS
HOME IN ST. LOUIS--HE OFFERS ME THE USE OF ALL HIS PAPERS--
I PUBLISH ALSO IN THE REVIEW A PROSE NARRATIVE OF THE MARCH
TO THE SEA--MRS. SHERMAN READS IT TO THE GENERAL--BUFFALO
BILL--GENERAL GIVES ME HIS ARMY BADGE--NIGHTS IN SHERMAN’S
OFFICE--CONVERSATIONS WITH HIM--LIFE IN THE SHERMAN
HOME--THE GENERAL’S COMPLETE RECONCILIATION WITH HIS SON
“TOM”--INTERESTING LETTERS FROM SHERMAN AS TO MAGAZINES--HIS
FORTHCOMING BOOK--FARMS AND TAXES--WAR HISTORIES--GRANT’S
BOOK--NEWSPAPERS--CHRISTMAS LETTER.

The interval between my resignation at Rome and my reappointment as
Consul General for Switzerland was spent in my home in Iowa.

Early in 1886, the North American Review asked me to prepare and edit a
series of General Sherman’s letters for the magazine.

I received an interesting letter from the General about the tempting
offers made to him by the magazines. They make offers of that kind to
one man in a million, and only one man in a million could decline them.
He mentions his forthcoming book.

“WASHINGTON, D. C., Feb. 3, 1886.

“DEAR BYERS:--I was glad to receive your letter of the 1st inst.
It indicates a purpose to join in the throng now publishing
articles about the war. Last year Rice, of the N. A. Review,
offered me $1,000 for an article on Grant, which I declined
and he obtained that of March for nothing. I hate controversy,
but could not escape this with F----, who is an army officer,
retired, and usually very accurate, but his denial to furnish
me the source of his extract from one of my private letters
led up to my reply in the March number. If you have read from
the magazine itself, all right, but if you have only seen the
newspaper extracts, I would like to have you get the Review
itself and read the whole. The Century Magazine is also a very
respectable vehicle for war stories and has tempted me with
high offers in money, but I have resolved to keep out of the
newspapers and magazines as far as they will let me, confining
myself to the memoirs revised, which will be issued by the
Appletons by May next. I have gone over all the proof and will
now stand by it. The first and last chapters are new--as well as
the index, maps and illustrations.

“We are all very well here and I shall regret to give up my own
home here for a hotel in New York, but I shall never consent to
housekeeping in New York.

“My best love to Mrs. Byers and the children.

“Truly your friend,

W. T. SHERMAN.”

At the General’s invitation I went to St. Louis, and for a time was a
guest in his home as I had been before in Washington.

A few notes of the great commander’s life at this time may not be amiss
here.

General Sherman was now a retired officer. After a great life on the
military stage, he had himself rung down the curtain. He was living in
a comfortable, brown, two-story brick house, at 912 Garrison Avenue.

His simple little office, where he spent most of his time, was down in
the basement, just as it had been in Washington. The same little sign
bearing the simple words:

“_Office of General Sherman_”

was on one of the basement windows. In this room, on shelves and in
cases, were all the records of his life--his memoranda of the war,
military maps, correspondence. There were letters on file in that
little room from eminent men all over the country. A magazine editor
once offered $40,000 for permission to go down into that basement and
pick out the letters he would like to print in his magazine. The editor
even offered a thousand dollars for one certain, single letter there.
It was never printed till its importance was gone.

One evening he came down into the basement where I was sitting, and
taking his keys out of his pocket threw them on the table beside me,
saying: “There, I trust you with everything; unlock everything; use
what you want.” The complete confidence thus placed in me, I recall
with pride and affection. I recall, too, the responsibility I felt.

Night after night, day after day, I read among the letters, picking out
only those that seemed of interest to the public, and to be perfectly
proper to print.

At that time I edited for the North American Review six chapters of
them. Nothing went without General Sherman’s approval. He allowed his
clerk, Mr. Barrett, to copy for me. Hundreds of the most entertaining
letters I regarded it indiscreet to print at that time, and they have
never been printed yet.

The General and myself sat there in the basement by the little open
fire many a time till twelve or one o’clock at night; I looking through
the almost thousands of letters and papers, he smoking a cigar and
reading. The poems of Burns lay there on his desk all the time, because
Burns was his favorite poet. Dickens and Scott, he read time and again;
some of the stories once a year, he said.

When I would find something of especial interest among the letters, I
would speak of it. He would stop reading and, for an hour, tell me all
about it, and add interesting things concerning the writer. What would
I not now give could my memory recall faithfully his talks to me in
the silence of those nights. He suffered some with asthma, and it was
always easier for him to sit up far into the night and talk, than to
go to bed. Sometimes a wee drop from a black bottle in the back room
refreshed us both, without harming either.

About this time, a few over-zealous friends of Grant, not satisfied
with the world’s recognition of his genius, were claiming for him the
impossible merit of everything that happened in the war, even the
origin of the March to the Sea. The claim was ridiculous, and I do not
believe that General Grant personally had anything to do with it. But
I am sure that Sherman felt that Grant ought to have spoken at this
juncture.

One evening I came across an autograph letter from Grant to Sherman,
congratulating him on the achievement of the March to the Sea, “a
campaign,” in Grant’s words, “the like of which has not been read of in
past history.” There was not a thought of claiming any of the glory for
himself. Right beside it lay a letter from Robert E. Lee, telling how
this movement of Sherman’s resulted eventually in the fall of Richmond.
Reading these, determined me, while with General Sherman in his home,
to write, myself, an account of the March to the Sea, for the North
American Review. My article was printed in the Review, September, 1887.

When it was finished I asked the General to listen to it. He sent
upstairs one morning for Mrs. Sherman to come down and hear it also.
“Let me read it aloud,” said Mrs. Sherman. It was one of the delightful
hours of my life, to sit there and hear the wife of the great soldier
read to him my story of his March to the Sea. I watched his face while
she read, and could see that his mind was again afire with the thought
of the campaign. He made no important changes, and a note to the editor
of the Review showed that he approved my paper fully.

Life went on in the General’s family very much as at Washington. It
was a happy, hospitable home. “Tom,” the father now being reconciled
to the idea of his being a priest, came up often from the college down
town, and many were the interesting conversations I heard between
the great soldier and his intellectual son. It seemed to me the same
fire of intellect was in each, only it was all different in flame and
purpose. Mrs. Sherman had a little office of her own upstairs, just
as at her Washington home, where she devoted her energy to planning
for the poor. She was a noble, unselfish woman, and her charities,
unheralded to the world, did much to soften the hard lines of the
unfortunate.

The General’s health was not the very best. He was often taking such
severe colds as even threatened his life. The doctors were uneasy, and
Mrs. Sherman was on one or two occasions much alarmed. “Should such
a misfortune occur,” she said to me one morning after the breakfast,
“should I survive him, I want you to undertake the publication of all
my husband’s papers and correspondence. He has told me of his affection
for you many times, and you know my own.” I was greatly touched by this
new proof of confidence in me, but I could not but think that General
Sherman had many years to live.

The General, simple in public life, was still simpler in his home.
He came to breakfast mornings in his comfortable old slippers and
wearing a shiny little morning coat that was more comfortable than
decorative. After lunch at noon, he usually took an hour’s nap and
then went down in the basement to his work of answering letters. He
answered everybody, and gave himself as much labor in this imposed
letter writing as if he were well paid for it. Hundreds and hundreds
of people asked him to help them get office, and hundreds asked him
for money. He gave a great deal, and the giving helped to keep him a
comparatively poor man. Mrs. Sherman told me how he kept accounts at
certain Washington stores, and sent needy men there almost daily with
orders for hats, coats, etc. His daughter Lizzie was one of the kindest
and sweetest spirits I ever knew. She was almost a constant companion
of her father in his many travels.

We had pleasant chats every morning at the breakfast table, though it
was nearly impossible to get the General away from the basement and
his newspaper, till Mrs. S. had the papers put on the table with the
coffee. Then the General would read and comment. He regarded the press
almost as a necessary evil. Few of his comments were complimentary to
it. He had a horror of reporters.

A great railroad strike was going on. Some sensational newspapers in
St. Louis were helping to keep it up by encouraging the strikers. A
month before, the same journals had been obsequious to the railroads.
“Some day,” said the General one morning, throwing down the newspaper,
“these pusillanimous scoundrels of editors will be for calling on
me and on the country to save them from the very ruin they are now
encouraging. They are pulling the house down on their own heads. If it
could fall on them, only! But little newspapers care for the sorrow
they carry to human breasts, if they can only start a sensation.”

He hated professional politicians even as much as such editors, but he
discriminated between a man going to Congress for bread and butter,
and a man who tried to labor for his country. Even Blaine, whom he
so cordially honored, he thought a spoilsman at times, not always a
statesman.

In the home here, Mrs. Sherman called him “Cump,” and that was the
title he liked to hear. The name conveyed something dearer and better
to him than titles and rank. He had no love for any of these empty
sounding baubles, anyway, and never sought a promotion in his life.

One evening he was to address the Ransom Grand Army Post at St. Louis,
and in the name of some patriotic man present a flag. He asked me to go
along. After supper I came down and found him dressed and waiting for
me in the drawing-room. “Where is your Grand Army badge?” he asked,
observing I had none. I explained that mine was at home in Iowa. “You
must have one,” he said, “I’ll give you this,” and taking the emblem
from his breast he fastened it on my coat. I treasure it still. It is
an heirloom for my son.

He took me to see Buffalo Bill, the Indian fighter, one day. It was at
the Fair Ground. The scout came to the General’s box with all the fair
manner of a high-born gentleman, saluted, bowed, advanced, took the
extended hand and met a genuine soldier’s greeting. Sherman had known
him on the plains, and respected him as a man of worth. “That man’s a
genius,” he said, when Cody went down to the ring, “and he believes in
himself. That’s half the battle of life.” Sherman, like Buffalo Bill,
believed in himself. He knew what he could do, and did it, and asked
neither praise nor pay.

That evening, one of Sherman’s daughters and a girl friend visiting
in the family, danced with Buffalo Bill at a great ball. “He was the
best dancer of them all,” said one of the girls on coming home. “_Just
too lovely for anything_,” added the other. And this was the man of
the prairies, the hunter, the scout. Environment doesn’t count for
anything, after all.

One day while at the Shermans, a friend, Mr. Haydock, asked me to go
with him to see Grant’s log house. It is on the old Dent farm in the
woods, seven miles southwest of the city. This now neglected land
was given to Mrs. Grant by her father, at her marriage. When Grant
was thirty-two, he saw no prospects ahead of him in the army; so he
resigned and went out here in the woods to live. “I had no means to
stock the farm,” he wrote later, “and a house had to be built. I worked
very hard, never losing a day because of bad weather. If nothing else
could be done, I would put a load of wood on the wagon and take it to
the city for sale.” For four years, Grant and his family lived this
obscure life here in a little log cabin he built with his own hands.

The cabin is now hard to find. The road is deserted, the yard is
overgrown with tall grass, straggling rose bushes bloom in what was
once a garden; the windows of the cabin are gone, the doors stand open.

Grant cut the trees, prepared and hauled the logs for the cabin
himself, and a hired hand helped him to put them up. It is a typical
Southern log house, one and a half stories high, two rooms below,
separated by an open hall, two rooms above. There is no history of
Grant’s life, during the years he struggled to make a living on this
lonesome backwoods farm. Grant seldom alluded to it himself.

While walking over the deserted cabin and yard, I saw in my mind its
whilom owner, the guest of peoples and potentates.

Sherman had an extravagant opinion of General Grant’s abilities. “Grant
was the one level-headed man among us all,” he said to me one night,
down in the basement of his home. Sherman went to the opera because he
was fond of music, though he could not sing a note. If he kissed the
pretty women behind the scenes sometimes, or more likely in front of
the scenes, it was because the pretty women kissed him. I never saw
a man so run after by womankind in my life. It was a great honor to
have him touch their hands, their lips. Once in Switzerland, when he
was leaving Bern on a train, the whole crowd of American women at the
depot, old and young, pretty and ugly, children and all, kissed him.

When I was leaving his home at St. Louis, Miss Lizzie said I should
have something to remember my visit by. “Then I want something from
the little basement,” I said, “there is where I have spent most of my
time.” “Papa, why not give him your paper weight.” It was a little
bronze bust of General Grant that he had used on his desk for many
years. It has been mine since that evening, though I needed nothing
to remind me forever of the hours spent far into the night down in the
basement of the Sherman home.

In April, I received an interesting letter from him on taxation:

“ST. LOUIS, MO., April 25, 1886.

“DEAR BYERS:--I have your letter of the 18th, and though I have
nothing to tell you, will answer. I understand that your article
on the March to the Sea will be in the North American Review
for May, and I will look for it. It might have been better had
you applied to the Century Magazine, which seems to invite
contributions illustrative of the war, though it seems partial
to our adversaries. The absence of Mr. Rice in Europe, too, may
be one cause of a relaxed interest in such articles as you could
supply. J. R. is rather the workman than the editor, and is
governed chiefly by the notoriety of the contribution rather than
by the merit of the article.

“Hold on to your farm. This removal to the cheaper land of
Dakota will not last long, as that is devoid of wood, and cold
in the extreme. As soon as the few inviting places west are
filled up, the tide will set back to Iowa. But I really do fear
now an internal cause of the diminished value of land. Instead
of supporting one government as in Europe, we have to support
five--National, State, County, Township and Municipal--each of
which expects for its support enough taxes for the whole. We are
merely the nominal owners. The aggregate taxes here and with you,
I infer, are equal to rent, and the question is: Who owns the
farm? I infer the State does, and the nominal owner is merely
the tenant at will. This fact, with the labor organizations, may
bring about conflicts such as desolated Asia, hundreds, if not
thousands of years ago.

“I will be in Chicago Decoration Day, Indianapolis June 2d, San
Francisco Aug. 3-6, in Washington Territory and British Columbia
till September, when I must come to Rock Island for the annual
meeting of the Army of the Tennessee, Sept. 15-16, then for New
York.

“Mrs. Sherman will go East about July 1st, and we will all meet
in New York about Sept. 20th. I shall expect to see you at Rock
Island.

“With best compliments to Mrs. Byers, and best wishes for your
health and success.

“Truly your friend,

W. T. SHERMAN.”

Later, he wrote me his views on newspapers and war books:

“ST. LOUIS, MO., June 11, 1886.

“DEAR BYERS:--I have your letter of the 8th, and note that you
are now in correspondence with two of the best monthlies of the
country. I feel assured that you will get along, though the
speculation of buying young cattle and feeding them on your own
land is a better business. The newspapers of our country have
been as the morning mist, absolutely lost or dissipated by the
noonday sun. The monthlies may hang on a little longer. And only
printed volumes with indexes, collected in libraries, will be
accepted as approximate truth.

“Grant’s book will of course survive all time. Mine, Sheridan’s
and a few others will be auxiliary, but the great mass of books
purporting to give the history of especial corps, regiments and
even individuals, will be swept aside, because the world now
demands condensation, and probably in fifty years, one hundred
pages will be all that the world will allow for the history of
the Civil War. Meantime, you can interest and entertain your
readers, for which the journals can pay you what you need, money.

“But I would not advise you to attempt any material change of
the public judgment, as recorded by Grant. I prefer, when you
use any letter of mine, or any of Grant’s to me, that you insist
on their being used with your text, not theirs. If you consent
to their expurgating any special letter, the editor will use it
with his own introduction, to justify himself in some conclusion
heretofore published. I have experienced this and could not find
fault, as it was explained by the usual motives for human action.
I would insist on the publication of your articles as you made
them, with literal or immaterial corrections, when convinced of
their necessity.

“We are now pretty well packed up, and no doubt we will be ready
for breaking up here July 1st, after which my address will be
Palace Hotel, San Francisco. Present us all kindly to Mrs. Byers
and the boy, and believe me that I shall always feel a personal
interest in your welfare.

“Your friend,

W. T. SHERMAN.”

On Christmas, he sent me this kindly note:

“NEW YORK, Dec. 24, 1886.

“DEAR BYERS:--I was very glad to receive your kind letter of the
20th, and assure you of my continued interest and affection,
wishing you and yours all earthly happiness.

“The task on which you have entered, ‘Iowa in War Times,’ will
afford you full employment for a year and more, and I trust with
reasonable profit. Remember that ‘brevity is the soul of wit,’
and condensation is now the true aim of history. Each regiment
will expect you to include a diary of its life, but I know you
have industry and patience enough to generalize.

“I shall look out for your article in the North American. I
was tempted only yesterday by the Century Magazine to furnish
an article on that very subject, which I declined in a letter
at some length, claiming that my Memoirs were as full as I can
reproduce, and preferring that others like yourself should
present the facts in a more agreeable form. To ward off other
applicants I have consented to the publication of that letter.

“Truly your friend,

W. T. SHERMAN.”

The General had now given up his beautiful home in St. Louis, and was
about to move to New York. It turned out to be, as he hoped it would,
his last change of residence. Again he wrote me. It was his last letter
to me from St. Louis, and again he touched on the troubles he had
had with American newspapers. In fact his experiences with newspaper
correspondents during the war had been such as to make him hate the
entire fraternity. There were times when he had unceremoniously driven
them away from his army, as mischief makers and traitors.

“ST. LOUIS, MO., June 29, 1886.

“DEAR BYERS:--I have your letter of the 22d, with copy of yours
to R. * * *

“I am willing to risk B.’s preface to any of your articles. He
has been always most friendly to me, and I should always fear his
_over_ praise, rather than his adverse criticisms. Nevertheless,
you are right in claiming that your ‘articles’ should be
published as written by you. The editor has the privilege
of calling attention to the subject-matter of his special
‘articles,’ but the article itself should not be ‘coupled’ with
matter written by any outsider before publication and after
preparation.

“The chief trouble of my life has been in dealing with newspapers
and periodicals. They want something ‘sensational,’ which will
sell as an article of commerce, and their self-interest blinds
them to the personal consequences of the publications. To sell
50, 500 or 5,000 of this paper or magazine, is their business.
If they make sad a hundred or a million of hearts, it is to them
of no consequence. Lizzie and I will be off for California July
1st. Mrs. Sherman and Cump for Marietta, Lancaster Co., Pa., July
2d. You may not hear of or from me till I reach Rock Island,
Sept. 15-16. On my arrival at San Francisco, I can buy the North
American Review, so you need not send me a copy. We are all now
at the Lindell Hotel, and will scatter as I have indicated, in
two more days. An excellent family has taken our home for three
years, with the privilege of three more--in fact beyond our
lives, at $1,500 a year, enough to pay taxes and repairs. I think
we have made a fatal mistake, but if our youngest son can thereby
be made a real lawyer and man, I will be content. My career is
ended.

“Wishing you and yours all the happiness possible,

“I am sincerely your friend,

W. T. SHERMAN.”

CHAPTER XXIX

1887-90

AN INTERESTING LETTER FROM GENERAL GRANT--SHERMAN LIVING IN NEW
YORK--HIS IMMENSE POPULARITY WITH ALL AMERICANS--LETTERS
FROM HIM--EXHIBITED LIKE A CIRCUS--NO UNION MAN LEFT IN
FOREIGN SERVICE BY CLEVELAND--HE WRITES FOR THE MAGAZINES--
MAGAZINES AGAIN--APPROVES MY ARTICLE IN THE NORTH AMERICAN
REVIEW ON THE MARCH TO THE SEA--HUMBLEST UNION MAN BETTER
PATRIOT THAN THE PROUDEST SOUTH CAROLINA REBEL--SHERIDAN
DYING--CONGRESS SHOULD MAKE RANK OF LIEUTENANT GENERAL
PERMANENT--HIS RECEPTION AT COLUMBUS--DEATH OF MRS. SHERMAN--
ABOUT HIS MEMOIRS--NO PROFIT--THE ARMY OF THE TENNESSEE AT
CINCINNATI--MY POEM THERE--AN ODD INTERVIEW AT THE WHITE
HOUSE--CONVERSATIONS WITH SECRETARY BLAINE--DEATH OF THE
GREAT GENERAL--SPEECHES ABOUT HIM IN THE SENATE--I AM AGAIN
APPOINTED TO SWITZERLAND.

I was now in the West working on my “Iowa in War Times” and sometimes
writing an article for the magazines.

Many documents and important autograph letters were put in my hands
from all over the country. One of the most interesting of these was
from General Grant. It has never been printed and I give it here
because it was possibly the only letter he ever wrote during a battle.
It was at Black River bridge, Grant was sitting on his horse, Lawler’s
brigade had just made a successful charge on the intrenchments. An
officer from the Headquarters at Washington rides up to the General
with an important order. It is for him to abandon his Vicksburg
campaign, and join Banks with his army. “Do you see that charge?” said
the General. “You are too late.” He wrote this letter sitting there on
his saddle, and the Vicksburg battles and successes followed. Had Grant
gone to Banks, the latter would have been chief in command. Grant’s
great career would not have had even a beginning. This very minute was
the great crisis in General Grant’s life!

May 17th, 10:30 A. M.

DEAR GEN.:

Lawler’s brigade stormed the enemy’s works a few minutes since,
carried it, capturing from 2,000 to 3,000 prisoners, 10 guns so
far as heard from, and probably more will be found. The enemy
have fired both bridges.

A. J. Smith captured 10 guns this morning, with teams, men and
ammunition.

I send you a note from Col. Wright.

Yours,

U. S. GRANT,
_Maj. Gen_.

Maj. Gen. Sherman,
Com’d’g 17th Army Corps.

I still received an occasional letter from General Sherman. As these
were often strong, characteristic and interesting, I copy a number.

He was now living in the Fifth Avenue Hotel, New York, so far as it
could be said that he was living anywhere, for his presence was in
such demand at public occasions, all over the country, as to make any
lengthy stay at home an impossibility. He was beyond all doubt the
most loved man at this time in the United States. No American knew so
many people by face, and by name. No face was so familiar to almost
everybody as was the face of “Uncle Billy Sherman.” The soldiers of
the Civil War, of whom a million were still alive, absolutely adored
their leader. There was no place so high, no post so honored, that
his people would not have pressed it upon him, had he been willing to
accept it. To no other living American was the Presidency ever offered
without the seeking. No other American was ever great enough to turn
aside from the proffered gift.

With all this great place in the hearts of a whole people, he went
about his daily life with a simplicity that astonished all; a
simplicity of which only true greatness is capable. In the great army
processions at the reunions, where he might have led the van, borne on
the shoulders of his victorious veterans, he marched afoot in the dust,
along with the boys he had led from Atlanta to the sea.

Political glory had no charm for him, and the huzzahs of the multitude
he measured for what they were worth. It was my good fortune to know
him in his real heart, his inside life, and a man less moved by hopes
of applause it seemed to me could not be imagined. He constantly saw
before him the vanity of human greatness. To him, a modest life of
simple things, well done, was as great as a life glowing with renown.
The glory that comes from achievement counted as little. The good that
follows doing right for right’s sake, to him was everything. Everything
he ever did, or said, or wrote, confirmed this.

He was an American, too, all over, and a loyal one. When an English
General attempted to belittle the North, and to foist Lee onto the top
of the victor’s column, Sherman answered him.

The following letters refer to this and to his article on “The Grand
Strategy of the War:”

“NEW YORK, May 1, 1887.

“DEAR BYERS:--I received your letter of April 24th some days ago,
and kept it for Sunday’s answering. Of course I could not go to
Dubuque on the occasion of the meeting of the G. A. R. and of the
remnant of the 13th Infantry. To them, it may seem a neglect,
but were I to accept one invitation in the hundred, I would have
to abandon family, friends and all peace, to become a vagrant.
I am now advertised like Barnum’s circus, at Cincinnati, May 4;
at Philadelphia _same day_, and at Washington May 11-12, for
the dedication of the Garfield statue, all _a la_ Pickwick, at
my own expense. As soon as I had become domiciled in New York,
I was assailed by all the magazines and newspapers to become
a regular contributor, at a compensation represented by the
algebraic expression x/2, but of course I declined with thanks.
Yet when General Lord Wolseley’s article in Macmillan’s March
number was published, claiming for Lee the maximum honors, to
tower high above every man of this country, I could not resist
the temptation to reply, and this is in the May number of the
North American. I suppose you are a subscriber, or can obtain
a copy. I would like to have your judgment. Also the Century
Magazine wanted an article on ‘The Grand Strategy of the War,’
which I prepared with some care, and they may publish in the June
number, or may withhold as a kind of preface to their intended
publication of all the military publications of the past four
years. In the multitude of counsels there may be wisdom, at all
events we had better put forth all we have, lest the Rebels
succeed in their claims to have been the simon pure patriots
and ‘Union Men’ of our day and generation. They have partially
succeeded, and may completely succeed, for to-day not a single
Union man represents the United States in foreign lands, and
the logical conclusion is that we were wrong, and our opponents
right. So Lord Wolseley is not to be blamed for assuming Lee as
the great hero of the Civil War in America. The war of muskets
long since subsided, now the war of the pen must begin, else the
remnant of the Union Army must pass down to history as barbarians.

“Your friend,

W. T. SHERMAN.”

* * * * *

“ARMY BUILDING, NEW YORK, May 21, 1887.

“DEAR BYERS:--I have received your letter of May 5th, and have
seen Thorndike Rice about your articles, but did not tell him all
you wrote. I think Rice is too much engrossed with social life to
give much of his personal attention to the North American. All
that I could extricate out of him was that your article would
appear as early as possible. I sometimes pity these magazine
men who have to read cords of manuscript, and out of the mass
choose that which will pay. The great mass of work devolves on
subordinates, and the editor finally indicates what shall be
‘set up.’ Even after that, articles are kept hanging fire. You
had better let what you have done stand, and in future watch the
current of the public thought, prepare your papers, and deal with
that magazine which you consider fairest.

“Now as to my May number, it was suggested by Thorndike Rice in
a telegram from Washington. I at first positively declined, but
when I got the full text of Wolseley’s article in Macmillan’s
Magazine, I saw somebody must answer, and all turned to me. I
wrote it one Sunday, and gave it to Rice for $500. If I had
charged a thousand, he would have paid it. In like manner my
article on the Grand Strategy of the War is longer, better, and
I charged the Century Magazine $1,000 for it. It was designed
to comprehend the whole series of War Articles to be bound in a
volume.[10] It may appear in the August number of the Century.

“I am besieged by the magazines, but shall reserve myself for
chance shots like this of Wolseley’s. I am not willing to rake
among old embers for new fire.

“Mrs. Sherman and Rachel are now at Detroit, on a visit to Tom.
Lizzie and I are at the Fifth Avenue Hotel. All go to Lake
Hotel, Lake George, N. Y., early in June. I will retain my
room, and circulate generally. I ordered the Appletons to send
you my second edition, in the theory that Mrs. S. had not done
so. Please inscribe it to your son, on the blank page. You can
substitute therefor at some time one of my letters, which will
answer for an autograph. It is a good deal of trouble to go to
the Appletons to do this in person.

“Love to all

“Yours truly,

W. T. SHERMAN.”

Shortly, I was gratified to receive from him a letter complimentary to
my article in the North American Review, describing his great campaign.

“NEW YORK, Aug. 26, 1887.

“DEAR BYERS:--In coming from my office in the Army Building,
I stopped at the office of the North American Review, to see
Thorndike Rice, but he was away at Newport, and his partner,
Redpath, gave me an advance copy of the September number, which
contains your article, ‘March to the Sea.’ It reads to me very
well, condensed, strong and well sustained by proofs. I think
it will command large attention, and I trust it will lead to
profitable employment for your pen. The leading events of the
war are now accepted, are crystallizing into pages, and even
paragraphs. The public is tired of minute details, especially to
bolster up this or that man. You have, in the compress of six or
eight pages, given all that the memory of the ordinary reader can
retain. I have already put it in a sealed envelope, addressed to
my daughter Lizzie, who reads and appreciates everything from
you. She, with her mamma, Rachel and Cump, has been up at Lake
George since June. I have been up three times. Spent last week
there, but am now here preparing for the Detroit meeting, Sept.
14-15, as also the G. A. R. Encampment at St. Louis, Sept.
25-28. If you come to St. Louis then, you will find me at Henry
Hitchcock’s, corner of Fifteenth and Lucas Place.

“As always your friend,

W. T. SHERMAN.”

In February of 1888, General Sherman wrote me some very decided views
he had, as to the difference between loyal men and disloyal men.

“NEW YORK, Feb. 10, 1888.

“DEAR BYERS:--I have your letter of the 5th, and as I have staid
indoors to-day for the express purpose of answering a batch of
kind messages sent me on my sixty-eighth birthday, I answer yours
in its turn.

“Of course I am pleased to know that you approve my Century
article. It would have seemed more opportune had it been printed
a year in advance, as it was written at the same time as my
Wolseley article. But the editors paid me for it, and could use
it for their interests, and at their own time. It looks to me
as if the Southern men will succeed, not only in controlling
the history of the war, but in achieving the government of
this country, notwithstanding we won the battles. Our Northern
people split up on questions of minor interest, whereas they
have skilled leaders who control ‘their people,’ and by throwing
their vote into one or other of the Northern factions, actually
govern both. This is none of my business, and I cannot help it.
So long as I live, I will hold the most humble Union man as a
better patriot than the proudest Carolinian of South Carolina.
Wade Hampton is out in another blast against me for cruelty
and inhumanity during the ‘March.’ The people of Georgia bore
their affliction with some manliness, but in South Carolina from
the Savannah River to the State line, the people whined like
Curs, and Wade Hampton’s resistance was so feeble as to excite
our contempt. I shall not notice his paper, meant for home
consumption, but if he attempt to enlarge his sphere, I will
give him a blast of the truth, as you and hundreds know it.

“I shall be glad if you come East, and it may be you can secure
a better audience here than from Iowa. The time will come when
the Mississippi Valley States will assert their supremacy in
literature, as now in the products of the soil, but the time is
not yet, and may not be in my day.

“We are all reasonably well except Mrs. Sherman. Wishing you and
yours all the happiness possible, I am truly

“Your friend,

W. T. SHERMAN.”

In June, General Sheridan was dying, and his great comrade in arms sent
me this little note. My book, “Iowa in War Times,” had just appeared,
and a copy was sent to him.

“NEW YORK, June 2, 1888.

“DEAR BYERS:--I received by due course of mail your letter of
May 27th and yesterday came to me at the Fifth Avenue Hotel the
volume, ‘Iowa in War Times.’ I have cast my eye over it, and
recognize most of the illustrations. The print, paper, etc., all
seem good, and I know the text will be even better. It is hardly
possible that I can read this volume in the whole, but I will
have occasion to refer to parts, to compare with other accounts
of the same general events.

“General Sheridan’s extreme illness has caused universal grief. I
hear daily by telegraph from his brother, Colonel Sheridan, and
have just sent a message of congratulations at his promotion to
the full rank of ‘General.’ But honestly I feel that it was too
late to carry with it much compliment. All hope of his recovery
seems to be abandoned, and every morning I wake, expecting to
find the papers in mourning.

“Congress ought to make the rank of Lieutenant General permanent.
It is simply dishonest for the country to compel a Major General
to do the work of a Lieutenant General, just as in the war
hundreds of Colonels had to command brigades and divisions.

“Mrs. Sherman is not so well, but went yesterday to make a
month’s visit to our daughter Elly near Philadelphia. Rachel and
Lizzie are with me at the Fifth Avenue Hotel.

“Give my best love to Mrs. Byers and the family.

“Always your friend,

W. T. SHERMAN.”

By September the Shermans were in their new home in New York, at
Seventy-first Street. After all, they were keeping house again. The
General had had enough of expensive and fashionable hotels. He had been
homeless longer than he cared to be. He describes this house in his
letter of the 16th. I was also glad to have his approval of my “Iowa in
War Times.”

“No. 75 West 71st St.
“NEW YORK, Sept. 16, 1888.

“DEAR BYERS:--When at Columbus, your letter of Sept. 1st was
handed me by Maj. Loring, at a time when I was chased from corner
to corner as though I had just escaped the penitentiary. I fear
the Major thought me neglectful of him and his letter. Let him
put himself in my place. Forty thousand ex-soldiers and sixty
thousand strangers were added to the resident population, all
bent on seeing the sights, of which I was one. Instead of dying
out, the interest in the war and its actors seems to grow with
time. I was not allowed time to eat or sleep, much less read and
write letters, but I escaped alive and should be grateful.

“I am now in our new house, not as large as that in St. Louis,
but better located, near Central Park and near the Sixth Avenue
Elevated R.R. Four full stories and basement, in which I have my
office with all my books and papers. Not divided as they were
when I was at the Fifth Avenue Hotel.

“The interior arrangements are not yet complete, so the family is
away, but by the middle of next week it will be all ready and the
family will come. I hope this is my last change on earth.

“I have at intervals found time to read your volume, ‘Iowa in
War Times,’ and congratulate you in having succeeded in giving
to each regiment and organization a fair measure of space, and
yet preserved the general authenticity of events. I hope the
book pays you proportionately to your labor and expense. As now
established with Mr. Barrett I can always supply you dates, facts
and figures, should you still pursue your literary labors.

“With love to the family, I am, etc.,

W. T. SHERMAN.”

Mrs. Sherman’s health had been failing somewhat for months, but nothing
absolutely serious was anticipated till, unexpectedly, she was worse in
the mid-winter. Then the end came so suddenly that some of her children
could not reach New York in time to see her passing away.

I was in California, and shortly received this reply to my letter of
sympathy:

“NEW YORK, Dec. 19, 1888.

“MY DEAR BYERS:--Your letter of sympathy is here. Mrs. Sherman
had long been ailing from heart trouble and general disability,
and everything that could be done for her relief was willingly
offered by me and the children. I did not realize any danger
until the day before her death, when she began to fail very
perceptibly, and I at once telegraphed to the absent members
of the family to join us at once. Neither Mrs. Fitch, Mrs.
Thackera, or Tom reached home in time to see their mother alive.
The remainder of us were at the death-bed, and were witnesses of
a painless and peaceful end. We had learned that there was no
possibility of her ever fully recovering, and as she therefore
must have contended with much pain and suffering, our anguish at
her demise was somewhat assuaged.

“Every courtesy was extended the funeral party on its sorrowful
journey to and from St. Louis, Mr. Roberts, President of the
Penn. R. R., excelling in his kind and accepted offer of his
private car. At St. Louis, all preliminaries had been carefully
attended to by Messrs. Jas. Yeatman and Geo. D. Capen, so that we
were enabled to start on the return trip the same evening.

“I well know the respect and honor with which Mrs. Sherman held
you at all times, and in which we all shared, and I beg you now
to be assured of our continued affection and deep interest in all
that concerns you and yours.

“Sincerely your friend,

W. T. SHERMAN.”

In September of 1889 the Army of the Tennessee was to hold its reunion
and banquet at Cincinnati. I was elected to deliver an original poem
for the occasion. As General Sherman was president of the Association,
I sent a copy of my poem to him in advance. It was called “The Tramp of
Sherman’s Army.” I was greatly interested to receive the copy back from
him, with marginal notes and suggestions for changes written over it,
and even a couple of new lines of his _own composition_. Possibly, it
was the only time General Sherman ever indulged in _writing poetry_.

When the reunion took place, many great characters sat upon the
stage--Cox, Logan, Dodge, Howard, Sherman and many others of the great
war heroes. At the tables sat hundreds whose names had been known in
the Civil War.

The toasts consisted of stanzas from “Sherman’s March to the Sea.” They
were elegantly painted by hand on white satin, on which also was traced
in gold the route of that famous March. Each toast was responded to by
the particular General who had commanded at the point described in the
verse. General Sherman, as president, made the first speech.

He then introduced me to the audience, and I recited my poem, “The
Tramp of Sherman’s Army,” with bugle strain accompaniment. Its
reception showed that the enthusiasm for war ballads had not died out.
Each morning of the reunion the officers of the Army of the Tennessee,
preceded by a drum corps or a band, walked in line from the Burnett
House over to the hall where they held their meetings. Though Sherman
was there, and many other distinguished men, it was almost a sad and
pathetic sight as they walked together in the middle of the street,
death had so thinned the line and reduced the number! Some of the
onlookers did not realize what men were marching there, what names for
history, or that among that peaceful looking little band were veterans
who had led great armies to battle.

* * * * *

_March, 1888._--With Mr. Harrison’s installation at the White House,
I resolved to again, if possible, enter the service abroad. In the
meantime, my military book of Iowa had not been a source of profit.
One large edition sold, that was all. It seemed I was not alone in
receiving no great income from war books. General Sherman, speaking of
his own experience, wrote the following letter:

“NEW YORK, June 14, 1890.

“DEAR BYERS:--I have just received your letter, enclosing the
programme of exercises for the 18th. I see so many boys nowadays,
who were born after the war, that I am hardened. It so happens
that my youngest, Cump, born at St. Louis, since the war, is
being examined to-day for admission to the bar. I am also just
back from West Point, where I saw the corps of cadets, about
three hundred, strong, brawny boys, all born since the war, who
now look up to me as a stray souvenir of a bygone age.

“I am sorry to learn that your book, ‘Iowa in War Times,’ has
not proven more profitable. Your case is not _exceptional_, as
I have good reason to know. So many expect me to present copies
of my ‘Memoirs,’ ignorant of the fact that the publisher gets
nine-tenths, the author one-tenth, so that when I present a copy
it amounts to my buying it at 80 cents less than the common
purchaser. My annual receipts from Sherman’s Memoirs don’t pay
one-quarter of traveling expenses _demanded_ at the Army Reunion
each year. The same is true of Sheridan’s and other war books.
Grant’s case is exceptional, because purchasers believe they
contribute to the support of his family.

“Of course I know nothing of your prospects for a mission or
consulate. I infer the present administration, like all others,
must use offices to pay for active political work.

“Present me kindly to Mrs. Byers. Lizzie is now absent on a visit
to her sister, Mrs. Thackera, at Cape May. Rachel is at home, and
we generally have visitors.

“Sincerely your friend,

W. T. SHERMAN.”

Senator James F. Wilson, who had been a true friend in all the years
that I had been in Europe, took me to the Executive Mansion one day, to
introduce me to the President. It was a curious meeting that morning.
I had never seen Mr. Harrison, and we waited with interest in the
anteroom of his private office. The place was full of grave looking
Senators. It might have been a funeral.

Mr. W. and I stood half an hour waiting among the rest. I wondered why
the President’s door did not open. All the time there was a little low
buzzing going on among some of the waiting ones, and I noticed a few
slip up and whisper to a very sober looking little man, in a corner by
the window. I supposed him to be a Senator. There would be some low
talk with him, a stiff bow, and then some other Senator would slip
up and go through the same performance. At last I whispered to Mr.
Wilson, “Who is that man by the window?” “Why, that is the President,”
he answered, to my complete astonishment. We had been in his presence
all the time, and I had not known it. Now my attention was doubly
fixed on him. Here was a quiet little man in the corner, ruling seventy
millions of people. He seemed to indicate, by an extra glance, who
might approach him next. I thought the Senators were all afraid of him,
judging from the humble way in which they walked to the corner, and the
very prompt manner in which they went away. There was not a smile on
anybody’s face, and all was silence. Had they all been stepping up to
take a last look at somebody’s corpse, the scene could not have been
very different. If he actually promised some Senator something, there
was no sign of the promise on his face.

After a while, he glanced over to Senator Wilson. We were but a few
feet away. Mr. W. went up and spoke in a low voice, telling him, as I
now know, something of the propriety of appointing men of experience
to the service, and suggesting my name. Not a muscle moved on the
President’s face. It is no go for me, I said to myself. Then Mr. Wilson
said, a little louder: “Now, Mr. President, let me present Mr. Byers.”
I heard him and stepped forward. I expressed the honor done me, and
he mechanically took my hand; but, as if taking a second thought on
the matter, he looked over my shoulder at somebody else, and, without
saying a word, simply let go. My interview with the President of the
United States was over. I laugh about it yet. “It did not promise much,
did it?” I said to the Senator, as we went out. “Well, no, nothing
extremely definite, or to count on,” replied Mr. Wilson. “But he never
says much, and means much more than he says. He is icy with everybody,
you saw that?” Yes, I _thought I did_. A year went by and I did not
try it again. A place was offered me in South America, but I did not
care for it. Then one morning Mr. Wilson said, “We will go and see Mr.
Blaine.” The interview was absolutely the opposite of the one at the
White House. Secretary Blaine had great esteem for the Iowa Senator,
as did every one who knew him. He invited us both to come and visit
him the next morning, at his private house. It was at the corner
of Lafayette Square, opposite the Treasury. While we waited in the
drawing-room I forgot for the moment what I had come for. I was only
thinking of the singular history of that house.

Upstairs was the room where the attempt on Secretary Seward’s life was
made, the night Lincoln was assassinated. Out there in front of the
door, Key was killed by General Sickles. At this moment, the house was
the home of the most noted living American statesman.

Shortly Mr. Blaine entered, all cheer and sunshine. He was a handsome
man, with his fine erect form, his intellectual face, his genial smile,
his great, big heart. He did not need the Presidency to make him great.
Though able for very hard work still, he was looking very white in the
face, his hair was quite gray. He talked to us for a time about the
need of keeping well. Did he have premonitions then? “Never sleep in
a room without a window raised, be it ever so little,” he said, “and
don’t go to late night banquets in crowded rooms. Secretary Windom,”
he went on, “has been murdered by trying to please crowds, speaking to
them when he ought to have been in bed. I am done letting people make
an exhibition of me. I will never, never sit in a room full of smokers
again, and sacrifice health for others’ curiosity. That’s all they want
of public men in such places, and one can die at it just as Windom has
done.”[11]

After a while I wondered if the Secretary had forgotten the object of
our call. Senator Wilson hinted at it at last, and Mr. Blaine got up,
walked about the room and said: “Really, now, I have been too busy
to keep my promise.” He asked us to come to him again, and fixed the
morning. “Bring with you the consular list and we will go all over it
together.” He also spoke of a kind letter on file in my interests from
General Sherman, who was then very ill in New York.

That afternoon, while on a street car going over to the Capitol, I
heard the conductor tell a passenger that General Sherman was dead. I
was greatly moved and pained. A thousand instances of his friendship
for me rushed through my mind. In a few minutes I heard, from a seat
in the Senate Gallery, the eulogiums pronounced by Senators Evarts,
Hawley and Manderson. Hawley almost broke down in tears. The Senate
adjourned, and probably every loyal heart in America was in sorrow.
The Southerners in the Senate that afternoon, sat still, and heard the
eulogies on Sherman in perfect silence. I wondered that not one of them
had the nobility to rise in his seat and speak of the great dead.

I went to New York and on the morning of the funeral was with the
family at the Sherman home. In the little back parlor, in the full
uniform of his highest rank, lay the commander of the March to the Sea.
Candles burned around his coffin in the darkened chamber. While I was
standing there, looking at his face, his son, Father Thomas E. Sherman,
who had that moment reached home from Europe, came into the room. He
embraced me, for we had many mutual memories.

A short Catholic service was held by the children that morning over
all that was left of their illustrious father. They were all sincere
Catholics. The mother, devoted to the same church, had died in the
room upstairs. The father had been reconciled to his children’s kind
of religion. He was not a professor of any creed himself, and for his
children to have this farewell ceremony, conducted by his own son,
seemed in every way appropriate.

That afternoon, New York City and the people of America buried General
Sherman. A more imposing funeral was never seen in the United States,
not even at the death of Washington.

Shortly, Senator Wilson and I, on invitation, went to Secretary
Blaine’s home again. There was a bright “Good morning, Mr. Wilson,”
as the Secretary again entered the drawing-room. Seeing me, he walked
across the room, took me by the hand and congratulated me on my
reappointment. “Your name goes to the Senate this afternoon for St.
Gall,” he continued, “the post shall shortly be increased in rank, and
you will be made Consul General for Switzerland.” He offered me my old
post at Zurich, however, if I preferred it. I never saw Mr. Blaine
again.

CHAPTER XXX

1891

GO TO SWITZERLAND AS CONSUL GENERAL--AN OCEAN VOYAGE THEN AND
NOW--A GLIMPSE OF BURNS’ HOME--THE HIGHEST CITY IN EUROPE--
A NOVEL REPUBLIC--LIFE IN THE HIGHER ALPS--HEADQUARTERS FOR
EMBROIDERY--PRINCESS SALM SALM--AN OPEN AIR PARLIAMENT--THE
UPPER RHINE--AT HAMBURG--A SUMMER ON THE BALTIC--INTERVIEW
WITH PRINCE BISMARCK.

In a few weeks I was again in Switzerland; this time away up among the
Alps, for St. Gall is the highest city of any importance in the world.

The sea voyage had been uneventful. The only lion among the passengers
on the “City of New York” was Henry M. Stanley. His wife, a
distinguished looking English lady, was with him.

_April 10, 1891._--This is my fourteenth sea voyage on the Atlantic.
What changes in ships since 1869! First-class steamers of that time
are now all off on second-class lines to South America; or else they
are at the bottom of the sea. Three that I crossed on have since gone
down--“City of London,” “Anglia,” “Deutschland.”

Yet aside from the added speed, the changes in ocean ships are not so
favorable as we try to think them. True, the vessels are more palatial,
but one can be just as seasick on a floating palace as on board a
schooner. Besides, speed and a palace are poor recompense for the
crowds that pack a modern ocean greyhound. Twenty years ago everybody
knew everybody on shipboard, and many of the ship acquaintances
became friends for life. Then, too, few of one’s fellow passengers had
ever been to Europe. There was all the joy of expectation that made the
little crowd happy. Those who fly often across the Atlantic have small
pleasure compared with the delight of those who long ago saw land for
the first time after a long voyage.

The crowds, the blasé character of half the passengers, have robbed a
sea voyage of most of its delights.

_April 20._--We came straight from Liverpool to Scotland, and staid
a week in Ayrshire at the old home of my wife’s father. “Clerkland,”
their old farm place, is there as good as it was centuries since, when
presented by Mary Queen of Scots to Mary Livingstone, one of her maids
of honor. It seems strange to read in the town register the name of
every owner of the Gilmour home for three or four hundred years down to
the present time. We do things differently in America, where we hardly
know where our own fathers were born.

The old-fashioned graveyard back of the kirk at Stewarton, with its
big brown granite slabs, confirms the town register. They are all
there, save an occasional one who wandered beyond the sea and died
among strangers. A pretty memorial window in the same kirk tells of
John Gilmour, my wife’s uncle, a young poet, called the Kirk White of
Ayrshire, who took all the Glasgow University prizes, won fame, and
died at nineteen.

We went to every spot near Ayr, made illustrious by the name of
Burns--Bonny Doon, Kilmarnock, Ellisland, everywhere, and held in
our hands the very Bible the poet gave to Highland Mary as they bade
farewell forever, standing with hands clasped across a little brook.

Our friend and guide was Mr. McKee, the old Burns scholar and
historian, who in his youth had known many of Burns’ friends. He is a
last link with the poet’s day. He gave me a souvenir, his own book on
Burns. I have kept it with one given me later at Edinburgh by a friend
of Walter Scott, who had been an apprentice in the printing house where
Walter Scott was a member. As a messenger for the poet, he carried his
manuscripts from Abbotsford to Edinburgh, and the money for them back
to Scott. He wrote his name in an early edition of “Marmion,” and gave
it to us.

[Illustration: St. Gall.--_Page 306._]

_St. Gall, Switzerland, May Day, 1891._--The Consulate and our home
is at 41 Museum Strasse. The duties here are five times what they
were at Rome. The district sends forty million francs worth of laces
and embroideries to New York in a single year, and a hundred million
francs worth of goods are sent from the country at large. These are all
invoiced and samples examined at the consulates, while to avoid frauds,
copies of the sworn invoices are sent to the shipper, to the Custom
House, and to the Treasury.

There is not another city situated like St. Gall in all the world. It
has 40,000 people, and they live like a little kingdom to themselves,
up here among the Alps. The customs of the people differ from
everything else in Switzerland. The families are as clannish as the old
Scots, and their ways of doing things almost as old as their mountains.

This land of St. Gall was once a Republic by itself, like Venice. Its
history is half forgotten. Napoleon put an end to it after it had
endured five hundred years.

It was modeled on the plan of some of the Greek states. Its founders
had been readers of history, not politicians trying experiments. They
had a good chance to govern wholly for themselves, and to be let alone.
They were isolated in the heart of the beautiful Alps, and their
valleys were three or four thousand feet above sea level. Mountain
scenery of the finest description surrounded them everywhere, just as
it does the land of their children to-day. A thousand feet below them,
lay a beautiful and historic lake.

They had Burgomasters for Presidents, and it was purely a people’s
government. Its type exists in neighboring Appenzell even to-day. There
the parliament meets in meadows, and the people pass laws by the
showing of hands.

Wegelin, the famous historian of Frederick the Great, speaking of this
forgotten government of St. Gall, says: “It is a Republic where a
handful of virtuous citizens accomplish what the greatest monarchs fail
in. They guard their state from disorder and revolution by the simple
grace of homely virtues. An habitual honor prevails there as a happy
instinct.”

To the honor of the modern dwellers in the land of the old Republic,
let it be said, the virtues of their ancestors have not been forgotten.

A great Italian traveler visited the little old Republic once, and
I translate from a letter he wrote home. It is a novel letter: “The
people of the St. Gall Republic are great traders and manufacturers,
and are noted for their integrity. Weaving linen is their great
industry. There are few failures in business, and cheating is a crime.
The merchants and traders are mostly nobles. They travel when young
and learn all languages. Flax is spun here to the fineness of a hair.
The bleaching is wonderful, owing to the pure water of the Alps. The
rich own many estates in the Rhine valley near by, and beautiful
gardens are about the town. The taxes are small, but more than support
the economical government. The surplus in the city treasury is loaned
to citizens at low interest, to insure factories, house building,
etc. Officers are held to terribly strict account. The blessings of
heaven rest on the Republic as a reward for its charities, which are
unbelievably great. No citizen is permitted to live in bitter distress.
The people are extremely pious and the men appear in church (close by)
several times a day, in white collars and black mantles, while women
serve God only in black dresses.”[12]

With some modifications as to taxes, church-going, etc., this
Italian’s letter would be a fair description of the people here
to-day. The manufacturing industry of their fathers, in changed form,
continues, and St. Gall is the first embroidery-making city of the
world.

In its neighborhood, 30,000 people work at hand looms in their pleasant
homes, making curtains, lace edgings, handkerchiefs--the delight of
mankind. Great factories, working steam machines, are also filling
the world’s market with the same articles. Designing these beautiful
articles has become a St. Gall fine art. Nature helps the artist
here, for after a moist day and a cold night in winter, the pines of
the forest, the hedge rows, the lawn trees and the vines put on a
magnificence of frost work absolutely indescribable. Millions of forest
pines, drooping with icicles, snow and frost, resemble an ocean of
Christmas trees glinting in the sunlit gates of paradise.

The people of St. Gall, surrounded as they are, could not help but
make things beautiful. That many have grown rich at it, and live in
beautiful villas on the heights about the city, is not to be wondered
at.

Sometimes, though, a high American tariff, or bitter competition
elsewhere, make hard times for the common embroiderer whose wages are
never high. This very winter starvation stares many of the makers
of the beautiful things in the face, and a franc a day is the poor
pittance for twelve hours’ work. In better times even six francs are
earned. Then the great shippers, who furnish the linen and cotton and
silk to the peasants, and buy their embroideries from them, grow rich.
St. Gall is full of rich people, and it is full of scholars and culture.

Once a year the city itself, at its own expense, gives all the schools
a great festival and banquet on some high, green meadow. The sight of
from five to ten thousand happy boys and girls, all in pretty costumes,
bearing garlands and marching with banners and music, is not to be
forgotten.

* * * * *

The Sirocco or Foehn winds have been blowing for a week. Sunday, the
fine town of Meyringen was burned up, seven hotels and three hundred
houses. Nothing can save a town, once on fire, when this dry scorching
wind blast is in the mountains. It is no longer believed to be a
Sirocco, however, coming from the African desert, but a thing born of
the changeful temperatures in the mountains. It is a disagreeable freak
of nature, and half the people are ill when the Foehn wind blows. But
it brings the mountains out in added grandeur, everything seems nearer,
snow fields and lofty mountains forty miles away seem but five miles
off. Their distinctness then is marvelous, their beauty tenfold.

* * * * *

The scenery everywhere about St. Gall is purely Alpine. The
“Rosenberg,” a long, low mountain close by, is lined with magnificent
villas; nothing like it elsewhere in the world. Back of these villas,
far below them, but still in view, is the Lake of Constance. In front
of them, deep in the valley, sits the city, while beyond the valley
rise the glorious mountains. Nature and man have combined here to make
everything beautiful. The people are kind and hospitable, more so than
elsewhere in Switzerland. Evenings, we are often invited out to homes
where the characteristic St. Gall life is enjoyable.

Many a time we have climbed up the Apfelberg to the homes of Swiss
friends. Sylvester evenings, Christmas evenings, and the like, are
celebrated by family reunions, sparkling Christmas trees and great
dinners. Wine flows like water and the fatted Nüremberg goose takes the
place of the American turkey. A circle is formed around the Christmas
tree and all join hands and dance, father, mother, sister, brother,
friends and servants. As at the country houses in England, for once,
servants and master are on a footing. Everybody taking part gets his
present.

On summer evenings the young ladies of the house sometimes place by
our plates at supper wild Alpine roses that grew in their own garden.
Possibly not another spot in the world, where fine modern homes and
Alpine roses are side by side.

The view of the illuminated city at night from these high villas, is
grand beyond any fireworks ever conceived. On festive occasions, fires
are built on the sides of the opposite mountains, or Bengal lights burn
on villa lawns high up beyond the valley, when the scene reveals all
our imagined pictures of fairyland.

The Americans, together with the Minister and Consuls in Switzerland,
celebrated the Fourth of July at the hotel “Baur au Lac” in Zurich.
Minister Washburn presided. Many were present. The day before, I had
sent cowboys into the higher Alps about St. Gall, to gather Alpine
roses for the occasion. They brought me bushels of them, and the chief
decoration of the table at the banquet was a solid pyramid of Alpine
roses ten feet high.

Few American tourists visit St. Gall, but many New York importers have
agents and factories here. There is a constant business rivalry between
them and the Swiss.

One of the interesting people who came to us this summer was Princess
Salm Salm. She has her home at Bonn on the Rhine. She is one of the
most beautiful women to be met anywhere. A kind heart has kept her
young. She is one of the few Americans who married foreign titles and
were happy. It was a love match--not a buying of a bride. Her life has
been one of extraordinary interest. Her husband, a German Prince on
General Bleeker’s staff in our Civil War, fell in love with the young
beauty at Washington, married her, and when the war was done took her
with him to Mexico, where he was a high officer on the staff of the
Emperor Maximilian. Like the Emperor, he was sentenced to be shot. His
young wife, by extraordinary cleverness and great exertion, saved his
life. History now relates how the Emperor’s life would have been saved
also, had he followed this clever woman’s plans. All was arranged
for his escape. The Emperor hesitated and was lost. The Prince and
Princess went to Germany, where her beauty, talents and rank, brought
her friends among the great people of the country. She and her husband
were favorites of the King of Prussia. When the war with France broke
out the Prince was an officer in the Fourth Guards, or the Queen’s Own
regiment. His wife was one of the titled women of Germany who labored
in the army hospitals. The Prince was shot dead while leading his
command at Gravelotte. The Princess remained, helping the wounded to
the end of the war. A more fascinating book than her story of her life
in three wars, I have not read. Many novels have this interesting woman
for their heroine.

* * * * *

[Illustration: Mer de Glace, Chamouny.--_Page 311._]

Last week, five of us, including my son, started to climb up the
Saentis, the highest mountain in the vicinity. We began the ascent
late. Storm and darkness coming on, we lost our way. Half the night
was spent up there, creeping about on ice and stones. At last we stood
still and yelled all together. We were heard at the little weather hut
on top of the mountain at last, and the guides came down with dogs and
lanterns and helped us out of our dilemma. We were all well used up,
and as for myself, I received an injury that I may never get rid of. We
got home next day, and were off the mountains just in time to escape a
great snowfall that will bury the path till next year.

* * * * *

General Sherman’s daughter, Mrs. Thackera, paid us a long visit, as did
our old friends, the Edmundsons and Frankels.

Together we made excursions, notably to “_The Little Land of
Appenzell_,” described so beautifully by Bayard Taylor. We went to
the meeting of the people’s parliament--a strange spectacle. All the
peasants came, wearing swords as signs of their right to vote. It was a
mass meeting in the open air. Ten to fifteen thousand voters stood and
voted on the laws of the canton. These laws, proposed by the outgoing
officials, had been printed and distributed in the farmhouses weeks
before. These officials in old-time garb now stood before the people
on a raised platform. There was no discussion at the mass meeting. “Do
you want this law--yes or no?” said the President, and that was all
there was to it. In two hours’ time new laws had been adopted. The
canton officials went through the ceremony of transferring their state
mantles to the shoulders of the newly elected officers. Then the vast
crowd were asked to bare their heads, hold up their right hands and
swear new allegiance to the Republic. When that packed mass of humanity
turned their faces to the sun, and held up ten thousand brown hands, it
was the most impressive scene one can imagine. They meant it. The vast
mountains stood around and looked on in silence. Far below we could see
the broad lake shining like a sea of silver. When the oath was over,
the bands played, and the peasant lawmakers returned in silence to
their homes. There had not been a single disturbance, not a rude, loud
word.

For hundreds of years this simple people of Appenzell have met and made
their laws in this way, and, as a historian said of the old Republic of
St. Gall, “They guard their state from disorder and revolution by the
simple grace of homely virtues.”

* * * * *

_September, 1891._--The six hundredth anniversary of the founding of
the Swiss Republic has now been celebrated--the most unique celebration
possibly the world ever saw. Three million people took part in it.
Every man, woman and child in Switzerland understood the significance
of the festival, and contributed to its glory. On every mountain top
joy fires burned, in every valley the bells rang paeans of liberty.
On top of the mighty peak of the Mythen, in sight of the spot where
independence was declared, stood a flaming cross of fire, fifty
feet across and a hundred feet high. It shone like a beacon light to a
million witnesses, who saw it from the heights near and far, over all
the Alps. Illuminations shone in every hamlet, even to the edges of the
snow fields and glaciers. For days Te Deums sounded, masses were said,
and a whole people gave thanks for five hundred years of liberty. The
usual vocations of men in the Republic came to a standstill, so that
employer and employed, high and low, rich and poor, could participate
in the dramatic rehearsal of the country’s history. Near the town of
Schwyz, where Swiss liberty was born, a vast stage and amphitheater
were erected, where amid the applause of multitudes the whole panorama
of Swiss history was reenacted with all the splendor of costume and
scenic effect of past ages. Once more William Tell, Arnold Winkelried
and Stauffacher with all the old Swiss heroes, walked among the people,
in sight of the very lakes and mountains that had witnessed their
heroic deeds. The great museums were emptied of their historic arms
and banners, and Morgarten and Sempach were fought over again with the
same hellebards, morgensterns and battle axes that had been used in the
dreadful encounters of centuries ago. The blood stains of the ancient
heroes were still upon their blades, and the descendants of the Swiss
martyrs for liberty, counting the cost, stood as ready to die for their
country as did ever the men who founded freedom among the Alps.

* * * * *

The river Rhine is close by us here, flowing through Lake Constance.
Every day in summer sees crowds of the St. Gallese rushing down to
the lake by train, to bathe in its waters. The ride down there, with
its glimpses of mountain valleys, blooming orchards, and shining
waterfalls, is one of the most picturesque in Europe. Down by the water
side are villages and walls old as the time of the Romans.

The little valleys and the plains between St. Gall and the lake, are
planted with hundreds of pear orchards. In the spring, when this ocean
of pear trees is in full white blossom, the ride down to the lake is
truly wonderful.

* * * * *

Spelterini is here with his big balloon, to take people traveling
above the mountain tops. Some of our friends went up for a few hours,
repeatedly, and pronounce the view of the lake, mountain and valley as
seen from the sky, something wonderful. He charges 200 francs for a
few hours’ ride among the mist and clouds. He passed close above our
house yesterday morning at a great rate. He has made a thousand ascents
and never had an accident. Riding with his balloon at a height of
15,000 feet, and at an express speed is safer than riding on American
railroads.

_May 13, 1893._--News has come of the appointment of a new Consul
General for Switzerland. The rotating machine has been put to work. I
scarcely dare to complain.

A new administration at Washington can remove me from office, but it
cannot take away from me the pleasure of the past years. Still I have
lived so long among the delightful scenes of Switzerland I leave them
with a pang.

“_Aufwiedersehen_,” our friends call out as they throw us their roses,
the train moves, we are looking for the last time possibly on the
mountains.

Part of this summer of 1893 we spent with our friends, the Witts, at
Hamburg, and then together we went to the Island of Rügen in the Baltic
Sea, where many delightful weeks among novel scenes were ending our
stay in Europe.

Later, our friends offered to take us to see Prince Bismarck, at his
home at “Friedrichsruhe.”

A couple of hours’ ride from Hamburg through an uninteresting country
of sand and pine trees, brought us to the little station not far from
the ex-Chancellor’s house. It seemed like a villa stuck away in the
woods of North Carolina, yet delegations find this hidden spot from
every corner of Germany, and come here by trainfuls, to do homage
to the man who made the empire. He is a greater man here on his farm
than the Emperor is in Berlin on his throne. There is not much about
the rather ill-kept looking estate to attract attention. There are a
thousand handsomer estates all over Germany.

We wait, as directed, under the trees behind the castle (though it is
no castle at all) for pretty soon the great man will come down the
garden walk. Miss Witt, who has an enormous bouquet of flowers for him
(she has given him flowers before), will approach him first, and then
the rest of us. There come his two big Danish dogs down the path now.
In a moment they are followed by a powerful looking old man who carries
a big club of a cane, and wears a great slouch hat of felt. He knows
what the young lady and the flowers mean very quickly, and his strong,
marked face is soon in smiles. We are all presented. I speak to him
in English, but he says, “Please speak German. There was a time when
I spoke English, but that is almost gone.” I looked at him closely,
when others were talking. His great, wrinkled, seamed face looked as
powerful as his herculean frame. I could not help thinking to myself,
here stands the man who overthrew Louis Napoleon, and here is he who
once ruefully said, “The lives of eighty thousand human beings would
have been saved were it not for me.”

He had a few kind words for all of us, and Madame Semper he remembered
well. But he was getting old, and seemed on the point of feebleness;
his great race was done. His dogs rubbed against his legs and looked
at us as if they wanted us to stay away from their master. Shortly
he lifted his great broad hat, saying: “My wife is waiting for me at
breakfast. I bid you good-day.” Then he turned and walked back to the
castle. We had seen Bismarck.

INDEX.

Alabama Claims, 47

Alcott, Bronson and Louise, 201

Alps, 22

Americans, at Zurich, 115, 162

Artists, American at Munich, 157

Astor, W. W, 248

Avalanche, An, 205

Bauer, Caroline, 38

Beer Gardens, 35, 117

Berlin, Visit there, 225

Billingsgate Market, 17

Bismarck, Prince, 314

Black Forest, 165

Blaine, 199

Blanc, Louis, 44

Bocken, 49

Bonner, Kate Sherwood, 121

Boucicault, Dion, 112

Brentano, Lorenzo, 24

Bright, John, 18

Burns, Visit at home of, 305

Byron, Lord, 240
Letters about, 240

Capri, Island of, 266

Chicago Fire, 42

Christmas Night at Sea, 124

Commers of Students at Zurich, 116

Constitution, Swiss, 101

Conway, Hugh, 257

Crawford, Marion, 250

Custom House Frauds, 232

Davis, Winnie, 143

Dennison, 126

Disraeli, Lord Beaconsfield, 18

Duels, 117

Dufour, General, 61;
Letter, 62

Elm Destroyed, 205

Eugenie, French Empress, 83

Favre, Jules, 45

Fick, Professor, 114

Field, Kate, 111

Forney, Col. Jno. W., 122

Fox Hunting, 166

Frederick, Crown Prince, 227

Freeman, Artist, 98

Frey, Emil, 232

Funeral, Swiss, 36
Of a Poet’s Child, 37
Irish, 209

Gambetta, Leon, 45

Garibaldi at Rome, 97

Gladstone, Speech by, 18
Hatred of, 238, 269

Gilmour, John, a Scotch Poet, 305

Grant, Gen. U. S., at White House, 71;
visits Switzerland, 128;
conversations at Lake Luzern, 128;
simplicity of life, 131;
with the Swiss President, 134;
banquet to him at Bern, 134;
and at Zurich, 149;
recollections of him in the War, 145;
at Champion Hills, 145;
his log cabin near St. Louis, 280;
letter from him, 288.

Harrison, President, Interview with, 299

Harte, Bret, 170;
letters from, 171, 172;
visits Bocken, 174;
visit the Rigi together, 177;
and Obstalden, 178;
more letters, 183, 185, 187.

Hauk, Minnie, 107

Holidays at the Consulate, 115

Hortense, Queen of Holland, 80

“Home, Sweet Home,” funeral of author, 230

Humbert, King of Italy, 247

Hurricane at Christmas, 124

Ibsen at Rome, 257

Icebergs, 121

Immigration Difficulties, 195

Indians in Switzerland, 218, 228

Inn, an English, 16

Ireland, a foot trip through, 206

Ischia Destroyed, 250

Kaiser, the Old, 229

Keller, Ferdinand, 241

Keller, Gottfried, 25

King, Horatio, Literary Evenings in Washington, 122

Kinkel, Gottfried, his death and funeral, 219
Letter from Mrs. Kinkel, 220
And from Carl Schurz, 219

Lake Dwellers of Switzerland, 241

Leo XIII., Pope, presented to him, 261

Lions, Baby, 227

Liszt, Franz, at Zurich, 141
At Rome, 260

London, Sunday quiet, fog, 17
Visit in 1875, 111

Longfellow, Henry W., 200

Lucca, Pauline, 142

Lugano, 217

Magazines, Writing for, 139

Margaret, Queen of Italy, 252

McDonald, Geo., at Washington, 72

Miller, Joaquin, at Rome, 99

Moleschott, Roman Senator, 269

Moselle River, Our trip there, 184

Motley, Jno. L., 18

Napoleon III., his boyhood in Switzerland, 80

North American Review, Write articles for, 276

Obstalden, an Alpine Hamlet, 119
Storm in the Alps, 119

Ocean Voyages, then and now, 304

Orsini Café, distinguished people met there, 25

Paris, Horrors of the Commune, 34

Parliament in the Open Air, 311

Pierpont, Edwards, Governor, 268

Pierpont, Secretary of Legation, 265

Polish Patriot and His Castle on Lake Zurich, 38

Pope Leo XIII., 261

Porta Nigra, Ruins of, 185

Rhine, the Source of, 89

Rigi, A Strange Experience, 132

Robert, Christopher, 123

Rogers, Randolph, 264

Rome, Our Life in, 246

St. Bernard, Dogs there, 38

St. Gall, Description of it, 306
Life there, 306

Salm-Salm, Princess, 310

Sargent, A. A., Minister to Berlin, 225

“Schiller,” The Wreck of, 127

Scherr, Johannes, 224

Scotland, Visit to Burns’ Home, 305
“Clerkland”, 305

Sherman, Gen.; see below.

Smalley, Geo. W., 111

Smith, Dr., Author of “America”, 203

Stein on the Rhine, Castle of, 165

Story, W. W., 263

Switzerland, cheap living there, 21;
new Constitution, 101;
I write a book on Switzerland, 108.

Sherman, Gen. W. T., Visit at Zurich, 58;
at Berne, 61;
I visit his home in Washington, 68;
Mrs. Sherman, 67;
letter from her, 104;
takes me to see Mr. Blaine, 300;
invites me to his home in St. Louis, 275;
my article on the March to the Sea, 276;
life in the Sherman home, 277;
conversations with the General, 276;
gives me his army badge, 280;
in New York, 288;
his immense popularity with the people, 289;
death of Mrs. Sherman, 296;
at reunion of Army of Tennessee, 297;
his sickness and death, 301, 302;
speeches in the Senate, 302;
his funeral, 302.

Letters from Gen. Sherman:
Franco-German War, 29
Four letters as to his coming abroad, 54, 76
Loss of the “Atlantic”, 80
Thiers, 87
Letter, 93
Cuba, 96
Too Many Commanders, 102
War Histories, 103, 283, 292
Negro Question, 109
Writing His Memoirs, 109
Prussian Army Maneuvers, 118
Confiscation by Taxes, 147
Confederates More Popular than Union Men, 163
Ready to Surrender, 163
About Italy, 190
Grant and the Presidency, 192
Politics, 193
His Son “Tom”, 198
The Duke of Wellington, 212
Assassination of President Garfield, 213, 214
Science of War, 213
The Mississippi Valley, 222
Himself and the Presidency, 223
Retirement from the army, 233
His “Flaming Sword”, 236
The Presidency, 237
Views of Rome, 258
Politics, 259
Party Stronger than Patriotism, 271
Farms, 272
Taxes, 272, 282
Money Lending and Taxes, 273
“Keep Out of Debt”, 273
Memoirs, 275, 298
Grant’s Book, 283
Newspapers, 285
Exhibited Like a Circus, 289
No Union Man Left in Office Abroad, 290
The Magazines, 289, 291
March to the Sea, 292
General Wolseley, 293
Late Rebels Getting Control, 293
Sheridan Dying, 294
At Columbus, 295
Mrs. Sherman’s Death, 296

Tell, William, 50;
a relic from Tell’s chapel, 50

Terry, C. T., 64

Tilden-Hayes Contest, 125

Tilton, Rollin, 265, 267

Treves, 185

Twain, Mark, in Munich, 160
At the Artists’ Club, 161
Conversations with him, 160

Vedder, Elihu, 265

Victor, Emanuel, 101

Wagner, Richard, Life at Zurich, 141

Walton, Minnie, 113

“Wangensbach”, 106

War between France and Germany, 28

Washburne, E. B., 64

Willi, Dr., 141

Wilson, Senator Jas. F., 299;
Blaine’s regard for him, 300;
secures my reappointment, to Switzerland, 303.

Wood, Shakspeare, 269

Zurich, 20, 21;
Mob at, 32, 114

FOOTNOTES:

[1] “Switzerland and the Swiss.”

[2] A detailed description of the incidents of the adventure within the
lines of the enemy appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, May, 1880, and is
repeated in Mr. Byers’ “Last Man of the Regiment.”

[3] Note.--The second edition of this book was printed under my own
name. It is the volume from which Boyd Winchester, in his “Swiss
Republic,” borrowed so astoundingly, later, forgetting both my name,
and the common use all but literary burglars make of quotation marks.
Hepworth Dixon, though dead, and un-named, lives on in the book of Mr.
Winchester in the same manner.

[4] Details of this incident are related in Mr. Byers’ “Last Man of the
Regiment.”

[5] It was almost his last public performance.

[6] This boy, Hamilton Fish, grew to manhood, and was the first
American soldier killed for his country on Cuban soil.

[7] The State Department also sent me a letter later, thanking me for
my zeal. The publicity I gave to the outrages going on, has also led
the Swiss Parliament to change its regulations as to immigration, while
our own Congress has adopted severe measures against the traffic in
paupers and criminals.

[8] At last Mr. Sargent, tired and disgusted with the situation,
resigned his post.

[9] Harper’s Magazine No. 477.

[10] This refers to the Century Co.’s “Battles and Leaders of the Civil
War,” for which Mr. Byers was also invited to contribute his article
describing Sherman’s Assault at Missionary Ridge, in which he was a
participant.

[11] A few evenings before, Secretary Windom had dropped dead while
addressing a company of banqueters in New York.

[12] A detailed sketch by me of this remarkable little Republic,
appeared in Magazine of American History, December, 1891.

Transcriber’s Notes:

Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant
preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced
quotation marks retained.

Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.

Some illustrations have been moved closer to the pages or passages they
reference.

Page 175: “employe” perhaps should be “employed”.

*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Twenty Years in Europe - A Consul-General's Memories of Noted People, with Letters - From General W. T. Sherman" ***

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