MEMOIRS 
 
Ube prose Worfes of Ifodnricb Ibeine. 
 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 
 CHARLES GODFREY LELAND, M.A., F.R.L.S. 
 
 (HANS BREITMANN). 
 In 8 Volumes. Po->t 8vo. 
 
 The Library Edition at 55. per volume. The Cabinet Edition, special 
 binding, in cloth box, price 2, IDS. the set. The Large Paper 
 Edition, limited to 100 Numbered Copies, price to Subscribers 153. 
 per volume net. 
 
 I. FLORENTINE NIGHTS, SCHNABELEWOPSKI, 
 
 THE RABBI OF BACHARACH, and SHAKESPEARE S 
 MAIDENS AND WOMEN. 
 
 II. III. PICTURES OF TRAVEL. 1823-1828. In 2 
 
 Volumes. 
 IV 7 . THE SALON. Letters on Art, Music, Popular Life and 
 
 Politics. 
 V. VI. GERMANY. In 2 Volumes. 
 
 VII. VIII. FRENCH AFFAIRS. Letters from Paris, 1832, 
 
 and LUTETIA. In 2 Volumes. 
 
 Times. "We can recommend no better medium for making ac 
 quaintance at first hand with the German Aristophanes than the 
 Works of Heinrich Heine, translated by Charles Godfrey Leland. 
 Mr. Leland. manages pretty successfully to preserve the easy grace 
 of the original." 
 
 LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 
 21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C. 
 
MEMOIRS 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES GODFREY LELAND 
 
 (HANS BREITMANN) 
 
 WITH PORTRAIT 
 
 Second h 
 
 BDttion 
 
 LONDON 
 WILLIAM HEINEMANN 
 
 1894 
 
 [All rights reserved} 
 
FIRST EDITION (2 Volumes], October 1893. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 IT happened once in Boston, in the year 1861 or 1862, 
 that I was at a dinner of the Atlantic Club, such as was held 
 every Saturday, when the question was raised as to whether 
 any man had ever written a complete and candid autobiog 
 raphy. Emerson, who was seated by me at the right, sug 
 gested the " Confessions " of Rousseau. I objected that it 
 was full of untruths, and that for plain candour it was sur 
 passed by the " Life of Casanova." Of this work (regarding 
 which Carlyle has said, " Whosoever has looked therein, let 
 him wash his hands and be unclean until even ") neither 
 Emerson nor Lowell, nor Palfrey nor Agassiz, nor any of the 
 others present seemed to have any knowledge, until Dr. 
 Holmes, who was more adventurous, admitted he knew some 
 what thereof. Now, as I had read it thrice through, I knew 
 it pretty well. I reflected on this, but came to the conclusion 
 that perhaps the great reason why the world has so few and 
 frank autobiographies is really because the world exacts too 
 much. It is no more necessary to describe everything cynic 
 ally than it is to set forth all our petty diseases in detail. 
 There are many influences which, independent of passion or 
 shame, do far more to form character. 
 
 Acting from this reflection, I wrote this book with no in 
 tention that it should be published ; I had, indeed, some idea 
 that a certain friend might use it after my death as a source 
 whence to form a Life. Therefore I wrote, as fully and 
 honestly as I could, everything which I could remember 
 
i v PREFACE. 
 
 which had made me what I am. It occurred to me as a 
 leading motive that a century or two hence the true inner 
 life of any man who had actually lived from the time when 
 railroads, steamboats, telegraphs, gas, percussion-caps, ful 
 minating matches, the opera and omnibuses, evolution and 
 socialism were quite unknown to his world, into the modern 
 age, would be of some value. So I described my childhood 
 or youth exactly as I recalled, or as I felt it. Such a book 
 requires very merciful allowance from humane reviewers. 
 
 It seemed to me, also, that though I have not lived famil 
 iarly among the princes, potentates, and powers of the earth, 
 yet as I have met or seen or corresponded with about five 
 hundred of the three thousand set down in " Men of the 
 Time," and been kindly classed among them, it was worth 
 while to mention my meetings with many of them. Had 
 the humblest scribbler of the age of Elizabeth so much as 
 mentioned that he had ever exchanged a word with, or even 
 looked at, any of the great writers of his time, his record 
 would now be read with avidity. I have really never in my 
 life run after such men, or sought to make their acquaintance 
 with a view of extending my list ; all that I can tell of them, 
 as my book will show, has been the result of chance. But 
 what I have written will be of some interest, I think at least 
 " in the dim and remote future." 
 
 I had laid the manuscript by, till I had time to quite for 
 get what I had written, when I unexpectedly received a pro 
 posal to write my memoirs. I then read over my work, and 
 determined ".to let it go," as it was. It seemed to me that, 
 with all its faults, it fulfilled the requisition of Montaigne in 
 being ung livre de bonne foye. So it has gone forth into 
 print. Jacta est alea. 
 
 The story of what is to me by far the most interesting 
 period of my life remains to be written. This embraces an 
 account of my labour for many years in introducing Indus 
 trial Art as a branch of education in schools, my life in Eng 
 land and on the Continent for more than twenty years, my 
 
PREFACE. v 
 
 travels in Russia and Egypt, my researches among Gypsies 
 and Algonkin Indians, my part in Oriental and Folklore and 
 other Congresses, my discovery of the Shelta or Ogham tongue 
 in Great Britain, and the long and very strangely adven 
 turous discoveries, continued for five years, among witches in 
 Italy, which resulted in the discovery that all the names of 
 the old Etruscan gods are still remembered by the peasantry 
 of the Toscana Romagna, and that ceremonies and invoca 
 tions are still addressed to them. All this, however, is still 
 too near to be written about. But it may perhaps some day 
 form a second series of reminiscences if the present volumes 
 meet with public favour. 
 
 As some of my readers (and assuredly a great many of the 
 American) will find these volumes wanting in personal ad 
 venture and lively variety of experiences, and perhaps dull 
 as regards " incidents," I would remind them that it is, after 
 all, only the life of a mere literary man and quiet, humble 
 scholar, and that such existences are seldom very dramatic. 
 English readers, who are more familiar with such men or 
 literature, will be less exacting. What I have narrated is 
 nowhere heightened in colour, retouched in drawing, or made 
 the utmost of for effect, and I might have gone much further 
 as regards my experiences in politics with the Continental 
 Magazine, and during my connection with Colonel Forney, 
 or life in the West, and have taken the whole, not more from 
 my memory than from the testimony of others. But if this 
 work be, as Germans say, at first too subjective, and devoted 
 too much to mere mental development by aid of books, the 
 " balance " to come of my life will be found to differ mate 
 rially from it, though it is indeed nowhere in any passage ex 
 citing. This present work treats of my infancy in Phila 
 delphia, with some note of the quaint and beautiful old 
 Quaker city as it then was, and many of its inhabitants who 
 still remembered Colonial times and Washington s Republican 
 Court ; reminiscences of boyhood in New England ; my revo 
 lutionary grandfathers and other relatives, and such men as 
 
yi PREFACE. 
 
 the last survivor of the Boston Tea-party (I also saw the last 
 signer of the Declaration of Independence) ; an account of 
 my early reading ; my college life at Princeton ; three years 
 in Europe passed at the Universities of Heidelberg, Munich, 
 and Paris, in what was emphatically the prime of their quaint 
 student-days ; an account of my barricade experiences of the 
 French Revolution of Forty-Eight, of which I missed no 
 chief scene ; my subsequent life in America as lawyer, man 
 of letters, and journalist ; my experiences in connection with 
 the Civil War, and my work in the advancement of the sign 
 ing the Emancipation by Abraham Lincoln ;. recollections of 
 the Oil Region when the oil mania was at its height ; a win 
 ter on the frontier in the debatable land (which was indeed 
 not devoid of strange life, though I say it) ; my subsequent 
 connection for three years with Colonel John Forney, during 
 which Grant s election was certainly carried by him, and in 
 which, as he declared, I " had been his right-hand man ; " 
 my writing of sundry books, such as the " Breitmann Bal 
 lads," and my subsequent life in Europe to the year 1870. 
 
 I can enumerate in my memory distinctly half-a-dozen 
 little-known men whom I have known, and could with time 
 recall far many more, compared to whose lives my uneventful 
 and calm career has been as that of the mole before the 
 eagle s. Yet not one of their lives will ever be written, 
 which is certainly a pity. The practice of writing real auto 
 biographies is rapidly ceasing in this our age, when it is bad 
 form to be egoistic or to talk about one s self, and we are 
 almost shocked in revising those chronicled in the Causeries 
 de Lundi of Sainte-Beuve. Nowadays we have good gossipy 
 reminiscences of other people, in which the writer remains as 
 unseen as the operator of a Punch exhibition in his scJnuassel 
 box, while he displays his puppets. I find no fault with this 
 a cliacun sa maniere. But it is very natural under such 
 influences that men whose own lives are full of and inspired 
 with their own deeds will not write them on the model of 
 Benvenuto Cellini. One of the greatest generals of modern 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 vn 
 
 times, Lord Napier of Magdala, told me that he believed I 
 was the only person to whom he had ever fully narrated his 
 experiences of the siege of Lucknow. He seemed to be sur 
 prised at having so forgotten himself. In ancient Viking 
 days the hero made his debut in every society with a " Me 
 void, mes enfants I Listen if you want to be astonished ! " 
 and proceeded to tell how he had smashed the heads of kings, 
 and mashed the hearts of maidens, and done great deeds all 
 round. It was bad form and yet we should never have 
 known much about Regner Lodbrog but for such a canticle. 
 If I, in this work, have not quite effaced myself, as good taste 
 demands, let it be remembered that if I had, at the time of 
 writing, distinctly felt that it would be printed as put down, 
 there would, most certainly, have been much less of " me " 
 visible, and the dead-levelled work would have escaped much 
 possible shot of censure. It was a little in a spirit of defiant 
 reaction that I resolved to let it be published as it is, and 
 risk the chances. As Uncle Toby declared that, after all, a 
 mother must in some kind of a way be a relation to her own 
 child, so it still appears to me that to write an autobiography 
 the author must say something about himself; but it is a 
 great and very popular tour deforce to quite avoid doing this, 
 and all art of late years has run to merely skilfully overcom 
 ing difficulties and avoiding interesting motives or subjects. 
 It may be, therefore, that in days to come, my book will be 
 regarded with some interest, as a curious relic of a barbarous 
 age, and written in a style long passed away 
 
 " When they sat with ghosts on a stormy shore, 
 And spoke in a tongue which men speak no more ; 
 Living in wild and wondrous ways, 
 In the ancient giant and goblin days." 
 
 Once in my younger time, one of the most beautiful and 
 intellectual women whom I ever knew, Madame Anita de 
 Barrera (Daniel Webster said she was beautiful enough to 
 redeem a whole generation of blue-stockings from the charge 
 of ugliness) once made a great and pathetic fuss to me about 
 
viii PREFACE. 
 
 a grey hair which had appeared among her black tresses. 
 " And what difference," I said, " can one white hair make to 
 any friend?" "Well," she replied, "I thought if I could 
 not awaken any other feeling, I might at least inspire in you 
 veneration for old age." So with this work of mine, if it 
 please in naught else, it may still gratify some who love to 
 trace the footsteps of the past, and listen to what is told by 
 one who lived long " before the war." 
 
 Now for a last word which involves the only point of 
 any importance to me personally in this preface I would 
 say that there will be certain readers who will perhaps think 
 that I have exaggerated my life-work, or blown my own 
 trumpet too loudly. To these I declare in plain honesty, that 
 I believe there have been or are in the United States thou 
 sands of men who have far surpassed me, especially as re 
 gards services to the country during the Civil War. There 
 were leaders in war and diplomacy, editors and soldiers who 
 sacrificed their lives, to whose names I can only bow in rev 
 erence and humility. But as it was said of the great unknown 
 who passed away the fortes ante Agamemnon " they had 
 no poet, and they died." These most deserving ones have 
 not written their lives or set themselves forth, " and so they 
 pass into oblivion " and I regret it with all my soul. But 
 this is no reason why those who did something, albeit in 
 lesser degree, should not chronicle their experiences exactly 
 as they appear to them, and it is not in human nature to 
 require a man to depreciate that to which he honestly devoted 
 all his energies. Perhaps it never yet entered into the heart 
 of man to conceive how much has really been done by every 
 body. 
 
 And I do most earnestly and solemnly protest, as if it 
 were my last word in life, that I have said nothing whatever 
 as regards my political work and its results which was not 
 seriously said at the time by many far greater men than I, so 
 that I believe I have not the least exaggerated in any trifle, 
 even unconsciously. Thus I can never forget the deep and 
 
PREFACE. i x 
 
 touching sympathy which Henry W. Longfellow expressed 
 to me regarding my efforts to advance Emancipation, and 
 how, when some one present observed that perhaps I would 
 irritate the Non-Abolition Union men, the poet declared em 
 phatically, " But it is a great idea " or " a noble work." And 
 Lowell, Emerson, and George W. Curtis, Bayard Taylor, and 
 many more, spoke to the same effect. And what they said 
 of me I may repeat for the sake of History and of Truth. 
 
 The present work describes more than forty years of life 
 in America, and it is therefore the American reader who will 
 be chiefly interested in it. I should perhaps have mentioned 
 what I reserved for special comment in the future : that dur 
 ing more than ten years residence in Europe I had one thing 
 steadily in view all the time, at which I worked hard, which 
 was to qualify myself to return to America and there intro 
 duce to the public schools of Philadelphia the Industrial or 
 Minor Arts as a branch of education, in which I eventually 
 succeeded, devoting to the work there four years, applying 
 myself so assiduously as to neglect both society and amuse 
 ments, and not obtaining, nor seeking for, pay or profit thereby 
 in any way, directly or indirectly. And if I have, as I have 
 read, since then "expatriated" myself, my whole absence has 
 not been much longer than was that of Washington Irving, 
 and I trust to be able to prove that I have " left my country 
 for my country s good "albeit in a somewhat better sense 
 than that which was implied by the poet. 
 
 And I may here incidentally mention, with all due mod 
 esty, that since the foregoing paragraph came to me " in re 
 vise," I received from Count Angelo di Gubernatis a letter, 
 beginning with the remark that, in consequence of my gentile 
 ed insistente premura, or " amiable persistence, begun four 
 years ago," he has at length carried out my idea and sugges 
 tion of establishing a great Italian Folklore Society, of 
 which I am to rank as among the first twelve members. 
 This is the fourth institution of the kind which I have been 
 first, or among the first, to found in Europe, and it has in 
 
x PREFACE. 
 
 every case been noted, not without surprise, that I was an 
 American. Such associations, being wide-reaching and cos 
 mopolitan, may be indeed considered by every man of culture 
 as patriotic, and I hope at some future day that I shall still 
 further prove that, as regards my native country, I have only 
 changed my sky but not my heart, and laboured for American 
 interests as earnestly as ever. 
 
 CHARLES GODFREY LELAND. 
 BAGNI DI LUCCA, ITALY, August 20, 1893. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. EARLY LIFE (1824-1837) 1 
 
 II. BOYHOOD AND YOUTH (1837-1845) 65 
 
 III. UNIVERSITY LIFE AND TRAVEL IN EUROPE (1845-1848) . 107 
 IV. THE RETURN TO AMERICA (1848-1862) . . . .190 
 
 V. LIFE DURING THE ClVIL WAR AND ITS SEQUENCE (1862- 
 
 1866) 245 
 
 VI. LIFE ON THE PRESS (1866-1869) 318 
 
 VIL EUROPE REVISITED (1869-1870) 370 
 
 VIII. ENGLAND (1870) 387 
 
I. 
 
 EARLY LIFE. 
 
 1824-1837. 
 
 My birthplace Count Bruno and Dufief Family items General 
 Lafayette The Dutch witch-nurse Early friends and associations 
 Philadelphia sixty years ago Early reading Genealogy First 
 schools Summers in New England English influences The 
 Revolutionary grandfather Centenarians The last survivor of 
 the Boston Tea-party and the last signer of the Declaration 
 Indians Memories of relations A Quaker school My ups and 
 downs in classes Arithmetic My first ride in a railway car 
 My marvellous invention Mr. Alcott s school A Transcendental 
 teacher Rev. W. H. Furness Miss Eliza Leslie The boarding- 
 school near Boston Books A terrible winter My first poem I 
 return to Philadelphia. 
 
 I WAS born on the 15th of August, 1824, in a house 
 which was in Philadelphia, and in Chestnut Street, the 
 second door below Third Street, on the north side. It had 
 been built in the old Colonial time, and in the room in 
 which I first saw life there was an old chimney-piece, which 
 was so remarkable that strangers visiting the city often came 
 to see it. It was, I believe, of old carved oak, possibly me 
 diaeval, which had been brought from some English manor 
 as a relic. I am indebted for this information to a Mr. 
 Landreth, who lived in the house at the time.* 
 
 * As I was very desirous of learning more about this celebrated fire 
 place, I inserted a request in the Public Ledger for information regard 
 ing it, which elicited the following from some one to me unknown, to 
 whom I now return thanks : 
 
 " MR. CITY-EDITOR OF THE Public Ledger, In your edition of this 
 date, I notice a communication headed To Local Antiquarians. With- 
 
2 MEMOIRS. 
 
 It was then a boarding-house, kept by a Mrs. Eodgers. 
 She had taken it from a lady who had also kept it for board 
 ers. The daughter of this latter married President Madison. 
 She was the well-known " Dolly Madison," famous for her 
 grace, accomplishments, and belle humeur, of whom there are 
 stories still current in Washington. 
 
 My authority informed me that there were among the 
 boarders in the house two remarkable men, one of whom 
 often petted me as a babe, and took a fancy to me. He was 
 a Swedish Count, who had passed, it was said, a very wild 
 life as pirate for several years on the Spanish Main. He 
 was identified as the Count Bruno of Frederica Bremer s 
 novel, " The Neighbours." The other was the famous phi 
 lologist, Dufief, author of "Nature Displayed," a work of 
 such remarkable ability that I wonder that it should have 
 passed into oblivion. 
 
 My mother had been from her earliest years devoted to 
 literature to a degree which was unusual at that time in the 
 United States. She had been, as a girl, a special protegee of 
 Hannah Adams, the author of many learned works, who was 
 the first person buried in the Mount Auburn Cemetery of 
 Boston. She directed my mother s reading, and had great 
 
 out any well-founded pretensions to the designation Antiquarian, as I 
 get older I still take a great interest in the early history of our beloved 
 city. I remember distinctly the fact, but not the date, of reading a de 
 scription of the mantelpiece. It was of wood, handsomely carved on 
 the pillars, and under the shelf, and on the centre between the pillars, 
 was the following quaint and witty hieroglyphic inscription : 
 
 When the grate is M. T. put : 
 When it is . putting : 
 
 which is a little puzzling at first sight, but readily translated by con 
 verting the punctuation points into written words. SENIOR. 
 "Frankford, May 24, 1892" 
 
 I can add to this, that the chimney-piece was originally made for 
 wood-fires, and that long after a grate was set in and the inscription 
 added. 
 
EARLY LIFE. 3 
 
 influence over her. My mother had also been very intimate 
 with the daughters of Jonathan Russell, the well-known 
 diplomatist. My maternal grandfather was Colonel God 
 frey, who had fought in the war of the Revolution, and who 
 was at one time an aide-de-camp of the Governor of Massa 
 chusetts. He was noted for the remarkable gentleness of 
 his character. I have heard that when he went forth of a 
 morning, all the animals on his farm would run to meet and 
 accompany him. He had to a miraculous degree a certain 
 sympathetic power, so that all beings, men included, loved 
 him. I have heard my mother say that as a girl she had a 
 tame crow who was named Tom, and that he could distinctly 
 cry the word "What?" When Tom was walking about in 
 the garden, if called, he would reply " What ? " in a per 
 fectly human manner. 
 
 When I was one month old, General Lafayette visited our 
 city and passed in a grand procession before the house. It is 
 one of the legends of my infancy that my nurse said, " Char 
 ley shall see the General too ! " and held me up to the win 
 dow. General Lafayette, seeing this, laughed and bowed to 
 me. He was the first gentleman who ever saluted me for 
 mally. When I reflect how in later life adventure, the study 
 of languages, and a French Revolution came into my experi 
 ences, it seems to me as if Count Bruno, Dufief, and Lafa 
 yette had all been premonitors of the future. 
 
 I was a great sufferer from many forms of ill-health in 
 my infancy. Before my second birthday, I had a terrible ill 
 ness with inflammation of the brain. Dr. Dewees (author of 
 a well-known work on diseases of women and children), who 
 attended me, said that I was insane for a week, and that it 
 was a case without parallel. I mention this because I believe 
 that I owe to it in a degree whatever nervousness and tend 
 ency to " idealism " or romance and poetry has subsequently 
 been developed in me. Through all my childhood and youth 
 its influence was terribly felt, nor have I to this day recov 
 ered from it. 
 
4 MEMOIRS. 
 
 I should mention that my first nurse in life was an old 
 Dutch woman named Van der Poel. I had not been born 
 many days before I and my cradle were missing. There was 
 a prompt outcry and search, and both were soon found in the 
 garret or loft of the house. There I lay sleeping, on my 
 breast an open Bible, with, I believe, a key and knife, at my 
 head lighted candles, money, and a plate of salt. Nurse Van 
 der Poel explained that it was done to secure my rising in 
 life by taking me up to the garret. I have since learned 
 from a witch that the same is still done in exactly the same 
 manner in Italy, and in Asia. She who does it must be, 
 however, a strega or sorceress (my nurse was reputed to be 
 one), and the child thus initiated will become deep in dark 
 some lore, an adept in occulta, and a scholar. If I have not 
 turned* out to be all of this in majoribus, it was not the fault 
 of my nurse. 
 
 Next door to us lived a family in which were four daugh 
 ters who grew up to be famous belles. It is said that when 
 the poet N. P. Willis visited them, one of these young ladies, 
 who was familiar with his works, was so overcome that she 
 fainted. Forty years after Willis distinctly recalled the cir 
 cumstance. Fainting was then fashionable. 
 
 Among the household friends of our family I can remem 
 ber Mr. John Vaughan, who had legends of Priestley, Berke 
 ley, and Thomas Moore, and who often dined with us on 
 Sunday. I can also recall his personal reminiscences of Gen 
 eral Washington, Jefferson, and all the great men of the pre 
 vious generation. He was a gentle and beautiful old man, 
 with very courtly manners and snow-white hair, which he 
 wore in a queue. He gave away the whole of a large fortune 
 to the poor. Also an old Mr. Crozier, who had been in 
 France through all the French Revolution, and had known 
 Robespierre, Marat, Fouquier Tinville, &c. I wish that I 
 had betimes noted down all the anecdotes I ever heard from 
 them. There were also two old ladies, own nieces of Benja 
 min Franklin, who for many years continually took tea with 
 
EARLY LIFE. 5 
 
 us. One of them, Mrs. Kinsman, presented me with the cot 
 ton quilt under which her uncle had died. Another lady, 
 Miss Louisa Nancrede, who had been educated in France, 
 had seen Napoleon, and often described him to me. She told 
 me many old French fairy-tales, and often sang a ballad 
 (which I found in after years in the works of Cazotte), 
 which made a great impression on me something like that 
 of " Childe Roland to the dark tower came." It was called 
 Le Sieur Enguermnd, and the refrain was " Oh ma lonne fai 
 tant peur" 
 
 That these and many other influences of culture stirred 
 me strangely even as a child, is evident from the fact that 
 they have remained so vividly impressed on my memory. 
 This reminds me that I can distinctly remember that when I 
 was eight years of age, in 1832, my grandmother, Mrs. Oliver 
 Leland, told my mother that the great German poet Goethe 
 had recently died, and that they bade me remember it. On 
 the same day I read in the Athenceum (an American reprint 
 of leading articles, poems, &c., from English magazines, 
 which grandmother took all her life long) a translation of 
 Schiller s " Diver." I read it only once, and to this day I 
 can repeat nearly the whole of it. I have now by me, as I 
 write, a silver messenger-ring of King Robert, and I never 
 see it without thinking of the corner of the room by the side- 
 door where I stood when grandmother spoke of the death of 
 Goethe. But I anticipate. 
 
 My father was a commission merchant, and had his place 
 of business in Market Street below Third Street. His part 
 ner was Charles S. Boker, who had a son, George, who will 
 often be mentioned in these Memoirs. George became in 
 after life distinguished as a poet, and was Minister for many 
 years at Constantinople and at St. Petersburg. 
 
 From Mrs. Rodgers my parents went to Mrs. Shinn s, 
 in Second Street. It also was a very old-fashioned house, 
 with a garden full of flowers, and a front doorstep almost on 
 a level with the ground. The parlour had a large old fire- 
 
Q MEMOIRS. 
 
 place, set with blue tiles of the time of Queen Anne, and it 
 was my delight to study and have explained to me from them 
 the story of Joseph and his brethren and .^Esop s fables. 
 Everything connected with this house recurs to me as emi 
 nently pleasant, old-fashioned, and very respectable. I can 
 remember something very English-like among the gentle 
 men-boarders who sat after dinner over their Madeira, and 
 a beautiful lady, Mrs. Stanley, who gave me a sea-shell. 
 Thinking of it all, I seem to have lived in a legend by Haw 
 thorne. 
 
 There was another change to a Mrs. Eaton s boarding- 
 house in Fifth Street, opposite to the side of the Franklin 
 Library. I can remember that there was a very good marine 
 picture by Birch in the drawing-room. This was after living 
 in the Washington Square house, of which I shall speak 
 anon. I am not clear as to these removals. There were 
 some men of culture at Mrs. Eaton s among them Sears 0. 
 Walker, a great astronomer, and a Dr. Brewer, who had trav 
 elled in Italy and brought back with him pieces of sculpture. 
 We were almost directly opposite the State House, where 
 liberty had been declared, while to the side, across the street, 
 was the Library founded by Dr. Franklin, with his statue 
 over the door. One of his nieces often told me that this was 
 an absolutely perfect likeness. The old iron railing, now re 
 moved more s the pity ! surrounded the Square, which was 
 full of grand trees. 
 
 It was believed that the spirit of Dr. Franklin haunted 
 the Library, reading the books. Once a coloured woman, 
 who, in darkey fashion, was scrubbing the floor after mid 
 night, beheld the form. She was so frightened that she 
 fainted. But stranger still, when the books were removed to 
 the New Library in Locust Street, the ghost went with them, 
 and there it still " spooks " about as of yore to this day, as 
 every negro in the quarter knows. 
 
 In regard to Franklin and his apparition, there was a 
 schoolboy joke to this effect : that whenever the statue of 
 
EARLY LIFE. 7 
 
 Franklin over the Library door heard the clock strike twelve 
 at night, it descended, went to the old Jefferson Wigwam, 
 and drank a glass of beer. Bat the sell lay in this, that a 
 statue cannot hear. 
 
 And there was a dim old legend of a colony of Finns, 
 who, in the Swedish time, had a village all to themselves in 
 Wiccacoe. They were men of darksome lore and magic 
 skill, and their women were witches, who at tide and time 
 sailed forth merrily on brooms to the far-away highlands of 
 the Hudson, where they held high revel with their Yankee, 
 Dutch, and Indian colleagues of the mystic spell. David 
 MacEitchie, in a recent work, has made a note of this curious 
 offshoot of the old Philadelphia Swedes. 
 
 And 1 can also remember that before a marble yard in 
 Race Street there were two large statues of very grim for 
 bidding-looking dogs, of whom it was said that when there 
 was any one about to die in the quarter, these uncanny 
 hounds came down during a nightly storm and howled a 
 death duet. 
 
 And when I was very young there still lingered in the 
 minds of those invaluable living chronicles (whether bound 
 in sheepskin or in calf), the oldest inhabitants, memories 
 from before the Revolution of the Indian market, when on 
 every Saturday the natives came from their rural retreats, 
 bringing pelts or skins, baskets, moccasins, mocos or birch 
 boxes of maple-sugar, feathers, and game for sale. Then 
 they ranged themselves all along the west side of Independ 
 ence Square, in tents or at tables, and sold or were sold 
 themselves in bargains. Even now the Sunday-child, or he 
 who is gifted to behold the departed, may see the ghostly 
 forms of Red-men carrying on that weekly goblin market. 
 Miss Eliza Leslie s memory was full of these old stories, 
 which she had collected from old people. 
 
 As for the black witches, as there were still four negro 
 sorcerers in Philadelphia in 1883 (I have their addresses), it 
 may be imagined to what an extent Voodoo still prevailed 
 
8 MEMOIRS. 
 
 among our Ebo-ny men and brothers. Of one of these my 
 mother had a sad experience. We had a black cook named 
 Ann Lloyd, of whom, to express it mildly, one must say that 
 she was u no good." My mother dismissed her, but several 
 who succeeded her left abruptly. Then it was found that 
 Ann, who professed to be a witch, had put a spell of death on 
 all who should take her place. My mother learned this, and 
 when the last black cook gave warning she received a good 
 admonition as to a Christian being a slave to the evil one. 
 I believe that this ended the enchantment. There is or was 
 in South Fifth Street an African church, over the door 
 of which was the charming inscription, " Those who have 
 walked in Darkness have seen a great light." But this light 
 has not even yet penetrated to the darksome depths of Lom 
 bard or South Streets, if I may believe the strange tales which 
 I have heard, even of late, of superstition there. 
 
 Philadelphia was a very beautiful old-fashioned city in 
 those days, with a marked character. Every house had its 
 garden, in which vines twined over arbours, and the magnolia, 
 honeysuckle, and rose spread rich perfume of summer nights, 
 and where the humming-bird rested, and scarlet tanager or 
 oriole with the yellow and blue bird flitted in sunshine or in 
 shade. Then swallows darted at noon over the broad streets, 
 and the mighty sturgeon was so abundant in the Delaware 
 that one could hardly remain a minute on the wharf in 
 early morn or ruddy evening without seeing some six-foot 
 monster dart high in air, falling on his side with a plash. 
 In the winter- time the river was allowed to freeze over, and 
 then every schoolboy walked across to Camden and back, as 
 if it had been a pilgrimage or religious duty, while meantime 
 there was always a kind of Russian carnival on the ice, oxen 
 being sometimes roasted whole, and all kinds of " fakirs," as 
 they are now termed, selling doughnuts, spruce-beer, and 
 gingerbread, or tempting the adventurous with thimblerig ; 
 many pedestrians stopping at the old-fashioned inn on 
 Smith s Island for hot punch. Juleps and cobblers, and the 
 
EARLY LIFE. 9 
 
 " one thousand and one American fancy drinks," were not as 
 yet invented, and men drank themselves unto the devil quite 
 as easily on rum or brandy straight, peach and honey, madeira 
 and punch, as they now do on more varied temptations. 
 Lager beer was not as yet in the land. I remember drink 
 ing it in after years in New Street, where a German known as 
 der dicke Georg first dealt it in 1848 to our American public. 
 Maize-whisky could then be bought for fifteen cents a gal 
 lon ; even good " old rye " was not much dearer ; and the 
 best Havanna cigars until 1840 cost only three cents a-piece. 
 As they Lose in price they depreciated in quality, and it is 
 now many years since I have met with a really aromatic old- 
 fashioned Havanna. 
 
 It was a very well-shaded, peaceful city, not " a great vil 
 lage," as it was called by New Yorkers, but like a pleasant 
 English town of earlier times, in which a certain picturesque 
 rural beauty still lingered. The grand old double houses, 
 with high flights of steps, built by the Colonial aristocracy- 
 such as the Bird mansion in Chestnut Street by Ninth Street 
 had a marked and pleasing character, as had many of the 
 quaint black and red-brick houses, whose fronts reminded 
 one of the chequer-board map of our city. All of this quiet 
 charm departed from them after they were surrounded by a 
 newer and noisier life. I well remember one of these fine 
 old Colonial houses. It had been the old Penington mansion, 
 but belonged in my early boyhood to Mr. Jones, who was one 
 of my father s partners in business. It stood at the corner of 
 Fourth and Race Streets, and was surrounded on all sides by 
 a garden. There was a legend to the effect that a beautiful 
 lady, who had long before inhabited the house, had been so 
 fond of this garden, that after death her spirit was often seen 
 of summer nights tending or watering the flowers. She was 
 a gentle ghost, and the story made a great impression on me. 
 I still possess a pictured tile from a chimney-piece of this old 
 mansion. 
 
 The house is gone, but it is endeared to me by a very 
 
10 MEMOIRS. 
 
 strange memory. When I was six or seven years of age, I 
 had read Shakespeare s " Tempest," and duly reflected on it. 
 The works of Shakespeare were very rare indeed in Quaker 
 Philadelphia in those days, and much tabooed, but Mr. Jones, 
 who had a good library in the great hall upstairs, possessed a 
 set in large folio. This I was allowed to read, but not to re 
 move from the place. How well I can remember passing my 
 Saturday afternoons reading those mighty tomes, standing 
 first on one leg, then on the other for very weariness, yet ab 
 sorbed and fascinated ! 
 
 About this time I was taken to the theatre to see Fannie 
 Kemble in " Much Ado About Nothing " or it may have 
 been to a play before that time when my father said to me 
 that he supposed I had never heard of Shakespeare. To 
 which I replied by repeating all the songs in the " Tempest." 
 One of these, referring to the loves of certain sailors, is not 
 very decent, but I had not the remotest conception of its im 
 propriety, and so proceeded to repeat it. A saint of virtue 
 must have laughed at such a declamation. 
 
 As it recurs to me, the spirit which was over Philadelphia 
 in my boyhood, houses, gardens, people, and their life, was 
 strangely quiet, sunny, and quaint, a dream of olden time 
 drawn into modern days. The Quaker predominated, and 
 his memories were mostly in the past ; ours, as I have often 
 said, was a city of great trees, which seemed to me to be ever 
 repeating their old poetic legends to the wind of Swedes, 
 witches, and Indians. 
 
 Among the street-cries and sounds, the first which I 
 can remember was the postman s horn, when I was hardly 
 three years old. Then there were the watchmen, " who 
 cried the hour and weather all night long." Also a col 
 oured man who shouted, in a strange, musical strain which 
 could be heard a mile : 
 
 " Tra-la-la-la-la-la-loo. 
 Le-mon-ice-cream ! 
 An -wanilla-too ! " 
 
EARLY LIFE. H 
 
 Also the quaint old Hominy-man : 
 
 " De Hominy man is on his way, 
 Frum de Navy- Yard ! 
 Wid his harmony ! " 
 
 (Spoken) " Law bess de putty eyes ob de young lady ! Hominy s 
 good fur de young ladies ! 
 
 " De Harmony man is on his way," &c. 
 
 Also, " Hot-corn ! " " Pepper-pot ! " " Be-au-ti-ful Clams ! " 
 with the " Sweep-oh " cry, and charcoal and muffin bells. 
 
 One of the family legends was, that being asked by some 
 lady, for whom I had very little liking, to come and visit her, 
 I replied with great politeness, but also with marked firm 
 ness, " I am very much obliged to you, ma am, and thank you 
 but I won t:" 
 
 In Washington Square, three doors from us, at the corner 
 of Walnut Street, lived Dr. George McClellan. He had two 
 sons, one, John, of my own age, the other, George, who was 
 three years younger. Both went to school with me in later 
 years. George became a soldier, and finally rose to the head 
 of the army in the first year of the War of Eebellion, or 
 Emancipation, as I prefer to term it. 
 
 Washington Square, opposite our house, had been in the 
 olden time a Potter s Field, where all the victims of the yel 
 low fever pestilence had been interred. Now it had become 
 a beautiful little park, but there were legends of a myriad of 
 white confused forms seen flitting over it in the night, for it 
 was a mysterious haunted place to many still, and I can re 
 member my mother gently reproving one of our pretty neigh 
 bours for repeating such tales. 
 
 I have dreamy yet very oft-recurring memories of my life 
 in childhood, as, for instance, that just before I was quite 
 three years old I had given to me a copy of the old New Eng 
 land Primer, which I could not then read, yet learned from 
 others the rhymes with the quaint little cuts. 
 
 " In Adam s fall 
 We sin-ned all." 
 
12 MEMOIRS. 
 
 " My book and heart 
 Shall never part," &c. 
 
 Also of a gingerbread toy, with much sugar, colour, and 
 gilding, and of lying in a crib and having the measles. I can 
 remember that I understood the meaning of the word dead 
 before that of alive^ because I told my nurse that I had heard 
 that Dr. Dewees was dead. But she replying that he was 
 not, but alive, I repeated " live " as one not knowing what it 
 meant. 
 
 I recollect, also, that one day, when poring over the pic 
 tures in a toy-book, my Uncle Amos calling me a good little 
 boy for so industriously reading, I felt guilty and ashamed 
 because I could not read, and did not like to admit it. 
 Whatever my faults or follies may be, I certainly had an 
 innate rectitude, a strong sense of honesty, just as many 
 children have the contrary ; and this, I believe, is due to in 
 herited qualities, though these in turn are greatly modified 
 by early association and influences. That I also had preco 
 cious talent and taste for the romantic, poetic, marvellous, 
 quaint, supernatural, and humorous, was soon manifested. 
 Even as an infant objects of bric-a-brac and of antiquity 
 awoke in me an interest allied to passion or awe, for which 
 there was no parallel among others of my age. This was, I 
 believe, the old spirit which had come down through the 
 ages into my blood the spirit which inspired Leland the 
 Flos Grammaticortnn, and after him John Leland, the anti 
 quary of King Henry VIII., and Chrs. (Charles) Leland, 
 who was secretary of the Society of Antiquaries in the time 
 of Charles I. Let me hereby inform those who think that 
 " Chrs." means Christopher, that there has been a Charles in 
 the family since time immemorial, alternated with an Oliver 
 since the days of Cromwell. 
 
 John Leyland, an Englishman, now living, who is a deep 
 and sagacious scholar, and the author of the " Antiquities of 
 the Town of Halifax" (a very clever work), declares that for 
 four hundred years there has not been a generation in which 
 
EARLY LIFE. 13 
 
 some Leland (or Leyland) of the old Bussli de Leland stock 
 has not written a work on antiquity or allied to antiquarian- 
 ism, though in one case it is a translation of Demosthenes, 
 and in another a work on Deistical Writers. He traces the 
 connection with his own family of the Henry Leland, my 
 ancestor, a rather prominent political Puritan character in 
 his time, who first went to America in 1636, and acquired 
 land which my grandfather still owned. It was very exten 
 sive. 
 
 There is a De la Laund in the roll of Battle Abbey,* but 
 John says our progenitor was De Bussli, who came over with 
 the Conqueror, ravaged all Yorkshire, killing 100,000 men, 
 and who also burned up, perhaps alive, the 1,000 Jews in the 
 Tower of York. For these eminent services to the state he 
 was rewarded with the manor of Leyland, from which he 
 took his name. The very first complete genealogical register 
 of any American family ever published was that of the Leland 
 family, by Judge Leland, of Roxbury, Mass, (but for which 
 he was really chiefly indebted to another of the name), in 
 which it is shown that Henry Leland had had in 1847 fifteen 
 thousand descendants in America. In regard to which I am 
 
 * Also given as Delaund or Dellaund in one copy. De Quincey was 
 proud of his descent from De la Laund. I may here say that John 
 Leyland, who is a painstaking and conscientious antiquarian and accom 
 plished genealogist, has been much impressed with the extraordinary 
 similarity of disposition, tastes, and pursuits which has characterised 
 the Lelands for centuries. Any stranger knowing us would think that 
 he and I were nearly related. It is told of the manor of Leyland that 
 during the early Middle Ages it was attempted to build a church there 
 in a certain place, but every morning the stones were found to be re 
 moved. Finally, it was completed, but the next dawn beheld the whole 
 edifice removed to the other spot, while a spirit-voice was heard to call 
 (one account says that the words were found on a mystic scroll) : 
 
 "1m s^all ht her, 
 lnb fjere shall itt stanbe; 
 lnb tfcw sjiall bee talleb: 
 e Cburt^e of |Tet)lanb." 
 
14 MEMOIRS. 
 
 honoured with a membership in the Massachusetts Genealog 
 ical Society. The crest of Bussli and the rest of us is a raven 
 or crow transfixed by an arrow, with a motto which I dearly 
 love. It is Cui debeo, fidus. Very apropos of this crow or 
 raven is the following: Heinrich Heine, in his " Germany" 
 (vol. ii. p. 211, Heinemann s edition), compares the same to 
 priests " whose pious croaking is so well known to our ears." 
 This is in reference to such birds which fly about the moun 
 tain of Kyffhauser, in which the Emperor Friedrich Barba- 
 rossa is sleeping, and where he will sleep till they disappear. 
 And then, praising himself, Heine adds : " But old age has 
 weakened them, and there are good marksmen who know 
 right well how to bring them down. I know one of these 
 archers, who now lives in Paris, and who knows how, even 
 from that distance, to hit the crows which fly about the 
 Kyffhauser. When the Emperor returns to earth, he will 
 surely find on his way more than one raven slain by this 
 archer s arrows. And the old hero will say, smiling, * That 
 man carried a good bow. " In my note to this I remarked 
 that " the raven or crow transfixed by an arrow is the crest 
 of the coat-of-arms of the name of Leland, or of my own. I 
 sincerely trust that Bussli, the first who bore it, did not 
 acquire the right to do so by shooting a clergyman." As a 
 single crow is an omen of ill-luck, so the same transfixed sig 
 nifies misfortune overcome, or the forcible ending of evil in 
 fluences by a strong will. It is a common belief or saying 
 t among all the Lelands, however widely related, that there has 
 never been a convicted criminal of the name. Dii faxint! 
 
 At four years of age, while still living in Washington 
 Square, I was sent to an infant school in Walnut Street, 
 above Eighth Street, south side, near by. It was kept by the 
 Misses Donaldson. We all sat in a row, on steps, as in an 
 amphitheatre, but in straight lines. Miss Donaldson, senior, 
 sat at a desk, prim and perpendicular, holding a rod which 
 was fifteen or twenty feet in length, with which she could 
 hit on the head or poke any noisy or drowsy child, without 
 
EARLY LIFE. 15 
 
 stirring from her post. It was an ingenious invention, and 
 one which might be employed to advantage in small churches. 
 I can remember that at this time I could not hear a tune 
 played without stringing my thoughts to it ; not that I have 
 any special ear for music, but because I am moved by melody. 
 There was a rhyme that was often sung to me to the tune of 
 " Over the Wate.r " 
 
 " Charley Buff 
 
 Had money enough, 
 And locked it in his store ; 
 
 Charley die 
 
 And shut his eye, 
 And never saw money no more." 
 
 The influence of this and other tunes on my thought was 
 so great, that I have often wondered whether anybody ever 
 realised how much we may owe to metre acting on thought ; 
 for I do not believe that I ever penned any poetry in my life 
 unless it was to a tune ; and even in this prose which I now 
 write there is ever and anon a cadence as of a brook running 
 along, then rising, anon falling, perceptible to me though 
 not to you, yet which has many a time been noted down by 
 critics speaking gently of my work. This induced me to 
 learn betimes an incredible number of songs ; in fact, at the 
 age of ten or eleven I had most of Percy s " Relics " by heart. 
 This naturally enough led me to read, and reading under 
 stand, an amount of poetry of such varied character that I 
 speak with strictest truth in saying that I have never met 
 with, and never even read of, any boy who, as a mere little 
 boy, had mastered such a number and variety of ballads and 
 minor poems as I had done as will appear in the course of 
 this narrative. 
 
 While living at Mrs. Eaton s I was sent to a school kept 
 by two very nice rather young Quaker ladies in Walnut 
 Street. It was just opposite a very quaint old-fashioned col 
 lection of many little dwellings in one (modelled after the 
 Fuggerei of Augsburg?) known as the Quaker Almshouse. 
 
16 MEMOIRS. 
 
 One morning I played truant, and became so fearfully weary 
 and bored lounging about, that I longed for the society of 
 school, and never stayed from study any more. Here I was 
 learning to read, and I can remember " The History of Little 
 Jack," and discussing with a comrade the question as to 
 whether the word history really meant Ms story, or was in 
 geniously double and inclusive. I also about this time be 
 came familiar with many minor works, such as are all now 
 sold at high prices as chap-books, such as " Marmaduke 
 Multiply," " The World Turned Upside Down," " Chronon- 
 hotonthologos," " The Noble History of the Giants," and 
 others of Mr. Newberry s gilt-cover toy-books. All of our 
 juvenile literature in those days was without exception Lon 
 don made, and very few persons can now realise how deeply 
 Anglicised I was, and how all this reading produced associa 
 tions and feelings which made dwelling in England in later 
 years seem like a return to a half-forgotten home, of which 
 we have, however, pleasant fairy-tale reminiscences. 
 
 The mistress of the school was named Sarah Lewis, and 
 while there, something of a very extraordinary nature to 
 me, at least took place. One day, while at my little desk, 
 there came into my head with a strange and unaccountable 
 intensity this thought : " I am I I am Myself I myself 7," 
 and so on. By forcing this thought on myself very rapidly, 
 I produced a something like suspension of thought or syn 
 cope ; not a vertigo, but that mental condition which is allied 
 to it. I have several times read of men who recorded nearly 
 the same thing among their youthful experiences, but I do 
 not recall that any of them induced this coma by reflecting 
 on the ego-ism of the I, or the me-ness of the Me.* It often 
 recurred to me in after years when studying Schelling and 
 
 * A similar incident is recorded in Kenelm Chillingly. I had long 
 before the publication of the work conversed with Lord Lytton on the 
 subject which is also touched on in my Sketch-Book of Meister Karl, 
 of which the illustrious author had a copy. 
 
EARLY LIFE. 17 
 
 Fichte, or reading works by Mystics, Quietists, and the like. 
 At a very early age I was indeed very much given to in 
 dulging in states of mind resembling metaphysical abstrac 
 tion a kind of vague marvelling what I was and what others 
 were ; whether they and everything were not spirits playing 
 me tricks, or a delusion a kind of psychology without ma 
 terial or thought, like a workman without tools. 
 
 For a short time,- while five or six years old, and living at 
 Mrs. Eaton s, I was sent to a school of boys of all ages, kept 
 by a man named Eastburn, in Library Street, whom I can 
 only recall as a coarse, brutal fiend. From morning to night 
 there was not a minute in which some boy was not screaming 
 under the heavy rattan which he or his brother always held. 
 I myself infant as I was for not learning a spelling-lesson 
 properly, was subjected to a caning which would have been 
 cruel if inflicted on a convict or sailor. In the lower story 
 this man s sister kept a girls school, and the ruffian was con 
 tinually being called down-stairs to beat the larger girls. My 
 mother knew nothing of all this, and I was ashamed to tell 
 that I had been whipped. I have all my life been opposed 
 to corporal punishment, be it in schools or for criminals. It 
 brings out of boys all that is evil in their nature and nothing 
 that is good, developing bullying and cruelty, while it is 
 eminently productive of cowardice, lying, and meanness as 
 I have frequently found when I came to hear the private life 
 of those who defend it as creating " manliness." It was 
 found during the American war that the soldiers who had 
 been most accustomed to beating and to being beaten were 
 by far the greatest cowards, and that " Billy Wilson s " regi 
 ment of pugilists was so absolutely worthless as to be un 
 qualified for the field at any time. One thing is very certain, 
 that I have found that boys who attend schools where there 
 is no whipping, and little or no fighting, are freest from that 
 coarseness which is so invariably allied to meanness, lying, 
 and dishonesty. I had about 2000 children in the public 
 schools of Philadelphia pass under my teaching, and never 
 
18 MEMOIRS. 
 
 met with but one instance of direct rudeness. There was 
 also only one of dishonesty or theft, and that was by a fight 
 ing boy, who looked like a miniature pugilist. Philadelphia 
 manners were formed by Quakers. When I visited, in 1884, 
 certain minor art-work classes established in the East End of 
 London, Mr. Walter Besant said to me that I would find a 
 less gentle set of pupils. In fact, in the first school which I 
 examined, the girls had, the week before, knocked down, 
 kicked, and trampled on an elderly lady who had come to 
 teach them art-work out of pure benevolence. I am often 
 told that whipping put an end to garroting. If this be true, 
 which it is not (for garroting was a merely temporary fancy, 
 which died out in America without whipping), it only proves 
 that the garotters, who were all fighting and boxing roughs, 
 were mere cowards. Red Indians never whip children, but 
 they will die under torture without a groan. 
 
 My parents were from Massachusetts, and every summer 
 they returned to pass several months in or near Boston, gen 
 erally with their relatives in Worcester county, in Dedham, 
 in the "Hub" itself, or in Milford, Mendon, or Holliston, 
 the home of my paternal grandfather, Oliver Leland. Thus 
 I grew to be familiar with New England, its beautiful scenery 
 and old-fashioned Yankee rural ways. Travelling was then 
 by stage-coach, and it took two days to go from Philadelphia 
 to Boston, stopping on the way overnight at Princeton, Perth 
 Amboy, or Providence. This is to me a very interesting 
 source of reminiscences. In Dedham, for three summers, I 
 attended school. I remember that we stayed with Dr. Jeremy 
 Stimson, who had married a sister of my mother. I studied 
 French ; and can recall that my cousins Caroline and Emily, 
 who were very beautiful young ladies, generally corrected my 
 exercises. I was then seven or eight years of age. Also that 
 I was very much alone ; that I had a favourite bow, made by 
 some old Indian ; that I read with great relish " Gil Bias " 
 and " Don Quixote," and especially books of curiosities and 
 oddities which had a great influence on me. I wandered 
 
EARLY LIFE. 19 
 
 for days by myself fishing, strolling in beautiful wild places 
 among rocks and fields, or in forests by the River Charles. I 
 can remember how one Sunday during service I sat in church 
 unseen behind the organ, and read Benvenuto Cellini s ac 
 count of the sorcerer in the Colosseum in Rome : I shall see 
 his Perseus ten minutes hence in the Signoria of Florence, 
 where I now write. 
 
 Then there were the quiet summer evenings in the draw 
 ing-room, where my cousins played the piano and sang " The 
 Sunset Tree," " Alknoomuk," " I see them on the winding 
 way," and Moore s melodies. Tempi passati " Tis sixty 
 years since." Caroline meantime married a Mr. Wight, who 
 had passed most of his life in England, and was thoroughly 
 Anglicised. There was also an English lady visiting America 
 who stayed a while in Declham to be with my cousin. She 
 was jeune encore, but had with her a young English gen 
 tleman relative who would call her "Mamma!" which we 
 thought rather niais. From my reading and my few ex 
 periences I, however, acquired a far greater insight into life 
 than most boys would have done, for I remembered and 
 thought long over everything I heard or learned. Between 
 my mother and cousins and our visitors there was much read 
 ing and discussion of literary topics, and I listened to more 
 than any one noted, and profited by it. 
 
 I was always reading and mentally reviewing. If my 
 mother made a call, I was at once absorbed in the first book 
 which came to hand. Thus I can remember that one sum 
 mer, when we came to Dr. Stimson s, during the brief inter 
 val of our being shown into the " parlour," I seized on a Uni 
 tarian literary magazine and read the story of Osapho, the 
 Egyptian who trained parrots to cry, " Osapho is a god ! " 
 Also an article on Chinese acupuncture with needles to cure 
 rheumatism; which chance readings and reminiscences I 
 could multiply ad infinitum. 
 
 My cousin Caroline, whom I remember as very beautiful 
 and refined, with a distinguee manner, had a small work- 
 
20 MEMOIRS. 
 
 box, on the cover of which was a picture of the Pavilion in 
 Brighton. She spoke of the building as a rubbishy piece 
 of architecture; but I, who felt it through the "Arabian 
 Nights," admired it, and pitied her want of taste. Now I 
 have lived altogether three years in Brighton, but I never 
 saw the Pavilion without recalling the little yellow work- 
 box. In some mysterious way the picture seems to me to be 
 grander than the original. Dickens has expressed this idea. 
 I was too grave and earnest as a child to be called a cheer 
 ful or happy one, which was partly due to much ill-health ; 
 yet, by a strange contradiction not uncommon in America, I 
 was gifted with a precociously keen sense of humour, and 
 not only read, but collected and preserved every comic alma 
 nac and scrap of droll anecdote which I could get. Thus 
 there came into my possession half-a-dozen books of the 
 broadest London humour of the time, all of which entered 
 into my soul ; such things as : 
 
 " Ladies in furs and gemmen in spurs, 
 
 Who lollop and lounge all day ; 
 The Bazaar in Soho is completely the go, 
 Walk into the shop of Grimaldi." 
 
 Reader mine, you can have no conception how deeply T, 
 as a mere little boy, entered into and knew London life and 
 society from such songs, sketches, anecdotes, books, and cari 
 catures as I met with. Others read and forget them, but I 
 took such trifles deep into my soul and dwelt on them. It is 
 only of late years, since I have lived in England, that I have 
 learned how extensively I may say incredibly well I was 
 informed for my age as to many phases of English life. Eew 
 of us know what may be got out of reading the current light 
 literature of the day, if we only read it earnestly and get it 
 by heart. This I did to a great extent, as my reminiscences 
 continually awakened in England prove. 
 
 There was in Dedham a very old house of somewhat supe 
 rior style, which had been built, if not in 1630, at least within 
 a very few years after. It was inhabited by three sisters 
 
EARLY LIFE. 21 
 
 named Fairbanks, who were very peculiar indeed, and their 
 peculiarity consisted in a strange devotion to the past, and 
 above all to old English memories of colonial times before 
 the Kevolution. Even in England this resistance can hardly 
 be understood at the present day, and yet it may still be found 
 alive in New England. In the house itself was a well, dug to 
 supply water when besieged by Indians, and the old ladies 
 used to exhibit an immense old gun once used by Puritans, 
 and an ox-saddle and other relics. They had also a very 
 ancient book of prayer of the Church of England, and an 
 old Bible, and thereby hangs a tale. They were all still 
 living in 1849 or 1850, when I visited them with my very 
 pretty cousin Mary Elizabeth Fisher, and as I professed the 
 Episcopal faith, and had been in England, the precious relics 
 were shown to me as to one of the initiated. But they showed 
 a marked aversion to letting Miss Fisher see them, as she was 
 a Unitarian. So they went on, as many others did in my 
 youth, still staunch adherents to England, nice old Tories, 
 believers in the King or Queen, for whom they prayed, and 
 not in the President. I remember that Miss Eliza Leslie 
 told me in later years of just such another trio. 
 
 My grandfather in Holliston was, as his father and broth 
 ers and uncles had all been, an old Revolutionary soldier, 
 who had been four years in the war and taken part in many 
 battles. He had been at Princeton (where I afterwards 
 graduated) and Saratoga, and witnessed the surrender of 
 Burgoyne to Gates. I was principally concerned to know 
 whether the conqueror had kept the sword handed to him on 
 this occasion, and was rather disappointed to learn that it 
 was given back. Once I found in the garret a bayonet which 
 my grandma said had been carried by grandfather in the 
 war. I turned it with a broom-handle into a lance and made 
 ferocious charges on the cat and hens. 
 
 This grandfather, Oliver Leland, exerted an extraordinary 
 influence on me, and one hard to describe. He was great, 
 grim, and taciturn to behold, yet with a good heart, and not 
 
22 MEMOIRS. 
 
 devoid of humour. He was gouty, and yet not irritable. He 
 continually recurs to me while reading Icelandic sagas, and 
 as a kind of man who would now be quite out of the age any 
 where. All his early associations had been of war and a 
 half-wild life. He was born about 1758, and therefore in a 
 rude age in rural New England. He, I may say, deeply in 
 terested me. 
 
 All boys are naturally full of the romance of war ; the 
 Revolution was to us more than the Crusades and all chivalry 
 combined, and my grandfather was a living example and 
 chronicle of all that I most admired. Often I sat on a little 
 cricket at his feet, and listened to tales of battles, scoutings, 
 and starving ; how he had been obliged to live on raw wheat, 
 which produced evil results, and beheld General Washington 
 and other great men, and had narrow escapes from Indians, 
 and been at the capturing of a fort by moonlight, and seen 
 thousands of pounds worth of stores destroyed. I frequently 
 thought of old grandfather Oliver when " out " myself during 
 the Civil AVar, and was half-starved and chilled when scout 
 ing, or when doing rough and tough in West Virginia. 
 
 My grandfather often told me such stories of the war, 
 and others of his father and grandfather, who had fought 
 before him in the old French war in Canada, and how the 
 latter, having gone up to trade among the Indians one win 
 ter, endeared himself so much to them that they would not 
 let him go, and kept him a captive until the next summer. 
 I came across traces of this ancestor in an old Canadian rec 
 ord, wherein it appears that he once officiated as interpreter 
 in the French and Indian tongues. Whereby critics may re 
 mark that learning French and Algonkin runs in our blood, 
 and that my proclivity for Indians is legitimately inherited. 
 I would that I knew all the folklore that my great-graridsire 
 heard in the Indian wigwams in those old days ! 
 
 I can remember seeing my grandfather once sitting and 
 talking with five other veterans of the war. But I saw them 
 daily in those times, and once several hundreds, or it may be 
 
EARLY LIFE. 23 
 
 thousands, of them in a great procession in Philadelphia in 
 1832. And here I may mention that in 1834 I often saw one 
 named Rice, whose age, as authenticated by his pension pa 
 pers, was 106, and that in 1835 I shook hands with Thomas 
 Hughes, aged 95, who was the last survivor of the Boston 
 Tea party. He had come to visit our school, and how we 
 boys cheered the old gentleman, who was in our eyes one of 
 the greatest men alive ! But all the old folk in my boyhood 
 could tell tales of the Revolution, which was indeed not very 
 much older then than the Rebellion is to us now. 
 
 I can also recollect seeing Charles Carroll of Carrollton, 
 the last of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, 
 though my memory of the man is now confused with that of 
 a very perfect portrait which belonged to his granddaughter, 
 Mrs. Jackson, who was a next-door but one neighbour in after 
 years in Walnut Street, Philadelphia. He was a very vener 
 able-looking man. 
 
 My father served for a short time in the war of 1812, and 
 I have heard him relate that when the startling news of peace 
 arrived in Boston, where he was, he at once took a sleigh and 
 fast horses and drove full speed, being the first to disseminate 
 the news in the country. That was as good as Browning s 
 " Ride to Ghent " in its way apropos of which Mr. Brown 
 ing once startled me by telling me, " I suppose you know that 
 it is an invention of mine, and not founded on any real inci 
 dent." But my father s headlong sleigh-ride he was young 
 and wild in those days was real and romantic enough in all 
 conscience. It set bells to ringing, multitudes to cheering, 
 bonfires a-blazing on hills and in towns, and also some few to 
 groaning, as happened to a certain old deacon, who had in 
 vested his all in English goods, and said, when he heard the 
 cheers caused by the news, " Wife, if that s war news, I m 
 saved ; but if it s peace, I m ruined ! " Even so it befell me, 
 in after years, to be the first person to announce in the United 
 States, far in advance of any others, the news of the French 
 Revolution of 1848, as I shall fully prove in the sequence. 
 
24 MEMOIRS. 
 
 It may be here remarked, that, though not " profession 
 als," all of our family, without a break in the record, have 
 successively taken turns at fighting, and earned our pay as 
 soldiers, since time lost in oblivion ; for I and my brother 
 tried it on during the Rebellion, wherein he indeed, standing 
 by my side, got the wound from a shell of which he event 
 ually died ; while there were none who were not in the old 
 Indian wars or the English troubles of Charles the Second 
 and First, and so on back, I dare say, to the days of Bussli 
 de Leland, who laid all Yorkshire waste. 
 
 My grandfather, though not wealthy, owned a great deal 
 of land, and I can remember that he one afternoon showed 
 me a road, saying that he owned the land on each side for a 
 mile. I myself, in after years, however, came to own in fee- 
 simple a square mile of extremely rich land in Kansas, which 
 I sold for sixteen hundred dollars, while my grandfather s 
 was rather of that kind by which men s poverty was measured 
 in Virginia that is to say, the more land a man had the 
 poorer he was considered to be. It is related of one of these 
 that he once held great rejoicing at having got rid of a vast 
 property by the ingenious process of giving some person one 
 half of it to induce him to take the other. However, as there 
 is now a large town or small city on my grandfather s whi 
 lom estate, I wish that it could have been kept. Mais oil 
 sont les neiges tfantan, or the ducats of Panurge ? 
 
 There was a "home-pasture," a great field behind my 
 grandfather s house, where I loved to sit alone, and which 
 has left a deep impression on my memory, as though it were 
 a fairy-haunted or imagined place. It was very rocky, the 
 stones being covered with clean, crisp, dry lichens, and in one 
 spot there was the gurgling deep down in some crevice of a 
 mysterious unseen spring or rivulet. Young as I was, I had 
 met with a line which bore on it 
 
 u Deep from their vaults the Loxian murmurs flow." 
 And there was something very voice-like or human in this 
 
EARLY LIFE. 25 
 
 murmur or chattering of the unseen brook. This I dis 
 tinctly remember, that the place gave me not only a feeling, 
 but a faith that it was haunted by something gentle and 
 merry. I went there many a time for company, being much 
 alone. An Indian would have told me that it was the Un a 
 games-suk the spirit-fairies of the rock and stream. These 
 beings enter far more largely, deeply, and socially into their 
 life or faith than elves or fairies ever did into those of the 
 Aryan races, and I might well have been their protege, for 
 there could have been few little boys living, so fond as I was 
 of sitting all alone by rock and river, hill and greenwood 
 tree. There are yet in existence on some of this land which 
 was once ours certain mysterious walls or relics of heavy 
 stone-work, which my friend Eben C. Horsford thinks were 
 made by the Norsemen. I hope that they were, for I have 
 read many a saga in Icelandic, old Swedish, and Latin, and 
 the romance thereof is deep in my soul ; and as my own 
 name is Godfrey, it is no wonder that the god Frey and his 
 Freya are dear to me. In my boyhood and it may be still 
 the case the " Injuns " got the credit of having built these 
 mysterious works. 
 
 Not far from Holliston is Mendon, where I had an uncle, 
 Seth Davenport, who had a large, pleasant, old-fashioned 
 New England farm, which was more productive than my 
 grandfather s, since there were employed on it sixteen men, 
 three of whom were Natick Indians of the old local stock. 
 There were many of them when my mother was young, but I 
 suppose that the last of the tribe has long since died. One 
 of these Indians, Rufus Pease, I can recall as looking like a 
 dark-ruddy gypsy, with a pleasant smile. He very was fond 
 of me. He belonged to a well-known family, and had a 
 brother and thereby hangs a tale, or, in this case, a scalp- 
 lock. 
 
 " Marm " Pease, the mother of Rufus, had on one occa 
 sion been confined, and old Doctor I forget his name who 
 officiated at the birth, had been asked to give the infant a 
 
26 MEMOIRS. 
 
 name. Now he was a dry wag, of the kind so dear to Dr. 
 Holmes, and expressed much gratification and gratitude at 
 such a compliment being paid to him. " He had long been 
 desirous," he said, " of naming a child after his dear old 
 friend, Dr. Green." So the name was bestowed, the simple 
 Indians not realising for some time after the christening that 
 their youngest bore the name of Green Pease. Whether he 
 was ever called a duck, I know not. 
 
 Everything about Uncle Seth and Aunt Betsy was, as I 
 remember, delightfully comfortable, old-fashioned, and in a 
 way beautiful. There was their daughter Eebecca, who was 
 pretty and gentle, so that several wild birds came every morn 
 ing to feed from her hand and perch on her fingers. Uncle 
 Seth himself wore a scarlet waistcoat, and, as I recall him, 
 seemed altogether in figure to belong to the time of Crom 
 well, or to earlier days. There was a hall, hung round with 
 many old family portraits in antique dresses, and an immense 
 dairy the pride of Aunt Betsy s heart and a garden, in 
 which I was once shown a humming-bird s nest ; and cousin 
 Rebecca s mantelpiece, over a vast old fireplace, heaped with 
 mosses, birds nests, shells, and such curiosities as a young 
 girl would gather in the woods and fields ; and the cider- 
 press, in which Uncle Seth ground up the sixteen hundred 
 bushels of apples which he had at one crop, and the new 
 cider gushing in a stream, whereof I had a taste. It was a 
 charming, quiet old homestead, in which books and culture 
 were not wanting, and it has all to me now something of 
 the chiaroscuro and Eembrandt colour and charm of the 
 Mdhrchen or fairy-tale. The reality of this charm is apt 
 to go out of life as that of literature or culture comes in. 
 To this day I draw the deepest impression or sentiment 
 of the pantheism or subtle spiritual charm of Nature far 
 more from these early experiences of rural life than from 
 all the books, poetry included, which I have ever perused. 
 Note this well, ye whose best feelings are only a rechauffe 
 of Ruskin and Browning secundem ordinem for I observe 
 
EARLY LIFE. 27 
 
 that those who do not think at second hand are growing 
 rare. 
 
 In the town of Milford lived my uncle, William Godfrey, 
 with my aunt Nancy, and of them and their home I have 
 many pleasant memories. The very first of them all was not 
 so pleasant to me at the time. My parents had just arrived, 
 and had not been ten minutes in the house ere a tremendous 
 squall was heard, and my mother, looking from the window, 
 beheld me standing in the open barn-door holding a tiny 
 chicken in my right hand, while an old hen sat on my head 
 flapping her wings and pecking me in wrath. I, seeing the 
 brood, had forthwith captured one, and for that was under 
 going penance. It was a beautiful tableau, which was never 
 forgotten ! We went there on visits for many summers. 
 Uncle William was a kind-hearted, "sportive" man, who 
 took BeWs Life, and I can remember that there was a good 
 supply of English reading in the house. My uncle had three 
 sons, all much older than I. The eldest, Stearns, was said to 
 have first popularised the phrase " posted up," to signify well- 
 informed. The second, Benjamin, became in after years a 
 great manufacturer and somewhat noted politician, and owner 
 of a famous racehorse. The third, Samuel, went into busi 
 ness in Philadelphia, and crossed the Atlantic with me. He 
 died quite young. All of them, like their father and grand 
 father, were very good-natured or gentle, and men of perfect 
 integrity. The Lelands, however, were rather dour and grim 
 in their honesty, or more Northern than the Godfreys. This 
 was accounted for by the fact, that while my father s family 
 was Puritan of the purest, and only intermarried with Puri 
 tan stock, the Godfreys had in Ehode Island received an in 
 fusion of French Huguenot blood, which was indeed very 
 perceptible in their faces and lively pleasant manner. 
 
 There was a strange tradition, to w r hich my mother some 
 times jestingly referred, that there had been among her 
 Khode Island ancestors a High German (i. e., not a Hol 
 lander) doctor, who had a reputation as a sorcerer or wizard. 
 
28 MEMOIRS. 
 
 He was a man of learning, but that is all I ever heard about 
 him. My mother s opinion was that this was a very strong 
 case of atavism, and that the mysterious ancestor had through 
 the ages cropped out again in me. Something tells me that 
 this was the High German doctor who, according to Wash 
 ington Irving, laid the mystic spell on Sleepy Hollow, which 
 made of it such a pleasant, ancient, dreamy fairy-land. 
 Whether his friendly spirit still watches over me, or whether 
 I am the man himself, is a problem which I leave to my 
 friend Francis Galton, who indeed personally often reminds 
 me of Irving. High German sorcerers were not common in 
 those days north of Pennsylvania, so that I trow mine was 
 the very man referred to by Geoffrey Crayon. And it is true 
 beyond all doubt that even in infancy, as I have often heard, 
 there was a quaint uncanniness, as of something unknown, 
 in my nature, and that I differed in the main totally from 
 every relative, and indeed from any other little boy, known 
 to anybody ; though I was a perfect Godfrey in face when 
 very young, as I am now a typical Leland. I was always 
 given to loneliness in gardens and woods when I could get 
 into them, and to hearing words in birds songs and running 
 or falling water ; and I once appalled a visitor by professing 
 seriously that I could determine for him some question as to 
 what would happen to him by divination with a bullet in an 
 Indian moccasin. We had two servants who spoke old Irish ; 
 one was an inexhaustible mine of legends, which she related 
 to me she surpassed Croker; the other, less versed, still 
 knew a great deal, and told me how her own father, Jackey 
 Mooney, had seen the fairies with his own eyes. Both of 
 these sincerely and seriously regarded me as " gifted " or 
 elfin-favoured, and the latter said in proof thereof, " Only lis 
 ten to his voice ; sure whin he spakes he d while a burred aff 
 a tree." For my uncanny ways made a deep impression on 
 them, as also on the darkies. 
 
 Once I had a wonderful dream. I thought that I was in 
 Dr. Furness s chapel, but that, instead of the gentle reverend 
 
EARLY LIFE. 29 
 
 clergyman, the devil himself was in the pulpit preaching. 
 Feeling myself inspired, I went up into the pulpit, threw the 
 Evil One out, and preached myself in his place. Now our 
 nurse had a dream-book, and made some pretence to mystic 
 fairy knowledge learned in Kilkenny, and she interpreted 
 this dream as signifying that I would greatly rise in this 
 world, and do strange things. But she was greatly struck 
 with such a vision in such an infant. 
 
 Now, I was a great reader of Scripture ; in fact, I learned 
 a great deal too much of it, believing now that for babes and 
 sucklings about one-third of it had better be expurgated. 
 The Apocrypha was a favourite work, but above all I loved 
 the Revelations, a work which, I may say by the way, is 
 still a treasure to be investigated as regards the marvellous 
 mixture of Neo-Platonic, later Egyptian (or Gnostic), and 
 even Indian Buddhistic ideas therein. Well, I had learned 
 from it a word which St. John applies (to my mind very 
 vulgarly and much too frequently) to the Scarlet Lady of 
 Babylon or Rome. What this word meant I did not know, 
 but this I understood, that it was " sass " of some kind, as 
 negroes term it, and so one day I applied it experimentally 
 to my nurse. Though the word was not correctly pro- 
 nounced, for I had never heard it from anybody, its success 
 was immediate, but not agreeable. The passionate Irish 
 woman flew into a great rage and declared that she would 
 "lave the house." My mother, called in, investigated the 
 circumstances, and found that I really had no idea whatever 
 of the meaning of what I had said. Peace was restored, but 
 Annie declared that only the divil or the fairies could have 
 inspired such an infant to use such language. 
 
 I was very fond of asking my nurse to sing in old Irish or 
 to teach me Irish words. This she did, but agreed with her 
 sister Biddy that it was all very uncanny, and that there 
 must have been a time when I was perfectly familiar with 
 the owld language, as I had such unearthly fondness for it. 
 
 I must have been about seven years old when my parents 
 
30 MEMOIRS. 
 
 took a house in Arch Street, above Ninth Street, Phila 
 delphia. Here my life begins to be more marked and dis 
 tinct. I was at first sent, i. e., walked daily to the school of 
 Jacob Pierce, a worthy Quaker, who made us call him Jacob, 
 and who carefully taught us all the ordinary branches, and 
 gave us excellent lectures on natural philosophy and chem 
 istry with experiments, and encouraged us to form mineralo- 
 gical collections, but who objected to our reading history, 
 " because there were so many battles in it." In which system 
 of education all that is good and bad, or rather weak, in 
 Quakerism is fully summed up. Like the Eoman Catholic, 
 it is utterly unfit for all the world, and incapable of grap 
 pling with or adapting itself to the natural expansion of 
 science and the human mind. Thus the Quaker garb, which 
 was originally intended by its simplicity to avoid the appear 
 ance of eccentricity or peculiarity (most dress in the time of 
 the Stuarts being extravagant), has now become, by merely 
 sticking to old custom, the most eccentric dress known. The 
 school was in a very large garden, in which was a gymnasium, 
 and in the basement of the main building there was a car 
 penter s shop with a turning-lathe, where boys were allowed 
 to work as a reward for good conduct. 
 
 I could never learn the multiplication table. There are 
 things which the mind, like the stomach, spasmodically re 
 jects without the least perceptible cause or reason. So I 
 have found it to be with certain words which will not be re 
 membered. There was one Arab word which I verily 
 believe I looked out one hundred times in the dictionary, and 
 repeated a thousand, yet never could keep it. Every teacher 
 should be keen to detect these antipathies, and cure them by 
 gentle and persuasive means. Unfortunately no one in my 
 youth knew any better way to overcome them than by 
 " keeping me in " after school to study, when I was utterly 
 weary and worn a very foolish punishment, as is depriving 
 a boy of his meals, or anything else levelled at Nature. I 
 think there must have been many months of time, and of 
 
EARLY LIFE. 31 
 
 as much vain and desperate effort on my part to remember, 
 wasted on my early arithmetic. Now I can see that by 
 rewards or inducements, and by the very simple process 
 of only learning " one time one is one " for the first lesson, 
 and that and one line more for the second, I could have 
 mastered the whole book in time. But oh ! the weary, dreary 
 days, and the sad waste of time, and the anxious nervous suf 
 fering, which arithmetic cost me in my youth, and mathe 
 matics in after years ! 
 
 But there was one class at Jacob s in which I was facile- 
 princeps and habitual past-grand-master. This was the class 
 which was, like the professorship of Diogenes Teufelsdrockh, 
 for Matters and Things in General. That is to say, we read 
 aloud from some book it may have been selections from 
 English writers and then Jacob, picking out the hard words 
 or facts or phrases, required of them definition or explanation. 
 One day there arose in these questions a sum in arithmetic, 
 when I shot down to the tail of the class as a plummet drops 
 to the bottom of the well. I shall never forget the proud 
 fierce impatience which I felt, like an imprisoned chieftain 
 who knows that he will speedily be delivered and take dire 
 vengeance on his foes. I had not long to wait. " Kefec- 
 tory, what is a refectory ? Hillburn Jones, does thee 
 know ? Joseph Widdifield, does thee ? " But none of them 
 knew till it came to me "down tail," when I cried "An 
 oyster-cellar." " That is quite right, Charley ; thee can go 
 up head," said Jacob, and as I passed Hillburn Jones he 
 whispered, half in fun, half enviously, the Kemble Refectory." 
 This was an oyster-cellar which had been recently opened 
 under the Arch Street Theatre, and whence Hillburn and 
 I had derived our knowledge of the word, the difference 
 being that I remembered more promptly and risked more 
 boldly. But I missed it one day when I defined a peasant 
 as " a nest full of young birds ; " the fact being that I re 
 called a picture in ^Esop s fables, and confused peasant with 
 pheasant. One day Jacob rebuked the class for letting me 
 
32 MEMOIRS. 
 
 always be at their head, when Hillburn Jones, who was a very 
 honest little boy, said, " Indeed, Jacob, thee must know that 
 all that we do know, Charley tells us." For I was already 
 an insatiable reader, and always recalling what I read, 
 and always communicating my knowledge to others in the 
 form of small lectures. I had a book of Scripture stories, 
 with a picture of Pharoah in his chariot, with the title, 
 " Pharaoh s host sunk in the Red Sea." Hence I concluded 
 that a host was a vehicle of a very superior description. A 
 carriage-builder in our neighbourhood had executed a chaise 
 of very unusual magnificence, and as I stood admiring it I 
 informed Hillburn that this was what was called by the 
 learned a host, and that it was in such a host that Pharaoh 
 perished. I remember elevating my voice somewhat for the 
 benefit of a bystander, being somewhat proud of this bit of 
 knowledge. 
 
 Unfortunately, not only my father, but also my teacher, 
 and with them the entire population of North America, in 
 those days regarded a good knowledge of arithmetic as form 
 ing nine-tenths of all that was most needful in education, 
 while indulgence in a taste for general information, and 
 " literature " especially, was glared at with a very evil eye 
 indeed, as tending to injure a "practical business man." 
 That there could be any kind of profitable or respectable call 
 ing not based upon arithmetic did not enter into the heart 
 of man to conceive, while among the bankers and merchants 
 of Boston, New York, or Philadelphia there was a deeply- 
 seated conviction that even a wealthy and successful editor, 
 literary man, or artist, was really an inferior as compared to 
 themselves. As this sublime truth was severely rubbed into 
 me several times daily during the greater portion of my 
 youthful life, and as in its earlier stage I rarely met with a 
 man grown who did not look down on me as an unfortunate 
 non-arithmetical, unbusinesslike creature, and let me know it 
 too, I very naturally grew up with a low estimate of my own 
 capacities ; and as I was proud and sensitive, this was to me 
 
EARLY LIFE. 33 
 
 a source of much suffering, which often became terrible as I 
 advanced in years. But at that time the position of the 
 literary man or scholar, with the exception of a very few 
 brilliant magnates who had "made money," was in the 
 United States not an enviable one. Serious interest in art 
 and letters was not understood, or so generally sympathised 
 with, as it now is in " Quakerdelphia." There was a gentle 
 man in Philadelphia who was a scholar, and who having lived 
 long abroad, had accumulated a very curious black-letter and 
 rariora library. For a long time I observed that this library 
 was never mentioned in polite circles without significant 
 smiles. One day I heard a lady say very meaningly, " I sup 
 pose that you know what kind of books he has and liow lie 
 obtained them?" So I inquired very naturally if he had 
 come by them dishonestly. To which the reply, half-whis 
 pered in my ear lest it should be overheard, was, " They say 
 his books are all old things, which he did not buy at any first- 
 class stores, but picked up at old stalls and in second-hand 
 shops at less than their value ; in fact, they did not cost Mm 
 much" 
 
 Yet these remarks must not be regarded as too sweeping 
 or general. Firstly, I am speaking of sixty years since. 
 Secondly, there were many people of literary tastes in Phila 
 delphia a little isolated, it is true ; and finally, there was a 
 great culture of science, founded by Franklin, and fostered 
 by the medical schools. I could cite a brilliant array of 
 names of men distinguished in these matters. What I am 
 writing is simply a sincere record of my own somewhat 
 peculiar or personal experiences. There are doubtless many 
 who would write very differently. And now times are very 
 greatly changed. 
 
 I have again a quaint early reminiscence. It would hap 
 pen that now and then a new carriage, always of the same 
 sober description, with two very good, but seldom showy, 
 horses would appear in the streets. Then its owner would 
 be greeted on Market Street with the remark, " Well, Sammy, 
 
3 MEMOIRS. 
 
 I see thee s got thee fifty thousand dollars." This sum ten 
 thousand pounds constituted the millionaireism or moneyed 
 aristocracy of those days. On it, with a thriving business, 
 Samuel could maintain a family in good fashion, and above 
 all, in great comfort, which was sensibly regarded as better 
 than fashion or style. Fifty thousand dollars entitled a man 
 to keep a carriage and be classed as " quality " by the negroes. 
 
 It may be worth noting that although the Quakers did 
 not allow the piano in their families, as being too worldly, they 
 compromised by having musical boxes. And I have heard 
 that in the country, where still older fashioned ideas pre 
 vailed, the one bit of finery allowed to a Quaker damsel was 
 a red ribbon ; but it must be red, not of any other colour. 
 
 Let it be remembered that at this time Philadelphia, and 
 even the world, were as yet to a great degree in the Middle 
 Ages as compared to the present day. We had few steam 
 boats, and no railroads, or telephones, or percussion-caps, or 
 a tremendous press, or Darwinism, or friction matches. Even 
 the introduction of ice-cream, and stone coal as fuel, and 
 grates was within the memory of our elders. Apropos of 
 matches, the use of tinderbox and brimstone matches was 
 universal ; bold young men had tinder pistols ; but the wood 
 fire was generally kept under ashes all night, and I can well 
 remember how our negro servants, when it had gone out, 
 were used early on winter mornings to borrow a shovelful of 
 coals from the cook of our next-door neighbour, and how it 
 was handed over the garden fence, the recipient standing on 
 our pump handle and the donor on hers. 
 
 I forget in what year the railroad (with locomotives) was 
 first built from Philadelphia to Columbia, a distance of sixty 
 miles. I believe it was the first real road of the kind in 
 America. On the day when the first train ran, the City 
 Council and certain honoured guests made the journey, and 
 among them was my father, who took me with him. There 
 were only a few miles of the road then completed. It was a 
 stupendous marvel to me, and all this being drawn by steam, 
 
EARLY LIFE. 35 
 
 and by a great terrible iron monster of a machine. And 
 there was still in all souls a certain unearthly awe of the re 
 cently invented and as yet rather rare steamboats. I can 
 (strangely enough) still recall this feeling by a mental effort 
 this meeting the Horror for the first time ! My father re 
 membered, and had been in the first steamboat which was a 
 success on the Delaware. I saw its wreck in . after years at 
 Hoboken. The earlier boat made by John Fitch is still pre 
 served in Bordentown. 
 
 I can remember that when gas was introduced to light 
 the city, it was done under a fearful opposition. All the 
 principal people signed a petition against it. I saw the paper. 
 It would burst and kill myriads ; it was poisonous ; and, 
 finally, it would ruin the oil trade. However, we got it at 
 last. Somebody had invented hand gas-lamps; they were 
 sold in the Arcade ; and as one of these had burst, it was 
 naturally supposed that the gasworks would do the same. 
 
 The characteristics of old Philadelphia were in those days 
 so marked, and are, withal, so sweet to the memory, that I 
 cannot help lingering on them. As Washington Irving says 
 of the Golden Age of Wouter van Twiller, " Happy days 
 when the harvest moon was twice as large as now, when the 
 shad were all salmon, and peace was in the land." Trees 
 grew abundantly in rows in almost every street one before 
 every house. I had two before mine till 1892, when the 
 Street Commissioners heartlessly ordained that one must be 
 cut down and removed, and charged me ten dollars for doing 
 it. It is needless to say that since Street Commissioners have 
 found this so profitable, trees have disappeared with sad ra 
 pidity. Then at twilight the pea-ale of the night-hawk could 
 be heard all over Arasapha, which is the Indian name for the 
 place where our city stands ; there were in Coaquannoc, or 
 the Schuylkill, abundant gold fish and perch, of which I 
 angled divers. Yes, there was, and still is, a Fisher Club, 
 which claims to be the oldest gentleman s club in Anglo- 
 Saxony, and which has for two centuries brewed for itself a 
 
36 MEMOIRS. 
 
 " fish-house punch " as delicious as that of London civic 
 banquets. There be no fish in the fair river now ; they have 
 all vanished before the combined forces of petroleum and the 
 offal of factories and mines, but the Fish-House Club still has 
 its merry banquets in its ancient home ; for, as the French 
 say, "Chacun peche a sa maniere" In graveyards lone or 
 over gardens green glittered of summer nights millions of 
 fireflies ; there was the scent of magnolias, roses, pinks, and 
 honeysuckles by every house ; for Philadelphians have always 
 had a passion for flowers, and there never was a Quaker, much 
 less a Quakeress, who has not studied botany, and wandered 
 in Bartram s Garden and culled blue gentians in the early 
 fall, or lilies wild in Wissahickon s shade. There still re 
 mains a very beautiful relic of this olden time in the old 
 Swedes Church, which every stranger should visit. It is a 
 quaint structure of more than two hundred years, and in its 
 large churchyard (which is not, like Karamsin s graves, " de 
 serted and drear," but charming and garden-like) one can 
 imagine himself in rural England. 
 
 In the spring of the year there was joyous activity on the 
 Delaware, even in town ; for, as the song hath it 
 
 " De fishin time hab come at last, 
 De winter all am gone and past ; " 
 
 and there was the casting of immense seines and the catching 
 of myriads of shad, the typical fish or emblem of the Quaker 
 Philadelphia!!, because in the profile outline of the shad peo 
 ple professed to discern the form according to which the 
 Quaker coat was cut. With the shad were many herring, and 
 now and then a desperate giant of a sturgeon, who in his 
 struggles would give those concerned enough to do. Then 
 the yells of the black fishermen, the flapping of the horny 
 knife-backed prey often by the flashing of a night-fire 
 formed a picture worthy of Rembrandt. Apropos of these 
 sturgeon, the fresh caviare or roe (which has been pronounced 
 at St. Petersburg to surpass the Russian) was always thrown 
 
EARLY LIFE. 37 
 
 away, as was often the case with sweetbreads, which were 
 rarely eaten. But if the caviare or roe was really in those 
 days " caviare to the general " multitude, the nose of the fish 
 was not, it being greatly coveted by us small boys wherewith 
 to make a ball for " shinny," which for some occult reason 
 was preferred to any other. Old people of my acquaintance 
 could remember when seals had been killed at Cape May be 
 low the city, and how on one or two occasions a bewildered 
 whale of no small dimensions had found its way to Burling 
 ton, some miles above. 
 
 Now and then there would be found in the bay below the 
 city a tremendous, square-shaped, hideous, unnatural pisca 
 torial monster, known as a devil-fish, or briefly devil. It was 
 a* legend of my youth that two preachers or ministers of the 
 Presbyterian faith once went fishing in those waters, and 
 having cast out a stout line, fastened to the mast, for shark, 
 were amazed at finding themselves all at once careering 
 through the waves at terrible speed, being dragged by one of 
 the diabolical " monsters of the roaring deep " above men 
 tioned. Whereupon a friend, who was in the boat, burst 
 out laughing. And being asked, " Wherefore this unre 
 strained hilarity?" replied, " Is it not enough to make a man 
 laugh to see the Devil running away with two clergymen ? " 
 
 There was a very excellent and extensive museum of Mat 
 ters and Things in General, founded by an ancient artist 
 named Peale, who was the head-central charm and delight of 
 all young Philadelphia in those days, and where, when we 
 had been good all the week, we were allowed to repair on 
 Saturday afternoons. And here I may say by the way, that 
 miscellaneous collections of " curiosities," oddities, and relics 
 are far more attractive to children, and stimulate in them 
 far more interest and inquisitiveness and desire for general 
 information, than do the best scientific collections, where 
 everything is ranked and numbered, and wherein even an 
 Etruscan tiara or a Viking s sword loses much of its charm 
 when placed simply as a " specimen " in a row of others of 
 
38 MEMOIRS. 
 
 the kind. I am not arguing here in the least against scien 
 tific or properly arranged archseologic collections, but to de 
 clare the truth that for children museums of the despised 
 curiosities are far more attractive and infinitely more useful. 
 
 I owe so very much myself to the old Peale s Museum ; it 
 served to stimulate to such a remarkable degree my interest 
 in antiquities and my singular passion for miscellaneous in 
 formation, and it aided me so much in my reading, that I 
 cannot pass it by without a tribute to its memory. How 
 often have I paused in its dark galleries in awe before the 
 tremendous skeleton of the Mammoth how small did that 
 of a great elephant seem beside it and recalled the Indian 
 legend of it recorded by Franklin. And the stuffed monkeys 
 one shaving another what exquisite humour, which never 
 palled upon us ! No ; that was the museum for us, and the 
 time will come when there will be such collections made ex 
 pressly for the young. 
 
 " Stuffed monkey" was a common by- word, by the way, 
 for a conceited fellow. Therefore the Louisville Journal, 
 speaking of a rival sheet, said : " Eeader, if you will go into the 
 Louisville Museum, you will see two stuffed monkeys reading 
 the Courier. And if you will then go into the office of the 
 Louisville Courier, you may see two living stuffed monkeys 
 editing the same." The beautiful sallies of this kind which 
 appeared in these two newspapers for years would make a 
 lively volume. 
 
 Never shall I forget one evening alone in that Museum. 
 I had come with Jacob Pierce s school, and strayed off alone 
 into some far-away and fascinating nook, forgetful of friends 
 and time. All the rest had departed homewards, and I 
 sought to find them. The dark evening shades were casting 
 sombre tones in the galleries I was a very little boy of seven 
 or eight and the stuffed lions and bears and wolves seemed 
 looming or glooming into mysterious life ; the varnished 
 sharks and hideous shiny crocodiles had a light of awful in 
 telligence in their eyes; the gigantic anaconda had long 
 
EARLY LIFE. 39 
 
 awaited me ; the grim hyaena marked me for his own ; even 
 deer and doves seemed uncanny and goblined. At this long 
 interval of sixty years, I can recall the details of that walk, 
 and every object which impressively half-appalled me, and 
 how what had been a museum had become a chamber of 
 horrors, yet not without a wild and awful charm. Of course 
 I lost my way in the shades, and was beginning to speculate 
 on having to pass a night among the monsters, and how 
 much there would be left for my friends to mourn over in 
 the morning, when Eureka ! Thalatta ! I beheld the gate 
 of entrance and exit, and made my latter as joyously as ever 
 did the souls who were played out of Inferno by the old rep 
 robate of the Roman tale. 
 
 Since that adventure I never mentioned it to a living 
 soul till now, and yet there is not an event of my life so 
 vividly impressed on my memory. 
 
 My father took me very rarely to the theatre ; but my 
 Quaker school-mates had never seen the inside of such places 
 at all, and therefore listened greedily to what I could tell 
 them of the sights. One of the wonders of my youth was 
 the seeing the great elephant Columbus perform in a play 
 called " The Englishman in Siam." It was indeed very 
 curious, and it is described as such in works on natural his 
 tory. And I saw Edwin Forrest (whom I learned to know 
 in later years) in " Metamora," and Fanny Kemble in " Bea 
 trice," and so on. As for George Boker, he went, I believe, 
 to every place of amusement whenever he pleased, and talked 
 familiarly of actors, some of whom he actually knew, and 
 their lives, in a manner which awoke in me awe and a feel 
 ing as being humble and ignorant indeed. As we grew, older, 
 Boker and I, from reading " Don Quixote " and Scott, used 
 to sit together for hours improvising legends of chivalry and 
 marvellous romances. It was in the year when it first ap 
 peared that I read (in the New Monthly] and got quite by 
 heart the rhyming tale of " Sir Rupert the Fearless," a tale 
 of the Rhine, one of the Ingoldsby legends, by Barham. I 
 
40 MEMOIRS. 
 
 can still repeat a great part of it. I bore it in mind till in 
 after years it inspired (allied to Goethe s Wassermddchen) my 
 ballad of De Maiden mit Nodings on, which has, as I now 
 write, been very recently parodied and pictured by Punch, 
 March 18, 1893. My mother had taught me to get poetry 
 by heart, and by the time I was ten years of age, I had 
 imbibed, so to speak, an immense quantity ; for, as in 
 opium-eating, those who begin by effort end by taking in 
 with ease. 
 
 There was something else so very characteristic of old 
 Philadelphia that I will not pass it by. In the fall of the 
 year the reed-bird, which is quite as good as the ortolan of 
 Italy, and very much like it (I prefer the reed-bird), came in 
 large flocks to the marshes and shores of the Delaware and 
 Schuylkill. Then might be seen a quaint and marvellous 
 sight of men and boys of all ages and conditions, with fire 
 arms of every faculty and form, followed by dogs of every 
 degree of badness, in all kinds of boats, among which the 
 bateau of boards predominated, intermingled with an occa 
 sional Maryland dug-out or poplar canoe. Many, however, 
 crept on foot along the shore, and this could be seen below 
 the Navy Yard even within the city limits. Then, as flock 
 after flock of once bobolinks and now reed-birds rose or fell 
 in flurried flight, there would be such a banging, cracking, 
 and barking as to suggest a South American revolution aided 
 by blood-hounds. That somebody in the melee now and then 
 got a charge of shot in his face, or that angry parties in dis 
 pute over a bird sometimes blazed away at one another and 
 fought a Voutrance in every way, " goes without saying. * 
 Truly they were inspiriting sights, and kept up the martial 
 valour, aided by frequent firemen s fights, which made Phila- 
 delphians so indomitable in the Eebellion, when, to the 
 amazement of everybody, our Quaker city manifested a 
 genius or love for hard fighting never surpassed by mortals. 
 
 There were, of course, some odd episodes among the in 
 fantry or gunners on foot, and one of these was so well 
 
EARLY LIFE. 4-1 
 
 described by my brother Henry in a poem, that I venture to 
 give it place. 
 
 REED-BIRDING. 
 
 Two men and a bull-dog ugly, 
 
 Two guns and a terrier lame ; 
 They d better stick out in the marsh there, 
 
 And set themselves up for game. 
 
 But no ; I mark by the cocking 
 
 Of that red-haired Paddy s eye, 
 He s been " reeding " too much for you, sir, 
 
 Any such game to try. 
 
 " Now, Jamie, ye divil, kape dark there, 
 
 And hould the big bull-dog in : 
 There s a bloody big crowd of rade-birds, 
 
 That nade a pepperin ! " 
 
 Ker-rack ! goes the single barrel, 
 
 Flip-boong ! roars the old Queen Anne ; 
 
 There s a Paddy stretched out in the mud-hole, 
 A kicked-over, knocked-down man. 
 
 " Och, Jamie, ye shtupid crature, 
 
 Sure ye re the divil s son ; 
 How many fingers load, thin, 
 
 Did ye putt in this d d ould gun f " 
 
 " How many fingers, be jabers ? 
 
 I nivir putt in a wan ; 
 Did ye think I d be afther jammin 
 
 Me fingers into a gun I " 
 
 " Well, give me the powder, Jamie." 
 
 " The powder ! as sure as I m born, 
 I put it all into yer musket, 
 
 For I d nivir a powder-horn ! " 
 
 Then we all had reed-bird suppers or lunches, eked out 
 perhaps with terrapins and soft-shell crabs, gumbo, " snap 
 per," or pepper-pot soup, peaches, venison, bear-meat, selon 
 la saison for both bear and deer roamed wild within fifty or 
 sixty miles so that, all things considered, if Philadelphians 
 
42 MEMOIRS. 
 
 and Baltimoreans did run somewhat over-much to eating up 
 their intellects as Dr. Holmes declares they do they had 
 at least the excuse of terrible temptation, which the men of 
 my " grandfather-land " (New England), as he once termed 
 it in a letter to me, very seldom had at any time. 
 
 Once it befell, though a few years later, that one winter 
 there was a broad fair field of ice just above Fairmount dam, 
 which is about ten feet high, that about a hundred and fifty 
 men and maidens were merrily skating by moonlight. I 
 know not whether Colonel James Page, our great champion 
 skater, was there cutting High Dutch ; but this I know, that 
 all at once, by some strange rising of the stream, the whole 
 flake of ice and its occupants went over the dam. Strangely 
 enough, no one was killed, but very few escaped without in 
 jury, and for some time the surgeons were busy. It would 
 make a strange wild picture that of the people struggling in 
 the broken floes of ice among the roaring waters. 
 
 And again, during a week on the same spot, some practi 
 cal joker amused himself with a magic-lantern by making a 
 spirit form flit over the fall, against its face, or in the misty 
 air. The whole city turned out to see it, and great was their 
 marvelling, and greater the fear among the negroes at the 
 apparition. 
 
 Sears 0. Walker, who was an intimate friend, kept a 
 school in Sansom Street, to which I was transferred. I was 
 only seven years old at the time, and being the youngest, he 
 made, when I was introduced, a speech of apology to his 
 pupils. He was a good kind man, who also, like Jacob, gave 
 us lectures on natural philosophy and chemistry. There I 
 studied French, and began to learn to draw, but made little 
 progress, though I worked hard. I have literally never met 
 in all my life any person with so little natural gift or aptitude 
 for learning languages or drawing as I have ; and if I have 
 since made an advance in both, it has been at the cost of 
 such extreme labour as would seem almost incredible. 
 
 I was greatly interested in chemistry, as a child would be, 
 
EARLY LIFE. 43 
 
 and, having heard Mr. Walker say something about the colour 
 ing matter in quartz, resolved on a great invention which 
 should immortalise my name. My teacher used to make his 
 own ink by pounding nut-galls in an iron mortar. I got a 
 piece of coarse rock-crystal, pounded it up in the same mor 
 tar, pouring water on it. Sure enough the result was a pale 
 ink, which the two elder pupils, who had maliciously aided 
 and encouraged me, declared was of a very superior quality. 
 I never shall forget the pride I felt. I had, first of all sci 
 entists, extracted the colouring matter from quartz ! The 
 recipe was at once written out, with a certificate at the end, 
 signed by my two witnesses, that they had witnessed the 
 process, and that this was written with the ink itself ! This 
 I gave to Mr. Walker, and could not understand why he 
 laughed so heartily at it. It was not till several days after 
 that he explained to me that the ink was the result of the 
 dregs of the nut-galls which remained in the mortar. 
 
 We had not many books, but what we had I read and re 
 read with great assiduity. Among them were Cooper s nov 
 els, Campbell s poems, those of Byron, and above all, Wash 
 ington Irving s " Sketch Book," which had great influence 
 on me, inspiring that intense love for old English literature 
 and its associations which has ever since been a part of my 
 very soul. Irving was indeed a wonderful, though not a 
 startling genius; but he had sympathised himself into such 
 appreciation of the golden memories and sweet melodies of 
 the olden time, be it American or English, as no writer now 
 possesses. In my eighth year I loved deeply his mottoes, 
 such as that from. Syr Grey Steel : 
 
 " He that supper for is dight, 
 He lies full cold I trow this night ; 
 Yestreen to chamber I him led, 
 This nighte Grey Steel has made his bed." 
 
 Lang not Andrew has informed us that no copy of 
 the first black-letter edition of Sir Grey Steel is known to 
 exist. In after years I found in the back binding of an old 
 
44 MEMOIRS. 
 
 folio two pieces of it, each about four inches square. It has 
 been an odd fatality of mine that whenever a poet existed in 
 black-letter, I was always sure to peruse him first in that 
 type, which I always from childhood preferred to any other. 
 To this day I often dream of being in a book-shop, turning 
 over endless piles of marvellously quaint parchment bound 
 books in letres blalce, and what is singular, they are gener 
 ally works quite unknown to the world first discoveries 
 unique ! And then oh ! then how bitter is the waking ! 
 
 There was in Mr. Walker s school library a book, one well 
 known as Mrs. Trimmer s " Natural History." This I read, 
 as usual, thoroughly and often, and wrote my name at the 
 end, ending with a long snaky flourish. Years passed by, 
 and I was at the University, when one evening, dropping in 
 at an auction, I bought for six cents, or threepence, " a blind 
 bundle " of six books tied up with a cord. It was a bargain, 
 for I found in it in good condition the first American edi 
 tions of De Quincey s " Opiuin-Eater," " The Kejected Ad 
 dresses," and the Poems of Coleridge. But what startled me 
 was a familiar-looking copy of Mrs. Trimmer s " Natural His 
 tory," in which at the end was my boyish signature. 
 
 "And still wider." In 1887 I passed some weeks at a 
 hotel in Venice. A number of Italian naval officers dined at 
 our talle-cPJiote every evening. One of them showed us an 
 intaglio which he had bought. It represented a hunter on 
 an elephant firing at a tiger. The owner wished to know 
 something about it. Baron von Rosenfeld, a chamberlain of 
 the Emperor of Austria, remarked at once that it was as old 
 as the days of flint-locks, because smoke was rising from the 
 lock of the gun. I felt that I knew more about it, but could 
 not at once recall what I knew, and said that I would explain 
 it the next day. And going into the past, I remembered 
 that this very scene was the frontispiece to Mrs. Trimmer s 
 " Natural History." I think that some gem engraver, pos 
 sibly in India, had copied it to order. I can even now recall 
 many other things in the book, but attribute my retention of 
 
EARLY LIFE. 45 
 
 so much which I have read not to a good memory, such as 
 the mathematician has, which grasps directly, but simply to 
 frequent reading and mental reviewing or revising. Where 
 there has been none of this, I forgot everything in a short 
 time. 
 
 My father took in those years BlackwoocTs and the New 
 Monthly Magazine, and as I read every line of them, they 
 were to me a vast source of knowledge. I remember an epi 
 gram by " Martial in London " in the latter : 
 
 " In Craven Street, Strand, four attorneys find place, 
 And four dark coal- barges are moored at the base ; 
 Fly, Honesty, fly seek some safer retreat, 
 For there s craft on the river, and craft in the street." 
 
 I never pass by Craven Street without recalling this, and 
 so it has come to pass that by such memories and associations 
 London in a thousand ways is always reviving my early life 
 in America. 
 
 The Nodes Ambrosiance puzzled me, as did the Bible, but 
 I read, read, read, toujours. My uncle Amos lent me the 
 " Arabian Nights," though my father strictly prohibited it. 
 But the zest of the forbidden made me study it with won 
 drous love. The reader may laugh, but it is a fact that hav 
 ing obtained " Mother Goose s Melodies," I devoured them 
 with a strange interest reflected from Washington Irving. 
 The truth is, that my taste had been so precociously devel 
 oped, that I unconsciously found a literary merit or charm 
 in them as I did in all fairy-tales, and I remember being 
 most righteously indignant once when a young bookseller 
 told me that I was getting to be too old to read such stuff ! 
 The truth was, that I was just getting to be old enough to 
 appreciate it as folk-lore and literature, which he never 
 did. 
 
 The great intellectual influence which acted on me most 
 powerfully after Irving was an incomplete volume of about 
 1790, called " The Poetical Epitome." It consisted of many 
 of Percy s " Relics " with selections of ballads, poems, and 
 
46 MEMOIRS. 
 
 epigrams of many eminent writers. I found it a few years 
 after at a boarding-school, where I continually read it as 
 before. 
 
 As I was backward in my studies, my parents, very inju 
 diciously so far as learning was concerned, removed me from 
 Mr. Walker s school, and put me under the care of T\ Bron- 
 son Alcott, who had just come to Philadelphia. This was 
 indeed going from the frying-pan into the very fire, so far as 
 curing idleness and desultory habits and a tendency to ro 
 mance and wild speculation was concerned. For Mr. Alcott 
 was the most eccentric man who ever took it on himself to 
 train and form the youthful mind. He did not really teach 
 any practical study ; there was indeed some pretence at geog 
 raphy and arithmetic, but these we were allowed to neglect 
 at our own sweet will. His forte was " moral influence " and 
 " sympathetic intellectual communion " by talking ; and oh, 
 heaven ! what a talker he was ! He was then an incipient 
 Transcendentalist, and he did not fail to discover in me the 
 seeds of the same plant. He declared that I had a marvellous 
 imagination, and encouraged my passion for reading anything 
 and everything to the very utmost. It is a fact that at nine 
 years of age his disquisitions on and readings from Spenser s 
 " Faerie Queen " actually induced me to read the entire work, 
 of which he was very proud, reminding me of it in 1881, 
 when I went to Harvard to deliver the Phi Beta Kappa poem. 
 He also read thoroughly into us the " Pilgrim s Progress," 
 Quarles s " Emblems," Northcote s " Fables," much Shake 
 speare, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Milton, all of which sunk 
 into my very soul, educating me indeed " ideally " as no boy 
 perhaps in Philadelphia had ever been educated, at the utter 
 cost of all real " education." It was a great pity, and pity 
 tis tis true. The word ideal was ever in his mouth. All of 
 the new theories, speculations, or fads which were beginning 
 to be ventilated among the Unitarian liberal clergy found 
 ready welcome in his dreamy brain, and he retailed them all 
 to his pupils, among whom I was certainly the only one who 
 
EARLY LIFE. 47 
 
 took them in and seriously thought them over. Yet I cannot 
 say that I really liked the man himself. He was not to me 
 exactly sympathetic-human. Such training as his would de 
 velop in any boy certain weaknesses and I had mine which 
 were very repulsive to my father, who carried plain common- 
 sense to extremes, and sometimes into its opposite of uncon 
 scious eccentricity, though there was no word which he so 
 much hated. 
 
 Bulwer s " Last Days of Pompeii," " The Disowned," and 
 " Pilgrims of the Rhine " made a deep and lasting impression 
 on me. I little thought then that I should in after years be 
 the guest of the author in his home, and see the skull of 
 Arbaces. Oh, that by some magic power every author could 
 be made to feel all the influence, all the charm, which his art 
 exerts on his readers, and especially the young. Sometimes, 
 now and then, by golden chance, a writer of books does realise 
 this, and then feels that he has lived to some purpose. Once 
 it happened to me to find a man, an owner of palaces and 
 millions, who had every facility for becoming familiar with 
 far greater minds and books than mine, who had for years 
 collected with care and read everything which I had ever 
 written. He actually knew more about my books than I did. 
 I was startled at the discovery as at a miracle. And if the 
 reader knew what a melange I have written, he would not 
 wonder at it. 
 
 It is very probable that no man living appreciates the vast 
 degree to which any book whatever which aims at a little 
 more than merely entertaining, and appeals at all to thought, 
 influences the world, and how many readers it gets. There 
 are books, of which a thousand copies were never sold, which 
 have permeated society and been the argument of national 
 revolutions. Such a book was the " Political Economy " of 
 H. C. Carey, of which I possess the very last copy of the first, 
 and I believe the only, edition. And there are novels which 
 have gone to the three hundred thousand, of whose authors 
 it may be said that 
 
48 MEMOIRS. 
 
 " Over the barren desert of their brains 
 There never strayed the starved camel of an idea," 
 
 and whose works vanish, like wind. 
 
 What is very remarkable is the manner in which even the 
 great majority of readers confuse these two classes, and be 
 lieve that mere popular success is correlative with genius and 
 desert. A great cause of this really vulgar error is the grow 
 ing conviction that artistic skill alone determines merit in lit 
 erature, and that intellect, as the French, beginning mildly 
 with Voltaire and ending violently with Sainte-Beuve, assert 
 is of far less importance than style. "Le style, Jest V esprit 
 du siecle" Apropos of which I remarked that in the war 
 like Middle Age in France the motto might have been 
 "IShomme Jest le STEEL." Then came the age of wigs, 
 when the cry was, "IShomme c est le STYLE." And now we 
 are in the swindling and bogus-company-promoting age, 
 when it might be proclaimed that "Uhomme c est le STEAL." 
 
 There was another book which I read through and 
 through in early childhood to great profit. This was Cottle s 
 "Alfred," an epic of some merit, but chiefly in this, that it sets 
 forth tolerably clearly the old Norse life and religion. George 
 Boker owned and gave me some time after a book entitled 
 " Five Norse Poems," in the original, and translated. This 
 with Grey s poems, which latter I possessed, laid the basis 
 for a deep interest in after years in Northern antiquities ; 
 they were soon followed by Mallett ; and if I have since read 
 many sagas in Icelandic and studied with keenest interest the 
 museums of the North, the first incentive thereto came from 
 my boyish reading. When I was sixteen I executed a poetic 
 version of the " Death Song of Kegner Lodbrog," which, 
 though it was never published, I think was at least as good 
 as any translation which I have since executed, " however 
 that may be." I very seriously connected this Norse spirit 
 with my grandfather and his stern uncles and progenitors, 
 who had fought in Canada and in the icy winters of New 
 England ; grim men they were all ; and I daresay that I was 
 
EARLY LIFE. 49 
 
 quite right. It always seems to me that among these alter 
 nately fighting and farming Icelanders I am among my Le- 
 land relatives ; and I even once found Uncle Seth in his red 
 waistcoat in the Burnt Njals saga to the life. There was a 
 paragraph, as I write, recently circulating in the newspapers, 
 in which I was compared in appearance to an old grey Vi 
 king, and it gave me a strange uncanny thrill, as if the writer 
 of it were a wizard who had revealed a buried secret. 
 
 My parents, on coming to Philadelphia, had at first at 
 tended the Episcopal church, but finding that most of their 
 New England friends held to the Rev. W. H. (now Dr.) Fur- 
 ness, an Unitarian, they took a pew in his chapel. After fif 
 teen years they returned to the Episcopal faith, but allowed 
 me to keep the pew to myself for one or two years, till I went 
 to college. In Dr. Furness s chapel I often heard Channing 
 and all the famous Unitarian divines of the time preach, and 
 very often saw Miss Harriet Martineau, Dr. Combe, the 
 phrenologist, and many other distinguished persons. In 
 other places at different times I met Andrew Jackson, Henry 
 Clay, to whom I was introduced, Daniel Webster, to whom I 
 reverently bowed, receiving in return a gracious acknowledg 
 ment, Peter Duponceau, Morton, Stephen Girard, Joseph 
 Buonaparte, the two authors of the " Jack Downing Let 
 ters"; and I once heard David Crockett make a speech. 
 Apropos of Joseph Buonaparte, I can remember to have 
 heard my wife s mother, the late Mrs. Rodney Fisher, tell 
 how when a little girl, and while at his residence at Borden- 
 town, she had run a race with the old ex-king of Spain. A 
 very intimate friend in our family was Professor John Frost, 
 the manufacturer of literally innumerable works of every 
 description. He had many thousands of woodcut blocks, and 
 when he received an order as, for example, a history of any 
 country, or of the world, or of a religion, or a school geog 
 raphy, or book of travel or adventure, or a biography, or 
 anything else that the heart of man could conceive he set 
 his scribes to write, scissors and paste, and lo ! the book was 
 
50 MEMOIRS. 
 
 made forthwith, he aiding and revising it. What was most 
 remarkable was that many of these pieces de manufacture 
 were rather clever, and very well answered the demand, for 
 their sale was enormous. He had when young been in the 
 West Indies, and written a clever novelette entitled " Ramon, 
 the Rover of Cuba." Personally he was very handsome, re 
 fined, and intelligent; a man meant by Nature for higher 
 literary work than mere book-making. 
 
 Miss Eliza Leslie, the writer of the best series of sketches 
 of American domestic life of her day, was a very intimate 
 friend of my mother, and a constant visitor at our house. 
 She was a sister of Leslie, the great artist, and had been in 
 her early life much in England. I was a great favourite 
 with her, and owed much to her always entertaining and 
 very instructive conversation, which was full of reminiscences 
 of distinguished people and remarkable events. I may say 
 with great truth that I really profited as much by mere hear 
 ing as many boys would have done by knowing the originals, 
 so deep was the interest which I felt in all that I heard, and 
 so eager my desire to learn to know the world. 
 
 Then I was removed, and with good cause, from Mr. Al- 
 cott s school, for he had become so very " ideal " or eccentric 
 in his teaching and odd methods of punishment by torment 
 ing without ever whipping, that people could not endure his 
 purely intellectual system. So for one winter, as my health 
 was bad and I was frequently ill, for a long time I was 
 allowed to do nothing but attend a writing-school kept by a 
 Mr. Rand. At the end of the season, he sadly admitted that 
 I still wrote badly ; I think he pronounced me the worst and 
 most incurable case of bad writing which he had ever attend 
 ed. In 1849 Judge (then Mr.) Cadwallader, with whom I 
 was studying law, said that he admired my engrossing hand 
 more than any he had ever seen except one. As hands go 
 round the clock, our hands do change. 
 
 I was to go the next summer to New England with my 
 younger brother, Henry Perry Leland, to be placed in the 
 
EARLY LIFE. 51 
 
 celebrated boarding-school of Mr. Charles W. Greene, at 
 Jamaica Plains, five miles from Boston ; which was done, and 
 with this I enter on a new phase of life, of which I have very 
 vivid reminiscences. Let me state that we first went to 
 Dedham and stayed some weeks. There I found living with 
 his father, an interesting boy of my own age, named Wil 
 liam Joshua Barney, a grandson of the celebrated Com 
 modore Barney, anent whom was written the song, " Barney, 
 leave the girls alone," apropos of his having been allowed to 
 kiss Marie Antoinette and all her maids of honour. William 
 had already been at Mr. Greene s school, and we soon became 
 intimate. 
 
 During this time my father hired a chaise; I borrowed 
 William s shot-gun, and we went together on a delightful tour 
 to visit all our relations in Holliston, Milford, and elsewhere. 
 At one time we stopped to slay an immense black snake ; at 
 another to shoot wild pigeons, and " so on about " to Prov 
 idence and many places. From cousins who lived in old 
 farmhouses in wild and remote places I received Indian ar 
 row-heads and a stone tomahawk, and other rustic curiosities 
 dear to my heart. At the Fremont House in Boston my 
 father showed me one day at dinner several foreign gentle 
 men of different nations belonging to different Legations. 
 In Rhode Island I found by a stream several large pot-holes in 
 rocks of which I had read, and explained to my father (grave 
 ly as usual) how they were made by eddies of water and 
 gravel-stones. One day my father in Boston took me to see 
 a marvellous white shell from China, valued at one hundred 
 pounds. What was the amazement of all present to hear me 
 give its correct Latin name, and relate a touching tale of a 
 sailor who, finding such a shell when shipwrecked on a 
 desert island, took it home with him, " and was thereby raised 
 (as I told them) from poverty to affluence." Which tale I 
 had read the week before in a children s magazine, and, as 
 usual, reflected deeply on it, resolving to keep my eye on all 
 shells in future, in the hope of something turning up. 
 
52 MEMOIRS. 
 
 I was not, however, a little prig who bored people with 
 my reading, for I have heard old folk say that there was a 
 quaint naivete and droll seriousness, and total unconscious 
 ness of superior information in my manner, which made these 
 outpourings of mine very amusing. I think I was a kind of 
 little Paul Dombey, unconsciously odd, and perhaps in 
 nocently Quaker-like. I could never understand why Aunt 
 Nancy, and many more, seemed to be so much amused at 
 serious and learned examples and questions which I laid down 
 to them. For though they did not " smile outright," I had 
 learned to penetrate the New England ironical glance and 
 satirical intonation. My mother said that, when younger, I, 
 having had a difficulty of some kind with certain street-boys, 
 came into the house with my eyes filled with tears, and said, 
 " I told them that they were evil-minded, but they laughed 
 me to scorn." On another occasion, when some vagabond 
 street-boys asked me to play with them, I gravely declined, 
 on the ground that I must " Shun bad company " this 
 phrase being the title of a tract which I had read, and the 
 boys corresponding in appearance to a picture of sundry 
 young ragamuffins on its title-page. 
 
 My portrait had been admirably painted in Philadelphia 
 by Mrs. Darley, the daughter of Sully, who, I believe, put 
 the finishing touches to it. When Mr. Walker saw it, he re 
 marked that it looked exactly as if Charley were just about 
 to tell one of his stories. At the time I was reading for the 
 first time "The Child s Own Book," an admirable large col 
 lection of fairy-tales and strange adventures, which kept me 
 in fairy-land many a time while I lay confined to bed for 
 weeks with pleurisies and a great variety of afflictions, for in 
 this respect I suffered far more than most children. 
 
EARLY LIFE. 53 
 
 AT SCHOOL IN NEW ENGLAND. 
 
 Mr. Charles W. Greene was a portly, ruddy, elderly 
 Boston gentleman of good family, who had been in early 
 life attached in some diplomatic capacity to a Legation, and 
 had visited Constantinople. I think that he had met with 
 reverses, but having some capital, had been established by 
 his many friends as a schoolmaster. He was really a fine old 
 gentleman, with a library full of old books, and had Madeira 
 in quaint little old bottles, on which, stamped in the glass, 
 one could read GREENE 1735. He had a dear little wife, 
 and both were as kind to the boys as possible. Once, and 
 once only, when I had really been very naughty, did he pun 
 ish me. He took me solemnly into the library (oh, what 
 blessed beautiful reading I often had there !), and, after a 
 solemn speech, and almost with tears in his eyes, gave me 
 three blows with a folded newspaper ! That was enough. 
 If I had been flayed with a rope s end, it would not have had 
 a greater moral effect than it did. 
 
 Everything was very English and old-fashioned about the 
 place. The house was said in 1835 to be a hundred and fifty 
 years old, having been one of the aristocratic Colonial 
 manors. One building after another had been added to it, 
 and the immense elms which grew about testified to its age. 
 The discipline or training was eminently adapted to make 
 young gentlemen of us all. There was almost no immorality 
 among the boys, and no fighting whatever. The punish 
 ments were bad marks, and for every mark a boy was obliged 
 to go to bed an hour earlier than the others. Extreme cases 
 of wickedness were punished by sending boys to bed in the 
 daytime. When two were in a room, and thus confined, they 
 used to relieve the monotony of their imprisonment by fight 
 ing with pillows. Those who had bad marks were also con 
 fined within certain bounds. Good boys, or those especially 
 favoured, were allowed to chop kindling wood, or do other 
 work, for which they were paid three cents per hour. 
 
54 MEMOIRS. 
 
 The boy who was first down in the morning had an apple 
 given to him. This apple was greatly despised by the bolder 
 spirits, who taunted those who arose promptly with a desire 
 to obtain it. 
 
 Candour compels me to admit that, as a teacher of learn 
 ing, Mr. Greene was not pre-eminent. He had two school 
 rooms, and employed for each as good a teacher as he could 
 hire. But we were not at all thoroughly well taught, al 
 though we were kept longer in the schoolroom than was 
 really good for us ; for in summer we had an hour s study 
 before breakfast, then from nine till twelve, and again from 
 two to five. In winter we had, instead of the early lesson, 
 an hour in the evening. Something was wanting in the sys 
 tem, and I believe that after a year and a half I knew no 
 more, as regards studies, than I did when I first entered. 
 
 When a boy s birthday came, he was allowed to have 
 some special dainty for us all. I was very much disgusted 
 with the Boston boys when they selected pork and beans, 
 which I loathed. Some would choose plum-pudding, others 
 apple-pies. There were always two or three dishes for break 
 fast, as, for instance, fried potatoes and butter, or cold meat, 
 or pan-dowdy a kind of coarse and broken up apple-pie 
 with the tea and bread and coffee, but we could only eat of 
 one. There was rather too much petty infant-schoolery in 
 all this, but we got on very well. Pepper and mustard were 
 forbidden, but I always had a great natural craving for these, 
 and when I asked for them, Mr. Greene would shake his 
 head, but always ended by handing them to me. He was a 
 bon vivant himself, and sympathised with me. There were 
 one or two books also of a rather peppery or spicy nature in 
 his library, such as a collection of rollicking London songs, 
 at which he likewise shook his head when I asked for them 
 but I got them. There I read for the first time all of 
 Walter Scott s novels, and the Percy Ballads, and some of 
 Marryatt s romances, and Hood s Annual, and Dr. Holmes s 
 first poems. 
 
EARLY LIFE. 55 
 
 There was in Mr. Greene s library a very curious and now 
 rare work in three volumes, published in Boston at some 
 time in the twenties, called " The Marvellous Depository." 
 It consisted of old legends of Boston, such as the story of 
 " Peter Rug<r,"" Tom Walker and the Devil," " The Golden 
 Tooth," " Captain Kidd," " The Witch Flymaker," and an ad 
 mirable collection of unearthly German tales, such as " The 
 Devil s Elixir," by Hoffmann (abridged), " Jacob the Bowl," 
 " Rubezahl," " Der Freyschutz," and many more, but all of 
 the unearthly blood-curdling kind. Singly, they were appall 
 ing enough to any one in those days when the supernatural 
 still thrilled the strongest minds, but taken altogether for 
 steady reading, the book was a perfect Sabbat of deviltry and 
 dramatic horrors. The tales were well told, or translated in 
 very simple but vigorous English, and I pored over the col 
 lection and got it by heart, and borrowed it, and took it to 
 Dedham in the holidays, and into the woods, where I read it 
 in sunshine or twilight shade by the rippling river, under 
 wild rocks, and so steeped my soul in the supernatural, that 
 I seemed to live a double life. As was natural, my school 
 mates read and liked such tales, but they sunk into my very 
 soul, and took root, and grew up into a great overshadowing 
 forest, while with others they were only as dwarf bushes, if 
 they grew at all. All of this though I did not know it 
 was unconsciously educating my bewitched mind to a deep 
 and very precocious passion for mediaeval and black-letter 
 literature and occult philosophy, which was destined to 
 manifest itself within a few years. 
 
 There was another book which greatly influenced my 
 mind and life. I have forgotten the title, but it was a very 
 remarkable collection of curiosities, such as accounts of a 
 family of seven children who had every one some strange 
 peculiarity, dwarfs and giants, and mysteriously-gifted mor 
 tals, and all kinds of odd beings and inventions. I obtained 
 it in a very mysterious way ; for one day I found it in my 
 desk, a blessed gift indeed from some unknown friend who 
 
56 MEMOIRS. 
 
 had rightly judged of my tastes. This work I literally lived 
 upon for a long time. Once a lady friend of my mother s 
 came in winter and took me a-sleighing, but I had my dear 
 book under my jacket, and contrived now and then to re-read 
 some anecdote in it. In after years I found a copy of it in 
 the Mercantile Library, Philadelphia, but I have never seen 
 it elsewhere.* I had at Mr. Alcott s carefully studied all the 
 Percy Anecdotes, and could repeat most of them when re 
 called by some association; also Goldsmith s "Animated 
 Nature," the perusal of which latter work was to me as the 
 waving of a forest and the sighing of deep waters. Then, 
 too, I had read in fact I owned the famous Peter Parley 
 books, which gave me, as they have to thousands of boys, a 
 desire to travel and see the world. I marvelled greatly at 
 finding that Peter Parley himself, or Mr. S. G. Goodrich, had 
 a beautiful country-house very near our school, and his son 
 Frank, who was a very pleasant and wonderfully polite and 
 sunshiny boy, sat by me in school. Frank Goodrich in after 
 life wrote a novel entitled " Flirtation and its Consequences," 
 of which my brother said, " What are its consequences, 
 Frank; good rich husbands? By no means." I can re 
 member being invited to a perfectly heavenly garden-party 
 at the Goodrichs , and evening visits there with my mother. 
 And I may note by the way, that Frank himself lived abroad 
 in after years ; that his father became the American Consul 
 
 * Since writing the foregoing, and by a most appropriately odd co 
 incidence or mere chance, I have received with delight a copy of this 
 work from Jesse Jaggard, a well-known dealer in literary curiosities in 
 Liverpool, who makes a specialty of hunting up rarities to order, which 
 is of itself a quaint business. The book is entitled " Curiosities for the 
 Ingenious. Selected from the Most Authentic Treasures of Nature, 
 Science and Art, Biography, History, and General Literature. London : 
 Thomas Boys, Ludgate Hill, 1821." Boys was the publisher of the cele 
 brated series of " The Percy Anecdotes." I should here, in justice to 
 Mr. Jaggard, mention that I am indebted to him for obtaining for me 
 several rare and singular works, and that his catalogues are remarkably 
 well edited. 
 
EARLY LIFE. 57 
 
 in Paris, and that in 1848 he introduced to the Gouverne- 
 ment Proviso ire the American delegation, of which I was 
 one, and how we were caricatured in the Charivari, in which 
 caricature I was specially depicted, the likeness being at once 
 recognised by everybody, and how I knew nothing of it all 
 till I was told about it by the beautiful Miss Goodrich, 
 Frank s younger sister, on a Staten Island steamboat, many, 
 many years after. And as a postscript I may add, that it is 
 literally true that before I was quite twenty- three years of age I 
 had been twice caricatured or pictorially jested on in the 
 Munich Fliegende Blatter and twice in the Paris Charivari, 
 which may show that I was to a certain degree about town in 
 those days, as I indeed was. While I am about it, I may as 
 well tell the Munich tale. There was a pretty governess, a 
 great friend of mine, who had charge of two children. Meet 
 ing her one day in the park, at a sign from me she pressed 
 the children s hats down over their eyes with " Kinder, setzt 
 cure Hiite fester auf ! " and in that blessed instant cast up 
 her beautiful lips and was kissed. I don t know whether 
 we were overseen ; certain it is that in the next number of 
 the Fliegende Blatter the scene was well depicted, with the 
 words. The other instance was this. One evening I met in 
 a BierJialle a sergeant of police with whom I fraternised. I 
 remember that he could talk modern Greek, having learned 
 it in Greece. This was very infra dig. indeed for a Student, 
 and one of my comrades said to me that, as I was a foreigner, 
 I was probably not aware of what a fault I had committed, 
 but that in future I must not be seen talking to a soldier. 
 To which I, with a terrible wink, replied, "Mum s the 
 word ; that soldier is lieutenant of police in my ward, and I 
 have squared it with him all right, so that if there should be 
 a Bierkrawall (a drunken row) in our quarter he will let me 
 go." This, which appeared as a grand flight of genial genius 
 to a German, speedily went through all the students kneipe, 
 and soon appeared, very well illustrated, in the " F. B" 
 We were allowed sixpence a week spending-money at Mr 
 
58 MEMOIRS. 
 
 Greene s, two cents, or a penny, being deducted for a bad 
 mark. Sometimes I actually got a full week s income ; once 
 I let it run on up to 25 cents, but this was forbidden, it not 
 being considered advisable that the boys should accumulate 
 fortunes. A great deal of my money went for cheap comic 
 literature, which I carefully preserved. In those days there 
 were Crockett s almanacs (now a great fund of folk-lore), 
 and negro songs and stories were beginning to be popular. 
 It is very commonly asserted that the first regular negro 
 minstrel troupe appeared in 1842. This is quite an error. 
 While I was at Mr. Greene s, in 1835, there came to Dedham 
 a circus with as regularly-appointed a negro minstrel troupe 
 of a dozen as I ever saw. I often beheld the pictures of them 
 on the bill. Nor do I think that this was any novelty even 
 then. The Crockett almanacs greatly stimulated my sense 
 of American humour (they do indeed form collectively a 
 very characteristic work), and this, with some similar read 
 ing, awoke in me a passion for wild Western life and frontier 
 experiences, which was fully and strangely gratified in after 
 years, but which would certainly have never happened had it 
 not been for this boyish reading. 
 
 For I beg the reader to observe that it is a very deeply- 
 seated characteristic that whatever once takes root in my 
 mind invariably grows. This comes from the great degree to 
 which I have always gone over, reviewed, and reflected on, or 
 nursed everything which ever once really interested me. And 
 as I have thus far written, and shall probably conclude this 
 work without referring to a note, the reader will have ample 
 opportunity of observing how very strangely in all cases the 
 phases of my life were predetermined long before by the 
 literary education which I gave myself, aided very much by 
 hereditary or other causes quite beyond my control. Now, as 
 the object of a Life is to understand every cause which cre 
 ated it, and as mine was to a very unusual degree created by 
 reading and reflecting, even in infancy, I beg the reader not 
 to be impatient with me for describing so much in detail the 
 
EARLY LIFE. 59 
 
 books which made my mind at different times. That is, I 
 pray this much allowance and sympathy from possible read 
 ers and critics, that they will kindly not regard me as vain or 
 thinking over-much of, or too much over, myself. For to 
 set oneself forth as one really is requires deep investigation 
 into every cause, and the depicting all early characteristics, 
 and the man never lived who ever did this truly and accu 
 rately without much egoism, or what the ill-disposed may 
 treat as such. And I promise the possible reader that when 
 this subjective analysis shall be fairly disposed of, there will 
 be no lack of mere incident or event of objective nature and 
 more general interest. 
 
 My first winter at Jamaica Plains was the terrible one of 
 1835, during which I myself saw the thermometer at 50 de 
 grees Fahrenheit below zero, arid there was a snow-bank in 
 the play-ground from October till May. The greatest care 
 possible was taken of us boys to keep us warm and well, but 
 we still suffered very much from chilblains. Water thrown 
 into the air froze while falling. Still there were some happy 
 lights and few shadows in it all. The boys skated or slid on 
 beautiful Jamaica Pond, which was near the school. There 
 was a general giving of sleds to us all ; mine broke to pieces 
 at once. I never had luck with any plaything, never played 
 ball or marbles, and hardly ever had even a top. Nor did I 
 ever have much to do with any games, or even learn in later 
 years to play cards, which was all a great pity. Sports should 
 be as carefully looked to in early education as book-learning. 
 I had also a pair of dear gazelle-skates given to me with the 
 rest, but they also broke up on first trial, and I have never 
 owned any since. Destiny was always against me in such 
 matters. 
 
 The boys built two large snow-houses, roofed in or arched 
 over with hard snow. One was ingeniously and appropri 
 ately like an Eskimo hut, with a rather long winding passage 
 leading into it. Of these I wrote in the spring, when the 
 sun had begun to act, " one is almost annihilated, and of the 
 
QO MEMOIRS. 
 
 other not a vestage remains." I found the letter by chance 
 many years later. 
 
 There lived in Boston some friends of my mother s named 
 Gay. In the family was an old lady over eighty, who was 
 a wonderfully lively spirited person. She still sang, as I 
 thought, very beautifully, to the lute, old songs such as 
 " The merry days of good Queen Bess," and remembered 
 the old Colonial time as if it were of yesterday. One day 
 Mr. Gay came out and took me to his house, where I re 
 mained from Saturday until Monday ; during which time I 
 found among the books, and very nearly read through, all 
 the poems of Peter Pindar or Doctor Wolcott. Precious 
 reading it was for a boy of eleven, yet I enjoyed it im 
 mensely. While there, I found in the earth in the garden 
 an oval, dark-green porphyry pebble, which I, moved by a 
 strange feeling, preserved for many years as an amulet. It 
 is very curious that exactly such pebbles are found as fetishes 
 all over the world, and the famous conjuring stone of the 
 Voodoos, which I possess, is only an ordinary black flint 
 pebble of the same shape. Negroes have travelled a thou 
 sand miles to hold it in their hands and make a wish, which, 
 if uttered with faith, is always granted. Its possession alone 
 entitles any one to the first rank as master in the mysteries 
 of Voodoo sorcery. Truly I began early in the business ! I 
 may here say that since I owned the Voodoo stone it has 
 been held in several very famous and a few very beautiful 
 hands. 
 
 While I was at Mr. Greene s I wrote my first poem. I 
 certainly exhibited no great precocity of lyrical genius in it, 
 but the reader must remember that I was only a foolish little 
 boy of ten or eleven at the time, and that I showed it to no 
 one. It was as follows : 
 
 " As a long-bearded Sultan, an infidel Turk, 
 Who ne er in his life had done any work, 
 Rode along to the bath, he saw Hassan the black, 
 With two monstrous water-skins high on his back. 
 
EARLY LIFE. 61 
 
 " Ho, Hassan, thou afreet ! thou infidel dog ! 
 Thou son of a Jewess and eater of hog ! 
 This instant, this second, put down thy skin jugs, 
 And for my sovereign pleasure remove both the plugs ! 
 
 " The negro obeyed him, put both on the ground, 
 And opened the skins and the water flew round ; 
 The Sultan looked on till he laughed his fill; 
 Then went on to the bath, feeling heated and ill. 
 
 " When arrived at the bath, Is all ready? he cries. 
 4 Indeed it is not, sire, the bath-man replies ; 
 For to fetch the bath-water black Hassan has gone, 
 And your highness can t have it till he shall return. " 
 
 In after years my friend, Professor E. H. Palmer, trans 
 lated this into Arabic, and promised me that it should be 
 sung in the East. It is not much of a poem, even for a boy, 
 but there is one touch true to life in it which is the cursing. 
 This must have come to me by revelation ; and in after years 
 in Cairo I never heard a native address another as "Afrit ! 
 Ya-Mnzeer wa Yalmd yin uldeen ak 9 " " curse your re 
 ligion ! " but I thought how marvellous it was that I, even 
 in my infancy, had divined so well how they did it ! How 
 ever, now I come to think of it, I had the year before read 
 Morier s "Haji-Baba" with great admiration, and I doubt 
 not that it was the influence of that remarkable book which 
 produced this beautiful result. In after years I met with a 
 lady who was a daughter of Morier. Apropos of the look, it 
 reminds me that I specially recall my reviewing it mentally 
 many times. 
 
 I have reviewed my early life in quiet, old-fashioned, 
 shaded Philadelphia and in rural New England so continu 
 ally and carefully all the time ever since it passed that I am 
 sure its minutest detail on any day would now be accurately 
 recalled at the least suggestion. As I shall almost certainly 
 write this whole work without referring to a note or journal 
 or other document, it will be seen that I remember the past 
 pretty well. What is most remarkable in it all, if I can make 
 myself intelligible, is that what between the deep and indeli- 
 
02 MEMOIRS. 
 
 ble impression made on my mind by books, and that of 
 scenery and characters now passed away the two being con 
 nected it all seems to me now to be as it were vividly de 
 picted, coloured, or written in my mind, like pages in an 
 illuminated or illustrated romance. As some one has said 
 that dreams are novels which we read when asleep, so by 
 gone memories, when continually revived and associated with 
 the subtle and delicate influences of reading, really become 
 fixed literature to us, glide into it, and are virtually turned 
 to copy, which only awaits type. Thus a scene to one highly 
 cultivated in art is really a picture, to a degree which few 
 actually realise, though they may fancy they do, because to 
 actually master this harmony requires so many years of study 
 and thought that I very rarely meet with perfect instances of 
 it. De Quincey and Coleridge are two of the best illustra 
 tions whom I can recall, while certain analytical character- 
 sifters in modern novels seem the farthest remote from such 
 genial naturalness. 
 
 At the end of the first year my brother returned to Phila 
 delphia. I passed the summer at Dr. Stimson s, in Dedham, 
 wandering about in the woods with my bow, fishing in the 
 river, reading always whatever fate or a small circulating 
 library provided I remember that " The Devil on Two 
 Sticks " and the " Narrative of Captain Boyle " were in it 
 and carving spoons and serpents from wood, which was a 
 premonition of my later work in this line, and of my 
 " Manual of Wood-Carving." 
 
 At this time something took place which deeply impressed 
 me. This was the two hundredth anniversary of the build 
 ing of the town of Dedham, which was celebrated with very 
 great splendour : speeches, tents with pine-boughs, music- 
 booths, ginger-beer, side-shows in short, all the pomp and 
 circumstance of a country fair allied to historic glory. I had 
 made one or two rather fast and, I fear me, not over-reputa 
 ble acquaintances of my own age, with whom I enjoyed the 
 festival to the utmost. Then I returned to school, and au- 
 
EARLY LIFE. (J3 
 
 tumn came, and then winter. At this time I felt fearfully 
 lonely. I yearned for my mother with a longing beyond 
 words, and was altogether home-sick. 
 
 I was seated one Saturday afternoon, busily working in 
 the drawing-class under a little old Englishman named Dr. 
 Hunt, when there came the startling news that a gentleman 
 had come to take me home ! I could hardly believe my 
 senses. I went down, and was presented to a man of about 
 thirty, of extremely pleasant and attractive appearance, who 
 told me that his name was Carlisle, that he was a friend 
 of my father s, and that I was at once to return with 
 him to Philadelphia. I wonder that I did not faint with 
 
 joy- 
 Mr. Carlisle was a man of very remarkable intelligence, 
 kindness, and refinement. Nearly sixty years have passed 
 since then, and yet the memory of the delightful impression 
 which he made on me is as fresh as ever. My trunk was soon 
 packed ; we were whirled away to Boston, and went to a ho 
 tel, he treating me altogether like a young gentleman and an 
 equal. 
 
 It had been the dream and hope and wild desire of my 
 life to go to the Lion Theatre in Boston, where circus was 
 combined with roaring maritime melodramas, of which I had 
 heard heavenly accounts from a few of my schoolmates. And 
 Mr. Carlisle took me there that evening, and I saw " Hyder 
 Ali." Never, never in my life before did I dream that dra 
 matic art, poetry, and mimesis could attain to such ideal 
 splendour. And then a sailor came on the stage and sang 
 " Harry Bluff," and when he came to the last line 
 
 " And he died like & true Yankee sailor at last," 
 
 amid thundering hurrahs, it seemed to me that romance could 
 go no farther. I do not think that Mr. Carlisle had any knowl 
 edge of boys, certainly not of such a boy as I was, but I am 
 sure that he must have been amply repaid for his kindness to 
 me in my delight. And there were acrobatic performances, 
 
64: MEMOIRS. 
 
 such as I had never seen in my life, and we returned to the 
 hotel and a grand supper, and I was in heaven. x 
 
 The next morning Mr. Carlisle put into my hand, with 
 great delicacy, such a sum as I had never before possessed, 
 telling me that I " would need it for travelling expenses." 
 All the while he drew me out on literature. On the Long 
 Island Sound steamer he bade me notice a young gentleman 
 (whom I was destined to know in after years), a man with 
 curly hair and very foppish air, accompanied by a page " in 
 an eruption of buttons," and told me that it was 1ST. P. Willis. 
 And so revelling in romance and travel, with mince-pie and 
 turkey for my daily food, my pocket stuffed with money, in 
 the most refined and elegant literary society (at least it was 
 there on deck), I came to Philadelphia. I may here say that 
 the memory of Mr. Carlisle has made me through all my life 
 kinder to boys than I might otherwise have been ; and if, as a 
 teacher, I have been popular among them, it was to a great 
 degree due to his influence. For, as will appear in many pas 
 sages in this book, I have to a strange degree the habit of 
 thinking over marked past experiences, and drawing from 
 them precedents by which to guide my conduct; hence it has 
 often happened that a single incident has shown itself in hun 
 dreds of others, as a star is reflected in countless pools. 
 
II. 
 
 BOYHOOD AND YOUTH. 
 1837-1845. 
 
 Return to Philadelphia at twelve years of age Early discipline School 
 at Mr. C. Walker s B. P. Hunt My first reading of Rabelais- 
 Mr. Robert Stewart Hurlbut s school Boyish persecution Much 
 strange reading Francois Villon Early studies in philosophy 
 Transcendentalism and its influence Spanish School of E. C. 
 Wines The French teacher Long illness The intelligent horse- 
 Princeton University professors Albert Dodd and James Alexander 
 College life Theology Rural scenes Reading My first essays 
 The Freshman rebellion Smoking George H. Boker Jacob 
 Behmen or Bohme Stonington Captain Nat Palmer and Commo 
 dore Vanderbilt My graduation. 
 
 How happy I was again to see my mother and father and 
 Henry ! And then came other joys. My father had taken a 
 very nice house in Walnut Street, in the best quarter of the 
 city, below Thirteenth Street, and this was a source of pleas 
 ure, as was also a barrel of apples in the cellar, to which I 
 had free access. They had been doled out to us very spar 
 ingly at school, and I never shall forget the delight with 
 which I one day in December at Jamaica Plain discovered a 
 frozen apple on a tree ! Then there was the charm of being 
 in a great city, and familiar old scenes, and the freedom from 
 bad marks, and being ruled into bounds, and sent to bed at 
 early hours. There is, in certain cases, a degree of moral 
 restraint and discipline which is often carried much too far, 
 especially where boys are brought up with a view to pushing 
 themselves in the world. I was sixteen years of age and six 
 feet high before I was allowed to leave off short jackets, go to 
 a theatre, or travel alone, all of which was more injurious to 
 
66 MEMOIRS. 
 
 me, I believe, than ordinary youthful dissipation would have 
 been, especially in America. Yet, while thus repressed, I 
 was being continually referred by all grown-up friends to en 
 terprising youth of my own age, who were making a living in 
 bankers or conveyancers offices, &c., and acting " like men." 
 The result really being that I was completely convinced that 
 I was a person of feeble and inferior capacity as regarded all 
 that was worth doing or knowing in life, though Heaven 
 knows my very delicate health and long illnesses might of 
 themselves have excused all my failings. The vast majority 
 of Americans, however kind and generous they may be in 
 other respects, are absolutely without mercy or common-sense 
 as regards the not succeeding in life or making money. Such, 
 at least, was my experience, and bitter it was. Elders often 
 forget that even obedience, civility, and morality in youth are 
 luxuries which must be paid for like all other extravagances 
 at a high price, especially in children of feeble constitution. 
 The dear boy grows up " as good as pie," and, being pious, 
 " does not know one card from another," nor one human be 
 ing from another. You make of him a fool, and then call 
 him one I mean, what you regard as a fool. I am not at 
 all sure that one or two cruises in a slaver (there were plenty 
 of them sailing out of New York in those days) would not 
 have done me far more good of a certain kind than all the 
 education I had till I left college in America. I am not here 
 complaining, as most weak men do, as if they were specially 
 victims to a wretched fate and a might-have-been-better. 
 The vast majority of boys have not better homes or educa 
 tion, kinder parents, or advantages greater than mine were. 
 But as I do not recall my boyhood s days or my youth till I 
 left college with that joyousness which I find in other men 
 without exception, and as, in fact, there always seems as if a 
 cloud were over it all, while from below there was a low con 
 tinual murmur as of a patient soul in pain, I feel that there 
 was something wrong in it all, as there indeed was the 
 wrong of taking all the starch out of a shirt, and then won- 
 
BOYHOOD AND YOUTH. 67 
 
 dering that it was not stiff. But I must say, at the same 
 time, that this free expansion is not required by the vast 
 majority of boys, who are only far too ready and able to 
 spread themselves into "life" without any aid whatever. 
 What is for one meat may be for another poison, and mine 
 was a very exceptional case, which required very peculiar 
 treatment. 
 
 My father had sold out his business in 1832 to Mr. Charles 
 S. Boker, and since then been principally engaged in real 
 estate and stock speculation. When I returned, he had 
 bought a large property between Chestnut Market and Third 
 Streets, on which was a hotel called Congress Hall, with which 
 there were connected many historical associations, for most 
 of the noted men who for many years visited Philadelphia 
 had lived in it. With it were stables and other buildings, 
 covering a great deal of ground in the busiest portion of the 
 city, but still not in its condition very profitable. Then, 
 again, he purchased the old Arch Street prison, a vast 
 gloomy pile, like four dead walls, a building nearly 400 feet 
 square. It was empty, and I went over it and into the cells 
 many times. I remember thinking of the misery and degra 
 dation of those who had been confined there. The disci 
 pline had been bad enough, for the prisoners had been allowed 
 to herd freely together. My father tore it down, and built a 
 block of handsome dwelling-houses on its site. As the trot- 
 toir or side-walk was narrow, he, at a considerable loss to 
 himself, made a present to the city of a strip of land which 
 left a wide pavement. I say " at a loss," for had the houses 
 been deeper they would have sold for much more. The City 
 Council graciously accepted the gift, with the special condi 
 tion that my father should pay all the expenses of the trans 
 fer ! From which I learned the lesson that in this life a man 
 is quite as liable to suffer from doing good as doing evil, un 
 less he employs just as much foresight or caution in the doing 
 thereof. Some of the most deeply regretted acts of my life, 
 which have caused me most sincere and oft-renewed repent- 
 
68 MEMOIRS. 
 
 ance, were altogether and perfectly acts of generosity and 
 goodness. The simple truth of which is that a, gush, no mat 
 ter how sweet and pure the water may be, generally displaces 
 something. Many more buildings did my father buy and sell, 
 but committed withal the very serious error of never buying 
 a house as a permanent home or a country place, which he 
 might have easily done, and even to great profit, which error 
 in the long-run caused us all great inconvenience, and much 
 of that shifting from place to place which is very bad for a 
 growing family. The humblest man in such case in a house 
 of his own has certain great advantages over even a million 
 aire in lodgings. 
 
 Mr. S. C. Walker had given over his school to a younger 
 brother named Joseph, but it was still kept in the old house 
 in Eighth Street, where also I had taken my lessons in the 
 rudiments of Transcendentalism from the Orphic Alcott. It 
 was now a fairly good school as things went in those days, 
 with the same lectures in Natural Philosophy and Chemistry 
 the same mild doses of French and Latin. The chief 
 assistant was E. Otis Kimball, subsequently a professor of 
 astronomy, a very gentlemanly and capable instructor, of a 
 much higher type than any assistant-teacher whom I had 
 ever before met. Under him I read Voltaire s " Charles the 
 Twelfth." George H. Boker, who was one year older than I, 
 and the son of my father s old partner, went to this school. 
 I do not remember that for the first year or eighteen months 
 after my return to Philadelphia there was any incident of 
 note in my life, or that I read anything unless it was Shake 
 speare, and reviews which much influenced me. However, I 
 was very wisely allowed to attend a gymnasium, kept by a 
 man named Hudson. Here there was a sporting tone, much 
 pistol-shooting at a mark, boxing and fencing, prints of 
 prize-fighters on the wall, and cuts from Life in London, 
 with copious cigar-smoke. It was a wholesome, healthy 
 place for me. Unfortunately, I could not afford the shoot 
 ing, boxing, &c., but I profited somewhat by it, both morally 
 
BOYHOOD AND YOUTH. 69 
 
 and physically. At this critical period, or a little later, a few 
 pounds a year judiciously invested in sport and "dissipation " 
 would have changed the whole current of my life, probably 
 much for the better, and it would certainly have spared my 
 poor father the conviction, which he had almost to his death, 
 that I was a sad and mortifying failure or exception which 
 had not paid its investment ; for which opinion he was in no 
 wise to blame, it being also that of all his business acquaint 
 ances, many of whose sons, it was true, went utterly to the 
 devil, but then it was in the ancient intelligible, common- 
 sensible, usual paths of gambling, horsing, stock-brokering, 
 selling short, or ruining all their relatives by speculating 
 with their money. However, there was also the rather for 
 lorn hope ahead that I would do something in a profession. 
 
 The school went on, Mr. Walker studying law meantime 
 till he had passed his examination, when it was transferred 
 to Mr. B. P. Hunt. With this man, who became and re 
 mained my intimate friend till his death, thirty years after, 
 came the first faint intimation of what was destined to be 
 the most critical, the most singular, and by far the most im 
 portant period of my life. 
 
 Mr. Hunt was, as he himself declared to me in after years, 
 not at all fitted to be a schoolmaster. He lacked the minor 
 or petty earnestness of character, and even the training or 
 preparation, necessary for such work. On the other hand, 
 he had read a great deal in a desultory way ; he was very 
 fond of all kinds of easy literature ; and when he found that 
 any boy understood the subject, he would talk with that boy 
 about whatever he had been reading. Yet there was some 
 thing real and stimulative in him, for there never was a man 
 in Philadelphia who kept school for so short a time and with 
 so few pupils who had among them so many who in after life 
 became more or less celebrated. For he certainly made all 
 of us who were above idiocy think and live in thought above 
 the ordinary range of school-boy life. Thus I can recall 
 these two out of many incidents : 
 
70 MEMOIRS. 
 
 Finding me one day at an old book-stand, he explained 
 to me Alduses, and Elzevirs, and bibliography, showing me 
 several specimens, all of which I remembered. 
 
 I had read Watson s " Annals of Philadelphia." [By the 
 way, I knew the daughter of the author.] There was an 
 allusion in it to Cornelius Agrippa, and Mr. Hunt explained 
 and dilated on this great sorcerer to me till I became half 
 crazy to read the " Occult Philosophy," which I did at a 
 roaring rate two years later. 
 
 One day I saw Mr. Hunt and Mr. Kendall chuckling to 
 gether over a book. I divined a secret. Now, I was a very 
 honourable boy, and never pried into secrets, but where a 
 quaint old book was concerned I had no more conscience 
 than a pirate. And seeing Mr. Hunt put the book into his 
 desk, I abode my time till he had gone forth, when I raised 
 the lid, and . . . 
 
 Merciful angels and benevolent fairies ! it was Urquhart s 
 translation of Rabelais ! One short spell I read, no more ; 
 but it raised a devil which has never since been laid. Ear 
 hath not heard, it hath not entered into the heart of man to 
 conceive, what I felt as I realised, like a young giant just 
 awakened, that there was in me a stupendous mental 
 strength to grasp and understand that magnificent mixture 
 of ribaldry and learning, fun and wisdom, deviltry and divini 
 ty. In a few pages time I knew what it all meant, and that 
 I was gifted to understand it. I replaced the book ; nor did 
 I read it again for years, but from that hour I was never 
 quite the same person. The next day I saw Callot s " Temp 
 tation of St. Anthony " for the first time in a shop- window, 
 and felt with joy and pride that I understood it out of 
 Rabelais. Two young gentlemen lawyers apparently by 
 my side thought it was crazy and silly. To me it was more 
 like an apocalypse. 
 
 I am speaking plain truth when I say that that one quar 
 ter of an hour s reading of Rabelais standing up was to 
 me as the light which flashed upon Saul journeying to 
 
BOYHOOD AND YOUTH. 71 
 
 Damascus. It seems to me now as if it were the great event 
 of my life. It came to such a pass in after years that I could 
 have identified any line in the Chronicle of Gargantua, and 
 I also was the suggester, father, and founder in London of 
 the Rabelais Club, in which were many of the best minds of 
 the time, but beyond it all and brighter than all was that 
 first revelation. 
 
 It should be remembered that I had already perused Sterne, 
 much of Swift, and far more comic and satiric literature than 
 is known to boys, and, what is far more remarkable, had thor 
 oughly taken it alHnto my cor cordium by much repetition 
 and reflection. 
 
 Mr. Hunt in time put me up to a great deal of very val 
 uable or curious belletristic fair-lettered or black-lettered 
 reading, far beyond my years, though not beyond my intelli 
 gence and love. We had been accustomed to pass to our 
 back-gate of the school through Blackberry Alley 
 
 " Blackberry Alley, now Duponceau Street, 
 A rose by any name will smell as sweet " 
 
 which was tenanted principally by social evils. He removed 
 to the corner of Seventh and Chestnut Streets. Under our 
 schoolroom there was a gambling den. I am not aware that 
 these surroundings had any effect whatever upon the pupils. 
 Among the pupils in Seventh Street was one named Emile 
 Tourtelot. We called him Oatmeal Turtledove. I had an 
 other friend who was newly come from Connecticut. His 
 uncle kept a hotel and often gave him Havanna cigars. We 
 often took long walks together out of town and smoked 
 them. He taught me the song 
 
 " On Springfield mountains there did dwell," 
 
 with much more quaint rural New England lore. 
 
 About this time my grandfather Leland died. I wept 
 sadly on hearing it. My father, who went to Holliston to 
 attend the funeral, brought me back a fine collection of 
 
72 MEMOIRS. 
 
 Indian stone relics and old American silver coins, for he had 
 been in his way an antiquarian. Bon sang ne pent mentir. 
 I had also the certificate of some Society or Order of Revo- 
 lutionary soldiers to which he had belonged. One of his 
 brothers had, as an officer, a membership of the hereditary 
 Order of the Cincinnati. This passed to another branch of 
 the family. 
 
 For many years the principal regular visitor at our house 
 was Mr. Robert Stewart, a gentleman of good family and 
 excellent education, who had during the wars with Napoleon 
 made an adventurous voyage to France, and subsequently 
 passed most of his life as Consul or diplomatic agent in Cuba. 
 He had brought with him from Cuba a black Ebo-African 
 slave named Juan. As the latter seemed to be discontented 
 in Philadelphia, Mr. Stewart, who was kindness itself, offered 
 to send him back freed to Cuba or Africa, and told him he 
 might buy a modest outfit of clothing, such as suited his 
 condition. The negro went to a first-class tailor and ordered 
 splendid clothes, which were sent back, of course. The vin 
 dictive Ebo was so angry at this, that one summer afternoon, 
 while Mr. Stewart slept, the former fell on him with an axe 
 and knife, mangled his head horribly, cut the cords of his 
 hand, &c., and thought he had killed him. But hearing his 
 victim groan, he was returning, when he met another servant, 
 who said, " Juan, where are you going ? " He replied, " Me 
 begin to kill Mars Stewart now me go back finish him ! " 
 He was, of course, promptly arrested. Mr. Stewart recovered, 
 but was always blind of one eye, and his right hand was 
 almost useless. Mr. Stewart had in his diplomatic capacity 
 seen many of the pirates who abounded on the Spanish Main 
 in those days. He was an admirable raconteur, abounding 
 in reminiscences. His son William inherited from an uncle 
 a Cuban estate worth millions of dollars, and lived many 
 years in Paris. He was a great patron of (especially Span 
 ish) art. 
 
 So I passed on to my fourteenth year, which was des- 
 
BOYPIOOD AND YOUTH. 73 
 
 tined to be the beginning of the most critical period of my 
 life. My illnesses had increased in number and severity, and 
 I had shot up into a very tall weak youth. Mr. Hunt gave 
 up teaching, and became editor of LitteWs Magazine. I was 
 sent to the school of Mr. Hurl but as I believe it was then 
 spelled, but I may be wrong. He had been a Unitarian 
 clergyman, but was an ungenial, formal, rather harsh man 
 the very opposite of Mr. Hunt. My schoolmates soon found 
 that though so tall, I was physically very weak, and many of 
 them continually bullied and annoyed me. Once I was driven 
 into a formal stand-up fight with one younger by a year, but 
 much stronger. I did my best, but was beaten. I offered to 
 fight him then in Indian fashion with a hug, but this he 
 scornfully declined. After this he never met me without 
 insulting me, for he had a base nature, as his after-life proved. 
 These humiliations had a bad effect upon me, for I was 
 proud and nervous, and, like many such boys, often very 
 foolish. 
 
 But I had a few very good friends. Among these was 
 Charles Macalester. One day when I had been bullied shame 
 fully by the knot of boys who always treated me badly, he 
 ran after me up Walnut Street, and, almost with tears in his 
 eyes, assured me of his sympathy. There were two other 
 intimates. George Patrullo, of Spanish parentage, and Rich 
 ard Seldener, son of the Swedish Consul. They read a great 
 deal. One day it chanced that Seldener had in his bosom a 
 very large old-fashioned flint-lock horse-pistol loaded with 
 shot. By him and me stood Patrullo and William Henry 
 Hurlbut, who has since become a very well-known character. 
 Thinking that Seldener s pistol was unloaded, Patrullo, to 
 frighten young Hurlbut, pulled the weapon suddenly from 
 Seldener s breast, put it between Hurlbut s eyes and fired. 
 The latter naturally started to one side, so it happened that 
 he only received one shot in his ear. The charge went into 
 the wall, where it made a mark like a bullet s, which was long 
 visible. George Patrullo was drowned not long after while 
 
74 MEMOIRS. 
 
 swimming in the Schuylkill river, and Kichard Seldener 
 perished on an Atlantic steamer, which was never heard of. 
 
 On the other hand, something took place which cast a 
 marvellous light into this darkened life of mine. For one 
 day my father bought and presented to me a share in the 
 Philadelphia Library. This was a collection which even 
 then consisted of more than 60,000 well-chosen volumes. 
 And then began such a life of reading as was, I sincerely 
 believe, unusual in such youth. My first book was "Arthur 
 of Little Britaine," which I finished in a week ; then " Newes 
 from New Englande, 1636," and the " Historie of Clodoal- 
 dus." Before long I discovered that there were in the Lo- 
 ganian section of the library several hundred volumes of 
 occult philosophy, a collection once formed by an artist 
 named Cox, and of these I really read nearly every one. 
 Cornelius Agrippa and Barret s " Magus," Paracelsus, the 
 black-letter edition of Reginald Scot, Glanville, and Gaffarel, 
 Trithemius, Baptista Porta, and God knows how many Rosi- 
 crucian writers became familiar to me. Once when I had 
 only twenty-five cents I gave it for a copy of " Waters of the 
 East " by Eugenius Philalethes, or Thomas Vaughan. 
 
 All of this led me to the Mystics and Quietists. I read Dr. 
 Boardman s " History of Quakerism," which taught me that 
 Fox grew out of Behmen ; and I picked up one day Poiret s 
 French work on the Mystics, which was quite a handbook or 
 guide to the whole literature. But these books were but a 
 small part of what I read ; for at one time, taking another 
 turn towards old English, I went completely through Chaucer 
 and Gower, both in black letter, the collections of Ritson, 
 Weber, Ellis, and I know not how many more of mediaeval 
 ballads and romances, and very thoroughly and earnestly in 
 deed Warton s " History of English Poetry." Then I read Sis- 
 mondi s " Literature of Southern Europe " and Longfellow s 
 " Poets and Poetry of Europe," which set me to work on 
 Raynouard and other collections of Proven9al poetry, in the 
 knowledge of which I made some progress, and also St. 
 
BOYHOOD AND YOUTH. 75 
 
 Pelaye s, Le Grand s, Costello s, and other books on the 
 Trouveurs. I translated into rhyme and sent to a maga 
 zine, of which I in after years became editor, one or two la is^ 
 which were rejected, I think unwisely, for they were by no 
 means bad. Then I had a fancy for Miscellanea, and read 
 the works of D Israeli the elder and Burton s " Anatomy." 
 
 One day I made a startling discovery, for I took at a 
 venture from the library the black-letter first edition of the 
 poems of FranQois Villon. I was then fifteen years old. 
 Never shall I forget the feeling, which Heine compares to 
 the unexpected finding of a shaft of gold in a gloomy mine, 
 which shot through me as I read for the first time these bal 
 lades. Now-a-days people are trained to them through sec 
 ond-hand sentiment. Villon has become Heaven bless the 
 mark ! fashionable! and aesthetic. I got at him "straight" 
 out of black-letter reading in boyhood as a find of my own, 
 and it was many, many years ere I ever met with a single soul 
 who had heard of him. I at once translated the " Song of the 
 Ladies of the Olden Time " ; and I knew what bon bee meant, 
 which is more than one of Villon s great modern translators 
 has done ! Also heaulmi&re, which is not helmet-maker, as 
 another supposes. 
 
 I went further in this field than I have room to describe. 
 I even read the rococo-sweet poems of Joachim du Bellay. 
 In this year my father gave me " The Doctor," by Robert 
 Southey, a work which I read and re-read assiduously for 
 many years, and was guided by it to a vast amount of odd 
 reading, Philemon Holland s translation of Pliny being one 
 of the books. This induced me to read all of Southey s 
 poems, which I did, not from the library, but from a book 
 store, where I had free run and borrowing privileges, as I 
 well might, since my father lost 4,000 by its owner. 
 
 While at Mr. Greene s school I had given me Alsopp s 
 " Life and Letters of Coleridge," which I read through many 
 times ; then in my thirteenth year, in Philadelphia, I read 
 with great love Charles Lamb s works and most of the works 
 
76 MEMOIRS. 
 
 of Coleridge. Mr. Alcott had read Wordsworth into us in 
 illimitable quantities, so that I soon had a fair all-round 
 knowledge of the Lakers, whom I dearly loved. Now there 
 was a certain souppon of Mysticism or Transcendentalism 
 and Pantheism in Coleridge, and even in Wordsworth, which 
 my love of rocks and rivers and fairy lore easily enabled me 
 to detect by sympathy. 
 
 But all of this was but a mere preparation for and fore 
 shadowing, of a great mental development and very preco 
 cious culture which was rapidly approaching. I now speak 
 of what happened to me from 1838 to 1840, principally in 
 the latter year. If I use extravagant, vain words, I beg the 
 reader to pardon me. Perhaps this will never be published, 
 therefore sit verbo venia ! 
 
 I had become deeply interested in the new and bold de 
 velopment which was then manifesting itself in the Unitarian 
 Church. Channing, whom I often heard preach, had some 
 thing in common with the Quietists ; Mr. Furness was really 
 a thinker " out of bounds," while in reality as gentle and 
 purely Christian as could be. There was something new in 
 the air, and this Something I, in an antiquated form, had 
 actually preceded. It was really only a rechauffe of the Keo- 
 Platonism which lay at the bottom of Porphyry, Proclus, 
 Psellus, Jamblichus, with all of whom I was fairly well ac 
 quainted. Should any one doubt this, I can assure him that 
 I still possess a full copy of the " Poemander " or " Pirnan- 
 der " of Hermes Trismegistus, made by me in my sixteenth 
 year, which most assuredly no mortal could ever have under 
 stood or macle, or cared to make, if he had not read the Neo- 
 Platonists ; for Marsilius Ficinus himself regarded this work 
 as a pendant to them, and published it as such. Which work 
 I declared was not a Christian Platonic forgery, but based 
 on old Egyptian works, as has since been well-nigh proved 
 from recent discoveries. (I think it was Dr. Garnett 
 who, hearing me once declare in the British Museum that 
 I believed Hermes was based on an ancient Egyptian 
 
BOYHOOD AND YOUTH. 77 
 
 text, sent for a French work in which the same view was 
 advanced.) 
 
 The ignorance, narrow-mindedness, and odium theologicum 
 which prevailed in America until 1840 was worse than that 
 in Europe under the Church in the Middle Ages, for even in 
 the latter there had been an Agobard and an Abelard, Knight- 
 Templar agnostics, and illuminati of different kinds. The 
 Unitarians, who believed firmly in every point of Christianity, 
 and that man was saved by Jesus, and would be damned if 
 he did not put faith in him as the Son of God, were regarded 
 literally and truly by everybody as no better than infidels be 
 cause they believed that Christ was sent by God, and that 
 Three could not be One. Every sect, with rare exceptions, 
 preached, especially the Presbyterians, that the vast majority 
 even of Christians would be damned, thereby giving to the 
 devil that far greater power than God against which Bishop 
 Agobard had protested. As for a freethinker or infidel, he 
 was pointed at in the streets ; and if a man had even seen a 
 " Deist," he spoke of it as if he had beheld a murderer. 
 Against all this some few were beginning to revolt. 
 
 There came a rumour that there was something springing 
 up in Boston called Transcendentalism. Nobody knew what 
 it was, but it was dreamy, mystical, crazy, and infideleterious 
 to religion. Firstly, it was . connected with Thomas Carlyle 
 and Kalph Waldo Emerson, and finally with everything Ger 
 man. The new school of liberal Unitarians favoured it. I 
 had a quick intuition that here was something for me to work 
 at. I bought Carlyle s Sartor Resartus, first edition, and 
 read it through forty times ere I left college, of which I " kept 
 count." 
 
 My record here as regards some books may run a little 
 ahead ; but either before I went to college or during my first 
 year there (almost all before or by 1840- 41), I had read Car 
 lyle s " Miscellanies " thoroughly, Emerson s " Essays," a 
 translation of Kant s " Critique of Pure Eeason," the first 
 half of it many times ; Dugald Stewart s works, something 
 
78 MEMOIRS. 
 
 of Reid, Locke, and Hobbes s " Leviathan " ; had bought and 
 read French versions of Schelling s " Transcendental Ideal 
 ism " and Fichte s fascinating " Destiny of Man " ; studied a 
 small handbook of German philosophy ; the works of Cam- 
 panella and Vanini (Bruno much later, for his works were 
 then exceeding rare. I now have Weber s edition), and also, 
 with intense relish and great profit, an old English version of 
 Spinoza s Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. In which last work 
 I had the real key and clue to all German philosophy and 
 Rationalism, as I in time found out. I must here modestly 
 mention that I had, to a degree which I honestly believe sel 
 dom occurs, the art of rapid yet of carefully-observant read 
 ing. George Boker once, quite unknown to me, gave me 
 something to read, watched my eyes as I went from line to 
 line, timed me by watch, and finally examined me on what I 
 had read. He published the incident long after, said he had 
 repeated it more than once a mon insu, and that it was re 
 markable. 
 
 Such a dual life as I at this time led it has seldom entered 
 into the head of man to imagine. I was, on the one hand, a 
 school-boy in a jacket, leading a humiliated life among my 
 kind, all because I was sickly and weak ; while, on the other 
 hand, utterly alone and without a living soul to whom I could 
 exchange an idea, I was mastering rapidly and boldly that 
 which was then in reality the tremendous problem of the age. 
 I can now see that, as regards its real antique bases, I was far 
 more deeply read and better grounded than were even its most 
 advanced leaders in Anglo-Saxony. For I soon detected in 
 Carlyle, and much more in Emerson, a very slender knowl 
 edge of that stupendous and marvellous ancient Mysticism 
 which sent its soul in burning faith and power to the depth 
 of " the downward-borne elements of God," as Hermes called 
 them. I missed even the rapt faith of such a weak writer as 
 Sir Kenelm Digby, much more Zoroaster ! Vigourous and 
 clever and bold writers they were Carlyle was far beyond me 
 in literary art but true Pantheists they were not. And they 
 
BOYHOOD AND YOUTH. ?9 
 
 were men of great genius, issuing essays to the age on popu 
 lar, or political, or " literary " topics ; but philosophers they 
 most assuredly were not, nor men tremendous in spiritual 
 truth. And yet it was precisely as philosophers and thauma- 
 turgists and revealers of occult a that they posed especially 
 Emerson. And they dabbled or trifled with free thought and 
 " immorality," crying Goethe up as the Light of Lights, while 
 all their inner souls were bound in the most Puritanical and 
 petty goody-goodyism. Though there were traces of grim 
 Scotch humour in Carlyle, my patron saint and master, Kabe- 
 lais, or aught like him, had no credit with them. 
 
 They paddled in Pantheism, but as regards it, both lacked 
 the stupendous faith and inspiration of the old adepti, who 
 flung their whole souls into God ; and yet they sneered at 
 Materialism and Science. 
 
 I did not then see all of this so clearly as I now do, but I 
 very soon found that, as in after years it was said that Comte- 
 ism was Catholicism without Christianity, so the Carlyle- 
 Emersonian Transcendentalism was Mysticism without mys 
 tery. Nor did I reflect that it was a calling people from the 
 nightmared slumber of frozen orthodoxy or bigotry to come 
 and see a marvellous new thing. And when they came, they 
 found out that this marvellous thing was that they had been 
 awakened, "only that and nothing more"; and that was the 
 great need of the time, and worth more than any magic or 
 theosophy. But I had expected, in simple ignorant faith, that 
 the sacred mysteries of some marvellous cabala would be re 
 vealed, and not finding what I wanted (though indeed I dis 
 covered much that was worldly new to me), I returned to the 
 good old ghost-haunted paths trodden by my ancestors, to 
 dryads and elves and voices from the stars, and the archmis 
 formed by the astral spirit (not the modern Blavatsky affair, 
 by-the-bye), which entyped all things . . . and so went elv- 
 ing and dreaming on mid ruins old. 
 
 Be it observed that all this time I really did not know 
 what I knew. Boys are greatly influenced by their sur- 
 
gO MEMOIRS. 
 
 roundings, and in those days every one about me never spoke 
 of Transcendentalism or " Germanism," or even " bookish- 
 ness," without a sneer. I was borne by a mysterious inner 
 impulse which I could not resist into this terrible whirlpool 
 of Mies-lettres, occulta, facetiae, and philosophy ; but I had, 
 God knows, little cause for pride that I read so much, for it 
 was on every hand in some way turned against me. If it 
 had only been reading like that of other human beings, it 
 might have been endured ; but I was always seen coming and 
 going with parchment-bound tomes. Once I implored my 
 father, when I was thirteen or fourteen, to let me buy a cer 
 tain book, which he did. This work, which was as dear to 
 me as a new doll to a girl for a long time, was the Reducto- 
 rium or moralisation of the whole Bible by Petrus Berchorius, 
 black-letter, folio, Basle, 1511. It was from the library of a 
 great and honest scholar, and, as the catalogue stated, " con 
 tained MS. notes on the margin by Melanchthon." 
 
 Promising, this, for an American youth who was expected 
 to go into business or study a profession ! 
 
 While at Hurlbut s school I took lessons in Spanish. 
 There was a Spanish boy from Malaga, a kind of half-serv 
 ant, \\alf~protege in a family near us, with whom I practised 
 speaking the language, and also had some opportunity with 
 a few Cubans who visited our family. One of them had been 
 a governor-general. He was a Gallician by birth, but I did 
 not know this, and innocently asked him one day if los Gal- 
 legos no son los Irlandeses d Espana ? if the Gallicians were 
 not the Irish of Spain which drew a grave caution from my 
 brother, who knew better than I how the land lay. I really 
 attained some skill in Spanish, albeit to this day " Don Quix 
 ote " demands from me a great deal of dictionary. But, as I 
 said before, I learn languages with incredible difficulty, a fact 
 which I cannot reconcile with the extreme interest which I 
 take in philology and linguistics, and the discoveries which 
 I have made ; as, for instance, that of SJielta in England, or 
 my labours in jargons, such as Pidgin-English, Slang, and 
 
BOYHOOD AND YOUTH. 81 
 
 Eomany. But, as the reader has probably perceived, I was a 
 boy with an inherited good constitution only from the pater 
 nal side, and a not very robust one from my mother, while 
 my mind, weakened by long illness, had been strangely stimu 
 lated by many disorders, nervous fevers being frequent among 
 them. In those days I was, as my mother said, almost 
 brought up on calomel and she might have added quinine. 
 The result of so much nervousness, excessive stimulating by 
 medicine, and rapid growth was a too great susceptibility to 
 poetry, humour, art, and all that was romantic, quaint, and 
 mysterious, while I found it very hard to master any really 
 dry subject. What would have set me all right would have 
 been careful physical culture, boxing, so as to protect me 
 from my school persecutors, and amusement in a healthy 
 sense, of which I had almost none whatever. 
 
 Hurlbut s became at last simply intolerable, and my 
 parents, finding out in some way that I was worse for being 
 there, removed me to a far better school kept by E. C. 
 Wines, who had written books on education, and attained 
 some fame thereby. This was in 1839- 40, and I was there 
 to be prepared for college. We were soon introduced to an 
 old French gentleman, who was to teach us, and who asked 
 the other boys what French works they had read. Some 
 had gone through Telemaque, or Paul et Virginie, Florian^ 
 etcetera. The good-goody nature of such reading awoke in 
 me my sense of humour. When it came to my turn, and I 
 was asked, I replied, " La Pucelle (T Orleans and Dictionnaire 
 Philosopliique of Voltaire, the Confessions of Rousseau, the 
 Poems of Villon, Charles tf Orleans, Clotilde de Surville, and 
 more or less of Helvetius, D Holbach, and Condillac." Here 
 the professor, feeling himself quizzed, cast forth his hands as 
 in disgust and horror, and cried, "Assez! assez ! Unhappy 
 boy, you have raked through the library of the devil down to 
 the dregs ! " Nor was I " selling " him, for I certainly had 
 read the works, as the records of the Philadelphia Library 
 can in a great measure prove, and did not speak by hearsay. 
 
82 MEMOIRS. 
 
 I had at this time several severe long attacks of illness 
 with much pain, which I always bore well, as a matter of 
 course or habit. But rather oddly, while in the midst of my 
 Transcendentalism, and reading every scrap of everything 
 about Germany which I could get, and metaphysics, and 
 study I was very far gone then, and used to go home from 
 school and light a pipe with a long wooden stem, and study 
 the beloved " Critic of Pure Reason " or Carlyle s Miscella 
 nies, having discovered that smoking was absolutely necessary 
 in such reading [De Quincey required a quart of laudanum 
 to enable him to enjoy German metaphysics] there came a 
 strange gleam of worldly dissipation, of which I never think 
 without pleasure. I had passed one summer vacation on a 
 farm near Philadelphia, where I learned something in wood- 
 ranging about wild herbs and catching land-tortoises and 
 " coon-hunting," and had been allowed to hire and ride a 
 horse. 
 
 I did not know it, but this horse had thrown over his 
 head everybody who had ever mounted him. He was a per 
 fect devil, but also a perfect gentleman. He soon took my 
 measure, and resolved to treat me kindly as & protege. When 
 we both wanted a gallop, he made such time as nobody be 
 fore had dreamed was in him ; when he was lazy, he only 
 had to turn his head and look at me, and 1 knew what that 
 meant and conformed unto him, He had a queer fancy at 
 times to quietly steal up and put his hoof on my foot so as to 
 hurt me, and then there was an impish laugh in his eye. 
 For he laughed at me, and I knew it. There is really such 
 a thing as a horse-laugh. One day we passed through a 
 drove of sheep, and he did not like it no horse does. After 
 a while I wanted to go by a certain road, but he refused 
 sternly to take it. I found soon after that if I had done so 
 we must have met the sheep again. He had, in fact, under 
 stood the route far- better than I. I once got a mile out of 
 him in three minutes more or less; but he had seen me 
 look at my watch, and knew that I wanted to see what he 
 
BOYHOOD AND YOUTH. 83 
 
 could do. He never did it again. I may have been mis 
 taken here, but it was my impression at the time. Perhaps 
 if I had gone on much longer in intimacy with him I might 
 have profited mentally by it, and acquired what Americans 
 call " horse-sense," of which I had some need. It is the sixth 
 or the first sense of all Yankees and Scotchmen. When 
 I returned to the city I was allowed to hire a horse for a few 
 times from a livery stable, and went out riding with a friend. 
 This friend was a rather precociously dissipated youth, and 
 with him I had actually now and then very rarely a glass 
 at a bar and oysters. He soon left me for wilder associates, 
 and I relapsed into my old sober habits. Strange as it may 
 seem, I believe that I was really on the brink of becoming 
 like other boys. But it all faded away. Now it became im 
 perative that I should study in earnest. I used to rise at 
 three or four in the morning. What with hard work and 
 great fear of not passing my matriculation, I contrived to 
 get up so much Latin, Greek, and mathematics, that Mr. 
 W r ines thought I might attempt it, and so one fine summer 
 day my father went with me to Princeton. I was in a fear 
 ful state of nervous anxiety. 
 
 COLLEGE LIFE. 
 
 PRINCETON. 
 
 We went to Princeton, where I presented my letters of 
 introduction, passed a by no means severe examination for 
 the Freshman s class, was very courteously received by the 
 professors to whom I was commended, and, to my inexpressi 
 ble delight, found myself a college student. Booms were 
 secured for me at a Mrs. Burroughs , opposite Nassau Hall ; 
 the adjoining apartment was occupied by Mr. Craig Bid die, 
 now a judge. George H. Boker was then at the end of his 
 Sophomore year, the term having but a few days to run. He 
 had rooms in college and lived in unexampled style, having 
 actually a carpet on his floor and superior furniture, also a 
 
84 MEMOIRS. 
 
 good collection of books, chiefly standard English poets. He 
 at once took me in hand and gave me a character. 
 
 Princeton College was entirely in the hands of the strict 
 est of " Old School " Presbyterian theologians. Piety and 
 mathematics rated extravagantly high in the coarse. The 
 latter study was literally reckoned in the grades as being of 
 more account than all the rest collectively. Thus, as eventu 
 ally happened to me, a student might excel in Latin, English, 
 and Natural Philosophy in fact, in almost everything, good 
 conduct included and yet be the last in the class if he neg 
 lected mathematics. There was no teaching of French, be 
 cause, as was naively said, students might read the irreligious 
 works extant in that language, and of course no other modern 
 language ; as for German, one would as soon have proposed 
 to raise the devil there as a class in it. If there had been an 
 optional course, as at Cambridge, Massachusetts, by which 
 German was accepted in lieu of mathematics, I should proba 
 bly have taken the first honour, instead of the last. And 
 yet, with a little more Latin, I was really qualified, on the 
 day when I matriculated at Princeton, to have passed for a 
 Doctor of Philosophy in Heidelberg, as I subsequently accu 
 rately ascertained. 
 
 There were three or four men of great ability in the Fac 
 ulty of the University. One of these was Professor Joseph 
 Henry, in those days the first natural philosopher and lecturer 
 on science in America. I had the fortune in time to become 
 quite a special protege of his. Another was Professor James 
 Alexander, who taught Latin, rhetoric, and mental philoso 
 phy. He was so clear-headed and liberally learned, that T 
 always felt sure that he must at heart have been far beyond 
 the bounds of Old School theology, but he had an iron 
 Roman-like sternness of glance which quite suited a Cove 
 nanter. The most remarkable of all was Albert Dodd, Pro 
 fessor of Mathematics and Lecturer on Architecture. This 
 man was a genius of such a high order, that had it not been 
 for the false position in which he was placed, he would have 
 
BOYHOOD AND YOUTH. 85 
 
 given to the world great works. The false position was this : 
 he was the chief pulpit orator of the old school, and had 
 made war on the Transcendentalist movement in an able 
 article in the Princeton Review (which, by the way, was use 
 ful in guiding me to certain prohibited works, before un 
 known to me). But as he was a man of poetic genial feel 
 ing, he found himself irresistibly fascinated by what he had 
 hunted down, and so read Plato, and when he died actually 
 left behind him a manuscript translation of Spinoza s works ! 
 
 The reader may imagine what a marvellous find I was to 
 him. George Boker, who was ages beyond me in knowledge 
 of the world man and woman said one day that he could 
 imagine how Dodd sat and chuckled to hear me talk, which 
 remark I did not at all understand and thought rather stupid. 
 I remember that during my first call on him we discussed 
 Sartor Resartus, and I expressed it as my firm conviction 
 that the idea of the Clothes Philosophy had been taken from 
 the Treatise on Fire and Salt by the Rosicrucian Lord Blaise. 
 Then, in all naivete and innocence of effect, I discussed some 
 point in Kant s " Critic," and a few other trifles not usu 
 ally familiar to sub-Freshmen, and took my departure, very 
 much pleased at having entered on a life where my favourite 
 reading did not really seem to be quite silly or disreputable. 
 I remember, however, being very much surprised indeed at 
 finding that the other students, in whom I expected to en 
 counter miracles of learning, or youth far superior to myself 
 in erudition and critical knowledge, did not quite come up to 
 my anticipations. However, as they were all far beyond me 
 in mathematics, I supposed their genius had all gone in that 
 direction, for well I knew that the toughest page inJFichte 
 was a mere trifle compared to the awful terrors of the Eule of 
 Three, and so treated them as young men who were my su 
 periors in other and greater things. 
 
 There were wearisome morning prayers in the chapel, and 
 roll-call every morning, and then an hour of recitation before 
 breakfast, study till ten or eleven, study and recitation in the 
 5 
 
86 MEMOIRS. 
 
 afternoon, and evening prayers again and study in the even 
 ing. The Sabbath was anything but a day of rest, for we had 
 the same prayers ; morning attendance at church ; afternoon, 
 the learning and reciting of four chapters in the Bible ; while 
 we were expected in the evening to master one or two chap 
 ters in the Greek Testament. I am not sorry that I used to 
 read books during sermon-time. It kept me from, or from 
 me, a great deal of wickedness. Videlicet : 
 
 The sermons consisted principally of assertion that man 
 himself consisted chiefly of original sin. As evil communica 
 tions corrupt good manners, I myself, being young and im 
 pressionable, began to believe that I too was an awful sinner. 
 Not knowing where else to look for it, I concluded that it con 
 sisted in my inability to learn mathematics. I do not dis 
 tinctly remember whether I prayed to Heaven that I might 
 be able to cross the Pons Asinorum, but " anyway " my prayer 
 was granted when I graduated. 
 
 Another stock-piece in the repertoire consisted of attacks 
 on Voltaire, Tom Paine, and other antiquated Deists or infi 
 dels. I had read with great contempt a copy of " The Rights 
 of Man " belonging to my genial uncle Amos. I say with 
 great contempt, for I always despised that kind of free 
 thought which consisted chiefly of enmity to Christianity. 
 Now I can see that Voltaire and his followers were quite in 
 the right in warring on terrible and immediate abuses which 
 oppressed mankind; but I had learned from Spinoza to be 
 lieve that every form of faith was good in its way or accord 
 ing to its mission or time, and that it was silly to ridicule 
 Christianity because the tale of Balaam s ass was incredible. 
 Paine was to me just what a Positivist now is to a Darwinian 
 or Agnostic, and such preaching against " infidels " seemed 
 to me like pouring water on a drowned mouse. There had 
 always been in Mr. Furness s teaching a very decided degree 
 of Rationalism, and I had advanced far more boldly on the 
 track. I remember reading translations from Schleiermacher 
 and buying Strauss s " Life of Jesus " before I went to Prince- 
 
BOYHOOD AND YOUTH. 87 
 
 ton I saw Strauss himself in after years at Weinsberg, in 
 Germany but at Princeton the slightest approach to explain 
 ing the most absurd story in the Old Testament was regarded 
 as out-and-out atheism. It had all happened, we were told, 
 just as it is described. 
 
 I may as well note here the fact that for many years in 
 my early life such a thing as only reading a book through 
 once rarely happened, when I could obtain it long enough. 
 Even the translations of the Neo-Platonists, with Campa- 
 nella, Vanini, or the Italian naturalists, were read and re 
 read, while the principal English poets, and such books as I 
 owned, were perused daily. 
 
 And here in this great infant arithmetic school I was in 
 due time set down to study Paley s " Evidences of Chris 
 tianity" and Locke on the Understanding like Carlyle s 
 young lion invited to a feast of chick weed. Apropos of the 
 first, I have a droll reminiscence. There had been in Phila 
 delphia two years before a sale of a fine library, and I had 
 been heart-broken because my means had not permitted me 
 to buy the works of Sir Kenelm Digby. However, I found 
 them in the Princeton College Library. The first thing I 
 came to in Paley was his famous simile of the watch taken 
 bodily and without acknowledgment from Digby. The theft 
 disgusted me. " These be your Christian champions ! " I 
 thought 
 
 " Would any of the stock of infidels 
 Had been my evidence ere such a Christian ! " 
 
 And, moreover, Paley forgets to inform us what conclu 
 sion the finder might draw if he had picked up a badly made 
 watch which did not keep good time like this our turnip of 
 a world at times ! 
 
 As we were obliged to attend divine service strictly on 
 Sunday, I was allowed to go to the Episcopal church in the 
 village, which agreed very well with my parents views. I 
 quite fell into the sentiment of the sect, and so went to Pro 
 fessor Dodd to ask for permission from the Faculty to change 
 
88 MEMOIRS. 
 
 my religion. When he asked me how it was that I had rene- 
 gaded into Trinitarianism, I replied that it was due to reflec 
 tion on the perfectly obvious and usual road of the Platonic 
 hypostases eked out with Gnosticism. I had found in the 
 College Library, and read with great pleasure almost as soon 
 as I got there, Cud worth s " Intellectual System " (I raided a 
 copy as loot from a house in Tennessee in after years, during 
 the war), and learned from it that " it was a religious instinct 
 of man to begin with a Trinity, in which I was much aided 
 by Schelling, and that there was no trace of a Trinity in the 
 Bible, or rather the contrary, yet that it ought consistently to 
 have been there " a sentiment which provoked from Pro 
 fessor Dodd a long whistle like that of Uncle Toby with 
 Lilliburlero. " For," as I ingeniously represented, " man or 
 God consists of the Monad from which developed spirit or 
 intellect and soul ; for toto enim in mundo lucet Trias cujus 
 Nonas est princeps, as the creed of the Rosicrucians begins 
 (which is taken from the Zoroastrian oracles)" here there 
 was another long subdued whistle " and it is set forth on 
 the face of every Egyptian temple as the ball, the wings of 
 the spirit which rusheth into all worlds, and the serpent, 
 which is the Logos." Here the whistle became more sympa 
 thetic, for Egypt was the professor s great point in his lec 
 tures on architecture. And having thus explained the true 
 grounds of the Trinity to the most learned theologian of the 
 Presbyterian sect, I took my leave, quite unconscious that I 
 had said anything out of the common, for all I meant was 
 to give my reasons for going back to the Episcopal Church. 
 As for Professor Dodd, he had given me up from the very 
 first interview to follow my idols as I pleased, only just 
 throwing in argument enough to keep me well going. He 
 would have been the last man on earth to throw down 
 such a marvellous fairy castle, goblin-built and elfin-ten 
 anted, from whose windows rang ^Eolian harps, and which 
 was lit by night with undying Rosicrucian lamps, to erect 
 on its ruin a plain brick, Old School Presbyterian slated 
 
BOYHOOD AND YOUTH. 89 
 
 chapel. I was far more amusing as I was, and so I was 
 let alone. 
 
 I had passed my examination about the end of June, and 
 I was to remain in Princeton until the autumn, reading under 
 a tutor, in the hope of being able to join the Sophomore 
 class when the college course should begin. There I was 
 utterly alone, and rambled by myself in the woods. I be 
 lieved myself to be a very good Christian in those days ; but 
 I was really as unaffected and sincere a Poly-Pantheist or 
 Old Nature heathen as ever lived in Etrusco-Roman or early 
 German days. A book very dear to my heart at that time 
 was the Curiositez Inouyes of Gaffarel (Trollope was under 
 the impression that he was the only man in Europe who ever 
 read it), in which there is an exquisite theory that the stars 
 of heaven in their courses and the lines of winding rivers and 
 bending corn, the curves of shells and minerals, rocks and 
 trees, yes, of all the shapes of all created things, form the 
 trace and letters of a stupendous writing or characters spread 
 all over the universe, which writing becomes little by little 
 legible to the one who by communion with Nature and ear 
 nest faith seeks to penetrate the secret. I had found in the 
 lonely woods a small pond by a high rock, where I often sat 
 in order to attain this blessed illumination, and if I did not 
 get quite so far as I hoped, I did in reality attain to a deep 
 unconscious familiarity with birds and leafy shades, still 
 waters, and high rising trees ; in short, with all the sweet 
 solemnity of sylvan nature, which has ever since influenced 
 all my life. I mean this not in the second-hand way in 
 which it is so generally understood, but as a real existence in 
 itself, so earnestly felt that I was but little short of talking 
 with elfin beings or seeing fairies flitting over flowers. Those 
 who explain everything by " imagination " do not in the least 
 understand how actual the life in Nature may become to us. 
 Reflect for a minute, thou whose whole soul is in gossip and 
 petty chronicles of fashion, and " sassiety," that in that life 
 thou wert a million years ago, and in it thou wilt be a million 
 
90 MEMOIRS. 
 
 years hence, ever going on in all forms, often enough in 
 rivers, rock, and trees, and yet canst not realise with a sense 
 of awe that there are in these forms, passing to others ever, 
 ever on myriads of men and women, or at least their life 
 ho iu we know not, as ivhat we know not only this, that the 
 Will or creative force of the Creator or Creating is in it all. 
 This was the serious yet unconscious inspiration of my young 
 life in those days, in even more elaborate or artistic form, 
 which all went very well hand in hand with the Euclid and 
 Homer or Demosthenes and Livy with which my tutor Mr. 
 Schenk (pronounce Skdnk) was coaching me. 
 
 My reading may seem to the reader to have been more 
 limited than it was, because I have not mentioned the his 
 torians, essayists, or belletrists whose works are read more or 
 less by " almost everybody." It is hardly worth while to say, 
 what must be of course surmised, that Sterne, Addison, Gold 
 smith, Johnson, Swift, and Macaulay in fine, the leading 
 English classics were really well read by me, my ambition 
 being not to be ignorant of anything which a literary man 
 should know. Macaulay was then new, and I devoured not 
 only his works, but a vast amount by him suggested. I 
 realised at an early age that there was a certain cycle of 
 knowledge common to all really cultivated minds, and this I 
 was determined to master. I had, however, little indeed of 
 the vanity of erudition, having been deeply convinced and 
 constantly depressed or shamed by the reflection that it was 
 all worse than useless, and injurious to making my way in 
 life. When I heard that Professor Dodd had said that at 
 seventeen there were not ten men in America who had read 
 so much, while Professor Joseph Henry often used words to 
 this effect, and stern James Alexander in his lectures would 
 make deeply learned allusions intended for me alone as, for 
 instance, to Kant s "^Esthetik " I was anything but elated 
 or vain in consequence. I had read in Sartor Resartus, " If 
 a man reads, shall he not be learned ? " and I knew too well 
 that reading was with me an unprofitable, perhaps pitiable, 
 
BOYHOOD AND YOUTH. 91 
 
 incurable mania-amusement, which might ruin me for life, 
 and which, as it was, was a daily source of apprehension be 
 tween me and my good true friends, who feared wisely for 
 my future. 
 
 I absolutely made James Alexander smile for once in his 
 life twas sunshine on the grim Tarpeian rock. I had 
 bought me a nice English large type Juvenal, and written on 
 the outside in quaint Elizabethan character form I forget 
 now the name of the author the following : 
 
 " Ay, Juvenall, thy jerking hande is good, 
 Not gently laying on, but bringing bloude. 
 Oh, suffer me amonge so manye men 
 To treade aright the traces of thy penne, 
 And light my lamp at thy eternal flame ! " 
 
 We students in the Latin class had left our books on a 
 table, when I saw grim and dour James Alexander pick up 
 my copy, read the inscription, when looking up at me he 
 smiled ; it was a kind of poetry which pleased him. 
 
 I remember, too, how one day, when in Professor Dodd s 
 class of mathematics, I, instead of attending to the lecture, 
 read surreptitiously Cardanus de Subtilitate in an old vellum 
 binding, and carelessly laid it on the table afterwards, where 
 Professor Dodd found it, and directed at me one of his half- 
 laughing Mephistophelian glances. Eeading of novels in 
 lectures was not unknown ; but for Dodd to find anything so 
 caviare-like as Cardanus among our books was unusual. 
 George Boker remarked once, that while Professor Dodd 
 was a Greek, Professor James Alexander was an old Roman, 
 which was indeed a good summary of the two. 
 
 I have and always had a bad memory, but I continued to 
 retain what I read by repetition or reviewing and by colloca 
 tion, which is a marvellous aid in retaining images. For, in 
 the first place, I read entirely by GROUPS ; and if I, for in 
 stance, attacked Blair s " Rhetoric," Longinus and Burke 
 promptly followed ; and if I perused " Rambles in the Foot 
 steps of Don Quixote," I at once, on principle, followed it up 
 
92 MEMOIRS. 
 
 with " Spain in 1830," and a careful study of Ford s Guide- 
 Book for Spain, and perhaps a score of similar books, till I 
 had got Spain well into me. And as I have found by years 
 of observation and much research, having written a book on 
 Education partly based on this principle, ten books on any 
 subject read together, profit more than a hundred at inter 
 vals. And I may here add, that if this record of what I 
 read be dull, it is still that of my real youthful life, giving 
 the clue to my mind as it was formed. Books in those days 
 were the only events of my life. 
 
 Long before I went to college I had an attack of Irish 
 antiquities, which I relieved by reading O Brien, Yallancey, 
 the more sensible Petrie, and O Somebody s Irish grammar, 
 aided by old Annie Mooney, who always remained by us. In 
 after years I discovered an Ogham inscription and the famed 
 Ogham tongue, or SMta, li the lost language of the bards," 
 according to Kuno Meyer and John Sampson. 
 
 During my first half-year a college magazine was pub 
 lished, and I, a Freshman, was requested to contribute to the 
 first number. I sent in an article on the history of English 
 poetry. Before I wrote it, the great man among the senior 
 students asked leave to be allowed to write it with me. I did 
 not quite like the idea, but reflecting that the association 
 would give me a certain prestige, I accepted his aid. So it 
 appeared ; but it was regarded as mine. Professor Dodd said 
 something to me about the inexpediency of so young a per 
 son appearing in print. I could have told him that I had 
 already published several poems, &c., in Philadelphian news 
 papers, but reflecting that it was not kind to have the better 
 of him, I said nothing. From that time I published some 
 thing in every number. My second article was an essay on 
 Spinoza, and I still think it was rather good for a boy of 
 sixteen. 
 
 There was the College and also a Society library, out of 
 which I picked a great deal of good reading. One day I 
 asked Professor John Mac-Lean, the college librarian, for the 
 
BOYHOOD AND YOUTH. 93 
 
 works of Condorcet. His reply was, " Vile book ! vile book ! 
 can t have it." However, I found in the Society library Ur- 
 quhart s translation of " Rabelais," which I read, I daresay, as 
 often as any mortal ever did. And here I have a word to say 
 to the wretched idiots who regard " the book called Rabelais " 
 as " immoral " and unfit for youth. Many times did I try to 
 induce my young friends to read " Rabelais," and some actu 
 ally mastered the story of the goose as a torche-cul, and per 
 haps two or three chapters more ; but as for reading through 
 or enjoying it, " that was not in their minds." All com 
 plained, or at least showed, that they "did not understand 
 it." It was to them an aggravating farrago of filth and 
 oddity, under which they suspected some formal allegory or 
 meaning which had perished, or was impenetrable. Learn 
 this, ye prigs of morality, that no work of genius ever yet de 
 moralised a dolt or ignoramus. Even the Oki Testament, 
 with all its stores of the " shocking," really does very little 
 harm. It requires mind for mind in reading, and vice be 
 comes unattractive even to the vicious when they cannot under 
 stand it. I did understand Rabelais, and the Moycn de Par- 
 venir, and the Cymbalum Mundi, and Boccaccio (I owned 
 these books), and laughed over them, yet was withal as pure- 
 minded a youth as could well be imagined without being a 
 simpleton. For, with all such reading, I best loved such a 
 book as Bromley s " Sabbath of Rest," or sweet, strange 
 works of ancient Mysticism, which bore the soul away to the 
 stars or into Mature. Such a combination is perfectly pos 
 sible when there is no stain of dishonesty or vulgarity in the 
 character, and I had escaped such influences easily enough. 
 
 A droll event took place in the spring. It had been usual 
 once a year I forgot on what occasion to give to all the 
 classes a holiday. This year it was abolished, and the Sopho 
 more, junior, and senior classes quietly acquiesced. But we, 
 the Freshmen, albeit we had never been there before, rebelled 
 at such infringement of " our rights," and absented ourselves 
 from recitation. I confess that I was a leader in the move- 
 
94 MEMOIRS. 
 
 ment, because I sincerely believed it to be a sin to " remove 
 old landmarks," and that the students required more rest and 
 holidays than were allowed them ; in which I was absolutely 
 in the right, for our whole life, except Saturday afternoons, 
 was " one demnition grind." 
 
 The feeling which was excited by this " Freshman s rebel 
 lion" was one of utter amazement, or awful astonishment 
 tempered with laughter, not unmingled with respect. It was 
 the terrier flying at the lion, when the great mastiff, and 
 bloodhound, and Danish dog had quietly slunk aside. There 
 were in the class beside myself several youths of marked 
 character, and collectively we had already made an impres 
 sion, to which my intimacy with George Boker, and Professor 
 Dodd, and the very elite of the seniors, added not a little 
 force. We were mysterious. Hitherto a Freshman had been 
 the greenest erf the green, a creature created for ridicule, a 
 sort of " leathery fox " or mere tyro (ty not a ty-pographical 
 error pace my kind and courteous reviewer in the Satur 
 day] and here were Freshmen of a new kind rising in dig 
 nity above all others. 
 
 Which reminds me of a merry tale. It was usual for 
 Freshmen to learn to smoke for the first time after coming 
 to college, and for more advanced students to go to their 
 rooms, or find them in others, and smoke them sick or into 
 retreating. I, however, found a source of joy in this, that I 
 could now sit almost from morning till night, and very often 
 on to three in the morning, smoking all the time, being 
 deeply learned in Varinas, Kanaster, and the like ; for I 
 smoked nothing but real Holland tobacco, while I could buy 
 it. A party of Sophomores informed George Boker that 
 they intended to smoke me out. " Smoke him out ! " quoth 
 George ; " why, he d smoke the whole of you dumb and blind." 
 However, it came to pass that one evening several of them 
 tried it on ; and verily they might as well have tried it on to 
 Niklas Henkerwyssel, who, as the legend goes, sold his sonl 
 to the devil for the ability to smoke all the time, to whom my 
 
BOYHOOD AND YOUTH. 95 
 
 father had once compared me. So the cigars and tobacco 
 were burned, and I liked it extremely. Denser grew the 
 smoke, and the windows were closed, to which I cheerfully 
 assented, for I liked to have it thick ; and still more smoke 
 and more, and the young gentlemen who had come to 
 smother me grew pale, even as the Porcupines grew pale 
 when they tried to burn out the great Indian sorcerer, who 
 burned them ! But I, who was beginning to enjoy myself 
 amazingly in such congenial society, only filled Boker s great 
 meerschaum with Latakia, and puffed away. One by one the 
 visitors also " puffed away," i. e., vanished through the door 
 into the night. 
 
 " Shall I open the window ? " asked George. 
 
 " Not on my account," I replied. " I rather enjoy it as 
 it is." 
 
 " I begin to believe," replied my friend, " that you would 
 like it in Dante s hell of clouds. Do you know what those 
 men came here for? It was to smoke you out. And you 
 smoked them out, and never knew it." Which was perfectly 
 true. As for smoking, my only trouble was to be able to buy 
 cigars and tobacco. These were incredibly cheap in those 
 days, and I always dressed very respectably, but my smoking 
 always cost me more than my clothing. 
 
 When we Freshmen had rebelled, we were punished by 
 being rusticated or sent into the country to board. I went 
 to Professor Dodd to receive my sentence, and in a grave 
 voice, in which was a faint ring as of irony, and with the 
 lurking devil which always played in his great marvellous 
 mysterious black eyes, he said, " If you were any other stu 
 dent, I would not send you to the city, and so reward your 
 rebellion with a holiday. But as I know perfectly well that 
 you will go into the Philadelphia Library, and never stop 
 reading till it is time to return, I will send you there." 
 
 My parents were then absent with my younger sisters in 
 New England, but I had unlimited credit at Congress Hall 
 Hotel, which was kept by a Mr. John Sturdevant, and where 
 
96 MEMOIRS. 
 
 I was greatly respected as the son of the owner of the prop 
 erty. So I went there, and fared well, and, as Professor 
 Dodd prophesied, read all the time. One night I went into 
 an auction of delightful old books. My money had run low ; 
 there only remained to me one dollar and a half. 
 
 Now, of all books on earth, what I most yearned -for in 
 those days were the works of Jacob Behmen. And the auc 
 tioneer put up a copy containing " The Aurora or Morning 
 Rednesse," English version (circa 1636), and I bid. One 
 dollar one dollar ten cents twenty twenty-five ; my heart 
 palpitated, and I half fainted for fear lest I should be out 
 bid, when at the very last I got it with my last penny. 
 
 The black eyes of Professor Dodd twinkled more elfishly 
 than ever when I exhibited to him my glorious treasure. He 
 evidently thought that my exile had been to me anything but 
 a punishment, and he was right. For a copy of Anthropo- 
 sopJios Tlieomagicus or the works of Eobert Fludd I would 
 have got up another rebellion. 
 
 It was quite against the college regulations for students 
 to live in the town, but as I never touched a card, was totally 
 abstemious and " moral," and moreover in rather delicate 
 health, I was passed over as an odd exception. Once or twice 
 it was proposed to bring me in, but Professor Dodd interfered 
 and saved me. While in Princeton for more than four years, 
 I never once touched a drop of anything stronger than coffee, 
 which was a great pity ! Exercise was not in those days en 
 couraged in any way whatever in fact, playing billiards and 
 ten-pins was liable to be punished by expulsion ; there was no 
 gymnasium, no boating, and all physical games and manly ex 
 ercises were sternly discouraged as leading to sin. JSTow, if I 
 had drunk a pint of bitter ale every day, and played cricket 
 or " gymnased," or rowed for two hours, it would have saved 
 me much suffering, and to a great degree have relieved me 
 from reading, romancing, reflecting, and smoking, all of 
 which I carried to great excess, having an inborn impulse to 
 be always doing something. That I did not grapple with 
 
BOYHOOD AND YOUTH. 97 
 
 life as a real thing, or with prosaic college studies or society, 
 was, I can now see, a disease, for which, as my peculiar tastes 
 had come upon me from nervous and Unitarian and Alcott- 
 ian evil influences, I was not altogether responsible. I was 
 a precocious boy, and I had fully developed extraordinary 
 influences, which, like the seed of Scripture, had in my case 
 fallen on more than fertile ground ; it was like the soil of the 
 Margariten Island, by Budapest, which is so permeated by 
 hot springs in a rich soil that everything comes to maturity 
 there in one-third of the time which it does elsewhere. I 
 was the last child on earth who should ever have fallen into 
 Alcott s hands, or listened to Dr. Channing or Furness, or 
 have been interested in anything " ideal " ; but fate willed 
 that I should drink the elfin goblet to the dregs. 
 
 George H. Boker had a great influence on me. We were 
 in a way connected, for my uncle Amos had married his aunt, 
 and my cousin, Benjamin Godfrey, his cousin. He was ex 
 actly six feet high, with the form of an Apollo, and a head 
 which was the very counterpart of the bust of Byron. A 
 few years later N. P. Willis described him in the Home 
 Journal as the handsomest man in America. He had been 
 from boyhood as precociously a man of the world as I was 
 the opposite. He was par eminence the poet of our college, 
 and in a quiet, gentlemanly way its " swell." I passed a 
 great deal of my time in his rooms reading Wordsworth, 
 Shelley, and Byron, the last named being his ideal. He ridi 
 culed the Lakers, whom I loved ; and when Southey s last 
 poem, " On Gooseberry Pie," appeared, he declared that the 
 poor old man was in his dotage, to which I assented with 
 sorrow in my heart. Though only one year older than I, 
 yet, as a Junior, and from his superior knowledge of life, I 
 regarded him as being about thirty. He was quite familiar, 
 in a refined and gentlemanly way, with all the dissipation of 
 Philadelphia and New York ; nor was the small circle of his 
 friends, with whom I habitually associated, much behind him 
 in this respect. Even during this Junior year he was offered 
 
98 MEMOIRS. 
 
 the post of secretary to our Ambassador at Vienna. From 
 him and the others I acquired a second-hand knowledge of 
 life, which was sufficient to keep me from being regarded as a 
 duffer or utterly " green," though in all such "life " I was prac 
 tically as innocent as a young nun. Now, whatever I heard, 
 as well as read, I always turned over and over in my mind, 
 thoroughly digesting it to a most exceptional degree. So that 
 I was somewhat like the young lady of whom I heard in Vienna 
 in after years. She was brought up in the utmost moral and 
 strict seclusion, but she found in her room an aperture through 
 which she could witness all that took place in the neighbour 
 ing room of amaison de passe; but being a great philosopher, 
 sh3 in time regarded it all as the " butterfly passing show " of 
 a theatre, the mere idle play of foolish mortal passions. 
 
 Even before I began my Freshman year there came into 
 my life a slight but new and valuable influence. Professor 
 Dodd, when I arrived, had just begun his course of lectures 
 on architecture. To my great astonishment, but not at all 
 to that of George Boker, I was invited to attend the course, 
 Boker remarking dryly that he had no doubt that Dodd 
 thanked God for having at last got an auditor who would 
 appreciate him. Which I certainly did. I in after years 
 listened to the great Thiersch, who trained Heine to art, and 
 of whom I was a special protege, and many great teachers, 
 but I never listened to any one like Albert Dodd. It was 
 not with him the mere description of styles and dates ; it 
 was a deep and truly aesthetic feeling that every phase of 
 architecture mirrors and reciprocally forms its age, and 
 breathes its life and poetry and religion, which characterised 
 all that he said. It was in nothing like the subjective rhap 
 sodies of Ruskin, which bloomed out eight years later, but 
 rather in the spirit of Vischer and Taine, which J. A. Sy- 
 monds has so beautifully and clearly set forth in his Essays * 
 
 * May I be pardoned for here mentioning that Mr. Symonds, not 
 long before his death, wrote a letter to one of our mutual friends, in 
 
BOYHOOD AND YOUTH. 99 
 
 that is, the spirit of historical development. Here my 
 German philosophy enabled me to grasp a subtle and delicate 
 spirit of beauty, which passed, I fear, over the heads of the 
 rest of the youthful audience. His ideas of the correspond 
 ence of Egyptian architecture to the stupendous massiveness 
 of Pantheism and the appalling grandeur of its ideas, were 
 clear enough to me, who had copied Hermes Trismegistus 
 and read with deepest feeling the Orphic and Chaldean ora 
 cles. The ideas had not only been long familiar to me, but 
 formed my very life and the subject of the most passionate 
 study. To hear them clearly expressed with rare beauty, in 
 the deep, strange voice of the professor, was joy beyond be 
 lief. And as it would not be in human nature for a lecturer 
 not to note an admiring auditor, it happened often enough 
 that something was often introduced for my special appreci 
 ation. 
 
 For I may here note and it was a very natural thing 
 that just as Gypsy musicians always select in the audience 
 soino one who seems to be most appreciative, at whom they 
 play (they call it de o kan}, so Professors Dodd and James 
 Alexander afterwards, in their aesthetic, or more erudite dis 
 quisitions, rarely failed to fiddle at me Dodd looking right 
 in my eyes, and Alexander at the ceiling, ending, however, 
 with a very brief glance, as if for conscience sake. I feel 
 proud of this, and it affects me more now than it did then, 
 when it produced no effect of vanity, and seemed to me to 
 be perfectly natural. 
 
 I heard certain mutterings and hoots among the students 
 as I went out of the lecture-room, but did not know what 
 it meant. George Boker informed me afterwards that there 
 had been great indignation expressed that " a green ignorant 
 Freshman " had dared to intrude, as I had done, among his 
 intellectual superiors and betters, but that he had at once ex- 
 
 which he spoke " most enthusiastically " of my work on " Etruscan 
 Roman Traditions in Popular Tradition." "For that alone would I 
 have writ the book." 
 
100 MEMOIRS. 
 
 plained that I was a great friend of Professor Dodd, and a 
 kind of marvellous rara avis, not to be classed with common 
 little Freshmen ; so that in future I was allowed to go my 
 way in peace. 
 
 A man of culture who had known Coleridge well, declared 
 that as a conversationalist on varied topics Professor Albert 
 Dodd was his superior. When in the pulpit, or in the length 
 ened " addresses " of lecturing, there was a marvellous fas 
 cination in his voice an Italian witch, or red Indian, or a 
 gypsy would have at once recognised in him a sorcerer. Yet 
 his manner was subdued, his voice monotonous, never loud, 
 a running stream without babbling stones or rapids ; but 
 when it came to a climax cataract he cleared it with grand 
 eur, leaving a stupendous impression. In the ordinary mo 
 notony of that deep voice there was soon felt an indescribable 
 charm. In saying this I only repeat what I have heard in 
 more or less different phrase from others. There was always 
 in his eyes (and in this as in other points he resembled Emer 
 son) a strange indefinable suspicion of a smile, though he, 
 like the Sage of Concord, rarely laughed. Owing to these 
 black eyes, and his sallow complexion, his sobriquet among 
 the students was " the royal Bengal tiger." He was not un 
 like Emerson as a lecturer. I heard the latter deliver his 
 great course of lectures in London in 1848 including the 
 famous one on Napoleon but he had not to the same per 
 fection the music of the voice, nor the indefinable mysterious 
 charm which characterised the style of Professor Dodd, who 
 played with emotion as if while feeling he was ever superior 
 to it. He was a great actor, who had gone far beyond acting 
 or art. 
 
 Owing, I suppose, to business losses, my father and family 
 lived for two years either at Congress Hall Hotel or en pen 
 sion. I spent my first vacation at the former place. There 
 lived in the house a Colonel John Du Solle, the editor of a 
 newspaper. He was a good-natured, rather dissipated man, 
 who kept horses and had a fancy for me, and took me out 
 
BOYHOOD AND YOUTH. 101 
 
 " on drives," and once introduced me in the street to a great 
 actress, Susan Cushman,* and very often to theatres and cof 
 fee-houses and reporters, and printed several of my lucubra 
 tions. Du Solle was in after years secretary to P. T. Barnum, 
 whom I also knew well. He was kind to me, and I owe him 
 this friendly mention. Some people thought him a rather 
 dangerous companion for youth, but I was never taken by 
 him into bad company or places, nor did I ever hear from him 
 a word of which my parents would have disapproved. But I 
 really believe that I could at that time, or any other, have 
 kept company with the devil and not been much harmed : it 
 was not in me. Edgar A. Poe was often in Du Solle s office 
 and at Congress Hall. 
 
 In the summer we all went to Stonington, Connecticut, 
 where we lived at a hotel called the Wadawanuc House. 
 There I went out sailing once on a clam-bake excursion in 
 a yacht owned by Captain Nat. Palmer, who had discovered 
 Palmer s Land and sailed far and wide. That summer I 
 also saw on his own deck the original old Vanderbilt himself, 
 who was then the captain of a Sound steamboat ; and I 
 bathed every day in salt-water, and fished from the wharf, 
 and smoked a great deal, and read French books ; and after 
 a while we went into Massachusetts and visited the dear old 
 villages and Boston, and so on, till I had to return to Prince 
 ton. Soon after my father took another house in Walnut 
 Street, the next door above the one where we had lived. 
 This one was rather better, for though it had less garden, it 
 had larger back-buildings. 
 
 Bon an, mal an, the time passed away at Princeton for 
 four years. I was often very ill. In the last year the phy- 
 
 * " Susan Cushman was extremely pretty, but was not particularly 
 gifted; in personal appearance she was altogether unlike Charlotte; 
 . . . the latter was a large, tall woman " (" Gossip of the Century," 
 vol. ii.). John Du Solle took me for the first time to see Charlotte 
 Cushman, and then asked me what I thought she looked like. And I 
 replied, "A bull in black silk." 
 
102 MEMOIRS. 
 
 sician who tested my lungs declared they were unsound in 
 two places ; and about this time I was believed to have con 
 tracted an incurable stoop in the shoulders. One day I re 
 solved that from that minute I would always hold myself 
 straight upright ; and I did so, and in the course of time be 
 came as straight as an arrow, and have continued so, I be 
 lieve, ever since. 
 
 I discovered vast treasures of strange reading in the 
 library of the Princeton Theological College. There was in 
 one corner in a waste-room at least two cart-loads of old 
 books in a cobwebbed dusty pile. Out of that pile I raked 
 the thirteenth known copy of Blind Harry s famed poem, a 
 black-letter Euphues Lely, an Erra Pater (a very weak- 
 minded friend actually shamed me out of making a copy of 
 this great curiosity, telling me it was silly and childish of 
 me to be so pleased with old trash), and many more mar 
 vels, which were so little esteemed in Princeton, that one of 
 the professors, seeing me daft with delight over my finds, 
 told me I was quite welcome to keep them all ; but I, who 
 better knew their great value, would not avail myself of the 
 offer, reflecting that a time would come when these treas 
 ures would be properly valued. God knows it was a terrible 
 temptation to me, and such as I hope I may never have 
 again ne inducas nos in temptationem ! 
 
 The time for my graduation was at hand. I had profited 
 very much in the last year by the teaching and friendly coun 
 sel of Professor Joseph Henry, whose lectures on philosophy 
 I diligently attended ; also those on geology, chemistry and 
 botany by Professor Torrey, and by the company of Professor 
 Topping. I stood very high in Latin, and perhaps first in 
 English branches. Yet, because I had fallen utterly short in 
 mathematics, I was rated the lowest but one in the class or, 
 honestly speaking, the very last, for the one below me was an 
 utterly reckless youth, who could hardly be said to have stud 
 ied or graduated at all. There were two honours usually 
 awarded for proficiency in study. One was the First Honour, 
 
BOYHOOD AND YOUTH. 103 
 
 and he who received it delivered the Valedictory Oration ; 
 the second was the Poem ; and by an excess of kindness and 
 justice for which I can never feel too grateful, and which 
 was really an extraordinary stretch of their power under the 
 circumstances, the Poem was awarded to me ! 
 
 I was overwhelmed at the honour, but bitterly mortified 
 and cut to my heart to think how little I had deserved it ; 
 for I had never done a thing save read and study that which 
 pleased me and was easy. I wrote the poem (and I still 
 think it was a good one, for I put all my soul into it), and 
 sent it in to the Faculty, with a letter stating that I was 
 deeply grateful for their extreme kindness, but that, feeling 
 I had not deserved it, I must decline the honour. But I sent 
 them my MS. as a proof that I did not do so because I felt 
 myself incapable, and because I wished to give them some 
 evidence that they had not erred in regarding me as a poet. 
 
 Very foolish and boyish, the reader may say, and yet I 
 never regretted it. The Faculty were not to blame for the 
 system pursued, and they did their utmost in every way for 
 four years to make it easy and happy for one of the laziest 
 and most objectionable students whom they had ever had. I 
 have never been really able to decide whether I was right or 
 wrong. At liberal Cambridge, Massachusetts, neither I nor 
 the professors would ever have discovered a flaw in my indus 
 try. At the closely cramped, orthodox, hide-bound, mathe 
 matical Princeton, every weakness in me seemed to be de 
 veloped. Thirty years later I read in the Nassau Monthly, 
 which I had once edited, that if Boker and I and a few 
 others had become known in literature, we had done so in 
 spite of our education there. I do not know who wrote it ; 
 whoever he was, I am much obliged to him for a very com 
 forting word. For, discipline apart, it was literally " in spite 
 of our education " that we learned anything worth knowing 
 at Princeton as it then was. 
 
 From this point a new phase of life begins. Prominent 
 
lOi MEMOIRS, 
 
 in it and as its moving power was the great kindness of my 
 father. That I had graduated at all nnder any conditions 
 was gratifying, and so was the fact that it was not in reality 
 without the so-called Second Honour, despite my low grade. 
 And the pitiable condition of my health was considered. 
 During the last year I had taken lessons in dancing and 
 fencing, which helped me a little, and I looked as if I might 
 become strong with a change of life. So my father took my 
 mother and me on a grand excursion. We went to Stoning- 
 ton, Xew York, and Saratoga, where I attended a ball my 
 first and then on to Xiagara. On the way we stopped at 
 Auburn, where there was a great State-prison, which I visited 
 alone. There was among its attractions a noted murderer 
 under sentence of death. There were two or three ladies and 
 gentlemen who were shown by the warder with me over the 
 building. He expressed some apprehension as to showing 
 us the murderer, for he was a very desperate character. We 
 entered a large room, and I saw a really gentlemanly-looking 
 man heavily ironed, who was reading a newspaper. While 
 the others conversed with him, I endeavoured to make unob 
 served a sketch of his face. The warder noticing this, called 
 me to the front to make it boldly, and the prisoner, smiling, 
 told me to go on with it : which I did, and that not so badly 
 at least, the sitter approved of it 
 
 So we went up the beautiful Hudson, which far surpasses 
 the Bhine, and yields the palm only to the Danube, stopping 
 at Poughkeepsie and Albany, and so on to Xiagara Falls, 
 On the way we passed through a burning forest. My awe at 
 this wonderful sight amused some one present to whom it 
 was a familiar thing. Which reminds me that about the 
 time when I first went to college, but while staying at Con 
 gress Hall, I there met a youth from Alabama or Mississippi, 
 who was on his way to Princeton to join our ranks. To him 
 I of course showed every attention, and by way of promoting 
 his happiness took him to the top of the belfry of the State 
 House, whence there is a fine view. While there I casually 
 
BOYHOOD AND YOUTH. 105 
 
 remarked what a number of ships there were in the river, 
 whereupon he eagerly cried, " Oh, show me one ! I never 
 saw a ship in all my life ! " I gazed at him in utter aston 
 ishment, as if I would say, " What manner of man art thou ?" 
 and then recalling myself, said, " Well, we are just equal, for 
 you never saw a ship, and I never saw a cotton-field" The 
 young man smiled incredulously, and replied, " Now I know 
 that you are trying to humbug me, for how could you grow 
 up without ever seeing cotton-fields ? " 
 
 We arrived at Niagara about noon, and I at once went to 
 see the Falls. There was a very respectable-looking old gen 
 tleman, evidently from the far South, with two young ladies, 
 one a great beauty, advancing just before. I heard him say, 
 " Now, keep your eyes closed, or look down till you can have 
 a full view." I did the same, and when he cried " Look up ! " 
 did so. It was one of the great instants of my life. 
 
 I know not how it was, but that first glance suggested to 
 me something chivalric. It may have been from Byron s 
 simile of the tail of the white horse and the cataract, and the 
 snow-white steed of that incarnation of nobility, Crescentius, 
 and there rang in my memory a mystical verse 
 
 " My eye bears a glance like the gleam of a lance 
 
 When I hear the waters dash and dance ; 
 And I smile with glee, for I love to see 
 The sight of anything that s free ! " 
 
 But it was a mingled sense of nobility, and above all of 
 freedom, which impressed me in that roaring mist of waters, 
 in the wild river leaping as in reckless sport over the vast 
 broad precipice. It is usual, especially for those who have no 
 gift of description, to say that Niagara is " utterly indescrib 
 able," and the Visitors Book has this opinion repeated by 
 the American Philistine on every page. But that is because 
 those who say so have no proper comprehension of facts 
 stated, no poetic faculty, and no imagination. Of course no 
 mere description, however perfect, would give the same con 
 ception of even a pen or a button as would the sight thereof ; 
 
106 MEMOIRS. 
 
 but it is absurd and illogical to speak as if this were peculiar 
 to a great thing alone. For my part, I believe that the mere 
 description to a poet, or to one who has dwelt by wood and 
 wold and steeped his soul in Nature, of a tremendous cataract 
 a mile in breadth and two hundred feet high, cleft by a 
 wooded island, and rushing onward below in awful rocky 
 rapids with a mighty roar, would, could, or should convey a 
 very good idea of the great sight. For I found in after 
 years, when I came to see Venice and the temples on the 
 Nile, that they were picturesquely or practically precisely 
 what I had expected to see, not one shade or nuance of an 
 expression more or less. As regards Eome and all Gothic 
 cathedrals, I had been assured so often, or so generally, by all 
 " intelligent tourists," that they were all WTetched rubbish, 
 that I was amazed to find them so beautiful. And so much 
 as to anticipations of Niagara, which I have thrice visited, 
 and the constant assertion by cads unutterable that it is " in 
 describable." 
 
 While at Niagara for three days, I walked about a great 
 deal with a young lady whose acquaintance we had made at 
 the hotel. As she was, I verily believe, the very first, not a 
 relative, with whom I had ever taken a walk, or, I may al 
 most say, formed an acquaintance, it constituted an event in 
 my life equal to Niagara itself in importance. I was at this 
 time just twenty-one, and certain I am that among twenty- 
 one thousand college graduates of my age in America, of the 
 same condition of life, there was not another so inexperienced 
 in worldly ways, or so far behind his age, or so " docile unto 
 discipline." I was, in fact, morally where most boys in the 
 United States are at twelve or thirteen ; which is a very great 
 mistake where there is a fixed determination that the youth 
 shall make his own way in life. We cannot have boys good 
 little angels at home and devils in business abroad. Horum 
 utrum magis velim, mihi incertum est. 
 
III. 
 
 UNIVERSITY LIFE AND TRAVEL IN EUROPE. 
 
 1845-1848. 
 
 Passage in a sailing ship Gibraltar Marseilles Smugglers and a 
 slaver Italy Life in Rome Torlonia s balls and the last great 
 Carnival of 1846 Navone, the chief of police Florence Venice 
 How I passed the Bridge of Sighs The Black Bait Slavery- 
 Crossing the Simplon Switzerland Pleasing introduction to Ger 
 manyStudent life at Heidelberg Captain Medwin Justinus 
 Kerner How I saw Jenny Lind Munich Lola Montez Our 
 house on fire All over Germany How 1 was turned out of Po 
 landParis in 1847 The Revolution of 18481 become con 
 spirator and captain of barricades Taking of the Tuileries The 
 police bow me out of France A season in London Return to 
 America. 
 
 AFTER our return to Philadelphia something of great im 
 portance to me began to be discussed. My cousin Samuel 
 Godfrey, who was a few years older than I, finding himself 
 threatened with consumption, of which all his family died, 
 resolved to go to Marseilles on a voyage, and persuaded my 
 father to let me accompany him. At this time I had, as in 
 deed for many years before, such a desire to visit Europe that 
 I might almost have died of it. So it was at last determined 
 that I should go with " Sam," and after all due preparations 
 and packing, I bade farewell to mother and Henry and the 
 dear little twin sisters, and youngest Emily, our pet, and 
 went with my father to New York, where I was the guest 
 for a few days of my cousin, Mrs. Caroline Wight, whom the 
 reader may recall as the one who used to correct my French 
 exercises in Dedham. 
 
 We were to sail in a packet or ship for Marseilles. My 
 
108 MEMOIRS. 
 
 father saw me off. He was wont to say in after years, that 
 as I stood on the deck at the last moment and looked affec 
 tionately at him, there was in my eyes an expression of inno 
 cence or goodness and gentleness which he never saw again. 
 Which was, I am sure, very true ; the great pity being that 
 that look had not utterly disappeared years before. If it only 
 had vanished with boyhood, as it ought to have done, my 
 father would have been spared much sorrow. 
 
 At this time I was a trifle over six feet two in height, and 
 had then and for some time after so fair a red and white com 
 plexion, that the young ladies in Philadelphia four years 
 later teased me by spreading the report that I used rouge 
 and white paint ! I was not as yet " filled out," but held 
 myself straightly, and was fairly proportioned. I wore a cap 
 a Vetudiant, very much over my left ear, and had very long, 
 soft, straight, dark-brown hair ; rny dream and ideal being 
 the German student. I was extremely shy of strangers, but 
 when once acquainted soon became very friendly, and in most 
 cases made a favourable impression. I was " neat and very 
 clean-looking," as a lady described me, for the daily bath or 
 sponge was universal in Philadelphia long ere it was even in 
 England, and many a time when travelling soon after, I went 
 without a meal in order to have my tub, when time did not 
 permit of both. I was very sensitive, and my feelings were 
 far too easily pained ; on the other hand, I had no trace of 
 the common New England youth s vulgar failing of nagging, 
 teasing, or vexing others under colour of being " funny " or 
 " cute." A very striking, and, all things considered, a re 
 markable characteristic was that I hated, as I still do, with 
 all my soul, gossip about other people and their affairs ; never 
 read even a card not meant for my eyes, and detested curi 
 osity, prying, and inqnisitiveness as I did the devil. I owe a 
 great development of this to a curious incident. It must 
 have been about the time when I first went to college, that I 
 met at Cape May a naval officer, who roomed with me in a 
 cottage, a farm-house near a hotel, and whom I greatly ad- 
 
STUDENT LIFE AND TRAVEL IN EUROPE. 1Q9 
 
 mired as a man of the world and a model of good manners. 
 To him one day I communicated some gossip about some 
 body, when he abruptly cut me short, and when I would go 
 on, informed me that he never listened to such talk. This 
 made a very deep impression on me, which never disap 
 peared ; nay, it grew with my growth and strengthened with 
 my strength. Now the New England people, especially Bos- 
 tonians, are inordinately given to knowing everything about 
 everybody, and to " tittle-tattle," while the Southerners are 
 comparatively free from it and very incurious. Two- thirds 
 of the students at Princeton were of the first families in the 
 South, and there my indifference to what did not personally 
 concern one was regarded as a virtue. But there is a spot in 
 this sun that he who never cares a straw to know about the 
 affairs of other people, will, not only if he live in Boston, but 
 almost anywhere else Old England not at all excepted be 
 forced, in spite of himself, and though he were as meek and 
 lowly as man may be, into looking down on and feeling him 
 self superior unto those people who will read a letter not 
 meant for their eyes, or eavesdrop, or talk in any way about 
 anybody in a strain to which they would not have that per 
 son listen. Which reminds me that in after years I got some 
 praise in the newspapers for the saying that a Yankee s 
 idea of hell was a place where he must mind his own busi 
 ness. It came about in this way. In a letter to Charles 
 Astor Bristed I made this remark, and illustrated it with a 
 picture of Virgil taking a Yankee attired in a chimney-pot 
 hat and long night-gown into the Inferno, over whose gate 
 was written 
 
 " Badate a vostri affari voi che intrate ! " 
 (Mind your own business ye who enter here !) 
 
 One day soon after my arrival at Princeton, George Boker 
 laid on the table by me a paper or picture with its face down. 
 I took no notice of it. After a time he said, "Why don t you 
 look at that picture ? " I replied simply, " If you wanted me 
 to see it you would have turned it face up." To which he 
 
 6 
 
HO MEMOIRS. 
 
 remarked, " I put it there to see whether you would look at 
 it. I thought you would not." George was a " deep, saga 
 cious file," who studied men like books. 
 
 My cousin who accompanied me had as a boy " run away 
 and gone to sea " cod-fishing on the Grand Banks. If I had 
 gone with him it would have done me good. Another 
 cousin, Benjamin Stimson, did the same ; he is the S. often 
 mentioned in Dana s " Two Years Before the Mast." Dana 
 and Stimson were friends, and ran away together. It was 
 quite the rule for all my Yankee cousins to do this, and they 
 all benefited by it. In consequence of his nautical experi 
 ence Sam was soon at home among all sailors, and not having 
 my scruples as to knowing who was who or their affairs, soon 
 knew everything that was going on. Our captain was a 
 handsome, dissipated, and " loud " young man, with rather 
 more sail than ballast, but good-natured and obliging. 
 
 " Come day, go day," we passed the Gulf Stream and the 
 Azores, and had long sunny calms, when we could not sail, 
 and lay about on deck, warm and lazy, and saw the Azores, 
 and so on, till we were near the Spanish coast. One evening 
 there clipped right under our lee a fisherman s smack. " I 
 say, Leland, hail that fellow ! " said the captain. So I called 
 in Spanish, " Adonde venga usted?" 
 
 " Da Algesiras," was the reply, which thrilled out of my 
 heart the thought that, like the squire in Chaucer 
 
 " He had been at the siege of Algecir." 
 
 So I called, in parting, " Dios vaya con usted ! " 
 Sam informed me that the manner in which I hailed the 
 fisherman had made a great impression on the captain, who 
 lauded rne highly. It also made one on me, because it was 
 the first time I ever spoke to a European in Europe ! 
 
 Anon we were boarded by an old weather-beaten seadog 
 of a Spanish pilot, unto whom I felt a great attraction ; and 
 greeting him in Malagan Spanish, such as I had learned from 
 Manuel Gorj, as Hermano ! and offering him with ceremoni- 
 
STUDENT LIFE AND TRAVEL IN EUROPE. m 
 
 ous politeness a good cigar, I also drew his regards ; all 
 Spaniards, as I well knew, being extremely fond, beyond all 
 men on earth, of intimacy with gentlemen. We were de 
 layed for two days at Gibraltar. I may here remark, by the 
 way, that this voyage of our ship is described in a book by 
 Mrs. Fanny Kemble Butler, entitled " A Year of Consolation 
 Abroad." She was on board, but never spoke to a soul 
 among the passengers. 
 
 I was never acquainted with Mrs. Butler, as I easily might 
 have been, for we had some very intimate friends in common ; 
 but as a boy I had been " frightened of her " by certain anec 
 dotes as to her temper, and perhaps the influence lasted into 
 later years. I have, however, heard her lecture. She was a 
 very clever woman, and Mr. Henry James, in Temple Bar for 
 March, 1893, thus does justice to her conversational power : 
 
 " Her talk reflected a thousand vanished and present things; but 
 there were those of her friends for whom its value was, almost before 
 any other, documentary. The generations move so fast and change so 
 much, that Mrs. Kemble testified even more than she affected to do, 
 which was much, to ancient manners and a close chapter of history. 
 Her conversation swarmed with people and with criticism of people, 
 with the ghosts of a dead society. She had, in two hemispheres, seen 
 every one and known every one, had assisted at the social comedy 
 of her age. Her own habits and traditions were in themselves a 
 survival of an era less democratic and more mannered. I have no 
 room for enumerations, which, moreover, would be invidious ; but the 
 old London of her talk the direction I liked is best to take was, 
 in particular, a gallery of portraits. She made Count d Orsay fa 
 miliar, she made Charles Greville present; I thought it wonderful 
 that she could be anecdotic about Miss Edgeworth. She reanimated 
 the old drawing-rooms, relighted the old lamps, retimed the old pianos. 
 The finest comedy of all, perhaps, was that of her own generous whim 
 sicalities. She was superbly willing to amuse, and on any terms ; and 
 her temper could do it as well as her wit. If either of these had failed, 
 her eccentricities were always there. She had more habits than most 
 people have room in life for, and a theory that to a person of her dis 
 position they were as necessary as the close meshes of a strait- waistcoat. 
 If she had not lived by rule (on her showing) she would have lived in 
 fallibly by riot. Her rules and her riots, her reservations and her coo- 
 
112 MEMOIRS. 
 
 cessions, all her luxuriant theory and all her extravagant practice ; her 
 drollery, that mocked at her melancholy ; her imagination, that mocked 
 at her drollery ; and her wonderful manners, all her own, that mocked 
 a little at everything: these were part of the constant freshness which 
 made those who loved her love her so much. If my servants can live 
 with me a week, they can live with me for ever, she often said ; but the 
 first week sometimes kills them. A domestic who had been long in her 
 service quitted his foreign home the instant he heard of her death, and, 
 travelling for thirty hours, arrived travel-stained and breathless, like a 
 messenger in a romantic tale, just in time to drop a handful of flowers 
 into her grave." 
 
 There came on board of our boat a fruit-dealer, and the 
 old pilot, seeing that I was about to invest a real in grapes, 
 said, " Let me buy them for you " ; which he did, obtaining 
 half-a-peck of exquisite large grapes of a beautiful purple 
 colour. 
 
 There was a middle-aged lady among the passengers, of 
 whom the least I can say was, that she had a great many 
 little winning ways of making herself disagreeable. She im 
 posed frightfully on me while on board, getting me to mark 
 her trunks for her, and carry them into the hold, &c. (the 
 sailors disliked her so much that they refused to touch them), 
 and then cut me dead when on shore. This ancient horror, 
 seeing me with so many grapes, and learning the price, con 
 cluded that if a mere boy like me could get so many, she, a 
 lady, could for four reals lay in a stock which would last for 
 life, more or less. So she obtained a bushel-basket, expect 
 ing to get it heaped full ; but what was her wrath at only 
 getting for her silver half-dollar just enough to hide the 
 bottom thereof! Great was her rage, but rage availed her 
 nought. She did not call old pilots " Brother," or give them 
 cigars, or talk Malagano politely. She was not even " half- 
 Spanish," and therefore, as we used to say at college of cer 
 tain unpopular people, was " a bad smoke." 
 
 We went on shore on Sunday, which in those days always 
 made Gibraltar literally like a fancy ball. The first person 
 whom I met was a pretty young lady in full, antique, rich 
 
STUDENT LIFE AND TRAVEL IN EUROPE. H3 
 
 Castilian costume, followed by a servant bearing her book of 
 devotion. Seeing my gaze of admiration, she smiled, at 
 which I bowed, and she returned the salute and went her 
 way. Such an event had never happened to me before in all 
 my life. I accepted it philosophically as one of a new order 
 of things into which I was destined to enter. Then I saw 
 men from every part of Spain in quaint dresses, Castilians in 
 cloaks, Andalusians in the jaunty majo rig, Gallegcs, Moors 
 from the Barbary coast, many Greeks, old Jews in gabardines, 
 Scotch Highland soldiers, and endless more concursus 
 splendidus non possum non mirari. 
 
 I felt myself very happy and very much at home in all 
 this. I strolled about the streets talking Spanish to every 
 body. Then I met .with a smuggler, who asked me if I 
 wanted to buy cigars. I did. In New York my uncle 
 George had given me a box of five hundred excellent Ha- 
 vanas, and these had lasted me exactly twenty days. I had 
 smoked the last twenty-five on the last day. So I went and 
 bought at a low enough figure a box of the worst cigars I 
 had ever met with. But youth can smoke anything except 
 deceit. 
 
 Entrance to the galleries was strictly forbidden in those 
 days, but an incorruptible British sergeant, for an incorrupt 
 ible dollar or two, showed us over them. There was, too, a 
 remarkable man, a ship-chandler named Felipe, to whom I 
 was introduced. Felipe spoke twenty-four languages. He 
 boarded every ship and knew everybody. Gibraltar was then 
 a vaSt head-quarters of social evils, or blessings, and Felipe, 
 who was a perfect Hercules, mentioned incidentally that he 
 had had a new maja, or moza, or muger, or puta, every night 
 for twenty years ! which was confirmed by common report. 
 It was a firm principle with him to always change. This ex 
 traordinary fact made me reflect deeply on it as a psycho 
 logical phenomenon. This far surpassed anything I had ever 
 heard at Princeton. Then this and that great English dig 
 nitary was pointed out to me black eyes ogled me every- 
 
MEMOIRS. 
 
 body was polite, for I had a touch of the Spanish manner 
 which I had observed in the ex-Capitan-General and others 
 whom I had known in Philadelphia ; and, in short, I saw 
 more that was picturesque and congenial in that one day than 
 I had ever beheld in all my life before, I had got into " my 
 plate," 
 
 From Gibraltar our ship sailed on to Marseilles, The 
 coasts were full of old ruins, which I sketched. We lay off 
 Malaga for a day, but I could not go ashore, much as I longed 
 to. At Marseilles, 8am and the captain and I went to a very 
 good hoteL 
 
 Now it had happened that on the voyage before a certain 
 French lady the captain said she was a Baroness having 
 fallen in love with the said captain, had secreted herself on 
 board the vessel, greatly to his horror, and reappeared when 
 out at sea. Therefore, as soon as we arrived at Marseilles, 
 the injured husband came raging on board and tried to shoot 
 the captain, which made a great *candal. And, moved by 
 this example, the coloured cook of our vessel, who had a wife, 
 shot the head-waiter on the same day, being also instigated 
 by jealousy. Sam Godfrey chaffed the captain for setting a 
 bad moral example to the niggers which was all quite a 
 change from Princeton. Life was beginning to be lively. 
 
 Tnere had come over on the vessel with us, in the cabin, 
 a droll character, an actor in a Philadelphia theatre, who had 
 promptly found a lodging in a kind of maritime boarding- 
 house. Getting into some difficulty, as he could not speak 
 French he came in a great hurry to beg me to go with* him 
 to his pension to act as interpreter, which I did. I found at 
 once that it was a Spanish house, and the resort of smugglers. 
 The landlady was a very pretty black-eyed woman, who played 
 the guitar, and sang Spanish songs, and brought out Spanish 
 wine, and was marvellously polite to me, to my astonishment, 
 not unmingled with innocent gratitude. 
 
 There I was at home. At Princeton I had learned to play 
 the guitar, and from Manuel Gori, who had during all his 
 
STUDENT LIFE AND TRAVEL IN EUROPE. H5 
 
 boyhood been familiar with low life and smugglers, I had 
 learned many songs and some slang. And so, with a crowd 
 of dark, fierce, astonished faces round me of men eagerly 
 listening, I sang a smuggler s song 
 
 " Yo que soy contrabandists, 
 Y campo a me rispeto, 
 A todos mi desafio, 
 Quien me compra hilo negro? 
 
 Ay jaleo ! 
 
 M uchachas jaleo ! 
 Quien me compra hilo negro ! " 
 
 Great was the amazement and thundering the applause 
 from my auditors. Let the reader imagine a nun of fourteen 
 years asked to sing, and bursting out with " Go it while you re 
 young!" Then I sang the Tragala, which coincided with 
 the political views of my friends. But my grand coup was 
 in reserve. I had learned from Borrow s " Gypsies in Spain " 
 a long string of Gitano or Gypsy verses, such as 
 
 " El eray guiliabela, 
 El eray obusno ; 
 Que avella romanella, 
 No avella obusno ! " 
 
 " Loud sang the gorgio to his fair, 
 
 And thus his ditty ran : 
 Oh, may the Gypsy maiden come, 
 
 And not the Gypsy man ! " 
 
 And yet again 
 
 " Coruncho Lopez, gallant lad, 
 
 A smuggling he would ride; 
 So stole his father s ambling prad, 
 And therefore to the galleys sad 
 
 Coruncho now I guide." 
 
 This was a final coup. How the diabolo I, such an innocent 
 stranger youth, had ever learned Spanish Gypsy the least 
 knowledge of which in Spain implies unfathomable iniquity 
 
MEMOIRS. 
 
 and fastness was beyond all comprehension. So I departed 
 full of honour amid thunders of applause. 
 
 From the first day our room was the resort of all the 
 American ship-captains in Marseilles. We kept a kind of 
 social hall or exchange, with wine and cigars on the side- 
 table, all of which dropping in and out rather reminded me 
 of Princeton. My friend the actor had pitched upon a young 
 English Jew, who seemed to me to be a doubtful character. 
 He sang very well, and was full of local news and gossip. 
 He, too, was at home among us. One evening our captain 
 told us how he every day smuggled ashore fifty cigars in his 
 hat. At hearing this, I saw a gleam in the eyes of the young 
 man, which was a revelation to me. When he had gone, I 
 said to the captain, " You had better not smuggle any cigars 
 to-morrow. That fellow is a spy of the police." 
 
 The next day Captain Jack on leaving his ship was ac 
 costed by the douaniers, who politely requested him to take 
 off his hat. He refused, and was then told that he must go 
 before the prefet. There the request was renewed. He com 
 plied ; but " forewarned, forearmed " there was nothing 
 in it. 
 
 Captain Jack complimented me on my sagacity, and scold 
 ed the actor for making such friends. But he had uncon 
 sciously made me familiar with one compared to whom the 
 spy was a trifle. I have already fully and very truthfully de 
 scribed this remarkable man in an article in Temple Bar, but 
 his proper place is here. He was a little modest-looking Eng 
 lishman, who seemed to me rather to look up to the fast 
 young American captains as types or models of more daring 
 beings. Sometimes he would tell a mildly-naughty tale as if 
 it were a wild thing. He consulted with me as to going to 
 Paris and hearing lectures at the University, his education 
 having been neglected. He had, I was told, experienced a 
 sad loss, having just lost his ship on the Guinea coast. One 
 day I condoled with him, saying that I heard he had been 
 ruined. 
 
STUDENT LIFE AND TRAVEL IN EUROPE. 
 
 " Yes," replied the captain, " I have. Something like 
 this : My mother once had a very pretty housemaid who dis 
 appeared. Some time after I met her magnificently dressed, 
 and I said, * Sally, where do you live now ? She replied, 
 4 Please, sir, I don t live anywhere now ; I ve been ruined? " 
 
 Sam explained to me that 1 the captain had a keg of gold- 
 dust and many diamonds, and having wrecked his vessel in 
 tentionally, was going to London to get a heavy insurance. 
 He had been " ruined " to his very great advantage. Then 
 Sam remarked 
 
 " You don t know the captain. I tell you, Charley, that 
 man is an old slaver or pirate. See how I ll draw him out." 
 
 The next day Sam began to talk. He remarked that he 
 had been to sea and had some money which he wished to in 
 vest. His health required a warm climate, such as the Afri 
 can coast. We would both, in fact, like to go into the Guinea 
 business. [Bozales " sacks of charcoal," I remarked in Span 
 ish slaver- slang.] The captain smiled. He had apparently 
 heard the expression before. He considered it. He had a 
 great liking for me, and thought that a trip or two under the 
 black flag would do me a great deal of good. So he noted 
 down our address, and promised that as soon as he should get 
 a ship we should hear from him. 
 
 After that the captain, regarding me as enlisted in the 
 fraternity, and only waiting till twas " time for us to go," 
 had no secrets from me. He was very glad that I knew. Span 
 ish and French, and explained that if I would learn Coro- 
 mantee or Ebo, it would aid us immensely in getting cargoes. 
 By the way, I became very well acquainted in after years with 
 King George of Bonney, and can remember entertaining him 
 with a story how a friend of mine once (in Cuba) bought thir 
 ty Ebos, and on entering the barracoon the next morning, 
 found them all hanging by the necks dead, like a row of pos 
 sums in the Philadelphia market they having, with magnifi 
 cent pluck, and in glorious defiance of Bnckra civilisation, 
 resolved to go back to Africa. I have found other blacks 
 
118 MEMOIRS. 
 
 who believed that all good darkies when they die go to Guinea, 
 and one of these was very touching and strange. He had been 
 brought as a slave-child to South Carolina, but was always 
 haunted by the memory of a group of cocoa-palms by a place 
 where the wild white surf of the ocean bounded up to the 
 shore a rock, sunshine, and sand. There he declared his 
 soul would go. He was a Voodoo, and a man of marvellous 
 strange mind. 
 
 Day by day my commander gave me, as I honestly believe, 
 without a shadow of exaggeration, all the terrific details of a 
 slaver s life, and his strange experiences in buying slaves in 
 the interior. Compared to the awful massacres and cruelties 
 inflicted by the blacks on one another, the white slave trade 
 seemed to be philanthropic and humane. He had seen at the 
 grand custom in Dahomey 2,500 men killed, and a pool made 
 of their blood into which the king s wives threw themselves 
 naked and wallowed. " One day fifteen were to be tortured 
 to death for witchcraft. I bought them all for an old dress- 
 coat," said the captain. " I didn t want them, for my cargo 
 was made up ; it was only to save the poor devils lives." 
 
 If a slaver could not get a full cargo, and met with a weaker 
 vessel which was full, it was at once attacked and plundered. 
 Sometimes there would be desperate resistance, with the aid 
 of the slaves. " I have seen the scuppers run with blood," 
 said the captain. And so on, with much more of the same 
 sort, all of which has since been recorded in the "Journal of 
 Captain Canot," from which latter book I really learned noth 
 ing new. I might add the " Life of Hobart Pacha," whom I 
 met many times in London. A real old-fashioned slaver was 
 fully a hundred times worse than an average pirate, because 
 he was the latter whenever he wished to rob, and in his busi 
 ness was the cause of far more suffering and death. 
 
 The captain was very fond of reading poetry, his favourite 
 being Wordsworth. This formed quite a tie between us. He 
 was always rather mild, quiet, and old-fashioned in fact, niuff- 
 ish. Once only did I see a spark from him which showed 
 
STUDENT LIFE AND TRAVEL IN EUROPE. H9 
 
 what was latent. Captain Jack was describing a most extraor 
 dinary run which we had made before a gale from Gibraltar 
 to Cape de Creux, which was, indeed, true enough, he having 
 a very fast vessel. But the Guinea captain denied that such 
 time had ever been made by any craft ever built. "And I 
 have had to sail sometimes pretty fast in my time," he added 
 with one sharp glance no more but, as Byron says of the 
 look of Gulleyaz, twas like a short glimpse of hell. Pretty 
 fast ! I should think so now and then from an English 
 cruiser, all sails wetted down, with the gallows in the back 
 ground. But as I had been on board with Sam, the question 
 was settled. We had made a run which was beyond all prece 
 dent. 
 
 I fancy that the captain, if he escaped the halter or the 
 wave, in after years settled down in some English coast- 
 village, where he read Wordsworth, and attended church 
 regularly, and was probably regarded as a gentle old duffer 
 by the younger members of society. But take him for all in 
 all, he was the mildest-mannered man that ever scuttled ship 
 or cut a throat, and he always behaved to me like a perfect 
 gentleman, and never uttered an improper word. 
 
 We had to wait one month till my cousin could get certain 
 news from America. We employed the time in travelling in 
 the south, visiting Aries, Nismes, Montpellier, and other 
 places. An English gentleman named Gordon, whom I had 
 met in Marseilles, had given me a letter of introduction to 
 M. Saint Rene Taillandier in the latter place. I knew 
 nothing at all then about this great man, or that he was the 
 first French critic of German literature, but I presented my 
 letter, and he kindly went with me about the town to show 
 me its antiquities. I can remember discussing Gothic tracery 
 with him ; also, that I told him I was deeply interested in 
 the Troubadours. He recommended Raynouard and several 
 other books, when finding that I was familiar with them all, 
 he smiled, and said that he believed he could teach me 
 nothing more. I did not know it then, but that word 
 
120 MEMOIRS. 
 
 from him would have been as good as a diploma for me in 
 Paris. 
 
 As for old Roman ruins and Gothic churches, and cloisters 
 grey, and the arrowy Rhone, and castellated bridges every 
 thing was in a more original moss-grown, picturesque condi 
 tion then than it now. is I enjoyed them all with an in 
 tensity, a freshness or "love, which passeth all belief. I had 
 attended Professor D odd s lectures more than once, and 
 illuminated manuscripts, and had bought me in Marseilles 
 Berty s " Dictionary of Gothic Architecture," and got it by 
 heart, and began to think of making a profession of it, which, 
 if I had known it, was the very wisest thing I could have 
 done. And that this is no idle boast is clear from this, that 
 I in after years made a design according to which a " store," 
 which cost 30,000, was built, my plan being believed by 
 another skilled architect to have been executed by a " pro 
 fessional." This was really the sad slip and escape of my 
 lifetime. 
 
 In those days, really good red wine was given to every one 
 at every table ; savoury old-fashioned dishes, vegetables, and 
 fruits were served far more freely and cheaply than they now 
 are, when every dainty is sent by rail to Paris or London, 
 and the drinking of Bordeaux and Burgundy did me much 
 good. Blessed days of cheapness and good quality, before 
 chicory, the accursed poison, had found its way into coffee, 
 or oleomargarine was invented, or all things canned the 
 world will never see ye more ! I have now lived for many 
 months in a first-class Florence hotel, and in all the time 
 have not tasted one fresh Italian mushroom, or truffle, or 
 olive nothing but tasteless abominations bottled in France ! 
 
 It was settled that my cousin should return from Mar 
 seilles to the United States, while I was to go on alone to 
 Italy. It was misgivingly predicted at home by divers friends 
 that I would be as a lamb set loose among wolves, and lose 
 all my money at the outstart. Could they have learned that 
 within a week after my arrival I had been regarded by 
 
STUDENT LIFE AND TRAVEL IN EUROPE. 121 
 
 Spanish smugglers as a brother, and tripped up a spy of the 
 police, and been promised a situation as a slaver s and pirate s 
 assistant, they might have thought that I had begun to learn 
 how to take care of myself in a hurry. As for losing my 
 money, I, by a terrible accident, doubled it, as I will here 
 describe. 
 
 Before leaving home, a lady cousin had made for Samuel 
 and me each a purse, and they were exactly alike. Now by 
 a purse I mean a real purse, and not a pocket-book, or a 
 porte-monnaie, or a wallet that is, I mean a long bag with 
 a slit and two rings, and nothing else. And my cousin 
 having often scolded me for leaving mine lying about in our 
 room, I seeing it, as I thought, just a few minutes before my 
 departure, lying on the table, pocketed it, thanking God that 
 Sam had not found it, or scolded me. 
 
 I went on board the steamboat and set sail towards Italy. 
 I was sea-sick all night, but felt better the next day. Then 
 I had to pay out some money, and thought I would look over 
 my gold. To my utter amazement, it was doubled ! This 
 I attributed to great generosity on Sam s part, and I blessed 
 him. 
 
 But, merciful heavens ! what were my sensations at find 
 ing in the lower depth of my pocket another purse also filled 
 with Napoleons in rouleaux ! Then it all flashed upon me. 
 Samuel, the careful, had left his purse lying on the table, and 
 I had supposed it was mine ! I felt as wretched as if I had 
 lost instead of won. 
 
 When I got to Naples I found a letter from my cousin 
 bewailing his loss. He implored me, if I knew nothing 
 about it, not to tell it to a human soul. There was a M. 
 Dnclanx in Marseilles, with whom we had had our business 
 dealings, and from him Sam had borrowed what he needed. 
 I at once requested Captain Olive, of the steamer, to convey 
 the purse and its contents to M. Duclaux, which I suppose 
 was done secundem ordinem. 
 
 Poor Sam ! I never met him again. He died of con- 
 
122 MEMOIRS. 
 
 sumption soon after returning home. He was one of whom 
 I can say with truth that I never saw in him a fault, however 
 trifling. He was honour itself in everything, as humane as 
 was his grandfather before him, ever cheerful and kind, 
 merry and quaint. 
 
 The programme of the steamboat declared that meals 
 were included in the fare, " except while stopping at a port." 
 But we stopped every day at Genoa or Leghorn, or some 
 where, and stayed about fifteen hours, and as almost every 
 passenger fell sea-sick after going ashore, the meals were not 
 many. On board the first day, I made the acquaintance of 
 Mr. James Temple Bowdoin, of Boston, and Mr. Mosely, of 
 whom I had often heard as editor of the Richmond Whig. 
 Mr. Bowdoin was a nephew of Lady Temple, and otherwise 
 widely connected with English families. He is now living 
 (1892), and I have seen a great deal of him of late years. 
 With these two I joined company, and travelled with them 
 over Italy. Both were much older than I, and experienced 
 men of the world ; therefore I was in good hands, and better 
 guides, philosophers, mentors, pilots, and friends I could 
 hardly have found. Left to myself, I should probably ere 
 the winter was over have been the beloved chief of a gang of 
 gypsies, or brigands, or witches, or careering the wild sea- 
 wave as a daring smuggler, all in innocence and goodness of 
 heart ; for truly in Marseilles I had begun to put forth buds 
 of such strange kind and promise as no friend of mine ever 
 dreamed of. As it was, I got into better, if less picturesque, 
 society. 
 
 We came to Naples, and went to a hotel, and visited 
 everything. In those days the beggars and pimps and pick 
 pockets were beyond all modern conception. The pictur- 
 esqueness of the place and people were only equalled by the 
 stinks. It was like a modern realistic novel. We went a 
 great deal to the opera, also to the Blue Grotto of Capri, and 
 ascended Mount Vesuvius, and sought Baise, and made, in 
 fact, all the excursions. As there were three, and sometimes 
 
STUDENT LIFE AND TRAVEL IN EUROPE. 123 
 
 half-a-dozen of our friends on these trips, we had, naturally, 
 with us quite a cortege. Among these was an ill-favoured 
 rascal called " John," who always received a dollar a day. 
 One evening some one raised the question as to what the 
 devil it was that John did. He did not carry anything, or 
 work to any account, or guide, or inform, yet he was always 
 there, and always in the way. So John, being called up, was 
 asked what he did. Great was his indignation, for by this 
 time he had got to consider himself indispensable. He de 
 clared that he " directed, and made himself generally useful." 
 We informed him that we would do our own directing, and 
 regarded him as generally useless. So John was discarded. 
 Since then I have found that " John " is a very frequent in 
 gredient in all societies and Government offices. There are 
 Johns in Parliament, in the army, and in the Church. His 
 children are pensioned into the third and fourth and fortieth 
 generation. In fact, I am not sure that John is not the 
 greit social question of the age. 
 
 There was in Philadelphia an Academy of Fine Arts, or 
 Gallery, of which my father had generously presented me 
 witli two shares, which gave me free entrance. There were 
 in it many really excellent pictures, even a first-class Murillo, 
 besides Wests and Allstons. Unto this I had, as was my 
 wont, read up closely, and reflected much on what I read, so 
 that I was to a certain degree prepared for the marvels of art 
 which burst on me in Naples. And if I was, and always have 
 been, rather insensible to the merits of Kenaissance sculpture 
 and architecture, I was not so to its painting, and not at all 
 blind to the unsurpassed glories of its classic prototypes. 
 Professor Dodd had indeed impressed it deeply and specially 
 on my mind that the revival of a really pure Greek taste in 
 England, or from the work of Stewart and Revett, was con 
 temporary with that for Gothic architecture, and that the 
 appreciation of one, if true, implies that of the other. As I 
 was now fully inspired with my new resolution to become an 
 architect, I read all that I could get on the subject, and 
 
MEMOIRS. 
 
 naturally examined all remains of the past far more closely 
 arid critically than I should otherwise have done. And this 
 again inspired in me (who always had a mania for bric-a-brac 
 and antiquity, which is certainly hereditary) a great interest 
 in the characteristic decoration of different ages, which thing 
 is the soul and life of all aesthetic archaeology and the minor 
 arts ; which latter again I truly claim to have brought, I may 
 say, into scientific form and made a branch of education in 
 after years. 
 
 I think that we were a month in Naples. I kept a 
 journal then, and indeed everywhere for three years after. 
 The reader may be thankful that I have it not, for I foresee 
 that I shall easily recall enough to fill ten folios of a thou 
 sand pages solid brevier each, at this rate of reminiscences. 
 As my predilection for everything German and Gothic came 
 out more strongly every day, Mr. Mosely called me familiarly 
 Germariicus, a name which was indeed not ill-bestowed at 
 that period. 
 
 From Naples we went to Kome by vettura, or in car 
 riages. We were two days and two nights on the route. I 
 remember that when we entered Eome, I saw the douanier 
 who examined my trunk remove from it, as he thought un- 
 perceived, a hair-brush, book, &c.,and slyly hide them behind 
 another trunk. I calmly walked round, retook and replaced 
 them in my trunk, to the discomfiture, but not in the least to 
 the shame, of the thief, who only grinned. 
 
 And here I may say, once for all, that one can hardly 
 fail to have a mean opinion of human common-sense in gov 
 ernment, when we see this system of examining luggage still 
 maintained. For all that any country could possibly lose by 
 smuggling in trunks, &c., would be a hundred-fold recom 
 pensed by the increased amount of travel and money im 
 ported, should it be done away with, as has been perfectly 
 and fully proved in France ; the announcement a year ago 
 that examination would be null or formal having had at once 
 the effect of greatly increasing travel. And as there is not a 
 
STUDENT LIFE AND TRAVEL IN EUROPE. 125 
 
 custom-house in all Europe where a man who knows the 
 trick cannot pull through his luggage by bribery the excep 
 tions being miraculously rare the absurdity and folly of the 
 system is apparent. 
 
 We went to the Hotel d Allemagne, where I fell ill, either 
 because I had a touch of Neapolitan malaria in me (in those 
 days the stench of the city was perceptible three miles out at 
 sea, and might have risen unto heaven above and been smelt 
 by the angels, had they and their home been as near to earth 
 as was believed by the schoolmen), or because the journey 
 had been too much for me. However, an English physician 
 set me up all right in two or three days (he wanted to sell us 
 pictures which would have cured any one of a love of art), 
 aod then there began indeed a glorious scampering and in 
 vestigating, rooting and rummaging 
 
 " Mid deathless lairs in solemn Rome." 
 
 Galleries and gardens, ruins and palaces, Colosseum and 
 temples, churches and museums ye have had many a better 
 informed and many a more inspired or gifted visitor than I, 
 but whether from your first Sabine days you ever had a hap 
 pier one, or one who enjoyed you more with the simple en 
 joyment of youth and hope gratified, I doubt. Sometimes 
 among moss-grown arches on a sunny day, as the verd-an- 
 tique lizards darted over the stones from dark to light, while 
 far in the distance tinkled bells, either from cows or con 
 vents, and all was calm and sweet, I have often wondered if 
 it could indeed be real and not a dream. Life often seemed 
 to me then to be too good to be true. And there was this at 
 least good in my Transcendentalism and Poly-Pantheism, 
 that it quite unconsciously or silently gave me many such 
 hours ; for it had sunk so deeply into my soul, and was so 
 much a real part thereof, that it inspired me when I never 
 thought of it, in which I differed by a heaven s width from 
 the professional Yankee Transcendentalists, Presbyterians, 
 Methodists, /Esthetes, and other spiritualists or sorcerers, 
 
126 MEMOIRS. 
 
 who always kept their blessed belief, as a holy fugleman, full 
 in sight, to give them sacred straight tips, or as a Star-span 
 gled Bannerman who waved exceedingly, while my spirit 
 was a shy fairy, who dwelt far down in the depths of the all 
 too green sea of my soul, where it seemed to me she had ever 
 been, or ever a storm had raised a wave on the surface. An 
 tiquely verdant green I was, no doubt. And even to this day 
 the best hours of my life are when I hear her sweet voice 
 mid ivy greens or ruins grey, in wise books, hoar traditions. 
 Be it where it will, it is that, and not the world of men or 
 books, which gives the charm. 
 
 It was usual for all who drew from Torlonia s bank not 
 less than 20 to be invited to his soirees. To ensure the 
 expenses, the footman who brought the invitation called the 
 day after for not less than five francs. But the entertain 
 ment was well worth the money, and more. There was a 
 good supper Thackeray has represented a character in 
 " Vanity Fair " as devouring it and much amusement. 
 
 Now I had written my name Clias., which being mistaken 
 for Chev., I in due time received an invitation addressed to 
 M. le Chevalier Godfrey de Leland. And it befell that I 
 once found a lost decoration of the Order of the Golden 
 Spur, which in those days ivas actually sold to anybody who 
 asked for it for ten pounds, and was worth " nothing to no 
 body." This caused much fun among my friends, and from 
 that day I was. known as the Chevalier Germanicus, or the 
 Knight of the Golden Spur, to which I assented with very 
 good grace as a joke. There were even a few who really 
 believed that I had been decorated, though I never wore it, 
 and one day I received quite a severe remonstrance from a 
 very patriotic fellow-countryman against the impropriety of 
 my thus risking my loss of citizenship. Which caused me 
 to reflect how many there are in life who rise to such " hon 
 ours," Heaven only knows how, in a back-stairs way. I know 
 in London a very great man of science, nemini secundus, 
 who has never been knighted, although the tradesman who 
 
STUDENT LIFE AND TKAVEL IN EUROPE. 127 
 
 makes for him his implements and instruments has received 
 the title and the accolade. Fie at justitia ! 
 
 I saw at one of the Torlonia entertainments a marvel 
 lously beautiful and strange thins:, of which I had read an 
 account in Mme. de StaeTs Corinne. There was a stage, on 
 which appeared a young girl, plainly dressed, and bearing a 
 simple small scarf. She did not speak or dance, or even as 
 sume "artistic positions"; what she did was far more strik 
 ing and wonderful. She merely sat or stood or reclined in 
 many ways, every one of which seemed to be perfectly natu 
 ral or habitual, and all of which were incredibly graceful. I 
 have forgotten how such women were called in Italy. I am 
 sure that this one had never been trained to it, for the 
 absolute ease and naturalness with which she sat or stood 
 could never have been taught. If it could, every woman in 
 the world would learn it. Ristori was one of these instinct 
 ive Graces, and it constituted nearly all the art there was in 
 her. 
 
 This was in 1846. The Carnival of that year in Rome 
 was the last real one which Italy ever beheld. It was the 
 very last, for which every soul saved up all his money for 
 months, in order to make a wild display, and dance and 
 revel and indulge in 
 
 " Eating, drinking, masking, 
 And other things which could be had for asking." 
 
 Then all Rome ran mad, and rode in carriages full of 
 flowers, or carts, or wheelbarrows, or triumphal chariots, or 
 on camels, horses, asses, or rails rfimporte quoi and merri 
 ly cast confetti of flour or lime at one another laughing, 
 while grave English tourists on balconies laboriously poured 
 the same by the peck from tin scoops on the heads of the 
 multitude, under the delusion that they too were enjoying 
 themselves and " doing " the Carnival properly. It was the 
 one great rule among Italians that no man should in the 
 Carnival, under any provocation whatever, lose his temper. 
 And here John Bull often tripped up. On the last night of 
 
128 MEMOIRS. 
 
 the last Carnival that great night there was the Senza 
 Moccolo or extinguishment of lights, in which everybody 
 bore a burning taper, and tried to blow or knock out the 
 light of his neighbour. Now, being tall, I held my taper 
 high with one hand, well out of danger, while with a broad 
 felt hat in the other I extinguished the children of light like 
 a priest. I threw myself into all the roaring fun like a wild 
 boy, as I was, and was never so jolly. Observing a pretty 
 young English lady in an open carriage, I thrice extin 
 guished her light, at which she laughed, but at which her 
 brother or beau did not, for he got into a great rage, even 
 the first time, and bade me begone. Whereupon I promptly 
 renewed the attack, and then repeated it, " according to the 
 rules of the game," whereat he began to curse and swear, 
 when I, in the Italian fashion of rebuke (to the delight of 
 sundry Italians), pointed my finger at him and hissed ; 
 which constituted the winning point d honneur in the game. 
 
 There, too, was the race of wild horses, right down 
 through the Corso or Condotti, well worth seeing, and very 
 exciting, and game suppers o nights after the opera, and the 
 meeting with many swells and noted folk, and now it all 
 seems like some memory of a wild phantasmagoria or hur 
 ried magic-lantern show galleries and ruins by day, and 
 gaiety by night. Even so do all the scenes of life roll up 
 together at its end, often getting mixed. 
 
 Yet another Roman memory or two. We had taken 
 lodgings in the Via Condotti, where we had a nice sitting- 
 room in common and a good coal-fire. Our landlady was 
 lady-like and spoke French, and had long been a governess 
 in the great Borghese family. As for her husband, there 
 were thousands of Liberals far and wide who spoke of him 
 as the greatest scoundrel unhung, for he was at the head of 
 the Roman police, and I verily believe knew more iniquity 
 than the Pope himself. It would have been against all na 
 ture and precedent if I had not become his dear friend and 
 protege, which I did accordingly, for I liked him very much 
 
STUDENT LIFE AND TRAVEL IN EUROPE. 129 
 
 indeed, and Heaven knows that such a rum couple of friends 
 as Giuseppe Navone and myself, when out walking together, 
 could not at that time have been found in Europe. 
 
 It may here be observed that I was decidedly getting on 
 in the quality of my Mentors, for, as regarded morals and 
 humanity, my old pirate and slaver friend was truly as a 
 lamb and an angel of light compared to Navone. And I 
 will further indicate, as this book will prove, that if I was 
 not at the age of twenty-three the most accomplished young 
 scoundrel in all Europe, it was not for want of such magnifi 
 cent opportunities and friends as few men ever enjoyed. But 
 it was always my fate to neglect or to be unable to profit by 
 advantages, as, for instance, in mathematics ; nor in dishon 
 esty did I succeed one whit better, which may be the reason 
 why the two are somehow dimly connected in my mind. 
 Here I think I see the unfathomable smile in the eye of 
 Professor Dodd (it never got down to his lips), who was the 
 incarnate soul of purity and honour. But then the banker, 
 E. Fenzi, who swindled me out of nearly 500 francs, was an 
 arithmetician, and I write under a sense of recent wrong. 
 How this loss, and Fenzi s failure, flight, and the fuss which 
 it all caused in Florence, were accurately foretold me by a 
 witch, may be read in detail in my " Etrusco-Roman Re 
 mains in Tuscan Tradition." London : T. Fisher Unwin. 
 
 My landlady was a very zealous Catholic, and tried to con 
 vert me. This was a new experience, and I enjoyed it. I 
 proved malleable. So she called in a Jesuit priest to perfect 
 the work. I listened with deep interest to his worn-out fade 
 arguments, made a few points of feeble objection for form s 
 sake, yielded, and met him more than half way. But some 
 how he never called again. Latet anguis in herba my 
 grass was rather too green, I suppose. I was rather sorry, 
 for I expected some amusement. But I had been too deep 
 for the Jesuit and for myself. 
 
 The time came for my departure. I was to go alone on 
 to Florence, in advance of my friends. Navonc arranged 
 
130 MEMOIRS. 
 
 everything nicely for me : I was to go by diligence on to 
 Civita Vecchia, where I was to call on a relative of his, who 
 kept a bric-a-brac shop. I did not know how or why it was 
 that I was treated with such great respect, as if with fear, by 
 the conductor, and by all on the road. I was en route all 
 night, and in the morning, very weary, I went to a hotel, 
 called a commissionaire, and bade him get my passport from 
 the police, and have it visee, and secure me a passage on the 
 boat to Leghorn. He returned very soon, and said with an 
 air of bewilderment, " Signore, you sent me on a useless 
 errand. Here is your passport put all en regie, and your pas 
 sage is all secured ! " 
 
 I saw it at once. The kind fatherly care of the great 
 and good Navone had done it all ! He had watched over me 
 invisibly and mysteriously all the time during the night ; on 
 the road I was a pet child of the Roman police ! The Vehm- 
 gericht had endorsed me with three crosses ! Therefore the 
 passport and the passage were all right, and the captain was 
 very deferential, and I got to Florence safely. 
 
 In Florence I went to the first hotel, which was then in 
 what is now known as the Palazzo Feroni, or Viesseux s, the 
 great circulating library of Italy. It is a fine machicolated 
 building, which was in the Middle Ages the prison of the 
 Republic. From my window I had a fine view of the Via 
 Tornabuoni in which I had coffee since I concluded the 
 last line. There were but three or four persons the first 
 evening at the talle-cThote. One was a very beautiful Polish 
 countess, who spoke French perfectly. She was very fascinat 
 ing, and, when she ate a salad, smeared her lovely mouth and 
 cheeks all round with oil to her ears. Some one said some 
 thing to her about the manner in which the serfs were 
 treated in Poland, whereupon she replied with great vivacity 
 that the Polish serfs were even more degraded and barbarous 
 than those of Russia. Which remark inspired in me certain 
 reflections, which were amply developed- in after years by the 
 perusal of Von Moltke s work on Poland, and more recently 
 
STUDENT LIFE AND TRAVEL IN EUROPE. 131 
 
 of that very interesting novel called " The Deluge." If free 
 dom shrieked when Kosciusko fell, it was probably, from a 
 humanitarian point of view, with joy. 
 
 There was, however, at the same hotel a singular man, a 
 Lithuanian Pole named Andrekovitch, with whom I became 
 very intimate, and whom I met in after years in Paris and in 
 America. He had been at a German university, where he 
 had imbibed most liberal and revolutionary ideas. He subse 
 quently took part in one or two revolutions, and was exiled. 
 He had read about Emerson in a French magazine, and was 
 enthusiastic over him. In strange contrast to him was a 
 handsome young man from the Italian Tyrol, who was, like 
 the Pole and myself, full of literary longings, but who was 
 still quite a Eoman Catholic. He knew about as much, or as 
 little, of the world as I did, and was " gentle and bland." 
 When we bade farewell, he wept, and kissed me. Andreko 
 vitch was eccentric, wild, and Slavonian-odd to look at at any 
 time. One evening he came into my room clad in scarlet 
 dressing-gown, and having altogether the appearance of a 
 sorcerer just out of a Sabbat. The conversation took a theo 
 logical turn. Andrekovitch was the ragged remnant of a 
 Catholic, but a very small one. He sailed close to the wind, 
 and neared Rationalism. 
 
 " But the Pope ! . . ." exclaimed the Tyrolese. 
 
 Andrekovitch rose, looking more sorcerer or Zamiel-like 
 than ever, and exclaiming, " The Pope be - - ! " left the 
 room. The last word was lost in the slam of the door. It 
 was a melodramatic departure, and as such has ever been im 
 pressed on my memory. 
 
 My father, while a merchant, and also my uncle, had done 
 a very large business in Florentine straw goods, and I had 
 received letters to several English houses who had corre 
 sponded with them. I heard, long after, that my arrival had 
 caused a small panic in Florence in business circles, it being 
 apprehended that I had come out to establish a rival branch, 
 or to buy at head-quarters for the American " straw-market." 
 
132 MEMOIRS. 
 
 I believe that their fears were appeased when I interviewed 
 them. One of these worthy men had been so long in Italy 
 that he had caught a little of its superstition. He wished to 
 invest in lottery tickets, and asked me for lucky numbers, 
 which I gave him. 
 
 As I write these lines in Florence, I have within half-an- 
 hour called for the first time on an old witch or strega, whom 
 I found surrounded by herbs and bottles, and a magnificent 
 cat, who fixed his eyes on me all the time, as if he recognised 
 a friend. I found, however, that she only knew the common 
 vulgar sorceries, and was unable to give me any of the higher 
 scongiurazioni or conjurations ; and as I left, the old sorceress 
 said respectfully and admiringly, " You come to me to learn, 
 Maestro, but it is fitter that I take lessons from you ! " 
 Then she asked me for " the wizard blessing," which I gave 
 her in Eomany. So my first and last experiences in the deep 
 and dark art come together ! 
 
 I became acquainted in Florence with Hiram Powers, 
 which reminds me that I once in Kome dined vis-a-vis to 
 Gibson and several other artists, with whom I became inti 
 mate as young men readily do. I contrived to study archi 
 tecture, and made myself very much at home in a few studios. 
 The magnificent Fiorara^ or flower-girl, whom so many will 
 remember for many years, was then in the full bloom of her 
 beauty. She and others gave flowers to any strangers whom 
 they met, not expecting money down, but when a man de 
 parted the flower-girls were always on hand to solicit a gratu 
 ity. Twenty years later this same Fiorara, still a very hand 
 some woman, remembered me, and gave my wife a handsome 
 bouquet on leaving. 
 
 I studied Provencal and Italian poetry in illuminated 
 MSS. in the Ambrosian or Laurentian Library, and took my 
 coffee at Doney s, and saw more of Florence in a few weeks 
 time than I have ever done since in any one of my residences 
 here, though some of them have been for six and nine months. 
 As is quite natural. Who that lives in London ever goes to 
 
STUDENT LIFE AND TRAVEL IN EUROPE. 133 
 
 see the Tower ? All things in Europe were so new and fresh 
 and beautiful and wonderful to me then, and I had been 
 yearning for them so earnestly for so many years, and this 
 golden freedom followed so closely on the deadly ennui of 
 Princeton, that I could never see enough. 
 
 If any of my readers want to know something of sorcery, 
 I can tell them that among its humblest professors it is per 
 fectly understood that pleasure or enjoyment is one of its 
 deepest mysteries or principles, as an integral part of fascina 
 tion. So I can feel an enchantment, sometimes almost in 
 credible, in gazing on a Gothic ruin in sunshine, or a beautiful 
 face, a picture by Carpaccio, Norse interlaces, lovable old books, 
 my amethyst amulet, or a garden. For if you could sway 
 life and death, and own millions, or walk invisible, you could 
 do no more than enjoy ; therefore you had better learn to en 
 joy much without such power. Thus endeth the first lesson ! 
 
 I arrived in Venice. There had been a time in America 
 when, if I could have truthfully declared that I had ever 
 been in a gondola, I should have felt as if I held a diploma 
 of nobility in the Grand Order of Cosmopolites. Having 
 been conveyed in one to my hotel on the Grand Canal, I felt 
 that I at last held it ! Now I had really mastered the three 
 great cities of Italy, which was the first and greatest part of 
 all travel in all the world of culture and of art. Fate might 
 hurl me back to America, or even into New Jersey, but I had 
 "swum in a gondola." 
 
 I very soon made the acquaintance of two brothers from 
 New York named Seymour, somewhat older than myself, 
 and men of reading and culture. With them I " sight-saw " 
 the city. I had read Venice up rather closely at Princeton, 
 and had formed a great desire to go on the Bridge of Sighs. 
 For some reason this was then very strictly forbidden. Our 
 Consul, who was an enterprising young man, told me that he 
 had been for months trying to effect it in vain. It at once 
 became apparent to me as a piece of manifest destiny that I 
 
 must do it. 
 
 7 
 
134 MEMOIRS. 
 
 One day I had with me a clever fellow, a commissionaire 
 or guide, and consulted him. He said, " I think it may be 
 done. You look like an Austrian, and may be taken for an 
 officer. Walk boldly into the chief s office, and ask for the 
 keys of the bridge ; only show a little cheek. You may get 
 them. Give the chief s man two francs when you come out. 
 At the worst, he can only refuse to give them." 
 
 It was indeed a very cheeky undertaking, but I ventured 
 on it with the calmness of innocence. I went into the office, 
 and said, " The keys to the bridge, if you please ! " as if I 
 were in an official hurry on State business. The official 
 stared, and said 
 
 " Do I understand that you formally demand the keys? " 
 " Ja wolil^ certainly ; at once, if you please ! " 
 They were handed over to me, and I saw the bridge and 
 gave the two francs, and all was well. But it gave me no re 
 nown in Venice, for the Consul and all my friends regarded 
 it as a fabulous joke of mine, inspired by poetic genius. But 
 I sometimes think that the official who yielded up the keys, 
 and the man whom he sent with me, and perhaps the com 
 missionaire, all had a put-up job of it among them on those 
 keys, and several glasses all round out of those two francs. 
 Quien sabe 9 Vive la bagatelle ! 
 
 We went on an excursion to Padua. What I remember 
 is, that what impressed me most was a placard here and there 
 announcing that a work on Oken had just appeared ! This 
 rather startled me. Whether it was for or against the great 
 German offshoot from Schelling, it proved that somebody in 
 Italy had actually studied him ! Eppure si muove, I thought. 
 It cannot be true that 
 
 " Padua ! the lamp of learning 
 In thy halls no more is burning." 
 
 I have been there several times since. All that I now 
 recall is that the hotel was not very good the last time. 
 
 I met in Venice a young New Yorker named Clark, who 
 
STUDENT LIFE AND TRAVEL IN EUROPE. 135 
 
 had crossed with me on the ship. He was a merry compan 
 ion. Sailing with him one morning in a gondola along the 
 Grand Canal, we saw sitting before a hotel its porter, who 
 was an unmistakable American man of full colour. Great 
 was Clark s delight, and he called out, " I say, Buck ! what 
 the devil are you doing here?" 
 
 With a delighted grin, the man and brother replied in 
 deep Southern accent 
 
 " Dey sets me hyar fo a bait to tice de Americans with." 
 
 I heard subsequently that he had come from America 
 with his mistress, and served her faithfully till there came 
 into the service a pretty French girl. Great was the anger 
 of the owner of the man to find that he had unmistakably 
 " enticed " the maid. To which he replied that it was a free 
 country ; that he had married the damsel she was his wife ; 
 and so the pair at once packed up and departed. 
 
 We used to hear a great deal before the war from South 
 erns about the devotion of their slaves, but there were a great 
 many instances in which the fidelity did not exactly hold 
 water. There was an old Virginia gentleman who owned 
 one of these faithful creatures. He took him several times 
 to the North, and as the faithful one always turned a deaf 
 ear to the Abolitionists, and resisted every temptation to de 
 part, and refused every free-ticket offered for a journey on 
 " the underground railway," and went back to Richmond, he 
 was of course trusted to an unlimited extent. When the 
 war ended he was freed. Some one asked him one day how 
 he could have been such a fool as to remain a slave. He 
 replied 
 
 " Kase it paid. Dere s numn pays like being a dewoted 
 darkey. De las time I went Norf wid massa I made nuff 
 out of him to buy myself free twice t over." 
 
 Doubtless there were many instances of "pampered and 
 petted " household servants who had grown up in families 
 who had sense to know that they could never live free in the 
 freezing North without hard work. These were the only 
 
136 MEMOIRS. 
 
 devoted ones of whom I ever heard. The field-hands, dis 
 ciplined by the lash, and liable to have their wives or chil 
 dren or relatives sold from them as happened on an average 
 once at least in a life were all to a man quite ready to for 
 sake " ole massa " and " dear ole missus," and flee unto free 
 dom. And what a vile mean wretch any man must be who 
 would sacrifice his freedom to any other living being, be it 
 for love or feudal fidelity and what a villain must the man 
 be who would accept such a gift ! 
 
 I had never thought much of this subject before I left 
 home. I did not like slavery, nor to think about it. But in 
 Europe I did like such thought, and I returned fully im 
 pressed with the belief that slavery was, as Charles Sumner 
 said, "the sum of all crimes." In which summation he 
 showed himself indeed a " sumner," as it was called of yore. 
 Which cost me many a bitter hour and much sorrow, for 
 there was hardly a soul whom I knew, except my mother, to 
 whom an Abolitionist was not simply the same thing as a 
 disgraceful, discreditable malefactor. Even my father, when 
 angry with me one day, could think of nothing bitterer than 
 to tell me that I knew I was an Abolitionist. I kept it to 
 myself, but the reader can have no idea of what I was made 
 to suffer for years in Philadelphia, where everything South 
 ern was exalted and worshipped with a baseness below that 
 of the blacks themselves. 
 
 For all of which in after years I had full and complete 
 recompense. I lived to see the young ladies who were ready 
 to kneel before any man who owned " sla-iives," detest the 
 name of " South," and to learn that their fathers and friends 
 were battling to the death to set those slaves free. I lived to 
 see the roof of the " gentlemanly planter," who could not of 
 yore converse a minute with me without letting me know 
 that he considered himself as an immeasurably higher being 
 than myself, blaze over his head amid yell and groan and 
 sabre-stroke 
 
 " And death-shots flying thick and fast," 
 
STUDENT LIFE AND TRAVEL IN EUROPE. 137 
 
 while he fled for life, and the freed slaves sang hymns of joy 
 to God. I saw the roads, five miles wide, level, barren, and 
 crossed with ruts, where Northern and Southern armies 
 had marched, and where villages and plantations had once 
 been. I saw countless friends or acquaintances, who had once 
 smiled with pitying scorn at me, or delicately turned the con 
 versation when Abolition was mentioned in my presence, be 
 come all at once blatant u nigger-worshippers," abundant in 
 proof that they had always had " an indescribable horror of 
 slavery " it was, in fact, so indescribable that (until it was 
 evident that the North would conquer) none of them ever 
 succeeded in giving anybody the faintest conception of it, or 
 any idea that it existed. I can still recall how gingerly and 
 cautiously " paw by paw into the water " these dough 
 faces became hard-baked Abolitionists, far surpassing us of 
 the Old Guard in zeal. I lived to see men who had voted 
 against Grant and reviled him become his most intimate 
 friends. But enough of such memories. It is characteristic 
 of the American people that, while personally very vindictive, 
 they forgive and forget political offences far more amicably 
 very far than do even the English. However, in the case 
 of the Rebellion, this was a very easy thing for those to do 
 who had not, like us old Abolitionists, borne the burden and 
 heat of the day, and who, coming in at the eleventh hour, 
 got all the contracts and offices ! It never came into the 
 head of any man to write a Dictionnaire des Girouettes in 
 America. These late converts had never known what it was 
 to be Abolitionists while it was " unfashionable," and have, 
 as it were, live coals laid on the quivering heart as I had a 
 thousand times during many years all for believing the tre 
 mendous and plain truth that slavery was a thousand times 
 wickeder than the breach of all the commandments put to 
 gether. It was so peculiar for any man, not a Unitarian or 
 Quaker, to be an Abolitionist in Philadelphia from 1848 
 until 1861, that such exceptions were pointed out as if they 
 had been Chinese" and d d bad Chinese at that," as a 
 
138 MEMOIRS. 
 
 friend added to whom I made the remark. So much for 
 man s relations with poor humanity. 
 
 My old friend, B. P. Hunt, was one of these few excep 
 tions. His was a very strange experience. After ceasing to 
 edit a " selected " magazine, he went to and fro for many 
 voyages to Haiti, where, singular as it may seem, his experi 
 ences of the blacks made of him a stern Abolitionist. He 
 married a connection of mine, and lived comfortably in 
 Philadelphia, I think, until the eighties. 
 
 I travelled with Mr. Clark from Venice to Milan, where 
 we made a short visit. I remember an old soldier who spoke 
 six languages, who was cicerone of the roof of the Cathedral, 
 and whom I found still on the roof twenty years later, and 
 still speaking the same six tongues. I admired the building 
 as a beautiful fancy, exquisitely decorated, but did not think 
 much of it as a specimen of Gothic architecture. It is the 
 best test of aBsthetic culture and knowledge in the world. 
 When you hear anybody praise it as the most exquisite or 
 perfect Gothic cathedral in existence, you may expect to hear 
 the critic admire the designs of Chippendale furniture or the 
 decoration of St. Peter s. 
 
 So we passed through beautiful Lombardy and came to 
 Domo d Ossola, where a strange German-Italian patois was 
 spoken. It was in the middle of April, and we were warned 
 that it would be very dangerous to cross the Simplon, but we 
 went on all night in a carriage on sleigh-runners, through 
 intervals of snowstorm. Now and then we came to rushing 
 mountain-torrents bursting over the road ; far away, ever and 
 anon, we heard the roar of a lauwine or avalanche ; some 
 times I looked out, and could see straight down below me a 
 thousand feet into an abyss or on a headlong stream. We 
 entered the great tunnel directly from another, for the snow 
 lay twenty feet deep on the road, and a passage had been 
 dug under it for several hundred feet, and so two tunnels 
 were connected. Just in the worst of the road beyond, and 
 in the bitterest cold, we met a sleigh, in which were an Eng- 
 
STUDENT LIFE AND TRAVEL IN EUROPE. 139 
 
 lish gentleman and a very beautiful young lady, apparently 
 his daughter, going to Italy. " I saw her but an instant, yet 
 methinks I see her now " a sweet picture in a strange scene. 
 Poets used to " me-think " and " me-seem " more in those 
 days, but we endured it. Then in the morning we saw 
 Brieg, far down below us in the valley in green leaves and 
 sunshine, and when we got there then I realised that we 
 were in a new land. 
 
 We had a great giant of a German conductor, who seemed 
 to regard Clark and me as under his special care. Once when 
 we had wandered afar to look at something, and it was time 
 for the stage or Eilivagen to depart, he hunted us up, scolded 
 us " like a Dutch uncle " in German, and drove us along be 
 fore him like two bad boys to the diligence, " pawing up " 
 first one and then the other, after which, shoving us in, he 
 banged and locked the door with a grunt of satisfaction, even 
 as the Giant Blunderbore locked the children in the coffer 
 after slamming down the lid. Across the scenes and shades 
 of forty years, that picture of the old conductor driving us 
 like two unruly urchins back to school rises, never to be for 
 gotten. 
 
 We went by mountains and lakes and Gothic towns, rocks, 
 forests, old chateaux, and rivers the road was wild in those 
 days till we came to Geneva. Thence Clark went his way 
 to Paris, and I remained alone for a week. I had, it is true, 
 a letter of introduction to a very eminent Presbyterian Swiss 
 clergyman, so I sent it in with my card. His wife came out 
 on the balcony, looked coolly down at me, and concluding, I 
 suppose from my appearance, that I was one of the ungodly, 
 went in and sent out word that her husband was out, and 
 would be gone for an indefinite period, and that she was en 
 gaged. The commissionaire who was with me poor devil ! 
 was dreadfully mortified ; but I was not very much aston 
 ished, and, indeed, I was treated in much the same manner, 
 or worse, by a colleague of this pious man in Paris, or rather 
 by his wife. 
 
140 MEMOIRS. 
 
 I believe that what kept me a week in Geneva was the 
 white wine and trout. At the end of the time I set out to 
 the north, and on the way met with some literary or profes 
 sional German, who commended to me the " Pfisterer-Zunf t " 
 or Bakers Guild as a cheap and excellent hostelry. And it 
 was curious enough, in all conscience. During the Middle 
 Ages, and down to a very recent period, the Zilnfte or trade- 
 guilds in the Swiss cities carried it with a high hand. Even 
 the gentlemen could only obtain rights as citizens by enroll 
 ing themselves as the trade of aristocrats. I had heard of 
 the boy who thought he would like to be bound apprentice 
 to the king ; in Berne he might have been entered for a 
 lower branch of the business. These guilds had their own 
 local taverns, inns, or Herbergs, where travelling colleagues 
 of the calling might lodge at moderate rates, but nobody else. 
 However, as time rolled by, these Zilnfte or guild-lodgings 
 were opened to strangers. One of the last which did so was 
 that of the Pfister or bakers (Latin, pistor], and this had 
 only been done a few weeks ere I went there. As a literary 
 man whom I met on the ramparts said to me, " That place 
 is still strong in the Middle Age." It was a quaint old 
 building, and to get to my room I had to cross the great 
 guild-hall of the Ancient and Honourable Society of Bakers. 
 There were the portraits of all the Grand Masters of the 
 Order from the fourteenth or fifteenth century on the walls, 
 and the concentrated antique tobacco-smoke of as many ages 
 in the air, which, to a Princeton graduate, was no more than 
 the scent of a rose to a bee. 
 
 I could speak a little German not much but the degree 
 to which I felt, sympathised with, and understood everything 
 Deutsch, passeth all words and all mortal belief. Sit verbo 
 venial But I do not believe that any human being ever 
 crossed the frontier who had thought himself down, or rather 
 raised himself up, into Teutonism as I had on so slight a 
 knowledge of the language, even as a spider throweth up an 
 invisible thread on high, and then travels on it. Which 
 
STUDENT LIFE AND TRAVEL IN EUROPE. 
 
 thing was perceived marvellously soon, and not without some 
 amazement, by the Germans, who have all at least this one 
 point in common with Savages, New Jerseymen, Red Indians, 
 Negroes, Gypsies, and witches, that they by mystic sympathy 
 know those ivho like them, and take to them accordingly, 
 guided by some altogether inexplicable clue or Hexengam, 
 even as deep calleth unto deep and star answereth star with 
 out a voice. Whence it was soon observed at Heidelberg by 
 an American student that " Leland would abuse the Dutch 
 all day long if he saw fit, but never allowed anybody else to 
 do so." The which thing, as I think, argues the very ne 
 plus ultra of sympathy. 
 
 I found my way to Strasburg, where I went to the tip-top 
 outside of the cathedral, and took the railway train for Hei 
 delberg. And here I had an adventure, which, though trifling 
 to the last degree, was to me such a great and new experience 
 that I will describe it, let the reader think what he will. I 
 went naturally enough first-class, so uncommon a thing then 
 in Germany that people were wont to say that only princes, 
 Englishmen, and asses did so. There entered the same car 
 nage a very lady-like and pretty woman. The guard, seeing 
 this, concluded that whatever he concluded, he carefully 
 drew down all the curtains, looking at me with a cheerful, 
 genial air of intense mystery, as if to say, " I twig ; it s all 
 right ; I ll keep your secret." 
 
 It is a positive fact that all this puzzled me amazingly. 
 There were many things in which I, the friend and pupil of 
 Navone, was as yet as innocent as a babe unborn. The lady 
 seemed to be amused as well she might. Sancta simplici- 
 tas ! I asked her why tRe conductor had drawn the cur 
 tains. She laughed, and explained that he possibly thought 
 we were a bridal pair or lovers. Common sense and ordi 
 nary politeness naturally inspired the reply that I wished we 
 were, which declaration was so amiably received that I sug 
 gested the immediate institution of such an arrangement. 
 Which was so far favourably received that it was sealed with 
 
142 MEMOIRS. 
 
 a kiss. However, the seal was not broken. I think the lady 
 must have been very much amused. It is not without due 
 reflection that I record this. Kissing went for very little in 
 Germany in those days. It was about as common in Vienna 
 as shaking hands. But this was my first experience in it. 
 So I record it, because it seems as if some benevolent fairy 
 had welcomed me to Germany ; it took place just as we 
 crossed the frontier. However, I found out some time after, 
 by a strange accident, that my fairy was the wife of a banker 
 who lived beyond Heidelberg ; and at Heidelberg I left her 
 and went to the first hotel in the town. 
 
 I had formed no plans, and had no letters to anybody. I 
 had read Howitt s " Student Life in Germany " through and 
 through, so I thought I would study in Heidelberg. But 
 how to begin ? That was the question. I went into a shop 
 and bought some cigars. There I consulted with the shop 
 keeper as to what I should do. Could he refer me to some 
 leading authority in the University, known to him, who 
 would give me advice ? He could, and advised me to consult 
 with the Pedell Capelmann. 
 
 Now I didn t know it, but Pedell meaning beadle, com 
 monly called Poodle by the students was the head-constable 
 of the University. In honest truth I supposed he must be 
 the President or Pro-Eector. So I went to Pedell Capel 
 mann. His appearance did not quite correspond to my idea 
 of a learned professor. He was an immensely burly, good- 
 natured fellow, who came in in his shirt-sleeves, and who, 
 when he learned what I wanted, burst out into a JEferW 
 Gottsdonnerwetter ! of surprise, as he well might. But I 
 knew that the Germans were a very sans fa? on bourgeois peo 
 ple, and still treated him with deep respect. He suggested 
 that, as there were a great many American students there, I 
 had better call on them. He himself would take me to see 
 
 the Herr , with whom, as I subsequently learned, he 
 
 had more than once had discussions relative to questions of 
 University-municipal discipline. As for the startling pecul- 
 
STUDENT LIFE AND TRAVEL IN EUROPE. 143 
 
 iarity which attended my introduction to University life, it is 
 best summed up in the remark which the Herr 0. (of Balti 
 more) subsequently made. 
 
 " Great God, fellows ! lie made Ms first call on old Capel- 
 mann ! ! " 
 
 He took me to the Herr 0. and introduced me. I was 
 overwhelmed with my cordial reception. There was at once 
 news sent forth that a new. man and a brother fellow-coun 
 tryman had come to join the ranks. "And messengers 
 through all the land sought Sir Tannhauser out." I was 
 pumped drv as to my precedents, and as I came fresh from 
 Princeton and had "been through Italy, I was approved of. 
 The first thing was a discussion as to where I was to live. 
 The Fran Directorinn Louis in the University Place had two 
 fine rooms which had just been occupied by a prince. So we 
 went and secured the rooms, which were indeed very pleas 
 ant, and by no means dear as it seemed to me. I was to 
 breakfast in my rooms, dine with the family at one o clock, 
 and sup about town. 
 
 Then there was a grand council as to what I had better 
 study, and over my prospects in life ; and it was decided that, 
 as the law-students were the most distinguished or swell of 
 all, I had better be a lawyer. So it was arranged that I 
 should attend Mittermayer s and others lectures ; to all of 
 which I cheerfully assented. The next step was to give a 
 grand supper in honour of my arrival. After the dinner and 
 the wine, I drank twelve schoppens of beer, and then excused 
 myself on the plea of having letters to write. I believe, how 
 ever, that I forgot to write the letters. And here I may say, 
 once for all, that having discovered that, if I had no gift for 
 mathematics, I had a great natural talent for Rheinwein and 
 lager, I did not bury that talent in a napkin, but, like the 
 rest of my friends, made the most of it, firstly, during two 
 semesters in Heidelberg : 
 
 " Then I bolted off to Munich, 
 And within the year, 
 
MEMOIRS. 
 
 Underneath my German tunic 
 
 Stowed whole butts of beer ; 
 For I drank like fifty fishes, 
 
 Drank till all was blue, 
 For whenever I was vicious 
 
 I was thirsty too." 
 
 The result of which " dire deboshing " was that, having 
 come to Europe with a soul literally attenuated and starved 
 for want of the ordinary gaiety and amusement which all 
 youth requires, my life in Princeton having been one con 
 tinued strain of a sobriety which continually sank into sub 
 dued melancholy, and a body just ready to yield to con 
 sumption, I grew vigorous and healthy, or, as the saying is, 
 " hearty as a buck." I believe that if my Cousin Sam had 
 gone on with me even-pace, that he would have lived till to 
 day. When we came abroad I seemed to be the weakest ; 
 he returned, and died in a few months from our hereditary 
 disease. How many hecatombs of young men have been 
 murdered by " seriousness " and " total abstinence," miscalled 
 temperance, in our American colleges, can never be known ; 
 perhaps it is as well that it never will be ; for if it were, there 
 would be a rush to the other extreme, which would " upset 
 society." And here be it noted that, with all our inordinate 
 national or international Anglo-Saxon sense of superiority to 
 everybody and everything foreign, we are in the main thing 
 that is, the truly rational enjoyment of life and the art of 
 living utterly inferior to the German and Latin races. We 
 are for the most part either too good or too bad totally ab 
 stemious or raving drunk always in a hurry after excitement 
 or in a worry over our sins, or those of our neighbours. " Rest, 
 rest, perturbed Yankee, rest ! " 
 
 My rooms were on the ground-floor, the bedroom looking 
 into the University Square and my study into a garden. 
 Next door to me dwelt Paulus, the king of the Rationalists. 
 He was then, I believe, ninety-four years of age. He re 
 mained daily till about twelve or one in a comatose condition, 
 
STUDENT LIFE AND TRAVEL IN EUROPE. 145 
 
 when he awoke and became lively till about three, when he 
 sank into sleep again. His days were like those of a far 
 Northern winter, lit by the sun at the same hours. 
 
 The next morning a very gentlemanly young man knocked 
 at my door, and entered and asked in perfect English for a 
 Mr. Bell, who lived in the same house. I informed him that 
 Mr. Bell was out, but asked him to enter my room and take 
 a chair, which he did, conversing with me for half an hour, 
 when he departed, leaving a card on a side-table. In a few 
 minutes later, 0., who was of the kind who notice everything, 
 entered, took up the card, and read on it the name and ad 
 dress of the young Grand Duke of Baden, who was naturally 
 by far the greatest man in the country, he being its heredi 
 tary ruler. 
 
 " Where the devil did you get this ? " asked 0., and all, in 
 amazement. 
 
 " Oh," I replied, " it s only the Duke. He has just been 
 in here making a call. If you fellows had come five minutes 
 sooner you d have seen him. Have some beer ! " 
 
 The impression that I was a queer lot, due to my making 
 my first call on Capelmann et cetera, was somewhat strength 
 ened by this card, until I explained how I came by it. But 
 as Dr. Johnson in other words remarked, there are people to 
 whom such queer things happen daily, and others to whom 
 they occur once a year. And there was never yet a living 
 soul who entered into my daily life who did not observe that 
 I belong to the former class. If I have a guardian angel, it 
 must be Edgar A. Poe s Angel of the Odd. But he generally 
 comes to those who belong to him ! 
 
 It was a long time before I profited much by my lectures, 
 because it was fearful work for me to learn German. I en 
 gaged a tutor, and worked hard, and read a great deal, and 
 talked it con amore ; but few persons would believe how 
 slowly I learned it, and with what incredible labour. How 
 often have I cursed up hill and down dale, the Tower of 
 Babel, which first brought the curse of languages upon the 
 
146 MEMOIRS. 
 
 world ! And what did I ever have to do with that Tower ? 
 Had I lived in those days, I would never have laid hand to 
 the work in merry, sunny, lazy Babylon, nor contributed a 
 brick to it. By the way, it was a juvenile conjecture of mine 
 that the Tower of Babel was destroyed for being a shot-tower, 
 in which ammunition was prepared to be used by the heathen. 
 Which theory might very well have been inspired by a verse 
 from the old Puritanical rendering of the Psalms : 
 
 " Ye race itt is not al waves gott 
 By him who swiftest runns, 
 Nor y e Battell by y e Peo-pel 
 
 Who shoot with longest gunnes." 
 
 Even before I had gone to Princeton I had read and 
 learned a great deal relative to Justinus Kerner, the great 
 German supernaturalist, mystic, and poet, firstly from a 
 series of articles in the Dublin University Magazine, and 
 later from a translation of " The Seeress of Prevorsfc," and 
 several of the good man s own romances and lyrics. I sup 
 pose that, of all men on the face of the earth, I should have 
 at that time preferred to meet him. Wherefore, as a matter 
 of course, it occurred that one fine morning a pleasant gentle 
 manly German friend of mine, who spoke English perfectly, 
 and whose name was Riicker, walked into my room, and 
 proposed that we should take a two or three days walk up 
 the Neckar with our knapsacks, and visit the famous old 
 ruined castle of the Weibertreue. My mother had read me 
 the ballad-legend of it in my boyhood, and I had learned it 
 by heart. Indeed, I can still recall it after sixty years : 
 
 " Who can tell me where Weinsberg lies ? 
 
 As brave a town as any ; 
 It must have sheltered in its time 
 
 Brave wives and maidens many : 
 If e er I wooing have to do, 
 Good faith, in Weinsberg I will woo ! " 
 
 " And then, when we are there," said Riicker, " we will call 
 
STUDENT LIFE AND TRAVEL IN EUROPE. 14.7 
 
 on an old friend of my father s, named Justinus Kerner. 
 Did you ever hear of him ? " 
 
 Did a Jew ever hear of Moses, or an American of General 
 Washington ? In five minutes I convinced my friend that I 
 knew more about Kerner than he himself did. Whereupon it 
 was decided that we should set forth on the following morning. 
 
 Blessed, beautiful, happy summer mornings in Suabia 
 green mounts and grey rocks with old castles peasants har 
 vesting hay a Kirchwcih, or peasant s merry-making, with 
 dancing and festivity till we came to Weinsberg, and forth 
 with called on the ancient sage, whom we found with the 
 two or three ladies and gentlemen of his family. I saw at a 
 glance that they had the air of aristocracy. He received us 
 very kindly, and invited us to come to dinner and sup with 
 him. 
 
 The Weibertreue is an old castle which was in or at the 
 end of Dr. Kerner s garden. Once, when all the town had 
 taken refuge in it from the Emperor Conrad, the latter gave 
 the women leave to quit the fort, and also permission to 
 every one to carry with her whatever was unto her most valu 
 able, precious, or esteemed. And so the dames went forth, 
 every one bearing on her back her husband. 
 
 In the tower of the castle, or in its wall, which was six 
 feet thick, were eight or ten windows, gradually opening like 
 trumpets, through which the wind blew all the time, and 
 pleasantly enough on a hot summer day. In each of these 
 the Doctor had placed an ^Eolian harp, and he who did not 
 believe in fairies or the gentle spirit of a viewless sound 
 should have sat in that tower and listened to the music as it 
 rose and fell, as in endless solemn glees or part-singing ; one 
 harp stepping in, and pealing out richly and strangely as 
 another died away, while anon, even as the new voice came, 
 there thrilled in unison one or two more Ariels who seemed 
 to be hurrying up to join the song. It was a marvellous 
 strange thing of beauty, which resounded, indeed, all over 
 Germany, for men spoke of it far and wide. 
 
148 MEMOIRS. 
 
 Quite as marvellous, in the evening, was the Doctor s own 
 performance on the single and double Jew s harp. From 
 this most unpromising instrument he drew airs of such ex 
 quisite beauty that one could not have been more astonished 
 had he heard the sweet tones of Grisi drawn from a cat by 
 twisting its tail. But we were in a land of marvels and won 
 ders, or, as an English writer described it, " Weinsberg, a 
 place on the Neckar, inhabited partly by men and women- 
 some in and some out of the body and partly by ghosts." 
 There were visions in the air, and dreams sitting on the stair 
 cases ; in fact, when I saw the peasants working in the fields, 
 I should not have been astonished to see them vanish into 
 mist or sink into the ground. 
 
 And yet from the ruined castle of the Weibertreue 
 Kerner pointed out to us a man walking along the road, and 
 that man was the very incarnation of all that was sober, 
 rational, and undream-like ; for it was David Strauss, author 
 of the " Life of Jesus." And at him too I gazed with the 
 awe due to a great man whose name is known to all the cul 
 tured world ; and to me much more than the name ; for I 
 had read, as before mentioned, his " Life of Jesus " when I 
 first went to Princeton. 
 
 Dr. Kerner took to me greatly, and said that I very much 
 reminded him, in appearance and conversation, of what his 
 most intimate friend, Ludwig Uhland, had been at my age ; 
 and as he repeated this several times, and spoke of it long 
 after to friends, I think it must have been true, although I 
 am compelled to admit that people who pride themselves on 
 looking like this or that celebrity never resemble him in the 
 least, mentally or spiritually, and are generally only mere 
 caricatures at best. 
 
 On our return we climbed into an old Gothic church- 
 tower, in which I found a fifteenth-century bell, bearing the 
 words, Vivas voco, mortuos plango,fulgura frango, and much 
 
 more 
 
 " The dead I knell, the living 1 wake, 
 And the power of lightning break ! " 
 
STUDENT LIFE AND TRAVEL IN EUROPE. 
 
 which caused me to reflect on the vast degree to which all 
 the minor uses and observances of the Church which are 
 nine-tenths of all their religion to the multitude were only 
 old heathen superstitions in new dresses. The bell was a 
 spell against the demons of lightning in old Etrurian days ; 
 to this time the Tuscan peasant bears one in the darkening 
 twilight-tide to drive away the witches flitting round : in him 
 and them " those evening bells " inspired a deeper sentiment 
 than poetry. 
 
 In a village, Riicker, finding the beer very good, bought 
 a cask of it, which was put on board the little Neckar steam 
 boat on which we returned to Heidelberg. And thus pro 
 vided, the next evening he gave a " barty " up in the old 
 castle, among the ruins by moonlight, where I " assisted," 
 and the lager was devoured, even to the last drop. 
 
 I soon grew tired of the family dinners with the Frau 
 Inspectoriiin and the Herr Inspector with the one tumbler 
 of Neckar wine, which I was expected not to exceed ; so I 
 removed my dining to the " Court of Holland," a first-class 
 hotel, where 0. and the other Americans met, and where the 
 expectation was not that a man should by any means limit 
 himself to one glass, but that, taking at least one to begin 
 with, he should considerably exceed it. This hotel was kept 
 by a man named Spitz, who looked his name to perfection. 
 
 " Er spitzt betriibt die Nase," 
 
 as Scheffel wrote of him in his poem, Numero Adit, the scene 
 of which is laid in the " Court of Holland." Here a word 
 about Scheffel. During the following semester he was for 
 months a daily table-companion of mine at the Bremer-Ec.k, 
 where a small circle of students quorum pars fui met 
 every evening to sup and kneip, or to drink beer and smoke 
 and sing until eleven. Little did I dream in those days that 
 he would become the great popular poet of his time, or that 
 I should ever translate his Gaudeamus. I owe the " Court 
 of Holland " to this day for a dinner and a bottle of wine. 
 
150 MEMOIRS. 
 
 It is the only debt I owe, to my knowledge, to anybody on 
 earth. 
 
 It was resolved among the Americans that we should all 
 make a foot-excursion with knapsacks down the Khine to 
 Cologne. It was done. So we went gaily from town to town, 
 visiting everything, making excursions inland now and then. 
 We had a bottle or two of the best Johannisberg in the very 
 Schloss itself omne cum prcetio and meeting with such 
 adventures as befell all wandering students in those old- 
 fashioned, merry times. The Rhine was wild as yet, and not 
 paved, swept, garnished and full of modern villas and adorn 
 ment, as now. I had made, while in America, a manuscript 
 book of the places and legends of and on the Rhine, with 
 many drawings. This, and a small volume of Snow s and 
 Planche s " Legends of the Rhine," I carried with me. I was 
 already well informed as to every village and old ruin or 
 tower on the banks. 
 
 So we arrived at Cologne, and saw all the sights. The 
 cathedral was not then finished, and the town still boasted its 
 two-and-seventy stinks, as counted by Coleridge. Then we 
 returned by steamer to Mainz, and thence footed it home. 
 
 Little by little I rather fell away from my American 
 friends, a ffiT began to take to German or English associates, 
 and especially to the company of two Englishmen. One was 
 named Leonard Field, who is now a lawyer in Lincoln s Inn 
 Fields ; the other was Ewan P. Colquhoun, a younger brother 
 of Sir Patrick Colquhoun, whom I knew well, and as friend, 
 in after years, until his recent death. I always, however, 
 maintained a great intimacy with George Ward, of Boston, 
 who became long after a banker and Baring s agent in Amer 
 ica. In one way and another these two twined into my life 
 in after years, and led to my making many acquaintances or 
 friends. 
 
 I walked a great deal all about Heidelberg to many very 
 picturesque places, maintaining deep interest in all I saw 
 by much loving reading of Des Knaben Wunderliorn and 
 
STUDENT LIFE AND TRAVEL IN EUROPE. 151 
 
 Uhland s collection of old German songs his own poems I 
 knew long before the Nibelungen and Hero- Book, and a 
 great variety of other works. I had dropped the Occulta, 
 and for a year or two read nothing of the kind except casually 
 the works of Eckhartshausen and Justinus Kerner. I can 
 now see that, as I became healthy and strong, owing to the 
 easy, pleasant existence which I led, it was best for me after 
 all. "Grappling with life" and earnestly studying a pro 
 fession then might haffe extinguished me. My mental spring, 
 though not broken, was badly bent, and it required a long 
 time to straighten it. 
 
 Colquhoun was only eighteen, but far beyond his years in 
 dissipation, and well-nigh advanced to cool cynicism. With 
 him I made many an excursion all about the country. 
 Wherever a Kirchiveih or peasants ball was to be held, he 
 always knew of it, and there we went. One morning early 
 he came to my rooms. There was to be a really stunning 
 duel fought early between a Senior and some very illustrious 
 Schlciger, and he had two English friends named Burnett 
 who would go with us. So we went, and meeting with Riicker 
 at the Pawkboden, it was proposed that we should go on to 
 gether to Baden-Baden. To which I objected that I had 
 only twenty florins in my pocket, and had no time to return 
 home for more. " Never mind," said Colquhoun ; " Riicker 
 has plenty of money ; we can borrow from him." 
 
 We went to Baden and to the first hotel, and had a fine 
 dinner, and saw the Burnetts off. Then, of course, to the 
 gaming-table, where Colquhoun speedily lost all his money, 
 and I so much that I had but ten florins left. " Never 
 mind; we ll pump on Riicker," said Colquhoun. 
 
 We went up to visit the old castle. While there, Riicker 
 took off his overcoat, in which he had his pocket-book, and 
 laid it over a chair. When we returned to the hotel the 
 pocket-book was gone ! There we were, with a hotel- bill to 
 pay and never a cent wherewith to pay it. I had, however, 
 still ten florins. Colquhoun suddenly remembered that he 
 
152 MEMOIRS. 
 
 had seen something in the town, price ten florins, which he 
 must buy. It was something which he had promised to buy 
 for a relative in England. It was a very serious case of 
 necessity. 
 
 I doubted my dear friend, but having sworn him by all 
 his gods that he would not gamble with the money, I gave 
 it to him. So he, of course, went straight to the gaming 
 table, and, having luck, won enough to pay our debt and 
 take us home. 
 
 I should mention that Riicker went up to the castle 
 and found his pocket-book with all the money. " For not 
 only doth Fortune favour the bold," as is written in rny 
 great unpublished romance of " Flaxius the Immortal," " but, 
 while her hand is in, also helps their friends with no un 
 sparing measure, as is marvellously confirmed by Machia- 
 velli." 
 
 Vacation came. My friends scattered far and wide. I 
 joined with three German friends and one Frenchman, and 
 we strapped on our knapsacks for a foot-journey into Switzer 
 land. First we went to Freiburg in Baden, and saw the old 
 Cathedral, and so on, singing, and stopping to drink, and 
 meeting with other students from other universities, and 
 resting in forests, amid mountains, by roaring streams, and 
 entering cottages and chatting with girls. Hurra ! frei ist 
 der bursch ! 
 
 One afternoon we walked sixteen miles through a rain 
 which was like a waterfall. I was so drenched that it was 
 with difficulty I kept my passport and letter of exchange 
 from being ruined. When we came out of the storm there 
 were six of us ! Another student had, unseen, joined our 
 party in the rain, and I had never noticed it ! 
 
 We came to a tavern at the foot of the Eigiberg. My 
 pack was soaked. One friend lent me a shirt, another a 
 pair of drawers, and we wrapped ourselves in sheets from 
 the beds and called for brandy and water hot a pleasing 
 novelty to the Germans and so went to bed. The next day 
 
STUDENT LIFE AND TRAVEL IN EUROPE. 153 
 
 we ascended the Rigi ; found many students there ; did not 
 see the sun rise in the morning, but still a mighty panorama, 
 wondrous fair, and so walked down again. And receiving 
 my carpet-bag at Lucerne, whither I had had the precaution to 
 send one, I dressed myself again in clean linen and went back 
 to Germany. I meant to travel more in Switzerland, but it 
 was very rainy that year, and, as it proved, I did wisely. 
 
 I returned to Spitz, but his house was full of English, 
 and he informed me, rather exultantly and foolishly, that he 
 had no room for me, and could not tell me where to go, 
 " every place was full." As I had spent money freely with 
 him I did not like it. The head -waiter followed me out and 
 recommended the Black Eagle, kept by Herr Lehr. There 
 I went, got a good room, and for months after dined daily at 
 its table-cfhote. I sent friends there, and returned to the 
 house with my wife twenty years later. My brother also 
 went there long after, and endeared himself to all, helping 
 Herr Lehr to plant his vines. In after years Herr Lehr had 
 forgotten me, but not my brother. Lehr s son was a gentle 
 manly young fellow, well educated. He became a captain, 
 and was the first officer killed in the Franco-German war. 
 
 Vacation passed, and the students returned and lectures 
 were resumed. There was a grand Commers or students 
 supper meeting at which I was present ; and again the duel 
 ling-ground rang with the sound of blades, and all was merry 
 as before. Herr Zimmer, the University dancing-master, 
 gave lessons and cotillion or waltzing-parties thrice a week, 
 and these I regularly attended. Those who came to them 
 were the daughters of the humbler professors and respect 
 able shopkeepers. During the previous session I had taken 
 lessons from a little old Frenchman, who brought his fiddle 
 and a pretty daughter twice a week to my room, where, with 
 Ward, we formed a class of three. 
 
 This gentleman was a perfect type fit to be staged with 
 out a touch of change of the old emigre, who has now van 
 ished, even from among the French. His bows, his wit la 
 
154: MEMOIRS. 
 
 grace extraordinaire the intonations of his voice, and his 
 vivacity, were beyond the art of any actor now living. There 
 were many more peculiar and marked types of character in 
 the last generation than now exist, when Everybody is becom 
 ing Everybody else with such fearful rapidity. 
 
 There were four great masked balls held in Heidelberg 
 during the winter, each corresponding to a special state of 
 society. That at the Museum or great University Club was 
 patronised by the elite of nobility and the professors and 
 their families. Then came the Harmonie respectable, but 
 not aristocratic. Then another in a hotel, which was rather 
 more rowdy than reputable ; not really outrageous, yet where 
 the gentlemen students " whooped it up " in grand style with 
 congenial grisettes ; and, finally, there was a fancy ball at 
 the Waldhorn, or some such place, or several of them, over 
 the river, where peasants and students with maids to match 
 could waltz once round the vast hall for a penny till stopped 
 by a cordon of robust rustics. We thought it great fun with 
 our partners to waltz impetuously and bump with such force 
 against the barrier as to break through, in which case we 
 were not only greatly admired, but got another waltz gratis. 
 We had wild peasant-dancing in abundance, and the con 
 sumption of wine and beer was something awful. 
 
 One morning a German student named Grimer, who had 
 been at Jena, came to my room with a brilliant proposition. 
 We should go to Frankfort and hear Jenny Lind sing in her 
 great role of Norma. I had already heard her sing in con 
 cert in Heidelberg where, by the way, the students rushed 
 into her room as soon as she had left, and tore to strips the 
 bed in which she had slept, and carried them away for sou 
 venirs, to the great amazement of an old Englishman who 
 had just been put into the room. (N. B. I was not in the 
 party.) I objected that it was getting to the end of the 
 month, and that I had not money enough for such an out 
 ing. To which he replied, that we could go on to Homburg, 
 and make money enough at rouge-et-noir to cover all ex- 
 
STUDENT LIFE AND TRAVEL IN EUROPE. 155 
 
 pcnses. This obvious and admirable method of raising funds 
 had not occurred to me, so I agreed to go. 
 
 We went to Frankfort, and heard the greatly overrated 
 Jenny Lind, and the next day proceeded to Hamburg, and 
 at once to the green table. Here I lost a little, but Griiner 
 made so much, that on returning to the table I took from it 
 a sufficient sum to cover all our expenses, and told him that, 
 come what might, it must remain untouched, and gave him 
 the remainder. That afternoon I played for five-franc pieces, 
 and at one time had both my side-pockets so full that they 
 weighed very heavily. And these again I lost. Then Griiner 
 lost all his, and came imploring me for more, but I would 
 not give him a Icreutzer. Matters were beginning to look 
 serious. I had a reserved fund of perhaps fifty napoleons, 
 which I kept for dire need or accidents. That evening I 
 observed a man who had great luck, winning twice out of 
 three times. I watched his play, and as soon as he lost I set 
 a napoleon by which I won enough to clear my expenses, 
 and buy me, moreover, a silver-headed cane, a gold watch- 
 chain, and two Swiss watches. I may mention by the way, 
 that since that day I have never played at anything, save 
 losing a ten-franc piece in after years at Wiesbaden. 
 
 There dined very often at our table-d > li6te in the Adler 
 an old German lady named Helmine von Chezy, who had a 
 reputation as a poetess. With her I sometimes conversed. 
 One day she narrated in full what she declared was the true 
 story of Caspar Hiiuser. Unto her Heine had addressed the 
 epigram 
 
 " Helmine von Chezy, 
 
 Geborene Klencke, 
 
 Ich bitte Sie, geh Sie 
 
 Mit ihrer Poesie, 
 
 Sonst kriegt Sie die Kranke ! " 
 
 " Helmine von Chezy, 
 Born Klencke, I pray 
 With your pestilent poems 
 You ll hasten awav." 
 
156 MEMOIRS. 
 
 There was also an elderly and very pleasant Englishman, 
 with whom I became rather intimate, and who was very kind 
 to me. This was the well-known Captain Medwin, who had 
 known so well Byron, Shelley, Trelawny, and their compeers. 
 He was full of anecdotes, which I now wish that I had re 
 corded. He introduced me to Lady Caroline de Crespigny, 
 who was then living permanently in Heidelberg. This lady, 
 who was said to be then fifty years of age, was still so young- 
 looking and beautiful, that I cannot remember in all my life 
 to have ever seen such an instance of time arrested. I also 
 made the acquaintance of Professor Creutzer, author of the 
 Symlolik, a work of vast learning.* And I went to balls, 
 one at Professor Gervinus s. 
 
 I entered myself with the great Leopold Gmelin for a 
 course of lectures on chemistry, and worked away every 
 morning with the test-tubes at analytical chemistry under 
 Professor Posselt, at which I one day nearly poisoned myself 
 by tasting oxalic acid, which I did not recognise under its 
 German name of Kleesaure. I read broad and wide in Ger 
 man literature, as I think may be found by examining my 
 notes to my translation of Heine s works, and went with 
 Field several times to Frankfort, to attend the theatre, and 
 otherwise amuse ourselves. There I once made the acquaint 
 ance of the very famous comic actor Hasselt. He was a 
 grave, almost melancholy man when off the stage, very fond 
 of archaeology and antiquities. 
 
 The winter drew to an end. I had long felt a deep de 
 sire to visit Munich, to study art, and to investigate funda 
 mentally the wonderful and mysterious science of Esthetics, 
 of which I had heard so much. So I packed up and paid my 
 bills, and passing through one town where there was in the 
 hotel where I stopped, the last wolf ever killed in Germany, 
 
 * He was the real head, and the most sensible, of that vast array of 
 wild antiquaries, among whom are Faber, Godfrey Higgins, Inman, 
 Bryant, and several score more whom I in my youth adored and de 
 voured with a delight surpassing words. 
 
STUDENT LIFE AND TRAVEL IN EUROPE. 157 
 
 and freshly killed (I believe lie has been slain two or three 
 times since), and at another where I was invited to see a 
 criminal beheaded by the sword which sight I missed by 
 over-sleeping myself I came through Stuttgart, Ulm, and 
 Augsburg to the German Athens. 
 
 I went to the Hotel Maulick, where I stayed a week. 
 Opposite to me at table every day sat the famous Saphir, the 
 great Vienna wit and licensed joker. Of course I soon be 
 came acquainted with some students, and was entered at the 
 University, and got the card which exempted me from being 
 arrested by any save the University beadles. I believe that 
 we even had our own hangman, but as none of my friends 
 ever had occasion for his services I did not inquire. The 
 same ticket also entitled me to attend the opera at half-price, 
 and if it had only included tobacco and beer gratis, it would 
 have been the means of vast economies. 
 
 I entered myself for a course of lectures by Professor 
 Friedrich Thiersch on ^Esthetics. He it was who had trained 
 Heine to art, and I venture to say that in my case the seed 
 fell on good ground. I took in every thought. His system 
 agreed, on the whole, perfectly with that advanced in after 
 years by Taine, and marvellously well with that set forth in 
 the " Essays, Speculative and Suggestive," of J. A. Symonds 
 that is, it was eclectic and deductive from historical peri 
 ods, and not at all " rhapsodical " or merely subjective. I 
 bought the best works, such as Kngler s, for guides, and stud 
 ied hard, and frequented the Pinacothek and Glyptothek, and 
 I may say really educated myself well in the history of art and 
 different schools of assthetics. My previous reading, travel, 
 and tastes fitted me in every way to easily master such knowl 
 edge. I also followed Becker s course on Schelling, but my 
 heart was not in it, as it would have been two years before. 
 The lectures of Professor Henry and Gmelin and true Sci 
 ence had caused in me a distrust of metaphysics and psy 
 chological systems and theories. I began to see that they 
 were all only very ingenious shufflings and combinations and 
 8 
 
158 MEMOIRS. 
 
 phases of the same old cards of Pantheism, which could be 
 made into Theism, Pietism, Atheism, or Materialism to suit 
 any taste. I was advancing rapidly to pure science, though 
 Evolution was as yet unknown by the name, albeit the Oken- 
 ites and others with their Natur-philosophie were coming 
 closely to it. 
 
 In fact, I think it may be truly said that, as regarded de 
 ducing man and all things from a prima materia or proto 
 plasm by means of natural selection and vast study of differ 
 entiation, they were exactly where Darwin, and Wallace, and 
 Huxley were when we began to know the latter. I do not 
 agree with Max Miiller in his very German and very artfully 
 disguised and defended theory that the religious idea origi 
 nated in a vague sense of the Infinite in the minds of sav 
 ages ; for I believe it began with the bogeys and nightmares 
 of obscure terror, hunger, disease, arid death ; but the Pro 
 fessor is quite right in declaring that Evolution was first cre 
 ated or developed in the German Natur-pliilosopliie, the true 
 beginning of which was with the Italian naturalists, such as 
 Bruno and De Cusa. What is to be observed is this, yet few 
 understand it, nor has even Symonds cleared the last barrier 
 that when a Pantheist has got so far as to conceive an iden 
 tity between matter and spirit, while on the other hand a sci 
 entific materialist rises to the unity of spirit and matter, there 
 is nothing to choose between them. Only this is true, that 
 the English Evolutionists, by abandoning reasoning based on 
 Pantheistic poetic bases, as in Schelling s case, or purely 
 logical, as in Hegel s, and by proceeding on plainly prosaic, 
 merely material, simply scientific grounds after the example of 
 Bacon, swept away so much rubbish that people no longer rec 
 ognised the old temple of Truth, and really thought it was a 
 brand new workshop or laboratory. But I can remember very 
 distinctly that to me Evolution did not come as if I had re 
 ceived a new soul, or even a new body, but had merely had a 
 bath, and put on new garments. And as I became an Eng 
 lish Evolutionist in due time, I had this great advantage, that 
 
STUDENT LIFE AND TRAVEL IN EUROPE. 159 
 
 by beginning so young I succeeded in doing very thoroughly 
 what Symonds and Maudsley and many more clearly under 
 stand is most difficult that is, not merely to accept the truth, 
 but to get rid of the old associations of the puzzle of a differ 
 ence between spirit and matter, which thing caused even the 
 former to muddle about " God," and express disgust at " Ma 
 terialism," and declare that there is " an insoluble problem," 
 which is all in flat contradiction to pure Evolution, which 
 does not meddle with " the Unknowable." 
 
 There was a Jewish professor named Karl Friedrich Neu 
 mann, who was about as many-sided a man as could be found 
 even in a German university. He was a great Chinese scholar 
 had been in China, and also read on mathematics and mod 
 ern history. I attended these lectures (not the mathematics) 
 and liked them : so we became acquainted. I found that he 
 had written a very interesting little work on the visit recorded 
 in the Chinese annals of certain Buddhist monks to Fusang 
 probably Mexico in the fifth century. I proposed to trans 
 late it, and did so, he making emendations and adding fresh 
 matter to the English version. 
 
 Professor Neumann was a vigorous reader, but he soon 
 found that I was of the same kind. One day he lent me a 
 large work on some Indian subject, and the next I brought 
 it back. He said that I could not have read it in the time. 
 I begged him to examine me on it, which he did, and ex 
 pressed his amazement, for he declared that he had never 
 met with anything like it in all his life. This from him was 
 praise indeed. Long after, in America, George Boker in 
 closer fashion tested me on this without my knowing it, and 
 published the result in an article. 
 
 I became acquainted with a learned writer on art named 
 Foerster, who had married a daughter of Jean Paul Richter, 
 and dined once or twice at his house. I also saw him twenty 
 years later in Munich. George Ward came in from Berlin to 
 stay some weeks in Munich. I saw Taglioni several times at 
 the opera, but did not make her acquaintance till 1870. The 
 
160 MEMOIRS. 
 
 great, tremendous celebrity at that time in Munich was also 
 an opera-dancer, though not on the stage. This was Lola 
 Montez, the King s last favourite. He had had all his mis 
 tresses painted, one by one, and the gallery was open to the 
 public. Lola s was the last, and there was a blank space still 
 left for a few more. I thought that about twenty-five would 
 complete the collection. 
 
 Lola Montez had a small palace, and was raised to be the 
 Countess of Landsfeldt, but this was not enough. She wished 
 to run the whole kingdom and government, and kick out the 
 Jesuits, and kick up the devil, generally speaking. But the 
 Jesuits and the mob were too much for her. I knew her very 
 well in later years in America, when she deeply regretted that 
 I had not called on her in Munich. I must have had a great 
 moral influence on her, for, so far as I am aware, I am the 
 only friend whom she ever had at whom she never threw a 
 plate or book, or attacked with a dagger, poker, broom, chair, 
 or other deadly weapon. We were both born at the same 
 time in the same year, and I find by the rules of sorcery that 
 she is the first person who will meet me when I go to heaven. 
 I always had a great and strange respect for her singular tal 
 ents ; there were very few indeed, if any there were, who really 
 knew the depths of that wild Irish soul. Men generally were 
 madly fascinated with her, then as suddenly disenchanted, and 
 then detracted from her in every way. 
 
 There were many adventuresses in later years who passed 
 themselves about the world for Lola Montez. I have met 
 with two friends, whom I am sure were honest gentlemen, 
 who told me they had known her intimately. Both de 
 scribed her as a large, powerful, or robust woman. Lola was 
 in reality very small, pale, and thin, or frele, with beautiful 
 blue eyes and curly black hair. She was a typical beauty, 
 with a face full of character, and a person of remarkably 
 great and varied reading. One of her most intimate friends 
 was wont to tell her that she and I had many very strange 
 characteristics in common, which we shared with no one else, 
 
STUDENT LIFE AND TRAVEL IN EUROPE. l(Jl 
 
 while we differed utterly in other respects. It was very like 
 both of us, for Lola, when defending the existence of the soul 
 against an atheist, to tumble over a great trunk of books of 
 the most varied kind, till she came to an old vellum-bound 
 copy of Apuleius, and proceed to establish her views accord 
 ing to his subtle Neo-Platonism. But she romanced and em 
 broidered so much in conversation that she did not get credit 
 for what she really knew. 
 
 I once met with a literary man in New York who told 
 me he had long desired to make my acquaintance, because he 
 had heard her praise me so immeasurably beyond anybody 
 else she had ever known, that he wanted to see what manner 
 of man I could be. 1 heard the same from another, in an 
 other place long after. Once she proposed to me to make a 
 bolt with her to Europe, which I declined. The secret of 
 my influence was that I always treated her with respect, and 
 never made love or flirted. 
 
 An intimate of both of us who was present when this 
 friendly proposal was made remarked with some astonish 
 ment, " But, Madame, by what means can you two live ? " 
 " Oh," replied Lola innocently and confidingly, " people like 
 us " (or " who know as much as we ") " can get a living any 
 where." And she rolled us each a cigarette, with one for 
 herself. I could tell a number of amusing tales of this Queen 
 of Bohemia, but Space, the Kantean god, forbids me more. 
 But I may say that I never had more really congenial and 
 wide-embracing conversations with any human being in my 
 life than with Her Majesty. There was certainly no topic, 
 within my range, at least, on which she could not converse 
 with some substance of personal experience and reading. 
 She had a mania for meeting and knowing all kinds of pe 
 culiar people. 
 
 I lived in the main street near the Karlsthor, opposite a 
 tavern called the Ober-Pollinger, which was a mediaeval 
 tavern in those days. My landlady was a nice old soul, and 
 she had two daughters, one of whom was a beauty, and as 
 
162 MEMOIRS. 
 
 gentle and Gerrnanly good as a girl could be. Her face still 
 lives in a great picture by a great artist. We lived on the 
 third floor ; on the ground was a shop, in which cutlery and 
 some fireworks were sold. It befell that George Ward and I 
 were very early in the morning sitting on a bench before the 
 Ober-Pollinger, waiting for a stage-coach, which would take 
 us to some place out of town ; when bang ! bang ! crack ! I 
 heard a noise in the firework shop, and saw explosions puff 
 ing smoke out of the bursting windows. Great God ! the 
 front shop was on fire ; it was full of fireworks, such as rock 
 ets and crackers, and I knew there was a barrel of gunpowder 
 in the back-shop ! I had found it out a few days before, 
 when I went there to buy some for my pistols. And the 
 family were asleep. In an instant I tore across the street, 
 rushed screaming upstairs, roused them all out of bed, howl 
 ing, " It burns ! there s gunpowder ! " Yet, hurried as I 
 was, I caught up a small hand-bag, which contained my 
 money, as I got the girls and their mother downstairs. I was 
 just in time to see a gigantic butcher burst open the two-inch 
 door with an axe, and roll out the barrel containing two hun 
 dred pounds of gunpowder, as the flames were licking it. I 
 saw them distinctly. 
 
 It was the awful row which I made which had brought 
 the people out betimes, including the butcher and his axe. 
 But for that, there would have been a fearful blow-up. But 
 the butcher showed himself a man of gold on this occasion, 
 for he it was who really saved us all. A day or two after, 
 when I was jesting about myself as a knightly rescuer of 
 forlorn damsels, in reply to some remark on the event, 
 George Ward called me to order. There was, as he kindly 
 said, too much that he respected in that event to make fun 
 of it. 
 
 George Ward is deeply impressed on my memory. He 
 was a sedate young fellow, with a gift of dry humour, now 
 and then expressed in quaint remarks, a gentleman in every 
 instinct, much given to reading and reflecting. When he 
 
STUDENT LIFE AND TRAVEL IN EUROPE. 163 
 
 said anything, he meant it, and this remark of his struck me 
 more than the event itself had done. 
 
 And to think that I quite forgot, in narrating my Prince 
 ton experiences, to tell of something very much like this in 
 cident. It was in my last year, and my landlady had just 
 moved into a new house, when, owing to some defect in the 
 building, it caught fire, but was luckily saved after it had 
 received some damage. I awoke in the night, flames burst 
 ing into my room, and much smoke. It happened that the 
 day before a friend in Alabama had sent me eleven hundred 
 dollars wherewith to pay for him certain debts. My first 
 thought was for this money, so I hurried to get the key of 
 the secretary in which it was keys never can be found in a 
 hurry and when found, I could not find the right one in the 
 bunch. And then it stuck in the lock and would not open 
 it, till finally I succeeded and got the money out. And then, 
 not finding myself quite dead, I in a hurry turned the con 
 tents of three drawers in my bureau and my linen on to the 
 bed, threw on it my coats and trousers, tied the four corners 
 of a sheet together in one bundle, caught up my boots, 
 fencing-foils, &c., to make another, and so rescued all I had. 
 I verily believe I did it all in one minute. That day the 
 President, old Dr. Carnahan, when I plead " not prepared " 
 for failing at recitation, excused me with a grim smile. I 
 had really that time some excuse for it. During the Munich 
 incident I thought of the sheets. But I had gunpowder and 
 two girls to look after in the latter place, and time and tide 
 or gunpowder and girls wait for no man. 
 
 And so, with study and art and friends, and much terrible 
 drinking of beer and smoking of Varinas-Kanaster, and 
 roaming at times in gay greenwoods with pretty maids alway, 
 and music and dancing, the Munich semester came to an end. 
 I proposed to travel with an English friend named Pottinger 
 to Vienna, and thence by some adventurous route or other 
 through Germany to Paris ; which was a great deal more 
 to undertake in those days than it now is, entailing several 
 
164 MEMOIRS. 
 
 hundred per cent, more pain and sorrow, fasting, want of 
 sleep and washing, than any man would encounter in these 
 days in going round the world and achieving la grande route ; 
 or the common European tour, to boot. For it befell me ere 
 I reached my journey s end to pass eighteen nights in one 
 month in Eilwagen or waggons, the latter being sometimes 
 without springs. And once or twice or thrice I was so ut 
 terly worn and wearied that I slept all night, though I was 
 so tossed about that I awoke in the morning literally bruised 
 from head to foot, with my chimney-pot hat under my feet ; 
 which was worse than even a forced march on short com 
 mons as I found in after years or driving in a Russian 
 telega, or jackassing in Egypt, or any othe r of the trifles 
 over which pampered tourists make such heart-rending howls 
 now-a-days. 
 
 So we went to Prague, and thence to Vienna, which, in 
 the year 1847, was a very different place indeed to what it is 
 at present ; for an unbounded gaiety and an air of reckless 
 festivity was apparent then all the time to everybody every 
 where. Under it all lurked and rankled abuses, municipal, 
 social, and political, such as would in 1893 be deemed in 
 credible if not unnatural (as may be read in a clever novel 
 called .Die sch one Wiener inn), but on the surface all was 
 brilliant foam and sunshine and laughing sirens. What new 
 thing Strauss would play in the evening was the great event 
 of the day. I saw and heard the great Johann Strauss this 
 was the grandfather and in after years his son, and the sch one 
 Edie his grandson. Everywhere one heard music, and the 
 Prater was a gay and festive paradise indeed. There was no 
 business ; the town lived on the Austrian, Hungarian, Bohe 
 mian, Russian, and other nobility, who in those days were 
 extravagant and ostentatious to a degree now undreamed of, 
 and on strangers. As for free and easy licentiousness, Paris 
 was a trifle to it, and the police had strict orders to encourage 
 everything of the kind; the result being that the seventh 
 commandment in all its phases was treated like pie-crust, as 
 
STUDENT LIFE AND TRAVEL IN EUROPE. 165 
 
 a thing made to be broken, the oftener the better. Even 
 on our first arriving at our hotel, our good-natured landlord, 
 moved by the principle that it was not good for a young man 
 to be alone, informed us that if we wished to have damsels in 
 our rooms no objection would be interposed. " Why not?" 
 he said ; " this is not a church " ; the obvious inference being 
 that to a Viennese every place not a church must necessarily 
 be a temple to Venus. And every Wiener, when spoken to, 
 roared with laughter ; and there were minstrels in the streets, 
 and musicians in every dining-place and cafe, and great ring 
 ing of bells in chimes, and twas merry in hall when beards 
 wagged all, and " the world went very well in those days." 
 Vienna is a far finer town now, but it is a Quaker meeting 
 house compared to what it was for gaiety forty years ago. 
 
 This change of life and manners has spread, and will con 
 tinue to spread, all over the world. In feudal times the peo 
 ple were kept quiet by means of holidays, carnivals, proces 
 sions, fairs, fairy-tales, treats, and indulgences; even the 
 common childish instinct for gay dress and picturesqueness 
 of appearance was encouraged, and at high tides everybody 
 was fed and given to drink : so that if the poor toiled and 
 fasted and prayed, it might be for months, they had their joy 
 ous revellings to anticipate, when there were free tables 
 even for strangers. In those days 
 
 " A Christmas banquet oft would cheer 
 A poor man s heart for half the year." 
 
 This Middle Age lasted effectively until the epoch of the 
 Revolution and railroads, or, to fix a date, till about 1848. 
 And then all at once, as at a breath, it all disappeared, and 
 now lives, so to speak, only in holes and corners. For as 
 soon as railroads came, factories sprang up and Capital began 
 to employ Labour, and Labour to plot and combine against 
 Capital ; and what with scientific inventions and a sudden 
 stimulus to labour, and newspapers, the multitude got beyond 
 fancy dresses and the being amused to keep them quiet like 
 
166 MEMOIRS. 
 
 children, and so tliejuventus mundi passed away. " It is a per 
 fect shame ! " say the dear young lady tourists, " that the peas 
 antry no longer wear their beautiful dresses ; they ought to 
 be obliged to keep them up." " But how would you like, my 
 dear, if you were of the lower orders, to wear a dress which 
 proclaimed it?" Here the conversation ceaseth, for it be 
 comes too deep for the lady tourist to follow. 
 
 How it was we wandered I do not distinctly remember, 
 but having visited Nuremberg, Prague, and Dresden, we 
 went to Breslau, where a fancy seized us to go to Cracow. 
 True, we had not a special vise from a Kussian minister to 
 enter the Muscovite dominions, but the police at Breslau, who 
 (as I was afterwards told) loved to make trouble for those on 
 the frontier, bade us be of good cheer and cheek it out, 
 neither to be afraid of any man, and to go ahead bravely. 
 Which we did. 
 
 There was a sweet scene at the frontier station on the 
 Polish-Russian line at about three o clock in the morning, 
 when the grim and insolent officials discovered that our pass 
 ports had only the police vise from Breslau ! I was asked 
 why I had not in my native country secured the vise of a 
 Russian minister ; to which I replied that in America the 
 very existence of such a country as Russia was utterly un 
 known, and that I myself was astonished to find that Rus 
 sians knew what passports were. Also that I always sup 
 posed that foreigners conferred a great benefit on a country 
 by spending their money in it ; but that if I could not be ad 
 mitted, that was an end of it ; it was a matter of very tri 
 fling consequence, indeed, for we really did not care twopence 
 whether we saw Russia or not ; a country more or less made 
 very little difference to such travellers as we were. 
 
 Cheek is a fine thing in its way, and on this occasion 
 I developed enough brass to make a pan, and enough 
 " sass " to fill it ; but all in vain. When I visited the Mus 
 covite realm in after years I was more kindly received. On 
 this occasion we were closely searched and re-searched, al- 
 
STUDENT LIFE AND TRAVEL IN EUROPE. 107 
 
 though we were not allowed to go on into Russia ! Every 
 square inch of everything was examined as with a microscope 
 even the small scraps of newspaper in which soap or such 
 trifles were wrapped were examined, a note made as to each, 
 and all put under paper-weights ; and whatever was sus 
 pected as, for instance, books or pamphlets was confiscated, 
 although, as I said, we were turned back ! And this robbery 
 accomplished, we were informed that the stage-coach, or 
 rather rough post- waggon, in which we came, would return at 
 five o clock P. M., and that we could in it go back to Dresden, 
 and might pass the time till then on a bench outside the 
 building reflecting on our sins ! I had truly some papers 
 about me which I did not care to have examined, but these 
 were in my cravat, and even Russian ingenuity had not at 
 that time got beyond picking pockets and feeling the linings 
 of coats. It has since been suggested to me by something 
 which I read that I was under suspicion. I had in Munich 
 aided a Swiss student who was under police surveillance for 
 political intriguing to escape, by lending him money to get 
 away. It is probable that for this my passport was marked 
 in a peculiar manner. My companion, Pottinger, was not 
 much searched ; all suspicion seemed to fall on me. 
 
 The stage went on, and Pottinger and I sat on the bench 
 in a mild drizzle at half -past three in the morning, with as 
 miserable a country round about as mortal man ever beheld. 
 By-and-bye one of the subs., a poor Pole, moved by compas 
 sion and the hope of reward, cautiously invited us to come 
 into his den. He spoke a very little German and a little 
 Latin (Pottinger was an Oxford man, and knew several heavy 
 classics, Greek and Latin, perfectly by heart). The Pole had 
 a fire, and we began to converse. He had heard of America, 
 and that Polish exiles had been well treated there. I assured 
 him that Poles were admired and cherished among us like 
 pet lambs among children, and the adored of the adored. 
 Then I spoke of Russian oppression, and the Pole, in utmost 
 secrecy, produced a sabre which had been borne under Kosci- 
 
168 MEMOIRS. 
 
 usko, and showed us a silver coin utterly prohibited which 
 had been struck during the brief period of the Polish revo T 
 lution. 
 
 The Pole began to prepare Ms coffee for one. I saw 
 that something must be done to increase the number of cups. 
 He took up his book of prayers and asked of what religion 
 we were. Of Pottinger I said contemptuously, " He is noth 
 ing but a heretic," but that as for myself, I had for some 
 time felt a great inclination towards the Panna Holy Virgin 
 and that it would afford me great pleasure to conform to 
 the Polish Catholic Church, but that unfortunately I did not 
 understand the language. To which he replied, that if lie 
 were to read the morning service in Polish and I would re 
 peat it word by word, that the Panna would count it to my 
 credit just as if I had. And as I was praying in good earnest 
 for a breakfast, I trust that it was accepted. Down on our 
 knees we went and began our orisons. 
 
 " Leland ! you humbug ! " exclaimed Pottinger. 
 
 " Go away, you infernal heretic, and don t disturb Chris 
 tians at their devotions ! " was my devout reply. So, prayers 
 concluded, there was coffee and rolls for three. And so in 
 due time the coach returned. I rewarded our host with a 
 thaler, and we returned to Breslau, of which place I noted 
 that the natives never ate anything but sweet cakes for their 
 first morning meal. 
 
 We stopped at Gorlitz, where I asked a woman standing 
 in the half -doorway of the house of Jacob Bdhme if that was 
 his house. But she had never heard of such a man ! 
 
 Dresden we thoroughly explored, and were at Leipzig 
 during the great annual fair. These fairs, in those days, 
 were sights to behold. Now they are succeeded by stupen 
 dous Expositions, which are far finer and inconceivably 
 greater, yet which to me lack that kind of gypsy, side-show, 
 droll, old-fashioned attraction of the ancient gatherings, 
 even as Barnum s Colossal Moral Show of half-a-dozen cir 
 cuses at once and twenty-five elephants does not amuse any- 
 
STUDENT LIFE AND TRAVEL IN EUROPE. 169 
 
 body as the old clown in the ring and one elephant did of 
 yore. 
 
 Thence to Berlin, where we were received with joy by the 
 American students, who knew all about one another all over 
 Germany. I very much enjoyed the great art gallery, and the 
 conversation of those who, like myself, followed lectures on 
 aesthetics and the history of art. Thence to Magdeburg and 
 Hanover, Dusseldorf to cut it short, Holland and the chief 
 cities in Belgium. 
 
 I noted one little change of custom in Berlin. In South 
 Germany it was a common custom for students, when calling 
 on a friend, to bring and leave generally a small bouquet. 
 When I did this in Berlin my friends were astonished at it. 
 This was an old Italian custom, as we may read in the beau 
 tiful One Hundred and Fifty Brindisi or Toasts of Minto. 
 
 " Porto a voi un fior novello, 
 Ed, oh come vago e bello ! " 
 
 In 1847 even a very respectable hotel in Holland was in 
 any city quite like one of two centuries before. You entered 
 a long antiquely-brown room, traversed full length by a table. 
 Before every chair was placed a little metallic dish with hot 
 coals, and a churchwarden pipe was brought to every visitor 
 at once without awaiting orders. The stolid, literal, me 
 chanical action of all the people s minds was then wonderful. 
 An average German peasant was a genius compared to these 
 fresh, rosy-fair, well-clad Hollanders. It was to me a new 
 phase of human happiness in imbecility, or rather in undis 
 turbed routine ; for it is written that no bird can fly like a 
 bullet and doze or sleep sweetly at the same time. Yet, as 
 from the Huns, the most hideous wretches in the world, 
 there arose by intermixture the Hungarians, who are per 
 haps the handsomest, so from the Knickerbocker Dutch 
 sprang the wide-awake Xew Yorkers ! The galleries in Hol 
 land and Belgium were to me joys unutterable and as the 
 glory of life itself. Munich and Thiersch still inspired me ; 
 
170 MEMOIRS. 
 
 I seemed to have found a destiny in aesthetics or art, or what 
 had been wanting in Princeton ; that is, how the beautiful 
 entered into life and was developed in history and made itself 
 felt in all that was worth anything at all. Modern English 
 writers on this subject with exceptions like that of J. A. 
 Symonds, whose Essays I cannot commend too highly are 
 in the same relation to its grand truth and higher inspiration 
 as Emerson and Carlyle to Pantheism in its mightiest early 
 forms. Eor several years the actual mastery of aesthetics 
 gave me great comfort, and advanced me marvellously in 
 thought to wider and far higher regions. 
 
 I forget where I parted with Pottinger ; all that I can re 
 member was, that early in November I arrived alone in Paris, 
 going to some small hotel or other, and that as all the fa 
 tigues of the past many weeks of weary travel seemed to 
 come upon me all at once, I went to bed, and never left the 
 house till four o clock p. M. the next day. On the next I 
 found my way into the Latin Quarter, and secured a not very 
 superior room in the Place Saint-Michel, near the Ecole de 
 Medecine, to which I moved my luggage. 
 
 I was very much astonished, while sitting alone and 
 rather blue and overcast in my room, at the sudden entrance 
 of a second cousin of mine named Frank Fisher, who was 
 studying medicine in Paris. He had by some odd chance 
 seen my name registered in the newspapers as having arrived 
 at the hotel, and lost no time in looking me up. He lived 
 on the other side of the Seine in the Boule Eouge, near the 
 Rue Helder, a famous happy hunting-ground for les liclies 
 I mean kids or the very dear. I must go forthwith to his 
 quarters and dine, which I did, and so my introduction to 
 Paris was fairly begun. 
 
 I attended at the College Louis le Grand, and at the 
 Sorbonne, all or any lectures by everybody, including a very 
 dull series on German literature by Philarete Ch&sles. I 
 read books. Inter alia, I went through Dante s "Inferno" 
 in Italian aided by Rivarol s translation, of which I possessed 
 
STUDENT LIFE AND TRAVEL IN EUROPE. 
 
 the very copy stamped with the royal arms, and containing 
 the author s autograph, which had been presented to the 
 King. I picked it up on the Quai for a franc, for which 
 sum I also obtained a first edition of Melusine, which Mr. 
 Andrew Lang has described as such a delightful rarity. And 
 I also ran a great deal about town. I saw Kachel, and Fre 
 deric Lemaitre, and Mile. Dejazet, and many more at the 
 great theatres, and attended assiduously at Bobinot s, which 
 was a very small theatre in the Quartier Latin, frequented 
 entirely by students and grisettes. I went to many a ball, 
 both great and small, including the masked ones of the 
 Grand Opera, and other theatres, at which there was dissipa 
 tion and diablerie enough to satisfy the most ardent imagina 
 tion, ending with the grande ronde infernale. I made many 
 acquaintances, and if they were not by any means all highly 
 respectable, they were at least generally very singular or noto 
 rious. One day I would dine at a place outside the Barrier, 
 where we had a plain but fairly good dinner for a franc, vin 
 compris, and where the honoured guest at the head of the 
 table was the chef des claqueurs or head of the paid applauders 
 at all the theatres. Then it would be at a private table-cFhdte 
 of loretteS) where there was after dinner a little private card- 
 playing. I heard afterwards that two or three unprincipled 
 gamblers found their way into this nest of poor little inno 
 cents and swindled them out of all their money. When I 
 was well in funds I would dine at Magny s, where, in those 
 days, one could get such a dinner for ten francs as fifty 
 would not now purchase. When au sec, I fed at Flictoteau s 
 we called him V empoisonneur where hundreds of students 
 got a meal of three courses with half a bottle of ordinaire, 
 and not so bad either, for thirty sous. 
 
 It happened one night at Bobinot s that I sat in the front 
 row of the stage-box, and by me a very pretty, modest, and 
 respectable young girl, with her elder relations or friends. 
 How it happened I do not know, but they all went out, leav 
 ing the young lady by me, and I did not speak to her. 
 
172 MEMOIRS. 
 
 Which " point " was at once seized by the house. The 
 pit, as if moved by one diabolical inspiration, began to roar, 
 "II Vembrassera!" (He will kiss her), to which the gallery 
 replied, "11 ne Vembrassera pas" 
 
 So they kept it up and down alternately like see-sawing, 
 to an intonation ; and be it remarked, by the way, that in 
 French such a monotonous bore is known as a scie or saw, as 
 may be read in my romance in the French tongue entitled 
 Le Lutin du Chateau, which was, I regret to say, refused by 
 Hachette the publisher on account of its freedom from strait- 
 laced, blue-nosed, Puritanical conventionalism, albeit he 
 praised its literary merit and style, as did sundry other 
 French scholars, if I may say it who should not ! 
 
 I saw that something must be done ; so, rising, I waved 
 my glove, and there was dead silence. Then I began at the 
 top of my voice, in impassioned style in German, an address 
 about matters and things in general, intermingled with in 
 sane quotations from Latin, Slavonian, anything. A change 
 came o er the spirit of the dream of iny auditors, till at last 
 they " took," and gave me three cheers. I had sold the 
 house ! 
 
 There was in the Rue de la Harpe a house called the 
 Hotel de Luxembourg. It was the fragment of a very old 
 palace which had borne that name. It had still a magnifi 
 cent Renaissance staircase, which bore witness to its former 
 glory. Washington Irving, in one of his earlier tales, de 
 scribes this very house and the rooms which I occupied in it 
 so accurately, that I think he must have dwelt there. He 
 tells that a student once, during the Revolution, finding a 
 young lady in the street, took her home with him to that 
 house. She had a black ribbon round her neck. He 
 twitched it away, when off fell her head. She had been 
 guillotined, and revived by sorcery. 
 
 I soon removed to this house, where I had two very good- 
 sized rooms. In the same establishment dwelt a small actress 
 or two, and divers students, or men who were extremely busy 
 
STUDENT LIFE AND TRAVEL IN EUROPE. 173 
 
 all the winter in plotting a revolution. It was considered as 
 a nest of rather doubtful and desperate characters, and an 
 American carabin or student of medicine told me of another 
 who had fled from the establishment after a few days expe 
 rience, "for fear lest he should have his throat cut." But 
 this was very silly, for none of us would have cut anybody s 
 throat for any consideration. Some time ago I read the 
 " Memoirs of Claude," who was the head of police in Paris 
 during my time, and I was quite startled to find how many 
 of the notorieties chronicled in his experiences had been 
 known to me personally. As, for instance, Madame Marie 
 Farcey, who he declares had a heart of gold, and with whom 
 I had many a curious conversation. She was a handsome, 
 very ladylike, suave sort of a person, who was never known 
 to have an intrigue with any man, but who was " far and 
 away " at the very head of all the immorality in Paris, as is 
 well known to everybody who was deeply about town in the 
 Forties. Claude himself I never knew, and it was to his 
 possible great loss ; for there came a time when I could, had 
 I chosen, have given him information which would have 
 kept him in office and Louis Philippe on the throne, and 
 turned the whole course of the events of 1848, as I will now 
 clearly and undeniably prove. 
 
 I did not live in the Hotel de Luxembourg for nothing, 
 and I knew what was going on, and what was coming, and 
 that there was to be the devil to pay. Claude tells us in his 
 " Memoirs " that the revolution of February 24 took him so 
 much by surprise that he had only three hours previous no 
 tice of it, and really not time to remove his office furniture. 
 Now, one month before it burst out I wrote home to my 
 brother that we were to have a revolution on the 24th of 
 February, and that it would certainly succeed. Those who 
 would learn all the true causes and reasons of this may find 
 them in my forthcoming translation of " Heine s Letters 
 from Paris," with my notes. The police of Paris were very 
 clever, but the whole organisation was in so few hands, and 
 
174 MEMOIRS. 
 
 we managed so well, that they never found us out. It was 
 beyond all question the neatest, completest, and cheapest 
 revolution ever executed. Lamartine himself was not al 
 lowed to know anything about it till he was wanted for 
 President. And all over the Latin Quarter, on our side of 
 the river, in cafes and balls and in shops, and talking to 
 everybody, went the mysterious dwellers of the Hotel de 
 Luxembourg, sounding public opinion and gathering signs 
 and omens, and making recruits and laying trains, which, 
 when fired, caused explosions all over Europe, and sounds 
 which still live in history. And all the work was duly re 
 ported at head-quarters. The great secret of the success of 
 the revolution was that it was in the hands of so few per 
 sons, who were all absolutely secret and trustworthy. If 
 there had been a few more, the police would have found us 
 out to a certainty. One who was suspected was " squared." 
 
 At last the ball opened. There was the great banquet, 
 and the muttering storm, and angry mobs, and small emeutes. 
 There is a mere alley I forget its name on the right bank, 
 which runs down to the Seine, in which it is said that every 
 Paris revolution has broken out. Standing at its entrance, 
 I saw three or four shots fired and dark forms with guns 
 moving in the alley, and then came General Changarnier 
 with his cavalry and made a charge, before which I fled. I 
 had to dodge more than one of these charges during the day. 
 Before dark the rioting was general, and barricades were 
 going up. The great storm-bell of Notre Dame rung all 
 night long. 
 
 The next morning I rose, and telling Leonard Field, who 
 lived in the same hotel with me, that I was going to work in 
 earnest, loaded a pair of duelling-pistols, tied a sash round 
 my waist en revolutionnaire, and with him went forth to busi 
 ness. First I went to the Cafe Rotonde, hard by, and got 
 my breakfast. Then I sallied forth, and found in the Eue 
 de la Harpe a gang of fifty insurgents, who had arms and a 
 crowbar, but who wanted a leader. Seeing that I was one of 
 
STUDENT LIFE AND TRAVEL IN EUROPE. 175 
 
 them, one said to me, " Sir, where shall we make a barri 
 cade ? " I replied that there was one already to the right 
 and another farther down, but that a third close at hand was 
 open. Without a word they handed me the crowbar, and I 
 prized up the stones out of the pavement, while they under 
 took the harder work of piling them up. In a few minutes 
 we had a solid wall eight feet high. Field had on light kid 
 gloves, which formed an amusing contrast to his occupation. 
 Then remembering that there was a defenceless spot some 
 where else, I marched my troop thither, and built another 
 barricade all in grim earnest without talking. 
 
 I forgot to say that on the previous day I had witnessed 
 a marvellously dramatic scene in the Faubourg Saint-An- 
 toine, by the market-house. There was across it an immense 
 barricade, made of literally everything old beds, waggons, 
 stones, and rubbish and it was guarded by a dense crowd of 
 insurgents, armed or unarmed, of whom I was one. All 
 around were at least three thousand people singing the Mar 
 seillaise and the Chant des Girondins. There was a charge 
 of infantry, a discharge of muskets, and fifteen fell dead, 
 some almost touching me, while the mob around never ceased 
 their singing, and the sounds of that tremendous and ter 
 rible chorus mingled with the dying groans and cries of the 
 victims and the great roar of the bell of Notre Dame. It 
 was like a scene in the opera. This very barricade has been 
 described by Victor Hugo in detail, but not all which took 
 place there, the whole scene being, in fact, far more dramatic 
 or picturesque than he supposed it to have been. 
 
 It seemed to be predestined that I should see every great 
 event in that drama, from the charge of Changarnier down 
 to the very end, and I hereby declare that on my honour I set 
 forth exactly what I saw with my own eyes, without a shade 
 of colour off the truth. 
 
 There was a garcon named Edouard, who always waited 
 on me in the Cafe Rotonde. While I was working for life 
 at my second barricade, he came out holding a napkin, and 
 
176 MEMOIRS. 
 
 examining my labour critically, waved it, exclaimed approv 
 ingly, " Tres lien, Citoyen Charles tres Men I " It was his 
 little joke for some days after to call me Citoyen Charles. 
 
 Returning down the Rue de la Harpe before our house, 
 my landlady exclaimed to me in alarm, " Hide your pistols ! 
 there is a mouchard (spy of the police) following you." I 
 believe that I, my blood being up, said something to the 
 effect that if she would point him out I would shoot him 
 forthwith, but the mouchard had vanished. We had all got 
 into cool earnestness by that time as regards shooting, having 
 been in it constantly for three days. 
 
 Over the barricade came sprawling a tall ungainly red- 
 haired Yankee, a student of medicine, whom I had met be 
 fore, and who began to question me as to what I was doing. 
 To which I replied, " What the devil do you want here, any 
 how?" not being in a mood to be trifled with. To which 
 he replied, " Nawthin , only a kinder lookin reound. But 
 what on airth "But are you for us, or against?" I 
 
 cried. " Wall, I ain t on no side." " See here ! " I cried in 
 a rage ; " those who are not for us are against us. Any one 
 of those fellows you see round here would shoot you at once 
 if I told him to, and if you don t clear out in double quick 
 time, by God I will ! " And at this he made himself scarce 
 forthwith, " nor does he come again into this story." 
 
 Then I went down the street, and as a large supply of 
 ammunition came to us from our friends, with the aid of a 
 student of the Ecole Polytechnique, I distributed it to the 
 mob. I had principally boxes of percussion-caps to give. I 
 mention this because that young man has gone into history 
 for it, and I have as good a right to a share in this extremely 
 small exploit as he. Besides, though not wounded by the 
 foe, I got a bad cut on my hand from a sharp paving-stone, 
 and its scar lasted for many years. 
 
 I had that day many a chance to knock over a piou-piou 
 or shoot a soldier, as Field said, but I must confess that I 
 felt an invincible repugnance to do so. The poor devils 
 
STUDENT LIFE AND TRAVEL IN EUROPE. 
 
 were, after all, only fighting unwillingly against us, and I 
 well knew that unless they came over to our side all would 
 be up with us. Therefore it was our policy to spare them as 
 much as possible. I owe it to Field to state that through all 
 the stirring scenes of the Revolution he displayed great calm 
 ness and courage. 
 
 All at once we heard a terrible outcry down the street. 
 There was a tremendous massing of soldiers there, and to de 
 fend that barricade meant death to all defenders. I confess 
 that I hesitated one instant, and than rushed headlong to 
 join the fight. Merciful God ! the troops had fraternised 
 with us, and they were handing over their muskets to the 
 mob, who were firing them in the air. 
 
 The scene was terribly moving. My men, who a minute 
 before had expected to be shot, rushed up, embraced and 
 kissed the soldiers, wept like children in short, everybody 
 kissed and embraced everybody else, and all my warriors got 
 guns, and therewith I dismissed them, for I knew that the 
 war was now about at an end. 
 
 There was a German-French student named Lenoir, and 
 he, with Field and I, hearing that there was sharp work at 
 the Tuileries, started thither in haste. And truly enough, 
 when we got there, the very devil was loose, with guns firing 
 and the guard-house all in a blaze. The door was burst 
 open, and Field and I were among the very first who entered. 
 We behaved very well, and did not steal anything. I re 
 member that there was a great pile of plate and jewellery 
 soon laid by the door. 
 
 I went into the throne-room. There was a great silver 
 inkstand on the table, paper and pens, and we wrote, " Ee- 
 spect Property!" "Liberty for Italy and Hungary!" and 
 hung the papers up around the room. I wrote one or two 
 myself, and touched the inkstand for luck, in case I should 
 ever write about the event. 
 
 It was a great and indeed a very touching and beautiful 
 sight, for all present were inspired with a feeling like that 
 
1Y8 MEMOIRS. 
 
 of men who have passed a terrible, racking crisis. Nous 
 avons vaincu I Yes, we had conquered. And the Revolu 
 tion had marched sternly on through years of discontent 
 unto the year of aggravation, Forty-Eight, when there was 
 thunder all round in Europe and after all, France at one 
 desperate bound had again placed herself in the van ! And 
 it was first decided by the taking of the Tuileries ! 
 
 Let me dwell an instant on some minor incidents. Many 
 of the insurgents had been all night without food. The 
 royal dinner was cooking in the kitchen, and it was droll to 
 see the men helping themselves and walking off with the 
 chickens and joints on their bayonets. I had never seen a 
 royal kitchen before. Soon all along the street loafers were 
 seen with jars of preserved cherries, &c., emptying them into 
 their caps. I went into the burning guard-house. A savage 
 fellow offered me a great tin pail, containing about two gal 
 lons of wine, which he offered me to drink. I was very 
 thirsty, but I had a scruple against plunder. Grasping his 
 sword, he cried, " Buvez, citoyen ; tfest du vin royal" Not 
 wishing to have a duel a Pout ranee with a fellow-patriot, and, 
 as I said, being thirsty, I took a good long pull. We mutu 
 ally winked and smiled. He took a pull also to my health 
 and Liberty. We both "pulled." 
 
 I forgot to mention how my cohort had partially armed 
 themselves that morning. They burst into every house and 
 carried off all the arms they could find, and then wrote in 
 chalk over the doors " Armes donnees" The Musee Cluny 
 was very near my hotel and I saw it plundered. Such a 
 sight ! I saw one vagabond on a fine stolen horse, with a 
 mediaeval helmet on his head, a lance in his hand, and a six- 
 feet double-handed sword or flamberg hanging behind his 
 back. He appeared to be quite drunk, and reared about in 
 eccentric gambades. This genius of Freedom reappeared at 
 the Tuileries. Mortal man was never under such tempta 
 tion to steal as I was just one fifteenth-century poignard as 
 a souvenir from that Museum in fact, it was my duty at 
 
STUDENT LIFE AND TRAVEL IN EUROPE. 179 
 
 that instant to do so, whispered the tempter in my ear. But 
 I resisted ; and lo ! it came to pass in later years that I be 
 came possessed, for a mere trifle, in Dresden, of the court 
 dagger, in exquisite carved ivory, which was originally made 
 for Francis II. of France, and which has been declared by 
 competent authority to be authentic. Owing to his short 
 reign there are very few relics of this monarch. 
 
 Some of the blackguards in the mob drew out the royal 
 carriages, set fire to them, and rolled them gaily along the 
 quai. 
 
 A noble-looking very old gentleman in military costume 
 spoke to me before the Tuileries, and saying that he had seen 
 all of the old Revolution and Napoleon s wars, actually with 
 tears in his eyes implored me to use my influence to prevent 
 any plundering. " -Respectez la properte" There were very 
 few gentlemen indeed among the insurgents. I only observed 
 two or three in our quarter, and they were all from our hotel, 
 or rather lodgings. But the next day every swell in Paris 
 came out as an insurgent. They had all worked at barricades 
 so they said. I certainly had not seen any of them at 
 work. 
 
 That afternoon I strolled about with Field. We came to 
 a barricade. A very pretty girl guarded it with a sword. She 
 sternly demanded the parole or countersign. I caught hold 
 of her and kissed her, and showed my pistols. She laughed. 
 As I was armed with dirk and pistols, wore a sash, and was 
 unmistakably a Latin Quarter itudiant, as shown by long 
 hair, rakish cap on one side, red neck -tie, and single eye 
 glass, I was everywhere treated as a man and brother, friend 
 and equal, warrior, and by the girls almost like a first- 
 cousin. Field shared the glory, of course. And we made a 
 great deal out of it, and were thought all the more of in con 
 sequence. Vive la jeunesse ! 
 
 Coming to a corner, we heard three or four musket-shots. 
 We turned the corner, and saw a man lying dead or dying in 
 the last quiver, while at his head there was at once placed a 
 
180 MEMOIRS. 
 
 stick with a paper on it, on which was written with lead- 
 pencil, "Mort aux voleurs ! " 
 
 The day before, one insurgent had offered me a beautiful 
 old silver-mounted sword for one of my pistols, fire-arms be 
 ing so much in demand, but I declined the offer. 
 
 The day after, I went into a cafe. There were some stu 
 dents there who had laid their arms on a table. There was a 
 very notorious little lorette^ known as Pochardinette, who was 
 so called because she was always half -tipsy. She was even 
 noted in a popular song as 
 
 " La Pochardinette, 
 Qui ne salt refuser 
 Ni la ponche a pleine verre, 
 Ni sa bouche a baiser." 
 
 Pochardinette picked up a horse-pistol, when its owner 
 cried, " Let that be ! That is not the kind of weapon which 
 you are accustomed to manage ! " I stared at him with re 
 spect, for he had actually translated into French an epigram 
 by Jacopo Sannazar, word for word ! 
 
 I should here mention that on the 24th there was actu 
 ally a period of two hours during which France had no Gov 
 ernment that is, none that it knew of. Then there appeared 
 on the walls all at once small placards giving the list of names 
 of the Gouvernement Provisoire. Now, during this period of 
 suspense there appeared at the Hotel de Ville a mysterious 
 stranger ; a small, bustling, active individual, who came in 
 and announced that a new Government had been formed, 
 that he himself had been appointed Minister, that France 
 expected every man to do his duty, and that no one should 
 lose their places who conformed to his orders. " I appoint," 
 he said, " So-and-so to take command of Vincennes. Here, 
 you Chose! notify him at once and send orders. I believe 
 that Tel-et-tel had better take Marseilles. Do any of you fel 
 lows know of a good governor for Mauritius ? " So he gov 
 erned France for half-an-hour and then disappeared, and 
 nobody ever knew to this day who this stupendous joker was. 
 
STUDENT LIFE AND TRAVEL IN EUROPE. 181 
 
 A full account of it all appeared some time after, and the 
 cream of the joke was that some of his appointed ones con 
 trived to keep their places. This brief dynasty has not been 
 recorded in any work save this ! 
 
 It was a droll fact that I had, the year before, at Heidel 
 berg, drawn a picture of myself as an insurgent at a barri 
 cade, and written under it, " The Boy of the Barricades." I 
 had long had a strange presentiment as to this event. I gave 
 the picture to Peter A. Porter, then a student, and owner of 
 a singular piece of property that is, Niagara Falls, or at 
 least Goat Island and more or less of the American side. 
 Some time after the 24th he showed me this picture in Paris. 
 He himself, I have heard, died fighting bravely in our Civil 
 War. His men were so much attached to him that they 
 made, to recover his body, a special sally, in which twelve of 
 them were killed. He was bon compagnon, very pleasant, and 
 gifted with a very original, quaint humour. 
 
 If our ungrateful temporary stepmother, France, did not 
 know it, at least the waiters in the cafes, shopkeepers, and 
 other people in the Latin Quarter were aware that Field and 
 I were among the extremely small and select number of gen 
 tlemen who had operated at the barricades for the health of 
 Freedom, and for some time we never entered a restaurant 
 without hearing admiring exclamations from the respectful 
 waiters of "Ces sont Us Americains!" or "Les Anglais" 
 And indeed, to a small degree, I even made a legendary local 
 impression ; for a friend of mine who went from Philadel 
 phia to Paris two years later, reported that I was still in the 
 memory of the Quarter as associated with the Revolution and 
 life in general. One incident was indeed of a character 
 which French students would not forget. I had among my 
 many friends, reputable and demi-reputable, a rather remark 
 able lorette named Maria, whose face was the very replica of 
 that of the Laughing Faun of the Louvre or, if one can 
 conceive it, of a very pretty " white nigger." This young 
 lady being either ennuyee or frightened by the roar of mus- 
 9 
 
182 MEMOIRS. 
 
 ketry probably the former and knowing that I was a Rev 
 olutionist and at work, conceived the eccentric idea of hiring 
 a coach, just when the fighting was at the worst, and driving 
 over from the Rue Helder to visit me. Which she actually 
 did. When she came to a barricade, she gave five francs to 
 the champions of liberty, and told them she was bearing iui- 
 portant political orders to one of their leaders. Then the 
 warriors would unharness the horses, lift the carriage and 
 beasts somehow over the barricade, re-harness, hurrah, and 
 11 Adieu, madame! Vive la liberte!" And so, amid bullets 
 and cheers, and death-stroke, and powder-smoke Jiinc et 
 inde mors et luctus Maria came to my door in a carriage, 
 and found me out with a vengeance for I was revelling at 
 the time in the royal halls of the Bourbons, or at least drink 
 ing wine out of a tin pail in the guard-house, whereby I escaped 
 the expense of a truffled champagne dinner at Magny s 
 while the young lady was about fifty francs out of pocket by 
 her little drive, probably the only one taken that day in 
 Paris. But she had a fearfully jolly time of it, and saw the 
 way that guns were fired to perfection. This, too, became 
 one of the published wonders of the day, and a local legend 
 of renown. 
 
 Of course all these proceedings put an end to lectures and 
 study for the time. Then Mr. Goodrich, our Consul, as I 
 have before said, organised a deputation of Americans in 
 Paris to go and congratulate the new Gouvernement Pro- 
 visoire on the new Republic, of which I was one, and we 
 saw all the great men, and Arago made us a speech. Unfor 
 tunately all the bankers stopped paying money, and I had to 
 live principally on credit, or sailed rather close to it, until I 
 could write to my father and get a draft on London. 
 
 But when the Revolution of June was coming, I deter 
 mined to leave Paris. I had no sympathy for the Socialists, 
 and I knew very well that neither the new Government, nor 
 the still newer Louis Napoleon, who was looming up so dan 
 gerously behind it, needed my small aid. There was a regu- 
 
STUDENT LIFE AND TRAVEL IN EUROPE. 183 
 
 lation in those days that every foreign resident on leaving 
 Paris must give twenty-four hours notice to the police before 
 he could obtain his passport. But when I applied for mine, 
 it was handed out at once " over the counter," with a smile 
 and a wink, as if unto one who was merrily well known, with 
 an intimation that they were rather glad that I was going, 
 and would do everything to facilitate my departure. I sus 
 pect that my dossier must have been interesting reading ! 
 M. Claude, or his successor, was probably of the same mind 
 regarding me as the old black preacher in Philadelphia re 
 garding a certain convert, " De Lawd knows we don want 
 no sitch bredderin in dis congregation ! " 
 
 So I went to Rouen and saw the cathedral and churches 
 it was a very quaint old town then and thence to Havre, 
 where I took passage on a steamboat for London. The cap 
 tain had a very curious old Gnostic-Egyptian ring, with a 
 gem on which were four animal heads in one, or a chimaera. 
 I explained what it was, and that it meant the year. But 
 the captain could not rest till he had got the opinion of a 
 fussy old Frenchman, who, as a doctor, was of course sup 
 posed to know more than I. He looked at it, and, with a 
 great air, remarked, "C est grecque I " Then the captain was 
 quite satisfied. It was Greek ! 
 
 I went in London to a very modest hotel, where I was, 
 however, very comfortable. In those days a bottle of the 
 very vilest claret conceivable, and far worse than " Glad 
 stone," cost four or five shillings ; therefore I took to pale 
 ale. Ewan Colquhoun soon found me out, and, under his 
 guidance, and that of two or three others whom I had met, 
 I soon explored London. Firstly, he took me daily to his 
 house in St. James Street, where I can recall his mother, 
 Mrs. Colquhoun, and father, and brothers, Patrick and 
 James. Patrick was a remarkable young man. He had 
 graduated at Cambridge and Heidelberg and filled diplo 
 matic capacities in the East, and was familiar with many 
 languages from Arabic to Gaelic, and was the first amateur 
 
184 MEMOIRS. 
 
 light-weight boxer in England, and first sculler on the 
 Thames, and had translated and annotated the principal 
 compendium of Eoman law. He took me to see a grand 
 rowing match, where we were in the Leander barge. So 
 here and there I was introduced to a great many people of 
 the best society. Meanwhile, with Ewan, I visited the Cider 
 Cellars, Evans , the Judge and Jury Club, Cremorne, and all 
 the gay resorts of those days, not to mention the museums, 
 Tower, and everything down to Madame Tussaud s. I went 
 down in a diving-bell in the Polytechnic, and over Barclay 
 and Perkins Brewery. 
 
 One night Colquhoun and I went to Drury Lane, and, 
 after hearing Grisi, Mario, and Lablache together, saw the 
 great pas de quatre which became a historical marvel. For 
 it was danced by Taglioni, Cerito, Carlotta Grisi, and Lucile 
 Grahn. In after years, when I talked with Taglioni about 
 it, she assured me that night I had witnessed what the 
 world had never seen since, the greatest and most perfect 
 execution conceivable. For the four great artists, moved by 
 rivalry, were inspired to do their best before such an audience 
 as was seldom seen. Colquhoun kept pointing out one ce 
 lebrity after another to me ; I verily believe that I saw most 
 of the great men and women of the time. And afterwards I 
 saw a great number in Parliament. 
 
 There was a rather distinguished-looking Frenchman 
 very much about town in London while I was there. He 
 was always alone, and always dressed in a long, light over 
 coat. Wherever I went, to Cremorne or the Park, there he 
 was. When Louis Napoleon came up in the world and I 
 saw his photograph, I at once recognised my Frenchman. 
 
 There roomed next to me in our hotel a German from 
 Vienna named Becker. He was an opera-singer, and the 
 newspapers said that he was fully equal to the first baritone 
 of the day. I forget who that was : was it Pischek ? I liked 
 him very much ; he was always in my room, and always sing 
 ing little bits, but I was not much impressed by them, and 
 
STUDENT LIFE AND TRAVEL IN EUROPE. 185 
 
 once told him that I believed that I could sing as loudly as he. 
 He never said a word, but at once let out his whole voice in 
 a tremendous aria. I clapped my hands to my ears ; I verily 
 believed that he would shatter the windows ! I have heard 
 of a singer who actually broke a goblet by vibration, and I 
 now believe that it is possible. I was once shown in the 
 Hague Museum a goblet which rang marvellously in accom 
 paniment when one sang to it, and have met with others 
 like it. 
 
 I was invited by a young friend named Hunt (a son of 
 the great Chartist), who had been a friend of mine in Hei 
 delberg, where he had taken his degree as doctor of Philoso 
 phy, to pass a week in the country at a charming old Eliza 
 bethan place, said to have been the original Bleak House. 
 Everything there was perfectly delightful. There were two 
 or three charming young ladies. I remember among them 
 a Miss Oliphaunt. There was a glorious picnic, to which I 
 and all walked eight miles and back. I admired on this oc 
 casion for the first time the pedestrian powers of English 
 girls. 
 
 I visited Verulamium and St. Alban s Abbey, not then 
 " restored," and other beautiful places. It all seemed like a 
 fairy-tale, for the charm of my early reading came over me 
 like enchantment. One night Hunt and I went into a little 
 wayside inn. There were assembled a number of peasants 
 hedgers and ditchers, or such like. We treated them to ale, 
 and they sang many strange old songs. Then I was called 
 on, and I sang " Sir Patrick Spens," which was well received. 
 
 I returned to London, and found, to my dismay, that I 
 had not enough money to take me home ! I had received a 
 bill of exchange on a merchant in London, and, in my inno 
 cence, never dreamed that it constituted no claim on him 
 whatever for a further supply. I called at his office, saw his 
 son, who naturally informed me that they could advance me 
 no more money, but referred me to his father. The old gen 
 tleman seemed to be amused, and questioned me all about 
 
186 MEMOIRS. 
 
 myself. When he found that his Philadelphia correspondent 
 was very well known to my father, and that the son of the 
 correspondent was a fellow-student of mine at Heidelberg 
 and Paris, he asked me how much I wanted. When I re 
 plied, " Only enough to pay my passage," he replied, " Is 
 that all ? " and at once gave me the money. Then he ques 
 tioned me as to my friends in London, and said, " You have 
 seen something of the aristocracy, I would like you to see 
 some of the business people." So he invited me to a dinner 
 at the Reform Club, to meet a few friends. Among these 
 was a Mr. Birch, son of the celebrated Alderman Birch. He 
 had directed the dinner, being a famous gourmet, and Soyer 
 had cooked it. That dinner cost my host far more than he 
 had made out of me. We had six kinds of choicest wines, 
 which impressed me then. 
 
 Mr. Birch was a man of literary culture, and we went 
 deeply into books. The next day he sent me a charming 
 work which he had written on the religious belief of Shake 
 speare, in which it was fairly proved that the immortal bard 
 had none. And I was so well pleased with England, that 
 I liked it better than any country I had ever visited. 
 
 In 1870, when I came to London, and found my charac 
 ter of " Hans Breitmann " on three stages at once, I received, 
 of course, a great deal of attention. Somebody said to me, 
 " Oh, of course ; you come here well known, and are made a 
 great deal of." I replied, " Twenty years ago I came to 
 London without a single letter of introduction, and had only 
 two or three student friends, and received just as much kind 
 hospitality." I think that like generally finds its like, so 
 long as it is honest and can pay its bills. 
 
 I left Portsmouth for New York in a sailing-vessel or 
 packet. I could have returned by steamer, but preferred the 
 latter, as I should now, if there were any packets crossing the 
 ocean. In old times travel was a pleasure or an art ; now it 
 is the science of getting from place to place in the shortest 
 time possible. Hence, with all our patent Pullman cars and 
 
STUDENT LIFE AND TRAVEL IN EUROPE. 187 
 
 their dentist s chairs, Procrustean sofas, and headlong pas 
 sages, we do not enjoy ourselves as we did- when the coach 
 went on the road so slowly as to allow us to see the country, 
 when we halted often and long, many a time in curious old 
 villages. But " the idea of dragging along in that way ! " 
 Well, and what, tourist, dost thou travel for ? 
 
 There was on the vessel in which I sailed, among the few 
 passengers, Mrs. and Mr. John Gilbert, a well-known dra 
 matic couple, who were extremely agreeable and genial, the 
 husband abounding in droll reminiscences of the stage ; a 
 merry little German musician named Kreutzer, son of the 
 great composer ; and a young Englishwoman with a younger 
 brother. I rather doubted the " solidity " of this young 
 lady. By-and-bye it was developed that the captain was in 
 love with her. Out of this, I have heard, came a dreadful 
 tragedy ; for the love drove him mad, the insanity develop 
 ing itself on the return voyage. The captain had to be im 
 prisoned in his own state-room, where he committed suicide in 
 a terrible manner by tearing his throat open with the point of 
 a candlestick or sconce. The second mate, who was as coarse 
 a brute as a common sailor could be, took command, and as 
 he at once got drunk, and kept so, the passengers rose, con 
 fined him, and gave the command to the third, who was very 
 young. 
 
 " Thus woman is the cause of fearful deeds." 
 
 However, I freely admit that this incident resulted from 
 a long voyage, for we were thirty-five days in going from 
 port to port. In only a week, with three or four days pre 
 liminary sea-sickness, there is hardly time for " flirtation and 
 its consequences." Nor was it so much a stormy trip as one 
 with long sunny calms. Then we hauled up Gulf- weed w r ith 
 little crabs saw Portuguese men-of-war or sea-anemones 
 sailing along like Cleopatra s barges with purple sails, or 
 counted flying-fish. Apropos of this last I have something 
 to say. During my last trip I once devoted an afternoon to 
 closely observing these bird-like creatures, and very distinctly 
 
188 MEMOIRS. 
 
 saw two cases in which the fish turned and flew against the 
 wind or tacked a fact which has been denied. 
 
 One day I saw a few rudder-fish playing about the stern. 
 They weigh perhaps some six or seven pounds ; so, standing 
 on velvet cushions in the cabin, I fished out of the stern- 
 window. Then came a bite, and in a second I had my fish 
 flapping about on the carpet under the table, to the great 
 amazement of the steward, who had probably never had a 
 live fish jump so promptly before into his hands. And we 
 had it for dinner. One day a ship made to us a signal of 
 distress, and sent a boat, saying that they were completely 
 out of fuel ; also that their passengers consisted entirely of 
 the celebrated Eavel troupe of acrobats and actors. It would 
 have been an experience to have crossed in that packet with 
 their chief, Gabriel ! 
 
 Gabriel Ravel it is one of my brother s published tales 
 was a good boxer as well as a marvellous acrobat, and he 
 could look like what he pleased. One morning a muscular and 
 vain New York swell saw in a gymnasium one whom he sup 
 posed to be a very verdant New Jersey rustic gaping about. 
 The swell exhibited with great pride his skill on the parallel 
 bars, horizontal pole, ct cetera, and seeing the countryman 
 absolutely dumbfounded with astonishment, proposed to the 
 latter to put on the gloves. " Jersey " hardly seemed to 
 know what gloves were, but with much trouble he was got 
 into form and set to milling. But though he was as awk 
 ward as a blind cow, the swell pugilist could not for a very 
 long time get in a blow. Jersey dodged every hit " some 
 how " in a manner which seemed to be miraculous. At last 
 one told on his chest, and it appeared to be a stunner, for 
 it knocked him into the air, where he turned a double som 
 ersault, and then fell on his feet. And it seemed as if, 
 during this flight, he had been suddenly inspired with a 
 knowledge of the manly art, for on descending, he went at 
 the swell and knocked him from time. It was Gabriel Ravel. 
 
 We saw an iceberg far away, and lay off on the Grand 
 
STUDENT LIFE AND TRAVEL IN EUROPE. 189 
 
 Banks (where our steerage passengers caught cod-fish), and 
 beheld a water-spout I once saw two at a time in the Medi 
 terranean and whales, which were far commoner then than 
 now, it being rumoured that the one, and no more, which is 
 regularly seen by passengers now is a tame one belonging to 
 the White Star or some other line, which keeps him moored 
 in a certain place on exhibition ; also that what Gulf-weed 
 there is left is grown near New York and scattered by night 
 from certain boats. It may be so this is an artificial age. 
 All that remains is to learn that the flying-fish are No. 3 salt 
 mackerel set with springs, and I am not sure that I should 
 doubt even that. 
 
IV. 
 THE RETURN TO AMERICA. 
 
 1848-1862. 
 
 Home Studying law with John Cadwallader Philadelphia as I found 
 it Richard B. Kimball " Fusang "Literal reporting in German 
 First experiences in magazines and newspapers Father Matthew 
 Dr. Rufus Griswold Engaged to be married A journey North 
 Colonel Cotl and pistol-practice with him Alfred Jaell Editor of 
 Barnum s Illustrated News Dr. Griswold and his MS. Bixby s 
 Mr. Barnum My first books New York society in the early Fifties 
 Alice and Phoebe Carey Washington Irving Bayard Taylor 
 N. P. Willis J. G. Saxe H. C. Carey Emily Schaumberg I be 
 come assistant-editor of the Bulletin George H. Boker Cremation 
 Editorial life Paternal enterprise My father renews his for 
 tune I am married The Republican Convention First great dis 
 sension with the South Translating Heine The lady in the burn 
 ing hotel The writing of " Hans Breitmann s Barty " Change to 
 New York Appletons Cyclopaedia G. W. Ripley and Charles A. 
 Dana Foreign editing of New York Times "Vanity Fair" The 
 Bohemians Artemus Ward Lincoln s election The Civil War 
 My political work in the Knickerbocker Emancipation I become 
 sole editor of the Continental Magazine What I did in 1862 and 
 1863 in aid of the Union cause. 
 
 So we arrived in New York, and within an hour or two 
 after my arrival I was in the train en route for Philadelphia. 
 On the way, I intrusted a newsboy with an English shilling 
 to go and get me change. I still await that change. And 
 in Philadelphia the hackman who drove me to my father s 
 house, as soon as the trunks were removed, departed sud 
 denly, carrying away with him a small hand-bag containing 
 several valuable objects, which I never recovered. I began 
 to think that if the object of travel be to learn to keep one s 
 
THE RETURN TO AMERICA. 191 
 
 eyes open and avoid being swindled, that I had better have 
 remained at home. 
 
 My father had removed to another house in Walnut 
 Street, below Twelfth Street. After this he only changed 
 dwellings once more before his death. This constant change 
 from one rented house to another, like the changes from 
 school to school, is very unfortunate, as I have before said, 
 for any family. It destroys all the feeling and unity of 
 character which grow up in a settled home. 
 
 I pass over the joy of again seeing my parents, the dear 
 sisters, and brother Henry. I was soon settled down, soon 
 visiting friends, going to evening parties, making morning 
 or afternoon calls, and after a little while was entered as a 
 law-student in the office of John Cadwallader in Fourth 
 Street. 
 
 I cannot pass over the fact, for it greatly influenced my 
 after life, that though everybody was very kind to me, and I 
 was even in a small way a kind of lion, the change from my 
 late life was very hard to bear. I have read a wonderful 
 story of a boy who while at a severe school had a marvellous 
 dream. It seemed to last for years, and while it lasted he 
 went to the University, graduated, passed into diplomatic 
 life, was a great man and beloved ; when all at once he awoke 
 and found himself at school again and birchable. After the 
 freedom of student life in Heidelberg and Munich and Paris, 
 and having been among the few who had carried out a great 
 revolution, and much familiarity with the most cosmopolite 
 type of characters in Europe, and existing in literature and 
 art, I was settled down to live, move, and have all being 
 hencefortj^ and perhaps for ever in Philadelphia ! Of which 
 city, at that time, there was not one in the world of which so 
 little evil could be said, or so much good, yet of which so 
 few ever spoke with enthusiasm. Its inhabitants were all 
 well-bathed, well-clad, well-behaved; all with exactly the 
 same ideas and the same ideals. A decided degree of refine 
 ment was everywhere perceptible, and they were so fond of 
 
192 MEMOIRS. 
 
 flowers that I once ascertained by careful inquiry that in 
 most respectable families there was annually much more 
 money expended for bouquets than for books. When a 
 Philadelphian gave a dinner or supper, his great care was to 
 see that everything on the table was as good or perfect as 
 possible. I had been accustomed to first considering what 
 should be placed around it on the chairs as the main item. 
 The lines of demarcation in " society " were as strongly 
 drawn as in Europe, or more so, with the enormous differ 
 ence, however, that there was not the slightest perceptible 
 shade of difference in the intellects, culture, or character of 
 the people on either side of the line, any more than there is 
 among the school-boys on either side of the mark drawn for 
 a game. Very trifling points of difference, not perceptible 
 to an outsider, made the whole difference between the ex- 
 clusives and the excluded ; just as the witch-mark no larger 
 than a needle-point indicates to the judge the difference 
 between the saved and the damned. 
 
 I had not been long engaged in studying law when I 
 made the acquaintance of Kichard B. Kimball, a lawyer of 
 New York, who had written a few novels which were very 
 popular, and are still reprinted by Tauchnitz. He knew 
 everybody, and took a great interest in me, and opened the 
 door for me to the Knickerbocker Magazine. To this I had 
 contributed articles while at Princeton. I now sent it my 
 translation of Professor Neumann s " Chinese in Mexico in 
 the Fifth Century." I forget whether this was in 1849 or 
 1850. In after years I expanded it to a book, of which a cer 
 tain Professor said, firstly in a paper read before the Ameri 
 can Asiatic Society, and secondly in a pamphlet, J;hat there 
 was nothing of any importance in it which had not already 
 appeared in Bancroft s work on the Pacific. I wrote to him, 
 pointing out the fact that Bancroft s work did not appear till 
 many years after my article in the Knickerbocker. To which 
 the Sinologist replied very suavely and apologetically indeed 
 that he was " very sorry," but had never seen the article in 
 
THE RETURN TO AMERICA. 193 
 
 the Knickerbocker, &c. But he did not publish the correction, 
 as he should have done. For which reason I now vindicate 
 myself from the insinuated accusation that I borrowed from 
 Bancroft. I had, indeed, almost forgotten this work, " Fu- 
 sang," when, in 1890, Prince Roland Bonaparte, at a dinner 
 given by him to the Congres des Traditions Populaires, 
 startled me by recurring to it and speaking of it with great 
 praise. For it vindicates the claim of the French that Des- 
 guignes first discovered the fact that the Chinese were the 
 first to discover America. If any one doubts this, let him 
 read the truly great work of Vinton on the whole. Prince 
 Roland had been in China and earnestly studied the subject. 
 Von Eichthal had endorsed my views, and wrote to me on 
 Fusang. I have been for many years well acquainted with 
 his nephew, Baron von Eichthal, and his remarkably accom 
 plished wife, who is expert in all the minor arts. 
 
 My father s resources became about this time limited, and 
 I, in fact, realised that he had taxed himself more than I had 
 supposed to maintain me abroad. His Congress Hall prop 
 erty did not pay much rent. For my position in the world, 
 friends, studies, and society, I found myself very much and 
 very often in great need of money. As at that time we w r ere 
 supposed to be much richer than we really were, this was an 
 additional source of trial. I began to see clearly that in the 
 law, as in all business or professions, I should have to wait 
 for years ere I could make a living. For the instances are 
 very few and far between in which a young man, who has not 
 inherited or grown up to a practice, can make one himself at 
 once. 
 
 More than this, I was not fitted for law at all. From my 
 birth I had absolutely one of those peculiar temperaments 
 which really disqualify men for " business." If I had en 
 tered a law-office in which there was much office-work or 
 practice, I might have acquired a practical interest in the 
 profession, but of this there was in ours literally none what 
 ever. I had a great fondness for copying deeds, &c., but Mr. 
 
194 MEMOIRS. 
 
 Cadwallader, though he very much admired my quaint round 
 hand, being the very soul of honour, observing that I was 
 eager for such work, would not give me much of it though 
 it would have been to his profit, because, as he said, " stu 
 dents who paid should not be employed as clerks only, much 
 less as copying machines." As it had always been deeply im 
 pressed on my mind by every American friend that I had 
 " no business capacity," and, moreover, as I greatly dreaded 
 speaking in court, I had from the beginning a great fear that 
 I could never live by the law. I mention this because there 
 are many thousands of young men who suffer terribly from 
 such apprehension, and often ruin life by it. A few months 
 practice in a mercantile college will go far to relieve the first 
 apprehension, while as regards stage fright, it can be easily 
 educated out of anybody, as I have since those days educated 
 it out of myself, so that rising to debate or speak inspires in 
 me a gaudium certaminis, which increases with the certainty 
 of being attacked. Let the aspirant begin by reading papers 
 before, let us say, a family or school, and continue to do so 
 frequently and at as short intervals as possible before such 
 societies or lyceums as will listen to him. Then let him 
 speak from memory or improvise and debate. This should 
 form a part of all education whatever, and it should be thor 
 ough. It is specially needed for lawyers and divines, yet a 
 great proportion of both are most insufficiently trained in it ; 
 and while I was studying law it was never mentioned to me. 
 I was never so much as once taken into court or practically 
 employed in any manner whatever. 
 
 I remember an amusing incident in the office. Mr. Cad 
 wallader asked me one day to call, returning from my lunch, 
 on a certain Mr. Dimpfel, one of his clients, leave a certain 
 message and his request as follows : " I want you, Mr. Leland, 
 to be very careful I have observed that you are sometimes 
 inaccurate in such matters, therefore be sure that you give 
 me Mr. Dimpfel s very words" Mr. Cadwallader knew 
 French and Spanish perfectly, but not German, and was 
 
THE RETURN TO AMERICA. 195 
 
 not aware that I always conversed with Mr. Dimpfel in the 
 latter language. When I returned my teacher said 
 
 " Now, Mr. Leland, can you repeat accurately word for 
 word what Mr. Dimpfel said? " I replied : 
 
 " Yes. Der Herr Dimpfel Idsst sich grilssen und meldet 
 das er Montag kommen wird urn halb drei. Und er sagt 
 weiter ..." 
 
 " That will do," cried Mr. Cadwallader; "you must give 
 it in English." 
 
 " I beg your pardon," was my grave reply, " but you 
 asked for his very words." 
 
 I began to write for publication in 1849. Mr. John Sar- 
 tain, a great engraver, established a magazine, to which I 
 contributed several articles on art subjects, subsequently 
 many more on all subjects, and finally every month a certain 
 number of pages of humorous matter. A man named Manuel 
 Cooke established in Philadelphia a Drawing-Room Journal. 
 For this I wrote a great deal for a year or two. It paid me 
 no money, but gave me free admission to theatres, operas, 
 etc., and I learned a great deal as to the practical manage 
 ment of a newspaper. 
 
 The first summer after my return we went to Stonington, 
 and thence to visit our friends in New England, as of yore. 
 At Dedham I had an attack of cholera ; my uncle, Dr. Stim- 
 son, gave me during the night two doses of laudanum of fifty 
 drops each, which cured me. Father Matthew came to Ded 
 ham. I went with a very pretty young cousin of mine named 
 Marie Lizzie Fisher, since deceased, to hear him preach. 
 After the address, meeting the Father, I went boldly up and 
 introduced myself to him, and then Miss Fisher. I think 
 that his address must have deeply affected me, since I was 
 obliged to stop on my way home to take a drink to steady 
 my nerves. It was against the law at that time to sell such 
 " poison," so the hotel-keeper took me and my paternal uncle, 
 George, who treated, down into the cellar, where he had con 
 cealed some Hollands. I can remember that that pleasant 
 
196 MEMOIRS. 
 
 summer in Dedham I, one Sunday morning in the church dur 
 ing service, composed a poem, which in after years even found 
 its way into " The Poets and Poetry of America." It began 
 with the words 
 
 " O er an old ruined doorway 
 
 Philosophus hung, 
 And madly his bell-cap 
 And bauble he swung." 
 
 It was a wild mixture of cosmopolitanism and Hamletism, 
 and it indicates accurately the true state of my cor cordium 
 at that time. Earnest thought, or a yearning for truth, and 
 worldly folly, were playing a game of battledore and shuttle 
 cock, and I was the feathered cork. There is a song with 
 out words by Mendelssohn, which sets forth as clearly as 
 Shakespeare or Heine could have done in words, deep melan 
 choly or unavoidable suffering expressing itself merrily and 
 gaily in a manner which is both touching and beautiful, or 
 sweet and sad. Without any self-consciousness or display of 
 sentimentalism, I find deep traces of this in many little poems 
 or sketches which I wrote at that time, and which have now 
 been forgotten. I had been in Arcadia ; I was now in a very 
 pleasant sunny Philistia; but I could not forget the past. 
 And I never forgot it. Once in Paris, in the opera, I used in 
 jest emphatically the Russian word harrascho, " good," when 
 a Eussian stranger in the next box smiled joyously, and rising, 
 waved his glove to me. Once in a brilliant soiree in Phila 
 delphia there was a Hungarian Count, an exile, and talking 
 with him in English, I let fall for a joke " Bassama terem- 
 tete!" He grasped my hand, and, forgetting all around, 
 entered into a long conversation. It was like the American 
 who, on finding an American cent in the streets in Paris, 
 burst into tears. So from time to time something recalled 
 Europe to me. 
 
 I went now and then to New York, which I liked better 
 than Philadelphia. I was often a guest of Mr. Kimball. He 
 introduced me to Dr. Rufus Griswold, a strange character 
 
THE RETURN TO AMERICA. 197 
 
 and a noted man of letters. He was to his death so uniformly 
 a friend to me, and so untiring in his efforts to aid me, that 
 I cannot find words to express his kindness nor the gratitude 
 which I feel. He became the editor of a literary magazine 
 which was really far in advance of the time. It did not last 
 long ; while it endured I supplied for it monthly reviews of 
 foreign literature. 
 
 There were not many linguists on the American press in 
 those days, and my reviews of works in half-a-dozen languages 
 induced some one to pay a high compliment to the editor. 
 It was Bayard Taylor, I believe, who, hearing this, declared 
 honestly, and as a friend, that I alone deserved the credit. 
 This was repeated by some one to Dr. Griswold in such a 
 form that he thought / had been talking against him, though 
 I had never spoken to a soul about it. The result was that 
 the Doctor promptly dismissed me, and I felt hurt. Mr. 
 Kimball met me and laughed, saying, " The next time you 
 meet the Doctor just go resolutely at him and replace your 
 self. Don t allow him a word." So, meeting Dr. Griswold 
 a few days after in Philadelphia, I went boldly up and said, 
 " You must come at once with me and take a drink imme 
 diately ! " The Doctor went like a lamb not to the slaughter, 
 but to its milk and when he had drunk a comforting grog, 
 I attacked him boldly, and declared that I had never spoken 
 a word to a living soul as to the authorship of the reviews 
 which was perfectly true, for I never broke the golden 
 rule of " contributorial anonymity." So the Doctor put 
 me on the staff again. But to the end of his life I was 
 always with him a privileged character, and could take, if 
 I chose, the most extraordinary liberties, though he was 
 one of the most irritable and vindictive men I ever met, 
 if he fancied that he was in any way too familiarly 
 treated. 
 
 Kossuth came to America, and I was almost squeezed to 
 death right against a pretty German girl in the crowd at 
 his reception in Philadelphia. At the dinner in New York 
 
198 MEMOIRS. 
 
 I met at Kimball s house Franz Pulszky, and sat by his wife. 
 I have since seen him many times in Buda-Pest. 
 
 There lived in Philadelphia a gentleman named Rodney 
 Fisher. He had been for many years a partner in an Eng 
 lish house in Canton, and also lived in England. He had 
 long been an intimate friend of Eussel Sturgis, subsequently 
 of " Baring Brothers." He was a grand-nephew of Caesar 
 Rodney, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independ 
 ence, and a son of Judge Fisher, of Delaware. He was a 
 man of refined and agreeable manners and an admirable re- 
 later of his innumerable experiences in Europe and the East. 
 His wife had been celebrated for her beauty. When I first 
 met her in her own house she seemed to me to be hardly 
 thirty years of age, and I believed at first she was one of her 
 own daughters. She was without exception the most ami 
 able, I may say lovable person whom I ever met, and I never 
 had a nuance or shade of difference of opinion with her, or 
 know an instant during which I was not devoted to her. I 
 visited his house and fell in love with his daughter Belle, to 
 whom I became, after about a. year, engaged. We were not, 
 however, married till five years after. Thackeray, whom I 
 knew well, said to a Mr. Curtis Raymond, of Boston, not 
 long before leaving for England, that she was the most beau 
 tiful woman whom he had seen in America. I cannot help 
 recording this. 
 
 I need not say that, notwithstanding my terrible anxiety 
 as to my future, from this time I led a very happy life. 
 There was in Philadelphia a very wealthy lady called its 
 Queen. This was Mrs. James Rush. She had built the 
 finest house in our city, and placed in it sixty thousand 
 dollars worth of furniture. " E un Id palazzo ! " said an 
 Italian tenor one evening to me at a reception there. This 
 lady, who had read much, had lived long in Europe and 
 " knew cities and men." To say that she was kind to me 
 would feebly express her kindness. It is true that we were 
 by much mutual knowledge rendered congenial. She in- 
 
THE RETURN TO AMERICA. 199 
 
 vited me to attend her weekly receptions, &c., with Miss 
 Fisher. There we met and were introduced to all the cele 
 brated people who passed through Philadelphia. One even 
 ing I had there, for instance, a conversation in German with 
 Mine. Sontag, the great singer, as with Jerome Bonaparte; 
 the nephew. 
 
 When the summer came I joined Mr. Fisher and his two 
 daughters the second was named Mary in a tour. We 
 went to New York, thence up the Hudson, and eastward to 
 Boston. After a day s travel we came to a town on the 
 frontier line, where we had to stop for two hours. Mr. 
 Fisher and I, being very thirsty and fatigued, went into a 
 saloon in which were two bars or counters. Advancing to 
 the second of these, I asked for brandy. " We don t sell no 
 brandy here," replied the man. " This is in Massachusetts : 
 go to the other bar that is in New York." In an instant 
 we left New England for the Middle States, and refreshed 
 ourselves. Thence we went to Springfield and saw the 
 armoury, where guns are made. Thence to Boston, where 
 we stopped at a hotel. I went with Miss Belle Fisher for a 
 day s excursion to Dedham, where my mother and sisters 
 were on a visit. It was very pleasant. 
 
 From Boston we went to Newport, and stayed at the 
 Ocean House. There I found Milton Sanford, a connection 
 of mine and a noted character. He had lived in Florence 
 and known Browning and his wife. He was, I believe, 
 uncle of Miss Kate Field. He introduced me to Colonel 
 Colt, the celebrated inventor or re-discoverer of the re 
 volver; to Alf. Jaell, a very great pianist; and Edward 
 Marshall, a brother of Humphrey Marshall. Sanford, Colt, 
 Marshall, and I patronised the pistol - gallery every day, 
 nor did we abstain from mint - juleps. I found that, in 
 shooting, Colonel Colt could beat me at the word, but 
 that I always had the best of it at a deliberate " take-your- 
 time" shot. There, too, were the two brothers Burnett, 
 whom I had met long before in Heidelberg. What with 
 
200 MEMOIRS. 
 
 drives and balls and other gaiety, the time passed pleas 
 antly enough. 
 
 As I spoke German, I became intimate with Jaell. He 
 could not sing at all. Once I suggested to him that he 
 should compose variations on an air, a German popular song. 
 For a day or two he hummed it as well as he could. On the 
 third morning he took me into a room where there was a piano, 
 and asked me to sing while he played accompaniments. All 
 at once he said, " Stop ! I have got it ! " and then he played 
 the air with marvellously beautiful variations. He was a 
 great genius, but I never heard him play in public as he 
 played then. He was in a " high hour." It was wonderful. 
 I may here say that in after years, while living at a hotel, I 
 became well acquainted with Thalberg, and especially with 
 Ole Bull, the violinist, who told me much about Heine. 
 
 So time rolled on for three years. I passed my examina 
 tion and took an office in Third Street, with a sign proclaim 
 ing that I was attorney-at-law and Avokat. During six 
 months I had two clients and made exactly three pounds. 
 Then, the house being wanted, I left and gave up law. This 
 was a very disheartening time for me. I had a great many 
 friends who could easily have put collecting and other busi 
 ness in my hands, but none of them did it. I felt this very 
 keenly. Quite apart from a young man s pushing himself, 
 despite every obstacle, there is the great truth that some 
 times the obstacles or bad luck become insuperable. Mine 
 did at this time. 
 
 The author of " Gossip of the Century " has well re 
 marked that " it has been said that however quickly a clever 
 lad may have run up the ladder, whether of fame or fortune, 
 it will always be found that he was lucky enough to find 
 some one who put his foot on the first rung." Which is 
 perfectly true, as I soon found, if not in law, at least in 
 literature. 
 
 I went more than once to New York, hoping to obtain 
 literary employment. One day Dr. Rufus Griswold came to 
 
THE RETURN TO AMERICA. 201 
 
 me in great excitement. Mr. Barnum the great showman 
 and the Brothers Beech were about to establish a great 
 illustrated weekly newspaper, and he was to be the editor and 
 I the assistant. It is quite true that he had actually taken 
 the post, for which he did not care twopence, only to provide 
 a place for me, and he had tramped all over New York for 
 hours in a fearful storm to find me and to announce the good 
 news. 
 
 Then work began for me in tremendous earnest. Let the 
 reader imagine such a paper as the London Illustrated News 
 with one editor and one assistant! Three men could not 
 have read our exchanges, and I was expected to do that 
 and all the minor casual writing for cuts, or cutting down 
 and occasional outside work. And yet even Mr. Barnum, 
 who should have had more sense, one day, on coming in, ex 
 pressed his amazement on seeing about a cartload of country 
 exchanges which I had not opened. But there was some 
 thing in Philadelphia which made all work seem play to me, 
 and I long laboured from ten in the morning till midnight. 
 My assiduity attracted attention. 
 
 Dr. Griswold was always a little " queer," and I used to 
 scold and reprove him for it. He had got himself into great 
 trouble by his remarks on Edgar A. Poe. Mr. Kimball and 
 others, who knew the Doctor, believed, as I do, that there was 
 no deliberate evil or envy in those remarks. Poe s best 
 friends told severe stories of him in those days me ipso taste 
 and Griswold, naught extenuating and setting down 
 naught in malice, wrote incautiously more than he should. 
 These are the words of another than I. But when Griswold 
 was attacked, then he became savage. One day I found in 
 his desk, which he had committed to me, a great number of 
 further material collected to Poe s discredit. I burnt it all 
 up at once, and told the Doctor what I had done, and scolded 
 him well into the bargain. He took it all very amiably. 
 There was also much more matter to other men s discredit 
 ascensionem expectans awaiting publication, all of which I 
 
202 MEMOIRS. 
 
 burned. It was the result of long research, and evidently 
 formed the material for a book. Had it ever been published, 
 it would have made Rome howl ! But, as I said, I was angry, 
 and I knew it would injure Dr. Griswold more than anybody. 
 It is a pity that I had not always had the Doctor in hand 
 though I must here again repeat that, as regards Poe, he is, 
 in my opinion, not so much to blame as a score of writers 
 have made out. The tales, which were certainly most authen 
 tic, or at least apparently so, during the life of the latter, 
 among his best friends regarding him, were, to say the least, 
 discreditable, albeit that is no excuse whatever for publish 
 ing them. I have always much disliked the popular princi 
 ple of judging men s works entirely by their lives, and decid 
 ing against the literary merit of Sartor Resartus because 
 Carlyle put his wife s money to his own account in banco. 
 
 And it is, moreover, cruel that a man, because he has 
 been a poet or genius or artist, must needs have every weak 
 ness (real or conjectured) in his life served up and grinned at 
 and chatted over, as if he forsooth were a clergyman or some 
 kind of make-believe saint. However, the more vulgar a 
 nature is the more it will gloat on gossip ; and herein the 
 most pretentious of the higher classes show themselves no 
 better than the basest. 
 
 I lived at Dan Bixby s, at the corner of Park Place and 
 Broadway, where I came very near being shot one night by a 
 man who mistook me, or rather my room, for that of the one 
 below, in which his wife was, or had been, with another per 
 son. Being very tipsy, the injured individual went one 
 storey too high, and tried to burst in to shoot me with a re 
 volver, but I repelled him after a severe struggle, in which 
 I had sharp work to avoid being shot. I would much rather 
 fight a decent duel any time than have such a " hog-fight." 
 I only had a loaded cane. The worst of it was that the in 
 jured husband, having traced his wife, as he erroneously 
 thought, to my room, went to Bixby and the clerk, and asked 
 who lived in it. But as they were my friends, they dismissed 
 
TIIE RETURN TO AMERICA. 203 
 
 him gruffly, yet believed all the same that / had " a petticoat 
 in my wardrobe." Hence for a week all my friends kept 
 making cruel allusions in my presence to gay deceivers and 
 Don Juan et cetera, until in a rage I asked what the devil it 
 all meant, when there was an explanation by a clergyman, 
 and I swore myself clear. But I thought it was hard lines 
 to have to stand the revolver, endure all the scandal for a week, 
 and be innocent all the time withal ! That was indeed bitter 
 in the cup ! 
 
 Apropos of this small affair, I can recall a droll scene, de 
 eodem genere, which I witnessed within a week of the other. 
 There was a rather first-class saloon, bar, and restaurant on 
 Broadway, kept by a good-looking pugilistic-associated in 
 dividual named George Slmrragar. As he had black eyes, 
 and was a shoulder-hitter, and as the name in Romany means 
 " a captain," I daresay he was partly gypsy. And, when 
 weary with editorial work, I sometimes dropped in there for 
 refreshment. One night an elderly, vulgar individual, 
 greatly exalted by many brandies, became disorderly, and 
 drawing a knife, made a grand Malay charge on all present, 
 a la mok. George Shurragar promptly settled him with a 
 blow, disarmed him, and " fired him out " into outer dark 
 ness. Then George exhibited the knife. It was such a dirty, 
 disreputable-looking "pig-sticker," that we were all dis 
 gusted, and George cast it with contempt into the street. 
 Does the reader remember the scene in "The Bohemian 
 Girl " in which the dandy Count examines the nasty knife 
 left behind by the gypsy Devilshoof? It was the very 
 counterpart of this, the difference being that in this case it 
 was the gypsy who despised the instrument. 
 
 Such trivial amusing incidents and rencontres as these 
 were matters of almost daily occurrence to me in those days, 
 and I fear that I incur the reproach of padding by narrating 
 these. Yet, as I write this, I have just read in the " Life of 
 Benvenuto Cellini " that he too omits the description of a lot 
 of exactly such adventures, as being, like the darkey s im- 
 
204: MEMOIRS. 
 
 prisonments for stealing, " not worf mentionin " and con 
 fess I felt great regret that he did so ; for there is always a 
 great deal of local and temporal colour in anything whose 
 proper finale should be in a police-court. 
 
 Hawthorne used to stay at Bixby s. He was a moody 
 man, who sat by the stove and spoke to no one. Bixby had 
 been a publisher, and was proud that he had first issued 
 llayward s " Faust " in America. He was also proud that 
 his hotel was much frequented by literary men and naval 
 officers. He was very kind to me. Once when I complained 
 to the clerk that the price of my rooms was too high, he re 
 plied, " Mr. Leland, the prices of all the rooms in the house, 
 excepting yours, were raised long ago, and Mr. Bixby charged 
 me strictly not to let you know it" Uncle Daniel was a 
 gentleman, and belonged to my club the Century. When 
 he grew older he lived on an annuity, and was a great and 
 privileged favourite among actresses and singers. Thirty 
 years later I called with him in New York on Ada Caven 
 dish. 
 
 After a fortnight or so, Dr. Griswold began to be very 
 erratic. He had a divorce case going on in Philadelphia. 
 He went off, assuring me that everything was in order, and 
 never returned. The foreman came to me saying that there 
 was no copy, and nothing ready, and everything needed. 
 Here was indeed a pretty kettle of fish ! For I at that time 
 absolutely distrusted my own ability to do all the work. I 
 flew to Kimball, who said, " Just put it through by strong 
 will, and you ll succeed." 
 
 Then I went to Mr. Barnum Uncle Barnum who was 
 always "as good as gold" tome. I burst out into a state 
 ment of my griefs, mentioning incidentally that I really 
 could not go on as full editor, and do such fearful work on 
 the salary of an office-boy. He listened to it all, I am sure 
 with amusement, and placing his hand kindly on my shoulder 
 as we walked up and down the hall of the Museum, said, 
 " You slictri t go. Don t get into a funk. I know that you 
 
THE RETURN TO AMERICA. 205 
 
 can do the work, and do it well. And the salary shall be 
 doubled certainly ! " 
 
 So the paper was brought out after all. I had great trouble 
 for some time to learn to write editorials. I used to go to the 
 office of a Sunday morn, and sit sometimes from ten till two 
 turning over the exchanges, and seeking for ideas. It was a 
 dreadful ordeal. In fact, in after times it was several years 
 before I could seize a pen, rattle up a subject and dash off a 
 leader. Now I can write far more easily than I can talk. 
 And it is a curious fact that soon after I became really skilled 
 at such extempore work in the opinion of the best judges, 
 such as Raymond, I no longer had any opportunity to prac 
 tice it. 
 
 I had worked only a week or two when a rather queer, 
 tall, roughish Yankee was brought into the office. He 
 worked for a while, and in a day or two took possession of 
 my desk and rudely informed me that he was my superior 
 editor and master there. He had, as many men do, mistaken 
 amiable politeness for humility. I replied, knowing that 
 Mr. Beech, out of sight, was listening to every word, that 
 there was no master there but Mr. Beech, and that I should 
 keep my desk. We became affable ; but I abode my time, 
 for I found that he was utterly incompetent to do the work. 
 Very soon he told me that he had an invitation to lecture in 
 Philadelphia. I told him that if he wished to go I would 
 do all his work for him. So he went, and Mr. Beech com 
 ing in, asked where Mr. was. I replied that he had 
 
 gone away to lecture, and that I was to do his work during 
 his absence. This was really too much, and the Yankee was 
 dismissed " in short order," the Beeches being men who 
 made up their minds promptly and acted vigorously. As 
 for me, I never, shirked work of any kind. A gentleman on 
 a newspaper never does. The more of a snob a man is, the 
 more afraid he is of damaging his dignity, and the more de 
 sirous of being "boss" and captain. But though I have 
 terribly scandalised my chief or proprietor by reporting a fire, 
 10 
 
208 MEMOIRS. 
 
 I never found that I was less respected by the typos, reporters, 
 and subs. 
 
 I had before leaving Philadelphia published two books. 
 One was " The Poetry and Mystery of Dreams," which I 
 dedicated to my fiancee, Miss Belle Fisher. The other was 
 an odd melange, which had appeared in chapters in the 
 Knickerbocker Magazine. It was titled Meister Karl s 
 Sketch-Book. It had no great success beyond attaining to a 
 second edition long after ; yet Washington Irving praised it 
 to everybody, and wrote to me that he liked it so much that 
 he kept it by him to nibble ever and anon, like a Stilton 
 cheese or a pate de foie gras ; and here and there I have 
 known men, like the late Nicolas Triibner or E. L. Bulwer, 
 who found a strange attraction in it, but it was emphatically 
 caviare to the general reader. It had at least a style of its 
 own, which found a few imitators. It ranks, I think, about 
 pari passu with Coryatt s " Crudities," or lower. 
 
 There were two or three salons in New York where there 
 were weekly literary receptions, and where one could meet 
 the principal writers of the time. I often saw at Kimball s 
 and other places the Misses Wetherell, who wrote the " Wide, 
 Wide World " and " Queechy." They were elderly, and had 
 80 very little of the " world " in their ways, that they occurred 
 to me as an example of the fact that people generally write 
 most on what they know least about. Thus a Lowell factory- 
 girl likes to write a tale of ducal society in England ; and 
 when a Scotchman has less intelligence of " jocks " and 
 " wut " than any of his countrymen, he compiles, and com 
 ments on, American humorists. 
 
 Once there was a grand publishers dinner to authors 
 where I went with Alice and Phoebe Carey, who were great 
 friends of mine. There I met and talked with Washington 
 Irving ; I remember Bryant and N. P. Willis, et tous les 
 autres. Just at that time wine, &c., could only be sold in 
 New York "in the original packages as imported." Alice 
 or Phoebe Carey lamented that we were to have none at the 
 
THE RETURN TO AMERICA. 207 
 
 banquet. There was a large dish of grapes before her, and I 
 said, " Why, there you have plenty of it in the original pack 
 ages ! " 
 
 At that time very hospitable or genial hosts used to place 
 a bottle of brandy and glass in the gentlemen s dressing-room 
 at an evening s reception, and I remember it was considered 
 a scandalous thing when a certain old retired naval officer 
 once emptied the whole bottle single-handed. 
 
 Of course I was very intimate with Clark of the Knick 
 erbocker, Fred Cozzens, John Godfrey Saxe, and all the com 
 pany of gay and festive humorists who circled about that 
 merry magazine. There was never anything quite like the 
 Knickerbocker, and there never will be again. It required a 
 sunny, genial social atmosphere, such as we had before the 
 war, and never after ; an easy writing of gay and cultivated 
 men for one another, and not painfully elaborating jocosities 
 
 or seriosities for the million as in But never mind. It 
 
 sparkled through its summer-time, and oh ! how its readers 
 loved it ! I sometimes think that I would like to hunt up 
 the old title-plate with Diedrich Knickerbocker and his pipe, 
 and issue it again every month to a few dozen subscribers 
 who loved quaint odds and ends, till I too should pass away ! 
 
 It was easy enough to foresee that a great illustrated 
 weekly, with actually one young man, and generally no 
 more, to do all the literary work could not last long. And 
 yet the New York Times, or some such journal, said that 
 the work was very well done, and that the paper did well 
 until I left. Heaven knows that I worked hard enough on 
 it, and, what was a great deal to boast of in those days, never 
 profited one farthing beyond free tickets to plays, which I 
 had little time to use. And yet my pay was simply despicably 
 small. I had great temptations to write up certain specu 
 lative enterprises, and never accepted one. Our circulation 
 sometimes reached 150,000. And if the publishers (excepting 
 Barnum) had ever shown me anything like thanks or kind 
 ness for gratuitous zeal and interest which I took, I could 
 
208 MEMOIRS. 
 
 have greatly aided them. One day, for instance, I was asked 
 to write a description of a new ferry. I went there, and the 
 proprietor intimated that he would pay a large sum for an 
 article which would point out the advantage or profit which 
 would accrue from investing in his lots. I told him that if 
 it were really true that such was the case, I would do it for 
 nothing, but that I never made money behind my salary. I 
 began to weary of the small Yankee greed and griping and 
 " thanklessness " which I experienced. There were editors 
 in New York who, for less work, earned ten times the salary 
 which I received. I was not sorry when I heard that some 
 utterly inexperienced New England clergyman had been en 
 gaged to take my place. So I returned to Philadelphia. The 
 paper very soon came to grief. I believe that with Barnum 
 alone I could have made it a great success. We had Frank 
 Leslie for chief engraver, and he was very clever and am 
 bitious. I had a knowledge of art, literature, and foreign 
 life and affairs, which could have been turned, with Leslie s 
 co-operation, to great advantage. I needed an office with a 
 few books for reference, at least three or four literary aids, 
 and other ordinary absolutely necessary facilities for work. 
 All that I literally had was a space half -portioned off from 
 the engine-room, where a dozen blackguard boys swore and 
 yelled as it were at my elbow, a desk, a chair, and a pair of 
 scissors, ink, and paste. This wretched scrimping prevailed 
 through the whole business, and thus it was expected to es 
 tablish a great first-class American illustrated newspaper. It 
 is sometimes forgotten in the United States that to make a 
 vast success, something is requisite beyond enterprise and 
 economy, and that it is a very poor policy to screw your 
 employes down to the last cent, and overwork them, and 
 make business needlessly irksome, when they have it in their 
 power to very greatly advance your interests. I dwell on this 
 because it is a common error everywhere. I have in my 
 mind a case in which an employer, who lived "like a prince," 
 boasted to me how little he paid his men, and how in the 
 
THE RETURN TO AMERICA. 209 
 
 long-run it turned out bitterly to his loss in many ways. 
 Those who had no principle robbed him, while the honest, 
 who would have made his interests their own, left him. I 
 have seen business after business broken up in this way. 
 While the principal is in vigour and life, he may succeed 
 with mere servants who are poorly paid ; then, after a time, 
 some younger partner, who has learned his morals from the 
 master, pushes him out, or he dies, and the business is worth 
 less, because there is not a soul in it who cares for it, or who 
 has grown up with any common sense of interest with the 
 heirs. 
 
 I remember one day being obliged in New York to listen 
 to a conversation between two men of business. One owed 
 the other a large sum, honestly enough of that there was 
 no question between them ; but he thought that there was a 
 legal way to escape payment, while the other differed from 
 him. So they argued away for a long time. There was not 
 a word of reproach; the creditor would have cheated the 
 debtor in the same way if he could ; the only point of differ 
 ence was whether it could be done. An employe who can 
 remain in such surroundings and be honest must be indeed a 
 miracle of integrity, and, if he do not over-reach them in the 
 long-run, one of stupidity. I might have made " house and 
 land " out of the newspaper had I been so disposed. 
 
 Of all the men whom I met in those days in the way of 
 business, Mr. Barnum, the great American humbug, was by 
 far the honestest and freest from guile or deceit, or " ways 
 that were dark, or tricks that were vain." He was very 
 kind-hearted and benevolent, and gifted with a sense of fun 
 which was even stronger than his desire for dollars. I have 
 talked very confidentially with him many times, for he was 
 very fond of me, and always observed that to engineer some 
 grotesque and startling paradox into tremendous notoriety, 
 to make something immensely puzzling with a stupendous 
 sell as postscript, was more of a motive with him than even 
 the main chance. He was a genius like Rabelais, but one 
 
210 MEMOIRS. 
 
 who employed business and humanity for material instead 
 of literature, just as Abraham Lincoln, who was a brother 
 of the same band, employed patriotism and politics. All 
 three of them expressed vast problems, financial, intellectual, 
 or natural, by the brief arithmetic of a joke. Mr. Barnum 
 was fearfully busy in those days; what with buying ele 
 phants, wooing two-headed girls for his Grand Combination, 
 laying out towns, chartering banks, and inventing unheard- 
 of wonders for the unrivalled collection of one hundred and 
 fifty million unparalleled moral marvels ; but he always found 
 time to act as unpaid contributor to a column of humorous 
 items which I always published. I have said that I had no 
 assistant ; I forgot that I always had Mr. Barnum as assistant 
 humorous editor for that department. All at once, when 
 least expected, he would come smiling in with some curiosity 
 of literature such as the " reverse " 
 
 " Lewd did I live & evil I did dwel," 
 
 or a fresh conundrum or joke, with all his heart and soul full 
 of it, and he would be as delighted over the proof as if to see 
 himself in print was a startling novelty. We two had " beau 
 tiful times " over that column, for there was a great deal of 
 " boy " still left in Barnum ; nor was I by any means de 
 ficient in it. One thing I set my face against firmly : I 
 never would in any way whatever write up, aid, or advertise 
 the great show or museum, or cry up the elephant. I was 
 resolved to leave the paper first. 
 
 On that humorous column Barnum always deferred to 
 me, even as a small school-boy defers to an elder on the ques 
 tion of a game of marbles or hop-scotch. There was no 
 affectation or play in it ; we were both quite in earnest. I 
 think I see him now, coming smiling in like a harvest-moon, 
 big with some new joke, and then we sat down at the desk 
 and " edited." How we would sit and mutually and ad 
 miringly read to one another our beautiful " good things," 
 the world forgetting, by the world forgot ! And yet I declare 
 
THE RETURN TO AMERICA. 211 
 
 that never till this instant did the great joke of it all ever 
 occur to me that two men of our experiences could be so 
 simply pleased ! Those humorous columns, collected and 
 republished in a book, might truly bear on the title-page, 
 " By Barnum and Hans Breitmann." And we were both of 
 the opinion that it really would make a very nice book in 
 deed. We were indeed both " boys " over it at play. 
 
 The entire American press expected, as a matter of course, 
 that the Illustrated Neivs would be simply an advertisement 
 for the great showman, and, as I represented to Mr. Barnum, 
 this would ere long utterly ruin the publication. I do not 
 now really know whether I was quite right in this, but it is 
 very much to Mr. Barnum s credit that he never insisted on 
 it, and that in his own paper he was conspicuous by his ab 
 sence. And here I will say that, measured by the highest and 
 most refined standard, there was more of the gentleman in 
 Phineas T. Barnum than the world imagined, and very much 
 more than there was in a certain young man in good society 
 who once expressed in my hearing disgust at the idea of even 
 speaking to " the showman." 
 
 Henry Ward Beecher was a great friend of Barnum and 
 the Beaches, of which some one wrote 
 
 " No wonder Mr. Alfred Beach 
 Prefers, as noblest preacher, 
 A man who is not only Beach, 
 But even more so Beecher." 
 
 He came very frequently into our office ; but I cannot re 
 call any saying of his worth recording. 
 
 There was also a brother of H. W. Longfellow, a clergy 
 man, who often visited me, of whom I retain a most agree 
 able recollection. 
 
 The newsboys who clustered round the outer door were 
 divided in opinion as to me. One party thought I was Mr. 
 Barnum, and treated me with profound respect. The other 
 faction cried aloud after me, " Hy ! you ! " 
 
 Mr. Barnum wanted me to write his Life.* This would 
 
MEMOIRS. 
 
 have been amusing work and profitable, but I shrunk from 
 the idea of being identified with it. I might as well have 
 done it, for I believe that Dr. Griswold performed the task, 
 and the public never knew or cared anything about it. But 
 my jolly companions at Dan Bixby s used to inquire of me at 
 what hour we fed the monkeys, and whether the Great Gryas- 
 cutus ever gave me any trouble ; and I was sensitive to such 
 insinuations. 
 
 At this time Mr. Barnum s great moral curiosity was a 
 bearded lady, a jolly and not bad-looking Frenchwoman, 
 whose beard was genuine enough, as I know, having pulled 
 it. My own beard has been described by a French newspaper 
 as une barbe de Charlemagne^ a very polite pun, but hers was 
 much fuller. It was soft as floss silk. After a while the cap 
 illary attraction ceased to draw, and Mr. Barnum thought of 
 an admirable plan to revive it. He got somebody to prose 
 cute him for false pretences and imposture, on the ground 
 that Madame was a man. Then Mr. Barnum had, with the 
 greatest unwillingness and many moral apologies, a medical 
 examination ; they might as sensibly have examined Vashish- 
 ta s cow to find out if it was an Irish bull. Then came the 
 attack on the impropriety of the whole thing, and finally Mr. 
 Barnum s triumphant surrebutter, showing he had most un 
 willingly been goaded by the attacks of malevolent wretches 
 into an unavoidable course of defence. Of course, spotless 
 innocence came out triumphant. Mr. Barnum s system of 
 innocence was truly admirable. When he had concocted some 
 monstrous cock-and-bull curiosity, he was wont to advertise 
 that " it was with very great reluctance that he presented this 
 unprecedented marvel to the world, as doubts had been ex 
 pressed as to its genuineness doubts inspired by the actually 
 apparently incredible amount of attraction in it. All that we 
 ask of an enlightened and honest public is, that it will pass a 
 fair verdict and decide whether it be a humbug or not " So 
 the enlightened public paid its quarters of a dollar, and de 
 cided that it was a humbug, and Barnum abode by their 
 
THE RETURN TO AMERICA. 213 
 
 decision, and then sent it to another city to be again de 
 cided on. 
 
 1 returned to Philadelphia, and to my father s house, and 
 occupied myself with such odds and ends of magazine and 
 other writing as came in my way, and always reading and 
 studying. I was very much depressed at this time, yet not 
 daunted. My year in New York had familiarised me with 
 characteristic phases of American life and manners ; my fa 
 ther thought I had gone through a severe mill with rather 
 doubtful characters, and once remarked that I should not 
 judge too harshly of business men, for I had been unusually 
 unfortunate in my experience. 
 
 A not unfrequent visitor at our house in Philadelphia was 
 our near neighbour, Henry C. Carey, the distinguished scholar 
 and writer on political economy, who had been so extensively 
 robbed of ideas by Bastiat, and who retook his own, not with 
 out inflicting punishment. He was a handsome, black-eyed, 
 white-haired man, with a very piercing glance. During the 
 war, when men were sad and dull, and indeed till his death, 
 Mr. Carey s one glorious and friendly extravagance was to as 
 semble every Sunday afternoon all his intimates, including 
 any distinguished strangers, at his house, round a table, in 
 rooms magnificently hung with pictures, and give everybody, 
 ad libitum, hock which cost him sixteen shillings a bottle. I 
 occasionally obliged him by translating for him German let 
 ters, &c., and he in return revised my pamphlet on Centrali 
 zation versus State Rights in 1863. H. C. Baird, a very able 
 writer of his school, was his nephew. The latter had two or 
 three sisters, whom I recall as charming girls while I was a 
 law-student. There were many beauties in Philadelphia in 
 those days, and prominent at the time, though as yet a school 
 girl, was the since far-famed Emily Schaumberg, albeit I pre 
 ferred Miss Belle Fisher, a descendant maternally of the fa 
 mous Callender beauties, and by her father s side allied to 
 Miss Vining, the American Queen of Beauty during the Revo 
 lution at Washington s republican court. There was also a 
 
214 MEMOIRS. 
 
 Miss Lewis, whose great future beauty I predicted while as 
 yet a child, to the astonishment of a few, " which prophecy 
 was marvellously fulfilled." Also a Miss Wharton, since de 
 ceased, on whom George Boker after her death wrote an ex 
 quisite poem. The two were, each of their kind, of a beauty 
 which I have rarely, if ever, seen equalled, and certainly never 
 surpassed, in Italy. How I could extend the list of those too 
 good and fair to live, who have passed away from my knowl 
 edge ! Miss Nannie Grigg Miss Julia Biddle ! Mais ou 
 sont Us neiges d antan ? 
 
 Thus far my American experiences had not paid well. I 
 reflected that if I had remained in Paris I should have done 
 far better. When I left, I knew that the success of Louis 
 Napoleon was inevitable. Three newspapers devoted to him 
 had appeared on the Boulevards in one day. There was 
 money at work, and workmen such as lived in the Hotel de 
 Luxembourg, gentlemen who could not only plan barricades 
 but fight at them, were in great demand, as honest men always 
 are in revolutions. Louis Napoleon was very anxious indeed 
 to attach to him the men of February, and many who had 
 not done one-tenth or one-twentieth of what I had, had the 
 door of fortune flung wide open to them. My police-dossier 
 would have been literally a diploma of honour under the new 
 Empire, for, after all, the men of February, Forty-eight, were 
 the ones who led off, and who all bore the highest reputation 
 for honour. All that I should have required would have been 
 some ambitious man of means to aid and such men abound 
 in Paris to have risen fast and high. As it turned out, it 
 was just as well in the end that I neither went in as a political 
 adventurer under Louis Napoleon, nor wrote the Life of Bar- 
 num. But no one knew in those days how Louis would 
 turn out. 
 
 I have but one word to add to this. The secret of the 
 Revolution of February had been in very few hands, which 
 was the secret of its success. Any one of us could have 
 secured fortune and " honours," or at least " orders," by be- 
 
THE RETURN TO AMERICA. 215 
 
 traying it. But we would as soon have secured orders for the 
 pit of hell as done so. This was known to Louis Napoleon, 
 and he must have realised who these men of iron integrity 
 were, for he was very curious and inquiring on this subject. 
 Now, I here claim it as a great, as a surpassing honour for 
 France, and as something absolutely without parallel in his 
 tory, that several hundred men could be found who could 
 not only keep this secret, but manage so very wisely as they 
 did. Louis Blanc was an example of these honest, unselfish 
 men. I came to know him personally many years after, 
 during his exile in London. 
 
 One morning George H. Boker came to me and informed 
 me that there was a writing editor wanted on the Philadel 
 phia Evening Bulletin. Its proprietor was Alexander Cum- 
 mings. The actual editor was Gibson Bannister Peacock, 
 who was going to Europe for a six months tour, and some 
 one was wanted to take his place. Mr. Peacock, as I sub 
 sequently found, was an excellent editor, and a person of will 
 and character. He was skilled in music and a man of culture. 
 I retain grateful remembrances of him. I was introduced and 
 installed. With all my experience I had not yet quite acquired 
 the art of extemporaneous editorial composition. My first 
 few weeks were a severe trial, but I succeeded. I was ex 
 pected to write one column of leader every day, review books, 
 and " paragraph " or condense articles to a brief item of news. 
 In which I succeeded so well, that some time after, when a 
 work appeared on writing for the press, the author, who did 
 not know me at all, cited one of my leaders and one of my 
 paragraphs as models. It actually made little impression on 
 me at the time I was so busy. 
 
 I had been at work but a short time, when one day Mr. 
 Cummings received a letter from Mr. Peacock in Europe, 
 which he certainly had hardly glanced at, which he threw to 
 me to read. I did so, and found in it a passage to this effect : 
 " I am sorry that you are disappointed as to Mr. Leland, but 
 I am confident that you will find him perfectly capable in 
 
216 MEMOIRS. 
 
 time." This gave me a bitter pang, but I returned it to Mr. 
 Cummings, who soon after came into the office and expressed 
 frankly his great regret, saying that since he had written to 
 Mr. Peacock he had quite changed his opinion. 
 
 I enjoyed this new life to the utmost. Mr. Cummings, 
 to tell the truth, pursued a somewhat tortuous course in 
 politics and religion. He was a Methodist. One day our 
 clerk expressed himself as to the latter in these words : 
 " They say he is a Jumper, but others think he has gone over 
 to the Holy Rollers." The Jumpers were a sect whose mem 
 bers, when the Holy Spirit seized them, jumped up and down, 
 while the Holy Rollers under such circumstances rolled over 
 and over on the floor. We also advocated Native American 
 ism and Temperance, which did not prevent Mr. Peacock 
 and myself and a few habitues of the office from going daily 
 at eleven o clock to a neighbouring lager-beer Wirtliscliaft 
 for a refreshing glass and lunch. One day the bar-tender, 
 Hermann, a very nice fellow, said to me, " I remember when 
 you always had a bottle of Rudesheimer every day for dinner. 
 That was at Herr Lehr s, in Heidelberg. I always waited 
 on you." 
 
 Whoever shall write a history of Philadelphia from the 
 Thirties to the end of the Fifties will record a popular period 
 of turbulence and outrages so extensive as to now appear 
 almost incredible. These were so great as to cause grave 
 doubts in my mind whether the severest despotism, guided 
 by justice, would not have been preferable to such repub 
 lican license as then prevailed in the city of Penn. I refer to 
 the absolute and uncontrolled rule of the Volunteer Fire De 
 partment, which was divided into companies (each having 
 clumsy old fire apparatus and hose), all of them at deadly 
 feud among themselves, and fighting freely with pistols, 
 knives, iron spanners, and slung shot, whenever they met, 
 whether at fires or in the streets. Of these regular firemen, 
 fifty thousand were enrolled, and to these might have been 
 added almost as many more, who were known as runners, 
 
THE RETURN TO AMERICA. 
 
 bummers, and hangers-on. Among the latter were a great 
 number of incendiaries, all of whom were well known to and 
 encouraged by the firemen. Whenever the latter wished to 
 meet some rival company, either to test their mutual skill or 
 engage in a fight, a fire was sure to occur; the same always 
 happened when a fire company from some other city visited 
 Philadelphia. 
 
 This gave occasion to an incredible amount of blackmail 
 ing, since all house-owners were frequently called on to con 
 tribute money to the different companies, sometimes as a 
 subscription for ball- tickets or repairs. It was well under 
 stood, and generally pretty plainly expressed, that those who 
 refused to pay might expect to be burned out or neglected. 
 The result of it all was a general fear of the firemen, a most 
 degrading and contemptible subservience to them by politi 
 cians of all kinds, a terrible and general growth and spread 
 of turbulence and coarse vulgarity among youth, and finally, 
 such a prevalence of conflagration that no one who owned a 
 house could hear the awful tones of the bell of Independence 
 Hall without terror. Fires were literally of nightly occur 
 rence, and that they were invariably by night was due to the 
 incendiary "runner." A slight examination of the news 
 papers and cheap broadside literature of that time will amply 
 confirm all that I here state. " Jakey " was the typical fire 
 man ; he was the brutal hero of a vulgar play, and the ideal 
 of nineteen youths out of twenty. For a generation or more 
 all society felt the degrading influences of this rowdyism in 
 almost every circle for there were among the vast majority 
 of men not very many who respected, looked up to, or cared 
 for anything really cultured or refined. I have a large col 
 lection of the popular songs of Philadelphia of that time, in 
 all of which there is a striving downwards into blackguardism 
 and brutality, vileness and ignorance, which has no parallel 
 in the literature of any other nation. The French of the 
 Pere Duchene school may be nastier, and, as regards aristo 
 crats, as bloody, but for general all-round vulgarity, the state 
 
218 MEMOIRS. 
 
 of morals developed among the people at the time of which 
 I speak was literally without its like. It is very strange that 
 Pliny also speaks of the turbulence or rowdyism of the fire 
 men of Rome. 
 
 I remember that even in Walnut Street, below Thirteenth 
 Street, before my father s house (this being then by far the 
 most respectable portion of Philadelphia), it happened sev 
 eral nights in succession that rival fire-companies, running 
 side by side, fought as they ran, with torches and knives, 
 while firing pistols. There was a young lady named Mary 
 Bicking, who lived near us. I asked her one day if she had 
 ever seen a man shot ; and when she answered " No," I re 
 plied, " Why don t you look out of your window some night 
 and see one?" 
 
 The southern part of the city was a favourite battle 
 ground, and I can remember hearing ladies who lived in 
 Pine Street describe how, on Sunday summer afternoons, 
 they could always hear, singly or in volleys, the shots of the 
 revolvers and shouts of the firemen as they fought in Moya- 
 mensing. 
 
 Every effort to diminish these evils, or to improve the 
 fire department in any way whatever, was vigorously opposed 
 by the rowdies, who completely governed the city. The first 
 fire-alarm electric telegraphs were a great offence to firemen, 
 and were quietly destroyed ; the steam-engines were regarded 
 by them as deadly enemies. But the first great efficient re 
 form in the Philadelphia fire department, and the most radi 
 cal of all, was the establishment of a fire-detective depart 
 ment under a fire-marshal, whose business it was to investi 
 gate and punish all cases of incendiarism. For it was simply 
 incendiarism, encouraged and supported by the firemen 
 themselves, which caused nineteen-twentieths of all these 
 disasters; it was the fires which were the sole support of the 
 whole system. 
 
 I was much indebted for understanding all this, and act 
 ing on it boldly, as I did, to the city editor and chief reporter 
 
THE RETURN TO AMERICA. 219 
 
 on the Evening Bulletin, Caspar Sender. The Mayor of the 
 city was Richard Vaux, a man of good family and education, 
 and one who had seen in his time cities and men, he having 
 once in his youth, on some great occasion, waltzed with the 
 Princess now Queen Victoria. Being popular, he was 
 called Vaux populi. I wrote very often leaders urging 
 Mayor Vaux by name to establish a fire-detective depart 
 ment. So great was the indignation caused among the fire 
 men, that I incurred no small risk in writing them. But at 
 last, when I published for one week an article every day 
 clamouring for a reform, Mayor Vaux as he said directly to 
 Mr. Souder, " in consequence of my appeals " vigorously 
 established a fire-marshal with two aids. By my request, the 
 office was bestowed on a very intelligent and well-educated 
 person, Dr. Blackburne, who had been a surgeon in the 
 Mexican war, then a reporter on our journal, and finally a 
 very clever superior detective. He was really not only a born 
 detective, but to a marked degree a man of scientific attain 
 ments and a skilled statistician. His anecdotes and com 
 ments as to pyromaniacs of different kinds were as entertain 
 ing and curious as anything recorded by Gaboriau. Some of 
 the most interesting experiences of my life were when I went 
 with Dr. Blackburne from place to place where efforts had 
 been made to burn houses, and noted the unerring and Red- 
 Indian skill with which he distinguished the style of work, 
 and identified the persons and names of the incendiaries. 
 One of these "fire-bugs" was noted for invariably setting 
 fire to houses in such a manner as to destroy as many in 
 mates as possible. If there were an exit, he would block it 
 up. Dr. Blackburne took me to a wooden house in which 
 the two staircases led to a very small vestibule about three 
 feet square before the front door. This space had been filled 
 with diabolical ingenuity with a barrel full of combustibles, 
 so that every one who tried to escape by the only opening 
 below would be sure to perish. Fortunately, the combusti 
 bles in the barrel went out after being ignited. "I know 
 
220 MEMOIRS. 
 
 that fellow by his style," remarked the Doctor, " and I shall 
 arrest him at four o clock this afternoon." 
 
 This fire-detective department and the appointment of 
 Blackburne was the real basis and beginning of all the re 
 forms which soon followed, leading to the abolition of the 
 volunteer system and the establishment of paid employes. 
 And as I received great credit for it then, my work being 
 warmly recognised and known to all the newspaper reporters 
 and editors in the city, who were the best judges of it, as they 
 indeed are of all municipal matters, I venture to record it 
 here as something worth mentioning. And though I may 
 truly say that at the time I was so busy that I made no ac 
 count of many such things, they now rise up from time to 
 time as comforting assurances that my life has not been quite 
 wasted. 
 
 This reminds me that I had not been very long on the 
 newspaper, and had just begun to throw out editorials with 
 ease, when Mr. Cummings said to me one day that I did not 
 realise what a power I held in my hand, but that I would 
 soon find it out. Almost immediately after, in noticing some 
 article or book which was for sale at No. 24 Chestnut Street, 
 I inadvertently made reference to 24 Walnut Street. Very 
 soon came the proprietor of the latter place, complaining 
 that I had made life a burden to him, because fifty people had 
 come in one day to buy something which he had not. I 
 reflected long and deeply on this, with the result of observing 
 that to influence people it is not at all necessary to argue 
 with them, but simply be able to place before their eyes such 
 facts as you choose. It is very common indeed to hear people 
 in England, who should have more sense, declare that " no 
 body minds what the newspapers say." But the truth is, 
 that if any man has an eye to read and memory to retain, he 
 must, willy-nilly, be influenced by reading, and selection 
 from others by an able editor is often only a most ingenious 
 and artful method of arguing. It has very often happened 
 to me, when I wanted to enforce some important point, to 
 
THE RETURN TO AMERICA. 221 
 
 clothe it as an anecdote or innocent " item," and bid the 
 foreman set it in the smallest type in the most obscure corner. 
 And the reader is influenced by it, utterly unconsciously, 
 just as we all are, and just as surely as all reflection follows 
 sensation as it ever will into the Ages ! 
 
 There was much mutual robbing by newspapers of tele 
 graphic news in those days. Once it befell that just before 
 the Bulletin went to press a part of the powder-mills of 
 Dupont Brothers in Delaware blew up, and we received a few 
 lines of telegram, stating that Mr. Dupont himself had saved 
 the great magazine by actually walking on a burning build 
 ing with buckets of water, and preventing the fire from ex 
 tending, at a most incredible risk of his life. Having half- 
 an-hour s time, I expanded this telegram into something 
 dramatic and thrilling. A great New York newspaper, think 
 ing, from the shortness of time which elapsed in publishing, 
 that it was all telegraphed to us, printed it as one of its own 
 from Delaware, just as I had written it out which I freely 
 forgive, for verily its review of my last work but one was such 
 as to make me inquire of myself in utter amazement, " Can 
 this be I ? " " so gloriously was I exalted to the higher life." 
 The result of this review was a sworn and firm determination 
 on my part to write another book of the same kind, in which 
 I should show myself more worthy of such cordial encourage 
 ment; which latter book was the " Etruscan Legends." I 
 ought indeed to have dedicated it to the New York Tribune, 
 a journal which has done more for human freedom than any 
 other publication in history. 
 
 I do not know certainly whether the brave Dupont whom 
 I mentioned was the Charley Dupont who went to school 
 with me at Jacob Pierce s, nor can I declare that a very 
 gentlemanly old Frenchman who came to see him in 1832 
 was his father or grandfather, the famous old Dupont de 
 FEure of the French Revolution. But I suppose it was the 
 latter who carried and transformed the art of manufacturing 
 moral gunpowder in France to the making material explosives 
 
222 MEMOIRS. 
 
 in America. Yes, moral or physical, we are all but gun 
 powder and smoke pulvis et umbra sumus ! 
 
 There was a morning paper in Philadelphia which grieved 
 me sore by pilfering my news items as I wrote them. So I 
 one day gave a marvellous account of the great Volatile 
 Chelidonian or Flying Turtle of Surinam, of which a speci 
 men had just arrived in New York. It had a shell as of 
 diamonds blent with emeralds and rubies, and bat-like wings 
 of iridescent hue surpassing the opal, and a tail like a serpent. 
 Our contemporary, nothing doubting, at once published this 
 as original matter in a letter from New York, and had to 
 bear the responsibility. But I did not invest my inventive 
 ness wisely ; I should have shared the idea with Barnum. 
 
 There was in Philadelphia at this time a German book 
 seller named Christern. It was the thought of honourable 
 and devoted men which recalled him to my mind. I had 
 made his acquaintance long before in Munich, where he had 
 been employed in the principal bookseller s shop of the city, 
 His " store " in Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, became a kind 
 of club, where I brought such of my friends as were interested 
 in German literature. We met there and talked German, 
 and examined and discussed all the latest European works. 
 He had a burly, honest, rather droll assistant named Euhl, 
 who had been a student in Munich, then a Eevolutionist and 
 exile, and finally a refugee to America. To this shop, too, 
 came Andrekovitch, whom I had last known in Paris as a 
 speculator on the Bourse, wearing a cloak lined with sables. 
 In America he became a chemical manufacturer. When at 
 last an amnesty was proclaimed, his brother asked him to 
 return to Poland, promising a support, which he declined. 
 He too was an honourable, independent man. About this 
 
 time the great 1 forget his name ; or was it Schoffel ? 
 
 who had been President of the Frankfort Revolutionary 
 Parliament, opened a lager-beer establishment in Eace Street. 
 I went there several times with Euhl. 
 
 George Boker and Frank Wells, who subsequently sue- 
 
THE RETURN TO AMERICA. 223 
 
 ceeded me on the Bulletin, would drop in every day after the 
 first edition had gone to press, and then there would be a 
 lively time. Frank Wells was, par eminence, the greatest 
 punster Philadelphia ever produced. He was in this respect 
 appalling. We had a sub-editor or writer named Ernest 
 Wallace, who was also a clever humorist. One day John 
 Godfrey Saxe came in. He was accustomed among country 
 auditors and in common sanctums to carry everything before 
 him with his jokes. In half-an-hour we extinguished him. 
 Having declared that no one could make a pun on his name, 
 which he had not heard before, Wallace promptly replied, 
 " It s axing too much, I presume ; but did you ever hear 
 that ? " Saxe owned that he had not. 
 
 George H. Boker, whose name deserves a very high place 
 in American literature as a poet, and in history as one who 
 was of incredible service, quietly performed, in preserving 
 the Union during the war, was also eminently a wit and 
 humorist. We always read first to one another all that we 
 wrote. He had so trained himself from boyhood to self- 
 restraint, calmness, and the nil admirari air, which, as Dallas 
 said, is " the Corinthian ornament of a gentleman " (I may 
 add especially when of Corinthian brass), that his admirable 
 jests, while they gained in clearness and applicability, lost 
 something of that rattle of the impromptu and headlong 
 which renders Irish and Western humour so easy. I recorded 
 the bon mots and merry stories which passed among us all in 
 the sanctum in articles for our weekly newspaper, under the 
 name of " Social Hall Sketches " (a social hall in the West is 
 a steamboat smoking-room). Every one of us received a 
 name. Mr. Peacock was Old Hurricane, and George Boker, 
 being asked what his pseudonym should be, selected that of 
 Bullfrog. These "Social Hall Sketches" had an extended 
 circulation in American newspapers, some for many years. 
 One entirely by me, entitled " Opening Oysters," is to be 
 found in English almanacs, &c., to this day. 
 
 It was, I think, or am sure, in 1855 that some German in 
 
224 MEMOIRS. 
 
 Pennsylvania, instead of burying his deceased wife, burned 
 the body. This called forth a storm of indignant attack in 
 the newspapers. It was called an irreligious, indecent act. 
 I wrote an editorial in which I warmly defended it. Ac 
 cording to Bulwer in the " Last Days of Pompeii," the early 
 Christians practised it. Even to this day urns and torches 
 are common symbols in Christian burying-grounds, and we 
 speak of " ashes " as more decent than mouldering corpses. 
 And, finally, I pointed out the great advantage which it 
 would be to the coal trade of Pennsylvania. A man of cul 
 ture said to me that it was the boldest editorial which he had 
 ever read. Such as it was, I believe that it was the first arti 
 cle written in modern times advocating cremation. If I am 
 wrong, I am willing to be corrected. 
 
 To those who are unfamiliar with it, the life in an Amer 
 ican newspaper office seems singularly eventful and striking. 
 A friend of mine who visited a sanctum (ours) for the first 
 time, said, as he left, that he had never experienced such an 
 interesting hour in his life. Firstly, came our chief city 
 reporter, exulting in the manner in which he had circum 
 vented the police, and, despite all their efforts, got, by ways that 
 were dark, at all the secrets of a brand-new horrible murder. 
 Secondly, a messenger with an account of how I, individ 
 ually, had kicked up the very devil in the City Councils, and 
 set the Mayor to condemning us, by a leader discussing cer 
 tain municipal abuses. Thirdly, another, to tell how I had 
 swept one-half the city by an article exposing its neglect, 
 and how the sweepers and dirt-carts were busy where none 
 had been before for weeks, and how the contractor for cleaning 
 wanted to shoot me. Fourthly, a visit from some great dig 
 nitary, who put his dignity very much a Vabri in his pocket, 
 to solicit a puff. Fifthly, a lady who, having written a very 
 feeble volume of tales which had merely been gently com 
 mended in our columns, came round in a rage to shame me 
 by sarcasm, begging me as a parting shot to at least read a 
 few lines of her work. Sixthly, a communication from a 
 
THE RETURN TO AMERICA. 225 
 
 great New York family, who, having been requested to send 
 a short description of a remarkable wedding-cake, sent me 
 one hundred and fifty pages of minute history of all their 
 ancestors and honours, with strict directions that not a line 
 should be omitted, and the article printed at once most con 
 spicuously.* Seventhly, . . . but this is a very mild speci 
 men of what went on all the time during office-hours. And 
 on this subject alone I could write a small book. 
 
 Now, at this time there came about a very great change 
 in my life, or an event which ultimately changed it alto 
 gether. My father had, for about two years past, fallen into 
 a very sad state of mind. His large property between Chest 
 nut and Bank Streets paid very badly, and his means became 
 limited. I was seriously alarmed as to his health. My dear 
 mother had become, I may say, paralytic; but, in truth, the 
 physicians could never explain the disorder. To the last she 
 maintained her intellect, and a miraculous cheerfulness un 
 impaired. 
 
 All at once a strange spirit, as of new life, came suddenly 
 over my father. I cannot think of it without awe. He 
 went to work like a young man, shook off his despair, finan 
 ciered with marvellous ability, borrowed money, collected old 
 and long-despaired of debts, tore down the old hotel and the 
 other buildings, planned and bargained with architects it 
 was then that I designed the facade before described and 
 built six stores, two of them very handsome granite buildings, 
 on the old site. In short, he made of it a very valuable 
 estate. And as he superintended with great skill and ability 
 the smallest details of the building, which was for that time 
 remarkably well executed, I thought I recognised whence it 
 was that I derived the strongly developed tendency for 
 architecture which I have always possessed. I have since 
 made 400 copies of old churches in England. 
 
 This was a happy period, when life was without a cloud, 
 
 * (Here I forgot myself this occurred in New York.) 
 
226 MEMOIRS. 
 
 excepting my mother s trouble. As my father could now well 
 afford it, he made me an allowance, which, with my earnings 
 from the Bulletin and other occasional literary work, justified 
 me in getting married. I had had a long but still very 
 happy engagement. So we were married by the Episcopal 
 ceremony at the house of my father-in-law in Tenth Street, 
 and a very happy wedding it was. I remember two incidents. 
 Before the ceremony, the Reverend Mr., subsequently 
 Bishop Wilrner, took me, with George Boker, into a room 
 and explained to me the symbolism of the marriage-ring. 
 Now, if there was a subject on earth which I, the old friend 
 of Creuzer of Heidelberg, and master of Friedrich s Sym- 
 bolik, and Durandus, and the work " On Finger-Rings," 
 knew all about, it was that; and I never shall forget the 
 droll look which Boker threw at me as the discourse pro 
 ceeded. But I held my peace, though sadly tempted to set 
 forth my own archaeological views on the subject. 
 
 The second was this : Philadelphia, as Mr. Philipps has 
 said, abounds in folk-lore. Some one suggested that the 
 wedding would be a lucky one because there was only one 
 clergyman present. But I remarked that among our col 
 oured waiters there was one who had a congregation (my 
 wife s cousin, by the way, had a coloured bishop for coach 
 man). However, this sable cloud did not disturb us. 
 
 We went to New York, and were visited by many friends, 
 and returned to Philadelphia. We lived for the first year at 
 the La Pierre Hotel, where we met with many pleasant peo 
 ple, such as Thackeray, Thalberg, Ole Bull, Mr. and Mrs. 
 Choteau, of St. Louis, and others. Of Thalberg I have 
 already remarked, in my notes to my translation of Heine s 
 Salon, that he impressed me as a very gentlemanly, dignified, 
 and quietly remarkable man, whom it would be difficult 
 to readily or really understand. " He had unmistakably 
 the manner peculiar to many great Germans, which, as I 
 have elsewhere observed, is perceptible in the maintien and 
 features of Goethe, Humboldt, Bismarck," and Brugsch, of 
 
THE RETURN TO AMERICA. 227 
 
 Berlin (whom I learned to know in later years). Thalberg 
 gave me the impression, which grew on me, of a man who 
 knew many things besides piano-playing, and that he was 
 born to a higher specialty. He was dignified but affable. 
 I remember that one day, when he, or some one present, 
 remarked that his name was not a common one, I made him 
 laugh by declaring that it occurred in two pieces in an old 
 German ballad : 
 
 " Ich that am BERGE stehen, 
 
 Und schaute in das THAL; 
 Da hab ich sie gesehen, 
 Zum aller letzten mal." 
 
 " I stood upon the mountain, 
 
 And looked the valley o er ; 
 There I indeed beheld her, 
 But saw her never more." 
 
 Thalberg s playing was marvellously like his character or 
 himself : Heine calls it gentlemanly. Thackeray was marked 
 in his manner, and showed impulse and energy in small utter 
 ances. I may err, but I do not think he could have endured 
 solitude or too much of himself. He was eminently social, 
 and rather given at times to reckless (not deliberate or spite 
 ful), sarcastic or "ironic" sallies, in which he did not, with 
 Americans, generally come off "first best." There was a 
 very beautiful lady in Boston with whom the great novelist 
 was much struck, and whom he greatly admired, as he sent 
 her two magnificent bronzes. Having dined one evening at 
 her house, he remarked as they all entered the dining-room, 
 " Now I suppose that, according to your American custom, 
 we shall all put our feet up on the chimney-piece." " Cer 
 tainly," replied his hostess, " and as your legs are so much 
 longer than the others, you may put your feet on top of the 
 looking-glass," which was about ten feet from the ground. 
 Thackeray, I was told, was offended at this, and showed it ; 
 he being of the "give but not take " kind. One day he said 
 to George Boker, when both were looking at Diirer s etching 
 
228 MEMOIRS. 
 
 of " Death, Knight, and the Devil," of which I possess a fine 
 copy, " Every man has his devil whom he cannot overcome ; 
 I have two laziness, and love of pleasure." I remarked, 
 " Then why the devil seek to overcome them ? Is it not 
 more noble and sensible to yield where resistance is in vain, 
 than to fight to the end ? Is it not a maxim of war, that he 
 who strives to defend a defenceless place must be put to 
 death ? Why not give in like a man ? " 
 
 I had just published my translation of Heine s ReiseMlder, 
 and Bayard Taylor had a copy of it. He went in company 
 with Thackeray to New York, and told me subsequently that 
 they had read the work aloud between them alternately with 
 roars of laughter till it was finished ; that Thackeray praised 
 my translation to the skies, and that his comments and droll 
 remarks on the text were delightful. Thackeray was a per 
 fect German scholar, and well informed as to all in the book. 
 
 Apropos of Heine, Ole Bull had known him very well, 
 and described to me his brilliancy in the most distinguished 
 literary society, where in French the German wit bore away 
 the palm from all Frenchmen. " He flashed and sprayed in 
 brilliancy like a fountain." Ole Bull by some chance had 
 heard much of me, and we became intimate. He told me 
 that I had unwittingly been to him the cause of great loss. 
 I had, while in London, become acquainted with an odd and 
 rather scaly fish, a German who had been a courier, who was 
 the keeper of a small cafe near Leicester Square, and who 
 enjoyed a certain fame as the inventor of the poses plastiques 
 or living statues, so popular in 1848. This man soon came 
 over to America, and called on me, wanting to borrow money, 
 whereupon I gave him the cold shoulder. According to Ole 
 Bull, he went to the great violinist, represented himself as 
 my friend and as warmly commended by me, and the heed 
 less artist, instead of referring to me directly, took him as 
 impresario ; the result being that he ere long ran away with 
 the money, and, what was quite as bad, Ole Bull s prima- 
 donna, who was, as I understood, specially dear to him. Ole 
 
THE RETURN TO AMERICA. 229 
 
 Bull s playing has been, as I think, much underrated by cer 
 tain writers of reminiscences. There was in it a marvellous 
 originality. 
 
 While I was there, in the La Pierre Hotel, the first great 
 meeting was held at which the Republican party was organ 
 ised. Though not an appointed delegate from our State, I, 
 as an editor, took some part in it. Little did we foresee the 
 tremendous results which were to ensue from that meeting ! 
 It was second only to the signing of the Declaration of Inde 
 pendence, and on it was based the greatest struggle known 
 to history. I could have, indeed, been inscribed as a consti 
 tutional member of it for the asking or writing my name, 
 but that appeared to me and others then to be a matter of 
 no consequence compared to the work in hand. So the 
 Bulletin became ^Republican ; Messrs. Cummings and Pea 
 cock seeing that that was their manifest destiny. 
 
 From that day terrible events began to manifest them 
 selves in American politics. The South attempted to seize 
 Kansas with the aid of border ruffians ; Sumner was caned 
 from behind while seated ; the Southern press became out 
 rageous in its abuse of the North, and the North here and 
 there retaliated. All my long-suppressed ardent Abolition 
 spirit now found vent, and for a time I was allowed to write 
 as I pleased. A Richmond editor paid me the compliment 
 of saying that the articles in the Bulletin were the bitterest 
 and cleverest published in the North, but inquired if it was 
 wise to manifest such feeling. I, who felt that the great 
 strife was imminent, thought it was. Mr. Cummings 
 thought differently, and I was checked. For years there 
 were many who believed that the fearfully growing cancer 
 could be cured with rose-water ; as, for instance, Edward 
 Everett. 
 
 While on the Bulletin I translated Heine s Pictures of 
 Travel. For it, poetry included, I was to receive three shil 
 lings a page. Even this was never paid me in full ; I was 
 obliged to take part of the money in engravings and books, 
 11 
 
230 MEMOIRS. 
 
 and the publisher failed. It passed into other hands, and 
 many thousands of copies were sold ; from all of which I, of 
 course, got nothing. I also became editor of Graham s 
 Magazine, which I filled recklessly with all or any kind of 
 literary matter as I best could, little or nothing being allowed 
 for contributions. However, I raised the circulation from 
 almost nothing to 17,000. For this I received fifty dollars 
 (10) per month. When I finally left it, the proprietors 
 were eighteen months in arrears due, and tried to evade pay 
 ment, though I had specified a regular settlement every 
 month. Finally they agreed to pay me in monthly instal- 
 ments of fifty dollars each, and fulfilled the engagement. 
 
 Talking of the South, I forget now at what time it was 
 that Barnum s Museum in Philadelphia was burned, but I 
 shall never forget a droll incident which it occasioned. Op 
 posite it was a hotel, and the heat was so tremendous that 
 the paint on the hotel was scorched, and it had begun to burn 
 in places. By the door stood a friend of mine in great dis 
 tress. I asked what was the matter. He replied that in the 
 hotel was a Southern lady who would not leave her trunks, 
 in which there were all her diamonds and other valuables, 
 and that he could not find a porter to bring them down. I 
 was strong enough in those days. " What is the number 
 of her room ? " " No. 22." I rushed up it was scorching 
 hot by this time burst into No. 22, and found a beautiful 
 young lady in dire distress. I said abruptly, "I come from 
 Mr. ; where are your trunks ? " She began to cry con 
 fusedly, " Oh, you can do nothing ; they are very heavy." 
 Seeing the two large trunks, I at once, without a word, 
 caught one by each handle, dragged them after me bumping 
 downstairs, the lady following, to the door, where I found my 
 friend, who had a carriage in waiting. From the lady s sub 
 sequent account, it appeared that I had occasioned her much 
 more alarm than pleasure. She said that all at once a great 
 tall gentleman burst into her room, seized her trunks without 
 a word of apology, and dragged them downstairs like a giant ; 
 
THE RETURN TO AMERICA. 231 
 
 she was never so startled in all her life ! It was explained to 
 me that, as in the South only negroes handle trunks, the lady 
 could not regard me exactly as a gentleman. She was within 
 a short ace of being burnt up, trunks and all, but could not 
 forget that she was from the " Sa-outh," and must needs 
 show it. 
 
 Apropos of this occurrence, I remember something odd 
 which took place on the night of the same day. There was a 
 stylish drinking-place, kept by a man named Guy, in Seventh 
 Street. In the evening, when it was most crowded, there en 
 tered a stranger, described as having been fully seven feet 
 high, and powerful in proportion, who kept very quiet, but 
 who, on being chaffed as the giant escaped from Barnum s 
 Museum, grew angry, and ended by clearing out the bar 
 room driving thirty men before him like flies. Aghast at 
 such a tremendous feat, one who remained, asked, " Who in 
 God s wrath are you ? haven t you a name ? " 
 
 " Yes, I have a name," replied the Berserker ; "Pm 
 CHARLES LELAND ! " saying which he vanished. 
 
 The next day it was all over Philadelphia that I had 
 cleared out John Guy s the night before, sans merci. True, 
 I am not seven feet high, but some men (like stories) expand 
 enormously when inflated or mad ; so my denial was attrib 
 uted to sheer modesty. But I recognised in the Charles 
 Leland a mysterious cousin of mine, who was really seven 
 feet high, who had disappeared for many years, and of whom 
 I have never heard since. 
 
 While editing Graham s Magazine, I had one day a space 
 to fill. In a hurry I knocked off " Hans Breitmann s Barty " 
 (1856). I gave it no thought whatever. Soon after, Clark 
 republished it in the Knickerbocker, saying that it was evi 
 dently by me. I little dreamed that in days to come I should 
 be asked in Egypt, and on the blue Mediterranean, and in 
 every country in Europe, if I was its author. I wrote in those 
 days a vast number of such anonymous drolleries, many of 
 them, I daresay, quite as good, in Graham s Magazine and 
 
232 MEMOIRS. 
 
 the Weekly Bulletin, &c., but I took no heed of them. They 
 were probably appropriated in due time by the authors of 
 " Beautiful Snow." 
 
 I began to weary of Philadelphia. New York was a wider 
 field and more congenial to me. Mr. Cummings had once, 
 during a financial crisis, appealed to my better feelings very 
 touchingly to let my salary be reduced. I let myself be 
 touched in the pocket. Better times came, but my salary 
 did not rise. Mr. Cummings, knowing that my father was 
 wealthy, wanted me to put a large sum into his paper, assur 
 ing me that it would pay me fifteen per cent. I asked how 
 that could be possible when he could only afford to pay me so 
 very little for such hard work. He chuckled, and said, 
 " That is the way we make our money." Then I determined 
 to leave. 
 
 Mr. George Ripley and Charles A. Dana, of the Tribune, 
 were then editing in New York Appletons 9 Cydopcedia. Mr. 
 Ripley had several times shown himself my friend ; he be 
 longed to the famous old band of Boston Transcendental- 
 ists who were at Brook Farm. I wrote to him asking if I 
 could earn as much at the Cydopcedia as I got from the 
 Bulletin. He answered affirmatively ; so we packed up and 
 departed. I had a sister in New York who had married a 
 Princeton College-mate named Thorp. We went to their 
 house in Twenty-second Street near Broadway, and arranged 
 it so as to remain there during the winter. 
 
 In the Cydopcedia rooms I found abundance of work, 
 though it was less profitable than I expected. For after an 
 article was written, it passed through the hands of six or 
 seven revisers, who revised not always wisely, and frequently 
 far too well. They made their objections in writing, and we, 
 the writers, made ours. I often gained a victory, but the vic 
 tory cost a great deal of work, and of time which was not paid 
 for. Altogether, I wrote about two hundred articles, great 
 and small, for the Cydopcedia. On the other hand, there 
 was pleasant and congenial society among my fellow-work- 
 
THE RETURN TO AMERICA. 233 
 
 men, and the labour itself was immensely instructive. If 
 any man wishes to be well informed, let him work on a cyclo 
 paedia. As I could read several languages, I was addition 
 ally useful at times. The greatest conciseness of style is re 
 quired for such work. In German cyclopaedias this is carried 
 to a fault. 
 
 After a while I began to find that there was much more 
 money to be made outside the Cyclopatdia than in it. Wil 
 liam H. Hurlbut, whom I had once seen so nearly shot, had 
 been the "foreign editor" of the Neiv York Times. Mr. 
 Henry Raymond, its proprietor, had engaged a Mr. Ham 
 mond to come after some six months to take his place, and I 
 was asked to fill it ad interim. I did so, so much to Mr. 
 Raymond s satisfaction, that he much regretted when I left 
 that he had not previously engaged me. He was always very 
 kind to me. He said that now and then, whenever he 
 wanted a really superior art criticism, I should write it. He 
 was quite right, for there were not many reporters in New 
 York who had received such an education in aBsthetics as 
 mine. When Patti made her debut in opera for the first 
 time, I was the only writer who boldly predicted that she 
 would achieve the highest lyrical honours or become a " star " 
 of the first magnitude. Apropos of Hurlbut, I heard many 
 years after, in England, that a certain well-known litterateur, 
 who was not one of his admirers, having seen him seated in 
 close tete-a-tete with a very notorious and unpopular charac 
 ter, remarked regretfully, " Just to think that with one pis 
 tol-bullet both might have been settled ! " Hnrlbut was, even 
 as a boy, very handsome, with a pale face and black eyes, and 
 extremely clever, \>Q\i\gfacileprinceps, the head of every class, 
 and extensively read. But there was " a screw loose " some 
 where in him. He was subject, but not very frequently, to 
 such fits of passion or rage, that he literally became blind while 
 they lasted. I saw him one day in one of these throw his 
 arms about and stamp on the ground, as if. unable to behold 
 any one. I once heard a young lady in New York profess 
 
234 MEMOIRS. 
 
 unbounded admiration for him, because " he looked so 
 charmingly like the devil." For many years the New York 
 Herald always described him as the Eeverend Mephistopheles 
 Hurlbut. There was another very beautiful lady who after 
 wards died a strange and violent death, as also a friend of 
 mine, an editor in New York, both of whom narrated to me 
 at very great length " a grotesque Iliad of the wild career " 
 of this remarkable man. 
 
 It never rains but it pours. Frank Leslie, who had been 
 with me on Barnum s Illustrated Neivs, was now publishing 
 half-a-dozen periodicals and newspapers, and offered me a 
 fair price to give him my mornings. I did so. Unfor 
 tunately, my work was not specified, and he retained his old 
 editors, who naturally enough did not want me, although they 
 treated me civilly enough. One of these was Thomas Powell, 
 who had seen a great deal of all the great English writers 
 of the last generation. But there was much rather shady, 
 shaky Bohemianism about the frequenters of our sanctum, 
 and, all things considered, it was a pity that I ever entered 
 it. 
 
 Und noch weiter. There was published in New York at 
 that time (1860) an illustrated comic weekly called Vanity 
 Fair. There was also in the city a kind of irregular club 
 known as the Bohemians, who had been inspired by Murger s 
 novel of that name to imitate the life of its heroes. They 
 met every evening at a lager-beer restaurant kept by a Ger 
 man named Pfaif. For a year or two they made a great sen 
 sation in New York. Their two principal men were Henry 
 Clapp and Fitz-James O Brien. Then there were Frank 
 Wood and George Arnold, W. Winter, C. Gardette, and 
 others. Wood edited Vanity Fair, and all the rest contrib 
 uted to it. There was some difficulty or other between Wood 
 and Mr. Stephens, the gerant of the weekly, and Wood left, 
 followed by all the clan. I was called in in the emergency, 
 and what with writing myself, and the aid of R. H. Stoddard, 
 T. B. Aldrich, and a few more, we made a very creditable 
 
THE RETURN TO AMERICA. 235 
 
 appearance indeed. Little by little the Bohemians all came 
 back, and all went well. 
 
 Now I must here specify, for good reasons, that I held 
 myself very strictly aloof from the Bohemians, save in busi 
 ness affairs. This was partly because I was married, and I 
 never saw the day in my life when to be regarded as a real 
 Bohemian vagabond, or shiftless person, would not have 
 given me the horrors. I would have infinitely preferred the 
 poorest settled employment to such life. I mention this be 
 cause a very brilliant and singular article entitled " Charles 
 G-. Leland Vennemi des Allemands" (this title angered me), 
 which appeared in the Revue des Deux Mondes in 1871, 
 speaks of me by implication as a frequenter of Pfaff s, declar 
 ing that I there introduced Artemus Ward to the Bohemian 
 brotherhood, and that it was entirely due to me that Mr. 
 Browne was brought out before the American world. This 
 is quite incorrect. Mr. Browne had made a name by two or 
 three very popular sketches before I had ever seen him. But 
 it is very true that I aided him to write, and suggested and 
 encouraged the series of sketches which made him famous, 
 as he himself frankly and generously declared, for Charles 
 Browne was at heart an honest gentleman, if there ever was 
 one ; which is the one thing in life better than success. 
 
 Mr. Stephens realising that I needed an assistant, and ob 
 serving that Browne s two sketches of the Showman s letter 
 and the Mormons had made him well known, invited him to 
 take a place in our office. He was a shrewd, naif, but at the 
 same time modest and unassuming young man. He was a 
 native of Maine, but familiar with the West. Quiet as he 
 seemed, in three weeks he had found out everything in New 
 York. I could illustrate this by a very extraordinary fact, 
 but I have not space for everything. I proposed to him to 
 continue his sketches. "Write," I said, "a paper on the 
 Shakers." He replied that he knew nothing about them. 
 I had been at Lenox, Massachusetts, where I had often gone 
 to New Lebanon and seen their strange worship and dances, 
 
236 MEMOIRS. 
 
 and while on the Illustrated News had had a conference 
 with their elders on an article on the Shakers. So I told him 
 what I knew, and he wrote it, making it a condition that I 
 would correct it. He wrote the sketch, and others. He was 
 very slow at composition, which seemed strange to me, who 
 was accustomed to write everything as I now do, currente 
 calamo (having written all these memoirs, so far, within a 
 month more or less, and certainly very little more). From 
 this came his book. 
 
 When he wrote the article describing his imprisonment, 
 there was in it a sentence, " Jailor, I shall die unless you 
 bring me something to eat ! " In the proof we found, " I 
 shall die unless you bring me something to talk" He was 
 just going to correct this, when I cried, " For Heaven s sake, 
 Browne, let that stand ! It s best as it is." He did so, and 
 so the reader may find it in his work. 
 
 Meanwhile the awful storm of war had gathered and was 
 about to burst. I may here say that there was a kind of lit 
 erary club or association of ladies and gentlemen who met 
 once a week of evenings in the Studio Buildings, where I had 
 many friends, such as Van Brunt, C. Gambrell, Hazeltine, 
 Bierstadt, Clifford, Church, and Mignot. At this club I con 
 stantly met General Birney, the great Abolitionist, whose 
 famous charge at Gettysburg did so much to decide the bat 
 tle. Constant intercourse with him and with C. A. Dana 
 greatly inspired me in my anti-slavery views. The manager 
 of Vanity Fair was very much averse to absolutely commit 
 ting the journal to Republicanism, and I was determined on 
 it. I had a delicate and very difficult path to pursue, and I 
 succeeded, as the publication bears witness. I went several 
 times to Mr. Dana, and availed myself of his shrewd advice. 
 Browne, too, agreed pretty fairly with me. I voted for Abra 
 ham Lincoln at the first election in New York. I voted on 
 principle, for I confess that every conceivable thing had been 
 said and done to represent hinr as an ignorant, ungainly, 
 silly Western Hoosier, and even the Republican press had 
 
THE RETURN TO AMERICA. 237 
 
 little or nothing to say as to his good qualities. Horace 
 Greeley had " sprung him " on the Convention at the eleventh 
 hour and fifty-ninth minute as the only available man, and 
 he had been chosen as our candidate to defeat Douglas. 
 
 Let me here relate two anecdotes. When my brother 
 heard of Lincoln s " candidacy " he said 
 
 " I don t see why the people shouldn t be allowed to have 
 a President for once." 
 
 A Copperhead friend of mine, who was always aiming at 
 " gentility," remarked to me with an air of disgust on the 
 same subject 
 
 " I do wisht we could have a gentleman for President for 
 
 The said Copperhead became in due time a Republican 
 office-holder, and is one yet. 
 
 Lincoln was elected. Then came the storm. Our rejoic 
 ings were short. Sumter was fired on. Up to that time 
 everybody, including President Lincoln, had quite resolved 
 that, if the South was resolved to secede, it must be allowed 
 to depart in peace. There had been for many years a con 
 viction that our country was growing to be too large to hold 
 together. I always despised the contemptible idea. I had 
 been in correspondence with the Eussian Iskander or Alex 
 ander Herzen, who was a century in advance of his time. 
 He was the real abolisher of serfdom in Russia, as history 
 will yet prove. I once wrote a very long article urging the Rus 
 sian Government to throw open the Ural gold mines to for 
 eigners, and make every effort to annex Chinese territory and 
 open a port on the Pacific. Herzen translated it into Russian 
 (I have a copy of it), and circulated twenty thousand copies 
 of it in Russia. The Czar read it. Herzen wrote to me : 
 " It will be pigeon-holed for forty years, and then perhaps 
 acted on. The Pacific will be the Mediterranean of the fu 
 ture." With such ideas I did not believe in the dismember 
 ment of the United States.* 
 
 * Herzen once sent me a complete collection of all his books. 
 
238 MEMOIRS. 
 
 But Sumter was fired on, and the whole North rose in 
 fury. It was the silliest act ever committed. The South, 
 with one-third of the votes, had two-thirds of all the civil, 
 military, and naval appointments, and every other new 
 State, and withal half of the North, ready to lick its boots, 
 and still was not satisfied. It could not go without giving 
 us a thrashing. And that was the drop too much. So 
 we fought. And we conquered ; but how 9 It was all 
 expressed in a few words, which I heard uttered by a com 
 mon man at a Bulletin board, on the dreadful day when we 
 first read the news of the retreat at Bull Run : " It s hard 
 but we must buckle up and go at it again." It is very strange 
 that the South never understood that among the mud-sills 
 and toiling slaves and factory serfs of the North the spirit 
 which had made men enrich barren New England and colo 
 nise the Western wilderness would make them buckle up and 
 go at it again boldly to the bitter end. 
 
 One evening I met C. A. Dana on Broadway. "War had 
 fairly begun. " It will last," he said, " not less than four 
 years, but it may extend to seven." 
 
 Trouble now came thick and fast. Vanity Fair was 
 brought to an end. Frank Leslie found that he no longer 
 required my services, and paid my due, which was far in 
 arrears, in his usual manner, that is, by orders on advertisers 
 for goods which I did not want, and for which I was charged 
 double prices. Alexander Cummings had a very ingenious 
 method of " shaving " when obliged to pay his debts. His 
 friend Simon Cameron had a bank the Middleton which, 
 if not a very wild cat, was far from tame, as its notes were 
 always five or ten per cent, below par, to our loss for we were 
 always paid in Middleton. I have often known the clerk to 
 take a handful of notes at par and send out to buy Middle- 
 ton wherewith to pay me. I am sorry to say that such tricks 
 were universal among the very great majority of proprietors 
 with whom I had dealings. To " do " the employes to the 
 utmost was considered a matter of course, especially when 
 
THE RETURN TO AMERICA. 239 
 
 the one employed was a " literary fellow " of any kind or an 
 artist. 
 
 I should mention that while in New York I saw a great 
 deal of Bayard Taylor and his wife. I had known him since 
 1850, and was intimate with him till his death. He oc 
 cupied the same house with the distinguished poet E. H. 
 Stoddard. I experienced from both much kindness. We 
 had amusing Saturday evenings there, where droll plays 
 were improvised, and admirable disguises made out of any 
 thing. In after years, in London, Walter H. Pollock, Minto 
 (recently deceased), and myself, did the same. One night, 
 in the latter circle, we played Hamlet, but the chief char 
 acter was the Sentinel, who stared at the Ghost with such 
 open-jawed horror " bouche beante, recliignez I " and so 
 prominently, that poor Hamlet was under a cloud. Pollock s 
 great capuchon overcoat served for all kinds of mysterious 
 characters. We were also kindly entertained many a time 
 and oft in New York by Mr. and Mrs. Charles A. Dana. 
 
 My engagement expired on the Times where, by the 
 way, I was paid in full in good money and I found myself 
 without employment in a fearful financial panic. During 
 the spring and early summer we had lived at the Gramercy 
 Park Hotel ; we now went to a very pleasant boarding-house 
 kept by Mrs. Dunn, on Staten Island. My old friend, 
 George Ward, and G. W. Curtis, well known in literature 
 and politics (who had been at Mr. Greene s school), lived at 
 no great distance from us. The steamboats from New York 
 to Staten Island got to racing, and I enjoyed it very much, 
 but George Ward and some of the milder sort protested 
 against it, and it was stopped ; which I thought rather hard, 
 for we had very little amusement in those dismal days. I 
 was once in a steamboat race when our boat knocked away 
 the paddle-box from the other and smashed the wheel. 
 From the days of the Romans and Norsemen down to the 
 present time, there was never any form of amusement dis 
 covered so daring, so dangerous, and so exciting as a steam- 
 
240 MEMOIRS. 
 
 boat race, and nobody but Americans could have ever in 
 vented or indulged in it. 
 
 The old JfnickerbocJcer Magazine had been for a long 
 time running down to absolutely nothing. A Mr. Gilmore 
 purchased it, and endeavoured to galvanise it into life. Its 
 sober grey-blue cover was changed to orange. Mr. Clark left 
 it, to my sorrow ; but there was no help for it, for there was 
 not a penny to pay him. I consented to edit it for half 
 ownership, for I had an idea. This was, to make it promptly 
 a strong Republican monthly for the time, which was utterly 
 opposed to all of Mr. Clark s ideas. 
 
 I must here remark that the financial depression in the 
 North at this time was terrible. I knew many instances in 
 which landlords begged it as a favour from tenants that they 
 would remain rent-free in their houses. A friend of mine, 
 Mr. Fales, one day took me over two houses in Fifth 
 Avenue, of which he had been offered his choice for $15,000 
 each. Six months after the house sold for $150,000. Fac 
 tories and shops were everywhere closing, and there was a 
 general feeling that far deeper and more terrible disasters 
 were coming war in its worst forms national disintegra 
 tion utter ruin. This spirit of despair was now debilitating 
 everybody. The Copperheads or Democrats, who were with 
 in a fraction as numerous as the Republicans, continually 
 hissed, " You see to what your nigger worship has brought 
 the country. This is all your doing. And the worst is to 
 come." Then there was soon developed a class known as 
 Croakers, who increased to the end of the war. These were 
 good enough Union people, but without any hope of any happy 
 issue in anything, and who were quite sure that everything 
 was for the worst in this our most unfortunate of all wretched 
 countries. Now it is a law of humanity that in all great 
 crises, or whenever energy and manliness is needed, pes 
 simism is a benumbing poison, and the strongest optimism 
 the very elixir vitce itself. And by a marvellously strange 
 inspiration (though it was founded on cool, far-sighted calcu- 
 
THE RETURN TO AMERICA. 241 
 
 lation), I, at this most critical and depressing time, rose to 
 extremest hope and confidence, rejoicing that the great crisis 
 had at length come, and feeling to my very depths of convic 
 tion that, as we were sublimely in the right, we must conquer, 
 and that the dread portal once passed we should find our 
 selves in the fairy palace of prosperity and freedom. But 
 that I was absolutely for a time alone amid all men round 
 me, in this intense hope and confidence, may be read as 
 clearly as can be in what I and others published in those 
 days, for all of this was recorded in type. 
 
 Bayard Taylor had been down to the front, and remarked 
 carelessly to me one day that when he found that there was 
 already a discount of 40 per cent, on Confederate notes, he 
 was sure that the South would yield in the end. This made 
 me think very deeply. There was no reason, if we could 
 keep the Copperheads subdued, why we should not hold our 
 own on our own territory. Secondly r , as the war went on we 
 should soon win converts. Thirdly, that the North had im 
 mense resources its hay crop alone was worth more than all 
 the cotton crop of the South. And fourthly, that when 
 manufacturing and contract-making for the army should once 
 begin, there would be such a spreading or wasting of money 
 and making fortunes as the world never witnessed, and that 
 while we grew rich, the South, without commerce or manu 
 factures, must grow poor. 
 
 I felt as if inspired, and I wrote an article entitled, " Woe 
 to the South." At this time, " Woe to the North " was the 
 fear in every heart. I showed clearly that if we would only 
 keep up our hearts, that the utter ruin of the South was in 
 evitable, while that for us there was close at hand such a 
 period of prosperity as no one ever dreamt of that every 
 factory would soon double its buildings, and prices rise be 
 yond all precedent. I followed this article by others, all in 
 ar wild, enthusiastic style of triumph. People thought I was 
 mad, and the New York Times compared my utterances to the 
 outpourings of a fanatical Puritan in the time of Cromwell. 
 
242 MEMOIRS. 
 
 But they were fulfilled to the letter. There is no in 
 stance that I know of in which any man ever prophesied so 
 directly in the face of public opinion and had his predictions 
 so accurately fulfilled. I was all alone in my opinions. At 
 all times a feeling as of awe at myself comes over me when I 
 think of what I published. For, with the exception of Gil- 
 more, who had a kind of vague idea that he kept a prophet 
 as Moses the tailor kept a poet not a soul of my acquaint 
 ance believed in all this. 
 
 Then I went a step further. I found that the real block in 
 the way of Northern union was the disgust which had gathered 
 round the mere name of Abolitionist. It became very appar 
 ent that freeing the slaves would, as General Birney once said 
 to me, be knocking out the bottom of the basket. And people 
 wanted to abolitionise without being " Abolitionists " ; and at 
 this time even the New York Tribune became afraid to advo 
 cate anti-slavery,and the greatest fanatics were dumb with fear. 
 
 Then I made a new departure. I advocated emancipa 
 tion of the slaves as a ivar measure only, and my cry was 
 " Emancipation for the sake of the White Man." I urged 
 prompt and vigorous action without any regard to philan 
 thropy. As publishing such views in the Knickerbocker was 
 like pouring the wildest of new wine into the weakest of old 
 bottles, Gilmore resolved to establish at once in Boston a 
 political monthly magazine to be called the Continental, to 
 be devoted to this view of the situation. It was the only 
 political magazine devoted to the Republican cause published 
 during the war. That it fully succeeded in rapidly attract 
 ing to the Union party a vast number of those who had held 
 aloof owing to their antipathy to the mere word abolition, is 
 positively true, and still remembered by many.* Very speed- 
 
 * Abraham Lincoln once remarked of the people who wanted eman 
 cipation, but who did not like to be called Abolitionists, that they re 
 minded him of the Irishman who had signed a temperance pledge and 
 did not like to break it, yet who sadly wanted a " drink." So going to 
 an apothecary he asked for a glass of soda-water, adding, "an , docther 
 
THE RETURN TO AMERICA. 243 
 
 ily indeed people at large caught at the idea. I remember 
 the very first time when one evening I heard Governor 
 Andrews say of a certain politician that he was not an 
 Abolitionist but an Emancipationist; and it was subsequently 
 declared by my friends in Boston, and that often, that the 
 very bold course taken by the Continental Magazine, and the 
 creation by it of the Emancipationist wing, had hastened by 
 several months the emancipation of the slaves by Abraham 
 Lincoln. It was for this alone that the University of Cam 
 bridge, Massachusetts, afterwards, through its president, gave 
 me the degree of A. M., " for literary services rendered to 
 the country during the war," which is as complete a proof of 
 what I assert as could be imagined, for this was in very truth 
 the one sole literary service which I performed at that time, 
 and there were many of my great literary friends who de 
 clared their belief in, and sympathy with, the services which 
 I rendered to the cause. But I will now cite some facts 
 which fully and further confirm what I have said. 
 
 The Continental Magazine was, as I may say, a something 
 more than semi-official organ. Mr. Seward contributed to it 
 two anonymous articles, or rather their substance, which were 
 written out and forwarded to me by Oakey Hall, Esq., of 
 New York. We received from the Cabinet at Washington 
 continual suggestions, for it was well understood that the 
 Continental was read by all influential Eepublicans. A con 
 tributor had sent us a very important article indeed, pointing 
 out that there was all through the South, from the Mississip 
 pi to the sea, a line of mountainous country in which there 
 were few or no slaves, and very little attachment to the Con 
 federacy. This article, which was extensively republished, 
 attracted great attention. It gave great strength and en 
 dear, if yees could put a little whisky into it unbeknownst to me, I d be 
 much obliged to yees." I believe that I may say that as Mr. Lincoln 
 read all which I published (as I was well assured), I was the apothecary 
 here referred to, w T ho administered the whisky of Abolition disguised 
 in the soda-water of Emancipation. 
 
214 MEMOIRS. 
 
 couragement to the grand plan of the campaign, afterwards 
 realised by Sherman. By official request, to me directed, the 
 author contributed a second article on the subject. These 
 articles were extensively circulated in pamphlet form or 
 widely copied by the press, and created a great sensation, 
 forming, in fact, one of the great points made in influencing 
 public opinion. Another of the same kind, but not ours, 
 was the famous pamphlet by Charles Stille, of Philadelphia, 
 " How a Free People Conduct a Long War," in which it was 
 demonstrated that the man who can hold out longest in a 
 fight has the best chance, which simple truth made, however, 
 an incredible popular impression. Gil more and our friends 
 succeeded, in fact, in making the Continental Magazine 
 "respected at court." But I kept my independence and 
 principles, and thundered away so fiercely for immediate 
 emancipation that I was confidentially informed that Mr. 
 Seward once exclaimed in a rage, " Damn Leland and his 
 magazine ! " But as he damned me only officially and in 
 confidence, I took it in the Pickwickian sense. And at this 
 time I realised that, though I was not personally very much 
 before the public, I was doing great and good work, and, as 
 I have said, a great many very distinguished persons ex 
 pressed to me by letter or in conversation their appreciation 
 of it ; and some on the other side wrote letters giving it to 
 me per contra, and one of these was Caleb Gushing. Gu 
 shing in Chinese means " ancient glory," but Caleb s renown 
 was extinguished in those days. 
 
 I may add that not only did H. W. Longfellow express to 
 me his sympathy for and admiration of my efforts to aid the 
 Union cause, but at one time or another all of my literary 
 friends in Boston, who perfectly understood and showed deep 
 interest in what I was doing. Which can be well believed of 
 a city in which, above all others in the world, everybody 
 sincerely aims at culture and knowledge, the first principle 
 of which inspired by praiseworthy local patriotism is to 
 know and take pride in what is done in Boston by its natives. 
 
V. 
 
 LIFE DURING THE CIVIL WAR AND 
 ITS SEQ UENCE. 
 
 1862-18GG. 
 
 Boston in 1862 Kind friends Literary circles Emerson, 0. W. 
 Holmes, Lowell, E. P. Whipple, Agassiz, &c. The Saturday dinners 
 The printed autograph The days of the Dark Shadow Lowell 
 and Ilosea Biglow I am assured that the Continental Magazine 
 advanced the period of Emancipation I return to Philadelphia 
 My pamphlet on " Centralisation versus States Rights " Its Results 
 Books Ping-\Ving The Emergency I enter an artillery com 
 pany Adventures and comrades R. W. Gilder I see rebel 
 scouts near Harrisburg The shelling of Carlisle Incidents My 
 brother receives his death- wound at my side Theodore Fassitt 
 Stewart Patterson Exposure and hunger The famous bringing- 
 up of the cannon Picturesque scenery The battle of Gettysburg 
 The retreat of Lee Incidents Return home Cape May The 
 beautiful Miss Vining Solomon the Sadducee General Carrol 
 Tevis The Sanitary Fair The oil mania The oil country Colo 
 nel H. Olcott, the theosophist Adventures and odd incidents in 
 Oil-land Nashville Dangers of the road A friend in need I act 
 as unofficial secretary and legal adviser to General Whipple Freed 
 slaves Inter arma silent leges Horace Harrison Voodoo Cap 
 tain Joseph R. Paxton Scouting for oil and shooting a brigand 
 Indiana in winter Charleston, West Virginia Back and forth 
 from Providence to the debated land The murder of A.Lincoln 
 Goshorn Up Elk River in a dug-out A charmed life Sam Fox 
 A close shot Meteorological sorcery A wild country Marvel 
 lous scenery I bore a well Robert Hunt Horse adventures The 
 panther I am suspected of being a rebel spy The German apology 
 Cincinnati Niagara A summer at Lenox, Mass. A MS. burnt. 
 
 WE went to Boston early in December, 1861, and during 
 that winter lived pleasantly at the Winthrop House on the 
 
246 MEMOIRS. 
 
 Common. I had already many friends, and took letters to 
 others who became our friends. We were very kindly re 
 ceived. Among those whom we knew best were Mrs. and 
 Mr. H. Eitchie, Mrs. and Mr. T. Perkins, Mrs. H. G. Otis, 
 Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, Mr. and Mrs. Samuel W T ard but I 
 must really stop, for there was no end to the list. Among 
 my literary friends or acquaintances, or " people whom I 
 have very often met," were Emerson, Longfellow, Dr. 0. W. 
 Holmes, J. R. Lowell, E. P. Whipple, Palfrey, G. Ticknor, 
 Agassiz, E. Everett in a word, all that brilliant circle which 
 shone when Boston was at its brightest in 1862. I was often 
 invited to the celebrated Saturday dinners, where I more 
 than once sat by Emerson and Holmes. As I had been 
 editor of the free lance Vanity Fair, and was now conduct 
 ing the Continental with no small degree of audacity, regard 
 less of friend or foe, it was expected and no wonder that 
 I would be beautifully cheeky and New Yorky ; and truly 
 my education and antecedents in America, beginning with 
 my training under Barnum, were not such as to inspire faith 
 in my modesty. But in the society of the Saturday Club, 
 and in the very general respect manifested in all circles in 
 Boston for culture or knowledge in every form in which 
 respect it is certainly equalled by no city on earth I often 
 forgot newspapers and politics and war, and lived again in 
 memory at Heidelberg and Munich, recalling literature and 
 art. I heard, a day or two after my first Saturday, that I 
 had passed the grand ordeal successfully, or summa cum 
 magna laude, and that Dr. Holmes, in enumerating divers 
 good qualities, had remarked that I was modest. Every 
 stranger coming to Boston has a verdict or judgment passed 
 on him he is numbered and labelled at once and it is 
 really wonderful how in a few days the whole town knows it. 
 I had met with Emerson many years before in Philadel 
 phia, where I had attracted his attention by remarking in 
 Mrs. James Rush s drawing-room that a vase in a room was 
 like a bridge in a landscape, which he recalled twenty years 
 
LIFE DURING THE CIVIL WAR. 
 
 later. With Dr. Holmes I had corresponded. Lowell ! " that 
 reminds me of a little story." 
 
 There was some "genius of freedom" i. e., one who takes 
 liberties who collected autographs, and had not even the 
 politeness to send a written request. He forwarded to me 
 this printed circular : 
 
 " DEAR SIR : As I am collecting the autographs of dis 
 tinguished Americans, I would be much obliged to you for 
 your signature. Yours truly, 
 
 While I was editing Vanity Fair I received one of these 
 circulars. I at once wrote : 
 
 " DEAR SIR : It gives me great pleasure to comply with 
 your request. CHARLES G. LELAND." 
 
 I called the foreman, and said, " Mr. Chapin, please to set 
 this up and pull half-a-dozen proofs." It was done, and I 
 sent one to the autograph-chaser. He was angry, and an 
 swered impertinently. Others I sent to Holmes and Lowell. 
 The latter thought that the applicant was a great fool not to 
 understand that such a printed document was far more of a 
 curiosity than a mere signature. I met with Chapin after 
 wards, when in the war. He had with him a small company 
 of printers, all of whom had set up my copy many a time. 
 Printers are always polite men. They all called on me, and 
 having no cards, left cigars, which were quite as acceptable 
 at that time of tobacco-famine. 
 
 Amid all the horrors and anxieties of that dreadful year, 
 while my old school-mate, General George B. McClellan, was 
 delaying and demanding more men mas y mas y mas I 
 still had as many happy hours as had ever come into any year 
 of my life. If I made no money, and had to wear my old 
 gloves (I had fortunately a good stock gathered from one of 
 Frank Leslie s debtors), and had to sail rather close to the 
 wind, I still found the sailing very pleasant, and the wind 
 fair and cool, though I was pauper in cere. 
 
 Mrs. Harrison Gray Otis held a ladies sewing-circle to 
 make garments for the soldiers, at which my wife worked zeal- 
 
248 MEMOIRS. 
 
 ously. There were many social receptions, readings, etc., where 
 we met everybody. It was very properly considered bad form 
 in those early days of the war to dance or give grand dinners 
 or great " parties." It was, in fact, hardly decent for a man 
 to dress up and appear as a swell at all anywhere. Death was 
 beginning to strike fast into families through siege and battle, 
 and crape to blacken the door-bells. There was a dark shad 
 ow over every life. I had been assured by an officer that my 
 magazine was doing the work of two regiments, yet I was tor 
 mented with the feeling that I ought to be in the war, as my 
 grandfather would surely have been at my age. The officer 
 alluded to wrote to me that he on one occasion had read one 
 of my articles by camp-fire to his regiment, who gave at the 
 end three tremendous cheers, which were replied to by the 
 enemy, who were not far away, with shouts of defiance. As 
 for minor incidents of the war-time, I could fill a book with 
 them. One day a young gentleman, a perfect stranger, came 
 to my office, as many did, and asked for advice. He said, 
 " Where I live in the country we have raised a regiment, and 
 they want me to be colonel, but I have no knowledge what 
 ever of military matters. What shall I do?" I looked at 
 him, and saw that he " had it in him," and replied, " New 
 York is full of Hungarian and German military adventurers 
 seeking employment. Get one, and let him teach you and 
 the men ; but take good care that he does not supplant you. 
 Let that be understood." After some months he returned in 
 full uniform to thank me. He had got his man, had fought 
 in the field all had gone well. 
 
 I remember, as an incident worth noting, that one even 
 ing while visiting Jas. R. Lowell at his house in Cambridge, 
 awaiting supper, there came a great bundle of proofs. They 
 were the second series of the Biglow Papers adapted to the 
 new struggle, and as I was considered in Boston at that time 
 as being in my degree a literary political authority or one of 
 some general experience, he was anxious to have my opinion 
 of them, and had invited me for that purpose. He read them 
 
LIFE DURING THE CIVIL WAR. 249 
 
 to me, manifested great interest as to my opinion, and seemed 
 to be very much delighted or relieved when I praised them 
 and predicted a success. I do not exaggerate in this in the 
 least ; his expression was plainly and unmistakably that of a 
 man from whom some doubt had been banished. 
 
 My brother Henry had at once entered a training-school 
 for officers in Philadelphia, distinguished himself as a pupil, 
 and gone out to the war in 1862. The terrible ill-luck which 
 attended his every effort in life overtook him speedily, and, 
 owing to his extreme zeal and over-work, he had a sunstroke, 
 which obliged him to return home. He was a first-lieuten 
 ant. The next year he went as sergeant, and was again in 
 valided. What further befell him will appear in the course 
 of my narrative. 
 
 The Continental Magazine had done its work and was 
 evidently dying. I had never received a cent from it, and it 
 had just met the expenses of publication. It had done much 
 good and rendered great service to the Union cause. Gil- 
 more had very foolishly yielded half the ownership to Robert 
 J. Walker, of whom I confess I have no very agreeable recol 
 lections. So it began to die. But I have the best authority 
 for declaring that, ere it died, it had advanced the time of the 
 Declaration of Emancipation, which was the turning-point of 
 the whole struggle, and all my friends in Boston were of that 
 opinion. This I can fully prove. 
 
 The summer of 1862 I passed in Dedham, going every 
 day to my office in Boston. We lived at the Phoenix Hotel, 
 and occupied the same rooms which my father and mother 
 had inhabited thirty-five years before. We had many very 
 kind and hospitable friends. I often found time to roam 
 about the country, to sit by Wigwam Lake, to fish in the 
 river Charles, and explore the wild woods. I have innumer 
 able pleasant recollections of that summer. 
 
 I returned in the autumn with my wife to Philadelphia, 
 and to my father s house in Locust Street. The first thing 
 which I did was to write a pamphlet on " Centralisation 
 
250 MEMOIRS. 
 
 versus States Eights." In it I set forth clearly enough the 
 doctrine that the Constitution of the United States could not 
 be interpreted so as to sanction secession, and that as the 
 extremities or limbs grew in power, so there should be a 
 strengthening of the brain or greater power bestowed on the 
 central Government. I also advocated the idea of a far greater 
 protection of general and common industries and interests 
 being adopted by the Government. 
 
 There was in the Senate a truly great man, of German 
 extraction, named Gottlieb Orth, from Indiana. He was 
 absolutely the founder of the Bureaus of Education, &c., 
 which are now nourishing in Washington. He wrote to me 
 saying that he had got the idea of Industrial bureaus from 
 my pamphlet. In this pamphlet I had opposed the com 
 monly expressed opinion that we must do nothing to " aggra 
 vate the South." That is, we should burn the powder up by 
 degrees, as the old lady did who was blown to pieces by the 
 experiment. "Do not drive them to extremes." I declared 
 that the South would go to extremes in any case, and that we 
 had better anticipate it. This brought forth strange fruit in 
 after years, long after the war. 
 
 While I was in Boston in 1862, I published by Putnam in 
 New York a book entitled " Sunshine in Thought," which 
 had, however, been written long before. It was all directed 
 against the namby-pamby pessimism, " lost Edens and buried 
 Lenores," and similar weak rubbish, which had then begun 
 to manifest itself in literature, and which I foresaw was in 
 future to become a great curse, as it has indeed done. Only 
 five hundred copies of it were printed. 
 
 I was very busy during the first six months of 1863. I 
 wrote a work entitled " The Art of Conversation, or Hints 
 for Self-Education," which was at once accepted and pub 
 lished by Carleton, of New York. It had, I am assured, a 
 very large sale indeed. I also wrote and illustrated, with the 
 aid of my brother, a very eccentric pamphlet, " The Book of 
 Copperheads." When Abraham Lincoln died two books 
 
LIFE DURING THE CIVIL WAR. 251 
 
 were found in his desk. One was the " Letters of Petroleum 
 V. Nasby," by Dr. R. Locke, and my " Book of Copper 
 heads," which latter was sent to me to see and return. It 
 was much thumbed, showing that it had been thoroughly 
 read by Father Abraham. 
 
 I also translated Heine s " Book of Songs." Most of these 
 had already been published in the " Pictures of Travel." I 
 restored them to their original metres. I also translated the 
 " Memoirs of a Good-for-Nothing " from the German, and 
 finished up, partially illustrated, and published two juvenile 
 works. One of these was " Mother Pitcher," a collection of 
 original nursery rhymes for children, which I had writen 
 many years before expressly for my youngest sister, Emily, 
 now Mrs. John Harrison of Philadelphia. In this work 
 occurs my original poem of " Ping-Wing the Pieman s Son." 
 Of this Poem Punch said, many years after, that it was " the 
 best thing of the kind which had ever crossed the Atlantic." 
 Ping-Wing appeared in 1891 as a full-page cartoon by Tenniel 
 in Punch, and as burning up the Treaty. I may venture to 
 say that Ping- Wing once improvised to amuse dear little 
 Emily has become almost as well known in American nurs 
 eries as " Little Boy Blue," at any rate his is a popular type, 
 and when Mrs. Vanderbilt gave her famous masked ball in 
 New York, there was in the Children s Quadrille a little Ping- 
 Wing. Ping travelled far and wide, for in after years I put 
 him into Pidgin-English, and gave him a place in the "Pidgin- 
 English Ballads," which have always been read in Canton, I 
 daresay by many a heathen Chinese learning that childlike 
 tongue. I also translated the German " Mother Goose." 
 
 And now terrible times came on, followed, for me, by 
 a sad event. The rebels, led by General Lee, had pene 
 trated into Pennsylvania, and Philadelphia was threatened. 
 This period was called the " Emergency." I could easily have 
 got a command as officer. I had already obtained for my 
 brother an appointment as major with secretary s duty on 
 Fremont s staff, which he promptly declined. But it was no 
 
252 MEMOIRS. 
 
 time to stand on dignity, and I was rather proud, as was my 
 brother, to go as " full private " in an artillery company known 
 as " Chapman Biddle s," though he did not take command of 
 it on this occasion.* Our captain was a dealer in cutlery 
 named Landis. 
 
 After some days delay we were marched forth. Even 
 during those few days, while going about town in my private s 
 uniform, I realised in a droll new way what it was to be a 
 common man. Maid-servants greeted me like a friend, other 
 soldiers and the humbler class talked familiarly to me. I 
 had, however, no excuse to think myself any better than my 
 comrades, for among the hundred were nearly twenty lawyers 
 or law-students, and all were gentlemen as regards position in 
 society. Among them was R. W. Gilder, now the editor of 
 the Century, who was quite a youth then, and in whose 
 appearance there was something which deeply interested me. 
 I certainly have a strange Gypsy faculty for divining charac 
 ter, and I divined a genius in him. He was very brave and 
 uncomplaining in suffering, but also very sensitive and emo 
 tional. Once it happened, at a time when we were all nearly 
 starved to death and worn out with want of sleep and fa 
 tigue, that I by some chance got a loaf of bread and some 
 molasses. I cut it into twelve slices and sweetened them, 
 intending to give one to every man of our gun. But I could 
 only find eleven, and, remembering Gilder, went about a long 
 mile to find him ; and when I gave it to him he was so 
 touched that the tears came into his fine dark eyes. Trivial 
 as the incident was, it moved me. Another was Theodore 
 Fassitt, a next-door neighbour of mine, whose mother had 
 specially commended him to me, and who told me that once 
 
 * Chapman Biddle himself was a very remarkable man as a lawyer, 
 and a person of marked refinement and culture. He became my friend 
 in after years, as did his son Walter. Both are now departed. I wrote 
 and publicly read an " In Memoriam " address and poem on his death, 
 in delivering which I had great pains to refrain from weeping, which was 
 startling to me, not being habitually expressive of emotion. 
 
LIFE DURING THE CIVIL WAR. 253 
 
 or twice he had stolen ears of maize from the horses to keep 
 himself alive. Also Edward Penington, and James Biddle, a 
 gentleman of sixty; but I really cannot give the roll-call. 
 However, they all showed themselves to be gallant gentlemen 
 and true ere they returned home. The first night we slept 
 in a railroad station, packed like sardines, and I lay directly 
 across a rail. Then we were in camp near Harrisburg for a 
 week dans la pluie et la misere. 
 
 We knew that the rebels were within six miles of us, at 
 Shooter s Hill in fact, two of our guns went there. Pening 
 ton was with them, and had a small skirmish, wherein two of 
 the foemen were slain, the corporal being, however, called oil 
 before he could secure their scalps. That afternoon, as I was 
 on guard, I saw far down below a few men who appeared to 
 be scouting very cautiously, and hiding as they did so. They 
 seemed mere specks, but I was sure they were rebels. I 
 called on Lieutenant Perkins, who had a glass, but neither 
 he nor others present thought they were of the enemy. Long 
 after, this incident had a droll sequel. 
 
 Hearing that the rebels were threatening Carlisle, we 
 were sent thither on a forced march of sixteen miles. They 
 had been before us, and partially burned the barracks. We 
 rested in the town. There was a large open space, for all the 
 world like a stage. Ladies and others brought us refresh 
 ments; the scene became theatrical indeed. The soldiers, 
 wearied with a long march, were resting or gossipping, when 
 all at once ivhizz-lang a shell came flying over our heads 
 and burst. There were cries the ladies fled like frightened 
 wild-fowl ! The operatic effect was complete ! 
 
 About ten thousand rebel regulars, hearing that we had 
 occupied Carlisle, had returned, and if they had known that 
 there were only two or three thousand raw recruits, they 
 might have captured us all. From this fate we were saved 
 by a good strong tremendous lie, well and bravely told. 
 There was a somewhat ungainly, innocent, rustic-looking 
 youth in our company, from whose eyes simple truth peeped 
 12 
 
254: MEMOIRS. 
 
 out like two country girls at two Sunday-school windows. 
 He, having been sent to the barracks to get some fodder, 
 with strict injunction to return immediately, of course lay 
 down at once in the hay and had a good long nap. The 
 rebels came and roused him out, but promised to let him go 
 free on condition that he would tell the sacred truth as to 
 how many of us Federal troops were in Carlisle. And he, 
 moved by sympathy for his kind captors, and swearing by 
 the Great Copperhead Serpent, begged them to fly for their 
 lives ; " for twenty regiments of regulars, and Heaven only 
 knew how many volunteers, had come in that afternoon, and 
 the whole Xorth was rising, and trains running, and fresh 
 levies pouring in." 
 
 The rebels believed him, but they would not depart with 
 out giving us a touch of their quality, and so fired shell and 
 grape in on us till two in the morning. There were two 
 regiments of " common fellows," or valiant city roughs, with 
 us, who all hid themselves in terror wherever they could. 
 But our company, though unable to fire more than a few 
 shots, were kept under fire, and, being all gentlemen, not a 
 man flinched. 
 
 I did not, to tell the truth, like our captain ; but what 
 ever his faults were, and he had some, cowardice was not 
 among them. Some men are reckless of danger ; he seemed 
 to be absolutely insensible to it, as I more than once observed, 
 to my great admiration. He was but a few feet from me, 
 giving orders to a private, when a shell burst immediately 
 over or almost between them. Xeither was hurt, but the 
 young man naturally shied, when Landis gruffly cried, " Xever 
 mind the shells, sir ; they ll not hurt you till they hit you." 
 
 I was leaning against a lamp-post when a charge of grape 
 went through the lamp. Remembering the story in " Peter 
 Simple," and that " lightning never strikes twice in the same 
 place," I remained quiet, when there came at once another, 
 smashing what was left of the glass about two feet above my 
 head. 
 
LIFE DURING THE CIVIL WAR. 255 
 
 Long after the war, when I was one day walking with 
 Theodore Fassitt, I told him the tale of how I had awakened 
 the family at the fire in Munich. And Theodore dolefully 
 exclaimed, " I don t see why it is that / can never do any 
 thing heroic or fine like that ! " Then I said, " Theodore, 
 I will tell you a story. Once upon a time there was a boy 
 only eighteen years of age, and it happened in the war that 
 he was in a town, and the rebels shelled it. Now this boy 
 had charge of four horses, and the general had told him to 
 stay in one place, before a church ; and he obeyed. The 
 shells came thick and fast I saw it all myself and by-and- 
 bye one came and took off a leg from one of the horses. 
 Then he was in a bad way with his horses, but he stayed. 
 After a while the general came along, and asked "him why 
 the devil he was stopping there. And he replied, I was 
 ordered to, sir ! Then the general told him to get behind 
 the church at once." 
 
 " Why ! " cried Theodore in amazement, " / was that 
 boy!" 
 
 " Yes," I replied ; " and the famous Roman sentinel who 
 remained at his post in Pompeii was no braver, and I don t 
 think he had so hard a time of it as you had with that horse." 
 
 I was put on guard. The others departed or lay down to 
 sleep on the ground. The fire slackened, and only now and 
 then a shell came with its diabolical scream like a dragon 
 into the town. All at last was quiet, when there came sham 
 bling to me an odd figure. There had been some slight at 
 tempt by him to look like a soldier he had a feather in his 
 hat but he carried his rifle as if after deer or raccoons, and 
 as if he were used to it. 
 
 " Say, Cap ! " he exclaimed, " kin you tell me where a 
 chap could get some ammynition ? " 
 
 " Go to your quartermaster," I replied. 
 
 " Ain t got no quartermaster." 
 
 " Well, then to your commanding officer to your regi 
 ment." 
 
256 MEMOIRS. 
 
 " Ain t got no commanding officer nowher this side o 
 God, nor no regiment." 
 
 " Then who the devil are you, and where do you belong ? " 
 
 " Don t belong nowher . I ll jest tell you, Cap, how it is. 
 I live in the south line of New York State, and when I heard 
 that the rebs had got inter Pennsylvany, forty of us held a 
 meetin and pinted me Cap n. So we came down here cross 
 country, and rived this a ternoon, and findin fightin goin 
 on, went straight for the bush. And gettin cover, we shot 
 the darndest sight of rebels you ever did see. And now all 
 our ammynition is expended, I ve come to town for more, for 
 ther s some of em still left who want killin badly." 
 
 " See here, my friend," I replied. " You don t know it, 
 but you re nothing but a bush-whacker, and anybody has a 
 right to hang or shoot you out of hand. Do you see that 
 great square tent ? " Here I pointed to the general s mar 
 quee. " Go in there and report yourself and get enrolled." 
 And the last I saw of him he was stumbling over the sticks 
 in the right direction. This was my first experience of a 
 real guerilla a character with whom I was destined to make 
 further experience in after days. 
 
 An earlier incident was to me extremely curious. There 
 was in our battery a young gentleman named Stewart Pat 
 terson, noted for his agreeable, refined manners. He was 
 the gunner of our cannon No. Two. We had brass Napo 
 leons. At the distance of about one mile the rebels were 
 shelling us. Patterson brought his gun to bear on theirs, 
 and the two exchanged shots at the same instant. Out of 
 the smoke surrounding Patterson s gun I saw a sword-blade 
 fly perhaps thirty feet, and then himself borne by two or 
 three men, blood flowing profusely. The four fingers of his 
 right hand had been cut away clean by a piece of shell. 
 
 At the instant I saw the blade flash in its flight, I recalled 
 seeing precisely the same thing long before in Heidelberg. 
 There was a famous duellist who had fought sixty or seventy 
 times and never received a scratch. One day he was acting 
 
LIFE DURING THE CIVIL WAR. 257 
 
 as second, when the blade of his principal, becoming broken 
 at the hilt by a violent blow, flew across the room, rebounded, 
 and cut the second s lip entirely open. It was remarkable 
 that I should twice in my life have seen such a thing, in both 
 instances accompanied by wounds. Long after I met Pat 
 terson in Philadelphia, I think, in 1883. He did not recog 
 nise me, and gave me his left hand. I said, " Not that hand, 
 Patterson, but the other. You ve no reason to be ashamed 
 of it. I saw the fingers shot off." 
 
 But on that night there occurred an event which, in the 
 end, after years of suffering, caused the deepest sorrow of my 
 life. As we were not firing, I and the rest of the men of the 
 gun were lying on the ground to escape the shells, but my 
 brother, who was nothing if not soldierly and punctilious, 
 stood upright in his place just beside me. There came a 
 shell which burst immediately, and very closely over our 
 heads, and a piece of it struck my brother exactly on the 
 brass buckle in his belt on the spine. The blow was so 
 severe that the buckle was bent in two. It cut through his 
 coat and shirt, and inflicted a slight wound two inches in 
 length. But the blow on the spine had produced a concus 
 sion or disorganisation of the brain, which proved, after years 
 of suffering, the cause of his death. At first he was quite 
 senseless, but as he came to, and I asked him anxiously if he 
 was hurt, he replied sternly, " Go back immediately to your 
 place by the gun ! " He was like grandfather Leland. 
 
 A day or two after, while we were on a forced march to 
 intercept a party of rebels, the effect of the wound on my 
 brother s brain manifested itself in a terrible hallucination. 
 He had become very gloomy and reserved. Taking me aside, 
 he informed me that as he had a few days before entered a 
 country-house, contrary to an order issued, to buy food, he 
 was sure that Captain Landis meant as soon as possible to 
 have him shot, but that he intended, the instant he saw any 
 sign of this, at once to attack and kill the captain ! Know 
 ing his absolute determined and inflexibly truthful char- 
 
258 MEMOIRS. 
 
 acter, and seeing a fearful expression in his eyes, I was much 
 alarmed. Keflecting in the first place that he was half- 
 starved, I got him ajneal. I had brought from Philadelphia 
 two pounds of dried beef, and this, carefully hoarded, had 
 eked out many a piece of bread for a meal. I begged some 
 bread, gave my brother some beef with it, and I think suc 
 ceeded in getting him some coffee. Then I went to Lieu 
 tenant Perkins a very good man and begged leave to take 
 my brother s guard and to let him sleep. He consented, and 
 my brother gradually came to his mind, or at least to a bet 
 ter one. But he was never the same person afterwards, his 
 brain having been permanently affected, and he died in con 
 sequence five years after. 
 
 I may note as characteristic of my brother, that, twelve 
 years after his death, Walt Whitman, who always gravely 
 spoke the exact truth, told me that there was one year of his 
 life during which he had received no encouragement as a 
 poet, and so much ridicule that he was in utter despondency. 
 At that time he received from Henry, who was unknown to 
 him, a cheering letter, full of admiration, which had a great 
 eifect on him, and inspired him to renewed effort. He sent 
 my brother a copy of the first edition of his " Leaves of 
 Grass," with his autograph, which I still possess. I knew 
 nothing of this till Whitman told me of it. The poet de 
 clared to me very explicitly that he had been much influ 
 enced by my brother s letter, which was like a single star in 
 a dark night of despair, and I have indeed no doubt that the 
 world owes more to it than will ever be made known. 
 
 During the same week in which this occurred my wife s 
 only brother, Rodney Fisher, a young man, and captain in 
 the regular cavalry, met with a remarkably heroic death at 
 Aldie, Virginia. He was leading what was described as " the 
 most magnificent and dashing charge of the whole cam 
 paign," when he was struck by a bullet. He was carried to 
 a house, where he died within a week. He was of the stock 
 of the Delaware Rodneys, and of the English Admiral s, or 
 
LIFE DURING THE CIVIL WAR. 259 
 
 of the best blood of the Revolution, and well worthy of it. 
 It was all in a great cause, but these deaths entered into the 
 soul of the survivors, and we grieve for them to this day. 
 
 Our sufferings as soldiers during this Emergency were 
 very great. I heard an officer who had been through the 
 whole war, and through the worst of it in Virginia, declare 
 that he had never suffered as he did with us this summer. 
 And our unfortunate artillery company endured far more 
 than the rest, for while pains were taken by commanding 
 officers of other regiments, especially the regulars, to obtain 
 food, our captain, either because they had the advance on 
 him, or because he considered starving us as a part of the 
 military drama, took little pains to feed us, and indeed neg 
 lected his men very much. As we had no doctor, and many 
 of our company suffered from cholera morbus, I, having some 
 knowledge of medicine, succeeded in obtaining some red 
 pepper, a bottle of Jamaica ginger, and whisky, and so re 
 lieved a great many patients. One morning our captain 
 forbade my attending to the invalids any more. " Proper 
 medical attendance," he said, " would be provided." It was 
 not ; only now and then on rare occasions was a surgeon bor 
 rowed for a day. What earthly difference it could make in 
 discipline (where there was no show or trace of it) whether I 
 looked after the invalids or not was not perceptible. But 
 our commander, though brave, was unfortunately one of 
 those men who are also gifted with a great deal of " pure 
 cussedness," and think that the exhibiting it is a sign of 
 bravery. Although we had no tents, only a miserably rotten 
 old gun-cover, and not always that, to sleep under (I gener 
 ally slept in the open air, frequently in the rain), and often 
 no issue of food for days, we were strictly prohibited from 
 foraging or entering the country houses to buy food. This, 
 which was a great absurdity, was about the only point of 
 military discipline strictly enforced. 
 
 At one time during the war, when men were not allowed 
 to sleep in the country houses (to protect their owners), the 
 
260 MEMOIRS. 
 
 soldiers would very often burn these houses down, in order 
 that, when the family had fled, they might use the fireplace 
 and chimney for cooking; and so our men, forbidden to 
 enter the country houses to buy or beg food, stole it. 
 
 I can recall one very remarkable incident. We had six 
 guns, heavy old brass Napoleons. One afternoon we had to 
 go uphill in many cases it was terribly steep by a road 
 like those in Devonshire, resembling a ditch. It rained in 
 torrents and the water was knee-deep. The poor mules had 
 to be urged and aided in every way, and half the pulling and 
 pushing was done by us. All of us worked like navvies. So 
 we went onwards and upwards for sixteen miles ! When we 
 got to the top of the hill, out of one hundred privates, Henry, 
 I, and four others alone remained. R. W. Gilder was one of 
 these, besides Landis and Lieutenant Perkins that is to say, 
 we alone had not given out from fatigue ; but the rest soon 
 followed. This exploit was long after cited as one of the 
 most extraordinary of the war and so it was. AVe were 
 greatly complimented on it. Old veterans marvelled at it. 
 But what was worse, I had to lie all night on sharp flints 
 i. e., the slag or debris of an iron smeltery or old forge out of 
 doors in a terrible rain, and, though tired to death, got very 
 little sleep ; nor had we any food whatever even then or the 
 next day. Commissariat there was none, and very little at 
 any time. 
 
 From all that I learned from many intimate friends who 
 were in the war, I believe that we in the battery suffered to 
 the utmost all that men can suffer in the field, short of 
 wounds and death. Yet it is a strange thing, that had I not 
 received at this time most harassing and distressing news 
 from home, and been in constant fear as regards my brother, 
 I should have enjoyed all this Emergency like a picnic. We 
 often marched and camped in the valley of the Cumberland 
 and in Maryland, in deep valleys, by roaring torrents or " on 
 the mountains high," in scenery untrodden by any artist or 
 tourist, of marvellous grandeur and beauty. One day we 
 
LIFE DURING THE CIVIL WAR. 261 
 
 came upon a scene which may be best described by the fact 
 that my brother and I both stopped, and both cried out at 
 once, " Switzerland ! " The beauty of Nature was to me a 
 constant source of delight. Another was the realisation of 
 the sense of duty and the pleasure of war for a noble cause. 
 It was once declared by a reviewer that in my Breitmann 
 poems the true gaudium certaminis, or enjoyment of battle, 
 is more sincerely expressed than by any modern poet, because 
 there is no deliberate or conscious effort to depict it seriously. 
 And I believe that I deserved this opinion, because the order 
 to march, the tramp and rattle and ring of cavalry and artil 
 lery, and the roar of cannon, always exhilarated me ; and 
 sometimes the old days of France would recur to me. One 
 day, at some place where we were awaiting an attack and I 
 was on guard, General Smith, pausing, asked me something 
 of which all I could distinguish was " Fire before." Think 
 ing he had said, " Were you ever under fire before? "and 
 much surprised at this interest in my biography, I replied, 
 " Yes, General in Paris at the barricades in Forty-eight." 
 He looked utterly amazed, and inquired, " What the devil did 
 you think I said ? " I explained, when he laughed heartily, 
 and told me that his question was, " Has there been any 
 firing here before ? " 
 
 Two very picturesque scenes occur to me. One was a 
 night before the battle of- Gettysburg. The country was 
 mountain and valley, and the two opposing armies were 
 camped pretty generally in sight of one another. There was, 
 I suppose, nearly half a cord of wood burning for every twelve 
 men, and these camp-fires studded the vast landscape like 
 countless reflections of the stars above, or rather as if all \vere 
 stars, high or low. It was one of the most wonderful sights 
 conceivable, and I said at the time that it was as well worth 
 seeing as Vesuvius in eruption. 
 
 Henry had studied for eighteen months in the British Art 
 School in Rome, and passed weeks in sketching the Alham- 
 bra, and, till he received his wound, took great joy in the pio 
 
262 MEMOIRS. 
 
 turesque scenery and " points " of military life. But it is in 
 credible how little we ate or got to eat, and how hard we 
 worked. It is awful to be set to digging ditches in a soil 
 nine-tenths stone, when starving. 
 
 As we were raw recruits, we were not put under fire at 
 Gettysburg, but kept in Smith s reserve. But on the night 
 after the defeat, when Lee retreated in such mad and need 
 less haste across the Potomac, we were camped perhaps the 
 nearest of any troops to the improvised bridge, I think within 
 a mile. That night I was on guard, and all night long I heard 
 the sound of cavalry, the ring and rattle of arms, and all that 
 indicates an army in headlong flight. I say that they went 
 in needless haste. I may be quite in the wrong, but I have 
 always believed that Meade acted on the prudent policy of 
 making a bridge of gold for a retreating enemy ; and I always 
 believed, too, that at heart he did not at all desire to inflict 
 extreme suffering on the foe. Had he been a General Bir- 
 ney, he would have smote them then and there hip and thigh, 
 and so ended the war " for good and all," like a Cromwell, 
 with such a slaughter as was never seen. I base all this on 
 one fact. At two o clock on the afternoon before that night 
 I went to a farmhouse to borrow an axe wherewith to cut 
 some fuel ; and I was told that the rebels had carried away 
 every axe in great haste from every house, in order to make a 
 bridge. Now, if I knew that at two o clock, General Meade, 
 if he had any scouts at all, must have known it. But qui 
 vult decipi, decipiatur. 
 
 That ended the Emergency. The next day, I think, we 
 received the welcome news that we were no longer needed and 
 would soon be sent home. On the way we encamped for a 
 week at some place, I forget where. There was no drill now 
 we seldom had any no special care of us, and no " polic 
 ing " or keeping clean. Symptoms of typhoid fever soon 
 appeared ; forty of our hundred were more or less ill. My 
 brother and I knew very well that the only way to avert this 
 was to exercise vigorously. On waking in the morning we all 
 
LIFE DURING THE CIVIL WAR. 263 
 
 experienced languor and lassitude. Those who yielded to it 
 fell ill. Henry was always so ready to work, that once our 
 sergeant, Mr. Bullard, interposed and gave the duty to an 
 other, saying it was not fair. I always remembered it with 
 gratitude. But this feverish languor passed away at once with 
 a little chopping of wood, bringing water, or cooking. 
 
 One more reminiscence. Our lieutenant, Perkins, was a 
 pious man, and on Sunday mornings held religious service, 
 which we were obliged to attend. One day, when we had by 
 good fortune rations of fresh meat, it was cooked for dinner 
 and put by in two large kettles. During the service two hun 
 gry pigs came, and in our full sight overturned the kettles, 
 and, after rooting over the food, escaped with large pieces. 
 I did not care to dine, like St. Antonio, on pigs leavings. 
 My brother finding me, asked why I looked so glum. I re 
 plied that I was hungry. " Is that all ? " he replied. " Come 
 with me ! " We went some distance until we came to a farm 
 house in the forest. He entered, and, to my amazement, was 
 greeted as an old friend. He had been there in the campaign 
 of the previous year. I was at once supplied with a meal. 
 My brother was asked to send them newspapers after his re 
 turn. He never sought for mysteries and despised dramatic 
 effects, but his life was full of them. Once, when in Naples, 
 he was accustomed to meet by chance every day, in some re 
 tired walk, a young lady. They spoke, and met and met 
 again, till they became like friends. One day he saw her in 
 a court procession, and learned for the first time that she was 
 a younger daughter of the King. But he never met her 
 again. 
 
 There were two or three boys of good family, none above 
 sixteen, who had sworn themselves in as of age recruiting 
 officers were not particular and who soon developed brilliant 
 talents for " foraging," looting, guerilla warfare, horse-steal 
 ing, pot-hunting rebels, and all those little accomplishments 
 which appear so naturally and pleasingly in youth when in 
 the field. For bringing out the art of taking care of your- 
 
264: MEMOIRS. 
 
 self, a camp in time of war is superior even to " sleeping about 
 in the markets," as recommended by Mr. Weller. Other tal 
 ents may be limited, but the amount of " devil " which can 
 be developed out of a " smart " boy as a soldier is absolutely 
 infinite. College is a Sunday-school to it. One of these youths 
 had " obtained " a horse somewhere, which he contrived to 
 carry along. Many of our infantry regiments gradually con 
 verted themselves into cavalry by this process of "obtaining" 
 steeds ; and as the officers found that their men could walk 
 better on horses legs, they permitted it. This promising 
 youngster was one day seated on a caisson or ammunition wag 
 gon full of shells, &c., when it blew up. By a miracle he rose 
 in the air, fell on the ground unhurt, and marching immedi 
 ately up to the lieutenant and touching his hat, exclaimed, 
 " Please, sir, caisson No. Two is blown to hell; please appoint 
 me to another ! " That oath was not recorded. Poor boy ! 
 he died in the war. 
 
 There was one man in our corps, a good-natured, agree 
 able person, a professional politician, who astonished me by 
 the fact that however starved we might be, he had always a 
 flask of whisky wherewith to treat his friends ! Where or 
 how he always got it I never could divine. But in Amer 
 ica every politician always has whisky or small change where 
 with to treat. Always. Money was generally of little use, 
 tot there was rarely anything to buy anywhere. I soon de 
 veloped here and there an Indian-like instinct in many 
 things, and this is indeed deep in my nature. I cannot ex 
 plain it, but it is there. I became expert when we approached 
 a house at divining, by the look of waggons or pails or hen 
 coops, whether there was meal or bread or a mill anywhere 
 near. One day I informed our lieutenant that a detachment 
 of rebel cavalry had recently passed. He asked me how I 
 knew it. I replied that rebel horses, being from mountain 
 ous Virginia, had higher cocks and narrower to their shoes, 
 and one or two more nails than ours, which is perfectly true. 
 And where did I learn that? Not from anybody. I had 
 
LIFE DURING THE CIVIL WAR. 265 
 
 noticed the difference as soon as I saw the tracks, and guessed 
 the cause. One day, in after years in England, I noticed 
 that in coursing, or with beagles, the track of a gypsy was 
 exactly like mine, or that of all Americans that is, Indian- 
 like and straight-forward. I never found a Saxon-English 
 man who had this step, nor one who noticed such a thing, 
 which I or an Indian would observe at once. Once, in Rome, 
 Mr. Story showed me a cast of a foot, and asked me what it 
 was. I replied promptly, " Either an Indian girl s or an 
 American young lady s, whose ancestors have been two hun 
 dred years in the country." It was the latter. Such feet 
 lift or leap, as if raised every time to go over entangled 
 grass or sticks. Like an Indian, I instinctively observe 
 everybody s ears, which are unerring indices of character. I 
 can sustain, and always could endure, incredible fasts, but for 
 this I need coffee in the morning. " Mark Twain " whom 
 I saw yesterday at his villa, as I correct this proof also has 
 this peculiar Indian-like or American faculty of observing 
 innumerable little things which no European would ever 
 think of. There is, I think, a great deal of " hard old In 
 jun" in him. The most beautiful of his works are the three 
 which are invariably bound in silk or muslin. They are 
 called " The Three Daughters, or the Misses Clemens." 
 
 It occurred to me, after I had recorded the events of our 
 short but truly vigorous and eventful campaign, to write to 
 R. W. Gilder and ask him quid memoriae datum est " what 
 memories he had of that great war, wherein we starved and 
 swore, and all but died." There are men in whose letters we 
 are as sure to find genial life as a spaccio di vino or wine 
 shop in a Florentine street, and this poet-editor is one of 
 them. And he replied with an epistle not at all intended 
 for type, which I hereby print without his permission, and 
 in defiance of all the custom or courtesy which inspires 
 gentlemen of the press. 
 
266 MEMOIRS. 
 
 " May 8th, 1893. 
 
 " EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT, THE CENTURY MAGAZINE, 
 " UNION SQUARE, NEW YORK. 
 
 "My DEAR LELAND: How your letter carries me back! Do you 
 know that one night when I was trudging along in the dark over a 
 road-bed where had been scattered some loose stones to form a founda 
 tion, I heard you and another comrade talking me over in the way to 
 which you refer in your letter ? Well, it was either you or the other 
 comrade who said you had given me something to eat, and I know that 
 I must have seemed very fragile, and at times woe-begone. I was pos 
 sibly the youngest in the crowd. I was nineteen, and really enjoyed it 
 immensely notwithstanding. 
 
 I remember you in those days as a splendid expressor of our mis 
 eries. You had a magnificent vocabulary, wherewith you could elo 
 quently and precisely describe our general condition of starvation, mud, 
 ill-equippedness, and over-work. As I think of those days, I hear 
 reverberating over the mountain-roads the call, Cannoneers to the 
 wheels ! and in imagination I plunge knee-deep into the mire and grab 
 the spokes of the caisson.* 
 
 "Do you remember the night we spent at the forge? I burnt my 
 knees at the fire out-doors, while in my ears was pouring a deluge from 
 the clouds. I finally gave it up, and spent the rest of the night crouch 
 ing upon the fire-bed of the forge itself, most uncomfortably. 
 
 " You will remember that we helped dig the trenches at the fort on 
 the southern side of the river from Harrisburg,f and that one section 
 
 * In reference to " heaving out " by main force, cannon from some 
 deep slough, perhaps of stiff clay, which holds like glue, or, what I think 
 far more wearisome, urging them along for miles over the heaviest roads 
 or broken ways, when the poor exhausted mules have almost given out. 
 Though, as he says, he was only nineteen and seemed very fragile, the 
 indomitable pluck and perseverance of Gilder in all such trials were such 
 as to call special commendation fr<3m my brother Henry, who was not 
 habitually wasteful of praise. 
 
 f " Well do I remember " also what accursed work it was, the ground 
 consisting chiefly of broken stone, and how a number of Paddies, w r ho 
 were accustomed to such labour, assembled above and around us to en 
 joy the unusual sight of " jontlemen " digging like " canawlers," and how 
 I, while at my spade, excited their hilarity and delight by casting at 
 them scraps of " ould Eerish," or Irish. The fight of the section here 
 alluded to was, I believe, rather of the nature of an improvised rencontre, 
 albeit two or three rebels were killed in the artillery duel. Corporal 
 
LIFE DURING THE CIVIL WAR. 267 
 
 of the battery got into a fight near that fort ; nor can you have forgot 
 ten when Stuart Patterson s hand was shot off at Carlisle. As he passed 
 me, I heard him say, * My God, I m shot ! That night, after we were 
 told to retire out of range of the cannon, while we were lying under 
 a tree near one of the guns, an officer called for volunteers to take 
 the piece out of range. I stood up with three others, but seeing and 
 hearing a shell approach, I cried out, Wait a moment! which 
 checked them. Just then the shell exploded within a yard of the 
 cannon. If we had not paused, some of us would surely have been 
 hit. We then rushed out, seized the cannon, and brought it out of 
 range. 
 
 " By the way, General William F. Smith (Baldy Smith) has since 
 told me that he asked permission to throw the militia (including our 
 selves) across one of Lee s lines of retreat. If he had been permitted to 
 do so, I suppose you and I would not have been in correspondence 
 now. 
 
 " You remember undoubtedly the flag of truce that came up into 
 the town before the bombardment began. The man was on horseback 
 and had the conventional white flag. The story was that Baldy Smith 
 sent word that if they wanted the town they could come and take 
 it. * I suppose you realise that we were really a part of Meade s 
 
 Penington was, I believe, as usual, the inspiring Mephistopheles of 
 the affair. 
 
 * This reply, which is much better in every respect than that of " The 
 old guard dies but never yields," was made in the face of far more over 
 whelming numbers, and has few parallels for sheer audacity, all things 
 considered, in the history of modern warfare. It passed into a very 
 widely-spread popular mot in America. It is more than an on dit, for 
 I was nearly within ear-shot when it was uttered, and it was promptly 
 repeated to me. Yet, if my memory serves me right, there is some 
 thing like this, " Come and take it ! " recorded in the early Tuscan wars 
 in Villari s introduction to the " Life of Machiavelli," translated by his 
 accomplished wife. I have, as I write this note, just had the pleasure 
 of meeting with the Minister and Madame Villari at a dinner at Sena 
 tor Comparetti s in Florence, which is perhaps the reason why I recall 
 the precedent. And I may also recall as a noteworthy incident, that at 
 this dinner Professor Milani, the great Etruscologist and head of the 
 Archaeological Museum, congratulated me very much on having been 
 the first and only person who ever discovered an old Etruscan word 
 still living in the traditions of the people i. e., Intial, the Spirit of the 
 Haunting Shadow. This is a little discursive maisje prends mon bien 
 
268 MEMOIRS. 
 
 right, and that we helped somewhat to delay the rebel left wing. Do 
 you not remember hearing from our position at Carlisle the guns of 
 that great battle the turning-point of the war? * 
 
 " 1 could run on in this way, but your own memory must be full of 
 the subject. I wish that we could sometime have a reunion of the old 
 battery in Philadelphia. I have a most distinct and pleasant remem 
 brance of your brother a charming personality indeed, a handsome 
 refined face and dignified bearing. I remember being so starved as to 
 eat crackers that had fallen on the ground ; and I devoured, too, wheat 
 from the fields rubbed in the hands to free it from the ear. . . . 
 
 " Sincerely, R. W. GILDER. 
 
 " P. S. I could write more, but you will not need it from me." 
 
 Truly, I was that other comrade whom Gilder overheard 
 commending him, and it was I who gave him something to 
 eat, I being the one in camp who looked specially after two 
 or three of the youngest to see that they did not starve, and 
 who doctored the invalids. 
 
 I here note, with all due diffidence, that Mr. Gilder chiefly 
 remembers me as " a splendid expressor of our miseries, with 
 a magnificent vocabulary " wherewith to set forth fearful 
 adversities. I have never been habitually loquacious in life; 
 full many deem me deeply reticent and owl-like in my taci 
 turnity, but I " can hoot when the moon shines," nor is there 
 
 ouje le trouve, and it is all autobiographic ! " It is all turkey," as the 
 wolf said when he ate the claws. 
 
 The proposal of General Smith to resist with us alone the tre 
 mendous maddened rush of half of Lee s veterans has its re-echo in my 
 ballad, where Breitmann attempts with his Bummers to stem the great 
 army of the South. The result would have probably been the same 
 that is, we should have been "gobbled up." But he would have un 
 doubtedly tried it without misgiving. I have elsewhere narrated my 
 only interview with him. 
 
 * The thunder of the artillery at Gettysburg was indeed something 
 to be long and well remembered. It was so awful that on the field wild 
 rabbits, appalled by the sound, ran to the gunners and soldiers and tried 
 to take refuge in their bosoms. Those who have only heard cannon 
 fired singly, or a single discharge of cannon, can have no conception of 
 what such sounds when long sustained are like. 
 
LIFE DURING THE CIVIL WAR. 269 
 
 altogether lacking in me in great emergencies a certain rude 
 kind of popular eloquence, which has I avow it with humil 
 ity enabled me invariably to hold my own in verbal encoun 
 ters with tinkers, gypsies, and the like, among whom " chaff " 
 is developed to a degree of which few respectable people have 
 any conception, and which attains to a refinement of sarcasm, 
 originality, and humour in the London of the lower orders, 
 for which there is no parallel in Paris, or in any other Eu 
 ropean capital ; so that even among my earliest experiences 
 I can remember, after an altercation with an omnibus-driver, 
 he applied to me the popular remark that he was " blessed if 
 he didn t believe that the gemman had been takin lessons in 
 language hof a cab-driver, and set up o 1 nights to learn" 
 But the ingenious American is not one whit behind the vig 
 orous Londoner in " de elegant fluency of sass," as darkies 
 term it, and it moves my heart to think that, after thirty 
 years, and after the marvellous experiences of men who are 
 masters of our English tongue which the editor of the Century 
 must have had, he still retains remembrance of my oratory ! 
 
 At last we were marched and railroaded back to Philadel 
 phia. I need not say that we were welcome, or that I en 
 joyed baths, clean clothes, and the blest sensation of feeling 
 decent once more. Everything in life seemed to be luxurious 
 as it had never been before. Luxuries are very conventional. 
 A copy of Praetorius, for which I paid only fifteen shillings, 
 was to me lately a luxury for weeks ; so is a visit to a picture 
 gallery. For years after, I had but to think of the Emer 
 gency to realise that I was actually in all the chief conditions 
 of happiness. 
 
 Feeling that, although I was in superb health and strength, 
 the seeds of typhoid were in me, I left town as soon as pos 
 sible, and went with my wife, her sister, and two half-nieces, 
 or nieces by marriage, and child-nephew, Edward Robins, to 
 Cape May, a famous bathing-place by the ocean. One of the 
 little girls here alluded to, a Lizzie Robins, then six years of 
 age, is now well known as Elizabeth Robins Pennell, and " a 
 
270 MEMOIRS. 
 
 writer of books," while Edward has risen in journalism in 
 Philadelphia. There as I walked often eighteen or twenty 
 miles a day by the sea, when the thermometer was from 90 
 to 100 in the shade, I soon worked away all apprehension of 
 typhoid and developed muscle. One day I overheard a man 
 in the next bathing-house asking who I was. "I don t 
 know," replied the other, " but if I were he, I d go in for 
 being a prize-fighter." 
 
 Everybody was poor in those days, so we went to a very 
 cheap though respectable hotel, where we paid less than half 
 of what we had always given at " The Island," and where we 
 were in company quite as happy or comfortable as we ever 
 had been anywhere, though the death of her brother weighed 
 sadly on my poor wife, and her dear good mother, whom I 
 always loved tenderly, and with whom I never had a shade of 
 difference of opinion nor a whisper of even argument, and to 
 whom I was always devoted. I seem to have been destined 
 to differ from other mortals in a few things : one was, that I 
 always loved my mother-in-law with whole heart and soul, 
 and never considered our menage as perfect unless she were 
 with us. She was of very good and rather near English 
 descent, a Callender, and had been celebrated in her youth 
 for extraordinary beauty. Her husband was related to the 
 celebrated beauty Miss Vining, whom Maria Antoinette, from 
 the fame of her loveliness, invited to come and join her court. 
 At the beginning of this century no great foreigner travelled 
 in America without calling on Miss Vining in Delaware. 
 There is a life of her in Griswold s " Republican Court." It 
 is without any illustrative portrait. I asked Dr. Griswold 
 why he had none. He replied that none existed. I said to 
 him severely, " Let this be a lesson to you never to publish 
 anything without submitting it first to me. I have a photo 
 graph of her miniature." The Doctor submitted ! 
 
 This summer at Cape May I made the acquaintance of a 
 very remarkable man named Solomon. He was a Jew, and 
 we became intimate. One evening he said to me : " You 
 
LIFE DURING THE CIVIL WAR. 271 
 
 know so much about the Jews that I have even learned some 
 thing from you about them. But I can teach you something. 
 Can you tell the difference between the Aschkenazim and 
 the Sepliardim by their eyes ? No ! Well, now, look ! " Just 
 then a Spanish-looking beauty from New Orleans passed by. 
 " There is Miss Inez Aguado ; observe that the corners of 
 her eyes are long with a peculiar turn. Wait a minute ; now, 
 there is Miss Lowenthal Levi, of course of Frankfort. 
 Don t you see the difference?" 
 
 I did, and asked him to which of the classes he belonged. 
 He replied 
 
 " To neither. I am of the sect of the ancient Sadducees, 
 who took no part in the Crucifixion." 
 
 Then I replied, " You are of the Karaim" 
 
 " No ; that is still another sect or division, though very 
 ancient indeed. We never held to the Halacha, and we laugh 
 at the Mishna and Talmud and all that. We do not believe 
 or disbelieve in a God Yahveh, or the older Elohim. We 
 hold that every man born knows enough to do what is right ; 
 and that is religion enough. After death, if he has acted 
 up to this, he will be all right should there be a future of 
 immortality ; and if he hasn t, he will be none the worse 
 off for it. We are a very small sect. We call ourselves 
 the Neu Reformirte. We have a place of worship in New 
 York." 
 
 This was the first agnostic whom I had ever met. I 
 thought of the woman in Jerusalem who ran about with the 
 torch to burn up heaven and the water to extinguish hell- 
 fire. Yes, the sect was very old. The Sadducees never 
 denied anything ; they only inquired as to truth. Seek or 
 Sikh ! 
 
 I confess that Mr. Solomon somewhat weakened the effect 
 of his grand free-thought philosophy by telling me in full 
 faith of a Rabbi in New York who was so learned in the 
 Cabala that by virtue of the sacred names he could recover 
 stolen goods. Whether, like Browning s sage, he also received 
 
272 MEMOIRS. 
 
 them, I did not learn. But Jest tout comme chez nous autres. 
 The same spirit which induces a man to break out of or 
 thodox humdrumness, induces him to love the marvellous, 
 the forbidden, the odd, the wild, the droll even as I do. It 
 is not a fair saying that " atheists are all superstitious, which 
 proves that a man must believe in something." No ; it is the 
 spirit of nature, of inquiry, of a desire for the new and to 
 penetrate the unknown ; and under such influence a man 
 may truly be an atheist as regards what he cannot prove or 
 reconcile with universal love and mercy, and yet a full be 
 liever that magic and ghosts may possibly exist among the 
 infinite marvels and mysteries of nature. It is admitted that 
 a man may believe in God without being superstitious; it is 
 much truer that he maybe "superstitious" (whatever that 
 means) without believing that there is an anthropomorphic 
 bon Dieu. However this may be, Mr. Solomon made me re 
 flect often and deeply for many a long year, until I arrived 
 to the age of Darwin. 
 
 I also made at Cape May the acquaintance of a very re 
 markable man, whom I was destined to often meet in other 
 lands in after years. This was Carrol (not as yet General) 
 Tevis. We first met thus. The ladies wanted seats out on 
 the lawn, and there was not a chair to be had. He and I 
 were seeking in the hotel-office ; all the clerks were absent, 
 and all the chairs removed ; but there remained a solid iron 
 sofa or settee, six feet long, weighing about 600 pounds. 
 Tevis was strong, and a great fencer ; there is a famous lotte 
 which he invented, bearing his name; perhaps Walter H. 
 Pollock knows it. I gave the free-lance or condottiero a 
 glance, and proposed to prig the iron sofa and lay waste the 
 enemy. It was a deed after his Dugald Dalgetty heart, and 
 we carried it off and seated the ladies. 
 
 In the autumn there was a vast Sanitary Fair for the 
 benefit of the army hospitals held in Philadelphia. I edited 
 for it a daily newspaper called Our Daily Fare, which often 
 kept me at work for eighteen hours per diem, and in doing 
 
LIFE DURING THE CIVIL WAR. 273 
 
 which I was subjected to much needless annoyance and 
 mortification. At this Fair I saw Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 It was about this time that the remarkable oil fever, or 
 mania for speculating in oil-lands, broke out in the United 
 States. Many persons had grown rich during the war, and 
 were ready to speculate. Its extent among all classes was 
 incredible. Perhaps the only parallel to it in history was the 
 Mississippi Bubble or the South Sea speculations, and these 
 did not collectively employ so much capital or call out so 
 much money as this petroleum mania. It had many strange 
 social developments, which I was destined to see in minute 
 detail. 
 
 My first experience was not very pleasant. A publisher 
 in New York asked me to write him a humorous poem on 
 the oil mania. It was to be large enough to make a small 
 volume. I did so, and in my opinion wrote a good one. It 
 cost me much time and trouble. When it was done, the 
 publisher refused to take it, saying that it was not what he 
 wanted. So I lost my labour or oleum perdidi. 
 
 I had two young friends named Colton, who had been in 
 the war from the beginning to the end, and experienced its 
 changes to the utmost. Neither was over twenty-one. Wil 
 liam Colton, the elder, was a captain in the regular cavalry, 
 and the younger, Baldwin, was his orderly. It was a man in 
 the Captain s company, named Yost, who furnished the type 
 of Hans Breitmann as a soldier. The brothers told me that 
 one day in a march in Tennessee, not far from Murfrees- 
 boro , they had found petroleum in the road, and thought it 
 indicated the presence of oil-springs. I mentioned this to Mr. 
 Joseph Lea, a merchant of Philadelphia. He was the father 
 of Mrs. Anna Lea Merritt, who has since become a very dis 
 tinguished artist, well known in England, being the first 
 lady painter from whom the British Government ever bought 
 a picture. Mr. Lea thought it might be worth some expense 
 to investigate this Tennessee oil. I volunteered to go, if my 
 expenses were paid, and it was agreed to. It is difficult at 
 
274: MEMOIRS. 
 
 the present day to give any reader a clear idea of the dangers 
 and trouble which this undertaking involved, and I was fully 
 aware beforehand what they would be. The place was on 
 the border, in the most disorganised state of society conceiv 
 able, and, in fact, completely swarming with guerillas or 
 brigands, sans merci, who simply killed and stripped every 
 body who fell into their hands. All over our border or 
 frontier there are innumerable families who have kept up 
 feuds to the death, or vendettas, in some cases for more than 
 a century ; and now, in the absence of all civil law, these 
 were engaged in wreaking their old grudges without restraint, 
 and assuredly not sparing any stranger who came between 
 them. 
 
 I had a friend in C. A. Dana, the Assistant-Secretary of 
 War, and another in Colonel Henry Olcott, since known as 
 the theosophist. The latter had just come from the country 
 which I proposed to visit. I asked him to aid me in getting 
 military passes and introductions to officers in command. 
 He promised to do so, saying that he would not go through 
 what I had before me for all the oil in America.* And, in 
 deed, one could not take up a newspaper without finding full 
 proof that Tennessee was at that time an inferno or No-man s 
 Land of disorder. 
 
 I went to it with my eyes wide open. After so many 
 years of work, I was as poor as ever, and the seven years of 
 harvest which I had prophesied had come, and I was not 
 gathering a single golden grain. My father regarded me as 
 
 * Apropos of Olcott he did good and noble work in the war, in the 
 field, and also out of it as a Government detective, and I am very far 
 from being ashamed to say that I aided him more than once in the 
 latter capacity. There was a lady in Philadelphia who availed herself 
 of a distinguished position in society so as to go and come from Rich 
 mond and act as spy and carry letters between rebel agents. I knew 
 this and told Olcott of it, who put a stop to her treason. I also 
 learned that a rascally contractor had defrauded Government with 
 adulterated chemicals. Olcott had him heavily fined. 
 
LIFE DURING THE CIVIL WAR. 275 
 
 a failure in life, or as a literary ne er-do-weel, destined never 
 to achieve fortune or gain an etat, and he was quite right. 
 My war experience had made me reckless of life, and specu 
 lation was firing every heart. I bought myself a pair of 
 long, strong, overall boots and blanket, borrowed a revolver, 
 arranged money affairs with Mr. Lea, who always acted with 
 the greatest generosity, intelligence, and kindness, packed 
 my carpet-bag, and departed. It was midwinter, and I was 
 destined for a wintry region, or Venango County, where, un 
 til within the past few months, there had been many more 
 bears and deer than human beings. For it was in Venango, 
 Pennsylvania, that the oil-wells were situated, and Mr. Lea 
 judged it advisable that I should first visit them and learn 
 something of the method of working, the geology of the re 
 gion, and other practical matters. 
 
 My brother accompanied me to the station, and I left at 
 about 8 P. M. After a long, long, weary night and day, I 
 arrived at an oil town, whose name I now forget. By great 
 good fortune I secured a room, and by still greater luck I 
 got acquainted the next morning at breakfast with three or 
 four genial and gentlemanly men, all " speculators " like my 
 self, who had come to spy into the plumpness and oiliness of 
 the land. We hired a sleigh and went forth on an excursion 
 among the oil-wells. It was in some respects the most re 
 markable day I ever spent anywhere. 
 
 For here was oil, oil, oil everywhere, in fountains flowing 
 at the rate of a dollar a second (it brought 70 cents a gallon), 
 derricks or scaffoldings at every turn over wells, men making 
 fortunes in an hour, and beggars riding on blooded horses. 
 I myself saw a man in a blue carter s blouse, carrying a 
 black snake- whip, and since breakfast, for selling a friend s 
 farm, he had received $250,000 as commission (i. e., 50,000). 
 When we stopped to dine at a tavern, there stood behind us 
 during all the meal many country-fellows, all trying to sell 
 oil-lands ; every one had a great bargain at from thirty or 
 forty thousand dollars downwards. The lowest in the lot was 
 
276 MEMOIRS. 
 
 a boy of seventeen or eighteen, a loutish-looking youth, who 
 looked as if his vocation had been peddling apples and loz 
 enges. He had only a small estate to dispose of for $15,000 
 (3,000), but he was very small fry indeed. My companions 
 met with many friends ; all had within a few days or hours 
 made or lost incredible sums by gambling in oil-lands, bor 
 rowing recklessly, and failing as recklessly. Companies were 
 formed here on the spot as easily as men get up a game of 
 cards, and of this within a few days I witnessed many in 
 stances. Two men would meet. " Got any land over ? " 
 (i. e., not " stocked "). " Yes, first-rate ; geologer s certifi 
 cate ; can you put it on the market ? " " That s my business. 
 I ve floated forty oil stocks already, terms half profits." So 
 it would be floated forthwith. Gambling by millions was in 
 the air everywhere ; low common men held sometimes thirty 
 companies, all their own, in one pocket, to be presently 
 sprung in New York or elsewhere. And in contrast to it 
 was the utterly bleak wretchedness and poverty of every 
 house, and the miserable shanties, and all around and afar 
 the dismal, dark, pine forests covered with snow. 
 
 I heard that day of a man who got a living by spiritually 
 intuiting oil. " Something told him," some Socratic demon 
 or inner impulse, that there was " ile " here or there, deep 
 under the earth. To pilot to this " ile " of beauty he was 
 paid high fees. One of my new friends avowed his intention 
 of at once employing this oil-seer as over-seer. 
 
 We came to some stupendous tanks and to a well which, 
 as one of my friends said enviously and longingly, was run 
 ning three thousand dollars a day in clear greenbacks. Its 
 history was remarkable. For a very long time an engineer 
 had been here, employed by a company in boring, but bore 
 he never so wisely, he could get nothing. At last the com 
 pany, tired of the expenditure and no returns, wrote to him 
 ordering him to cease all further work on the next Saturday. 
 But the engineer had become " possessed " with the idea that 
 he must succeed, and so, unheeding orders, he bored away 
 
LIFE DURING THE CIVIL WAR. 277 
 
 all alone the next day. About sunset some one going by 
 heard a loud screaming and hurrahing. Hastening up, he 
 found the engineer almost delirious with joy, dancing like a 
 lunatic round a fountain of oil, which was " as thick as a 
 flour-barrel, and rising to the height of a hundred feet." It 
 was speedily plugged and made available. All of this oc 
 curred only a very few days before I saw it. 
 
 That night I stopped at a newly-erected tavern, and, as no 
 bed was to be had, made up iny mind to sleep in my blanket 
 on the muddy floor, surrounded by a crowd of noisy specula 
 tors, waggoners, and the like. I tell this tale vilely, for 
 I omitted to say that I did the same thing the first night 
 when I entered the oil-country, got a bed on the second, and 
 that this was the third. But even here I made the acquaint 
 ance of a nice Scotchman, who found out another very nice 
 man who had a house near by, and who, albeit not accus 
 tomed to receive guests, said he would give us two one bed, 
 which he did. However, the covering was not abundant, and 
 I, for all my blanket, was a-cold. In the morning I found a 
 full supply of blankets hanging over the foot-board, but we 
 had retired without a light, and had not noticed them. Our 
 breakfast being rather poor, our host, with an apology, 
 brought in a great cold mince-pie three inches thick, which 
 is just the thing which I love best of all earthly food. That 
 he apologised for it indicated a very high degree of culture 
 indeed in rural America, and, in fact, I found that he was a 
 well-read and modest man. 
 
 It was, I think, at a place called Plummer that I made 
 
 the acquaintance of two brothers named B , who seemed 
 
 to vibrate on the summit of fortune as two golden balls might 
 on the top of the oil-fountain to which I referred. One 
 spoke casually of having at that instant a charter for a bank 
 in one pocket, and one for a railroad in the other. They 
 bought and sold any and all kinds of oil-land in any quantity, 
 without giving it a thought. While I was in their office, 
 
 one man exhibited a very handsome revolver. " How much 
 13 
 
278 MEMOIRS. 
 
 did it cost?" asked B. "Fifty dollars" (10). "I wish," 
 replied B., " that when you go to Philadelphia you d get me 
 a dozen of them for presents." A man came to the window 
 and called for him. " What do you want ? " " Here are 
 the two horses I spoke about yesterday." Hardly heeding 
 him, and talking to others, B. went to the window, cast 
 a casual glance at the steeds, and said, " What was it you 
 said that you wanted for them?" "Three thousand dol 
 lars." " All right ! go and put em in the stable, and come 
 here and get the money." 
 
 From Plummer I had to go ten miles to Oil City. If I 
 had only known it, one of my very new friends, who was 
 very kind indeed to a stranger, would have driven me over in 
 his sleigh. But I did not know it, and so paid a very rough 
 countryman ten dollars (2) to take me over on a jumper. 
 This is the roughest form of a sledge, consisting of two sap 
 lings with the ends turned up, fastened by cross-pieces. The 
 snow on the road was two feet deep, and the thermometer at 
 zero. But the driver had two good horses, and made good 
 time. I found it very difficult indeed to hold on to the 
 vehicle and also to keep my carpet-bag. Meanwhile my 
 driver entertained me with an account of a great misfor 
 tune which had just befallen him. It was as follows : 
 
 " Before this here oil-fever came along I had a little 
 farm that cost me $150, and off that, an workin at car- 
 pentrin , I got a miglity slim livin . I used to keep all my 
 main savin s to pay taxes, and often had to save up the 
 cents to get a prospective drink of whisky. Well, last 
 week I sold my farm for forty thousand dollars, and dern 
 my skin ef the feller that bought it didn t go and sell it 
 yesterday for a hundred and fifty thousand ! Just like my 
 derned bad luck ! " 
 
 " See here, my friend," I said ; " I have travelled pretty 
 far in my time, but I never saw a country in which a man 
 with forty thousand dollars was not considered rich." 
 
 " He may be rich anywhere else with it," replied the 
 
LIFE DURING THE CIVIL WAR. 279 
 
 nouveau riclie contemptuously, "but it wouldn t do more 
 than buy him a glass of whisky here in Plummer." 
 
 Having learned what I could of oil-boring, I went to Cin 
 cinnati, and then to Nashville by rail. It may give the read 
 er some idea of what kind of a country and life I was com 
 ing into when I tell him that the train which preceded mine 
 had been stopped by the guerillas, who took from it fifty 
 Federal soldiers and shot them dead, stripping the other pas 
 sengers ; and that the one which came after had a hundred 
 and fifty bullets fired into it, but had not been stopped. 
 We passed by Mammoth Cave, but at full speed, for it 
 was held by the brigands. All of which things were duly 
 chronicled in the Northern newspapers, and read by all at 
 home. 
 
 I got to Nashville. It had very recently been taken by 
 the Federal forces under General Thomas, who had put it 
 under charge of General Whipple, who was, in fact, the rul 
 ing or administrative man of the Southwest just then. I 
 went to the hotel. Everything was dismal and dirty noth 
 ing but soldiers and officers, with all the marks of the field 
 and of warfare visible on them citizens invisible every 
 thing proclaiming a city camp in time of war sixty thousand 
 men in a city of twenty thousand, more or less. I got a 
 room. It was so cold that night that the ice froze two inches 
 thick in my pitcher in my room. 
 
 I expected to find the brothers Colton in Nashville. I 
 went to the proper military authority, and was informed that 
 their regiment was down at the front in Alabama, as was also 
 the officer who had the authority to give them leave of ab 
 sence. I was also informed that my only chance was to go to 
 Alabama, or, in fact, into the field itself, as a civilian ! This 
 was a dreary prospect. However, I made up my mind to it, 
 and was walking along the street in a very sombre state of 
 mind, for I was going to a country like that described in 
 " Sir Grey Stele " 
 
 " Whichc is called the Land of Double/ 
 
280 MEMOIRS. 
 
 And doubtful indeed, and very dismal and cold and old, 
 did everything seem on that winter afternoon as I, utterly 
 alone, went my way. What I wanted most of all things on 
 earth was a companion. With my brother I would have 
 gone down to the front and to face all chances as if it were 
 to a picnic. 
 
 When ill-fortune intends to make a spring, she draws 
 back. But good fortune, God bless her ! does just the same. 
 Therefore si fortuna tonat, caveto mergi if fortune frowns, 
 do not for that despond. Just as I was passing a very re 
 spectable-looking mansion, I saw a sign over its office-door 
 bearing the words : " Captain Joseph R. Paxton, Mustering- 
 in and Disbursing Officer." 
 
 Joseph K. Paxton was a very intimate friend of mine in 
 Philadelphia. He was still a young man, and one of the 
 most remarkable whom I have ever known. He was a great 
 scholar. He was more familiar with all the rariora, curiosa, 
 and singular marvels of literature than any body I ever knew 
 except Octave Delepierre, with whose works he first made 
 me acquainted. He had translated Ik Marvel s " Reveries 
 of a Bachelor " into French, and had been accepted by a 
 Paris publisher. He had been a lawyer, an agent for a rail 
 road, and had long edited in Philadelphia a curious journal 
 entitled Bizarre, and written a work on gems. His whole 
 soul, however, was in the French literature of the eighteenth 
 century, and he always had a library which would make a 
 collector s mouth water. Had he lived in London or Paris, 
 he would have made a great reputation. And he was kind- 
 hearted, genial, and generous to a fault. He had always 
 some unfortunate friend living on him, some Bohemian of 
 literature under a cloud. 
 
 I entered the office and found him, and great was his 
 amazement ! " Que (liable, mon ami, faistu id dans cette 
 galere ? " was his greeting. I explained the circumstances in 
 detail. He at once exclaimed, " Come and live here with 
 me. General Whipple is my brother-in-law, and he will be 
 
^ LIFE DURING THE CIVIL WAR. 281 
 
 here in a few days and live with us. He ll make it all right." 
 " Here, Jim ! " he cried to a great six-foot man of colour 
 " run round to the hotel and bring this gentleman s lug 
 gage ! " 
 
 There I remained for a very eventful month. Paxton 
 had entered with the conquerors, and had just seized on the 
 house. I may indeed say that we seized on it, as regards any 
 right I being accepted as hail-fellow-well-met, and as a bird 
 of the same feather. In it was a piano and a very good old- 
 fashioned library. It was like Paxton to loot a library. He 
 had had his pick of the best houses, and took this one, 
 " niggers included," for the servants, by some odd freak, 
 preferred freedom with Paxton to slavery with their late 
 owner. This gentleman was a Methodist clergyman, and 
 Paxton found among his papers proofs that he had been con 
 cerned in a plot to burn Cincinnati by means of a gang of 
 secret incendiaries. 
 
 Whenever the blacks realised the fact that a Northern 
 man was a gentleman they all have marvellous instincts for 
 this, and a respect for one beyond belief they took to him 
 with a love like that of bees for a barrel of syrup. I have 
 experienced this so often, and in many cases so touchingly, 
 that I cannot refrain from recording it. Among others who 
 thus took to me was the giant Jim, who was unto Paxton 
 and me as the captive of our bow and spear, albeit an eman 
 cipated contraband. When the Southerners defied General 
 Butler to touch their slaves, because they were their " prop 
 erty " by law, the General replied by " confiscating " the 
 property by what Germans call Faustrecht (or fist-right) as 
 "contraband of war." 
 
 This Jim, the general waiter and butler, was a character, 
 shrewd, clever, and full of dry humour. W T hen I was alone 
 in the drawing-room of an evening, he would pile up a great 
 wood-fire, and, as I sat in an arm-chair, would sit or recline 
 on the floor by the blaze and tell me stories of his slave life, 
 such as this : 
 
282 MEMOIRS. 
 
 " My ole missus she always say to me, l Jim, don you 
 ever have anything to do with dem Yankees. Dey re all 
 pore miserable wile wretches. Dey lib in poverty an nasti- 
 ness and don know nothin . I says to her, It s mighty 
 quare, missus. I can t understan it. Whar do all dem 
 books come from? Master gits em from de Norf. Who 
 makes all our boots an clothes and sends us tea an every- 
 thin ? Dey can t all be so pore an ignoran ef dey writes 
 our books an makes everythin we git. Jim, she says, 
 4 you re a fool, an don understan nothin . Wery good, 
 missus, says I, but I thinked it over. All we do is to raise 
 cotton, an dey make it into cloff, which we hav n t de sense 
 to do." 
 
 I believe that I give this word for word. And Jim, as I 
 found, was a leading mind among the blacks. 
 
 I had a letter of introduction from Mr. Lea to Horace 
 Harrison, who was the State Attorney for Tennessee. At 
 this time his power was very great, for he had in his hands 
 the disposition of all the estates of all the rebels in Tennes 
 see. He was the type of a Southwestern gentleman. He 
 reminded me very much of my old Princeton friends, and 
 when I was in his office smoking a pipe, I felt as if I were in 
 college again. I liked him very much. One morning I 
 called, and after some deliberation he said, " You are a 
 lawyer, are you not?" I replied that I had studied law 
 under Judge Cadwallader. 
 
 " Then I should like to consult with you as a lawyer. I 
 have a very difficult case to deal with. There is a law de 
 claring that all property belonging to rebels shall be seized 
 and held for one year. Now, here is a man whose estate I 
 have held for six months, who has come in and declared his 
 allegiance, and asks for his lands. And I believe that before 
 long, unless he comes in now, they will be almost ruined. 
 What shall I do?" 
 
 " It appears to me," I replied, " that if the disposal of 
 these lands is in your hands, you must be supposed to exert 
 
LIFE DURING THE CIVIL WAR. 283 
 
 some will and discretion. Stat pro ratione voluntas is a good 
 axiom here. We are not at all in slatu quo ante lellum in 
 fact, the war is not at an end, nor decided. Your duty is to 
 act for the good of the country, and not simply to skin the 
 enemy like a bushwhacker, but to pacify the people. Victor 
 volentes per populos dat jura laws should always be mildly 
 interpreted. In your case, considering the very critical con 
 dition of the country, I should in equity give the man his 
 property, and take his oath of allegiance. Severe measures 
 are not advisable quod est violentum, non est durabile" 
 
 This is, I believe, pretty accurately what I said. That 
 evening, as I was sitting with General Whipple, he amazed 
 me by addressing me exactly as Mr. Harrison had done in 
 the morning. 
 
 " I say, Leland, you re a lawyer, and I want your advice. 
 There are six warehouses here, and I want them badly for 
 military stores. But Horace Harrison says that I can t have 
 them, because he holds them for the United States. What 
 am I to do ? " 
 
 " General Whipple," I replied, " is this town under mili 
 tary occupation in time of war, or is it not ? " 
 
 " Most decidedly it is." 
 
 " So I should think from the way your patrols bother me. 
 And if such is the case, all things must yield to military 
 wants. Where we have no legal principles or courts to de 
 cide, we must fall back on legal axioms. And here the law 
 is clear and explicit, for it says, Inter arma leges silent the 
 laws are suspended in warfare." 
 
 " A magnificent saying ! " exclaimed the General admir 
 ingly. " Ah ! you ought to be in the Supreme Court." And 
 seizing a pen he wrote to the State Attorney : 
 
 " SIR : This town, being but recently captured from the 
 enemies of the United States, is, of course, under military 
 occupation, which renders absolutely necessary for military 
 purpose many temporary seizures and uses, such as that of 
 the six warehouses referred to in our late correspondence. 
 
284: MEMOIRS. 
 
 As regards legal precedent and principle, I need not remind 
 one of your learning that (I say, Leland, how do you spell 
 that Latin? 1-n-t-e-r yes, I ve got it) Inter arma silent 
 
 I am afraid that Horace Harrison, when he got that let 
 ter, suspected that I had been acting as counsel for both 
 sides. However, as I took no fee, my conscience was at rest. 
 I think that I was of great use to General Whipple at that 
 time, and, as he said one day, an unofficial secretary. Great 
 and serious matters passed through our hands (for the Gen 
 eral and Harrison were taking the lead in virtually reforming 
 the whole frontier or debatable land), and these grand affairs 
 were often hurried through "like hot cakes." My slender 
 legal attainments were several times in requisition on occa 
 sions when the head of the Supreme Court would have been 
 a more appropriate referee. I discovered, however, that there 
 was really a department of law in which I might have done 
 good work. Questions of very serious importance were often 
 discussed and disposed of among us three with very great 
 economy of time and trouble. And here I may say "excuse 
 the idle word " that I wonder that I never in all my life fell 
 into even the most trifling diplomatic or civil position, when, 
 in the opinion of certain eminent friends, I possess several 
 qualifications for such a calling that is, quickness in mas 
 tering the legal bearings of a question, a knowledge of lan 
 guages and countries, readiness in drawing up papers, and 
 an insatiable love of labour, which latter I have not found to 
 be always possessed by the accomplished gentlemen whom 
 our country employs abroad. 
 
 I may here narrate a curious incident which touched and 
 gratified me. When all the slaves in Nashville were set free 
 by the entrance of our troops, the poor souls, to manifest 
 their joy, seized a church (nobody opposing), and for three 
 weeks held heavy worship for twenty-four hours per diem. 
 But not a wliite soul was allowed to enter the real and 
 deeply-concealed reason being that Voodoo rites (which 
 
LIFE DURING THE CIVIL WAR. 285 
 
 gained great headway during the war) formed a part of their 
 devotion. However, I was informed that an exception would 
 be made in my case, and that I was free to enter. And why ? 
 Had Jim surmised, by that marvellous intuition of character 
 which blacks possess, that I had in me " the mystery " ? 
 Now, to-day I hold and possess the black stone of the Voo 
 doo, the possession of which of itself makes me a grand- mas 
 ter and initiate or adept, and such an invitation would seem 
 as natural as one to a five-o clock tea elsewhere ; but I was 
 not known to any one in Nashville as a " cunjerer," and the 
 incident strikes me as very curious. 
 
 Apropos of marvels, many of the blacks can produce in 
 their throats by some strange process sounds, and even airs, 
 resembling those of the harmonicon, or musical box, one or 
 the other or both. One evening in Nashville, in a lonely 
 place, I heard exquisite music, which I thought must be that 
 of a superior hand-organ from afar. But, to my amazement, 
 I could discover none ; there were only two black boys in 
 the street. Alexis Paxton, the son of my host, explained to 
 me that what I heard was unquestionably music made by 
 those ebony flutes of boys, and that there were some wonder 
 ful performers in the city. I have listened to the same 
 music at a public exhibition. I greatly wonder that I have 
 never heard of this kind of music in Europe or the East. It 
 is distinctly instrumental, not vocal in its tones. It has the 
 obvious recommendation of economy, since by means of it 
 a young lady could be performer and pianoforte all in one, 
 which was indeed the beginning of the invention in Syrinx, 
 who was made into a pan-pipe, which as a piano became the 
 great musical curse (according to Heine) of modern times, 
 and by which, as I conjecture, the fair Miss Reed or Syrinx 
 revenges herself on male humanity. By the way, the best 
 singer of "Che faro senza Euridice" whom I ever heard was 
 a Miss Reed, a sister of Mrs. Paran Stevens. 
 
 I had a very pleasant time with Paxton, and I know right 
 well that I was no burden on him, but a welcome friend. 
 
286 MEMOIRS. 
 
 Au reste, there was plenty of room in the house, and abun 
 dant army stores to be had for asking, and one or two rare 
 acquaintances. One of these was a Southern officer, now a 
 general, who had come over to our side and fought, as the 
 saying was, with a rope round his neck. He was terribly 
 hated by the rebels, which hate he returned with red-hot 
 double compound interest for a renegade is worse than ten 
 Turks. He was the very type of a grim, calm old Border 
 moss-trooper. He lived in his boots, and never had an ounce 
 of luggage. One evening General Whipple (always humane 
 and cultivated, though as firm as an iron bar) said to him 
 before me, " I really don t know what to do with many of 
 my rebel prisoners. They dress themselves in Federal uni 
 forms for want of other clothes ; they take them from the 
 dead on the battlefield, and try to pass themselves off for 
 Federals. It is very troublesome." 
 
 " No trouble to me," replied the other. 
 
 " And how do you do with them ? " 
 
 " Shoot them as spies. Why, only last week I got four 
 dozen of them, and in less than four minutes I had them all 
 laid out stiff in the road." 
 
 The reader need not imagine that the general here ro 
 manced or exaggerated. At that very moment the massacres 
 and murders which were going on within three miles of us 
 were beyond belief. The bands of guerillas or bushwhackers 
 which swept the country murdered in cold blood all who fell 
 into their hands, and the Confederate soldiers often did the 
 same. There resulted, of course, a deadly hatred on both 
 sides, and the most unscrupulous retaliation. 
 
 I could fill a book with the very interesting observations 
 which I made in Nashville. And here I call attention to a 
 very strange coincidence which this recalls. During the 
 previous year I had often expressed a great desire to be in 
 some State during its transition from Confederacy to Union 
 ism, that I might witness the remarkable social and political 
 paradoxes and events which would result, and I had often 
 
LIFE DURING THE CIVIL WAR. 287 
 
 specified Tennessee as the one above all others which I should 
 prefer to visit for this purpose. And I had about as much 
 idea that I should go to the moon as there. But prayers 
 are strangely granted at strange hours plus impetravi quam 
 fuissem ausus and I was placed in the very centre of the 
 wheel. This very remarkable fulfilment of a wish, and many 
 like it, though due to mere chance, naturally made an im 
 pression on me, for no matter how strong our eyesight may 
 be, or our sense of truth, we are all dazed when coming out 
 of darkness into light, and all the world is in that condition 
 now. No matter how completely we exchange the gloom of 
 supernaturalism for the sunlight of science, phantoms still 
 seem to flit before our eyes, and, what is more bewildering 
 still, we do not as yet know but what these phantoms may be 
 physical facts. Perhaps the Voodoo stone may have the 
 power to awaken the faith which may move the vital or nerv 
 ous force, which may act on hidden subtler forms of elec 
 tricity and matter, atoms and molecules. Ah ! we have a 
 great deal to learn ! 
 
 Through General Whipple s kind aid the brothers Colton 
 were at once brought up from the front. With them and 
 Captain Paxton we went to Murfreesboro, and at once called 
 on the general in command, whose name I have forgotten. 
 He struck me as a grim, brave old commander, every inch 
 a soldier. While we conversed with him a sergeant entered, 
 a man who looked as if he lived in the saddle, and briefly 
 reported that a gang of guerillas were assembled at a certain 
 place some miles away I forget how far, but the distance 
 was traversed in an incredibly short time. The general issued 
 orders for a hundred cavalry to go at once and "get " them. 
 They " got " them, killing many, and the next morning, on 
 looking from my window, I saw the victors ride into the 
 courtyard, many of them with their captives tied neck and 
 heels, like bags of corn, over the cruppers of the horses. A 
 nice night s ride they must have had ! But the choice was 
 between death and being cruppered, and they preferred the 
 
288 MEMOIRS. 
 
 latter to coming a cropper. Strange that the less a man has 
 to live for the more he clings to life. 
 
 The general thought that if he gave us a corporal and 
 four men, and if we were well armed, that we might go out 
 on the Bole Jack road and return unharmed, " unless we met 
 with any of the great gangs of bushwhackers." But he 
 evidently thought, as did General Whipple, who did not heed 
 a trifle by any means, that we were going into the lion s jaws. 
 So the next morning, eq uo iter ingredi, I rode forth. I had 
 some time before been appointed aide-de-camp to Governor 
 Pollock, of Pennsylvania, with the rank of colonel, and had 
 now two captains and a corporal with his guard. It was a 
 rather small regiment. 
 
 We heard grim stories that morning as to what had taken 
 place all around us within almost a few hours. Three 
 Federal pickets had been treacherously shot while on guard 
 the night before ; the troops had surprised a gang of bush 
 whackers holding a ball, and firing through the windows, 
 dropped ten of them dead while dancing ; two men had been 
 
 murdered by and his gang. This was a noted 
 
 guerilla, who was said to have gone south with the Confed 
 erate army, but who was more generally believed to have re 
 mained in hiding, and to have committed most of the worst 
 outrages and murders of late. 
 
 At the first house where we stopped in the woods there 
 lay a wounded man, one of the victims of the dance the night 
 before. The inmates were silent, but not rude to us. I 
 offered a man whisky, but he replied, " I don t use it." We 
 rode on. Once there was an alarm of " bushwhackers." I 
 should have forgotten it but for the memory of the look of 
 Baldwin Col ton s eyes, the delighted earnestness of a man or 
 of a wild creature going to fight. He and his brother had 
 hunted and fought guerillas a hundred times, perhaps much 
 oftener, for it was a regular daily service at the front. Once 
 during a retreat, Baldwin (eighteen or nineteen years of age) 
 fell out of rank so often to engage in hand-to-hand sword 
 
LIFE DURING THE CIVIL WAR. 289 
 
 conflicts with rebel cavalrymen, that his brother detached 
 four to take him prisoner and keep him safe. Daring spirits 
 among our soldiers often became very fond of this kind of 
 duelling, in which the rebs were not a whit behind them, and 
 two of the infantry on either side would, under cover of the 
 bushes, aim and pop away at one another perhaps for hours, 
 like two red Indians. 
 
 I have forgotten whether it was with extra whisky, coffee, 
 or money that we specially gratified our corporal and guard ; 
 but Baldwin, who was "one of em," informed me that they 
 enjoyed this little outing immensely, just like a picnic, and 
 had a good time. From which it may be inferred that men s 
 ideas of enjoyment are extremely relative. It could not have 
 been in the dodging of guerillas to that they were accus 
 tomed ; perhaps it was the little extra ration, or the mystery 
 of the excursion, for they were much puzzled to know what 
 I wanted, why I examined the road and rocks, and all so 
 strangely, and went into the very worst place in all the land 
 to do so. Baldwin Colton himself had been so knocked 
 about during the war, and so starved as a prisoner in South 
 ern hands, that he looked back on a sojourn in that ergastu- 
 lum, Libby Prison, "as rather an oasis in his sad experiences. 
 " It wasn t so bad a place as some, and there was good com 
 pany, and always something to eat" The optimist of Can- 
 dide was a Mallock in mourning compared to this. 
 
 That night we came to somebody s plantation. I forget 
 his name, but he was a Union man, probably a very recent 
 acquisition, but genial. He had read the Knickerbocker, and 
 knew my name well, and took good care of us. In the 
 morning I offered him ten dollars for our night s lodging, 
 which was, in the opinion of my two captains, stupendously 
 liberal, as soldiers never paid. Our host declined it like a 
 Southern planter, on the ground that he never sold his hos 
 pitality. So I put the money into the hand of one of his 
 pretty children as a present. But as we rode forth we were 
 called back, and reminded that we had forgotten to pay for 
 
290 MEMOIRS. 
 
 the soldiers ! I gave another five-dollar greenback and rode 
 away disgusted. And at the gate a negro girl begged us to 
 give her a " dalla " (dollar) to buy a fish-line. It all came 
 from my foolish offer to pay. Gratitude is a sense of further 
 benefits to be bestowed. 
 
 The place where the oil had been seen was near a conical 
 rocky hill called Grindstone Knob. We examined carefully 
 and found no trace of it. The geology of the country was 
 unfavourable, much flint and conglomerate, if I remember, 
 and wanting in the signs of coal, shales, &c., and " faults " 
 or ravines. I may be quite WTong, but such was my opinion. 
 No one who lived thereabout had ever heard of " ile." Once 
 I asked a rustic if any kind of oil was found in the neigh 
 bourhood in springs. His reply was, " What ! ile come up 
 
 outer the ground like water ! H ! I never heard of sitch 
 
 a thing." There was no oil 
 
 At the foot of Grindstone Knob was a rather neat, small 
 house, white, with green blinds. We were somewhat aston 
 ished to learn from a negro boy, who spoke the most astonish 
 ingly bad English, that this was the home of Mas . 
 
 Yes, this was the den of the wolf himself, and I had no 
 doubt that he was not far off. There "was a small cotton 
 plantation round about. 
 
 We entered, and were received by a good-looking, not 
 unladylike, but rather fierce-eyed young woman and her 
 
 younger sister. It was Mrs. . The two had been to a 
 
 lady s seminary in Nashville, and played the piano for us. I 
 felt that we were in a strange situation, and now and then 
 walked to the window and looked out, listening all the time 
 suspiciously to every sound. It was easy enough for Mrs. 
 
 , the brigand s wife, to perceive from my untanned 
 
 complexion that I had not been in the field, and was mani 
 festly no soldier. You look like an officer," she said to 
 Captain Colton, " and so does that one, but what is he ? " 
 meaning me by this last. We had dinner roast kid and 
 when we departed I gave the dame five dollars, having 
 
LIFE DURING THE CIVIL WAR. 291 
 
 the feeling that I could not be indebted to thieves for a 
 dinner. 
 
 We had gone but a little distance when we saw two bush 
 whackers with guns, and gave chase, but they disappeared in 
 the bushes, much to the grief of our men, who would have 
 liked either to shoot them or to bring them in. Then the 
 corporal told us that while we were at dinner s " faith 
 ful blacks " had informed his men that " Mas - - had been 
 at home ever since Crismas " ; that at eleven o clock every 
 night they assembled at the house and thence went out ma 
 rauding and murdering. 
 
 I paused, astonished and angry. It was almost certain 
 that the bushwhacker had been during dinner probably in 
 the cellar under our feet. The guerillas had great fear of 
 our regular soldiers ; two of the latter were a match at any 
 time for half-a-dozen of the former, as was proved continually. 
 Should I go back and hang - - up over his own door? I 
 was dying to do it, but we had before us a very long ride 
 through the Cedar Barrens, the sun was sinking in the west, 
 and we had heard news which made it extremely likely that 
 a large band of guerillas would be in the way. 
 
 That resolve to go actually saved our lives, for I heard 
 the next day that a hundred and fifty of these free murderers 
 had gone on our road just after us. This fact was at once 
 
 transferred to the Northern newspapers, that "on a 
 
 hundred and fifty bushwhackers passed over -the Bole Jack 
 road." Which was read by my wife and father, who knew 
 that on that very day I was on that road, to their great ap 
 prehension. 
 
 I never shall forget the dismal appearance of the Cedar 
 Barrens. The soil was nowhere more than two inches deep, 
 and the trees which covered it by millions had all died as 
 soon as they attained a height of fifteen or twenty feet. 
 Swarms of ill-omened turkey-buzzards were the only living 
 creatures visible " like foul lemur es flitting in the gloom." 
 
 Hiding over the battlefield the Coltons and Paxton 
 
292 MEMOIRS. 
 
 pointed out many things, for they had all been in it severely. 
 At one place, Major Rosengarten, a brother of my old Paris 
 fellow-student, had had a sabre-fight with a rebel, and they 
 told me how Rosengarten s sword, being one of the kind 
 which was issued by contract in the earlier days of the war, 
 bent and broke like a piece of tin. Hearing a ringing sound, 
 Baldwin jumped from his horse, picked up a steel ramrod, 
 and gave it to me for a cane. 
 
 As we approached Murfreesboro I met a genial, daring 
 soldier, one Major Hill, whom I had seen before. He had 
 with him a hundred and fifty cavalry. " Where are you 
 going so late by night ? " I said. 
 
 He replied, " I am after that infernal scoundrel, 
 . My scouts have found out pretty closely his range. 
 I am going to divide my men into tens and scatter them over 
 the country and then close in." 
 
 " Major," I replied, " I will tell you just where to lay 
 your hand at once, heavy on him. Do you know Grindstone 
 Knob and a white house with green windows at its foot ? " 
 
 " I do." 
 
 " Well, be there at exactly eleven to-night, and you ll get 
 him. I have been there and learned it from the niggers." 
 
 " Well, I declare that you are a good scout, Mr. Leland ! " 
 cried the Major in amazement. " What can I do to thank 
 you?" 
 
 " Well, Major Hill," I said, " I have one thing to request : 
 
 that is, if you get , don t parole him. Shoot him at 
 
 once ; he is a red-handed murderer." 
 
 " I will shoot him," said the Major, and rode forth into 
 
 the night with his men. But whether he ever got 
 
 I never knew, though according to the calculations of 
 
 the Coltons, who were extremely experienced in such matters, 
 
 " Massa " had not more than one chance in a thousand 
 
 to escape, and Hill was notoriously a good guerilla-hunter 
 and a man of his word. 
 
 I believe that at the plantation our men had camped out. 
 
LIFE DURING THE CIVIL WAR. 293 
 
 At Murfreesboro we returned them to the general, and I 
 took the Coltons to a hotel, which was so very rough that 
 I apologised for it, while Baldwin said it seemed to him to 
 be luxurious beyond belief, and that it was the first night for 
 eighteen months in which he had slept in a bed. In the 
 morning I wanted a spur, having lost one of mine, and there 
 was brought to me a large boxful of all kinds of spurs to 
 choose from, which had been left in the house at one time or 
 another during the war. 
 
 I did not remain long in Nashville after returning 
 thither. I had instructions to go to Louisville, Kentucky, 
 and there consult with a certain merchant as to certain 
 lands. General Whipple accompanied me to the " depot," 
 which was for the time and place as much of an honour as if 
 Her Majesty were to come to see me off at Victoria Station. 
 There was many and many a magnate in those days and 
 there, who would have given thousands to have had his ear 
 as Paxton and I had it. 
 
 One night we were in the side private box at the theatre 
 in Nashville. Couldock, whom I had known well many 
 years before, was on the stage. The General was keeping 
 himself deeply in the shade to remain unseen. He re 
 marked to Paxton that he wanted a house for his family, 
 who would soon arrive, and could not find one, for they were 
 all occupied. This one remark shows the man. I wonder 
 how long General Butler would have hesitated to move any 
 body ! 
 
 Captain Paxton knew everything and everybody. With 
 a quick glance from his keen dark eyes he exclaimed 
 
 " I ve got it ! Do you see that fat man laughing so 
 heartily in the pit ? He has a splendid house ; it would 
 
 just suit you ; and he s a d d old rebel. I know enough 
 
 about him to hang him three times over. He has" (here 
 followed a series of political iniquities). " Voila votre affaire" 
 
 " And how is it that he has kept his house ? " asked the 
 General. 
 
294: MEMOIRS. 
 
 " He sent the quartermaster a barrel of whisky, or some 
 thing of that sort." 
 
 The General looked thoughtfully at the fat man as the 
 latter burst into a fresh peal of laughter. I thought that if 
 he had known what was being said in our box that laugh 
 would have died away. 
 
 I do not know whether the General took the house. I 
 think he did. I left for Louisville. There I saw the great 
 merchant, who invited me to his home to supper and con 
 sulted with me. His daughters were rebels and would not 
 speak to me. He had a great deal of property in Indiana, 
 which might be oil-lands. If I would visit it and report on 
 it, he would send his partner with me to examine it. I con 
 sented to go. 
 
 This partner, Mr. W., was a young man of agreeable, easy 
 manners. With him I went to Indianapolis, and thence by 
 " stages," waggons, or on horseback through a very dismal 
 country in gloomy winter into the interior of the State. I 
 can remember vast marshy fields with millions of fiddler crabs 
 scuttling over them, and more mud than I had ever seen in 
 my life. The village streets were six inches deep in soft 
 mud up to the doors and floors of the houses. At last we 
 reached our journey s end at a large log-house on a good 
 farm. 
 
 I liked the good man of the house. He said to us, after a 
 time, that at first he thought we were a couple of stuck-up 
 city fellows, but had found to his joy that we were old-fash 
 ioned, sensible people. There was no sugar at his supper- 
 table, but he had three substitutes for it " tree-sweetnin , bee- 
 sweetnin , and sorghum " that is, maple sugar, honey, and 
 the molasses made from Chinese maize. Only at a mile s dis 
 tance there was a " sugar-camp," and we could see the fires 
 and hear the shouts of the people engaged night and day in 
 making sugar from the trees. 
 
 He told me that on the hills in sight a mysterious light 
 often wandered. During the Kevolutionary war some one 
 
LIFE DURING THE CIVIL WAR. 2<)5 
 
 had buried a barrelf ul of silver plate and money, and over it 
 flitted the quivering silver flame, but no one could ever find 
 the spot. 
 
 The next day I examined the land. There was abundance 
 of fossiliferous limestone, rich in petrifactions of tertiary 
 shells, also cartloads of beautiful geodes or round flint balls, 
 which often rattled, and which, when broken, were encrusted 
 with white or purple amethystine crystals. I decided that 
 there were places where oil might be found, though there 
 was certainly no indication of it. I believe that my conjec 
 ture subsequently proved to be true, and that Indiana has 
 shown herself to be a wise virgin not without oil. 
 
 On the afternoon of the next day, riding with my guide, 
 I found that I had left my blanket at a house miles behind. 
 I offered the man a large price to return and bring it, which 
 he did. While waiting by the wood, in a dismal drizzle, I 
 saw a log cabin and went to it for shelter. Its only inmate 
 was a young woman, who, seeing me coming, hastily locked 
 the door and rushed into the neighbouring woods. When the 
 guide returned I expressed some astonishment at the flight ; 
 he did not. With a very grave expression he asked me, " Don t 
 the gals in your part of the country allays break for the woods 
 when they see you a-coming ? " " Certainly not," I replied. 
 To which he made answer, " Thank God, our gals here hev 
 got better morrils than yourn." 
 
 We returned to St. Louis. There I was shown the im 
 mensely long tomb of Porter the Kentucky giant. This 
 man was nine feet in height ! I had seen him alive long 
 before in Philadelphia. I made several interesting acquaint 
 ances in St. Louis, the Athens of the West. But I must 
 hurry on. 
 
 I went to Cincinnati, where I found orders to wait for Mr. 
 Lea. A syndicate had been formed in Providence, Rhode 
 Island, which had purchased a great property in Cannelton, 
 West Virginia. This consisted of a mountain in which there 
 was an immense deposit of canncl coal. Cannelton was very 
 
296 MEMOIRS. 
 
 near the town of Charleston, which is at the junction of the 
 Kanawha (a tributary of the Ohio) and Elk rivers. 
 
 I waited a week at the hotel in Cincinnati for Mr. Lea. 
 It was a weary week, for I had no acquaintances and made 
 none. Never in my life before did I see so many Sardines, 
 or Philistines of the dullest stamp as at that hotel. But at 
 last Mr. Lea came with a party of ladies and gentlemen. A 
 small steamboat was secured, and we went up the Ohio. The 
 voyage was agreeable and not without some incidents. There 
 was a freshet in the river, and one night, taking a short cut 
 over a cornfield, the steamboat stuck fast like Eve in an 
 apple-tree. 
 
 One day one of the party asked me what was the greatest 
 aggregate deposit of coal known in England. I could not 
 answer. A few hours after we stopped at a town in Ken 
 tucky. There I discovered by chance some old Patent Office 
 reports, and among them all the statistics describing the coal 
 mines in England. When we returned to the boat I told my 
 informant that the largest deposit in England was just half 
 that of Cannelton, and added many details. Mr. Lea was 
 amazed at my knowledge. I told him that I deserved no 
 credit, for I had picked it up by chance. " Yes," he replied, 
 " and how was it that you chanced to read that book ? None 
 of us did. Such chances come to inquiring minds." 
 
 It also chanced that this whole country abounded in signs 
 of petroleum. It was found floating on springs. The com 
 pany possessed rights of royalty on thousands of acres on Elk 
 Eiver, which was as yet in the debatable land, harassed by 
 rebels. These claims, however, were " run out," and needed 
 to be renewed by signatures from the residents. They were 
 in the hands of David Goshorn, who kept the only "tavern" 
 or hotel in Charleston, and he asked $5,000 for his rights. 
 There was another party in the field after them. 
 
 I verily believe that David Goshorn sold the right to me 
 because he played the fiddle and I the guitar, and because he 
 did not like the rival, who was a Yankee, while I was a con- 
 
LIFE DURING THE CIVIL WAR. 297 
 
 genial companion. Many a journey had we together, and as 
 I appreciated him as a marked character of odd oppositions, 
 we got on admirably. 
 
 In Cannelton I went down into a coal mine and risked 
 my life strangely in ascending a railway. The hill is 1,500 
 feet in height, and on its face is a railway which ascends at 
 an angle of 15, perhaps the steepest in America. I ascended 
 in it, and soon observed that of the two strands of the iron 
 cable which drew it one was broken. The very next week 
 the other broke, and two men were killed by an awful death, 
 they and the car falling a thousand feet to the rocks below. 
 
 The next week we returned to Cincinnati, and thence to 
 Philadelphia. On my way from New York to Providence I 
 became acquainted in the train with a modest, gentlemanly 
 man, who told me he was a great-grandson or descendant of 
 Thomson who wrote the " Seasons." I thought him both 
 great and grand in an incident which soon occurred. A burly, 
 bull-necked fellow in the car was attacked with an epileptic 
 fit. He roared, kicked, screamed like a wildcat ; and among 
 fifty men in the vehicle, I venture to say that only Thomson 
 and I, in a lesser degree, showed any plain common sense. 
 I darted at the epileptic, grappled with him, held him down 
 by what might be called brutal kindness, for I held his head 
 down, while I sat on his arm and throttled him sans merci 
 I avow it and tore off in haste his neckcloth (his neck was 
 frightfully swelled), while Thomson brought cold water from 
 the " cooler," with which we bathed his face freely, and 
 chafed his pulse and forehead. Little by little he recovered. 
 The other passengers, as usual, did nothing, and a little old 
 naval officer, who had been fifty years in service (as Thom 
 son told me), simply kicked and screamed convulsively, 
 " Take him away! take him away!" The epileptic was 
 George Christy, the original founder of the Christy Minstrels. 
 I can never think of this scene without exclaiming, " Vive 
 Thomson ! " for he was the only man among us who dis 
 played quiet self-possession and savoir faire. As for me, my 
 
298 MEMOIRS. 
 
 " old Injun " was up, and I had " sailed in " for a fight by 
 mere impulse. Vive Thomson ! Bon sang ne peut mentir. 
 
 I went to Providence, where I was empowered to return 
 to Cannelton to pay Goshorn $5,000, and renew the leases 
 on Elk River. I should have to travel post to anticipate the 
 Yankee. It was not concealed from me that even if I suc 
 ceeded, I had before me a very dangerous and difficult task. 
 But after what I had already gone through with I was ready 
 for anything. I was really developing rapidly a wild, reck 
 less spirit the " Injun " was corning out of me. My old 
 life and self had vanished like dreams. Only now and then, 
 in the forests or by torrents, did something like poetry re 
 visit me ; literature was dead in me. Only once did I, in a 
 railway train, compose the "Maiden mit nodings on." I 
 bore it in my memory for years before I wrote it out. 
 
 I arrived in Philadelphia. The next morning I was to 
 rise early and fly westward. No time to lose. Before I rose, 
 my sister knocked at the door and told us the awful news 
 that President Lincoln had been murdered ! 
 
 As I went to the station I saw men weeping in the streets, 
 and everybody in great grief, conversing with strangers, as if 
 all had lost a common relation. Everywhere utter misery ! 
 I arrived in Pittsburg. It was raining, and the black pall of 
 smoke which always clothes the town was denser than ever, 
 and the long black streamers which hung everywhere as 
 mourning made the whole place unutterably ghastly. In 
 the trains nothing but the murder was spoken of. There 
 was a young man who had been in the theatre and witnessed 
 the murder, which he described graphically and evidently 
 truthfully. 
 
 I reached Cincinnati, and as soon as possible hurried on 
 board the steamboat. We went along to Charleston, and it 
 will hardly be believed that I very nearly missed the whole 
 object of my journey by falling asleep. We had but one 
 more very short distance to go, when, overcome by fatigue, I 
 dropped into a nap. Fortunately I was awakened by the last 
 
LIFE DURING THE CIVIL WAR. 299 
 
 ringing of the bell, and, seizing my carpet-bag, ran ashore 
 just as the plank was to be withdrawn. 
 
 I went directly to Goshorn s hotel. He was a stout, burly 
 man, shrewd in his way, good-natured, but not without tem 
 per and impulses. He looked keenly after business, played 
 the fiddle, and performed a few tricks of legerdemain. He 
 had a ladylike wife, and both were very kind to me, epecially 
 after they came to know me pretty well. The lady had a 
 nice, easy horse, which ere long was lent me freely whenever 
 I wanted to ride. One day it was missing. The master 
 grieved. They had named it after me in compliment. 
 " Goshorn," I said, " in future I shall call you Horse-gone" 
 But he was not pleased with the name. However, it was re 
 covered by a miracle, for the amount of horse-stealing which 
 went on about us then was fabulous. 
 
 After a few days Goshorn and I prepared to go up Elk 
 River, to renew the leases of oil and coal lands. Now I must 
 premise that at all times the man who was engaged in " ile " 
 bore a charmed life, and was venerated by both Union men 
 and rebels. He could pass the lines and go anywhere. At 
 one time, when not a spy could be got into or out of Rich 
 mond to serve us, Goshorn seriously proposed to me to go 
 with him into the city ! I had a neighbour named Fassit, an 
 uncle of Theodore. He had oil-wells in Virginia, and when 
 the war begun work on them was stopped. This dismayed 
 the natives. One morning there came to Mr. Fassit a letter 
 imploring him to return : " Come back, o come agin and 
 bore us some more wels. We wil protec you like a son. 
 We dont make war on 7/e." And I, being thus respected, 
 went and came from the Foeman s Land, and joined in the 
 dreadful rebel-ry and returned unharmed, leading a charmed 
 if not particularly charming life all winter and the spring, 
 to the great amazement and bewilderment of many, as will 
 appear in the sequence. 
 
 The upper part of Elk River was in the debatable land, 
 or rather still in Slave-ownia or rebeldom, where a Union 
 
300 MEMOIRS. 
 
 man s life was worth about a chinquapin. In fact, one day 
 there was a small battle between me and home with divers 
 wounds and deaths. This going and corning of mine, among 
 and with rebels, got me into a droll misunderstanding some 
 time after. But I think that the real cause lay less in oil 
 than in the simple truth that these frank, half-wild fellows 
 liked me. One said to me one day, " You re onlike all 
 the Northern men who come here, and we all like you. 
 What s the reason?" I explained it that he had only met 
 with Yankees, and that as Pennsylvania lay next to Virginia, 
 of course we must be more alike as neighbours. But the 
 cause lay in the liking which I have for Indians, gypsies, and 
 all such folk. 
 
 Goshorn began by buying a dug-out poplar canoe sixty- 
 four feet in length, and stocking it with provisions. " Money 
 won t be of much use," he said ; " what we want chiefly is 
 whisky and blue beads for presents." He hired two men 
 who had been in the Confederate army, but who had ab 
 sented themselves since the proceedings had become uninter 
 esting. These men took to me with a devotion which ended 
 by becoming literally superstitious. I am quite sure that, 
 while naturally intelligent, anything like a mind stored with 
 varied knowledge was something utterly unknown to them. 
 And as I, day by day, let fall unthinkingly this or that scrap 
 of experience or of knowledge, they began to regard me as a 
 miracle. One day one of them, Sam Fox, said to me mean 
 ingly, that I liked curious things, and that he knew a nest 
 where he could get me a young raven. The raven is to an 
 Indian conjuror what a black cat is to a witch, and I suppose 
 that Sam thought I must be lonely without a familiar. 
 Which recalls one of the most extraordinary experiences of 
 all my life. 
 
 During my return down the river, it was in a freshet, and 
 we went headlong. This is to the very last degree dangerous, 
 unless the boatmen know every rock and point, for the dug 
 out canoe goes over at a touch, and there is no life to be 
 
LIFE DURING THE CIVIL WAR. 301 
 
 saved in the rapids. Now we were flying like a swallow, and 
 could not stop. There was one narrow shoot, or pass, just in 
 the middle of the river, where there was exactly room to an 
 inch for a canoe to pass, but to do this it was necessary to 
 have moonlight enough to see the King Rock, which rose in 
 the stream close by the passage, and at the critical instant to 
 " fend off " with the hand and prevent the canoe from driv 
 ing full on the rock. A terrible storm was coming up, 
 thunder was growling afar, and clouds fast gathering in 
 the sky. 
 
 The men had heard me talking the day before as to how 
 storms were formed in circles, and it had deeply impressed 
 them. When Goshorn asked them what we had better do, 
 they said, " Leave it all to Mr. Leland ; he knows every 
 thing." I looked at the moon and saw that the clouds were 
 not driving dead against it, but around while closing in, and 
 I know not by what strange inspiration I added, " You will 
 have just time to clear King Rock ! " 
 
 It was still far away. I laid down my paddle and drew 
 my blanket round me, and smoked to the storm, and sang 
 incantations to myself. It was a fearful trial, actually risk 
 ing death, but I felt no fear only a dull confidence in fate. 
 Closer grew the clouds darker the sky when during the 
 very last second of light King Rock came in sight. Goshorn 
 was ready with his bull-like strength and gave the push ; 
 and just as we shot clear into the channel it became dark as 
 pitch, and the rain came down in a torrent. Goshorn pitched 
 his hat high into the air aux moulins arid hurrahed and 
 cried in exulting joy. 
 
 " Now, Mr. Leland, sing us that German song you re 
 always so jolly with lodlc yodle tol de rol de roll " 
 
 From that hour I was Kcliee-Bo-o-in or Grand Pow-wow 
 to Sam Fox and his friends. He believed in me, even as I 
 believe in myself when such mad " spells " come over me. 
 One day he proved his confidence. It was bright and sun 
 shiny, and we were paddling along when we saw a " summer 
 14 
 
302 MEMOIRS. 
 
 duck " swimming perhaps fifty yards ahead. Sam was sitting 
 in the bow exactly between me and the duck. " Fire at it 
 with your revolver ! " cried Sam. 
 
 " It is too far away," I replied, " and you are right in the 
 way." 
 
 Sam bent over sideways, glaring at me with his one 
 strange eye. It was just about as close a shot as was William 
 TelPs at the apple. But I knew that reputation for nerve 
 depended on it, so I fired. As the duck rose it dropped a 
 feather. 
 
 " I knew you d hit ! " cried Sam triumphantly. And so 
 I had, but I should not like to try that shot again. 
 
 Reflex action of the brain and secondary automatism ! It 
 must be so Haeckel, thou reasonest well. But when the 
 "old Injun" and my High-Dutch ancestor are upon me, I 
 reason not at all, and then I see visions and dream dreams, 
 and it always comes true, without the least self-deception or 
 delusion. 
 
 It is a marvellous thing that in these canoes, which tip over 
 so easily, men will pass over mill-dams ten or twelve feet high, 
 as I myself have done many a time, without upsetting. The 
 manner of it is this. The canoe is a log hollowed out. This 
 is allowed to pass over till it dips like a seesaw, or falls into 
 the stream below. It is a dangerous, reckless act, but gen 
 erally succeeds. One day Sam Fox undertook to shoot our 
 dug-out over a fall. So he paddled hard, and ran the canoe 
 headlong to edge, he being in the bow. But it stuck half 
 way, and there was my Samuel, ere he knew it, high in the 
 air, paddling in the atmosphere, into which thirty feet of 
 canoe was raised. 
 
 Meanwhile, the legal business and renewal of the leases 
 and the payment of money was performed accurately and 
 punctually. Talk about manna in the wilderness ! money in 
 the wilderness came to the poor souls impoverished by the 
 war as a thousandfold nicer. But over and above that, half 
 a pound of coffee or a drink of whisky would cause a thrill 
 
LIFE DURING THE CIVIL WAR. 303 
 
 of delight. One day, stopping at a logger s camp, I gave a 
 decent-looking man a tin cup full of whisky. The first thing 
 he did was to put it to the mouth of a toddling two-year-old 
 child, and it took a good pull. I remonstrated with him for 
 it, when he replied, " Well, you see, sir, we get it so seldom, 
 that whisky is a kind o delicacy with us." 
 
 Sometimes the log huts were twenty miles apart. In 
 such isolation there is no rivalry of ostentation, and men care 
 only to live. One day we came to a log house. The occu 
 pant had several hundred acres of very good land, and only 
 a half acre under cultivation. He was absent at a county 
 court for amusement. All that I could see in the cabin was 
 a rude seat, an iron pot and spoon, and a squirrel-gun. 
 There were two cavities or holes in the bare earth floor, in 
 which the old man and his wife slept, each wrapped in a 
 blanket. Even our boatman said that such carelessness was 
 unusual. But all were ignorant of a thousand refinements 
 of life of which the poorest English peasant knows some 
 thing, yet every one of these people had an independence or 
 pride far above all poverty. 
 
 One night we stopped at the house of a man who was 
 said to possess $150,000 (30,000) worth of land. The 
 house was well enough. His two bare-legged daughters, 
 girls of seventeen or eighteen, lounged about smoking pipes. 
 I gave one a cigar. She replied, " I don t keer if I do try it. 
 I ve allays wanted to know what a cigar smokes like." But 
 she didn t like it. Apropos of girls, I may say that there is 
 a far higher standard of morals among these people than 
 among the ignorant elsewhere. 
 
 It was indeed a wild country. One day Goshorn showed 
 me a hill, and a hunter had told him that when standing on 
 it one summer afternoon he had seen in a marshy place the 
 very unusual spectacle of forty bears, all wallowing together 
 in the mud and playing at once. Also the marks of a bear s 
 claws on a tree. Game was plenty in this region. All the 
 time that I stayed with Goshorn we had every day at his 
 
304: 
 
 MEMOIRS. 
 
 well-furnished table bear s meat, veuison, or other game, fish, 
 ham, chickens, &c. 
 
 There was a great deal of very beautiful scenery on Elk 
 River, and some of its " incidents " were marvellously strange. 
 The hard sandstone rocks had worn into shapes resembling 
 castles and houses, incredibly like buildings made by man. 
 One day I saw and copied a vast square rock through which 
 ran to the light a perfect Gothic archway sixty feet high, 
 with a long wall like the side of a castle, and an immense 
 square tower. There are the most natural-looking houses 
 and Schlosser imaginable rising all alone in the forest. Very 
 often the summits of the hills were crowned with round tow 
 ers. On the Ohio Kiver there is a group of these shaped like 
 segments of a truncated cone, and " corniced " with another 
 piece reversed, like this : 
 
 These are called " Devil s Tea-tables." I drew them sev 
 eral times, but could never give them the appearance of be 
 ing natural objects. It is very extraordinary how Nature 
 seems to have mocked man in advance in these structures. 
 In Fingal s Cave there is an absolutely original style of archi 
 tecture. 
 
 The last house which we came to was the best. In it 
 dwelt a gentlemanly elderly man with two ladylike daugh 
 ters. His son, who was dressed in " store clothes," had been 
 a delegate to the Wheeling Convention. But the war had 
 
LIFE DURING THE CIVIL WAR. 305 
 
 borne hard on them, and for a long time everything which 
 they used or wore had been made by their own hands. They 
 had a home-made loom and spinning-wheel I saw several 
 such looms on the river ; they raised their own cotton and 
 wool and maple sugar, and were in all important details 
 utterly self-sustaining and independent. And they did not 
 live rudely at all, but like ladies and gentlemen, as really in 
 telligent people always can when they are free. The father 
 had, not long before, standing in his own door, shot a deer 
 as it looked over the garden gate at him. Goshoru, observ 
 ing that I attached some value to the horns (a new idea to 
 him), secured them for himself. 
 
 A day or two after, while descending the river, we stopped 
 to see an old hunter who lived on the bank. He was a very 
 shrewd, quaint old boy, " good for a novel." He examined 
 Goshorn s spectacles with so much interest, that I suspect it 
 was really the first time in his life that he ever fully ascer 
 tained the " true inwardness and utilitarianism " of such ob 
 jects. He expressed great admiration, and said that if he 
 had them he could get twice as many deer as he did. I 
 promised to send him a pair. I begged from him deer-horns, 
 which he gave me very willingly, expressing wonder that I 
 wanted such rubbish, and at my delight. And seeing that 
 my companion had a pair, he said scornfully : 
 
 "Dave Goshorn, what do you know about such things? 
 What s set you to gittin deer s horns? Give em to this here 
 young gentleman, who understands such things that we don t, 
 and who wants em fur some good reason/ 
 
 I will do Goshorn the justice to say that he gave them to 
 me for a parting present. My room at his house was quite 
 devoid of all decoration, but by arranging on the walls crossed 
 canoe-paddles, great bunches of the picturesque locust-thorn, 
 often nearly a foot in length, and the deer s horns, I made it 
 look rather more human. But this arrangement utterly be 
 wildered the natives, especially the maids, who naively asked 
 me why I hung them old bones and thorns up in my room. 
 
306 MEMOIRS. 
 
 As this thorn is much used by the blacks in Voodoo, I sup 
 pose that it was all explained by being set down to my " con- 
 jurin . y 
 
 The maid who attended to my room was a very nice, good 
 girl, but one who could not have been understood in Eng 
 land. I found that she gathered up and treasured many 
 utterly worthless trifling bits of pen-drawing which I threw 
 away. She explained that where she came from on Coal River, 
 anything like a picture was a great curiosity ; also that her 
 friends believed that all the pictures in books, newspapers, &c., 
 were drawn by hand. I explained to her how they were made. 
 When I left I offered her two dollars. She hesitated, and 
 then said, " Mr. Leland, there have been many, many gentle 
 men here who have offered me money, but I never took a 
 cent from any man till now. And I will take this from you 
 to buy something that I can remember you by, for you have 
 always treated me kindly and like a lady." In rural America 
 such girls are really lady-helps, and not " servants," albeit 
 those who know how to get on with them find them the very 
 best servants in the world; but they must be treated as 
 friends. 
 
 I went up Elk River several times on horse or in canoe 
 to renew leases or to lease new land, &c. The company sent 
 on a very clever and intelligent rather young man named 
 Sandford, who had been a railroad superintendent, to help 
 me. I liked him very much. We had a third, a young Vir 
 ginian, named Finnal. At or near Cannelton I selected a 
 spot where we put up a steam-engine, and began to bore for 
 oil. It was very near the famous gas-well which once be 
 longed to General Washington. This well gave forth every 
 week the equivalent of one hundred and fifty tons of coal. 
 It was utilised in a factory. After I sunk our shaft it gave 
 out ; but I do not believe that we stopped it, for no gas came 
 into our well. Finnal was the superintendent of the well. 
 One day he nearly sat down nudo podice on an immense 
 rattlesnake. He had a little cottage and a fine horse. He 
 
LIFE DURING THE CIVIL WAR. 307 
 
 kept the latter in a stable and painted the door white, so that 
 when waking in the night he could see if any horse-thief had 
 opened it. Many efforts were made to rob him of it. 
 
 At this time Lee s army was disbanded, and fully one-half 
 came straggling in squads up the valley to Charleston to be 
 paroled. David Goshorn s hotel was simply crammed with 
 Confederate officers, who slept anywhere. With these I 
 easily became friends ; they seemed like Princeton Southern 
 college mates. Now I have to narrate a strange story. One 
 evening when I was sitting and smoking on the portico with 
 some of these bons compagnons I said to one 
 
 "People say that your men never once during the war 
 got within sight of Harrisburg or of a Northern city. But I 
 believe they did. One day when I was on guard I saw five 
 men scout on the bank in full sight of it. But nobody 
 agreed with me." 
 
 The officer laughed silently, and cried aloud to a friend 
 with a broken arm in a sling, who lay within a room on a 
 
 bed, " Come out here, L . Here is something which will 
 
 interest you more than anything you ever heard before." 
 
 He came out, and, having heard my story, said 
 
 " Nobody ever believed your story, nor did anybody ever 
 believe mine. Mine is this that when we were at Sporting 
 Hill a corporal of mine came in and declared that he and his 
 men had scouted into within full sight of Harrisburg. I 
 knew that the man told the truth, but nobody else would be 
 lieve that any human being dared to do such a thing, or 
 could do it. And now you fully prove that it was done." 
 
 There came to Goshorn s three very interesting men with 
 whom I became intimate. One was Eobert Hunt, of St. 
 Louis. He was of a very good Virginia family, had been at 
 Princeton College, ran away in his sixteenth year, took to 
 the plains as a hunter, and for twenty-three years had ranged 
 the Wild West from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific. 
 At the end of the time an uncle in the Fur Company had 
 helped him on, and he was now rich. He was one of the 
 
308 MEMOIRS. 
 
 most genial, gay, and festive, reckless yet always gentlemanly 
 men I ever knew. He expressed great astonishment, as he 
 learned gradually to know me, at finding we were so con 
 genial, and that I had so much " real Injun " in me. His 
 eyes were first opened to this great fact by a very singular 
 incident, of which I can never think without pleasure. 
 
 Hunt, with two men who had been cavalry captains all 
 through the war, and his friend Ross, who had long been an 
 Indian trader, and I, were all riding up Elk Valley to look at 
 lands. We paused at a place where the road sloped sideways 
 and was wet with rain. As I was going to remount, I asked 
 a German who stood by to hold my horse s head, and sprang 
 into the saddle. Just at this critical instant it all passed in 
 a second as the German had not heard me, my horse, feel 
 ing that he must fall over on his left side from my weight, 
 threw himself completely over backward. As quick as 
 thought I jumped up on his back, put my foot just between 
 the saddle and his tail, and took a tremendous flying leap so 
 far that I cleared the horse. I only muddied the palms of 
 my gloves, on which I fell. 
 
 The elder cavalry captain said, " When I saw that horse 
 go over backwards, I closed my eyes and held my breath, for 
 I expected the next second to see you killed." But Robert 
 Hunt exclaimed, " Good as an Injun, by God ! " And when 
 I some time after made fun of it, he shook his head gravely 
 and reprovingly, as George Ward did over the gunpowder, 
 and said, " It was a magnificent thing ! " 
 
 That very afternoon Hunt distinguished himself in a 
 manner which was quite as becoming an aborigine. I was 
 acting as guide, and knowing that there was a ford across a 
 tributary of the Elk, sought and thought I had found it. 
 But I was mistaken, and what was horrible, we found our 
 selves in a deep quicksand. On such occasions horses be 
 come, as it were, insane, trying to throw the riders and then 
 jump on them for support. By good luck we got out of it 
 soon, but there was an awful five minutes of kicking, plung- 
 
LIFE DURING THE CIVIL WAR. 309 
 
 ing, splashing, and "ground and lofty" swearing. I got 
 across dry by drawing my legs up before me on the saddle, 
 a la tailor, but the others were badly wet. But no sooner 
 had we emerged from the stream than Eobert Hunt, bursting 
 into a tremendous "Ho ! ho ! " of deep laughter, declared that 
 he had shown more presence of mind during the emergency 
 than any of us ; for, brandishing his whisky flask, he de 
 clared that while his horse was in the flurry it occurred to 
 him that the best thing he could do was to lighten the load, 
 and he had therefore, with incredible presence of mind, 
 drunk up all the whisky ! 
 
 However, he afterwards confessed to me that the true 
 reason was that, believing death was at hand, and thinking it 
 a pity to die thirsty, he had drained the bottle, as did the old 
 Indian woman just as she went over the Falls of Niagara. 
 Anyhow, the incorrigible vaurien had really emptied his flask 
 while in the " quick." 
 
 Though I say it, I believe that Hunt and I were a pretty 
 well matched couple, and many a wild prank and Indian-like 
 joke did we play together. More than once he expressed 
 great astonishment that I, a man grown up in cities and to 
 literary pursuits, should be so much at home where he found 
 me, or so congenial. He had been at Princeton, and, ex pede 
 Herculem, had a point whence to judge me, but it failed.* 
 His friend Boss was a quiet, sensible New Englander, who 
 reminded me of Artemus Ward, or Charles Browne. He 
 abounded in quaint anecdotes of Indian experiences. 
 
 As did also a Mr. Wadsworth, who had passed half his 
 life in the Far West as a surveyor among the Chippeways. 
 He had written a large manuscript of their legends, of which 
 Schoolcraft made great use in his Algic book. I believe that 
 much of Longfellow s Hiawatha owed its origin thus indi- 
 
 * The reader may find some interesting references to Robert Hunt 
 in the Introduction by me to the Life of James Beckwonrth, the famous 
 chief of the Crow Indians. London : T. Fisher Unwin, 1893. 
 
310 MEMOIRS. 
 
 rectly to Mr. Wadsworth. In after years I wrote out many 
 of his tales, as told to me, in articles in Temple Bar. 
 
 The country all about Charleston was primitively wild 
 and picturesque, rocky, hilly, and leading to solitary life and 
 dreams of sylvani and forest fairies. There were fountained 
 hills, and dreamy darkling woods, and old Indian graves, and 
 a dancing stream, across which lay a petrified tree, and every 
 where a little travelled land. I explored it with Goshorn, 
 riding far and wide into remote mountain recesses, to get the 
 signatures in attestation of men who could rarely write, but 
 on the other hand could " shoot their mark " with a rifle 
 to perfection, and who would assuredly have placed such 
 signature on me had I not been a holy messenger of lie, and 
 an angel of coming moneyed times. 
 
 One day we stopped at a farm-house in a wild, lonely place. 
 There was only an old woman there one of the stern, resolute, 
 hard-muscled frontier women, the daughters of mothers who 
 had fought " Injuns " and a calf. And thereby hung a tale, 
 which the three men with me fully authenticated. 
 
 The whole country thereabouts had been for four years so 
 worried, harried, raided, raked, plundered, and foraged by 
 Federals and Confederates one day the former, the next the 
 latter ; blue and grey, or sky and sea that the old lady had 
 nothing left to live on. Hens, cows, horses, corn, all had 
 gone save one calf, the Benjamin and idol of her heart. 
 
 One night she heard a piteous baaing, and, seizing a 
 broom, rushed to the now henless hen-honse, in which she 
 kept the calf, to find in it a full-grown panther attacking her 
 pet. By this time the old lady had grown desperate, and 
 seizing the broom, she proceeded to " lam " the wild beast 
 with the handle, and with all her heart ; and the fiend of 
 ferocity, appalled at her attack, fled. I saw the calf with the 
 marks of the panther s claws, not yet quite healed ; I saw the 
 broom ; and, lastly, I saw the old woman, the mother in 
 Ishmael ; whose face was a perfect guarantee of the truth of 
 the story. One of us suggested that the old lady should have 
 
LIFE DURING THE CIVIL WAR. 
 
 the calf s hide tanned and wear it as a trophy, like an Indian, 
 which would have been a strange reversal of Shakespeare s 
 application of it, or to 
 
 " Hang a calf-skin on those recreant limbs." 
 
 Then there came the great spring freshet in Elk River, 
 which rose unusually high, fifty feet above its summer level. 
 It had come to within an inch or two of my floor, and yet I 
 went to bed and to sleep. By a miracle it rose no more, for 
 I had a distinct conviction it would not, which greatly 
 amazed everybody. But many were drowned all about us. 
 The next day a man who professed bone-setting and doctor 
 ing, albeit not diplomaed, asked me to go with him and act 
 as interpreter to a German patient who had a broken thigh. 
 While felling a tree far away in the forest, it thundered down 
 on him, and kept him down for two or three days till he was 
 discovered. To get to him we went in a small canoe, and 
 paddled ourselves with shingles or wooden tiles, used to cover 
 roofs. On the way I saw a man on a roof fiddling ; only a bit 
 of the roof was above water. He was waiting for deliver 
 ance. Many and strange indeed were all the scenes and inci 
 dents of that inundation, and marvellous the legends which 
 were told of other freshets in the days of yore. 
 
 I never could learn to play cards. Destiny forbade it, 
 and always stepped in promptly to stop all such proceedings. 
 One night Sandford and friends sat down to teach me poker, 
 when bang, bang, went a revolver outside, and a bullet buried 
 itself in the door close by me. A riotous, evil-minded darkey, 
 who attended to my washing, had got into a fight, and was 
 forthwith conveyed to the Bull-pen, or military prison. I 
 was afraid lest I might lose my shirts, and so " visited him " 
 next day and found him in irons, but reading a newspaper at 
 his ease. From him I learned the address of " the coloured 
 lady " who had my underclothing. 
 
 The Bull-pen was a picturesque place a large log en 
 closure, full of strange inmates, such as wild guerillas in 
 
312 MEMOIRS. 
 
 moccasins, grey-back Confederates and blue-coat Federals 
 guilty of many a murder, arson, and much horse-stealing, 
 desolate deserters, often deserving pity the debris of a four 
 years war, the crumbs of the great loaf fallen to the dirt. 
 
 Warm weather came on, and I sent to Philadelphia for a 
 summer suit of clothes. It came, and it was of a light grey 
 colour. At that time Oxford " dittos," or a suit pareil par- 
 tout, were unknown in West Virginia. I was dressed from 
 head to foot in Confederate grey. Such a daring defiance of 
 public opinion, coupled with my mysterious stealing into the 
 rebel country, made me an object of awe and suspicion a 
 kind of Sir Grey Steal ! 
 
 There was at that time in Charleston a German artillery 
 regiment which really held the town that is to say, the 
 height which commanded it. I had become acquainted with 
 its officers. All at once they gave me the cold shoulder and 
 cut me. My friend Sandford was very intimate with them. 
 One evening he asked their Colonel why they scorned me. 
 The Colonel replied 
 
 " Pecause he s a tamned repel. Aferypody knows it." 
 
 Sandford at once explained that I was even known at 
 Washington as a good Union man, and had, moreover, trans 
 lated Heine, adding other details. 
 
 " Gott verdammich lieiss ! " cried the Colonel in amaze 
 ment. " Is dot der Karl Leland vot dranslate de Reiselilder ? 
 Herr je ! I hafe got dat very pook here on mein table ! 
 Look at it. Bei Gott! here s his name! Dot is der crate 
 Leland vot edit de Continental Magazine! Dot moost pe a 
 fery deep man. Und I dink lie vas a repel ! " 
 
 The next morning early the Colonel sent his ambulance 
 or army waggon to my hotel with a request that I would come 
 and take breakfast with him. It was a bit of Heidelberg life 
 over again. We punished Rheinwein and lager-beer in quan 
 tities. There were old German students among the officers, 
 and I was received like a brother. 
 
 At last Sandford and I determined to return to the East. 
 
LIFE DURING THE CIVIL WAR. 313 
 
 There was in the hotel a coloured waiter named Harrison. 
 He had been a slave, but " a gentleman s gentleman," was 
 rather dignified, and allowed no ordinary white man to joke 
 with him. On the evening before my departure I said to 
 him 
 
 " Well, Harrison, I hope that you haven t quite so bad an 
 opinion of me as the other people here seem to have." 
 
 He manifested at once a really violent emotion. Dashing 
 something to the ground, he cried 
 
 " Mr. Leland, you never did anything contrary to a gen 
 tleman. I always maintained it. Now please tell me the 
 truth. Is it true that you re a great friend of Jeff Davis ? " 
 
 " Damn Jeff Davis ! " I replied. 
 
 " And you ain t a major in the Confederate service ? " 
 
 " I m a clear-down Abolitionist, and was born one." 
 
 " And you ain t had no goings on with the rebels up the 
 river to bring back the Confederacy here ? " 
 
 " Devil a dealing." 
 
 And therewith I explained how it was that I went un 
 harmed up into the rebels country, and great was the joy of 
 Harrison, who, as I found, had taken my part valiantly against 
 those who suspected me. 
 
 There was a droll comedy the next day on board the 
 steamboat on which I departed. A certain Mr. H., who had 
 been a rebel and recanted at the eleventh hour and become 
 a Federal official, requested everybody on board not to notice 
 me. Sandford learned it all, and chuckled over it. But the 
 captain and mate and crew were all still rebels at heart. 
 Great was my amazement at being privately informed by the 
 steward that the captain requested as a favour that I would 
 sit by him at dinner and share a bottle of wine. I did so, 
 and while I remained on board was treated as an honoured 
 guest. 
 
 And now I would here distinctly declare that, apart from 
 my political principles, from which I never swerved, I always 
 found the rebels that is, Southern and Western men with 
 
314 MEMOIRS. 
 
 whom I had had intimate dealings without one exception 
 personally the most congenial and agreeable people whom I 
 had ever met. There was not to be found among them what 
 in England is known as a prig. They were natural and gen 
 tlemanly, even down to the poorest and most uneducated. 
 
 One day Sam Fox came to me and asked me to use my 
 influence with the Cannelton Company to get him employ 
 ment at their works. 
 
 " Sam," I replied, " I can t do it. It is only three weeks 
 now, when you were employed at another place, that you tried 
 to stuff the. overseer into the furnace, and if the men had not 
 prevented, you would have burned him up alive." 
 
 " Yes," replied Sam, " but he had called me a son 
 
 of- 
 
 " Very good," I answered ; " and if he had called me that, 
 I should have done the same. But I don t think, if I had 
 done it, I should ever have expected to be employed again on 
 another furnace. You see, Samuel, my son, that these North 
 ern men have very queer notions very" 
 
 Sam was quite convinced. 
 
 At Cincinnati a trifling but droll incident occurred. I 
 do not set myself up for a judge of wines, but I have natu 
 rally a delicate sense of smell or flair, though not the extraor 
 dinary degree in which my brother possessed it, who never 
 drank wine at all. He was the first person who ever, in 
 printed articles or in lectures, insisted that South New Jersey 
 was suitable for wine-growing. At the hotel Sandford asked 
 me if I could tell any wine by the taste. I replied No, but I 
 would try ; so they gave me a glass of some kind, and I said 
 that honestly I could only declare that I should say it was 
 Portugal common country wine, but I must be wrong. Then 
 Sandford showed the bottle, and the label declared it to be 
 grown in Ohio. The next day he came to me and said, " I 
 believe that after all you know a great deal about wine. I 
 told the landlord what you said, and he laughed, and said, I 
 had not the American wine which you called for, and so I 
 
LIFE DURING THE CIVIL WAR. 315 
 
 gave you a cheap but unusual Portuguese wine. This wine 
 is neither white nor red, and tastes like sherry and Burgundy 
 mixed. 
 
 At Cincinnati, Sandford proposed that we should return 
 by way of Detroit and Niagara. I objected to the expense, 
 but he, who knew every route and rate by heart, explained to 
 me that, owing to the competition in railway rates, it would 
 only cost me six shillings ($1.50) move, plus $2.50 (ten shil 
 lings) from New York to Philadelphia. So we departed. In 
 Detroit I called on my cousin, Benjamin Stimson (the S. of 
 " Two Years before the Mast"), and found him a prominent 
 citizen. So, skirting along southern Canada, we got to Niag 
 ara, and thence to Albany and down the Hudson to New 
 York, and so on to Philadelphia. 
 
 It seems to me now that at this time all trace of rny 
 former life and self had vanished. I seemed to be only 
 prompt to the saddle, canoe-paddle, revolver, steamboat, and 
 railroad. My wife said that after this and other periods of 
 Western travel I was always for three weeks as wild as an 
 Indian, and so I most truly and unaffectedly was. I did not 
 act in a foolish or disorder^ manner at all, but Tennessee 
 and Elk River were in me. Robert Hunt and Sam Fox and 
 many more had expressed their amazement at the amount 
 of extremely familiar and congenial nature which they had 
 found in me, and they were quite right. Sam and Goshorn 
 declared that I was the only Northern man whom they had 
 ever known who ever learned to paddle a dug-out correctly ; 
 but as I was obliged to do this sometimes for fifteen hours 
 a day nolens volens, it is not remarkable that I became an 
 expert. 
 
 As regards the real unaffected feeling of wildness born to 
 savage nature, life, and association, it is absolutely as differ 
 ent from all civilised feeling whatever as bird from fish ; and 
 it very rarely happens that an educated man ever knows what 
 it is. "What there is of it in me which Indians recognise is, 
 I believe, entirely due to hereditary endowment. 
 
316 MEMOIRS. 
 
 " Zura Wald, zum Wald, steht mir mein Sinn. 
 
 So einzig, ach ! so einzig bin. 
 Dort lebt man freundlich, lebt man froh, 
 Und nirgends, nirgends lebt man so." 
 
 It does not come from reading or culture it comes of 
 itself by nature, or not at all ; nor has it over- much to do 
 with thought. Only in something like superstition can it 
 find expression, but that must be childlike and sweet and 
 sincere, and without the giggling with which such subjects 
 are invariably received by ladies in society. 
 
 I went with my wife and her mother and sister to pass 
 some time at Bethlehem, in Pennsylvania, which we did very 
 pleasantly at a country inn. It is a very interesting town, 
 where a peculiar German dialect is generally spoken. There 
 was a very respectable wealthy middle-aged lady, a Pennsyl- 
 vanian by birth, who avoided meeting us at table because she 
 could not speak English. And when I was introduced to 
 her, I made matters worse by speaking to her naturally in 
 broad South German, whereupon she informed me that she 
 spoke Hoch-Deutsch I But I made myself popular among the 
 natives with my German, and our landlord was immensely 
 proud of me. I wasn t " one of dem city fellers dat shames 
 demselfs of de Dutch," not I. " Vy, I dells you vot, mein 
 Gott! he s proud of it!" 
 
 I ended the summer at beautiful Lenox, in Massachusetts, 
 in the charming country immortalised in " Elsie Venner " ; 
 of which work, and my letter on it to Dr. Holmes, and my 
 conversation with him thereanent, I might fill a chapter. 
 But " let us not talk about them but pass on." I returned 
 to Philadelphia and to my father s house, where I remained 
 one year. 
 
 I had for a long time, at intervals, been at work on a book 
 to be entitled the " Origin of American Popular Phrases." 
 I had scissored from newspapers, collected from negro min 
 strels and Western rustics, and innumerable New England 
 friends, as well as books and old songs and comic almanacs 
 
LIFE DURING THE CIVIL WAR. 317 
 
 and the like, a vast amount of valuable material. This work, 
 which had cost me altogether a full year s labour, had been 
 accepted by a New York publisher, and was in the printer s 
 hands. I never awaited anything with such painful anxiety 
 as I did this publication, for I had never been in such straits 
 nor needed money so much, and it seemed as if the more 
 earnestly I sought for employment the more it evaded me. 
 And then almost as soon as my manuscript was in the 
 printer s hands his office was burned, and the work perished, 
 for I had not kept a copy. 
 
 It was a great loss, but from the instant when I heard of 
 it to this day I never had five minutes trouble over it, and 
 more probably not one. I had done my very best to make a 
 good book and some money, and could do no more. When I 
 w r as a very small boy I was deeply impressed with the story in 
 the "Arabian Nights " of the prisoner who knew that he was 
 going to be set free because a rat had run away with his 
 dinner. So I, at the age of seven, announced to my father 
 that I believed that whenever a man had bad luck, good was 
 sure to follow, which opinion he did not accept. And to this 
 day I hold it, because, reckoning up the chances of life, it is 
 true for most people. At any rate, I derived some comfort 
 from the fact that the accident was reported in all the news 
 papers all over the Union. 
 
 About the 1st of July, 1866, we left my father s house to 
 go to Cape May, where we remained for two months. In 
 September we went to a very good boarding-house in Phila 
 delphia, kept by Mrs. Sandgren. She possessed and showed 
 me Tegner s original manuscript of "Anna and Axel." I 
 confess that I never cared over-much for Tegner, and that I 
 infinitely prefer the original Icelandic Saga of Frithiof to his 
 sago-gruel imitation of strong soup. 
 
VI. 
 LIFE ON THE PRESS. 
 
 1866-1869. 
 
 I become managing editor of John W. Forney s Press Warwick the 
 King-maker The dead duck A trip to Kansas in the old buffalo 
 days Miss Susan Blow, of St. Louis The Iron Mountain of Mis 
 souri A strange dream Rattlesnakes Kaw Indians I am adopted 
 into the tribe Grand war-dance and ceremonies Open-air lodg 
 ings Prairie fires In a dangerous country Indian victims H. 
 M. Stanley Lieutenant Hesselberger I shoot a buffalo Wild rid 
 ing In a herd Indian white men Ringing for the carriage with 
 a rifle Brigham the driver General and Mrs. Ouster Three thou 
 sand miles in a railway car How Hans Breitmann s " ballads 
 came to be published The publisher thinks that he cannot sell 
 more than a thousand of the book I establish a weekly newspaper 
 Great success Election rioting Oratory and revolvers How 
 the meek and lowly Republicans revolvered the Democrats The 
 dead duck and what befell him who bore it I make two thousand 
 German votes by giving Forney a lesson in their language Freiheit 
 und GleichJieit The Winnebago Indian chief Horace Greeley 
 Maretzek the Bohemian Fanny Janauschek and the Czech lan 
 guage A narrow escape from death on the Switchback Death of 
 my father Another Western railway excursion A quaint old 
 darkey Chicago I threaten to raise the rent General influence 
 of Chicago St. Paul, Minnesota A seven days journey through 
 the wilderness The Canadian Smudges Indians A foot jour 
 ney through the woods Indian pack-bearers Mayor Stewart I 
 rifle a grave of silver ornaments Isle Royal e My brother, Henry 
 Perry Leland The press John Forney carries Grant s election. 
 and declares that I really did the work The weekly press and 
 George Francis Train Grant s appointments My sixth introduc 
 tion to the General Garibaldi s dagger. 
 
 had not lived at Mrs. Sandgren s more than a week 
 when George Boker, knowing my need, spoke to Colonel 
 
LIFE ON THE PRESS. 319 
 
 John Forney, who was at that time not only Secretary of the 
 Senate of the United States, but the proprietor of the Chron 
 icle newspaper in Washington, of the Press in Philadelphia, 
 "both daily," as the Colonel once said, which very simple 
 and commonplace expression became a popular by-word. 
 Colonel Forney wanted a managing editor for the Press, and, 
 as I found in due time, not so much a man of enterprise and 
 a leader that he supplied nor yet one to practically run 
 the journal that his son John, a young man of eighteen, sup 
 plied so much as a steady, trustworthy, honest pivot on which 
 the compass could turn during his absences and that / sup 
 plied. I must, to explain the situation, add gently that 
 John, who could not help it considering his experiences, 
 was, to put it mildly, a little irregular, rendering a steady 
 manager absolutely necessary. It was a great pity, for John 
 the junior was extremely clever as a practical managing edi 
 tor, remembering everything, and knowing what I never 
 did or could all the little tricks, games, and wiles of all the 
 reporters and others employed. 
 
 Colonel Forney was such a remarkable character, and had 
 such a great influence for many years in American politics, 
 that as I had a great deal to do with him very much more 
 than was generally known at a time when he struck his 
 greatest political coup, in which, as he said, I greatly aided 
 him, I will here dwell on him a space. Before I knew him 
 I called him Warwick the King-maker, for it was generally 
 admitted that it was to his intense hatred of Buchanan, 
 added to his speech-making, editing, and tremendously vig 
 orous and not always over-scrupulous intriguing, that " Ten- 
 cent Jimmy " owed his defeat. At this time, in all presiden 
 tial elections, Pennsylvania turned the scale, and John For 
 ney could and did turn Pennsylvania like a Titan ; and he 
 frankly admitted that he owed the success of his last turn to 
 me, as I shall in time relate. 
 
 Forney s antipathies were always remarkably well placed. 
 He hated Buchanan ; also, for certain personal reasons, he 
 
320 MEMOIRS. 
 
 hated Simon Cameron ; and finally it came to pass that he 
 hated Andrew Johnson with a hatred of twenty-four carats 
 an aquafortis detestation and for a most singular cause. 
 
 One night when this " President by the pistol, and small 
 est potato in the American garden of liberty," was making 
 one of his ribald speeches, after having laid out Horace Gree- 
 ley, some one in the crowd cried 
 
 " Now give us John Forney ! " 
 
 With an air of infinite contempt the President ex 
 claimed 
 
 " I don t waste my powder on dead ducks." 
 
 He had better have left that word unsaid, for it ruined 
 him. It woke Colonel John Forney up to the very highest 
 pitch of his fighting " Injun," or, as they say in Pennsylva 
 nia, his " Dutch." He had always been to that hour a genial 
 man, like most politicians, a little too much given to the so 
 cial glass. But from that date of the dead duck he became 
 "total abstinence," and concentrated all his faculties and 
 found all his excitement in vengeance hot and strong, with 
 out a grain of sugar. In which I gladly sympathised and 
 aided, for I detested Johnson as a renegade Copperhead, or 
 rather venomous toad to the South, who wished with all his 
 soul to undo Lincoln s work" and bring in the Confederacy. 
 And I believe, on my life and soul, that if John Forney had 
 not defeated him, we should have had such disasters as are 
 now inconceivable, the least of them being a renewal of the 
 war. Johnson had renegaded from the Confederacy because, 
 being only a tailor, he had ranked as a " low white," or some 
 thing despised even by "quality" negroes. The Southern 
 aristocracy humbugged him by promising that if he would 
 betray the Union he should be regarded as one of themselves, 
 by which very shallow cheat he was as a snob would be 
 easily caught, and in due time cast off. 
 
 I had been but a few weeks on the Press, and all was 
 going on well, when one morning the Colonel abruptly asked 
 me if I could start in the morning for Fort Riley, of which 
 
LIFE ON THE PRESS. 321 
 
 all I knew was that it constituted an extreme frontier station 
 in Kansas. There was to be a Kansas Pacific railway laid 
 out, and a large party of railroad men intended to go as far 
 as the last surveyor s camp. Of course, a few editors had 
 been invited to write up the road, and these in turn sent 
 some one in their place. I knew at once that I should have 
 something like the last year s wild life over again, and I was 
 delighted. I borrowed John Forney s revolver, provided an 
 agate-point and "manifold paper" for duplicate letters to 
 our " two papers, both daily," and at the appointed hour was 
 at the railway station. There had been provided for us the 
 director s car, a very large and extremely comfortable vehi 
 cle, with abundance of velvet " settees " or divan sofas, with 
 an immense stock of lobster-salad, cold croquettes, game, with 
 " wines of every fineness," and excellent waiters. The excur 
 sion, indeed, cost 1,000 ; but it was made to pay, and that 
 to great profit. 
 
 We were all a very genial, congenial party of easy-going 
 geniuses. There was Hassard, the " day editor " of the New 
 York Tribune, who had been with me on the Cyclopcedia, and 
 to whom I was much attached, for he was a gentlemanly 
 scholar, and withal had seen enough of life on the Tribune 
 to hold his own with any man ; and Captain William Colton, 
 who had been with me in Tennessee ; Robert Lamborn, who 
 had studied science in Germany, and was now a railroad man, 
 and many more who are recorded in my pamphlet, " Three 
 Thousand Miles in a Railway Car," and my old associate, 
 Caspar Souder, of the Bulletin. This excursion was destined, 
 in connection with this pamphlet, to have a marvellous effect 
 on my future life. 
 
 In every town where we paused and our pauses were fre 
 quent, as we travelled very much on the " go-as-you-please " 
 plan we were received by the authorities with honour and 
 speeches and invited to dinners or drinks. Our conductors 
 were courtesy itself. One afternoon one of them on a rough 
 bit of road said, " Gentlemen, whenever you wish to open a 
 
322 MEMOIRS. 
 
 bottle of champagne, please to pull the cord and stop the 
 train. You can then drink without spilling your wine." 
 
 So we went to Chicago and St. Louis, where we were enter 
 tained by Mr. Blow, and where I became acquainted with his 
 daughter Susan. She was then a beautiful blonde, and, as I 
 soon found, very intelligent and cultured. She was long 
 years afterwards busy in founding philanthropic schools in 
 St. Petersburg, Russia, when I was there a singularly noble 
 woman. However, at this time neither of us dreamed of the 
 school-keeping which we were to experience in later years. 
 At this soiree, and indeed for the excursion the next day, we 
 had as a guest Mr. Walter, of the London Times. 
 
 The next day we had a special train and an excursion of 
 ladies and gentlemen to visit the marvellous Knob or Iron 
 Mountain. This is an immense conical hill with a deep sur 
 rounding dale, beyond which rise other hills all of nearly 
 solid iron. Returning that evening in the train, a very 
 strange event took place. There was with us a genial, pleas 
 ant, larky young fellow, one of the famous family of the 
 MacCooks. When the war came on he was at college went 
 into the army, fought hard rose to be captain, and then 
 after the peace went back to the college and finished his 
 studies. This was the "event." We were telling stories of 
 dreams ; when it came to my turn I said : 
 
 " In 1860 I had never been in Ohio, nor did I know any 
 thing about it. One night it was at Reading, Pennsylvania 
 I fell asleep. I dreamed that I woke up, rose from the bed, 
 went to the match-box, struck a light, and while it burned 
 observed the room, which was just the same as when I had 
 retired. The match went out. I lit another, when what was 
 my amazement to observe that everything in the room had 
 changed its colour to a rich brown ! Looking about me, I 
 saw on a kind of etagere scores of half-burned candles in 
 candlesticks, as if there had been a ball. I lighted nearly all 
 of them. Hearing a sound as of sweeping and the knocking 
 of a broom-handle without, I went into the next room, which 
 
LIFE ON THE PRESS. . 323 
 
 was the hall where the dance had been held. A very stupid 
 fellow was sweeping it out. I asked him where I was. He 
 could not reply intelligently. There carne into the hall a 
 bustling, pleasant woman, rather small, who I saw at a glance 
 was the housekeeper. She said something to the man as to 
 the room s being dark. I remarked that there was light 
 enough in my room, for I had lit all the candles. She cried, 
 laughing, What extravagance ! I answered, My dear little 
 woman, what does a candle or two signify to you? Now 
 please tell me where I am. Last night I went to sleep in 
 Reading, Pennsylvania. Where am I now ? She replied 
 (and of this word I was not sure), In Columbus, Ohio. I 
 asked if there was any prominent man in the place who was 
 acquainted with Philadelphia, and who might aid me to re 
 turn. She reflected, and said that Judge Duer and his two 
 daughters (of whom I had never heard) had just returned 
 from the East." 
 
 Here MacCook interrupted me eagerly : " You were not 
 in Columbus, but in Dayton, Ohio. And it was not Judge 
 Duer, but Judge Duey, with his two daughters, who was that 
 summer in the East." I went on : 
 
 " I left the room and went into the hall. I came to the 
 front door. Far down below me I saw a winding river and 
 a steamboat." 
 
 Here MacCook spoke again : " That was surely Dayton. 
 I know the house and the view. But it could not have been 
 Columbus." I went on : 
 
 " I went downstairs too far by mistake into the cellar. 
 There I found a man sawing wood. I went up again. [Pray 
 observe that a year after, when I went West, this very incident 
 occurred one morning in Cincinnati, Ohio.] I found in the 
 bar-room three respectable-looking men. I told them my 
 story. One said to the others, He is always the same old 
 fellow ! I stared at him in amazement. He held out one 
 hand and moved the other as if fiddling. Monotonous 
 creaking sounds followed, and I gradually awoke. The same 
 
324 MEMOIRS. 
 
 sounds continued, but they were caused by the grasshoppers 
 and tree-toads, who pipe monotonously all night long in 
 America." 
 
 Nothing ever came of the dream, but it all occurred ex 
 actly as I describe it. I have had several quite as strange. 
 Immediately after I had finished my narration, some one, al 
 luding to our party, asked if there was any one present who 
 could sing "Hans Breitmann s Barty," and I astonished them 
 not a little by proclaiming that I was the author, and by sing 
 ing it. 
 
 We went on to Leavenworth, where we had a dinner at 
 the hotel which was worthy of Paris. We had, for example, 
 prairie pullets or half -grown grouse, wild turkeys and tender 
 venison. Thence to Fort Riley, and so on in waggons to the 
 last surveyor s camp. I forget where it was on the route that 
 we stopped over-night at a fort, where I found some old 
 friends and made new ones. A young officer Lieutenant 
 Brown, I think gave me a bed in his cabin. His ceiling was 
 made of canvas. For weeks he had heard a great rattlesnake 
 moving about on it. One day he had made a hole in the ceil 
 ing and put into it a great fierce tom-cat. The cat " went 
 for " the snake and there was an awful row. After a time 
 the cat came out looking like a devil with every hair on end, 
 made straight for the prairie, and was never heard of again. 
 Neither was the snake. They had finished one another. On 
 another occasion, when sitting in a similar cabin, my gentle 
 hostess, an officer s wife, whom I had known a few years be 
 fore as a beauty in society, remarked that she had two large 
 rattlesnakes in her ceiling, and that if we would be silent we 
 might hear them crawling about. They could not be taken 
 out without rebuilding the roof. 
 
 Captain Col ton had just recovered from a very bad attack 
 of fever and ague, and, being young, had the enormous appe 
 tite which follows weeks of quinine. I saw him this day eat 
 a full meal of beefsteaks, and then immediately after devour 
 another, at Brown s, of buffalo-meat. The air of the Plains 
 
LIFE ON THE PRESS. 325 
 
 causes incredible hunger. We all played a good knife and 
 fork. 
 
 About twilight-tide there came in a very gentlemanly 
 Catholic priest. I was told that he was a roving missionary. 
 He led a charmed life, for he went to visit the wildest tribes, 
 and was everywhere respected. I conversed with him in 
 French. After a while he spread his blanket, lay down on 
 the floor and slept till morning, when he read his prayers and 
 departed. 
 
 The next day the fort square was full of Kaw Indians, all 
 in savage array, about to depart for their autumnal buffalo- 
 hunt. I met one venerable heathen with his wife and babe, 
 with whom I made genial acquaintance. I asked the wife 
 the name for a whip; she replied B meergashee ; a pony was 
 shoonga, the nose hin, and a woman shimmy -shindy I I 
 bought his whip for a dollar. The squaw generously offered 
 to throw in the baby, which I declined, and we all laughed 
 and parted. 
 
 I went to the camp, and there the whole party, seeing my 
 curious whip, went at the Kaws to buy theirs. Bank-bills 
 were our only currency then, and the Indians knew there were 
 such things as counterfeits. They consulted together, eyed 
 us carefully, and then every man as he received his dollar 
 brought it to me for approval. By chance I knew the Pawnee 
 word for " good " ( Washitaw], and they also knew it. Then 
 came a strange wild scene. I spoke to the chief, and point 
 ing to my whip said, " B meergashee" and indicating a woman 
 and a pony, repeated, " Shimmy -shindy, shoonga-hin" inti 
 mating that its use was to chastise women and ponies by hit 
 ting them on the nose. Great was the amazement and delight 
 of the Kaws, who roared with laughter, and their chief curi 
 ously inquired, "You Kaw?" To which I replied, " 0, 
 nitchee, me Kaw, washitd good Injun me." He at once em 
 braced me with frantic joy, as did the others, to the great 
 amazement of my friends. A wild circular dance was at once 
 improvised to celebrate my reception into the tribe ; at which 
 15 
 
326 MEMOIRS. 
 
 our driver Brigham dryly remarked that he didn t wonder 
 they were glad to get me, for I was the first Injun ever seen 
 in that tribe with a whole shirt on him. This was the order 
 of proceedings : I stood in the centre and sang wildly the 
 following song, which was a great favourite with our party, 
 and all joining in the chorus : 
 
 1 slew the chief of the Muscolgee ; 
 I burnt his squaw at the blasted tree ! 
 By the hind-legs I tied up the cur, 
 He had no time to fondle on her. 
 
 Chorus. 
 
 Hoo ! hoo ! hoo ! the Muscolgee ! 
 Wah, wah, wah ! the blasted tree 1 
 
 A faggot from the blasted tree 
 Fired the lodge of the Muscolgee ; 
 His sinews served to string my bow 
 When bent to lay his brethren low. 
 
 Chorus. 
 
 Hoo ! hoo ! hoo ! the Muscolgee ! 
 Wah, wah, wah ! the blasted tree ! 
 
 I stripped his skull all naked and bare, 
 And here s his skull with a tuft of hair ! 
 His heart is in the eagle s maw, 
 His bloody bones the wolf doth gnaw. 
 
 Chorus. 
 
 Hoo ! hoo ! hoo ! the Muscolgee ! 
 Wah, wah, wah ! the blasted tree ! 
 
 The Indians yelled and drummed at the Reception Dance. 
 " Now you good Kaw Good Injun you be all same me," 
 said the chief. Hassard and Lamborn cracked time with 
 their whips, and, in short, we made a grand circular row ; truly 
 it was a wondrous striking scene ! From that day I was called 
 the Kaw chief, even by Hassard in his letters to the Tribune, 
 in which he mentioned that in scenes of excitement I rode 
 and whooped like a savage. It may be so / never noticed 
 it ; perhaps he exaggerated, but I must admit that I do like 
 
LIFE ON THE PRESS. 327 
 
 Indians, and they like me. We took ambulances or strong 
 covered army-waggons and pushed on. We were now well 
 out on the plains. All daylong we passed prairie-dog villages 
 and saw antelopes bounding afar. At night we stopped at 
 the hotel Alia Fresco,, or slept in the open air. It was per 
 fectly delightful, though in November. Far in the distance 
 many prairie fires stretched like miles of blazing serpents over 
 the distance. I thought of the innumerable camp-fires be 
 fore the battle of Gettysburg, and determined that the two 
 were among the most wonderful sights of my life. We rose 
 very early in the morning, by grey light, and after a drink of 
 whisky pushed on. I may here mention that from 1863 for 
 six years I very rarely indeed tasted any intoxicant. 
 
 So we went on till we reached the last surveyor s camp. 
 We had not been there half an hour before a man came in 
 declaring that he had just saved his scalp, having seen a 
 party of Apaches in their war-paint, but luckily hid himself 
 before they discovered him. It was evident that we had 
 now got beyond civilisation. Already, on the way, we had 
 seen ranches which had been recently burned by the Indians, 
 who had killed their inmates. One man, observing my Kaw 
 whip, casually remarked that as I was fond of curiosities he 
 was sorry that he had not kept six arrows which he had 
 lately pulled out of a man whom he had found lying dead in 
 the road, and who had just been shot by the Indians. 
 
 Within this same hour after our arrival there came in a 
 Lieutenant Hesselberger, bringing with him a Mrs. Box and 
 her two daughters, one about sixteen and the other twelve. 
 The Indians had on the Texas frontier murdered and scalped 
 her husband before her eyes, burned their home, and carried 
 the three into captivity, where for six months they were daily 
 subjected to such incredible outrages and cruelty that it was 
 simply a miracle that they survived. As it was, they looked 
 exactly like corpses. Lieutenant Hesselberger, with bravery 
 beyond belief, having heard of these captives, went alone to 
 the Indians to ransom them. Firstly, they fired guns unex- 
 
328 MEMOIRS. 
 
 pectedly close to his head, and finding that he did not start, 
 brought out the captives and subjected them to the extremes 
 of gross abuse before his eyes, and repeatedly knocked them 
 down with clubs, all of which he affected to disregard. At 
 last the price was agreed on and he took them away. 
 
 In after years, when I described, all this in London to 
 Stanley, the African explorer, he said, " Strange ! I, too, 
 was there that very day, and saw those women, and wrote an 
 account of it to the New York Herald." I daresay that I 
 met and talked to him at the time among those whom we 
 saw. 
 
 Not far from our camp there was a large and well-popu 
 lated beaver-dam, which I studied with great interest. It 
 was more like a well regulated town than is many a western 
 mining village. I do not wonder that Indians regard QuaJi- 
 beet, the beaver, as a human being in disguise. N. B. The 
 beaver always, when he cuts a stick, sharpens it like a lead- 
 pencil which indicates an artistic nature. 
 
 It was now resolved that a number of our party should 
 go into the Smoky Hill country to attend a very great In 
 dian council, while the rest returned home. So I joined the 
 adventurers. The meeting was not held, for I believe the 
 Indians went to war. But we rode on. One morning I saw 
 afar a few black specks, and thought they were cattle. And 
 so they were, but the free cattle of the plains, or buffaloes. 
 That evening, as we were out of meat, Colton and others 
 went out to hunt them, and had a fine chase, but got 
 nothing. 
 
 The next morning Colton kindly gave me his chance 
 that is, he resigned to me a splendid black horse used to the 
 business and most of us went to the field. After a while, or 
 a four miles run, we came up with a number. There was a 
 fine cow singled out and shot at, and I succeeded in putting 
 a ball in just behind the shoulder. Among us all she became 
 beef, and an expert hunter with us, whose business it was to 
 supply the camp with meat, skinned and butchered her and 
 
LIFE ON THE PRESS. 
 
 329 
 
 cooked a meal for us on the spot. The beef was deliciously 
 tender and well flavoured. 
 
 Now, before this cooking, in the excitement of the chase, 
 I had ridden on like an Indian, as Hassard said in his letter, 
 whooping like one all alone after the buffalo, and in my joy 
 forgot to shake the spent cartridge out of my Spenser seven- 
 shooter carbine. All at once I found myself right in the 
 herd, close by a monstrous bull, whose height at the instant 
 when he turned on me to gore me seemed to be about a hun 
 dred and fifty feet. But my horse was used to this, and 
 swerved with incredible tact and swiftness, while I held on. 
 I then had a perfectly close shot, not six feet off, under the 
 shoulder, and I raised the carbine and pulled trigger, when 
 it ticked ! I had forgotten the dead cartridge, and was not 
 used to the arm which I carried. I think that I swore, and 
 if I did not I am sorry for it. Before I could arrange my 
 charge the buffaloes were far away. 
 
 However, we had got our cow, and that was more than 
 we really needed. At any rate, I had shot a buffalo and had 
 
 a stupendous run. And here I must mention that while 
 racing and whooping, I executed the most insanely foolish 
 thing I ever did in all my life, which astonished the hunter 
 and all present to the utmost. I was at the top of a declivity 
 
330 MEMOIRS. 
 
 from which there descended a flight of natural stairs of rock, 
 but every one very broad, like the above sketch. 
 
 And being inspired by the devil, and my horse not object 
 ing at all, I clattered down over it at full speed a la Putnam. 
 I have heard that Indians do this very boldly, declaring that 
 it is perfectly safe if the rider is not afraid, and I am quite 
 sure that mine must have been an Indian horse. I hope that 
 no one will think that I have put forward or made too much 
 of these trifling boyish tricks of recklessness. They are of 
 daily occurrence in the Wild West among men who like ex 
 citement, and had Eobert Hunt been among us there would 
 have been fun indeed. 
 
 So we turned homewards, for the Indian Conference had 
 proved a failure. We had for our driver a man named Brig- 
 ham, to whom I had taken a great liking. He had lived as 
 a trader among the wildest Indians, spoke Spanish fluently, 
 and knew the whole Western frontier like his pocket. The 
 day after we had seen Mrs. Box come in, I was praising the 
 braveness of Lieutenant Hesselberger in venturing to rescue 
 her. 
 
 " It isn t all bravery at all," said Brigham. " He s brave 
 as a panther, but there s more in it than that. There is 
 about one man in a hundred, and not more, who can go 
 among the most God-forsaken devils of Injuns and never 
 get hurt. The Injuns take to them at a glance and love em, 
 Pm such a man, and I ve proved it often enough, God 
 knows! Lieutenant Hesselberger is one, and," he added 
 abruptly, " Mr. Leland, yoiCre another." 
 
 " What makes you think so ? " I said, greatly surprised. 
 
 " Cause I ve watched you. You ve got Injun ways that 
 you don t know of. Didn t I notice the other day, when the 
 gentlemen were buying the whips from the Kaws, that every 
 Injun took a squint, and then came straight to you ? Why 
 didn t they go to one of the other gentlemen? Because 
 they ve got an instinct like a dog for their friends, and for 
 such as we." 
 
LIFE ON THE PRESS. 331 
 
 We were coming to Fort Harker. I forget how it all 
 came about, but we found ourselves afoot, with a mile or two 
 to walk, carrying our guns, carpet-bags, and petites bagages, 
 while about fifty yards ahead or more there was Brigham 
 driving on merrily to the fort, under the impression that we 
 had secured other conveyance. 
 
 Captain Colton fired his carbine. It made about as much 
 noise as a percussion-cap, and the wind was from Brigham 
 toward us. Carried away by an impulse, I caught Colonel 
 Lamborn s light rifle out of his hand. 
 
 " Great God ! " he cried, li you don t mean to shoot at 
 him?" 
 
 " If you ll insure the mules," I said, " I will the driver." 
 My calculation was to send a bullet so near to Brigham that 
 he could hear it whizz, but not to touch him. It was not so 
 dangerous as the shot I had fired over Sam Fox, and the 
 " spirit " was on me ! 
 
 But I did not know that in the covered waggon sat Has- 
 sard talking with Brigham, their faces being, as Hassard de 
 clared, just about six inches apart. I fired, and the bullet 
 passed just between their noses ! 
 
 Hassard heard the whizz, and cried, " What s that ? " 
 
 " Injuns, by God ! " roared Brigham, forgetting that we 
 had left the Indian country two days behind us. " Lie down 
 in the waggon while I drive." And drive he did, till out of 
 gunshot, and then putting his face out, turned around, and 
 gave in full desperate cry the taunting war-whoop of the 
 Cheyennes. It was a beautiful sight that of Brigham s 
 broad red face wild with rage and his great gold earrings 
 and Mexican sombrero turning round the waggon at us in 
 defiance like Marmion ! 
 
 But when he realised that we had fired at him, just 
 
 as a pack of d d Apaches might have done, for fun, 
 
 to stop the waggon, his expression became one of utter 
 bewilderment. As I came up I tbought there might be 
 a shindy. 
 
332 MEMOIRS. 
 
 " Brigham," I said in Spanish, " es la mano o el navaji 
 [Is it to be hand, or knife ?] 
 
 Brigham was proud of his Spanish ; it was his elegant 
 accomplishment, and this was a good scene. Grasping my 
 hand cordially, he said, " La mano." Like a true frontiers 
 man, he felt in a minute the grandeur of the joke. There 
 was, if I may so vulgarly express myself, an Indian-uity in 
 it which appealed to his deepest feelings. There was a si 
 lence for several minutes, which he broke by exclaiming 
 
 " I ve driven waggons now this twelve years on the fron 
 tier, but I never heard before of tryin to stop the waggon by 
 shootin at the driver." 
 
 There was another long silent pause, when he resumed 
 
 " I wish to God there was a gulch (ravine) between here 
 and the fort ! I d upset this crowd into it d d quick ! " 
 
 That evening I took leave of Brigham. I drank healths 
 with him in whisky, and shook hands, and said 
 
 " I did a very foolish and reckless thing to-day, Brigham, 
 when I shot at you, and I am sorry for it, and I beg your 
 pardon. Here is a dagger which I have had for twenty-five 
 years. I carried it all over Europe. I have nothing better 
 to give you ; please take it. And when you stick a Greaser 
 (Mexican) with it, as I expect you will do some day, then 
 think of me." 
 
 The tears rose to his eyes, and he departed. I never met 
 him again, but " well I wot " he ever had kindly remem 
 brance of me. We were to be guests of General Ouster at 
 the fort, and I was rather shy of meeting the castellan after 
 firing at his driver ! But he greeted me with a hearty burst 
 of laughter, and said 
 
 " Mr. Leland, you have the most original way of ringing 
 a bell when you want to call a carriage that I ever heard 
 of." 
 
 As for Hassard, when he witnessed my parting with Brig- 
 ham, he said 
 
 " This is all mighty fine ! daggers and whisky, and all 
 
LIFE ON THE PRESS. 333 
 
 kinds of beautiful things flying around for Brigham, but 
 what am / to have ? " 
 
 " And what dost thou expect, son Hassard ? " I replied. 
 
 Holding out both his hands, he replied 
 
 " Much tobacco ! much tobacco ! " 
 
 This was in allusion to a story told us by Lieutenant 
 Brown. Not long before, the Lieutenant, seeing, as he 
 thought, a buffalo, had fired at it. But the buffalo turned 
 out to be an Indian on a pony ; and the Indian riding fierce 
 ly at the Lieutenant, cried aloud for indemnity or the 
 " blood-fine " in the words, " Much tobacco ! " And so I 
 stood cigars. 
 
 Life is worth living for or it would be if it abounded 
 more in such types as Mrs. General Ouster and her husband. 
 There was a bright and joyous chivalry in that man, and a 
 noble refinement mingled with constant gaiety in the wife, 
 such as I fear is passing from the earth. Her books have 
 shown that she was a woman of true culture, and that she 
 came by it easily, as he did, and that out of a little they 
 could make more than most do from a life of mere study. I 
 fear that there will come a time when such books as hers 
 will be the only evidences that there were ever such people 
 so fearless, so familiar with every form of danger, privation, 
 and trial, and yet joyous and even reckless of it all. Good 
 Southern blood and Western experiences had made them 
 free of petty troubles. The Indians got his scalp at last, and 
 with him went one of the noblest men whom America ever 
 brought forth.* 
 
 That evening they sent for a Bavarian-Tyroler soldier, 
 who played beautifully on the cithern. As I listened to the 
 Jodel-lieder airs I seemed to be again in his native land. It 
 was a pleasure to me to hear from him the familiar dialect. 
 
 * " CUSTER was the life and soul of the greatest hand-to-hand victory 
 ever gained over the Indians of the Plains except Patsy Connor s Bear 
 River Fight." The Masked Venus, by RICHARD HENRY SAVAGE. 
 
334: MEMOIRS. 
 
 At St. Louis we were very kindly entertained in several 
 distinguished houses. At one they gave us some excellent 
 Ehine wine. 
 
 " What do you think of this ? " said Hassard, who was a 
 good Latinist. 
 
 I replied, " Vinum Rhenense decus et gloria mense." 
 
 In the next we had Moselle wine. " And what of this ? " 
 
 I answered, " Vinum Moslanum fuit omne tempore sa- 
 num." 
 
 And here I would say that every memory which I have of 
 Missouri (and there are more by far than this book indi 
 cates), as of Missourians, is extremely pleasant. The State 
 is very beautiful, and 1 have found among my friends there 
 born such culture and kindness and genial hospitality as I 
 have never seen surpassed. To the names of Mary A. Owen,* 
 Blow, Mark Twain, and the Choteaus I could add many 
 more. 
 
 So we jogged on homeward. I resumed my work. I 
 had written out all the details of our trip in letters to the 
 Press. They had excited attention. The Pennsylvania 
 Railroad Company suggested that they should be published 
 in a pamphlet. I did so, and called it " Three Thousand 
 Miles in a Railroad Car." They offered to pay me a very 
 good sum for my trouble in so doing. I declined it, because 
 I felt that I had been amply paid by the pleasure which I 
 had derived from the journey. But I received grateful rec 
 ognition subsequently in another form. The pamphlet was 
 most singular of its kind. It was a full report of all the statis 
 tics and vast advantages of the Kansas Pacific Road. It con 
 tained very valuable facts and figures ; and it was all served 
 up with jokes, songs, buffalo-hunting, Indians, and Brigham. 
 It was a marvellous farrago, and it " took." It was sent to 
 every member of Congress and " every other man." 
 
 * Miss Owen is well known to all folk-lorists as the first living au 
 thority on Voodoo. 
 
LIFE ON THE PRESS. 335 
 
 Before it appeared, a friend of mine named Ring wait, 
 who was both a literary man and owner of a printing-office, 
 offered me $200 if I would secure him the printing of it. I 
 said that I would not take the money, but that I would get 
 him the printing, which I easily did ; but being a very honour 
 able man, he was led to discharge the obligation. One day 
 he said to me, " Why don t you publish your Breitmann 
 Ballads ? Everybody is quoting them now." I replied, 
 " There is not a publisher in America who would accept 
 them." And I was quite right, for there was not. He an 
 swered, " I will print them for you. I accepted the offer, 
 but when they were set up an idea occurred to me by which 
 I could save my friend his expenses. I went to a publisher 
 named T. B. Peterson, who said effectively this " The book 
 will not sell more than a thousand copies. There will be 
 about a thousand people who will buy it, even for fifty cents, 
 so I shall charge that, though it would be, as books go, only 
 as a twenty-five cent work." He took it and paid my friend 
 for the composition. I was not to receive any money or share 
 in the profits till all the expenses had been paid. 
 
 Mr. Peterson immediately sold 2,0004,000 I know not 
 how many thousands at fifty cents a copy. It was repub- 
 lished in Canada and Australia, to my loss. An American 
 publisher who owned a magazine asked me, through his edi 
 tor, to write for it a long Breitmann poem. I did so, mak 
 ing, however, an explicit verbal arrangement that it should 
 not ~be repuUislied as a book. It was, however, immediately 
 republished as such, with a title to the effect that it was the 
 " Breitmann Ballads." I appealed to the editor, and it was 
 withdrawn, but I know not how many were issued, to my loss. 
 
 I had transferred the whole right of publication in Eng 
 land to my friend Nicolas Triibner, whom I had met when 
 he had visited America, and I wrote specially for his edition 
 certain poems. John " Camden " Hotten wrote to me mod 
 estly asking me to give him the sole right to republish the 
 work. He said, " I hardly know what to say about the price. 
 
336 MEMOIRS. 
 
 Suppose we say ten pounds ! " I replied, " Sir, I have given 
 the whole right of publication to Mr. Triibner, and I would 
 not take it from him for ten thousand pounds." Hotten at 
 once published an edition which was a curiosity of ignorance 
 and folly. There was a blunder on an average to every page. 
 He had annotated it ! He explained that Knasterbart meant 
 " a nasty fellow," and that the French garce was gare,"a 
 railway station ! " Triibner had sold 5,000 copies before this 
 precious affair appeared. After Hotten s death the British 
 public were informed in an obituary that he had "first in 
 troduced me " to their knowledge ! 
 
 Hans Breitmann became a type. I never heard of but 
 one German who ever reviled the book, and that was a Demo 
 cratic editor in Philadelphia. But the Germans themselves 
 recognised that the pen which poked fun at them was no 
 poisoned stiletto. Whenever there was a grand German pro 
 cession, Hans was in it the indomitable old Degen hung 
 with loot and he appeared in every fancy ball. Nor were 
 the Confederates offended. One of the most genial, search 
 ing, and erudite reviews of the work, which appeared in a 
 Southern magazine (De Bow s), declared that I had truly 
 written the Hudibras of the Civil War. What struck this 
 writer most was the fact that I had opened a new field of 
 humour. And here he was quite right. With the exception 
 of Dan Kice s circus song of " Der goot oldt Sherman shen- 
 tleman," and a rather flat parody of " Jessie, the Flower of 
 Dumblane," I had never seen or heard of any specimen of 
 Anglo-German poetry. To be merely original in language is 
 not to excel in everything a fact very generally ignored 
 else my Pidgin-English ballads would take precedence of 
 Tennyson s poems ! On the other hand, very great poets 
 have often not made a new form. The Yankee type, both 
 as regards spirit and language, had become completely com 
 mon and familiar in prose and poetry, before Lowell revived 
 it in the clever Biglow Papers. Bret Harte s " Heathen 
 Chinee," and several other poems, are, however, both original 
 
LIFE ON THE PRESS. 337 
 
 and admirable. Whatever the merits or demerits of mine 
 were and it was years ere I ever gave them a thought the 
 public, which is always eager for something new, took to 
 them at once. 
 
 I say that for years I never gave them a thought. All of 
 the principal poems except the " Barty " and " Breitmann as 
 a Politician," were merely written to fill up letters to C. A. 
 Bristed, of New York, and I kept no copies of them in fact, 
 utterly forgot them. Weingeist was first written in a letter 
 to a sister of Captain Colton, with the remark that it was 
 easier to write such a ballad than any prose. But Bristed 
 published them a mon insu in a sporting paper. Years after 
 I learned that I published one called " Breitmann s Sermon " 
 in Leslie s Magazine. This I have never recovered. If I 
 write so much about these poems now, I certainly was not 
 vain of them when written. The public found them out long 
 before I did, and it is not very often that it gets ahead of a 
 poet in appreciating his own works. 
 
 However, I was " awful busy " in those days. I had 
 hardly begun on the Press ere I found that it had a weekly 
 paper, made up from the daily type transferred, which only 
 just paid its expenses. Secondly, I discovered that there was 
 not a soul on the staff except myself who had had any ex 
 perience of weekly full editing. I at once made out a sched 
 ule, showing that by collecting and grouping agricultural 
 and industrial items, putting in two or three columns of 
 original matter, and bringing in a story to go through the 
 daily first, the weekly could be vastly improved at very little 
 expense. 
 
 Colonel Forney admired the scheme, but asked " who was 
 to carry it out." I replied that I would. He remonstrated, 
 very kindly, urging that I had all I could do as it was. I 
 answered, " Colonel Forney, this is not a matter of time, but 
 method. There is always time for the man who knows how 
 to lay it out." So I got up a very nice paper. But for a very 
 long time I could not get an agent to solicit advertisements 
 
338 MEMOIRS. 
 
 who knew the business. The weekly paid its expenses and 
 nothing more. But one day there came to me a young man 
 named M. T. Wolf. He was of Pennsylvania German stock. 
 He had lost a small fortune in the patent medicine business 
 and wanted employment badly. I suggested that, until some 
 thing else could be found, he should try his hand at collect 
 ing " advers." 
 
 Now, be it observed, as Mozart was born to music, and 
 some men have a powerful instinct to study medicine, and 
 others are so unnatural as to take to mathematics, Wolf had 
 a grand undeveloped genius beyond all belief for collecting 
 advertisements. He had tried many pursuits and failed, but 
 the first week he went into this business he brought in $200 
 (40), which gave him forty dollars, and he never afterwards 
 fell below it, but often rose above. " Advers." for him meant 
 not adversity. It was very characteristic of Colonel Forney, 
 who was too much absorbed in politics to attend much to 
 business, that long after the Weekly Press was yielding him 
 $10,000 a year clear profit, he said to me one day, "Mr. Le- 
 land, you must not be discouraged as to the weekly; the 
 clerks tell me in the office that it meets its expenses I " 
 
 There w r as abundance of life and incident on the news 
 paper in those days, especially during election times in the 
 autumn. I have known fights, night after night, to be going 
 on in the street below, at the corner of Seventh and Chest 
 nut, between Republicans and Democrats, with revolver shots 
 and flashes at the rate of fifty to a second, when I was liter 
 ally so occupied with pressing telegrams that I could not look 
 out to see the fun. One night, however, when there were 
 death-shots falling thick and fast, I saw a young man make a 
 most incredible leap. He had received a bullet under the 
 shoulder, and when a man or a deer is hit there he always 
 leaps. I heard afterwards that he recovered, though this is a 
 vital place. 
 
 It happened once that for a week the Republicans were 
 kept from resisting or retaliating by their leaders, until the 
 
LIFE ON THE PRESS. 339 
 
 Democrats began to disgrace themselves by excesses. Then 
 all at once the Republicans boiled over, thrashed their foes, 
 and attacking the Copperhead clubs, threw their furniture 
 out of the window, and inadvertently perhaps also a few 
 Copperheads. Just before they let their angry passions rise 
 in this fashion there came one night a delegation to serenade 
 Colonel Forney at the office. The Colonel was grand on 
 such occasions. He was a fine, tall, portly man, with a lion- 
 like mien and a powerful voice. He began 
 
 " My friends, fellow-citizens and Eepublicans, you have 
 this week acted nobly." 
 
 Cries from the crowd, " We Jiev ! ive hev ! " 
 
 " You, when smitten on the right cheek, turned unto the 
 oppressor the left." 
 
 " We did ! we did / " 
 
 " You are beyond all question models I may say with 
 truth, paragons of patience, long-suffering, and humility. 
 You are Christian gentlemen ! " 
 
 " We air ! we air ! " 
 
 While this was passing, a great gloomy thunder 
 cloud of the Democratic enemy gathered on the opposite 
 sidewalk, and as the Colonel lifted his voice again, there 
 came a cry 
 
 " Shut up, you d d old Republican dead-duck ! " 
 
 That word was a spell to raise the devil withal. Bang ! 
 bang ! bang ! went the revolvers of the Union men in a vol 
 ley, and the Democrats fled for their lives down Seventh 
 Street, pursued by the meek, lowly, and long-suffering 
 Christians like rabbits before wolves. 
 
 The enemy at last resolved to attack the Press and burn 
 the building. Then we had one hundred and fifty policemen 
 sent to garrison and guard. There was a surging, howling 
 mob outside, and much guerilla-shooting, but all I can re 
 member is my vexation at having so much to disturb me in 
 making up the paper. 
 
 I never went armed in my life when I could help it, for I 
 
340 MEMOIRS. 
 
 hate impedimenta in my pockets. All of us in the office 
 hung up our coats in a dark place outside. Whenever I sent 
 an assistant to get some papers from mine, he said that he 
 always knew my coat because there was no pistol in it. 
 
 Scenes such as these, and quite as amusing, were of con 
 stant occurrence in those days in Philadelphia. " All night 
 long in that sweet little village was heard the soft note of 
 the pistol and the dying scream of the victim." Now, be it 
 noted, that a stuffed dead duck had become the gonfalon or 
 banner of the Eepublicans, and where it swung there the battle 
 was fiercest. There was a young fellow from South Carolina, 
 who had become a zealous Union man, and who made up for 
 a sinful lack of sense by a stupendous stock of courage. One 
 morning there came into the office an object and such an 
 object ! His face was all swathed and hidden in bloody 
 bandages ; he was tattered, and limped, and had his arm in a 
 sling. 
 
 " In the name of Heaven, who and what are you ? " I ex 
 claimed. " And who has been passing you through a bark- 
 mill that you look so ground-up ? " 
 
 In a sepulchral voice he replied, " I m , and last 
 
 night I carried the dead duck! " 
 
 Till I came on the Press there was, it may be said, almost 
 no community between the Germans of North Philadelphia 
 and the Americans in our line. But I had become intimate 
 with Von Tronk, a Hanoverian of good family, a lawyer, and 
 editor, I believe, of the Freie Presse. I even went once or 
 twice to speak at German meetings. In fact, I was getting to 
 be considered " almost as all de same so goot ash Deutsch," and 
 very " bopular." One day Von Tronk came with a request. 
 There was to be an immense German Republican Massen- 
 versammlung or mass-meeting in a great beer-garden. " If 
 Colonel Forney could only be induced to address them ! " I 
 undertook to do it. It was an entirely new field to him, but 
 one wondrous rich in votes. Now Colonel Forney, though 
 from Lancaster County and of German-Swiss extraction, 
 
LIFE ON THE PRESS. 
 
 knew not a word of the language, and I undertook to coach 
 him. 
 
 " You will only need one phrase of three words," I said, 
 " to pull you through ; but you must pronounce them perfectly 
 and easily. They are Freiheit und Gleichheit j freedom 
 and equality. Now, if you please, fry-height" 
 
 The Colonel went at his lesson, and being naturally clever, 
 with a fine, deep voice, in a quarter of an hour could roar out 
 Freiheit und Gleichheit with an intonation which would 
 have raised a revolution in Berlin. We came to the garden, 
 and there was an immense sensation. The Colonel had win 
 ning manners, with a manly mien, and he was duly intro 
 duced. When he rose to speak there was dead silence. He 
 began 
 
 " Friends and German Fellow-citizens : Yet why should I 
 distinguish the words, since to me every German is a friend. 
 I am myself, as you all know, of unmingled German ex 
 traction, and I am very, very proud of it. But there is one 
 German sentiment which from a child has been ever in my 
 heart, and from infancy ever on my lips, and that sentiment, 
 my friends, is Freiheit und Gleichheit I " 
 
 If ever audience was astonished in this world it was that 
 of the Massenversammlung when this burst on their ears. 
 They hurrahed and roared and banged the tables in such a 
 mad storm of delight as even Colonel Forney had never seen 
 surpassed. Rising to the occasion, he thundered on, and as 
 he reached the end of every sentence he repeated, with great 
 skill and aptness, Freiheit und Gleichheit. 
 
 "You have made two thousand votes by that speech, 
 Colonel," I said, as we returned. " Von Tronk will manage 
 it at this crisis." After that, when the Colonel jested, he 
 would called me " the Dutch vote-maker." This was during 
 the Grant campaign. 
 
 Droll incidents were of constant occurrence in this life. 
 Out of a myriad I will note a few. One day there came into 
 our office an Indian agent from the West, who had brought 
 
342 MEMOIRS. 
 
 with him a Winnebago who claimed to be the rightful chief 
 of his tribe. They were going to Washington to enforce the 
 claim. While the agent conversed with some one the Indian 
 was turned over to me. He was a magnificent specimen, six 
 feet high, clad in a long trailing scarlet blanket, with a 
 scarlet straight feather in his hair which continued him up 
 ad infinitum, and he was straight as a lightning rod. He 
 was handsome, and very dignified and grave ; but I under 
 stood that. I can come it indifferent well myself when I 
 am " out of my plate," as the French, say, in strange society. 
 He spoke no English, but, as the agent said, knew six Indian 
 languages. He was evidently a chief by blood, " all the way 
 down to his moccasins." 
 
 What with a few words of Kaw (I had learned about a 
 hundred words of it with great labour) and a few other 
 phrases of other tongues, I succeeded in interesting him. 
 But I could not make him smile, and I swore unto myself 
 that I would. 
 
 Being thirsty, the Indian, seeing a cooler of ice-water, 
 with the daring peculiar to a great brave, went and took a 
 glass and turned on the spicfcet. He filled his glass it was 
 brim-fullbut he did not know how to turn it off. Then I 
 had him. As it ran over he turned to me an appealing help 
 less glance. I said "Neosho" This in Pottawattamie means 
 an inundation or overflowing of the banks, and is generally 
 applied to the inundation of the Mississippi. There is a 
 town on the latter so called. This was too much for the 
 Indian, and he laughed aloud. 
 
 " Great God ! what have you been saying to that Indian ? " 
 cried the agent, amazed. " It is the first time he has laughed 
 since he left home." 
 
 " Only a little pun in Pottawattamie. But I really know 
 very little of the language." 
 
 " I have no knowledge of the Indian languages," remarked 
 our city editor, MacGinnis, a genial young Irishman, " least 
 of all, thank God ! of Pottawattamie. But I have always 
 
LIFE ON THE PRESS. 343 
 
 understood that when a man gets so far in a tongue as to 
 make puns in it, it is time for him to stop." 
 
 Years after this I was one evening in London at an open 
 ing of an exhibition of pictures. There were present Indian 
 Hindoo princes in gorgeous array, English nobility, literary 
 men, and fine ladies. Among them was an unmistakable 
 Chippeway in a white Canadian blanket-coat, every inch an 
 Indian. I began with the usual greeting, " Ho nitclii I " 
 (Ho, brother !), to which he gravely replied. I tried two or 
 three phrases on him with the same effect. Then I played a 
 sure card. Sinking my voice with an inviting wink, I uttered 
 "Shingawauba" or whisky. "Dot fetched him." He too 
 laughed. Gleich mit gleich, gesellt sich gern. 
 
 While living in New York, and during my connection 
 with the Press, I often met and sometimes conversed with 
 Horace Greeley. Once I went with him from Philadelphia 
 to New York, and he was in the car the observed of all ob 
 servers to an extraordinary degree. He sat down, took out 
 an immense roll of proof, and said, "Lead pencil!" One 
 was immediately handed to him by some stranger, who was 
 by that one act ennobled, or, what amounts to the same 
 thing in America, grotesquely charactered for life. He was 
 the man who gave Horace Greeley a lead pencil ! I, as his 
 companion, was also regarded as above ordinary humanity. 
 When the proof was finished " Horace " said to me 
 
 " How is John Forney getting on ? " 
 
 " Like Satan, walking to and fro upon the face of the 
 earth, going from the Chronicle in Washington one day to 
 the Press in Philadelphia on the next, and filling them both 
 cram full of leaders and letters." 
 
 " Two papers, both daily ! I tell Forney that I find it is 
 all I can do to attend to one. Tell him not to get too rich 
 bad for the constitution and worse for the country. Any 
 man who has more than a million is a public nuisance." 
 
 Finally, we walked together from the ferry to the corner 
 of Park Place and Broadway, and the philosopher, after 
 
344 MEMOIRS. 
 
 minutely explaining to me which omnibus I was to take, bade 
 me adieu. I do not think we ever met again. 
 
 In the summer Colonel Forney went to Europe with John 
 the junior. When he left he said, " I do not expect you to 
 raise the circulation of the Press, but I hope that you will 
 be able to keep it from falling in the dead season." I went 
 to work, and what with enlarging the telegraphic news, and 
 correspondence, and full reports of conventions, I materially 
 increased the sale. It cost a great deal of money, to be sure, 
 but the Colonel did not mind that. At this time there came 
 into our office as associate with me Captain W. W. Nevin. 
 He had been all through the war. I took a great liking to 
 him, and we always remained intimate friends. All in our 
 office except myself were from Lancaster County, the birth 
 place, I believe, of Fitch and Fulton. It is a Pennsylvania 
 German county, and as I notoriously spoke German openly 
 without shame ours was called a Dutch office. Once when 
 Colonel Forney wrote a letter from Holland describing the 
 windmills, the Sunday Transcript unkindly remarked that 
 " he had better come home and look after his own Dutch 
 windmill at the corner of Seventh and Chestnut Streets." 
 
 I had at this time a great deal to do with the operas and 
 theatres, and often wrote the reviews. After a while, as Cap 
 tain Nevin relieved me of a great deal of work, and I had an 
 able assistant named Norcross, I devoted myself chiefly to 
 dramatic criticism and the weekly, and such work as suited 
 me best. As for the dignity of managership, Captain Nevin 
 and I tossed it from one to the other like a hot potato in 
 jest, but between us we ran the paper very well. There was an 
 opera impresario named Maurice Strakosch, of whom I had 
 heard that he was hard to deal with and irritable. I forget 
 now who the prima donna in his charge was, but there had 
 appeared in our paper a criticism which might be interpreted 
 in some detail unfavourably by a captious critic. One after 
 noon there came into the office, where I was alone, a gentle 
 manly-seeming man, who began to manifest anger in regard 
 
LIFE ON THE PRESS. 345 
 
 to the criticism in question. I replied, " I do not know, sir, 
 what your position in the opera troupe may be, but if it 
 be anything which requires a knowledge of English, I am 
 afraid that you are misplaced. There was no intention to 
 offend in the remarks, and so far as the lady is concerned I 
 shall only be too glad to say the very best I can of her. 
 Comprenez, monsieur , Jest une bagatelle" He laughed, and 
 we spoke French, then Italian, then German, and of Patti 
 and Sontag and Lind. Then I asked him what he really 
 was, and he replied, " I do not believe that you even know 
 the name of my native tongue. It is Czech." I stared at 
 him amazed, and said 
 
 "Veliky Bog! Eozprava pochesky? Nekrasneya rejece 
 est." 
 
 The Bohemian gentleman drew a handsomely bound 
 book from his pocket. " Sir," he said, " this is my album. 
 It is full of signatures of great artists, even of kings and 
 queens and poets. There is not a name in it which is not 
 that of a distinguished person, and I do not know what your 
 name is, but I beg that you will write it in my book." 
 
 Nearly the same scene was repeated soon after, with the 
 same words, when the great actress Fanny Janauschek came 
 to Philadelphia. At that time she played only in German. 
 Her manager, Grau, introduced me to her, and she compli 
 mented me on my German, and praised the language as the 
 finest in the world. 
 
 " Yes," I replied, " it is certainly very fine. But I know 
 a finer, which goes more nearly to the heart, and with which 
 I can move you more deeply." 
 
 " And what is that ? " cried the great artist astonished. 
 
 " It is," I replied, in her native tongue, " Bohemian. 
 That is the language for me." 
 
 Madame Janauschek was so affected that she burst out 
 crying, though she was a woman of tremendous nerve. We 
 became great friends, and often met again in after years in 
 England. 
 
346 MEMOIRS. 
 
 I have seen Kistori play for thirty nights in succession,* 
 and Rachel and Sarah Bernhardt ; but as regards true genius, 
 Janauschek in her earlier days was incomparably their su 
 perior ; for these all played from nerves and instinct, but 
 Janauschek from her brain and intellect. I often wondered 
 that she did not write plays. It is said of Rachel that there 
 was once a five-act play in which she died at the end of the 
 fourth act. After it had had a long run she casually asked 
 some one lioiv it ended. She had never read the fifth act. 
 Such a story could never have been told of Janauschek. 
 
 In the summer there were one or two railroad excursions 
 to visit new branch roads in Pennsylvania. While on one of 
 these I visited the celebrated Mauch Chunk coal mines, and 
 rode on the switchback railway, where I had a fearfully 
 narrow escape from death. This switchback is a montagne 
 Russe coming up and down a hill, and six miles in length. 
 Yet, though the rate of speed is appalling, the engineer can 
 stop the car in a few seconds time with the powerful brake. 
 We were going down headlong, when all at once a cow 
 stepped out of the bushes on the road before us, and if we 
 had struck her we must have gone headlong over the cliff 
 and been killed. But by a miracle the engineer stopped the 
 car just as we got to the cow. We were saved by a second. 
 Something very like it had occurred to my wife and to me 
 in 1859. We were going to Reading by rail, when the train 
 ran off the track and went straight for an embankment 
 where there was a fall of 150 feet. It was stopped just as 
 the locomotive protruded or looked over the precipice. Had 
 there been the least trifle more of steam on at that instant 
 we must all have perished. 
 
 In November of this my second year on the Press 
 my father died. One thing occurred on this sad bereave 
 ment which alleviated it a little. I had always felt all my 
 
 * I am revising this MS. in the beautiful palazzo built for Ristori, 
 22 Lung Arno Nuovo, Florence. It is now the Pensione Pellini. On 
 the ground floor are statues representing Ristori in different parts. 
 
LIFE ON THE PRESS. 347 
 
 life that he had never been satisfied with my want of a fixed 
 career or position. He did not, I think, very much like 
 John Forney, the audacious, reckless politician, but he still 
 respected his power and success, and it astonished him a 
 little, and many others quite as much, to find that I was in 
 many respects Forney s right-hand man, and manager of a 
 bold political paper which had a great influence. A day or 
 two before he died my father expressed himself kindly to 
 the effect that I had at last done well, and that he was satis 
 fied with me. At last, after so many years, he felt that I 
 had etat a calling, a definite position. In fact, in those 
 days it was often said that Forney could make himself Presi 
 dent, as he indeed might have done but for certain errors, 
 no greater than have been committed by more successful 
 men, and a stroke of ill-luck such as few can resist. 
 
 The winter passed quietly. I was extremely fond of my 
 life and work. Summer came, and with it a great desire for 
 a change and wild life and the West, for I had worked very 
 hard. A very great railway excursion, which was destined 
 to have a great effect, was being organised, and both my wife 
 and I were invited to join it. Mr. John Edgar Thompson, 
 the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, Mr. Hinckley, 
 of the Baltimore road, President Felton, Professor Leidy, 
 Robert Lamborn, and a number of other notables, were 
 to go to Duluth, on Lake Superior, and decide on the 
 terminus of the railroad as a site for a city. Mrs. John E. 
 Thompson had her own private car, which was seventy feet 
 in length, and fitted up with every convenience and luxury. 
 To this was added the same directors car in which I had 
 travelled to Minnesota. There were to be in all ten or twelve 
 gentlemen and ten ladies. There was such efficient service 
 that one young man, a clerk, was detailed especially to look 
 after our luggage. As we stopped every night at some hotel, 
 he would inquire what we required to be taken to our rooms, 
 and saw that it was brought back in the morning. I went 
 off in such a hurry that I forgot my Indian blanket, nor had 
 
34:8 MEMOIRS. 
 
 I any revolver or gun, all of which, especially the blanket, I 
 sadly missed ere I returned. I got, before I left, a full white 
 flannel or fine white cloth suit, which was then a startling 
 novelty, and wore it to the Falls of the Mississippi. Little 
 did I foresee that ere it gave out I should also have it on at 
 the Cataracts of the Nile ! 
 
 So we started and after a few hours travel, stopped at 
 Altona. There I was very much amused by an old darkey 
 at the railway-station hotel, who had, as he declared, "spe 
 cially the kyar of de ladies an quality." He had been a slave 
 till the war broke out, and had been wondrously favoured by 
 visions and revelations which guided him to freedom. " De 
 Lawd he pear to me in a dream, an I hyar a vi ce which cry, 
 1 Simon, arise an git out of dis, an put fo de Norf as fass 
 as you kin travel, fo de day of de pressor is at an end, an 
 you is to be free. So I rosed an fled, hardly a-waitin to 
 stuff my bag wid some corn-dodgers an bacon, an foller de 
 JSTorf Star till I git confused an went to sleep agin, wen, lo, 
 an angel expostulated hisself befo my eyes in a wision, an 
 say, Simon, beholdes dou dat paff by de riber? Dat s de 
 one fo you to foller, ole son ! So I follers it till I git on de 
 right trail. Den I met anoder nigger a- scapin from the 
 bon s of captivity, an carryin a cold ham, an I jined in wid 
 him you bet an so we come to de Lawd s country." 
 
 And so gaily on to Chicago. We went directly to the 
 first hotel, and as soon as I had toiletted and gone below, I 
 saw on the opposite building a sign with the words Chicago 
 Tribune. This was an exchange of ours, so I crossed over, 
 and meeting the editor by chance in the doorway, was wel 
 comed and introduced to Governor Desbrosses, who stood by. 
 Then I went to a telegraph office and sent a despatch to the 
 Press. The man wanted me to pay. I told him to C. 0. D., 
 " collect on delivery." He declined. I said, " Your princi 
 pal office is in Philadelphia, is it not? Third and Chestnut 
 Streets. Just send a telegram and ask the name of your 
 landlord. It s Leland, and Tm the man. If you make me 
 
LIFE ON THE PKESS. 349 
 
 pay, I ll raise your rent." He laughed heartily and let me 
 off, but not without a parting shot : " You see, Mr. Leland, 
 there are so many scallawags * from the East come here, that 
 we are obliged to be a little particular." 
 
 I returned to the hotel, and was immediately introduced 
 to some one having authority. I narrated my late experi 
 ence. He looked at me and said, " How long have you been 
 in Chicago?" I replied, " About thirty minutes." He an 
 swered gravely, " I think you d better stay here. You ll suit 
 the place." I was beginning to feel the moral influence of 
 the genial air of the West. Chicago is emphatically what is 
 termed " a place," and a certain amount of calm confidence 
 in one s self is not in that city to any one s discredit. Once 
 there was an old lady of a " hard " type in the witness-box in 
 an American city. She glared round at the judge, the jury, 
 and the spectators, and then burst out with, " You needn t 
 
 all be staring at me in that way. I don t keer a for you 
 
 all. I ve lived eleven years in Chicago, and ain t affeard of 
 the devil." Chicago is said in Indian to mean the place of 
 skunks, but calling a rose a skunk-cabbage don t make it one. 
 
 Walking on the edge of the lake near the city, the waters 
 cast up a good-sized living specimen of that extraordinary 
 fish -lizard, the great menobranclius, popularly known as the 
 hell-bender from its extreme ugliness. Owing to the im 
 mense size of its spermatozoa, it has rendered great aid to 
 embryology, a science which, when understood au fond, will 
 bring about great changes in the human race. We were 
 taken out in a steamboat to the end of the great aqueduct, 
 which was, when built, pronounced, I think by the London 
 Times, to be the greatest engineering work of modern times. 
 
 In due time we came to St. Paul, Minnesota,. We went 
 to a very fair hotel and had a very good dinner. In the 
 West it is very common among the commonalty to drink 
 coffee and milk through dinner, and indeed with all meals, 
 
 * Scallawag, from the Gaelic scaUag, a vagabond. D. MacRitchie. 
 16 
 
350 MEMOIRS. 
 
 instead of wine or ale, but the custom is considered as vulgar 
 by swells. Having finished dessert, I asked the Irish waiter 
 to bring me a small cup of black coffee and brandy. Draw 
 ing himself up stiffly, Pat replied, " We don t serve caafy at 
 dinner in this hotel." There was a grand roar of laughter, 
 which the waiter evidently thought was at my expense, as he 
 retreated smiling. 
 
 We were kindly received in St. Paul by everybody. 
 There is this immense advantage of English or American 
 hospitality over that of all other countries, that it introduces 
 us to the home, and makes us forget that we are strangers. 
 When we were at the end of the fearfully wearisome great 
 moral circus known as the Oriental Congress, held all over 
 Scandinavia in 1890, there came to me one evening in the 
 station a great Norseman with his friends. With much 
 would-be, ox-like dignity he began, " You ha-ave now expe 
 rienced de glorious haspitality off our country. You will go 
 oom and say " 
 
 " Stop a minute there ! " I exclaimed, for I was bored to 
 death with a show which had been engineered to tatters, and 
 to half defeating all the work of the Congress, in order to 
 glorify the King and Count Landberg. " I have been here 
 in your country six weeks, and I had letters of introduction, 
 and have made no end of acquaintances. I have been shown 
 thousands of fireworks, which blind me, and offered dozens 
 of champagne, which I never touch, and public dinners, 
 which I did not attend. But during the whole time I have 
 never once seen the inside of a Swedish or Norwegian house." 
 Which was perfectly true, nor have I ever seen one to this 
 day. There is a kind of "hospitality" which consists of 
 giving yourself a grand treat at a tavern or cafe^ and in 
 viting your strangers to it to help you to be glorified. But 
 to very domestic people and utter Philistines, domestic life 
 lacks the charm of a brass band, and the mirrors and gilding 
 of a restaurant or hotel ; therefore, what they themselves en 
 joy most, they, with best intent, but most unwisely, inflict on 
 
LIFE ON THE PRESS. 351 
 
 more civilised folk. But in America and England, where 
 home-life is worth living and abounding in every attraction, 
 and public saloons are at a discount, the case is reversed. 
 And in these Western towns, of which many were, so to 
 speak, almost within hearing of the whoop of the savage or 
 the howl of the wolf (as Leavenworth really was), we ex 
 perienced a refinement of true hospitality in homes kind 
 ness and tact such as I have never known to be equalled save 
 in Great Britain. One evening I was at a house in St. Paul, 
 where I was struck by the beauty, refined manners, and 
 agreeableness of our hostess, who was a real Chippeway or 
 Sioux Indian, and wife of a retired Indian trader. She had 
 been well educated at a Canadian French seminary. 
 
 We were taken over to see the rival city of Minneapolis, 
 of which word my brother Henry said it was a vile grinding 
 up together of Greek and Indian. Minne means water ; 
 Minne-sota, turbid water, and Minne-haha does not signify 
 " laughing," but falling water. This we also visited, and I 
 found it so charming, that I was delighted to think that for 
 once an Indian name had been kept, and that the young 
 ladies of the boarding-schools of St. Paul or Minneapolis 
 had not christened or devilled it " Diana s Bath." 
 
 We were received kindly by the Council of the city of 
 Minneapolis. Half of them had come from the East afflicted 
 with consumption, and all had recovered. But it is necessary 
 to remain there to live. My wife s cousin, Mr. Richard 
 Price, who then owned the great saw-mill next the Fall of 
 St. Anthony, came with this affliction from Philadelphia, and 
 got over it. After six years absence he returned to Phila 
 delphia, and died in six weeks of consumption. Strangely 
 enough, consumption is the chief cause of death among the 
 Indians, but this is due to their careless habits, wearing wet 
 moccasins and the like. 
 
 Now a great question arose. It was necessary for the 
 magnates of our party to go to Duluth, and to do this they 
 must make a seven days journey through the wilderness, 
 
352 MEMOIRS. 
 
 either on a very rough military road cut through the woods 
 during the war, or sometimes on no road at all. Houses or 
 post-stations, often of only one or two rooms, were sometimes 
 a day s journey apart. The question was whether delicate 
 ladies, utterly unaccustomed to anything like hard travel, 
 could take this trip, during which they must endure clouds 
 of mosquitos, put up with camp-cooking, or often none, and 
 otherwise go through privations such as only an Indian or a 
 frontiersman would care to experience ? The entire town of 
 St. Paul, and all the men of our party, vigorously opposed 
 taking the ladies, while I, joining the latter, insisted on it 
 that they could go ; for, as I said to all assembled, where 
 the devil is afraid to go he sends a woman ; and I had always 
 observed that in travelling, long after men are tired out 
 women are generally all right. They are never more played 
 out than they r want to be. 
 
 " Femme plaint, femme deult, 
 Femme est malade quand elle veult, 
 Et par Sainte Marie ! 
 Quand elle veult elle est guerye." 
 
 And of course we carried the day. Twelve men, even 
 though backed up by a city council, have no chance against any 
 ten women. To be sure women, like all other savages, re 
 quire a male leader I mean to say, just as Goorkha troops, 
 though brave as lions, must have an English captain so they 
 conquered under my guidance ! 
 
 Having had experience in fitting out for the wilderness, I 
 was requested to see to the stores so many hams to so many 
 people for so many days, so much coffee, and so forth. I 
 astonished all by insisting that there should be one tin cup 
 to every traveller. "Every glass you have will soon be 
 broken," I said. And so it was, sooner than I expected. As 
 tin cups could not be found in St. Paul, we bought three or 
 four dozen small tin basins of about six inches diameter at 
 the rim, and when champagne was served out it wa&,faute 
 de mieuX) drunk from these eccentric goblets. 
 
LIFE ON THE PRESS. 353 
 
 In the first waggon were Mr. and Mrs. Thompson and 
 Mrs. Leland. Their driver was a very eccentric Canadian 
 Frenchman named Louis. He was to the last degree polite 
 to the ladies, but subject to attacks of Indian rage at mere 
 trifles, when he would go aside, swear, and destroy something 
 like a lunatic in a fury, and then return quite happy and 
 serene. I was in the second waggon with three ladies, a man 
 being wanted in every vehicle. Our driver was named 
 George, and he was altogether like Brigham, minus the 
 Mexican-Spanish element. George had, however, also lived 
 a great deal among Indians, and been at the great battle of 
 the Chippeways and Sioux, and was full of interesting and 
 nai ve discourse. 
 
 Of course, we of the two leading waggons all talked to 
 Louis in French, who gave himself great airs on it. One 
 morning George asked me in confidence, " Mr. Leland, you re 
 not all French, are you ? " " Certainly not," I replied ; " we re 
 from Philadelphia." "Well," replied George, "so I told 
 Louis, but he says you are French, like him, and shut me up 
 by askin me if I hadn t heard you talkin it. Now what I 
 want to know is, if you re not French, how came the whole 
 of you to know it? " I explained to George, to his astonish 
 ment, that in the East it was usual for all well-educated per 
 sons, especially ladies, to learn it. I soon became as intimate 
 with George as I had been with Brigham, and began to learn 
 Chippeway of him, and greet the Indians whom we met. 
 One day George said 
 
 " Of course you have no Indian blood in you, Mr. Leland ; 
 but weren t you a great deal among em when you were young?" 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " Because you ve got queer little old Injun ways. When 
 ever you stop by the roadside to talk to anybody and sit 
 down, you always rake the small bits of wood together and 
 pull out a match and make a smudge " (a very smoky fire 
 made by casting dust on it), " just like an Indian in an Injun 
 kind of way." (In after years I found this same habit of 
 
354: MEMOIRS. 
 
 making fires of small bits of wood peculiar to old English 
 gypsies.) 
 
 The smudge is the great summer institution of Minne 
 sota. It is the safeguard against mosquitos. They are all 
 over the State in such numbers that they constitute a plague. 
 We all wore all the time over our faces and necks a kind of 
 guard or veil, shaped exactly like an Egyptian fanous or 
 folding lantern. It is cylindrical, made of tulle or coarse 
 lace, with rings. At every house people sat in the porticos 
 over a tin bucket, in which there was a smudge that is to 
 say, in smoke. In the evening some one goes with a tin or 
 iron pail containing a smudge, and fills the bedrooms with 
 dense smoke. One evening Mr. Hinckley and another of our 
 party went fishing without veils. They returned with their 
 necks behind swollen up as if with goitres or Kropfe. I knew 
 a young Englishman who with friends, somewhere beyond 
 Manitoba, encountered such a storm of mosquitos that their 
 oxen were killed, and the party saved themselves by riding 
 away on horseback. So he told me. 
 
 At the stations all log-houses the ladies collected pil 
 lows and buifalo blankets, and, making a great bed, all slept 
 in one room. We men slept in waggons or under a tent, 
 which was not quite large enough for all. The Indian 
 women cut spruce twigs and laid them over-lapping on the 
 ground for our bed. By preference I took the outside, al 
 fresco. One night we stayed at a house which had an upper 
 and a lower storey. The ladies camped upstairs. In the 
 morning, when we men below awoke, all took a drink of 
 whisky. There entered a very tall Indian, clad in a long 
 black blanket, who looked on very approvingly at the drink 
 ing. I called to my wife above to hand me down my 
 whisky flask. " There is a big Indian here who wants a 
 drink," I remarked. " I think I know," she replied, " who 
 that big Indian is," but handed down the flask. " Don t 
 waste whisky on an Indian" said one of my companions. 
 But I filled the cup with a tremendous slug, and handed it 
 
LIFE ON THE PRESS. 355 
 
 to the Objibway. He took it down like milk, and never a 
 word spoke he, but when it was swallowed he looked at me 
 and winked. Such a wink as that was ! I think I sec it 
 now so inspired with gratitude and humour as to render all 
 words needless. He had a rare sense of tact and gratitude. 
 Soon after I was sitting out of doors among a few ladies, 
 when the Indian, who had divined that I was short of Chip- 
 peway and wished to learn, stalked up, and pointing to our 
 beauty, said gravely, squoali i. e., woman. Then he indi 
 cated several other articles, told me the Indian name for 
 each, and walked away. It was all he could do. The ladies, 
 who could not imagine why this voluntary lesson was given 
 to me, were much amused at it. But / understood it ; he had 
 seen the Injun in me at a glance, and knew what I wanted 
 most ! 
 
 One night we stopped at a place called Kettle River. It 
 was very picturesque. Over the rushing stream the high 
 rocky banks actually overhung the water. I got into a birch 
 canoe with my wife, and two Indian boys paddled us, while 
 others made a great fire on the cliff above, which illuminated 
 the scene. Other Indian youths jumped into the water and 
 swam about and skylarked, whooping wildly. It reminded me 
 strangely of the Blue Grotto of Capri, where our boatmen 
 jumped in and swam in a sulphur-azure glow, only that this 
 was red in the firelight. 
 
 Our whisky ran short it always does on all such excur 
 sions and our drivers in consequence became very " short " 
 also, or rather unruly. But bon cliemin, mal chcmin, we 
 went on, and the ladies, as I had predicted, pulled through 
 merrily. 
 
 One day, at a halt, I found, with the ladies, in the woods 
 by a stream, a pretty sight. It was a wigwam, which was 
 very open, and which had been made to look like a bower 
 with green boughs. When I was in the artillery I was the only 
 person who ever thus adorned our tent in Indian style. It is 
 very pleasant on a warm day, and looks artistic. In the wig- 
 
356 MEMOIRS. 
 
 warn sat a pretty Indian woman with a babe. The ladies 
 were, of course, at once deeply interested, but the Indian 
 could not speak English. One of the ladies had a common 
 Japanese fan, with the picture of a grotesque god, and I at 
 once saw my way to interest our hostess. 
 
 I once read in the journal of a missionary s wife in Can 
 ada that she had a curious Malay or Cingalese dagger, with 
 a curved blade and wooden sheath, while on the handle was 
 the figure of an idol. One day she showed this to an Indian, 
 and the next day he came with five more, and these again 
 with fifteen, till it seemed as if the whole country had gone 
 wild over it. Very much alarmed at such heathenism, the 
 lady locked it up and would show it no more. Ere she did 
 so, she asked an old Indian how it was possible to make a 
 scabbard of one piece of wood, with a hole in it to fit the 
 blade. This man, who had been one of the most devoted 
 admirers of the deity on the handle, saw no puzzle in this. 
 He explained that the hole was burned in by heating the 
 blade. 
 
 I showed the god on the fan to the Indian woman, and 
 said, " Manitu ktchee manitu" ("a god a great god"). 
 She saw at once that it was heathen, and her heart went 
 out unto it with great delight. With a very few Chippeway 
 words and many signs I explained to her that forty days 
 journey from us was the sea, and forty days beyond another 
 country where the people had this manitou. I believe that the 
 lady gave her the fan, and it may be that she worships it to 
 this day. How absurd it is to try to force on such people 
 Catholic or Protestant forms, which they do not understand 
 and never will, while their souls take in with joy the poly- 
 pantheistic developments of supernaturalism, and that which 
 suits their lives. Like the little boy who thought he would 
 like to have a Testament, but Tcnew he wanted a squirt, the 
 Indian, unable to rise to the grandeur of monotheistic trini- 
 tarianism, is delighted with goblins, elves, and sorcery. He 
 can manage the squirt. 
 
LIFE ON THE PRESS. 357 
 
 At Fond-du-Lac I became acquainted with a Mr. Duffy, 
 a very genial and clever man, a son of a former governor of 
 Rhode Island. He had an Indian wife and family, and was 
 looked up to by the Indians as Kitchimokomon, " the white 
 man." That he was a gentleman will appear from the fol 
 lowing incident. There was one of our party who, to put it 
 mildly, was not remarkable for refinement. A trader at 
 Fond-dn-Lac had a very remarkable carved Indian pipe, for 
 which he asked me fifteen dollars. It certainly was rather a 
 high price, so I offered ten. Immediately the man of whom 
 I spoke laid down fifteen dollars and took the pipe. He was 
 dans son droit, but the action was churlish. It seemed so to 
 Duffy, who was standing by. After I had returned to Phila 
 delphia, Mr. Duffy sent me a very handsome pipe for a pres 
 ent, which he assured me had been smoked at two grand 
 councils. He was indeed a " white man." 
 
 There was an old Indian here whose name in In 
 dian meant " He who changes his position while sitting," 
 but white people called him Martin "for short." He was 
 wont to smoke a very handsome pipe. One day, seeing him 
 smoking a wretched affair rudely hewn, I askdd him if he 
 had not a better. He replied, " I had, but I sold it to the 
 kcheemo-komon iqueh "the long-knife woman (i. e., to a 
 white lady). Inquiry proved that the "long-knife woman" 
 was Miss Lottie Foster, a very beautiful and delicate young 
 lady from Philadelphia, to whom such a barbaric term seemed 
 strangely applied. As for me, because I always bought every 
 stone pipe which I could get, the Indians called me Poaugun 
 or Pipe. Among the Algonkin of the East in after-days I 
 had a name which means he who seeks hidden things (i. e., 
 mysteries). 
 
 We came to Duluth. There were in those days exactly 
 six houses and twenty-six Indian wigwams. However, we 
 were all accommodated somehow. Here there were grand 
 conferences of the railroad kings with the authorities of Du 
 luth and Superior City, which was a few miles distant, and 
 
358 MEMOIRS. 
 
 as the Dulutherans outbid the Father Superiors, the terminus 
 of the road was fixed at Duluth. 
 
 It was arranged that the ladies should remain at Duluth, 
 while we, the men, were to go through the woods to examine 
 a situation a day s march distant. We had Indians to carry 
 our luggage. Every man took a blanket and a cord, put his 
 load into it, turned the ends over the cord, and then drew it 
 up like a bag. They carried very easily from 150 to 250 Ibs. 
 weight for thirty miles a day over stock and stone, up and 
 down steep banks or amid rotten crumbling trees and moss. 
 Though a good walker, I could not keep up with them. 
 
 I had with me a very genial and agreeable man as walk 
 ing companion. His name was Stewart, and he was mayor, 
 chief physician, and filled half-a-dozen other leading capaci 
 ties in St. Paul. Our fellow-travellers vanished in the for 
 est. Mayor Stewart and I with one Indian carrier found 
 ourselves at two o clock very thirsty indeed. The view was 
 beautiful enough. A hundred yards below us by the steep 
 precipice rushed the St. Lawrence, but we could not get at 
 it to drink. 
 
 Stewart threw himself on the grass in despair. " Yes," 
 he cried, " we re lost in the wilderness, and I m going to die 
 of thirst. Remember me to my family. " I say," he sud 
 denly cried, " ask that Injun the name of that river." 
 
 I asked of the Indian, " Wa go nin-iu 9 " (" How do you 
 call that ? ") Thinking I wanted to know the name for a 
 stream, he replied, " Sebe" This is the same as sipi in 
 Missis-sippi. 
 
 " I knew it," groaned Stewart. " There is no such river 
 as the Sebe laid down on the map. We re lost in an unknown 
 region." 
 
 "It occurs to me," I said, "that this is a judgment on 
 me. When I think of the number of times in my life when 
 I have walked past bar-rooms and neglected to go in and take 
 a drink, I must think that it is a retribution." 
 
 " And I say," replied Stewart, " that if you ever do get 
 
LIFE ON THE PRESS. 350 
 
 back to civilisation, you ll be the old toper that ever 
 
 was." 
 
 When we came to the camp we found there by mere 
 chance a large party of surveyors. As there were thirty or 
 forty of us, it was resolved, as so many white men had never 
 before been in that region, to constitute a township and elect 
 a member to the Legislature, or Congress, or something I 
 forget what ; but it appeared that it was legal, and it was 
 actually done I voting with the rest as a settler. I, too, am 
 a Minnesot. 
 
 We railroad people formed one party and sat at our even 
 ing meal by ourselves, the surveyors made another, and the 
 Indians a third table-cThote. An open tin of oysters was be 
 fore us, and somebody said they were not good. One only 
 needs say so to ruin the character of an oyster and too often 
 of " a human bivalve," as the Indiana orator said. We were 
 about to pitch it away, when I asked the attendant to give it 
 to the Indians. It was gravely passed by them from man 
 to man till it came to the last, who lifted it to his mouth 
 and drank off the entire quart, oysters and all, as if it 
 had been so much cider. Amazed at this, I asked what it 
 meant, but the only explanation I could get was, " He like 
 um oyster." 
 
 This was a charming excursion, all through the grene 
 wode wilde, and I enjoyed it. I had Indian society, and 
 learned Indian talk, and bathed in charming rushing waters, 
 and saw enormous pine trees 300 feet high, and slept alfresco, 
 and ate ad libitum. To this day its remembrance inspires in 
 me a feeling of deep, true poetry. 
 
 I think it was at Duluth that one morning there was 
 brought in an old silver cross which had just been found in 
 an Indian grave on the margin of the lake, not very far away. 
 I went there with some others. It was evidently the grave 
 of some distinguished man who had been buried about a hun 
 dred years ago. There were the decayed remains of an old- 
 fashioned gun, and thousands of small beads adhering, still 
 
360 MEMOIRS. 
 
 in pattern, to the tibice. I dug up myself in fact they al 
 most lay on the surface, the sand being blown away several 
 silver bangles, which at first looked exactly like birch-bark 
 peelings, and, what I very much prized, two or three stone 
 cylinders or tubes, about half an inch in diameter, with a 
 bole through them. Antiquaries have been much puzzled 
 over these, some thinking that they were musical instru 
 ments, others implements for gambling. My own theory 
 always was that they were used for smoking tobacco, and as 
 those which I found were actually stuffed full of dried semi- 
 decayed " fine cut," I still hold to it. I also purchased from 
 a boy a red stone pipe-head, which was found in the same 
 grave. I should here say that the pipe which had been 
 bought away from me by the man above mentioned had on 
 it the carving of a reindeer, which rendered it to me alone of 
 living men peculiarly valuable, since I have laboured hard, 
 and subsequently set forth in my " Algonkin Legends " the 
 theory that the Algonkin Indians went far to the North and 
 there mingled with the Norsemen of Greenland and Labra 
 dor. The man who got the pipe promised to leave it to me 
 when he died, but he departed from life and never kept his 
 word. A frequent source of grief to me has been to see ob 
 jects of great value, illustrating some point in archaeology, 
 seized as " curiosities " by ignorant wealthy folk. The most 
 detestable form of this folly is the buying of incunabula, first 
 editions or uncut copies, and keeping them from publication 
 or reading, and, in short, of worshipping anything, be it a 
 book or a coin, merely because it is rare. Men never ex 
 patiate on rariora in literature or in china, or talk cookery 
 and wines over-much, without showing themselves prigs. It 
 is not any beauty in the thing, but the delightful sense of 
 their own culture or wealth which they cultivate. When 
 there is nothing in a thing but mere rarity and cost to com 
 mend it, it is absolutely worthless, as is the learning and con- 
 noisseurship thereupon dependent. 
 
 Business concluded, we took a steamboat, and were very 
 
LIFE ON THE PRESS. 3d 
 
 sea-sick on Lake Superior for twenty-four hours. Then we 
 went to the Isle Royale, and saw the mines, which had been 
 worked even by the ancient Mexicans ; also an immense mass 
 of amethysts. The country here abounds in agates. At Mar- 
 quette there was brought on board a single piece of pure vir 
 gin copper from the mine which weighed more than 4,000 
 pounds. There it was, I think, that we found our cars wait 
 ing, and returned in them to Philadelphia. 
 
 It was at this time that my brother Henry died, and his 
 loss inflicted on me a terrible mental blow, which went far, 
 subsequently, to bring about a great crisis in my health. My 
 dear brother was the most remarkable illustration of the fact 
 that there are men who, by no fault of their own, and who, 
 despite the utmost honour or integrity, deep intelligence, 
 good education, and varied talents, are overshadowed all 
 their lives by sorrow, and meet ill-luck at every turn. He 
 went at sixteen as employe into a Cuban importing house, 
 where he learned Spanish. His principal failed, and thence 
 he passed to a store in New York, where he worked far too 
 hard for $600 a year. His successor, who did much less, was 
 immediately paid $2,500 per annum. Finding that his em 
 ployer was being secretly ruined by his partner, he warned 
 the former, but only with the result of being severely repri 
 manded by the merchant and my father as a mischief-maker. 
 After a while this merchant was absolutely ruined and bank 
 rupted by his partner, as he himself declared to me, but, like 
 many men, still kept his rancune against my poor brother. 
 By this time the eyesight and health of Henry quite gave out 
 for some time. Every effort which he made, whether to get 
 employment, to become artist or writer, failed. He published 
 two volumes of tales, sporting sketches, &c., with Lippincott, 
 in Philadelphia, which are remarkable for originality. One 
 of them was subsequently written out by another distin 
 guished author in another form. I do not say it was after 
 my brother s, for I have known another case in which two 
 men, having heard a story from Barnum, both published it, 
 
362 MEMOIRS. 
 
 ignorant that the other had done so. But I would declare, in 
 justice to my brother, that he told this story, which I am sure 
 the reader knows, quite as well as did the other. 
 
 He travelled a great deal, was eighteen months in Rome 
 and its vicinity, visited Algeria, Egypt, and Cuba and the 
 West, always spending so little money that my father ex 
 pressed his amazement at it. I regret to say that in my 
 youth I never astonished him in this way. But this morbid 
 conscientiousness or delicacy as to being dependent did him 
 no good, for he might just as well have been thoroughly com 
 fortable, and my father would never have missed it. The 
 feeling that he could get no foothold in life, which had long 
 troubled me, became a haunting spectre which followed him 
 to the grave. His work " Americans in Rome " is one of the 
 cleverest, most sparkling, and brilliant works of humour, 
 without a trace of vulgarity, ever written in America. It 
 had originally some such title as " Studios and Mountains," 
 but the publisher, thinking that the miserable clap-trap title of 
 " Americans in Rome " would create an impression that there 
 was " gossip," and possibly scandal, in it, insisted on that. It 
 was published in the weary panic of 1862 in the war, and fell 
 dead from the press. Though he never really laughed, and 
 was generally absolutely grave, my brother had an incredibly 
 keen sense of fun, and in conversation could far outmaster 
 or " walk over the head " of any humorist whom I ever met. 
 He was very far, however, from showing off or being a pro 
 fessional wit. He was very fond, when talking with men 
 who considered themselves clever, of making jests or puns 
 in such a manner and in such an unaffected ordinary tone of 
 voice that they took no note of the quodlibets. He enjoyed 
 this much more than causing a laugh or being complimented. 
 But taking his life through, he was simply unfortunate in 
 everything, and his worst failures were when he made wisely 
 directed energetic efforts to benefit himself or others. He 
 rarely complained or grieved, having in him a deep fond of 
 what I, for want of a better term, call Indian nature, or 
 
LIFE ON THE PRESS. 363 
 
 stoicism, which is common in Americans, and utterly incom 
 prehensible to, or rarely found in, a European. 
 
 The death of my father left me a fifth of his property, 
 which was afterwards somewhat augmented by a fourth 
 share of my poor brother s portion. For one year I drew 
 no money from the inheritance, but went on living as before 
 on my earnings, so that my wife remarked it really took me 
 a year to realise that I had any money. After some months 
 I bought a house in Locust Street, just opposite to where 
 my father had lived, and in this house I remained six months 
 previously to going to Europe in 1869. We had coloured 
 servants, and I never in all my life, before or since, lived so 
 well as during this time. The house was well furnished ; 
 there was even the great luxury of no piano, which is a great 
 condition of happiness. 
 
 This year I was fearfully busy. As I had taken the dra 
 matic criticism in hand, for which alone we had always em 
 ployed a man, I went during twelve months 140 times to the 
 opera, and every evening to several theatres, et cetera. Once 
 I was caught beautifully. There had been an opera bouffe, 
 the " Grande Duchesse " or something, running for two or 
 three weeks, and I had written a criticism on it. This was 
 laid over by " press of matter," but as the same play was an 
 nounced for the next night with the same performers, we 
 published the critique. But it so chanced that the opera by 
 some accident was not played ! The Evening Bulletin, my 
 old paper, rallied me keenly on this blunder, and I felt 
 badly. John Forney, jun., however, said it was mere rub 
 bish of no consequence. He was such an arrant Bohemian 
 and hardened son of the press, that he regarded it rather as 
 a joke and a feather in our caps, indicating that we were a 
 bounding lot, and not tied down to close observances. Truly 
 this is a very fine spirit of freedom, but it may be carried too 
 far, as I think it was by a friend of mine, who had but one 
 principle in life, and that was never to write his newspaper 
 correspondence in the place from which it was dated. It 
 
364: MEMOIRS. 
 
 came to pass that about three weeks after this retribution 
 overtook the Bulletin, for it also published a review of an 
 opera which was not sung, but I meanly passed the occur 
 rence by without comment. When a man hits you, it is far 
 more generous, manly, and fraternal to hit him back a good 
 blow than to degrade him by silent contempt. 
 
 The Presidential campaign between Grant and Johnson 
 was beginning to warm up. Colonel Forney was in a cy 
 clone of hard work between Washington, Pennsylvania, and 
 New York, carrying on a thousand plots and finely or 
 coarsely drawn intrigues, raising immense sums, speaking in 
 public, and, not to put it too finely, buying or trading votes 
 in a thousand tortuous or " mud-turtlesome and possum-like 
 ways" for non possumus was not in his Latin. Never 
 shall I forget the disgust and indignation with which the 
 great Republican champion entered the office one evening, 
 and, flinging himself on a chair, declared that votes in New 
 Jersey had gone up to sixty dollars a head ! And I was 
 forced to admit that sixty dollars for a Jerseyman did seem 
 to be an exorbitant price. So he went forth on the war-path 
 with fresh paint and a sharp tomahawk. 
 
 It often happened to me in his absence to have very cu 
 rious and critical decisions in my power. One of these is the 
 " reading in " or " reading out " of a man from his party. 
 This is invariably done by a leading political newspaper. I 
 remember, for instance, a man who had been very prominent 
 in politics, and gone over to the Democrats, imploring me to 
 readmit him to the fold ; but, as I regarded him as a mere 
 office-hunter, I refused to do it. Excommunicatus sit! 
 
 There was a very distinguished and able man in a very 
 high position. To him I had once addressed a letter begging 
 a favour which would have been nothing at all to grant, but 
 which was of great importance to me, and he had taken no 
 notice of it. It came to pass that we had in our hands to 
 publish certain very damaging charges against this great 
 man. He found it out, and, humiliated, I may say agonised 
 
LIFE ON THE PRESS. 365 
 
 with shame and fear, he called with a friend, begging that 
 the imputations might not be published. I believe from my 
 soul that if I had not been so badly treated by him I should 
 have refused his request, but, as it was, I agreed to withdraw 
 the charges. It was the very best course, as I afterwards 
 found. I am happy to say that, in after years, and in other 
 lands, he showed himself very grateful to me. I am by na 
 ture as vindictive as an unconverted Indian, and as I am 
 deeply convinced that it is vile and wicked, I fight vigor 
 ously against it. In my Illustrated Neivs days in New York 
 I used to keep an old German hymn pasted up before me in 
 the sanctum to remind me not to be revengeful. Out of all 
 such battling of opposing principles come good results. I 
 feel this in another form in the warring within me of super 
 stitious feelings and scientific convictions. 
 
 It became apparent that on Pennsylvania depended the 
 election of President. The State had only been prevented 
 from turning Copperhead-Democrat which was the same 
 as seceding by the incredible exertions of the Union 
 League, led by George H. Boker, and the untiring aid of 
 Colonel Forney. But even now it was very uncertain, and 
 in fact the election on which the very existence of the 
 Union virtually depended was turned by only a few hun 
 dred votes ; and, as Colonel Forney and George H. Boker 
 admitted, it would have been lost but for what I am going to 
 narrate. 
 
 There were many thousand Eepublican Clubs all through 
 the State, but they had no one established official organ or 
 newspaper. This is of vast importance, because such an or 
 gan is sent to doubtful voters in large numbers, and gives the 
 keynote or clue for thousands of speeches and to men stump 
 ing or arguing. It occurred to me early to make the Weekly 
 Press this organ. I employed a young man to go to the 
 League and copy all the names and addresses of all the thou 
 sands of Republican clubs in the State. Then I had the 
 paper properly endorsed by the League, and sent a copy to 
 
366 MEMOIRS. 
 
 every club at cost price or for nothing. This proved to be a 
 tremendous success. It cost us money, but Colonel Forney 
 never cared for that, and he greatly admired the coup. I 
 made the politics hot, to suit country customers. I found 
 the gun and Colonel Forney the powder and ball, and be 
 tween us we made a hit. 
 
 One day Frank Wells, of the Bulletin (very active indeed 
 in the Union League), met me and asked if I, since I had 
 lived in New York, could tell them anything as to what kind 
 of a man George Francis Train really was. " He has come 
 over all at once," he said, " from the Democratic party, and 
 wishes to stump Pennsylvania, if we will pay him his ex 
 penses." I replied 
 
 " I know Train personally, and understand him better 
 than most men. He is really a very able speaker for a popu 
 lar American audience, and will be of immense service if 
 rightly managed. But you must get some steady, sensible 
 man to go with him and keep him in hand and regulate ex 
 penses, &c." 
 
 It was done. After the election I conversed with the one 
 who had been the bear-leader, and he said 
 
 " It was an immense success. Train made thousands of 
 votes, and was a most effective speaker. His mania for 
 speaking was incredible. One day, after addressing two or 
 three audiences at different towns, we stopped at another to 
 dine. While waiting for the soup, I heard a voice as of a 
 public speaker, and looking out, saw Train standing on a 
 load of hay, addressing a thousand admiring auditors." 
 
 There are always many men who claim to have carried 
 every Presidential election the late Mr. Guiteau was one of 
 these geniuses but it is also true that there are many who 
 would by not working have produced very great changes. 
 Forney was a mighty wire-puller, if not exactly before the 
 Lord, at least before the elections, and he opined that I had 
 secured the success. There were certainly other men e. g., 
 Peacock, who influenced as many votes as the Weekly Press^ 
 
LIFE ON THE PRESS. 367 
 
 and George Francis Train without whose aid Pennsylvania 
 and Grant s election would have been lost, but it is something 
 to have been one of the few who did it. 
 
 When General Grant came in, he resolved to have nothing 
 to do with " corrupt old politicians," even though they had 
 done him the greatest service. So he took up with a lot of 
 doubly corrupt young ones, who were only inferior to the 
 veterans in ability. Colonel Forney was snubbed cruelly, in 
 order to rob him. Whatever he had done wrongly, he had 
 done his ivork rightly, and if Grant intended to throw his 
 politicians overboard, he should have informed them of it 
 before availing himself of their services. His conduct was 
 like that of the old lady who got a man to saw three cords of 
 wood for her, and then refused to pay him because he had 
 been divorced. 
 
 I had never in my life asked for an office from anybody. 
 Mr. Charles A. Dana once said that the work I did for the 
 Kepublican party on Vanity Fair alone was worth a foreign 
 mission, and that was a mere trifle to what I did with the 
 Continental Magazine, my pamphlet, &c. When Grant was 
 President, I petitioned that a little consulate worth $1,000 
 (200) might be given to a poor Episcopal clergyman, but a 
 man accustomed to consular work, who spoke French, and 
 who had been secretary to two commodores. It was for a 
 small French town. It was supported by Forney and George 
 H. Boker ; but it was refused because I was " in Forney s 
 set," and the consulate was given to a Western man who did 
 not know French. 
 
 If John Forney, instead of using all his immense influ 
 ence for Grant, had opposed him tooth and nail, he could 
 not have been treated with more scornful neglect. The pre 
 tence for this was that Forney had defaulted $40,000! I 
 know every detail of the story, and it is this : While Forney 
 was in Europe, an agent to whom he had confided his affairs 
 did take money to that amount. As soon as Forney learned 
 this, he promptly raised $40,000 by mortgage on his prop- 
 
368 MEMOIRS. 
 
 erty, and repaid the deficit. Even his enemy Simon Cam 
 eron declared he did not believe the story, and the engine of 
 Ms revenge was always run by " one hundred Injun power." 
 
 I had " met " Grant several times, when one day in Lon 
 don I was introduced to him again. He said that he was 
 very happy to make my acquaintance. I replied, " General 
 Grant, I have had the pleasure of being introduced to you 
 six times already, and I hope for many happy renewals of it." 
 A week or two after, this appeared in Puncli, adapted to a 
 professor and a duchess. 
 
 When the Sanitary Fair was held in Philadelphia in 1863, 
 a lady in New York wrote to Garibaldi, begging him for 
 some personal souvenir to be given to the charity. Garibaldi 
 replied by actually sending the dagger which he had carried 
 in every engagement, expressing in a letter a hope that it 
 might pass to General Grant. But a warm partisan of Mc- 
 Clellan so arranged it that there should be an election for 
 the dagger between the partisans of Grant and McClellan, 
 every one voting to pay a dollar to the Fair. For a long 
 time the McOlellanites were in a majority, but at the last 
 hour Miss Anna M. Lea, now Mrs. Lea Merritt, very cleverly 
 brought down a party of friends, who voted for Grant, secured 
 the dagger for him, and so carried out the wish of Garibaldi. 
 Long after an amusing incident occurred relative to this. 
 In conversation in London with Mrs. Grant, I asked her if 
 the dagger had been received. She replied, " Oh, yes," and 
 then added naively, " but wasn t it really all a humbug f " 
 
 The death of my father and brother within a year, the 
 sudden change in my fortunes, the Presidential campaign, 
 and, above all, the working hard seven days in the week, had 
 been too much for me. I began to find, little by little, that 
 I could not execute half the work to which I was accustomed. 
 Colonel Forney was very kind indeed, and never said a word. 
 But I began to apprehend that a break-down in my health 
 was impending. I needed change of scene, and so resolved, 
 finding, after due consideration, that I had enough to live on, 
 
LIFE ON THE PRESS. 3G9 
 
 to go abroad for a long rest. It proved to be a very wise re 
 solve. So I rented my house, packed my trunks, and depart 
 ed, to be gone " for a year or two." 
 
 I would say, in concluding this chapter, that Colonel John 
 Forney was universally credited, with perfect justice, as hav 
 ing carried Grant s election. When Grant was about to deliver 
 his inaugural speech, a stranger who stood by me, looking at 
 the immense expectant crowd, remarked to a friend, " This 
 is a proud day for John Forney ! " " Yes," replied the other, 
 " the Dead Duck has elected Grant." But Forney cheerfully 
 and generously declared that it was the Weekly Press which 
 had carried Pennsylvania, and that I had managed it entirely 
 alone. All these things were known to thousands at the time, 
 but we lived in such excitement that we made but little ac 
 count thereof. However, there are men of good repute still 
 living who will amply confirm all that I have said of my work 
 on the Continental Magazine; and that Abraham Lincoln 
 himself did actually credit me with this is proved by the fol 
 lowing incident. Because I had so earnestly advocated Eman 
 cipation as a war measure at a time when even the most fiery 
 and advanced Abolition papers, such as the Tribune, were 
 holding back and shouting pas trop de zele and as it proved 
 wisely, by advocating it publicly merely as a war measure 
 the President, at the request of George H. Boker, actually 
 signed for me fifty duplicate very handsome copies of the 
 Proclamation of Emancipation on parchment paper, to every 
 one of which Mr. Seward also added his signature. One of 
 these is now hanging up in the British Museum as my gift. 
 I perfectly understood and knew at the time, as did all con 
 cerned, that this was a recognition, and a very graceful and 
 appropriate one, of what I had done for Emancipation 
 Harvard having A.M. d me for the same. The copies I pre 
 sented to the Sanitary Fair to be sold for its benefit, but there 
 was not much demand for them ; what were left over I divided 
 with George Boker. 
 
VII. 
 EUROPE REVISITED. 
 
 1869-1870. 
 
 Voyage on the Pereire General Washburne I am offered a command 
 in another French Revolution Paris J. Meredith Read and Pre- 
 vost Paradol My health Spa J. C. Hotten Octave Delepierre 
 Heidelberg Dresden Julian Hawthorne and G. Lathrop Verona 
 Venice Rome W. W. Story Florence Lorimer Graham 
 " Breitmann " in the Royal Family Tuscany. 
 
 WE sailed on the famed Pereire from New York to Brest 
 in May, 1869. We had not left port before a droll incident 
 occurred. On the table in the smoking-room lay a copy of 
 the " Ballads of Hans Breitmann." A fellow-passenger asked 
 me, " Is that your book ? " I innocently replied, " Yes." 
 " Excuse me, sir," cried another, " it is mine." " I beg your 
 pardon," I replied, " but it is really mine." " Sir, I bought it." 
 " I don t care if you did," I replied ; " it is mine for I wrote 
 it." There was a roar of laughter, and we all became ac 
 quainted at once. 
 
 General Washburne was among the passengers. He had 
 been appointed Minister to France and was going to Paris, 
 where he subsequently distinguished himself during the siege 
 by literally taking the place of seven foreign Ministers who 
 had left, and kindly caring for all their proteges. It never 
 occurred to the old frontiersman to leave a place or his duties 
 because fighting was going on. I had a fine twelve-feet blue 
 Indian blanket, which I had bought somewhere beyond 
 Leavenworth of a trader. When sitting on deck wrapped in 
 it, the General would finger a fold lovingly, and say, " Ah ! 
 the Indians always have good blankets ! " 
 
EUROPE REVISITED. 371 
 
 We arrived in Brest, and Mrs. Leland, who had never 
 before been in Europe, was much pleased at her first sight, 
 early in the morning, of a French city ; the nuns, soldiers, 
 peasants, and all, as seen from our window, were indeed very 
 picturesque. We left that day by railway for Paris, and on 
 the road a rather remarkable incident occurred. There was 
 seated opposite to us a not very amiable-looking man of thirty, 
 who might be of the superior class of mechanics, and who 
 evidently regarded us with an evil eye, either because we were 
 suspected Anglais or aristocrats. I resolved that he should 
 become amicable. Ill-tempered though he might be, he was 
 still polite, for at every stopping-place he got out to smoke, 
 and extinguished his cigar ere he re-entered. I said to him, 
 " Madame begs that you will not inconvenience yourself so 
 much pray continue to smoke in here." This melted him, 
 as it would any Frenchman. Seeing that he was reading the 
 Rappel, I conversed " liberally." I told him that I had been 
 captain of barricades in Forty-eight, and described in full the 
 taking of the Tuileries. His blood was fired, and he con 
 fided to me all the details of a grand plot for a Revolution 
 which he was going up to Paris to attend to, and offered me 
 a prominent place among the conspirators, assuring me that 
 I should have a glorious opportunity to fight again at the 
 barricades ! I was appalled at his want of discretion, but 
 said nothing. Sure enough, there came the emeute of the 
 plebiscite, as he had predicted, but it was suppressed. George 
 Boker wrote to me : " When I heard of a revolution in Paris, 
 I knew at once that you must have arrived and had got to 
 work." And when I told him that I knew of it in advance, 
 and had had a situation offered me as leader, he dryly replied, 
 " Oh, I suppose so as a matter of course." It was certainly 
 a strange coincidence that I left Paris in Forty-eight as a 
 Revolutionary suspect, and re-entered it in 1870 in very nearly 
 the same capacity. 
 
 We found agreeable lodgings at the Rond Point of the 
 Champs Elysees. The day after our arrival 1 determined to 
 
372 MEMOIRS. 
 
 arrange the terms of living with our landlord. He and his 
 wife had the reputation of being fearful screws in their 
 " items." So he, thinking I was a newly arrived and per 
 fectly ignorant American, began to draw the toils, and enu 
 merate so much for the rooms, so much for every towel, so 
 much, I believe, for salt and every spoon and fork. I asked 
 him how much he would charge for everything in the lump. 
 He replied, "Mais, Monsieur, nous ne faisons pas jamais 
 comme cela a Paris" Out of all patience, I burst out into 
 vernacular : " Sacre nom de Dieu et mille tonnerres, vieux 
 galopin ! you dare to tell me, a vieux carabin du Quartier 
 Latin, that you cannot make arrangements ! Et depuisse- 
 quand, s^il vous plait 9 " * He stared at me in blank amaze 
 ment, and then said with a smile : " Tiens ! Monsieur est 
 done de nous ! " " That I am," I replied, and we at once 
 made a satisfactory compromise. 
 
 We had pleasant friends, and saw the sights and shopped ; 
 but I began to feel in Paris for the first time that the dreaded 
 break-down or collapse which I had long apprehended was 
 coming over me. There was a very clever surgeon and 
 physician named Labbrde, who was called Nelaton s right- 
 hand man. I met him several times, and he observed to a 
 mutual friend that I was evidently suffering seriously from 
 threatening nervous symptoms, and that he would like to 
 attend me. He did so, and gave me daily a teaspoonful of 
 bromide of potassium. This gave me sleep and appetite; 
 but, after some weeks or months, the result was a settled, 
 mild melancholy and tendency to rest. In fact, it was nearly 
 eighteen months before I recovered so that I could write or 
 work, and live as of old. 
 
 I had inherited from both parents, and suffered all my 
 life fearfully at intervals, from brachycephalic or dorsal 
 neuralgia. Dr. Laborde made short work of this by giving 
 me appallingly strong doses of tincture of aconite and sul- 
 
 * For depuisse-quand, vide Paul de Kock. 
 
EUROPE REVISITED. 373 
 
 pliate of quinine. Chemists have often been amazed at the 
 prescription. But in due time the trouble quite disappeared, 
 and I now, laus Deo ! very rarely ever have a touch of it. 
 As many persons suffer terribly from this disorder, which is 
 an aching in the back of the head and neck accompanied by 
 "sick headache," I give the ingredients of the cure; the 
 proper quantity must be determined by the physician.* 
 
 We dined once with Mr. Washburne, who during dinner 
 showed his extreme goodness of heart in a very characteristic 
 manner. Some foolish American had during the emeute in 
 which I was to have been a leader, had I so willed got him 
 self into trouble, not by fighting, but through mere prying 
 Yankee "curiosity" and mingling with the crowd. Such 
 people really deserve to be shot more than any others, for 
 they get in the way and spoil good fighting. He was de 
 servedly arrested, and sent for his Minister, who, learning it, 
 at once arose, drove to the prefecture, and delivered his in 
 quisitive compatriot. On another occasion we were the guests 
 of J. Meredith Read, then our Minister to Athens, where we 
 met Prevost Paradol. But at this time there suddenly came 
 over me a distaste for operas, theatres, dinners, society in 
 short, of crowds, gaslight, and gaiety in any form, from which 
 I have never since quite recovered. I had for years been fear 
 fully overdoing it all in America, and now I was in the re 
 action, and longed for rest. I was in that state when one 
 could truly say that life would be tolerable but for its amuse 
 ments. It is usual for most people to insist in such cases 
 that what the sufferer needs is " excitement " and " distrac 
 tion of the mind," change of scene or gaiety, when in reality 
 the patient should be most carefully trained to repose, which 
 is not always easily done, for so very little attention has been 
 
 * On due reflection, I believe that I have here had a slip of memory. 
 It was not till after a year, when returning from Italy, that these inci 
 dents occurred. But as it is all strictly true in every detail, I let it 
 remain, as of little consequence. 
 17 
 
374 MEMOIRS. 
 
 paid to this great truth, that even medical science as yet can 
 do very little towards calming nervous disorders. In most 
 cases the trouble lies in the presence, or unthinking heedless 
 influence, of other people ; and, secondly, in the absence of 
 interesting minor occupations or arts, such as keep the mind 
 busy, yet not over-excited or too deeply absorbed. An im 
 portant element in such cases is to interest deeply the patient 
 in himself as a vicious subject to be subdued by his own ex 
 ertions. No one who has never had the gout severely can 
 form any conception of the terribly arrogant irritability which 
 accompanies it. I say arrogant, because it is independent 
 of any voluntary action of the mind. I have often felt it 
 raging in me, and laughed at it, as if it were a chained wild 
 beast, and conversed with perfect serenity. Unfortunately, 
 even our dearest friends, generally women, cannot, to save their 
 very lives and souls, refrain from having frequent piquant 
 scenes with such tempting subjects ; while, on the other hand, 
 the subjects are often led by mere vanity into exhibiting 
 themselves as something peculiar. Altogether, I believe 
 that where there is no deeply seated hereditary or congenital 
 defect, or no displacement or injury from violence or disease, 
 there is always a cure to be hoped for, or at least possible ; 
 but this cure depends in many cases so very much upon the 
 wisdom and patience of friends and physicians, that it is only 
 remarkable that we find so many recoveries as we do. Where 
 the patient and friends are all really persons of superior in 
 telligence, almost miraculous cures may be effected. But 
 unfortunately, if it be not born in us, it requires a great deal 
 of genius to acquire properly the real dolce far niente. 
 
 From Paris we went to Spa in the Ardennes. In this 
 very beautiful place, in a picturesque land of legends, I felt 
 calmer and more relieved. I think it was there that for the 
 first time I got an inkling that my name was becoming 
 known in Europe. There was a beautiful young English 
 lady whom I occasionally met in an artist s studio, who one 
 day asked me with some interest whom the Leland could be 
 
EUROPE REVISITED. 375 
 
 of whom one heard sometimes " he writes books, I think." 
 I told her that I had a brother who had written two or three 
 clever works, and she agreed with me that he must be the 
 man ; still she inclined to think that the name was not 
 Henry, but Charles. 
 
 Mr. Nicolas Triibner, whom I had not seen since 185G, 
 came with his wife and daughter to Spa, and this was the 
 beginning of a great intimacy which lasted to his death. 
 Which meeting reminds me of something amusing. I had 
 written the first third of " Breitmann as a Politician," which 
 J. " Camden " Hotten had republished, promising the public 
 to give them the rest before long. This I prevented by copy 
 righting the two remaining thirds in England ! Being very 
 angry at this, Hotten accused me in print of having written 
 this conclusion expressly to disappoint and injure Mm! In 
 fact, he really seemed to think that Mr. Triibner and I were 
 only a pair of foreign rogues, bound together to wrong Mr. 
 J. C. Hotten out of his higher rights in " Breitmann." I 
 wrote a pamphlet in which I said this and some other things 
 very plainly. Mr. Triibner showed this to his lawyer, who 
 was of the opinion that it could not be published because it 
 bore on libel, though there was nothing in it worse than what 
 I have here said. However, Mr. Triibner had it privately 
 printed, and took great joy, solace, and comfort for a very 
 long time in reading it to his friends after dinner, or on 
 other occasions, and as he had many, it got pretty well about 
 London. I may here very truly remark that Mr. Hotter), in 
 the public controversy which he had with Mr. Triibner on 
 the subject of my "Ballads," displayed an effrontery ab 
 solutely without parallel in modern times, apropos of which 
 Punch remarked 
 
 " The name of Curll will never be forgotten, 
 And neither will be thine, John Camden Hotten." 
 
 From Spa we went to Brussels, where I remember to have 
 seen many times at work in the gallery the famous artist 
 
376 MEMOIRS. 
 
 without arms who painted with his toes. What was quite as 
 remarkable was the excellence of his copies from Rembrandt. 
 Nature succeeded in his case in " heaping voonders oopen 
 voonders," as Tom Hood says in his " Rhine." I became 
 well acquainted with Tom Hood the younger in after years, 
 and to this day I contribute something every year to Tom 
 Hood s Annual. At Brussels we stayed at a charming old 
 hotel which had galleries one above the other round the 
 courtyard, exactly like those of the White Hart Inn immor 
 talised in " Pickwick." There was in Philadelphia a perfect 
 specimen of such an inn, which has of late years been rebuilt 
 as the Bingham House. While in Spa I studied Walloon. 
 
 From Brussels to Ghent, which I found much modern 
 ised from what it had been in 1847, when it was still exactly 
 as in the Middle Age, but fearfully deca} 7 ed, and, like Fer- 
 rara, literary with grass-grown streets. Und noch weiier 
 to Ostend, where for three weeks I took lessons in Flemish or 
 Dutch from a young professor, reading " Vondel " and 
 " Bilderdijk," who, if not in the world of letters known, de 
 serves to be. I had no dictionary all this time, and the 
 teacher marvelled that I always knew the meaning of the 
 words, which will not seem marvellous to any one who under 
 stands German and has studied Anglo-Saxon and read 
 " Middle or Early English." Then back to Spa to meet Mr. 
 and Mrs. Triibner and her father Octave Delepierre, who 
 was a great scholar in rariora, curiosa, and old French, and 
 facile princeps the greatest expert in Macaronic poetry who 
 ever wrote. May I here venture to mention that he always 
 declared that my later poem of " Breitmann and the Pope " 
 was the best Macaronic poem which he had ever read ? His 
 reason for this was that it was the most reckless and heedless 
 or extravagant combination of Latin and modern languages 
 known to him. I had, however, been much indebted to Mr. 
 Oscar Browning for revising it. And so the truth, which 
 long in darkness lay, now comes full clearly to the light of 
 day. 
 
EUROPE REVISITED. 377 
 
 Thence to Liege, Amsterdam, the Hague, Haarlem, and 
 Leyden, visiting all the great galleries and many private col 
 lections. At Amsterdam we saw the last grand kermess or 
 annual fair ever held there. It was a Dutch carnival, so 
 wild and extravagant that few can comprehend now to what 
 extremes " spreeing " can be carried. The Dutch, like the 
 Swedes, have or had the strange habit of bottling up their 
 hilarity and letting it out on stated occasions in uproarious 
 frolics. I saw carmagnoles in which men and women, seized 
 by a wild impulse, whirled along the street in a frantic dance 
 to any chance music, compelling every bystander to join. I 
 heard of a Prince from Capua, who, having been thus car- 
 magnoled, returned home in rags. 
 
 In Leyden I visited the Archaeological Museum, where I 
 by chance became acquainted with the chief or director, who 
 was then engaged in rearranging his collections, and who, 
 without knowing my name, kindly expressed the wish that I 
 would remain a week to aid him in preparing the catalogue. 
 As there are few works on prehistoric relics which I do not 
 know, and as I had for many years studied with zeal innu 
 merable collections of the kind, I venture to believe that his 
 faith in my knowledge was not quite misplaced. Even as I 
 write I have just received the Catalogue of Prehistoric 
 Works in Eastern America, by Cyrus Thomas a work of 
 very great importance. 
 
 Thence we went to Cologne, where it was marvellous to 
 find the Cathedral completed, in spite of the ancient legend 
 which asserts that though the devil had furnished its design 
 he had laid a curse upon it, declaring that it should never 
 be finished. Thence up the Ehine by castles grey and smil 
 ing towns, recalling my old foot-journey along its banks; 
 and so on to Heidelberg, where I stayed a month at the 
 Black Eagle. Herr Lehr was still there. He had grown 
 older. His son was taking dancing lessons of Herr Zimmer, 
 who had taught me to waltz twenty years before. One day 
 I took my watch to a shop to be repaired, when the proprie- 
 
378 MEMOIRS. 
 
 tor declared that he had mended it once before in 1847, and 
 showed me the private mark which he put on it at the time. 
 
 There were several American students, who received me 
 very kindly. I remember among them Wright, Manly, and 
 Overton. When I sat among them smoking and drinking 
 beer, and mingling German student words with English, it 
 seemed as if the past twenty years were all a dream, and that 
 I was a Bur sell again. Overton had the reputation of being 
 par eminence the man of men in all Heidelberg, who could 
 take off a full quart at one pull without stopping to take 
 breath a feat which I had far outdone at Munich, in my 
 youth, with the horn, and which I again accomplished at 
 Heidelberg " without the foam," Overton himself, who was a 
 very noble young fellow, applauding the feat most loudly. 
 But I have since then often done it with Bass or Alsopp, 
 which is much harder. I need not say that the " Breitmann 
 Ballads," which had recently got among the Anglo-American 
 students, and were by them greatly admired, did much to 
 render me popular. 
 
 I found or made many friends in Heidelberg. One 
 night we were invited to a supper, and learned afterwards 
 that the two children of our host, having heard that we were 
 Americans, had peeped at us through the keyhole and ex 
 pressed great disappointment at not finding us Hack. 
 
 In November we went to Dresden. We were so fortunate 
 as to obtain excellent rooms and board with a Herr and 
 Madame Rohn, a well-to-do couple, who, I am sure, took 
 boarders far more for the sake of company than for gain. 
 Herr Rohn had graduated at Leipzig, but having spent most 
 of his life in Vienna, was a man of exuberant jollity a man 
 of gold and a gentleman, even as his wife was a truly gentle 
 lady. As I am very tall, and detest German small beds, I 
 complained of mine, and Herr Rohn said he had another, of 
 which I could not complain. And I certainly could not, for 
 when it came I found it was at least eight feet in length. It 
 seems that they had once had for a boarder a German baron 
 
EUROPE REVISITED. 379 
 
 who was more than seven feet high, and had had this curiosity 
 constructed ; and Herr Rohn roared with laughter as I gazed 
 on it, and asked if I would have it lengthened. 
 
 We remained in Dresden till February, and found many 
 friends, among whom there was much pleasant homelike 
 hospitality. Among others were Julian Hawthorne and sis 
 ters, and George Parsons Lathrop. They were young fellows 
 then, and not so well known as they have since become, but 
 it was evident enough that they had good work in them. 
 They often came to see me, and were very kind in many 
 ways. I took lessons in porcelain-painting, which art I kept 
 up for many years, and was, of course, assiduous in visiting 
 the galleries, Green Vault, and all works of art. I became 
 well acquainted with Passavant, the director. I was getting 
 better, but was still far from being as mentally vigorous as I 
 had been. I now attribute this to the enormous daily dose 
 of bromide which I continued to take, probably mistaking 
 its influence for the original nervous exhaustion itself. It was 
 not indeed till I got to England, and substituted lupulin in 
 the form of hops that is to say, pale ale or " bitter " in 
 generous doses, that I quite recovered. 
 
 So we passed on to Prague, which city, like everything 
 Czech, always had a strange fascination for me. There I 
 met a certain Mr. Vojtech Napristek (or Adalbert Thimble), 
 who had once edited in the United States a Bohemian news 
 paper with which I had exchanged, and with whom I had 
 corresponded, but whom I had never before seen. He had 
 established in Prague, on American lines, a Ladies Club of 
 two hundred, which we visited, and was, I believe, owing to 
 an inheritance, now a prosperous man. Though I am not a 
 Thimble, it also befell me, in later years, to found and pre 
 side over a Ladies Art Club of two hundred souls. At that 
 time the famous legendary bridge, with the ancient statue 
 of St. John Nepomuk, still existed as of yore. No one im 
 agined that a time would come when they would be washed 
 away through sheer neglect. 
 
380 MEMOIRS. 
 
 So on to Munich, where, during a whole week, I saw but 
 one Riegelhaube, a curious head-dress or chignon-cover of 
 silver thread, once very common. Even the old Bavarian dia 
 lect seemed to have almost vanished, and I was glad to hear it 
 from our porter. Many old landmarks still existed, but King 
 Louis no longer ran about the streets I nearly ran against 
 him once ; people no longer were obliged by law to remove 
 cigars or pipes from their mouths when passing a sentry-box. 
 Lola Montez had vanished. Mais ou sont les neiges cTantan 9 
 
 So we went over the Brenner Pass, stopped at Innspruck, 
 and saw the church described by Heine in his Reisebilder, 
 and came to Verona, the Bern of the Heldenbuch. " Icli will 
 gen Bern ausreiten, sprach Meister Hildebrand" 
 
 It was a happy thought of the Italians to put picturesque 
 Verona down as the first stopping-place for Northern travel 
 lers, and I rather like Kuskin s idea of buying the town and 
 keeping it intact as a piece of bric-a-brac. He might have 
 proposed Rome while he was about it ; " anything there can 
 be had for money," says Juvenal. 
 
 When we arrived at the station I alone was left to en 
 counter the fierce douaniers. One of them, inquisitive as to 
 tobacco, when I told him I had none, laid his finger impres 
 sively on the mouthpiece of my pipe, remarking that where 
 the tail of the fox was seen the fox could not be far off. To 
 which I replied that I indeed had no tobacco, but wanted 
 some very badly, and that I would be much obliged to him if 
 he would give me a little to fill my pipe. So all laughed. 
 My wife entering at this instant, cried in amazement, " Why, 
 Charles ! where did you ever learn to talk Italian ? " Which 
 shows that there can be secrets even between married people ; 
 though indeed my Italian has always been of such inferior 
 quality that it is no wonder that I never boasted of it even in 
 confidence. It is, in fact, the Hand-organo dialect flavoured 
 with Florentine. 
 
 There was an old lady who stood at the door of a curiosity- 
 shop in Verona, and she had five pieces of bone-carviDgs 
 
EUROPE REVISITED. 381 
 
 from some old scatola or marriage-casket. She asked a 
 fabulous price for them, and I offered five francs. She 
 scorned the paltry sum with all the vehemence of a suscep 
 tible soul whose tenderest feelings have been outraged. So 
 I went my way, but as I passed the place returning, the old 
 lady came forth, and, graciously courtesying and smiling, 
 held forth to me the earrings neatly wrapped in paper, and 
 thanked me for the five francs! Which indicated to me 
 that the good small folk of Italy had not materially changed 
 since I had left the country. 
 
 We came to Venice, and went to a hotel, where we had 
 a room given to us which, had we wished to give a ball, would 
 have left nothing to be desired. I counted in it twenty-seven 
 chairs and seven tables, all at such a distance from one an 
 other that they seemed not to be on speaking terms. I do 
 not think I ever got quite so far as the upper end of that 
 room while I inhabited it it was probably somewhere in 
 Austria. I have spoken of having met Mr. Wright at Heidel 
 berg. He was from Wilkesbarre, Pennsylvania. The next 
 day after my arrival I found among the names of the depart 
 ed, " Signore Wright- Kilkes, from Barre, Pennsylvania, 
 America." This reminded me of the Anglo-American who 
 was astonished at Rome at receiving invitations and circulars 
 addressed to him as " Illustrissimo Varanti Solezer." It 
 turned out that an assistant, reading aloud to the clerk the 
 names from the trunks, had mistaken a very large " WAR 
 RANTED SOLE LEATHER " for the name of the owner. 
 
 And this on soles reminds me that there was afemme sole 
 or lone acrimonious British female at our hotel, who declared 
 to me one evening that she had never in all her life been so 
 insulted as she was that day at a banker s ; and the insult 
 consisted in this, that she, although quite unknown to him, 
 had asked him to cash a cheque on London, which he had 
 declined to do. I remarked that no banker who did business 
 properly ever ought to cash a cheque from a total stranger. 
 
 " Sir," said the lady, " do / look like an impostor? " 
 
382 MEMOIRS. 
 
 " Madame," I replied, " I have seen thieves and wretches 
 of the vilest type who could not have been distinguished 
 from either of us as regards respectability of appearance. 
 You do not appear to know much about such people." 
 
 " I am happy to say, sir," replied the lady with intense 
 acidity, "that / do not." But she added triumphantly, 
 " What do you say when I tell you that I had my cheque-book f 
 How could I have possessed it if I had not a right to draw? " 
 
 " Any scamp," I replied, " can deposit a few pounds in a 
 bank, buy a cheque-book, and then draw his money." 
 
 But the next day she came to me in radiant sneering 
 triumph. She had found another banker, who was a gentle 
 man, with a marked emphasis, who had cashed her cheque. 
 How many people there are in this world whose definition of 
 a gentleman is " one who does whatever pleases us ! " 
 
 In Florence we went directly to the Hotel d Europe in 
 the Via Tuornabuoni, where my Indian blanket vanished 
 even while entering the hotel, and surrounded only by the 
 servants to whom the luggage had been confided. As the 
 landlord manifested great disgust for me whenever I men 
 tioned such a trifle, and as the porter and the rest declared 
 that they would answer soul and body for one another s hon 
 esty, I had to grin and bear it. I really wonder sometimes 
 that there are not more boarders, who, like Benvenuto Cel 
 lini, set fire to hotels or cut up the bedclothes before leaving 
 them. That worthy, having been treated not so badly as I 
 was at the Hotel d Europe and at another in Florence, cut to 
 pieces the sheets of his bed, galloped away hastily, and from 
 the summit of a distant hill had the pleasure of seeing the 
 landlord in a rage. Now people write to the Times, and 
 " cut up " the whole concern. It all comes to the same 
 thing. 
 
 In Florence I saw much of an old New York friend, the 
 now late Lorimer Graham. When he died, Swinburne wrote 
 a poem on him. He was a man of great culture and refined 
 manner. There was something sympathetic in him which 
 
EUROPE REVISITED. 383 
 
 drew every one irresistibly into liking. It was his instinct to 
 be kind and thoughtful to every one. He gave me letters to 
 Swinburne, Lord Houghton, and others. 
 
 I made an acquaintance by chance in Florence whom I 
 can never forget : for he was a character. One day while in 
 the Uffizi Gallery engaged in studying the great Etruscan 
 vase, now in the Etruscan Museum, a stranger standing by 
 me said, " Does not this seem to you like a mysterious book 
 written in forgotten characters? Is not a collection of such 
 vases like a library ? " 
 
 " On that hint I spake." " I see," I replied, " you refer 
 to the so-called Etruscan Library which an Englishman has 
 made, and which contains only vases and inscriptions in that 
 now unknown tongue of Etruria. And indeed, when we 
 turn over the pages of Inghirami, Gherard, and Gori, Gray, 
 or Dennis, it does indeed really seem But what do you 
 really think the old Etruscan language truly was ? " 
 
 "Look here, my friend," cried the stranger in broad 
 Yankee, " I guess I m barkin up the wrong tree. I calcu 
 lated to tell you something, but you re ahead of me." 
 
 We both laughed and became very good friends. He 
 lived at our hotel, and had been twenty-five years in Italy, 
 and knew every custode in every gallery, and could have 
 every secret treasure unlocked. He was perfectly at home 
 about town would stop and ask a direction of a cab-driver, 
 and was capable of going into an umbrella-shop when it 
 rained. 
 
 We went on to Rome, and I can only say that as regards 
 what we saw there, my memory is confused literally with an 
 embarras de richesses. The Ecumenical Council was being 
 held, at which an elderly Italian gentleman, who possibly did 
 not know oxygen from hydrogen, or sin from sugar, was de 
 clared to be infallible in his judgment of all earthly things. 
 
 While in Rome we saw a great deal of W. W. Story, the 
 sculptor, and his wife and daughter, Edith, for whom 
 Thackeray wrote his most beautiful tale, and I at my humble 
 
384 MEMOIRS. 
 
 distance the ballad of "Breitmann in Rome," which con 
 tained a remarkable prophecy, of the Franco-German war. 
 At their house we met Odo Russell and Oscar Browning, and 
 many more whose names are known to all. It was there also 
 that a lady of the Royal English household amused us very 
 much one evening by narrating how the " Breitmann Bal 
 lads," owing to their odd mixture of German and English, 
 were favourite subjects for mutual reading and recitation 
 among the then youthful members of the Royal family, and 
 what haste and alarm there was to put the forbidden book 
 out of the way when Her Majesty the Queen was announced 
 as coming. I also met in Rome the American poet and 
 painter T. Buchanan Read, who gave, me a dinner, and very 
 often that remarkable character General Carroll Tevis, who, 
 having fought under most flags, and been a Turkish bey or 
 pacha, was now a chamberlain of the Pope. In the following 
 year he fought for the French, behaved with great bravery 
 in Bourbaki s retreat, and was decorated on the field of bat 
 tle. Then again, when I was in Egypt, Tevis was at the 
 head of the military college. He had fairly won his rank of 
 general in the American Civil War, but as there was some 
 disinclination or other to give it to him, I had used my in 
 fluence in his favour with Forney, who speedily secured it 
 for him. He was a perfect t} 7 pe of the old condottiero, 
 but with Dugald Dalgetty s scrupulous faith to his mili 
 tary engagements. The American clergyman in Rome was 
 the Rev. Dr. Nevin, a brother of my friend Captain Nevin. 
 There was also Mrs. John Grigg, an old Philadelphia friend 
 (now residing in Florence), to whom we were then, as we 
 have continually been since, indebted for the most cordial 
 hospitality. 
 
 Through the kind aid of General Tevis we were enabled 
 to see all the principal ceremonies of the Holy Week and 
 Easter. This year, owing to the Council, everything was on 
 a scale of unusual magnificence. I can say with Panurge that 
 I have seen three Popes, but will not add with him, " and 
 
EUROPE REVISITED. 385 
 
 little good did it ever do me," for Mrs. Leland at least was 
 much gratified with a full sight and quasi-interview with His 
 Holiness. 
 
 There was a joyous sight for a cynic to be seen in Rome 
 in those days in fact, it was only last year (1891) that it 
 was done away with. This was the drawing of the lottery by 
 a priest. There was on a holy platform a holy wheel and a 
 holy little boy to draw the holy numbers, and a holy old 
 priest to oversee and bless the whole precious business. The 
 blessing of the devil would have been more appropriate, for 
 the lotteries are the curse of Italy. What the Anglo-Ameri 
 can mechanic puts into a savings bank, the Italian invests 
 in lotteries. In Naples there are now fourteen tickets sold 
 per annum for the gross amount of the population, and in 
 Florence twelve. 
 
 One day I took a walk out into the country with Briton 
 Riviere and some other artists. I had a cake or two of 
 colour, and Riviere, with wine for water, at a trattoria where 
 we lunched, made a picture of the attendant maid. He 
 pointed out to me on the road a string of peasants carrying 
 great loaves of coarse bread. They had walked perhaps 
 twenty miles to buy it, because in those days people were not 
 allowed to bake their own bread, but must buy it at the 
 public forno, which paid a tax for the privilege. So long as 
 Rome was under Papal control, its every municipal institu 
 tion, such as hospitals, prisons, and the police, were in a 
 state of absolutely incredible inhuman vileuess, while under 
 everything ran corruption and dishonesty. The lower or 
 ders were severely disciplined as to their sexual morals, be 
 cause it was made a rich source of infamous taxes, as it now 
 is in other cities of Europe ; but cardinals and the wealthier 
 priests kept mistresses, almost openly, since these women 
 were pointed out to every one as they flaunted about proudly 
 in their carriages. 
 
 From Rome we passed into Pisa, Genoa, Spezzia, and 
 Nice, over the old Cornici road, and so again to Paris, where 
 
386 MEMOIRS. 
 
 we remained six weeks, and then left in June, 1870, just be 
 fore the war broke out. While in the city we saw at differ 
 ent times in public the Emperor and Empress, also the 
 Queen of Spain. The face of Louis Napoleon was indeed 
 somewhat changed since I saw him in London in 1848, but 
 it had not improved so much as his circumstances, as he was 
 according to external appearances and popular belief now 
 extremely well off. But appearances are deceptive, as was 
 soon proved, for he was in reality on the verge of a worse 
 bankruptcy than even his uncle underwent, for the nephew 
 lost not only kingdom and life, but also every trace of repu 
 tation for wisdom and honesty, remaining to history only as 
 a brazen royal adventurer and " copper captain." 
 
 In Rome our dear old friend Mrs. John Grigg showed us, 
 as I said, many kind attentions, which she has, in Florence, 
 continued to this day. This lady is own aunt to my old 
 school friend General George B. McClellan. At an advanced 
 age she executes without glasses the most exquisite em 
 broidery conceivable, and her heart and intellect are in keep 
 ing with her sight. 
 
VIII. 
 ENGLAND. 
 
 1870. 
 
 The Triibners George Eliot and G. H. Lewes Heseltine Edwards- 
 Etched by Bracquemond and Legros Jean Ingelow Tennyson 
 Hepworth Dixon Lord Lytton the elder Lord Houghton Bret 
 Harte France, Alsace, and Lorraine Samuel Laing Gypsies 
 The Misses Horace Smith Brighton and odd fish Work and 
 books Hunting Dore Art and Nature Taglioni Chevalier 
 Wykoff Octave Delepierre Breitmann Thomas Carlyle George 
 Borrow A cathedral tour round about England Salisbury, Wells, 
 and York. 
 
 IT is pleasant being anywhere in England in June, and 
 the passing from picturesque Dover to London through 
 laughing Kent is a good introduction to the country. The 
 untravelled American, fresh from the " boundless prairies " 
 and twenty-thousand-acre fields of wheat, sees nothing in it 
 all but the close cultivation of limited land ; but the tourist 
 from the Continent perceives at once that, with most careful 
 agriculture, there are indications of an exuberance of wealth, 
 true comfort, and taste rarely seen in France or Germany. 
 The many trees of a better quality and slower growth than 
 the weedy sprouting poplar and willow of Normandy ; the 
 hedges, which are very beautiful and ever green ; the flower 
 beds and walks about the poorest cottage ; the neatly planted, 
 prettily bridged side roads, all indicate a superiority of wealth 
 or refinement such as prevails only in New England, or rather 
 which did prevail, until the native population, going west 
 ward, was supplanted by Irish or worse, if any worse there be 
 at turning neatness into dirty disorder. 
 
388 MEMOIRS. 
 
 That older American population was deeply English, with 
 a thousand .rural English traditions religiously preserved ; 
 and the chief of these is clean neatness, which, when fully 
 carried out, always results in simple, unaffected beauty. This 
 was very strongly shown in the Quaker gardens, once so com 
 mon in Philadelphia and in the people. 
 
 We arrived in London, and went directly to the Triibners , 
 No. 29 Upper Hamilton Terrace, N. W. The first person 
 who welcomed me was Mr. Delepierre, an idol of mine for 
 years ; and the first thing I did was to borrow half-a-crown of 
 him to pay the cab, having only French money with me. It 
 was a charming house, with a large garden, so redolent of 
 roses that it might have served Chriemhilda of old for a 
 romance. For twenty years that house was destined to be an 
 occasional home and a dwelling where we were ever welcome, 
 and where every Sunday evening I had always an appointed 
 place at dinner, and a special arm-chair for the never-failing 
 Havannah. Mrs. Triibner had, in later years, two boxes of 
 Havannahs of the best, which had belonged to Gr. H. Lewes, 
 and which George Eliot gave her after his death. I have kept 
 two en souvenir. I knew a man once who had formed a large 
 collection of such relics. There was a cigar which he had 
 received from Louis Napoleon, and one from Bismarck, and 
 so forth. But, alas ! once while away on his travels, the whole 
 museum was smoked up by a reckless under-graduate younger 
 brother. In fumo exit. 
 
 How many people well known to the world or rather how 
 few who were not have I met there Edwin Arnold, Gr. H. 
 Lewes, H. Dixon, M. Van der Weyer, Frith the artist, Mrs. 
 Triibner s uncle Lord Napier of Magdala, Pigott, Norman 
 Lockyer, Bret Harte, " and full many more," scholars, poets, 
 editors, and, withal, lady writers of every good shade, grade, 
 and quality. How many of them all have passed since then 
 full silently into the Silent Land, where we may follow, but 
 return no more ! How many a pleasant smile and friendly 
 voice and firm alliances and genial acquaintances, often carried 
 
ENGLAND. 389 
 
 out in other lands, date their beginning in my memory to the 
 house in Hamilton Terrace ! How often have I heard by land 
 or sea the familiar greeting, " I think I met you once at the 
 Triibners ! " For it was a salon, a centre or sun with many 
 bright and cheering rays a civilising institution ! 
 
 Mrs. Triibner was the life of this home. Anglo-Belgian 
 by early relation and education, she combined four types in 
 one. When speaking English, she struck me as the type of 
 an accomplished and refined British matron ; in French, her 
 whole nature seemed Parisienne ; in Flemish, she was alto 
 gether Flamande ; and in German, Deutsch. If Cerberus 
 was three gentlemen in one, Mrs. Triibner was four ladies 
 united. Very well read, she conversed not only well on any 
 subject, but, what is very unusual in her sex, with sincere 
 interest, and not merely to entertain. If interrupted in a 
 conversation she resumed the subject ! This is a remarkable 
 trait ! 
 
 The next day after our arrival Mrs. Triibner took Mrs. 
 Leland, during a walk, to call on George Eliot, and that even 
 ing G. H. Lewes, Hepworth Dixon, and some others came to 
 a reception at the Triibners . Both of these men were, as 
 ever, very brilliant and amusing in conversation. I met them 
 very often after this, both at their homes and about London. 
 I also became acquainted with George Eliot or Mrs. Lewes, 
 who left on me the marked impression, which she did on all, 
 of being a woman of genius, though I cannot recall anything 
 remarkable which I ever heard from her. I note this because 
 there were most extraordinary reports of her utterances among 
 her admirers. A young American lady once seriously asked 
 me if it were true that at the Sunday afternoon receptions in 
 South Bank one could always see rows of twenty or thirty of 
 the greatest men in England, such as Carlyle, Fronde, and 
 Herbert Spencer, all sitting with their note-books silently 
 taking down from her lips the ideas which they subsequently 
 used in their writings ! There seemed, indeed, to be afloat in 
 America among certain folk an idea that something enormous, 
 
390 MEMOIRS. 
 
 marvellous, and inspired went on at these receptions, and that 
 George Eliot posed as a Pythia or Sibyl, as the great leading 
 mind of England, and lectured while we listened. There is 
 no good portrait, I believe, of her. She had long features, 
 and would have been called plain but for her solemn, earnest 
 eyes, which had an expression quite in keeping with her voice, 
 which was one not easily forgotten. I never detected in her 
 any trace of genial humour, though I doubt not that it was 
 latent in her ; and I thought her a person who had drawn her 
 ideas far more from books and an acquaintance with certain 
 types of humanity whom she had set herself deliberately to 
 study albeit with rare perception than from an easy intui 
 tive familiarity with all sorts and conditions of men. But 
 she worked out thoroughly what she knew by the intuition of 
 genius, though in this she was very far inferior to Scott. 
 Thus she wrote the " Spanish Gypsy," having only seen such 
 gypsies two or three times. One day she told me that in order 
 to write " Daniel Deronda," she had read through two hun 
 dred books. I longed to tell her that she had better have 
 learned Yiddish and talked with two hundred Jews, and been 
 taught, as I was by my friend Solomon the Sadducee, the art 
 of distinguishing Fraulein Lowenthal of the Ashkenazim 
 from Senorita Aguado of the Sephardim by the corners of 
 their eyes ! 
 
 I had read more than once Lewes s " Life of Goethe," his 
 " History of Philosophy and Physiology," and even " written 
 him" for the Cyclopaedia. With him I naturally at once 
 became well acquainted. I remember here that Mr. Ripley 
 had once reproved me for declaring that Lewes had really a 
 claim to be an original philosopher or thinker ; for Boston 
 intellect always frowned on him after Margaret Fuller con 
 demned him as " frivolous and atheistic." I remember that 
 Tom Powell had told me how he had dined somewhere in 
 London, where there was a man present who had really been 
 a cannibal, owing to dire stress of shipwreck, and how Lewes, 
 who was there, was so fascinated with the man-eater that he 
 
ENGLAND. 391 
 
 could think of nothing else. Lewes told me that once, having 
 gone with a party of archaeologists to visit a ruined church, 
 he found on a twelfth-century tombstone some illegible let 
 ters which he persuaded the others to believe formed the 
 name 0>oli;i.$, probably having in mind the. poems of Walter 
 de Mapes. When I returned from Russia I delighted him 
 very much by describing how I had told the fortunes by hand 
 of six gypsy girls. He declared that telling fortunes to gyp 
 sies was the very height of impudence ! 
 
 " A hundred jests have passed between us twain, 
 Which, had I space, I d gladly tell again." 
 
 A call which I have had, since I wrote that last line, from 
 John Postle Heseltine, Esq., reminds me that he was one of 
 the first acquaintances I made in London. Mr. E. Edwards, 
 a distinguished etcher and painter, gave me a dinner at Rich 
 mond, at which Mr. Heseltine was present. In Edwards 
 studio I met with Bracquemond and Legros, both of whom 
 etched my portrait on copper. Mr. Heseltine is well known 
 as a very distinguished artist of the same kind, as well as for 
 many other things. Edwards was very kind to me in many 
 ways for years. Legros I found very interesting: There was 
 in Edwards studio the unique complete collection of the etch 
 ings of Meryon, which we examined. Legros remarked of 
 the incredibly long-continued industry manifested in some of 
 the pictures, that lunatics often manifested it to a high de 
 gree. Meryon, as is known, was mad. I had etched a very 
 little myself and was free of the fraternity. 
 
 Within a few days Mr. Strahan, the publisher, took me to 
 Mr. (now Lord) Tennyson s reception, where I met with 
 many well-known people. Among them were Lady Char 
 lotte Locker and Miss Jean Ingelow. These ladies, with 
 great kindness, finding that I was married, called on Mrs. 
 Leland, and invited us to dine. I became a constant visitor 
 for years at Miss Ingelow s receptions, where I have met 
 Ruskin, Mr. and Mrs. S. 0. Hall (whom I had seen in 1848), 
 
392 MEMOIRS. 
 
 Calverly, Edmund Gosse, Hamilton Aide, Mr. and Mrs. 
 Alfred Hunt. I conversed with Tennyson, but little passed 
 between us on that occasion. I got to know him far better 
 "later on." 
 
 I here anticipate by several years two interviews which I 
 had with Tennyson in 1875, who had ad interim been de 
 servedly "lauded into Lordliness," and which, to him at 
 least, were amusing enough to be recalled. The first was at 
 a dinner at Lady Franklin s, and her niece Miss Cracroft. 
 And here I may, in passing, say a word as to the extraordinary 
 kindly nature of Lady Franklin. I think it was almost as 
 soon as we became acquainted that she, learning that I suf 
 fered at times from gout, sent me a dozen bottles of a kind 
 of bitter water as a cure. 
 
 There were at the dinner as guests Mr. Tennyson, Sir 
 Samuel and Lady Baker, Dr. Quain, and myself. There was 
 no lack of varied anecdote, reminiscences of noted people and 
 of travel ; but by far the most delightful portion of it all was 
 to watch the gradual unfreezing of Tennyson, and how from 
 a grim winter of taciturnity, under the glowing influence of 
 the sun of wine, as the Tuscan Redi hath it 
 
 " Dell Indico Oriente 
 Domator glorioso il Dio di Vino . . . 
 Di quel Sol, che in Ciel vedete . . ." 
 
 he passed into a glorious summer of genial feeling. I led 
 unto it thus : My friend Professor Palmer and I had pro 
 jected a volume of songs in English Eomany or Gypsy, which 
 is by far the sweetest and most euphonious language in Eu 
 rope. My friend had translated " Home they brought her 
 warrior dead," by Tennyson, into this tongue, and I had the 
 MS. of it in my pocket. Tennyson was very much pleased 
 at the compliment, and asked me to read the poem, which I 
 did. The work was by permission dedicated to him. At 
 last, when dinner was over, Tennyson, who had disposed of 
 an entire bottle of port, rose, and approaching me, took me 
 
ENGLAND. 393 
 
 gaily-gravely by both sides, as if he would lift me up, and 
 drawing himself up to his full height, said, " I like to see a 
 poet a full-sized substantial man," or " tall and strong," or 
 words to that effect. I replied that it was very evident from 
 the general appearance of Shakespeare s bust that he was a 
 very tall man, but that though the thunder of height had hit 
 twice the Poet Laureate being the second case that I had 
 been very slightly singed, tall as I was. Enfin, some days 
 after, Tennyson in a letter invited me to call and see him 
 should I ever be in the Isle of Wight ; which took place by 
 mere chance some time after in fact, I did not know, when 
 I was first at the hotel in Freshwater, that Tennyson lived at 
 a mile s distance. 
 
 I walked over one afternoon and sent in my card. Mr. 
 Hallam Tennyson, then a very handsome young man of win 
 some manner, came out and said that his father was taking 
 his usual siesta, but begged me to remain, kindly adding, 
 " Because I know, Mr. Leland, he would be very sorry to have 
 missed you." After a little time, however, Tennyson himself 
 appeared, and took me up to his den or studio, where I was 
 asked to take a pipe, which I did with great good-will, and 
 blew a cloud, enjoying it greatly, because I felt with my host, 
 as wilh Bulwer, that we had quickly crossed acquaintanceship 
 into the more familiar realm where one can talk about what 
 ever you please with the certainty of being understood and 
 getting a sympathetic answer. There are lifelong friends 
 with whom one never really gets to this, and there are ac 
 quaintances of an hour at taUe-cThotes, who " come like shad 
 ows, so depart," who talk with a touch to our hearts. Bul 
 wer and Tennyson were such to me, and apre miro zl, as the 
 gypsies say on my life-soul ! if I had talked with them, as 
 I did, without knowing who they were, I should have recalled 
 them with quite as much interest as I now do, and see them 
 again in dreams. And here I may add, that the common-place 
 saying that literary men are rarely good talkers, and generally 
 disappointing, is not at all confirmed by my experiences. 
 
394 MEMOIRS. 
 
 After burning our tobacco, in Indian fashion, to better 
 acquaintance (I forgot to say that the poet had two dozen clay 
 pipes ranged in a small wooden rack), we went forth for 
 a seven miles walk on the Downs. And at last, from the 
 summit of one, I pointed down to a small field below, and 
 said 
 
 But first I must specify that the day before I had gone 
 with a young lady of fourteen summers named Bee or Bea 
 trice Fredericson, both of us bearing baskets, to pick black 
 berries for tea, and coming to a small field which was com 
 pletely surrounded by a hedge, we saw therein illimitable 
 blackberries glittering in the setting sunlight, and longed to 
 enter. Finding a gap which had been filled by a dead thorn- 
 bush, I removed the latter, and, going in, we soon picked a 
 quart of the fruit. But on leaving we were met by the farm 
 er, who made a to-do, charging us with trespassing. To which 
 I replied, " Well, what is to pay ? " He asked for two shil 
 lings, but was pacified with one ; and so we departed. 
 
 Therefore I said to Tennyson, " I went into that field yes 
 terday to pick your blackberries, and your farmer caught us 
 and made me pay a shilling for trespassing." 
 
 And he gravely replied, though evidently delighted 
 
 " Served you right ! What business had you to come over 
 my hedge into my field to steal my blackberries ? " 
 
 " Mea culpa" I answered, " meet maxima culpa" 
 
 "Mr. Leland," pursued Tennyson, as gravely as ever, 
 grasping all the absurdity of the thing with evident enjoy 
 ment, " you have no idea how tourists trespass here to get at 
 me. They climb over my gate and look in at my windows. 
 It is a fact one did so only last week. But I declare that 
 you are the very first poet and man of letters who ever came 
 here to steal blackberries ! " Here he paused, and then 
 added forcibly 
 
 " I do believe you are a gypsy, after all." 
 
 Then we talked of the old manor-houses in the neighbour 
 hood, and of the famous Mortstone, a supposed Saxon rude 
 
ENGLAND. 395 
 
 monolith near by. I thought it prehistoric, because I had 
 dug out from the pile of earth supporting and coeval with it 
 (and indeed only with a lead-pencil) a flint flake chipped by 
 hand and a bit of cannel coal, which indicate dedication. My 
 host listened with great interest, and then told me a sad tale : 
 how certain workmen employed by him to dig on his land had 
 found a great number of old Roman bronze coins, but, instead 
 of taking them to him, had kept them, though they cared so 
 little for them that they gave a handful to a boy whom they 
 met. " I told them," said Tennyson, " that they had been 
 guilty of malappropriation, and though I was not quite sure 
 whether the coins belonged to me or to the Crown, that they 
 certainly had no right to them. Whereupon their leader said 
 that if I was not satisfied they would not work any longer for 
 me, and so they went away." I had on this occasion a long 
 and interesting discussion with Mr. Tennyson relative to Walt 
 Whitman, and involving the principles or nature of poetry. 
 According to the poet-laureate, poetry, as he understood it, 
 consisted of elevated or refined, or at least superior thought, 
 expressed in melodious form, and in this latter it seemed to 
 him (for it was very modestly expressed) that Whitman was 
 wanting. Wherein he came nearer to the truth than does 
 Symonds, who overrates, as it seems to me, the value, as re 
 gards art and poetry, of simply equalising all human intelli 
 gences. Though I never met Symonds, there was mutual 
 knowledge between us, and .when I published my " Etrusco- 
 Roman Remains in Popular Traditions," which contains the 
 results of six years intimacy with witches and fortune-tellers, 
 he wrote a letter expressing enthusiastic admiration of it to 
 Mr. T. Fisher Unwin. Now all three of these great men are 
 dead. I shall speak of Whitman anon, for in later years for 
 a long time I met him almost daily. 
 
 I can remember that during the conversation Tennyson 
 expressed himself, rather to my amazement, with some slight 
 indignation at a paltry review abusing his latest work ; to 
 which I replied 
 
396 MEMOIRS. 
 
 " If there is anything on earth for which I have envied 
 you, even more than for your great renown as a poet, it has 
 been because I supposed you were completely above all such 
 attacks and were utterly indifferent to them." Which he 
 took amiably, and proceeded to discuss ripe fruit and wasps 
 or their equivalent. Yet I doubt whether I was quite in 
 the right, since those who live for fame honourably acquired 
 must ever be susceptible to stings, small or great. An editor 
 who receives abusive letters so frequently that he ends by 
 pitching them without reading into the waste-basket, and 
 often treats ribald attacks in print in the same manner as I 
 have often done has so many other affairs on his mind that 
 he becomes case-hardened. But I have observed from long 
 experience that there is a Nemesis who watches those who 
 arrogate the right to lay on the rod, and gives it to them 
 with interest in the end. 
 
 It was very soon after my arrival in London that I was 
 invited to lunch at Hepworth Dixon s to meet Lord Lytton, 
 or Bulwer, the great writer. His works had been so intensely 
 and sympathetically loved by me so long, that it seemed as if 
 I had been asked to meet some great man of the past. I 
 found him, as I expected, quite congenial and wondrous 
 kind. I remember a droll incident. Standing at the head 
 of the stairs, he courteously made way and asked me to go 
 before. I replied, " When Louis XIV. asked Crillon to do 
 the same, Crillon complied, saying, Wherever your Majesty 
 goes, be it before or behind, is always the first place or post 
 of honour, and I say the same with him," and so went in ad 
 vance at once. I saw by his expression that he was pleased 
 with the quotation. 
 
 We were looking at a portrait of Shakespeare which 
 Dixon had found in Russia. Lord Lytton asked me if I 
 thought it an original or true likeness. I observed that the 
 face was full of many fine seamy lines, which infallibly in 
 dicate great nervous genius of the highest order noting at 
 the same time that Lord Lytton s countenance was very much 
 
ENGLAND. 397 
 
 marked in a like manner. The observation was new to him, 
 and he seemed to be interested in it, as he always was in 
 anything like chiromancy or metoscopy. A few days later I 
 was invited to come and pass nearly a week with Hepworth 
 Dixon at Knebworth, Lord Lytton s country seat. It is a 
 very picturesque chateau, profusely adorned with fifteenth- 
 century Gothic grotesques, with a fine antique hall, stained 
 glass windows, and gallery. There is in it a chamber contain 
 ing a marvellous and massive carved oak bedstead, the posts 
 of which are human figures the nze of life, and in it and in 
 the same room Queen Elizabeth is said to have slept when 
 she heard of the destruction of the Spanish Armada. It was 
 the room of honour, and it had been kindly assigned to me. 
 It all seemed like a dream. 
 
 There was in the family of the late Lord Lytton his son, 
 who made a most favourable impression on me. I think the 
 first coup was my finding that he knew the works of An- 
 dreini, and that it had occurred to him as well as to me that 
 Euphues Lily s book had been modelled on them. There 
 was also his wife, a magnificent and graceful beauty ; Lord 
 Lytton s nephew, Mr. Bulwer ; and several ladies. The first 
 morning we all fished in the pond, and, to my great amaze 
 ment, Lord Lytton pulled out a great one-eyed percli I I 
 almost expected to see him pull out Paul Clifford or Zanoni 
 next ! In the afternoon we were driven out to Cowper Cas 
 tle to see a fine gallery of pictures, our host acting as cice 
 rone, and as he soon found that I was fairly well educated in 
 art, and had been a special pupil of Thiersch in Munich, and 
 something more than an amateur, we had many interesting 
 conversations. I think I may venture to say that he did not 
 expect to find a whilom student of aesthetics, art-history, and 
 philosophy in the author of " Hans Breitmann." What was 
 delightful was his exquisite tact in never saying as much ; 
 but I could detect it in the sudden interest and involuntary 
 compliment implied in his tone of conversation. In a very 
 short time he began to speak to me on all literary or artistic 
 18 
 
398 MEMOIRS. 
 
 subjects without preliminary question, taking it for granted 
 that I understood them and chimed in with him. I was with 
 every interview more and more impressed with his culture 
 I mean with what had resulted from his reading his 
 marvellous tact of kindness in small things to all, and 
 his quick and vigorous comparing and contrasting of images 
 and drawing conclusions. But there was evidently enough 
 a firm bed-rock or hard pan under all this gold. I was 
 amazed one day when a footman, who had committed 
 some bevue or blunder, or apprehended something, actu 
 ally turned pale and stammered with terror when Lord 
 Lytton gravely addressed a question to him. I never in 
 my life saw a man so much frightened, even before a re 
 volver. 
 
 But Lord Lytton was beyond all question really interested 
 when he found me so much at home in Rosicrucian and oc 
 cult lore, and that I had been with Justinus Kerner in 
 Weinsberg, and was familiar with the forgotten dusky paths 
 of mysticism. He had in his house the famous Earl Stan 
 hope crystal, and wished me to sleep with it under my pillow, 
 but I was so afraid lest the precious relic should be injured, 
 that I resolutely declined the honour, for which I am now 
 sorry, for I sometimes have dreams of a most extraordinary 
 character. This Stanhope crystal is not, however, the great 
 mirror of Dr. Dee, though it has been said to be so. The 
 latter belonged to a gentleman in London, who also offered 
 to lend it to me. It is made of cannel coal. That Lord 
 Lytton made a very remarkable impression on me is proved 
 by the fact that I continued to dream of him at long inter 
 vals after his death ; and I am quite sure that such feeling 
 is, by its very nature, always to a certain slight degree recip 
 rocal. He had a natural and unaffected voice, yet one with 
 a marked character ; something like Tennyson s, which was 
 even more striking. Both were far removed from the now 
 fashionable intonation, which is the admiration and despair 
 of American swells. It is only ihefin de stick form of the 
 
ENGLAND. 399 
 
 demnition dialect of the Forties and the La-ard and Lunnon 
 of an earlier age. 
 
 Lord Lytton was generally invisible in the morning, 
 sometimes after lunch. In the evening he came out splen 
 didly groomed, fresh as a rose, and at dinner and after was 
 as interesting as any of his books. He had known " every 
 body " to a surprising extent, and had anecdotes fresh and 
 vivid of every one whom he had met. He loved music, and 
 there was a lady who sang old Spanish ballads with rare taste. 
 I enjoyed myself incredibly. 
 
 I may be excused for mentioning here that I sent a copy 
 ot the second edition of my " Meister Karl s Sketch-Book " 
 to Lord Lytton. No one but Irving and Triibner had ever 
 praised it. When Lord Lytton published afterwards " Ken- 
 elm Chillingly," I found in it three passages in which I recog 
 nised beyond dispute others suggested by my own work. I 
 do not in the least mean that there was any borrowing or 
 taking beyond the mere suggestion of thought. Why I think 
 that Lord Lytton had these hints in his mind is that he gave 
 the name of Leland to one of the minor characters in the 
 book. 
 
 When I published a full edition of " Breitmann s Poems," 
 he wrote me a long letter criticising and praising the work, 
 and a much longer and closely written one, of seven pages, 
 relating to my " Confucius and Other Poems." I was sub 
 sequently invited to receptions at his house in London, where 
 I first met Browning, and had a long conversation with him. 
 I saw him afterwards at Mrs. Proctor s. This was the wife 
 of Barry Cornwall, whom I also saw. He was very old and 
 infirm. I can remember when the " Cornlaw Rhymes " rang 
 wherever English was read. 
 
 As I consider it almost a duty to record what I can re 
 member of Bulwer, I may mention that one evening, at his 
 house in London, he showed me and others some beautiful 
 old brass salvers in repousse work, and how I astonished him 
 by describing the process, and declaring that I could produce 
 
4(JO MEMOIRS. 
 
 a facsimile of any one of them in a day or two ; to which 
 assertion hundreds to whom I have taught the art, as well as 
 my " Manual of Repousse," and another on " Metal Work," 
 will, I trust, bear witness. And this I mention, not vainly, 
 but because Lord Lytton seemed to be interested and pleased, 
 and because, in after years, I had much to do with reviving 
 the practice of this beautiful art. It was practising this, and 
 a three years study of oak-wood carving, which led me to 
 write on the Minor Arts. Mihi ces et triplex robur. 
 
 Lord Lytton had the very curious habit of making almost 
 invisible hieroglyphics or crosses in his letters at least I 
 found them in those to me, as it were for luck. It was a 
 very common practice from the most ancient Egyptian times 
 to within two centuries. Lord Lytton s were evidently in 
 tended to escape observation. But there was indeed a great 
 deal in his character which would escape most persons, and 
 which has not been revealed by any writer on him. This I 
 speedily divined, though, of course, I never discovered what 
 it all was. 
 
 Lord Houghton, " Richard Monckton Milnes," to whom 
 I had a letter of introduction from Lorimer Graham, was 
 very kind to me. I dined and lunched at his house, where 
 I met Odo Russell or Lord Ampthill, the Duke of Bedford, 
 the Hon. Mrs. Norton, W. W. Story, and I know not how 
 many more distinguished in society, or letters. At Lord 
 Lytton s I made the acquaintance of the Duke of Wellington. 
 I believe, however, that this meeting with Lord Houghton 
 and the Duke was in my second year in London. 
 
 The first English garden-party which I ever attended was 
 during this first season, at the villa of Mr. Bohn, the pub 
 lisher, at Twickenham. There I made the acquaintance of 
 George Cruikshank, whom I afterwards met often, and knew 
 very well till his death. He was a gay old fellow, and on 
 this occasion danced a jig with old Mr. Bohn on the lawn, 
 and joked with me. There, too, we met Lady Martin, who 
 had been the famed Helen Faucit. Cruikshank was always 
 
ENGLAND. 401 
 
 inexhaustible in jokes, anecdotes, and reminiscences. At his 
 house I made the acquaintance of Miss Ada Cavendish. 
 
 To revert to Mr. Triibner s, I may say that one evening 
 after dinner, when, genial though quiet, Bret Harte was one 
 of the guests, he was asked to repeat the " Heathen Chinee," 
 which he could not do, as he had never learned it which is 
 not such an unusual thing, by the way, as many suppose. 
 But I, who knew it, remarked, " Ladies and gentlemen, it is 
 nothing to merely write a poem. True genius consists in 
 getting it by or from heart [from Bret Harte, for instance], 
 and repeating it. This genius nature has denied to the 
 illustrious poet before you but not to me, as I will now 
 illustrate by declaiming the Heathen Chinee." Which 
 performance was received with applause, in which Harte 
 heartily joined. But my claim to possess genius would hard 
 ly have borne examination, for it was years before I ever 
 learned " Hans Breitmann s Barty," nor would I like to risk 
 even a pound to one hundred that I can do it now without 
 mixing the verses or committing some error. 
 
 Once during the season I went with my wife and Mr. 
 W. TV. Story to Eton, where we supped with Oscar Browning. 
 We were taken out boating on the river, and I enjoyed it 
 very much. There is a romance about the Thames asso 
 ciated with a thousand passages in literature which goes to 
 the very heart. I was much impressed by the marked char 
 acter of Mr. Browning and his frank, genial nature ; and I 
 found some delightful old Latin books in his library. May 
 I meet with many such men ! 
 
 This year, what with the German war and the Trubner- 
 Hotten controversy, my " Breitmann Ballads " had become, I 
 may say, well known. The character of Hans was actually 
 brought into plays on three stages at once. Boucicault, 
 whom I knew well of yore in America, introduced it into 
 something. I had found Ewan Colquhoun the same old 
 sixpence and one night he took me to the Strand Theatre 
 to see a play in which my hero was a prominent part. I was 
 
402 MEMOIRS. 
 
 told afterwards that the company having been informed of 
 my presence, all came to look at me through the curtain-hole. 
 There were some imitations of my ballads published in Punch 
 and the Standard, and the latter were so admirably executed 
 pardon the vain word ! that I feared, because they satir 
 ised the German cause, that they might be credited to me ; 
 therefore I wrote to the journal, begging that the author 
 would give some indication that I had not written them, 
 which was kindly done. Finally, a newspaper was started 
 called Hans Breitmann, and the Messrs. Cope, of Liverpool, 
 issued a brand of Hans Breitmann cigars. Owing to the 
 resemblance between the words Bret and Breit there was a 
 confusion of names, and my photograph was to be seen about 
 town, with the name of Bret Harte attached to it. This 
 great injustice to Mr. Harte was not agreeable, and I, or my 
 friends, remonstrated with the shop-folk with the to-be-ex 
 pected result, " Yes-sir, yes-sir very sorry, sir we ll correct 
 the mistake, sir ! " But I don t think it was ever corrected 
 till the sale ceased. 
 
 I was sometimes annoyed with many imitations of my 
 poems by persons who knew no German, which were all 
 attributed to me. A very pious Presbyterian publication, in 
 alluding to something of the kind, said that " Mr. Leland, 
 because he is the author of Bret Harte, thinks himself justified 
 in publishing any trash of this description." I thought this 
 a very improper allusion for a clergyman, not to say libellous. 
 In fact, many people really believed that Bret Harte was a 
 nom deplume or the title of a poem. And I may here say 
 by the way that I never " wrote under " the pseudonym of 
 Hans Breitmann in my life, nor called myself any such name 
 at any time. It is simply the name of one of many books 
 which I have written. An American once insisting to me 
 that I should be called so from my work, I asked him if he 
 would familiarly accost Mr. Lowell as "Josh Biglow." If 
 there is anything in the world which denotes a subordinate 
 position in the social scale or defect in education, it is the 
 
ENGLAND. 403 
 
 passion to call men " out of their names," and never feel 
 really acquainted with any one until he is termed Tom or 
 Jack. It is doubtless all very genial and jocose and sociable, 
 but the man who shows a tendency to it should not complain 
 when his betters put him in a lower class or among the 
 " lower orders." 
 
 Once at a reception at George Boughton s, the artist, 
 there was, as I heard, an elderly gentleman rushing about 
 asking to see or be introduced to Hart Bretmann, whose 
 works he declared he knew by heart, and with whom he was 
 most anxious to become acquainted. Whether he ever dis 
 covered this remarkable conglomerate I do not know. 
 
 I once made the acquaintance of an American at the 
 Langham Hotel who declared that I had made life a burden 
 to him. His name was H. Brightman, and being in business 
 in New York, he never went to the Custom-House or Post- 
 Office but what the clerks cried " Hans Brightman ! of course. 
 Yes, we have read about you, sir in history." 
 
 But even in this London season I found more serious 
 work to attend to than comic ballads or society. Mr. Triibner 
 was very anxious to have me write a pamphlet vindicating 
 the claim of Germany to Alsace and Lorraine, and I offered 
 to do it gladly, if he would provide all the historical data 
 or material. The result of this was the brochure entitled 
 " France, Alsace, and Lorraine," which had a great success. 
 It at once reappeared in America, and even in Spanish in 
 South America. The German Minister in London ordered 
 six copies, and the Times made the work, with all its facts 
 and figures, into an editorial article, omitting, I regret to say, 
 to mention the source whence it was derived ; but this I for 
 give with all my heart, considering the good words which it 
 has given me on other occasions. For the object of the work 
 was not at all to glorify the author, but to send home great 
 truths at a very critical time; and the article in the Times, 
 which was little else but my pamphlet condensed, caused a 
 great sensation. But the principal result from it was this : 
 
404: MEMOIRS. 
 
 I had in the work discussed the idea, then urged by the 
 French and their friends, that, to avoid driving France to 
 "desperation," very moderate terms should be accepted in 
 order to conciliate. For the French, as I observed in effect, 
 will do their very tvorst in any case, and every possible ex 
 treme should be anticipated and assumed. This same argu 
 ment had previously been urged in my " Centralisation versus 
 States Eights." 
 
 When Prince Bismarck conversed with the French Com 
 missioners to arrange terms of peace, he met this argument 
 of not driving the French to extremes with a phrase so closely 
 like the one which I had used in my pamphlet, that neither 
 Mr. Trubner nor several others hesitated to declare to me 
 that it was beyond all question taken from it. Bismarck 
 had certainly received the pamphlet, which had been rec 
 ognised by the Times, and in many other quarters, as a 
 more than ordinary paper, and Prince Bismarck, like all great 
 diplomatists, prend son Men ou il le trouve. In any case this 
 remains true, that that which formed the settling argument of 
 Germany, found at the time expression in my pamphlet and 
 in the Chancellor s speech. 
 
 We made soon after a visit to the Rev. Dean and Mrs. 
 Carrington, in Booking, Essex. They had a fair daughter, 
 Eva, then quite a girl, who has since become well known as 
 a writer, and is now the Countess Cesaresco Martinengro 
 an Italian name, and not Romany-Gypsy, as its terminations 
 would seem to indicate. There is in the village of Booking, 
 at a corner, a curious and very large grotesque figure of oak, 
 which was evidently in the time of Elizabeth a pilaster in some 
 house-front. My friend Edwards, who was wont to roam all 
 over England in a mule-waggon etching and sketching, when 
 in Booking was informed by a rustic that this figure was the 
 image of Harkiles (Hercules), a heathen god formerly wor 
 shipped in the old Catholic convent upon the hill, in the old 
 times ! 
 
 From London we went in August, 1870, to Brighton, stay- 
 
ENGLAND. 405 
 
 ing at first at the Albion Hotel. There, under the influence 
 of fresh sea-air, long walks and drives in all the country 
 round, I began to feel better, yet it was not for many weeks 
 that I fairly recovered. A chemist named Phillips, who 
 supplied me with bromide of potass, suggested to me, to his 
 own loss, that I took a great deal too much. I left it off 
 altogether, substituting pale ale. Finding this far better, I 
 asked Mr. Phillips if he could not prepare for me lupulin, or 
 the anodyne of hops. He laughed, and said, "Do you find 
 the result required in ale ? " I answered, " Yes." " And do 
 you like ale ? " " Yes." " Then," he answered, " why don t 
 you drink ale?" And I did, but before I took it up my 
 very vitality seemed to be well-nigh exhausted with the 
 bromide. 
 
 Samuel Laing, M. P., the chairman of the Brighton Kail- 
 way, had at that time a house in Brighton, with several sons 
 and daughters, the latter of whom have all been very re 
 markable for beauty and accomplishments. In this home 
 there was a hospitality so profuse, so kind, so brilliant and 
 refined, that I cannot really remember to have ever seen it 
 equalled, and as we fully participated in it at all times in every 
 form, I should feel that I had omitted the deepest claim to 
 my gratitude if I did not here acknowledge it. Mr. Laing 
 was or is of a stock which deeply appealed to my sympathies, 
 for he is the son of the famous translator of the Heims- 
 kringla, a great collection of Norse sagas, which I had read, 
 and in which he himself somewhat aided. Of late years, 
 since he has retired from more active financial business, Mr. 
 Laing has not merely turned his attention to literature ; he 
 has deservedly distinguished himself by translating, as I may 
 say, into the clearest and most condensed or succinct and 
 lucid English ever written, so as to be understood by the 
 humblest mind, the doctrines of Darwin, Huxley, and the 
 other leading scientific minds of the day. Heine in his time 
 received a great deal of credit for having thus acted as the 
 flux and furnace by which the ore of German philosophy was 
 
406 MEMOIRS. 
 
 smelted into pure gold for general circulation ; but I, who 
 have translated all that Heine wrote on this subject, declare 
 that he was at such work as far inferior to Samuel Laing as 
 a mere verbal description of a beautiful face is inferior to a 
 first-class portrait. This family enters so largely into my 
 reminiscences and experiences, that a chapter would hardly 
 suffice to express all that I can recall of their hospitality for 
 years, of the dinners, hunts, balls, excursions, and the many 
 distinguished people whom I have met under their roof. It 
 is worth noting of Mr. Laing s daughters, that Mary, now 
 Mrs. Kennard, is at the head of the sporting-novel writers ; 
 that the beautiful Cecilia, now Mrs. MacRae, was pronounced 
 by G. H. Lewes, who was no mean judge, to be the first 
 amateur pianiste in England ; while the charming " Floy," 
 or Mrs. Kennedy, is a very able painter. With their two 
 very pretty sisters, they formed in 1870 as brilliant, beau 
 tiful, and accomplished a quintette as England could have 
 produced. 
 
 One day Mr. Laing organised an excursion with a special 
 train to Arundel Castle. By myself at other times I found 
 my way to Lewes and other places rich in legendary lore. 
 Of this latter I recall something worth telling. Harold, the 
 conquered Saxon king, had a son, and the conqueror William 
 had a daughter, Gundrada. The former became a Viking 
 pirate, and in his old age a monk, and was buried in a 
 church, now a Presbyterian chapel. There his epitaph may 
 be read in fine bold lettering, still distinct. That man is 
 dear to me. 
 
 Gundrada married, died, and was buried in a church 
 with a fine Norman tombstone over her remains. The 
 church was levelled with the ground, but the slab was pre 
 served here and there about Lewes as a relic. When the 
 railway was built, about 1849, there was discovered, where 
 the church had been, the bones of Gundrada and her husband 
 in leaden coffins distinctly inscribed with their names. A 
 very beautiful Norman chapel was then built to receive the 
 
ENGLAND. 407 
 
 coffins, and over them is placed the original memorial in 
 black marble. There is also in Lewes an archaeological mu 
 seum appropriately bestowed in an old Gothic tower. All 
 of which things did greatly solace me. As did also the Nor 
 man or Gothic churches of Shoreham, Newport, the old 
 manor of Rottingdean, and the marvellous Devil s Dyke, 
 which was probably a Roman fort, and from which it is 
 said that fifty towns or villages may be seen "far in the 
 blue." 
 
 One day I went with my wife and two ladies to visit the 
 latter. The living curiosity of the place was a famous old 
 gypsy woman named Gentilla Cooper, a pure blood or real 
 Kalorat Romany. I had already in America studied Pott s 
 " Thesaurus of Gypsy Dialects," and picked up many phrases 
 of the tongue from the works of Borrow, Simson, and others. 
 The old dame tackled us at once. As soon as I could, I 
 whispered in her ear an improvised rhyme : 
 
 " The bashno and kani, 
 The rye and the rani, 
 Hav d akai pre o boro Ion pani." 
 
 Which means that the cock and the hen, the gentleman 
 and the lady, came hither across the great salt water. The 
 effect on the gypsy was startling; she fairly turned pale. 
 Hustling the ladies away to one side to see a beautiful view, 
 she got me alone and hurriedly exclaimed, " Rya master ! 
 be you one of our people ? " with much more. AVe became 
 very good friends, and this little incident had in time for me 
 great results, and many strange experiences of gypsy life. 
 
 There live in Brighton two ladies, Miss Horace Smith 
 and her sister Rosa, who were and are well known in the 
 cultured world. They are daughters of Horace Smith, who, 
 with his brother James, wrote the "Rejected Addresses." 
 Their reminiscences of distinguished men are extremely 
 varied and interesting. The elder sister possesses an album 
 to which Thackeray contributed many verses and pen- 
 
408 MEMOIRS. 
 
 sketches. Their weekly receptions were very pleasant ; at 
 them might be seen most of the literary or social celebrities 
 who came to Brighton. A visit there was like living a 
 chapter in a book of memoirs and reminiscences. I have 
 had, if it be only a quiet, and not very eventful or remark 
 able, at least a somewhat varied life, and the Laings and 
 Smiths, with their surroundings, form two of its most inter 
 esting varieties. I believe they never missed an opportunity 
 to do us or any one a kindly act, to aid us to make congenial 
 friends, or the like. How many good people there really are 
 in the world ! 
 
 Of these ladies the author of "Gossip of the Century" 
 writes : 
 
 " Horace Smith s two daughters are still living, and in 
 Brighton. Their very pleasant house is frequented by the 
 best and most interesting kind of society, affording what may 
 be called a salon, that rare relic of ancient literary taste and 
 cementer of literary intimacies a salon which the cultivated 
 consider it a privilege to frequent, and where these ladies re 
 ceive with a grace and geniality which their friends know 
 how to appreciate. It is much to be regretted that gather 
 ings of this description seem to be becoming rarer every year, 
 for as death disturbs them society seems to lack the spirit or 
 the good taste, or the ability, to replace them." 
 
 Brighton is a very pleasant place, because it combines the 
 advantages of a seaside resort with those of a clean and 
 cheerful city. Walking along the front, you have a brave 
 outlook to the blue sea on one hand, and elegant shop-win 
 dows and fine hotels on the other. A little back in the town 
 on a hill is the fine old fifteenth-century church of St. 
 Nicholas, in which there is perhaps the most curious carved 
 Norman font in England ; but all this is known to so few 
 visitors, that I feel as if I were telling a great secret in letting 
 it out. Smith s book-store on the Western Road, and Bohn s 
 near the station, arvi kept by very well-informed and very 
 courteous men. I have been much indebted to the former 
 
ENGLAND. 409 
 
 in many ways, and found by his aid many a greatly needed 
 and rare work. 
 
 When I first went to Brighton there was one evening a 
 brilliant aurora borealis. As I looked at it, I heard an Eng 
 lishman say, to my great amazement, it was the first time he 
 had ever seen one in his life ! I once saw one in America of 
 such extraordinary brilliancy and duration, that it prolonged 
 the daylight for half an hour or more, till I became amazed, 
 and then found it was a Northern Light. It lasted till sun 
 rise in all its splendour. I have taken down from Algonkin 
 Indians several beautiful legends relating to them. In one, 
 the Milky Way is the girdle of a stupendous deity, and the 
 Northern Lights the splendid gleams emitted by his ball 
 when playing. In another, the narrator describes him as 
 clad in an ineffable glory of light, and in colours unknown 
 on earth ! 
 
 And this reminds me further that I have just read in the 
 newspapers of the death of Edwin Booth, who was born 
 during the famous star shower of 1833, which phenomenon I 
 witnessed from beginning to end, and remember as if it were 
 only yesterday. Now, I was actually dreaming that I was in 
 a room in which cigars were flying about in every direction, 
 when my father came and woke me and my brother Henry, 
 to come and see an exceeding great marvel. There were for a 
 long time many thousands of stars at once in the sky, all shoot 
 ing, as it were, or converging towards a centre. They were 
 not half so long as the meteors which we see ; one or two had 
 acrook or bend in the middle (e. g., f~\ L *) 
 
 The next day I was almost alone at school in the glory of 
 having seen it, for so few people were awake in sober Phila 
 delphia at three in the morning that one of the newspapers 
 ridiculed the whole story. 
 
 I can distinctly recall that the next day, at Mr. Alcott s, 
 I read through a very favourite work of mine, a translation 
 of the German Das MdhrcJien ohne Ende " The Story with 
 out an End." 
 
410 MEMOIRS. 
 
 All kinds of odd fish came to Brighton, floating here and 
 there ; but two of the very oddest were encountered by me 
 in it on my last visit. I was looking into a chemist s win 
 dow, when two well-dressed and decidedly jolly feminines, 
 one perhaps of thirty years, and the other much younger and 
 quite pretty, paused by me, while the elder asked 
 
 "Are you looking for a hair-restorer?" 
 
 " I am not, though I fear I need one much more than 
 you do." 
 
 " The search for a good hair-restorer," she replied in 
 Italian, " is as vain as the search for happiness." 
 
 " True," I answered in the same tongue, " and unless you 
 have the happiness in you, or a beautiful head of hair like 
 yours already growing on you, you will find neither." 
 
 "What we forget" added the younger in Spanish, " is the 
 best part of our happiness." 
 
 " Senorita, parece que no ha olvidado su Espanol " The 
 young lady appears not to have forgotten her Spanish I 
 replied. (Mine is not very good.) 
 
 " There is no use asking whether you talk French," said 
 the elder. " Konnen Sie aucJi Deutsch sprechen ? " 
 
 " Ja ivohl! Even worse than German itself," I answered. 
 
 Just then there came up to us a gypsy girl whom I knew, 
 with a basket of flowers, and asked me in Gypsy to buy some ; 
 but I said, " Parraco pen, jd vrl, mandy kdms kek ruzliia 
 kedivvus " Thank you, sister, no flowers to-day and she 
 darted away. 
 
 " Did you understand that 9 " I inquired. 
 
 "No; what was it?" 
 
 " Gitano gypsy." 
 
 " But how in Heaven s name," cried the girl, " could she 
 know that you spoke Gitano ? " 
 
 " Because I am," I replied slowly and grimly, " the chief 
 of all the gypsies in England, the loro Romany rye and Presi 
 dent of the Gypsy Society. Subscription one pound per 
 annum, which entitles you to receive the journal for one year, 
 
ENGLAND. 
 
 and includes postage. Behold in me the gypsy king, whom 
 all know and fear ! I shall be happy to put your names down 
 as subscribers." 
 
 At this appalling announcement, which sounded like an 
 extract from a penny dreadful, my two romantic friends 
 looked absolutely bewildered. They seemed as if they had 
 read in novels how mysterious gypsy chiefs cast aside their 
 cloaks, revealing themselves to astonished maidens, and as I 
 had actually spoken Gitano to a gypsy in their hearing, it 
 must be so. They had come for wool with all their languages, 
 poor little souls ! and gone back shorn. The elder said some 
 thing about their having just come to Brighton for six hours 
 frolic, and so they departed. They had had their spree. 
 
 I have often wondered what under the sun they could 
 have been. Attaches of an opera company ladies -maids 
 who had made the grand tour who knows? A mad world, 
 my masters ! 
 
 I can recall of that first year, as of many since at Brighton, 
 long breezy walks on the brow of the chalk cliffs, looking out 
 at the blue sea white capped, or at the downs rolling inland 
 to Newport, sometimes alone, at times in company. On all 
 this chalk the grass does not grow to more than an inch or 
 so in length, and as the shortest, tenderest food is best for 
 sheep, it is on this that they thrive I believe by millions 
 yielding the famous South Downs mutton. In or on this 
 grass are incredible numbers of minute snails, which the 
 sheep are said to devour ; in fact, I do not see how they could 
 eat the grass without taking them in, and these contribute to 
 give the mutton its delicate flavour. Snails are curious beings. 
 Being epicene, they conduct their wooings on the mutual 
 give and take principle, which would save human beings a 
 great deal of spasmodic flirtation, and abolish the whole femme 
 incomprise business, besides a great many bad novels, if we 
 could adopt it. When winter comes, half-a-dozen of them 
 retire into a hole in a bank, connect themselves firmly into a 
 loving band like a bunch of grapes by the tenderest ties, and 
 
412 MEMOIRS. 
 
 stay there till spring. Finally, in folk-lore the snail is an 
 uncanny or demoniac being, because it has horns. Its shell 
 is an amulet, and the presentation of one by a lady to a gen 
 tleman is a very decided declaration of love, especially in 
 Germany. Sed mittamus Jicec. 
 
 At this time, and for some time to come, I was engaged 
 in collecting and correcting a book oj: poems of a more serious 
 character than the " Breitmann Ballads." This was "The 
 Music Lesson of Confucius and other Poems." Of which 
 book I can say truly that it had a succes d estime, though it 
 had a very small sale. There were in it ten or twelve ballads 
 only which were adapted to singing, and all of these were set 
 to music by Carlo Pinsutti, Virginia Gabriel, or others. There 
 was in it a poem entitled " On Mount Meru." In this the 
 Creator is supposed to show the world when it was first made 
 to Satan. The adversary finds that all is fit and well, save 
 " the being called Man," who seems to him to be the worst 
 and most incongruous. To which the Demiurgus replies 
 that Man will in the end conquer all things, even the devil 
 himself. And at the last the demon lies dying at the feet of 
 God, and confesses that " Man, thy creature hath vanquished 
 me for ever Vicisti Galilcee ! " Some years after I read a 
 work by a French writer in which this same idea of God and 
 the devil is curiously carried out and illustrated by the his 
 tory of architecture. And as in the case of the letter from 
 Lord Lytton Bulwer, warm praise from other persons of high 
 rank in the literary world and reviews, I had many proofs 
 that these poems had made a favourable impression. The 
 only exception which I can recall was a very sarcastic review 
 in the Athenceum, in which the writer declared his belief 
 that the poems or Legends of Perfumes in the book were 
 originally written as advertisements of some barber or trades 
 man, and being by him rejected as worthless, had been thrown 
 back on my hands ! Other works by me it treated kindly 
 so it goes in this world like a recipe for a cement 
 which I have just copied into my great work on " Mend- 
 
ENGLAND. 413 
 
 ing and Repairing" in which vinegar is combined with 
 sugar. 
 
 While at Brighton we met Louis Blanc, whom we had 
 previously seen several times at the Triibners , in London. In 
 Brighton he heard the news of the overthrow of the Empire 
 and departed for Paris. At Christmas we went to London 
 to visit the Triibners, and thence to the Langham Hotel, 
 where we remained till July. I recall very little of what I 
 witnessed or did beyond seeing the Queen prorogue Parlia 
 ment and translating ScheffePs Gaudeamus, a little volume 
 of German humorous poems. Scheffel, as I have before 
 written, was an old Mitkneipant^ or evening-beer companion 
 of mine in Heidelberg. 
 
 In July we made up a travelling party with Mrs. S. Laing 
 and her daughters Cecilia and Floy, and departed for a visit 
 to the Rhine that is to say, these ladies preceded us, and we 
 joined them at the Hotel des Quatre Saisons in Homburg. It 
 was a very brilliant season, for the German Emperor, fresh 
 with the glory of his great victory, was being feted every 
 where, and Homburg the brilliant was not behind the Ger 
 man world in this respect. I saw the great man frequently, 
 near and far, and was much impressed with his appearance. 
 Punch had not long before represented him as Hans Breit- 
 mann in a cartoon, deploring that he had not squeezed more 
 milliards out of the French, and I indeed found in the origi 
 nal very closely my ideal of Hans, who always occurs to me 
 as a German gentleman, who drinks, fights, and plunders, 
 not as a mere rowdy, raised above his natural sphere, but as 
 a rough cavalier. And that the great-bearded giant Emperor 
 Wilhelm did drink heavily, fight hard, and mulct France 
 mightily, is matter of history. This was the last year of the 
 gaming-tables at Homburg. Apropos of these, the roulette- 
 table was placed in the Homburg Museum, where it may be 
 seen amid many Roman relics. Two or three years ago, while 
 I was in the room, there came in a small party of English or 
 Yankee looking or gazing tourists, to whom the attendant 
 
414: MEMOIRS. 
 
 pointed out the roulette-table. " And did the old Romans 
 really play at roulette, and was that one of their tables ? " 
 said the leader of the visitors. This ready simple faith indi 
 cates the Englishman. The ordinary American is always 
 possessed with the conviction that everything antique is a 
 forgery. Once when I was examining the old Viking armour 
 in the Museum of Copenhagen, a Yankee, in whose face a 
 general vulgar distrust of all earthly things was strongly 
 marked, came up to me and asked, " Do you believe that all 
 these curiosities air genooine 9 " " I certainly do," I replied. 
 With an intensely self -satisfied air he rejoined, " I guess you 
 can t fool me with no such humbug." 
 
 There was a great deal of cholera that year in Germany, 
 and I had a very severe attack of it either in an incipient 
 form or something thereunto allied : suffice it to say that for 
 twelve hours I almost thought I should die of pure pain. I 
 took in vain laudanum, cayenne pepper, brandy, camphor, 
 and kino nothing would remain. At last, at midnight, 
 when I was beginning to despair, or just as I felt like being 
 wrecked, I succeeded in keeping a little weak laudanum and 
 water on my stomach, and then the point was cleared. After 
 that I took the other remedies, and was soon well. But it was 
 a crisis of such fearful suffering that it all remains vividly im 
 pressed on my memory. I do not know whether any sensible 
 book has ever been written on the moral influence of pain, but 
 it is certain that a wonderful one might be. So far as I can 
 understand it, I think that in the vast majority of cases it is 
 an evil, or one of Nature s innumerable mistakes or diva 
 gations, not as yet outgrown or corrected ; and it is the great 
 error of Buddhistic- Christianity that it accepts pain not 
 merely as inevitable, but glorifies and increases it, instead of 
 making every conceivable exertion to diminish it. Herein 
 clearly lies the difference between Science and Religion. Sci 
 ence strives in every way to alleviate pain and suffering ; errone 
 ous " Religion " is based on it. During the Middle Ages, the 
 Church did all in its power to hinder, if not destroy, the 
 
ENGLAND. 415 
 
 healing art. It made anatomy of the human body a crime, 
 and carried its precautions so far that, quite till the Reforma 
 tion, the art of healing (as Paracelsus declares) was chiefly in 
 the hands of witches and public executioners. Torturers, 
 chiefly clergymen such as Grillandus, were in great honour, 
 while the healing leech was disreputable. It was not, as 
 people say, " the age " which caused all this it was the result 
 of religion based on crucifixion and martyrdoms and pain in 
 fact, on that element of torture which we are elsewhere 
 taught, most inconsistently, is the special province of the 
 devil in hell. The cant of this still survives in Longfellow s 
 " Suifer and be strong," and in the pious praise of endur 
 ance of pain. What the world wants is the hope held out to 
 it, or enforced on it as a religion or conviction, that pain and 
 suffering are to be diminished, and that our chief duty should 
 consist in diminishing them, instead of always praising or 
 worshipping them as a cross ! 
 
 We left our friends and went for a short time to Switzer 
 land, where we visited Lucerne, Interlaken, Basle, and Berne. 
 Thence we returned to London and the Langham Hotel. 
 This was at that time under the management of Mr. John 
 Sanderson, an American, whom I had known of old. He 
 was a brother of Professor Sanderson, of Philadelphia, who 
 wrote a remarkably clever work entitled TJie American in 
 Paris. John Sanderson himself had contributed many arti 
 cles to Appletons Cyclopcedia, belonged to the New York 
 Century Club, and, like all the members of his family, had 
 culture in music and literary taste. While he managed the 
 Langham it was crowded during all the year, as indeed any 
 decent hotel almost anywhere may be by simple proper lib 
 eral management. This is a subject which I have studied 
 aufond, having read Das Hotel wesen der Gegenwart, a very 
 remarkable work, and passed more than twenty years of my 
 life in hotels in all countries. 
 
 I can remember that during the first year of my residence 
 in England I tried to persuade a chemist to import from 
 
416 MEMOIRS. 
 
 South America the coca leaf, of which not an ounce was then 
 consumed in Europe. Weston the walker brought it into 
 fashion " later on." I had heard extraordinary and authen 
 tic accounts of its enabling Indian messengers to run all day, 
 from a friend who had employed them. Apropos of this, " I 
 do recall a wondrous pleasant tale." My cousin, Godfrey 
 Davenport, a son of the Uncle Seth mentioned in my earlier 
 life, owned what was regarded as the model plantation of 
 Louisiana. My brother Henry visited him one winter, and 
 while there w r as kindly treated by a very genial, hospitable 
 neighbouring planter, whom I afterwards met at my father s 
 house in Philadelphia. He was a good-looking, finely-formed 
 man, lithe and active as a panther the replica of Albert 
 Pike s " fine Arkansas gentleman." And here I would fain 
 disquisit on Pike, but type and time are pressing. Well, this 
 gentleman had one day a difference of opinion with another 
 planter, who was, like himself, a great runner, and drawing 
 his bowie knife, pursued him on the run, tiventy-two miles, 
 ere he " got " his victim. The distance was subsequently 
 measured and verified by the admiring neighbours, who put 
 up posts in commemoration of such an unparalleled pedes 
 trian feat. 
 
 When I returned to Brighton, after getting into lodgings, 
 I began to employ or amuse myself in novel fashion. Old 
 Gentilla Cooper, the gypsy, had an old brother named Mat 
 thias, a full-blood Romany, of whom all his people spoke as 
 being very eccentric and wild, but who had all his life a fancy 
 for picking up the old " Egyptian " tongue. I engaged him 
 to come to me two or three times a week, at half-a-crown a 
 visit, to give me lessons in it. As he had never lived in 
 houses, and, like Eegnar Lodbrog, had never slept under a 
 fixed roof, unless when he had taken a nap in a tavern or 
 stable, and finally, as his whole life had been utterly that of 
 a gypsy in the roads, at fairs, or " by wood and wold as out 
 laws wont to do," I found him abundantly original and in 
 teresting. And as on account of his eccentricity and amus- 
 
ENGLAND. 417 
 
 ing gifts he had always been welcome in every camp or tent, 
 and was watchful withal and crafty, there was not a phase, 
 hole, or corner of gypsy life or a member of the fraternity 
 with which or whom he was not familiar. I soon learned 
 his jargon, with every kind of gypsy device, dodge, or pecul 
 iar custom, and, with the aid of several works, succeeded in 
 drawing from the recesses of his memory an astonishing 
 number of forgotten words. Thus, to begin with, I read to 
 him aloud the Turkish Gypsy Dictionary of Paspati. When 
 he remembered or recognised a word, or it recalled another, 
 I wrote it down. Then I went through the vocabularies of 
 Liebrich, Pott, Simson, &c., and finally through Brice s 
 Hindustani Dictionary and the great part of a much larger 
 work, and one in Persian. The reader may find most of the 
 results of Matty s teaching in my work entitled " The Eng 
 lish Gypsies and their Language." Very often I went with 
 my professor to visit the gypsies camped about Brighton, far 
 or near, and certainly never failed to amuse myself and pick 
 up many quaint observations. In due time I passed to that 
 singular state when I could never walk a mile or two in the 
 country anywhere without meeting or making acquaintance 
 with some wanderer on the highways, by use of my newly- 
 acquired knowledge. Thus, I needed only say, " Seen any 
 of the Coopers or Bosvilles lately on the drum?" (road), or 
 " Do you know Sam Smith ? " &c., to be recognised as one of 
 the grand army in some fashion. Then it was widely ru 
 moured that the Coopers had got a rye, or master, who spoke 
 Romany, and was withal not ungenerous, so that in due time 
 there was hardly a wanderer of gypsy kind in Southern Eng 
 land who had not heard of me. And though there are thou 
 sands of people who are more thoroughly versed in Society 
 than I am, I do not think there are many so much at home 
 in such extremely varied phases of it as I have been. I have 
 sat in a gypsy camp, like one of them, hearing all their little 
 secrets and talking familiarly in Romany, and an hour after 
 dined with distinguished people; and this life had many 
 
418 MEMOIRS. 
 
 other variations, and they came daily for many years. My 
 gypsy experiences have not been so great as those of Francis 
 H. Groorae (once a pupil and protege of Benfey), or the 
 Grand Duke Josef of Hungary, or of Dr. Wlislocki, but next 
 after these great masters, and as an all-round gypsy rye in 
 many lands, I believe that I am not far behind any aficionado 
 who has as yet manifested himself. 
 
 To become intimate, as I did in time, during years in 
 Brighton, off andxon, with all the gypsies who roamed the 
 south of England, to be beloved of the old fortune-tellers 
 and the children and mothers as I was, and to be much in 
 tents, involves a great deal of strangely picturesque rural 
 life, night-scenes by firelight, in forests and by river-banks, 
 and marvellously odd reminiscences of other days. There 
 was a gypsy child who knew me so well that the very first 
 words she could speak were " omany * " (0 Romany rye), 
 to the great delight of her parents. 
 
 After a little while I found that the Romany element 
 was spread strangely and mysteriously round about among 
 the rural population in many ways. I went one day with 
 Francis H. Groome to Cobham Fair. As I was about to 
 enter a tavern, there stood near by three men whose faces and 
 general appearance had nothing of the gypsy, but as I passed 
 one said to the other so that I could hear 
 
 " DikJc adovo rye, se o Romany rye, yuv, tacho ! " (Look 
 at that gentleman ; he is a gypsy gentleman, sure ! ) 
 
 I naturally turned my head hearing this, when he burst 
 out laughing, and said 
 
 " I told you I d make him look round." 
 
 Once I was startled at hearing a well-dressed, I may say 
 a gentlemanly-looking man, seated in a gig with a fine horse, 
 stopping by the road, say, as I passed with my wife 
 
 " Likk adovo gorgio adoi!" (Look at that Gentile, or 
 
 Not being accud;omed to hear myself called a gorgio, I 
 glanced up at him angrily, when he, perceiving that I under- 
 
ENGLAND. 
 
 stood him and was of the mysterious brotherhood, smiled, and 
 touched his hat to me. One touch of nature makes the 
 whole world grin. 
 
 But the drollest proposal ever macle to me in serious 
 earnest came from that indomitable incarnate old gypssissi- 
 mus Tsingarorum, Matthew Cooper, who proposed that I 
 should buy a donkey. He knew where to get one for a 
 pound, but 2 105. would buy a " stunner." He would bor 
 row a small cart and a tent, and brown my face and hands 
 so that I would be dark enough, and then on the drum 
 " over the hills." As for all the expenses of the journey, I 
 need not spend anything, for he could provide a neat nut- 
 brown maid, who would not only do all our cooking, but 
 earn money enough, by fortune-telling to support us all. I 
 would be expected, however, to greatly aid by my superior 
 knowledge of ladies and gentlemen ; and so all would go 
 merrily on, with unlimited bread and cheese, bacon and ale, 
 and tobacco into the blue away ! 
 
 I regret to say that Matthew expected to inherit the 
 donkey. 
 
 About this time, as all my friends went hunting once or 
 twice a week, I determined to do the same. Now, as I had 
 never been a good rider, and had anything but an English 
 seat in the saddle, I went to a riding-school and underwent 
 a thorough course both on the pig-skin and bare-backed. 
 My teacher, Mr. Goodchild, said eventually of me that I was 
 the only person whom he had ever known who had at my 
 time of life learned to ride well. But to do this I gave 
 my whole mind and soul to it ; and Goodchild s standard, 
 and still more that of his riding-master, who had been a 
 captain in a cavalry regiment, was very high. I used to feel 
 quite as if I were a boy again, and one under pretty severe 
 discipline at that, when the Captain was drilling me. For 
 his life he could not treat his pupils otherwise than as re 
 cruits. " Sit up straighter, sir ! Do you call that sitting 
 up ? That s not the way to hold your arms ! Knees in ! 
 
420 MEMOIRS. 
 
 Why, sir, when I was learning to ride I was made to put 
 shillings between my knees and the side, and if I dropped 
 one I forfeited it ! " 
 
 Then in due time came the meets, and the fox and hare 
 hunting, during which I found my way, I believe, into every 
 village or nook for twenty miles round. By this time I had 
 forgotten all my troubles, mental or physical, and after riding 
 six or seven hours in a soft fog, would come home the picture 
 of health. 
 
 I remember that one very cold morning I was riding alone 
 to the meet on a monstrous high black horse which Good- 
 child had bought specially for me, when I met two gypsy 
 women, full blood, selling wares, among them woollen mit 
 tens just what I wanted, for my hands were almost frozen 
 in Paris kids. The women did not know me, but I knew 
 them by description, and great was the amazement of one 
 when I addressed her by name and in Romany. 
 
 " Pen a mandy, Priscilla Cooper, sa buti me sosti del tute 
 for adovo pustini vashtini?" (Tell me, Priscilla Cooper, 
 how much should I give you for those woollen gloves ?) 
 
 " Eighteen pence, master." The common price was 
 ninepence. 
 
 " I will not give you eighteen pence," I replied. 
 
 " Then how much will you give, master ? " asked 
 Priscilla. 
 
 Four shillings will I give, and not a penny less miri 
 pen you may take it or leave it." 
 
 I went off with the gloves, while the women roared out 
 blessings in Romany. There was something in the whole 
 style of the gift, or the manner of giving it, which was spe 
 cially gratifying to gypsies, and the account thereof soon 
 spread far and wide over the roads as a beautiful deed. 
 
 The fraternity of the roads is a strange thing. Once 
 when I lived at Walton there was an old gypsy woman named 
 Lizzie Buckland who often camped near us. A good and 
 winsome young lady named Lillie Doering had taken a lik- 
 
ENGLAND. 
 
 ing to the old lady, and sent her a nice Christmas present 
 of clothing, tea, &c., which was sent to me to give to the 
 Egyptian mother. But when I went to seek her, she had 
 flown over the hills and far away. It made no difference. I 
 walked on till I met a perfect stranger to me, a woman, but 
 " evidently a traveller." " Where is old Liz ? " I asked. 
 " Somewhere about four miles beyond Moulsey." " I ve got 
 a present for her ; are you going that way ? " " Not exactly, 
 but I ll take it to her ; a few miles don t signify." I learned 
 that it had gone from hand to hand and been safely delivered. 
 It seems a strange way to deliver valuables, to walk forth and 
 give them to the first tramp whom you meet ; but I knew 
 my people. 
 
 I may here say that during this and the previous winter I 
 had practised wood-carving. In which, as in studying Gypsy, 
 I had certain ultimate aims, which were fully developed in 
 later years. I have several times observed in this record that 
 when I get an idea I cherish it, think it over, and work it 
 up. Out of this wood-carving and repousse and the design 
 ing which it involved I in time developed ideas which led to 
 what I may fairly call a great result. 
 
 We remained at Brighton until February, when we went 
 to London and stayed at the Langham Hotel. Then began 
 the London life of visits, dinners, and for me, as usual, of 
 literary work. In those days I began to meet and know Pro 
 fessor E. H. Palmer, Walter Besant, Walter H. Pollock, and 
 many other men of the time of whom I shall anon have more 
 to say. I arranged with Mr. Triibner as to the publication 
 of " The English Gypsies." I think it was at this time that 
 I dined one evening at Sir Charles Dilke s, where a droll in 
 cident took place. There was present a small Frenchman, 
 to whom I had not been introduced, and whose name there 
 fore I did not know. After dinner in the smoking-room I 
 turned over with this gentleman a very curious collection of 
 the works of Blake, which were new to him. Finding that he 
 evidently knew something about art, I explained to him that 
 19 
 
422 MEMOIRS. 
 
 Blake was a very strange visionary that lie believed that the 
 spirits of the dead appeared to him, and that he took their 
 portraits. 
 
 " C etait done un fou" remarked the Frenchman. 
 
 " Non, Monsieur," I replied, " he was not a madman. He 
 was almost a genius. Indeed, c etait un Dore manque " (he 
 was all but a Dore). 
 
 There was a roar of laughter from all around, and I, inno 
 cently supposing that I had said something clever unawares, 
 laughed too. 
 
 After all had departed, and I was smoking alone with Sir 
 Charles, he said 
 
 " Well, what did you think of Dore ? " 
 
 " Dore ! " I replied astonished, " why, I never saw Dore 
 in all my life." 
 
 " That was Dore to whom you were talking," he an 
 swered. 
 
 " Ah ! well," was my answer, " then it is all right." 
 
 I suppose that Dore believed that I knew at the time who 
 he was. Had he been aware that I did not know who he was, 
 the compliment would have seemed much stronger. 
 
 I have either been introduced to, conversed with, or been 
 well acquainted at one time or another with Sir John Millais, 
 Holman Hunt, the Rossettis, Frith, Whistler, Poynter, Du 
 Maurier, Charles Keene, Bough ton,. Hodges, Tenniel (who 
 set my motive of " Ping-Wing," as I may say, to music in a 
 cartoon in Punch), the Hon. John Collier, Riviere, Walter 
 Crane, and of course many more or less here and there in 
 the club, or at receptions. Could I have then foreseen or 
 imagined that I should ever become albeit in a very humble 
 grade an artist myself, and that my works on design and the 
 minor arts would form the principal portion of my writings 
 and of my life s work. I should assuredly have made a greater 
 specialty of such society. But at this time I could hardly 
 draw, save in very humble fashion indeed, and little dreamed 
 that I should execute for expensive works illustrations which 
 
ENGLAND. 423 
 
 would be praised by my critics, as strangely happened to my 
 " Gypsy Sorcery." But we never know what may befall us. 
 
 " Oh, little did my mother think, 
 
 The day she cradled me, 
 The lands that I should travel in, 
 
 Or the sights that I should see ; 
 Or gae rovin about wi gypsy carles, 
 
 And sic like companie." 
 
 As the Nodes varies it. For it actually came to pass that a 
 very well-known man of letters, while he, with the refined 
 politeness characteristic of his style, spoke of mine as " rig 
 marole," still praised my pictures. 
 
 In April we went to Leamington to pay a visit to a Mr. 
 Field, where we also met his brother, my old friend Leonard 
 Field, whom I had known in Paris in 1848. During this 
 journey we visited Kenil worth, the town and castle of War 
 wick, Stratford-on-Avon, and all therewith connected. At 
 the Easter spring-tide, when primroses first flush by running 
 waters, and there are many long bright sunny days in the 
 land, while birdes songs do ripple in the aire, it is good 
 roaming or resting in such a country, among old castles, tow 
 ers, and hamlets quaint and grey. To him who can think and 
 feel, it is like the reading of marvellously pleasant old books, 
 some in Elizabethan type, some in earlier black letter, and 
 hearing as we read sweet music and far-distant chimes. And 
 apropos of this, I would remark that while I was at Princeton 
 an idea fixed itself so firmly in my mind that to this day I 
 live on it and act on it. It is this : There is a certain stage 
 to be reached in reading and reflection, especially if it be 
 aided by broad aesthetic culture and science, when every 
 landscape, event, or human being is or may be to us exactly 
 the same as a book. For everything in this world which can 
 be understood and felt can be described, and whatever can 
 be described may be written and printed. For ordinary 
 people, no ideas are distinct or concentrated or " literary " 
 till they are in black and white ; but the scholar or artist in 
 
424 MEMOIRS. 
 
 words puts thoughts into as clear a form in his own mind. 
 Having deeply meditated on this idea for forty years, and 
 been constantly occupied in realising it, I can say truly that 
 I often compose or think books or monographs which, though 
 not translated into type, are as absolutely literature to me as 
 if they were. There is so much more in this than will at 
 first strike most readers, that I can not help dwelling on it. 
 It once happened to me in Philadelphia, in 1850, to pass all 
 the year in fact, nearly two years " in dusky city pent," 
 and during all that time I never got a glimpse of the country. 
 As a director of the Art Union, I was continually studying 
 pictures, landscapes by great artists, and the like. The sec 
 ond year, when I went up into Pennsylvania, I found that I 
 had strangely developed what practically amounted to a kind 
 of pseudophia. Every fragment of rural scenery, every rustic 
 " bit," every group of shrubs or weeds, everything, in fact, 
 which recalled pictures, or which could itself be pictured, 
 appeared to me to be a picture perfectly executed. This 
 lasted as a vivid or real perception for about a week, but the 
 memory of it has been in my mind ever since. It was not so 
 much the beautiful in all Nature which I saw, as that in 
 Nature which was within the power of the skilled artist to 
 execute. In like manner the practised reflector and writer 
 reads books in everything to a degree which no other person 
 can understand. Wordsworth attained this stage, and the 
 object of the " Excursion " is to teach it. 
 
 In the " Letters of James Smetham " there is a passage 
 to the effect that he felt extremely happy among English 
 hedgerows, and found inexhaustible delight in English birds, 
 trees, flowers, hills, and brooks, but could not appreciate his 
 little back-garden with a copper-beech, a weeping-ash, nailed- 
 up rose trees, and twisting creepers. After I had made a 
 habit, till it became a passion, of seeking decorative motives, 
 strange and novel curves in short, began to detect the 
 transcendent alphabet or written language of beauty and 
 mystery in every plant whatever (of which the alphabet may 
 
ENGLAND. 425 
 
 be found in the works of Hulme), I found in every growth 
 of every kind, yes, in every weed, enough to fill my soul with 
 both art and poetry ; I may say specially in weeds, since in 
 them the wildest and most graceful motives are more abun 
 dant than in garden flowers. Unto me now anything that 
 grows is, in simple truth, more than what any landscape once 
 was. This began in youth in much reading of, and long re 
 flection on, the signatures, correspondences, and mystical 
 fancies of the Paracelsian writers especially of Gaffarel, of 
 whom I have a Latin version by me as I write and of late 
 years I have carried its inspiration into decorative art. I 
 have said so much of this because, as this is an autobi 
 ography, I cannot omit from it something which, unseen in 
 actions, still forms a predominant motive in my life. It is 
 something which, while it perfectly embraces all landscaping 
 or picture-making or dainty delicate cataloguing in poetry, 
 a la Morris at times, or like the Squyre of Lowe Degre, in 
 detail, also involves a far more earnest feeling, and one which 
 combines thought or religion with emotion, just as a melody 
 which we associate with a beautiful poem is worth more to us 
 than one which we do not. Burne Jones is a higher example 
 of this. 
 
 During this season we met at Mrs. Inwood Jones who 
 was a niece of Lady Morgan and had many interesting sou 
 venirs of her aunt several people of note, among whom w r as 
 Mme. Taglioni, now a very agreeable and graceful though 
 naturally elderly lady. I was charmed with her many remi 
 niscences of well-known characters, and as I had seen her as 
 well as Ellsler and all the great ballerine many times, we had 
 many conferences. Somebody said to her one day, " So you 
 know Mr. Leland ? " " Yes," replied Taglioni in jest, " he 
 was one of my old lovers." This was reported to me, when 
 I said, " I wish she had told me that thirty years sooner." 
 In 1846 Taglioni owned three palaces in Venice, one of them 
 the Ca d oro, and in 1872 she was giving lessons in London. 
 At Mrs. Frank Hill s I made the acquaintance of the mar- 
 
426 MEMOIRS. 
 
 vellously clever Eugene Schuyler, and at Mr. Smalley s of 
 the equally amazingly cheeky and gifted " Joaquin " Miller. 
 Somewhere else I met several times another curious celebrity 
 whom I had known in America, the Chevalier Wykoff. 
 Though he was almost the type and proverb of an adven 
 turer, I confess that I always liked him. He was gentle 
 manly and kind in his manner, and agreeable and intelligent 
 in conversation. Though he had been Fanny Ellsler s agent 
 or secretary, and written those two curiously cool works, 
 " Souvenirs of a Eoving Diplomatist " (he had been employed 
 by Palmerston) and " My Courtship and its Consequences " 
 (in reference to his having been imprisoned in Italy for at 
 tempting to carry off an elderly heiress), he was also the 
 author of a really admirable work on the political system of 
 the United States, which any man may read to advantage. 
 A century ago or more he would have been a great man in 
 his way. He knew everybody. I believe that as General 
 Tevis formed his bold ideal of life from much reading of 
 condottieri or military adventurers, and Robert Hunt from 
 Cooper s novels, so Wykoff got his inspiration for a career 
 from studying and admiring the diplomatic parvenus of 
 Queen Anne s time. These Bohemiens de la haute volee, 
 who drew their first motives from study, are by far more 
 interesting and tolerable than those of an illiterate type. 
 
 One summer when I was at Bateman s, near Newport, 
 with GL H. Boker, Robert Leroy, and our wives, Leroy re 
 ported one day that he had seen Wykoff, Hiram Fuller, a 
 certain very dashing prim a donna, and two other notorieties 
 sitting side by side in a row on the steps of the Ocean House. 
 I remarked that if there had only been with them the devil 
 and Lola Montez, the party would have been complete. 
 Leroy was famous for his quaint mots, in which he had a 
 counterpart in " Tom Appleton," of Boston, whom I also 
 knew very well. The Appletoniana and Leroyalties which 
 were current in the Sixties would make a lively book. 
 
 I remember that one evening at a dinner at Triibner s in 
 
ENGLAND. 427 
 
 this year there were present M. Van der Weyer, G. H. Lewes, 
 and M. Delepierre. I have rarely heard so much good talk 
 in the same time. Thoughts so gay and flashes so refined, 
 such a mingling of choice literature, brilliant anecdote, and 
 happy jests, are seldom heard as I heard them. Tempi pas- 
 sat i ! 
 
 Apropos of George II. Boker and Leroy, I may here re 
 mark that they were both strikingly tall and distingue men, 
 but that when they dressed themselves for bass-fishing, and 
 " put on mean attire," they seemed to be common fisher-folk. 
 One day, while fishing on the rocks, there came up the ele 
 gant prima donna referred to, who, seeing that they had very 
 fine lobsters, ordered them to be taken to the hotel for her. 
 " Can t do it, ma am," answered Leroy brusquely ; " we want 
 them for bait." The lady swept away indignantly. To her 
 succeeded Ralph Waldo Emerson, who did not know them 
 personally, and who began to put to Mr. Boker questions as 
 to his earnings and his manner of life, to all of which Mr. 
 Boker replied with great naivete. Mr. B., however, had on 
 his pole a silver reel, which had cost 30 ($150), and at last 
 Mr. Emerson s eye rested on that, and word no more spoke 
 he, but, with a smile and bowing very politely, went his road. 
 Ultimam dixit salutem. 
 
 One evening I was sitting in the smoking-room of the 
 Langham Hotel, when an American said to me, " I hear that 
 Charles Leland, who wrote Breitmann, is staying here." 
 " Yes, that is true," I replied. " Could you point him out 
 to me ? " asked the stranger. " I will do so with pleasure 
 in fact, if you will tell me your name, I think I can manage 
 to introduce you." The American was very grateful for this, 
 and asked when it would be. "Noio is the time," I said, 
 " for I am he." On another occasion another stranger told 
 me, that having heard that Mr. Leland was in the smoking- 
 room, he had come in to see him, and asked me to point him 
 out. I pointed to myself, at which he was much astonished, 
 and then, apologetically and half ashamed, said, " Who do 
 
428 MEMOIRS. 
 
 you really suppose, of all the men here present, I had settled 
 on as being you ? " I could not conjecture, when he pointed 
 to a great broom-bearded, broad-shouldered, jovial, intemper 
 ate, German-looking man, and said, " There ! I thought that 
 must be the author of Hans Brietmann. " Which suggested 
 to me the idea, " Does the public, then, generally believe that 
 poets look like their heroes?" One can indeed imagine 
 Longfellow as Poor Henry of the " Golden Legend," but few 
 would expect to find the counterpart of Biglow in a Lowell. 
 And yet this belief or instinct is in every case a great compli 
 ment, for it testifies that there is that in the poem which is 
 inspired by Nature and originality, and that it is not all 
 mere art-work or artificial. And it is true that by some 
 strange law, name, body, and soul generally do preserve some 
 kind of unity in the realm of literature. There has never 
 been, as yet, a really great Gubbins or Podgers in poetry, or 
 Boggs in romance ; and if literature has its Hogg, let it be 
 remembered that the wild boar in all Northern sagas and 
 chronicles, like the Eber in Germany, or the Wolf, was a 
 name of pride and honour, as seen in Eberstein. The 
 Whistler of St. Leonard s is one of the most eccentric and 
 original of Scott s characters, and the Whistler of St. Luke s, 
 or the patron saint of painting, is in no respect deficient in 
 these noble qualifications. The Seven Whistlers who fly 
 unseen by night, ever piping a wild nocturne, are the most 
 uncanny of birds, while there is, to my mind, something 
 absolutely grotesquely awful (as in many of " Dreadful Jem 
 my s " pictures) in the narration that in ancient days the 
 immense army of the Mexican Indians marched forth to 
 battle all whistling in unison probably a symphony in 
 blood-colour. Fancy half a million of Whistlers on the war 
 path, about to do battle to the death with as many Ruskins 
 I mean red-skins ! Nomen est omen. 
 
 One of the most charming persons whom I ever met in 
 my life was the Hen. Mrs. Caroline Norton, and one of the 
 most delightful dinners at which my wife and I were ever 
 
ENGLAND. 429 
 
 present was at her house. As I had been familiar with her 
 poems from my boyhood, I was astonished to find her still so 
 beautiful and young if my memory does not deceive me, I 
 thought her far younger looking than myself. I owe her 
 this compliment, for I can recall her speaking with great 
 admiration of Mrs. Leland to Lord Houghton and " Bul- 
 wer." 
 
 Mrs. Norton had not only a graceful, fascinating expres 
 sion of figure and motion, but narrated everything so well as 
 to cast a peculiar life and interest into the most trifling anec 
 dote. I remember one of the latter. 
 
 " Lord Houghton," she said, " calls you, Mr. Leland, the 
 poet of jargons." (He indeed introduced me to all his guests 
 once by this term.) "Jargon is a confusion of language, 
 and I have a maid who lives in a jargon of ideas as to 
 values. The other day she broke to utter ruin an antique 
 vase " (I do not accurately recall what the object was) 
 " which cost four hundred pounds, and when I said that it 
 was such a grief to me to lose it, she replied, while weeping, 
 1 Oh, do not mind it, my lady ; Til buy you just such an 
 other, as if it were worth tenpence." 
 
 Mrs. Norton had marvellously beautiful and expressive 
 eyes, such as one seldom meets thrice in a life. As a harp 
 well played inspires tears or the impulse to dance, so her 
 glances conveyed, almost in the same instant, deep emotion 
 and exquisite merriment. I remember that she was much 
 amused with some of my American jests and reminiscences, 
 and was always prompt to respond, eodem genere. So night 
 ingale the wodewale answereth. 
 
 During this season in London I met Thomas Carlyle. 
 Our mutual friend, Moncure Conway, had arranged that I 
 should call on the great writer at the house of the latter in 
 Chelsea. I went there at about eleven in the morning, and 
 when Mr. Carlyle entered the room I was amazed I may 
 say almost awed by something which was altogether unex 
 pected, and this was his extraordinary likeness to my late 
 
430 MEMOIRS. 
 
 father. A slight resemblance to Caiiyle may be seen in my 
 own profile, but had he been with my father, the pair might 
 have passed for twins ; and in iron-grey grimness and the 
 never-to-be-convinced expression of the eyes they were iden 
 tity itself. 
 
 I can only remember that for the first twenty or thirty 
 minutes Mr. Carlyle talked such a lot of skimble-skamble 
 stuff and rubbish, which sounded like the very debris and 
 lees of his " Latter-Day Pamphlets," that I began to sus 
 pect that he was quizzing me, or that this was the manner 
 in which he ladled out Carlyleism to visitors who came to be 
 Carlyled and acted unto. It struck me as if Mr. Tennyson, 
 bored with lion-hunting guests, had begun to repeat his 
 poetry to them out of sheer sarcasm, or as if he felt, " Well, 
 you ve come to see and hear me a poet so take your poetry, 
 
 and be d d to you ! " However, it may be I felt a coming 
 
 wrath, and the Socratic demon or gypsy doolc, which often 
 rises in me on such occasions, and never deceives me, gave 
 me a strong premonition that there was to be, if not an ex 
 emplary row, at least a lively incident which was to put a 
 snapped end to this humbugging. 
 
 It came thus. All at once Mr. Carlyle abruptly asked 
 me, in a manner or with an intonation which sounded to me 
 almost semi-contemptuous, " And what kind of an American 
 may you be ? " (I think he said " will you be ? ") " German, 
 or Irish, or what? " 
 
 To which I replied, not over amiably : 
 
 " Since it interests you, Mr. Carlyle, to know the origin 
 of my family, I may say that I am descended from Henry 
 Leland, whom the tradition declares to have been a noted 
 Puritan, and active in the politics of his time, and who went 
 to America in 1636." 
 
 To this Mr. Carlyle replied : 
 
 " I doubt whether any of your family have since been 
 equal to your old Puritan great-grandfather " (or " done any 
 thing to equal your old Puritan grandfather "). With this 
 
ENGLAND. 431 
 
 something to the effect that we had done nothing in Amer 
 ica since Cromwell s ^Revolution, equal to it in importance or 
 of any importance. 
 
 Then a great rage came over me, and I remember very 
 distinctly that there flashed through my mind in a second 
 
 the reflection, " Now, if I have to call you a d d old fool 
 
 for saying that, I will ; but I ll be even with you." When as 
 quickly the following inspiration came, which I uttered, and 
 I suspect somewhat energetically ; 
 
 " Mr. Carlyle, I think that my brother, Henry Leland, who 
 got the wound from which he died standing by my side in 
 the war of the rebellion, fighting against slavery, was worth 
 ten of my old Puritan ancestors ; at least, he died in a ten 
 times better cause. " And " (here my old " Indian " was up 
 and I let it out) " allow me to say, Mr. Carlyle, that I think 
 that in all matters of historical criticism you are principally 
 influenced by the merely melodramatic and theatrical." 
 
 Here Mr. Carlyle, looking utterly amazed and startled, 
 though not at all angry, said, for the first time, in broad 
 Scotch 
 
 " Whot s tliot ye say ? " 
 
 " I say, Mr. Carlyle," I exclaimed with rising wrath, 
 " that I consider that in all historical judgments you are in 
 fluenced only by the melodramatic and theatrical." 
 
 A grim smile as of admiration came over the stern old 
 face. Whether he really felt the justice of the hit I know not, 
 but he was evidently pleased at the manner in which it was 
 delivered, and it was with a deeply reflective and not dis 
 pleased air that he replied, still in Scotch 
 
 " Na, na, I m nae tlwt" 
 
 It was the terrier who had ferociously attacked the lion, 
 and the lion was charmed. From that instant he was courte 
 ous, companionable, and affable, and talked as if we had 
 been long acquainted, and as if he liked me. It occurred to 
 me that the resemblance of Carlyle to my father during the 
 row was appalling, the difference being that my father never 
 
432 MEMOIRS. 
 
 gave in. It would have been an awful sight to see and a 
 sound to hear if the two could have " discussed " some sub 
 ject on which they were equally informed say the American 
 tariff or slavery. 
 
 After a while Mr. Froude the historian came in, and we 
 all went out together for a walk in the Park. Pausing on 
 the bridge, Mr. Carlyle called my attention to the very rural 
 English character of a part of the scenery in the distance, 
 where a church-spire rises over ranges of tree-tops. I ob 
 served that the smoke of a gypsy fire and a tent by a hedge 
 was all that was needed. Then we began to talk about 
 gypsies, and I told Mr. Carlyle that I could talk Romany, 
 and ran on with some reminiscences, whereat, as I now re 
 call, though I did not note it then, his amusement at or 
 interest in me seemed to be much increased, as if I had un 
 expectedly turned out to be something a little out of the 
 ordinary line of tourist interviewers ; and truly in those days 
 Romany ryes were not so common as they now are. Then 
 Mr. Carlyle himself told a story, how his father if I remem 
 ber rightly had once lent a large sum to or trusted a gypsy 
 in some extraordinary manner. It befell in after days that 
 the lender was himself in sore straits, when the gypsy took 
 him by night to a hut, and digging up or lifting the Jiard- 
 stane or hearth-stone, took out a bag of guineas, which he 
 transferred to his benefactor. 
 
 We parted, and this was the only time I ever conversed 
 with Mr. Carlyle, though I saw him subsequently on more 
 than one occasion. He sent word specially by Mr. Conway 
 to me that he would be pleased to have me call again ; but 
 " once bitten twice shy," and I had not so much enjoyed my 
 call as to wish to repeat it. But I believe that what Mr. 
 Carlyle absolutely needed above all things on earth was some 
 body to put on the gloves with him metaphorically about 
 once a day, and give and take a few thumping blows ; nor do 
 I believe that he would have shrunk from a tussle a la Clioc- 
 taw, with biting, gouging, tomahawk and scalper, for he had 
 
ENGLAND. 433 
 
 an uncommonly dour look about the eyes, and must have 
 been a magnificent fighter when once roused. But though I 
 had not his vast genius nor wit, I had the great advantage of 
 having often had very severe differences with my father, who 
 was, I believe, as much CarJyled by Nature as Carlyle him 
 self, if not more so, whereas it is morally impossible that the 
 Sage of Chelsea could ever have found any one like himself 
 to train under. But to Carlyle people in conversation re 
 quires constant practice with a master consuetudine quoti- 
 diana cum aliquo congredi and he had for so long a time 
 knocked everybody down without meeting the least resist 
 ance, that victory had palled upon him, and he had, so to 
 speak, " vinegared " on himself. With somebody to " sass 
 him back," Carlyle would have been cured of the dyspepsia, 
 and have lived twenty years longer. 
 
 Carlyle s was and ever will be one of the greatest names 
 in English literature, and it is very amusing to observe how 
 the gossip-makers, who judge of genius by tittle-tattle and 
 petty personal defects, have condemned him in toto because 
 he was not an angel to a dame who was certainly a bit of a 
 diaUesse. Thus I find in a late very popular collection the 
 remark that 
 
 " It is curious to note in the Life and Correspondence of 
 Lord Houghton the high estimation in which Carlyle was 
 held by him. His regard and admiration cannot but seem 
 exaggerated, now that we know so much of the Chelsea phi 
 losopher s real character." 
 
 This is quite the moral old lady, who used to think that 
 Raphael was a good painter " till she read all about that nasty 
 Fornarina." 
 
 There was another hard old character with whom I be 
 came acquainted in those days, and one who, though not a 
 Carlyle, still, like him, exercised in a peculiar way a great in 
 fluence on English literature. This was George Borrow. I 
 was in the habit of reading a great deal in the British Mu 
 seum, where he also came, and there I was introduced to him. 
 
434 MEMOIRS. 
 
 He was busy with a venerable-looking volume in old Irish, 
 and made the remark to me that he did not believe there was 
 a man living who could read old Irish with ease (which I 
 now observe to myself was " fished " out of Sir W. Betham). 
 We discussed several gypsy words and phrases. I met him 
 in the same place several times. He was a tall, large, fine- 
 looking man, who must have been handsome in his youth. I 
 knew at the time in London a Mr. Kerrison, who had been 
 as a very young man, probably in the Twenties, very intimate 
 with Borrow. He told me that one night Borrow acted very 
 wildly, whooping and vociferating so as to cause the police to 
 follow him, and after a long run led them to the edge of the 
 Thames, " and there they thought they had him." But he 
 plunged boldly into the water and swam in his clothes to the 
 opposite shore, and so escaped. 
 
 " For he fled o er to t other side, 
 
 And so they could not find him ; 
 He swam across the flowing tide, 
 And never looked behind him." 
 
 About this time (1826?) George Borrow published a 
 small book of poems which is now extremely rare. I have a 
 copy of it. In it there is a lyric in which, with his usual 
 effrontery, he describes a very clever, tall, handsome, accom 
 plished man, who knows many languages and who can drink 
 a pint of rum, ending with the remark that he himself was 
 this admirable person. As Heine was in England at this 
 time, it is not improbable that he met with this poem ; but 
 in any case, there is a resemblance between it and one of his 
 own in the Buck der Lieder, which runs thus : 
 
 " Brave man, he got me the food I ate, 
 His kindness and care I can never forget, 
 Yet I cannot kiss him, though other folk can, 
 For I myself am this excellent man ! " 
 
 It came to pass that after a while I wrote my book on 
 " The English Gypsies and their Language," and sent a note 
 
ENGLAND. 435 
 
 to Mr. Borrow in which I asked permission to dedicate it to 
 him. I sent it to the care of Mr. Murray, who subsequently 
 assured me that Mr. Borrow had actually received it. Now 
 Mr. Borrow had written thirty years before some sketches 
 and fragments on the same subject, which would, I am very 
 certain, have remained unpublished to this day but for me. 
 He received my note on Saturday never answered it and 
 on Monday morning advertised in all the journals his own 
 forthcoming work on the same subject. 
 
 Now, what is sincere truth is, that when I learned this I 
 laughed. I thought very little of my own work, and if Mr. 
 Borrow had only told me that it was in the way of his I 
 would have withdrawn it at once, and that with right good 
 will, for I had so great a respect for the Nestor of gypsy ism 
 that I would have been very glad to have gratified him with 
 such a small sacrifice. But it was not in him to suspect or 
 imagine so much common decency in any human heart, and 
 so he craftily, and to my great delight and satisfaction, " got 
 ahead " of me. For, to tell the truth of truth, I was pleased 
 to my soul that I had caused him to make and publish the 
 work. 
 
 I have said too hastily that it was written thirty years be 
 fore. What I believe is, that Mr. Borrow had by him a 
 vocabulary, and a few loose sketches, which he pitchforked 
 together, but that the book itself was made and cemented 
 into one with additions for the first time after he received 
 my note. He was not, take him altogether, over-scrupulous. 
 Sir Patrick Colquhoun told me that once when he was at 
 Constantinople, Mr. Borrow came there, and gave it out that 
 he was a marvellous Oriental scholar. But there was great 
 scepticism on this subject at the Legation, and one day at 
 the taUe-cTliote, where the great writer and divers young 
 diplomatists dined, two who were seated on either side of 
 Borrow began to talk in Arabic, speaking to him, the result 
 being that he was obliged to confess that he not only did not 
 understand what they were saying, but did not even know 
 
436 MEMOIRS. 
 
 what the language was. Then he was tried in Modern 
 Greek, with the same result. The truth was that he knew a 
 great deal, but did all in his power to make the world believe 
 it was far more like the African king, or the English prime 
 minister, who, the longer his shirts were made, insisted on 
 having the higher collars, until the former trailed on the 
 ground and the latter rose above the top of his head " when 
 they came home from the wash ! " 
 
 What I admire in Borrow to such a degree that before it 
 his faults or failings seem very trifling, is his absolutely vigor 
 ous, marvellously varied originality, based on direct familiarity 
 with Nature, but guided and cultured by the study of natural, 
 simple writers, such as Defoe and Smollett. I think that the 
 " interest " in or rather sympathy for gypsies, in his case as 
 in mine, came not from their being curious or dramatic 
 beings, but because they are so much a part of free life, of out- 
 of-doors Nature ; so associated with sheltered nooks among 
 rocks and trees, the hedgerow and birds, river-sides, and wild 
 roads. Borrow s heart was large and true as regarded Eng 
 lish rural life ; there was a place in it for everything which 
 was of the open air and freshly beautiful. He was not a 
 view-hunter of " bits," trained according to Ruskin and the 
 deliberate word-painting of a thousand novels and Victorian 
 picturesque poems ; but he often brings us nearer to Nature 
 than they do, not by photography, but by casually letting 
 fall a word or trait, by which we realise not only her form 
 but her soul. Herein he was like Washington Irving, who 
 gives us the impression of a writer who was deeply inspired 
 with calm sweet sunny views of Nature, yet in whose writ 
 ings literal description is so rarely introduced, that it is a 
 marvel how much the single buttercup lights up the land 
 scape for a quarter of a mile, when a thousand would pro 
 duce no effect whatever. This may have possibly been art 
 in Irving art of the most subtle kind but in Borrow it was 
 instinct, and hardly intentional. In this respect he was su 
 perior even to Whitman. 
 
ENGLAND. 437 
 
 And here I would say, apropos of Carlyle, Tennyson, 
 Irving, Borrow. Whitman, and some others whom I have 
 met, that with such men in only one or two interviews, one 
 covers more ground and establishes more intimacy than with 
 the great majority of folk whom we meet and converse with 
 hundreds of times. Which fact has been set forth by Wie- 
 land in his work on Democritus or the Abderites so ingeni 
 ously, as people expressed it a century ago, or so cleverly, as we 
 now say, or so sympathetically, as an Italian would say, that 
 my pen fails to utter the thoughts which arise in me com 
 pared to what he has written. 
 
 When the summer came, or on the 1st of August, we 
 started on a grand tour about England. First we went to 
 Salisbury. I was deeply interested in the Cathedral there, 
 because it is possibly the only great Gothic structure of the 
 kind in Europe which was completed in a single style during 
 a single reign. Stonehenge was to me even more remarkable, 
 because it is more mysterious. Its stupendous barbarism or 
 archaic character, involving a whole lost cycle of ideas, con 
 trasts so strangely with the advanced architectural skill dis 
 played in the cutting and fitting of the vast blocks, that the 
 whole seems to be a mighty paradox. This was the work of 
 many thousands of men of very well directed labour under 
 the supervision of architects who could draw and measure 
 skilfully with a grand sense of proportion or symmetry, who 
 had, however, not attained to ornament a thing without 
 parallel in humanity. This is absolutely bewildering, as is 
 the utter want of all indication as to its real purpose. The 
 old British tradition that the stones were brought by magic 
 from Africa, coupled with what Sir John Lubbock and others 
 declare as to similar remains on the North African coast, sug 
 gest something, but what that was remains to be discovered. 
 Men have, however, developed great works of the massive and 
 simple order in poetry, as well as in architecture. The Nibe- 
 lungen Lied is a Stonehenge. There are in it only one or two 
 similes or decorations. " Simplicity is its sole ornament." 
 
438 MEMOIRS. 
 
 From Salisbury we went to Wells. The cathedrals of 
 England form the pages of a vast work in which there is 
 written the history of a paradox or enigma as marvellous as 
 that of Stonehenge ; and it is this that the farther back we 
 go, even into a really barbarous age, almost to the time when 
 Eoman culture had died and the mediaeval had not begun, 
 the more exquisite are the proportions of buildings, the 
 higher their tone, and, as in the case of Early and Deco 
 rated English, the more beautiful their ornament. That is to 
 say, that exactly in the time when, according to all our mod 
 ern teaching and ideas, there should have been no architec 
 tural art, it was most admirably developed, while, on the con 
 trary, in this end of the nineteenth century, when theory, 
 criticism, learning, and science abound, it is in its lowest and 
 most depraved state, its highest nights aiming at nothing 
 better than cheap imitation of old examples. The age which 
 produced the Komanesque architecture, whether in northern 
 Italy, along the Rhine as the Lombard, or in France and 
 England as Norman, was extremely barbarous, bloody, and 
 illiterate ; and yet in the noblest and grandest conceptions of 
 architectural art it surpassed all the genius of this our time 
 as the sun surpasses a star. While we know that man has 
 advanced, it still remains true that the history of archi 
 tecture alone for the past thousand years indicates a steady 
 retrogression and decay in art, and this constitutes the 
 stupendous paradox to which I have alluded. But Mil 
 ton has fully explained to us that when the devils in hell 
 built the first great temple or palace Pandemonium they 
 achieved the greatest work of architecture ever seen ! 
 
 York Cathedral made on me a hundred times deeper and 
 more sympathetic impression than St. Peter s of Kome. 
 There is a grandeur of unity and a sense of a single cultus in 
 it which the Renaissance never reached in anything. Even 
 from the days of Orcagna there is an element of mixed 
 motives and incoherence in the best of Italian architecture 
 and sculpture. It requires colour to effect that which Nor- 
 
ENGLAND. 439 
 
 man or Gothic art could produce more grandly and impres 
 sively with shade alone. It is the difference between a gar 
 den and a forest. This is shown in the glorious mediaeval 
 grisaille windows, in which such art proves its absolute perfec 
 tion. AVhile I was looking at these in rapt admiration, an 
 American friend who did not lack a certain degree of culture 
 asked me if I did not find in them a great want of colour ! 
 
 I made in York the acquaintance of a youth named Carr, 
 son of a former high sheriff, who, by the way, showed us very 
 great hospitality whenever we visited the city. This young 
 man had read Labarthe and other writers on archaeology, and 
 was enthusiastic in finding relics of the olden time. He took 
 me into a great many private houses. I visited every church, 
 and indeed saw far more than do the great majority of even 
 the most inquiring visitors. The Shambles was then and is 
 still perhaps one of the most curious specimens of a small 
 mediaeval street in the world. I felt as if I could pass a life 
 in the museum and churches, and I did, in fact, years after, 
 remain there, very busy, for three weeks, sketching innumer 
 able corbels, gargoyles, goblins, arches, weather-worn saints 
 and sinners. And in the Cathedral I found the original of 
 the maid in the garden a-hanging out the clothes. She is a 
 fair sinner, and the blackbird is a demon volatile, who, hav 
 ing lighted on her shoulder, snaps her by the nose to get her 
 soul. The motive often occurs in Gothic sculpture. 
 
 We may trace it back vide the " Pharaohs, Fellahs, and 
 Explorers " of Amelia B. Edwards (whom I have also met at 
 an Oriental Congress) to Roman Harpies and the Egyptian 
 Ba, depicted in the " Book of the Dead " or the " Egyptian 
 Bible." 
 
 THE 
 
TTclccjiapbic 
 
 Sunlocks, London, 
 
 21 BEDFORD STREET, ir.c 
 
 A LIST OF 
 
 MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN S 
 
 PUBLICATIONS 
 
 AND 
 
 FORTHCOMING WORKS 
 
 The Books mentioned in this List can 
 be obtained to order by tiny Bonk 
 seller if not in stock, or will be sif^t 
 by the Publisher post free on ^eceipt 
 of the published price. 
 
of Butbors. 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 
 8 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Balestier . 
 Barrett . 
 
 10, 14 
 
 Leighton . 
 Leland 
 
 10 
 
 Behrs 
 
 
 Lie 
 
 
 
 16 
 
 
 
 Bjornson 
 
 . 4, 12 
 
 Lowry 
 
 I*J 
 
 Briscoe 
 
 14 
 
 Maartens . 
 
 It 
 
 Brown and Griffiths . 
 Buchanan . 
 Butler 
 
 16 
 
 . Q, II, I 4 
 
 Maeterlinck 
 Mantegazza 
 
 8 
 
 
 
 Maupassant 
 
 12 
 
 Caine .... 
 
 16 
 
 
 8 
 
 
 T 8 
 
 Merriman . 
 Michel 
 
 8 
 
 Clarke 
 
 
 
 
 Colomb 
 
 8 
 
 Moore 
 
 
 
 
 
 8 
 
 Coppe e 
 
 14 
 
 Norris 
 Ouida 
 
 10 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 " 
 
 Pearce 
 
 
 
 
 Pennell 
 
 8 
 
 
 16 
 
 Philips 
 
 
 De Quincey 
 Dowson 
 
 7 
 10 
 
 Phelps 
 Pinero 
 
 14 
 15 
 9 
 
 Elhvanger . 
 Ely 
 
 8 
 
 Kenan 
 Richter 
 
 9 
 
 
 
 Ridclell 
 
 
 Fitch 
 
 
 Rives 
 
 
 Forbes 
 
 8 
 
 Roberts (C.G.T) ) 
 
 10 
 
 Fothergill . 
 
 
 
 
 Franzos 
 Frederic 
 
 . 12 
 
 Salaman (M. <. .) 
 
 8 
 
 Garner 
 
 9 
 
 Sarcey 
 
 7 
 
 Gaulot 
 Gilchrist . 
 
 4 
 
 Scudanaore . 
 Serao .... 
 
 3 
 
 Gore .... 
 
 16 
 8, IT, 15 
 
 Steel .... 
 
 13 
 ii 
 
 Grand 
 Gray 
 
 . . 10, i) 
 
 8 
 
 Tallentyre 
 
 8 
 
 Gray (Maxwell) 
 Griffiths . 
 Hall 
 
 10 
 16 
 16 
 
 Terry .... 
 Thurston . 
 Tolstoy 
 
 4 
 
 16 
 
 2 i X 5 
 
 
 
 
 
 Harland 
 Hardy 
 Heine .... 
 
 14 
 
 !3 
 
 . 6, 7 
 
 Valera 
 Vazoff 
 
 12 
 
 12 
 
 4 
 
 Henderson . 
 
 14 
 
 Ward .... 
 
 14 
 
 Hughes 
 Hungerford 
 
 5 
 ii, 13 
 
 Waiigh 
 Weitenieyer 
 
 7 
 
 9 
 
 
 
 
 
 Ingersoll 
 
 10 
 
 White 
 Whitman 
 
 1 1 
 
 Jaeger . 
 
 
 Williams . 
 
 9 
 
 Keeling 
 
 it 
 
 Wood 
 
 ii 
 
 Kiinball 
 
 16 
 
 Zola . 
 
 14 
 
 Kipling and Balestier . 
 
 . . 11 
 
 
 
. WILLIAM HEINEM ANN S LIST. 
 
 In preparation. 
 
 REMBRANDT: 
 
 HIS LIFE, HIS WORK, AND HIS TIME. 
 
 BY 
 
 EMILE MICHEL, 
 
 MllMKl-li Oh THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE. 
 (Authorised English Edition.) 
 EDITED AND PREFACED BY 
 
 FREDERICK WED MO RE. 
 
 Nothing need be said in justification of a comprehensive book 
 upon the life and work of Rembrandt. A classic among classics, 
 he is also a modern of moderns. His works are to-day more 
 sought after and better paid for than ever before ; he is now at 
 the zenith of a fame which can hardly decline. 
 
 The author of this work is perhaps, of all living authorities on 
 Rembrandt, the one who has had the largest experience, the best 
 opportunity of knowing all that can be known of the master. 
 
 The latest inventions in photogravure and process-engraving 
 have enabled the publisher to reproduce almost everything that is 
 accessible in the public galleries of Europe, as well as most of the 
 numerous private collections containing specimens of Rembrandt s 
 work in England and on the Continent. 
 
 This work will be published in two volumes 4to, each containing 
 over 300 pages. There will be over 30 photogravures, about 40 
 coloured reproductions of paintings and chalk drawings, and 250 
 illustrations in the text. 
 
 Two Editions will be printed one on Japanese vellum, limited 
 to 200 numbered copies (for England and America), with duplicates 
 of the plates on India paper, price 10 los. net. The ordinary 
 edition will be published at 2 2s. net. 
 
 An illustrated prospectus is now ready and may be had on applica 
 tion. Orders will be received by all booksellers, in town and country 
 
MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN S LIST. 
 
 forthcoming Morfta 
 
 MEMOIRS. 
 
 By CHARLES GODFREY LELAND (Hans Breitmann) In Two Volumes, Svo. 
 With a Portrait. 
 
 THE ROMANCE OF AN EMPRESS. 
 
 Catharine II. of Russia. By R. WALISZEWSKI. In Two Volumes, 8vo. With 
 a Portrait. 
 
 A FRIEND OF THE QUEEN. 
 
 Being Correspondence between Marie Antoinette and Monsieur de Fersen. 
 By PAUL GAULOT. In One Volume, Svo. With Portraits. 
 
 LIFE OF HEINRICH HEINE. 
 
 By RICHARD GARNETT, LL.D. With Portrait. Crown Svo (uniform with the 
 translation of Heine s Works). 
 
 GOLF STORIES. 
 
 By Professor KNIGHT of St. Andrews University. Crown Svo. 
 
 LITTLE JOHANNES. 
 
 By FREDERICK VAN EEDEN. Translated from the Dutch by CLARA BELL. 
 With an Introduction by ANDREW LANG. Illustrated. 
 
 %* Also a Large Paper Edition. 
 
 STRAY MEMORIES. 
 
 By ELLEN TERRY. In One Volume. 410. Illustrated. 
 
 A NEW PLAY. 
 
 By BJURNSTJERNE BjoRNSON. Translated from the Norwegian. 
 
 SONGS ON STONE. 
 
 By J. McNEiLL WHISTLER. A Series of lithographic drawings in colour 
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 will be sold at Two Guineas net per part, by Subscription for the Series 
 only. 
 
 There -will also be issued 50 copies on Japanese paper, signed l>y the artist, 
 -zck Five Guineas net. 
 
MX. WILLIAM HEINEMANN*S LIST. 
 
 rent Ebucators. 
 
 A Scries of Volumes by Eminent Writers, presenting in their 
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 Tiic Tiiiics. " A Series of Monographs on The Great Educators -hould 
 prove of service to all who concern themselves with the history, theory, and 
 practice of education." 
 
 The Speaker. "There is a promising sound about the title of Mr. Heine- 
 mann s new series, The Great Educators. 1 It should help to allay the hunger 
 and thirst for knowledge and culture of the vast multitude of young men and 
 maidens which our educational system turns out yearly, provided at least with 
 an appetite for instruction." 
 
 Each subject will form a complete volume, crown 8vo, 5$. 
 
 Now ready. 
 
 ARISTOTLE, and the Ancient Educational Ideals. 
 
 THOMAS DAVIDSON, M.A., LL.D. 
 The Times. "A very readable sketch of a very interesting subject." 
 
 LOYOLA, and the Educational System of the Jesuits. Ey 
 
 Rev. THOMAS HUGHES, S.J. 
 
 Saturday Review." Full of valuable information If a school 
 master would learn how the education of the young can be carried on so as to 
 confer real dignity on those engaged in it, \ve recommend him to read Mr. 
 Hughes book." 
 
 ALCUIN, and the Rise of the Christian Schools. Ey 
 Professor ANDREW F. WEST, Ph.D. 
 
 FROEBEL, and Education by Self-Activity. By H. COUR- 
 
 THOl E BOWEN, M.A. 
 
 ABELARD, and the Origin and Early History of Uni 
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 Toulouse. 
 
 In preparation. 
 
 ROUSSEAU; and, Education according to Nature. Ey 
 PALL H. HAN us. 
 
 HORACE MANN, and Public Education in the United 
 
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6 MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN S LIST. 
 
 THE WORKS OF HEINRICH HEINE. 
 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 
 CHARLES GODFREY LELAND, M.A., F.R.L.S. 
 
 (HANS BREITMANN.) 
 
 Issued in Two Editions : The Library Edition, in crown 8vo, cloth, at 5^. 
 per volume. Each volume of this edition is sold separately. The Large 
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 will only be supplied to subscribers for the Complete Work. 
 
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 HEINE S PROSE WORKS, 
 
 Are now ready, and may be had in a handsome box, in special binding, 
 gilt top, price 2 IQS. 
 
 I. FLORENTINE NIGHTS, SCHNABELEWOPSKI, 
 THE RABBI OF BACHARACH, and SHAKE 
 SPEARE S MAIDENS AND WOMEN. 
 
 II., III. PICTURES OF TRAVEL. 1823-1828. In Two 
 
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 IV. THE SALON. Letters on Art, Music, Popular Life, 
 
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 V., VI. GERMANY. In Two Volumes. 
 
 VII., VIII. FRENCH AFFAIRS. Letters from Paris 1832 
 
 and Lutetia. In Two Vols, 
 
 Times. " We can recommend no better medium for making acquaintance 
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 placed before English readers." 
 
 Dally Telegraph. "Mr. Leland has done his translation in able and scho 
 larly fashion." 
 
 In preparation. 
 
 THE POETIC WORKS OF HEINRICH HEINE. 
 
 The first of which, forming Vol. IX. of the Works, will be 
 
 THE BOOK OF SONGS. 
 
 Followed by 
 
 NEW POEMS. 
 
 ATTA TROLL, GERMANY AND ROMANCERO. 
 
 LAST POEMS. 
 
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