(jr^ 
 
TRIUMPHS 
 
 OP 
 
 ENTERPRISE, INGENUITY, 
 
 AND 
 
 PUBLIC SPIRIT. 
 
 BY JAMES PART ON: 
 
 AUTHOR OF LIFE AND TIMES OF AARON BURR, LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, LIF1 
 
 OF ANDREW JACKSON, LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY, GENERAL BUTLER 
 
 IN NEW ORLEANS, FAMOUS AMERICANS OF RECENT 
 
 TIMES, PEOPLE'S BOOK OF BIOGRAPHY, ETC. 
 
 ILLUSTRATED. 
 
 PUBLISHED ONLY BY SUBSCRIPTION. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 VIRTUE & YORSTON, 12 DEY STREET, 
 CHICAGO: M. A. PARKER & Co. 
 
 1874. 
 
Entered, according- to jSci of Congress, in the year 18>7//. } by 
 Virtue fy Yorston, in the Office of the Libra r ian of 
 Congress, at Washing-ton. 
 
 Anderson &* Ramsay, Printers, 28 Frankfoi t Street, New York. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 i. 
 
 THE COOPER INSTITUTE AND ITS FOUNDER 28 
 
 II. 
 THE WONDERFUL GROWTH OF CHICAGO 35 
 
 III.. 
 
 DESTRUCTION AND RECONSTBUCTION OF CHICAGO, 79 
 
 IV. 
 
 THE FOUNDER OF THE VASSAR COLLEGB . . . 90 
 
 V. 
 
 THE BEGINNINGS OF SCIENCE IN THE UNITED STATES ... 97 
 
 VI. 
 ORIGIN OF THE ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH 119 
 
 VII. 
 
 FROM THE CARPENTER'S BENCH TO PRESIDENCY OF A COLLEGE. 
 
 A SKETCH OF THE CAREER OF JARED SPARKS .... 131 
 
 VIII. 
 HISTORY OF THE SEWING-MACHINE 139 
 
 IX. 
 INVENTION OF CIRCULATING LIBRARIES 177 
 
 X. 
 
 SOME OF THE MARVELS AND CURIOSITIES OF PITTSBURGH . 183 
 
 XI. 
 
 ORIGIN OF THE COTTON-WEAVING MACHINERY .... 225 
 
 MCG7937 
 
iy COJ^TENTS. 
 
 XII. 
 JOHN FlLLMORE AND HIS VICTORY OVER THE PlRATES . . 241 
 
 XIII. 
 
 SINGULAR TRIUMPH OF RESOLUTION. PAINTING WITHOUT HANDS 249 
 
 XIV. 
 ONE OF THE HEROES OF LITERATURE: THOMAS HOOD . . 255 
 
 XV. 
 THE FIRST BOSTONIAN AND THE FIRST NEW-YORKER . . . 267 
 
 XVI. 
 
 THE FOUNDERS OF THE LITERATURE OF THE UNITED STATES: 
 
 IRVING, COOPER, BRYANT 279 
 
 XVII. 
 Two OF OUR BOHEMIANS : EDGAR A. POE AND ARTEMAS WARD. 
 
 How THEY LIVED, AND WHY THEY DIED so YOUNG . . 297 
 
 XVIII. 
 JOSIAH QUINCY: A MODEL GENTLEMAN OF THE OLD SCHOOL . 311 
 
 XIX. 
 THE PIANO AMONG us, AND THE HISTORY OF THE INSTRUMENT 
 
 FROM THE REMOTEST TIMES 323 
 
 XX. 
 
 ANECDOTES OF FARADAY 353 
 
 XXI. 
 
 THOMAS NAST 863 
 
 i 
 
 XXII. 
 
 DAVID CROCKETT: A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE, AND ONE OF HIS EX- 
 PLOITS '. . . . . . 369 
 
 XXIII. 
 OIL PAINTINGS BY MACHINERY 383 
 
 XXIV. 
 THE FOUNDER OF THE ROTHSCHILDS 4Q. r > 
 
CONTENTS. 
 XXV- 
 
 A MlLLIONNAIRE IN THE RANKS 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 How THE AMERICAN PEOPLE LEARNED TO NOMINATE PRESIDENTS 419 
 
 XXVII. 
 THE FOUNDER OP THB INTERNAL IMPROVEMENT SYSTEM OF THE 
 
 UNITED STATES . ......... 443 
 
 XXVIII. 
 UNROMANTIC TRUTH. POCAHO NT AS AND HER HUSBAND . . 4^1 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 INVENTION OF THE COMPASS, AND WHO FIRST USED IT . . 461 
 
 XXX. 
 
 DISCOVERY OF THE ISLAND OF MADEIRA ..... 485 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 THE REAL MERITS OF COLUMBUS ....... 511 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 THE NAMING OF THE NEW WORLD ....... 533 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 THE WISEST OF THE PAGANS, AND SOME OF HIS THOUGHTS . 541 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 ARISTOTLE : HIS KNOWLEDGE AND HIS IGNORANCE . . . 553 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 INVENTION OF THE DAGUERROTYPE ...... 565 
 
 XXXVI. 
 JOHN MACADAM .......... 671 
 
 XXXVII. 
 WILLIAM GED, THE FIRST STEREOTYPER ..... 677 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 A FRENCH TORY: PIERRE ANTOIXE BERRYER . . 685 
 
VI CONTENTS. 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 JOHN ELIOT, THB APOSTLE TO THE INDIANS ..... 593 
 
 XL. 
 
 LIFE, TRIAL, AND EXECUTION OF ALGERNON SIDNEY ... 601 
 
 XLI. 
 THE CITY OF ST. Louis 615 
 
 XLII. 
 WHAT SORT OF MAN is BISMARCK? . . . , . . . . 649 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 PAINLESS SURGERY BY ETHER . . . . , . . 659 
 
 XLIV. . 
 BENJAMIN THOMPSON, alias COUNT RUMFORD 669 
 
 XLV. 
 CHABLES DICKENS AS A CITIZEN, ...... 67fl 
 
I 
 
 PKEFATORY. 
 
 As the publishers of this volume have thought proper to begin 
 it with a portrait of myself, it occurs to me that I may as well 
 open my part of it by relating a few personal reminiscences. 
 Not that I have the slightest claim to be regarded as one of the 
 '* Triumphs," either of " enterprise, ingenuity, or public spirit." 
 
 This article, like the portrait, is preliminary to the book, rather 
 than a portion of the book itself. I have observed, however, 
 that there is considerable curiosity in the minds of reading people 
 with regard to the ways of writers, and particularly the circum- 
 stances of their introduction to a literary career. This curiosity 
 is at least harmless, and I see no reason why it should not 
 be gratified. 
 
 When Charlotte ^Bronte's novel of Jane Eyre came out, 
 twentj^-two years ago, there was a good deal of talk in the 
 newspapers and in society upon the question, Whether the 
 author was a man or a woman. The title-page bore the name 
 of Currer Bell, which was invented by the author for the pur- 
 pose of concealing her sex. But sex is not so easy to conceal 
 as she seems to have supposed, and I was perfectly certain 
 myself, as every attentive reader of the book must have been, 
 that Currer Bell was a woman. I was then a teacher, and, 
 like most teachers, worked very hard for very little money. 
 One evening, when I had finished the labors of the day, I sat 
 down in my exceedingly small room, and wrote a little piece 
 upon this vexed question, in which I gave my reasons for sup- 
 posing that a woman had written Jane Eyre, the most popular 
 novel of the day. I took a world of pains with this essay, 
 and when I had finished it, about midnight, I flattered myself 
 
14 PREFATORY. 
 
 that I had produced something very convincing and effective. I 
 folded it up in a neat packet, and wrote upon it these words : 
 "N. Parker Willis, Esq., Editor of the Home Journal." 
 
 It so happened that I used to pass Mr, Willis's residence 
 every morning on my way to school. It was an elegant but 
 rather small house in Fourth Street, near Washington Square, 
 and bore upon its front door a large plate, upon which was 
 written the single word, " Willis." Having had, from my youth 
 up, the greatest interest in books, and the people who wrote 
 them, I had never passed this door without looking at it with 
 curious eyes, wondering how a poet looked, and how he was 
 dressed, and what he had in his parlor, and what he was hav- 
 ing for breakfast. Mr. Willis's position then in literature and 
 journalism was very different from what it was afterwards, when 
 disease had injured his understanding, and almost annihilated 
 his talent. The " Home Journal " was then taken by a large num- 
 ber of the best families in the country, and it was reckoned an 
 honor to contribute to it. It really had some excellent quali- 
 ties, and was, upon the whole, an entertaining and respectable 
 periodical, not without its value as a guide to the public taste. 
 
 So, the next morning, instead of passing this door as usual, I 
 mustered up courage to go up to it, and ring the bell. The bell 
 was answered by a small but very pretty boy in gray livery, one 
 of those minute servants who used to be styled, in France and Eng- 
 land, tigers. To this pleasing youth I handed my packet, and 
 then walked rapidly away to hide a blush. I had not gone twenty 
 steps before I saw this transaction in a very disagreeable light. I 
 felt that I had been doing a very foolish thing ; that neither Mr. 
 Willis nor the public needed any instruction upon the authorship 
 of this novel ; and that if I could only get my essay back again, 
 I should gladly throw it into the fire. However, the deed was 
 done, and the consequences must be borne. 
 
 Not being aware at that time how far in advance of their date 
 periodicals are manufactured, I opened the " Home Journal" of that 
 very week with eager and trembling hands, to see if my profound 
 discourse upon Jane Eyre had appeared. Of course ft had not. 
 
PREFATORY. 15 
 
 The "Home Journal" for that week had been printed several days 
 before my ingenious essay was written. By this time my faith in 
 the aforesaid disquisition had partially revived ; so that when I saw 
 that it was not printed, I experienced a ridiculous mixture of dis- 
 appointment and relief. When the next number appeared, I again 
 seized the paper with eagerness, and rapidly scanned its contents. 
 No essay on Jane Eyre ! Then I gave it up, wondering how I 
 could ever have been so foolish as to write on such a subject, or to 
 write at all for so elegant and distinguished a periodical. 
 
 But I was not to escape so easily; Four or five weeks after I 
 had delivered my packet to the pretty little tiger, I happened to be 
 down town on a Saturday morning, and bought a copy of the "' Home 
 Journal " at a bookstore then kept under the Astor House. Before 
 putting the paper into my pocket, I gave one careless glance at 
 the clearly-printed, handsome first page, and there, behold, my 
 article ! And not only that, but before it were a few lines written 
 by Mr. Willis himself, calling attention to the piece, and paying a 
 compliment to the writer. I am afraid the reader will think me 
 very silly ; but, as I have begun this story, I may as well finish it. 
 The sight of my poor little essay, so fairly printed in such a con- 
 spicuous place of such a paper, with the few encouraging words of 
 the editor, threw me into a perfect ecstasy, and I felt that I must 
 tell some one of my good fortune. 
 
 The nearest person at hand whom I knew was the foreman of the 
 "Tribune" press-room. To his excavation in the bowels of the 
 earth I directed rapid steps. I found him in the engine-room, black 
 from head to foot, from an exploration he had just been making of 
 the boiler, which needed repairs. His mind being preoccupied 
 with this important duty, he was in no mood to sympathize with 
 my exultant feelings. Nevertheless, he gave me a friendly though 
 very evanescent smile ; and taking the clean paper which I pre- 
 sented to him with the tip of his intensely black thumb and finger, 
 conveyed it to his desk, assuring me that he would read it with 
 the greatest attention by and by. No doubt he kept his word ; 
 but as he had never heard of Currer Bell or her novel, I am afraid 
 I subjected his good nature to a test too severe. 
 
16 PREFATORY. 
 
 This was the beginning of my writing for the press. The ice 
 being now broken, I did not fail to repeat the experiment ; which, 
 being successful, was followed by a third venture ; and in fact I 
 stopped so often at Mr. Willis's door, to intrust a package of 
 manuscript to the little tiger, that he and I became well ac- 
 quainted with each other, without ever having exchanged a sylla- 
 ble. My contributions, I should add, were all anonymous, and 
 were written without the slightest expectation of any reward, 
 except the gratification of seeing them in print. After some 
 months, a friend informed me that Mr. Willis had expressed to 
 him some little curiosity to know who this industrious correspon- 
 dent was, that kept peppering him with manuscript. Duly pro- 
 vided with a note of introduction, I proceeded to gratify his curi- 
 osity in person. 
 
 Neither before nor since have I ever seen small parlors so full 
 of books, nicknacks, pictures, and curiosities, as those into which 
 I was ushered, on a certain afternoon, by my old friend, the tiger 
 in gray ; and consequently I was very glad that Mr. Willis did not 
 immediately present himself, for his delay gave me an opportunity 
 to look over a large book of autographs, which lay open upon a 
 table, and to inspect various oddities in the way of decoration and 
 furniture with which the rooms abounded. 
 
 Enter, the poet ! He was forty-two years of age then, a tall, 
 well-formed, elegant-looking man, with an abundance of reddish, 
 curly hair, brushed well off his forehead. He wore an extremely 
 peculiar jacket, which he said he had brought from the Mediter- 
 ranean, where it was called a Cossair jacket, a remarkably pretty 
 garment, of dark blue and white stripes. Altogether, there was that 
 graceful and romantic something in his appearance, which was in 
 keeping with his writings and his position. Interesting as his 
 appearance was, his face would hardly bear a close inspection. 
 His eyes were small and insignificant, 'the blue being pale and 
 " washed out." His nose also was small, and slightly turned up. 
 He looked, however, the gentleman and the man of letters to per- 
 fection, and he received the verdant individual before him with 
 that ease of the man of the world which immediately puts a guest 
 
PREFATORY. 17 
 
 at ease. I remember little of the conversation, except that he 
 praised my articles, and advised me to go on writing. He said it 
 was not the custom for the " Home Journal" to pay for contributions 
 in any other coin than the honor it might confer, and the introduc- 
 tion it could give to a literary career. And so I went on writing, 
 perfectly satisfied with the pleasure of so doing ; but not ill pleased, 
 now and then, to receive from Mr. Willis a package of concert 
 tickets, or cards of admission to a ball or picture gallery. 
 
 At this time Mr. Willis was already afflicted with that mysterious 
 disease (epilepsy) from which he suffered during the last twenty 
 years of his life, and which so impaired his mental powers, that 
 his latest writings showed scarcely a gleam of the sparkling tal- 
 ent he had once possessed. It was during one of his frequent 
 periods of ill health, that I became his assistant in editing the 
 paper, an employment in which I continued for two or three 
 years. No man could be more considerate either of the 
 feelings or the rights of a subordinate than he was. In my zeal 
 and ignorance I made many mistakes, some of which were absurd 
 and ludicrous ; but he was always disposed to make light of hon- 
 est blunders, and was prompt in bestowing praise when I had 
 done anything a little better than usual. 
 
 Of all the literary men whom I have ever known, N. P. Willis 
 was the one who took the most pains with his work. It was no 
 very uncommon thing for him to toil over a sentence for an hour ; 
 and I knew him one evening to write and rewrite a sentence for 
 two hours before he had got it to his mind ; and then he had 
 made the wit of it so abstrusely refined and complicated, that I 
 presume many readers missed the point after all. Four or five 
 pages of foolscap was with him a good morning's work ; and it 
 sometimes happened that these pages contained so many erasures 
 that they would not make half a column in the paper. There 
 was nothing he abhorred so much in composition as those faults 
 which come of writing too rapidly and too much. I can say 
 truly of him, that in his art as a journalist he was conscientious. 
 lie did the very best he could every time he put pen to paper.' Yet 
 his talent was so decided, that he could hardly write the most 
 
18 PREFATORY. 
 
 trifling note, without putting in it some happy turn, some unex- 
 pected play upon a word, which gave the note a certain literary 
 value. 
 
 To this I will add one remark more. He once had occasion to 
 say to the public, that since his first marriage his " moral con- 
 duct had been irreproachable." I have not the slightest doubt 
 that he told the truth. Faults he had, as we all have, and some 
 of those faults were serious defects of character ; but with regard 
 to the particular class of offences to which he referred in the lan- 
 guage just quoted, I do not believe the person lived who could 
 justly accuse him. 
 
 Among the great masses of manuscript which the mail brought 
 every day to the office of the " Home Journal," there came, one mor- 
 ning, a singularly interesting narrative concerning the youth and 
 apprenticeship of Horace Greeley, written by the gentleman to 
 whom he had been apprenticed, Mr. Amos Bliss, of East Poultney, 
 Vermont. The " Tribune " had then been in existence about eleven 
 years ; and although I had never seen the editor, I had become 
 warmly attached tq him. I admired him for one thing above all 
 others, his advocacy of the rights of working men, and the heart- 
 felt interest he manifested in their welfare and dignity. Often, 
 when a working man rises from the ranks, and becomes himself 
 an employer of working men, he forgets the companions of his 
 earlier years, and would gladly have others forget that he was ever 
 connected with them. 
 
 From this poor foible of human nature the editor of the " Tribune" 
 seemed to be wholly free. He appeared to be as solicitous for the 
 honor and prosperity of mechanics, as when he had worked with 
 them side by side, and sat at table with them day by day. It was 
 for this that I honored the editor of the "Tribune" above all other 
 men then living on this continent ; and hence it was that I read 
 with so much pleasure the narrative of his youthful days, contrib- 
 uted to the " Home Journal" by Amos Bliss. , 
 
 The article told how a tall and gawky boy, in the roughest coun- 
 try clothes, had come to Mr. Bliss, as he was hoeing in his garden, 
 and asked if he was the man that carried on the printing-office ; 
 
PKEFATOKY. 19 
 
 and how Mr. Bliss, amused at first at the oddity of his dress and 
 demeanor, had gradually discovered that the lad's head was full -of 
 all kinds of interesting knowledge, and that he was just the boy 
 he wanted for his printing-office. The narrative appeared in the 
 " Home Journal," with comments by Mr. Willis, and attracted 
 much attention throughout the country. 
 
 Several months after, when I was dining at the famous old res- 
 taurant of Dietz, in Barclay Street, where dinners were served 
 exactly as they were served in Berlin, I happened to sit near a 
 group of publishers, chief among whom were the Brothers Mason, 
 who have since been so universally known in connection with the 
 cabinet organ. At that time they were among the most enterpris- 
 ing and ambitious of publishers, always on the lookout for some- 
 thing that would be likely to please our sovereign lord, the Pub- 
 lic. After some conversation on books, successful and unsuccess- 
 ful, I happened to say, 
 
 "What an interesting book the Life of Horace Greeley would 
 make, if the facts could only be ascertained ! " 
 
 I made this observation without the slightest thought of 
 attempting such a work, or even supposing that it could be exe- 
 cuted in the lifetime of the subject. I merely remembered Mr. 
 Bliss's graphic and entertaining narrative, the substance of which 
 I repeated to the company, concluding with a remark like this : 
 
 " No doubt there are fifty other anecdotes and scenes of Hor- 
 ace Greeley's early life, quite as interesting as these, only they 
 have never been written out. If any one could go to Vermont 
 and New Hampshire, and gather them up, going from house to 
 house, and getting them from the lips of living persons, the whole 
 story would be as interesting as Franklin's autobiography." 
 
 After dinner, we went our several ways, and I thought no 
 more of the matter for many weeks. I was exceedingly surprised, 
 one day, upon meeting one of the brothers in the street, to receive 
 a proposition for the production of such a work as I had described. 
 It seemed, at first, too ridiculous to be entertained ; but, on further 
 reflection, I said I would attempt it, provided Mr. Greeley himself 
 had no objection, and would give me the names and residences of 
 
20 PREFATORY. 
 
 the people who had familiarly known him from early life to the 
 opening of his public career. 
 
 Late one afternoon, I found the editor standing at his desk in 
 the dismal " Tribune" editorial rooms of that day, writing with his 
 usual velocity. For some time after I entered, I stood waiting for 
 him to cease, or to give some token that he recognized my presence. 
 He continued, however, to scribble with all his might, until I 
 addressed him, and asked when he would be at leisure to listen to 
 what I had to say. He remarked that leisure was a commodity 
 with which he had no acquaintance. He had had none of it for 
 years, and did n't think he should ever have any more, but that he 
 would listen, then and there, to whatever I had to offer. As he 
 had already received an intimation of the scheme, and expressed 
 no repugnance to it, I had only to make known my name in order 
 to explain my business. He said again, that he had no leisure and 
 could do nothing to assist the project, unless, perhaps, occasionally 
 on Saturday nights, when he had a reception at his house. I told 
 him that all I wished, at present, was the names and residences of 
 the persons who had known him best from his childhood up. 
 
 Instantly before I could get my pencil out of my pocket he 
 began to give me the names desired. In the course of ten minutes, 
 I had a long catalogue written down. Soon after, I made a tour of two 
 months in New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, and Pennsylvania, 
 collecting the anecdotes and incidents which are recorded in the 
 early chapters of my life of Horace Greeley. On returning to New 
 York I bought a complete file of the " Tribune " for the twelve years 
 of its existence, and borrowed sets of the " Jeffersonian," " New 
 Yorker," and " Log Cabin." Every number of these journals I 
 closely examined, and extracted from each every lurking atom .of 
 biography which it may have contained. It took me six weeks to 
 do it. Eleven months after I entered upon the work, the manuscript 
 was ready for the printer. Before the day of publication such 
 was the curiosity of the public concerning the foremost editor of 
 the day seven thousand copies of the work were ordered, and 
 in the course of the first few months, about thirty thousand were 
 sold ; which, for that day, was a considerable success. 
 
PREFATORY. 21 
 
 All this train of events began with my placing that first packet 
 of manuscript in the hands of the little tiger in gray at Mr. Willis's 
 front-door. 
 
 Concerning the present volume, I will only observe, that it is the 
 result of many thousand hours of labor, and many thousand miles 
 of travel ; and that it seems to myself to be more compact with 
 interesting and suggestive information than any other which I 
 have offered to the public. 
 
OOOPKB I NSTIT UTE. 
 
THE 
 
 COOPER INSTITUTE AND ITS FOUNDER. 
 
 EIGHTY years ago, in Water Street, New York, not far 
 from the wharves, there was a small manufactory of hats, 
 with a hat store in front, kept by a person who was some- 
 times styled by his neighbors Captain Cooper. He had 
 indeed served in the ^Revolutionary war ; had taken part in 
 some noted operations ; and, at the conclusion of peace, had 
 retired from the service with the rank of Captain. He was 
 not formed to achieve success in civil life, for he lacked 
 perseverance. He was better at forming a scheme than 
 at carrying it out ; and the consequence was, that, after a 
 struggle of ten years, he was still but a poor hatter in 
 Water Street, with a large and rapidly increasing family. 
 
 Like many other amiable, inefficient men, he had had the 
 luck to marry a woman singularly fitted to be the main-stay of 
 a family having an incompetent head. The daughter of a 
 former Mayor of New York, who had served in important 
 positions during the Kevolution, she had been reared and 
 educated among the Moravians in Pennsylvania, who had so 
 nourished and strengthened her moral nature as to render 
 her a rare blending of sweetness and fire, of efficiency and 
 tenderness, a lovely, noble creature, who has transmitted 
 a vivid tradition of her excellent qualities to the third 
 generation of her descendants. 
 
 Seven sons and two daughters were born to this couple. 
 Their fifth child was Peter Cooper, who has been for so many 
 
 2 
 
24 TRIUMPHS OP ENTERPRISE. 
 
 years past, of all the inhabitants of Manhattan Island, the 
 one most honored and beloved. He was born in 1791. 
 
 The father's necessities compelling him to employ his chil- 
 dren in his business, the earliest recollection of this son is 
 of pulling and picking wool for hat bodies. He was kept at 
 work, assisting his father, all his boyhood, except that dur- 
 ing one year he attended school half of every day, when he 
 learned reading, writing, and a little arithmetic. Before his 
 father left the hat business, Peter learned to make a hat 
 throughout; and when afterwards his father removed to 
 Peekskill, and set up a brewery, he learned every branch of 
 that business also ; for, from childhood, he was quick to 
 learn, dexterous in handling tools, and much given to in- 
 venting improved methods and implements. 
 
 At seventeen, not relishing the idea of spending his life 
 in brewing beer, he came, with his father's consent, to New 
 York, intending to put himself apprentice to any trade that 
 he should fancy, after looking about among the workshops 
 of the city. After wandering for some days without finding 
 a shop that he liked, and that also wanted a boy, he went 
 into a carriage factory, near the corner of Chambers Street 
 and Broadway, and asked one of the partners if he had room 
 for an apprentice. 
 
 "Do you know anything about the business ? " asked the 
 master. 
 
 He did not. 
 
 " Have you been brought up to work ? " 
 
 He had, most decidedly ; he had learned to make hats and 
 to brew beer. 
 
 " Is your father willing you should learn this trade ? " 
 
 " He has given me my choice of trades." 
 
 " If I take you, will you stay with me and work out your 
 time?" 
 
COOPER INSTITUTE AND ITS FOUNDER. 25 
 
 He promised so to do. The bargain was struck, four 
 years' service, at twenty-five dollars a year and his board. 
 In those cheap, simple times, a careful boy, with a little help 
 from his mother or sisters, could clothe himself for twenty- 
 five dollars a year, and have a pretty good suit of clothes for 
 Sunday. In busy seasons, this apprentice, by working over 
 time, earned extra wages, most of which he sent to his 
 father, but a part of which he kept for another purpose. 
 
 He painfully felt his ignorance. He had an energetic, 
 inquisitive, inventive mind, which craved knowledge as a 
 hungry man craves food. He bought some books, but a lad 
 unaccustomed to handle books is apt at first to be more per- 
 plexed than assisted by them ; and so he looked about him 
 for some kind of evening school where he could have the 
 help of the living teacher. In all New York there was then 
 no such thing. There were no free schools of any kind, and 
 no means of instruction for lads who, like himself, had to 
 work all day for their livelihood. He hired a teacher for a 
 while to help him in the evening, and he thus increased his 
 knowledge of arithmetic, and gained a little insight into 
 other branches. 
 
 It was then, when he was a poor apprentice boy, thirsting 
 for knowledge and unable to obtain it, that he formed a 
 memorable resolution. 
 
 " If," said he to himself, " I ever prosper in business, and 
 acquire more property than I need, I will try to found an 
 institution in the city of New York, wherein apprentice boys 
 and young mechanics shall have a chance to get knowledge 
 in the evening." 
 
 This purpose was distinctly formed in his mind before he 
 was of age, and he kept it steadily in view for forty years, 
 before he was able to accomplish it. 
 
 When he was out of his time, his employers offered to 
 
26 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 help him into business for himself, but he declined the offer 
 from the natural dread which such men have of getting into 
 debt. And fortunate it was for him that he did decline it ; 
 for, a few months after, the war of 1812 broke out, which 
 would certainly have proved ruinous to the business of a 
 young carriage-maker without capital. The war, however, 
 was the beginning of his fortune. The supply of foreign 
 merchandise being cut off, a great impulse was given to 
 manufactures. Cloth, for example, rose to such an extrav- 
 agant price that cloth factories sprang up everywhere, and 
 there was a sudden demand for every description of cloth- 
 making machinery. Peter Cooper, who possessed a fine 
 genius for invention, invented a machine for shearing the 
 nap from the surface of cloth. It answered its purpose 
 well, and he sold it without delay to good advantage. Then 
 he made another ; and as often as he had one done, he would 
 go to some cloth mill, explain its merits, and sell it. He 
 soon had a thriving shop, where he employed several men r 
 and he sold his machines faster than he could make them. 
 
 In 1814, before the war ended, he contracted that exqui- 
 site marriage which gave him fifty-five years of domestic 
 happiness, as complete, as unalloyed, as mortals can ever 
 hope to enjoy. It is believed by members of his family 
 that during that long period of time there was never an act 
 done or a word spoken by either of them which gave pain to* 
 the other. They began their married life on a humble scale 
 indeed. When a cradle became necessary, and he was called 
 upon to rock "it oftener than was convenient, he invented a 
 self-rocking cradle, with a fan attachment, which he patented r 
 and sold the patent for a small sum. 
 
 The peace of 1815 ruined his business ; for no more cloth 
 could be manufactured at a profit in America. He tried 
 cabinet-making for a while. Then he went far up town and 
 
COOPER INSTITUTE AND ITS FOUNDEB. 27 
 
 bought out a grocery store on the site of the Cooper Insti- 
 tute, which even then he thought would become by and by 
 the best place in the city for the evening school which he 
 hoped one day to establish. It was where the Bowery 
 terminated by dividing into two forks, one of which was the 
 old Boston road, now called the Third Avenue, and the 
 other was the Middle road, now called the Fourth Avenue. 
 He thought that by the time a far-distant time he was 
 ready to begin his school, those vacant fields around him 
 would be built over, and that that angle would be not far 
 from the centre of the town. 
 
 The grocery store prospered. But he was not destined 
 to pass his life as a grocer. One day, when he had been 
 about a year in the business, as he was standing in the door 
 of his shop, a wagon drove up, from which an old acquaint- 
 ance sprang to the sidewalk. 
 
 "I have been building," said the new-comer, after the 
 usual salutations, w a glue factory for my son; but I don't 
 think that either he or I can make it pay. But you are the 
 very man." 
 
 " Where is it ? " asked the young grocer. 
 
 It was on what we should now call the corner of Madison 
 Avenue and Twenty-ninth Street, the present centre of ele- 
 gance and fashion in New York. 
 
 "I '11 go and see it." 
 
 He got into the wagon with his friend, and they drove to 
 the spot. He liked the prospect. All the best glue was 
 then imported from Russia, the American glue being of the 
 most inferior quality, and bringing only one fourth the price 
 of the imported article. He saw no reason why as good 
 glue could not be made in New York as in Russia, and he 
 determined to try. The price was two thousand dollars. 
 It so happened that he possessed exactly that sum, over and 
 
28 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 above the capital invested in his grocery business. He con- 
 cluded the bargain on the spot, sold out his grocery forth- 
 with, and began to make glue. 
 
 Now followed thirty years of steady hard work. He 
 learned how to make the best glue that ever was made in 
 the world, and it brought the highest price. For twenty 
 years he had no book-keeper, no clerk, no salesman, no 
 agent. He was up at the dawn of day. He lighted the 
 factory fires, so as to be ready for the men at seven o'clock. 
 He boiled his own glue. At mid-day he drove into town in 
 his wagon, called upon his customers, and sold them glue 
 and isinglass. At home in the evening, posting his books 
 and reading to his family. 
 
 Such was his life for thirty years, his business producing 
 him thirty thousand dollars a year, a large portion of which 
 he saved, always thinking and often talking of the institu- 
 tion which he hoped to found. Glue is made from bullocks' 
 feet, and for many years he consumed in his glue factory all 
 the feet which the city yielded, and saw the price gradually 
 rise from one cent to twelve cents per foot. 
 
 When he had become a capitalist, he embarked in other 
 enterprises, and made many inventions, some of which have 
 since proved profitable, though for a long time they were a 
 heavy charge upon his resources, and retarded the execution 
 of his favorite scheme. It was at Peter Cooper's iron works 
 in Baltimore, that the first locomotive was made ever em- 
 ployed in drawing passengers on the Western Continent; 
 and it was in Peter Cooper's ingenious brain that the idea 
 originated of using iron for the beams and girders of houses. 
 
 After forty years of active and successful business life, he 
 found himself able to begin the execution of the project 
 formed when he was a New York apprentice boy. 
 
 At the head of the famous street called the Bowery, in 
 
COOPER INSTITUTE AND ITS FOUNDER. 29 
 
 the city of New York, stands the lofty edifice of brown stone 
 which is known throughout the country as the Cooper Insti- 
 tute. There is a little park in front of it ; and, standing 
 unconnected with other buildings, at the point where the 
 Bowery divides into two avenues, it makes a noble termina- 
 tion to the broadest and not least imposing of our streets. 
 The ground floor of the building is occupied by showy 
 stores, and the second story by the offices of various public 
 institutions, the rents of which, amounting to about thirty- 
 five thousand dollars a year, are the fund which supports the 
 institution. 
 
 Under ground is a vast cavern-like lecture room, in which 
 political meetings are held, and where courses of popular 
 lectures are delivered upon Art and Science. In the third 
 story there is an extensive reading-room, furnished with 
 long tables and newspaper stands, wherein the visitor has 
 his choice of about three hundred journals and periodicals 
 from all parts of the world. 
 
 This room is not much frequented in the daytime ; but in 
 the evening every seat is filled, and every stand is occupied 
 by persons, well dressed and polite indeed, who observe the 
 strictest order, and yet have evidently labored all day as 
 clerks, mechanics, or apprentices. Several ladies are gener- 
 ally present, reading the magazines ; for this apartment is 
 free to all, of every age, sex, condition, and color, provided 
 only that they are cleanly dressed and well behaved. On a 
 platform at one end of the room a young lady sits, the libra- 
 rian, who exercises all the authority that is ever needed. 
 The most perfect order prevails at all times, and no sound 
 is heard except the rustling of leaves. In all the city of 
 New York, a more pleasing spectacle cannot be found than 
 is exhibited in this spacious, lofty, and brilliantly lighted 
 room, with its long tables bordered on both sides by silent 
 
30 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 readers, presided over by a lady quietly plying her crochet 
 needle. 
 
 If you ascend to the stories above, you behold scenes not 
 less interesting. The upper stories are divided into class- 
 rooms and lecture-rooms. In one, you may see fifty or sixty 
 lads and lasses listening to a lecture upon Chemistry, illus- 
 trated by experiments. In another, a similar class is wit- 
 nessing an exposition of the Electric Telegraph. In another 
 apartment there will be a hundred pupils seated at long 
 tables, drawing from objects or copies ; and in another, a 
 smaller class is drawing a statue, or a living object, placed 
 in the centre of the room. Drawing, indeed, would appear 
 to be a favorite branch with the frequenters of this establish- 
 ment, nearly all of whom are engaged in some mechanical 
 business which drawing facilitates. Young machinists and 
 engineers, young carpenters and masons, who hope one day 
 to be builders and architects, young carriage-makers, uphol- 
 sterers, and house painters, who aspire to exercise the higher 
 grades of their vocation, are here in great numbers in the 
 various rooms devoted to drawing and painting. There are 
 classes, also, the pupils of which, both boys and girls, learn 
 to model in clay, several of whom have produced creditable 
 works. 
 
 In the daytime most of these upper class-rooms are 
 empty; but, soon after seven in the evening, crowds of 
 young people begin to stream in from the streets, ascend the 
 stairs, and fill all the building with eager young life. At 
 half-past seven work begins, and after that time no one is 
 admitted. The classes continue for an hour or two hours, 
 according to the nature of the subject or exercise. By half- 
 past nine the rooms are again silent and deserted. The 
 reading-room closes at ten ; the lights are extinguished, and' 
 the Cooper Institute has discharged its beneficent office for 
 one day more. 
 
COOPER INSTITUTE AND ITS FOUNDER. 31 
 
 All this is free to every one, on two simple conditions : 
 first, that the applicant knows how to read, write, and cipher ; 
 and, secondly, that he desires to increase his knowledge. 
 Of course, every one must observe the ordinary rules of 
 decorum ; but this is so uniformly done by the pupils that 
 it scarcely requires mention. 
 
 Such is the Cooper Institute. This is that Evening School 
 which Peter Cooper resolved to found as long ago as 1810, 
 when he was a coach-maker's apprentice looking about in 
 New York for a place where he could get instruction in the 
 evening, but was unable to find it. Through all his career, 
 as a cabinet-maker, grocer, manufacturer of glue, and iron- 
 founder, he never lost sight of this object. If he had a 
 fortunate year, or made a successful speculation, he was 
 gratified, not that it increased his wealth, but because it 
 brought him nearer to the realization of his dream. 
 
 When he first conceived the idea, there were no public 
 schools in the city, and such a thing as an evening school 
 had not been thought of. His first intention, therefore, was 
 to establish such an evening school as he had needed himself 
 when he was an apprentice boy, where boys and young 
 men could improve themselves in the ordinary branches of 
 education. But by the time that he was ready to begin to 
 build, there were free evening schools in every ward of the 
 city. His first plan was therefore laid aside, and he deter- 
 mined to found something which should impart a knowledge 
 of the Arts and Sciences involved in the usual trades ; so 
 that every apprentice could become acquainted with the 
 mechanical or chemical principles which his trade compelled 
 him to apply. 
 
 Before any plan was fully formed in his mind, he met in 
 the street one day a friend, an accomplished physician, and 
 the alderman of his ward, who had just returned from a tour 
 
32 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 in Europe. New York aldermen were then its most eminent 
 and worthy citizens, many of them men of education and 
 public spirit, who had the greatest pride and interest in the 
 improvement and progress of the city, men who would 
 have been hewn in pieces rather than accept a bribe, and 
 who would have been strongly disposed to perform that op- 
 eration upon the man who had dared to offer one. Peter 
 Cooper was himself an alderman in those happy days. 
 
 This physician, on meeting his friend Cooper, aware of 
 his interest in the scientific education of mechanics, began to 
 describe, in glowing language, the Polytechnic School in 
 Paris, where just such instruction was given as intelligent 
 mechanics and engineers require. 
 
 " Why," said the alderman, w young men come from all 
 parts of France, and live in Paris on a crust a day, in order 
 to attend the classes at the Polytechnic." 
 
 Mr. Cooper listened eagerly to his friend's description, 
 and he determined that his institution should be founded 
 upon a similar plan. Already he had begun to buy portions 
 of the ground for the site. I have been informed by a mem- 
 ber of his family that he bought the first lot about thirty 
 years before he began to build, and from that time continued 
 to buy pieces of the ground as he could spare the money. 
 In 1854 the whole block was his own, and he began to erect 
 thereon a massive structure of stone, brick, and iron, six 
 stories in height, and fire-proof in every part. It cost seven 
 hundred thousand dollars, which was all the fortune the 
 founder possessed, except that invested in his business. In 
 1859 he delivered the property, with the joyful and proud 
 consent of his wife and children, into the 1 hands of trustees, 
 and thus placed it forever beyond his control. Two thou- 
 sand pupils immediately applied for admission, a number 
 which has greatly increase'd every year, until now most of 
 
COOPER INSTITUTE AND ITS FOUNDER. 33 
 
 the departments are filled during the winter season with 
 attentive students. From the beginning, as many as three 
 thousand persons used the reading-room every week. 
 
 Along with the title-deeds, the founder presented to the 
 trustees a singularly wise and affectionate letter, in which he 
 expressed the objects he had had in view in founding the 
 institution. "My heart's desire is," said he, "that the rising 
 generation may become so thoroughly acquainted with the 
 works of nature, and the mystery of their own being, that 
 they may see, feel, understand, and know that there are 
 immutable laws, designed in infinite wisdom, constantly 
 operating for our good, so governing the destiny of 
 worlds and men that it is our highest wisdom to live in 
 strict conformity to these laws." 
 
 The whole letter is in this strain of benevolent wis- 
 dom. Perhaps the most characteristic passage is the fol- 
 lowing : 
 
 " My feelings, my desires, my hopes, embrace humanity through- 
 out the world ; and, if it were in my power, I would bring all 
 mankind to see and feel that there is an almighty power and 
 be'auty in goodness. I would gladly show to all, that goodness 
 rises in every possible degree, from the smallest act of kindness 
 up to the Infinite of all good. My earnest desire is to make this 
 building and institution contribute, in every way possible, to unite 
 all in one common effort to improve each and every human being, 
 seeing that we are bound up in one common destiny, and by the 
 laws of our being are made dependent for our happiness on the 
 continued acts of kindness we receive from each other." 
 
 He concludes this long and eloquent epistle with the utter- 
 ance of a desire, that thousands of youth thronging the 
 halls of the institution might learn " those lessons of wisdom 
 so much needed to guide the inexperience of youth amid the 
 dangers to which they are at all times exposed." 
 
34 TRIUMPHS OF ENTEKPKISE. 
 
 A pleasant sight it is, at the annual exhibition of the 
 Institute in the spring, when, for three days and evenings, 
 the halls are crowded with people viewing the works of art, 
 the drawings, the models, the paintings produced by the 
 pupils during the year, to see the venerable founder, his 
 countenance beaming with happiness, moving about among 
 the company, and receiving their congratulations upon the 
 success of his enterprise. Few evenings in the winter pass 
 without his visiting the Institute. It is the delight of his 
 old age to see so many hundreds of young people freely 
 enjoying the advantages which he longed for in early life, 
 and could not obtain. He has recently given one hundred 
 and fifty thousand dollars to provide the institution with a 
 library of books of reference. 
 
THE 
 
 WONDEKFUL GKOWTH OF CHICAGO. 
 
 WHEN Professor Goldwin Smith was preparing for his 
 voyage to America, Mr. Kichard Cobden said to him, "See 
 two things in the United States, if nothing else, Niagara 
 and Chicago." Professor Smith acted upon this advice, and 
 while visiting Chicago, acknowledged that the two objects 
 named by his friend were indeed the wonders of North Amer- 
 ica. Chicago can claim one point of superiority over its 
 fellow-wonder. According to the geologists, the cataract 
 has been about four hundred centuries in becoming what it 
 is, but the city has come to pass in thirty-seven years. 
 
 On Monday morning, October 4, 1834, word was brought 
 to the people of Chicago that a large black bear had been 
 seen in a strip of woods a quarter of a mile out of town. 
 The male population seized their guns and made for the 
 forest, where the bear was soon treed and shot. After so 
 cheering an exploit, the hunters, disinclined to resume their 
 ordinary labors, resolved to make a day of it, and have a 
 dash at the wolves which then prowled nightly in every part 
 of Chicago. Before the night closed in they had killed forty 
 wolves, all on the site of the present Metropolis of the 
 Northwest ! The wolves, however, did not take the hint, 
 since we learn that, as late as 1838, the howlings of this 
 pest of the prairies were occasionally heard far within the 
 present city limits. Yet even then the inhabitants of the 
 place were bewildered at the rapidity of its growth, and 
 
36 TKITTMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 spoke of the brilliant prospects before it very much as they 
 now do. 
 
 In 1830, Chicago was what it had been for a quarter of a 
 century, a military post and fur station, consisting of 
 twelve habitations. There was a log fort, with its garrison 
 of two companies of United States troops. There was 
 the fur agency. There were three taverns, so called, much 
 haunted by idle, drunken Indians, who brought in furs, and 
 remained to drink up the proceeds. There were two stores 
 supplied with such goods as Indians buy. There was a 
 blacksmith's shop, a house for the interpreter of the station, 
 and one occupied by Indian chiefs. All that part of Illinois 
 swarmed with Indians. As many Indian trails then marked 
 the prairie and concentrated at the agency house as there are 
 railroads now terminating in the city of Chicago ; for the 
 Indians brought furs to that point from beyond the Missis- 
 sippi, as well as from the great prairies of the North and 
 South. Once a year, John Jacob Astor sent a schooner to 
 the post to convey supplies to it, and take away the year's 
 product of fur. Once a week in summer, twice a month in 
 winter, a mail rider brought news to the place from the great 
 world on the other side of the Lakes. In 1830, there resided 
 at Chicago, besides the garrison and the fur agent, four 
 white families. In 1831, there were twelve families; and 
 when winter came on, the troops having been withdrawn, 
 the whole population moved into the fort, and had a pleasant 
 winter of it, with their debating society and balls. In 1832, 
 the taxes amounted to nearly one hundred and fifty dollars, 
 twelve of which were expended in the erection of Chicago's 
 first public building, a pound for stray cattle. 
 
 But in 1833, the rush began. Before that year closed 
 there were fifty families floundering in Chicago mud. When 
 the forty wolves were slain in 1834, there were, as it 
 
WONDERFUL GROWTH OF CHICAGO. 37 
 
 \ 
 
 appears, nearly two thousand inhabitants in the town ; and 
 in November, 1835, more than three thousand. 
 
 The motive must have been powerful which could induce 
 such large numbers of people to settle upon that most unin- 
 viting shore. A new town on a flat prairie, as seen from car 
 windows, has usually the aspect which is described as God- 
 forsaken. Wagon wheels have obliterated the only beauty 
 the prairie ever had, and streaked it with an excellent article 
 of blacking. There may be but twenty little wooden houses 
 in the place ; but it is " laid out " with all the rigor of math- 
 ematics ; and every visible object, whether animate or inan- 
 imate, the pigs that root in the soft, black, prairie mire, 
 the boys, the horses, the wagons, the houses, the fences, the 
 school-houses, the steps of the store, the railroad platform, 
 are all powdered or plastered with disturbed prairie. If, 
 filled with compassion for the unhappy beings whom stern 
 fate seems to have cast out upon that dismal plain, far from 
 the abodes of men, the traveller enters into conversation with 
 them, he finds them all hope and animation, and disposed to 
 pity him because he neither owns any corner lots in that 
 future metropolis, nor has intellect enough to see what a 
 speculation it would be to buy a few. Pity ! You might as 
 well pity the Prince of Wales because he is not yet king. 
 
 Chicago, for fifteen years after it began its rapid increase, 
 was perhaps of all prairie towns the most repulsive to every 
 human sense. The place was in vile odor even among the 
 Indians, since the name they gave it, Chicago, if it 
 does not mean skunk, as some old hunters aver, signifies 
 nothing of sweeter odor than wild onion. 
 
 o 
 
 The prairie on that part of the shore of Lake Michigan 
 appears to the eye as flat as the lake itself, and its average 
 height above the lake is about six feet. A gentleman who 
 arrived at Chicago from the South in 1833 reports that he 
 
38 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 waded the last eight miles of his journey in water from one 
 to three feet deep, a sheet of water extending as far as the 
 eye could reach over what is now the fashionable quarter of 
 Chicago and its most elegant suburbs. Another traveller 
 records, that, in 1831, in riding about what is now the very 
 centre and heart of the business portion of the city, he often 
 felt the water swashing through his stirrups. Even in dry 
 summer weather that part of the prairie was very wet, and 
 during the rainy seasons no one attempted to pass over it on 
 foot. "I would not have given sixpence an acre for the 
 whole of it," said a gentleman, speaking of land much of 
 which is now held at five hundred dollars a foot. It looked 
 so unpromising to farmers' eyes, that Chicago imported a 
 considerable part of its provisions from the eastern shores of 
 Lake Michigan, as late as 1838. Chicago, that did this only 
 thirty-three years ago, now feeds states and kingdoms. 
 
 Why settle such a spot when the same shore presented 
 better sites ? It was only because the Chicago River fur- 
 nished there the possibility of a harbor on the coast of the 
 stormiest of lakes. The Chicago River is not a river. The 
 lake at that point had cut into the soft prairie, just as 
 the ocean cuts deep, regular fissures into the rock -bound 
 coast of New England and its rocky isles. This cutting, 
 which was a hundred yards wide, ran straight into the prairie 
 for three quarters of a mile, then divided into two forks, one 
 running north, the other south, and both parallel to the lake 
 shore. These two branches extend for several miles, and 
 lose themselves at last in the prairie sloughs. There is no 
 tide or flow to this curious inlet, except such as is caused by 
 the winds blowing the waters of the lake into it which flows 
 out when the wind changes or subsides. Originally the 
 inlet was twenty feet deep, but the mouth being obstructed 
 by a sand-bar, it only admitted vessels of thirty or forty 
 
WONDEKFUL GROWTH OF CHICAGO. 39 
 
 tons. Bnt the crevice was there, ready for the dredge, 
 which has since made it capable of receiving the largest 
 ships that sail the lakes, and given Chicago thirty miles of 
 wharves. Considering the peculiar destiny of Chicago, as 
 the great distributor of commodities, no engineer could have 
 contrived a more convenient harbor ; for, go where you will 
 in the city, you cannot get far from it ; and every mill, 
 warehouse, elevator, and factory can have its branch or 
 basin, and receive and send away merchandise in boats at its 
 door. Those drawbridges, it is true, are rather in the way 
 at present. It is a trial to the patience to have to wait while 
 seventeen little snorting tu^-boats tow through the draw 
 
 O O O 
 
 seventeen long three-masters from the lake ; but nothing 
 daunts Chicago. In due time those seventeen maddening 
 drawbridges will have been superseded by seventeen tunnels. 
 Underneath that oozy prairie, which an hour's rain converts 
 into Day and Martin, and an hour's sun into fine Maccaboy, 
 there is an excellent clay which affords the finest tunnelling, 
 and which indomitable Chicago turns to various account, 
 as time reveals the .need of it. 
 
 The growth of Chicago since 1833, though it strikes every 
 mind with wonder, is not in the least mysterious. There 
 the city stands, at the southern end of Lake Michigan, which 
 gives it necessarily a leading share of the commerce of all 
 the lakes, and easy access by land, round the southern 
 shore of Lake Michigan, to all the east and southeast. But 
 there Chicago was for thirty years without advancing beyond 
 the rank of an outpost of civilization, and there it might 
 have stood for ages in the same condition, if the region 
 behind/ it had remained unpeopled. That muddy inlet, 
 called the Chicago River, is a portal to the prairies, and 
 Chicago has grown with the development and accessibility 
 of that wonderful region, of which it is the grand depot, 
 
 exchange, counting-house, and metropolis. 
 
 3 
 
40 TKIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 Those prairies, long undervalued, are now known to be 
 that portion of the earth's surface where Nature has accumu- 
 lated the greatest variety and quantity of what man needs 
 for the sustenance and the decoration of his life, and where 
 she has placed the fewest and smallest obstacles in his way. 
 That is the region where a deep furrow can be drawn 
 through the richest mould for thirty miles or more, without 
 striking a pebble, a bog, or a root ; and under almost every 
 part of which there is deposited some kind of mineral 
 clay, coal, stone, lead, iron useful to man. Besides being 
 well watered by rivers, nowhere is it so easy to make arti- 
 ficial highways, roads, railroads, and canals. The climate, 
 like all climates, has it inconveniences, but, upon the whole, 
 there is none better. Not much of the prairie land is flat ; 
 most of it is undulating enough for utility and beauty. 
 Blest are the eyes that see a rolling prairie at a season of 
 the year when the grass is green and the sky is clear ! It is 
 an enchanting world of azure and billowy emerald, where, 
 from the summit of a green wave twenty feet high, you can 
 see whole counties. The absence of all dark objects, such 
 as woods, roads, rocks, hills, and fences, gives the visitor 
 the feeling that never before in all his life was he completely 
 out of doors. It is a delicious sensation, when you inquire 
 the way to a place ten miles off, to have it pointed out, and 
 to make for it across the verdant, elastic prairie, untram- 
 melled by roads. The landscape has, too, such a finished 
 aspect, that the traveller finds it difficult to believe that he 
 is not wandering in a boundless park, refined by a thousand 
 years of culture. When the country has been settled for 
 many years, it does not lose this park-like appearance ; it 
 looks then as if some enlightened nobleman had turned dem- 
 ocrat, torn down his park walls, and invited his neighbors 
 to come in and build upon his rounded knolls and wave-like 
 ridges. 
 
WONDERFUL GROWTH OF CHICAGO. 41 
 
 And there is enough of this exquisite country for twelve 
 great States, and to maintain a population of one hundred 
 millions. It is sure to be the seat of empire forever. 
 Chicago, the inevitable metropolis of the vigorous north- 
 western third of the prairie world, has taken the lead in 
 rendering the whole of it accessible. Her vocation is to 
 put every good acre in all that region within ten miles of a 
 railroad, and to connect every railroad with a system of 
 ship-canals terminating in the Mississippi and the Atlantic 
 Ocean. That is, has been, and will be for many a year to 
 come, Chicago's work ; and her own growth will be exactly 
 measured by her wisdom and efficiency in doing it. So far, 
 every mile of railroad has yielded its proportionable revenue 
 to the great prairie exchange and banking-house ; and this 
 fact, now clearly seen by every creature in the town, guar- 
 antees the execution of the task. 
 
 They see it now; but it ought to moderate the boasting 
 of some of the elders of Chicago, that they were full fifteen 
 years in finding it out. The boasters should further con- 
 sider, that the canal which connects Lake Michigan with the 
 Illinois River and with the Mississippi was thought of in 
 1814, and authorized in 1825, when as yet there was no 
 Chicago ; and the fogy interest should ever be kept in mind 
 that the projectors of the first railroad to the Mississippi had 
 to encounter the opposition of most of the business men of 
 the town, who were certain it would ruin Chicago by distrib- 
 uting its business along the line of the road. But, with 
 these deductions allowed, there is enough in the early his- 
 tory of the city to justify more self-laudation than is gen- 
 erally becoming. 
 
 Those crowds of idle and dissolute Indians were the first 
 obstacle to the growth of Chicago with which the early 
 settlers had to contend. On a day in September, 1833, 
 
42 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 seven thousand of them gathered at the Tillage to meet 
 commissioners of the United States for the purpose of sell- 
 ing their lands in Illinois and Wisconsin.' In a large tent 
 on the bank of the river, the chiefs signed a treaty which 
 ceded to the United States the best twenty million acres of 
 the Northwest, and agreed to remove twenty days' journey 
 west of the Mississippi. A year later, four thousand of the 
 dusky nuisances assembled in Chicago to receive their first 
 annual annuity. The goods to be distributed were heaped 
 up on the prairie, and the Indians were made to sit down 
 around the pile in circles, the squaws sitting demurely in 
 the outer ring. Those who were selected to distribute the 
 merchandise took armfuls from the heap, and tossed the 
 articles to favorites seated on the ground. Those who were 
 overlooked soon grew impatient, rose to their feet, pressed 
 forward, and at last rushed upon the pile, each struggling to 
 seize something from it. So severe was the scramble, that 
 those who had secured an armful could not get away, and 
 the greater number of empty-handed could not get near the 
 heap. Then those on the outside began to hurl heavy arti- 
 cles at the crowd, to clear the way for themselves, and the 
 scramble ended in a fight, in which several of the Indians 
 were killed, and a large number wounded. Night closed in 
 on a wild debauch, and when the next morning arrived, few 
 of the Indians were the better off for the thirty thousand 
 dollars' worth of goods which had been given them. Similar 
 scenes, with similar bloody results, were enacted in the fall 
 of 1835 ; but that was the last Indian payment Chicago ever 
 saw. In September, 1835, a long train of forty wagons, 
 each drawn by four oxen, conveyed away, across the prairies, 
 the children and effects of the Pottawatomies, the men and 
 able-bodied women walking alongside. In twenty days 
 they crossed the Mississippi, and for twenty days longer 
 
WONDERFUL GROWTH OF CHICAGO. 43 
 
 continued their westward march ; and Chicago was troubled 
 with them no more. Walking in the imposing streets of 
 the Chicago of to-day, how difficult it is to realize that 
 forty years have not elapsed since the red men were dis- 
 possessed of the very site on which the city stands, and were 
 " toted " off in forty days to a point now reached in fifteen 
 hours ! 
 
 This was the work of our common Uncle, and Chicago 
 does not boast of it. Nor can she claim the credit of the 
 improvement of the harbor in 1833 and 1834, which first 
 called the attention of the country to that frontier post. 
 The United States spent thirty thousand dollars, in 1833, in 
 dredging out the Chicago River ; and in the spring of 1834, 
 a most timely freshet swept away the bar at the mouth of 
 the river, making it accessible to the largest lake craft. This 
 made Chicago an important lake port at once. The town 
 had taken its first stride toward greatness. In 1836 the 
 population was four thousand. 
 
 Then there was a check to the prosperity of Chicago, as 
 to that of Illinois and of the United States ; and the popu- 
 lation scarcely increased for five years, if, indeed, it did not 
 dimmish. Besides the mania for land speculations, which 
 ended in prostrating the business of the whole country, Illi- 
 noisans had embarked the credit of the State in schemes 
 of internal improvement too costly for the time, though 
 since surpassed and executed by private enterprise. The 
 State was bankrupt; work on the railroads ceased; and 
 even the canal designed to connect Lake Michigan with the 
 Illinois Eiver was abandoned for a time. Chicago lan- 
 guished, and repented that it had ever dared to be anything 
 but a military post. Those corner lots, those river sites, 
 those lake borders, so eagerly sought in 1835, were loath- 
 some to the sight of luckless holders in 1837. Some men 
 
44 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 in Chicago are millionaires to-day only because they could 
 not sell their land at any price during those years of desola- 
 tion and despair. But it was in those very years, 1837 to 
 1842, that Chicago entered upon its career. A little beef 
 had already been salted and sent across the lake ; but in 
 1839 the business began to assume promising proportions. 
 3,000 cattle had been driven in from the prairies, barrelled 
 and exported. In 1838, a venturesome trader shipped 
 thirty-nine two-bushel bags of wheat. Next year nearly 
 4,000 bushels were exported; the next, 10,000; the next, 
 40,000. In 1842, the amount rose, all at once, from 
 40,000 to nearly 600,000, and announced to parties inter- 
 ested, that the " hard times " were coming to an end in Chi- 
 cago. But the soft times were not. That mountain of 
 grain was brought into this quagmire of a town from far 
 back in the prairies, twenty, fifty, one hundred, and even 
 one hundred and fifty miles t The season for carrying grain 
 to market is also the season of rain, and many a farmer in 
 those times has seen his load hopelessly " slewed " within 
 what is now Chicago. The streets used often to be utterly 
 choked and impassable from the concourse of wagons, which 
 ground the roads into long vats of blacking. And yet, 
 before there was a railroad begun or a canal finished, Chi- 
 cago exported two and a quarter millions of bushels of 
 grain in a year, and sent back, on most of the wagons that 
 brought it, part of a load of merchandise. 
 
 The canal connecting the Chicago River with the Illinois,, 
 and through that river with the Mississippi, begun in 1836,. 
 and finished in 1848, opened to Chicago an immense area of 
 uncultivated acres, which could then come into profitable 
 cultivation. But the immediate effects of this great event 
 upon the trade of the city were not great enough to open 
 the eyes of its business men to the single condition upoa 
 
WONDERFUL GROWTH OF CHICAGO. 45 
 
 which the growth of the town depended, namely, its acces- 
 sibility to the Eastern cities and to the great prairie world. 
 Chicago was still little more than a thriving country town, 
 which received the products of adjacent farms, and gave in 
 exchange merchandise brought in three weeks from the sea- 
 shore. Middle-aged gentlemen of Chicago have a lively 
 recollection of the opposition of store-keepers to the first 
 project of a railroad to the Mississippi River. In 1850, 
 the Chicago and Galena Railroad was completed, for forty- 
 two miles, to the rolling prairies by which the beautiful and 
 vigorous town of Elgin is surrounded. From that time, 
 there were indeed fewer ox-teams wallowing in Chicago 
 mire, but trade increased, and changed its character from 
 retail to wholesale ; and the wheat coming in by car-loads 
 to the river shore was poured into the waiting vessels with 
 a great saving of labor and expense. Still there were men 
 in Chicago who did not take the idea. The money which 
 built that forty-two, miles of road had to be borrowed, in 
 great part, on the personal responsibility of the directors, 
 and the road could not have been built at all but for the 
 fact that a prairie railroad is nothing but two ditches and a 
 'track. The railroads, said the fogies, will drain the country 
 of its resources, Chicago of its business, and place the wel- 
 fare of Illinois at the mercy of Eastern capitalists. But 
 when, in 1853, the road paid a dividend of eleven per cent, 
 and it was found that Chicago had trebled its population in 
 six years after the opening of the canal, and that every mile 
 of the railroad had poured its quota of wealth into Chicago 
 coffers, then the truth took possession of the whole mind of 
 Chicago, and became its fixed idea, that every acre with 
 which it could put itself into easy communication must pay 
 tribute to it forever. From that time there has been no 
 pause and no hesitation ; but all the surplus force and rev- 
 
46 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 enue of Chicago have been expended in making itself the 
 centre of a great system of railroads and canals. 
 
 It was in April, 1849, that the whistle of the locomotive 
 was first heard on the prairies west of Chicago ; and this loco- 
 motive drew a train to a distance of ten miles from the city, 
 amid the cheers of the people who had little to lose, and the 
 forebodings of most of those who had much. The railroad 
 system of which Chicago is a centre now includes ten thou- 
 sand miles of track, and the railroad system of which Chicago 
 is the centre embraces over five thousand miles of track. 
 A passenger train reaches or leaves the city every fifteen 
 minutes of the twenty-four hours. Not less than two hun- 
 dred trains arrive or depart in a day and night. No farm in 
 Illinois is more than fifty miles from a station, and very few 
 so far ; the average distance, as near as we can compute so 
 impossible a problem, is not more than seven miles. There 
 are sixteen points on the Mississippi which have railroad com- 
 munication with Chicago. The Illinois Central, with its 
 seven hundred miles of road, lays open the central part of 
 the long State of Illinois, and has brought into culture nearly 
 two million acres of the best land in the world. The straight 
 road to St. Louis renders accessible another line of Illinois 
 counties, besides " tapping " the commerce of the Missouri 
 River at Alton, and that of the Lower Mississippi at St. 
 Louis. Other roads stretch out long arms into the fertile 
 prairies of Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Missouri, and 
 extend far towards the mining region of Lake Superior; 
 and on whatever lines railroads are building or con- 
 templated to the Pacific, Chicago means to be ready 
 with facilities for reaping her natural share of the advan- 
 tages resulting from their completion. It is but six- 
 teen years since Chicago first had railroad communication 
 with the cities on the Atlantic coast ; and the traveller now 
 
WONDERFUL GEOWTH OF CHICAGO. 47 
 
 has his choice of three main lines, which branch out to every 
 important intermediate point. Railroad depots, immense in 
 extent and admirably convenient, are rising in Chicago in 
 anticipation of the incalculable business of the future, 
 such depots as ought to put to shame the directors of some 
 of our Eastern roads, who afford to their human freight 
 accommodations less generous than Chicago bestows upon 
 the pigs and cattle that pass through the city. There is one 
 depot for passengers only, which has under cover three quar- 
 ters of a mile of track, from which three trains can start at 
 the same moment, without the least danger of interference, and 
 wherein no passenger has to cross a track in changing cars. 
 In every sphere of exertion, those Western men improve upon 
 Eastern models and methods. They have sleeping-cars in 
 those grand depots, built at a cost of twenty-five thousand 
 dollars, in which a king would only be too happy 'to ride, 
 sup, sleep, and play whist. 
 
 In some parts of the country, railroads have temporarily 
 diminished the importance of water communication. This is 
 not the case with the Great Lakes, nor with Chicago's lion's 
 share of their commerce. It is but yesterday ,that Astor's 
 single schopner of forty tons was the only vessel known to 
 the Chicago River, except Indian canoes. Chicago is now 
 more than the Marseilles of our Mediterranean, though 
 Marseilles was a place of note twenty-four hundred years 
 ago. Seventy-seven steamers, one hundred and eigh- 
 teen barques, forty-three brigs, six hundred and thirteen 
 schooners, fifty-three scows and barges, in all, nine hun- 
 dred and four vessels, carrying 218,215 tons, and employ- 
 ing ten thousand sailors, ply between Chicago and the 
 other Lake ports. In the winter, after navigation has closed, 
 five hundred vessels may be counted in the harbor, frozen 
 up safely in the ice. On a certain day of November, 1867, 
 
48 TKIUMPHS OF ENTEKPKISE. 
 
 a favorable wind blew into port two hundred and eighteen 
 vessels loaded with timber. 
 
 Provided thus with the means of gathering in and sending 
 away the surplus products of the prairies, the granary of the 
 world, and of supplying them with merchandise in return, 
 Chicago has, for the last few years, transacted an amount of 
 business that astonishes and bewilders herself when she has 
 time to pause and add up the figures. The export of grain, 
 which began in 1838, with seventy-eight bushels, had run up 
 to six millions and a half in 1853. In 1854, when there 
 were two lines of railroad in operation across the State of 
 Michigan to the East, the export of grain more than doubled, 
 the quantity being nearly eleven millions of bushels. From 
 that time the export has been as follows : 
 
 Tear. Bushels. 
 
 1854 . V / 4 . . 12,932,320 
 
 1855 . . -,,,;;" , . . 16,633,700 
 
 1856 . . ;/,. . . . 21,583,221 
 
 1857 . r -,,V . . . 18,032,678 
 
 1858 . . ",_,' . . . 20,035,166 
 
 1859 . ''."- , , v I . . 16,771,812 
 
 1860 . , V,.. t V . . 31,108,759 
 ' 1861 . '; v Y v> . . 50,481,862 
 
 1862 . . ,.'.. -:V 56,484,110 
 
 1863 . C, Y 54,741,839 
 1864-5 . ' \;,M .... 47,124,494 
 1865-6 53,212,224 
 
 To this remarkable statement I will add one still more 
 wonderful, showing the increase during the years 1868 
 and 1869. I copy from the carefully conducted business 
 department of the " Chicago Tribune," under the date of 
 Dec. 30, 1870. 
 
 " The footing up," says the editor, "by the year's business 
 
WONDERFUL GROWTH OF CHICAGO. 49 
 
 in Chicago, shows receipts of merchantable commodities, 
 including grain and lumber, of the value of $415,652,000, 
 against $397,552,000 for the year 1868, an increase of 
 $18,100,000. The manufactures of the city amount to 
 $58,000,000, against $63,000,000 for the preceding year, 
 a decrease of $5,000,000. The number of new buildings 
 erected was 3,423, of an estimated value of $16,000,000, 
 against 4,100 last year, of an estimated value of $20,000,000. 
 The collections- of internal revenue at this point for the year 
 were $7,680,500, against $4,939,487 for the preceding 
 year an increase of $2,740,813, of which increase $2,088,- 
 061 was from the tax on distilled spirits. The total collec- 
 tions from distilled spirits were $3,697,000. 
 
 The following table shows the receipts of the principal 
 articles of agricultural produce and lumber for two years : - 
 
 1869. 1868. 
 
 Flour, bbls. . .V 2,259,904 2,092,553 
 
 Wheat, bushels . . 16,714,696 13,540,250 
 
 Corn, bushels . . 23,932,325 25,396,523 
 
 Oats, bushels . . 11,330,933 14,449,489 
 
 Rye, bushels . V 1,524,415 1,367,461 
 
 Barley, bushels . '. 1,832,470 1,511,219 
 
 Hides, Ibs. . . 27,635,424 27,813,162 
 
 Dressed Hogs, number 209,463 239,113 
 
 Live Hogs', number . 1,700,050 - 1,706,782 
 
 Cattle, number. . . 403,627 324,524 
 
 Sheep, number . . 339,630 278,875 
 
 Tobacco, Ibs. . . 12,861,428 8,027,419 
 
 Lumber, M. . ' . 1,012,678 982,581" 
 
 The ease, the quietness, and celerity with which this incon- 
 ceivable quantity of grain is "handled," as they term it, 
 although hands never touch it, is one of the wonders of 
 Chicago. Whether it arrives by canal, railroad, or lake, it 
 
50 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 comes w in bulk," i. e. without bags or barrels, loose in the 
 car or boat. The train or the vessel stops at the side of one 
 of those tall elevators, by which the grain is pumped into 
 enormous bins, and poured out into other cars or vessels on 
 the other side of the building, the double operation being 
 performed in a few minutes by steam. The utmost care is 
 taken to do this business honestly. The grain is all in- 
 spected, and the brand of the inspector fixes its grade abso- 
 lutely. The owner may have his grain deposited in the part 
 of the elevator assigned to its quality, where it blends with 
 a mountain of the same grade. He never sees his grain 
 again, but he carries away the receipt of the clerk of the ele- 
 vator, which represents his property as unquestionably as a 
 certified check. Those little slips of paper, changing hands 
 on 'Change, constitutes the business of the "grain men" of 
 Chicago. When Chicago exported a few thousands of 
 bushels a year, the business blocked the streets and filled 
 the town with, commotion ; but now that it exports fifty or 
 sixty millions of bushels, a person might live a month at 
 Chicago without being aware that anything was doing in 
 grain. 
 
 Recently, Chicago has sought to economize in transporta- 
 tion, by sending away part of this great mass of food in the 
 form of flour. The ten flour-mills there produced in 1867 
 just one thousand barrels of flour every working-day. 
 
 Saving in the cost of transportation being Chicago's special 
 business and mission, and corn being the great product of 
 the Northwest, it is in the transport of that grain that the 
 most surprising economy has been effected. A way has been 
 discovered of packing fifteen or twenty bushels of Indian 
 corn in a single barrel. The " corn crop," as Mr. S. B. 
 Ruggles remarked recently in Chicago, " is condensed and 
 reduced in bulk, by feeding it into an animal form, more 
 
WONDERFUL GROWTH OF CHICAGO 51 
 
 portable. The hog eats the corn, and Europe eats the hog. 
 Corn thus becomes incarnate ; for what is a hog, but fifteen 
 or twenty bushels of corn on four legs ? " Mr. Kuggles fur- 
 ther observed, amid the laughter of his audience, that the 
 three hundred millions of pounds of American pork exported 
 to Europe in 1863 were equal to "a million and a half of 
 hogs marching across the ocean." 
 
 The business of pork packing, as it is called, which can 
 only be done to advantage on a great scale, has attained 
 enormous proportions in Chicago, surpassing those of the 
 same business in Cincinnati, where it originated. In one 
 season of three months, Chicago has converted nearly two 
 million hogs into pork ; which was one third of all the hogs 
 massacred in the Western country during the year. Walk- 
 ing in single, file, close together, that number of hogs would 
 form a line reaching from Chicago to Maine. 
 
 During the last few years, the number of cattle received 
 in Chicago from the prairies, and sent away in various forms 
 to the East, has averaged about one thousand for each work- 
 ing-day. Nevertheless, a person might reside there for 
 years, and never suspect that any business was done in 
 cattle, never see a drove, never hear the bellow of an ox. 
 
 A bullock is an awkward piece of merchandise to "handle" ; 
 he has a will of his own, with much power to resist the will 
 of other creatures ; he cannot be pumped up into an elevator, 
 nor shot into the hold of a vessel ; Ke must have two pails 
 of water every twelve hours, and he cannot go long without a 
 large bundle of hay. There is also a Society for the Preven- 
 tion of Cruelty to Animals, with an eloquent and resolute 
 Henry Bergh to see that cattle have their rights. Chicago 
 has learned to conform to these circumstances, and now 
 challenges mankind to admire the exquisite way in which 
 those four or five hundred thousand cattle per annum, and 
 
52 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 those millions of hogs, sheep, and calves, are received, 
 lodged, entertained, and despatched. 
 
 Out on the flat prairie, four miles south of the city, and 
 two feet below the level of the river, part of that eight 
 miles which our traveller found under water in 1833, may 
 be seen the famous " Stock Yards," styled, in one of the 
 Chicago guide-books, "The great bovine city of the world." 
 Two millions of dollars have been expended there in the 
 construction of a cattle market. The company owning 
 it have now nearly a square mile of land, 345 acres of 
 which are already enclosed into cattle pens, 250 of these 
 acres being floored with plank. There is at the present 
 time pen-room for 1*0,000 cattle, 75,000 hogs, and 20,000 
 sheep ; the sheep and hogs being provided with sheds ; and 
 no Thursday has passed since the yards were opened when 
 they were not full, Thursday being the fullest day. This 
 bovine city of the world, like all other prairie cities, is laid 
 out in streets and alleys, crossing at right angles. The pro- 
 jectors have paid New York the compliment of naming the 
 principal street Broadway. It is a mile long and seventy- 
 five feet wide, and is divided by a light fence into three 
 paths, so that herds of cattle can pass one another without 
 mingling, and leave an unobstructed road for the drovers. 
 Nine railroads have constructed branches to the yards, and 
 there is to be a canal connecting it with one of the forks of 
 the Chicago River. 
 
 Nothing is more simple and easy than the working of the 
 system of these stock yards. The sum of anguish annually 
 endured in the United States will be greatly lessened when 
 that system shall prevail all along the line from the prairies 
 to the Atlantic. A cattle train stops along a street of pens ; 
 the side of each car is removed ; a gently declining bridge 
 woos the living freight down into a^clean, planked enclosure, 
 
WONDERFUL GROWTH OF CHICAGO. 53 
 
 where on one side is along trough, which the turn of a faucet 
 fills with water, and on another side is a manger which can 
 be immediately filled with hay. While the tired and hungry 
 animals are enjoying this respite from the torture of their 
 ride, their owner or his agent finds comfort in the " Hough 
 House " (so named from one of the chief promoters of the 
 enterprise), a handsome hotel of yellow stone, built solely 
 for the accommodation of the " cattle men," and capable of 
 entertaining two hundred of them at once. A few steps^ 
 from the hotel is the Cattle Exchange, another spacious and 
 elegant edifice of yellow stone, wherein there is a great room 
 for the chaiferiug or preliminary "gassing" (as the drovers 
 term it) of buyers and sellers ; also a bank solely for cattle 
 men's use, with a daily business ranging from one hundred 
 thousand to five hundred thousand dollars ; also a telegraph 
 office, which reports, from time to time, the price of beef, 
 pork, and mutton in two hemispheres, and sends back to the 
 cattle markets of mankind the condition of affairs in this, 
 the great bovine city of the world. The "gassing" being 
 accomplished, the cattle men leave this fine Exchange, and go 
 forth to view the cattle which have been the subject of their 
 conversation, and they move about in the midst of those pro- 
 digious herds, and inspect the occupants of any particular 
 pen, with as much ease as a lady examines pictures in a 
 window. The purchase completed, the cattle are driven 
 along, through opening pens and broad streets, to the yards 
 adjoining the railroad, by which* they are to resume their 
 journey. On the way to those yards, they are weighed at 
 the rate of thirty cattle a minute, by merely pausing in the 
 weighing pen as they pass. The men return to the Ex- 
 change, where the money is paid, all the cattle business 
 being done for cash, after which they conclude the affair by 
 dining together at the hotel, or at an excellent restaurant in 
 the Exchange itself. 
 
54 TKIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 In this elegant Exchange-room, two classes of cattle men 
 meet, those who collect the cattle from the prairie States, 
 Texas, Missouri, Kansas, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, Min- 
 nesota, and those who distribute the cattle among the 
 Eastern cities. One of the potent civilizers is doing busi- 
 ness on the grand scale. By means of this cattle Exchange, 
 a repulsive and barbarizing business is lifted out of the mire, 
 and rendered clean, easy, respectable, and pleasant. The 
 actual handling and supervision of the cattle require few 
 men, who are themselves raised in the social scale by being 
 parts df a great system ; while the controlling minds are left 
 free to work at the arithmetic and < book-keeping of the busi- 
 ness. We remember with pleasure the able and polite gen- 
 tlemen the necessities of whose business suggested this 
 enterprise, and who now control it. The economy of the 
 system is something worth consideration. The design of 
 the directors is to keep the rent of the pens at such rates as 
 to exactly pay the cost of cleaning and preserving them, and 
 to get the requisite profit only from the sale of hay and corn. 
 One hundred tons of hay are frequently consumed in the 
 yards in one day. If those yards were in New England, the 
 sale of manure would be an important part of the business ; 
 but in those fertile prairies, they are glad to sell it at ten 
 cents a wagon-load, which is less than the cost of shovelling 
 it up. 
 
 There is one commodity in which Chicago deals, that 
 makes a show proportioned 'to it importance. Six hundred 
 and fourteen millions of feet of timber, equal to about fifty 
 millions of ordinary pine boards, which Chicago sold a year 
 or two since, cannot be hidden in a corner. The prairies, to 
 which Nature has been so variously bountiful, lack this first 
 necessity of the settler, and it is Chicago that sends up the 
 lake for it and supplies it to the prairies. Miles of timber 
 
WONDERFUL GROWTH OF CHICAGO. 55 
 
 yards extend along one of the forks of the river ; the har- 
 bor is choked with arriving timber vessels j timber trains 
 shoot over the prairies in every direction. To economize 
 transportation, they are now beginning to dispatch timber in 
 the form of ready-made houses. There is a firm in Chicago 
 which is happy to furnish cottages, villas, school-houses, 
 stores, taverns, churches, court-houses, or towns, wholesale 
 and retail, and to forward them, securely packed, to any 
 part of the country. No doubt we shall soon have the exhil- 
 aration of reading advertisements of these town-makers, to 
 the effect that orders for the smallest villages will be thank- 
 fully received ; county towns made to order ; a metropolis 
 furnished with punctuality and despatch ; any town on our 
 list sent, carriage paid, on receipt of price ; rows of cottages 
 always on hand; churches in every style. N. B. Clergy- 
 men and others are requested to call before purchasing else- 
 where. 
 
 While this great business has been forming, Chicago itself 
 has undergone many and strange transformations. The pop- 
 ulation, which numbered 70 in 1830, was 4,853 in 1840. 
 During the next five years, it nearly trebled, being 12,088 in 
 1845. In 1850, the year in which the railroad was opened to 
 Elgin, the population had mounted to 29,963, and during the 
 next ten years it quadrupled. In 1860, 110,973 persons lived 
 in Chicago. In 1865, after four years of war, the population 
 was 178,900. In the spring of 1870, if we include the sub- 
 urban villages, which are numerous and flourishing, and 
 which are as much Chicago as Harlem is New York, we may 
 safely put down the population at 330,000. The closing of 
 the war has not checked the growth of the city. We are 
 assured by the moderate and most able "Chicago Tri- 
 bune," that in 1866 the number of houses of all kinds built 
 in Chicago was nine thousand ; for the construction of which 
 
56 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE . 
 
 sixty-two millions of bricks were made from the clay over 
 which the city stands. We learn, also, from a series of arti- 
 cles in the " Chicago Kepublican," that in the young cities 
 of the Northwest, which must ever flourish or decline with 
 Chicago, there is the same astonishing activity in the build- 
 ing of houses. 
 
 The city is no longer a quagmire. For many years after 
 Chicago began to be a flourishing town, its business men 
 aimed to make a rapid fortune, and retire to the banks of the 
 Hudson, or to the pleasant places of New England, and enjoy 
 it. Who could enjoy life on a wet prairie, made passable 
 by pine boards, through the knot-holes and crevices of which 
 water could be seen, and where a carriage would sink three 
 or four feet within two miles of the court-house ? But about 
 twenty years ago, when the effect of the first railroad revealed 
 the future of Chicago, the leading men said to one another : 
 w This city is to be the abode of a million or more of the 
 American people. Meanwhile, it is our home. Let us make 
 it fit to live in. Let us make it pleasant for our children." 
 Seldom have men taken hold of a task more repulsive or 
 more difficult, and seldom has human labor produced such 
 striking results in so short a time. The mud and water for 
 a long period were the despair of the people, since water 
 will only run down hill, and part of the town was below the 
 level of the lake. Planking was a poor expedient, though 
 unavoidable for a time. They tried a system of open 
 ditches for a while, which in wet seasons only aggravated 
 the difficulty. Many hollow places were filled up, but the 
 whole prairie was in fault. It became clear, at length, that 
 nothing would- suffice, short of raising the whole town ; and, 
 accordingly, a higher grade was established, to which all 
 new buildings were required to conform. It soon appeared 
 that this- grade was not high enough, and. one still higher was 
 
WONDERFUL GROWTH OF CHICAGO. 57 
 
 ordained. Even this proved inadequate; and. the present 
 grade was adopted, which lifts Chicago about twelve feet 
 above the level of the prairie, and renders it perfectly drain- 
 able, and gives dry cellarage. It is as common now in 
 Chicago to store such merchandise as dry goods, books, and 
 tea in basements, as it is in sandy New York ; and in nearly 
 all the newer residences, the dining-room and kitchen are in 
 the basement. During the ten years while Chicago was 
 going up out of the mud of the prairie to its present eleva- 
 tion, it was the best place in the world in which to develop 
 the muscles of the lower half of the body. All the newest 
 houses were built, of course, upon the new grade, and some 
 spirited owners raised old buildings to the proper level ; but 
 many houses were upon the grades previously established, 
 and a large number were down upon the original prairie. 
 The consequence was, that the plank sidewalk became a 
 series of stairs. For half a block you would walk upon an 
 elevated path, looking down upon the vehicles of the street 
 many feet below ; then, you would descend a flight of stairs 
 to, perhaps, the lowest level of all, along which you would 
 proceed only a few steps, when another flight of stairs 
 assisted you to one of the other grades. Such, however, 
 were the energy and public spirit of the people, that these 
 inequalities, although their removal involved immense expen- 
 diture, have nearly all disappeared. The huge Tremont 
 House, a solid hotel as large as the Astor, was raised bodily 
 from its foundation and left at the proper height ; and whole 
 blocks of brick stores went up about the same time to the 
 same elevation. To this day, however, there are places in 
 the less important streets, where the stranger can see at one 
 view all the past grades of the town. The sidewalk will be 
 upon the grade now established ; the main street upon the 
 one that preceded the present and final level ; the houses, 
 
58 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 upon the grade established when it was first determined to 
 raise the town ; while in the vacant lots near by portions of 
 the undisturbed prairie may be discovered. The principal 
 streets now paved with stone, or else with that ne plus ultra 
 of comfort for horse and rider, for passer-by and ladies liv- 
 ing near, the Nicolson pavement. 
 
 The people of Chicago have had a long and severe strug- 
 gle with their river, and they have not yet made a complete 
 conquest of it. The river and its two forks, as we have 
 before remarked, so divide the town, that you cannot go far 
 in any direction without crossing one of them. In old times, 
 the Indians carried people over in their canoes, and, for 
 some time after the Indians had been wagoned off beyond 
 the Mississippi, a chance canoe was still the usual means of 
 crossing. Ferries of canoes were then established, and, in 
 course of time, the canoes expanded into commodious row- 
 boats. Next, floating bridges were tried, much to the dis- 
 content of the mariners, who found it difficult to rein in their 
 swift vessels in time. One day, when a gale was blowing 
 inward, a vessel came rushing into the river, and, before the 
 bridge could be floated round, ran into it, cut it in halves, 
 and kept on her way up the stream. The sailors much 
 approved this manoeuvre, and it had also the effect of indu- 
 cing landsmen to "reconsider floating bridges. Drawbridges 
 then came in, seventeen of which now span the river and its 
 branches. Better drawbridges than these can nowhere be 
 found ; but the inconvenience to which they subject the busy 
 " Chicagonese " must be seen to be understood. Unfavor- 
 able winds sometimes detain vessels in the lake, until three 
 hundred of them are waiting to enter. The wind changes ; 
 the whole fleet comes streaming in 5 in twelve hours, three 
 hundred vessels are tugged through the drawbridges, which 
 is an average of more than two a minute. At all the bridges, 
 
WONDERFUL GROWTH OF CHICAGO. 59 
 
 and on both sides of them, crowds of impatient people, and 
 long lines of vehicles extending back farther than the eye 
 can reach, are waiting. Now and then the bridges can be 
 closed for a short time, and then tremendous is the rush to 
 cross. Often, before all the waiters have succeeded in get- 
 ting over, the bell rings, the bridge is cleared, and the draw 
 swings open to- admit another procession of vessels, each 
 towed by a puffing and snorting little propeller. These are 
 exceptional days, and there are other exceptional days in 
 which the bridges are seldom opened. But we were 
 informed, that a business man who has any important ap- 
 pointment in a distant part of the town, allows an hour for 
 possible detention at the bridges. Omnibuses leaving the 
 hotels for a depot a quarter of a mile distant, but on the 
 other side of the river, start an hour before the departure of 
 the train. 
 
 All this inconvenience will soon be a 'thing of the past- 
 Before these lines are read the first two tunnels under the 
 river will have been opened. Others will be at once begun. 
 
 That river, which is not a river, and because it is not a 
 river, is now giving Chicago another opportunity to exert 
 its unconquerable energy and resolution. Into this forked 
 inlet all the drainage of the town is poured, and there is no 
 current to carry it away into the lake. Despite incessant 
 dredging, these streams of impurity fill the channel, and 
 convert the water into a liquid resembling in color and con- 
 sistency a rich pea soup, such as the benevolent Farmer 
 ladles out so plentifully to the poor women of New York. 
 This evil, great already, must increase as rapidly as the 
 town increases, and might in time render the place uninhab- 
 itable. Chicago is now expending two or three millions of 
 dollars in changing that pool of abominations into a pure 
 and running stream. The canal, before spoken of, which 
 
60 TEITJMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 connects Lake Michigan with the Illinois River, begins at 
 the end of one of the branches of the Chicago River, the 
 water of which is now pumped up into the canal by steam. 
 This canal Chicago is deepening, so that the water of the 
 river will flow into it, and run down through all its length 
 to the Illinois, and so carry away the impurities of the town 
 to the Mississippi. Thus, by one operation, the pumping is 
 obviated, the canal is improved, the river is purified, and 
 the city is rendered more salubrious. The Chicago River 
 will at length become a river; only, it will run backwards. 
 
 With regard to that two-mile tunnel under the blue lake, 
 by whi^h its purest water, all uncontaminated by the town, 
 flows, by ten thousand rills, into every room and closet of 
 the place, it is not Chicago's fault if all the world does not 
 understand it. Indeed, we are expressly informed by a 
 guide-book, that "when the work was conceived, the whole 
 civilized world was awed by the magnitude of the project." 
 In what state of mind, then, will the whole world find itself, 
 when it learns that a work of such magnitude was executed 
 in just three years, at a cost of less than a million dollars? 
 The work is really something to be proud of, not for its 
 magnitude, but for the simplicity, originality, and boldness 
 of the idea. 
 
 Until within the last ten* years, Chicago was little more 
 than what we have previously named it, the great North- 
 western Exchange. It was a buyer and a seller on a great 
 scale ; but it made scarcely anything, depending upon the 
 Eastern States for supplies of manufactured merchandise. 
 Upon this fact was founded the ridiculous expectation, enter- 
 tained at the beginning of the late war by the enemies of the 
 Republic, of seeing the Western States secede from the 
 Union. The Western man, however, has the eminent good 
 fortune of not being a fooL Every business man in Chicago 
 
WONDERFUL GROWTH OF CHICAGO. 61 
 
 was intelligent enough to know that this dependence upon 
 the East was a necessity of the case and time. Newly set- 
 tled countries cannot manufacture their own. pins, watches, 
 and pianos, nor even their own boots, overcoats, and sauce- 
 pans, and they are glad enough to give other communities 
 some of their surplus produce in exchange for those articles. 
 But, happily, there is FREE TRADE between the Eastern and 
 Western States. The only and sufficient protective tariff 
 imposed upon that trade is the cost of transportation. Con- 
 sequently, we find that just as fast as it is best for both 
 sections that the West should cease to depend upon the East, 
 just so fast, and no faster, Chicago gets into manufacturing. 
 In all the history of business, there cannot be found a more 
 exquisite illustration of the harmonious and safe working of 
 untrammelled trade. At first, Chicago began to make, on a 
 small scale, the rough and heavy implements of husbandry. 
 That great factory, for example, which now produces an 
 excellent farm-wagon every seven minutes of every working- 
 day, was founded twenty-five years ago by its proprietor 
 investing all his capital in the construction of one wagon. 
 At the present time, almost every article of much bulk used 
 upon railroads, in farming, in warming houses, in building 
 houses, or in cooking, is made in Chicago. Five thousand 
 persons are now employed there in manufacturing coarse 
 boots and shoes. The prairie world is mowed and reaped 
 by machines made in Chicago, whose people are feeling their 
 way, too, into making woollen and cotton goods. Four or 
 five miles out on the prairie, where, until May, 1867, the 
 ground had never been broken since the Creation, there 
 stands now the village of Austin, which consists of three large 
 factory buildings, many nice cottages for workmen, and two 
 thousand young trees. This is the seat of the Chicago Clock 
 Factory, the superintendent of which was that honest and 
 
62 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 ingenious man, Chauncey Jerome, the inventor of most of 
 the wonderful machinery by which American clocks have 
 been made so excellent and so cheap. After his melancholy 
 failure in Connecticut (wholly through the fault of others, 
 for he had retired from active business), he found an honor- 
 able asylum here, and gave to this establishment the benefit 
 of his fifty-five years' experience in clock-making. The 
 machinery now in operation can produce one hundred thou- 
 sand clocks a year ; -and the proprietors had received orders 
 for eight months' product before they had finished one clock. 
 They expect to be able to sell their clocks at New Haven 
 quite as cheap as those made in New Haven ; since nearly 
 every metal and wood employed in the construction of a 
 clock can be bought cheaper in Chicago than in Connec- 
 ticut. A few miles farther back on the prairies, at Elgin, 
 there is the establishment of the National Watch Company, 
 which produces fifty watches a day, and competes for a 
 share of the ten or eleven millions of dollars which the peo- 
 ple of America pay every year for new watches. They are 
 beginning to make pianos at Chicago, besides selling a hun- 
 dred a week of those made in the East ; and the great music 
 house of Root and Cady are now engraving and printing all 
 the music they publish. Melodeons are made in Chicago on 
 a great scale. 
 
 It is in this gradual and safe manner, that trade adjusts 
 itself to circumstances when it is untrammelled by law ; and 
 such will be the working of free /trade in all the nations of 
 the earth, when, by and by, all the nations shall be in a 
 condition to adopt it. For some years to come so long, 
 indeed, as the national debt is our king we shall have to 
 approach free trade with slow and cautious steps ; but we 
 need not lose sight of the truth, that universal free trade is 
 the consummation at which the statesmanship of all lands 
 is to aim. 
 
WONDERFUL GROWTH OF CHICAGO. 63 
 
 Chicago is now intent upon four things, the establish- 
 ment of manufactures, the improvement of the city, the 
 completion of more railroads to the Pacific, the construction 
 of ship canals from the Mississippi to the Atlantic Ocean. 
 He who can lend a helping hand or head to any of these is 
 welcome, and especially he who can make any useful article 
 well. There, as everywhere, mere buyers and sellers are 
 in excess. Those "Commercial Colleges " which abound in 
 all the Western cities, useful as they are in many respects, 
 appear to be luring young men from, their proper vocation 
 of producers and makers, into the over-crowded business of 
 distributing; so that even in busy Chicago, where every 
 able man is doing two men's work, the merchants are pes- 
 tered with applications for clerkships, and the salaries of 
 clerks are generally low. These waiting youths are the 
 only idle class in Chicago. There are no men of leisure 
 there. No man thinks of stopping work because he has 
 money enough for his personal use. In all the Western 
 country,, as a rule, the richer a man is, the harder he toils, 
 and the more completely is he the servant of his fellow- 
 citizens. 
 
 Chicago, already a handsome town, is going to be one of 
 the most beautiful cities in the world. Twenty years ago, 
 when the present court-house, or City Hall, was built, the 
 corporation sent all the way to Lockport, in the State of 
 New York, for the stone, a dark granite. Long before 
 the people had done boasting of this grand and gloomy 
 edifice, the men who were digging the canal at Athens, a 
 point about fourteen miles from the city, struck a deposit of 
 soft, cream-colored stone, which proved to be an inexhausti- 
 ble quarry. For some time, this stone was supposed to be 
 useless, and it was regarded only iu the light of an obstruc- 
 tion to the excavation of the canal. It was discovered, a 
 
64 TRIUMPHS OP ENTERPRISE. 
 
 year or two after, that fragments of the stone which had 
 been exposed to the air for a few months had become 
 harder ; and by very slow degrees the truth dawned upon 
 a few interested minds, that Chicago had stumbled upon 
 a treasure. It was, nevertheless, with much difficulty that 
 builders were induced to give a trial to what is now recog- 
 nized as the very best and most elegant building material in 
 the country. Soft to the chisel, it is hard in the finished 
 wall ; and devoid of the glare of white marble, it possesses 
 that hue of the Parthenon which, Dr. Wordsworth says, 
 looks as though it had been " quarried out of the golden 
 light of an Athenian sunset." The general use in Chicago 
 of this light-colored stone, and of the light-yellow brick of 
 the prairie clay, gives to the principal streets a cheerful, 
 airy, elegant aspect, which is enhanced by the promptitude 
 with which all the new and pleasing effects in street archi- 
 tecture are introduced. The Western man, in all that he 
 does, and in much that he thinks, is the creature of all the 
 earth who is least trammelled by custom and tradition. His 
 ruling aim, when he sets about anything, is to do it better 
 than the same thing has ever been done before since the cre- 
 ation of man. We do not hesitate to say, that the best 
 houses in the leading avenues of Chicago are far more pleas- 
 ing to the eye than those of the Fifth Avenue in New York, 
 and that the general effect of the best streets is finer. 
 
 Of course, Chicago is still a forming city. It stretches 
 along the lake about eight miles, but does not reach back 
 into the prairie more than two. In the heart of the town 
 the stranger beholds blocks of stores, solid, lofty, and in 
 the most recent taste, hotels of great magnitude, and public 
 buildings that would be creditable to any city . The streets 
 are as crowded with vehicles and people as any in New 
 York, and there is nothing exhibited in the windows of New 
 
WONDERFUL, GROWTH OF CHICAGO. 65 
 
 York which .may not be seen in those of Chicago. As the 
 visitor passes along, he sees at every moment some new evi- 
 dence that he has arrived at a rich metropolis. Now it is a 
 gorgeous and enormous carpet-house that arrests his atten- 
 tion ; now a huge dry-goods store, or vast depot of gro- 
 ceries. The next moment he finds himself peering into a 
 restaurant, as splendid as a steamboat; or into a dining- 
 room window, where, in addition to other delicacies of ^the 
 season, there is a spacious cake of ice, covered with naked 
 frogs, reposing picturesquely in parsley. 'Farther on, he 
 pauses before a jeweller's, brilliant with gold, silver, dia- 
 monds, and pictures, where a single item of the business was 
 the sale of three thousand two hundred watches, of which 
 one thousand were American. The number and extent of 
 the book-stores is another striking feature ; and it is impos- 
 sible to go far without being strongly reminded that pianos 
 and cabinet-organs are for sale in the city. 
 
 Along the lake, south of the river, for two or three 
 miles, extend the beautiful avenues which change insensibly 
 into those streets of cottages and gardens which have given 
 to Chicago the name of the "Garden City." This is a pleas- 
 ant, umbrageous quarter, where glimpses are caught of the 
 blue lake that stretches away to the east for sixty miles. 
 On this shore is the monument to Douglas, and there is a 
 shady street near by that will last longer than the monu- 
 ment, called Douglas Place. In all Chicago there is not 
 one tenement house. Thrifty workmen own the houses they 
 live in, and the rest can still hire a whole house ; conse- 
 quently seven tenths of Chicago consist of small wooden 
 houses, in streets with wooden sidewalks and roadways of 
 prairie black. 
 
 It is always interesting to a stranger to notice' the names 
 of the streets of a town which he visits for the first time. 
 
66 TKIUMPHS OF ENTERPKISE. 
 
 Chicago boasts a Goethe Street and a Schiller Street. There 
 is also a Greeley, a Bremer, a Poe, a Kane, a Kossuth, a 
 Bross, a Went worth, and a Long John Street. Local his- 
 tory is commemorated in Calumet, Astor, Fur, Kiusie, 
 Blackhawk, and Wahpanseh; and general history, in 
 Blucher, Bonaparte, Buena Vista, Calhoun, Burnside, Cass, 
 De Kalb, Carroll, Fabius, Macedonia, Garibaldi, Madison, 
 Washington, Monroe, Lafayette, Franklin, Butler, Grant, 
 Kansas, Lincoln, Mayflower, Napoleon, Eandolph, Sigel, 
 and Thomas. New York is called to mind in Broadway, 
 the Bowery, and the Bloomingdale Road ; and Philadelphia, 
 in Chestnut Street. There is likewise a Rosebud Street, a 
 Selah Street, a Queer Place, and a Grub Street. 
 
 When next we chronicle the progress of Chicago, we 
 shall have to describe a grand Boulevard, furnishing a 
 drive of fifteen miles round the city, shaded with trees, and 
 lined with villas and gardens. A great park is also in con- 
 templation, in .which Chicago hopes to behold the Strange 
 spectacle of hill and dale. It is not unlikely that the park 
 will enclose a range of mountains, the loftiest peaks of 
 which will pierce the air half a hundred feet ; and up those 
 giddy heights Chicago's boys will climb on Saturday after- 
 noons, inhale the breath of liberty on the mountain tops, 
 and learn why Switzerland is free. 
 
 Would the stranger see the MEN whose public spirit and 
 energy have created Chicago, and are guiding its destinies? 
 Then he must go, about noon, to the beautiful edifice in the 
 centre of the city, wherein the Board of Trade assembles. 
 This is the Exchange of Chicago. Here, in a spacious and 
 lofty apartment, decorated with fine fresco paintings by resi- 
 dent Italian artists, are daily gathered from a thousand to 
 two thousand of the men who control the collection and dis- 
 tribution of those grain mountains, those miles of timber 
 
WONDERFUL GROWTH OF CHICAGO*. 67 
 
 stacks, and all that mass of produce of which we have spoken. 
 Here are the buyers, the sellers, the insurers, and the for- 
 warders, and loud is the roar of their talk. Groups of men 
 cover the whole extent of the floor. A few minutes suffice 
 to buy, insure, and despatch a ship-load of wheat ; a few 
 minutes suffice to convert a sanguine speculator into the 
 lamest of ducks, or send him away rejoicing in the posses- 
 sion of new means of speculation. Suddenly, loud knocks 
 are heard in a gallery above, which commands a view of the 
 whole scene. The 'roar is instantly hushed, and all eyes and 
 all ears are directed toward a gentleman in the gallery, the 
 Secretary of the Board, who proceeds, in a sonorous voice, 
 to read the last telegram of prices in New York and London. 
 The instant he has finished, conversation sets in with renewed 
 vigor, and the whole hall is filled with noise. At a semi- 
 circle of mahogany desks at one end of the room sit the gen- 
 tlemen representing the press, who compile daily reports of 
 the business of the city, which for completeness and extent 
 are unequalled. In about an hour and a half the business 
 of the day is done, and the room is empty, with half an inch 
 of grain on the floor, ready bruised for the janitor's pig and 
 chickens. 
 
 No body of men in this land were more heartily loyal 
 to their country during the war than the Chicago Board 
 of Trade. Adjoining the great exchange-room is a smaller 
 apartment, handsomely furnished in black walnut, for the 
 meetings of the Directors of the Board ; and in this room 
 are preserved the flags of the several regiments raised or 
 equipped under the auspices and by the assistance of the 
 Board. It so chanced, that while we were in the great room, 
 Mr. Walter, of the London "Times," passed through it, un- 
 observed, escorted by Governor Bross, of the "Chicago 
 Tribune," who usually does the honors of the city and no 
 
68 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 one could do them more agreeably or more intelligently to 
 visitors of distinction. When it transpired who it was that 
 had accompanied Governor Bross, a difficult moral problem 
 was discussed by some of those exceedingly uncompromising 
 loyalists. The question was, Suppose Mr. Walter had been 
 recognized, which ought to have been the controlling princi- 
 ple in the minds of those present, courtesy to a stranger, 
 or disapproval of a public enemy? In other words, would 
 it have been right and becoming in the Board of Trade to 
 have hissed Mr. Walter a little? From the tone of the 
 remarks upon this abstruse question of morals, we fear that, 
 if Mr. Walter had been generally recognized, he would not 
 have been left in doubt as to the feelings of the Board toward 
 a man who, the Board thought, gave us two years more of 
 war than we should have had if he had not led England 
 against us. Those radical and straightforward men of wheat 
 and wool do not, perhaps, sufficiently consider that the great 
 journals of the world are the world's paid servants, who 
 seem to lead, but are in reality propelled. 
 
 The great question respecting Chicago, and all othei 
 places under heaven, is, What is the quality of the human 
 life lived in it ? It is well to have an abundance of beef, 
 pork, grain, wool, and pine boards, so long as these are used 
 as means to an end ; and that end is the production and 
 nurture of happy, intelligent, virtuous, and robust human 
 beings. This alone is success ; all short of this is failure. 
 Cheerful, healthy human life, that is the wealth of the 
 world ; and the extreme of destitution is to have all the rest 
 and not that. The stranger, therefore, looks about in this 
 busy, thriving city, and endeavors to ascertain, above all 
 else, how it fares there with human nature. In Chicago, as 
 everywhere, human nature is weak and ignorant, temptable 
 and tempted ; and in considering the influences to which it 
 
WONDERFUL GROWTH OF CHICAGO. 69 
 
 / 
 
 is there subjected, we must only ask whether those influ- 
 ences are more or less favorable than elsewhere. 
 
 The climate upon the whole is good. The winters, short, 
 sharp, and decisive, are healthful, of course. The summer 
 heats are mitigated by the prairie breezes and the fresh, cool 
 winds from the lake. Occasionally a southern wind pre- 
 vails, and gives Chicago some stifling days. To those who 
 can afford it, the northern lakes offer an easy and complete 
 escape from the hot weather, as well as a trip of almost un- 
 equalled variety and charm. With regard to food, Chicago 
 has the pick of the best ; nothing remains but to learn how 
 to cook it. The West has much to acquire in this great art, 
 and even many of the large hotels are wanting in their mis- 
 sion of setting an example of cookery. The raw material 
 abounds. It is only necessary not to spoil it with grease, 
 saleratus, and the lazy, odious frying-pan. We are happy 
 tp state that excellent dinners are daily enjoyed in Chicago, 
 though a prodigious number of bad ones are bolted. 
 
 Some parts of the mind are well cultivated there. Chi- 
 cago is itself a college to all its inhabitants. When we see 
 a boy reading in Roman history an account of the Appian 
 Way, we all say that he is improving his mind. The Nicol- 
 son pavement has ten times more thought in it than the 
 Appian Way ; why is not an urchin improving his mind who 
 stands, with his hands in his pockets, looking on while the 
 workmen arrange the little blocks, and pour in the odorous 
 tar? Then those mighty schemes for ship canals, and new, 
 fkr-reaching railroads, and the improved methods, processes, 
 models, all these are the daily theme of conversation and 
 keen discussion, with maps spread out and authorities at 
 hand. A great and splendid city is rising from the prairie, 
 in the view of all the people, who watch, criticise, compare, 
 suggest. It is observed that the too respectable Bostonian, 
 
70 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 the staid Philadelphia!!, the self-indulgent and thoughtless 
 New Yorker, acquire, after living a while in Chicago, a vivacity 
 of mind, an interest in things around them, a public spirit, 
 which they did not possess at home. It must be very diffi- 
 cult for a boy to grow up a fool in a Western city, unless, 
 indeed, he takes to vice, which, there and everywhere, is 
 deadly to the understanding. 
 
 It is with pleasure that we report to the people of the 
 United States, that their fellow-citizens of Chicago are look- 
 ing well to the interests of those who are to carry on their 
 work when they are gone. The public schools of the city 
 are among the very best in the United States. The build- 
 ings are large, handsome, and convenient ; much care is taken 
 with regard to the ventilation of the rooms and the exercise 
 of the pupils ; the salaries of the teachers range from four 
 hundred to twenty-four hundred dollars a year ; the gentle- 
 men of the Board of Education are among the most respec- 
 table and capable of the citizens. In the High School, an 
 institution of which any city in Christendom might be justly 
 proud, colored lads and girls may be seen in most of the 
 classes, mingled with the other pupils ; and in the evening 
 schools of the city, colored men and women are received on 
 precisely the same footing as white. Colored children also 
 attend the common schools, and no one objects, or sees any- 
 thing extraordinary in the fact. No little child is allowed to 
 pass more than half an hour without exercise. In the higher 
 classes, the physical exercises occur about once an hour ; the 
 windows are thrown open, the pupils rise, and all the class 
 imitate the motions of the teacher for five minutes. The 
 boys in the High School have a lesson daily in out-door gym- 
 nastics, skilfully taught by a gentleman who left one of his 
 legs before Vicksburg. The girls have a variety of curious 
 exercises, which combine play and work in an agreeable 
 
WONDERFUL GROWTH OF CHICAGO. 71 
 
 manner. Connected with the High School, there is a small 
 school of young children, for the purpose of giving young 
 ladies who intend to become teachers an opportunity of prac- 
 tice, under the direction of a teacher already experienced. 
 If in one room we regretted to see boys and girls expending 
 their force in acquiring a smattering of Latin, we were con- 
 soled in another by discovering that those who are wise 
 enough to prefer it can learn German or French. 
 
 The peril of America is the over-schooling of her chil- 
 dren. In Chicago, as everywhere else, the grand fault of 
 the public schools is, that too much is attempted in them. 
 The Board of Education is ambitious ; the superintendent is 
 ambitious ; the teachers, the parents, the children are ambi- 
 tious ; and there is nowhere in the system any one who 
 stands between these co-operating ambitions and the delicate 
 organization of the children. Five hours' school a day, with 
 two hours' intermission, and no lessons learned at home, 
 these are our colors, and we nail them to the mast. Even 
 on Sundays, the poor children have no rest from eternal 
 school and the stimulating influence of older minds. 
 
 Three medical colleges, two seminaries, a university, an 
 academy of sciences, all in their infancy, but full of young 
 vigor, exist in Chicago. It is startling to find on the 
 western shore of Lake Michigan, where, thirty-five years 
 ago, seven thousand Indians howled, an astronomical observa- 
 tory of the most improved model, provided with a telescope, 
 which is considered the finest of its kind in the world, and a 
 resident professor capable of using it. Chicago will have a 
 museum before New York has one. Eleven years ago, a few 
 gentlemen interested in science, particularly in natural his- 
 tory and geology, formed a society for the collection of 
 specimens, and the acquisition of knowledge. Three years 
 since, it occurred to one or two of the more zealous members 
 
 5 
 
72 TJilUMPHS OP ENTERPRISE. 
 
 that the time had come for the society to take a step forward. 
 The merchants of Chicago have a finely developed talent for 
 subscribing money, and before many days had gone by, one 
 hundred and twenty men had subscribed five hundred dollars 
 each, for the purpose of establishing, on a proper basis, the 
 Chicago Academy of Sciences. A lot had been purchased ; 
 a building was begun ; and Chicago will have a museum 
 before many years have passed. Already the society pos- 
 sesses many objects of particular interest, among others, a 
 specimen of the prairie squirrels thai cannot climb, which 
 ought to be put in the same case with the eyeless fish of the 
 Mammoth Cave. 
 
 The daily mental food of the business men in Western 
 cities is the daily newspaper ; and many of them read noth- 
 ing else. The daily press of Chicago is conducted with the 
 vigor, enterprise, and liberality of expenditure which we 
 should expect to see in a city pervaded with the spirit of 
 advertising. Readers have not forgotten General Butler's 
 famous apple-speech in front of the City Hall in New York, 
 the report of which filled nearly two columns of the New 
 York papers. It was telegraphed, with all the remarks and 
 doings of the crowd, to the " Chicago Republican." The 
 ' Chicago Tribune " has excellent " own correspondents " in 
 New York, London, Paris, and Washington, besides occa- 
 sional contributors in twenty other cities. On almost any 
 day in the year, this excellent newspaper publishes tele- 
 graphic news from as many as twenty-five points, and on 
 extraordinary occasions, the number of dispatches has risen 
 to seventy-five . In the office of the " Republican " is kept a 1 ist 
 of seven hundred and sixty names of persons residing in dif- 
 ferent towns, to^vhom the editor can send for detailed infor- 
 mation when anything of interest has occurred within their 
 reach. If the Mammoth Cave should cave in, or Niagara 
 
WONDERFUL GROWTH OF CHICAGO. 73 
 
 break down, there would be some one on the spot, an hour 
 after, collecting details of the catastrophe for the w Chicago 
 Republican " on the next morning. The " Evening Journal," 
 too, though it cannot compete with morning papers in point 
 of news, presents a singularly well-digested and tastefully 
 selected variety of interesting reading. 
 
 The press of Chicago has opinions of its own. The " Tri- 
 bune," unlike its great New York namesake, favors free trade. 
 The editors are prepared to recommend that the policy of 
 protection should be carried no farther, and that future 
 changes made in the tariff should lessen restrictions upon 
 trade, not increase them , The " Chicago Times " is the leading 
 Democratic paper of the Northwest, but it advocates " impar- 
 tial suffrage," as well as universal amnesty. It was the first 
 paper of its party that had the ability to see that the one 
 chance of the Democratic party's regaining power was to give 
 the suffrage to the great mass of the negroes immediately. 
 Ignorance is ignorance. Ignorance, always gravitating the 
 wrong way, can be cajoled and bought. It is the dema- 
 gogue's natural prey ; honest men cannot get near enough to 
 it for a shot. What a reproach to Tammany, that a politi- 
 cian in far-off Chicago should have been the first to see the 
 mode of New-Yorkizing the politics of the South I 
 
 The community that possesses a large surplus of beef, 
 pork, grain, wool, and timber, can have whatever other 
 purchasable commodity it desires. To Chicago, accordingly, 
 painters come and paint pictures for its parlors, or send them 
 from afar. There is a surprising taste there for every kind 
 of artistic decoration. It is more common to see good 
 engravings and tolerable paintings in the residences of Chi- 
 cago than in those of New York. In a window of one of 
 the stores, we noticed a very pretty statue of the boy Wash- 
 ington, executed by a resident sculptor. And we agree 
 
74 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 with the possessor of the Crosby Opera House, that he drew 
 in the lottery the most elegant interior in the country. We 
 must claim the privilege of assei-ting, that, in the construc- 
 tion of buildings designed for the assembling together of 
 many people, Chicago surpasses the rest of the world. There 
 are, positively, no churches anywhere else in which elegance 
 and convenience are so perfectly combined as in the newer 
 churches of Chicago. That beautiful opera house wants 
 nothing but an opera. We heard within it, however, one of 
 the concerts of the Philharmonic Society, at which the violin 
 playing of Camilla Urso was listened to with rapture, while 
 an abstruse symphony, performed by a German orchestra, 
 was borne with the patient faith which we Northern barba- 
 rians generally exhibit on such occasions. We firmly believe 
 the music is sublime; we are ashamed that we cannot enjoy 
 it; and now and then, when the orchestra plays a little 
 louder than usual, we wake from a revery, and almost per^ 
 snade ourselves that we are receiving pleasure. As in New 
 York, so in Chicago. Only, the politer Chicago gentlemen 
 do not talk, nor the ladies giggle. 
 
 But Chicago does more than listen patiently to foreign 
 artists. It has music of its own. Those war-songs, which 
 cheered ten thousand camp-fires, and solaced many a weary 
 march, "Tramp, tramp, tramp, the Boys are Marching/' 
 "The Battle Cry of Freedom, ""Kingdom's Coming, " Wake 
 Niooclemus," and twenty others, familiar to the army and 
 country, were composed, printed and published in Chicago. 
 That worthy gentleman, Mr. George F. Eoot, of the firm of 
 Root and Cady, composed several of the best of them. Mr. 
 H. C. Work, connected with the same house, is the author 
 of others, some of which had a wonderful run. Now, reader, 
 mark how time brings it revenges I Many years ago, Alonzo 
 Work, father of this composer, was walking along a road in 
 
WONDERFUL, GROWTH OF CHICAGO. 75 
 
 Missouri, when he was overtaken by a party of fugitive 
 slaves, who asked the way to a free State. He directed them 
 on their course, and gave them some slight aid in money. 
 For doing .this he was condemned to twenty years' imprison- 
 ment at hard labor, and served several years of the term 
 before he was pardoned. In 1861, his son, a poor invalid 
 journeyman printer, climbed up to Mr. Root's study, and laid 
 upon his desk the music and words of a war song. Aston- 
 ished that so forlorn an apparition should have ever had a 
 thought of music in his soul, Mr. Root was still more aston- 
 ished to discover that he had a genius for producing such 
 music as the people love. Before he left the room he had 
 engaged to compose for Messrs. Root and Cady for five 
 years. His songs have been sung by millions of men, and 
 he now has a pleasant cottage, paid for, and an income from 
 copyrights of three thousand dollars a year. 
 
 Such books, too, as the people of Chicago and the North- 
 west are buying ! Already several large book-houses are 
 competing to supply the demand of this great market. The 
 most attractive as well as the most promising indication of 
 the healthful progress of Chicago is given in the quantities 
 and character of the books offered for sale. 
 
 The book-houses, the shelves of which are crowded with 
 the best literature, are not exotic. They come in obedience 
 to the law of demand and supply. All our leading publish- 
 ing houses have their lists of publications completely repre- 
 sented, and Chicago itself is rapidly becoming second only 
 to New York as a distribution point. The demand for for- 
 eign books, for costly books, for valuable books, is very 
 great. You see in these large establishments an assortment 
 almost as large and valuable as is to be found in any of our 
 Atlantic cities. Here have been sold over three thousand sets 
 of Appleton's Encyclopaedia, in sixteen volumes ; and into 
 
76 TKIUMPHS OF ENTERPKISE. 
 
 this market several hundred sets of the Encyclopaedia Bri- 
 tannica,*m twenty-two volumes, worth two hundred dollars 
 a set, have found their way We were surprised to find here 
 such works, for example, as Robertson's Holy Land, the 
 works of Sir Joshua Reynolds, of Hogarth, Gilray, Dore, 
 Jameson, Myrick, and many others, at prices varying from 
 one hundred to four hundred and fifty dollars each. We 
 vvere surprised, too, to read in a Chicago newspaper the 
 programme of a course of twenty-four lectures to be deliv- 
 ered in the French language Allied to the book business 
 is the news business, which is not the least among the note- 
 worthy things of this city. The business itself is an out- 
 growth of the express business, which, by its ramifications 
 and punctuality, has, notwithstanding its extortionate charges, 
 been a great public servant. The express has opened in 
 almost every town, certainly in almost every respectable 
 village, a news stand ; and the influence of these cheap 
 establishments in the diffusion of intelligence will be the 
 duty of some future historian to estimate. 
 
 The truth is, that much of the best young brain, taste, 
 and civilization of the country has gone to the Northwest ; 
 and Chicago, besides supplying it with an annual fifty mil- 
 lions of dollars' worth of dry goods, and no end of boards, 
 to minister to its nobler needs, and distribute over the 
 country ten millions of dollars' worth of books At Chicago, 
 the other day, fifty graduates of Yale, all residents of the 
 city, were gathered about one table. 
 
 The traveller who stays over a Sunday in Chicago wit- 
 nesses as complete a suspension of labor as in Boston or 
 Philadelphia. A great majority of the eager and busy pop- 
 ulation on that day resigns itself to the influence of its 
 instructors ; and two hundred churches are well filled with 
 attentive people. The social life of the people centres in 
 
WONDERFUL GROWTH OF CHICAGO. 77 
 
 their churches. Those superb church edifices in "Wabash 
 Avenue are not merely for the assembling of a congregation 
 on Sunday ; they are rather religious club-houses, and some 
 of them are provided with a complete kitchen and restaurant 
 apparatus, and contain extensive suites of apartments, in 
 which, twice a month, the ladies give an entertainment to 
 the congregation The Sunday-school rooms are made in- 
 viting by pictures, elegant furniture, and, in some instances, 
 by fountains and natural flowers In no city of the United 
 States are the local benevolent operations of the churches 
 carried on with such sustained vigor, and on such a thor- 
 ough, far-reaching system, as in Chicago There is one 
 mission Sunday-school there which gathers every Sunday 
 afternoon a thousand poor, neglected children into apart- 
 ments replete with all the best modern apparatus of instruc- 
 tion, and full of pleasing objects. At Chicago it is evident 
 that the people are rapidly learning and fulfilling the final 
 purpose of a Christian church , which is not the promulga- 
 tion of barren and dividing opinions, but the diffusion among 
 the whole community of the civilization hitherto enjoyed 
 only by a few favored families. 
 
 Nowhere in the world are there such striking proofs of 
 the vigor and power of Christianity as in this new prairie 
 town. Here, far inland, on the shores of this blue lake, 
 amid these grain mountains, these miles of timber, this 
 entanglement of railroads, this mighty host of new-comers, 
 even here it is still the voice from Palestine, coming across 
 so many centuries, that delivers the needed message : "Eest 
 not, Chicago, in planks, nor in grain, nor in railroads, nor 
 in infinite pork. These are but means to an end. Never 
 mind about cutting out St. Louis ; try only which shall do 
 most for the civilization of the prairie world." Chicago is 
 not inattentive to this message, and is learning to interpret 
 
78 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 it aright. Those beautiful temples, those excellent schools, 
 those local benevolences, that innocent social life, those 
 ceaseless battlings with vice, that instinct of decoration, that 
 Conscientiously conducted press, those libraries and book- 
 stores, all attest that Chicago does not mean to laboriously 
 champ the shells of the nut of life, and throw the kernel 
 away. It is our impression that human nature there is sub- 
 ject to influences as favorable to its health and progress as 
 in any city of the world, and that a family going to reside 
 in Chicago from one of our older cities will be likely to find 
 itself in a better place than that from which it came. 
 
DESTRUCTION 
 
 AND 
 
 KECONSTKUCTION OF CHICAGO. 
 
 SUCH was Chicago, the metropolis of the prairies, before 
 the great catastrophe of 1871. The city had continued to 
 prosper, and to expand. At the beginning of 1871, the 
 population of the place was reckoned at 334,270, and the 
 number of buildings at 50,000, valued at $620,000,000, and 
 covering an area of 30,000 acres. Nor had there ever been 
 a time when the spirit of the people had been more hopeful 
 and progressive than during that very year. New railroads 
 were projected. New manufactories were rising. More build- 
 ings were in course of erection than ever before. The Chi- 
 cago Tribune had remarked upon the general buoyancy of 
 affairs on that memorable morning of October 8th, a day that 
 will never be forgotten in the annals of the city. w New build- 
 ings," said The Tribune, "are looming up in every direction, 
 and the city's growth this year has been unparalleled." 
 
 But there was a menacing peril in the air. The autumn 
 of 1871, and, indeed, the whole summer, had been unusually 
 hot and dry. The reader, perhaps., has observed in the 
 northwestern country, that the air and sun have a peculiar 
 drying power, particularly at the end of the summer. I 
 have, myself, while sitting on a log in the woods in the 
 northwest, touched the surface of the log with the end of a 
 lighted cigar; and, passing the spot on the following day, 
 have discovered the log nearly consumed, and still burning, 
 from that momentary contact with fire. A large city where 
 most of the houses are of wood acquires at such a season 
 
SO TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 the character of tinder "or scorched paper, which needs littie 
 more than a spark and a favoring breeze to set the whole in 
 a blaze. Such was the condition of Chicago during the first 
 week of October, 1871.' The newspapers had even descan- 
 ted upon the danger. On the very morning of the great fire, 
 The Tribune held this language : " For days past, alarm 
 has followed alarm, but the comparatively trifling losses have 
 familiarized us to the pealing of the Court-house bell, and 
 we had forgotten that the absence of rain for three weeks 
 had left every thing in so dry and inflammable a condition, 
 that a spark might start a fire which would sweep from end 
 to end of the city." 
 
 At nine o'clock that evening, the spark fell. According 
 to the report of the time, the fire began in a stable, wherein 
 a woman was milking a cow. The cow kicked over a ker- 
 osene lamp, and, in a few minutes, the whole of a squalid 
 neighborhood was in flames. The story is too familiar to re- 
 quire repetition here. All that night the fire burned, and a 
 considerable part of the next day ; during which the city of 
 Chicago presented a spectacle of which I suppose no concep- 
 tion can be formed from written words. A thousand grotesque 
 and hideous incidents occurred ; and there was the strangest 
 conceivable blending of the sublime and the ridiculous. One 
 reporter speaks of an undertaker with a dray-load of coffins 
 hastening to a place of safety ; and, unable to carry all his 
 coffins, employed half a dozen boys; and, giving each of 
 them one to carry, took a large one himself, and headed the 
 procession. The coffins, carried upright, and advancing 
 along just above the heads of the crowd, while the carriers 
 were invisible, presented a startling scene. Another writer 
 says : " There was very little smoke ; it burned too rapidly , 
 or what there was must have been carried away on the wind 
 The whole was accompanied by a crackling noise as of aa 
 
DESTRUCTION AND RECONSTRUCTION OF CHICAGO. 81 
 
 enormous bundle of dry twigs burning, and by explosions 
 that followed each other in quick succession on all sides." 
 w The solid stone edifices," he remarks, " ignited suddenly 
 all over in a manner entirely new to me, just as I have seen 
 paper do that is held to the fire until it is scorched and breaks 
 out in a flame. The crowds who were watching them greeted 
 the combustion with terrible yells." 
 
 Mr. Horace White, the Editor of "The Chicago Tribune," 
 whose office and home were both destroyed, wrote a graphic 
 account of the spectacle : " Billows of fire were rolling 
 over the business palaces of the city arid swallowing up their 
 contents. Walls were falling so fast that the quaking of the 
 ground under our feet was scarcely noticed, so continuous 
 was the reverberation. Sober men and women were hurry- 
 ing through the streets from the burning quarter, some with 
 bundles of clothing *on their shoulders, others dragging 
 trunks along the sidewalks by means of strings and ropes 
 fastened to the handles, children trudging by their sides or 
 borne in their arms. Now and then a sick man or woman 
 would be observed, half concealed in a mattress doubled up 
 and borne by two men. Droves of horses were in the streets, 
 moving under some sort of guidance to a place of safety. 
 Vehicles of all descriptions were hurrying to and fro, some 
 laden with trunks and bundles, and others seeking similar 
 loads and immediately finding them, the drivers making more 
 money in one hour, than they were used to see in a week or 
 a month." 
 
 One of the most interesting narratives was that of the Rev- 
 erend Robert Collyer, the celebrated minister of Unity 
 Church, a beautiful edifice of stone, situated three miles from 
 where the fire began. For five or six years, Mr. Collyer had 
 labored zealously to build and pay for this magnificent tem- 
 ple, until it stood in its completed beauty, a monument to 
 
82 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 his energy and taste. This church, too, was destined to be 
 swept away. His family had gone to bed as usual, Sunday 
 evening, in ignorance of their danger, and slept peacefully 
 till half-past one in the morning, when Mrs. Collyer was 
 awakened by the bright glare in the sky, and the storm of 
 fire flakes sweeping over their quarter of the town. She 
 roused her husband. He relates what followed : 
 
 " Presently my little son ran in, and said, ' Papa, the fire has 
 crossed at State Street.' I ran down and found it was so. 
 By daylight the north side of the church was heaped up with 
 the poor belongings of many German families, while they 
 sheltered their children inside. Our own people came also 
 and piled many precious things in the lecture-room, and in 
 my study. Indeed, we hindered nobody ; all came in who 
 would, and brought what they had. The fire 4;hen was 
 sweeping up eastward, and a little more westward. By this 
 time we had begun to break down the fences, and hammer 
 away at the sidewalks with our hands and feet, for we had 
 no tools, except, I think, one hatchet and a shovel. A num- 
 ber of young men belonging to the church, and some others 
 I did not know, worked with all their might." 
 
 Long the pastor hoped to save his church. Yet he was 
 not without serious fears, and employed a number of men 
 and boys in carrying his library out of doors into the ad- 
 jacent park, himself assisting at the operation. He thus 
 continues the melancholy tale : "As I came back, out of the 
 park I saw a little puff of black smoke, intensely black, ris- 
 ing above the roof on the north side of the church, near the 
 tower. It rose up presently into a great cloud ; then I knew 
 we were beaten, shouted to the men to come out of the cel- 
 lar, told what women were left to get away with their children 
 as fast as they could, for the church would' presently be i* ^i 
 blaze, and either then, or a little sooner, I think, I went 
 
DESTRUCTION AND RECONSTRUCTION OF CHICAGO. 83 
 
 stairs into my pulpit, where I stood the night before and 
 talked to my people about poor, burnt Paris, as I saw it in 
 July, took one great, mighty look at it, as you look at a 
 dear friend you know you will never see again, then I took 
 the Bible, came down stairs, locked my study-door, puj; the 
 key in my pocket, and came away. I have the key still, 
 and when we get another Unity Church, I shall have a 
 lock made for that key, and the lock put on to my study- 
 door.' 1 
 
 Imagine such scenes as these in every part of the city, 
 during all that night and a portion of Monday morning. 
 When night fell on Monday, more than two thousand acres 
 of Chicago had been burned over. This is equivalent to more 
 than three square miles. The.number of buildings destroyed 
 was 17,450. More than 98,000 persons were rendered 
 homeless, and about 250 had lost their lives through the con- 
 flagration. Almost all the important public buildings were 
 gone : The Custom House, Post Office, City Hall, Chamber 
 of Commerce, Armory, Gas Works, most of the great Rail- 
 road Depots, the offices of nine daily papers, all the princi- 
 pal Hotels, the Opera House, the Theatres, public school edi- 
 fices, the Law Library, the Historical Library, a large 
 number of private collections of books, and all the National 
 Banks but one. The total amount of loss by the fire, in- 
 cluding all the items, has been estimated at three hundred 
 millions of dollars, or a little less than half the total value 
 of the city. 
 
 But if the catastrophe was great beyond all previous expe- 
 rience in the United States, the spirit in which it was met by 
 the people of Chicago was far more wonderful. Long 
 before the ruins were cool, a business man had stuck up a 
 shingle (and that shingle not his own) on the ruins of hia 
 store, exhibiting these words to the passers-by : 
 
84 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 "ALL GONE BUT WIFE, CHILDREN, AND ENERGY." 
 
 And that was the spirit of the whole people. The first 
 thing, of course, was to care for those deprived of shelter, 
 and cut off from all their usual sources of supply. Train- 
 loads of provisions came in, every hour. Meetings were 
 held, committees organized, depots established, and a vast 
 machinery of relief speedily set in motion. Even while the 
 fire was in full blaze, newspaper men were out seeking tem- 
 porary offices, and, on Wednesday morning, The Tribune 
 reappeared, with an account of the great calamity in twelve 
 columns, and a short editorial that cheered the people of 
 Chicago like the sound of a trumpet which announces to a 
 besieged city the approach of a relieving force : 
 
 CHEER UP. 
 
 w In the midst of a calamity without parallel in the world's 
 history, looking upon ashes of thirty years' accumulations, 
 the people of this once beautiful city have resolved that 
 CHICAGO SHALL RISE AGAIN!" 
 
 And so on, for a half a column, every paragraph equally 
 appropriate to the occasion. The other journals 'were not 
 backward in sounding the same cheery note. The very next 
 morning they had the satisfaction of announcing that a 
 larger percentage of the insurance would be paid than the 
 most sanguine had dared to anticipate, and that twelve of the 
 Banks had secured temporary quarters, and would at once 
 resume business. 
 
 But the crowning marvel of this event was the manner in 
 which Christendom came to the help of the stricken city. 
 As the news reached cities and towns, there was no thought 
 but instantly to organize relief. Milwaukee heard the news 
 
DESTRUCTION AND RECONSTRUCTION OF CHICAGO. 85 
 
 on Monday morning, and, before night closed, two cars 
 laden with cooked provisions had reached Chicago. From 
 Saint Louis and all the places within a day's journey, food 
 and supplies of every kind were despatched with the great- 
 est promptitude ; and, as soon as the first needs of the people 
 had been supplied, unprecedented subscriptions of money 
 were made. Saint Louis sent five hundred thousand dollars, 
 and Cincinnati, I believe, not less. In New York half a 
 million was raised in the first thirty hours, which was in- 
 creased in two weeks to more than two millions. A. T. 
 Stewart gave fifty thousand dollars, and Robert Bonner ten 
 thousand. Philadelphia contributed more than half a million, 
 and Boston about the same. Pittsburg and Louisville gave 
 a hundred and fifty thousand each. Detroit raised thirty-five 
 thousand at one meeting. Cleveland, besides a large gift in 
 money, sent twenty-three car-loads of supplies within twenty- 
 four hours after hearing of the disaster. Brooklyn contrib- 
 uted in the first forty-eight hours one hundred and twelve 
 thousand ; Buffalo, a hundred thousand, and, indeed, almost all 
 the cities, towns, and villages of the country, in their propor- 
 tion. From the other side of the Atlantic, munificent do- 
 nations were forwarded. London, Liverpool, Paris, Edin- 
 burgh, Glasgow, and almost every place and person of note 
 in Europe joined in the movement. Mr. Thomas Hughes 
 started a scheme for replacing the Public Library of Chicago, 
 and invited each author to contribute a copy of his works. 
 And all this help was of more use than in supplying the phy- 
 sical necessities of the people. It cheered and exalted their 
 minds. It gave them moral strength. It nerved them for 
 the great task which the calamity had imposed upon them. 
 Affecting incidents occurred on the following Sunday, 
 when the people, burned out of their churches, gathered in 
 the midst of the ruins, and listened to such words of good 
 
86 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 cheer as the clergymen could extemporize. Robert Colly er's 
 little speech was extremely touching. After reviewing the 
 situation, he concluded with these eloquent words : 
 
 "The relation between us as pastor and people, dear 
 friends, has been of the deepest and truest love ever known. 
 I have always felt that it was so, and you have felt it too. 
 Now we have received a shock in this relation such as we 
 never expected, such as we never could have expected. For 
 two or three days after it came I was stunned, and did not 
 know what to do. I could tell nothing about the future. I 
 think I must have been personally injured by my long fight 
 with the fire. It was a day or two before I began to look 
 about and think with myself what I could say to these, my 
 children. At last it came to me in one word and this is 
 what I have to say about it. If you will stay by me, I will stay 
 with you ; if you will work with me, I will work with you, 
 and we will make the best fight we can against this adverse 
 situation. I am not going to be a burden to you. You can- 
 not find a cheaper man anywhere than I will be. I preached 
 seven years for seventy-five cents a year. I won't take any 
 more than that if you can't spare any more. I don't mean to 
 task Unity Church, but I mean to stick by you if you will 
 stick by me. Never fear for me, I can get along well enough. 
 People will give me more for a lecture than they will give 
 some folks, and if the worst comes to the worst, 1 can make 
 as good horseshoes and nails as any man in Chicago." 
 
 The manner in which the relief fund was adminstered, 
 reflects infinite credit upon the people of Chicago. As soon 
 as the first necessities were supplied, the great object was to 
 provide shelter for all those thousands of homeless families. 
 In two months from the extinguishment of the fire, five thou- 
 sand seven hundred small, well-planned, weather-proof 
 shanties had been built and furnished, at a cost of one hun- 
 
DESTRUCTION AND RECONSTRUCTION OF CHICAGO. 87 
 
 dred and twenty-five dollars each ; and provided with a cook- 
 ing stove, with its utensils, a bedstead and bedding, three 
 chairs, and one table. A family of five persons were fed and 
 warmed during the winter, at a cost of about four dollars a 
 week, and the fund was so carefully managed, that it lasted 
 in perfect sufficiency during the whole of a remarkably cold, 
 snowy winter. The good sense and ingenuity displayed in 
 this work cannot be too highly commended. 
 
 Three months after the fire, when I visited the city on a 
 snowy, cold day in January, the site presented a scene of 
 desolation beyond even what I had anticipated. Miles and 
 miles and miles of ruins I Interminable rows of wooden 
 shanties ! Here and there a blackened wall, a chimney, a 
 steeple ; and, in several places, smoke was still ascending 
 from the cellars wherein masses of coal had been stored. 
 The extent of the ruin was most impressive. I tired myself 
 all out in walking against the keen prairie wind, and still I 
 had not come within sight of the end of the desolation ; and 
 I crept back to the hotel, chilled, exhausted, and depressed. 
 
 A year passed. On another winter's day I reached the 
 same hotel, and went forth in the morning for a walk about 
 the city. What a change ! Not many buildings, indeed, 
 seemed to be quite finished, although many were in a state of 
 forwardness ; but, as far as the eye could reach, and as far 
 as the feet could tread, I saw one thing men building 
 houses. It looked as though Chicago had gone universally 
 into the building business, and was just finishing off a con- 
 tract for a first-rate metropolis. Before the second anniver- 
 sary of the fire, a stranger will be obliged to seek traces of 
 it. A new Chicago, superior in all respects to the old, wiJl 
 stand upon the shore of Lake Michigan. 
 
 When the work of reconstruction shall have been comple- 
 ted, a task a thousand times more difficult will devolve upon 
 
88 TRIUMPHS OP ENTERPRISE. 
 
 the people of Chicago. A system of municipal government 
 is to be created in the United States, which will conduct the 
 affairs of a city with an approximation to the efficiency, the 
 wise audacity, and the just economy, which a competent 
 man of business displays in the management of a private 
 enterprise. Let Chicago undertake this noble work. 
 
 New York has been so inundated and overwhelmed with 
 foreign ignorance and home-bred vice, that her citizens have 
 not had a fair chance. They have struggled manfully and 
 persistently against adverse circumstances, and they have 
 struggled not altogether in vain, nor without realizing good 
 hopes for the future of the city. Philadelphia, too, has a 
 vast and portentous predominance of ignorant voters, drawn 
 into her midst by her ever-growing manufacturers. Boston 
 and Baltimore are, perhaps, not yet ripe for radical changes, 
 and are too firmly set in ancient ways to discard enough of 
 the old, and adopt bold measures wholly untried. 
 
 Chicago is young, and untrammelled by ancient precedent. 
 She dares look this problem of city government in the face, 
 and there is practical intellect enough in the city to solve it. 
 When a man in Chicago is going to start a factory or build 
 a house, he inquires how other people have started factories 
 and built houses, not for the purpose of following their ex- 
 ample, but with a view to ascertain how much, and in how 
 many ways, he can improve upon their methods. It is in 
 that spirit that Chicago men and women (for women, too, 
 will give their aid) must undertake the business of devising 
 a city government that shall keep out scallawags and scoun- 
 drels from the City Hall, and put in their place men of 
 brains and principle. 
 
 Our cities perish for lack of intelligent government. 
 Opportunities are not improved. Life is rendered burthen- 
 some and unpleasing. Countless myriads of human beings 
 
DESTRUCTION AND RECONSTRUCTION OF CHICAGO. 89 
 
 are huddled together, and pass their lives in a closeness of 
 contiguity that makes civilization, and even decency, impos- 
 sible; and they leave their miserable abodes for their daily 
 work, only to get into vehicles more densely packed with 
 living flesh than the cars in which pigs are conveyed to mar- 
 ket. There are a thousand men in Chicago capable of recti- 
 fying the worst of these evils in two years, if only they pos- 
 sessed the requisite authority, and could surround themselves 
 with intelligent and efficient assistance. 
 
 The new constitution of Illinois is now confessed to be, 
 and probably is, the most advanced and best working in- 
 strument of the kind that man has yet contrived. The fact 
 that it abolishes special legislation, would alone stamp it 
 superior to the constitutions of other States. The citizens 
 of Chicago have but to bring to the formation of municipal 
 government the good sense and mental independence which 
 produced their State constitution, in order to frame a system 
 that will go round the world, converting unclean, corrupt, 
 and cheerless cities into places bright with verdure, with 
 ample room for virtuous and happy life, and magnificent 
 with the triumphs of all the arts. 
 
THE FOUNDER OF VASSAE COLLEGE. 
 
 How immeasurable the consequences of one good action ! 
 I was struck with this upon reading, some time ago, President 
 John H. Raymond's interesting account in the " Galaxy " of tke 
 late Matthew Vassar, the founder of the College for Young 
 Ladies at Poughkeepsie, the first institution of the kind ever 
 attempted. I have walked over the edifice erected by the 
 munificence of this man, an enormous building, in the style 
 of the Tuileries at Paris. If it were as easy to create a 
 serviceable college as it is to construct a fine building, we 
 could already pronounce Matthew Yassar a benefactor of 
 man. The college, however, is still an experiment. When 
 the young ladies educated by it are wives and mothers, and 
 have outlived the illusions of youth, they will be able, per- 
 haps, to decide whether the instruction they received at the 
 college was such as to give them real help in contending 
 with the difficulties of life, the kind of help a woman needs 
 when the welfare and happiness of a household depend upon 
 her. Meanwhile, one thing is certain : The motive which 
 induced Mr. Yassar to found the college was altogether 
 humane and admirable. 
 
 But I was speaking of the way in which one good act leads 
 to another. It was three little words on a monument which 
 put the thought into Matthew Yassar's heart of giving away 
 some of his spare, money for the benefit of his race. He 
 was standing in the quadrangle of Guy's Hospital in London, 
 
THE FOUNDER OF VASSAR COLLEGE. 91 
 
 looking at the bronze statute of the founder of that cele- 
 brated institution, the most extensive of its kind, I believe, 
 in England. The inscription upon the pedestal of the 
 statue is as follows : 
 
 THOMAS GUT, 
 Sole Founder of this Hospital, 
 
 IN HIS LIFETIME. 
 A. D., 1726. 
 
 The words that arrested his attention, and sunk into his 
 mind, were these: "In his Lifetime" They were not 
 exactly true, however. Thomas Guy did indeed build the 
 hospital in his lifetime, at a cost of a hundred thousand 
 dollars ; but the million dollars that may be said to have 
 founded it, he left in his will. 
 
 "When Matthew Vassar read these words he was fifty-three 
 years of age, a rich brewer, from Poughkeepsie on the 
 Hudson, who was making the tour of Europe. His father ,. 
 an English wool-grower, emigrated in 1796, and settled on 
 the banks of the Hudson, where, from being a farmer, he 
 became a brewer, making with considerable success an arti- 
 cle much approved in that region, called the "Vassar Ale." 
 It is a curious circumstance that Matthew Yassar, though 
 destined to make a large fortune by brewing beer, had such 
 a repugnance to entering his father's brewery, that he ran 
 away from home rather than do so. The father, it seems, 
 was an obstinate, strong-minded, ignorant man, who thought 
 he had the right to decide the fate of his offspring, and gave 
 his son the choice of being a brewer or a tanner. The con- 
 sequence was, that the boy, assisted by his mother, ran away. 
 With all his little property tied up in a cotton handkerchief, 
 he walked to a ferry eight miles from Poughkeepsie, accom- 
 panied by his mother, who there gave him seventy-five cents 
 
92 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 and her blessing, and stood crying on the banks of the river 
 until she saw the boy safely landed on the opposite shore. 
 
 Within twenty-four hours, he had obtained a place in a 
 country store as boy of all work ; from which he steadily 
 rose, in five years, by hard work and faithful service, to the 
 place of first clerk. Reconciled to his father, and having 
 saved a hundred and fifty dollars, he returned home to 
 Poughkeepsie, and became book-keeper in his father's 
 brewery. 
 
 I am reminded at this point of a remark made by Horace 
 Greeley, several years ago, in the "Tribune." "A young 
 man," said he, "having nothing to depend upon but his 
 own labor, who does not save a hundred dollars by the time 
 he is twenty-one, will be likely to carry a poor man's head 
 upon his shoulders all his life." 
 
 There is, doubtless, a good deal of truth in this observa- 
 tion. Not that a hundred dollars is so great a matter ; but 
 for a young man to save from a small salary shows that he 
 has the self-control which is one of the chief elements in a 
 great success of any kind. 
 
 Young Vassar's hundred and fifty dollars, however, was 
 soon swallowed up in the total ruin of the whole family. In 
 a single night the Yassar brewery was swept away by fire. 
 Scarcely an article of value was saved ; there was not a 
 dollar of insurance on the property ; and, to crown the dis- 
 aster, Matthew's elder brother, upon whom the weight of 
 the business rested, lost his life from the noxious gases 
 generated from a beer-vat into which he had incautiously 
 descended. 
 
 His elder brother buried, his father unmanned by the 
 blow, a mother, sisters, and two younger brothers reduced 
 from comparative affluence to destitution, this lad of nine- 
 teen accepted the charge of restoring the fortunes of the 
 
THE FOUNDER OF VASSAR COLLEGE. 93 
 
 family. He saved from the ruins a few kettles, and set up 
 a small brewery of his own in an unoccupied dye-house, 
 where he brewed one or two barrels of beer at a time, and 
 delivered it himself to his customers. He opened also an 
 oyster saloon, on a small scale, which promoted the consump- 
 tion of his beer. In the course of a year or two, a man of 
 capital joined him in the brewing business, which from that 
 time steadly increased, and soon extricated the family from 
 the unfortunate position to which the fire had reduced them. 
 The principle on which he conducted his business was as 
 simple as it was sound. It was to make the best beer in 
 the market. From an early period, Albany and other towns 
 in that part of New York were noted for the brewing of beer, 
 most of which was sold under the familiar name of " Albany 
 Ale." Vassar's brewery, for thirty years, supplied the country 
 with a large quantity of the best of it, and he became at 
 length one of the richest brewers in the region of the Upper 
 Hudson. 
 
 At ease in his circumstances, he made honorable efforts 
 to remedy the defects of his early education. His father 
 never learned to read, and did not feel the necessity of 
 giving his sons more than the mere rudiments of knowledge. 
 Matthew Vassar now became a diligent reader, and was fond 
 of conversing upon the usual topics of educated society. At 
 fifty-three, he gave himself the long-desired pleasure of a 
 tour in the old world, and during his stay in London it was 
 that he read the inscription upon the monument in Guy's 
 Hospital, as related above. 
 
 Having no children, and few heirs of his own kindred, he 
 had already determined to leave the bulk of his large 
 estate to found some charitable or useful institution. But 
 those words, In His Lifetime, arrested his attention, and 
 moved him deeply. The purpose was rapidly formed in his 
 
94 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 mind to imitate the example of Thomas Guy, and at least 
 begin something while he was yet living to watch and con- 
 trol it. But what ? He meditated the question for many 
 years before he could arrive at a final decision. 
 
 On a certain day in February, 1861, sixteen years after 
 he had read the inscription upon the monument of Thomas 
 Guy, in a hotel at Poughkeepsie, in the presence of twenty 
 or thirty gentlemen, he announced the conclusion which his 
 benevolent mind had reached. He entered the room carry- 
 ing a small tin box. After the usual preliminary exercises 
 of a public meeting, he arose to address the company. He 
 was an old man then, not far from seventy years of age, 
 a stout, well-preserved, well-proportioned man, with silvery 
 hair, and particularly neat in his attire. Amid breathless 
 silence, he delivered this brief address : 
 
 "Gentlemen," said he, "as my long-cherished purpose 
 to apply a large portion of my estate to some benevolent 
 object is now about to be accomplished, it seems proper 
 that I should submit to you a statement of my motives, 
 views, and wishes. It having pleased God that I should 
 have no descendants to inherit my property, it has long 
 been my desire, after suitably providing for those of my 
 kindred who have claims upon me, to make such a disposi- 
 tion of my means as should best honor God and benefit my 
 fellow-men. At different periods, I have regarded various 
 plans with favor ; but these have all been dismissed, one 
 after another, until the subject of erecting and endowing a 
 college for the education of young women was presented 
 for my consideration. The novelty, grandeur, and benig- 
 nity of the idea arrested my attention. The more carefully 
 1 examined it, the more strongly it commended itself to my 
 judgment and interested my feelings. It occurred to me 
 that woman, having received from the Creator the same 
 
THE FOUNDER OF VASSAR COLLEGE. 95 
 
 intellectual constitution as man, has the same right as man 
 to intellectual culture and development. I considered that 
 the mothers of a country mould the character of its citizens, 
 determine its institutions, and shape its destiny. Next to 
 the influence of the mother is that of the female teacher, who 
 is employed to train young children at a period when im- 
 pressions are most vivid and lasting. It also seemed to me 
 that, if woman were properly educated, some new avenues 
 to useful and honorable employment, in entire harmony 
 with the gentleness and modesty of her sex, might be opened 
 to her. It further appeared that there is not in our 
 country, there is not in the world, so far as is known, a 
 single fully endowed institution for the education of women. 
 It was also in evidence that, for the last thirty years, the 
 standard of education for the sex has been constantly rising 
 in the United States ; and the great, felt, pressing want has 
 been ample endowments, to secure to female seminaries the 
 elevated character, the stability and permanency of our best 
 colleges. And now, gentlemen, influenced by these and 
 similar considerations, after devoting my best powers to a 
 study of the subject for a number of years past ; after duly 
 weighing the objections against it, and the arguments that 
 preponderate in its favor ; and the project having received the 
 warmest commendations from many prominent literary men 
 and practical educators, as well as the universal approval of 
 the public press, I have come to the conclusion that the estab- 
 lishment and endowment of a College for the Education of 
 Young Women is a work which will satisfy my highest 
 aspirations, and will be, under God, a rich blessing to this 
 city and State, to our country and the world." 
 
 After some further remarks, he placed the key of the tin 
 box in the hands of one of the gentlemen present, who had 
 been appointed President of the Board of Trustees, say- 
 ing: 
 
96 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 "And now, gentlemen of the Board of Trustees, I transfer 
 to your possession and ownership, the real and personal 
 property which I have set apart for the accomplishment of 
 my design." 
 
 The box contained bonds and other securities amounting 
 in value to about four hundred and sixty thousand dollars. 
 Before many weeks had elapsed, the construction of the 
 edifice was begun; but the war, which broke out a few 
 weeks after the transfer of the property, caused embarrass- 
 ment and delay Contracts made with mechanics and mer- 
 chants in the cheap year of 1861, could not be carried out 
 in the dear years of 1863 and 1864. Nevertheless, the work 
 went on, and the college was opened in 1865. It .has been in 
 operation now six years, during which it has been attended 
 by a large number of young ladies from all parts of the 
 country. 
 
 During the scene described above, when Mr, Yassar, 
 with such eloquent simplicity, announced his purpose, he 
 had said : * f It is my fervent desire that I may live to see 
 the institution in successful operation." 
 
 He had his wish. On three successive commencement 
 days he was present, congratulating pupils and chatting with 
 parents, a blithe and healthy old man, as happy as the 
 youngest of the company. On the third commencement 
 day, which occurred in June, 1868, he was again at the 
 college, and met as usual the Board of Trustees. When the 
 meeting had been organized, he began to read his customary 
 annual address ; and as his voice was somewhat feeble, the 
 members gathered closer round his chair to catch the old 
 man's words. He had nearly concluded, when his voice 
 faltered, and soon ceased. The paper dropped from his 
 hand. His head fell back upon his chair. He was dead. . 
 
THE BEGINNINGS OF SCIENCE IN THE 
 UNITED STATES. 
 
 FOUNDING OF HARVARD AND YALE. How THE EARLY PROFESSORS 
 
 WERE FORMED. CAREER OF PROFESSOR SlLLIMAN. 
 
 ONE of the most remarkable facts of the early history of 
 New England is, that the colonists of Massachusetts, only 
 six years after the founding of Boston, should have set about 
 establishing a College. Perhaps the New England historians, 
 however, boast somewhat too much of this. These people 
 had come into the wilderness for the sole purpose of enjoying 
 and perpetuating their peculiar religion, one of the most 
 essential features of which was a learned ministry. But as 
 the English Universities were under the control of the Epis- 
 copal Church, and the Nonconformists in England were per- 
 secuted and discouraged in every way, there was no reason 
 to expect that England would long continue to supply the 
 growing colonies with competent clergymen. The colonists, 
 therefore, were compelled to provide for this difficulty, or 
 give up the object of their founding the colony. A nursery 
 for the education of clergymen was one of the necessities 
 of the situation, and the first college was founded for that 
 purpose. 
 
 Almost as soon as the colony was planted, in 1630, the 
 people began to think of rearing clergymen, and a few young 
 men were lodged in the families of ministers, from whom 
 they received instruction in the languages and theology. 
 
98 TRIUMPHS OP ENTERPRISE. 
 
 But this resource being manifestly inadequate, the Legisla- 
 ture, in the sixth year of the colony's existence, when the 
 country was threatened with an Indian war, and all New 
 England contained but five thousand white families, voted 
 four hundred pounds toward the building of a college. This 
 sum was about as much for the Massachusetts of 1636, as 
 ten millions of dollars would be for the Massachusetts of 
 1871 
 
 The next year, the Legislature appointed twelve of the 
 leading men to superintend the work, and changed the name 
 of the place where it was appointed to be established, from 
 New Town to Cambridge. Many of the leading men of the 
 colony had been students at Cambridge in old England, and 
 they gave the town this new name in grateful recollection 
 of the happy days of their youth. 
 
 The Pequot war ensued, which obliged the colonists to 
 put forth all their strength, and expend far more than their 
 revenue ; so that the vote of the Legislature would have 
 probably remained inoperative for several years, but for the 
 beneficence of a private individual. 
 
 There was then living at Charlestown, on the other side 
 of Charles Eiver, an invalid clergyman named John Harvard, 
 who had brought with him from England some property and 
 a considerable number of books. He had been educated at 
 Cambridge, in England, and had emigrated to Massachusetts 
 in 1637, the very year of the Pequot war, and the year after 
 the four hundred pounds had been voted for a college. An 
 opinion was current at the time that the voyage across the 
 Atlantic and a residence in New England were good for 
 consumptives ; and there is some- reason to believe that John 
 Harvard, sharing this opinion, had removed to Massachu- 
 setts for the restoration of his health. 
 
 He does not appear to have preached in America, nor, as 
 
THE BEGINNINGS OF SCIENCE IN THE U. S. 99 
 
 far as we know, to have contemplated preaching. But after 
 struggling with disease for about a year, he died of con- 
 sumption. When his will was opened, it was found that he 
 had left his whole library of two hundred and sixty volumes, 
 and one half of ' his estate, to the proposed college, his 
 estate being worth nearly sixteen hundred pounds sterling. 
 Provided thus with a fund of nearly twelve hundred pounds, 
 the trustees went forward, erected a building, established 
 the college, and conferred upon it the name of its first bene- 
 factor. 
 
 The example of John Harvard was more beneficial even 
 than the money which he bequeathed ; for it inspired a large 
 number of other persons with generous feelings toward the 
 infant institution. Some of the early donations were very 
 simple and curious. A clergyman, for example, having 
 neither money nor lands to bestow, gave the college two 
 cows, valued at nine pounds. A gentleman presented nine 
 shillings' worth of cotton cloth. Another contributed forty 
 shillings a year for ten years ; and a farmer, who lived in 
 Hartford, bequeathed a hundred pounds, to be paid in corn 
 and meal, the college to defray the cost of transportation. 
 One of the Bahama Islands, for which at a time of famine 
 collections had been made in New England, now, in its 
 turn, made a collection for the college, "out of their pov- 
 erty," as they said, and sent a hundred and twenty-four 
 pounds. 
 
 The college received various gifts of land, from one acre 
 to six hundred acres, as well as " two shops " in Boston, let 
 by the president of the college for ten shillings a year. 
 Among the smaller gifts, were a piece of plate valued at 
 three guineas, a silver fruit dish, a sugar spoon, a silver- 
 tipped jug, " one great salt and one small trencher salt," one 
 pewter flagon worth ten shillings, a pair of globes, a bell, 
 
100 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 a silver tankard, two silver goblets, thirty ewe sheep worth 
 thirty pounds, and some horses which brought seventy -two 
 pounds. 
 
 A large number of books, the weighty quartos and folios 
 of the olden time, were presented to the college. One Lon- 
 don lawyer gave eight chests of books at one time, worth 
 four hundred pounds ; and it seems to have been a ^common 
 thing for clergymen and others to bequeath their libraries to 
 the College. Books were then high-priced, few in number, 
 and highly valued. We have an interesting proof of this in 
 a document which may still be read in the college records, 
 to the effect, that a certain Henry Stevens gave to the Col- 
 lege his Greek Dictionary, in four volumes, folio, on the 
 following conditions, to wit : that if his son should ever 
 have occasion to use the work, he should have free access to 
 it, and that if " God should bless the said Joshua with any 
 child or children that shall be students of the Greek tongue, 
 then the said books above specified shall be unto them deliv- 
 ered." It so happened that the said Joshua had a son who 
 studied Greek, to whom the Dictionary was delivered on 
 demand accordingly. 
 
 These voluntary contributions being insufficient, the Gov- 
 ernment assigned for the support of the College the profits 
 of the ferry over the Charles River, and the people were 
 called upon to make an annual contribution to it, of at least 
 one peck of corn! For many years, however, the College 
 was a heavy charge upon the people, and the tutors and 
 president were most scantily and precariously maintained. 
 
 A sad misfortune befell the institution at the start. The 
 first president, Nathaniel Eaton, although an excellent 
 scholar, proved to be a man of violent temper and cruel 
 disposition. In all colleges, then, the president was author- 
 ized to inflict corporeal punishment on the students ; and 
 
THE BEGINNINGS OF SCIENCE IN THE U. 8. 101 
 
 this Eaton, besides half starving his scholars, pummelled 
 them so outrageously that even the stern Puritans of that 
 severe age could not endure it. 
 
 "Among many of the instances of his cruelty," says 
 Cotton Mather, " he gave one in causing two men to hold a 
 young gentleman, while he so unmercifully beat him with 
 a cudgel, that upon complaint of it unto the court, in Sep- 
 tember, 1639, he was fined an hundred marks, besides a 
 convenient sum to be paid unto the young gentleman that 
 had suffered by his unmercifuluess ; and for his inhumane 
 severities towards the scholars, he was removed from his 
 trust." 
 
 This was an inauspicious beginning, and it was some time 
 apparently before the College recovered from the check 
 which the unfortunate choice of a President gave it. Under 
 better men, however, the institution grew and throve, and 
 acquired so high a reputation that Puritan families in Eng- 
 land sent over their sons to be educated in it. 
 
 The journal of a Dutch traveller, who made the tour of 
 the American colonies when the college was forty years old, 
 describes an unexpected scene which the author witnessed 
 at Harvard College in 1680. The manuscript of this work 
 was accidentally discovered, a few years ago, in a book- 
 seller's shop at Amsterdam, by an American citizen, who 
 caused it to be translated and published. In this strange, 
 roundabout way, we get an interesting glimpse of old Har- 
 vard. The author records, that, being at Boston, he started 
 one morning about six o'clock to go to Cambridge, to see 
 the college and the printing-office, the latter a great wonder 
 then in America. After being rowed across the Charles 
 River, he and his companion lost their way, so that they did 
 not reach Cambridge until eight o'clock. He describes the 
 village as being small, the houses standing very much apart, 
 
102 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 and the college building conspicuous in the midst. Upon 
 approaching the college, they neither heard nor saw anything 
 remarkable, until they had got round to the back of the edi- 
 fice; where, he says, "we heard noise enough in an upper 
 room to lead my comrade to suppose they were engaged in 
 disputation." They entered and went up-stairs, where they 
 were met by a gentleman, who requested them to walk into 
 the apartment whence the noise proceeded. 
 
 "We found there," our Dutchman reports, "eight or ten 
 young fellows sitting around smoking tobacco, with the smoke 
 of which the room was so full, that you could hardly see, 
 and the whole house smelt so strong of it, that when I was 
 going up stairs, I said this is certainly a tavern. . . We 
 inquired how many professors there were, and they replied 
 not one, as there was no money to support one. We asked 
 how many students there were. They said, at first, thirty, and 
 then came down to twenty : I afterwards understood there 
 were probably not ten. They could hardly speak a word 
 of Latin, so that my comrade could not converse with them." 
 
 It was true that, at the time of this visit, there was a 
 vacancy in the office of the President, and that there was no 
 one connected with the college entitled to be called Profes- 
 sor; the classes being instructed by tutors. Nevertheless, 
 it shows a want of discipline that the students should smoke 
 so as to make the whole building smell like a tavern. One 
 of the rules expressly forbade the use of tobacco, "unless 
 with the consent of parents or guardians, and on good reason 
 first given by a physician, and then in a sober and private 
 manner." But among Puritans, as among other people, 
 " when the cat 's away the mice will play." 
 
 As to their not being able to speak Latin, they probably 
 could not understand that language as pronounced by a 
 Dutchman. The first rule of the college was, that no student 
 
THE BEGINNINGS OF SCIENCE IN THE U. 8. 103 
 
 should be admitted to the Freshman class, until he could 
 translate such Latin as that of Cicero at sight, and " speak 
 true Latin in verse and prose." If this rule were strictly 
 observed at the present day, every college in America would 
 be empty. The students of Harvard were even required to 
 speak Latin in their ordinary conversation ; one of the rules 
 being, " The scholars shall never use their mother tongue, 
 except that, in public exercises of oratory, or such like, they 
 be called to make them in English." 
 
 Another curious rule was the following : " Every scholar 
 shall be called by his surname only, till he is invested with 
 his first degree, except he be a fellow-commoner, or knight's 
 eldest son, or of superior nobility." Another rule reads thus : 
 w They shall honor their parents, magistrates, elders, tutors 
 and aged persons by being silent in their presence (except 
 they be called on to answer) , not gainsaying ; showing all 
 those laudable expressions of honor and reverence in their 
 presence that are in use, as bowing before them, standing 
 uncovered, or the like." 
 
 A very simple examination decided who was worthy of 
 his Bachelor's degree. Every scholar was entitled to it who 
 was found capable of translating the Hebrew Bible and the 
 Greek Testament into tolerable Latin ; but for the degree of 
 Master of Arts, the student was required to possess a com- 
 petent knowledge of logic, natural and moral philosophy, 
 arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. Such was Harvard 
 College during the first half-century of its existence. 
 
 Then another college began to be talked of. Other settle- 
 ments had attained importance ; Hartford and New Haven 
 had been founded ; the supply of ministers was still thought 
 to be inadequate. And it was deemed a hardship by the 
 people of Connecticut to be compelled to send their sons so 
 far away for education, 
 
 7 
 
104 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 The reader is aware, probably, that the State of Connec- 
 ticut, though uot the largest in the world, has two capitals, 
 Hartford and New Haven. If he reads on, he will discover 
 the reason of this superfluity ; for it grew out of the found- 
 ing df Yale College. 
 
 We must go back to the year 1635, when so large a num- 
 ber of emigrants had fled to Massachusetts from persecution 
 in England, that the group of settlements about Boston had 
 become over-crowded, and people could scarcely subsist 
 their cattle through the long winters. At that day, the 
 rough-and-ready mode of clearing laud since practised, by 
 merely felling the trees, burning off the timber, and letting 
 the stumps remain in the ground, had not been thought of; 
 but every one supposed that the stumps must all be 
 grubbed up and destroyed, before the land could be culti- 
 vated. By this slow process, few farmers could clear more 
 than an acre or two in a year ; and but for the fact that 
 there was a great quantity of cleared land about Boston and 
 Salem, the Indian owners of which had died of a plague 
 some years before, the colonists could not have subsisted at all. 
 
 But in 1635, five years after the settlement of Boston, the 
 good cleared lands along the coast were all taken up, and a 
 number of settlers resolved to remove to the beautiful 
 meadows upon the banks of the Connecticut River, of which 
 glowing accounts had reached them from traders who had 
 sailed up the Connecticut for traffic with the Indians. Hav- 
 ing made up their minds to settle near the site of the city 
 of Hartford, they chose a most unfortunate time for their 
 removal. It was on the 15th of October, 1635, when the 
 weather was already cold, that about fifteen families, num- 
 bering sixty persons, men, women and children, with horses, 
 cattle, and pigs, began their march from the neighborhood 
 of Boston. 
 
THE BEGINNINGS OF SCIENCE IN THE U. S. 105 
 
 The distance is about one hundred miles, and the whole 
 journey lay through a wilderness, trackless and untrodden. 
 There were rivers to cross, high hills to surmount, and 
 tangled swamps to get through. The sufferings of the little 
 band were severe and long ; and when at length they arrived 
 at the shores of the broad Connecticut, they were on the 
 wrong side of the river, and at a loss^how to get their cattle 
 over. By the 15th of November, while they were still 
 engaged in getting their cattle across, the winter set in with 
 such severity that the stream was frozen over, and there 
 was deep snow upon the ground. A whole month had been 
 consumed, and there was scarcely a hut yet erected which 
 could shelter the young children from the withering blasts of 
 this premature winter. 
 
 It was a season of misery, famine, and death. Two ves- 
 sels laden with their goods were wrecked on the voyage 
 round, and all on board were lost. By the end of November, 
 "the situation was so appalling, that thirteen persons went 
 back through the woods starving to Boston, only saved 
 from perishing in the wilderness by the kindness of the 
 Indians. Seventy more, in the very middle of the winter, 
 contrived to make their way back by water. Those who 
 remained lived on acorns, nuts, game, and what little corn 
 they could get from the Indians. Amid sufferings seldom 
 paralleled even in the early history of New England, the 
 State of Connecticut was planted. 
 
 With returning spring, however, relief was afforded to the 
 settlers ; the fugitives went back ; Hartford was founded ; 
 and new colonists came in. After the Pequot war of 1636, 
 the settlements on the fertile shores of the beautiful Connec- 
 ticut flourished exceedingly, and the province soon acquired 
 some little importance. 
 
 It was in old Connecticut that the American method of 
 
106 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 clearing land was first hit upon ; and, without that inven- 
 tion, the American wilderness never could have been cleared 
 fast enough to receive the tide of emigration which set 
 toward it. 
 
 The fact, though not mentioned by any historian of note, 
 is of so much importance that I will copy here the original 
 record of it, as contained in an old manuscript history of 
 Guilford, Connecticut, written one hundred years ago by the 
 minister of that town, Eev. Thomas Kuggles, and published 
 a year or two since in the " New York Historical Magazine/' 
 The passage has historical value. 
 
 " It was a great many years the planters were chiefly confined to 
 the lands cleared by the Indians, near the sea, in their husbandry. 
 They indeed early made a law that every planter should clear up 
 yearly half an acre of new land. This was a hard piece of labor. 
 It was all done by hand by digging and stubbing up the trees 
 and small growths by the roots although they quite spoiled the 
 land by it ; but they knew of no other way, and it was a severe 
 penalty to be guilty of transgressing this town order. It was a 
 long time before the present way of clearing new land was prac- 
 tised. The first adventurer herein was John Scranton, upon the 
 top of a good hill of land, now the property of Mr. Ruggles. He 
 cleared about an acre. 
 
 " The inhabitants were amazed, first at his courage, that he 
 would venture so far, about two miles, into, the wood to labor ; then 
 at his folly, that he should think a crop of wheat would grow in 
 such a way. So strange are new things to the world. But they 
 were perfectly astonished when they saw twenty bushels of the 
 best of wheat reaped at harvest from only three pecks of seed on 
 an acre of ground sown in that manner by such tillage. 
 
 "Experience, from whence almost all useful knowledge, espe- 
 cially in husbandry, is derived, convinced them of the truth ; and 
 the same spirit spread, and the wood-lands soon became fields of 
 wheat." 
 
THE BEGINNINGS OF SCIENCE IN THE U. 8. 107 
 
 Nine years after that winter march through the wilderness, 
 the Connecticut colonists began to contribute a little toward 
 the support of Harvard College, each family being requested 
 by the legislature to give one peck of wheat per annum. 
 When the colony was seventeen years old, a project was 
 seriously discussed of founding a college of their own ; but 
 it was thought best, for a while longer, for all New England 
 to unite in supporting Harvard. In the year 1700, when 
 Connecticut contained twenty-eight towns, and fifteen thou- 
 sand inhabitants, the clergy of the colony formed themselves 
 into a society for the purpose of establishing a college 
 in Connecticut. There was a meeting of this society 
 soon after, to which each member brought from his own 
 precious little store of volumes those which he thought 
 suitable, and laying them upon a table, said these words : 
 44 1 give these books for the founding of a college in this 
 colony." 
 
 The number of volumes thus collected was only forty ; 
 but they were all solid folios of the olden time. The 
 trustees took possession of them, deposited them in a 
 safe place, and they formed the nucleus around which 
 gathered the venerable institution now called Yale Col- 
 lege. Other books were added ; a little money was given ; 
 and one gentleman presented six hundred and thirty-seven 
 acres of land, and engaged to supply all the glass and 
 nails that should be necessary to build the college. The 
 legislature agreed to give sixty pounds a year toward the 
 support of the institution, and this they did for fifty-four 
 years. 
 
 The college was ready to receive pupils in the spring of 
 1702. The first who entered was Jacob Hemmingway, who, 
 from March to September, remained the only student. But 
 in September, the number of students was increased to eight ; 
 
108 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 a tutor was appointed to aid the rector; and the college 
 entered upon its long and honorable career. 
 
 One of the earliest settlers of New Haven was an English 
 gentleman, named Thomas Yale, who arrived in 1638, and 
 after remaining twenty years in the colony, went back to 
 England, returning to America no more. He took back with 
 him to his native land his son, Elihu Yale, a little boy ten 
 years of age, born in New Haven. This son, after growing 
 to manhood in England, went out to seek his fortune, as so 
 many young Englishmen did, and do, to the East Indies, 
 where he married an heiress ; and, returning to England, was 
 chosen Governor of the East India Company. That he was 
 a man interested in learning, if not possessed of it, we may 
 infer from the fact that he was a Fellow of the Royal Society, 
 that honorable institution to which Newton and Franklin 
 communicated their discoveries. 
 
 Hearing what was going forward in his native Connecticut, 
 he sent over, from time to time, donations of books, money, 
 and merchandise, for the benefit of the new college. Some 
 of his gifts arriving just in time to aid the trustees in the 
 construction of a new building at New Haven, they named , 
 the edifice Yale College, and this name was finally assigned, 
 by common usage, to the institution itself. It was a grand 
 day in New Haven, in September, 1718, when the first Com- 
 mencement took place after the completion of this building. 
 In the presence of the Governor, the legislature, the judges, 
 the clergy, and a great concourse of spectators from far and 
 near, one of the trustees read a memorial in pompous Latin, 
 which concluded thus : 
 
 " We, the trustees, having the honor of being intrusted with an 
 affair of so great importance to the common good of the people, do, 
 with one consent, agree, determine, and ordain, that our College 
 House shall be called by the name of its munificent patron, and 
 
THE BEGINNINGS OF SCIENCE IN THE U. 8. 109 
 
 shall be named YALE COLLEGE : that this province may keep and 
 preserve a lasting monument of such a generous gentleman, who, 
 by so great benevolence and generosity, has provided for their 
 greatest good, and the peculiar advantage of the inhabitants both 
 in the present and future ages." 
 
 On this joyful occasion an oration was pronounced by one 
 of the trustees, in which he extolled the generosity of Yale 
 in the most glowing terms. Eight students received their 
 bachelor's degree, and the ceremony concluded with an ora- 
 tion in Latin, pronounced by the Governor of the State, in 
 which the benevolence of Mr. Yale was again warmly com- 
 mended. 
 
 It remains to be told how Connecticut came to be blest 
 with two capitals. As soon as the college was determined 
 upon in 1700, the question arose, and was discussed with the 
 energy and heat with which such questions usually are, In 
 what town shall it be situated ? The institution was begun 
 at Saybrook, and was not finally established at New Haven 
 until 1718, which was sixteen years after the first student 
 entered. This removal, as the reader may imagine, was 
 keenly resented, not only by Saybrook, but by other towns 
 which had hoped to be chosen as the site of the college, 
 particularly Hartford. To reconcile Hartford to the disap- 
 pointment, the legislature agreed to build a State House 
 there, as they said, " to compensate for the college at New 
 Haven" They tried to appease Saybrook by voting twenty- 
 five pounds sterling for the use of its school. But Saybrook 
 was irreconcilable. When the sheriff, by order of the trus- 
 tees, attempted to remove the library to New Haven, a riot 
 ensued, in the course of which two hundred and fifty vol- 
 umes were conveyed away to parts unknown, and never 
 recovered. 
 
 Elihu Yale lived to the age of seventy-three years, dying 
 
HO TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 in 1721, and was buried at Wrexham, in Wales. The epi- 
 taph on his tombstone is still legible. After the date of his 
 birth and death these lines follow : 
 
 Born in America, in Europe bred, 
 
 In Africa travelled, and in Asia wed, 
 
 Where long he lived and thrived : at London, dead. 
 
 Much good, some ill, he did : so hope all 's even, 
 
 And that his soul through mercy 's gone to Heaven. 
 
 You that survive and read, take care 
 
 For this most certain exit to prepare : 
 
 For only the actions of the just 
 
 Smell sweet and blossom in the dust. 
 
 The time came when the enlightened minds connected 
 with Harvard and Yale, sharing the modern enthusiasm for 
 science, felt the incompleteness of the old college course. I 
 have often admired the sensible manner in which they pro- 
 ceeded to form Professors of science, when they could not 
 find any. That, for example, was an important conversation 
 which occurred in 1801, under the noble elms of New 
 Haven, between Dr. D wight, President of Yale College, and 
 young Silliman, tutor and student of law. 
 
 Benjaman Silliman, twenty-two years of age, of May- 
 flower ancestry, and the son of a Revolutionary general, was 
 one of the most promising young men of New England, and 
 he would have begun the profession of the law with every 
 advantage that can be derived from birth, connections, and 
 natural talent. Dr. Dwight, theologian as he was, was a 
 man of vigorous, inquisitive mind, interested in branches of 
 knowledge beyond the range of a college founded and main- 
 tained chiefly for the purpose of supplying New England 
 with clergymen. The young man cherished for the Presi- 
 dent the profoundest veneration. 
 
THE BEGINNINGS OF SCIENCE IN THE U. 8. Ill 
 
 w When I hear him speak," he wrote in his college diary, 
 " it makes me feel like a very insignificant being, and almost 
 prompts me to despair; but I am reencouraged when I 
 reflect that he was once as ignorant as myself, and that learn- 
 ing is only to be acquired by long and assiduous application." 
 
 He had just received an invitation to take charge of an 
 academy in Georgia, and was deliberating on the proposal 
 on the College Green, under the beautiful elms, on a warm 
 July morning, when he met President Dwight and asked 
 his advice. 
 
 " I advise you not to go to Georgia," said the President. 
 "I would not, voluntarily, unless under the influences of some 
 commanding moral duty, go to live in a country where 
 slavery is established. You must encounter, moreover, the 
 dangers of the climate, and may die of a fever within two 
 years. I have still other reasons which I will now proceed 
 to state to you." 
 
 He told the young man that the corporation of the college 
 had, several years before, at his recommendation, resolved 
 to establish a professorship of Chemistry and Natural His- 
 tory as soon as the college could afford to pay another salary. 
 The time had come ; but there was a difficulty in the way. 
 In the United States there was then not a single individual 
 competent to fill such a professorship, and there were objec- 
 tions to the employment of a foreigner, who, whatever his 
 scientific knowlege, could not be expected to harmonize with 
 the college system so well as a native of the soil and a grad- 
 uate of the institution. 
 
 " I see no way," added he, w but to select a young man 
 worthy of confidence, and allow him time, opportunity, and 
 pecuniary aid, to enable him to acquire the requisite science 
 and skill, and wait for him until he shall be prepared to 
 begin." 
 
112 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 Dr. D wight concluded by offering to recommend to the 
 corporation the appointment of his young friend. The tutov 
 was startled at a proposal so novel and unexpected, the 
 acceptance of which would compel him to renounce his long- 
 cherished ambition of a distinguished career at the bar, and 
 to enter upon a course of life of which there was no Ameri- 
 can example. He stood confounded and speechless. The 
 President, perceiving his embarrassment, continued to enlarge 
 upon the scheme. 
 
 " I could not," he said, " propose to you a course of life 
 and of effort which would promise more usefulness, or more 
 reputation. The profession of law does not need you ; it is 
 already full, and many eminent men adorn our courts of 
 justice. In the profession which I proffer to you there will 
 be no rival here. The field will be your own. Our country 
 is rich in unexplored treasures, and by aiding in their devel- 
 opment you will perform an important public service, and 
 connect your name with the rising reputation of our native 
 land. Time will be allowed to make every necessary pre- 
 paration, and when you enter upon your duties you will 
 speak to those to whom the subject will be new. You will 
 advance in the knowledge of your profession more rapidly 
 than your pupils can follow you, and will be always ahead 
 of your audience." 
 
 This view of the subject strongly impressed the young 
 man, and he asked for a few weeks for consideration and 
 consultation with friends, chief among whom, he records, 
 was "a wise and good mother." The result was, that he 
 accepted the appointment ; not, however, without stipulating 
 that he should first pass his examination for the bar, " as a 
 retreat, in case of disaster to the college, from the violence 
 of party spirit." President Dwight, he explains, was "an 
 ardent Federalist of the Washington school, and his eloquent 
 
THE BEGINNINGS OF SCIENCE IN THE U. S. 113 
 
 appeals excited the hostility of the rising democracy." In 
 1802, his appointment was announced, to the wonder of the 
 public, and he soon began the work of preparation. 
 
 He was almost totally ignorant of the sciences which he 
 had undertaken to teach ; nor was there a person in New 
 England to whom he could apply for instruction. He could 
 not even find, nor did there exist, an elementary work upon 
 chemistry simple enough for a beginner. After his conver- 
 sation with Dr. D wight, he had procured a few books upon 
 chemistry, but he could make little of them, and he found 
 it necessary to proceed to Philadelphia, which was then, in 
 everything which pertained to science and learning, the 
 metropolis of the country. 
 
 The means of instruction in chemistry were extremely 
 limited even there, consisting chiefly of a course of lectures 
 delivered every winter in a small, inconvenient room by one 
 of the physicians attached to the medical school. The lab- 
 oratory was a few closets ; the apparatus was barely sufficient 
 for beginners ; and the lecturer was neither deeply versed in 
 the science nor skilful in exhibiting its laws. To the young 
 tutor, however, even the rudiments of chemistry had the 
 attraction of novelty, and the lectures, as he says, were a 
 treasure to him. An instance of the lecturer's want of skill 
 used to be related by Professor Silliman. After informing 
 the class, one day, that life could not be sustained in hydro- 
 gen gas, a hen was placed under a bell glass filled with 
 hydrogen. The hen gasped, kicked, and was still. 
 
 "There, gentlemen," said the lecturer, "you see she is 
 dead." 
 
 He had no sooner uttered these words, than the hen over- 
 turned the bell glass and flew screaming across the room, 
 flapping with her wings the heads of the students, who 
 roared with laughter. 
 
114 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 After attending these lectures for two winters, and avail- 
 ing himself of all other means of acquiring knowledge, he 
 returned to New Haven and entered upon the duties of his 
 professorship. During his absence, a laboratory had been 
 constructed in one of the new college buildings ; but such 
 complete ignorance prevailed of chemistry and its require- 
 ments, that the young professor found his laboratory a gloomy 
 cavern, sixteen feet below the surface of the ground, to which 
 access could be gained only by a trap-door and a ladder. The 
 architect had some confused notion that chemistry was one 
 of the black arts, like alchemy, with its fiery furnaces, explo- 
 sions, and incantations. Confounded at the sight of this 
 dungeon, the young professor invited the corporation of the 
 college to descend with him into its gloomy depths ; which 
 resulted in their authorizing him to make such alterations as 
 were necessary to let in light and air ; and in that room he 
 labored and taught during fifteen of the best years of his 
 life. 
 
 Another curious proof of the universal ignorance of science 
 at the time, Professor Silliman has recorded. He applied to 
 a glass manufacturer to make some retorts for him. The 
 man replied that he had never seen a retort, but he had no 
 doubt he could make some, if a pattern were sent him. 
 
 W I had a retort," says Professor Silliman, "the neck or 
 tube of which was broken off near the ball ; but as no portion 
 was missing, and the two parts exactly fitted each other, I 
 sent this retort and its neck in a box. In due time my dozen 
 of green glass retorts of East Hartford manufacture arrived, 
 carefully boxed, and all sound, except that they were all 
 cracked off in the neck exactly where the pattern was frac- 
 tured ; and broken neck and ball lay in state, like decapitated 
 kings in their coffins." 
 
 'With such rudimentary difficulties had science to contend 
 
THE BEGINNINGS OF SCIENCE IN THE U. S. 115 
 
 in the infant Eepublic. In October, 1804, the young pro- 
 fessor, in his subterranean laboratory, began to lecture upon 
 chemistry. He was a very handsome man, of stately pro- 
 portions, elegant and dignified in his manners, of bland and 
 courteous demeanor, and with that happy manual dexterity 
 so important to an experimenter. Thus endowed, he .lec- 
 tured with striking success from the beginning, and gave an 
 impetus to the study of Natural Science in America which 
 will never cease as long as this continent remains inhabited 
 by civilized men. Among his pupils that winter were Gal- 
 laudet, Heman Humphrey, John Pierpont, and Gardiner 
 Spring ; and often when the Senior class descended into the 
 laboratory, President D wight would follow, and humbly 
 taking his seat as a learner among them, listen to the lecture 
 and watch the experiments with the deepest interest. The 
 poet Pierpont, who heard the first lecture, remembered for 
 sixty-one years the words of its opening sentence : " Chem- 
 istry is the science that treats of the changes that are effected 
 in material bodies or substances by light, heat, and mix- 
 ture." 
 
 The college authorities, under the influence of President 
 Dwight, were bountiful to the new professorship, appropri- 
 ating soon ten thousand dollars for apparatus, and sending 
 Professor Silliman to Europe to purchase it, and to improve 
 himself by intercourse with the learned men of the old 
 world. The Professor remained fifteen months abroad, and 
 returned to New Haven provided with ample means for 
 elucidating chemistry, and enriched with the results of the 
 most recent investigation. 
 
 "Why, Domine," said a member of the college corporation 
 to Professor Silliman one day, "is there not danger that 
 with these physical attractions you will overtop the Latin 
 and the Greek ?" 
 
116 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPEISE. 
 
 " Sir," replied the professor, " let the literary gentlemen 
 push and sustain their departments. It is my duty to give 
 full effect to the sciences committed to my care." 
 
 This he continued to do for more than half a century. 
 Collections of great value gathered round him. A better 
 laboratory and ampler apparatus followed in due time. 
 Other branches of natural science, under Day, Olmstead, 
 and others, received their share of attention, and no college 
 has since existed in the United States in which the natural 
 sciences have not held a leading place in the routine of 
 studies. In 1818, Professor Silliman began the publication 
 of the "Journal of Science," a quarterly periodical, which he 
 continued to edit for thirty years, and which has had much 
 to do with promoting a taste among learned men for knowl- 
 edge purely scientific. 
 
 It cannot be said of Professor Silliman that he greatly 
 increased the sum of human knowledge, but few men have 
 ever lived who have done more to diffuse it. He was a 
 great teacher, and an excellent man. He was one of the 
 first of Americans to see through the wine delusion which 
 we inherit from our ancestors. Like most people of his 
 day, he supposed that stimulants were necessary for the 
 preservation and restoration of health; and consequently 
 when, in middle life, his system had become thoroughly 
 disorganized and enfeebled, he resorted to the means then 
 usually employed for its restoration. I wish to give the 
 result of his experiment in his own language, foialfce consid- 
 eration of those who still believe in the restoring virtue of 
 alcoholic drinks. 
 
 "I yielded, for a time," he says, "to the popular belief 
 that good wine and cordials were the lever which would 
 raise my depressed power ; but the relief was only temporary. 
 . . . No medical man informed me that I was pursuing a 
 wrong course ; but the same wise and good friend to whom 
 

 ~ '-~3 " 
 r'-- --- 
 
 

THE BEGINNINGS OF SCIENCE IN THE U. S. 117 
 
 I had been already so much indebted, Mr. Daniel Wads- 
 worth, convinced me, after much effort, that my best chance 
 for recovery was to abandon all stimulants, and adopt a very 
 simple diet, and in such quantities, however moderate, as the 
 stomach might be able to digest and assimilate. I took my 
 resolution in 1823, in the lowest depression of health. I 
 abandoned wine and every other stimulant, including, for the 
 time, even coffee and tea. Tobacco had always been my ab- 
 horrence. ... I persevered a year in this strict regimen, 
 of plain meat, vegetables, bread, ancl rice, and after a few 
 weeks, my unpleasant symptoms abated, my strength grad- 
 ually increased, and health, imperceptibly in its daily prog- 
 ress, but manifest in its results, stole upon me unawares." 
 
 He lived to the age of eighty-five, enjoying life almost to 
 his last hour, a happy, beautiful, affectionate old man. He 
 would have lived longer, if science had progressed far enough 
 in 1864 to show us some safe, easy way of ventilating public 
 rooms. He suffered extremely from the bad air of a crowded 
 chapel, upon leaving which, the wintry wind struck his irri- 
 tated and enfeebled lungs, causing a cold, of which he died. 
 
 The colleges, thus formed in the infancy of New Eng- 
 land, continue to hold the first rank among the institutions 
 of learning in America. The time, I hope, is not distant, 
 when " these physical attractions," and the languages now 
 spoken in the world, " will overtop the Latin and Greek," 
 not only in these institutions, but in all others which aim to 
 prepare the youth of America for the work America has 
 for them to do. No one ever more keenly enjoyed the 
 study of those ancient languages than I did ; but no one 
 has oftener had occasion to deplore that the time expended 
 in getting a very imperfect knowledge of Latin and Greek, 
 Was not employed in obtaining a competent knowledge of 
 French, German, Italian, and Spanish, four useful lan- 
 guages, and, four rich literatures I 
 
ORIGIN OF THE ELECTEIC TELEGRAPH. 
 
 DURING the voyage of the packet ship Sully, from Havre 
 to New York, in October, 1832, a conversation arose one 
 day in the cabin upon electricity and magnetism. Dr. 
 Charles S. Jackson, of Boston, described an experiment 
 recently made in Paris with an electro-magnet, by means of 
 which electricity had been transmitted through a great length 
 of wire, arranged in circles around the walls of a large 
 apartment. The transmission had been instantaneous, and 
 it seemed as though the flight of electricity was too rapid 
 to be measured. Among the group of passengers, no one 
 listened more attentively to Dr. Jackson's recital than a 
 New York artist, named Samuel Finley Breece Morse, who 
 was returning from a three years' residence in Europe, 
 whither he had gone for improvement in his art. 
 
 Painter as he was, he was nevertheless well versed in 
 science, for which he had inherited an inclination. His 
 father was that once famous geographer and doctor of divin- 
 ity, of Charlestown, Massachusetts, whose large work upon 
 geography was to be found, half a century ago, in almost 
 every considerable collection of books in America. Besides 
 assisting his father in his geographical studies, Samuel Morse 
 had studied chemistry at Yale College, under Professor Sil- 
 limau, and natural philosophy under Professor Day. After 
 graduating from Yale, in 1810, he went with Washington 
 Allston to London, where he received instruction in painting 
 from Sir Benjamin West. Returning to the United States 
 
 8 
 
120 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 in 1815, he pursued his vocation with so much success, that 
 he was elected the first president of our National Academy, 
 and held the office for sixteen years. In 1829, he went again 
 to Europe, for further improvement; and it was when 
 returning from this visit that the conversation took place 
 in the cabin of the Sully. During all the years of his artist 
 life, he had retained his early love for science, and usually 
 was himself Veil informed of its progress. Hence the eager- 
 ness with which he listened to Dr. Jackson's narrative. 
 
 M Why," said he, when the Doctor had finished, " if that 
 is so, and the presence of electricity could be made visible 
 in any desired part of the circuit, I see no reason why in- 
 telligence might not be transmitted instantaneously by 
 electricity." 
 
 "How convenient it would be," added one of the passen- 
 gers, " if we could send news in that manner." 
 
 " Why can't we ? " asked Morse, fascinated by the i3ea. 
 
 From that hour the subject occupied his thoughts ; and he 
 began forthwith to exercise his Yankee ingenuity in devis- 
 ing the requisite apparatus. Voyages were long in those 
 days, and he had nothing to do but meditate and contrive. 
 Before the Sully dropped her anchor in New York harbor, 
 he had invented and put upon paper, in drawings and explan- 
 atory words, the chief features of the apparatus employed, to 
 this hour, by far the greater number of the telegraphic lines 
 throughout the world. 
 
 The system of dots and marks, the narrow ribbon of 
 paper upon a revolving block, and a mode of burying the 
 wires in the earth after inclosing them in tubes, all were, 
 thought of and recorded on board the packet-ship. The 
 invention, in fact, so far as the theory and the essential 
 devices were concerned, except alone the idea of suspending 
 the wires upon posts, was completed on board the vessel. 
 
ORIGIN OF THE ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH. 121 
 
 A few days after landing, the plan, now universally em- 
 ployed, of supporting the wires, was thought of by the 
 inventor, though he still preferred his original conception 
 of the buried tubes. 
 
 The reader, of course, is aware that the mere idea of trans- 
 mitting intelligence by electricity was not original with 
 Samuel Morse. From the time when Dr. Franklin and his 
 friends stretched a wire across the Schuylkill River, and 
 killed a turkey for their dinner by a shock from an electri- 
 cal machine on the other side of the stream, the notion had 
 existed of using the marvellous fluid for transmitting in- 
 telligence ; and long before the Sully was launched, some 
 attempts had been made in this direction, which were not 
 wholly unsuccessful. 
 
 There is no instance on record, I believe, of a great inven- 
 tion completed by the efforts of one man. Usually, an inven- 
 tion of first-rate importance is originated in one age, and 
 brought to perfection in another ; and we can sometimes 
 trace its progress for thousands of years. Probably so sim- 
 ple a matter as a pair of scissors one of the oldest of inven- 
 tions was the result of the cogitations of many ingenious 
 minds, and has undergone improvements from the days of 
 Pharaoh to those of Rogers & Sons. The most remarkable 
 case of rapid invention with which I am acquainted is that of 
 the sewing-machine, which, in twenty-five years, has been 
 brought to a point not distant from perfection. But then 
 thousands of ingenious minds have exerted themselves upon 
 it ! In the Patent Office at Washington, not less than thir- 
 teen hundred devices and improvements have been patented 
 relating to this beautiful contrivance. 
 
 The electric telegraph is an instance of the slow growth 
 of a great invention. The first step was taken toward it 
 thousands of years ago, when some one observed that if a 
 
122 TRIUMPHS OF ESTTERPRISE. 
 
 piece of amber was rubbed against cloth, it attracted small 
 objects and emitted a spark. In Greek, the word electron 
 signifies amber ; and hence the name which has been given 
 to the mysterious and wonderful fluid that pervades the uni- 
 verse. The second step toward the telegraph was not made 
 until the middle of the last century, when a Dutch professor 
 invented the Leyden jar, by which electricity can be accu- 
 mulated, and from which it can be suddenly discharged in 
 an electric shock. 
 
 From that time electricity became, in all civilized coun- 
 tries, the favorite branch of science. Franklin's discoveries 
 quickly followed. Galvani led the way to electro-magnetism, 
 which Volta pursued with striking success. The galvanic 
 battery was speedily added to the resources of science. The 
 electro-magnet followed; and in 1719, Professor Oersted, of 
 Denmark, so increased our knowledge of these instruments, 
 that little remained except for ingenious inventors to devise 
 the mechanical apparatus of the telegraph. 
 
 An artist, arriving at home after a three years' residence 
 in foreign countries, is not apt to be furnished with a great 
 abundance of cash capital ; nor is he usually able to spend 
 any more time in unproductive industry. Three years passed 
 before Mr. Morse had set up his rude apparatus of half a 
 mile of wire and a wooden clock, adapted to the purpose by 
 his own hands, and sent a message from one end of his wire 
 to the other, legible at least by himself. He used to exhibit 
 his apparatus now and then to his friends, and he spent all 
 the time he could spare from his profession in perfecting it. 
 For some time it was placed in a large room of the New 
 York University, where, in the fall of 1837, large numbers 
 of persons witnessed its operation. 
 
 The invention attracted much notice at the time, as I can 
 just remember. Every one said, How wonderful ! how 
 
ORIGIN OF TILE ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH. 123 
 
 ingenious ! and boasted of the progress man was making in 
 science ; but scarcely any one believed that the invention 
 could be turned to profitable account, and no man could be 
 found in New York willing to risk his capital in putting the 
 invention to a practical test. By this time, however, Mr. 
 Morse had become fully possessed of the . inventor's mania, 
 which shuts a man's eyes to all obstacles, and forces him 
 to pursue his project to the uttermost. 
 
 Having no other resource, he went to Washington 
 in 1838, arranged his apparatus there, exhibited its per- 
 formance to as many members as he could induce to 
 attend, and petitioned Congress for a grant of public 
 money with which to make an experimental line between 
 Washington and Baltimore, a distance of forty miles. It is 
 weary work getting a grant of money from Congress for 
 such a purpose ; and it ought to be, for Congress has no 
 constitutional right to give away the people's money to test 
 such an invention. A committee reported upon it favora- 
 bly, but nothing further was done during the session. 
 
 He crossed the ocean to seek assistance in Europe. His 
 efforts were fruitless. Neither in France nor in England 
 could he obtain public or private encouragement. It 
 seemed out of the sphere of government, and capitalists 
 were strangely obtuse, not to the merits of the invention, 
 but to the probability of its being profitable. They could 
 not conceive that any considerable number of persons in a 
 country would care to pay for the instantaneous transmission 
 of news. Eeturning home disappointed, but not dis- 
 couraged, he renewed his efforts, winter after winter, using 
 all the influence of his personal presence at Washington, 
 and all his powers of argument and persuasion. 
 
 March the third, 1843, the last day of the session, was 
 come. He attended all day the House of Kepresentatives, 
 
124 TEIUMPHS OP ENTEKPEISE. 
 
 faintly hoping that something might be done for him before 
 the final adjournment ; but as the evening wore away, the 
 pressure and confusion increased, and at length hope died 
 within him and he left the Capitol. He walked sadly home 
 and went to bed. 
 
 Imagine the rapture with which he heard on the follow- 
 ing morning that Congress, late in the night, amid the roar 
 and stress preceding the adjournment, had voted him thirty 
 thousand dollars for constructing his experimental line ! 
 Eleven years and a half had passed since he had made his 
 invention on board the ship. Perhaps, on that morning, he 
 thought it worth while to strive and suffer for so long a 
 period, to enjoy the thrill and ecstasy which he then expe- 
 rienced. 
 
 But his troubles were far from being over. Clinging 
 still to his original notion of inclosing the wires in buried 
 tubes, he wasted nearly a whole year, and spent twenty- 
 three thousand dollars of his appropriation in discovering 
 that the plan would not work. 
 
 And this brings another character on the scene, the 
 founder of the Cornell University. Ezra Cornell has a place 
 in the history of the telegraph, which would have caused his 
 name to be remembered if he had never founded a univer- 
 sity. At a critical moment, his ingenuity came to the rescue 
 of Morse's enterprise, and saved it, perhaps, from premature 
 extinction. The telegraph, in return for this service, has 
 since given him a colossal fortune, part of which he has 
 expended in a manner with which the world is acquainted. 
 
 On a certain day in 1842, when he was a travelling agent 
 for a patent plough, he arrived at Portland, in Maine, and, 
 naturally enough, called at the office of an agricultural jour- 
 nal, edited by Mr. F. O. J. Smith, with whom he was well 
 acquainted. This visit proved to be the turning-point in the 
 
ORIGIN OF THE ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH. 125 
 
 plough agent's career. Horace Greeley often says, that every 
 man has one chance in his life to make a fortune ; and Mr. 
 Disraeli has recently informed mankind that the secret of 
 success is, to be ready for your opportunity when it comes. 
 Mr. Cornell's opportunity was now coming, and he was 
 ready for it. On entering the office, he found the editor on 
 his knees, with parts of a plough by his side, drawing on the 
 floor with a piece of chalk, and trying to explain his draw- 
 ing to a plough-maker named Robinson, who was standing 
 near. 
 
 " Cornell," said the editor, with animation, and as if much 
 relieved, " you are the very man I wanf to see. I want a 
 scraper made, and I can't make Eobinson understand exactly 
 what I want. But you can understand it, and make it for 
 me too." 
 
 Ezra Cornell had indeed learned the trade of a machinist. 
 The son of a farmer, named Elijah Cornell, in Westchester 
 County, New York, he had passed his boyhood, as our 
 country boys usually do, in working on his father's farm, and 
 going to the district school during the winter. In 1828, 
 when he came of age, he went to Ithaca, New York, in 
 search of employment, and there worked a while in a 
 machine-shop, and afterwards passed several years as the 
 superintendent of a large mill in Ithaca. Of an ingenious, 
 inventive turn of mind, he had become familiar with the 
 mechanical powers, could handle tools with dexterity, and 
 was fertile in what may be called mechanical ideas. He was 
 one of those men who would undertake on the spot to build 
 a mill, dig a canal, bore the Hoosac Tunnel, or construct 
 the High Bridge, and execute the work in a triumphant man- 
 ner. He was a sound, healthy man, too, who drank no 
 intoxicating drink, used no tobacco, and lived cleanly in 
 every respect. It was with reason, therefore, that the editor 
 
126 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 felt relieved when he saw him enter his office that day in 
 Portland, while he was vainly expounding an imaginary 
 scraper to Mr. Kobinson. 
 
 "What do you want your scraper to do?" asked Cornell. 
 
 Mr. Smith explained. Congress had made an appropria- 
 tion to build a line of telegraph between Washington and 
 Baltimore, and Mr. Smith had taken the contract from Pro- 
 fessor Morse to lay down the pipe in which the wire was to 
 be inclosed. Finding that it would cost a great deal more 
 to do the work than he had calculated upon, he was trying to 
 invent something which would dig the ditch, and fill it with 
 dirt again, after the pipe was laid at the bottom. Cornell 
 asked various questions concerning the size of the pipe and 
 the depth of the ditch, and, after thinking a while, said : 
 
 M You don't want either a ditch or a scraper." 
 
 He then took a pencil and drew the outline of a machine, 
 to be drawn by a yoke of oxen, which, he said, would cut 
 open the ground to the depth of two feet, deposit the pipe 
 at the bottom, and cover it with earth, as the oxen drew the 
 machine along. The editor was incredulous. Cornell, how- 
 ever, expressed unbounded confidence in its successful work- 
 ing, and Smith at last agreed to pay for one, provided Cor- 
 nell would superintend its construction. If it succeeded, 
 the inventor was to be handsomely paid ; if it failed, he was 
 to receive nothing. Ten days after, the trial took place, 
 when one yoke of oxen, with the assistance of the machine 
 and three men, laid one hundred feet of pipe and covered it 
 with earth in the first five minutes. The contractor found 
 that he could lay the pipe for about ten dollars a mile, for 
 which he was to receive a hundred dollars. 
 
 Nothing would now content the contractor but Cornell's 
 going to Baltimore and superintending the working of the 
 machine which he had invented ; and as he made an advan- 
 
ORIGIN OF THE ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH. 127 
 
 tageous offer, Cornell agreed to go. Upon conversing with 
 Professor Morse, and inspecting the pipe that was to be used, 
 he predicted failure, and endeavored to convince the Profes- 
 sor that the pipe would not answer. Morse clung to the 
 child of his brain, and the work was begun. The pipe was 
 laid with great rapidity, and it was not until Mr. Cornell had 
 ploughed in ten miles of pipe, nearly all the way from Balti- 
 more to the Relay House, that Morse was satisfied messages 
 could not be transmitted through it. But, as our French 
 friends say, " The eyes of the universe were upon him," and 
 he shrank from the comments of the press upon the waste of 
 the public money in an experiment so prolonged. The ready 
 Cornell quickly relieved him from this embarrassment. He 
 shouted to his men one day : 
 
 " Hurry up, boys . Start the team liyely ! We must 
 reach the Eelay House before we leave off to-night." 
 
 Cornell, who was guiding the machine, directed it so that 
 it caught under a rock, and in a moment it was smashed to 
 pieces. The newspapers lamented the catastrophe, and con- 
 doled with the inventor upon the delay which it would cause. 
 Another kind of pipe was tried, and failed. The whole of 
 that year was consumed in such experiments. At last, when 
 but seven thousand dollars of the appropriation was left, and 
 Professor Morse was almost in despair, he gave up the exe- 
 cution of the work to Mr. Cornell, who forthwith, with the 
 Professor's approval, abandoned the pipe system, and set up 
 the telegraphic wire upon poles, employing an insulator and 
 a relay magnet of his own invention. 
 
 On the first of May, 1843, the first message was sent ; and 
 although every part of the apparatus worked imperfectly, 
 and sometimes would not work at all, the line was sufficiently 
 successful to establish the electric telegraph as a permanent 
 addition to the possessions of man. No one more constantly 
 
128 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 \ 
 
 studied its defects than Ezra Cornell; for, from this time 
 forward, it became his business to construct telegraphic lines. 
 After a long struggle with the early difficulties mechanical, 
 scientific, pecuniary he systematized the business so that 
 it became profitable. Like most contractors, he occasionally 
 received part of his compensation for constructing a line in 
 stock of the company owning it ; and when the great rise in 
 the value of telegraphic stock occurred, some years ago, he 
 found himself a very rich man. 
 
 Many years elapsed before the invention was of much 
 advantage to Mr. Morse. Rival inventors entered the field, 
 and rival companies spoiled the business. It was not until 
 the consolidation of most of the companies into two or three, 
 that the business of transmitting messages by telegraph was 
 very profitable to any one. During the last few years, the 
 inventor has been enriched ; but I presume there are at least 
 fifty persons now living who, without having contributed an 
 idea to the invention, have made more money by it than the 
 inventor. 
 
 What an astounding development the business has attaiaed 
 in the United States ! We have one company, the capital 
 $tock of which is forty-one millions of dollars, and the 
 receipts during the year 1869, seven millions and a half, of 
 which more than two millions and a half was profit. This 
 company has 121,595 miles of wire, 3,469 stations, 2,607 
 instruments for reading by sound, 1,334 recording instru- 
 -. ments, and 22,000 magnetic battery-cups. It transmitted, 
 last year, 40,000,000 messages, and an amount of newspaper 
 matter equal to about 30,000 columns. There is one tele- 
 graphic office in the city of New York in which 125 operators 
 are employed, and you may see them at work, if you step in 
 at the corner of Broadway and Liberty Street. It is not un- 
 usual for this office to receive and send 30,000 messages in 
 
ORIGIN OF THE ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH. 129 
 
 one day. There is a small sign-board, over one of the cable 
 offices, which, I should suppose, Mr. Morse could never read 
 without emotion. It is this : 
 
 " Telegraphic messages sent to all parts of Europe, Asia 
 and Africa." 
 
JAEBD SPAEKS. 
 
 FROM THE CARPENTER'S BENCH TO THE PRESIDENCY OF HARVARD 
 
 COLLEGE. 
 
 I TELL you again, boys, that you may all be as learned as 
 you wish, even though you have no rich father to send you 
 to college. The history of the late Dr. Jared Sparks, Presi- 
 dent of Harvard University, and editor of the works of 
 Washington and Franklin, is another illustration of this 
 truth. 
 
 He was a Connecticut boy, born as long ago as 1789, 
 and as poor as any boy that reads this book. He earned 
 his living as soon as he was strong enough to wield a hoe 
 or drive a plough-horse, by working on a rough, stony Con- 
 necticut farm ; and when he had grown to be a pretty stout 
 lad, he was occasionally employed in a saw-mill of the 
 neighborhood. When the time came for him to learn a 
 business, he apprenticed himself to a carpenter ; and he 
 worked diligently at this trade for two years. When he 
 was twenty years of age, he was still hammering, planing, 
 and mortising as a carpenter's apprentice. 
 
 But during all this time, whether working on a farm, or 
 in the saw-mill, or in the carpenter's shop, he spent his lei- 
 sure hours in reading and study. He had a most extraor- 
 dinary thirst for knowledge. The clergyman of the town, 
 observing his studious habits, spoke to him about his books, 
 and, finding him intent on getting knowledge, offered to 
 
132 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 give him some regular instruction in mathematics, and 
 advised him to study Latin. The youth joyfully accepted 
 this offer ; but with that fine, manly spirit that distinguishes 
 the stock from which he sprang, he compensated the minis- 
 ter by shingling his barn for him. With all his studying, 
 however, he had no expectation of ever being anything but 
 an honest Yankee carpenter, until he was a young man of 
 nearly twenty. A circumstance then occurred which opened 
 the way for him to a college education. 
 
 He was sitting, one day, in the chimney corner of his 
 clerical instructor's house, so intensely engaged in study 
 as to be unconscious of all else. The clergyman, as it hap- 
 pened, had a visitor that day, the minister of an adjacent 
 town, and the two gentlemen conversed together for some 
 time in the same apartment. Afterwards, being in another 
 room, they had a conversation together which determined 
 the whole future career of the silent and absorbed young 
 carpenter. Dr. Sparks used to relate this conversation him- 
 self, and one of his friends has recently put it on record in 
 the "Historical Magazine." 
 
 " Did you notice the young man in the other room with 
 his books ? " asked the clergyman in whose house the collo- 
 quy occurred. 
 
 "Yes," said the other. 
 
 "He is a very remarkable young man," continued the cler- 
 gyman ; "he has a great thirst for knowledge, and ought to 
 be helped to obtain a liberal education. I have promised to 
 give him two months' instruction, and hope to interest the 
 neighboring clergy to do as much for him."' 
 
 " Most certainly I will help him," said the other minister, 
 who was himself a great lover of knowledge ; " and I will 
 try to do better for him than to give him tuition at my own 
 house. I am acquainted with the trustees of Exeter Acad- 
 
JABED SPARKS. 133 
 
 emy, in New Hampshire, where there is a provision for 
 worthy scholars who may be unable to pay their expenses, 
 and I think I can get him a place there." 
 
 This Exeter Academy was founded in 1778 by two noble 
 brothers, John and Samuel Phillips. Among those who have 
 been educated there, in part, we find the names of Daniel 
 Webster, Lewis Cass, Levi Woodbury, Benjamin F. Butler, 
 Alexander Everett, Edward Everett, and George Bancroft. 
 To this list we must add the name of Jared Sparks ; for the 
 friendly interposition of this good clergyman procured for 
 him a scholarship in the academy at Exeter, which entitled 
 him to his board and tuition. 
 
 Jared Sparks was a happy young man when this intelli- 
 gence reached him, but his difficulties were not yet over. 
 Readers must not forget how very poor and frugal people 
 were fifty years ago in Connecticut. This apprentice had 
 scarcely a dollar in the world, and his time was not yet out. 
 His master, however, fully sympathizing with his love of 
 knowledge, gave him his liberty without any compensation, 
 and nothing remained but for him to pack his trunk and 
 go to school. But Exeter was one hundred and fifty miles 
 distant. 
 
 " How can you manage to get to Exeter ? " asked the cler 
 gyman who had procured him the scholarship. 
 
 The reader may ask, Why did not the clergyman just put 
 his hand into his pocket and pay. the young man's fare by 
 the stage ? To which I reply, that a Connecticut minister, 
 in 1809, was a man who had to bring up a large family, 
 respectably, upon five or six hundred dollars a year, or less. 
 Such a man has not twenty dollars to spare. 
 
 " If it were not for my trunk," replied the student, " I 
 should walk." 
 
 The minister replied in the spirit of one who said, w Sil- 
 
134 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 ver and gold have I none, but such as I have I give unto 
 you." 
 
 " Within a few weeks," said he, "I shall make a journey 
 to Boston" (which is far on the way to Exeter) , " and if you 
 can get along till that time, I will tie your trunk to the axle- 
 tree of my chaise, and bring it to you." 
 
 The young man gladly consented to this arrangement, and, 
 a few days after, he bade good-by to his friends, and, espe- 
 cially, to his two benefactors, slung his bundle over his back, 
 and set off upon his long tramp. 
 
 He reached Exeter in safety. The school gave him his 
 food and instruction, and he earned his clothes and his books 
 by teaching school in the vacations. It so chanced that three 
 young men, destined to distinction as American historians, 
 were all at this school at the same time, George Bancroft, 
 Jared Sparks, and J. G. Palfrey, the historian of New Eng- 
 land. After two years of most faithful study, Jared Sparks 
 had completed the academical course and was ready to enter 
 college. 
 
 He was as poor as ever, and the expenses of a residence 
 at Harvard University amounted, at that time, to about four 
 hundred dollars a year. But, all this time, although he had 
 not saved any money, he had been accumulating character 
 and reputation. A virtuous young man, who is trying hard 
 to educate himself, finds friends everywhere. On this occa- 
 sion, the President of Harvard, the benevolent Dr. Kirkland, 
 who had been told the history of young Sparks, stepped 
 forward and gave him a helping hand. He procured for 
 him a " scholarship " in the University, which entitled him 
 to his tuition, and part of the cost of his board. Thus 
 sided, he ventured, when twenty-two years of age, to enter 
 college, and, during the vacations, earned the rest of his 
 expenses by teaching school. Generally he taught in district 
 
JARED SPARKS. 135 
 
 schools of the neighborhood, but once he went as far as 
 Maryland, and taught awhile in an academy there. It was 
 during the war of 1812 that he taught in Maryland, and he 
 was there when the British landed and invaded the State. 
 All the men being called to arms, he, too, shouldered a 
 musket, and served in the militia until the enemy had with- 
 drawn. Returning to college, he completed his studies, 
 and graduated with high distinction in 1815, being then 
 twenty-six years of age. 
 
 So far, so good. He had worked his way, with the assist- 
 ance of generous friends, through college, and now he was 
 to choose what he would do with his knowledge. It is a 
 
 o 
 
 beautiful arrangement of things in the United States that a 
 poor young man, who wishes to educate himself, can only 
 earn the means of doing it by helping to educate others ; 
 and when even he has gone through college, if he desires to 
 study for a profession, still he is obliged to teach in order to 
 live until he is ready to practise his profession. Jared 
 Sparks had resolved to study for the ministry, and he did so 
 for the space of four years, during which he performed labor 
 enough for two ordinary men. After teaching a while in a 
 boys' school, he was appointed tutor in Harvard College. 
 Soon after, he was engaged to edit the " North American 
 Review," which he did for two years, with general approval. 
 It was not till 1819, when he was thirty years of age, that 
 his theological studies were completed, and he was ordained 
 a Unitarian minister. Thus, it required ten years to transfer 
 this young man from the carpenter's shop to the pulpit. 
 Having reached the pulpit, he found its labors unsuited to 
 his bodily constitution, and therefore, after preaching for 
 four years in Baltimore, he resigned his charge, and spent 
 the whole of the rest of his long life in instructing his coun- 
 trymen by means of printed books. 
 
136 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 Six hundred thousand volumes, bearing his name on the 
 title-page, have been sold in the United States during the 
 last forty years. 
 
 He became an author while yet a pastor, having published 
 some theological works. Returning to Boston, he purchased 
 the "North American Review," edited it for many years, and 
 wrote for its pages more than fifty articles. It was Jared 
 Sparks who gathered up and gave to the world, in twelve 
 precious volumes, the writings of George Washington. It 
 was Jared Sparks who collected the widely scattered letters 
 and works of Benjamin Franklin, and published them hi ten 
 volumes. The Diplomatic Correspondence of the United 
 States during the period of the Revolution, gathered patiently 
 in the archives of France, England, Germany, and the United 
 States, was published by him in seventeen volumes. Four 
 interesting volumes of letters, addressed to General Washing- 
 ton, were edited by this indefatigable man. He also wrote, 
 or caused to be written, thirty or forty small volumes of 
 American biography, designed for general circulation. 
 
 These arduous and useful labors resulted in placing Dr. 
 Sparks at his ease in pecuniary matters. Every dollar that 
 friends had advanced him at school or college he repaid, 
 principal and interest, and he was always most ready to 
 assist young men who were striving for an education against 
 adverse circumstances. As President of Harvard Uni- 
 versity, he favored a mild and confiding system of govern- 
 ment. One of his friends has related the following anecdote 
 of him, as President of the college : 
 
 " One of the scholars in the institution made a noise some- 
 what derisive to one of the tutors, as he was coming out 
 from recitation. The tutor stated the case to the Faculty, 
 and gave the names of several who, if not guilty, he thought 
 might know who was. These young men were summoned 
 
JAKED SPARKS. 137 
 
 before the President, who was requested to ask them, one 
 by one, if they made the noise, or who made it? Dr. 
 Sparks addressed them, when they came before him, in sub- 
 stance as follows : , 
 
 " ' I have been requested by the Faculty to ask you if you made, 
 or know who made, the disturbance at the close of your recent 
 recitation. I have stated to you their request, but if you know who 
 made the noise, I do not intend to ask you to tell.' 
 
 " They answered, one after another ; some did not know ; some 
 said they knew, but did not tell. Finally, one was called forward 
 who said : 
 
 " ' I did it myself ; I know I ought not to have done it ; I am 
 sorry that I did it ; I hardly know why I did it ; yes, I should say 
 it was because I did not like the tutor, as I thought he had not 
 used me fairly in some of my recitations.' 
 
 President Sparks told the Faculty that he ought rather to be 
 commended than punished ; but the tutors outvoted the others, and 
 he was suspended. Dr. Sparks wrote a note to his father, saying 
 that he considered it no dishonor, as young men did not often have 
 such an opportunity to show themselves so frank and noble." 
 
 Dr. Sparks died at the age of seventy-seven, leaving his 
 only son a student at the college to which he owed his own 
 education. He was a kind and happy old man. We have 
 had in the United States many literary men more brilliant and 
 famous ; but, I venture to predict, not one to whom posterity 
 will be so much indebted as Jared Sparks, who, in his 
 twentieth year, was a carpenter's apprentice. 
 
HISTORY OF THE SEWING-MACHINE. 
 
 IN Cornhill, Boston, thirty years ago, there was a shop for 
 the manufacture and repair of nautical instruments and phil- 
 osophical apparatus, kept by Ari Davis/ Mr. Davis was a 
 very ingenious mechanic, who had invented a successful 
 dovetailing machine, much spoken of at the time, when 
 inventions were not as numerous as they are now. Being 
 thus a noted man in his calling, he gave way to the foible of 
 affecting an oddity of dress and deportment. It pleased him 
 to say extravagant and nonsensical things, and to go about 
 singing, and to attract attention by unusual garments. Nev- 
 ertheless, being a really skilful mechanic, he was frequently 
 consulted by the inventors and improvers of machinery, to 
 whom he sometimes gave a valuable suggestion. 
 
 In the year 1839, two men in Boston one a mechanic, and 
 the other a capitalist were striving to produce a knitting- 
 machine, which proved to be a task beyond their strength. 
 When the inventor was at his wit's end, his capitalist brought 
 the machine to the shop of Ari Davis, to see if that eccentric 
 genius could suggest the solution of the difficulty, and make 
 the machine work. The shop, resolving itself into a com- 
 mittee of the whole, gathered about the knitting-machine and 
 its proprietor, and were listening to an explanation of its 
 principle, when Davis, in his wild, extravagant way, broke 
 in with these words : " What are you bothering yourselves 
 with a knitting-machine for ? Why don't you make a sew- 
 ing-machine ? " 
 
140 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 " I wish I could," said the capitalist ; " but it can't be 
 done." 
 
 "O, yes it can," said Davis; "I can make a sewing- 
 machine myself." 
 
 "Well," said the other, ff you do it, Davis, and I '11 insure 
 you an independent fortune." 
 
 There the conversation dropped, and it was never resumed. 
 The boastful remark of the master of the shop was considered 
 merely one of his sallies of affected extravagance, as it really 
 was ; and the response of the capitalist to it was uttered 
 without a thought of producing an effect. Nor did it pro- 
 duce any effect upon the person to whom it was addressed. 
 Davis never attempted to construct a sewing-machine. 
 
 Among the workmen who stood by and listened to this 
 conversation was a young man from the country, a new hand, 
 named Elias Howe, then twenty years old. The person 
 whom we have named the capitalist, a well-dressed and fine- 
 looking man, somewhat consequential in his manners, was 
 an imposing figure in the eyes of this youth, new to city 
 ways ; and he was much impressed with the emphatic assur- 
 ance that a fortune was in store for the man who should 
 invent a sewing-machine. He was the more struck with it, 
 because he had already amused himself with inventing some 
 slight improvements, and recently he had caught from Davis 
 the habit of meditating new devices. The spirit of invention, 
 as all mechanics know, is exceedingly contagious. One man 
 in a shop who invents something that proves successful, will 
 give the mania to half his companions, and the very appren- 
 tices will be tinkering over a device after their day's work is 
 done. There were other reasons, also, why a conversation 
 so- trifling and accidental should have strongly impressed 
 itself upon the mind of this particular youth. Before that 
 day, the idea of sewing by the aid of a machine had never 
 occurred to him. 
 
HISTORY OF THE SEWING-MACHINE. 141 
 
 ELIAS HOWE, the inventor of the sewing-machine, was 
 born in 1819, at Spencer, in Massachusetts, where his father 
 was a farmer and miller. There was a grist-mill, a saw-mill, 
 and a shingle-machine on the place ; but all of them together, 
 with the aid of a farm, yielded but a slender revenue for a 
 man blessed with eight children. It was a custom in that 
 neighborhood, as in New England generally, forty years ago, 
 for families to carry on some kind of manufacture at which 
 children could assist. At six years of age, Elias Howe 
 worked with his brothers and sisters at sticking the wire 
 teeth into strips of leather for " cards," used in the manufac- 
 ture of cotton. As soon as he was old enough, he assisted 
 upon the farm and in the mills, attending the district school 
 in the winter months. He is now of opinion, that it was the 
 rude and simple mills belonging to his father, which gave 
 his mind its bent toward machinery ; but he cannot remem- 
 ber that this bent was very decided, nor that he watched the 
 operation of the mills with much attention to the mechanical 
 principles involved. He was a careless, play-loving boy, 
 and the first eleven years of his life passed without an event 
 worth recording. At eleven, he went to "live out" with a 
 farmer of the neighborhood, intending to remain until he was 
 twenty-one. A kind of inherited lameness rendered the hard 
 work of a farmer's boy distressing to him, and after trying 
 it for a year, he returned to his father's house, and resumed 
 his place in the mills, where he continued until he was six- 
 teen. 
 
 One of his young friends, returning from Lowell about this 
 time, gave him such a pleasing description of that famous 
 town, that he was on fire to go thither. In 1835, with his 
 parents' reluctant consent, he went to Lowell, and obtained 
 a learner's place in a large manufactory of cotton machinery, 
 where he remained until the crash of 1837 closed the mills 
 
142 TKIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 of Lowell, ard sent him adrift, a seeker after work. He 
 went to Cambridge, under the shadow of venerable Harvard. 
 He found employment there in a large machine-shop, and 
 was set at work upon the new hemp-carding machinery 
 invented by Professor Treadwell. His cousin, Nathaniel P. 
 Banks, since Speaker of the House of Eepresentatives and 
 Major-General, worked in the same shop and boarded in the 
 same house with him. After working a few months at Cam- 
 bridge, Elias Howe found employment more congenial in 
 Boston, at the shop of Ari Davis, where the conversation 
 occurred which we have just related. 
 
 Judging merely by appearances, no one would have pitched 
 upon him as the person likely to make one of the revolution- 
 izing inventions of the age. Undersized, curly-headed, and 
 exceedingly fond of his joke, he was at twenty more a boy 
 than a man. Nor was he very proficient in his trade, nor 
 inclined to put forth extra exertion. Steady labor was 
 always irksome to him ; and frequently, owing to the consti- 
 tutional weakness to which we have alluded, it was painful. 
 He was not the person to seize an idea with avidity, and 
 work it out with the passionate devotion of a Watt or a 
 Goodyear. The only immediate effect upon him of the con- 
 versation in the shop of Mr. Davis was to induce a habit of 
 reflecting upon the art bf sewing, watching the process as 
 performed by hand, and wondering whether it was within the 
 compass of the mechanic arts to do it by machinery. His 
 uppermost thought, in those years, was, What a waste of 
 power to employ the ponderous human arm, and all the intri- 
 cate machinery of the fingers, in performing an operation so 
 simple, and for which a robin's strength would sufiice ! Why 
 not draw twelve threads through at once, or fifty? And 
 sometimes, while visiting a shop where army and navy cloth- 
 ing was made, he would look at the heaps of unsewed gar- 
 
HISTOHY OF THE SEWING-MACHINE. 143 
 
 ments, all cut alike, all requiring the same stitch, the same 
 number of stitches, and the same kind of seam, and say to 
 himself, " What a pity this cannot be done by machinery 1 
 It is the very work for a machine to do." Such thoughts, 
 however, only flitted through his mind now and then ; he 
 was still far from any serious attempt to construct a machine 
 for sewing up the blue trousers. 
 
 At twenty-one, being still a journeyman machinist, (Barn- 
 ing nine dollars a week, he married; and, in time, children 
 came with inconvenient frequency. Nine dollars is a fixed- 
 quantity, or, rather, it was then; and the addition of three 
 little mouths to be fed from it, and three little backs to be 
 clothed by it, converted the vivacious father into a thought- 
 ful and plodding citizen. His day's labor at this time, 
 when he was upon heavy work, was so fatiguing to him, 
 that, on reaching his home, he would sometimes be too 
 exhausted to eat, and he would go to bed, longing, as we 
 have heard him say, "to lie in bed for ever and ever." It 
 was the pressure of poverty and this extreme fatigue, that 
 caused him, about the year 1843, to set about the work of 
 inventing the machine which, he had heard four years 
 before, would be "an independent fortune" to the inventor. 
 Then it was that he caught the inventor's mania, which 
 gives its victims no rest and no peace till they have accom- 
 plished the work to which they have abandoned themselves. 
 
 He wasted many months on a false scent. When he 
 began to experiment, his only thought was to invent a 
 machine which should do what he saw his wife doing when 
 she sewed. He took it for granted that sewing must be 
 that, and his first device was a needle pointed at both ends, 
 with the eye in the middle, that should work up and down 
 through the cloth, and carry the thread through it at each 
 thrust. Hundreds of hours, by night and day, he brooded 
 
144 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 over this conception, and cut many a basket of chips in the 
 endeavor to make something that would work such a needle 
 so as to form the common stitch. He could not do it. 
 One day, in 1844, the thought flashed upon him, Is it nec- 
 essary that a machine should imitate the performance of the 
 hand? May there not be another stitch? This was the 
 crisis of the invention. The idea of using two threads, and 
 forming a stitch by the aid of a shuttle and a curved needle, 
 with the eye near the point, soon occurred to him, and he 
 felt that he had invented a sewing-machine. It was in the 
 month of October, 1844, that he was able to convince him- 
 self, by a rough model of wood and wire, that such a 
 machine as he had projected would sew. 
 
 At this time he had ceased to be a journeyman mechanic. 
 His father had removed to Cambridge to establish a machine 
 for cutting palm-leaf into strips for hats, a machine 
 invented by a brother of the elder Howe. Father and son 
 were living in the same house, into the garret of which the 
 son had put a lathe and a few - machinists' tools, and was 
 doing a little work on his own account. His ardor in the 
 work of invention robbed him, however, of many hours that 
 might have been employed, his friends thought, to better 
 advantage by the father of a family. He was extremely 
 poor, and his father had lost his palm-leaf machine by a fire. 
 With an invention in his head that has since given him 
 more than two hundred thousand dollars in a single year, 
 and which is now yielding a profit to more than one firm 
 of a thousand dollars a day, he could scarcely provide for 
 his little family the necessaries of life. Nor could his inven- 
 tion be tested, except by making a machine of steel and 
 iron, with the exactness and finish of a clock. At the pres- 
 ent time, with a machine before him for a model, a good 
 mechanic could not, with his ordinary tools, construct a 
 
HISTORY OF THE SEWING-MACHINE. 145 
 
 sewing-machine in less than two months, nor at a less 
 expense th/m three hundred dollars. Elias Howe had only 
 his model in his head, and he had not money enough to pay 
 for the raw material requisite for one machine. 
 
 There was living then at Cambridge a young friend and 
 schoolmate of the inventor, named George Fisher, a coal 
 and wood merchant, who had recently inherited some prop- 
 erty, and was not disinclined to speculate with some of it. 
 The two friends had been in the habit of conversing 
 together upon the project of the sewing-machine. When 
 the inventor had reached his final conception, in the fall of 
 1844, he succeeded in convincing George Fisher of its feasi- 
 bility, which led to a partnership between them for bring- 
 ing the invention into use. The terms of this partnership 
 were these : George Fisher was to receive into his house 
 Elias Howe and his family, board them while Elias was 
 making the machine, give up his garret for a workshop, 
 and provide money for material and tools to the extent of 
 five hundred dollars ; in return for which, he was to become 
 the proprietor of one half the patent, if the machine proved 
 to be worth patenting. Early in December, 1844, Elias 
 Howe moved into the house of George Fisher, set up his 
 shop in the garret, gathered materials about him, and went 
 to work. It was a very small, low garret, but it sufficed for 
 one zealous, brooding workman, who did not wish for gos- 
 siping visitors. 
 
 It is strange how the great things come about in this 
 world. This George Fisher, by whose timely aid such an 
 inestimable boon was conferred upon womankind, was led 
 into the enterprise as much by good nature as by expecta- 
 tion of profit, and it was his easy acquisition of his money 
 that made it easy for him to risk it. So far as we know, 
 neither of the partners indulged in any dream of beuevo- 
 
146 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 lence. Howe wanted to invent a sewing-machine to deliver 
 himself from that painful daily toil, and Fisher was inclined 
 to aid an old friend, and not disinclined to own a share in 
 a valuable patent. The greatest doers of good have usually 
 proceeded in the same homely spirit. Thus Shakespeare 
 wrote, thus Columbus sailed, thus Watt invented, thus New- 
 ton discovered. It seems, too, that George Fisher was 
 Elias Howe's only convert. "I believe," testified Fisher, 
 in one of the great sewing-machine suits, " I was the only 
 one of his neighbors and friends in Cambridge that had any 
 confidence in the success of the invention. He was gen- 
 erally looked upon as very visionary in undertaking any- 
 thing of the kind, and I was thought very foolish in assist- 
 ing him." It is the old story. 
 
 All the winter of 1844-45 Mr. Howe worked at his 
 machine. His conception of what he intended to produce 
 was so clear and complete, that he was little delayed by 
 failures, but worked on with almost as much certainty and 
 steadiness as though he had a model before him. In April, 
 he sewed a seam by his machine. By the middle of May, 
 1845, he had completed his work. In July, he sewed by 
 his machine all the seams of two suits of woollen clothes, 
 one suit for Mr. Fisher and the other for himself, the sew- 
 ing of both of which outlasted the cloth. This first of all 
 sewing-machines, after crossing the ocean many times, and 
 figuring as a dumb but irrefutable witness in many a court, 
 may still be seen at Mr. Howe's office in Broadway, where, 
 within these few weeks, it has sewed seams in cloth at 
 the rate of three hundred stitches a minute. It is agreed 
 by all disinterested persons (Professor Renwick among 
 others) who have examined this machine, that Elias Howe, 
 in making it, carried the invention of the sewing-machine 
 farther on towards its complete and final utility, than any 
 
HISTORY OF THE SEWING-MACHINE. 147 
 
 other inventor has ever brought a first-rate invention at the 
 first trial. It is a little thing, that first machine, which goes 
 into a box of the capacity of about a cubic foot and a half. 
 Every contrivance in it has been since improved, and new 
 devices have been added ; but no successful sewing- 
 machine has ever been made, of all the seven hundred thou- 
 sand now in existence, which does not contain some of the 
 essential devices of this first attempt. We make this asser- 
 tion without hesitation. or reserve, because it is, we believe, 
 the one point upon which all the great makers are agreed. 
 Judicial decisions have repeatedly affirmed it. 
 
 Like all the other great inventors, Mr. Howe found that, 
 when he had completed his machine, his difficulties had but 
 begun. After he had brought the machine to the point of 
 making a few stitches, he went to Boston one day to get a 
 tailor to come to Cambridge and arrange some cloth for sew- 
 ing, and give his opinion as to the quality of the work done 
 by the machine. The comrades of the man to whom he first 
 applied, dissuaded him from going, alleging that a sewing- 
 machine, if it worked well, must necessarily reduce the 
 whole fraternity of tailors to beggary ; and this proved to 
 be the unchangeable conviction of the tailors for the next 
 ten years. It is probable that the machines first made would 
 have been destroyed by violence, but for another fixed 
 opinion of the tailors, which was, that no machine could be 
 made that would really answer the purpose. It seems 
 strange now, that the tailors of Boston could have persisted 
 so long in such an opinion ; for Mr. Howe, a few weeks 
 after he had finished his first model, gave them an oppor- 
 tunity to see what it could do. He placed his little engine 
 in one of the rooms of the Quincy Hall Clothing Manufac- 
 tory, and, seating himself before it, offered to sew up any 
 seam that might be brought to him. One unbelieving tailor 
 
148 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE, 
 
 after another, brought a garment, and saw its long seams 
 sewed perfectly, at the rate of two hundred and fifty stitches 
 a minute ; which was about seven times as fast as the work 
 could be done by hand. For two weeks he sat there daily, 
 and sewed up seams for all who chose to bring them to him. 
 He amused himself, .at intervals, in executing rows of orna- 
 mental stitching, and he showed the strength of the machine 
 by sewing the thick, plaited skirts of frock-coats to the 
 bodies. At last, he challenged five of the swiftest seam- 
 stresses in the establishment to sew a race with the machine. 
 Ten seams of equal length were prepared for sewing, five of 
 which were laid by the machine, and the other five given to 
 the girls. The gentleman who held the watch, and who was 
 to decide the wager, testified, upon oath, that the five girls 
 were the fastest sewers that could be found, and that they 
 sewed "as fast as they could, much faster than they were 
 in the habit of sewing," faster than they could have kept 
 on for one hour. Nevertheless, Mr. Howe finished his five 
 seams a little sooner than the girls finished their five ; and 
 the umpire, who was himself a tailor, has sworn, that " the 
 work done on the machine was the neatest and strongest." 
 
 Upon reading testimony like this, we wonder that manu- 
 facturers did not instantly set Mr. Howe at work making 
 sewing-machines. Not one was ordered. Not a tailor 
 encouraged him by word or deed. Some objected that the 
 machine did not make the whole garment. Others dreaded 
 to encounter the fierce opposition of the journeymen. Others 
 really thought it would beggar all hand-sewers, and refrained 
 from using it on principle. Others admitted the utility of 
 the machine and the excellence of the work done by it ; but, 
 said they, M We are doing well as we are, and fear to make 
 such a change." The great cost of the machine was a most 
 serious obstacle to its introduction. A year or two since, 
 
HISTORY OF THE SEWING MACHINE. 149 
 
 Mr. Howe caused a copy of his first machine to be made 
 for exhibition in his window, and it cost him two hundred 
 and fifty dollars. In 1845, he could not have furnished his 
 machine for less than five hundred dollars, and a large 
 clothier or shirt-maker would have required thirty or forty 
 of them. 
 
 The inventor was not disheartened by the result of the 
 introduction of the machine. The next thing was to get the 
 invention patented, and Mr. Howe again shut himself up in 
 George Fisher's garret for three or four mouths, and made 
 another machine for deposit in the Patent Office. In the 
 spring of 1846, there being no prospect of revenue from the 
 invention, he engaged as " engineer " upon one of the rail- 
 roads terminating at Boston, and " drove " a locomotive daily 
 for some weeks ; but the labor proved too much for his 
 strength, and he was compelled to give it up. Late in the 
 summer, the model and the documents being ready for the 
 Patent Office, the two associates treated themselves to a 
 journey to Washington, where the wonderful machine was 
 exhibited at a fair, with no results except to amuse the 
 crowd. September 10, 1846, Jfche patent was issued, and 
 soon after the young men returned to Cambridge. 
 
 George Fisher was now totally discouraged. He had 
 maintained the inventor and his family for many months ; 
 he had provided the money for the tools and material for 
 two machines ; he had paid the expense of getting the 
 patent, and of the journey to Washington ; he had advanced 
 in all about two thousand dollars ; and he saw not the 
 remotest probability of the invention becoming profitable. 
 Elias Howe moved back, to his father's house, and George 
 Fisher considered his advances in the light of a dead loss. 
 "I had lost confidence," he has since testified, "in the 
 machined ever paying anything." 
 
150 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 But mothers and inventors do not give up their offspring 
 so. America having rejected the invention, Mr. Howe 
 resolved to offer it to England. In October, 1846, his 
 brother, Amasa B. Howe, with the assistance of their father, 
 took passage in the steerage of a sailing packet, and con- 
 veyed one of the machines to London. An Englishman was 
 the first manufacturer who had faith enough in the Ameri- 
 can sewing-machine to invest money in it. In Cheapside, 
 Amasa Howe came upon the shop of William Thomas, who 
 employed, according to hte own account, five thousand per- 
 sons in the manufacture of corsets, umbrellas, valises, carpet 
 bags, and shoes. William Thomas examined and approved 
 the machine. Necessity, as poor Eichard remarks, cannot 
 make a good bargain ; but the bargain which it made on this 
 occasion, through the agency of Amasa B. Howe, was sig- 
 nally bad. He sold to* Mr. Thomas, for two hundred and 
 fifty pounds sterling, the machine he had brought with him, 
 and the right to use as many others in his own business as he 
 desired. There was also a verbal understanding that Mr. 
 Thomas was to patent the invention in England, and, if the 
 machine came into use there, he was to pay the inventor 
 three pounds on every machine sold. That was an excellent 
 day's work for William Thomas of Cheapside. The verbal 
 part of the bargain has never been carried out. He patented 
 the invention ; and ever since the machines began to be used, 
 all sewing-machines made in England, or imported into Eng- 
 land, have paid tribute to him at the rate of ten pounds or 
 less for each machine. Elias Howe is of opinion that the 
 investment of that two hundred and fifty pounds has yielded 
 a profit of one million dollars. Mr. Thomas further proposed 
 to engage the inventor to adapt the machine to the work 
 upon corsets, offering him the munificent stipend of three 
 pounds a week, and to defray the expense of workshop, 
 tools, and material. 
 
HISTORY OF THE SEWING-MACHINE. 151 
 
 Amasa B. Howe returned to Cambridge with this offer. 
 America being still insensible to the charms of the new 
 invention, and the two hundred and fifty pounds having been 
 immediately absorbed by the long-accumulating necessities 
 of the family, and there being no prospect of advantageous 
 employment at home, Elias Howe accepted the offer, and 
 both brothers set sail for London, February 5, 1847. Thej 
 went in the steerage, and cooked their own provisions. 
 William Thomas provided a shop and its requisites, and 
 even advanced money for the passage to England of the in- 
 ventor's family, who joined him soon, wife and three 
 children. After eight months of labor, the inventor suc- 
 ceeded in adopting his machine to the purposes of the stay- 
 maker ; and when this was done, the stay-maker apparently 
 desired to get rid of the inventor. He required him to do 
 the miscellaneous repairs, and took the tone with him which 
 the ignorant purse-holder, in all lands, is accustomed to hold 
 in his dealings with those to whom he pays wages. The 
 Yankee, of course, resented this behavior, and William 
 Thomas discharged Elias Howe from his employment. 
 
 To be a poor stranger, with a sick wife and three children 
 in America, is to be in a purgatory that is provided with a 
 practicable door into paradise. To be such a person in 
 London, is to be in a hell without visible outlet. 
 
 Since undertaking to write this little history of the sew- 
 ing-machine, we have gone over about thirty thousand pages 
 of printed testimony, taken in the numerous suits to which 
 sewing-machine patents have given rise. Of all these pages, 
 the most interesting are those from which we can gather the 
 history of Elias Howe during the next few months. From a 
 chance acquaintance, named Charles Inglis, a coach-maker, 
 who proved to be a true friend, he hired a small room for a 
 work-shop, in which, after borrowing a few tools, he began 
 
 10 
 
152 TRIUMPHS OP ENTERPRISE. 
 
 to construct his fourth sewing-machine. Long before it was 
 finished, he saw that he must reduce his expenses or leave 
 his machine unfinished. From three rooms, he removed his 
 family to one, and that a small one in the cheapest quarter 
 of Surrey. Nor did that economy suffice ; and he resolved 
 to send his family home while he could, and trust to the 
 machine in hand for the means to follow them. 
 
 "Before his wife left London," testifies Mr. Inglis, "he 
 had frequently borrowed money from me in sums of five 
 pounds, and requested me to -get him credit for provisions. 
 On the evening of Mrs. Howe's departure, the night was 
 very wet and stormy, and, her health being delicate, she 
 was unable to walk to the ship. He had no money to pay 
 the cab-hire, and he borrowed a few shillings from me to pay 
 it, which he repaid by pledging some of his clothing. Some 
 linen came home from his washerwoman for his wife and 
 children on the day of her departure. She could not take it 
 with her on account of not having money to pay the woman." 
 After the departure of his family, the solitary inventor was 
 still more severely pinched. w He has borrowed a shilling 
 from me," says Mr. Inglis, "for the purpose of buying beans, 
 which I saw him cook and eat in his own room." After 
 three or four months of labor, the machine was finished. It 
 was worth fifty pounds. The only customer he could find 
 for it was a working man of his acquaintance, who offered 
 five pounds for it, if he could have time to pay it in. The 
 inventor was obliged to accept this offer. The purchaser 
 gave his note for the five pounds, which Charles Inglis suc- 
 ceeded in selling to another mechanic for four pounds. To 
 pay his debts and his expenses home, Mr. Howe pawned his 
 precious first machine and his letters-patent. '< He drew a 
 hand-cart, with his baggage on it, to the ship, to save the 
 expense of cartage " ; and again he took passage in the steer- 
 
HISTORY OF THE SEWING-MACHINE. 153 
 
 age, along with his English friend, Charles Inglis. His 
 brother Amasa had long before returned to America. 
 
 In April, 1849, Elias Howe landed in New York, after 
 an absence of two years from the country, with half a crown 
 in his pocket. Four years had nearly elapsed since the 
 completion of his first machine, and this small piece of silver 
 was the net result of his labors upon that invention. He and 
 his friend went to one of the cheapest emigrant boarding- 
 houses, and Elias Howe sought employment in the machine- 
 shops, which luckily he found without delay. The news 
 reached him soon that his wife was dying of consumption, 
 but he had not the money for a journey to Cambridge. In 
 a few days, however, he received ten dollars from his father, 
 and he was thus enabled to reach his wife's bedside, and 
 receive her last breath. He had no clothes except those he 
 daily wore, and he was obliged to borrow a suit from his 
 brother-in-law in which to appear at the funeral. It was 
 remarked by his old friends, that his natural gayety of dis- 
 position was quite quenched by the severity of his recent 
 trials. He was extremely downcast and worn. He looked 
 like a man just out after a long and agonizing sickness. 
 Soon came the intelligence that the ship, in which he had 
 embarked all his household goods, had been wrecked off Cape 
 Cod, and was a total loss. 
 
 But now he was among friends, who hastened to relieve 
 his immediate necessities, and who took care of his children. 
 He was soon at work ; not, indeed, at his beloved machine, 
 but at work which his friends considered much more 
 rational. He was again a journeyman machinist at weekly 
 wages. 
 
 As nature never bestows two eminent gifts upon the same 
 individual, the man who makes a great invention is seldom 
 the man who prevails upon the public to use it. Every Watt 
 
154 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 needs his Boulton. Neither George Fisher nor Elias Howe 
 possessed the executive force requisite for so difficult a piece 
 of work as the introduction of a machine which then cost 
 two or three hundred dollars to make, and upon which a 
 purchaser had to take lessons as upon the piano, and which 
 the whole body of tailors regarded with dread, aversion, or 
 contempt. It was reserved, therefore, for other men to edu- 
 cate the people into availing themselves of this exquisite, 
 labor-saving apparatus. 
 
 Upon his return home, after his residence in London, 
 Elias Howe discovered, much to his surprise, that the sew- 
 ing-machine had become celebrated, though its inventor 
 appeared forgotten. Several ingenious mechanics, who had 
 only heard or read of a machine for sewing, and others who 
 had seen the Howe machine, had turned their attention to 
 inventing in the same direction, or to improving upon Mr. 
 Howe's devices. We have before us three hand-bills, which 
 show that, in 1849, a sewing-machine was carried about in 
 Western New York, and exhibited as a curiosity, at a charge 
 of twelve and a half cents for admission. At Ithaca, the fol- 
 lowing bill was posted about in May, 1849, a few weeks after 
 the inventor's return from Europe : 
 
 A GREAT 
 
 CURIOSITY ! ! 
 
 The 
 
 YANKEE SEWING-MACHINE 
 is now 
 
 EXHIBITING 
 AT THIS PLACE 
 
 from 
 
 8 A. M. tO 5 P. M. 
 
 The public were informed by other bills, that this won- 
 derful machine could make a pair of pantaloons in forty min- 
 
HISTOEY OP THE SEWING-MACHINE. 155 
 
 utes, and do the work of six hands. The people of Ithaca, 
 it appears, attended the exhibition in great numbers, and 
 many ladies carried home specimens of the sewing, which 
 they preserved as curiosities. But this was not all. Some 
 machinists and others in Boston, and elsewhere, were making 
 sewing-machines in a rude, imperfect manner, several of 
 which had been sold to manufacturers, and were in daily 
 operation. 
 
 The inventor, upon inspecting these crude products, saw 
 that they all contained the devices which he had first com- 
 bined and patented. Poor as he was, he was not disposed 
 to submit to this infringement, and he began forthwith to 
 prepare for war against the infringers. When he entered 
 upon this litigation, he was a journeyman machinist i his 
 machine and his letters-patent were in pawn, three thousand 
 miles away, and the patience, if not the purses, of his friends 
 was exhausted. When the contest ended, a leading branch 
 of the national industry was tributary to him. The first 
 step was to get back from England that first machine, 
 and the document issued from the Patent Office. In 
 the course of the summer of 1849, he contrived to raise 
 the hundred dollars requisite for their deliverance ; and 
 the Hon. Anson Burlingame, who was going to London, 
 kindly undertook to hunt them up in the wilderness of 
 Surrey. He found them, and sent them home in the autumn 
 of the same year. The inventor wrote polite letters to the 
 infringers, warning them to desist, and offering to sell them 
 licenses to continue. All but one of them, it appears, were 
 disposed to acknowledge his rights, and to accept his pro- 
 posal. That one induced the others to resist, and nothing 
 remained but a resort to the courts. Assisted by his father, 
 the inventor began a suit ; but he was soon made aware that 
 justice is a commodity much beyond the means of a journey - 
 
156 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 man mechanic. He tried to reawaken the faith of George 
 Fisher, and induce him to furnish the sinews of war ; but 
 George Fisher had had enough of the sewing-machine ; he 
 would sell his half of the patent for what it had cost him ; 
 but he would advance no more money. Mr. Howe then 
 looked about for some one who would buy George Fisher's 
 share. He found three men who agreed to do this, and 
 tried to do it, but could not raise the money. 
 
 The person to whom he was finally indebted for the means 
 of securing his rights, was George W. Bliss, of Massachusetts, 
 who was prevailed upon to buy Mr. Fisher's share of the 
 patent, and to advance the money needful for carrying on 
 the suits. He did this only as a speculation. He thought 
 there might be something in this new notion of sewing by 
 machinery, and, if there was, the machine must become 
 universal, and yield large revenues. This might be ; he 
 even thought it probable ; still, so weak was his faith, that 
 he consented to embark in the enterprise only on condition 
 of his being secured against loss by a mortgage on the farm 
 of the inventor's father. This generous parent who is 
 still living in Cambridge came once more to the rescue, 
 and thus secured his son's fortune. The suits went on ; but, 
 as they went on at the usual pace of patent cases, the 
 inventor had abundant leisure to push his invention out of 
 doors. 
 
 Towards the close of 1850, we find him in New York, 
 superintending the construction of fourteen sewing-machines 
 at a shop in Gold Street, adjoining which he had a small 
 office, furnished with a five-dollar desk and two fifty-cent 
 chairs. One of those machines was exhibited at the fair in 
 Castle Garden in October, 1851, where, for the space of two 
 weeks, it sewed gaiters, pantaloons, and other work. Sev- 
 eral of them were sold to a boot-maker in Worcester, who 
 
HISTORY OF THE SEWING-MACHINE. 157 
 
 used them for sewing boot-legs, with perfect success. Two 
 or three others were daily operated in Broadway, to the 
 satisfaction of the purchasers. We can say, therefore, of 
 Elias Howe, that besides inventing the sewing-machine, and 
 besides making the first machine with his own hands, he 
 brought his invention to the point of its successful employ- 
 ment in manufacture. 
 
 While he was thus engaged, events occurred which 
 seriously threatened to rob him of all the benefit of his inven- 
 tion. The infringers of his patent were not men of largo 
 means nor of extraordinary energy, and they had no w case " 
 whatever. There was the machine which Elias Howe had 
 made in 1845, there were his letters-patent, and all the 
 sewing-machines then known to be in existence were essen- 
 tially the same as his. But in August, 1 850, a man became 
 involved with the infringers who was of very different mettle 
 from those steady-going Yankees, and capable of .carrying 
 on a much more vigorous warfare than they. This was that 
 Isaac Merritt Singer, who has since so often astonished the 
 Fifth Avenue, and is now amusing Paris, by the oddity and 
 splendor of his equipages. He was then a poor and baffled 
 adventurer. He had been an actor and manager of a theatre, 
 and had tried his hand at various enterprises, none of which 
 had been very successful. In 1850, he invented (as he has 
 since sworn) a carving-machine, and having obtained an 
 order for one from Boston, he made it, and took it himself 
 to Boston. In the shop in which he placed his carving- 
 machine, he saw, for the first time, several sewing-machines, 
 brought there for repairs. Orson C. Phelps, the proprietor 
 of the shop (Mr. Singer says) , showed him one of these 
 machines, and said to him that, if it could be improved so 
 as to render it capable of doing a greater variety of work, 
 " it would be a good thing " ; and if Mr. Singer could accom- 
 
158 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 plish this, he could get more money from sewing than from 
 carving-machines. Whereupon, Mr. Singer contemplated 
 the apparatus, and at night meditated upon it, with so much 
 success, that he was able in the morning to exhibit a drawing 
 of an improved machine. This sketch (so he swears) con- 
 tained three original devices, which, to this day, form part of 
 the sewing-machine made by the Singer Company. The 
 sketch being approved, the next thing was to construct a 
 model. Mr. Singer having no money, the purchaser of his 
 carving-machine agreed to advance fifty dollars for the pur- 
 pose ; upon which Mr. Singer flew at the work like a tiger. 
 "I worked," he says, "day and night, sleeping but three 
 or four hours out of the twenty-four, and eating generally 
 but once a day, as I knew I must get a machine made for 
 forty dollars, or not get it at all. The machine was com- 
 pleted the night of the eleventh day from the day it was 
 commenced. About nine o'clock that evening, we got the 
 parts of the machine together, and commenced trying it. 
 The first attempt to sew was unsuccessful ; and the workmen, 
 who were tired out with almost unremitting work, left me, 
 one by one, intimating that it was a failure. I continued 
 trying the machine, with Zieber " (who furnished the forty 
 dollars) "to hold the lamp for me, but, in the nervous con- 
 dition to which I had been reduced by incessant work and 
 anxiety, was unsuccessful in getting the machine to sew 
 tight stitches. About midnight, I started with Zieber to the 
 hotel where I boarded. Upon the way, we sat down on a 
 pile of boards, and Zieber asked me if I had noticed that the 
 loose loops of thread on the upper side of the cloth came 
 from the needle. It then flashed upon me that I had for- 
 gotten to adjust the tension upon the needle thread. Zieber 
 and I went back to the shop. I adjusted the tension, tried 
 the machine, and sewed five stitches perfectly, when the 
 
HISTORY OF THE SEWING-MACHINE.' 159 
 
 thread broke. The perfection of those stitches satisfied me 
 that the machine was a success, and I stopped work, went 
 to the hotel, and had a sound sleep. By three o'clock the 
 next day, I had the machine finished, and started with it to 
 New York, where I employed Mr. Charles M. Keller to get 
 out a patent for it." 
 
 Such was the introduction to the sewing-machine of the 
 man whose energy and audacity forced the machine upon an 
 unbelieving public. He borrowed a little money, and form- 
 ing a partnership with his Boston patron and the machinist 
 in whose shop he had made his model, began the manufac- 
 ture of the machines. Great and numerous were the diffi- 
 culties which arose in his path, but, one by one, he overcame 
 them all. He advertised, he travelled, he sent out agents, 
 he procured the insertion of articles in the newspapers, he 
 exhibited the machine at fairs in town and country. Several 
 times he was upon the point of failure, but in the nick ot 
 time something always happened to save him, and year after 
 year he advanced toward an assured success. We well 
 remember his early efforts, when he had only the back part 
 of a small store in Broadway, and a little shop over a rail- 
 road depot ; and we remember also the general incredulity 
 with regard to the value of the machine with which his name 
 was identified. Even after hearing him explain it at great 
 length, we were very far from expecting to see him, one 
 day, riding to the Central Park in a French diligence, drawn 
 by five horses, paid for by the sewing-machine. Still less 
 did we anticipate that, within fourteen years, the Singer 
 Company would be selling two thousand sewing-machines a 
 week, at a profit of a thousand dollars a day. He was the 
 true pioneer of the mere business of selling the machines, 
 and made it easier for all his subsequent competitors. 
 
 Mr. Singer had not been long in the business before he 
 
160 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 was reminded by Elias Howe that he was infringing his 
 patent of 1846. The adventurer threw all his energy and 
 his growing means into the contest against the original inven- 
 tor. The great object of the infringing interest was to dis- 
 cover an earlier inventor than Elias Howe. For this purpose, 
 the patents records of England, France, 1 and the United 
 States were most diligently searched ; encyclopaedias were 
 examined ; and an attempt was even made to show that the 
 Chinese had possessed a sewing-machine for ages. Nothing, 
 however, was discovered that would have made a plausible 
 defence, until Mr. Singer joined the infringers. He ascer- 
 tained that a New York mechanic, named Walter Hunt, who 
 had a small machine-shop up a narrow alley in Abingdon 
 Square, had made, or tried to make, a sewing-machine as 
 early as 1832. Walter Hunt was found. He had attempted 
 to invent a sewing-machine in 1832 ; and, what was more 
 important, he had hit upon the shuttle as the means of form- 
 ing the stitch. He said, too, that he had made a machine 
 which did sew a little, but very imperfectly, and, after 
 wearying himself with fruitless experiments, he had thrown 
 aside. Parts of this machine, after a great deal of trouble, 
 were actually found among a quantity of rubbish in the 
 garret of a house in Gold Street. Here was a discovery ! 
 Could Mr. Hunt take these parts, all rusty and broken, into 
 his shop, and complete the machine as originally made, so 
 that it would sew ? He thought he could. Urged on by the 
 indefatigable Singer, supplied by him with money, and stim- 
 ulated by the prospect of fortune, Walter Hunt tried hard 
 and long to put his machine together ; and when he found 
 that he could not, he employed an ingenious inventor to aid 
 him in the work. But their united ingenuity was unequal to 
 the performance of an impossibility ; the machine could not 
 be got to sew a seam. The fragments found in the garret 
 
HISTORY OF THE SEWING MACHINE . 161 
 
 did indeed demonstrate that, in 1832, Walter Hunt had been 
 upon the track of the invention ; but they also proved that 
 he had given up the chase in despair, long before coming up 
 with the game. 
 
 And this the courts have uniformly held. In the year 
 1854, after long trial, Judge Sprague, of Massachusetts, 
 decided that " the plaintiff's patent is valid, and the defend- 
 ant's machine is an infringement." The plaintiff was Elias 
 Howe ; the real infringer, I. M. Singer. Judge Sprague 
 further observed, that "there is no evidence in this case, 
 that leaves a shadow of doubt that, for all the benefit con- 
 ferred upon the public by the introduction of a sewing- 
 machine, the public are indebted to Mr. Howe." 
 
 This decision was made when nine years had elapsed since 
 the completion of the first machine, and when eight years of 
 the term of the first patent had expired. The patent, how- 
 ever, even then, was so little productive, that the inventor, 
 embarrassed as he was, was able, upon the death of his part- 
 ner, Mr. Bliss, to buy his share of it. He thus became, for 
 the first time, the sole proprietor of his patent ; and this 
 occurred just when it was about to yield a princely revenue. 
 From a few hundreds a year, his income rapidly increased, 
 until it went beyond two hundred thousand dollars. He 
 received in all not much less than two millions. As Mr. 
 Howe devoted twenty-seven years of his life to the invention 
 and development of the sewing-machine, the public com- 
 pensated him at the rate of seventy-five thousand dollars a 
 year. It cost him, however, immense sums to defend hia 
 rights, and he was very far from being the richest of the 
 sewing-machine kings. He had the inconvenient reputation 
 of being worth four millions, which was exactly ten times 
 the value of his estate. 
 
 So much for the inventor. In speaking of the improvers 
 
162 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 of the sewing-machine, we know not how to be cautious 
 enough ; for scarcely anything can be said on that branch of 
 the subject which some one has not an interest to deny. We, 
 the other day, looked over the testimony taken in one of the 
 suits which Messrs. Grover and Baker have had to sustain 
 in defence of their well-known " stitch." The testimony in 
 that single case fills two immense volumes, containing three 
 thousand five hundred and seventy-five pages. At the 
 Wheeler and Wilson establishment in Broadway, there is a 
 library of similar volumes, resembling in appearance a quan- 
 tity of London and Paris Directories. The Singer Company 
 are equally blessed with sewing-machine literature, and Mr. 
 Howe had chests full of it. We learn from these volumes 
 that there is no useful device connected with the apparatus, 
 the invention of which is not claimed by more than one per- 
 son. And no wonder. If to-day the ingenious reader could 
 invent the slightest real improvement to the sewing-machine, 
 so real that a machine having it would possess an obvious 
 advantage over all machines that had it not, and he should 
 sell the right to use that improvement at so low a rate as 
 fifty cents for each machine, he would find himself in the 
 enjoyment of an income of one hundred thousand dollars per 
 annum. The consequence is, that the number of patents 
 already issued in the United States for sewing-machines, and 
 improvements in sewing-machines, is about nine hundred ! 
 Perhaps thirty of these patents are valuable ; but the great 
 improvements are not more than ten in number, and most of 
 those were made in the infancy of the machine. 
 
 By general consent of the able men who are now conduct- 
 ing the sewing-machine business, the highest place in the list 
 of improvers is assigned to Allen B. Wilson. This most in- 
 genious gentleman completed a practical sewing-machine 
 early in 1849, without ever having seen one, and without 
 
HISTORY OF THE SEWING-MACHINE. 163 
 
 having any knowledge of the devices of Elias Howe, 
 who was then buried alive in London. Mr. Wilson, at 
 the time, was a very young journeyman cabinet-maker, 
 living in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. After that desperate 
 contest with difficulty which inventors usually experience, 
 he procured a patent for his machine, improved it, and 
 formed a connection with a young carriage-maker of his ac- 
 quaintance, Nathaniel Wheeler, who had some capital ; and 
 thus was founded the great and famous house of Wheeler 
 and Wilson, who are now making sewing-ma chines at the rate 
 of about fifty-three thousand a year. These gentlemen were 
 honest enough in opposing the claim of Elias Howe, since 
 Mr. Wilson knew himself to be an original inventor, and he 
 employed devices not to be found in Mr. Howe's machine. 
 Instead of a shuttle, he used a "rotating hook," a device 
 as ingenious as any in mechanism. The" four-motion feed," 
 too, was another of Mr. Wilson's masterly inventions, suffi- 
 cient of itself to stamp him as an inventor of genius. Noth- 
 ing, therefore, was more natural than that Messrs. Wheeler 
 and Wilson should regard Mr. Howe's charge of infringe- 
 ment with astonishment and indignation, and join in the con- 
 test against him. 
 
 Messrs. Grover and Baker were early in the field. William 
 O. Grover was a Boston tailor, whose attention was directed 
 to the sewing-machine soon after Mr. Howe's return from 
 Europe. It was he who, after numberless trials, invented 
 the exquisite devices by which the famous "Grover and 
 Baker stitch " is formed, a stitch which, for some pur- 
 poses, is of unequalled utility. 
 
 When, by the decision of the courts, all the makers had 
 become tributary to Elias Howe, paying him a certain sum 
 for each machine made, then a most violent warfare broke 
 out among the leading houses; Singer aud Company, 
 
164 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 Wheeler and Wilson, Grover and Baker, each accusing the 
 others of infringement. At Albany, in 1856, these causes 
 were to be tried ; and parties concerned saw before them a 
 good three months' work in cou*t. By a lucky chance, one 
 member of this happy family had not entirely lost his temper, 
 and was still in some degree capable of using his intellect. 
 It occurred to this wise head, that, no matter who invented 
 first, or who second, there were then assembled at Albany 
 the men who, among them, held patents which controlled the 
 whole business of making sewing-machines; and that it 
 would be infinitely better for them to combine and 'control, 
 than to contend with and devour one another. They all 
 came into this opinion ; and thus was formed the " Combina- 
 tion," of which such terrible things are uttered by the sur- 
 reptitious makers of sewing-machines. Elias Howe, who was 
 the best-tempered man in the world, and only too easy in 
 matters pecuniary, had the complaisance to join this confed- 
 eration, only insisting that at least twenty-four licenses 
 should be issued by it, so as to prevent the manufacture from 
 sinking into a monopoly. By the terms of this agreement, 
 Mr. Howe was to receive five dollars upon every machine 
 sold in the United States, and one dollar upon each one 
 exported. The other parties agreed to sell licenses to use 
 their various devices, or any of them, at the rate of fifteen 
 dollars for each machine ; but no license was to be granted 
 without the consent of all the parties. It was further agreed 
 that part of the license fees received should be reserved as 
 a fund for the prosecution of infringers. This agreement 
 remained unchanged until the renewal of Mr. Howe's patent 
 in 1860, when his fee was reduced from five dollars to one 
 dollar, and that of the Combination from fifteen dollars to 
 seven. That is to say, every sewing-machine honestly 
 made paid Elias Howe one dollar ; and every sewing-machine 
 
HISTORY OP THE SEWING-MACHINE. 165 
 
 made, which included any device or devices the patent for 
 which is held by any other member of the Combination, 
 paid seven dollars to the Combination. Of this seven dol- 
 lars, Mr. Howe received his one, and the other six went 
 into the fund for the defence of the patents against infringers. 
 For example, take the Wilcox and Gibbs machine, the 
 only one, as far as we know, which was not invented by a 
 Yankee, or in Yankee land. Twelve years ago, Mr. James 
 E. A. Gibbs, a Virginia farmer, saw in the " Scientific Ameri- 
 can " a picture of a sewing-machine. Being a man of a 
 decided turn for mechanics, he examined the drawing with 
 great attention ; but, as it exhibited only the upper part of 
 the machine, he could form no idea of the contrivance under- 
 neath by which the stitch was formed. The working of the 
 apparatus was, however, very plain, down to the moment 
 when the needle perforates the cloth ; and he fell into the 
 habit of musing upon the course of events after the point of 
 the needle was lost to view. The result of his cogitations, 
 aided by infinite whittling, was the ingenious little revolving 
 hook which constitutes the peculiarity of the Wilcox and 
 Gibbs machine. But that machine, besides employing Mr. 
 Gibbs' invention, uses the feeding apparatus of Allen B. 
 Wilson, and the eye-pointed needle of Elias Howe. It is 
 therefore tributary to the Combination, and pays it seven 
 dollars for each machine. A similar history could be related 
 of the " Florence," the " Weed," the " Elliptic," the " Empire," 
 and others. All these machines are worth examination by 
 those who are curious in mechanical devices. The " Florence," 
 for example (so called because it is made in Florence, 
 Massachusetts), has a beautiful contrivance, by means of 
 which the operator can sew backwards as well as forwards. 
 The shuttle of this machine is so constructed as to make its 
 own " tension "; or, in other words, the shuttle holds the 
 thread as tightly or as loosely as the seam requires. 
 
166 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 The business of making and selling sewing-machines, 
 which was not fairly started before 1856, has attained a truly 
 wonderful development. Twenty-seven firms or companies 
 have been engaged in it at one time, a few of which have 
 lately withdrawn, leaving about twenty still in the business. 
 One of these has twenty-four stores of its own in the large 
 cities of the world, besides a much larger number of local 
 agents. Another boasts that there are thirty-nine cities on 
 this planet where its machines can be bought at all times. 
 We can ourselves bear witness, that, in such cities as Cin- 
 cinnati, St. Louis, and Chicago, each of the well-known 
 makers has a spacious and elegant establishment, with all the 
 appurtenances to which we are accustomed in New York. 
 In Australia, one of our New York companies, at least, has 
 an establishment of its own. 
 
 Gentlemen best acquainted with the business, compute 
 that the whole number of sewing-machines made in the 
 United States up to the close of the year 1866 was about 
 seven hundred and fifty thousand. During the quarter end- 
 ing December 10, 1866, the number of machines made by 
 licensed companies, as reported by them to Elias Howe, was 
 52,219 ! This is above the rate of two hundred thousand 
 per annum. Mr. Howe was of opinion that about half as 
 many more were produced by unlicensed makers, including 
 the Yankees who, driven from the United States by the Com- 
 bination, have set up their factories on the other side of the 
 Canada line. At present we are producing the astounding 
 and almost incredible number of two thousand sewing- 
 machines every working-day, at an average cost to the pur- 
 chaser of sixty dollars each. The world, however, is a very 
 large place, and America still supplies it with most of its 
 sewing-machines. When we visit single establishments in 
 New England, which employ five hundred machines ; when 
 
HISTORY OP THE SEWING-MACHINE. 167 
 
 we learn that the shirt-makers of one city, Troy, are now run- 
 ning more than five thousand of them ; and when we con- 
 sider that there are in the United States seven millions of 
 families, most of whom mean to have a sewing-machine 
 when they can afford it, we can believe that even so many as 
 two thousand a day may be absorbed. About one fifth of 
 all the machines made in the United States are exported to 
 foreign countries. Wheeler and Wilson, Grover and Baker, 
 Singer and Company, Wilcox and Gibbs, the Florence, and 
 others, are familiar names in St. Petersburg, Paris, London, 
 Berlin, Vienna, Madrid, Melbourne, Mexico, Kio Janeiro, 
 Havana, Valparaiso, Vancouver's Island, and wherever else 
 in the world many stitches are taken. Foreigners can no 
 more make a Yankee sewing-machine than they can make a 
 Yankee clock. They have not the machinery as curious 
 as the machine itself by which each part of the apparatus 
 is made at the minimum of expense, and with perfect cer- 
 tainty of excellence. To found a sewing-machine manufac- 
 tory in Europe, which could compete with those of America, 
 would involve an expenditure of two millions of dollars, and 
 the expatriation of several of our American foremen. It is 
 only upon a great scale that the machines can be made well 
 or profitably. 
 
 By means of the various improvements and attachments, 
 the sewing-machine now performs nearly all that the needle 
 ever did. It seams, hems, tucks, binds, stitches, quilts, 
 gathers, fells, braids, embroiders, and makes button-holes. 
 It is used in the manufacture of every garment worn by man, 
 woman, or child. Firemen's caps, the engine-hose which 
 firemen use, sole-leather trunks, harness, carriage curtains 
 and linings, buffalo-robes, horse-blankets, horse-collars, pow- 
 der-flasks, mail-bags, sails, awnings, whips, saddles, cor- 
 sets, hats, caps, valises, pocket-books, trusses, suspenders, 
 
 11 
 
1(58 TRIUMPHS OF ENTEKPRISE. 
 
 are among the articles made by its assistance; but it is 
 employed, quite as usefully, in making kid gloves, 
 parasols, and the most delicate articles of ladies' attire. 
 Some of our readers, perhaps, witnessed the show, in 
 New York, of the shoes, gaiters, and ladies' boots made for 
 the Paris Exhibition. They were of all degrees of deli- 
 cacy, from the stout Balmoral to the bpot of kid, satin, or 
 velvet; and every kind of stitch had been employed in 
 their manufacture. Some of the stitches were so fine that 
 they could not be distinctly seen without a magnifying-glass, 
 and some were as coarse and strong as those of men's boots. 
 The special wonder of this display was that every stitch in 
 every one of those beautiful shoes was executed by the 
 machine. Mr. E. C. Burt, who made this splendid contri- 
 bution to the Exhibition, assured us, that all this variety of 
 elegant and durable work was performed on the sewing- 
 machine. Upon ordinary boots and shoes, the machine has 
 long been employed ; but it is only recently that any one 
 has attempted to apply it to the manufacture of those dainty 
 things which ladies wear upon their feet when they go forth 
 armed, cap-a-pie, for conquest. A similar change has oc- 
 curred in other branches of manufacture. As operators have 
 increased in skill, and as the special capabilities of the differ- 
 ent machines have been better understood, finer kinds of 
 work have been done upon them than used to be thought 
 possible. Some young ladies have developed a kind of 
 genius for the sewing-machine. The apparatus has fasci- 
 nated them ; they execute marvels upon it, as Gottschalk did 
 upon the piano. One of the most recent applications of the 
 machine is to the sewing of straw hats and bonnets. A Yan- 
 kee, in Connecticut, has invented attachments by which the 
 finest braids are sewn into bonnets of any form. 
 
 Attempts have been made to estimate the value, in money, 
 
HISTORY OF THE SEWING-MACHINE. 169 
 
 of the sewing-machine to the people of the United States. 
 Professor Renwick, who has made the machine a particular 
 study, expressed the opinion, nine years ago, on oath, that 
 the saving in labor then amounted to nineteen millions of 
 dollars per annum. Messrs. Wheeler and Wilson have pub- 
 lished an estimate, which indicates that the total value of the 
 labor performed by the sewing-machine, in 1863, was 'three 
 hundred and forty-two millions of dollars. A good hand- 
 sewer averages thirty-five stitches per minute ; the fastest 
 machines on some kinds of work, perform three thousand a 
 minute. There are in a good shirt 20,620 stitches ; what a 
 saving to do them at a machine speed ! We glean from the 
 volumes of testimony before us a few similar facts. The 
 stitching of a man's hat by hand requires fifteen minutes ; 
 by machine, one minute. One girl can do the sewing by 
 machine of as many boys' caps as ten men can do by hand. 
 In fine clothing for men, the saving is, of course, not so 
 great. Messrs. Brooks Brothers, of New York, say that the 
 making of a first-rate overcoat by hand requires six days' 
 steady sewing ; by machine, three days. In the general 
 work of a tailor, the machine saves a journeyman about four 
 hours in twelve t Carriage trimmers testify that one machine 
 and three hands are equivalent to eleven hands. In the truss 
 and bandage business, which is one of very great extent and 
 importance, one machine is equal to ten women. In the 
 manufacture of bags for flour, salt, and meal, of which the 
 city of New York produces two millions of dollars' worth 
 per annum, a machine does the work of nine girls. In mere 
 hemming, on a machine fitted expressly for the purpose, one 
 machine does the work of fifty girls. 
 
 Yet where is the woman who can say that her sewing is 
 less a tax upon her time and strength than it was before the 
 sewing -machine came in? But this is not the machine's 
 
170 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 fault ; it is the fault of human nature. As soon as lovely 
 woman discovers that she can set ten stitches in the time that 
 one used to require, a fury seizes her to put ten times as 
 many stitches in every garment as she formerly did. Tailors 
 and seamstresses, not content with sewing the seams of gar- 
 ments, must needs cover them with figures executed by 
 " stitching." And thus it is that man never is, but always 
 to be, blest. If with one part of his brain he invents a labor- 
 saving apparatus, the other lobes immediately create as 
 much new labor as the apparatus saves. But it is this chase 
 of Desire, after Ability, which keeps the world moving, 
 and tends always to equalize the lot of men. The sewing- 
 machine is one of the means by which the industrious laborer 
 is as well clad as any millionnaire need be, and by which 
 working girls are enabled safely to gratify their woman's 
 instinct of decoration. 
 
 Elias Howe could justly claim that it was his invention 
 which enabled the United States to put and keep a million 
 men in the field during the war. Those countless garments, 
 tents, haversacks, cartridge-boxes, shoes, blankets, sails, 
 how could they have been produced without the sewing- 
 machine ? One day during the war, at three o'clock in the 
 afternoon, an order from the War Department reached New 
 York, by telegraph, for fifty thousand sand-bags, such as are 
 used in field-works. By two o'clock the next afternoon, the 
 bags had been made, packed, shipped, and started south- 
 ward. 
 
 In the early days of the sewing-machine, it was not sup- 
 posed that it would ever come into general use in families. 
 The great cost of the machine, and the supposed difficulty 
 of learning to use it, were considered fatal obstacles to its 
 general introduction into households. The price has now 
 been reduced to fifty-five dollars for the cheapest good 
 
HISTORY OP THE SEWING-MACHINE. 171 
 
 machines, and it has been found that an intelligent woman 
 can learn to sew with it in an hour. An average seamstress 
 becomes proficient in the use of it in a month. For some 
 time past, therefore, the great object of the celebrated 
 makers is to produce the best family machine. This is the 
 point of rivalry among them. 
 
 A lady who leaves her home, after a breakfast consulta- 
 tion with her husband, and goes forth to select a family sew- 
 ing-machine, has undertaken an expedition which promises 
 nothing but pleasure. The sewing-machine establishments 
 are numerous and splendid. She pauses before a magnifi- 
 cent marble store, with windows formed of single panes of 
 plate-glass, in one of which are sewing-machines, brilliant 
 with polished steel and silver plate and rosewood, and in 
 the others are beautiful garments covered with miraculous 
 stitching, executed by those pretty parlor ornaments. 
 Yielding to these allurements, she enters a grand saloon, 
 a hundred feet long, extending back to another street, and 
 covered with Wilton carpet, of better quality, probably, 
 than that which she treads in her own parlor. Perhaps 
 the walls and ceilings are frescoed ; and, if they are not, they 
 are richly papered and painted. Sewing-machines, in long- 
 rows, not too close together for convenient moving about, 
 agreeably dot the whole surface of the apartment, as far 
 as the eye can penetrate the gloom of the distance. Along 
 the wall, at the farther end of the room, she will dis- 
 cover, by and by, a row of enclosed desks, like those of 
 a bank, each desk being a small apartment, as elegant 
 and commodious as taste and money can make it. These 
 are for the dignitaries of the Company, the president, the 
 cashier, the general agent, the advertising clerk. Here 
 and there a young lady may be seen " operating " one of 
 the machines, in a graceful attitude, and with such perfect 
 
172 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 ease as to dispel the fears of a purchaser most distrustful 
 of her powers. The rapid and yet not noisy click of the 
 machines is cheering, and seems the appropriate music of 
 the place. And this grand hall is only one of many apart- 
 ments. The basement, and the cellar below the basement, 
 each as large as the store, are occupied as depositories, 
 repairing shops, packing rooms ; while in the story above 
 the store may be found superb rooms, wherein ladies who 
 have bought a machine receive instruction in the art of using 
 it, attending daily, if they choose, until they have become 
 proficients in hemming, sewing, braiding, making button- 
 holes, and in all the other varieties of needle-work. 
 
 The clerk who advances to wait upon the lady soon learns 
 her errand, and discovers her ignorance. Indeed, she 
 frankly avows her ignorance. She has come out, she art- 
 lessly says, in pursuit of knowledge. She desires to ascer- 
 tain which is the best sewing-machine in existence for family 
 use. Long practice has taught an intelligent and ambitious 
 young man how to deal with cases of this kind. He does, 
 in his inmost soul, believe that the sewing-machines made 
 by the company he serves are the very best in the world, 
 especially for family use. But he feels the delicacy of his 
 situation. "Of course, madam, we are interested parties, 
 and it would be no more than natural that we should repre- 
 sent our machines to be the best in the market. But it is 
 no part of the policy of our company to disparage those 
 made by our neighbors. We are on friendly terms with 
 them, and we are ready to admit that some of them do make 
 machines which, for some purposes, are excellent. But 
 when it comes to machines for family use, which is our spe- 
 cialty, why then, madam, we cannot hesitate. Upon that 
 point there can be but one opinion. Nevertheless, we do not 
 ask ladies to believe what we say ; we show them what our 
 
H1STOKY OF THE SEWING-MACHINE. 173 
 
 machine does, and let it speak for itself." Conciliated by 
 such modesty and candor, the lady watches with pleasure 
 and admiration while one dexterous young lady runs up a 
 seam, and another hems a sheet, and another does a little 
 quilting, and another makes a button-hole in half a minute. 
 The lady herself takes a seat at a machine, and is astonished 
 to find herself sewing at a rattling pace, " without any pre- 
 vious instruction." 
 
 She is convinced. She is perfectly satisfied. She sym- 
 pathizes with the tender compassion expressed by the clerk 
 for the great number of ladies who have been deluded into 
 buying other machines, which, after distracting a household 
 for many months, are now discarded and consigned to the 
 garret. " You see, madam, advertising can force a machine 
 on the market ; but, in the long run, real merit overcomes 
 all opposition." She assents with her whole soul to his prop- 
 osition. It accords with what she has observed of human 
 life. She has even made the remark herself. 
 
 The impulse is strong within her to buy one of these peer- 
 less machines on the spot, and she has not the slightest 
 doubt that she shall do so in the course of the day. But it 
 was agreed between her husband and herself, that she should 
 examine all before ' purchasing ; and so, in obedience to a 
 stern sense of duty, she resolves to go through the form 
 the mere form of looking at other machines. She feels 
 that she must be able to say that she has fulfilled her com- 
 pact. 
 
 In another spacious and elegant saloon, another accom- 
 plished clerk claims for another machine precisely the same 
 excellences, which other young ladies proceed to exhibit. 
 If she ventures timidly to intimate that she has been looking 
 at a machine elsewhere, the accomplished clerk knows well 
 how to proceed. He discourses at large upon the merits of all 
 
174 TRIUMPHS OF ENTEKPKISE. 
 
 the machines. He exhibits all the varieties of needles employed 
 in them, and expatiates upon the very complicated machinery 
 uesd to propel those needles. "Your own common-sense 
 must tell you, madam, that the simpler a piece of mechanism 
 is, the less liable it is to get out of order, and the more easily 
 it is worked by an inexperienced person. Now, madam, our 
 machine contains eleven pieces less than any other in the 
 market, and your own common-sense must tell you that 
 every piece added to a machine makes it more complicated, 
 and more easily disarranged. Don't misunderstand me, 
 madam ; I do not say that the machine you examined on the 
 other side of the street was not a very good one, in its day ; 
 but some people, you know, when they have a pretty good 
 thing, are satisfied, and don't keep up with the times. 
 However, we never speak ill of our neighbors. We simply 
 show what our machine is, and what it can do. Your own 
 common-sense must decide." 
 
 And so he goes on, until the lady shudders to think what 
 a narrow escape she has had from falling a victim to the 
 wiles of the brilliant young man who first entertained her. 
 By the time she has gone the rounds of the ten or twelve 
 sewing-machine establishments on Broadway, between Canal 
 Street and Union Square, she is in a state of mind to buy a 
 wheelbarrow, in order to end the agonizing struggle. 
 
 In truth, ladies, there is no such thing as an absolutely 
 and universally best sewing-machine. Each has its special 
 merits, which make it the best for some purposes. No 
 machine exists which will sew equally well the sole-leather 
 for a trunk and the cambric of a chemisette. The machine 
 that is best for a family of young children may not be 
 best for a family of grown daughters, who go to balls, 
 and want new cloaks every winter. The machine that is 
 best for a farmer's wife may not be the best for a fine lady 
 
HISTORY OF THE SEWING MACHINE. 175 
 
 of the city ; but though not the best, it is so good that she 
 could hardly be made to believe there could be a better. 
 We find, accordingly, that every lady believes firmly in 
 the sewing-machine which she is so fortunate as to pos- 
 sess. 
 
 It is but just to add, that all the well-known makers have 
 seized the truth, that the only way in which a business . per- 
 manently great can be created, is by serving the public with 
 systematic and scrupulous fidelity. Nothing can exceed the 
 care taken by them all, that no machine shall leave the factory 
 which shall not be, as long as it lasts, an advertisement for 
 the company whose name it bears. 
 
INVENTION OF CIRCULATING LIBRARIES. 
 
 I HAVE sometimes thought that a proper history of 
 the last century could be written without so much as 
 mentioning the name of Napoleon Bonaparte ; for nothing 
 is really worth recording as final history, except what 
 promotes the permanent welfare of man. Bonaparte 
 founded nothing, established nothing, suggested nothing, 
 which our race will not gladly dispense with, when we learn 
 how to make a better use of our energies than in destroying 
 one another. He was a tempest. He did not help France 
 out of her difficulties, nor make the future easier for her. 
 When he had passed away, the beautiful country which he 
 had dazzled and drained fell helpless into the hands of a 
 poor old man and a few old priests. To this day, there is 
 no hope for France, except in forgetting Bonaparte, and 
 extirpating nearly all that he left behind him. 
 
 But if the historian could pass by without mention that 
 incarnate tornado, I am sure that no enlightening, complete 
 history of the last two centuries could be written without 
 relating the origin of circulating libraries, humble as that 
 origin was, and only preserved from oblivion in the brief 
 memoirs of their inventor. Next to the district schools, a 
 good, self-sustaining circulating library is perhaps the most 
 beneficial institution which can exist in a town. It is useful 
 anywhere ; but in secluded country places, a good public 
 library makes the difference, in the long run, between mental 
 
178 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 life and mental darkness ; between the gloom of ignorance 
 and bigotry, and the cheerful light shed abroad by knowledge 
 and public spirit. 
 
 This invaluable institution we owe to the benevolence, 
 ingenuity, and practical wisdom of that great benefactor of 
 his species, Benjamin Franklin. In that part of his auto- 
 biography where he relates his adventures in London as a 
 journeyman printer, from his nineteenth to his twenty-first 
 year, the following passage occurs : 
 
 " While I lodged in Little Britain, I made an acquaintance with 
 one Wilcox, a bookseller, whose shop was next door. He had an 
 immense collection of second-hand books. Circulating libraries 
 were not then in use ; but we agreed that, on certain reasonable 
 terms, which I have now forgotten, I might take, read, and return 
 any of his books. This I esteemed a great advantage, and I made 
 as much use of it as I could." 
 
 In this passage we have, I think, the germ of the circulat- 
 ing library. 
 
 Six years passed. Franklin had returned to Philadelphia, 
 where he had set up in business as a printer, and established 
 his celebrated club, called the "Junto." At first this club met 
 in an ale-house ; but, after a while, one of the members lent 
 them a room, which he set apart for their exclusive use. In 
 their debates and conversations, the members often referred 
 to their books, which, however, being at home, could not be 
 produced at the opportune moment. One evening, Franklin 
 proposed that they should all bring their little stock of books 
 to this apartment, where they would be at the service of the 
 members at all times, and each would have the advantage of 
 a considerable library. The members consenting, the books 
 were brought, and arranged at one end of the room upon 
 shelves. The collection was not large, for the members were 
 
INVENTION OF CIRCULATING LIBK ARIES. 179 
 
 mostly young men, either journeymen, or just beginning 
 business, and books at that time 1731 were ponderous, 
 scarce, and high-priced. 
 
 The plan did not answer as well as Franklin hoped. 
 Some of the books were carelessly used and injured. The 
 owners were dissatisfied, and, at the end of a year, each 
 member took home his books, and so the collection was 
 broken up. 
 
 Franklin, who was all his life a student, missed them from 
 the club-room ; and he now conceived the project of founding 
 a permanent library for the benefit of the whole town, and 
 one from which books could be taken to the homes of the 
 subscribers. Philadelphia, at that time, contained about ten 
 thousand inhabitants, and among them there were few who 
 had much taste for reading. The project, therefore, was not 
 easy of accomplishment. It demanded all of Franklin's tact, 
 perseverance, and knowledge of mankind. 
 
 First, he tells us, he drew a sketch of the plan and rules, 
 and requested a conveyancer, a member of the club, to put 
 them in legal form to be subscribed, each signer engaging to 
 pay forty shillings down for the first purchase of books, and 
 ten shillings every year for the increase of the library. It 
 was with very great difficulty, and after many a weary tramp 
 about the town, and many an hour's persuasive talk, that he 
 obtained fifty subscribers. He lets us in to one of the secrets 
 of his success in an amusing passage, which the reader would 
 do well to remember the next time he has any public object 
 to promote. 
 
 " The objections and reluctances I met with, in soliciting 
 the subscriptions, made me soon feel the impropriety of 
 presenting one's self as the proposer of any useful project 
 that might be supposed to raise one's reputation in the 
 smallest degree above that of one's neighbors, when one has 
 
180 TKIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 need of their assistance to accomplish that project. I there- 
 fore put myself as much as I could out of sight, and stated 
 it as a scheme of a number of friends, who had requested 
 me to go about and propose it to such as they thought lovers 
 of reading. In this way my affair went on more smoothly, 
 and I ever after practised it on such occasions ; and, from 
 my frequent successes, can heartily recommend it. The 
 present little sacrifice of your vanity will afterwards be 
 amply repaid. If it remains a while uncertain to whom the 
 merit belongs, some one more vain than yourself may be 
 encouraged to claim it, and then even envy will be disposed 
 to do you justice, by plucking those assumed feathers, and 
 restoring them to their right owner." 
 
 Notwithstanding his good management, more than a year 
 elapsed before the money was collected, and the first parcel 
 of books sent for. When the books arrived, the solid 
 octavos and huge folios of the olden time, one of the sub- 
 scribers was appointed to take care of them, and to be in 
 attendance at a certain hour, once a week, to give them out. 
 The library was highly successful from the start. Donations 
 of books were frequently made. Governor Penn sent over 
 from England several valuable works. Libraries on the 
 same plan were soon formed in other places, to the manifest 
 advantage of the people. 
 
 "Reading," says Franklin, "became fashionable; and our 
 people, having no public amusements to divert their atten- 
 tion from study, became better acquainted with books ; and, 
 in a few years, were observed by strangers to be better 
 instructed and more intelligent than people of the same rank 
 generally are in other countries." 
 
 This library continued to flourish as long as Franklin 
 lived ; and during the very last year of his life, the large 
 brick building was erected for it near the State House, which 
 
INTENTION OF CIFCHLATING LIBRARIES. 181 
 
 still stands. The library then contained six thousand vol- 
 umes. It now numbers nearly one hundred thousand, and a 
 fund is forming for the erection of an edifice still more 
 extensive, elegant, and commodious. The great utility of 
 the library, however, was in demonstrating the fact, that such 
 an institution as a self-sustaining circulating library could 
 exist. A few years after, the Society Library of New York, 
 which is still flourishing, was established on precisely the 
 same principle ; and there is now scarcely a large town in 
 the civilized world which does not contain one. 
 
 The beauty of the principle is, that it works just as well 
 in a village library of five hundred volumes, as it does in 
 such great establishments as the public libraries of New 
 York and Boston. There is no need to wait for some rich 
 man to give a large sum of money, or for a town to vote an 
 annual appropriation. Hold a meeting; form a society; 
 invite gifts of books ; invite subscriptions of money ; elect 
 a librarian ; open the library ; and permit all to share its 
 benefits for a small annual charge, two dollars, three dol- 
 lars, five dollars, as may be thought best. By a good course 
 of lectures, a few hundred dollars can be raised every winter, 
 with which the library can be enriched with some glorious 
 boxes of books all at once. In a few years, a town will be 
 surprised to find itself able to erect a building for the library 
 and reading-room, and to employ one of its intelligent young 
 ladies as a permanent librarian. 
 
SOME OF THE WONDERS OF PITTSBUEG. 
 
 THERE are three cities, readily accessible to the tourist, 
 which are peculiar, Quebec, New Orleans, and Pittsburg; 
 and of these, Pittsburg is the most interesting by far. In 
 other towns the traveller can make up his list of lions, do 
 them in a few hours, and go away satisfied ; but here all is 
 curious or wonderful, site, environs, history, geology, 
 business, aspect, atmosphere, customs, everything. Pitts- 
 burg is a place to read up for, to unpack your trunk and 
 settle down at, to make excursions from, and to study as 
 you would study a group of sciences. To know Pittsburg 
 thoroughly, is a liberal education in "the kind of cul- 
 ture demanded by modern times." 
 
 On that low point of land, fringed now with steamboats 
 and covered with grimy houses, scarcely visible in the No- 
 vember fog and smoke, modern history began. It began on 
 an April day, one hundred and seventeen years ago, with the 
 first hostile act of the long war which secured North America 
 to our race, and gave final preeminence in Europe to the 
 Protestant powers. Bismarck's recent exploits do but con- 
 tinue the work begun in 1754, when a French captain seized 
 that point of land, and built Fort Duquesne upon it. From 
 the windows of the Monougahela House, which stands near 
 the site of the old fort, and within easy reach of the three 
 rivers, the whole geography of the country can be spelled 
 
 out on the sides of the steamboats. Here begins the Great 
 
 12 
 
184 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 West. We have reached the United States. Or, if it is 
 political economy that you would know, behold it in opera- 
 tion 1 Here it is, complete, illustrated, with errata in the 
 form of closed factories and workmen on the strike. What- 
 ever protection can do to force the growth of premature 
 enterprises has here been done, undone, and done again; 
 and here, too, may be seen the legitimate triumphs of skill, 
 fortitude, and patience, which the vagaries of legislation do 
 not destroy, nor the alteration of a decimal fraction at a cus- 
 tom-house impair. Brave and steadfast men have battled 
 nobly here with the substances that offer the greatest resist- 
 ance to our control, and which serve us best when subju- 
 gated ; and in the hills and valleys round about, nature has 
 stored those substances away with unequalled profusion. 
 Besides placing a thick layer of excellent bituminous coal 
 half-way up those winding heights ; besides accumulating 
 within them exhaustless supplies of iron; besides sinking 
 under them unfathomable wells of oil and salt water, nature 
 has coiled about their bases a system of navigable streams, 
 all of which form themselves into two rivers, the Alle- 
 ghany and Monongahela, and, at Pittsburg, unite to form 
 the Ohio, and give the city access to every port on earth. 
 It is chiefly at Pittsburg that the products of the Pennsylva- 
 nia hills and mountains are converted into wealth, and dis- 
 tributed over the world. The wonder is, not that Pittsburg 
 is an assemblage of flourishing towns of 250,000 inhabitants, 
 but that, placed at such a commanding point, it is not the 
 most flourishing and the most populous city in America. 
 
 This it might have been, perhaps, if the site had been ten 
 level square miles, instead of two, and those two surrounded 
 by steep hills, four hundred feet high, and by rivers a third 
 of a mile wide. It is curiously hemmed in, that small 
 triangle of low land upon which the city was originally built. 
 
SOME OF THE WONDEKS OF PITTSBURG. 185 
 
 A stranger, walking about the streets on a summer afternoon, 
 is haunted by the idea that a terrific thunder-storm is hang- 
 ing over the place. Every street appears to end in a huge 
 black cloud, and there is everywhere the ominous darkness 
 that creeps over the scene when a storm is approaching. 
 When the traveller has satisfied himself that the black clouds 
 are only the smoke-covered hills that rise from each of the 
 three rivers, still he catches himself occasionally quickening 
 his steps, so as to get back to his umbrella before the storm 
 bursts. During our first stroll about the town, some years 
 ago, we remained under this delusion for half an hour ; and 
 only recovered from it after observing that the old ladies 
 who sat knitting about the markets never stirred to get their 
 small stock of small wares under cover. 
 
 Pittsburg announces its peculiar character from afar off. 
 Those who approach it in the night see before them, first of 
 all, a black hill, in the side of which are round flaming fires 
 in a row, like so many fiery eyes. Then other black hills 
 loom dimly up, with other rows of fires half-way up their 
 sides ; and there are similar fiery dots in the gloom as far as 
 the eye can reach. This is wonderfully picturesque, and 
 excites the curiosity of the traveller to the highest point. 
 He thinks that Pittsburg must be at work behind those fires, 
 naked to the waist, with hairy chest and brawny arms, doing 
 tremendous things with molten iron, or forging huge masses 
 white-hot, amid showers of sparks. No such thing. These 
 rows of fires, of which scores can be counted from a favora- 
 ble point, are merely the chimneys of coke-ovens, quietly 
 doing their duty during the night, unattended. That duty 
 is to convert the waste coal-dust at the mouths of the mines, 
 where it has been accumulating fora century, into serviceable 
 coke. These are almost the only fires about Pittsburg that 
 are always burning, night and day, Sundays and holidays. 
 
186 TRIUMPHS OP ENTERPRISE. 
 
 The approach to the city by day is even more remarkable. 
 The railroad from Cincinnati, after crossing the Ohio sev- 
 eral miles below Pittsburg, has an arduous work to perform. 
 Its general design is to follow the course of the river ; but 
 as the river is always bending into the form of the letter S, 
 and carrying the hills with it, the railroad is continually div- 
 ing under the hills to make short cuts. This is unfavorable 
 to the improvement of the traveller's mind ; for the alterna- 
 tions from daylight to darkness are so frequent and sudden, 
 that he is apt, at length, to lay aside his book altogether, and 
 give himself up to the contemplation of the November drizzle. 
 This was our employment when the cars stopped opposite the 
 point for which nine nations have contended, France, Eng- 
 land, the United States, and the " Six Nations." Was there 
 ever such a dismal lookout anywhere else in this world ? Those 
 hills, once so beautifully rounded, and in such harmony with 
 the scene, have been cut down, sliced off, pierced, slanted, 
 zigzagged, built upon, built under, until almost every trace 
 of their former outline has been obliterated, without receiv- 
 ing from man's hand any atoning beauty. The town lies low, 
 as at the bottom of an excavation, just visible through the 
 mingled smoke and mist, and every object in it is black. 
 Smoke, smoke, smoke, everywhere smoke ! Smoke, with 
 the noise of the steam-hammer, and the spouting flame of 
 tall chimneys, that is all we perceive of Pittsburg from the 
 side of the hill opposite the site of Fort Duquesne. How 
 different the scene which the youthful Washington saw here , 
 a hundred and twenty years ago, when not a human dwelling 
 was near, and scarcely a white man lived beyond the Alle- 
 ghanies ! With his soldier's eye he marked the rushing 
 Alleghany, the tranquil Monongahela, the winding Ohio, and 
 the hills through which they flowed, only to report that the 
 point of land at the intersection was the very place, of all 
 
SOME OF THE WONDERS OF PITTSBURG. 187 
 
 others, for a fort. We have found better uses for it since. 
 But these better uses have played havoc with the striking 
 beauties of the landscape. 
 
 The two tributary rivers are spanned by many bridges, 
 light but strong, some of which are of great elegance. Over 
 one of them the train crosses the Monongahela, alive with 
 black barges and puffing tug-boats, and enters soon that 
 famous depot, the common centre of all the great railroads 
 meeting here. The West is paying back, with large interest, 
 the instruction and propulsion it once received from the 
 East. New York has no such depot as this, though it ; has 
 far more need of one than any Western city. We shall have 
 to go to school to the West erelong, and try to enlarge our 
 minds and methods, especially our methods of dealing with 
 that long-suffering creature, the Public. Many thousand 
 passengers are daily received, transferred, and distributed at 
 this extensive depot, replete with every convenience, with- 
 out loss of time, money, or temper. 
 
 The traveller arriving from the West is immediately 
 reminded that, at this point, the West terminates. Neither 
 the Western nor the Southern mind fully recognizes the 
 existence of any sum of money between five and ten cents, 
 and the Southern man considers it a proud distinction that 
 in his " section " there are no copper coins. In this depot, 
 on the contrary, boys can be found who charge seven cents 
 for a New York paper. In this depot there are hackmen 
 who demand the exact fare as by law established, and who 
 manifest some concern for the traveller's convenience and 
 comfort. Many other trifling circumstances denote that we 
 have reached a State where exactness and economy are 
 instinctive ; a State that is neither Eastern nor Western, 
 Northern nor Southern, but constitutes a class by itself, 
 PENNSYLVANIA, square, solid, plodding, careful, saving 
 
188 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 Pennsylvania. There is no affectation here of stuffing change 
 into the pocket without counting it. There is no one here 
 who does not know there are such sums of money as seven, 
 eight, and nine cents. Iron ore is not converted into steel 
 bars so easily that the people who do it are disposed to throw 
 away ever so small a fraction of the results of their labor. 
 On the other hand, these men of iron know how to be liberal 
 when there is occasion. During the war, no regiment, no 
 soldier, passed through Pittsburg without being bountifully 
 entertained ; and the Sanitary Fair held here yielded a 
 larger sum, for the, size of the city, than any other. The sum 
 was very nearly four hundred thousand dollars. It is people 
 who feel the utility of copper coin that can do such things. 
 
 From some of the expensive foibles of human nature the 
 people of Pittsburg are necessarily exempt. There can 
 never be any dandies here. He would be a very bold man 
 indeed who should venture into the streets of Pittsburg with 
 a pair of yellow kids upon his hands, nor would they be 
 yellow more than ten minutes. All dainty and showy 
 apparel is forbidden by the state of the atmosphere, and 
 equally so is delicate upholstery within doors. Some very 
 young girls, in flush times, when wages are high, venture 
 forth with pink or blue ribbons in their bonnets, which may, 
 in highly favorable circumstances, look clean and fresh for 
 half a mile, but ladies of standing and experience never think 
 of such extravagance, and wear only the colors that harmo- 
 nize with the dingy livery of the place. These ladies pass 
 their lives in an unending, ineffectual struggle with the omni- 
 present black. Everything is bought and arranged with 
 reference to the ease with which its surface can be purified 
 from the ever-falling soot. Lace curtains, carved furniture, 
 light-colored carpets, white paint, marble, elaborate chande- 
 liers, and every substance that either catches or shows this 
 
SOME OF THE WONDERS OF PITTSBURG. 189 
 
 universal and all-penetrating product of the place, are 
 avoided by sensible housekeepers. As to the men of Pitts- 
 burg, there is not an individual of them who appears to take 
 the slightest interest in his clothes. If you wish to be in 
 the height of the fashion there, you must be worth half a mil- 
 lion, and wear a shabby suit of fustian. You must be pro- 
 prietor in some extensive "works," and go about not quite 
 as well dressed as the workmen. 
 
 We will endeavor to describe without exaggeration the 
 state of the atmosphere in Pittsburg, as we observed it on 
 the 6th of December, 1866. We select that day because it 
 was the first perfect specimen of a Pittsburg day at which we 
 ever had the pleasure to assist, and it consequently made an 
 impression on our mind. During the autumn, they have 
 about thirty such days as the one we are about to describe. 
 Pittsburg is proud of them. No other city can exhibit such 
 a day. Pittsburg amuses itself (when it can find a moment 
 to spare) with the wonder which its characteristic and unap- 
 proachable day excites in the mind of the stranger. No 
 matter how dark it may be, the people still say that "this i 
 nothing " to what they can do in the way of darkness. It 
 was with irrepressible exultation, that one of the young 
 gentlemen of the press assured us that he had been three 
 weeks waiting to have his photograph taken. We know not 
 why it is that no one has given an account of this curious 
 production of nature and art, a Pittsburg day. 
 
 On waking in the morning, while it was still as dark as 
 midnight, we became gradually conscious that the town was 
 all astir. The newsboys were piping their morning songs at 
 the door of the hotel ; the street cars were jingling by ; the 
 steamboat whistles were shrieking ; those huge Pennsylvania 
 wagons, with their long lines of horses, were rumbling past ; 
 and in the passages of the hotel frequent steps were heard 
 
190 TRIUMPHS OP ENTERPRISE. 
 
 .of heavy-booted travellers and of light-footed chamber- 
 maids. "Ah," we thought, "this is Pennsylvania indeed! 
 What energy, what a fury of industry ! All Pittsburg at 
 work before the dawn of day! This surpasses Chicago. 
 What would luxurious St. Louis say of such reckless devo- 
 tion to business as this?" Revolving such thoughts, it 
 occurred to us, at length, that it would be only proper for an 
 inquisitive traveller to follow this example, and do in Pitts- 
 burg as the Pittsburghers had already done. This bold con- 
 ception was executed. A match was felt for and found, the 
 gas was lighted, and the first duties of the day were per- 
 formed with that feeling of moral superiority to mankind in 
 general which is apt to steal over the soul of a person who 
 dresses by gas-light for the first time in many years. 
 "Would Brown do this? would Jones? would Robinson? 
 What vigor there must be in that traveller who gets up to 
 study his town before the first streak of dawn ? " 
 
 Descending to the lower rooms of the hotel, elate with this 
 new vanity, we were encouraged to find the gas all alight 
 and turned full on, just as we had left it the evening before. 
 The dining-room, too, was brilliantly lighted, and full of 
 people taking sustenance. Hardly prepared to go so far as 
 to take breakfast by gas-light, there is a medium in all 
 things, even in the practice of heroic virtue, we neverthe- 
 less deemed it a wise precaution to buy a newspaper or two, 
 thinking it probable that in such a place the newspapers 
 would be all bought and done with by daylight. Then we 
 strolled to the front door, and out into the street. It was 
 still dark, though there were some very faint indications of 
 daylight. Everything, however, was in full movement, 
 stores open and lighted up, drivers alert, newsboys vocifer- 
 ous, vehicles and passers-by as numerous as if it were broad 
 day. It is not pleasant to stumble about out of doors before 
 
SOME OP THE WONDERS OF PITTSBURGH 191 
 
 daylight, on a damp and chilly December morning, especially 
 in a strange place. The valuable idea now occurred to us, 
 that it would be good economy to employ the time required 
 by the day to overcome the gloom of the twilight in break- 
 fasting. This fine idea was realized, and as it was never pos- 
 sible for us to read a newspaper with the light ten feet above 
 it, we soon lost ourselves in wonder why people order for 
 breakfast, at a hotel, five times as much as they can eat. We 
 also pleased ourselves in anticipating the moderation which 
 these wasters of food will exhibit when the civilized custom 
 prevails of paying for what is ordered, and no more. These 
 reflections were prolonged and varied as much as possible, 
 and we endeavored to check the propensity to eat rapidly 
 which besets him who eats alone in a crowd. Still the day- 
 light made little progress ; which we excused on the ground 
 that it had much to contend with in Pittsburg, and could not 
 be expected to do as well as in more favored climes. We 
 left the dining-room, and looked about for a seat close to a 
 window, where perhaps the large-type headings of the news 
 might be made out by the aid of a glass. There was just 
 light enough for that, and we sat awhile waiting for more. 
 It came with such strange and tantalizing slowness, that it 
 occurred to us, at last, to see what time it was. One glance 
 at the watch dispelled our dream of moral superiority. It 
 was a quarter to nine ! 
 
 It was a still, foggy morning. There being no wind to 
 drive away the smoke issuing from five hundred huge chim- 
 neys, the deep chasm in which Pittsburg lies was filled full 
 of it, and this smoke was made heavy and thick by being 
 mixed with vapor. At eleven o'clock that morning all the 
 gas in the stores was lighted, and the light was as necessary 
 as it ever can be at night. At ten minutes past noon, 
 we chanced to be in a book-store, where the book-keeper's 
 
192 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 desk was situated directly under a skylight, which in any 
 other city would have flooded the desk with a dazzling 
 excess of light. Even there, the gas was burning with all 
 its force from two burners, and all its light was required. 
 Toward two o'clock the heavy masses of smoke lifted a 
 little ; the sun appeared, in the semblance of a large, clean, 
 yellow turnip ; and, for the first time that day, it was pos- 
 sible to read without artificial light. This interval lasted 
 half an hour. By three o'clock, it was darker than ever, 
 and so remained till night came, to make the darkness 
 natural; when, the streets being lighted, Pittsburg was more 
 cheerful than it had been all day. 
 
 There is one evening scene in Pittsburg which no visitor 
 should miss. Owing to the abruptness of the hill behind the 
 town, there is a street along the edge of a bluff, from which 
 you can look down upon all that part of the city which lies 
 low, near the level of the rivers. On the evening of this dark 
 day, we were conducted to the edge of the abyss and looked 
 over the iron railing upon the most striking spectacle we 
 ever beheld. The entire space lying between the hills was 
 filled with blackest smoke, from out of which the hidden 
 chimneys sent forth tongues of flame, while from the depths 
 of the abyss came up the noise of hundreds of steam- 
 hammers. There would be moments when no flames were 
 visible ; but soon the wind would force the smoky curtains 
 aside, and the whole black expanse would be dimly lighted 
 with dtfll wreaths of fire. It is an unprofitable business, 
 view-hunting ; but if any one would enjoy a spectacle as 
 striking as Niagara, he may do so, by simply walking up a 
 long hill to Cliff Street in Pittsburg, and looking over into 
 hell with the lid taken off. 
 
 Such is the kind of day which Pittsburg boasts. The first 
 feeling of the stranger is one of compassion for the people, 
 
SOME OF THE WONDERS OF PITTSBURG. 193 
 
 who are compelled to live in such an atmosphere. When 
 hard pressed, a son of Pittsburg will not deny that the 
 smoke has its inconveniences. He admits that it does pre- 
 vent some inconsiderate people from living there, who, but 
 for the prejudice against smoke in which they have been 
 educated, would become residents of the place. He insists, 
 however, that the smoke of bituminous coal kills malaria, 
 and saves the eyesight. The smoke, he informs you, is a 
 perpetual public sun-shade and color-subduer. There is no 
 glare in Pittsburg, except from fire and red-hot iron ; no object 
 meets the eye that demands much of that organ, and conse- 
 quently diseases of the eyes are remarkably rare. Jt is 
 interesting to hear a Pittsburgher discourse on this subject; 
 and it much relieves the mind of a visitor to be told, and to 
 have the assertion proved, that the smoke, so far from being 
 an evil, is a blessing. The really pernicious atmospheres, 
 say the Pittsburg philosophers, convey to man no intimation 
 of the poison with which they are laden, and we inhale 
 death while enjoying every breath we draw ; but this smoke 
 is an evil only to the imagination, and it destroys every prop- 
 erty of the atmosphere that is hostile to life. In proof of 
 which the traveller is referred to the tables of mortality, 
 which show that Pittsburg is the most favorable city in the 
 world to longevity. All this is comforting to the benevolent 
 mind. Still more so is the fact, that the fashion of living a 
 few miles out of the smoke is beginning to prevail among 
 the people of Pittsburg. Villages are springing up as far 
 as twenty miles away, to which the business men repair, 
 when, in consequence of having inhaled the smoke all day, 
 they feel able to bear the common country atmosphere 
 through the night. It is probable that, in coming years, 
 the smoky abyss of Pittsburg will be occupied only by 
 factories and " works," and that nearly the whole population 
 
J94 TEIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 will deny themselves the privilege of living in the smoke. 
 With three rivers and half a dozen railroads, the people 
 have ready means of access to places of almost unequalled 
 beauty and pleasantness. 
 
 The " great fact " of Pittsburg is coal. Iron and copper 
 can better afford to come to coal to be melted, than send for 
 coal to come and melt them. All those hills that frown 
 down upon Pittsburg, and those that rise from the rivers 
 back of Pittsburg, have a stratum of coal in them from four 
 to twelve feet thick. This stratum is about three hundred 
 feet above the water's edge, and about one hundred feet 
 from the average summit of the hills. It is simply a great 
 cake of coal, lying flat in the hills, uniform, compact, as 
 though this region had once been a lake of liquid coal, upon 
 which mountains had been tossed, pressing it solid. The 
 higher the hill rises above the coal cake, the better is the 
 coal. It has had more pressure, is more compact and less 
 impure. What this black stuff really is that we have named 
 coal, how it got laid away so evenly in these hills, why the 
 stratum of coal is always found just so high up the hill, why 
 coal is found here and not eveiy where, and why it is better 
 here than elsewhere, are questions to which answers have 
 often been attempted. We have read some of these answers, 
 and remain up to the present moment perfectly ignorant of 
 the whole matter. The mere quantity of coal in this region 
 is sufficiently staggering. All the foundries and iron-works 
 on earth could find ample room in this region, at the edge 
 of a navigable stream, and have a coal-mine at their back 
 doors. The coal that is used in the foundries along the 
 Monongahela is only shovelled twice. Deep in the heart 
 of the hill that rises behind the foundry, the coal is mined 
 and thrown upon a car, by which it is conveyed to the 
 mouth of the mine, and thence down an inclined plane to 
 
SOME OF THE WONDEBS OF PITTSBURG. 195 
 
 the foundry, where it is dumped at the door of the furnace 
 which is to consume it. And, it seems, there are fifteen 
 thousand square miles of " this sort of thing." The " great 
 Pittsburg coal seam," as it is called, which consists of bitu- 
 minous coal only, is put down in the books as covering eight 
 and a half trillions of acres. Mr. George H. Thurston, of 
 Pittsburg, who is learned in everything relating to his 
 beloved city, computes that this area contains a trifle of 
 about three trillions and a half of bushels of workable coal, 
 or fifty-four billions of tons. Supposing this coal ^to be 
 worth at the mine two dollars a ton, and supposing that we 
 could sell out the whole seam for cash, Mr. Thurston assures 
 us that we could immediately pay the national debt twenty- 
 seven times over. He also remarks, that it would take the 
 entire product of the California gold-mines for a thousand 
 years to buy the coal of this one seam. 
 
 We fervently hope these -statements are correct. What 
 we need is, a grand National, or, rather, a Continental Sur- 
 vey, on the scale of the Coast Survey, to take an inventory 
 of our natural wealth, that could be implicitly relied on. 
 It is but thirteen years ago, that a writer in the "Ency- 
 clopaedia Britannica," who seemed deeply versed in his 
 subject, assured his readers that there was in the coal-mines 
 of Great Britain workable coal enough to last nineteen hun- 
 dred years ; and now a great man rises in Parliament, and 
 startles the world by the assertion that the supply will be 
 practically exhausted in eighty years ! If Mr. Thurston is 
 right, and if Mr. Mill is right, the time is at hand when 
 Sheffield, Birmingham, and the other iron cities of England 
 will begin to cast inquiring eyes at these hills and streams 
 about Pittsburg. If there is indeed a supply of bituminous 
 coal in this region for many thousand years, we see no 
 reason why Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, New 
 
196 TRIUMPHS OP ENTERPRISE. 
 
 York, and fifty smaller cities, may not make their gas in the 
 coal region, and convey it across the country in pipes. The 
 idea has been discussed, and there is talk of a company for 
 carrying it into effect. This matter of the quantity and, dis- 
 tribution of coal is of importance beyond calculation. There 
 was one " tow " of coal sent down to New Orleans last year 
 by a Pittsburg house, that contained all the coal of three and 
 a quarter acres of seam. It were well to know with cer- 
 tainty and exactness, how long the Pittsburg seam can keep 
 it up at that rate. 
 
 To observe the whole process of getting coal out of the 
 hills, it is only necessary to walk half a mile from the city. 
 Cross one of the bridges over the Monongahela, walk up the 
 hill that rises from the banks of that tranquil stream, and 
 you behold, in the side of the hill, a round hole about large 
 enough for a man to stand upright in. This cavity haa 
 smooth walls of coal, and there is a narrow railroad track in 
 it. The air within is neither damp nor chilly, and often 
 delicate flowers are blooming about the entrance. Strangers 
 usually enter this convenient and inviting aperture, which 
 may lead into the hill a mile, or even three miles. After 
 walking a hundred yards or so, strangers usually think it 
 best to go no farther. It is as dark in there as darkness 
 itself, and as silent as a tomb. The entrance shows like a 
 distant point of light. The visitor listens for the sound of 
 the pickaxe, or the rumble of a coal-car ; but nothing breaks 
 the horrid silence of the place, and, retracing his steps, he 
 sees with pleasure the point expanding into a round O. 
 Reassured, he peers again into the mountain's heart, .and 
 discerns in the far distance a speck of light. This speck 
 slowly, very slowly, approaches. A low and distant rumble 
 is heard. The speck of light enlarges a little. A voice is 
 heard, the voice of a boy addressing an observation to a 
 
SOME OF THE WONDERS OF PITTSBUKO. 197 
 
 mule. The light, that was but a speck, begins now to dis- 
 perse the gloom ; and at last we discover that it is a lamp 
 fixed upon a mule's head, and that the mule is drawing two 
 or three car-loads of coal, and is driven by a perfectly black 
 white boy, who also has a lamp upon his head. The coal is 
 immediately dumped, the mule is attached to the other end 
 of the train, and reenters the black hole. A stranger who 
 has a proper respect for his garments will hesitate to climb 
 over into that exceedingly black car ; but curiosity is fre- 
 quently stronger than principle, and there are travellers who 
 will ride into the black bowels of the earth if they see an 
 empty car going thither. What a strange sensation I How 
 great the distance ! The round O of the entrance, after 
 dwindling to a white dot, disappears quite, and it is long 
 before anything becomes visible in the depths of the mine. 
 As we pass along this black and narrow street, just wide 
 enough for a car, and not high enough for a man to stand 
 upright in the car, we observe openings like doors into 
 black, empty rooms. These are " rooms." "When a mine 
 is opened, the first thing, of course, is to make a straight 
 passage into it ; but on each side of the passage " rooms " 
 are opened, one man being assigned to each, who excavates 
 the apartment in solitude. The partitions left between the 
 " rooms " keep the hill from settling down, and they remain 
 intact until the seam is worked out. Then the partitions are 
 knocked away and the coal removed. The hill is then only 
 supported by upright logs, two or three feet thick, which, 
 as the hill settles, are pressed slowly down and flattened 
 out. 
 
 After a long ride in the car, signs of life appear ; a speck 
 of light is seen in the distance, and the click of a pickaxe is 
 faintly heard. The train -of empty coal-cars stops at the door 
 of a " room," and one of them is cast off, and pushed into 
 
198 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 this apartment by a turnout. The visitors alight as best the}' 
 can, and find themselves in the coaliest coal-hole they have 
 ever known. Nothing is seen, felt, or smelt but coal ; noth- 
 ing is heard but the strokes of an invisible pickaxe, wielded 
 by an unseen arm. The solitary occupant of this "room " is 
 invisible at the moment, because he is employed in what the 
 miners call "bearing in." When a miner finds himself 
 before a wall of coal, from which he is to excavate conven- 
 ient masses of that precious commodity, the first thing he 
 does is to " bear in." To " bear in " is to get down upon 
 your knees, and with a pickaxe cut deeply in at the bottom 
 of the seam of coal, as far in as you can reach, even by 
 lying down. When the miner has made his gash, three feet 
 deep and six feet wide, it is very easy, by wedges, or even 
 by the pickaxe alone, to bring down all the upper part of the 
 seam in pieces small enough to handle. Our miner was 
 bearing in, at the moment of our entrance, with enthusiasm, 
 owing to his being a little behind with his heap for the next 
 load. Each miner expects to have a 'car-load ready when his 
 car comes, and he lays out his work accordingly. His task 
 is done when he has dug out the coal, and loaded it upon the 
 car. And it is for doing these two things that he is paid a 
 certain sum per bushel. Seven years ago, that sum was 
 three-quarters of a cent ; it is now four cents ; and the miners 
 used to get out more coal per day when the price was low 
 than they do now at the high price. Our eager miner hear- 
 ing voices in his room, rose at length, and dimly revealed 
 himself by the light of a very small tin lamp that hung loosely 
 on his forehead. What a picture he was, as he peered over 
 the heap of coal with his black cap fitting close to his head, 
 his dangling tin lamp, his coaly visage, his red lips and white 
 teeth, and his black eyes glistening in the midst of the dull 
 black of the rest of his countenance 1 He looked the Spirit 
 
SOME OF THE WONDERS OF PITTSBUEG. 199 
 
 of the Coal-mine ! He was, however, introduced to the 
 intruders as "Mr. Gallagher"; and a very merry, social, 
 pleasant fellow he was. 
 
 People come into the mines prepared to regard with com- 
 passion these grimy workers' in the eternal dark ; but, on the 
 contrary, they finrl them the gayest of men, very cheerful 
 and companionable, with a keen sense of independence - and 
 personal dignity. We discovered at once that this man of 
 the dangling lamp was indeed Mr. Gallagher. He begins 
 work when he likes, works as fast as he likes, or as slow, 
 and goes home when he likes. His " room " is his own 
 against the world ; and when he has dug out of it his regular 
 hundred bushels, which he usually accomplishes about three 
 o'clock in the afternoon, he takes up his oil-bottle and his 
 dinner-kettle, gets upon a load of coal, rides to daylight, and 
 saunters home. When he has had his thorough Saturday- 
 afternoon wash, and has put on his fine Sunday broadcloth, 
 he looks like a pale, muscular poet. The sun does not brown 
 his skin, nor the wind roughen it. He works in the dark, in 
 a still air, and at a uniform temperature of about sixty 
 degrees, the year round. If he has a fancy to get rich, he 
 can. Many of the proprietors about here once dug coal at 
 three quarters of a cent per bushel. The people who live 
 near the mines along the Monongahela speak well of the 
 miners as a class. They are proud 5 honest, and orderly. A 
 few of them, on festive days, indulge in their native pastime 
 of whipping their wives ; but even the few who do this are 
 acquiring a taste for nobler pleasures. The farmers say that 
 their apples and watermelons are as safe here as anywhere. 
 The miners are proud of their right to vote, are prompt to 
 exercise that right, and generally send their children to 
 school. 
 
 We asked "Mr. Gallagher" whether the practice of bis 
 
 13 
 
200 TEIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 vocation was attended by any danger. Like most other 
 men in perilous emplojonents, he protested that there was 
 not the least danger, if a man was only careful. In proof 
 of which he adduced the fact, that in this mine only one 
 man had been killed in eleven months, and he was killed 
 by a piece of "horseback" falling on him. Horseback is a 
 thick scale of remarkably heavy stone that is always found 
 at the top of the stratum of coal, and which ought to fall 
 when the coal is cut away from under it. But masses of 
 it often adhere to the roof of the mine, and cannot be dis- 
 lodged without more labor than a miner is always willing to 
 bestow. In almost every "room" of a mine, therefore, there 
 will be heavy chunks of horseback clinging to the roof, 
 which are sure to fall soon, and may fall at any instant. 
 The solitary occupant of the room intends to avoid stand- 
 ing under these masses. He also intends to employ his 
 first leisure in prying them off. But time passes ; he forgets, 
 in the heat of his work, the overhanging peril ; and some 
 day the solitary worker in the next room notices that his 
 neighbor's pickaxe has ceased to strike. Down there in the 
 bowels of the earth, each man working by himself, sepa- 
 rated from his fellow by a wall of coal several feet thick, 
 men acquire a strange power of knowing how it fares with 
 their friends in the rooms adjoining. They can tell what 
 they are doing, whether they are forward with their load or 
 behind with it, whether the coal is working easily or hard, 
 whether they are working merrily or dully, whether they 
 are good-tempered or cross. The sudden cessation of all 
 noise in a room, at an hour when work is going on, soon 
 attracts attention, and the poor miner is found Avith his 
 lamp and his life crushed out, under half a ton of horse- 
 back. This is said to be the only danger to the miners of 
 the Pittsburg Seam. If noxious gases are generated, it is 
 
SOME OF THE WONDERS OF PITTSBUBG. 201 
 
 easy to open a passage through to the other side of the hill 
 for ventilation, or make a chimney through the roof. It is 
 difficult to see how fifty or sixty billions of tons of coal 
 could be put where man could get at them more conven- 
 iently. Sir Charles Lyell, who was in this region some 
 years ago, was particularly struck with the accessibility of 
 this coal, and observed that he never saw anywhere else 
 coal so easily worked and loaded. 
 
 The population of the coal region near Pittsburg is about 
 thirty-five thousand, and seven thousand of these are 
 employed in and about the mines. The annual product of 
 the mines is something near two millions and a half of tons, 
 of which one third is consumed at Pittsburg, and the rest 
 is sent away down the rivers to fill the valley of the Missis- 
 sippi with smoke. In one week of 1866, seven steamboats 
 arrived at New Orleans, having in tow fifty-eight coal- 
 barges from Pittsburg, containing in all forty-five thousand 
 tons of coal, worth at New Orleans three hundred and 
 twenty-five thousand dollars. 
 
 As to that third part of the coal product of the great 
 Pittsburg Seam which Pittsburg itself consumes, it performs 
 a prodigious quantity of work, assisted by many thousand 
 mechanics and laborers. There are in the congregation of 
 towns which the outside world knows only by the name of 
 Pittsburg, five hundred manufactories and "works." Fifty 
 of these are glass-works, in which one half of all our glass- 
 ware is made, and which employ three thousand persons. 
 This important branch of business was planted here in 1787 
 by a person no less distinguished than Albert Gallatin, and 
 it has grown to proportions of which no one seems to be 
 aware out of Pittsburg. The fifteen bottle-works here pro- 
 duce the incredible number of seventy million bottles and 
 vials per annum. But Pittsburg (so we were told in Nich- 
 
202 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 olas Loiigworth's wine-cellar at Cincinnati) has not yet 
 learned to make a champagne-bottle that will stand the 
 pressure of that wine. A serviceable champagne-bottle has 
 never yet been made in the United States ; and we have to 
 send to France for all that we require in Ohio, Missouri, 
 and California. We learned (in the same subterranean 
 retreat) that the Pittsburg champagne-bottle comes nearest 
 to being what a champagne-bottle should be, of any made in 
 the United States. One in ten of the best French bottles 
 bursts in the cellar of the bottler; one in six of the best 
 Pittsburg bottles. But the truth is, we are such inveterate 
 swillers of every kind of abominable mess that admits of 
 being bottled, labelled, and advertised, that the Pittsburg 
 bottle-makers have not had time yet to develop the higher 
 branches of their vocation. Any sort of glass will do for 
 quack medicine. 
 
 There are also fifteen window-glass works at Pittsburg, 
 which produce nearly half a million boxes of that commod- 
 ity every year, worth about two millions and a half of dol- 
 lars. It so happened that we had a burning curiosity to 
 know how window-glass is made, and one of the first things 
 we did at Pittsburg was to gratify this noble thirst for 
 knowledge. Who would have -thought that common win- 
 dow-glass is blown? It is actually blown like a bottle. The 
 blower stands on a bench, and as he blows, he swings his 
 tube to and fro, which causes the soft globule to lengthen 
 out into a cylinder, five feet long and one foot in diameter. 
 This cylinder is afterwards slit down all its length by a 
 diamond, and placed in an oven, with the diamond-cut 
 uppermost. As that oven grows hot, the cylinder divides 
 where the diamond marked it, gently falls apart, and lies 
 down flat on the bottom of the oven. There is your sheet 
 of window-glass. As soon as it is cooled, it is cut into the 
 
8OME OF THE WONDERS OF PITTSBUEG. 203 
 
 required sizes by a diamond. There are also fifteen flint- 
 glass works at Pittsburg, the annual product of which is 
 more than four thousand tons of the finest glassware, worth 
 two millions of dollars. The total value of the glass made 
 at Pittsburg every year is about seven millions of dollars, 
 which is almost exactly one half of the value of our whole 
 annual product of glassware. This is one item of the 
 yearly work done by Pittsburg coal at Pittsburg. Other 
 trifles are sixteen potteries, forty-six foundries, thirty-one 
 rolling-mills, thirty-three manufactories of machinery, and 
 fifty-three oil-refineries. Such a thing it is to have plenty 
 of coal ! 
 
 Oil Creek is a branch of the Alleghany Eiver, and 
 empties into it one hundred miles above Pittsburg. 
 Pittsburg is, consequently, the great petroleum mart 
 of the world. It is but five years ago that this material 
 became important ; and yet there were received at Pittsburg 
 during the year 1866, more than sixteen hundred thousand 
 barrels of it. The Alleghany River is one of the swiftest 
 of navigable streams ; but there is never a moment when 
 its surface at Pittsburg is not streaked with petroleum. It 
 would not require remarkable talent in an inhabitant of this 
 place to " set the river on fire." The crude oil is floated 
 down this impetuous river in the slightest-built barges, 
 mere oblong boxes, made of common boards, into which 
 the oil is poured as into an enormous trough. Petroleum is 
 lighter than water, and would float very well without being 
 boxed in ; only it would be difficult to keep each pro- 
 prietor's lot separate. It needs but a slight accident to 
 knock a hole in one of these thin barges. When such an 
 accident has occurred, the fact is revealed by the rising of 
 the petroleum in the barge ; and the vessel gets fuller and 
 fuller, until it overflows. In a few minutes the petroleum 
 
204 TKIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 lies all spread out upon the swift river, making its way 
 toward Pittsburg, while the barge is filled with water and 
 sunk. 
 
 We were prepared to discourse wisely upon the subject 
 of oil, its discovery, the fortunes made and squandered 
 " in " it, and the healthy, proper way in which oil is now 
 rising from the rank of a game to that of a business. We 
 give place, however, to the editor of the " Crawford 
 Journal" (published in the oil region), who related, while 
 we were at Pittsburg, a story which is worth more than 
 preaching. An item appeared in the papers, recording the 
 sale of a certain farm on Oil Creek for taxes, which elicited 
 from the editor of the " Crawford Journal " the following 
 remarkable explanation : 
 
 " This farm was among the first of the oil-producing farms of 
 the valley. Early in 1863, the Van Slyke well, on this farm, was 
 struck, and flowed for some time at the rate of twenty-five hundred 
 barrels per day, and several wells yielding from two hundred to 
 eight hundred barrels were struck at subsequent periods. Beside 
 these, there were many smaller wells ; and the territory, though 
 sadly mismanaged, is still regarded as among the best in the oil 
 region. In 1864, Widow McClintock died from the effects of burns 
 received while kindling a fire with crude oil. At this time, the 
 average daily income from the landed interest of the farm was two 
 thousand dollars ; and by her will the property, with all her posses^ 
 sions in money, was left, without reservation, to her adopted son, 
 John W. Steele, then about twenty years of age. In the iron safe 
 where the old lady kept her money was found one hundred and 
 fifty thousand dollars, two thirds of the amount in greenbacks, 
 and the balance in gold. Mrs. McClintock was hardly cold in her 
 coffin before young Steele, who appears to have had nothing natu- 
 rally vicious in his composition, was surrounded by a set of vam- 
 pires who clung to him as long as he had a dollar remaining. The 
 young millionnaire's head was evidently turned by his good for- 
 
SOME OF THE WONDERS OF PITTSBURG. 205 
 
 tune, as has been that of many an older man who made his ' pile 
 in oil ' ; and he was of the opinion that his money would accumu- 
 late too rapidly unless it was actually thrown away, and throw it 
 away he did. Many of the stories concerning his career in New 
 York and Philadelphia savor strongly of fiction, and would not be 
 credited were they not so well authenticated. Wine, women, 
 horses, faro, and general debauchery soon made a wreck of that 
 princely fortune ; and in twenty months Johnny Steele squandered 
 two millions of dollars. Hon. John Morrissey, M. C., 'went 
 through ' him at faro to the amount of one hundred thousand dol- 
 lars in two nights ; he bought high-priced turnouts, and after 
 driving them an hour or two gave them away ; equipped a large 
 minstrel troupe, and presented each member with a diamond pin 
 and ring, and kept about him, besides, two or three men who were 
 robbing him day after day. He is now filling the honorable posi- 
 tion of doorkeeper for Skiff and Gaylord's Minstrels, the company 
 he organized, and is to use a very expressive, but not strictly 
 classical phrase completely ' played out.' 
 
 " The wealth obtained by those who worked so assiduously to 
 effect Steele' s ruin gave little permanent benefit to its possessors. 
 The person, most brazen and chiefly instrumental in bringing about 
 the present condition of affairs was the notorious Seth Slocum, 
 who hung around this city several weeks last summer. He was 
 worth at one time over one hundred thousand dollars, which he had 
 1 captured ' from Steele, and laid aside for a rainy day ; but when 
 the tatter's money vanished, this amount soon took unto itself 
 wings, and he is at present known among his old associates as a 
 ' dead beat.' At last accounts, Slocum was incarcerated in the 
 jail of a neighboring county for various breaches of the peace, and 
 was unable to obtain bail in the sum of five hundred dollars. 
 Exemplifications these of the old adage, ' Easy come, easy go ' ; 
 or the other, ' Fools and their money are soon parted.' " 
 
 This is merely the most striking and best known of many 
 similar instances. It is doubtful if wealth suddenly acquired, 
 without merit on the part of the recipient, has ever been of 
 
206 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 real service ; and we presume Johnny Steele did the best 
 thing possible for him in getting rid of his absurd millions 
 in twenty months. He might have staggered under them 
 twenty years, and even then had enough left to keep him 
 from his proper place in the world. Happily, all this is 
 over in the oil country, where the business languishes after 
 the excitements of recent years, and is settling down to be 
 a safe and legitimate pursuit, like coal, iron, and salt. 
 
 It is, however, the iron-works of Pittsburg that usually 
 attract the stranger first, astonish him most, and detain him 
 longest. We all know the precise quantity of " dirt " which 
 each of us has to eat in a lifetime. It is one peck But is 
 the gentle reader aware that each inhabitant of the United 
 States "consumes" about one hundred and twenty-five 
 pounds of iron every year ? So we are assured ; and we are 
 also informed that the fact is highly honorable to us, since 
 the quantity of iron consumed by a nation is one of the tests 
 of its civilization. A Spaniard, for example, gets along with 
 only five pounds of iron in a year, and a Russian finds ten 
 pounds sufficient. An Austrian is satisfied with fifteen, a 
 Swiss with twenty-two, a Norwegian with thirty ; but a 
 German must have fifty pounds, a Frenchman sixty, a Bel- 
 gian seventy. Of the iron consumed in the United States, 
 it appears that about two fifths are manufactured at Pitts- 
 burg, in those hundred and thirteen iron-works mentioned 
 before. There is not one of those establishments in which 
 an intelligent person may not find wonders enough to enter- 
 tain him all day ; but in the compass of one brief article we 
 can do little more than allude to one or two of the more 
 famous and established "lions." Pittsburg, as we have 
 before remarked, is densely packed with marvels. Go 
 where you will, you find something of the most particular 
 interest, that demands to be examined, and most richly 
 
SOME OF THE WONDERS OF PITTSBURG. 207 
 
 rewards examination. If ever we establish a college, we 
 shall arrange it so, that the senior class shall spend six weeks 
 at and near Pittsburg, in order to vivify their knowledge of 
 geology, chemistry, and the other Sciences. 
 
 Down by the swift and turbid Alleghany, close to the 
 river, as all the great foundries are, we discovered with 
 difficulty, on a very dark morning, the celebrated Fort Pitt 
 Foundry, where twenty-five hundred of the great guns were 
 cast that blew the late Confederacy out of water. In this 
 establishment may be seen the sublime of the mechanic arts. 
 Only here, on the continent of America, have there ever 
 been cast those monsters of artillery which are called by the 
 ridiculous diminutive of " the twenty-inch gun." A twenty- 
 inch gun is one of those corpulent pieces of ordnance that 
 we see mounted on forts about our harbors, which weigh 
 sixty tons, cost fifty thousand dollars each, and send a ball 
 of a thousand pounds three miles. To be exact, the ball 
 weighs one thousand and eighty pounds, and it costs one 
 hundred and sixty-five dollars. To discharge a twenty-inch 
 gun, loaded with one of these balls, requires one hundred 
 and twenty-five pounds of powder, worth forty cents a 
 pound ; so that every time one of the guns is fired it costs a 
 hundred and ninety-five dollars, without counting the wear 
 and tear of the gun and its carriage, and the pay of the men. 
 
 The foundry where these huge guns are made is large, 
 lofty, dark, and remarkably silent. Nearly every operation 
 goes on in silence, and without the least fuss or hurry. We 
 will endeavor to show, in a few words, how it is that a large 
 lump of iron with a hole in it should cost so much. 
 
 To people outside of the iron world, iron is iron ; but to 
 people inside of that world there are as many varieties of 
 iron as there are sources of supply. We have often been 
 amused at the positiveness with which the inhabitants of iron 
 
208 TKICJMPHS OF ENTEEPEISE. 
 
 districts declare their iron to be the "best in the world." 
 The people of Marquette, upon Lake Superior, the people 
 interested in the Iron Mountain of Missouri, the iron-makers 
 of Lake Champlain, and all who have anything to do with an 
 iron mine, assert the superiority of their own iron. The 
 best of it is, that all these people are right ; for each of the 
 great brands of iron actually is the best in the world for 
 some purposes. The iron for these large cannon comes 
 from the Bloomfield Mine, in Blair County, Pennsylvania, 
 and there is in the United States but one other iron as good 
 for guns ; and that is found in far-off Massachusetts. Eve- 
 rything depends upon the even and sufficient, density of the 
 iron ; therefore, the pigs of iron from the Bloomfield Mine 
 are again melted and purified here. They have an ingenious 
 machine for testing the strength of iron. By a system of 
 levers, a round piece of iron, one inch thick, is subjected to 
 a steady pull until it breaks, and the operator is enabled to 
 ascertain precisely how many pounds weight it will bear. The 
 same machine tests it by twisting and by crushing. It is 
 this machine which determines the rank and value of all 
 iron. 
 
 The mould in which the cannon are cast is an enormous 
 structure of iron and sand, which weighs, when ready for 
 the metal, more than forty tons. The preparation of the 
 mould is the most difficult and delicate of all the work done 
 in the foundry ; but it would be nearly impossible to convey 
 an idea of it on paper. When it is ready it is hoisted by 
 steam derricks, and let down into a pit, where it stands on 
 end, with open mouth, ready for the fiery fluid. Those 
 steam derricks are wonderful. One man, by their assistance, 
 lifts, carries, and deposits upon a car, in thirty minutes, a 
 twenty-inch gun in its mould, weighing in all (including the 
 waste metal) one hundred and thirty tons ; and this he does 
 
SOME OF THE WONDEKS OF PITTSBURG. 209 
 
 with about as much physical exertiori as is required to draw 
 a glass of beer from a barrel. The whole force of the 
 foundry two hundred and fifty men^ could not move 
 such a mass one inch in twenty-four hours, unaided by 
 machinery. 
 
 The thrilling event of the day is the casting, which occurs 
 here at two o'clock in the afternoon, one great gun being' cast 
 every day. Three furnaces, early in the morning, are 
 stacked full of pigs of iron, as high as a man's head, and 
 about ten o'clock the fires are lighted under them. In three 
 hours the stacks of pigs are all melted down into a pool of 
 liquid iron one foot deep. From each of the three furnaces 
 an iron trough, lined with clay, extends acfoss the wide and 
 gloomy foundry, to the mound which is this day to be filled. 
 The distance is a hundred feet, perhaps ; and the iron troughs 
 are laid in curves, to prevent a too rapid flow of metal. 
 (The Ohio River is arranged on the same principle.) Men 
 are stationed along each trough to comb off the dross, and 
 there are men at the mould with levers and other imple- 
 ments ; while Joseph Kaye, the foreman and genius of the 
 place, who learned his trade here thirty years ago, and who 
 is the inventor of important parts of the process we are 
 beholding, stands apart, to give the word and overlook the 
 whole. The word is given. A man at each furnace sets 
 the stream running. At once, three fiery serpents of the 
 fieriest fire come coiling down those troughs with a kind 
 of slow rush, and make for the mould, into which they go 
 headlong, and fall to the bottom with a sputtering thud. 
 The resemblance to a serpent is perfect, until the stream has 
 reached the gun. The stranger fancies that he can see the 
 fiery devil's eyes, and that the sparks that fly from his head 
 are the signs of a deadly anger. The streams run for about 
 twenty minutes, and then, at a signal, a lump of clay is 
 
210 TKIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 thrust into the aperture of each furnace ; the streams dwin- 
 dle to threads, and dry up. 
 
 Usually, all goes so smoothly that it seems as if it could 
 go no other way. But there are frightful perils in the busi- 
 ness. Sometimes an obstruction will occur in one of the 
 troughs, and the liquid metal will overflow, and spread about 
 the ground ; or the supply of iron will be exhausted before 
 the mould is quite full ; or a break will occur in the mould, 
 and the iron burst through, spoiling the mould, and wasting 
 itself in the bottom of the pit. It is at such times that 
 Joseph Kaye asserts his kingly power, and stands self-pos- 
 sessed in the midst of panic-stricken men. Many a great 
 gun about to lap^e into hopeless ruin has been saved by his 
 courage and skill. There have been times when every man 
 fled but him, and he sufficed. They point out one honest 
 German who was so thoroughly terrified by the breaking of 
 a steam derrick with a gun hanging to it, that he ran home 
 at the top of his speed, and could not be coaxed back till six 
 months had passed. Another German was once in a most 
 painful dilemma. The furnaces having run dry before the 
 gun-mould was quite full, the foreman, to save the gun, 
 ordered metal to be brought from another furnace in iron 
 pails. These pails of liquid iron are swung upon a lever, and 
 carried by two men. Our German was so unfortunate as to 
 stumble a little, which caused some of the melted metal to 
 fall into his low shoe. But, exquisite as the agony was, he 
 was obliged to endure it ; since, in the hurry of the moment, 
 there was no one who could stop to help him, while to have 
 let go his load had been ruin and death. The man walked 
 steadily to the mould, and assisted his comrade to empty the 
 pail into it, before seeking relief. 
 
 After the gun has been cast, a variety of curious precau- 
 tions are taken to cause the eighty tons of iron to cool in 
 
SOME OF THE WONDERS OF PITTSBURG. 211 
 
 the manner most conducive to the strength of the gun. If 
 nothing of this kind were done, the gun would be thirty days 
 in getting cool enough to handle ; but, by the constant flow 
 of cold water in and out of the bore, the cooling is shortened 
 to eighteen days. Then the huge thing is gently lifted out 
 of its pit, gently swung across the dim foundry, and gently 
 laid in the turning-shop ; where the great rough end is -cut 
 off, where the outside is turned smooth, where the inside is 
 bored to the proper size, where it loses twenty tons of metal. 
 The mere boring of one of these monsters takes four weeks, 
 night and day, Sundays and week-days. When once the 
 boring has been begun, it can never stop until it is finished 
 without spoiling the gun; since, if the gun cools, the 
 temperature that existed at the moment when the boring 
 ceased can never be exactly reproduced, and consequently 
 there will be a variation in the size of the bore. A varia- 
 tion in the bore of a hundredth part of an inch insures the 
 rejection of the gun, and a hundredth part of an inch is less 
 than the space between the teeth of a fine-tooth comb. Issu- 
 ing from the lathe all shaven and shorn, the gun is laid upon 
 two cars fastened together, taken seventeen miles out of 
 town, fired ten times, and delivered to the government in- 
 spector. Formerly, they used to cram the great guns full 
 of powder, and fire them off, thus overloaded, until they 
 were on the point of bursting, and would burst with only an 
 ordinary charge. This error has been avoided since the 
 Princeton gun killed a secretary of state, and came near 
 destroying the whole government. 
 
 From seeing one of these enormous guns cast, the visitoi 
 at Pittsburg may go, if he chooses, to an establishment 
 where they make tacks so minute that it takes a thousand of 
 them to weigh an ounce. We went thither, having long had 
 an imbecile curiosity to know how nails and tacks are made. 
 
212 TKIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 How startling the contrast between the slow movements, and 
 tranquil, gloomy vastness of the cannon foundry, and the 
 animation of the great rattling, roaring, crowded nail-works 
 of Chess, Smyth, & Co., all glaring and flashing with light, 
 with many tall chimneys pouring out black smoke and red 
 blaze into the December evening ! Noise ? There is only 
 one place in this world as noisy as a large nail-factory in full 
 operation, and that is under the sheet at Niagara Falls. How 
 should it be otherwise, when the factory is making many 
 thousand nails a minute, and when every single nail, spike, 
 brad, and tack is cut from a strip of cold iron, and headed 
 by a blow upon cold iron? We saw one machine there 
 -pouring out shoemakers' brads at the rate of three thousand 
 a minute, and it required the attendance of only one boy. 
 They came rattling down a tin gutter as fast as meal comes 
 from a mill. But to see this wonderful machine astonishes 
 the stranger less than to see a girl in the packing-room who 
 weighs and packs two thousand papers of tacks in nine 
 hours. 
 
 Nails are made thus: 1. Pig-iron is rolled into long 
 bars ; 2. These long bars are cut into lengths of one foot; 
 3. These lengths are piled into heaps of nine; 4. These 
 heaps of nine are rolled into sheets as thick as the nail is to 
 be , 5. Those sheets are cut into strips a little wider than 
 the nail is to be long; 6. These strips are cut into nails by 
 the nailing-machine, which also heads the nails as they fall. 
 A. man holds the strip of iron in the machine's jaws, which 
 instantly bite off a nail. But a nail tapers off from the head 
 to the point, and consequently the strip has to be turned over 
 before the machine can be allowed to bite again. But for 
 this necessity of turning the strip, men could be dispensed 
 with. Imagine a room four times as large as the interior 
 of Trinity Church, with rows of nailing-machines as close 
 
SOME OF THE WONDERS OF PITTSBURGH 213 
 
 together as sewing-machines in a clothing factory, and all on 
 the full champ, some biting off spikes three to a pound, 
 and others nipping tacks at the rate of thousands a minute. 
 
 This most interesting establishment employs two hundred 
 and ten men, forty boys, and twenty-five girls ; consumes 
 one hundred and fifty tons of iron in a week ; makes two 
 hundred kinds of nails, tacks, and brads ; makes in a week 
 two thousand four hundred kegs of nails, one hundred and 
 fifty boxes of tacks, one hundred pounds to a box, and one 
 hundred boxes of brads. 
 
 The crowning glory of Pittsburg is the "American Iron- 
 Works " of Messrs. Jones and Laughlins. This establish- 
 ment, which employs twenty-five hundred men, which has a 
 coal-mine at its back door and an iron-mine on Lake Superior, 
 which makes almost every large and difficult iron thing the 
 country requires, which usually has "on hand" seven hun- 
 dred thousand dollars' worth of finished work, is such a world 
 of wonder, that this whole volume would not contain an 
 adequate account of it. Here are machines ponderous and 
 exact ? here are a thousand ingenuities ; here is the net 
 result of all that man has done in iron masses during the 
 whole period of his residence upon earth. What should there 
 be here, too, but a specimen of what man can undo in iron, 
 in the form of a great heap of rusty twisted rails from 
 Georgia, so completely spoiled by General Sherman's troops 
 that there was nothing to be done with them but sell them 
 for old iron 1 It is at these works alone that iron is subjected 
 to the new process called "cold-rolling." Every reader has 
 stood by a steam-engine, and admired the perfect roundness, 
 the silvery brightness, and the irresistible thrust of the 
 piston-rod. A piston-rod is usually made thus. A huge, 
 jagged mass of white-hot iron, just on the point of fusion, is 
 fished out of the furnace, and is swung across the foundry to 
 
214 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPEISE. 
 
 the rolling-machine, which rolls it into a long round roll, a 
 little thicker than the piston-rod is to be. It is next put into 
 a turning lathe, where it is turned and polished to the size 
 required, a long and costly process. That is the usual 
 way. The "cold-rolling" process is this : the long, round 
 roll, a little thicker than this piston-rod is to be, is passed 
 cold through another rolling-mill of immense power, and 
 simply squeezed to the size required. Advantages : 1. The 
 process is quicker and cheaper ; 2 . The rod issues from the 
 mill as brilliantly polished as the plate on a queen's table ; 
 3. The pressure so increases the density of the iron, that 
 the rod is about two and a half times stronger than those 
 made in the old way. Iron plates and bars are made on the 
 same principle. 
 
 We cannot linger among these wondrous " works " of the 
 strong men of Pittsburg. The men themselves have claims 
 upon our notice. 
 
 The masters of Pittsburg are mostly of the Scotch-Irish 
 race, Presbyterians, keen and steady in the prosecution of 
 their affairs, indifferent to pleasure, singularly devoid of the 
 usual vanities and ostentations, proud to possess a solid and 
 spacious factory, and to live in an insignificant house. There 
 are no men of leisure in the town. Mr. George H. Thurs- 
 ton, President of the Pacific and Atlantic Telegraph Com- 
 pany, who, from having superintended the preparation of 
 the Directory for many years, as well as from his very great 
 interest in all that relates to the prosperity and glory of 
 Pittsburg, knows the town better than any other person that 
 ever lived in it, assured us positively that there were not, 
 in all the region which we call Pittsburg, three persons out 
 of business who were physically capable of conducting busi- 
 ness. The old men never think of " retiring," nor is there 
 anything for them to retire to. The family tie being pow- 
 
SOME OF THE WONDERS OF PITTSBURGH 215 
 
 erful in this race, the great firms are usually composed of 
 near relatives, and generally survive the generation that 
 founded them. Thus, the Fort Pitt Foundry, founded in 
 1803, has cast cannon for every war in which the United 
 States has been engaged, and is now conducted by the 
 worthy nephews of the Charles Knap who made the estab- 
 lishment what it is. In the American Iron- Works, we 
 find six partners, namely, the two chiefs, Messrs. Jones and 
 Laughlin, two sons of one of these chiefs, and two brothers 
 of the other, a nice family party. Hence, there are few 
 hired clerks in Pittsburg. These mighty " works " are 
 managed with the minimum of expense. The visitor gen- 
 erally finds " the old man " bustling about the works in his 
 cap and fustian jacket ; while perhaps his eldest son is keep- 
 ing the books, a son-in-law or nephew is making up the 
 wages accounts, and a younger son is in the warehouse. 
 
 The conservative elements here are powerful, as they are 
 in all communities in which families endure. Until very 
 recently, in Pittsburg, it would have boded ill for a man to 
 build a handsome house a few miles out of the smoke; and 
 to this day it is said that a Pittsburg man of business who 
 should publish a poem would find his " paper " doubted at 
 the bank. "A good man, sir, but not practical." These 
 excellent and strenuous men accuse themselves vehemently 
 of a want of public spirit, and it is evident the charge is 
 just. For the last few years, business has rushed in upon 
 them like a torrent ; and all their force having been expended 
 in doing this business, they now awake to the fact that a 
 Great City is upon their hands, to be consolidated, organ- 
 ized, paved, policed, parked, purified, and adornecl. They 
 now feel that some of those iron kings, those great men of 
 glass, oil, coal, salt, and clay, must leave business to their 
 sons and nephews, and take hold of Pittsburg. 
 
 14 
 
216 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 The masters work too hard. We wish we had room to 
 tell the story of one of the great brains of this place, just as 
 we heard him tell it. We can but indicate the outline. 
 
 His own master at sixteen. At twenty-eight, one of a 
 firm about to found new iron-works. Capital, one hundred 
 and fifty thousand dollars. Plunged into a business of a 
 million per annum. Ticklish work this ! A slight miscal- 
 culation in estimating for a contract, an unexpected rise in 
 the price of something, and away goes the small capital, and 
 honor with it. Hence he worked eighteen hours a day 
 for fourteen years. Called at six every morning but Sun- 
 day. At warehouse in Pittsburg till nine. At the works 
 until two. At the mine until dark. Home to tea, and 
 to lovely family, well beloved ; but too tired and dull 
 to enjoy or be enjoyed. At seven, would " drag " round to 
 the office, and there write or w estimate " till twelve. Then 
 home to bed, and instantly to sleep. Felt always as if play- 
 ing a great, splendid, complicated Game, upon which fortune 
 and honor both were staked, but especially honor. Two 
 kinds of honor, honor as a man of business, honor as a 
 man of ability. The game was won ! Capital increased 
 from one hundred and fifty thousand to three million dol- 
 lars. Finest, grandest iron-works in America. Glorious 
 scene of triumphant ingenuity. Three hundred brick cot- 
 tages owned by the firm, all tenanted by their own work- 
 men. Paper, gilt-edged. 
 
 But one night, two years ago, instead of dropping asleep 
 as soon as his head touched the pillow, this successful man 
 could not go to sleep for hours, and then slept ill. Many such 
 nights followed. One day, when he was abstrusely calculat- 
 ing, his mind suddenly lost its power ; he could not keep 
 his attention upon his figures, nor make any safe progress in 
 his work. Alarmed, he went to the doctor, who told him, 
 
SOME OF THE WONDERS OF PITTSBURG. 217 
 
 to his great astonishment, that he had been working too 
 hard, and must rest. He took this advice and a short jour- 
 ney ; but soon after, resuming his ordinary labors, his brain 
 again suddenly lost its power. It was about eleven o'clock 
 in the morning, and he tried to think of something to do 
 that would amuse without fatiguing his mind. He could 
 think of nothing but the dentist; so to the dentist's he went, 
 hoping to enjoy a little anguish till dinner-time. But this 
 recreation was denied him, for, while waiting in the den- 
 tist's parlor, he' fainted dead away. He was now seriously 
 alarmed, and for the first time began to consider his case 
 with the intelligence he had been in the habit of bestowing 
 upon iron alone. He lived thenceforth as became a man, a 
 husband, and a father ; worked ten hours a day, and spent 
 every evening in playing with his children, and conversing 
 with his wife and their friends. Thanks to a wonderful con- 
 stitution, it was not too late. He recovered his health, and 
 is now in the full enjoyment of life. 
 
 It is such as he who should leave iron to the youngsters, 
 and amuse themselves for the rest of their lives in making 
 Pittsburg metropolitan. Such a thought does not, it is said, 
 ever cross their minds. When we suggested it to a son of 
 Pittsburg, and mentioned an individual who could soon put 
 
 the city in order, the reply was : " If Mr. should sell 
 
 out for three millions, he would never be easy till he had 
 built a new factory for seven millions, and then give himself 
 no rest till he had paid off the four millions of debt." 
 
 This is mania. There will be, perhaps, asylums for this 
 class of patients some day. 
 
 The workmen, what of them? As the stranger goes 
 about among the "works," and sees men performing labors 
 so severe that they have to stop, now and then, in summer, 
 take off their boots, and pour the perspiration out of them, 
 
218 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 he is apt to become a fanatical free-trader on the spot. He 
 says to himself: " If there is any foreign country that is 
 willing to do all this hideous work for us at a rate of com- 
 pensation that we can afford to pay, why should not that 
 foreign country be allowed to do it, so that these American 
 citizens could turn their attention to something more agree- 
 able?" But, then, if the work is terrific, the wages are 
 extraordinary. Some of these " puddlers," rollers, nailers, 
 modellers, and others of the aristocracy of the mills, receive 
 from ten to twenty -five dollars a day ; and the average 
 wages of skilled labor do not probably average below five 
 dollars a day. The necessaries of life are cheaper here than 
 in any other large city, East or West. For several years 
 past, too, the men have generally been the masters, because 
 there has been work offering beyond the capacity of the 
 town to execute. 
 
 But all who have power abuse it, more or less. Consid- 
 ering that during the greater part of man's existence on 
 earth, working men have been oppressed, it is not surpris- 
 ing that they should avail themselves of a passing opportu- 
 nity to try a little oppression upon others. All the trades 
 here have guilds, or societies, for protection against the 
 capitalists, who also combine to resist the demands of the 
 workmen; What both these combinations need, to keep 
 their intercourse dignified and friendly, to prevent that 
 fierce and vulgar hostility which rages in England between 
 employers and men, is knowledge, the great want of all 
 men everywhere ! But the working men especially need it . 
 Every one of those working men's societies should have a 
 little library of the best works upon political economy. If 
 only one man in the whole guild had the spirit to study 
 them, that one man might, at a critical time, prevent a 
 whole trade from running full tilt, blindly, against a law of 
 
SOME OF THE WONDEKS OF PITTSBURG. 219 
 
 nature. But more than one man would study them, for 
 there are evidently a great number of excellent heads among 
 the men of the mills. One of the best little papers we ever 
 read is one conducted by and for them at Pittsburg, called 
 the " Workmen's and Soldiers' Advocate," and bearing the 
 excellent motto, "Union is strength, KNOWLEDGE is 
 power." 
 
 We saw no indication at Pittsburg of the infernal feeling 
 that appears to exist in Sheffield and Birmingham between 
 employers and employed. The men laugh a good deal at 
 the alleged narrowness of some of the capitalists of the 
 town. A writer in the little paper just mentioned says : 
 " Some one started the idea of making a public park on the 
 northern face of Grant's Hill ; but the public beneficence of 
 the project was so un-Pittsburg-like, that the projector 
 found he was either behind or in advance of the age so far. 
 A soldiers' monument was next spoken of, but several of 
 our wealthiest men (who had become so by the war) could 
 only give . two or three dollars apiece, and it has so far 
 failed." Again : " It has become the prevailing opinion 
 that landlords are not among our most benevolent citi- 
 zens ; and it is quite probable that public opinion does 
 them injustice, since they are to be found among the most 
 strict professors of religion, occupying front pews in 
 church, carrying round the money-basket for collections, 
 leading the way to the sacrament, inviting the minister 
 to tea, and reproving the outbursts of hilarious youth on 
 all occasions. None of the Pittsburg landlords owned 
 the houses where Christ travelled, and e had not where 
 to lay his head.' But if he should ever happen to be 
 in Pittsburg, which is doubtful, he would find that 
 it would require an enormous amount of * scrip in his 
 purse.' " 
 
220 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 It is only such harmless fun as this that the grim}' man of 
 the furnace pokes at the slightly less grimy man of the 
 counting-room. But if these passages show the good-humor 
 of the men, how clearly they reveal their need of a course 
 of political economy ! All talk of that kind about the land- 
 lords is ignorance, pure ignorance. An American me- 
 chanic should be above it. Is not the law of nature which 
 impels the working man to get as much as he can for his 
 labor a universal law ? 
 
 Here, as everywhere, we see the process going on by 
 which from the mass of men the few are selected whom 
 nature has fitted to be masters. Many of the men who get 
 from fifty to one hundred and fifty dollars a week waste their 
 money and themselves. Some men drink twenty glasses of 
 beer per day the year round. About one third of the whole 
 number of men save money, and live cleanly and sensibly ; 
 and it is from this third that the future foremen and propri- 
 etors will be gradually sifted out. 
 
 Nothing in the life of Pittsburg is more striking to a 
 visitor than the completeness of the cessation from labor at 
 the close of the week. The Scotch-Irish race are strict 
 Sabbatarians, and nothing goes on in Pittsburg on Sundays 
 which it is possible to stop. Of all those five hundred tall 
 chimneys, there will not usually be more than two that 
 smoke on Sundays. During the week the town gets under 
 such a headway of industry, that it takes all Saturday after- 
 noon for it to come to a stand. The regular work ceases at 
 noon, but the afternoon is spent in paying wages, grinding 
 tools, cleaning up, making repairs, and getting ready for a 
 fair start on Monday morning. By seven in the evening, 
 the principal streets of Pittsburg are densely filled with 
 washed men. They stroll about ; they stand conversing in 
 groups ; they gather, in thick semicircles, about every 
 
SOME OF THE WONDERS OF PITTSBURG. 221 
 
 shop- window that has a picture in it, or any bright or 
 curious object ; especially do they haunt the news-stands, 
 which provide a free picture-gallery for them, of Illustrated 
 News, Comic Monthlies, and Funny Fellows. The men 
 are so numerous, that the whole width of some of the streets 
 is filled with them ; and there is not a woman to be seen ! 
 Not a single petticoat among thousands of other coats ! , Yet 
 no crowd could be more orderly and quiet. These men, 
 after a week of intense monotony, gazing at dull objects, 
 and doing the same dull act ten hours a day, how hungry 
 they seemed for some brightness to flash into their lives ! 
 How we longed to usher them all into some gorgeous scene, 
 and give them a banquet of splendors ! Mere brilliancy of 
 color and light is transport, we should suppose, to a man 
 who has been making nails or digging coal from Monday 
 morning until Saturday noon. 
 
 We need not say that every theatre and show in Pitts- 
 burg is crammed on Saturday night. By putting forth the 
 greatest efforts, \ve did manage to get into one of the 
 theatres, into which dense masses of men were crowding. 
 Not a woman was present. The place was packed with 
 brawny men and noisy boys, all washed, all well-disposed, 
 though half mad with joyous excitement. On the walls 
 were posted such admonitions as these : " Hats off," " No 
 hallooing or whistling allowed," "Applaud with your 
 hands," " Order must be observed," "No walk around by 
 performers in white faces allowed." What the last of these 
 announcements may mean we cannot tell ; but, with regard 
 to the rest, we can say that the audience paid no heed to 
 them whatever. The performances consisted of farces raised 
 to the fiftieth power, comic songs, and legs. Never have 
 we seen an audience so amusable. It often happened, dur- 
 ing the performance of a farce, that the people would keep 
 
222 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 up such a roar of laughter, that for many seconds at a 
 time not a word could be heard from the stage. We dis- 
 covered here, what the play-bills mean when they speak 
 of w roaring farces," and of farces that are w screaming." 
 
 The reader will say, perhaps, that this is a poor ending to 
 a week of hard labor. Perhaps it is. But the natural kings 
 of Pittsburg do not provide anything better, nor heartily 
 encourage the production of anything better. These poor 
 hungry fellows of the dark mine and the dim foundry want 
 some change, some pleasure, some brilliancy. They can 
 get this for twenty-five cents /and it is better than nothing. 
 There are two other theatres in the town, where perform- 
 ances of a more " legitimate " character are given ; and t 
 considering the little aid they derive from those who could 
 best afford to attend them, they are respectable. 
 
 Nine miles and three eighths from Pittsburg, on the shores 
 of the Monongahela, is the pleasant and growing village 
 called " Braddock's Field." Its principal streets are " Wash- 
 ington," "Bradclock," "Halkett," "Frazer," "Beaujean," 
 "Aliquippa." We need not say why this village is so 
 called, nor why these names were given to its streets. The 
 ford by which the fated army crossed the river was used as 
 a ford until a few years ago, when the river was dammed to 
 improve the navigation. The ancient Indian trail which led 
 up from the ford is still a lane, fenced and used. The two 
 ravines in which the Indians lay in ambush are visible. 
 They are not more than three or four feet below the general 
 level, the ambush having been afforded by a. close growth 
 of hazel-bushes that long ago disappeared. There are 
 several trees standing on the field that must m have been of 
 good size when the defeat occurred ; the largest is an ancient 
 oak, that stands where the bullets must have flown thickest, 
 and from which many have been picked by the prying 
 
SOME OF THE VONDEKS OF PITTSBURG. 223 
 
 knives of visitors. Near it is a rough enclosure of common 
 rails, such as farmers make for a hay-stack, within which 
 are buried a considerable number of human bones, that 
 were dug up when the track of the Pennsylvania Railroad 
 was laid across the scene of the battle. Interesting relics 
 of the encounter are still occasionally found. Colonel 
 Edward J. Allen, whose agreeable and hospitable house 
 stands upon the battle-field, close to the place of the greatest 
 slaughter, informed us that his garden has never yet been 
 dug up in the spring without the exposure of something of 
 the kind, an arrow-head, a bullet, or even a bayonet. A 
 sword with a name engraved upon it, has been recently found 
 in the neighborhood. 
 
 How changed this scene in a hundred and twelve years ! 
 The bluff beneath which those seven hundred men laid down 
 their lives is pierced with holes, near the summit, out of 
 which mules emerge, drawing car-loads of glistening coal. 
 On the opposite bank, rows of the blazing chimneys of 
 coke-ovens glare through the night. A beautiful village, 
 noisy with the school-children at play, covers a great part 
 of the field. Two railroads cross it, over which one hundred 
 and twenty trains pass every twenty-four hours 1 
 
ORIGIN OF THE 
 
 COTTON -WEAVING MACHINERY. 
 
 ONE evening, about a hundred years ago, Dr. Franklin 
 and Dr. Priestley were conversing at the Eoyal Society Club 
 in London, upon the progress of the arts and sciences. The 
 question arose at length, what was the most desirable inven- 
 tion that remained to be made ; upon which Dr. Franklin 
 expressed himself thus : w A machine capable of spinning 
 two threads at the same time." 
 
 The cotton manufacture, introduced into England about 
 the year 1620, was then fast rising into importance. We 
 read in an English book, published in 1641, the following 
 interesting passage : 
 
 " The town of Manchester buys linen yarn from the Irish in 
 great quantity, and weaving it, returns again the same in linen into 
 Ireland to sell. Neither does her industry rest here ; for they buy 
 cotton wool in London that comes from Cyprus and Smyrna, and 
 work the same into fustians, vermilions, and dimities, which they 
 return to London, where they are sold, and from thence not seldom 
 are sent into such foreign parts, where the first material may be 
 more easily had for that manufacture." 
 
 At this time, and for more than a century after, the weaver 
 bought his own yarn, took it home to his cottage, and wove 
 it into cloth ; so that each weaver's house was a little factory. 
 He bought the yarn for the warp ; the wool for the woof was 
 carded and spun by his wife and daughters, while the weav- 
 
226 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 ing was performed by himself and sons. It was long before 
 any attempt was made in England to make cloth wholly of 
 cotton, although fabrics of this nature had been known in 
 India for centuries, and were beginning to be imported into 
 England in considerable quantities before the year 1700. 
 
 It is curious to notice how uniformly every great step in 
 the progress of man has been dreaded and opposed. Dr. 
 Ure says : 
 
 " The silk and woollen weavers of England manifested the keen- 
 est hostility to the use of printed calicoes, whether brought from 
 the east or made at home. In the year 1680 they mobbed the India 
 House, in revenge for some large importations then made of the 
 chintzes of Malabar. They next induced the government, by inces- 
 sant clamors, to exclude altogether the beautiful robes of Calicut 
 from the English market. But the printed goods found their way 
 into the country in spite of excessive penalties annexed to smug- 
 gling, and raised a new alarm among the manufacturing population. 
 The sapient legislators of that day, intimidated by the London 
 mob, enacted, in 1720, an absurd law prohibiting the wearing of all 
 printed calicoes whatsoever, either of foreign or domestic origin ! 
 This disgraceful enactment, worthy of Cairo or Algiers, proved not 
 only a death-blow to rising industry, but prevented the ladies from 
 attiring themselves in the becoming drapery of Hindostan." 
 
 This law, it appears, remained in force for ten years, and 
 was then replaced by an act somewhat less oppressive. Peo- 
 ple were allowed to make what was styled " British calicoes," 
 provided the warp was made of linen, and only the woof of 
 cotton ; and provided, also, that for every yard of such cal- 
 ico the maker should pay a duty of sixpence to the govern- 
 ment. Even while staggering under this burden, the cotton 
 manufacture made some progress ; so that more than fifty 
 thousand pieces of mixed fabrics were made in England in 
 the year 1750. 
 
ORIGIN OF THE COTTON- WEAVING MACHINERY. 227 
 
 This restrictive legislation, as Dr. Ure remarks, grew out 
 of the ignorance and terror of the* weavers themselves. A 
 curious anecdote has been related, which most strikingly 
 illustrates the fact. A man was about to be executed at 
 Cork for stealing. On the appointed day, the weavers, who 
 were short of work, and attributed the hard times to cotton, 
 gathered about the gallows, and dressed both the criminal 
 and the executioner in cotton cloth, to mark their contempt 
 and abhorrence of it, and to make the wearing of it disgrace- 
 ful. The criminal, sympathizing with the object, delivered 
 the following a'ddress just before being turned off : 
 
 " Give ear, oh good people, to the words of a dying sinner. I 
 confess I have been guilty of what necessity compelled me to com- 
 mit ; which starving condition I was in, I am well assured, was 
 occasioned by the scarcity of money, that has proceeded from the 
 great discouragement of our woollen manufactures. Therefore, good 
 Christians, consider that, if you go on to suppress your own goods 
 by wearing such cottons as I am now clothed in, you will bring 
 your country into misery which will consequently swarm with such 
 unhappy malefactors as your present object is, and the blood of 
 every miserable felon that will hang after this warning, will lay at 
 your door." 
 
 Thus has it ever been. Man has always hated and warred 
 against his best benefactors, and denounced in one age what 
 he has honored in the next. Wonderful to relate, it was not 
 until the year 1774, that the law was repealed which required 
 the warp of calico to be made of linen, and for many years 
 after that a duty of threepence per yard was exacted. Nor 
 are we who live in a more enlightened day exempt from sim- 
 ilar folly. I have heard lately arguments in favor of a pro- 
 tective tariff and against an international copyright, which 
 were just as short-sighted as the English cotton legislation 
 of the last century. 
 
22$ TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 But to come to our subject. About the year 1760, a 
 change was introduced into the cotton manufacture, which 
 proved to be of importance in leading to the great inventions 
 of a later day. The Manchester dealers, instead of buying 
 calicoes and other fabrics from the weavers, now began to 
 furnish the weavers with materials, and to pay a certain 
 price for doing the work. They gave out a quantity of linen 
 thread, and with it a certain proportion of cotton-wool, which 
 the weaver himself had to convert into woof. Now arose 
 the difficulty which led Dr. Franklin to make the remark 
 previously quoted. As there was no machine in existence 
 for spinning, except the old-fashioned spinning-wheel, which 
 spun but one thread at a time, the weavers were constantly 
 troubled to get their cotton-wool spun fast enough. The 
 business was self-limited. Even if there had been no 
 restraining laws, the cotton manufacture could never have 
 attained grand proportions unless a method had been con- 
 trived of spinning with greater rapidity. 
 
 James Hargreaves, a poor, illiterate weaver of Lancas- 
 shire, in England, was the man who began those improve- 
 ments in the methods of spinning which have made England 
 the cotton manufacturer for the world. While Dr. Franklin 
 was uttering the words attributed to him, James Hargreaves, 
 if he was awake at the moment, was probably brooding over 
 the same subject. Nothing is recorded of the early life of 
 this man. We simply know, that about the year 1762, the 
 weavers of Lancashire, and he among them, were sorely 
 troubled to get their cotton- wool spun fast enough, and that, 
 being a man of an inventive turn, he began to meditate 
 improvements. 
 
 He turned his attention, first, to devising a more rapid 
 way of carding cotton. Before his time, carding was done 
 by hand. He invented a mode of doing the work which 
 
ORIGIN OF THE COTTON-WEAVING MACHINERY. 229 
 
 enabled the carder to double his product, and to do it with 
 greater ease. This contrivance, however, was soon super- 
 seded by the well-known carding-machine, which is still in 
 use. The inventor of this is unknown. It is known, how- 
 ever, that one of the first persons to use it was Sir Kob- 
 ert Peel, who made one with his own hands, assisted by 
 Hargreaves ; from which it seems reasonable to infer that 
 Hargreaves was the inventor. 
 
 Five years after, Hargreaves conceived 4he idea of his 
 celebrated spinning-jenny, which was suggested to him, it i 
 said, by seeing a spinning-wheel, which had been over- 
 turned, continue to revolve horizontally, as it lay on the 
 floor. Being but slightly acquainted with mechanics, he had 
 great difficulty in carrying out his conception ; but he suc- 
 ceeded, at length, in constructing a rude machine of eight 
 spindles, turned by bands from a horizontal wheel. Rude 
 as it was, it answered the purpose, and enabled the spinner 
 to produce eight threads at once. The inventor labored dil- 
 igently to improve it, until, in the course of a year or two, 
 he made a spinning-jenny which spun eighty threads at once. 
 Dr. Franklin was in England at the time, and I presume he 
 duly rejoiced at this new triumph of human ingenuity. 
 
 But all men are not Franklins. The spinners took the 
 alarm I A mob of ignorant and anxious men burst into 
 James Hargreaves' house, and broke his machine all to 
 pieces. The inventor fled to Nottingham, where he began 
 forthwith to construct another. Soon after this the spinners 
 of Lancashire rose in greater numbers than before, and 
 scoured the country, destroying every carding-machine and 
 spinning-machine they could find. In the large town of 
 Nottingham, however, Hargreaves was safe from violence 
 of this kind ; but there an event soon occurred which, though 
 a benefit to the rest of mankind, was a terrible calamity to 
 
230 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 him. Richard Arkwright invented the spinning- frame ! A 
 mechanical genius like Hargreaves must have comprehended 
 at a glance all the merit of that splendid invention. He 
 must have seen in it the irresistible rival of his darling spin- 
 ning-jenny. The spinning-frame of Arkwright, which per- 
 forms the whole process of spinning with only the superin- 
 tendence of a girl, was so complete a conception, that it is 
 employed to-day in all the cotton factories of Christendom. 
 
 Poor Hargreaves, it seems, never recovered the blow. 
 He struggled with adverse fortune for a few years, and then 
 died at Nottingham in extreme poverty. 
 
 The career of Arkwright, on the contrary, was as trium- 
 phant as it was peculiar. This great inventor, who died a 
 knight and a millionnaire, kept a barber-shop in a cellar in 
 the town of Bolton, Lancashire. He was the child of parents 
 who were rich in nothing but children, of whom they had 
 thirteen. Richard, the youngest child, received scarcely 
 any education, but was apprenticed at an early age to a bar- 
 ber, and, in due time, established himself in that business in 
 the cellar just mentioned. 
 
 Tradition reports that even in these lowly circumstances 
 he showed some enterprise and ingenuity, and cherished a 
 deep-rooted desire to emerge from his cellar to a position 
 more worthy of the powers which he was conscious of pos- 
 sessing. He is said to have attracted customers by putting 
 a sign over his cellar which bore these words : " Come to 
 the subterraneous barber he shaves for a penny." This 
 announcement proved so attractive, that the other barbers 
 were compelled to reduce their price to the same standard ; 
 whereupon Arkwright exchanged his sign for one still more 
 alluring : " A clean shave for a half-penny." 
 
 This dashing measure, tradition reports, brought plenty 
 of customers, but reduced the profits of the business so low 
 that he resolved to abandon it. 
 
ORIGIN OF THE COTTON-WEAVING MACHINERY. 231 
 
 It was about the year 1762, when he was thirty years of 
 &ge, that he left his cellar at Bolton, and roamed the country, 
 baying up human hair for the wig-makers, travelling from 
 fair to fair, and purchasing the long tresses of the rustic 
 girls who attended them. That was the age of wigs. Few 
 persons above the rank of a laborer ever thought of present- 
 ing themselves to view in their own hair, and some of the 
 wigs worn were of great size and considerable weight. Tho 
 trade of wig-maker was one of the principal occupations of 
 the country, and the trade in human hair of all descriptions 
 was extensive and profitable. Richard Arkwright now began 
 to accumulate property. He increased his gains by selling 
 hair-dye, and by dyeing the hair which he purchased, an art 
 in which he acquired great skill. 
 
 But his prosperity was of brief duration. Although he 
 possessed wonderful mechanical talent, he had so little knowl- 
 edge of mechanical principles, that he took it into his head 
 to invent a perpetual motion. So infatuated was he, that he 
 spent most of his time, and soon all his money, in making 
 experiments. Peace fled from his house, and plenty from his 
 board. His wife ve*ry naturally resented this infringement 
 of her rights, and, on one unhappy day, overcome with sud- 
 den anger, she broke to pieces his wheels and levers, and all 
 the apparatus of his perpetual motion. Violence never 
 answers a good purpose between people who live together in 
 a relation so intimate, neither violence of word nor deed. 
 Richard Arkwright could not forgive this cruel stroke ; he 
 separated himself from his wife, and never lived with her 
 again. 
 
 Resuming his travels about Lancashire, he could not but 
 become aware of Hargreaves' still imperfect invention of the 
 spinning-jenny. There was a great defect in this ingenious 
 machine ; for, though it would spin eighty threads at once, 
 
 15 
 
232 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 those threads were not hard and strong enough to serve as the 
 warp of calico, but could only be used for the woof. This 
 was of no great consequence at the time, because it was 
 unlawful to use cotton as the warp of a fabric ; but pure cot- 
 ton cloth never could have been made by machinery unless a 
 mode had been invented of spinning cotton- wool into a firm 
 thread. At the very time that poor Hargreaves was toiling 
 to improve his spinning-jenny, Arkwright fell in with a 
 clock-maker, named John Kay, who had rendered some 
 assistance to Hargreaves in constructing his machine, and 
 had been frequently employed in making and mending 
 weavers' tools. 
 
 Arkwright consulted John Kay respecting his perpetual 
 motion, and it is highly probable that Kay, who was a good 
 mechanic, diverted him from further pursuing that chimera, 
 and turned his mind toward the invention of cotton-spin- 
 ning machinery. The jenny was still incomplete, and the 
 weavers still found extreme difficulty in getting cotton-wool 
 fast enough to keep their looms in motion. While his 
 mind was intent upon this purpose, he chanced to go into an 
 iron foundry, where he saw a red-hot bar of iron drawn out 
 into wire by being made to pass between rollers. The idea 
 of his great invention the spinning-frame flashed upon 
 his mind. The essential feature of his machine was to spin 
 cotton into threads by causing it to pass between grooved 
 rollers, as the reader may see by stepping into a cotton 
 factory the next time he passes one. 
 
 Arkwright now sought his friend Kay, and gave himself 
 wholly up to the construction of a machine upon the prin- 
 ciple which he had conceived. Kay made such a machine 
 for him under his directions ; or, to speak more correctly, 
 the model of one which he could show to men of capital. 
 In the construction of this first model, he reduced himself 
 
ORIGIN OF THE COTTON-WEAVING MACHINERY. 233 
 
 to such poverty, that his clothes were all in rags and tat- 
 ters, and he could not replace them. An election of mem- 
 bers of parliament occurring about this time, he desired to 
 vote for General Burgoyne, who was destined to be so 
 famous in our Revolution ; but his clothes were in a con- 
 dition so woful that he was ashamed to appear at the polls, 
 and, as the election was closely contested, some of General 
 Burgoyne's adherents clubbed together and bought him a 
 suit of clothes to wear when he cast his vote. 
 
 Another calamity threatened him. Hargreaves' spinning- 
 jenny had just been torn to pieces by a mob in another 
 town, and the weavers about Preston were beginning to eye 
 with suspicion the mysterious operations of this tattered 
 barber, and his assistant, the clock-maker. In the nick of 
 time Arkwright packed up his model and conveyed it safely 
 to the large town of Nottingham. Confident in the merit 
 of his invention, he boldly applied to a firm of bankers for 
 money to assist him in constructing a machine, which they 
 agreed to furnish on condition of sharing the profits of the 
 invention. 
 
 But these worthy bankers, as many men have since 
 done, soon grew weary of spending their money upon a 
 machine which was slow to get into a working condition ; 
 but they recommended the inventor to explain his ideas to 
 a great firm of stocking-weavers, men of enterprise, wealth, 
 and intelligence. One of them, Jedediah Strutt, was him- 
 self an inventor, having but recently contrived and patented 
 a highly ingenious and successful machine for making stock- 
 ings. Mr. Strutt had scarcely seen Arkwright's models, 
 before he comprehended the inestimable value of the inven- 
 tion. A partnership was promptly formed with the inge- 
 nious barber, and the invention never again stood still for 
 lack of money. 
 
234 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 The patent for the spinning-frame was taken out in 1769, 
 the very year in which James Watt patented his improved 
 steam-engine, which was to keep this spinning-frame in 
 motion. It is a curious fact, that Eichard Arkwright is 
 styled in the letters-patent a "clock-maker," possibly 
 because he had not the courage to write himself down 
 a barber. 
 
 The patent being secured, Arkwright erected his first 
 mill, the power of which was supplied by horses. Horses 
 proving too expensive, he built a larger mill in an adjacent 
 county, the machinery of which was moved by water power. 
 He now proceeded to create the system of cotton manufac- 
 ture which has ever since prevailed, and to improve every 
 part of the machinery employed in the business. He per- 
 formed such a twenty years' work as few men have ever 
 done in this world. From four in the morning until nine 
 at night, he was ever at work, inventing, organizing, creat- 
 ing, improving. When compelled to travel, he rode in a 
 post-chaise, drawn by four .horses ridden at their utmost 
 speed, merely to save time. 
 
 Many years elapsed, and very many thousand pounds were 
 spent, before the enterprise yielded any profit. He had 
 all the usual difficulties to contend with, and some that were 
 unusual. When the value of his spinning - frame had 
 become apparent, his patent was infringed, and, to main- 
 tain his right, he was compelled to engage in a series of 
 most expensive and most wearisome lawsuits, which alone 
 would have exhausted the patience of most men. At one 
 time his largest and most costly mill was destroyed by a 
 mob of working men, although it was defended by bodies of 
 soldiers and policemen. For some time the weavers would 
 not buy his cotton-thread for their looms, while confessing 
 that it was the best in England. 
 
OKIGIN OF THE COTTON-WEAVING MACHINERY. 235 
 
 After a struggle of twenty years, the indomitable man 
 triumphed over all enemies and all obstacles, and he accu- 
 mulated a fortune of two million pounds sterling. When, 
 at length, he began to enjoy a little leisure, which was not 
 until he was fifty years of age, he set to work to remedy 
 some of the defects of his early education. At fifty years 
 of age, it is not easy to bring the mind to acquire the rudi- 
 ments of knowledge ; but this remarkable man applied him- 
 self humbly to the task, studied grammar, strove to 
 improve his handwriting, and to become a more correct 
 speller, 
 
 *Late in life, when he was high sheriff of an English 
 county, it became his duty to present an address to George 
 the Third, congratulating him upon his escape from an 
 assassin. The king conferred upon himself the honor of 
 knighting the man whose inventive and organizing genius 
 enabled Great Britain to supply the waste of her resources 
 caused by the king's folly and obstinacy. For the last few 
 years of his life, therefore, he was styled Sir Eichard Ark- 
 wright, 
 
 He died in 1792, in the sixtieth year of his age, having 
 in thirty years created the cotton manufacturing system of 
 Eugland, such as it exists to-day. 
 
 Another man who contributed a lifetime of toil and thought 
 to the development of the cotton manufacture of England, 
 was the founder of the Peel family. A hundred years ago, 
 Robert Peel was a small farmer with a large family, residing 
 in the county of Lancaster, in England. His farm was sit- 
 uated two or three miles from the town of Blackburn, and 
 about twenty miles from Manchester, now the centre of the 
 English cotton manufacture. The reason why the manufac- 
 tures of England have gathered in that region is, that it is 
 near the coal-mines, the great Lancashire coal-field extend- 
 
236 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 ing over four hundred square miles, which is among the most 
 important of the coal regions of the world. 
 
 Lands which abound in mineral wealth are frequently not 
 very productive on the surface. The farm tilled by Robert 
 Peel was far from being fertile, and as his family increased 
 he became less and less satisfied with his condition and pros- 
 pects. It has for ages been customary with the tillers of 
 barren soils and small farms, to eke out their subsistence by 
 carrying on some kind of domestic manufacture during the 
 winter months. The custom prevails to this day in many 
 parts of the United States. There are some counties in New 
 Jersey where almost every farmer spends the winter in mak- 
 ing shoes, and there are parts of New England where the 
 manufacture of straw hats and bonnets is the winter employ- 
 ment of many a household. In western New York, and in 
 other wheat-raising States, farmers and their sons often 
 spend the winter months in making flour barrels, and the 
 industrious people of Pennsylvania carry on various small 
 trades in the same season. 
 
 And so in English Lancaster the farmers had long been 
 accustomed to add to their slender revenues by the manufac- 
 ture of a certain excellent fabric, half linen and half cotton, 
 called " Blackburn gray." Eobert Peel, seeing in industry 
 of this kind a means of employing and supporting his large 
 family, began the home-manufacture of calico. Like the 
 founders of every other great and permanent establishment 
 of which I have ever heard or read, he was a very honest 
 man, and put his honesty into the fabrics he wrought. Nor 
 less ready was he to seize upon improved machinery and 
 methods. James Hargreaves, a native of this county, 
 invented the spinning-jenny about the year 1760, and Robert 
 Peel was one of the first to avail himself of his neighbor's 
 inventions. He was soon a thriving man. 
 
ORIGIN OF THE COTTON-WEAVING MACHINERY. 237 
 
 His great success, however, was in the printing of calicoes, 
 an art which scarcely existed before his time. His special 
 object was to invent a mode of printing calico by machinery. 
 At that period, when the patent-laws afforded little protec- 
 tion, every ingenious mechanic had, or thought he had, val- 
 uable secrets respecting his trade, which he kept with the 
 greatest care. Apprentices were formerly bound by their 
 indentures to "keep their master's secrets," and every one 
 employed in the shop considered himself bound in honor not 
 to betray them. Kobert Peel's experiments in calico print- 
 ing were carried on in the deepest secrecy, just as forgers 
 and counterfeiters now ply their vocation. One of his 
 daughters usually assisted him, washing and ironing the 
 cloth, mixing the colors, and sketching the patterns. 
 
 Farmers in those days generally used pewter plates at 
 table. It happened one day that Robert Peel drew a pattern 
 for calico on the back of one of his dinner-plates, and while 
 he was looking at it, the thought occurred to him that per- 
 haps if he should spread color upon it, and apply the 
 requisite degree of pressure, he could get an impression on 
 calico. In a cottage close to his farm-house lived a woman 
 who had one of those machines for smoothing fabrics which 
 worked by rollers. Having applied color to his pattern, 
 and placed calico over it, he passed his plate between the 
 rollers of this calendering' machine. He was delighted to 
 find that an excellent impression was made upon the calico, 
 and thus was begun the invention of the process by which 
 to this day calico is printed. Robert Peel rapidly improved 
 upon the original idea, and was soon printing calicoes by 
 machinery. 
 
 At this period fortunes were not made with the rapidity 
 which we are accustomed to in these times. Robert Peel, 
 however, was henceforth a prosperous man, and began to 
 
238 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 accumulate property. Relinquishing his farm, he removed 
 to a village near by, and there established a calico printing- 
 house, which constantly grew in importance as long as he 
 lived. 
 
 As his sons grew up, and he had many sons, he 
 established them in the neighborhood in various branches of 
 the cotton manufacture, so that each could be of service to 
 all the rest. He was not able to give them much capital at 
 starting; but there was a great deal of solid worth and 
 understanding in the family, and these sons had been 
 brought up in the sensible way of the olden time. It is a 
 remarkable fact, that every one of his sons became at length 
 the proprietor of a great manufactory, and made a great 
 fortune. 
 
 The eldest son of this able and vigorous English yeoman, 
 born in 1750, was also named Robert, and became, in the 
 course of time, Sir Robert Peel. He learned the trade of 
 cotton-printing under his father, and when he was twenty 
 years of age he determined to set up for himself. His 
 father had not yet become rich enough to advance him any 
 great amount of capital, not more, it is said, than a hun- 
 dred pounds. But he had a young friend in the town of 
 Blackburn, named William Yates, whose father kept the 
 Bull Tavern there, and had saved a little money. Young 
 Robert Peel had the requisite knowledge, and the elder Yates 
 gave his son three hundred pounds, to enable him to go into 
 partnership with his friend. James Haworth, a near 
 relative of Robert Peel, joined the two young men, and 
 added a hundred pounds to the joint capital. Their first 
 operation was to buy an old mill, all in ruins, with a con- 
 siderable piece of ground attached to it. Upon this ground 
 they erected, chiefly with their own hands, a few wooden 
 sheds, and forthwith began to print calicoes. 
 
ORIGIN OF THE COTTON-WEAVING MACHINERY. 239 
 
 The humble and frugal manner in which they lived is 
 pleasant to read in these days of fuss and ostentation : 
 " William Yates," says an English writer, " being a married 
 man, with a family, commenced house-keeping on a small 
 scale, and to oblige Peel, who was single, he agreed to take 
 him as a lodger. The sum which the latter first paid for 
 board and lodging was only eight shillings a week; but 
 Yates, considering this too little, insisted on the weekly 
 payment being increased a shilling, to which Peel at first 
 demurred, and a difference between the partners took place, 
 which was eventually compromised by the lodger paying an 
 advance of a sixpence a week. William Yates' eldest child 
 was a girl, named Ellen, and she very soon became an 
 especial favorite with the young lodger. On returning from 
 his hard day's work, he would take the little girl upon his 
 knee, and say to her : ' Nelly, thou bonny little dear, wilt 
 be my wife?' to which the child would readily answer, 
 'Yes,' as any child would do. 'Then I'll wait for thee, 
 Nelly; I'll wed thee, and none else.' And Robert Peel 
 did wait. As the girl grew in beauty towards womanhood, 
 his determination to wait for her was strengthened ; and 
 after the lapse of ten years years of close application to 
 business and rapidly-increasing prosperity Robert Peel 
 married Ellen Yates when she had completed her seven- 
 teenth year." 
 
 The success of this firm was great and rapid, beyond all 
 previous precedent. Robert Peel was the soul of the enter- 
 prise. He was equally bold and prudent, most prompt to 
 adopt every real improvement, and sagacious and far-seeing 
 in an eminent degree. At one time he had fifteen thousand 
 persons in his employment, and he made a fortune of two 
 million pounds sterling. He owed his baronetcy to the zeal 
 and liberality with which he supported the politics of 
 
240 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 George the Third and the Tory party. It was he who, 
 during the French wars, gave the king a frigate, with all 
 her guns and equipage complete. 
 
 Elected to Parliament in 1790, he was a member of that 
 body for thirty years. He was a most thorough and con- 
 sistent Tory. He appears to have been the author of the 
 sentiment, that " a national debt is a national blessing " ; at 
 least, he wrote a pamphlet entitled, " The national debt pro- 
 ductive of national prosperity." What wonder that George 
 the Third made him a baronet ! 
 
 He died in 1830, soon after completing his eightieth year, 
 leaving the greater part of his immense possessions to his 
 eldest son, the great Sir Kobert Peel. 
 
JOHN FILLMORE, 
 
 AND HIS VICTORY OVER THE PIRATES. 
 
 PEIDE in one's ancestry is condemned as a foible only 
 by those who have no ancestry to be proud of. Foible or no 
 foible, few would hesitate to excuse Mr. Millard Fillmore 
 for boasting a little of the gallant exploit of his great-great- 
 grandfather, John Fillmore, of Boston, in delivering himself 
 from the pirates, and bringing them to justice. A braver 
 act has scarcely been recorded in the annals of New Eng- 
 land. 
 
 The father of John Fillmore was a New-England mariner, 
 who was captured by a French frigate, carried away, and 
 kept long in close and cruel confinement ; and after his 
 exchange, died on the voyage home. His widow lived then 
 in Boston, with her son John, whom she apprenticed in due 
 time to a carpenter. Opposite her house there lived a boy 
 named William White, apprenticed to a tailor, with whom 
 her son John became intimate, and both of the lads had the 
 boy's passion, so common then in seaport towns, for going 
 to sea. The melancholy fate of John Fillmore's father had 
 no eflect to check this strong desire. White, three years 
 the elder, was out of his time first, and as soon as he was 
 free, went on board a ship, and was seen in Boston no more. 
 
 Soon after White's departure, young Fillmore, being sev- 
 enteen years of age, entreated his mother to let him go a 
 voyage ; but she opposed it so strongly, and with such per- 
 duasive tenderness, that he reluctantly postponed his project, 
 
242 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 and said nothing about it for two years more, when he 
 renewed his request. His mother, perceiving that his desire 
 was unconquerable, unless it were gratified, and thinking, 
 perhaps, that a taste of a sailor's hard life might sicken him 
 of it forever, gave her consent that he should make one 
 fishing voyage in the sloop Dolphin, then lying in the harbor 
 getting ready for sea. He shipped on board the sloop 
 accordingly. 
 
 Nothing unusual occurred until they reached the fishing 
 banks, nor for some little time after they had begun to fish. 
 One day, to their great alarm, a large armed ship hove in 
 sight, which some of the old hands soon suspected to be a 
 pirate. As it was impossible either to get away from her 
 by flight, or to offer any effectual resistance, they were 
 obliged to await her coming up, and take the consequences. 
 In a few minutes the pirate hove to, and lowered away a 
 boat, which came alongside. 
 
 " Who are you, and where are you bound?" cried a voice 
 from the boat. 
 
 "The Dolphin, from Boston, fishing," answered the cap- 
 tain of the sloop. 
 
 The boat then returned to the ship, but soon came back, 
 and the officer commanding her demanded a list of the men 
 of the sloop's crew ; having obtained which, he returned 
 alongside the pirate. Before long the boat again approached 
 the sloop, bringing with her a young man, whom John Fill- 
 more, to his amazement and horror, recognized as his old 
 friend William White, the tailor's apprentice ! It seems, 
 that upon looking over the list of the sloop's crew, he had 
 recognized the name of his old companion ; and he told the 
 pirate captain that John Fillmore was a good, stout, resolute 
 fellow, just such a hand as was wanted on board, and 
 advised him to take him into his service. So, when the 
 
JOHN FILLMORE'S VICTORY. 243 
 
 boat returned, the pirate officer told the captain of the sloop, 
 that if he would give up John Fillmore, the rest of the crew 
 could go free. 
 
 The captain, an honest, worthy man, took Fillmore aside, 
 and communicated to him this terrible message, expressing 
 great sorrow and sympathy. 
 
 w And yet," said he, " as we are entirely in the power of 
 a bloody ? merciless ruffian, and have no hope of escape but 
 by giving you up, I believe you must go and try your for- 
 tune with them." 
 
 After a few moments' reflection, the young man replied as 
 follows : 
 
 " Captain," said he, "I have ever been faithful to your 
 interests and commands, and I have always wished to do 
 my duty punctually and well ; but I am determined not to go 
 on board the pirate, let the consequence be what it may." 
 
 The captain spoke to the pirate officer, and the boat 
 departed ; but immediately returned, with orders to bring, 
 John Fillmore back, dead or alive. 
 
 This message being delivered to the young man, he was 
 thrown into the greatest perplexity. If he refused, instant 
 death stared them all in the face ; and if he went, he expected 
 to be murdered for refusing to sign the articles of the pirate 
 ship, which he was resolved never to do, though put to the 
 last extremity of torture. After thinking the matter over, 
 he got together his kit, bade his comrades good-by, stepped 
 into the boat, and was soon on the pirate's quarter-deck, 
 face to face with that dread bandit of the seas, the notorious 
 Captain Phillips. 
 
 Phillips, it appears, received him civilly enough, and 
 renewed the promise made by the mate to let him go after 
 two months' service. Fillmore, on his part, while constantly 
 refusing to sign the articles, agreed to render faithful service 
 as a seaman during the term named. 
 
244 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 The two months passed without any captures of impor- 
 tance being made. Fillmore then demanded his release. 
 Phillips replied good-humoredly : 
 
 "We have done but little business since you came on 
 board, and I can't well spare you yet ; but if you will stay 
 with me three months longer, upon my honor I will set you 
 at liberty." 
 
 The three months also passed, during which a few small 
 vessels only were overhauled, plundered, and two or three 
 of their best hands taken. Again John Fillmore reminded 
 the pirate of his promise, and asked to be set ashore, that 
 he might rejoin his mother. Phillips, in a tremendous fury, 
 roared out : 
 
 " Set you at liberty ? Damn you ! you shall be set at 
 liberty when I am damned, and not before I " 
 
 After this Phillips became much more harsh and abusive 
 toward the young man, sometimes striking him with his 
 sword, and discharging a volley of execrations at him upon 
 the slightest offence, real or imaginary. Several valuable 
 prizes were taken during the next two months, by manning 
 which the crew of the pirate had become considerably weak- 
 ened, until there were only seventeen men left, five of whom 
 were prisoners, like Fillmore, who had not signed the 
 articles. 
 
 These five honest men began to think of the possibility of 
 subduing the pirates, and taking the ship into port. In the 
 dead of night, when the pirates were in a deep drunken sleep, 
 they got together and formed their plan- Two of them, 
 although they swore secrecy, frankly owned that they had 
 not courage enough to join in the attempt. The work, 
 therefore, would have to be done by three men, one of whom 
 was an Indian, in whom the other two had no great con- 
 fidence. It was, in fact, two against eleven, Fillmore and 
 
JOHN FILLMOKE'S VICTORY. 245 
 
 Cheeseman, a carpenter, against Phillips and ten of his 
 crew. 
 
 It so happened that the pirate captain, before sitting down 
 to the night's debauch, had ordered Cheeseman to do some 
 carpenter work on the quarter-deck the next morning, which 
 would require the use of a broadaxe. Their plan was, that 
 at noon the next day, at the moment when the quarter- 
 master stood near the bulwarks, quadrant in hand, taking 
 the sun, Cheeseman should seize him and throw him into 
 the sea ; and at the same instant Fillmore should pick up the 
 broadaxe, and, to use his own language, "make the best use 
 of it he could." The Indian, without having any particular 
 duty assigned him, was to join in the fray and do his best. 
 
 At midnight their plan was complete, and they separated 
 for the night. John Fillmore, on going into the caboose, 
 found stretched upon the floor two of the most desperate of 
 the pirates, in so deep a drunken stupor as to have lost the 
 power of feeling. 
 
 "I took fire," says Fillmore, in his narrative, "and burnt 
 these two villains in the feet, while they lay senseless, so 
 badly as to render them unable to be upon deck the next 
 day." 
 
 This reduced the pirate gang to nine. Early in the morn- 
 ing the confederates were on deck ; the tools were taken aft, 
 and the broadaxe was placed where it could be most con- 
 veniently seized. The pirates slept late after their carouse. 
 Fillmore, afraid that they would not get up in time to take 
 an observation of the sun, went to the cabin door soon after 
 ten o'clock, and told the captain it was getting about time to 
 take 'the sun. 
 
 "Damn you I " he growled ; "it is none of your business." 
 
 However, the officers soon came on deck, captain, 
 master, quarter-master, and boatswain. 
 
246 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 The agitation of the confederates now became most in- 
 tense, and the white man who could not muster courage to 
 take part, became so deadly pale that the captain noticed it, 
 and asked what was the matter with him. 
 
 " He has been sick all night," said the ready Fillmore. w ] 
 believe a dram would help him." 
 
 " Go to my case," said Phillips, " and get a bottle of 
 brandy." 
 
 When the brandy was brought, they all drank of it except 
 the Indian, who, although a drinking man, wisely refused to 
 touch a drop of it. The critical moment arrived. The mas- 
 ter prepared to take the observation, Cheeseman keeping near 
 him with a hammer in his hand, and Fillmore standing close 
 to the broadaxe, and with one foot upon it. The master 
 raised the quadrant to his eye. Cheeseman seized him and 
 threw him into the ocean. Fillmore instantly caught up the 
 broadaxe, and with one blow clove the boatswain's skull. 
 He then struck the captain a blow on the head, which only 
 half stunned him. But at that moment Cheeseman came up 
 with his hammer, struck him once upon the head, and killed 
 him. The quarter-master now came running out of the 
 cabin, also with a hammer in his hand, and running toward 
 Cheeseman, would have probably struck him a mortal blow 
 if the Indian tyad not caught him by the elbow and held him 
 for a moment. Fillmore swung his broadaxe round with 
 such tremendous force against the back of his neck, as to 
 nearly cut his head off, and his head fell down before him, 
 hanging by the skin. 
 
 The rest of the pirate crew, panic-stricken, made no resist- 
 ance, but surrendered the vessel, and begged for their lives. 
 Fillmore and his comrades took the vessel into Boston har 
 bor, where they hoisted their pirate's colors, and fired a gun 
 for the authorities to come on board ; into whose hands they 
 
JOHN FILLMORE'S VICTORY. 247 
 
 gave up the vessel and the prisoners. Six of the pirates 
 were hanged, one of whom was White, who had caused Fill- 
 more's capture. Cheeseman received an appointment in one 
 of the king's ship-yards ; the Indian also had some reward ; 
 and the court which tried the pirates presented Fillmore 
 with Captain Phillips's gun, silver-hilted sword, silver shoe 
 and knee buckles, and two gold rings. The ship, instead of 
 being given to the heroic men who had captured her, was 
 confiscated to the king's service. 
 
 After these events, John Fillmore settled at Norwich, 
 Connecticut, where he married, reared a family, acquired 
 property, lived happily, and died lamented. Often, in the 
 decline of life, he was called upon to tell the thrilling story 
 of his deliverance from the pirates ; and finally he wrote it 
 out, and it was printed. From a copy of his narrative 
 kindly given me by his distinguished descendant, the ex- 
 president, I have retold the tale. The stout and vigorous 
 frame which, together with his lion heart, enabled him to do 
 this valiant deed, he transmitted to his posterity. Mr. 
 Millard Fillmore is a person of handsome proportions ; and 
 his father, Deacon Fillmore, whom I have seen, was as 
 erect and vigorous an old gentleman as you could meet in ft 
 week's journey. 
 
 16 
 
SINGULAR TRIUMPH OF RESOLUTION. 
 
 PAINTING WITHOUT HANDS. 
 
 OPPOSITE the "Tribune" office in New York, there sits, in 
 the open street, a young man who has lost both arms, and 
 who earns his livelihood by cutting kindling wood with his 
 feet. With one of his feet he holds a pine board, and with 
 the toes of the other he holds a long sharp knife, with which 
 he cuts, with great rapidity, long strips from the board. On 
 cold days in the winter you can see him thus employed, and 
 he does not appear to suffer either from the severity of the 
 weather, or the awkwardness and monotony of his occu- 
 pation. 
 
 I remember, too, that when I was about ten years of age, 
 a man used to sit on the Battery in New York, just within 
 the gate of Castle Garden, who was also deprived of both 
 arms, and who used to cut out very good likenesses from 
 black paper with a pair of scissors held in his toes. He cut 
 out my likeness for one, and I kept it as a curiosity for sev- 
 eral years. We have recently seen also how quickly men 
 could learn to write with the left hand, who had lost their 
 right in the war ; some of whom learned to write legibly in 
 ten days, and very well in three months. 
 
 But what are such examples as these to the case of John 
 Carter, whose arms and legs were all paralyzed and totally 
 helpless, and who yet became one of the most exquisite 
 draughtsmen that ever lived? The reader, I am sure, will 
 be interested in this story of a man who showed more strik- 
 
250 TKIUMPH8 OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 ingly than any other the power which the human mind has 
 to triumph over bodily deficiencies. 
 
 On a Saturday night in May, 1836, a party of young silk- 
 weavers were carousing in an ale-house in the village of 
 Coggeshall, in the English County of Essex. Silk- weaving 
 was a profitable employment then, and these men earned 
 what they call in England good wages ; that is, about 
 four dollars a week : much of which they wasted in guzzling 
 beer. Late in the evening, when the party had taken 
 enough beer to deprive them of what little sense they had, 
 one of them proposed that they should go to a gentleman's 
 park near by, to rob the rooks' nests of the young birds, a 
 great delicacy to men who seldom eat any meat but bacon. 
 The suggestion found favor, and seven or eight weavers sal- 
 lied forth on the expedition about midnight. 
 
 One of them, John Carter by name, a wild, dissolute young 
 fellow, about twenty years of age, climbed to the top of a 
 high fir-tree, and while he was attempting to jump to another, 
 which in the darkness of the night he thought he could 
 reach, he struck short of his object, and fell to the ground. 
 The height of the branch from which he slipped was about 
 forty feet, and he would probably have been killed imme- 
 diately, if his fall had not been broken by other branches. 
 As it was, he lay upon the ground insensible, and his compan- 
 ions carried him home upon a hurdle. The accident occurred 
 about one o'clock in the morning, and he was brought home 
 shortly before daybreak. 
 
 His wife, who had gone to bed sick, and anxious about her 
 scapegrace of a husband, heard the noise outside of the 
 cottage, and supposing he had come home drunk, as he often 
 had before, came down to let him in. Upon opening the 
 door, she saw her husband lying upon the hurdle still insen- 
 sible, with one of his friends sitting by his side, the others 
 
SINGULAR TRIUMPH OF RESOLUTION. 251 
 
 having fled. A doctor was sent for, who arrived between 
 four and five in the morning. The doctor found him insen- 
 sible and motionless, cold and breathing imperfectly, with 
 a pulse extremely feeble. He concluded at once that either 
 the brain or spinal column was fatally injured, and that the 
 patient would die in a few hours. He ordered, however, hot 
 flannels and other means of restoring warmth to the body. 
 Towards evening the pulse became stronger, and in the course 
 of the next day his senses returned, and he was able to 
 inform the doctor that the injury was in the upper part of 
 the spine, near the back of the neck. 
 
 It soon appeared that the entire body below the neck was 
 paralyzed, and so it remained as long as the patient lived. 
 He suffered little pain, but he could neither move hand nor 
 foot, nor turn himself in bed, nor was there any feeling in 
 his flesh, except in that of his head and neck ; and thus he 
 lay for fourteen years, his body torpid and only his head 
 really alive. 
 
 Previous to the accident there had been nothing remark- 
 able in his life or character. His parents were honest labor- 
 ing people, and he had attended a charity-school long enough 
 to learn to read and write. As a school-boy he had been 
 noted for an unusual inclination to draw. He was one of 
 those boys who, whenever they have a pen or pencil in hand, 
 or a piece of chalk or charcoal, are strongly disposed to dis- 
 figure their books and slates, and the walls of their room, 
 with rough representations of animals and other familiar 
 objects. At the usual age he was apprenticed to a silk- 
 weaver, and at twenty was a married man, distressing his 
 wife with his behavior. Not that he was bad by nature, but 
 he had the misfortune to live in a parish where virtue was 
 made disgusting or ridiculous by the very people who were 
 employed to render it lovely and engaging; and so he 
 
252 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 thought it a fine thing to muddle his brains with beer, and 
 to seek amusement by making inroads upon other people's 
 property. The terrible accident which laid him helpless for 
 life upon a bed, awoke his better nature, and he became 
 contrite, affectionate, and patient. 
 
 Being fond of reading, and no other pleasure being now 
 within his reach, his friends and neighbors kept him pretty 
 well supplied with books, and he passed much of his time 
 with a book held conveniently before him by a machine made 
 for the purpose. His wife one day brought home to him a 
 tract which gave an account of a young woman in an asylum 
 at Liverpool, who, after losing the use of her limbs, had 
 learned to draw tolerably with her mouth. 
 
 " The thought at once came into my -mind," he once wrote 
 (and he wrote these very words with his mouth, and in a 
 very good hand too), "that I might certainly do the same, 
 and I could not rest satisfied till I made the attempt." 
 
 He began immediately, glad of a new means of breaking 
 the monotony of his life. He drew first upon a slate, and 
 then upon pieces of paper pinned to the pillow ; using at 
 first only a pencil, but afterwards coloring his pictures with 
 water colors. I have before me a copy of the first picture 
 he ever painted in this manner. A remarkably brilliant but- 
 terfly was one day caught in his room. Thinking he could 
 paint it, he sent for a sixpenny-box of paints, and soon 
 produced a portrait of the insect so perfect that it was pro- 
 nounced a fac-simile, both in form and color. He now 
 produced many pictures of birds and flowers, which were 
 readily sold in the village, and the price of which was a wel- 
 come addition to the allowance made him by the parish. 
 
 The manner in which he worked is described by the cler- 
 gyman of his parish, the author of a memoir of Carter, pub- 
 lished recently in this city. On a desk, supported at the 
 
SINGULAR TRIUMPH OF RESOLUTION. 253 
 
 right slant before him, his drawing paper was fastened with 
 those large flat-headed pins which artists and architects use 
 for the purpose. He held his pencil as firmly between his 
 teeth as it it had been in a vice. A saucer of color or India 
 ink was prepared, into which his wife or sister dipped his 
 brush and placed it in his mouth; when, says the clergy- 
 man, w by a curious muscular action of his lips and tongue, 
 he would twirl the brush round with great velocity, until he 
 had thrown off all superfluous ink, and brought it to a very 
 fine point. He then held it fast between his jaw teeth, and, 
 by the motion of the head, produced the most accurate and 
 delicate strokes. . . . Considering how great the evap- 
 oration would be in summer-time, and how impossible it was, 
 from his recumbent position, for the colors to flow to the 
 point of the brush, when actually touching his work, it will 
 easily be imagined how troublesome an operation it must 
 have been to him, and what incessant assistance he required ; 
 for the brush was always taken from his mouth, replenished, 
 and replaced by his attendant." 
 
 He attained to a fineness of stroke which probably the hand 
 has never equalled. In the memoir just quoted, photographs 
 are given often of his works, and I think I never saw any- 
 thing so fine in drawing before. One of these is the picture 
 of a sick horse, standing in his stable, with drooping head, 
 his body covered with a large, thick blanket. The expres- 
 sion of the horse is perfect, and the picture is wrought out 
 with so much distinctness that you can almost count the very 
 straws of the horse's bed. His most celebrated work is 
 called " The Village Rat-Catcher and his Dogs," which is most 
 admirable, both in the arrangement of the figures and in the 
 amazing delicacy and clearness of the execution. 
 
 This exquisite artist lived, as I have said, fourteen years 
 after his accident, and lost his life at last by another acci- 
 
254 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 dent. He had a kind of couch made upon wheels, upon 
 which his wife or sister used to draw him about the country 
 on fine days, and to church on Sundays. He was confirmed 
 as he lay upon this couch in church by the Bishop of London ; 
 the bishop leaving the altar, and going to where the poor 
 fellow lay, and there placing his hands upon his head, a 
 spectacle which brought tears to the eyes of the whole con- 
 gregation. In the summer of 1850 his sister had drawn him 
 out, when, wishing to give her the pleasure of a favorite 
 walk on a beautiful summer day, he insisted that she should 
 go home across the fields, while he was drawn home on the 
 road by a boy. His sister at length yielded to his solicita- 
 tions. He watched her as long as he could see her, fearful 
 that she might be frightened at some cattle grazing near 
 where she had to pass. He was of an exceedingly loving 
 nature, and his countenance wore a singularly angelic aspect, 
 which was often remarked. A few minutes after, the boy, 
 who was drawing him down a slight descent, tripped and 
 overthrew the carriage, and poor Carter was thrown violently 
 to the ground. The shock proved to be too severe for him, 
 and a week after he died. 
 
 It was discovered, after his death, that three bones of the 
 spinal column were displaced, one of which, by pressing 
 upon the spinal cord, had deprived of sense and motion all 
 the body below the point of compression. One of his pic- 
 tures is now the property of Queen Victoria, and another, 
 "The Rat-catcher," has been engraved and published. 
 
A HEKO OF LITEKATTJKE THOMAS HOOD. 
 
 IT is a curious fact that those who contribute to the mer- 
 riment of mankind, are, as a class, among the least happy of 
 our species. Comic actors, for example, are usually very 
 grave men, often subject to melancholy, sometimes to ill 
 temper; and, in some notorious instances, they have been 
 cruelly unfortunate. I have been behind the scenes of a 
 theatre two or three times in my life, and I was always 
 struck with the serious demeanor of the comic men when 
 they were off duty. 
 
 I well remember one evening, when the curtain went down 
 upon the gay comedy of " The Honeymoon," the startling 
 change which came over the countenances of the comedians 
 at the very moment that they were hidden from the gaze of 
 the audience. Every face collapsed into an expression of 
 mingled sadness and fatigue, and they all seemed to slink 
 away, in their fine clothes and staring paint, as if they were 
 thoroughly sick of the whole business, and never meant to 
 appear on the stage again. The excellent artist who played 
 the part of the " Mock Duke " passed me as he went slowly 
 and wearily up to his dressing-room. I shall never forget 
 how tired and dejected he looked ; and I have since learned 
 that he had abundant cause to be dejected. He was amusing 
 the public and keeping multitudes in a roar of laughter, 
 when his heart was torn and desolate by the most acute 
 domestic afflictions. 
 
256 TKIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 Humorous writers, I should suppose, are not more happy 
 or more fortunate than their brethren of the stage. I could 
 mention some striking examples among the living ; but it 
 seems to be a necessity of the case, that those who cheer and 
 entertain us by their pleasure-giving talents, should them- 
 selves tread the wine-press alone, and receive little help and 
 little sympathy until neither can do them any good. 
 
 The life and death of Thomas Hood, author of the " Song 
 of the Shirt," and editor for many years of the "Comic 
 Annual," seems to me to be one of the most pathetic trage- 
 dies of modern times. m Observe this passage from one of 
 the letters of his wife : 
 
 " All Tuesday Hood has been in such an exhausted state he was 
 obliged to go to bed ; but 7 was up all night ready to write at his 
 dictation if he felt able; but it was so utter a prostration of strength, 
 that he could scarcely speak, much less use his head at all. The 
 doctor said it was extreme exhaustion from the cold weather, want 
 of air and exercise, acted upon by great anxiety of- mind and ner- 
 vousness. . . . The shorter the time became the more nervous 
 he was, and incapable of writing. . . . His distress that the 
 last post was come without his being able to send (manuscript to a 
 magazine) was dreadful." 
 
 It was jests for a comic periodical that poor Hood strug- 
 gled to invent that night, while his wife sat at his side wait- 
 ing to write them down at his dictation. Such scenes 
 occurred many a time in the author's room, he so racked 
 with agony that he could neither write nor draw, and his wife 
 sitting patiently during the slow hours of the night, waiting 
 to see if her husband would have an interval of ease when he 
 could exercise his powers. The following is a portion of an 
 apology once inserted in the magazine called " Hood's Own " : 
 
 " Up to Thursday, the twenty-third, Mr. Hood did not relinquish 
 the hope that he should have strength to continue in the present 
 
LITERATURE THOMAS HOOD. 257 
 
 number the novel which he began in the last. ... On the same 
 evening, sitting up in bed, he tried to invent and sketch a few comic 
 designs ; but even this effort exceeded his strength, and was fol- 
 lowed by the wandering delirium of utter nervous exhaustion." 
 
 And yet, even in such desperate circumstances, he could 
 sometimes throw off a great number of excellent jests' and 
 amusing pictures. On that very night just described, he 
 succeeded in drawing two humorous sketches, which were 
 published in the magazine. One was a picture of a magpie, 
 with a hawk's hood on its head, which was called " Hood's 
 Mag." The other picture was a collection of bottles, leeches, 
 and blisters ; and this was styled "The Editor's Apologies." 
 During the last twelve years of his life, he scarcely ever 
 wrote except with great physical pain or inconvenience. Nor 
 was it possible for him to rest ; for the compensation paid to 
 contributors was smaller then than now, and he had a family 
 dependent on him. He was in debt through the fault of 
 others, and it required the utmost exertion of his powers 
 to keep the wolf from the door. 
 
 His father was a London bookseller and author, more 
 successful, however, in selling than in making books. He 
 wrote two novels, which have long since passed into obliv- 
 ion ; but as a bookseller he was successful enough to rear 
 his family respectably, and give his children such education 
 as was usual at that day, in his sphere of life. His second 
 son, Thomas, was born in the last year of the last century. 
 Losing his father when he was a boy of fifteen, he was 
 apprenticed to an engraver, under whom he acquired that 
 skill with his pencil which he turned to account as the editor 
 of comic periodicals. To his widowed mother he was a 
 most affectionate and faithful son. She did not long survive 
 her husband, and her last days were greatly soothed and 
 cheered by the untiring services of her children. 
 
258 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 If the reader knows anything of the writings of Thomas 
 Hood, he is aware that there was one thing in the world that 
 he hated more than all others besides, and that was the 
 cant of religion. I have just discovered the cause of the 
 peculiar intensity of this hatred. Being much persecuted by 
 a female neighbor with tracts and canting letters, he sat 
 down one day, and wrote her a long satirical remonstrance, 
 which he entitled, "My Tract." It is extremely ingenious 
 and forcible ; but the last paragraph gives us the key, not 
 only to this composition, but to others of a similar nature 
 which abound in his works : 
 
 " And now, Madam, farewell Your mode of recalling yourself 
 to my memory reminds me that your fanatical mother insulted mine 
 in the last days of her life (which was marked by every Christian 
 virtue), by the presentation of a tract addressed to Infidels. I 
 remember, also, that the same heartless woman intruded herself, 
 with less reverence than a Mohawk squaw would have exhibited, 
 on the chamber of death, and interrupted with her jargon almost 
 my very last interview with my dying parent. Such reminiscences 
 warrant some severity ; but if more be wanting, know that my 
 poor sister has been excited by a circle of canters like yourself 
 into a religious frenzy, and is at this moment in a private mad- 
 house." 
 
 That explains all. And terrible was the revenge which 
 he took upon all the tribe of hypocrites ; for I suppose no 
 man ever lived who did so much to make the cant of religion 
 odious and loathsome. 
 
 The close confinement of an engraver's office soon told 
 upon his health ; for he was a delicate and sensitive boy. 
 He was therefore sent to a relation in Scotland, where he 
 remained for two years as clerk in a counting-room ; and it 
 was in Scotland that he first began to write for the public. 
 Returning to London in his twenty-second year, he obtained 
 
LITERATURE THOMAS HOOD. 259 
 
 employment in the office of a magazine as proof-reader and 
 editorial assistant. He began forthwith to write humorous 
 contributions for this periodical in prose and verse, few of 
 which, however, have been thought worthy of republicatiou. 
 His connection with this magazine made him a literary man 
 for life, and in that career he achieved, at length, a fame 
 which extended as far as the English language is known. 
 
 At twenty-five he married that admirable, that devoted, 
 that martyr wife, who gave herself up so entirely to her suf- 
 fering husband, and upon whose cheering presence he was 
 at last so dependent, that he could hardly write at all if she 
 were not near him. The first years of his married life were 
 happy and fortunate, for he enjoyed tolerable health ; he 
 could produce salable matter with astonishing ease, and he 
 had a sufficient income. 
 
 Ten years passed. He had saved some money, which he 
 invested in a publishing business, as Sir Walter Scott did in 
 the great Edinburgh house that published his novels. The 
 firm of which poor Hood was a silent member failed in 1834, 
 by which he lost all that he had saved, and was plunged into 
 debt His friends advised him to avail himself of the Bank- 
 rupt Act, or as he expressed it, to " score off his debts with 
 legal whitewash or a wet sponge." But he chose to follow 
 the example of Scott, and resolved, if health continued, to 
 discharge his obligations by honest toil in his profession. 
 With this object in view, he removed with his family to 
 Coblentz, a town on the Rhine, where the necessaries of life 
 are much cheaper than in England. On the passage over 
 he narrowly escaped shipwreck, and suffered so severely, 
 that his delicate constitution never recovered the strain. 
 
 How he flew at his task ; how patiently he toiled ; how 
 fearfully he suffered ; with what indomitable gayety of heart 
 he bore his daily and nightly anguish ; how kind he was as 
 
260 TKIUMPHS OF ENTEKPKISE. 
 
 father, husband, and friend ; how tenderly he felt for the 
 sorrows of the poor and friendless ; how nobly he toiled in 
 the service of the forlorn and afflicted ; and how, while he 
 suffered, he enlivened and blessed ten thousand homes with 
 his honest, cheerful, and innocent writings, cannot here be 
 told. The story of his life has never been related as it 
 ought to have been. The memorials published some years 
 ago by his children are of the deepest interest, and would 
 almost move a heart of stone to pity ; but we feel the tale 
 to be incomplete, and it provokes curiosity rather than satis- 
 fies it. I gather, however, a few traits and incidents from it. 
 It is a custom in Europe to construct libraries in such a 
 way that the doors and windows are not visible, so that the 
 student may feel himself hemmed in on every side by 
 books, and not be tempted to wander forth before his task 
 is done. As there must be a way of getting in and out, 
 the doors are so contrived as to resemble perfectly a con- 
 tinuation of the book-shelves, and on the backs of the imag- 
 inary books are stamped such fanciful titles as the inge- 
 nuity of the owner can devise ; as " Essays on Wood," 
 " Perpetual Motion," and others. Hood being requested by 
 the Duke of Devonshire to furnish a number of such titles, 
 he contributed a great number, of which the following are 
 specimens : 
 
 " The Life of Zimmerman (author of a work on Solitude) . By 
 Himself." " The Racing Calendar, with the Eclipses for 1831." 
 "Percy Vere, in forty volumes." "Lamb on the Death of 
 Wolfe." " Tadpoles, or Tales out of My Own Head." " On 
 Trial by Jury, with remarkable Packing Cases." " Mac Adam's 
 Views in Rhodes." " Boyle on Steam." " John Knox on Death's 
 Door." " Designs for Friezes, by Captain Parry." " Peel on 
 Bell's System." " Life of Jack Ketch, with Cuts of His own 
 Execution." " Barrow on the Common Weal." " Cursory 
 
LITERATURE THOMAS HOOD. 261 
 
 Remarks on Swearing." " Recollections of Bannister, by Lord 
 Stair." " The Sculpture of the Chipaway Indians." " Cook's 
 Specimens of the Sandwich Tongue." "In-i-go on Secret 
 Entrances." 
 
 The Duke might well reply as he did: "I am more 
 obliged to you than I can say for my titles. They are 
 exactly what I wanted, and are invented in that remarka- 
 ble vein of humor which has, in your works, caused me 
 and many of my friends so much amusement and satisfac- 
 tion." 
 
 It was dangerous to make Hood the butt of a joke, for 
 he was most ingenious at a retort, whether verbal or prac- 
 tical. Some friends one day, who were fishing with him in 
 a small boat near his cottage, contrived to give the boat 
 such a push as to throw him into the water. Upon coming 
 out dripping he made light of the mishap ; but soon began 
 to complain of various cramps and pains, and at last went 
 into the house apparently suffering a good deal. His jovial 
 friends became serious, and persuaded him to go to bed, 
 which he did. As soon as he was within the sheets, he 
 began to groan and writhe in the most alarming manner, to 
 the infinite distress of his comrades. The nearest doctor 
 lived some miles distant, and meanwhile the patient, shak- 
 ing with suppressed laughter, appeared to those around him 
 seized with the most violent ague. One rushed for a tea- 
 kettle of boiling water, another brought in a large tin bath ; 
 and a third employed himself in getting the materials for a 
 mustard plaster. At last the patient pretended to be dying, 
 and began in a hollow voice to give directions with regard 
 to his will. His friends, penetrated with horror, implored 
 him to forgive them for their fatal joke, and begged him to 
 believe in the depth and sincerity of their remorse. Upon 
 this, Hood could restrain himself no longer, but burst into 
 
262 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 a perfect roar of laughter, which the horrified by-standers 
 regarded as delirium. This time, however, the laughter 
 was too natural to deceive them long, and they were soon 
 all roaring in concert around the bedside. 
 
 The city of Cologne in those days was paved with cobble- 
 stones, even to the sidewalks, as New York used to be when 
 it was a Dutch town. As Hood and his wife were hobbling 
 along, he said it looked as though there had been a stone 
 storm, and that if a certain place was paved with good inten- 
 tions, Cologne must have been paved with the bad ones. 
 
 When they were living in Germany, Mrs. Hood volun- 
 teered to make an English plum-pudding for some of the 
 officers of the garrison of Coblentz. Hood was writing late 
 at night, when the servant took the pudding out of the pot, 
 and put it smoking on a table near him. She then went to 
 bed, and left him alone with the savory object. The spirit 
 of mischief seized him. There was a large quantity of new 
 wooden skewers lying about, which he proceeded to thrust 
 into the pudding in every direction, and did it so- neatly that 
 the pudding presented no visible sign of the mischief that 
 had been done to it. In the morning it was conveyed to 
 the officers' mess, where it figured upon their table at din- 
 ner ; and in the evening one of them came to thank Mrs. 
 Hood for the gift. When the officer arrived, the lady was 
 not present, and he began to pour forth the admiration and 
 gratitude of the officers to her mischievous husband. 
 
 " Don't you think it was well trussed ?" asked Hood. 
 
 To this the officer replied, "Yes," so simply and gravely, 
 that Hood supposed they meditated a joke in retaliation, and 
 kept a bright lookout upon the parties concerned. Days 
 passed, and nothing happened. He discovered at length, by 
 accident, that the Prussian officers, totally ignorant of the 
 nature of plum-pudding, supposed that the skewers were a 
 
UTEKATURE THOMAS HOOD. 203 
 
 proper and necessary part of it, and it was not until some 
 one informed them to the contrary that they became aware 
 that a joke had been played upon them. George the Third, 
 we know, was puzzled to account for the presence of the 
 apple inside of a dumpling ; and these Prussians were no 
 better informed respecting the nature of a plum-pudding. 
 
 He made a remark in one of his letters from Ostend, 
 which some of our office-seekers might employ if their appli- 
 cations for appointment were "founded upon fact." 
 
 " Why," said he, " can't the Queen make me consul here? 
 I don't want to turn anybody out; but can't there be 
 nothing-to-do enough for two?" 
 
 He said once that, there was a family living near him that 
 had a mile of daughters. The name of the family was Fur- 
 long, and eight of them were daughters' " Eight furlongs 
 make a mile." 
 
 When Hood was ready to sink under his burden, poor and 
 sick, earning a bare subsistence for his family by efforts of 
 almost superhuman endurance, a young man, little more 
 than twenty-one, soared to celebrity and wealth by the exer- 
 cise of the same kind of talent as that which Hood possessed. 
 This was Charles Dickens, whose Pickwick, after running 
 three or four months, was selling at the rate of eighty thou- 
 sand a number. Hood beheld this success, not only without 
 any mean repining, but with generous joy, and was one of 
 the keenest appreciators of the new author. The editor of 
 the "Athenaeum" having privately asked his opinion of 
 Dickens, Hood gave him the warmest praise, exulting in 
 the talent which knew how to recognize and exhibit " good 
 in low places, and evil in high ones." 
 
 He had a funny habit of inserting notes and comments in 
 his wife's letters to her friends. She wrote once, " Hood is 
 certainly much better in spite of all his drawbacks." Upon 
 which he inserted, " Does she mean blisters? " 
 
 17 
 
264 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 Although he was one of the most fertile of jesters, he did 
 not disdain to note down ideas for use when he should need 
 them. Among his papers was found a small book, in which 
 he was accustomed to put down rudimental jokes, like the 
 following : 
 
 " Some men pretend to penetration, who have not even half-penny- 
 tration." " A quaker loves the ocean for its broadbrim." " If three 
 barley corns go to an inch, how many corns go to a foot? Bun- 
 yan says $hirty-six." " That bantam Mercury, with feathered 
 heels." "What a little child ! Ah ! his parents never made much 
 of .him." 
 
 As his life was ebbing away, he wrote several notes of 
 farewell to his more distant friends, and even in them he 
 could not refrain from the exercise of his fanciful wit. One 
 of these notes was the following : 
 
 " Dear Moir God bless you and yours, and good-by ! I drop 
 these few lines as in a bottle from a ship water-logged and on the 
 brink of foundering, being in the last stage of dropsical debility. 
 But though suffering in body, serene in mind. So without revers- 
 ing my Union Jack, I await my last lurch. Till which, believe me, 
 dear Moir, yours most truly, 
 
 " THOMAS HOOD." 
 
 There never was a man more disposed to enjoy and make 
 much of the innocent pleasures of this world. He suffered 
 extremely during his last sickness, and yet the sight of a 
 flower, or the streaming in of the sunlight, would often 
 make him for a while forget his pain. He said to his chil- 
 dren on a fine spring morning, shortly before his death : 
 
 " It >s a beautiful world, and since I have been lying here I have 
 thought of it more and more. It is not so bad, even humanly 
 speaking, as people would make it out. I have had some very 
 
LITERATURE THOMAS HOOD. 265 
 
 happy days while I lived in it, and could have wished to stay a 
 little longer. But it is all for the best, and we shall all meet in a 
 better world." 
 
 His last verses, published in the last number of his maga- 
 zine to which he contributed, were these : 
 
 STANZAS. 
 
 Farewell Life ! My senses swim, 
 And all the world is growing dim ; 
 Thronging shadows cloud the light, 
 Like the advent of the night : 
 Colder, colder, colder still 
 Upward steals a vapor chill 
 Strong the earthy odor grows, 
 I smell the mould above the rose ! 
 
 Welcome Life ! The spirit strives ! 
 Strength returns, and hope revives ; 
 Cloudy fears and shapes forlorn 
 Fly like shadows at the morn ; 
 O'er the earth there comes a bloom 
 Sunny light for sullen gloom, 
 Warm perfume for vapors cold 
 I smell the rose above the mould ! 
 
 He died in 1845, aged forty-six years. He was buried in 
 a cemetery near London, where an unusually beautiful and 
 tasteful monument covers his remains, to the erection of 
 which a prodigious number of the best hearts in the British 
 Empire contributed. 
 
THE FIEST BOSTOOTAN 
 
 AND 
 
 THE FIEST NEW-YOEKEE. 
 
 IF the Mayflower had sailed thirty miles farther north than 
 she did, in December, 1620, she would have come to a spa- 
 cious bay, protected from the waves and winds of the ocean 
 by twenty or thirty small islands, with a deep channel 
 between them, leading to a harbor safe, deep, and conven- 
 ient. At the bottom of this bay, the Pilgrims would have 
 found a peninsula, long and narrow, containing about seven 
 hundred acres, connected with the main land by a narrow 
 neck of swampy ground. Upon this peninsula, formed by 
 the Charles River, the illustrious and peculiar city of Boston 
 now stands. 
 
 The Pilgrims would have found it without inhabitant, and 
 even shorn of trees ; and thus, as one of the settlers re- 
 marked, they could easily have been protected there from 
 their three worst enemies, " Indians, wolves and mosquitoes." 
 The Indian name of this commodious site, let me not forget 
 to mention, was Shawmut. A pestilence of some kind had 
 raged among the Indians all along that coast, a few years 
 before, and carried off so many of the red men, that the 
 white settlers found most of their cleared fields wholly un- 
 occupied, and many of their ancient seats with very few 
 inhabitants. 
 
 It is of the first white inhabitant of this peninsula, the 
 first Bostonian, the first individual who ever revolved at the 
 Hub of the Universe, that I am to say a few words. 
 
268 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 What sort of person should we naturally expect the first 
 Bostonian to be? Learned? Of course. College bred? 
 By all means. Eeligious? Assuredly. Heterodox in opin- 
 ion? Certainly. Firm in adhering to his opinions, even to 
 obstinacy? Yes ; this, too, must have been expected. The 
 first inhabitant of Boston did really unite in himself all the 
 traits, and exhibited in his life all the peculiarities, which 
 the world would naturally look for in the original Bostonian. 
 
 His name was William Blackstone, a name of various 
 renown in the annals of Great Britain. After graduating 
 from the University of Cambridge in 1617, he took orders in 
 the Church of England, and was so much a Conformist in 
 1621, as to be admitted to the degree of Master of Arts, 
 without hinderance from the authorities of the realm. Nat- 
 urally disposed to radicalism, as became him, considering 
 the destiny in store for him, he was soon ranked among the 
 Puritans of the Church of England, and finally carried his 
 opposition to the Bishops so far as to reject their authority 
 altogether. He may have been silenced by them, but the 
 probability is that his withdrawal from the church was vol- 
 untary. 
 
 About the year 1623, as it is conjectured, he joined a party 
 of Episcopalian Puritans, under a son of Sir Ferdinando 
 Gorges, and emigrated to a plantation on the New-England 
 coast, called Wessagusset, twelve miles southeast of Boston, 
 now called Weymouth. He was a man who had in his com- 
 position peculiarities which made it difficult or disagreeable 
 for him to live with other men; and soon after reaching 
 America, he went off by himself, and travelled along the 
 coast until he came to the peninsula of Shawmut just 
 described. At the end of the peninsula he found the 
 remains of a hut, of which he took possession, and slept in 
 it one night. Upon examining the site, he approved its 
 
THE FIRST BOSTONIAN AND THE FIRST NEW-YORKER. 269 
 
 loneliness and security; built a log cabin on a point near 
 the shore ; brought thither his books and his furniture, and 
 there established his home. 
 
 He had one neighbor a mile or two off, upon the land on 
 which Charlestown now stands. There were a few persons 
 upon Cape Ann, thirty miles distant. Wessagusset was not 
 yet abandoned perhaps, and the colony at Plymouth was 
 striking root into its sandy soil. With these exceptions, 
 there were no white inhabitants then upon the whole coast 
 of New England, and none between New England and Vir- 
 ginia, except a few Dutchmen on Manhattan Island. There, 
 however, he lived contentedly enough, and created around 
 him a considerable farm. He possessed a large number of 
 books for that day, a hundred and eighty-six volumes, it is 
 said, some of them learned folios in Latin, brought with 
 him perhaps from Cambridge. 
 
 When he had lived there five years, the population of the 
 whole of Massachusetts was not more than three hundred. 
 But in 1630, Governor Winthrop arrived at Salem, and a great 
 fleet with him, containing seven or eight hundred colonists. 
 Two or three hundred more arrived soon after, and before 
 the year closed, another thousand, swelling the population 
 of the colony to twenty-three hundred. There being too 
 many people for the cleared lands about Salem, a portion of 
 the hive, as Cotton Mather remarks, were obliged to swarm. 
 Governor Winthrop removed, and led a company to the site 
 of Charlestown, where he began to build a large house, 
 intending to make that the principal town and seat of gov- 
 ernment. Before the winter set in, however, sickness broke 
 out among the emigrants at this place, of which many died. 
 
 "In almost every family," wrote one of them, "lamenta- 
 tion, mourning, and woe was heard, and no fresh food to be 
 had to cherish them. . . . And that which added to their 
 
270 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 present distress was the want of fresh water ; for, although 
 the place did afford plenty, yet, for the present they could 
 find but one spring, and that not to be come at but when the 
 tide was down." 
 
 This circumstance led to the founding of the city of Bos- 
 ton. 
 
 The home of William Blackstone was separated from the 
 new settlement only by the Charles River ; for his log cabin 
 was on a point which extended into that stream. He heard 
 of the distress, and, crossing over the Charles, told the gov- 
 ernor that there was an excellent spring of water near his 
 house, and urged him to remove to his peninsula. The 
 governor accepted his invitation, and, liking the place, 
 planted his settlement upon it, and removed thither the 
 frame of his house, partly prepared in Charlestown. He 
 built his house on land, a corner of which is now occupied 
 by the Old South Church. The entry of this interesting 
 remnant, in the Eecords of Charlestown, closes with the fol- 
 lowing words : 
 
 " The governor, with Mr. Wilson, and the greatest part of the 
 churqh, removed thither ; whither, also, the frame of the governor's 
 house, in preparation at this town, was also to the discontent of 
 some carried : where people began to build their houses against 
 winter ; and THIS PLACE WAS CALLED BOSTON." 
 
 It was so named, partly because a good number of the 
 emigrants were natives of Boston in England ; but chiefly, 
 perhaps, in honor of the Rev. John Cotton, for many years 
 rector of the church at English Boston, whom they expected 
 soon to come out and be their minister in the Boston of New 
 England. 
 
 It was certainly a kind and neighborly act in William 
 Blackstone, to make the governor acquainted with his excel- 
 
THE FIRST BOSTONIAN AND THE FIRST NEW- YORKER. 271 
 
 leut spring of water, and to invite so large a company over 
 to share the safety and convenience of his peninsula. But 
 he soon had cause to regret this act of good-nature. He 
 claimed the whole peninsula as his property, on the ground 
 that, finding it vacant, he had taken possession of it, and, 
 first of all white men, slept within its borders. The claim, 
 although not good in law, had some ground in right, and the 
 town therefore presented him with a tract of fifty acres 
 about his house, to be his own forever. This affair settled, 
 another difficulty arose. No man could hold office in Mas- 
 sachusetts, and no man was reckoned of much account 
 there, nor, indeed, could be long welcome, unless he was a 
 member of the church. William Blackstone could not 
 conscientiously join the church of Boston, nor did he 
 relish the union of church and state that existed in the 
 colony. 
 
 "I came from England," said he, " because I did not like 
 the Lord Bishops ; but I can't join with you, because I would 
 not be under the Lord Brethren." 
 
 So, in the spring of 1635, having sold his land for thirty 
 pounds sterling, and bought a number of cows with the 
 money, he removed to a place thirty-five miles south of 
 Boston, which is now the town of Cumberland, in Rhode 
 Island. Here, on the banks of a beautiful river, since named 
 Blackstone River, after himself, he built a new home, and 
 cleared a new farm, planted another garden, and set out 
 another orchard ; arranged his books anew, and resumed the 
 tranquil life of study and labor, which the coming of Gov- 
 ernor Winthrop and his friends had interrupted. Many 
 years passed before he had any near neighbors. 
 
 It seems that he grew weary of his solitude at last ; for 
 when he had lived on the Blackstone River for twenty-four 
 years, he made a journey to Boston, married, and took his wife 
 
272 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 home with him to his retreat. He lived sixteen years after 
 this event; and dying in 1675, past eighty, left a son not 
 yet of age. A few weeks after his death, the Indian war, 
 commonly called King Philip's war, broke out ; in the course 
 of which a party of Indians burnt his house and his precious 
 collection of ancient books. 
 
 His farm is still occasionally visited by antiquaries and 
 students of history. One who did so twenty years ago, 
 found the old man's well still in existence, with the stoning 
 in good condition, very much as Blackstone left it. The 
 cellar of his house was then plainly to be seen, as well as his 
 lonely grave on the side of an eminence still called Study 
 Hill. Two rude gravestones, one at the head and one at the 
 foot, mark the spot where reposes the dust of the first Bos- 
 tonian. 
 
 Strange to say, the first white inhabitant of Manhattan Isl- 
 and was a character as prophetic of the practical and enter- 
 prising New Yorker, as William Blackstone was of the book- 
 loving and difficult-to-get-along-with Bostonian Radical. 
 
 The first houses ever erected by white men upon Manhat- 
 tan Island were built in the year 1613, and the spot upon 
 which they stood is in the lower part of Broadway, nearly 
 on the site of No. 39. It was that worthy Dutch mariner, 
 Adrian Block, who took the liberty of establishing himself 
 on the extremely valuable lot in Broadway just named. I 
 sometimes wish that he had selected Staten Island, or the 
 shores of Long Island, or some other place on the bay where 
 the future city would not have been cramped between two 
 broad and deep rivers, so much to the inconvenience of those 
 who are obliged, every morning and evening, to ride in our 
 crowded cars and ferry-boats. But far indeed was honest 
 Adrian Block from foreseeing the Third Avenue railroad, 
 
THE FIKST BOSTONIAN AND THE FIRST NEW-YORKER. 273 
 
 the Fulton ferry, or even the Knickerbocker line of stages. 
 The Dutch were an enterprising people in that age. It 
 was in December, 1609, that the news reached Amsterdam 
 of Henry Hudson's discovery of a great river in North 
 America, the shores of which swarmed with inhabitants and 
 abounded in fur-bearing animals. So prompt were they to 
 improve the opportunity of a profitable trade, that in the 
 July following a vessel was despatched thither from Amster- 
 dam, commanded by Hudson's Dutch mate, and manned in 
 part by the Dutchmen of his crew. Nothing is known of 
 the results of this voyage, though there is reason to believe 
 that the vessel returned to Holland with a profitable cargo. 
 There is a tradition that the Indians were very glad to see 
 the white men among them once more ; from which I infer 
 that this vessel must have gone high up the river, where 
 Captain Hudson found the red men friendly, and too willing 
 to drink his brandy and wine. 
 
 From this time forward, I believe, there was no year in 
 which at least one Dutch vessel did not enter our bay to 
 trade with the Indians. Probably no part of North America 
 was so prolific of fur-bearing animals as the shores of the 
 Hudson River, and the country beyond them, diversified, as 
 it was, with mountains and plains, and densely covered with 
 the noble trees of the primeval wilderness. Even within my 
 recollection, bears have been shot in the Catskill Mountains ; 
 and as late as the year 1790, the sloop-masters of the Hud- 
 son used to bring in from its upper waters considerable quan- 
 tities of skins, more or less valuable. For a century or 
 more after the city was founded, beaver-skins occasionally 
 served as money, and were constantly referred to as a stand- 
 ard of value. From such facts we may gather some notion 
 of the valuable freights which must have been collected by 
 the Dutch navigators, when those beautiful shores were a 
 
274 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 wilderness, with Indians enough to hunt and trap them, who 
 had not yet learned the value of what they sold. 
 
 Adrian Block, who may in some sense be called the foun- 
 der of the city of New York, was a brave and enterprising 
 navigator, who had won distinction in the service of the 
 great Dutch merchants, then the wealthiest in Europe. 
 Coming home to Holland in 1611, and finding the new lands 
 discovered by Henry Hudson the great topic of the year, 
 he joined a friend in chartering a vessel, in which both of 
 the adventurers sailed for the Hudson Eiver. They brought 
 back with them, not only a profitable cargo of furs, but two 
 young Indians, whom they named Valentine and Orson. 
 As these were the first Indians ever brought to Holland, they 
 attracted great attention, and gave an important impulse to 
 Dutch commercial enterprise. Many people suppose that 
 enthusiasm has nothing to do with the investing of money, 
 but the daily experience of our bankers and brokers proves 
 the contrary ; and it appears that the presence in Amsterdam 
 of these Indians had almost as much to do in stimulating the 
 enterprise of merchants, as the prospect of obtaining valuable 
 returns. 
 
 Three merchants of Amsterdam now united for the pur- 
 pose of trade with the Indians of the Hudson Eiver, or, as 
 they called it, the river Mauritius. Two vessels were made 
 ready, one named the Fortune, and the other the Tiger. 
 The Fortune was commanded by Block's old comrade and 
 partner, Christiaensen. Captain Block took command of 
 the Tiger, and in the summer of 1613, both sailed in com- 
 pany for the New World. Other small vessels followed, as 
 many as three or four ; and the harbor of New York soon 
 exhibited a little fleet of vessels, which penetrated the neigh- 
 boring creeks and bays, ascended the river, threaded the 
 Kills, explored the Karitan, and gathered abundant cargoes 
 of valuable furs at small expense. 
 
THE FIRST BOSTONIAN AKT> THE FIRST NEW-YORKER. 275 
 
 Before the autumn of 1613 was far advanced, these vessels 
 returned richly laden to Holland all except one, the Tiger, 
 commanded by Adrian Block. One day, while this vessel 
 lay anchored near the shore of Manhattan Island, say 
 about pier No. 4, North River she caught fire, and was 
 burned to the water's edge. 
 
 Now Captain Block had a rare opportunity to show his 
 quality. Undaunted by his calamity, he established himself 
 on the island, and determined to spend the winter in building 
 another vessel, using for the purpose the iron of the burnt 
 Tiger, and such parts of her as had been saved. It was a 
 valiant and high-spirited resolution; for the Indians of 
 Manhattan were numerous and warlike, and there was not a 
 white man on the coast, besides his own company, between 
 Virginia and Canada. The Dutch, however, had conciliated 
 that troublesome tribe by fair dealing, and they proved 
 very helpful and friendly to Captain Block in his misfor- 
 tune. 
 
 Manhattan Island, little as we should think it now, was 
 then one of the most beautiful islands in the world. Along 
 both rivers there were lofty and picturesque bluffs ; and the 
 interior, besides being agreeably diversified with hill and 
 dale, was dotted with ponds and lakes, remarkably clear and 
 deep, and beautifully fringed with virgin green. A few deer 
 were still left upon the island, notwithstanding the incessant 
 hunting of the Indians. Some rabbits and goats had been 
 brought over from Holland ; but soon after being brought on 
 shore they were poisoned by some plant which grew among 
 the herbage. 
 
 But what best pleased Captain Block was, that nearly the 
 whole surface of the island was covered with noble trees, 
 admirably suited to his purpose of building a vessel. Near 
 the lower extremity of the island, between Trinity Church 
 
276 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 and Bowling Green, he built a few huts, and began forthwith 
 to build his vessel. Through all that long winter he and his 
 men kept steadily at work, the Indians bringing daily sup- 
 plies of food and whatever else they had which could be of 
 use. 
 
 He accomplished his purpose. By the time the vessels 
 from Holland began to arrive, in the spring of 1614, he had 
 his vessel finished. She was a yacht, forty-four and a half 
 feet long, eleven and a half feet wide, decked, and of sixteen 
 tons burden. If Adrian Block cannot properly be called the 
 founder of New York, we can at least claim for him that ho 
 was its first ship-builder. His vessel, which he named the 
 Restless, was the second launched in North America, the first 
 having been built in Maine by the colony which passed a win- 
 ter there seven years before. 
 
 Captain Block no sooner had his little craft rigged and 
 ready for sea, than he set out on a voyage of discovery in 
 the waters of the coast. He, first of all white men, braved 
 the perils of Hell Gate ; which was so named by Captain Block 
 himself after a similar turbulent stream in Zealand called the 
 Hellegat. Having reached Long Island Sound, he explored 
 its northern shore, discovered the Housatonic River, passed 
 by the bay upon which New Haven now stands, and arrived at 
 last at the mouth of the Connecticut. This river he ascended 
 as far as the site of Hartford, visiting the Indian tribes on its 
 shores, from whom he learned that the Indian name of the 
 river was Connittecock, which has been corrupted to Con- 
 necticut. 
 
 Descending the river, he continued the voyage eastward, 
 and discovered the river Thames ; and crossing the Sound, 
 went ashore on Montauk Point. Recrossing to the main 
 land, he visited the island, six or eight miles in extent, 
 which to this day retains the name then given it, Block 
 
THE FIRST BOSTONIAN AND THE FIRST NEW-TORKER. 277 
 
 Island. Next he penetrated Narragansett Bay, which he 
 ascended as far as the heights upon which Providence DOW 
 stands, and explored all its islands and shores. An island 
 near the mouth of the bay he named Eoode Island, from the 
 red color of the soil, Roode being the Dutch word for red. 
 Roode Island was changed by the English into Rhode Island, 
 and this name was finally given to the whole province. 
 Continuing his course, he visited Martha's Vineyard, Nan- 
 tucket, Cape Cod, Nahant, and indeed every prominent 
 island and point between Boston and New York, carefully 
 noting and recording every object. 
 
 When he had reached Cape Cod, on his return to Manhat- 
 tan, he discovered a sail in the distance, which proved to be 
 the ship of his former partner, Christiaensen. He went on 
 board, and concluded to return in her to Holland, and leave 
 the little Restless to explore the coast farther, for the benefit 
 of the company and future mariners. Upon reaching 
 Amsterdam, he reported his discoveries to the merchants, 
 who listened to them with the greatest interest, since they 
 learned from them the real value and importance of the 
 Dutch possessions in America. An artist was employed to 
 draw an elaborate map from Captain Block's notes and 
 explanations. This map exists at the present day, a witness 
 to the enterprise and fidelity of the navigator whose dis- 
 coveries it records. 
 
 The company of merchants deputed some of their number 
 to go with Captain Block to the Hague, to report his voyage 
 and exhibit his map to their High Mightinesses, the States 
 General. In a magnificent apartment, around the counsel 
 table, sat the twelve great lords who governed the country, 
 and upon the table was spread the map of Captain Block, 
 while one of the merchants related his adventures, detailed 
 their own expenditures, and asked an exclusive license to 
 
278 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 trade with the regions which their capital and enterprise had 
 revealed. Their petition was granted without delay. The 
 country was named New JSTetherland, and to the company of 
 Amsterdam merchants was granted the exclusive privilege 
 of trading thither. The very memorandum or outline of 
 this charter, written hastily at the time by the Secretary, 
 has been preserved, although now not legible. 
 
 Captain Adrian Block, at this interesting moment, van- 
 ishes from the history of the New World. He never again 
 trod the beautiful island of Manhattan, nor enjoyed a yacht- 
 ing cruise on the sparkling waters of Long Island Sound, 
 nor glided about among the emerald isles which gem the 
 coast of Massachusetts. An enterprising merchant of 
 Amsterdam, knowing the value of the man, engaged him in 
 the service of a fishing company, and sent him to command 
 a fleet employed in the whale fishery in the Arctic Ocean. I 
 hope he prospered in this vocation. 
 

y Brady 
 
 ^WC 
 
 
THE FOUNDERS OF THE 
 
 LITERATUBE OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 IRVING, COOPER, BRYANT. 
 
 FOR a generation these three Washington Irving, James 
 Fenimore Cooper, and William Cull en Bryant were the 
 only names which America had given to the literature of the 
 world. The poet was born a literary man; he "lisped in 
 numbers " ; he was famous before he was out of short jack- 
 ets. But Cooper appears to have fallen upon literature by 
 accident, and Irving to have been drawn into it by necessity 
 as much as inclination. Irving was the first to acquire gen- 
 eral reputation. 
 
 Before the Revolutionary war, there used to be a line of 
 small packet-ships plying between New York, and a seaport 
 in the south of England named Falmouth. 
 
 The father of Washington Irving was a mate in one of 
 these packets. He was a native of one of the Orkney 
 Islands, and after his mother's death went to sea before the 
 mast, and was a sailor in the packet service until his good 
 conduct and seamanship led to his promotion. Soon after 
 this event he married the girl of his heart, with whom he had 
 become acquainted when on shore at Falmouth. A year or 
 two after their marriage they sailed for New York, where 
 they arrived in 1763, the year of the peace between France 
 and England. 
 
 There are two houses now in the city which were standing 
 when William Irving and Sarah his wife reached these 
 
 18 
 
280 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 western shores in 1763. One was the Walton House, in 
 Pearl street, and the other is the old Dutch Church, now 
 used as the post-office. 
 
 In New York, Mr. Irving went into business, and was a 
 moderately prosperous man when the Revolutionary war 
 drove him from the city, and he fled to Rahway, in New 
 Jersey. Finding himself there an object of persecution by 
 the English officers, he returned to New York, where he 
 resumed his business, and was noted for his liberality toward 
 the American prisoners confined in the prison-ships and 
 elsewhere. In 1783, eight months before the evacuation of 
 the city, in William Street, Washington Irving, the eleventh 
 and youngest child of his parents, was born. 
 
 He was named after the victorious General Washington, 
 whom he may have seen with his baby eyes marching into 
 the city on Evacuation Day, November twenty-fifth, 1783. 
 The hand of Washington once rested upon his head. A 
 Scotch servant girl who had him in charge one day, when he 
 was about three years old, followed General Washington 
 into a shop, and thus addressed the Father of his Country 
 "Please your honor, here's a bairn was named after you.' 
 Washington placed his hand upon the head of the boy, and 
 gave him the usual benediction. 
 
 Except Columbia College, the only means of education 
 which the city then furnished were small private schools, 
 kept by persons more or less competent ; and at these the 
 boy received that small portion of his education which he die 
 not acquire by his own unassisted efforts. He was an affec- 
 tionate, merry lad, and a great reader from early childhood 
 From his eleventh year he was passionately fond of reading 
 voyages and travels, a little library of which was within his 
 reach, and he used to secrete caudles to enable him to reac 
 these transporting works in bed. 
 
LITERATURE OF THE UNITED STATES. 281 
 
 The persual of such books gave him a strong desire to go 
 to sea, and at fourteen he had almost made up his mind to 
 run away and be a sailor. But there was a difficulty in the 
 way. He had a particular aversion to salt pork, which he 
 endeavored to overcome by eating it at every opportunity. 
 He also endeavored to accustom himself to a hard bed by 
 sleeping on the floor of his room. Fortunately for the infant 
 literature of his country, the pork grew more disgusting 
 instead of less, and the hard floor became harder, until he 
 gave up his purpose of trying a sailor's life. 
 
 At sixteen he left school and entered a law office, and he 
 continued the study of the law until he was admitted to the 
 bar. Ill health at first, and a love of literature afterwards, 
 prevented him from practising the profession of law with any 
 benefit to himself, although he was occasionally employed as 
 junior counsel in important cases. He was one of the half 
 dozen lawyers engaged to defend Aaron Burr at Richmond 
 against the charge of treason, but took no public part in the 
 case. 
 
 In 1802, his brother, Dr. Peter, established in New York 
 a daily paper, called "The Morning Chronicle." Dr. 
 Irving was assisted in this enterprise by Aaron Burr, then 
 Vice-President of the United States, and the main object of 
 the paper was to defend Burr against his political opponents, 
 who had then become numerous and powerful. A few weeks 
 after the first number of the " Chronicle " appeared, Washing- 
 ton Irving, then nineteen years of age, began to contribute 
 to it a series of satirical essays, signed Jonathan Oldstyle, 
 which Colonel Burr and his fellow-citizens generally thought 
 were "very good for so young a man." This was the 
 beginning of Washington Irving's long and splendid literary 
 career. He continued to write occasionally for the " Chroni- 
 cle," winning considerable local reputation, until the dis- 
 
282 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 astrous termination of Burr's political career put an end to 
 the existence of his organ ; which occurred, I think, soon 
 after the duel with Hamilton in 1804. 
 
 Irving was then twenty-one years of age. His health 
 was extremely delicate, and there was a sad prospect of his 
 early filling a consumptive's grave. His family sent him 
 abroad to spend a year or two in the south of Europe, and 
 as he was going on board ship, the captain said to him- 
 self: "There's a chap who will go overboard before we get 
 across." 
 
 But he did not. He gained strength as he neared the 
 European shore, and under the influence of leisurely travel 
 in the pleasant climates of Southern Europe, he began to gain 
 something of that robustness of body and ruddiness of com- 
 plexion which many of us remember. At Rome he was 
 strongly tempted to turn painter ; and it was there also that 
 he was the recipient of attentions more flattering than he 
 could account for until just as he was going away. 
 
 "Tell me, sir," said a great Roman banker, who had paid 
 him particular honor, " are you a relative of General Wash- 
 ington?" 
 
 He thus learned that he had been indebted for unexpected 
 invitations and other civilities to his supposed relationship to 
 our first President. Mr. Irving, after telling this anecdote, 
 used sometimes to add to it another. An English lady and 
 her daughter paused in a gallery of art before a bust of 
 Washington. 
 
 "Mother," said the daughter, "who was Washington?" 
 
 " Why, my dear, don't you know ? He wrote the Sketch 
 Book." 
 
 Returning home after two years' absence, he made some 
 slight attempt at practising his profession; but the only 
 thing he really cared for, or ever seriously attempted, was 
 
LITERATURE OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 literature, and in that he was always successful. The Salma- 
 gundi now appeared, a series of humorous numbers, which 
 appeared three or four times a month ; obtaining a circula- 
 tion of several hundred copies a number. Erelong, his 
 humorous history of New York by Diedrich Knickerbocker 
 began to amuse the public, and it has ever since been part of 
 its common stock of entertainment. 
 
 After the war of 1812, Washington Irving joined one of 
 his brothers who was established as a merchant in Liverpool ; 
 and there occurred the fortunate calamity which drove him 
 to adopt literature as a profession. The brothers failed in 
 business, and lost all they had in the world. Then it was 
 that Washington Irving began the publication of the Sketch 
 Book, which appeared in numbers in New York, and won 
 an immediate popularity, which it has ever since retained. 
 The first number was published in May, 1819, price seventy- 
 five cents, and the first edition of two thousand copies was 
 rapidly sold, and most eagerly read. 
 
 Under the auspices of Sir Walter Scott, the Sketch Book 
 was republished in England, where it became and remains 
 not less a favorite than in America. Its most remarkable 
 and memorable effect was in awakening the genius of Charles 
 Dickens. Mr. Dickens has repeatedly acknowledged, and 
 once in writing to Mr. Irving himself, that it was his early 
 reading of the Sketch Book that gave his mind the habit of 
 surveying life in the humorous and sympathetic spirit which 
 led to his peculiar literary career. 
 
 The Sketch Book, as we all know, was followed by similar 
 volumes, which confirmed and extended the author's reputa- 
 tion ; until, having exhausted his stock of pleasant fancies, he 
 had the good sense to exert his maturer powers upon works 
 of solid instruction, chief among which are his Life of 
 Columbus and his Life of Washington. 
 
284 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 After seventeen years' residence abroad, he returned home, 
 where he was warmly welcomed, both by the friends who 
 were attached to his person, and by his countrymen gener- 
 ally, who were proud of his fame. He retired soon to that 
 delicious and romantic home ofhis on the banks of the Hud- 
 son, near Tarry town, where the long evening of his life glided 
 tranquilly away, ennobled by well-directed toil, and cheered 
 by the presence of those whom he loved. He died suddenly, 
 of heart-disease, in 1859, aged seventy-six. His remains 
 were followed to the grave by a wonderful concourse of 
 people ; and it may be said, with considerable truth, that his 
 country mourned his departure. 
 
 I had the pleasure once of spending a day with him at 
 Sunny side, and walking with him about his grounds, and 
 listening to the stories, which he was so much pleased to tell, 
 of his old friends Scott, Moore, Leslie, Allston, and others, 
 and ofhis gay life in London and Paris, and of the old times 
 in New York, when Knickerbocker's history was coming 
 out. There never was a' man more completely devoid of 
 every kind of pretence and affectation. He was simplicity 
 itself. 
 
 How different a man was Fenimore Cooper, and how 
 different his life ! 
 
 This pioneer and ornament of the young literature of the 
 United States was not so happy a man as we should suppose 
 he might have been. He had an exaggerated estimate of 
 his own importance, and as a consequence he was prone to 
 undervalue both the character and opinions of other men. 
 Unlike the genial and friendly Irving, who never had an 
 enemy because he could never be an enemy, Cooper's life 
 was sown with enmities, and it ended in a prodigious broil. 
 He had, however, admirable qualities, without reckoning 
 his brilliant talents; and if he had but thought a little 
 
LITERATURE OF THE UNITED STATES. 285 
 
 less of himself, and a great deal more of others, he might 
 have been as much beloved as he was admired. 
 
 His father was that rich and proud old Federalist politi- 
 cian and member of Congress, Judge William Cooper, whose 
 name figures in the history of the intrigue of 1801 to foist 
 Aaron Burr upon the country as President, instead of 
 Thomas Jefferson, who was the real choice of the victorious 
 Democratic party. It was Judge Cooper who wrote in the 
 midst of the struggle in the House of Representatives : " A 
 little good management would have secured our object on 
 the first vote. . . . Had Burr done anything for him- 
 self, he would long ere this have been President." 
 
 This passage was much relied upon by the friends of Burr 
 in their successful attempts to defend that politician against 
 the charge of aiding that nefarious conspiracy. Judge 
 Cooper at that time was a representative from the State of 
 New York, almost in the very centre of which, on the shores 
 of Lake Otsego, he lived, in a kind of pioneer baronial style, 
 lord of a county of primeval forest. He had built a 
 stately mansion near the lake, and he lived in it very much 
 in the manner frequently described in the novels of his son. 
 Judge Cooper was a rich man when he removed into the 
 wilderness, but he became still richer by the rapid rise in 
 the value of the lands which he had bought of the Indians. 
 
 His son, James Fenimore Cooper, born in Burlington, 
 New Jersey, in 1789, was little more than an infant when 
 the family took up their abode in the forest around Lake 
 Otsego, and there he continued to live, the petted child of 
 a wealthy family, until, at the age of thirteen, he was sent to 
 New Haven, where he entered the Freshman class of Yale 
 College, the youngest pupil in the institution. It is not 
 surprising that he remained at college undistinguished, and 
 that his college life left few perceptible traces upon his char- 
 
286 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 acter or his mind. He was too young to go to college. A 
 boy should be at least eighteen years of age before he 
 attempts to grapple with the subjects which properly belong 
 to a college course, and which demand for their consider- 
 ation a certain maturity of mind seldom attained before 
 eighteen. 
 
 He seems not to have improved his residence at New 
 Haven. He was expelled from college a year before his 
 class graduated, and accepted a midshipman's commission in 
 the navy of the United States ; in which he served six years, 
 rising to the rank of Lieutenant. He saw some service on 
 the ooean, and some on Lake Ontario ; enough in all to give 
 him the knowledge of sea life which his sea novels exhibit. 
 But just as the country was drifting into the war of 1812 
 with Great Britain, which would have given abundant scope 
 for all his seamanship and daring, he fell in love with Susan 
 De Lancey, an admirable girl, of the well-known New York 
 De Lanceys. On New- Year's Day of 1811, Lieutenant 
 Cooper married this young lady, and, resigning his commis- 
 sion soon after, settled in a pleasant village on Long Island 
 Sound, thirty miles from New York. 
 
 Here he lived for some years the half-idle life of a country 
 gentleman, without the remotest expectation of attracting to 
 himself the attention of the world. So far as is known, he 
 had never given any particular indication of possessing a 
 talent for literature, and probably did not himself suspect 
 the existence of the gift that slumbered within him. He 
 used to relate the trifling circumstance which led to his first 
 attempt. He was reading aloud to his wife one of those 
 tedious and trivial English novels which were so common 
 before Scott and Cooper supplanted them. Weary of the 
 spiritless delineations of inane characters, he said to his 
 wife, with a yawn, "I can write a better novel than that 
 myself." 
 
Fho by Brady. 
 
 J. TfrWtrrj 
 
LITERATURE OF THE UNITED STATES. 287 
 
 " You had better try," replied she ; and thought no more 
 of it. 
 
 It was a happy and a timely suggestion. He was young, 
 energetic, with plenty of ambition, and nothing to do. 
 Without telling even his wife of his intention, he began to 
 write a novel, which he named " Precaution," and which, 
 after a few weeks of secret toil, he had the pleasure of sub- 
 mitting to his wife's inspection, and reading it to a circle of 
 friends. It is a curious thing, but he produced merely a 
 tolerable imitation of the very kind of novel with which he 
 had been so much disgusted. Partial friends, however, 
 flattered the author, as they generally do, and he was in- 
 duced in 1819 to publish it, at his own expense, in two 
 volumes. It had a moderate success, but made nothing that 
 resembled a hit ; and it was indeed singularly devoid of all 
 that energy and fire and graphic power which distinguished 
 the author's later works. He was then thirty years of age, 
 and his talent still slept. 
 
 This partial failure was the event which roused him to a 
 consciousness of his abilities. He now abandoned English 
 models, and formed the scheme of producing a story of 
 American life, a tale of the Kevolution, the classic period 
 in the history of the infant nation. The " Spy " was the 
 result of his labors, the first and greatest of a class of 
 novels now to be numbered by thousands. 
 
 As in the case of nearly every other very successful book, 
 the author had great difficulties in getting it before the pub- 
 lic. No publisher could be found who would undertake it, 
 and it was finally, after three years' delay, published at the 
 author's cost. It is said that Mr. Cooper was the only 
 proof-reader of this work, and that he sometimes actually 
 assisted in setting it in type. With very great difficulty the 
 first volume was put in type ; and when that was done, the 
 
288 TRIUMPHS or ENTERPRISE. 
 
 author was so thoroughly sickened of the enterprise, that he 
 would have been more than willing to give the novel away 
 to any one who would have brought it out. But there was 
 not a printer in the city who had both courage and capital 
 enough to accept the author's urgent and repeated offers. 
 
 In 1822, three years after the appearance of " Precaution," 
 w The Spy " was published. Its success was immediate and 
 immense. It had every kind of success whjch a novel can 
 nave, universal circulation in the author's own country, the 
 intense admiration of all classes of readers, prompt republi- 
 cation in England, a brilliant popularity there, translation 
 into every cultivated language, even into Arabic and Per- 
 sian, countless imitations, and the acquisition of a permanent 
 place in universal literature. 
 
 The " Pioneers " followed, in which the author turned to 
 excellent account his early experience of life in the wilder- 
 ness, and his recollections of the lordly state of his father's 
 establishment. In due time the " Pilot " appeared, and 
 afterwards the "Red Rover," sea novels, in which Mr. 
 Cooper availed himself of his six years' experience as an 
 officer of the navy. 
 
 For thirty-one years he was a popular writer, producing a 
 long series of successful novels, and a valuable contribution 
 to the history of his country, a " History of the Navy of 
 the United States." He took a great deal of pains to make 
 this work strictly correct, which was a high merit in a man 
 so imaginative and so patriotic as Fenimore Cooper, who 
 could easily and with impunity nay, with the applause of 
 nine tenths of his readers have heightened the effect of 
 
 o 
 
 narratives flattering to the national pride, by giving a little 
 play to his imagination. 
 
 Toward the close of his life, he wrote some works designed 
 to cure his countrymen of some of their alleged bad habits, 
 
LITERATURE OF THE UNITED STATES. 289 
 
 which called forth from the press a great number of humor- 
 ous and satirical paragraphs, as well as some which were 
 abusive. Mr. Cooper was weak enough to resent this, and 
 to bring a great number of libel suits against the offending 
 editors. His famous suit against the New York " Tribune " 
 was founded upon the following words, which occurred in a 
 letter giving an account of a trial in which the novelist 
 obtained a verdict of four hundred dollars : 
 
 " The value of Mr. Cooper's character has been judicially ascer- 
 tained. It is worth exactly four hundred dollars." 
 
 Mr. Greeley defended the suit in person, and made a very 
 spirited and able defence, of which he published a ludicrous 
 account afterwards in the " Tribune." Nevertheless, he was 
 obliged to conclude his amusing narrative with the following 
 paragraph : 
 
 " The jury retired about half-past two, and the rest of us went 
 to dinner. The jury were hungry too, and did not stay out long. 
 On comparing notes, there were seven of them for a verdict of $100, 
 two for $200, and three for $500. They added these sums up 
 total $2,600 divided by twelve, and the dividend was a little over 
 $200 ; so they called it $200 damages, and 6 cents cost, which of 
 course carries full costs against us. We went back from dinner, 
 took the verdict in all meekness, took a sleigh and struck a bee-line 
 for New York." 
 
 Mr. Cooper rather prided himself on these suits, and used 
 to boast that he had won his case every time he had gone 
 into court. I have no doubt he thought he was rendering a 
 service to the public in curbing what he considered the licen- 
 tiousness of the press. 
 
 He died at his ancestral seat, upon the banks of Lake 
 Otsego, in 1851, aged sixty-two years. His eldest daughter 
 still lives, and has won considerable distinction by a series 
 
290 TEIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 of pleasant and sympathetic works upon the charms of 
 country life. Mr. Cooper was a strikingly handsome man, 
 of magnificent proportions, and most winning, agreeable 
 presence. In the bosom of his own family he is said to 
 have been the kindest and most entertaining of men. 
 
 I come now to the last of the illustrious trio. 
 
 On the twenty-second of December, 1807, Congress, 
 acting upon the recommendation of President Jefferson, 
 passed an embargo law, which prohibited the departure from 
 the ports of the United States of any vessels bound for for- 
 eign countries, unless they were men-of-war, or foreign 
 merchant vessels going home in ballast. 
 
 This act suspended the commerce of the United States, 
 and threw out of employment mariners, merchants' clerks, 
 and a great number of other persons who derived their liveli- 
 hood directly and indirectly from commerce. In no part of 
 the country did the embargo produce effects so disastrous as 
 in New England, which for many years had been growing 
 rich by supplying the belligerents with provisions oncl other 
 merchandise. Boston was desolate ; its wharves and ware- 
 houses were silent and deserted. The prices of produce fell, 
 and thus the farmers were disappointed and alarmed. New 
 England, moreover, had been, from the early days of Wash- 
 ington, the stronghold of Federalism ; and the Federalists 
 were opposed not only to the embargo, but to the policy 
 which had led to it, as they were afterwards to the war which 
 it led to. Interest, therefore, and political feeling, combined 
 to inflame the popular discontent. 
 
 There was then living at the village of Cummington, in 
 Hampshire County, the garden county of Massachusetts, 
 Dr. Peter Bryant, a physician noted the country round for 
 his skill, learning, and benevolence. Among his children, 
 all of whom were intelligent beyond their years, was 
 
LITERATUKB OF THE UNITED STATES. 291 
 
 William Cullen, a boy of thirteen, who, young as he was, 
 was already somewhat famous in his native county as a poet. 
 At nine he had written harmonious verses, and at ten he had 
 composed a poem for a school exhibition, which was thought 
 good enough for publication, and was actually published in 
 the county paper. And now this gifted boy, moved by what 
 he heard of the terrible embargo, and the more terrible 
 Jefferson and the Democratic party, wrote a poem, in the 
 heroic measure, entitled "The Embargo," in which he 
 endeavored to express the feeling of New England respecting 
 the course of the general government. The poem was pub- 
 lished in pamphlet form, and was so well received in the 
 county that, a year after, it was republished in a little thin 
 volume, the title-page of which read as follows : 
 
 "The Embargo; or, Sketches of the Time. A Satire. The 
 Second edition corrected and enlarged, together with the Spanish 
 Revolution and other Poems. By William Cullen B^ant. Bos- 
 ton : Printed for the Author by E. G. House. No. V. Court Street. 
 1809." 
 
 The lad was nearly fifteen years of age when this volume 
 of thirty-six pages saw the light. It contained poems so 
 extraordinary, that it was thought necessary in the preface to 
 print a kind of certificate, declaring that the author was 
 really only a boy ! The reader, I am sure, will be gratified 
 to read one of the short poems from this volume, which was 
 written when the poet was ten years and nine months old. 
 
 DROUGHT. 
 
 Plunged amid the limpid waters, 
 
 Or the cooling shade beneath, 
 Let me fly the scorching sunbeams, 
 
 And the south wind's sickly breath ! 
 
TKIUMPHS OF EOTERPRISE. 
 
 Sirius burns the parching meadows, 
 
 Flames upon the embrowning hill 
 Dries the foliage of the forest, 
 
 And evaporates the rill. 
 
 Scarce is seen a lonely flow'ret, 
 
 Save amid th' embowering wood ; 
 O'er the prospect, dim and dreary, 
 
 Drought presides in sullen mood I 
 
 Murky vapors hung in ether, 
 
 Wrap in gloom the sky serene ; 
 Nature pants distressful, silence 
 
 Reigns o 'er all the sultry scene. 
 
 Then amid the limpid waters, 
 
 Or beneath the cooling shade, 
 Let me shun the scorching sunbeams, 
 
 And the sickly breeze evade. 
 JULY, 1807. 
 
 Such precocity as this was a perilous gift. Fortunately 
 the boy had a judicious father, who early taught him to 
 avoid superfluous words, and to distinguish between true 
 poetical expression, and that which has nothing of poetry 
 but the form. The poet, in one of his latter productions, 
 commemorates at once his father's death and his own indebt- 
 edness to his taste and judgment. 
 
 " For he is in his grave who taught my youth 
 The art of verse, and in the bud of life 
 Offered me to the Muses." 
 
 And while his early taste was forming, there reached him, 
 in the seclusion of his village home, Wordsworth's Lyrical 
 Ballads, that volume which survived the criticism of the 
 
LITERATURE IN THE UNITED STATES. 293 
 
 " Edinburgh Keview," to make its way over the world, and 
 kindle the gentle poetic flame in kindred minds beyond the 
 sea. There were few books of poetry then to be met with 
 among the hills of Western Massachusetts, and the boy 
 appears to have read little poetry in his childhood except 
 Pope. 
 
 " Upon opening Wordsworth," Mr. Bryant once said, 
 " a thousand springs seemed to gush up at once in my heart?, 
 and the face of nature of a sudden to change into a strange 
 freshness and life." 
 
 And what a " nature " it was that he beheld around him ! 
 
 Western Massachusetts is an enchanting region. I spent 
 a summer there recently, within sight of that Monument 
 Mountain which Mr. Bryant has celebrated in verse, and not 
 far from that Green River to which he had dedicated stanzas 
 as flowing and tranquil as itself. If it were in the power of 
 beautiful nature to awaken, or even to cultivate, the poetic 
 faculty, the region of the Berkshire hills would do it. But 
 beautiful nature cannot do this. Mr. Bryant is a poet 
 because of the fine brain which nature gave him, and the 
 excellent father who taught and reared him. 
 
 Poet as he was, however, and marked out by nature to 
 charm and cheer his species, he must needs go to college, 
 like other lads, and enter a lawyer's office, and be admitted 
 to practice, and hang out his tin sign in a country town, and 
 plead causes in county courts. All this he did ; and we 
 find him, as early as his nineteenth year, established as a 
 country lawyer in his native State. He did not want for 
 practice, and yet found time, as he has ever since done, to 
 exercise his poetic gift. 
 
 The " North American Review," in 1816, was conducted 
 by a club of Boston gentlemen, the chief of whom was Rich- 
 ard H. Dana. It was more like a monthly magazine then, 
 
294 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 than a review, and published whatever literary matter came 
 to hand of the requisite merit. Mr. Dana received, one 
 day in 1816, two poems that were offered for publication, 
 one entitled Thanatopsis, and the other, A Fragment. The 
 poems being accompanied by the name of Bryant, Mr. Dana, 
 in some way now forgotten, received the impression that 
 Thanatopsis was written by Dr. Peter Bryant, then a mem- 
 ber of the Massachusetts State Senate, and that The Frag- 
 ment was the production of his son. Struck with the 
 majestic beauty of the longer poem, he hastened to the Sen- 
 ate house to see the new poet. He found Dr. Bryant a man 
 of dark complexion, with black hair, thick eyebrows, and a 
 countenance indicative of every excellent quality except the 
 poetic. The editor was rather ashamed of his want of discern- 
 ment, but remained for some years under the impression thai 
 the author of Thanatopsis was the Senator from Hampshire ; 
 not discovering his mistake until, in conversation with the 
 poet himself, he chanced to use the expression, " your fathers 
 Thanatopsis." Who, indeed, could suppose that that noble 
 poem was the work of a youth of nineteen? 
 
 " So live, that when thy summons comes to join 
 The innumerable caravan which moves 
 To that mysterious realm where each shall take 
 His chamber in the silent halls of death, 
 Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, 
 Scourged to his dungeon ; but, sustained and soothed 
 By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave 
 Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch 
 About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams." 
 
 These are its concluding lines. The reader cannot do 
 better than learn them by heart, and say them over once a 
 day, for they have a moral as well as a poetic value. From 
 the day of the publication of this poem, in 1816, an 
 
UTEKATUKE OF THE UNITED STATES. 295 
 
 American could boast that his country also had produced 
 a poet. William Cullen Bryant still the honored head of 
 American literature was the first native of the Western 
 Continent who ever wrote poetry which the world accepted 
 as poetry. 
 
 One who can write such verses as these cannot long be 
 contented without exercising his talent. After the publica- 
 tion of Thanatopsis, the young poet occasionally contributed 
 to the periodicals of Boston ; and in 1821 his poems were 
 published at Cambridge in a volume, which procured for him 
 a certain intense local fame, and gave him courage to .aban- 
 don the law and come to New York to gain his livelihood by 
 literature. This was in 1825, when he was thirty-one years 
 of age. After a year or two spent in editing a literary 
 periodical, he made that fortunate engagement with the " Eve- 
 ning Post," as fortunate for his country as for himself, 
 which has added at length an ample fortune to the poet's 
 ever-brightening fame. From the day when the influence of 
 Mr. Byrant began to be felt in this newspaper, it has been 
 the ally of every sound principle in politics and morals. 
 He continued to contribute poems to the magazines of the 
 day ; so that in the course of a few years he had a con- 
 siderable collection, which, in 1831, he published in a vol- 
 ume of some magnitude. The public cordially welcomed 
 this addition to its means of enjoyment. The author sent a 
 copy to Washington Irving, then running a brilliant career 
 of authorship in London. In one of Irviug's letters of 
 1832, we read : 
 
 " I have received recently a volume of poetry from Mr. Bryant, 
 in which are many things really exquisite. Yet I despair of find- 
 ing a bookseller that will ofier anything for it, or that will even 
 publish it for his own benefit ; such is the stagnation of the liter- 
 ary market." 
 
 19 
 
296 TEIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 The cholera was then raging in England, the terrible 
 cholera of 1832. Nothing daunted, however, Mr. Irving 
 wrote a preface introducing the poet to the people of Eng- 
 land, and the volume soon after appeared. Its merits alone 
 would have given it currency enough in time ; but the 
 friendly offices of Mr. Irving drew the attention of the pub- 
 lic to it at once, and secured to Mr. Bryant an immediate 
 popularity. His poems have ever since held their ground in 
 England, and his name is familiar in English homes. 
 
 Of late years, Mr. Byrant has withdrawn in some degree 
 from active life. But from any worthy public object his in- 
 fluence and voice have never been willingly withheld. For 
 ten years past he has occasionally contributed poems to the 
 New York " Ledger," which have the flow and finish and 
 seductive charm of his earlier works. How little could any 
 one have foreseen, when he offered his first poems to a coun- 
 try paper, sixty-five years ago, that he would live to see the 
 day when there would be published in the United States a 
 literary periodical that would convey his verses, in a single 
 week, to four hundred thousand, and offer them for perusal 
 to two millions of people ! 
 
 His latest work is a translation of the Iliad of Homer, 
 which has been universally approved. Mr. Bryant's literary 
 career, reckoning from the date of his first publication, 
 extends over a period of sixty-four years. 
 
 Irving Cooper Bryant, fortunate is the generation 
 tliat produces three such lights and ornaments of the race 1 
 
TWO OP OUR BOHEMIANS. 
 
 EDGAR A. POB AND " ARTEMTJS WARD," HOW THEY LIVED, AND WHY 
 THEY DIED so YOUNG. 
 
 No one who has written of poor Poe seems to have quite 
 understood his case. Nor should I, if I had not spent a few 
 days last summer at the Inebriate Asylum at Binghamton, in 
 the State of New York. 
 
 Edgar A. Poe, like Byron and many others, appears to 
 have been a man whose brain was permanently injured by 
 alcohol, and so injured that there was no safety for him except 
 in total and eternal abstinence from every intoxicating drink. 
 I have often heard the late N. P. Willis speak of Poe's con- 
 duct when he was sub-editor of the " Evening Mirror," of 
 which Mr. Willis was one of the editors. Poe, he would 
 say, was usually one of the most quiet, regular, and gentle- 
 manlike of men, remarkably neat in his person, elegant and 
 orderly about his work, and wholly unexceptionable in con- 
 duct and demeanor. But in a weak moment, tempted, per- 
 haps, by a friend, or by the devil Opportunity, he would take 
 one glass of wine or liquor. From that moment he was another 
 being. His self-control was gone. An irresistible thirst for 
 strong drink possessed him, and he would drink and drink and 
 drink, as long as he could lift a glass to his lips. If he could 
 not get good liquor, he would drink bad ; all he desired was 
 something fiercely stimulating. He would frequently keep 
 this up for several days and nights, until, in fact, his system 
 was perfectly exhausted, and he had been taken helpless and 
 
298 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 unresisting to bed. There he would lie, miserable and 
 repentant, until he had in some degree recovered his health, 
 when he would return to his labor, if the patience of his 
 employers had not been exhausted. 
 
 Having formed this deplorable habit while his brain was 
 immature, I believe that it then received an incurable 
 injury, which caused it to generate unsound thoughts, erro- 
 neous opinions, and morbid feelings. His thinking appara- 
 tus was damaged, and he came upon the stage of life with a 
 propensity toward absurdity and extravagance. 
 
 David Poe, of Maryland, the grandfather of the poet, was 
 an officer of repute in the army of the Eevolution. Like 
 many other soldiers, he married when the war was over, and 
 settled in the chief city of his native State, Baltimore. 
 His eldest son, who was also named David, was destined to 
 the law, and in due time entered the office of a Baltimore 
 lawyer. This son was an ardent, impetuous youth, one of 
 those ill-balanced young men who may, if circumstances 
 favor, perform heroic actions, but who are much more likely 
 to be guilty of rash and foolish ones. While he was still 
 pursuing his studies, an English actress, named Elizabeth 
 Arnold, appeared at the Baltimore theatre. David Poe fell 
 in love with her, as many young fellows before and since 
 have done with ladies of that profession. More than that, he 
 married her, abandoned his studies, and went upon the 
 stage. 
 
 Having taken this desperate step, he lived for a few years 
 the wandering life of an actor, playing with his wife in the 
 principal cities of the South. Three children were born to 
 them, of whom Edgar, the eldest, first saw the light at Balti- 
 more, in 1811. Six years after, Mr. and Mrs. David Poe 
 were fulfilling an engagement at the theatre in Richmond, 
 Virginia. Within a short time of one another, they both 
 
TWO OF OUR BOHEMIANS. 299 
 
 died, leaving their three little children totally unprovided 
 for. Edgar, at this time, was a lively, pretty boy, extremely 
 engaging in his manners, and giving great promise of future 
 talent. He was so fortunate as to attract the attention of 
 Mr. John Allan, a rich merchant of Kichmond, who adopted 
 him, and who proceeded to afford him what he considered 
 the best opportunities for education then existing. 
 
 When the boy was not quite seven years of age, he took 
 him to London ; and in a village near that city, he placed the 
 little orphan at a boarding-school, where he left him for nearly 
 five years. So far as is known, the child had not a friend, 
 still less a relation, on that side of the ocean. Here was an 
 eager, vivacious, and probably precocious boy, confined -in 
 the desolation of an English school ; which is, generally 
 speaking, a scene as unsuited to the proper nurture of the 
 young, as Labrador for the breeding of canary-birds. Such 
 a boy as that needed the tenderness of women and the 
 watchful care of an affectionate and wise father. He needed 
 love, home, and the minute, fond attention which rare and 
 curious plants usually receive, but which children seldom do, 
 who are so much more worthy of it, and would reward it so 
 much more. He needed, in short, all that he did not have, 
 and he had in abundance much that he did not need. If 
 the truth could be known, it would probably be found that 
 Poe received at this school the germ of the evil which 
 finally destroyed him. Certainly, he failed to acquire the 
 self-control and strong principle which might have saved 
 him. The head-master, it appears, was a dignified clergy- 
 man of the Church of England, whom the little American 
 was disposed to laugh at in his shabby suit of black on week- 
 days, though he regarded him with awe and admiration 
 when on Sunday he donned his canonicals, and ascended 
 the pulpit. 
 
300 TKIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 Poe was past eleven years of age a pale, bright little 
 boy when Mr. Allan brought him home, and placed him 
 at a school in Richmond. At a very early age, not much 
 later than fourteen, he entered the Virginia University at 
 Charlotte sville, which Jefferson had founded, and over 
 which the aged statesman was still affectionately watching, 
 as the favorite child of his old age. At this university he 
 became immediately distinguished, both in the class-room 
 and out of doors. One of his biographers (who, however, 
 was a notorious liar) tells us that, on a hot day in June, "he 
 swam seven miles and a half against a tide running, probably, 
 from two to three miles an hour." This is a manifest false- 
 hood. Neither Byron, nor Leander, nor Franklin, nor any 
 of the famous swimmers, could have performed such a feat. 
 Nevertheless, he may have been an excellent swimmer, and 
 may have excelled in the other sports proper to his age. 
 The acquisition of knowledge was easy to him, and he could 
 without serious effort have carried off the highest honors of 
 his class. But he drank to excess ; and as drink is the ally 
 of all the other vices, he gambled recklessly, and led so 
 disorderly a life that he was expelled from the college. His 
 adopted father refusing to pay his gambling debts, the young 
 man wrote him a foolish, insulting letter, took passage for 
 Europe, and set off, as he said, to assist the Greeks in their 
 struggle for independence. 
 
 Of his adventures in Europe only two facts are known ; 
 for Poe was always curiously reticent respecting the events 
 of his own life. One fact is, that he never reached Greece. 
 The other is, that, about a year after his departure from 
 America, he was arrested in St. Petersburg by the police, 
 probably for an offence committed when he was drunk. 
 The American minister procured his discharge, and finding 
 him totally destitute of money, relieved his wants and paid 
 
TWO OF OUR BOHEMIANS. 301 
 
 his passage home. On reaching Eichmond the prodigal was 
 heartily welcomed by his benefactor, Allan, who soon pro 
 cured for him a cadetship at West Point. 
 
 He appears to have entered that institution with a sincere 
 determination to perform his duties, and become a good 
 officer. For a while his behavior was excellent ; he stood 
 high in his class ; and his friends hoped that he had sown 
 his wild oats, and that he was now a reformed character. 
 
 But what an amount of falsehood is implied in that expres- 
 sion, He has sown his wild oats. The popular belief is, that 
 a young man may go on drinking, carousing, gambling, and 
 turning night into day, for a certain time, and then, sud- 
 denly changing his course of life, live the rest of his days as 
 well and happily as though he had never gone astray. Mis- 
 erable mistake ! No one can abuse his body without paying 
 the penalty, and, least of all, a man of delicate and refined 
 organization like Edgar A. Poe. Such men as he are formed 
 by nature for the exercise of the noblest virtues and the 
 practice of the highest arts. A stronger and coarser nature 
 than his, or one more mature, might have suffered for a 
 while from the blighting fumes of alcohol, and then in some 
 degree have recovered its tone, and made some amends for 
 the wrong it had done. 
 
 It was not so with the tender 'and unformed organs of this 
 young man, who never recovered from the injury which 
 early dissipation had wrought. A few months after entering 
 West Point, his appetite for drink resumed its sway, and he 
 relapsed into his former habits. Before his first year had 
 expired, he was expelled from the academy. 
 
 Again he returned to Richmond, and again his long-suffer- 
 ing benefactor received him into his house. There he found 
 the young and beautiful wife whom Mr. Allan had recently 
 married ; and to her, it is said, he paid attentions so marked 
 
302 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 that Mr. Allan was at length thoroughly incensed against 
 him, and banished him forever from his house. A more 
 probable version of the story is, that Mr. Allan, happy in 
 the society of his wife, was less patient than before of his 
 protege's dissipated habits, and was easily set against him by 
 the young lady. However it may be, John Allan died soon 
 after, and, though he left a large fortune, poor Poe's name 
 was not mentioned in his will. His death occurred in 1834, 
 when Poe was twenty-three years of age. 
 
 The young man had published a small volume of poems at 
 Baltimore in 1829, which attracted some attention, more on 
 account of the youth of the writer than the merits of the 
 writing. Being now destitute of all resource, he made some 
 endeavors to procure literary employment. Failing in this, 
 he enlisted in the army as a private soldier. While he was 
 serving in the ranks, he was recognized by officers whom he 
 had known at West Point, who, after inquiring into his case, 
 applied for his discharge ; but before the document arrived 
 Poe deserted. He was not very closely pursued, however, 
 and he soon found himself in Baltimore, a free man, but 
 almost totally destitute. Then it was that he read in a paper 
 an advertisement by the publisher of a literary periodical, 
 offering two prizes of $100- each for the best story and the 
 best poem that should be offered. Poe sent in both a story 
 and a poem, won both prizes, and soon after obtained employ- 
 ment as editor of the " Southern Literary Messenger," then 
 published at Richmond. 
 
 Again the same story : steady conduct and well -sustained 
 industry for a short time ; then drink, dissipation, and dis- 
 charge. Before he was dismissed, he had married his cousin, 
 Virginia Clemm, a very pretty, amiable girl, and exceed- 
 ingly fond of her erratic husband. The ill-provided pair 
 removed to New York in 1837, where he continued to live 
 
TWO OF OUR BOHEMIANS. 303 
 
 during the greater part of the rest of his life. Nothing new 
 remains to be told. He frequently obtained respectable and 
 sufficiently lucrative employment, but invariably lost it by 
 misconduct, arising, as I think, solely from the effect of 
 alcohol on his brain. In October, 1849, in the course of a 
 Southern lecturing tour, he stopped at Baltimore, where, 
 meeting some of his old companions, he spent a night in a 
 wild debauch, and was found in the morning in the street 
 suffering from delirium tremens. He was taken to the hos- 
 pital, where, in a few days, he died, aged thirty-eight. 
 
 Poe was a mild-looking man, of pale, regular features, 
 with a certain expression of weakness about the mouth, which 
 men often have who are infirm of purpose. He had some- 
 thing of the erect military bearing noticeable in young men 
 who have had a military drill in their youth. What with 
 the neatness of his attire, the gentleness of his manners, and 
 the pale beauty of his face, he usually excited an interest in 
 those who met him, and . he remained to the last a favorite 
 with ladies. 
 
 He has had many followers in the Bohemian way of life, 
 few of whom have had his excuse. But nearly all of them 
 ended in the same miserable, tragic manner. Of the twenty 
 yonng men of the New York press, who were known, ten 
 years ago, as the Bohemians, all are in their graves except 
 five or six, who saw in time the abyss before them, and 
 struck into better paths. One died of an honorable wound 
 received in battle. The rest might all have been living and 
 honored at this moment, if they had lived pure and temper- 
 ate lives, and gone to bed when they had done their work, 
 instead of going to Pfaff's. Let me briefly relate the story 
 of one of them, who was, naturally, as amiable and worthy 
 a fellow as any young man of his time to say nothing of 
 his rare talent. 
 
304 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 In the beautiful town of Cleveland, Ohio, ten years ago, 
 I was introduced, one Sunday morning, to Mr. Charles F. 
 Browne, who had recently acquired celebrity by his Artemus 
 Ward letters, in the Cleveland " Plaindealer." He was then 
 twenty-five years of age, of somewhat slender form, but with 
 ruddy cheeks, and a general appearance of health and vigor. 
 He was the local editor of the " Plaindealer," and had the 
 ready, cordial, and off-hand manner of the members of the 
 Western press. Like other professional humorists, he was 
 not particularly funny in ordinary conversation ; on the con- 
 trary, he was less so than Western editors usually are. I 
 was far from anticipating the career that was in store for 
 him ; still less could I have foreseen the premature death of 
 a young man who presented even an exceptional appearance 
 of good health. If he were alive to-day, he would only be 
 thirty-eight years of age. 
 
 He was born at Waterford, in Maine, where his father was 
 a surveyor. His native village, as he says in one of his 
 papers, " does not contain over forty houses, all told ; but 
 they are milk-white, with the greenest of blinds, and, for the 
 most part, are shaded with beautiful elms and willows. To 
 the right of us is a mountain ; to the left a lake. The vil- 
 lage nestles between. Of course it does. I never read a 
 novel in my life in which the village did not nestle. Vil- 
 lages invariably nestle." In this secluded nook of New 
 England, he passed the first fourteen years of his life, dur- 
 ing which he acquired such education as a rather idle and 
 sport-loving boy could acquire in the common and high 
 schools. 
 
 He was sent to learn the printing business at a neighbor- 
 ing town, called Skowhegan, where, in the office of the 
 Skowhegan " Clarion," he learned to set type and work the 
 hand-press. To the last of his days he held this place in 
 
TWO OF OUE BOHEMIANS. 305 
 
 abhorrence. One of his friends has recorded that he was 
 accustomed "to set up a howl of derision" whenever its 
 name was mentioned ; and that whenever he desired to ex- 
 press the last degree of contempt for any person, place, or 
 thing, he would speak of it as worthy of Skowhegan. How 
 many a boy has reaped a fell revenge upon a teacher or an 
 employer, by turning out to be a genius, and consigning him 
 to universal ridicule ! 
 
 At sixteen he found his way to Boston, where he obtained 
 employment as a compositor in the office of the funniest 
 periodical then published in Boston, " The Carpet-bag," to 
 which Shillaber, Halpine, and Saxe contributed. As he set 
 up, from week to week, the humorous contributions of those 
 writers, the conviction grew upon him that he too could 
 write a piece that would make people laugh. I think he 
 must have been reading Franklin's Autobiography or the 
 preface to " Pickwick," for in putting his talent to the test, 
 he employed a device, similar to that used by Franklin and 
 Dickens in offering their first productions to the press. 
 Having written his piece in a disguised hand, he put it into 
 the editor's box. Great was his joy when it was handed to 
 him, soon after, to set in type. 
 
 This first piece, I believe, was in the style of Major Jack 
 Downing, whose letters, he once said, had more to do with 
 making him a humorist than the productions of any other 
 writer. 
 
 About this time he chanced to read Bayard Taylor's 
 "Views Afoot," in which that popular author gave an 
 account of his making the tour of Europe, and paying his 
 way by working at his trade, which was that of a printer. 
 Captivated by this example, he started for the Great West. 
 When his money was exhausted, he would stop for a while 
 m some large town where there was a printing-office, and 
 
306 TKIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 replenish his purse ; which done, he would continue his 
 journey. 
 
 "I did n't know," he once said, "but what 1 might get as 
 far as China, and set up a newspaper one day in the 
 tea-chest tongue." 
 
 He stopped short of China, however. At the town of 
 Tiffin, Ohio, he obtained a place as compositor and assistant 
 editor, at four dollars a week. From Tiffin he removed to 
 Toledo, where he procured a similar place in the office of the 
 "Toledo Commercial," at five dollars a week. It was upon 
 this paper that his talent as a humorist first attracted atten- 
 tion, and he was soon permitted to devote his whole time to 
 filling the local columns with amusing abuse of the rival 
 paper. He acquired so much celebrity in Ohio as a writer 
 of facetious paragraphs, that he was offered at length the 
 place of local editor of the Cleveland " Plaindealer," at a 
 salary, munificent for the time and place, of twelve dollars 
 a week. 
 
 Most of the noted humorists and the great master of 
 humor himself, Charles Dickens have shown a particular 
 fondness for persons who gain their livelihood by amusing 
 the public, showmen of all kinds and grades, from the 
 tumbler in the circus to the great tragedian of the day. In 
 the performance of his duty as local editor, Charles Browne 
 had abundant opportunity of gratifying this taste, and he 
 gradually became acquainted with most of the travelling 
 showmen of the Western country. He delighted to study 
 their habits, and he used to tell many a good story of their 
 ingenious devices for rousing the enthusiasm of the public. 
 Much of this snowman's lore he turned to account in the 
 Letters of Artemus Ward. 
 
 There are dull times in a place like Cleveland, times 
 when the local editor is hard put to it to fill his columns. 
 
TWO OF OUR BOHEMIANS. 307 
 
 No show, no court, no accident, no police report, no trot- 
 ting match, no fashionable wedding, no surprise party, no 
 anything. One day in 1859, when the local editor of the 
 Cleveland " Plaindealer " was in desperate want of a topic, 
 he dashed upon paper a letter from an imaginary showman, 
 to which he affixed the name of a Revolutionary General, 
 which had always struck him as being odd, "Arternas 
 Ward." The letter began thus : 
 
 " To the Editor of the Plaindealer SIR : I'm moving along 
 slowly along down tords your place. I want you should write 
 me a letter, sayin hows the show-bizniss in your place. My show 
 at present consists of three moral Bares, a Kangaroo a amoozin 
 little Raskal ; 'twould make you larf to deth to see the little cuss 
 jump up and squeal wax figgers of G. Washington, Gen. Tay- 
 lor, John Bunyan, Dr. Kidd, and Dr. Webster in, the act of 
 killiii' Dr. Parkman, besides several miscellanyus moral wax stat- 
 toots of celebrated piruts and murderers, etc., ekalled by few and 
 exceld by none." 
 
 The showman proceeds to urge the editor to prepare the 
 way for his coming, and promises to have all his handbills 
 " dun at your offiss." 
 
 " We must fetch the public somehow," he continues. " We must 
 work on their feelins come the moral on 'em strong. -If it's a 
 temperance community, tell 'em I sined the pledge fifteen minits 
 arter ise born. But, on the contrary, if your people take their 
 tods, say that Mister Ward is as genial a feller as we ever met 
 full of conviviality, and the life and sole of the soshul Bored. Take, 
 don't you?" 
 
 Mister Ward concludes his epistle by condensing its 
 whole meaning into a very short postscript : 
 
 " You scratch my back, and He scratch your back." 
 
308 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 This letter made a wonderful hit. It was immediately 
 copied into many hundreds of newspapers, and was gener- 
 ally taken as the genuine production of a showman. Other 
 letters in the same vein followed, which carried the name of 
 Artemus Ward and the Cleveland " Plaindealer " to the ends 
 of the earth. For two or three years they figured in the 
 funny column of most of the periodicals in America, Eng- 
 land, and Australia. 
 
 But except the reputation which the letters gave, they 
 were of little advantage to their author. His salary may 
 have been increased a few dollars a week, and he added a 
 little to his income by contributions to the comic papers of 
 New York. No man, indeed, is so cruelly plundered as the 
 writer of short amusing pieces, easily clipped and copied. 
 He writes a comic piece for a trifling sum, which amuses per- 
 haps five millions of people, and up one compensates him 
 except the original purchaser. There -are, for example, 
 comic dialogues which have done service for fifteen years at 
 negro minstrel entertainments, and now make thousands of 
 people laugh every night, for which the author received 
 three dollars. 
 
 Artemus Ward, anxious to buy back the family home- 
 stead in which to shelter the old-age of his widowed mother, 
 soon discovered that he could never do it by making jokes, 
 unless he could sell them over and over again. So he tried 
 comic lecturing. The first night the experiment was a fail- 
 ure. A violent storm of snow, sleet, and wind thinned the 
 audience in Clinton Hall, New York to such a degree, 
 that the lecturer lost thirty dollars by the enterprise. A 
 tour in New England, however, had better results. He lec- 
 tured a hundred nights, by which he cleared nearly eight 
 thousand dollars; and he was soon able to establish his 
 mother in the comfortable village home in which he was 
 born. 
 
TWO OF OUR BOHEMIANS. 309 
 
 I ought not to conclude this article without letting the 
 reader precisely know why this bright and genial spirit is no 
 longer here to add to the world's harmless amusement. 
 Well, this was the reason : wherever he lectured, whether 
 in New England, California, or London, there was sure to be 
 a knot of young fellows to gather round him, and go home 
 with him to his hotel, order supper, and spend half the night 
 in telling storfes and singing songs. To any man this will 
 be fatal in time ; but when the nightly carouse follows an 
 evening's performance before an audience, and is succeeded 
 by a railroad journey the next day, the waste of vitality is 
 fearfully rapid. Five years of such a life finished poor 
 Charles Browne. He died in London, in 1867, aged thirty- 
 three years ; and he now lies buried at the home of his 
 childhood in Maine. 
 
 He was not a deep drinker. He was not a man of strong 
 appetites. It was the nights wasted in conviviality which 
 his system needed for sleep, that sent him to his grave forty 
 years before his time. For men of his profession and cast 
 of character, for all editors, literary men, and artists, there 
 is only one safety TEETOTALISM. He should have taken 
 the advice of a stage-driver on the Plains, to whom he once 
 offered some whiskey, and I commend it strongly to every 
 young man : 
 
 " I DON'T DRINK. I WON'T DEINK ! AND I DON'T LIKE 
 
 TO SEE ANYBODY ELSE DRINK. I'M OF THE OPINION OF 
 THOSE MOUNTAINS KEEP YOUR TOP COOL. THEY'VE GOT 
 SNOW AND I 'VE GOT BRAINS ; THAT 'S AT/T, THE DIFFER- 
 
JOSIAH QUINCY. 
 
 A MODEL GENTLEMAN OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 
 
 BOKN in 1772, and died in 1864 ! Ninety-two years of 
 happy, prosperous, and virtuous life ! How was it that, in 
 a world so full of the sick, the miserable, and the unfortu- 
 nate, Josiah Quincy should have lived so long, and enjoyed, 
 during almost the whole of his life, uninterrupted happiness 
 and prosperity? Let us see. 
 
 He was born in Boston, in a house the walls of which are 
 still standing, in a part of the city now called Washington 
 Street. His father was that young Josiah Quincy who went 
 away on a patriotic mission to London when this boy was 
 three years of age, and only returned to die within sight of 
 his native land, without having delivered the message with 
 which Doctor Franklin had charged him. Left an orphan at 
 so early an age, his education was superintended by one of 
 the best mothers a boy ever had ; and this was the first cause 
 both of the length and of the happiness of his life. This 
 admirable mother was so careful lest her fondness for her 
 only son should cause her to indulge him to his harm, that 
 she even refrained from caressing him, and, in all that she 
 did for him, thought of his welfare first, and of her own 
 pleasure last, or not at all. To harden him, she used to 
 have him taken from a warm bed in winter, as well as in 
 summer, and carried down to a cellar kitchen, and there 
 dipped three times in a tub of cold water. She even accus- 
 tomed him to sit in wet feet, and endeavored in all ways to 
 
 20 
 
312 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPKISE. 
 
 toughen his physical system against the wear and tear of 
 life. 
 
 This boy (who only died seven years ago) was old enough 
 during the Eevolutionary war to remember some of its inci- 
 dents. "I imbibed," he once wrote , "the patriotism of the 
 period, was active against the British, and with my little whip 
 and astride my grandfather's cane, I performed prodigies of 
 valor, and more than once came to my mother's knees declar- 
 ing that I had driven the British out of Boston." Like all 
 other healthy boys, he was a keen lover of out-of-door 
 sports of every kind. " My heart," he wrote, " was in ball 
 and marbles." And yet, in accordance with the custom of 
 the schools of that time, he was compelled to sit on the same 
 hard bench every day, four hours in the morning, and four 
 hours in the afternoon, studying lessons which it was impos- 
 sible so young a child could value or understand. A boy of 
 less elastic mind and less vigorous constitution of body 
 must have been injured by this harsh, irrational discipline. 
 It seems only to have taught him patience and fortitude. 
 Being a member of a rich and ancient family, he enjoyed 
 every advantage of education which America then afforded, 
 and graduated from Harvard College, in 1790, with honor. 
 He was soon after admitted to the bar ; but as he was not 
 dependent upon his profession for a maintenance, he was not 
 a very diligent or famous lawyer. 
 
 I have said that he was a very happy man. This is 
 almost equivalent to saying that he was very happily mar- 
 ried, since the weal or woe of most men's lives chiefly 
 depends upon the wisdom with which they choose their life's 
 companion. Josiah Quincy was indeed most fortunately 
 married, and yet he does not appear to have exercised his 
 judgment in the choice of a wife. In seven days after he 
 first saw her face, he was engaged to be married to her. It 
 happened thus : 
 
JOSIAH QUINCY. 313 
 
 On a certain Sunday evening, in 1794, being then twenty- 
 two years of age, he went, according to his custom, to visit 
 one of his aunts, who lived in Boston. He found at his 
 aunt's house, a Miss Morton, a young lady from New York, 
 of whom he had never before heard, and who was so little 
 remarkable in her appearance, that she made no impression 
 on his mind. In the course of the evening, a female relative 
 who was present asked him to go into the next room, as she 
 wished to consult him on some affair of business. While 
 they were talking, the strange lady began to sing one of the 
 songs of Burns with a clearness of voice,, and with a degree 
 of taste and feeling, which charmed and excited him beyond 
 anything he had ever experienced. He immediately threw 
 down the law papers which he had been examining, and 
 returned to the company. Miss Morton sang several other 
 eongs, to the great delight of all who heard her, and to the 
 unbounded rapture of this particular young gentleman. 
 When the singing was over, he entered into conversation 
 with her, and discovered her to be an intelligent, well- 
 informed, unaffected, and kind-hearted girl. In short, he 
 fell in love with her upon the spot, and when the young lady 
 left Boston a week after, he was engaged to her. 
 
 Some time elapsed, however, before they were married. 
 She was a young lady of highly respectable connections and 
 considerable fortune. 'The marriage was suitable in all re- 
 spects, and they lived together fifty-three happy years. This 
 most fortunate union was, no doubt, one of the main causes 
 of the singular peace and uninterrupted happiness of his 
 life. 
 
 It was expected, at that time, that a man of fortune, tal- 
 ents, and education, like Josiah Quincy, would enter public 
 life. In 1805 he was elected a member of Congress by the 
 Federalists of Boston, a party of which he was a warm adhe- 
 
314 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 rent, and to which he clung as long as it existed. His son 
 tells us, in an excellent biography of his father recently 
 published, that, to the last of his life, when he was in reality 
 a member of the Republican party, the old man still called 
 himself a Federalist. Having been elected to Congress, he 
 did a most extraordinary thing : he actually set to work to 
 prepare himself, by a study of politics and history, to dis- 
 charge the duties of the place I He even learned the French 
 language, in order to be able to converse with the foreign 
 ministers and other Europeans whom he might meet in 
 "Washington. Besides this, he made a large collection of 
 pamphlets, documents, and books relating to the history of 
 his country, and to the political questions which had agitated 
 it since the close of the Revolution. 
 
 He was, unquestionably, the ablest member of the Federal 
 party in Congress at that time, and he served his party with 
 a zeal and eloquence which was highly useful in keeping the 
 administrations of Jefferson and Madison in the true path. 
 Being myself in the fullest sympathy with Jefferson and 
 Madison, I cannot think so highly of his Congressional career 
 as, perhaps, his son would have us. But I can fully appre- 
 ciate his honesty, his industry, his high-bred courtesy, and 
 his admirable eloquence. His ardor in debate would have 
 led to frequent challenges and duels, if he had not from the 
 first made up his mind never to be bullied into an acquies- 
 cence with so barbarous a custom. In conversation with 
 Southern members on the subject, he would say : " We 
 do not stand upon equal grounds in this matter. If we fight 
 and you kill me, it is a feather in your cap, and your con- 
 stituents will think all the better of you for it. If I should 
 kill you, it would ruin me with mine, and they never would 
 send me to Congress again." 
 
 Reasoning of this kind the fire-eaters of 1810 could under- 
 
JOSIAH QUINCY. 315 
 
 stand, though they would have been little able to compre- 
 hend the lofty moral grounds on which his objections to the 
 practice were really founded. 
 
 The most remarkable event of his public life was his oppo- 
 sition to the creation of States, by Act of Congress, out of 
 territory which did not belong to the United States when 
 the Constitution was agreed to. His opinion was, that such 
 new States could only be admitted into the Union by the 
 consent of as many of the original thirteen States as had 
 been necessary for the adoption of the Constitution itself. 
 So rooted and passionate was his conviction on this subject, 
 that, in the year 1811, when the act was discussed under 
 which Louisiana was afterwards admitted, he uttered in the 
 House the following words : 
 
 w I am compelled to declare it as my deliberate opinion, 
 that, if this bill passes, the bonds of this Union are virtually 
 dissolved ; that the States which compose it are free from 
 their moral obligation ; and that, as it will be the right of 
 all, so it will be the duty of some, to prepare definitely for 
 a separation ; amicably, if they can, violently if they must." 
 
 This looks so much like the secession doctrines of subse- 
 quent times, that, I am afraid, many readers will never be 
 able to distinguish the difference. One thing is certain : the 
 admission of new States formed out of new territory by a 
 mere Act of Congress, did actually, for fifty years, make 
 the Southern States masters of this Union ; and Josiah 
 Quincy was, perhaps, the first public man who clearly saw 
 and clearly foretold that this would be the case. 
 
 Mr. Quincy, in one of his letters from Washington, 
 relates an anecdote of Felix Grundy, of Tennessee, which 
 throws light upon Western politics, as they were conducted 
 half a century ago. Mr. Grundy, after having soundly 
 berated Mr. Quincy in the House, said to him the next day : 
 
316 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 w Quincy, I thought I had abused you enough; but I find 
 it will not do." 
 
 " Why, what is the matter now ? I do not mean to speak 
 again." 
 
 " No matter," said Grundy ; " by Heavens, I must give 
 you another thrashing." 
 
 " Why so ? " asked the member from Massachusetts. 
 
 Why," said Grundy, " the truth is, a d d fellow has 
 set up against me in my District, a perfect Jacobin, as 
 much worse than I am as worse can be. Now, except Tim 
 Pickering, there is not a man in the United States so per- 
 fectly hated by 'the people of my District as yourself. You 
 must therefore excuse me. I must abuse you, or I shall 
 never get re-elected. I will do it, however, genteelly. I 
 will not do it as that fool of a Clay did strike so hard as 
 to hurt myself. But abuse you I must. You understand ; 
 I mean to be friends, notwithstanding. I mean to be in 
 Congress again, and must use the means." 
 
 The imagination is a great deceiver. We have a curious 
 example of this truth in the different accounts which have 
 come down to us respecting the appearance of General Wash- 
 ington. Josiah Quincy and his wife both saw this illustri- 
 ous man, and both were persons of eminent intelligence 
 and perfect truth. Nevertheless, how different their impres- 
 sions ! Mrs. Quincy, who was of a highly imaginative 
 temperament, used to speak of him as being as far above 
 ordinary mortals, in grace and majesty of person and de- 
 meanor, as he was in character. Mr. Quincy, on the 
 contrary, though revering Washington not less, thought him 
 rather countrified and awkward in his appearance and 
 manners. He used to say that " President Washington had 
 the air of a country gentleman not accustomed to mix much 
 with society, perfectly polite, but not easy in his address and 
 
JOSIAH QUINCT. 317 
 
 conversation, and not graceful in his gait and movements." 
 We can account for these different representations by sup- 
 posing that one of the witnesses was, and the other was not, 
 misled by the imagination. 
 
 When Josiah Quincy was a young man, about the year 
 1795, he paid a visit to New York, and while there became 
 acquainted with Alexander Hamilton, who, with Aaron Burr, 
 stood at the head of the New York bar. Upon one occasion, 
 t when the conversation turned upon Colonel Burr, Mr. 
 Quincy asked Hamilton whether Burr was a man of great 
 talents. Hamilton's reply, in view of subsequent events, 
 was remarkable. 
 
 "Not of great talents," said Hamilton. "His mind, though 
 brilliant, is shallow, and incapable of broad views or con- 
 tinued effort. He seldom speaks in court more than twenty 
 minutes ; and, though his speeches are showy and not with- 
 out effect upon a jury, they contain no proof of uncommon 
 powers of mind. But he has ambition that will never be 
 satisfied until he has encircled his brow with a diadem." 
 
 These words were uttered nine years before the duel took 
 place which terminated the life of Alexander Hamilton. It 
 shows that, even at that early period, he had the same ill 
 opinion of Burr, the too careless expression of which after- 
 wards cost him his life. 
 
 In the spring of 1812, when President Madison deter- 
 mined, before declaring war against Great Britain, to try 
 once more the effect of an embargo, Mr. Quincy was informed 
 of the President's intention by Mr. Calhoun, a member of 
 the Committee on Foreign Relations. Being authorized to 
 communicate the news to his constituents, he joined another 
 member from Massachusetts in writing to two of the lead- 
 ing citizens of Boston a letter containing the important intel- 
 ligence. Despatch in the transmission of the news was, of 
 
318 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 course, all important, and they contracted with a stage pro- 
 prietor to convey the letter from Washington to Boston in 
 seventy-six hours. The contract was performed ; and never, 
 perhaps, did news produce a greater excitement. 
 
 "On Saturday and Sunday," as Mr. Quincy himself 
 relates, " the whole town was in motion. Every truck and 
 cart was in requisition. The streets and wharves were 
 crowded by the merchants, anxious to send their ships to 
 sea before the harbor was closed by the embargo." All day 
 Sunday those Puritan merchants continued to load their 
 ships ; so that, by the time the embargo was laid, all the 
 vessels designed for England were safe at sea. 
 
 Some pretty rough politicians used to find the way to 
 Washington from the Western States, fifty or sixty years 
 ago. Matthew Lyon was one of these, a man of great note 
 in his day. Josiah Quincy once asked him how he obtained 
 an election to the House of Representatives so soon after 
 his emigration to Kentucky. He answered, " By establish- 
 ing myself at a cross-roads, which everybody in the district 
 passed from time to time, and abusing the sitting member." 
 
 This Lyon was one of those members who continually sent 
 printed speeches and political letters to their constituents. 
 Mr. Quincy asked him one day how he avoided offending 
 those of his constituents whom he chanced to overlook in 
 this distribution of favors." 
 
 " I manage it in this way," said he. " When I am canvas- 
 sing my district, and I come across a man who looks distantly 
 and cold at me, I get up cordially to him and say : f My dear 
 friend, you got my printed letter last session, of course.* 
 'No, sir,' replies the man, with offended dignity, 'I got no 
 such thing.' 'No ! ' I cry out in a passion. 'No ! damn that 
 post-office ! ' Then I make a memorandum of the man's name 
 and address, and when I get back to Washington I write him 
 an autograph letter, and all is put to rights." 
 
JOSIAH QUINCr. 319 
 
 After eight years of Congressional life, when he was but 
 forty-one years of age, and when he might easily have been 
 reflected, Josiah Quincy withdrew from public life, partly 
 from private and partly for public reasons. The main pub- 
 lic reason was, that the Federal party was too powerless ,even 
 to make a useful opposition ; and his chief private reason 
 was, that he loved his wife and children too much to be sep- 
 arated from them. Returning home, he served his native 
 State, first by making costly experiments in agriculture upon 
 his estate, which, though unprofitable to him, were highly 
 beneficial to the community. For several years he was 
 mayor of Boston, during which he reformed the city govern- 
 ment, and rendered services to the city the good effects of 
 which are still apparent. If Boston is the best-governed 
 city in America, it is in part owing to the efficiency and wis- 
 dom of Josiah Quincy. 
 
 When Mr. Quincy was President of Harvard College, he 
 displayed unusual tact in the management of different col- 
 lege cases. He actually was so eccentric as to believe that 
 when young men complain, their complaints may be not 
 altogether without cause. For several years there had been 
 discontent among the students with the contractor who pro- 
 vided their food. Upon inquiring into the matter, Presi- 
 dent Quincy discovered that the students were right, and 
 instead of rebuking them for their rebellious disposition, he 
 proceeded to remove the causes of their dissatisfaction. 
 Besides causing the table to be served with abundant and 
 proper food, he ordered a set of china from England, and 
 banished from the college-board the heterogeneous vessels 
 which had formerly disfigured it. 
 
 On one occasion the contractor complained that the stu- 
 dents would persist in toasting their bread at the stove, to 
 the great injury of the forks. The contractor said that he 
 
320 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 complained of this to former presidents, but that none of 
 them had proved equal to putting an end to it. 
 
 w What did they do when you complained ? " asked Presi- 
 dent Quincy. 
 
 " Why," replied the contractor, " they would admonish the 
 offender, and in case of a repetition of the practice, they, 
 would suspend or dismiss him." 
 
 "But that seems a rather hard measure," said the Presi- 
 dent. " Pray, do you not have your own bread toasted for 
 breakfast in winter ? " 
 
 "Certainly I do," was the reply ; "but I cannot afford to 
 toast the bread of all the college on my present terms." 
 
 " Very good," said the President ; " toast the bread, and 
 charge the additional expense in your bill." 
 
 This excellent man carried one of his virtues to excess 
 early rising. He rose so early in the morning, that he 
 scarcely had sleep enough ; so that, when he sat down during 
 the day for ten minutes, he was very likely to fall asleep. 
 John Quincy Adams was also addicted to excessive early 
 rising. One day these two distinguished men went into 
 Judge Story's lecture-room to hear him read his lecture to 
 his class in the law school. The Judge received the two 
 presidents with his usual politeness, and placed them on the 
 platform by his side, in full view of the class, and then went 
 on with his lecture. In a very few minutes both the presi- 
 dents were fast asleep. The Judge paused a moment, and 
 pointing to the two sleeping gentlemen, uttered these words : 
 " Gentlemen, you see before you a melancholy example of 
 the evil effects of early rising." 
 
 This remark was followed by a shout of laughter, which 
 effectually roused the sleepers, after which the Judge resumed 
 his discourse. 
 
 For sixteen years Mr. Quincy was President of Harvard 
 
JOSIAH QUINCY. 321 
 
 College, a difficult and laborious office. His son tells us, 
 that, during the whole sixteen years of his presidency, he 
 was never absent from the six-o'clock morning prayers but 
 three times ; and that was occasioned by his being obliged 
 to attend a distant court as a witness on behalf of the Col- 
 lege. Upon resigning his presidency, though he was then 
 an old man past seventy, he was still apparently in the ve.ry 
 prime of his powers, and he lived many years after in the 
 enjoyment of the most perfect health, and of scarcely 
 diminished vigor. It concerns us all to know the secret of 
 such health and longevity as this. His father died very 
 young, and his mother in middle life. Nor had any of his 
 paternal ancestors lived beyond seventy-four. 
 
 In the first place, he was strictly temperate in the use of 
 intoxicating drinks, almost to total abstinence. At break- 
 fast and at night he ate moderately and of plain food. At 
 dinner, which he had the good sense to eat in the middle of 
 the day, he ate heartily of whatever was set before him. He 
 discovered, many years ago, how important perfect cleanli- 
 ness is to the preservation of health, and he made a frequent 
 use of the bath tub, the flesh brush, and the hair gloves. 
 He was an exceedingly early riser. He was addicted to no 
 vice whatever. His life was blameless and cheerful. He 
 indulged none of the passions which waste the vitality and 
 pervert the character. All his objects were such as a rational 
 and virtuous man could pursue without self-reproach, and 
 with the approbation of the wise and good. Thus living, he 
 attained nearly to the age of ninety-three, enjoying life almost 
 to the last hour, and passed away as peacefully and painlessly 
 as a child goes to sleep. 
 
 He was an eminently handsome man, from youth to 
 extreme old age. His fine set of teeth he kept entire until 
 his death ; and this, no doubt, had much to do with preserv- 
 
322 TKIUMPHS OP ENTERPRISE. 
 
 ing the health of his body and the proportions of his counte- 
 nance. His son says that a bust of him taken in his prime, 
 by Horatio Greenough, might well pass for the head of an 
 Apollo or a Jupiter. Of all the myriads of men that have 
 lived and labored on this earth since its creation, I question 
 if there has ever been one man who lived, upon the whole, a 
 better life than Josiah Quincy, of Massachusetts. He had 
 a sound constitution, and took care of it ; he had a good 
 mind, and improved it ; he had an excellent wife, and appre- 
 ciated her value ; he had a good fortune, and did not abuse 
 it ; he lived in a good country, and faithfully served it ; he 
 had an enlightened religion, and lived up to it. 
 
 In religious matters, Josiah Quincy displayed a degree of 
 independence and good sense rarely to be met with in his 
 generation in New England. He had a particular aversion 
 to all theological disputes and sectarian exclusiveness. He 
 was accustomed sometimes to sum up his opinions on this 
 subject by quoting the well-known lines, 
 
 " For modes of faith, let graceless zealots fight, 
 He can't be wrong whose life is in the right." 
 
 One of the entries in his diary, made when he was past 
 eighty-four years of age, was the following : 
 
 "From the doctrines with which metaphysical divines have 
 chosen to obscure the word of God, such as predestination, elec- 
 tion, reprobation, etc., I turn with loathing to the refreshing assur- 
 ance, which to my mind contains the substance of revealed religion. 
 * In every nation he who feareth God and worketh righteousness is 
 accepted of him/ " 
 
 In these more enlightened days it is easy to believe this 
 truth; but sixty or seventy years ago, when Josiah Quincy 
 was forming his opinions, few persons were able to accept it 
 fully and heartily. 
 
THE ORIGINAL: 
 
 THE INTERMEDIATE: 
 
 THE HARPSICHORD. 
 
 THE PRESENT: 
 
THE PIANO AMONG US, 
 
 AND THE HISTORY OF THE INSTRUMENT FROM 
 REMOTEST TIMES. 
 
 THE piano, one hundred and sixty years after its inven- 
 tion, in spite of its great cost, has become the leading musi- 
 cal instrument of Christendom. England produces thirty-five 
 thousand every year ; the United States, thirty thousand ; 
 France, fifteen thousand ; Germany, perhaps, ten thousand ; 
 and all other countries, ten thousand ; making a total of one 
 hundred thousand. It is computed that an average piano is 
 the result of one hundred and twenty days' work ; and, con- 
 sequently, there must be at least fifty thousand men em- 
 ployed in the business. And it is only within a few years 
 that the making of these noble instruments has been done 
 on anything like the present scale. Messrs. Broadwood, of 
 London, who have made in all one hundred and twenty-nine 
 thousand pianos, only begin to count at the year 1780 ; and 
 in the United States there were scarcely fifty pianos a year 
 made fifty years ago. , 
 
 We need scarcely say that the production of music for the 
 piano has kept pace with the advance of the instrument. 
 Dr. Burney mentions, in his History of Music (Vol. IV. p. 
 664), that when he came to London in 1744, "Handel's 
 Harpsichord Lessons and Organ Concertos, and the two 
 First Books of Scarletti's Lessons, were all the good music 
 for keyed instruments at that time in the nation." We 
 have at this moment before us the catalogue of music sold 
 by one house in Boston, Oliver Ditson & Co. It is a closely 
 
324 TRIUMPHS OP ENTERPRISE. 
 
 printed volume of three hundred and sixty pages, and con- 
 tains the titles of about thirty-three thousand pieces of 
 music, designed to be performed, wholly or partly, on the 
 piano. By far the greater number are piano music pure and 
 simple. It is not a very rare occurrence for a new piece to 
 have a sale of one hundred thousand copies in the United 
 States. A composer who can produce the kind of music 
 that pleases the greatest number, may derive a revenue 
 twenty times greater than Mozart or Beethoven enjoyed 
 in their most prosperous time. There are trifling waltzes 
 and songs upon the list of Messrs. Ditson, which have 
 yielded more profit than Mozart received for "Don 
 Giovanni " and " The Magic Flute " together. We learn 
 from the catalogue just mentioned, that the composers of 
 music have an advantage over the authors of books, in being 
 always able to secure a publisher for their productions. 
 Messrs. Ditson announce that they are ready and willing to 
 publish any piece of music by any composer on the follow- 
 ing easy conditions : " Three dollars per page for engraving ; 
 two dollars and a half per hundred sheets of paper ; and one 
 dollar and a quarter per hundred pages for printing." At 
 the same time they frankly notify ambitious teachers, that 
 "not one piece in ten pays the cost of getting up, and not 
 one in fifty proves a success." 
 
 The piano, though its recent development has been so 
 rapid, is the growth of ages, and we can, for three thousand 
 years or more, dimly and imperfectly trace its growth. The 
 instrument, indeed, has found an historian, Dr. Blmbault, 
 of London, who has gathered the scattered notices of its 
 progress into a handsome quarto, now accessible in some of 
 our public libraries. It is far from our desire to make a 
 display of erudition ; yet perhaps ladies who love their piano 
 may care to spend a minute or two in learning how it came 
 
THE PIANO AMONG US. 325 
 
 to be the splendid triumph of human ingenuity, the precious 
 addition to the happiness of existence, which they now find 
 it to be. "I have had my share of trouble," we heard a 
 lady say the other day, "but my piano has kept me happy." 
 All ladies who have had the virtue to subdue this noble 
 instrument to their will, can say something similar of the 
 solace and joy they daily derive from it. 
 
 The Greek legend that the twang of Diana's bow suggested 
 to Apollo the invention of the lyre, was not a mere fancy ; 
 for the first stringed instrument of which we have any trace 
 in ancienfc sculpture differed from an ordinary bow only in 
 having more than one string. A two-stringed bow was, 
 perhaps, the first step towards the grand piano of to-day. 
 Additional strings involved the strengthening of the bow 
 that held them; and, accordingly, we find the Egyptian 
 harps, discovered in the catacombs by Wilkinson, very thick 
 and massive in the lower part of the frame, which terminated 
 sometimes in a large and solid female head. From the two- 
 stringed bow to these huge twelve-stringed Egyptian harps, 
 six feet high and beautifully finished with veneer, inlaid with 
 ivory and mother-of-pearl, no one can say how many centu- 
 ries elapsed. The catgut strings of the harps of three 
 thousand years ago are still capable of giving a musical 
 sound. The best workmen of the present time, we are 
 assured, could not finish a harp more exquisitely than these 
 are finished ; yet they have no mechanism for tightening or 
 loosening the strings, and no strings except such as were 
 furnished by the harmless, necessary cat. The Egyptian 
 harp, with all its splendor of decoration, was a rude and 
 barbaric instrument. 
 
 It has not been shown that Greece or Eome added one 
 essential improvement to the stringed instruments which 
 they derived from older nations. The Chickerings, Stein- 
 
326 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 ways, Erards, and Broad woods of our day cannot lay a finger 
 upon any part of a piano, and say that they owe it to the 
 Greeks or to the Romans. 
 
 The Cithara of the Middle Ages was a poor thing enough, 
 in the form of a large P, with ten strings in the oval part ; 
 but it had movable pegs, and could be easily tuned. It was, 
 therefore, a step toward the piano of the French Exposition 
 in 1867. 
 
 But the Psaltery was a great stride forward. This instru- 
 ment was an arrangement of strings on a box. Here we 
 have the principle of the sounding-board, a thing of vital 
 moment to the piano, and one upon which the utmost care is 
 bestowed by all the great makers. Whoever first thought 
 of stretching strings on a box may also be said to have half 
 invented the guitar and the violin. No single subsequent 
 thought has been so fruitful of consequences as this in the 
 improvement of stringed instruments. The reader, of 
 course, will not confound the psaltery of the Middle Ages 
 with the psaltery of the Hebrews, respecting which nothing 
 is known. The translators of the Old Testament assigned 
 the names with which they were familiar to the musical 
 instruments of the Jews. 
 
 About the year 1200 we arrive at the Dulcimer, which 
 was an immense psaltery, with improvements. Upon a 
 harp-shaped box, eighteen to thirty-six feet long, fifty strings 
 were stretched, which the player struck with a stick or a 
 long-handled hammer. This instrument was a signal advance 
 toward the grand piano. It was a piano, without its 
 machinery. 
 
 The next thing, obviously, must have been to contrive a 
 method of striking the strings with certainty and evenness ; 
 and, accordingly, we find indications of a keyed instrument 
 after the year 1300, called the Clavicytherium, or keyed 
 
THE PIANO AMONG US. 327 
 
 cithara. The invention of keys permitted the strings to be 
 covered over, and therefore the strings of the clavicytherium 
 were enclosed in a box, instead of being stretched on a box. 
 The first keys were merely long levers with a nub at the end 
 of them, mounted on a pivot, which the player canted up at 
 the strings on the see-saw principle. It has required four 
 hundred years to bring the mechanism of the piano key to 
 its present admirable perfection. The clavicytherium was 
 usually a very small instrument, an oblong box, three or 
 four feet in length, that could be lifted by a girl of fourteen. 
 The clavichord and manichord, which we read of in Mozart's 
 letters, were only improved and better-made clavicytheria. 
 How affecting the thought, that the divine Mozart had noth- 
 ing better on which to try the ravishing airs of " The Magic 
 Flute" than a wretched box of brass wires, twanged with 
 pieces of quill ! So it is always, and in all branches of art. 
 Shakespeare's plays, Titian's pictures, the great cathedrals, 
 Newton's discoveries, Mozart's and Handel's music, were 
 executed while the implements of art and science were still 
 very rude. 
 
 Queen Elizabeth's instrument, the Virginals, was a box 
 of strings, with improved keys, and mounted on four legs, 
 In other words it was a small and very bad piano. The 
 excellent Pepys, in his account of the great fire of London 
 of 1666, says: "River full of lighters and boats taking in 
 goods, and good goods swimming in the water; and only I 
 observed that hardly one lighter or boat in three that had the 
 goods of a house in it, but there were a pair of virginalls in 
 it." Why " a pair " ? For the same reason that induces 
 many persons to say " a pair of stairs," and "a pair of com- 
 passes " ; that is, no reason at all. 
 
 It is plain that the virginals, or virgin's clavichord, was far 
 from holding the rank among musical instruments which the 
 
 21 
 
328 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 piano now possesses. If any of our readers should ever come 
 upon a thin folio, entitled " Musick's Monument " (London, 
 1676), we advise him to clutch it, retire from the haunts of 
 men, and abandon himself to the delight of reading the 
 Izaak Walton of music. It is a most quaint and curious 
 treatise upon "the Noble Lute, the best of instruments," 
 with a chapter upon "the Generous Viol," by Thomas Mace, 
 " one of the clerks of Trinity College in the University of 
 Cambridge." Master Mace deigns not to mention keyed 
 instruments, probably regarding keys as old sailors regard 
 the lubber's hole, fit only for greenhorns. The "Noble 
 Lute," of which Thomas Mace discourses, was a large, heavy, 
 pot-bellied guitar with many strings. "We learn from this 
 enthusiastic author, that the noble lute had been calumniated 
 by some ignorant persons ; and it is in refuting their calum- 
 nious imputations that he pours out a torrent of knowledge 
 upon his beloved instrument, and upon the state of music in 
 England in 1675. In reply to the charge, that the noble 
 lute was a very hard instrument to play upon, he gives 
 posterity a piece of history. That the lute was hard once, 
 he confesses, but asserts that "it is now easie, and very 
 familiar." 
 
 " The First and Chief Reason that it was Hard in former Times, 
 was, Because they had to their Lutes but Few Strings ; viz. to some 
 10, some 12, and some 14 Strings, which in the beginning of my 
 Time were almost altogether in use ; (and is this present Year 
 1675, fifty-four years since I first began to undertake That Instru- 
 ment.) But soon after, they began to adde more Strings unto 
 Their Lutes, so that we had Lutes of 16, 18, and 20 Strings ; 
 which they finding to be so Great a Convenience, staj^ed not long 
 till they added more to the Number of 24, where we now rest sat- 
 isfied ; only upon my Theorboes I put 26 Strings, for some Good 
 Reasons I shall be able to give in due Time and Place." 
 
THE PIANO AMONG US. 329 
 
 Another aspersion upon the noble lute was, that it was "a 
 Woman's Instrument." Master Mace gallantly observes, that 
 if this were true, he cannot understand why it should suffer 
 any disparagement on that account, " but rather that it should 
 have the more Reputation and Honour." 
 
 There are passages in this ancient book which take us 
 back so agreeably to the concert-rooms and parlors of two 
 hundred years ago, and give us such an insight into the 
 musical resources of our forefathers, that we shall venture 
 to copy two or three of them. The following brief dis- 
 course upon Pegs is very amusing: 
 
 " And you must know, that from the Badness of the Pegs, arise 
 several Inconveniences ; The first I have named, viz. the Loss of 
 Labour. The 2d. is, the Loss of Time ; for I have known some so 
 extreme long in Tuning their Lutes and Viols, by reason only of 
 #ad Pegs, that They have wearied out their Auditors before they 
 began to Play. A 3d. Inconvenience is, that oftentimes, if a High- 
 stretch'd small String happen to slip down, t is in great danger to 
 break at the next winding up, especially in wet moist weather, and 
 that it have been long slack. The 4th. is, that when a String 
 hath been slipt back, it will not stand in Tune, under many Amend- 
 ments ; for it is continually in stretching itself, till it come to Its 
 highest stretch. A 5th. is, that in the midst of a Consort, All the 
 Company must leave off, because of some Eminent String slipping. 
 A 6th. is, that sometimes ye shall have such a Rap upon the 
 Knuckles, by a sharp-edg'd Peg, and a stiff strong String, that the 
 very Skin will be taken off. And Tthly. It is oftentimes an occa- 
 sion of the Thrusting off the Treble-Peg-Nut, and sometimes of 
 the Upper Long Head ; And I have seen the Neck of an Old Viol, 
 thrust off into two pieces, by reason of the Badness of the Pegs, 
 meerly with the Anger and hasty Choller of Him that has been 
 Tuning. Now I say that These are very Great Inconveniences, and 
 do adde much to the Trouble and Hardness of the Instrument. I 
 shall therefore inform you how ye may Help All These with Ease ; 
 
330 TRIUMPHS OP ENTERPRISE. 
 
 viz. Thus. When you perceive any Peg to be troubled with the 
 slippery Disease, assure yourself he will never grow better of Him- 
 self, without some of Your Care ; Therefore take Him out, and 
 examine the Cause." 
 
 He gives advice with regard to the preservation of the 
 Lute in the moist English climate : 
 
 " And that you may know how to shelter your Lute, in the worst 
 of 111 weathers (which is moist) you shall do well, ever when you 
 Lay it by in the day-time, to put it into a Bed, that is constantly 
 used, between the Rug and Blanket ; but never between the Sheets, 
 because they may be moist with Sweat, etc. 
 
 " This is the most absolute and best place to keep It in always, 
 by which doing, you will find many Great Conveniences which I 
 shall here set down 
 
 " Therefore, a Bed will secure from all These Inconveniences, 
 and keep your Glew so Hard as Glass, and All safe and sure ; only 
 to be excepted, That no Person be so inconsiderate, as to Tumble 
 down upon the Bed, whilst the Lute is There ; For I have known 
 several Good Lutes spoiled with such a trick." 
 
 We may infer from Master Mace his work, that the trivial 
 virginals were gaining in popular estimation upon the nobler 
 instrument which is the theme of his eulogy. He has no 
 patience with those who object to his beloved lute that it is 
 out of fashion. He remarks upon this subject in a truly 
 delicious strain : 
 
 " I cannot understand, how Arts and Sciences should be subject 
 unto any such Phantastical, Giddy, or Inconsiderate Toyish Con- 
 ceits, as ever to be said to be in Fashion, or out of Fashion. I 
 remember there was a Fashion, not many years since, for Women 
 in their Apparel to be so Pent up by the Straitness, and Stiffness 
 of their Gown-Shoulder-Sleeves, that They could not so much as 
 Scratch Their Heads, for the Necessary Remove of a Biting Louse ; 
 nor Elevate their Arms scarcely to feed themselves Handsomly ; 
 
THE PIANO AMONG US. 331 
 
 nor Carve a Dish of Meat at a Table, but their whole Body must 
 needs Bend towards the dish. This must needs be concluded by 
 Reason, a most Vnreasonable, and Inconvenient Fashion; and 
 They as Vnreasonable Inconsiderate who would be so Abus'd, and 
 Bound up. I confess It was a very Good Fashion, for some such 
 Viragoes, who were us'd to Scratch their Husbands Faces or Eyes, 
 and to pull them down by the Coxcombes. And I am subject to 
 think, It was ameer Rogery in the Combination, or Club-Council 
 of the Taylors, to Abuse the Women in That Fashion, in Revenge 
 of some of the Curst Dames their Wives." 
 
 Some lute-makers, this author informs us, were so famous 
 in Europe, that he had seen lutes of their making, " pittifull, 
 old, batter'd, crack'd things," that were valued at a hundred 
 pounds sterling each ; and he had often seen lutes of three 
 or four pounds' value " far more illustrious and taking to a 
 Common eye." In refuting the K aspersion that one had as 
 good keep a horse (for cost) as a Lute," he declares, that he 
 never in his life " took more than five shillings the quarter to 
 maintain a Lute with strings, only for the first stringing I 
 ever took ten shillings." He says, however: "I do confess 
 Those who will be Prodigal and Extraordinary Curious, may 
 spend as much as may maintain two or three Horses, and 
 Men to ride upon them too, if they please. But 20*. per 
 ann. is an Ordinary Charge ; and much more they need not 
 spend, to practise very hard." 
 
 Keyed instruments, despite the remonstrances of the 
 iutists, continued to advance toward their present suprem- 
 acy. As often as an important improvement was introduced, 
 the instrument changed its name, just as in our day the 
 melodeon was improved into the harmonium, then into the 
 organ-harmonium, and finally into the cabinet organ. The 
 virginals of 1600 became the spinet of 1700, so called 
 because the pieces of quill employed in twanging the strings 
 
332 TRIUMPHS or ENTERPRISE. 
 
 resembled thorns, and spina, in Latin, means thorn. Any 
 lady who will take the trouble to mount to the fourth story 
 of Messrs. Cnickering's piano store in the city of New 
 York, may see such a spinet as Mrs. Washington, Mrs. 
 Adams, and Mrs. Hamilton played upon when they were 
 little girls. It is a small, harp-shaped instrument on legs, 
 exceedingly coarse and clumsy in its construction, the 
 case rough and unpolished, the legs like those of a kitchen 
 table, with wooden castors such as were formerly used in 
 the construction of cheap bedsteads of the " trundle " vari- 
 ety. The keys, however, are much like those now in use, 
 though they are fewer in number, and the ivory is yellow 
 with age. If the reader would know the tone of this ancient 
 instrument, he has but to stretch a brass wire across a box 
 between two nails, and twang it with a short pointed 
 piece of quill. And if the reader would know how much 
 better the year 1871 is than the year 1700, he may first hear 
 this spinet played upon in Messrs. Chickerings' dusty garret, 
 and then descend to one of the floors below, and listen to 
 the round, full, brilliant singing of a Chickering grand, 
 of the present illustrious year. By as much as that grand 
 piano is better than that poor little spinet, by so much is the 
 present time better than the days when Louis XIV. was 
 king. If any intelligent person doubts it, it is either because 
 he does not know that age, or because he does not know 
 this age. 
 
 The spinet expanded into the harpsichord, the leading 
 instrument from 1700 to 1800. A harpsichord was nothing 
 but a very large and powerful spinet. Some of them had 
 two strings for each note ; some had three ; some had three 
 kinds of strings, catgut, brass, and steel ; and some were 
 painted and decorated in the most gorgeous style. Freder- 
 ick the Great had one made for him in London, with silver 
 
THE PIANO AMONG U8. 333 
 
 hinges, silver pedals, inlaid case, and tortoise-shell front, at 
 a cost of two hundred guineas. Every part of the construc- 
 tion of the spinet was improved, and many new minor 
 devices were added ; but the harpsichord, in its best estate, 
 was nothing but a spinet, because its strings were always 
 twanged by a piece of quill. How astonished would an 
 audience be to hear a harpsichord of 1750, and to be in- 
 formed that such an instrument Handel felt himself fortunate 
 to possess ! 
 
 Next, the piano, invented at Florence in 1710, by Bar- 
 tolommeo Cristofali. 
 
 The essential difference between a harpsichord and a piano 
 is described by the first name given to the piano, which was 
 hammer-harpsichord, i. e. a harpsichord the strings of which 
 were struck by hammers, not twanged by quills. The next 
 name given to it was forte-piano, which signified soft, with 
 power; and this name became piano-forte, which it still 
 retains. One hundred years were required to prove to the 
 musical public the value of an invention without which no. 
 further development of stringed instruments had been pos- 
 sible. No improvement in the mere mechanism of the harp- 
 sichord could ever have overcome the trivial effect of the 
 twanging of the strings by pieces of quill ; but the moment 
 the hammer principle was introduced, nothing was wanting 
 but improved mechanism to make it universal. It required, 
 however, a century to produce the improvements sufficient 
 to give the piano equal standing with the harpsichord. The 
 first pianos gave forth a dull and feeble sound to ears accus- 
 tomed to the clear and harp-like notes of the fashionable 
 instrument. 
 
 In that same upper room of Messrs. Chickering, near the 
 spinet just mentioned, there is an instrument, made perhaps 
 about the year 1800, which explains why the piano was 
 
334 TRIUMPHS OP ENTERPRISE. 
 
 so slow in making its way. It resembles in form and size a 
 grand piano of the present time, though of coarsest finish 
 and most primitive construction, with thin, square, kitchen- 
 table legs, and wooden knobs for castors. This interesting 
 instrument has two rows of keys, and is both a harpsichord 
 and a piano, one set of keys twanging the wires, and the 
 other set striking them. The effect of the piano notes is so 
 faint and dull, that we cannot wonder at the general prefer- 
 ence for the harpsichord for so many years. It appears to 
 have been a common thing in the last century to combine 
 two- or more instruments in one. Dr. Charles Burney, 
 writing in 1770, mentions "a very curious keyed instru- 
 ment," made under the direction of Frederick II. of Prussia. 
 " It is in shape like a large clavichord, has several changes 
 of stops, and is occasionally a harp, a harpsichord, a lute, or 
 piano-forte ; but the most curious property of this instru- 
 ment is, that, by drawing out the keys, the hammers are 
 transferred to different strings. By which means a compo- 
 sition may be transposed half a note, a whole note, or a flat 
 third lower at pleasure, without the embarrassment of differ- 
 ent notes or clefs, real or imaginary." 
 
 The same sprightly author tells us of " a fine Rucker harp- 
 sichord, which he has had painted inside and out with as 
 much delicacy as the finest coach, or even snuff-box, I ever 
 saw at Paris. On the outside is the birth of Venus ; and on 
 the inside of the cover, the story of Rameau's most famous 
 opera, Castor and Pollux. Earth, Hell, and Elysium are 
 there represented; in Elysium, sitting on a bank, with a 
 lyre in his hand, is that celebrated composer himself." 
 
 This gay instrument was at Paris. In Italy, the native 
 home of music, the keyed instruments, in 1770, Dr. Burney 
 says, were exceedingly inferior to those of the North of 
 Europe. "Throughout Italy, they have generally little 
 
THE PIANO AMONG US. 335 
 
 octave spinets to accompany singing in private houses, some- 
 times in a triangular form, but more frequently in the shape 
 of an old virginal ; of which the keys are so noisy and the 
 tone is so feeble, that more wood is heard than wire. I 
 found three English harpsichords in the three principal cities 
 of Italy, which are regarded by the Italians as so many phe- 
 nomena." 
 
 To this day Italy depends upon foreign countries for her 
 best musical instruments. Italy can as little make a grand 
 piano as America can compose a grand opera. 
 
 The history of the piano from 1710 to 1871 is nothing but 
 a history of the improved mechanism of the instrument. 
 The moment the idea was conceived of striking the strings 
 with hammers, unlimited improvement was possible ; and 
 though the piano of to-day is covered all over with ingenious 
 devices, the great, essential improvements are few in num- 
 ber. The hammer, for example, may contain one hundred 
 ingenuities, but they are all included in the device of cover- 
 ing the first wooden hammers with cloth ; and the master- 
 thought of making the whole frame of the piano of iron, sug- 
 gested the line of improvement which secures the supremacy 
 of the piano over all other stringed instruments forever. 
 
 Sebastian Erard, the son of a Strasbourg upholsterer, 
 went to Paris, a poor orphan of sixteen, in the year 1768, 
 and, finding employment in the establishment of a harpsi- 
 chord-maker, rose rapidly to the foremanship of the shop, 
 and was soon in business for himself as a maker of harpsi- 
 chords, harps, and pianos. To him, perhaps, more than to 
 any other individual, the fine interior mechanism of the piano 
 is indebted ; and the house founded by Sebastian Erard still 
 produces the pianos which enjoy the most extensive reputa- 
 tion in the Old World. He may be said to have created the 
 "action" of the piano, though his devices have been subse- 
 
336 TKIUMPHS or ENTERPRISE. 
 
 quently improved upon by others. He found the piano in 
 1768 feeble and unknown; he left it, at his death in 1831, 
 the most powerful, pleasing, and popular stringed instru- 
 ment in existence ; and besides gaining a colossal fortune for 
 himself, he bequeathed to his nephew, Pierre Erard, the most 
 celebrated manufactory of pianos in the world. Next to 
 Erard ranks John Broad wood, a Scotchman, who came to 
 London about the time of Erard's arrival in Paris, and, like 
 him, procured employment with a harpsichord-maker, the 
 most noted one in England. John Broadwood was a " good 
 apprentice," married his master's daughter, inherited his busi- 
 ness, and carried it on with such success, that, to-day, the 
 house of Broadwood and Sons is the first of its line in Eng- 
 land. John Broadwood was chiefly meritorious for a general 
 improvement in the construction of the instrument. If he 
 did not originate many important devices, he was eager to 
 adopt those of others, and he made the whole instrument 
 with British thoroughness. The strings, the action, the case, 
 the pedals, and all the numberless details of mechanism 
 received his thoughtful attention, and show to the present 
 time traces of his honest and intelligent mind. It was in 
 this John Broadwood's factory, that a poor German boy 
 named John Jacob Astor earned the few pounds that paid his 
 passage to America, and bought the seven flutes which were 
 the foundation of the great Astor estate. For several years, 
 the sale of the Broadwood pianos in New York was an 
 important part of Mr. Astor's business. He used to sell his 
 furs in London, and invest part of the proceeds in pianos, 
 for exportation to New York. 
 
 America began early to try her hand at improving the 
 instrument. Mr. Jefferson, in the year 1800, in one of his 
 letters to his daughter Martha, speaks of "a very ingenious, 
 modest, and poor young man " in Philadelphia, who " has 
 
THE PIANO AMONG US. 337 
 
 invented one of the prettiest improvements in the forte-piano 
 I have ever seen." Mr. Jefferson, who was himself a player 
 upon the violin, and had same little skill upon the harpsi- 
 chord, adds, "It has tempted me to engage one for Monti- 
 cello." This instrument was an upright piano, and we have 
 found no mention of an upright of an earlier date. " His 
 strings," says Mr. Jefferson, "are perpendicular, and he 
 contrives within that height " (not given in the published 
 extract) " to give his strings the same length as in the grand 
 forte-piano, and fixes his three unisons to the same screw, 
 which screw is in the direction of the strings, and therefore 
 never yields. It scarcely gets out of tune at all, and then, 
 for the most part, the three unisons are tuned at once." This 
 is an interesting passage ; for, although the " forte-pianos " 
 of this modest young man have left no trace upon the history 
 of the instrument, it shows that America had no sooner cast 
 an eye upon its mechanism than she set to work improving 
 it. Can it be that the upright piano was an American inven- 
 tion? It may be. The Messrs. Broad wood, in the little 
 book which lay upon their pianos in the Exhibition of 1851, 
 say that the first vertical or cabinet pianos were constructed 
 by William Southwell, of their house, in 1804, four years 
 after the date of Mr. Jefferson's letter. 
 
 After 1800 there were a few pianos made every year in 
 the United States, but none that could compare with the best 
 Erards and Broadwoods, until the Chickering era, which 
 began in 1823. 
 
 The two Americans to whom music is most indebted in the 
 United States, are Jonas Chickeriug, piano-maker, born in 
 New Hampshire in 1798, and Lowell Mason, singing teacher 
 and composer of church tunes, born in Massachusetts in 
 1792. While Lowell Mason was creating the taste for music, 
 Jonas Chickering was improving the instrument by which 
 
338 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 musical taste is chiefly gratified ; and both being established 
 in Boston, each of them was instrumental in advancing the 
 fortunes of the other. Mr. Mason recommended the Chick- 
 ering piano to his multitudinous classes and choirs, and thus 
 powerfully aided to give that extent to Mr. Chickering's 
 business which is necessary to the production of the best 
 work. Both of them began their musical career, we may 
 say, in childhood ; for Jonas Chickering was only a cabinet- 
 maker's apprentice when he astonished his native village by 
 putting in excellent playing order a battered old piano, long 
 before laid aside ; and Lowell Mason, at sixteen, was already 
 leading a large church choir, and drilling a brass band. The 
 undertaking of this brass band by a boy was an amusing in- 
 stance of Yankee audacity; for when the youth presented 
 himself to the newly formed band to give them their first 
 lesson, he found so many instruments in their hands which 
 he had never seen nor heard of, that he could not proceed. 
 "Gentlemen," said he, "I see that a good many of your 
 instruments are out of order, and most of them need a little 
 oil, or something of the kind. Our best plan will be to 
 adjourn for a week. Leave all your instruments with me, 
 and I will have them in perfect condition by the time we 
 meet again." Before the band again came together, the 
 young teacher, by working night and day, had gained a suffi- 
 cient insight into the nature of the instruments to instruct 
 those who knew nothing of them. 
 
 Jonas Chickering was essentially a mechanic, a most 
 skilful, patient, thoughtful, faithful mechanic, and it was 
 his excellence as a mechanic which enabled him to rear an 
 establishment which, beginning with one or two pianos a 
 month, was producing, at the death of the founder, in 1853, 
 fifteen hundred pianos a year. It was he who introduced 
 into the piano the full iron frame. It was he who first made 
 
THE PIANO AMONG US. 339 
 
 American pianos that were equal to the best imported 
 ones. He is universally recognized as the true founder of 
 the manufacture of the piano in the United States. No man 
 has, perhaps, so nobly illustrated the character of the Ameri- 
 can mechanic, or more honored the name of American 
 citizen. He was the soul of benevolence, truth, and honor. 
 When we have recovered a little more from the illusions 
 which invest "public men " with supreme importance, we 
 shall better know how to value those heroes of the apron, 
 who, by a life of conscientious toil, place a new source of 
 happiness, or of force, within the reach of their fellow- 
 citizens. 
 
 Henry Steinway, the founder of the great house of Stein 
 way and Sons, has had a career not unlike that of Mr. 
 Chickering. He also, in his native Brunswick, amused his 
 boyhood by repairing old instruments of music, and making 
 new ones. He made a cithara and a guitar for himself with 
 only such tools as a boy can command. He also was 
 apprenticed to a cabinet-maker, and was drawn away, by 
 natural bias, from the business he had learned, to the making 
 of organs and pianos. For many years he was a German 
 piano-maker, producing, in the slow, German manner, two 
 or three excellent instruments a month ; striving ever after 
 higher excellence, and growing more and more dissatisfied 
 with the limited sphere in which the inhabitant of a small 
 German state necessarily works. In 1849, being then past 
 fifty years of age, and the father of four intelligent and 
 gifted sons, he looked to America for a wider range and a 
 more promising home for his boys. With German prudence, 
 he sent one of them to New York to see what prospect there 
 might be there for another maker of pianos. Charles Stein- 
 way came, saw, approved, returned, reported ; and in 1850 
 all the family reached New York, except the eldest son. 
 
o40 TRIUMPHS OF ENTEEPEISE. 
 
 Theodore, who succeeded to his father's business in Bruns- 
 wick. Henry Steinway again showed himself wise in not 
 immediately going into business. Depositing the capital he 
 had brought with him in a safe place, he put on once more 
 the journeyman's apron, and worked for three years in a 
 New York piano factory to learn the ways of the trade in 
 America ; and his sons obtained similar employment, one 
 of them, fortunately, becoming a tuner, which brought him 
 into relations with many music-teachers. During these three 
 years, their knowledge and their capital increased every day, 
 for they lived as wise men in such circumstances do live 
 who mean to control their destiny. In plain English, they 
 kept their eyes open, and lived on half their income. In 
 1853, in a small back shop in Varick Street, with infinite 
 pains, they made their first piano, and a number of teachers 
 and amateurs were invited to listen to it. It was warmly 
 approved and speedily sold. Ten men were employed, who 
 produced for the next two years one piano a week. In 
 1855, the Messrs. Steinway, still unknown to the public, 
 placed one of their best instruments in the New York Crys- 
 tal Palace Exhibition. A member of the musical jury has 
 recorded the scene which occurred when the jury came to 
 this unknown competitor : 
 
 "They were pursuing their rounds, and performing their duties 
 with an ease and facility that promised a speedy termination to 
 their labors, when suddenly they came upon an instrument that, 
 from its external appearance, solidly rich, yet free from the 
 frippery that was then rather in fashion, attracted their atten- 
 tion. One of the company opened the case, and carelessly struck 
 a few chords. The others were doing the same with its neighbors, 
 but somehow they ceased to chatter when the other instrument 
 began to speak. One by one the jurors gathered round the strange 
 polyphonist, and, without a word being spoken, every one knew 
 
THE PIANO AMONG US. 341 
 
 that it was the best piano-forte in the Exhibition. The jurors 
 were true to their duties. It is possible that some of them had 
 predilections in favor of other makers ; it is certain that one of 
 them had, the writer of the present notice. But when the time 
 for the award came, there was no argument, no discussion, no bare 
 presentment of minor claims ; nothing, in fact, but a hearty in- 
 dorsement of the singular merits of the strange instrument." 
 
 From that time the Stein ways made rapid progress. The 
 tide of California gold was flowing in, and every day some 
 one was getting rich enough to treat his family to a new 
 piano. It was the Messrs. Stein way who chiefly supplied 
 the new demand, without lessening by one instrument a 
 month the business of older houses. Various improvements 
 in the framing and mechanism of the piano have been 
 invented and introduced by them ; and, while some members 
 of the family have superintended the manufacture, others 
 have conducted the not less difficult business of selling. 
 Until last year, the father of the family, in the dress of a 
 workman, attended daily at the factory, as vigilant and 
 active as ever, though then past seventy ; and his surviving 
 sons were as laboriously engaged in assisting him as they 
 were in the infancy of the establishment. 
 
 To visit one of our large manufactories of pianos is a les- 
 son in the noble art of taking pains. Genius itself, says 
 Carlyle, means, first of all, "a transcendent capacity for 
 taking trouble." Everywhere in these vast and interesting 
 establishments we find what we may call the perfection 
 of painstaking. 
 
 The construction of an American piano is a continual act 
 of defensive warfare against the future inroads of our cli- 
 mate, a climate which is polar for a few days in January, 
 tropical for a week or two in July, Nova-Scotian now and 
 then in November, and at all times most trying to the 
 
342 TEIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 finer woods, leathers, and fabrics. To make a piano is not 
 so difficult ; but to make one that will stand in America, 
 that is very difficult. In the rear of Messrs. Steinways' 
 factory there is a yard for seasoning timber, which usually 
 contains an amount of material equal to two hundred and 
 fifty thousand ordinary boards, an inch thick and twelve feet 
 long ; and there it remains from four months to five years, 
 according to its nature and magnitude. Most of the timber 
 used in an American piano requires two years' seasoning at 
 least. From this yard it is transferred to the steam-drying 
 house, where it remains subjected to a high temperature for 
 three months. The wood has then lost nearly all the warp 
 there ever was in it, and the temperature may change fifty 
 degrees in twelve hours (as it does sometimes in New York) 
 without seriously affecting a fibre. Besides this, the timber 
 is sawed in such a manner as to neutralize, in some degree, 
 its tendency to warp, or, rather, so as to make it warp the 
 right way. The reader would be surprised to hear the great- 
 makers converse on this subject of the warping of timber. 
 They have studied the laws which govern warping ; they 
 know why wood warps, how each variety warps, how long a 
 time each kind continues to warp, and how to fit one warp 
 against another, so as to neutralize both. If two or more 
 pieces of wood are to be glued together, it is never done at 
 random ; but they are so adjusted that one will tend to warp 
 one way, and another another. Even the thin veneers upon 
 the case act as a restraining force upon the baser wood which 
 they cover, and in some parts of the instrument the veneer 
 is double for the purpose of keeping both in order. An 
 astonishing amount of thought and experiment has been 
 expended upon this matter of warping, so much, that now 
 not a piece of wood is employed in a piano, the grain of 
 which does not run in the precise direction which experience 
 has shown to be the best. 
 
THE PIANO AMONG US. 
 
 343 
 
 The forests of the whole earth have been searched for 
 woods adapted to the different parts of the instrument. Dr. 
 Eimbault, in his learned "History of the Piano-forte," gives 
 a catalogue of the various woods, metals, skins, and fabrics 
 used in the construction of a piano, which forcibly illustrates 
 the delicacy of the modern instrument and the infinite care 
 taken'inits manufacture. We copy the list, though some of 
 the materials differ from those used by American manufac- 
 turers. 
 
 Woods 
 
 Oak 
 Deal 
 Fir 
 Pine . 
 
 Mahogany 
 
 fieech 
 
 Beef-wood 
 
 Birch 
 
 Cedar 
 -Lime-tree 
 Pear-tree . 
 Sycamore 
 
 Ebony . 
 
 MATERIALS. 
 
 From 
 
 Riga 
 
 Norway . 
 Switzerland 
 America . 
 
 Honduras 
 
 England 
 
 Brazils 
 
 Canada . 
 S. America 
 England . 
 
 . Ceylon . 
 
 Spanish Mahogany Cuba 
 
 Rosewood . Rio Janeiro 
 
 Satinwood . East Indies 
 
 White Holly . England 
 
 Zebra-wood . Brazils . 
 Other fancv woods 
 
 WHERE USED. 
 
 Framing, various parts. 
 
 Wood-bracing, etc. 
 
 Sounding-board. 
 
 Parts of framing, key-bed or 
 
 bottom. 
 Solid wood of top, and various 
 
 parts of the framing and the 
 
 action. 
 
 Wrest-plank, bridge or sound- 
 board, centre of legs. 
 Tongues in the beam, forming 
 
 the divisions between the 
 
 hammers. 
 
 Belly-rail, a part of the framing. 
 Round shanks of hammers. 
 Keys. 
 
 Heads of dampers. 
 Hoppers or levers, veneers on 
 
 wrest-plank. 
 Black keys. 
 
 For decoration. 
 
 22 
 
344 
 
 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 WOOLLEN FABRICS. 
 
 Baize ; green, blue, and brown. Upper surface of key-frame, 
 
 cushions for hammers to fall 
 on, to damp dead part of 
 strings, etc. 
 
 Cloth, various qualities . For various parts of the action 
 
 and in other places, to pre- 
 vent jarring ; also for damp- 
 V*^ era. 
 
 Felt -..x* v v'- .^;o^'': ''.. ; ' : * " V External covering for hammers. 
 
 LEATHER. 
 
 Under-covering of hammers-bass. 
 
 " " tenor and treble. 
 
 Various parts of action. 
 
 Kings for pedal wires. 
 
 METAL. 
 
 Buffalo 
 
 Saddle 
 
 Basil 
 
 Calf 
 
 Doeskin 
 
 Seal 
 
 Sheepskin 
 
 Morocco 
 
 Sole .:# 
 
 Iron ~) 
 
 Steel I Metallic bracing, and in various small screws, springs, 
 
 Brass f centres, pins, etc., etc., throughout the instrument. 
 
 Gun Metal J 
 
 Steel wire ;r ^ ,' f .;v .-, Strings. 
 
 Steel spun wire ' . ' ^ '.-.:. ,*-# ..- Lapped strings. 
 
 Covered copper wire ,. . " lowest notes. 
 
 VARIOUS. 
 
 Ivory . White keys. 
 
 Black lead To smooth the rubbing surfaces of cloth or leather in 
 the action. 
 
 Glue (of a particular quality, made ) -_ , ... 
 
 > Woodwork throughout, 
 expressly for this trade) 
 
THE PIANO AMONG US. 345 
 
 Beeswax, emery paper, glass paper, ~) 
 
 French polish, oil, putty powder, [ Cleaning and finishing, 
 spirits of wine, etc., etc. j 
 
 Such are the materials used. The processes to which 
 they are subjected are far more numerous. So numerous 
 are they and so complicated, that the Stein ways, who 
 employ six hundred men, and labor-saving machinery which 
 does the work of six hundred men more, aided by three 
 steam-engines of a hundred and twenty-five, fifty, and 
 twenty-five horse-power, can only produce from fifty-five to 
 sixty-five pianos a week. The reader has seen, doubtless, 
 a piano with the top taken off; but perhaps it has never 
 occurred to him what a tremendous pull those fifty to sixty 
 strings are keeping up, day and night, from one year's end 
 to another. The shortest and thinnest string of all pulls 
 two hundred and sixty-two pounds, about as much as we 
 should care to lift ; and the entire pull of the strings of a 
 grand piano is sixty pounds less than twenty tons, a load 
 for twenty cart-horses. The fundamental difficulty in the 
 construction of a piano has always been to support this con- 
 tinuous strain. When we look into a piano we see the 
 "iron frame" so much vaunted in the advertisements, and 
 so splendid with bronze and gilding ; but it is not this thin 
 plate of cast-iron that resists the strain of twenty tons. If 
 the wires were to pull upon the iron for one second, it would 
 fly into atoms. The iron plate is screwed to what is called 
 the w bottom " of the piano, which is a mass of timber four 
 inches thick, composed of three layers of plank glued 
 together, and so arranged that the pull of the wires shall be 
 in a line with the grain of the wood. The iron plate itself 
 is subjected to a long course of treatment. The rough cast- 
 ing is brought from the foundry, placed under the drilling- 
 machine, which bores many scores of holes of various sizes 
 
346 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 with marvellous rapidity. Then it is smoothed and finished 
 with the file ; next, it is japanned ; after which it is baked 
 in an oven for forty-eight hours. It is then ready for the 
 bronzer and gilder, who covers the greater part of the sur- 
 face with a light-yellow bronzing, and brightens it here and 
 there with gilding. All this long process is necessary in 
 order to make the plate retain its brilliancy of color. 
 
 Upon this solid foundation of timber and iron the deli- 
 cate instrument is built, and it is enclosed in a case con- 
 structed with still greater care. To make so large a box 
 and one so thin as the case of a piano, stand our summer 
 heats and our furnace heats (still more trying) , is a work 
 of extreme difficulty. The seasoned boards are covered 
 with a double veneer, designed to counteract all the tenden- 
 cies to warp; and the surface is most laboriously polished. 
 It takes three months to varnish and polish the case of a 
 piano. In such a factory as the Stein ways' or the Chicker- 
 ings', there will be always six or seven hundred cases under- 
 going this expensive process. When the surface of the 
 wood has been made as smooth as sand-paper can make it, 
 the first coat of varnish is applied, and this requires eight days 
 to harden. Then all the varnish is scraped off, except that 
 which has sunk into the pores of the wood. The second coat 
 is then put on; which, after eight days' drying, is also 
 scraped away, until the surface of the veneer is laid bare 
 again. After this four or five coats of varnish are added, 
 at intervals of eight days, and, finally, the last polish is 
 produced by the hand of the workman. The object of all 
 this is not merely to produce a splendid and enduring gloss, 
 but to make the case stand for a hundred years in a room 
 which is heated by a furnace to seventy degrees by day, and 
 in which water will freeze at night. During the war, when 
 good varnish cost as much as the best champagne, the var- 
 nish bills of the leading makers were formidable indeed. 
 
THE PIANO AMONG US. 347 
 
 The labor, however, is the chief item of expense. The 
 average wages of the six hundred men employed by Messrs. 
 Steinway is twenty-six dollars a week. This force, aided 
 by one hundred and two labor-saving machines, driven by 
 steam-power equivalent to two hundred horses, produces 
 a piano in one hour. A man with the ordinary tools can 
 make a piano in about four months, but it could not possibly 
 be as good a one as those produced in the large establish- 
 ments. Nor, indeed, is such a feat ever attempted in the 
 United States. The small makers, who manufacture from 
 one to five instruments a week, generally, as already men- 
 tioned, buy the different parts from persons who make only 
 parts. It is a business to make the hammers of a piano ; it 
 is another business to make the " action " ; another, to make 
 the keys ; another, the legs ; another, the cases ; another, 
 the pedals. The manufacture of the hardware used in a 
 piano is a Very important branch, and it is a separate 
 business to sell it. The London Directory enumerates 
 forty-two different trades and businesses related to the piano, 
 and we presume there are not fewer in New York. Conse- 
 quently, any man who knows enough of a piano to put one 
 together, and can command capital enough to buy the parts 
 of one instrument, may boldly fling his sign to the breeze, 
 and announce himself to an inattentive public as a "piano- 
 forte maker." The only difficulty is to sell the piano when 
 it is put together. At present it costs rather more money 
 to sell a piano than it does to make one. 
 
 When the case is finished, all except the final hand-polish, 
 it is taken to the sounding-board room. The sounding-board 
 a thin, clear sheet of spruce under the strings is the 
 piano's soul, wanting which, it were a dead thing. Almost 
 every resonant substance in nature has been tried for sound- 
 ing-boards, but nothing has been found equal to spruce. 
 
348 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 Countless experiments have been made with a view to ascer- 
 tain precisely the best way of shaping, arranging, and 
 fixing the sounding-board, the best thickness, the best 
 number and direction of the supporting ribs ; and every 
 great maker is happy in the conviction that he is a little 
 better in sounding-boards than any of his rivals. Next, the 
 strings are inserted ; next, the action and the keys. Every 
 one will pause to admire the hammers of the piano, so light, 
 yet so capable of giving a telling blow, which evoke all the 
 music of the strings, but mingle with that music no click, 
 nor thud, nor thump, of their own. The felt employed 
 varies in thickness from one sixteenth of an inch to an inch 
 and an eighth, and costs $5.75 in gold per pound. Only 
 Paris, it seems, can make it good enough for the purpose. 
 Many of the keys have a double felting, compressed from an 
 inch and a half to three-quarters of an inch, and others again 
 have an outer covering of leather to keep the strings from 
 cutting the, felt. Simple as the finished hammer looks, there 
 are a hundred and fifty years of thought and experiment in 
 it. It required half a century to exhaust the different kinds 
 of wood, bone, and cork; and when, about 1760, the idea 
 was conceived of covering the hammers with something soft, 
 another century was to elapse before all the leathers and 
 fabrics had been tried, and felt found to be the ne plus ultra. 
 With regard to the action, or the mechanism by which the 
 hammers are made to strike the strings, we must refer the 
 inquisitive reader to the piano itself. 
 
 When all the parts have been placed in the case, the in- 
 strument falls into the hands of the " regulator," who 
 inspects, rectifies, tunes, harmonizes, perfects the whole. 
 Nothing then remains but to convey it to the store, give it 
 its final polish and its last tuning. 
 
 The next thing is to sell it. Six hundred and fifty dol- 
 
THE PIANO AMONG US. 
 
 lars seems a high price for a square piano, such as we used 
 to buy for three hundred, and the " natural cost " of which 
 does not much exceed two hundred dollars. Fifteen hun- 
 dred dollars for a grand piano is also rather startling. But 
 how much tax, does the reader suppose, is paid upon a 
 fifteen-hundred-dollar grand? It is difficult to compute it; 
 but it does not fall much below two hundred dollars. It is 
 computed that the taxes upon very complicated articles, 
 in which a great variety of materials are employed, such as 
 carriages, pianos, organs, and fine furniture, amount to about 
 one eighth of the price. The piano, too, is an expensive 
 creature to keep, in these times of high rents, and its fare 
 upon a railroad is higher than that of its owner. We saw, 
 however, a magnificent piano, the other day, at the establish- 
 ment of Messrs. Chickering, in Broadway, for which passage 
 had been secured all the way to Oregon for thirty-five dol- 
 lars, only five dollars more than it would cost to transport 
 it to Chicago. Happily for us, to whom fifteen hundred 
 dollars nay, six hundred and fifty dollars is an enormous 
 sum of money, a very good second-hand piano is always 
 attainable for less than half the original price. 
 
 For, reader, you must know that the ostentation of the rich 
 is always putting costly pleasures within the reach of the 
 refined not-rich. A piano in its time plays many parts, and 
 figures in a variety of scenes. Like the more delicate and 
 sympathetic kinds of human beings, it is naught unless it is 
 valued ; but, being valued, it is a treasure beyond price. 
 Cold, glittering, and dumb, it stands among the tasteless 
 splendors with which the wealthy ignorant cumber their 
 dreary abodes, a thing of ostentation merely, as unin- 
 teresting as the women who surround it, gorgeously appar- 
 elled, but without conversation, conscious of defective parts 
 of speech. w There is much music, excellent voice, in that 
 
350 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 little organ," but there is no one there who can "make it 
 speak." They may " fret " the noble instrument ; they " can- 
 not play upon it." 
 
 But a fool and his nine-hundred-dollar piano are soon 
 parted. The red flag of the auctioneer announces its transfer 
 to a drawing-room frequented by persons capable of enjoy- 
 ing the refined pleasures. Bright and joyous is the scene, 
 about half-past nine in the evening, when, by turns, the 
 ladies try over their newest pieces, or else listen with intel- 
 ligent pleasure to the performance of a master. Pleasant 
 are the informal family concerts in such a house, when one 
 sister breaks down under the difficulties of Thalberg, and 
 yields the piano-stool to the musical genius of the family, 
 who takes up the note, and dashing gaily into the midst of 
 "Egitto," forces a path through the wilderness, takes the 
 Red Sea like a heroine, bursts at length into the triumphal 
 prayer, and retires from the instrument as calm as a summer 
 morning. On occasions of ceremony, too, the piano has a 
 part to perform, though a humble one. Awkward pauses 
 will occur in all but the best-regulated parties, and people 
 will get together, in the best houses, who quench and neu- 
 tralize one another. It is the piano that fills those pauses, 
 and gives a welcome respite to the toil of forcing conversa- 
 tion. How could "society" go on without the occasional 
 interruption of the piano? One hundred and sixty years 
 ago, in those days beloved and vaunted by Thackeray, when 
 Louis XIV. was king of France, and Anne queen of England, 
 society danced, tattled, and gambled. Cards have receded 
 as the piano has advanced in importance. 
 
 For such a drawing-room as this, after a stay of some 
 years, the piano may pass into a boarding-school, and thence 
 into the sitting-room of a family who have pinched for two 
 years to buy it. w It must have been," says Henry Ward 
 
THE PIANO AMONG US. 351 
 
 Beecher, w about the year 1820, in old Litchfield, Connecti- 
 cut, upon waking one fine morning, that we heard music in 
 the parlor, and, hastening down, beheld an upright piano, 
 the first we ever saw or heard of ! Nothing can describe the 
 amazement of silence that filled us. It rose almost to super- 
 stitious reverence, and all that day was a dream and marvel." 
 It is such pianos that are appreciated. It is in such parlors 
 that the instrument best answers the end of its creation. 
 There is many a piano in the back room of a little store, or 
 in the uncarpeted sitting-room of a farm-house, that yields 
 a larger revenue of delight than the splendid grand of a 
 splendid drawing-room. In these humble abodes of refined 
 intelligence, the piano is a dear and honored member of 
 the family. 
 

ANECDOTES OF FAKADAY. 
 
 ONE day, about the year 1812, a certain Mr. Dance, a gen- 
 tleman who employed much of his leisure in scientific pur- 
 suits, went to a bookbinder's shop in London to see about 
 having some books bound. Ribaud was the bookbinder's 
 name, and Mr. Dance was one of his regular customers. 
 While they were conversing together, the attention of Mr. 
 Dance was drawn to an electrical machine, and other philo- 
 sophical apparatus, not usually found in the establishment 
 of a bookbinder. Mr. Ribaud remarked, by way of expla- 
 nation, that this apparatus had all been made by an appren- 
 tice of his, Michael Faraday by name, the son of a blacksmith 
 in very humble circumstances. 
 
 The curiosity of Mr. Dance was roused. He sought the 
 acquaintance of this youth, and discovered at once that, 
 under a rustic exterior, he concealed an intelligent and gifted 
 mind, with a decided bent towards science. There was then, 
 and is still, in London, an association of men of science, 
 called the Royal Institution, which employed professors, and 
 maintained courses of scientific lectures. Mr. Dance was a 
 member of this society, and he invited young Faraday to go 
 with him and hear the last four lectures of a course which 
 Sir Humphrey Davy was just completing. The young man 
 gladly accepted the kind offer. After being conducted past 
 the doorkeeper by Mr. Dance, the apprentice took a modest 
 Beat in the gallery, where he attended closely to the lectures, 
 
354 TRIUMPHS or ENTERPRISE. 
 
 and took notes of them, which notes he afterwards wrote 
 out and expanded. 
 
 Michael Faraday was thirteen years of age when he was 
 bound apprentice to a London bookseller and bookbinder. 
 His father, a blacksmith, was reared far away in the north of 
 England, in Yorkshire. Why the trade of bookbinder was 
 the one selected for him, is not now known ; but, probably, 
 he had shown some inclination to learning, and his parents 
 supposed that the manufacture of books would facilitate his 
 getting a knowledge of their contents. 
 
 And so it proved. Among the books which he assisted to 
 bind, were the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and Mrs. Marcet's 
 Conversations on Chemistry. His curiosity being excited 
 by these works, and especially by that of Mrs. Marcet, he 
 used to remain 'in the shop after working hours, and read 
 them. This was the beginning of his interest in science. 
 
 "I was a very lively, imaginative person," he once wrote, 
 " and could believe in the Arabian Nights as easily as in the 
 Encyclopaedia. But facts were important to me and saved 
 me. I could trust a fact, and always cross-examined an 
 assertion. So when I questioned Mrs. Marcet's book by 
 such little experiments as I could find means to perform, and 
 found it true to the facts as I could understand them, I felt 
 that I had got hold of an anchor in chemical knowledge, and 
 clung fast to it." 
 
 He always felt the deepest veneration for Mrs. Marcet, 
 and it was a great delight to him in after years to form her 
 acquaintance, and tell her how much he was indebted to her. 
 As long as she lived, he used to send her a copy of all his 
 philosophical papers as they appeared. 
 
 Hearing the lectures of Sir Humphrey Davy had the effect 
 of increasing his taste for the sciences, and especially for the 
 branches (chemistry and electricity) in the investigation of 
 
ANECDOTES OF FAKADAY. 355 
 
 which Davy had won so much distinction. The book- 
 binder's apprentice was probably aware that Sir Humphrey 
 himself was the son of a poor widow, who kept a milliner's 
 shop in Cornwall, and that he had struggled up to his pres- 
 ent position through the difficulties which usually beset the 
 upward path of genius and poverty. Longing for a similar 
 career with the yearning of disinterested love, and feeling 
 that he had it in him to accomplish something in science, he 
 took courage, in his twenty-second year, to write to Sir 
 Humphrey, making known his desires to him ; and with his 
 letter he sent the notes he had formerly taken of Davy's four 
 lectures. Sir Humphrey answered promptly. He compli- 
 mented the intelligence of his correspondent, but strongly 
 advised him not to give up the solid and certain advantages 
 of his trade for a profession which yielded to its most suc- 
 cessful votaries little except barren glory. 
 
 " Science," wrote Davy, " is a harsh mistress, and, in a 
 pecuniary point of view, but poorly rewards those who 
 devote themselves to her service." 
 
 Sir Humphrey informed him, however, in conclusion, that, 
 if upon further reflection, he still desired to devote his life 
 to science, he would bear his wishes in mind, and endeavor 
 in some way to promote their gratification. The young 
 man's purpose remained unshaken, and the philosopher kept 
 his word. 
 
 There has been preserved the very recommendation given 
 of Faraday by Sir Humphrey Davy to the managers of the 
 Royal Institution. As Sir Humphrey was going to the 
 Institution, the morning after he had received Faraday's 
 note, he met one of its managers, named Pepys. 
 
 "Pepys," says Davy, "what am I to do? Here is a let- 
 ter from a young man named Faraday ; he has been attend- 
 ing my lectures, and wants me to get him employment at the 
 Royal Institution. What can I do ? " 
 
356 TRIUMPHS OP ENTERPRISE. 
 
 "Do?" replied Pepys, "put him to wash bottles; if he 
 is good for anything, he will do it directly ; if he refuses, he 
 is good for nothing." 
 
 "No, no," replied Sir Humphrey, " we must try him with 
 something better than that." 
 
 So, a few weeks after, when a vacancy occurred at the 
 Institution for a chemical assistant, Sir Humphrey penned 
 the following recommendation : 
 
 " Sir Humphrey Davy has the honor to inform the managers that 
 he has found a person who is desirous to occupy the situation in the 
 Institution lately filled by William Payne. His name is Michael 
 Faraday. He is a youth of twenty-two years of age. As far as 
 Sir H. Davy has been able to observe or ascertain, he appears well- 
 fitted for the situation. His habits seem good; his disposition 
 active and cheerful, and his manner intelligent. He is willing to 
 engage himself on the same terms as given to Mr. Payne at the tune 
 of quitting the Institution." 
 
 This note having been read at a meeting of the managers, 
 the following resolution was immediately passed : 
 
 " Resolved, That Michael Faraday be engaged to fill the situation 
 lately occupied by Mr. Payne, on the same terms." 
 
 In this humble way was introduced to a scientific career 
 the man who is now generally considered the greatest exper- 
 imental philosopher the world has ever seen. He was 
 engaged at a stipend which tradition reports to have been 
 forty pounds a year and his board. He soon had the great 
 pleasure of accompanying Sir Humphrey Davy to the conti- 
 nent upon that scientific tour which was made famous, at the 
 time, by Napoleon having given these Englishmen passports, 
 in the interests of science, while waging war against Eng- 
 land. They remained abroad for two years, spending much 
 
ANECDOTES OF FAKADAT. 357 
 
 of their time in Italy analyzing the colors and inks of Pom- 
 peiian scrolls. 
 
 Upon the return of Sir Humphrey to England, Faraday 
 resumed his employment as chemical assistant in the Royal 
 Institution. It was the assistant's duty to perform all those 
 humble and laborious tasks which usually fall to the lot of 
 those who prepare experiments for chemical lectures. He 
 fitted corks ; he repaired apparatus ; he prepared solutions 
 and gases ; and did all the other dirty work of a laboratory. 
 This, however, was the farthest possible from being a hard- 
 ship to such a lover of science as Michael Faraday ; and when 
 these duties were done he had still more than half his time 
 left for studies and experiments of his own. He improved 
 his time so well that, when he had filled this lowly post for a 
 few years, he received the appointment of professor of chem- 
 istry, and from that time forward he was wholly employed 
 in discovering and communicating scientific truth. 
 
 Eight years after entering the Institution, he married, and 
 was allowed by the managers to bring his young wife into 
 his rooms at the Royal Institution, and there they lived most 
 happily for forty-six years. 
 
 As an illustration of his character, the following extract 
 may be given from a diary which he kept during a short res- 
 idence in Switzerland : 
 
 "August 2d, 1841 .Nail making goes on here rather considerably, 
 and is a very neat and pretty operation to observe. I love a smith's 
 shop and anything relating to smithery. My father was a smith" 
 
 When Faraday began to be famous in England as a chem- 
 ist, he was frequently applied to by men of business to 
 analyze substances, and perform other operations in what is 
 called commercial chemistry. This kind of business in- 
 creased to such an extent, that an immense fortune was 
 
358 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 within his reach, and he found that he must choose between 
 getting money and investigating science. Having no chil- 
 dren, and being blessed with a wife who sympathized with his 
 pursuits, it was not difficult for him to choose the nobler 
 part. 
 
 "This son of a blacksmith," says his friend Tyndall, "and 
 apprenticed to a bookbinder, had to decide between a for- 
 tune of one hundred and fifty thousand pounds on the one 
 side, and his undowered science on the other. He chose the 
 latter, and died a poor man. But his was the glory of hold- 
 ing aloft among the nations the scientific name of England 
 for a period of thirty years." 
 
 And this glory he enjoyed ; but far dearer to him was the 
 love which his success in extending the area of knowledge 
 brought him. 
 
 "Tyndall," said he once, taking his friend by the hand, 
 the hand that had just written a review of Faraday's works, 
 " Tyndall, the sweetest reward of my work is the sym- 
 pathy and good- will which it has caused to flow in upon me 
 from all quarters of the world." 
 
 Of all the sons of men, those who benefit mankiad most, 
 and get from mankind least (that is, considering tha services 
 they render), are genuine men of science. The salary 
 attached to this professorship of chemistry, m*.de forever 
 illustrious by Faraday's having held it, was eighty pounds a 
 year, the use of three rooms, with fuel and caadles enough 
 to warm and light them. This was actually the income of 
 Professor Faraday during the years when he nude his great- 
 est discoveries. And for such a man it was enough. Small 
 as it was, it gave him the command of all his time, and the 
 Institution provided him with an ample apparatus and com- 
 petent assistants. 
 
 I only wish we had in each of our large cities, such as 
 
ANECDOTES OF FARADAY. 359 
 
 New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, New Orleans, 
 St. Louis, Chicago, and Cincinnati, a scientific institution 
 which would give to only one man of science such an oppor- 
 tunity as the Royal Institution of London gave to Davy and 
 Faraday. 
 
 Later in life, when the name of Faraday had become 
 celebrated, the government added to his salary a^ modest 
 pension of three hundred pounds a year. It is said, by 
 those who knew his affairs intimately, that he never received, 
 in any one year of his life, as much as five hundred pounds. 
 He had abundant opportunities to gain money by analyzing 
 soils, coals, mineral waters, and poisoned stomachs ; but 
 Faraday, satisfied with his little revenues, preferred to 
 spend the whole of his time in efforts to discover truth. 
 
 Electricity, I need hardly say, was his favorite branch, in 
 which he made the capital discovery, that the electricity 
 produced by friction, and that contained in the magnet, are 
 essentially tL| same. The substance of all that he discov- 
 ered and conjectured, is contained in four or five volumes 
 of small size, but of inestimable value. 
 
 He re-created the science of Electricity, and many of the 
 most important practical uses to which that element has 
 been applied were suggested by him. It was he who dis- 
 covered that a single drop of water, while decomposing, 
 generates an amount of electricity equal to the contents of 
 eight hundred thousand large Leyden jars. This would 
 make a vivid and extensive flash of lightning. He says, 
 also, that the chemical action of a single grain of water on 
 four grains of zinc would yield Electricity equal in quantity 
 to that of a powerful thunder-storm. 
 
 He was greatly beloved by those who lived near enough to 
 him to know him. He was utterly free from that corroding 
 vice of England, that spiritual imbecility, which Thackeray 
 
 23 
 
#60 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 named Snobbery, giving a foolish, trivial name to a thing 
 far from trivial. He always spoke of his father, the black- 
 smith, as simply and naturally as a good democratic Ameri- 
 can would, if he had been so fortunate as to have an honest 
 blacksmith for a father. When he was lecturing one even- 
 ing upon something which he had discovered respecting 
 illuminating gas, he concluded as follows: 
 
 " Thus much for my part. I believe I devised the scheme ; but 
 I should never have carried it into practice but for the casualty 
 that I had, and have, a brother who is a gas-fitter." 
 
 Professor Scoffern relates an incident which occurred, 
 when Faraday was at the height of his celebrity, that shows 
 the simplicity of his character : 
 
 " While I was working in the Laboratory of the Royal Institu- 
 tion, Faraday came down and gossipped about things in general. 
 The preparations for a chemical lecture involve many details of 
 work not pleasant, and for the most part dirty. There are corks* 
 to be bored and adapted, joints of apparatus to be made good, 
 stains to be removed, slops to be disposed of. That duty, aided 
 by the Royal Institution assistant, was mine. Instinctively 
 Faraday began to help not choosing mere fancy work, however, 
 but aiding right and left, doing whatever he saw had to be done. 
 Handling a retort, I chanced to let it fall, and then there was a 
 slop of some corrosive liquid. In an instant Faraday threw some 
 soda on the floor ; then down on his hands and knees he went, 
 slop-cloth in hand, like an humble housemaid. Laughing, I ex- 
 pressed my desire to photograph him then and there ; he demurred 
 to the pose, begged me to consult his dignity, and began laughing 
 with a childish joyousness. Hilariously boyish upon occasion he 
 could be, and those who knew him best, knew he was never more 
 at home, that he never seemed so pleased, as when making an old 
 boy of himself, as he was wont to say, lecturing before a juvenile 
 audience at Christmas." 
 
ANECDOTES OF FAR AD AT. 361 
 
 Professor Tyndall relates a very striking and amusing 
 anecdote of Faraday's revisiting his old bookbinder's shop 
 at a time when his fame as a philosopher was spread over the 
 world. The incident occurred about the year 1850, when 
 Professor Faraday was sixty years of age. 
 
 "Faraday and myself," writes Professor Tyndall, "quitted 
 the Institution one evening together to pay a visit in Baker 
 Street. He took my arm at the door, and, pressing it to his 
 side in his warm, genial way, said : 
 
 " ' Come, Tyndall, I will now show you something that 
 will interest you/ 
 
 "We walked northward, passed the house of Mr. Bab- 
 bage, which drew forth a reference to the famous evening 
 parties once assembled there. We reached Blauford Street, 
 and after a little looking about, he paused before a stationer's 
 shop, and then went in. On entering the shop, his usual 
 animation seemed doubled ; he looked rapidly at everything 
 it contained. To the left, on entering, was a door, through 
 which he looked down into a little room, with a window in 
 front facing Blandford Street. Drawing me towards him, he 
 said eagerly : 
 
 "'Look there, Tyndall, that was my working-place. I 
 bound books in that little nook.' 
 
 " A respectable-looking woman stood behind the counter : 
 his conversation with me was too low to be heard by her, and 
 he now turned to the counter to buy some cards as an excuse 
 for our being there. He asked the woman her name her 
 predecessor's name his predecessor's name. 
 
 " ' That won't do,' he said, with good-humored impatience ; 
 ' who was his predecessor ? ' 
 
 "'Mr. Ribaud,' she replied, and immediately added, as if 
 suddenly recollecting herself, ' He sir, was the master of 
 Sir Charles Faraday.' 
 
362 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 " ' Nonsense ! ' he responded, ' there is no such person.' 
 
 " Great was her delight when I told her the name of her 
 visitor ; but she assured me that as soon as she saw him run- 
 ning about the shop, she felt though she did not know 
 why that it must be f Sir Charles Faraday.' " 
 
 This admirable man, in the ardor of his devotion to 
 science, wore out both mind and body. There was one 
 period of two years during which he was not even permitted 
 to read scientific works, much less perform experiments. 
 He lived to be seventy-six years of age ; but his last years 
 were passed in a kind of lethargy, caused by the exhaustion 
 of his brain from forty years of laborious experiment and 
 intense thought. We may form some idea of the extent of 
 his labors from the fact that the last experiment entered in 
 his book is numbered 16,045. 
 
 The Queen gave him a suite of apartments at the pleasant 
 palace of Hampton Court, near London, and there he peace- 
 fully dozed and dreamed away the evening of his life. 
 Nothing roused him, we are told, near the end of his days, 
 but a thunder-storm. He would gaze in rapture upon the 
 scene, and watch the play of the lightning with all the eager 
 curiosity of his prime. But when the clouds broke up, and 
 the storm rolled away beyond his view, the philosopher sank 
 again into his state of dreamy unconsciousness. 
 
THOMAS NAST. 
 
 AT the age of twenty-eight, Thomas Nast, chiefly self- 
 taught, and with only the public for a patron, is among the 
 best known and most widely honored of the artists of Amer- 
 ica. His success illustrates the truth that America has work 
 enough for her artists, and is prepared, munificently, to 
 reward them, if they will but bend their minds to do the 
 work which is needed. 
 
 In one particular, I believe, the lives of artists are alike. 
 They all begin their artistic career at a very early age 
 indeed, by drawing portraits of favorite domestic animals, 
 and other familiar objects, on walls, doors, and primers. 
 Some children, it is true, have this propensity, who never 
 develop into artists ; but where is the genuine artist who 
 did not once enchant or disgust his parents by disfiguring 
 his bedroom walls, or the blank leaves of his school-books? 
 If any such there are, Mr. Nast is not one of them. He 
 began to draw before he could hold a pencil, performing 
 wonders with chalk and charcoal. It was in a humble home 
 in the city of New York, that the bent of his taste thus man- 
 ifested itself, and it was there, too, that he received lessons 
 in drawing for a few months when he was about twelve 
 years of age. 
 
 Never was there a talent more decided than his in child- 
 hood. Being of a very active, eager disposition, all the 
 energy of his nature expended itself in drawing. He 
 scarcely needed any instruction in the rudiments of his art ; 
 
364 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 he practised it so incessantly, that he seemed to have no 
 more occasion to learn perspective, in order to draw, than a 
 child needs to learn anatomy, in order to walk. He cannot 
 remember the time when the drawing of any ordinary object 
 was difficult to him. 
 
 When he was about fourteen years of age, Mr. Bryan 
 came home from Europe, bringing with him several hundred 
 paintings, designed to illustrate the history or progress of 
 the art, from an early period to the present time. These 
 pictures were recently presented by Mr. Bryan to the New 
 York Historical Society, and they now form part of its 
 extensive collection ; but for many years they were exhibited 
 by themselves, at a small charge for admission, in the upper 
 part of the city. 
 
 Thomas Nast used frequently to visit this gallery, for the 
 purpose of copying some of the pictures ; and Mr. Bryan, 
 observing his assiduity, made his acquaintance, and pre- 
 sented him with a season ticket. From that time, the boy 
 almost lived in the gallery. Mr. Bryan, struck with his 
 ready talent, and pleased to encourage a steadiness of 
 endeavor unusual in one so young, proposed to him one 
 day to become the doorkeeper of the establishment. At 
 that time, the novelty of the exhibition having worn off, 
 there were seldom more than half a dozen visitors in a day, 
 so that the taking of their money would cause but a very 
 slight interruption to the labors of the young artist. In- 
 deed, whole days passed during which not a single individ- 
 ual, except himself, visited the gallery. 
 
 Mr. Bryan offered him the entire receipts of the exhibi- 
 tion, unless those receipts amounted to more than six 
 dollars a week. The boy gladly accepted the post, which, 
 beside giving him an excellent place in which to pursue his 
 studies, yielded an average weekly income of about four 
 
THOMAS NAST. 365 
 
 dollars : enough, ten years ago, for a careful boy's mainte- 
 nance. This assistance, trifling as it may seeni, was, to this 
 ardent youth, an inestimable boon. It was just that timely 
 aid needed to bridge over the period between boyhood and 
 manhood, which, if it had been wasted, might have diverted 
 him from his true career. 
 
 Two years later, having now reached the age of sixteen, 
 he boldly applied to Mr. Frank Leslie for employment as a 
 draughtsman. Being remarkably short for his age, and of 
 a boyish expression of countenance, Mr. Leslie looked at 
 him with some astonishment. 
 
 " What, my boy," said he, " so you think you 'can draw 
 well enough for my paper, do you ? " 
 
 w I would like to try," said the youth. 
 
 "Well," rejoined Mr. Leslie, "you shall. Go down to the 
 Hoboken ferry-boat, and bring me a drawing of the scene 
 just as the boat is coming into the dock." 
 
 This was putting the lad to a severe test. Mr. Leslie has 
 since told me that he had no expectation of the M little fel- 
 low's " doing it, and gave him the job merely for the purpose 
 of bringing home to his youthful mind the absurdity of his 
 application. The young artist repaired immediately to the 
 ferry-house, where he at once proceeded to the performance 
 of the difficult task assigned him, a task for which the 
 quiet copying of pictures in the Bryan gallery was a most 
 inadequate preparation. He struck out boldly, however, 
 upon the paper, and produced a sketch, which, though far 
 from correct, abounded in those graphic and vigorous toucheb 
 so needful in popular illustration. Mr. Leslie saw at a 
 glance its merits and defects, and at once made a place for 
 him in his establishment, at boy's wages of five dollars a 
 week. 
 
 The youth made such rapid improvement, that when the 
 
366 TEIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 pugilistic encounter was about to take place in England 
 between the vigorous Sayers and the mighty Heenan, he was 
 selected by the New York " Illustrated News," then in exis- 
 tence, to go across the Atlantic and illustrate that stupendous 
 occurrence. He went. He performed the duty well. After- 
 wards, he made his way to Italy, and sent home illustrations 
 of the celebrated campaign in which Garibaldi freed Naples, 
 and created the kingdom of Italy. He sent many pictures 
 also to the "Illustrated London News," which were accepted 
 and published. Returning home, after a year's absence, he 
 stepped on shore with three half-dollars in his pocket, but 
 with a treasure of experience in his mind and fingers. 
 
 Mr. Nast was instantly at work again, and was soon in the 
 receipt of as large a revenue as any draughtsman had ever 
 before enjoyed in the United States. He now married Miss 
 Sarah Edwards, a lovely girl, who, to many other virtues 
 and accomplishments, adds a practical good sense, which 
 singularly fits her to be a helpmeet to an artist. 
 
 It was during the war that Mr. Nast won his national rep- 
 utation. Fortunate was it for the nation, during those critical 
 years, that such powerful engines of popular influence as 
 Harper's " Weekly " and Harper's " Monthly " were the vehi- 
 cles of two such genial and patriotic souls as those of George 
 W. Curtis and Thomas Nast. Every one remembers those 
 double-paged pictures in Harper's " Weekly," instinct with 
 the best feeling of the hour, which Mr. Nast used to give 
 us from week to week. In some of these pictures caricatures 
 and burlesque became little less than sublime, and they 
 moved to tears more than to laughter. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln placed a high value upon this series of truly 
 national works, and many members of Congress and many 
 brave soldiers have testified to the artist, in the strongest 
 language, their sense of the value of his efforts. 
 
THOMAS NAST. 367 
 
 Mr. Nast is still at the beginning of his career. It is as a 
 draughtsman that he has been chiefly distinguished hitherto, 
 although he has executed several oil paintings which have 
 been much admired. It remains to be seen whether he will 
 develop into a great national painter, or confine himself to 
 the branches of art in which Leech and Dore have won so 
 much distinction. He has the three essentials of a great 
 career, talent, industry, and perfectly virtuous habits. 
 Although of German origin, he has not even the absurd vice 
 of smoking. 
 
DAVID CROCKETT. 
 
 A SKETCH OF HIS EVENTFUL LIFE, AND AN ACCOUNT OF ONE OF HIS 
 
 EXPLOITS. 
 
 FEW men have reached Congress by a stranger road than 
 the eccentric individual named at the head of this article. 
 Some men have talked, others have written, others have 
 fought themselves into Congress ; but David Crockett shot 
 himself thither. It was his wonderful skill as a marksman, 
 and his daring as a bear-hunter, which made him so popular 
 hi his district, that when he chose to run for office he 
 usually distanced all competitors. He could shoot a hum- 
 ming-bird on the wing with a single ball. Seated upon the 
 margin of a river, he would aim at a fish, and as soon as the 
 crack of his rifle was heard, one of the little inmates of the 
 stream would be seen struggling on the surface. He used 
 to speak of his battered old rifle in words like these : " She 'a 
 a mighty rough old piece, but I love her; for she and I 
 have seen hard times. She mighty seldom tells me a lie. 
 If I hold her right, she always sends the ball where I tell 
 her." 
 
 Shooting was not his only qualification. He had other gifts 
 and graces calculated to win the favor of a frontier popula- 
 tion ; although it was his matchless skill with the rifle that 
 first drew attention to him. He was an abundant relator of 
 comic anecdotes, and an utterer of those eccentric remarks 
 which are passed from mouth to mouth, and form a large 
 part of the common stock of wit in a country place. Forty 
 or fifty years ago, almost every newspaper that appeared had 
 
370 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 a story in it, in some odd corner, in which the name of 
 David Crockett figured. 
 
 He was born in East Tennessee, in 1786, the youngest 
 but one of the six sons of John Crockett, who by turns was 
 farmer, miller, and tavern-keeper. This John Crockett was 
 the son of an emigrant from the north of Ireland, who, after 
 fighting with noted courage through the Revolutionary war, 
 settled in East Tennessee. There he and his wife were 
 murdered by the Creek Indians. One of their sons was 
 wounded, and another was carried into captivity, and re- 
 mained a prisoner with the Indians for seventeen years. 
 John Crockett escaped, grew up, and in due time became 
 the father of the famous David. When the boy was seven 
 years old, his father met with a misfortune which reduced 
 him to utter poverty. A freshet swept away a new mill in 
 which he had invested the savings of a lifetime. It was 
 carried off bodily, leaving not a wreck behind. The unfor- 
 tunate proprietor then removed to another county, and 
 opened a small tavern not far from the present city of 
 Knoxville. 
 
 It happened, one evening, when David was twelve years 
 of age, that an old Dutchman, a drover, put up at his father's 
 tavern, having with him a drove of cattle. To this Dutch- 
 man John Crockett hired his son, as drover's boy, with the 
 understanding that he was to help drive the cattle as far as 
 Richmond, and then return. Away he went, and was soon 
 in high favor with the Dutchman, from whom he learned 
 those Dutch anecdotes and the Dutch brogue which he after- 
 wards employed with so much effect. He liked his master 
 very well, but after travelling for some weeks with the cattle, 
 he became homesick, ran away, joined a wagoner bound for 
 East Tennessee, and so reached home again. 
 
 The next winter his father sent him to school for the first 
 
DAVID CROCKETT. 371 
 
 time in his life ; but before he had been at school a week, he 
 had a fight with one of the scholars, in which he gained the 
 victory, and beat his antagonist so severely that he dared 
 not show himself in school again. So he played truant for 
 several days ; but discovering. that his father had found .him 
 out, he thought it prudent to beat a retreat, and hired him- 
 self to another drover who was going to Virginia. Many 
 were his adventures. His employer, after ill-treating him 
 in various ways, turned him adrift hundreds of miles from 
 home, with only four dollars. Then he joined a wagoner 
 once more, and soon found himself at Baltimore, where, for 
 the first time in his life, he saw a ship. 
 
 As he stood on the dock, gazing at the ship with open 
 eyes and mouth, bewildered at the sight, one of the sailors 
 accosted him and asked him if he would not like to go to 
 Liverpool. Forgetting his engagement with the wagoner, 
 he joyfully consented, and rushed off to the wagon to get his 
 clothes, although ten minutes before he did not know that there 
 was such a thing as a ship in the world. The wagoner posi- 
 tively refused to let him go. Watching his chance, however, 
 he bundled up his clothes and started for the wharf; but it so 
 chanced that in turning the corner of a crowded street, he 
 came full upon his master, who collared him and brought 
 him back. 
 
 Leaving his wagoner soon after, he started, penniless, to 
 work his way home. First he worked a while as a laborer, 
 and, with the money thus earned, he travelled a few miles 
 towards Tennessee. When his money was gone, he would 
 stop and work again for the first farmer who wanted him. 
 Once he bound himself as an apprentice to a hatter, for four 
 years, and worked for him a few months, until the hatter 
 failed, and he was homeless once more. At length, after two 
 years' absence, one winter evening he entered his father's 
 
372 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 tavern with his bundle, and asked permission to sit down 
 and rest. No one knew him. His father, a somewhat infirm 
 old man, was waiting upon his, guests ; his mother was cook- 
 ing supper ; and his sister was also working about the house. 
 He remained silent for an hour, when, supper being ready, 
 he was asked to come to the table, where, the light falling 
 upon his face, his sister recognized him. The truant had a 
 joyful welcome, and he kept the family up late relating his 
 adventures. 
 
 He now set to work in earnest to assist his old father, to 
 whom he had not given much help or comfort hitherto. By 
 six months' hard work he paid one of his father's debts, which 
 had caused the old man much anxiety. Then he worked six 
 months more to cancel a note of thirty dollars which his 
 father had given, and brought it to his father as a present. 
 Next he went to work for sundry other months, until he had 
 provided himself with a supply of decent clothes. He was 
 now nearly twenty years of age, and being much mortified 
 with his inability to read or write, he made a bargain with a 
 Quaker schoolmaster, agreeing to work two days on the 
 Quaker's farm for every three that he attended his school. 
 He picked up knowledge rapidly, and, after six months of 
 this arrangement, he could read, write, and cipher sufficiently 
 well for the ordinary purposes of life on the frontier. 
 
 He now began to be extremely susceptible to the charms 
 of the female sex. Marriageable girls were as scarce on the 
 frontiers then as they now are in some parts of California and 
 Oregon. Accordingly, a young fellow had to be prompt 
 both at popping the question and in fulfilling his engagement. 
 The first girl with whom he was smitten was a young relative 
 of his schoolmaster, but, while he was courting her with the 
 vigor and warmth of a backwoodsman, and flattering himself 
 that his passion was returned, a wealthy suitor came along, 
 
DAVID CROCKETT. 373 
 
 and snapped her up before his eyes. He soon fell in love 
 again, at a ball, and, before the evening was finished, he was 
 engaged to be married, and a day was appointed for him to 
 announce the fact to the girl's parents. 
 
 On the appointed day, he started for the young lady's 
 abode, but falling in on the way with a gay party, he spent 
 the whole night in a frolic ; and when, the next morning, he 
 approached the house of his lady-love, he learned that she 
 was to be married -that evening to another man. His riding- 
 whip slipped from his hand ; his jaw fell ; and he sat on his 
 horse staring wildly at his informant. He recovered his 
 spirits, however, went to the wedding, and danced all night, 
 the merriest of the merry. 
 
 He was soon in love again, over head and ears, and in due 
 time was happily married. He lived, at first, with his wife's 
 mother, working a little, and hunting a great deal, for his 
 subsistence. After two years he set up his own cabin on 
 the Elk Kiver, where he cultivated a few acres for his bread, 
 and ranged the forest for his meat. 
 
 The Creek "War, in 1813, summoned the yeomen of Ten- 
 nessee to arms under General Jackson. No young man of 
 them all was prompter to take the field than David Crockett. 
 He was in most of the principal engagements under General 
 Jackson, and if ever he obtained leave of absence, he soon 
 tired of the monotony of home, and was off again for the 
 army. He was the life of the camp. His merriment, his 
 Dutch anecdotes, his bear stories, his wonderful shooting, 
 his fortitude and courage, made him a universal favorite. 
 
 The war over, he removed his little family one hundred 
 and fifty miles to the west, and settled in the midst of a wil- 
 derness forty miles distant from the nearest settlement. 
 There he built his cabin, dug his well, cleared his cornfield, 
 and lived the life of a pioneer in its perfection. His skill 
 
374 TRIUMPHS or ENTERPRISE. 
 
 and courage in hunting the deer, the panther, and the bear, 
 were wonderful indeed ; and I must find room for one of his 
 bear stories before I close. 
 
 Years passed on. The country filled up with settlers. 
 The fame of David Crockett, as a hunter, story-teller, and 
 general good fellow, spread far and wide, and at last he 
 found himself elected to the Legislature. So popular was 
 he in the Legislature that, in 1824, he was set up as an 
 anti-tariff candidate for Congress, and was only beaten by 
 two votes, in a district of seventeen counties. At the next 
 election, he was returned by the extraordinary majority of 
 twenty-seven hundred votes. 
 
 At Washington, he was a conspicuous personage, for his 
 fame preceded him, and he was, perhaps, the only genuine 
 pioneer and backwoodsman that ever sat in Congress. He 
 was a member four years, and would, no doubt, have been 
 again elected, if he had not differed with his old commander, 
 President Jackson, on the removal of the Cherokees. He 
 found, at the next election, that Andrew Jackson was too 
 strong for him. He was defeated, and, soon after, joined in 
 the movement started by General Houston, which was de- 
 signed to sever Texas from Mexico, and annex it to the 
 United States. 
 
 His exploits were as romantic as any which have ever 
 been related. He was caught, at length, in a fort garrisoned 
 by a hundred and forty Texans, when it was invested by a 
 Mexican army of two thousand. Never was a place 
 more valiantly defended. After ten days of conflict 
 and starvation, every man of the garrison had perished, 
 except six, one of whom was Colonel Crockett. These six 
 heroes then surrendered to Santa Anna, the dastardly traitor 
 and coward, who commanded the Mexican army. This 
 base wretch, so far from being touched by the heroism of 
 
DAVID CROCKETT. 375 
 
 Colonel Crockett, ordered him to be murdered, and the gal- 
 lant pioneer fell, pierced with a dozen swords. 
 
 This is the merest outline of a life so full of strange and 
 romantic adventure, that if it could be truly and fully writ- 
 ten, it would attract universal attention, and be a permanent 
 addition to our literature. It is a subject worthy the pen of 
 an Irving or a Cooper. 
 
 Let me give one incident of his life as a bear-hunter, as 
 related by himself to his friends. 
 
 The scene of this thrilling adventure was the region near 
 the Mississippi river called the "Shakes," from its having 
 been shaken, and tumbled into chaos, by the great earth- 
 quake of 1812. This region is thus described by a gentle- 
 man familiar with it from having hunted over it, with 
 Crockett himself: 
 
 " The Obion River, a navigable stream which empties 
 into the Mississippi nearly opposite to New Madrid, was 
 dammed up, and two considerable lakes, one nearly twenty 
 miles long and varying in its breadth, the other not quite so 
 large, have been formed of unknown depth. The bed of the 
 river has been changed ; and fissures or openings, made in 
 the earth by the concussion, still remain, running parallel 
 to each other, of various lengths, from three to thirty feet 
 wide, and from ten to forty feet deep. One, to visit these 
 "Shakes," would see striking marks of the gigantic power of 
 an earthquake. He would find the largest forest trees split 
 from their roots to their tops, and lying half on each side 
 of a fissure. He would find them split in every direction, 
 and lying in all shapes. At the time of this earthquake, no 
 persons were living where those lakes have been formed. 
 Colonel Crockett was among the nearest settlers ; and to 
 this day, there is much of that country entirely uninhabited, 
 and even unknown. Several severe hurricanes have passed 
 
 24 
 
376 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 along, blowing down all the trees in one direction, and an 
 undergrowth has sprung up, making these places almost 
 impenetrable to man. This section of country which has 
 been visited by the shakes, forms the best hunting-ground 
 in the west. There are bears, wolves, panthers, deer, elk, 
 wild cats, in abundance ; and this is the only place within 
 my knowledge east of the Mississippi, where elk are yet to 
 be found." 
 
 Such was the scene of the unique bear-hunt now to be 
 related. Imagine the mighty hunter himself telling the 
 story to a group of backwoodsmen on the stoop of a country 
 store. 
 
 w It has been a custom with me," began Colonel Crockett 
 (so his neighbors always called him) , " ever since I moved to 
 this country, to spend a part of every winter in bear-hunt- 
 ing, unless I was engaged in public life. I generally take a 
 tent, pack horses, and a friend 'long with me, and go down to 
 the "Shakes," where I camp out and hunt till I get tired, or 
 till I get as much meat as I want. I do this because there is 
 a great deal of game there ; and, besides, I never see any- 
 body but the friend I carry, and I like to hunt in a wilder- 
 ness, where nobody can disturb me. I could tell you a 
 thousand frolics I Ve had in these same " Shakes" ; but per- 
 haps the following one will amuse you : 
 
 w Some time in the winter of 1824 or '25, a friend called to 
 see me, to take a bear-hunt. I was in the humor ; so we got 
 our pack horses, fixed up our tent and provisions, and set 
 out for the "Shakes." We arrived there safe, raised our tent, 
 stored away our provisions, and commenced hunting. For 
 several days we were quite successful ; our game we brought 
 to the tent, salted it, and packed it away. We had several 
 hunts, and nothing occurred worth telling, save that we 
 killed our game. 
 
DAVID CROCKETT. 377 
 
 " But one evening, as we were coming along, our pack 
 horses loaded with bear-meat, and our dogs trotting lazily after 
 us, old Whirlwind held up his head and looked about ; then 
 rubbed his nose agin a bush, and opened. I knew, from the 
 way he sung out, 'twas an old he bear. The balance of. the 
 dogs buckled in, and off they went right up a hollow. I 
 gave up the horses to my friend, to carry 'em to the tent, 
 which was now about half a mile distant, and set out after 
 the dogs. 
 
 " The hollow up which the bear had gone, made a bend, 
 and I knew he would follow it ; so I run across to head him. 
 The sun was now down ; 't was growing dark mighty fast, 
 and 'twas cold; so I buttoned my jacket close round me, 
 and run on. I had n't gone fur, before I heard the dogs tack, 
 and they come a tearing right down the hollow. Presently 
 I heard the old bear rattling through the cane, and the dogs 
 coming on like lightning after him, I dashed on ; I felt 
 like I had wings, my dogs made such a roaring cry ; they 
 rushed by me, and as they did I harked 'em on ; they all 
 broke out, and the woods echoed back and back to their 
 voices. It seemed to me they fairly flew, for 't was n't long 
 before they overhauled him, and. I could hear 'em fighting 
 not fur before me. I run on, but just before I got there, 
 the old bear made a break and got loose ; but the dogs kept 
 close up, and every once in a while they stopped him and 
 had a fight. I tried for my life to git up, but just before I 'd 
 get there, he 'd break loose. I followed him this way for two 
 or three miles, through briers, cane, etc., and he devilled me 
 mightily. Once I thought I had him : I got up in about 
 fifteen or twenty feet, 't was so dark I could n't tell the bear 
 from a dog, and I started to go to him ; but I found out 
 there was a creek between us. How deep it was I did n't 
 know ; but it was dark and cold, and too late to turn back ; 
 
378 TEIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 so I held my rifle up and walked right in. Before I got 
 across, the old bear got loose and shot for it, right through 
 the cane ; I was mighty tired, but I scrambled out and fol- 
 lowed on. I knew I was obliged to keep in hearing of my 
 dogs, or git lost. 
 
 " Well, I kept on, and once in a while I could hear 'em 
 fighting and baying just before me; then I'd run up, but 
 before I'd get there, the old bear would git loose. I some- 
 times thought 'bout giving up and going back ; but while 
 I'd be thinking, they'd begin to fight agin, and I'd run on. 
 I followed him this way 'bout, as near as I could guess, 
 from four to five miles, when the old bear could n't stand it 
 any longer, and took a tree ; and I tell you what, I was 
 mighty glad of it. 
 
 "I went up, but at first it was so dark I could sec 
 nothing ; however, after looking about, and gitting the tree 
 between me and a star, I could see a very dark-looking 
 place, and I raised up old Betsy, and she lightened. Down 
 came the old bear ; but he was n't much hurt, for of all the 
 fights you ever did see, that beat all. I had six dogs, and 
 for nearly an hour they kept rolling and tumbling right at 
 my feet. I could n't see anything but one old white dog 1 
 had ; but every now and then the bear made 'em sing out 
 right under me. I had my knife drawn, to stick him when- 
 ever he should seize me ; but after a while, bear, dogs, anc 
 all rolled down a precipice just before me, and I could heai 
 them fighting, like they were in a hole. I loaded Betsy 
 laid down, and felt about in the hole with her till I got hei 
 agin the bear, and I fired ; but I did n't kill him, for out of 
 the hole he bounced, and he and the dogs fought harder 
 than ever. I laid old Betsy down, and drew my knife ; but 
 the bear and dogs just formed a lump, rolling about ; and 
 presently down they all went again into the hole. 
 
DAVID CROCKETT. 379 
 
 * My dogs now began to sing out mighty often ; they were 
 getting tired, for it had been the hardest fight I ever saw. 
 I found out how the bear was laying, and I looked for old 
 Betsy to shoot him again ; but I had laid her down some- 
 where and could n't find her. I got hold of a stick and 
 began to punch him ; he didn't seem to mind it much, so I 
 thought I would git down into the crack, and kill him with 
 my knife. 
 
 " I considered some time 'bout this ; it was ten or eleven 
 o'clock, and a cold winter night. I was something like 
 thirty miles from any settlement ; there was no living soul 
 near me, except my friend, who was in the tent, and I did n't 
 know where that was. I knew my bear was in a crack 
 made by the shakes, but how deep it was, and whether I 
 could get out if I got in, were things I could n't tell. I was 
 sitting down right over the bear, thinking ; and every once 
 in a while some of my dogs would sing out, as if they 
 wanted help ; so I got up and let myself clown in the crack 
 behind the bear. Where I landed was about as deep as I 
 am high ; I felt mighty ticklish, and I wished I was out ; I 
 could n't see a thing in the world, but I determined to go 
 through with it. I drew my knife and kept feeling about 
 with my hands and feet till I touched the bear ; this I did 
 very gently, then got upon my hands and knees, and inched 
 my left hand up his body, with a knife in my right, till I 
 got pretty fur up, and I plunged it into him ; he sunk down 
 and for a moment there was a great struggle ; but by the 
 time I scrambled out, everything was getting quiet, and my 
 dogs, one at a time, came out after me and laid down at my 
 feet. I knew everything was safe. 
 
 " It began now to cloud up : 't was mighty dark, and as 
 I didn't know the direction of my tent, I determined to stay 
 all night. I took out my flint and steel and raised a little 
 
380 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE, 
 
 fire ; but the wood was so cold and wet it would n't burn 
 much. I had sweated so much after the bear, that I began 
 to get very thirsty, and felt like I would die, if I didn't git 
 some water : so, taking a light along, I went to look for the 
 creek I had waded, and as good luck would have it, I found 
 the creek, and got back to my bear. But from having been 
 in a sweat all night, I was now very chilly; it was the 
 middle of winter, and the ground was hard frozen for sev- 
 eral inches, but this I had not noticed before ; I again set to 
 work to build me a fire, but all I could do could n't make it 
 burn. The excitement under which I had been laboring 
 had all died away, and I was so cold I felt very much like 
 dying ; but a notion struck me to git my bear up out of the 
 crack ; so down into it I went, and worked until I got into 
 a sweat again ; and just as I would git him up so high, that 
 if I could turn him over once more he'd be out, he'd roll 
 back. I kept working, and resting, and while I was at it, it 
 began to hail mighty fine ; but I kept on, and in about three 
 hours I got him out. 
 
 " I then came up almost exhausted ; my fire had gone out 
 and I laid down, and soon fell asleep ; but 't was n't long 
 before I waked almost frozen. The wind sounded mighty 
 cold as it passed along, and I called my dogs, and made 'em 
 lie upon me to keep me warm; but it wouldn't do. I 
 thought I ought to make some exertion to save my life, and 
 I got up, but I don't know why or wherefore, and began to 
 grope about in the dark ; the first thing I hit again was a 
 tree : it felt mighty slick and icy as I hugged it, and a 
 notion struck me to climb it ; so up I started, and I climbed 
 that tree for thirty feet before I came to any limb, and then 
 slipped down. It was awful warm work. How often I 
 climbed it, I never knew ; but I was going up and slipping 
 down for three or four hours, and when day first began to 
 
DAVID CROCKETT. 381 
 
 break, I was going up that tree. As soon as it was cleverly 
 light, I saw before me a slim sweet gum, so slick, that it 
 looked like every varmunt in the woods had been sliding 
 down it for a month. I started off and found my tent, 
 where sat my companion, who had given me up for lost. I 
 had been distant about five miles ; and, after resting, I 
 brought my friend to see the bear. I had run more perils 
 than those described ; had been all night on the brink of a 
 dreadful chasm, where a slip of a few feet would have 
 brought about instant death. It almost made my head giddy 
 to look at the dangers I had escaped. My friend swore he 
 would not have gone in the crack that night with a wounded 
 bear, for every one in the woods. We had as much meat 
 as we could carry ; so we loaded our horses, and set out for 
 home." 
 
 This, I think, is the most remarkable narrative of the 
 kind ever put upon paper. It has haunted me for years ; 
 and I copy it now for the reader's entertainment from 
 the little volume, published nearly forty years ago, in 
 which I read it. 
 
OIL PAINTINGS BY MACHINEEY. 
 
 THE impatience of a German washerwoman led to the 
 invention of lithography. The history of that elegant art 
 begins with a homely domestic scene, which occurred at 
 Munich, about the year 1793, and in which three characters 
 figured, Madame Senefelder, the poor widow of an excel- 
 lent actor, then recently deceased ; her son, Alois Senefel- 
 der, aged twenty-two, a young man of an inventive turn ; 
 and the impatient washerwoman just mentioned. The 
 washerwoman had called at the home, of this widow for 
 the weekly wash ; but the list was not ready, and the 
 widow asked her son to take it. He looked about the room 
 for a piece of paper upon which to write it, without being 
 able to find the least fragment, and he noticed also that his 
 ink was dry. "Washerwomen are not apt to be overawed by 
 such customers, and this one certainly did not conceal her 
 impatience while the fruitless search was proceeding. The 
 young man had in the apartment a smooth, soft, cream-col- 
 ored stone, such as lithographers now use. He had also a 
 mass of paste made of lampblack, wax, soap, and water. In 
 the hurry of the moment, he dashed upon the soft, smooth 
 stone, the short list of garments, using for the purpose this 
 awkward lump of oily paste. The washerwoman went off 
 with her small bundle of clothes, peace was restored to the 
 family, and the writing on the stone remained. 
 
 To understand how so trifling a circumstance caused the 
 invention of lithography, it is necessary to know why this 
 
384 TEIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 young man had in his house that flat, smooth stone and that 
 soapy black lump, and how it happened that his ink was dry, 
 and that not the smallest piece of paper could be found in 
 the room. If it is humiliating to the pride of man to learn 
 what a great part Accident plays in discoveries, we are 
 somewhat reassured when we perceive that it is only a 
 specially trained, active, penetrating human intelligence 
 which can interpret and follow up the hint which Accident 
 gives. Our washerwoman, reader, might drive us raving 
 mad with her impatience, but I fear we should never invent 
 anything remarkable in consequence. But this Alois Sene- 
 fender was prepared for his washerwoman by previous experi- 
 ment and brooding thought. 
 
 He had been a law student to please his father ; but upon 
 his father's death, the poverty of the family compelled him 
 to abandon a distasteful pursuit, and he hastened to try the 
 stage. The coldness of the audience announced to him that 
 he had not inherited his father's talent, and the manager could 
 only offer him the position of supernumerary, which he 
 accepted. While performing silent parts, he devised 
 speeches and situations for more gifted actors. Some of his 
 plays were performed, and with such success that he deemed 
 it worth while to print them ; and this led to his becoming 
 intimately conversant with the whole art and mystery of 
 printing. Having plenty of leisure, and a plentiful lack of 
 everything else, it occurred to him to try and save expense, 
 by printing his own plays ; and, with that end in view, he 
 proceeded to experiment with sealing-wax, wood, and other 
 substances. Not succeeding in getting a good impression 
 from wax or wood, he attempted to engrave a copperplate, 
 by the aid of aqua-fortis. But before applying this biting 
 liquid, he had to cover his copperplate with the varnish that 
 engravers use for the purpose, and write upon it a page of 
 
OIL PAINTINGS BY MACHINERY. 385 
 
 print backwards. It is not easy to write printing letters back- 
 wards ; he made many mistakes ; and one mistake might spoil 
 a most laboriously written page. To lessen this difficulty, 
 he contrived the mixture of wax, soap, lampblack, and water 
 referred to above, with which he used to cover over his 
 errors, and write upon it the correct word. This accounts 
 for his having in his house so unusual a mixture, which was, 
 in fact, an oily pencil, one of the essentials of the art, then 
 unknown, of taking impressions from a writing or drawing 
 upon stone. 
 
 He succeeded, at length, in getting a tolerable proof of 
 one page from his copperplate. But plates of polished cop- 
 per are expensive, and the poor German playwright could 
 not continue his experiments with them. In the neighbor- 
 hood of Munich the slabs of soft stone, since used by litho- 
 graphers, are found ; and it now occurred to the experimen- 
 ter to try and engrave his works upon them. It is a lime 
 stone, which, though soft when taken from the quarry, har- 
 dens after exposure to the air. He cut some letters upon 
 the surface of one of the slabs which he had brought with 
 his own hands from the banks of the Inn ; but the result 
 was not encouraging, and he only waited for his purse to be 
 replenished to continue his experiments upon copper. 
 Meanwhile he used to cover his flat stone with engraver's 
 varnish, and upon the surface thus prepared practise writing 
 backwards. On the morning of the washerwoman's visit 
 he had in his room a stone which he had been roughening a 
 little to receive the varnish, and it lay before him fresh 
 and clean. Every scrap of paper in the house he had used 
 in taking proofs from his copperplate and engraved stones ; 
 and the ink of this dramatic author was dry, because, in his 
 eagerness to print, he had ceased to write. Hence it was 
 that, to get rid of an impatient washerwoman, he wrote the 
 
386 TKIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 list of clothes upon a surface of limestone with a soapy, 
 waxy pencil. The wax was of no importance. The secret 
 of what followed was, that he had written upon limestone 
 with a pencil of which grease was an ingredient. 
 
 In fact, the whole art of lithography and chromo-litho- 
 graphy depends upon two facts of chemistry, that water 
 and oil will not mix, and that oil and lime will. 
 
 Before rubbing out his hasty scrawl, it occurred to him 
 to try whether the letters would resist aqua-fortis ; a weak 
 dilution of which he poured over the stone, and let it remain 
 wet for five minutes. He found, or fancied, that the aqua- 
 fortis had eaten away the stone to the depth of one line, 
 leaving the letters in slight relief. His next thought was to 
 see if it were possible to take an impression of his list upon 
 paper. After many experiments and failures, he succeeded 
 in contriving a method by which he could cover his letters 
 with ink, and keep the rest of the surface clean. He found 
 it was only necessary to wet the whole surface of the stone 
 before applying his inking pad. The film of water kept the 
 oily printer's ink from adhering to the stone, but did not 
 keep it from adhering to the letters written upon the stone 
 with soap and lampblack. He laid his paper upon the stone, 
 applied the requisite pressure, and lo ! an excellent proof of 
 his washing list ! Lithography was invented. The process 
 was complete. It only remained to devise apparatus for 
 executing it with facility and despatch. 
 
 The great secrets of the art are these: 1. A limestone 
 surface ; 2. An oily pencil in drawing upon the surface ; 3. 
 Wetting the stone before putting on the oily printing-ink. 
 
 Every one familiar with the history of inventions can 
 guess perfectly well what next befell this inventor without 
 being told. It is ever the same old story. After reducing 
 himself very near the verge of starvation by continuing his 
 
OIL PAINTINGS BY MACHINERY. 387 
 
 experiments, and being at his wit's end, a man who had been 
 drawn as a conscript in a neighboring province offered him 
 fifty dollars if he would serve in his stead. Senefelder 
 accepted the offer, but, upon presenting himself at the sta- 
 tion, he was rejected as a foreigner, and compelled to 
 return to Munich. Then he revealed his secret to the Court 
 musician, and represented to him how well adapted the new 
 process was to the printing of music, which was then only 
 printed upon copperplates at great cost. The Court musician 
 was convinced. He joined the inventor in setting up at 
 Munich the first lithographic establishment that ever existed 
 in the world ; where, amid poverty and discouragement, 
 Senefelder toiled on, inventing presses, utensils, processes, 
 and methods, patiently developing the art which he had 
 created. Of course, the engravers and draughtsmen of that 
 day either pooh-poohed lithography as something contemp- 
 tible and transitory, or denounced it as inimical to the inter- 
 ests of art ; and we may be sure that some of the art critics 
 of the time smiled derision upon the inventor's exertions, 
 and maintained that the slightest sketch from an artist's 
 hand was more to be desired than the best lithograph which 
 mechanism could assist in producing. It is mentioned, as 
 an evidence of the slight importance attached to the new art, 
 that on one occasion the Academy of Munich voted to Sene- 
 felder and his partner the sum of twelve florins to aid them 
 in their experiments. The inventor, however, as inventors 
 frequently do, triumphed at length over foes and friends, 
 and, after about twenty years of unrequited labor, secured a 
 small but sufficient share of the results of his invention. 
 
 He lived to the year 1834. I am assured by the most 
 eminent lithographer of the United States, that Senefelder 
 created almost the entire process, as now conducted, by which 
 plain lithographs are produced, and that he lived to see that 
 
388 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 branch of the art reach its ^utmost development. Better 
 plain lithographs were executed in the inventor's own lifetime 
 than it has since been thought worth while to attempt. He 
 also brought the art of tinting lithographs as far as it has ever 
 gone, although, perhaps, he did not himself execute the best 
 specimens. Finally, he more than suggested the application 
 of the process by which those chromo or color lithographs 
 are produced, which now adorn our abodes, and which are 
 pushing from cottage and farm-house and barber-shop walls 
 the gorgeous daubs of Napoleon crossing the Alps, the por- 
 traits of "Emma," the engravings of General Washington 
 ascending to heaven borne by angels in Continental uniform, 
 the representations of Edwin Forrest in the part of Rolla, 
 holding aloft in fearful peril the child of a supernumerary, 
 which used to disfigure them. It is seldom that in a single 
 lifetime an invention is developed so far as this, and applied 
 to so many uses. 
 
 The part which Accident played in the invention of litho- 
 graphy is more than usually remarkable. Since the day 
 when Alois Senef elder, wandering thoughtful on the banks 
 of Iser, near Munich, picked up specimens of that peculiar 
 limestone, and brought home a slab to engrave upon, the 
 earth has been carefully looked over, and the geologists 
 have been closely questioned, for lithographic stones ; but 
 none have been found equal to those which he there discov- 
 ered, seventy -five years since. That quality of stone has 
 increased in price, until it now sells in our seaports at thirty- 
 five cents a pound, which makes a stone twenty inches square 
 worth about fifty dollars ; but we can get no supplies of it 
 except in the region where Accident revealed its existence to 
 our poor playwright in 1793. If he had daubed his washing 
 list on marble or slate, nothing would have come of it. If 
 he could only have found a small fragment of a play-bill or 
 
OIL PAINTINGS BY MACHINERY. 389 
 
 newspaper lying about in his room, we might never have had 
 lithography. If his ink had not been dry, he would doubt- 
 less have used that in writing upon the stone, and from such 
 an ink no impressions could have been taken. If his wash- 
 erwoman had been so happy as to possess a tranquil mind, or 
 if she had had no crying baby at home, or had held the Sene- 
 felder family in more respect, the poor lad might have kept 
 her waiting while he ran in next door and borrowed a piece 
 of paper. If he had not mixed some soap in his paste, and 
 thus added to it the ingredient of oil, which forms the requi- 
 site chemical combination with the limestone, he would have 
 experimented fruitlessly with his washing-list. If he and his 
 mother had not been very poor, and in all respects circum- 
 stanced just as they were and where they were, mankind 
 might not, for ages to come, and might never, have attained 
 to lithography, and we should not have been the happy pos- 
 sessors of Mr. Prang's chromos. It is startling to consider 
 how near we all came to losing Eastman Johnson's " Barefoot 
 Boy." Two inches of waste paper the more, or a small piece 
 of yellow soap the less, and the public might never have had 
 that interesting child. 
 
 Chromo-lithography, by which our houses and school- 
 rooms are now filled with beautiful pictures, is a combination 
 of Senefelder's invention with an ancient method of printing 
 in colors by using two or more blocks. Antiquity, however, 
 only gave the hint, which has been developed with wonder- 
 ful rapidity by accomplished artists and artisans in Germany, 
 France, England, and the United States, the German 
 Engelmann being the chief originator of methods. The first 
 patents relating to chromo-lithography bear date 1835, and 
 in these forty-four years the art has made such progress, 
 that copies of fine oil paintings are now daily produced 
 which contain all of the original picture which the public 
 
390 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 can see, and which none but a close observer can tell from 
 the original. At Prang's manufactory of chromos in Boston 
 there is a gallery in which the proprietor sometimes hangs, 
 side by side, an oil painting and the chromo-lithograph 
 taken from it, both framed alike. I think that not even the 
 artist who painted the picture could always tell them apart, 
 and I am sure that few others could. It would be a safe 
 thing to wager that the critics who have endeavored to write 
 down these beautiful productions would not be always able, 
 without handling them, to decide which was brush and 
 which was printing-press. 
 
 The process by which these chromo-lithographs are pro- 
 duced is simple, but it is long, delicate, and expensive. One 
 of the chromos most familiar, just now, to the public, is that 
 of the boy referred to above, in the painting of which Mr. 
 Eastman Johnson endeavored to express upon canvas that 
 which Mr. Whittier had already written in verse : 
 
 " Blessings on thee, little man, 
 Barefoot boy, with cheeks of tan ; 
 With thy turned-up pantaloons, 
 And thy merry-whistled tunes ; 
 With thy red lip, redder still 
 Kissed by strawberries on the hill : 
 With the sunshine on thy face, 
 Through thy torn brim's jaunty grace. 
 From my heart I give thee joy ; 
 I was once a barefoot boy ! " 
 
 It is a small picture, about thirteen inches by ten, 
 but to reproduce it in chromo-lithograph requires twenty- 
 six slabs of stone, weighing not far from two tons, and 
 worth fourteen hundred dollars. The time occupied uj 
 preparing these stones for the press is about three months ; 
 
PBAIIG'8 CHROMO OF WHITTIER's BAREFOOTKD BOY. 
 
OIL PAINTINGS BY MACHINERY. 391 
 
 and when once the stones are ready, an edition of a thousand 
 copies is printed in five months more. And yet, although 
 the original is worth a thousand dollars, and the process of 
 reproduction is so long and costly, a copy is sold for five 
 dollars, a copy, too, which, to nineteen twentieths of the 
 public, says as much, and gives as much delight every time 
 it is looked at, as the original work could. It may be pos- 
 sible, in a few words, to convey some idea of the manner in 
 which this particular boy, standing barefoot upon a rock 
 in a brook, with trees, a grassy bank, and blue sky behind 
 him, is transferred from a thousand-dollar canvas to whole 
 stacks of five-dollar pasteboard. 
 
 As far as possible, the chromo-lithographer produces his 
 copy by the method which the artist employed in painting 
 the original. One great difference between painting and 
 printing is, that the printer puts on all his color at once, 
 while the painter applies color in infinitesimal quantities. 
 One crush of the printing-press blackens the page ; but a 
 landscape grows and brightens gradually under the artist's 
 hand, as the natural scene which he is representing ripens 
 and colors under the softer touches of the sun, the warm 
 winds and gentle showers of April and May. As far as 
 possible, I say, the chromo-lithographer imitates these pro- 
 cesses of art and nature by applying color in small quantities 
 and by many operations. He first draws upon a stone, 
 with his pencil of soap and lampblack, a faint shadow of 
 the picture, the outline of the boy, the trees, and the 
 grassy bank. In taking impressions from this first stone an 
 ink is used which differs from printers' ink only in its color. 
 Printers' ink is composed chiefly of boiled linseed oil and 
 lampblack; but our chromo-lithographer, employing the 
 same basis of linseed oil, mixes with it whatever coloring 
 matter he requires. In taking impressions from the first 
 
 25 
 
392 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 stone in laying, as it were, the foundation of the boy, he 
 prefers a browned vermilion. The proof from this stone 
 shows us a dim beginning of the boy in a cloud of brownish- 
 red and white, in which can be discerned a faint outline of 
 the trees that are by and by to wave over his head. The 
 face has no features. The only circumstances clearly 
 revealed to the spectator are, that the boy has his jacket off, 
 and that his future trousers will be dark. Color is placed, 
 first of all, where most color will be finally wanted. 
 
 The boy is begun. He wants more vermilion, and some 
 portions of the trees and background will bear more. On 
 the second stone, only those portions of the picture are 
 drawn which at this stage of the picture require more of 
 that color. Upon this second stone, after the color is 
 applied, the first impression is laid, and the second impres- 
 sion is taken. In this proof, the boy is manifestly advanced. 
 As the deeper color upon his face was not put upon the spots 
 where his eyes are to be, we begin to discern the outline of 
 those organs. The boy is more distinct, and the general 
 scheme of the picture is slightly more apparent. 
 
 As yet, however, but two colors appear, brown-vermil- 
 ion and white. On the third stone the drawing is made 
 of all the parts of the picture which require a blue color- 
 ing, both those that will finally appear blue, and those 
 which are next to receive a color that will combine with 
 blue. Nearly the whole of the third stone is covered with 
 drawing ; for every part of the picture requires some blue, 
 except those small portions which are finally to remain 
 white. The boy is now printed for the third time, a bright 
 blue color being spread upon the stone. The change is sur- 
 prising, and we begin now to see what a pretty picture we 
 are going to have at last. The sky is blue behind the boy, 
 and the water around the rock upon which he stands is 
 
OIL PAINTINGS BY MACHINERY. 393 
 
 blue ; there is blue in his eyes and in the folds of his shirt ; 
 but in the darker parts of the picture the brown- vermilion 
 holds its own, and gains in depth and distinctness from the 
 intermixture with the lighter hue. 
 
 Stone number four explains why so much blue was ,used 
 upon number three. A bright yellow is used in printing 
 from number four, and this color, blending with the blue of 
 the previous impression, plasters a yellowy, disagreeable 
 green on the trees and grass. The fifth stone, which applies 
 a great quantity of brown-vermilion, corrects in s6me degree 
 this dauby, bad effect of the yellow, deepens the shadows, 
 and restores the spectator's confidence in the future of the 
 boy. In some mysterious way, this liberal addition of ver- 
 milion brings out many details of the picture that before 
 were scarcely visible. The water begins to look like water, 
 the grass like grass, the sky like sky, and the flesh like flesh. 
 The sixth stone adds nothing to the picture but pure black ; 
 but it corrects and advances nearly every part of it, 
 especially the trunks of the trees, the dark shade upon the 
 rocks, and portions of the boy's trousers. Stone number 
 seven gives the whole picture, except the figure of the boy, 
 a coat of blue ; which, however, only makes that bluer 
 which was blue before, and leaves the other objects of their 
 previous color, although brighter and clearer. The eighth 
 stone merely puts " madder lake " upon the boy's face, hands 
 and feet, which darkens them a little, and gives them a red- 
 dish tinge. He is, however, far from being a pleasing 
 object ; for his eyes, unformed as yet, are nothing but dirty 
 blue spots, extremely unbecoming. The ninth stone, which 
 applies a color nearly black, adds a deeper shade to several 
 parts of the picture, but scarcely does anything for the boy. 
 The tenth stone makes amends by putting upon his cheeks, 
 hands, and feet a bright tinge of blended lake and vermilion, 
 and giving to his eyes a somewhat clearer outline. 
 
394 TKIUMPHS OF ENTERPKISE. 
 
 To an inexperienced person the picture now appears to be 
 in a very advanced stage, and many of us would say, Put a 
 little speculation into that boy's eyes, and let him go. Trees, 
 rocks, grass, water, and sky look pretty well, look a 
 thousand times better than the same objects in paintings 
 which auctioneers praise, and that highly. But we are only 
 at the tenth stone. That child has to go through the press 
 sixteen times more before Mr. Prang will consider him fit 
 to appear before a fastidious public. 
 
 Stones number eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, 
 and sixteen all apply what seems to the uninstructed eye 
 mere black. The colors are, indeed, extremely dark, al- 
 though not pure black, and the chief object of these six 
 impressions is to put into the picture those lines and shad- 
 ows which the eye just mentioned cannot understand, but 
 only enjoys. It is by such minute applications of color that 
 a picture is raised from the scale of merit which escapes 
 censure, to that which affords delight. The last of these 
 shading stones gives the boy his eyes, and from this time 
 he looks like himself. 
 
 The seventeenth stone lays upon the trees and grass a 
 peculiar shade of green that corrects them perceptibly. 
 Number eighteen just touches the plump cheeks, the mouth 
 and toes of the boy with mingled lake and vermilion, at 
 whicli he smiles. The last seven stones continue the shad- 
 ing, deepening, and enriching of the picture by applying to 
 different parts of it the various mitigations of black. It is 
 then passed through the press upon a stone which is grained 
 in such a way as to impart to the picture the roughness of 
 canvas ; after which it is mounted upon thick pasteboard and 
 varnished. The resemblance to the original is then such 
 that it is doubtful if Mr. Eastman Johnson could pick out 
 his own boy if he were surrounded with a number of copies. 
 
OIL PAINTINGS BY MACHINERY. 395 
 
 It is not every picture that admits of such successful treat- 
 ment as this, nor does every chromo-lithographer bestow 
 upon his productions so much pains and expense. A salable 
 picture could be made of this boy in ten impressions ; but, 
 as we have seen, he receives twenty-six; and the process 
 might be prolonged until a small quarry of stones had been 
 expended upon him. Some landscapes have been executed 
 which required fifty-two stones, and such pictures advance 
 to completion by a process extremely similar to that em- 
 ployed by an artist. That is to say, color is applied to them 
 very much in the same order, in the same minute quantities, 
 and with an approach to the same intelligent delicacy of 
 touch. It is an error to regard these interesting works as 
 mechanical. A mere mechanic, it is true, by a certain 
 Chinese servility of copying, can produce an extremely close, 
 hard imitation of an oil painting ; and much work of this 
 kind is done in Germany and England. But in our Boston 
 establishment no mechanic puts pencil to one of the stones 
 employed in producing fine pictures. The artistic work is 
 executed by artists of repute, who have themselves produced 
 respectable paintings of the kind which they are employed to 
 imitate. Any one who watches Mr. Harring transferring 
 to a long series of lithographic stones Mr. Hill's painting of 
 the Yosemite Valley will perceive that he is laboring in the 
 spirit of an artist and by the methods of an artist. It would 
 be highly absurd to claim for any copyist equal rank with 
 the creator of the original, or to say that any copy can pos- 
 sess the intrinsic value of an original. But it is unjust to 
 reduce to the rank of artisans the skilful and patient artists 
 who know how to catch the spirit and preserve the details 
 of a fine work, and reproduce in countless copies all of both 
 which the public can discern. 
 
 This art of chromo-lithography harmonizes well with the 
 I 
 
396 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 special work of America at the present moment, which is 
 not to create, but to diffuse ; not to produce literature, but 
 to distribute the spelling-book ; not to add to the world's 
 treasures of art, but to educate the mass of mankind to an 
 intelligent enjoyment of those which we already possess. Our 
 poets, most of them, are gray-beards, and it does not yet 
 appear that their places are to be filled when they are gone. 
 Our few literary men of established rank are descending into 
 the vale of years, and "their successors have not emerged 
 into view. In the region of thq fine arts there are indica- 
 tions of more vigorous life ; but our young artists do not 
 seem so willing as the great men of old to submit to the 
 inexorable conditions of a lasting and a growing success, 
 a simple, inexpensive life, steady toil, Spartan fare, and a 
 brain uncontaminated by narcotics. And if, in the depart- 
 ment of original science, we can boast of one great name, it 
 is the name of a person whom we only had the sense to appro- 
 priate, not the honor to produce. Meanwhile, what our 
 sweet and tenderly beloved Tory friends amiably style " the 
 scum of Europe " pours upon our shores, chokes up our 
 cities, and overspreads the Western plains. When a Tory 
 speaks of the "scum of Europe," or of "the dregs of the 
 people," he merely means the people whom his barbaric and 
 all-grasping meanness has kept ignorant and poor. These 
 people, as well as the emancipated slaves of the South, it 
 devolves upon us of this generation and the next to convert 
 into thinking, knowing, skilful, tasteful American citizens. 
 Mr. Prang has finished his new manufactory just in time. 
 By his assistance we may hope to diffuse among all classes 
 of the people that feeling for art which must precede the 
 production of excellent national works. 
 
 The public have shown an alacrity to possess these beauti- 
 ful pictures. In April, 1861, Louis Prang was proprietor 
 
OIL PAINTINGS BY MACHINERY. 397 
 
 of a small lithographic establishment in the fourth story of a 
 building in Boston. The impending war had not merely 
 injured his business, but brought it to an absolute stand-still. 
 His presses were covered with dust ; he had dismissed his 
 workmen ; no one came near him ; and, being still in debt 
 for his presses and stones, he was not to be reckoned, just 
 then, among the fortunate of his species. One day, at the 
 time when all eyes were directed to the pregnant events 
 occurring in Charleston Harbor, when Sumter and Moultrie 
 were on every tongue and in every heart, a friend chanced 
 to show the anxious lithographer an engineer's plan of that 
 harbor, with the positions of all the forts, shoals, and chan- 
 nels marked, with a map of the city in its proper place, 
 drawings of the forts in the corners, and the distances indi- 
 cated. w This would be a good thing for you to publish,'* 
 said his friend. It was an oar thrown to a drowning man. 
 A few days after, the occupants of the lofty building in 
 which Mr. Prang had his small shop were at first surprised, 
 and then annoyed, by the thunder of newsboys and errand- 
 boys tramping up and thumping down the stairs leading to 
 the lithographer's room. Four presses were soon running. 
 The master of the shop, with surprise and pleasure beaming 
 from his countenance, of late so dejected, was handing out 
 copies of the map by ones, twos, dozens, twenties, and hun- 
 dreds, damp from the stones, as fast as the presses could 
 print them. On the first day, before the map had got into 
 the shop windows and upon the news-stands, so large a 
 number of single copies were sold, at twenty-five cents each, 
 by the publisher himself, that he had at night a hatful of 
 silver coin. The flow of cash came so suddenly and so unex- 
 pectedly, that he did not know where to put it, and was 
 obliged to use his hat, for want of a reservoir more conven- 
 ient. The little map was a marvellous hit. It sold to the 
 
398 TKITJMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 extent of forty thousand copies before the public mind was 
 turned to other scenes. 
 
 And you may be sure that, when the public mind had gone 
 over the Long Bridge into Virginia, Mr. Prang was ready 
 with another map, and that during the four years which fol- 
 lowed it was not his fault if the people did not perfectly 
 comprehend the various "seats of war." One of his maps, 
 drawn so that each person could mark for himself the chang- 
 ing positions of the two armies, was in such demand that he 
 had six presses running upon it, night and day, for several 
 weeks, and sold hundreds of thousands of copies. When 
 maps flagged, he started those card-portraits of popular gen- 
 erals, of which millions were sold, at ten cents each, chiefly 
 to the army. Then followed sheets of heads, fifty heads 
 upon one large card, which had considerable success. 
 
 In this way was accumulated the capital upon which Mr. 
 Prang's present business of chromo-lithography was founded. 
 He began with those extremely pretty cards which enliven 
 young ladies' albums. He invited a lady of Boston, noted 
 for her skill and taste in painting flowers and fruit, to paint 
 for him twelve wild-flowers from nature, each on a card of 
 the usual album size. These he lithographed in colors, and 
 followed them with sets of mosses, butterflies, birds, roses, 
 autumn leaves, fruit, dogs, landscapes, and many others. 
 All of these were painted from nature, and reproduced with 
 great fidelity. Some of them are exceedingly popular with 
 the possessors of albums, one set of twelve beautiful roses 
 having already reached a sale of fifty thousand sets . And 
 so, by successive steps, this able man arrived at the produc- 
 tion of full chromo-lithographs. His first attempts were 
 failures. A set of four Cuban scenes, the first of the Prang 
 chromos, which were sold together in a paper portfolio, did 
 not strike the public favorably. There was nothing to hang 
 
OIL PAINTINGS BY MACHINERY. 399 
 
 up in the parlor. Mr. Prang next tried a pair of landscapes, 
 which also failed to lure five-dollar bills from the passers-by. 
 His third attempt was Tait's Group of Chickens, and this 
 was an immediate, great, and permanent success. This 
 encouraged him to persevere, until now his list of full chro- 
 mos embraces forty subjects, and he has been able to build 
 the first factory that was ever erected for a lithographic bus- 
 iness in any part of the world. With seventy men and forty 
 presses, he is only just able to supply the demand. It would 
 now be hard to find a house or school-room in which there 
 is not somewhere a bit of brilliancy executed at this estab- 
 lishment. 
 
 In order to value aright the advantage it is to the public 
 to be able to buy a truly beautiful little picture, correct in 
 drawing and natural in color, for the price of a pair of slip- 
 pers, it is necessary for us to know what pictures these 
 chromos displace. It is not true that they lessen the demand 
 for excellent original works The ostentation of the rich, in 
 this kind of luxury, ministers to the pleasure of the rest of 
 mankind ; just as the pride of a class pays for the opera, 
 which the poor man can enjoy for next to nothing in the gal- 
 lery. The reason why we laborers in New York own a 
 fine park of eight hundred acres, is because sundry rich men 
 felt the need of a more convenient place for displaying their 
 equipages on fine afternoons. We may rely upon it, that 
 the persons who now buy expensive works will continue so 
 to do, and that these chromos will enhance, rather than 
 diminish, the value of originals ; because the possession of 
 an original will confer more distinction when every one has 
 copies ; and it is distinction which the foolish part of our 
 race desires. Nor is it a slight advantage to an artist to 
 have in his works two kinds of property instead of one ; the 
 power to sell them, and the power to sell the privilege of 
 
400 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 multiplying copies of them. Neither art, literature, nor 
 science will have fair play in this world, until one success, 
 strictly first-rate, will confer upon the producer of the work 
 a competent estate ; or, in other words, until every one who 
 acquires property in a production of art, literature, or science 
 will pay a just compensation to the producer. Before many 
 years have passed, we shall see artists mounted on horseback 
 riding in our Central Park, who would have gone on foot 
 all their days, but for the reproduction of their works by 
 chromo-lithography. Copyright will pay for the oats. 
 
 But there is one class of picture-dealers and picture-makers 
 whom this beautiful process of chromo-lithography will seri- 
 ously injure. I mean those who make and sell the land- 
 scapes which are offered at the New York ferries for five 
 dollars a pair, gilt frames and all ; also those who sell at 
 auction " splendid oil paintings collected in Italy by a well- 
 known connoisseur recently deceased." Some of these fine 
 works, I am informed by one who has done them (a German 
 artist whom poverty and ignorance of the English language 
 compelled for a few months to misuse his .brush in this way), 
 are executed a dozen at a time, and are paid for by the 
 dozen. Twelve canvases are set up in a large garret-room. 
 The painter, with paint-pot in one hand and brush in the 
 other, goes his rounds ; first, putting in all the skies ; next, 
 perhaps, all the grass ; then, his trees ; and, finally, dots in 
 a few cows, sheep, children, and ladies. A good hand can 
 execute a very superior dozen in a week, for which, in these 
 dear times, he may get as much as twenty dollars. Before 
 the war, the established price for a good article of an oil 
 painting was twelve dollars a dozen, and find your own 
 paint. 
 
 The principal manufactory in the United States of this 
 description of ware is in a certain Broad and noisy street 
 
OIL PAINTINGS BY MACHINERY. 401 
 
 of a city that need not be named. It is styled by its propri- 
 etor " The American Art Gallery for the Encouragement of 
 Art and Young Artists " ; but among the unhappy young 
 men who earn a sorry livelihood by plying the brush therein, 
 the establishment is called " The Slaughter-House," and its 
 master "The Butcher." This man of blood was once an 
 auctioneer in a street that has little in common with the illus- 
 trious orator and statesman whose name it bears, wherein 
 persons in needy circumstances can either sell superfluous or 
 buy indispensable garments. It is now his boast that he is 
 the "greatest patron of the fine arts in America," and his 
 ways 'of patronizing arts are various. He will have pictures 
 painted by a young artist whose necessities are urgent, which 
 he will keep as part of his stock in trade. In a room parti- 
 tioned off from " The American Art Gallery " just mentioned 
 he has a number of " hands " multiplying copies of these pic- 
 tures as fast as the brush can dab on the paint. These 
 "hands," to whom he pays weekly wages which average less 
 than the wages of laborers, acquire by incessant practice a 
 dexterity in making the copies that is truly remarkable. 
 Besides these, he has out-door hands, who, like journeymen 
 tailors, take their work home and do it by the piece. The 
 pictures are offered for sale in the Gallery ; but as they accu- 
 mulate rapidly, the proprietor holds an auction every few 
 weeks, either of the Old Masters or of Great Living Artists. 
 These auctions take place, by turns, in New York, Boston, 
 Philadelphia, Buffalo, Cincinnati, Chicago, St. Louis, and 
 San Francisco. The Californians, my German artist says, 
 are liberal patrons of the " American Art Gallery for the 
 Encouragement of Art and Young Artists," the sales in San 
 Francisco being both frequent and profitable. Even to Aus- 
 tralia, on the other side of the globe, consignments of these 
 precious works are sent from the Gallery in the nameless 
 
402 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 city. The pictures offered at the auction sales are frequently 
 advertised and declared to be " original oil paintings, by 
 native artists, from the American Gallery for the Encourage- 
 ment of Art and young Artists." The frame is, of course, 
 an item of the first importance in this kind of picture. The 
 butcher manufactures his own frames, and he takes care that 
 they shall be splendid. This is probably the secret of his 
 success ; for what is there dearer to the heart of man and 
 woman than a gorgeous parlor? This amiable passion burns 
 in the breast of every true American, and it is this which 
 creates the demand for splendid gilt frames with something 
 in them that looks a little like a picture. 
 
 I will copy, for the reader's more complete information, a 
 few sentences from a letter lying before me, which describes 
 some of the modes in which Art is encouraged at this Amer- 
 ican Gallery : 
 
 " The proprietor never fails to impress upon a young artist who 
 goes to him to sell pictures or get employment the advantages to 
 be derived from studying with him, and his generosity in founding 
 a place for their encouragement and assistance, and in furnishing 
 them canvas, a nice studio, easels, and other things, and then pay- 
 ing them while they are improving themselves. They are required 
 to furnish their own paints ; but as they all use house paint, and 
 buy it in pound pots, that does not form a very heavy item of 
 expense. When I first went to him in 1863 I preferred working by 
 the piece, and generally made about fifteen dollars a week. . . 
 I received for a picture twenty-six inches by thirty-six, four dol- 
 lars ; for one about twelve by sixteen, one dollar and a half. For 
 Cole's Voyages of Life, size twenty-four by thirty (one set was 
 sent with every collection), we received two dollars. The next 
 time I went to him he would not employ me except by the week, 
 and gave me twelve dollars, which he said was more than he was in 
 the habit of paying. When working by the piece, the most money 
 was to be made on what he calls his crystal medallions, small 
 
OIL PAINTINGS BY MACHINERY. 403 
 
 ovals pasted on the under side of convex glasses, for which we 
 were paid from seventy-five cents to a dollar and a quarter, accord- 
 ing to size. It is a trick of this old fellow, when a person brings 
 in a picture for sale, to tell him to leave it, and when he has time 
 he will look at it, and pay whatever it is worth. If the owner does 
 so, and the picture is of any value, he sends it immediately to the 
 paint room, and has one or more copies made of it. When the 
 owner calls he will offer him two or three dollars for it ; and if he 
 is not satisfied, he can take it away, for the copies answer the pur- 
 pose just as well as the original." 
 
 These are the pictures which chromos are displacing. 
 Such are the dealers whom their popularity is likely to drive 
 to more honest or less hurtful employments. When I hear 
 critics lamenting the prevalence of these truly beautiful 
 products of chemistry and art, and declaring that they cor- 
 rupt the taste of the people, I think of the "American Gallery 
 for the Encouragement of Art and Young Artists." 
 
 It is possible to overvalue the educating influence even 
 of excellent pictures. In strengthening or informing the 
 intellect, they are of no more use than mothers' kisses or 
 the smiling loveliness of a flower-garden ; and, truly, a man 
 may spend his life among pictures, and fill books with elo- 
 quent discourse about them, and yet remain a short-sighted 
 Buskin, filled with insolent contempt of his species, whom 
 he does his best to mislead. But we can say of good pic- 
 tures, that they are a source of innocent and refined pleasure ; 
 and that is enough to justify their existence. I think, there- 
 fore, that this new art, which enables us -to buy for five 
 dollars all that we can enjoy of a thousand-dollar picture, is 
 one that deserves the encouragement it is receiving. 
 
THE FOUNDER OF THE ROTHSCHILDS. 
 
 THEKE used to be a conundrum current in Europe, which 
 was something like this : " What is the difference between 
 ancient and modern times ? Answer: In ancient times, all 
 the Jews had one king ; in modern times, all the kings have 
 one Jew." 
 
 The Jew referred to in this conundrum was Maier Arnsel 
 Rothschild, the founder of the great banking-house so famous 
 throughout the world. The history of this remarkable per- 
 son, which I shall now briefly relate, is a striking illustration 
 of the well-known truth, that every great and permanent 
 success in business is founded up'on the rock of honesty. 
 
 A hundred years ago, there lived in the German city of 
 Frankfort a Jewish money-changer, named Amsel Moses 
 Rothschild, who gained a moderate livelihood by buying 
 and selling the coins of the hundred little sovereignties into 
 which Germany was then divided. Frankfort being a place 
 of great trade, merchants resorted to it from most of these 
 sovereignties, each of which had its own coinage and its own 
 standard of the purity of the metals of which its coins were 
 composed. Hence, there was a considerable, though not 
 very profitable, business done in Frankfort in buying, sell- 
 ing, and exchanging coins. Moses Rothschild, though a very 
 honest and respectable man, appears to have had no partic- 
 ular talent or audacity in business, and he acquired, there- 
 fore, only that "modest competence" which everybody 
 extols, and with which no one is content. 
 
406 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 The founder of the great banking-house was the eldest 
 son of this worthy Israelite. He was accustomed from his 
 youth up to assist his father in his business of money-chang- 
 ing. He counted and sorted the coins, computed their 
 value, procured supplies from other money-changers of such 
 coins as were needed, carried deposits to the bank, and thus 
 obtained a most familiar and exact knowledge of the coin 
 system of the whole world. He became acquainted, also, 
 with the artificial values which some coins possess as speci- 
 mens and curiosities. This knowledge was the beginning 
 of his fortune. While still a youth, he was in the habit of 
 closely examining the bags of coin in his father's coffers, 
 and selecting from them such as he could sell at a premium 
 to collectors. It sometimes happens in Wall Street, in our 
 own day, that coins of great value are found in a bag of 
 miscellaneous pieces ; but Wall Street men and boys are too 
 busy to pick them out, as any one may see who will go 
 into the office of a Wall Street bullion dealer, and see the 
 rapidity with which the clerks do their work. But they 
 took business more leisurely in Frankfort ninety years ago, 
 and the boy, Maier Rothschild, found many a prize among 
 his father's store. 
 
 It was not the intention of his father to bring him up to 
 business. On the contrary, he meant to make a Rabbi of 
 him; and, with that intent, sent him to an institution in 
 which young Jews were fitted for the ecclesiastical office. 
 The youth remained for many months at this establishment. 
 Nature, however, will have her way with all of us, in spite 
 of our fathers and in spite of ourselves ; and so this youug 
 Rothschild laid aside his books of theology, and took the 
 place of clerk in a banking-house in Hanover. It was imme- 
 diately evident that finance was his true vocation. As a 
 banker's clerk he was diligent, prudent, faithful, and skilful 
 
 
THE FOUNDER Or THE ROTHSCHILDS. 407 
 
 in the highest degree, and was trusted by his employers 
 with operations of the first importance. 
 
 Men destined to a great career, I have observed, generally 
 serve a long and rigorous apprenticeship to it of some kind. 
 They try their forming powers in little things before grap- 
 pling with great. I cannot call to mind a single instance of 
 a man who achieved a success of the first magnitude who 
 did not first toil long in obscurity. 
 
 Maier Rothschild remained a banker's clerk for several 
 years before attempting to set up for himself. At length he 
 returned to his native city, and there established a small 
 business, similar in character to that of his father. Besides 
 being a money-changer, he bought and sold curious coins, 
 jewels, plate, and other precious objects. His knowledge 
 and long training gave him such advantages that, by the 
 time he was twenty-seven years of age, he was a banker of 
 some note and considerable wealth. He was a married man, 
 too, and was, in every respect, aH established and prosper- 
 ous citizen. From this time his wealth increased with a 
 rapidity remarkable for that day ; so that, in the year 1780, 
 when he was but thirty-seven years of age, he was already 
 living in the style of an opulent banker, and had already 
 removed into the mansion in which he spent the remainder 
 of his life. 
 
 Doubtless he would have lived the life of a private banker 
 of Frankfort to the end, but for that fearful storm of the 
 French Revolution, which swept a large quantity of the 
 wealth of the French nobility into his coffers. During these 
 prosperous years he had been gaining something besides 
 money and bonds. He had been accumulating character, 
 He was known to be a man as honest as he was sagacious. 
 His word was as good as his bond. When, therefore, the 
 French emigrants came, bringing with them jewels, plate, 
 
 26 
 
408 TKIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 and all that they could seize in the hurry of departure, and 
 conceal during their flight, it was in the banking-house of 
 Rothschild that the most precious of these valuables were 
 deposited, to be by him invested or sold. His vaults were 
 filled with treasures not his own. Looking about over 
 Europe for a place where this property could be safely 
 employed, out of the range of the political tempest which 
 threatened the whole continent, he chose the sea-girt realm 
 of Britain. To that country a great part of his capital his 
 own as well as that of others was transported, and ere 
 long he established in London a banking-house to facilitate 
 the transaction of the business resulting from the transfer. 
 
 Nevertheless, he was still only a private banker. No king 
 had as yet paid him tribute ; he had taken no government loan. 
 His introduction into the region of grand finance occurred in 
 the year 1801, when he was fifty-eight years of age. The 
 richest of the smaller potentates of Germany at that time 
 was the Landgrave of Hesse, who had still in his strong box 
 two million dollars of the money which the English govern- 
 ment had paid him for the hire of the Hessian troops in our 
 Revolution. In 1801, this noble sovereign was in quest of a 
 person to manage his financial concerns, and he asked one 
 of his friends to recommend him a suitable individual. It 
 so happened that the Landgrave's friend, General Estorff, 
 had noticed the accuracy and good sense of Maier Rothschild 
 many years before, when the banker was a banker's clerk in 
 Hanover. He recommended him for the post, and he was 
 summoned to the Landgrave's residence. When he arrived, 
 it chanced that the mighty monarch was getting badly 
 beaten in a game of chess, by General Estorff. 
 
 " Do you understand chess ? " asked the Landgrave. 
 
 w Yes, your highness," said the banker. 
 
 w Then step up here, and look at my game." 
 
THE FOUNDER OF THE ROTHSCHILDS. 409 
 
 Rothschild obeyed, and suggested the moves by which the 
 game was easily won. 
 
 It was enough. From that time to the end of his life, he 
 managed the finances of the Landgrave of Hesse. This gave 
 him such standing, and the use of so much capital, that 
 when the Danish government in 1804 wished to borrow ten 
 millions of dollars, he was able to take the whole loan. In 
 1806, the Landgrave of Hesse, an ally of the King of Prus- 
 sia, was involved in the ruin of that monarch, beaten by 
 Napoleon in the decisive battle of Jena. The Landgrave, 
 obliged to abandon his capital, caused his treasure to be 
 secretly conveyed to Frankfort, and deposited with Maier 
 Rothschild, who in his turn had it all safely conveyed to 
 London. For two or three years he had the use of it with- 
 out interest, on the easy condition of keeping it safe. Thus 
 strengthened, he was able to undertake to supply the British 
 army in the Peninsula with money, and to mate the stipu- 
 lated payments, on behalf of the British government, to 
 Spain and Portugal. As he rendered this service on terms 
 proportioned to its difficulty and risk, his profits were enor- 
 mous. 
 
 This able and honest man died in 1812, aged sixty-nine 
 years, leaving five sons and five daughters. Since his death, 
 the house has constantly grown in wealth and importance, 
 and the partners now live in a style which would formerly 
 have been considered extravagant in a king. 
 
 During the ninety-eight years which have elapsed since the 
 house was founded by Maier Rothschild at Frankfort, it has 
 never failed to keep an engagement. 
 
A MILLIONAIRE IN THE BANKS. 
 
 No army, I suppose, ever contained such a variety of 
 characters and conditions as that of the United States during 
 the late war. There were men in it of almost every race 
 and color; men of every rank, from French princes lin- 
 eally descended from Henry IV. , to the plantation-slave ; 
 men of every degree of moral worth and un worthiness, 
 from the patriot-hero, giving his life for his country, to the 
 plundering " bounty-jumper," who has since found a suitable 
 home in a state-prison. Among other characters, the 
 strangest, perhaps, was a private soldier who possessed an 
 income of two hundred thousand dollars a year. Upon the 
 staffs of major-generals and at the head of regiments there 
 were several millionnaires and sons of millionnaires ; but the 
 gentleman of whom we speak Elias Howe, Jr., the inven- 
 tor of the sewing-machine served in the ranks of the Seven- 
 teenth Connecticut, and refused every offer of a commission ; 
 alleging, as a reason, that he was ignorant of military affairs, 
 and could render no effective service to his country except as a 
 private. Having had occasion recently to gather information 
 respecting the origin and progress of the sewing-machine, I 
 heard the story of Mr. Howe's enlistment and service from 
 the officers of his regiment, and now avail myself of the 
 opportunity to repeat it to the reader. 
 
 He enlisted in July, 1862, the second year of the war. 
 The country, as we all remember, had put forth prodigious 
 efforts to repair the calamity of Bull Run, An immense 
 
412 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 army had been assembled on the banks of the Potomac, 
 which, after along winter spent in organizing and drilling it, 
 had been swiftly conveyed to Virginia, and successfully 
 landed near Yorktown. That proved to be the end of its 
 success. Stopped for a month at Yorktown, until Richmond 
 was ready to withstand it, that mighty host of devoted men 
 came within sight of the steeples of the Confederate capital ; 
 whence, after a succession of mishaps, reverses, and defeats, 
 it was driven back to the James, and was soon after ordered 
 back to its old position on the Potomac. Nothing in the 
 history of the war seems to me so remarkable as the high 
 spirit and unshaken resolution of the people, after disasters 
 so terrible, so unexpected, and so peculiarly calculated to 
 dishearten a nation unused to war. 
 
 !tt was July, 1862. The army was still on the James, 
 protected by the gunboats of the navy. A new levy of 
 troops was ordered. Until this time, men had not hung 
 back, and new regiments had come in about as fast as they 
 could be equipped. But, in July of this year, when the 
 ripening harvest called farmers to their fields, and the 
 tidings of defeat gave pause to those inclined to enlist, the 
 forming regiments filled slowly, and there were vague rumors 
 in the air of a possible draft. Then it was that it occurred 
 to some gentlemen of Bridgeport, Connecticut, to raise a 
 county regiment, the several companies of which should be 
 composed of friends and neighbors. It was an excellent and 
 fruitful thought. The sanction of Governor Buckingham 
 was obtained, and a public meeting was called for July 17th, 
 to begin the work. 
 
 The public anxiety as well as the patriotism of the people 
 of Bridgeport caused this to be one of the largest and most 
 earnest ever held in the town. Mr. Howe attended it, and 
 sat on the platform as one of the vice-presidents. When the 
 
A MILLIONNAIRE IN THE BANKS. 413 
 
 meeting had been organized, it was addressed by several 
 speakers, who raised the enthusiasm of the crowd to the 
 highest point. Money was liberally subscribed for the 
 expenses of the proposed regiment, Messrs. Wheeler & 
 Wilson heading the list with five thousand dollars, and Elias 
 Howe following with one thousand. The whole sum raised 
 was twenty-five thousand dollars. This was encouraging, 
 and it was then to be seen how the citizens of Bridgeport 
 would respond to the call for services more perilous and 
 more necessary than the subscribing of money. 
 
 When the time came for inviting men to enlist, Mr. Howe 
 to the astonishment of his friends, for he had never before 
 addressed a public meeting rose to his feet, and spoke 
 somewhat as follows : 
 
 " At such a time as this, every man Is called upon to do what he 
 can for his country. I don't know what I can do, unless it is to 
 enlist and serve as a private in the Union army. I want no posi- 
 tion. In fact, I know nothing of military matters ; but I am willing 
 to learn, and to do what I can with a musket. At any rate I mean 
 to go. I have in my hand a piece of paper for the names of those 
 who wish to enlist to-night, and my name is at the head of it." 
 
 With these words, he laid the paper upon the chairman's 
 table. The excitement produced by this announcement can 
 neither be imagined nor described. Mr. Howe was known 
 to every person present, as one of the wealthiest men in the 
 State, whose residence at Iranistan was as pleasant and 
 attractive a scene as could anywhere be found ; and to ex- 
 change this for the privations of a camp seemed to the audi- 
 ence, as it was, a most remarkable evidence of patriotic 
 principle. Cheer upon cheer expressed and relieved the 
 feelings of the excited multitude. 
 
 The next incident that occurred was one in which the 
 
414 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 comic and the pathetic were blended. The coachman who 
 had driven Mr. Howe's carriage that evening, attracted by 
 the continual cheers within the hall, had hired a boy to hold 
 his horses, and had entered the building to witness the pro- 
 ceedings. He was a warm-hearted Irishman, named Michael 
 Cahill, past the age of military service as defined by law. 
 Upon hearing his employer's speech, he rushed forward, and 
 clambering upon the platform, cried out, 
 
 w Put down my name too 1 I can't bear to have the old 
 man go alone." 
 
 So down went the name of Michael Cahill, coachman, next 
 to that of Elias Howe. Laughter and cheers, mingled in 
 about equal proportions, followed the announcement of 
 " Mike's " intention. Other names now came in with great 
 rapidity. A large number of men were obtained that night, 
 and such zeal and enthusiasm were created in the county by 
 the events of the evening that in twenty days the Seventeenth 
 Connecticut had upon its rolls the -names of one thousand men. 
 It was commanded by Colonel H. H. Noble, one of the lead- 
 ing lawyers of Bridgeport. 
 
 A difficulty arose when Mr. Howe bad to be examined by 
 the surgeon of the regiment, Dr. Hubbard. All his life, the 
 inventor of the sewing-machine had been troubled with an 
 hereditary lameness. Indeed, it was owing to the extreme 
 fatigue which his daily labor as a journeyman machinist 
 caused him, in consequence of this lameness, that he set 
 about .inventing something by which he hoped to earn his 
 living less laboriously. The probability is, that if Elias 
 Howe had had two good legs, he would never have invented 
 the sewing-machine. When Dr. Hubbard hesitated about 
 accepting him, and told him that he could not march, 
 
 w No matter," said the inventor, " you must pass me. I am 
 going!" 
 
A MILLIONNAIRE IN THE HANKS. 415 
 
 Both the officers and men of the regiment soon discovered 
 that to have a man in a regiment who is both rich and gen- 
 erous is extremely convenient. To some of the field-officers 
 he gave horses from his stable, and to others he lent them ; 
 and whenever there was delay or difficulty in procuring an 
 article necessary for the. regiment's speedy departure, his 
 purse was always open to supply the deficiency. Early in 
 September, the regiment started on its way toward the seat 
 of war, and went into camp near Baltimore. 
 
 When the camp was organized and the regiment entered 
 upon its routine duties, Mr. Howe discovered that the doctor 
 was right ; he could not march with a musket in his hand, 
 even to the extent of standing sentry. But determined to 
 be of service, he volunteered to serve the regiment as its 
 postmaster, messenger, and expressman. Sending home for 
 a suitable horse and wagon, he drove into Baltimore twice 
 every day, and brought to the camp the letters and parcels 
 for the regiment, which he distributed from his own tent 
 with his own hands. He served, in short, as the father of 
 the regiment. Going home, occasionally, to Bridgeport, 
 where he was then building a large factory, he always gave 
 notice of his intention, and made his journey with a small 
 cargo of letters and bundles for the families of his comrades, 
 and took unwearied pains in performing every commission 
 intrusted to him. As one of the officers said tome, "He 
 would run half over the State to deliver a letter to some 
 lonely mother anxious for her soldier boy, or bring back to 
 him in the camp a favorite pair of boots which he needed 
 during the rainy winter of Maryland." 
 
 I once heard Mr. Howe relate a curious anecdote of one 
 of these journeys. He was sitting in the cars, behind two 
 wild secessionists, who were conversing eagerly about the 
 war. One of them said to the other : 
 
416 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 "Yes, sir ! the whole thing was got up for the purpose of 
 giving fat contracts to to the d d abolitionists. There's 
 old Howe, the sewing-machine man, worth his millions ; 
 they have actually given him the contract for carrying the 
 mail to the army." 
 
 "You don't say so," said the other. 
 
 "It's a fact," rejoined his friend. "I saw Howe myself 
 riding in one of the mail-carts yesterday." 
 
 Mr. Howe smiled, but said nothing. 
 
 Another story of his warlike experience is related by 
 Colonel Stephen A. Walker, paymaster of the division to 
 which Mr. Howe's regiment belonged. 
 
 For four months after the Seventeenth Connecticut en- 
 tered the field, the government was so pressed for money 
 that no payments to the troops could be made, and, conse- 
 quently, there was great suffering among the families of the 
 soldiers, and a still more painful anxiety suffered by the men 
 themselves. One day, a private soldier came quietly into 
 the paymaster's office in Washington, and, as there were 
 several officers already there to be attended to, he took his 
 seat in a corner, to wait his turn. When the officers had 
 been disposed of, Colonel Walker turned to him and said, 
 
 " Now, my man, what can I do for you?" 
 
 "I have called," said the soldier, "to see about the pay- 
 ment of the Seventeenth Connecticut." 
 
 The paymaster, a little irritated by what he supposed a, 
 needless and impertinent interruption, told him, somewhat 
 bluntly, "that a paymaster could do nothing without money, 
 and that until the government could furnish some, it was 
 useless for soldiers to come bothering him about the pay of 
 their regiments." 
 
 " I know," said the soldier, " the government is in straits, 
 and I have called to find out how much money it will take to 
 
A MILLIONNAIKE IN THE RANKS. 417 
 
 give my regiment two months* pay, and if you will tell me, 
 I am ready to furnish the amount." 
 
 The officer stared with astonishment, and asked the name 
 of the soldier, who was no other than Elias Howe. On 
 referring to his books, Colonel Walker found that the sum 
 required was thirty-one thousand dollars. Upon receiving 
 the information, the private wrote a draft for the sum, and 
 received in return a memorandum certifying the advance, 
 and promising reimbursement when the government could 
 furnish the money. 
 
 Two or three days after, at Fairfax Court-House, the regi- 
 ment was paid, and there were a thousand happy men in 
 camp. When Mr. Howe's name was called, he went up to 
 the paymaster's desk, received twenty-eight dollars and 
 sixty cents of his own money, and signed the receipt there- 
 for, " Private Elias Howe, Jr." We cannot be surprised at 
 some of the officers of neighboring regiments sending over 
 to inquire if they could " borrow " this private for a while 
 from the Seventeenth Connecticut. 
 
 During the winter Mr. Howe was twice prostrated by 
 sickness ; first by dysentery, and afterwards by fever. It 
 was proposed to convey him to the officers' hospital ; but he 
 insisted on being taken to the hospital of the privates, and 
 to be treated in all respects as a private soldier. There was 
 no difference, however, in essential points, between the hos- 
 pitals for officers and those for private soldiers. 
 
 When the spring came, and the regiment was about to 
 enter upon active service, and to make long marches, it 
 became clear to Mr. Howe that he could be nothing but an 
 encumbrance, and, therefore, after rendering all the service 
 which a man in his physical condition could render, he reluc- 
 tantly asked a discharge and returned home. He used to 
 say to the soldiers : 
 
418 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 "I've got to leave you, boys. I'm of no use here ; but 
 never mind ; when your time is out, come to me at Bridge- 
 port. I'm building a large sewing-machine factory there, 
 and I shall have plenty of work for those who want it." 
 
 Many of his comrades took him at his word, and are now 
 at work in the factory in various capacities. Honest " Mike," 
 after faithfully serving out his term, went to his old home, 
 and has advanced from driving Mr. Howe's carriage to driv- 
 ing his own horse and cart, which he is still doing. 
 
 Mr. Howe's enlistment to -serve in the ranks of the army 
 was due to a genuine patriotic impulse. An officer of his 
 regiment related to me a conversation which he had with him 
 one gloomy day in camp, when bad news was coming in from 
 the West. 
 
 " Well," said the officer, w what do you think the trash we 
 call our property will be worth when this is all over ? " 
 
 " So that this thing is settled right? said Mr. Howe, w I 
 don't care a copper. As for me, give me three acres of 
 land, and I can earn my living upon it, and that's all I 
 want." 
 
HOW THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 LEARNED TO 
 
 NOMINATE CANDIDATES FOR THE PRESIDENCY. 
 
 ALEXANDER HAMILTON once said, that the mode of elect- 
 ing a President prescribed by the Constitution " was intended 
 to secure to prominent talents and virtues the first honors of 
 our country, and forever to disgrace the barbarous institu- 
 tions by which executive power is to be transmitted through 
 the organs of generation." If this view of the matter be 
 correct, if the Presidency is to be regarded as a means of 
 rewarding services and honoring merit, then it must be 
 confessed we have failed to carry out the design of the Con- 
 stitution. On several occasions, indeed, the people have 
 bestowed the Presidency upon men prominent, above all 
 others, for virtue and talent; but, at other times, men 
 have been selected for their insignificance, rather than their 
 prominence, and merely as representing the platform of 
 their party. But under a government such as ours, so long 
 as it is honestly administered, if great talents in the Presi- 
 dential chair might essentially benefit the nation, inferior 
 talents cannot materially retard its progress. Under John 
 Tyler, the United States continued to advance in wealth and 
 in civilization ; under George Washington, it did no more. 
 It is desirable, for many reasons, that the President of the 
 United States should be an able, honorable, and prudent 
 man. All we mean to assert is, that the destinies of the 
 country do not depend upon an individual; and, if this had 
 before been doubtful, recent events have established it. 
 
420 TRIUMPHS OF ENTEKPBISE. 
 
 It may be interesting at this stage of our affairs to cast a 
 glance at previous Presidential elections, and note the 
 various processes by which, among the mass of American 
 citizens, a suitable chief magistrate has been found. As the 
 mode of electing a President has always been prescribed by 
 law, the chief difficulty has been the nomination of candi- 
 dates. We have usually had in the United States two polit- 
 ical parties nearly equal in strength and numbers, but we 
 have never had two men in the country so clearly represen- 
 tative of the divergent tendencies embodied in those par- 
 ties, that the people spontaneously looked up to them as 
 their standard-bearers. 
 
 So far as we know, but one man has ever governed a 
 nation who was the spontaneous and unanimous choice of its 
 inhabitants. That man was George Washington. In him 
 alone, among the sons of men, were combined all the quali- 
 ties which could influence a free and virtuous people to select 
 him as their chief. In social position he was the first gen- 
 tleman of America, and that was a far more important con- 
 sideration eighty years ago than it is now. His private 
 character was spotless. His prudence had been subjected to 
 every test, and never found insufficient. His military repu- 
 tation, so captivating to the multitude, was only equalled, 
 among living generals, by that of Frederick the Great. 
 Possessing the traits of character which inspire confidence, 
 an imposing personal presence, and a splendor of reputation 
 unequalled in America, he must have been the choice of the 
 American people, in whatever mode his name had been pre- 
 sented for the their suffrages. Every electoral vote was cast 
 for him, and he took his place at the head of the Government 
 with the approval of every individual voter in every State 
 of the Union. 
 
 During General Washington's first term, the two parties 
 
CANDIDATES FOB THE PRESIDENCY. 421 
 
 were formed which, under various names, have ever since 
 contended for the supremacy. Each of these parties con- 
 sisted at first of one man. The first American Democrat, 
 in the party sense of the word, was Thomas Jefferson, Sec- 
 retary of State ; and the First Federalist was Alexander 
 Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury. These two men, 
 associated in the Cabinet of President Washington, soon 
 discovered that they differed fundamentally on almost every 
 point on which it is desirable that Cabinet ministers should 
 agree. The French Revolution was the great topic at that 
 time. Jefferson, fresh from France, hailed that mighty 
 revolt with the keenest approval, for he had witnessed the 
 oppression which justified it. Hamilton from the first 
 regarded it with dread and horror. Hamilton had a low 
 opinion of mankind, and thought that government must 
 necessarily be both powerful and imposing. Jefferson, on 
 the contrary, respected his fellow-citizens, and desired their 
 government to be simple, inexpensive, and strictly limited. 
 The consequence was, that the two Secretaries, as Jefferson 
 remarked, were " pitted against each other every day in the 
 Cabinet like two fighting-cocks " ; and this dissension, com- 
 municating itself to their friends and followers, gradually 
 divided the nation into parties. 
 
 Those who sided with Jefferson were called Republicans, 
 and those who sympathized with Hamilton were called Fed- 
 eralists. The Republican party embraced three descriptions 
 of persons : first, young men of intellect and enthusiasm, 
 like Jefferson himself, who had faith in their fellow-men, and 
 believed in the progress of their species ; secondly, a consid- 
 erable number of the wealthy planters of the South, who, 
 without being Democrats, desired the General Government 
 to be so simple and limited as not to detract from the impor- 
 tance of the State Governments ; thirdly, the more intelli- 
 
422 raiuMPHS OP ENTERPRISE. 
 
 gent artisans and poor men of the North, who were naturally 
 attracted by the equalizing doctrines of the Declaration of 
 Independence. The Federal party included a large majority 
 of the men of property and education, the men who in 
 all times and lands are naturally disposed to conservatism. 
 These solid men of the land, and the voters whom they influ- 
 enced, constituted the Federal party. 
 
 The first contest between these parties occurred in 1793, 
 when for the second time a President and Vice-President 
 were to be chosen. Washington was unanimously re- 
 elected, but for the second office there was an animated 
 strife. 
 
 At the first election in 1788, John Adams had received 
 thirty-four electoral votes out of sixty-seven for the Vice- 
 Presidency, and the rest were divided among ten other can- 
 didates, of whom no one received more than nine. In 1792, 
 the party lines were strictly drawn. A caucus of the 
 Republican members of Congress nominated for the Vice- 
 Presidency George Clinton, of New York, and a caucus of 
 Federal members nominated John Adams. In the short 
 space of four years party discipline had become so well 
 developed in the country, that every elector but five cast his 
 vote for one of these candidates. John Adams received 
 seventy-seven electoral votes : George Clinton, fifty. It 
 was only far-off Kentucky that had not yet fallen into line. 
 Kentucky cast its vote for Thomas Jefferson, aud one elec- 
 tor in South Carolina voted for Aaron Burr. 
 
 A caucus of members of Congress, then, was the first 
 method hit upon for the selection of candidates. It is diffi- 
 cult to conceive of any other plan suited to the state of 
 things at that time. A National Convention, even if it had 
 been thought of, would have absorbed the greater part of a 
 year, and there was then no Press which could in any sense 
 
CANDIDATES FOR THE PRESIDENCY. 423 
 
 be called national. The newspapers were few and of limited 
 circulation, and a nomination by them would have been con- 
 sidered impertinent by the country gentlemen then so influ- 
 ential. The Congressional caucuses were held with closed 
 doors, and no parff of their proceedings was communicated 
 to the public except the result. It is obvious that such a 
 mode of nomination was open to objections, since it gave 
 opportunity for personal intrigue and solicitation, and it 
 rendered a President who desired reelection, and a Cabinet 
 minister ambitious of the succession, subservient to those 
 members of Congress upon whom would soon devolve the 
 nomination of candidates, and whose nomination was fre- 
 quently equivalent to an election. These objections, how- 
 ever, though immediately apparent to the few thoughtful 
 observers, were not at first regarded by the people, cer- 
 tainly not considered formidable. Five Presidents in succes- 
 sion were nominated in this manner, who, upon the whole, 
 were the men best entitled to the confidence of their party, 
 and all of whom served their country well. 
 
 In 1796, when it was known that General Washington 
 would retire at the expiration of his second term, there was 
 no man in the Federal party of such commanding promi- 
 nence as to be its natural and spontaneous choice. The 
 Federalist who was most active and who possessed most of 
 personal, force and influence, was Alexander Hamilton ; and 
 it is somewhat remarkable that so shining a light in the 
 Federal party should never have been thought of for the 
 Presidency. It is true, he was not a native of the United 
 States ; but a special clause of the Constitution had provided 
 for such cases as his, by making foreign-bora citizens 
 eligible to the Presidency who had been citizens at the 
 adoption of the Constitution. Why, then, was the creator 
 and soul of the Federal party never its official head ? Partly 
 
 27 
 
424 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 because he never desired it. He was not ambitious of official 
 distinction. Whatever Alexander Hamilton did in politics, 
 whether wrong or right, was done with a single eye to the 
 public good. If he intrigued, he intrigued for his country. 
 If he used improper means for the success of his party, it 
 was because he believed that the honor and safety of his 
 country depended absolutely upon its being governed by 
 Federalists. Destitute of fortune, he was compelled to 
 devote himself to the labors of his profession ; and at that 
 day a man but forty years of age, dependent upon his indus- 
 try for his livelihood, had not that kind of weight in the 
 country which would have drawn attention to him as a 
 possible candidate for the highest office. Besides this, he 
 was the author of the very measures most odious to the 
 Republicans. He was, we may say, the Charles Simmer of 
 the Federalists ; and who has ever seriously proposed Charles 
 Suniner for the Presidency? 
 
 The Federal members of Congress in 1796 recommended 
 to their fellow-citizens John Adams for the Presidency, and 
 Thomas Pinckney for the Vice-Presidency. The Republican 
 members nominated Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr. 
 Here we see at once both the excellence and the perils of 
 this mode of nomination. Adams, Jefferson, and Pinckney 
 were fit and proper names to be presented for the consider- 
 ation of their fellow-citizens. The impetuous and unmanage- 
 able Adams, during the seven years of his Vice-Presidency, 
 had been in a position which kept him aloof from party 
 politics, and concealed from those around him his eminent 
 unfitness to rale. His revolutionary services, his diplomatic 
 career, his oratorical talents, his fine personal presence, and 
 the English cast of his mind, made him a suitable represen- 
 tative of the party with which he sympathized. 
 
 Thomas Jefferson the author of the Declaration of Inde- 
 
CANDIDATES FOR THE PRESIDENCY. 425 
 
 pendence, the conspicuous champion of France and the 
 defender of the French Revolution, and the first Democrat 
 of his age was peculiarly entitled to the suffrages of the 
 party himself had created, Pinckney, too, as a member of 
 an important and wealthy Southern family, of dignified 
 demeanor and respectable talents, could not have been con- 
 sidered out of place in the chair of the Senate. But Aaron 
 Burr what Was he, and what had he done, that at the age 
 of forty he should have been reckoned a fit man to succeed 
 John Adams in the second office ? His nomination was 
 unquestionably due to the fact, that, having sat in the Senate 
 for six years, he had brought to bear upon members of Con- 
 gress at once the magic of his personal presence and the arts 
 of the politician. A popular Convention might not have 
 selected either of these names ; or, if either, the dexterity 
 of a Burr might have had a better chance than the earnest 
 wisdom and sublime humanity of a Jefferson. We can say, 
 that through the instrumentality of a Congressional caucus, 
 the best attainable statesmen were sometimes placed in nom- 
 ination, and only once the mere politician. 
 
 Candidates in those simple old days were usually passive, 
 and if they were not so, it was felt to be dishonorable. The 
 letters, diaries, and private memoranda of Washington, John 
 Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and John Quincy Adams con- 
 vince us that neither of those gentlemen wrote a line, or 
 uttered a word, designed or calculated to promote their own 
 elevation or to prevent that of another. In such a man as 
 John Adams, infatuated as he was with a consciousness of 
 his transcendent merits, such delicacy as this was highly 
 honorable. There is an amusing passage in one of his let- 
 ters, written a few days after his inauguration, which we 
 may quote : "It is a delicate thing," he says, "for me to 
 speak of the late election. To myself, personally, my elec- 
 
426 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 tion might be a matter of indifference, or rather of aversion. 
 Had Mr. Jay, or some others, been in question, it might 
 have less mortified my vanity, and infinitely less alarmed my 
 apprehensions for the public. But to see such a character 
 as Jefferson, and, much more, such an unknown being as 
 Pinckney, brought over my head, and trampling on the bel- 
 lies of hundreds of other men, infinitely his superiors in 
 talent, services, and reputation, filled me with apprehensions 
 for the safety of us all. It demonstrated to me that, if the 
 project succeeded, our Constitution could not have lasted 
 four years. We should have been set afloat, and landed the 
 Lord knows where. That must be a sordid people indeed 
 a people destitute of a sense of honor, equity, and character 
 
 that could submit to be governed, and see hundreds of its 
 most meritorious public men governed, by a Pinckney, under 
 an elective government. Hereditary government, when it 
 imposes young, new, inexperienced men upon the public, has 
 its compensations and equivalents, but elective government 
 has none. I mean by this no disrespect to Mr. Pinckney. 
 I believe him to be a worthy man. I speak only by compar- 
 ison with others." 
 
 This passage shows at once the weakness of the man, and 
 the error of .his party. In their view, men were everything, 
 
 institutions, principles, people, were subordinate. Hap- 
 pily for us, this is not the case ; for, if it had been, a man so 
 fussy, so vain, and so unteachable as Adams, might have 
 destroyed the country, instead of merely ruining the Federal 
 party. 
 
 During the four years of Mr. Adams's administration, 
 Vice-Presiclent Jefferson, though presiding over the Senate, 
 and performing no independent action, constantly grew in 
 the affections and the esteem of the Republican leaders. 
 His influence over those around him was due to the capti- 
 
CANDIDATES FOB THE PRESIDENCY. 427 
 
 vating power of truth, and the persuasive eloquence with 
 which he expounded it in conversation. He had never 
 served his country in the field, and he was as little of an 
 orator as General Grant. He probably never made a speech 
 of fifteen minutes' length in his life, and never addressed a 
 popular audience. The public knew him as the man who 
 had abolished in Virginia the laws of Primogeniture and the 
 legal supremacy of the Episcopal Church, the twin meas- 
 ures which annihilated caste, and set religion free. They 
 honored him as the great writer, who had known how to 
 express with force and dignity the feeling and the determina- 
 tion of America in the Declaration of Independence. They 
 knew him as the man who could forgive the violence and 
 even the cruelty of the revolutionists in France, easier than 
 he could forgive the infinite turpitude of their oppressors. 
 These things, however, might not have won for him the 
 plaudits of a miscellaneous convention. 
 
 Again we find the name of Burr associated in the Presi- 
 dential canvass with that of the illustrious Democrat. A 
 Congressional caucus, we again see, was not infallible in its 
 palmiest days, since, while nominating a philosopher and 
 statesman, it could at the same time recommend to the peo- 
 ple an adroit politician, a man who, perhaps, had as little 
 of the true Democrat in him as any one then living. Burr 
 was chosen by the caucus, simply in recognition of his skill 
 as a political manager. As it was the State of New York 
 which decided the election in favor of the Republicans, it 
 was agreed in the caucus that the candidate for the second 
 office should be a New Yorker, and Burr carried the day 
 against Chancellor Livingston and George Clinton, both of 
 whom were superior to himself in age, fortune, services, and 
 social rank. 
 
 A dastardly weapon early employed in our Presidential 
 
428 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 contests was calumny; but the wounds which it inflict&d 
 were never mortal. We may assert that slander has never 
 seriously harmed a public man, though it has frequently aided 
 one. Hamilton, accused of peculation, could only refute the 
 charge by confessing himself an adulterer ; but neither the 
 He nor the truth lessened his influence as a politician, nor 
 indeed lowered his character as a man ; for those who 
 lamented his immorality, honored its frank acknowledgment. 
 Jefferson was denounced as an atheist, and it was said that his 
 plantation swarmed with the yellow-faced proofs of his licen- 
 tiousness. These accusations gained for him more votes than 
 they lost. The virtuous John Adams was accused of im- 
 porting mistresses from England, but no one regarded the 
 ridiculous tale. Such calumnies as these had one pernicious 
 effect: they prevented well-founded charges from being 
 believed. Aaron Burr, for example, was neither a moral 
 nor an honest man; but in the midst of such a torrent of 
 groundless slanders, who could believe that the candidate 
 for the Vice-Presidency was profligate or debauched ? So, in 
 later times, when true representations of the violence of 
 Andrew Jackson were given to the public, people disbelieved 
 them as a matter of course. 
 
 Skilful politicians in these modern days have learned 
 wisdom from the experience of their predecessors. We have 
 known instances, during the last few years, of the best- 
 founded objections to the private character of candidates 
 being deliberately withheld from the public, from the convic- 
 tion that they would benefit rather than injure. 
 
 A profound peace settled upon the politics of the country 
 after the inauguration of Jefferson in 1801. That great mail 
 knew the importance of little things . The stately ceremonies 
 and tedious etiquette of the White House were immediately 
 laid aside, and a republican simplicity characterized all the 
 
CANDIDATES FOR THE PRESIDENCY. 429 
 
 intercourse between the President and his fellow-citizens. 
 A coach and four no longer conveyed the President through 
 the miie of Washington. When Mr. Jefferson had occasion 
 to attend at the Capitol, he rode thither on horseback, unat- 
 tended, and tied his horse to a post before entering the 
 building. While such trifles as these enchanted the multi- 
 tude, wise men were gratified to see the national affairs con- 
 ducted with a dignity, wisdom, and economy, which, we 
 truly believe, have never been equalled in the government of 
 any nation. It cannot be that Jefferson was a chimera of 
 the popular imagination. No man's conduct and character 
 have ever endured so long and keen a scrutiny as his, and 
 he retained to the last the veneration of a great majority of 
 the American people. Such an ascendency as he maintained 
 for thirty years over the popular mind was not due to any 
 splendor of talent, or to the eclat of military exploits ; it was 
 the honest tribute of an intelligent people to the greatest and 
 best of their servants. Thomas Jefferson ruled the United 
 States, by himself and his disciples, for twenty-four years. 
 Indeed, we may say, with considerable truth, that the United 
 States has only had four Presidents, namely : George Wash- 
 ington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, and Abraham 
 Lincoln. The rest have been satellites, disciples, or acci- 
 dents. 
 
 In 1808, two men were prominent above all others for the 
 succession, and they were prominent chiefly because Thomas 
 Jefferson was known to prefer and honor them. These were 
 James Madison, Secretary of State, and James Monroe, the 
 negotiator who had recently purchased Louisiana from Napo- 
 leon. Of these two, Monroe was the man whose "record," 
 as we term it, had most in it which the people could appre- 
 ciate. Twice wounded, and twice promoted in the Revolu- 
 tion, known to be favored by General Washington, employed 
 
430 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 by Adams in foreign service, and recalled from France 
 because his sympathies for the Revolutionists were too man- 
 ifest, and their regard for him too conspicuous, a law-student 
 with Jefferson, a Virginian of good family, blessed with a 
 lovely and attractive wife, he had recently crowned his 
 diplomatic career by succeeding in the purchase of Louisiana, 
 two weeks after his arrival in Paris. The merit of this great 
 acquisition seemed to be chiefly his, though it was not ; and 
 there was a considerable party of Republicans who desired 
 to reward it by elevating him to the chief magistracy. He 
 was very far indeed from being a great man. The spirit of 
 command was not in him, nor had he the tact which fre- 
 quently supplies its place. He aspired to the highest hon- 
 ors of the State, and he saw, not without repining, that the 
 preference of Mr. Jefferson for his rival was likely to defer 
 the gratification of his wishes. Mr. Jefferson has informed 
 posterity, that in this contest he maintained an absolute neu- 
 trality, and we have not the slightest question of the fact. 
 But Mr. Jefferson's preference for Madison was evident, and 
 such was the ascendency of the President in ^the Republican 
 party, that the preference was decisive of Mr. Madison's 
 nomination by the Congressional caucus. That nomination 
 was made, however, with the understanding that Monroe was 
 to be James Madison's successor. It is surprising to notice 
 under what discipline the Democratic party was at that early 
 day. Monroe, who was the favorite of the extreme Repub- 
 licans, such as Andrew Jackson, received but three votes in 
 the Congressional caucus, out of eighty-nine, while James 
 Madison, the "regular candidate" of the party, received 
 eighty-three* Monroe, we may gather from the correspon- 
 dence of the time, was restive under his defeat ; but he was 
 recalled to his duty, and reconciled to his fate, by a few kind 
 'ind wise lines from the pen of Mr. Jefferson. 
 
CANDIDATES FOB THE PRESIDENCY. 431 
 
 Of all the men elected by universal suffrage to the chief 
 magistracy of a nation, the one that was least likely to be 
 spontaneously elected was James Madison. In personal 
 appearance and demeanor, dressed as he was always in a suit 
 of black, he was more like a student than a man of the world. 
 A plain, sound, and courteous speaker, there was neither 
 great force nor brilliancy in his oratory. He was a man of 
 the closet, far more able to form a correct opinion respecting 
 government, than to administer government in times of 
 difficulty. A relative of Jefferson, who was much with him 
 in his old age, has informed us that Thomas Jefferson 
 respected more highly the understanding of James Madison, 
 and deferred to it more, than to that of any other man of his 
 time. It is not, however, the wisdom of the cloister which 
 can conduct a young nation with honor and success through 
 a war with an ancient and powerful empire. That the disas- 
 ters of the war of 1812 did not prevent the reelection of 
 Mr. Madison is a proof, at once, of Jefferson's commanding 
 influence, of the strict discipline of the Democratic party, 
 and, above all, of the good sense of the American people. 
 Whatever might have been Mr. Madison's shortcomings, it 
 was not clear to the party or to the public that any one else 
 would do better, and " it is no time," as Mr. Lincoln 
 remarked, " to swap horses when you are swimming a stream." 
 When some weak brethren of the party faltered in their sup- 
 port of the President, and besought Mr. Jefferson to come to 
 his aid in the Cabinet, he replied, and that, too, at a time of 
 extreme despondency in the public mind : " From three and 
 thirty years' trial, I can say conscientiously, that I do not 
 know in the world a man of purer integrity, more dispassion- 
 ate, disinterested, and devoted to genuine republicanism ; nor 
 could I, in the whole scope of America and Europe, point 
 out an abler head. He may be illy seconded by others, 
 
432 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 betrayed by the Hulls and Arnolds of our country, for 
 such there are in every country, and with sorrow and suffer- 
 ing we know it, but what man can do, will be done by 
 Mr. Madison. I hope, therefore, there will be no difference 
 among Kepublicans as to his reelection." 
 
 Supported thus by the venerable chief of the Democrats, 
 and aided by cheering victories upon the ocean, Mr. Madi- 
 son was reflected by one hundred and twenty-eight electoral 
 votes, to De Witt Clinton's eighty-nine. 
 
 When the war closed in a blaze of triumph at New Orleans, 
 in 1815, the Federal party was a thing of the past. It may 
 be laid down as a rule, that a political party which gives a 
 doubtful support to the administration during a war in which 
 the honor and safety of the country are at stake, and from 
 which the nation issues triumphant, will never regain power 
 under its old name and organization. This law fcas been 
 twice exemplified in the history of the United States. The 
 Federal party ceased to exist in 1815, and James Monroe 
 succeeded to the Presidency in 1817, and was reflected in 
 1821, with the nearest approach to unanimity the country 
 has seen since the days of Washington. 
 
 Another law of politics may be laid down : whenever a 
 political party has practically extinguished the party in oppo- 
 sition to it, it will speedily divide. Even if there did not 
 exist a necessity for this in human nature, it would occur 
 sooner or later from the ambition of rival chiefs. 
 
 If James Monroe had been a man of commanding char- 
 acter, or even a thorough-going partisan, it would have been 
 easy for him to continue the Jeffersonian dynasty by choos- 
 ing his successor. But he was neither. So moderate had 
 he become, that he was disposed to give one of the places in 
 his Cabinet to a Federalist. "While I am here," he wrote 
 to General Jackson, a few days before his inauguration, " I 
 
CANDIDATES FOR THE PRESIDENCY. 433 
 
 shall make the administration, first, for the country and its 
 cause ; secondly, to give effect to the government of the 
 people, through me, for the term of my appointment, not for 
 the aggrandizement of any one'' In this spirit the good- 
 natured and hospitable old soldier conducted his administra- 
 tion, and consequently neither of the able men who aspired 
 to the succession was able to use the administration for the 
 promotion of his views. 
 
 The leading competitors were six in number, and each of 
 them possessed some signal advantage over the others. 
 John Quiucy Adams, as Secretary of State, was in the line 
 of succession which the usage of twenty-four years had 
 established. William H. Crawford, by withdrawing his 
 name from the caucus of 1816 in favor of Mr. Monroe, had 
 acquired a kind of right, which was acknowledged, to a 
 nomination by the caucus of 1824 ; and he was indeed regarded 
 as the rightful candidate of the party. Henry Clay, the first 
 orator of his time, who had carried the war of 1812 upon his 
 shoulders, the favorite of the House of Representatives, 
 over which he had presided for fourteen years, could 
 form well-founded hopes of success before the people. Cal- 
 houn and De Witt Clinton were also prominent candidates ; 
 and, in distant Tennessee, there was Andrew Jackson, the 
 most popular man then living in tfie country, whom the 
 Legislature of his State had placed in nomination. 
 
 As Mr. Crawford was the predestined candidate of the 
 Congressional caucus, neither of his rivals could hope for 
 the prize unless the caucus system were abolished. Accord- 
 ingly, such a clamor was fomented in the country against 
 "King Caucus," that the prestige of that potentate was 
 destroyed. It was in vain that the party managers admitted 
 the public to witness the deliberations of the caucus. On 
 the evening appointed for its meeting, while the galleries of 
 
434 TKIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 the House of Representatives were crowded with spectators, 
 there were but sixty-six members of Congress upon the floor, 
 who nominated Crawford, amid the derision of the country, 
 and without increasing his strength in any section of it. 
 
 King Caucus was thus dethroned without leaving an heir 
 to succeed him, and, for the next eight years, there was no 
 settled and recognized plan of nominating candidates. 
 Andrew Jackson, first recommended to the people by the 
 Legislature of Tennessee, indorsed by State Conventions and 
 public meetings, was a name of magic with the people, and 
 required little artificial aid. Mr. Adams's battle was fought 
 chiefly by the Press and the usual local machinery. This 
 want of system in nominating candidates so divided the 
 electoral vote, that the people failed to elect a President, and 
 the election devolved upon the House of Representatives, 
 which set aside the favorite of the people, and chose Mr. 
 Adams. 
 
 For the election of 1828, no preliminary caucus and no 
 other system of nomination was necessary. There could be 
 but two candidates : the incumbent of the Presidential chair, 
 and the popular soldier whose friends had industriously dis- 
 seminated the falsehood, that he had been cheated out of 
 the Presidency in 1825. 
 
 General Jackson was elected. He received one hundred 
 and seventy-eight electoral votes, and Mr. Adams eighty- 
 three. Thus, the powerful Republican party, triumphant 
 and united since 1801, was divided, and the two divisions 
 soon adopted new names. The party of which Andrew 
 Jackson was the idolized chief was called Democratic, and 
 that which looked up to Henry Clay as its head took the 
 name of Whig. 
 
 General Jackson, as every one knows, brought into the 
 Presidential chair the passions which five years of political 
 
CANDIDATES FOB THE PRESIDENCY. 435 
 
 strife had generated and inflamed, and the two darling 
 objects of his policy were to keep Henry Clay out of, and 
 bring Martin Van Buren into, the Presidency. Scarcely one 
 important act of his administration was performed which had 
 not some bearing upon one or the other of these objects. 
 We, however, have only to do with the measures taken to 
 prepare the way for the elevation of Mr. Van Buren. 
 
 General Jackson, we can positively assert, came to Wash- 
 ington in 1829, intending to serve but one term. He 
 brought with him in his pocket a paper of rules for the con- 
 duct of his administration ; which rules he had read to sev- 
 eral of his friends in Tennessee, and he had pledged himself 
 to abide by them. One of these rules was, that no member 
 of his Cabinet should be a candidate for the succession. 
 The object of this, as he said, was to prevent a recurrence 
 of the intrigues which had taken place in the Cabinet of 
 "Jim Monroe," as he was wont to style his old friend, 
 almost every member of which had been an active candidate 
 for the succession. This famous rule was read to the mem- 
 bers of General Jackson's Cabinet, and they all admitted its 
 reasonableness, and promised a compliance with it. There 
 was, however, but one member of the Cabinet of sufficient 
 prominence to be thought of as a candidate, and that was 
 Martin Van Buren, Secretary of State. To him alone the 
 rule could be supposed to apply. 
 
 Andrew Jackson was not a man to let a slip of writing- 
 paper interpose an obstacle to the execution of his will, and 
 a means was readily found of removing Mr. Van Buren from 
 the list of the excluded. 
 
 On General Jackson's inauguration day, his most intimate 
 friends could not have foretold which would finally stand 
 highest in his regard, Vice-President Calhoun or Mr. Van 
 Buren. The events which led to the President's speedy and 
 
436 TEIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 total estrangement from Mr. Calhoun, and which induced 
 him to dedicate himself, as it were, to the elevation of Mr. 
 Van Buren, are too well known to be related here. It suf- 
 fices merely to remind the reader of the fact ; and by that 
 fact the politics of the United States were not merely 
 influenced, but controlled, for a period of thirty years. 
 
 The measures taken by General Jackson to insure the 
 succession to Mr. Van Buren shall now be briefly indicated. 
 During the first summer of his Presidency, the General was 
 in such feeble health that his friends concluded that he could 
 not survive the term for which he had been elected, and it 
 occurred to one of them, Major William B. Lewis, that, if 
 the President should die, Mr. Calhoun would succeed him, 
 and Mr. Van Buren's prospects be ruined. To prevent so 
 dire a result, he induced the General to write a letter, to be 
 published in case of his death, warmly commending Mr. 
 Van Buren, and severely denouncing Mr. Calhoun. This 
 letter contained the following passage : 
 
 " Permit me here to say of Mr. Van Buren, that I have found 
 him everything I could desire him to be, and believe Mm to be, 
 not only deserving my confidence, but the confidence of the nation. 
 Instead of his being selfish and intriguing, as has been represented 
 by some of his opponents, I have ever found him frank, open, 
 candid, and manly. He, my dear friend, is well qualified to fill 
 the highest office in the gift of the people, who in him will find- a 
 true friend and safe depositary of their rights and liberties. I wish 
 I could say as much for Mr. Calhoun and some of his friends." 
 
 The letter proceeds, at considerable length, to descant 
 upon Mr. Calhoun and his political errors. To guard against 
 accidents, a copy of this letter, signed by the General's own 
 hand, was retained in the secret archives of the White House. 
 As, however, the event which it contemplated never oc- 
 curred, the letter was never used, and the old friend of the 
 
CANDIDATES FOR THE PEESIDENCT. 437 
 
 President, to whom it was addressed, never knew its real 
 object. 
 
 Vice-President Calhoun was too important a character at 
 that time, and had too many claims upon the support of his 
 party, to be easily set aside. It was, therefore, concluded, 
 in the secret counsels of the White House, that General 
 Jackson must serve a second term, and measures to this end 
 were taken early in the spring of the General's first year. 
 An adroit letter was written in the White House to a mem- 
 ber of the Pennsylvania Legislature, a thorough-going 
 adherent of the Administration, which contained a sugges- 
 tion that bore fruit. " I am not authorized to say," said the 
 author of this epistle, "that the General would permit his 
 name to be used again ; but, knowing him as I do, I feel 
 confident that, if he believed the interest of the country 
 required it, and that it was the' wish of the people he should 
 serve another term, he would not hesitate one moment. If, 
 then, it is the desire of your State that he should serve 
 another term, let the members of her Legislature express the 
 sentiments of the people upon that subject. Let it be done in 
 such a way as not to make it necessary for him to speak in 
 relation to the matter." 
 
 The hint was promptly taken. In a few days, an address 
 appeared in the designated newspaper, requesting General 
 Jackson to serve a second term, and it was signed by sixty- 
 eight members of the Legislature. Similar tactics elicited 
 similar addresses from the Legislatures of New York and 
 Ohio ; so that, before General Jackson had served fourteen 
 months of his first term, he was brought forward conspicu- 
 ously, as the candidate of his party, for a second. The 
 sweeping removals from office, and the filling of all valuable 
 posts with unscrupulous partisans of the Administration, 
 made it the easiest thing in the world for the President to 
 
438 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 call forth expressions of opinion in favor of any man or any 
 measure. 
 
 ' Mr. Calhoun, who was no match for the President and his 
 Kitchen Cabinet in political craft, was continually giving 
 them advantages over him. He thought to injure Andrew 
 Jackson's popularity by publishing his hostile correspon- 
 dence with the President, forgetting that the President con- 
 trolled the Democratic press of the country, and could thus 
 give to the party his own interpretation of that correspon- 
 dence. Jackson accepted the defiance, and promptly dis- 
 missed from his Cabinet the three members of it who 
 regarded the Vice-President as their political chief, and 
 appointed in their place three of his own friends. It was 
 thought to be necessary, also, for Mr. Van Buren to with- 
 draw from the Cabinet, and thus escape the operation of the 
 rule, which excluded Cabinet ministers for the succession. 
 His resignation was accepted, and, to remove him for a time 
 from the scene of political strife, he was sent as Minister to 
 England. 
 
 Then the Yice-President blundered again. Allying himself 
 for the moment with Whig Senators, he formed a combination 
 powerful enough to reject the nomination of Mr. Van Buren, 
 who was thus compelled to return from England after hold- 
 ing the post of Minister for a few months. Mr. Calhoun 
 was convinced that such an emphatic censure, by the Senate 
 of the United States, would lay his rival prostrate forever. 
 He was overheard to say to one of his friends : " It will kill 
 him, sir, kill him dead. He will never kick, sir, never 
 kick." Seldom has a man been more mistaken. The Dem- 
 ocratic party welcomed Van Buren's return as they would 
 have welcomed a conqueror, and General Jackson instantly 
 set on foot measures to make the rejected minister Vice- 
 President of the United States. 
 
CANDIDATES FOE THE PRESIDENCY. 439 
 
 There was a difficulty in the way, which much perplexed 
 the White House managers, and the solution of which has 
 had important and lasting consequences. How should Mr. 
 Van Buren be nominated for the Vice-Presidency ? Other 
 gentlemen had their eyes upon the post, and Martin Van 
 Buren had not the national reputation which could call forth 
 a spontaneous and universal nomination. It was, also, 
 highly important that this nomination should appear spon- 
 taneous, and, especially, that the President's hand should 
 not be seen in it. It was Major William B. Lewis, the 
 President's most confidential friend, and an inmate of the 
 White House, who suggested the solution of the problem. 
 In a letter to Amos Kendal, of May, 1831, he reviewed the 
 situation, and the claims of the several candidates, and added 
 the following words : 7 
 
 " Surrounded by so many difficulties as the case is, and taking 
 everything into consideration, many of our friends (and the most 
 judicious of them) think it would be best for the Republican mem- 
 bers of the respective Legislatures to propose to the people to elect 
 delegates to a NATIONAL CONVENTION, to be holden for that 
 purpose at Harrisburg, or some other place, about the* middle of 
 next May. That point is preferred, to prevent an improper inter- 
 ference by members of Congress, who, about that time will leave 
 this city for their respective homes. If the Legislature of New 
 Hampshire will propose this, I think it will be followed up by 
 others, and have the effect, no doubt, of putting a stop to partial 
 nominations. You had better reflect upon this proposition, and, 
 if you think with me, make the suggestion to our friend Hill (one 
 of the Senators from New Hampshire)." 
 
 This ingenious proposition was approved by Mr. Kendal 
 and Mr. Hill. The docile legislators of the Granite State, 
 to the number of one hundred and sixty-nine, immediately 
 met in caucus, and adopted the plan which Major Lewis had 
 
 28 
 
440 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 suggested. The " Globe " seconded the proposal for a 
 National Convention ; other Legislatures sanctioned it ; and 
 due care was taken, by the friends of the Administration, 
 that the right delegates should attend it. The Convention 
 met at Baltimore, in May, 1832, and it consisted of three 
 hundred and twenty-six delegates. Leading members, who 
 were disinclined to vote for Mr. Van Buren, were given dis- 
 tinctly to understand, that they must vote for the President's 
 candidate, or be prepared to quarrel with the President. 
 Such was the power of the Administration, and such the dis- 
 cipline of the party, that, out of the three hundred and twenty- 
 six delegates, only sixty-six presumed to give a vote against 
 Martin Van Buren, just enough to impart to the delibera- 
 tions of the Convention a slight show of independence. The 
 people, however, were not quite so obedient to the mandates 
 of a party chief. General Jackson received two hundred 
 and nineteen electoral votes in 1832, while Mr. Van Buren 
 received but one hundred and eighty-nine ; which, however, 
 was forty-four more than he needed. 
 
 Thus was inaugurated the system of -nominating candi- 
 dates by National Convention, which has continued to the 
 present time. State nominating Conventions had been fre- 
 quently held ; and, when railroads were about to make all 
 parts of the country easily accessible, the system properly 
 and naturally became National. 
 
 The plan is open to objections, as every plan would be ; 
 but it is probably the fairest and best which the case admits. 
 The great objection to the system does not exist in the sys- 
 tem itself, but in the overshadowing influence of an Adminis- 
 tration, through its control of the office-holders. So long as 
 the President possesses an unlimited power of removal, a 
 nominating Convention consists, necessarily, either of men 
 in office who desire to keep their offices, or of men out of 
 
CANDIDATES FOR THE PRESIDENCY. 441 
 
 office, who desire to have office. No Convention for the 
 nomination of Presidential candidates has ever yet been held, 
 which did not chiefly consist, either of office-holders or 
 office-seekers. The Convention, for example, which nomi- 
 nated Mr. Van Burenfor the Presidency in 1836, was almost 
 entirely composed of men pledged to his support, and whose 
 defection would have been instantly visited by their dismis- 
 sal from valuable posts, or the dismissal of their friends. It 
 was in no sense a deliberative body. No choice was given 
 it. No regiment of the army could feel itself more bound to 
 obey the orders of its colonel, than this Convention felt itself 
 bound to comply with the known desires of the President. 
 It is well for the people to understand this. A President 
 who remains united with the party that elected him, and who 
 has an unlimited power of removal from office, is in a posi- 
 tion to dictate to the Convention of his party the man it shall 
 nominate. But he ought not to have an unlimited power of 
 removal. 
 
THE ORIGINATOR OF ODB 
 
 INTERNAL IMPROVEMENT SYSTEM, 
 
 AND WHAT HB TRIED TO ACCOMPLISH. 
 
 IT was not De Witt Clinton who began the great work of 
 making the Western Continent, in all its parts, accessible. 
 The father of our American system of internal improvement 
 was George Washington, planter, of Virginia. The splendor 
 of his fame as patriot, warrior, and statesman obscures in 
 some degree the homelier merits of the citizen and the 
 pioneer. His public life, however, was only incidental ; it 
 was forced upon him, not sought; endured, not enjoyed. 
 At the head-quarters of the army, and still more at the seat 
 of government, he led a glorious life, it is true, but a con- 
 strained, unnatural one, ever anxious, to use his own admir- 
 able and touching words, "to collect his duty from a just 
 appreciation of every circumstance by which it might be 
 affected." This noble solicitude made him seem, to the 
 slighter men around him, slow and over-cautious. He who 
 would know the man aright, the true George Washington, 
 must see him on one of his own excellent horses, following 
 up, with a party of hunters and half-breeds, the head- waters 
 of the James or the Potomac piercing the Alleghanies, and 
 roaming the wilderness beyond in search of branches of the 
 Ohio, by which the commerce of the Western rivers and 
 lakes could find its way to the rivers of Virginia. Here he 
 was at home. Here his glance was bold and free. Here he 
 appeared, what he really was, a leader of his generation, and 
 
444 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 showed that his preeminence in Virginia was not due merely 
 to the accident of his possessing a great fortune, but to the 
 cast and breadth of his mind, which was truly continental. 
 He, first of all men, was fully possessed of that American 
 spirit which has just brought the two oceans within a hundred 
 and fifty hours of one another. He was the forerunner of 
 De Witt Clinton, as of the men who have since created Chi- 
 cago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, San Francisco, Duluth. 
 
 The broad Potomac, which swept by his own front-door, 
 he had personally traced to its sources in the Alleghanies, 
 examined its falls and obstructions, and sought out the 
 branch of the Ohio nearest Lake Erie ; musing, meanwhile, 
 upon the best modes of creating, out of these materials, the 
 great national highway between- the ocean and the waters 
 of the West. How intent he was upon this scheme, how 
 clearly he saw its advantages, we discover in the length and 
 particularity of his correspondence on the subject with Jef- 
 ferson and other Virginia friends. For that day, however, 
 it was too much for Virginia to attempt, and Washington 
 fixed upon the improvement of the navigation of the James 
 as the nearest approach to a realization of his plan then pos- 
 sible. A canal seven miles long round the falls at Eichmond 
 adds two hundred and twenty miles to the barge navigation 
 of the river, and makes a water highway to the mountains. 
 Companies were formed at Richmond for the improvement 
 of both rivers, and a grateful legislature presented to Gen- 
 eral Washington, as the originator of both schemes, fifty 
 hundred-pound shares in the Potomac Company, and a hun- 
 dred hundred-dollar shares in the James River Company. 
 He declined both gifts, of course ; but in his will he distinctly 
 claims to have " suggested the vast advantages which Virginia 
 would derive from the extension of its inland navigation under 
 legislative patronage." 
 
INTERNAL IMPROVEMENT SYSTEM. 445 
 
 He not only suggested the scheme, but he felt for it the 
 warm affection which men cherish for the children of their 
 brain. To bring the commerce of the western country to the 
 ocean by the shortest cut and easiest grades, namely, 
 across Virginia to the waters of the Chesapeake, this was 
 Washington's conception; and it was the first American 
 scheme of the kind of which we have any knowledge. On 
 various errands in furtherance of the general plan Washing- 
 ton crossed the mountains as many as five times. 
 
 There are readers who have heard the late venerable 
 Albert Gallatin describe the interview which, when a young 
 man, he chanced to witness in the heart of the Alleghauies. 
 General Washington and a number of trappers and pioneers 
 had met with the purpose of ascertaining the best practicable 
 gap in the mountains for the road between the two water 
 systems. The idea of tunnelling the mountains, and lifting 
 a canal-boat two thousand feet into the air, and letting it 
 softly down on the Ohio slope, had not yet entered the most 
 daring mind. Washington took for granted the necessity 
 of a " carrying place," and he desired to discover the happy 
 medium between the shortest and the easiest. Old woods- 
 man as he was, he knew that the deer and the buffalo are the 
 first explorers of the wilderness, and that it is the hunter who 
 first becomes acquainted with the Reports of those four- 
 footed engineers. So he invited the hunters and settlers to 
 meet him at a log-hut in the mountains, a " land-office " con- 
 sisting of one room fourteen feet square, containing a bed, a 
 small pine table, and a wooden bench. The General, upon 
 his arrival with his nephew, took his seat at the table, and 
 the hunters crowded into the cabin and stood around the 
 table, a few finding an advantageous place upon the land 
 agent's bed. Young Gallatin was in the front of the leather- 
 stockinged group, near the central figure. Pen in hand, the 
 
446 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 Father of his Country questioned each pioneer in turn, and 
 recorded the substance of his replies. When all had spoken, 
 the young gentleman from Switzerland fancied he saw the 
 path of which the General was in search. Washington still 
 hesitating, Gallatin broke in with rash and reckless words : 
 "O, it is plain enough ; that is evidently the most practicable 
 place." All the company stared, astonished at so gross 3 
 breach of politeness in a youth towards the most illustrious 
 ol living men. The General laid down his pen, and cast a 
 reproachful look at the culprit ; but, resuming his inquiries, 
 he soon made up his mind, and turning to the intruder said, 
 as he again put down his pen, " You are right, sir." Thu 
 was established the road through the Alleghanies, which has 
 been used ever since as a highway, and will be used forever. 
 w It was always so," Mr. Gallatin would say, " with General 
 Washington ; he was slow in forming an opinion, and never 
 decided till he knew he was right." That night the General 
 slept upon the bed ; while his nephew, the agent, and Galla- 
 tin lay upon the floor wrapped in buffalo-skins. 
 
 General Washington did not live to see his project exe- 
 cuted ; nor has it yet been executed. Not a bushel of corn 
 from the Western country reaches the ocean by way of Vir- 
 ginia; and if a ton of coal from the head-waters of the 
 Kanawha occasionally gets to Richmond, it is carried down 
 the Kanawha to the Ohio ninety miles, down the Ohio and 
 Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico, and 'so round by the ocean 
 to the James River, a circuit of four thousand miles. All 
 this swoop of travel, because Washington's scheme wants 
 the finishing touch, the last hundred miles or so of easy 
 road-making ! 
 
 And yet, from the day when the General had his confer- 
 ence with the hunters to the present hour, Virginia has been 
 trying to accomplish it, trying hard, too, and spending 
 
INTERNAL IMPROVEMENT SYSTEM. 447 
 
 money more freely than could have been expected. Tho 
 old James Kiver Company, founded by Washington, made 
 that seven-mile canal round the falls near Richmond, and 
 cleared the river of obstructions as far back as Buchanan, in 
 Botecourt County, where the Blue Eidge interposes a 
 barrier. It was a long stride toward the Kanawha (the 
 nearest navigable branch of the Ohio) , and it was a priceless 
 good to Virginia. Then, in 1823, a second James River 
 Company, succeeding to the rights of the first, improved all 
 that the first had done, and added several important works 
 of its own. First, it constructed a canal through the moun- 
 tains, seven miles and a half long, which enabled boats to 
 get as far west as Covington, which is two hundred and five 
 miles from Richmond. Next, it made a pretty good turn- 
 pike road from Covington to the Ohio, at the point where 
 the Big Sandy enters it, a distance of two hundred and 
 eighty miles. Lastly, it improved the navigation of the 
 Kanawha by dams and sluices, so that steamboats could 
 more easily ascend it, and bring passengers sixty miles 
 nearer Covington before taking to the road. This was more 
 than a boon to Virginia ; it was a national good ; it was an 
 approximation to Washington's idea. Henry Clay, when he 
 was getting into the vale of years, found this way of travel- 
 ling to Washington much more agreeable than a six weeks' 
 horseback ride, with the chance of drowning at the swollen 
 fords of so many mountain streams. They still point out, 
 along the line of the Covington Turnpike, the houses where 
 he and his merry party used to halt for the night, and spend 
 a long evening at whist. 
 
 But the age of turnpikes passed. In 1835, when the Erie 
 Canal was pouring the wealth of the great West into New 
 York, Virginia, always believing that she possessed the true 
 pathway, prepared for a supreme effort. The James River 
 
448 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 and Kanawha Company was chartered, the State being 
 the chief stockholder, and Virginia set about constructing 
 a canal between the two rivers, the plan of which included a 
 nine-mile tunnel through the Alleghanies at an elevation of 
 seventeen hundred feet. Upon this work Virginia has been 
 fitfully toiling ever since. Eleven millions of dollars have 
 been spent upon it, and it will cost forty millions more to 
 complete it. It could be finished in four years, ^the forty 
 millions were forthcoming ; but there is no immediate pros- 
 pect of Virginia's having such a sum at her disposal. 
 
 Probably the means could have been found for the execu- 
 tion of the project, if, in its infancy, a new mode of trans- 
 portation had not been introduced, which proved more 
 attractive to capital. Within a year after the formation of 
 the Canal Company, the State began to push a railroad west- 
 ward, that is to say, a railroad company was formed, and 
 the State, according to its ancient custom, subscribed for 
 three fifths of the stock. Forty-four years having elapsed, 
 we find that it is the railroad, not the canal, that will realize 
 Washington's dream ; for the railroad has overcome its 
 worst obstacles, and is going on to speedy completion. By 
 various companies, under different charters, the State had 
 constructed a railroad from Richmond to the mountains, 
 nearly two hundred miles, and expended three millions and 
 a quarter in preparing for the laying of the rails beyond the 
 mountains, when the war broke out, compelling us all to 
 devote our energies and our means to the work of destruc- 
 tion. The Alleghanies had been tunnelled at eight places. 
 One tunnel a mile long, and seven shorter tunnels, had been 
 finished, or nearly finished. The heavy embankments and 
 deep excavations requisite in the mountain region were 
 either done or were in an advanced stage of forwardness, 
 and trains were running to a station within ten miles of 
 
INTERNAL IMPROVEMENT SYSTEM. 449 
 
 Covington. Then all constructive works were brought to a 
 stand-still, while we fought to undo the mistakes of men 
 who died two hundred years before any of us were born. 
 
 When the war ended, Virginia was so torn, impoverished, 
 and desolate, that if this road could have been finished by 
 waving a wand over the incomplete parts, she could scarcely 
 have lifted an arm for the purpose. In 1866, the two com- 
 panies which had executed the work so far one the part 
 east of the mountains, and the other the part west were 
 consolidated into the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad Com- 
 pany. But three fifths of the stock of these companies had 
 been the property of Virginia, and the Virginia which had 
 subscribed so liberally had ceased to exist. There were 
 two Virginias in 1866, each having rights in these works, 
 but neither able to complete them. Both legislatures, how- 
 ever, comprehended the situation. Both knew that, unas- 
 sisted, they could not finish the road, and that its prompt 
 completion was the supreme interest of both. Hence, they 
 agreed to surrender their rights to the new company, on 
 condition that it should go forward and perform the work. 
 In other words, they said to capitalists : " Here you see two 
 hundred miles of war-worn, battered railroad-track; like- 
 wise, a dozen tunnels, finished and unfinished ; also, a great 
 many miles of embankment and excavation, unharmed by 
 war and weather ; and a large number of bridges, more or 
 less sound : take all this property, on the simple condition 
 of converting and completing it into a substantial railroad, 
 that shall connect the James with the Ohio, and open a new 
 highway between the ocean and the great West." 
 
 It was a difficult task to undertake in the second year of 
 peace, with a Pacific Railroad clamoring for money in every 
 county, and the debt system still in debate. Nevertheless, 
 
450 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 Wall Street, after due hesitation, accepted the offer. The 
 Empire State of the nineteenth century joined hands with 
 the Empire State of the eighteenth, and we may expect with 
 confidence that before long Washington's project will be 
 executed. 
 
POCAHONTAS AND HER HUSBAND. 
 THE UNEOMANTIC TKUTH. 
 
 HAVING duly celebrated various triumphant exertions of 
 human ingenuity, let me now relate one instance of success- 
 ful imposture. But it will oblige us to bid farewell to our 
 childhood's Pocahontas. Dusky maiden, heroine of Captain 
 John Smith's romantic story, farewell forever ! 
 
 It is strange we should have believed this pleasing fiction 
 so long ; for the other incredible tales of the same author 
 ought to have put us upon our guard. He describes Pow- 
 hatan, for example, as living in great state, like an " empe- 
 ror," who gave audience to Captain Newport, with twenty 
 women on each side of the room, and a guard of four or five 
 hundred men around the house ; while on each side of the 
 door stood forty platters of " fine bread." John Smith knew 
 the Indians better than that. He knew very well that a 
 people without cattle, horses, sheep, or swine, with little 
 cleared land, and only two or three rude implements, could 
 never maintain an imperial court and retinue in that style. 
 
 It seems to have been a habit of this adventurer to attri- 
 bute his deliverance from peril to the friendship and inter- 
 cession of beautiful damsels. In Turkey he won the tender 
 love of the lovely Tragabigzanda, who gave him substantial 
 aid in his time of trouble. At another place, it was the 
 noble Lady Callamata who " largely supplied all his wants." 
 But let him speak for himself. In the dedication of his 
 
452 TKIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 History of Virginia to the Duchess of Eichmond, he holds 
 the following language : 
 
 " My comfort is, that heretofore honorable and virtuous ladies, 
 and comparable but amongst themselves, have offered me rescue 
 and protection in my greatest danger. Even in foreign parts I 
 have felt relief from that sex. The beauteous lady Tragabigzanda, 
 when I was a slave to the Turks, did all she could to secure me. 
 When I overcame the bashaw of Nalbritz in Tartaria, the charita- 
 ble Lady Callamata supplied my necessities. In the utmost of 
 many extremities, that blessed Pocahontas, the great King's 
 daughter of Virginia, oft saved my life. When I escaped the cru- 
 elties of pirates and most furious storms, a long time alone in a 
 small boat at sea, and driven ashore in France, the good Lady, 
 Madam Chanoies, bountifully assisted me. And so verily these 
 my adventures have tasted the same influence from your gracious 
 hand." 
 
 Then he never tells his story twice alike. In one of his 
 versions, Pocahontas is spoken of as " a child of tenne " ; in 
 another, as a maiden of twelve or thirteen ; and in the 
 passage just quoted, he goes beyond previous statements in 
 saying that she oft saved his life. But the most remarkable 
 discrepancy, and the one that led to the detection of the 
 braggart, remains to be told. In the year 1608, a few weeks 
 after his return to Jamestown from his residence with Pow- 
 hatan, he wrote a long letter home, in which he gave an 
 account of the manner in which he was taken prisoner, and 
 of what transpired during the month of his detention among 
 the Indians. In this letter there is no allusion to Pocahon- 
 tas ; he does not mention her name ; nor does he relate any 
 story at all resembling the one with which we are -all so 
 familiar. On the contrary, he assures us that Powhatan 
 treated him with the most bountiful generosity, and he 
 speaks of him as " this kind king." 
 
POCAHONTAS AND HEE HUSBAND. 453 
 
 Wingfield, President of the colony, was in the habit of 
 recording in his diary everything of interest that occurred 
 in Virginia. He mentions the fact of Smith's imprisonment 
 and safe return, but says nothing whatever of an Indian 
 maiden having saved his life. In short, of the events which 
 occurred in Virginia during the first ten years of the col- 
 ony's existence, we have seven distinct sources of informa- 
 tion, all but one of which are the productions of men who 
 had lived in the colony ; but in none of them is there an 
 intimation that Pocahontas saved the life of Captain Smith. 
 Two of these narratives contain several particulars of the life 
 and death of this Indian girl, and the authors of them had a 
 strong interest in exalting her reputation. 
 
 The reader, if he knows anything of the Indian character, 
 is aware that nothing is more unlikely than that an Indian 
 chief should be diverted from his purpose by the entreaties 
 of a little, girl ; and that Indian children, so far from being 
 disposed to intercede for a prisoner, enjoyed the execution 
 and torture of captives as our children do the circus and the 
 Fourth of July. 
 
 I say, then, farewell the Pocahontas of romance ! and 
 approach the true Pocahontas, the dumpy, dingy little squaw 
 whom John Eolfe married, and the council sent to England 
 to advertise forlorn Virginia ! 
 
 Pocahontas was born in the year 1598. Her father Pow- 
 hatan, by reason of his age and former prowess, was the 
 principal chief of the tribe of Indians inhabiting the region 
 about the falls of the James, a tribe that may have num- 
 bered three hundred warriors, and was connected by inter- 
 marriage and alliance with tribes living upon the Potomac 
 and other rivers flowing into the Chesapeake. We get our 
 first glimpse of Pocahontas when she was a naked girl of 
 twelve, who used to visit Jamestown and play about the 
 
454 TRIUMPHS OP ENTERPRISE. 
 
 peninsula with the white boys. William Strachey, secretary 
 of the colony, and one of its first historians, describes her as 
 he first saw her in 1610 : 
 
 " The younger Indian women goe not shadowed (clad) amongst 
 their owne companie until they be nigh eleaven or twelve returnes 
 of the leafe old (for so they accompt and bring about the yeare, 
 calling the fall of the leafe taquitock) ; nor are they much ashamed 
 thereof; and therefore would the before remembered Pochahuntas 
 a well-featured but wanton young girle, Powhatan's daughter, 
 sometymes resorting to our fort, of the age then of eleaven or twelve 
 yeares, get the boyes forth with her into the markett place, and 
 make them wheele, falling on with their hands, turning up their 
 heeles upwards, whome she would follow and wheele so herself, 
 naked as she was, all the fort over." 
 
 This, then, is her first appearance in the history of Vir- 
 ginia, a wanton young girl, naked, wheeling and wheeled 
 about the market-place at Jamestown ! Three years passed, 
 during part of which, it is intimated by one of the early 
 chroniclers, she lived with one of the settlers as his mistress. 
 Powhatan becoming actively hostile to the whites she left 
 them, and went to reside for a while with a chief and his 
 wife, whose village was situated on the shores of the river 
 Potomac. She was living there in the spring of 1613 ; but 
 the place of her retreat was unknown to the English. 
 
 One Captain Argol, a noted man in the early days of Vir- 
 ginia, was despatched that season for the third time, in the 
 vessel which he commanded, to trade with the Potomac 
 Indians for corn ; and while he lay anchored in their river, 
 he heard that Pocahontas was living near, in the village of the 
 very chief with whom he was most intimate. Japazaws was 
 the name of this potentate. He had had many a bauble 
 from Captain Argol in exchange for corn, and was accus- 
 
POCAHONTAS AND HER HUSBAND. 455 
 
 tomed to style the Captain his brother. At this time Pow- 
 hatan had eight white captives, and Captain Argol conceived 
 that by getting Pocahontas into his possession, he could 
 induce her father to give them up in exchange for her. He 
 enlisted Japazaws in the scheme, promising to give him a 
 copper kettle if he would lure Pocahontas on board his 
 ship. The temptation was too much for the Indian. His 
 wife, too, gave way at the prospect of such an addition to her 
 household treasures, and promised her assistance. 
 
 So, on a certain day the chief and his wife, accompanied 
 by Pocahontas, strolled down to the river's bank to see the 
 ship ; and while there the wife was seized with a longing to 
 goon board. Her husband objected. She persisted, saying 
 that this was the third timfi the vessel had been in their 
 river, and yet she had never visited it. The chief still 
 refusing, she resorted to the expedient employed by lovely 
 woman, in all ages and climes, to subdue the obstinacy of 
 man : she began to cry. Then her husband, as husbands 
 generally do, relented; and when Pocahontas joined her 
 entreaties, the chief launched his canoe and took the ladies 
 on board. The treacherous couple returned to the shore 
 rejoicing over their copper kettle, but Pocahontas was a 
 prisoner. 
 
 Arrived at Jamestown, she was kept as a hostage while 
 the Governor negotiated the exchange, and during her stay 
 she caught the fancy of one of the early settlers, styled in 
 the list of passengers, "John Rolfe, gentleman." I think he 
 really liked the girl. We have a very long and very sancti- 
 monious letter of his, in which he declares that his motive 
 in desiring to marry her was, to promote the welfare of the 
 colony, and the conversion of the heathen. He says this at 
 such length, and in such pious phraseology, that we are jus- 
 tified in disbelieving him. It was evidently his cue to exalt 
 
 29 
 
456 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 Pocahontas, but there is no hint in his letter of her saving 
 John Smith's life six years before. The Governor and 
 Council consenting, and Pochontas having been baptized, 
 the marriage was solemnized in 1613. 
 
 Powhatan was conciliated. He gave up his prisoners, and 
 much of his plunder. He remained the friend and ally of the 
 whites as long as he lived. 
 
 For three years John Eolfe and his wife Rebecca nee 
 Pocahontas lived together in Jamestown. A son was born 
 to them. In 1616, when Sir Thomas Dale was going home 
 to see his friends, it occurred to the Council to send with 
 him, at the expense of the colony, this interesting family, 
 as a kind of first fruit of missionary success. The colony 
 was in ill repute in England, 1 needed friends there, and 
 they thought Pocahontas and her child would advertise 
 poor Virginia effectively. 
 
 The family reached England, where Captain John Smith 
 was still living. Then it was eight years after his resi- 
 dence with Powhatan that he first told the famous tale of 
 his rescue by Pocahontas from a violent death. Doubtless 
 he told it to help the advertising scheme, and to excuse his 
 old friend Rolfe for marrying an Indian girl. He had prob- 
 ably been reading a tract, published in London in 1609, 
 concerning De Soto's exploits in Florida, in which there is 
 an account given of the Spaniard, John Ortiz, falling into the 
 hands of the savages, who bound him to stakes, and were 
 about to burn him, when a daughter of the chief interceded 
 for him and saved his life. The ingenious Smith improved 
 upon this simple tale. He wrote a letter to the Queen of 
 England, recommending the " Virginia Princess " to her 
 majesty, in which he used the following language : 
 
 " After some six weeks' fatting amongst those savage courtiers, 
 at the minute of my execution, shejiazarded the beating out of her 
 
POCAHONTAS AIO) HER HUSBAND. 457 
 
 own brains to save mine ; and not only that, but so prevailed with 
 her father that I was safely conducted to Jamestown." 
 
 The trick succeeded to admiration. Pocahontas became 
 the lion of the London season. The king and queen received 
 her at court with gracious civility ; the bishop of London 
 gave her a banquet ; and King James consulted his council 
 upon the question, whether Rolfe had not committed a grave 
 offence in marrying a princess of an imperial house ! After 
 a year's stay in England, poor Pocahontas, sick from the 
 change in her mode of living, and yet unwilling to go, set 
 out with her husband on her return home. While waiting 
 at Gravesend for the sailing of the ship, she died, and was 
 buried in one of the parish churches of that town. 
 
 Rolfe returned to Virginia, where he founded a consider- 
 able estate. His son, Thomas Rolfe, after being educated 
 in England and growing to manhood there, joined his father 
 in America. He left one son ; that son had one daughter ; 
 that daughter became the mother of a family of daughters, 
 who married respectable young men of the colony ; and thus 
 the blood of Pocahontas circulates to this day in the prin- 
 cipal families of Virginia. 
 
 Later in life, John Smith, being in London poor and neg- 
 lected, appears to have fallen into the hands of the booksel- 
 lers * for whom he wrote various versions of his travels and 
 adventures. It was at this part of his life, and to make 
 these works more attractive, that he expanded the tale of 
 Pocahontas into the form in which we usually find it. His 
 writings have been received with full credit almost to the 
 present day. A copy of his History of Virginia was sold at 
 auction the other evening in New York, for two hundred and 
 sixty-two dollars. 
 
 In another way, Rolfe is connected with the early history 
 of Virginia. In the spring of 1612, the fifth year of the 
 
458 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 Colony, he performed an action which, if we were to judge 
 it by its consequences only, we might pronounce the most 
 important deed ever done in colonial Virginia. Being an 
 old smoker, he had the curiosity to know whether white 
 men could raise good tobacco in Virginia ; and, accordingly, 
 he planted some tobacco seed at Jamestown. It grew well 
 during the summer, and when the leaves were ripe, he cured 
 them as best he could; for not a person in the colony was 
 acquainted with the proper process. When the leaves were 
 dry, he tried them in his pipe, and pronounced the tobacco 
 excellent. His friend, Ralph Hamor, secretary of the 
 colony, tried it; and finding it very much to his taste, 
 planted some seed in his own garden, in the following 
 spring. Mr. Hamor, in his tract upon Virginia, published 
 in 1615, gave Virginia tobacco a strong indorsement. 
 
 w I dare affirm," he wrote, " that no country under the sun 
 can or doth afford more pleasant, sweet, and strong tobacco 
 than I have tasted there, even of my own planting; which, 
 howsoever, being then the first year of a trial thereof, we 
 had not the knowledge to cure and make up ; yet are there 
 some men resident there, out of the last year's well-observed 
 experience, which both know, and, I doubt not, will make 
 and return such tobacco this year (1615) that even England 
 shall acknowledge the goodness thereof." 
 
 He further says, when urging emigrants to go to Virginia, 
 that any man in the colony could there earn his clothes by 
 raising tobacco, clothes having to be bought in England 
 with money. 
 
 The secretary's prediction proved correct. English smok- 
 ers so well appreciated the tobacco of Virginia, that the 
 price of the article ranged from three to five shillings a 
 ; pound. A colonist needed to send only a very few pounds 
 -of tobacco home to get an excellent suit of clothes. Natu- 
 
POCAHONTAS AND HUSBAND. 459 
 
 rally enough, every one was eager to plant tobacco ; and we 
 read of tobacco growing luxuriantly in the very streets and 
 public places of Jamestown. Nothing could "draw the 
 people off," says an old historian, " from their greedy and 
 immoderate pursuit of tobacco " ; although a hundred and 
 fifty people were sent out from England to set up three iron 
 works, and an attempt was made to introduce the culture of 
 hemp, flax, and silk. Tobacco became, and for two centu- 
 ries remained, the great staple product of Virginia. For a 
 century and more, it served in part as the currency of the 
 colony. We read of men bequeathing hundreds of pounds 
 of tobacco for endowing a college or converting the heathen. 
 Clergymen were paid salaries of so many thousand pounds 
 of tobacco per annum. Taxes, debts, and rents were paid 
 in tobacco. 
 
 No colony can flourish, if indeed it can exist, unless it 
 produces something which can be sold for money in other 
 and older countries ; since it cannot, for many years, manu- 
 facture the implements, utensils, fabrics, and apparel, with- 
 out which it must either perish, or lapse into barbarism. 
 Virginia now had such a commodity ; and from this time 
 forward it could make a return to the company at home, and 
 buy with its own produce indispensable articles manufac- 
 tured in England. Such were the consequences of John 
 Rolfe's planting of tobacco seed in the spring of 1612. 
 
 So much for Pocahontas and her husband. 
 
INTENTION OF THE COMPASS, 
 
 AND WHO FIRST USED IT. 
 
 A PERSON does not need to go to sea in order to find out 
 how lost and helpless a sailor would be in the midst of the 
 ocean if he had no compass. A few summers ago I passed 
 some days at one of the Isles of Shoals, a small rocky group 
 in the Atlantic Ocean, ten miles from the coast of New 
 Hampshire ; and I used to go out almost every day in a boat, 
 fishing for cod and haddock. One misty morning, I remem- 
 ber, I started with three or four others for one of the favorite 
 fishing-places, about half a mile off. We had been there for 
 an hour or two, and had caught a few very fine fish, when 
 some one, looking up, cried out, " Where is the island? " 
 
 We all looked around, but the island was gone ! The mist 
 had changed into a dense fog, which had gathered over our 
 rocky abode, and hid it completely from our view. Nor was 
 there any object in sight, except another of the island boats, 
 containing a fishing-party like ourselves. >We called out to 
 them, " Where is the island ? " 
 
 To which one of them replied, "It's drifted out to sea." 
 
 Which, in fact, we might have done, if we had been a little 
 farther off. 
 
 How entirely lost we seemed for a few minutes ! Every 
 one gave his opinion as to the direction in which the island 
 was ; but, as our boat had been floating about without an 
 anchor, and had consequently changed its position every mo- 
 ment, it was all guesswork ; and we might have rowed about 
 
462 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 a whole day without finding it, and drifted out of sight of 
 land. While we were talking the matter over, we heard the 
 large bell of the hotel ring, which of course told us the way 
 we were to go, in order to reach the island. So we kept on 
 our fishing for two or three hours longer, and the mist soon 
 rolled away, revealing to view the gray rock, the long white 
 hotel, the ladies walking about, and the boys fishing for 
 perch along the shore. We afterwards learned that the regu- 
 lar frequenters of this island considered it unsafe to go a 
 hundred yards from the shore without a compass, and always 
 took a pocket-compass with them, in case a sudden fog should 
 wrap the island from their sight. 
 
 I was telling this incident one evening, some time after 
 dark, when I was out in a boat on Lake Champlain. It was 
 pretty dark, and I had been asking the boatman by what 
 marks he was guided in steering the boat towards the little 
 cove to which we were bound. He said he depended entirely 
 on the outline of the shore, which he proceeded to explain to 
 us. After I had told my story, he told one which showed, in 
 a far more striking manner, what a handy thing it may be 
 sometimes to have a compass in your pocket. 
 
 He said that he had been a prisoner for eleven months in 
 Andersonville during the late war, and when he heard that 
 General Sherman was at Atlanta, about two hundred and 
 forty miles distant, he and his comrade determined to try to 
 escape, and make their way thither. One of them had an 
 old-fashioned watch, with a compass in the back of it ; and 
 by this they expected to direct their course, which was 
 nearly northwest. But, as they expected to travel only by 
 night, they resolved not to start until they could get a box 
 of matches, so as to be able to strike a light now and then, 
 to look at their compass. They delayed their departure for 
 six weeks, trying to get a box of matches, for the purchase 
 
INVENTION OF THE COMPASS. 463 
 
 of which they gave one of their negro friends their last five- 
 dollar bill. He could not buy a box of matches for five 
 dollars, nor for any other number of dollars, and so at last 
 they made up their minds to start without them. 
 
 Assisted by their black friend, they got away one after- 
 noon, and lay hidden until late in the evening, when they 
 started at a great pace through the woods, and came about 
 midnight to a road which seemed to go, as nearly as they 
 could guess, exactly northwest. Seemed, I say ; but it 
 might not ; and, if it did not, it would lead them to cap- 
 ture and death. The night was not very dark, but the 
 stars were hidden by clouds ; else the friendly North Star 
 would have guided them upon their way. Anxious as 
 they were to get on, they stood for several minutes com- 
 paring recollections, and debating the great question upon 
 which their lives depended. But the more they talked 
 it over, the more uncertain they became ; and now they 
 bitterly regretted their impatience in coming away without 
 matches. 
 
 There were a great number of fire-flies flying about. A 
 lucky thought occurred to one of them, the boatman who 
 told us the story. He caught a fire-fly, and, taking it be- 
 tween his thumb and finger, held it over his compass. 
 Imagine their joy to find that the insect gave them plenty of 
 light for their purpose ; and imagine their still greater joy 
 to discover that the road led straight to the Union army. 
 Eight nights of travel brought them safely to it. 
 
 Admirable invention ! I often wonder that a thing so 
 valuable can be so small, simple, and cheap. It is nothing 
 but a needle, a pivot, and a card, which you can buy for 
 half a dollar, and carry in your pocket, or dangle at the end 
 of a watch-chain. Yet, small and trifling as it is, a ship's 
 company that should find themselves in the middle of the 
 
464 , TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 ocean without a compass would consider it a great favor to 
 be allowed to buy one for a million dollars. - 
 
 There is a kind of iron ore, of a dark-gray color, found in 
 iron-mines in many parts of the world, which is called load- 
 stone, or natural magnet. It is about as heavy as the 
 common iron ore, and looks like it, except that it is a little 
 more glistening. It has, however, most wonderful and 
 mysterious properties. One is, that it attracts to itself iron 
 and other metals. The smaller the magnet, the more power 
 it usually has. There have been found magnets weighing a 
 twentieth part of an ounce, which could lift a piece of iron 
 weighing two ounces, or forty times their own weight; and 
 the story goes, that Sir Isaac Newton had a magnet set in a 
 finger-ring which could lift a piece of iron of two hundred 
 and fifty times its own weight. There is a famous magnet 
 at Cadiz, which was presented by the Emperor of China to 
 one of the kings of Portugal. It weighs thirty-eight pounds, 
 and can lift two hundred pounds. It is not common, how- 
 ever, for a loadstone to be capable of lifting more than ten 
 times its weight. This attractive power of the magnet is 
 one of the most curious things in nature, and one which 
 nobody has yet been wise enough to explain. 
 
 Another property of the magnet is far more important to 
 man. If you take a bar of iron or steel, and rub it against 
 a loadstone, and then suspend it carefully in the middle by a 
 thread, it will always point north and south, or very nearly 
 north and south. A compass is nothing more than a 
 small steel needle, which, having been rubbed against 
 a magnet in a certain manner, is balanced with great nicety 
 upon a pivot, and the whole enclosed in a box. That needle 
 points toward the North Star, and serves to guide the mar- 
 iner over the trackless deep, when neither sun nor stars are 
 visible. It does not tell him where he is ; but it tells him in 
 
INVENTION OF THE COMPASS. 465 
 
 what direction he is sailing, and it tells him, with the help 
 of other instruments, in what direction he must sail to reach 
 the haven where he would be. 
 
 No one knows who invented the compass, nor precisely 
 when it was invented, nor even who first found a natural 
 magnet. The fanciful Greeks, who had a story about every- 
 thing, used to say that a shepherd, named Magnes, was tend- 
 ing his sheep one day on Mount Ida, when he noticed that 
 the iron crook at the end of his shepherd's staff was attracted 
 by a piece of dark-colored stone, which he brought with him 
 down the mountain. This is the reason, the Greeks say, 
 why the magnet was called, in their language, Magnes. The 
 story is probably one of those pretty tales which the Greeks 
 delighted to invent respecting the origin of things. Be this 
 as it may, the Greeks, the Romans, the Chinese, and all the 
 ancient civilized nations, knew something about the attrac- 
 tive power of the loadstone ; and the Chinese, it ( seems, 
 employed the directing power of the magnetic needle, more 
 than a thousand years ago, in their journeys across the wide, 
 uninhabited plains of Asia. But the compass, such as we 
 have it now, was unknown in Europe until about the year 
 1300. 
 
 I was saying the other day to a gentleman well versed in 
 the Bible, that the ancients did not possess the compass, but 
 sailed the Mediterranean and other inland seas, or skirted 
 along the coasts of the ocean, without the aid of this precious 
 instrument. 
 
 " But," he asked, scratching his head with the end of his 
 pen, " does not St. Paul say something about using the com- 
 pass on one of his voyages in the Mediterranean Sea ? " 
 
 "Impossible," said I. "There was not a compass in 
 existence at that time in that part of the world." 
 
 " I think you are mistaken," he rejoined. 
 
466 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 I handed him a Bible, and asked him to find the passage ; 
 which he proceeded to do with the alacrity of,a man who is 
 about to win a victory. And, sure enough, he soon turned 
 to Acts xxviii. verses 12 and 13, and read as follows : 
 
 " And, landing at Syracuse, we tarried there three days. And 
 from thence we fetched a compass, and came to Rhegium." 
 
 I must confess that for a moment I was puzzled. But, 
 being positive that the compass was not known either to the 
 Greeks, the Romans, or the Jews, I thought that perhaps 
 the translators had used the word " compass " for some other 
 instrument which may have been used by the ancient navi- 
 gators. It then occurred to us to look up the passage in the 
 Greek Testament, and ascertain what the word was which 
 had been translated " compass." The mystery vanished at 
 once ; for we found that St. Paul had used the Greek verb 
 which means to tack, to go about, to make a circuit, which 
 sailors, in the days of King James I., when our translation 
 was made, used to call fetching a compass. The passage, 
 therefore, simply means this : " And from Syracuse we made 
 a circuit " (round the island of Sicily) " and so came to 
 Rhegium " (on the coast of Italy) . 
 
 The captain of the ship, then, that bore the valiant Apostle 
 Paul to the mouth of the Tiber, had no compass on board 
 his vessel, but was guided by the stars, the sun, and the 
 bold outline of the shore. Nevertheless, it was from the 
 native land of St. Paul that the Crusaders, about seven hun- 
 dred years ago, brought home to Europe specimens of the 
 loadstone, and some little knowledge of its properties. The 
 first Crusaders returned from Palestine about the year 1100, 
 but the first mention which has been discovered of the 
 directing power of the magnetic needle occurs in a book that 
 bears date 1180. In a French poem called "The Bible," 
 
INVENTION OF THE COMPASS. 467 
 
 published about 1250, there is a passage, too, in which the 
 author expresses the wish that the Pope were as safe a point 
 to look at as the North Star is to sailors, who can steer 
 towards that star by the direction of a needle floating in a 
 straw on a basin of water, after being touched by the magnet. 
 And there is a still more interesting allusion to the needle 
 in an account which has come down to us of a visit paid 
 about the year 1258 by a learned Italian to Roger Bacon, the 
 celebrated English philosopher, the fame of whose learning 
 had spread over Europe. 
 
 "I did not fail," says the Italian scholar, "to see Friar 
 Bacon as soon as I arrived ; and, among other things, he 
 showed me a black, ugly stone, called a magnet, which has 
 the surprising property of drawing iron to it; and upon 
 which if a needle be rubbed, and afterwards fastened to a 
 straw, so that it shall swim upon water, the needle will 
 instantly turn towards the Pole Star; therefore, be the 
 night ever so dark, so that neither moon nor star be visible, 
 yet shall the mariner be able by the help of this needle to 
 steer his vessel aright." 
 
 It would have been difficult for a sailor, tossing upon the 
 wild, tempestuous Atlantic, to keep a needle afloat upon a 
 still surface of water, and I doubt very much whether it was 
 often attempted. There was another reason why the captains 
 of ships in that age would have hesitated to employ such a 
 contrivance, which our Italian thus explains : "This discov- 
 ery, which appears useful in so great a degree to all who 
 travel by sea, must remain concealed until other times, 
 because no master-mariner dares to use it, lest he should fall 
 under a supposition of his being a magician ; nor would even 
 the sailors venture themselves out to sea under his command 
 if he took with him an instrument which carries so great an 
 appearance of being constructed under the influence of some 
 infernal spirit." 
 
468 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 Well might he say so in speaking of poor Friar Bacon, 
 who, not many years after this visit, was imprisoned in his 
 convent cell, while his works were condemned as dangerous 
 and devilish. The ignorant monks of his time thought he 
 must have sold his soul to the Devil, because he said that he 
 and other astronomers, by noting the movements of the hea- 
 venly bodies, might be able to foretell their future move- 
 ments, especially such events as eclipses of the sun and moon. 
 He was a prisoner for ten years, he, the most valuable 
 and enlightened man of his age, and was released only 
 when his religious superiors thought he was too old and too 
 infirm to write any more books, or make any more discover- 
 ies. He lived but a year after his release, during which time 
 he often said he was sorry for having taken so much trouble 
 on behalf of science. 
 
 I have often thought, that, if Roger Bacon had not been 
 himself a priest, the ignorant and timid priests of that day 
 would have burnt him at the stake, and all because he knew 
 more than they ! But in those days people really thought that 
 the Devil went secretly about the world, hungry for human 
 souls, and that men often made compacts with him, agreeing 
 to serve him forever, after their death, if in this world he 
 would make them exceedingly wise, powerful, beautiful, or 
 rich. Sailors have always been given to such fancies ; and, 
 very likely, if a captain had in that age dared to steer his 
 ship by so simple a thing as a needle enclosed in a straw, 
 and floating on a cup of water, the sailors would have thought 
 him in league with the Devil, and tossed him overboard, 
 another Jonah, to appease the tempest. 
 
 Many a year passed away, therefore, before the magnetic 
 needle was much used by sailors. Still it was used ; for in an 
 Icelandic book, written even before Roger Bacon was born, 
 we read that the brave Norwegian chief who settled Iceland, 
 
INTENTION OF THE COMPASS. 469 
 
 found his way thither from Norway, a distance of seven hun- 
 dred miles, guided by ravens. "For," says the author, " in 
 those times, seamen had no loadstones in the northern coun- 
 tries." These words are a positive proof that the direct- 
 ing power of the magnetic needle was known as early as ,the 
 year 1150. 
 
 But how could ravens direct a ship from Norway to Ice- 
 land? I suppose that, when this brave navigator began to 
 doubt whether he was sailing in the right direction, he let 
 loose one of his ravens, and by watching which way it took 
 to get back to its home, he could ascertain in what direction 
 Iceland lay. 
 
 But the magnetic needle could never have been of very 
 great use to sailors, while it could only be used wrapped in 
 a straw floating on the water, or suspended by a string. 
 Nevertheless it was two centuries after the Crusaders brought 
 home the first loadstone to Europe, before the compass, as 
 we now have it, was invented, An Italian navigator, it 
 seems, named Flavio Gioja, who used to sail out of Naples 
 (where, a friend tells me, the name is still common), was 
 the man who first had ingenuity enough to mount the needle 
 upon a pivot, and enclose it in a box. In fact, he " boxed 
 the compass " ; and this is the reason, I suppose, why the 
 Italian word for compass is bossola, a box. In French, it is 
 boussole, which is evidently derived from the Italian word. 
 This boxing of the needle, or the invention of the compass, 
 took place about the year 1300, five hundred and seventy- 
 one years ago. 
 
 Then the sailor needed no longer to creep timidly along the 
 shore, and lie to whenever the sky was veiled with clouds, 
 or a mist hung over the landmarks by which he was accus- 
 tomed to steer. Much remained to be done before the broad 
 ocean could be navigated with certainty and safety by an 
 
470 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 ordinary man ; but the first and greatest step was taken when 
 the compass was invented. 
 
 Still we must not suppose that there were no adventurous 
 navigators before that period, and no science of navigation. 
 At the very time when Captain Flavio Gioja invented the 
 compass at Naples, the ship-yards of Venice employed six- 
 teen thousand men, and the ships of Venice dotted every 
 inland sea, and swarmed in every port of Europe, bearing to 
 them the spices, fabrics, and jewels brought from India. 
 And had not the Norwegians sailed to Iceland, seven hun- 
 dred miles, and from Iceland to Greenland, two hundred 
 miles, and afterwards from Greenland to Massachusetts, to 
 cut firewood and ship-timber, and this seven hundred years 
 before Columbus? In the East Indies, too, they built long 
 galleys and huge junks, some of which required a crew of 
 three hundred men, carried six thousand bags of pepper, and 
 had ten boats hung over the side, just where we hang them 
 now. They built their vessels in compartments, too ; so 
 that, if a ship sprung a leak, the water was kept out of all 
 the hold except one small portion, from which the cargo 
 could be quickly removed. There were map-makers then in 
 the commercial cities, and a good many of them ; for at that 
 day, of course, every map was made by hand. And men 
 who live much out of doors, and pass a part of every night 
 under the stars, become extremely well acquainted with the 
 heavens above, and with the objects around them, and can 
 feel their way, in an astonishing manner, without chart or 
 compass. 
 
 Not the less does the invention of the compass make an 
 era in the history of the human race. Bold and skilful as 
 the ancient sailors were in navigating inland seas, and sailing 
 along well-known coasts, it was a very different thing when 
 they found themselves blown out upon the broad ocean. 
 
INVENTION OF THE COMPASS. 471 
 
 The Atlantic was then called the Sea of Darkness ; and many 
 sailors supposed that if they should sail far enough down 
 into the torrid zone, they would come to where the waters of 
 the ocean boiled continually, and that finally they would reach 
 the fiery mouth of hell, into which they would be drawn, and 
 punished for their audacity in everlasting fire. 
 
 I have another curious thing to tell about the compass, 
 which I heard of only the other day. It is said above that 
 Roger Bacon's way of showing the power of the magnetic 
 needle was to enclose it in a straw, and let it float upon 
 water. The best compasses now in use are made on that 
 very principle. Ritchie's patent "Liquid Compass," now 
 used in the ships of the United States Navy, and by the 
 Cunard line of steamships, has the needle enclosed, not in a 
 straw, of course, but in a very thin, round case of metal, 
 air-tight, which floats upon liquid in such a way as to 
 steady the needle, and make it work much better than in the 
 ordinary compass. The needle has the additional support 
 of a pivot. In this compass, the needle being supported, 
 in great part, by the liquid, it can be heavier, and thus have 
 a stronger directing force than the light needles which have 
 no support but the pivot. 
 
 So much for the invention of this wonderful instrument. 
 Now, let me relate how it came to be used, and who first 
 had the daring and enterprise to navigate the ocean. 
 
 When I was a school-boy and studied geography, I used 
 to wonder sometimes, as I was poring over a large map of 
 the world, how it came to pass that such a country as Por- 
 tugal had so many possessions in distant parts of the earth. 
 It is a little kingdom, about as large as our State of Indiana, 
 and contains only about as many people as the State of New 
 York; and those people, travellers tell us, are net very 
 industrious, skilful, or enterprising. And yet the old map 
 
 30 
 
472 TRIUMPHS OF ENTEEFRISE. 
 
 which I used to look at seemed to be dotted all over with 
 places marked, "Belongs to Portugal." 
 
 It is not so surprising that this small kingdom, this odd 
 corner of Europe, should have gained possession of most 
 of those islands off the African coast, the Azores, 
 Madeiras, and the Cape Verdes, because they are not 
 very far from Portugal, and because there is no other Chris- 
 tian country from which they can be so conveniently reached. 
 Most of those islands are within seven or eight hundred 
 miles of its southwestern corner. But away down the 
 African coast, in what is called Lower Guinea, the land of 
 ivory, gold-dust, and precious gums, we find a great region 
 of country belonging to Portugal, with a Portuguese town 
 in it, a Portuguese governor-general, and churches conducted 
 by Portuguese priests, in which crowds of half-naked negroes 
 and mulattoes bow low before the cross, and the image of 
 the Virgin. 
 
 Ai}d then, on the other side of Africa, there is another 
 extensive region, called Mozambique, which also belongs to 
 Portugal. Here Portugal has a territory as large as the 
 State of Virginia, from which are exported indigo and rare 
 drugs, fine woods for furniture, elephants' tusks, the teeth 
 of the hippopotamus, and the horns of the rhinoceros ; to 
 say nothing of rice, sugar, spice, coffee, and coal. Here 
 again we find a Portuguese city of considerable size, with 
 great barracks for soldiers, with storehouses and wharves, a 
 splendid palace for the governor-general, a cathedral, and 
 several smaller churches and convents. In this city, which 
 consists of palaces for the Portuguese and huts for the 
 natives, there are a Portuguese bishop, Portuguese priests, 
 nuns, and monks, Portuguese judges and courts. The Por- 
 tuguese have been so long established in that country that 
 one of their towns there has had time to go to decay. It is 
 
INVENTION OP THE COMPASS. 473 
 
 called Melinda, and you may see there the ruins of Portu- 
 guese churches, convents, storehouses, wharves, and pal- 
 aces, which were built three centuries ago. 
 
 But this is not all. If you should sail from the ruined 
 walls and wharves of Melinda two thousand miles to the 
 westward, across the ocean, and enter the harbor of Goa, on 
 the coast of India, you would find a Portuguese settlement 
 and city that would fill you with still greater astonishment. 
 Neither the English nor the French nor the Dutch have 
 ever built in that part of the world cathedrals or palaces so 
 splendid as those with which the Portuguese have adorned 
 this city, so far from their native land. One church there is 
 decorated with beautiful paintings brought from Italy ; and 
 the cathedral is so exceedingly gorgeous, and so vast in 
 extent, that it would not be thought out of place in one of 
 the principal cities of Catholic Europe. These buildings, it 
 is true, are going to decay ; but they show what power the 
 Portuguese must have had in India, when they could spend 
 the revenue of an Indian province upon one convent or one 
 church. To this day there is a Portuguese viceroy resident 
 there, and a Portuguese archbishop ; and there is also a 
 Portuguese seminary for the education of priests. 
 
 Then there is Macao, a Portuguese city in China, where 
 again we find amazing evidences, in the form of churches, 
 convents, and seminaries, of the power once possessed in 
 this part of the world by the Portuguese. Indeed, it was at 
 this city of Macao that Camoens, the only Portuguese poet 
 known to the rest of the world, composed the only famous 
 poem which that country has produced. Macao was given by 
 the Emperor of China to the mighty King of Portugal, in 
 return for some assistance which the Portuguese King had 
 rendered him in driving pirates from the Chinese seas. 
 
 Three hundred years ago, there was not a head in all the 
 
474 TRIUMPHS OP ENTERPRISE. 
 
 Eastern world 'that would not bow low to the Portuguese 
 uniform; and millions of dusky human beings in Asia and 
 Africa toiled from youth to old age to enrich that small 
 and distant kingdom. In America, too, there is Brazil, a 
 country containing nearly four millions of square miles, 
 larger than the United States, which belonged to Portugal 
 until a few years ago. Here the Portuguese language is still 
 spoken, Portuguese laws and customs still prevail, and it is 
 governed by an emperor sprung from the royal family of 
 Portugal. 
 
 I used to wonder at these things when I had but a slight 
 knowledge of them at school ; but in later years I found out 
 the reason. The reason why Portugal, a little, insignificant 
 kingdom, held possessions so valuable and numerous in 
 those distant parts of the world, is simply this : The Portu- 
 guese were the first to turn the compass to account in navi- 
 gating the ocean. 
 
 But this does not quite explain the mystery. The com- 
 pass is a delicate instrument, and one which lazy and igno- 
 rant people would be very unlikely to take an interest in, 
 and still more unlikely to use in exploring unknown seas. 
 From what we know of the Portuguese of the present day we 
 should not suppose them to have been at any time very ener- 
 getic, very enterprising, or very intelligent. Indeed, I was 
 told only last year by a New York merchant who has lived 
 twenty years in India and China, that many of the Portuguese 
 in Macao, Goa, Mozambique, and Angola, are more deeply 
 sunk in vice, ignorance, and superstition than the natives 
 themselves. I think we may say that it never would have 
 occurred to such men as most of the Portuguese now are to 
 take a needle in a box on board a ship, and go forth to dis- 
 cover and to conquer on the other side of the globe. It is 
 only virtuous and intelligent people who do great and heroic 
 
INVENTION OF THE COMPASS. 475 
 
 things. We may well ask, therefore, how it came to pass 
 that the Portuguese, of all the nations of Europe, should 
 have been among the first to understand, and the first to use, 
 the compass in navigating the broad ocean. 
 
 Kings and nobles are not very much thought of in America 
 at present, and this is very proper ; for they appear to have 
 done nearly all the good they had to do in the world. But 
 the time was when kings and nobles were worth all they 
 cost, and when they greatly assisted the nations in coming 
 out of barbarism and ignorance. If kings had not been 
 necessary to mankind, mankind would not have had kings 
 so long. 
 
 One of the ways in which kings and princes helped to 
 civilize nations was by marrying into families better than 
 their own, and thus bringing into a country powerful persons 
 who had more knowledge, more sense, or better feeling than 
 before existed in it. 
 
 And the reason why this little kingdom of Portugal for 
 two centuries took the lead in exploring and subduing 
 unknown regions is, that it had a royal family which was a 
 great deal better and wiser than the race over which it ruled. 
 Henry of Burgundy, first Count of Portugal, besides being 
 himself a valiant and high-minded prince, was also wise 
 enough to rear a son worthy to fill his place and able to 
 continue his work. That son, in honor of his benefactor, he 
 named Alphonso Henry. He it was who defeated the 
 Moors in one of the fiercest battles ever fought in the Penin- 
 sula. Five Moorish kings, it is said, led against him an 
 army of two hundred thousand men, while he could muster 
 but thirteen thousand troops for the defence of his domin- 
 ions. From morning until evening, upon, the plains of 
 Ourique, the battle was fought ; and at sunset the Moors 
 took to flight, and their army was totally destroyed. A* 
 
476 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 the close of this bloody day, Count Alphonso was proclaimed 
 king by his victorious soldiers ; and this title being ratified 
 by the -pope, as well as by his own valor and goodness, he 
 held it to his dying day, and transmitted it to sixteen suc- 
 cessors of his name and blood. 
 
 His wife Matilda was a woman worthy to be the mother 
 of a royal line. It was this noble pair who set the example 
 of bringing up the royal children of Portugal in those 
 habits of temperance and study which caused so many of 
 them to be distinguished for virtue and knowledge. For- 
 tunate was it, too, for Portugal, that Alphonso I. and 
 Matilda, his queen, had a large family of sons and daughters, 
 who, marrying into other noble and princely families, passed 
 on the good qualities and good habits of their parents to 
 their own children. 
 
 Two centuries passed. The kingdom had increased in 
 wealth and power. The royal line remained pure, inquisi- 
 tive, and patriotic. Prince Henry, the most important per- 
 sonage since the Christian era, was born. But this great 
 and good man must be more formally introduced to the 
 reader. 
 
 Portugal ends in a promontory that juts far out into the 
 Atlantic Ocean, and points straight to the Madeira Islands. 
 A bold and lofty headland it is, named Cape St. Vincent, 
 very familiar to sailors bound for the Mediterranean, and 
 famous in these modern times for a great naval battle fought 
 near it in 1797, for gaining which an English admiral was 
 created Earl St. Vincent. 
 
 About three miles to the east of this promontory there is 
 another, called Cape Sagres, of very peculiar form and char- 
 acter. It is shaped something like a long human foot, and 
 extends out into the sea about three quarters of a mile. It 
 is about one quarter of a mile wide in its widest part, and it 
 
INVENTION OF THE COMPASS. 477 
 
 is elevated a hundred feet or more above the surface of the 
 water. It is a bleak, barren, and desolate place. If the 
 promontory had not been composed of solid granite, it 
 would long ago have been washed away by the sea ; and, 
 granite as it is, the huge Atlantic waves have worn and torn 
 deep cuttings in it, scooped out great archways under it, and 
 have even forced openings through the solid rock to the sur- 
 face of the promontory. Through these openings, and 
 especially through one very large one, the swelling sea drives 
 out the wind with great force ; and sometimes the sea itself 
 rushes up in a great mass, and, tossing itself high into the 
 air, breaks into spray, and is carried by the wind as far as 
 two miles into the interior, thus blighting the vegetation, 
 and keeping the grass from growing over the loose, sandy 
 soil. 
 
 Standing upon this promontory, you behold, in all direc- 
 tions but one, the broad sea. Before you, and on each side 
 of you, there is sea, sea, sea, everywhere sea ; and the view 
 behind is a level waste, grassless, colorless, from the never- 
 ceasing wind and spray ; and no sound is heard except the 
 dash and thunder and retreating growl of the never-rest- 
 ing waves. And yet, this is the place, of all others in the 
 world, that I should choose to visit, if in the delightful days 
 of spring I could have a free passage to Anywhere I liked. 
 
 Evidently some one else, in some distant age, had the 
 same taste j for all over this promontory there are signs of 
 human habitation. Here there is an old tower, once an 
 observatory, now used as a hay-loft. At another place there 
 are old walls that formed part of a stately residence. Yonder 
 are the ruins of a church. Elsewhere there are walls over- 
 thrown, and at the beginning of the promontory there is a 
 pedestal, such as was formerly used for the support of a 
 wayside cross. There is also a fort, and some barracks, in 
 
478 TKIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 which a company of Portuguese troops have sometimes been 
 stationed. The fort and the barracks, however, are modern 
 structures, with which we have little concern. All the 
 buildings that once stood on this cape, which have to do 
 with our present subject, were partly burnt by Drake, in 
 1587, and tumbled into ruins by the great earthquake of 
 1755. 
 
 Why should I wish to visit a spot so remote and desolate ? 
 Who could ever have lived in such a place ? What motive 
 could induce a man to select Cape Sagres for his abode in 
 sunny, vine-clad Portugal ? 
 
 Come into this fort and you will see. Imbedded in the 
 wall over the inner gate of the fort there is a large slab of 
 fresh-looking marble, sculptured and inscribed like a tomb- 
 stone. On the upper part there is engraved a coat of arms, 
 a geographical globe, and an ancient ship under full sail, with 
 a pennant streaming from her mast-head, and the Portuguese 
 flag astern. Below is an inscription which explains why I 
 desire to stand upon this height, and who it was, by residing 
 here, made it sacred forever ! This whole promontory was 
 named Sacred by the Romans, because they found upon it a 
 Druidical temple, and the present name Sagres is a corrup- 
 tion of the Latin word sacrum. A far better reason have we 
 for calling it Sacred ; for there lived upon it once a man, 
 who spent his whole life in the service of his race. 
 
 The inscription on this monumental stone has been trans- 
 lated thus : 
 
 "SACRED FOREVER. 
 
 " IN THIS PLACE 
 
 The great Prince Henry, son of John L, King of Portugal, having 
 undertaken to discover the previously unknown regions of West 
 Africa, and also to open a way, by the circumnavigation of Africa, 
 
INVENTION OF THE COMPASS. 479 
 
 to the remotest parts of the East, established at his own cost 
 his royal palace, the famous school of cosmography, the astro- 
 nomical observatory, and the naval arsenal, preserving, im- 
 proving, and enlarging the same till the close of his life, with 
 admirable energy and perseverance, and to the greatest benefit 
 of the kingdom, of literature, of religion, and of the whole 
 human race. After reaching by his expeditions the eighth 
 degree of north latitude, and discovering and planting Portuguese 
 colonies in many islands of the Atlantic, this great prince died on 
 the 13th of November, 1460. Three hundred and seventy-nine 
 years after his death, Maria II., Queen of Portugal and the 
 Algarves, commanded that this monument should be erected to 
 the memory of the illustrious Prince, her kinsman, the viscount de 
 Sa da Baudiera being Minister of Marine. 1839." 
 
 The monument is small compared with the importance of 
 the man in whose honor it was erected. But all America is 
 his monument. Australia is his monument. The coasts of 
 India and the numberless islands of the seas speak his fame. 
 Those two great continents and those innumerable islands 
 were discovered directly in consequence of the labors of 
 Prince Henry the Navigator, who never navigated. 
 
 Some readers will perhaps be glad to know that the mother 
 of Prince Henry was of our own blood, an Englishwoman. 
 For my part, I have enough of the vanity of race to think 
 that he derived much of his peculiar generosity of mind, his 
 public spirit, and his love of knowledge from the noble 
 English mother of his, Philippa, daughter of the valiant 
 Prince whom Shakespeare calls w Old John of Gaunt, time- 
 honored Lancaster." I do not suppose that we Americans 
 and English are, upon the whole, better than other races of 
 human beings ; but in the one virtue of public spirit, a heart- 
 felt interest in the public welfare, a willingness to take trou- 
 ble and spend money that others may be happy, wise, and 
 good, I do really believe that we are not surpassed by any 
 
480 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 other people. However that may be, the fact remains, that 
 the mother of Prince Henry was an English lady. 
 
 Not that this Prince had not also a right valiant and 
 worthy father. Five centuries have passed since the birth 
 of King John the First of Portugal ; but to this day he is 
 called by the Portuguese John the Great and King John the 
 Father of his Country. And with much reason do they call 
 him by the latter name. When the Moors had been driven 
 to a safe distance from the frontiers, it was this King John 
 who defended Portugal against its powerful neighbor, Cas- 
 tile. In his fierce and desperate war against the King of 
 Castile, he won victories so great and so numerous as to 
 secure the independence of his country against its Christian 
 enemies, as his brave forefathers had against its Mahometan 
 foes. It was chiefly owing to him that Portugal has been 
 able, for the greater part of the last five centuries, to hold its 
 own against the powerful kingdoms near it. Spain despises 
 Portugal, and Portugal hates Spain; but if this contempt 
 and hatred should ever again cause a war between them, the 
 large kingdom will not be able to absorb the little one, as 
 long as Portugal remembers the valor of King John. His 
 tomb defends his country more than any of its forts. 
 
 The marriage between King John and the Princess Phi- 
 lippa took place February 2, 1387. They had eight children, 
 all of whom grew up except two. Prince Henry, called The 
 Navigator, was born at Oporto on the 4th of March, 1394. 
 He was the fifth child and fourth son of his parents. 
 
 While these princes were growing up to manhood, their 
 father was busy in governing and defending his kingdom, 
 and consequently the care of the family devolved chiefly 
 upon their mother, Queen Philippa. She was one of those 
 women whose nature it is to be a blessing to every one con- 
 nected with them. Her whole employment was to do good, 
 
INVENTION OF THE COMPASS. 481 
 
 and in nothing did she so much delight as to reconcile 
 disputes, and change enemies into friends. She was not like 
 some of the fine ladies of the present day, who think it a 
 great shame that they should have to take care of their 
 households, and assist in rearing their children. She de- 
 lighted in those great duties. She felt it to be worthy of a 
 queen to take part in training princes who were one day to 
 give the tone to the manners and morals of the kingdom ; 
 nor did she consider it beneath her to attend to the affairs of 
 the dining-room and kitchen. In short, she was a thoroughly 
 good mother. 
 
 In Europe, as a rule, the higher the rank of a family, the 
 more strictly the children of it are brought up. These young 
 princes, besides being inured to hardship as young soldiers, 
 had a thorough drilling in Latin, Greek, and mathematics. 
 The two elder brothers, we are told, were particularly fond 
 of the ancient languages, and learned to write very well in 
 Latin, as well as in Portuguese. Prince Henry, however, 
 preferred mathematics, astronomy, geography, and other 
 branches which are particularly useful to a navigator. All 
 of these children gave great promise of future worth and 
 talent ; and they acquired in their youth, not only a great 
 deal of knowledge, but that love of knowledge, that eager 
 curiosity to know, which makes the persons who are so 
 happy as to have it students and observers as long as they 
 live. 
 
 Two of the princes began about 1416 to carry out the 
 great purpose of their lives, which was to gain a greater 
 knowledge of the wonderful world they lived in than 
 had yet been obtained by any one. Pedro sought knowl- 
 edge by travelling on land, and Prince Henry from the 
 exploration of the sea. Prince Pedro, attended by twelve 
 persons, set out upon a journey which lasted twelve years, 
 
482 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 during which he visited his royal relatives in Castile, France, 
 and England, traversed a great part of Europe, and probably 
 parts of Asia and Africa. No account of this remarkable 
 journey has yet been published in Portugal, though I can- 
 not help thinking there must be some narrative of it among 
 the manuscripts in which that country abounds. We know 
 little more of it than that he returned safe and sound, after 
 twelve years' travel ; and he spent the rest of his days in 
 assisting his brother Henry in the study of the ocean. 
 
 Prince Henry chose the sea, and the unknown lands bor- 
 dering upon it, for his object. The King made him gover- 
 nor of Algarve, the most southern province of Portugal, near 
 the extremity of which is Cape Sagres, described above. 
 On that promontory the Prince built a mansion, and there he 
 went to reside, having no other motive except a desire to be 
 on the spot most convenient for carrying out his design. 
 Around him and before him was the sea which he wished to 
 explore, and near by was the port of Lagos for the ships 
 which he intended to employ. At his abode upon Cape 
 Sagres he gathered a considerable number of the young nobil- 
 ity of the kingdom, for whose instruction in mathematics, 
 navigation, and geography he invited men learned in those 
 branches to come and live in his palace, to whom he gave a 
 princely welcome and liberal support. 
 
 A little town grew up about his house, which the people 
 of the neighborhood called Villa do Infante, or, as we should 
 style it, Princeton. He built an observatory, a church, an 
 arsenal, and a library. He collected books, maps, charts, 
 compasses, and all other instruments then used in navigation. 
 Surrounded by learned men and learned books, by young 
 students and aged instructors, he passed a long life upon 
 this promontory, leaving it only when public affairs called 
 him away. He devoted all his time, all his talents, all his 
 
INVENTION OF THE COMPASS. 483 
 
 revenues, and all his influence to increasing man's knowledge 
 of the planet he inhabits. 
 
 His chief concern, of course, was the sending out of those 
 ships of discovery which have made his name immortal. For 
 forty years he made a practice of sending out a ship or ships 
 every spring, with orders to sail as far down the coast of 
 Africa as the captains could make the crews go, and to bring 
 back to him, at Cape Sagres, a full account of all they had 
 seen and heard during the voyage, both on land and sea. 
 This was the chosen business of his life. He wisely pre- 
 ferred never to sail on these expeditions himself, and there- 
 fore I have called him Prince Henry, the Navigator who 
 never navigated. As prince, as general, as master of the 
 military Order of Christ, as counsellor to the King, as chief 
 of a school of navigators, he had duties to perform which kept 
 him at home. He had chosen for his part the more difficult 
 and less popular task of inspiring, directing, and rewarding 
 other men, and keeping up that steady succession of endeav- 
 ors, which alone could have accomplished anything great in 
 that age. Any brave man might make a successful voyage. 
 Prince Henry's post was on the lofty height of Sagres, 
 seeing to it that brave men went forth every year in quest 
 of knowledge. 
 
 It was he who began the movement that ended in the 
 voyage to India, and the discovery of a new continent. 
 
BEGINNING OF OCEAN NAVIGATION. 
 
 THE DISCOVERY OF MADEIRA. 
 
 I HAVE to begin with a love story, which is so strange and 
 romantic that it was long supposed to be a fiction. But it 
 turns out to be true. 
 
 More than four hundred years ago, a century, almost, 
 before the discovery of America, a young Englishman 
 named Robert Machin fell in love with a nobleman's 
 beautiful daughter. He courted her and won her affections. 
 He was a young man of respectable family, but of a rank so 
 inferior to that of the young lady whom he loved, that her 
 parents could not think of permitting her to marry him. 
 The lover, however, was known to be resolute and brave, 
 and there was some danger of his carrying her off from her 
 father's castle. So the nobleman laid the matter before the 
 king, who had poor Robert Machin put in prison, and 
 promised to keep him there until the lady should be safely 
 married. Her parents lost no time in marrying her to 
 Lord D'Arfet, and he, as soon as the nuptial knot was tied, 
 took her with him to his country-seat near the famous sea- 
 port of Bristol. 
 
 They then thought the young lady perfectly safe, and 
 Robert Machin was set free. But as he was a young fellow 
 of high spirit, he was angry at his unjust confinement, and 
 being still in love with the lady, he set on foot a plan to 
 gratify at once his revenge and his passion. To Bristol he 
 went, with some of his friends, who felt that he had been 
 
486 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 badly treated, and were determined to help him. One of 
 them, putting on the dress and manners of a servant, 
 obtained employment as groom in the family of Lord D'Ar- 
 fet, and it thus became part of his duty to attend Lady 
 D'Arfet when she rode out into the country on horseback. 
 
 Robert Machin, meanwhile, got ready a small vessel, on 
 board of which he went. The gentleman groom, obtaining 
 an interview with Lady D'Arfet when no one was within 
 hearing, told her all about her lover's plan, which was to 
 take her with him in the vessel and sail away for France, 
 where they would live happily together all their lives. The 
 lady, who had been so cruelly separated from her lover 
 and forced to marry another man, willingly consented , and 
 nothing remained but to carry the scheme into execution. 
 
 On the day appointed, early in the afternoon, she ordered 
 her horse to be saddled, and told her groom to get ready to 
 attend her, as she was going alone. She mounted her horse 
 and rode towards the banks of the river Avon, near where it 
 enters the Severn. At a certain spot on the shore a small 
 boat was waiting. The lady and groom dismounted, fas- 
 tened their horses to a tree, entered the boat, and were con- 
 veyed on board the vessel, where the lovers had a joyful 
 meeting after their long separation. The anchor was 
 instantly hoisted ; the vessel dropped down the stream into 
 the broad Severn; and, spreading all her sails, was soon 
 beyond sight and pursuit in the Bristol Channel. 
 
 These lovers, in order to clear Land's End, had to go a 
 good way out into the ocean, and then turn again towards the 
 east to get into the English Channel, and so land on the 
 coast of France. If all had gone well, they ought to have 
 made a French port in about fifty hours. But they were 
 destined never to see fair France. In the night the wind 
 rose. It increased to a tempest, which blew them far out into 
 
BEGINNING OF OCEAN NAVIGATION. 487 
 
 the Atlantic. When the day dawned they found themselves 
 in the midst of a tempestuous ocean, out of sight of land, and 
 with no pilot on board who knew enough of navigation to 
 guide the ship towards a port. It is not likely that they had 
 so much as a compass on board, for compasses were not then 
 in general use, and every vessel kept as close to the shore 
 as possible. 
 
 All day the tempest raged. The wind came out of the 
 northeast, and therefore blew them towards the southwest, 
 past the Scilly Isles, past the jutting northwest corner of 
 France, and down past the Bay of Biscay. Day after day 
 they could only scud before the wind ; and they were driven 
 down by Spain, past the long line of the Portuguese coast, 
 and still farther south, until they were off the unknown coast 
 of Africa. For thirteen days they were driven before this 
 merciless gale. But at last it died away, and they tossed 
 about all one night on those great waves which continue to 
 heave long after a storm has subsided. 
 
 The morning of the fourteenth day dawned. Away 
 towards the south the sailors fancied they saw a low dark 
 line upon the sea that looked like land. The sun rose. It 
 was land ! Trees were soon discerned, and several kinds 
 of birds which they had never seen before came from the 
 land, and perched in the rigging without showing any fear. 
 
 As soon as they were near enough, a boat was hoisted out, 
 and several of the adventurers went on shore, wondering 
 what country this could be, and doubtless not without fear 
 that they might have come to the land of the infidels, and 
 might be made slaves. When they stepped on shore, a 
 beautiful prospect opened before them, of hills and valleys, 
 of dense forests, and streams of fresh water. No inhabitants 
 appeared, and no animals except such as were small and 
 harmless. 
 
 31 
 
488 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 Returning on board the vessel, the sailors gave such a 
 favorable account of the land that the lovers too came on 
 shore. Walking into the interior, they came at last to a 
 pleasant hill, upon the summit of which there was a large 
 and most beautiful tree, affording delicious shade from the 
 heat of the sun. The spot was so agreeable that they deter- 
 mined to live there for a while, and rest after the fatigues 
 and terrors of their voyage. So they cut large boughs from 
 the tree, and made some bowers, in which they slept at 
 night. In the daytime they roamed about the country, ob- 
 serving its curious trees, plants, stones, birds, and insects, 
 always wondering where they were, and to whom this 
 curious and beautiful land belonged. Part of the company, 
 especially the sailors, continued to live on board the vessel, 
 while the lovers and their friends remained on shore. 
 
 Three days passed pleasantly enough. In the afternoon 
 of the third day a gale sprung up from the northeast, which 
 increased during the night. When the lovers and their 
 friends rose in the morning, they looked most anxiously to 
 see how it had fared with their little vessel, upon which 
 depended their only chance of ever again living in a Chris- 
 tian land. 
 
 She was gone ! The storm had driven her from her 
 anchorage, and no trace of her could be seen on the ocean, 
 which was covered with white-crested waves. 
 
 It was a terrible blow. The poor lady, whose health, had 
 been shattered by the agonizing perils of the voyage, upon 
 seeing herself cut off forever from home and country and 
 friends, was struck dumb with horror. In three days she 
 breathed her last, and they buried her under the beautiful 
 tree. 
 
 Robert Machin could not be comforted. He lingered five 
 days, and then died, beseeching his comrades to bury his 
 
BEGINNING OF OCEAN NAVIGATION. 489 
 
 body in the same grave with hers. His last request was 
 complied with, and over the grave of the lovers was set up 
 a large wooden cross, and near by an inscription was placed 
 which gave an account of their coming to this unknown land, 
 and concluded with a prayer, addressed to any Christian 
 who might ever come to the spot, asking them to build a 
 church, upon that hill, and dedicate it to Jesus the Saviour. 
 
 The land upon which these unhappy lovers were driven 
 was the beautiful island of Madeira. The part of the coast 
 where their vessel anchored was named by subsequent ex- 
 plorers Machico, after Machin, and this name it retains to 
 the present hour. The island had been seen, and perhaps 
 visited, several years before, but it had never been settled, 
 and its existence was only known to a few persons very 
 learned in geography. 
 
 After the death of Eobert Machin, his companions, in 
 haste to leave the fatal spot, set sail for England in their 
 small boat ; but they were driven before a northeasterly 
 wind, and thrown upon the coast of Morocco, where they 
 were captured by the Moors, and sent to prison. What was 
 their astonishment to find in this prison the crew of the 
 vessel in which they had sailed from England. It had been 
 borne by the gale to the same coast I 
 
 In those times the Moors derived great profit from the 
 Christian prisoners whom they captured on land and sea. 
 It seems as if almost every ship was a kind of pirate then, 
 and almost all captains thought it right to capture a ship 
 that was smaller than their own. Certainly, no Moor had 
 any scruples about capturing a ship owned and manned by 
 Christians ; and, consequently, all along the coast of 
 Morocco there were jails filled with Christian captives, who 
 were kept until they were ransomed by their friends or 
 country. 
 
490 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 Common sailors and poor people were generally sold as 
 slaves as soon as they were brought on shore ; but captains, 
 merchants, and passengers of rank were usually kept in con- 
 finement until they were ransomed. All over Europe, but 
 especially at seaports, there used to be collections taken in 
 churches for the ransom of Christian captives in Morocco. 
 It was a custom also for rich people to leave money in their 
 wills for this purpose, and there were some orders of 
 monks who went about begging money for the ransom 
 of Christian captives. There were also societies of ladies 
 and others, who used to make costly articles of needle-work, 
 and sell them for the benefit of captives who had no friends 
 rich enough to pay their ransom. It is necessary to bear 
 this in mind in order to understand how it came to pass that 
 the sad adventure of Robert Machin and Lady D'Arfet led to 
 the real discovery and settlement of the Island of Madeira. 
 
 For some years the friends of Machin languished in a 
 Moorish prison, with hundreds of other unhappy captives, 
 longing for the hour of their deliverance. Among other 
 persons confined with them was a certain John de Morales, 
 a skilful and famous Spanish pilot and navigator. To him 
 they naturally told the strange tale of the unhappy lovers, 
 and described the beautiful land where they had died. Now, 
 Captain de Morales, being an experienced navigator and a 
 good geographer for that day, listened with intense curiosity 
 to their descriptions of the unknown country, and, I have no 
 doubt, questioned them closely as to the direction in which 
 it lay, and how many miles it was from the coast. Prisoners 
 have not many kinds of amusement at their command, and 
 we may be quite sure that this good Spanish pilot heard the 
 lovers' story over and over again, and longed to be free that 
 he might join once more in the exploration of the ocean. 
 
 The time arrived at last. In the year 1416 died Prince 
 
BEGINNING OF OCEAN NAVIGATION. 491 
 
 Sancho, the youngest son of the King of Aragon, and left a 
 large sum of money for the ransom of Spanish captives in 
 Morocco. Accordingly, a ship was sent from Spain to a 
 port in Morocco, where she was soon filled with captives 
 rejoicing in their deliverance, and in the expectation of , soon 
 seeing again their friends and country. 
 
 The happiest people in the world are those just let out of 
 prison after long confinement. I remember, during the war, 
 coming home from the army once in a flag-of-truce boat, 
 upon which were three hundred and fifty wounded officers 
 and soldiers released from prison in Richmond after a con- 
 finement of several months. They were so happy that the 
 least thing made them giggle like school-girls ; and although 
 most of them had to be carried on board the steamboat, yet, 
 after being on board thirty hours, they were well enough, 
 when the boat reached Annapolis, and the band on the 
 wharf struck up Hail Columbia, to walk on shore and toddle 
 off to the hospital. Of course the good food they had on 
 the boat, and the kind treatment they received, had much 
 to do with this sudden cure. But, after all, the medicine 
 which really restored them was the joy of being among 
 friends once more, and of knowing that they were going 
 home. 
 
 The Spanish ship full of captives sailed away from 
 Morocco, and had got as far as the Straits of Gibraltar, 
 when, O horror ! three Portuguese vessels came in sight ; 
 and in another hour they were all prisoners again ! 
 
 Not that Spain and Portugal were at war ; but the two 
 kings of those countries, we are told by the old chroniclers, 
 had had " a little misunderstanding," and so the commander 
 of the Portuguese fleet felt perfectly justified in taking all 
 these poor captives prisoners again. Imagine their feelings 
 upon their hopes being so suddenly and bitterly disap- 
 
492 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 pointed. Luckily for them, the Portuguese commodore was 
 a kind-hearted man, as well as a good Catholic, and there- 
 fore, taking pity upon them, he gave up their ship and let 
 them go, all except one man. 
 
 That one man was the good Spanish pilot, John de 
 Morales, of whom I have spoken above. And, strange to 
 say, De Morales was perfectly willing to go with the Portu- 
 guese, instead of returning to Seville, where he lived. Now, 
 in order to understand this mystery, we must know who 
 those Portuguese were that were crossing the Straits of 
 Gibraltar, and whence they had come, and whither they 
 were going. And now we have another curious story, 
 almost as strange as that of the two English lovers. 
 
 In a former article, I said something about Prince Henry, 
 the navigator who never navigated, and how he settled upon 
 the promontory of Sagres, and built a mansion there, and 
 intended to devote all his life and all his money to sending 
 out ships to discover what land there was beyond the coun- 
 try of the Moors. Every summer he sent out two or three 
 vessels, which crept along down the African coast, each 
 captain satisfied if only he went a few miles farther south 
 than any one else had gone. 
 
 Two or three summers were employed in this way before 
 anything very interesting was found out ; but in the summer 
 of 1418 a most important discovery was made. In that 
 year two brave young knights of Prince Henry's household, 
 named Zarco and Vaz, who had fought valiantly under him 
 at Ceuta, entreated him to let them try their fortune in 
 exploring the terrible African coast. The Prince consent- 
 ing, they crossed the straits, and went carefully along the 
 coast for some little distance, perhaps two hundred miles, 
 when a terrible storm rose, which blew them right out to 
 sea. Of course they gave themselves up for lost ; but when 
 
BEGINNING OF OCEAN NAVIGATION. 493 
 
 the storm abated, they came in sight of an island, six or 
 seven miles long and three wide. This was Porto Santo, 
 an island twenty-five miles to the northeast of Madeira, 
 three hundred and eighty miles from Africa, and six hundred 
 and sixty miles from their native Portugal. 
 
 After gazing at this island awhile they ventured on shore, 
 fearing it might be inhabited by warlike savages like those 
 who lived upon the Canaries. Great was their joy to find 
 that it was not inhabited at all. Upon discovering this they 
 put on board their vessel specimens of its stones, shells, 
 woods, and plants, and made all sail to convey the great 
 news to Prince Henry ; knowing what a great help it would 
 be to him, in exploring unknown regions, to have this fine 
 island for the repair and supply of his ships. 
 
 The Prince was, indeed, overjoyed. It was his first 
 success, and, that success being accidental, he regarded it 
 as the direct blessing of Heaven upon his labors, and a 
 divine command to continue them. He fitted out three 
 vessels, filled them with implements, seeds, and other mate- 
 rials, placed them under the command of the discoverers, 
 and another knight, named Perestello, and sent them to 
 plant and settle the island. Perestello was to govern the 
 colony, and Zarco and Yaz were to return with their vessels 
 to Portugal. 
 
 A curious thing happened to this colony, which is all that 
 I can here relate respecting the adventures of Perestello. 
 On the voyage out a tame rabbit on board of Perestello's 
 ship had young ones, which with the mother were turned 
 loose upon the island of Porto Santo. These rabbits 
 increased so fast that the whole island was soon overrun 
 with them. They devoured everything which the colonists 
 planted, and proved so great an evil that, after contending 
 with these little enemies and other misfortunes for two 
 
494 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 years, Perestello gave up the struggle and went home to 
 Portugal. He returned to the island, however, soon after, 
 at the request of Prince Henry, and succeeded at last in 
 founding a colony. But they had terrible work with the rab- 
 bits. So numerous were the little creatures that as many 
 as two thousand were destroyed in one day, and it was all 
 the colonists could do for a while to keep them under. 
 
 But to return to the gallant knights, Zarco and Vaz. I 
 must relate how they became acquainted with the Spanish 
 pilot, John de Morales. 
 
 In 1420 Prince Henry fitted out another fleet of three 
 small vessels, and placed them under the command of 
 Zarco, Vaz being one of his captains. This was the fleet 
 which, in crossing the Straits of Gibraltar, fell in with the 
 Spanish ship that was loaded with captives. The pilot De 
 Morales told the Portuguese the interesting story of the 
 English lovers, described the beautiful land to which they 
 had been driven, and offered his services in attempting to 
 rediscover it. Zarco, knowing the fame of De Morales as a 
 pilot, accepted this offer, and, having dismissed the Spanish 
 ship and her load of captives, sailed back to Prince Henry 
 with the precious intelligence thus obtained. 
 
 How eagerly that gallant and intelligent Prince listened to 
 the tale of the lovers, and to the description of the country 
 they had found, as given him by John de Morales ! His 
 resolve was instantly taken. He sent Zarco and De Mora- 
 les to Lisbon to tell the same strange story to the King, his 
 father, and to ask the King's assistance in fitting out a 
 larger vessel than the Prince could afford, for the- purpose 
 of striking out boldly into the ocean in search of the un- 
 known land. 
 
 At court the two navigators did not succeed very well. 
 Some of the noblemen about the King objected to spending 
 
BEGINNING OF OCEAN NAVIGATION. 495 
 
 so much money for such a purpose, saying that in Portugal 
 there was plenty of waste land, and that there was no need 
 of sending ships roaming about the ocean in quest of more. 
 "Besides," said they, "are there not widows enough already 
 in Portugal, that we should send more sailors to find a grave 
 in the deep ? " 
 
 The Prince, hearing of these objections, mounted his 
 horse, and, accompanied by a few of his knights, went him- 
 self to Lisbon, and talked the matter over with the King. 
 All difficulties melted away in the presence of this enthusi- 
 astic Prince ; and soon Zarco, Vaz, and De Morales, with a 
 brave company of knights and mariners, put to sea in a stout 
 ship of the Portuguese navy, attended by an oared galley. 
 They were to touch first at Porto Santo, little thinking that 
 that island was only twenty-five miles from the land of which 
 they were in search, the land where the two lovers reposed 
 side by side under their beautiful tree. 
 
 A few days of pleasant sailing brought them to Porto 
 Santo, where the adventurers landed for a short period of 
 repose before letting out in search of the land unknown. 
 Perestello had not yet returned, and the island was still 
 peopled only by his enemies the rabbits. Zarco and Vaz, 
 however, and several of their comrades were familiar with the 
 island, and pointed out to De Morales the curiosities they 
 remembered. 
 
 Among other things, Zarco called the attention of the 
 Spanish pilot to a strange appearance on the horizon, far 
 away to the southwest, which he had noticed on his first 
 visit, and which had been often spoken of among Perestello's 
 colonists. A thick darkness hung over the sea like a huge 
 black cloud. But it could not be a cloud, for it never grew 
 less, nor larger ; and the clearer the sky was, the plainer it 
 was seen. 
 
496 TRIUMPHS OF ENTEEPEISE. 
 
 A strange natural object is apt to 'be a terrible one. Some 
 of those simple souls thought the dark object was the smoky 
 mouth of a bottomless abyss ; others supposed it to be the 
 horrid entrance into hell ; and a few of the more intelligent 
 maintained that it was a mysterious island, forever hidden 
 under a veil of cloud, to which the Christian saints and 
 bishops who had escaped from Moorish prisons had been 
 miraculously conveyed, and where they were now living in a 
 heaven upon earth. 
 
 But the bold De Morales believed none of these things. 
 He looked fearlessly upon that dark appearance in the south- 
 western sky. 
 
 " It is the land we are in search of," said he. 
 
 And he held fast to this opinion, and convinced several of 
 his comrades of its truth. The whole company gathered to 
 consult upon the matter, and they agreed at last that they 
 would wait until the moon changed, and see what effect that 
 would have upon the cloud. The moon changed ; but the 
 cloud remained motionless, vast, and dark as before. Upon 
 perceiving this, a panic seized them, and they would have 
 hurried on board ship, and made all sail for home, but for 
 the firmness and good sense of the Spanish pilot. He 
 declared again and again that, according to what the Eng- 
 lishmen had told him, the lovers' land could not be far off. 
 They told him, he said, that the soil of that unknown coun- 
 try was shaded by lofty trees, standing close together, which 
 alone, he thought, would cause a vapor continually to rise, 
 and that vapor would naturally spread over the sky, and 
 take the appearance of a great cloud. 
 
 Frightened men are hard to convince. In all the com- 
 pany there was only one man who remained of the pilot's opin- 
 ion; but that man was Zarco, commander of the expedition. 
 So, one morning, without telling anybody but the pilot 
 
BEGINNING OF OCEAN NAVIGATION. 497 
 
 where he was going, Zarco ordered all hands aboard, got up 
 the anchor, and, crowding all sail, stood straight for the 
 mysterious cloud. 
 
 The reader is aware that the Island of Madeira is little 
 more than a huge volcanic mountain, the highest point of 
 which is six thousand one hundred feet high ; and this moun- 
 tain, as just remarked, was then covered with enormous 
 trees. Of course, then, the nearer these poor trembling 
 sailors got to the island, the more awful it looked ; and when 
 at last they were near enough to hear the roaring of the 
 sea, as it broke upon the rocky shore, some of them fell 
 upon their knees, others cried out in an agony of terror, and 
 many gathered round the captain, entreating him to change 
 his course and save them from destruction. 
 
 Happily, the commander was a man of courage. He made 
 a speech to the panic-stricken sailors, giving them good 
 reasons for believing that behind that veil of dark mist there 
 was solid land, and no abyss at all. Not venturing yet to 
 go close in, they sailed for some distance, every eye fixed 
 intently upon the huge unknown object. Some of the sailors 
 declared that they saw through the gloom giants of awful 
 stature, which they found afterwards were only high rocks 
 upon the shore. Erelong they came to a point which 
 plainly was nothing else than land ; and, thus encouraged, 
 they stood in closer, and it was soon apparent to all that 
 land was before them. 
 
 An hour or two after they came to a bay which, the 
 pilot said, was exactly such a bay as the Englishmen 
 had described; and there he went ashore. Upon walk- 
 ing a little way into the interior, the brave pilot was 
 overwhelmed with joy to discover the tree-crowned hill 
 upon which the lovers had died; and upon its summit 
 he found the tomb, the tall wooden cross, the inscription, 
 
498 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 and all the other marks which his fellow-captives in Mo- 
 rocco had mentioned. 
 
 Exulting in this discovery, he hurried on board the large 
 ship, and told the news to Zarco and Vaz, who instantly 
 came on shore, and took possession of the country in the 
 joint names of King John and Prince Henry. 
 
 Need I say that they were enchanted with their discovery ? 
 They had found one of the most delightful of all the islands 
 in the world, as well as one of the most productive, an 
 island where an invalid can sleep out-of-doors almost every 
 night of the year, and where the heat of the sun is .most 
 agreeably tempered by breezes from the sea. So productive 
 was the soil there that it yielded sixty-fold, and the bunches 
 of grapes were formerly two or three spans long, and some- 
 times four. 
 
 After exploring the island a little, the adventurers sailed 
 for Portugal, eager to convey such glorious news to their 
 beloved Prince. He was the happiest of men, and at once 
 set about planting and settling the land. Dividing it into 
 two unequal parts, he made Zarco lord of the larger, and Vaz 
 of the smaller. He freighted vessels with vine-cuttings, 
 plants, vegetables, seeds, and tools, and sent great numbers 
 of men and some families to possess and people the island. 
 
 The first settlers, it appears, had great difficulty on account 
 of the dense forests with which the island was covered. In 
 fact, the island was named Madeira (which means timber) , 
 from the enormous quantity of the wood upon it. At last, 
 one of the settlers, thinking to make short work of the for- 
 est, set it on fire, and, the season being dry, the fire raged 
 with such violence that Captain Zarco and all his family, it 
 is said, were obliged to wade out into the sea, and remain 
 up to their necks in water for two days and two nights. The 
 old historians also say that this fire continued to burn for 
 
BEGINNING OF OCEAN NAVIGATION. 499 
 
 seven years. The ground was indeed cleared by the fire, 
 but Prince Henry, when he heard of it, regretted very much 
 the loss of so much good timber. 
 
 Before the island had been settled long, a boy was born in 
 it, whom his father named Adam. The next child born hap- 
 pened to be in the same family, and her parents named her 
 Eve. On the hill where the lovers were buried Zarco 
 immediately erected an altar, and after a few years he built 
 a church upon the spot, in the choir of which he placed their 
 bodies. 
 
 As to the grape- cuttings which Prince Henry sent to be 
 planted in Madeira, they took root and flourished exceed- 
 ingly, and have supplied the world ever since with an impor- 
 tant part of its wine. It is agreed, I believe, that the best 
 Madeira is the best wine the earth produces. Another inter- 
 esting fact is, that the family of Zarco still exists in Portugal. 
 I am informed that Madam da Camara, the governess of the 
 present Queen of Portugal, is a lineal descendant of the 
 brave man who commanded the expedition that discovered 
 Madeira. 
 
 Encouraged by the discovery of the Madeira Islands in 
 1420, the noble Prince put forth greater efforts than ever. 
 In 1424 he prepared a grand expedition of twenty-five hun- 
 dred foot-soldiers and a hundred and twenty horse-soldiers 
 for the conquest of the Canary Islands, which were inhabited 
 by innocent, good-tempered, but brave and warlike savages. 
 But it was not clear at the time to whom the group belonged, 
 and the Prince was very reluctant to spend in mere fighting 
 a great sum of money which would go so much farther in 
 discovering new lands and seas. So he put off this enter- 
 prise, and the natives of those islands continued for twenty 
 years longer to live in peace, and the Prince had more time 
 and money to spend in colonizing and planting Madeira. 
 
500 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 Yon have forgotten that Prince Pedro, the brother of 
 Prince Henry, set out upon his travels, and was gone twelve 
 years. In 1428 he returned, bringing with him a great store 
 of knowledge, and several new books and maps, which he 
 had gathered in distant cities. Among his maps there was 
 one upon which the group of islands now called the Azores, 
 that lie in the Atlantic Ocean, eight hundred miles west of 
 Portugal, were distinctly marked. Prince Henry, after he 
 had obtained possession of this precious map, never rested 
 content until he had found out whether there really were 
 such islands out there in the broad Atlantic. 
 
 So in 1431 he fitted out a vessel, placed it in command of 
 a nobleman named Cabral, and sent him in search of those 
 islands. The first attempt to find them was a failure ; but 
 Prince Henry never thought of giving up a search of this 
 kind even after ten failures. The next summer he sent 
 Cabral again, who cruised about in the Atlantic until he dis- 
 covered one island of the group, which he named Santa 
 Maria, a name which it bears to this day. As this was a fine, 
 large, fertile island, Prince Henry at once set about coloniz- 
 ing it, giving the direction of the colony to Cabral, who suc- 
 ceeded in settling upon it several families, descendants of 
 whom are now living there. 
 
 For several years no one supposed that there were any 
 islands near Santa Maria. But, one day, a runaway slave in 
 Santa Maria, who had been living in the mountains for some 
 time, came into the settlement, gave, himself up to his mas- 
 ter, and told him something which he hoped would secure 
 his pardon and perhaps his freedom. He said that on a clear 
 day, from the top of the highest mountain on the island, he 
 had seen, far away to the north, another island. Some of 
 the colonists went to the spot, found that the slave had 
 spoken the truth, and sent word to Prince Henry. It so 
 
BEGINNING OP OCEAN NAVIGATION. 501 
 
 happened that Cabral was with the Prince when this news 
 reached him, and he was immediately ordered to go in 
 search of the new island. The first time he missed it, and 
 the Prince explained to him from the chart that he had prob- 
 ably passed between Santa Maria and the new island. The 
 next time he found it, and a very fine island it proved to be, 
 which the Prince also planted and settled. The rest of the 
 group gradually came to light, and they were named Azores 
 (which means hawks), because so many birds resembling 
 hawks were found upon them. 
 
 Thus, by the year 1432, three of the groups of islands in 
 the Atlantic Ocean were known and partly settled. These 
 were the Canaries, the Madeiras, and the Azores, the last 
 two of which groups were rediscovered and colonized by 
 the brave navigators who sailed in the service of Prince 
 Henry. Besides this, his captains had sailed down the coast 
 of Africa as far as the Great Desert, which begins at a point 
 about seven hundred miles from Cape Sagres, on which the 
 Prince lived. Such were the results of about fifteen years' 
 exploration. During all that time Prince Henry had sent 
 out a small vessel or two every summer, and this was what 
 he had accomplished. 
 
 And now many of his friends supposed, and perhaps he 
 thought himself, that his discoveries were at an end. There 
 was a lion in the path, a terrible roaring lion, more awful 
 to the imagination of the credulous mariners of that day 
 than we can conceive. This was nothing less than the terri- 
 ble Cape Bojador, a promontory which thrust itself out into 
 the Atlantic Ocean from the coast of the Great Desert, just 
 below the most southern of the Canary Islands. This cape 
 cuts a poor figure on our maps ; it hardly shows at all ; but 
 for a century it was an object of such terror to sailors that 
 none of them thought it possible for any vessel navigated by 
 
502 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 mortals to go beyond it. It was supposed to run out into 
 the sea a hundred and fifty miles, and away out beyond the 
 cape there were reefs, upon which the waves of the Atlantic 
 broke and thundered and foamed eternally. 
 
 This awful cape was supposed to be, for all the purposes 
 of man, the end of the world. With regard to what there 
 might be south of it sailors had different conjectures. Some 
 thought that the waters of the seas on the other side of Cape 
 Bojador grew hotter and hotter until they boiled, and that 
 consequently the ocean there was too shallow for navigation. 
 It was generally believed that white people could not live 
 in the tropics for any time without turning as black as 
 negroes, and remaining so for the rest of their lives. 
 
 Now, in truth, to sailors creeping timidly down along the 
 African coast, this harmless Cape Bojador might well have 
 seemed terrible. It does extend some miles out into the 
 ocean, and there is a reef of rocks lying low in the water 
 three or four miles beyond it; and, both upon the shore of 
 the cape and upon the rocky reef, the mighty waves of the 
 Atlantic do break and foam and thunder in the sublimest 
 manner. As you approach the cape from the north, the 
 sand of the shore and of the cliffs above it has a reddish 
 hue, which probably added to the terrors of the scene in 
 those simple old days. At present, when sailors keep as 
 far from land as possible, this cape is not terrible at all, and 
 few sailors ever see it or know anything about it. Indeed, 
 I have had much trouble in finding out what sort of a cape 
 it really is. 
 
 By this time, as you may imagine, Prince Henry put very 
 little faith in the tales which mariners brought him of the 
 terrors of the sea ; and he had long been satisfied that a man 
 bold enough to stand out from the shore far enough would 
 find no great difficulty in sailing past this awful cape, and 
 
BEGINNING OF OCEAN NAVIGATION. 503 
 
 finding out what there was on the other side of it. So in 
 the year 1433, the year after the discovery of the Azores, 
 he appears to have determined to make the passing of Cape 
 Bojador the next of his undertakings. It was in this very 
 year that King John, his father, died, exhorting him on his 
 death-bed to persevere in his work of discovery, and thus 
 extend the Christian faith among the heathen. King Ed- 
 ward, the Prince's brother, who succeeded King John upon 
 the throne of Portugal, also urged him to go on, and 
 promised him all the help he could afford. Thus exhorted 
 and encouraged, our noble Prince continued his labors with 
 fresh zeal and determination. 
 
 Among the young gentlemen who lived and studied with 
 him, and served him in his mansion at Sagres, there was a 
 certain Gil Eannes, a brave man, and one of the Prince's 
 favorites. Him, in the summer of 1433, the Prince sent 
 forth in command of a small sailing vessel, directing him to 
 go beyond Cape Bojador, and bring back some account of 
 what there was on the other side. Gil Eannes set sail 
 boldly enough. But among his crew, it seems, there were 
 four old sailors who had heard the usual accounts of Cape 
 Bojador, and they told those wild tales to their captain, 
 who consequently went no farther than the Canary Islands, 
 whence he stole some of the natives and returned home. 
 
 The prince was exceedingly displeased, not because he 
 had brought home and made slaves of the innocent Canary 
 Islanders, which no doubt the Prince regarded as a very 
 proper and virtuous action, but because he had been fright- 
 ened from his purpose by the terrible stories of some igno- 
 rant mariners. 
 
 " If," said the Prince, w there were the slightest authority 
 for these stories that they tell, I would not blame you ; but 
 you come to me with the statements of four seamen who 
 
 32 
 
504 TKIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 have been accustomed to the voyage to Flanders, or some 
 other well-known route, and beyond that have no knowledge 
 of the needle or the sailing chart. Go out then, again, and 
 give no heed to their opinions; for by the grace of God 
 you cannot fail to derive from your voyage both honor and 
 profit. No perils that you encounter can be so great that 
 your reward shall not be greater if you accomplish the 
 object." 
 
 These things and many others the Prince said to his down- 
 cast squire after his return from the Canaries in 1433. 
 Prince Henry was not a man whose censure or whose praise 
 could be lightly regarded. Every man who served him 
 desired, above all things, to win the approval of so worthy a 
 Prince. Gil Eannes now secretly resolved that, no matter 
 what might be the perils, and terrors of Bojador, he would 
 pass beyond that cape, or never return to tell the tale of his 
 failure. 
 
 Following the Prince's advice, he no longer hugged the 
 shore ; but, as soon as he had got well by the Canaries, stood 
 out to sea, and of course he had no more difficulty in 
 passing the cape than in sailing over any other portion of 
 the Atlantic on a fine day in summer. As soon as he had 
 got by he stood in, and found a pleasant, tranquil little bay, 
 to which the end of the cape served as a breakwater against 
 the huge waves from the north, and in which there was good 
 anchorage. He went on shore, but found no signs of inhabi- 
 tants ; and, indeed, there were not and are not to this day 
 any inhabitants on that part of the coast of the Desert. He 
 gathered some plants that were growing on the shore, which 
 were similar to a plant common in Portugal, called by the 
 Portuguese St. Mary's Roses. Content with these trophies, 
 he ventured no farther south, but made all haste home to the 
 Prince. 
 
BEGINNING OF OCEAN NAVIGATION. 505 
 
 It is easy to laugh at a ghost when you know it is not a 
 ghost. It does, indeed, seem rather ridiculous that, after 
 performing so easy a task, Gil Eannes should have been 
 received and rewarded as a great hero and conqueror, and 
 his name carried all over Europe as the valiant navigator 
 who had braved the terrors of the terrible Cape Bojador. 
 But it is impossible for us to imagine how awful that cape 
 was to the ignorant people who lived four hundred years 
 ago. I should judge, from reading the old books, that the 
 passing of this cape was more encouraging to Prince Henry 
 and his friends, and had more to do with the progress of dis- 
 covery than anything that had yet occurred, not excepting 
 the discovery of the fine island of Madeira. It taught one 
 grand lesson to all concerned, not to be frightened before 
 they were hurt. 
 
 The Prince was now all alive to know something of the 
 country south of Cape Bojador, how far Africa extended , 
 and whether the region beyond the cape had any inhabitants. 
 The very next summer, which was that of 1435, he sent Gil 
 Eannes again in the same vessel, and with this he despatched 
 a large oared galley, of which he gave the command to his 
 cup-bearer, Alphonso Gonsalvez. These two navigators had 
 no difficulty in getting by the cape, and they kept on their 
 way down along the coast for a hundred and fifty miles 
 beyond it. Coming to a convenient bay, they anchored and 
 went on shore. Before they had gone far into the interior, 
 they found traces both of men and camels, but nowhere any- 
 thing like a human habitation. No one ever lived there, 
 although for ages caravans of men and camels had passed 
 and repassed along that shore. 
 
 But these adventurers knew nothing of caravans and the 
 roving life of the Desert. They now knew, however, that 
 there were people in Africa ; how many, and of what dispo- 
 
506 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 sition, and how armed, they knew not. It seemed best to 
 them, therefore, to go on board their vessels and return to 
 Portugal, which they did with all despatch. 
 
 Such was the ardor of Prince Henry in the pursuit of 
 knowledge that he was well satisfied with the summer's 
 work, although he only learned from it that there were 
 people and animals in Africa south of Cape Bojador, and 
 that it was all a delusion about the ocean in the tropics 
 being any shallower than in the temperate zone. I do not 
 suppose that Prince Henry ever believed that the seas there 
 were boiling ; but until Gil Eannes had passed the cape he 
 evidently thought that the tropical parts of the ocean were 
 very shallow. The vessel in which Gil Eannes first passed 
 the cape was a bark of fifteen or twenty tons. The oared 
 galley which Gonsalvez commanded on the second voyage is 
 spoken of in the old books as the largest vessel that had ever 
 been employed by the Prince in his exploring expeditions. 
 
 There were people, then, in Africa south of the cape. The 
 next thing was to find out who those people were, whether 
 they were many or few, natives or visitors, and, above all, 
 in the mind of Prince Henry, whether they were Pagans or 
 Christians. Accordingly, the next summer he again sent 
 his cup-bearer, Gonsalvez, in the same large oared galley. 
 The sole object of this expedition was to bring home to 
 Portugal some of the inhabitants of Africa ; and to promote 
 this object the Prince sent with Gonsalvez an interpreter 
 who was acquainted with the language of the Moors. He 
 also put on board the galley two horses, to make it easier 
 for the adventurers to examine the country. To Gonsalvez 
 he intrusted two noble youths, aged about seventeen years, 
 members of his own household, whom he was training for 
 the future service of the state. The Prince's orders to 
 Gonsalvez were to go as far down the coast of Africa as 
 
BEGINNING OF OCEAN NAVIGATION. 507 
 
 he could, and to do his very best to capture at least one of 
 the people and bring him to Portugal. 
 
 On the morning of a summer day in 1436 the galley left 
 the port of Lagos, and directed its course toward the African 
 coast. Several days' rowing, aided by a favorable breeze, 
 brought them past Cape Bojador ; whence Gonsalvez kept on 
 his way until he had gone more than two hundred miles 
 beyond the place where he had gathered the plants on his 
 last voyage. He was then three hundred and sixty miles 
 south of Cape Bojador. Here they came to what they 
 thought was the mouth of a large river, but which afterwards 
 was found to be only an indentation into the shore, which 
 extended many miles into the interior. Entering this deep 
 gulf, which to this day is called a river (Rio d'Ouro) , they 
 cast anchor in a convenient place, and Gonsalvez went on 
 shore, and looked about him* The land appeared more 
 likely to be inhabited than where they had formerly been on 
 shore, and the commander thought that this would be a good 
 place to search for the Africans whom the Prince desired so 
 much to possess. 
 
 The two horses were landed, and upon them Gonsalvez 
 mounted the two noble youths of whom I have just spoken. 
 
 w The names of these two youths," says an old historian, 
 "were Hector Homen and Diogo Lopez d'Almaida, both 
 gentlemen and cavaliers, educated in that school of nobility 
 and virtue, the household of the excellent Prince, the Infante 
 Don Henry ! " 
 
 An ancient Portuguese chronicler says of them : w I after- 
 wards knew one of these boys when he was a noble gentle- 
 man of good renown in arms, and you will find him in the 
 chronicles of the kingdom well proved in great deeds. The 
 other was a nobleman of good presence, as 1 have heard from 
 those who knew him." 
 
508 TEIUMPHS OP ENTERPBISE. 
 
 These gallant lads wore no armor, carrying only their 
 lance and sword, in order that they might be freer to make 
 their escape if they should come upon a large number of the 
 natives. Gonsalvez ordered them to keep together, to view 
 the country as far as they could without dismounting, and if 
 they could take any captives without running any risk, they 
 were to do it. 
 
 They were lads of high metal, these pupils of the noble 
 Prince Henry, and they cantered gayly off as though they 
 were going to take a pleasant ride into a country perfectly 
 well-known and safe ; and we may be sure that the crew of 
 the galley followed them with their eyes as long as they 
 could be seen. They kept along the shore of the bay for 
 the space of twenty-one miles, without seeing any signs of 
 inhabitants. It was then pretty late in the afternoon, and it 
 was high time for them to set out on their return to the ship. 
 All at once they came full upon a group of naked men, 
 armed with darts. They came upon them so suddenly that 
 it was impossible for them to retreat without being seen. 
 Not having the idea that naked black men could have any 
 human feelings or human rights, and being themselves but 
 boys, and at the same time full of desire to gratify the Prince 
 their master, they rushed into the midst of the savages, and 
 began to wound them with their spears. The natives, 
 astounded and bewildered as they were, defended themselves 
 with their darts, and wounded one of the young men in the 
 foot. In order the better to resist the strangers, they gath- 
 ered in a cluster behind a heap of rocks, where the young 
 men could not follow them upon their horses, nor reach them 
 with their lances. 
 
 Night coming on, and there being no prospect of taking a 
 prisoner, these audacious young fellows thought it best to 
 leave the savages to themselves, and set out upon their 
 
BEGINNING OF OCEAN NAVIGATION. 509 
 
 V 
 
 return to the galley. Night soon overtook them, but as they 
 had only to follow the course of the bay, they continued their . 
 journey all night, and reached the galley just as the day was 
 breaking the next morning. Every reader can imagine the 
 relief and joy of Gonsalvez and the crew when they satvr the 
 young men riding up on their tired steeds ; and how warmly 
 every one extolled their valor and determination. 
 
 The wound in the foot proved to be but slight, and after 
 resting an hour or two the lads were in good condition, and 
 eager to guide their commander to the spot where they had 
 seen the natives. So, about nine o'clock in the morning, 
 they mounted their horses once more, and Gonsalvez hoisted 
 his anchor, and the galley was rowed gently up the bay, 
 guided by the two youths on horseback to the place where 
 they had left the savages the evening before. The poor 
 negroes had gone, however, and probably in a great panic, for 
 they had left behind them all their little property, such as it 
 was, which Gonsalvez put on board his galley to convey to 
 the Prince. The two mounted youths galloped far and wide 
 over the country at the head of the bay, but they saw no 
 further trace of human beings. 
 
 Most reluctant was Gonsalvez to leave the spot without a 
 prisoner, but he was obliged to do so, and he returned 
 again to the mouth of the bay. Still unwilling to give it 
 up, he continued on his way down the coast forty miles 
 farther, until they came to the mouth of another bay, 
 where they saw a wonderful sight. On an island which 
 lay across the entrance, they discovered an amazing number 
 of seals, or, as they called them, sea-wolves, lying fast 
 asleep. Gonsalvez thought there were at least five thousand 
 of them in sight at one time. Here they had a grand seal- 
 hunt, and loaded the galley with as many seal-skins as they 
 could find room for. These were valuable, and would pay 
 
510 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 part of the cost of the expedition ; but Gonsalvez was well 
 aware that if he had loaded his galley with gold, the Prince 
 would not have valued it as much as one African. What the 
 Prince wanted was, not seal-skins, nor any other kind of 
 wealth, but knowledge. Gonsalvez, therefore, again turned 
 his prow southward, and kept bravely on one hundred and 
 fifty miles farther, until he reached a rocky promontory 
 which looked so much like a galley in shape, that they called 
 it Gallee, a name which it bears to this day. 
 
 Here again they went on shore, and examined the coun- 
 try. In the course of their rambles they found some fishing- 
 nets, which, you may be sure, they seized eagerly and closely 
 examined. These nets were not made of hemp, nor of any- 
 thing else the Portuguese were acquainted with, but of the 
 fibres of the bark of a tree that grew near. And yet these 
 nets were as strong as any that could be made by Europeans. 
 Here Was another plain proof that this part of Africa was 
 inhabited ; but nowhere could Gonsalvez or his crew, or the 
 brave youths of the Prince's household, find any traces of 
 inhabitants except these nets. The adventurers were obliged 
 to return to Portugal, after all the trouble they had taken, 
 without being able to present to their Prince a single cap- 
 tive. 
 
 It was in the year 1436 that this galley voyage was made, in 
 the course of which, for the first time, Europeans sailed into 
 the torrid zone, and reached a point fourteen hundred miles 
 south of Portugal. Considering all things, it was a great 
 achievement. So far and no farther had the ocean been 
 explored when Columbus lay in his mother's arms at Genoa, 
 an infant a few months old. 
 
THE KEAL MERITS OF COLUMBUS. 
 
 THE CHAIN OP EVENTS LEADING TO THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA.- 
 WHO SUGGESTED THE EXPEDITION. 
 
 ABOUT the year 1254, two Venetian merchants, brothers 
 of noble extraction, named MafFeo Polo and Nicholo Polo, 
 set out upon a voyage to Constantinople in their own vessel, 
 carrying with them a large quantity of rich and valuable 
 merchandise. At Constantinople they sold their merchan- 
 dise, and were then ready to employ their capital in any way 
 that promised to be profitable. - Hearing that there was a 
 good market for jewels at the court of a powerful Tartar 
 Chief, beyond the Black Sea, they bought a number of costly 
 gems, and sailed to a port at the extremity of the Crimea, 
 where they purchased horses, and travelled many days until 
 they reached their destination. Upon being presented to the 
 Tartar Prince, they showed him the jewels they had brought 
 with them. Perceiving that he was exceedingly pleased 
 with their brilliancy and beauty, they, in accordance with the 
 custom of the East, made him a present of them all ; which 
 was only a more profitable way of selling them. The Tar- 
 tar Chief, not willing to be surpassed in generosity, ordered 
 his treasurer to give them twice the value of the jewels in 
 money, and made them several costly presents besides. 
 
 Well pleased with the result of the transaction, they re- 
 mained a year in the dominions of this generous Prince, and 
 at the end of that time prepared to set out on their return 
 to Venice. But a war breaking out between the Prince 
 
512 TRIUMPHS OP ENTERPRISE. 
 
 and one of his neighbors, the roads by which they had come 
 were unsafe, and they attempted to reach Constantinople by 
 going round the head of the Caspian Sea, a distance of about 
 sixteen hundred miles. Travelling on horseback, they 
 crossed plains, deserts, and mountains, journeying week 
 after week, until they arrived at the Persian city of Bokhara, 
 where they remained for three years. At Bokhara, they 
 fell in with an ambassador who was on his way to the court 
 of the Grand Khan, or King of Kings, the great chief of all 
 the Tartar tribes, and at that time the most powerful mon- 
 arch of Asia. 
 
 The precise place of his residence is not certainly known, 
 but it was in the north of China, about fifteen hundred miles 
 east of Bokhara. Hearing from this ambassador of the 
 wealth and liberality of the king, and the disturbed state of 
 the country rendering it extremely difficult to travel home- 
 ward without an armed escort, they joined the suite of the 
 ambassador, and travelled with him to the capital of the 
 Grand Khan. They were impeded sometimes by the deep 
 snow, and often delayed on the banks of a swollen river until 
 the waters had receded into their usual channel ; so that a 
 whole year elapsed, after leaving Bokhara, before they reached 
 the abode of the Tartar King. 
 
 The ambassador introduced the brothers to this mighty 
 potentate, who enjoyed nothing so much as conversation 
 with well-informed and intelligent travellers. Besides ques- 
 tioning them respecting the kings of Europe, the extent of 
 their possessions, their laws and customs, he manifested a 
 particular curiosity concerning the Pope, the church, the 
 worship and religious usages of Christians. The brothers, 
 who were good Catholics, gave him abundant information on 
 these points, and they made upon his mind so favorable an 
 impression with regard to the Christian religion, that he 
 
THE REAL MERITS OP COLUMBUS. 513 
 
 determined to employ them as his ambassadors to the Pope. 
 The Khan told them that his object was to request his Holi- 
 ness to send him a hundred men of learning, thoroughly 
 acquainted with the principles of the Christian religion, as 
 well as with "the seven arts," and qualified to prove that the 
 Christian -faith was truer and better than any other. He said 
 that he wished to know whether or not it was true, that the 
 Tartar gods and idols were only evil spirits, whom the people 
 of the Eastern world were wrong in worshipping. He like- 
 wise signified his desire that they should bring with them, 
 from Jerusalem, on their way back, some of the holy oil from 
 the lamp which was kept burning over the sepulchre of Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
 Upon hearing these desires of the great king, so agreeable 
 and flattering to them as Catholics, they prostrated them- 
 selves before him, and declared that they were ready 
 instantly to set out on an embassy so important and honor- 
 able. The Khan caused to be written to the Pope letters 
 in the Tartar language, in which his requests were made 
 known. He also gave the merchants a small tablet of gold, 
 containing upon it the imperial cipher, or seal, which entitled 
 whomsoever held it to be escorted and conveyed from station 
 to station, from city to city, by all the Tartar governors, 
 and also to supplies of provisions for the journey, and to 
 free maintenance wherever they chose to stop. 
 
 They were, as near as I can compute, about two thousand 
 miles from Venice, and the following is the account of their 
 journey a part of the way home : 
 
 " Being thus honorably commissioned, they took their leave of 
 the Grand Khan, and set out on their journey, but had not pro- 
 ceeded more than twenty days, when the officer, named Khogatal, 
 their companion, fell dangerously ill, in the city named Alan. In 
 this dilemma it was determined, upon consulting all who were 
 
514 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 present, and with the approbation of the man himself, that they 
 should leave him behind. In the prosecution of their journey, 
 they derived essential benefit from being provided with the royal 
 tablet, which procured them attention in every place through 
 which they passed. Their expenses were defrayed, and escorts 
 were furnished. But notwithstanding these advantages, so great 
 were the natural difficulties they had to encounter from the extreme 
 cold, the snow, the ice, and the flooding of the rivers, that their 
 progress was unavoidably tedious, and three years elapsed before 
 they were enabled to reach a seaport town in the lesser Armenia. 
 Departing from thence by sea, they arrived at Acre, in the month 
 of April, 1269." 
 
 Acre is a port of the Mediterranean, and there they were 
 within reach of European news. At Acre they learned that 
 the Pope was dead, and that a new one was not yet elected ; 
 so they communicated their mission to the Pope's Legate 
 resident at Acre, who advised them to wait until the election 
 of a Pope had taken place, and then proceed to Rome and 
 deliver to him the letters of the Grand Khan. As this 
 seemed the only course open to them, they adopted it, and 
 resolved to employ the interval in visiting their families 
 at Venice. They embarked on board a vessel, and soon 
 reached their native city. Nicolo Polo had left his wife at 
 a time when there was a prospect of her soon making him a 
 father ; but during all his journeyings he had never heard 
 a word from home. Upon reaching his abode, he was 
 informed that his wife had died soon after giving birth to a 
 son, who had been christened by the name of Marco, and 
 was then fifteen years of age. 
 
 Thus fifteen years were consumed in the travels of these 
 two Venetian merchants ; which altogether did not amount 
 to much more, in point of distance, than a journey from 
 New York to San Francisco. 
 
THE REAL MERITS OF COLUMBUS. 515 
 
 Two years elapsed before a new Pope was elected. The 
 brothers, accompanied by the youthful Marco, then pre- 
 sented themselves before the chief of the Christian Church 
 at Rome, who received them with cordiality, and read the 
 letters of the Grand Khan with the respect due to so great 
 a monarch. The Pope did not send the Khan a hundred 
 learned men, as he had requested ; but selected two friars 
 to go to the Tartar court, giving them authority to ordain 
 priests and consecrate bishops, and ordering them to 
 expound with their best ability, and recommend with all 
 their eloquence, the Christian religion among the Tartars. 
 He also gave them several handsome crystal vases, and other 
 beautiful gifts, to be presented to the great king in his name 
 and with his blessing. 
 
 Most perilous, arduous and wearisome was their journey. 
 The two priests soon became discouraged and turned back, 
 but the three Venetians persevered in spite of every obsta- 
 cle. The king had removed his capital near to where Pekin 
 now stands, and it was three years and a half before the 
 travellers got near enough to him even to know where he 
 was. And it appears the Khan heard of them about as soon 
 as they heard of him. For Marco tells us that the king 
 sent a party to meet them at the distance of forty days' jour- 
 ney from his capital, and gave orders for everything to be 
 made ready for their comfort on the way. 
 
 "By these means," adds Marco Polo, "and through the 
 blessing of God, they were conveyed in safety to the royal 
 court." 
 
 The king gave them a truly grand reception in a full assem- 
 bly of his councillors. They related their travels, explained 
 their delay, delivered the letters of the Pope, and gave the 
 precious vessel of oil from the Holy Sepulchre. Observing 
 the youthful Marco, the king asked who he was. 
 
516 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 "This," said his father, "is your servant and my son." 
 
 " He is welcome," said the Khan, " and I am glad that he 
 is here." 
 
 He caused the youth to be enrolled among his honorable 
 attendants, employed him, made much of him, promoted him, 
 sent him on various errands all over the Eastern world, and 
 treated the whole family with the greatest liberality and 
 respect. 
 
 Twenty-four years passed away. On a certain day in the 
 year 1295, three men in patched and coarse garments 
 knocked at the door of the Polo mansion in Venice, and 
 demanded admittance. They were the two merchants, gray- 
 haired now, but still erect and vigorous, and Marco Polo in 
 the prime of life. So coarse was their attire, and so changed 
 were their countenances by the lapse of years and by long 
 travel, that their kindred who lived in the house had some 
 difficulty in recognizing them. 
 
 A few days after, the family invited all their old friends 
 and relations to a grand entertainment, at which the two 
 brothers and Marco appeared in magnificent robes of crim- 
 son satin flowing down to the floor, which they afterwards 
 changed for robes of crimson damask, and again to gorgeous 
 dresses of crimson velvet ; all of which they divided among 
 the guests as they took them off. At the end of the repast, 
 Marco withdrew and brought in the clothes coarse, dirty, 
 and patched which they had worn on their arrival. They 
 proceeded to rip with knives the seams and patches of 
 these garments, when the guests discovered that these ragged 
 old clothes had concealed a marvellous quantity of rubies, 
 sapphires, carbuncles, diamonds, and emeralds, with which 
 the Great Khan had rewarded their long service, and upon 
 which they lived in great splendor all the rest of their days. 
 
 Some time after, Marco Polo, while serving in the Vene- 
 
THE REAL, MERITS OF COLUMBUS. 517 
 
 tian navy, was taken prisoner and conveyed to Genoa, where 
 he was kept in confinement for four years. To amuse him- 
 self in prison, he wrote out the story of his adventures and 
 travels, which, being published, remained for two centuries 
 and more one of the most popular and universal of books. 
 It may still be bought in almost every large book-store. 
 
 The work was well calculated to provoke curiosity. To 
 this day it can be read with great pleasure. When the 
 author speaks of what he himself saw, he appears to have 
 spoken the truth, although many of his statements make 
 large demands upon our credulity. He describes, for exam- 
 ple, that remarkable breed of sheep mentioned by Herodo- 
 tus, which have tails weighing thirty pounds and upwards ; 
 the sheep themselves being as large as asses. This was long 
 supposed to be only a traveller's tale, but a recent French 
 writer confirms Herodotus and Polo ; and a modern English 
 traveller informs us that the tails of these sheep are so long 
 and heavy, that the shepherds are obliged to fix a piece of 
 board under them to prevent their being injured by rubbing 
 on the ground. Some shepherds, he adds, fix a pair of 
 wheels to this board to facilitate its progress over the soil ; 
 which confirms Herodotus, who speaks of the tails of these 
 sheep being " supported by little carts. " 
 
 Marco Polo drew enchanting pictures of the splendor and 
 profusion of Oriental courts. He speaks of one king who 
 lived in a beautiful valley shut in by mountains, where he had 
 a luxurious garden, abounding in delicious fruits and fragrant 
 flowers, and where he had palaces of various forms, orna- 
 mented with works in gold, with paintings, and with rich 
 furniture. By means of small conduits in these palaces, 
 streams of wine, milk, honey, and water were to be seen 
 flowing in every direction. The inhabitants of these sump- 
 tuous abodes were elegant and lovely girls, possessing in 
 
518 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 great perfection the arts of singing and playing upon instru- 
 ments. Clad in rich dresses, these alluring damsels were 
 seen continually sporting and amusing themselves in the 
 gardens and arbors, while their female guardians carefully 
 concealed themselves within. 
 
 In another kingdom, governed by Princes descended from 
 Alexander and the daughter of Darius, Marco says that the 
 best rubies in the world were found, embedded in a high 
 mountain, so precious and splendid that they were never 
 sold, but reserved exclusively for royal gifts. In the same 
 kingdom the stone was found which yields the most beautiful 
 blue, and the horses had hoofs so hard that they required no 
 shoeing. He has a great deal to say also respecting the 
 power and glory of the Grand Khan, the King of kings, 
 the greatest monarch in all the Oriental world. 
 
 " In the middle of the hall," he tells us, " where the Grand 
 Khan sits at table, there is a magnificent piece of furniture, 
 made in the form of a square coffer, each side of which is 
 three paces in length, exquisitely carved with figures of ani- 
 mals, and gilt. It is hollow within, for the purpose of 
 receiving a capacious vase shaped like a jar, and of precious 
 materials, calculated to hold about a tun, and filled with wine. 
 On each of its four sides stands a smaller vessel containing 
 about a hogshead, one of which is filled with mare's milk, 
 another with that of the camel, and so of the others accord- 
 ing to the kinds of beverage in use. Within this buffet are 
 also the cups or flagons belonging to his Majesty for serving 
 the liquors. Some of them are of beautiful gilt plate. Their 
 size is such that, when filled with wine or other liquor, the 
 quantity would be sufficient for eight or ten men. Before 
 every two persons who have seats at the tables one of these 
 flagons is placed, together with a kind of ladle in the form of 
 a cup with a handle, also of plate, to be used not only for 
 
THE REAL MERITS OF COLUMBUS. 519 
 
 taking the wine out of the flagon, but for lifting it to the 
 head. The quantity and richness of the plate belonging to 
 his majesty are quite incredible." 
 
 Such passages as these respecting the Grand Khan have a 
 particular interest, because they were quoted by Columbus 
 in his letters to the sovereigns of Europe, urging them to 
 undertake a voyage of discovery to the west. It was to 
 reach the region capable of sustaining such profusion as this, 
 that Columbus sailed. 
 
 One curious fact which Marco Polo mentions is, that the 
 Grand Khan issued a kind of paper money, made of the 
 bark of the mulberry-tree, cut into oblong pieces of different 
 sizes, each size having a particular value, and each bearing , 
 the signature of high officers appointed by the king. Marco 
 Polo gives a particular account of the manufacture, circula- 
 tion, and redemption of this paper money, which concludes 
 with the following words : 
 
 " When any persons happened to be possessed of paper money 
 which from long use had become damaged, they carry it to the mint, 
 where, upon the payment of only three per cent they may receive 
 fresh notes in exchange. Should any be desirous of procuring gold 
 or silver for the purposes of manufacture, such as of drinking cups, 
 girdles, or other articles wrought of these metals, they in like 
 manner apply at the mint, and for their paper obtain the bullion 
 they require. All his majesty's armies are paid with this currency, 
 which is to them of the same value as if it were gold or silver. 
 Upon these grounds it may certainly be affirmed that the Grand 
 Khan has a more extensive command of treasure than any other 
 sovereign in the universe." 
 
 He spoke of another region, where all the money con- 
 sisted of plain gold rods, which were cut into lengths, 
 each piece being valued according to its length. He spoke 
 of a seaport where ships were to be seen from all parts of 
 
 33 
 
520 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 the East, and where the merchants were wealthier than the 
 princes of other countries. He spoke of an island where 
 gold was so abundant that the sovereign's palace had the 
 entire roof plated with gold; the ceilings were of gold, 
 the windows had golden ornaments, and some of the rooms 
 had tables of pure gold. In the same island there were 
 pearls of wonderful size and beauty. 
 
 Perhaps the most important and useful passage in the 
 work of Marco Polo is that in which he describes the manner 
 in which the Indian ships were built in compartments, an 
 idea which has since been adopted by the ship-builders of 
 all countries. 
 
 w Some ships of the larger class," he says, " have as many 
 as thirteen bulkheads, or divisions in the hold formed of 
 thick planks let into each other. The object of these is to 
 guard against accidents which may occasion the vessel to 
 spring a leak, such as striking a rock or receiving a stroke 
 from a whale, a circumstance that not unfrequently 
 occurs. . . . The crew, upon discovering the situation of 
 the leak, immediately remove the goods from the division 
 affected by the water, which, in consequence of the boards 
 being so well fitted, cannot pass from one division to 
 another. They then repair the damage, and return the 
 goods to that place in the hold from whence they had been 
 taken." 
 
 The hint afforded by this passage was never acted upon 
 by the ship-builders of Europe or America until Dr. Frank- 
 lin called attention to it and recommended it, towards the 
 close of his valuable life. Even then the expedient was 
 seldom employed ; and it was not until this age of great 
 steamships that vessels of magnitude were generally built 
 with water-tight compartments. The Indian vessels which 
 Marco Polo describes as being built in this manner must 
 
THE REAL MERITS OF COLUMBUS. 521 
 
 have been of great size, for he says that some of them 
 required crews of three hundred men, and carried six thou- 
 sand bags of pepper. 
 
 From these few specimens the reader can form some idea 
 of the influence and attractiveness of Marco Polo's work in 
 an age when Europeans generally knew nothing whatever 
 of the world beyond the boundaries of their own country. 
 We may judge of its general effect by that which it produced 
 upon Sir John Mandeville, an English knight of ancient 
 lineage, and well versed in the knowledge which Europe 
 then possessed. Such curiosity was enkindled in his mind 
 respecting the wonder-lands of the East, that at twenty- 
 seven he left his country, and traversed the whole eastern 
 world, visiting Egypt, Palestine, Arabia, China, and India ; 
 returning to England an old man, after an absence of thirty- 
 four years, to publish his travels, and thus further inflame 
 the curiosity of mankind. 
 
 Besides confirming what Marco Polo had .recorded of the 
 great wealth of India, and the splendid court of the Grand 
 Khan, he related many things of which Europeans had never 
 previously heard. It was he who first told Christendom of 
 the Egyptians hatching chickens in ovens ; of the mode of 
 sending messages by pigeons ; and of the manner in which 
 diamonds were found, sorted, and prepared for sale. He 
 described the growth and culture of pepper. It was he also 
 who first wrote of the Car of Juggernaut, and the victims 
 crushed under its wheels, and described the burning of wid- 
 ows on the funeral piles of their husbands. The crocodile, 
 the hippopotamus, the elephant, the giraffe, he had the good 
 fortune to describe to people who had never seen them. In 
 his work Europeans first read of the peculiar customs of 
 the Chinese, the long tails of the men, the little feet of 
 the women, and other strange freaks and fashions now so 
 familiar to all the world. 
 
522 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 But the great influence of Mandeville's travels arose from 
 the fact that he confirmed so many of the statements of 
 Mareo Polo. The works of both these travellers contained 
 marvels too great even for the credulity of the middle ages ; 
 and perhaps, if one had not confirmed the other on some 
 of the most material points, neither could have produced so 
 profound an impression upon the best minds of the time. 
 Mandeville's book, like Marco Polo's, had wonderful cur- 
 rency. Not only were a multitude of copies produced, but 
 many of the copyists, to enhance the value of their product, 
 inserted in the text marvels of their own invention, for which 
 the injured author has had to suffer reproach in modern times. 
 Mandeville was in truth an honest, intelligent man, and 
 when he related what he saw himself he usually spoke 
 the truth, although, like Polo, he was often led astray by the 
 reports of others. 
 
 Judged by the effects which it produced, the little book of 
 Marco Polo must be pronounced the most important piece of 
 writing which has been executed during the last thousand 
 years. There arose during the next century an intense 
 desire in the minds of educated men to know more of the 
 great globe which they inhabited, and particularly of those 
 countries in Asia whence came the spices, drugs, jewels, 
 metals, and fabrics, which were associated in the minds of 
 all with wealth and luxury. At present we do not think 
 much of such things as nutmegs, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, 
 and pepper, because they are cheap and common ; but five 
 hundred years ago, no one but kings, nobles, and great mer- 
 chants ever saw them, for they were worth their weight in 
 gold ; and nothing was too strange to believe of countries 
 that produced commodities so rare and exquisite. The dia- 
 monds, too, that glittered in kings' crowns, and sparkled 
 on the diadems of princesses, all came from the mysterious 
 
THE REAL MERITS OF COLUMBUS. 523 
 
 regions of Asia, to which a European scarcely ever pene- 
 trated. Except the nobles, almost the only rich people in 
 Europe were the merchants who trafficked in the precious 
 things of India ; and Venice, whose ship-yards employed 
 sixteen thousand men, and whose vessels were seen in every 
 harbor, had grown great by this commerce alone. 
 
 Among the learned men in Europe who read in manuscript 
 the travels of Marco Polo, no one studied them with an inter- 
 est so passionate and sustained as a certain famous astronomer 
 of Florence named Toscanelli. Being an astronomer, he 
 knew that the earth was a globe ; and, as he brooded over 
 the scenes of wonder which Marco Polo revealed, the thought 
 dawned upon his mind, at length, that perhaps the land of 
 spices and diamonds, of rubies and gold, which lay far to 
 the east of his native land, could be reached by sailing to 
 the west. 
 
 It was this thought of Toscanelli which led to the discovery 
 of America. 
 
 As often as he had opportunity, he conversed with mer- 
 chants who traded in the commodities of the East, and gath- 
 ered from them all that they knew or had heard of the 
 productions and situation of the Oriental countries. Once 
 there came to Florence an ambassador from the Grand Khan. 
 Toscanelli conversed with this interesting personage, who 
 confirmed abundantly all that Marco Polo relates of the vast 
 extent and various wealth of the Eastern world. 
 
 As years rolled on, the notion of reaching the East by 
 sailing to the west acquired in the ardent mind of this Ital- 
 ian philosopher something of the dominating power of a 
 mania. He attached the more importance to it because he 
 thought the world was much smaller than it is. He sup- 
 posed that a navigator would only have to sail six thousand 
 five hundred miles westward in order to reach Asia, whereas 
 
524 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 the true distance is about sixteen thousand miles. Possessed 
 by his theory, and being in correspondence with the learned 
 men of every capital in Europe which could boast of learned 
 men, he was diligent in making it known ; and, indeed, he 
 appears to have written of it so often that he became at 
 length somewhat ashamed of repeating the demonstration. 
 Toscanelli was a man of European reputation, past three- 
 score and ten, when his darling thought dropped like a ripe 
 seed into the mind in which it was destined to germinate. 
 
 Affonso the Fifth was King of Portugal when the occur- 
 rences took place which I am about to relate. This king 
 figures in Portuguese history as " Affonso the African," 
 because in his reign so many discoveries were made in Africa 
 by navigators who sailed under his orders. He is also called 
 " Affonso The Redeemer," from his having redeemed so many 
 African slaves. His first wife was a daughter of that Prince 
 Pedro who made the twelve years' tour of the world, and 
 brought home from Venice the precious manuscript of Marco 
 Polo. To this interesting fact I need only add, that he was 
 the founder of the first public library that Portugal ever 
 possessed, to show that he was a man likely to catch at Tos- 
 canelli's daring theory. He appears to have heard of it in 
 the year 1474. It was in that year, at least, that he ordered 
 his secretary to write to Toscanelli on the subject, and ask 
 him for an exact description of the course to be taken in 
 order to reach India by sailing to the west. Toscanelli 
 replied most fully to the king's secretary, although he began 
 his letter with a kind of apology for repeating once more his 
 oft-told tale. Few letters so important as this have ever 
 been written since the art of writing was invented. 
 
 "Although," wrote Toscanelli, "I have often treated of 
 the advantages of this route, I will once more, since the 
 Most Serene King desires it, indicate with precision the 
 
THE REAL MERITS OF COLUMBUS. 525 
 
 course which it will be necessary to follow. With a globe 
 in my hand I could demonstrate the correctness of my the- 
 ory ; but I can show the ship's course upon a chart like 
 those used by mariners, upon which I have myself marked 
 the entire line of coast from Ireland to the end of Guinea, 
 with all the intervening islands. Directly opposite this line 
 x)f coast, straight to the west, I have placed the beginning 
 of the Indies, with the islands and places which a navigator 
 would first reach. You will see also upon this chart how far 
 you can go from the Arctic Pole towards the Equator, and at 
 what distance to the west lie those regions so fertile and so 
 abounding in spices and precious stones. . . . You will 
 not be surprised that I place upon this map the land of spices 
 to the west, the land which we generally call the Levant ; 
 for those who will continue to sail westward will come at last 
 to those very regions at which travellers arrive who journey 
 by land toward the east." 
 
 When he had explained the chart, he proceeded to remark 
 upon the extent and wealth of the Eastern countries, not 
 omitting to remind his correspondent of the multitudes of 
 human beings in those regions who might be expected to 
 embrace the Christian faith, if only the gospel could be 
 preached to them. 
 
 "From the port of ZaTthoun," he continued, " a hundred 
 ships sail every year loaded with spices. Several provinces 
 and kingdoms pay tribute to the Grand Khan, who is, as it 
 were, the king of kings, and who lives generally in Cathay. 
 His predecessors wished to establish commercial relations 
 with the Christians ; and, two hundred years ago, they sent 
 ambassadors to the Popes asking instructors competent to 
 explain our faith. But those ambassadors could not reach 
 Rome, but were obliged to turn back on account of the im- 
 mense difficulties of the journey. Under the reign of Pope 
 
526 TEIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 Eugenius the Fourth, came an ambassador who assured his 
 Holiness of the affection which the princes and people of his 
 country had for the Catholics. I ha<} a long conversation 
 with that ambassador, in the course of which he spoke to me 
 of the magnificence of his king, of the great rivers that water 
 his country, one of which has upon its banks two hundred 
 cities, and is crossed by ten bridges of marble. He spoke, 
 too, of a country where they choose for officers of the gov- 
 ernment men of letters, without regard to birth or wealth. 
 He told me also of that city of Quisay, a name which signi- 
 fies City of Heaven, situated in the province of Mango, 
 near Cathay, and the circumference of which is twenty-five 
 league s." 
 
 The chart sent by Toscanelli with his letter contained a 
 peculiarity not mentioned in the passages quoted. The 
 space between Europe and Asia was divided upon it into 
 twenty-six portions of two hundred fifty miles each, making 
 the whole distance six thousand five hundred miles. Fortu- 
 nate mistake ! Columbus, daring and devoted as he was, 
 would scarcely have ventured forth into the unknown ocean 
 if he had supposed that sixteen thousand miles stretched 
 between Lisbon and that wonderful Cipango (Japan) of 
 which Marco Polo gives so alluring an account. 
 
 Columbus was in Lisbon when Toscanelli's letter and chart 
 arrived. He had then resided four years in the dominions 
 of the King of Portugal ; during which a series of events had 
 rendered him of all living men the readiest to accept Tos- 
 canelli's theory. A devout Catholic, he had been accustomed 
 to hear mass every morning in the chapel of a convent, 
 which was also attended by the young ladies of the convent 
 school. One of these ladies was Donna Felipa, daughter of 
 Perestrello, Governor of Porto Santo, an island near Madeira. 
 Columbus fell in love with her, married her, and went soon 
 
THE REAL MERITS OF COLUMBUS. 527 
 
 after to live at Porto Santo, with his wife's mother, then a 
 widow. Here Columbus,, as Mr. Irving finely says, was 
 " on the frontier of discovery," away out on the broad ocean, 
 on the track of navigators who sailed every year from Por- 
 tugal to the coast of Africa. More than once, as his son 
 Fernando records, he sailed to the coast of Guinea, and saw 
 with his own eyes the wonders which had been so often the 
 topic of conversation at Lisbon. 
 
 At Porto Santo his mother-in-law gave up to him the 
 diaries and other manuscripts of her deceased husband, who 
 had been brought up in the household of Prince Henry, under 
 whose orders he had often sailed, and who had appointed 
 him Governor of the first colony which he had planted. A 
 sister of his wife Felipa had married another famous navi- 
 gator, Correa by name ; so that the whole family party on 
 the island, both from inclination and necessity, were singu- 
 larly alive to everything that related to navigation and dis- 
 covery. It was Pedro Correa who related one day in the 
 family, Columbus being present, that a piece of carved wood 
 had been washed ashore on the island during the prevalence 
 of a westerly storm. Some Portuguese pilots informed him 
 that exceedingly long reeds had come ashore at the Canaries 
 while a westerly wind was blowing ; and a friend who lived 
 on one of the Azores spoke to him of enormous trunks of 
 pine-trees, of a kind unknown in Europe, blown ashore from 
 the west. Two human bodies of an unknown race had 
 been tossed, as he was informed, on one of the Azores dur- 
 ing a westerly storm. The people of those islands, ignorant 
 of the optical illusion which we call mirage, were continually 
 fancying that they saw islands lying far to the west, of which 
 they sometimes went in search, but found them not. All 
 these things, though they awakened in Columbus a profound 
 curiosity to know what there might be to the west beyond 
 
528 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 the wide waste of waters, did not suffice to suggest to his 
 mind the idea of undertaking the enterprise that was to 
 immortalize his name. 
 
 In 1474 he was at Lisbon again, making maps, charts, 
 and globes for the support of his wife and child, sending a 
 little money now and then to his aged father at Genoa, 
 toward the education of his two younger brothers. At Lis- 
 bon there was then a little colony of Italian merchants and 
 mariners, with whom he frequently conversed upon the sub- 
 ject nearest his heart. He was told one day by an Italian 
 friend of the letter and chart which Toscanelli had sent to 
 the King of Portugal. Columbus listened to an outline of 
 Toscanelli's theory with an interest of which ordinary mor- 
 tals cannot form the faintest idea. He was approaching his 
 destiny. His whole previous life had been only one long 
 preparation for that thrilling moment. It so happened that 
 one of his Italian friends was about to return to Florence, 
 and Columbus seized the opportunity there were no public 
 means of forwarding letters then to write to his learned 
 countryman, asking him for further information, and express- 
 ing his desire to make the westward voyage which Tosca- 
 nelli had suggested. The aged philosopher kindly replied 
 to the letter of the obscure map-maker. 
 
 "I see," he wrote, "that you have the grand and noble 
 desire to sail to the country where spices spontaneously 
 grow ; and in reply to your letter I send a copy of one which 
 I addressed some days ago to a friend attached to the ser- 
 vice of the Most Serene King of Portugal, and who had the 
 order of his Highness to write to me upon the same subject." 
 
 Furnished thus with the very letter which had been writ- 
 ten for the king's own eye, and encouraged by one of the 
 most celebrated philosophers of the age, Columbus hastened 
 to write again in acknowledgment of the favor done him, 
 
THE REAL MERITS OF COLUMBUS. 529 
 
 and repeating his desire to undertake the voyage. Tosca- 
 nelli again wrote approvingly. 
 
 "I commend," said he, "your desire to sail toward the 
 west ; and I am persuaded, as you will have perceived by 
 my preceding letter, that while the expedition which you 
 wish to undertake is not an easy matter, the transit from 
 the coasts of Europe to the land of spices is certain, if you 
 follow the course which I have marked out. You would be 
 entirely convinced of it if, like myself, you had had oppor- 
 tunity of conversing with a great number of travellers who 
 have been in that part of the world. Be sure that you will 
 find there powerful kingdoms, great cities well peopled; and 
 rich provinces." 
 
 Columbus was convinced. His plan was formed. The 
 object of his life was plain before him. And although 
 eighteen years were to elapse before he could execute his 
 purpose, there is no reason to believe that it was ever for a 
 moment laid aside. It is not certain that at the time of his 
 correspondence with Toscanelli in the summer of 1474, 
 he had ever read the travels of Marco Polo. But it is 
 evident from his subsequent letters that he became familiarly 
 acquainted with them, and burned with desire to discover an 
 easier access to those rich and densely peopled countries, so 
 that their wealth could be poured into Europe, and new 
 empires be added to the realm of the church. Cipango 
 that wonderful island described by Polo as lying out in the 
 ocean fifteen hundred miles from the coast of Asia was 
 the frequent subject of his thoughts. He read in Marco Polo 
 that the sea adjacent contained exactly seven thousand four 
 hundred and forty islands, mostly inhabited, and abounding 
 in every kind of precious product, spices, drugs, gems, 
 pearls, and gold. These islands he expected first to reach, if 
 ever the means should be given him of making his westward 
 
530 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 voyage ; and there he expected to gather the wealth that 
 would enable him to send an army into Palestine for the 
 recovery of the Holy Sepulchre. 
 
 I shall not repeat the affecting story which has been told 
 with such vividness and grace by Washington Irving, of 
 Columbus' weary wanderings from court to court, humbly 
 begging the kings of the earth to allow him to pour the 
 wealth of Asia into their coffers. As told by Mr. Irving, it 
 is as fascinating a true story as mortal ever related. He 
 prevailed at length. He prevailed by telling the pious 
 Isabella, Queen of Spain, what he had read in Marco Polo 
 of the Grand Khan's embassy to the Pope, asking him to 
 send a hundred Christian priests to instruct his subjects in 
 the Christian religion. I firmly believe that this was the 
 fact which decided Isabella to lend her influence to the 
 undertaking. He sailed, as we all know, at sunrise on 
 Friday, the third of August, 1492, from Palos, a small sea- 
 port in the south of Spain, with three small ships and one 
 hundred and twenty men. The chart which he took with 
 him as a guide was founded upon the one sent him by Tosca- 
 nelli eighteen years before. Upon it was delineated the line 
 of coast from Ireland to Guinea, and opposite to that coast, 
 directly to the west, the extremity of India ; while between 
 was marked the Island of Cipango, at which he hoped first 
 to arrive. 
 
 On Friday, at two o'clock in the morning, October the 
 twelfth, 1492, ten weeks after leaving Spain, a gun from 
 one of his vessels announced to him that land was seen. 
 As the day dawned there was gradually disclosed to the view 
 of the enraptured voyagers, not, indeed, the glittering 
 minarets, the gorgeous palaces, and mast-fringed wharves 
 of the city of Cipango, but a verdant and beautiful island, 
 only a few leagues in extent, with other islands dimly 
 
THE REAL MERITS OF COLUMBUS. 531 
 
 visible in the distance, all green, wooded, and inviting. 
 Columbus had no doubt that he had reached the archipelago 
 of the seven thousand four hundred and forty islands, and 
 that Cipango was not far distant. Being certain that he 
 was in India, he naturally called the simple inhabitants of 
 the islands by the name of Indians. The land first descried, 
 and first trodden by the voyagers, was the island of San 
 Salvador, one of the group of the Bahamas. 
 
 Columbus died without knowing that he had discovered 
 a continent. 
 
THE NAMING OF THE NEW WORLD. 
 
 WHEN Columbus was at Seville, before his first westward 
 voyage, there was living in that city a wealthy Italian mer- 
 chant and ship chandler, named Juan Berardi. Columbus 
 became familiarly acquainted with his countryman ; and, 
 after his happy return from the new world, employed him 
 to furnish, equip, and provision the great fleet with which 
 he sailed a second time to the Bahamas, in 1493. 
 
 The chief clerk in the house of Berardi at that time, upon 
 whom devolved the charge of loading the vessels, was one 
 Amerigo Vespucci, a native of Florence, forty-two years of 
 age. The records of the period show this clerk to have been 
 very busy in making payments, buying provisions, and fur- 
 nishing the vessels ; .and it was through him, also, that the 
 government sometimes made large payments to the house in 
 which he was employed. The Latinized form of the name 
 of this clerk is Americus Vespucius ; under which form every 
 reader recognizes the navigator whose name was afterwards 
 given to the continent we inhabit. 
 
 He was the son of a highly respectable, though impover- 
 ished, family of Florence ; his father being by profession a 
 notary, who also held the office of Secretary to the Senate 
 of the Florentine Eepublic. He had an uncle, Giorgio 
 Antonio Vespucci, noted in Florence as a scholar, one of the 
 Friars in a convent there, and the master of the convent 
 school, which was attended by sons of the Florentine no- 
 bility. This school Amerigo frequented, and thus acquired 
 
534 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 an education which probably his father could not otherwise 
 have afforded him. As he grew up, the young man became 
 interested in the favorite sciences of the times, astronomy 
 and geography, often conversing upon them with the illus- 
 trious Toscanelli himself, who had so much to do with the 
 discovery of the New World. He also learned to write Latin 
 pretty well, and acquired a good Italian style. 
 
 Destined by his father to a commercial life, he appears to 
 have made voyages to various parts of the world ; for in 
 speaking, many years after, of South America, he says, w I 
 found countries more fertile and more thickly inhabited than 
 / have ever found anywhere else, even in Asia, Africa, and 
 Europe" His elder brother we know was a merchant in one 
 of the cities of Asia Minor, where he prospered for many 
 years, but finally failed. Americus, too, was one of the 
 unlucky ones of the earth. In his thirty-ninth year, he left 
 his native city for Spain, attracted by the prospect of mend- 
 ing his fortunes in a country where many Italians had found 
 profitable employment. In 1492, we find him settled at 
 Seville, the assiduous clerk of a mercantile house, directing 
 the various activities occupied in preparing vessels for sea. 
 Erelong his employer died, and he was engaged for some 
 time in settling his affairs and closing the business of the 
 house. Thrown then upon his own resources, he entered 
 into an employment through which his name was immor- 
 talized. 
 
 It was customary in that age, as I gather from scattered 
 indications in the old chronicles, for every sea-going vessel 
 to have on board, a person who could read and write (rare 
 accomplishments then), whose duty it* was to keep the ship's 
 accounts, and record whatever occurred that was extraordi T 
 nary. He was called by a title which may be translated 
 Ship's Secretary, and he seems to have been an officer of 
 
THE NAMING OF THE NEW WORLD. 535 
 
 much consequence on board ; for he not only represented the 
 dignity of the sciences by the aid of which the vessel made 
 her way across the trackless sea, but he usually had particular 
 charge of those mysterious instruments, the compass, the astro- 
 labe, and the quadrant. In 1497 the King of Spain offered 
 him such a post as this in an expedition of four vessels, 
 which he was about to despatch on a voyage of discovery. 
 Americus accepted T^he offer, and the expedition sailed from 
 Cadiz on the 10th of May, 1497. 
 
 From the Canary Islands the expedition sailed in a south- 
 westerly direction until the voyagers reached the coast of 
 Venezuela, where they landed, and found it a fertile region, 
 swarming with naked savages who had never before seen the 
 face of a white man. They coasted southward for several 
 hundred miles, often going on shore, even spending weeks 
 and months among the innocent and hospitable natives. 
 The expedition returned to Spain, after an absence of sev- 
 enteen months and five days, bringing two hundred and 
 twenty-two Indians, who were sold as slaves. What more 
 natural than that Americus should write home an account of 
 the marvels he had seen ? He directed his letter to a school- 
 fellow, one of those noblemen who had attended Friar 
 Giorgio's school in the convent at Florence. It was a sim- 
 ple, honest, graphic letter, making no pretensions of any 
 kind, and consisted chiefly of minute accounts of the strange 
 habits and customs of the Indians. He says, among other 
 things, that, "we established a baptismal font, and great num- 
 bers were baptized, calling us, in their language, Carabi, 
 which means men of. great wisdom." Most of his letter is 
 occupied with similar details. The king and queen of Spain 
 received him with distinction, listening to his narratives with 
 the deepest interest, and so bountifully rewarded him, that 
 he was enabled to marry a lady for whom he had cherished 
 an affection for several years. 
 
 34 
 
536 TKIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 In the spring following (May, 1499) he sailed in a simi- 
 lar capacity in a second expedition sent out by the king to 
 explore the same coasts. On this voyage he coasted Brazil 
 southward beyond the equator ; and a bright lookout he kept 
 at night for that southern polar star which, for many years, 
 navigators imagined must play the part in the southern hem- 
 isphere which the polar star did in the northern. " Many a 
 time," says this observant, intelligent Italian, " I lost my 
 night's sleep while contemplating the movements of the stars 
 round the southern pole." After sailing along the coast for 
 more than two thousand miles, the ships returned to Spain, 
 bringing home pearls, gold dust, emeralds, amethysts, some 
 exquisite crystals, and, alas ! two hundred and thirty-two 
 Indian slaves. 
 
 Again Amerigo wrote a long letter home, to a great noble- 
 man of Florence, giving an account of this voyage also. 
 Again he told his story simply and modestly, his mind being 
 evidently filled and overwhelmed with the wonders he had 
 seen. 
 
 The King and Queen again welcomed him to court, and 
 more cordially than before, happy to place among the crown 
 jewels the pearls and gems he had brought. Ferdinand 
 without delay prepared a new expedition ; but before it was 
 ready, the King of Portugal tempted Americus into his 
 service ; so that he made his third voyage to Brazil in the 
 Ships and under the flag of Portugal. This third voyage 
 was by far the most important of them all ; and when he 
 returned from it, he had that to tell which fully justified 
 both himself and his readers in supposing that he was the 
 discoverer of another quarter of the globe. What else could 
 be thought from such passages as the following : 
 
 " From Cape Verd we sailed on a southwesterly course until, at 
 the end of sixty-four days, we discovered land, which on many 
 
THE NAMING OF THE NEW WORLD. 537 
 
 accounts we concluded to be Terra Firma. We coasted this land 
 about eight hundred leagues in a direction west by south . . . 
 until we entered the Torrid Zone, and passed to the south of the 
 equator, and the Tropic of Capricorn. We navigated here four 
 months and twenty-seven days, seeing neither the polar star nor 
 the Great or Little Bear. We discovered here many beautiful con- 
 stellations, invisible in the northern hemisphere, and noted their 
 marvellous movements and grandeur. . . , In effect my navigation 
 extended to the fourth part of the world" 
 
 In another letter to the same Florentine nobleman, he 
 says: 
 
 "Carefully considered, these countries appear truly to form 
 another world, and therefore we have, not without reason, called it 
 
 THE NEW WORLD." 
 
 Both of the letters which treat of this momentous third 
 voyage give us the impression that their author was an intel- 
 ligent and gifted man, who was eager to make other men 
 partakers of the honest joy with which he himself hailed the 
 addition of a continent to the domain of civilization. There 
 is a little pardonable vanity, it is true, in his mentioning 
 how much credit he won by his knowledge of navigation. 
 He says that on one occasion no pilot in the fleet could 
 tell where they were within fifty leagues, and they might 
 have been lost but for his reckoning. 
 
 w On this occasion," he says, "I acquired no little glory 
 for myself; so that from that time forward I was held in 
 such estimation by my companions as the learned are held in 
 by people of quality. I explained the sea charts to them, 
 and made them confess that the ordinary pilots were igno- 
 rant of cosmography, and knew nothing in comparison with 
 myself." 
 
 He had glory enough on his return to Portugal. The king 
 received him magnificently ; and his vessel, battered by the 
 
538 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 waves and unseaworthy, was broken up, and parts of it 
 were carried in procession to a church, where they were 
 hung up as precious relics. The people of far-off Florence 
 also read his letters with pride and delight. His return was 
 celebrated by religious ceremonies at Florence, and honors 
 were bestowed upon members of the Vespucci family who 
 were then residing there. We cannot wonder that his fame, 
 for a moment, should have eclipsed the imperishable glory 
 of Columbus, then an old man, deprived of his employments, 
 cheated of his revenues, and anxious for his daily bread. 
 Nor had Columbus published any entertaining letters, giving 
 accounts of his discoveries. 
 
 Upon the fourth voyage of Vespucci, when he sailed with 
 six ships along the coast of Africa, I need not dwell, for it 
 had nothing to do with the naming of the new world. Five 
 of the vessels of this fleet were lost, and the one in which 
 Vespucci sailed alone returned to tell the tale. He landed 
 at Lisbon, June the eighteenth, 1504, a poor man ; for the 
 voyage had proved a failure in every respect, and the King 
 of Portugal was in no humor to repeat the experiment. 
 After adding an empire to the dominions of the Portuguese 
 king without reward, Amerigo returned to Seville, where 
 he found Columbus sick, poor, and disheartened, his son 
 Diego at court, soliciting justice from the Spanish sovereigns. 
 Columbus charged him with a letter to his son, in which he 
 speaks of the Florentine in the most friendly terms. 
 
 "He has always been desirous of serving me," wrote 
 Columbus, " and is an honorable man, though fortune has 
 been unpropitious to him, as to many others, and his labors 
 have not brought him the profit which he had reason to 
 expect. He goes on my account, and with a great desire 
 to do something which may redound to my advantage, if 
 it is in his power. ... I have informed him of all 
 
THE NAMING OF THE NEW WORLD. 539 
 
 the payments which have been made to me, and what is 
 due." 
 
 This letter, dated February the fifth, 1505, is an affecting 
 proof, both of the wrongs done to Columbus, and of the in- 
 nocence of Vespucci toward the great discoverer. At court 
 Vespucci did better for himself than he could for his illustri- 
 ous client, for the king appeared to seize eagerly the chance 
 of showing the world that he could make discoveries without 
 the aid of Columbus. The king made Vespucci a citizen of 
 Spain, presented him with twelve thousand maravedis ; and 
 a few months after, when Columbus was no more, gave him 
 the place of Chief Pilot, with a salary of seventy-five thou- 
 sand maravedis per annum. 
 
 Americus gave to the world a little work, called The Four 
 Voyages, which had long been handed about in manuscript 
 among his royal and noble friends ; while his manuscript 
 letters had had great currency in Italy. As early as 1504, 
 a suggestion had appeared in print that the coasts described 
 by him should be named Amerigo's land. The Professor of 
 Geography then at the College of Saint-Die, in Lorraine, was 
 Martin Waldseemiiller, who, as the custom then was with 
 professors, was an author and bookseller also. In 1507, 
 he wrote a small work upon geography, in Latin, the title 
 of which may be translated thus : 
 
 " An Introduction to Cosmography, together with the Outlines of 
 Geometry and Astronomy appertaining thereunto. To which are 
 added, The Four Voyages of Americus Vespucius." 
 
 In this work the author, ignorant of the superior claims 
 of Columbus, boldly says, that to Americus Vespucius 
 belongs the right to give his name to " the fourth part of the 
 world " ; and he further suggested, that since Europa and 
 Asia were named after women, it would be proper, in nam- 
 
540 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 ing the new world, to use the feminine form, and call it 
 AMERICA. This volume enjoyed great popularity in Europe 
 for many years, for it ministered to the prevailing curiosity 
 of the age ; and thus the name of America was fixed inefface- 
 ably to all that region which Americus had explored. For 
 fifty years the name was confined to that part of the conti- 
 nent; but gradually it was applied to the entire western 
 world, and Amerigo's Land received the name of Brazil, 
 after a valuable wood that 'grew there. Americus, the 
 innocent cause of this injustice, died at Seville in 1512. 
 Absorbed as he was, during the last few years of his life, in 
 the arduous duties of his office, he may never have learned 
 of the use which the Lorraine Professor had made of part of 
 his name, still less could he have foreseen that the name 
 would finally be applied to what proved to be in reality 
 more than " the fourth part of the world." 
 
 Thus it came to pass that our continent was named, not 
 after the great man who discovered it, but after him who 
 first made it known. 
 
THE WISEST OF THE PAGANS. 
 
 MARCUS AURELIUS, AND SOME OF HIS THOUGHTS. 
 
 THIS man, the sixteenth of the Roman Emperors, born A. 
 D. 121, has been greatly glorified in modern times by anti- 
 Christian authors. "Behold," say they, "this virtuous 
 Pagan ! What Christian has ever been more pure, more 
 just, more magnanimous, more modest than he? If such 
 virtue as his can be attained by the unassisted efforts of man, 
 what need is there of miraculous revelation? " Voltaire, and 
 other writers of his age, never lose an opportunity of extoll- 
 ing in this manner the virtuous Marcus Aurelius. He is a 
 standing subject with them. Of late years, his reign has 
 been the subject of particular investigation in Europe, and to 
 the scanty information furnished by his biographers, much 
 knowledge has been added by those patient and learned men 
 who study the inscriptions, medals, and coins of antiquity. 
 His character, however, bears investigation well, and the 
 more we know of him the more we can respect him. 
 
 He was not born heir to the imperial throne, but was the 
 son of private persons of patrician rank, who were related 
 to the Emperor Adrian. His father dying when he was only 
 a child, he was adopted by his grandfather, and this brought 
 him into nearer intimacy with the Emperor, who became 
 warmly attached to him, greatly admiring his good-nature, 
 his docility, and his artless candor. His early education 
 appears to have been conducted with equal care and wisdom. 
 *' To the gods," he says, " I am indebted for having had 
 
542 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 good grandfathers, good parents, a good sister, good teach- 
 ers, good associates, good kinsmen and friends, nearly every- 
 thing good." 
 
 He thanks the gods, also, that he was not hurried into any 
 offence against either of these persons, that his youth was 
 passed in purity and peace, and that he was subjected to a 
 ruler and father, who showed him that it was possible for 
 a man to live in a palace without wanting either guards or 
 a splendid attire. And especially he thanks the gods for 
 the excellent teachers that were given him, from whom he 
 gays he received clear and correct instruction how to live 
 according to nature. There has recently been discovered, in 
 the library of the Vatican, a familiar correspondence between 
 this studious and affectionate youth, and one of his teachers. 
 He wrote to his teacher as lovingly as a young man writes to 
 his sweetheart. 
 
 " How do you think," he says, in one of the letters, " that 
 I can study when I know that you are suffering ? " And 
 again : " I love you more than any one else loves you ; more 
 than you love yourself. I could only compare my tender- 
 ness for you with that of your daughter, and I am afraid that 
 mine surpasses hers. Your letter has been for me a treasure 
 of affection, a springing fountain of goodness, a warming 
 fire of love. It has lifted my soul to such a degree of joy, 
 that my words are incapable of uttering it." 
 
 He tells his teacher, elsewhere, that he passes many hours 
 of the night in study ; and he makes just such remarks on 
 the books he reads, upon the lectures he hears, and upon the 
 lessons he takes, as a student might of the present day. He 
 speaks thus, for example, of one of the most noted Greek 
 teachers of oratory : 
 
 " Three days ago, I heard Polemon declaim. Do you wish to 
 know what I think of him ? Well, this is my answer : I compare 
 
THE WISEST OF THE PAGANS. 543 
 
 him to a farmer well skilled and experienced, who asks nothing of 
 his farm but corn and grapes. Doubtless, he has happy vintages 
 and abundant harvests ; but you seek in vain upon his domain for 
 the beautiful fig-tree or the sweet rose ; in vain you wish to repose, 
 under the shade of a noble tree. All is useful, nothing is agree- 
 able ; and we can but coldly praise that which has not charmed us. 
 You will think my judgment rash, perhaps, considering the splen- 
 did reputation of the orator ; but it is to you that I am writing, my 
 master, and I know that my rashness does not displease you." 
 
 We learn from these pleasant letters, also, that he was a, 
 merry lad, as well as a studious one. He tells his teacher an 
 incident of one of his rides : " I was on horseback," he says, 
 "and had gone some distance on the road. All at once we 
 perceived directly before us a numerous flock of sheep. It 
 was a solitary place ; two shepherds, four dogs, nothing 
 else. One of the shepherds said to the other, as we rode 
 up, e Let us take care ; these people look to me like the 
 greatest thieves in the world.' I heard the remark, and, 
 spurring- my horse vigorously, I dashed into the flock. The 
 frightened sheep scattered and fled, pell-mell. The shepherd 
 hurled his crook at me, and it came near hitting the horse- 
 man who rode behind me. We started off as quick as pos- 
 sible, and the poor man, who expected to lose his flock, lost 
 nothing but his crook." 
 
 These passages give us a lively and pleasing idea of the 
 innocent youth of this excellent man, who appears to have 
 enjoyed every advantage of education which the Roman 
 world afforded, and to have improved his opportunities of 
 education to the utmost. He seems to have been & 
 natural lover of wisdom from his youth up. In those days, 
 persons who wished to be, or to be thought, philosophers, 
 wore a particular kind of dress, and lived austerely, prac- 
 tices which may have suggested the peculiar costume and 
 
544 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 rigorous discipline of the Catholic orders. As early as his 
 twelfth year, Marcus Aurelius assumed the philosopher's 
 mantle, ate coarse bread, and delighted to sleep upon the 
 bare ground. His mother, fearing for his health, which 
 really suffered from his austerities, had great difficulty in 
 persuading him to lie at night upon some skins of animals. 
 At fifteen he was betrothed to the daughter of -ZElius Csesar, 
 then heir to the throne ; and from this time, young as he 
 was, he was conspicuously favored and employed by the 
 Emperor Adrian, and he shone in the view of mankind as 
 the gifted and fortunate youth whom the Emperor delighted 
 to honor. 
 
 When he was seventeen, the event occurred which made 
 him an important personage in the Empire. The heir to 
 the imperial throne suddenly died, leaving a son who gave 
 no promise of ever possessing either the ability or the virtue 
 requisite for governing a great Empire. In these circum- 
 stances the aged Adrian adopted as his heir and successor 
 the noble Antoninus, who afterward reigned so gloriously 
 over the Empire and over himself; but Antoninus was 
 adopted on condition that he should adopt, as his heirs and 
 successors, Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, the lattei 
 being the son of that -ZElius Caesar who had just died. A 
 few months after, Adrian himself died. Antoninus succeeded 
 him, and during the whole of his reign Marcus Aurelius 
 lived with him on terms of the closest intimacy, and shared 
 with him the cares and duties of administration. On the 
 death of Antoninus, Marcus Aurelius and the indolent and 
 sensual Lucius Verus succeeded ; but the weight of empire 
 was borne by Marcus alone. Including the period when he 
 was the most trusted counsellor of Adrian, we may say that, 
 for forty years, his was the ruling influence in the Empire. 
 
 The history of Marcus Aurelius, during this long period 
 
THE WISEST OF THE PAGANS. 545 
 
 of time, is the history of the great Roman Empire, which 
 then embraced the civilized world ; and that history cannot, 
 of course, be related here. I can say, however, that he 
 displayed, in his high place, great talents and great virtues. 
 He improved the administration of justice ; he was prompt 
 in relieving private and public distress. Holding war in 
 dread and abhorrence, he appears never to have engaged in 
 any, except to defend his Empire against attack or conspir- 
 acy. He originated a system of educating indigent young 
 men of noble birth, which evidently gave rise to our modern 
 military academies. He was clement and forgiving, even to 
 a fault. On one occasion, when they brought him the head 
 of a nobleman who had led a formidable revolt, he rejected 
 the foul offering with horror and disgust, and refused to 
 admit into his presence the men who had slain him. He 
 wrote to the Senate with regard to the accomplices of this 
 man : 
 
 " Shed no blood. Recall those who have been banished, and 
 restore to their owners the estates which have been confiscated. 
 Would to the gods that I could recall also those who are in the 
 tomb ! Nothing is less worthy of a sovereign than to avenge his 
 personal injuries. Accord, then, a full pardon to the son of the 
 guilty man, to his son-in-law, to his wife. And why speak of par- 
 don? They are not criminals. Let them live in security, in the 
 tranquil possession of their patrimony ; let them be rich, and free 
 to go where they wish ; let them carry into every country testimo- 
 nials of my goodness, and proofs of yours. Procure this glory to 
 my reign, that on the occasion of a revolt aimed at the throne 
 itself, the only rebels who died fell upon the field of battle ! " 
 
 These are noble sentiments, and they accord with the gen- 
 eral character of the man arid his government. History 
 records but one similar instance. His forbearance and mag- 
 nanimity have been equalled only by the people of the 
 
546 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 United States, who suppressed the most stupendous rebellion 
 ever seen, and freely forgave every one who had taken part 
 in it. 
 
 There is a blot upon the fame of this great ruler. During 
 his reign, the innocent and harmless Christians continued to 
 be persecuted. He regarded the Christians as disturbers 
 of the peace, foolish, fanatical, obstinate, and worthy of 
 death, if they refused to abandon their religion. He 
 regarded them, in fact, as the people of Christian coun- 
 tries would now regard a body of men who should 
 denounce the Christian religion, and spend their utmost 
 strength in subverting it. Great pecuniary interests, let us 
 remember, were involved in the support of paganism ; mul- 
 titudes of people gaining subsistence and honor by serving 
 the altars, by providing animals for the sacrifice, by the 
 manufacture of images and other religious objects, just as 
 among us vast numbers of persons gain their livelihood by 
 serving the church. Marcus Aurelius, with all his wisdom 
 and tolerance, sympathized with those of his subjects who 
 thought that the spread of Christianity would deprive them 
 of their means of living, and he allowed Christians to be 
 tortured and put to death in considerable numbers. Voltaire 
 denies this, and apparently with perfect sincerity ; but recent 
 investigation establishes it beyond a doubt. The emperor, 
 in fact, appears to have been ignorant, and, I think, unjus- 
 tifiably ignorant, of the men stigmatized as Christians, and 
 of the religion they were willing to die for. 
 
 "A man," he says, "ought always to be ready to die; 
 but this readiness should come from a man's own judgment, 
 not from mere obstinacy, as with Christians, but consider- 
 ately and with dignity, and in a way to persuade another, 
 without tragic show." 
 
 When he was born, Christianity had existed in the world 
 
THE WISEST OF THE PAGANS. 547 
 
 one hundred and twenty-one years ; and when he died, A. D. 
 180, it had already outlived savage persecutions, and had its 
 adherents in all the more civilized parts of Europe, Africa, 
 and Asia. 
 
 This Emperor, with Christians all around him, appears 
 never to have thought it worth while to inquire personally 
 into their character, conduct, or doctrine. Judging from 
 his writings, as well as from his conduct in allowing Chris- 
 tians to be tortured and put to death, I should say that his 
 ignorance of Christianity was complete, and that whatever 
 he knew, or guessed, of man's duty, origin, and destiny, he 
 had reached without assistance from it. Perhaps readers 
 may feel some curiosity to know the opinions of this great 
 Pagan on some of the subjects most interesting to man, and 
 I have consequently gone over his celebrated Thoughts, 
 and selected a few of them as specimens. 
 
 The Emperor, it seems, was in the habit of jotting down 
 his reflections as they occurred to him, whether he was 
 residing peacefully in his palace, or whether he was living 
 in camp, reducing to subjection a revolted province. These 
 thoughts have come down to us in a manuscript now in the 
 Vatican Library at Rome. They were written in the Greek 
 language, and were first printed, with a Latin translation, in 
 1570. Since that time, they have been translated into many 
 other languages, and they are justly regarded as one of the 
 most precious relics of antiquity. 
 
 " If a man die, shall he live again?" Upon this question, 
 the most interesting of all others to man, the emperor 
 thought much, but, apparently, without being able to satisfy 
 himself. He weighs the reasons for and against immortality. 
 He imagines an objector to the doctrine of immortality 
 asking, 
 
 "If souls continue to exist for ever, how does the air 
 contain them?" 
 
548 TKIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 He answers the objection thus : " Bat how does the earth 
 contain the bodies of those who have been buried from times 
 so remote ? For as the dissolution of bodies makes room 
 for other dead bodies, so the souls which are removed into 
 the air, after subsisting for some time, are transmuted and 
 diffused, and assume a fiery nature by being received into 
 the seminal intelligence of the universe, and in this way 
 make room for the fresh souls which come to dwell there." 
 
 w This," he continues, " is the answer which a man might 
 give on the hypothesis of souls continuing to exist. But we 
 must not only think of the number of bodies which are thus 
 buried, but also of the number of animals which are daily 
 eaten by us and the other animals. For what a number is 
 consumed, and thus in a manner buried in the bodies of those 
 who feed on them I And, nevertheless, this earth receives 
 them." 
 
 He concludes, therefore, that there is room in the universe 
 for all the souls which have ever existed, and ever shall 
 exist ; but this does not suffice to convince him of immor- 
 tality. In another place, discoursing upon death, he asks 
 whether death is a " dispersion, or a resolution into atoms, 
 or annihilation." One of two things, he thinks, it must be : 
 extinction or change. 
 
 "How can it be," he asks, "that the gods, after having 
 arranged all things well and benevolently for mankind, 
 have overlooked this alone : that good men, when they have 
 once died, should never exist again, but should be com- 
 pletely extinguished? But if this is so, be assured that, if 
 it ought to have been otherwise, the gods would have done 
 it. But because it is not so, if in fact it is not so, be thou 
 convinced that it ought not to have been so." 
 
 It is pretty evident from such passages, first, that Marcus 
 Aurelius did not know whether man is immortal or not; 
 
THE WISEST OF THE PAGANS. 549 
 
 and, secondly, that he was inclined to think he is not. He 
 was equally in the dark respecting the First Great Cause. 
 
 " There is one light of the sun," he says, " though it is 
 distributed over walls, mountains, and other things infinite. 
 There is one common substance, though it is distributed 
 among countless bodies which have their several qualities. 
 There is one SOUL, though it is distributed among infinite 
 natures and individuals. There is one intelligent soul, 
 though it seems to be divided." 
 
 Again he says, " To those who ask, where hast thou seen 
 the gods, or how dost thou comprehend that they exist, and 
 so worshippest them ? I answer, that neither have I seen my 
 own soul, and yet I honor it. Thus, then, with respect to 
 the gods ; from what I constantly experience of their power, 
 I comprehend that they exist, and I venerate them." 
 
 This appears tolerably decisive; but I should suppose, 
 from other passages, that the Emperor was far from having 
 a clear belief in the existence of a supreme intelligence. The 
 following sentences are full of interest : 
 
 w Either there is a fatal necessity and invincible order, or 
 a kind providence, or a confusion without a purpose, and 
 without a director. If, then, there is an invincible neces- 
 sity, why dost thou resist? But if there is a providence 
 which allows itself to be propitiated, make thyself worthy of 
 the help of the divinity. But if there is a confusion without 
 a governor, be content that in such a tempest thou hast in 
 thyself a certain ruling intelligence. And even if the tem- 
 pest carry thee away, let it carry away the poor flesh, the 
 breath, everything else ; for the intelligence, at least, it will 
 not carry away." 
 
 This appears to have been a favorite thought of the Em- 
 peror, for he repeats it more clearly and sharply, thus : 
 
 " Either it is a well-arranged universe, or a chaos huddled 
 
/)50 TRIUMPHS OP ENTERPRISE. 
 
 together, but still a universe. But can a certain order 
 subsist in thee, and disorder in the All? And this, too, 
 when all things are so separated and diffused and sympa- 
 thetic." 
 
 He has a curious remark upon the manner in which men 
 ought to pray. 
 
 "A prayer of the Athenians: 'Rain, rain, O dear Zeus, 
 down on the ploughed fields of the Athenians, and on tlie 
 plains.' In truth, we ought not to pray at all, or we ought 
 to pray in this simple and noble fashion." 
 
 So much for this noble heathen's idea of the Deity. It 
 does not amount to much. When, however, he speaks of 
 man's duties to his fellow, his words are often pregnant with 
 suggestive wisdom. The following sentences might be 
 profitably uttered by every one at the beginning of every 
 day: 
 
 "If thou workest at that which is before thee, following 
 right reason seriously, vigorously, calmly, without allowing 
 anything else to distract thee, but keeping thy divine part 
 pure as if thou shouldst be bound to give it back imme- 
 diately ; if thou boldest to this, expecting nothing, fearing 
 nothing, but satisfied with thy present activity according to 
 nature, and with heroic truth in every word and sound which 
 thou utterest, thou wilt live happy. And there is no man 
 who is able to prevent this." 
 
 This is indeed an exceedingly fine passage, full of val- 
 uable meaning, and one which only a great soul could have 
 uttered. The following is in keeping with it : 
 
 M Everything harmonizes with me which is harmonious to 
 thee, O Universe ! Nothing for me is too early nor too late, 
 which is in due time for thee. Everything is fruit to me 
 which thy seasons bring, O Nature ; from thee are all things, 
 in thee are all things, to thee all things return." 
 
THE WISEST OF THE PAGANS. 551 
 
 To these fine passages I will add a few striking sentences, 
 gathered here and there in his writings : 
 
 "Observe how ephemeral and worthless human beings are, 
 and what was yesterday a little mucus, to-morrow will be a 
 mummy or ashes. Pass, then, through this little space of 
 time conformably to nature, and end thy journey in content, 
 just as an olive falls off when it is ripe, blessing nature that 
 produced it, and thanking the tree on which it grew " 
 
 " Be like the promontory against which the waves continu- 
 ally break, but it stands firm and tames the fuiy of the water 
 around it." 
 
 " If it is not right, do not do it ; if it is not true, do not 
 say it." 
 
 " No longer talk about the kind of man that a good man 
 ought to be, but be such." 
 
 " Imagine every man who is grieved at anything or dis- 
 contented, to be like a pig which is sacrificed, and kicks and 
 screams." 
 
 " When thou art offended at any man's fault, forthwith 
 turn to thyself, and reflect in what like manner thou dost err 
 thyself." 
 
 " Suppose any man should despise thee, let him look to 
 that himself. But /will look to this, that I be not discov- 
 ered doing or saying anything deserving of contempt." 
 
 * In the gymnastic exercises, suppose that a man has torn 
 thee with his nails, and by dashing against thy head has in- 
 flicted a wound. Well, we neither show any signs of vexation, 
 nor are we offended, nor do we suspect him afterwards, as a 
 treacherous fellow; and yet we are on our guard against 
 him ; not, however, as an enemy, nor yet with suspicion, 
 but we quietly get out of his way. Something like this let 
 thy behavior be in the other parts of life ; let us overlook 
 many things in those who are like antagonists in the gymna- 
 
 35 
 
552 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 slum. For it is in our power, as I said, to get out of the 
 way, and to have no suspicion or hatred." 
 
 " Keep thyself simple, good, pure, serious, free from 
 affectation, a friend of justice, a worshipper of the gods, 
 kind, affectionate, strenuous in all proper acts ; strive to 
 continue to be such as philosophy wished to make thee. 
 Reverence the gods and help men. Short is life. There 
 is only one fruit of this terrene life, a pious disposition and 
 social acts." 
 
 Such are some of the thoughts of the famous Emperor 
 Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. Upon such topics as the immor- 
 tality of the soul, the supreme power of the universe, the 
 nature of death, he knew simply nothing ; all was dream 
 and conjecture with him. But when he speaks of the duty 
 of man to his neighbor and to himself, matters within the 
 compass of human reason, he is often eminently wise. 
 
 Marcus Aurelius died A. D. 180, aged sixty-nine years, 
 of which he had reigned nearly twenty. He was mourned 
 throughout the whole of the Roman Empire, which lost in 
 him its noblest citizen. Of all those equestrian bronze statues 
 erected to the memory of Roman Emperors, but one has 
 been spared by the destructive tooth of time and the avidity 
 of men. It is that of Marcus Aurelius. 
 
ARISTOTLE. 
 
 HIS KNOWLEDGE AND HIS IGNOKANCE. 
 
 * IT is difficult," says Mr. Lewes, the author of an excel- 
 lent work upon the science of the ancients, "to speak of 
 Aristotle without exaggeration, he is felt to be so mighty, 
 and is known to be so wrong." 
 
 He appears to have possessed the whole of the knowledge 
 which man had accumulated from the creation to his time ; 
 but, along with that knowledge, he imbibed many of those 
 errors which are inseparable from knowledge acquired before 
 the true methods of investigation had been discovered. 
 Hence the remark quoted : " He is felt to be so mighty, and 
 is known to be so wrong." Mr. Lewes makes another 
 remark concerning Aristotle which I think is exceedingly 
 fine : 
 
 " It is the glory of science to be constantly progressive. After 
 the lapse of a century, the greatest teacher, on reappearing among 
 men, would have to assume the attitude of a learner. The very seed 
 sown by himself would have sprung up into a forest to obscure the view. 
 But he who rejoices in the grandeur of the forest, must not forget 
 by whom the seeds were sown. His heritors, we are richer, but 
 not greater than he." 
 
 This is a just and beautiful passage. There is not an 
 intelligent boy or girl in a well-conducted school who could 
 not set Aristotle right on a thousand points of science, who 
 would not laugh at many of his mistakes ; and yet it is not 
 
554 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 less true, that he was one of the greatest intellects that has 
 ever appeared among men. 
 
 It is strange how little we know of the personal history 
 of so great a man. The chief biographer of Aristotle, and 
 the one whom all the others copy, was not born until nearly 
 six hundred years after the philosopher was dead. We pos- 
 sess, therefore, only an outline of his life, and the statements 
 even of that are not certain. 
 
 On the coast of northern Greece there was a small seaport 
 town, called Stagira; and there Aristotle was born, three 
 hundred and eighty-four years before the birth of Christ. 
 It is from the name of his birthplace that he is frequently 
 called " the Stagirite." His father was a renowned physi- 
 cian, who practised his profession at the court of the king of 
 Macedon, Amyntas the Second, the father of Philip, and the 
 grandfather of Alexander the Great. While yet a boy, he 
 accompanied his father to the residence of the king, and 
 there attracted the regard of Philip, the future monarch. 
 
 When he was seventeen years of age his father died, and 
 left him a large fortune. Some of his biographers state that 
 he squandered his wealth, and was obliged to sell drugs for a 
 livelihood. This, however, is improbable and incredible ; 
 for he is known to have collected in the early part of his 
 life a valuable library. Books in those days were about as 
 costly as good pictures now are : the works of some authors 
 selling for as many talents as would be equivalent to four or 
 five thousand of our dollars. His writings show that he had 
 mastered all the literature of the Old World which wealth 
 and research could procure, and that literature must have 
 been his own. 
 
 After his father's death, instead of squandering his patri- 
 mony in contemptible dissipation, he went to Athens, the 
 centre of the world of intellect, which was something like 
 
ARISTOTLE. 555 
 
 going to one of the great universities of the present day. 
 His objects were to buy books, to get knowledge, and to 
 listen, if possible, to the conversations of the illustrious 
 Plato. Plato, it seems, was absent when he arrived, and he 
 studied for three years, while awaiting his return, in order 
 to qualify himself for admission to the circle of the great 
 master's disciples. Once admitted, he was in no haste to 
 withdraw ; for he had dedicated his whole existence to the 
 acquisition of knowledge. He remained for seventeen years 
 the pupil and friend of Plato ; not always, however, agree- 
 ing in opinion with his master, but expressing his dissent 
 occasionally with decision and force. He did not think it 
 was any part of friendship, nor even of discipleship, to ren- 
 der a servile assent to the opinion of his instructor. On 
 the contrary, he maintains, in one of his works, that it is 
 our duty sometimes to attack the doctrines held by dear 
 friends when we feel them to be erroneous. 
 
 " We ought," he adds, " to slay our own flesh and blood 
 where the cause of truth is at stake, especially as we are 
 philosophers. Loving both, it is our sacred duty to give the 
 preference to truth. " 
 
 In one respect he differed very much from Plato. As his 
 mind matured, he lost in some degree his taste for those 
 moral and metaphysical discourses in which Plato delighted, 
 and was powerfully drawn toward physical science, in which 
 he began at length to deliver lectures at Athens. The bias 
 to such studies must have been strong in Aristotle, for Plato 
 cared little for them, and the general taste of Athens was 
 rather averse to natural philosophy. 
 
 Philip, meanwhile, who had ascended the throne of Mace- 
 donia, had not -forgotten the son of his father's physician. 
 Doubtless, the fame of Aristotle had spread over Greece, 
 and kept the recollection of him alive in the memory of the 
 
556 TKIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 Macedonian king. His son Alexander being then fourteen 
 years of age, Philip invited Aristotle to reside in his court, 
 and take charge of the Prince's education. This was the 
 greatest honor which a king could then bestow upon a man 
 of learning. Aristotle accepted the invitation. He was 
 received at court with the greatest honor, and Alexander 
 became tenderly attached to his instructor. He said once 
 that he honored Aristotle no less than his own father ; for 
 if to the one he owed his life, he owed to the other that 
 which made life worth having. Centuries after the death of 
 Aristotle there still existed the beautiful grove, with its 
 winding, shady walks and seats of stone, which King Philip 
 assigned for the use of his son and his master, in the midst 
 of which he built a commodious school-room. There the 
 philosopher and the Prince strolled and studied and con- 
 versed for the space of four years, when those delightful 
 days suddenly terminated by Alexander being compelled, at 
 eighteen years of age, to become the regent of the kingdom. 
 
 But Aristotle still remained in Macedon. Alexander gave 
 him royal aid towards making those collections upon which 
 his scientific works are founded. It is said that the young 
 king presented him with a sum of money equal to a million 
 dollars in gold, and that he gave orders to his huntsman and 
 fisherman, during the march into Asia, to furnish him with 
 all the animals he might desire to examine. The first of 
 these statements is certainly an exaggeration ; and as to the 
 second, Humboldt declares that in no work of Aristotle is 
 there any mention of an animal brought to the knowledge of 
 Europeans through Alexander's conquests. There is no 
 doubt, however, that the young and liberal king gave impor- 
 tant aid to his preceptor in his researches. 
 
 After seven years' residence in Macedonia, he returned to 
 Athens, where he obtained permission to teach in the most 
 
ARISTOTLE. 557 
 
 splendid of all the Athenian places of instruction, the 
 Lyceum. If we may judge from the descriptions given of 
 it, it was more like a beautiful university town than a col- 
 lege ; as it consisted, we are told, of a number of edifices 
 surrounded with gardens, avenues of trees, and groves , and 
 boasted its porticoed courts, its lecture-rooms, covered 
 promenades and baths, its course for foot-races, and a circus 
 for wrestling. In this agreeable and commodious place, 
 Aristotle lived for thirteen years, teaching the young men of 
 Greece, who gathered eagerly around him, and hung upon 
 his lips. There also he wrote those works which have pre- 
 served his renown to the present hour. 
 
 During the lifetime of Alexander, the politicians of Athens 
 dared not molest his preceptor, although they regarded him 
 with some suspicion as the friend of their country's foe. But 
 when the great news came that Alexander was no more, 
 Aristotle was no longer safe in Athens. A pretext was soon 
 found for his persecution ; he was accused, like Socrates, of 
 irreligion. He had the good sense not to confront an igno- 
 rant and prejudiced mob, but left the city in time, in order, 
 as he said, " not to give the Athenians a second opportunity 
 of committing a sacrilege against philosophy." 
 
 In his retirement he wrote a defence of his conduct ; but 
 the Athenians, when he did not appear in answer to the 
 summons, pronounced him guilty, deprived him of all the 
 rights and honors they had conferred upon him, and sen- 
 tenced him to death. The sentence harmed him not. Worn 
 by excessive study, and wounded, perhaps, by the ingrati- 
 tude of the people whose city he had rendered glorious by 
 living in it, he died soon after his retreat, in the sixty-third 
 year of his age. 
 
 He was twice married, and had children both of his own 
 and by adoption. His will, which has come down to us, 
 
558 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 contains thoughtful and kind provisions for his wife, his 
 children, and his slaves. He expressly ordered that none 
 of his slaves should be sold, but that all should be set free 
 on attaining maturity. 
 
 Those who have not forgotten their Greek Reader, re- 
 member the list of Aristotle's wise sayings given in that 
 work. Here are two or three of them. Being asked in 
 what the educated differ from the uneducated, he said, " As 
 the living differ from the dead." "What grows old soon?" 
 asked one. His reply was, * Gratitude." Being blamed 
 for giving alms to an unworthy person, he said, tf l gave; 
 but it was to mankind." Once when he was sick, he said to 
 the doctor, " Do not treat me as you would a driver of oxen 
 or a digger, but tell me the cause, and you will find me 
 obedient." 
 
 The world came very near losing all the works of 
 Aristotle before they had seen the light of publicity. 
 The philosopher bequeathed his numerous writings to his 
 friend Theophrastus, who, after having been his favorite 
 disciple, had become his successor as chief lecturer in the 
 Lyceum at Athens. Theophrastus at his death left them 
 to his favorite pupil Neleus, who conveyed them from 
 Athens to a city in Asia Minor, where he lived. When 
 Neleus died, the , precious manuscripts became the prop- 
 erty of his heirs, who, not being men of letters, valued 
 them only as so much property. 
 
 By this time the works of philosophers and men of 
 genius had acquired a great pecuniary value ; for many 
 kings had caught, from the example of Alexander, the 
 fashion of collecting manuscripts and founding libraries. 
 Literary works had become indeed objects of such intense 
 desire to kings and princes, that they began to be unsafe, 
 because they were so easily stolen. The heirs of Neleus, 
 
ABISTOTLE. 559 
 
 therefore, while awaiting some royal purchaser for the works 
 of Aristotle, did with them what the ancients were accus- 
 tomed to do with money and jewels, they buried them in 
 the earth. And in the earth they remained till they were 
 forgotten. Much buried treasure of other descriptions was 
 lost in ancient times by the death of the sole possessors of 
 the secret. Travellers tell us that, to this day, a large 
 amount of gold, silver, and jewels is annually lost in this 
 way, in China, India, and other parts of Asia. 
 
 The writings of Aristotle narrowly escaped destruction ; 
 for it was only after they had been buried one hundred and 
 thirty years, that they were discovered, and then only by 
 accident. They were much defaced by the dampness of 
 the earth, and some of the writing was obliterated. By 
 a happy chance, a wealthy disciple of Aristotle heard of 
 the discovery of the books, bought them, and employed 
 several copyists in transcribing them. Many pages and 
 some whole treatises were lost beyond recovery, and it is 
 supposed that many of the errors now found in the text 
 were owing to the well-meant endeavors of the purchaser 
 to restore sentences and passages that were partly effaced. 
 
 The works thus accidentally preserved were conveyed to 
 Athens, where they remained until the city was captured and 
 plundered by Scylla, by whom they were carried away to 
 Eome, with a vast amount of other literary treasure. This 
 was a fortunate circumstance. At Rome they attracted the 
 attention of a learned Greek, who made additional copies 
 of them. At length, about three hundred years after the 
 death of Aristotle, his works may be said to have been pub- 
 lished : that is, copies of them became an article of literary 
 merchandise, and anybody could have a copy who could 
 afford to pay a sum of money equal to four or five thousand 
 dollars. From that time to about two centuries ago, the 
 
560 TKIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 works of Aristotle constituted of themselves an important 
 portion of the scientific property of man. It is only during 
 the last two hundred years that discovery has rendered his 
 scientific writings valueless, and only interesting as a curi- 
 osity of the past. 
 
 It is surprising how little he knew that could be depended 
 upon ; and all because he did not follow his own maxim : 
 "Men who desire to learn, must first learn to doubt; for 
 science is only the solution of doubts. " 
 
 He did not doubt enough. He took things too much for 
 granted. He believed too easily. Although a writer on 
 anatomy, for example, it is almost certain that he never 
 examined the inside of the human body, much less dis- 
 sected one. Imagine a doctor of the present day giving 
 such an account of the liver as the following : 
 
 " The liver is compact and smooth, shining and sweet, though 
 somewhat bitter ; and the reason is, that the thoughts falling on it 
 from the intellect, as on a mirror, might terrify it by employing* 
 a bitterness akin to its nature ; and threateningly mingle this 
 bitterness with the whole liver, so as to give it the black color of 
 bile ; or, when images of a different kind are reflected, sweetening 
 its bitterness and giving place to that part of the soul which lies 
 near the liver, giving it rest at night, with the power of divination 
 in dreams. Although the liver was constructed for divination, it 
 is only during life that its predictions are clear ; after death its 
 oracles become obscure, for it becomes blind." 
 
 This is wonderfully absurd. Elsewhere he informs us that, 
 in his opinion, the seat of the soul is that portion of the 
 brain called the Pineal gland, a small, solid mass of nervous 
 matter in the midst of the lobes of the brain. The reason 
 which this great philosopher gives for so thinking is, that 
 " all the other parts of the brain are double, and thought is 
 single." 
 
ARISTOTLE. 561 
 
 Man's soul thus being in the head, he feels it necessary to 
 explain why we are provided with bodies and limbs. Since 
 the soul is completely enclosed within the skull, why should 
 we be encumbered with such a great mass of unspiritual 
 matter? The gods foresaw, he tells us, that the head, being 
 round, would roll down the hills, and could not ascend steep 
 places ; and to prevent this, the body was added as a carrier 
 and locomotive of the head. 
 
 He has some strange ideas with regard to the heavenly 
 bodies. "The heat and light of the stars," he says, "are 
 evolved from the friction of their bodies against the air; for 
 motion naturally produces heat, even in wood and 'stones; 
 and still more must this be the case with bodies which are 
 nearer to fire ; and air is nearer to fire, as may be concluded 
 from the heat of arrows, which become so heated that some- 
 tunes their lead is melted ; and when they are heated, the air 
 surrounding them must be heated also. Motion through the 
 air generates heat. Of the heavenly bodies, each is moved 
 in its own circle, so that it does not become hot, but the air 
 surrounding it is made hot, and there hottest where the sun 
 is. We must conclude, therefore, that the stars are neither 
 made of fire nor moved in fire." 
 
 It is not surprising that Aristotle should have been igno- 
 rant of astronomy, because in his day the instruments did not 
 exist by which the stars are observed, and the science of 
 astronomy had not begun to be. It is, however, very sur- 
 prising that he should have been so ignorant of the structure 
 of the human body, and even of the bodies of animals. He 
 seems never to have taken the slightest pains to test his 
 conclusions by experiment, or even by close observation. 
 He was satisfied to conjecture, and was contented with 
 an explanation, if it only seemed reasonable to his own 
 mind. 
 
562 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 His errors of mere statement respecting the body are 
 numerous and. remarkable. He says, for example, that the 
 human kidney is lobed ; that man has but eight ribs ; that 
 the heart has only three chambers ; that the brain contains 
 no blood ; and that the back part of the human skull is 
 empty : all of which are manifest errors. His idea of diges- 
 tion is very curious. He supposed that the food in the 
 stomach was cooked by the heat of the body, and that while 
 it is cooking the liquefied food steams up into the heart, 
 where it is converted into blood. Nature, he says, being a 
 good economist, gives the best part of the food to the noblest 
 parts of 'the body ; as masters eat the best portions of an 
 animal, the slaves the inferior parts, and the dogs the 
 refuse. 
 
 Since the interior of the body is so hot that food is cooked 
 merely by the natural heat, he felt it necessary to explain 
 why the body did not get too hot, and consume itself. This 
 would certainly be the case, he says, if we did not continually 
 inhale cool air I Breathing is the cooling process ; and air 
 alone, he adds, would answer the purpose, because its light- 
 ness enables it to penetrate into many parts of the body which 
 water could not enter. 
 
 He misstates many things which he could have verified 
 with the utmost ease. He says, for example, that a man has 
 more teeth than a woman, and that the ox and the horse have 
 each a bone in its heart. Mice, he informs us, die if they 
 drink in summer ; and all animals bitten by mad dogs go 
 mad, except man. He also says, that horses feeding in 
 meadows suffer from no disease except gout, which destroys 
 their hoofs, and that one sign of this disease is the appear- 
 ance of a deep wrinkle beneath the nose. 
 
 He gives the following explanation of the limbs of animals 
 and men: 
 
ARISTOTLE. 563 
 
 " Animals are four-footed, because their souls are not powerful 
 enough to carry the weight of their bodies in an erect position. 
 Therefore all animals in relation to man are dwarfs ; for dwarfs are 
 those which have the upper parts large and the organs of progres- 
 sion small. In man there is a proper proportion between the trunk 
 and the limbs ; but when newly born, the trunk is large and the 
 limbs small. Hence infants crawl, and cannot walk ; at first they 
 cannot even crawl, nor move alone, for all infants are dwarfs. On 
 the contrary, among quadrupeds the under part is at first the 
 larger ; but as they develop, the upper part becomes the larger. 
 Hence colts are little if at all shorter than horses, and when they 
 are young they can touch their heads with their hind feet, which 
 they cannot do as adults. Hence all animals are less intelligent 
 than man. And among men children and dwarfs are less intelligent 
 than the adult and well-grown. The reason is, as before stated, 
 because the physical principle is very difficult to move, and is cor- 
 poreal." 
 
 Into such errors can the ablest of men fall when they try 
 to use their minds before they have learned to use their 
 eyes. Aristotle loved to think, but he was averse to the 
 patient observation and the exact experiment by which 
 alone scientific knowlege is gained. His works swarin with 
 curious examples of ingenious reasoning, founded more upon 
 fancy than fact. I will conclude with one more specimen. 
 
 "The hand," says he, "is an instrument. Nature, like a 
 rational being, always bestows instruments on those who 
 can use them. For it is better to give a flute to a flute- 
 player, than to make a flute-player of one who possesses a 
 flute ; since the inferior ought to be given to the greater and 
 nobler, and not the nobler and greater to the inferior. If, 
 therefore, it is better so, and as nature always acts for 
 the best when possible, evidently man has hands because he 
 is the most intelligent, and is not the most intelligent 
 because he has hands." 
 
564 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 Upon such science as this the human mind subsisted for 
 fifteen hundred years ; for such was the overshadowing 
 greatness of Aristotle's fame, and such the veneration felt 
 by scholars for everything written in Greek, that it was an 
 act of great mental courage, during all that long period, to 
 call in question any statement made by the Philosopher of 
 Stagira. 
 
INVENTION OF THE DAGUEKEOTTPE. 
 
 EVERY washerwoman is a daguerrotypist sometimes. 
 Take a sheet of unbleached cotton, and spread it on the 
 grass in the sun ; place in the middle of it a low stool, or any 
 other object which will shade a portion of the sheet from the 
 sun ; leave the whole exposed to sun, rain, and dew for two 
 weeks. At the end of that period the sheet will have become 
 perfectly white, except the part upon which the sun has 
 not shone, and that will retain its original yellowish hue. 
 Behold, a daguerrotype ! a dingy yellow picture upon a 
 field of white. The complete daguerrotype apparatus merely 
 assists the sun to produce the picture more distinctly, more 
 durably, more quickly, and upon a more convenient material. 
 
 The first experiment ever made towards sun-painting was 
 performed by Dr. Priestley, nearly a hundred years ago, 
 and that was identical in principle with the bleaching pro- 
 cess just described. Instead of the grassy field, Dr. Priest- 
 ley used a glass bottle, on the outside of which he deposited 
 some chloride of silver, and over that he placed a piece of 
 paper with letters cut in it with a penknife. Thus prepared, 
 the bottle was exposed to the sun. Where the light had 
 fallen the chloride of silver had turned black, but all the parts 
 shaded by the paper remained as white as before. In this 
 experiment the action of the sun produced black instead of 
 white, but the principle was the same, and the result was 
 similar, a dark picture on a white surface. 
 
566 TKIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE . 
 
 Many philosophers made experiments of this kind before 
 Daguerre was born, but those experiments had no useful 
 result, because the pictures produced soon faded away in the 
 light, and no apparatus was invented capable of producing 
 such pictures with facility and despatch. Many inven- 
 tors also contributed their part towards the invention of 
 such apparatus in our own day. It is, however, I believe, 
 agreed that the man to whom the chief honor of the inven- 
 tion is due, was Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre, born near 
 Paris in 1789. 
 
 Of the early life of Daguerre nothing has been as yet given 
 to the public by his French biographers. We first hear of 
 him as an industrious pupil of a celebrated Paris scene- 
 painter named Degoti, who was the scene-painter to the 
 grand opera. At this period of his life, Daguerre painted 
 and exhibited several figure pictures, concerning the merit 
 of which nothing is now remembered ; but his remarkable 
 skill in the painting of theatrical scenes attracted notice, and 
 he soon became the most successful scene-painter in Paris. 
 In getting up such pieces as Aladdin and the Wonderful 
 Lamp, he was of the greatest assistance to a manager, 
 because he not only painted the most beautiful scenes, but 
 was very ingenious in devising novel effects by the arrange- 
 ment of the light. It was he who brought to perfection that 
 kind of scenery by which an apartment is shown upon the 
 stage with an unbroken wall and ceiling, instead of the 
 w wings " commonly used. He was also the inventor of sev- 
 eral pleasing effects in imitation of sunlight, moonlight, and 
 sunset, which are now employed in every well-appointed 
 theatre. 
 
 From scene-painting he advanced to the painting of pano- 
 ramas, and he assisted Prevost in the production of those 
 fine panoramas of Rome, Naples, London, Jerusalem, and 
 
INVENTION OF THE DAGUERBOTYPE. 567 
 
 Athens, which were among the conspicuous attractions of 
 Paris forty or fifty years ago. Having still fresh in his 
 mind the striking effects produced at the theatre by modifi- 
 cations of light, he now conceived an improvement on the 
 panorama, to which he gave the name of diorama, the object 
 of which was to throw upon the pictures the kind of light 
 suited to the scene and time of day. In 1822 the Diorama 
 was opened. It was a circular building, capable of seating 
 three hundred and fifty persons, and was so arranged that 
 the spectators unconsciously revolved, and saw the various 
 scenes of the panorama, which was itself stationary. Arrang- 
 ing his lights with consummate skill, Daguerre produced 
 illusions so perfect that the spectators could scarcely believe 
 that the scene before them was not real. The changes from 
 darkness to daylight, and from a clear to a hazy atmosphere, 
 were admirably managed. 
 
 "At one moment," says a writer who remembers the 
 Diorama of 1822, "the spectator believed himself conveyed 
 into an immense cathedral, of which the arches, the columns, 
 and the large windows conveyed the idea of vast space with 
 striking truth. Now the rays of the moon silvered an arid 
 soil, a desolate plain, and portions of fallen walls, while in 
 the dim distance rose to view a castle, invulnerable and 
 menacing. Now some light clouds veiled the brightness of 
 the sky, and a cemetery came into view." 
 
 The Diorama was extremely popular, and gave Daguerre 
 a considerable income for the space of seventeen years. 
 
 That round edifice in the park of New York, behind the 
 City Hall, was modelled after the one erected by Daguerre 
 in Paris. It was built by Yanderlyn, an American artist, 
 who saw Daguerre's diorama, painted one himself, and 
 exhibited it in that building about the year 1830. The edi- 
 fice was afterwards used as the New York post-office, and 
 
 36 
 
568 TKIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 is now occupied by the Commissioners of the Croton Aque- 
 duct. The reader may say that this has not much to do 
 with Daguerre ; but to us in New York it is an interesting 
 fact, that the little round house where we go every May 
 to pay our water-tax, can trace its origin back to the max 
 who is identified with one of the most interesting of all 
 inventions. 
 
 While Daguerre's Diorama in Paris was at the height of 
 its popularity, and thus gave its proprietor the command of 
 time and money, he began the experiments which resulted, 
 after many years, in the completion of the process which 
 has added to the English language a new word, and given 
 to mankind new sources of pleasure. 
 
 He began to experiment about the year 1824 ; but when 
 he had been working for two years, he heard that another 
 philosopher, Nice"phore Niepce by name, was experimenting 
 for the same object, and had actually succeeded in getting 
 photographic pictures. Daguerre sought the acquaintance 
 of this man, which resulted in their forming a partnership 
 for further investigation. They labored together for seven 
 years, at the end of which period Niepce died, and Daguerre 
 went on alone. It appears that Niepce was the real inventor 
 of a photographic process by which tolerable pictures were 
 produced, but Daguerre so essentially improved this pro- 
 cess, that to him has been assigned the chief honors of the 
 discovery. 
 
 After about fifteen years of experimenting, Daguerre set- 
 tled upon the following method as the best : 
 
 1. A silver-plated tablet of copper was highly polished, and 
 made perfectly clean. 
 
 2. This tablet was exposed to the vapor of iodine until it had 
 assumed a yellow color. 
 
 3. It was placed in the camera obscura, where it received the 
 
INVENTION OF THE DAGUERROTYPE. 569 
 
 fmage ; remaining in the camera a few seconds more or less, 
 according as the day was dull or bright. 
 
 4. It was removed from the camera, and exposed to the vapor 
 of mercury heated to the temperature of 170 degrees. It was 
 allowed to remain exposed to this vapor for three or four minutes, 
 or until the picture was distinctly visible. 
 
 5. The plate was dipped in a preparation of soda, which 
 removed from it the yellow of the iodine. 
 
 6. The plate was thoroughly washed in clean water. 
 
 Such was the process by which daguerrotypes were pro- 
 duced. It must be evident to every one that no man could 
 have invented such a process who was not a good chemist. 
 Now we know that Niepce was well versed in chemistry, 
 and that Daguerre knew little of it. It is not improbable, 
 therefore, that it was Niepce rather than Daguerre who 
 should have given his name to the pictures produced. Still, 
 after the death of Niepce, his son succeeded him as 
 Daguerre's partner, and this son it was who maintained 
 that Daguerre's improvements were so important as to con- 
 stitute him the true inventor. By Niepce's method it took 
 five hours and a half to produce a picture, but by Daguerre's 
 improvements a picture was completed in ten minutes. 
 Notwithstanding this, however, Daguerre admitted that 
 Niepce had invented the process; which he himself had 
 greatly improved, but only improved. 
 
 In 1839, Daguerre's Diorama was burnt to the ground, 
 which deprived the inventor of his usual source of income. 
 Arago then proposed to the French Government to buy 
 the invention, and present it as a free gift to the whole 
 world. The government did so, and conferred upon 
 Daguerre a pension of six thousand francs a year, and 
 upon young Niepce, Ms partner, a pension of four thou- 
 sand francs a year. 
 
570 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 I notice a remarkable statement in the excellent aiid 
 trustworthy American Encyclopedia of Messrs. Ripley and 
 Dana. It is, that daguerrotype portraits were first taken 
 in the city of New York. The French inventors employed 
 the process only in taking views of inanimate objects. Dr. 
 Draper, says the writer in the Encyclopedia, Professor of 
 Chemistry in the University of New York, was the first 
 to perceive the applicability of Dagtierre's method to the 
 taking of portraits. He immediately submitted his thought 
 to the test of experiment, and succeeded in producing por- 
 traits so excellent that they have not yet been surpassed. 
 The reader is well aware that daguerrotype portraits came 
 rapidly into favor, and had immense currency ; though they 
 have since been superseded by photographs, and many other 
 varieties of sun-painted pictures. 
 
 Daguerre died in 1851, aged sixty-two, after having spent 
 twenty-six years in perfecting and developing the invention 
 with which his name is identified. He wrote a work upon 
 the daguerrotype and the diorama, which has been transla 
 ted into English. 
 
JOHN MACADAM. 
 
 FEW persons are aware who ride over the excellent macad- 
 amized roads of the Central Park, that Mr. Macadam, the 
 inventor of the roads which bear his name, was once a resi- 
 dent of New York, and probably often walked or rode over 
 the fields and farms which then occupied the site of the park. 
 Yet such was the fact. Though born and buried in Scotland, 
 he lived for some years in New York; and, possibly, the 
 horrid condition of American roads before the Revolutionary 
 war, may have first impressed upon his mind the urgent 
 necessity there was for a better road system. 
 
 John London Macadam was born in 1756, in Ayr County, 
 Scotland, not far from the birthplace of Robert Burns. His 
 family was ancient and highly respectable. When he was 
 little more than an infant, one of his uncles, William 
 Macadam, accompanied the British forces which came to 
 America under Lord Loudoun, during the old French war, 
 for the conquest of Canada. This William Macadam, it 
 appears, had something to do with supplying the British 
 army with provisions ; and when the war was over, instead 
 of returning to Europe, he settled in the city of New York, 
 where he became a thriving merchant. When John Macadam 
 was fourteen years of age, his father died, and the boy was 
 sent to America to become a member of the family of his 
 uncle William, who procured him a place in the counting. 
 Louse of a friend. 
 
572 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPEISE. 
 
 f 
 
 This was in 1770, when New York was a quaint old place, 
 half English, half Dutch, situated at the end of Manhattan 
 Island, the residue of which was verdant with woods and 
 farms, and adorned with the villas and mansions of the 
 wealthier citizens. People who are only acquainted with 
 Manhattan Island now, when its beautiful groves are gone, 
 its commanding bluffs dug away, its surface excavated and 
 excoriated for railroads and streets, can form no idea of its 
 loveliness a hundred year** ago, when John Macadam was a 
 junior clerk. 
 
 Five years after his arrival here, the Revolutionary war 
 broke out, and he was compelled to side for the king or the 
 colonies. Being but nineteen years of age at the time, and 
 of Scottish birth (there is a great deal of Tory blood in 
 Scottish veins), he espoused the cause of George the Third, 
 along with his uncle William, and a majority of the 
 wealthier merchants of the city. In 1776, when he was 
 still but twenty years old, General "Washington was com- 
 pelled to abandon New York, which, for the next seven 
 years, remained in the hands of the British. After a time, 
 this young man received the valuable appointment of prize- 
 agent for the port of New York, which gave him a percent- 
 age upon the prizes brought in by British privateers and 
 men-of-war. His percentage was probably pretty liberal, 
 for he is reported to have gained a considerable fortune from 
 his office. 
 
 Far indeed was it from the thoughts of the New York 
 loyalists that the time would ever come when it would be 
 beyond the power of their king to protect his faithful subjects 
 in Manhattan. And yet that time came. In 1783, John 
 Macadam, then twenty-seven years of age, with all the other 
 Tories of note, was obliged to leave New York, and abandon 
 so much of their property as they could not carry off. 
 
JOHN MACADAM. 573 
 
 On reaching his native Scotland, however, Macadam was 
 rich enough to buy an estate in the county of Ayr, and that 
 estate was large enough to make him an important man in 
 the county. We find him soon a county magistrate, a trus- 
 tee of the public roads, and Deputy Lord Lieutenant, 
 offices which are never bestowed in Great Britain except 
 upon persons of wealth and social importance. It was while 
 he held the office of Ayrshire road-trustee that he began 
 seriously to study the subject of road-making. At that 
 time roads were universally bad, except where Nature her- 
 self had made them good. 
 
 "A broad-wheeled wagon," wrote Adam Smith, in 1774, 
 "attended by two men, and drawn by eight horses, in about 
 six weeks' time, carries and brings back, between London 
 and Edinburgh (404 miles), near four ton weight of 
 goods." 
 
 Dr. Franklin, writing in 1751, speaks of travelling seventy 
 miles a day in England, by a post-chaise, as a most extraor- 
 dinary achievement, killing to man and beast. Much of 
 the soil of England and Scotland is a deep, rich clay, which 
 makes the best farms and the worst roads in the universe ; 
 and yet it is particularly well adapted to the system of 
 Macadam. 
 
 What it was which suggested to him the simple expedient 
 of covering the soft, miry roads with broken stones, averag- 
 ing six ounces each in weight, has not been recorded. We 
 only know, that, during the long wars between England and 
 France, he held important appointments under the Crown, 
 which made it his duty to superintend the transportation of 
 supplies. He then renewed the study of roads, and pursued 
 it with all the unflagging perseverance of a thorough Scotch- 
 man. At his own expense, he travelled thirty thousand 
 miles for the observation of roads, which occupied him more 
 
574 TKIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 than five years, and cost him more than five thousand pounds 
 sterling. I presume his idea was entirely original ; for we 
 cannot find any trace of a macadamized road previous to his 
 day. The only notion which existed, previous to his time, 
 of making a permanent road, was to pave the whole surface 
 with pebbles, blocks, or slabs of stone; either of which was 
 far too expensive to become general. 
 
 It was not until 1811, when he was fifty-five years of age, 
 that Macadam made his celebrated report to the House of 
 Commons, in which he described the condition of the roads 
 of Great Britain, and gave an outline of his system for 
 repairing them. In 1815 a district was assigned him for an 
 experiment. Need I say that he met with nothing but oppo- 
 sition, not only from every one connected with the old road 
 system, but even from the farmers through whose lands the 
 first macadamized road was to be made ! Such was the pre- 
 judice against his plan that he could not get the old road- 
 makers to execute his orders, and he was obliged to get his 
 three sons to come and assist him in superintending the 
 details. 
 
 But the tide soon turned. A good macadamized road is 
 an irresistible argument; and there soon arose a rage for 
 making such roads, as furious as the former prejudice against 
 them. Four years after he began operations, there were 
 seven hundred miles of macadamized road in Great Britain ; 
 and before the death of the inventor, out of the twenty-five 
 thousand six hundred miles of high roads in England, there 
 were not more, it is said, than two hundred and fifty miles 
 not macadamized. 
 
 John Macadam was a strangely disinterested man. He 
 not only refused to receive any reward for his services, 
 including an offered knighthood, but he would not take a 
 contract to make or repair a road, and he declined some 
 
, JOHN MACADAM. 575 
 
 pressing and liberal offers to take charge of the roads in 
 foreign countries. 
 
 He was twice married first, during his residence in New 
 Fork, to a Long Island lady ; and again, in his seventy-first 
 year, to another American lady, Miss De Laucey, of New 
 York, a member of the family which has given its name to 
 one of our streets He died in 1836, aged eighty years. 
 
 I have spoken above of the excellent roads in the Central 
 Park of New York, as macadamized. I should, perhaps, 
 have styled them Telfordized, for it was Thomas Telford, a 
 famous English engineer, contemporary with Macadam, who 
 invented the particular plan upon which those roads are 
 built. Macadam laid his broken stones upon the naked 
 soil, but it was Thomas Telford who improved upon 
 Macadam's idea, by laying large, rough, flat stones upon the 
 soil, placing upon them the broken stones of Macadam, and 
 covering the surface with fragments of the size of a boy's 
 marble. 
 
WILLIAM GED, THE FIRST STEREOTYPER. 
 
 FEW readers, I presume, have ever seen or heard the 
 name placed at the head of this article. Nevertheless, it 
 was the name of a man who conferred a favor upon them all ; 
 since he invented the art without which it would be impos- 
 sible to sell a copy of a volume at its present price. Wil- 
 liam Ged was the inventor of Stereotyping. 
 
 He was a Scotchman, born about the year 1690. For 
 some years he was a thriving goldsmith at Edinburgh, and 
 was considerably noted in the trade for his ingenuity. He 
 invented some tools and processes which facilitated the exer- 
 cise of his craft, and these he freely made known to persons 
 of the same vocation. It appears that his attention was 
 called to the art of printing by his being employed in pay- 
 ing off the hands of an Edinburgh printing-house, which led 
 him to reflect upon the vast amount of labor absorbed in the 
 production of a book. In those days, a goldsmith performed 
 some of the functions of a banker, and kept other people's 
 gold in his strong box as well as his own. It was probably 
 in his capacity as ajbanker that he furnished the money for 
 the payment of the Scottish printers. 
 
 It is a curious circumstance that as late as the year 1725, 
 no types were cast in Scotland, although the business of 
 printing had then attained considerable proportions in that 
 country. It seems, too, that the English printers then im- 
 ported some of their best type from the Continent. Young 
 
578 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 Benjamin Franklin, in that very year, worked as a journey- 
 man printer in London, and he tells us that his master 
 employed fifty men ; but notwithstanding this large demand 
 for types, the English printers imported some kinds from 
 Holland, a country which appears to have had in ancient 
 times almost a monopoly of the business of type-founding. 
 
 One day in 1725, William Ged fell into conversation with 
 a printer, who spoke of the loss it was to Scotland not to 
 have a type-founder nearer than London. The printer 
 showed the ingenious goldsmith some single types, and also 
 composed pages standing ready for the press, and asked 
 him if there was anything so difficult in the manufacture of 
 type that he could not invent a way of doing it. 
 
 w I judge it more practicable," replied the goldsmith, " for 
 me to make plates from the composed pages than to make 
 single types." 
 
 " If," said the printer, " such a thing could be done, an 
 estate might be made by it." 
 
 William Ged requested the printer to lend him a page of 
 composed type for an experiment, which he took home with 
 him, and proceeded to consider. After several days of exper- 
 imenting, he appears to have hit upon the right idea. That 
 is to say, he came to the conclusion that the composed page 
 must be cast; but the question remained, what was the 
 proper material in which to cast it ; and it was not until two 
 years had elapsed that he discovered the secret. He appears 
 to have tried the harder and more expensive metals before 
 attempting it in a metal, or compound of metals, similar to 
 that of the type itself. At the end of two years, he had 
 such success that no one could distinguish an impression taken 
 from one of his cast plates from ordinary print. 
 
 From this time he had the usual experience of an inventor. 
 Although not destitute of capital, he offered a fourth inter- 
 
WILLIAM GED, THE FIRST STEREOTYPES. 579 
 
 est in his invention to an Edinburgh printer, on condition of 
 his advancing all the money requisite for establishing a ste- 
 reotype foundry. But this printer, upon conversing with 
 others of the craft, became so alarmed at the expensiveness 
 of the undertaking, that he failed to perform his part of the 
 contract. The partnership lasted two years, during which 
 the cautious Scotch printer advanced but twenty-two pounds ; 
 and the impatient Ged looked eagerly about him for a more 
 enterprising partner. Thus four years passed away after he 
 had begun to experiment. 
 
 A London stationer, William Fenner by name, being by 
 accident at Edinburgh, heard of the invention, and made an 
 offer for a share in its profits. He agreed to advance all the 
 money requisite ; and, four months after date, to have a 
 house and materials ready in London suitable for Ged's pur- 
 pose. The inventor thought it a -hard bargain to relinquish 
 one half the profits of so valuable and costly a conception ; 
 but he gladly accepted it, and proceeded to arrange his busi- 
 ness for a removal to the metropolis. 
 
 Arriving in London at the time appointed, he was sorely 
 disappointed to find that neither house nor material was 
 ready for him. His delinquent partner, who was a plausible 
 fellow, contrived to satisfy him with his excuses, and even 
 induced him to admit into the firm a type-founder on condi- 
 tion of his supplying them with the requisite amount of 
 type. This type-founder, however, furnished them only 
 with refuse type, wholly unsuited to the purpose, which 
 Ged rejected, to the great disgust of both his partners. Not 
 discouraged, he next applied to the king's printers to know 
 if they would take from him stereotyped plates of a certain 
 excellent type which they had recently introduced. A day 
 was appointed for Ged to lav before them in detail his plans 
 and proposals. 
 
580 TKIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 Before the day named for the interview, the king's print- 
 ers very naturally consulted upon the subject the very type- 
 founder who had furnished them with the admirable type 
 which had attracted Ged's attention. The type-founder as 
 naturally pooh-poohed the new system ; indeed, laughed it 
 to scorn, and said he would give the inventor fifty guineas 
 if in six months he would make one page of the Bible by 
 the new method, which would produce as good an impres- 
 sion as could be obtained from good type. The interview, 
 however, occurred, and probably Ged would have convinced 
 the king's printers of the feasibility of his plans, but for the 
 adverse opinion of an interested man. The printers told 
 the inventor of the offer of fifty guineas, and said that the 
 gentleman who had made it was then in the house. 
 
 "Being called into our company," Mr. Ged relates, in a 
 narrative dictated on his death-bed, after a long life of disap- 
 pointment, w he bragged much of his great skill and knowl- 
 edge in all the parts of mechanism, and particularly vaunted 
 that he and hundreds besides himself could make plates to as 
 great perfection as I could ; which occasioned some heat in 
 our conversation." 
 
 The dispute was settled at last by a kind of wager. The 
 type-founder and Ged were each of them to be furnished 
 with a page of the Bible in type, and bring back within eight 
 days a stereotyped plate of the same ; and he who failed 
 was to treat the whole company. An umpire was appointed, 
 the foreman of the king's printing-house, and the parties 
 separated. The result may best be given in Ged's own 
 quaint language : 
 
 " Next day, about dinner time, each of us had a page sent us. 
 I immediately after fell to work, and by five o' th' clock that same 
 afternoon, I had finished three plates from that page, and caused 
 to take impressions from them on paper, which I and partners 
 
WILLIAM GED, THE FIRST STEREOTYPES. 581 
 
 carried directly to the king's printing- house, and showed them to 
 said Mr. Gibb, the foreman, who would not believe but these 
 impressions were taken from the type ; whereupon, I produced 
 one of the plates, which, he said, was the types soldered together, 
 and sawed through. To convince him of his mistake, I took that 
 plate from him, and broke it before his face, then showed him 
 another, which made him cry out. He was surprised at my per- 
 formance, and then called us to a bottle of wine ; when he pur- 
 posed I should take eleven pages more, to make up a form, that 
 he might see how it answered the sheet-way." 
 
 Poor Ged had been only too successful ; for the printers 
 fancied they saw in this new invention the destruction of 
 their business; and from this time there appears to have 
 been a tacit understanding .among them that Ged and his 
 scheme were to be frustrated. At the expiration of the 
 eight days, the type-founder failed to keep his appointment, 
 but had the honesty to send word that he could not perform 
 the thing himself, neither " could he get one of the hundreds 
 he had spoken of to undertake it." 
 
 The news of Ged's invention circulated in London, and 
 specimens of his plates were handed about, till one of them 
 fell into the hands of the Earl of Macclesfield. This noble- 
 man caused the partners to be informed that the office of 
 printer to the University of Cambridge was vacant, and that 
 the heads of the University would be glad to receive them, and 
 award them the privilege of printing Bibles and Prayer Books 
 by the new process. This was joyful intelligence ; but the 
 too easy and credulous Ged was not the man to profit by it. 
 Indeed, the opposition of the London printers was so gen- 
 eral and so violent, that a stronger man than he might have 
 struggled against it in vain. He now discovered that his 
 partner, Tenner, was not possessed of capital, and they were 
 obliged to admit a fourth partner, who afterwards boasted 
 
582 TEIUMPHS OF ENTERPKISE. 
 
 that he had joined the company for the sole purpose of 
 destroying it. 
 
 " As long as I am their letter-founder," said he to a lead- 
 ing printer, " they shall never hurt the trade, and it was for 
 that reason I joined them." 
 
 The contract, however, was obtained from the University, 
 and Ged went to Cambridge to superintend the work. But 
 he was utterly unable to contend against the opposition of 
 the printers ; and the less, because he had not been bred a 
 printer himself. His partners deceived and cheated him ; 
 his colleague, the type-founder, sent him damaged and 
 imperfect type. He sent to Holland for a supply. After 
 two months they arrived, but they proved to be so incom- 
 plete that an impression taken from them was little more 
 than a page of blots. 
 
 After struggling with difficulties of this nature for four or 
 five years, without being able to complete the stereotyped 
 plates for one Bible or Prayer Book, his patience was 
 exhausted, and he returned to Edinburgh, a ruined man. 
 The true cause of his failure was his extreme credulity, 
 which was such as to disqualify him from successfully dealing 
 with men. At Edinburgh his friends, anxious that so valu- 
 able an invention should not be lost, made a subscription to 
 defray the expense of stereotyping one volume, and Ged 
 apprenticed his son to a printer in order that he might not be 
 dependent for the necessary assistance upon a hostile body. 
 By the aid of his son, he completed plates for a Latin 
 Sallust, which was printed at Edinburgh in the year 1736, 
 and copies of it are still preserved in Scotland as curiosities. 
 As he was unable to procure the best type, this Sallust is not 
 a very fine specimen of stereotyping ; but it is a convincing 
 proof that William Ged had mastered the chief difficulties of 
 the art, and that in more favorable circumstances he could 
 
WILLIAM GED, THE FIRST STEREOTYPES. 583 
 
 have executed work which even at the present day would be 
 considered creditable. 
 
 The invention was never a source of profit to the inventor. 
 By the time his son was a sufficiently good compositor to 
 render him valuable aid, and just as they were about to 
 embark in business together, he was taken sick. He died 
 in 1749. 
 
 It is a proof of the simplicity of his character and of his 
 faith in the value of his invention, that, though he had offers 
 from Holland either to go thither or sell his invention to 
 Holland printers, he always refused. 
 
 " I want," said he, " to serve my own country, and not to 
 hurt it, as I must have done by enabling them to undersell 
 by that advantage." 
 
 After Ged's death the secret slumbered till about the year 
 1795, when it was revived or rediscovered in Paris, and soon 
 after brought to considerable perfection in England. At 
 present the art of stereotyping has been brought to the point, 
 that our daily newspapers, such as the "Tunes," "Herald," 
 and "Tribune, "containing eight large pages, are stereotyped 
 every night in from twenty-five to thirty minutes, and as many 
 copies of the plates can be produced as may be desired. 
 
 37 
 
A FRENCH TORT. 
 
 PIERRE ANTOINE BERRYER. 
 
 IT is curious to notice how limited are reputations. I sup- 
 pose that for every individual in the world who has heard of 
 Queen Victoria, there are ten who do not know that such a 
 person exists ; and I am sure that there are thousands in the 
 United States who never heard of General Grant. Many 
 reputations are limited by the sect, profession, or party to 
 which the individual belongs. A man's name may be as 
 familiar as a household word to all the Baptists in the world, 
 and yet the majority of Presbyterians may know nothing of 
 him ; or a man may have in his own country an immense and 
 dazzling reputation, and be unknown to all the world 
 besides. 
 
 A case in point is that of the great French lawyer, 
 Berry er, who died recently in Paris. Americans in general 
 know about as much of Berryer as French people in general 
 know of our famous lawyer, James T. Brady, whose death 
 occurred in New York a short time ago. But M. Berryer 
 was so interesting a person that I am tempted to give a little 
 account of him. 
 
 Pierre Antoine Berryer, born at Paris in 1790, was 
 the son of a lawyer, and was descended from a family 
 that had come originally from Germany, but had long been 
 settled in France. He seems to have been composed almost 
 entirely of the stuff of which romances are made. It is 
 wonderful that such a man should ever have been able to 
 
586 TRIUMPHS OF ENTEKPKISE. 
 
 adopt the profession of the law. His father, who was a 
 warm adherent of the Bourbon dynasty, placed him at a 
 college near Paris, which was conducted by priests, and 
 there he showed a strong inclination to enter the church. 
 He yielded, however, to his father's wishes, and prepared 
 for the legal profession. 
 
 He completed his studies, and was about to begin the 
 practice of law, at the age of twenty-one, when he fell in 
 love with an attractive young lady, aged sixteen, whom he 
 immediately married. This was in 1811, when Napoleon 
 was at the zenith of his power. 
 
 After his marriage, he threw himself ardently into his pro- 
 fession, and endeavored also to attract attention by public 
 addresses, for which he had a particular talent. Inheriting 
 his father's political opinions, he was never reconciled to the 
 sway of Napoleon; and when, in 1814, the allies entered 
 France, and Napoleon was obliged to surrender, young 
 Berryer announced his downfall to a company of magistrates 
 and law students. The intelligence not being believed, an 
 order was issued for his arrest ; but he was forewarned, and 
 made his escape. After Napoleon's return from Elba, he 
 joined the volunteers who turned out to defend the ancient 
 dynasty ; but resumed his profession after Waterloo and the 
 second return of Louis the Eighteenth. 
 
 As yet, he had won no great distinction at the bar. In 
 1815, being then but twenty-five years of age, he was one of 
 the three lawyers engaged to defend Marshal Ney T who was 
 tried for rejoining the Emperor, after the escape from Elba. 
 It was on this occasion that the talents of young Berryer, 
 both as a lawyer and an orator, were revealed to his 
 countrymen. It was a cause which gave immense oppor- 
 tunities for a display of knowledge, skill, and eloquence ; 
 and the young advocate is said to have improved those oppoiv 
 
A FRENCH TOBY. 587 
 
 trinities to the utmost, and his closing speech is, to this day, 
 regarded as a modeLof its kind. He could not save Marshal 
 Ney, but he made himself the first of the young lawyers of 
 his country. He was employed to defend other generals 
 of Napoleon, and acquitted himself to admiration. 
 
 It is, however, as a politician that he is interesting to us. 
 I consider him in the light of a curiosity. With talents sur- 
 passed by few men of his time, with great and exact knowl- 
 edge, and a patriotism which no one that knew him could 
 doubt, he was .nevertheless, from youth to hoary age, a zeal- 
 ous, consistent, uncompromising adherent of the old Bourbon 
 dynasty, now represented by the person known in Europe 
 generally as the Count de Chambord, but who is styled, 
 by the legitimists of France, Henry the Fifth. There is 
 something strange in this. It is incomprehensible to us 
 how a man so able, so pure, and in many respects so 
 wise as Berry er, could honestly think that this poor, 
 foolish Count de Chambord had a divine right to reign 
 over France, and that France could never be tranquil or 
 happy until she dutifully accepted him as her king. So it 
 was, however, and he was true to his belief to the last hour 
 of his life. 
 
 He was too sensible a man not to know that the time had 
 not come for the return of the Bourbons- In 1832, when 
 the Duchess de Berri attempted to raise an insurrection 
 against the government of Louis Philippe, he went to La 
 Vendee, where the Duchess was, and begged her to abandon 
 an attempt which he saw could end in nothing but defeat. 
 Notwithstanding he had given her this excellent advice 
 (which of course she, being a Bourbon, disregarded), he was 
 arrested on a charge of promoting the insurrection. He was 
 tried and triumphantly acquitted. Soon after this, his friend 
 Viscount de Chateaubriand, another legitimist, in a pamphlet 
 
588 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 upon the imprisonment of the Duchess de Bern, apostro- 
 phized her thus : 
 
 " Your son is our King." 
 
 The Viscount was prosecuted by the government, together 
 with half a dozen editors who had published an address of 
 de Chateaubriand's, of a similar tenor. Who could defend 
 these prisoners but Berry er ? His conduct of the case was 
 in the highest degree effective, and all the prisoners were 
 acquitted. 
 
 During the whole of the reign of Louis Philippe, he was 
 sure to be employed whenever a legitimist of rank was cited 
 before the tribunals. In 1836, the legitimist party in France 
 subscribed to purchase an estate for the great advocate who 
 had delivered so many of them from trouble. In the saine 
 year, when it was announced that the exiled King, Charles 
 the Tenth, was near his end, Berryer visited him in his 
 retreat near Trieste, and paid a last homage to the man whom 
 he revered as his rightful sovereign. 
 
 It was Berryer who, in 1840, defended Louis Napoleon 
 after he had made his ridiculous attempt to corrupt the 
 garrison of Boulogne. But it was with* great difficulty that 
 he was induced to undertake the cause, and he did so at 
 length, because, as he said Louis Napoleon was certainly 
 the heir of the Napoleon dynasty and ought not to be con- 
 demned to death for asserting what he considered to be his 
 rights. 
 
 "All that I can do," said the great advocate, "is to save 
 his life ; perpetual imprisonment must at all events be his 
 fate." 
 
 An interesting anecdote is related of this trial. Louis 
 Napoleon, it was agreed, should deliver a short address to 
 the Court, and then refuse to answer any questions. He 
 
A FRENCH TOKY. 589 
 
 prepared a draught of such an address as he wished to deliver, 
 aud handed it to his lawyer for emendation. M. Berry er, 
 thinking the address was much too inflated, read it over to 
 an English friend to get his suggestions upon it. 
 
 "You English," said M. Berryer, "who have so much 
 common-sense, can suggest what is ultra and exaggerated-" 
 
 The reading began. Various alterations were made in the 
 opening sentences. At length M. Berryer came to the 
 following : ^ 
 
 " I represent before you a principle and a cause the first, the 
 Sovereignty of the People, and the second, that of the Empire." 
 
 Upon hearing these words the Englishman laughed. 
 
 " What are you laughing at? " asked the lawyer. 
 
 "Well," replied the Englishman, "I think there is one 
 other thing the Prince represents." 
 
 "What is that?" 
 
 " A defeat," was the reply. 
 
 '< What do you mean ? " 
 
 w Waterloo," answered the Englishman. 
 
 w It is the word ! the very word ! " cried M. Berryer, and 
 he instantly altered the passage so that it read thus : 
 
 " I represent before you a principle, a cause, and a defeat. The 
 principle is the Sovereignty of the People ; the cause is that of the 
 Empire ; the defeat is that of Waterloo. The principle, you have 
 recognized it; the cause, you have served it; the defeat, you 
 would avenge it." 
 
 This piece of clap-trap was accordingly delivered by the 
 prisoner. Years after, when Louis Napoleon, as Emperor 
 of France, was seeking the alliance of Great Britain, some 
 prying journalist fished out this forgotten passage from the 
 dead sea of journalism, and spread it before Europe. The 
 
590 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 English Press poured torrents of invective upon the person 
 supposed to be the author of it ; and it was only a few months 
 ago, since M. Berryer's death, that the Englishman who 
 figures in the story communicated the facts to one of the 
 London papers. 
 
 During the last twenty years, M. Berryer's name appears 
 in the report of almost every important trial that has 
 occurred in Paris, and he has usually been a member of 
 whatever semblance of a legislature France may have had. 
 Always faithful to the ancient Royal Family, he protested, 
 in 1851, against repealing the law which forbade the Bour- 
 bons from entering France. "The Count de Chambord," 
 said he, w is not a Frenchman in exile ; he is a King of 
 France unlawfully excluded from the throne, and no mon- 
 arch can accept permission to enter his own dominions." 
 
 On his death-bed, in November, 1869, a few hours before 
 he expired, after he had received the last sacraments of the 
 church, M. Berry er wrote the following letter to the Count 
 de Chambord : 
 
 "Oh, Monseigneur oh, my King! they tell me that my last 
 hour is at hand. Alas ! that I should die without having seen the 
 triumph of your hereditary rights, consecrating the establishment 
 and the development of those liberties of which our country stands 
 in need. 
 
 " I bear these vows to Heaven for your Majesty, for her Majesty 
 the Queen, for our dear France. That they may be less unworthy 
 to be heard by God, I leave this life armed with all the succors of 
 our holy religion. 
 
 " Adieu, Sire ; may God protect you and save France. 
 
 "Your devoted and faithful subject. BERRYEB. 
 
 "18th November, 1868." 
 
 He died soon after these words were written. His remains 
 were followed to the grave by a great concourse of his legal 
 
A FRENCH TOEY. 591 
 
 brethren and others, among whom were several distin- 
 guished members of the English bar. 
 
 A writer in the "London Times," who has frequently 
 heard Berry er speak, gives a glowing description of his 
 eloquence. 
 
 "His speeches," says this writer, " had in them at once all 
 the charm of finished orations and the force of the sudden- 
 ness, vivacity, and fire of extempore harangues. . . 
 When he stood at the tribune, with his head raised and his 
 arm uplifted, and poured forth his torrent of eloquence, 
 nothing could be superior to him in style or in action. Pos- 
 sessing a most musical voice, and thoroughly gifted with 
 every oratorical resource, he was listened to with profound 
 silence, broken by applause only at the end of some fine 
 period. Add to this the fact that he had an astonishing 
 aptitude for business, and an intuitive quickness in mastering 
 the details of the most complicated questions, and the reader 
 may have an idea of the versatile and powerful orator whom 
 France has just lost." 
 
 Though M. Berry er was, during most of his professional 
 life, in the receipt of a very large income, he lived so freely 
 that he left little more to his son than the estate which was 
 presented to him, and a library valued at half a million 
 francs. 
 
JOHN ELIOT, 
 
 THE APOSTLE TO THE INDIANS. 
 
 A COPY of Eliot's Indian Bible was sold by auction, a few 
 months ago, in the city of New York, for one thousand and 
 fifty dollars. The same copy two years before sold for 
 eleven hundred and thirty dollars. These are high prices 
 for a dingy, chunky volume which, it is said, only one man 
 in the world can read, Mr. Trumbull, of the Historical 
 Society of Connecticut, a descendant of John Eliot. But 
 even these are not the highest prices which this Bible has 
 realized. A copy has been sold for fifteen hundred dollars ; 
 and the one sold the other day would probably have brought 
 as much, if the times had been favorable. 
 
 I must confess that this mania for possessing volumes 
 which have no other interest except that of rarity, seems to 
 me childish and absurd. What sense can there be in giving 
 a thousand dollars for an unintelligible book, filled with such 
 words as this, which only has the peculiarity of being a little 
 longer than any of the others : " Wutappesittukqussunnooh- 
 wehtunkquoh " ? 
 
 This is one word from Eliot's Bible, and it signifies (Mark 
 1 : 40) " kneeling down to him." A vast number of the 
 words are of prodigious length, and cannot even be pro- 
 nounced except after long practice. 
 
 John Eliot, the translator of this Bible, who was born in 
 England in 1604, and educated at the Univers.ty of Cam- 
 bridge, began his laborious life as a teacher in an English 
 
594 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 grammar school, an employment which he justly considered 
 one of the most interesting and honorable exercised among 
 men. There was only one vocation, he used to say, more 
 important, that of minister; and into this, accordingly, he 
 entered at an early age. Of his preaching in England, we 
 only know that it was so pleasing to a congregation of Puri- 
 tans, many of whom were about to emigrate to New Eng- 
 land, that they induced him to emigrate also, and obtained 
 from him a promise that when they were settled in America, 
 he would again serve them as one of their religious teachers. 
 Accordingly, in 1632, when he was twenty-eight years of 
 age, we find him settled as "teacher" of the church in Rox- 
 bury, which was then a village three miles from Boston. A 
 lovely girl, to whom he was engaged to be married before he 
 left England, joined him soon, and they were married, and 
 lived happily together for more than fifty years. 
 
 From the first days of the colony, the Indians had excited 
 at once the wonder, compassion, and disgust of the people. 
 I suppose that Cotton Mather expressed the general feeling 
 when he said that, although no one knew how " these forlorn 
 and wretched heathen " got to America, " yet we may guess 
 that probably the devil decoyed those miserable savages, in 
 hopes that the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ would never 
 come here to destroy or disturb his absolute empire over 
 them." The emphatic Mather italicizes the words " absolute 
 empire." He appends a long description of the Indians 
 and their mode of life, from which it is evident, that if as a 
 minister and Christian he had a sort of official compassion 
 for them, yet as a man he held them in abhorrence and 
 contempt. 
 
 " These abject creatures," he says, " live in a country full 
 of mines, but were never owners of so much as a knife till 
 we come among them ; their name for an Englishman was a 
 
JOHN ELIOT. 595 
 
 Knife-man. . . . They live in a country where we now 
 have all the conveniences of human life ; but as for them, 
 their housing is nothing but a few mats tied about poles 
 fastened in the earth. . . . They live in a country full of 
 the best ship-timber under Heaven, but never saw a ship 
 till some came f^om Europe hither. . . . No arts are 
 understood among them, except just so far as to maintain 
 their brutish conversation, which is little more than is to be 
 found among the very beavers on our streams." 
 
 Such facts as these, which appear to have stirred the con- 
 temptuous wrath of Cotton Mather, excited in the tenderly 
 benevolent mind of Eliot a profound and constant pity. He 
 had, moreover, a fancy that these Indians of the American 
 wilderness were descended from the Lost Tribes of Israel, 
 and he thought that perhaps Englishmen had been directed 
 to these shores as the appointed means of their restoration. 
 Before he had been many years in Roxbury, and while still 
 performing his pastoral duties (which, indeed, he never 
 resigned but with his life) , he entered upon that course of 
 heroic toil for the conversion of the Indians, which has won 
 for him with posterity the title of the Indian Apostle. 
 
 After making some attempts to preach to the Indians 
 about Roxbury through an interpreter, he concluded that he 
 could accomplish little until he could preach to them in their 
 own tongue. He hired a native to come to his house and be 
 his teacher, with whose assistance he slowly and painfully 
 acquired a knowledge of the language, and formed a system 
 of grammar and spelling, which he recorded in a treatise for 
 the use of future students. It was not until 1646, however, 
 when he was forty-two years of age, that he felt himself able 
 to conduct a religious service in the language of the red men. 
 He first preached to a congregation of Indians at Nonantum, 
 now called Newton, a few miles from Boston 
 
596 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPEISE. 
 
 It was an interesting occasion. First he uttered a short 
 prayer in the Indian tongue ; after which he gave an outline 
 of the facts and doctrines of Christianity, as held by the 
 Puritans of his time, describing particularly the character 
 and sufferings of Jesus Christ, and exhorting them to accept 
 him as their Saviour. When the sermon was finished, which 
 we may imagine was delivered with an anxious mind and 
 faltering tongue, he told the Indians that he should be glad 
 to answer any questions they might wish to propose upon 
 what he had said. One of them asked whether Jesus Christ 
 would be able to understand Indians, if they prayed in their 
 own language. Another, who had misunderstood the 
 minister's account of the Deluge, asked him how the world 
 had become full of people again, if they were all once 
 drowned. Another wished to know how God could create 
 man in his own image, since it was forbidden in the com-' 
 mandment to make the image of God. On another occasion, 
 soon after, when he preached a similar discourse, he was 
 asked how it came to pass that the water of the ocean was 
 salt, and river water fresh ; and why, since there is more 
 water than land, the water does not overflow the earth. One 
 Indian inquired how it was, if all men sprung from one 
 father, that the English knew God and Jesus Christ, and the 
 Indians not. 
 
 Having thus begun his labors, he pursued them with 
 wonderful zeal and courage, roaming the wilderness of New 
 England, facing dangers undaunted, and submitting to hard- 
 ships which tasked his endurance to the uttermost. Without 
 neglecting his duties at honie, he made a kind of missionary 
 tour twice a month, preaching, catechising, establishing 
 churches ; going sometimes as far as the end of Cape Cod, 
 a tramp through the sand of a hundred weary miles. Such 
 success had he, that after he had preached five years, there 
 
JOHN ELIOT. 597 
 
 were so many Indians who wished to live in a Christian 
 manner, that they gathered into a town on the Charles River, 
 called Natick. This town, with its church, was built in the 
 English manner, and the Indians lived there, as far as 
 Indians could, like the Puritans around them. When he had 
 been preaching fifteen years, there were as many as twenty- 
 four Indians regularly preaching to Indian congregations. 
 
 His Indian Bible, a work of inconceivable toil and diffi- 
 culty, occupied him more or less during thirty years of his 
 life. He was assisted in printing it by a Society in England 
 formed for the purpose, which gave him a salary as mis- 
 sionary of fifty pounds a year, all of which he expended 
 upon his Bible, and sent over types and a printing-press. 
 
 An interesting circumstance of the printing is, that one of 
 the hands employed in setting the type and working the press 
 was an Indian. He had been so far educated in one of Eliot's 
 Indian schools at Cambridge, as to read and write very well. 
 He served a regular apprenticeship to the printing business, 
 ^and was employed upon Eliot's Bible for many years. When 
 King Philip's war broke out, though he had spent almost all 
 his life among the whites, the dormant savage woke within 
 him, and he ran away and joined the forces of that terrible 
 chief. He survived the war, and when the Governor issued 
 his proclamation offering a free pardon to all Indians surren- 
 dering in fifteen days, who should come in and give himself 
 up but "James Printer," as this Indian was named I He 
 lived at Boston many years after, exercising his old trade, 
 the only Indian, I believe, who ever belonged to the distin- 
 guished fraternity of printers. 
 
 An outline has been preserved of a sermon preached by 
 one of Eliot's Indian preachers. The corn having been much 
 damaged by excessive rains, the "praying Indians," as they 
 were termed, appointed a day of fasting and humiliation. 
 
598 TRIUMPHS OF ENTEKPKISE. 
 
 The preacher in question selected for his subject the sacrifice 
 offered by Noah of every clean beast and fowl, upon which 
 he discoursed in this strain : 
 
 K A little I shall say, according to that little I know. In that 
 Noah sacrificed, he showed himself thankful ; in that Noah wor- 
 shipped, he showed himself godly ; in that he offered clean beasts, 
 he showed that God is a holy God. And all that come to God must 
 be pure and clean. Know that we must by repentance purge our- 
 selves ; which is the work we are to do this day. Noah sacrificed 
 and so worshipped. This was the manner of old time. But what 
 sacrifices have we now to offer ! I shall answer by that in Psalm 
 4 ; offer to God the sacrifice of righteousness, and put your trust 
 in the Lord!" 
 
 He expanded upon these ideas very much as Eliot himself 
 would have done, urging his brethren to sacrifice their sins, 
 even those which were dearest to them. 
 
 Notwithstanding these flattering appearances of success, 
 neither John Eliot nor any other man has ever succeeded in 
 truly civilizing one Indian. An Indian cannot be civilized. 
 He is a wild man by nature, and when you tame him you 
 destroy him. Eliot's Indian students, whom he required to 
 renounce hunting, and who were trained to live as English 
 students do, became consumptive, and they either resumed 
 their wild way of life, or perished. Never were missions 
 conducted with more energy, and sustained with more deter- 
 mination, than those of the fathers of New England among 
 the Indians ; but their well-meant labors were wasted upon a 
 race which can no more be civilized than a buffalo can be 
 converted into a steady-going ox. 
 
 "Have you had any real success with your Indians?" I 
 once asked of a most estimable Roman Catholic bishop, who 
 had spent thirty years in a mission in the wilderness near 
 Lake Superior. 
 
JOHN ELIOT. 599 
 
 w I have succeeded," he replied, " in making some of them 
 pretty good Christians, but I have not succeeded in making 
 any of them men." 
 
 The apostle Eliot, however, labored on in unquestioning 
 faith to the end ; firmly believing, that if he could npt make 
 men of his Indians, he at least saved their souls from eternal 
 torment. The happy men in this world are those who devote 
 themselves, in a disinterested spirit, to the promotion of 
 human welfare ; and Eliot, whose heart was one lump of 
 benevolence, passed his days in tranquil delight, loving and 
 beloved. Besides his Bible, he translated primers, cate- 
 chisms, grammars, and several religious works into the Indian 
 tongue. He died in 1690, aged eighty-six, leaving behind 
 him a grandson, Jared Eliot, the most eminent physician in 
 New England, and a man of great public spirit. 
 
 38 
 
 
LIFE, TRIAL, AND EXECUTION OF 
 
 ALGEKNON SIDNEY. 
 
 THAT splendid spendthrift, Louis XIV., King of France, 
 while he was hunting one day, in a royal park near Paris, 
 noticed among the throng of hunters an Englishman, 
 mounted upon an exceedingly superb and high-mettled 
 horse. Foreigners of rank were permitted to share in the 
 sports of the King, whose hunting retinue was frequently 
 joined by gentlemen who had been presented to him by 
 ambassadors residing at this gorgeous court. 
 
 The King was so captivated by the stranger's horse that 
 he determined to possess it, and sent a messenger to ask the 
 owner to name the price and deliver the animal. This was 
 the King's way of buying anything upon which he had fixed 
 covetous eyes, and no one ever presumed to refuse him. 
 But this Englishman, to the surprise of the messenger, and 
 to the great irritation of the King, replied to the proposal, 
 that his horse was not for sale. The haughty monarch 
 caused a liberal price for a horse to be counted out, and 
 sent it to the Englishman, with a positive order to accept 
 the same and surrender the animal. An exile from his 
 native land, where, at that bad time, there was no justice for 
 such as he, where king and ministers were the paid servants 
 of the French monarch, he seemed to have no choice but to 
 obey. But this was a man of the heroic type. He drew a 
 pistol and shot the horse through the head, saying : 
 
602 TEIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 "My horse was born a free creature, has served a free 
 man, and shall not be mastered by a king of slaves." 
 
 There you have Algernon Sidney, the blunt, brave, noble- 
 minded Republican, among the first of his time and country 
 who clearly understood the rights of man and the just foun- 
 dation of human government, the forerunner of our Jeffer- 
 son and Madison. 
 
 There are two noted Sidneys in modern English history. 
 One was that knightly gentleman, Sir Philip Sidney, who is 
 remembered and beloved, because, on the battle-field, he 
 waved aside the proffered draught of water, and had it given 
 to a wounded soldier, who, he thought, needed it more. 
 Algernon Sidney was his grandnephew, the son of a nephew 
 of Sir Philip. Algernon's father was the Earl of Leicester, 
 a wealthy and powerful nobleman, who held conspicuous 
 posts both under king and parliament. That these two 
 Sidneys were alike in character, as well aj akin by. blood, 
 we might infer from a single incident in the life of Alger- 
 non, which marks the gentleman as unmistakably and as 
 grandly as Sir Philip's refusal of the water. 
 
 Though the son of one of the chief of England's nobility, 
 he sided with the parliament against the king, and, while 
 still a very young man, commanded under CromwelPs eye a 
 regiment of horse at the battle of Marston Moor, where he 
 charged the foe with brilliant impetuosity, returning from 
 the fight covered with wounds. Unable from his lameness 
 to serve again in the field during the war, he entered the 
 House of Commons, where, by voice and vote, he still 
 labored for the success of the parliamentary cause. 
 
 Victory crowned the united efforts of warriors and states- 
 men. Then, as usually happens in such cases, differences 
 of opinion arose among the chiefs, particularly with regard 
 to the fate of the king. Cromwell, from the first, had 
 
ALGERNON SIDNEY. 603 
 
 regarded Charles merely as the chief of the enemies of the 
 country, the leader of the great faction hostile to the ancient 
 liberties of England and the natural rights of man. Long 
 ago he had said to his troops : 
 
 " If I should meet King Charles in the body of the enemy, 
 I would as soon discharge my pistol upon him as upon any 
 private man ; and for any soldier present who is troubled 
 with a conscience that will not let him do the like, I advise 
 him to quit the service he is engaged in." 
 
 Feeling thus at the beginning of the struggle, Cromwell 
 was not disposed to respect the kingly character when at 
 length Charles was in his power. Sidney, however, and 
 many of his friends, though fully alive to the king's guilt, 
 and prepared to decree his deposition, deemed it impolitic 
 and unjust to put him to death. When the act passed for 
 bringing the king to trial, Sidney was spending a few days 
 at the seat of his father, the Earl of Leicester. On hearing 
 the news, he hastened to London, where he heard, for the 
 first time, that his own name was in the list of persons 
 appointed to try the king. 
 
 "I presently," he says, " went to the Painted Chamber, 
 where those who were nominated for judges were assem- 
 bled, A debate was raised, and I did positively oppose 
 Cromwell and Bradshaw and others who would have the 
 trial to go on, and drew my reasons from these two points : 
 First, the king could be tried by no court. Secondly, that 
 no man could be tried by that court. This being alleged in 
 vain, and Cromwell using these formal words, 'I tell you 
 we will cut off his head with the crown upon it,' I replied, 
 ' You may take your own course ; I cannot stop you ; but I 
 will keep myself clean from having any hand in this busi- 
 ness,' and immediately went out of the room and never 
 returned. This is all that passed publicly, or that can with 
 
604 TKIUMPHS OF ENTEKPKISE. 
 
 truth be recorded or taken notice of. I had an intention 
 which is not very fit for a letter." 
 
 His intention was, as his friends conjectured, to move, in 
 the House, the formal deposition of the king ; but Cromwell 
 carried the day. The king was tried, condemned, and exe- 
 cuted ; and the Lord Protector ruled in his stead. 
 
 Now, here is the point that shows the high tone and noble 
 breeding of Algernon Sidney. In the secret councils of his 
 party he had opposed the trial and execution of the king, 
 and he even signified to the public his disapproval by absent- 
 ing himself from London till the deed was done ; but, imme- 
 diately after, he resumed his attendance in Parliament, and 
 continued to give his aid in the settlement of the govern- 
 ment, still faithful to the liberal cause. And when, in after 
 years, the execution of Charles was held throughout Europe 
 to be an act that covered the perpetrators with the blackest 
 infamy, Sidney never sought, by avowing his innocence, to 
 escape his share of the odium. From Denmark, after the 
 Restoration, he wrote to his father : 
 
 " I do avow that, since I came into Denmark, I have many times 
 so justified that act, as people did believe I had a hand in it ; and 
 never did disavow it, unless it were to the king of Sweden and 
 Grand Maitre of Denmark, who asked me privately." 
 
 Such behavior marks the difference between men of ordi- 
 nary and men of noble nature. Common men say, take 
 care of number one. The heroes, ornaments, and saviours of 
 our race are apt to take care of every one except number one. 
 
 Sidney opposed Oliver Cromwell on another memorable 
 occasion, when the Protector dispersed the Long Parliament, 
 rising in his place, and crying out : 
 
 " You are no Parliament ! I say you are no Parliament ! I '11 
 put an end to your sitting. Begone! Give way to honester 
 men ! " 
 
ALGERNON SIDNEY. 605 
 
 When Cromwell had thus spoken, he stamped upon the 
 floor. The door flew open. A file of soldiers marched in 
 and drove out the members, all but two, the Speaker and 
 Algernon Sidney, who sat nearest him. These would not 
 yield except to force actually applied to their persons. 
 Pointing to the Speaker, Cromwell shouted, 
 
 "Fetch him down!" 
 
 One of Cromwell's adherents, Harrison, went to the 
 Speaker, and asked him to leave his seat and retire from 
 the hall. 
 
 "I will not come down till I am forced," said the Speaker. 
 
 w Take him down ! " cried Cromwell. 
 
 " Sir," said Harrison, pulling the Speaker by the gown, 
 " I will lend you a hand." 
 
 Upon this the Speaker descended from his chair, and with- 
 drew. Sidney alone remained. 
 
 "Put him out ! " said Cromwell, pointing to his old com- 
 rade in arms. 
 
 Harrison went to Sidney, and urged him to obey. 
 
 " I will not go out," said Sidney.. 
 
 w Put him out ! " repeated Cromwell. 
 
 Two of Cromwell's satellites then placed their hands upon 
 the shoulders of this last representative of England's free- 
 dom, thus applying the requisite technical "force," upon 
 which Sidney rose and left the room. Then it was that 
 Cromwell, pointing to the Speaker's mace, cried out : " Take 
 away that bauble ! " 
 
 With his own hands he locked the door, and carried off the 
 key to his palace, the absolute lord of England. Sidney 
 withdrew to the family seat in the country, and took no part 
 in public life till Cromwell's death restored parliamentary 
 government. He then resumed the seat from which he had 
 been ejected, resumed his place in the executive government, 
 
606 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 under Kichard, Cromwell's son. During the short period 
 that elapsed between the death of Oliver Cromwell and the 
 return of Charles II., Sidney accepted an important diplo- 
 matic mission to Denmark, and there he was residing when 
 the news reached him of the restoration of the King. He 
 knew not whether to remain or return home, nor whether to 
 continue or renounce his diplomatic character. He was not 
 long in learning, however, that the only terms upon which 
 he could safely tread again his native soil, were such as he 
 could not comply with without indelible dishonor : namely, 
 the acknowledgment that he had done wrong in opposing 
 the late king, and asking pardon of the new one. 
 
 "I had rather," he wrote, " be a vagabond all my life than 
 buy my own country at so dear a rate." 
 
 He said that on a calm review of the past he could not 
 think of one act of his, in connection with the late civil 
 wars, which he did not think justified by the state of things 
 at the time. 
 
 " This," he added, " is my strength, and I thank God by 
 this I enjoy very serene thoughts. If I lose this by vile and 
 unworthy submissions, acknowledgment of errors, asking 
 pardon, or the like, I shall, from that moment, be the miser- 
 ablest man alive, and the scorn of all men." 
 
 And so, for seventeen years, Algernon Sidney remained 
 an exile and a wanderer; always protesting his willingness 
 to obey the king, because Parliament had accepted him , and 
 made him the lawful head of the government ; but firmly 
 refusing to express the slightest contrition for the part he 
 had taken in the rebellion. His father, at length, a very 
 aged man, feeling the approach of death, urged him to ask 
 the government to permit his return and brief stay in Eng- 
 land, that they might meet once more. Sidney complied ; 
 obtained permission ; saw his father, and was present at his 
 death, which occurred six weeks after. 
 
ALGERNON SIDNEY. 607 
 
 Happy would it have been for him, if he had returned to 
 France, as he had intended. Remaining, to settle some 
 affairs growing out of a disputed clause of his father's will, 
 he was arrested on a groundless charge of being concerned 
 in a conspiracy to dethrone the king, and bestow the crown 
 upon the Duke of Monmouth, the king's illegitimate son, 
 
 A witty French author, descanting upon the foibles of the 
 fair sex, remarks that a woman often has two reasons for 
 her conduct : First, the reason ; secondly, the reason that 
 she gives. 
 
 It is no more true of women than of men. In the olden 
 time, when diplomacy was reckoned an important and mys- 
 terious science, it was eminently true of governments, which 
 seldom avowed the reason that actually controlled their 
 action. In dooming Algernon Sidney to death, for example, 
 the government of England pretended that that admirable 
 gentleman had conspired to dethrone Charles II. and to give 
 the crown to the Duke of Monmouth, the king's illegitimate 
 son. That was the pretext. The real reason was, that 
 Algernon Sidney held in the deepest abhorrence and con- 
 tempt the legitimate heir, the king's brother, the Duke of 
 York, whose accession to the throne a considerable party 
 opposed. Sidney was one of the leaders of this party in 
 Parliament, and gave the most earnest support to a bill 
 excluding the Duke of York from the succession. The king 
 dissolved the Parliament in the midst of the session, and the 
 Duke of York wrote to his brother, applauding this course, 
 and urging other arbitrary measures. 
 
 t? The time," wrote he, " has come to be truly king, or to 
 perish ! No more parliaments. It is to France you must 
 have recourse for subsidies ! " 
 
 The creatures of the Duke were reckless enough to avow 
 that their master had given this advice ; and it was Algernon 
 
608 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 Sidney who defended Parliament, and denounced the Duko 
 for his treachery to the independence of his country. This 
 he did in a very able, eloquent pamphlet, which had great 
 success with the public. 
 
 " Good God ! " exclaimed the indignant Sidney, " to what 
 a condition is this kingdom reduced, when the ministers and 
 agents of the only prince in the world who can have designs 
 against us, or of whom we ought to be afraid, are not only 
 made acquainted with the most secret passages of state, but 
 are made our chief ministers too, and have the principal 
 conduct of our affairs ! And let the world judge if . the 
 Commons had not reason for their vote, when they declared 
 those eminent persons who manage things at this rate, to be 
 enemies to the king and kingdom, and promoters of the 
 French interests." 
 
 It was well known whom he meant by " those eminent 
 persons " ; the cruel and vindictive Duke of York was, at 
 least, well aware of the author's meaning. 
 
 Sidney, too, had mortally offended the king, and the 
 whole party of tories and non-resistants, by the freedom 
 with which he denounced the arbitrary principles then 
 affected by all who aspired to favor or place. 
 
 "Do the people," said he, in one of his popular tracts, 
 " make the king, or the king make the people ? Is the king 
 for the people or the people for the king? Did God create 
 the Hebrews that Saul might reign over them? or did they, 
 from an opinion of procuring their own good, ask a king that 
 might judge them and fight their battles ? " 
 
 He aggravated the royal party still further by justifying 
 the deposition of such kings as Charles I. , who proved faith- 
 less to their trust, by transcending or abusing their authority. 
 Governments, he maintained, exist for the good of the gov 
 erned, and have no rightful authority except by the consent 
 
ALGEKNON SIDNEY. 609 
 
 of the governed. Imagine Charles II., the Duke of York, 
 and their friends, reading a passage like this in a tract by 
 Algernon Sidney : 
 
 " As absolute monarchy cannot subsist unless the prevailing part 
 of the people be corrupted, and free or popular government must cer- 
 tainly perish unless they be preserved in a great measure free -from 
 vices. I doubt whether any better reason can be given why there 
 have been, and are, more monarchies than popular governments in 
 the world, than that nations are more easily drawn into corruption 
 than defended from it ; and I think that monarchy can be said to 
 be natural in no other sense than that our depraved nature is most 
 inclined to that which is worst." 
 
 That must have been unpalatable doctrine to the men who 
 were doing their utmost to bring England under the yoke of 
 an absolute monarch. The time came when they could 
 wreak a bloody vengeance upon the author of sentiments so 
 hostile to their scheme. Upon a groundless charge of com- 
 plicity with the designs of Monmouth, the partisans of the 
 Duke of York urged his arrest and trial for treason. 
 
 Sidney had reached the age of sixty-one years. On the 
 26th of June, 1683, after a morning passed in study, he was 
 seated at dinner with a few friends, unapprehensive of dan- 
 ger. An officer entered the apartment, bearing an order 
 from the .Privy Council, requiring him to appear before 
 them, and ordering the seizure of his papers. Being con- 
 ducted to the council chamber, he replied to all questions, 
 that, upon the production of any evidence implicating him, 'he 
 was ready to meet it, and refute it ; but till that was done, he 
 had nothing to say. Upon this he was committed-to the Tower 
 upon a charge of high treason, no hint being given him of the 
 particulars or the grounds of the accusation. 
 
 There were no grounds. The government had no evi- 
 dence criminating him ; but they were resolved to find some, 
 
610 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 or to make it. Among other expedients, they sent a com- 
 mittee to visit the prisoner in the Tower, hoping to extort 
 or beguile something from him that could be used against him. 
 But Sidney said to them in his lofty manner : 
 
 "You seem to want evidence, and to have come to draw it from 
 my own mouth ; but you shall have nothing from me." 
 
 He could easily foresee his doom ; for while he lay in the 
 Tower, denied all intercourse with friends or counsel, Lord 
 William Russell, a fellow-prisoner, died upon the block, a 
 martyr to the very principles which Sidney had defended so 
 long by voice, vote, and pen. After four months' imprison- 
 ment, he was arraigned before the infamous Jeffries, that 
 creature of the court whom the Duke of York, when he 
 became James II., rewarded for his services in these trials, 
 by making him Lord High Chancellor of England. The 
 trial was the merest mockery of justice. The indictment, 
 which the prisoner never saw, and never heard till he heard 
 it read in court that day, was so long, so involved, and 
 couched in Latin so technical, that he could not understand 
 what he was charged with. The prisoner objected to the 
 indictment. The judge told him he must plead guilty or 
 not guilty ; but the prosecuting attorney said he had no 
 objection to the prisoner taking exception to the indictment, 
 if he chose to run the risk. 
 
 " I presume," rejoined Sidney, puzzled by these proceed- 
 ings, w I presume your lordship will direct me, for I am an 
 ignorant man in matters of this kind. I may be easily sur- 
 prised in it. I never was at a trial in my life, of anybody, 
 and never read a law book." 
 
 The false and heartless knave of a chief-justice, unmoved 
 by this touching appeal, refused all useful information, and 
 told the prisoner that he must either plead to the indict- 
 
ALGERNON SIDNEY. 611 
 
 inent, or demur ; and if he should demur, and not be able 
 to sustain his objection, his life was forfeit without further 
 trial. Still the prisoner hesitated. It was not till Jeffries 
 threatened to proceed to instant judgment, that he reluc- 
 tantly consented to plead not guilty. A hireling witness 
 and a packed jury completed what a corrupt judge had 
 begun. Passages from the papers seized in Sidney's own 
 house were read in court as evidence against him ; some of 
 which had been written twenty years before, as part of a 
 treatise upon government. One sentence, at which Jeffries 
 pretended to be shocked, and which the prosecuting attorney 
 held up to the execration of an ignorant and bigoted jury, 
 was this : 
 
 " The general revolt of a nation from its own magistrates can 
 never be called a rebellion." 
 
 This was held to justify, not only the revolt against 
 Charles I., but any future revolt against Charles II. or his 
 successors ; and it was in vain that Sidney called the atten- 
 tion of the jury to the fact that the paper upon which the 
 offensive words were written was yellow with age. 
 
 "If you believe," said Jeffries, in his charge to the jury, 
 w that that was Colonel Sidney's book, no man can doubt 
 but it is sufficient evidence that he is guilty of compassing 
 and imagining the death of the king. . . . Gentlemen, I 
 must tell you I think I ought more than ordinarily to press 
 this upon you, because I know the misfortunes of the late 
 unhappy rebellion, and the bringing the late blessed king to 
 the scaffold, was first begun by such kind of principles. 
 They cried, he had betrayed the trust that was delegated to 
 him from the people." 
 
 The trial lasted from ten in the morning until six in the 
 evening; and during the whole period, Sidney not only 
 
612 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 displayed his constitutional firmness and courage, but a 
 promptitude and skill in meeting the points made by the 
 attorney and the judge, which would have secured his 
 triumphant acquittal, if the jury had been intelligent and 
 uncorrupt. After half an hour's absence from their box, the 
 jury returned with a verdict of Guilty; and a few days 
 after, the prisoner was brought again to the court-room, to 
 receive his sentence. When asked what he had to say why 
 sentence should not be pronounced, he attempted to speak, 
 but was rudely interrupted by one of the associate justices, 
 and all his exceptions were contemptuously set aside by 
 Jeffries, who seemed impatient to sentence him. When the 
 sentence had been pronounced, Sidney, raising his hands to 
 heaven, uttered these words : 
 
 " Then, O God, I beseech Thee to sanctify these sufferings unto 
 me, and impute not my blood to the country, nor to the great city 
 through which I am to be drawn ; let no inquisition be made for it, 
 but, if any, and the shedding of blood that is innocent must be 
 avenged, let the weight of it fall upon those that maliciously per- 
 secute me for righteousness' sake ! " 
 
 A week later, he ascended the scaffold on Tower Hill, 
 with the calm fortitude that belonged to his character. To 
 the sheriff, who asked him if he had anything to say to the 
 people, he replied : 
 
 " I have made my peace with God, and have nothing to say to 
 men ; but here is a paper of what I have to say/' 
 
 After removing some of his upper garments, he laid his 
 head upon the block with the utmost serenity of manner ; 
 and when the executioner, according to the customary form, 
 asked him if he should rise again, he quietly replied : 
 
 " Not till the general resurrection. Strike on." 
 
ALGERNON SIDNEY. 613 
 
 A moment after, the axe descended, severing the head at 
 a blow, and the executioner held it up to the multitude as 
 the head of a traitor. It was the noblest head in England, 
 and under it had beaten one of the noblest hearts. 
 
 I have seen and the reader may see when he visits the 
 Tower of London the block upon which Sidney's head 
 was laid, and the axe with which it was severed from the 
 body. From the number of cuts in the block, it is evident 
 that it was often used; and the reader, if he chooses, may 
 indulge his fancy, and guess which of the cuts records the 
 execution of Lady Jane Grey, which that of Charles I., 
 which that of Lord William Russell, and which that of this 
 noblest of them all Algernon Sidney. 
 
THE CITY OF ST. LOUIS. 
 
 ST. Louis is an immense surprise to visitors from the 
 Eastern States, particularly to those who come round to it 
 from furious and thundering Chicago. It has stolen into 
 greatness without our knowing much about it. If Chicago 
 may be styled the New York, St. Louis is the serene and com- 
 fortable Philadelphia, of the West. Having passed through 
 its wooden period, to that of solid brick and stone, it has a 
 refined and finished appearance, and there is something in 
 the aspect of the place which indicates that people there find 
 time to live, as well as accumulate the means of living. 
 Chicago amuses, amazes, bewilders, and exhausts the trav- 
 eller ; St. Louis rests and restores him. 
 
 The railroad ride of two hundred and eighty miles from 
 Chicago does not promise much for the city at the end of it. 
 At Springfield, the capital of Illinois, the train bleeds civil- 
 ization at every pore. Away goes the lawyer who has been 
 solacing himself with Mr. Lowell's last volume, and away 
 goes every one else almost who appears to be capable of a 
 similar feat. After Springfield, the cars fill with another 
 kind of people, rough, candid, round-faced simpletons, 
 the sport of politicians, who, on one side of an imaginary 
 line, make them elect Democrats to Congress, and, on the 
 other, fight to destroy their country. What is this we hear ? 
 " Give Pemberton as many men as Grant had, and he 'd 
 whip him before breakfast." And again, "That Stonewall 
 Jackson of yours was a mighty smart fellow." To which the 
 
 39 
 
616 TKIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 flattered Southern brother modestly replies, as if to waive 
 the compliment, " He was a very pious man." 
 
 It is a strange state of things in a country, when a day's 
 ride transports us to a region which reveres what we laugh 
 at, and loathes what we adore. It is strange to travel in 
 one morning, without change of cars, from the nineteenth 
 century to the eighteenth. It is strange to be at 9 A. M. at 
 Abraham Lincoln's tomb, and see pilgrims approach it with 
 uncovered head, and at 12 M. to find yourself surrounded 
 by people who affect to hold in contempt all that he repre- 
 sented, without having the slightest understanding of it. 
 Nor less startling is it, after a long ride over unpeopled 
 prairies, attired in the dismal hue of November, to be shot 
 out upon the shore of the Mississippi, in view of a scene so 
 full of novelty and wonder as that which St. Louis presents 
 on the opposite bank. The three railroads which connect 
 St. Louis with the Northern, Southern, and Eastern States, 
 as well as the short lines which run back a few miles to the 
 mines that supply the city with coal, all terminate here ; so 
 that the river severs the city from all the noise and litter of 
 the railroads. The bridge, however, will soon send the trains 
 screaming through the town. At present, it requires seven 
 hundred horses, two or three hundred men, and a dozen 
 large and powerful ferry-boats, to convey across this half- 
 mile of swift and turbid water the passengers and merchan- 
 dise brought to the eastern bank by the railroads. 
 
 The Mississippi, like Shakespeare, Niagara Falls, the 
 Pyramids, the unteachable ignorance of an original Seces- 
 sionist, and many other stupendous things in nature and art, 
 does not reveal its greatness all at once. When, however, 
 the stranger is informed, and sees himself the evidence of 
 the fact, that the river, which now appears so insignificant, 
 sometimes creeps up that steep, wide levee, and fills all that 
 
THE CITY OF ST. LOUIS. 617 
 
 broad w American Bottom " miles back to the "bluffs," he 
 begins to suspect that the Father of Waters may, after all, 
 be equal to its reputation. Such ferries as those by which we 
 cross the Hudson and the Delaware are impossible upon a 
 river so swift and so capricious as this. The ferry-boat is built 
 like other steamboats, except that it is wider and stronger. 
 With its head up the stream, it lies alongside of a barge to 
 receive its enormous freight of coal- wagons, omnibuses, 
 express-wagons, mail- wagons, carts, and loose mules enough 
 to fill the interstices. Being let go, the boat, always headed 
 to the impetuous flood, swings across, the engine merely 
 keeping the huge mass from being carried away down the 
 stream. 
 
 Seen from the top of the ferry-boat, St. Louis is a curved 
 line of steamboats, a mile and a half long, without a single 
 mast or sail among them. The whole number of steamboats 
 plying between this city and other river towns is two hun- 
 dred and sixty-five, of which one hundred may frequently 
 be seen in port at once, ranged along the levee in close 
 order, with their sterns slanting down the stream, and their 
 bows thrust against the treacherous sand of the shore, each 
 boat presenting a scene of the third act of " The Octoroon." 
 Any one who has witnessed Mr. Bourcicault's excellent play 
 of that name has only to imagine the steamboat scene 
 stretched out a mile and a half, and throw in a few hundred 
 mules and colored men, the latter driving the former by 
 means of the voice and whip, and he will have before him 
 a correct view of the St. Louis levee. Chicago smiles at 
 the necessity under which St. Louis labors of carrying its 
 merchandise up and down that very wide, rough, and steep 
 bank, and contemplates with fine complacency its own con- 
 venient river, which brings the grain, the cattle, the boards, 
 and every box and bale to the precise spot where it is 
 
618 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 wanted, from which it is hoisted to the warehouse without 
 the agency of human muscle. Chicago laughs at the idea 
 of such a town competing for the trade of the prairies with 
 a city of seventeen elevators. But let Chicago take note : 
 St. Louis, which for many years supposed elevators impos- 
 sible on the banks of the Mississippi, now has elevators 
 in most successful operation. The difficulty caused by the 
 ever-changing height of the river is overcome in the sim- 
 plest manner. When the river is low, the huge spout which 
 connects the elevator with the boat is lengthened, and as the 
 river rises it is shortened. Such success had the first elevator, 
 that, during the first forty days of its existence, it received 
 six hundred thousand bushels of grain. It only needs a few 
 more Yankees along the St. Louis levee to apply similar 
 devices to the "handling" of other merchandise, and abolish 
 the mules and their noisy drivers. 
 
 Twenty-eight years ago, Charles Dickens landed upon this 
 levee, and was driven up to the summit of it into the old- 
 est part of the city, which he thus described : 
 
 " In the old French portion of the town, the thoroughfares are 
 narrow and crooked, and some of the houses are very quaint and 
 picturesque, being built of wood, with tumble-down galleries 
 before the windows, approachable by stairs, or rather ladders, from 
 the street. There are queer little barbers* shops, and drinking- 
 houses too, in this quarter ; and abundance of crazy old tenements 
 with blinking casements, such as may be seen in Flanders. Some 
 of these ancient habitations, with high garret gable-windows perk- 
 ing into the roofs, have a kind of French shrug about them ; 
 and, being lop-sided with age, appear to hold their heads askew 
 besides, as if they were grimacing in astonishment at the 
 American improvements." 
 
 There is nothing of this now to be seen in St. Louis, 
 except that the ancient streets along the river are narrower 
 
THE CITY OF ST. LOUIS. 619 
 
 than the rest. All is modern, American, Philadelphian, 
 especially Philadelphian. No daughter is more like her 
 mother than St. Louis is like Philadelphia. From 1775 
 to 1800, Philadelphia was the chief city of the country, to 
 which all eyes were directed, and to which the leaders of 
 the nation annually repaired. So dazzling was this plain 
 and staid metropolis to the eyes of Western members and 
 merchants, that, in laying out the cities of the West, they 
 could not but copy Philadelphia, even in the minutest par- 
 ticulars. The streets of Philadelphia running parallel to the 
 river are numbered ; so are those of St. Louis, Cincinnati, 
 and other Western towns. The cross-streets of Philadelphia 
 were named after the trees, plants, and bushes that grew 
 upon its site, such as Sycamore, Vine, Cherry, Walnut, 
 Chestnut, Pine, and Spruce. Accident changed some of 
 these appellations in the course of years, so that we find 
 such names as " Race " and " Arch " mingled with those of 
 the trees. So infatuated were the Western men of the early 
 day with the charms of Philadelphia, a visit to which must 
 have been the great event of their lives, that they not only 
 named their streets at home Sycamore and Chestnut, but 
 used also the accidental ones, such as Race and Arch. 
 Nearly every street in Nashville has a Philadelphia name. 
 Half the streets of Cincinnati have Philadelphia names. In 
 St. Louis, too, we are reminded of the Quaker City at 
 every turn, both in the names and the aspect of the streets. 
 Those old-fashioned, square, roomy brick mansions, the 
 habit of tipping and pointing everything with marble, 
 the brick pavements, the chastened splendor of the newer 
 residences, the absence of any principal thoroughfare, 
 such as Broadway, the prodigious extent of the city for 
 its population, the general quiet and neatness, all call 
 to mind comfortable Philadelphia. They have even adopted, 
 
620 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 of late, the mode of numbering the houses practised in the 
 Quaker City, the system which makes a person live at 
 1418 Washington Street, merely because his house is the 
 eighteenth above the corner of Fourteenth Street. 
 
 St. Louis enjoys the tranquillity which strikes every 
 stranger with so much surprise, because nature has placed 
 no obstacle in the way of its growth in any direction, and 
 therefore there is no crowded thoroughfare, no intense busi- 
 ness centre, no crammed square mile. New York is cramped 
 in a long, narrow island, between two wide and rapid rivers, 
 as yet unbridged. Cincinnati, a mile and a half from the 
 Ohio, encounters an almost precipitous hill, four hundred 
 and sixty feet high. Chicago had to be raised bodily in the 
 air, while twelve feet of earth was thrown under it to keep 
 it there. Boston cannot grow without making ground to 
 grow upon. But fair St. Louis, the future capital of the 
 United ^States, perhaps, and of the civilization of the Conti- 
 nent, can extend itself in every direction back from the 
 Mississippi, without meeting any formidable obstacle. The 
 ground is high enough to lift the city above the highest 
 floods of the river, but nowhere so high as to require 
 expensive grading. The prairie behind the city is neither 
 level nor inconveniently undulating. North of the city 
 there are some blufis of slight elevation, which have been 
 turned to excellent account as the sites of the two chief 
 cemeteries. The highest hijl, however, which we remember 
 about the city, is that lofty Mound on the bank of the river, 
 supposed to have been thrown up for a lookout station by 
 the Indians, ages ago, from which St. Louis derives its name 
 of the w Mound City." It was with a cutting pang of regret 
 that we observed the partial destruction of this most curious 
 monument of the past, and heard of the supposed necessity 
 for its removal. We could not see the necessity. Though 
 
THE CITY OF ST. LOUIS. 621 
 
 St. Louis should grow to be a greater and more imperial 
 city than Rome (which it may) , the time will never come 
 when that Mound, if perfectly preserved, would not be one 
 of its most interesting objects. It was originally, and could 
 easily be again, a well-shaped mound, about as high and 
 about as large as the State House inBoston. 
 
 There being no hinderance to the natural growth of the 
 city, it has arranged itself in a natural manner. Along the 
 river, as far back as Third Street, the wholesale business 
 of the town is done. Here are rows of tall brick stores and 
 warehouses ; here are the post-office, the exchange, the 
 court-house; here are the mills and the factories, which 
 must be near the river. All the bustle and clatter of the 
 place are confined to these three or four streets nearest 
 the water, and to the streets crossing them, a strip of 
 the town three miles long and a quarter of a mile wide. 
 Fourth Street contains the principal retail stores, many of 
 which are on the scale of Broadway. Here the ladies of St. 
 Louis replenish at once and exhibit their charms, flitting 
 from store to store. Fifth Street is also a street of retail 
 business ; but beyond that line the city presents little but a 
 vast extent of residences, churches, public institutions, and 
 vacant lots, these last being so numerous that the town 
 could double its population without taking in much more of 
 the prairie. From the cupola of the court-house, the city 
 appears an illimitable expanse of brick houses, covered 
 always with a light smoke from forty thousand fires of 
 bituminous coal. The two principal hotels are the largest 
 in the United States, and among the best. The nearness of 
 the city to the wilderness and the uninhabited prairie fills 
 the markets with game. Venison is cheaper than mutton ; 
 wild turkeys, than tame. The markets of St. Louis proba- 
 bly furnish a greater variety and profusion of delicious food 
 
622 TEITTMPHS OF ENTEKPKISE. 
 
 than any others in the world, and the art of cookery seems 
 never to have been lost there. 
 
 The resemblance of this highly favored city to Philadelphia 
 is only external. It has a character of its own, to which 
 many elements have contributed, and which many influences 
 have modified. The ball-clubs, playing in the fields on 
 Sunday afternoons, the billiard-rooms open on Sunday, the 
 great number of assemblies, balls, and parties, the existence 
 of five elegant and expensively sustained theatres in a town 
 of two hundred and twenty thousand inhabitants, the closing 
 of all the stores by sunset in winter, and before sunset in 
 summer, and an indefinable something in the tone and air 
 of the people, notify the stranger that he is in a place which 
 was not the work exclusively of the Puritan, nor even of the 
 Protestant. It is, indeed, a town of highly composite char- 
 acter. The old and wealthy families, descendants of the 
 original French settlers, still speaking the French language 
 and maintaining French customs, give to the place something 
 of the style of New Orleans. As the chief city of a State 
 that shared, and deliberately chose to share, the curse of 
 slavery, it has much of the languor and carelessness induced 
 by the habit of being served by slaves. The negro, too, has 
 imparted his accent to the tongue of the people. Nearly 
 one half of the population being Catholic, and the Catholic 
 Church being by far the wealthiest denomination of the 
 place, and much the most active, enterprising, and wise, the 
 civilization of the town is essentially Catholic ; and even 
 the imitative negroes turn out on Sundays and play matches 
 of base-ball in costume. The city being midway between 
 the Northern Lakes and the Gulf of Mexico, and offering 
 opportunities to men of enterprise, has attracted a few 
 thousands of Northern people, who have been, and are now, 
 a powerful propelling force in St. Louis and in the wondrous 
 
THE CITY OF ST. LOUIS. 623 
 
 o , 
 
 State of Missouri. Add to these various elements sixty 
 thousand Germans, whom the Secessionists of St. Louis 
 compliment with the title of the " Damned Dutch," utter- 
 ing the words with that ferocious emphasis which they 
 usually reserve exclusively for the "Damned Yankees." 
 Our placid and good-natured German friends are not apt to 
 excite the ire of their fellow-citizens ; but at St. Louis they 
 have contrived to make themselves most intensely abhorred 
 by the "aristocracy " of the place, nine in ten of whom were 
 Secessionists. Reason : it was the loyal and democratic 
 Germans, who, in 1861, saved the city from falling into the 
 hands of the Rebels, and it is the Germans who, to-day, 
 constitute the strength of the United States in the State of 
 Missouri. Let us drink, at all future Union banquets, 
 to the "Damned Dutch of St. Louis," for truly we owe 
 them honor and gratitude. 
 
 The many evidences which meet the eye, in this city, of 
 solid and ancient wealth, are a constant marvel to visitors 
 accustomed to the recentness of other Western cities. How 
 was the money gained which built those hundred-thousand 
 dollar residences, these numerous and spacious churches, 
 colleges, convents, hospitals, and filled them with pictures, 
 books, and apparatus? The capital which has created, 
 renewed, and adorned this city was gained here, upon the 
 spot, by her own people, not borrowed from abroad. 
 
 St. Louis is just one hundred and four years old. In the 
 summer of 1763, Pierre Laclede Liguest, a vigorous and 
 enterprising Frenchman, led from New Orleans a large party 
 of French trappers and traders, for the purpose of founding, 
 at the junction of the Mississippi and Missouri, a depot for 
 the furs of the vast region watered by those rivers. In 
 December, after five months of toil, he saw the mouth of the 
 muddy Missouri, but preferred for the site of his settlement 
 
624 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 the fine bend of the Mississippi, twenty miles below, which 
 he had observed on his way up. Landing there, he marked 
 the spot by " blazing " some of the trees, and, in the follow- 
 ing February, sent, from his winter quarters below, a party 
 of thirty young fellows to build sheds and cabins for the 
 settlement. The 15th of February, 1764, the day on which 
 this little band landed, was the birthday of St. Louis. In 
 the course of the year, the main body of adventurers arrived, 
 the Indians were conciliated, cabins of upright poles were 
 built, a little corn, was planted, trade was begun, and the 
 settlement fairly established. 
 
 A Frenchman was a popular personage with the Indians 
 in those days. He had no conscientious scruples against 
 taking a squaw ; and his religion had much in it that was 
 imposing to the savage mind. There was usually a fiddle 
 in French settlements, and it was not idle on festive days. 
 The Frenchman of that day had not familiarized his mind 
 with the history of Joshua, and it did not give him much 
 concern to know that the Indians were heathen. He took 
 the business of settling the new country lightly, and accom- 
 modated himself to the wild life of the prairie and the river, 
 instead of attempting to subdue them, and found upon them 
 a Christian state, " to the glory of God." He did not even 
 take the trouble to build a good, solid log-house, such as the 
 men of our race built, but was content to stick poles in the 
 ground, and cover the roof with bark and skins, a slight 
 improvement upon the wigwam. Never, never would those 
 gay and pleasant Frenchmen have conquered the continent 
 from savage man and savage nature ; but they got along very 
 peaceably with the Indians, had a dance on Sunday after- 
 noons, and made the best of their lot. It is quite true, as 
 the good people of St. Louis often say, that, if the English 
 had settled St. Louis, there would have been massacres and 
 
THE CITY OF ST. LOUIS. 625 
 
 wars without end. Yes ; the white men who do not hate 
 and exterminate Indians, the white men who can find solace 
 in the arms of squaws, and build wigwams instead of houses, 
 may possess delightful qualities of head and heart, but they 
 arc not the men who found empires. 
 
 European politics, strange to say, had a powerful influence 
 upon this little settlement of fur-traders. The peace of 
 1763 gave all the country east of the Mississippi to the Eng- 
 lish, As soon as tidings of this dreadful event reached the 
 Frenchmen who had settled upon the Illinois, they made 
 haste to remove to St. Louis, so as to avoid the infamy of 
 living under the rule of their " natural enemy." No sooner 
 had they arrived, than news still more terrible reached them : 
 Louis XV. had ceded all his possessions west of the Missis- 
 sippi to Spain ! For the next thirty years the village was 
 an outpost of Spanish Louisiana, in whose broad extent no 
 one could own land who was not a Catholic. The French- 
 men submitted to the easy sway of the Spanish commandant, 
 and the settlement slowly increased in numbers and wealth. 
 To go to New Orleans and return was a voyage of ten 
 months. Furs, lead, and salt were sent down the river in 
 barges ; which, returning in the following year, brought 
 back the beads, tomahawks, and trash coveted by the In- 
 dians, as well as the few articles required by the settlers. 
 As the village grew, the range of its busines extended, and 
 parties of trappers and of traders ascended the Missouri, and 
 laid its upper waters under contribution. From the Missis- 
 sippi to the Pacific, there was a territory two thousand miles 
 broad, all alive with Indians, with buffalo, beaver, deer, 
 bears, and every kind of game. From 1764 down to the 
 year 1815, when the first steamboat ascended the river, St. 
 Louis gained the chief part of its livelihood by hunting, trap- 
 ping, and trading over that wondrous, illimitable park, of 
 
626 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 which it was the principal entrance. There was no fur-pro- 
 ducing region, between the river and the Rocky Mountains, 
 which was not embraced in the system of which St. Louis 
 was the controlling power. St. Louis was the metropolis of 
 the hunting-shirt. 
 
 The great event in the history of St. Louis was its trans- 
 fer, with all that was once called Louisiana, to the United 
 States This occurred in 1804, forty years after Pierre 
 Laclede Liguest had blazed the trees on the site of St. Louis. 
 The entire province of " Upper Louisiana " then contained 
 nine thousand and twenty whites, and one thousand three 
 hundred and twenty blacks. St Louis consisted of one hun- 
 dred and eighty houses, nearly all of which were one-story 
 cabins made of upright hewn logs, roofed with shingles. Many 
 of the inhabitants had married squaws, and some of the 
 trappers had an Indian wife in the town, and another in the 
 hunting-grounds. On one occasion, a Frenchman and his 
 Indian wife presented their eight children for baptism all at 
 once. The old records contain various indications that, in 
 this French village of St. Louis, neither the wife nor the 
 community saw anything very censurable in a married man 
 having illegitimate children. There is a joint will, for exam- 
 ple, in the archives, in which husband and wife express the 
 utmost fondness for one another, and beg to be buried as 
 near one another as possible. The clause following these 
 aifectionate expressions bequeaths five thousand francs to 
 an illegitimate daughter of the fond and beloved husband. 
 There was one Catholic church in the place, built of logs ; 
 of course, no other than a Catholic church would have been 
 permitted by the Spanish bigots who ruled the province. The 
 people were gay, good-humored, and polite, but totally des- 
 titute of the force, the spirit, the ambition, the enterprise, 
 which made the people of cold and barren New England fish 
 
THE CITY OF ST. LOUIS. 627 
 
 for cod off Newfoundland, and open a profitable commerce 
 with the West Indies, while they were still warring with the 
 Indians. A St. Louis merchant of 1790 was a man who, in 
 a corner of his cabin, had a large chest, which contained a 
 few pounds of powder and shot, a few knives and hatchets, 
 a little red paint, two or three rifles, some hunting-shirts of 
 buckskin, a few tin cups and iron pots, and perhaps a little 
 tea, coffee, sugar, and spice. There was no post-office, no 
 ferry over the river, no newspaper. No one could post a 
 bill in the town for a lost horse without a permit from the 
 Governor ; no Protestant could own a lot. But, as we have 
 before observed, the people enjoyed existence in their way. 
 There was a pleasant, social life in the place. On occasions 
 of festivity, each family brought its quota of provisions, paid 
 its share of the fiddler's fee, came together in some conven- 
 ient place, and danced till the sun went down. And thus 
 they would have lived and danced till the present hour, but 
 for the cession of the province to the United States. 
 
 That glorious event changed everything. See how the 
 system of freedom works when it supplants the system of 
 restriction. The post-office was, of course, immediately 
 established. The laws forbidding Protestant worship, and 
 requiring owners of land to profess the Catholic faith, being 
 abolished, vigorous men (not many, but enough for pro- 
 pelling force) moved in from the East and South, and began 
 the work of creating what we now call St. Louis. In 1808, 
 there was a newspaper. In 1809, there were fire-companies. 
 In 1810, there were road-masters, who had power to compel 
 the requisite labor on the highways. In 1811, there were 
 two schools in the town, one French and one English. In 
 the same year a market was built ; and already the streets 
 had changed their names from La Hue Prmcipale, La 
 Rue Royale, La Rue des Granges, to such as Walnut and 
 
628 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 Chestnut; and La Place d'Armes had also become plain 
 Centre Square. 
 
 In 1812, by the formation of the great Missouri Fur Com- 
 pany, the power of combined capital and labor was brought 
 to bear upon the hitherto wild, precarious business of col- 
 lecting furs, and expeditions were sent out upon a scale and 
 with resources that insured success. The trappers and hun- 
 ters were organized, disciplined, and directed by able men, 
 who could stay at home and form part of a stable commu- 
 nity. The lead-mines began to be worked to better advantage 
 on a larger scale. Above all, agriculture, which the French 
 settlers had only regarded as a means of obtaining food, 
 assumed increasing importance. In 1815, the era of the 
 steamboat began. 
 
 But though there was enough vigorous brain in the town, 
 after the cession, to give it impetus and organization, there 
 was not enough to prevent its falling into an error that 
 retarded its progress for forty-five years. In 1820, after a 
 long and most animated discussion, St. Louis cast its vote 
 for slavery, and led Missouri to the same decision. The 
 population then was 4,928. In 1830, it had increased to 
 5,852 I An increase of 924 inhabitants in ten years ! If 
 Missouri had chosen the better part in 1820, St. Louis 
 would at this moment be a city of a million inhabitants, and 
 Missouri a State of four millions. 
 
 The rapid growth of St. Louis dates from 1833, when the 
 prairie world began to attract the attention of emigrants. 
 Every family that settled upon the banks of the Missouri, 
 the Mississippi, or upon their tributaries, contributed its 
 quota of business to a city which is the natural capital of 
 the Mississippi Valley, and which is the natural centre of 
 the great steamboat interest of all that wonderful system 
 of rivers. From 1830 to 1860, the population of St. Louis 
 
THE CITY OF ST. LOUIS. 629 
 
 trebled every ten years, and, from being the narrow and 
 ill-favored town described by Charles Dickens, expanded 
 into the spacious, elegant, tranquil, and solid metropolis we 
 find it now. 
 
 Who can describe how bitterly St. Louis expiated, during 
 the Rebellion, the mistake of 1820? The wealth, the social 
 influence, the planting interest, and much of the cultivated 
 brain of the city and the State, were in the fullest sympathy 
 with the Secessionists. The governor of the State was a 
 Secessionist, and nearly every other man whose official posi- 
 tion would render him important in a crisis. In all Missouri 
 there were in 1860 about 20,000 Republicans, but nowhere 
 in the State was there any considerable body of them in 
 one place, except at St. Louis, among the "Damned Dutch." 
 The United States Arsenal in the city, filled with arms and 
 ammunition, was commanded by an officer bound to the 
 South by every tie that usually influences men. And yet 
 the arsenal and the city were promptly saved from the 
 clutch of treason. 
 
 We talk of erecting monuments to the saviours ot the 
 country, but we shall never erect a monument to its real 
 saviours, the Secessionists themselves, whose madness 
 came so often to the rescue of the gasping Union. If they 
 had only been, at critical moments, a little less foolish, a 
 little less blindly arrogant, ignorant, cruel, or ridiculous, 
 just a little, how could we, with so many enemies among 
 us, and with every power in Christendom except one on 
 their side, how could we have put them down? They 
 lost St. Louis by their headlong precipitation. When Frank 
 Blair and his friends returned from nominating Mr. Lincoln 
 at the Chicago Convention of 1860, a ratification meeting 
 was held at St. Louis, which was assailed and broken up by 
 a mob of " Democrats." Some of the speakers were struck 
 
630 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 with stones, all were ' insulted by blasphemous yells and 
 hellish imprecations. That riot saved St. Louis, for it led 
 to the formation of the Wide- Awake Club, which issued, 
 in due time, in sixty-six regiments of loyal Missouri vol- 
 unteers. Eeaders remember the Wide-A wakes of 1860. 
 With us, they were only the decoration of the " campaign," 
 the material of which its torchlight processions were com- 
 posed ; but at St. Louis they were necessary for the main- 
 tenance of freedom and order. They attended every 
 Republican meeting, armed with a loaded club and a flaming 
 lamp of camphene, and assailed disturbers of the peace with 
 club and fire. Disbanded after the election, they reorgan- 
 ized in the following February, when traitors began to cast 
 inquiring eyes upon the arsenal ; but now they appeared in 
 another guise, as regiments of militia, armed through the 
 exertions of Frank Blair, and led, at length, by that alert 
 and valiant soldier, Nathaniel Lyon. These were the men 
 who saved the arsenal, broke up the traitors' camp in the 
 suburbs, and kept the enemy's troops always a hundred 
 miles from the city. 
 
 We in the North can but faintly realize the desolation and 
 misery of the war in Missouri and St. Louis. The blockade 
 of the river reduced the whole business of the city to about 
 one third its former amount ; and yet nothing could pre- 
 vent refugees from the seat of war from seeking safety and 
 sustenance in the impoverished town. Families were terri- 
 bly divided. Children witnessed daily the horrid spectacle 
 of their parents fiercely quarrelling over the news of the 
 morning, each denouncing what the other held sacred, and 
 vaunting what the other despised. In the back counties, 
 whole regions were absolutely depopulated. "No quarter !" 
 was the word on both sides. "In counties," says a well- 
 informed writer, " where the Rebels had control, no Union 
 
THE CITY OF ST. LOUIS. 631 
 
 man dared to remain ; in counties where Union men were 
 dominant, no Rebel was permitted to reside. As the wave 
 of war flowed or ebbed across the State, it carried on its 
 surface the inhabitants in one direction or the other. As the 
 Rebel armies advanced, Union citizens retired, taking with 
 them their families and household goods ; when the enemy 
 retrograded, followed up by the Federal armies, the Union 
 men returned, and the Rebel families receded. The whole 
 population was at war. There was no neutrality, and could 
 be none. In this way those sections of the State which 
 were debatable ground became uninhabitable, were depop- 
 ulated, and turned into a wilderness." 
 
 During the last two years of the war, .the prodigious 
 expenditures of the government in the Southwest enriched 
 many citizens of St. Louis, and employed some thousands 
 of them. It is, nevertheless, a decisive proof of the solidity 
 of the business men of the city, that they bore the long 
 stagnation so well, and came out of the war generally pre- 
 pared to resume business at the point and on the scale at 
 which the interruption occurred. St. Louis is, in every 
 sense, herself again, with the absence of the black incubus 
 that weighed her down. All is hopefulness and energy there 
 now. It is but six years since the war ended, and yet the. 
 city did more business in 1870 than in any other year of its 
 existence. 
 
 The war inflicted wounds which are not so easily healed. 
 We heard much in St. Louis of the ill-temper of the defeated 
 Secessionists ; but they seemed to us more sad than bitter, 
 more anxious than resentful. If, in their intercourse with 
 strangers, they were reserved, it appeared to be because the 
 only topic upon which they have been accustomed to con- 
 verse is utterly exhausted. And really, after thirty years 
 of talk, and four of war, they may well pause, fatigued, and 
 
 40 
 
632 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 try a little meditation. In mingling with those polite and 
 reticent men, we could feel for them nothing but good-will. 
 We could not but remember that for thirty years they had 
 been severed, intellectually and morally, from the rest of the 
 human race, and had not shared in the new light and better 
 feeling of recent times. We could not but remember, that 
 during the war, they were as sure that they were right as 
 we were sure that we were right. We could not but 
 remember that they dared more, sacrificed more, suffered 
 more than we did. 
 
 And then these Southern brethren of ours are, in all intel- 
 lectual matters, such children, that it is impossible, while 
 you are among them, to feel otherwise than tenderly towards 
 them. Judging from the Southern literature that may be 
 found in great variety on the counters of St. Louis book- 
 stores, we should say that the reading people of the South 
 are still subsisting upon the novels and poems of Sir Walter 
 Scott. They appear to have taken Scott seriously, as 
 though Sir Walter had really thought Ivanhoe was a more 
 admirable personage than James Watt, and wanted people 
 to stop making steam-engines and go back to chivalry ! Let 
 the middle-aged reader recall the time-when he read Scott's 
 novels with the passion so proper and natural to youth, then 
 let him endeavor ^to imagine what 'sort of person he would 
 now be if he had read nothing else since ; and he will be 
 able to form a conception of the kind of people who litter 
 the bookstores of St. Louis with " Cavalier " newspapers 
 and "Southern Lyrics." Nothing is so amusing as the 
 gravity, nay, the solemnity, with which they treat the most 
 trivial topics. While we were at St. Louis, a band of negro 
 minstrels performed a burlesque of a " tournament " which 
 had been recently held in the city. One of these amiable 
 writers discoursed on this topic in a manner to draw tears. 
 
THE CITY OF ST. LOUIS. 633 
 
 " This sooty band of harmonists, who -have stolen their com- 
 plexion from the negro and their character from the same individ- 
 ual, if, indeed, they have any, are engaged just now in 
 entertaining the public with a burlesque of the Tournament lately 
 held at the Fair Grounds. These mountebanks, emboldened by 
 the laugh of the crowd, and having no knowledge of the proprie- 
 ties of social life to restrain them, have presumed to push their 
 insolence beyond all limit of reason or decency, and to present the 
 actions of private persons in scenes of the broadest caricature 
 upon the stage. They have gone further, and made, as well, the 
 incidents and personages of the social gathering that followed 
 that event the subject of their noisy mirth and coarse buffoon- 
 ery." 
 
 Imagine two columns of this eloquence, all on the sub- 
 ject of a little piece of harmless fun by a " sooty band of 
 harmonists." A heap of such clippings lies before us, cut 
 from all sorts of periodicals ; but in the heap there are one 
 or two that contain a gleam of sense. The following is 
 more than a gleam : it is a burst of light : it solves the whole 
 problem of reconstruction. The conversation is supposed to 
 have taken place on board of a Red River steamboat, among 
 a group of Arkansas planters : 
 
 " First Planter, I have made up my mind to sell half of my 
 farm, and I shall sell it to a Yankee, 
 
 "Second Planter. You are joking; You couldn't endure a 
 Yankee neighbor. 
 
 " First Planter. No, I am not joking ; I swear I am in earn- 
 est. I want an enterprising Yankee neighbor. I think he can 
 teach me a good many things, and that I can teach him a good 
 many things, and that together we can double the value of my 
 lands, and improve the condition of my county. We haven't a 
 school in the county, not one. We have good water power, but 
 no machinery. Our lands are as rich as the banks of the Nile, 
 but they will not bring to-day twenty-five dollars an acre, and we 
 
634 TKIUMPHS OF ENTERPEISE. 
 
 are head over ears in debt. Gentlemen, we need a Yankee element 
 to develop Arkansas. 
 
 " Second Planter. But his politics. 
 
 " First Planter. Damn politics ! We have followed abstrac- 
 tions until we are wellnigh ruined." 
 
 We greatly fear that this conversation originated in the in- 
 ventive mind of a Yankee ; but its publication in a Southern 
 newspaper was something. Would that it could be " cut out " 
 and stuck up in every Southern post-office I At present the 
 Yankee is usually spoken of in the South as per specimen, 
 copied from the opening lines of "The Saint's Jubilee, a Sat- 
 ire,' published at St. Louis : 
 
 " To Saints and Pilgrims now we bawl, 
 Who worship in old Fan'il Hall, 
 Old Fan'il Hall, that glorious spot, 
 Where saints so oft blow cold and hot, 
 And launch abroad their wordy thunder 
 To fill th' astonished world with w.onder ; 
 The ' cradle ' this of revolution, 
 From whence doth spring such wild confusion, 
 That saints are sometimes in a pother, 
 To know if this is that or father." 
 
 Consider the feelings of a people saturated with Scott, 
 and regarding Hudibras as a classic model, at being " con- 
 quered," as they delight to term it, by the saints of Faneuil 
 Hall. 
 
 One of the many surprises of St. Louis is the smallness of 
 the negro population, not more than three thousand in all. 
 At Chicago and other Northern cities, the waiters at the 
 hotels are generally colored men; at St. Louis, generally 
 white. Most of the coachmen, grooms, porters, and female 
 servants are white. Along the levee there is a fringe of 
 
THE CITY OF ST. LOUIS. 35 
 
 negroes, loading and unloading the steamboats, and negroes 
 are employed in other rough work ; but they play as uncon- 
 spicuous a part in the life of the city, as in that of Boston 
 or New York. There is a vast difference between a Chicago 
 negro and a St. Louis negro. At St. Louis the shadow of 
 slavery rests still upon their countenances, and cows their 
 souls. So imitative and sympathetic is man, that the negroes 
 will never believe much in themselves, until white men 
 believe a little in them ; and the Southern portion of the St. 
 Louis people are still very far from this. How impossible 
 to convey to the Northern mind the faintest idea of the wild, 
 incredulous, speechless amazement of the Southern woman 
 on being informed that negroes were to vote ! It was as 
 though a Northern lady were to read in a newspaper, that 
 rats and mice were to be counted in the election of the next 
 President. But these traits of immaturity will disappear, 
 are disappearing, now that no artificial obstacle exists to 
 the free growth of the Southern mind. We doubt if to-day 
 one hundred disinterested votes could be obtained in St. 
 Louis for the reestablishment of slavery in Missouri. 
 
 Has the reader ever taken the trouble to observe what a 
 remarkable piece of the earth's surface this State of Missouri 
 is ? Surface, indeed ! We beg pardon ; Missouri goes far 
 enough under the surface to furnish mankind with one hun- 
 dred million tons of coal a year for thirteen hundred years ! 
 Think of 26,887 square miles of coal-beds, nearly half the 
 State, and some of the beds fifteen feet thick. With 
 regard to iron, it is not necessary to penetrate the surface 
 for that. They have iron in Missouri by the mountain. 
 Pilot Knob, 581 feet high, and containing 360 acres, is a 
 mass of iron ; and Iron Mountain, six miles distant from it, 
 is 228 feet high, covers 500 acres, and contains 230,000,000 
 tons of ore, without counting the inexhaustible supply that 
 
636 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 may reasonably be supposed to exist below the level. There 
 is enough iron lying about loose in that region for a double 
 track of railroad across the continent. The lead districts of 
 Missouri include more than 6,000 square miles, and at least 
 five hundred " points " where it is known that lead can be 
 profitably worked. In fifteen counties there is copper, and 
 in seven of these counties there is copper enough to pay for 
 working the mines. There are large deposits of zinc in the 
 State. There is gold, also, which does not yet attract much 
 attention, because of the dazzling stores of the precious metal 
 farther west. In short, within one hundred miles of St. 
 Louis, the following metals and minerals are found in quan- 
 tities that will repay working : gold, iron, lead, zinc, copper, 
 tin, silver, platina, nickel, emery, cobalt, coal, limestone, 
 granite, pipe-clay, fire-clay, marble, metallic paints, and salt. 
 The State contains forty-five million acres of land. Eight 
 millions of these acres have the rich soil that is peculiarly 
 suited to the raising of hemp. There are five millions of 
 acres among the best in - the world for the grape. Twenty 
 million acres are good farming lands, adapted to the ordinary 
 crops of the Northern farmer. Two million acres are mining 
 lands. Unlike some of the prairie States, Missouri pos- 
 sesses a sufficiency of timber land, and most of her prairies 
 are of the rolling variety. 
 
 'We have often tried to decide the great question, which 
 of the States of the Union is the fittest and richest dwelling- 
 place for man. It is easy to come to a conclusion on the 
 subject, but difficult to adhere to it. Often, while sailing on 
 the broad and brimming Hudson, and thinking of the various 
 charms and advantages of the State through which it flows, 
 we have been quite certain that New York is the fairest and 
 noblest province of the earth. In this opinion we remain 
 fixed, until we find ourselves surveying the outward beauty, 
 
THE CITY OF ST. LOUIS. 637 
 
 and contemplating the hidden wealth, of Pennsylvania. Then 
 we throw New York over, and assign to its great neighbor 
 the palm of superiority. But, anon, we are lost in wonder 
 at the unknown but inexhaustible resources of Virginia, its 
 happy situation, its favorable climate, the tranquil pictu- 
 resqueness of its winding streams, its romantic and accessible 
 mountains. Then we give Pennsylvania the go-by, and 
 yield our allegiance to Virginia. In the same way we have 
 found our unstable affections straying off to noble Ohio, 
 beautiful Iowa, bountiful Illinois, delightful Tennessee, 
 various Minnesota, each of which, when the other dear 
 charmers are forgotten, seems the unique and unapproach- 
 ably lovely. At the present moment, great Missouri has 
 our profoundest homage. There is nothing which man needs, 
 and there are few things which it is rational for him to 
 desire, that this imperial State does not furnish in rich abun- 
 dance. There is grain for his sustenance, tobacco for his 
 solace, gold for his decoration, iron for his use, wine for his 
 exhilaration, cotton and wool for his garments, and hemp for 
 his morals. Held back for forty years by slavery, desolated 
 for four years by civil war, it has gone forward since the 
 return of peace by strides and bounds. 
 
 If St. Louis were nothing more than the chief city of such 
 a State, it would be a place of all but the first impor- 
 tance. But, it is far more than that ; it is the centre and 
 natural metropolis of the Valley of the Mississippi. Above 
 it, the great river is navigable for 800 miles ; below it, for 
 1,345 miles. Twenty miles above the city, the Missouri 
 pours in its turbid flood, navigable to a point nearly three 
 thousand miles from St. Louis. Two hundred miles below 
 the city is the mouth of the Ohio, which gives St. Louiy 
 river communication with Pittsburg, twelve hundred miles 
 distant, and with the oil and coal regions of Pennsylvania, 
 
638 TKIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 above Pittsburg. The navigable tributaries of the Missis- 
 sippi and Missouri, eleven thousand miles in length, place 
 within reach of the city every town of much importance in a 
 valley of twelve hundred thousand square miles, destined to 
 contain a population of two hundred millions of pe6ple. 
 Those ship canals which Chicago is so set upon speedily 
 creating, will give St. Louis also access to the Great Lakes, 
 and a short cut to the Atlantic Ocean. A thousand miles of 
 railroad in the State connect the city with the Western sys- 
 tem of roads, chief among whiph is the railroad to the 
 Pacific. When that greatest work of man was finished, in 
 1870, St. Louis which is 1,000 miles from New York 
 and 2,300 miles from San Francisco was as manifestly 
 the natural capital of the United States as it was of the 
 richest portion of it. It is not, in a geographical sense, 
 the central city ; but considering the superior importance to 
 us of Europe over Asia, and other obvious facts, it is 
 central in every sense except the geographical one, the 
 centre of politics, of business, and of distribution. 
 
 There is always a certain agreeable freshness, heartiness, 
 and simplicity in a community which deals chiefly in the 
 natural products of the earth ; and this is one reason why 
 it is so pleasant to a Northern traveller to reside for a while 
 in the Southern States. He feels like a lawyer out in the 
 hay-fields, or like city children in the country. Agriculture 
 is there conducted on a scale which invests it with a dignity 
 not so easily discerned in a region of little farms, each 
 worked by one poor, anxious, overtasked man, assisted by 
 one poor, anxious, overtasked woman. St. Louis, from the 
 time when it laid the foundation of its fortune in the fur 
 trade, has always been a depot and market for grain, flour, 
 hemp, and tobacco ; and, although the manufactures of the 
 city are important and increasing, St. Louis still gains the 
 
THE CITY OF ST. LOUIS. 639 
 
 chief part of its livelihood by dealing in natural products. 
 The great Exchange room, where the twenty-five hundred 
 ruling business men of the place daily meet for an hour and 
 a half, is a refreshing scene to the worn slave of the desk 
 who may chance to witness it. Here, along the sides of the 
 long room, are tables covered with little tin pans, containing 
 samples of corn, wheat of all grades and colors, flour, meal, 
 oats, barley, beans, bran, seeds, apples, dried apples, salt ; 
 on other tables are hams, samples of hemp, wool, and cotton, 
 bottles of coal oil, lard, lard oil, lubricating oil, currying 
 oil, specimens of rope, and many other such commodities. 
 What fine, fresh, hearty-looking men ! Here are the millers, 
 with their ruddy faces and light-colored clothes, who super- 
 intended the grinding of those annual million barrels of 
 flour, and whose honesty and good sense have made the St. 
 Louis brands the favorites in all the flour marts of the coun- 
 try. Here are the buyers of grain, each in his accustomed 
 place, to whom come sellers bearing pans of wheat, which 
 the buyer runs his hand through, asks the price and the 
 quantity, and indicates, by a shake OP a nod of the head, 
 whether he takes or declines it. These men of the St. Louis 
 Exchange do not know as much, do not think and read as 
 much, do not push and advertise and vaunt as much, as 
 those who frequent the Exchange of Chicago ; but they have 
 that something about them which makes the charm of the 
 farmer and the country gentleman. Evidently they take 
 life more easily than their rivals farther north. Much of 
 their talk is in an unknown tongue. When they are speak- 
 ing of tobacco, they describe the varieties of that article in 
 such terms as the following: "scraps," "lugs," "factory 
 lugs," "planters' lugs," "medium shipping leaf," "choice 
 manufacturing," "dark fillers," "bright fillers," "black wrap- 
 pers," "fancy leaf." We must not omit to record that the 
 
640 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 standard of commercial honor has always been high at St. 
 Louis, and that its merchants have rather inclined to an 
 excess of caution than to an excess of enterprise. As the 
 brand of " St. Louis " upon a barrel of flour adds to its com- 
 mercial value, so the name of St. Louis upon a merchant's 
 card facilitates his way to confidence and credit in other 
 cities. 
 
 What, then, of the reckless steamboating ? St. Louis has 
 at least the candor to publish every year a catalogue of all 
 the steamers and barges sunk, burnt, and exploded on the 
 rivers. During the year 1866 the explosions were seven in 
 number; twenty-two steamboats were burnt; forty-nine 
 were sunk and lost ; twelve were sunk and raised ; twenty- 
 nine barges were sunk ; one hundred and nineteen casual- 
 ties in all. Judging from our intercourse with the manly 
 and agreeable fellows who command and pilot the St. Louis 
 steamboats, we should not suppose that they had any very 
 decided taste for being blown a hundred feet in the air, nor 
 any marked inclination to have their property and credit 
 submerged in the thick waters of the Mississippi. Such is 
 the competition among owners for competent pilots, that the 
 best pilots now command seven hundred dollars a month, 
 and each boat must have two. For the explosions there is 
 no excuse ; for the conflagrations, there is some ; for the 
 sinkings, there is enough. A Western steamboat is as com- 
 bustible as a theatre ; there is in the midst of it a raging 
 volcano ; and the whole mass of fire and fuel is rushing 
 through the air at the rate of fifteen miles an hour. One 
 stray spark, unobserved for ten minutes, suffices to kindle a 
 blaze which nothing can quench but the river's rolling flood. 
 These fires can be prevented only by a systematic and sleep- 
 less vigilance, which the Southwestern man does not take to 
 easily. But learn it they must and will. 
 
THE CITY OF ST. LOUIS. 641 
 
 Recently, they have introduced upon the great rivers of 
 the West the tow-boat and barge system, as we have it upon 
 the Hudson. Tow-boats of immense power, which carry no 
 freight, draw after them and around them, like a duck sur- 
 rounded by her family, five, ten, or fifteen spacious barges, 
 loaded with grain, cotton, and passengers. On arriving at 
 a town, the fleet stops only long enough to let go one barge, 
 and take on another. Nor is there any stopping for fuel, for 
 the tow-boat is large enough to contain a supply for the voy- 
 age. Such is the saving of time, by avoiding hours' delay 
 at each of the principal landings and the frequent stoppings 
 for fuel, that the tow-boats, with ten loaded barges attached 
 to them, make the trip from St. Louis to New Orleans in six 
 days, which is just the time usually taken by the fastest pas- 
 senger boats. In this way such commodities as grain can be 
 conveyed in bulk, a great economy, and the voyage on 
 the Mississippi is rendered- almost as safe as upon the Dela- 
 ware. It is the tow-boat, in the van of the floating mass, 
 that incurs most of the perils of the river, and all those of 
 the boiler. The system is a prodigious economy. One of 
 those large passenger boats on the Mississippi is run at an 
 expense of a thousand dollars a day, and it wastes half its 
 time in waiting for freight. A tow-boat capable of towing 
 ten barges expends but two hundred dollars a day, and 
 wastes fewer hours than a passenger boat wastes days. 
 
 That Mississippi River, dull and harmless as it usually 
 looks, is one of the most unmanageable things in nature, and 
 supplies the towns upon its banks with that element of peril 
 that is a universal concomitant of human life. It never 
 knows its own mind two years together, and rolls about in 
 its soft bed like a sick hippopotamus. One year it floods a 
 town, or slices off a few acres of it ; the next, it threatens 
 to leave it and seek another channel. Even St. Louis, 
 
642 TKIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 though safe from floods, has been obliged to use considerable 
 compulsion to keep the river from floundering over toward 
 the Illinois shore, and leaving the levee a dry joke to the 
 Chicagonese forever. Every ten or fifteen years, too, the 
 river rises high enough to pour in at the front doors of 
 the stores at the top of the levee, which are needlessly near 
 the channel. The elders of the town remember the time 
 when the flood was threatening, and Edwin Forrest was act- 
 ing, both on the same evening ; and, as often as the curtain 
 went down, the men would rush out of doors to hear the last 
 news from the river, and when the play was over, the entire 
 audience hurried pell-mell to the levee to see for themselves 
 whose cellars were flooded, and into whose second-story 
 windows the water was pouring. 
 
 The ice, too, is a thing of terror at St. Louis. It does no 
 harm while it is forming, nor as long as it remains firm. On 
 the contrary, it furnishes a convenient bridge, over which, 
 for a month sometimes, the heaviest loads are safely drawn. 
 It is the breaking up that does the mischief. Along the 
 gently curving edge of the levee, a hundred steamboats have 
 their noses in the sand, and their hulls fixed aslant in the 
 thickest ice. Ropes and cables fasten some to the shore ; 
 others, for experiment's sake, are held by light ropes, or by 
 none. In the middle of the river a few boats are anchored, 
 also as an experiment, and others line the opposite 
 shore. The ice gives no warning of the coming change, 
 and, by degrees, the vigilance of the thousands who have 
 reason to contemplate its breaking up with dread is 
 relaxed. Suddenly, when no one is thinking of the river, a 
 voice is heard crying, "It moves!" 
 
 All eyes are turned to the ice. It is a horrid circumstance 
 of the breaking up, that, when the ice begins to go, it moves 
 in an entire mass, so slowly and so silently that, for several 
 
THE CITY OI ST. LOUIS. 643 
 
 minutes, no inexperienced person can discern the motion. 
 The boy that first noticed the movement of the ice in 1866 
 was scolded by the by-standers for making a false alarm. 
 As soon as it becomes certain that the ice has started, the 
 fire-bells ring, and all the city hurries to the levee, to pre- 
 vent or witness the destruction of the steamboats. - The 
 broad sheet of ice, two or three feet thick, as it glides along, 
 soon begins to bring a fearful strain upon the line of boats. 
 Something must give way. Nothing can stop the motion of 
 the ice, that has hundreds of miles of ice behind it, pressing 
 it on. Suddenly the silence is broken ; the ice cracks : 
 fissures yawn ; some boats are crushed like paper ; others 
 are drawn bodily under the sheet; others are thrown 
 violently against one another ; some are forced partly upon 
 the ice. Meanwhile the owners and officers of the boats, 
 aided by the firemen and citizens, are making desperate 
 exertions to save their property, and the whole levee, as 
 far as the eye can reach, is a scene of excitement and con r 
 sternation. At the breaking up of the ice in 1866, seventeen 
 steamboats were crushed and sunk in a few minutes. It is 
 within the compass of human ability to provide a remedy 
 for this annual danger. St. Louis must put on its thinking- 
 cap and consider it. 
 
 If there is any one who regards the Roman CathoEc 
 Church as an institution that has nearly played its part in 
 this world, a short residence at St. Louis will dispel the 
 delusion. The Catholics, French, German, and Irish, are 
 nearly one half the population ; and the property of the 
 Church, in buildings and lands, is estimated at fifteen mil- 
 lions of dollars. From the single tent in which the mass 
 was first celebrated on the site of the city one hundred years 
 ago, succeeded soon by a small church of logs, the number 
 of places of worship has increased, until now there are 
 
644 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 twenty-nine Catholic churches and chapels, while no other 
 sect has more than nine. Nor have the Catholics there 
 wasted their resources in the erection of churches prema- 
 turely splendid. The force of the church in St. Louis is 
 expended in the education of youth, in the care of the sick, 
 in reclaiming the fallen, in providing refuge for the unfortu- 
 nate. The catalogue of the Roman Catholic institutions of 
 the city tells a story that may well excite reflection in the, 
 Protestant mind. 
 
 We shall not soon forget a delightful hour spent in one of 
 the great convent schools, of St. Louis. How clean, how 
 bright, how tranquil the place ! We Protestants, who only 
 see nuns passing along the streets, with their ugly bonnets, 
 their black dresses, and their downcast oyes, are apt to 
 conclude that a nun must be a forlorn and melancholy being. 
 They do not appear such in their convent homes. We found 
 the Sisters of the "Visitation" witty, high-bred, well- 
 informed ladies, full of pleasant badinage and innocent fun. 
 How could they, indeed, be other than very happy women, 
 with their future secure, with an arduous, noble employ- 
 ment, and with that tide of young and joyous life streaming 
 in every morning at the doors of their abode ? The Catholic 
 priests, too, they really do not appear to be the terrible 
 creatures that some of us think them to be. 
 
 But come, reader, let us visit one of them together. It 
 will do us good who never before spoke with a Catholic 
 priest, still less entered a Catholic parsonage. The house is 
 not as large nor as elegantly furnished as the residences of 
 the Protestant preachers ; but it is sufficiently comfortable. 
 
 A robust and middle-aged housekeeper shows us into a 
 library arranged for work rather than enjoyment. We 
 notice all the familiar books, and there is nothing in the room 
 peculiar, except a crucifix before the writing-desk and a few 
 
THE CITY OF ST. LOUIS. 645 
 
 engravings of a Catholic cast. And what is this yellow-cov- 
 ered pamphlet on the table ? Can it be ? It is the last num- 
 ber of the " Westminster Keview " ! Enter, a stout, handsome, 
 healthy-looking gentleman, in the house attire of a priest, 
 evidently a gentleman and man of the world. The yellow- 
 covered Review is a convenient subject of conversation, and 
 we soon discover that the " Church" reciprocates the friendly 
 feeling of the " Rationalists," and is duly sensible of the fair- 
 ness and candor of the Westminster when it treats of the 
 Catholic Church. Extremes meet. The intelligent and 
 thinking portion of the Catholic clergy appears to be of 
 opinion that there are but two consistent persons in the 
 world : namely, the Roman Catholic who surrenders his rea- 
 son, and the Rationalist who uses it. They are perfectly 
 aware, also, of the immense advantage which the Catholic 
 Church derives from the restraints imposed by the narrower 
 Protestants upon the enjoyment of such innocent pleasures 
 as dancing and the drama. Here again extremes meet. 
 This excellent priest remarked upon the demoralizing influ- 
 ence of ascetic Protestantism and of the " moral strait-jacket" 
 of the Evangelical school, just as Theodore Parker did in 
 Boston, and as Robert Colly er does at Chicago. 
 
 " Does the Catholic Church expect again to rule Chris- 
 tendom, and absorb at length all the sects, and the ' West- 
 minster Review ' as well ? " 
 
 " The Catholic Church will never cease to claim that she 
 is the sole divinely appointed and infallible teacher of God's 
 will to men." 
 
 "But these Western men will never surrender their under- 
 standings." 
 
 "Nor will I mine. The Church says, Use your reason so 
 far as to examine her credentials. Nor then does she require 
 blind submission. The Church gives a reason for all that 
 
646 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 she demands, and leaves nothing unexplained, except the 
 unexplainable. In the teachings of the Catholic Church I 
 find nothing contrary to my reason, though I find much that 
 is above and beyond my reason ; nor can I see any halting- 
 place between the Catholic faith and utter unbelief." 
 
 A long and most instructive conversation with this gifted 
 and genial clergyman confirmed us in the impression that cer- 
 tain Protestant practices and beliefs are giving the Catholics 
 a considerable advantage in the Western country. The great 
 free West, however, will never be Catholic; since the 
 incredible doctrines of that Church neutralize the power of 
 its exquisite organization, and its organization is so inter- 
 woven with its doctrines that the Church cannot revise its 
 creed without destroying itself. The Western man will 
 never abdicate his right to think. The priest may indeed 
 convert the howling dervishes of the camp-meeting into 
 orderly worshippers, and may allure the negro by the splen- 
 dor of his vestments and the pomp of his ceremonies. But 
 the intelligent and ruling minds of the West will be forever 
 beyond his reach. 
 
 The basis of the civilization of St. Louis, then, is Catho- 
 lic. But the progressive and propelling institutions are 
 well rooted there, and no one need fear for the future of the 
 city. The public school system is in vigorous operation, and 
 is sustained by the public opinion of the State. Governor 
 Fletcher, who presides with so much ability over the inter- 
 ests of Missouri, is its devoted friend. The Washington 
 University, founded on the principle of absolute and entire 
 toleration, has already a considerable endowment, a hand- 
 some edifice, and a most enlightened and patriotic corps of 
 professors. It is destined to play a leading part in the 
 higher education of the Southwest. One of the largest and 
 most respectable of the Protestant churches in St. Louis is 
 
THE CITY OF ST. LOUIS. 647 
 
 the Unitarian, the pastor of which, Dr. William G. Eliot, is 
 the ally and champion of everything that makes for the good 
 of the Southwest. For many years there has been a Mer- 
 cantile Library in the city, which has now nearly thirty 
 thousand volumes. Its principal room, which is more a 
 gallery than a library, contains sixty-eight works of art, all 
 of which are interesting, and many excellent. It was at St. 
 Louis that Harriet Hosmer found her most liberal patron, 
 Mr. Wayman Crow, under whose auspices she studied and 
 practised her art in the city ; and it is in this Library that 
 the largest collection of her works is to be found. St. 
 Louis is proud of Miss Hosmer, and claims a kind of 
 property in her fame. 
 
 How interesting the spectacle of those rising cities of the 
 West ! How cheering to discover that the ruling minds in 
 them all are alive to the fact that posterity, to the remotest 
 ages, will be affected by what the men do who control the 
 cities that they are now forming ! Why this rage to visit 
 the Old World ? Since we are assured that good Americans 
 when they die go to Paris, why not defer Paris till then, 
 and see in this life the seats of future empire in the West ? 
 Nothing could so cheer and expand an American citizen. 
 
 41 
 
WHAT SORT OF MAN IS BISMARCK? 
 
 HE is descended from a noble and ancient family, which 
 traces its origin far back into the middle ages, and which 
 has contributed to the service of the state many able men, 
 both in the cabinet and in the field. In the early part of 
 the reign of Frederick the Great, a Bismarck was one of the 
 ministers of that king, and appears to have stood high in his 
 confidence. A Count Bismarck, who had served with dis- 
 tinction in the armies of several of the German States, was 
 living recently in retirement, an old man past eighty. This 
 aged soldier is the author of many works upon military 
 science, which are held in esteem in Europe. 
 
 Baron Von Bismarck, born in 1814, studied at three of the 
 principal universities of Germany, and went from college 
 into the army. In Prussia every man of whatever rank is 
 required to serve in the army for a short time, and after 
 learning the trade of soldier, he is liable to be called on for 
 the defence of his country in time of need. Bismarck, it 
 appears, adopted the military profession from choice ; but, 
 in 1846, when he attended the Diet of his province, he 
 retired from the army. Both in that body and in the general 
 Diet of the following year, he acquired some notoriety for 
 the boldness with which he denounced everything that 
 savored of democracy. He is said to have expressed the 
 desire that all the large cities might be swept from the sur- 
 face of the earth, because they were the centres of democracy 
 and constitutionalism. If he said this, it was probably only 
 
650 TKIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 the extravagance of a young man irritated by contradiction, 
 or heated with wine. 
 
 In 1848, the storm swept over Europe which drove one 
 king from his throne, and made every king feel unsafe. He 
 is remembered at that period as an inflexible opponent of 
 popular government, and a defender of Absolutism. In 
 1851, the ability and audacity with which he supported his 
 ideas in the Prussian Parliament attracted the notice of the 
 King, Frederick William the Fourth. The king invited 
 him into the diplomatic service, and gave him the important 
 appointment of Minister Resident of Frankfort, one of the 
 most important diplomatic posts. Even then he had dis- 
 tinctly conceived the policy which he has since so trium- 
 phantly carried out. Even then, while appearing to oppose 
 and distrust the people of Germany, he was preparing the 
 way for the realization of their dearest wish. 
 
 The dream of every good German, for many a year, has 
 been to see the entire German people, all who speak the 
 German tongue and share the German character, united as a 
 Confederation under one head, so as to form a great Ger- 
 man nation, and be a controlling power in the centre of 
 Europe. Bismarck, too, indulged this fond desire, and he 
 saw clearly the only probable means of realizing it. Either 
 Prussia or Austria, he thought, must gain such an ascendency 
 in Germany as to draw to itself a great preponderance of the 
 smaller States, and thus unite Germany by absorbing it. 
 Austria he believed incapable of playing this grand part, 
 nor would he have been willing to see her attempt it. 
 Devoted to Prussia, he naturally desired Prussia to be chief 
 in Germany, and to become another name for Germany. To 
 accomplish this, he foresaw that Prussia must encounter, 
 first, Austria in the field, and submit the question to the 
 arbitrament of the musket. But, twenty years ago, Prussia 
 
WHAT SORT OF MAN IS BISMARCK? 651 
 
 was not considered a match for Austria in the field. Bis- 
 marck himself did not consider her such; and he early 
 conceived the plan for dividing her powers, which he has 
 since executed. 
 
 From Frankfort, Bismarck was transferred, in 1852, to 
 Vienna, where he studied the Austrian Empire with special 
 reference to his favorite system. While still in the diplomatic 
 service, he published his celebrated pamphlet, entitled 
 " Prussia and the Italian Question," in which he expressed 
 the opinion that Italy's sullen discontent was Austria's weak- 
 ness ; and endeavored to show that an alliance between 
 Prussia, Russia, and France was the true method by which 
 Prussia could gain the ascendency in Germany, while deliv- 
 ering the northern provinces of Italy from the grasp of 
 Austria. This pamphlet produced considerable effect in 
 Prussia, and attracted attention elsewhere. 
 
 ID 1859, Bismarck was appointed Ambassador to Russia. 
 He resided at St. Petersburg three years, and it is supposed 
 that he then prepared the Russian Emperor for the events 
 which followed, and disposed him to witness the aggrandize- 
 ment of Prussia with satisfaction. In May, 1862, he reached 
 the highest diplomatic honor by being appointed Ambassador 
 to Paris ; but after a stay of but three months at the gay 
 capital, he was suddenly recalled to Berlin, where he 
 received appointments which made him Prime Minister of 
 the king, and the almost absolute controller of the policy 
 of the government. 
 
 It was not, however, without a severe struggle that he 
 held in check the democratic tendencies of the nation. Both 
 in parliament and at the council board he was the supporter 
 of measures which tended to strengthen the authority of the 
 king, and enable him to wield without restraint the resources 
 of the kingdom. He was an exceedingly unpopular min- 
 
652 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 ister, down to the very moment when he gave his country- 
 men the keen gratification of seeing their country the 
 unquestionable head of Germany. 
 
 The series of masterly manoeuvres by which he hurled Gari- 
 baldi, Victor Emanuel, and the Italian people upon the rear 
 of Austria, while the Prussian Army attacked her in front, is 
 still fresh in the recollection of every reader. Prussia was 
 perfectly ready for the struggle, and the Prussian army had 
 that effective weapon, the needle-gun. Austria, unprepared, 
 ill-armed, deep in debt, and powerfully attacked in the 
 south, was unable to withstand the vigorous onslaught of 
 the Prussian forces. One short campaign sufficed. Austria 
 was compelled to relinquish her hold upon Venetia, and 
 compelled to acquiesce in the absorption into Prussia of 
 several powerful German States. 
 
 Passing over his more recent exploits, let me answer the 
 question proposed : What sort of man is he ? 
 
 On the the first of April, 1871, he was fifty-six years of 
 age. 
 
 In person he is tall and strongly built, with the imposing 
 carriage that belongs to a large and well-proportioned figure. 
 We are all familiar with the lineaments of his countenance, 
 his lofty forehead, his bald head, his full, military mustache ; 
 but there is said to be an animation in his face, and an air 
 of high breeding, which photographs seldom preserve. In 
 his demeanor and conversation there is a blending of soldier- 
 like directness with the courtesy of the aristocrat. When 
 he is dressed in his white military uniform, and sits upon 
 one of his own thorough-bred horses, he is one of the most 
 distinguished looking men in Europe. 
 
 He is a man of homely, domestic habits. In the letters 
 to his wife and sister, a great number of which have been 
 published, there are many allusions to his three children, 
 
WHAT SORT OF MAN IS BISMARCK? 653 
 
 their infantile complaints, the trouble he had in buying them 
 suitable Christmas presents, and to the pains he took with 
 their habits and education. A gentleman who lived for sev- 
 eral months under Bismarck's roof, records that the great 
 statesman constantly exhorted his two boys at table V> sit 
 upright ; and that in consequence of his hearing so much said 
 upon this point, he got into the habit of sitting upright him- 
 self, and found, at the end of his visit, that he had become 
 two inches taller. At Christmas time, while the children 
 were young, there was always a great Christmas tree in the 
 dining-room, which was consecrated and exhibited with all 
 the usual ceremonies. 
 
 Naturally as he frequently himself remarks Bismarck 
 was an idle, pleasure-loving man, who desired nothing better 
 than to lead the life and enjoy the sports of " an honest coun- 
 try gentleman." He said, in 1863, when he was in the full 
 tide of his career as Prime Minister, " I regard every one as a 
 benefactor who .seeks to bring about my fall." Nothing is 
 more- evident in his family letters, than that he is extrava- 
 gantly fond of hunting. We find such passages as this : 
 
 " Besides several roebucks and stags, I shot five elks, one a very 
 fine stag, measuring roughly six feet eight, without his colossal 
 head. He fell like a hare, but as he was still alive, I mercifully 
 gave him my other barrel. Scarcely had I done so when a second 
 came up, still taller, so close to me that Engel, my loader, had to 
 jump behind a tree to avoid being run over. I was obliged to 
 look at him in a friendly way, as I had no other shot." 
 
 Even when he had no such luck as this, or no luck at all. 
 he hunted all day. In another letter, he writes : 
 
 "Yesterday we had a very tired day's sport, long and rocky ; it 
 produced me one woodcock ; but it has tamed me so completely, 
 that to-day I am sitting at home with bandages, so as to be ready 
 
654 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 to travel to-morrow and shoot the next day. I really am aston- 
 ished at myself for stopping at home alone in such charming wea- 
 ther, and can scarcely refrain from the abominable wish that the 
 others will shoot nothing." 
 
 Usually he had excellent luck in his hunting. One day, 
 when he shot over one of the imperial parks near Vienna, he 
 killed fifty-three pheasants and fifteen hares ; and, on another 
 day, eight stags. "I am quite lame," he adds, "in hand 
 and cheek from shooting." He had all the other tastes of 
 the country gentleman. He was passionately fond of his 
 horses, and often when he was away at Paris or some other 
 distant place, he would sigh for some favorite animal in his 
 stables at home. " Next to my wife and children," he once 
 wrote from Paris, "I want my black mare." It was his 
 boast, too, that the country gentlemen of his neighborhood 
 treated the peasantry with a degree of consideration and 
 generosity, of which " a savage Democrat " could form no 
 idea. 
 
 If we may judge from his private letters, he is a religious 
 man of the old type, and attends punctually to the obser- 
 vances of the national church of his country. To a friend 
 who once wrote to him respecting a scandalous picture, in 
 which he was represented sitting beside a noted actress, he 
 made a long reply, denying the imputation, and defending 
 the lady. In the course of this epistle, the following sen- 
 tences occur : 
 
 " I would to God that, besides what is known to the world, I had 
 not other sins upon my soul, for which I can only hope for forgive- 
 ness in a confidence upon the blood of Christ ! As a statesman, I 
 am not sufficiently disinterested ; in my own mind, I am rather 
 cowardly ; because it is not easy always to get that clearness on 
 the questions coming before me which grows upon the soil of divine 
 
WHAT SORT OF MAN IS BISMARCK? 655 
 
 confidence. . . . Among the multitude of sinners who are 
 in need of the mercy of God, I hope that His grace will not deprive 
 me of the staff of humble faith, in the midst of the dangers and 
 doubts of my calling." 
 
 We observe also that he had his children both baptized 
 and confirmed, and that, if he is unable to attend church, 
 he usually has prayers read by some young clergyman 
 at home. 
 
 In former days, before experience and observation had 
 instructed and broadened him, he was a Tory of the most 
 pronounced description. They relate an anecdote of him in 
 Berlin, to this effect : At a beer saloon much frequented by 
 conservatives, Bismarck, one evening, just as he had taken 
 his seat, and was about to drink his first glass of beer, over- 
 heard a man, who sat at the next table, speak of a member 
 of the royal family in a particularly insulting manner. Bis- 
 marck rose, and, lifting his glass of beer, thundered out : 
 " Out of the house ! If you are not off when I have drunk 
 this beer, I. will break the glass on your head ! " 
 
 Upon this there was a wild commotion in the room, and 
 loud outcries, but Bismarck drank his glass of beer with the 
 utmost composure. When he had finished it, he smashed 
 the glass upon the offender's head. The outcries ceased for 
 a moment, and Bismarck said quietly : " Waiter, what is to 
 pay for this broken glass ? " 
 
 The manner in which this outrage Was committed Bis- 
 marck's commanding look and bearing carried the day; 
 the beer drinkers applauded the act, and the man dared not 
 resent it. 
 
 Bismarck's attachment to the Crown of Prussia was, at 
 first, merely the instinctive feeling of a nobleman for his 
 King. " I am the King's man," he once said in Parliament ; 
 and it was such words as these that made him Prime Minis- 
 
(J56 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 ter. But Bismarck is a man of understanding, as well as a 
 nobleman, and this understanding has constantly grown and 
 expanded with the march of events. When he began his 
 public life, he was an admirer of the Austrian system; but 
 when, after a residence near the Austrian Court, he knew 
 what the Austrian system was, his feelings underwent a 
 complete change, and he adopted it as the aim of his public 
 life, " to snatch Germany from Austrian oppression," and to 
 gather round Prussia, in a North German Confederation, all 
 the States "whose tone of thought, religion, manners, and 
 interests " were in harmony with those of Prussia. 
 
 "To attain this end," he once said, in conversation, "I 
 would brave all dangers exile, the scaffold itself ! What 
 matter if they hang me, provided the rope by which I am 
 hung binds this new Germany firmly to the Prussian 
 throne?" 
 
 In the course of the conversation in which he used this 
 language, which occurred in 1866, he denied that he was an 
 enemy to a truly liberal government. 
 
 "When the King sent for me," said he, "four years ago, 
 his Majesty laid before me a long list of liberal concessions. 
 I said to the King : " I accept ; and the more liberal the 
 government can prove itself, the stronger it will be." The 
 Chamber had been obdurate on one side, and the Crown on 
 the other. In the conflict I remained by the King. My 
 respect for him, all my antecedents, all the traditions of my 
 family, made it my duty to do so. But that I am an adver- 
 sary of parliamentary government, is a perfectly gratuitous 
 supposition." 
 
 The leading ideas of his policy appear to be these : 1. The 
 Northern states of Germany united, and Prussia supreme 
 over all. 2. The Prussian military system to be preserved 
 intact. 3. The King's person and authority inviolable. 
 
WHAT SORT OF MAN IS BISMARCK? 657 
 
 4. As much parliamentary palaver as may be necessary to 
 relieve the minds of the people and veil the fact of Despotism 
 under Republican forms. But his is a growing mind, and, 
 if he lives long enough, he may yet cooperate with the next 
 King in making a parliament of the Germanic Empire the 
 supreme power of the land. Tory as he may be, he is not 
 deceived by the shows of this world. When he was Ambassa- 
 dor at Frankfort, twenty years ago, he saw, with the clearness 
 of an honest mind, all the humbug of what is called diplo- 
 macy. He gives a humorous account of the manner in which 
 he and his fellow-diplomatists "worried themselves with 
 their important nothings." 
 
 "Nobody," he wrote, "not even the most malicious sceptic 
 of a Democrat, believes what quackery and self-importance 
 there is in this diplomatizing. ... I am making enormous 
 progress in the art of saying nothing in a great many words. 
 I write reports of many sheets, which read as tersely and 
 roundly as leading articles ; and if the minister can say what 
 there is in them, after he has read them, he can do more 
 than I can." 
 
 There is a good sense and good-humor in his private let- 
 ters, which indicate the man who can rise superior to the 
 traditions of his order, and who, from being the King's man 
 at forty, may grow to be the Nation's man and the People's 
 man at sixty. 
 
PAINLESS SURGERY BY ETHER. 
 
 DISCOVERY OF THE PROCESS. 
 
 THIKTY-FIVE years ago there was a dentist in Boston 
 named William Thomas Green Morton, a native of Massa- 
 chusetts, about twenty-five years of age. Zealous and suc- 
 cessful in his calling, he had already improved in some partic- 
 ulars upon its usual practice ; but he was much perplexed by 
 the difficulty of inducing patients to have their old teeth 
 entirely removed before new ones were inserted. It was 
 not common at that day, as it now is, for dentists to advise 
 so unpopular an operation, and it seemed presumption in 
 this young practitioner to demand it. It was useless to 
 explain to patients the great and lasting advantages of such 
 a method, for the pain was top great to be endured, so long 
 as dentists of repute pronounced it unnecessary. 
 
 The thought occurred to the young man one day, that 
 perhaps a way might be discovered of lessening human 
 sensibility to pain. He had not received a scientific educa- 
 tion, nor had he more scientific knowledge than an intelli- 
 gent young man would naturally possess who had passed 
 through the ordinary schools of a New England town. 
 Instead of resorting to books, or consulting men of science, 
 he began, from time to time, to experiment with various 
 well-known substances. 
 
 First he tried draughts of wine and brandy, sometimes to 
 the intoxication of the patient ; but as soon as the instru- 
 ment was applied, consciousness revived, and long before 
 
660 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 the second tooth was out, the patient, though not perfectly 
 aware of what was going on, was roaring with agony. He 
 tried laudanum in doses of two hundred and three hundred 
 drops, and opium in masses often grains, frequently renew- 
 ing the dose until the patient would be in a condition truly 
 deplorable. Dr. Morton records in his diary, that on one 
 occasion he gave a lady five hundred drops of laudanum in 
 forty-five minutes, which did indeed lessen the pain of the 
 operation, but it took her a whole week to recover from the 
 effects of the narcotic. 
 
 This would never do, and he soon abandoned the prac- 
 tice. Attributing his failure to his ignorance, he entered a 
 physician's office as a student of medicine, and while still 
 carrying on his business, pursued his medical studies until 
 he graduated from the medical school of Harvard College a 
 Doctor of Medicine. 
 
 One day in July, 1844, a young lady called upon him to 
 have a tooth filled which was in so sensitive a condition that 
 she could not endure the touch of an instrument. It 
 occurred to him, at length, to apply to the tooth some sul- 
 phuric ether, the effect of which, in benumbing the parts 
 of the body to which it was applied, had become familiar to 
 him during his medical studies. The ether seemed to allay 
 the sensitiveness of the tooth in some degree, but not 
 enough to admit of the operation being finished at one sit- 
 ting. She had to call several times, and every time she 
 came the ether was applied, always with some effect in 
 lessening her pain. On one occasion, when he happened to 
 use the ether more freely and for a longer time than before, 
 he was surprised to discover that the gum near the tooth 
 was so benumbed as to be almost insensible to the pressure 
 of the instrument. 
 
 Now it was that the idea occurred to him, that if, in some 
 
PAINLESS SURGERY BY ETHER. 661 
 
 way, the wliole system could be etherized, his dream of 
 extracting teeth without pain might be realized, at least 
 in part. 
 
 But how could this be done ? Could the body be bathed 
 in ether? Would washing the whole surface answer? 
 Such thoughts as these passed through his mind-, for 
 although he had witnessed the effects of laughing-gas, it did 
 not yet occur to him to try whether ether inhaled would 
 benumb the common source of pain and pleasure, the brain. 
 Meanwhile he reflected constantly upon ether, read and con- 
 versed upon ether; always hopeful, and sometimes confident 
 that he was upon the path leading to a discovery that would 
 make his fortune. 
 
 Baffled for the time in his experiments, and absorbed 
 in business and study, several months passed before he took 
 another step toward the great achievement of his life. The 
 subject, indeed, had somewhat faded from his mind, when 
 it was revived by a ludicrous scene in one of the medical 
 class-rooms at the University. Some laughing-gas was 
 administered to a patient for the purpose, as the experi- 
 menter said, of pulling a tooth without pain. This is now 
 done every day ; but the experiment did not succeed. The 
 gas was administered, but as soon as the experimenter began 
 to pull at the tooth, the patient gave such a yell of agony, 
 that the students laughed and hooted as only medical stu- 
 dents can, and the operator retired in confusion. 
 
 Here let me pause and tell who the unlucky operator in 
 laughing-gas was. He too, played a leading, perhaps an 
 essential, part in the great discovery. His name was Horace 
 Wells, dentist, of Hartford. 
 
 But observe, first of all, that neither of these young men 
 claim to have invented the substances ether and laughing- 
 gas - now used in destroying sensibility to pain ; nor was 
 
662 TKIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 either of them the first to originate the idea of inhaling gas 
 for the purpose. The idea was original with Sir Humphry 
 Davy. In 1798, when he was twenty years old, he was 
 appointed chemical superintendent of a hospital for the cure 
 of pulmonary diseases by the inhalation of different gases. 
 This appointment led to his undertaking a series of experi- 
 ments with the various gases employed, particularly the 
 protoxyd of nitrogen, sometimes called by him, "the pleas- 
 ure-giving air," and by us laughing-gas. In the course of 
 his remarks on this gas, he used the following language : 
 
 " As nitrous oxide (another name for the same gas), in its exten- 
 sive operation, appears capable of destroying physical pain, it may 
 probably be used with advantage during surgical operations, in which 
 no great effusion of blood takes place." 
 
 Here, then, is the suggestion, but only the suggestion, and 
 it was put forward by Sir Humphry, with a hesitation 
 unusual in an experimenter twenty-one years of age. The 
 gas only appeared capable of destroying pain, and its advan- 
 tageous use was only probable in some cases. Sir Humphry 
 Davy's experiments with the laughing-gas, an account of 
 which he published in the year 1800, attracted universal 
 attention, and it became common, in courses of chemical 
 lectures, both in colleges and lyceums, to administer the gas, 
 The fact, therefore, became familiar to a large number of 
 persons, that people under the influence of this gas were not 
 susceptible to such pain as is inflicted by pinching or slight 
 pricking with a pin. 
 
 Horace Wells, born in Vermont in 1815, established him- 
 self, in 1836, at Hartford as a dentist. Being an intelligent 
 man and skilful operator, he soon obtained a large practice. 
 Like Dr. Morton, he was much inconvenienced by the unwil- 
 lingness of patients to submit to the pain of having dental 
 
PAINLESS SURGERY BY ETHER. 663 
 
 operations performed thoroughly ; and like Dr. Morton, too, 
 he had tried the effect of laudanum and spirituous liquors in 
 lessening sensibility. He had even thought of trying the 
 laughing-gas ; but he was prevented from doing so by the 
 dread of it which existed in the public mind, owing to a 
 person having died from the effects of it in Connecticut 
 some years before. It does not appear, from his narrative, 
 that he had ever heard of Sir Humphry Davy's suggestion, 
 quoted above. 
 
 " Reasoning from analogy," he says, "I was led to believe 
 that surgical operations might be performed without pain, by 
 the fact that an individual, when much excited from ordinary 
 causes, may receive severe wounds, without manifesting the 
 least pain ; as, for instance, the man who is engaged in com- 
 bat, may have a limb severed from his body, after which he 
 testifies that it was attended with no pain at the time ; and 
 so the man who is intoxicated with spirituous liquor may be 
 severely beaten without his manifesting pain, and his frame 
 in this state seems to be more tenacious of life than under 
 ordinary circumstances. By these facts I was led to inquire 
 if the same result would not follow the inhalation of exhila- 
 rating gas." 
 
 This was the state of his mind on the subject when, on the 
 10th of September, 1844, Mr. G. Q. Coltoii gave in Hart- 
 ford a public exhibition of the laughing-gas, which Dr. 
 Wells attended. In the course of the evening a man, after 
 inhaling the gas, bruised himself severely by falling over 
 some benches. Dr. Wells was quick to observe that the 
 man felt no pain, and he at once said to a friend : "A man, 
 by taking that gas, could have a tooth extracted, or a limb 
 amputated, and not feel the pain I " 
 
 The very next day that is to say, September the llth, 
 1844 he put the matter to the test by having one of hia 
 
 42 
 
664 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 own teeth extracted while under the influence of the gas. 
 The operation was painless. Soon after he repeated the 
 experiment about fifteen times with perfect success. Other 
 dentists in Hartford employed the same gas in their practice 
 during the autumn of 1844. We have the sworn testimony 
 to this effect of respectable dentists who used the gas at that 
 time, and of several gentlemen who had teeth extracted 
 without pain after inhaling it. The friends of Horace Wells, 
 I think, have established their main position, that he was the 
 first man in the world who ever successfully used a gas for 
 destroying sensibility to pain. If human testimony can 
 establish anything, it has established this. 
 
 It seems, also, that Dr. Wells was aware that ether 
 possessed the same property, that he often conversed with 
 professional friends upon the pain-suspending power of 
 ether, and that the question was discussed between them, 
 whether it would answer as well as the nitrous oxide. They 
 concluded- but without having tried the experiment that 
 the nitrous oxide gas was easier to inhale, less offensive, and 
 more safe. For the extraction of teeth, the laughing-gas is 
 still found more convenient than ether ; but it would not 
 avail for any operation in surgery which requires more than 
 a few minutes. 
 
 In December, 1844, Dr. Wells went to Boston for the 
 purpose of making known his discovery to physicians and 
 scientific men. Dr. Jackson, he says, received his state- 
 ments with ridicule and contempt. The celebrated surgeon 
 Dr. Warren, however, gave him an opportunity to address 
 the medical class of Harvard College on the subject, and to 
 perform an experiment before them. 
 
 It is not an easy matter to address a class of medical 
 students with effect, for they are not the most patient of 
 mortals, and they are accustomed to express their feelings 
 
PAINLESS SURGERY BY ETHER. 665 
 
 in a noisy and emphatic way Dr Wells, too, not yet 
 thirty years of age, was constitutionally diffident, and did 
 not succeed very well in his preliminary remarks. But a 
 successful experiment would have made amends. The class 
 having assembled in another room to see a tooth extracted 
 without pain, the gas was administered to the patient. 
 Unfortunately he did not take enough, and the moment the 
 wrench was applied he roared with pain. The class hooted, 
 hissed, and laughed immoderately. Dr. Wells retired 
 in confusion, and returned to Hartford to report that Boston 
 had given a sorry welcome to his discovery. 
 
 This scene it was which set young Morton again upon 
 the path of discovery. The thought flashed upon his mind : 
 Why not try the effect of inhaling ether? But at once 
 another question arose : Is it safe ? 
 
 On searching his medical books, he found a passage which 
 informed him that ether, when long inhaled, produces a 
 kind of stupefaction, from which it was not certain that the 
 patient could be restored. At least, it was not possible to 
 ascertain to what degree of stupefaction it was safe to 
 reduce the patient. Discouraging as this was, he began 
 from this time timidly to experiment upon himself. At first 
 he made a mixture of opium and ether, which he warmed 
 over a fire, and then inhaled the vapor that was generated. 
 Some degree of numbness, he thought, was produced, 
 but the -experiment gave him headaches so severe that he was 
 obliged to discontinue them. 
 
 He received soon after a student of dentistry, who told 
 him that he had often inhaled pure ether when he was a 
 school-boy, and in considerable quantities, without experien- 
 cing any harm. 
 
 Fortified by this and other testimony, he bought a quan- 
 tity of ether, and went into the country to make experiments 
 
666 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 upon animals. After many absurd failures and sone partial 
 successes, he succeeded in etherizing a dog, a frisky black- 
 and-tan terrier, and this he accomplished in the way com- 
 monly practised at the present time. A handful of cotton 
 saturated with ether was placed at the bottom of a tin vessel, 
 and the dog's head held directly over it. 
 
 "In a short time," says Morton, "the dog wilted com- 
 pletely away in my hands, and remained insensible to all my 
 efforts to arouse him by moving or pinching him." 
 
 And, what was infinitely more important, three minutes 
 after the vessel was taken away, the dog was frisking about 
 as usual, totally unharmed I Need I say that the experi- 
 menter was in the highest elation ? 
 
 w Soon," said he to a friend, " I shall have my patients com- 
 ing in at one door, have all their teeth extracted without 
 knowing it, and then, going into the next room, have a full 
 set put in." 
 
 Feeling now that he held a great discovery in his hand, he 
 engaged an experienced dentist to take entire charge of his 
 business, while he devoted all his time to experimenting 
 with ether. Again he went into the country, where he again 
 subjected his innocent dog to the process. One day the 
 animal, exhilarated by the ether, dashed against the glass 
 jar containing the fluid, and broke it, so that only a small 
 portion remained at the bottom. There was no further sup- 
 ply nearer than Boston, and, unwilling to lose the fruits of 
 his journey, he suddenly determined to use the little ether 
 remaining in an experiment upon himself. He dipped his 
 handkerchief in the ether, held it over his mouth and nose, 
 and inhaled the gas strongly into his lungs. A feeling of 
 lassitude stole over him, and this was followed by a single 
 moment's unconsciousness. 
 
 " I am firmly convinced," he afterwards said, " that a tooth 
 could have been drawn at that time without pain." 
 
SURGERY BY ETHER. 667 
 
 Nothing remained but to try the complete experiment of 
 actually extracting a tooth from a patient under the influ- 
 ence of ether. Long he tried in vain to hire and persuade 
 some one to run the risk of a trial. He repeated the experi- 
 ment upon himself more than once, remaining on one occasion 
 insensible for neauly eight minutes without experiencing any 
 subsequent harm. Having now no lingering doubt of the safety 
 of the process, he waited impatiently for some one to come 
 in who would consent to submit to the stupefying influence. 
 
 " One evening," he tells us, "a man entered the office suf- 
 fering great pain, and wishing to have a tooth extracted, 
 He was afraid of the operation, and asked if he could be 
 mesmerized, I told him I had something better ; and sat- 
 urating my handkerchief with ether, gave it to him to inhale. 
 He became unconscious almost immediately. It was dark, 
 and Doctor Hayden held the lamp, while I extracted a firmly 
 rooted bicuspid tooth. There was not much alteration in the 
 pulse, and no relaxation of the muscles. He recovered in a 
 minute, and knew nothing of what had been done to him ! " 
 
 The discovery was accomplished. A short time after, the 
 process was repeated on a large scale in the operating room 
 of the Massachusetts General Hospital, in the presence of 
 a great number of contemptuous students and incredulous 
 physicians. A painful and widely rooted tumor was cut 
 from the face of a young man while he was under the influ- 
 ence of ether, administered by Dr. Morton. When the 
 patient returned to consciousness, he said to the surgeon : 
 
 * I have felt no pain, but only a sensation like that of 
 scraping the part with a blunt instrument." 
 
 The students were no longer contemptuous, nor the doc- 
 tors unbelieving ; but all gathered about Dr. Morton, pro- 
 foundly impressed with the importance of what they had seen, 
 and overwhelmed him with congratulations. 
 
668 TEIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 This great discovery brought upon the discoverer, during 
 the rest of his life, little but vexation and bitterness. As 
 the process could not be patented, he wasted many years 
 and many thousands of dollars in trying to induce Congress 
 to make him a grant of public money. He did not succeed ; 
 and, although he received considerable sums from hospitals 
 and medical colleges in recognition of his right, he became 
 at last a bankrupt, and the sheriff held his estate. His cir- 
 cumstances afterwards improved ; but he died upon his farm 
 in Massachusetts^ a few years ago, a comparatively poor 
 man. 
 
 He was ever hopeful and cheerful. More than once I have 
 heard him relate this tale, and I witnessed his calm demeanor 
 under the repeated disappointments he had to suffer from not 
 receiving expected aid from Congress. He never com- 
 plained, and was never cast down ; but, making the best of 
 such good fortune as befell him, enjoyed life to the end, and 
 never so much as during his last years. 
 
 By all means let the people of Connecticut erect their mon- 
 ument to the memory of Dr. Wells, who, first of all man- 
 kind, succeeded in destroying sensibility to pain through the 
 inhalation of a gas. Not the less let us honor the memory 
 of JMorton, who carried the discovery another step forward, 
 that last step, which renders it one of the most precious 
 of all the incidental results of scientific discovery. 
 
BENJAMIN THOMPSON, 
 
 ALIAS COUNT RUMFORD. 
 
 WHAT a strange tale is the life of this Yankee Count ! His 
 real name was Benjamin Thompson, and he was born of a 
 respectable family of farmers in 1753, at North Woburn, 
 Massachusetts, in a plain country house that is still stand- 
 ing. The boy was father of the man. From childhood he 
 exhibited a remarkable interest in natural objects, and scien- 
 tific experiments ; and this trait attracted the notice of a 
 clergyman of the neighborhood, who gave him instruction in 
 mathematics and astronomy. Before he was fourteen, he 
 could calculate an eclipse. At the same time he displayed a 
 singular manual dexterity, being skilful in the use of his 
 pocket knife and in constructing apparatus for experiments, 
 in making curious nick-nacks and mechanical contrivances. 
 He also learned to play the violin in his boyhood, and 
 showed a great love for music, flowers, and other refined 
 pleasures. 
 
 With all his talents and aptitudes, he was obliged, from 
 the narrow circumstances of his family, to be apprenticed at 
 thirteen to a store-keeper at Salem, with whom he remained 
 three years. Hogarth, probably, would not have pro- 
 nounced him a "good apprentice." He was prone, it is 
 said, to play on the fiddle when customers were not press- 
 ing ; he was particularly skilful in engraving the names of 
 his companions upon the handles of their knives ; he con- 
 structed an electrical machine ; he attempted to produce per- 
 
670 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 petual motion ; lie experimented in chemistry ; he made fire- 
 works to celebrate the repeal of the Stamp Act ; he watched 
 closely the winds and the weather ; he addressed inquiries to 
 learned friends concerning the mysteries of the universe ; 
 and he reflected upon the greatest mystery of all, the ori- 
 gin of life. A capital draughtsman, too, he was ; excelling 
 in caricature likenesses. In short, he knew everything bet- 
 ter than business, and did everything better than serve his 
 master. 
 
 He changed his vocation in his sixteenth year, beginning 
 the study of medicine, and earning his livelihood by teaching 
 school, according to the time-honored New England custom. 
 
 At nineteen, we find him at Concord, New Hampshire, 
 teacher of a school there, a splendid and gifted youth, six 
 feet in stature, nobly proportioned, with handsome features, 
 bright blue eyes, and hair of dark auburn. He was what 
 we may call a natural gentleman ; one of those who easily take 
 to polite ways, and assume without an effort an agreeable 
 demeanor ; one who, though country-born and village-bred, 
 could have adapted himself to the life of a court. 
 
 While teaching school at Concord, he attracted the regard 
 of a young widow of good family and fortune, whom, after a 
 short courtship, he married. At twenty-one he was both a 
 husband and a father, living with considerable elegance in 
 the principal mansion of the town, and, to all appearance, 
 he was settled for life, as gentleman farmer and philosopher. 
 The Governor of New Hampshire appointed him major of a 
 regiment, so that an honorable military title was added to 
 the other distinctions of his lot. 
 
 But the storm of the Revolution was impending, and then 
 appeared the radical defect of his understanding. If he was 
 a gentleman and courtier by nature, he was also a tory by 
 nature, and his heart was not with his country at this crisis 
 
BENJAMIN THOMPSON. 671 
 
 of her fate. He performed no overt act of hostility to the 
 patriot cause ; but his neighbors felt and knew that he was 
 not one of them. At such a time as that, silence cannot 
 conceal a man's sentiments, because silence betrays the 
 secret of his heart more forcibly than words. His house was 
 mobbed. Fortunately he was absent, or it might have 
 gone ill with him. At twenty-two he was a fugitive from 
 his home and family, domesticated with the tories in Boston ; 
 and when, at length, General Washington compelled the 
 British to abandon that city, he had done the enemy such 
 service that he was commissioned to bear the tidings of the 
 evacuation to England in a British ship of war. He never 
 saw his home, nor his wife, nor his native State again. 
 
 In England he at once won powerful friends, for he had 
 just what they most wanted at the moment, . information 
 respecting affairs in America. His agreeable manners, his 
 commanding presence, his admirable talents, his heartfelt 
 toryism, all stood him in good stead ; and he soon won the 
 affections of the War Secretary, Lord George Germaine, to 
 whom he made himself indispensable. Under this lord, he 
 held a lucrative office, that of Under Secretary of State, 
 which gave him charge of transporting supplies and raising 
 troops, duties which at that time brought great profit. 
 When Lord George Germaine was compelled to resign, he 
 provided handsomely for his factotum, by procuring for him 
 a commission as^ Lieutenant-Colonel in the British army. 
 
 But he was a lieutenant-colonel without a regiment. The 
 regiment was to be gathered in America from the " loyal- 
 ists." To America he went, accordingly, where he raised a 
 regiment, which he commanded, and which he did not 
 scruple to lead against his countrymen. So lost was he to 
 a sense of his position, that he could write of an action in 
 which he took part, in such language as the following : 
 
672 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 " We had the good fortune this morning to fall in with a 
 chosen corps, under the command of General Marion in 
 person, which we attacked and totally routed, killing a con- 
 siderable number of them, taking sixteen prisoners, and 
 driving General Marion and the greater part of his army 
 into the Santee, where it is probable a great many of them 
 perished." 
 
 This he calls " good fortune " That native of America 
 who could speak so of the slaughter of some of his country- 
 men, and the lingering death of others, must indeed have 
 had what the phrenologists call a " defective organization." 
 
 The war ended, he returned to England, and retired from 
 the army on half pay. He was now an English gentleman 
 of rank, fortune, celebrity, prestige, and thirty years. What 
 more natural than that such a person should avail himself of 
 the peace to make the tour of Europe ? 
 
 A new chapter of his strange history now opens. At 
 Strasbourg, one day, mounted upon a superb English 
 horse, and dressed in his uniform, he attended a grand 
 parade. Prince Maximilian, heir to the throne of Bavaria, 
 but then a field-marshal in the service of France, commanded 
 the troops on that occasion. Struck with the fine appear- 
 ance of Colonel Thompson, he accosted him, conversed with 
 him, was captivated by him, and invited him to dinner. In 
 short, the Prince conceived so lively a regard for the British 
 officer, that it ended in his inviting him to enter the service 
 of Bavaria, in a capacity which gave him all the power, at 
 once, of a favorite and a prime minister. This office, how- 
 ever, he could not accept without the permission of the 
 King of England. George the Third not only granted the 
 permission, but allowed him to retain his half pay, and 
 knighted him ; so that he took up his abode in Munich, as 
 Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Benjamin Thompson. The Elector 
 
BENJAMIN THOMPSON. 673 
 
 soon gave him the title of Count Rumford, by which name 
 he has ever since been known. It was only in occasional 
 letters to his mother that he had the good sense to use the 
 old familiar Benjamin. Plain Thompson he sunk entirely, 
 preferring always to sign himself by the rather ridiculous 
 name of "Rumford." Such is the weakness of the Tory 
 mind ! 
 
 The glorious part of his career now begins. He was one 
 of the greatest benefactors Bavaria has ever known. 
 Armed with authority little less than sovereign, and wielding 
 the revenues of an important state, he introduced into every 
 branch of the public service the most radical and useful 
 improvements. He reduced the excessive power of the 
 church ; he restored discipline and efficiency to the army ; he 
 established foundries and factories ; he drove the swarms 
 of beggars from the high roads and streets, and gave them 
 profitable employment; he drained marshes, and converted 
 them into gardens ; he turned waste places into beautiful 
 parks ; he founded schools ; he caused the cities and towns 
 to be perfectly cleansed ; he invented ovens, kitchens, laun- 
 dries, so contrived that vast numbers of people would be 
 provided for at the minimum of expense. In a word, he 
 was a Yankee, with all a Yankee's thrift, invention, love of 
 order, love of cleanliness, dropped down into a kingdom 
 burdened with the accumulated abuses of centuries ; and he 
 was a Yankee who wielded the power of an absolute prince. 
 Wealth and honors flowed in upon him. When he was sick, 
 vast numbers of the poor went in procession to church to 
 beseech Heaven for his recovery, and to this day a monu- 
 ment, surmounted by a statue, standing in the streets of 
 Munich, attests the veneration in which he was held. 
 
 Imagine such a man alighting in the city of New York, 
 with absolute power, and twenty-five millions a year to 
 
674 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 spend in putting the city in order ! What a bewildering 
 thought ! 
 
 When he had worked for Bavaria twenty years, the death 
 of the elector, and the coming in of a prince who valued him 
 less, enabled him to transfer his beneficent activity to Eng- 
 land ; where he erected a monument to himself far more 
 honorable, and, I hope, more lasting, than his Munich statue. 
 He founded the ROYAL INSTITUTION, which employed Sir 
 Humphry Davy, and gave to Faraday the opportunity to 
 spend his life in discovering scientific truth. 
 
 Some years later, he contracted an unfortunate marriage 
 with a brilliant, wealthy, French widow, which embittered 
 his closing years. 
 
 She was wholly a woman of the drawing-room. He was 
 an inventor, a philosopher, and a lover of order even to 
 fanaticism. An infuriate " incompatibility " was rapidly de- 
 veloped. One of their quarrels he has himself recorded : 
 
 " A large party had been invited I neither liked nor approved of, 
 and invited for the sole 1 purpose of vexing me. Our house (near 
 Paris) was in the centre of the garden, walled around, with iron 
 gates. I put on my hat, walked down to the porter's lodge, and 
 gave him orders, on his peril, not to let any one in. Besides, I took 
 away the keys. Madame went down, and when the company ar- 
 rived she talked with them, she on one side, they on the other, 
 of the high brick wall. After that she goes and pours boiling water 
 on some of my beautiful flowers." 
 
 A recurrence of such scenes soon rendered the connection 
 insupportable, and the unhappy pair had the good sense to 
 separate. If we believe the husband, we shall certainly have 
 a very bad opinion of this lady. In a letter to his 
 American daughter, he calls her "the most imperious, 
 tyrannical, unfeeling woman that ever existed"; and he 
 
BENJAMIN THOMPSON. G75 
 
 speaks of her as one, "whose perseverance in pursuing an 
 object is equal to her profound cunning and wickedness in 
 framing it." Observers of life will know how to interpret 
 these words. The habits of both of these people were 
 fixed before they saw one another, and they had passed the 
 period when change is possible. Such incompatibility is 
 the fault of neither party, but the calamity of both. How 
 was it possible that they should agree ? She loved society ; 
 he loved quiet. He was willing enough to spend money for 
 permanently improving or embellishing their abode ; she 
 rejoiced in giving the most profuse entertainments, happy to 
 live all the week upon scraps, if she could give a gorgeous 
 banquet on Sunday. Their house was filled with Frenchmen 
 who detested Rumford, and whom he detested. He says, in 
 one of his letters, that no one can imagine the utter want of 
 nobleness in the French character unless he lives long in 
 France. It was a happy day for both when the husband 
 took up his abode in another mansion near Paris, and re- 
 sumed his bachelor life ; which, however, he alleviated, 
 according to the bad custom of the country, by keeping a 
 mistress. His wife, it appears, occasionally visited him, and 
 he visited her ; so that the separation was what is called 
 " amicable." 
 
 Rumford was a strange mixture of great and little, of good 
 and evil. If he abandoned his home and country, he cher- 
 ished a tender recollection of his mother, and provided gen- 
 erously for the comfort of her old age. His interest, too, in 
 the welfare of the poor appears to have been genuine and 
 deep. In one of his essays, we find the following pas- 
 sage : 
 
 " Amongst the great variety of enjoyments which riches put 
 within the reach of persons of fortune and education, there is none 
 more delightful than that which results from doing good to those 
 
676 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 from whom no return can be expected, or none but gratitude, re- 
 spect and attachment. ... Is it not possible to draw off the 
 attention of the rich from trifling and unprofitable amusements, 
 and engage them in pursuits in which their own happiness and rep- 
 utation, and 'the public prosperity, are so intimately connected? 
 . . . What a wonderful change in the state of society might in a 
 short time be effected by their united efforts ! " 
 
 No doubt his heart spoke in these words. On the other 
 hand, he was firmly convinced that the poor were incapable 
 of helping themselves, and can never be raised from their 
 miserable condition except through the generosity of the rich. 
 He approved the social arrangements existing in the Old 
 World. ,He thought China the nearest approach to a perfect 
 state, because there the principle of ORDER was developed 
 to the uttermost ; and, for the same reason, he approved 
 American slavery. Such minds as his can form no concep- 
 tion of a state of things, like that which exists in the best 
 portions of the United States, where no class depends upon 
 another for its welfare and happiness, but all classes are 
 equally dependent and equally independent. 
 
 This extraordinary man died in 1814, at Auteuil, near 
 Paris, where he was buried, and a handsome monument cov- 
 ers his remains. His daughter, Sarah, who inherited his 
 title, spent most of her days in New England, where she was 
 called the " Countess of Rumford." One of his illegitimate 
 sons, born in the last year of his life, entered the French 
 army as an officer, won distinction in the service, and fell 
 before Sebastopol during the Crimean war. A son of this 
 officer is still living in Paris, to whom the fr Countess of 
 Rumford " left a portion of her fortune. 
 
 To Harvard College he left, first, a thousand dollars a 
 year; secondly, his daughter's annuity after her death, of 
 four hundred dollars a year ; and, thirdly, his whole estate 
 
X 
 
 BENJAMIN THOMPSON. 677 
 
 after the decease of persons dependent upon its income. The 
 object of this handsome bequest was to endow a professorship 
 for the promotion of physical and mathematical science. 
 He bequeathed to the government of the United States all 
 that part of his library which related to military subjects, as 
 well as all his military plans and designs, for the use- of the 
 Military Academy at West Point. In accordance with his 
 bequest to Harvard College, the Rumford Professorship of 
 Science was founded in 1816, and the first person who held 
 the appointment was Dr. Jacob Bigelow, an eminent physi- 
 cian and man of science. 
 
 Count Rumford, in his lifetime, presented five thousand 
 dollars to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an 
 endowment which has increased, in the course of years, to 
 more than six times that amount. Under the auspices of this 
 institution a complete edition of the works of Count Rum- 
 ford, in four handsome volumes, has been recently published. 
 Fifty years ago, his essays and papers, philanthropic and 
 philosophical, were highly esteemed, ran through many 
 editions, and were translated into several languages. A 
 superb biography has recently been written by a distin- 
 guished member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences, the 
 Rev. George E. Ellis, of Boston. This is one of the most 
 important books of the year, and secures to posterity a 
 knowledge of Count Rumford's extraordinary character and 
 unique career. 
 
CHARLES DICKENS AS A CITIZEN. 
 
 To most of us, the prospect of being obliged to make a 
 speech is simply terrible. This appears to be particularly 
 the case with literary men, who are apt to be shy and sen- 
 sitive, and whose success in one kind of utterance, they 
 think, imposes upon them a kind of obligation not to fail in 
 another. 
 
 Every one remembers the woful plight into which the 
 poet Cowper was thrown when his friends procured for him 
 a lucrative office for life, which would oblige him to read 
 aloud occasionally in the House of Lords. He was so com- 
 pletely panic-stricken, that his reason at length gave way ; 
 and, after he had twice attempted to commit suicide, his 
 family consented to his resigning the place. Washington 
 Irving, as we all know, had a mortal dread of addressing an 
 assembly, and, on one celebrated occasion, broke down and 
 took his seat in confusion. Hawthorne, too , was a coward before 
 an audience, and it cost him a great effort, when he was Con- 
 sul at Liverpool, to say a few words after dinner in acknowl- 
 edgment of a toast complimenting his country. Thackeray 
 was little more of a speech-maker than Hawthorne. He used 
 to suffer extremely when he had engaged to preside at a meet- 
 ing, or reply to a sentiment. I remember, also, the remark- 
 able case of the strong man of New England, Dr. Winship, 
 who declares that he lost seven pounds of flesh during the 
 week or two preceding the delivery of his first lecture ; and 
 
 43 
 
G80 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 when at length he came trembling before the audience, and 
 had uttered a few words, the lights swam before his eyes, 
 he fell to the floor, and was carried out in a dead faint. 
 
 Notwithstanding this natural repugnance to public speak- 
 ing, I think that every citizen of a free country ought to 
 endeavor to overcome it. It seems to me to be a real 
 cowardice, which we ought not to permit to ourselves, any 
 more than a boy ought to stay out of the water, because the 
 first plunge is chill and disagreeable. Surely we ought to 
 expect from every educated person, that he should be able 
 to get upon his legs, look his fellow-beings in the face, and 
 utter to them freely and calmly his thoughts, if he has any, 
 upon subjects of common ' interest. That this accomplish- 
 ment is somewhat more common in the United States than 
 anywhere else in the world, is a fact upon which we should 
 congratulate ourselves. 
 
 Charles Dickens was so constituted that he never expe- 
 rienced the slightest embarrassment in making a speech. 
 When he was last in the United States, he told a friend that 
 the first time he had ever addressed an audience, he was as 
 composed in mind as though he were talking to his own 
 family, and that every speech he had ever delivered was 
 extemporaneous. He said that when he was going to speak 
 in the evening, he was accustomed to take a walk by him- 
 self, and arrange the outline of what he wished to say, and 
 after fixing the leading thoughts well in his mind, dismiss the 
 subject until he rose to speak. 
 
 All those fifty-six speeches, therefore, which have been 
 recently published in a volume, were in some degree the 
 unstudied expression of his nature. Many of them, indeed, 
 were uttered without a moment's preparation, since they 
 were suggested by occurrences which could not be antici- 
 pated. In delivering the prizes one evening to the pupils 
 
CHARLES DICKENS AS A CITIZEN. 681 
 
 of the Birmingham Institute, he had to bestow one of the 
 medals upon a Miss Winkle, a name which was, of course, 
 received by the audience with laughter, as it reminded them 
 of Mr. Pickwick's sporting friend. The young lady herself 
 joining in the merriment, Mr. Dickens pretended to whisper 
 a few words in her ear, and then, turning to the audience, 
 said : 
 
 W I have recommended Miss Winkle to change her 
 name." 
 
 In this happy way he availed himself of every incident of 
 festive occasion. No one, I presume, ever carried the art of 
 presiding at a public dinner nearer perfection than he. There 
 was such a blending of dignity and ease in his demeanor, 
 and such a union of airy humor and weighty thought in his 
 discourse, that no one could tell, at the close of the repast, 
 whether he had been more amused than impressed, or more 
 impressed than amused, although sure that he had never 
 been so much amused or so much impressed in his life 
 before. 
 
 These speeches are perhaps, upon the whole, the most 
 Dickensy of his works, and they certainly do present him to 
 us in a most captivating light. They show him to us as a 
 man who, although himself powerful and famous, yet had a 
 peculiar and strong sympathy with the weak and the 
 defeated. For example, in that very Birmingham speech, to 
 which allusion has just been made, he did not omit to say a 
 few consoling words to those who had striven for the prizes, 
 but striven in vain. He remarked that the prize-takers 
 were not the only successful pupils, but merely -the most 
 successful. 
 
 " To strive at all," said he, " involves a victory achieved 
 over sloth, inertness, and indifference. . . Therefore, 
 every losing competitor among my hearers may be certain 
 
682 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 that he has still won much very much and that he can 
 well afford to swell the triumph of his rivals who have 
 passed him in the race." 
 
 It was also graceful in him, in presiding at a meeting of 
 proof-readers, to acknowledge that he had never gone over 
 the sheets of any of his works without having a proof-reader 
 point out to him " something that he had overlooked, some 
 slight inconsistency into which he had fallen, some little 
 lapse he had made"; showing that he had been closely 
 followed w by a patient and trained mind, and not merely by 
 a skilful eye." 
 
 At the same time he was, if we may judge by his speeches, 
 wholly free from jealousy of authors who might be supposed 
 to be his rivals. The only two men in England whom any 
 one could regard in that light, during his lifetime, were 
 Thackeray and Bulwer, but he seems to have had for both a 
 genuine admiration. 
 
 " I am sure," said Mr. Dickens, at a dinner of the Theat- 
 rical Fund, at which Thackeray presided, " I am sure that 
 this institution never has had, and that it never will have, 
 simply because it cannot have, a greater lustre cast upon it 
 than by the presence of the noble English writer who fills 
 the chair to-night." 
 
 On more than one occasion, he paid equal homage to the 
 genius of Lord Lytton, Thomas Hood, Douglas Jerrold, 
 Thomas Carlyle, and Henry Thomas Buckle. 
 
 Dickens shows himself a modest man in these speeches, 
 inasmuch as he ever attributes whatever success he may 
 have had in literature to hard work. I would like to have 
 the following passage put up conspicuously in every school 
 and college on the globe : 
 
 " The one serviceable, safe, certain, remunerative, attainable 
 quality, in every study and in every pursuit, is the quality of 
 
CHAELES DICKENS AS A CITIZEN. 683 
 
 ATTENTION. My own invention or imagination, such as it is, I can 
 most truthfully assure you, would never have served me as it has, 
 but for the habit of commonplace, humble, patient, daily, toiling, 
 drudging attention. Genius, vivacity, quickness of penetration, 
 brilliancy in association of ideas, such mental qualities will not 
 be commanded ; but attention, after a due term of submissive ser- 
 vice, always will. Like certain plants which the poorest peasant 
 may grow in the poorest soil, it can be cultivated by any one, and 
 it is certain, in its own good season, to bring forth flowers and 
 fruit/' 
 
 Many times he recurs to the same idea. He seems to 
 take pleasure, also, in sharing the glory of his works with 
 his readers. " Your earnestness," he once said, "has stimu- 
 lated mine, your laughter has made me laugh, and your 
 tears have overflowed my eyes " ; and he again added, that 
 he claimed nothing for himself but " constant fidelity to hard 
 work" 
 
 For so amiable a man, he was singularly free from every- 
 thing mawkish and weakly sentimental. Like every other 
 person of good feeling, he regarded war with horror ; but 
 he knew well, as he once eloquently said, that there are 
 times "when the evils of peace, though not so acutely felt, 
 are immeasurably greater than the evils of war." We might 
 almost suppose him speaking with a mind prophetic of these 
 very days, when he gave one example of a peace more terri- 
 ble than war. It was when "a powerful nation, by admit- 
 ting the right of any autocrat to do wrong, sows, by such 
 complicity, the seeds of its own ruin." 
 
 The same hearty, robust sense dictated his frequent 
 remark, that sanitary reform must precede all other social 
 remedies, and that neither education nor religion can do 
 anything permanently useful until the way has been paved 
 for their ministrations by cleanliness and decency. 
 
 He always stands by the age in which he had the happi- 
 
684 TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE. 
 
 ness to live. There is an excellent passage, too long for 
 quotation, in which he defends the present time against the 
 common charge of its being " a material age." He wishes 
 to know whether electricity has become more material, in 
 any sane mind, because of the blessed discovery that it 
 could be employed for the service of man, to an immeasura- 
 bly greater extent than for his destruction. He desires also 
 to be informed whether he makes a more material journey 
 to the bedside of a dying parent, when he travels thither 
 sixty miles an hour, than when he jogs along at six. 
 
 "Rather," he adds, "in the swiftest case, does not my 
 agonized heart become over-fraught with gratitude to that 
 Supreme Beneficence from which alone could have proceeded 
 the wonderful means of shortening my suspense ? " 
 
 He goes on to say, with excellent truth and point, that 
 the true material age is " the stupid Chinese age, in which 
 no new or grand revelations of nature are granted, because 
 they are ignorantly and insolently repelled, instead of being 
 diligently and humbly sought." 
 
 I am tempted to append to these observations a passage 
 from his celebrated Manchester speech of 1858, before the 
 distribution of the prizes awarded by the Institutional As- 
 sociation of Lancashire and Cheshire. It may serve as a 
 specimen of his manner, and an evidence of his worth as 
 a citizen. 
 
 "I have looked," said he, "over a few of those examina- 
 tion-papers, which have comprised history, geography, gram- 
 mar, arithmetic, book-keeping, decimal coinage, mensura- 
 tion, mathematics, social economy, the French language, 
 in fact, they comprise all the keys that open all the locks of 
 knowledge. I felt most devoutly gratified, as to many of 
 them, that they had not been submitted to me to answer, for 
 I am perfectly sure that if they had been, I should have had 
 
CHARLES DICKENS AS A CITIZEN. 685 
 
 mighty little to bestow upon myself to-night. And yet it is 
 always to be observed, and seriously remembered, that these 
 examinations are undergone by people whose lives have been 
 passed in a continual fight for bread, and whose whole exist- 
 ence has been a constant wrestle with 
 
 4 Those twin jailors of the daring heart, 
 Low birth and iron fortune/ * 
 
 "I could not but consider, with extraordinary admiration, 
 that these questions have been replied to, not by men like 
 myself, the business of whose life is with writing and with 
 books, but by men, the business of whose life is with tools 
 and with machinery. 
 
 " Let me endeavor to recall, as well as my memory will serve 
 me, from among the most interesting cases of prize-holders 
 and certificate-gainers who will appear before you, some two 
 or three of the most conspicuous examples. There are two 
 poor brothers from near Chorley, who work from morning 
 to night in a coal-pit, and who, in all weathers, have walked 
 eight miles a night, three nights a week, to attend the classes 
 in which they have gained distinction. There are two poor 
 boys from Bollington, who began life as piecers at one shil- 
 ling or eighteenpence a week, and the father of one of whom 
 was cut to pieces by the machinery at which he worked, but 
 not before he had himself founded the institution in which 
 this son has since come to be taught. These two poor boys 
 will appear before you to-night, to take the second-class 
 prize in chemistry There is a plasterer from Bury, sixteen 
 years of age, who took a third-class certificate last year at 
 the hands of Lord Brougham ; he is this year again success- 
 ful in a competition three times as severe. There is a 
 Wagon-maker from the same place, who knew little or abso- 
 lutely nothing until he was a grown man, and who has 
 
 * Claude Melnotte, in " The Lady of Lyons," Act III. Scene 2. 
 
686 TRIUMPHS OP ENTERPRISE. 
 
 learned all he knows, which is a great deal, in the local insti- 
 tution. There is a chain-maker, in very humble circum- 
 stances, and working hard all day, who walks six miles n 
 night, three nights a week, to attend the classes in which he 
 has won so famous a place. There is a moulder in an iron 
 foundry, who, whilst he was working twelve hours a day 
 before the furnace, got up at four o'clock in the morning to 
 learn drawing. 'The thought of my lads/ he writes in his 
 modest account ot himself, ' in their peaceful slumbers above 
 me, gave me fresh courage, and I used to think that if I 
 should never receive any personal benefit, I might instruct 
 them when they came to be of an age to understand the mighty 
 machines and engines which have made our country, Eng- 
 land, pre-eminent in the world's history.' There is a piecer 
 at mule-frames, who could not read at eighteen, who is now 
 a man of little more than thirty, who is the sole support of 
 an aged mother, who is arithmetical teacher in the institution 
 in which he himself was taught, who writes of himself that 
 he made the resolution never to take up a subject without 
 keeping to it, and who has kept to it with such an astonish- 
 ing will, that he is now well versed in Euclid and Algebra, 
 and is the best French scholar in Stockport. The drawing- 
 classes in that same Stockport are taught by a working 
 blacksmith ; and the pupil of that working blacksmith will 
 receive the highest honors of to-night Well may it be said 
 of that good blacksmith, as it was written of another of his 
 trade, by the American poet : 
 
 * Toiling, rejoicing, sorrowing, 
 
 Onward through life he goes ; 
 Each morning sees some task begun, 
 
 Each evening sees its close. 
 Something attempted, something done. 
 
 Has earned a night's repose.' 
 
CHARLES DICKENS AS A CITIZEN. 687 
 
 w To pass from the successful candidates to the delegates 
 from local societies now before me, and to content myself 
 with one instance from amongst them, there is among 
 their number a most remarkable man, whose history I have 
 read with feelings that I could not adequately express under 
 any circumstances, and least of all when I know he hears 
 me, who worked when he was a mere baby at hand-loom 
 weaving until he dropped from fatigue ; who began to teach 
 himself as soon as he could earn five shillings a week ; who 
 is now a botanist, acquainted with every production of the 
 Lancashire valley ; who is a naturalist, aud has made and 
 preserved a collection of the eggs of British birds, and 
 stuifed the birds ; who is now a conchologist, with a very 
 curious, and, in some respects, an original collection of fresh- 
 water shells, and has also preserved and collected the mosses 
 of fresh water and of the 'sea; who is worthily the president 
 of his own local Literary Institution, and who was at his 
 work this time last night as foreman in a mill 
 
 w So stimulating has been the influence of these bright 
 examples, and many more, that I notice among the applica- 
 tions from Blackburn for preliminary test examination-papers, 
 one from an applicant who gravely fills up the printed form 
 by describing himself as ten years of age, and who, with 
 equal gravity, describes his occupation as " nursing a little 
 child." Nor are these things confined to the men. The 
 women employed in factories, milliners' work, and domestic 
 service, have begun to show, as it is fitting they should, a 
 most decided determination not to be outdone by the men ; 
 and the women of Preston in particular have so honorably 
 distinguished themselves, and shown in their examination- 
 papers such an admirable knowledge of the science of house- 
 hold management and household economy, that if I were a 
 working bachelor of Lancashire or Cheshire, and if I had 
 
688 TRIUMPHS OP ENTERPRISE. 
 
 not cast my eye or set my heart upon any lass in particular, 
 I should positively get up at four o'clock in the morning 
 with the determination of the iron-moulder himself, and 
 should go to Preston in search of a wife." 
 
 How admirable is this ! Mr. Dickens concluded with the 
 following remark : " Lastly, let me say one word out of my 
 own personal heart, which is always very near to it in this 
 connection. Do not let us, in the midst of the visible objects 
 of nature, whose Avorkings we can tell in figures, surrounded 
 by machines that can be made to the thousandth part of an 
 inch, acquiring every day knowledge which can be proved 
 upon a slate or demonstrated by a microscope, do not let 
 us, in the laudable pursuit of the facts that surround us, neg- 
 lect the fancy and the imagination which equally surround us 
 as a part of the great scheme. Let the child have its fables , 
 let the man or woman into which it changes, always remem- 
 ber those fables tenderly; let numerous graces and orna- 
 ments that can not be weighed and measured, and that seem 
 at first sight idle enough, continue to have their places about 
 us, be we never so wise. The hardest head may coexist 
 with the softest heart. The union and just balance of those 
 two is always a blessing to the possessor, and always a bless- 
 ing to mankind. The Divine Teacher was as gentle and con- 
 siderate as he was powerful and wise. You all know how 
 He could still the raging of the sea, and could hush a little 
 child. As the utmost results of the wisdom of men can 
 only be at last to help to raise this earth to that condition to 
 which His doctrine, untainted by the blindnesses and passions 
 of men, would have exalted it long ago ; so let us always 
 remember that He set us the example of blending the under- 
 standing and the imagination, and that, following it ourselves, 
 we tread in His steps, and help our race on to its better and 
 host days. Knowledge, as all followers of it must know, 
 
CHARLES DICKENS AS A CITIZEN. 689 
 
 has a very limited power indeed, when it informs the head 
 alone ; but when it informs the head and heart too, it has a 
 power over life and death, the body and the soul, .and domi- 
 nates the universe." 
 
 The perusal of these speeches, when some day a well- 
 edited edition of them shall be published, with due explana- 
 tions of the circumstances in which they were delivered, will 
 probably enhance the public estimate both of his genius and 
 of his worth. The reader will observe, with pleasure, that 
 most of them were delivered for the benefit of charitable 
 funds and working men's lyceums. He could not but know 
 that the success of a public dinner or of a public meeting was 
 secure, if only the managers could print the magic words : 
 " Charles Dickens will preside." It was a matter of principle 
 with him not to refuse such a request when it was made on 
 behalf of an institution which he approved. He presided 
 several times at the annual dinner of the London newspaper 
 carriers, and he frequently performed the same office for the 
 benefit of circus riders and poor actors, a class whom he 
 delighted to defend against their calumniators. By making 
 this noble use of his great powers and his great fame, he not 
 only put many thousands of pounds into the treasury of use- 
 ful charities, but he assisted to rescue from failure, and to 
 place upon a solid footing, the working men's lyceum system 
 of England. 
 
 Like all the rest of the sons of men, he had his faults and 
 his limits. He was more a microscope than a telescope. He 
 knew the by-ways of London better than he could ever have 
 known the solar system. He could better inspire benevolent 
 feeling than suggest practical measures. But when the 
 whole story of his public and private life has been told, we 
 shall probably all be persuaded that this beloved author was 
 not less excellent as a man and citizen, than admirable as a 
 genius. 
 
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 THE 
 
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