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JOHN N. EDWARDS 
 
 BIOGRAPHY, MEMOIRS, REMINISCENCES AND 
 RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 HIS BRILLIANT CAREER AS SOLDIER, AUTHOR, 
 AND JOURNALIST 
 
 CHOICE COLLECTION OF HIS MOST NOTABLE AND INTERESTING 
 NEWSPAPER ARTICLES, TOGETHER WITH SOME UNPUB- 
 LISHED POEMS AND MANY PRIVATE LETTERS. 
 
 ALSO A REPRINT OF 
 
 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO 
 
 AN- UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR 
 
 COMPILED BY HIS WIFE 
 
 JENNIE EDWARDS 
 
 KANSAS CITY, Mo. : 
 JENNIE EDWARDS, PUBLISHER 
 
 iSSg 
 
COPYRIGHTED 
 JENNIE EDWARDS 
 
 DONOHUE & HENNEBERRY, 
 
 PRINTERS AND BINDERS, 
 CHICAGO. 
 
DEDICATION. 
 
 TO THE FRIENDS OF MY DEAD HUSBAND, 
 SOLDIERS AND CIVILIANS, CONFEDERATES 
 AND FEDERALS, DEMOCRATS AND REPUB- 
 LICANS, I INTRUST THIS WORK 
 
 JENNIE ED WARDS. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 DEDICATION. BY JENNIE EDWAKDS .'... 3 
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. BY REV. GEO. PLATTENBURG.. ..... 9 
 
 TWENTY YEARS OF FRIENDSHIP. BY MORRISON MUNFORD. ... 37 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS OF JOHN N. EDWARDS: 
 
 POOR CARLOTA 65 
 
 A STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND 66 
 
 PILOT, WHAT OF THE SHIP ? 68 
 
 QUANTRELL 69 
 
 THOMAS BUCHANAN READ 70 
 
 JAMES GORDON BENNETT 71 
 
 FENIMORE COOPER 73 
 
 SOHUYLER COLFAX. j 74 
 
 BON VOYAGE, Miss NELLIE 75 
 
 LITTLE NELSON W. DALBY 76 
 
 HENRY CLAY DEAN 77 
 
 HENRY WARD BEECHER 78 
 
 GENERAL ALBERT SIDKEY JOHNSTON 80 
 
 KATKOFF 82 
 
 A FISH STORY 84 
 
 PROHIBITION 85 
 
 ON DEMOCRACY 88 
 
 NOT MEN ENTIRELY 89 
 
 EVERY TUB ON ITS OWN BOTTOM 91 
 
 BOURBON DEMOCRACY 92 
 
 A VERY PLAIN REMEDY 93 
 
 M. TAINE ON NAPOLEON 95 
 
 THE STATUE TO CALHOUN 97 
 
 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL 98 
 
 THE BATTLE OF THE FLAGS 99 
 
 GENERAL GORDON 100 
 
 VICTOR HUGO 102 
 
 HENRY M. STANLEY 104 
 
 DEATH FROM STARVATION 105 
 
 IN A FOREIGN LAND 107 
 
 ALWAYS ,A WOMAN 108 
 
 MORE LITERARY MUTILIATION 110 
 
 CHRISTMAS REJOICINGS Ill 
 
 5 
 
Vi CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 POOR VALENTINE BAKER 114 
 
 ROSCOE CONKLING 116 
 
 ON SOUTHERN POETS 118 
 
 As TO KING DAVID , 119 
 
 DR. JOSEPH M. WOOD 121 
 
 WAR QUAKER FASHION 123 
 
 WlLL-O'-THE-WlSP 124 
 
 WOLESLEY ON McCLELLAN AND LEE 126 
 
 CLEVELAND RETIRES TO PRIVATE LIFE 128 
 
 WASHINGTON'S BIRTHDAY , 130 
 
 TIME MAKES ALL THINGS EVEN 132 
 
 JAMES N. BURNES 134 
 
 DEATH OF THE PRINCE IMPERIAL 137 
 
 BAZAINE 138 
 
 THE NEY MYTH 140 
 
 DON CARLOS AND MEXICO 142 
 
 POOR FRANCE 143 
 
 EDMUND O'DONOVAN. . 146 
 
 THE REVISED NEW TESTAMENT 148 
 
 THE GERMAN SUCCESSION 149 
 
 A NEW REVISION OF THE BIBLE 150 
 
 THE REVISED BIBLE 150 
 
 MARRIAGE OF CAPTAIN COLLINS 152 
 
 THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL 152 
 
 OUIDA AND ZOLA 154 
 
 Is DEATH ALL? 155 
 
 THE NEW YEAR 156 
 
 WHOSE FAULT is IT? 157 
 
 GONE DOWN AT SEA 158 
 
 BETTER WAR BY LAND THAN SEA 160 
 
 A CLOSE CALL 161 
 
 THE KILLING OF JESSE JAMES 163 
 
 VETERAN SAM 165 
 
 ADDRESS ACCEPTING A FLAG 167 
 
 CARRIER'S ADDRESS OF THE MISSOURI EXPOSITOR .... 168 
 
 MURDER DONE; OR, THE GYPSY'S STORY 171 
 
 THE BIVOUAC OF THE DEAD 174 
 
 THE MARRIAGE OF PERE HYACINTHE 176 
 
 NAPOLEON AND His DETRACTORS 178 
 
 THE BEST ONE HUNDRED BOOKS 180 
 
 PERSONAL TRIBUTES 181 
 
 NEWSPAPER TRIBUTES 196 
 
 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO. AN UNWRITTEN LEAF 
 
 OP THE WAR . 229 
 
JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS 
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 
 
 BY REV. GEO. PLATTENBURG, DOVER, MO. 
 
 The subject of this brief sketch, John Newman 
 Edwards, was born in Warren County, Va., January 4, 
 1839. Whilst a mere boy he learned tpye-setting at the 
 town of Front Royal, a place now of great and heroic mem- 
 ories, in the Gazette office, a paper at this writing called 
 the Sentinel. Even at that time he was regarded as a boy 
 of extraordinary powers, having, at the immature age of 
 fourteen years, as testifies a contemporary, written a story 
 that gave him " wide celebrity. " While yet a boy, through 
 the influence of his relation, Thomas J. Yerby, of Lexing- 
 ton, now of Marshall, Mo., he was induced to come to the 
 State of Missouri in 1854 or 1855. Arriving in Lexington, 
 he soon thereafter entered upon his avocation of printer 
 in the office of the Expositor, by whom conducted I do not 
 now recall. Here, really, began the education of this 
 singularly gifted boy, wjiose manhood was to be so rich in 
 strange adventures and romance. Of schools Major 
 Edwards knew but little, his advantages of this kind were 
 limited and poor in character. As a boy, he loved soli- 
 tude this peculiarity in manhood made him shy to the 
 verge of girlish timidity. He loved the fields, sweet with 
 " the breath of kine " and the new-mown hay. He 
 lingered in the dim vistas of the woods, and from out their 
 slumberous shadows, dreamily watched the ceaseless swirl 
 of the great river. This love of nature and its communion, 
 
10 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 made him fond of the hunt and the pastime of gentle 
 Izaak Walton. 
 
 His life during these years, in and about Lexington, was 
 of the ordinary uneventful character, belonging to extreme 
 youth and peaceful times. But the storm was brewing. 
 The distant and sullen muttering of a great political 
 upheaval was breaking ominously upon the nation's ears. 
 Great questions lying radically at the very base of the two 
 antagonistic conceptions of the American system of gov- 
 ernment, were loudly and hotly contested by the sections 
 of the country. The slavery question was not the cause, 
 but the occasion of the threatened rupture. Whatever 
 men may say, or however much they may deplore sectional 
 'controversy, there were, as there are, but two great drifts 
 of thought as to the true theory of our institutions, the 
 one, denominated, " State Rights/' the other, the steady 
 trend toward centralization. Leaving the truth or 
 falsity of these contested theories out of the question, the 
 fact remains that out of them came one of the mightiest 
 struggles known to the annals of the race. The rupture 
 came. The "golden bowl was broken," the "silver cord 
 was loosened," and there came an era of hate and blood 
 that all good men ought gladly to wish to be forgotten. 
 
 HIS CAREER AS A SOLDIER. 
 
 It is at this juncture that Major Edwards began his 
 active career. In the year 1862, Gen. Jo. 0. Shelby 
 organized a regiment near Waverly, Lafayette County, 
 Mo. Of this regiment Frank Gordon was Lieutenant- 
 Colonel. Colonels Shanks and Beal G. Jeans, with Capt. 
 Ben Elliott in command of a battalion, joined and united 
 with Shelby at this point. This command moved on the 
 day of the Lone Jack fight with a view of forming a junc- 
 tion with Cockrell and Coffee. The forces of Shanks, 
 Jeans, and Elliott, with his own regiment, constituted the 
 original force under Shelby. Of this command, after the 
 expiration of several months, upon the retirement of 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. H 
 
 Captain Arthur, John N. Edwards received the appoint- 
 ment of Brigade- Adjutant, with the rank of Major. This 
 occurred in the month of September, 1863. When finally 
 Shelby was promoted to the command of a division, 
 Edwards shared the fortune of his generous and chival- 
 rous leader and became the Adjutant of the division, I 
 think with the rank of Colonel, though of this I have no 
 positive evidence at hand. In this positionhe continued 
 until the disbanding of the whole command after Lee's 
 surrender. 
 
 Shelby's force, as we have seen, left Waverly to 
 form a junction with Cockrell and Coffee, but on reaching 
 Columbus in Johnson County, he heard of the Lone 
 Jack battle, and was compelled to revise his plans. 
 He began to work his way south, invironed by almost 
 indescribable difficulties, and never at any time were the 
 experiences and dangers of this illustrious body of men 
 greater or graver. Care, prudence and courage of the 
 highest order were manifested in successfully making this 
 junction, with the men that fought at Lone Jack, an 
 accomplished fact. This was done at or near Newtonia, 
 from which point the united force fell back to McKissock's 
 Springs, in Arkansas. Of this force, as Senior Colonel, 
 Shelby took command, Lieut. -Col. Frank Gordon being 
 at the head of the old regiment. From McKissock's they 
 fell back to Cane Hill, a place made memorable years 
 before by one of those tragedies so incident to frontier life 
 of almost indescribable horror. Here they rested, Hind- 
 man at that time having his headquarters at Van Buren. 
 To Shelby was given the arduous and dangerous duty of 
 watching and contesting, step by step, the Federal advance 
 from Fayetteville. It was necessarily Shelby's additional 
 duty to cover Hindman's movements at Van Buren, Blount 
 performing a like service for Curtiss. During this period 
 the splendid soldierly qualities of this whole command were 
 daily exhibited. The soldier alone knows the hardships, 
 and the demand for an almost superhuman endurance in 
 this form of military service, of such varied fortune of 
 defeat and victory. During the whole period immediately 
 
12 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 prior to the battle of Prairie Grove, Shelby held the posi- 
 tion in front of Hindman's advance, and finally, on a frosty 
 December morning, he opened the hard contested fight of 
 Prairie Grove. The sad December night before the battle 
 is thus described by Major Edwards himself, and as he 
 alone could do it: "The moon this night had been 
 eclipsed, too, and upon many of the soldiers the weird, 
 mysterious appearance of <the sky, the pale, ghost-like 
 phantom of a cloud across its crimson disc, had much of 
 superstitious influence. At first, when the glowing camp 
 fires had burned low 'and comfortable a great flood of 
 radiance was pouring over the mountains and silvering 
 even the hoary white beard of the moss clustering about 
 the blank, bare faces of the precipices. The shadows con- 
 tracted finally. The moon seemed on fire, and burned 
 itself to ashes. The gigantic buckler of the heavens, 
 studded all over with star-diamonds, had for its boss a 
 gloomy, yellowish, struggling moon. Like a wounded 
 King, it seemed to bleed royally over the nearest cloud, 
 then wrapt its dark mantle about its face, even as Cassar 
 did, and sink gradually into extinction. There was a 
 hollow grief of the winds among the trees, and the snowy 
 phantasm of the frost crinkled and rustled its gauze robes 
 under foot. The men talked in subdued voices around 
 their camp-fires, and were anxious to draw from the 
 eclipse some happy augury. Belief exhibited itself on 
 every face when the moon at least shone out broad and 
 good, and the dark shadows were again lit up with tremu- 
 lous rays of light." 
 
 And e'er the great sun's white splendors kissed the rime- 
 robed earth, Shelby's voice, clear as a bugle's note, came 
 to gallant Shanks, "Forward, Major!" And since the 
 day that men first learned war, they never rode with more 
 splendid courage into battle; not one of all these men but 
 deserved the golden spurs of chivalrous knighthood. 
 From this field, stained with such precious blood on this 
 chill December day, Shelby again occupied the post of 
 honor and danger, covering Hindman's retreat. Falling 
 back slowly, on reaching Van Buren he found that General 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 13 
 
 Hindman had abandoned his position at Van Buren, 
 and had fallen back to Little Rock. Shelby finally went 
 into camp at Lewisburg, on the Arkansas River, and 
 became virtually an outpost of Hindman's command at 
 Little Rock. Shelby in all this service acted independ- 
 ently, although shortly prior to the Prairie Grove battle 
 Shelby's and Marmaduke's Brigades had been united, form- 
 ing Marmaduke's Division; the latter becoming Division 
 Commander by virtue of a Brigadier's commission at that 
 time in his possession. At this camp was organized an 
 expedition into Missouri, the leading event of which was 
 the capture of Springfield, January 8, 1863. But being 
 unable to hold the position won, they moved on in an 
 easterly direction to the town of Hartsville, where a dis- 
 astrous defeat was sustained. From this point a retreat 
 was effected, and the force went finally into camp at Bates- 
 ville, on the "White River in Arkansas. Here, probably in 
 the month of April, subsequent to the events described, 
 was organized what is known as the " Cape Girardeau 
 Expedition," as the attack upon this town was the leading 
 event of the campaign, where the subject of this sketch 
 was wounded and taken prisoner. Some time prior to that 
 measureless blunder of a most pitiful senility, the disastrous 
 assault upon Helena, Arkansas, Major Edwards was 
 exchanged and had rejoined his command, taking part in 
 the fateful scenes of that dark day when so many gallant 
 and fearless men were slaughtered upon the altar of a 
 boundless stupidity. Shelby was wounded in this battle. 
 His command then moved to Jackson Port, where he 
 remained until the Federal advance under that humane 
 soldier, General Frederick Steele, was made on Little Rock. 
 Shelby was commanded to take position on Bayou Metoe, 
 to watch Steele's advance from points on the White River. 
 Price's whole force was then occupying an intrenched 
 position on the Arkansas River immediately opposite 
 Little Rock. Colonel Frank Gordon's regiment was occu- 
 pying a position on the extremity of a spur of Big Rock, 
 in full view of the city. In all the scenes before Little 
 Rock Shelby's division was a very large part, and finally 
 
14 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 covered Price's retreat from the city. At Arkadelphia 
 another expedition into Missouri was organized, at the 
 earnest solicitation of General Shelby, and so the raid of 
 1863 was inaugurated. He gained permission to select a 
 number of men from eaeh regiment of his division, to the 
 number of 800. After a single day's march they came 
 within the enemy's territory. Marching day and night, 
 engaged in countless skirmishes, they reached and captured 
 Boonville ; from thence they came to Marshall, where they 
 were surrounded by not less than 5,000 men under 
 Ewing, Crittenden and Pleasonton. The two formed in 
 front, the latter in the rear. After three or four hours' 
 fighting, Shelby determined to cut his way out, and an 
 order to this effect was borne to Colonel Shanks by Major 
 Edwards. The plan was successfully accomplished despite 
 the mighty odds against them. The inequality of the 
 forces gave especial glory to the deed. 
 
 But it is not possible in a brief sketch like this to fol- 
 low the fortunes of this band of noble soldiers under so 
 dashing and fearless a leader, in a long war. Of the 
 scenes so tragic of this vast conflict each soldier might say 
 with Aeneas as he recounted the miseries and the fall of 
 Troy, to Dido and her Tyrians, until the sinking stars 
 invited to repose " Magna Pars Fui." Of the great con- 
 test and its strangely varied fortunes they were a great 
 part. It was at this point in the history of this great 
 internecine struggle that Major Edwards began to receive 
 that military prominence he so richly deserved. As a 
 soldier, he was not only brave and fearless, and wise in 
 council, but gentle, tender, courteous to the humblest 
 soldier beneath him. As he was whole-hearted in the 
 cause he espoused, so dealt he kindly with the men that 
 shared his convictions and the fortunes of a common cause. 
 
 I here employ, the beautiful tribute of Major J. F. 
 Stonestreet, who shared with him the vicissitudes of a 
 long and bitter struggle. It is better said than I could 
 say it : 
 
 A COMRADE'S TRIBUTE. 
 
 The achievements of Shelby and his men are matters 
 of history. Of them all Major Edwards was the hero. 
 The individual instances of his bravery in battle, his 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 15 
 
 wisdom in council, his tender 'solicitude for his men, his 
 self-sacrificing spirit, would fill a volume. Major J. F. 
 Stonestreet, of this city, who was with him until he 
 crossed the Rio Grande into Mexico, tells well the story of 
 his part in the great struggle. 
 
 " I cannot speak of John Edwards without emotion," 
 he said. " He was the noblest man of the many noble 
 men who took part in the great struggle in the West. I 
 can not begin to tell of all the instances of his valor in 
 battle, his kindness in camp, his care for his comrades, his 
 noble self-sacrifice, his great brain and noble heart. No 
 one but those who were with him in those dark hours 
 can appreciate his magnificent spirit. He was only a boy 
 when he joined Gordon's regiment, but he soon became 
 the hero of Shelby's old brigade. It was a grand sight to see 
 him in battle. He was always where the fight was thickest. 
 He was absolutely devoid of fear. The men had the con- 
 fidence in him that they would have had, had he been a God. 
 Their trust in him was sublime. He had a genius for war. 
 While he was as brave as a lion, his courage was not of the 
 rash, impetuous sort that led him into foolhardy under- 
 takings. His wisdom was as great as his bravery. No one 
 appreciates more the character and achievmentsof General 
 Shelby than I; but when the dark days came, it was John 
 Edwards who, more than anybody else, inspired hope in 
 the hearts of the men, cheered and encouraged them, and 
 spurred them on to renewed exertions. 
 
 "This self-sacrifice was noble. I have seen him dis- 
 mount and give his horse away to a tired trooper. In the 
 hospital once I saw him take off his shirt and tear it up for 
 bandages for the wounded, not knowing when or how he 
 was to get another one. I have seen him take off his coat 
 and give it to a soldier who, he thought, was more in need 
 of it. His spirit was so gentle that it hurt him more to 
 see others suffer than to sufferhimself . What heroism he 
 displayed in that awful retreat from Westport ! Small- 
 pox broke out among the men. John Ed wards feared it as 
 little as he did the bullets of the enemy. He would take 
 a soldier with the small-pox in his arms, carry him to the 
 most comfortable place that could be secured, and nurse 
 him with the care of a woman. He would brave any- 
 thing to secure a delicacy for a sick soldier. When we 
 were eating horseflesh on that awful march, and the 
 men were starving, naked and ready to give up, it was he 
 who cheered and encouraged them and held them 
 together. His heart was so big that he thought of every- 
 body before himself. 
 
16 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 "In battle lie was a very Mars; in camp he was as 
 gentle as a woman. The men loved him, and little 
 wonder. He could never do enough for them. Brave men, 
 all of them, they recognized him as the bravest and the 
 brainiest. ' Follow me, boys/ I have heard him cry/ and 
 -I will take you where the bullets are the thickest and the 
 sabers the sharpest/ and then, his sword flashed in his 
 hand, he would be off to where the fight was the hottest. 
 And the men would be after him with a confidence and 
 devotion that insured victory. He was the bravest man in 
 war and the gentlest in peace that I ever saw. He was 
 the soul of honor. He was one man in a million. He 
 was the Chevalier Bayard of Missouri." 
 
 Notwithstanding his intrepid bravery, Major Stone- 
 street says he was badly wounded but once. That was in 
 Marmaduke's raid on Springfield, when he was shot and 
 taken prisoner in the fight near Hartsville. He was after- 
 ward exchanged and rejoined his regiment at Jackson- 
 ville, Ark. He especially distinguished himself for 
 bravery and strategy in the 4th of July fight at Helena, 
 which was in progress when Vicksburg surrendered. It 
 was said of him that he had more horses shot from under 
 him, and gave more horses away to those whom he thought 
 needed them more than himself, than any man in Shelby's 
 brigade. 
 
 So testifies one who knew John Edwards through all 
 the trying scenes of a contest all too bitter, and who loved 
 him well. John Edwards was a born soldier. The genius 
 of war and the genius of poetry alike presided at his 
 birth. The courage of the Knight and the poesy of the 
 Troubadour were alike his. He crowned the brow of war 
 with golden nimbus of the poet. For his deft fingers the 
 brand of the grizzled grenadier and the minstrel's lute 
 were alike fashioned. He brought the chivalry and song 
 of the thirteenth into the Titanic struggles of the nine- 
 teenth century. 
 
 An officer once bore a report of General Shelby's to Gen- 
 eral Holmes, who on reading it exclaimed with an impious 
 expletive: "Why, Shelby is a poet as well as a fighter!" 
 "No, replied the officer, but his Adjutant is a born poet." 
 It was this remarkable combination of elements in Major 
 Edwards that made him as brave and fearless as he was 
 tender and gentle. It also accounts for the strong, 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 17 
 
 religious sentiment of his nature mentioned in a brief 
 speech at his grave. Belief in the supernatural elements 
 of religion and poesy go hand in hand. Goethe stated a 
 very large and a very fundamental truth when he wrote, 
 "Der Aberglaube ist die Poesie des Lebens" the "over- 
 faith, the supernatural, is the ground of life's highest 
 political forms. 
 
 IN MEXICO MARRIAGE, ETC. 
 
 After the close of the war Major Edwards followed 
 the fortunes of his old leader with others of his fellow- 
 soldiers into Mexico, where .he spent two years, a deeply 
 interested spectator of the affairs of Maximilian's Empire. 
 With this amiable, but unfortunate Prince, and with his 
 wife the "Poor Carlotta," he became a favorite, and 
 through him was negotiated and obtained the grant 
 which enabled Shelby, and perhaps fifty others, to estab- 
 lish the Cordova Colony of Carlotta. He and Governor 
 Allen, of Louisiana, a man of beautiful spirit and richly 
 stored mind, established a newspaper, The Mexican Times, 
 devoted to the restoration of an era of peace, prosperity 
 and good government for this sadly distracted people. 
 Whilst here, the material of one of his books, "An Un- 
 written Leaf of the War/' was produced and gathered, 
 wl|ich appears in this present volume. What a strangely 
 romantic period these two years must have been to the 
 dreamy, poetic soldier of the North. The rich, tropical 
 foliage, the skies luminously blue, the warm airs, the 
 voluptuous climate, the romantic people inheriting the 
 glorious traditions of Old Spain, the memories of the Cid, 
 songs of Calderon and Lope de Vega, chanted in the sweet 
 the Castilian tongue must have been things of ceaseless 
 charm to the imaginative temperament so strongly marked, 
 in Major Edwards. It was a period of romantic adventure, 
 and from time to time he has related to me singular 
 episodes that occurred during his association with Governor 
 Allen 3 but brevity denies indulgence to the reminiscent 
 mood. 
 
!S JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 In the year 1867, having returned from Mexico, Major 
 Edwards went on the Republican as a reporter, then under 
 the editorial control of Col. William Hyde, a noble 
 gentleman and an able writer, whose contributions to that 
 great paper have rarely been equaled in western journalism. 
 
 In the year 18G8, in connection with the brilliant and 
 versatile Col. John C. Moore, now of the Pueblo Dis- 
 patch, he inaugurated the Kansas City Times, with the 
 iinancial support of R. B. Drury & Co. It was at this 
 time that he was married. This marriage took place on 
 March 28, 1871, to Mary Virginia Plattenburg, of Dover, 
 Lafayette County, Missouri. A woman scarce less bril- 
 liant than himself, of high impulses, poetic sentiment and 
 of an uncommon literary faculty, she was a fit companion 
 for this molder of " fiery and delectable shapes." They 
 were married at the residence of Gen. John 0. Shelby, 
 near Aullville, in Lafayette County. This marriage took 
 place away from the home of the bride because of an inter- 
 posed objection on the part of the parents, grounded solely 
 upon the near family relationship of the parties. The 
 fruit of this marriage is two boys and one girl. The boys 
 are John aged seventeen and James fourteen years, the girl 
 Laura eight. 
 
 THE DUEL WITH COLONEL FOSTER. 
 
 Major Edwards remained on the Times until 1873, two 
 years after it passed into its present management, and 
 greatly aided in building it up into its present command- 
 ing position as director of western thought and enterprise. 
 In this same year, he went upon the St. Louis Despatch, 
 owned and controlled by Mr. Stilson Hutchins, whom he 
 followed into the St. Louis Times. It was while at work 
 on the Times that his duel with Col. Emory S. Foster 
 took place. The difficulty grew out of certain questions 
 incident to the great civil struggle whose memories were 
 yet fresh in the minds of all, and its passions still unallayed. 
 These matters were discussed with great acerbity of 
 temper and sharpness of expression. The acrimony engeri- 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 19 
 
 dered by a long, bitter contest, was still more or less domi- 
 nant in the minds of men in all sections. It can serve no 
 good purpose here to dwell on the questions themselves 
 or their mode of treatment; they belong to the dead past, 
 and there let them remain. I know that the acrimony so 
 rife at the time of this occurrence with Major Edwards, in 
 common with the better class of men in both sections, was 
 a thing to be deplored and forgotten. The friends and 
 admirers of Major Edwards are of all parties. There are 
 no more tender or appreciative tributes to his memory 
 than those written by the men in blue. Mrs. Edwards 
 informs me that she has received as many expressions of 
 sympathy and admiration from Federal as from Confeder- 
 ate soldiers. The perpetuation of the rancor of the war is 
 left to the camp-follower and coward. I shall here enter 
 on no defense of Major Edwards' ideas on the duello. 
 With his education, and sensitive perception of the worth 
 of personal honor, it is easily accounted for. Omitting 
 the offensive paragraphs we give this statement from a 
 morning paper the day after the rencounter: 
 
 BELOIT, Wis., Sept. 4, 1875. 
 
 A duel was fought at five o^clock this afternoon, six 
 miles north of Rockford, in Winnebago County, Illinois, 
 between Maj. John N. Edwards, of the St. Louis Times 
 and Despatch, and Col. E. S. Foster, of the St. Louis 
 Journal. The origin of the affair grew out of the recent 
 invitation to Jefferson Davis to address the Winnebago 
 Fair. ^ The St. Louis Times of August the 25th contained 
 an article written by Major Edwards, commenting upon 
 the treatment of Mr. Davis, and reflecting upon the intol- 
 erant spirit manifested. To this the Journal replied that 
 the writer of the Times article had lied, and knew he lied, 
 when he wrote it. 
 
 Major Edwards took exception to this and demanded 
 a retraction of the offensive language. Colonel Foster, 
 the editor of the Journal, disavowed any personal allusion 
 to Major Edwards, but declined to retract the language. 
 A lengthy correspondence ensued, Col. H. B. Branch 
 acting as the friend of Major Edwards, and Col. W. D. W. 
 Barnard as the friend of Colonel Foster, the result of 
 which is embodied in the last letters of the principals, 
 which show the difference between them : 
 
20 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 ST. Louis, Mo., Aug. 30, 1875. 
 6 ' Col. EMORY S. FOSTER : 
 
 "Sir: In reply to your letter of this date I have to state 
 that your reply to the reasonable request I made of you, 
 to-wit, to withdraw and to disavow all language in your 
 editorial of the 25th inst., personally offensive to myself, is 
 evasive and not responsive to my request. In my letter 
 to you I referred solely to what was directly personal to 
 myself, without inquiring whether my editorial, or yours 
 in answer to it, exceeded the usages of the press in discuss- 
 ing a subject generally or referring to bodies of persons. 
 I can not admit your right to introduce these questions 
 into this controversy which refer solely to your allusion to 
 the writer of the Times editorial. 
 
 " The disclaimer in the first four paragraphs of your 
 letter would be satisfactory had you followed it up by a 
 withdrawal of the offensive terms of your editorial, so far 
 as they referred to me personally. But as you decline to 
 do so I must, therefore, construe your letter of this date, 
 and its spirit, as a refusal on your part to do me an act of 
 common justice, and so regarding it, I deem it my duty 
 to ask of you that satisfaction which one gentleman has a 
 right to ask of another. 
 
 " My friend, Col. H. B. Branch, who will deliver this, 
 is authorized to arrange with any friend you may select, 
 the details of further arrangements connected with the 
 subject. Very respectfully, your obedient servant, 
 
 J. N. EDWARDS/' 
 
 ST. Louis, Aug. 31, 1875. 
 " Col. JOHN N. EDWARDS: 
 
 " Sir: Yours of the 30th inst. was handed to my friend, 
 W. D. W. Barnard, Esq., at 11 o'clock this A. M., by your 
 friend, Col. H. B. Branch, and is now before me. In 
 reply, I have to state that I emphatically disclaimed in 
 my note of yesterday any intention of referring to you, or 
 in any way offering to you, a personal offense in the mat- 
 ter in which you have raised the issue. 
 
 "My friend Mr. Barnard will have charge of my honor 
 in the premises. I am, very respectfully, your obedient 
 servant, EMORY S. FOSTER." 
 
 It being found impossible, as appears from the above 
 correspondence, to accomplish a reconciliation between 
 the parties by a withdrawal of the offensive language, the 
 matter passed into the hands of the seconds, Col. H. B. 
 Branch, on the part of Major Edwards, and W. D. W. 
 Barnard on the part of Colonel Foster. 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 21 
 
 They were to meet on the 4th day of September, 1875, 
 between the hours of 6 and 7 A. M., or as soon thereafter 
 as the parties could reach the grounds, in the county of 
 Winnebago, State of Illinois. The weapons, Colt's navy 
 revolvers calibre 38, the Distance twenty paces. Each 
 party entitled to one shot, unless both demanded a second. 
 The firing was to be at the words, thus: " Are you ready; 
 one, two, three" the firing to occur after the word 
 "two" and not after the word "three." The seconds were 
 to be similarly armed, and any violation of the rules agreed 
 upon entitled the second of the one to shoot down the 
 offending second of the other. 
 
 Upon arriving at Rockford both parties drove to the 
 Holland House and partook of dinner. 
 
 About 3 o'clock. the seconds completed their arrange- 
 ments. It was decided to drive five miles north on 
 the Beloit road, and have the meeting in. some secluded 
 spot. Both principals agreed, and Col. Edwards' party 
 started off in a hack at half -past three, the understanding 
 being for them to await the other party for half an hour 
 after arriving as far out as designated. If the challenged 
 party did not arrive on time it was to be regarded as an 
 evidence of cowardice. 
 
 The Foster party caught up with the other party just 
 as they were halting at an estimated distance from the 
 city of five miles. 
 
 The spot where the halt was called was a shaded valley, 
 with a winding stream called Turtle Creek, running 
 through it. The seconds held another consultation, and, 
 the site suiting them, they went in search of a place suffi- 
 ciently far from the Beloit road to be safe from intrusion. 
 After an absence of five minutes they were successful in 
 their search, and on their return the whole party left the 
 carriages. The hackmen, who were wondering what was 
 in the wind, but had not the enterprise to gratify their 
 curiosity, were told to wait in the neighborhood for a few 
 minutes, which instructions they filled to the very letter. 
 The names of the parties who went on the field were: Col. 
 John N. Edwards, the challenging principal; Col. H. B. 
 Branch, second; Dr. Montgomery, surgeon; Dr. Munford, 
 of the Kansas City Times, friend; Major Foster, principal; 
 W. D. W. Barnard, second; Dr. P. S. O'Reilly, surgeon, 
 and the representative of the Tribune, friend. 
 
 The spot selected was a couple of hundred yards to the 
 west of the road, a beautifully shaded valley in which 
 horses and cattle were grazing. The seconds took up 
 position near a tree and commenced to examine the 
 
22 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 weapons. The principals were a few yards apart, Foster 
 reclining on a bank, coolly smoking a cigar, Edwards 
 resting with his back against a tree and conversing with 
 Dr. Munford, with whom he served in the Confederate 
 army. The surgeons took their cases of instruments to 
 the hill-side, where they sat watching the preparations for 
 the encounter. Some time was occupied in the examina- 
 tion and loading of the pistols, and while the necessary 
 part of the work was in progress, the principals each 
 divested himself of his watch and other articles which 
 might turn off a bullet. The next procedure was to 
 measure the ground, a matter which was gone through 
 with business-like dispatch and coolness. Twenty paces 
 was the distance. The positions were north and south, 
 and were marked by a short stake driven into the ground. 
 Branches of trees were cleared out of the way io prevent 
 injury from falls, and other details attended to which 
 might render things comfortable for the parties imme- 
 diately interested. The next important step was to toss 
 up for position and the call. Branch, Edward's second, 
 won the choice of position, and Barnard the call. This 
 fact was communicated to the principals, who expressed 
 themselves satisfied with the result. The principals and 
 seconds then walked up the ground. Edwards asked 
 Foster's opinion as to position, but the latter said he had 
 no choice. They both received their weapons from the 
 seconds and Edwards chose the south end of the ground. 
 Before the final arrangements were completed, the friends 
 were requested to relieve themselves of their pistols, a 
 precaution against a general skirmish should either party 
 feel aggrieved. Dr. Munford was the only one who had a 
 pistol on his person, and he at once placed it in his valise. 
 The conditions of the fight were then read. Edwards 
 requested Barnard to articulate the words, "Are you ready? 
 one, two, three/' in a distinct manner, so as to prevent 
 unpleasant haste. Both men at this point displayed mar- 
 velous nerve, Foster smoking his cigar in an unconcerned 
 way. Positions were then taken up, the the seconds shak- 
 ing hands with their principals, and receiving instructions 
 in case they should fall. At length all was ready. The 
 seconds had pistols in their hands ready to revenge any 
 infringements of the code. There was an ominous pause. 
 At exactly 5 o'clock the men faced each other and took men- 
 tal aim; then came the words, "Are you ready?" in clear, 
 distinct tones: "one, two." Before the word three the duel- 
 ists fired almost simultaneously. The surgeons anxiously 
 looked each to his man, expecting him to fall, but neither 
 
BICGHArillCAL SKETCH. 23 
 
 was wotmdcd . " A little high ! " exclaimed Foster, as soon as 
 he had ni^u. Edwards demanded another fire, in an excited 
 tune. Hissecuiid asked if he would adhere to that resolution. 
 "Yes/' he replied, " it is just as I toldyou before we cameon 
 the Held. I will go on if it takes a thousand fires; "and with 
 this remark lie sat down on the grass. Foster declined 
 another fire. He was the challenged party, and felt no 
 bitterness against his antagonist. Therefore he was not 
 anxious for blood. His honor had been sustained as 
 the challenged party. Shots had been exchanged, and 
 that was all that was necessary. Barnard went to talk 
 with Edwards, who was heard to say: "I have admitted 
 as much as I can do have received no satisfaction to take 
 with me." After the interchange of a few words, Edwards 
 concluded to make the thing up. He approached Foster 
 and shook hands. There was mutual congratulation all 
 round, and it was interesting to see the brotherly love dis- 
 played by the men, who two minutes before, had faced 
 each other with death in their eyes. The genial Bourbon 
 was produced, and the agreeable termination to the affair 
 toasted. A short time was spent on the grass in mutual 
 explanation, and everything was forgotten and forgiven. 
 The parties then returned to their hacks, one shaping 
 toward Beloit and the other to Kockford, which place 
 they left in the evening, but for what point the reporter 
 failed to ascertain. 
 
 Apprehending a possible fatal result, Major Edwards 
 wrote the following note to his friend, Dr. Morrison Mun- 
 ford, who was present. It was written at the Tremont 
 House, Chicago, and bears no date, and written in pencil 
 on a leaf torn from a note-book which he carried in his 
 pocket. The note needs no comment it carries it's own : 
 
 Dear Morry: A little farewell I want to speak to you. 
 I have but three thoughts: my wife, my two children. 
 When you can help my wife in her pride help her. It 
 aint much only it is so much to me. Your friend, 
 
 J. N. EDWAKDS. 
 
 This note is a revelation of the character of the rela- 
 tions between these two men, and shows how implicity he 
 relied upon the loyalty and steadfastness of Dr. Munford's 
 friendship the one man of all others upon whom he called 
 in his supposed extremity. John Edwards knew the man 
 he calls " Dear Morry " as perhaps no other man did, and 
 
24 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 lie trusted him. And now, the " little farewell" has been 
 spoken, and the memory of a brave soul is left to men. 
 
 JOURNALIST AND AUTHOR. 
 
 After his withdrawal from the St. Louis Times he 
 started to Santa Fe, to engage in sheep-raising, but visiting 
 Dover to make his farewells, he was dissuaded from the 
 undertaking, and remained at the home of his wif e's father, 
 Judge J. S. Plattenburg, and wrote the " Noted Guer- 
 rillas," a wonderful record of the border warfare. Subse- 
 quently he went to Sedalia, taking editorial charge of the 
 Democrat. Retiring from this paper he, started the Des- 
 patch, which had a brief, but singularly brilliant career. 
 He was then called to the editorial management of the St. 
 Joseph Gazette, by the late Col. J. N. Burnes, the owner 
 of the paper. Again, in 1887, he was recalled to the edit- 
 orial chair of the Kansas City Times, which place he held 
 at the time of his death. One needs but to read the 
 numerous press tributes to know how exceedingly brilliant 
 his editorial career has been. His style, bright and full of 
 poetic forms, was forceful, vigorous and convincing; as 
 flashing and as keen as the scimiter of Saladdin. Many of 
 the passages in this book bear critical comparison with the 
 most beautiful passages of classic English. The exuber- 
 ance of expression and prodigality of beautiful words in 
 the compositions of Major Edwards have occasionally led 
 men to overlook or underestimate the more solid aspects of 
 his mind. His historical and general knowledge was very 
 great; his familiarity with the best specimens of Classic 
 English in both prose and poetry was something wonderful 
 in both accuracy and comprehensiveness. The opportuni- 
 ties of a student's life were never within his reach, and yet 
 he knew vastly more of books than most men who had been 
 patient toilers over their pages through continuous years. 
 To the ordinary mind it was wholly inexplicable, how or 
 when he obtained such stores of rich and varied knowl- 
 edge. His work was a remarkable blending of fact and 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 25 
 
 fancy, of cogent reasoning and vivicf poetic expression. 
 A rare combination of powers. There are many grad- 
 grinds, but few poets to clothe the hard facts of life in the 
 aureole of imperishable beauty. The words necessary to 
 describe fitly the dauntless courage, the greatness of soul, 
 the tenderness surpassing that of woman, characterizing 
 the life of John Edwards, would, to those who little knew 
 4iim, seem fulsome and extravagant. But not so to his 
 friends who knew him. Some of the virtues of Major Ed- 
 wards were so intense in their expression as to seem 
 almost weaknesses. He never talked of himself. There 
 was not a single shred of the braggart in his nature. He 
 was reticent of his own deeds to the verge of eccentricity. 
 He seemed to be wholly unambitious, free, even from a 
 suspicion of egotism. A strongly marked instance of this 
 is shown in the fact in three books of which he is the 
 real hero, not once is illusion made to himself. I fully 
 agree with his devoted friend, Dr. Munford, that such a 
 repression of self, under such circumstances, is simply 
 without a parallel. I have known but one other man well, 
 in Missouri, who even nearly equaled the modesty, the 
 unselfish self-forgetfulness of John Edwards. That man 
 was the prince of orators, whose soldiery skill wrote his 
 name beside that of Xenophon, viz. : Gen. A. W. Doniphan. 
 For all meretricious methods, for every form of pretense, 
 for merely dramatic effect, John Edwards entertained the 
 harshest scorn. Sham and cant that sniveled, stirred his 
 gentle nature into holiest and hottest wrath, and he wove 
 around its victim the network of scathing lampoon that 
 burned like the shirt of Nessus. Trickery, deceit and 
 cowardice alone made him pitiless. That he was unselfish 
 is clearly manifested in this fact, that his great influence* 
 and surely no single man in all the State had so large a 
 personal following whose devotion was a passion, was 
 never employed to advance his own financial interest or to 
 win place for himself. His influence was always for his 
 friends. The witnesses are everywhere, in every walk of 
 life. Men in high places, and low alike, bear testimony 
 to his unselfish work for every comer. He showed me once 
 
26 JOHN NEWMAN EDWAHIV. 
 
 a letter from a poor Irishman, asking his assistance to pro- 
 cure a position on the police force of St. Louis, and it was 
 granted as readily as to a seeker of the highest place and 
 power. Of his carelessness of self-advancement and his 
 unceasing thought of other people, this circumstance is 
 recalled. He, the writer, and an old soldier, grim and 
 gray, in stature a very son of Anak, stood together. These 
 two men had ridden into battle as joyously as the groom 
 seeks his bride. And now in the days of peace, the griz- 
 zled soldier asks: "John, wouldn't you make a good gov- 
 ernor?" Promptly the answer came: "No, but I know 
 who would/' The swart grenadier asks: "Who?" It is 
 not needful to give the party named, beyond this: that he 
 represented his district in Congress, and wore for years 
 stainlessly the judicial ermine of his State. I reconsider, 
 and give the name of Elijah Norton, the able jurist, the 
 distinguished publicist and reproachless gentleman. 
 
 HIS DEATH. 
 
 Major Edwards was ill as early as the Wednesday prior 
 to his death, but his demise at last was sudden and unex- 
 pected by his friends. The immediate cause of his death 
 was inanition of the cardiac nerves. In the morning early 
 he read part of a late paper. No one witnessed his death, 
 but Thomas, a colored servant, and his little daughter 
 Laura, aged eight years. His sons were at St. Mary's Col- 
 lege, Kansas, and Mrs. Edwards, worn out from loss of rest, 
 had retired to another room. He seemed to have some 
 premonition that the end was near, as three different times 
 he asked Thomas to call Mrs. Edwards. The boy not 
 realizing the Major's condition, said, "no let Mrs. 
 Edwards rest." The child was playing with a bubble-pipe, 
 and about ten minutes before death he blew a bubble, and 
 said "Laura, always remember that papa bought you that 
 pipe " evidently from this he knew the end had come. 
 The little girl stood by the bedside wiping the chill death 
 dew from her father's brow, as his soul took its mysterious 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 27 
 
 I 
 
 flight to tliat ({ bourne whence- no traveler returns. " 
 Mrs. Edwards and Major Bittinger entered the room 
 together, just as life's bound was reached. Soon it was 
 noised abroad, and produced a profound sensation in all 
 parts of the city. Says one: 
 
 The news soon spread throughout the city, and there 
 was universal expression of profound sorrow. Major 
 Edwards had been a frequent visitor to the capital, attend- 
 ing all the sessions of the Legislature for the past eighteen 
 years, and all Democratic conventions held during that 
 time. He was known to a majority of the members of the 
 General Assembly, to the State officials and to the people 
 generally. As soon as his death was announced, groups of 
 men could be seen on the principal streets, discussing the sad 
 event, and at the capitol half of the members of the Sen- 
 ate and House at once left their seats and gathered in the 
 lobby and adjoining rooms. Republicans and Democrats 
 alike expressed the deepest sorrow for his sudden and 
 untimely death, and the highest sympathy for his bereaved 
 family. During the recess at noon nothing else was 
 talked about among the crowds at the various hotels but 
 the death of the brilliant journalist. 
 
 RESOLUTIONS OF RESPECT. 
 
 At the afternoon session of the Senate, Senator 
 McGrath, of St. Louis, offered the following resolution: 
 
 WHEREAS, The Senate of Missouri, with profound regret, have 
 learned of the death of one of Missouri's greatest and rnost distin- 
 guished citizens, Major John N. Edwards; therefore, be it 
 
 Resolved, That in respect to his memory the Senate now 
 adjourn. 
 
 After a few appropriate remarks by Senator Moran, of 
 St. Joseph, the resolution was unanimously adopted and 
 the Senate adjourned. In the House, Hon. Lysander A. 
 Thompson, of Macon, offered a similar resolution, which 
 was unanimously adopted and the House adjourned. This 
 evening a great number of the members of the Senate 
 and House visited the McCarty House to take a last look 
 at the features of the dead journalist. 
 
 In addition to the action of the Senate and House of 
 Representatives as a mark of respect to the memory of the 
 dead journalist, the local newspaper men and newspaper 
 correspondents met at the Tribune office this afternoon, 
 
28 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 and a committee consisting of Walter M. Monroe, of the 
 Tipton Times, W. A. Edwards, of the St. Joseph Gazette, 
 and C. B. Oldham, of the Jefferson City Tribune, were 
 appointed to draft suitable memorial resolutions to the 
 memory of the deceased journalist. The committee 
 reported the following: 
 
 Maj. John S". Edwards was born in Virginia about 
 fifty-one years ago. His parents moved to Lexington, 
 Mo., when he was of tender age. He received a common 
 school education and afterward learned the printing trade 
 in an office at Lexington. At the commencement of the 
 Civil War he enlisted in the Confederate army and belonged 
 to Gen. Jo. O. Shelby's command. He was promoted 
 time and again for skill and personal bravery, and won his 
 military titles in the most honorable manner possible. 
 He was engaged in more than fifty battles and skirmishes, 
 and was severely wounded on more than one occasion. As 
 the war drew to a close he followed Shelby and Price to 
 Texas, and about the time peace was declared a small frag- 
 ment of Shelby's command, known as the "Iron Brigade," 
 sank the flag the blood-stained flag which they had car- 
 ried through the war in the Rio Grande River, crossed the 
 line into Mexico, and for thirteen months served in the 
 French army. Later, Major Edwards returned to Missouri 
 and published several books, one relating to the border 
 warfare in Missouri, Texas and Arkansas, another entitled 
 (( Shelby and his Men." He soon after engaged in news- 
 paper editorial work, first in St. Louis, next in Sedalia, 
 then in St. Joseph and Kansas City, respectively. He was 
 for a time editor of the Despatch and Times in St. Louis, 
 edited the Sedalia Democrat and Despatch, later the St. 
 Joseph Gazette, and at the time of his death was editor of 
 the Kansas City Times. No writer in the West was better 
 known than Major Edwards. He followed no man. 
 Every idea he advanced was original, and every thought he 
 expressed in print was copied far and wide. He had no 
 superior in the newspaper field and but few peers. He 
 was honest and fearless, and never published a line in pub- 
 lic prints which he did not believe to be the truth, and for 
 which he would not answer personally at all times. We, 
 representatives of the western press, recognize in his 
 death an irreparable loss. He was brave and generous in 
 war, and fearless and honest in civil life, and liberal to a 
 fault an affectionate husband and a kind father. We 
 believe that his death has left a vacancy in Missouri jour- 
 nalism that can never be filled. His death is a calamity 
 to the press of the State. As an original writer and 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 29 
 
 conscientious literary man, he never had a superior. He 
 was brave and magnanimous in health, and fearless and 
 resigned when the final summons came. Resolutions can 
 not express our opinion of his ability and fearlessness. He 
 lived the life of a patriotic American, and died the death of 
 a brave, conscientious newspaper man. 
 
 Augustine Gallagher, Kansas City Journal, president. 
 
 W. A. Edwards, St. Joseph Gazette, secretary. 
 
 C. B. Oldham, Tribune, chairman committee. 
 
 Walt M. Monroe, Tipton Times. 
 
 Walter Sander, WestlicJie Post. 
 
 John Meagher, St. Louis Globe-Democrat. 
 
 A. C. Lemmon, Post-Despatch. 
 
 W. M. Smith, St. Louis Republic. 
 
 W. N. Graham, Sedalia Gazette. 
 
 J. H. Edwards, Tribune. 
 
 W. A. Curry, Kansas City Times. 
 
 W. J. Cambliss, Higginsville Advance. 
 
 John W. Jacks, Montgomery Standard. 
 
 A. A. Lesueur, Lexington Intelligencer. 
 
 Walter Williams, Boonville Advertiser. 
 
 Immediately on the announcement of Major Edwards' 
 death, Col. A. C. Dawes telegraphed General Manager 
 Clark of the Missouri Pacific, and received a reply that he 
 would place his special car at his disposal to convey the 
 remains of the dead journalist and his family to Dover, 
 Lafayette County, where it had been decided he should 
 be buried. The pall-bearers are: ex-Governor Charles P. 
 Johnson, Dr. Morrison Munford, Maj. J. L. Bittinger, 
 Darwin W. Marmaduke, J. F. Merryman and Col. 
 Thomas P. Hoy. 
 
 Captain Lesueur, Secretary of State, gives the follow- 
 ing account of the journey from Jefferson City to Dover: 
 
 THE FUNERAL JOURNEY. 
 
 The death of Maj John N. Edwards, from heart dis- 
 ease, took place at the McCarty House, in Jefferson City, 
 at 9:40 A. M., Saturday, May 4th. It is not too much to 
 say that it created a profound sensation throughout the 
 city. No man in Missouri was so well known as he to its 
 public men. . In Jefferson City he was known by every- 
 
30 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 body, and his friends were numbered by the limit of his 
 acquaintance. Republicans as well as Democrats were his 
 warm admirers, and the humblest negro that knew him 
 loved him. 
 
 It is safe to say that no funeral that has occurred at 
 Dover for many years has created a more profound impres- 
 sion upon the public mind than did that of Major Ed- 
 wards. There he learned to know his beloved commander, 
 Gen. Joseph 0. Shelby, and many of the brave and 
 daring soldier boys whose firmness in battle and endur- 
 ance on the march gained for the old brigade that 
 renown which he afterward immortalized in most poetic 
 prose. There, too, he wooed and won his bride, a fair, 
 gray-eyed Southern lassie, as full of impulse and romance 
 as himself, a woman of ideals and poesy perhaps, but a 
 brave and true-hearted woman who stood by him always, 
 in weal and in woe, in joy and affliction, and was ever his 
 ministering angel, his comfort and his solace. 0, yes, 
 Dover had many ties upon the heart of Major Edwards, 
 and to the good people of the vicinity, a steady, God-fear- 
 ing people, but a people of leisure, who read and preserve 
 a touch of the romance of the days of Cceur de Lion, of 
 Bruce and of McGregor, John Ed wards was the embodiment 
 of all that was chivalric and poetic. They ever followed 
 from journal to journal his gifted pen, and he was nearer 
 and dearer to them than he was to many with whom he 
 came in daily contact outiin the busy, active world. And 
 they were there to put all that was mortal of him away in 
 its last resting place with their own loving hands. Their 
 wives and daughters were there, too, to add their tears to 
 those of the stricken wife and children. As the numerous 
 assemblage encircled the grave, grief and sorrow written 
 upon every face, the scene was one to immortalize the painter 
 who could have seized it and put it on canvas. There was 
 the evidence of an unusual depth of feeling and regret 
 even for such an occasion. 
 
 From the moment of his death until his remains were 
 taken from the train, there was a constant stream of sad 
 and sorrowing friends passing in and out of the corridor, 
 all intent upon hearing the particulars of his dying hours, 
 upon looking just once more at his familiar features, upon 
 expressing grief at his loss and of sympathy with his be- 
 reaved wife and children. At 12:30 on Sunday the funeral 
 procession formed at the hotel to go to the depot, 
 where the train was waiting. First, came a long line of 
 gentlemen on foot, led by Governor Francis, and com- 
 posed of senators, members of the house of representa- 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 31 
 
 tives, and many others. By the side of the hearse were 
 the pall-bearers Dr. Morrison Munford, Col. D. W. Mar- 
 maduke, Hon. J. Frank Merriman, Maj. John L. Bit- 
 tinger, Col. T. P. Hoy and Capt. A. A. Lesueur ; after 
 them came the family and other friends in carriages. At 
 Tipton a special train furnished by the courtesy of S. H. 
 Clark, Esq., at the request of Col. A. C. Dawes, awaited 
 the funeral party, which was composed of Mrs. Edwards, 
 Miss Ella McCarty, her near friend, all of the pall- 
 bearers (except Col. Marmaduke), Rev. Peter Trone, and 
 Messrs. George and Walter Plattenburg. At Boonville 
 they were joined by Hon. Thomas Cranmer, and at Mar- 
 shall by Elder George Plattenburg and Mr. Yerbey. The 
 train reached the Dover depot at about 6:30 p. M., where 
 it was met by a number of the citizens of the place, and 
 by the following named gentlemen, who acted as actual 
 pall-bearers : John Allen Harwood, E. S. Van Anglen, 
 Dr. E. R. Meng, R. T. Koontz, James F.Winn and George 
 B. Gordon. The casket was deposited at the Plattenburg 
 mansion, Mrs. Edwards 7 girlhood home, until 10 o'clock 
 the next morning, when the burial took place in the vil- 
 lage cemetery. The whole country-side had turned out. 
 
 The train arrived as above, at Dover, 6:40 p. M. Sun- 
 day, May 5th. The following day, May 6th, he was borne 
 to his last resting pl'ace. The burial is thus described by 
 the Kansas City Times, the paper he started, and at whose 
 helm he gallantly and dauntlessly stood through many a 
 storm: 
 
 THE LAST SLEEP. 
 
 [Special to the Kansas City Times.'] 
 
 HIGGIKSVILLE, Mo., May 6th. In the old cemetery, 
 just at the outskirts of the little town of Dover, ten miles 
 from here, the body of John N. Edwards was buried this 
 morning. It is a quiet, secluded spot, where the rumble 
 of wagon wheels in the road near by are the only sounds, 
 save the singing of birds, heard from one year's end to 
 the other just the place where one with Major Edwards' 
 love of nature and the beautiful would desire to lie in his 
 last long sleep. And it was his wish, frequently expressed , 
 that he should be buried there. It is within easy view from 
 the old Plattenburg homestead, where his wife spent her 
 girlhood and he wooed and won her, and from which hi 3 
 body was carried to its last resting place this moring. From 
 
32 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 the windows the tombstones which mark the graves of the 
 former residents of Dover are plainly visible. The whole 
 scene is a pretty rural one, the scattering houses of Dover 
 giving it just enough of an urban aspect to soften its out- 
 lines without destroying its primitive beauty. It was no 
 wonder that one with the poetic temperament and chival- 
 rous ideals of Major Edwards should choose the old Dover 
 cemetery as his burial place, even if his early days had not 
 endeared it to him. 
 
 The special train which was kindly furnished by the 
 Missouri Pacific bearing the body, the wife and little 
 daughter of Major Edwards, the pall-bearers and friends, 
 arrived at Dover from Jefferson City, Sunday night at 6:40. 
 The pall-bearers were Maj. John L. Bittinger of St. 
 Joseph; Dr. Morrison Munford, Hon. J. F. Merryman, Rev. 
 Peter Trone of Clinton; Col. T. P. Hoy and Secretary of 
 State A. A. Lesueur. Miss Ella McCarty of Jefferson City; 
 Messrs. George and Walter Plattenburg of Kansas City; 
 brothers of Sirs. Edwards, and Mr. Thomas Cranmer, 
 sheriff of Cooper County, were among the party that came 
 from Jefferson City. 
 
 The body was at once taken from the station to the 
 residence of Mrs. L. C. Plattenburg, Mrs. Edward's 
 mother. 
 
 THE LAST SAD LOOK. 
 
 At 8:30 this morning the casket was opened, and the 
 citizens of Dover and the people from the country for 
 miles around, filed in to take a last look at the face which 
 was loved throughout the length and breadth of Lafayette 
 County, where he passed his early life, and from which ho 
 went to make a name that was honored and loved where- 
 ever it was known. Moist eyes of strong men gave evi- 
 dence of the sincere affection with which the dead soldier 
 and journalist had been regarded. Many of the men who 
 passed had seen him go out to battle in the pride of his 
 youthful strength, and they said that after many years 
 the face was not changed as much as might have been 
 expected. The features were life-like and the expression 
 peaceful. "He looks as if he were sleeping," many 
 remarked. 
 
 The greater part of the five or six hundred people who 
 viewed the corpse came from Lexington, Higginsville, Cor- 
 der and the neighboring towns. There had been a mis- 
 understanding as to the time the funeral would take place, 
 and many persons from Higginsville, Corder and other 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 33 
 
 places had driven over Sunday. This and the comparative 
 inaccessibility of Dover kept many persons away who had 
 desired to be present. Nevertheless the little town could 
 not have accommodated many more strangers. 
 
 There were no services at the house. At 10 o'clock 
 the casket was closed. In addition to the pall-bearers 
 who had accompanied the body from Jefferson Cit} 7 , Mr. 
 John Allen Harwood, E. S. Van Anglen, E. K. Meng, 
 li. L Koontz, James F. Winn, and George B. Gordon of 
 Dover, had been selected. They carried the casket to the 
 hearse, which had been sent from Lexington. Besides 
 Mrs. Ed wards -And her two sons and daughter, the mem- 
 bers of the family who were present were J. Q. Platten- 
 burg, H. W. Plattenburg, H. Y. Plattenburg, George 
 Plattenburg, and W. L. Plattenburg, brothers of Mrs. 
 Edwards ; Mrs. L. C. Plattenburg, her mother and Miss 
 Eala Plattenburg, her sister. Mrs. Thomas Yerby, with 
 whom Major Edwards lived when he was a boy, and learned 
 to set type, also followed the body to the grave. Mr. Wiley 
 O. Cox, of Kansas City, was in one of the carriages. The 
 procession was a long one, but the distance from the house 
 to the cemetery was^hort. 
 
 THE PREACHER'S TRIBUTE. 
 
 The services at the grave were simple, as Major 
 Edwards had wished them to be. They were conducted 
 by Rev. George Plattenburg, a cousin of Mrs Edwards. 
 He spoke feelingly and every word was listened to intently. 
 His address was substantially as follows : 
 
 Twenty-eight years ago, when General Shelby was the 
 captain of a single company, composed largely of the 
 flower of the youth of this immediate vicinity, Major 
 Edwards came to my home in Little Rock, Arkansas, 
 accompanied by Yandell Blackwell, a soldier and gentle- 
 man from spur to plume. From that day to this my 
 intercourse with Major Edwards has been of a most inti- 
 mate character. I have never met a more rarely gifted or 
 nobler man. His knowledge of men and books was sim- 
 ply wonderful. When and how he gained this great and 
 varied knowledge was to me, a close student of books for 
 more than forty years, still more wonderful, engaged as he 
 was continuously in great active interests, and involved in 
 the stress of vast political contests. A great journal of 
 yesterday morning spoke of him as only a poet. If by this 
 
34 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 was meant that he was only a maker of rhythmic phrases, 
 or the f ramer of melodious sentences, the statement WHS 
 so-arcely just. His was the wonderful and acute insight of 
 the true poetic faculty into the great problems of human 
 life and action and destiny the faculty that intuitively 
 penetrates the reason of things. In this sense he was a 
 poet. These things he clothed in the poet's glowing words, 
 in striking and ofttirnes surprisingly beautiful forms of 
 speech. In his best moods he threw oif passages of rare 
 charm, not surpassed, if equaled, anywhere in the vast 
 field of American journalism. 
 
 It was not the splendor of his intellect, the marvelous 
 grace of his diction, or the unoqualed mastery of scintil- 
 lant and forceful words, that bound John Edwards to his 
 friends, but his greatness of heart, his sweet, gentle and 
 unselfish nature. In a long intercourse with men of all 
 ranks and conditions, professions and trades, I have met 
 no man so free from all ignoble and selfish impulses. His 
 wide influence was never used for his own gain or personal 
 advancement, but always for that of others. Those debtor 
 to John Edwards in this regard may be counted by hun- 
 dreds. A journalist, and now a State official said to me 
 years ago," he asks for himself, never; for others, always/' 
 A great, loyal, loving and unselfish heart was his. God 
 rarely makes a man like him. Fitly might the Recording 
 Angel write of him, Abou Ben Adhem's prayer, " write 
 me as one that loves his fellow men/' 
 
 Whatever the infirmities of gentle and gifted John 
 Edwards, there was in him a strong religious sentiment. 
 I do not mean religious as defined by books, or as formulated 
 in creeds, but in the acceptance and reverent holding of 
 those great truths that lie behind all formulated systems 
 and of which organized religions are the product. That 
 Infinite Being, forming the primary religious concept of 
 primitive peoples, the Jehovah of the Hebrew records, the 
 "Heaven-Father " of the Vedic hymns, which Max Mul- 
 ler says formed humanity's first poem and first artic- 
 ulate prayer, and as exalted by the great Master in that 
 universal prayer : "Our Father who art in Heaven/' he 
 recognized and looked up to with the trust of a child. In 
 addition to this as a necessary sequence, he accepted unfal- 
 teringly the doctrine of the soul's immortality as the sole 
 basis of a hope that can gladden and sweeten the labor of 
 stricken men. Once as I sat by his bedside at the McCarty 
 House, late in the night, turning suddenly to me after a 
 lull in our talk, he asked : "Do you ever go down to the 
 great river that flows near your home, and sitting beneath 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 35 
 
 the midnight stars listen to the solemn swish of the on- 
 sweepirig mysterious stream, and think of the vast things 
 that lie beyond the river and beyond the stars?" From this 
 we drifted into a discussion of the largest problems with 
 which the soul has to do ; the questions of action and 
 destiny. Then, more than ever before 'or after, John 
 Edwards revealed to me the secrets of his immost life. He 
 felt as the Laureate sings: 
 
 My own dim-life should teach me this, 
 
 That life shall live forever more, 
 
 Else earth is darkness at the core, 
 And dusrand ashes all that is. 
 
 This round of green, this orb of flame, 
 
 Fantastic beauty, such as lurks 
 
 In some wild poet as he works 
 Without a conscience or an aim. 
 
 To-day, from every part of the great Southwest, the 
 scarred veterans of the "lost cause," will turn with tearful 
 eyes to this village graveyard, where we reverently and 
 lovingly lay their old companion in arms, so brilliant in 
 intellect, so noble in heart, so gentle and generous, so 
 pure and chivalrous in every impulse. May the smile of 
 God rest upon this village grave as a perpetual benedic- 
 tion. 
 
 * 
 * * 
 
 In the quiet, quaint little village of Dover, whose 
 people removed, " Far from the maddening crowd's ignoble 
 strife," pursue the even tenor of their way, on a gentle 
 declivity leaning to the kiss of southern suns, a sheltered, 
 sequestered spot, fit place of rest after life's " fitful fever," 
 lies the village graveyard. Here: 
 
 " The sacred calm that reigns around, 
 Bids every fierce tumultuous passion cease; 
 In still small accents whispering from the ground 
 A grateful earnest of eternal peace." 
 
 In this retired spot reverent hands laid all that remained 
 of gifted John Edwards. The voice, that oft within the 
 " battle's red rim," shouted, ' ' Steady, Men," is hushed. 
 The eye that flashed with steely glitter, as it saw the set- 
 ting and onset of squadrons, but so gently limpid in repose, 
 is closed forever. The blare of bugles, the cannon's roar, 
 the rush of armed fleet and the voice of love are now alike 
 
36 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 unheard. The fearless soldier, the brilliant journalist, 
 the loyal friend, the dreamer of sweet dreams, by his own 
 request lies quietly among the village dead, apart from the 
 stress of enterprise and the coldness of greed. Above the 
 narrow, dreamless abode of the great heart now pulseless, 
 the leaves shimmer in soft light, the fragrance of flowers 
 lingers above the turf lovingly, and the sweet May stars 
 distill their dews to keep the grasses green. In his owi| 
 words, written of "Prince" John B. Magruder's lon& 
 Texas grave, we may say, " If roses are the tear drops of 
 angels as the beautiful Arab belief puts forth in poetry, 
 then is this lowly mound a hallowed spot, and needs not 
 the sculptured stone, the fretted column and the obelisk. " 
 Few men have been so admired, or so mourned. At his 
 grave, old, scarred soldiers, unused to tears wept like girls./ 
 Friends, kindred, his children grieved, but a larger grief 
 was hers, whom he wooed and won with knightly devotion 
 in the summer days long ago. She, sitting within the 
 mysterious shadow of the " Spheral Change, by men called 
 death," can only sing with Dante Kossetti, in mournful 
 questioning: 
 
 " O nearest, furthest! Can there be 
 At length some hard-earned, heart-won home, 
 Where exile changed for sanctuary. 
 Our lot may fill indeed its sum, 
 And you may wait and I may come." 
 
TWENTY YEARS OF FRIENDSHIP 
 
 BY MORRISON MUNFORD. 
 
 IN September, 1868, 1 came over from Seneca, Kansas, 
 where I had been sojourning on business,f or a visit to Kansas 
 City, the then questionable metropolis of the Missouri 
 Valley. I stopped at the Sheridan Hotel, the first-class 
 hostelry of the town. After supper I went by devious 
 ways without sidewalks to the Times office. I was in search of 
 Col. John C. Moore, a cousin, and the only man I knew 
 within the city limits. I found him in his den, the auto- 
 cratic editor of the Times, on the second story of what is. 
 now 813 Main street, opposite the present Times office. 
 He welcomed me as one disfranchised Confederate would 
 another in those days, and during the evening introduced 
 me to some of his associates and visitors. Among the latter 
 I recollect Major Wholegan, Colonel Crafton and Colonel 
 Branch. Later on he made me acquainted with a man 
 apparently of about my own age, who came in with some 
 matter which he submitted, and who was mentioned to me as 
 Major Edwards, of Shelby's command, and associate editor 
 of the Times. It happened that his work was about over 
 for the night, and an hour's conversation was the result of 
 our introduction. That hour's talk with John Edwards 
 that night made an indelible impression upon my mind. 
 It was in the midst of the Seymour and Blair campaign, 
 and politics was at fever heat. I had come down from 
 intolerant Kansas, where an ex-Confederate soldier barely 
 had the right of existence. I wanted consolation and 
 comfort, and I got both from John Edwards that Septem- 
 ber night in 1868. 
 
 This was our first acquaintance, which was renewed, 
 37 
 
38 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 from time to time, until my removal to Kansas City in 
 May, 1869, soon after which we became room-mates, and 
 so continued until we sought other partners for life. 
 
 The memory of my bachelor days twenty years ago, 
 with John Edwards as my chum, lingers as a sweet 
 unction. I was then in a business that required no night 
 work, but nearly every night would find me seeking the 
 Times office, and together, after the paper had gone to 
 press, we would wander homeward to our bachelor quarters. 
 The communings we then had, the confidences we 
 mutually bestowed, the castles in the air we then built 
 are all, all a glorious recollection. The friendship then 
 established between us continued unbroken to the day of 
 his death. 
 
 In 1871 I became manager of the Times, with John N. 
 Edwards as editor. This relation lasted for some three 
 years, and never was one more congenial and satisfactory. 
 Then, against my positive judgment and advice he went 
 to St Louis on the Times with Stilson Hutchins, who 
 aspired to be the dictator of Missouri politics. The 
 golden promises held out to John Edwards turned to 
 worse than ashes, and his consecutive drifting from point 
 to point in new ventures in Missouri journalism was the 
 consequence. 
 
 During these many years I had personally, and by 
 letters, advised and entreated him to return to his first 
 love, telling him there was always a place for him on the 
 Times staff. In the fall of 1886 he wrote me from St. 
 Joseph that he would come, and in January, 1887, he came. 
 His contributions since then to the Times need no men- 
 tion at my hands. Treating every topic, political, social, 
 scientific, historical, literary, whatever he touched bore 
 evidence of his splendid genius. What he did in these 
 last years of his life as it appears on the surface in his 
 writings is known to the world, but how much of effort 
 and endeavor, of strife and contention he had to endure, 
 and the fierce contest he waged against his only enemy 
 day and night, no one can know, except those who 
 knew him as I intimately knew him during these later 
 
TWENTY YEARS OF FRIENDSHIP. 39 
 
 years, and who had so much to do with the efforts made to 
 disenthrall him. And I have thought that perhaps I 
 could do no more just, kind or brotherly act to his 
 memory than to give to the world in his own words 
 extracts from his letters to me an insight into this phase 
 of his character. They show, it is true, his weakness and 
 irresolution but they also show his noble impulses and his 
 heroic struggles to overthrow his enemy "the monster 
 of drink." 
 
 Soon after his arrival he wrote me as follows : 
 
 KANSAS CITY, January 26, 1887. 
 
 I have agreed upon a house, and I want to bring what 
 I have into it instantly. I want to get to work and buckle 
 down to business instantly. Work now is my salvation. I 
 do not care how hard it is, but I want not only to paralyze 
 the tiger but also to kill him. 
 
 What I want to do is for you to put me upon my honor, 
 and deal with me in a business way. Our personal friend- 
 ship is another matter. 
 
 You can trust me in all the future about drinking. 
 My honor is pledged to your nobleness of character. 
 
 The return of Major Edwards to Kansas City to take a 
 permanent position on the Times was soon made the 
 occasion for a matter of social rejoicing and convivialities, 
 by unwise and indiscreet " friends," the result of which 
 left him in a deplorable condition, from which he 
 barely escaped with life, and his enemy soon seemed to 
 have a spell upon him that no ordinary methods could 
 break. After trying in vain the unavailing efforts of the 
 good sisters of the ho'spital, and the influences and 
 restraints of my own house for several months, I concluded, 
 with the written sanction of his wife, to try a more heroic 
 remedy, to put him under treatment of Dr. Keeley and 
 his celebrated Gold Cure, at Dwight, 111. The Major had 
 always expressed the utmost abhorrence against going to 
 an inebriate asylum, or even a sanitarium where there was 
 physical restraint, but as this was nothing of the kind I 
 thought it the best place I knew of for the experiment, 
 both from hearsay and also from a letter of inquiry to 
 which the following was a reply: 
 
40 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 DWIGHT, March 17, 1887. 
 
 Dear Sir: I do not know that I can tell you anything 
 about our cure for the liquor habit that you do not know, 
 but for the benefit of the gentleman, I will say, that a 
 patient here is put upon our Gold-graded treatment, a 
 plan much after that of Pasteur, for hydrophobia (with- 
 out the inoculation). His bottles are numbered from one 
 to six, and are taken in their order. There is no shock or 
 pain in the transition period, from the effects of a spree 
 to complete sobriety. From three to nine days after com- 
 mencing the remedy all want and desire for alcoholic 
 stimulants of any kind will be entirely eradicated the 
 words, "want and desire," in their broadest and most 
 intensive sense. I do not deny the patient liquor while 
 under treatment. 
 
 It was concluded to try the experiment and so after 
 many comical as well as sorrowful experiences on the trip, 
 we arrived at Dwight on the morning of March 21, 1887, 
 and he was duly installed for treatment. I left him that 
 night, going on to Chicago, from which place I wrote him 
 the most powerful and appealing, yet at the same time 
 firm and admonishing letter, that a friendship such as ours 
 could inspire. On my return home I received an eight- 
 page letter, which in his agate or pearl manuscript would 
 make about double that number of ordinary writing. Al- 
 ready the gold cure had begun to have its first effects, and 
 his mind seemed to be clearing rapidly. He wrote con- 
 cerning a dozen matters, but I eliminate in this article 
 all from this and subsequent letters except the portions 
 pertaining to his struggle against "the monster of drink" 
 and our efforts to save him. 
 
 EXTRACTS FROM MAJOR EDWARDS' LETTERS. 
 
 DWIGHT, March 25, 1887. 
 
 My Dear Morry : I have received your letter from 
 Chicago. It is very true in many things. Very strange 
 in some others. Very unnecessary in a few. 
 
 That I was a fool on the trip here oh, such a fool 
 I will admit. Do you think I have not suffered for 
 my madness? That I still do not suffer? That, if by 
 way of expiation I could recall the shame and mortifica- 
 
TWENTY YEARS OF FRIENDSHIP. 41 
 
 tion I caused your wife, I would joyfully put my right 
 hand in the flames until 
 
 "It grew fiery red 
 Like Cramner's at the stake." 
 
 What a transformation she must have witnessed in 
 me ! You know that when I have been sober and traveled 
 with you no man ever sat in a car more modest, circum- 
 spect and dignified. And then to see that other beast of 
 last Sunday and Monday! 
 
 * * * The picture you draw of the sufferings of my 
 wife and children is as true as God is true. It is the 
 knowledge of this fact that has put me in a living hell for 
 the past five years, for during this time my drinking has 
 been deeper, longer and deadlier than ever before. How 
 I have yearned to break with the monster of drink, fam- 
 ishing days and horrible midnights, if they would but 
 speak, would all too truly tell you. Days with a con- 
 science that was as a human appetite, feeding, as it were, 
 upon a living soul, if this could speak it also would all 
 too truly tell you. Separated from whisky, if there is a 
 truer, kinder, tenderer husband and father, I do not know 
 him. Then why do I drink? Omniscience knows. It is 
 not for a want of physical courage, for no one has ever 
 doubted that. Not for a want of moral courage, for once 
 at the side of a friend, I could defy public opinion with 
 an infinite scorn, and go with him into utter darkness. 
 Ah! one day we shall know it all. Yes, one day we shall 
 know it all ! 
 
 Now, a few words just here in regard to yourself and 
 our relationships together. Have you ever doubted for a 
 moment that I did not understand why you loved me, and 
 why you have stood by me through drunkenness, neglect 
 of duty, and, at times, absolute desertion? Have I not 
 told you, and said to you, and written to you over and 
 over again that I was no more necessary to the life of the 
 Times, or to its future growth, position, or prosperity, 
 than the man in the moon? No man has ever dared yet 
 to tell me that your friendship was merely mercenary, or 
 that you only wanted me because I might be utilized in 
 some bare pecuniary sense. I knew that we ought to get 
 together again. That, as it were, we supplemented one 
 another. That I had some qualities which you did not 
 possess, and you many that I did not. That we were so 
 congenial in so many things, and knew so well how to do 
 so many things in common. That allied, we could con- 
 quer fate; that joined with you, and being guided by 
 
42 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 you, and going with 3-011 hand in hand, you could put me 
 beyond want in my old days, and some other day take me 
 out of the shafts of a dray horse. This is what I knew, 
 and this is what I have always proclaimed from the house- 
 tops. 
 
 Suppose silly lies have been told as to our relation- 
 ships and the reasons given by some malignant devils, who 
 hate us both,, why you have taken me drunk from hotels, 
 paid my bills, sent me to hospitals to save me, and stood 
 by me almost to a funeral ? Isn't God's blessed sunshine 
 in our hearts for each other, and God's blessed sunshine 
 all about us to make glorious and luminous in our lives 
 those places made perfect forever where our devotion 
 began and lingered at, and dwelt upon these twenty years 
 and more ? Doesn't my wife know it ? Haven't we talked 
 it all over a thousand times ? Let us dispose of this thing 
 now and forever. Whatever else happens in this world 
 and if the time ever does come when we have to take our 
 ways apart, we will go away with not as much shadow of 
 a cloud betwixt us as would fleck even the grasses or the 
 flowers upon a baby's grave. 
 
 * * * As to my situation here, it is about this : 
 Keeley has been very kind. I have taken his medicine as 
 prescribed. I have no more desire to drink than if whisky 
 were prussic acid. There is a bottle now before me sent 
 here by him he says especially to tempt me. Since Tues- 
 day night last I have abhorred liquor in every shape. I do 
 not understand it at all. He has invited me to drink 
 several times, and keeps a very fine article always in his 
 office. I pulled the cork out of the bottle in my room and 
 smelt the whisky. It was positively loathsome. I shall send 
 forward after to-day bushels of editorial. * * * Please 
 send word to my wife that I am all right. I have not had 
 the heart to write to her since being here. There are 
 times when even I will not commit sacrilege. 
 Your friend as ever, 
 
 I give some other extracts by date which tell their own 
 story without comment: 
 
 DWIGHT, March 30, 1887. 
 
 * * * A week ago yesterday, Tuesday, I took my last 
 drink. There is a bottle now standing upon a table in the 
 room. I hate it. It has been standing there since yesterday 
 
TWENTY YEARS OF FRIENDSHIP. 43 
 
 week. I see it the first thing in the morning and the last 
 thing at night. I do not understand anything about it. 
 All I know is that the very thought of liquor makes me 
 sick. I am as well as I ever was in my life. I walk about 
 five miles a day, eat everything, and pour editorials in on 
 you by every mail. I have done some good writing, if I 
 do say it myself. 
 
 DWIGHT, March 30, 1887. 
 
 Since I wrote to you this morning I have received your 
 very kind and welcome letter. It did me a power of good. 
 
 Have no fear of me. I will stick to a funeral. If it is 
 three weeks, then it is three weeks. I was never better, 
 physically in all my life, and, as I told you this morning, 
 I hate even the smell of liquor. I feel and believe that 1 
 am saved. In fact I know it. 
 
 DWIGHT, April 1, 1887. 
 
 I am as well as I ever was in my life, and hate liquor 
 more and more every day. I could take the medicine just 
 as well at home as here, but if it is three weeks then it is 
 three weeks. Don't rely on a word I say, but write to 
 Keeley. I find him an exceedingly strong man in his 
 profession, and possessed of a vast erudition. I can not 
 fathom his medicine, however, nor do I know one thing 
 ubout its therapeutic effect. I only know that it kills 
 whisky like a ferret kills a rat. 
 
 DWIGHT, April 2, 1887. 
 
 I received your letter of the 31st this morning. I am 
 in splendid health, still hate liquor, and feel that I shall 
 never touch it again. That is all I know about it. I just 
 know that I hate the very smell of it. I will stay the 
 twenty-one days gladly, although I believe fully that the 
 appetite is broken up, root and branch. 
 
 DWIGHT, April 4, 1887. 
 
 A week from to-day I will have been here twenty-one 
 days. Then I shall start back. Still the same feeling in 
 regard to whisky. I have no more desire for it than for 
 prussic acid. More than that, I do not even think of it. 
 The bottle is still on the table in my room, uncorked and 
 unnoticed. Not for ten years have I been free from a 
 constant desire for alcohol in some shape until I came 
 here. Of late years that desire had become almost second 
 nature, the appetite becoming stronger and stronger with 
 each spree. Now it is totally eradicated. How it passed 
 away I can not say. There was no effort on my part, no 
 struggle of any kind. The usual horrible depression was 
 
44 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 totally absent. Dr. Keeley offered me liquor over and 
 over again indeed, he really tried to tempt me to drink, 
 but the very thought of drinking made me sick. I do 
 not explain anything. I can not explain anything con- 
 nected with the medicine any more than I can explain the 
 immortality of the soul. In a physical sense I only know 
 that I do not want to drink. 
 
 DWIGHT, APEIL 5, 1887. 
 
 I inclose you a statement of my account, up to next 
 Monday, the llth, at half past three o'clock, p. M. 
 when I take the Denver train for Kansas City, as, I believe, 
 a thoroughly cured man. You will see that I bring four 
 bottles of the medicine with me. If I am cured, which mean 
 life and everything to me, I will owe it solely to you. I 
 see things more clearly to-day than I have seen them in 
 ten years. If there is one trait in my character stronger 
 than another, it is that of gratitude. If you were to ask 
 me to stand by your side when the chances were a thou- 
 sand to one that we would both be killed, I would stand as 
 joyfully as I ever went forth to play or hunt as a boy. 
 This is the physical part of my love for you. The other part 
 is to show you that I am worthy of your devotion to me, 
 which has been shown under circumstances that would 
 have driven away from me a million of so-called friends 
 and even relations. 
 
 DWIGHT, April 6, 1887. 
 
 I have talked with Dr. Keeley fully, freely and 
 frankly. I have obeyed him in everything, and he is 
 clearly of the opinion that 21 days is enough to stay here. 
 He is satisfied perfectly as to the cure, and I bring four 
 bottles with me. He wrote you fully to-day. If nothing 
 happens I will be at home next Tuesday morning, the 3 2th. 
 I am awful tired, but I am free. What a glorious thing 
 is freedom. I still hate liquor with an abiding hatred. 
 
 DWIGHT, April 7, 1887. 
 
 I am still as I was the second day of my arrival here. 
 I have not the least desire for whisky. Keeley shows me 
 letters from all over the United States bearing testimony 
 to the efficacy of his cure for both liquor and opium. It 
 is astonishing. 
 
 I) WIGHT, April 9, 1887. 
 
 I have just received your kind letter with inclosures. 
 Well, next Tuesday morning 
 
 "In other guise than forth he rode, 
 Will return Lord Marmion." 
 
TWENTY YEARS OF FRIENDSHIP. 45 
 
 I will get off at Grand avenue. I never felt better, and 
 never felt freer from all desire to drink. I am on my fifth 
 bottle of gold cure. 
 
 Dr. Keeley spoke of having also received a letter from 
 you to-day. He did not show it to me. 
 
 Way late in the night, while I have been communing 
 with the moon and the stars, I have in my walks run across 
 here and there one of the Doctor's opium patients. They 
 are a curious race of human beings. I go to them, hunt 
 them up; and try to draw them out. One had a face like 
 what I imagine a vampire ought to have. His eyes were 
 scintillant. He was in an old field sitting on a stump. 
 His pallor was the pallor of a corpse that had been three 
 days dead. Under some sort of an occult mesmerism that 
 I did not understand, I went out to him and commenced to 
 talk. He raved like a madman, and fairly shrieked for me 
 to go away. I went. I swear to you that I have seen that 
 vampire face every night for a week since. 
 
 DR. KEELEY'S CONFIDENCE. 
 
 As corroborative of the confidence the Major felt I 
 give some extracts from letters of Dr. Keeley: 
 
 DWIGHT, April 6, 1887. 
 
 Your truly kind letter of the 3d inst. came in this 
 morning and I hasten to answer it. 
 
 I am glad to be able to tell you that I think the good 
 Major entirely cured. He tells me that he has absolutely 
 no thought of liquor, consequently no crave, and further 
 that he has had none since the evening of the second day 
 after coming. He has still in his room the last four 
 ounces that I bought for him that evening, and intends 
 to take it home to you as " an earnest " of " the miracle 
 God hath wrought" in his case. 
 
 I shall be very sorry indeed when the dear Major leaves 
 us, he is so companionable, or as our " janitress" says, so 
 "knowledgable." He has made friends with everybody 
 with whom he has come in contact here, and many will 
 share my regret in his leaving. He has been one of the 
 most patient and obedient gentlemen whom I have had to 
 treat, and has taken as much pains to make his treatment 
 a success as his friends could wish. 
 
 I agree with you now, that the dear gentleman is bet- 
 ter worth saving than two-thirds of the patients who have 
 come here. You remember you told me I would think so 
 
46 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 before he left. May God keep and protect him in all the 
 future. 
 
 DWIGHT, April 11, 1887. 
 
 Our good Major left us this afternoon, and will reach 
 you before this letter. We are all sorry to lose him, and 
 none more so than myself. May the dear Christ go with 
 him, keep him and preserve him, is the wish of his many 
 friends here. I think -you will find a wonderful change in 
 him, and I am almost persuaded that it is a permanent 
 one for good. 
 
 Dr. Keeley suggested to me when I left the Major at 
 D wight that it would be a good idea to have some of his 
 friends write him kind and encouraging letters to "brace 
 him up," and I accordingly wrote to Colonel Burnes, 
 among others, which led to the passage of several letters 
 between us. His letters cover the situation so fully and 
 analytically and at the same time are so tender and full of 
 friendship that I am tempted to give some extracts: 
 
 COLONEL BURNES' HOPES AND FEARS. 
 
 ST. JOSEPH, March 26, 1887. 
 
 Dear Dr. Munford : I am just in receipt of your pro- 
 foundly interesting favor written in Chicago, and beg to 
 say that with all my heart and soul I am truly grateful for 
 the confidence you give me, also for the genuine spirit of 
 kindness so plainly manifest. It is upon such confidences 
 and kindnesses that the friendship " which sticketh closer 
 than a brother " is safely founded, and they alone lend 
 enchantment and encouragement to the daily struggles of 
 life which, at best, are of brief and valueless results to 
 us all. 
 
 Poor, dear John! A thousand times I have realized 
 that the course you have now taken was the only one that 
 remained. Everything else has been tried, over and over 
 again, in vain. Your whole course toward him, and this 
 last action, more supremely than all your varied goodness 
 and kindness to him for years before, conclusively evi- 
 dences an interest in and a love for him that is God-like. 
 Let us hope but so many bitter disappointments in the 
 past make me tremble at the use of the word that this 
 present step will result in his permanent restoration ; but 
 as it is our last hope, let us be firm in making his stay 
 long and thorough. I need scarcely add, that I will most 
 fully comply with your wishes and instructions, and do 
 
TWENTY YEARS OF FRIENDSHIP. 47 
 
 everything in my power to aid and second your efforts. If 
 I can see him to any advantage, I will visit D wight for 
 the purpose, and whenever you think it best I will write 
 him, with earnest exhortation, to aid by constant resolu- 
 tion and effort your noble purpose to save him for the 
 benefit of his family, his friends and mankind. He knows 
 full well that my love for him is as strong as life, and has 
 always appeared to yield something to my judgment. On 
 the one accursed subject his lamentable failing no one 
 can control him by any ordinary methods. His is a dis- 
 ease beyond all question, and should be eradicated, root 
 and branch. All we can now do is to soothe and nurse 
 him as an infant. 
 
 ST. JOSEPH, April 7, 1887. 
 
 Your valued and deeply interesting favor of the 3d 
 gives me profound hope and joy. At the same time dis- 
 appointment has so often followed a similar creation 
 bitter and cruel disappointment that I venture to suggest: 
 Be in no haste to recall the cherished object of our most 
 affectionate solicitude from his safe and pleasant retreat. 
 According to the authority in charge he has a disease. 
 I have, for a long time, regarded it as a disease. It is of 
 all diseases the most hypocritical. It is a disease with 
 limitless cunning and all the qualities of the opossum. 
 In its consequences or results are to be found there its 
 triumphs. Its victim John himself is deceived and 
 betrayed by it. It lulls him, by a vain sense of security, 
 into a belief that he is capable strong enough to win a 
 fight with it. Deceived himself, his infinite variety of 
 influence, his unparalleled power over his attendants and 
 friends, whose stern judgment surrenders too soon to a 
 lovable sympathy, make them easy victims of this our 
 confidence and cordiality. 
 
 I need not perhaps ought not to say this to you for 
 you have much more of the iron in your blood than I 
 without less of womanly tenderness ; but the resources of 
 John's enemy are so infinite that it takes us all, as well as 
 himself, to win even a partial victory. 
 
 How nobly he writes to yon ! How nobly he writes, 
 and feels and thinks ! He believes he can never fall 
 again. He is amazed at his past folly. His intellectual 
 perceptions are now complete and perfect, but is he free 
 from his disease? God knows I hope so with all my heart; 
 but after a brief treatment, even a treatment so faith- 
 inspiring, do I believe as a matter of experience or 
 judgment that he can now stand? Alas! do I ? Will 
 it not take time long time time to kill, and then to 
 
48 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 eradicate, purge away the last vestige of the invidious, 
 treacherous monsters that have pursued and tormented 
 him so long ! 
 
 ST. JOSEPH, April 14, 1887. 
 
 Your esteemed favor of the 10th just received. I am 
 very thankful for your great kindness in thus advising 
 me of the good news. An hundred times I have said I 
 can never, alas, have any more hope, and yet I confess, 
 now, it is strong again. I do again believe and trust. 
 Surely we will no more suffer disappointment. You have 
 done the work; it is noble and God-like. If I could envy 
 such a friend and such a gentleman, as yourself, the glory 
 and satisfaction fairly won, I would wish that I had been 
 the savior of John Edwards as you are. But fortunately 
 my happiness in the result is too perfect and complete to 
 o,dmit of any base alloy. 
 
 I met the Major at the depot that Tuesday morning, 
 April 12th, on his return from Dwight. I was there ahead 
 of time, and I wondered, half in doubt, in what manner 
 he would appear. The train drew up and soon I saw him 
 coming along, and truly 
 
 "In other guise than forth he rode." 
 
 His hearty handshake; his joyous, half silent laugh 
 which always reminded me of " Pathfinders," as described 
 by Cooper; his appearance, his gait, all were an occular 
 demonstration of the wonderful change effected in three 
 weeks. There was much rejoicing in several households, 
 and among all his true friends that day, and for some 
 weeks thereafter. But alas! the foreboding and misgiv- 
 ing of Colonel Burnes proved only too true. The disease 
 was not eradicated, and in less than a month the " mon- 
 ster of drink " had full control again. A second experi- 
 ment at Dwight was tried with substantially the same 
 results as the first one. Later on, during the past year 
 the virtues of Excelsior Springs were tested on two occa- 
 sions with satisfactory results, which, however, did not 
 prove lasting. The additional extracts below are from 
 letters written while there, and also others from time to 
 time until his death, all pertaining to this subject: 
 
TWENTY YEARS OF FRIENDSHIP. 49 
 
 MORE OF MAJOR EDWARDS' LETTERS. 
 
 EXCELSIOR SPRINGS, June 20, 1888. 
 
 Well, we got here Saturday night safe and sound. 
 Saturday morning I began on the water. In an hour I 
 was so sick that it seemed to me as if I could hear the 
 first ten notes of the final trumpet. All day Saturday 
 and Sunday night, all day Monday and Monday night I 
 could not lift my head scarcely from the pillow. Tuesday 
 morniDg I managed to crawl to a bath house; like Napo- 
 leon at St. Helena, I managed to stay in one, off and on, 
 for four hours. This Wednesday morning I went to work. 
 I send forward four articles. 
 
 Of course every hour here is a purgatory, with no priest 
 in a thousand miles to help pray r me out. All that it is 
 possible for these waters to do in the way of curing 
 alcoholism all that it has ever been claimed that they 
 would do is to break the drinking gait, bring a man 
 back to a. realization of his sense of duty, and leave the 
 balance in his own hands. Still, I will stay as long as 
 you desire. 
 
 EXCELSIOR SPRINGS, June 23, 1888. 
 
 As this is the first clear day for one solid week, I have 
 lived out of doors as one of the captured Apaches might 
 live if suddenly from the Dry Tortugas he were carried to 
 his own Madre Mountains and there set free with God and 
 immensity. As five hours out of the twenty-four are all 
 that I can ever sleep, whisky or no whisky, I wait for 
 the darkness to do my thinking. For hours and hours, 
 and far into the night, I sit by an open window and think. 
 Here, I have gone over the entire political field from 
 Washington City to Jefferson City. * * * 
 
 And yet you would put me to writing " literary arti- 
 cles." No, no, Morry, I can not dance attendance upon 
 
 "Sweet Miss Fanny, of Trafalgar Square," 
 While outside the bugles are singing, 
 
 " All the Blue Bonnets are over the border." 
 
 You also say : " This is a sad ending to all our hopes 
 and expectations." Say, rather, their resurrection, Morry. 
 There comes a time to every one of my disposition when 
 he regains his second youth, or rather, second manhood. 
 That period was very near to me. I had come at last to 
 look my condition full in the face. I saw just what had to 
 be done. I was surely providing for every friend to whom 
 I owed a dollar. I was getting further and further away 
 from whisky. I was getting nearer and nearer to a condi- 
 tion of independence, and I saw clearer and clearer per- 
 
50 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 severance in mining matters was nearly equal to gold. But 
 no matter all this. This will belong to some business talks 
 we will have before we separate for a period which neither 
 of us can now reckon accurately upon. How true a friend 
 you have been to me, I will not here narrate. How 
 splendidly I would have stood at your side through any 
 storm, crisis, or disaster, it does not become me now to 
 declare. Wherever you are I will always be glad to hear 
 the story of your happiness and progress of some triumph 
 grateful in a personal way, some victory won over the 
 Pharisees and Philistines. 
 
 I had better come home next Friday, I reckon. My 
 pass ends next Saturday, the 30th. Further expense here 
 is unnecessary. All the good the water can do has been 
 done. I am free from all desire, in perfect health, can eat 
 anything, digest anything, but I do not sleep. Nor have 
 I more than five hours a night for years. The fight from 
 this on I must make myself, and, God willing, I intend to 
 make it. 
 
 EXCELSIOR SPRINGS, June 26, 1888. 
 
 I am coming back with a renewed youth, and a deter- 
 mination to show you that all your kindness to me, and 
 friendship for me, and devotion to me have not been in 
 vain. Morry, I will be a sober man. Our last days shall 
 be our best. 
 
 I see the town this morning, and the fog above it, and 
 a great cloud bank against the sun, but, 
 
 "My heart is far away, 
 Sailing the Vesuvian bay." 
 
 Good-bye. As the Spanish say: Asia lue ago until 
 we meet again. 
 
 KANSAS CITY, June 28, 1888. 
 
 The trip to the Springs enabled me to break my gait. 
 Having fully resolved to change my whole life as far as 
 whisky drinking is concerned, I only ask an opportunity 
 to show you what is in me. 
 
 KANSAS CITY, July 20, 1888. 
 
 God of Israel! If for two weeks I have not suffered 
 the tortures of the damned, then, as Sheridan said, one 
 might just as well rent out hell and live in Texas. 
 
 I have crawled from my bed, bent double with pain, 
 and tried to work.' The spirit was willing but the flesh 
 was weak. "Acute inflammation of the duodenum" 
 was diagnosed, whatever that may be, and yet 1 was 
 drunk, when a quart of whisky would have killed me. 
 
TWENTY YEARS OF FRIENDSHIP. 51 
 
 But no matter. One can not always eat his cake and have 
 it too. 
 
 KANSAS CITY, August 27, 1888. 
 
 I am at home working like a gopher, and taking gold 
 cure within an inch of my life. This time I will anchor 
 the old ship or wreck her. I have Keeley's later process. 
 
 KANSAS CITY, August 29, 1888. 
 
 * * * In my own behalf I have not a single word to 
 say. If I knew a million I would not utter one. I knew it 
 had to come, sooner or later, and why not now? And yet I 
 should have triumphed. Just think of that; I should 
 have triumphed. Of course I might get sick enough to 
 die, and all who knew me might declare that I was on a 
 spree. Such was not the case when I saw you last. Such 
 has not been the case these two weeks. 
 
 This information, however, is mere words. I sincerely 
 wanted you to know the truth, so that when some snake- 
 in-the-grass goes to gloating over my drunkenness, you 
 can give him the lie. 
 
 * * * I am a political writer. It is only when I feel 
 depressed or cast down, or it is dark all around, that I write 
 something sad, or of pitiful episodes, or of men or women 
 who sing low in the twilight: 
 
 "By the shore of life and the gate of breath, 
 There are more things waiting for men than death." 
 
 KANSAS CITY, January 8, 1889. 
 
 Last Friday, January 4th, was my birthday fifty-one 
 years old. I feel like twenty-five. I went to my priest, 
 laid my hand upon the crucifix, and swore to the God who 
 made us all, never again to touch liquor. You laugh. 
 Very well you have good cause. Watch and wait. 
 
 KANSAS CITY, January 11, 1889. 
 
 Since the cloud of liquor has been lifted, work is all 
 my consolation. To save my life I can't lie in bed over 
 five hours. Often and often I get up at three in the 
 morning and go to work. I can eat anything, digest 
 anything, stand any amount of fatigue and exposure, but 
 I can't sleep. Perhaps all this will regulate itself. 
 
 Have you anything else for me to do by way of occu- 
 pation literature, reminiscences with all individuality 
 left out, anything? I wan't more load to carry more 
 ground to plow. 
 
 KANSAS CITY, February 2, 1889. 
 
 Morry, I am a curious man. So, also, are you. I swear 
 to you that when I looked upon his face (Col. Burnes) in 
 
52 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 the coffin there, I said this to myself, "Who will be 
 next? Will Munford look upon the face of Edwards, or 
 will Edwards look upon the face of Munford?" 
 
 KANSAS CITY, March 19, 1889. 
 
 I have nothing on earth to reproach you with. You 
 have done for me what but few brothers would have done. 
 I recognize the situation as fully as I recognized the over- 
 throw of the Confederacy. 
 
 I shall make one more effort. If I fail I will come to 
 you loyally, frankly and honestly, and say: "It is fin- 
 ished. Choose some one else to do what you had a right 
 to expect me to do." 
 
 These words of John Edwards during the last two 
 years of his life, from March 25, 1887, to March 19, 
 1889, contain a more graphic and pathetic account of his 
 unavailing struggle against his only enemy, "the monster 
 of drink/' than any other pen could depict. They are at 
 times disconnected and scattered over long periods, but 
 the extracts given are verbatim from his letters. I doubt 
 not I have mislaid or failed to preserve many others written 
 during this period, which might perhaps fill up the gaps, 
 but these are not necessary, the skeleton is shown, and it 
 requires little imagination to fill : up the interstices and 
 round out the details. With such a framework, a genius 
 like his could weave such a sad and pathetic story as would 
 surpass in vividness De Quincey's "Confessions." 
 
 In the many letters I have of Major Edwards among 
 them those from which the foregoing extracts are taken 
 hundreds of topics of a different character and on different 
 subjects are mentioned in a manner that only he could 
 touch them. Much of this is of a semi-personal nature, 
 growing out of his relations toward me and his connection 
 with the Times. Much relates to State and National 
 politics, to individuals and events as they were presented 
 at the time. All are interesting private and not written 
 for publication therefore the more interesting to the 
 public. Much contained in those letters can "ot yet be 
 published, as the comments on politicians and public men 
 would be premature. In the extracts subjoined I have 
 intended to include nothing that would offend any living 
 
TWENTY YEARS OF FRIENDSHIP 53 
 
 person certainly no one in Missouri. Among the follow- 
 ing will be found in full the last letter I ever received from 
 him : 
 
 LETTERS ON DIFFERENT TOPICS. 
 
 KANSAS CITY, August 18, 1887. 
 
 I saw briefly, but had no talk. He was 
 
 looking everywhere for you. That's a Black Prince for 
 you. I had rather have him on the skirmish line alone 
 than ten of Shelby's picked body guard picked for a 
 personal daring that never had an equal. , as a scout, 
 is everything. Cool, quiet, dumb as a dead man when 
 you need wariness; noisy as a brass band when you want 
 fun, or frolic, or boisterousness; pensive as a quaker, yet 
 laughing to himself at the incongruous things of a day's 
 travel; impenetrable, seeing all things, hearing all things, 
 knowing all things. Lord, what a line of priesthood this 
 Tennessee Melchizedek might have created. 
 
 KANSAS CITY, August 19, 1887. 
 
 Now, Morry, I have given you my candid opinion of 
 
 . You could even put him on guard at the 
 
 great gate of Jerusalem while Titus was thundering 
 away on the outside. I am in no need to tell you about 
 him, only this: In view of my almost immediate depart- 
 ure from Kansas City, and to a country that is not blessed 
 with quite so many railroads as we have, it would be a 
 splendid act of political policy to put him on the paper. 
 Indeed, he could do much better without me than I could 
 do without him, were I back again. I know you hate 
 politics, but you certainly ought to use your own paper to 
 defend yourself. To fight your enemies with all modern 
 weapons, and forage liberally upon the enemy, always. 
 
 What matters how rich your newspaper is ? How 
 fully it can be made to drift and drift, merely keeping its 
 head to the wind. How e( faultlessly nice, and icily dull " 
 some of its features are no matter all these things and 
 more I had rather anchor such a craft, broad-side on, 
 and square up for a funeral against the whole fleet of the 
 enemy, than to keep out of the fight in Missouri a single 
 hour. There is the threat to drive you from the party. 
 Your want of activity and aggressiveness will be miscon- 
 strued. Men would call you coward who would not dare 
 to face you. And so it would go. Without miners, with- 
 out boring, and digging, and putting down dynamite, and 
 making here a clean alliance; there a combination, and 
 
54 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 everywhere scouts who report daily or weekly, a campaign 
 would be like the bridal meal given by the high contract- 
 ing parties, 
 
 " And what do you think they had for dinner? 
 Two little fish and one little minnow!" 
 
 can save you from all this. As God is my judge, 
 
 Morry, I would not have you simply wipe out the political 
 prestige of your newspaper for all the money you possess, 
 now or hereafter, so I have insisted upon and do insist 
 
 upon . Do not quit the field at the first onset. I have 
 
 told you fifty times that no man's life was necessary to the 
 Times. It will go on just the same. And just think what 
 a campaign it is going to be. Revolution everywhere. 
 Unrest everywhere. Threats, passion, eager defiance 
 everywhere. Try it, anyhow. In no possible way can it 
 lead up to your experiment with me. 
 
 EXCELSIOR SPRINGS, June 23, 1888. 
 
 Morry, so sure as we two live to see next November, 
 we will see Cleveland a beaten man. His message killed 
 him. You remember the charge of the Light Brigade at 
 Balaklava. A French commander, General Bosquet, was 
 looking on. Asked an aide : "What do you think of 
 that, General ?" "It is magnificent, but it is not war." 
 
 If Harrison is nominated, it will be a fight for life and 
 death in Indiana, with the odds all against us, and if we 
 do not carry Indiana, good-bye, Grover ! We have no 
 more chance of carrying a single other Western State than a 
 man has of life who has been bitten by a cobra de capello. 
 Wisconsin ! Wisconsin devil. Michigan ! Michigan two 
 devils. Whatever else you and I may be, do not let us be 
 fools. And then Connecticut and New Jersey. They 
 are tariff to the core, as you and I are Confeder- 
 ates. Kandall, by a still hunt never before surpassed 
 in American politics, carried them for Cleveland. And 
 his reward? An iceberg thrust down his back, and an 
 avalanche poured over his head. His corpulency can also 
 be an exhausted receiver upon occasion. For the lifted 
 hand of Randall no latch-string hangs out at the Wliite 
 House door. Mr. Scott, of Pennsylvania, attended to 
 that a cerberus with a single head. You know what the 
 French say : "Nothing succeeds like ingratitude." Very 
 well. We shall see. 
 
 For Missouri now: I read Glover's interview in this 
 morning's Times. As to Morehouse, he was never more 
 mistaken in his life Glover, I mean, when he intimates 
 
TYTIZNTY YEARS OF FRIENDSHIP. 55 
 
 that he, Morehouse, does nor know his own strength. He 
 does know it to within ten votes. So far, the race is 
 
 diers of the guard, but do not let us deceive ourselves. 
 His only hope on earth is in an alliance with Morehouse. 
 For heaven's sake ! do not think me a pessimist. I am 
 writing to you like one brother would write to another, 
 and just as" I would talk to you by your own fireside, and 
 under the sanctity of your own roof-tree. I see the race, 
 however, as I now can plainly see the sky, with the blessed 
 sun shining in it. 
 
 EXCELSIOK SPRINGS, June 26, 1888. 
 Now what ! Harrison and Morton. Remember In- 
 diana, and what I told you in my letter Saturday of the 
 situation there. It is desperate for the Democracy. 
 McDonald is sulking in his tent like Achilles. And no 
 wonder, Cleveland put the knife into him in cold blood 
 and turned it in the wound. Gray is a new comer. Still 
 on his garments are the mud stains of first republicanism, 
 and next mugwumpery. 
 
 KANSAS CITY, July 9, 1888. 
 
 I think that I should at least stay with you until the 
 fight is fought. I have been sick for a week sicker than 
 you believe, or any man believes. Such is my reputa- 
 tion that I can not be sick without being drunk. I have 
 had a most painful and weakening dysentery so painful 
 as to prevent both eating and sleeping. All put together I 
 have not drank a quart of liquor. Then I got some good 
 brandy with laudanum in it, prescribed by Dr. A. B. 
 Sloan. I have touched nothing in four days except this, 
 and there is a third of it left yet. 
 
 I have lost a week. Strike it out. The end will very 
 soon come in politics, after the August convention. 
 Then let us close the books. Every word you wrote to me 
 is true to the letter. Each went into my soul. 
 
 Old Frederick the Great when his fortunes were at 
 their very worst, and when it was fellest and blackest 
 said to a soldier running away, "How, now, comrade?" 
 "I am deserting old Fritz," was the answer. "Yon 
 can neither feed me, clothe me, nor give me shoes nor 
 shelter." " Hold on for one more battle, and if the tide 
 does not turn, I promise to desert with you." 
 
 We had better remain together for one more battle. I 
 
56 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 believe that I can do you some good. If I did not think 
 so, and if I did not want to finally show you that I have 
 some gratitude, I would never enter the Times office again 
 except to say to you, ' ( Hail and farewell/" I know my 
 un worthiness. Think you not that the iron has gone into 
 my flesh, cruel and corroding? 
 
 As for pay, if I had cared more for it I had surely done 
 better. But all this in passing. I am at work to-day, and 
 will send down several articles. 
 
 KANSAS CITY, August 17, 1888. 
 
 Dick Collins was married this morning at eleven 
 o'clock, by the Rev. Father Lillis, of St. Patrick's church. 
 His witnesses were Col. John Longdon, my wife, and 
 myself. I have written his epithalamium, or his obituary, 
 I do not know which. His friendship has always been so 
 true to you, his devotion always so undeviating for you, 
 his courage always so steadfast for you, that I ask as a 
 special favor that you have published in the morning the 
 marriage notice I send you. 
 
 Of course all these high qualities are now of no longer 
 availment, but for all that upon some graves there should 
 always be monuments. 
 
 KANSAS CITY, November 7, 1888. 
 
 As old Job once said, or as good as said, " This is 
 hell/' Recall what I once wrote you from Excelsior 
 Springs ! 
 
 KANSAS CITY, November 8, 1888. 
 
 What an overthrow! Four Congressmen gone from 
 Missouri, and scant 5,000 plurality in the State ! As Pyrr- 
 hus said: " Another such a victory and I am ruined." 
 
 If you and I had been prophets and the sons of pro- 
 phets we could not more surely have foretold the disaster. 
 They see it now, poor fools they who wanted to put us 
 to death because we pleaded almost on our knees for the 
 integrity of the party of our love, our religion and our 
 idolatry. 
 
 Tarsney's election is a great card for you. By con- 
 trast it shows what power the Times has when it is either 
 for or against. 
 
 I wish much that I had your philosophy. The defeat 
 of Cleveland actually made me sick. 
 
 Your special Kansas train was a master piece of busi- 
 ness. Lord ! but how Kansas is joined to her idols. Let 
 the mortgages go on. One day she will shrivel up in the 
 folds of her eastern anacondas as some old garment in 
 flames. 
 
TWENTY YEARS OF FRIENDSHIP. 57 
 
 For the next month I will show you some of the best 
 writing I have ever yet done. The inspiration of defeat 
 has lit all my lamps again. 
 
 KANSAS CITY, November, 14, 1888. 
 
 I was never more surprised in my life than when I got 
 your letter of yesterday, the 13th, this morning. 
 
 I have at this hour, and had last night, not less than 
 five columns of editorial matter on Mr. Grasty's table. 
 How you could have been mistaken in this, I am at an 
 utter loss to understand. The articles you will say your- 
 self, are to the point and such as you would have indorsed 
 in every line. 
 
 As for depending on me, I, too, have re-organized from 
 top to bottom, from Alpha to Omega. You say articles 
 ahead are not journalism. No, not political journalism ; 
 but every newspaper on earth has more or less literary 
 matter. These are the kind of articles which should con- 
 stitute the reserve. 
 
 KANSAS CITY, November 20, 1888. 
 
 Since this is the hour of reconstruction, let me say a 
 word or two categorically: 
 
 1st. From this day I want you to order every Missouri 
 exchange, except St. Louis, to my especial keeping. Have 
 them tied up and put in your room. I will get them 
 every evening myself. Then I will show you a State 
 melange of which you will be proud. 
 
 2d. There appear to be some of my editorials which 
 are not acceptable. Will you please read such, make a 
 two or three line memorandum on the back as to their 
 deficiency, and send them back to me. In many an 
 instance it will save me much work. Especially where the 
 tariff is concerned. By hook and by crook I have man- 
 aged to get hold of about thirty valuable works on the 
 tariff. To write one single half-a-column article I have 
 sometimes to consult as many as fifteen. I have prided 
 myself on my tariff articles because of their perfect accu- 
 racy. Even as much of a night owl as you are, I am pour- 
 ing over Adam Smith, Beasley, McAdam, Granier, What- 
 sook, etc.. when you are asleep. I think that all the tariff 
 books which come to the office, pro or con, you should 
 give to me. I honed after McCulloch's book. If you 
 really mean for your newspaper to fight out this fight, you 
 ought to supply my cartridge-box when it costs nothing. 
 
 3d. There is an editorial on Carter Harrison which 
 you should permit to go in by all means. Morry, this 
 miserable renegade's attack upon Cleveland was so unjust 
 
58 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 and cowardly that even stones on streets would cry out 
 against it. 
 
 KANSAS CITY, February 2, 1889. 
 
 Perhaps you will think that I know something about 
 foreign affairs. I predicted Boulanger. Also, the hum- 
 buggery of Emin Bey; also Stanley's fanfaronade; also 
 Gladstone's complete overthrow; also the impossibility of 
 France fighting Italy over Tunis; also the impossibility 
 of Italy making inroads into Abyssinia and now, hear me 
 again: The Crown Prince of Austria committed suicide* 
 He was pitiably married, he had epilepsy, a girl as beautiful 
 as the dawn was torn away from him, he was a powerful 
 drinker, he used opium to excess, he scarcely slept five 
 hours out of twenty-four, and what else could come except 
 that terrible word Finis. 
 
 If you will let me, I would like to write half a column 
 on him. It is part of the curse that he should die. I have 
 Hungarian history open before me the blackest, the 
 crudest, the most unspairing ever recorded and I wonder 
 at nothing that now comes to the Hapsburgs. 
 
 HIS LAST LETTER. 
 
 JEFFERSON CITY, April 15, 1889. 
 
 My Dear Morry: Frank Graham told me this morning 
 that you had been quite seriously sick with your old trouble. 
 I need not tell you how grieved I was and how unhappy 
 it made me. If it had been John or Jim I could not have 
 sorrowed more. If you should die I would feel like I was 
 
 "Alone, alone, all, all alone 
 Alone on a wide, wide sea." 
 
 There are but few men in this world for whose sake I 
 would be willing to die, if nothing else but death would 
 avail. You are one, Jo. Shelby is another, there might be 
 two or three more; but these would cover the category. 
 For God's sake take care of yourself. You do not do this. 
 You think that you do, but there are times when you for- 
 get yourself and undergo ruinous exposure. That infer- 
 nal steam heat in your room at the office would kill a 
 Ganges crocodile. You go from it to the open air that is 
 to say from a temperature of about 80 degrees to one of 
 40. Victor Hugo wrote that no man could be suddenly 
 transported from Senegal to Senegambia without losing 
 his reason. 
 
 I think the fight is won here. It has been hard, 
 
TWENTY YEARS OF FRIENDSHIP. 59 
 
 unceasing, and exhausting. Everything is being attacked 
 beef, hogs, liquor, telegraphs, telephones, express com- 
 panies, stock yards, school text books everything. The 
 Democratic house is on fire from cellar to garret, and not 
 a drop of water nearer than that apochryphal drop, which 
 Abraham might have commanded, but didn't, to cool the 
 parched tongue of that otherwise apochryphal gentleman 
 called Mr Dives. 
 
 In about two years more, good-bye. Democracy. It 
 has been a faithful old soul, God bless it ! Upon a time 
 it strode across the land and giants sprang up. For a 
 blessing it knelt at the feet of patriotism, and when it 
 arose a long line of statesmen had been created. When 
 the Civil War came it made all the lists of it jubilant with 
 the clanking of its armor. 
 
 And now what? 
 
 Wolf scalps, imbecility, cowardice, demagogy, the 
 chattering of monkeys, and the want of daily washing. I 
 
 will be Morry, if a man can be a good Democrat unless 
 
 he keeps his person clean. I am so tired. Just as soon 
 as we can force the fight here to a final vote, I will come 
 home. 
 
 This is a glorious April day. Such days as these will 
 soon make you as of old. 
 
 Your friend as ever, 
 
 * ^i* 
 
 * 
 * * 
 
 And now the most difficult part of this sad labor of 
 love is but just begun to tell in proper terms and fitting 
 phrases of the greatness and nobleness of this Paladin, 
 whose untimely ending brought so much sorrow to so 
 many hearts as illustrated through an intimate friend- 
 ship of over twenty years. Within three weeks after his 
 last letter I stood by his open grave in the village graveyard 
 at Dover, and mingled my tears with others that were fall- 
 ing as the earth was fast hiding all that was mortal from 
 our sight. There was no feigned emotion on that sad occa- 
 sion. The bronzed and grizzled veterans who had fought 
 with him more than twenty-five years ago, wept as freely 
 and felt as bereaved as his own wife and children. Never 
 has earth closed upon mortal man more truly and sincerely 
 
60 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 mourned. Others as brilliant and gifted, have passed 
 away and left a void intensified, it may be by their intel- 
 lectual gifts, but no man of so rare and splendid genius 
 ever died, at whose grave these gifts were so forgotten in 
 sorrow for the nobleness of the man who was their 
 possessor while alive. 
 
 The two most distinguishing traits of character in John 
 Edwards, as I knew him, were his absolute unselfishness 
 and his genuine modesty. Coupled with these, of course, 
 were undoubted courage and chivalry, devotedness and 
 loyalty, an unvarying courtesy and cordiality, that 
 wonderful memory of his which enabled him to never for- 
 get a face or a name all of which endeared him to old 
 friends, and made new ones of those with whom he was 
 brought in contact. But over and above, and greater far 
 than all these, were his pure and unalloyed unselfishness 
 and self-abnegation. Never once in our long and intimate 
 acquaintance can I recall a single instance in which there 
 was the shadow of a difference or variation when these 
 phases of his character were called into action. No matter 
 what the time or when the occasion, he was always ready 
 to do and be done for his friends. Regardless of money, 
 of personal comfort or convenience, aye, of public opinion 
 and the proprieties he would make any sacrifice to his own 
 detriment, for a friend, it mattered not how poor, how 
 humble, or even reviled, so John Edwards considered him 
 a friend. This may be called devotion, and so it is, but 
 its substratum is unselfishness. 
 
 And it may be said that this might refer to notable 
 instances of a public character in which there was much 
 of glamour, and in which the mock-heroic could have been 
 assumed for effect. I mean nothing of the kind. I am 
 thinking and writing of the thousands of instances, in 
 every day life, under all kinds of circumstances, when I 
 have seen these traits so fully tested and so clearly exem- 
 plified of how I have seen him spend time, money, energy, 
 brain power, influence, anything and everything, for some 
 poor fellow who could not help himself, and whom John 
 Edwards supposed he ought to help ; of how, in any cam- 
 
TWENTY YEARS OF FRIENDSHIP. 61 
 
 paign, undertaking or journey, his personality or conven- 
 ience was never to be considered ; of how he always pre- 
 ferred and looked to the comfort of others, whether patri- 
 cians or plebians, the highest and most distinguished, or 
 the lowest and most forsaken in short, of how he seemed 
 always to want to take the fi smallest half " of everything, 
 to think of everybody except himself, not humbly or 
 ignobly, but naturally and with an unassumed grace, I 
 have never seen in any other mortal man. Often I have 
 said to myself: It was born in him, and he can not help it. 
 
 If there was aught of self-pride or egotism in John 
 Edwards, the world never knew it, nor did his most inti- 
 mate friends. For twenty years he was recognized and 
 acknowledged as the most gifted writer in the West. No 
 matter on what newspaper he was engaged, his brilliant 
 pen soon made for itself a place and an individuality that 
 were known far and wide. Nearly all of this time he was 
 one of the most prominent figures and potent factors in 
 Missouri politics. He entered heart and soul into every 
 campaign, first for his friends and always for his party. 
 And yet during these twenty years, with the fierce light of 
 political antagonism and professional rivalry shining upon 
 him, no living man can point to one instance in which by 
 word or deed John Edwards ever preferred or exalted him- 
 self, or ever showed that he was conscious that he was the 
 gifted son of genius, which everyone else knew except 
 himself. Personal adulation and praise, especially of his 
 writing, seemed always to be absolutely painful, and hun- 
 dreds of times have I seen him adroitly turn the drift of 
 such conversation into other channels. His relations with 
 his newspaper associates seem to have been of the same 
 kind as those with his army associates. All recognized his 
 overshadowing ability but in no breast was there ever the 
 tinge of envy. He was the equal, the friend, the helper of 
 every man on the staff from reporter to proprietor, from 
 private to general. And never once in army, in journalism, 
 in politics, was he known to ask preferment or seek to be 
 advanced. 
 
 More than all this., he was an author a writer of books. 
 
62 JOHN NEWilAX EDV*AIIDS. 
 
 Two of his volumes, "Shelby and his Men, "and "Shelby's 
 Expedition to Mexico" relate entirely to events and occur- 
 rences in which John Edwards was an only less prominent 
 participant than the commander himself. He was General 
 Shelby's adjutant-general, and held the same relation to 
 him that Rawlms did to General Grant. It is no detrac- 
 tion from the established fame of General Shelby or of any 
 officer who served under him to say that during all those 
 days John Edwards was much more than his title implied, a 
 mere adjutant-general that in fact he was more to Shelby 
 than any captain, any colonel, any brigadier-general that 
 he was always at the war councils, and that his judgment 
 outweighed them all. These volumes of John Edwards 
 w r ere written to perpetuate the deeds and glory of Shelby's 
 command during the war, and to tell of the romantic 
 march of the five hundred indomitables to Mexico after its 
 close. And yet in neither of these volumes, " Shelby 
 and his Men," and " Shelby's Expedition to Mexico," 
 does the name of the author John N. Edwards, 
 appear except on the title pages and in official orders! I 
 challenge the rounds of history, biography, memoirs, 
 recollections and what not, to instance a parallel! Privates, 
 corporals, sergeants, lieutenants, captains, quartermasters, 
 commissaries, colonels, generals, all every one of them 
 almost are given a place in the only history that could 
 perpetuate their names and their fame. But the name of 
 the author and the master spirit and what he did is never 
 once intruded. I have asked myself time and again why 
 does this man so abnegate himself, and I often tried to draw 
 him out on the subject. His unvarying answer was that 
 he had almost the horror of seeing his name in print as he 
 would have of facing hydrophobia. His actions through- 
 out years corroborated this statement. No journalist in 
 Missouri ever received from his brethren of the press so many 
 laudatory and eulogistic notices. But while inwardly he 
 no doubt appreciated them, he never by word or deed or 
 look gave evidence of that fact. He did not preserve 
 them he never kept a scrap book. Next to army 
 experience, camping, marching, messmating, and fight- 
 
TWENTY YEARS OF FRIENDSHIP. 63 
 
 ing, there is no better crucible in which to test a man than 
 in the active brain shop of a metropolitan newspaper. 
 There obtains in the latter an esprit de corps that 
 is surpassed nowhere except, perhaps, in a well organized 
 and drilled military troop in active service. There can 
 be no loafers or laggards in either corps. A man is soon 
 "sized up" and rated for what he is worth. John Edwards 
 has been ' ' sized up " in both of these professions. Ask any 
 of his old army comrades all of them and there isbut one 
 reply : ( ' He was the truest, the bravest among the brave, 
 and withal the most modest and unselfish." So, also, 
 would be the verdict of his newspaper friends, and 
 especially those with whom he was last associated ; he was 
 true always to his convictions, whether right or wrong 
 that he was brave goes without saying that he was 
 modest and unselfish, there is an avalanche of testimony. 
 I shall add to these notes neither analysis nor pane- 
 gyric which I leave to other but not more devoted friends. 
 I have felt that no pen but his own could do full justice 
 to such a character as that of John N. Edwards. To us 
 who were for so many years his daily companions; who 
 have experienced the loyalty of his friendship, the inef- 
 fable charm of his personality, and the masterful force of 
 his genius, the loss is a bitter one, and words die upon the 
 lips as we look into this open grave. Thousands and tens 
 of thousands share the bereavement who also shared his 
 loving kindness and charity his daily practice of the 
 sentiment: 
 
 ' In men whom men condemn as ill, 
 I find so much of goodness still; 
 In men whom men pronounce divine, 
 I see so much of sin and blot, 
 I hesitate to draw a line, 
 Between the two where God has not." 
 
 The life which closed with the death of John Edwards 
 grows no less beautiful and admirable as we realize that 
 he has gone from us. He has left imperishable memen- 
 toes through which he will live wherever human hearts 
 beat to generous emotions. But far the most cherished 
 
64 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 recollections will be those of his personal friends, those 
 who knew how genuine were his qualities, how warm and 
 tender and true he was back of the genius which flashed 
 through his pages. 
 
 These lines from Pope might serve as a fitting epi- 
 taph: 
 
 " Friend to truth, of soul sincere, 
 In action faithful, and in honor clear; 
 Who broke no promise, served no private end, 
 Who gained no title, and who lost no friend." 
 
 KANSAS CITY, June 8, 1889. 
 
WRITINGS OF JOHN N. EDWARDS. 
 
 " POOR CARLOTTA." 
 
 [From the Kansas City Times, May 29, 1870.] 
 
 DISPATCHES from Europe say that the ^ malady is at its worst, 
 and that the young widow of Maximilian is near her death hour. 
 Ah ! when the grim king does come, he will bring to her a blessing 
 and a benediction. The beautiful brown eyes have been lusterless 
 these many months ; the tresses of .her sunny hair have long ago 
 been scorched with fever and pain , the beautiful and brave young 
 Spartan, rich in energy, in love, in passionate devotion, knows no 
 more the roses and lawns of Miramar ; the Mediterranean brings no 
 more from over perilous seas the silken pennon of her fair-haired 
 royal sailor lover. It is quiet about Lacken, where the Empress lays 
 a-dying ; but Time will never see such another woman die until the 
 whole world dies. 
 
 It is not much to die in one's own bed, peaceful of conscience 
 and weary of child-bearing. The naked age is crowded thick with 
 little loves, and rose-water-lines, and the pink and the white of the 
 bridal toilettes. Here is a queen now in extremity, who reigned in 
 the tropics, and whose fate has over it the lurid grandeur of a vol- 
 cano. A sweet Catholic school-girl she was when the Austrian 
 came a-wooing, with a ship of the line for chariot. She played 
 musical iostruments; she had painted rare pictures of Helen, and 
 Omphale in the arms of Hercules, and Jeanne d'Arc with the yel- 
 low hair, and the pensive Roland her of the Norrran face over 
 whose black doom there still flits a ruddy fervor, streaks of bright 
 Southern tint, not wholly swallowed up of death. Yes ! it was a 
 love-match, rare if king-craft and court cunning. Old Leopold's 
 daughter married with the flags of three nations waving over her, 
 amid the roar of artillery and the broadsides of battle-ships. The 
 sea gave its sapphire bloom and the skies their benison. Afar off 
 French eagles were seen, alas ! to shadow all the life of the bride 
 with the^ blood of the husband. The nineteenth century witnessed 
 the heroic epic which darkened to such a tragedy. She came to 
 Mexico, bringing in her gentle hands two milk-white doves, as it 
 were. Charity and Religion. 
 
 Pure as all women; stainless as an angel-guarded child; proud 
 as Edith of the swan's neck; beautiful; a queen of all hearts where 
 honor dwelt; mistress of the realms of music; rare in the embroid- 
 ery she wove; having time for literature and letters; sensuous only 
 in the melody of her voice; never a mother it was as though God 
 had sent an angel of light to redeem a barbaric race and sanctify a 
 degraded people. How she tried and how she suffered, let the fever 
 which is burning her up alive give answer. It is not often that the 
 world looks upon such a death-bed. Yet in the rosy and radiant 
 toils of the honeymoon, a bride came to govern an empire where 
 
 65 
 
66 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 armies did her bidding, and French Marshals, scarred at Inkermann 
 and Solferiuo, kissed with loyal lips her jeweled hand and mur- 
 mured through their gray moustaches words of soldierly truth and 
 valor. Siie sate herself down in the palace of the Montezumas and 
 looked our amid the old elms where Cortez's swart cavaliers had 
 made love in the moonlight, their blades not dry with blood of the 
 morning's battle; upon Chepultepec, that had seen the cold glitter 
 of American steel and the gleam of defiant battle flags; upon the 
 Alernada where Alvarado look the Indian maiden to kiss, who 
 drove the steel straight for his heart, and missed, and found a surer 
 lodgment in her own. 
 
 All these were bridal gifts to the Austrian's bride the brown- 
 eyed, beautiful Carlota. Noble white vision in a land of red har- 
 lots, with soft, pitying, queenly face ; hair flowing down to the 
 girdle, and as true a heart as ever beat in woman's bosom. As a 
 Grecian statue, serenely complete, she shines out in that black wreck 
 of things a star. 
 
 It c ime suddenly, that death of her lover and her husband. It 
 dared not draw near when the French eagles flew, but afterward what 
 a fate for one so royal and so brave. God shielded the tried heart 
 from the blow of his last words, for they were so tender as to carry 
 a sorrow they could not heal. "Poor Carlota!" Youth, health, 
 reason, crown, throne, empire, armies, husband, all gone. Why 
 should the fates be so pitiless and so unsparing? 
 
 Some where in eternity within some golden palace walls, where 
 old imperial banners float, and Launcelots keep guard, and Arthurs 
 reign, and all the patriot heroes dwell, her Maximilian is waiting for 
 his bride. Long ago that spotless soul has been there. Let death 
 come quickly and take the body, and end its misery and subdue its 
 pain. All that is immortal of Carlota is with her husband. The 
 tragedy is nearly over. In an age of iron and steam and armies 
 and a world at peace, it remained^for a woman to teach nations how 
 an empress loves and dies. Who shall dare to say hereafter there 
 is nothing in blood or birth ? What gentle sister, in the struggle 
 and turmoil of life, will look away from that death-bed in Lacken 
 Castle, and not bless God for being a woman and of the sex of her 
 who is dying for her king and her empire? Sleep! the angels have no 
 need of sleep. Nothing suffices love. Having h^piness, one wishes 
 for Paradise; having Paradise, one wishes for Heaven. There is a 
 starry transfiguration mingled with her crucifixion. The crown is 
 almost hers, and in the beautiful garden of souls she will find once 
 more the monarch of her youth. 
 
 A STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND. 
 
 [Kansas City Times, April 26, 1872.] 
 
 It seems so strange that the hands of poetry should be laid upon 
 perishable things. Heir of immortality itself, its offspring also 
 should be immortal, having no stain of earth, no link that rusts, no 
 flower that fades, no stream that runs dry, no passion that con- 
 sumes, no sun that is obscured, no morning without its dawn, and 
 no sky without its rainbow and its twilight. The picture that it 
 calls into life, the book that it makes beautiful, the idea that it 
 etherializes, the field that it decorates, the warrior that it ennobles, 
 the woman that it makes angelic all, all should live only in the 
 atmosphere that surrounded their creation, in the memories the poem 
 made impervious to time or the rough current of real and practical 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 67 
 
 things. Fancy has its own imperial caste, and surrenders but too 
 sorrowfully its precious and adored deceits. There are too many 
 lattice bars against which its wings beat in vain, and too many false 
 and luring lights in the windows of its hope's first affluence in the 
 color and charm of its day-dreams and its visions. 
 
 It can do no good however sternly inexorable thelogic of to-day 
 may be to make the Cleopatra of our youth forty-two and cross- 
 eyed when Anthony lost Actuim for her own sweet sake. It can do 
 no good to doubt the story of the asp, and deny the half-human, 
 half-panther instinct which, cruel to the last, forgave not the losing 
 of the battle, nor the deep sword-thrust that was sterner proof of 
 Roman love than the starkest blow ever struck by legionary or 
 Egyptian. Why deny that when the long, voluptuous dance was 
 done a dance dreamily danced in the odor of frankincense and the 
 balm of myrrh that the full, pouting lips of the beautiful Hero- 
 dias made no pleading prayer for an august head laureled with 
 God's benediction ? It brings no peace to any dreamer's dream to 
 know that the deft fingers which wove the web of long deceit and 
 broken promise were gaunt and wrinkled, and that the good king, 
 in the ceaseless clatter of Penelope's shrewish tongue, longed for 
 the blue sweep of the seas running shoreward, for the wines of the 
 nymphs the Bacchanal court, and the sweet, long loves -of the 
 Queen Calypso. 
 
 And now the once fair "Maid of Athens " lies a-dying, old, 
 withered, abandoned of the world and forgotten altogether. The 
 wife of an English consul in Greece, Byron met her, loved her for 
 a month and a day, sung of her, and sailed away. The song did 
 not die will not die. It was passionate and beautiful. Many re- 
 member it; many remember some voice that has lingered over it 
 some night when it dwelt in the memory as a star lives in the sky 
 some intonation that had a meaning as sweet as it was hidden. 
 
 " Maid of Athens, ere we part, 
 Give, oh ! give me back my heart. 1 ' 
 
 She was beautiful then. The black hair was long and lustrous; 
 her eyes that unfathomable hue born of a moment's pleasure or pas- 
 sion; her form the lithe, superb motion Byron's heroines always 
 had, her voice softly musical and tuned to the old Italian airs he 
 loved so dearly. The fancy pleased him passing well, but no sin 
 came of it all, and over against his name when the inexorable angel 
 has made up the records of the world there will be written naught 
 of a folly that could darken the frown even on the unforgiving face 
 of his uncharitable and unsympathetic wife. 
 
 And to-day the Maid of Athens, forgotten of the world, lies old, 
 withered, helpless, waiting for death in sight of the blue waves that 
 went out with her life's first romance and her poet lover. It is well, 
 perhaps, that time kneels at no shrine and passes no heads by 
 untinged of gray and unshorn of laurels. He would linger, else, too 
 long for hearts that are breaking and weariness that would be at 
 rest. The grave alone is sacred ground. Its confines mark the 
 limit of finite beauty and bloom, and no matter how sweet the song 
 that pours its fragrance out, nor how adored the idol lifted up in the 
 placid past of youth and .joyous retrospect, it were better that time 
 shrouded and shattered all, than, like the wisest and best of human- 
 ity, it knelt at the feet of some alluring fancy worshiped beneath 
 the rays of some imperial beauty that had even Byron for votary or 
 voluptuary. 
 
 And death should come quickly to her whose face is a picture 
 
68 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 yet in the pensive glow and glory of its Norman setting come in 
 with the tide bearing swift ships from her native England bearing 
 voices that sing the sweet songs of him who knew and loved the 
 Maid of Athens a long half century ago. 
 
 PILOT, WHAT OF THE SHIP? 
 
 [Kansas City Times, April 26, 1872]. 
 
 In the ceaseless drift and change of things, not many eyes have 
 watched and not many hearts have listened for tidings from the 
 good ship Polaris, going on grandly into the night of an unknown 
 ocean. From out the gloom and the silence of the frozen wilder- 
 ness no words have come back of good cheer or safety, and it may 
 be that the hearts which beat bravest when the vessel sailed, and the 
 voices that were blithest and gayest, will beat never more and sing 
 never again till the waters of the world have passed away for- 
 ever. 
 
 Yet the ocean loves its offspring loves with a love beyond the 
 land; those who tempt perilous things and live heroic lives, face to 
 face with the fates of the storm and the harpies of the lee shore and 
 the wreck. And who knows how much of this strange pity may go 
 to color the web of Hall's deathless adventure, and weave into its 
 warp and woof stray streaks of arctic sunshine, not wholly swallowed 
 up of the midnight and the glacier. 
 
 It was summer when the Polaris sailed, the scent of many 
 flowers in the land breeze and the voices of many birds in the trees. 
 All nature held out pleading hands a mute protest of odor, and 
 bloom, and the singing of happy waters, and the glad and green- 
 growing things on the upland and meadow. Autumn came, and 
 winter, and now the spring again, with blessing of blossom and 
 promise of fruit, and soon with the summer once more a year will 
 have gone. One year, and not a word from this American vessel, 
 with her American crew, bearing American hearts that have prom- 
 ised to find the Open Sea, or perish. 
 
 The nation has not forgotten them. There maybe some, per- 
 haps, too many, who have only a sneer for the brave endeavor, ' id 
 onlya faith mils folly and failure, but the great sympathetic un ... r- 
 current of the land is with the mariners, praying right on that the 
 Northern Ocean may give up its secrets that favoring winds may 
 bear them back safely to their own again. How speeds the ship 
 and how fares the crew, the waves have not told, nor any voice yet 
 heard in the homes of the absent. What form death took in clam- 
 bering over the bulwarks, if death came at all, and what rites were 
 said in the face of the wondering midnight, not any messenger has 
 yet returned bearing aught of record or tidings. Perhaps all is well. 
 Terror and night and the unknown are all in league with the 
 spirits who sentinel the Open Sea grim watchers at the uttermost 
 gates of the world but even now the mists may have been rolled 
 back from before the longing eyes, letting in visions of waves that 
 sleep in- a tranquil summer sunshine visions of islands green with 
 palms and fringed in scented and odorous things. Who knows? So 
 Franklin believed and died. So Kane prophesied and passed 
 away. And so Hall did write but one short year ago, when he 
 gave his fate to the ocean and his family to science and his country. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 69 
 
 CJUANTRELL. 
 
 [Kansas City Times, May 12, 1372.] 
 
 As the glorification of living and dead guerrillas seems now to 
 be the order of the day, a few words as to the character of this, the 
 king of guerrillas, may not be amiss. Since Mosby's recent inter- 
 view with General Grant, the Radical papers declare that his sins, 
 though as scarlet, shall be made white as snow. No good reason, 
 therefore, exists why the truth shall not be told of one who, brave 
 and steadfast to the end, died as he had lived, a fearless Ishmaeliie. 
 
 Richardson, whom McFarland killed, wrote once in a letter 
 from Denver city to the New York Tribune, of Billy West, a noted 
 border man, as "the swarthy Adonis of the Plains." Carrying 
 forward the simile, Quantreirmight be likened unto a blonde Apollo 
 of the prairies. His eyes were very blue, soft and winning. 
 Peculiar they were in this, that they never were in rest. Looking 
 at the face, one might say there is the face of a student. It was 
 calm, serene, going oftener to pallor than to laughter. It may be 
 that he liked to hear the birds sing, for hours and hours he would 
 linger in the woods alone. His hands were small and perfectly 
 molded. Who could tell in looking at them that they were the 
 most deadly hands with a revolver in all the border. Perhaps no 
 man ever had more complete mastery over a horse than Quantrell, 
 and whether at a furious gallop or under the simple swing of the 
 route step, he could lean from the saddle and snatch a pebble from 
 the ground. 
 
 Anderson was a tiger let loose ; Quaatrell was a tiger too, 
 that had the innocence of a lamb. Nature loves to group the gro- 
 tesque. Hence all the smiles his features had on when his pitiless 
 lips pronounced the death sentence. Todd mingled no melody 
 with his murders ; Quantrell was heard to sing little snatches 
 of song as the gray smoke rolled away from his pistol. Mosby 
 delighted in surprises and disguises ; Quantrell published his name 
 broadcast when the mood was on him, and blazed it along the 
 route of his travels as if it were a cloud to cover him. He was 
 unlike them all, just as he was greater than them all. 
 
 It is instructive sometimes to study the pictures the war painted. 
 No nation furnishes a counterpart for guerrillas such as ours, except 
 Spain. France had a few, but women tempted them and they were 
 trapped and slain. These Missourians loved women, but the love 
 lasted not beyond the bivouac. In the morning each heart was all 
 iron. What instructs one in the contemplation of such characters, 
 is their intense individuality. Horrified at their ferocity, one yet 
 delights to analyze their organization. If there is a race born with- 
 out fear, Quantrell belonged to it. He loved life, and yet he did not 
 value it. Perhaps this is why it was so hard to lose it. In his war- 
 life, which was one long, long, merciless crusade, he exhibited all 
 the qualities of cunning, skill, nerve, daring, physical endurance, 
 remorseless cruelty, abounding humor, insatiable revenge, a cour- 
 age that was sometimes cautious to excess and sometimes desperate 
 to temerity. In the midst of a band who knew no law but the re- 
 volver, his slightest wish was anticipated and obeyed. Hence his 
 power to command was unquestioned. Recognizing no flag but the 
 black flag, he sat as quietly down in the midst of a hostile country 
 as the foes who were on his track ; and having shaken hands with 
 death, he thought no more of the word surrender. If he believed 
 in God, he denied the special providences of heaven, and stabled 
 
70 JOHN NEWMAN EDWAKDS. 
 
 his horses in a church as well as in a stall. Without knowing the 
 ghastly irony of it, perhaps, he was often heard to offer up a prayer 
 for a victim. 
 
 It is useless to declare that these kind of characters do not 
 attract. All Paris came to see Cartouche hung, and yet Cartouche 
 was only a robber. But then his little child was suspended on the 
 same scaffold. In the arsenal at Jefferson City is a picture of Bill 
 Anderson, taken after death. The clear-cut face is ghastly pale A 
 white, mute, appealing look is on the tense, drawn features. Dead 
 leaves and sand are in the long yellow hair and tawny beard. For 
 hours women gather about this picture and babble of balls and 
 revels and dances and battles, and ever and ever come back to the 
 white, set face and the wa'n, mute features. ISo visitor goes away 
 without seeing it, and thinking of it for many a day thereafter. 
 
 No nation equals in individuality the American. Her people 
 possess all the elements to make the finest soldiers on earth. Keen, 
 desperate, enduring, insatiate for the excitement of active conflict, 
 and readily hardened into reckless butchers, they make conscience 
 subsidiary to slaughter, and accept the fortunes of a struggle with a 
 fatalism that is Oriental. As a perfect type of this, Quantrell will 
 live as a model. Sooner or later he knew death would come, and so 
 he forgot him. Meanwhile his killing went on, and his exploits 
 filled a historic page of the gigantic contest. 
 
 This California paper is too far away to know the truth of his 
 last battle's ending. The curious can find his grave if they will look 
 for it in Kentucky, deep enough to keep him till the judgment day. 
 Bloodier and crueller than Mosby, he died as he had lived, wor- 
 shiped by a few, loved by many, and abhorred of half the nation. 
 
 THOMAS BUCHANAN READ. 
 
 [Kansas City Times, May 12, 187,?.] 
 
 The dead poet and painter American and therefore sectional 
 has gone to his grave before it was yet springtime on all the ways 
 and the woods of his lordly west. The bloom of the lilacs had 
 faded, and the white tentsof the dogwoods had been pitched beyond 
 the green of the swelling uplands, but there was something the'May 
 days wanted some fullness of sap in the maple-trees, some softer 
 music in the hush that lingered by the edges of the running water, 
 some rarer radiance in the hues th at made the gold and crimson o f the 
 sunset skies. And if he could have waited yet a little while waited 
 until the gentler spring and the softer summer took hands in the 
 laughing weather their blended lives having only the roses as a 
 stream between them heaven might have seemed nearer, and fairer 
 and closer to the reach of the hands that will never touch pencil or 
 pen again this side eternity. 
 
 He was not a great poet, nor will America ever produce one 
 until all sectional lines are broken down and all sectional passions 
 obliterated. The realms of poetry are nature's own, bounded by the 
 blue skies, the fields, the flowers, the lessons that humanity teaches, 
 the songs thatryhthm make musical, the pictures that art adorns, the 
 yearnings that fancy interprets, the mortality that imagination 
 glorifies and redeems. Wars send abroad over the land stern battle 
 lyrics that bear in their ringing cadence the sound of sudden sword- 
 blades, and the dim, nebulous swing of burnished bayonets, but 
 they are foreign wars, waged when a nation's life it at hazard or a 
 nation's honor at stake. Read sang of a soldier whose morning 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 71 
 
 was clouded by doubtful fame, and whose evening had over it the 
 baleful light of rapine and slaughter. No matter, he eame to laurel 
 Sheridan and he did it, in that desolate valley by Winchester town, 
 after the conflict was done and the glory awarded. History, how- 
 ever, rejecting the sonorous swell of the picturesque ride, lays its 
 inexorable tribute at the feet of Wright, unsung and unknown 
 though he be in the numbers of the poet. Truth, the terrible logi- 
 cian, halts never a moment for a smiJe from the " sweetest lips that 
 ever were kissed " for a verse from the sweetest song that ever was 
 sung. In the mills of the critics where the grinding is done, that 
 which is false is crushed with its rhetoric, and that which is true is 
 redeemed with its glory and its gold. 
 
 No matter again, he believed in his hero, and faith with a poet 
 is religion. Somewhere in the islands of the blest somewhere be- 
 yond the sunset shore he will find the old, glad days of his Italian 
 weather again. There must be an Italy in heaven, or the world 
 would send thither none like Byron, nor Shelley, nor Keats, nor De 
 Musset, nor Scott, nor the boy Chatterton, nor the woman Brown- 
 ing, sweet in royal singer fashion, the purest, fairest, saddest Eng- 
 lish Bird of Paradise who ever, swan-like, sang and died." 
 
 JAMES GORDON BENNETT. 
 
 [Kansas City Times, June 8, 1872.1 
 
 The telegraph brings the news that this aged and war-worn editor 
 is near his death hour that even now he may have passed over the 
 river to rest under the shade of the trees. About the death of any 
 Paladin there is always something of solemn import, something 
 that attracts, even while it terrifies. No matter how the life had 
 been, no matter whether the prowess that lifted him up a giant 
 among his fellows was the prowess that the pirate has, that the Free 
 Lance boasts who fights for gold or for beauty, that the Christian 
 owns who dares the Syrian night winds it is the last, last act alone 
 of the tragedy called existence which fascinates those who gaze in 
 upon the struggle. There is the standard lifted up on some perilous 
 day, torn now~and bloody; there is the good sword too heavy for 
 the weak hands that will never use steel again ; there are the hau- 
 berk and. shield, dinted by many a blow and cleft by many a battJe- 
 stroke ; and there, too, it may be, faded and soiled, is what the world 
 knew not, a little glove or bunch of ribbon, telling the old, old story 
 of how, in the stern, unpitying hearfthere was a memory that all 
 the desolating work of rapine and slaughter could not banish or 
 obliterate. 
 
 James Gordon Bennett came to America a rugged Scotch boy, to 
 whom the world owed a living. Alone, friendless, penniless, who 
 can doubt how the beginning went, and how the struggle began. 
 Pinched in pocket, oftentimes hungry, made sullen by disappoint- 
 ment, and vindictive from the utter isolation of his life, he hated 
 society because he believed society hated him. Hence all that long, 
 fierce warfare upon it, which brought him curses, insults, blows, 
 prosecutions, fines, and once an imprisonment. Even in the gutter 
 the old Scotch desperation writhed up against the foot that was 
 trampling him down, that it might deal a blow as stark as him of 
 Colonsay at Bannock burn. Much self-communing makes men snv- 
 ages or dwarfs; solitude either gives veneration or cruelty. Bennett 
 was a savage of the streets; his cruelty dealt with character and rep- 
 utationblasting and blighting them as a hoar-frost would the sum- 
 
72 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 mer plants. It was a terrible warfare, this of bis in poverty and 
 gloom. He stood upon tbe streets witb a pencil for a pistol this 
 freebooter of the alleys, crying out to the proud and the rich: Stand 
 and deliver. Want assailed him, and the law, and the bravoes of 
 that society, whom he hated and defied. But the Scotch blood and 
 bitterness were there, and he fought like a wolf at bay. His pen 
 was dipped in poison. Scandal, stripped to the waist, made an elab- 
 orate toilet before all New York in waiting, and fast men and women 
 clapped their hands and applauded. Amid it all, however, he had a 
 wife who was beautiful and whom he idolized. Strange union, this 
 man and that woman one hating the cliiffonieres and the offal of his 
 hateful life, and the other turning to him as an angel of goodness, 
 when the deep loathing and disgust was uppermost, and tying a rose- 
 bud in his button-hole. 
 
 He struggled also for notoriety, and gained it such notoriety 
 as Lafitte and Murrell had. His paper was read by all, sought 
 for by ail, bought by all, and then the tide turned. One day he 
 came forth a new man, faultlessly dressed, having gloves upon his 
 hands, and boots upon his feet. He lifted an elegant beaver to the 
 world, and bowed to it as one who meant to treat the world civilly. 
 This soldier of fortune had become to be a Marshal of the Empire ; 
 this Dugald Dalghetty was no longer a Free Lance, but a Baron with 
 armorial crest and quarterings. The two lives kept pace together 
 the newspaper's life and the editor's life. Where he poisoned before, 
 hestimulated; where he pulled dowiibefore, he builtup; wherehe lac- 
 erated before, he soothed and gratified ; and where he administered vit- 
 riol before, he gave opiates and rosewater. The shadow of the Herald 
 fell upon a continent, and men rested under it and found it grateful. 
 The immense enterprise and brain-power of the man were turned into 
 legitmate channels. Never sincere/liowever, never reliable, never a 
 partisan in politics, those whom he supported longest and truest felt 
 that behind the mask there was a glim, sardonic smile which toler- 
 ated them while it despised them. Not all the old clansman's blood 
 was entirely eradicated. The love of the sudden and the grotesque 
 would ever and anon break out, and for a grand sensation men knew 
 he would sacrifice a President or immolate a senator. And he did, 
 roaming over the political field as an incarnate executioner, cutting 
 off heads that were sometimes the wisest and the most august. In 
 a revelation, he would have been Camille Desmoulins ; in the 
 Chamber, Barriere; at the barricades, St. Just, who turned pale 
 and wept, giving as a reason : "I am too young and too poor to 
 die." 
 
 The country grew, and grew, and changed until the country of 
 Bennett's youth and Bennett's maturity were as two countries, the 
 years a rolling stream between. But he filled the new country with 
 his fame as he had the old. The Herald's empire remained without 
 a rival, and to day, while he lies a-dying or dead, he knows, if that 
 curious, gnarled, rugged nature knows aught of earth, that behind 
 him as a monument is left the greatest newspaper the new world has 
 ever known or seen. His ways to make it such were his own ways, 
 dark and crooked though they were at times, yet he had that great- 
 est of all meritsuccess the only standard by which a soldier of 
 fortune can be judged this side the court where human reason and 
 human intellect are no longer lamps to light and guide us in the 
 paths of duty. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 73 
 
 FENIMORE COOPER. 
 
 [Kansas City Times, October 16, 1878.] 
 
 In the Indian summer, that honeymoon of the year, one loves 
 to recall the names of those who made nature a great white throne 
 where men might kneel, or dream, or worship. It is good for all of 
 us, no matter, when or how, to get away alone in the dim woods, 
 and those authors are dearest to us who lead on to where the even- 
 ing will fold its purple wings about the trees, or where, in the white 
 hush of the morning, the kisses of the breeze will awaken the sleep 
 of the flowers. Isolation comes often as an anodyne softer than 
 night, or dreams in the night. The forest has a voice which, thrill- 
 ing, articulate, mighty, speaks to the inmost soul of the glory of 
 God and of the wonderful powers of His Omnipotence. 
 
 There is no tree which gathers to its grateful branches the dew 
 and the sunshine; no unseen brook that babbles of the lowlands and 
 the summer's sea; no trailing vine that lifts its soft lips up to the 
 bearded lips of the oak; no swaying nest, vocal with life and love; 
 no flower that feeds its bee; no spring that slakes some creature's 
 thirst; no bird that sits and sines for joy; no glad or growing or 
 happy thing in all the woods that has no voice to tell something 
 good or true of something to make life brighter and braver, and 
 better for all of us. 
 
 Cooper is the novelist of the woods. The spirit of nature has 
 entered into his genius and inspired it. As Byron loved the ocean; 
 as Shelley the placid lakes, where the blue of the waves and the blue 
 of the sky were deep together; as Poe the midnight and the waning 
 moon, so Cooper loved the mighty woods, no matter whether 
 spring had peopled all its waiting places with bud and blossom, or 
 summer with wealth and teeming life, or autumn with crimson and 
 gold, or winter with its vanguard of snow, which could be seen 
 creeping stealthily through the pines, until the melodies of the 
 streams were mute, and a glaze as of death had swept over all their 
 dimples. 
 
 Cold actuality has discarded his Indian pictures, and bereft 
 many a hamlet and stream of the delightful romance of his genius, 
 but who wishes to analyze a novel? What difference does it make if 
 the champagne which intoxicates is a mixture of prussic acid, Jersey 
 cider, and beet leaves? None want to look beneath the sparkle and 
 foam for the dark sediment that has headache in it, and heartache as 
 well. Cooper fascinates. Through five books he carries a single 
 character that of Natty Bumppo and the light that shines upon 
 him is always the light which eomes from some tree, some stream, 
 some desolate trail, some hushed and thrilling ambushment, some 
 river that runs to the sea, some little clearing where a cabin stands, 
 the blue smoke going up to the blue skies as a prayer to the good 
 God who guards alike the trapper in the wilderness and the king in 
 the midst of his capital. 
 
 We do not believe that the fame of the great American novelist 
 is dying out, no matter what some Eastern critics have lately said 
 and written. Who is there to take his place ? What hand anywhere 
 yet lifted up can weave the web of romance as he has woven it about 
 all the great lakes, and all the great tribes gone or decimated ? It 
 is true that the pathway of progress lies over the graves of the Indians, 
 and that the vices of civilization have made the remnant of the race 
 a cruel, beggarly, degraded few; but we seek only for our gratifica- 
 tion among the ideal creations of his fancy, and not where the 
 
74 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 squalid Diggers live on grasshoppers, and the vindictive Apaches 
 murder all alike the old and the young, the women and the chil- 
 dren. It is nature we want as revealed by one who worshiped at 
 her shrine, and who felt her beauty and her glory enter him as a 
 divine love, purifying his imagination and giving to his prose the 
 music and tremor of a hymn. God grant that the mantle of this 
 great man, so long unknown, may yet find a resting-place upon some 
 new American Cooper, as wonderful in his creations as the great 
 original. 
 
 SCHUYLER COLFAX. 
 
 [Kansas City Times, February IS, 1873.] 
 
 There is a momentary pity in the hearts of most men for any ani- 
 mal hunted hard and brought at last to bay. No matter how 
 trapped, or sought, or slain, some commiseration will mingle with 
 the defcth struggle when the yearnings of the chase are over, and 
 not a little of weariness and disgust because for the skill of the 
 hunter there could only be the conquest that destroyed without re- 
 storing again. But if anywhere in all this broad land there is one 
 who begrudged the Credit Mobilier its righteous and unmerciful 
 work upon Schuyler Colfax, there is no record made by either 
 press or pulpit. 
 
 An unctuous, smiling, psalm-singing, cold-water hypocrite, he 
 must have knelt down when he took his bribe just to show God how 
 fervent he was. He must have laughed, too, in the face of his soul 
 and promised it a camp-meeting holiday, with a feast of hymns and 
 a revel of prayer, wherein conscience, a beautiful angel no longer, 
 transformed its body into railroad stock and its wings into cou- 
 p 0ns a dividend for the harp within its hand and the "crown upon 
 its head. 
 
 The creature and the pet of the war, it swallowed him as a 
 mighty whale a gigantic Jonah. Strange food for such a stomach. 
 Strange taste for the appetite that had devoured cities sacked and 
 pillaged, provinces laid waste, and living armies arrayed as growing 
 corn, fresh with the beams of the morning of life ai.d ripe^for the 
 scythe of the harvester Death. One day he was cast forth again, 
 and the faithful places knew him a miracle by the white of his sanc- 
 tified vest, the cut of his orthodox coat, the zeal of his loyal 
 prayers, and the penetrating sweetness of a seraphic smile that made 
 all the tough missionaries easier of digestion, and all the Christian 
 Association stockholders in the radical party. Babies were named 
 for him, and he kissed and blessed them, and dabbled among their 
 diapers for votes. Temperance societies invoked his inspiration, 
 and he drank their soda water and their chamomile tea. Sewing 
 circles worshiped at his shrine, and offered up a sister a day as a 
 sacrifice. Sunday-schools patented little pious proverbs and pinned 
 them to the name of Colfax. -Prayer-meetings wrestled with the 
 Lord for Schuyler's promotion, and eliminated from their cate- 
 chisms the story of Ananias and Sapphira. 
 
 For others there were glory, fame, records made noble in battle, 
 manhood, triumphs, deeds done daringly for man and for humanity; 
 but for Schuyler the sole irrevocable and eternal smile. He laughed 
 in the faces of the corpses that the waves of the war threw out upon 
 the ghastly beaches of society; at the feet that had waded in the 
 valleys of the strife and came away crimson to the instep; at maimed 
 and furloughed veterans, homeward bound and laureled; at fairs 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 75 
 
 and sanitary gatherings, and at all the crowds that met to tell of 
 victorous fights by laud or sea. One day the men who frowned and 
 fought were mustered out, and Schuyler got well ahead in the 
 jackal race that knew no goal but loyalty and plunder. But alas! 
 alas ! for Schuyler. Another day and a fisherman came who cast his 
 net into the sacred places of the House and Senate and snared such 
 lordly and loyal fish as Patterson and Dawes, Harlan and Kelley, 
 Mr. Speaker Blaine and Mr. President Colfax. Even through the 
 meshes of the trap there shone on the bland face of Schuyler the 
 same old smile. They dragged him forth in the light of the Credit 
 Mobilier conflagration, so that the world might see what manner of 
 a fish he was. There was the same immaculate vest, the same coat, 
 and brass buttons, and cold-water countenance, and beaming and 
 benignant face. Brother Newman recognized him and blessed him. 
 The Young Men's Christian Association of Boston drew a draft in 
 favor of his integrity and demanded that the Great God should cash 
 it; South Bend thrilled through all the limestone veins of its tem- 
 perance societies and drowned its virtuous grief in soothing ginger- 
 pop. Too late! Not Lazarus at the rich man's gate was ever more 
 an object of contempt ever a more polluted, tainted and accursed 
 thing. To bribery there had been added perjury, to hypocriscy the 
 crime of detection. Even the smile that had cheated the devil 
 through all the years of hatred and persecution and annual baby- 
 shows, and Good Templar funeral services, fled from the mouth that 
 had sworn to a lie, and hovered like a dove, it is supposed, until 
 taken into a laminated steel-spring hoop-skirt factory at South 
 Bend, Indiana. Men 'who hold bribes in cosmopolitan hands can 
 wash them and get well again; but for the Puritan who all his life 
 fingered only the prayers of the Pharisee, there is only leprosy and 
 death. He could not rend his garments and be forgiven if he 
 would. For the lion , snared or shot, there is human pity and regret, ; 
 for the soft-pawed, slinking jackal, only the bayings of the watch- 
 dogs and the broom-sticks of the washerwomen. Away with the 
 corpse to the Potter's Field. Is there any need of epitaph? No. 
 Yet, lest loyalty should seek some nobler grave to find its perjured 
 priest, a monument uplifted there might bear for record the simple 
 words URIAH HEEP. 
 
 BON VOYAGE, MISS NELLIE. 
 
 [St. Louis Evening Dispatch, May 22, 1874.] 
 
 The young, innocent thing just married to a stranger and borne 
 to a stranger's home, will carry with her the blessings and good 
 wishes of the American people. No matter the pomp of the cere- 
 mony, the preciousness of the bridal gifts, the magnificent display 
 that waited upon the marriage of the president's daughter, there was 
 something supremely sad in that almost regal heart plighting, where 
 the fairer and the weaker was so soon to say good-bye, and so soon to 
 sail away from parents and kindred and native land, the passionate 
 yearning for which is never known until forsaken. In the spring 
 time affluence of her first love, and bravely loyal and womanly 
 patient, she will bear herself proudly up and sing and sigh not 
 .through the beautiful English summer weather; but when it is 
 autumn on all the woods, and the night comes, and the talk of home 
 and friends beyond the sea, tears will gather in the calm brown eyes, 
 and pensive longingsthat whisper and cling about the heart until, as 
 a bird set free, the sweet young bride, so homesick and so hungry for 
 
76 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 the land of her birth, will return again for a mother's tender kiss and 
 a father's gentle greeting. 
 
 Not as the daughter of a president, nor yet as one born to the 
 memories of a name and fame great in the somber glories of a civil 
 war, do the Americans send benisons and blessings after the sweet 
 young bride. For her womanhood alone do they honor her, and for 
 the rare fragrance of a sinless and stainless life. A Christian 
 mother reared her a Christian child, and she carries to the old world 
 from the new a character made strong with the precepts of duty 
 and a proud consciousness that the true domain where she can rule 
 by right divine is home the subjects whose loyalty is most impor- 
 tant, the children that God will give her the works most necessary 
 for her to study, their little hearts and the treasure best worth 
 seeking, her husband's love. 
 
 LITTLE NELSON W. DALBY. 
 
 [Sedalia Democrat.'] 
 
 Sang a poet once: 
 
 " God's lightning spares the laureled head." 
 
 But why not that other one, laureled with six summers of curls 
 and six summers of sunshine? Don't you see he was taken the day 
 before the May day, when all the birds could have sung for him, and 
 all the buds burst into bloom for him, and all the grasses grow so 
 green for him, and all the odorous, blossomy, glorious weather put 
 surely for him the red in his cheeks and the south wind in his hair? 
 You see he was also so young. Every little garment he left con- 
 tained a legacy of grief. He did not walk without taking the hand 
 of his mother or father. He never knew a night outside the parent 
 nest. He clung so. If he had only been a soldier and fallen in bat- 
 tle, his face to the foe and the flag of his faith above him ; if he had 
 only been a man, scarred by life's combat and scorched by life's 
 fever ; if he could only have worn harness and put a war plume in 
 his helmet's crest ; but you see he was only a little blue-eyed, fair- 
 faced, timid, shrinking boy, laying his head in hismother's lap when 
 he wanted to sleep, and saying his prayers by his mother's knee 
 when he wanted to be put to bed. 
 
 Peace after such a sacrifice ! Never any more this side the 
 river called the River of Death. There is the little grave, lying out 
 in the dawn and the dew, awaiting the resurrection. There are the 
 garments he wore. There are broken toys, 
 
 "And pieces of rings, 
 
 And fragements of songs which nobody- sings, 
 A lute unswept, and a harp without strings, 
 And part of- an infant's prayer." 
 
 There are words before the cooing had given place to the lisping, 
 and the lisping had lapsed into the thrill and the vibration of the yet 
 untutored voice. There is the vacant chair. There is above these 
 and over and beyond all these, the cry of the finite soul trying to 
 pierce the infinite : What of the future, oh! merciful God, is it 
 annihilation is it the dark ? 
 
 What can be said to make the utter agony an hour less in pain ? 
 Nothing. There is no need to try. Even love is stronger than' 
 time, than change of scene, than efforts at forgetfulness, and here 
 was adoration. My boy ! my boy ! not my angel, that is the cry 
 from every human lip that ever cursed the daylight because death 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 77 
 
 had made it hideous, or clung to an idol's lips, in one passionate 
 caress, lips pale, and pinched, and wan, and drawn forever. "The 
 Lord gives and the Lord takes away." Hush ! put nothing upon 
 the Lord that makes Him merciless, or monstrous, or the slayer of 
 the lambs in his own sheep -fold. The lord loves little children. He 
 had once a son, whose death, though in the full prime of his heav- 
 enly manhood, shook the earth as though hell had risen upon it and 
 mastered it, and every accursed murderer upon it was to be given 
 back unto the night and chaos. The boy's fate came out of the 
 unknown swiftly, and that was all. It is best to believe this, for 
 woe be to the land when its mothers groping in the dark for their 
 children, blind, gasping, crying aloud for help, come face to face 
 with a creed which tells them that God took them away. 
 
 As little Nelson Dalby was in the flesh tender, confiding, 
 beautiful so let him be remembered by his parents and adored until 
 the unfathomed gives back its dead to those who seek them there, 
 or utter and eternal night its surcease of sorrow and f orgetf ulness. 
 Keep everything his little hands ever touched, and everything that 
 ever as toy or trinket made his wondering eyes to shine, or the 
 red in his cheeks to deepen like a scarlet japonica bud. Never 
 mind the future. On this earth are the thorns, the parched high- 
 way, the covering up of those faces which give to the heart a hor- 
 rible drought. Make of his memory a shrine and worship there as 
 flesh worships flesh which is its own. Grief has its luxury. Some- 
 thing that is exquisite may be even given to despair. The darling 
 is gone and he is not gone. Imagination perpetually renews his 
 walk, his talk, his infinite confidences and his good-night kiss that 
 will be forever and forever a benediction. 
 
 HENKY CLAY DEAN. 
 
 [Kansas City Times, February 13, 1887.] 
 
 This many-sided intellectual giant and we refer solely to his 
 intellect and his heart in any analysis that may be made of his char- 
 acter has suddenly passed away. He was a strange man in many 
 respects, yet one of the most genial and lovable men, when once 
 thoroughly understood and appreciated, ever known in Missouri. 
 Beneath an exterior which could not always be easily penetrated, 
 he carried the conscience of a Christian and the heart of a child. If 
 the expression may be permitted he had two natures, that of the 
 warrior and that of the priest. The hand that smote upon occasion 
 so relentlessly and so remorselessly was no less/prompt to soothe, to 
 heal and to make whole again. A tale of sorrow moved him to 
 instant response. Those who had no friends always found him a 
 friend in need. His good deeds were innumerable, and his charities, 
 for his means were larger by far than any one supposed; but he 
 neither boasted of the first nor claimed for the last any sort of recog- 
 nition or approbation. 
 
 Intellectually he was rarely gifted. He was preacher, lawyer, 
 politician, public speaker, lecturer, farmer and author. Many qual 
 ities went to make up his power before a crowd. He was mighty 
 in invective, but it was the invective which came at an adversary 
 with a club. Perhaps no man ever used to more advantage the rare 
 exquisite gift of irony, and he did with it what few writers or 
 speakers of this country have ever yet succeeded in doing he joined 
 with it an indescribable pathos. Hence his power before a jury 
 when his intellectual and his moralnature was aroused. At other times 
 
78 JOHN NE\VMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 lie dealt only in a ponderous kind of logic and built up his speeches 
 as some mighty triphammer might forge an iron mainmast for a 
 man-of-war. His weakness in politics appeared to lie in his want 
 of flexibility and plan of battle. He lacked in the capacity of mass- 
 ing his forces and seizing instantly upon all the strong points of a 
 disputed field. Too much precious time was often wasted upon 
 skirmishes that his scouts might have looked after, or upon recon- 
 noissances which his captains might have controlled. Gifted as lie 
 was, these gifts were not at all times homogeneous. With a mind 
 as vivid as a dream, rapid in its encompassments as thought, of won- 
 derful grasp, resource and fertility, it yet did not drive forward 
 straight to the end, knowing neither variableness nor shadow of 
 turning. A pleasant byway was lure enough to take him aside; a 
 rare look put him to dreaming. There were too many unresponsive 
 fibers in his individual make-up ever to permit him to become a suc- 
 cessful politician. The harness of the caucus so galled his withers 
 that he would frequently stop short in the middle of the road, refus- 
 ing thereafter to pull a single pound for either love or money. Of 
 the stronger and more potent elements of leadership he did not pos- 
 sess a single one. Not a few have been the magnificent structures 
 he has erected, only to burn them down or blow them up in a moment 
 of spleen, or disgust, or uncontrollable indignation. For a hot fight 
 under a black flag, where for the wounded there was no surgeon and 
 for the dead no sepulcher, he was incomparable. But if strategy 
 were required solely, if the head alone and not the heart were to dom- 
 inate the struggle, if only the cold logistics of mathematical maneu- 
 vering were to be permitted to the combatants, he was not the man to 
 lead; but what if he could not lead in such a crisis ? It is sometimes 
 as vital to destroy as it is to build up. 
 
 He wrote one book the " Crimes of the Civil War" which was 
 fierce, fragmentary, and not unfrequently viciously savage. He 
 wrote another the " Criminals of the Civil War" which was, if 
 anything, fiercer and more savage than the other, but it has never 
 been printed. The manuscript was burned at the time his house 
 was, some several years ago, together with a library that was 
 unequaled in Missouri, and which, with nigh on to 10,000 volumes, 
 he had been a lifetime in collecting. His reading was vast, his 
 information almost superhuman, and if such a thing could be pos- 
 sible, or even half-way possible, he had, as it were, the whole 
 recorded history of the world stowed in his mind, and ready to be 
 summoned for any purpose at his bidding. Some of his monologues 
 were only surpassed by those of Napoleon at St. Helena. When 
 the mood was on him he put spells upon people through the sheer 
 force of an intellectual necromancy that forced them to listen even 
 as the guest to the marriage feast was forced to listen by the ancient 
 mariner. 
 
 He loved much to talk of the hereafter. He speculated much 
 as to what was beyond the grave. He sought in many ways to pen- 
 etrate the future, and to get but one bare glimpse of something real 
 and tangible that told of another life. Upon this earth nothing was 
 ever vouchsafed to him. Does he know it all now ? 
 
 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 
 
 [Kansas City Times, March 9, 1887.] 
 
 The blow has fallen at last, and the wizard of the pulpit of 
 Plymouth church can no longer conjure a congregation which 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 79 
 
 adored him. That sleep came upon him which he had so often 
 described, and when he awoke he had solved for himself the great 
 problem of the hereafter. How he strove to do this while yet upon 
 earth. How from under the dark shadow of restless intellectual 
 doubts which come to all men who read and think, and reason, he, 
 yearned for a faith that never wavered. How, when he imagined, 
 in the fervor of an exalted vision, that he saw the porphyry domes, 
 the jasper gates and the golden highways of the New Jerusalem, he 
 looked again, but only on a mirage. How, step by step, he sought 
 for the soul's immortality through every proof that God, or man, or 
 s iience, or nature, or creed, or conscience, or revealment had fur- 
 nished, he has best declared in a mountain of discourses as high as 
 Plymouth's steeple. 
 
 Did he find before death came to him that perfect peace which 
 can only come from a perfect knowledge? What matters it? He 
 lived the life that was in him, and better than that no man can do 
 who was ever yet born of woman. 
 
 With Beecher's final faith or belief, however, we have nothing 
 to do. That was solely a matter between himself and his Creator. 
 The reckoning already has been had, the score been paid, the re- 
 cording angel's book closed for the present ; and somewhere out in 
 the wide, white hush of eternity is a freed spirit waiting for the 
 resurrection. 
 
 As a preacher he is the most difficult man to analyze, in an 
 intellectual way, in the United States. At times he had an almost 
 indescribable pathos. Often his irony was superb, but it was the 
 irony of a splendid spiritual digestion, and, therefore, as a balm it 
 always carried with it a touch of amazing grace. Satire helped him 
 upon occasion, but it was not the satire of the scorner and the hater 
 it was rather that of one who was fond of a laugh and fond of a 
 story. 
 
 Born actor, his mobile face italicised, as it were, each emotion 
 which he wished to make emphatic. Not unfrequently a quaint 
 humor played along the edges of his sermons as a sunbeam along the 
 edges of a storm cloud. Then the lightnings of some terrible denun- 
 ciations would leap forth, and one saw only the darker and more 
 somber aspect of the sky. In this he was dramatic, but what is in- 
 tense realism at last if it is not vivid contrast, and the swift inter- 
 mingling of sunshine and shadow? He surely loved nature as only 
 a passionate lover could love her. He took into the pulpit images of 
 fields where the green corn stood in serried ranks like lines of infan- 
 try formed for battle; of summer wheat fields, the south wind 
 bending their bearded heads as though at the touch of ^ its caressing 
 fingers they had bowed as to a benediction; of twilight woods, 
 where nest said good-bye to nest in the gloaming; of apple orchards 
 white and pink with blossoms; of dewy lanes, where on eiiher 
 hand could be heard the weird laughter of the owls in the thickets; 
 of bird and tree and bird and leaf and fljwer and all sorts of 
 blessed things which filled the heart with reverenceand made man in 
 spite of himself lift up his thoughts from nature to nature's God. 
 
 In the stronger and terser "ser.ee of epigram Mr. Beecher was 
 notably lacking. Weak also in pictiiresqnene?s that sort of pic- 
 turesqueness which can make one hear the flapping of invisible 
 wings and the swish or the flow of imaginary waters he yet had 
 what answered almost the Fame purpose a quick, entertaining and 
 corruscating fancy. Imagination wns also wanting that sort of 
 imagination which could make one see a sinner being held up over 
 the very mouth of hell and make one smell his very hair scorching. 
 
80 JOHN NEWMAN EDWAKDS. 
 
 He could not soar. He never in all his long life, according to our 
 estimate of him as a preacher, preached a really strong, terse, mass- 
 ive, logical sermon. He could take hold of the heart and do with it 
 pretty much what he pleased, but he almost always left the head 
 where he found it. He was utterly incapable of building a massive 
 edifice of thought, perfect in every arch, beam, door, floor, window 
 and rafter story upon story and stone upon stone ; but he could 
 build a beautiful cottage, with lattice-work all about it, and put 
 angels into it, and make honey suckles form a bower for them in which 
 to play their harps and wave their palms, and decorate it with all 
 sorts of little nooks and crannies, and fill these with all sorts of 
 quaint rugs and rare books and celestial brick-a-brac generally; 
 but for a fortress that the very wiles of the devil himself could not 
 prevail against through any force of sup, or siege, or stratagem, or 
 cunning well, some other hands than Mr. Beecher's would have to 
 hew out the rock and rear the structure. 
 
 What, then, was his power over his congregation, over his 
 audiences, ar,d over all public bodies with whom he came in contact 
 or before whom he delivered not only sermons but various other 
 kinds of addresses? It was the powerful individuality of the man 
 to begin with, buttressed upon an immense vitality, electricity and 
 personal magnetism. Then he had pathos, knowledge, dramatic 
 capacity in no small degree, all sorts of resources to be summoned 
 at a moment's notice for his apt and apropos illustrations, a forgiv- 
 ing charity for the errors and the frailties^of poor human nature, an 
 appositeness in putting things that, while it is not true eloquence, yet 
 does much that real eloquence alone can do more demagogy than 
 appears at first sight, vividness, perspicacity, anecdote, every art of 
 a finished actor, ease, grace, the poetry of motion, much elocution, 
 and above all, and beyond all for the purposes for w r hich the gift 
 was given an almos.t supernatural acquaintance with human 
 nature. 
 
 There w T ill be innumerable obituary articles written on the 
 death of this famous American pulpit preacher. He will be dis- 
 cussed from every conceivable standpoint. He has had his share of 
 harsh criticism and indiscriminate laudation. He has gone through 
 some fiery ordeals, and as he himself has sometimes said in moments 
 of unutterable sadness, the way has seemed to be so dreary and dark, 
 and life's burdens so heavy ; but, whatever the final judgment may be 
 that his countrymen shall pronounce upon him, both as a man and 
 as a preacher, this should always precede the verdict: 
 
 In men -whom men condemn as ill 
 
 I lind so much of goodness still, 
 
 In men whom men pronounce divine 
 
 I find so much of sin and blot, 
 I hesitate to draw the line, 
 
 Where God has not. 
 
 GENERAL ALBERT SIDNEY JOHNSTON. 
 
 [Kansas City Times, April 10, 1887.] 
 
 An equestrian statue, erected to the memorj^ of General Albert 
 Sidney Johnston, has just been unveiled in New Orleans with heart- 
 felt and appropriate ceremonies. Randall Gibson, who commanded 
 a Brigade under him at Shiloh, delivered the memorial address, and 
 Jefferson Davis passed in review his life, his military services 
 and his spotless character. 
 
 Albert Sidney Johnston was a man whose ability as a com- 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 81 
 
 mander the soldiers of the Civil War will always love to study. They 
 never tire of asking, one of another, the following questions: If he 
 had lived, would he have driven Grant into the river? If he had 
 lived, would he not have been made commander-in-chief of all the 
 Confederate forces? If he had lived, would he not have finished the 
 battle of Shiloh during the first day's fighting? If _he had lived, 
 would he have fulfilled the promise of his earlier years, and would 
 he finally have become the bulwark and the savior of the Southern 
 Confederacy? 
 
 These be hard questions to answer. As the Confederacy was 
 organized, it is doubtful if even a Napoleon Bonaparte could have 
 saved it. The politicians got hold of it almost before it had put its 
 armor on. Nothing would do them but a constitution, a congress, 
 a president, a cabinet and a civil administration. Not a single 
 leader in the South, bold or otherwise, arose in his place to demand 
 a dictator. Secession was a mere juggler's term. Some coiner of 
 phrases or quibbler over abstractions invented it. Revolution was 
 the word stark, inexorable, unmistakable revolution. For this 
 anything else but a dictator was a criminal absurdity. With a 
 president, there would always be an administration and an anti- 
 administration party; with a congress, the outs would be eternally 
 striving to circumvent the ins ; with a constitution, the strict con- 
 structionists would do little else but fiddle and dance while Rome 
 was burning; with a cabinet, red tape was bound to be a king. A 
 general in the field, to get to his chief authority, would have to trav- 
 erse as many avenues as there were rat-holes about a granary filled 
 with corn. While armies were crying for arms, ammunition, food, 
 clothing and medicine, cabinet officers would be indexing reports 
 and pointing out how every requisition would have to go through 
 the regular channels, you know. 
 
 Johnston fought but one battle before he was killed, that of 
 Shiloh, and he did not fight that to a finish. Up to the momen 
 when a minie-ball cut the femoral artery of his right leg he had 
 everything his own way. His plans were working to perfection. 
 The various subdivisions of his army had taken the ground pointed 
 out to them, and when the designated hour came had entered 
 promptly into the fight. It was not possible for any general to have 
 held his forces better in hand. True, it had been his intention to 
 begin the attack one day earlier than he actually did begin it. but 
 he could not be everywhere at one and the same time, and so, at a 
 most critical period, some of his subordinates failed him. But for 
 this Buell could never have reached Pittsburg Landing in time to suc- 
 cor Grant, no matter whether Johnston had lived or died, nor 
 whether Beauregard had or had not called a halt to rearrange his 
 lines of battle. 
 
 That Johnston was a man of splendid administrative ability 
 none have ever denied. That in a military point of view he showed 
 skill of the very highest order in his operations in Kentucky, his 
 Federal opponents have borne ample and generous testimony. He 
 seems to have known war and to have had a better idea of the exi- 
 gencies and the requirements of the struggle than any other com- 
 mander who fought for the South. From his writings and from 
 some sketches and memoranda of campaigns left behind him, there 
 can be no mistake made about the grasp of his intellect, nor of the 
 further fact that such was his prescience and his logical acumen 
 from the standpoint simply of the soldier that he predicted future 
 events with a vividness and directness that the aftertime was to 
 prove more than prophetic. 
 
82 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 As far as it was fought by Johnston, Shiloh was the most perfect 
 battle of the war and the most glorious for the arms and the prowess 
 of the Southern Confederacy. When he fell the contrast came in, 
 and from this contrast much may be understood how immeasurably 
 he towered above those who succeeded him in the command of the 
 Army of the Tennessee. 
 
 KATKOFF. 
 
 [Kansas City Times, April 1, 1887.] 
 
 If the report is true that M. Katkoff, editor of the Moscow 
 Gazette, has fallen into deep disgrace with the Czar, then indeed has 
 one stormy petrel been brought to the ground with ruffled plumage 
 or broken wing. 
 
 In his journalistic make-up he was part Tartar and part Greek, 
 that is to say: He rode like a Cossack and glided like a snake. His 
 newspaper wore always two masks. Behind the first one could 
 invaribly hear the rattling of chains and the swishing of the knout 
 that was for Russia. Behind the second one could always hear an 
 air from an opera or the voice of a woman that was for Europe. 
 Remove both, and there was the elegant man of the world smiling, 
 plausible, soft of speech, a rose in his buttonhole and a love knot in 
 his hair. It was as one going into a coffin to find a corpse and find- 
 ing Adonis. 
 
 The Emperor Nicholas first discovered in the young Katkoff 
 those elements of superb pliability and audacity which have made 
 more tyrants and more revolutions than any other two elements 
 which go to make up the sum of human character. Of course he 
 had others, and shining ones, but these two constituted the pick-ax 
 and spade with which he worked. The Emperor put him at Mos- 
 cow, laying upon him only one injunction: "Be always a Mus- 
 covite," that is to say, stand always by the old Russian party as 
 against the new. 
 
 And he has. Next to the Czar, himself, Katkoff had more to do 
 with bringing on the Crimean War than any other man in Russia. 
 He has said things which no other subject alive would ever have 
 been permitted to say, and he has written and printed things which 
 would have rewarded any other subject alive with Siberia. What- 
 ever he has done, however, he has always wrote furiously, and ably 
 as well, against Germany and Austria, and in favor of Russia's 
 eternal advance, if it is only one foot a day, toward Constantinople. 
 He has had a spy at every capital, and surprised, over and over 
 again, the most important secrets of half the crowned heads in 
 Europe, ife was loved, petted, caressed and ennobled by the father 
 of the present Czar, and for a time after Alexander II. met with so 
 horrible a fate, Katkoff was in high favor with his successor. If he 
 is now indeed in disgrace it is a mystery, but then, so many mys- 
 teries exist in Russia. The night of its despotism is sometimes im- 
 penetrable. 
 
 [August 7, 1837.] 
 
 So Katkoff, the great Russian editor, is dead. When death 
 stripped him of his harness and flung it furiously aside in the lists 
 where they had struggled month after month for the mastery, it 
 rang out no louder than the blow of a wooden sword-blade upon a 
 wooden buckler. A brief paragraph was all that was vouchsafed 
 him in the American newspapers by way of obituary, and save in 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 83 
 
 his own land and his own city his passing away was but little more 
 accounted of than the folding of the hands in sleep. 
 
 When Mary died, the Mary whom the slanderous Froude called 
 bloody, she said : "If you will examine my heart you will find the 
 word Calais written thereon." And Nelson said: " For my epi 
 taph put this died from a want of frigates." And if Katkoff s 
 heart could have been examined also that, too, might have had 
 stamped upon it indelibly Constantinople. 
 
 For fifty years his one long, fiery interminable text was Con- 
 stantinople. We can never become powerful as a nation, he has 
 thundered out ten thousand times through the columns of his news- 
 paper, until we get to the sunshine and the sea. Do not call the 
 Black Sea a sea. For half the year it is a lake, frozen as hard as 
 the solid earth aye, as the rock which is crowned with the cannon 
 of Gibraltar. It is the Mediterranean which will forever go to 
 make up the warp and the wool of Russia's destiny. 
 
 When Peter the Great was dying, sometimes delirous and some- 
 times in a stupor, he would have brief intervals when the clouds 
 would roll away from that strangely perturbed brain of his, and the 
 shadows recede far enough to give him a glimpse of the light that 
 still abode upon all the world. Then he would cry out to those 
 about him : ' ' Never take your eyes from Constantinople. I com- 
 mand you upon your loyalty, your honor and your love for Russia, 
 to never take your eyes from Constantinople." 
 
 Perhaps that word might also have been found written upon his 
 heart, if, indeed, this savage Tartar fisherman, shipbuilder, archi- 
 tect, assassin, pope, czar and epileptic ever had a heart. 
 
 To that dying command of the wonderful barbarian Katkoff 
 devoted his whole life. Since it was given, Russia has five separate 
 and distinct times come within sight of the spires and the minarets 
 of Constantinople, the domes of its mosques and the monuments to 
 its heroes ; but banded Europe, England at the head, threw itself 
 in front of the conquering columns, and stayed the hand that had 
 almost closed about the prize. 
 
 Baffled, and made aged in his prime at each successive defeat, 
 Katkoff would begin anew the preaching of another crusade. He 
 must have been a statesman, because he was patient and knew how 
 to wait. He must have been a politician, because the people's pulse 
 to him was always as a barometer. He must have been a leader, 
 because after he knelt at the feet of the iron-hearted Nicholas for a 
 blessing, a pale faced, stoop-shouldered, shrinking, scarcely articu- 
 late man, fresh from the academy, when he arose he was a giant. 
 He must have been a poet as Beranger was, because in the white 
 heat and torment of some of the fiercest charges at Plevna, the 
 grenadiers of the guard went on singing one of his battle hymns 
 set to music. 
 
 Furthermore, and for the benefit of those superlatively superb' 
 patriots of our own Civil War who seem to have forgotten everything 
 else connected with it except a doctor's certificate of ^disability and 
 a pension, Katkoff was one of the most devoted friends and elo- 
 quent advocates the cause of the Union had. It was owing largely 
 to his counsels that the Russian fleet broke out of the Black Sea and 
 anchored in American waters, pending the settlement of the Mason- 
 Slidell-Trent affair, when England showed so much passion and Mr. 
 Seward so much common sense. 
 
 The Moscow Gazette, Katkoff s newspaper, must have been a 
 power in Russia. It was the idol of the old Muscovite party, which 
 leaped full-statured and full-armored from the loins of Ivan the 
 
84 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 Terrible. This party never stirred, nor lifted a hand, nor gave 
 forth responses to a single appeal until Katkoff passed along its lines 
 and fired them, as a torch passing along will fire a line of ready 
 gaslights. We know of no newspaper which ever before had so 
 much power and audacity, nor have we ever read of one. Perhaps 
 none could exist outside of such a despotism as Russia's. When the 
 savage hour was on Nicholas, none could get to him quicker than 
 Katkoff, nor soothe him more completely. More than to any other 
 man, save Alexander II., did the serfs owe their emancipation. As 
 he hated black slavery, so he hated white, and so his voice was lifted 
 up against the forms of it in his own country. We say the forms 
 of it because the substance remains. There are still the dungeons, 
 the knout and Siberia. 
 
 Prance also has lost a devoted friend. Ever since the Crimean 
 war he has demanded an alliance offensive and defensive with 
 France, offering Egypt to France if France would help Russia to 
 Constantinople. There can be little doubt that Russian counsels 
 were back of Boulanger, and Russian army corps in readiness for 
 materialization, Katkoff could not know that he was leaning on a 
 reed, and that fine clothes and gold lace and a cocked hat and 
 heroic words could never make a general. 
 
 Perhaps the great editor died too soon. He might have lived to 
 see the next European conflagration, to help on which and to lead up 
 to which he has brought more tar, pitch and turpentine than any 
 other one hundred men in all Europe. 
 
 A FISH STORY. 
 
 [Kansas City Times, March 17, 1887.] 
 
 There are just nine hundred and ninety-nine chances out of one 
 thousand that nobody attempted to kill the Ozar last Sunday; that 
 nobody held a dynamite bomb in his hand ; that the whole story is 
 bald and barren and bogus; that whatever there is to it at all was 
 born of an Oriental imagination, qualified by that all-pervading blood 
 mania which belongs to the absolute right of Russian despotism. 
 
 Look for but just a moment how absurd and ridiculous the cable 
 dispatches are. It was semi-officially stated that an attempt might 
 be made on the life of the Czar. That several persons were arrested 
 near the palace with dynamite bombs in their hands. That no 
 actual attempt was made to kill him. ^ That a bomb attached to a 
 cord was thrown in his direction, the intention being to tighten a 
 string which was fastened to its mechanism, but before the said 
 string could be tightened the would-be assassin, laboring under the 
 disadvantages of holding a very loose string in his hand, was seized. 
 That the bomb, still with this very loose string, was shaped like a 
 book. That one of the students arrested in connection with the 
 plot also had a bomb shaped like a book. That a woman with a 
 bomb in her muff, probably not shaped like a book, was also 
 arrested. That on Monday every suspicious person who had been 
 arrested had been released except one. 
 
 That this one was of short stature, and would not talk, and that 
 the Czar himself, when he came fully to understand what an escape 
 he had made, cried bitterly he the great big six-foot booby, a 
 monarch, and a lineal descendent of Peter the Great and Ivan the 
 Terrible. What slush, what jargon and what absurdity! That the 
 Czar has many a subject who would like to kill him thousand upon 
 thousands of them no well-informed student of history doubts for 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 85 
 
 a moment; but death lias never yet been known to make itself ridic- 
 ulous. Men, with dynamite bombs in their hands do not go gali- 
 vanting about the streets of St. Petersburg. It has never yet been 
 recorded that women carried them about in muffs. Of course it is 
 clearly understood that in many of the sad, subtle, and more merci- 
 less tragedies of the past, wherever the weaving was the darkest or 
 the most somber, its warp and its woof could be traced clearly to a 
 woman's hand; but then they always sang a song or two like Circe 
 before they slaughtered. "Was not Delilah's lad a pillow for Samp- 
 son, and her dusky hair above him like a canopy, before his own 
 long locks were shred away, and he was turned over, helpless and 
 blinded, to his enemies? 
 
 Finally, our faith is abiding that if the Czar comes DO nearer to 
 death than he was last 'Sunday, England will yet hear the Russian 
 drums 
 
 Beat at the gates of Candahar. 
 
 PROHIBITION. 
 
 [Kansas City Times, February lo, 1887]. 
 
 In voting to indefinitely postpone all prohibition legislation 
 call it by the name of submission, if you please, that sleek, sly, 
 slinking wolf, with the soft wool of the best of the flock yet thick 
 in its teeth the Missouri senate has done well. It took by the 
 throat the most vicious and disastrous species of legislation ever 
 introduced into a Democratic general assembly, and strangled it 
 with as little compunction of conscience as if it had been a snake. 
 In politics, as in inundations, what a blessed thing it is sometimes to 
 have a breakwater. The high, full, serene courage of conviction is 
 rare in the land, and is, perhaps, growing rarer. Demagogy that 
 accursed ulcer which has eaten the life out of more republics than 
 Leonid as had Greeks to defend the pass of Thermopylae has as- 
 sailed Missouri fiercely of late, and swept over too many of its fair 
 and fertile political places. To every ism which came along too 
 many sturdy old Democrats knelt and sought to turn away its wrath 
 as if it had been a murdering giant. To a man upon his knees every 
 attacking enemy is a giant. Wnat was greatly needed in the pres- 
 ent prohibition crisis was simple to make the Democrats get up from 
 an attitude which was cowardly, cringing and degrading. They 
 knew that submission meant prohibition, and that prohibition would 
 make out of the people of the State a people of liars, sneaks and 
 hypocrites. They knew also further that prohibition did not prohibit. 
 
 They knew also still further that if prohibition prevailed in 
 Missouri even though qualified, as in Kansas, by the obsequious 
 probate judge and the all-accommodating and all-embracing 
 drugstore the State would be torn from its Democratic moorings 
 and given over rudderless and dismasted, to the pirates of the 
 greedy and remorseless opposition. They saw women whose 
 babies at home were crying for the milk of maternal breasts, and 
 whose dirty and unkept bodies pleaded for the work of maternal 
 hands haunting the lobbies of the Legislature, glib with their little 
 hoard of Mayflower maxims, preaching down Missouri laws and 
 habits and customs, and smiling the sweet, elephantine smile of the 
 frowzy female reformer every time some old one-gallus Democrat 
 would become thoroughly impregnated with the new religion, and 
 yell for more prohibition straw about the mourner's bench as though 
 he were in a Sam Jones' circus, with the sisters all a shouting, and 
 
86 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 the new recruits beating their breasts and tearing their hair, as 
 though the "hell serpents" had them already, even as they had old 
 Parson Bullen when Sut Lovingood poked the lizards up the two 
 legs of his breeches. They read a little pamphlet scattered thicker 
 than the vine leaves were ever scattered by the nymphs of Bacchus, 
 when naked to the knees they trampled the grapes of the God-given 
 vintage a pamphlet wherein was retailed all the partisan slanders 
 upon "poor old Missouri," and wherein also might be found the 
 false and somewhat startling assertion that whatever of wealth, 
 civilization and development might be contained in the full flow of 
 a flood tide of emigration was all passing by ' ' drunken and whisky 
 Missouri" and finding a sure and contended lodgment in sober, 
 pious and prohibition Iowa and Kansas. 
 
 Too many Democrats, we say, saw all these things, and heard 
 all these things, and read all these things, and yet they never whim- 
 pered ; the unfortunates, they did worse ; they indorsed everything 
 said to the detriment of Missouri, because they trailed at the bedrag- 
 gled skirts of the women who had the slanders printed, and rocked 
 and crooned over the cradle in a lullaby voice that might have made 
 a panther dumb, wherein was jabbering that bastard and misbegot- 
 ten infant called submission. But the Democratic Senate came to 
 the rescue and tumbled about the cars of its builders and into a vast 
 mass of rubbish all the sham, pretense, lying-in-wait, deceit, false- 
 hood, and hypocrisj r of a dozen accumulated years of snuffle and 
 cant and wheeze. It only needed some such stroke as this bold, 
 umistakable and patriotic to bring the timid and the wavering 
 Democrats everywhere to their senses, to make them grope again 
 through the darkness of their temporary betrayal until they find the 
 old landmarks of the party ,to go again to the teachings of the fathers 
 as to an altar, there to confess their sins, abjure the disreputable 
 political associates of the new faith and plead to the august shade of 
 him who wrote our Magna Charta for the peace that can only come 
 from a perfect absolution. 
 
 As for the Times, it stands to-day where it has alwaysstood, and 
 where it stood in its declaration of principles years ago utterly 
 opposed to every form and species of prohibition. High license and 
 local option is its platform at the present, just as it has been from 
 the beginning. It believes in temperance as much as it believes in 
 the laws which govern, regulate and protect human society. It 
 believes that temperance should begin at the fireside; that parents 
 should teach it to their children; that the preachers of the gospel 
 should embody it in their sermons, and insist upon it in all their 
 devout and holy ministrations; that local enactments should become 
 its intelligent ally; that the saloon should not be driven from the 
 street to the private residence; that alcohol drinking may be regu- 
 lated, but never extirpated; that civilization brings with it certain 
 evils or vices which have to be dealt with in a spirit of tolerant, not 
 of violent, firmness or aggression, and that where history, illustra- 
 tion, comparison and example all teach us that prohibition does not 
 prohibit, it would be a species of folly but little better than a crime 
 to attempt its introduction into a State, the large majority of whose 
 people hate the very sources from which it sprang, and who are not 
 yet prepared to swap the principles of a lifetime for smuggled beer 
 and drug-store whisky. 
 
 [May 16, 1887.] 
 
 A valued correspondent writes to know what the chances are 
 for the prohibitionists to carry Texas, and to ask if the support ren- 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WHITINGS. 87 
 
 dered to them by Senator Reagan will not help them in a greater 
 degree than could othewise have been expected. 
 
 The prohibitionists never had any chances in Texas to begin 
 with, and it is altogether useless to speculate upon them now. Never 
 having existed, there is nothing to discuss. Texas is a peculiar 
 State in many ways. It has three zones, three climates, three ter- 
 ritorial empires, and three world staples sugar, cotton and cattle. 
 
 One would scarcely suppose so, but Texas is also an exceedingly 
 cosmopolitan State ; made so by its very immensity. Tolerance is 
 indigenous there because of that exalted idea of personal or individ- 
 ual freedom which finds its highest type and its most exalted 
 expression in range, latitude, boundlessness. Liberty exists there 
 because of its immense cattle ranches and grazing grounds. 
 
 To find prohibition in its perfect form and essence one must go 
 where population is concentrated. Where the mases are dense 
 enough to hunt for a master, as all dense masses do. Where dema- 
 gogues swarm, forage and litter. Where familiarity breeds con- 
 tempt and contempt expresses itself in upheaval. Where anything 
 that is stable is hateful, and where the thing called progress is inter- 
 preted to mean nobody's rights but your own. Where civilization 
 can neither advance nor retreat, and where, for the want of some 
 sort of exercise to prevent social putridity, it is often found avail- 
 able to resort to proscriptive politics. Prohibition thrives in Maine 
 because its administrative life is dank, stagnant, finished , in Iowa, 
 because its life is that of Plymouth rock harsh, sterile, proselyting, 
 greedy for strife ; in Kansas, because its life is of the Mayflower 
 canting^ morose, insincere and brutal; if each could not war on 
 whisky it would be on something else. The race to which eithtr 
 belongs in all the world's history has been a race of bigotry, psalm- 
 singing and spoils. 
 
 Prohibition in Texas would be the same as aloes in sugar or 
 cologne in a pig pen an absurd anachronism. When a man in 
 Texas goes to fooling with his neighbor's landmark, they put him to 
 death. In Iowa they make him either a judge or a preacher. When 
 a man in Texas begins to prescribe certain fixed metes and bounds 
 wherein his neighbor shall walk and conduct himself, he is either 
 lassoed or scalped. In Kansas, after running away with somebody 
 else's wife, he would be sent to congress. Hence, our valued cor- 
 respondent can readily see what sort of a show the average prohibi- 
 tionist would have in Texas. 
 
 And Senator Reagan? And Senator Reagan's influence? 
 Neither the man nor his influence, in the sense that he could make 
 one hair of the prohibition head in Texas either white or black, is 
 worth the price of a mustang pony. He is a good soul enough, but 
 he labors under one disadvantage that of not knowing that he does 
 not amount to anything. He is one of Texas' fossils left over from 
 the Southern Confederacy. Should he get drowned in the Brazos, 
 his contiguous water course, his neighbors as a mass would look up 
 stream for his body. As a pre-Adamite he will do just about as 
 well as the Alamo, with this difference in favor of the Alamo it 
 has a substantial fence around it. To size up Reagan in the light 
 of his own self-appreciation and then fencehim round would require 
 a county. Hence they just let him run at large, a powerful squealer, 
 but quite harmless. 
 
88 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS.' 
 
 ON DEMOCRACY. 
 
 [Kansas City Times, January 24, 1887.] 
 TO BE KILLED AGAIN. 
 
 Prophets of evil are abroad in the land: 
 
 First a speck and then a vulture, 
 Till the air is dark with pinions. 
 
 Everywhere in the darkness there can be heard the flapping of 
 invisible wings and the whetting of insatiable beaks. It is the Dem- 
 ocratic party which is to be slaughtered again and picked to the 
 bones. t And by whom? By what process? Through what sort of 
 revolutionary uprising or upheaval? 
 
 The new labor party, already as good as formed, is to be the 
 butcher, a white apron above its paunch and its feet to the knees 
 dabbled in great pools of blood. The republican orators have 
 decreed it. The Republican newspapers have proclaimed it. All 
 that servile crowd of camp followers, who find private benefit in 
 public disorders and who prefer the favor of a master to the inex- 
 orable equality of the law, are praying for it hourly. Elaine has 
 declared it with something of the apocalyptic vision the pirate had 
 when he saw in his dreams a Spanish galleon beating up from the 
 Indies with a clear king's ransom in silver^and gold. 
 
 Well, the old thing called the Democratic party has been con- 
 siderably bruised and battered up in its day and generation. It has 
 been proscribed, bedeviled, shot at, carpet-bagged, pro-consuled, 
 hunted up one side of the country and down another; but when 
 they came with a coffin to carry away the corpse the corpse was 
 not forthcoming. All of its long and memorable life it has been 
 always just on the eve of destruction. Federalism was to put it to 
 death. Federalism was buried in the grave of the elder Adams. 
 
 The Whig party its pure, its true and its strongest opponent 
 came next to die with its mighty leader, Clay. Knownothingism 
 came next, fighting under the black banner of religious intolerance, 
 but Virginia, putting into the hands of Henry A. Wise her spotless 
 Democratic banner, slew the monster at the very gates of liberty. 
 
 Then the war came, and the very blackness of darkness swept 
 over the fortunes of the Democracy. Out of the white heat and 
 torment of that war the Republican party seized upon the North in 
 the name of patriotism, and held it for the spoils of a savage 
 partisan vengeance. The South had never a limb that did not 
 wear a shackle For twenty-four long, weary, hungry, disconso- 
 late years the Democratic party dragged its crippled body up 
 to the defense of the Constitution, only to be beaten back or beaten 
 down by the Republican organization, rioting in ^ the excess of 
 colossal strength, drilled like a regiment and despotic like an army. 
 True, within the period named Mr. Tilden was elected president, 
 but the victory was a hateful one, because it was torn from the 
 hands of those who had won it without an effort at defense or even 
 a suggestion of protest or resistance. Four years later Garfield 
 buttressed upon the money power, and the whole tremendous 
 influence of the Federal patronage machine defeated Hancock, and 
 made the night darker and darker for the Democracy. It rallied, 
 however. Patched as best it could its tattered old garments. 
 Dressed as best it could its battered old ranks. Gathered as best it 
 could about its ragged old banner> and rushed once more to the 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 89 
 
 asasult upon Radicalism as though Jefferson had written its platform 
 and Jackson were leading its columns to the fight. This time the 
 hero was destimed to enjoy the victory and the martyr to wear the 
 crown. Not a hand was lifted to stay the inauguration of Cleve- 
 land. After renewing its youth the party was back again in the 
 house of its father serene, unconquerable, and healed of all of its 
 grievous and manifold wounds, even as Lazarus was healed in the 
 bosom of Abraham. 
 
 While attempting to prove the indestructibility of the Demo- 
 cratic party from the brief history we have given of the organiza- 
 tions it has successfully encountered, the sacrifices it has made and 
 the sufferings it has heroically endured, we have said nothing of the 
 no less formidable enemies it has had to grapple within many of the 
 States. Whatever sprang up in the shape of an ism, a craze, or a 
 local uprising, there was the Democratic party, square in the breach, 
 fighting the one long, eternal fight for the repose and the integrity 
 of the national organization. It might be greenbackism, or tad- 
 poleism, or prohibition, or whatever other name these emeutes went 
 by, the party set its face against them like a flint, and sooner or 
 later carted them all away to the potter's field, many a time without 
 even a shroud or a coffin. And now the cry is that organized labor 
 is to kill the Democratic party. What for, in the name of common 
 sense and the simplest instincts of common self protection? If the 
 Democratic party from the very first hour of its creation up to the 
 present hour has not been the friend of the laboring man, then kill 
 it. If it has not, both in and out of Congress, fought every kind and 
 species of monopoly, kill it. If it has not stood as a wall against 
 every land grant, grab or steal, and every extravagant appropriation, 
 kill it. If it has not been a constitutional party in every bone and 
 fiber, seeking to preserve home rule and States' rights in their very 
 essence and purity, without which no republic can be long free, 
 kill it. If, in short, it has not been the steadfast and unselfish friend 
 of the oppressed, no matter by whom, or how, or in what fashion, 
 kill it. But if , after having been all these things, there is a single 
 honest workingman to-day in the country who would vote to destroy 
 the Democratic party, that same workingman would murder his 
 father. Parricide is parricide, whether political or social, and a 
 party of parricides is as impossible in America as that an immacu- 
 late soul, washed white in the blood of the Lamb, should not enter 
 heaven. 
 
 NOT MEN ENTIRELY. 
 
 [Kansas City Times, March 8, 1887.] 
 
 In adversity the attitude of the Democratic party was superb. In 
 six desperate presidential campaigns did it drag its battered and 
 crippled old limbs up to an assault upon the Republican party that 
 splendidly organized party born of the Civil War. the spoiled child of 
 pillage and the sword, intrenched in the treasury, claiming to own 
 the nation by the divine right of Appomattox Court House, hobnob- 
 bing with God Almighty in its platforms,and calling Him boss, with 
 the reconstruction aegis over it as a yellow flag over a hospital six 
 times, we say, did the Democracy rush to the fight, successful only 
 in its last encounter with the giant of Radicalism. It was a gaunt 
 and grizzled old thing, this Democratic party. It had hungered and 
 thirsted for a long time. It had laid out of nights, and slept in corn 
 shocks, and gone barefooted many times, and had cockleburrs in its 
 hair, and needed quinine powerful bad for its "ager shake," and 
 
90 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 spoke a strange gibberish about the Constitution, and wanted to 
 know where its little Meenie, called States' rights, was ; but, God 
 bless it ! it was the same old glorious Rip at heart who had gone up 
 into the mountain, singing like a school boy and jocund like a 
 reveler. 
 
 And now what? Nothing, except that it has got fat again. In 
 renewing its youth it has become somewhat obstreperous. The old 
 house appears to be a little bit circumscribed. The old political 
 family Bible appears to have been revised. Some of its chapters 
 appear to have been interpolated with chapters on prohibition. The 
 niche where once stood the radiant figure of the Constitution is filled 
 with a gutta percha thing, chiseled by the hands of congressional 
 jobbers, and made to cover every appropriation from a silk milch 
 cow up to an ironclad which can not go to sea. As for States' rights, 
 an overflowing public treasury put its velvet paw upon it, and ever 
 since the contact it has purred at the feet of power as the little 
 white mice purred and purred in the velvety hands of Count Fosco. 
 Many saints have been persecuted and many martyrs stoned. In 
 short, the Democratic party appears to be in a transition period 
 appears to be about changing front in presence of the enemy some- 
 thing which Hannibal never attempted and which Bonaparte dared 
 not do but thrice in his lifetime. 
 
 This condition of things, however, is not calculated to encour- 
 age the opposition so much as to make its own old guard lukewarm 
 or indifferent. The old Democratic party regarded the individual as 
 the unit of society, upon the integrity of which society depended 
 wholly. The personal liberty of the citizen. Jefferson and his 
 associates drove the Federal party out of power on this issue, which 
 was fundamental in the struggle which gave us our free government, 
 and which produced the Constitution. As was the citizen so was the 
 State. The State began at the family. Children were taught at the 
 fireside to love it, to fight for it, to obeys its laws, to revere its 
 institutions and to preserve for it every right guaranteed by the con- 
 stitution. Hence the doctrine of States'^ rights, which once made 
 the Democracy so dear to the people. Which gave to it its magnifi- 
 cent staying qualities, which enabled it to be grand in victory and 
 august in defeat, and which, as contradistinguished from Federalism 
 or centralization, made it essentially the party of the poor man and 
 the pride of every true lover of liberty in the whole land. 
 
 If it would still retain its hold upon the country it must come 
 back to first principles. It must show that it is fit to reign by stamp- 
 ing upon its administration the features of the great organic law 
 under which it was created. To do this it must be economical in the 
 handling of public money. It must get rid of the idea, as soon as 
 possible, that this is a paternal government, and that whenever there 
 is either a flood, a drouth, a murrain among cattle, a splenetic fever, 
 or a fever of any sort, the only cure is to open the treasury doors. 
 
 It must extirpate mugwumpery in its own ranks by putting a 
 Simon-pure Democrat in every Federal office in the United States. 
 It must go oftener to the shrine of Andrew Jackson and less to the 
 living presence of those independent fellows who strive a lifetime to 
 take the backbone out of American politics and invent new names 
 for party fealty, truth and devotion. 
 
 There is yet plenty of time to do all these things, but they must 
 be done thoroughly and in perfect order. The place to begin is in 
 the next Congress. The Democrats have a majority in the House, 
 and upon the work of this majority much will depend that is not 
 now believed in or even imagined. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 91 
 
 EYERY TUB ON ITS OWN BOTTOM. 
 
 [Kansas City Times, July 17, 1887.] 
 
 It makes not one particle of difference whether the labor party 
 does or does not put a presidential ticket in the field. We take it 
 for granted that it will. Or the Henry George party. We take it 
 for granted that it will. Or the prohibition party. We take it for 
 granted that it will; but it does make a wonderful sight of differ 
 ence what the Democratie party proposes to do in the premises. 
 
 Let these various organizations do as they please. This is a free 
 country, and the greater the multiplicity of parties, we suppose, the 
 greater the magnitude of personal or political liberty. Parties are 
 everything in a republic. In France there are some twenty odd, 
 probably. 
 
 However, all this, the Democratic party has only itself to 
 depend upon primarily for success in 1888. Some great overmas- 
 tering principle must be enunciated by it, and so emphasized as to 
 carry conviction home with it and make it also fragrant and allur- 
 ing with the truth. Nothing that is fast-and-lpose, hot-or-cold, may- 
 be-so-yes or may-be-so-no can live an hour in the winds and the 
 storms of the next campaign. 'Questions have arisen which have 
 got to be answered, and the Democratic party must give its answer 
 in such a way as will make the dust of old Andrew Jackson quicken 
 and stir in its last resting place. Platforms generally are milk and 
 cider. They mean broadcloth or blue jeans. Big sunflowers or 
 scarlet japonicabuds. Something that is soft, pliant and easy to 
 handle. Something that suggests: 
 
 "Let me tangle my hand in your hair, Jeane*te; 
 It is soft as the floss of the silk, my pet." 
 
 But in the next national Democratic platform there must be 
 two or three planks which need to be all iron. No metaphor. No 
 lullaby rhetoric, singing a soft, low song at the cradle of interpreta- 
 tion. ]tfo apple plucked and pitched into the committee on resolu- 
 tions by Henry Watterson to be pared by Mr. Randall until it might 
 be a peach, or a quince, or an ivory billiard ball. Our country at 
 last has come face to face with the necessity of few words and many 
 deeds. The prayers now put up must be like Sir Richard Waller's 
 riding down to Naseby: "O, Lord ! Thou knowest how busy I must 
 be this day. If I forget Thee, do Thou not forget me. March on, 
 boys." 
 
 It is not necessary for the Democratic party to do aught else 
 except to deal frankly and justly with the people. In many directions 
 they seem somewhat bewildered. Beset by a multitude of recruiting 
 officers for all sorts of organization, they simply need to be made 
 able to lay hands upon Democracy. Therefore its organization must 
 be perfect; its discipline of the old days; its platform the^law and 
 the gospel; its declarations patriotic but adamant, and its every 
 movement that of something which is being led and guided by the 
 Constitution. 
 
 Three times in the history of this republic has the Democratic 
 party prevented a change in its present form of government. As for 
 labor it has given it everything it now possesses in the way of hearty 
 recognition, liberal laws and strong safeguards to prevent the least 
 encroachment. Since It was created it has been especially the party 
 of the poor man and the stranger. It has nothing to fear from hon- 
 est labor, although there may be fifty so-called labor tickets in the 
 
92 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 field, and all working against it. Let all things else go except a full 
 and perfect reliance upon its own resources. Call back its old time 
 energy and discipline, and the people will do the rest. 
 
 BOURBON DEMOCRACY. 
 
 [Kansas City Times, May 22, 1888.] 
 
 One hears much of this term lately. It is as glib in the mouths 
 of certain republican men and newspapers as the forked tongue in 
 the mouth of a snake. And just as glibly does it dart in and out, 
 by its rapidity something like a nerve that jumps and throbs under 
 galvanism, and something like a cut-throat in ambush where the 
 hedge is thickest, or the road the most lonely and God-forsaken. 
 
 In their estimation Bourbon Democracy means to pull dowji ; 
 burn school-houses; retrograde; have here and there a touch of 
 the thumb-screw; the rack also upon occasions; proscription always; 
 guerrillas out in the underbrush; all the better if a few train 
 robbers ride and raid; breaking into the strong places where the 
 public money is kept; chaos; no more law and order; no more 
 jails; the Rebels in the saddle; and no pitch hot in any available 
 direction. 
 
 The truth about Bourbonism in Missouri is just this: It got 
 its name from the fact that it would not steal in the old days, 
 nor disfranchise, nor break into meeting-houses to deprive other 
 denominations of their property, nor confiscate railroads, nor run 
 away with county funds, nor be generally unclean, despicable and 
 dishonest. 
 
 True, a Bourbon Democrat delighted in the past. He believed 
 in the old-fashioned way of doing things. He lived in peace with 
 his neighbors. He burnt neither their hay, their "wheat nor their 
 straw stacks. Nor was one ever known to break into a smoke-house. 
 He believed in the family, and taught his children to rely upon it 
 as the basis of all society, the foundation upon which the State rested, 
 the bulwark against which all the Cossacks in the world tould not 
 prevail when they came to attack civil and religious liberty. He 
 liked his dram and got the best that was going. No Puritanical 
 processes invaded his sanctuary, preaching free love on the one hand 
 and prohibition on the other. Virtue was a shrine at which all 
 the brave Missourians worshiped. The seducer, before the lust had 
 died out of his heart, died on his own dunghill. 
 
 The Bourbon Democrat was also a pastoral American. He 
 hunted, fished, plowed, loved the "woods, laughed and sang at his 
 work, indulged much in reverie, which is the parent of sadness, did 
 not know how to lie, never knew the road to Canada with his stolen 
 goods and chattels, would have put his wife or daughter to death 
 before permitting either to work or. vote at the polls, the one with the 
 straddle or the waddle of an alligator on land, the other with the 
 leer or the musky smell of the street walker. 
 
 What a happy commonwealth, this great one of ours! Peace, 
 plenty, prosperity, happiness, truth, manhood, courage, money^ in 
 bank, thoroughbreds in pastures, the devil beyond the' Alleghanies, 
 and each man's fireside his altar and his citadel. 
 
 One day the sky grew suddenly black as one of Pharoah's 
 Egyptian midnights. In the darkness there were heard the footsteps 
 of men in motion. The travail of civil war was at hand and por- 
 tentious births came every where to the surface. The face of Mis- 
 souri changed as suddenly as the maps Napoleon used to make of 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 93 
 
 Europe when he would inundate it like a mountain torrent from the 
 Rhine to the Vistula. Strange animals got in. A hybrid thing, 
 called a registrar, was it not one-half Bashi Bazouk and the other 
 half horse stealer or blackmailer, went about with his little thing- 
 gum-bo D ballot boxes to cheat, to rob, to ensnare, to betray, to dis- 
 franchise the Bourbon Democrats. These registrars had armed 
 guards. They knew a mule on the other side of a mountain. Fine, 
 fat Durhams made their mouths so water as to cause one to think 
 mad dogs had been about. It was not the drooling and dripping of 
 mercury, but the vims of carpet-baggery, robbery and innate scoun- 
 drelism. In this condition this salivation was saturnalia. 
 
 The man who would not take the oath to forswear his people, 
 his kindred and his blood was a Bourbon Democrat. So also was 
 the man who defended his stable with a shotgun. So also were the 
 men Bourbon Democrats who organized a body-guard for Frank 
 Blair when on his blessed tour of enfranchisement, and smote the 
 beggars and the bulldozers hip and thigh at Warrensburg and at 
 Marshall. So also were all the people who would not put collars 
 on their necks and chains around their ankles. 
 
 Then there came another day when all this hierarchy of looters, 
 proscriptionists and thieves was tumbled down in one working and 
 squirming mass together. The blue-bottle flies had found their 
 carrion, and from that hour to this the carcass has never known a 
 resurrection. 
 
 Hence, when a term is to be applied of particular odium, as is 
 supposed by some of these leavings of the old carpet-bag days, the 
 person so banded against is called a Bourbon Democrat. Hence also 
 the virulence with which Morehouse is being attacked, and Glover 
 and Claiborne and many more who are in the field as candidates 
 upon the Democratic ticket. 
 
 Very well! It is an honor higher than the grand cross of the 
 Legion of Honor itself. Hunted, proscribed, shot at, robbed, over- 
 ridden, swallowed up, who is on top to-day? The Bourbons, bless 
 God, as they are understood to be by their Republican re vilers. And 
 look at the hands of these very same Bourbons. Are they not 
 clean? They never stole a railroad nor appropriated money that 
 belonged to some office of trust and responsibility; never broke 
 into churches, never murdered a righteous minister of the gospel, 
 never drove off other people's mules, horses, oxen, sheep, hogs and 
 cattle in droves, never tore jewelry from the ears and fingers of 
 women; but it is on top, we tell you, with victory on every one of 
 its banners which flies to the wind, a president in the "White House 
 and Elaine, the speckled gentleman, betwixt the devil and the deep 
 sea. 
 
 A VERY PLAIN REMEDY. 
 
 [Kansas City Times, February 26, 1889.] 
 
 Representative Democrats from all portions of the State have 
 just met in St. Louis to consider the ways and means of a practical 
 and thorough reorganization of the party. Any political caucus or 
 convention which the Hon. Champ Clark, of Pike county, presides 
 over and addresses, commends itself at once not alone to the con- 
 fidence but to the active support of the entire Democracy of Missouri. 
 Young as he is, he is possessed of that kind of progressive ardor and 
 all prevading faith which removes mountains. In the lares and pen- 
 ates of his political household there are only the gods of his fathers. 
 
 The results of the late election showed all too plainly that the 
 
94 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 Democratic party in Missouri -was sick sick enough to call in a 
 doctor. Its malady came from a tampering with too many poisons. 
 It had wandered iar afield from the spot where stood many of its 
 ancient landmarks. It had stopped too long to dally with Circe, and 
 all too long to make love to the Sirens. Wolf tracks might be seen 
 all about its premises. Many of its gods were mere pinchbeck or 
 putty. Its leadership went by the name of nincompoopery or no 
 good. It was everything for men and nothing for principle. The 
 old guard was forced in many instances to give place to conscripts. 
 About many of the camp tires there was either dearth, desolation or 
 absolute night. Some of its martyrs were stoned, some of its saints 
 were crucified, and some of its heroes were put to death. 
 
 Change appeared to have laid its polluting hands upon every- 
 thing that should have been held sacred and inviolable. Men who 
 had never been Democrats aspired to gushing and garrulous 
 supremacy in the way of organization Political tramps pointiog 
 to a certain glib unction of speech as prima facie evidence of their 
 right to fill pulpits and pose as meek and lowly preachers of the 
 gospel of Christ got thick among the chinaware and the crockery- 
 ware of the Democracy, and did more devilment in one year than so 
 many bulls of Bashan could have done in ten. Emotional women 
 sometimes -unfrocked and always unsexed got among the one 
 suspendered, and so ogled and ogled andso manipulated and manip- 
 ulated them, that in three days they brought each to the verge 
 of insanity, so making him scowl at his wife, his companion for 
 forty years, the blameless mother of six grown up children, with a 
 hideous expression of carving-knives and strychnine. Laws, that 
 the people had been living under peacefully and prosperously for 
 forty years, were changed with the rapidity of the figures in a 
 kaleidoscope. Each session of the Legislature exuded from its 
 lowest depths, which is demagogy, cartload upon cartload of oint- 
 ments, unguents and healing things, so that the plan of salvation 
 might be done away with, and the great marquee of the millennium 
 pitched upon the blue grass about the capitol buildings. The courts 
 also took a hand from the lowest to the highest, and as a result of 
 all these came gloom, disgust, sullenness, an indifference almost sui- 
 cidal, an apathy which froze like a Dakotian blizzard as it fell, a 
 great pulling apart from a lack of cohesiveness, a great falling away 
 because of a scowling demoralization black as a night with a tem- 
 pest in it and, finally, an almost overwhelming defeat at the 
 polls. 
 
 We name no names and we make neither a crimination nor a 
 recrimination. We have simply pointed out the wounds upon the 
 body of the Democratic party yet all unhealed and bleeding and 
 cry aloud for that blessed balm we know to be still somewhere 
 abiding in this our political Gilead. 
 
 And now what about a remedy for it all a remedy for organiza- 
 tion at its ebb, discipline shattered, querulousness and fault-finding 
 everywhere, four congressmen lost, a bare working majority in the 
 Lower House of the Legislature, and some splendid Democratic parties 
 torn from their hitherto steadfast moorings and given over, rudder- 
 less and dismasted to the wreckers and spoilers of the great political 
 deep? 
 
 A very plain remedy is nigh at hand come back to first prin- 
 ciples. The present general assembly of Missouri, Democratic in 
 both branches, can do this vitally necessary and inestimable work. 
 Resolutions are all very well in their way, but, like fine words, they 
 butter no parsnips. Such meetings as the one just held in St. Louis, 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 95 
 
 if they do no good can at least do no harm. The masses, however, 
 want acts not words. If the present general assembly will show to 
 the State that It is a dignified, economical, practical body, opposed 
 to every form and feature of experiment in legislation; proscriptive 
 in no single degree and in no single given direction; willing to live 
 and lat live; that it means to purge its lobbies free from the hateful 
 yet ruinous presence of a swarm of gad-fly cranks of all sexes, 
 nationalities and politicalpredilections; if it will quit meddling with 
 old landmarks and cease to follow the teachings and advice ot those 
 who are never happy unless they are living in political chaos, and 
 never well-fed, clothed or housed unless there is political dynamite 
 and upheaval on every hand if, in short, it will teach by example 
 that the Democratic party of Missouri is what it once was the pro- 
 tector of the poor man, the friend of the laboring man, a foe to 
 proscription in all its Protean shapes, a zealous guard over the peo- 
 ple's money, free from all manner of envies, jealousies and spites, a 
 true lover of the Constitution, a stalwart champion of home rule and 
 States' rights, despising buncombe, and setting its face as a flint 
 against every quack doctor of a demagogue peddling all sorts of vile 
 legislative nostrums and specifics, the Democracy will rally to it en 
 masse, reform its ranks, and go forward into the next fight with all 
 of its old-time resolution and audacity. But there must be no back- 
 ing and filling. The hour has struck when a new day is to be ushered 
 in of either men or mice. 
 
 M. TAINE ON NAPOLEON. 
 
 [Kansas City Times, April 17. 1887.] 
 
 M. Taine, having in his own estimation, pilloried Victor Hugo, 
 for all the future, has been writing a series of articles on the life 
 and character of Napoleon Bonaparte. 
 
 M. Taine is a French literary charlatan, who carries the commune 
 into literature and strives to pull down as many great names as pos- 
 sible, the better to propitiate the red Republicans of the faubourgs. 
 It is not the first time in history that a rat has been known to attack 
 an elephant not the first time in history that little six-by-nine luci- 
 fers have risen in revolt against the living God and been kicked into 
 perdition for their audacity. 
 
 Indeed, among a certain class of authors the writing of sacrileg- 
 ious things is looked upon as the frank license of superior skill, and 
 the formulating of blasphemous speeches the strongest sort of evi- 
 dence that behind the sacrilege and behind the blasphemy there is a 
 genius that might illuminateand entrance theworld. 
 
 To this class belongs Henri Taiue. It is positively painful to 
 see him drag his crooked and crippled limbs up to the assault upon 
 the mighty Corsican. Why so feeble an assailant should choose for 
 his pattering and inconsequential blowsso huge a colossus is only to 
 be accounted for upon the supposition that notoriety, even though 
 it be of the infamous sort, is better than no notoriety at all. Pos- 
 sessed perfectly of this spirit was Eratostratus, the Ephesian, who 
 burnt the famous temple of Diana, and Randolph, who pulled the 
 nose of Andrew Jackson. 
 
 Red republicanism never had a master in Europe until Napoleon 
 came. He organized it, drilled it, armed it, equipped it, and then 
 served it out as food for gunpowder. Jacobin bones were left on 
 every battle-field from Moscow to Waterloo. He found the crown of 
 Louis XVI. rolling in a gutter of blood, and he picked it up, cleaned 
 
96 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 it, and put it upon his head. To keep it there he had to make war. 
 All the kings in Europe coalesced to kill him, and to save his own 
 life he became a king himself. That necessitated army after army, 
 and who so well qualified to fight as those old Septembrizers, 
 those old Dantuniau butchers of the Abbaye, those old cut-throats 
 of the Cordelier club who apostrophized the guillotine as a beauti- 
 ful woman, and wrote sonnets to its knife as to a coquettish maiden. 
 
 Napoleon knew the who e savage lot better than any other man 
 in all France, and he managed, first and last, to get the great bulk 
 of them killed. Their lineal descendants to day are such rabid 
 Republicans as Taine, Madame De llemusat, Jung, and a whole host 
 of other third-rate scrioblers, who imagine that they can put out the 
 light of the sun by lighting two-penny tallow candles. 
 
 And how do they seek to blacken the fame of the great Napo- 
 leon? How does this despoiler of the dead, Taine, seek to do it? 
 By adverse criticisms of his genius as a soldier? No. By logical 
 discussions of his capacity as a commander-in-chief? No. By 
 showing wherein he failed as a ruler, a lawgiver, an emperor, the 
 conqueror of Europe? No. By comparing him unfavorably to 
 Ca3sar, Hannibal, Marl borough, Frederick the Great? No, but by 
 dwelling upon the venial sins and shortcomings of his personal char- 
 acter. He delights to tell how Napoleon gave way at times to par- 
 oxysms of ungovernable temper. How he swore at his secretaries, 
 pinched the ears of his aids de camp, roared out at Josephine, abused 
 his marshals, broke furniture, threw his clothes in the fire, insulted 
 ambassadors, kept five or six mistresses, would not brook contra- 
 diction, did not know what patience was, cared nothing for music, 
 could not spell, did not know French, never read a book, abomin- 
 ated plays, persecuted Madame De Stael, put on theatrical airs, was 
 the terror of courtiers, and the overbearing despot whom all about 
 him feared. 
 
 And is this not a wonderful way to sum up the life and char- 
 acter of Napoleon Bonaparte? To gossip about him in the style of 
 an old woman; to tell of the little faults and foibles of poor human 
 nature; to become his valet in order to see him at his toilet, in his 
 bath, when he is relaxed, when he has nothing else to do except 
 to make himself disagreeable; to leave out the Italian campaign, 
 the Austrian campaign, the Prussian campaign; to say nothing of 
 the Alps where the eagles of the mouutaics and tbe eagh s of the 
 standards touched wing and wing and soared together; nothing of 
 Montenotte; of Lodi, of Arcola, of Marengo, of Austerlitz, 
 Wagram and Jena, of Eylan, Friedland and Borodino; nothing 
 of the raft upon the Niemen, the peace of Tilsit, and three 
 monarchs at his feet pleading for the bare right to reign. And yet 
 M. Taine calls ail this interminable stuff of his about Bonaparte's 
 boots, temper, toilettes, idiosyncracies of various kinds, and what 
 not, an accurate and critical summing up of the life and character 
 of the greatest soldier, the greatest lawgiver, the greatest adminis- 
 trator and the greatest ruler in all ways to make a nation powerful 
 that the world ever produced 
 
 The desire of the red Republicans to bring imperialism into 
 disrepute may be all very legitimate and desirable, but why send a 
 rat to attack an elephant? Were there not others of the earth alto- 
 gether earthly to be carped at and picked to pieces? It takes a god 
 to destroy a demi-sfod. No pigmy of a man, much less such a man as 
 Henri Taine, chained Prometheus to the rock and summoned the 
 vultures from the sky to prey upon his vitals. For work like that 
 the forger of the thunderbolts had to apply his hands. The garru- 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 97 
 
 lous Frenchman has simply lighted his two-penny candles in front of 
 that tomb under the dome of The Invalides, and proposes to put out 
 the sun of Austerlitz. 
 
 THE STATUE TO CALHOUN. 
 
 [Kansas City Times, April 27, 1887.] 
 
 South Carolina did well yesterday when she unveiled the statue 
 which had been erected to the memory of her foremost citizen, John 
 C. Calhoun. That he was the strongest man the South ever pro- 
 duced in many intellectual ways, no Northern man doubts; that he 
 was the strongest man the nation ever produced in many intellectual 
 ways, the North will never admit. As parlies exist at present; as 
 long as sectional lines remain as rigidly drawn as they are to-day; 
 while the memories and the events of the Civil War still go to make 
 up the standard whereby public men are tried, analyzed, and given 
 a place in contemporaneous history, Calhoun, colossus though he 
 was, can never leave his mighty impress upon much beyond the con- 
 fines of his own immediate section. The day will come, however, 
 when Tie will be dealt with as an American in the broadest and fullest 
 acceptation of the term. Not as a South Carolinian alone, not as a 
 Southern man alone, not solely as a States' rights man, but as a citizen 
 of the entire republic, born to its institutions, the eloquent advocate 
 of its safest policies, the fearless exponent of its best thoughts, the 
 most inspired expounder of its wise institutions, and the most 
 prophetic statesman a nation ever had to warn it of its perils, and 
 point out to it the dangers that might be averted if it were true to 
 its own interests and to the civilization which called it into being. 
 
 The orator of the occasion was well chosen. The Hon. L. Q. 
 C. Lamar, both by education and sympathetic political training, 
 was thoroughly equipped for the work he was expected to accom- 
 plish. Without feeling it or knowing it, perhaps, the great South 
 Carolinian had been his model in more ways than one 1 . It was in 
 these qualities alone, more than in any other, the orator says, was to 
 be found thecauseof his unparalleled hold upon the love, reverence 
 antitrust of his people. "His/' hesays, "was the greatness of a soul, 
 which, fired with a love of virtue, consecrated itself to truth and 
 duty, and with unfaltering confidence in God, was ever ready to 
 be immolated in the cause of right and country." 
 
 In an article of this sort, or even in an article of any kind in 
 this day and generation, it would be time thrown away and effort 
 wasted to attempt a criticism upon the intellectual side of Calhoun's 
 character. As well discuss light, or heat, or germination, or the 
 sun's rays, or the ebb and the flow of the ocean. As the advocate 
 and the champion of States' rights, both in their essence and their 
 purity, he never had an equal. None whoever lived in this country 
 approximated him in luminous power and unanswerable logic. He 
 was never ornate. He stood in speaking as some vitalized figure 
 carved from marble. 'The stream of his discourse flowed from him 
 as some calm, clear, yet resistless river. Many replies were made 
 to his arguments in favor of this States' rights interpretation of the 
 Constitution, but answers never. On one memorable occasion Mr. 
 Webster is reported as saying, in connection with a speech Calhoun 
 had just made in defense of State sovereignty: " It may be replied 
 to, but it can never be answered. Sir, it is unanswerable." 
 
 Secretary Lamar's address is quite full and satisfactory. He 
 does not present Calhoun in any new light, but it brings him out 
 
98 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 again into the full view of the public. His is a character to be studied 
 from every standpoint, especially from every public and political 
 standpoint. The present generation do not inform themselves as 
 thoroughly as they should of the lives and characters of the great ones 
 gone, more particularly the great ones who founded the republic. 
 They know Clay, Calhoun and Webster more by the constant repe- 
 titi >n of their names than by any careful examination or summing 
 up of the life or works of either. We do not say that the American in- 
 tellect has deteriorated since the men of the Revolution lived or their 
 immediate descendants, but we do say that the age of statesmen 
 appears to have passed. The men charged now to conduct public 
 affairs are generally weak, very much swa} r ed by personal likes and 
 dislikes and full of deceit, subterfuge and trickery. The great 
 need to-day in the councils of the country is an unselfish courage. 
 Patriotism without courage is as mere sounding brass and tinkling 
 cymbal. Indeed, patriotism is but another name for the very high- 
 est sort of courage the courage of conviction, devotion and truth. 
 One thing more. Many believe that the results of the war put 
 to death forever 1 he doctrine of States' rights. There never was a 
 greater mistake if liberty itself is to live and the present form of 
 government endure as the Constitution established it. Calhoun's 
 spirit and teachings are yet to save the nation from the unutterable 
 despotism of centralization. 
 
 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 
 
 [Kansas City Times, May 14, 1887.] 
 
 If it be true that the hand of death is even now being heavily laid 
 upon Charles Stewart Parnell, the great Irish leader, the century 
 will not have furnished, when the end is finally reached, a more piti- 
 ful and deplorable giving up of life. 
 
 It is the surroundings which will constitute the tragedy. He is 
 carrying his country's banner. He is just in the prime of his physi- 
 cal manhood, if that is to be measured by years, and just in the per- 
 fect possession of every intellectual faculty. More united than they 
 have ever been, even under O'Connell, the Irish people are at his 
 back. He has already put forth so many admirable qualities of 
 leadership. He has been so patient in adversity, so calm in defeat, 
 so wise in counsel, so brave in actual combat that to lose him now 
 would be for Ireland, in this mighty duel to the death for liberty, 
 like losing her sword arm at the shoulder. 
 
 A volume might be written upon the part that sudden or inop- 
 portune death has played in the history of nations. When at Lussac 
 bridge the lance head of a Breton squire sped truer to the heart of 
 John Chandos than all the steel of the chivalry of France had done 
 on the fifty f oughten fields, was it any wonder that the Black Prince, 
 worn by disease and bent under his harness, exclaimed wearily when 
 the news was brought to him, "God help us then! We have lost 
 everything on the thither side of the seas " Or if Montcalm had 
 lived, what might fin ally have been the fate of Canada? If Caesar 
 had been spared, while he might not have cared to save the repub- 
 lic, would he not have made Nero and Caligula impossible? What 
 might not have happened also to Catholic Europe if that old war 
 wolf from the north, Gustavus Adolphus. had not fallen at Lutzen, 
 ankle-deep in blood, five balls in his body and a saber stroke which 
 crushed his skull? Who can doubt for a moment that all the misery, 
 pillage and degradation which the South endured through eight 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 99 
 
 years of Grantism and reconstruction would not have been saved her 
 if the miserable assassin had stayed his hand and permitted Abra- 
 ham Lincoln to live and carry out his policy? 
 
 We do not say that the Irish struggle would not go on even 
 though Parnell should die suddenly from the grievous sickness 
 which is now said to have fallen upon him ; but we do say that his 
 loss at such a time would be almost irreparable. 
 
 He knows his people, and he knows them at that better by all 
 odds than any among his following. In his hands he holds the 
 threads of every combination. A large proportion of the machinery 
 of campaigning, both offensive and defensive, is the result of his 
 own individual and [indomitable work. Gladstone leans upon him 
 in perfect confidence and trusts him implicitly. His influence over 
 his co-workers and associates is remarkable in a cause that has so 
 few of the elements of physical success as compared with its adver- 
 saries. At a word he could make war or peace, bring about an 
 uprising or precipitate a revolution. Nor can too much stress be 
 laid upon this powerful gift or factorship in his character as a 
 leader. The hour may come when it will be folly any longer to 
 either speak, plead, or negotiate. The hand that sometimes refuses 
 the sword must forever renounce the scepter. There are also times 
 when a great cause, no matter how holy or just, must either fight or 
 abdicate. Then we firmly believe Parnell will fight. 
 
 THE BATTLE OF THE FLAGS. 
 
 [Kansas City, Times July 3, 1887.] 
 
 General Sheridan from one standpoint and ex-President Jeffer. 
 son Davis from another, have just written each a practical and 
 sensible communication on the subject of the Confederate flags 
 captured in battle, or supposed to have been so captured. Sheridan 
 writes as a soldier; Davis as a statesman, with some' of the touches 
 of the amazing grace of politics thrown in. Each represents the 
 extreme of two civilizations, but the place of their meeting is the 
 common ground of common sense and practical humanity. 
 
 It is well for these distinguished gentlemen to have their say, 
 the first with a sort of f e-f o-f um of the ride to Winchester, and the 
 second with a sort of funereal sighing for a 
 
 " Touch of the vanished hand, 
 And the sound of a voice that is still;" 
 
 but the fighting men of the line, whom history never mentions and 
 never thinks of, have their own ideas and opinions also as to this 
 entire flag humbuggery, no matter where the flags now are or when 
 and where they were first captured. As far as the great mass of 
 the Confederate private soldiers are concerned they do not care 
 two straws whether these so-called captured flags are to day in 
 some spread-eagle Federal museum in Washington City, in Nova 
 Scotia, in Booroo-Booroo Gha or in Afghanistan. The cause for 
 which they once floated in the hot, lit foreground of many a terrible 
 and pitiless battle, after having appealed to the sword perished by 
 the sword. That was the end. The last lion of the Confederacy, 
 borne backward in his leap at Gettysburg, died at Appomattox 
 Court House. That again, we say, was the end. There was no 
 more cause. No more struggle, no more government, no more 
 armed resistance no more anything for the South except misery, 
 
100 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 poverty, graveyards everywhere, crepe everywhere, mourning 
 everywhere, and finally the beak of the reconstruction vulture where 
 once had been the musket of the brave invader. 
 
 Besides, there is a wonderful amount of gush and tomfoolery 
 about this flag business for other causes and reasons. Take the whole 
 mass and mess and muck of them beginning at the palmetto flag 
 of South Carolina, with a coiled rattlesnake at the root of the tree, 
 and leading on up through device after device and experiment after 
 experiment, until the regulation stars and bars were reached and 
 what is left at last but something that can be found on every field 
 where one of those parti-colored and variegated banners was 
 unfurled the deathless valor of the Confederate soldier. That is all 
 that the survivors care anything about. Many a time they fought 
 splendidly without any flag at all. It was the cause they wereafter. 
 Their uniform was supposed to be gray in color, but who can erect 
 a standard whereby rags and tatters shall be contrasted. Who shall 
 prescribe the hue of seams and darns and patches ? 
 
 Another thing: How many of these so called captured flags 
 were ever really captured in actual battle? Some, we know, fell 
 into Federal hands through capitulation. Somecametothem through 
 the pre-emption of discovery. Hidden away securely, as was sup- 
 posed, by detachments on a raid or outlying scouting parties, they 
 were either given up by faithless guardians or unearthed by the 
 enemy himself. Some were mere buckram flags, parodies upon the 
 originals, pieced together by frolicsome school girls and stuck up on 
 poles by the roadside in sheer womanly bravado. Some were furi- 
 ously and gloriously taken at the point of the bayonet; but, how- 
 ever, any or all of them were taken, the fact is eternal that those 
 who now have them are welcome to them forever and ever. 
 
 Neither do the surviving Confederate soldiers care two straws 
 for the political aspect of the flag question. The American people 
 make up a composite race one part being demagogues and the 
 other part toadies, the demagogues, however, standing vastly in the 
 ascendency. The Republican demagogues have been and are yet 
 making much of an uproar over President Cleveland'sfirst action in 
 the matter of the captured flags. They would march en masse to 
 Washington to prevent their return. They would rise en masse to 
 tear from his office any executive officer who would dare to attempt 
 such a thing. They would do a great many other terrible things, 
 among the balance to re-enact the role of the ass under the lion's 
 skin; "but high above all this rant, and roar, and fustian, there can 
 simply be seen another edition of the bloody shirt. True, this loyal 
 old bugaboo is a little bit different in its cut, and a little bit shrimper 
 in its gather and pucker, but how Sherman's grand old gal, Eliza 
 Pinkston, would delight to see it wave as of old, and how John 
 Sherman himself will wave it for her delectation in the spirit land, 
 and for his own advancement in the land of the demagogues and the 
 toadies. One thing as well as another serves for a bloody shirt, and 
 why not the return of the flags captured or supposed to be captured 
 from the Confederate forces? 
 
 GENERAL GORDON. 
 
 [Kansas City Times, July 17, 1887.] 
 
 General Gordon has been found again in Equatorial Africa, this 
 time far up in the Gondokoro country and the big lakes. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 101 
 
 What is he doing there? What has he been doing since hi3 
 miraculous escape from Khartoum? 
 
 Nothing. He never escaped. He has never been seen after the 
 gates of his defenses were sold by the miserable Egyptians to the 
 Arab followers of the still more miserable Mahdi. 
 
 Most probably he died under a hundred spear thrusts. It is gen- 
 erally understood that his head was cut off. He may also have been 
 flayed. This sort of mutilation is very common in the East, and Gor- 
 don was superstitiously regarded as some monster of a different race, 
 who would arise again if he were not dismembered. 
 
 The Gondokoro story is an old one. There never was a day 
 during the siege when Gordon could not have escaped from his envi- 
 ronments at Khartoum. The soldiers could have gone with ease 
 the citizens would have been sacrificed. He preferred that they 
 should all die together. If ever there was a Christian soldier in the 
 fullest and freest acceptation of the term, Gordon was one. 
 
 The average Christian soldier, however, was most generally a 
 sneak. Behind the mask of meekness and lowliness he had the 
 ambition of a king eagle. Look at Cromwell. He used to pray as 
 many as eleven times a day. In battle he was known to dismount 
 his own cavalry regiment the Ironsides and put up a fervent 
 appeal for victory, all of which did not prevent him from cutting 
 off the head of one king, and becoming one of the sternests despots 
 of Europe. Then there was old Monk, who came alor;g behind 
 Cromwell. He piddled and prayed all the way up to London, 
 playing fast-and-loose with Parliament, higgling with the Presby- 
 terians, hot and cold by turns to the Episcopalians, and finally 
 went over to Charles II. for so much cash in hand and an earldom. 
 
 But Gordon was a Christian general in this, that he frankly 
 declared what he believed, what his convictions were, what motives 
 controlled him, and for all of these he fought, prayed, and died. Of 
 all other English generals, we recall only the name of Havelock. 
 
 Gordon was sent especially to bring out of the Soudan the 
 Egyptian garrisons. It was as a giant going into the night to drag 
 forth its specters. It was literally the unknown he was about to 
 ride into, and he had for arms only a small walking cane and a well- 
 worn Bible. Poor missionary ! so trustful and yet so doomed. 
 
 His government abandoned him early. Red tape tied him 
 tighter than the bonds of Paul at the first onset. Not a single sol- 
 dier was ever given him. He asked for bare two hundred British 
 at Wady-Halfy. Refused. For bare 5,000 Turks for tne whole 
 territory. Refused. For Nubar Pasha as assistant. Refused. For 
 a garrison at Berber. Refused. For money to organize the natives. 
 Refused. Sir Evelyn Baring, a water gruel diplomat sent out to 
 Cairo to see what was needed, never saw Egypt in his life before, 
 and only then from within sight of the Red Sea and the Mediterra- 
 nean, dealt with this Samson as with a baby. He set him upon a 
 high chair, tucked a napkin under his chin, and bade him live on 
 Nile water. 
 
 Poor soul! He still watched on, hoped on, prayed on, starved 
 on, fought on. He saw garrison after garrison surrender, and chief 
 after chief fall away from him. None of his race were by him or 
 about him. His army was made up of everything which would run, 
 sell, desert, betray, steal, rob do every detestable deed known to 
 man but it would never fight. No wonder this last despairing cry 
 came from him in his pitiful helplessness "O! for but one more 
 touch of elbows with the men who stood with me in the Crimea." 
 He was thinking then of the old Black Watch, the famous 92d High- 
 
102 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 landers his regiment and he was hearing again the pealing of the 
 slogan, and the bagpipes playing as of old, and loud, and shrill, and 
 high- 
 All the Blue Bonnets are over the border. 
 
 Surely, surely, then, his youth must all have come back to him. 
 And all his childhood found him on the hills. 
 
 There came a day, however, when he was not to see the sun set 
 any more. First, the flour gave out, then the meal. There 
 were no medicines. There never had been any since Hicks Pasha 
 went out on his last march to deification or death, and found a 
 butchery There had been, no meat for month's. Cats and dogs 
 and whatever else crept or crawled had long ago been devoured. 
 Grass was gnawed on the streets as the wild King Nebuchadnezzar 
 gnawed it while God's curse of madness abode upon his head. 
 
 Finally, Sir Evelyn Baring's bill-of-fare had become alone 
 possible: Eat Nile water. All day one day they ate it, and that 
 night six of Gordon's pashas opened six gates to the enemy. The 
 Nile water was evidently a ration not fit for a soldier. There is not 
 much more to say, only when any liar puts in motion a report that 
 Chinese Gordon is hiding in the wilds of Equatorial Africa, such 
 liar should be instantly destroyed. 
 
 No more precious and peerless valor has any man shown through 
 all the ages. He went, beautiful in the warrior joy of free and 
 accepted" death, and took from fate's outstretched hand the martyr's 
 crown only such crown as is fit for heroes. He made no moan. 
 A simple, faithful, stainless knight, death smote him in the harness 
 and he died by the standard. 
 
 VICTOR HUGO. 
 
 [Kansas City Times, July 21, 1887.] 
 
 In various ways, and by many tangled and broken lanes and 
 avenues, efforts are being made in France to belittle Victor Hugo, 
 and raise up over against him the younger Dumas, Octave Feuillet, 
 Emile Zola, and a dozen or so other young gentlemen of the pen, 
 sown to be a field of wheat, but sprouted as rye, grew as rye, and 
 continued to be rye until the hogs were turned in upon it, showing 
 by their greediness that it was not alone rye, but a very fine quality 
 of rye at that. 
 
 We will admit that these gentlemen may have been sown as 
 wheat sound, prolific, unmistakable wheat but the wheat was 
 bogus, and the outgrowth something else except the original seed. 
 
 We think that we can understand the present attitude of most 
 of the French writers of Paris toward Victor Hugo. He soared too 
 high when he soared, and when he alighted it was upon a crag 
 inaccessible. Mediocrity loves company. Birds that twitter, and 
 sing, and peck here and there about the eaves and gables of houses, 
 have no use for eyries. The sun blears their eye-sight. Collapsed 
 pinions are so many barometers of altitude. Their lungs give away 
 above a tree-top. If their precious little bills are not eternally stuffed 
 with bon-bons and sugar plums, they become inarticulate. Every 
 throat is dumb until it has been food-expanded. 
 
 Another thing: These so-called rivals of Hugo were manufac- 
 turers; Hugo was creator By manufacturers we mean in literature 
 the faculty to saw, plane, smooth, adjust, emasculate, make the 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 103 
 
 proprieties trim, dove-tail, glue together, make pagodas, have arti- 
 ficial lakes, get big gold fish, some water lilies, a water dragon or 
 two, and an ape. By creators we mean a stroke of the pen and a 
 passion. Another stroke, and humanity down in the lists like a 
 giant struggling to do some good. Another stroke, and a star in the 
 east, and the camel drivers down on their knees, terrified but not 
 knowing that a Christ has been born. Another stroke, and lo! 
 Jean Valjean! Another stroke, and lo! Napolean Bonaparte. This 
 is what it means to be a creator. 
 
 Take the younger Dumas as an example. It is true that he 
 labors under the immense disadvantage of being the son of his father, 
 who was a splendid giant, and who peopled the heavens with con- 
 stellations like Athos and Aramis and Porthos and D'Artagnan 
 but take him as the rival of Hugo, self-appointed and, perhaps, self- 
 exalted. If iu literature you gave him a sobriquet, it would be the 
 "Anatomist." He analyzes a cough, but he evokes no idea of con- 
 sumption. He dissects a suicide, but he leaves behind the philosoph- 
 ical belief that some sort of expiation was needed for a life already 
 too much advanced. He deals with love, and it is pull Dick, pull 
 Devil, as to which of the lovers care the least for each other. He 
 stands by the deathbed, and he scoffs at the priests. He arms him- 
 self for war, and; he jeers at the young conscript who cries because 
 he has just left his sweetheart or his mother. He makes a patriotic 
 address, and he brings in atheism. He makes an address upon lit- 
 erature, and between two weak and hesitating fingers he snuffs out 
 the candle called Victor Hugo. 
 
 Snuffs it out! Hold on a little bit. That can't be done. Men 
 afloat that is to say, rushing from pillar to post, here to-day and 
 gone to-morrow, living by travel, and a great deal of it like light 
 things. A straw pile, only so it is afire, breaks the monotony of a 
 day's ride. A blockade of any sort is a benediction, because a 
 blockade signifies force, power, obstruction, something that must be 
 inquired into, something that can be inquired about. But when 
 anchored men say, Who is this young Alexander Dumas? I have 
 read him some, but he don't touch me, somehow. He discourses 
 much. He appears to be particularly sententious in some places, 
 and particularly prolix in others, but in putting every thing together, 
 I find that if you take away the chaff you break up the harvest. 
 
 Break up the harvest! Lord bless you, there was never any- 
 thing planted to make a harvest. Dumas fils was and is a manufact- 
 urer. Hugo was the creator. Dumas was satisfied with giving to 
 his finest character a cough not necessarily fatal, but rather weak, 
 suffocating and appealing. He was further satisfied with making 
 his poor victim die at the right time for himself, at the wrong time 
 for science and for human sympathy, ready with a thousand hands 
 to apply a remedy. 
 
 Hugo comes upon the stage like Danton used to, not knowing 
 what he wanted until he got a smell of blood. You hoar him first 
 like a bugle, faint, not exactly timid, but far away^ Nobody pays 
 any attention. ''Bug Jargal" dies with the publisher. "Notre 
 Dame " poises a little bit, touches here and there, wavers to and fro, 
 perishes by the wayside. 
 
 "LesMiserables!" Hush! Did you hear that trumpet? The 
 nation took time to listen. Presently "it came trooping. All chords 
 were touched, all nerves responded, all devotions leaped active and 
 alive, all humanity stirred in its sleep, all splendid manhood put its 
 hand upon its sword. 
 
 And the "Dame with Camelias" of the younger Dumas, who 
 
104 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 has just delivered an address before the French academy think of 
 that who has just delivered it against Victor Hugo and his writ- 
 ings. 
 
 And now for a si mile: They stood Enjoras up against a dead 
 wall. A dead wall in French and Spanish executions is a wall too 
 high for the most nervous con script to fire over, or for the most 
 hard shooting musket to penetrate. They stood Enjoras up against 
 one in the house where he was captured. He had curly, auburn 
 hair. The blood in his cheeks came and went as the web and the 
 woof of the Lady of Shalott. Perhaps he had not slept for sixty 
 hours. He had seen death all day and offered to shake hands with 
 him, but death denied the contact. Finally they stood him up. 
 After it was all over, and nothing was left but the midnight and the 
 corpses, one old grenadier said: "It seemed to me that I was shoot- 
 ing at a flower." 
 
 What is the appearance the situation presents when not grena- 
 diers, but conscripts and militia stand Victor Hugo up against a 
 dead wall and shoot at him ? A flower ? Never. Some king eagle 
 is a good name, after he has towered above Gillatt, who went down 
 to his death and his glory for a woman who had rather tie a pinch- 
 beck curate's white cravat than take the paladin, Breton though he 
 might have been, who had just conquered the devil fish and the 
 Douvers. 
 
 We make mention of these things solely to show what a war is 
 being waged upon Hugo. It is ridiculous, but it is practical. Hugo's 
 day is near at hand. These other people ? Ah ! nothing. They 
 have no days. 
 
 HENRY M. STANLEY. 
 
 [Kansas City Times, July 23, 1887.] 
 
 And now the rumor comes that Henry M. Stanley, the noted 
 African explorer is dead killed by a native in some sort of com- 
 bat or other. It may not be true, and he may still be alive; but 
 the probabilities are against him. . He was on the same old mission. 
 Out goes an explorer into the unknown. He gets lost, or hemmed 
 in, or captured. " The far cry comes up from Macedonia" for help. 
 A rescue is planned. Some other explorer, equally as devoted, 
 starts to accomplish it. And a third one to find the second, and may 
 be a fourth one to find the third, until as was the case with Dr. Liv- 
 ingstone as many as seven rescuing parties went to hunt first and 
 last for him, and would have been hunting yet probably if Stanley 
 himself had not come upon him accidentally. This expedition 
 Stanley is now on, if he is living, is an expedition to rescue Emin 
 Bey, one of the last beleagured foreign officers left over from the 
 Soudan folly. Of course men can do as they please. 
 
 Personal bravery is something that always has been and always 
 will be admired. Whoever risks his life for the faith that is in him 
 is a hero. It is something after all to see a person in the full pos- 
 session of a splendid manhood take every desperate chance that 
 can be encountered simply to solve the source of a river. Espe- 
 cially when that river, to say nothing of its source, can never be 
 anything else while the world stands except a breeder of fevers that 
 kill in an hour, the haunt of savage wild beasts and still more sav- 
 age natives. The weight of all the testimony ever compiled is to 
 the effect that the white man cannot live, work, and thrive in equa- 
 torial Africa. Stanley did better than the great bulk of his race 
 He tells us why : "In four years in the jungles," he says, "1 did 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 103 
 
 not drink altogether four teaspopnfuls of either whisky or brandy." 
 He studiously kept out of the night air. He never slept upon the 
 bare ground. He always ate sparingly, and used very little meat. 
 And even with it all he further says : "A white man who goes into 
 the far tropics without a plentiful supply of opium, quinine, and 
 calomel had far better go without a compass, some good fire-arms, 
 and plenty of gun-powder. In the first place, you would never get 
 out ; in the last place, you would have thirty chances ^out of one 
 hundred." 
 
 Now, here is the testimony of a man who was not yet thirty 
 when he went first to hunt for Livingstone. Who was an athlete. 
 Whose liver worked like a piece of prize machinery. Who eschewed 
 alcohol in every shape. Whose head was as clear as a winter's 
 night. Whose digestion was perfect, and yet who tells those who are 
 to come after him that if they ever want to get back they must bring 
 plenty of calomel, quinine and opium. Can it ever be forgottenhow 
 Dr. Livingstone, the presence of death in his very tent, groped about 
 on his hands and knees till he found his medicine chest and ate calo- 
 mel by the handful? 
 
 And for what is all this done ? For science, some say. For geog- 
 raphy, say others. For adventure, exploration, curiosity, because it is 
 desirable, say others still. For a little gold dust. Two or three goril- 
 las that never materialize and a few hundred pounds of ivory. Very 
 well. It is a splendid field to roam about in, get lost in, get the 
 jungle fever in; but one must have things pretty well closed up 
 behind him at home. When he starts it will be well for his peace of 
 mind if he has no further retrospects. Stanley was a gallant and 
 daring American. What a pity if he too, should perish on the 
 threshold. 
 
 DEATH FROM STARVATION. 
 
 [Kansas City Times, July 24, 1837.] 
 
 A great discussion is now going on between some English and 
 French journals as to how starvation kills, what are the accompany- 
 ing symptoms of starvation, and what the appearance of the body 
 after it has been starved to death. The text for said discussion 
 was the finding some weeks ago of a castaway boat in the Indian 
 Ocean, wherein were seven dead sailors, said to have all died from 
 starvation. The dead men were Frenchmen. 
 
 The principal point in dispute seems to be what material changes 
 take place in the reasoning faculties of the brain. To what extent, 
 in other words, is the moral nature of man involved as evidenced by 
 many horrible acts of cannibalism? 
 
 Death by starvation has been simply regarded as a wasting of 
 the body, a horrible agony, an increasing weakness, a lethargic* 
 state of the brain, coma, stupefaction, death. While all this is going 
 on in a physical sense, however, what about the intellectual faculty 
 and its power of distinguishing right from wrong? Is this, too, 
 not undergoing the process of wasting and death? Is this not, too, 
 losing complete control over all those superb moral qualities which 
 make so many Christian heroes and martyrs in the world? Is not 
 the residue simply what the - 
 
 Angels uprising, unveiling, affirm, 
 That the play is the Tragedy Man, 
 And its hero the Conqueror Worm. 
 
 The most deep rooted and powerful feeling of human nature 
 
106 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 tbe love of a mother for her offspring is perverted in cases of 
 btarvation. During the siege of Jerusalem by Titus, Jos^phus tells 
 us that mothers ate their babies in great numbers and greedily. A 
 similar case is mentioned in Second Kings, sixth chapter and 
 twenty-ninth verse. It occurred during the famine in Samaria. In 
 such cases, if the intellectual faculty was not entirely gone who 
 doubts for a moment that the mothers would have perished with 
 their children? 
 
 No end of books have been written on the subject of starva- 
 tion, some taking one ground and some another; some contending 
 that the brain dies first, and some that it is the last to die. In the 
 case of these seven dead sailors, although there was much distor- 
 tion on some of the faces, no attempt had been made at cannibalism. 
 From this the French medical journals argue that the brain dies 
 last, and that the moral faculties are the last to leave the human 
 tenement. 
 
 What are the symptoms of death from want of food, and how 
 long can man subsist without solid or liquid nourishment? Chossat 
 the great French pathologist, says from eight to eleven days, and 
 after forty per cent, of the weight of the body is consumed. Now, 
 as this means the waste of more of certain tissues than others, it may 
 be interesting to mention those that suffer most. The fat wastes 93 
 per cent, of its weight; the blood, 75; the spleen, 71; the liver, 52; 
 the heart, 44; the bowels, 42, and the muscles, 42. On the other 
 hand, the following parts waste much less: The bones, 16 per cent. ; 
 the eyes, 10; the skin, 33; the lungs, 22, and the nervous system only 
 2 per cent. another argument in favor of the proposition that the 
 brain dies last. But the pointmost worthy of attention among these 
 figures is the point that there must be almost consumption of fat be- 
 fore death takes place in fact, death by starvation is really death by 
 cold. As soon as the fat of the body goes and fat is the principle that 
 keeps up heat death takes place. The temperature of the body dim- 
 inishes but little until the fat is consumed, and then it falls rapidly. 
 
 The last symptoms of starvation from want of food have been 
 given in ten thousand books, and they are generally the same 
 whether in the polar regions or the tropics. They are: Severe pain 
 at the pit of the stomach, which is relieved on pressure. After a 
 day or two this pain subsides, to be followed by a feeling of weak- 
 ness or sinking in the same region. Then an insatiable thirst super- 
 venes, which, if water be withheld, thenceforth becomes the most 
 distressing symptom. The countenance becomes pale and cadaver- 
 ous. The eyes acquire a peculiarly wild and glittering stare. Then 
 a general emaciation. Then the body exhales a peculiar fcetor and 
 the skin is covered with a dirty, brownish-looking and offensive 
 secretion. The bodily strength rapidly declines, the sufferer totters 
 J in walking. His voice grows weak, and he is incapable of the least 
 exertion. At last the mental powers fail. First stupidity, then 
 imbecility, and at the end a raving delirium. 
 
 Chossat, above quoted, sneers at tlie idea that intellectual loss 
 must precede cannibalism. He declares that man is a carnivorous 
 animal, and that he approaches the hog nearest in all of his instincts 
 and appetites. Hence, when he gets desperately hungry, he will 
 eat his fellows like a sow will eat up an entire litter of pigs. 
 
 However, the discussion goes on, and we are only interested in 
 it to the extent of finding out by any research or resource of science, 
 when the man who feeds upon his fellow is a physical or a moral 
 monster, or both. This is the pith and point of the present discus- 
 sion. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 107 
 
 IN A FOREIGN LAND. 
 
 [Kansas City Times, August 31, 1887.] 
 
 The death of Mrs. Hubbard, the wife of the Hon. Richard H- 
 Hubbard, American minister to Japan, was singularly touching and 
 pitiful. She was sick a long time. She saw the inexorable reaper 
 afar off. As he came nearer and nearer she dreamed oftener and 
 of tener of her home by the setting sun. Just before she went out 
 into the night she weariedly asked: "Are we not almost there ?" 
 
 Where ? At her Texas home of course, for none can know 
 except the exile in person how that name home lingers the last upon 
 the lips just before they become inarticulate forever. Her loved 
 ones were behind her, sleeping the sleep that wakes not till the blow- 
 ing of the trumpet. She might perhaps have been a girl again. 
 There again she saw the same low, large moon lifting a realm of 
 romance out of the sea, and there again she saw the darkness and 
 the twilight, as twin ghosts, creeping in from the outermost gloam- 
 ings and obscuring all the land together. Outside a mocking bird 
 was singing as though its voice had a soul and that soul had already 
 caught a glimpse of heaven. It could not be true that the wan, 
 wasted face was never again to feel the breezes of her own native 
 land, nor the fading vision ever again to see the green of the prairie 
 and the blue of the sky grow glad together. Had she not been on a 
 long journey? Was she not so tired so tired? Would she not 
 reat ? Had she not wistfully asked : "Are we not almost there ?" 
 What voices she must have heard before she got to the river. 
 What faces must have stood out of the mists of her younger days 
 and smiled upon her as she set her tender feet upon the ragged rocks 
 of the road which led down to the Jordan. What shadows came 
 forth on either hand and gathered close about her for recognition, 
 as some gay, or blooming, or happy, or blessed, or beautiful thing 
 her girlhood had known and her memory had treasured, until smit- 
 ten in a foreign land she was forced to go the dark way all alone. 
 
 "Are we not almost there?" Yes, entirely there now, but not 
 in the home where she had left her idols and where, through its 
 open windows, she could see the monuments above her head. It was 
 another home, one not made with hands. Perhaps it was beautiful. 
 Perhaps it was satisfying and comforting. Perhaps the new life 
 brought a new delight in the smiting of the palms and the playing 
 of the harp-players; but where was her Texas home, the one she 
 longed to reach? Where the mocking bird in the bushes? Where 
 the lazy cattle grazing, knee deep all day in the sunshine and the 
 grasses? Where the stile at the gate? Where the familiarity that, 
 even in the blacknessof darkness, could lay a hand on fifty familiar 
 objects? Where the " luteunswept and^the pieces of rings?" Where 
 " the fragments of songs that nobody sings?" 
 
 One knows nothing whatever about all these things. It is not 
 given to finite minds to tell what is over beyond the wonderful 
 river, but this abides: When the sun has risen for the last time in 
 life, when the tide is just about to turn, when there have been years 
 of exile, and it may be years also of bitterness, isolation and despair, 
 one great yearning rises above and masters every other emo- 
 tion the yearning just to get home, the yearning which prompted 
 the old, immemorial question: " Are we not almost there?" 
 
108 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 ALWAYS A WOMAN. 
 
 [Kansas City Timers November 22, 1887.] 
 
 It was a woman, and a beautiful one at that, in that terrible 
 eastern story who, when the night deepened, stole away from the 
 side of her drugged and drunken husband, a lord of armies and 
 kingdoms, and crowns and crept to the hovel and the arms of a 
 beastly ragpicker, where her food was to be garbage and her 
 caresses blows. 
 
 It was to Lacenaire, the Paris butcher, who killed people like 
 fatted hogs and sold their flesh in delightful sausages, that a grand 
 dame cried out, supposed to be a duchess : " They will cut off 
 your head. Very well. You shall have as many masses a$ a king. 
 Not for your soul's sake, however, but your sausages." 
 
 Evidently this magnificent animal had been eating some of the 
 pork. 
 
 When Charlotte Corday forced a passage into the bathroom of 
 that wild beast Marat, and plunged a dagger into his breast, it was 
 a woman who flew upon her like a tigress, knocked her down, leaped 
 upon her ferociously, tore out her hair, lacerated her face, and strove 
 to bite out her flesh by mouthfuls. "When she was removed," 
 says Camille Desmoulins, who reported the trial, "the face of 
 Marat's mistress was as bloody as if she had that moment been eat- 
 ing raw flesh just cut from a recently slaughtered ox." " And the 
 prisoner ? " inquired the judge. " Even in her blood she was beau- 
 tiful. I did not see her torn and disfigured face, however ; I only 
 saw her soul." 
 
 Poor, grandly-gifted, intrepid, unfortunate journalist! There 
 came a day when even your colossus Danton could not save you, 
 and when this one little speech alone though only a sudden out- 
 burst of pity, or tenderness, or romance would weigh more in the 
 scales of the Terror, which was to try you than did the gigantic, 
 two-handed sword of the barbarian Brennus weigh in the scales 
 when Rome was buying back her very life with jewels and precious 
 and golden things enough to freight a vessel. 
 
 But to meaner and viler things: When the anarchists had 
 done their devil's work in Chicago, and when a suddenly awakened 
 and infuriated country was demanding that those who preached 
 dynamite should fare equally with those who acted dynamite, the 
 hunt was up for a scrofulous, pestiferous fellow who needed mer- 
 cury badly in some one of its preparations or other, called Johann 
 Most. Where was he? In what hiding place was stowed away the 
 carcass of this slinking cur of revolution, barking furiously before 
 danger began to show itself, and then through alleys and places 
 where offal is deposited hurrying away to a congenial kennel. 
 
 One day they found him, and where do you think? Under a 
 woman's bed. And there sat the woman in front of his place of con- 
 cealment, rocking as blandly as the May winds rock the apple blos- 
 soms and singing low to herself, no doubt, as her scullion hero 
 crouched under the bed, some song of the grand old days when 
 lance-shaft was splintered to gauntlet-grasp and sword blade was 
 shivered at the hilt something which, when looking out upon the 
 wild sea of fight would call aloud to tell of one peerless leader com- 
 ing down to guide its vanguard: 
 
 I know the purple vestment; 
 
 I know the crest of flame; 
 So ever rides Mamilius, 
 
 Prince of the Latian name. 
 
MISCELLANEOTS WRITINGS. 109 
 
 One respects and glorifies the heroic Highland maiden Who 
 when the bloodhounds of Claverhouse were hot on the flying foot- 
 steps of her youthful lover gave him shelter under her hoops. 
 The moss troopers came; entered in; ransacked that house from 
 cornerstone to rafter; broke into closets ; thrust broadswords 
 through bedticks; sounded the wainscoting; knocked in the heads 
 of hogsheads, and rummaged every box and barrel capacious 
 enough to hide a man; but no fugitive. There sat the maiden, 
 serene and smiling, never stirring a fold of her dress, or lifting so 
 much as a finger from her lap. Finally the fellows of the broad- 
 swords, and they were slashing fellows, too, bade her a rough good- 
 bye as they rode away.^ Then out popped her lover, radiant. Then 
 he wanted to take her in his arms and caress her. Then she broke 
 down, burst into a flood of tears, and cried passionately: "Go 
 away! Go away! Go instantly! I hate you!" But she didn't, 
 bless her pure, virginal, heroic soul "for," as old David Ramsay 
 says, a quaint old story-teller of the olden time, "they were mar- 
 ried after the evil days, and Claverhouse sent a young peacock 
 of an aide to dance at the wedding." But under" a bed with a 
 woman on guard ! Under a bed and he a man of war! Under a 
 bed and he the fierce evangel of a new crusade of bomb-shells, 
 gunpowder, fulminates that tear mountains to pieces, oaths taken 
 at midnight at a coffin for a court, pass-words, grips, signs, signals, 
 gabble, gush, rant, cant scoundrelism, and boom! boom! boom! 
 Lord of Israel! what sort of a woman was that who stood guard 
 over that sort of a lover? 
 
 But a little more of Mr. Most. After a speech in New York 
 the other day, notorious for its blasphemy, ferocity, and evil 
 counsel, the law laid hold of him and brought him to its bar. Bail, of 
 course, but who do you think was his bondsman ? It was not a man 
 at all, but only another woman, said to be rich, said to have a home, 
 husband, children, property, the good things of life, and to be 
 a devout believer in every infernal doctrine put forth by the most 
 advanced anarchist. 
 
 A little before this, yet another woman, well known in New York 
 took upon herself the task of erecting a monument to the hanged 
 scoundrels, who appeared to have made rampant all the crankism 
 latent in the country. She swears to rest neither day or night until 
 she has raised money enough to carry out her purpose. "Audit 
 shall be as high as Washington's, too," she said, defiantly, to a 
 reporter, "if we choose to make it so." 
 
 We frankly confess that we do not understand anything about 
 the whole business. Of course, in the bosom of every woman ever 
 yet born into the world there is something of the nature of the 
 tigress, and in all the black and the dark things of a man's life, 
 those threads which are blackest and go mainly to make up the 
 warp and the woof, are always woven by a woman's hand ; but the 
 tigress, is a cleanly animal. Gordon Gumming says that she bathes 
 three times a day in her native jungles, that she will not touch the 
 meat she has not slain, and that for her offspring she is the bravest 
 wild beast known to the earth. And yet what could this bonds- 
 woman for Most do for her off spring if anarchy could barely once 
 hold the city of New York for twenty-four hours. 
 
 Whence comes, however, to sum it all up, this morbid, mon- 
 strous, unaccountable female craving for making heroes, angels, and 
 models out of all sorts, kinds, and conditions of murderers men who 
 have butchered in cold blood. Who have not killed in open com- 
 bat, body to body and pistol to pistol, but have ambushed their vie- 
 
110 JOHN NE \VMAX EDWARDS. 
 
 tims'and slaughtered them before they could turn about. Ogre 
 murderers, pitted and pustuled, as though yet iu their veins and 
 mixed with their blood there still flowed the incarnate spirit of 
 small-pox. Beetle-browed murderers their ancestry still traceable 
 to some traveling showman's escaped chimpanzee. Pert young 
 murderers of the long hair order, beginning with a stolen horse and 
 ending by killing a man in his sleep for money. Romantic mur- 
 derers, who poison friends, pack their bodies in trunks and then go 
 off in a blaze of glory, leaving behind them a track that might be 
 followed in a coach and four. Mysterious murderers regular dons 
 of fellows low- voiced, soft of speech, perfumed, affecting jewelry, 
 dirt under their finger nails, and kept by a woman. 
 
 But whatever the kind of murderer, he gets fresh fruits, flowers, 
 visits when admissable, sly little missives, fondling when possible, 
 books marked at any passage that is amorous, all too often means to 
 escape, money, delicate things, bon-bons, adulation, flattery x hero 
 worship, sympathy, pity, and tears. 
 
 But bring to the attention of one of these murderer worshipers 
 some member of his victim's family who needed help, and she would 
 draw back her dainty garments as though they might be touched by 
 the finger of a leper, and throw a kiss to her beloved as she flounced 
 away from the cell. 
 
 But, after all, nature takes care of such creatures as these called 
 women? Those who finally do not die through pads, stays, corsets, 
 and bustles, die in the midst of an apothecary shop. 
 
 MORE LITERARY MUTILATION. 
 
 [Kansas City Times, Dec. 12, 1887.] 
 
 Sir Richard Burton is probably the ablest, the most gifted, and 
 the most thoroughly equipped and accomplished Oriental scholar 
 any English-speaking country ever produced. His knowledge of 
 the Arabic language is almost perfect, as also his knowledge of East- 
 ern customs and manners, Eastern traditions, superstitions, and folk 
 lore, and especially Eastern literature, which he delights to revel in 
 and to inhale whatever there was about it of perfume, languor, dal- 
 liance, and love. Well, he once upon a time made a literal transla- 
 tion of the "Arabian Nights/' accompanied by a mass of invalua- 
 ble notes, which threw a flood of light upon points that had hitherto 
 been obscure so obscure, indeed, as to be a sealed book to every- 
 body. 
 
 Only 1000 copies of the translation were printed, and these 
 instantly found their way into the hands of such scholars in Eng- 
 land, France,and Germany as could the more quickly lay hold upon 
 them. 
 
 So far so good, but now comes Lady Burton, with her edition 
 of her husband's great work. It has been pruned, trimmed, dove- 
 tailed, pared down, peruked, periwigged, pomatumed, essenced, and 
 perfumed. 
 
 Out of some 3,000 pages of the famed original, she makes 
 the modest statement that she has only found it necessary to cut out, 
 carve, mutilate, make patchwork of, make crazy-quilts of, some four 
 or five hundred ! As for the notes and the explanations of the first edi- 
 tion, which made it so extremely valuable in more ways than one, 
 what about them ? Have they, too, been sprinkled with rosewater, 
 and submitted to the inspection of some sacerdotal mummy who, wea- 
 ried out long ago with parish tittle-tattle, gossip and scandal, has 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. HI 
 
 withdrawn to his own hide-bound sarcophagus, hating and condemn- 
 ing everything which comes to him from the outside world, telling 
 of a civilization which he could never understand because of its 
 frankincense, its myrrh, its odors, and its Odalisques, and because 
 in snuffle, and groan, and drone, and monotone, it is not up to the 
 standard of the " Pilgrim's Progress, "or " Baxter's Saints' Rest." 
 
 And Lady Burton's self-confidence over what she has done in 
 the way of mutilation, and her self-assurance that she has done it 
 so well, are all the more amusing and refreshing because of the fact, 
 as she states herself, that Justin Himtley McCarthy, M. P., assisted 
 her much in the little matter of expurgation. 
 
 And was it not a little matter ? Only some four or five hun- 
 dred pages out of 3,000. Only! Why, there is nothing in 
 thirf world that could furnish a counterpart for such vandalism, 
 unless one could find a sculptor greater than any known to ancient 
 or modern times, who, after carving out a magnificent statue of 
 Apollo, needing only life to be a god, proposed to put it in some 
 great gallery of art for the world to see. Before doing this, how- 
 ever, he would cut away a leg, saw off an arm, put out one eye, 
 pinch a piece off the nose, and then cry aloud to everybody : 
 " Come up and see the work of your Phidias, greater than whom 
 no sculptor was ever born upon the earth." 
 
 But why go on ? Juggled with and cheated in all sorts of ways 
 in his adulterated flour, sugar, coffee, pepper, yeast powder,wine, 
 whisky, beer, brandy, in the most of what he eats and what he 
 drinks, why should this easy-going, rollicking, broad-shouldered, 
 good natured beast of all burdens, called the American, draw the 
 line at his literature ? Skimmed milk is skimmed milk, no matter 
 whether in the greasy pot of a swill-fed dairy, or within the guilt 
 and gold of Lady Burton's dishwater edition of her husband's 
 "Arabian Nights." 
 
 One thing more : before the work is printed, we respectfully 
 suggest that it be dedicated to Anthony Comstock. 
 
 CHRISTMAS REJOICINGS. 
 
 [Kansas City Times, December 27, 1887.] 
 
 It is well to make Christmas the one precious holiday of the 
 nation; to fill it full of mirth and good cheer; to rest from labor and 
 have a reckoning with time; to open the heart and the purse to every 
 cry of sorrow and every tale of distress; to remember that midnight 
 sky across which a star flashed that had never yet been seen on shore 
 or sea; to ask why in that lowly manger a babe was found, aboveits 
 head an aureole, and in its eyes the light of a mighty revelation; to 
 recall how from all the long, cold, cruel, terrible night of paganism 
 there came forth a far voice in the wilderness echoing the tidings of 
 a New Jerusalem; think over all that Christianity has done for the 
 world and it may yet do if infidelity does not defile it ; politics 
 debauch it. agnosticism corrupt it, materialism obscure it, perni- 
 cious pulpit-teachings emasculate it, and brutal sectarianism finally 
 eat it up alive. 
 
 That the birth of Christ, the deliverer of the human race, and the 
 mysterious link connecting the transcendent and incomprehensive 
 attributes of the deity with human sympathies and affections, 
 should be considered the most glorious event that ever happened 
 and the most worthy of being reverently and joyously commemo- 
 rated, is a proposition which must commend itself to the heart and 
 
112 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 reason of every one of His followers who aspires to walk in His 
 footsteps and share in the ineffable benefits His death has secured to 
 mankind. 
 
 And was not the birth of our Saviour the most glorious event 
 that ever happened in all history? The world was rotten at eveiy 
 pore and vein and organ and artery of its body. Born in the reign 
 of Tiberius Caesar, that monster of everything beastly in lust and 
 horrible in cruelty. Rome then almost the mistress of everything 
 known of either land or water was given up wholly to war, murdtr, 
 pillage, rape, gladiatorial butcheries, and excesses of other kinds so 
 monstrous and so unnatural that historians have not yet agreed as to 
 their origin, whether, in fact, they were borrowed from the Greeks, 
 the Babylonians, the Assyrians, or from a race in further Egj'pt, 
 long antedating the loves, the crimes, the sins and the follies of Cleo- 
 patra. Look where one would, chastity was the exception and not 
 the rule. Woman was literally a beast of burden in most of the 
 nations, and was bought and sold as a ewe or a heifer upon the hoof. 
 Polygamy abounded. Slavery in the most intolerable form ever 
 known to man universally existed, the master having the absolute 
 power of life and death over his slave. War was little less than 
 absolute extermination, Conquest meant either depopulation, 
 extinction, or absorption. Some of the massacres surpassed in 
 extent and atrocity every thing ever yet recounted of Timour Lenk 
 orZingis Khan. Out of this sort of a civilization there comes forth 
 a Nero, aPhalaris, a Caligula, a Domitian,aHeliogabalus,aMarius, 
 and aSylla human butchers all, possessed of a thirst for blood that 
 never knew an hour of appeasement until the assassin's hand smote 
 some, and death in the fullness of their years smote the balance. 
 
 Paganism was the only religion if such indeed it can be called 
 and it taught nothing but a gross and licentious materialism. 
 To live was simply to enjoy. Possession was the only thing need- 
 ful to struggle for the possession of palaces, slaves, kingdoms, 
 jewels, concubines, fine linen, spices, wines, wild beasts, shows, 
 monster circuses, triumphal processions, luxury, trophies, monu- 
 ments, temples, and legions that roamed at wilCbutchering as they 
 roamed, through Europe, Asia, and Africa. Might was right, and 
 the sword the only arbiter. Mankind appeared to have but one 
 mission, that of making war, in which the strong laid hold of the 
 weak, and either slew them, exiled them, or made them helpless 
 and pitiful slaves. 
 
 It was then that the Judean shepherds, watching their flocks by 
 night, saw a great, strange light in the sky, and it w T as then, in a 
 trough of a stable in Bethlehem, the founder of a new faith, a new 
 belief, and a new religion, first showed himself in human form to a 
 world which was to put Him to death because, in full accord with 
 His heavenly mission, He wished to redeem and save it. And how 
 feeble and helpless the struggle first appeared. On every hand was 
 menace, wrath, unbelief, and despotic power. The Roman tyranny 
 was harsh beyond measure, soulless, and omnipotent. How long 
 would paganism tolerate the preaching of doctrines which were 
 eventually to shatter its idols, purify its temples, and convert its 
 worshipers. And yet how touching, tender, and appealing were 
 the doctrines thus preached. Woman was enfranchised and made 
 fit to become the helpmate and companion of man to adorn his 
 household, rear their offspring, teach purity and virtue, thereby 
 making the family homogeneous, and thereby making as adamant 
 the foundations upon which to erect the two precious and priceless 
 fabrics of society and the state. When polygamy died something 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 113 
 
 like human freedom began to take vigorous and healthy root in the 
 earth. The Sermon on the Mount penetrated and illuminated the 
 surrounding darkness, as Sinai must have blazed forth as some huge 
 mountain on fire when Moses went up to have laid upon him the 
 command of the Lord. As balm softer than any in Gilead, how the 
 inculcations to be charitable to one another, and good to one another, 
 and just and forbearing to one another, must have fallen upon the 
 ear of the miserable and persecuted in every laud the captive in 
 his dungeon, the slave in his fetters, the emperor with his purple 
 about him, and the beggar in his rags and his ulcers, even as another 
 Lazarus. 
 
 And then the promises of a haven of rest in the end. Here at 
 last was something tangible. Here at last was something which 
 stopped death's power to make the grave the end of all which 
 robbed the grave of its power to any longer to make of its 
 coffin and its winding sheet utter and absolute oblivion. Here 
 at last was something beyond the Jordan. When the road 
 had been rough, and weary, and desolate. When old age had 
 come on apace, and all the air was full of farewells for the dying. 
 When the morning was never so bright any more on the hill- 
 tops, nor the twilight ever so weird and strange any more in the 
 valleys. When youth had seen all the fires of its aspirations and 
 ambitions go out one by one on desolate hearthstones. When fancy 
 could no longer fly and imagination no longer take wings and soar, 
 fas a bird that soars and sings. When illusions had simply become 
 spectres to torment or affright. When the light had so soon, so 
 soon died out of the loved faces of the early doomed and dead. 
 When there were voices in the air that nobody could hear, and 
 sounds in the darkness that nobody could interpret. When the 
 tottering gait had well nigh reached the limit of its strength, and 
 the tremulous hand the fullness of their tension. When life was 
 felt to be flaring in all the veins as a taper^ about to be spent, and 
 something like the presence of the Invisible Angel was left to be 
 at the door here then at last was the blessed promise of the resurrec- 
 tion. 
 
 Is it any wonder, therefore, that the Christian world hallows the 
 birthday of such a Redeemer of such a God showering upon it 
 such a multitude of inestimable blessings? The whole plan of sal- 
 vation fraught as it is with so many glorious promises and pledges 
 is one of the simplest, purest, and most easily adopted of all the 
 other aggregated mass of teachings and revealments the ingenuity 
 of man or the inspiration of so-called potentates, prophets, or powers, 
 ever intellectually encompassed. It appeals to everything that is 
 pure, truthful, clean, upright, and unselfish in humanity. 
 
 It asks for nothing that is not good to grant either as the indi- 
 vidual, the citizen, the ruler, the conqueror, or as a simple unit in the 
 vast volumes of the population which people the earth. Millions 
 have embraced it and die as only those can died who are filled with 
 a perfect peace. To the poor and afflicted it has brought such con- 
 solations as made grievous burdens less difficult to be borne, and 
 physical pain or mental agony less agonizing in its tortures and 
 afflictions. It has made nations merciful and the strong more toler- 
 ant and helpful of the weak. It has resisted a legion of assaults, 
 and seen a legion of its assailants cast down, broken, overwhelmed, 
 or disgraced^ Blessed, therefore, is the land which still hallows, 
 reveres, and celebrates its Christmas. There is not another day so 
 momentous in all ancient or modern chronology. 
 
114 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 POOR VALENTINE BAKER. 
 
 [Kansas City Times, January 6, 1888.1 
 
 It is all very well now to sing paeons over the grave where Gen- 
 eral Valentine Baker has been buried. He recks not now of any 
 war-trumpet that may be busy with his name or fame. The poet 
 may sing of his sorrowful and tempestuous life, and the novelist may 
 make of him a hero to adorn many a tale and romance; but he is 
 past all heeding now he has crossed over the river to rest, it may 
 be, with many another soldier under the shade of the trees. 
 
 General Valentine Baker, not long dead of a sudden heart 
 trouble, was born in 1831. Joining the British Army in 1848, he 
 served with brilliant courage and enterprise in Kaffir land, in 
 India, and in the Crimea. His regiment then was the Twelfth 
 
 quarters of the globe. 
 The Prince of Wales was his steadfast friend aye, more than friend, 
 for they were roystering companions together. When the Prince 
 made his somewhat celebrated visit to this country, the daring 
 colonel of the Tenth Hussars was in his train, a confidential adviser 
 and a constant attendant. It was remarked that the two men 
 seemed inseperable. 
 
 Fate was weaving a web for the future, however, and poor 
 Baker with his eyes wide open went straight to his destiny. 
 
 One summer night flushed somewhat with the wine of the 
 mess-table and the wine of the glorious weather he was riding up 
 from the camp at Aldershot to London. In the same railroad apart- 
 ment with him was a lady whom he did not know, whom he had 
 probably never seen, and who was disposed to be friendly, at least, 
 if not a little free. Some courtly conversation was held between 
 the two, and Baker saw or imagined he saw an opportunity for an 
 intrigue. Perhaps he pushed his suit. No doubt he would not take 
 the first no for an answer. It may be that with the glamor over him 
 he came too near for a man who came to be denied ; but whatever he 
 did, when the train reached London the woman called a police 
 officer, told her story, and Baker was required to answer at a court 
 of justice the next morning. 
 
 He made no defense publicly. He simply said to the magistrate, 
 "I have sinned, perhaps, and I will suffer. Let the law be satis- 
 fied." He was imprisoned for a brief period, but the Queen, when his 
 sentence had been served out.took his regiment away from him, drove 
 him from the army, and so branded him that he was octracised by soci- 
 ety in all its mean, petty, abject and malignant ways, until Valen- 
 tine Baker sought service with the Turk. The Russo-Turkish War 
 of 1877-8 was just on the eve of outbreak, and the Sultan made him 
 a major general and assigned him to the command of the gendarmerie 
 or what would be called in this country home-guards. This he 
 perfectly drilled and disciplined, and afterwards when the war 
 was becoming every day more bloody and desperate he was given 
 a division of regulars and sent rapidly to the front. At the Balkans 
 he fought splendidly, was decorated by the Sultan, and undoubt- 
 edly saved the army of Suleiman Pasha, then in full retreat for 
 Adrianople. 
 
 Over and over again appeals were made to Queen Victoria to 
 reinstate him in the British army, but they might just as well have 
 been made to a stone. The Prince of Wales never forsook him, and 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 115 
 
 made two touching personal requests of his mother in regard to him, 
 but her obdurate heart never melted for a moment. Until his dying 
 day the sentence of the court-martial stood over against his name 
 unexpunged. 
 
 Once he told the true story of his railroad adventure, but not for 
 the purpose of softening the Queen or begetting sympathy. His first 
 advances, he said, were unobjectionable. The woman appeared 
 rather to return his expressed admiration, and to be not averse to a 
 little coquetry. Desiring to make the flirtation a little more emphatic 
 on his part, she stopped him curtly, and that was the end. After- 
 ward he spoke no word to her that was not perfectly proper and 
 respectful. The entire British army believed him, as did as well 
 almost the entire British public, outside of the army. 
 
 By and by there were troubles in Egypt, and thither went 
 Baker, the soldier instinct still powerful upon him, and a great 
 yearning still in all his being to fight for his country, even though he 
 fought under a foreign flag. 
 
 At Tel-a-Kebir, Baker was among the first to storm the works 
 of Arab! Pasha. Afterward Osman Digna grew bold, grew ram- 
 pant, grew defiant, and Baker marched to encounter him with a 
 small Egyptian force of ragamuffins. British soldiers were denied 
 him, but he went forward without them. At El Teb the Arabs 
 delivered one volley and charged home. The Egyptians did not even 
 wait to receive the' onset. They fled ignominiously, and the flight 
 was a massacre. In the rear, and almost alone, Baker made heroic 
 efforts to rally his men, but if he had been a desert sand dune talk- 
 ing to the wind he could have made no less impression. Finally he 
 was shot in the leg. There were scars of a half dozen worse 
 wounds on his body, and he paid no attention to this. When near 
 to succor, and almost within shoulder touch of the British lines, an 
 iron ball tore through his left jaw, destroyed the sight of one eye, 
 knocked him from his horse, and knocked him "insensible. In 
 another moment he would have been speared to death, but of a 
 sudden a defiant bugle note rang out loud and shrill and challeng- 
 ing, and, if he then could have looked up and looked forward, lie 
 might have seen his own idolized regiment, the Tenth hussars, rush- 
 ing down to the rescue, % 
 
 If he had lived until the Prince came regularly to the throne 
 he would have been restored instantly to his own again; but, poor 
 fellow, fate would not even let him do that. He died at Ismalia, 
 far from his own sea girt land, and almost before he could say fare- 
 well to those about him or leave a single little message for the loved 
 ones that were not by. 
 
 We were aware of the claims now being made that, if he had 
 lived a little longer, the Queen, taking advantage of her jubilee year, 
 would have restored him to the ranks of the British army in fact, 
 making such restoration a crowning act of mercy and grace. If she 
 ever entertained anintention so righteous as this, red tape prevented 
 its fulfillment. How pitiful sound the remarks made about him by 
 a distinguished general officer, who was also his intimate friend: 
 "It is sad to think of the poor fellow lying upon his sick bed, 
 heartbroken with the many disappointments he had experienced. 
 All his hope had centered on the jubilee year, yet it seemed drawn 
 to a close without the Queen having shown any sign of relenting. 
 It is then easy to understand how, in Baker's weakened condition, 
 desire to live may have died out, for he knew nothing of the pleas- 
 ant surprise in store for him. Could he but have realized the cer- 
 tainty of his restoration, the poor fellow would probably have been 
 
116 JOHN NEWilAX EDWARDS. 
 
 living still. The Queen's pardon came too late, and all that his sor- 
 rowing friends can now do is to join in raising a tribute to the 
 memory of one who was a far better man than many whom the 
 world delights to honor." 
 
 It certainly can not be denied that after life's fitful fever he will 
 sleep well. 
 
 ROSCOE CONKLING. 
 
 [Kansas City Times, April 18, 1888.] 
 
 " A great man has fallen this day in Israel." 
 
 At the grave's side no one should write of him except as a typi- 
 cal American citizen. If there had been anything of dross, death's 
 crucible left only the gold in its value and purity. On the shroud 
 there was noplace for hands that might have smutched it with par- 
 tisanship; in the coffin there was no place for the cold formula of 
 political creeds no place for the cold presentment of any Nemesis 
 born of the fierce struggles and passions common to all men who 
 follow a flag and fight its party's battles. 
 
 Coukling was a proud man proud of his clean hands, his clean 
 public record, his clean professional life, his clean personal charac- 
 ter. He lived in an atmosphere where scandal never came. Under 
 the terrible stress and strain of fifteen years of war and reconstruc- 
 tion, with his armor scarcely ever off, and his naked blade scarcely 
 ever at rest in its scabbard, he fought a savage fight, but always in 
 the open. Others tortured; he desired to draw the line at the not 
 unreasonable utilization of the North's unmistakable victory over 
 the South. Jobbers swarmed about him; he barred the treasury 
 doors the best he could through all those terrible days of rapine, 
 confiscation, and the gathering together of the birds of prey. Oiheis, 
 sodden with the thrift which follows the fawning of demagogues, 
 cringed constantly at the feet of Lincoln and Grant; Conkliug 
 stood splendidly erect as some huge column supporting an edifice 
 wherein Solomon might have greeted and reveled with the Qiuen 
 of Sheba. 
 
 And horn he hated a little, a mean, a sneaking, or a contc n>] t- 
 ible thing. The man's whole nature seems to have had wir^s 
 especially granted to soar above tbe partisan hrgs in their stk s; 
 the partisan bullocks horning one another off from the troughs of 
 public plunder. No margins tempted him; no ring allurements, 
 seductive at every step with valuable spoils, ever attracted his atten- 
 tion ; no lobbyist ever dared to approach him with a special plea ; 
 across the black page of the De Golyer contracts, and the infamous 
 paj-roll of the Credit Mobilier thieves, no mortal eye ever saw 
 written thereon the white name of Roscoe Conkling. Can the same 
 be said for the apostolic sniveler who tried to humble him, to break 
 that proud spirit, to shear the locks from that stalwart Samson, to 
 chain him to the chariot wheels of a detested secretary of state, to 
 insult him in the house of his friends, to crack a master's whip and 
 bid him surrender, to banish from all part or lot in a Republican 
 administration this heroic Warwick, only knowing how to spend 
 millions for defense but not a cent for tribute ? 
 
 Conscious of the perfect rectitude of a life so far spent in the 
 service of his friends and his party, not capable of becoming a dwarf , 
 that he might escape the volleys of that pigmy brood which had 
 come into ephemeral life through the last bloody-shirt foment of 
 reconstruction politics, and unable to consort with the man-buyers 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 117 
 
 of the Pension Bureau and the two-dollar inundators of Indiana, 
 with Star-route Dorsey opening the sluices and the dykes, he put 
 away politics and went proudly out into the ranks of the honest 
 working people, where he knew the air to be pure, and where he 
 was positive that he could still maintain his consoling self-respect 
 and liis spotless honor. 
 
 And now he is dead in his prime. Possessed of an intellect 
 equal to that of any of the great ones gone. Quiet, studious, and 
 devoted to his profession. Not, perhaps, what in these days might 
 be called a popular leader because his standard was too high and 
 his will too unbending he would have been wise in counsel, mas- 
 terful in a cabinet, and superb in the field. Intolerance of shams 
 made liim appear at times lordly, supercilious, and dictatorial; but 
 behind the semblance was the substance, and in extremity every- 
 thing else was unreckoned of except the iron. There was nruch in 
 common between himself and General Grant, and this fact will go 
 far to explain their unselfish and unbroken friendship. Grant never 
 whined ; neither did Conkling. Grant was firm, resolute and indom- 
 itable; so was Conkling. Very late in his second term Grant had 
 at last discovered the snares and the pitfalls prepared for him by 
 his toadies and his flatterers; Conkling long before had foreseen 
 their danger and hastened to his chief with heartfelt and valuable 
 warnings. Grant confided in many, Conkling infew; but the middle 
 ground upon which they both met and fraternized was the loyal 
 respect one had for the other. This, being always the bond of com- 
 munion, no matter the separate road each took in response to its 
 bidding, each always reached it simultaneously. Hence, amid the 
 wreck of all things dear to Grant's ambition at Chicago, Conklicg 
 went down with the colors. 
 
 He died too soon. There would have been a mighty work for 
 him to have done in the near future. To many thinking men the 
 nation is on the eve of a crisis. There are elements this day at 
 work which are yet to make patriotism once more as precious as 
 when our forefathers pledged to freedom whatever they bad of life, 
 of property, and of sacred honor. There will come by and by ques- 
 tions to be settled some of them pressing, some undeniable, some 
 perhaps perilous which will need for their grappling some such in- 
 tellect as Conkling's clear, incisive, luminous; imbued somewhat 
 with omniscience; not afraid of the knife, still less of 1he caustic; 
 seeing the entire Union, unobscured as to the paltry efficacy of par- 
 tisan panaceas, serene even with the ship in the breakers, pon- 
 tifical like a priest's, aggressive like a soldier's where is there such 
 an one left for such emergencies in New York, where indeed in the 
 United States? 
 
 There be makeshifts in abundance doughty political physi- 
 cians who treat symptoms but never the disease itself. The land is 
 full of inanities that gambol on the political green as lambs do in 
 blue-grass pastures, when April is in the air, and the south wind 
 tells what it yet intends to do for the buds and blossoms. There 
 are quacks, and formulas, and nostrums by the shipload. There 
 are babblers of finance, and men in buckram to organize and util- 
 ize labor movements. There are multitudinous makers of trusts, 
 eating up the substance of the people, and feeding competition on 
 husks and shavings; but where are the giants to keep the faith and 
 keep this blessed land from mortal injury? One has just fallen 
 prostrate as some great oak falls, never to rise again. 
 
118 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 ON SOUTHERN POETS. 
 
 [Kansas City Times, September 14, 1888.] 
 
 The Atlanta Constitution, in dealing quite lengthily the other 
 day with Southern poetry and poets, seems only to know and put 
 forward three: Father Ryan, Sidney Lanier, and Paul H. Hayne. 
 It is well. No word is said amiss of these. If in a garden of flow- 
 ers, they would have been roses; if in a forest of trees, they would 
 have been oaks. But the horizon was not far enough away, the 
 vision was too much contracted. Any Southern sky with only 
 three stars in it is not a benignant sky. Neither is it a sky under 
 which the mocking birds will sing their merriest and the young 
 lovers linger out longest, none nearer to listen to the old, old story 
 than the passion flowers at the gate. 
 
 Where is Poe, that strange, weird, and still undefinable genius, 
 whose every verse was a wail, whose every heart-beat was super- 
 natural, and whose every gesture took ^ hold upon death? Not a 
 poet, you say? If this be so, then what is poetry? If it be poetry 
 to make the flesh creep and to be cold and hot by turns, then Poe 
 was the wizard of such emotions. He was the man who conjured 
 up ghosts, he was the man who so peopled the imagination with 
 horrors that it became haunted. Hayne never did this. His flight 
 was too near the earth to hear songs that were never sung and words 
 that were never spoken. 
 
 Where is Dr. F. O. Tick or and his "Little Giffen of Tennessee," 
 a lyric which will remain immortal while the language lasts. 
 
 'Out of the focal and foremost fire. 
 Out of the hospital walls as dire, 
 Smitten of grapeshot and gangrene. 
 Eighteenth battle and he sixteen 
 Spectre ! such as you seldom see, 
 Little Giffen of Tennessee." 
 
 Where is Harry B. Flash, the lyrical music in him as splendid 
 as in a military band playing as it might play if it were playing for 
 Leonidas ? Where the poems indeed from which we make an extract ? 
 
 "By blue Patapsco's billowy dash, 
 The tyrant's war shout comes, 
 Along with the cymbals' fitful clash, 
 And the growl of the sullen drums." 
 
 Where is James R. Randall with "Maryland, My Maryland," 
 and fifty other ungathered fugitives just as exquisite ? 
 
 Where is John R. Thompson tender, musical, a ballad maker 
 as perfect as Rossetti, a weaver of words as unequaled as Tennyson? 
 Where is Henry Timrod, death's hand on him at nineteen, with 
 enough odes to make a gold mine out of a sassafrass thicket ? 
 
 Where is W. W. Harney with his "sudden stabs in groves for- 
 lorn," andthat "Blockade Running," where one old classmate striving 
 for Wilmington called out to another old classmate who was pur- 
 suing : 
 
 "You'll want boots to follow me 
 All nisrht," said the master, 
 "With your wrought iron roster, 
 Old Geordie of Maine." 
 
 Where is Samuel Minturn Peck, who can be as quaint as James 
 Whitcomb Riley, as exquisitely tender as Riley, and as full of that 
 rare pathos which makes the fingers of poetry take hold of the heart- 
 strings ? 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 119 
 
 Not one of these does the Constitution touch, nor lift up, nor put 
 in a frame, nor hang lovingly in its sanctum. This should not be. 
 Scant praise at best has Southern literature or Southern writers ever 
 received from any source, but mainly because neither had an audi- 
 ence. Their territory now, however, is widening and becoming 
 more populous. It is not right just at this peculiar juncture to 
 make any invidious distinctions. The Constitution's field is almost 
 too limited to breathe in, much less to do a good day's plowing. Its 
 Pantheon is wofully lacking in gods. It is a temple with only three 
 shrines, while all the outside and abounding space is as desolate as a 
 forest without leaves. Perhaps it will fill it later. 
 
 As for the Southern women who have written poetry, we have 
 nothing to say, unless it "would be to ask the question : Did a 
 woman ever write poetry ? If one ever did it has surely not been 
 Miss Rives in her " Herod and Mariamne." 
 
 AS TO KING DATID. 
 
 [Kansas City Times, September 16, 1888.] 
 
 Mr. Ernest Renan, who was once a priest, and who even now 
 professes to live in the odor of sanctity, is again busily engaged in 
 taking venerable and respected tradition to pieces. Having already 
 finished with Christ and His Apostles having already dealt as he 
 was best able with the New Testament, he has now turned him to 
 the Old and it is King David who comes first under fire. 
 
 Renan has a peculiarintellectual development, even fora French- 
 man. No writers of this or any other century ever equaled the 
 French for lucidity of statement; the vivid power of illustration; 
 a satire that is perfectly exquisite; delightful badinage; an irony 
 which never purposely corrodes, but if purposely then only upon 
 occasion; swift movement; the commingling of tragedy and com- 
 edy ; an inherent dramatic encompassment that is never at a loss for 
 similes or situations while to marshal all these as is desirable, 
 using either of itself or the whole together as a mass, there is the 
 scaccato or epigrammatic style which to all others is so incomparable. 
 None can write biography like the French. As for memoirs, these 
 in their hands are unapproachable. 
 
 Renan has every one of these valuable gifts at his disposal 
 always valuable to an author and he has more. Pie has the educa- 
 tion of a Jesuit. This means about fifteen years of hard, uninter- 
 rupted study before it is supposed that a man knows anything. He 
 is the. fluent master of ten languages, among the ten being Persian, 
 Turkish, the Hebrew, and the Arabic. Probably at least three of 
 these he learned in order all the more readily to get at the Bible and 
 attempt to destroy many of its idols yet dear to the human heart. 
 
 Before he began his " Life of Christ " he spent three years in 
 Egypt and Palestine, The Sultan then owned the two countries, 
 and hence his knowledge of the Turkish and Arabic must have 
 stood him in most excellent stead. His sister accompanied him, an 
 enthusiast like himself, as he was then. They went anywhere and 
 everywhere. They appeared to have no idea of fear. When night 
 came they pitched their tents. The Arabs did not seem to understand 
 them; the Bedouins forgot to even ask them for backsheesh. 
 
 The sister never returned. She died under a date palm in the 
 desert, tenderly nursed, it is true, having skillful physicans at her 
 side, and plenty of female attendants. But the priest, where was 
 he? Her brother? no, her God. 
 
120 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 Time went on, and Renan got further and further away from 
 the sweet recollections of his college days, from the tender influ- 
 ences of a gentle and benignant life, from the restraints of an intel- 
 lectual discipline that he so much needed as a safeguard against 
 spiritual shipwreck, from well ordered fields wherein nothing grew 
 that was noxious or told of harm, from old friends and old associa- 
 tions, and the end then came speedily. The ardent young believer 
 was a hardened skeptic. He had grown gray in unbelief in anight. 
 Endowed as he was intellectually, what a spectacle and what a ruin! 
 Using the gifts which Providence had so lavishly bestowed upon 
 him to enlighten and succor mankind, he squandered them in terri- 
 ble attacks upon the very foundation of society itself. 
 
 And they were terrible, these attacks of his. The "Life of 
 Christ" is one of the most insidious, dangerous, yet attractive 
 books in any language. The danger lies in its distillation. Its 
 poison tastes like honey. On the edge of every pitfall there is a 
 fringe of roses. This fringe is also a screen. One reaches out for 
 a rose and instead finds engulf ment. The full flow and flood of the 
 tide of the narrative is poetry set to music. As the children fol- 
 lowed the flute of the Pied Piper of Hamelin into the heart of the 
 mountain, never to be seen of mortal again, so young men follow 
 the words and the thoughts of this wizard of the pen, and the result 
 in all too many cases is the hardening of the heart and the stiffening 
 of the'neck. 
 
 His ' ' Lives of the Apostles " is not so sweet to the taste nor so 
 delightful to the palate. It jars often. It is at times harsh, rasp- 
 ing, bitter. Not content with killing his victim he often chooses to 
 skin him. As he gets older of course this spirit will grow upon 
 him. He will not seek to seduce so much from this on as to demol- 
 ish. Scantier and scantier will become the wine he offers from his 
 own clear champagne country, and plentier and plentier the acrid 
 brew and the brew which burns like acid. 
 
 One can easily see this sort of feeling deepening over and about 
 Renan in his recent comments upon David. In three numbers of a 
 leading Paris review he has dealt with this King of Israel. He 
 describes him as a black-hearted hypocrite. A selfish egotist, 
 incapable of a sentiment of sympathy or a disinterested idea. A 
 coward in war, who wept over Absalom and then broke bread with 
 his murderer. He declares that he kept a harem, and that, although 
 he did dabble to some extent in poetry, he never wrote the Psalms. 
 He contrasts him with Saul, making of one a hero and a warrior of 
 great renown of the other a sneak and a trickster. David's deed 
 of putting Uriah in front of the battle to be killed as he was, in 
 order to take to wife his beautiful widow Bathsheba, is made into a 
 ferocious picture which probably no other hand could paint except 
 the hand of such a monster. 
 
 But the question arises, and it is a very natural one. What has 
 brought about this exhumation of David? And what will happen 
 to Solomon when Renan gets to him, who was the son of that very 
 Bathsheba the savage Frenchman has just taken as a text to crucify 
 her imperial ravisher? One can see no earthly good to arise from it 
 all. If Renan writes just to see how powerfully he can write, then 
 it must be admitted that he does it to perfection, although his 
 inspiration now appears to be of the devil . 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 121 
 
 DR. JOSEPH M. WOOD. 
 
 [Kansas City Times, September 20, 1888.] 
 
 One of the lights of the medical world clear, luminous, a great 
 beacon set as it were upon a high hill has suddenly gone out for- 
 ever. How death must have rejoiced when it laid him low. No 
 more mortal enemy of the inexorable destroyer ever lived in the 
 land. For more than fifty years man and boy he grappled with it, 
 rescued its victims, drove it from bedsides almost ready for the 
 shroud, fought it hand to hand across a coverlet, routed it from 
 households where every room was an intrenchment, smote it until 
 even its terrors were put to flight, snapped the shaft of its imme- 
 morial spear in sheer derision, taunted it with its impotency, and 
 filially became such an implacable foe that it seemed to avoidhimas 
 it he were superhuman. 
 
 And now to think that in this last encounter, he who had saved 
 so many could not save himself. But then this splendid defender of 
 his race had grown gray in the war harness. An active battle well 
 on to fifty years long had left him worn, and old, and less able to 
 withstand the final onset. He had the frame of a giant yes, but 
 he had also done the work of a giant. He had the strength of any 
 four ordinary men yes, but he put it forth so lavishly in supplying 
 the demands of his profession that when he needed a reserve for 
 himself that reserve had been exhausted. He had the buoyant life 
 and vitality of some great conquerer yes, even as Cortez, but he 
 poured them all out for others, never caring seemingly to know if 
 a day would not come when a little, at least, of this vast wealth 
 should have been laid away for the final grapple. 
 
 And yet how could he see or know or care about any of these 
 things thow could he take note to day what might happen or be 
 required for to-morrow? He lived for others. He was one of the 
 most generous, unselfish and lovable of men. A tale of want, or 
 sorrow, or suffering made him as a little child, he, this giant of a sur- 
 geon, whose very operating knife had about it something almost of 
 inspiration. The record of his good deeds could only have been 
 written by the recording angel. And they have been so written, 
 never fear. And many a page they took, shining all over and 
 through as though the pinions of the heavenly dove had been folded 
 there to make them blessed and resplendent. 
 
 Why, this man would often wait for the darkness to cover him 
 before he departed on his missions of mercy. He wrought out the 
 miracles both of his heart and his intellect by stealth. 
 
 To surprise him in any act of charity was to put him to flight. 
 If any one ever spoke of it in his presence he would go away pained. 
 That hand which was all iron, when the steel was in it, was always 
 open when it became necessary to succor as well as to save. No 
 matter what the nature of the succor was whether money, medi- 
 cines, food, raiment, care, watchfulness, professional attendance, 
 hired nurses he never hesitated a single moment to open his purse 
 or bestow his precious attainments upon the needy and the afflicted. 
 Even if his own life had ever depended upon an accurate summing 
 up of all these abounding charities, to save it he could not have made 
 a report of even a fractional part. Verily, with him the hand that 
 did not give never knew in a single instance what the hand which 
 did give was doing. 
 
 Once, when cholera was sweeping from the east to the west, and 
 over the plains, and across the Rocky Mountains, ravaging remorse- 
 
122 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 lessly where it touched, Dr. Wood was coming from St. Louis to 
 Liberty Landing on a crowded emigrant steamer. The steerage 
 swarmed with poor folks, men, women and children. Piercing as 
 the neigh of a frightened horse the cry arose that the White Specter 
 which leaves the faces of all those whom it has undone so pinched 
 and pallid and wan was aboard the boat, doing the same old 
 inevitable work that it had been doing from its home on the Ganges 
 to the Pacific Ocean. 
 
 Dr. Wood was just then in the very strength and flower of his 
 young manhood. Life was so fair, so fair before him. Perfect 
 physical health and perfect physical manhood made all nature 
 delicious, and all the world adorable. Every road which ran to the 
 future had upon it growing grasses and blooming flowers, and sing- 
 ing birds in all the branches of the trees. Death was below him in 
 its most appalling character. 
 
 He went below. For nearly a week so far from going to bed 
 he never even took off his clothes. He did the work of a dozen 
 men. His frame, which up to that time had been colossal, now sud- 
 denly came to be iron. Hir nature took upon itself attributes even 
 unknown to their possessor. He was physician, nurse, undertaker, 
 consoler, confessor, musician but, whatever he was, he staid. 
 
 We said musician yes, musician. Well knowing the power of 
 imagination over the human mind in all epidemics, even in those not 
 so virulent as a cholera epidemic, Dr. Wood took his medicine case 
 in one hand and his fiddle in the other. He was an excellent per- 
 former then. After seeing and prescribing for all of his patients he 
 would play them a lively tune something that would make self 
 quit preying upon self, something that would make the heart beat 
 faster, and the icy circulation strive just one more time to get at all 
 the extremities. 
 
 What a spectacle! Here was death, intrenched in the reeking 
 atmosphere of a steerageway, defied with the rollicking tunes of a 
 master fiddler. It was Mirabeau's death song materialized on a 
 western river: "Crown me with flowers, intoxicate me with per- 
 fumes and let me die to the sounds of delicious music." 
 
 But they did not die, many of them. Considering the unfavor- 
 able nature of the surroundings and the malignant type of the 
 disease, many were saved. And what was Dr. Wood's reward? 
 The prayers and the blessings of these poor survivors which fol- 
 lowed him for years after in the shape of letters and little tokens in 
 tbe way of remembrance and affection. Through rigid quarantine 
 and perpetual fumigation the cholera was kept from the cabin pas- 
 sengers.* And it was well. Dr. Wood's mission was in the steerage 
 and there he meant to stay even though he were stricken down in 
 mid-battle. God, however, spared him to finish his life, and to 
 build some priceless monuments of science and skill to adorn his 
 noble profession. 
 
 Dr. Wood, in its very essence and purity, was a medical philos- 
 opher. He went up from cause to effect with the rapid stride of the 
 born commander. Said Bichat, that wonderful Frenchman, who 
 died too young for the sake of humanity: "The discovery of the 
 cause is the discovery of the remedy." To this end Dr. Wood 
 marched with a set will that never relaxed or yielded. His glance 
 was instantaneous. He seemed to fathom disease through the appli- 
 cation of a sixth sense which might well be named intuition. His 
 diagnosis was as unerring as the tide's ebb and flow. His resources 
 in any desperate crisis were as manifold as they were instantly 
 evoked. No extremity, however desperate, ever confused his 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 123 
 
 searching glance or ruffled the calm serenity of the great physician. 
 Hence, when many of his brother practitioners, had patients sup- 
 posed to be nearing the inevitable hour, Dr. Wood was most gener- 
 ally called in for consultation. So frequently was this done that 
 the practice passed into a proverb. A lady one day made it vivid 
 by an epigram. Awakening from a deep sleep she saw Dr. Wood 
 standing by her bedside, and exclaimed: " What, then, is it so bad 
 as this? I see that Dr. Wood is here." 
 
 So remarkable had his fame become for snatching people f ] om 
 the very jaws of death, and so widely known had this reputaiion 
 been made, both in medicine and surgery, that he was sent for at 
 various times to New York, Baltimore, Washington City, upon sev- 
 eral occasions to Philadelphia, often to St. Louis, and to as many as 
 two hundred places in the State of Missouri. These demands were 
 constantly made upon him until he gradually withdrew from his 
 more arduous labors to devote more time to his own personal and 
 devoted friends. 
 
 Dr. Wood had a face like the face of that famous English sur- 
 geon, Sir Astley Cooper. Genius beamed from every line of it from 
 every form, fashion, contour and feature. In repose it was some- 
 times sad, yet always august. Butwheu that peculiar smile of his 
 broke over it, then it shone as the east shines when low down on its 
 utter most verge the shadows begin to lift a little and the dawn tostir 
 therein, peering over the edge and waiting to bless the world. It 
 had often and often been remarked for its fascination and from the 
 way it made his face transfigured. Seen in the sick chamber, it 
 brought hope, faith, help, consolation. Seen in social life it attracted 
 all who wanted solace, confidence and unrestrained communion. 
 
 And now it will never more be seen again anywhere this side 
 of the Wonderful River. He had lived his life as some huge old 
 oak which the wind for years could not prevail against, the light- 
 nings shiver, nor the storms uproot. But, stricken at last by time, 
 which strikes all earthly things to dust, it falls a forest monarch, 
 never to be upreared again in all the ages. 
 
 So fell our giant, who was yet full of all gentleness, and ten- 
 derness, and charity, and good deeds, and a stainless manhood, and 
 a fame that will endure while intellect does homage to intellect, and 
 genius has a shrine where all its devotees can kneel and worship. 
 A life so grandly and so unselfishly lived sinks from the sight of 
 those who yet remain with the halo of noble deeds about it, and 
 leaves behind the example of its own magnanimous dedication to 
 duty and to humanity. 
 
 But beyond? What of that? Ah 
 
 t " Who shall murmur or misdoubt 
 
 When God's great sunshine finds us out ? " 
 
 WAR QUAKER FASHION. 
 
 [Kansas City Times, September 21, 1888.] 
 
 The telegraph tells us that the Third German Army Corps, led 
 by the Emperor, was repulsed after a hot battle in an attack upon 
 Berlin, which was defended by the guards. 
 
 How many were killed ? None. How many were wounded I 
 None. Then it was a Quaker battle? Not absolutely necessary it 
 was only a part of the autumn rnanoeuvrers. 
 
 By the way, does this mimic sort of warfare amount to anything? 
 
124: JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 It can have no possible feature in common with war in its sure 
 enough form and fashion. Sham war goes by certain fixed rules 
 arranged over a map at night to be carried out in the morning. This 
 brigade is to do so and so, as will this division, as will this corps. 
 The attack is planned as would be a pleasure trip, the defense also. 
 Nothing is left to skill, to superior generalship, to the sudden mass- 
 ing of strong columns upon weak ones, to the swift concentration of 
 a more powerful artillery ; while last, but by no means least, nothing 
 is left to that intangible yet all powerful thing called by the ancients 
 fate and by the moderns fortune. Charles V. perfectly understood 
 it when the great Conde baffled him at Metz: "I am too old," he 
 said. " Fortune needs to be wooed by younger lovers." 
 
 On the other hand, actual war calls every resource of the com- 
 mander into instant action, and demands that he shall be capable on 
 the moment to seize upon and make favorable every circumstance 
 as i t arises. It is i mperati vely necessary that the army which attacks 
 shall be governed largely by the movements of the army which 
 resists. A plan of battle is all well enough, but it must be a plan 
 that will stretch for leagues, contract for leagues, change its 
 entire sum and substance or be of such a nature as to be 
 abandoned altogether when it is no longer fit to be relied upon 
 in the face of its surroundings. In other words, it is one thing 
 to plan and^another thing to execute. Actual war gives scope to all 
 that is daring, wary, crafty, impassive and omniscient in man; 
 mimic war puts him on an easy-going horse, and bids him ride leis- 
 urely down a certain road and halt at a certain stopping place for 
 the night. Actual war means to get there first with the most men, 
 and then go for everything in sight; mimic war means that if so and 
 so happens, then so and so must be done. Here are your metes and 
 bounds. Those whom you have to encounter have also their metes 
 and bounds. On each side they are inexorable. Do what you are 
 told and attend to your own business. 
 
 Therefore we ask again, Do these mimic mancEuvrers ever 
 amount to anything? "I nevermanceuvrer/'said Grant. "Wherever 
 I find General Lee I shall attack him." All of which did not pre- 
 vent him from grinding to powder by sheer attrition. "The com- 
 pany is the unit," said Napoleon. "It is my captains who have 
 won all my victories. Drill for me your companies perfectly and I 
 will do all the balance." The Roman legions gave all their spare 
 time to rigid drill and discipline. Marlborough made his soldiers 
 well nigh invincible by launching them against the enemy. The 
 suggestion merely of a mimic manceuvrer to old Frederick the Great 
 would have brought a blow from his walking stick. Wellington in 
 all his life never perhaps dreamed of one. Hannibal rested when he 
 did not fight. Alexander feasted when he was not marching. 
 
 Who knows, however, but what the times have changed greatly? 
 It may be that the German Emperor knows his business much better 
 than any one else can in the American republic, whose standing army 
 could be comfortably camped in a twenty-acre field. Any way Ber- 
 lin is safe, and that is something to be thankful for. 
 
 WILL-O'-THE WISP. 
 
 [Kansas City Times, September 22, 1888.] 
 
 There has been published for some time, in newspapers as well 
 as in magazines, a wonderful story of a hidden treasure, said to have 
 been buried by an Indian when Pizarro conquered Peru. Accord- 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 125 
 
 ing to reports, which break forth every now and then as though the 
 suoject were a new one, many a hunt has been made for it and many 
 a hunter has given up the search, baffled and disappointed. 
 
 And no wonder, if they take the following as a lamp for their 
 feet and a light for their eyes. It is from the American Magazine, 
 and it reads: 
 
 "Everyone who has read Prescott's fascinating volumes knows 
 what followed. "With the aid of the Spaniards, Atahualpa conquered 
 his brother. When he lay a prisoner in the hands of the guests he 
 had treated so hospitably, he offered to fill his prison with gold if 
 they would release him. They agreed, and his willing subjects 
 brought the treasure, but the greedy Spaniards demanded n.ore. 
 Runners were hurried all over the country, and the simple, unselfish 
 people surrendered all their wealth to save their king. But Pizarro 
 became tired of waiting for the treasure, and the men in charge < f it, 
 upon hearing the news that Atahualpa had been strangled, buried 
 the gold and silver in the L'anganati, where the Spaniardshavc been 
 searching for it ever since." 
 
 "Everybody who has read Prescott's fascinating volumes 
 knows " no such thing. Atahualpa never saw a Spaniard, and 
 most probably never heard of one, until seven months, and most 
 likely two years, after he had whipped his brother in two pitched 
 battles, seized upon his capital and dispossessed him of his territory. 
 It was the old story of a divided inheritance. Huayna Capac, by 
 far the greatest Inca of all of a long line of Peruvian Incas, divided 
 his kingdom, at his death, between his two sons, Huascar and Ata- 
 hualpa. The first was mild, generous, lovable, merciiul and just ; 
 the last was fierce, intractable and savage. He rose upon Huascar, 
 conquered him, and dethroned him. Then came Pizarro, who 
 lured Atahualpa into the city of Caxamalca. He came accompa- 
 nied by an armed following of some six thousand. These were 
 butchered to a man and the person of the Inca himself seized upon 
 and held in close confinement. The declaration that he offered 
 Pizarro as a ransom his prison full of gold is simply laughable. It 
 was only one apartment which Atahualpa promised to fill, and this 
 was seventeen feet broad by twenty-two feet long. The height was 
 indicated by a line drawn nine feet from the floor. Nothing was to 
 be melted down. The gold was to retain the original form of the 
 articles into which it Had first been manufactured. 
 
 The line had not been anywhere even nearly reached and it is 
 quite probable that it could never have been reached when the 
 Spanish soldiers began to clamor furiously for a division. Pizarro 
 either could not or would not gainsay them. He.ordered some very- 
 skillful goldsmith to reduce everything to ingots, or bars of a uni- 
 form standard, which were afterward nicely weighed under the 
 superintenderce of the royal inpr-ectors. The total amount of gold 
 was found to be about $15,500,000 of our money. One fifth of this 
 \va.s sent to the then emperor of Spain, Charles V., which he duly 
 received and duly made returns for in the shape of very valuable 
 land grants and most extraordinary privileges bestowed upon the 
 conquerors. The balanceof this gigantic amount of ransom money 
 was next distributed, at a ratio fully agreed upon, among Pizarro's 
 officers and men. Ts^t a word is said anywhere about a single gold 
 bar being buried by Indian or what rot. The wordL'langanali is 
 never written on a single page of Pre. c cott's history which deals 
 with this dark, this thrilling, this almost miraculous episode in 
 Peruvian conquest, the conquest itself being the greatest miracle of 
 them all. 
 
126 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 The final manner of the killing of Atahualpa has never been 
 satisfactorily explained. Whether he was strangled, garroted, or 
 burnt, is yet an open question for debate. He certainly lost his life. 
 He had murdered his own brother, his rightful sovereign, and to the 
 third generation he had destroyed every relation who was supposed 
 to contain a drop of the blood of the mighty Inca, Huayna Capac. 
 The surroundings of Pizarro were desperate. At the best he never 
 had over 700 Spanish soldiers all told, and he was in the midst of a 
 hostile population of seven or eight millions. It seems incredible, 
 but it is true. Worse circumstanced, and more fearfully beset, Lis 
 kinsman and townsman, Cortez, did the same with Gautemozin, the 
 last Aztec monarch of Mexico. 
 
 The silly paragraph from the magazine above quoted would 
 never have been referred to at all had it not been accompanied by tne 
 declaration that a company in New York was being formed for the 
 purpose of hunting for the buried treasures of Atahualpa which, if 
 buried at all, were buried nearly 350 years ago. Should it be formed 
 and should any of its prospectors go pestering about ihe site of the 
 ancient Caxamalca, the Peruvians themselves would laugh them out 
 of South America. 
 
 By the way, this buried treasure business is no new will-o'-the- 
 wisp no new Jack-with-his-lautern. They are still hunting for 
 the gold the pirate Kidd hid somewhere out of sight. Acre after 
 acre bas been dug over or plowed over to find the treasures of La- 
 fitte, although Lafitte had been amnestied long before he died peace- 
 fully in his bed, and had no need to bury any treasures. There are 
 three islands in the Pacific Ocean, off the Mexican port of Tepic, 
 called " The Three Marys," which have been regularly explored for 
 half a century by hunters hunting for the gold that that cruel buc- 
 caneer Morgan must surely have buried somewhere on one of the 
 three, according to tradition. But after all, perhaps, it is just as 
 well as not to let these sort of cranks complacently alone. They 
 are perfectly harmless and their credulity is one of the few imbe- 
 cile phases of human nature which amuses the multitude. 
 
 WOLESLEY ON M'CLELLAN AND LEE. 
 
 [Kansas City Times, September 30, 1838.] 
 
 "And lastly, let me glance at General Lee. Lee's strategy when 
 he fought in defense of the Southern capital, and threatened and 
 finally struck at that of the United States, marks him as one of the 
 greatest captains of this or any other age. No man has ever fought 
 an uphill and a losing game with greater firmness, or ever displayed 
 a higher order of true military genius than he did when i n command of 
 the Confederate Army. The knowledge of his profession displayed 
 by General McClellan was considerable, and his strategic concep- 
 tions were admirable, but he lacked one attribute of a general, 
 without which no man can ever succeed in war he was never able 
 to estimate with any accuracy the numbers opposed to him. It was 
 the presence in Lee of that intuitive genius for war which McClellan 
 lacked, which again and again gave him victory, even when he was 
 altogether outmatched in numbers." Lord Wolesley in Fortnightly 
 Review. 
 
 Why single out McClellan for these kind of comparisons? 
 Why make him alone, of all the Federal commanders, the one sole 
 standard by which shall be tried the military, successes and abilities 
 of Lee? Lord Wolseley has not alone done this, although he has 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 127 
 
 done it often; but the Count of Paris, also, Colonel Chesney, Colonel 
 Freemantle, Count Von Borcke and a multitude of American writers 
 good, bad and indiflerent. Why not occasionally range up along- 
 side of him McDowell or Burnside or Hooker or Hal leek or Pope 
 or Mead or Grant? He fought all of these at some one time or 
 another, and surely out of the vast array of writers that could be 
 easily enumerated others besides McClellan might be contrasted 
 with the great Virginian. 
 
 We have an abiding faith in the military genius of Lord Wol- 
 seley. It is fashionable, we know, to dismiss him with a sneer, and 
 ridicule his capacity because he has only fought Zulus, negroes and 
 Arabs. This is not all of ^ the truth. ^ He has fought Russians as 
 well, the stubbornest race in all the history of war except the Eng- 
 lish, and a race that stands killing with something of the fatalism 
 of tue Turk, and much of the stoicism of the North American 
 Indian. 
 
 General Jo Shelby once called upon Marshal Bazaine that time 
 he commanded the French in Mexico on business for some of his 
 old soldiers. They wanted to enlist under Bazaine, and Shelby 
 went directly to the Marshal in their behalf. Business done, wine 
 was brought. Over this the two men lingered longer than either 
 thought. One episode of the conversation impressed Shelby much. 
 Said Bazaiue, in substance: "I should like more than you may 
 imagine to meet this Grant of yours on the battlefield. He should 
 pick fifty thousand Americans and I fifty thousand Frenchmen." 
 Shelby answered with a smile, yet boldly: " In that event, Marshal, 
 I fear much that you would be worsted." 
 
 Something of a desire similar to Bazaine's must be felt by a great 
 many to see Lord Wolseley in command of a British army that was 
 to play its part upon some great European battlefield. It is then 
 that we firmly believe he would prove himself to be another Marl- 
 borough. We do not say Wellington because Wellington was a 
 mere episode in the great French drama then drawing rapidly toward 
 its close. He entered by a back door into Spain when Napoleon was 
 dreaming of Moscow. He found a nation in arms to meet him, and 
 greet him, and help him against the invader. And of what a race 
 of people was this nation composed! The Romans, world conquer- 
 ors, never conquered Spain. Two of the Scipios perished there. 
 Julius CaBsar left the old Iberians unsubdued in their mountains. 
 Hannibal barely escaped destruction there. The Saracens swept 
 over the land like a tempest, and as suddenly subsided. The^Moors 
 staid longer, but were finally exterminated. And it was with the 
 descendants of this invincible Spanish race that Napoleon was sup- 
 posed to be fighting lazily, languidly,and desultorily^-when Well- 
 ington came. True, the demigod went in person once and ran every- 
 thing into the ocean, British and all, but his heart was beyond the 
 Niemen. He was pluming his eagles for that swoop upon Russia 
 which was rewarded with St. Helena. We say Marlborough, there- 
 fore, and not Wellington. One thing Lord Wolseley appears never 
 to have understood nor any of the balance of the foreign authors for 
 that matter that McClellan f ousrht Lee in the splendid youth, vigor 
 and physical development of theSouthern Confederacy. Every sol- 
 dier following this flag was a volunteer. The pride of emulation 
 between the States begot a spirit of heroic endeavor that in its intens- 
 ity was truly Homeric. Men rushed to battle as to a marriage feast. 
 They clamored for it, they adorned themselves for it, they suffered 
 and endured all things joyously for it, and, when once being in, so 
 bore themselves that the world wondered how regiments of almost 
 
128 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 boys as it were could endure to be decimated, and yet close up, 
 shout, and go forward. 
 
 To meet this army of Northern Virginia, McClellan organized the 
 Army of the Potomac. That army saved the Union. There is not 
 a Federal general living or dead who could have faced Lee when he 
 faced him and held his own as he held it ; bedeviled as he was by the 
 idiots at Washington ; hated and betrayed by Stanton ; thwarted by 
 an insane fear forever rampant of the capital being in danger; his 
 most completely prepared and cherished movements constantly inter- 
 fered with ; bewildered by a mass of chaotic and driveling orders 
 sufficient to swamp a man-of-war ; caressed to-day and banished 
 to-morrow to stand up against all these things, we say, and a multi- 
 tude more just as hurtful, weakening and tormenting and fight Lee 
 week after week, retreating, it may be, but forever fighting , and 
 losing nothing but the ground which he had first taken himself, is 
 to prove McClellan the real hero and commander on the side of the 
 Federals. 
 
 And yet Grant gets all the glory. For a time yes. During 
 this generation and another? perhaps. The history, however, of 
 these events has yet all to be written, Eulogy is not history, nor 
 laudation, nor special pleas, nor messes of political pottage, nor 
 favoritism, spread-eagleism and Badeauism. History is a surgeon. 
 It goes at a thing knife in hand. It lays bare veins, nerves, arteries, 
 bones, muscles, all the organs, the whole physical structure of man. 
 Its nomenclature is inexorable. It covers up nothing, suppresses 
 nothing, has no shame, burns no incense, worships no idols. It is 
 the angel by the gate with truth's flaming sword in its hand. Never 
 more into the garden can there come again its prostitutes, its 
 revelers and its defilers. 
 
 When Grant came he had the country by the tail. He had only 
 to grunt and the earth shook with the tread of reinforcements. 
 He had only to crook one finger and Stanton fell upon his knees. 
 He had only to sulk one day in his tent and there was crape on the 
 doors of the executive mansion. At the rate of six to one he ground 
 Lee to powder. That proportion of sheep could have overcome a 
 lion. But for the grinding, as we have said, Grant got all the glory. 
 So be it. The truth, the purity, the integrity and the priceless abil- 
 ity of such a man as McClellan are wonderfully out of place in a 
 republic. Republics honor and adore only those things which hap- 
 pen to be in at the death. 
 
 CLEVELAND RETIRES TO PRIVATE LIFE. 
 
 [Kansas City Times, February 18, 1889.] 
 
 Precisely two weeks before the completion of his fifty -second 
 birthday President Cleveland will retire from the chief magistracy 
 of the Nation. He is in the full prime of his manhood; in the full 
 perfection of his life and strength. He was the youngest, save one, 
 of all the presidents, when inaugurated, General Grant beini}- his 
 junior by but a single year. He is now several years younger than 
 a majority of the presidents were when elected. The future ought 
 to be, and no doubt is, very fair before him. He can with much 
 calmness and self -possession look forward to a long period of activ- 
 ity and usefulness in his profession, and it is with no little pride and 
 satisfaction that his countrymen may regard his decision to return 
 again to business. It settles for the time, and perhaps for all time, 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. ^09 
 
 the question of pensioning the ex-presidents. It is a practical illus- 
 tration, in fact, of Jeffersonian Democracy. 
 
 In more ways than one President Cleveland has shown himself 
 to be a remarkable man. When he was elected to his present high 
 office the Democratic party had been out of power for twenty-three 
 years. Everywhere the declaration was made that the conservative 
 forces of the country not only distrusted it but were afraid of it. 
 Many believed in such talk, however much it was full of utter ab- 
 surdity, and folded their arms in mute acceptance of an assertion 
 which was composed equally of boast, greed and invidious lying. 
 It remained for Cleveland to give all such specious claims their 
 swift quietus, and he goes out of office as much respected and 
 depended upon as any of his predecessors, no matter his name or at 
 what period in the history of the republic he was president. 
 
 He came at a time when it was needful that a halt should be 
 called. Monopoly born of the Civil War and strengthened and 
 fenced about by every sort of congressional enactment which could 
 render it less and less amenable to assault was in complete posses- 
 sion of the nation. A tariff higher in its rates of protection and 
 heavier in the weight of its burdens than any tariff the people had 
 ever before known or thought possible was simply devouring agri- 
 culture and all the productions of agriculture. Public extravagance 
 had grown to be a public curse. It pervaded every branch of the 
 cmf service, and kept the national treasury, for at least nine months 
 in the year, swept as clean and as bare as a threshing floor. It was 
 the era of jobs, of rings, of all sorts of \margins for enterprising 
 boodlers, for irresponsible legislators, and for a partisan army of 
 foragers who looked upon the General Government in the light of a 
 great protector, who owed every one of them a living and a fat liv- 
 ing at that. The only thing, therefore, to be considered was best 
 how to get at it, how to make it as bountiful as possible and how 
 to squeeze out of the Federal funds as many dollars as could 
 possibly be laid hands upon or in some manner circumvented. 
 Centralization was the rule, while to legislate the least in favor of 
 the people was looked upon as time thrown away and energies 
 wasted. 
 
 The question then was not so much as to whether a Democrat 
 could or could not be elected president, but entirely as to the kind 
 of a Democrat. No milk sop, no easy-going politician content to let 
 things as they were abide as they were; no ambitious aspirant who 
 after he had once been chosen chief magistrate would make one 
 entire administration so shape itself as to secure another; no trim- 
 mer, time-server, or a man afraid of responsibility. A sort of halt- 
 ing, hesitating, half smothered cry came up from the masses, "Give 
 us iron!" and they got iron. 
 
 If the country had been raked fore and aft a sterner man than 
 Cleveland could not have been found, nor one more stubborn, nor 
 one more determined to do his duty despite all personal conse- 
 quences. He instantly called a halt. He attacked monopoly in 
 its very den, surrounded by the bones of its myriads of victims. 
 He struck the shield of the"high protective tariff with the iron point 
 of his lance, which meant a combat to the death, and it had to 
 muster its last man and its last dollar just to hold him^at bay. He 
 did not seek to know what enemies he was causing to rise up against 
 him. He believed that he was right and he pressed forward^o the 
 attainment of his objects with whip and spur His own, simple, 
 high-spirited and patriotic course felled sectionalism to the earth at 
 a single blow. If he did not kill, he certainly put it beyond all 
 
130 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 signs of life and motion during the time, at least, of his own admin- 
 istration. He cut down expenses; saved millions to the taxpayers, 
 economized in a multitude of practical ways; secured for actual 
 settlement an area of squandered territory as large as all of New 
 England; proved to the nation that the Democratic party was the 
 best party after all to rule over it best for its peace, progress and 
 development and that it could never have or enjoy the blessings of 
 perfect local self-government until this party was permitted to hold 
 and dispense power for not less than the lifetime of a single gen- 
 eration. 
 
 That he was beaten for re-election proves nothing. He accom- 
 plished splendidly the objects of his mission. He gave the people 
 time to stop awhile, to think and to look well about them. Time 
 will do the balance. He could have won easily the second time if 
 he had held his peace. Most men would have done so, but true to 
 his honest convictions, both of head and heart, Cleveland cried out 
 against the evils and the times, and bade his party do a giant's battle 
 against them. And defeat or no defeat, the Democratic party 
 to-day is more powerful than ever. 
 
 WASHINGTON'S BIRTHDAY. 
 
 [Kansas City Times, February 25, 1889.] 
 
 In more senses than one George Washington was the reai father 
 of his country. His fame abides with the people as firmly as it did 
 the day of Yorktown or Saratoga, and his name is just as much 
 dwelt upon and revered as when he delivered his farewell 
 address. Modern history makes mention of no actor in great and 
 stirring events even in events so momentous as- the founding of a 
 nation who held the love and veneration of his countrymen so long 
 and so sincerely. 
 
 In referring to the Seven Years' War, begun by Frederick the 
 Great, Voltaire said : "Such was the complication of political inter- 
 ests that a canton shot fired in America could give the signal that 
 would set Europe in a blaze." Not quite. It was not a cannon shot, 
 but a volley from the hunting pieces of a few backwoodsmen, com- 
 manded by a Virginian youth, George Washington. 
 
 To us of this day the result of the American part of the war 
 seems a foregone conclusion. It was far from being so; and very far 
 from being so regarded by our forefathers. The numerical superi- 
 ority of the British colonies was offset by organic weaknesses fatal 
 to vigorous and united action. Nor at the outset did they^or the 
 mother country aim at conquering Canada, but only at pushing back 
 her boundaries. The possession of Canada was a question of diplo- 
 macy as well as of war. If England conquered her she might restore 
 her, as she had lately restored Cape Breton. She had, or ought 
 to have had a vital interest in keeping France alive on the Amer- 
 ican continent. More than one clear eye saw at the middle of the 
 last century that the subjection of Canada would lead to a revolt of 
 these British colonies in question. So long as an active and enter- 
 prising enemy threatened their border they could not break with the 
 mother country, because they needed her help. And if the arms of 
 France had prospered in the other hemisphere, if she had gained 
 in Europe or Asia territories with which to buy back what she 
 had lost in America, Canada, in all probability, would have passed 
 again into her hands. 
 
 As has been ably and lengthily presented and discussed by a 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 131 
 
 number of French, English and American historians, the most 
 momentous and far-reaching question ever brought to issue on this 
 contineut was : Shall France remain here or shall she not ? If, by 
 diplomacy or war she had preserved but the half, or less than the 
 half of her American possessions, then a barrier would have been 
 set to the spread of the English speaking races ; there would have 
 been no Revolutionary War, and, for a long time, at least, no inde- 
 pendence. It was not a question of scanty population strung along 
 the banks of the St. Lawrence; it was or under a government of 
 any worth it would have been a question of the armies and generals 
 of France. America owes much to the imbecility of Louis XV., and 
 to the ambitious vanity and personal dislikes of his mistress, the 
 Pompadour, 
 
 Be these speculations and prognostications, however, as they 
 may, when the colonies finally did revolt it took the last man and 
 the last dollar just barely to win the fight ; nor would they in all 
 probability had it not been for French gold, soldiers and ships. The 
 further probability is also great that with their own resources and 
 those joined to them from the outside 'the colonies would have been 
 worsted in the Revolutionary War had not such a man as George 
 Washington been on hand to command their armies, and to be at 
 once general, lawgiver, statesman, purveyor, breakwater, ark of 
 refuge, and a leader of uncommon intellectual resource and iron 
 strength and fortitude of character. 
 
 In the sense of a Caesar, a Hannibal, an Alexander, or a Napo- 
 leon, it is certain that Washington was not gifted with any such 
 
 " military abilities as made these great conquerors world-renowned, 
 but he had others which, for his times and circum- 
 stances, were just as valuable. He had a patience which nothing 
 could ever ruffle, baffle, or make weary. His patriotism was so 
 high and exalted as to mount almost to the altitude of religious fer 
 vor. His great dignity of person and character caused his soldiers 
 to look upon him with awe, and to believe that where he lead it 
 could only be glory to follow. In this but in this alone was he the 
 counterpart of Wallenstein . He lost battles but he won campaigns. 
 
 . He was forced many times to retreat, but he was never routed. In 
 this but in this alone was he the counterpart of Frederick the Great. 
 His moral courage was equal to his physical, the first making him 
 impervious to all fear of taking responsibility, and the last giving 
 him conspicuous valor in the face of the most desperate perils and 
 surroundings of war. His tenacity and resolution of purpose wassuch 
 that these obstacles which to others appeared insurmountable, were 
 to him but mere stepping-stones whereby he could mount higher and 
 higher in his country's service. Whether contemplating the immi- 
 nent danger the nation ran in the almost successful accomplishment 
 of Arnold's treason, or the last death hours of what seemed going to 
 be the.army's life amid the horrors at V-alley Forge, his adjuration 
 to his soldiers was Cromwellian that they should perpetually put 
 their trust in God and keep their powder dry. Totally devoid of 
 all ambition of the sort which most generally comes to either the 
 heroes or the dominators in a great war, Congress relied upon him 
 implicitly, and followed his suggestions or advice as if his superb 
 disinterestedness had really been inspiration. He begged only for 
 food, clothing, arms and ammunition for his fighting men. 
 
 He lived as they lived, fared as they fared, suffered as they suf- 
 fered; while it is out of such stuff that both victors and martyrs are 
 made. To the first class belong Cortez, the two Pizarros, Garibaldi, 
 Bolivar, Robert Bruce, William Tell, Marshal Ney and Gustavus 
 
132 JOHN NEWMAN EDWAKDS. 
 
 Adolphus. To the last class belong Harold, Alfred the Great, 
 Henry of Navarre, Gordou, Lawrence, Havelockand William Wal- 
 lace. Offered the garments of royalty, he pushed them aside, not 
 as Caesar did the crown to seize it later, but because his conscience 
 was high and holy, and because he had fought for the real body of 
 liberty iu all of its truth, essence and substance, and not for its sham, 
 its make-shift and its counterfeit presentiments. 
 
 In the light now of all the past which still shines so vivid, so 
 instructive, and so consoling where was the American soldier who 
 could have taken Washington's place and created the American 
 republic? Greene, Gates, Charles Lee, Sullivan, Putnam, Hamil- 
 ton, Burr, Schuyler, Arnold admitting him true or any of the 
 balance of his more prominent subordinates? As well contend that 
 all of his marshals combined could have made the only great 
 Napoleon. 
 
 There is not a patriotic citizen to-day in the land but who 
 should take upon himself a labor of love in teaching his children 
 the grand patriotism and the spotless integrity of this superb char- 
 acter. He knew neither envy, detraction, littleness of soul, malice, 
 jealousy, fault-finding, nor invidious favoritism. It was a character 
 luminous with good deeds and with a devotion to country that 
 some few in history may have equaled, but not one who has ever 
 surpassed. 
 
 TIME MAKES ALL THINGS EVEN. 
 
 [Kansas City Times, October 8, 1889.] 
 
 The order had gone forth to destroy Robespierre. That mon- 
 ster who, when he came out of the charnal house went into the 
 tomb, was come at last to the place where an eye had to be rendered 
 up for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Under the fire of those mer- 
 ciless accusations and arraignments which shriveled him up as some 
 old parchment in flames, he turned green. It was a way lie had. 
 Where other men, so bestead, turned pale, this one turned green. 
 He essayed to speak, stammered, halted over his words, was not 
 articulate, and finally stood still, speechless, yet with his lips a 
 working. Then Lasource thundered out: "The blood of Danton 
 chokes thee, Robespierre!" 
 
 Through Elaine the blood of Conkling is about to choke Harri- 
 son. From the grave a skeleton hand has been stretched forth to 
 press the crimson chalice to his lips and force its drinking to the 
 uttermost drop. The letters of Dr. Watson, Conkling's life-time 
 physician, and George C. Gorham, a well-known stalwart repub- 
 lican, have both been published. Each but voices the views and 
 investigations of a multitude of Conkling republicans who write no 
 letters and fall into the hands of no newspaper reporters. In New 
 York the voters who go to make up this class are numerous, well 
 organized and powerful. Call that dominating influence which per- 
 meates them and welds them together as a steel bar a sentiment, if 
 you please, but beware of that sentiment, no matter whether in poli- 
 tics or what not, which makes brave men cry out and puts brave 
 men to working. Right there desperation is born, and from that 
 comes any act or deed within the encompassment of human intellect 
 or human fixedness of purpose. 
 
 Conkling was the idol of his following. Such was his person- 
 ality or individuality that those who served under his banner felt 
 more for him than the ordinary respect felt by the private for hia 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 133 
 
 chief they loved him even as David loved Jonathan. His hopes 
 were their hopes, his aims theirs, his ambition theirs, his wounds 
 made their bodies bleed, the blows rained upon his devoted head 
 brought them to their knees, and when in the last onset he went 
 down before the blackest and basest desertion and betrayal ever 
 known to American politics, they went down with him, all their 
 bands playing and all their flags flying in the air. 
 
 Nor was it any wonder that such a man had lavished upon him 
 so much of constancy and devotion. In politics he was never a 
 trimmer, adapting means to ends and lying, not alone to impose 
 upon mortal credulity, but even to fool God. He never went back 
 from the front leaving his best to die there because he was a coward. 
 He never apologized. The human mind is so constituted that the 
 man who apologizes before he fights is already forsworn and pil- 
 loried. He never stole anything. At a period when Grant made 
 legislators out of looters, governors out of jackboots and judges out 
 of demijohns, Conkling held his nose with white, clean hand while 
 the vultures of reconstruction were devouring the South. Roguery 
 was culminating. Robeson and his pals had stolen a navy. One of 
 the Shermans had been driven from the bench for bribery and pecu- 
 lation. A secretary of war, caught with every pocket bulged out 
 with boodle, had built for him a bridge of gold to retreat beyond 
 the reach of the penitentiary. A secretary of the interior, selling 
 decisions in bales, broke down under the weight of accumulated 
 spoils, and confessed to one-half in order to retain the other. Blaine 
 stood before the nation branded and disgraced. Another speaker, 
 Colfax, had been djiven ignominiously from public life. The 
 Stir-route revealments had made the masses shudder. Default- 
 ers in every department of the civil service piled up fortunes and 
 decamped. Pillage was everywhere. It was no infamy to steal , and 
 the bigger the pile the swifter the condonement. Would the storm 
 ever abate, the waters ever subside, the light ever flash? forth in the 
 east, the crest of Ararat ever rear itself up through the infinite black- 
 ness of darkness to greet the sunrise and the morning? 
 
 Through it all, however, Conkling stood as some great pillar of 
 Parian marble, without a fleck, a flaw, a spot, a stain, a fracture, or 
 a soilment. No whisper even marred the faultless array of a splen- 
 did integrity. Proud, scorning the public thieves with all the 
 scorn of "his magnificent nature, heroic in the management of his 
 party, stricken to the heart at the sight of so much fraud, violence, 
 and venality, and yet unwilling to overthrow the edifice of his labor 
 and his love while there was yet left a single chance to purify it, he 
 made one more rally, his final one, and literally saved Garfield from 
 the jaws of Democratic devourment in New York. And even while 
 he saved him the teeth of those jaws came together with a rasp and 
 grind that permitted no equilibrium to be restored to Saint Oleag- 
 inous until he reached the mayflower atmosphere of the Western 
 Reserve. 
 
 And his reward? Blaine and Gartield formed a conspiracy to 
 politically disgrace this chevalier sans peur et sans reproche of a 
 Conkling who would neither lie, cheat, take bribes, groan in the 
 amen corner, wrestle with the sisters in prayer, nor write letters to 
 De Golyer nor to Mulligan and, well, the country knows the bal- 
 ance. 
 
 History repeats itself, and what Blaine was to Garfield so he is 
 to be again to Harrison, should Harrison be elected. No wonder, 
 then, that there is a vengeful yet righteous revolt along the entire 
 Conkling line. They mean that the blood of their idol, Conkling, 
 
134 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 shall choke Harrison, because in choking him they strangle also the 
 hated Elaine. 
 
 JAMES N. BURNES. 
 
 [Kansas City Times, January 24-25, 1889. J 
 
 The sudden and fateful blow which yesterday struck down the 
 Hon. James N. Burnes, of the Third Congressional District, in the 
 midst of his labors and his usefulness struck also the unprotected 
 bosom of Missouri. 
 
 In the high noon of a splendid intellect, still in the full flow 
 and vigor of a perfect manhood, proud for his State, ambitious for 
 his State, loving his State as though it were a prescient thing with 
 whom he could confer, and upon whom he could rely for counsel, 
 guidance and inspiration, he stood in the hall of the House of Re- 
 presentatives as her especial champion, guardian and friend. 
 
 And then to see him fall as he did with all of his war harness 
 on fall in mid career with his work yet scarcely begun, and the 
 laurels bound tHick about his brows as green as when they were 
 gathered in the early morning of his first success, and as his most 
 precious victories ah ! it was pitiful. 
 
 One had to know James N. Burnes long and well to sound to its 
 uttermost depths the virile force and power of his many-sided char- 
 acter. It was not as a worldly moral or physical development that 
 one could know it, as he stood out boldly in the open, fighting the 
 battles of life with life's own weapons. Then and there he took such 
 blows, full front, as time and situation dealt him, giving back stroke 
 for stroke, yielding nothing to force, or blandishment, or seduction; 
 but hewing a path straight forward to the goal, with head erect and 
 soul undaunted. These were simply the periods when all the iron 
 in his blood went to make his muscles tense, his will adamant, and 
 the courage of his convictions as unswerving as the tides of the sea, 
 which ebb and flow, and yet which go on and on forever. 
 
 No. it was not as the gladiator that one should have studied the 
 man Burnes stalwart, indomitable, crushing obstacles, striding 
 over difficulties, scaling precipices high enough seemingly to shut 
 out the sunlight from his most cherished hopes, and obscure as 
 with the very blackness of darkness his most ardent aspirations. 
 He was then all nerve, energy, unyielding effort, unflagging zeal 
 and heroic endeavor. He was then grappling with destiny hand to 
 hand and yoking fortune to his chariot wheels to minister unto his 
 slightest wants and obey with alacrity his imperious bidding. Of 
 course then the brow was corrugated, the light of battle still shone 
 in his eyes, the dust of the conflict was still upon his garments, the 
 heat of the strife was still rioting in his blood, and, until the vic- 
 tory was won, and from the stricken field he had gathered the 
 spoils that belonged to him by right because of a mighty prowess 
 and an almost savage resolution, something like a dark hour 
 would seem to be upon this soul. He brooded then, and may have 
 been a little bit taciturn and a little bit reserved. 
 
 But afterward when he unbent how gentle, and fascinating, and 
 lovable he was. His face would then shine out as though for back- 
 ground an aureole was put to make it speaking with humanity, and 
 radiant with tenderness and affection. 
 
 As a son he idolized his father and mother. As a husband he 
 always bore himself as if he had never gone beyond the blissful 
 probation of the ardent lover. As a parent he made constant com- 
 panions of bis children, entering into all of their little whims, 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 135 
 
 notions and adolescent ambitions, teaching them how to be frank 
 of speech and generous of heart and nature. As a neighbor the 
 latch-string of his door was always out, and none in distress who 
 ever knocked there or entered there went away empty-handed. As 
 a citizen his enterprise knew no limit, his liberality was without 
 bounds, his resources multiplied themselves by the amount of oppo- 
 sition he had to encounter, while his faith in the people among 
 whom he lived and wrought never wavered a moment. Whatever 
 was apportioned for him to do was done as if as assistants he had 
 both omnipotence and omniscience. As a public man he pointed to 
 a stainless official record, and boasted with pardonable . pride of 
 duties faithfully and conspicuously done. 
 
 He was yet in the prime of life. In a single congressional ses- 
 sion he took immediate rank with the ablest and the most experienced 
 of his colleagues and associates. Samuel J. Randall put one day his 
 hands upon his head to give him asit were an appreciative blessing, 
 and when he arose he was a giant. None can say now to what posi- 
 tion he might not have aspired, or to what height he might not have 
 soared and reached if God had not called him hence for purposes 
 unknown to poor finite minds which strive, and yearn, and reach 
 out from under the shadow of a great bereavement to take once 
 more the hand that was ever open to succor the helpless and ever 
 closed to defend a friend. 
 
 And now he has gone out from the vision of all who knew him 
 and loved him so. Yes, he has gone the dark way all alone. No 
 comrade at his side; no voices of the olden time to make music for him; 
 no paths that were once so familiar to him to walk therein; no trees 
 that he once planted, and watered, and pruned to uprear themselves 
 by the roadside to make him shade; no tender words to greet him 
 as used to greet him in the old days when returning to his home; no 
 sweet good-byes to bid him God speed as of old at the parting. 
 The great unknown is over, and around, and about him, 
 
 Is it light there, and can he see far away to his front and yet 
 within encompassment the Great White Throne, and the jasper gates 
 and the golden streets of the New Jerusalem ? 
 
 Surely,surely, if anybody can he can; if anybody ever did so see 
 he has already seen, for did he not die like a soldier on duty? Ah! 
 yes, he 
 
 "Died with his harness on the broad-sword leaping 
 
 The wild fight surging fast, 
 Love wounded, with each stroke, yet keeping 1 , 
 
 His stout front to the last ! 
 When others faint of heart, sank down despairing, 
 
 He cheered the battle on. 
 To his last life-drop still that gay smile wearing, 
 
 As if the day was won. 
 And was it not ? Does truest, noblest glory, 
 
 In shallow triumph lie ? 
 They longest, brightest live, in song and story, 
 
 Who die as martyrs die." 
 
 IN HIS PUBLIC CAPACITY. 
 
 We have already made the declaration that the character of the 
 Hon. James N. Burnes had many sides, while to be thoroughly 
 understood and appreciated it would have to be summed up from 
 several standpoints family, social, business, public and political. 
 Having already discussed him as son, husband, father, neighbor, 
 citizen and friend, it may not be amiss or inopportune now to look 
 into his public and political life, 
 
136 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 He entered his career in Missouri at the very foot of the ladder. 
 In one sense fortune had been good to him, for it had given him 
 splendid physique, rugged development, great intellectual power, 
 untiring energy and indomitable will. To prove this, just see how 
 leaning upon the arm of his associate, Butterworth, the hand of 
 death even then tearing remorselessly at his heart-strings he 
 walked erect as a grenadier on guard to his committee room and 
 laid him down, the same sweet smile on his placid face, and the 
 same kind light in his frank, clear eyes, which even then, perhaps, 
 were gazing upon another morn than ours. 
 
 While always taking an eager local interest in politics giving 
 freely of his time and money to the organization and advancement 
 of the Democratic party he asked nothing for himself, nor sought 
 for himself any place of political profit or preferment. He was then 
 well content to lay the foundations broad and deep for that career of 
 the future which was to be so briefly brilliant and solamentably short. 
 
 In public life Missouri has sent to the frontsome veritable giants. 
 Their names belong to history, and their actions are the precious 
 heirlooms and idols of the commonwealth. But this State, however, 
 no matter the past, had never one to stand for her in the halls of 
 Congress who was wiser in council, bolder in action, loftier in 
 bearing, kinder in intercourse, less amenable to demagogy, less pli- 
 ant to sinister surroundings, less affected by the clamorings of the 
 rabble, less easy to be swerved from the demands of duty, less im- 
 pervious to the flatteries and the seductions of the designing and 
 surely not one who more rigidly lived up to the maxim that personal 
 and political honor were synonymous terms, and that he who 
 strained or forswore the one strained and forswore the other. 
 
 When Colonel Burues went first to Washington as one of Mis- 
 souri's representatives he was new to Congress and to the ways and 
 surroundings of congressional life. Of course he understood thor- 
 oughly the nature and extent of the resources which he possessed, 
 but how many others did? He saw the future stretching away 
 before him as some new, strange land, and a figure therein casting 
 something about him, now on this side and now on that, which 
 might have been a horoscope. Could that future be seized, utilized, 
 possessed, encompassed? 
 
 He would try. 
 
 1 At a single step he took rank with the vanguard. Placed next 
 to Mr. Chairman Randall on the most important committee in the 
 House, that of appropriations, he soon graduated as a leader of 
 men. Gifted with that rarest of all gifts, the gift of getting acquainted, 
 and with that other twin brother gift, the gift of never forgetting a 
 face or a person, he soon knew every member of the House, and 
 equally as soon was on terms with all of the heartiest and kindliest in- 
 tercourse. His motto as a Congressman was: " In business no pol- 
 itics; in politics stand by the party to a funeral." 
 
 How he did grow from the very start! One had to know him, 
 be with him, be close to him, be where one could see him daily in 
 the House to know what manner of a gladiator he was. When the 
 French spoliation claims bill likely to take anywhere from thirty 
 to eighty millions of money out of the treasury was up for passage 
 Colonel Burnes scored his greatest and proudest triumph. It was 
 the day of the combat. He came to participate in it, faultlessly 
 attired. A little white tuberose bud was pinned to his immaculate 
 coat. Any one man among the spectators in the gallery might have 
 whispered to another: "What! has Spartacus renewed his youth 
 and changed his nationality?" 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 137 
 
 The battle began. Colonel Burnes led the fight against the 
 measure. His attitude was superb his knowledge of details wonder- 
 ful. Every effort known to the ingenuity of legislation was massed 
 as a catapult to crush him at a blow. Question after question poured 
 in upon him as so many javelin points to pierce the armor of his 
 perfect imperturbability. He stood erect as Ajax with the lightning 
 flashes of the opposition flashing all about him'. To every speech he 
 listened deferentially as though in her boudoir he was listening to 
 the low, soft words of some beautiful woman. All over his face 
 was that peculiar smile of his, a little bit quizzical, a little bit satir- 
 ical, a little bit eager and questioning ; but always winning and 
 attractive as though it had just been glorified by the burst of some 
 sudden sunshine. 
 
 Assailant after assailant leaped to cross steel with him at close 
 quarters. He simply shortened his sword arm as he sainted, and 
 murmured " Habet ! " "Habet!" take it, take it and another 
 one lay dead on the dripping sands of the arena. 
 
 Every joint in his harness was lance proof. The color in his 
 cheeks scarcely deepened. His explanations were luminous; his 
 answers, not longer than a hand, were vivid as the flashes i f flame 
 in the night. The ablest debaters in the House formed phalanx and 
 moved to his overthrow. For this one he had a rapid saber-cut of 
 speech; for this one a delicate word of badinage, which went home 
 like a knife thrust; for this one some rolicking piece of railery, 
 which overwhelmed him with the laughter of his colleagues; for this 
 one a massive array of unanswerable^facts; for this one a logic so 
 cold as almost to freeze, and so much of the iron sort as to beat down 
 all opposition; and for this one some courteous reply, high bred anc' 
 facile, which made the seeker after the light see it almost ere the 
 lamps were lit to hasten the revealment. 
 
 Then it wasthat Randall leant over toward old man Kelley and 
 whispered : ' ' How superb he is. " 
 
 How superb, indeed ! The memorable triumph of that day is 
 still a wonder, a memory, a tradition, a delight among all the quid 
 nuncs, the old stagers, the old critics and the old philosophers at 
 the national capital. 
 
 And now what? A great light has gone out from the political 
 firmament of Missouri; a great Democratic leader has gone to his 
 rest with the blade Excalibor broken in his hand, and his bloodied 
 banner across his dauntless bosom. It is so pitiful, so sorrowful 
 so. The days to come promise much of evil deeds and treacherous 
 devil's work. Where then shall those turn who worship the very 
 name of Democracy to find the fleetest foot on the corrie, the sagest 
 council in cumber. Find them ! When Edward, the Black Prince, 
 was told that the lance-head of a Breton squire had found the life's 
 blood of John Chandos in an insignificant skirmish at Lussac bridge, 
 hepiteously exclaimed: "God help us, then; we have lost every- 
 thing on the nither side of the seas ! " 
 
 DEATH OF THE PRINCE IMPERIAL. 
 
 [From the Sedalia Democrat, June, 1879.1 
 
 At last the full particulars of the death of the young Bonaparte 
 have been published to the world. Sir Evelyn Wood the English 
 general who accompanied the ex-Empress Eugenia on her mournful 
 journey to the place in Africa where her son was killed has made 
 his report to the British Government, It was quite brief, yet it con- 
 
138 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 tained a story of quiet heroism that will be as deathless as immor- 
 tality itself is deathless. 
 
 He stood at bay like a lion, says the report, and died fighting 
 like a hero. On his body were seven wounds, his sword was broken 
 and his revolver was empty. Now, all this is very little; it is also a 
 great deal. Almost any sort of a war produces such heroes; the sort 
 of a war England wages with barbarians quite a number. When a 
 soldier comes face to face with his destiny he most generally dies, 
 fighting hard like a wolf, set upon or encompassed. Any history of 
 the Civil War in America is rich with such annals, and lurid also. 
 It is something to die, no matter under what flag, or for what cause, 
 or king, or creed, or country. It is perhaps, easier to die when one 
 is unnoted, isolated, having no tongue behind to cry out over fate, 
 nor any heart to make a moan. 
 
 But this was a Prince, who died from assegai wounds in Africa. 
 Princes do not often so. Princes who are heirs to Austerlitz and 
 Waterloo never but once in the world's life. He was but a boy. 
 His mother had raised him that is to say he had been made pious, 
 timid, modest like a girl, and sensitive like a nun at an altar. One 
 moment as he stood on the perilous edge of the fight it might have 
 appeared as if Hoche had come back from La Vendee, or Desspix 
 from Marengo. In his death he vindicated his dynasty. He died 
 not as Bonapartes have done, but as Bonapartes should have done. 
 Before that body in its tropical battlefield the French republic has 
 no need to keep itself uncovered. He stood for the saber, it is true, 
 but the saber has ever been the standard of France. Gambetta 
 preaches peace, but it is the peace of Samson ere the thick locks 
 have grown long again, and the soft undoing wrought by Delilah 
 has hardened into war last. France will surely feel more of rever- 
 ence for the Bonapartes when the tale is told of how this last one 
 died in a stronger army, true to his name, true to the fame of the 
 nation which had cast him out, and true to those mighty hopes 
 which must have flitted before him darkly those that one day 
 would make him the ruler of an empire like his father's. 
 
 Ridicule is a merciless weapon with the French. It has dealt 
 savagely with many high, holy, and august things. Its most exquis- 
 ite torture is to be found in tlie newspapers. These never failed to 
 show sticking out from under the long scarlet robe of the phantom 
 which they called Louis Napoleon, the great muddy boots of the 
 coup d' etat. These newspapers were also busy with this boy. He 
 was simply like an old piece of parlor furniture belonging to the 
 Empire. He was not in use any longer. He was obsolete an 
 anachronism. 
 
 But death sanctifies. Tender things will be said of this boy 
 now in France, and much recalled of his heroic death, if the time 
 ever shall come when any Bonaparte attempts to play over again the 
 role of his ancestors. 
 
 BAZAINE. 
 
 [Kansas City Times, April 30, 1887.1 
 
 The attempt to assassinate Marshal Bazaine, once a prominent 
 figure in French history, was a most causeless and cowardly 
 attempt. The usual commentary goes with the announcement of 
 the crime the would-be assassin is believed to be insane. 
 
 Of course. Never a murderous devil yet failed to have put up 
 for him some sort of a plea of this kind whenever lie did a deed that 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 139 
 
 was particularly noticeable for its horrible details and its atrocious 
 cruelty. "Whoever is the least bit theatrical in the gratification of 
 his blood-mania is crazy as a matter of course. The same villain 
 must only be permitted to stab, shoot or poison in a calm, deliberate, 
 methodical "manner. If he does not speak, very well. If he does 
 not change color in presence of the rigid corpse of his victim, still 
 very well. If no look, or word, or action tells that somewhere 
 about the murderer there is a soul, it is just splendid. There 
 is no insanity about that man. He shall be hung because 
 his equanimity is so superb and yet so diabolical. But if ever 
 a murderer is known to mutter in his sleep, be seen much 
 alone, be heard to make dire threats, act strangely upon public 
 occasions, rave over little things, establish a reputation as a crank, 
 or parade the streets with a" brass band why, he is insane, of 
 course, and must not be punished though he slay a hecatomb. 
 
 Marshal Bazaine commanded at Me tz during the Franco-Prussian 
 War, and after the battle of Gravelotte, wherein all the advantages 
 of the fight were all on his side, he surrendered this almost impreg- 
 nable fortress, and with it an army of nearly 300,000 men. Such a 
 surrender, when the number of soldiers surrendered is taken into 
 consideration, never occurred before in history. It really seems 
 impossible that such a surrender could have taken place without a 
 desperate effort to break through, but it did take place, and when 
 the war ended Bazaine was tried for treason, found guilty, sentenced 
 to be shot, had his sentence commuted to imprisonment for life in 
 the Chateau d'lf by President Thiers, escaped from there one stormy 
 night in an open boat at sea, and has since been a poor, isolated, 
 proscribed political exile in Spain. And now the man who has just 
 attempted to kill him, if, indeed, he has not succeeded, is already 
 being hedged about from the garrote by being declared crazy. 
 
 Was Bazaine guilty of treason at Metz? Contemporaneous his- 
 tory is of the opinion that he was not. The French character is 
 such that at every period of national disaster it furiously demands a 
 scape-goat or a victim. This desperate lot fell upon Bazaine. At 
 his trial he proved conclusively that the fortress he was ordered to 
 defend was almost absolutely barren of provisions; that the heavy- 
 guns upon the fortifications were comparatively without ammuni- 
 tion; that his musket cartridges had been reduced to sixty rounds to 
 the man; that he was encompassed about by 500,000 Germans; that 
 his artillery was practically useless because of a scarcity of horses 
 and grape and canister shot, and because he had positive orders from 
 his master, the Emperor Napoleon, to make the besttermshe could, 
 but under no circumstances to compromise his army by a bloody 
 but indecisive battle. Napoleon's object was plain. He never 
 believed that the Germans would dethrone him, and he wanted 
 Bazaine's army to re-establish himself upon the throne of France 
 after he had made a definite treaty of peace with the German con- 
 querors. 
 
 Bazaine was also with Maximilian in Mexico, and gave evidence 
 there of much soldierly skill and rare adminstrative capacity. He 
 had driven Juarez into Texas, held the more populous states under 
 a complete system of military subjugation, garrisoned with picked 
 troops the more important cities, and was just getting ready to 
 consolidate the power thus obtained, and to issue a general amnesty, 
 both civil and military, when the civil war in the United States 
 came to an end. That also brought to an end the French occupa- 
 tion. With over a million of men in arms, the United States Govern- 
 ment turned instantly to an emphatic reassertion of the Monroe 
 
140 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 doctrine, and ordered Louis Napoleon to get out of Mexico as soon 
 as possible. He got out, and rapidly. 
 
 Bazaine lias been held responsible for the death of Maximilian, 
 and a multitude of penny-a-liners have gone into elaborate details 
 to show how he badgered, outraged, and finally betrayed to his 
 undoing the hapless Austrian. 
 
 No baser lies were ever told to blacken the name and the fame of 
 a splendid soldier. Marshal Bazaiue strove the best he knew to induce 
 Maximilian to abandon Mexico. He pointed out to him the impossi 
 bilityof maintaining his position in a country that was against him 
 en immse, and argued from a purely military standpoint that it would 
 require an army of occupation of at least 300, 000 soldiers to keep him 
 on histhrone, andhedid nothave 10, 000 reliable troops. Maximilian 
 ref usrd to be guided by the marshal, and in so refusing hejost his life. 
 
 From a simple captain of a company in an infantry regiment of 
 the line, Bazaine fought his way up to be a Marshal of France. But 
 for Metz he would to-day have been an honored man in his own 
 cou mi y, loved, respected and surrounded by every comfort in his 
 old age. As it is, he may be dying from the blow of an assassin, 
 poor, friendless an exile, and a so-called traitor. What a strange 
 thing is fate. 
 
 THE NET MYTH. 
 
 [Kansas City Times, May 15, 1887.] 
 
 This is a country where quite a number of men will not stay 
 dead after they are dead. One can find scores of people who con- 
 scientiously believe that "Wilkes Booth is still alive ; nay more, who 
 have educated themselves to the belief that they have seen him. It 
 has not been so very long ago that quite along and interesting story 
 went the rounds of the newspapers to the effect that he was in com- 
 mand of a merchant vessel in the China seas, so changed by a life 
 of exposure, toil, and hiding, as to be almost impossible of recogni- 
 tion even by his mostintimate friends. 
 
 It would be difficult to enumerate the number of times that 
 Quantrell has been seen and conversed with since he was killed in 
 Kentucky. 
 
 But ihe other day Brigham Young was encountered in the 
 mountains of Utah, in strict incognito, and waiting and watching 
 against an hour in the near future when he should again take into 
 his liands the management of the Mormon State, and shield and save 
 his chosen people from destruction. 
 
 Once, according to well accepted romance or story, we had an 
 unmistakable Bourbon prince among us, the Rev. Eleazer Williams, 
 who was none other than the unfortunate son of Louis XVI. and his 
 murdered queen, Marie Antoinette. 
 
 Now conies the rehabilitation of another myth, and the 
 reclothing of it with flesh, blood, a local habitation, and a name. The 
 local habitation is the little town of Piedmont, N. C., and the name 
 none other than that of Michael Ney, Marshal of France, Duke of 
 Elchingen, Prince of Moskwa, and that beloved comrade of the 
 mighty Bonaparte, who, when even surrounded by half a million of 
 heroes, called him alone the bravest of the brave. 
 
 The story, briefly summed up, is about this: Marshal Ney was 
 not shot on December 7, 1815, as all history declares. Favored by 
 his old comrades, who were detailed to see the execution carried out, 
 a condemned criminal was put in his place, the forms of the killing 
 were duly gone through with, the real Key escaped to the United 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRTTTXGS. 141 
 
 States, taught school in North Carolina under the name of Peter S. 
 Ney, lived there until about 1837 as schoolteacher, and finally died 
 as a worn and broken old man in either 1838 or 1839. 
 
 These are the most essential points. To make P. S. Ney, the 
 schoolmaster, become the real Michael Ney, Marshal of France, 
 declared to have been stood up against a dead wall and shot about 
 daylight of a raw, cold morning in December, 1815, much ingenious 
 filling in is resorted to, and much plausible fabrication. 
 
 Unless history is a lie, this story, as now being so extensively 
 told, has been too carefully arranged, overworked, and overdone. 
 The North Carolina Ney was a man of fine education and knew la\v. 
 Marshal Ney had scarcely any education at all, and perhaps in Lis 
 whole life had never looked into a law book. The North Carolina 
 Ney was very fond of strong drink, and upon many described occa- 
 sions got uproariously drunk. Marshal Ney was noted for his 
 abstemious habits, and especially for his dislike of the various forms 
 of alcohol. Indeed, it was to this fact alone thathe himself attrib- 
 uted his wonderful endurance throughout all the horrors of the 
 Russian retreat, an endurance which Napoleon noted when he gave 
 info his hands the keeping of the rear guard and the preservation of 
 all that was finally preserved of the Grand Army. 
 
 The North Carolina Ney was always on guard lest his identity 
 should be suspected. He would never speak of himself, never say 
 whether he had been a soldier or not, never discuss Bonaparte 
 except as a thousand of his enthusiastic pupils might have do&e, 
 never wrote or received letters from France, and once, when 
 addressed by a wandering Frenchman as "Marshal Ney," gave the 
 poor unfortunate such a terrible look that he soon sneaked away 
 from his presence and fled the neighborhood in mortal fear lest he 
 be slaughtered. 
 
 Now, what, under such circumstances, might not the real Mar- 
 shal Ney have done, admitting always for the sake of argumert the 
 proposition that he had escaped, through the connivance of his 
 friends, the cowardly vengeance of the Bourbons. The very first 
 moment he landed upon American soil he was as free as the wind. 
 No living mortal would have dared to lay hands upon him for any 
 political crime much less for the alleged crime of devotion to his ( m- 
 peror and to his beloved France. He had left behind him a v.ife 
 whom he idolized, and children who were the joy of his life. Why 
 should he not have written to them, had them to have joined 1dm, 
 found for them a happy home in a country where his last days 
 might have been spent in" tranquil peace and rest? 
 
 Had this course not been to him the most preferable one, what 
 was to have prevented his own return to France after the expiration 
 of a few years of exile? An amnesty had been granted by Louis 
 XVIII., by Charles X., and by Louis Philippe. In the reign of 
 either he might have gone back home with perfect safety, and he 
 lived through the reign of two of these, and through many years of 
 the reign of the other. 
 
 As to the question, however, of the real Ney's death at the 
 hands of the Bourbons, perhaps that has never been doubted by any 
 one except these North Carolina quid nuncs and sensation concoct- 
 ers. Napoleon tells at St. Helena, both to Las Casas and O'Meara, 
 all about Ney's death. Montholon, in his memoirs, does the same. 
 Bourrienne is exceedingly full upon the subject. A strong effort 
 was made to save him, but Fouche, that horrible butcher of the reign 
 of terror that spy, thief, traitor, coward, servile slave, and cringing 
 suppliant at the feet of power swore that Ney should be killed as a 
 
142 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 sort of sacrifice to appease the fury of the allies. Key was chosen 
 as the victim because he had fought them oftener, more desperately, 
 with more ferocious success, had put more of them to rout, killed 
 more of them, was more indomitable and created wilder and fiercer 
 havoc in their ranks than any other subordinate who served under 
 Napoleon. Hence they hated him with th hatred of kings for the 
 very qualities which had served to make him famous and glorious. 
 The Bourbons demanded his death because of his heroic efforts to 
 save the day at Waterloo, which, if saved, would have precipitated 
 them into another flight into England. 
 
 Wellington was also besought to save Ney, but Wellington 
 never saved anybody. A more supremely cold, greedy, selfish man 
 never figured in the pages of history. The army which saved him 
 and glorified him at Waterloo he called "a beastly army," and so 
 grudgingly did he bestow praise upon those who served under him 
 that one could scarcely ever tell from his dispatches and bulletins 
 from the battle field whether he ever had such a thing as a private, 
 a corporal, a sergeant, a lieutenant, a captain, a major, a colonel, or 
 a general of any^ grade under him. As he was among his soldiers, 
 so, also, was he in public, in private, and in the midst of his family. 
 
 However, all this is a digression. Bourrienne refers especially 
 to the North Carolina myth and dwells, because of it, especially 
 upon the actions of Ney after the restoration of the Bourbons. He 
 tells how Ney, believing that he was protected by the terms of the 
 general surrender, made no effort to escape, whichmight have been 
 easily accomplished. How, when ordered for trial before a military 
 court, he pleaded his privilege as a peer of France and demanded 
 to have a jury of his peers. In doing this, said Napoleon, he signed 
 his own death warrant. His old comrades in arms would have 
 acquitted him. Bourrienne finally goes into minute particulars of 
 the execution, giving the name of the commander of the firing 
 party, a fanatical Bourbon emigrant, describes the scene, the death 
 moments, the grave, and the fury of the old soldiers afterward. 
 
 No, the Ney of North Carolina was either a hoax or an impos- 
 ter. 
 
 DON CARLOS AND MEXICO. 
 
 [Kansas City Times, May 23, 1887.] 
 
 Nothing could possibly be more absurd than the story that Don 
 Carlos, of Spain, is coming to Mexico to create an empire and erect 
 a throne. If he comes to Mexico at all, which is a matter of very 
 much doubt, he would come simply as any other Spanish gentleman, 
 and as such would bear himself what time he remained in the 
 country. 
 
 As for making an empire out of Mexico, that is the silliest non- 
 sense ever born in the brain of a crank. France tried it when the 
 United States was struggling in the toils of a furious Civil War. 
 First and last no less than forty thousand veteran French soldiers 
 were operating in Mexico at one time, to say nothing of the native 
 forces enlisted in the cause of Maximilian, and yet the very best 
 that they could do was to hold the towns while the Juaristas held 
 the country. All they ever owned, or occupied, or controlled, or 
 felt safe in, was that extent of territory and no more which their 
 cannon covered. When, finally, the French were recalled, the 
 Juaristas closed in behind them, generally a day's march behind 
 and saw them safe out of the so-called empire. Then they turned 
 about, toppled over poor Maximilian, and shot him with about as 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 143 
 
 many compunctions of conscience as they would have shot a prairie 
 wolf. The farce ended with a tragedy. 
 
 It is difficult to see who or what is at the bottom of this Don 
 Carlos business. To one who has lived in Mexico and understands 
 something of the Mexican situation the story is too absurd even for 
 an audience of cranks. They say he is to come as a special repre- 
 sentative of the Church party. Aft hat Church party? Mexico is a 
 Catholic country. There is no other religion there except the Cath- 
 olic religion. Here and there in a few of the larger cities a Protest- 
 ant mission or two may live from hand to mouth, and feebly, bur, 
 the great mass of the nation is as Catholic as Spain or Austria. Then 
 what is the use of talking about this idiotic myth of a Church 
 party ? 
 
 The concoct ers of the Don Carlos story also make him out a 
 Spaniard, who is to have an especial backing at the hands of the 
 Spanish colony in the City of Mexico. This colony is to take him in 
 charge, fete him, chaperone him, make a social lion out of him, put 
 him en rapport with the blue bipods, enlist aristocracy on his side, 
 array bank accounts under his standard, provide the ways and 
 means of revolution, revolutionize. 
 
 The Spanish colony! Lord bless us every one, if revolutions in 
 Mexico were done up in bunches like asparagus, the Spanish colony 
 could not even get to see the ground from which had been cut a 
 single asparagus stalk, much less to encompass an entire bundle. 
 The Spanish colony is composed of an exceedingly stiff and formal 
 lot of senors and senores, with some beautiful senoritas sandwiched 
 between, young plants of grace in every respect, and fair to look 
 upon as the blush rose or the lily. The wine is good, the discourse 
 grave, the minuets stately; but when you say revolution you say 
 aloes to the honeycomb and ice to the Burgundy. Thereafter, the 
 Spanish colony might help to make Don Carlos fit for an auto defe, 
 but never for a foray that had vigor enough in it for another Quere- 
 taro. The Spanish colony was formed for other purposes. The 
 nearest approach it will ever make to bloodshed will be a bull fight, 
 and the nearest approach to an uprising the crush at a theater when 
 some bright, particular star sings who is a Spanish favorite. 
 
 Another thing: Nobody has got any business fooling about 
 Mexico under the impression that thrones grow on trees down there. 
 It has learned many a stark, stubborn and stalwart lesson lately. 
 Its own revolutions have been remorsely drowned out in blood. Its 
 own revolutionists have been stood up against a dead wall and shot 
 in droves to cure them of the old robber fever, of the old robber 
 pronunciamiento days. It is as matter-of-fact as an oak tree, and as 
 logical as a column of figures. It means to be a nation among 
 nations not the by-word and reproach of all who set any store by 
 stability, and believe that self-respect must first begin at home 
 before national respect can be inculcated and insisted upon abroad. 
 
 Don Carlos may go to Mexico and have a most delightful visit, 
 but if he proposes to potter much about dynamite he had infinitely 
 better stay where he is. 
 
 POOR FRANCE. 
 
 [Kansas City Times, June 2, 1887.] 
 
 At last the red Republicans and the opportunists have done 
 their work, and to the revolt there has succeeded a revolution. 
 General Boulanger has been overthrown. 
 
 If this were all, if this were simply the pulling down of one 
 
144 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 man and the putting up of another, if this were only the rising or the 
 falling of the political mercury in that most mercurial of all barom- 
 eters, Paris, if this merely meant that the king is dead or that the 
 king lives, if behind the face of the ever piquant and attractive 
 farce there was not another face eager, hungry and splashed 
 somewhat with blood why, what difference would it make who 
 strutted his brief hour upon the stage, or whether the dances were 
 such as the grisette might enjoy at her last sou, equally with the 
 grand dame at her last lover? 
 
 But it was not the French citizen Boulanger, who was thus 
 put upon, nor the French General Boulanger, nor the Secretary of 
 War Boulanger, but it was Boulanger the idea, the prescience, the 
 terrible embodiment of a maimed and mutilated nation's half-stifled 
 cry for vengeance. 
 
 In the presence of those two cruel and yet bleeding wounds, 
 Sedan and Gravelotte, it does seem that even a congress of Jacobins 
 or dynamiters might have had some pity for France. That'instead 
 of the can-can in sight of these wounds the entire representative 
 body should have arisen, uncovered and saluted. That instead of a 
 whole forest full of chattering monkeys, there should have come 
 out at least from some one single jungle a roar that told of a lion 
 crouching. That instead of whole parliamentary rights wasted in 
 shriek and grimace, and shrug and epilepsy, something should have 
 been heard somewhere of the sounding of trumpets and the whist- 
 ling of s\vord-b!ades. That instead of there being only heard in all 
 the darkness the gutteral croakings and chokings of carrion birds, 
 the putrid offal thick in their distended throats, there might have 
 been heard the screams and the gatherings of the symbolic eagles, 
 scenting from their eyries the blue grapes which grew by the Rhine, 
 even as in the old days and from the towering Alps they scented the 
 oil and the wine of another Paradise named Italy. Boulanger stood 
 for the army that poor army which has been so cheated, juggled 
 with, preyed upon by jobber, ruinously led and stupidly fought 
 since Solferino. At Spicheren the ball-cartridges were a size too 
 large for the bore of the chassepots. At Metz it had neither shell 
 nor caunistershot. Two days before Gravelotte its meat ration had 
 failed. At Sedan it was shoeless, tunicless and well-nigh out of 
 ammunition. In front of Paris, and yet in the heart of one of the 
 richest and most fertile nations on earth, it went hungry for even 
 bread. In the end it had to take from the bloody hands of its own 
 ferocious and ravening wolves of countrymen what was left of 
 desolate, blackened, mutilated Paris. 
 
 Boulanger took this army; bound up its wounds; recalled its 
 history; made its standards once more adorable; gave it the esprit 
 de corps it had not known since it had transfigured Europe at the 
 double quickstep; dealt with it as some perfect machine which had 
 a soul; taught it that patriotism was the holiest word ever created 
 by God upon the lips of man; gave it the splendid resources which 
 come from ample numbers, organization, enthusiasm, discipline, 
 ambition, a battle cry that had vengeance in it, and then, as one 
 huge, compact, colossal mass, he held it, waiting and obedient, for 
 another march to the Rhine. 
 
 This, we say, is what Boulanger had done for the army, and 
 because he had he was slaughtered by communists and dynamiters, 
 joined to a lot of demagogues and politicians that have for fifteen 
 years made France the wonder, the pity, and the scorn of Europe- 
 
 To get a good look at the crime and the cowardice of such an 
 act, take down simply the map of Prussia after Jena Auerstadt and 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 145 
 
 Friedland. As a kingdom it was almost literally wiped out. The 
 omnipotent hand of Napoleon, clothed With the thunderbolts, had 
 suddenly been thrust forward through the gloom, and the torment 
 of battle, and with a sponge soaked in blood had obliterated the fig- 
 ures which stood for Prussia from the blackboard of continental 
 Europe. The King had no capital. The beautiful Queen beautiful 
 as some celestial portrait cut from a picture-book the angels paint 
 and keep m heaven was dying of a broken heart. Prussia itself, 
 and in every extremity, was stricken with a paralysis pitiful to even 
 its French despoilers. 
 
 Two men came as the Lord's annointed, two men Stein and 
 Scharnhorst. They pieced here and they patched there. They 
 darned this hole and they basted that one. It was Prussia always. 
 Men, they whispered, for they did not dare to cry aloud, everything 
 for Prussia. If you die, yes, many of you will, but you die for 
 Prussia. You give up your silver, your jewelry, your fruits your 
 fields, your homes, your live stock, your household goods yes, yes, 
 we know all this very well, but it is for Prussia. Your boy children 
 never come back to you; no, but they went away for Prussia. You 
 go hungry often, and your uniform is a mass of rags, and the blood 
 from your naked feet has splotched the snow, but if only your car- 
 tridge-boxes are full for Prussia what matter the haversacks that are 
 empty. Here's old Blucher. Here's old Marshal Vorwarts, who for 
 twenty years was always drunk; who for twenty years was always 
 in the saddle; who, when he wished to sleep well, took off one spur, 
 and who, when he wished to sleep luxuriously, took off both. 
 
 And the result? Blucher got to Waterloo; Grouchy never got 
 there at all. 
 
 But to reach Boulanger's case and see it in all of its concentrated 
 idiocy and want of patriotism. It is only necessary to imagine 
 Stein and Scharnhorst deposed by the very nation it was about to 
 save, and to restore again, unmutilated and greater in power and 
 territory than ever, to its old imperial rank among the monarchies 
 of Europe. In France the demagogues and politicians, joined to 
 the red caps and dynamite, would have torn those two army creat- 
 ors to pieces even before they had given a soul to the army which 
 they had summoned from chaos to encounter one who might well 
 have been looked upon as more than mortal. 
 
 Is it any wonder that France, in its last war with Germany, 
 never won even a skirmish from Weissomburg to Paris ? Is it any 
 wonder, then, that it has never had among its commanders such a 
 soldier as Von Moltke, nor among its politicians such a statesman 
 as Bismarck ? Von Moltke in Paris would have been exiled at 
 thirty. Under that hydra-headed thing called the French Republic 
 Bismarck would have either gone mad or died before his first 
 protocol, with all that mighty intellect of his buried with him, as 
 absolutely unknown to the world as the grave of Moses. 
 
 So France appears to Europe, and so she will always appear as 
 long as Paris is Babylon, qualified by steam, electricity and daily 
 newspapers There is no more iron in the blood of Paris. What the 
 newspapers have spared in the way of reverence, religion and old- 
 fashioned truth, manhood and virtue, the faubourgs have finished. 
 Ferry is a fearful old mugwump, decayed at the top. It is doubtful 
 if Grevy ever heard of Austerlitz, and DeFreycenet is a second Jim 
 Blaine, without half Blaine's ability. 
 
 The monkey part of the French character is in the saddle. 
 
146 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 EDMUND O'DONOYAN. 
 
 [Kansas City Times, June 2, 1887.] 
 
 This is the name of an Irish journalist who made himself 
 famous. A little thin shred of a life of him has just been published 
 in England, not greater than seventy or eighty pages, perhaps, 
 when it might well have gone to five hundred. 
 
 His father was a learned professor in the University of Dublin. 
 Devoted to his work there, he permitted his eldest born, Edmund, 
 to do pretty much as he pleased, and he pleased to become a surgeon. 
 After a little practice in this line, it further pleased him to become 
 a botanist and a geologist. Then he traveled. Then he began a 
 life of adventure which, in many ways, was one of the most adven- 
 turous lives that ever had an abiding place in the realms of either 
 truth, romance, or fiction. 
 
 Irishman born, bred and educated, he was one among the very 
 first to espouse the Fenian cause, and give to it youth, energy, dar- 
 ing, enthusiasm and devotion. He mastered the military tactics 
 of the text-books that he might become a drill sergeant. He was 
 rarely gifted by Nature to be both orator and agitator, and he was 
 both at a gallop. He enlisted recruits, organized them, drilled them 
 when he could, in some barn, or some lonely hillside, in some 
 isolated glen. When the drilling was done, the exhortations would 
 begin, and these went home to the hearts of his young Irishmen 
 ready to follow their young drill master to war or the scaffold. 
 
 James Stevens, the great head, front, and leader of the Fenian 
 movement, was his life-long guide, counselor and friend. One day 
 the British authorities laid hold upon Stevens and made him fast in 
 the dungeon of a Dublin prison. They could not or did not keep 
 him, for he soon broke out and fled to France. O 'Donovan quickly 
 followed after, joining him in Paris. Then with tongue, pen and 
 purse he wrought splendidly for his chief, and for the cause of Ire- 
 land so dear to his heart. 
 
 The Franco-Prussian War came on, and gave him the oppor- 
 tunity so long beseechod for, the opportunity to make his first essay 
 in arms. He joined a French regiment of the line as a private sol- 
 dier, fought as became his race, was named a captain on the field of 
 battle for heroic deeds, was shot down, captured, locked up in a 
 German fortress, escaped through sheer pity if not a tenderer senti- 
 ment of the gaoler's daughter, and got safely home once more to 
 Ireland. 
 
 The Carlists were next to break loose among the hills of Spain, 
 and thither rushed O'Donovan as a correspondent for the London 
 News. Somewhat of a guerrilla, much of a journalist and a passa- 
 ble artist, he fought, wrote and sketched until his reputation became 
 European. Meanwhile he had learned to speakFrench, Spanish and 
 German. Afterward he added to these Turkish, Russian and Arabic 
 and two or three dialects for especial use among the Tekkes and Turco- 
 mans of Tartary. Admirable polyglot, was there ever known in 
 all newspaper history before or since a journalist so thoroughly 
 equipped for war by land or sea among the Arabs or the Cossacks, 
 by the blue Bosphorus, or where, God willing, old Mazeppas steeds 
 to-morrow , 
 
 "Shall prraze at ease 
 Beyond the swift Borysthenes?" 
 
 One day, while still fighting, and writing, and penciling among 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 147 
 
 the guerrillas of Don Carlos the same Don Carlos, by the way, 
 whose name of late has been so absurdly mixed up with some certain 
 intrigues or conspiracies in Mexico a dream, a vision, an inspira- 
 tion came to him as he lay by a bivouac fire, the night wind keen 
 like a knife and the canteen empty. 
 
 He would see what the Russians were doing in Central Asia; 
 that is to say, he would go into the jaws of a lion, and, more proba- 
 bly into the jaws of death. Russia was gathering herself together 
 there lor a mighty spring upon Merv and the Hindoo Kush Mount- 
 ains, the gates to Herat. This spring was afterward made just as 
 O'Donovan said it would be, and how he said it would be, and when 
 he said it would be. England then remembered the warning words 
 of this prophetic Irishman, young as he was, and Fenian though he 
 was, as looking westward from the walls of Candahar she could see 
 the lances of the Cossacks, clear cut and uplifted, wrathful against 
 the lurid sunset. 
 
 Every attempt made by an Englishman to get into the Russian 
 possessions of Central Asia had theretofore failed. Most of the 
 attempts were stopped at the frontier- If the frontier was barely got 
 over by some one bolder than another, a cloud of cavalry instantly 
 enveloped him, and he was given his choice to quit the country for- 
 ever or die by the rope. It is not recorded that any of the adven- 
 turers came to an end so ignominious. All the Oases in and around 
 Merv was an unknown land to England. All that was known by 
 anybody about it was the knowledge that it was inhabited by Russian 
 specters. They flitted hither and thither through the gloom, but 
 what were they doing? O'Donovan took it upon himself to find out. 
 He laid his plans fully before the London News; explained them in 
 every detail and ramification. He was endorsed and they were 
 endorsed, and he started. 
 
 'Twere long to tell of that wonderful adventure. Of the foes 
 that he baffled, the streams that he swam, the disguises that he 
 assumed, the ambushments that he escaped, the robbers that he out- 
 witted, the Cossacks that he outrode, the chiefs that he bribed, the 
 coolness that never weakened and the smiling audacity which 
 abode to the end. He.won, however, in the desperate race," and liis 
 book, "The New Oasis," was the result. It was printed by five 
 nations, one among them being even Russia herself, and well all of 
 them may have done so, for it contained more accurate and valuable 
 information upon the Asiatic positions of Russia and Great Britain 
 than has ever yet been put in print before or since the famous gal- 
 lop. The pitcher, however, was about to go for the last time to the 
 well. The night was beginning to fall and the darkness to gather. 
 One of the purest and most dauntless spirits journalism ever gave to 
 the newspaper world to ennoble it and crowd it thicker still with yet 
 more unselfish and heroic deeds was about to take its flight forever. 
 
 The Soudan was all aflame. The Arab had turned savagely 
 upon the Egyptian, and there was war between civilizations as old 
 as Abraham. Of course O'Donovan could never stay his hand 
 when all that was hoary and majestic in the history of the race 
 might look down upon his marchings and his bivouacs, his battles 
 by day and his reveries by night. 
 
 He almost flew to Cairo, and was hot and eager with impatience 
 until he joined the army of Hicks Pasha on its last ma*rch to exter- 
 mination. Not a man of it, something over eleven thousand, ever 
 survived to tell the tale of the monstrous slaughter. Edmund 
 O'Donovan perished with the rest. He had a presentiment that he 
 should never survive the campaign, but in spite of it, if not because 
 
148 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 of it, he appeared to be all the more determined to see if fate had 
 really and finally forsaken him. Surely this English life of him 
 will soon be republished in America. 
 
 THE REVISED NEW TESTAMENT. 
 
 [Kansas City Times, June 13, 1887.] 
 
 We refer to the Revised Version of the New Testament. It can 
 not be made to supersede the old King James translation. It came 
 with a great flourish of religious trumpets. For ten years it was 
 in the hands of scholars said to be in every way exalted. When the 
 work was done, the cry went up from orthodox lips that it marked a 
 wonderful epoch in religious history. It was to fasten the attention 
 of the world upon it, and thereby bring about such an upheaval as 
 had never been known in all the long record of spiritual movements, 
 uprisings and revivals. Multitudes of those who professed to be 
 theologians and Scriptural commentators praised it to the skies. 
 Large sums were spent for early copies. The numbers sold at the 
 beginning were enormous. Every adventitious aid possible was given 
 to the sale, and the markets were bulled ecclesiastical ly . The gudgeons 
 were baited with an edition without a hell, and the new orthodox 
 revolution, as far as any sort of an insight could be got from the sur- 
 face, was an accomplished fact. 
 
 Beneath the surface, however, the revolution did not revolution- 
 ize. The established Church of England never would and never has 
 approved of it synodically, although it demanded the translation the 
 longest and loudest. No other Protestant denomination ever offi- 
 cially made use of it in its churches and Sunday-schools. The 
 Catholics would not touch it under any circumstances. Families 
 proscribed it. Writers and speakers, lay or clerical, so scorned it 
 that they would not quote from it. Tabooed, spurned, a failure 
 from the beginning, it has now passed almost completely out of 
 sight and out of mind. 
 
 And what is the reason for it all? Mr. John Fulton attempts to 
 give the reason in the June number of "The Forum." He says in 
 substance that top many changes were introduced to suit some and 
 not enough to suit others. He also thinks that the poetry of many- 
 passages was impaired by giving them a too literal translation. A 
 certain degree of obscurity serves to give a charm to the expression 
 of poetical sentiments. No one is pleased with a likeness of a person 
 made by measuring his features, and reducing them to a certain 
 scale, no matter how attractive they may have been or are. 
 
 Mr. John Fulton does not go deep enough. He does not get 
 down to the real bone and sinew of the subject. The translated 
 New Testament, or rather the revised edition of the New Testa- 
 ment, was the work of a lot of intellectual dudes. They refined 
 away poetry, pathos, rugged Saxon, quaint forms of express- 
 ion, old landmarks, verses that had been lived and died by for 
 centuries, old texts, old promises and old prophecies. One thing 
 the people as a mass will never permit to have taken away from 
 them, and that is the old-fashioned Bible. They never asked^ for 
 any revision. They never for a moment considered that a revision 
 was necessary . 
 
 The old 'King James version was venerated. Since its publi- 
 cation it has been a household book, the one sacred record of the 
 births, marriages and deaths in a family for a generation. Its 
 teachings had brought solace in sorrow, surcease in pain, comfort 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 149 
 
 in affliction, support in misfortune, ease in torment, light in dark- 
 ness, and better than all, something when the final summons came 
 that made it less dreadful to go down into the valley of the shadow 
 and cross over that wonderful river, which in all lands and in all 
 tongues has been called the river of death. 
 
 We do not say anything about the admirable quality of the 
 scholarship manifested in the version of the New Testament, for no 
 doubt that was very high and perfect ; but the new translation itself 
 was an impossible thing from the start if the intention was to make 
 it root out the version that it pretended to correct and beautify. 
 It makes no difference what a man may want with his Bible, how he 
 may use it, how explain, how expound, how interpret it, he is only 
 solicitous to know that it is his father's Bible, and that the refiners, 
 the agnostics, the tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee fellows of the last 
 half of the nineteenth century have not laid their hands upon that. 
 If that is intact all the balance is easy. The denominational pro- 
 cession can go forward thereafter as it pleases. Anchored fast to 
 his old-fashioned Bible, even the very gates of Greek shall not pre- 
 vail against his old-fashioned belief in fire and brimstone. 
 
 THE GERMAN SUCCESSION. 
 
 [Kansas City Times, June 14, 1887.] 
 
 If the Crown Prince of Germany is at all superstitious and most 
 thorough soldiers are and if he reads half the occult stories told 
 about him, and half the predictions made as to what his fate is likely 
 soon to be, the chances would be good to send him to a premature 
 grave through sheer nervous irritation and worriment. 
 
 First, when his father was quite a young man, unmarried and 
 sowing his wild oats plentifully, a gypsy told his fortune. He was 
 to be king and wear three crowns. He was to have a male heir, but 
 the heir was not to succeed him. 
 
 Later on the young man married, and was soon made king of 
 Prussia. Afterward of Hanover, then of all Germany. Here was the 
 three crowns the gypsy predicted. Still later on, and yet a little while 
 before the Franco-Prussian War, the Emperor William again had 
 his fortune told. Another gypsy cast his horoscope. He would 
 live, the old Zingaree said, until his ninety-second year, and that 
 when he died he would bs succeeded, not by his son, but by his 
 grandson. The son would die before his father. This son is the 
 present Crown Prince, whose life even at this moment is in immi- 
 nent peril. The physicians in attendance upon him and he has 
 some that have a world-wide celebrity have not } 7 et determined 
 what to call the morbid growth in his throat. If it is cancerous, 
 like General Grant's, no power short of the Lord Almighty can save 
 him from a speedy death. 
 
 The old Emperor William, his father, recalling the two gypsy 
 prophecies, is reported as being firmly of the belief that it is cancer, 
 and that his son and heir will die within the year. 
 
 Then again the weird, the haunting, the evil-foreboding White 
 Lady has been seen again at the Berlin palace. She was never 
 known to appear except to indicate some sudden calamity to the 
 house of Hohenzollern most generally death. Since the serious 
 illness of the Crown Prince the fact seems to be pretty well authen- 
 ticated that she has been seen twice, and each time with a look of 
 terror and anguish on her face. She first made her appearance dur- 
 ing the reign of the Emperor's mother the beautiful, the unfortu- 
 
150 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 nate and the broken-hearted Louise and has been part of the 
 imperial household ever since. Does her last visit bode evil to the 
 Crown Prince? Who knows? 
 
 A NEW REVISION OF THE BIBLE. 
 
 [Kansas City Times, July 23, 1887.] 
 
 A brief cable dispatch announced the other day the fact that 
 quite a number of denominational people, whatever that may mean, 
 had met in London and discussed freely the ways and means of pre- 
 paring another translation of the Bible. They adjourned to meet 
 again shortly. 
 
 Make it, gentlemen make it by all means. Rub up your 
 Hebrew and your Greek. Get quickly at your roots, your verbsand 
 your conjugations. Print a plentiful supply. Go upon the princi- 
 ple that ' ' Mark Twain" did when dealing with the lightning-rod 
 man: " Certainly I will take a rod, ten, fifteen, fifty. Put half a 
 dozen on the house, twenty on the barn; put them everywhere. One 
 on the servant girl, one on the cow, six on the woodshed and then 
 come back to me for further orders. Lightning-rods are great things 
 to have in a family." 
 
 But, seriously, what earthly use is there for another translation 
 of the Bible? The last one, not yet four years old, fell still-born. 
 A few cranks discussed it pro and con, and then it dropped out of 
 the public sight forever. Here and there a few enthusiasts pro- 
 claimed it from the housetops, but the people went by on the 
 other side. Once in a while a sweet geranium leaf of a youngster 
 sought to open with it his first call to preach, but his congregation 
 drew the line at sheol, and he quickly had to hunt another transla- 
 tion considerably more ancient. 
 
 People are afraid of new Bibles. Education is everything in 
 the matter of faith. Once well set in his religious ways and the 
 average man or woman will stick at the crater of Vesuvius, even 
 though an eruption is off only the distance of an hour. Habit also 
 fills a great space. To be able to find certain texts at the places 
 assigned to them is much more potential than to be able to interpret 
 them. People cry out against superstition, but it has been one of 
 Christianity's handmaidens. It has done a powerful sight of good 
 and a powerful sight of harm, but its good deeds are legion as to 
 one bad one. So, also, with Christianity itself. About the old 
 Bible there is a sort of superstition that enshrines it and makes it 
 invincible. Of course many things enter into the superstition to 
 harden and crystallize it, but it exists and can not be cast aside or 
 ignored, hence the folly of another translation no matter how per- 
 fect of the Holy Scriptures. 
 
 THE REVISED BIBLE. 
 
 [Kansas City Times , July, 1888.] 
 
 The English publishers of the revised edition of the Bible, 
 especially the revised New Testament, complain very much that the 
 venture, in a business point of view, is a dead failure. There is no 
 demand for this revised Bible, either in part or in whole. Much 
 money has already been lost, they say, more will be lost, and they 
 profess not to be able to understand why the sales are not larger 
 and the profits more reassuring. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 151 
 
 A blind man might see why. The masses of the people do 
 not want the revised Bible, will not have it, will not buy it, have no 
 faith in it, no respect for it, no tolerance for it aye, for it, in fact, 
 they have only supreme contempt and bitter mockery. 
 
 With every human creed, belief, or spiritual profession there 
 always goes a certain amount of superstition. It is not the super- 
 stition of ignorance. It is not the creed superstition which leads 
 to violence, bloodshed and murder. It is not the fanatical super- 
 stition which takes the sword in one hand and the crucifix in the 
 other. It is not the proselyting superstition which mistakes the 
 shadow for the substance, and seeks to bring about universal 
 brotherhood by extirpating all freedom of thought and independ- 
 ence of action. It is rather the sentimental superstition which 
 believes old things to be better than new; the faith of the old days 
 more holy than the faith of the new; the old ideas of futurity 
 more reverent than the new agnosticism, which does not know; the 
 old Bible, as pur fathers taught it, more sacred than anything 
 a broader learning can fashion, or a higher education make more 
 pliable to modern thought and insipid forms of expression. 
 
 Especially does the unvexed and unexpurgated Bible take hold 
 of the human imagination and do with it as it pleases. It has been 
 handed down from generation to generation. The family's genea- 
 logical tree has taken root thee. In sunshine it has sung praises to 
 the Lord; in shadow it has poured ointment into the hurts and tem- 
 pered the wind to the shorn lamb. Birth saw its precious depository 
 busy with the record, and death knew that however the stealth of its 
 bereavements, something would be writ to tell of what had been 
 given and what had been taken away. 
 
 And then what delightful memories of childhood cluster about 
 the old Bible. Call it the King James version, or the Dou ay ver- 
 sion, or whatever other version you please, so only it is the old Bible, 
 to childhood it is a sentient thing. It has life and breath and 
 speech and motion. For every doubt it has an explanation, and for 
 every wound a Gilead full of balm. Its promises are articulate, and 
 it soothes as it promises. To doubt its inspiration in those halcyon 
 days would have been to doubt a father's care or a mother's tender- 
 ness. Somehow, no matter how, it grew about the heart and 
 became chief among its holy household gods. Every line in it was 
 taken literally, interpreted literally, and acted upon literally. 
 It provided for a future. It robbed death of the severity of 
 its sting; it denied to the grave the exultation of its victory. 
 As one grew older it took upon itself shape after shape that 
 had not before been discovered, because to be more and more of a 
 necessity. It was historical, theological, polemical, scientific, 
 hygienic, geological and prophetic. It was a single volume and a 
 library. Day after day it gathered unto itself new strength; reading 
 after reading it revealed unto the student new beauties of thought 
 and new avenues of investigation. All in all, it was to him the most 
 satisfying book ever printed, and so when he went out into the world 
 for himself, along with the faces of the other near ones and dear 
 ones, there went also the form and the face of the idolize d old 
 family Bible. 
 
 No wonder, therefore, that the work which would cut and carve 
 this precious instrument is almost universally looked upon as sacri- 
 legious work, receiving bitter denunciations instead of indorsment, 
 or so completely ignored as to entail heavy financial losses upon 
 those who, through much learning, vainly imagined that they could 
 saturate the Word of God with their Greek and Hebrew refinements 
 
152 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 and force it upon the recognition of those who yet believe in the 
 inspiration of the Holy Scriptures- 
 
 MARRIAGE OF CAPTAIN COLLINS. 
 
 [Kansas City Times August, 1888.] 
 
 So this wary old campaigner has been captured at last. So the 
 old veteran battery commander, who never lost a gun in all the four 
 years' war, in one swift moment lost both his heart and whatever 
 may be looked upon as the blessedness of single life. So this splen- 
 did cannoneer, -whom General Jo Shelby took as a boy and left as a 
 giant, has become as pliant as a woman's necklace in as tender a pair 
 of hands as ever threaded the strands of life with the golden beads of 
 purity and devotion. Ah! love! love! 
 
 There are thousands of the comrades of Captain Collins thipday 
 all over Arkansas, Texas and Missouri who will rejoice that such a 
 destiny has come at last to one who has deserved so much at the 
 hands of fortune deserved so much because of truth, courage, gen- 
 erous manhood, steadfastness to friendship, perfect honor and a 
 faith that will fail not till the end. 
 
 Then if these old comrades of his could have seen his beautiful 
 bride so modest, so gentle, so refined, the dew of the morning of 
 her young life yet glistening upon the roses in her cheeks, their con- 
 gratulations would have been sent up to him twice, once because of 
 the resolution which made him draw near to such a shrine to offer 
 incense, and once because the priestess who presided there had so 
 many of the qualities of splendid American womanhood as to fit her 
 perfectly for adoration. 
 
 And now the two go out into the world hand in hand together. 
 Perhaps it may be dark sometimes. Perhaps in some mornings no 
 birds may be heard to sing. Perhaps fate's hand may now and then 
 smite hard -and smite the things which are tenderest. Perhaps 
 across the home threshold some shadows may fall which can be 
 lifted never more until the Hght that never was on shore or sea lift 
 them beyond the wonderful river; but stand up, old comrade, ten- 
 der and true. You are the oak. It is for you to sit sentinel by the 
 hearthstone, for you to make holy with devotion the perfect shelter 
 of the roof -tree. Everything that is touching in woman's confi- 
 dence has been reposed in you. The perfect purity of a sinless and 
 stainless life is yours for the cherishing. The sunhas risen on this 
 newer and fuller existence, and that journey has been entered upon 
 which must go forward to its final abiding place of domestic happi- 
 ness. Since it has been begun, may the good God send to bless 
 it those bountiful things which make the flowers to bloom for you, 
 and the green sward to be gracious for your feet, and soft winds to 
 blow for you, and a perfect possession to come unto you, as the 
 gentle night-dews come to a summer's hill. 
 
 THE GREAT AMERICAN NOYEL. 
 
 [Kansas City Times, October, 1888.] 
 
 The Boston Herald asks with more plaintiveness than the sub- 
 ject demands, it seems to us, when the great American novel may 
 be expected. Before such a question could be answered one would 
 have to understand what is meant by the great American novel. If 
 it is to be a " Les Miserables " of a book, the answer would be easy, 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 153 
 
 for it would consist of the single word never; but until a book in 
 some degree approaching this is produced this side of the Atlantic 
 it is not worth while to talk about any really distinctive or represen- 
 tative work of American fiction. 
 
 The American novels, now being printed by the carload and 
 scattered broadcast over the country, furnish the best possible evi- 
 dence that the Herald's question must remain in abeyance for a 
 satisfactory answer if not for a whole century at least for the half 
 of one. There never was such a ruck of simper, insanity and gush. 
 There was never such a reign of platitude, idiocy and drivel. No 
 power anywhere. No imagination. No hand that can paint a 
 picture to interest, much less to haunt one. Nothing that forces a 
 sigh, much less a shudder. Nothing that casts athwart the sky of 
 a perfect imbecility a single lurid flash to tell that the sun of genius 
 is about to lift itself above the horizon. 
 
 The old novels, by far the best ever published in this country, 
 are no longer read. Who to-day sets any store by James Fenimore 
 Cooper ? and yet he was as much of an American as the American 
 eagle. The forests at his touch took any hue or color. They were 
 green like green seas, or desolate like snow wastes in December. 
 They were jocund with bird songs, or hushed as though the vast 
 presence of the Angel of Silence brooded in all their branches. He 
 put his hand upon the streams and, as they hastened on to the 
 sea, they had a speech which he interpreted. He dramatized the 
 wigwam and the Indian, the trapper and the scout, and gave to 
 the civilization of the border the terse, picturesque form of expres- 
 sion which even to this day, dialect though it be, still retains all 
 of its pathos and intensity. His pictures of pioneer life were 
 perfect. The hunter, the trapper, the scout, the guide, the red 
 warrior, the warpath, the block-house, the ambushment, the butch- 
 ery they are as well recognized now as portrayed by this wiz- 
 ard as they were in the days when Montcalm pitched his marquee 
 in front of Fort William Henry, and poor old Munro, heroic Scotch- 
 man though he was, surrendered at last to French finesse and 
 Indian deviltry. 
 
 But Cooper is forgotten. And so is Poe. And Hawthorne will 
 be by and by. Namby-pamby ism is the standard. Any situation 
 which would make a mouse squeak is eliminated from all latter-day 
 American novels. The end is everything, the denouement as the 
 chirrupers like to call it. That mustbe a marriage, everybody happy, 
 the hero getting a medicine chest, and a copy of Godey's Lady's Book 
 for a wife, and the heroine .cetting one of Sam Jones' spider-legged 
 dudes and a walking stick for a husband. Hysteria and hair-pin. 
 The bustle and the pad. Tootsy-wootsy and baby -boy. Lord of 
 Israel ! what a race of chimpanzees would be born into the world 
 if these modern American novelists could have the making of its 
 procreators. 
 
 Coming like the white butterflies in June, and going like the 
 white caterpillars in November, there is one funny sort of a man 
 called Henry James, an American in the spring and an Englishman 
 in the fall, who has had the audacity to declare that he is the great 
 American novelist. Why, he isn't a novelist of any kind, let alone 
 an American novelist. If truth had ever had the fashioning of a 
 nora de plume for him it would have been insipidity. His women 
 wheeze like people with the phthisic. Now and then he has a stat- 
 uesque one, and she faints at the sight of a Japanese fan. Skilled 
 in essences, and with a smelling bottle always handy, he will go 
 into a drawing room and have four or five on the floor at once, some 
 
154 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 with their bodies unlaced and some in hysterics. His men are my 
 Lord Fitznoodle, and my Count Nonentity. He an American novel- 
 ist ! Henry James the great American novelist ! Yes, just about 
 as much as the pine cone on the ground is the gigantic pine tree. 
 
 If the Boston Herald is really in distress for a day to come when 
 that mythical thing, the great American novel, is to be born, it had 
 just as well begin now to tear its hair and rend its garments. Come 
 back again, say at the end of another century. The land is too new. 
 The standard of taste is too low. There is too much shoddy affec- 
 tation, and veneering to the front. The genius of the age lies in 
 money getting and money grabbing. The "yaller" covers have the 
 boom. Iron is king. Wait for more refinement, luxury and culti- 
 vation. Wait for the moccasin tracks to be obliterated. And while 
 you are about it, our dear contemporaries, just wait for the Millen- 
 nium. 
 
 OUIDA AND ZOLA. 
 
 [Kansas City Times, 1889.] 
 
 There is a literary club in Boston composed entirely of women, 
 Its name is the " Analytical," and the last subject brought before it 
 for discussion was rather a peculiar one, to speak modestly, being 
 this: "As between Ouida and Zola, which of the two is the most 
 immoral?" 
 
 It is not recorded what the verdict was, if a verdict was indeed 
 reached; but the debate, in the event that it took a wide range, must 
 have been exceedingly bizarre and somewhat interesting. 
 
 To settle the question of immorality between two such authors, 
 not a few edged tools would have to be handled. A spade would 
 have to be called a spade most emphatically. Vigorous English 
 would have to come in all along the line in"no uncertain manner. 
 Comparisons would have to be made by direct and apropos quota- 
 tions. No mere ipse dixit in thatassembly would have had the toler- 
 ance of a moment. There were the models, stripped from necklace 
 to satin slipper, and there were the judges, impassible as Plymouth 
 Rock, taking note of each development. 
 
 Between the two authors thus discussed the immorality of 
 each and of course we only refer to their writings differs merely 
 in the way it is presented. Ouida's immorality is perfumed, 
 essenced, plumed, scarfed, jeweled, full of poetry and full of 
 romance Zola's is brutal, indiscriminate and low-bred. .Ouida is 
 always refined, picturesque and suggestive; Zola lays about him with 
 a club. Ouida builds palaces for her Phrynes; Zola is content with 
 a rookery. Ouida crowns vice with flowers and decorates it with 
 diamonds; Zola is satisfied with rags and tatters. Ouida goes many 
 times to mass and sometimes to confession; Zola sneers alike at God 
 and devil. Ouida trips daintily to trystings, the red in her cheeks 
 and wind in her hair; Zola in great muddy boots that smell of the 
 stable. Ouida's approach is heralded by the swish of silk and the 
 odor of violets; Zola's by the stumblings of the drunkard and the 
 peculiarflavor of absinthe and brandy. Ouida gilds everything 
 touches the cheeks with rouge and the eyes with henna; Zola does 
 not even use soap and water. Ouida is luxury, sensuousness, down, 
 ermine, rare wines, passionate wooings and passionate embraces; 
 Zola is mechanical lust put together like a machine and quite as 
 soulless. Ouida's assignations have in them the singing of birds, 
 and the leaping of sword-blades; Zola's the shivering of plassps in 
 tavern brawls and the bacchanalian shouts of vulgar revelers. Ouida 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WHITINGS. 155 
 
 quiets conscience, weakens resolution, puts a silken scarf over the 
 eyes of purity, baits her traps with bait from a king's table, makes 
 a tiuce with continence, gives virtue a plenary indulgence, and lifts 
 constantly a curtain for glimpses of Paradise; Zola thrusts rudely 
 into the hand a printed bill of fare that orders may be issued 
 according to appetite. Ouida appeals to the spirit; Zola to the flesh. 
 The immorality of the one has over it always something of a gar- 
 ment, transparent though it may be and of the color of flesh; Zola 
 does not even put on a fig leaf about the loins. 
 
 These, therefore, are the two styles of immorality which the 
 fair ladies of the analytical club no doubt discussed in all the ins 
 and outs and ramifications of their putrescence and abomination. 
 As none but women were present this discussion in all probability 
 took a wide range and license, although we are of the opinion that 
 Ouida had the most votes. 
 
 What next? 
 
 IS DEATH ALL? 
 
 [Kansas City Times.] 
 
 There come up in connection with Colonel Ingersoll's eulogy 
 delivered upon the life and character of Roscoe Conkling some 
 serious thoughts. To Ingersoll he was a paladin. Yes, and to many 
 another besides Ingersoll. He is desribed by the orator as being 
 brave, true, clean, immovable in his friendships, and unalterable in 
 his love. The country knew that long ago. We put aside all of 
 Ingersoll's slush, wherein the bloody shirt and abolitionism are 
 mixed in equal proportions, and come directly to the question: 
 Where, beyond the grave, is the Pantheon for such a hero? 
 
 Take this great American as he is put upon Ingersoll's canvas. 
 Look at his face, his eyes, his pose, his stature and his whole com- 
 manding presence in every feature and aspect. Is no soul there? 
 If there is a soul, who gave it? Into whose hands does it return? 
 Is it annihilation? Do men like Napoleon, Caesar, Hannibal, Victor 
 Hugo and a whole mighty array of other giants disappear into noth- 
 ingness? 
 
 It can not be. It is against reason, common sense, revealed 
 religion, the Bible, the agony in the garden, the torture on the cross. 
 It is also against human nature. Man, in any state, is supremely 
 selfish. He wants a hereafter. He wants another world when he 
 gets old, a place to lie down, to sleep, perhaps to dream. Life's 
 battle may have borne against him heavily. Bosoms despite all 
 love, and courage, and watchfulness, and tenderness have been 
 stricken home at his side. He knows where his graves are. The 
 dew falls upon them like a benediction. The birds sing above them 
 as they do when they find sweet seed in the summer grasses. He is 
 worn now, and feeble and far spent. He dies, and Ingersoll says 
 that death is the last of him. He turns to a leaf, a sprout, a shrub, 
 perhaps a four-leaf clover, perhaps a head of timothy, it may be one 
 thing or it may be another; but, whatever it is. the end is utter 
 oblivion. 
 
 It is against every selfish instinct of man that such a fate is 
 desirable. In his inner being there is a constant revolt against such 
 abominable paganism. Indeed, it is worse than paganism. Pagan- 
 ism did have its altars, its shrines, its sacred groves, its temples, its 
 vestal virgins, its priests, its augurs, its elysian fields, its gods, its 
 goddesses, its spirits of good and of evil; but it never had extinc- 
 tion. Instead, it had sinners immortal in their capacity to suffer 
 
156 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 and endure. It had Pluto and Prometheus; it had Proserpine and 
 Acteon; it had Midas and Tantalus ; it had the Furies and the 
 Eumenides, but its future was never without a resurrection. That 
 has remained for the superior development of the nineteenth 
 century steam everywhere; electricity everywhere; oceans speaking 
 to the land through great coils of wires that even teach the fishes a 
 speech, and cause the great yet invisible monsters of the deep to 
 send forth their avants courier, their krakens, their sea serpents, 
 their devils of indescribable things which have as many arms as a 
 wheel has spokes, and in each arm the strength of a screw- 
 propeller send them forth to know all the meaning of the 
 new things men have invented who are totally without souls, and 
 yet with an intelligence equal to the angels. In fact, this wonder- 
 ful period in the life of mankind has waited for Robert G. Ingersoll. 
 It may be all as he says, but he has put his race at a terrible dis- 
 advantage. He has made of them mummies, monkeys and blocks 
 of wood. As far as he could he has burned out the eyes of faith. 
 He has taken from cripples, paralytics and deformed people what 
 little staff and script they had for this unknown journey, creeping 
 on apace and making fiercer and fiercer inroads at every returning 
 season. He has made of the holy mysteries things to deride, ridi- 
 cule, spit on, daub with mud, dress in rags and scarify like lepers. 
 And then to think that he had the audacity to deliver a eulogy on 
 Roscoe Conkling. Sacrilege! Sacrilege! Sacrilege! 
 
 THE NEW YEAR. 
 
 To all things there must come a past to those who sin and 
 love and suffer and repent, and who go on through life and make 
 no prayer or moan, it is well, in the infinite wisdom of God, that 
 there is a past. The heart buries its treasures there. It is full of 
 sad , sweet faces lying asleep in the sepulchres, full of ' ' broken vows 
 and pieces of rings. " There, when life was at its flood and the world 
 full of all glad and green-growingthings, it held so many memories 
 that came only when youth and hope were strong and rare, like 
 winsome lock of hair, some garment of spice-smell or sky-color, 
 some apple-tree white and pink with blossoms, some tune that came 
 in with the sunset and lingered until the night had fallen, some 
 snowy tents of the dogwood perched beyond the early green of 
 meadows washed with dew and wiped with the moonshine, some twi- 
 light trysting by the garden-gate, the moon bending low in the 
 West and the twilight busy with the lilacs, some lapsing flow of 
 running water where the tree-tops were jubilant with nests and 
 tremulous with many wings something that came only in the first 
 spring-time and affluence of life, and that lingers until the stars 
 have faded one by one, and the sounds are heard of the waves of 
 the wonderful river. 
 
 The new year comes, however, and behind it are all the old and 
 crowded years, some of them glad as with sunshine, and some of 
 them sorrowful as with tears. It is best neither to remember nor 
 forget. Let the past lie out peacefully among its sepulchers and its 
 shadows, and let the present be all our own. There are rugged bat- 
 tles yet to fight, there are triumphs yet in store, there is work for all 
 who know the meaning of that simple word duty, there are fields to 
 cultivate, consecrated efforts to put forth, and Illustrious examples 
 to set for all the future. Nothing is lost or thrown away. Poor 
 finite hearts that yearn, and doubt, and stand aside abashed as the 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 157 
 
 great cavalcade of high deeds and heroic actions go by, have only 
 need to lift themselves up and become as giants in the march of prog- 
 ress. It will be dark many times, and the winds will blow cold, 
 and the clouds will gather; but after the midnight the morning, anoV 
 after the cold, gray dawn in the east, the blue sky filled with its sun- 
 shine and its bountiful and temperate air. 
 
 WHOSE FAULT IS IT 2 
 
 In a recent discourse the Rev. J. P. Newman is reported to have 
 said, in referring to the Chicago anarchists : The cry goes up to-day 
 for absolute liberty, destroy the Bible, tear down the churches, 
 exile the pastors, abolish the Sabbath. Could any American citizen 
 have anticipated ten years ago such an advance ? Would any 
 American citizen ten years ago have foretold that to-day men call- 
 ing themselves good citizens and Christians would sign and circulate 
 a petition for the pardon of those whose hands are red with the 
 blood of the keepers of the peace and defenders of the public safety ? 
 What is back of this anarchy ? This foul, revolutionary movement 
 of miserable, cowardly wretches, who ought to have been hung long 
 ago ? Liberty means obedience to law, absolute liberty has no place 
 in this land, and he who comes to us from abroad should under- 
 stand that for those who yell for absolute liberty and its practices, 
 we have the dungeon, the gallows, or exile. 
 
 This is all very well as far as it goes, but it has merely skimmed 
 the surface of the evil which afflicts the country. Who pities those 
 dynamiters of Chicago? Who is lifting a hand to save them from 
 the rope except those who are but little better than they? Dr. 
 Newman need not have belabored these straw men so furiously. 
 They are the mere outgrowth of a poison that lies deeper; that 
 has been at work for thrice ten years; that is as difficult to eradi- 
 cate as leprosy; that the pulpit has had as much to do in making 
 deadly as a morass has in breeding malaria; that is becoming more 
 intense every day, more destructive and more impervious to medi- 
 cament we mean the poison of infidelity. 
 
 The gravitation toward a religion that has neither a Bible nor 
 a Savior has been going on steadily in the United States for thirty 
 years. It began when the New Testament was prostituted by the 
 elimination of an actual devil and a real hell. It began when a 
 reign of sensationalism set in, and when texts were not taken from 
 the Holy Scriptures, but from the most abnormal and outrageous 
 events of everyday society, the more fashionable the better and the 
 more given over to worldliness and display. 
 
 What has become of the old-fashioned orthodoxy? What of 
 a faith that once had to be manifested by works? What of Bible 
 verses and Bible expoundings? What of the whole congregation 
 joining in old-fashioned hymns, sometimes quaint but always 
 full of that kind of pathos which made people stronger and better 
 for the singing? What of the lowly meeting houses, with wooden 
 benches and uncarpeted aisles? 
 
 Fashion has killed them all. Infidelity has done its work all 
 too well, bringing to aid it as faithful allies agnosticism, material- 
 ism, atheism, doubt, questioning, ridicule, politics, prohibition, 
 the world, the flesh and the devil. The race is fast becoming one 
 of scoffers and unbelievers. It has no use for preachers who make 
 violent partisans out of themselves, and go about mixing in every- 
 thing that belongs to the ballot-box, and the meetings. Before it 
 
158 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 will listen to them it will go to the other extreme and assume an 
 air of infidel bravado out of their disgust or defiance. Who hears 
 religion preached any more in the fashionable churches? It has 
 become to be considered a species of anguish to call Jesus Christ 
 any longer the Son of God. The inspiration of the Bible is a 
 myth that has been sent to keep company with the sea serpent. 
 The whole beautiful and appealing plan of salvation, made touch- 
 ing and supremely lovable through the life, the teachings, the cruci- 
 fixion, and the resurrection of an immortal sacrifice, is now no 
 more accounted of than the bleeding and empty skin of a slaugh- 
 tered bullock. The road to Heaven has been made musical with 
 resonant organs and choirs of singing people who sing operatic airs 
 that boldly proclaim the green room and ogle the can-can not a 
 little wantonly. 
 
 And then the texts. Sermons have been preached on base ball, 
 on horse racing, on watering places, on battle flags, on cipher dis- 
 patches, on the waltz, on victorious armies, on the navy and what 
 it did in the war, on forty acres and a mnle, on Ingersoll, a 
 cart load or two on Guiteau, one in this town on Jesse James, 
 quite a number on the address Ingalls made concerning Ben Hill, 
 10,000 probably on Grant, not so many on Garfield; but precious 
 few about Jesus Christ and Him crucified. 
 
 Nor is Dr. J. P. Newman any better than a good many others 
 who have thus made the pulpit a place for man canonization and the 
 church a place for man idolatry. He has preached more politics to 
 the square inch of brain than any other preacher in the country. 
 When Grant was president he never had a favorite colt to chafe its 
 tail, that this inspector of consulates did not give his congregation 
 a discourse on the misfortune. Toady always, and spread-eagle 
 always, is it any wonder that such so-called expounders of the gospel 
 drive men in multitudes into any species of unbelief whicn will 
 array them openly against these charlatans and impostors? 
 
 Socialism is accursed of God, but so is infidelity. No nation 
 mentioned yet in all history ever prospered a single hour or in a 
 single undertaking after it abandoned the simple belief and faith of 
 its fathers, for -w ith these go truth, virtue, honesty and patriotic 
 manhood. It is no longer capable of making heroic sacrifices. It 
 is no longer fit to rise up against adversity, affliction or chastise- 
 ment. Its spiritual torpor is complete, and it is physically incapa- 
 ble of a single emotion. There are many instances recorded where 
 the pulpits have killed liberty. 
 
 GONE DOWN AT SEA. 
 
 The blue of the sky and the blue of the ocean were blended 
 together when the City of Boston sailed away from England in the 
 springtime, westward bound. It is winter now, and snows have 
 fallen, and the faces of all the seas have been white with the wrath 
 and the pain of the tempest, but never more forever will there come 
 up from the great deep a whisper to tell where the brave ship went 
 down. Three hundred were on board. Mothers were there with 
 their children newly born; maidens were there upon whose fair 
 head shad blown the pleasant winds of France, and in whose eyes 
 were the light of English summers ; youth stood upon the prome- 
 nade deck looking far into the future, with hope that had upon its 
 wings the morning and the sunrise ; manhood's stalwart faith gazed 
 camly on the azure face of the eternal ocean, and listened to the 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 159 
 
 voices of the tide as one hears soft music in a dream ; beauty 
 lingered late among the happy hours that had for solace merriment 
 and laughter ; and all the stars were kind, and all the elfin lights 
 that danced along the deep took mermaid shapes and whirled and 
 sported round the ship as though 'twere sailing in among the islands 
 of the blessed. Blithe battle blowing all about the sunny slopes of 
 France, and in amid the vine leaves and the vines as running water, 
 took eyes and hearts from the ocean bird sailing grandly on 
 to her inarticulate death. Was there any storm, clothed with 
 the wind and hurricane, that grappled and overthrew the ves- 
 sel? Nobody knows. Did the fiery lightning run all along 
 the spars and light the sails and shrouds and hull for funeral pyre? 
 The ebb and flow of moon-made tides carry no message back to 
 either shore. Oh! it was pitiful, that death ''alone, alone, all 
 alone alone on the wide,wide sea." Some died and made no moan. 
 Some must have floated with drenched, loose arms flung wide apart 
 and smiles of childhood on the wan, thin faces. Was the night 
 brooding upon the water, moonless and starless? Could a south 
 wind have blown, perfumed with land odors, only to bring the 
 skeleton reaper and the pitiless storm? What said all the beautiful 
 maidens in death's broken and touching talk? Were not the 
 mother's eyes more steadfast than any there, and were not her prayers 
 more holy and fervent as she lifted her face to heaven a face 
 that bore a living likeness to the fair-haired boy in tears upon her 
 bosom? Was it morning when the good ship went down, and had 
 the night, like a corpse abandoning a bier, stolen the shroud from 
 the face of the ocean ? In all the lost three hundred was there one to 
 whom death came as a benediction one that smiled sweetly as the 
 angry, crawling waves came up the oaken ribs, and murmured 
 wearily and wistfully to ears that could not hear: 
 
 "Fair mother, fed with the lives of men, 
 Thou are subtle and cruel of heart, men say; 
 Thou hast taken, and shall not render again; 
 Thou art full of thy dead, and cold as they; 
 But death is the worst that comes of thee; 
 Thou art fed with our dead, O Mother, O sea, 
 But when hast thou fed on our hearts? or when, 
 Having given us love, hast thou taken away?" 
 
 Oh, but nothing mangles, and rends, and devours like the sea. 
 It laughs with insatiable lips and comes to its prey screened by the 
 zephyrs and by gracious and temperate airs. The clouds and the 
 waves conspire. There is a gulf in the sky and a gulf in the ocean, 
 and all between is the freighted bark, having frail things, and beau- 
 tiful things for cargo and ballast, run from billow to billow, and a 
 great noise is heard as of agony and fear, and hard bestead and 
 Eunted like a wounded, stricken thing, the good ship, City of Bos- 
 ton went down and left no piece of wreck, no spar, no white face 
 swollen with the sleep of death, no bonnie tress of hair coiled about 
 and tangled with seaweed, no broken and battered boat, no whisper 
 in wind or air to tell how the wild waves went over all. 
 
 There are hearts yet in the old world and the new that are lis- 
 tening for the signal guns which tell of her offing truly made and 
 her anchors fast in the harbor of repose. The laughing morning 
 winds, fed with the dew and the sunrise have tripped over the 
 grave of the wreck, and when they had passed the sea wore its placid 
 smile, and there were no murmurs to tell of the three hundred 
 sleeping peacefully beneath. The hurricane and the tempest have 
 rocked them down amid the coral caves of old ocean, but no dreams 
 
160 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 come to the eternal slumber and no noises entered into the everlast- 
 ing rest.. Is it best so ? Poor, finite souls that only feel love's cease- 
 less vigils and stretch in vain the longing arms of hopeless sorrow, 
 think little of the faith which bids them weep no more and pray 
 for hope and consolation. The morning brings no ship and night 
 no dear ones to the home-hearth swept since the day of sailing. It 
 can not be that the secrets of the drowned must remain forever in 
 the inexorable bosom of the sea. Surely some wave will bear them 
 shoreward, some drift take them out to the islands where summer 
 is eternal and where shipwrecks never come. 
 
 BETTER WAR BY LAND THAN SEA. 
 
 [Kansas City Times.] 
 
 The talk is still of earthquake, shipwreck and disaster. By 
 land and sea the face of the Lord appears to be turned away from 
 the people. 
 
 It is impossible to read the stories which come from Italy with- 
 out a shudder at the wholesale destruction of so much life and 
 property. Villages disappear as a stranded ship on a pitiless lee 
 shore. Towns are blotted out as though a swift hand, holding a 
 sponge, had suddenly washed away the figures on a blackboard. 
 This hand, however, is appalling, for it emerges from the darkness 
 and retires again into the darkness. It is death, but it is the sort of 
 death that comes to the far south on the east wind, weaving its 
 winding sheets where the jangles are, and leaping out from the 
 dark lagoons, a horrid specter, just when all nature is most jocund 
 and when, in listening to the birds, one can dream in his dreams 
 that surely such songs must also be sung in 
 
 " The sweet fields of Eden." 
 
 Cities wherein it has been joyous to live, and wherein peace, 
 and all the good angels who wait upon her, have dwelt together as 
 vestal virgins in a temple have heard the blowing as of some titanic 
 subterranean horns, and have seen walls crash down and palaces 
 crumble as though a legion of imprisoned Joshuas were reaching 
 upward again for that sun which will never stand still any more in 
 the plains of Agalon. 
 
 The priest dies by the altar. In the cradle the baby croons and 
 goes to sleep forever. The strong man turns, as it were, sword in 
 hand, to defend his household. The gray hairs of age count for 
 nothing beyond the old, immemorial aureole. The mother, beauti- 
 ful in the august beauty of accepted death, rushes to guard hfr chil- 
 dren and perishes above them as though she, too, had the Douglas 
 blood in her veins, as when 
 
 " Dead above the heart of Bruce 
 The heart of .Douglas lay." 
 
 There were revels and routs and balls. In several of the 
 stricken places bridal affairs were in process of consummation. 
 Music abounded. Odors were everywhere. On the silk and satin 
 edges of the throngs the click as of castanets came to stir the blood, 
 as the blast of bugles do in battle. These were the feet of the 
 merry dancers " dancing in tune." 
 
 Suddenly death took a hand in all too many of these transac- 
 tions; as he came at Herculaneum , as he came at Pompeii; as lie has 
 come so of ten, so often to so many in the first springtime and affluence 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 161 
 
 of youth; to so many who have never known any other season 
 except spring, with its passion flowers, or summer with its roses so 
 he came to many a shattered and desolated hamlet, or village, or 
 town in Italy. Every sort of shape we have described death took 
 in its recent terrible visitations, and our own people barely catch 
 glimpses of the real horrors of the work done by these dreadful 
 upheavals. The inmates of churches, convents, schools, palatial 
 residences, hovels, marts of commerce, all avenues of trade and 
 traffic have perished in a moment, have been multilated or crippled 
 or robbed of everything which is really fit to make life enjoyable. 
 
 If a certain number of the human race have to be destroyed 
 violently, as many contend, to maintain the equilibrium of the pop- 
 ulation, why not let them be destroyed through war? Only the 
 strong, then, the fearless and the ambitious, have to go. Glory 
 awaits the survival of the fittest. They can see death as he waits for 
 them. He is yonder in that battery's smoke. Where that tawny 
 earthwork crouches, all about it seemingly asleep, as some gorged 
 wild beast in its lair, he has been in ambush since the early morn- 
 ing. Takecarei Those half-bent figures, with guns at a trail, just 
 creeping like panthers into the right-hand thicket, are as so many 
 spectral fingers pointing to death's unerring line of battle. You hear 
 in the darkness the clanking of steel scabbards, cries, oaths, the neigh- 
 ing of horses, a steady tramp, tramp, as of waves breaking on a 
 beach, and a low, continuous rumble, as of thunder at sea. Be 
 ready! Death is marching through the night to do its deadly work 
 in the daylight. An attacking army is getting into line. 
 
 But who perish? Only men men men! Young, stalwart 
 fellows, lusty food for gunpowder, and fit to get over yonder all the 
 houris and odalisques that may be had in the warrior's Paradise. 
 No children perish. No babes at the breast. No aged people at the 
 brink of the grave. No priest at the altar. No brides "betwixt the 
 red wine and the chalice." 
 
 A CLOSE CALL. 
 
 [Kansas City Times.'} 
 
 The assassin who fired point blank at Jules Ferry, not probably 
 over five feet away, surely meant to kill him. He hit him twice, but 
 it appears as if neither bullet broke the skin, much less penetrated. 
 In this no doubt many will see a miracle those who are always 
 seeking for signs, signals, portents, and interpretation outside of 
 human nature and common sense. The multitude, however, will 
 only see a very indifferent pistol and powerfully poor gunpowder. 
 
 Jules Ferry is one of the strongest men intellectually in France. 
 He is a philosopher, a bit of a stoic, not given to retrospects, never 
 disturbed by illusions and looks askance at the French republic as 
 if it were some untamable mustang of a thing, dangerous to mount 
 and impossible to ride. In addition, he lives up to Talleyrand's 
 famous motto: "Never have anything to do with an unlucky man." 
 
 But as to Jules Ferry's politics ah! that is quite another mat- 
 ter. He may be a Republican and he may not. A Bonapartist, 
 then? Never. Of that dynasty he once said: " In that nest there 
 was only one eagle. The world can not afford such eagles but 
 rarely in the centuries." 
 
 Orleanist? No. The younger generations of Louis Philippe, 
 Charles X., and that other old fellow of Chambord, with hislillies 
 in place of the tri-color, and that preposterous soubriquet of his of 
 
162 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 Dieudonne the God-given do not fuse, can not unite their forces, 
 have no cohesion, have no sense, don't know France, don't know its 
 population. They belong to his proscribed crowd of unlucky 
 people. 
 
 Opportunist? That may be. An Opportunist in politics is 
 what an Agnostic is in religion. In either surrounding , the creed 
 thoroughly summed up, is this: I do not know. There may be a 
 devil and tnere may not. There may be something above in the 
 shape of a New Jerusalem and there may not. After this life there 
 may be another and there may not. After death there may be a 
 resurrection and there may not. I do not know. 
 This is the Agnostic. 
 
 The Opportunist reasons pretty much in the same way. Every- 
 thing and nothing are taken for granted. There may be a war with 
 Germany. Very well. There may be a Russian alliance. Still 
 very well. Perhaps one of these days a coup d'etat may come 
 along. It would not surprise me. A republic is impossible in 
 France. I have never denied it. The army at heart is for a mon- 
 archy. That does not surprise me. I simply do not know. What- 
 ever the new broom may be, I shall take good care to have hold of 
 the handle. Is, then, M. Jules Ferry a Republican? Evidently the 
 poor fool who tried to kill him thought not, as did those who were 
 back of him, and who probably sent him to the galleys for the bal- 
 ance of his natural lifetime. They will scarcely cut off his head. 
 The guillotine now-a-daysis a kind of an aristocratic institution. It 
 has spilt so much blood of blue-blooded people first and last that 
 the thing has become to have a sort of horrible prescience. Some- 
 thing of the souls of those great ones whom it has put to death may 
 have entered into its own mechanical organization. Mark you, a 
 king died under its knife. And a queen. And heroic old generals 
 grown gray in war, with only their scars to tell their story. And 
 orators whose eloquence belongs to immortality. And that colossus 
 Danton. whose tramp across the surface of France shook Europe, 
 and at the roar of whose terrible voice armies sprang instantly into 
 life and marched away to the frontier why, indeed, should not the 
 guillotine be a little bit particular now about its victim, and be 
 granted some favors in the way of discriminating between criminals? 
 M. Ferry is not the man who can touch the fiber of the national 
 heart of France, which is in constant vibration either sensitively 
 or violently, because he is not in unison with it. Between political 
 parties who decimate and immolate one another, he is clearly of the 
 opinion that it is not best to tear too many passions to tatters. In 
 the days gone by he was a stubborn fighter in the ranks of whatever 
 opposition was uppermost, but always in the ranks of the opposition. 
 Of late he has neither written much nor spoken scarcely any at all. 
 He is of the opinion that the republic does not know what it wants 
 nor whither it is going. No doubt he is tired. He has reached that 
 age in life when he would like to think a little. He sees all the par- 
 ties about him actuated rather by likes than by hopes, by aversions 
 rather than by principles. He sees no brilliant star arising amid the 
 mists of the evening to guide new generations aright on the pathway 
 that leads to his ideal republic, and he doubts, folds his hands and 
 sets still. 
 
 Why, of all other men, he should have been singled out to be 
 murdered, surpasses all understanding on this side of the ocean. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 163 
 
 THE KILLING OF JESSE JAMES. 
 
 [Sedalia Democrat, April, 1881.] 
 
 " Let not Caesar's servile minions, 
 
 Mock the lion thus laid low: 
 'Twas no 1'oeman's hand that slew him. 
 'Twas his own that struck the blow." 
 
 No one among all the hired cowards, hard on the hunt for blood- 
 money, dared face this wonderful outlaw, one even against twenty, 
 until he had disarmed himself and turned his back to his assassins, 
 the first and only time in a career which has passed from the realms 
 of an almost fabulous romance into that of history. 
 
 We called him outlaw, and he was, but Fate made him so. When 
 the war came he was just turned of fifteen. The border was all 
 aflame with steel, and fire, and ambuscade, and slaughter. He flung 
 himself into a band which had a black flag for a banner and devils for 
 riders. What he did he did, and it was fearful. But it was war. 
 It was Missouri against Kansas. It was Jim Lane and Jennison 
 against Quantrell, Anderson and Todd. 
 
 When the war closed Jesse James had no home. Proscribed, 
 hunted, shot, driven away from among his people, a price put 
 upon his head what else could the man do, with such a nature, 
 except what he did do? He had to live. It was his country. 
 The graves of his kindred were there. He refused to be ban- 
 ished from his birthright, and when he was hunted he turned sav- 
 agely about and hunted his hunters. Would to God he were 
 alive to-day to make a righteous butchery of a few more of them. 
 
 There never was a more cowardly and unnecessary murder com- 
 mitted in all America than this murder of Jesse James. It was 
 done for money. It was done that a few might get all the money. 
 He had been living in St. Joseph for months. The Fords were 
 with him. He was in the toils, for they meant to betray him. 
 He was in the heart of a large city. One word would have sum- 
 moned 500 armed men for his capture or extermination. Not 
 a single one of the attacking party need to have been hurt. If, 
 when his house had been surrounded, he had refused to surrender, 
 he could have been killed on the inside of it and at long range. The 
 chances for him to escape were as one to 10,000, and not even 
 that; but it was never intended that he should be captured. It 
 was his blood the bloody wretches were after blood that would 
 bring money in the official market of Missouri. 
 
 And this great commonwealth leagued with a lot of self-con- 
 fessed robbers, highwaymen and prostitutes to have one of its citi- 
 zens assassinated, before it was positively known he had ever com- 
 mitted a single crime worthy of death. 
 
 Of course everything that can be said about the dead man to 
 justify the manner of his killing, will be said; but who is saying it? 
 Those with the blood of Jesse James on their guilty souls. Those 
 who conspired to murder him. Those who wanted the reward, and 
 would invent any lie or concoct any diabolical story to get it. They 
 have succeeded, but such a cry of horror and indignation at the 
 infernal deed is even now thundering over the land that if a single 
 one of the miserable assassins had either manhood, conscience, or 
 courage, he would go, as another Judas, and hang himself. But so 
 sure as God reigns, there never was a dollar of blood-money obtained 
 yet which did not bring with it perdition. Sooner or later there 
 
164 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 comes a day of vengeance. Some among the murderers are mere 
 beasts of prey. These, of course, can only suft'er through cold, or 
 hunger or thirst; but whatever they dread most that thing will hap- 
 pen. Others again among the murderers are sanctimonious devils 
 who plead the honor of the State, the value of law and order, the 
 splendid courage required to shoot an unarmed man in the back of 
 the head; and these will be stripped to their skin of all their preten- 
 sions, and made to shiver and freeze, splotched as they aie and 
 spotted and piebald with blood, in the pitiless storm of public con- 
 tempt and condemnation. This to the leaders will be worse than 
 death. 
 
 Nor is the end yet. If Jesse James had been hunted down as 
 any other criminal, and killed while trying to escape or in resisting 
 arrest, not a word would have been said to the contrary. He had 
 sined and he had suffered. In his death the majesty of the law 
 would have been vindicated ;but here the law itself becomes a muid< rrr. 
 It leagues with murderers. It hires murderers. It aids and aU is 
 murderers. It borrows money to pay and reward murderers. 
 It promises immunity and protection to murderers. It is itself a 
 murderer the most abject, the most infamous, and the most cow- 
 ardly ever known to history. Therefore this so-called law is an out- 
 law, and these so-called executors of the law are outlaws. There- 
 fore let Jesse James' comrades and he has a few remaining worth 
 all the Fords and Littles that could be packed together between St. 
 Louis and St. Joe do unto them as they did unto him. Yes, the 
 end is not yet, nor should it be. The man had no trial. What 
 right had any officer of this State to put a price upon his head and 
 hire a band of cut-throats and highwaymen to murder him for 
 money ? 
 
 Anything can be told of man. The whole land is filled with 
 liars and robbers, and assassins. Murder is easy for a Lucdrtd 
 dollars. Nothing is safe that is pure or unsuspecting, or just, tut 
 it is not to be supposed that the law will become an ally and a 
 co-worker in this sort of a civilization. Jesse James Ins been 
 murdered, first, because an immense price had been set upon his 
 head, and there isn't a low-lived scoundrel to-day in Missouri who 
 wouldn't kill his own father for money; and second, because lie 
 was made the scape-goat of every train robber, foot-pad and high- 
 wayman between Iowa and Tex?is. Worse men a thousand times 
 than the dead man have been hired to do this thing. The very 
 character of the instruments chosen shows the infairc us nature of 
 the work required. The hand that slew him had to be a traitors ! Into 
 all the warp and woof of the devil's work there were threads woven 
 by the fingers of a harlot. What a spectacle ! Missouri, with 
 splendid companies and regiments of militia. Missouri, with a 
 hundred and seventeen sheriffs, as brave and as efficient on the aver- 
 age as any men on earth. Missouri, with a watchful and vigilant 
 marshal in every one of her principal towns and cities. Missouri, 
 with every screw and cog and crank and lever and wheel of her 
 administrative machinery in perfect working order. Missouri, \A iih 
 all her order, progress and development, had yet to 'surrender all 
 these in the face of a single man a hunted, lied-upon, proscribed 
 and outlawed man, trapped and located in the midst of thirty -five 
 thousand people and ally with some five or six cut-throats and 
 prostitutes that the majesty of the law might be vindicated, and the 
 good name of the State saved from all further reproach ! Saved ! 
 Why, the whole State reeks to-day with a double orgy that of lust 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 165 
 
 and that of murder. What the men failed to do, the women 
 accomplished. 
 
 Tear the two bears from the flag of Missouri. Put thereon, in 
 place of them, as more appropriate, a thief blowing out the brains 
 of an unarmed victim, and a brazen harlot, naked to the waist and 
 splashed to the brows in blood. 
 
 "VETERAN SAM." 
 
 [Kansas City Times, July 31, 1884.] 
 
 MY DEAR FRIEND Enclosed please find a picture of an old 
 friend of yours. You will probably recognize him as the old "Col- 
 orado Sam" who helped to escort you and General Marmaduke 
 across Current River, by way of Chalk Bluff, and again met you at 
 Prairie Grove, and was on the "war-path" all through the "Price 
 Raid," and all through Missouri, bushwhacking around against your 
 boys. 
 
 I have him now at home, a living monument of what once was 
 the most faithful friend that man ever had in "times that tried men's 
 souls." A faithful and obedient servant in war, and a loving and 
 true friend in peace; a target for Confederate bullets; roughing 
 it with the boys; oftentimes half fed and ridden well nigh to 
 death, he never complained. All through the great struggle of the 
 bitterest war that was ever waged, he never failed in the performance 
 of his allotted duty, and now at thirty years of age, he has found a 
 home with his old master, there to pass away the remaining years of 
 his life, amid all the luxuries that horseflesh could desire. A play- 
 thing for the children, a pet for the women and a friend and comrade 
 of the man that fought with and against him, "Veteran Sam," long 
 may he live. Your old friend, 
 
 E. W. KINGSBURY. 
 
 P. S. I expect to ride him at the celebration of Elaine's inaug- 
 ural. 
 
 "VETERAN SAM." 
 
 [St. Joseph Gazette, August 3, 1884.] 
 
 Elsewhere in to-day's paper we publish a letter from an old 
 friend and associate of the old days, Capt. E. W. Kingsbury, now 
 of Kansas City. It will explain itself. It will tell of a veteran 
 war horse, thirty years of age, which has at last come back into 
 the hands of his old master, where, if tenderness and affection can 
 avail aught, he will have added to the already lengthy span of his 
 life many more good and thrifty years. 
 
 Captain Kingsbury commanded Company A, of the Second 
 Colorado Cavalry Regiment, and if there was a finer company or a 
 galanter Captain in either army, the war history up to date makes 
 no mention of the fact. Indeed, the whole Regiment was noted for 
 its staying and fighting qualities. Quantrell and his lieutenants 
 had been doing pretty much as they pleased along the Kansas 
 border until the Second Colorado came. They would congregate, 
 make a desperate dash, do some sudden deed of wholesale killing, 
 and disappear. Seeing in the night like any other beasts of prey, 
 they mustered and raided while it was the darkest. Ordinarily they 
 were never followed into the brush. Ordinarily the foremost 
 among the great bulk of the pursuers stopped short at the timber 
 line as though it were a line of unindurable fire. 
 
166 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 Composed largely of plainsmen, miners, men of the frontier 
 and old Indian fighters, the Coloradans stopped at nothing. Whether 
 by day or by night, when they struck a trail they followed it to a 
 funeral. " Damn these fellows," Quantrell used to say, over and 
 over again, " will nothing ever stop them?" It was very hard to do. 
 Shelby was the only man who ever did, and he had to give up about 
 eight hundred of his very best in less than an hour's fighting to do 
 even that much. It was* near Newtonia, Newton County, Missouri 
 a place where was fought one of the quickest, hottest, bloodiest 
 little combats of the Civil War. It was the last combat of the Price 
 Raid, of 1864, and took place on a prairie almost as level as a sea 
 strand. Shelby was still covering the rear of Price's stricken expe- 
 ditionary column, as he had been, day and night, ever since the fight 
 at Mine Creek, near to where Pleasanton, Kansas, now stands. 
 Every furious onslaught had failed either to break or shake his hold 
 loose from the rear. He fought, ran, turned about, fought again, 
 ran some more, wheeled round again, still kept fighting, and finally 
 saved everything that was left to him to save after Mine Creek. 
 
 Blunt, a grand soldier in every way, and a grand man besides 
 took up the hunt where Pleasanton left it off, and poured after the 
 fleeing Confederates a devouring tide of veteran horsemen, the Sec- 
 ond Colorado leading, with Captain Kingsbury and his company in 
 advance of the Regiment. They had two or three squadrons of 
 white houses, and wherever these were encountered the Confederates 
 knew well always that the Second Colorado was to the front. 
 
 Shelby, as he took position in front of Blunt, spoke to his 
 advance,a picked body of soldiers, in curt.sententious phrase: "Boys, 
 there are our old white horses again. It's the Second Colorado. It 
 is going to be a stricken field for somebody. I can't fall back any 
 further, and they won't." 
 
 Thereafter the combat was a duel. The white horses went 
 down fast, but so did a good many other horses which were not 
 white. Most generally where the steed lay, there also lay his rider. 
 No one, unless he has been a participant in a prairie fight between 
 two bodies of veteran soldiers, knows how bloody and pitiless they 
 most of them were. No tree, no hillock, no sway of the ground, no 
 shelter. It was a savage grapple out on the open, where, when all 
 w^as done, he who held the field had nothing to exalt himself over 
 him who surrendered it, fighting. Captain Kingsbury was badly 
 wounded at Newtonia, and so was his brave old horse, "Veteran 
 Sam," a picture of whom, in his thirtieth year, his old master has 
 just sent to the editor of this newspaper. 
 
 This little present is prized much. It recalls events of the old 
 war days which were made happy, some of them, with faithful com- 
 radeship, and some of them made sad as with tears. Perhaps no 
 two bodies of opposing soldiers ever had more real respect for each 
 other, or oftener gave evidence of it than did Shelby's men and the 
 Coloradans. They fought each other desperately, but when the 
 fighting was done whichever side held the field that side made mer- 
 ciful haste to look after the wounded. Since the war, and when- 
 ever any of these two bodies meet, there is always a lovefeast. In 
 Jackson county, where fully two regiments of Shelby's old soldiers 
 used to reside, and where there are living to-day many of Quant- 
 rell's most savage guerrillas, Captain Kingsbury s name is a house- 
 hold word, and many is the story tbey tell to this day of the daring 
 and prowess of the " Colorado boys." 
 
 In wishing again, therefore, a still further lease of life for 
 " Veteran Sam," we do not well see how we could put it stronger 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 167 
 
 than by wishing that he may live until his gallant master rides him 
 at the " celebration of Elaine's inaugural." 
 
 ADDRESS ACCEPTING A FLAG. 
 
 [From the Camden, Arkansas, Herald, February 26, 1864.] 
 
 Captain J. N. Edwards, of Shelby's Brigade, received the 
 banner on the part of the escort, with the following address: 
 Ladies, Mr. Speaker and Soldiers: 
 
 In receiving this flag, as the representative of this Company, I 
 take upon myself a proud and pleafeing task. Made by the fair hands 
 of woman; dedicated to a grand and glorious cause; sanctified by 
 the holy symbols of a true faith its crest to-day is as bright as the 
 sunlight that flashes on steel. Pure and stainless as an angel-guarded 
 child, it must never be dishonored. It is confided to your keeping 
 as a tender and timid maiden gives her virgin heart to the first sweet 
 whisperings of love. Cherish it, protect it, fight for it, die for it. 
 There is a day to come when it must receive its baptism of fire and 
 blood in the rattle of discordant musketry, and the thunder of impa- 
 tient drums. Let it ever be on the crest of battle, its blue folds the 
 meteor of the storm, its bright associations cheering the warrior's 
 heart like the white plume of Navarre. Once more the spring-time 
 comes with the tread of invading armies, and the shouts of cruel 
 foe. The road is plain and the path is beaten. Here are the blue 
 skies and the green fields of our native Southland ; here our fathers 
 sleep; and here cluster all our idols and our household gods, glorious 
 with the light and the love of a lifetime; and when the Old Cavalry 
 Division of General Marmaduke takes the field, our enemies will 
 sternly find 
 
 "That Nottingham has archers good; 
 And Yorshire men are stern of mood; 
 Northumbrian prickers wild and rude. ' 
 On Derby's hills the paths are steep; 
 In Ouse and Tyne the fords are deep; 
 And many a banner will be torn, 
 And many a knight to earth be borne, 
 And many a sheaf of arrows spent, 
 'Ere Scotland's king shall cross the Trent." 
 
 Into your hands, veterans of Springfield, Hartville, Prairie 
 Grove and Helena, I surrender this standard. A lady made it; her 
 prayersfollow it; your General gave it; and you will defend it. And 
 oh! amid the wreck and ruin of contending squadrons; the clash of 
 raging steel, and the glare of maddened powder; the shout, the 
 charge, the forlorn rally where beauty and gloom go down together; 
 the wild, tempestous shock of battle; the headlong rush of steed and 
 steel, may God keep it pure and spotless as the grand old flag that 
 waved o'er Sumter's battered walls. When the deadly war is over; 
 when the red banners of strife have gleamed over the last foughten 
 field, and paled beyond the sunset shore; when our gJorious cause 
 has risen beautiful from its urn of death and chamber of decay, with 
 the^ternal sunlight of land redeemed on its wings; and the white 
 pinions of peace, like a brooding dove, are hovering about us, let 
 the memories of this day go with you; let the affections of your 
 hearts go with this old banner all tattered and torn though it may 
 be and cling to it, and linger round it, like the dew on a summer 
 hill. 
 
 In your name I thank the fair donor in your name I thank our 
 gallant General. 
 
168 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 CARRIER'S ADDRESS OF THE MISSOURI EXPOSITOR. 
 January 1, 1861. 
 
 [By John N. Edwards.] 
 
 Time's tireless wing has borne away 
 
 The fond old year of yesterday ; 
 
 Not crowned with flowers, as sweet June dies, 
 
 Mid weeping stars and tender skies, 
 
 And twilight fountains murmering by 
 
 A sad and tender lullaby ; 
 
 But as some grim old warrior falls, 
 
 When foemen storm his castle walls. 
 
 Let winter mourn the monarch dead, 
 
 And heap his snow-drifts on his head 
 
 For all his farewell gifts were hers, 
 
 The ermine robes, the frozen tears, 
 
 The naked trees, and everything 
 
 That wpos and loves her rival, Spring. 
 
 ' Tis vain, perchance, and sad as vain, 
 
 To call its memories back again ; 
 
 Yet from without the silent past, 
 
 Dark shadows o'er the heart are cast ; 
 
 A happy home where death has been, 
 
 To claim the fairest form within ; 
 
 A tress of hair, but it's dimmed by years ; 
 
 A tiny glove, but it's soiled by tears ; 
 
 The little grave on the cold hill-side, 
 
 That was made the morn the baby died, 
 
 Mark all too well the ebb and flow 
 
 Of joys and sorrows here below; 
 
 And the sky is dark, and the night is drear, 
 
 God shield us now from the tempest here ! 
 
 Great events are on the gale 
 
 That soon may tell a darker tale; 
 
 And oh ! it was a fearful sight 
 
 To see the armies ranged for fight. 
 
 Grim Lincoln led the Northern host. 
 
 Imbued too strong with Seward's boast: 
 
 That all the States must now be free, 
 
 And curst the hydra, slavery. 
 
 Yet still against his subtle art 
 
 Came Breckinridge, with lion heart, 
 
 Douglas' war-cry too was heard, 
 
 And Bell's poor, threadbare rallying word. 
 
 They close in conflict loud and high 
 
 Rang banner-shout and battle-cry. 
 
 Some fought for fireside, home, and wife, 
 
 Some fought for natural love of strife, 
 
 And some, alas! for very hate 
 
 Of all our memories, good and great. 
 
 Yet still against the mighty North 
 
 Breckinridge led on his own loved South ; 
 
 And by his side was Yancey's crest, 
 
 A cockade on his dauntless breast 
 
 With lance in rest and spur of fire 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 169 
 
 He charged where burst the storm-cloud higher ; 
 
 South Carolina's wave-kissed shore 
 
 Sent back a proud, defiant roar ; 
 
 And green Virginia's bosom rose 
 
 In sorrow o'er her sisters' woes. 
 
 In vain! in vain their strength and mightl 
 
 In vain was Yancey's giant fight 
 
 Down went the fairest banner there, 
 
 Hurled back the pious patriot's prayer ; 
 
 And baffled, routed, forced to yield, 
 
 They slowly left the hated field. 
 
 Where will it end? God only knows! 
 
 Ask every Southern wind that blows; 
 
 Ask armed men that meet by day, 
 
 And swear to fling their lives away; 
 
 Ask every lone star on high, 
 
 That breathes the freedom of the sky; 
 
 Ask every curse that goes to heaven, 
 
 With hate and fury fiercely laden ; 
 
 Ask South Carolina's bursting shock, 
 
 And feel the Union reel and rock, 
 
 As, with her lone flag in the sky, 
 
 She bids it now a last good-bye. 
 
 All is dreary, dire and dark 
 
 No ray of hope, no tiny spark 
 
 To tell the watchers on the shore 
 
 The ship of state is safe once more. 
 
 Ah! see the grand old vessel quiver 1 
 
 How her timbers groan and shiver ! 
 
 Discord's lightnings flash around her, 
 
 Burn the ropes and shrouds above her; 
 
 Treason's bloated form is there; 
 
 War's cruel sword is keen and bare; 
 
 Ambition scales the dizzy mast, 
 
 And gives a black flag to the blast. 
 
 Helm aport ! hard hard alee! 
 
 God! how deadly white the sea! 
 
 Breakers ! breakers ! through the gloom 
 
 Hear their solemn, sounding boom. 
 
 Can you save her? Pilots, listen ! 
 
 How the grim rocks gleam and glisten! 
 
 Save her for our father's sake, 
 
 Save her for the lives at stake, 
 
 Save her for the precious freight, 
 
 Save our glorious ship of state! 
 
 Starry flag, float on, unfurled, 
 
 The beacon of the wide, wide world, 
 
 And bear for aye, o'er land and sea, 
 
 The magic spell-word, Liberty! 
 
 Cause on effect fate's giant wing 
 Is dark with terrors yet to bring, 
 And every day but adds a leaf 
 To destiny's sad book of grief. 
 Scarce e'er the mockery had begun, 
 To welcome England's monarch's son, 
 A helpless mass of bleeding clay, 
 The dying, butchered Walker lay, 
 
170 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 And Rudler pines where tropics shed 
 
 A living poison on his head. 
 
 Away! away! o'er leagues away! 
 
 Italia's night is almost day. 
 
 Hear the watchword Como rings 
 
 With the melody it brings. 
 
 Fight as brothers let us die 
 
 Die beneath our own loved sky! 
 
 Charge, then, heroes, do not waver, 
 
 Charge once more, and then you save her. 
 
 Charge with Freedom's battle-cry, 
 
 Charge with Garibaldi! 
 
 Spain in torpor long had lain, 
 
 Now starts to living life again; 
 
 And Austria, wounded near to death, 
 
 Is threatening, with her feeble breath. 
 
 The garlands Solferino gave, 
 
 May deck the first Napoleon's grave; 
 
 But France needs other trophies now, 
 
 To bind around her monarch's brow; 
 
 A wild, grand shock where armies meet, 
 
 Crowns and kingdoms at her feet 
 
 A second Moscow's lurid glare 
 
 Where England's Windsor towers fair; 
 
 The cold, despotic Russian Czar 
 
 Is brooding o'er Italian war, 
 
 And now a low, deep, deadly cry, 
 
 Is bursting out from Hungary. 
 
 Let tyrants tremble Freedom's star 
 
 Is hung upon the verge of war, 
 
 And but to gain it crowns will sink, 
 
 Thrones totter on the fearful brink; 
 
 Sacked cities swell with lurid breath, 
 
 The reeking pestilence of death 
 
 Till God's eternal justice reigns, 
 
 And blood wipes out the peasant's pains. 
 
 When sick of foreign courts and places, 
 
 Sick of titled heads and faces 
 
 Come gladly back to Lafayette, 
 
 The gem of Missouri's coronet. 
 
 Now where the velvet prairies gleam, 
 
 With flowery robe and sparkling stream, 
 
 The iron horse, with rapid flight 
 
 Will wake the echoes of the night; 
 
 And proudly toss its burning crest, 
 
 In honor to the giant West. 
 
 And where, beneath the grand, bright sun, 
 
 Is fairer town than Lexington? 
 
 God bless her commerce, trade and arts, 
 
 God bless her generous people's hearts, 
 
 And bless and crown her lovely girls 
 
 With smiles of love, and waves of curls 
 
 Till every glance of merry light 
 
 Will raise them up a chosen knight. 
 
 Who'll swear by faith and tiny glove, 
 
 Who'll break a lance for his lady-love! 
 
 Thus, on the dawn of sixty-one, 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 
 
 Its uutried journey just begun 
 
 I wish you health, and wealth, and joy, 
 
 And gift besides for the CARRIER BOY. 
 
 MURDER DONE; OR, THE GYPSY'S STORY. 
 
 [By John N. Edwards.] 
 (1870.) 
 
 Months of sorrow and days of sin ; 
 A life gone out as the knife went in. 
 Hush ! The moon was too young to see, 
 The shadows they fled aghast from me ; 
 And a spirit wailed out from the open door : 
 ' A dead man lies on the chamber floor! " 
 
 Evelyn Clare was debonair, 
 
 Darkness dwelt in his dreamy hair 
 
 Dwelt, and dallied, and tangled in 
 
 Much of sorrow and more of sin. 
 
 Hush ! The moon was behind a cloud 
 
 Hidden away as a corpse in a shroud : 
 
 Hidden away, but it peered at *ne, 
 
 Peered and grinned through the aspen tree ! 
 
 Love is ripe fruit ready to fall 
 
 In the arms of the sunshine over the wall 
 
 So fleet to fall and die in a day, 
 
 Its red gold ruined and kissed away. 
 
 Isabel came with her peach-colored face, 
 
 Ringlets ablow and her baby grace 
 
 Came and sighed and evil came after, 
 
 And blood and tears in the wine of laughter 
 
 'Till Isabel's lips in moan go over 
 
 All the languid lips of her lover. 
 
 Evelyn Clare was a king, they said, 
 
 Crowned with love from the heart to the head ; 
 
 A pale-browed king to dabble about 
 
 In seas of silks, and revel, and rout, 
 
 With kisses for coin and ruined hair, 
 
 A panther- king in his school-girl lair. 
 
 Girt about with adorable things, 
 
 Scented scarfs and talisman rings, 
 
 Plentiful tresses shorn away 
 
 From heads grown old and gray in a day. 
 
 The air was a song and the song had a tune, 
 
 Meet for the mystical roses of June. 
 
 The earth and the sky, and the sky and the air 
 
 Were all in league with Evelyn Clare. 
 
 He came and whispered : "My Gypsy maid, 
 
 Give me a tangled lock to braid." 
 
 To braid ! Oh, God ! if that were all - 
 
 Hush ! can you hear the dead man fall ? 
 
 I saw youth's crown on his Bacchanal crest, 
 Isabel's face on his dreaming breast 
 
172 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 A lily face with eyes in eclipse, 
 
 Poppy dew on the venomous lips ; 
 
 He stirred but once and the words came free 
 
 " The Gypsy maid is nothing to me." 
 
 Lost ! lost ! lost ! 
 A beautiful soul is lost : 
 A beautiful soul went down down 
 Down like a ship at sea 
 Who knows if a soul be lost ? 
 The moon went into a cave 
 
 Whose stalactites were pointed with stars 
 
 With a scintillant crescent of stars, 
 And a sweet south wind came over the rye 
 
 And broke on the lattice bars. 
 
 It was ten by the castle clock 
 Ten, and the night in bloom, 
 With bud of stars and blossom of clouds, 
 
 And the great rose of the moon. 
 The arbor ivies coiled and clung 
 To hear the accents of his tongue ; 
 And Isabel for sounds to waft her 
 Pleasure-boat had low-toned laughter 
 Laughter such as you seldom hear 
 Under the moon by a dead man's bier. 
 
 Hark ! Is that a step on the staircase there 
 
 Hushed in the light of the great knife bare ? 
 
 Hark ! to the bearded lips that tell : 
 
 " I love you, love you, Isabel !" 
 
 He lay in the moon for the moon to keep 
 
 Opiate wine for the drunkard sleep. 
 
 He lay with arms flung wide apart, 
 
 Weak fence for the guard of the lying heart. 
 
 He lay like a lover taking his rest, 
 
 The red in his cheeks and the dreams in his breast, 
 
 The red in his cheeks and the wind in his hair, 
 
 And Isabel's heart with Evelyn Clare. 
 
 Mad ! Who's mad ? The Gypsy maid, 
 Cast off, abandoned, and betrayed ? 
 Mad ! Who's mad ? The Zingaree 
 The tropical plant from over the sea ? 
 The poisonous flower stripped of its leaves, 
 And bound in the wreath of his lily sheaves ? 
 Avaunt ! pale moon, and send your cloud 
 To rift me the rain of a lover's shroud ! 
 
 Pretty little Isabel, prim as any pink, 
 Did you ever care about did you ever think, 
 Half a summer's afternoon of the suns that shine, 
 Over lovers woed with steel stabbed for kisses over 
 
 wine? 
 
 Waxen lady, Isabel, dainty lady lapped in white, 
 Tawny Gypsies mingle dirges with the bridal's music 
 
 night, 
 Hark ! I hear the dancers dancing, hear the love-lorn 
 
 light guitar, 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 173 
 
 Softer than a maiden's masses for her lover slain in war. 
 Hark ! I hear the waltz's clarion filled with pulses 
 
 fierce as wine, 
 Lit by beauty's blessed beacons, starred by dusky eyes 
 
 divine. 
 Hark ! I hear the pleading prattle wafted from the lips 
 
 of girls, 
 Half their shoulders bare as swimmers, half their heads 
 
 in bloom with curls, 
 Hark ! I hear your Ev'lyn's voice rounding off its 
 
 pliant lies, 
 As the south wind strips the cloud-veil from the summer 
 
 of the skies. 
 
 I struck but once struck hard 1 
 The aspens bowed in the yard ; 
 The moou was hid on valley and hill, 
 The damp dews fell in the window sill. 
 His lips moved once, oh, God ! to tell 
 Death's broken talk to Isabel. 
 The morn came up the broad oak stair, 
 Wan as a childless mother at prayer 
 Came to the face of the stricken sleeper, 
 And hid his lips for the lips of the weeper. 
 Came and went, and the sun came after, 
 Splashed with jrold each beam and rafter ; 
 Came breast high through the open door, 
 And blessed the dead man on the floor. 
 
 Ho ! good right hand, ye are red, ye are red ! 
 And the soul of the lily -browned lover is fled. 
 And lover and maid lie stark and still 
 In a little green grave down under the hill ; 
 And a curse to make the dead afraid 
 Goes up to the sky on the Gypsy maid. 
 The Gypsy maid whom Evelyn Clare 
 Caught in a braid of Gypsy hair, 
 Caught, and snared, and caged in glee, 
 'Till she sung the songs learned over the sea. 
 Sung, and rocked his cradle a bier, 
 Sung, and dropped a venomous tear, 
 Sung, 'till the eyes went into eclipse, 
 And death drank the dew of the bearded lips. 
 
 The old owl up in the aspen tree, 
 
 Spoke last night and glared at me. 
 
 Spoke in a dreary undertone : 
 
 ' ' The dead the dead can the dead make moan ? " 
 
 All last night I lay awake, 
 
 The grass, moon-flecked as a spotted snake, 
 
 Wove pallid hands that grasped in strife, 
 
 A deathly dripping dagger knife. 
 
 And a luminous star from the midnight's crown, 
 
 Suddenly shimmered and settled down, 
 
 Half on the low grave under the hill, 
 
 And half on the tinkling, tremulous rill. 
 
 The dead came forth arid dallied there, 
 
 Isabel Lorn and Evelyn Clare. 
 
 One arm lifted high above her, 
 
174 JOHN NEWMAN ED \VARDS. 
 
 And one about her spectral lover. 
 
 " Make inoan ! " said the owl, cursed fate and death, 
 
 'Twas a love that lived after fleeting breath. 
 
 Here and there the lovers strayed, 
 
 And laughed aloud at the Gypsy maid. 
 
 I strangled his voice, but oh, God ! 
 
 I would I could strangle the moan 
 That rushes up from the silent sod 
 
 When I walk with the midnight alone I 
 
 THE BIVOUAC OF THE DEAD. 
 
 (.Kansas City Times, 1872.] 
 
 One of the most thrilling w ar lyrics in our language is known 
 by this title. A quatrain has heen selected from it to serve as an 
 inscription over the gates of the National Cemetery at Boston, in 
 which the soldiers of Massachusetts are buried. It has probably 
 been printed at sometime or other in every newspaper in the United 
 States. I believe it has almost invariably been mis-printed, and the 
 public is entitled to a correct copy. The occasion for which it was 
 written was duplicated in the State Cemetery of Kentucky on the 
 15th, and this poem was read over the remains of its author by a 
 brother poet, Major Henry Stanton, who had access to original rec- 
 ords that enabled him to verify the text. 
 
 Soon after the Mexican War, Kentucky erected a noble monument 
 to her dead soldiers, and whenMcKee and Clay and others of her he- 
 roes who fell in the gorge of Buena Vista, were reinterred at its base, 
 their comrades in arms, the brave and gifted Theodore O'Hara, wrote 
 " The Bivouac of the Dead " as the poem of the occasion. Major 
 Cary H. Fry, upon whom the command of the Second Kentucky 
 Regiment devolved after the Colonel and Lieutenant-Colonel fell, 
 was present when the poem was first read in public. On the 15th 
 there was another great military and civic diplay on the same spot, 
 and the same poem was read over the remains of O'Hara and Fry. 
 In the war between the States they had served in opposing armies, 
 but the State had their moldering coffins, with that of Adjutant 
 Cardwell, brought from far distant graves to rest side by side with 
 their comrades of the Mexican War. General Wm. C. Preston 
 delivered the funeral eulogy, and we subjoin his sketch of the 
 author, before introducing the poem : 
 
 "Theodore O'Hara was a native of this county, the son of a 
 father well known throughout the State for his accomplishments as 
 a scholar and his worth as a citizen. Receiving a good classical 
 education from his parent, O'Hara entered upon life blessed with 
 an ardent mind, a handsome person, and a brave and generous char- 
 acter. He soon became known to the public as an editor in the city 
 of Louisville, where the easy grace and scholarly polish of his arti- 
 cles soon attracted attention and placed him high in the favor of the 
 Democratic party. He did not remain long in this pursuit, but war 
 being declared against Mexico, he abandoned a profession in which 
 he was rapidly acquiring distinction, and accepted a captain's com- 
 mission in the army. His dashing character .and poetic tem- 
 perament made him popular in a service suited to his tastes and 
 genius, and, sharing the dangers and the glory of our arms from 
 Vera Cruz to Mexico, O'Hara remained in service until the termina- 
 tion of the war. Not long after this period, O'Hara was one of 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 175 
 
 those who landed with the force at Cardenas under General Lopez 
 for the liberation of Cuba, when Crittenden, Logan and others per- 
 ished, but he escaped with a few of the survivors. 
 
 " When the recent war between the States commenced, O'Hara 
 at once embraced the cause of the South, to whose principles he had 
 always adhered , and became a staff officer under General Brecken- 
 ridge. In the Confederate armies O'Hara by his courage and serv- 
 ices, attained the rank of colonel, and after the establishment of 
 peace retired with a constitution impaired by the hardships of mili- 
 tary life to the vicinity of Columbus, Ga. , where he not long after- 
 ward died. Having known Colonel O'Hara intimately, both in his 
 campaigns in Mexico and in the South; having enjoyed the pleasures 
 that his cultivated mind and genial temper gave to the camp-fire or 
 the march; having witnessed his brilliant courage and quick discern- 
 ment in battle; having seen him in the defiles of Mexico, by the side 
 of Sidney Johnson in his dying moments at Shiloh, and with Breck- 
 euridge in his charge at Stone River, I here, in this solemn moment, 
 can sincerely say that I believe no braver heart will rest beneath 
 this consectrated sod, and no spirit more knightly or humane ever 
 lingered under the shadow of yonder monument." 
 
 The following is the correct text of "The Bivouac of the 
 Dead:" 
 
 The muffled drum's sad roll has beat 
 
 The soldier's last tattoo ! 
 No more on life's parade shall meet 
 
 That brave and fallen few; 
 On fame's eternal camping ground 
 
 Their silent tents are spread. 
 And glory guards, with solemn round, 
 
 The bivouac of the dead. 
 
 No rumor of the foe's advance 
 
 Now swells upon the wind, 
 No troubled thought at midnight haunts 
 
 Of loved ones left behind ; 
 No vision of the morrow's strife 
 
 The warrior's dream alarms, 
 No braying horn nor screaming fife 
 
 At dawn shall call to arms. 
 
 Their shivered swords are red with rust, 
 
 Their plumed heads are bowed, 
 Their haughty banner, trailed in dust, 
 
 Is now their martial shroud 
 And plenteous funeral tears have washed 
 
 The red stains from each brow, 
 And the proud forms, by battle gashed, 
 
 Are free from anguish now. t 
 
 The neighing troop, the flashing blade. 
 
 The bugle's stirring blast, 
 The charge, the dreadful cannonade. 
 
 The din and shout are past 
 Nor war's wild note, nor glory's peal, 
 
 Shall thrill with fierce delight 
 Those breasts that never more may feel 
 
 The rapture of the tight. 
 
 Like the fierce Northern hurricane 
 
 That sweeps his great plateau, 
 Flushed with the triumph yet to gain 
 
 Came down the serried foe 
 Who heard the thunder of the fray 
 
 Break o-er the field beneath. 
 Know well the watch word of that day 
 
 Was victory or death. 
 
176 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 Full many a norther's breath has swept 
 
 O'er Angostura's plain, 
 And long; the pitying sky has wept 
 
 Above its molder'd slain. 
 The raven's scream or eagle's flight, 
 
 Or shepherd's pensive lay, 
 Alone now wake each solemn height 
 
 That frowned o'er that dead fray. 
 
 Sons of the Dark and Bloody Ground! 
 
 Ye must not slumber there, 
 Where stranger steps and tongues resound 
 
 Along the heedless air; 
 Your own proud land's heroic soil 
 
 Shall be your fitter grave; 
 She claims from war its richest spoil 
 
 The ashes of her brave. 
 
 Thus, 'neath their parent turf they rest; 
 
 Far from the gory field, 
 Borne to a Spartan mother's breast 
 
 On many a bloody shield. 
 The sunshine of their native sky 
 
 Smiles sadly en them here, 
 And kindred eyes and hearts watch by 
 
 The heroes' sepulchre. 
 
 Rest on, embalmed and sainted deadl 
 
 Dear as the blood ye gave; 
 No impious footstep here shall tread 
 
 The herbage of your grave; 
 Nor shall your glory be forgot 
 
 While fame her record keeps, 
 Or honor points the hallowed spot 
 
 Where valor proudly sleeps. 
 
 Yon marble minstrel's voiceless stone, 
 
 In deathless song shnll tell, 
 When many a vanished year hath flown. 
 
 The story how ye fell; 
 Nor wreck, nor change, nor winter's blight. 
 
 Nor time's remorseless doom, 
 Can dim one ray of holy light 
 
 That gilds your glorious tomb. 
 
 THE MARRIAGE OF PERE HYACINTHE. 
 
 [Kansas City Times.] 
 
 This man, with a name like a flower, would lead a revolution. 
 This French priest charitable, amorous, poetical would deal with 
 an iron and austere thing like celibacy, and dismiss it as a thread- 
 bare cassock or cowl. To prepare himself for the conflict, he has 
 just married. From out the soft and mellowed light of his honey- 
 moon, and from amid the ardent transports of his delicious life, he 
 has written in favor of matrimony. Were this document nothing 
 but a great, palpitating heart, its settings and adornments are com- 
 plete. It is uxorious, roseate, sensuous, full of little sentences like 
 a sigh thick with images like his nights with kisses. 
 
 If Hyacinthe was not a Frenchman, he would understand how 
 fruitless the work which would seek to batter down a wall with 
 an ostrich feather. If he had not mistaken vanity for inspiration, 
 he would understand how hopeless the task of attackirg in the 
 name of the church an ordinance interwoven with the very fibers of 
 the church. Excommunicated, he yet aspires to the altar ; man- 
 sworn, he yet clings to the odors of a former sanctity ; awake in the 
 hush of his honeymoon nights, he yet hears in his memory the 
 matin and the vesper bells of Rome; and happy in the arms and the 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 177 
 
 smiles of his wife, he would yet be happy in the holy robes and 
 vestments of his order. 
 
 The last is impossible. Good Catholic he may be, and zealous 
 in the cause of his God and his church, but a priest nevermore for 
 ever. He has violated his vows of celibacy, he has lifted his hand 
 against his faith, he has faltered in the presence of the enemy, and 
 he has been cashiered and dismissed. It is well. The time has 
 come when French sensationalism should receive a check. Cathol- 
 icism has had quite enough of Lacordaire, Michelet, Renan, Hya- 
 ciuthe, and Victor Hugo. Caesar's prayer was pitiful, but it was full 
 of prophecy: "Oh! God, if Rome is to be cursed, curse her not with 
 old men in her extremity." And if the church of Paris could cry 
 out it would be in thunder tones against the deadly reign of materi- 
 alism falsely called science; of sensationalism; of a philosophy so 
 servile as to become infidelity; of that furious yearning and striving 
 after impossible and invisible things; of the poets who coin their 
 genius into satire that religion maybe wounded; of authors who 
 deny the Christ that miracles maybe lampooned; and of priests 
 like Hyacinthe who, to win popular applause, wear the cassock to-day 
 and the masquerade dress to-morrow. 
 
 Let the iron creed and discipline of the church pass over them 
 all. Brilliant Hyacinthe believed himself a Mahomet, but in lieu 
 of the scimetar he carried an orange blossom. In the early years 
 of his priesthood, and when all Paris came to his ministrations at 
 Notre Dame, the rustle of a silken gown affrighted, and the flash 
 of a black eye drove him beyond the bright line of the chandelier's 
 light. Now how changed. Bitten by the tarantula of sensation- 
 alism, the man who only had his voice, his beautiful white hands, 
 his wonderful rhetoric, French and staccato, his eyes that were 
 violet at times and at times dreamy or brown this man, adored of 
 the women, and watched from afar by grisettes and dames of grand 
 degree, turned upon Rome because he could make a pretty parable, 
 and demanded of Rome a thing that Rome would not give even to 
 Rome itself. Baffled, he rebelled. New York received him in 
 finished New York fashion, and for a month he was a lion. Some 
 Yankees, shrewder than others were, flattered him with a future 
 filled by an American Pope, and painted for him a spiritual empire 
 as grand as the continent. Having embraced one lust, he dallied 
 with another, and for long days he staggered upon the edge of the 
 pit that had been dug for him. He did not fall in, but he did not 
 repent, and so he returned to Europe to marry, and to continue his 
 absurd and ridiculous issue with the church. 
 
 Luther led a revolution ; Hyacinthe wages an emeute. Between 
 a revolution and an emeute there is this difference; the first comes 
 from the masses, the last from the passions; the first destroys, pulls 
 down, obliterates, but it builds up, re-creates and re establishes; the 
 last consumes, demolishes, stagnates, dies; the first commits great 
 crimes that good may follow; the last commits the same that 
 bad may follow. Luther married and went on to a warfare that 
 was audacious and gigantic; Hyacinthe marries and only marries. 
 Beyond this he claims to be all that he ever promised to be when he 
 took his vows the same in faith, in belief, in creed and in doc- 
 trine. Poor Frenchman, not to know that in breaking one vow 
 he broke them all, and that, should the days of Methuselah be his, 
 he can never more be received in the bosom of that church he has 
 forsaken for the white arms and the scented hair of his beloved. 
 
178 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 / 
 
 NAPOLEON AND HIS DETRACTORS. 
 
 [Kansas City Time*, August 10, 1888.] 
 
 This is the title of a book written by Prince Napoleon, which is 
 just now getting well under fire in England. If it has been trans- 
 lated and reprinted in this country it is well; if it has not been so 
 done the sooner it is done the better all of which means that the 
 sooner it is done the sooner will some publishing house put a pile of 
 money into its pocket. 
 
 The animus against this publication, on the part of the London 
 Illustrated News is that it touches up strong points that are facile 
 and leaves untouched other points which are still more facile and 
 still more unassailable. 
 
 Let us look into this question a little bit. The News says that he 
 disposes in a most masterly manner of Bourienne, Madame de 
 Remusat, Miot de Melito, the Abbe de Pradt and Prince Metternich, 
 and then adds we quote it literally: " But what is to be said of a 
 champion who enters and quits these particular lists without ventur- 
 ing to touch the shield of M Lanfrey?" 
 
 The shield of M. Lanfrey! Angels and ministers of grace, 
 defend us; why not say the shield of Sir Walter Scott? The last 
 wrote to be a baronet. He prostituted his splendid genius to pull 
 down a man who, in his Scottish heart of hearts he must have 
 adored, and who in so many elements of his character must have 
 been near of kin to all those heroes who stood out like men of iron 
 from the pages of " Marmion," the " Lady of the Lake," " Rokeby " 
 and the " Lord of the Isles." 
 
 Lanfrey ! One approaches him as one might well approach a 
 snake. Did he attack the genius of Napoleon as a soldier? he 
 could not. Did he attack his campaigns, where every capital was 
 an outpost and every sovereign a mere cup-bearer? he could not. 
 Did he attack his capacity as a lawgiver, wherein he wrote like Tac- 
 itus and collated like Justinian? he could not. What, then, did he 
 do? He wrote so that the Bourbons might give him the gewgaw of 
 a ribbon and the grimcrack of a decoration . He wrote of Napoleon's 
 private life; of his supposed lusts and his supposed love affairs; of 
 My Lord Petulancy and My Lord Impatience; of how he took ten 
 minutes to dinner and ten hours to his studies; of how he had shot 
 Palm, a bookseller, and d'Enghien, a prince; of how he made gren- 
 adiers out of stable grooms and marshals of France out of men who 
 had bled horses. Poor babbler! Mme. de Remusat could havedone 
 better than that. Her grievance was that groping one night cer- 
 tainly en dishabille to find Napoleon's chamber she stumbled across 
 Roustem, the Arab, swart, wide awake and lying prone across the 
 threshold. She fled, shrieking, iust as the tawny hand of the east 
 clutched at the white garments or western civilization. From that 
 hour Madame de Remusat looked upon Napoleon as an ogre. If 
 they had embraced, perhaps she would have looked upon him as an 
 angel. Who knows? When Don Juan found Miss Fitz Fulke at 
 the end of the corridor, whatever else happened, no skeleton has 
 ever yet outlined itself to prove Miss Blue Stocking right, or to prove 
 the propriety of putting a spray or two of lilacs on the grave where 
 Miss Prim Propriety lies buried. Lanfrey Remusat! While attack- 
 ing Napoleon for the large embraces that happened in his God-ap- 
 pointed career, contemporaneous history has perhaps forgotten that 
 Lanfrey was a Bourbon sneak and Madame a baffled lady of the bed 
 chamber. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 179 
 
 The News makes other points which we desire especially to refer 
 to. It admits everything as connected with Napoleon's military 
 genius, but it qualifies everything because the military side of his 
 character does not comport with his moral side. In proof of this 
 he cites several instances. Perhaps the most salient is this one 
 wherein he refers to the author of the book : 
 
 Nor has he a word to bestow on such a wretched business as 
 his uncle's legacy to Cantillon, the French officer who was tried for 
 an attempt on the life of the Duke of Wellington perhaps the most 
 hopelessly ignoble bequest which has ever found its way into any 
 testamentary document on record. 
 
 We challenge the record to prove that Napoleon ever left a 
 legacy to Cantillon because he proposed to assassinate the Duke of 
 Wellington. He denied it. Every instinct and action of his whole 
 life proved it to be a lie. Of course it is easy to enclose in the last 
 will and testament of such a man as Bonaparte, administered upon 
 by the Bourbons, the final development of a thousand daggers; but 
 all such stuff as this, and all such stuff as the Wellington assassin- 
 ation is bogus. 
 
 Per contra. When the dead body of George Cadoudal was 
 searched he had on his person a hundred and some odd sovereigns 
 of British money. When Luttrel was grabbed with more British 
 gold on his person, and a bale or two of incendiary proclamations 
 ready to be issued out of hand, he was not shot but set free. The 
 whole career of Napoleon was merciful to such a degree that every 
 unbiased historian has taken notice of it. We do not discuss these 
 moral aspects of Bonaparte's character. We only contend against 
 the proposition that the News sets up, that he must be judged by his 
 moral example that is to say, whether he kissed a woman more or 
 less, whether he pardoned a criminal more or less, or whether he 
 bore himself circumspectly more or less. 
 
 Nothing of Lodi ! Nothing of the Pyramids ! Nothing of Mon- 
 tenotte! Nothing of Arcola! Nothing of Marengo! Nothing of 
 the transfiguration one half inspiration and the other half endow- 
 ment where the corporal became emperor. 
 
 The News does not even skim the surface. It sums up every- 
 thing, but it does not deliver. 
 
180 
 
 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 THE BEST ONE HUNDRED BOOKS. 
 
 A RECENT LIST ARRANGED BY MAJOR J. N. EDWARDS. 
 [Kansas City Times, April 7th, 1889. 
 
 The Bible. 
 
 Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the 
 Roman Empire. 
 
 Hume's History of England. 
 
 Thiers' French Revolution. 
 
 Thitrs' Consulate and Empire ; 
 Lamartine. 
 
 History of the Girondists. 
 
 Michelet's Roman Republic. 
 
 Mommsen's Rome. 
 
 Les Miserables. 
 
 Shakespeare, with Lear, first of all 
 his plays. 
 
 Voltaire's Louis XIV. 
 
 Voltaire's Charles XII. 
 
 Prescott's Mexico and Ferdinand 
 and Isabella. 
 
 Charles V and Philip II. 
 
 Motley's Rise of the Dutch Repub- 
 lic ; United Netherlands, and John 
 of Barneveld. 
 . Guizot's History of France. 
 
 Macaulay's History of England ; 
 his Essays and his Lays. 
 
 Lamartine's History of Turkey. 
 
 Hugo's Ninety-Three. 
 
 Hugo's Toiler's of the Sea. 
 
 Grammont's Memoirs. 
 
 Louvet's Chevalier de Faublas 
 O'Mera's Voice from St. Helena. 
 
 Montholon's Memoirs. 
 
 Scott's Ivanhoe, the Lady of the 
 Lake, Marmion and Lord of the Isles. 
 
 Rossetti's Poems. 
 
 Swineburne's Laus Veneris. 
 
 Irving's life of Washington and 
 his Fall of Grenada. 
 
 Rollin's Ancient History. 
 
 Dumas' Count of Monte Cristo and 
 Three Guardsmen. 
 
 Wandering Jew. 
 
 Burke's Lives of the Popes. 
 
 Hildreth's History of the United 
 States. 
 
 Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. 
 
 Napier's Peninsula War. 
 
 Josephus. 
 
 Froude's Julius Caezar. 
 
 Tactitus what can be gotten of 
 him. 
 
 Soutonius as fragmentarj r as it 
 is. 
 
 Memoirs of Baron Besenval. 
 
 Carlyle's French Revolution and 
 Frederick the Great. 
 
 Tennyson's Poems as a Whole. 
 
 Kinglake's Crimean War. 
 
 Cooper's five stories, known as 
 the Pathfinder Series. 
 
 Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter. 
 
 The Koran. 
 
 Plutarch's Lives. 
 
 Csezar Commentaries. 
 
 Jomin's Campaigns of Napoleon, 
 also his Art of War. 
 
 Thackeray's Georges. 
 
 Bulwer's Strange Story and What 
 Will He Do With It ? 
 Dickens' Mutual Friend and Bleak 
 House. 
 
 Lawrence's Guy Livingstone and 
 Barren Honour. 
 
 What is left of Livy. 
 
 Napoleon's War Maxims. 
 
 Xenophon's Anabasis. 
 
 The Iliad. 
 
 Smith's Wealth of Nations. 
 
 Hazlitt's Life of Napoleon. 
 
 Memoirs of the Duchess Abrantes. 
 
 Coleridge's Ancient Mariner. 
 
 Byron's Poems. 
 
 Knight's History of England. 
 
 Charles O'Malley and Tom Burke 
 of Ours. 
 
 Davis's Poems, The Irish Patriot. 
 
 Southey's Life of Nelson. 
 
 Orators of France. 
 
 Democracy in America. 
 
 Chesney's Military Biographies. 
 
 Life of Marion. 
 
 Antommarchi Autopsy on Napo- 
 leon. 
 
PERSONAL TRIBUTES 
 
 TO 
 
 MAJOR JOHN N. EDWARDS 
 
 " A man there came whence none could tell 
 
 Bearing a touchstone in his hand, 
 And by its unerring spell 
 
 Tested all things in the land. 
 Quick birth to transmutation smote, 
 The fair to foul the foul to fair- 
 Purple nor ermine did he spare, 
 
 Nor scorn the dusky coat." 
 
 If the west ever produced a man who got at the heart 
 of things, that man was John Edwards. If it has ever 
 produced a man of purely chivalric spirit, of high courage 
 and noble endeavor, a man who knew and loved truth and 
 honor and uprightness and manly bearing, who hated 
 shams and pretense and cant and low cunning, that man 
 was John Edwards. It made no difference how cunning, 
 how deep the deception, how thick the veneering, he went 
 to the core; and it made no difference how rude and rugged 
 and moss-grown the rock, he found the diamond, and found 
 it at the first stroke of hi spick. " He was a good judge of 
 a man." Made by his early education and association 
 somewhat provincial, yet he wrote "Bon Voyage, Miss 
 Nellie," and no native born New Englander with a tra- 
 ditional Mayflower ancestry laid so pure and high a tri- 
 bute on the grave of Henry Ward Beecher. No, he 
 ceased to be provincial save when as a partisan he was 
 " in the saddle and moving things." A born soldier, he 
 knew intuitively when he was in an impregnable position 
 and rested himself, caught at a glance the seam in his 
 opponent's armor, and in a trice his sword-point was 
 
 181 
 
182 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 through it. He was " quick to hear the clarion call, the 
 war steed's neigh, the brave man's battle cry" ; and when 
 the call to the rescue came, when battle had to be made, 
 his voice was heard clearest and loudest, and at the front. 
 But, molded on the heroic type, life to him was always 
 heroic; and if disaster followed, if the battle had been 
 waged and lost, if defeat had come to high courage, if 
 death had laid his hand on a man, or sorrow had so much 
 as touched him with her finger, though an enemy, then no 
 hand was laid more gently on the wound than his, no sad- 
 der dirge was wailed over lolanthe's bier, and no cooing 
 mother ever crooned a sweeter song to soothe her fretted 
 babe. 
 
 Dying in the prime of manhood, his life so full, was yet 
 well rounded and complete. The concentration or fixed- 
 ness of purpose that ever goes hand in hand with genius, 
 was always well upon him, and carried him out beyond 
 the minor affairs of life. Great men have great thoughts 
 and great purposes, and deal only with great things, and 
 John Edwards was a great man. It was of little moment 
 to him whether his own or his friend's garners were full, 
 but it was a matter of great moment to him whether the 
 outlook for food for next year was equal to the needs of 
 the human race. The broils of the neighborhood did not 
 attract him; but with the eye of a seer he watched night 
 and day the movements on the chess-board of Europe; for 
 his own personal salvation he cared little, but for the sal- 
 vation of the world, of whatever brotherhood or creed, he 
 would have offered up his own life. With his broad liber- 
 ality he sacrificed personal gain to the public weal, buried 
 his animosities for the good of his cause, and buried his 
 cause for the good of his race. And yet this man, with the 
 burden of a mission on his shoulders, who led in the for- 
 lorn hope, who was full of the wisdom and traditions of a 
 classic and heroic past, who dealt hard blows with his 
 sword, and wrote hard words with his pen, was as simple 
 and modest as a young girl, depreciating his own efforts 
 and blushing to hear himself praised. In a provincial 
 town, there lived and died a woman who had barely reached 
 
PERSONAL TRIBUTES. 183 
 
 middle life. Standing by her grave, one was struck by the 
 looks of surprise on the iaces of those who had gathered 
 .to perform the last sad. rites. There were Jew and Gen- 
 tile, saint and sinner, the rich and the poor, the literary 
 club and the unlettered serving woman, the frocked priest 
 and non-conformist clergyman, the townspeople in coupes 
 and the country folk in carts, and each creed and class was 
 surprised to see the other, for each thought she belonged to 
 itself. She belonged to none singly, but to all. The in- 
 scription on a little monument near the battle field of 
 Camden came to mind: "To the memory of the noble 
 Baron De Kalb, born in Germany, but a citizen of the 
 world." And around the memory of Major Edwards has 
 again gathered the motley throng the Jew and the Gen- 
 tile, the saint and the sinner, the rich and the poor, the 
 literati and the unlettered laborer, the frocked priest and 
 the non-conformist, the politician and the voter, the 
 townspeople in their coupes and the country men in their 
 carts, the civilian and the soldier, and each class and creed 
 is surprised to see the others, and each avers that he be- 
 longs to itself; and yet he belonged to no race or class or 
 creed or country, but to all, for he was a "citizen of the 
 world." And as each lays his tribute down, it is but the 
 tribute to a single side of this many-sided man. 
 
 Those who have read "Shelby and his Men/' who had 
 followed the career of Major Edwards from 1862 through 
 the varied fortunes of the southern arms, until 1865, when 
 all hope was gone, and he and General Shelby, with a band 
 of chosen and faithful followers, pressed their way south- 
 ward, swam the Rio Grande with their sabers between 
 their teeth and a repeater in either hand, and laid their 
 swords at the feet of the noble but ill-starred Maximilian 
 in the halls of the Montezumas, imagined him to be a 
 giant in stature. Years after, when that most eccentric 
 and phenomenal character, Henry Clay Dean, was on a 
 hurried visit to Kansas City, with but an hour to spare, 
 he called at the Times office for the author of " Poor Car- 
 lotta." When a stripling was presented to him, he was so 
 overwhelmed that he dropped his valise and sat down. He 
 
1C4 JOHN NEWMAN EDWAKDS. 
 
 staid three days, and laid the foundation of an attachment 
 that only death severed. In some respects this ponderous 
 man and the stripling were alike. Both knew how to love 
 and how to hate; both were classic in their tastes Dean 
 being not only, as Edwards was, an elegant and forcible 
 writer, but also a finished and powerful orator, which 
 Edwards was not. Both were poets, although neither ever 
 penned a rhyme, and both belonged to another age, or 
 rather were exponents of a civilization that has passed. 
 The fact that nature reproduces herself is well attested. 
 The child of to-day resembles no living relative, but the 
 picture-gallery reveals its prototype. Is the Past not jealous 
 of the Present? Is she not afraid of oblivion? And does 
 she not send forward, from time to time, a champion of 
 her sacred rites and customs? Such men are among us 
 but not of us. Young though they be, we pay them the 
 reverence and respect that is due to age. They are some- 
 times called, for want of a better term, reactionists; but 
 they are the true conservative element of the times in which 
 they live. The past is known to them; but the future, 
 save as guaged by the past, is a sealed book. John Edwards 
 was such a man. These men discover no new continents, 
 make no revolutions, scan innovations warily, place the 
 brake on the wheels of progress until it is toned down in 
 harmony with precedent, and look askance at the approach- 
 ing stranger; but with things that have been they are 
 en rapport. In an inconstant present they are the faithful 
 custodians of " the sacred things the protecting statutes 
 and the sacred fires/' They are no John the Baptists, 
 proclaiming a new era, but Aarons, faithful to their charge 
 of keeping the fires burning on the altars and keeping 
 pure the records of the dead. They know nothing of barter 
 or trade or of commerce, and demand all things of all men 
 for the common weal. Their lives are heroic lives, and 
 there is not a chronicle of valor, of sacrifice, of 
 stout endeavor, of manly daring, of patient waiting, that 
 is not at their fingers' ends: nor a ballad of love or war 
 that is not familiar to their ears. With the gross and 
 earthly they have nothing in common, but with love, with 
 
PERSONAL TRIBUTES. 185 
 
 devotion, with honor, with sacrifice, their hearts beat in 
 unison. They do not love D'Aramis, the shrewd, recalci- 
 trant priest; but Athos, the chivalric, the gentle man of 
 honor, the pure nobleman; Porthos, the burly Porthos, 
 with his lumbering gait, his loud voice, and his ponderous 
 fist, and his huge shoulders that held up the arch of stone 
 to his own undoing; and D'Artagnan, the wild, royster- 
 iug, loyal " fighting sword blade." Ah! these are men of 
 their kidney. Such men emancipate their heroes of their 
 day, and habilitate them in the forms of the past. If 
 John Edwards sometimes glorified men that we all could 
 not glorify, it was no fault of his. Such deeds and valor 
 as he sang in poetry and song, Sir Walter Scott sang in 
 poetry and song, and Victor Hugo sang in poetry and 
 song, and Alexander Dumas sang in poetry and song. If 
 some of these men interrupted traffic and failed to be 
 conventional as to the rights of holding certain trusts, 
 Ich Van Dor, Eobin Hood, and other favorite heroes of. 
 ours, created the same social disturbances in their day and 
 generation; yet they are none the less heroes to us; more, 
 these men had once been his followers and comrades in 
 scenes and hours that he so graphically paints in his 
 loving tribute to George Winship: " By lonesome road- 
 sides, in the thickets at night, when the weird laughter of 
 the owl was as the voice of the fabled choosers of the 
 slain, crying out unto voice the roll of the dead, who were 
 to die on the morrow for God and the confederacy; in the 
 hot lit foreground of many a stormy battle-day, men's 
 lives falling off from either flank of it like snow; in many 
 a lonesome bivouac, when winter and hunger, as twin 
 furies of civil war, flew over the sleeping camp together; 
 in many a desperate border raid, where the wounded had 
 no succor and the dead no sepulchre; in far off and half- 
 forgotten foreign lands, where the flag that floated above 
 them was a black flag, and the comrades, who broke their 
 bread and shared their blankets, knew nothing of their 
 name, their speech, their life, their race, their creed, their 
 country." To a man of his temperament, this was a 
 baptism of fire and a consecration to brotherhood that 
 
136 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 only death could dissolve. Men who followed him 
 through such hours as these were as much his brothers as 
 if they had been taken from his own mother's womb. 
 Was the author of " Poor Carlotta" a poet? Of the very 
 highest type; a poet without effort and without knowing 
 that he was a poet. It has been repeatedly said that 
 Victor Hugo was his model. This is doubtful. While he 
 is terse, pointed, and rapid, after the style of Hugo, yet 
 this is due more to the nature and manner of the man 
 himself than to an effort to copy. Major Edwards was 
 not a robust man, physically, was of a highly nervous 
 organization, and his quick, pithy, pointed style was 
 unavoidable. For a man of his physique and few years 
 he did an immense amount of work, and work of the kind 
 that he did may not mean effort, but it meant high 
 tension, and high tension means exhaustion, and 
 exhaustion means, if a man goes on, " The silver thread 
 be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be 
 broken at the fountain; or the wheel be broken at the 
 cistern." 
 
 To what a region of elevation he lifts one, and at a 
 bound an optimist of the purest type. He had his dark 
 and dreary hours when life sat heavily upon him; but gen- 
 erally the sun was shining, and the birds were singing in 
 the trees, and the flowers were in bloom. If he wrote of 
 battlements and turrets, and waving banners and horse- 
 men in armor and sword and buckler, the sun always 
 illumed the turrets and reflected itself back from the 
 burnished shields and gleaming sword-blades. How he 
 loved the beautiful and the bright and the grand; and 
 rapidly passed before his eyes visions of noble men and 
 stately dames, strong castles, and fair women, and tall 
 knights with clanking swords, and "all quality, pride, 
 pomp and circumstance of glorious war." In the close of 
 his tribute to young Winship, how nearly he foretold his 
 own taking off: "That pitiless disease which neither 
 stayed nor sorrowed a moment in its work, which knew 
 nothing of the splendid past of the gentle young hero, 
 which counted for naught the five precious scars on his 
 
PERSONAL TRIBUTES. 187 
 
 poor, wasted body, which would not lengthen his life a 
 single hour by receiving in propitiation all the days he had 
 marched without food, and all the nights he slept without 
 blankets, and so it seized him as he stood grave and brave 
 and calm to the last and carried him away to where the 
 dark ?" Eead in the answer the simple confession of 
 faith, not strictly orthodox from the point of the 
 "straighest sect," but still a confession solacing to the 
 friends who knew and loved him, a confession that any 
 noble woman or brave man may repeat and which will 
 remain an ever-blooming flower upon his grave. "Ah, 
 no ! Sincerity must be religion. Over beyond the river 
 called Jordan there must be growing trees, and running 
 rivers, and fragrant fields, called the sweet fields of Eden 
 for all who on this side the sunset shore fought or bled or 
 died for king or cause or creed or country. Heroism is 
 a consecration to God, and death because of it but a going 
 to God. Over there surely the soldier is gently dealt 
 with. If he was brave in life, and noble and courteous 
 and generous and merciful, he had the attributes which 
 certainly could make a heaven, and, therefore, this one 
 dead to-day and buried within the historic soil of Jackson 
 was foreordained to happiness after death. It may be late 
 in coming; the bivouac may be right cold and dreary for 
 many a one yet who has to pass through the valley of the 
 shadow and over the river called death; and after the 
 night the morning, and after the judgment day the New 
 Jerusalem." 
 
 BRUMMELL JONES. 
 
 From HON. SAMUEL J. RANDALL. 
 
 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES U. S. ) 
 WASHINGTON, D. C., May 12, 1889. J 
 
 COLONEL MUNFOHD: 
 
 My Dear Sir Permit me to express to you my 
 sincere sorrow at the sudden death of J. N. Edwards. He 
 was a warm and true friend of mine, and I tried to be his 
 whenever occasion offered. His excellent judgment and 
 
188 ' JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 splendid mental accomplishments are a loss which, in 
 common with the good people of Missouri, I deeply deplore. 
 Yours truly, 
 
 SAMUEL J. KANDALL. 
 
 From A FEDERAL SOLDIER. 
 
 LAS CRUCES, N. M., June 1, 1889. 
 Dr. MORRISON MUNFORD: 
 
 My Dear Sir Since talking with you I was suddenly 
 called here by telegram, and may not return to Kansas 
 City for several days yet. Thinking perhaps Mrs. 
 Edwards might desire the "New Year," the wondrously 
 beautiful creation of Major Edwards, of which I spoke to 
 you before my return, I inclose it herewith. You will 
 have to handle it carefully, as I have carried it with me 
 over many miles of weary travel, and for many long years. 
 I have read it to many men to friends and strangers, and 
 it always excites unbounded admiration. It is a short little 
 piece, takes but little space, but I know of no living man 
 who could write it or speak it as an original production. 
 Nor does my reading tell me of any of the dead who could 
 write such an article but John N. Edwards and Victor 
 Hugo. 
 
 I loved Edwards before I had ever seen him, just from 
 reading his wonderful productions, and after seeing him 
 and becoming acquainted with him I only loved him 
 more intensely. May God bless his wife and children and 
 raise up kindly friends to love and care for and protect 
 them. Very sincerely yours, 
 
 JAMES K. WADDILL. 
 
 GENERAL SHELBY'S TRIBUTE. 
 
 BUTLER, Mo., May 7, 1889. 
 
 General Jo Shelby was found by the Times' corre- 
 spondent at hie home, eighteen miles northwest of here, 
 to-day. " The news of Major Edward's death was a great 
 shock to me," said the General. " I have known him 
 and loved him since he was a boy. It is hardly within 
 
PERSONAL TRIBUTES. 189 
 
 the power of language to portray or describe Major 
 Edwards as his noble character merits. God never 
 created a more noble, magnanimous; and truer man than 
 John N. Edwards. When the war broke out he threw 
 himself into the conflict with all the ardor of his warm 
 nature, and during the long, bloody struggle, he was ever 
 loyally devoted to the cause he championed. 
 
 The following is from General J. C. Jamison, late 
 Adjutant-General of the State : 
 
 GUTHRIE, to. TER., May 7,1889. 
 DR. MORRISON" MUNFORD : 
 
 My Dear Doctor The saddest thing I ever re*ad in 
 your great newspaper was the death of my beloved friend, 
 Major John N. Edwards. No death ever fell with such 
 poignant grief or affected me so deeply as his. I first 
 knew him when the fortunes of war threw* us together 
 in the same prison at Johnson's Island, in 1863. The 
 friendship there formed only grew stronger as time 
 went on, and only a few weeks ago, in Jefferson City, 
 we spent an afternoon reviewing the past and discussing 
 the future. He possessed a heart big enough to take 
 in the whole of humanity, and this problem was often 
 the theme of discussion. His generosity was only 
 bounded by h.is ability to minister to the unfortunate. 
 His was the most lovable character I ever knew. 
 His heroism in times of danger was absolutely the 
 sublimest thing I ever saw. He seemed to lose his per- 
 sonal identity as the danger grew more imminent, and 
 only thought of the safety of his men and his beloved 
 commander. But I did not start out to write of his 
 personal traits of character, but to say that I had the 
 honor, as the editor of the Clarksville (Mo.) Sentinel, to 
 publish the first, and, I believe, the only real story ever 
 written by him entitled "Guy Lancaster," the scene 
 being laid in Virginia. This romance was published in 
 1867, 1868, 1869, and the papers containing it are bound 
 in book-form, and are in my library at Jefferson City. 
 May the clods rest lightly over the body of our friend. 
 
 J. C. JAMISON. 
 
190 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 From JUDGE WILLIAM YOUNG, OF LEXINGTON. 
 
 When affairs are moving along their usual course 
 within well-marked boundaries, and the spectacle of life 
 is made up of the commonplace, struggles of men for 
 money, place and power ; when no great issue presents its 
 uncompromising front ; when public matters lie quiet 
 under the ferment of individual interests ; when the steady 
 grind of greed is going on, then men take value and 
 become important in proportion to the sum of their accumu- 
 lations. But let there come a shock ; let all the lines be 
 broken, and the plain boundaries be destroyed ; let a crisis 
 approach, and danger threaten ; let affairs present a prob- 
 lem that can not be solved by the ordinary rules of action; 
 let dread and doubt and uncertainty prevail, and then it is 
 that men arie rated for themselves alone, and borrow no 
 value from mere possessions. In such times, there are 
 men toward whom all eyes are turned in expectancy, and 
 to catch the sound of whose voices all ears are strained. 
 Not because they are always correct, or to be implicitly 
 followed ; not because of supernatural wisdom, or unerring 
 judgment, but because of their clear convictions of right, 
 their supreme unselfishness, their complete fearlessness, 
 their absolute sincerity, their hatred of shams, and their 
 unfailing faithfulness. ^ 
 
 There was erstwhile one such man in Missouri who is 
 now no more. There was one such voice that is silent 
 now. John N. Edwards is dead ! 
 
 Imbued with passions hot and strong, gifted with a 
 fiery and heroic genius, endowed with dauntless courage, 
 yet tempered all by a most generous disposition and the 
 tenderest of hearts, he was a rare man, whose like we shall 
 scarcely see again. 
 
 Coming up into manhood on the eve of a mighty revo- 
 lution, his high spirit reveled in the political excitement 
 of the times, when words were things, and every act of 
 vital consequence, and method of expression never lost the 
 glow caught from the fires of insurrection and war. 
 
 This most romantic and chivalrous of souls was placed 
 
PERSONAL TRIBUTES. 191 
 
 by fortune in the very position that enabled him to see 
 and know more of the romantic realities of the war than 
 perhaps any man now living in Missouri. 
 
 As the companion of Shelby, during all the while that 
 phenomenal cavalryman was rising from the rank of cap- 
 tain to that of major-general, he was an active participant 
 in all of the thrilling scenes enacted then. 
 
 The secrets of nearly every one of the daring expedi- 
 tions from that part of the Confederate forces were con- 
 fided to him. His council was sought, and his assistance 
 invoked on the eve of every wild scheme of reprisal, or 
 about all of those enterprises that depended for success on 
 the personal bravery of the participants. He was the 
 trusted confidant of every reckless, desperate, restless 
 spirit that sought danger in the front, by charge, or arti- 
 fice, or strategern; or that waged the mad, wild war of 
 personal hate far in the lines of the enemy. His was a 
 nature that invited confidence. He was burdened with 
 more vital secrets affecting the credit, life, and honor of 
 others than any other man perhaps in all of the land. In 
 it all, how truly, purely, perfectly faithful he was. 
 
 Such a life, with such a nature, could not fail to pro- 
 duce a rare combination a strange blending of contra- 
 dictory characteristics. 
 
 Inured to scenes of. carnage, and realizing from experi- 
 ence how great the sacrifices necessary to victory, and how 
 sternly regardless of individuals he must be who would 
 conquer, in the height of his absorbing devotion to the 
 cause he espoused, he called, with clarion voice and smok- 
 ing pen, upon the leaders of his cause for the most extraor- 
 dinary, heroic, and relentless policy; but for all this he 
 himself would have lost the most important battle, or 
 yielded the fruits of the greatest victory, before he would 
 have trampled upon the prostrate form of a brave but help- 
 less and unresisting foe. An enthusiast in politics, and 
 the advocate of the severest party discipline, amounting 
 to the utter ostracism of the delinquents, yet all was 
 excused, and all condoned by the slightest extenuating 
 circumstance or at the first intimation of regret. 
 
192 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 Ambitious to an unwonted degree,, he sought no position, 
 held back by his exquisite consideration for some friend 
 whose cause he was always ready to espouse with a per- 
 fectly unselfish devotion. 
 
 Detesting the falseness and meanness and sordidness of 
 humanity, he was wont to lash and scourge it with almost 
 frenzied indignation and disgust, and yet he loved all man- 
 kind, one by one. 
 
 There were none high enough to excite his envy or 
 command his adulation, so there were none so low as to 
 escape his sympathy. 
 
 His friendship was marvelously true. It was the rul- 
 ing trait of his character. Especially was this the case 
 with those who had been with him in the stirring scenes 
 of war. His devotion to these became a part of his being, 
 and neither poverty, nor disgrace, nor crime even, could 
 separate his regard from them. He found an excuse for 
 all of their faults, and served them with untiring faithful- 
 ness through all circumstances. 
 
 With him to be once a friend was to oe always such, 
 and to him the voice of distressed friendship was as the 
 voice of God. 
 
 It was as a newspaper writer' that the public knew him 
 best, and in this capacity he held a place second to none 
 in Missouri in influence. 
 
 Whenever he wrote, and on whatever subject, his mind 
 seemed crowded with poetical figures and apt illustra- 
 tions, mostly of a heroic cast, suggested by his experience 
 as a soldier, or drawn from the thrilling records of chiv- 
 alry. The most trivial incident, apparently, assumed at 
 times to his many-sided mind an aspect of momentous 
 importance, and, under his wonderful word-painting, took 
 on such colors as to attract the eyes of the nation. 
 
 But it was upon the happening of some great calamity, 
 or the occurrence of some incident of unusual impor- 
 tance, or the approach of a political crisis, and especially 
 an appearance of a wavering in the ranks of his party, 
 that his heroic genius shone out in full splendor. Then 
 it was that, with a pen tipped as it were with fire, he wrote 
 
PERSONAL TRIBUTES. 193 
 
 words tliat burned into the hearts of his readers; then it 
 was that the lightning of his genius flashed out and lit up 
 the whole social or political horizon, and the reverberating 
 thunder of his utterances startled the sleeper and the 
 unconcerned. 
 
 On every occasion of unusual popular interest, for the 
 last twenty years or more, while agitation and dissention 
 was going on over some proposed action, his earnest, manly 
 sentiments were the inspiration of many a worker, and his 
 sublime courage gave confidence to many a doubter. 
 
 Bat it was when argument and counsel had culminated 
 on some decisive action, and an appeal made to the coun- 
 try for a verdict thereon, that his rallying cry was most 
 eagerly listened for. 
 
 In all of this time there has been no crisis in the 
 affairs of his party, whether arising from internal dissen- 
 tions, political defection, or rival strength, that every Dem- 
 ocrat in this section has not hastened to read what he might 
 write upon the subject. This was not on account of a 
 belief in his infallible judgement, although he was quick 
 to discern and just to discriminate. It wasnot on account 
 of implicit confidence in his vast political wisdom, although 
 he had an intuitive knowledge of men and a genius for 
 politics. It was not on account of his splendid periods 
 and fervid bursts of eloquence, although in these he had 
 scarcely a rival. It was because friend and foe alike 
 knew that his was the expression of a fearless, true, incor- 
 ruptible man ; that, however mistaken, he believed as he 
 wrote, with all his heart and mind, with a belief as sub- 
 lime as his courage. He might not solve the problem, 
 but he always exposed the difficulty. His passions or 
 affections might cause him to err in position, but he 
 always struck to the point, and no hero or chivalry ever 
 pointed his lance with truer aim at the center of his 
 enemy's shield than did he. No paladin in battle ever 
 charged with less regard for consequences to himself than 
 did this Murat of Missouri journalism on the political 
 field. 
 
 His influence over thousands in Missouri and else- 
 
194 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 where was unbounded. There were, and are, many who 
 not only listened eagerly for his voice, but, having heard it, 
 all controversy with them was at an end. 
 
 Over many who had no personal acquaintance with 
 him this influence of his was exerted. 
 
 It was not his eloquence, or his fire, or his courage 
 that captivated them. It was asomething running through 
 all that he did or said; that looked out of his eyes, that 
 sounded in his voice, that appeared between the lines of 
 all he ever wrote. It was as imperceptible as a spirit to 
 the common eye, but making its presence felt upon kin- 
 dred spirits. It was that, back of genius and education 
 and culture, vitalizing and inspiring all, there was, as the 
 chief part of his being, physically, mentally, and spiritu- 
 ally, a gushing, throbbing, warm, true Great Heart. 
 
 And now we are to write that this great heart has 
 ceased to beat. In the quiet cemetery, near the little 
 town of Dover, his still and silent form has been laid away 
 until the great day of resurrection. 
 
 The green grass waves gently over him, and from the 
 neighboring wood the sound of the singing of birds is low. 
 
 Sleep on, great heart! Thou art done with earth and 
 its sorrows and joys, its victories and defeats, its sins and 
 virtues. Many of thy comrades have gone before. A 
 few years more and the last one will cross over to thee. 
 But while we live, aye, while our children and children's 
 children live, there shall never a deed of daring, or an act 
 of devoted friendship, such as thou didst love to hear of 
 and do, be performed, but that the telling of it shall bring 
 thee fresh to mind, and so all the heroism of the land shall 
 help to keep thy memory green. 
 
 Sleep on, great heart! Thougn there shall be sighs and 
 prayers and "tears and breaking hearts for thee," thou 
 shalt never more feel a kindred woe. 
 
 Sleep on, great heart! Thine enemies are powerless to 
 do thee harm. For when detraction, and envy, and hate, 
 and all uncharitableness have done their worst, and heaped 
 upon thy grave all of thy weaknesses and thine errors, 
 thy follies and thy sins, we might admit them all, but we 
 
PERSONAL TRIBUTES. 195 
 
 will bring such a multitude of thy merits, thy countless 
 kindly acts so secretly done, thy devotedness to friends 
 who owe thee all, thy generosity to foes now turned to 
 friends, thine undaunted courage, thy perfect sincerity, 
 thy noble unselfishness, and thine undying faithfulness 
 though thyself hath died, and lay them, too, upon thy rest- 
 ing place, until when the angels look down from heaven 
 they will see only the mountain of thy virtues, under 
 whose towering height all of thine imperfections are com- 
 pletely hid from sight. 
 
 Sleep on, great heart! Love is stronger than hate. 
 Where one shall blame a hundred more shall praise 
 where one condemn a thousand shall pay you tribute of 
 undying love. 
 
 Love shall stand guard for thee, 
 
 Friends without number, 
 Bereaved and disconsolate over thee weep: 
 
 Sweet be thy dreams, 
 Untroubled thy slumber; 
 
 Tranquilly, peacefully, resifully sleep. 
 
 Y. 
 
NEWSPAPER TRIBUTES. 
 
 MAJOR JOHN N. EDWARDS. 
 
 [Kansas City Times, May 5, 1889.] 
 
 No pen but his own should write of a nature like that of the 
 brilliant journalist who died yesterday at Jefferson City The spiiit 
 of Major John N. Edwards is justly measured in the hearts of a 
 thousand men who knew him on the battlefield and in the intellect- 
 ual life of later years, but to interpret it in words is beyond any one 
 who has not his'richness of flashing phrase, his warm love of the 
 great and the beautiful and his constant study of the best literary 
 models. And who has those resources, or who has the charity of 
 soul, the tender sympathy, the insight into the subtler beauties of 
 humanity and nature? Not one. Yet friendship will not allow the 
 first opportunity to pass for telling the world, however poorly, \\ hat 
 a noble man has departed. 
 
 Filling a part in the intense commercial life of the West, Major 
 Edwards had no thought of money except to regret that he had nut 
 more when he wished to help a fellow man. In an age of ephem- 
 eral literature he had no literary passion except for the great masters, 
 and if his all embracing charity preserved a patience with the slight 
 performances of the day, his unspoiled taste saved him frc m either 
 admiration or imitation. Absorbing from his intimate acquaintance 
 with the masters of all nations, a vast amount of knowledge, he 
 formed a style all his own, and for twenty years he has had a circle 
 of readers wider than that gathered around any contemporary Amer- 
 ican journalist. The chivalric spirit of the man, his bountiful vocab- 
 ulary, his singular faculty for imaginative illustration, his habii of 
 instantly striking at the heart of a subject and his skill in changing 
 from the simplest of prose to the dramatic or poetic, as the phases 
 of his thought suggested, invested his writing with an individually 
 and charm which every one of the readers in the circle recognized 
 at a glance. As the soldier boys were cheered and held to their 
 cause by his brave example in the weary days at the close of the 
 war, his friends and all the readers were his friends were held to 
 their political allegiance, to their faith in ideals and works, \vhtn 
 the mistakes and misfortunes incident to most human affairs threat- 
 ened disorganization and dispersion. The measure of hisservk-<s 
 to his party and to all other good causes which he made his own can 
 never be taken, because there neither is or can be a record of such 
 efforts. 
 
 Thinkers enough there are and trained writers, but who like 
 him can clothe every thought in shining raiment? Who has for 
 every abstraction its symbol, and for every feeling its signet? Who 
 knows the ways to the core of mankind's heart as he "did andean 
 utter the word which makes it palpitate as he could? Moreover, is 
 there another who possesses men's affections to such a degree auiLhas 
 
 196 
 
NEWSPAPElt TRIBUTES. 197 
 
 drawn on them so little. In all his life he never sought to advance 
 himself. With all his abundant abilities he never boasted that he 
 could do anything. With a courage so immaculate that it was a 
 proverb, he was the man gentlest in speech and most lovable in 
 nature in whatever community he lived. 
 
 Mujor Edwards was a hero worshiper in the noblest sense. He 
 worshiped great qualities and reveled in watching the play of mighty 
 forces as they wroght mighty deeds. He never*wearied of picturing 
 in his inimitable style the impact of genius on history. Beyond any 
 man he had that 
 
 "Highmindedness, a jealousy for good, 
 A loving kindness for the great man's fame." 
 
 With the poet's imagination he combined a remarkable power 
 of taking in a larger way an estimate of actual movements. This 
 power was displayed again and again, when but little more than a 
 boy, in his career as a soldier. Mature and able field officers were 
 not ashamed to seek his advice and to be guided by his judgment. 
 He displayed it with equal readiness as a journalist in dealing with 
 political and social events. His eye was never off the game upon 
 the European chessboard. He followed the diplomacy of Bismarck 
 with the same zest he had for a presidential campaign in the United 
 States, and he was seldom at fault in foreseeing the outcome of 
 either. Worldly knowledge, of these national questions or of 
 smaller matters, never made him cynical. In the highest or the 
 lowliest he saw virtues before faults, and if he could, he would 
 evade seeing faults at all. To the last his friendship was as tender 
 and his sympathy as freely flowing as a girl's. Enjoying relations 
 of the warmest mutual esteem with many of the most distinguished 
 statesmen of the country, he had an hour or a day, if need be, for 
 the humblest claimant upon his attention. 
 
 Major Edwards was the first editor of the Kansas City Times 
 and the last years of his life were also spent in inspiring its staff 
 with the ambition of vigorous journalism. What the host of lov- 
 ing personal friends feel at the loss of the versatile journalist, the 
 true-hearted man and the most loyal friend they could ever hope to 
 mett the Times feels as a newspaper. His unique personality will 
 not be reproduced soon if ever in the lifetime of those who have 
 know r n him. Besides the other characteristics and gifts which 
 excited such uncommon affection, he was one of the rare beings of 
 whom it can be said that he never feit animosity except to drive 
 ** Envy and malice to their native sty." 
 
 Against those mean passions he could lay his lance in rest 
 blithely and with determined energy. For all else he had forbear- 
 ance when he could not give praise. 
 
 It is not derogation to other good and brave men to say that the 
 death of no man in Missouri would cause genuine pain and grief to 
 so many and so different persons as that of John N. Edwards. Nor 
 will the memory of any be so cherished. 
 
 JOHN N. EDWARDS. 
 
 [Kansas City Journal-,] 
 
 Elsewhere the death of Major Edw r ards, for more than twenty 
 years at various times connected with the press of Kansas City, is 
 announced. At this writing we are not in possession of the par- 
 ticulars attending or preceding his decease, and it is here we only 
 
198 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 desire to lay a flower on the bier of a child of genius, whose 
 life story is as strange and weird as the inspiration of his pen. 
 
 He was in every respect the result of birth and environment, 
 and never for a day changed the habits of thought in which he 
 grew up. All this rush, bustle and change we call modern prog- 
 ress was a new and strange world to him and of which he never 
 became a part. His literary inspirations were those of romance 
 and of the age of romance. He was a knight of the antique order, 
 and wrote of knights and their ideals. If he ever drew upon the 
 more modern for his chivalric ideas it was of the Napoleon era and 
 the ideals of the old guard. Some of the finest pen pictures that 
 have graced contemporary journalism, werefromhis pen, and his 
 admirers were in larger number than any of his contemporaries. 
 
 We always thought and often told him that the political news- 
 paper was not the field he should have selected, as his mental organi- 
 zation and brilliant word painting were best suited to the magazine, 
 and it has always been a regret that he did not choose that field. 
 His was a singularly gentle nature, and one that knew no fault with 
 his friends and brooked no criticism of those he esteemed. The 
 finest judgment we have ever heard passed upon him was that he 
 was a child of the twelfth century born in the nineteenth. It seems 
 extravagant, but it describes the peculiar genius of our dead friend. 
 
 THE LATE JOHN N. EDWARDS. 
 
 [Kansas City Globe.] 
 
 John N. Edwards died yesterday. Throughout the length and 
 breadth of this State and scattered throughout this country are 
 men who will grow sad as they hear of his demise. Death silently, 
 swiftly stole into the din and clamor of the world about him and 
 led him away. Silent forever is the pen from which eloquence 
 always flamed a natural eloquence such as the wild wood bird 
 sings forth in its morning carols. His characteristic writings, 
 startling for their boldness and originality, stirring for their pathos 
 and genuine feeling, piercing with sharp satire or soothing with 
 melodious measures, emanating from a heart at high tide until the 
 man and his pen seemed one; will be seen no more in the press. 
 Many of his works will be read and re-read but most were written 
 for the day which is past. John N. Edwards is dead. 
 
 As for the man, he was a man indeed. As he wrote he spoke, 
 he acted; he was loyal to his friends. As softly, harmoniously, 
 sweetly as his measures formed themselves on paper for he wrote 
 in measures so his generosity of heart and mind made themselves 
 felt to those about him. Every time he met a man he made a friend. 
 He had few enemies and even those were compelled to admire him 
 for his fearlessness. 
 
 A BRIGHT AND SHINING LIGHT. 
 
 [Kansas City Star, May 4.] 
 
 The journalistic profession has lost a bright and shining light in 
 the death of Major John N. Edwards, of the Kansas City Times, 
 who died this morning at Jefferson City, after an illnessof two days. 
 He was barely fifty years of age, and was, therefore, in the very 
 zenith of his intellectual powers. As a newspaper maji he was one 
 of the most commanding figures in the West. He was a writer of 
 
NEWSPAPER TRIBUTES. 199 
 
 remarkable vigor, and his style was so picturesque as to invest his 
 work with a thoroughly distinctive quality. He possessed a dra- 
 matic power of description which will live in several volumes of 
 war literature which he has left as mementoes of his genius. He 
 loved the State of Missouri, and as an able and conscientious expo- 
 nent of public thought, it was his high privilege to advance all of the 
 interests of the State of his adoption. His professional career dated 
 back to the day of small beginnings in the West, but it covered a 
 period of eventful growth and splendid prosperity. Personally, 
 Major Edwards was one of the kindliest men whom the State has 
 ever been called upon to mourn. He loved his friends and received 
 from them a full requital of the affection which he bestowed upon 
 them. The intelligence of his death will awaken tender and tearful 
 regret wherever he was known, and he leaves behind him a memory 
 as fragrant with all the sweet amenities of life as the flowers which 
 will be spread upon his grave. 
 
 JOHN N. EDWARDS. 
 
 [St. Louis Republic.'] 
 
 Major John N. Edwards is dead. Missouri never had a more 
 picturesque figure, and there never was a kinder, more generous 
 heart than his. Had he lived five centuries ago he would have been 
 as great and full of honors as he was noble in all his instincts, but 
 living as he did at the close of the nineteenth century, his high 
 spirit simply fretted itself out against the bars of a utilitarian civili- 
 zation. He was really a poet, and nothing else, but the accident of 
 his birth at a time when the Civil War overtook him just as his 
 mind was in its formative period, made him what Missouri knew 
 him, a gallant, chivalric soldier, who remained a soldier up to the 
 day of his death. As a journalist he never exercised any direct in- 
 fluence; that is, he nearly always failed to accomplish what he set 
 out to accomplish. Indirectly his influence was wide. Working 
 himself to white heat wherever he saw or fancied he saw a wrong, 
 he struck off phrases like sparks from an anvil, and many of these 
 phrases will survive him for many decades after his death. They 
 are used in politics all over the country by thousands who have no 
 idea of their origin; who never heard of Edwards. 
 
 Living over and over again in journalism and politics the days 
 of wild dash when he rode by the side of General J. O. Shelby, life 
 for him was indeed a warfare. He had in his head always the jingle 
 of the spurs and the clashing of swords in the old English ballads he 
 loved above everything. Victor Hugo's Les Miserables moved and 
 influenced him more than all that has been written on government 
 and political economy. 
 
 He never abandoned a. friend. He had known Jesse and Frank 
 James when they were boys during the border war. Honorable and 
 rigidly honest himself, he would have sacrificed his life and his 
 reputation rather than slight an appeal from these hunted outlaws 
 for shelter. Loyalty with him was an overpowering instinct his 
 most marked trait, and he was as gentle and unobtrusive personally 
 as he was loyal. Except when thrilled by devotion to some cause or 
 other, he always sought the background. 
 
 As a newspaper writer, he never sought to advance himself, but 
 always worked for the advancement of others. His style as a 
 writer was highly poetical and it grew less effective in journalism as 
 his peculiarities of imagination gained more and more the control of 
 
200 JOHN NEWMAN EDWAliDS. 
 
 his judgment. Frequently when he found a subject that would 
 bear his style, his hurried productions had a wide popularity. An 
 article thus written on the marriage of Nelly Grant was copied 
 through this country and in Europe, and it is said that it touched 
 General Grant deeply. He had the faults and weaknesses of an 
 impulsive, poetical temperament, and one of these, growing 
 habitual, marred his usefulness. But were all said that could be 
 said of his faults, it would not weigh at all with those who knew 
 him in his gentleness and in his enthusiasms. 
 
 A DEAD JOURNALIST. 
 
 [St. Louis Spectator.'] 
 
 In the sudden death of Major J. N. Edwards western journalism 
 has certainly lost one of its most brilliant votaries. His style was at 
 once original, unique, and frequently startling and erratic. Tender 
 and pathetic as no other man could make it, if sympathy touched 
 his heart; every line he ever wrote in memoriam was a poem in itself. 
 Nurtured during the romance and realism of war, his pen, as if 
 dipped in blood, followed the fierce, fiery trail of his thoughts, if he 
 felt conscious a wrong had been perpetrated or an injustice done. 
 Many will, no doubt, remember his brilliant and heroic fusilade of 
 boiling fury, burning anathemas and fierce denunciations, which he 
 poured out upon the perpetrators of the death of Jesse James. Not 
 that he in any way approved the method of the James boys, but 
 treachery to a friend -was with him high treason. The following 
 tribute to the subject^of this sketch was written many years ago from 
 Jefferson City, the scene of his death, by one who knew him well: 
 ' ' He always seems to be a stranger wherever he goes. Walks alone, 
 seldom speaks to anybody, and does not smile three times a day. He 
 is one of the oddest and best of men; has the forehead and eyes of a 
 poet, and the nose and mouth of a soldier. Equally at home in bat- 
 tle and the flowery field of imagination. Sad in face, but glad in 
 heart, fierce like an eagle, gentle as the soul of a dove. One who 
 loves a man for his strength and a woman for her neatness. Noble, 
 generous, child-like in simplicity, but great in mind, a journalist, a 
 historian, and altogether one of Missouri's most illustrious sons. 
 
 MAJOR JOHN N. EDWARDS. 
 
 [St. Louis Globe-Democrat.] 
 
 The death of Major John N. Edwards carries off, suddenly and 
 unexpectedly, one of the brightest men connected with the journal- 
 ism of the West. In the past twenty years the pen of Major 
 Edwards has given point and brilliancy to half a dozen newspapers 
 of the State in St. Louis, in St. Joseph, in Sedalia and in Kansas 
 City. He had wonderful power of expression and description, and 
 his mind was an arsenal of facts gathered from extensive reading 
 and garnered in a retentive memory. He wrote always on the 
 side of his earnest convictions, and hence was often out of accord 
 with the Democratic party, to which he belonged, although his 
 variences were generally as to men rathrr than as to principles. 
 He was an honorable as well as a forcible opponent in debate, and 
 always kept within the lines of strict decorum in the discussion of 
 public questions. He will be greatly missed from the field of news- 
 
NEWSPAPER TRIBUTES. 201 
 
 paper controversy, and lie will leave behind him a vacancy which 
 will not soon be tilled. 
 
 MAJOR JOHN N. EDWARDS. 
 
 [The Journalist, New York.] 
 
 The death of the veteran journalist, John N. Edwards, who 
 died in Jefferson City, Mo.; recently, takes from the ranks of journal- 
 ism one of its oldest members and ablest writers. 
 
 His writing had a peculiar charm. His style was all his own. He 
 wrote wholly in prose, and put the most cogent argument in music 
 that charmed the ear while it convinced the reason. Th.e writings 
 of no living journalist had a more distinct and striking personality 
 Ha never wrote a line that was not interesting, nor a sentence that 
 it was not a pleasure to read. His editorial writing attracted the 
 attention of the country. It was inimitable and unequaled. 
 
 Major Edwards was a commanding figure in Missouri politics. 
 It is not too much to say of him that he had more warm personal 
 friends than any man in the State. Yet while always taking an 
 active part in politics he was never a candidate for office, and would 
 never listen to any suggestions that he should become one'. He was 
 the leading figure in the tight which resulted in Senator Vest's first 
 election, when he beat Samuel Glover, the father of the present 
 ex- Congressman of St. Louis. The Missouri Republican made a bit- 
 tit ; fight against Vest, and after he was elected the Globe-Democrat, 
 editorially, gave Major Edwards the credit for electing him. It was 
 conceded at the time that he did more than any other one man to 
 bring about the result. His personal influence was remarkable. 
 The friends that he made were devoted, and would go to any length 
 to accommodate him He supported Governor Crittenden in hiscon- 
 test against General Marmaduke, but was a warm supporter of Gen- 
 eral Marmaduke in the campaign which resulted in his nomination. 
 He never used his influence for his own advancement, but was always 
 generous in his endeavors for the success of his friends. Had his 
 political ambition run in the line of office-seeking there islittledoubt 
 that he could have had anything in the gift of the people. There was 
 probably more genuine regard and warm personal feeling for him 
 than for any man who ever took a prominent part in State politics. 
 
 The death of no man in Missouri was ever mournod more sin* 
 cerely than the death of Major Edwards will be. Everybody who 
 knew him loved him. The attachments which he created were 
 remarkable. No one ever became acquainted with him without 
 becoming warmly attached to him. In conversation and manner he 
 was as gentle and modest as a woman He was uniformly courteous 
 and kind. With him rank was but the guinea's stamp. He judged 
 men on their merits, and the man poor in money and fame received 
 the same considerate treatment that would have been accorded a mil- 
 lionaire or the President. His nature was a peculiarly lovable one, 
 and his friends entertained a warm affection for him seldom given 
 by one man to another. 
 
 THE DEATH OF MAJOR EDWARDS. 
 
 [Colonel John C. Moore in Pueblo, Colo. Despatch.] 
 Major Edwards was at the time of his death about fifty years of 
 age in the prime of his manhood and the flower of his intellect. 
 
202 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 He was a Virginian by birth, though since early youth he had lived 
 in and been identified with Missouri. He acquired his education 
 chiefly in a printing office at Lexington, but before he reached his- 
 majority, the war corning on, he espoused the Southern side and 
 enlisted as a private in a company raised and equipped by Caplaiu 
 Jo. Shelby. The military tie thus formed lasted through the war, 
 and as Shelby became successively colonel of a regiment, general of 
 brigade and general of division, Edwards advanced in grade with 
 him as adjutant, assistant adjutant-general, and chief of staff, and 
 finally after the close of the war the historian of the achievements 
 of his dashing commander and his gallant comrades in arms. 
 
 Indeed, he and General Shelby went to Mexico together in 1865, 
 and while in that country his book "Shelby and His Men" was 
 principally written. Being written at such a time and under such 
 circumstances, it was, of course, full of the fire and passions and 
 animosities of the war, and though not history in its higher and 
 more philosophical sense, it isa splendid pageant of four years serv- 
 ice in one of the greatest wars of the world, and contains an abun- 
 dance of the material of which history is made. After his return 
 from Mexico he wrote "The Unwritten Leaves of History," which 
 gave a graphic account of the deeds and misdeeds of the Confed- 
 erate contingent in that country, and of a most interesting episode 
 in Mexican history the attempt and failure to establish the imperial 
 dynasty of Maximilian in that country. 
 
 But it was as a journalist that his greatest and most effective 
 powers were exerted. The hurry, the rush, and the necessities of 
 life did not afford him leisure for the cultivation of literature in its 
 more permanent forms, though not infrequently he turned aside 
 from the weary path of daily labor to write a sketch or an essay, 
 which showed what he might have done under moi e favorable cir- 
 cumstances. In a remarkable degree he possessed the temperament 
 of "phantasieatd flame," which from the bcginmi g of the world 
 has been the birthright of the poet, the orator, the enthusiast, and 
 those who impress themselves strongly on their fellows and control 
 them by a power as irresistible as it is subtle and undeficable. His 
 mental processes were original. "With fine powerof logic and analy- 
 sis with wit, humor, and sarcasm at his command his strength as 
 a writer consisted chiefly in hisunequaled capacity as a rhetorician. 
 It is to be doubted whether he had his equal among American jour- 
 nalists in pathos, eloquence, epigrammatic point, vividness of 
 description, andtropical luxuriance of rhetorical illustration, when at 
 at his best. When in earnest as he usually was, for his nature was 
 essentially loyal to whatever he undertook his articles swept on, 
 like an impetuous stream bearing everything before it, the reader 
 forgetting to analyze, to criticise, or to question. 
 
 KNIGHTLY IN WHATEVER HE DID. 
 
 [Frank H. Brooks, in Chicago Times.] 
 
 " Major John N. Edwards was unobtrusive, personally. He 
 would no more wound the feelings of his fellowman than he would 
 desecrate the grave of his best friend. But in times, when it was 
 necessary for him to stand out and engage in a conflict, he was as 
 brave as a lion and picturesque in his manner of warfare. He had 
 sometimes in his composition that reminded one of old Murat and 
 yet he was perfectly free from bluster and ostentation. 
 
 ********* 
 
NEWSPAPER TRIBUTES. 203 
 
 "Major Edwards was knightly in whatever he did, and gave the 
 West a romantic coloring which attached to no other section. As 
 polished as any courtier, no matter whether he was in a hand-to- 
 hand conflict or in a drawing-room; as merciful as a Sister of Charity 
 and as tender us a mother. 
 
 "No matter what flag fluttered over the suffering, if he was in 
 the vicinity he turned aside and acted the role of the good Samari- 
 tan. If he could do this without his left hand being any the wiser 
 for it, it suited him so much the better. If any man had a contempt 
 for dress-parade it was John N. Edwards. . 
 
 ##**x-#*#* 
 
 " When the war was over Jo Shelby and some of his followers, 
 who had dreamed of an empire on this side of the Atlantic, went 
 galloping over the border and presented themselves to Maximilian, 
 iii the City of Mexico. Edwards was one of the company. It was 
 a strange soldiery, as picturesque as anything in the story of Spain. 
 Not a man in that company who had not been present at some of the 
 receptions of the most notable people in his own country. Not a 
 man who was not a nobleman by nature. Not one who had not had, 
 before the war, his retinue of servants and all that money could 
 give. Not one who did not speak the court language as fluently as 
 he spoke his own, Not one who was not fitted for the conventional- 
 ities of the drawing-room of any crowned head. Edwards, in par- 
 ticular, as shy as a fawn even then, became a favorite with Maxi- 
 milian, and was a guest at the capital at the invitation of Carlotta, 
 who never tired of hearing his stories of the country from which he 
 came. 
 
 "This unique soldiery, however, soon returned to their own 
 country and became loyal and useful citizens. Carlotta went home 
 across the water, and the pitiful story of her fate has been told in 
 tears all around the globe. Edwards wrote a tribute to her on the 
 occasion of her malady, which was printed and copied the land 
 over and translated into various languages in the old world. It was 
 the tenderest and purest bit of English that ever came from pen." 
 
 DEATH OF JOHN N. EDWARDS. 
 
 [Robert M. Yost, in Sedalia Gazette.] 
 
 Major John N. Edwards is dead. 
 
 In the estimate which men make of human life and character, 
 that disposition weighs most and is most sublime which carries in 
 its warp and woof the woven threads of charity and chivalry, of 
 getftleness and courage, of devotion to principle and duty, com 
 mingled with that love of fcllowman which is womanly in its ten 
 derness and grim in its determination. 
 
 And such a disposition had John N. Edwards. There was not 
 more of the rich purple of fruition in the great grapes of Eschol, 
 carried on men's shoulders out of the land of Canaan, than in the 
 blood of this heroic, childlike gentleman. No matter in what 
 society nor under what circumstances he wrote or spoke, he had 
 that kindliness of nature, that splendor of courtesy, which harmed 
 no man without a just and sorrowful cause. And amid all the 
 brilliant and beautiful things which found their way from his teem- 
 ing brain into human hearts, there was never one sting of malice, ot 
 envy, or of strife. Though pre eminently a man of peace^ though 
 born for the contemplation of sylvan shades and nights in June; 
 though nurtured by the velvet hand of poesy, and surrounded 
 
204 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 through life by convoys of cherubic thoughts, John N. Edwards 
 rode down with the guns on many a hard-fought battle-field and 
 smiled at the skeleton of death beside him; and rattled its drju 
 bones with no more thought of fear than has the prattling child 
 amid a field of clover-blooms. 
 
 And if he had ever contemplated a time to die, he would have 
 chosen yesterday as that time. The birds of spring were chirping 
 at his window; a golden flood of light had burst upon the world, 
 and the green woods flushed with sunshine, and shadowed here 
 and there, sang the praises of nature and of nature's God. It was a 
 peaceful hour; and when the great soul sped away to its haven of 
 rest the time and the hour were richer with the weight of duty 
 done. 
 
 There will be tears in every household of Missouri over the death 
 of John N. Etl wards. Tears for the man who loved the children 
 and the soldiers. Tears for him who rode booted and spurred into 
 the enemy's guns, and then turn to weep over the dead comrades 
 who laid "down their lives beside him. Tears for the journalist, 
 who knew neither fear nor malice. Tears for the patroit, who 
 hated nothing more fiercely than treachery and cowardice. Tears 
 for the neighbor and friend, whose hospitable door stood always 
 open, and whose hand, ever extended in genorsity to the poor, the 
 friendless and the outcast, never closed upon a dishonest dollar. 
 Tears for the husband and father, at whose grave will weep not 
 only a loving wife and children, but the wives and children of all 
 men in this broad State who love virtue and its defenders. Tears 
 to-day and tears to-morrow. And then a blessed memory of one 
 who gilded the sunshine while he lived, and then went down to 
 death with all the majestic calmness of one who lies down to 
 pleasant dreams. 
 
 After life's fitful fever, he sleeps well. 
 
 IN MEMORY OF MAJ. EDWARDS. 
 
 [George W. Terrell, in Boonville Advertiser.] 
 I had lost a friend in Romney Leigh. Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 One does not need to have a flaming fancy to picture to himself 
 this knight-errant of the nineteenth century riding down from the 
 ancient Arthurian days right into the heart of this grand State of 
 ours, and into the very midst of the time in which we move and 
 rejoice. He might have ridden, panoplied and plumed, beside? the 
 peerless Bayard in the stormy lists of the long ago, for his actual 
 career, in all its multiform incidents and episodes, rhymed, one 
 may say. as the lines of a poem rhyme, with the wild music of the 
 olden lances, the trumpets, and the spurs of gold. 
 
 Anyone who knew John N. Edwards intimately could not sit 
 down and read Tennyson's tragic "Idylls of the King" without 
 being keenly reminded of this chivalrous gentleman, soldier, and 
 journalist, whose mortal remains lie now beneath Missouri's sacred 
 sod. The brave, sweet, musical, strong voice, sharp withcommand, 
 or soft in speech to friend and woman; the poise of the fine head, 
 with a front of princely power; the large, luminous, liquid, dark 
 eyes, that were made to flash with fury or dreamily melt in love, 
 were only a part of the superb physical equipment given to our 
 dear friend by the Creator himself. 
 
NEWSPAPER TRIBUTES. 205 
 
 Major Edwards was fashioned and molded for the very day and 
 generation in which he lived. When the great civil struggle broke 
 ^lorth upon land and sea, he had just attained to the estate of lusty 
 'manhood. Beardless, but bold as a lion, he found a neighbor near 
 at hand who, of all men in the world, was to personify his supreme 
 idealization of the true soldier. This was none other than the famous 
 General Jo Shelby. With him the young cavalryman went gaily to 
 the war as a Knight of the Round Table was wont to enter the tragic 
 tournaments in times of the vanished kings and "queens. How well 
 he rode, and how far ; and how finely he fought in all those four 
 long years, need not be recounted in these imperfect lines. As a fit- 
 ting and dramatic close to his brilliant career in the States, what could 
 be more fascinating than the episode of Shelby's expedition to Mexico 
 one of the most strangely romantic in the annals of American 
 history. 
 
 Edwards' career was no less notable in the paths of peace than 
 on the ensanguined plains of battle. As his glittering blade gleamed 
 brighter than all others in the front of the fight, so his pen cast forth 
 gems of rhetoric richer in their quality than anything in Western 
 authorship. In picturing roses and wine and the graces of pretty 
 women his fancy was riotous in its profusion of poesy. In describ- 
 ing the deeds of valor done by his beloved Confederate comrades, 
 his phrases and epigrams had the brilliancy of th6 rapier and the 
 beauty and suppleness of the keen-flashing Damascus blade. His 
 eulogies of dead friends and companions were as tender and exquis- 
 ile us anything of the kindin the English language. 
 
 Ou Monday, near the quaint little village of Dover, in Lafayette 
 county, a multitude of tearful men and women assembled to see his 
 form "lowered gently to its last resting place. All the trees were 
 melodious with the songs of birds; all the rich grasses and fields 
 were abloom with flowers. The sweet young maiden, May, her vio- 
 let cheeks wet with the mist of many memories, bent from the blue 
 sky above the grave ; and in this wise, the- simple soldier, the 
 incomparable journalist, and the ideal chevalier of these days of 
 ours, was hidden away forever from the brimming eyes of his earthly 
 friends. 
 
 FROM THE MISSOURI PRESS ASSOCIATION. 
 
 At a meeting of the Missouri Press Association, held at Nevada 
 June 5, 1889, before the adoption of the report on memorials, Presi- 
 dent Williams paid the following beautiful acd touching tribute to 
 the memory of Colonel Turner and Major Edwards: "Especially 
 Lasjthis Association, \\ith the press of Missouri, suffered loss in the 
 death of Joseph H. Turner and John N. Edwards, more prominent 
 for various reasons than the others named. They were both news- 
 paper men to the manor born; they both knew something of Ibe 
 wastes along which the ((liter's pathway often goes, where streams 
 are not, nor springs nor water of refreshment anywhere. They 
 both had tasted of the bitter and the sweet. Modestly they accepted 
 fMte, drank deep cf life, knew books and hearts of men, cities and 
 camps, and man's immortal woe. They both had battled with the 
 sword and pen. Soldiers both, they were better citizens therefor. 
 They loved bravery and gentleness ard were brave and gentle alto- 
 erether. Honor and duty and love were theirs and littleness was as 
 foreign to^ their natures ns impurity to the sea. 
 
 " Their spheres of life were different and their characters dis- 
 similar. The one brilliant, meteoric, chivalric, passionate in word 
 
206 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 and deed, an Arthurian knight who had ridden down from the 
 days of the Round Table until now; the other conservative, practical, 
 genial, with big body and large heart, a faithful officer, a zealous 
 worker, more in smaller circle perhaps, but equally courageous, 
 tender and true. The one a soldier who had worn the blue with 
 credit and had followed where the old commander led, the other 
 who had donned, the gray a blue eyed and beardless boy, and 
 doffed it only when the cause for which he fought was lost the 
 stars and bars gone down and with them all save honor. What 
 better requiem now for these friends of ours to whom death's drum- 
 beathascalled 'Lightsout' thauthatsaidorsungoverSirLauncelot's 
 dead body, ' for than these no goodlier gentlemen ever set, lance in 
 rest, none braver drew swords in the press of knights.' This much 
 would I fain say in loving remembrance of these men buried the 
 one at Carrollton, yondermid the gold and scarlet of autumn leaves, 
 touched and tinged with frost; the other entombed on Lafayette's 
 prairies, broad and sunlit as his soul, within sight of the old home- 
 stead where he had wooed, won, and wedded the faithful 
 woman who was at his side through good and ill. 
 
 "Turner and Edwards of different creeds,of different faiths, of 
 opposing politics they were both large-hearted, clean-handed, cour- 
 ageous gentlemen and journalists. Helpful always to those who 
 needed help, loved most by those who knew them best, they richly 
 deserve this tribute at our hands. Upon the roster, where the names 
 of Regan and Carter and McFarland and Jim Anderson were placed, 
 let theirs also be inscribed, and after them let it be written, as the 
 response for two centuries the name of the famous old French 
 grenadier was, ' dead on the field of honor,' and as we close their 
 pspulchers, where the flowers bloom and grass is grown to-day, we 
 seem to catch in the clangor of the vault door swinging shut the 
 echo of the opening of the pearly gates of Paradise, and straining 
 our eyes through the darkness here, where the widow and children 
 and friends group blindly, wanderingly, do we not see across the 
 river, yonder, where the boatman rows us one by one, the gleaming 
 of lights of the harbor, and heavenly harbor at last." 
 
 DEATH OF MAJOR EDWARDS. 
 
 [Jefferson City Tribune."] 
 
 Missouri has lost her greatest newspaper man and her constella- 
 tion of journalists is dimmed by the departure of its most brilliant 
 member. Major John N. Edwards is dead, and again is exempli- 
 fied the adage that the King of Terrors loves a shining mark. 
 
 "John N. Edwards, the brilliant writer and prince of journal- 
 ists, is dead." That was the sorrowful news the telegraph carried 
 out to the journalists of the South and West yesterday. No sadder 
 intelligence than this has flashed over the wires out of this city. 
 Truly, a great man in journalism "has fallen this day." As the 
 sun in the firmament is to the solar system, so was Major John N. 
 Edwards to the journalisticfirmament. Butthe sun has set while itwas 
 yet noon. Few attain such eminence in their profession even when 
 hoary hairs adorn their brow as he attained while yet in the prime 
 of life and full vigor of manhood. Of him it can be said: "His 
 eye was not dim nor his natural force abated/' But he is gone out 
 into the great unknown future his spirit winged its way. The sum- 
 mons came and he obeyed the mandate. He died as he had lived a 
 friend to the unfortunate and down trodden. No kind mother ever 
 
NEWSPAPER TRIBUTES. 07 
 
 spreai the covering more tenderly over her sleeping infant than 
 John N. Edvsards spread the mantle of charity over the erring and 
 the fallen. 
 
 Brave as a lion, gentle as a lamb, none ever appealed to him for 
 charity in vain; the defenseless always found in him a prompt and 
 fearless advocate; a perfect stranger to personal fear, he was equally 
 unmoved by flattery or adulation. Always guided by the most noble 
 and generous impulses, he was wholly incapable of committing a 
 pusillanimous act. His severest journalistic castigations wereal way s 
 characterized by a purity of thought and chastity of language sel- 
 dom exhibited by caustic writers. Would that all writers could be 
 induced to emulate his noble virtues in this respect. "Peace to his 
 ashes." 
 
 JOHN NEWMAN EDWAKDS. 
 
 [Lexington Intelligencer.'] 
 
 John Edwards is dead. The brave, the true, the gentle, the 
 chivalric John Edwards has gone to sleep in death. His lance 
 is at rest; his pen will idly rust, and from every combat in which 
 men engage, we who have so long looked for him in every fray will 
 look for him in vain. There are few men like him. He had his 
 faults, perhaps, but who has not, and of how many of us can it be 
 said that these were as light as autumn leaves in comparison with 
 the merits of his virtues? His pen was ever ready to defend the 
 right; it never faltered in works of beneficence and mercy. The 
 weak possessed a claim upon him which he ne'er resisted, and the 
 poor had in him a champion and a friend. In this world of selfish- 
 ness and greed he knew no such thing as self, and was constantly an 
 immolation upon the altar of his love for hisfellowmen. 
 
 He was a poet, a soldier, and a politician a poet from the days 
 when a boy in a printing office in old Virginia he used surrepti- 
 tiously to hang his effusions on the hook; a soldier from the day 
 when duty first called him to the field, and a politician in that larger 
 sense which seeks by the means of government to better and to 
 ameliorate the condition of mankind. He was a student and a phi- 
 losopher. Books were his idols, and he worshiped at no polluted 
 shrine. The best that philosophy, history, and poetry afforded was 
 the contemplation of his leisure, and the instrument with which he 
 delved for men. 
 
 In the society of the learned and the high, men listened to his 
 words, surprised at their erudition and their depth; in company 
 with the lowly he had language equal to their comprehension 
 and their needs. Religion to him was nothing for passing show, to 
 be lightly taken up or as lightly laid aside. No man ever more 
 realizthed the awfulness and mightiness of God; no man ever more 
 reverently whispered His name. No man more thoroughly believed 
 in the immortality of the soul, or more completely appreciated the 
 immensity of consequent responsibilities. As little as he talked of 
 it, no man was more thoroughly a religious man than he. 
 
 In his composition there was no such thing as fear. Death had 
 no terrors for him. Often near it he neither sought, nor shrunk 
 from it. At the last, had he known tliat it had overtaken him, he 
 would, 
 
 " Sustained and soothed 
 3y an unfaltering trust, approach his grave 
 Like one that wraps the drapery of his couch 
 About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams." 
 
208 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 It was not only those in his own household that loved 
 Edwards. As keen as the scimeter of he Saracen in combat, as 
 merciless in debate as he was gentle in personal contact, his politi- 
 cal opponents honored, respected, and often loved him. This grew 
 largely outof his admiration for bravery and virtue wherever found. 
 He eulogized Conkling, and he apotheosized Nellie Grant. While 
 he fought like a tiger on the field, whether of arms or politics, he 
 could no more abuse power than he could condone a lie or for- 
 give a meanness. 
 
 DEATH OF JOHN N. EDWARDS. 
 
 [Columbia Herald.] 
 
 Thousands throughout the length and breadth of the land will 
 receive the news of Major Edwards' death with the profoundest sen- 
 sations of sorrow. He possessed a remarkable personal magnetism. 
 Singularly unobtrusive and modest, and apparently indifferent, 
 touching the attraction of others, he yet drew to him all men with 
 whom he came in close contact many of them by ties of strong 
 and genuine affection. While he was a hard fighter, whether in 
 politics or war, his bosom bore no malice, and his greatest happiness 
 lay in unselfish service of those he loved. 
 
 As a writer he was without a peer. To the imagination and 
 diction of the poet he added the vigorous and pungent force of a 
 practical journalist. No man connected with the Missouri press has 
 written so many beautiful things has left behind so many produc- 
 tions glittering with rhetorical gems, and at the same time no pen 
 has been wielded with more rapier-like vigor and effect in the realm 
 of practical politics. He has been a positive force in Missouri jour- 
 nalism for twenty years, and no one connected with newspapers has, 
 during that period, impressed his personality so strongly upon pub- 
 lic affairs. Personally he was the embodiment of chivalry, and, as 
 both soldier and journalist, he evinced qualities which characterized 
 rather the days of the crusader or cavalier than the prosaic periods 
 of the nineteenth century. 
 
 A gifted writer, a generous friend, an accomplished citizen, a 
 thorough gentleman, he passed away. We shall not look upon his 
 like again. 
 
 JOHN N. EDWARDS. 
 
 1 Hunnewe.ll (Kan.) Bee.] 
 
 Ah, Sir Launcelot ! thou wert head of all Christian knights ; now there thou 
 liest; thou wert never matched of none earthly knight's hands. And thou 
 wert the curliest knight that ever bore shield. And thou wert the kindest 
 man that ever strook with sword. And thou wprt the meekest man that 
 ever eate in hall among ladies. And thou wert the sternest knight to thy 
 Mortal foe that ever put speare in rest. Morte d* Arthur. 
 
 It is difficult to speak soberly at this time of the gallant soldier, 
 the generous man, the brilliant journalist, the strong, earnest, and 
 true Democrat for whose sudden death all Missouri mourns. Those 
 who knew him personally testify to his warm heart, his unselfish- 
 ness, and his personal bravery. To those who, like the writer of 
 this, only knew him through the medium of his writings, these testi- 
 monials come with a peculiarly grateful sound. We know of no 
 man in America whose literary style was quite so charming and 
 delightful as that of Major Edwards. It is difficult to describe it 
 
NEWSPAPER TRIBUTES, 209 
 
 and impossible to analyze it. All history seemed to be at his com- 
 mand, and lie possessed a wonderful knack of seizing its striking 
 and dramatic features aud placing them before the minds of his 
 readers. He had not only read history but he had lived and acted 
 it. He had no mean part in the events of the late war on. this side 
 of the Mississippi. 
 
 He has left a record of what he saw in the form of an histor- 
 ical work that is the very masterpiece of our " Civil-War "literature. 
 It is no dry detail of marches and sieges, no monotonous recital of 
 slaughter. There is not a dull page in the book and scarcely a 
 commonplace sentence. It is not a mere recital but a living 
 pageant of stirring events. One hears through every page the 
 trampling of armed squadrons, and catches the sound of the 
 trumpet; there is the light of the bivouac fires on the bearded 
 faces; there is the thrilling episode, the gallant charge, the heroic 
 death. And withal a faithful adherence to truth. His editorial 
 writings were remarkable for their strength and brilliancy. His 
 sentence^ were saber-strokes. He was a hard-hitter, yet there was 
 nothing coarse, nothing that was not polished and elegant. His 
 party had no safer guide. He was essentially sound in his political 
 utterances. He never once lost sight of the principles of Democ- 
 racy, and it has been well said of him that he never wrote one 
 sentence against his own convictions, no matter what the policy of 
 the newspaper for which he wrote might be. The world of journal- 
 ism will not again soon know his equal. 
 
 MAJOR JOHN N. EDWARDS. 
 
 [Saline County Progress.] 
 
 We do not know of any other Missouri journalist who has ever 
 lived, to whose memory so many beautiful and touching tributes 
 have been written by his brethren of the press. Indeed this is no 
 matter of wonder. Major Edwards, as a newspaper writer, was 
 unique, inimitable, and one of the greatest lights that has ever 
 figured in Missouri journalism. He was the prince of Missouri news- 
 paper men. Now that he is dead, all unite, regardless of party, in 
 one general chorus in praise of him who has done so much to honor 
 and adorn the profession. They mourn the loss of him who, more 
 than any other, was the architect of the glory of the press of our 
 State one who spent the best years of his life, the greatest vigor of 
 his mind, and the warmest sympathies of his large heart in securing 
 the advancement and dignity and power of the press of our State. 
 Missouri journalism mourns, in sorrow that cannot be comforted, for 
 him who was her pride and her glory, and who was chief among her 
 gallaxy of bright men. 
 
 "AT LAST." 
 
 [Frostburg (Md.) Mining Journal.'] 
 
 The Kansas City (Mo.) Times of last Sunday gives a lengthy 
 account of the death on Saturday of Major John N. Edwards, editor 
 of that paper, and one of the most brilliant writers in the United 
 States. We knew him as a youth of extraordinary promise. At 
 fourteen years of age he became the author of a story which won 
 for him a wide celebrity. Shortly after, he went to Missouri, where 
 he led a checkered but always an honorable and brilliant career. 
 A great publicist, he made friends in the highest walks of life. 
 
210 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 Instead of seeking, he was always the sought; instead of pushing 
 himself forward, he was unselfishly aggressive in promoting popu- 
 lar preferment for his friends. He stood at the helm of great 
 papers, to whom his flashing genius won wide circulation, and there 
 is hardly a library in Missouri that does not contain his books. 
 Proudly remembered by the friends of his youth, there are thousands 
 in the State of his adoption who will not look upon his like again. 
 
 JOHN N. EDWARDS. 
 
 [Liberty Advance.'] 
 
 As was said of the Douglass of old, "Thou art tender and 
 true," so might as justly be said of this Palladin of the nineteenth 
 century. In harmonious unison with the pulse-throbs that beat the 
 blood about the chivalric hearts of Roland and Bayard, moved his 
 blood around a heart as bold as Creur de Leon's, as gentle as 
 Romeo's. Naught that animated and inspired those bold deeds of 
 chivalry in the past, around which our memory in admiration so 
 loves to cling, was foreign to or absent from the heart of this 
 brilliant man, this sympathetic friend, this noble foe. 
 
 His was a character at once strong and attractive, and in the 
 long line of mourning friends who followed in the funeral train to 
 pay the last sad rites of respect to the dead, scarred and bearded 
 cheeks, with channels worn deep and lasting by war's rigors, shed 
 tears of sympathy, which freely commingled on the hero's grave 
 with those of child and maiden. 
 
 MAJOR JOHN N. EDWARDS. 
 
 [Richmond Conservator.] 
 
 There was scarcely another man in Missouri whose death 
 would have caused such universal regret and sadness as that of 
 Major John N. Edwards, of the Kansas City Times. When the 
 intelligence was flashed over the wires last Saturday that his spirit 
 had gone out from its earthly tabernacle and passed into the mystic 
 future,where the human eye can not penetrate or thehuman thought 
 fathom, many a stout heart bled with sorrow from its very depths, 
 and many an eye was reddened with tears of sadness. Almost 
 every man in Missouri of any prominence knew John N. Edwaids, 
 either personally or by reputation, and those who were best 
 acquainted with him were his warmest friends and most ardent 
 admirers. He was no ordinary man, and those with whom he CM me 
 in contact, as well as those who read from his pen, readily observed 
 his superior talent as a writer and noble impulses as a man. His 
 pen was a power in the journalistic field of Missouri and his influ- 
 ence even extended beyond her lines. 
 
 His brilliant and eloquent editorials were read with pleasure 
 by thousands of his admirers, and were easily recognized as com- 
 ing from his master mind, the reservoir of learning, of eloquence, 
 and of poetry. As he thought he wrote, and no man ever lived 
 who could imitate or counterfeit his peculiar and original style. 
 Nature endowed him with the superior faculty of drawing men to 
 him, and to become acquainted with him was to be his friend and 
 admirer. In opposition he was kind, generous, and sympathetic, 
 and never permitted an opportunity of doing a charitable act to 
 pass unnoticed. His body was laid to rest last Monday in 
 
NEWSPAPER TRIBUTES. 211 
 
 cemetery at Dover, where it will raolder and return to dust, but 
 his excellent qualities will remain green in the minds of his friends 
 and acquaintances for years to come, and they will recall with 
 pleasure incidents of his brilliant career as a soldier, a journalist 
 and an honored citizen of Missouri. 
 
 A CHIVALRIC NOBLE SPIRIT. 
 
 Major John N. Edwards is no more on this earth. 
 
 What a grand, chivalric, and noble spirit has gone forever from 
 among us! 
 
 He, the darling idol of the ten thousand, Missouri's bravest, 
 noblest, and best is carried away from this world's quickening 
 theater into the realms of eternal bliss, there to study the figures 
 and poetry of life eternal, as did wont his soul to soar and magnet- 
 ize in the days of his earthly career. 
 
 The pen his mighty pen is fallen ! 
 
 No more in the great strife of battle we have the infantry of 
 his logic, the bayonet-thrust of his sarcasm, the saber-stroke of his 
 irony; the cavalry charge of his courage, the powerful and terrific 
 thunderstorm of his denunciations, the artillery of his manhood, 
 and above all the tenderness and sunshine of his immortal soul. 
 
 In the quiet walks of life, a devoted and beloved husband; a 
 kind, loving, and adored father; a firm, loyal, and unselfish friend; a 
 remarkable and valuable citizen ; a brave, generous, noble, sincere, 
 manly man, who believed in the fatherhood of God and the brother- 
 hood of man, is departed from us. 
 
 All over Missouri the friends, comrades, and admirers of Major 
 John N. Edwards by the tens of thousands deeply mourn his 
 untimely death. 
 
 This unrivaled journalist, this gifted, brilliant, and good man 
 died too soon ! 
 
 As one who had the friendship of Major John N. Ed wards from 
 childhood, we loved him when he was with us. We mourn him 
 dead. He had no enemies. 
 
 "Bright be the place of thy soul. 
 
 No lovelier spirit than thine 
 E'er burst from its mortal control, 
 In the orbs of the blessed to shine." 
 
 JOHN N. EDWARDS. 
 
 [Cold water (Kas.) Star.] 
 
 And now sad tidings comes to us that Major John N. Edwards, 
 of the Kansas City Times, is dead. This news strikes sadly upon 
 our hearts. For over a quarter of a century we had known him, 
 and known him to love him. Born on the historic soil of old 
 Virginia, where he early acquired those noble and chivalric traits of 
 character which were clearly shown in all his after life, John 
 Edwards was a trained gentlemen, a scholar, and a friend, almost 
 without a peer. To him, friendship was so noble a tie that no 
 misfortune nor good fortune could ever break nor ever buy. John 
 Edwards was one among the few men on earth whom solid gold 
 could not buy. To him, friendship was almost a God. For him to 
 be your friend, meant for him, if necessary, to suffer and to die in 
 your behalf. To those who knew John Edwards, there came never 
 
212 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 a faint suspicion that confidence once given could ever there be 
 misplaced. 
 
 As a journalist, he ranked very high. As a literary writer, Jie 
 could have rivaled Victor Hugo, whom he greatly admired. Many 
 of his writings, notably " Poor Carlotta," stand in the front rank 
 as gems of their kind. 
 
 John Edwards is dead ! A noble soul has gone across the 
 mystic river ! He had his faults ; but who more virtuous than he ! 
 He never knew what it was to commit a little act ; his errors were 
 against himself. He has gone to his last resting-place to the great 
 and mysterious unknown. No more sha41 we hear his pleasant, 
 welcome voice ; no more gather pearls scattered from his fertile pen. 
 Alas, his body molds. Too sad! too sad ! And yet, " To this 
 complexion must we all come at last." 
 
 A GREAT WRITER GONE. 
 
 [Boonville Topic.} 
 
 The most striking figure in Missouri journalism was made a 
 memory when Major Edwards died. For years his writing had 
 been familiar, stamped as it was with the impress of his own pecul- 
 iar personality. Picturesque, abounding in original thoughts and 
 poetical expressions, classical sometimes almost to obscurity, assert- 
 ive always, logical never, his style was as well known throughout 
 the West as though across every line and article had been written 
 his initials or his name. Intense in friendships, he was equally 
 uncompromising in his hatreds. He wasapoet born. Through all 
 his work the vivid imagery, the thought, the diction, the essence of 
 poetry was to be seen. To all subjects that he touched he gave a 
 golden tinge. He weaved for his favorites crowns of roses; thorns 
 and nettles for those whom he did not like. He was a knight a 
 relic of the days of chivalry. In his life and writings he betrayed 
 the influence of that by-gone age. His sword was never drawn save 
 in what he thought to be a righteous cause. Upon his armor 
 glistened always purity and truth. Obstaclesdid not deter him nor 
 difficulties prevent him waging war. Personally, John Edwards 
 was brave and lion-hearted. There was only one foe he could not 
 face, and because he yielded to its temptations too often and too 
 long, Death came, the pen was laid aside, and peacefully as one 
 who sleeps when day is done, this man, still in the prime of life, 
 answered to a summons from beyond. Bury his inconsistencies with 
 him. Remember not the frailties of the dead. But his good of deed 
 and word and splendid heart is inscribed on the memory of many 
 that he helped and loved and labored for. May it fade not away 
 from us forever. 
 
 CHIVALROUS AS A KNIGHT. 
 
 [Ozark (Mo.,) Republican.] 
 
 The most brilliant writer Missouri ever nurtured to greatness 
 has passed away. Major John N. Edwards died at Jefferson City 
 on the 4th of May. The master of a style of vivid splendor he, like 
 Goldsmith, "touched nothing which he did not adorn." An 
 enthusiastic Democrat, and a Confederate who followed Shelby to 
 Mexico, he nevertheless had hosts of Republican friends. Through 
 all the wild, stern days of battle, John N. Edwards had fought, and 
 
NEWSPAPER TRIBUTES. 213 
 
 during many a woful night he had ridden with the terrible men of 
 the border, but he was always the soul of honor and as chivalrous 
 a^a knight of old. His strangely captivating style glittered with 
 metaphors that were drawn from his reminiscences of the stormy 
 but entrancing days when the great conflict filled men's hearts with 
 emotion and elevated their minds with thoughts and experiences of 
 epic grandeur. Of rhetoric. Major Edwards was a very lord, painting 
 in the chambers of his imagery pictures of vermilion and gold. 
 In his perfect diction there was always present that stimulus that 
 power of opening vistas vast as we see in dreams which it is the 
 privilege of genius only to possess. -Many a Missourian must feel 
 that when John N. Edwards died it was as if the bright star, A.lde- 
 baran, had faded forever from the sight of men. 
 
 JOHN N. EDWAKDS. 
 
 [CJlrick Chronicle.'] 
 
 By the death of John N. Edwards, which occurred suddenly at 
 Jefferson City last Saturday, one of the brightest stars is removed 
 from the galaxy of Western journalism. Major Edwards was the 
 Napoleon of journalism. No pen in the West we believe in the 
 United States was gifted so brilliantly as was his. His literary 
 productions in the profession of hischoice wereof the most magnifi- 
 cent type. Familiar with all the best authors of English literature, 
 he was never at a loss for a simile from the productions of such 
 writers as Shakspeare, Scott, and Moore. The master of the most 
 vindictive sarcasm when his antagonism was aroused, and of the 
 most disdainful irony when his contempt was excited, none were 
 quicker to change to sympathetic strains when his foe was van- 
 quished. Passing his earlier years among clangers known only to 
 those who have witnessed the scenes of border warfare, he strongly 
 imbibed the dash and impetuosity which he afterwards displayed in 
 the journalistic arena. Quick and impulsive, possessing the spirit 
 of independence, a stranger to policy, he was not always in harmony 
 with his party. Yet he was a partisan in its strictest sense, so far 
 as principles were concerned. He never lost sight of the tenets 
 established by those whom he esteemed as the founders of his party. 
 
 No man is perfect, so let his weaknesses be forgotten as he is 
 laid beneath the clods of the valley, while we, as members of the 
 same profession, cherish his memory for the good he has done 
 and may our conception of him as an ideal journalist tend to the 
 elevation of journalism in this country. Peace to his ashes. 
 
 HE HELPED THE NEEDY. 
 
 [Jefferson City Correspondence Chicago Times.] 
 
 A man and woman, who alighted from a common farm-wagon, 
 attracted considerable attention yesterday as they entered the 
 McCarty House and passed up to the room where lay the remains of 
 Major John N. Edwards, the Kansas City editor, who had died a few 
 hours before of paralysis. The woman was in tears, and her hus- 
 band evidently was trying hard to conceal his emotion. Both were 
 well along in years, and his hair was streaked with gray. 
 
 " AnT I related to Major Edwards ?" he said to an attendant. 
 "No ; but I would have done as much for him as I would for a 
 brother. He did me a friendly act once when I was a stranger and in 
 
214 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 sore need of friends. Nobody but Major Ed.wards would have done 
 it. I was in the army, and got word that my wife, Mary, was very 
 sick and likely to die To come back almost certainly meant to be 
 taken prisoner, but I decided to risk it. Several days 1 hung arouna 
 the neighborhood, and became nearly famished, and then 1 made a 
 break for the house. I was captured by two men and taken before 
 Major Edwards. To him I told my story. He believed me, and 
 accompanied me to my house. Mary was at death's door, but a 
 doctor came, and things that were necessary were provide^. Finally 
 she got better, and I was sent back to my company, the only thing 
 required being that I say nothing about what had taken place. Do 
 you wonder that I mourn this man's death ?" 
 
 MAJOR J. N. EDWARDS. 
 
 [Bates County Democrat.'] 
 
 No death has occurred in the State of Missouri for many years 
 that has given so much genuine sorrow as that of the brilliant, 
 gifted Edwards. No one had been more widely known in the State, 
 nnd no one had ever been more highly respected, esteemed, loved. 
 The great love which all his old comrades evince for him, is the best 
 evidence that he was a gallant soldier and a kind and generous com- 
 rade. He has been the chief editorial writer on nearly all the lead- 
 ing papers of the State. He was gifted indeed. His "Poor 
 Corlotta" is the finest composition, most splendid word-painting, in 
 the English language. He has a large number of old comrades in 
 this county who deeply lament his death, and none more so than 
 the writer of this, who met him nearly twenty years ago when a 
 friendship began which had never been interrupted. But every one 
 was his friend, and he was the friend of every one. 
 
 MAJOR JOHN N. EDWARDS DEAD. 
 
 [Higginsville Leader.'] 
 
 Major Edwards was regarded by all Western newspaper men as 
 belonging to a brilliant solar journalistic system around which they 
 clung with tenacity, and from whose brilliancy they took pride in 
 reflecting all the radiance that was in their power to obtain. He is 
 ffe td. He has gone to test the realities of an unknown world. 
 Journalism has lost a brilliant star, society has lost an illustrious 
 member, Democracy an earnest, effectual laborer, and the people a 
 true friend. In the hearts of the people who knew him is an aching 
 void. In the hearts of those who knew of him, is deep-seated sor- 
 row and sincere regret. Every newspaper in the land will contain a 
 panegyric of this brave soldier, thorough statesman, editor, his- 
 torian, and philanthropist. 
 
 [Missouri Statesman.] 
 
 Major John N. Edwards, the soldier, author, and journalist is 
 dead. Brave, daring, and chivalrous, he loved and was loved by his 
 men, nnd their trust in him was sublime. The record of the 
 achievements of Shelby and his men are matters of history, jtml of 
 all of these Edwards was the hero. With Shelby he went to Mcx ico 
 at the close of the Civil War, and there also he made a record to 
 which his friends point with pride. Returning home he once more 
 sought the printing room, but as a writer, and his pen has given to 
 
NEWSPAPER TRIBUTES. 215 
 
 the world works that will remain as long as history is read. No 
 man in the State was better or more widely known than Major 
 Kd^ards, and he numbered his friends by the thousand, who will 
 mourn his death long and sincerely. 
 
 JOHN N. EDWARDS. 
 
 [Shelbina Democrat] 
 
 The bright journalist, Major John N. Edwards, died at the 
 McCarty House, in Jefferson City, Saturday last, of paralysis. The 
 news of an event so unexpected was a sad surprise to the friends of 
 the brilliant man throughout the State. "When the death was 
 announced at the Capitol half of the members of both bodies of the 
 Legislature left their seats and gathered in the lobby and adjoining 
 rooms. Republicans and Democrats alike expressed the deepest 
 sorrow for his sudden and untimely death and the highest sym- 
 pathy for his bereaved family. During the recess at noon nothing 
 else was talked about among the crowds at the various hotels but 
 the death of the brilliant journalist. 
 
 MAJ. JOHN N. EDWARDS. 
 
 [Waverly Times.] 
 
 The death of this man, so universally esteemed by the people 
 and press of this State, is an irreparable loss to journalism, his family, 
 and a large circle of friends. He was by general consent termed a 
 peculiar man, invested with an originality of thought that painted 
 tilt; present with a coloring of the past, whose conceptions of the 
 ii'finite ruled in his just measure of manhood, and whose integrity 
 of purpose was unquestioned. He was a bold and unflinching 
 advocate of what he esteemed just, and his judgment was tem- 
 pered with charity. That he was more than ordinarily esteemed, 
 i Ihe universal testimony of his companions in arms who delight 
 t-.} sj>eak of his utter selfishness, faultless bravery, and many acts of 
 kindness on the march, in the battle and the camp, where he made 
 f ' -lends who were proud to march with him to ^victory or defeat. 
 And >o pusses away a gentle, loving, moving spirit that the world 
 !' onurs only in death. 
 
 HE WAS A BRAYE MAN. 
 
 [Clay County Progress.] 
 
 In the death of John N. Edwards, the State has lost one of its 
 purest citizens, the press one of its ablest writers, for he wrote as 
 if from inspiration ; his words were clean, pure, simple they carried 
 weight with them such weight as few writer's words carry. Few 
 newspaper men cared to cross swords with John N. Edwards. In 
 him the nation has lost one of her fairest sons. He battled for right, 
 for truth, for justice, ai d for the prosperity and upbuilding of his 
 native land. John N. Edwards was a man in all things. He was 
 no backbiter, sneak, coward, vilifier, perjurer he was a brave man, 
 a true man; he spent his whole life in doing good infighting for 
 the right, The world is better for his having lived in it, 
 
216 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 THE KNIGHTLIEST OF KNIGHTS. 
 
 [Moberly Monitor.] 
 
 Major Edwards was a man of genius a genius that glowed like a 
 furnace and sparkled like a star. His writings were prose poems ; 
 all his conceptions were unique, all his compositions were complete. 
 When he finished an article on any favorite theme, he left littCa to be 
 said by others who took the same view. 
 
 His force lay in the energy and harmony of his articles in the 
 vigor of expression, as well as in the uniqueness of conception . His 
 pen, like his sword, was always at the command of his friends, when 
 those friends advocated a cause he could conscientiously espouse. 
 He was as gallant in civil as in warlike times brave, chivalric, 
 never bending the knee to power, never crouching at the feet of pat- 
 ronage. Lofty in conception, noble in purpose, poetic in expression, 
 and pure in design, his articles dropped from his pen like liquid 
 gems, incrusting, hardening, sparkling as they fell. He was the 
 knightliest knight that ever poised a lance in the field of journa- 
 lism courageous and fearless, generous and just. He sought 
 no advantage, used no artifice, employed no deceit, but met his 
 antagonist front to front and steel to steel. He detested shams, 
 he hated hypocrisy, he abhorred deceit. What he was on New 
 Year's clay, the 31st of December found him always the champion 
 of the defenseless, the defender of the weak, the advocate of the 
 right as he saw it, the enemy of wrong wherever found. 
 
 MAJOR JOHN N. EDWARDS. 
 
 [Mexico (Mo.) Ledger.'] 
 
 This child of genius, who was known by thousands and loved 
 by all who knew him, was one of nature's truest noblemen. He 
 lived more for his fellows than for himself. Of unflinching con- 
 viction, with a hatred for all that was sham, he never put his pen to 
 a sentence that did not ring with force and truth. Major Edwards 
 was a writer whose work was so distinctively his own that he had 
 few equals and no superior throughout the country. Everything to 
 which he placed his pen sparkled with a quaint originality that 
 filled with interest every sentence that emanated from his wonder- 
 ful brain. Many hearts will go out in sorrow at the news of this 
 great man's death. His career comes to a close in the zenith of his 
 manhood. Beloved and honored he stood in life; revered in his 
 memory after death. This genius stood alone among the fellows of 
 his profession in Missouri, and his presence was their inspiration. 
 Those who knew him best regret his death the most; but of all the 
 mass whose acquaintance with this king among men was confined to 
 a perusal of the powerful and interesting products of his brain, not 
 one will hesitate to cast a flower upon his grave, or fail to drop a 
 tear to the memory of one who loved the right. 
 
 HE LOVED MISSOURI. 
 
 [Tipton Times.] 
 
 We have stood in the forest and seen the great towering oaks 
 felled by the woodman's axe, and, with a crash that awoke tb^ 
 echoes, it lay prostrate on the earth; as we gazed into vacant 
 

 NEWSPAPER TRIBUTES. 217 
 
 where but a moment before it reared its lofty branches and swayed 
 to and fro iii the breeze, and surveyed the scars and bruises its fall 
 had inflicted upon the surrounding timber, we felt impressed with 
 the desolation wrought. Like the fallen oak, Major Edwards'death 
 has left a vacancy that can not be filled, and has awakened tender 
 and sympathetic expressions of sorrow throughout the State ; and 
 like it, bruised and bleeding, btmourn his eLd. Pictures of the 
 most peaceful pastoral scenes, the bitter, invective, withering sar- 
 casms, poetic flights, and cold, logical reasoning were frequently 
 interspersed in the same article in the most fascinating and effective 
 manner, until the reader from lazily contemplating the grazing kind 
 or listening to the lullaby of -the brook in the meadow, was startled 
 by being confronted by some appalling crime. 
 
 He loved Missouri with all the enthusiasm of his nature, and 
 labored persistently for her advancement. He knew her brave, 
 sturdy, honest people, and few men had the power to touch their 
 hearts as he did. To his bereaved family we tender our deeepest 
 sympathy. 
 
 [Weston CTironicZe.] 
 
 Major Edwards, a title which he gallantly won in the late war, 
 was a man of great ability and force of character. As a man and 
 journalist his friends and admirers throughout the West, and partic- 
 ularly in Missouri, were numbered by legions. In this(Platte) 
 county he had hosts of ardent friends, who sincerely mourn the 
 departure of their able, warm hearted, brave, and generous friend. 
 His journalistic life was a success beyond even his own expectations. 
 By the press, and by all who had perused his peculiarly romantic 
 and ably-clad thoughts, he was regarded the equal if not the peer of 
 any in Western journalism. His life throughout, as a civilian and 
 soldier, was marked by many incidents of determination to accom- 
 plish acts of great worth and noble results both to himself and the 
 cause which he espoused and loved. In his newspaper career he 
 followed no man every idea he advanced was original, and every 
 thought expressed was copied throughout by the "press. He was 
 honest and fearless, and never published a line which he did not 
 believe to be the truth and for which he would not personally 
 answer. He was brave and generous in war and fearless and honest 
 in civil life, and liberal to a fault, an affectionate husband and a 
 kind father, and his death has left a vacancy in Missouri journalism 
 that will with difficulty, if ever, be filled, and his death is a calam- 
 ity to the press of the State. 
 
 DEATH OF MAJOR EDWARDS- 
 
 [Tarkio Avalanche.] 
 
 It has been truly said by a contemporary of Major Edwards, 
 that "no pen but his own should write of a nature like that of the 
 deceased journalist." In his character was blended many noble ele- 
 ments, embracing qualities that are seldom found grouped in the 
 human heart. While brave and impulsive, and ever willing to face 
 with unsheathed sword opponents of his sincere convictions, he pos- 
 sessed a temperament as beautiful and sublime as a balmy spring 
 morning. Although staunch, almost fierce, in his denunciation of 
 those who combatted his ideas of propriety, no man could sooner 
 drown in the fountain of mercy his resentment than he. While he 
 jealously guarded his idols and dealt strong blows, in their defense, 
 
218 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 he could admire and indorse the conscientious conviction that 
 caused others, whether rightly or wrongly, to attempt their over- 
 throw. It is claimed for him, and we believe justly so, that, despite 
 his devotion to principles, he did not hesitate to denounce insincerity 
 and wrong even where they were exercised to f uither such princi- 
 ples. When he indorsed a theory he considered it proper to put on 
 his whole armor in its defense. The strategem of war and the 
 diplomacy of peace are legitimate elements of success, and they are 
 unhesitatingly used, but with Major Edwards, willful and broad 
 deception and absolute injustice were never mistaken for these qual- 
 ities While an active and intense partisan, he numbered among his 
 true friends and ardent admirers the best men of all parties. Such 
 persons drop a tear on his bier and remember only his high and 
 noble qualities, his unique personality. 
 
 DEATH OF MAJOR EDWARDS. 
 
 [Argentine Republic.] 
 
 Major Edwards was a typical American hero, and one of the 
 kind wi; always loved to read about. He was a man of convictions 
 served through the war on the Confederate side brave to a fault, 
 and one of the most brilliant writers and fighters in the United 
 States. 
 
 Major Edwards was a man that made his enemies love and 
 respect him, and "what he failed in acetBiplisLir.g ruling tLe wtr 
 wiih his sword, he spent the nmairder c f his life in ] rickii g ard 
 cauterizing with the sharpest-pointed pen that ever made a scratch 
 on paper. Men like Edwards may "fold the drapery of their couch 
 around them and lie down to pleasant dreams," but they never, 
 never die. And just as long as the muddy waters continue to wash 
 the banks of poor old Missouri, the name of Edwards will be an 
 evening hearthstone spell and a fadeless memory. 
 
 THE DEATH OF AN HONEST MAN. 
 
 [Kansas City (Kas.) Gazette.] 
 
 Thus has passed away one of the shining lights of journalism. 
 The pen of Major Edwards had an individuality that was all his own. 
 His very soul seemed to creep down his brave right arm and inspire 
 the very ink he used. His style was original, highly figurative and 
 ornate, and Republicansas well as Democrats delighted to follow him 
 in print. He was an honest man, and we do not use this word in a 
 conventional sense, but in all its width, depth, and breadth. He fol- 
 lowed the truth as it came to his soul, and from his standpoint, and 
 was a genial friend, a happy husband, and a noble father. 
 
 [Atchison (Kas.) Champion.] 
 
 A strange coin pound was Major John N. Edwards, who died on 
 Saturday last at Jefferson City, Missouri. We doubt if the West 
 has ever produced as brilliant and picturesque a writer as was Major 
 Edwards. He was, as a word-painter, a genius. His powers of 
 description were marvelous. Evidently his model was Victor Hugo, 
 but he was not an imitator. He marshaled his words as a soldier 
 does battalions, and the blare of bugles and the roll of drums was in 
 tueir onset. 
 
 Personally, he was a kindly, gentle, lovable man, modest as a 
 
NEWSPAPER TRIBUTES. 219 
 
 woman, terder as a child. He treasured neither wrongs nor hates. 
 He was an unselfish friend and a generous opponent, and all who 
 knew him well admired and respected him. 
 
 [Barber County (Kas.) Index.] 
 
 Major John N. Edwards, one of the best known newspaper 
 men in Missouri or in the West, died at Jefferson City, Mo., last 
 Saturday. Major Edwards was not an ordinary man. His physical 
 strength was slight, but he had a large and active brain, a memory 
 for names, dates, and faces that was surprising. A friendship was 
 never betrayed or voluntarily broken by him. The word friendship 
 had a deeper significance with him than with most men. Ten 
 thousand who have known him long and well and who appreciate 
 nobility of character will grieve over the loss of a true friend, the 
 press will regret the loss of one of its most brilliant contributors, and 
 the whole State of Missouri will miss an active, progressive, talented 
 citizen. 
 
 [Plattsburg (Mo.) Jeffersonian.] 
 
 The death of Major John N. Edwards has created profound 
 and genuine sorrow within the entire borders of the State. His 
 personal and mental characteristics were outlined amid his surround- 
 ings, like the great peaks in the mountain range. His individualism 
 was never merged in his associations. The world admired his 
 brilliant genius; his enemies feared his terrific wrath, while his 
 friends loved him for his gentle, sweet, and generous spirit that 
 shone always for them. He filled a space in the field of journalism 
 which was peculiarly his own, and therefore may never be filled 
 again. 
 
 [Kansas City Live Stock Indicator.] 
 
 As a writer for the press, and as an author, he was known to the 
 general public, but it was as a man a man of generous impulses, 
 of steadfast, stalwart friendship that those who knew him inti- 
 mately admired. He was a talented writer, imbued with sincerity 
 of purpose, despising shams and frauds in short, one who was 
 always found the same yesterday, to-day, and whenever he was met. 
 He has gone, but those who knew Major Edwards personally, and 
 his acquaintances were his friends, can bear testimony to his nobil- 
 ity of character and unswerving fidelity. 
 
 [Marshall (Mo.) Democrat-News.] 
 
 By his death Missouri loses her most brilliant writer, and the 
 journalistic world an editor whose like we ne'er shall see again. No 
 man could be gentler to a friend or fiercer to a foe; and in writing 
 of one he loved, or of a cause he advocated, he was as gentle as a 
 dove and as delicate as a woman; but in denouncing an enemy or 
 opposing a measure his pen was a rapier, cutting and thrusting at 
 all vulnerable points. His style was all his own; no man can imi- 
 tate it, and none can say he copied it from man, alive or dead. 
 
 [Las Vegas (N. M.) Optic.] 
 
 He was a brilliant, noble, chivalric gentleman, with hands and 
 heart unstained by any unclean act. 
 
 With a good education, a copious vocabulary, a vivid imagina- 
 tion, fixed convictions, and dauntless courage, John Edwards could 
 worry his enemies and gladden the hearts of his friends as few other 
 writers west of the Missouri could, 
 
220 JOHN :;T:VOIA:; EDWARDS 
 
 [Wintield (Kan.) Telegram.] 
 
 By his death the journalistic profession loses one of its brightest 
 lights. His sentences were full and rounded, and each a glittering, 
 intellectual gem. He was versed in ancient history, and few men 
 possess the knowledge he possessed of the political situation of the 
 Old as well as the New World. Major J. N. Edwards' name is 
 engraved on the hearts of thousands, and it will be spoken with 
 reverence by coming generations. 
 
 [Emporia (Kan.) Democrat.] 
 
 The death of John N. Edwards removes from the newspaper 
 field one of the brightest and keenest writers of the day. 
 
 While many will miss his smooth and forcible paragraphs,tliose 
 who will miss him most are those who knew him as a friend in 
 private life. 
 
 [Rocky Mountain (Col.) News.] 
 
 He was one of the ablest writers in the West, and was at all 
 times a gentleman. Brave as the legendary lion, Major Edwards 
 had a tender heart and was ever ready to relieve distress in any of 
 its phases. 
 
 [Liberty (Mo.) Tribune.] 
 
 The sudden death of Major John N. Edwards recently, at the 
 State Capital, was a sad, unexpected blow to his numerous friends 
 and acquaintances throughout the West. His death was a great loss 
 to the profession to which he belonged, and the State of Missouri, 
 which hu loved so well. 
 
 [Lamar (Mo.) Democrat.] 
 
 The death of Major Edwards of the Kansas City Times has 
 caused sorrow wherever he was known or heard of. To kLow him 
 was to like him; to know him well was to love him. If yon were his 
 enemy you would but admire him. As a friend, he would do more 
 and go further than anyone else, he would make more sacrifices than 
 any other friend, he was true as steel, and he never was known to 
 quail in times of danger. 
 
 [Rich Hill (Mo.) .Review.] 
 
 Over the grave of John N. Edwards we pause to drop a tear of 
 sympathy and love. He was a true child of genius, a writer, his- 
 torian, and poet. In all the warp and woof of his nature the corn 
 mercial had no place. He was no utilitarian, and in this time and 
 age could not receive the appreciation due him. Goodness was 
 enshrined within his heart and from this fountain flowed love and 
 devotion, bravery and chivalry, and all the attributes of a great soul. 
 There was, there will be, but one John N. Edwards. 
 
 [Tipton (Mo.) Times.] 
 
 Major John N. Edwards is gone. His warm, sympathetic heart 
 is still; his tender blue eyes are curtained and dark. As a man, he 
 possessed the best attributes of the human heart. Honest, brave, 
 gentle, modest, unflinching in his fidelity to his friends, he stood 
 forth in the full measure of manhood and commanded the highest 
 admiration of all. But it was as an editor that he reached his 
 highest grandeur. His style was imitable, 
 
 [Richmond (Mo.) Payitc.] 
 He was ope of the best-known men in Missouri, Brave, brii- 
 
 
NEWSPAPER TRIBUTES. 221 
 
 liant, chivalric, steadfast in his friendships, he indirectly exerted a 
 wonderful influence on the people, and left behind him a name that 
 will live in history as long as time shall last. His newspaper articles 
 have been more admired and copied than those of any other writer 
 in this country, and the fraternity loses its best and most brilliant 
 star in his demise. 
 
 [Excelsior Springs (Mo.) Herald.] 
 
 It was with no little sadness we learned of the sudden death 
 of our esteemed friend, Major John N. Edwards, of the Kansas 
 City Times. In the death of John N. Edwards, Missouri has lost 
 one of her most valuable citizens and journalism a most inimitable 
 writer. No living writer wielded a more felicitous pen or knew 
 better how to touch every chord in the human heart. He was the 
 Nestor of Western journalism. 
 
 [Odessa Democrat.] 
 
 The death of Major John N. Edwards, which occurred at Jeffer- 
 son City on last Saturday, has caused universal regret throughout 
 the State. Political friend and opponent alike express the great loss 
 sustained by his unexpected death. His was a brilliant pen and a 
 warm heart that was touched with the tenderest sympathy for all 
 that were distressed or in need. 
 
 [Fort Scott (Kan.) Tribune.'] 
 
 The death o. Major J. N. Edwards, of the Kansas City Times, 
 is a severe loss to journalism in the West. Major Edwards was one 
 -of the most caustic and incisive editorial writers of his time. He 
 was an accurate observer of events, possessed a fund of historical and 
 classical knowledge scarcely ever attained by current writers, and 
 withal a happy faculty of making friends and retaining them. 
 
 [Moberly (Mo.) Monitor.] 
 
 Few writers of the West were better posted than Major John N. 
 Edwards, the knight errant of political journalism. In his death 
 journalism has lost a jewel, society an ornament, and humanity a 
 friend. It is with pride that the writer of this article can say. He 
 was my friend. 
 
 [Atchison (Kan.) Globe.] 
 
 John N. Edwards, famous as a soldier and editor, died at Jef- 
 ferson City qn Saturday at the age of 51. A book might be 
 written of this man; of his brave deeds, his big heart, his gentle 
 nature, his native modesty and unselfishness, and his wonderful 
 charm as a writer. 
 
 [Holton (Kan.] Record.] 
 
 Major John N. Edwards, editor of the Kansas City Times, died 
 suddenly in Jefferson City, Mo., on Saturday. He was an original 
 and unique writer, and whatever came from his pen was clothed 
 with the adornment of imagery and romance. 
 
 [Hamilton, (Mo.) News-Graphic.] 
 
 The announcement last Saturday of the death of Major John N. 
 Edwards was a great surprise and sad news to the many thousands 
 of friends and admirers of the deceased throughout the State. A 
 braver, truer, or nobler man than John N. Edwards never lived. 
 
 [Cass County (Mo.) Democrat.] 
 Major John N. .Edwards, of The Kansas City Times, died in 
 
222 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 Jefferson City last week. He was one of the most brilliant and 
 versatile writers in the country, and few men in the State had more 
 or warmer friends. 
 
 [Wichita (Kan.) Journal.] 
 
 Major John N. Edwards, the well-known editorial writer of 
 The Kansas City Times, died suddenly at Jefferson City Satur- 
 day. He was noted as one of the most forcible writers in the West 
 and a man of strong convictions. 
 
 [Mexico (Mo.) Ledger.] 
 
 The death of Major John N. Edwards, which occurred at 
 Jefferson City Saturday morning, spreads a gloom throughout the 
 State. This child of genius, who was known by thousands, and 
 loved by all who knew him, was one of nature's truest noblemen. 
 
 [Holton (Kan.) Signal.] 
 
 Major John N. Edwards, of Kansas City, one of the brightest 
 and most versatile writers in the West, died at Jefferson City last 
 Saturday. He was a great, generous man, and had many friends. 
 
 [Clinton (Mo.) Democrat.'] 
 
 In the death of Major John N. Edwards, of the Kansas City 
 Times, the press has lost one of its brightest jewels, humanity one of 
 its bravest and truest defenders. 
 
 [Topeka (Kan.) Capital.! 
 
 Major J. N. Edwards, whose untimely death at Jefferson City 
 occurred on Saturday, was an elegant and forcible writer, gifted 
 with a rnind of no ordinary quality. 
 
 [Breckenridge (Mo.) Bulletin.] 
 
 Major John N. Edwards, of the Kansas City Times, is no more. 
 He was one of the most brilliant writers and agreeable of gentlemen 
 in the United States. 
 
 [Topeka (Kan.) Democrat.] 
 
 Major John N. Edwards, one of the most brilliant editorial 
 writers in the West, died at Jefferson City on Saturday, of heart 
 affection. 
 
 [Neosho Times.] 
 
 One of Missouri's brightest journalists and best men has passed 
 from this earthly life to a happier one, that will never end. The 
 State has lost a true and frank and generous man, who, by his fine 
 abilities and straightforward force of character, by his high sense 
 of honor and unswerving faithfulness to all his convictions, and by 
 his noble traits of soul, had gained honor, influence, and troops of 
 friends. 
 
 [Cooper County Leader.] 
 
 John N. Edwards the brilliant journalist is dead. In the zenith 
 of his manhood he was stricken with paralysis, and in a few short 
 hours he yielded up a life in which every Missourian had an interest 
 courageous and generous to a fault, kind hearted and gentle as a 
 woman. At an early age he was thrown upon his own resources. 
 Inspired by genius and ambition, he began at once to climb the dizzy 
 heights of fame. As a journalistic writer, John N. Edwards hud but 
 few, if any, equals. He possessed to an eminent degree the happy 
 faculty of expressing his thoughts with a brilliancy of diction that 
 was at once inimitable. Thinking and caring more for the interest 
 
NEWSPAPER TRIBUTES. 223 
 
 of his people than for himself, he of ttiine? sacrificed his personal 
 interests for the advancement of his friends. 
 [Parkville Independent.] 
 
 John N. Edwards, one of the best known and, perhaps, most 
 influential newspaper men of Missouri, died at Jefferson City on la.^t 
 Saturday. As a newspaper writer, he had been before the people of 
 Missouri for many years, and there is but little doubt that he was the 
 most widely known of any editorial writer of which our State could 
 boast. 
 
 [Kendall County (Kan.) Banner.] 
 
 Major John N. Edwards, of Missouri, died at Jefferson City on 
 Saturday of last week, and has been laid to rest by loving hands and 
 with sorrowful hearts. He was a high type of Missouri's noblest 
 manhood, and the earth has not produced its superior. As an author 
 and editor, he has left a name that will live through ages; and as a 
 friend, comrade, and brother, his memory will be kept green in the 
 hearts of thousands of his fellow nteu. 
 
 [Hill City Democrat.] 
 
 Major J. N. Edwards, of Kansas City, died last Friday at Jef- 
 ferson City, Mo., with heart disease. Major Edwards was a promi- 
 nent journalist and writer. Above all, he was a brave, true hearted 
 man, and his death is sincerely mourned by all who knew him. 
 [Pleasant Hill Local.'] 
 
 He was a gifted and brilliant writer, anu was the author of 
 several valuable works. He was a liberal and large-hearted man, 
 beloved by all who knew him, ever ready to lend a helping hand to 
 the needy and unfortunate, to take sides with the weak against the 
 strong, to shield the wronged and oppressed. His death will cause 
 the deepest sorrow throughout this country and wherever he was 
 known. 
 
 [London Democrat.] 
 
 He was brave he knew no fear even in the sad ordeal that 
 we must all meet he was still the same gallant John N. Edwards. 
 Death had no terrors for him. He was an exceptional man in many 
 respects. He never courted trouble, but always met it boldly. 
 His whole life was an open book; his actions were above suspicion. 
 Wealth had no charms for him except so far as he could do good 
 with it. He was one man in a million. As a writer, he had no 
 superior in this State. He was full of personal magnetism. Asa 
 soldier, he led and never followed; as a man, he was the peer of any; 
 as a friend, none could be warmer or nearer; as a newspaperman, 
 there were but few who could equal him. 
 
 [Newton (Kan.) Republican.] 
 
 The particulars of the death of Major John N. Edwards, ~vho 
 was chief editorial writer of the Kansas City Times, are given on 
 first page. He was a Confederate officer, and for twenty years he 
 has been a unique figure in Western journalism. He had a style and 
 richness of expression peculiarly his own and bearing the impress 
 of an uncommon personality. 
 
 [Osagre City (Kan.) Free Press.] 
 
 Major John N. Edwards, one of the most brilliant editorial 
 writers in the West, died in Jefferson City on Saturday of heart 
 affection. At the time of his death he was on the staff of the Kan- 
 sas City Times. 
 
 [Miami (Mo.) News.] 
 The sudden death of that brilliant journalist and nobleman, 
 
224 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 Major John N. Edwards, on Saturday last, at Jefferson City, casts a 
 shadow of sorrow over the whole State. His editorial writing 
 attracted the attention of the country. It was inimitable and unsur- 
 passed. 
 
 [Jonesport Gazette.} 
 
 Major John N. Edwards, well known throughout Missouri, 
 died suddenly at Jefferson City on Saturday. He was a brilliant 
 journalist and wrote in a style all his own. 
 
 [Kingmaii County (Kan.) Democrat.} 
 
 Major Edwards was one of the foremost men of Missouri, and 
 lost no opportunity to serve his State. His early death will be 
 mourned by the thousands all over the West who esteem men by the 
 good they do rather than by the wealth and fame they obtain. 
 
 [Gallatin (Mo.) Democrat.} 
 
 Major John N. Edwards was one of Missouri's brilliant journal- 
 ists, and many mourn that the pen has dropped from his hand ere 
 the intellect that controlled it had reached the zenith of its power. 
 He was a man of kind thoughts, mighty hopes, and gentle deeds, but 
 life, with its activities, bringing the fruits of honor and joy, has 
 closed, and he slumbers with the dead, leaving to his friends a mem- 
 ory as fragrant with the sweet amenities of life as the perfume 
 exhaled by the roses of May which loving hands will scatter upon 
 his grave. 
 
 [Mexico Intelligencer.'] 
 
 There were few men in the State better known or more 
 universally respected than Major Edwards. He was a man of geu- 
 erous impulses, true to his friends under any and all circumstances. 
 As a newspaper writer, he had a style peculiarly his own, and his 
 articles commanded wide-spread admiration, No whisper of sus- 
 picion was ever raised against his personal integrity. He died poor 
 save in the respect and affections of those who knew him best. 
 
 Major Edwards was one of the readiest writers and brilliant 
 newspaper men in the West, with a style peculiarly his own, not 
 excelled anywhere. 
 
 Major Edwards was as bold and resolute in his positions that 
 he believed to be right as a lion, still was kind and gentle as a child, 
 never bearing resentments, no matter how badly misrepresented or 
 traduced. In his friendships he was as true as the needle to the 
 pole, and never allowed outside clamor or censure to swerve him a 
 particle. The Brunswicker. 
 
 [Linneus BuUetin.] 
 
 The sudden death of Major Jno. N. Edwards, at Jefferson City, 
 last Saturday, has called forth an expression of sorrow and regret 
 throughout the country. He was one of the most brilliant journal- 
 ists in the State, and had been for years one of the acknowledged 
 leaders of the Democratic party. His talents and his virtues have 
 won for him a warm place in the hearts of the people of Missouri. 
 They loved him and his memory they will ever cherish. 
 
 [Central Missourian.} 
 
 Major Edwards was the embodiment of most of the noble char- 
 acteristics that go to make all that is admirable in manhood. John 
 N. Edwards needs no introduction to our readers, 'many of them 
 having shared with him the hardships and dangers of the bivouac 
 
NEWSPAPER TRIBUTES. 225 
 
 and battle-field, but we are sorry that want of space prevents our 
 giving a more extended notice of his life and death. We will try 
 and do so in our next issue. 
 
 [Paola (Kan.) Republican,'] 
 
 The death of Major John N. Edwards, of the Kansas City 
 Times, at Jefferson City, Saturday morning, closed the career of a 
 talented, able editor who was the most popular and widely-known 
 newspaper man in the West. His death is deeply mourned by all 
 who knew him, and more particularly by his Missouri friends, who 
 knew him best and to whom he was most endeared. 
 
 [Las Vegas (N. M.) Qptfe.] 
 
 Kansas City and all the Democrats in Missouri, with a large Re- 
 publican contingent, are mourning the death of John N. Edwards. 
 We shall not soon look upon his like again. 
 
 [Dickinson Co. (Kan.) News.'] 
 
 Major John N. Edwards, probably the most picturesque figure 
 in Missouri, died at Jefferson City last Saturday. He was with 
 Shelby in the Confederate service, and was a beau ideal of a daring, 
 chivalric soidier. His style was fervent and poetical, and at all 
 times interesting. He was a gentleman in the strictest meaning of 
 that term, and his death will be widely regretted. 
 
 [Butler Times.] 
 
 The sad and unexpected death of Major John N. Edwards was 
 received in this city by his many friends with profound sorrow. He 
 was the most brilliant newspaper writer in the State. 
 
 [Emporia (Kan.) News.] 
 
 His style was entirely his own, and abounded in rhetorical fig- 
 ures, which fell from his pen as words from a good talker. He was 
 an intense Democrat, and'always wrote from conviction. 
 
 [Sweet Springs Herald.'] 
 
 As a journalist, he possessed rare attainments, and ranked with 
 the first of the land. He had many warm personal friends over the 
 entire State, who are shocked at his untimely death. He was a true 
 friend, a chivalrous enemy, a noble man 
 
 [Cole Co. Democrat.] 
 
 The sudden death of Major John N. Edwards, which occurred 
 in this city on the 4th instant, was a severe shock to his very many 
 friends and admirers throughout the State. Perhaps no man in the 
 State commanded a wider circle of friends than he. Major Edwards 
 was a brilliant writer, and had occupied a prominent position in the 
 journalistic field for many years. He was a brilliant man, a true 
 friend, and his death leaves a vacancy not easily filled and univer- 
 sally regretted. 
 
 [Springfield Leader.] 
 
 He was talented, courageous, gentle, and devoted. His honor 
 was never tarnished. He knew no such words as "mine" and 
 "thine." His boundless librality and charity kept him poor in the 
 goods of the world but rich in acts of beneficence. In politics he 
 was positive, uncompromising, and unrelenting where a principle 
 was involved, but after the battle and victory won there was no 
 
226 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 exultation in his heart or in his acts. In his death, the press of Mis- 
 souri loses its brightest light and the Democratic party its ablest 
 champion. 
 
 [Burlington Republican.'] 
 
 The death of Major John N. Edwards, of the Kansas City Times, 
 removes the most terse, forcible, and brilliant writer in the West. 
 There was a peculiar individuality about his work that anyone 
 familiar with it could readily recognize. His figures of speech were 
 happily selected apt and striking, and his diction in every respect 
 elegant. He was an ex-Confederate who served under Shelby, and 
 was always an ardent Democrat, but his work as a journalist was 
 none the less admirable and worthy of imitation by those who seek 
 to attain excellence. 
 
 [Huron Headlight.'} 
 
 We have for a long time regarded MajorEdwards as one of the 
 most vigorous editorial writers in the country. He was a fineclass- 
 ical scholar, and many brilliant paragraphs flowed from his ready 
 pen. 
 
 [Blue Springs Herald.'] 
 
 In the death of Major Edwards, the people have lost a friend. 
 He was ever on the side of the laborer, the poor, the needy, and the 
 patriot. He had wonderful powers of expression and his descrip- 
 tions were unsurpassed. His mind was a storehouse of facts 
 gathered from extensive reading and observation, possessing a 
 wonderfully retentive memory. He was terrific in controversy, 
 discharging a whole battery of shot and shell that demolishes the 
 stoutest. He was exact in honesty and fair-dealing, a choice friend, 
 and a noble man, and is a great loss to the Democratic party, that 
 cannot be easily gained. 
 
 [Slater Rustler.] 
 
 The death of Major John Edwards is mourned in every house- 
 hold throughout the State. He was a man whom all loved and 
 admired for his high character, as a man, soldier, citizen, and journal- 
 ist. As a journalist, we may look in vain for another who can fill 
 his place in the hearts of the people of Missouri. 
 
 [Salina (Kan.) Herald.] 
 
 Major Edwards was the ablest editorial writer west of the great 
 Mississippi River. As a political writer, he had no superior and few 
 equals anywhere. Bold and fearless in the expression of his opinion, 
 his editorials were read by thousands of readers with profit and 
 delight. 
 
 [Milan Standard.] 
 
 Major J. N. Edwards died at Jefferson Citv on the 5th. With 
 Mr. Edwards passes away a brilliant journalist, and one whose 
 death makes sad many households in the State of Missouri. 
 
 [Brookfleld Argus.] 
 
 It will be a long time before his place will be filled. Major 
 Edwards had many admirers and friends throughout the State. 
 Unlike any other journalist in the West, his style was original and 
 unique. His life and associations with his fellow men was full of 
 love and tenderness, and his writings were like his life. 
 
 [Meade Center Democrat.] 
 He was one of the-best known newspaper men in the West. 
 
NEWSPAPER TRIBUTES. 227 
 
 The story of his life reads like a romance. He was a brave soldier, 
 an author of ability, and a leader in journalists' circles 
 
 [Albany Republican . ] 
 
 John N. Edwards was one of the most brilliant and successful 
 editorial writers in the West, and perhaps one of the most intensely 
 partisan. He was always a brave man, and carried with him 
 unflinchingly the courage of his convictions. 
 
 [Lathrop Monitor.] 
 
 He was one of the most brilliant writers in the State and had 
 won a national reputation as an author. 
 
 * [Soldier City (Kan.) Tribune.'] 
 
 Mr. Edwards was a great writer, and his death ends the career 
 of one of Missouri's brightest and ablest journalists. 
 
 [Tola (Kan.) Republican.] 
 
 One of the most striking personalities and altogether the most 
 picturesque and original writer in the West passed from earth last 
 Saturday when Major John N. Edwards, of the Kansas City Times, 
 breathed his last. 
 
 [Selbina Torchlight.] 
 
 The death of Major John N. Edwards, which occurred last 
 Saturday at Jefferson City, removes from the ranks of journalism 
 one of Missouri's brightest and most vigorous writers. He was a 
 gallant soldier, an honest, fearless man, and a true friend. 
 
 [Lee's Summit Journal.] 
 
 Major John N. Edwards, one of the brightest journalists of the 
 country, died suddenly at Jefferson City Saturday. He was a man 
 (f noble and generous impulses, the idol of his old army comrades, 
 t.nd a writer who had no imitators. 
 
 [Rich Hill Enterprise.] 
 
 Major J. N. Edwards, one of the brightest and most noted 
 journalists in Missouri, died at Jefferson City Saturday morning. 
 
 [Howard County Democrat.] 
 
 Major Edwards was a brilliant journalist; every line he penned 
 sparkled like a jewel. Brave and courageous, the press of the 
 State has not only lost its most brilliant member, butthe Demo- 
 cratic party a wise counselor. 
 
 [Clinton Democrat.] 
 
 No words of ours can add to the many laurels he has won and 
 so modestly and appropriately worn. If faults he had, we all have 
 them, let us forget them, and remember only his merits and 
 his virtues, of which he had more than fall to the lot of many 
 mortals. 
 
 [Rich Hill Review.] 
 
 Never again shall his clarion call be heard in the ranks of jour- 
 nalism summoning up the chivalry of human nature to do battle for 
 honor and glory. His voice always heard in behalf of his con- 
 science, giving expresssion to the good, the true, and the beautiful, 
 is silent forever, but his memory will live in the hearts of all true 
 Missourians, and will be like some rare painting from the hand of 
 genius that time, while softening the tints and outlines, will not 
 dim but prove an inspiration and a legacy to generations yet 
 unborn. 
 
228 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. 
 
 [Hope (Kas.,) Herald.] 
 
 Major John N. Edwards, the well-known editorial writer on the 
 Kansas City Tiroes, died last Saturday. He was a fine writer and a 
 big, noble-hearted man/and the profession, in his death, loses one of 
 its best and brightest members. 
 
 [Palmyra Spectator.] 
 
 Major Edwards was well known throughout the State as one of 
 the most brilliant and graceful writers that ever graced the tripod, 
 and there is deep sorrow in the hearts of the multitudes, who loved 
 and admired him for his many noble qualities and rare talents, over 
 the news of his death. To the people he was ever a friend, coun- 
 selor, and guide, and to the Democracy a tower of strength. Few 
 men will be missed more than Major Edwards, and the expression 
 of sorrow manifested on all hands at his demise indicate the nobl 
 character of the man and the warm place he held in the hearts o 
 the people. 
 
 [Christian County Republican.] 
 
 The most brilliant writer Missouri ever nurtured to greatnes 
 has passed away. The master of a style of vivid splendor, he 
 like Goldsmith, " touched nothing which he did not adorn." Hi 
 strangely captivating style glittered with metaphors that wer 
 drawn from his reminiscences of the stormy but entrancing day 
 when the great conflict filled men's hearts with emotion am 
 elevated their minds with thoughts of epic grandeur. Of rhetoric 
 Major Edwards was a very lord, painting in the chambers of his 
 imagery pictures of vermilion and gold. In his perfect diction 
 there was always present that stimulus, that power of opening 
 vistas vast, as we see in dreams, which it is the privilege of geniu 
 only to possess. Many a Missourian must feel that when John N 
 Edwards died it was as if the bright star Aldebaran had fadec 
 forever from the sight of men. 
 
SHELBY'S 
 
 EXPEDITION TO ]\^EXICO 
 
 UNWRITTEN LEAF 
 
 THE WAR 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN N. EDWARDS 
 
 AUTHOR OF "SHELBY AND HIS MEN," ETC., ETC. 
 
 KANSAS CITY, Mo. : 
 JENNIE EDWARDS, PUBLISHER 
 
 1889 
 
COPYRIGHTED 
 JENNIE EDWARDS 
 
SHELBY'S 
 
 EXPEDITION TO MEXICO; 
 
 AN UNWKITTEN LEAF OF THE WAE. 
 
 CHAPTEB I. 
 
 " They rode a troop of bearded men, 
 Rode two and two out from the town. 
 And some were blonde and some were brown, 
 And all as brave as Sioux; but when 
 From San Bennetto south the line 
 That bound them to the haunts of men 
 Was passed, and peace stood mute behind 
 And streamed a banner to the wind 
 The world knew not, there was a sign 
 Of awe, of silence, rear and van. 
 Men thought who never thought before; 
 I heard the clang and clash of steel, 
 From sword at hand or spur at heel, 
 And iron feet, but nothing more. 
 Some thought of Texas, some of Maine, 
 But more of rugged Tennessee 
 Of scenes in Southern vales of wine, 
 And scenes in Northern hills of pine, 
 As scenes they might not meet again; 
 And one of Avon thought, and one 
 Thought of an isle beneath the sun, 
 And one of Rowley, one the Rhine, 
 And one turned sadly to the Spree . " 
 
 JOAQUIN MILLER. 
 
 WHAT follows may read like a romance; it was the saddest reality 
 this life could offer to many a poor fellow who now sleeps in a for- 
 eign and forgotten grave somewhere in the tropics somewhere 
 between the waters of the Rio Grande and the Pacific Ocean. 
 
 The American has ever been a wayward and a truant race. 
 There are passions which seem to belong to them by some strange 
 fatality of birth or blood. In every port, under all flags, upon every 
 
232 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO ; 
 
 island, shipwrecked and stranded upon the barren or golden shores 
 of adventure, Americans can be found, taking fate as it comes a 
 devil-may-care, reckless, good-natured, thrifty and yet thriftless 
 race, loving nothing so well as their country except an enterprise 
 full of wonder and peril. Board a merchant vessel in mid-ocean 
 and there is an American at the wheel. Steer clear of a lean, lank, 
 rakish-looking craft beating up from the windward toward Yuca- 
 tan, and overboard as a greeting, comes the full roll of an Anglo- 
 Saxon voice, half -familiar and half piratical. The angular features 
 peer out from under sombreros, bronzed and brown though they 
 may be, telling of faces seen somewhere about the cities eager* 
 questioning faces, a little sad at times, yet always stern enough for 
 broil or battle. They cruise in the foreign rivers and rob on the 
 foreign shores. Whatever is uppermost finds ready hands. No 
 guerrillas are more daring than American guerrillas; the church has 
 no more remorseless despoilers; the women no more ardent and 
 faithless lovers; the haciendas no more sturdy defenders; the wine 
 cup no more devoted proselytes; the stranger armies no more heroic 
 soldiers; and the stormy waves of restless emigration no more sinster 
 waifs, tossed hither and thither, swearing in all tongues rude, 
 boisterous, dangerous in drink, ugly at cards, learning revolver-craft 
 quickest and surest, and dying as they love to die, game to the 
 last. 
 
 Of such a race came all who had preceded the one thousand Con- 
 federates led by Shelby into Mexico. He found many of them 
 there. Some he hung and some he recruited, the last possibly not 
 the best. 
 
 The war in the Trans-Mississippi Department had been a holiday 
 parade for some; a ceaseless battle and raid for others. Shelby's 
 division of Missourians was the flower of this army. He had formed 
 and fashioned it upon an ideal of his own. He had a maxim, 
 borrowed from Napoleon without knowing it, which was: "Young 
 men for war." Hence all that long list of boy heroes who died 
 before maturity from Pocahontas, Arkansas, to Newtonia, Mis- 
 souri, died in that last march of 1864, the stupidest, wildest, 
 wantonest, wickedest march ever made by a general who had a 
 voice like a lion and a spring like a guinea pig. Shelby did the 
 fighting, or, rather, what he could of it. After Westport, eight 
 hundred of these Missourians were buried in a night. The sun that 
 set at Mine Creek set as well upon a torn and decimated division, 
 bleeding at every step, but resolute and undaunted. That night the 
 dead were not buried. 
 
 Newtonia came after the last battle west of the Mississippi 
 river. It was a prairie fight, stern, unforgiving, bloody beyond all 
 comparison for the stakes at issue, fought far into the night, and 
 won by him who had won so many before that he had forgotten to 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 233 
 
 count them. General Blunt is rich, alive and a brave man and a 
 happy man over in Kansas. He will bear testimony again, as he 
 has often done before, that Shelby's lighting at Newtonia surpassed 
 any he had ever seen. Blunt -was a grim fighter himself, be it 
 remembered, surpassed by none who ever held the border for the 
 Union. 
 
 The retreat southward from Newtonia was a famine. The 
 flour first gave out, then the meal, then the meat, then the medicines. 
 The recruits suffered more in spirit than in flesh, and fell out by 
 the wayside to die. The old soldiers cheered them all they could 
 and tightened their own sabre belts. Hunger was a part of their 
 rations. The third day beyond the Arkansas river, hunger found 
 an ally smallpox. In cities and among civilized beings this is 
 fearful. Among soldiers, and, therefore, machines, it is but another 
 name for death. They faced it as they would a line of battle, 
 waiting for the word. That came in this wise: Shelby took every 
 wagon he could lay his hands upon, took every blanket the dead 
 men left, and improvised a hospital. While life lasted in him, a 
 soldier was never abandoned. There was no shrinking; each 
 detachment in detail mounted guard over the terrible cortege 
 protected it, camped with it, waited upon it, took its chances as it 
 took tys rest. Discipline and humanity fraternized. The weak 
 hands of the one were intertwined with the bronzed hands of the 
 other. Even amid the pestilence there was poetry. 
 
 The gaps made in the ranks were ghastly. Many whom the 
 bullets had scarred and spared were buried far from soldierly 
 bivouacs or battle-fields War has these species of attacks, all the 
 more overwhelming because of their inglorious tactics. Fever can 
 not be fought, nor that hideous leprosy which kills after it has 
 defaced. 
 
 One day the end came, after much suffering and heroism and 
 devotion. A picture like this, however, is only painted that one 
 may understand the superb organization of that division which was 
 soon to be a tradition, a memory, a grim war spirit, a thing of gray 
 and glory f orevermore. 
 
 After the ill-starred expedition made to Missouri in 1864, the 
 Trans-Mississippi army went to sleep. It numbered about fifty 
 thousand soldiers, rank and file, and had French muskets, French 
 cannon, French medicines, French ammunition and French gold. 
 Matamoras, Mexico, was a port the Government could not or did 
 not blockade, and from one side of the river there came to it all 
 manner of supplies, and from the other side all kinds and grades of 
 cotton. This dethroned king had transferred its empire from the 
 Carolinas to the Gulf, from the Tombigbee to the Rio Grande. It 
 was a fugitive king, however, with a broken sceptre and a mere- 
 tricious crown. Afterward it was guillotined. 
 
234 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO ; 
 
 Gen. E. Kirby Smith was the Commander-in-Chief of this 
 department, who had under him as lieutenants, Generals John B. 
 Magruder and Simon B. Buckner. Smith was a soldier turned 
 exhorter. It is not known that he preached; he prayed, however, 
 and his prayers, like the prayers of the wicked, availed nothing. 
 Other generals in other parts of the army prayed, too, notably 
 Stonewall Jackson, but between the two there was this difference : 
 The first trusted to his prayers alone; the last to his prayers and 
 his battalions. Faith is a fine thing in the parlor, but it never yet 
 put grape-shot in an empty caisson, and pontoon bridges over a 
 fullfed river. 
 
 As I have said, while the last act in the terrible drama was being 
 performed east of the Mississippi river, all west of the Mississippi 
 was asleep. Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House awoke 
 them. Months, however, before the last march Price had made into 
 Missouri, Shelby had an interview with Smith. They talked of 
 many things, but chiefly of the war. Said Smith: 
 
 " What would you do in this emergency, Shelby?" 
 
 " I would," was the quiet reply, " march every single soldier of 
 my command into Missouri infantry, artillery, cavalry, all; I would 
 fight there and stay there. Do not deceive yourself. Lee is over- 
 powered; Johnston is giving up county after county full of our corn 
 and wheat fields; Atlanta is in danger, and Atlanta furnishes the 
 powder; the end approaches; a supreme effort is necessary; the eyes 
 of the East are upon the West, and with fifty thousand soldiers such 
 as yours you can seize St. Louis, hold it, fortify it, and crossover 
 into Illinois. It would be a drversion, expanding into a campaign 
 a blow that had destiny in it." 
 
 Smith listened, smiled, felt a momentary enthusiasm, ended the 
 interview, and, later, sent eight thousand cavalry under a leader 
 who marched twelve miles a day and had a wagon train as long as 
 the tail of Plantamour's comet. 
 
 With the news of Lee's surrender there came a great paralysis. 
 What had before been only indifference was now death. The army 
 was scattered throughout Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana, but in the 
 presence of such a calamity it concentrated as if by intuition. Men 
 have this feeling in common with animals, that imminent danger 
 brings the first into masses, the last into herds. Buffalo fight in a 
 circle, soldiers form square. Smith came up from Shreveport, 
 Louisiana, to Marshall, Texas. Shelby went from Fulton, Arkan- 
 sas, to the same place. Hither came also other generals of note, 
 such as Hawthorne, Buckner, Preston and Walker. Magruder 
 tarried at Galveston, watching with quiet eyes a Federal fleet beating 
 in from the Gulf. In addition to this fleet there were also transports 
 blue with uniforms and black with soldiers. A wave of negro troops 
 was about to inundate the department, 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 235 
 
 Some little reaction had begun to be manifested since the news 
 of Appomattox. The soldiers, breaking away from the iron bands 
 of a rigid discipline, had held meetings pleading against surrender. 
 They knew Jefferson Davis was a fugitive, westward bound, and 
 they knew Texas was filled to overflowing with all kinds of supplies 
 and war munitions. In their simple hero faith they believed that 
 the struggle could still be maintained. Thomas C. Reynolds was 
 Governor of ilissouri, and a truer and braver one never followed 
 the funeral of a dead nation his commonwealth had revered and 
 respected. 
 
 This Marshall conference had a two-fold object : first to ascer- 
 tain the imminence of the danger, and, second to provide against 
 it. Strange things were done there. The old heads came to the 
 young one; the infantry yielded its precedence to the cavalry; 
 The major-general asked the advice of the brigadier. There was 
 no rank beyond that of daring and genius. A meeting was held, 
 at which all were present except General Smith. The night was a 
 Southern one, full of balm, starlight and flower odor. The bronzed 
 men were gathered quietly and sat awhile, as Indians do who wish 
 to smoke and go upon the war-path. The most chivalrous scalp- 
 lock that night was worn by Buckner. He seemed a real Red Jacket 
 in his war-paint and feathers. Alas ! why was his tomahawk dug 
 up at all ? Before the ashes were cold about the embers of the 
 council-fire, it was buried. 
 
 Shelby was called on to speak first, and if his speech aston- 
 ished his audience, they made no sign : 
 
 " The army has no confidence in General Smith," he said, slowly 
 and deliberately, " and for the movements proposed there must be 
 chosen a leader whom they adore. We should concentrate every- 
 thing upon the Brazos river. We must fight more and make fewer 
 speeches. Fugitives from Lee and Johnson will join us by thou- 
 sands. Mr. Davis is on his way here ; he alone has the right to treat 
 for surrender. Our intercouse with the French is perfect, and fifty 
 thousand men with arms in their hands have overthrown, ere now, 
 a dynasty, and established a kingdom. Every step to the Rio 
 Grande must be fought over, and when the last blow has been struck 
 that can be struck, we will march into Mexico and re-instate Juarez 
 or espouse Maximilian. General Preston should go at once to Mar- 
 shal Bazaine, and learn from him whether it is peace or war. Sur- 
 render is a word neither myself nor my division understand." 
 
 This bold speech had its effect. 
 
 " Who will lead us? " the listeners demanded. 
 
 "Who else but Buckner," answered Shelby. "He has rank, 
 reputation, the confidence of the army, ambition, is a soldier of 
 fortune, and will take his chances like the rest of us. Which one 
 of us can read the future and tell the kind of an empire our swords 
 may carve out?" 
 
236 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO ; 
 
 Buckner assented to the plan, so did Hawthorne, Walker, Pres- 
 ton and Reynolds. The compact was sealed with soldierly alacrity, 
 each general answering for his command. But who was to inform 
 General Smith of this sudden resolution this semi-mutiny in the 
 very whirl of the vortex? 
 
 Again it was Shelby, the daring and impetuous. 
 
 "Since there is some sorrow about this thing, gentlemen," he 
 said, " and since men who mean business must have boldness, I will 
 ask the honor of presenting this ultimatum to General Smith. It is 
 some good leagues to the Brazos, and we must needs make haste. 
 I shall march to-morrow to the nearest enemy and attack him. 
 Have no fear. If I do not overthrow him I will keep him long 
 enough at bay to give time for the movement southward." 
 
 Immediately after the separation, General Shelby called upon 
 General Smith. There were scant words between them. 
 
 "The army has lost confidence in you, General Smith." 
 'I know it." 
 
 " They do not wish to surrender." 
 
 " Nor do I. What would the army have ?" / 
 
 " Your withdrawal as its direct commander, the appointment of 
 General Buckner as its chief, its concentration upon the Brazos 
 river, and war to the knife, General Smith." 
 
 The astonished man rested his head upon his hands in mute sur- 
 prise. A shadow of pain passed rapidly over his face, and he gazed 
 out through the night as one who was seeking a star or beacon for 
 guidance. Then he arose as if in pain and came some steps nearer 
 the young conspirator, whose cold, calm eyes had never wavered 
 through it all. 
 
 " What do you advise, General Shelby?" 
 
 " Instant acquiescence." 
 
 The order was written, the command of the army was given to 
 Buckner, General Smith returned to Shreveport, each officer galloped 
 off to his troops, and the first act in the revolution had been finished. 
 The next was played before a different audience and in another 
 theater. 
 
CHAPTEE II. 
 
 GEN. SIMON BOLIVAR BUCKNER was a soldier handsome enough 
 to have been Murat. His uniform was resplendent. Silver stars 
 glittered upon his coat, his gold lace shone as if it had been washed 
 by the dew and wiped with the sunshine, his sword was equaled only 
 in brightness by the brightness of its scabbard, and when upon the 
 streets women turned to look at him, saying, " That is a hero with a 
 form like a war-god." General Buckner also wrote poetry. Some 
 of his sonnets were set to music in scanty Confederate fashion, and 
 when the red June roses were all ablow and the night at peace- 
 with bloom and blossom, they would float out from open case- 
 ments as the songs of minstrel or troubadour. Sir Philip Sidney 
 was also a poet who saved the English army at Gravelines, and 
 though mortally wounded and dying of thirst, he bade his esquire 
 give to a suffering comrade the water brought to cool his own 
 parched lips . From all of which it was argued that the march to 
 the Brazos would be but as the calm before the hurricane that in the 
 crisis the American poet would have devotion equal to the English 
 poet. From the Marshall conference to the present time, however, 
 the sky has been without a war cloud, the lazy cattle have multiplied 
 by all the water-courses, and from pink to white the cotton has 
 bloomed and blown and been harvested. 
 
 Before Shelby reached his division, away up on the prairies about 
 Kaufman, news came that Smith had resumed command of the 
 army, and that a flag-of-truce boat was ascending Red river to 
 Shreveport. This meant surrender. Men whose rendezvous has 
 been agreed upon, and whose campaigns have been marked out, had 
 no business with flags of truce. By the end of the next day's march 
 Smith's order of surrender came. It was very brief and very com- 
 prehensive. The soldiers were to be concentrated at . Shreveport, 
 were to surrender their arms and munitions of war, were to take 
 paroles and transportation wherever the good Federal deity in com- 
 mand happened to think appropriate. 
 
 What of Buckner with his solemn promises, his recently con- 
 ferred authority, his elegant new uniform, his burnished sword with 
 its burnished scabbard, his sweet little sonnets, luscious as straw- 
 berries, his swart, soldierly face, handsome enough again for Murat? 
 Thinking of his Chicago property, and contemplating the mournful 
 fact of having been chosen to surrender the first and the last army 
 of the Confederacy. 
 
 237 
 
238 l SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO ; 
 
 Smith's heart failed him when the crisis came. Buckner's heart 
 was never fired at all. All their hearts failed them except the 
 Missouri Governor's and the Missouri General's, and so the Brazos 
 ran on to the sea without having watered a cavalry steed or reflected 
 the gleam of a burnished bayonet. In the meantime, however, 
 Preston was well on his way to Mexico. Later, it will be seen how 
 Bazaine received him, and what manner of a conversation he had 
 with the Emperor Maximilian touching Shelby's scheme at the Mar- 
 shall conference. 
 
 Two plans presented themselves to Shelby the instant the news 
 came of Smith's surrender. The first was to throw his division upon 
 Shreveport by forced marches, seize the government, appeal to the 
 army, and then carry out the original order of concentration. The 
 second was to make all surrender impossible by attacking the 
 Federal forces, wherever and whenever he could find them. To 
 resolve with him was to execute. He wrote a proclamation destined 
 for the soldiers, and for want of better material had it printed upon 
 wall paper. It was a variegated thing, all blue and black and red, 
 and unique as a circus advertisement. 
 
 "Soldiers, you have been betrayed. The generals whom you 
 trusted have refused to lead you. Let us begin the battle again by 
 a revolution. Lift up the flag that has been cast down dishonored. 
 Unsheath the sword that it may remain unsullied and victorious. 
 If you desire it, I will lead ; if you demand it, I will follow. We 
 are the army and the cause. To talk of surrender is to be a traitor. 
 Let us seize the traitors and attack the enemy. Forward, for the 
 South and Liberty!" 
 
 Man proposes and God disposes.- A rain came out of the sky 
 that was an inundation'even for Texas. All the bridges in the West 
 were swept away in a night. The swamps that had been dry land 
 rose against the saddle girths. There were no roads, nor any spot 
 of earth for miles and miles dry enough for a bivouac. Sleepless 
 and undismayed; the brown-bearded, bronzed Missourian toiled on y 
 his restless eyes fixed on Shreveport. There the drama was being 
 enacted he had struggled like a giant to prevent ; there division after 
 division marched in, stacked their arms, took their paroles, and 
 were disbanded. When, by superhuman exertions, his command 
 had forced itself through from Kaufman to Corsicana, the fugitives 
 began to arrive. Smith had again surrendered to Buckner, and 
 Buckner in turn had surrendered to the United States. It was useless 
 to go forward. If you attack the Federals, they pleaded, you will 
 imperil our unarmed soldiers. It was not their fault. Do not hold 
 them responsible for the sins of their officers. They were faithful 
 to the last, and even in their betrayal they were true to their colors. 
 
 Against such appeals there was no answer. The hour for a coup 
 d'etat had passed, and from a revolutionist Shelby was about to 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 339 
 
 become an exile. Even in the bitterness of his overthrow he was 
 grand. He had been talking to uniformed things, full of glitter 
 and varnish and gold lace and measured intonations of speech that 
 sounded like the talk stately heroes have, but they were all clay and 
 carpet-knights. Smith faltered, Buckner faltered, other generals, 
 not so gay and gaudy, faltered, they all faltered. If war had been 
 a woman, winning as Cleopatra, with kingdoms for caresses, the 
 lips that sang sonnets would never have kissed her. After the 
 smoke cleared away only Shelby and Reynolds stood still in the 
 desert the past a Dead Sea behind them, the future, what the 
 dark? 
 
 One more duty remained to be done. The sun shone, the waters 
 had subsided, the grasses were green and undulating, and Shelby's 
 Missouri Cavalry Division came forth from its bivouac for the last 
 time. A call ran down its ranks for volunteers for Mexico. One 
 thousand bronzed soldiers rode fair to the front, over them the old 
 barred banner, worn now, and torn, and well nigh abandoned. 
 Two and two they ranged themselves behind their leader, waiting. 
 
 The good-byes and the partings followed. There is no need to 
 record them here. Peace and war have no road in common. Along 
 the pathway of one there are roses and thorns; along the pathway 
 of the other there are many thorns, with a sprig or two of laurel 
 when all is done. Shelby chose the last and marched away with 
 his one thousand men behind him. That night he camped over 
 beyond Corsicana, for some certain preparations had to be made, 
 and some valuable war munitions had to be gathered in. 
 
 Texas was a vast arsenal. Magnificent batteries of French artil- 
 lery stood abandoned upon the prairies. Those who surrendered 
 them took the horses but left the guns. Imported muskets were in 
 all the towns, and to fixed ammunition there was no limit. Ten 
 beautiful Napoleon guns were brought into camp and appropriated. 
 Each gun had six magnificent horses and six hundred rounds of shell 
 and canister. Those who were about to encounter the unknown 
 began by preparing for giants. A complete organization was next 
 affected. An election was held in due and formal manner, and 
 Shelby was chosen colonel with a shout. He had received every 
 vote in the regiment except his own. Misfortunes at least make 
 men unanimous. The election of the companies came next. Some 
 who had been majors came down to corporals, and more who had 
 been lieutenants went up to maj ors. Rank had only this rivalry there, 
 the rivalry of self-sacrifice. From the colonel to the rearmost men 
 in the rearmost file it was a forest of Sharp's carbines. Each car- 
 bine had, in addition to the forty rounds the soldiers carried, three 
 hundred rounds more in the wagon train. Four Colt's pistols each, 
 dragoon size, and a heavy regulation sabre, 'completed the equipment. 
 For the revolvers there were ten thousand rounds apiece. Nor was 
 
240 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO ; 
 
 this all. In the wagons there were powder, lead, bullet molds, 
 and six thousand elegant new Enfields just landed from England, 
 with the brand of the Queen's arms still upon them. Recruits were 
 expected, and nothing pleases a recruit so well as a bright new 
 musket, good for a thousand yards. 
 
 For all these heavy war materials much transportation was neces- 
 sary. It could be had for the asking. General Smith's dissolving 
 army, under the terms of the surrender, was to give up everything. 
 And so they did, right willingly. Shelby took it back again, or at 
 least what was needed. The march would be long, and, he meant 
 to make it honorable, and therefore, in addition to the horses, the 
 mules, the cannon, the wagons, the fixed ammunition, and the 
 muskets, Shelby took flour and bacon. The quantities were limited 
 entirely by the anticipated demand, and for the first time in its his- 
 tory the Confederacy was lavish of its commissary stores. 
 
 When all these things were done and well done these prepara- 
 tions, these tearings down and buildings up, these re-organizations 
 and re-habilitations, this last supreme restoration of the equilibrium 
 of rank and position, a council of war was called. The old ardor 
 of battle was not yet subdued in the breast of the leader. Playfully 
 calling his old soldiers young recruits, he wanted as a kind of puri- 
 fying process, to carry them into battle. 
 
 The council fire was no larger than an Indian's, and around it 
 were grouped Elliot, Gordon, Slayback, Williams, Collins, Lang- 
 horne, Crisp, Jackman, Blackwell and a host of others who had 
 discussed weighty questions before upon eve of battle questions 
 that had men's lives in them as thick as sentences in a school 
 book. 
 
 "Before we march southward," said Shelby, "I thought we 
 might try the range of our new Napoleons." 
 
 No answer, save that quiet look one soldier gives to another 
 when the firing begins on the skirmish line. 
 
 " There is a great gathering of Federals at Shreveport, and a 
 good blow in that direction might clear up the military horizon 
 amazingly." 
 
 No answer yet. They all knew what was coming, however. 
 
 "We might find hands, too," and here his voice was wistful and 
 pleading; " we might find hands for our six thousand bright new 
 Enfields. What do you say, comrades?" 
 
 They consulted some little time together and then took a vote 
 upon the proposition whether, in view of the fact that there was a 
 large number of unarmed Confederates at Shreveport awaiting 
 transportation, it would be better to attack or not to attack. It was 
 decided against the proposition, and without further discussion 
 the enterprise was abandoned. These last days of the division were 
 its best. For a week it remained preparing for the long and peril- 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 241 
 
 ous march, a week full of the last generous rites brave men could 
 pay to a dead cause. Some returning and disbanded soldiers were 
 tempted at times to levy contributions upon the country through 
 which they passed, and at times to do seme cowardly work under 
 cover of darkness and drink. Shelby's stern orders arrested them 
 in the act, and his swift punishment left a shield over the neighbor- 
 hood that needed only its shadow to ensure safety. The women 
 blessed him for his many good deeds done in those last dark days, 
 deeds that shine out yet from the black wreck of things, a star. 
 
 This kind of occupation ended at last, however, and the column 
 marched away southward. One man^alone knew French, and they 
 were going to a land filled full of Frenchmen. One man alone knew 
 Spanish, and they were going to the land of the Spaniards. The 
 first only knew the French of the schools which was no French, arid 
 the last had been bitten by a tawny tarantula of a senorita some- 
 where up in Sonora, and was worthless and valueless when most 
 needed in the ranks that had guarded and protected him. 
 
 Before reaching Austin a terrible tragedy was enacted one of 
 those sudden and bloody things so thoroughly in keeping with the 
 desperate nature of the men who witnessed it. Two officers ore a 
 captain and one a lieutenant quarreled about a woman, a fair young 
 thing enough, lissome and light of love. She was the Captain's by 
 right of discovery, the Lieutenant's by right of conquest. At the 
 night encampment she abandoned the old love for the new, and 
 in the struggle for possession the Captain struck the Lieutenant fair 
 in the face. 
 
 " You have done a serious thing," some comrade said to him. 
 
 " It will be more serious in the morning," was the quiet reply. 
 
 " But you are in the wrong and you should apologize." 
 
 He tapped the handle of his revolver significantly, and made 
 answer: 
 
 "This must finish what the blow has commenced. A woman 
 worth kissing is worth fighting for." 
 
 I do not mention names. There are those to-day living in Marion 
 County whose sleep in eternity will be lighter and sweeter if they 
 are left in ignorance of how one fair-haired boy died who went forth 
 to fight the battles of the South and found a grave when her battles 
 were ended. 
 
 The Lieutenant challenged the Captain, but the question of its 
 acceptance was decided even before the challenge was received. 
 These were the terms: At daylight the principals were to meet one 
 mile from the camp upon the prairie, armed each with a revolver 
 and a saber. They were to be mounted and stationed twenty paces 
 apart, back to back. At the word they were to wheel and fire, 
 advancing if they chose or remaining stationary if they chose. In 
 no event were they to pass beyond a line two hundred yards in the 
 
242 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO', 
 
 rear of each position. This space was accorded as that in which 
 the combatants might rein up and return again to the attack. 
 
 So secret were the preparations, and so sacred the honor of the 
 two men, that, although the difficulty was known to 300 soldiers, 
 not one of them informed Shelby. He would have instantly 
 arrested the principals, and forced a compromise, as he had done 
 once before under circumstances as urgent but in no wa}'s similar. 
 
 It was a beautiful morning, all balm and bloom and verdure. 
 There was not wind enough to shake the sparkling dew-drops 
 from the grass, not wind enough to lift breast high the heavy odor 
 of the flowers. The face of the sky was placid and benignant. 
 Some red like a blush shone in the east, and some clouds, airy and 
 gossamer, floated away to the west. Some birds sang, too, Lushed 
 and far apart. Two and two, and in groups, men stole away from 
 the camp and ranged themselves on either flank. A few rude jokes 
 were heard, but they died out quickly as the combatants rode up to 
 the dead line. Both were calm and cool, and on the Captain's face 
 there was a half smile. Poor fellow, there was already the scars 
 of three honorable wounds upon his body; the fourth would be 
 his death wound. 
 
 They were placed, and sat their horses like men who are about 
 to charge. Each head was turned a little to one side, the feet rested 
 lightly in the stirrups, the left hands grasped the reins well gathered 
 up, the right hands held the deadly pistols, loaded fresh an hour 
 before. 
 
 "R3ady w j isslf " The trained steeds turned upon a pivot as 
 one steed . 
 
 "Fire!" 
 
 The Lieutenant never movrd from his tracks. The Captain 
 dashed down upon him at a full gallop, firing as he came on. Three 
 chambers were emptied, and three bullets sped away over the prairie, 
 harmless. Before the fourth fire was given the Captain was abreast 
 of the Lieutenant, and aiming at him at deadly range. Too late! 
 The Lieutenant threw out his pistol until the muzzle almost touched 
 the Captain's hair, and fired. The mad horse dashed away rider- 
 less, the Captain's life blood upon his trappings and his glossy hide. 
 There was a face in the grass, a widowed woman in Missouri, and 
 a soul somewhere in the white hush and waste of eternity. A great 
 dragoon ball had gone directly through his brain, and the Captain 
 was dead before he touched the ground. They buried him before 
 thesunrose, before the dew was dried upon the grassthatgrew upon 
 his premature and bloody grave. There was no epitaph, yet this 
 might have been lifted there, ere the grim soldiers marched away 
 again to the South : 
 
 " Ah, soldiet', t > your honored rest, 
 
 Your truth and valor bearing; 
 The bravest aro the tenderest, 
 The loving are the daring." 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 AT Houston, Texas, there was a vast depot of supplies filled with 
 all kinds of quartermaster and commissary stores. Shelby desired 
 that the women and children of true soldiers should have such of 
 these as would be useful or beneficial, and so issued his orders. 
 These were disputed by a thousand or so refugees or renegades 
 whose heads were beginning to be lifted up everywhere as soon as 
 the last mutterings of the war storm were heard in the distance. 
 
 He called to him two captains James Meadow and James 
 Wood two men known of old as soldiers fit for any strife. The 
 first is a farmer now in Jackson, the last a farmer in Pettis, both 
 young, brave, worthy of all good luck or fortune. 
 
 They came speedily; they saluted and waited for orders. 
 
 Shelby said: 
 
 " Take one hundred men and march quickly to Houston. Gal- 
 lop oftener than you trot. Proclaim to the Confederate women that 
 on a certain day you will distribute to them whatever of cloth, flour, 
 bacon, medicines, clothing or other supplies they may need or that 
 are in store. Hold the town until that day, and then obey my 
 orders to the letter." 
 
 " But if we are attacked? " 
 
 " Don't wait for that. Attack first." 
 
 " And fire ball cartridges? " 
 
 " And fire nothing else. Bullets first, speeches afterward." 
 
 They galloped away to Houston. Two thousand greedy and 
 clamorous ruffians were besieging the warehouses. They had not 
 fought for Texas and not one dollar's worth of Texas property 
 should they have. Wood and Meadow drew up in front of them. 
 
 " Disperse !" they ordered. 
 
 Wild, vicious eyes glared out upon them from the mass, red and 
 swollen by drink. They had rifled an arsenal, too, and all had 
 muskets and cartridges. 
 
 " After we have seen what's inside this building, and taken 
 what's best for us to take," the leader answered, "we will disperse. 
 The war's over young fellows, and the strongest party takes the 
 plunder. Do you understand our logic? " 
 
 " Perfectly," replied Wood, as cool as a grenadier, " and it's 
 bad logic if you were a Confederate, good logic if you are a 
 thief. Let me talk a little. We are Missourians, we are leaving 
 Texas, we have no homes, but we have our orders and our honor. 
 
 243 
 
244 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO ; 
 
 Not so much as one percussion cap shall you take from this house 
 until you bring a written order from Jo. Shelby, and one of Shelby's 
 men along with you to prove that you did not forge that order. Do 
 you understand my logic ? " 
 
 They understood him well, and they understood better the one 
 hundred stern soldiers, drawn up ten paces to the rear, with eyes to 
 the front and revolvers drawn. Shrill voices from the outside of 
 the crowd urged those nearest to the detachment to fire, but no 
 weapon was presented. Such was the terror of Shelby's name, and 
 such the reputation of his men for prowess, that not a robber stirred. 
 By and by, from the rear, they began to drop away one by one, then 
 in squads of tens and twenties, until, before an hour, the streets of 
 Houston were as quiet and as peaceful as the cattle upon the prairies. 
 These two determined young officers obeyed their instructions and 
 rejoined their General. 
 
 Similar scenes were enacted at Tyler and Waxahatchie. At the 
 first of these places was an arsenal guarded by Colonel Blackwell, 
 and a small detachment consisting of squads under Captain Ward, 
 Cordell, Rudd, Kirtley and Neale. They were surrounded in the 
 night time by a furious crowd of mountain plunderers and shirking 
 conscripts men who had dodged both armies or deserted both. 
 They wanted guns to begin the war on their neighbors after the 
 real war was over. 
 
 " You can't have any," said Blackwell. 
 
 " We will take them." 
 
 " Come and do it. These are Shelby's soldiers, and they don't 
 know what being taken means. Pray teach it to us." 
 
 This irony was had in the darkness, be it remembered, and in the 
 midst of seven hundred desperate deer-hunters and marauders who 
 had baffled all the efforts of the regular authorities to capture them. 
 Blackwell's detachment numbered thirty eight. And now a deed 
 was done that terrified the boldest in all that band grouped together 
 in the darkness, and waiting to spring upon the little handful of 
 devoted soldiers, true to that country which no longer had either 
 thanks or praise to bestow. James Kirtley, James Rudd, Samuel 
 Downing and Albert Jeffries seized each a keg of powder and 
 advanced in front of the arsenal some fifty paces, leaving behind them 
 from the entrance a dark and ominous train. "Where the halt was 
 had a little heap of powder was placed upon the ground, and upon 
 each heap was placed a keg, the hole downward, or connected with 
 the heap upon the ground. The mass of marauders surged back as 
 if the earth had opened at their very feet. 
 
 " What do you mean? " they yelled. 
 
 " To blow you into hell," was Kirtley's quiet reply, " i^you'r 
 within range while we are eating our supper. We have ridd( 
 thirty miles, we have good consciences, and therefore we are hungry. 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 245 
 
 Good night!" and the reckless soldiers went back singing. One 
 spark would have half demolished the town. A great awe fell upon 
 the clamoring hundreds, and they precipitately fled from the deadly 
 spot, not a skulker among them remaining until the daylight. 
 
 At Waxahatchie it was worse. Here Maurice Langhorne kept 
 guard. Langhorne was a Methodist turned soldier. He publishes 
 a paper now in Independence, harder work, perhaps, than soldier- 
 ing. Far be it from the author to say that the young Captain ever 
 fell from grace. His oaths were few and far between, and not the 
 great strapping oaths of the Baptists or the Presbyterians. They 
 adorned themselves with black kids and white neckties, and some- 
 times they fell upon their knees. Yet Langhorne was always ortho- 
 dox. His pistol practice was superb. During his whole five years' 
 service he never missed his man. 
 
 He held Waxahatchie with such soldiers as John Kritzer, Mar- 
 tin Kritzer, Jim Crow Childs, Bud Pitcher, Cochran and a dozen 
 others. He was surrounded by a furious mob who clamored for 
 admittance into the building where the stores were. 
 
 " Go away," said Langhorne, mildly. His voice was soft enough 
 for a preacher's, his looks bad enough for a l-ackslider. 
 
 They fired on him a close, hot volley. Wild work followed, for 
 with such men how could it be otherwise? No matter who fell, 
 or the number of dead and dying, Langhorne held the town that 
 ight, the day following and the next night. There was no moie 
 
 b. A deep peace came to the neighborhood, and as he rode 
 way there were many true, brave Confederates who came to his 
 little band and blessed them for what had been done. In such guise 
 did these last acts of Shelby array themselves. Scorning all who in 
 the name of soldiers plundered the soldiers, he left a record Ixhird 
 him which, even to this day, has men and women to rise up and call 
 it noble. 
 
 After Houston and Tyler and Waxahatchie came Austin. The 
 march had become to be an ovation. Citizens thronged the roads, 
 bringing with them refreshments and good cheer. No soldier could 
 pay for any thing. Those who had begun by condemning Shelby's 
 stern treatment of the mob, ended by upholding him. 
 
 Governor Murrah, of Texas, still remained at the capital of his 
 State. He had been dying for a year. All those insidious and 
 deceptive approaches of consumption were seen in the hectic cheeks, 
 the large, mournful eyes, the tall, bent frame that quivered as it 
 moved. Murrah was a gifted and brilliant man, but his heart was 
 broken. In his life there was the memory of an unblessed and an 
 unhallowed love, too deep for human sympathy, too sad and 
 passionate for tears. He knew death was near to him, yet he put on 
 his old gray uniform, and mounted his old, tried war horse, and rode 
 away dying to Mexico. Later, in Monterey, the red in his cheeks 
 
246 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO; 
 
 had burnt itself out. The crimson had turned to ashen gray. He 
 was dead with his uniform around him. 
 
 The Confederate government had a sub-treasury in Austin, in the 
 vaults of which were three hundred thousand dollars in gold and 
 silver. Operating about the city was a company of notorious 
 guerrillas, led by Captain Rabb, half ranchero and half freebooter. 
 It was pleasant pasturage over beyond the Colorado river, and 
 thither the Regiment went, for ithad marched far, and itwasweary. 
 Loitering late for wine and wassail, many soldiers halted in the 
 streets and tarried till the night came a misty, cloudy, ominous 
 night, full of darkness and dashes of rain. 
 
 Suddenly a tremendous battering arose from the iron doors of 
 the vaults in the State House where the money was kept. Silent 
 horsemen galloped to and fro through the gloom; the bells of the 
 churches were rung furiously; a home guard company mustered at 
 their armory to the beat of the long role, and from beyond the 
 Colorado there arose on the night air the full, resonant blare of 
 Shelby's bugle sounding the well-known rallying call. In some few 
 brief moments more the head of a solid column, four deep, galloped 
 into the Square, reporting for duty to the Mayor of the city a 
 maimed soldier of Lee's army. Ward led them. 
 
 " They are battering down the Treasury doors," said the Mayor. 
 
 " I should think so," replied Ward. " Iron and steel must soon 
 give way before such blows. What would you have ?" 
 
 " The safety of the treasure." 
 
 " Forward, men!" and the detachment went off at a trot, and in 
 through the great gate leading to the Capitol. It was surrounded. 
 The blows continued. Lights shone through all the windows; there 
 were men inside gorging themselves with gDld. No questions were 
 a*ked. A su idea, pitiless jet of flame spurted out from two score 
 of Sharp's carbines ; there was the sound of falling men on the echo- 
 ing floor, and then a great darkness. From out the smoke and gloom 
 and shivered glass and scattered eagles they dragged the victims 
 forth dying, bleading, dead. One among the rest, a great-framed, 
 girmt man, had a king's ransom about his person. He had taken off 
 his mntaloons, tied a string around each leg at the bottom and had 
 filled them. An epicure even in death, he had discarded the silver, 
 These white heaps, like a wave, had inundated the room, more 
 precious to fugitive men than food or raiment. Not a dollar was 
 touched, and a stern guard took his post, as immutable as fate, by 
 the silver heaps and the blood puddles. In walking his beat this 
 blood splashed him to the knees. 
 
 Now. this money was money of the Confederacy, it belonged to 
 her soldiers, they should have taken it and divided it per capita. They 
 did not do this because of this remark. Said Shelby, when they 
 appealed to him to take it as a right; 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR 247 
 
 "I went into the war with clean hands, and by God's blessing, 
 I will go out of the war with clean hands. ' 
 
 After that they would have starved before touching a silver 
 picayune. 
 
 Ere marching the next morning, however, Murrah came to Shelby 
 and insisted that as his command was the last organized body of 
 Confederates in Texas, and that as they were on the eve of abandon- 
 ing the country, he should take this Confederate property just as he 
 had taken the cannon and the muskets. The temptation was strong^ 
 and the arguments were strong, but he never wavered. He knew 
 what the world would say, and he dreaded its malice. Not for 
 himself, however, but for the sake of that nation he had loved and 
 fought so hard to establish. 
 
 "We are the last of the race," he said, a little regretfully, "but 
 let us be the best as well." 
 
 And so he turned his back upon the treasury and its gold, pen- 
 niless. His soldiers were ragged, without money, exiles, and yet at 
 his bidding they set their faces as iron against the heaps of silver, 
 and the broken doors of the treasury vaults, and rode on into the 
 South. 
 
 When the line of demarkation was so clearly drawn between 
 what was supposed, and what was intended when, indeed, Shelby's 
 line of march was so straight and so steadfast as to no longer leave 
 his destination in doubt, fugitives began to seek shelter under his 
 flag and within the grim ranks of his veterans. Ex-Governor and 
 Ex Senator Trusten Polk was one of these. He, like the rest, was 
 homeless and penniless, and joined his fortune to the fortunes of 
 those who had just left three hundred thousand dollars in specie in 
 Austin. From all of which Trusten Polk might have argued: 
 
 " These fellows will carry me through, but they will find for 
 me no gold or silver mines." 
 
 Somewhere in the State were other fugitives struggling to reach 
 Shelby fugitive generals, governors, congressmen, cabinet 
 officers, men who imagined that the whole power of the United 
 States Government was bent upon their capture. Smith was mak- 
 ing his way to Mexico, so was Magruder, Reynolds, Parsons, Stand- 
 ish, Conrow, General Lyon, of Kentucky ;Flournoy, Terrell, Clark, 
 and Snead, of Texas; General John B. Clark, Sr., General Prevost, 
 of Louisiana; Governor Henry W. Allen, Commodore M. F. Maury, 
 General Bee, General Oscar Watkins, Colonel Wm M. Broadwell, 
 Colonel Peter B. Wilks, and a host of others equally determined on 
 flight and equally out at elbows. Of money they had- scarcely fifty 
 dollars to the mau. Magruder brought his superb spirits and his 
 soldierly heart for every fate; Reynolds, his elegant cultivation, 
 and his cool, indomitable courage; Smith, his useless repinings and 
 his rigid West Point courtesy; Allen, his electric enthusiasm and 
 
23 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO; 
 
 his abounding belief in Providence; Maury, his learning and his 
 foreign decorations; Clark, his inimitable drollery and his broad 
 Southern humor; Prevost, his French gallantry and wit; Broad- 
 well, his generosity and his speculative views of the future ; Bee, 
 his theories of isothermal lines and cotton planting; and Parsons, 
 and Standish and Conrow the shadow of a great darkness that was 
 soon to envelop them as in a cloud the darkness of bloody and pre- 
 mature graves. 
 
 The command was within three days' march of San Antonio. 
 As it approached Mexico, the grass gave place to mesquite the wide, 
 undulating prairies to matted and impenetrable stretches of chap- 
 paral. All the rigid requirements of war had been carried out 
 the picquet guard, the camp guard, the advanced posts, and the 
 outlying scouts, aimless and objectless, apparently, but full of 
 daring, and cunning, and guile. 
 
 Pasturage was scarce this night, and from water to grass was 
 two good miles. The artillery and commissary teams needed to be 
 fed, and so a strong guard was sent with them to the grazing place. 
 They were magnificent animals, all fat and fine enough to put bad 
 thoughts in the fierce natures cf the cow-boys an indigenous Texas 
 growth and the unruly borderers. 
 
 They had been gone an hour, and the sad roll of the tattoo had 
 floated away on the night air. A scout Martin Kritzer rode 
 rapidly up to Shelby and dismounted. 
 
 He was dusty and tired, and had ridden far and fast. As a 
 soldier, he was all iron; as a scout, all intelligence; as a sentinel, 
 unacquainted with sleep. 
 
 " Well, Martin," his General said. 
 
 " They are after the horses," was the sententious reply. 
 
 "What horses?" 
 
 " Those of the artillery." 
 
 " Why do they want them? " 
 
 The cavalry soldier looked at his General in surprise. It was 
 the first time in his life he had ever lost confidence in him. Such a 
 question from such a source was more than he could well under, 
 stand. He repeated slowly, a look of honest credulity on his 
 bronzed face: 
 
 "Why do they want them? well, because they are fine, fat, 
 trained in the harness, scarce to find, and worth half their weight 
 in gold. Are these reasons enough? " 
 
 Shelby did not reply He ordered Langhorne to report to him, 
 He came up as he always came, smiling. 
 
 "Take fifty men," were the curt instructions, ' and station 
 them a good half mile in front of the pasturing-place. There must 
 be no bullets dropping in among our stock, and they must have 
 plenty of grass room, You were on duty last njght, I believe," 
 

 AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 349 
 
 " Yes, General." 
 
 "And did not sleep? " 
 
 " No, General." 
 
 " Nor will you sleep to-night. Station the men, I say, and then 
 station yourself at the head of them. You will hear a noise in the 
 night late in the night and presently a dark body of horsemen 
 will march up, fair to see between the grass and the sky line. You 
 need not halt them. When the range gets good, fire and charge. 
 Do you understand? " 
 
 "Perfectly." 
 
 In an hour Langhorne was at his post, silent as fate and terrible, 
 couching there in his lair, with fifty good carbines behind him. 
 About midnight a low note like thunder sprang up from toward 
 San Antonio. The keen ear of the practiced soldier took in its 
 meaning, as a sailor might the speech of the sea. 
 
 " Get ready they are coming." 
 
 The indolent forms lifted themselves up from the great shadow 
 of the earth. When they were still again they were mounted. 
 
 The thunder grew louder. What had before been noise was 
 now shape and substance. Seventy-eight border men were riding 
 down to raid the herders. 
 
 "Are you all loaded? " asked Langhorne. 
 
 " All. Have been for four years." 
 
 From the mass in front plain figures evolved themselves. Under 
 the stars their gun-barrels shone. 
 
 " They have guns," sneered Langhorce, " but no scouts in front. 
 What would Old Joe say to that? " 
 
 "He would dismount them and send them to the infantry," 
 laughed John Kritzer. 
 
 The leading files were within fifty yards, near enough for a 
 volley. They had not heard this grim by-play, rendered under the 
 night and to the ears of an unseen death crouching in the prairie 
 grass. 
 
 ' ' Make ready ! " Langhorne's voice had a gentleness in it, soft as 
 a caress. The Methodist had -turned lover. 
 
 Fifty dark muzzles crept out to the front, and waited there 
 gaping. 
 
 "Take aim!" The softest things are said in whispers. The 
 Methodist was about to deliver the benediction. 
 
 "Fire!" 
 
 A red cleft in the heart of the midnight a murky shroud of dun 
 and dark that smelt of sulphur a sudden uprearing of staggering 
 steeds and staggering riders a wild, pitiful panic of spectres who 
 had encountered the unknown and fifty terrible men dashed down 
 to the charge. Why follow the deadly work under the sky and the 
 stars. It was providence fulfilling a vow fate restoring 
 
250 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO. 
 
 librium of justice justice vindicating the supremacy of its immortal 
 logic. Those who came to rob had been a scourge more dreaded 
 than the pestilence more insatiate than a famine. Defying alike 
 civil and martial law, they had preyed alternately upon the people 
 and the soldiers. They were desperadoes and marauders of the 
 worst type, feared and hated or both. Beyond a few scattering 
 shots, fired by the boldest of them in retreat, they made no fight. 
 The dead were not buried. As the regiment moved on toward San 
 Aitoato, thirty-nine could have been counted lying out in the grass 
 booted and spurred, and waiting the Judgment Day. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 SAN ANTONIO, in the full drift of the tide which flowed in from 
 Mexico, was first an island and afterward an oasis. To the hungry 
 and war-worn soldiers of SHELBY'S expedition it was a Paradise. 
 Mingo, the unparalleled host of Mingo's Hotel, was the guardian 
 angel, but there was no terror in his looks, nor any flaming sword 
 in his hand. Here, everything that European markets could afford, 
 was found in abundance. Cotton, magnificent even in its overthrow, 
 had chosen this last spot as the city of its refuge and its caresses. 
 Fugitive generals had gathered here, and fugitive senators and 
 fugitive governors and fugitive desperadoes, as well, men senten- 
 tious of speech and quick of pistol practice. These last had taken 
 immediate possession of the city, and were rioting in the old royal 
 fashion, sitting in the laps of courtesans and drinking wines fresh 
 through the blockade from France. Those passers-by who jeered 
 at them as they went to and fro received a fusillade for their folly. 
 Seven even had been killed seven good Texan soldiers and a 
 great tear had fallen upon the place, this antique, half -Mexican city 
 which had seen Fannin's new Thermopylae, and the black Spanish 
 death-flag wind itself up into the Alamo. When the smoke had 
 cleared away and the powder-pall had been lifted, the black had 
 become crimson. 
 
 First a speck and then a vulture, until the streets had become 
 dangerous with desperadoes. They had plundered a dozen stores, 
 had sacked and burnt a commissary train, had levied a prestamo 
 upon the citizens, and had gone one night to "smoke out Tom 
 Hindman," in their rough border dialect. Less fortunate than Put- 
 nam, they found the wolf's den, and the wolf was within, but he 
 showed t his teeth and made fight. They hammered at his door 
 furiously. A soft musical voice called out: 
 
 " What do you want?" 
 
 Hindman was a small man, having the will and the courage of 
 a Highlander. Eloquent of speech, cool, a colloquial swordman 
 whose steel had poison on it from point to hilt, audacious in plot, 
 imperturbable in finesse, gray-eyed, proud at times to isolation, 
 unsuccessful in the field, and incomparable in the cabinet, it was 
 this manner of a man who had called out from behind his barri- 
 cade. 
 
 The leader of the attacking party answered him: 
 
 " It is said that you have dealt in cotton, that you have gold, that 
 you are leaving the country. We have come for the gold that is 
 
 all," 
 
 251 
 
252 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO ; 
 
 " Indeed ! " and the soft voice was strangely harsh and guttural 
 now. " Then, since you have come for the gold, suppose you take 
 the gold. In the absence of all law, might makes right." 
 
 He spoke to them not another word that night, but no man 
 advanced to the attack upon the building, and when the daylight 
 came, Shelby was in possession of the city. A deputation of citizens 
 had traveled nearly twenty miles that day to his camp, and 
 besought him to hasten forward, that their lives and their property 
 might be saved. The camp was in deep sleep, for the soldiers had 
 traveled far, but they mustered to the shrill bugle call, and rode on 
 through the long night afterwards, for ,honor and for duty. 
 
 Discipline is a stern, chaste queen beautiful at times as 
 Semiramis, ferocious as Medea. Her hands are those of the priest 
 and the executioner. They excommunicate, which is a bandage over 
 the eyes and a platoon of musketry; they make the sign of the cross, 
 which is the acquittal of a drum-head court-martial. Most generally 
 the excommunications outnumber the genuflections. 
 
 D. A. Williams did provost duty on one side of the river, A. W. 
 Slayback upon the other. What slipped through the hands of 
 the first fell into those of the last. What escaped both fell into the 
 water. Some men are born to be shot, some to be hung, and some 
 to be drowned. Even desperadoes have this fatality in common 
 with the Christians, and thus in the ranks of the plunderers there is 
 predestination. Peace came upon the city as the balm of a south- 
 east trade-wind, and after the occupation there was an ovation. 
 Women walked forth as if to afestival. The Plaza transformed itself 
 into a parterre. Roses bloomed in the manes of the horses these 
 were exotic; roses bloomed in the faces of the maidens these were 
 divine. After Cannae there was Capua. Shelby had read of Hanni- 
 bal, the Carthagenian, and had seen Hannibal the elephant, and so 
 in his mind there was no more comparison between the battle andthe 
 town than there was between the man and the animal. He would 
 rest a little, much, many, glad and sunshiny days, filled full of dal- 
 liance, and dancing, and music. 
 
 Miago's Hotel from a cloister had become to be a cantonment. 
 It was noisy like a hive, vocal like a morning in May. Serenading 
 parties improvised themselves. Jake Connor led them, an artillery 
 officer, who sank like Mario and fought like Victor Emmanuel. In 
 his extremes he was Italian. On the edge of all this languor and love, 
 discipline, like a fringe, arrayed itself. Patrols paraded the streets, 
 sentinels stood at the corners, from post to post martial feet made 
 time, and in the midst of a flood of defeat, disaster, greed, over^ 
 throw, and rending asunder, there was one ark which floated hither 
 and thither armed in a fashion unknown to Noah, bearing a strange 
 barred banner at the fore the Banner of the Bars. When it 
 Ararat wa.s found there was no longer any more Ark, 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OP THE WAR. 253 
 
 On the evening of the second day of occupation, an ambulance 
 drew up in front of the Mingo House. Besides the driver, there 
 alighted an old man, aged, bent, spent with fatigue, and dusty as 
 a foot soldier. Shelby sat in the balcony watching him, a light of 
 recognition in his calm, cold eyes. The old man entered, approached 
 the register, and wrote his name. One having curiosity enough to 
 look over his shoulder might have read : 
 
 " WILLIAM THOMPSON." 
 
 Fair enough name and honest. The old man went to his room 
 and locked his door. The windows of his room looked out upon 
 the plaza. In a few moments it was noticed that the blinds were 
 drawn, the curtains down. Old men need air and sunlight; they 
 do not commence hibernating in June. 
 When he had drawn his blinds, Shelby called up Connor. 
 
 "Get your band together, Lieutenant," was the order. 
 
 "For what, General?" 
 
 " Fora serenade." 
 
 " A serenade to whom?" 
 
 " No matter, but a serenade just the same. Order, also as you 
 go out by headquarters, that all the men not on duty, get under 
 arms immediately and parade in front of the balcony." 
 
 The assembly blew a moment afterwards, and as the sun set a 
 serried mass of soldiers, standing shoulder to shoulder, were in line, 
 waiting. Afterwards the band marched into the open place 
 reserved for it, Connor leading. 
 
 Shelby pointed up to the old man's window, smiling. 
 
 "Play Hail to the Chief,' " he said. 
 
 It was done. No answering signals at the window. The blinds 
 from a look of silence had put on one of selfishness. 
 Shelby spoke again: 
 
 "Try ' Dixie,' boys. If the old man were dead it would bring 
 him to life again." 
 
 The sweet, familiar strains rose up rapid and exultant, filling 
 all the air with life and the pulses with blood. When they had died 
 with the sunset, there was still no answer. 
 Shelby spoke again : 
 
 ''That old man up there is Kirby Smith ; I would know him 
 among a thousand. Shout for him until you are hoarse." 
 
 A great roar burst forth like a tempest, shaking the house, and 
 in the full torrent of the tide, and borne aloft as an awakening cry, 
 could be heard the name of ' ' Smith ! " " Smith ! " 
 
 The blinds flew open, the curtains were rolled up, and in plain 
 view of this last remnant of his magnificent army of fifty thousand 
 men, General E. Kirby Smith came forth undisguised, a look full 
 of eagerness and wonderment on his weary and saddened face. He 
 did not understand the greeting, the music, the armed men, the 
 
254 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO; 
 
 eyes that had penetrated his disguise, the shouts that had invaded 
 his retreat. Threatened with death by roving and predatory bands 
 from Shreveport to San Antonio, he knew not whether one friend 
 remained to him of all the regiments he had fed, clothed, flattered, 
 and left unfought. 
 
 Shelby rose up in his place, a great respect and tenderness at 
 work in his heart for this desolate and abandoned man who had 
 lived the military life that was in him, and who a stranger in 
 a land filled full of his soldiers had not so much as a broken 
 flag staff to lean upon. Given not overmuch to speaking and brief 
 of logic and rhetoric, he won the exile when he said to him : 
 
 "General Smith, you are the ranking officer in the Trans-Missis- 
 sippi Department. These are your soldiers, and we are here to 
 report to you. Command, and we obey; lead us and we will fol- 
 low. In this public manner, and before all San Antonio, with 
 music and with banners, we come to proclaim your arrival in the 
 midst of that little band which knows neither dishonor nor sur- 
 render. You were seeking concealment, and you have found a 
 noontide of soldierly obedience and devotion. You were seeking 
 the night and the obscurity of self-appointed banishment and 
 exile, and you have found guards to attend you, and the steadfast 
 light of patriotism to make your pathway plain. We bid you 
 good morning instead of good night, and await, as of old, your 
 further orders." 
 
 Shouts arose upon shouts, triumphal music filled all tiie air 
 again; thrice Smith essayed to speak, and thrice his' tears mastered 
 him. In an hour he was in the ranks of his happy soldiers as safe 
 and as full of confidence as a king upon his throne. 
 
 There came also to San Antonio, before the march was resumed, 
 an Englishman who was a mystery and an enigma. Some said he 
 was crazy, and he might have been, for the line of demarkation isso 
 narrow and so fine between the sound and the unsound mind, that 
 analysis, however acute, fails often to ascertain where the first ends 
 and the last begins. This Englishman, however, was different from 
 most insane people in this that he was an elegant and accomplished 
 linguist, an extensive traveler, a soldier who had seen service in 
 Algeria with the French, and in the Crimea with the British, and a 
 hunter who had known Jules Girard and Gordon Cumming. His 
 views upon suicide were as novel as they were logically presented. 
 His knowledge of chemistry, and the intricate yet fascinating 
 science of toxicology, surprised all who conversed with him. He 
 was a man of the middle age, seemingly rich, refined in all of his 
 habits and tastes, and singularly winning and fascinating in his inter- 
 course with the men. Dudley, that eminent Kentucky physician, 
 known of most men in America, declared, after the observations of 
 a long life, that every man born of a woman was crazy upon some 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 255 
 
 one subject. This Englishman, therefore, if he was crazy at all, 
 was crazy upon the subject of Railroad Accidents. He had a fever- 
 ish desire to see one, be in one, enjoy one, and run the risk of being 
 killed by one. He had traveled, he said, over two continents, pur- 
 suing a phantom which always eluded him. Now before and now 
 behind him, and then again upon the route he had just passed over, 
 he had never so much as seen an engine ditched. As fcrareal, 
 first-class collision, he had long ago despaired of its enjoyment. 
 His talk never ended of wrecked cars and shattered locomotives. 
 With a sigh he abandoned his hopes of a luxury so peculiar and un- 
 natural, and came as a private to an expedition which was taking him 
 away from the land of railroads. Later, this strange Englishman, 
 this traveler, linguist, soldier, philosopher, chemist this moncrrc- 
 niac, too, if you will was forcmcst in the tctt^e of the Salinas, 
 fighting splendidly, and well to the front. A musket ball killed his 
 horse. He mounted another and continued to press forward. The 
 second bullet shattered his left leg from the knee to the ankle. It 
 was not known that he was struck until a third ball, entering the 
 breast fairly, knocked him clear and clean ficm the saddle, dying. 
 He lived until the sun went down an hour and more. Before he 
 died, however, the strangest part of his life was to come that of 
 his confession. When related, in its proper sequence, it will be 
 found how prone the best of us are to forget that it is the heart 
 which is oftener diseased than the Letd. He Lad suffered rruch in 
 his stormy lifetime, had sinned not a little, and had died as a 
 hunted wolf dies, viciously ard at bay. 
 
 At San Antonio, also, Governor Reynolds and General Magruder 
 joined the expedition. The first was a man whose character had to 
 be tried in the fiery crucible of military strife atd disaster, that it 
 might stand out grand, massive and indomitable. He was a states- 
 man and a soldier. Much residence abroad had made him an 
 accomplished diplomatist. He spoke three foreign languages 
 fluently. To the acute analysis of a cultivated and expanded mind, 
 he had added the exacting logic of the law. Poetry, and all the 
 natural and outward forms of beauty affected him like other imagi- 
 native men, but in his philosophy he discarded the ornate for the 
 strong, the Oriental architecture for the Corinthian. Revolution 
 stood revealed before him, stripped of all its glare and tinsel. Asa 
 skillful physician, he laid his hand upon the pulse of the war and 
 told the fluctuations of the disease from the symptoms of the 
 patient. He knew the condition of the Confederacy better than its 
 President, and worked like a giant to avert the catastrophe. Shams 
 fled before him as shadows before the sun. He heard no voice but 
 of patriotism, knew no word but devotion, had no ambition but for 
 his country, blessed no generals without victorious battle fields, and 
 exiled himself before he would surrender. His faith was spotless 
 
256 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO. 
 
 in the sight of that God of battles in whom he put his trust, and his 
 record shone out through all the long, dark days as a light that was 
 set upon a hill. 
 
 Magruder was a born soldier, dead now and gone to heaven. He 
 had a figure like a Mars divested of immortality. He would fight 
 all day and dance all night. He wrote love songs and sang them, 
 and won an heiress rich beyond comparison. The wittiest mtn in 
 the old army, General Scott adored him. His speech had a litp that 
 was attractive, inasmuch as it lingered over its puns and caressed 
 its rhetoric. Six feet in heigth, ajid straight as Tecumseh, 
 Magruder, in full regimentals, was the handsomest soldier in the Con- 
 federacy. Not the fair, blonde beauty of the city, odorous of per- 
 fume and faultless in tailor-fashion, but a great, bronzed Ajax, 
 mighty thewed, and as strong of hand as strong of digestion. He 
 loved women, too, and was beloved by them. After Galveston, 
 with blood upon his garments, a bullet wound upon his body, and 
 victory upon his standards, he danced until there was daybreak in 
 the sky and sunlight upon the earth. From the fight to the frolic 
 it had been fifty-eight hours since he had slept. A boy at ixty- 
 four, penniless, with a family in Europe, homeless, bereft of an 
 avocation he had grown gray in following, having no country and 
 no calling, he, too, had come to his favorite officer to choose his 
 bivouac and receive his protection. The ranks opened eagerly for 
 this wonderful recruit, who carried in his old-young head so many 
 memories of the land towards which all were journeying. 
 
CHAPTEK V. 
 
 FROM San Antonio to Eagle pass was a long march made dreary 
 by mesquite and chapparal. In the latter war laggards abounded, 
 sleeping by day and devouring by night. These hung upon the 
 flanks and upon the rear of the column, relying more upon force 
 than stratagem more upon surprises for capture, than sabre woik 
 or pistol practice. Returning late one night from extra duty, D. 
 A. Williams with ten men met a certain Captain Bradford with 
 thirty-two. Williams had seven mules that Bradford wanted, and 
 to get them it was necessary to take them. This he tried from an 
 ambush, carefully sought and cunningly planned an ambush all 
 the more deadly because the superb soldier Williams \v as ridirg 
 campward under the moon, thinking more of women than of war. 
 
 In front, and back from the road upon the right, was a clump 
 of mesquite too thick almost for a centipede to crawl through. 
 When there was water, a stream bounded one edge of this under- 
 growth; when there was no water, the bed of this stream was a 
 great ditch. When the ambushment was had, instead of water 
 there was sand. On guard, however, more from the force of habit 
 than from the sense of danger, Williams had sent a young soldier 
 forward, to reconnoitre and to stay forward, watching well 
 upon the right hand and upon the left. George R. Cruzen 
 was his name, and a braver and better never awoke to the sound 
 of the reveille. Cruzen had passed the mesquite, passed beyond 
 the line of its shadows, passed out into the glare of a full har- 
 vest moon, when a stallion neighed fiercely to the right of him. 
 He halted by instinct, and drew himself together listening. 
 Thanks to the sand, his horse's feet had made no noise; thanks to 
 the stallion, he had stopped before the open jaws of the defile had 
 closed upon their prey. He rode slowly back into the chapparal, 
 dismounted, tied his horse, and advanced on foot to the brink of 
 the ravine just where it skirted the edge of the brush. As he held 
 his breath he counted thirty stalwart men crouching in the moon- 
 light. Two he did not see. These were on guard where the road 
 crossed the dry bed of the creek. Cruzen's duty was plain before 
 him. Regaining his horse speedily, he galloped back to where 
 Williams had halted for a bit of rest. "Short greeting serves in 
 time of strife," and Cruzen stated the case so plainly that Williams 
 could almost see the men as they waited there for his little band. 
 He bade his soldiers dismount, take a pistol in each hand, and fol- 
 low him. Before doing this the horses and led mules were securely 
 fastened. 
 
 257 
 
258 STIELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO; 
 
 Stealing round the point of the chapparal noiselessly as the flight 
 of birds through the air, he came upon the left flank of the 
 marauders, upon that flank which had been left unprotected and 
 unguarded. He was within five paces of them before he was dis- 
 covered. They fired a point blank volley full in his face, but his 
 detachment fell forward and escaped untouched. As they arose 
 they charged. The melee was close and suffocating. Three of 
 Williams' soldiers died in the ravine, two scrambled out wounded to 
 the death, one carries yet a bullet in his body. But he triumphed. 
 Never was there a fight so small, so rapid and so desperate. Cruzen 
 killed three, Cam. Boucher three, Williams four, Ras. Woods five 
 with one pistol, a heavy English dragoon, and other soldiers of the 
 ten two apiece. Out of the thirty -two, twenty-seven lay dead in a 
 space three blankets might have covered. Shelby heard the firing, 
 and sent swift succor back, but the terrible work was done. Wil- 
 liams rarely left a fight half finished. His deeds that night were 
 the talk of the camp for many long marches thereafter. 
 
 The next day at noon, while halting for dinner, two scouts 
 from the rear James Kirtley and James Rudd galloped in with 
 the news that a Federal force, 3,000 strong, with a six gun battery, 
 was marching to overtake the column. 
 
 "Who commands?" asked Shelby. 
 
 " Colonel Johnson," replied Rudd. 
 
 "How far in the rear did you see him? " 
 
 "About seventeen miles." 
 
 "Mount your horse again, Rudd, you and Kirtley, and await 
 further orders." 
 
 Shelby then called one who had been his ordnance master, Maj. 
 Jos. Moreland. Moreland came, polite, versatile, clothed all in red 
 and gold lace. Fit for any errand, keen for any frolic, fond of any 
 adventure, so only there were wine and shooting in it, Moreland 
 reported. 
 
 "I believe," said Shelby, "you can turn the prettiest period, 
 make the grandest bow, pay the handsomest compliment, and drink 
 the pleasantest toast of any man in my command. Take these two 
 soldiers with you, ride to the rear seventeen miles, seek an interview 
 with Colonel Johnson, and give him this." 
 
 It was a note which he handed him a note which read as 
 follows: 
 
 " COLONEL: My scouts inform me that you have about three 
 thousand men, and that you are looking for me. I have only one 
 thousand men, and yet I should like to make your acquaintance. I 
 will probably march from my present camp about ten miles further 
 to-day, halting on the high road between San Antonio and Eagle 
 Pass. Should you desire to pay me a visit, you will find me at home 
 until day after to-morrow." 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 259 
 
 Moreland took the message and bore it speedily to its destination. 
 Amid many profound bows, and a multitude of graceful and com- 
 plimentary words, he delivered it. Johnson was a gentleman, and 
 dismissed the embassy with many promises to be present. He did 
 not come. That night he went into camp five miles to the rear, and 
 rested there all the next day. True to his word, Shelby waited for 
 him patiently, and made every preparation for a stubborn fight. 
 Once afterwards Colonel Johnson came near enough to indicate busi- 
 ness, but he halted again at the eleventh hour and refused to pick 
 up the gage of battle. Perhaps he was nearer right than his antag- 
 onist. The war was over, and the lives of several hundred men 
 were in his keeping. He could afford to be lenient in this, the last 
 act of the drama, and he was. Whatever his motives, the challenge 
 remained unaccepted. As for Shelby, he absolutely prayed for a 
 meeting. The old ardor of battle broke out like a hidden fire, and 
 burnt up every other consideration. He would have staked all and 
 risked all upon the issue of the fight one man against three. 
 
 The march went rapidly on. But one adventure occurred after 
 Williams' brief battle, and that happened in this wise: Some stores 
 belonging to the families of Confederate soldiers had been robbed 
 by renegades and deserters a few hours previous to Shelby's arrival 
 in the neighborhood. A delegation of women came to his camp 
 seeking restitution. He gave them retribution. Eleven miles from 
 the plundered habitations was a rugged range of hills, inaccessible 
 to most soldiers who had ridden and raided about its vicinity. 
 Here, as another Rob Roy, the leader of the robber band had his 
 rendezvous. This band numbered, all told, nearly three hundred, 
 and a motley band it was, composed of Mexicans, deserters from 
 both armies, Indians, men from Arizona and California, and des- 
 perate fugitives from justice, whose names were changed, and 
 whose habitations had been forgotten. To these hills the property 
 had been taken, and to these hills went Slayback with two hundred 
 men. He found the goods piled up breast high, and in front of 
 them, to defend them, were about two hundred robbers. They 
 scarcely waited for a fire. Slayback charged them with a great 
 rush, and with the revolver solely. The nature of the ground alone 
 prevented the attack from becoming an extermination. Slayback 
 finished his work, as he always did, thoroughly and well, and 
 returned to the command without the loss of a man. 
 
 About this time three men came to Shelby and represented them- 
 selves as soldiers of Lee's army who where abandoning the country, 
 and who wished to go with him to Mexico. They were enrolled at 
 once and assigned to a company. In a day or two some suspicions 
 were aroused from the fact of their being well acquainted with the 
 Spanish language, speaking it fluently upon every occasion when an 
 opportunity offered. Now Lee's soldiers had but scant time for the 
 
260 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO. 
 
 acquirement of such accomplishments, and it became at last a ques- 
 tion of some doubt as to the truth of the statements of these three 
 men. To expose th.em fully it cost one of them his arm, the other 
 two their lives, together with the lives of thirteen Mexicans who, 
 guiltless in the intention, yet sinned in the act. 
 
 When within three days' journey of the Rio Grande, General Smith 
 expressed a desire to precede the regiment into Mexico, and asked 
 for an escort. This was cheerfully furnished, and Langhoin 
 received his orders to guard the Commander-in-Chief of the Trans- 
 Mississippi Department safely to the river, and as far beyond fcs the 
 need might be, if it were to the Pacific ocean. There was net a 
 drop of the miser's blood in Shelby's veins. In everything he was 
 prodigal of his money, when he had any, of his courage, of Ins 
 blood, of his men, of his succor, of his influence, of his good deeds 
 to his comrades and superior officers, and of his charities to others 
 not so strong and so dauntless as himself. With Smith there went 
 also, Magruder, Prevost, Wilcox, Bee, and a score of other officers, 
 who had business with certain French and Mexican officers at Pie- 
 dras Negras, and who were tired of the trained marching and the regu- 
 lar encampments of the disciplined soldiers. 
 
 Langhorn did his duty well. Rigid in all etiquette, punctilious 
 in the performance of every obligation, as careful of his <Laii as 
 he could have been of a post of honor in the front of battle, Smith 
 said to him, when he bade him good-bye : 
 
 ' ' With an army of such soldiers as Shelby has, and this last sad 
 act in the drama of exile would have been left unrecorded." 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 EAGLE PASS is on one side of the Rio Grande river, Piedras Negras 
 upon the other. The names indicate the countries. Wherever there 
 is an American there is always an eagle. Two thousand Mexican 
 soldiers held Piedras Negras followers of Jaurez quaint of cos- 
 tume and piratical of aspect. They saw the head of Shelby's 
 column debouching from the plateau above the river they saw the 
 artillery planted and commanding the town they saw the trained 
 soldiers form up rapidly to the right and left, and they wondered 
 greatly thereat. No boats would come over. Not a skiff ventured 
 beyond the shade of the Mexican shore, and not a sign of life, except 
 the waving of a blanket at intervals, or the glitter of a sombrero 
 through the streets, and the low, squat adobes. 
 
 HJW to get over was the question. The river was high and 
 rapid. 
 
 ' ' Who can speak Spanish ?" asked Shelby. 
 
 Only one man answered him of the senorita of Senora a 
 recruit who had joined at Corsicana, and who had neither name nor 
 lineage. 
 
 " Can you swim ?" asked Shelby. 
 
 "Well." 
 
 " Suppose you try for a skiff, that we may open negotiations 
 with the town." 
 
 " I dare not. I am afraid to go over alone." 
 
 Shelby opened his eyes. For the first time in his life such 
 answer had been made by a soldier. He scarcely knew what the 
 man was saying. 
 
 "Afraid!" This with a kind of half pity. "Then stand 
 aside." This with a cold contempt. Afterwards his voice rang 
 out with its old authority. 
 
 "Volunteers for the venture swimmers to the front." Fifty 
 stalwart men dashed down to the water, dismounted waiting. He 
 chose but two Dick Berry and George Winship two dauntless 
 young hearts fit for any forlorn hope beneath the sun. The stream 
 was wide, but they plunged in. No matter for the drowning. 
 They took their chances as they took the waves. It was only one 
 more hazard of battle. Before starting, Shelby had spoken to 
 Collins: 
 
 " Load with canister. If a hair of their heads is hurt, not one 
 stone upon another shall be lift in Piedras Negras." 
 
 The current was strong and beat the men down, but they mas. 
 tered it, and laid hands upon a skiff whose owner did not come to 
 
 261 
 
262 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO; 
 
 claim it. In an hour a flag of truce was carried into the town, 
 borne by Colonel Frank Gordon, having at his back twenty-five 
 men with side arms alone. 
 
 Governor Biesca, of the State of Coahuila, half soldier and 
 half civilian, was in command a most polished and elegant man, 
 who quoted his smiles and italicised his gestures. Surrounded by a 
 glittering staff, he dashed into the Plaza and received Gordon with 
 much of pomp and circumstance. Further on in the day Shelby 
 came over, when along and confidential interview was held between 
 the American and the Mexican between the General and the Gov- 
 ernor one blunt, abrupt, a little haughty and suspicious the other 
 suave, voluble, gracious, in promises, and magnificent in offers and 
 inducements. 
 
 Many good days before this interview before the terrible trag- 
 edy at that Washington theatre where a President fell dying in the 
 midst of his army and his capital Abraham Lincoln had made an 
 important revelation, indirectly, to some certain Confederate chief- 
 tains. This came through General Frank P. Blair to Shelby, and 
 was to this effect: The struggle will soon be over. Overwhelmed 
 by the immense resources of the United States, the Southern gov- 
 ernment is on the eve of an utter collapse. There will be a million 
 of men disbanded who have been inured to the license and the pas- 
 sions of war, and who may be troublesome if nothing more. An 
 open road will be left through Texas for all who may wish to enter 
 Mexico. The Confederates can take with them a portion or all of 
 the arms and war munitions now held by them, and when the da}~s 
 of their enlistment are over, such Federal soldiers as may desire 
 shall also be permitted to join the Confederates across the Rio 
 Grande, uniting afterwards in an effort to drive out the French and 
 re-establish Juarez and the Republic. Such guarantees had Shelby 
 received, and while on the march from Corsicana to Eagle Pass, a 
 multitude of messages overtook him from Federal regiments a*nd 
 brigades, begging him to await their arrival a period made depend- 
 ent upon their disbandment. They wished above all things to take 
 service with him, and to begin again a war upon imperialism after 
 the war upon slavery. 
 
 Governor Biesca exhibited his authority as Governor of Coa- 
 huila, and as Commander-in-Chief of Coahuila, Tamaulipas and New 
 Leon, and offered Shelby the military control of these three States, 
 retaining to himself only the civil. He required of him but 
 thing, a full, free and energetic support of Benito Juarez. He 
 gested, also, that Shelby should remain for several months at Pi( 
 ras Negras, recruiting his regiment up to a division, and that w] 
 he felt himself sufficiently strong to advance, he should move agaii 
 Monterey, held by General Jeanningros, of the Third Frei 
 Zouaves, and some two thousand soldiers of the Foreign Legic 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 263 
 
 The picture, as painted by this fervid Mexican, was a most 
 attractive one, and to a man like Shelby, so ambitious of military 
 fame, and so filled with the romance and the adventure of his situa- 
 tion, it was doubly so. At least he was a devout Liberal. Having 
 but little respect for Mexican promises or Mexican civilization, he 
 yet knew that a corps of twenty thousand Americans could be easily 
 recruited, and that after he once got a foothold in the country, he 
 could preserve it for all time. His ideas were all of conquest. If he 
 dreamed at all, his dreams were of Cortez. He saw the, golden 
 gates of Sonora rolled back at his approach, and in his visions, per- 
 haps, there were glimpses of those wonderful mines guarded even 
 now as the Persians guarded the sacred fire of their gods. 
 
 The destiny of the expedition was in this interview. Looking 
 back now through the placid vista of the peace years, there are 
 but few of all that rugged band who would speak out to-day as 
 they did about the council board on the morrow after the Ameri- 
 can and the Mexican had shaken hands and went their separate 
 ways. 
 
 The council was long, and earnest, and resolute. Men made 
 brief speeches, but they counted as so much gold in the scales that 
 had the weighing of the future. If Shelby was more elaborate and 
 more eloquent, that was his wont, be sure there were sights his fer- 
 vid fancy saw that to others were unrevealed, and that evolving itself 
 from the darkness and the doubts of the struggle ahead, was the fair 
 form of a new empire, made precious by knightly deeds, and gra- 
 cious with romantic perils and achievements. 
 
 Shelby spoke thus to his followers, when silence had fallen, and 
 men were face to face with the future : 
 
 "If you are all of my mind, boys, and will take your chances 
 along with me, it is Juarez and the Republic from this on unty we 
 die here, one by one, or win a kingdom. We have the nucleus of a 
 fine army we have cannon, muskets, amunition, some good pros- 
 pects for recruits, a way open to Sonora, and according to the faith 
 that is in us will be the measure of our loss or victory. Determine 
 for yourselves. You know Biesca's offer. What he fails to per- 
 form we will perform for ourselves, so that when the game is played 
 out there will be scant laughter over any Americans trapped or 
 slain by treachery." 
 
 There were other speeches made, briefer than this one by the 
 leader, and some little of whispering apart and in eagerness. At 
 last Elliott stood up the spokesman. He had been a fighting colo- 
 nel of the Old Brigade, he had been wounded four times, he was 
 very stern and very true, and so the lot fell to him to make answer. 
 
 "General, if you order it, we will follow you into the Pacific 
 Ocean; but we are all Imperialists, and would prefer service under 
 Maximilian." 
 
264 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO ; 
 
 " Is this your answer, men? " and Shelby's voice had come back 
 to its old cheery tones. 
 
 "It is." 
 
 "Final?" 
 
 " As the grave." 
 
 "Then it is mine, too. Henceforth we will fight under Maxi- 
 milian. To-morrow, at four o'clock in the afternoon, the march 
 shall commence for Monterey. Let no man repine. You have 
 chosen the Empire, and, perhaps, it is well, but bad or good, your 
 fate shall be my fate, and your fortune my fortune." 
 
 The comrade spoke then. The soldier had spoken at Marshall, 
 at Corsicana, at San Antonio, and in the long interview held with 
 Biesca. Time has revealed many things since that meeting in June, 
 1865 many things that might have been done and welldone, had the 
 frank speech of Elliott remained unspoken had the keen feeling of 
 sympathy between the French and the Confederates been less 
 romantic. Shelby was wiser then than any man who followed him, 
 and strong enough to have forced them in the pathway that lay 
 before his eyes so well revealed, but he would not for the richest 
 province in Mexico. And as the conference closed, he said, in pass- 
 ing out: 
 
 "Poor, proud fellows it is principle with them, and they 
 had rather starve under the Empire than feast in a republic. 
 Lucky, indeed, for many of them if to famine there is not added a 
 fusillade." 
 
 Governor Biesca's bland face blankly fell when Shelby 
 announced to him the next morning the decision of the conference. 
 He had slept upon the happiness of a coup d' etat; when he awoke 
 it was a phantasy. No further arguments availed him, and he made 
 none. When a Mexican runs his race, and comes face to face with 
 the inevitable, he is the most indifferent man in the world. A mut- 
 tered bueana, a folded cigarrito, a bow to the invisible, and he has 
 made his peace with his conscience and his God, and lies or sighs in 
 the>days that come after as the humor of the fancy takes him. 
 
 Biesca had all of his nation's nonchalance, and so, when for his 
 master's service he could not get men, he tried for munitions of 
 war. Negotiations for the purchase of the arms, the artillery and 
 the ammunition were begun at once. A prestamo was levied. 
 Familiarity with this custom had made him an adept. Being a part 
 of the national education, it was not expected that one so high in 
 rank as a governor would be ignorant of its rudiments. 
 
 Between the Piedras Negras and Monterey the country was al- 
 most a wilderness. A kind of debatable ground the robbers had 
 raided it, the Liberals had plundered it, and the French had deso- 
 lated it. As Shelby was to pass over it, he could not carry with 
 him his teams, his wagons, his atillery and his supply trains. Be- 
 

 AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 265 
 
 sides he had no money to buy food, even if food was to be had, and 
 as it had been decided to abandon Juarez, it was no longer neces- 
 sary to retain the war material. Hence the prestamo. A list of the 
 merchants was made; the amount assessed to each was placed oppo- 
 site his name; an adjutant with a file of soldiers called upon the in- 
 terested party; bowed to him; wished him happiness and high fort- 
 une ; pointed to the ominous figures, and waited . Generally they 
 did not wait long. As between the silver and the guard-house the 
 merchant chose the former, paid his toll, cursed the Yankees, made 
 the sign of the cross, and went to sleep. 
 
 By dint of much threatening, and much mild persuasiveness 
 such persuasiveness as bayonets give sixteen thousand dollars were 
 got together, and, for safety were deposited in the custom house. 
 On the morrow they were to be paid out. 
 
 r The day was almost a tropical one. No air blew about the 
 streets, and a white glare came over the sands and settled as a cloud 
 upon the houses and upon the water. The men scattered in every 
 direction, careless of consequences, and indifferent as to results. 
 The cafes were full. Wine and women abounded. Beside the 
 bronzed faces of the soldiers were the tawny faces of the senoritas. 
 In the passage of the drinking-horns the men kissed the women. 
 Great American oaths came out from the tiendas, harsh at times, 
 and resonant at times. Even in their wickedness they were 
 national. 
 
 A tragedy was making head, however, in spite of the white 
 glare of the sun, and the fervid kisses under the rose. The three 
 men, soldiers of Lee's army ostensibly men who had been fed and 
 sheltered were tempting Providence beyond the prudent point. 
 Having the hearts of sheep, they were dealing with lions. To 
 their treachery they were about to add bravado to the magazine 
 they were about to apply the torch. 
 
 There is a universal Mexican law which makes a brand a Bible. 
 From its truth there is no appeal. Every horse in the country is 
 branded, and every brand is entered of record, just as a deed or 
 legal conveyance. Some of these brands are intricate, some 
 uaique, some as fantastic as a jester's cap, some a single letter of the 
 alphabet, but all legal and lawful brands just the same, and good 
 to pass muster anywhere so only there are alcaldes and sandalled 
 soldiers about. Their logic is extremely simple, too. You prove 
 the brand and take the horse, no matter who rides him, nor how 
 great the need for whip and epur. 
 
 In Shelby's command there were a dozen magnificent horses, fit 
 for a king's race, who wore a brand of an unusual fashion many- 
 lined and intricate as a column of Arabesque. They had been ob- 
 tained somewhere above San Antonio, and had been dealt with as 
 (pnly cavalry soldiers know how to deal with horses. These the 
 
266 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO ; 
 
 three men wanted. With their knowledge of Spanish, they had 
 gone among the Mexican soldiers, poisoning their minds with tales 
 of American rapine and slaughter, depicting, with not a little of 
 attractive rhetoric, the long and weary march they had made with 
 these marauders that their beloved steeds might not be taken entirely 
 away from them. 
 
 The Mexicans listened, not from generosity, but from greed, and 
 swore a great oath by the Virgin that the gringos should deliver up 
 every branded horse across the Rio Grande. 
 
 Ike and Dick Berry rode each a branded horse, and so did Arm- 
 istead, Kirtley, Winship, Henry Chiles, John Rudd, Yowell and 
 two-score more, perhaps, equally fearless, and equally ignorant of 
 any other law besides the law of possession. 
 
 The afternoon drill was over. The hot glare was still upon the 
 earth and the sky. If anything, the noise from the cafes came 
 louder and merrier. Where the musical voices were the sweetest, 
 were the places where the women abounded with -disheveled hair 
 and eyes of tropical dusk. 
 
 Ike Berry had ridden one of these branded horses into the street 
 running by regimental headquarters, and sat with one leg crossed 
 upon the saddle, lazily smoking. He was a low, squat Hercules, 
 free of speech and frank of nature. In battle he always laughed; 
 only when eating was he serious. What reverence he had came 
 from the appetite. The crumbs that fell from his long, yellow 
 beard were his benediction. 
 
 Other branded horses were hitched about, easy of access and 
 unnoted of owner. The three men came into the street, behind them 
 a young Mexican captain handsome as Adonis. This captain led 
 thirty -five soldiers, with eyes to the front and guns at a trail. 
 
 Jim Wood lounged to the door of a cafe and remarked them as 
 they filed by. As he returned, he spoke to Martin Kritzer, toying 
 with an Indian girl, beaded and beautiful. 
 
 " They are in skirmishing order. Old Joe has delivered the 
 arms; it may be we shall take them back again." 
 
 One of the men went straight up to Ike Berry, as he sat cross- 
 legged upon his horse, and laid his hand upon the horse's bridle. 
 
 Ike knew him and spoke to him cheerily: 
 
 " How now, comrade?" 
 
 Short answer, and curt: 
 
 " This is my horse; he wears my brand; I have followed him to 
 Mexico. Dismount!" 
 
 A long white wreath of smoke curled up from Ike's meerschaum 
 in surprise. Even the pipe entered a protest. The old battle-smile 
 came back to his face, and those who were nearest and knew him 
 best, knew that a dead man would soon lay upon the street. He 
 knocked the ashes from his pipe musingly; he put the disengaged 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 267 
 
 foot back gently in the stirrup; he rose up all of a sudden the very 
 incarnation of murder; there was a white gleam in the air; a heavy 
 saber that lifted itself up and circled, and when it fell a stalwart arm 
 was shredded away, as a girl might sever a silken chain or the ten- 
 drils of a vine. The ghastly stump, not over four inches from the 
 shoulder, spouted blood at every heart throb. The man fell as one 
 paralyzed. A shout arose. The Mexicans spread out like a fan, 
 and when the fan closed it had surrounded Berry, and Williams, 
 and Kirtley, and Collins, andArmistead, and Langhorne, and Henry 
 Childs, and Jim Wood, and Rudd, and Moreland, and Boswell, and 
 McDougall, and the brothers Kritzer. Yowell alone broke through 
 the cordon and rushed to Shelby. 
 
 Shelby was sitting in a saloon discussing cognac and Catalan with 
 the Englishman. On the face of the last there was a look of sorrow. 
 Could it have been passible that the sombre shadows of the Salinas 
 were already beginning to gather about his brow? 
 
 A glance convinced Shelby that Yowell was in trouble. 
 
 " What is it? "he asked. 
 
 " They are after the horses." 
 
 "What horses?" 
 
 " The branded horses; those obtained from the Rosser ranche." 
 
 " Ah! and after we have delivered the arms, too, Mexican like . 
 Mexican like." 
 
 He arose as he spoke and looked out upon the street. Some 
 revolvers were being fired. These, in the white heat of the after- 
 noon, sounded as the tapping of woodpeckers. Afterward a steady 
 roar of rifles told how the battle went. 
 
 "The rally! the rally! sound the rally!" Shelby cried to his 
 bugler, as he dashed down to where the Mexicans were swarming 
 about Berry and the few men nearest to him. " We have eaten of 
 their salt, and they have betrayed us; we have come to them as 
 friends, and they would strip us like barbarians. It is war again 
 war to the knife!" 
 
 At this moment the wild, piercing notes of an American bugle 
 were heard clear, penetrating, defiant notes that told of sore stress 
 among comrades, and pressing need of succor. 
 
 The laughter died in the cafes as a night wind when the morning 
 comes. The bugle sobered all who were drunk with drink or dal- 
 liance. Its voice told of danger near and imminent of a field 
 needing harvesters who knew how to die. 
 
 The men swarmed out of every door- way poured from under 
 every portal flushed, furious, ravenous for blood. They saw the 
 Mexicans in the square, the peril of Berry and those nearest to him, 
 and they asked no further questions. A sudden crash of revolvers 
 came fi^st, close and deadly; a yell, a .shout, and then a fierce, hot 
 charge. Ras. Woods, with a short Enfield rifle in his hand, stood 
 
268 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO ; 
 
 fair in the street looking up at the young Mexican Captain with his 
 cold gray eyes that had in them never a light of pity. As the press 
 gathered about him, the rifle crept straight to the front and rested 
 there a moment, fixed as fate. It looked as if he was aiming at a 
 flower the dark olive beauty of the Spaniard was so superb. 
 
 "Spare him I" shouted a dozen reckless soldiers in a breath, 
 "he is too young and too handsome to die." 
 
 la vain! A sharp, sudden ring was the response; the Captain 
 tossed his arms high in the air, leaped up suddenly as if to catch 
 something above his head, and fell forward upon his face, a corpse. 
 A wail of women arose upon the sultry evening such as may have 
 been heard in David's household when back from the tangled brush- 
 wood they brought the beautiful Absalom. 
 
 " The life upon his yellow hair. 
 But not within his eyes, 1 ' 
 
 The work that followed was quick enough and deadly enough 
 to appal the stoutest. Seventeen Mexicans were killed, including 
 the Captain, together with the two Americans who had caused the 
 encounter. The third, strange to say, recovered from his ghastly 
 wound, and can tell to this day, if he still lives, of the terrible 
 prowess of that American soldier who shredded his arm away as a 
 scythe blade might a handful of summer wheat. 
 
 A dreadful commotion fell upon Piedras Negras after the battle 
 in the street had been finished. The long roll was beaten, and the 
 Mexican garrison rushed to arms. Shelby's men were infuriated 
 beyond all immediate control, and mounted their horses without 
 orders for a further battle. One detachment, led by Williams, 
 swept down to where the artillery and ammunition wagons were 
 packed and dispersed the guard after a rattling broadside. Lang- 
 horne laid hands upon the Custom-house and huddled its sentinels 
 in a room as so many boys that needed punishment. Separate 
 parties under Fell, Winship, Henry Chiles, Kirtley, Jim Wood and 
 Martin Kirtzer seized upon the skiffs and the boats at the wharf. 
 They meant to pillage and sack the town, and burn it afterward. 
 Women went wailing through the streets; the church bells rang 
 furiously; windows were darkened and barricaded; and over all the 
 din and turmoil the galloping of horses, and the clanking of steel 
 arose the harsh, gathering cry of the Mexican long roll sullen, 
 hoarse, discordant. Shelby stormed at his men, and threatened. 
 For the first and the last time in his career, they had passed beyond 
 his keeping. At a critical juncture Governor Biesca rushed down 
 into the square, pale, his hat off, pleading in impassioned Spanish, 
 apologizing in all the soft vowels known to that soft and sounding 
 language. 
 
 Shelby would bow to him in great gravity, understanding not 
 one word, conversing in English when the tide of Spanish had run 
 itself out: 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 059 
 
 " It's mostly Greek to me, Governor, but the devil is in the boys, 
 for all that." 
 
 Discipline triumphed at last, however, and one by one the men 
 came back to their duty and their obedience. They formed a solid, 
 ominous looking column in front of headquarters, dragging with 
 them the cannon that had been sold, and the cannon they had cap- 
 tured from the enemy. 
 
 " We want to sleep to-night," they said, in their grim soldier 
 humor, " and for fear of Vesuvius, we have brought the crater with 
 us." 
 
 As the night deepened, a sudden calm fell upon the city. Biesca 
 had sent his own troops to barracks, and had sworn by every saint 
 in the calendar that for the hair of every American hurt he would 
 sacrifice a hecatomb of Mexicans. He feared, and not without 
 cause, the now thoroughly aroused and desperate men who were 
 inflamed by drink, and who had good reason for much ill-will and 
 hatred. To Shelby's assurances of safety he offered a multitude of 
 bows, each one more profound and more lowly than the other, until 
 at last, from the game of war, the two chiefs had become to play a 
 game of diplomacy. Biesca wanted his cannon back, and Shelby 
 wanted his money for them. In the end, both were satisfied. 
 
 The men had gone to quarters, and supper was being cooked. 
 To the feeling of revenge had been added at last one of forgiveness. 
 Laughter and songs issued again from the wine-shops. At this 
 moment a yell was heard a yell that was a cross between an 
 Indian war-whoop and a Mexican cattle-call. A crowd of soldiers 
 gathered hastily in the street. Again the yell was repeated, this 
 time nearer, clearer, shriller than before. Much wonderment en- 
 sued. The day had been one of surprises. To a fusilade there was 
 to be added a frolic. Up the street leading from the river, two men 
 approached slowly, having a third man between them. When near 
 enough, the two first were recognized as the soldiers, Joseph More- 
 land and William Fell. The other man, despite the swarthy hue of 
 his countenance, was ghastly pale. He had to be dragged rather 
 than led along. Fell had his sabre drawn, Moreland his revolver. 
 The first was fierce enough to perform amputation ; the last suave 
 enough to administer chloroform. 
 
 When Moreland reached the edge of the crowd he shouted : 
 
 " Make way, Missourians, and therefore barbarians, for the only 
 living and animated specimen of the genus Polyglott now upon the 
 North American continent. Look at him, you heathens, and uncover 
 yourselves. Draw nigh to him, you savages, and fall upon your 
 knees. Touch him, you blood-drinkers, and make the sign of the 
 cross." 
 
 " What did you call him?" asked Armistead. 
 
270 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO ; 
 
 "A Polyglott, you Fejae Islander; a living dictionary; a 
 human mausoleum with the bones of fifty languages ; a lusus 
 naturae in a land of garlic, stilettos and straw hats." 
 
 The man himself was indeed a curiosity. Born of Creole 
 parents in New Orleans, he had been everywhere and had seen 
 everything. When captured he was a clerk in the custom house 
 French, Spanish, English, Italian, German, modern Greek, Gumbo 
 French, Arabic, Indian dialects without number, and two score or 
 so of patois rolled off from his tongue in harsh or hurried accents 
 accordingly as the vowels or the consonants were uppermost. He 
 charmed Shelby from the beginning. When he felt that he was 
 free his blood began to circulate again like quicksilver Invited to 
 supper, he remained late over his wine, singing songs in all manner 
 of languages, and boasting in all manner of tongues. When he 
 bowed himself out his voice had in it the benediction that follows 
 prayer. 
 
 That night he stole $2,000. 
 
 The money for the arms and the ammunition had been stored in 
 the custom house and he had the key. The next morning a sack 
 was missing. Biesca swore, Shelby seemed incredulous, the Poly- 
 glott only smiled. Between the oath and the smile there was this 
 difference : the first came from empty pockets, the last from more 
 money than the pockets could hold. Master of many languages, he 
 ended by being master of the situation. 
 
 In the full flow of the Polyglott's eloquence, however, Shelby 
 forgot his loss, and yielded himself again to the invincible charms 
 of his conversation. When they parted for the last time Shelby had 
 actually given him a splendid pistol, ivory-handled, and wrought 
 about the barrel with gold and figure work. So much for erudition. 
 Even in the desert there are date and palm trees. 
 
 The formal terms of the transfer were concluded at last. Biesca 
 received his arms, paid his money, buried the dead soldiers, and 
 blessed all who came into Piedras Negras and went out from it. His 
 last blessings were his best. They came from his heart and 
 from the happy consciousness that the Americans were about to de- 
 part forever from the midst of his post of honor and his possessions. 
 
 Marching southward from the town, the column had reached 
 the rising ground that overlooked the bold sweep of the rapid river, 
 the green shores of Texas beyond, the fort on the hill, from which 
 a battered Confederate flag yet hung, and a halt was called. Rear 
 and van the men were silent. All eyes were turned behind them. 
 Some memories of home and kindred may have come then as dreams 
 come in the night; some placid past may have outlined itself as a mirage 
 against the clear sky of the distant north; some voice may have 
 spoken even then to ears that heard and heeded, but the men made no 
 sign. The bronzed faces never softened. As the ranks closed up, 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 271 
 
 waiting, a swift horseman galloped up from the town a messenger. 
 He sought the leader and found him by instinct. 
 . ' ' Amiga," he said, giving his hand to Shelby. 
 
 " Friend, yes. It is a good name. Would you go with us? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 "What will you have? " 
 
 "One last word at parting. Once upon a time in Texas an 
 American was kind to me. Maybe he saved my life. I would be- 
 lieve so, because I want a reason for what is done between us." 
 
 "Speak out fairly, man. If you need help, tell me." 
 
 " No help, Senor, no money, no horses, no friendship none of 
 these. Only a few last words." 
 
 " What are they?" fc 
 
 " Beware of the Salinas!" 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE Salinas was a river, and why should one beware of it? Its 
 water was cool, the shade of its trees grateful, its pasturage abun- 
 dant, and why then should the command not rest some happy days 
 upon its further banks, sleeping and dreaming? Because of the 
 ambush. 
 
 Where the stream crossed the high, hard road leading down to 
 Monterey, it presented on either side rough edges of rock, slippery 
 and uncertain. To the left some falls appeared. In the mad vortex 
 of water, ragged pinnacles reared themselves up, hoary with the 
 white spray of the breakers grim cut-throats in ambush in mid 
 river. 
 
 Below these falls there were yet other crossings, and above them 
 only two. Beyond the fords no living thing could make a passage 
 sure. Quicksands and precipices abounded, and even in its solitude 
 the river had fortified itself. Tower and moat and citadel all were 
 there, and when the flood-time came the Salinas was no longer a 
 river it was a barrier that was impassable. 
 
 All the country round about was desolate. What the French 
 had spared the guerrillas had finished. To be sure that no human 
 habitation was left, a powerful war party of Lipan Indians came 
 after the guerrillas, spearing the cattle and demolishing the f armiEg 
 implements. These Lipans were a cruel and ferocious tribe, dwelling 
 in the mountains of Sonora, and descending to the plains to slaugh- 
 ter and desolate. Fleetly mounted, brave at an advantage, shooting 
 golden bullets of tener than leaden ones, crafty as all Indians are, 
 superior to all Mexicans, served by women whom they had captured 
 and enslaved, they were crouched in ambush upon the further side 
 of the Salinas, four hundred strong. 
 
 The weaker robber when in presence of the stronger is always 
 the most blood-thirsty. The lion will strike down, but the jackal 
 devours. The Lipans butchered and scalped, but the Mexicans 
 mutilated the dead and tortured the living. 
 
 With the Lipans, therefore, there were three hundred native 
 Mexicans, skilled in all the intricacies of the chapparal keen upon 
 all the scents that told of human prey or plunder. As ghastly skir- 
 mishers upon the outposts of the ambushment, these had come a 
 day's march from the river to where a little village was at peace and 
 undefended. As Shelby marched through there was such handi- 
 work visible of tiger prowess, that he turned to Elliott, that grim 
 Saul who never smiled, and said to him, curtly: 
 
 " Should the worst come to the worst, keep one pistol ball for 
 yourself, Colonel. Better suicide than a fate like this." 
 
 272 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 273 
 
 The spectacle was horrible beyond comparison. Men hung sus- 
 pended from door-facings literally flayed alive. Huge strips of skin 
 dangled from them as tattered garments might hang. Under some 
 a slow fire had been kindled, until strangulation came as a tardy 
 mercy for relief . There were the bodies of some children among 
 the slain, and one beautiful woman, not yet attacked by the ele- 
 ments, seemed only asleep. The men hushed their rough voices as 
 they rode by her, and more than one face lit up with a strange pity 
 that had in it the light of a terrible vengeance. 
 
 The village with its dead was left behind, and a deep silence fell 
 upon the column, rear and van. The mood of the stranger English- 
 man grew sterner and sadder, and when the night and the camp 
 came he looked more keenly to hia arms than was his wont, and 
 seemed to take a deeper interest in his horse. 
 
 Gen. Magruder rode that day with the men the third of July. 
 "To-morrow will be the Fourth, boys," he said, when dismount- 
 iag, "and perhaps we shall have fire works." 
 
 Two deserters two Austrians from the Foreign Legion under 
 Jeanningros at Monterey straggled into the picket lines before 
 tat f oo and were brought directly to Shelby. They believed death 
 to be certain and so they told the truth. 
 
 " Where do you go? " asked Shelby. 
 
 "To Texas." 
 
 " And why to Texas?" 
 
 " For a home; for any life other than a dog's life; for freedom, 
 for a country." 
 
 " You are soldiers, and yet you desert?" 
 
 "We were soldiers, and yet they made robbers of us. We do 
 not hate the Mexicans. They never harmed Austria, our country." 
 
 " Where did you cross the Salinas?" 
 
 " At the ford upon the main road." 
 
 " Who were there and what saw you?" 
 
 " No living thing, General. Nothing but trees and rocks and 
 water." 
 
 They spoke simple truth. Safer back from an Indian jungle 
 might these men have come, than from a passage over the Salinas 
 with a Lipan and Mexican ambushment near at hand. 
 
 It was early in the afternoon of the Fourth of July, 1865, when 
 the column approached the Salinas river. The march had been 
 long, hot and dusty. The men were in a vicious humor, and in 
 excellent fighting condition. They knew nothing of the ambush- 
 ment, and had congratulated themselves upon plentiful grass and 
 refreshing water. 
 
 Shelby called a halt and ordered forward twenty men under com- 
 mand of Williams to reconnoitre. As they were being told off for 
 the duty, the commander spoke to his surbordinate: 
 
274 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO ; 
 
 " It may be child's play or warrior's work, but whatever it is, let 
 me know quickly." 
 
 Williams' blue eyes flashed. He had caught some glimpses of 
 the truth, and he knew there was danger ahead. 
 
 " Any further orders, General?" he asked as he galloped away. 
 
 "None. Try the ford and penetrate the brush beyond. If you 
 find one rifle barrel among the trees, be sure there are five hundred 
 close at hand. Murderers love to mass themselves." 
 
 Williams had ridden forward with his detachment some five 
 minutes' space, when the column was again put in motion. From 
 the halt to the river's bank was an hour's ride. Before commencing 
 the ride, however, Shelby had grouped together his officers, and 
 thus addressed them : 
 
 " You know as well as I do what is waiting for us at the river, 
 which knowledge is simply nothing at all. This side Piedras Negras 
 a friendly Mexican spoke some words at parting, full of warning, 
 and doubtless sincere. He at least believed in danger, and so do I. 
 Williams has gone forward to flush the game, if game there be, and 
 here before separating I wish to make the rest plain to you. Listen, 
 all. Above and below the main road, the road we are now upon, 
 there are fords where men might cross at ease and horses find safe and 
 certain footing. I shall try none of them. When the battle opens, 
 and the bugle call is heard, you will form your men in fours and 
 follow me. The question is to gain the further bank, and after that 
 we shall see." 
 
 Here something of the old battle ardor came back to his face, and 
 his eyes caught the eyes of the officers. Like his own they were full 
 of fire and high resolve. 
 
 " One thing more," he said, " before we march. Come here, 
 Elliott." 
 
 The scarred man came, quiet as the great horse he rode. 
 
 " You will lead the forlorn hope. It will take ten men to form 
 it. That is enough to give up of my precious ones. Call for volun- 
 teers for men to take the water first, and draw the first merciless 
 fire. After that we will all be in at the death." 
 
 Ten were called for, two hundred responded. They had but 
 scant knowledge of what was needed, and scantier care. In the 
 ranks of the ten, however, there .were those who were fit to fight 
 for a kingdom. They were Maurice, Langhorne, James Wood, 
 George Winship, William Fell, Ras. Woods, James Kirtley, 
 McDougall, James Rudd, James Chiles and James Cundiff. 
 
 Cundiff is staid, and happy, and an editor sans peur et sans 
 reproche to-day in St. Joseph. He will remember, amid all the mul- 
 tifarious work of his hands his locals, his editorials, his type-set- 
 ting, his ledger, his long nights of toil and worry and to his last 
 day, that terrible charge across the Salinas, water to the saddle- 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAP OF THE WAR. 275 
 
 girths, and seven hundred muskets pouring forth an unseen and 
 infernal fire. 
 
 The march went on, and there was no news of Williams. It 
 was three o'clock in the afternoon. The sun's rays seemed to pene- 
 trate the very flesh. Great clouds of dust arose, and as there was 
 no wind to carry it away, it settled about the men and the horses as 
 a garment that was oppressive. 
 
 Elliott kept right onward, peering straight to the front, watching. 
 Between the advance and the column some two hundred paces inter- 
 vened. When the ambush was struck this distance had decreased 
 to one hundred paces when the work was over the two bodies had 
 become one. Elliott was wounded and under his dead horse, 
 Cundiff was wounded, Langhorne was wounded, Winship was 
 wounded, and Wood, and McDougall, and Fell. Some of the dead 
 were never seen again. The falls below the ford received them and 
 the falls buried them. Until the judgment day, perhaps, will they 
 keep their precious sepulchres. 
 
 Over beyond the yellow dust a long green line arose against the 
 horizon. This was the further edge of the Salinas, dense with trees, 
 and cool in the distance. The column had reached its shadow at 
 last. Then a short, sharp volley came from the front, and then a 
 great stillness. One bugle note followed the volley. The column, 
 moved by a viewless and spontaneous impulse, formed into fours 
 and galloped on to the river Elliott leading, and keeping his dis- 
 tance well. 
 
 The volley which came from the front had been poured sud- 
 denly into the face of Williams. It halted him. His orders were 
 to uncover the ambush, not to attack it, and the trained soldier 
 knew as well the number waiting beyond the river by the ringing of 
 their muskets as most men would have known after the crouching 
 forms had been seen and counted. 
 
 He retreated beyond range and waited. Elliott passed on beyond 
 and formed his little band the ten dauntless volunteers who were 
 anxious to go first and who were not afraid to die. 
 
 Shelby halted the main column still further beyond rifle range 
 and galloped straight up to Williams. 
 
 "You found them, it seems." 
 
 "Yes, General." 
 
 "How many?" ' 
 
 "Eight hundred at the least." 
 
 "How armed?" 
 
 " With muskets." 
 
 " Good enough. Take your place in the front ranks. I shall 
 lead the column." 
 
 Turning to Elliott, he continued: 
 
 "Advance instantly, Colonel. The sooner over the sooner to 
 sleep. Take the water as you find it, and ride straight forward. 
 
276 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO ; 
 
 Williams says there are eight hundred, and Williams is rarely mis- 
 taken. Forward!" 
 
 Elliott placed himself at the head of his forlorn hope and drew 
 his saber. With those who knew him, this meant grim work some- 
 where. Cundiff spoke to Langhorne upon his right: 
 
 " Have you said your prayers, Captain? " 
 
 " Too late now. Those who pray best pray first." 
 
 From a walk the horses moved into a trot. Elliott threw his 
 eyes backward over his men and cried out: 
 
 "Keep your pistols dry. It will be hot work on the other 
 side:" 
 
 As they struck the water some Indian skirmishers in front of 
 the ambush opened fire. The bullets threw the white foam tip in 
 front of the leading files, but did no damage. By and by the stray 
 shots deepened into a volley. 
 
 Elliott spoke again, and no more after until the battle was 
 finished: 
 
 " Steady men!" 
 
 Vain warning! The rocks were not surer and firmer. In the 
 rear the column, four deep and well in hand, thundered after the, 
 advance. Struggling through the deep water, Elliott gained the 
 bank unscathed. Then the fight grew desperate. The skirmishers 
 were driven in pell-mell, the ten men pressing on silently. As yet 
 no American had fired a pistol. A yell arose from the woods, long, 
 wild, piercing a yell that had exultation and murder in it. WiMly 
 shrill and defiant, Shelby's bugle answered it. Then the woods in 
 a moment started into infernal life. Seven hundred muskets flashed 
 out from the glpom. A powder pall enveloped the advance, and 
 when the smokj lifted Elliott was under his dead horse, badly 
 wounded; Cundiff 's left arm was dripping blood; Langhorne, and 
 Winship, and McDougall were down and bleeding; Fell, shot 
 through the thigh, still kept his seat, and Wood, his left wrist dis- 
 abled, pressed on with the bridle in his teeth, and his right arm 
 using his unerring revolver. Kirtley and Rudd and Chiles and 
 Has. Woods alone of the ten were untouched, and they stood over 
 their falle i comrades, fighting desperately. 
 
 The terrible volley had reached the column in the river, and a 
 dozen saddles were emptied. The dead the falls received; the 
 wounded were caught up by their comrades and saved from death by 
 drowning. Shelby pressed right onward. At intervals the stern 
 notes of the bugles rang out, and at intervals a great hearty cheer 
 came from the ranks of the Americans. Some horses fell in the 
 stream never to rise again, for the bullets plowed up the column and 
 made stark work on every side. None faltered. Pouring up from 
 the river as a great tide the men galloped into line on the right and 
 left of the road and waited under fire until the last man had made 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 277 
 
 his landing sure. The Englishman rode by Shelby's side, a battle- 
 light on his fair face a face that was, alas! too soon to be wan and 
 gray and drawn with agony. 
 
 The attack was a hurricane. Thereafter no man knew how the 
 killing went on. The battle was a massacre. The Mexicans first 
 broke, and after them the Indians. No quarter was shown. 
 "Kill," "kill," resounded from the woods, and the roar of the 
 revolver volleys told how the Americans were at work. The English- 
 man's horse was killed. He seized another and mounted it. Fight- 
 ing on the right of the road, he went ahead even of his commander, 
 The mania of battle seemed to have taken possession of his brain. 
 A musket ball shattered his left leg from the ankle to the knee. He 
 turned deadly pale, but he did not halt. Fifty paces further, and 
 another ball, striking him fair in the breast, knocked him clear 
 from the saddle. This time he did not rise. The blood that stained 
 all his garments crimson was his life's blood. He saw death creep- 
 ing slowly towards him with outstretched skeleton hands, and he 
 faced him with a smile. The rough, bearded men took him up 
 tenderly and bore him backward to the river's edge. His wounds 
 were dressed and a soft bed of blankets made for him. In vain. 
 Beyond human care or skill, he lay in the full glory of the summer 
 sunset, waiting for something he had tried long and anxiously to gain. 
 
 The sounds of the strife died away. While pursuit was worth 
 victims, the pursuit went on merciless, vengeful, unrelenting. 
 The dead were neither counted nor buried. Over two hundred fell 
 in the chapparal and died there. The impenetrable nature of the 
 undergrowth alone saved the remainder of the fugitives. Hundreds 
 abandoned their horses and threw away their guns. Not a prisoner 
 remained to tell of the ambush or the number of the foe. The vic- 
 tory was dearly bought, however. Thirty-seven wounded on the 
 part of Shelby needed care; nineteen of his dead were buried be- 
 fore the sun went down; and eight the waters of the river closed 
 over until the judgment day. 
 
 An hour before sunset the Englishman was still alive. 
 
 " Would you have a priest?" Shelby asked him, as he bent low 
 over the wounded man, great marks of pain on his fair, stern face. 
 
 " None. No word nor prayer can avail me now. I shall die as 
 I have lived." 
 
 " Is there any message you would leave behind? Any token to 
 those who may watch and wait long for your coming? Any fare- 
 well to those beyond the sea, who know and love you?" 
 
 His eyes softened just a little, and the old hunted look died out 
 from his features. 
 
 " Who among you speaks French?" he asked. 
 
 " Governor Reynolds," was the reply. 
 
 " Send him to me, please." 
 
278 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO; 
 
 It was done. Governor Reynolds came to the man's bedside, 
 and with him a crowd of soldiers. He motioned them away. His 
 last words on earth were for the ears of one man alone, and this is 
 his confession, a free translation of which was given the author by 
 Governor Reynolds, the original being placed in the hands of the 
 British Minister in Mexico, Sir James Scarlett: 
 
 "'I was the youngest son of an English Baron, born, perhaps, to 
 bad luck, and certainly to ideas of life that were crude and unsatis- 
 factory. The army was opened to me, and I entered it. A lieuten- 
 ant at twenty-two in the Fourth Royals, I had but one ambition, 
 that to rise in my profession and take rank among the great soldiers 
 of the nation. I studied hard, and soon mastered the intricacies of 
 the art, but promotion was not easy, and there was no war. 
 
 "In barracks the life is an idle one with the officers, and at times 
 they grow impatient and fit for much that is reprehensible and 
 unsoldierly. We were quartered at Tyrone, in Ireland, where a 
 young girl lived who was faultlessly fair and beautiful. She was 
 the toast of the regiment. Other officers older and colder than 
 myself admired her and flattered her; I praised her and worshiped 
 her. Perhaps it was an infatuation ; to me at least it was immor- 
 tality and religion. 
 
 "One day, I remember it yet, for men are apt to remember those 
 thing which change the whole current of the blood, I sought her out 
 and told her of my love. Whether at my vehemence or my desper- 
 ation, I know not, but she turned pale and would have left me with- 
 out an answer. The suspense was unbearable, and I pressed the 
 poor thing harder and harder. At last she turned at bay, wild, 
 tremulous, and declared through her tears that she did not and could 
 not love me. The rest was plain. A young cornet in the same reg- 
 iment, taller by a head than I, and blonde and boyish, had baffled 
 us all, and had taken from me, what in my bitter selfishness, I could 
 ni t see that I never had. 
 
 "Maybe, my brain has not been always clear. Sometimes I 
 have thought that a cloud would come between the past and present 
 and that I could not see plainly what had taken place in all the desolate 
 days of my valueless life. Somtimes I have prayed, too. I believe 
 even the devils pray no matter how impious or useless such prayer 
 may be. 
 
 " I need not detail all the ways a baffled lover has to overthrow 
 the lover who is successful. I pursued the cornet with insults and 
 bitter words, and yet l:e avoided me. One day I struck him, and 
 such was the indignation exhibited by his comrades, that he no 
 longer considered. A challenge followed the blow, and then a meet- 
 ing. Good people say that the devil helps his own. Caring very 
 little for God or devil, I fought him at daylight and killed him. 
 Since then I have been an outcast and a wanderer. Tried by a 
 
AN UXWlilTTSN LEAF OF THE WAR. 279 
 
 military commission and disgraced from all rank. I went first to 
 India and sought desperate service wherever it was to be found. 
 Wounded often and scorched by fever, I could not die. In the 
 Crimea the old, hard fortune followed me, and it was the same 
 struggle with bullets that always gave pain without pain's antidote. 
 No rest anywhere. Perhaps I lived the life that was in me. Who 
 knows? Let him who is guiltless cast the first stone. There is 
 much blood upon my hands, and here and there a good deed that 
 will atone a little, it may be, in the end. Of my life in America 
 it is needless to talk. Aimless, objectless, miserable, I am here 
 dying to-day as a man dies whof has neither fear nor hope. I thank 
 you very much for your patience, and for all these good men would 
 have done for me, but the hourhas come. Good-bye." 
 
 He lifted himself up and turned his face fair to the west. Some 
 beams of the setting sun, like a benediction, rested upon the long 
 blonde hair, and upon the white set lips, drawn now and gray with 
 agony. No man spoke in all the rugged band, flushed with victory, 
 and weary with killing. In the trees a little breeze lingered, and 
 b ome birds flitted and sang, though far apart. 
 
 For a few moments the Englishman lay as one asleep. Sud- 
 denly he roused himself and spoke: 
 
 " It is so dreary to die in the night. One likes to have the sun- 
 light for this." 
 
 Governor Keynolds stooped low as if to listen, drew back and 
 whispered a prayer. The man was dead ! 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 EVIL tidings have wings and fly as a bird. Through some proc- 
 ess, no matter what, and over some roads, no matter where, the 
 news was carried to General Jeanningros, holding outermpst watch 
 at Monterey, that Shelby had sold all his cannon and muskets, all his 
 ammunition and war supplies, to Governor Biesca, a loyal follower 
 of Benito Juarez. Staightway the Frenchman flew into a passion 
 and made some vows that were illy kept. 
 
 "Let me but get my hands upon these Americans, " he said, 
 " these canaille, and after that we can see." 
 
 He did get his hands upon them, but in lieu of the sword they 
 bore the olive branch. 
 
 The march into the interior from the Salinas river was slow and 
 toilsome. Very weak and sore, the wounded had to be waited for 
 and tenderly carried along. To leave them would have been to 
 murder them, for all the country was up in arms, seeking for some 
 advantage which never came to gain the mastery over the Americans. 
 At night and from afar, the outlying guerrillas would make great 
 show of attack, discharging platoons of musketry at intervals, and 
 charging upon the picquets at intervals, but never coming seriously 
 to blows. This kind of warfare, however, while it was not danger- 
 ous, was annoying. It interfered with the sleep of the soldiers and 
 kept them constantly on the alert. They grew sullen in some in- 
 stances and threatened reprisals. Shelby's unceasing vigilance 
 detected the plot before it had culminated, and one morning before 
 reaching Lampasas, he ordered the column under arms that he 
 might talk to the men. 
 
 " There are some signs among you of bad discipline, "he said, 
 " and I have called you out that you may be told of it. What have 
 you to complain about? Those who follow on your track to kill 
 you ? Very well, complain of them if you choose, and fight them 
 to your heart's content, but lift not a single hand against the Mexi- 
 cans who are at hotae and the non-combatants. We are invaders, 
 it is true but we are not murderers. Those who follow me are 
 incapable of this; those who are not shall not follow me. From 
 this moment forward I regard you all as soldiers, and if I am mis- 
 taken in my estimate, and if amid the ranks of those who have 
 obeyed me for four years some marauders have crept in, I order now 
 that upon these a soldier's work be done. Watch them well. He 
 who robs, he who insults women, he who oppresses the unarmed 
 and the aged, is an outcast to all the good fellowship of this com- 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 281 
 
 mand and shall be driven forth as an enemy to us all. Hereafter 
 be as you have ever been, brave true and honorable." 
 
 There was no longer any more mutiny. The less disciplined 
 felt the moral pressure of their comrades and bthuvtd theiLselves. 
 The more unscrupulous set the Mexicans on one side and the Ameri- 
 cans on the other, and elected to nn.ain peaceably in tie ranks 
 which alone could shelter and protect tliem. The marches became 
 shorter and the bivouacs less pleasant ai d agrt tulle. Althcugh it 
 was not yet time for the rainy seascr, Hue lair fell in tie more 
 elevated mountain ranges, and some (hijliig nigl 1s made comfoit 
 impossible. Now and then some days of camping, too, were 
 requisite days in which arms were cltaitd aid innumtion 
 inspected jealously. The American horses v ( u undergoing accli- 
 matization, and in the inevitable fevtr which develops ifetlf the 
 affectionate cavalryman sits by his hcise right and dty until the 
 crisis is passed. Well nursed, this fever is not dangerous. At the 
 crisis, however, woe to the steed who loses his blanket, and woe to 
 the rider who sleeps while the cold nigLt air is driving in death 
 through every pore. Accordingly as tie perspiration is checked 
 or encouraged is the balance for or agairst the life of the iicrse. 
 There horses were gold, and hence the almcst paternal solicitude. 
 
 Dr. John S. Tisdale, the lord of many patients and pill-boxes 
 to-day in Platte, was the veterinary surgeon, and from the healer 
 of men he had become to be the healer of horses. Shaggy-headed 
 and wide of forehead in the regions of ideality, he had a new name 
 for every disease, and a new remedy for every symptom. An 
 excellent appetite had given him a hearty laugh. During all the 
 long night watches he moved about as a Samaritan, his kindly face 
 set in its frame- work of gray his fifty years resting as lightly upon 
 him as the night air upon the mountains of San Juan de Aguilar. 
 He prayeth well who smoketh well, and the good Doctor's suppli- 
 cations went up all true and rugged many a time from his ancient 
 pipe when the hoar frosts fell and deep sleep came down upon the 
 camp as a silent angel to scatter sweet dreams of home and native 
 land. 
 
 Good nursing triumphed. The crisis of the climate passed 
 away, and from the last tedious camp the column moved rapidly on 
 toward Lampasas. Dangers thickened. Content to keep the 
 guerrillas at bay, Shelby had permitted no scouting parties and 
 forbidden all pursuit. 
 
 " Let them alone," he would say to those eager for adventure, 
 " and husband your strength. In a land of probable giants we have 
 no need to hunt possible chimeras." 
 
 These guerrillas, however, became emboldened. On the trail 
 of a timid or wounded thing they are veritable wolves. Their long 
 gallop can never tire. In the night they are superb. Upon the 
 
282 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO ; 
 
 flanks, in the front or rear, it is one eternal ambush one incessant 
 rattle of musketry which harms nothing, but which yet annoys like 
 the singing of mosquitos. At last they brought about a swift rec- 
 oning one of those sudden things which leave little behind save a 
 trail of blood and a moment of savage killing. 
 
 The column had reached to within two day's journey of Lam- 
 pasas. Some spurs of the mountain ran down to the road, and some 
 clusters of palm trees grouped themselves at intervals by the way- 
 side. The palm is a pensive tree, having a voice in the wind that 
 is sadder than the pine a sober, solemn voice, a voice like the 
 sound of ruffled cerements when the corpse is given to the coffin. 
 Even in the sunlight they are dark ; even in the tropics no vine 
 clings to them, no blossom is born to .them, no bird is housed by 
 them, and no flutter of wings makes music for them. Strange and 
 shapely, and coldly chaste, they seem like human and desolate 
 things, standing all alone in the midst of luxurious nature, un- 
 blessed of the soil, and unloved of the dew and the sunshine. 
 
 In a grove of these the column halted for the night. Beyond 
 them was a pass guarded by crosses. In that treacherous land these 
 are a growth indigenous to the soil. They flourish rowhere else in 
 such abundance. Wherever a deed of violence is done, a cross is 
 planted; wherever a traveler is left upon his face in a pool of blood, 
 a cross is reared; wherever a grave is made wherein lies the 
 murdered one, there is seen a cross. No matter who does the deed 
 whether Indian, or don, or commandante, a cross must mark the 
 spot, and as the pious wayfarer journeys by he lays all reverently a 
 stone at the feet of the sacred symbol, breathing a pious prayer and 
 telling a bead or two for the soul's salvation. 
 
 On the left a wooded bluff ran down abruptly to a stream. 
 Beyond the stream and near the palms, a grassy bottom spread itself 
 out, soft and grateful. Here the blankets were spread, and here the 
 horses grazed their fill. A young moon, clear and white, hung low 
 in the west, not sullen nor red, but a tender moon full of the beams 
 that lovers seek, and full of the voiceless imagery which gives pas- 
 sion to the songs of the night, and pathos to deserted and dejected 
 swains. 
 
 As the moon set the horses were gathered together and tethered 
 in amid the palms. Then a deep silence fell upon the camp, for the 
 sentinels were beyond its confines, and all withinside slept the sleep 
 of the tired and healthy. 
 
 It may have been midnight; it certainly was cold and dark. The 
 fires had gone out, and there was a white mist like a shroud creep- 
 ing up the stream and settling upon the faces of the sleepers. On 
 the far right a single pistol shot arose, clear and resonant. Shelby, 
 who slumbered like a night bird, lifted himself up from his blank- 
 ets and spoke in an undertone to Thrailkill: 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 283 
 
 " Who has the post at the mouth of the pass? " 
 
 "Jo. Macey." 
 
 " Then something is stirring. Macey never fired at a shadow in 
 his life." 
 
 The two men listened. One a grim guerrilla himself, with the 
 physique of a Cossack and the hearing of a Comanche. The other 
 having in his hands the lives of all the silent and inert sleepers 
 lying still and grotesque under the white shroud of the mountain mist. 
 
 Nothing was heard for an hour. * The two men went to sleep 
 again, but not to dream. Of a sudden and unseen the mist was 
 lifted, and in its place a sheet of flame so near to the faces of the 
 men that it might have scorched them. Two hundred Mexicans 
 had crept down the mountain, and to the edge of the stream, and 
 had fired point blank into the camp. It seemed a miracle, but not 
 a man was touched. Lying flat upon the ground and wrapped up 
 in their blankets, the whole volley, meant to be murderous, had 
 swept over them. 
 
 Shelby was the first upon his feet. His voice rang out clear and 
 faultless, and without a tremor: 
 
 ' ' Give them the revolver. Charge ! " 
 
 Men awakened from deep sleep grapple with spectres slowly. 
 These Mexicans were spectres. Beyond the stream and in amid the 
 sombre shadows of the palms, they were invisible. Only the pow- 
 der-pall was on the water where the mist had been. 
 
 Unclad, barefooted, heavy with sleep, the men went straight for 
 the mountain, a revolver in each hand, Shelby leading. From spec- 
 tres the Mexicans had become to be bandits. No quarter was given 
 or asked. The rush lasted until the game was flushed, the pursuit 
 until the top of the mountain was gained. Over ragged rock and 
 cactus and dagger-trees the hurricane poured. The roar of the 
 revolvers was deafening. Men died and made no moan, and the 
 wounded were recognized only by their voices. "When it was over 
 the Americans had lost in killed eleven and in wounded seventeen, 
 most of the latter slightly, thanks to the darkness and the impetu- 
 osity of the attack. In crawling upon the camp the Mexicans had 
 tethered their horses upon the further side of the mountain. The 
 most of these fell into Shelby's hands, together with the bodies of 
 the two leaders, Juan Anselmo, a renegade priest, and Antonio 
 Flores, a young Cuban who had sold his sister to a wealthy Jiacien- 
 daro and turned robber, and sixty-nine of their followers. 
 
 It was noon the next day before the march was resumed noon 
 with the sun shining upon the fresh graves of eleven dauntless 
 Americans sleeping their last sleep, amid the palms and the crosses, 
 until the resurrection day. 
 
 There was a grand fandango at Lampasas when the column 
 reached the city. The bronzed, foreign faces of the strangers 
 
284 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO ; 
 
 attracted much of curiosity and more of comment; but no notes in 
 the music jarred, no halt in the flying feet of the dancers could be 
 discovered. Shelby camped just beyond the suburbs, unwilling to 
 tiust his men to the blandishments of so much beauty, and to the 
 perils of so much nakedness. 
 
 Stern camp guards soon sentinelled the soldiers, but as the night 
 deepened their devices increased, until a good company had escaped 
 all vigilance and made a refuge sure with the sweet and swarthy 
 senoritas singing : 
 
 " O ven ! ama ! 
 Eres alma. 
 Soy corazon." 
 
 There were three men who stole out together in mere wantonness 
 and exuberance of life obedient, soldierly men who were to 
 bring back with them a tragedy without a counterpart in all their 
 history. None saw Boswell, Walker and Crockett depart the 
 whole command saw them return again, Boswell slashed from chin 
 to waist, Walker almost dumb from a bullet through cheeks and 
 tongue, and Crockett, solber and unhurt, yet having over him the 
 somber light of as wild a deed as any that stands out from all the 
 lawless past of that lawless land. 
 
 Tli^se men, when reaching Lampases, floated into the flood tide 
 of the fandango, and danced until the red lights shone with an 
 unnatural brilliancy until the fiery Catalan consumed what little 
 of discretion the dancing had left. They sallied out late at night, 
 flashed with drink, and having over them the glamour of enchant- 
 ing women. They walked on apace in the direction of the camp, 
 singing snatches of Bacchanal songs, and laughing boisterously 
 under the moonlight which flooded all the streets with gold. In 
 the doorway of a house a young Mexican girl stood, her dark face 
 looking out coquettishly from her fringe of dark hair. The men 
 spoke to her, and she, in her simple, girlish fashion, spoke to the 
 men. In Mexico this meant nothing. They halted, however, and 
 Crockett advanced from the rest and laid his hand upon the girl's 
 shoulder. Around her head and shoulders she wore a rebosa. This 
 garment answers at the same time for bonnet and bodice. When 
 removed the head is uncovered and the bosom is exposed. Crock- 
 ett meant no real harm, although he asked her for a kiss. Before 
 she had replied to him, he attempted to take it. 
 
 The hot Southern blood flared up all of a sudden at this, and 
 her dark eyes grew furious in a moment. As she drew back from 
 him in proud scorn, the rebosa came off, leaving all her bosom bare, 
 the long, luxuriant hair falling down upon and over it as a cloud 
 that would hide its purity and innocence. Then she uttered a low, 
 feminine cry as a signal, followed instantly by a rush of men who 
 drew knives and pistols as they came on. The Americans had no 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 285 
 
 weapons. Not dreaming uf danger, and being within sight almost 
 of camp, they had left their revolvers behind. Boswell was stabbed 
 three times, though not seriously, for he was a powerful man, and 
 fought his assailants off. Walker was shot through his tongue and 
 both cheeks, and Crockett, the cause of the whole melee, escaped 
 unhurt. No pursuit was attempted after the first swift work was 
 over. Wary of reprisals, the Mexicans hid themselves as suddenly 
 as they had sallied out. There was a young man, however, who 
 walked close to Crockett a young Mexican who spoke no word, 
 and who yet kept pace with the American step by step. At first he 
 was not noticed. Before the camp guards were reached Crockett, 
 now completely sobered, turned upon him and asked: 
 
 "Why do you follow me?" 
 
 "That you may lead me to your General." 
 
 "What do you wish with my General?" 
 
 "Satisfaction." 
 
 At the firing in the city a patrol guard had been thrown out who 
 arrested the whole party and carried it straight to Shelby. He was 
 encamped upon a wide margin of bottom land, having a river upon 
 one side, and some low mountain ridges upon the other. The 
 ground where the blankets were spread was velvety with grass. There 
 was a bright moon ; the air blowing from the grape gardens and the 
 apricot orchards of Lampasa was fragrant and delicious, and the 
 soldiers were not sleeping. 
 
 Under the solace of such surroundings Shelby had relaxed a little 
 of that grim severity he always manifested toward those guilty of 
 unsoldierly conduct, and spoke not harshly to the three men. When 
 made acquainted with their hurts, he dismissed them instantly to the 
 care of Dr. Tisdale. 
 
 Crockett and the Mexican still lingered, and a crowd of some fifty 
 or sixty had gathered around. The first told his story of the melee, and 
 told it truthfully. The man was too brave to lie. As an Indian list- 
 ening to the approaching footsteps of one whom he itends to scalp, 
 the young Mexican listened as a granite pillar vitalized to the whole 
 recital. When it was finished he went up close to Shelby, and said 
 to him, pointing his finger at Crockett : 
 
 "That man has outraged my sister. I could have killed him, 
 but I did not. You Americans are brave, I know; will you be gen- 
 erous as well, and give me satisfaction? " 
 
 Shelby looked at Crockett, whose bronzed face, made sterner in 
 the moonlight, had upon it a look of curiosity. He at least did not 
 understand what was coming. 
 
 "Does the Mexican speak truth, Crockett?" was the question 
 asked by the commander of his soldier. 
 
 " Partly; but I meant no harm to the woman. I am incapable of 
 that. Drunk I know I was, and reckless, but not willfully guilty, 
 General." 
 
I 
 286 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO ; 
 
 Shelby regarded him coldly. His voice was so stern when he 
 spoke again that the brave soldier hung his head : 
 
 ' ' What business had you to lay your hands upon her at all ? How 
 often must I repeat to you that the man who does these things is no 
 follower of mine? Will you give her brother satisfaction?" 
 
 He drew his revolver almost joyfully and stood proudly up, 
 facing his accuser. 
 
 " No! no! not the pistol! " cried the Mexican; " I do not under- 
 stand the pistol. The knife, Senor General; is the American afraid 
 of the knife?" 
 
 He displayed, as he spoke, a keen, glittering knife and held it 
 up in the moonlight. It was white, and lithe, and shone in con- 
 trast with the dusky hand which grasped it. 
 
 Not a muscle of Crockett's face moved. He spoke almost gently 
 as he turned to his General: 
 
 "The knife, ah! well, so be it. Will some of you give me a 
 knife?" 
 
 A knife was handed him and a ring was made. About four 
 hundred soldiers formed the outside circle of this ring. These, 
 bearing torches in their hands, cast a red glare of light upon the 
 arena. The ground under foot was as velvet. The moon, not yet 
 full, and the sky without a cloud, rose over all, calm and peaceful 
 in the summer night. A hush, as of expectancy, fell upon the camp. 
 Those who were asleep, slept on; those who were awake seemed as 
 under the influence of an intangible dream. 
 
 Shelby did not forbid the fight. He knew it was a duel to the 
 death, and some of the desperate spirit of the combatants passed 
 into his own. He merely spoke to an aide: 
 
 " Go for Tisdale. When the steel has finished the surgeon may 
 begin." 
 
 Both men stepped fearlessly into the arena. A third form was 
 there, unseen, invisible, and even in Ms presence the traits of the two 
 nations were uppermost. The Mexican made the sign of the cross, 
 the American tightened his sabre belt. Both may have prayed, 
 neither, however, audibly. 
 
 They had no seconds; perhaps none were needed. The Mexican 
 took his stand about midway the arena and waited. Crockett 
 grasped his knife firmly and advanced upon him. Of the two, he 
 was the taller by a head and physically the strongest. Constant 
 familiarity with danger for four years had given him a confidence 
 the Mexican may not have felt. He had been wounded three 
 times, one of which wounds was scarcely healed. This took none 
 of his manhood from him, however. 
 
 Neither spoke. The torches flared a little in the night wind, 
 now beginning to rise, and the long grass rustled curtly under foot. 
 Afterward its green had become crimson. 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 287 
 
 Between them some twelve inches of space now intervened. The 
 men had fallen back upon the right and the left for their commander 
 to see, and he stood looking fixedly at the two as he would upon a 
 line of battle. Never before had he gazed upon so strange a sight. 
 That great circle of bronzed faces, eager and fierce in the flare of 
 torches, had something monstrous yet grotesque about it. The 
 civilization of the century had been rolled back, and they were in a 
 Roman circus, looking down upon the arena, crowded with gladia- 
 tors and jubilant with that strangest of war-cries : Morituri te 
 talutant ! 
 
 The attack was the lightning's flash. The Mexican lowered his 
 head, set his teeth hard, and struck fairly at Crockett's breast. The 
 American made a half face to the right, threw his left arm forward 
 as a shield, gathered the deadly steel in his shoulder to, the hilt and 
 struck home. How pitiful ! 
 
 A great stream of blood spurted in his face. The tense form of 
 the Mexican bent as a willow wand in the wind, swayed helplessly, 
 and fell backward lifeless, the knife rising up as a terrible protest 
 above the corpse. The man's heart was found. 
 
 Cover him up from sight. No need of Dr. Tisdale here. 
 There was a wail of women on the still night air, a shudder of 
 regret among the soldiers, a dead man on the grass, a sister broken- 
 hearted and alone for evermore, and a freed spirit somewhere out in 
 eternity with the unknown and the infinite. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 GENERAL JEANNINGROS held Monterey with a garrison of five 
 thousand French and Mexican soldiers. Among them -was the For. 
 eign Legion composed of Americans, English, Irish, Arabs, Turks, 
 Germans and Negroes and the Third French Zouaves, aregimtnt 
 unsurpassed for courage and discipline in any army in any nation on 
 earth. This regiment afterward literally passed away from service at 
 Gravelotte. Like the old Guard at Waterloo, it was destroyed. 
 
 Jeanningros was a soldier who spoke English, who had gray 
 hair, who drank absinthe, who had been in the army thirty years, 
 who had been wounded thirteen times, and who was only a general 
 of brigade. His discipline was all iron. Those who transgressed, 
 those who were found guilty at night were shot in the morning. 
 He never spared what the court martial had condemned. There 
 was a ghastly dead wall in Monterey, isolated, lonesome, forbidding 
 terrible, which had seen many a stalwart form shudder and fall, 
 many a young, fresh, dauntless face go down stricken in the hush 
 of the morning. The face of this wall, covered all over with warts, 
 with excrescences, with scars, had about it a horrible small-pox. 
 Where the bullets had plowed it up were the traces of the pustules. 
 The splashes of blood left by the slaughter dried there. In the sun- 
 light these shone as sinister blushes upon the countenance of that 
 stony and inanimate thing, peering out from an inexorable ambush 
 waiting. 
 
 Speaking no word for the American, and setting down naught 
 to the credit side of his necessities or his surroundings, those who 
 had brought news to Jeanningros of Shelby's operations at Piedras 
 Negras had told him as well of the cannon sold as of the arms and 
 ammunition. Jeanningros had waited patiently and had replied 
 to them: 
 
 " Wait awhile. We must catch them before we hang them." 
 
 While he was waiting to lay hands upon them, Shelby had 
 marched to within a mile of the French outposts at Monterey. He 
 came as a soldier, and he meant to do a soldier's work. Pickets were 
 thrown forward, the horses were fed, and Governor Reynolds put in 
 most excellent French this manner of a note: 
 
 GENERAL JEANNINGROS, Commander at Monterey. General: I have the 
 honor to report that I am within one mile of your fortifications with my 
 command. Preferring exile to surrender, I have left my own country to 
 seek service in that held by His Imperial Majesty, the Emperor Maximilian. 
 Shall it be peace or war between us? If the former, and with your per- 
 mission, I shall enter your lines at once, claiming at your hands that courtesy- 
 due from one soldier to another. If the latter, I propose to attack you 
 immediately. Very respectfully, yours, 
 
 Jo. O . SHELBY. 
 288 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 289 
 
 Improvising a flag of truce, two fearless soldiers, John Tlirail- 
 skill and Rainy McKinney, bore it boldly into the public square at 
 Monterey. This nag was an apparition. The long roll was beaten, 
 the garrison stood to their arms, mounted orderlies galloped hither 
 and thither, and Jeanningros himself, used all his life to surprises, 
 was attracted by the soldierly daring of the deed. He received the 
 message and answered it favorably, remarking to Thrailkill, as he 
 handed him the reply: 
 
 "Tell your general to march in immediately. He is the only 
 soldier that has yet come out of Yankeedom." 
 
 Jeanningros' reception was as frank and open as his speech. 
 That night, after assigning quarters to the men, he gave a banquet 
 to the officers. Among those present were General Magruder, Ex- 
 Senator Trusten Polk, Ex-Governor Thomas C. Reynolds, General 
 T. C. Hindman, General E. Kirby Smith, General John B. Clark, 
 General Shelby, and many others fond of talk, wine and adventure. 
 Jeanningros was a superb host. His conversation never tired of the 
 Crimea, of Napoleon III.'s coup d'etat, of the Italian campaign, of 
 the march to Pekin, of Algeria, of all the great soldiers he had 
 iknown, and of all the great campaigns he had participated in. The 
 civil war in America was discussed in all of its vivid and somber 
 slights, and no little discussion carried on as to the probable effect 
 peace would have upon Maximilian's occupation of Mexico. Jean- 
 ningros was emphatic in all of his declarations. In reply to a ques- 
 tion asked by Shelby concerning the statesmanship of the Mexican 
 Emperor, the French General replied: 
 
 "Ah! the Austrian; you should see him to understand him. 
 More of a scholar than a king, good at botany, a poet on occasions, 
 a traveler who gathers curiosities and writes books, a saint over his 
 wine and a sinner among his cigars, in love with his wife, believing 
 more in manifest destiny than drilled battalions, good Spaniard in 
 all but deceit and treachery, honest, earnest, tender-hearted and 
 sincere, his faith is too strong in the liars who surround him, and his 
 soul is too pure for the deeds that must be done. He can not kill as 
 we Frenchmen do. He knows nothing of diplomacy. In a nation 
 of thieves and cut-throats, he goes devoutly to mass, endows hos- 
 pitals, laughs a good man's laugh at the praises of the blanketed 
 rabble, says his prayers and sleeps the sleep of the gentleman and 
 the prince. Bah! his days are numbered; nor can all the power of 
 France keep his crown upon his head, if, indeed, it can keep that 
 iiead upon his shoulders." 
 
 The blunt soldier checked himself suddenly. The man had 
 spoken over his wine; the courtier never speaks. 
 
 " Has he the confidence of Bazaine?" asked General Clark. 
 
 Jeanningros gave one of those untranslatable shrugs which are a 
 volume, and drained his goblet before replying. 
 
290 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO; 
 
 "The Marshal, you mean. Oh! the Marshal keeps his own 
 secrets. Besides I have not seen the Marshal since coming north- 
 ward. Do you go further, General Clark ?" 
 
 The diplomatist had met the diplomatist. Both smiled; neither 
 referred to the subject again. 
 
 Daylight shone in through the closed shutters before the party 
 separated the Americans to sleep, the Frenchman to sign a death 
 warrant. 
 
 A young lieutenant of the Foreign Legion, crazed by that most 
 damnable of drinks, absinthe, had deserted from outpost duty in a 
 moment of temporary insanity. For three days he wandered about, 
 taking no note of men or things, helpless and imbecile. On the 
 morning of the fourth day his reason was given back to him. None 
 knew better than himself the nature of the precipice upon which he 
 stood. Before him lay the Rio Grande, the succor beyond an 
 asylum, safety; behind him the court martial, the sentence, the hor- 
 rible wall, splashed breast high with blood, the platoon, the leveled 
 muskets death. He never faltered. Returning to the outpost at 
 Which he had been stationed, he saluted its officer and said: 
 
 "Here I am." 
 
 " Indeed. And who are you? " 
 
 "A deserter." 
 
 " Ah! but Jeanningros shoots deserters. Why did you not keep 
 on, since you had started? " 
 
 " No matter. I am a Frenchman and I know how to die." 
 
 They brought him in while Jeanningros was drinking his gener- 
 ous wine, and holding high revelrywith his guests. When the 
 morning came he was tried. No matter for anything the poor young 
 soldier could say, and he said but little. At sunrise upon the next 
 morning he was to die. 
 
 When Jeanningros awoke late in the afternoon there was a note 
 for him. Its contents, in substance, was as follows: 
 
 " I do not ask for my life only for the means of disposing of it. 
 I have an old mother in France who gave me to the country, and who 
 blessed me as she said good-bye. Under the law, General, if I am 
 shot, my property goes to the State; if I shoot myself my mother 
 gets it. It is a little thing a soldier asks of his General, who has 
 medals, and honors, and, maybe, a mother, too but for the sake of 
 the uniform I wore at Solf erino, is it asking more than you can grant 
 when I ask for a revolver and a bottle of brandy? " 
 
 Through his sleepy, half -shut eyes Jeanningros read the message 
 to the end. When he had finished he called an aide. 
 
 " Take to the commandant of the prison this order." 
 
 The order was for the pistol and the brandy. 
 
 That afternoon and night the young Lieutenant wrote, and drank, 
 and made his peace with all the world. What laid beyond he knew 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 291 
 
 not, nor any man born of woman. There was a little light in the 
 east and a little brandy in the bottle. But the letters had all been 
 written, and the poor woman in France would get her just due 
 after all. 
 
 Turn out the guard ! 
 
 For what end ? No need of soldiers there rather the coffin, 
 the prayer of the priest, the grave that God blessed though by man 
 decreed unhallowed. French to the last, the Lieutenant had waited 
 for the daylight, had finished his bottle, and had scattered his 
 brains over the cold walls of his desolate prison. Jeanningros 
 heard the particulars duly related, and had dismissed the Adjutant 
 with an epigram : 
 
 "Clever fellow. He was entitled to two bottles instead of one." 
 
 Such is French discipline. All crimes but one may be con- 
 doned desertion never. 
 
 Preceding Shelby's arrival in Monterey, there had come also 
 Col. Francois Achille Dupin, a Frenchman who was known as 
 "The Tiger of the Tropics." What he did would fill a volume. 
 Recorded here, no reader would believe it no Christian would 
 imagine such warfare possible. He was pastsixty, tall as Tecumseh, 
 straight as a rapier, with a seat in the saddle like an English guards- 
 man, and a waist like a woman. For deeds of desperate daring he 
 had received more decorations than could be displayed upon the 
 right breast of his uniform. His hair and beard, snowy white, 
 contrasted strangely with a stern, set face that had been bronzed by 
 the sun and the wind of fifty campaigns. 
 
 In the Chinese expedition this man had led the assault upon the 
 Emperor's palace, wherein no defender escaped the bayonet and no 
 woman the grasp of the brutal soldiery. Sack and pillage and 
 murder and crimes without a name all were there, and when the 
 fierce carnage was done, Dupin, staggering under the weight of 
 rubies and pearls and diamonds, was a disgraced man. The inex- 
 orable jaws of a French court martial closed down upon him, and 
 he was dismissed from service. It was on the trial that he paro- 
 died the speech of Warren Hastings and declared: 
 
 " When I saw mountains of gold and precious stones piled up 
 around me, and when I think of the paltry handfuls taken away, 
 by G d, Mr. President, I am astonished at my own moderation." 
 
 As they stripped his decorations and his ribbons from his breast 
 he drew himself up with a touching and graceful air, and said to 
 the officer, saluting: 
 
 " They have left me nothing but my scars." 
 
 Such a man, however, tiger and butcher as he was, had need of 
 the army and the army had need of him. The Emperor gave him 
 back his rank, his orders, his decorations, and gave him as well his 
 exile into Mexico. 
 
292 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO ; 
 
 Maximilian refused him ; Bazaine found work for his sword. 
 Even then that fatal quarrel was in its beginning which, later, 
 was to leave a kingdom defenseless, and an Emperor without an 
 arsenal or a siege-gun. Dupin was ordered to recruit a regiment 
 of Contre Guerillas, that is to say a regiment of Free Companions 
 who were to be superbly armed and mounted, and who were to fol- 
 low the Mexican guerrillas through copse and chapparal, through 
 lowland and lagoon, sparing no man upon whom hands were laid, 
 fighting all men who had arms in their hands, and who could be 
 found or brought to bay. 
 
 Murder with Dupin was a fine art. Mistress or maid he had 
 none. That cold, brown face, classic a little in its outlines, and 
 retaining yet a little of its fierce southern beauty, never grew soft 
 save when the battle was wild and the wreck of the carnage ghastly 
 and thick. On the eve of conflict he had been known to smile. 
 When he laughed or sang his men made the sign of the cross. They 
 knew death was ready at arm's length, and that in an hour he would 
 put his sickle in amid the rows and reap savagely a fresh harvest of 
 simple yet offending Mexicans. Of all things left to him from the 
 sack of that Pekin palace, one thing alone remained, typical of the 
 tiger thirst that old age, nor disgrace, nor.wounds, nor rough foreign 
 service, nor anything human, had power potent enough to quench 
 or assuage. Victor Hugo, in his "Toilers of the Sea," has woven it 
 into the story after this fashion, looking straight, perhaps, into the 
 eyes of the cruel soldier who, in all his life, has never listened to 
 prayer or priest: 
 
 "A piece of silk stolen during the last war from the palace of 
 the Emperor of China represented a shark eating a crocodile, 
 who is eating a serpent, who is devouring an eagle, who is preying 
 on a swallow, who is in his turn eating a caterpillar. All nature 
 which is under our observation is thus alternately devouring and 
 devoured. They prey, prey on each other." 
 
 Dupin preyed upon his species. He rarely killed outright. He 
 had a theory, often put into practice, which was diabolical. 
 
 " When you kill a Mexican," he would say, " that is the end of 
 him. When you cut off an arm or a leg, that throws him upon the 
 charity of his friends, and then two or three must support him. 
 Those who make corn can not make soldiers It is economy to 
 amputate." 
 
 Hundreds thus passed under the hands of his surgeons. His 
 maimed and mutilated were in every town from Mier to Monterey. 
 On occasions when the march had been pleasant and the wine gen- 
 erous, he would permit chloroform for the operation. Otherwise 
 not. It distressed him for a victim to die beneath the knife. 
 
 " You bunglers endanger my theory," he would cry out to his 
 surgeons. " Why can't you cut without killing?" 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 293 
 
 The "Tiger of the Tropics " also had his playful moods. He 
 would stretch himself in the sun, overpower one with gentleness 
 and attention, say soft things in whispers, quote poetry on occasions, 
 make of himself an elegant host, serve the wine, laugh low and 
 lightsomely, wake up all of a sudden a demon, and kill. 
 
 One instance of this is yet a terrible memory in Monterey. 
 
 An extremely wealthy and influential Mexican, Don Vincente 
 Ibarra, was at home upon his hacienda one day about noon as Dupin 
 marched by. Perhaps this man was a Liberal ; certainly he sym- 
 pathized with Juarez and had done much for the cause in the shape 
 of recruiting and resistance to the predatory bands of Imperialists. 
 As yet, however, he had taken up no arms, and had paid his pro- 
 portion of the taxes levied upon him by Jeanningros. 
 
 Dupiu was at dinner when his scouts brought Ibarra into camp. 
 In front of the tent was a large tree in full leaf, whose spreading 
 branches made an extensive and most agreeable shade. Under this 
 the Frenchman had a camp-stool placed for the comfort of the 
 Mexican. 
 
 "Be seated, "he said to him in a voice no harsherthan the wind 
 among the leaves overhead. "And, waiter, lay another plate for 
 my friend." 
 
 The meal was a delightful one. Dupin talked as a subject who 
 had a prince for his guest, and as a lover who had a woman for his 
 listener. In the intervals of the conversation he served the wine. 
 Ibarra was delighted. His suspicious Spanish heart relaxed the 
 tension of its grim defense, and he even stroked the tiger's velvet 
 skin, who closed his sleepy eyes and purred under the caress. 
 
 When the wine was at its full cigars were handed. Behind the 
 white cloud of the smoke, Dupin's face darkened. Suddenly he 
 spoke to Ibarra, pointing up to the tree: 
 
 "What a fine shade it makes, Senor? Do such trees ever 
 bear fruit?" 
 
 ' ' Never, Colonel. What a question." 
 
 "Never? All things are possible with God, why not with a 
 Frenchman?" 
 
 "Because a Frenchman believes so little in God, perhaps." 
 
 The face grew darker and darker. 
 
 "Are your affairs prosperous, Senor?" 
 
 " As much so as these times will permit." 
 
 "Very good. You have just five minutes in which to make 
 them better. At the end of that time I will hang you on that tree 
 so sure as you are a Mexican. What ho! Captain Jacan, turn out 
 the guard!" 
 
 Ibarra's deep olive face grew ghastly white, and he fell upon 
 his knees. No prayers, no agonizing entreaty, no despairing sup- 
 plication wrung from a strong man in his agony availed him aught. 
 
294 SHELBY'^ EXPEDITION TO MEXICO; 
 
 At the appointed time his rigid frame swung between heaven and 
 earth, another victim to the mood of one who never knew an hour 
 of penitence or mercy. The tree had borne fruit. 
 
 And so this manner of a man this white-haired Dupin decor 
 ated, known to two continents as the "Tiger of the Tropics," who 
 kept four picked Chasseurs to stand guard about and over him night 
 and day, this old-young soldier, with a voice like a school-girl and 
 a heart like glacier, came to Monterey and recruited a regiment of 
 Contre-Guerrillas, a regiment that feared neither God, man, the 
 Mexicans nor the devil. 
 
 Under him as a captain was Charles Ney, the grandson of that 
 other Ney who cried out to D'Erlon at Waterloo, " Come and see 
 how a marshal of France dies on the field of battle." 
 
 In Captain Ney's company there were two squadrons a French 
 squadron and an American squadron, the last having for its com- 
 mander Capt. Frank Moore, of Alabama. Under Moore were one 
 hundred splendid Confederate soldiers who, refusing to surrender, 
 had sought exile, and had stranded upon that inevitable lee shore 
 called necessity. Between the Scylla of short rations and the 
 Charybdis of empty pockets, the only channel possible was the 
 open sea. So into it sailed John C. Moore, Armistead, Williams and 
 the rest of that American squadron which was to become famous 
 from Matamoras to Matehuala. 
 
 This much by the way of preface has been deemed necessary in 
 order that an accurate narrative may be made of the murder of 
 Gen. M. M. Parsons, of Jefferson City, his brother-in-law, Colonel 
 Standish, of the same place, the Hon. M. D. Conrow, of Caldwell 
 county, and three gallant young Irishmen, James Mooney, Patrick 
 Langdon, and Michael Monarthy . Ruthlessly butchered in a foreign 
 country, they yet had avengers. When the tale was told to Colonel 
 Dupin, by John Moore, he listened as an Indian in ambush might 
 to the heavy tread of some unwary and approaching trapper. After 
 the story had been finished he asked, abruptly: 
 
 "What would you Americans have." 
 
 '* Per mission," said Moore, "to gather up what is left of our 
 comrades and bury what is left." 
 
 "And strike a good, fair blow in return? " 
 
 " Maybe so, Colonel." 
 
 "Thenmarclie at daylight with your squadron. Let me hear 
 when you return that not one stone upon another of the robber's 
 rendezvous has been left." 
 
 Gen. M. M. Parsons had commanded a division of Missouri 
 infantry with great credit to himself, and with great honor to the 
 State. He was a soldier of remarkable personal beauty, of great 
 dash in battle, of unsurpassed horsemanship, and of that graceful 
 and natural suavity of manner which endeared him alike to his 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 295 
 
 brother officers and to the men over whom he was placed in 
 command. His brother-in-law, Colonel Standish, was his chief of 
 staff, and a frank, fearless young officer, whom the Missourians 
 knew and admired. Capt. Aaron H. Conrow had, before the war, 
 represented Caldwell county in the Legislature, and had, during the 
 war, been elected to the Confederate Congress. With these three 
 men were three brave and faithful young Irish soldiers, James 
 Mooney, Patrick Langdon and Michael Monarthy six in all, who, 
 for the crime of being A r mericans, had to die. 
 
 Following in the rear of Shelby's expedition in the vain hope of 
 overtaking it, they reached the neighborhood of Pedras Negras too 
 late to cross the Rio Grande there. A strong body of guerrillas had 
 moved up into the town and occupied it immediately after Shelby's 
 withdrawal. Crossing the river, however, lower down, they had 
 entered Mexico in safety, and had won their perilous way to 
 Monterey without serious loss or molestation. Not content to go 
 further at that time, and wishing to return to Camargo for purposes 
 of communication with Texas, they availed themselves of the 
 protection of a train of supply wagons sent by Jeanningros, heavily 
 guarded by Imperial Mexican soldiers, to Matamoras. Jeanniugros 
 gave them safe conduct as far as possible, and some good advice as 
 well, which advice simply warned them against trusting anything 
 whatever to Mexican courage or Mexican faith. 
 
 The wagon train and its escort advanced well on their way to 
 Matamoras well enough at least to be beyond the range of French 
 succor should the worst come to the worst. But on the evening of the 
 fourth day, in a narrow defile at the crossing of an exceedingly rapid 
 and dangerous stream, the escort was furiously assailed by a large 
 body of Juaristas, checked at once, and finally driven back. General 
 Parsons and his party retreated with the rest until the night's camp 
 was reached, when a little council of war was called by the Ameri- 
 cans. Conrow and Standish were in favor of abandoning the trip 
 for the present, especially as the whole country was aroused and in 
 waiting for the train, and more especially as the guerrillas, attracted 
 by the scent of plunder, were swarming upon the roads and in am- 
 bush by every pass and beside the fords of every stream. General 
 Parsons overruled them, and determined to make the venture as soon 
 as the moon arose, in the direction of Camargo. 
 
 None took issue with him further. Accustomed to exact obedi- 
 ence, much of the old soldierly spirit was still in existence, and so 
 they followed him blindly and with alacrity. At daylight the next 
 morning the entire party was captured. Believing, however, that 
 the Americans were bnt the advance of a larger and more formid- 
 able party, the Mexicans neither dismounted nor disarmed them. 
 While at breakfast, and at the word of command from General Par- 
 sons, tlje whole six galloped off under a fierce fire of musketry, 
 
296 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO ; 
 
 unhurt, baffling all pursuit, and gaining some good hours' advantage^ 
 over their captors. It availed them nothing, however. About noon 
 of the second day they were again captured, this time falling into the 
 hands of Figueroa, a robber chief as notorious among the Mexicans, 
 as Dupin was among the French. 
 
 Short shrift came afterward. Colonel Standish was shot first. 
 When told of the fate intended for him, he bade good-bye to his. 
 comrades, knelt a few moments in silent prayer, and then stood up, 
 firmly, facing his murderers. At the discharge of the musketry 
 platoon, he was dead before he touched the ground. Two bullets, 
 pierced his generous and dauntless heart. 
 
 Capt. Aaron H. Conrow died next. He expected no mercy,, 
 and he made no plea for life. A request to be permitted to write a 
 a few lines to his wife was denied him, Figueroa savagely ordering 
 the execution to proceed. The firing party shortened the distance, 
 between it and their victim, placing him but three feet away from 
 the muzzles of their muskets. Like Standish he refused to have his. 
 eyes bandaged. Knowing but few words of Spanish, he called 
 out in his brave, quick fashion, and in his own language, "Fire!"' 
 and the death he got was certain and instantaneous. He fell within 
 a few paces of his comrade, dead like him before he touched the, 
 ground. 
 
 The last moments of the three young Irish soldiers had now come.. 
 They had seen the stern killing of Standish and Conrow, and they 
 neither trembled nor turned pale. It can do no good to ask what, 
 thoughts were theirs, or if from over the waves of the wide Atlantic 
 some visions came that were strangely and sadly out of place in front, 
 of the chapparal and the sandaled Mexicans. Monarthy asked for a. 
 priest and received one. He was a kind-hearted, ignorant Indian, 
 who would have saved them if he could, but safe from the bloody 
 hands of Figueroa no foreigner had ever yet come. The three men 
 confessed and received such consolation as the living could give to 
 men as good as dead. Then they joined hands and spoke some earn- 
 est words together for the brief space permitted them. Langdon, 
 the youngest, was only twenty-two. A resident of Mobile when the 
 war commenced, he had volunteered in a battery, had been captured 
 at Vicksburg, and had, later, joined Pindall's battalion of sharp- 
 shooters in Parsons' Division. He had a face like a young girl's, 
 it was so fair and fresh. All who knew him loved him. In all the 
 Confederate army there was neither braver nor better soldier. 
 Mooney was a man of fifty-five, with an iron frame and with a gaunt 
 scarred, rugged face that was yet kindly and attractive. He took 
 Langdon in his arms and kissed him twice, once on each cheek, 
 shook hands with Monarthy, and opened his breast. The close, 
 deadly fire was received standing and with eyes wide open. Lang- 
 don died without a struggle, Mooney groaned, twice and tried to 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 297 
 
 speak. Death finished the sentence ere it was commenced. Monarthy 
 required the coup de grace. A soldier went close to him, rested the 
 muzzle of his musket against his head and fired. He was very quiet 
 then; the murder was dene; five horrible corpses lay in a pool of 
 blood; the shadows deepened; and the cruel eyes of Figueroa 
 roamed, as the eyes of a tiger, from the ghastly faces of the dead to 
 the stern, set face of the living. General Parsons felt that for him, 
 too, the supreme moment had come at last. 
 
 Left in that terrible period alone, none this side eternity will ever 
 know what he suffered and endured. Waiting patiently for his 
 sentence, a respite was granted. Some visions of ransom must have 
 crossed Figueroa's mind. Clad in the showy and attractive uniform 
 of a Confederate major-general, having the golden stars of his rank 
 upon hia collar, magnificently mounted, and being withal a remark- 
 ably handsome and commanding-looking soldier himself, it was for 
 a time at least thought best to hold him a prisoner. His horse even 
 was given back to him, and for some miles further toward Mata- 
 moras he was permitted to ride with those who had captured him. 
 The Captain of the guard immediately in charge of his person had 
 also a very fine horse, whose speed he was continually boasting of. 
 Fortunately this officer spoke English, thus permitting General 
 Parsons to converse with him. Much bantering was had concerning 
 the speed of the two horses. A race was at length proposed. The 
 two men started off at a furious gallop, the American steadily gain- 
 ing upon the Mexican . Finding himself in danger of being dis- 
 tanced, the Captain drew up and ordered his competitor in the race 
 to halt. Unheeding the command, General Parsons dashed on with 
 the utmost speed, escaping the shots from the revolver of the Mexi- 
 can, and eluding entirely Figueroa and his command. Although in 
 a country filled with treacherous and blood-thirsty savages, and 
 ignorant of the roads and the language, General Parsons might have 
 reduced the chances against him in the proportion cf ten to one, 
 had he concealed himself in some neighboring chapparal and waited 
 until the night fell. He did not do this, but continued his flight 
 rapidly down the broad highway which ran directly from Monterey 
 to Matamoras. There could be but one result. A large scouting 
 party of Figueroa's forces returning to the headquarters of their 
 chief met him before he had ridden ten miles, again took him 
 prisoner, and again delivered him into the hands of the ferocious 
 bandit. 
 
 Death followed almost instantly. None who witnessed the deed 
 have ever told how he died, but three days afterward his body was 
 found stripped by the wayside, literally shot to pieces. Some Mexi- 
 cans then buried it, marking the unhallowed spot with a cross. 
 Afterward Figueroa, dressed in the full uniform of General Parsons, 
 was in occupation of Cam?>-go, while the same Colonel Johnson, 
 
298 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO : 
 
 who had followed Shelby southwardly frcm San Antonio, held the 
 opposite shore of the Rio Grande on the American side. Figueroa, 
 gloating over the savageness of the deed, and imagining, in his stolid 
 Indian cunning, that the Federal officers would pay handsomely for 
 the spoils of the murdered Confederate, proffered to deliver to him 
 General Parsons' coat, pistols and private papers for a certain speci- 
 fied sum, detailing, at the same time, with revolting accuracy, the 
 merciless particulars of the butchery. Horrified at the cool rapacity 
 of the robber, and thinking only of General Parsons as an American 
 and a brother, Colonel Johnson tried for weeks to entice Figueroa 
 across the river, intending to do a righteous vengeance upon him. 
 Too wily and too cowardly to be caught, he moved back suddenly 
 into the interior, sending a message afterward to Colonel Johnson 
 full of taunting and defiance. 
 
 Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his own blood be 
 shed. Dupin's avengers were on the track, imbued with Dupin's 
 spirit, and having over them the stern memory of Dupin's laconic 
 orders. Leave not one stone upon another. And why should 
 there be habitations when the inhabitants were scattered or killed. 
 
 Las Flores was a flower town, beautiful in name, and beautiful 
 in the blue of the skies which bent over it: in the blue of the mount- 
 ains which caught the morning and wove for it a gossamer robe of 
 amethyst and pearl; in the song and flow of running water, where 
 women sat and sang, and combed their dusky hair; and in the olden, 
 immemorial groves, filled with birds that had gold for plumage, and 
 sweet seed and sunshine for mating and wooing songs. 
 
 Hither would come Figueroa in the lull of the long marches, and 
 in the relaxation of the nights of ambush, and the days of watching 
 and starving. Booty and beauty, and singing maidens all were there. 
 There red gold would buy right royal kisses, and there feasting and 
 minstrelsy told of the pillage done, and the rapine and slaughter 
 beyond the sweep of the mountains that had cut the sky line. 
 
 God help all of them who tarried till the American squadron 
 charged into the town, one hundred rank and file, Frank Moore lead- 
 ing all who had beard upon their faces or guns within their hands. 
 A trusty guide had made the morning a surprise. It wag not yet 
 daylight. Some white mist, like a corpse abandoning a bier, was 
 creeping up from the lowlands. The music and the lights had died 
 out in the streets. The east, not yet awakened, had on its face the 
 placid pallor of sleep. What birds flew were weary of wing and 
 voiceless in the sober hush of dreamless nature. 
 
 Leave not one stone upon another. And the faces of the Ameri- 
 cans were set as a flint and the massacre began. Never were six 
 men so terribly avenged. It need not be told what flames were 
 there, what harsh and gutteral oaths, what tawny faces blanched 
 nd grew white, what cries and vollies and shrieks, and deaths 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 299 
 
 that made no moan arose on the morning, and scared the mist from 
 the water, the paradise birds from their bowers amid the limes and 
 the orange trees. It was over at last. Call the roll and gather up 
 the corpses. Fifteen' Americans dead, eleven wounded, and so 
 many Mexicans that you could not count them. Las Flores, the 
 City of the Flowers, had become to be Las Cruces, the City of the 
 Crosses. 
 
 When the tale was told to Dupin, he rubbed his brown bare 
 hands and lent his arm on his subaltern's shoulder. 
 
 " Tell me about it again," he ordered. 
 
 The tale was told. 
 
 "Oh! brave Americans!" he shouted. "Americans after my 
 own heart. You shall be saluted with sloping standards and un- 
 covered heads." 
 
 The bugles rang out "to horse," the regiment got under arms, 
 the American squadron passed in review along the ranks, the flags 
 were lowered and inclined, officers and men uncovered as the files 
 marched down the lines; there were greetings and rejoicings, and 
 from the already lengthened life of the white-haired commander 
 five good years of toil and exposure had been taken. For a week 
 thereafter he was seen to smile and to be glad. After that the old 
 Vild work commenced again. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 IN Monterey, tit the time of Shelby's arrival, there was one man 
 who had figured somewhat extensively in a role new to most 
 Americans. This man was the Hon. 'William M. Gwin, ex-United 
 States Senator and ex Governor of California. He had been to 
 France and just returned. Accomplished in all of the social graces; 
 an aristocrat born and a bit of an Imperialist as well; full of wise 
 words and sage reflections; graceful in his conversation and charm- 
 ing over his wine; having the political history of his country at hear 
 as a young Catholic does his catechism; fond of the pomp and 
 the paraphernalia of royalty; nothing of a soldier, but much of a 
 diplomatist; a stranger to reverence and a cosmopolitan in religion, 
 he was a right proper man to hold court in Sonora, the Mexican 
 province whose affairs he was to administer upon as a Duke. 
 Napoleon had granted him letters patent for this, and for this he 
 had ennobled him. It is nowhere recorded that he took possession 
 of his province. Granted an audience by Maximilian he laid his 
 plans before him and asked for a prompt installment into the admin- 
 istration of the dukedom. It was refused peremptorily. At the 
 mercy of Bazaine, and having no soldiers worthy the name other 
 than French soldiers, the Mexican Emperor had weighty reasons 
 besides private ones for such refusal. It was not time for the 
 coquetries of empire before that empire had an army, a bank 
 account, and a clean bill of health. Gwin became indignant, 
 Bazaine became amused, and Maximilian became disgusted. In the 
 end the Duke left the country and the guerrillas seized upon the 
 dukedom. When Shelby reached Monterey, ex-Governor Gwin was 
 outward bound for Matamoras, reaching the United States later only 
 to be imprisoned in Fort Jackson, below New Orleans, for several 
 long and weary months. The royal sufferer had most excellent, 
 company although Democratic, and therefore unsympathetic^ 
 General John B. Clark, returning about the same time, was pounced 
 upon and duly incarcerated. Gwin attempted to convert him to 
 imperialism, but it ended by Clark bringing Gwin back to Democ- 
 racy. And a noble Missourian was " Old" General Clark, as the 
 soldiers loved to call him. Lame from a wound received while 
 leading his brigade gallantly into action at Wilson's Creek, penniless 
 in a land for whose sake he had given up gladly a magnificent 
 fortune, proscribed of the Government, a prisoner without a country, 
 an exile who was not permitted to return in peace, dogmatic and 
 defiant to the last, he went into Fort Jackson a rebel, remained a 
 rebel there, came away a rebel, and a rebel he will continue to be as 
 
 300 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 301 
 
 long as life permits him to use the rough Anglo Saxon oaths which 
 go to make up his rebel vocabulary. On the march into Mexico he 
 had renewed his youth. In the night watches he told tales of his 
 boyhood, and by the camp fires he replenished anew the fires of his 
 memory. Hence all the anecdotes that amused all the reminis- 
 cences which delighted. At the crossing of the Salinas river he fell 
 in beside General Shelby, a musket in his hand, and the old ardor of 
 battle upon his stern and weather-beaten face. 
 
 " Where would you go?" asked Shelby. 
 
 "As far as you go, my young man." 
 
 "Not this day, my old friend, if I can help it. There are 
 younger and less valuable men who shall take this risk alone. Get out 
 of the ranks, General. The column can not advance unless you do." 
 
 Forced against his will to retire, he was mad for a week, and 
 only recovered his amiability after being permitted to engage in the 
 night encounter at the Pass of the Palms. 
 
 Before marching northward from Monterey, Shelby sought one 
 last interview with General Jeanningros. It was courteously 
 accorded. General Preston, who had gone forward from Texas to 
 open negotiations with Maximilian, and who had reached Mexico 
 City in safety, had not yet reported the condition of his surround- 
 ings. It was Shelby's desire to take military service in the Empire 
 since his men had refused to become the followers of Juarez at 
 Piedras Negras. Knowing that a corps of fifty thousand Ameri- 
 cans could be recruited in a few months after a base of operations 
 had once been established, he sought the advice of General Jean- 
 ningros to this end, meaning to deal frankly with him, and to dis- 
 cuss fully his plans and purposes. 
 
 Jeanningros had grown gray in the service. He acknowledged 
 but one standard of perfection success. Never mind the means, 
 so only the end was glory and France. The camps had made him 
 cruel; the barracks had given to this cruelty a kind of fascinating 
 rhetoric. Sometimes he dealt in parables. One of these told more 
 of the paymaster than the zouave, more of Minister Rouher than 
 Marshal McMahon. He would say: 
 
 "Napoleon and Maximilian have formed a partnership. To get 
 it well agoing much money has been spent. Some bargains have 
 been bad, and some vessels have been lost. There is a crisis at 
 hand. More capital is needed to save what has already been 
 invested, and 'for one, rather than lose the millions swallowed up 
 yesterday, I would put in as many more millions to-day. It is 
 economy to hold on." 
 
 Shelby went straight at his work : 
 
 " I do not know what you think of things here, General, nor of 
 the outcome the future has in store for the Empire, but one thing is 
 certain, I shall tell you the plain truth. The Federal Government 
 
8C2 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO ; 
 
 has no lore for your French occupation of Mexico. If diplomacy 
 can't get you out, infantry divisions will. I left a large army con- 
 centrating upon the banks of the Rio Grande, and all the faces of all 
 the men were looking straight forward into Mexico. Will France 
 fight? For one, I hope so; but it seems to me that if your Emperor 
 had meant to be serious in this thing, his plan should have been to 
 have formed an alliance long ago, offensive and defensive, with 
 Jefferson Davis. This, in the event of success, would have guar- 
 anteed you the whole country, and obliged you as well to have 
 opened the ports of Charleston, Savannah and New Orleans. Better 
 battles could have been fought on the Potomac than on the llio 
 Grande; surer results would have followed from a French landing 
 at Mobile than at Tampico or Vera Cruz. You have waited too long. 
 Flushed with a triumphant termination of the war, American 
 diplomacy now means the Monroe doctrine, pure and simple, with 
 a little of Yankee brutality and braggadocio thrown in. Give me a 
 port as a basis of operations, and I can organize an American force 
 capable of keeping Maximilian upon his throne. If left discretionary 
 with me, that port shall be either Guaymas or Mazatlan. The Cali- 
 fornianslove adventure, and many leaders amongthem have already 
 sent messengers to me with overtures. My agent at the capital has 
 not yet reported, and, consequently, I am uninformed as to the 
 wishes of the Emperor; but one thing is certain, the French can not 
 remain, and he can not rule over Mexicans with Mexicans. With- 
 out foreign aid he is lost. You knowBazaine better than I do, and 
 so what would Bazaine say to all this?" 
 
 Jeanningros heard him patiently to the end, answering Shelby as 
 frankly as he had been addressed : 
 
 "There will be no war between France and the United States, 
 and of this you may rest assured. I can not answer for Marshal 
 Bazaine, nor for his wishes and intentions. There is scant love, 
 however, between his excellency and Maximilian, because one is a 
 scholar and the other is a soldier ; but I do not think the Marshal 
 would be averse to the employment of American soldiers in the 
 service of the Empire. You have my full permission to march to 
 the Pacific, and to take such other steps as will seem best to you in 
 the matter of which you have just spoken. The day is not far dis- 
 tant when every French soldier in Mexico will be withdrawn, 
 although this would not necessarily destroy the Empire. Who will 
 take their places ? Mexicans. Bah ! beggars ruling over beggars, 
 cut-throats lying in wait for cut-throats, traitors on the inside mak- 
 ing signs for traitors on the outside to come in. Not thus are 
 governments upheld and administered. Healthy blood must be 
 poured through every effete and corrupted vein of this effete and 
 corrupted nation ere the Austrian can sleep a good man's sleep in 
 his palace of Chepultepec." 
 
AN UNWKITTEN LEAP OP THE WAR. 803 
 
 The interview ended, and Shelby marched northward to Sal- 
 tillo. The first camp beyond was upon the battle field of Buena 
 Vista. It was sunset when the column reached the memorable and 
 historic field. A gentle rain in the morning had washed the grass 
 until it shone, had washed the trees until the leaves glistened and 
 smelt of perfume. After the bivouac was made, silence and twi- 
 light, as twin ghosts, crept up the glade together. Nest spoke unto 
 nest in the gloaming, and bade good-night as the moon arose. It was 
 an harvest moon, white and splended and large as a tent-leafed 
 palm. Away over to the left a mountain arose, where the mist 
 gathered and hung dependent as the locks of a giant. The left of 
 the American army had rested there. In its shadows had McKee 
 fallen, and there had Hardin died, and there had the lance's point 
 found Yell's dauntless heart, and there had the young Clay yielded 
 up his precious life in its stainless and its spotless prime. The 
 great ravine still cut the level plain asunder. Rank mesquite grew 
 all along the crest of the deadly hill where the Mississippiacs 
 formed, and where, black-lipped and waiting, Bragg's battery 
 crouched in ambush at its feet. Shining as a satin band, the broad 
 highway lay t white under the moonlight toward Saltillo the high- 
 way to gain which Santa Anna dashed his desperate army in vain 
 the highway which held the rear and the life and the fame of the 
 Northern handful. 
 
 General Hindman, a soldier in the regiment of Col. Jefferson 
 Davis, explored the field under the moon and the stars, having at 
 his back a regiment of younger Americans who, although the actors 
 in a direr and more dreadful war, yet clung on to their earliest 
 superstitions and their spring time faith in the glory and the 
 carnage of Buena Vista. He made the camp a long to be remem- 
 bered one. Here a squadron charged; there a Lancer regiment, 
 gaily caparisoned in scarlet and gold, crept onward and onward 
 until the battery's dun smoke broke as a wave over pennant and 
 plume; here the grtm Northern lines reeled and rallied; there the 
 sandaled Mexicans, rent into fragments, swarmed into the jaws of 
 the ravine, crouching low as the hot temptest of grape and canister 
 rushed over and beyond them; yonder, where the rank grass is 
 greenest and freshest, the uncoffined dead were buried; and every- 
 where upon the right and the left, the little mounds arose, guarding 
 for evermore the sacred dust of the stranger slain. 
 
 The midnight came, and the harvest moon, as a spectral boat, 
 was floating away to the west in a tide of silver and gold. The 
 battle-field lay under the great, calm face of the sky a sepulchre. 
 Looking out from his bivouac who knows what visions came to the 
 musing soldier, as grave after grave gave up its dead, and as spirit 
 after spirit put on its uniform and its martial array. Pale squadrons 
 galloped again through the gloom of the powder-pall; again the 
 
304 
 
 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO : 
 
 deep roar of the artillery lent its mighty voice to swell the thunder 
 of the gathering battle; again the rival flags rose and fell in the 
 "hot, lit foreground of the fight;" again the Lancers charged; 
 piercing and sweet and wildly shrill, the bugles again called out 
 for victory; and again from out the jaws of the cavernous ravine a 
 tawny tide emerged, clutching fiercely at the priceless road, and 
 falling there in giant windrows as the summer hay when the scythe 
 of the reapers takes the grass that is rankest. 
 
 The moon went down. The mirage disappeard, and only the 
 silent and deserted battle-field lay out under the stars, its low trees 
 waving in the night wind, and its droning katydids sighing in the 
 grasses above the graves. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 FROM Parras there was a broad, national highway running 
 directly to Sonora, and so Shelby marched from Saltillo to Parras, 
 intending to rest there a few days and then continue on to the 
 Pacific, keeping steadily in view the advice and the information 
 given him by General Jeanningros. 
 
 His entrance into the city was stormy, and his reception there 
 had neither sunlight nor temperate air about it. Indeed, none of 
 the Parras winds blew him good. When within two days' march 
 of Parras a sudden rain storm came out of the sky, literally inun- 
 dating the ground of the bivouac. The watch fires were all put 
 out. Sleep was banished, and in the noisy jubilation of the wind a 
 guerrilla band stole down upon the camp. Dick Collins, James 
 Kirtley, George Winship and James Meadow were on picquet duty 
 at the mouth of a canyon on the north. They were peerless sol- 
 diers and they knew how to keep their powder dry. The unseen 
 moon had gone down, and the rain and the wind warred with each 
 other. Some black objects rose up between the eyes of Winship on 
 the outermost post, and the murky clouds, yet a little light, above 
 the darker jaws of the canyon. Weather proof, Winship spoke to 
 Collins : 
 
 "There is game afoot. No peaceful thing travels on such a 
 devil's night as this." 
 
 The four men gathered closer together, watching. Of a sudden 
 a tawny and straggling kind of flame leaped out from the canyon 
 and showed the faces of the Americans, one to another. They 
 were all resolute and determined. They told how the dauntless 
 four meant to stand there and fight there and die there, if needs be, 
 until the sleeping camp could get well upon its feet. Sheltered a 
 little by the darkness, and more by the rocks before and around 
 them, they held desperately on, "four men fighting two hundred. 
 The strange combat waxed hotter and closer. Under the murky 
 night the guerrillas crawled ever nearer and nearer. Standing 
 closely together the Americans fired at the flashes of the Mexican 
 muskets. As yet they had not resorted to their revolvers. Trained 
 to perfection in the use of Sharp's carbines, their guns seemed 
 always loaded. Collins spoke first in his quaint, characteristic 
 way: 
 
 " Boys, it's hot despite the rain." 
 
 " It will be hotter /'answered Winship. 
 
 Then the wild work commenced again. This time they could 
 no f t load their carbines. The revolvers had taken part in the melee. 
 
 305 
 
306 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO ; 
 
 Kirtley was hit badly in the left arm, Collins was bleeding from an 
 ugly wound in the right shoulder, Meadow and Winship each were 
 struck slightly, and the guerrillas were ready for the death grapple. 
 Neither thought of giving one inch of ground. The wind blew 
 furiously and the rain poured down. At the moment when the final 
 rush had come, the piercing notes of Shelby's bugle were heard, and 
 clearer and nearer and deadlier the great shout of an oncoming host, 
 leaping swiftly forward to the rescue. Past the four men on guard, 
 Shelby leading, the tide poured into the pass. What happened 
 there the daylight revealed. It was sure enough and ghastly enough 
 to satisfy all, and better for some if the sunlight had never 
 uncovered to kindred eyes the rigid corpses lying stark and stiff 
 where they had fallen. 
 
 All at once a furious fire of musketry was heard in the rear and 
 in amid the tethered horses. Again the bugle's notes were heard, 
 and again Shelby's rallying voice rang out: 
 
 " Countermarch for your lives. Make haste! make haste! the 
 very clouds are raining Mexicans to-night." 
 
 It was a quarter of a mile to the camp. The swiftest men got 
 there first. Sure enough the attack had been a most formidable 
 one. Slayback and Cundiff held the post in the rear and were 
 fighting desperately. On foot, in the darkness, and attacked by 
 four hundred guerrillas well acquainted with the whole country, 
 they had yet neither been surprised nor driven back. Woe unto 
 the horses if they had, and horses were as precious gold. Attracted 
 only by the firing, and waiting for no orders, there hadrushed to the 
 rearward post McDougall, Fell, Dorsey, Macey, Has Wood, Charley 
 Jones, Vines, Armistead and Elliott. Some aroused from their 
 blankets, were hatless and bootless. Inglehardtsnatched a lighted 
 torch from a sheltered fire and attempted to light the way. The 
 rain put it out. Henry Chiles, having his family to protect, knew, 
 however, by instinct that the rear was in danger, and pressed for- 
 ward with Jim Wood and the Berry brothers. Langhorne, from 
 the left, bore down with John and Martin Kritzer, where he had 
 been all night with the herd, keeping vigilant watch. In the im- 
 penetrable darkness the men mistook each other. Moreland fired 
 upon George Hall and shot away the collar of his overcoat. Hall 
 recognized his voice and made himself known to him. Jake Con- 
 nor, with the full swell and compass of his magnificent voice, struck 
 up, " Tramp, tramp, the boys are marching," until, guided by tbe 
 music of the song, the detached parties came together in the gloom 
 and pressed on rapidly to the rear. 
 
 It was time. Slayback and Cundiff, having only a detachment 
 of twelve men, nine of whom were killed or wounded, were half 
 surrounded. They, too, had refused to fall back. In the rain, in 
 the darkness, having no authorized commander, fired on from 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 307 
 
 three sides, ignorant of the number and the positions of their assail- 
 ants, they yet charged furiously in a body and drove everything 
 before them. When Shelby arrived with reinforcements the combat 
 was over. It had been the-most persistent and bloody of the expe- 
 dition. Calculating their chances well, the guerrillas had attacked 
 simultaneously from front and rear, and fought with a tenacity 
 unknown before in their history. The horses were the prize, and 
 right furiously did they struggle for them. Close, reckless fighting 
 alone saved the camp and scattered the desperate robbers in every 
 direction among the mountains. 
 
 Colonel Depreuil, with the Fifty-second of the French line, held 
 Parras, an extreme outpost on the north the key, in fact, of the 
 position toward Chihuahua and Sonora. Unlike Jeanningros in 
 many things, he was, yet a fine soldier, a most overbearing and tyran- 
 nical man. Gathered together at Parras also, and waiting permis- 
 sion to march to Sonora, was Colonel Terry, one of the famous 
 principals in the Broderick duel, and a detachment of Texans num- 
 bering, probably, twenty -five. Terry's own account of this mem- 
 orable duel was all the more interesting because given by one who, 
 of all others, knew best the causes and the surroundings which 
 rendered it necessary. In substance the following contains the 
 main points of the narrative: 
 
 " The political contest preceding the duel was exceptionally and 
 bitterly personal. Broderick recognized the code fully, and had 
 once before fought and wounded his man. He was cool, brave, 
 dangerous and very determined. His influence over his own im- 
 mediate followers and friends was more marked and emphatic than 
 that exercised by any other man that I have ever known. He 
 excelled in organization and attack, and possessed many of the most 
 exalted qualities of a successful commander. As an orator he was 
 rugged, yet inspired, reminding me somewhat of my own picturings 
 of Mirabeau, without the gigantic persistence and intellect of Mira- 
 beau. I do not desire to enter into even the details which led to the 
 unfortunate meeting, for these have been given again and again 
 in as many false and unnatural ways as possible. After the terms 
 had all been fully discussed and agreed upon, and the time and 
 place of the combat settled, I said confidentially to a friend of mine 
 that I did not intend to kill Broderick. This friend seemed 
 greatly surprised, and asked me after a few moments' reflection, 
 what I really intended to do in the matter. My answer was that I 
 simply desired to save my own life, and that I should only disable 
 him. 'It is a dangerous game you are playing,' he replied, 'and 
 one likely to bring you trouble. Broderick is no trifling antagonist. 
 He shoots to kill every time.' When I arrived on the field I had not 
 changed my mind, but when I looked into his eyes, I saw murder 
 there as plainly as murder was ever depicted, and then I knew that 
 
308 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO; 
 
 one of us had to die. I put my life fairly against his own. Hid 
 bearing was magnificent, and his nerve* superbly cool. It has been 
 asserted that I remarked to my second, while he was measuring the 
 ground, that he must take short steps. This is untrue, for the 
 ground was measured twice, once by my own second, and once by 
 the second of Broderick. They both agreed perfectly. The dis- 
 tance was ten paces, and in size neither had the advantage. I felt 
 confident of killingjhim, however, but if required to give a reason for 
 this belief I could not give either a sensible or an intelligent reason. 
 You know the result. He fell at the first fire, shot through the 
 neck and mortally wounded. I did not approach him afterward, 
 nor were any attempts made at reconciliation. At the hands 
 of his friends I received about as large a share of personal abuse as 
 usually falls to the lot of a man; at the hands of my friends I had 
 no reason to complain of their generous support and confidence. 
 When the war commenced I left California as a volunteer in tbe 
 Confederate army, and am here to-day, like the rest of you, a pen- 
 niless and an adventurous man. What a strange thing is destiny ? I 
 sometimes think we can neither mar nor make our fortunes, but 
 have to live the life that is ordained for us. The future nobody 
 knows. Perhaps it is best to take it as we find it, and bow grace- 
 fully when we come face to face with the inevitable." 
 
 Colonel Terry had felt his own sorrows, too, in the desperate 
 struggle. One brother had been shot down by his side in Kentucky; 
 a dearly loved child had just been buried in a foreign land; penni- 
 less and an exile himself, he had neither home, property, a country, 
 nor a cause. All that was left to him were his honor and his scars. 
 
 Before Shelby arrived in Paris, Colonel Depreuil had received an 
 order from Marshal Bazaine intended entirely for the Americans. 
 It was very concise an*d very much to the point. It commenced by 
 declaring that Shelby's advance was but the commencement of an 
 irruption of Americans Yankees, Bazaine called them who 
 intended to overrun Mexico, and to make war alike upon the French 
 and upon Maximilian. Their march to Sonora, therefore, was to 
 be arrested, and if they refused to return to their own country, they 
 were to be ordered to report to him in the City of Mexico. No 
 exceptions were to be permitted, and in any event, Sonora was to 
 be held as forbidden territory. 
 
 Used to so many disappointments, and so constantly misunder- 
 stood and misinterpreted, Shelby felt the last blow less, perhaps, 
 than some heavier ones among the first of a long series. He called 
 upon Colonel Depreuil, however, for an official confirmation. 
 
 This interview, like the night attack, was a stormy one. The 
 Frenchman was drinking and abusive. Uninvited to a seat, Shelby 
 took the nearest one at hand. Upon his entrance into the officer's 
 reception room, he had removed his hat. This was an act of polite- 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 309 
 
 ness as natural as it was mechanical. Afterward it came near unto 
 bloodshed. 
 
 " I have called, Colonel," Shelby began, "for permission to con- 
 tinue my march to Sonora." 
 
 "Such permission is impossible. You will turn aside to 
 Mexico." 
 
 "May I ask the reason of this sudden resolution? GeneralJean- 
 ningros had no information to this effect when I left him the other 
 day in Monterey." 
 
 At the mention of Jeanningros' name, Depreuil became furious in 
 a moment. It may have been that the subordinate was wanting in 
 respect for his superior, or it may have been that he imagined, in 
 his drunken way, that Shelby sought to threaten him with higher 
 authority. At any rate he roared out: 
 
 " What do I care for your information? Let the devil flyaway 
 with you and your information. It is the same old game you Amer- 
 icans are forever trying to play robbing to-day and killing to-morrow 
 and plundering, plundering, plundering all the time. You shall 
 not go to Sonora, and you shall not stay here; but whatever you do 
 you shall obey." 
 
 Shelby's face darkened. He arose as he spoke, put his hat on, and 
 walked some paces toward the speaker. His voice was so cold and 
 harsh when he answered him, that it sounded strange and unnatural: 
 
 "I am mistaken it seems. I imagined that when an American 
 soldier called upon a French soldier, he was at least visiting a gen- 
 tleman. One can not always keep his hands clean, and I wash mine 
 of you because you are a slanderer and a coward." 
 
 Depreuil laid his hand upon his sword; Shelby unbottoned the 
 flap of his revolver scabbard. A rencontre was imminent. Those 
 of Shelby's men who were with him massed themselves in one cor- 
 ner, silent and threateniDg. A guard of soldiers in an adjoining 
 room fell into line. The hush of expectancy that came over all was 
 ominous. A spark would have exploded a magazine. 
 
 Nothing could have surpassed the scornful, insulting gesture of 
 Depreuil as, pointing to Shelby's hat, he ordered fiercely: 
 
 "Remove that." 
 
 " Only to beauty and to God," was the stern, calm reply; " to a 
 coward, never." 
 
 It seemed for a moment afterward that Depreuil would strike 
 him. He looked first at his own guard, then grasped the hilt of his 
 sword, and finally with a fierce oath, he broke out: 
 
 " Retire retire instantly lest I outrage all hospitality and dis- 
 honor you in my own house. You shall pay for this you shall 
 apologize for this." 
 
 Depreuil was no coward. , Perhaps there was no braver and more 
 impulsive man in the whole French army. The sequel proved this. 
 
310 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO ; 
 
 Shelby went calmly from liis presence. He talked about various 
 things, but never about the difficulty until he found Governor 
 Reynolds. 
 
 11 Come apart with me a few moments, Governor," he said. 
 
 Reynolds was alone with him for an hour. When he came out 
 he went straight to the quarters of Col. Depreuil. It did not take 
 long thereafter to arrange the terms of a meeting. Governor Rey- 
 nolds was both a diplomatist and a soldier, and so at daylight the 
 next morning they were to fight with pistols at ten paces. In this 
 the Frenchman was chivalrous, notwithstanding his overbearing 
 and insulting conduct at the interview. Shelby's right hand and 
 arm had been disabled by a severe wound, and this Depreuil had 
 noticed. Indeed, while he was an expert with the sword, Shelby's 
 wrist was so stiff that to handle a sword at all would have been 
 impossible. Depreuil, therefore, chose the pistol, agreed to the 
 distance, talked some brief moments pleasantly with Governor Rey- 
 nolds, and went to bed. Shelby, on his part, had even fewer prep- 
 arations to make than Depreuil. Face to face with death for four 
 long years, he had seen him in so many shapes, and in so many 
 places, that this last aspect was one of his least uncertain and terri- 
 fying. 
 
 The duel, however, never occurred. That night, about ten 
 o'clock, a tremendous clattering of sabres and galloping of horses 
 were heard, and some who went out to ascertain the cause returned 
 with the information that General Jeanningros, on an inspecting tour 
 of the entire northern line of outposts, had arrived in Parras with 
 four squadrons of the Chasseurs d'Af rique. It was not long before 
 all the details of the interview between Depreuil and Shelby were 
 related to him. His quick French instinct divined in a moment 
 that other alternative waiting for the daylight, and in an instant 
 Depreuil was in arrest, the violation of which would have cost him 
 his life. Nor did it end with arrest simply. After fully investigat- 
 ing the circumstances connected with the whole affair, Jeanningros 
 required Depreuil to make a free and frank apology, which he did 
 most cordially and sincerely, regretting as much as a sober man 
 could the disagreeable and overbearing things did when he was drunk. 
 
 How strange a thing is destiny. About one year after this 
 Parras difficulty, Depreuil was keeping isolated guard above Quere- 
 tero, threatened by heavy bodies of advancing Juaristas, and in 
 imminent peril of destruction. Shelby, no longer a soldier now but 
 a trader, knew his peril and knew the value of a friendly warning 
 given while it was yet time. Taking all risks, and putting to the 
 hazard not only his own life, but the lives of forty others, Shell 
 rode one hundred and sixty-two miles in twenty-six hours, 
 Depreuil, rescued his detachment, and received in a general ord( 
 from Bazaine the thanks of the French army. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 BOTH by education and temperament there were but few men 
 better fitted to accept the inevitable gracefully than General Shelby. 
 It needed not Depreuil's testimony, nor the immediate confirmation 
 thereof by Jeanningros, to convince him that Bazaine's order was 
 imperative. True enough, he might have marched forth from 
 Parras free to choose whatsoever route he pleased, but to become 
 en rapport with the Government it was necessary to obey Bazaine. 
 So when the good-byes were said, and the 'column well in motion, it 
 was not toward the Pacific that the, foremost horsemen rode along. 
 
 As the expedition won well its way into Mexico, many places old 
 in local song and story, arose, as it were, from the past, and stood 
 out, clear-cut and crimson, against the background of a history filled 
 to the brim with rapine, and lust, and slaughter. No other land 
 under the sun had an awakening so storm begirt, a christening so 
 bloody and remorseless. First the Spaniards under Cortez swart, 
 fierce, long of broad-sword and limb ; and next the revolution, 
 wherein no man died peacefully or under the shade of a roof. 
 There was Hidalgo, the ferocious priest shot. Morelos, with these 
 words in his mouth shot: " Lord, if I have done well. Thou 
 knowest it ; if ill, to Thy infinite mercy I commend my soul." 
 Leonardo Bravo, scorning to fly shot. Nicholas Bravo, his son, 
 who had offered a thousand captives for his father's life shot. 
 Matamoras shot. Mina shot. Guerrera shot. Then came the 
 Republic bloodier, bitterer, crueller. Victoria, its first president 
 shot. Mexia shot. Pedraza shot. Santmanet shot by General 
 Ampudia, who cut off his head, boiled it in oil, and stuck it up on 
 a pole to blacken in the sun. Herrera shot. Paredes shot. All 
 of them shot, these Mexican presidents, except Santa Anna, who 
 lost a leg by the French and a country by the Americans. Among 
 his game-cocks and his mistresses to-day in Havana, he will see never 
 again, perhaps, the white brow of Orizava from the southern sea, 
 and rest never again under the orange and the banana trees about 
 Cordova. 
 
 It was a land old in the world's history that these men rode into, 
 and a land stained in the world's crimes a land filled full of the 
 sun and the tropics. What wonder, then, that a deed was done on 
 the fifth day's marching that had about it the splendid dash and 
 bravado of mediaeval chivalry. 
 
 Keeping outermost guard one balmy evening far beyond the 
 silent camp of the dreaming soldiers, James Wood and Yandell 
 Blackwell did vigilant duty in front of the reserve. The fire had 
 gone out when the cooking was done, and the earth smelt sweet 
 with grasses, and the dew on the grasses. A low pulse of song 
 
 311 
 
312 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO; 
 
 broke on the bearded faces of the cacti, and sobbed in fading 
 cadences as the waves that come in from the salt sea, seeking the 
 south wind. This was the vesper strain of the katydids, sad, solac- 
 ing, rhythmical. 
 
 Before the wary eyes of the sentinels a figure rose up, waving 
 his blanket as a truce flag. Encouraged, he came into the lines, 
 not fully assured of his bearings frightened a little, anti prone to 
 be communicative by way of propitiation. 
 
 Had the Americans heard of Encarnacion ? 
 
 No, they had not heard of Encaraacion. What was Encar- 
 nacion? 
 
 The Mexican, bora robber and devout Catholic, crossed himself. 
 Not to have heard of Encarnacion was next in infamy to have 
 slaughtered a priest. Horror made him garrulous. Fear, if it does 
 not paralyze, has been known to make the dumb speak. 
 
 Encarnacion was a hacienda, and a hacienda, literally translated, 
 is a plantation with royal stables, and acres of corral, and abounding 
 water, and long rows of male and female slave cabins, and a Don 
 of an owner, who has music, and singing maidens, and pillars of 
 silver dollars, and a passionate brief life, wherein wine and women 
 rise upon it at last and cut it short. Even if no ill luck intervenes, 
 the pace to the devil is a terrible one, and superb riders though 
 they are, the best sent in the saddle sways heavily at last, and the 
 truest hand on the rein relaxes ere manhood reaches its noon and 
 the shadows of the west. 
 
 Luis Enrico Rodriguez owned Encarnacion, a Spaniard born, and 
 a patron saint of all the robbers who lived in the neighboring 
 mountains, and of all the senoritas who plaited their hair by the 
 banks of his arroyos and hid but charily their dusky bodies in the 
 limpid waves. The hands of the French had been laid upon him 
 lightly. For forage and foray Dupin had never penetrated the 
 mountain line which shut in his guarded dominions from the world 
 beyond. When strangers came he gave them greeting; when 
 soldiers came, he gave them of his flocks and herds, his wines and 
 treasures. 
 
 There was one pearl, however, a pearl of great price, whom no 
 stranger eyes had ever seen, whom no stranger tongue had ever 
 spoken a fair good morning. The slaves called it a spirit, the 
 confessor a sorceress, *,he lazy gossips a Gringo witch, the man who 
 knew best of all called it wife, and yet no sprinkling of water or 
 blessing of church had made the name a holy one. 
 
 RDiriguez owned Eacarnacion and Encarnacion owned a skele- 
 ton. This much James Wood and Yandell Blackwell knew when 
 the half goat-herder and robber had told but half his story. When 
 he had finished his other half, this much remained of it: 
 
 Years before in Sonora a California hunter of gold had found 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAK. 313 
 
 his way to some streams where a beautiful Indian woman lived with 
 her tribe. They were married, and a daughter was born to them, 
 having her father's Saxon hair, and her mother's eyes of tropical 
 dusk. From youth to womanhood this daughter had been educated 
 in San Francisco. When she returned she was an American, hav- 
 ing nothing of her Indian ancestry but its color. Even her mother's 
 language was unknown to her. One day in Guaymas, Rodriguez 
 looked upon her as a vision. He was a Spaniard and a millionaire, 
 and he believed all things possible. The wooing was long, but the 
 web, like the web of Penelope, was never woven. He failed in his 
 eloquence, in his money, in his passionate entreaties, in his strata- 
 gems, in his lyings in wait in everything that savored of plead- 
 ing or purchase. Some men come often to their last dollar 
 never to the end of their audacity. If fate should choose to back 
 a lover against the world, fate would give long odds on a Spaniard. 
 
 At last, when everything else had been tried, Rodriguez deter- 
 mined upon abduction. This was a common Mexican custom, 
 dangerous only in its failure. No matter what the risk, no matter 
 how monstrous the circumstances, no matter how many corpses lay 
 in the pathway leading up from plotting to fulfillment, so only in 
 the end the lusts of the man triumphed over the virtue of the 
 woman. Gathering together hastily a band of bravos whose devo- 
 tion was in exact proportion to the dollars paid, Rodriguez seized 
 upon the maiden, returning late one night from the opera, and 
 bore her away with all speed toward Encarnacion. The Califor- 
 nian, born of a tiger race that invariably dies hard, mounted such 
 few men as loved him and followed on furiously in pursuit. Bereft 
 of his young, he had but one thing to do kill. 
 
 Fixed as fate and as relentless, the race went on. Turning once 
 fairly at bay, pursued and pMrsuers met in a death-grapple. The 
 Californian died in the thick of the fight, leaving stern and stark 
 traces behind of his terrible prowess. What cared Rodriguez, how- 
 ever, fora bravo more or less? The woman was safe, and on his 
 own garments nowhere did the strife leave aught of crimson or dust. 
 Once well in her chamber a mistress, perhaps a prisoner, cer- 
 tainly, she beat her wings in vain against the strong bars of her 
 palace, for all that gold could give or passion suggest had been 
 poured out at the feet of Inez Walker. Servants came and went at 
 her bidding. The priest blessed and beamed upon her. The 
 captor was fierce by turns, and in the dust at her shrine, by 
 turns, but amid it all the face of a murdered father rose up 
 in her memory, and prayers for vengeance upon her father's mur- 
 derer broke ever from her unrelenting lips. At times fearful 
 cries came out from the woman's chamber. The domestics heard 
 them and crossed themselves. Once in a terrible storm she fled from 
 her thraldom and wandered frantically about until she sank down 
 
314 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO ; 
 
 insensible. She was found alone with her beauty and her agony. 
 Rodriguez lifted her in his arms and bore her back to her chamber, 
 A fever followed, scorching her wan face until it was pitiful, and 
 shredding away her Saxon hair until all its gloss was gone and all 
 its silken rippling stranded. She lived on, however, and under the 
 light of a Southern sky, and by the fitful embers of a soldier's bivouac, 
 a robber goat-herd was telling the story of an American's daughter 
 to an American's son. 
 
 " Was it far to Encarnacion?" 
 
 Jim Wood asked the question in his broken Spanish way, look- 
 ing out to the front, musing. 
 
 " By to-morrow night, Senor, you will be there." 
 
 " Have you told the straight truth, Mexican? " 
 
 " As the Virgin is true, Senor." 
 
 4 'So be it. You will sleep this night at the outpost. To-morrow 
 we shall see." 
 
 The Mexican smoked a cigarrito and went to bed. Whether he 
 slept or not, he made no sign. Full confidence very rarely lays hold 
 of an Indian's heart. 
 
 Replenishing the fire, Wood and Blackwell sat an hour together 
 in silence. Beyond the sweeping, untiring glances of the eyes, the 
 men were as statues. Finally Blackwell spoke to Wood: 
 
 " Of what are you thinking ? " 
 
 " Encarnacion. And you ? " 
 
 ' ' Inez Walker. It is the same. " 
 
 The Mexican turned in his blanket, muttering. Wood's revolver 
 covered him : 
 
 "Lie still," he said, " and muffle up your ears. You may not 
 understand English, but you understand this," and he waved the 
 pistol menacingly before his eyes. ' ' One never does know when 
 these yellow snakes are asleep." 
 
 " No matter," said Blackwell, sententiously; " they never sleep." 
 
 It was daylight again, and although the two men had not unfolded 
 their blankets, they were as fresh as the dew on the grasses 
 fresh enough to have planned an enterprise as daring and as des- 
 perate as anything ever dreamed of in romance or set forth in fable. 
 
 The to-morrow night of the Mexican had come, and there lay 
 Encarnacion in plain view under the starlight. Rodriguez had 
 kept aloft from the encampment. Through the last hours of the 
 afternoon wide hatted rancheros had ridden up to the corral in 
 unusual numbers, had dismounted and had entered in. Shelby, 
 who took note of everything took note also of this. 
 
 "They do not come out," he said. "There are some signs of prep- 
 aration about, and some fears manifested against a night attack. 
 By whom? Save our grass and goats I know of no reason why 
 foraging should be heavier now than formally," 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 315 
 
 Twice Jim Wood had been on the point of telling him the whole 
 story, and twice his heart had failed him. Shelby was getting 
 sterner of late, and the reins were becoming to be drawn tighter and 
 tighter. Perhaps it was necessary. Certainly since the last furious 
 attack by the guerrillas 'over beyond Parras, those who had looked 
 upon discipline as an ill-favored mistress, had ended by embracing 
 her. 
 
 As the picquets were being told off for duty, Wood came close 
 to Blackwell and whispered : 
 
 "The men will be ready by twelve. They are volunteers and 
 splendid fellows. How many of them will be shot? " 
 
 " Quien sabe? Those who take the sword shall perish by the 
 sword." 
 
 " Bah! When you take a text, take one without a woman in it." 
 
 " I shall not preach to-night. Shelby will do that to-morrow to 
 all who come forth scathless." 
 
 With all his gold, and his leagues of cattle and land, Rodriguez 
 had only for eagle's nest an adobe eyrie. Hither his dove had been 
 carried. On the right of this long row of cabins ran the quarters of 
 his peons. Near to the great gate were acres of corral. Within thi s 
 saddled steeds were in stall, lazily feeding. A Mexican loves his 
 horse, but that is no reason why he does not starve him. This 
 night, however, Rodriguez was bountiful. For fight and night both 
 men and animals must not go hungry. On the top of the main 
 building a kind of tower lifted itself up. It was roomy and spacious 
 and flanked by steps that clung to it tenaciously. In the tower a 
 light shone, while all below and about it was hushed and impene- 
 trable. High adobe walls encircled the mansion, the cabins, the 
 corral, the acacia trees, the fountain that splashed plaintively, and 
 the massive portal which had mystery written all over its rugged 
 outlines. 
 
 It may have been twelve o'clock. The nearest picquet was 
 beyond Encarnacion, and the camp guards were only for sentinel 
 duty. Free to come and go, the men had no watchword for the 
 night. None was needed. 
 
 Suddenly, and if one had looked up from his blankets, he might 
 have seen a long, dark line standing out against the sky. This line 
 did not move. 
 
 It may have been twelve o'clock. There was no moon, yet the 
 stars gave light enough for the men to see each other's faces and to 
 recognize one another. It was a quarter of a mile from the camp 
 to the hacienda, and about the same distance to the picquet posts 
 from where the soldiers had formed. In the ranks one might have 
 seen such campaigners stern and rugged and scant of speech in 
 danger as McDougall, Boswell, Armistead, Winship, Ras Woods, 
 Macey, Vines, Kirtley, Blackwell, Tom Rudd, Crockett, Collins, 
 
316 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO ; 
 
 Jack Williams, Owens, Timberlake, Darnall, Johnson and the two 
 Berrys, Richard and Isaac. Jim Wood stood forward by right as 
 leader. All knew he would carry them far enough; some may 
 have thought, perhaps, that he would carry them too far. 
 
 The line, hushed now and ominous, still stood as a wall. From 
 front to rear Wood walked along its whole length, speaking some 
 low and cheering words. 
 
 "Boys, "he commenced, "none of us know what is waiting 
 inside the corral. Mexicans fight well in the dark, it is said, and 
 see better than wolves, but we must have that American woman 
 safe out of their hands, or we must burn the buildings. If the 
 hazard is too great for any of you, step out of the ranks. What we 
 are about to do must needs be done quickly. Shelby sleeps little of 
 late, and may be, even at this very moment, searching through the 
 camp for some of us. Let him find even so much as one blanket 
 empty, and from the heroes of a night attack we shall become its 
 criminals." ' 
 
 Sweeny, a one-armed soldier who had served under Walker in 
 Nicaragua, and who was in the front always in hours of enterprise 
 or peril, replied to Wood: 
 
 " Since time is valuable, lead on." 
 
 The line put itself in motion. Two men sent forward to try the 
 great gate, returned rapidly. Wood met them. 
 
 "Well?" he said. 
 
 " It is dark all about there, and the gate itself is as strong as a 
 mountain." 
 
 " We shall batter it down." 
 
 A beam was brought a huge piece of timber wrenched from the 
 upright fastenings of a large irrigating basin. Twenty men manned 
 this and advanced upon the gate. In an instant thereafter there 
 were tremendous and resounding blows, shouts, cries, oaths and 
 musket shots. Before this gigantic battering-ram adobe walls and 
 iron fastenings gave way. The bars of the barrier were broken as 
 reeds, the locks were crushed, the hinges were beaten in, and with a 
 fierce yell and rush the Americans swarmed to the attack of the 
 main building. The light in the tower guided them. A legion of 
 devils seemed to have broken loose. The stabled steeds of the 
 Mexicans reared and plunged in the infernal din of the fight, and 
 dashed hither and thither, masterless and riderless. 
 
 The camp where Shelby rested was alarmed instantly. The 
 shrill notes of the bugle were heard over all the tumult, and with 
 them the encouraging voice of Wood. 
 
 "Make haste! make haste, men, for in twenty minutes we will 
 be between two fires! " 
 
 Crouching in the stables, and pouring forth a murderous fire 
 from their ambush in the darkness, some twenty rancheros made sud- y 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 317 
 
 den and desperate battle. Leading a dozen men against them, Macy 
 and Ike Berry charged through the gloom and upon the unknown, 
 guided only by the lurid and fitful flashes of the muskets. When 
 the work was over the corral no longer vomited its flame. Silence 
 reigned there that fearful and ominous silence fit only for the dead 
 who died suddenly. 
 
 The camp, no longer in sleep, had become menacing. Short 
 words of command came out of it, and the tread of men forming 
 rapidly for battle. Some skirmishers, even in the very first moments 
 of the combat, had been thrown forward quite to the hacienda. 
 These were almost nude, and stood out under the starlight as white 
 spectres, threatening yet undefined. They had guns at least, and 
 pistols, and in so much they were mortal. These spectres had rea- 
 son, too. Close upon the fragments of the great gate, and looking 
 in upon the waves of the fight as they rose and fell, they yet did not 
 fire They believed, at least, that some of their kindred and com- 
 rades were there. 
 
 For a brief ten minutes more the combat raged evenly. Cheered 
 by the voice of Rodriguez, and stimulated by his example, his 
 retainers clung bitterly to the fight. The doors were as redoubts. 
 The windows were as miniature casemates. Once on the steps of 
 the tower Rodriguez showed himself for a second. A dozen of the 
 best shots in the attacking party fired at him. No answer save a 
 curse of defiance so harsh and savage that it sounded unnatural even 
 in the roar of the furious hurricane. 
 
 There was a lull. Every Mexican combatant outside the main 
 building had been killed or wounded. Against the massive walls 
 of the adobes the rifle bullets made no headway. It was murder 
 longer to oppose flesh to masonry. Tom Rudd was killed, young 
 and dauntless; Crockett, the hero of the Lampasas duel, was dead; 
 Rogers was dead; the boy Pro vines was dead; Matterhorn, a stark 
 giant of a German, shot four times, was breathing his last; and the 
 wounded were on all sides, some hard hit, and some bleeding, yet 
 fighting on. 
 
 " Once more to the beam," shouted Wood. 
 
 Again the great battering-ram crashed against the great door 
 leading into the main hall, and again there was a rending away of 
 iron and wood and mortar. Through splintered timber and over 
 crumbling and jagged masonry the besiegers poured. The 
 building was gained. Once well withinside, the storm of revolver 
 balls was terrible. There personal prowess told, and there the 
 killing was quick and desperate. At the head of his hunted 
 following, Rodriguez fought like the Spaniard he was, stubbornly, 
 and to the last. No lamps lit the savage melee. While the 
 Mexicans stood up to be shot at, they were shot where they stood. 
 The most of them died there. Some few broke away toward the 
 
;318 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO ; 
 
 last and escaped, for no pursuit was attempted, and no man cared 
 liow many fled nor how fast. It was the woman the Americans 
 wanted. Gold and silver ornaments were everywhere, and precious 
 tapestry work, and many rare and quaint and woven things, but the 
 pawder-blackened and blood-stained hands of the assailants touched 
 not one of these. It was too dark to tell who killed Rodriguez. To 
 the last his voice could be heard cheering on his men, and calling 
 down God's vengeance on the Gringos. Those who fired at him 
 specially fired at his voice, for the smoke was stifling, and the 
 sulphurous fumes of the gunpowder almost unbearable. 
 
 When the hacienda, was won Shelby had arrived with the rest of 
 the command. He had mistaken the cause of the attack, and his 
 mood was of that kind which but seldom came to him, but which, 
 when it did come, had several times before made some of his most 
 hardened and unruly followers tremble and turn pale. He had 
 caused the hacienda to be surrounded closely, and he had come alone 
 to the doorway, a look of wrathful menace on his usually placid face. 
 
 "Who among you have done this thing?" he asked, in tones 
 that were calm yet full and vibrating. 
 
 No answer. The men put up their weapons. 
 
 " Speak, some of you. Let me not find cowards instead of plun- 
 derers, lest I finish the work upon you all that the Mexicans did so 
 poorly upon a few." 
 
 Jim Wood came forward to the front then. Covered with blood 
 and powder-stains, he seemed in sorry plight to make much head- 
 way in defense of the night's doings, yet he told the tale as straight 
 as the goat-herd had told it to him, and in such simple soldier 
 fashion, taking all the sin upon his own head and hands, that even 
 the stern features of his commander relaxed a little, and he fell to 
 musing. It may have been that the desperate nature of the enter- 
 prise appealed more strongly to his own feelings than he was willing 
 that his men should know, or it may have been that his set purpose 
 softened a little when he saw so many of his bravest and best sol- 
 diers come out from the darkness and stand in silence about their 
 leader, Wood, some of them sorely wounded, and all of them cov- 
 ered with the signs of the desperate fight, but certain it is that when 
 he spoke again his voice was more relenting and assuring: 
 
 " And where is the woman? " 
 
 Through all the terrible moments of the combat the light in the 
 tower had burned as a beacon. Perhaps in those few seconds when 
 Rodriguez stood alone upon the steps leading up to the doves' nest, 
 in a tempest of fire and smoke, the old love might have been busy at 
 his heart, and the old yearning strong within him to make at last 
 some peace with her for whom he had so deeply sinned, and for 
 whose sake he was soon to so dreadfully suffer. Death makes many 
 a sad atonement, and though late in coming at times to the evil and 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 319 
 
 the good alike, it may be that when the records of the heart are writ 
 beyond the wonderful river, much that was dark on earth will be 
 bright in eternity, and much that was cruel and fierce in finite judg- 
 ment will be made fair and beautiful when it is known how love 
 gathered up the threads of destiny, and how all the warp that was 
 blood-stained, and all the woof that had bitterness and tears upon 
 it, could be traced to a woman's hand. 
 
 Grief-stricken, prematurely old, yet beautiful even amid the lone- 
 liness of her situation, Inez Walker came into the presence of 
 Shelby, a queen. Some strands of gray were in her glossy, golden 
 hair. The liquid light of her large dark eyes had long ago been 
 quenched in tears. The form that had once been so full and perfect, 
 was now bent and fragile; but there was such a look of mournful 
 tenderness in her eager, questioning face that the men drew back 
 from her presence instinctively and left her alone with their Gene- 
 ral He received her commands as if she were bestowing a favor 
 upon him, listening as a brother might until all her wishes were 
 made known. These he promised to carry Out to the letter, and 
 how well he did so, this narrative will further tell. For the rest of 
 that night she was left alone with her dead. Recovered somewhat 
 from the terrors of the wild attack, her woman came back to her, 
 weeping over the slain and praying piteously for their souls as well. 
 
 "When the dead had been buried, when the wounded had been 
 cared for, and when Wood had received a warning which he will 
 remember to his dying day, the column started once more on its 
 march to the south. With the guard of honor regularly detailed to 
 protect the families of those who were traveling with the expedi- 
 tion, there was another carriage new to the men. None sought to 
 know its occupant. The night's work had left upon all a sorrow 
 that was never entirely obliterated a memory that even now, 
 through the lapse of long years, comes back to all who witnessed it 
 as a memory that brings with it more of real regret than gladness. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE great guns were roaring furiously at Matehuala when the 
 expedition came within hearing distance of its outposts. Night had 
 fallen over the city and its twenty thousand inhabitants before the 
 advanced guard of the column had halted for further orders. The 
 unknown was ahead. All day, amid the mountains, there had come 
 upon the breeze the deep, prolonged rumbling of artillery firing; 
 and as the column approached nearer and nearer to the city, there 
 were mingled with the hoarse voices of the cannon the nearer and 
 deadlier rattle of incessant musketry. 
 
 Shelby rode up to the head of his advance and inquired the 
 cause of the heavy firing. No one could tell him. 
 
 " Then we will camp," he said. " Afterward a few scouts shall 
 determine definitely." 
 
 The number of scguts detailed for the service was not large 
 probably sixty all told. These were divided into four detachments, 
 each detachment being sent out in a direction different from the 
 others. James Kirtly led one, Dick Collins another, Jo. Macey the 
 third and Dorsey the fourth. They were to bring word back of the 
 meaning of all that infernal noise and din, that had been raging about 
 Matehuala the whole day through. And they did it. 
 
 Kirtly took the main road running down squarely into the city. 
 A piquet post barred his further progress. Making a circuit cautiously, 
 he gained the rear of this, and came upon a line of soldiers in 
 bivouac. In the shadow himself, the light of the campfires revealed 
 to him the great forms and the swarthy countenances of a battalion of 
 guerrillas. Further beyond there were other fires at which other bat- 
 talions were cooking and resting. 
 
 Collins was less furtunate in this that he had to fight a little. 
 Warned against using weapons except in self-defense, he had drawn 
 up his-small detachment under the cover o f a clump of niesquitebushes 
 watching the road along which men where riding to and fro. His 
 ambush was discovered and a company of cavalry came galloping 
 down to uncover his position. Halted twice they still continued to 
 advance. There was no help for it save a point blank volley, and this 
 was given with a will and in the darkness. Some saddles were emp- 
 tied, and one riderless horse dashed into the midst of the Americans, 
 this was secured and carried into camp. 
 
 Macey made a wide detour upon the left of the road, and across 
 some cultivated fields in which were a few huts filled with peons. 
 Five of these peons were captured and brought back to Shelby. 
 Questioned closely, they revealed the whole situation. Matehuala 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 321 
 
 was held by a French garrison numbering five hundred of the 
 Eighty-second Infantry of the line a weak detachment enough for 
 such an exposed outpost. These five hundred Frenchmen were 
 commanded by Major Henry Pierron, an officer of extreme youth 
 and dauntless enterprise. 
 
 Shelby called a council of his officers at once. The peons had 
 further told him that the besieging force was composed of about two 
 thousand guerrillas, under Colonel Escobeda, brother of that other 
 one who laughed and was glad exceedingly, when, Maximilian fell 
 butchered and betrayed, at Queretero. At daylight the garrison 
 was to be attacked again, and so what was to be done had great need 
 to be done quickly. 
 
 The officers came readily, and Shelby addressed them. 
 
 " We have marched far, we have but scant money, our horses 
 are foot-sore and much in need of shoes, and Matehuala is across 
 the only road for scores of miles in any direction that leads to Mex- 
 ico. Shall we turn back and take another? " 
 
 " No! no! " in a kind of angry murmur from the men. 
 
 " But there are two thousand Mexican soldiers, or robbers, who 
 are next of kin, across this road, and we may have to fight a little. 
 Are you tired of fighting? " 
 
 "Lead us on and see," was the cry, and this time his officers had 
 begun to catch his meaning. They understood now that he was 
 tempting them. Already determined in his own mind to attack the 
 Mexicans at daylight, he simply wished to see how much of his own 
 desire was in the bosoms of his subordinates. 
 
 "One other thing," said Shelby, "before we separate. From 
 among you I want a couple of volunteers two men who will take 
 their lives in their hands and find an entrance into Matehuala. I 
 must communicate with Pierron before daylight. It is necessary 
 that he should know how near there is succor to him, and how 
 furiously we mean to charge them in the morning. Who will go ? 
 
 All who were present volunteered, stepping one pace nearer to 
 their commander in a body. He chose but two James Cundiff 
 and Elias Hodge two men fit for any mission no matter how forlorn 
 or desperate. 
 
 By this time they had learned enough of Spanish to buy meat 
 and bread not enough to pass undetected an outlying guerrilla with 
 an eye like a lynx and an ear keener than a coyote's. They started, 
 however, just the same. Shelby would write nothing. 
 
 "A document might hang you," he said, " and besides, Pierron 
 can not, in all probability, read my English. Go, and may God pro- 
 tect you." 
 
 These two dauntless men then shook hands with their com- 
 mander, and with the few comrades nearest. After that they dis- 
 appeared in the unknown. It was a cloudy ight and some wind 
 
3'32 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO ; 
 
 blew. In this they were greatly favored. The darkness hid the 
 clear outlines of their forms, and the wind blended the tread of 
 their footsteps with the rustling of the leaves and the grasses. 
 Two revolvers and a Sharps' carbine each made up the equipment. 
 Completely ignorant of the entire topography of the country, they 
 yet had a kind of vague idea of the direction in which Matehuala 
 lay. They knew that the main road was hard beset by guerrillas, 
 and tfcat upon the right a broken and precipitous chain of mount- 
 ains encircled the city and made headway in that direction well 
 nigh impossible. They chose the left, therefore, as the least of 
 three evils. 
 
 It was about midnight, and it was two long miles to Matehuala. 
 Shelby required them to enter into the city; about their coming 
 back he was not so particular. Cundiff led, Hodge followed in 
 Indian fashion. At intervals both men would draw themselves up 
 and listen, long and anxiously. At last after crossing a wide field, 
 intersected by ditches and but recently plowed, they came to a road 
 which had a mesquite hedge on one side, and a fence with a few 
 straggling poles in it, on the other. Gliding stealthily down this 
 road, the glimmering of a light in front warned them of immediate 
 danger. In avoiding this they came upon another house, and in 
 going still further to the left to avoid this also, they found them- 
 selves in the midst of a kind of extended village, one of those inter- 
 minable suburbs close to yet disconnected from all Mexican cities. 
 
 Wherever there was a ticnda that is to say, a place where the 
 fiery native drink of the country is sold two or three saddle horses 
 might have been seen. In whispers, the men conferred together. 
 
 " They are here," said Hodge. 
 
 "They seem to be everywhere," answered Cundiff. 
 
 " What do you propose ? " 
 
 "To glide quietly through. I have a strong belief that beyond 
 this village we shall find Matehuala." 
 
 They struck out boldly again, passing near to a tienda in which 
 there were music and dancing. When outside of the glare of the 
 light which streamed from its open door, the sound of horses' feet 
 coming down the road they had just traveled called for instant con- 
 cealment. They crouched low behind a large maguey plant and 
 waited. The horsemen came right onward, laughing loud and 
 boisterously. They did not halt in the village, but rode on by the 
 ambush and so close that they could have touched the Americans 
 with a sabre. 
 
 " A scratch," said Hodge, breathing more freely. 
 
 "Hush," said Cundiff, crouching still closer in the shadow of the 
 maguey, " the worst is yet to come." 
 
 And it was. From where the Americans had hidden to the 
 tienda ia which the Mexicans were carousing it was probably fifteen 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 323 
 
 paces. The sudden galloping of the horsemen through the village 
 had startle'd th^ revelers. If they were friends, they called oat 
 to each other, they would have tarried long enough for a stirrup 
 cup ; if they are enemies we shall pursue. 
 
 The Mexicans were a little drunk, yet not enough so to make 
 them negligent. After mounting their horses, they spread out in 
 skirmishing order, with an interval, probably, of five feet between 
 each man. Against the full glare that streamed out from the 
 lighted doorway the picturesque forms of five guerrillas outlined 
 themselves. The silver ornaments on their bridles shone, the 
 music of the spurs penetrated to the ambush, and the wide 
 sombreros told all too well the calling of those mounted robbers who 
 are wolves in pursuit and tigers in victory. None have ever been 
 known to spare. 
 
 Hodge would talk, brave as he was, and imminent as was his 
 peril. Even in this extremity his soldierly tactics came uppermost. 
 
 "There are five," he said, "and we are but two. We have 
 fought worse odds." 
 
 " So we have," answered Cundiff, "and may do it again before 
 this night's work is over. Lie low and wait." 
 
 The guerrillas came right onward. At a loss to understand fully 
 the nature of the men who had just ridden through the village, 
 they were maneuvering now as if they expected to meet them in 
 hostile array at any moment. There were fifty chances to five that 
 some one of the skirmishers would discover the ambush. 
 
 Although terrible, the suspense was brief. Between the maguey 
 plant and the road, two of the guerrillas filled up the interval. 
 This left the three others to the left and rear. They had their mus- 
 quetoons in their hands, and were searching keenly every clump of 
 grass or patch of underbrush. Those nearest the road had passed 
 on, and those upon the left were just abreast of the ambush. The 
 Americans did not breathe. Suddenly, and with a fierce shout, the 
 third skirmisher in the line yelled out: 
 
 "What ho! comrades, close up close up here are two skulk- 
 ing Frenchmen. Per Dios, but we will have their hearts' blood." 
 
 As he shouted he leveled his musket until its muzzle almost 
 touched the quiet face of Cundiff, the rest of the Mexicans rushing 
 up furiously to the spot. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 IP it be true, that when a woman hesitates she is lost, the adage 
 applies with a ten-fold greater degree of precision to a Mexican 
 guerrilla, who has come suddenly upon an American in ambush 
 and who, mistaking him for a French soldier, hesitates to fire until> 
 he has called around him his comrades. A revolver to a Frenchman 
 is an unknown weapon. Skill in its use is something he never 
 acquires. Rarely a favorite in his hands no matter how great the 
 stress, nor how frightful the danger, it is the muzzle-loader that 
 ever comes uppermost, favored above all other weapons that might 
 have been had for the asking. 
 
 Cundiff, face to face with immiment death, meant to fight to the 
 last. His orders were to go into Matehuala, and not to give up as 
 a wolf that is taken in a trap. His revolver was in his hand, and the 
 Mexican took one second too many to run his eye along the barrel of 
 his musquetoon. With a motion as instantaneous as it was unex- 
 pected, Cundiff fired fair at the Mexican's breast, the bullet speed- 
 ing true and terrible to* its mark. He fell forward over his horse's 
 head with a ghastly cry, his four companions crowding around his 
 prostrate body, frightened, it may be, but bent on vengeance. As 
 they grouped themselves together, Hodge and Cundiff shot 
 into the crowd, wounding another guerrilla and one of the 
 horses, and then broke away from cover and rushed on toward 
 Matehuala. The road ran directly through a village This 
 village was long and scattering, and alive with soldiers. A great 
 shout was raised; ten thousand dogs seemed to be on the alert, more 
 furious than the men, and keener of sight and scent. The fight 
 became a hunt. The houses sent armed men in pursuit. The five 
 guerrillas, reduced now to three, led the rush, but not desperately. 
 Made acquainted with the stern prowess of the Americans, they had 
 no heart for a close grapple without heavy odds. At intervals 
 Cundiff and Hodge would halt and fire back with their carbines, 
 and then press forward again through the darkness. Two men 
 were keeping two hundred at bay, and Cundiff spoke to Hodge: 
 " This pace is fearful. How long can you keep it up?" 
 " Not long. There seems, however, to be a light ahead." 
 And there was. A large fire, distance some five hundred yards, 
 came suddenly in sight. The rapid firing coming from both pur- 
 suers and pursued had created commotion in front. There were 
 the rallying notes of a bugle, and the sudden forming of a line of 
 men immediately in front of the camp-fire seen by the Americans. 
 Was it a French outpost ? Neither knew, but against this unforeseen 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OP THE WAR. 325 
 
 danger now outlined fully in the front that in the rear was too near 
 and too deadly to permit of preparation. 
 
 " We are surrounded," said Hodge. 
 
 "Rather say we are in the breakers, and that in trying to avoid 
 Scylla we shall be wrecked upon Chary bdis," replied Cundiff, turn- 
 ing cooly to his comrade, after firing deliberately upon the nearest 
 of the pursuers, and halting long enough to reload his carbine. " It 
 all depends upon a single chance." 
 
 " And what is that chance ?" 
 
 " To escape the first close fusillade of the French." 
 
 " But are they French those fellows in front of us ?" 
 
 " Can't you swear to that ? Did you not mark how accurately 
 they fell into line, and how silent everything has been since ? Keep 
 your ears wide open, and when you hear a single voice call out, fall 
 flat upon the ground. That single voice will be the leader's ordering 
 a volley. " 
 
 It would seem that the Mexicans also had begun to realize the 
 situation. A. last desperate rush had been determined upon, and 
 twenty of the swiftest and boldest pursuers charged furiously down 
 at a run, firing as they came on. There was no shelter, and Cundiff 
 and Hodge stood openly at bay, holding, each, his fire, until the 
 oncoming mass was only twenty yards away. Then the revolver 
 volleys were incessant. At a distance they sounded as if a company 
 were engaged; to the guerrillas the two men had multiplied them- 
 selves to a dozen. 
 
 The desperate stand made told well. The fierce charge expended 
 itself. Those farthest in the front slackened their pace, halted, fell 
 back, retreated a little, yet still kept up an incessant volley. 
 
 "Come," said Cundiff, "and let's try the unknown. These 
 fellows in the rear have had enough." 
 
 Instead of advancing together now, one skirted the road on the 
 left and the other on the right. The old skirmishing drill was 
 beginning to re-assert itself again a sure sign that the danger in 
 the rear had transferred itself to the front. Of a sudden a clear, 
 resonant voice came from the direction of the fire. Cundiff and 
 Hodge fell forward instantly upon their faces, a hurricane of balls 
 swept over and beyond them, and for reply the loud, calm shout of 
 Hodge was heard in parley: 
 
 "Hold on, men, hold on. We are but two and we are friends. 
 See, we come into your lines to make our words good. We are 
 Americans and we have tidings for Captain Pierron." 
 
 Four French soldiers came out to meet them. Explanations 
 were mutually had, and it was long past midnight when the com- 
 mander of the garrison had finished his conference with the daring 
 scouts, and had been well assured of his timely and needed succor. 
 
 Pierron offered them food and lodging. 
 
326 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO ; 
 
 " We must return," said Cundiff. 
 
 The Frenchman opened his eyes wide with surprise. 
 
 " Return, the devil ! You have not said your prayers yet for 
 being permitted to get in." 
 
 ' ' No matter. He prays best who fights the best, and Shelby 
 gives no thanks for unfinished work. Am I right, Hodge ? " 
 
 " Now as always ; but surely Captain Pierron can send us by a 
 nearer road." 
 
 The Frenchman thus appealed to, gave the two men an escort of 
 forty cuirassiers and sent them back to Shelby's camp by a road but 
 slightly guarded, the Mexican picquets upon it firing but once at 
 long range and then scampering away. 
 
 It was daylight, and the great guns were roaring again. The 
 column got itself in motion at once and waited. Shelby's orders 
 were repeated by each captain to his company, and in words so 
 plain that he who ran might have understood. The attack was to 
 be made in columns of fours, the men firing right and left from the 
 two files as they dashed in among the Mexicans. It was the old way 
 of doing deadly work, and not a man there was unfamiliar with the 
 duty marked out for his hands to do. 
 
 Largely outnumbered, the French were fighting men who know 
 that defeat means destruction. Many of them had been killed. 
 Pierron was anxious, and through the rising mists of the morning, 
 his eyes more than once and with aa eagerness not usually there, 
 looked away to the front where he knew the needed succor lay. 
 It came as it always came, whether to friend or foe, in time. Not 
 a throb of the laggard's pulse had Shelby ever felt, and upon this 
 day of all days of his stormy career he meant to do a soldier's 
 sacred duty. From a walk the column passed into a trot, Shelby 
 leadirfg. There was no advance guard ahead, and none was needed. 
 
 "We know what is before us,' ' was his answer to Langhorne. 
 "and it is my pleasure this morning to receive the fire first of you all. 
 Take your place with your company, the fifth from the front." 
 
 ' ' Gallop march ! " 
 
 The men gathered up the reins and straightened themselves in their 
 stirrups. Some Mexicans were in the road before them and halted. 
 The apparition to them came from the unknown. They might have 
 been specters, but they were armed, and armed specters are terri- 
 ble. The alarm of the night before had been attributed to the dar- 
 ing of two adventurous Frenchmen. Not one of the besieging 
 host had dreamed that a thousand Americans were within two miles 
 of Matehuala, resolved to fight for the besieged, and take the 
 investing lines in rear and at the gallop. 
 
 On one side of the road down which Shelby was advancing there 
 ran a chain of broken and irregular hills, on the other, the long, 
 straggling village in which Cundiff and Hodge had well nigh sac- 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 327 
 
 rificed themselves. These the daylight revealed perfectly. Between 
 the hills and the village was a plain, and in this plain, the Mexican 
 forces were drawn up, three lines deep, having as a point d'appui a 
 heavy six-gun battery. 
 
 Understanding at last that while the column coming down from 
 the rear was not Frenchmen, it was not friendly, the Mexicans made 
 some dispositions to resist it. Too late 1 Caught between two inex- 
 orable jaws, they were crushed before they were aware of the peril. 
 Shelby's charge was like a thunder-cloud. Nothing could live before 
 the storm of its revolver bullets. Lurid, canopied in smoke-wreaths, 
 pitiless, keeping right onward, silent in all save the roar of the 
 revolvers, there was first a line that fired upon it, and then a great 
 upheaving and rending asunder. When the smoke rolled away the 
 battery had no living thing to lift a hand in its defense, and the 
 fugitives were in hopeless and helpless flight toward the mountains 
 on the right and toward the village upon the left. Pursuit Shelby 
 made none, but God pity all whom the French cuirassiers over- 
 took, and who, cloven from sombrero to sword-belt, fell thick in all 
 the streets of the village, and died hard among the dagger-trees and 
 the precipices of the stony and unsheltering mountains. 
 
 Pierron came forth with his entire garrison to thank and wel- 
 come his preservers. The freedom of the city was extended to 
 Shelby, the stores of the post were at his disposal, money was 
 offered and refused, and for three long and delightful days the men 
 rested and feasted. To get shoes for his horses Shelby had fought 
 a battle, not bloodless, however, to him, but a battle treasured 
 to-day in the military archives of France a battle which won for 
 him the gratitude of the whole French army, and which, in the end, 
 turned from him the confidence of Maximilian and rendered 
 abortive all his efforts to recruit for the Austrian a corps that would 
 have kept him upon his throne. Verily, man proposes and God 
 disposes. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 PIERRON made Matehuala a paradise. There were days of feast- 
 ing and mirth and minstrelsy, and in the balm of fragrant nights 
 the men dallied with the women. So when the southward march 
 was resumed, many a bronzed face was set in a look of sadness, and 
 many a regretful heart pined long and tenderly for the dusky hair 
 that would never be plaited again, for the tropical lips that for 
 them would never sing again the songs of the roses and the summer 
 time. 
 
 Adventures grew thick along the road as cactus plants. Villages 
 multiplied, and as the ride went on, larger towns and larger popula- 
 tions were daily entered into. The French held all the country. 
 Everywhere could be seen the picturesque uniforms of the Zouaves, 
 the soberer garments of the Voltigeurs, the gorgeous array of the 
 Chasseurs, and the more somber and forbidding aspect of the Foot 
 Artillery. The French held all the country, that is to say, wher- 
 ever a French garrison had stationed itself, or wherever a French 
 expeditionary force, or scouting force, or reconnoitering force had 
 camped or was on the march, such force held all the country within 
 the range of their cannon and their chassepots. Otherwise not. 
 Guerrillas abounded in the mountains; robbers fed and fattened by 
 all the streams; spies swarmed upon the haciendas, and cruel and 
 ruthless scourges from the marshes rode in under the full of the 
 tropical moons, and slew for a whole night through, and on many 
 a night at intervals thereafter, whoever of Mexican or Punic faith 
 had carried truth or tidings of Liberal movements to the'French. 
 
 It was in Dolores, the home of Hidalgo priest, butcher, revolu- 
 tionist that*those wonderful blankets were made which blend the 
 colors of the rainbow with the strength of the north wind. Soft, 
 warm, gorgeous, flexible, two strong horses can not pull them 
 asunder two weeks of au east rain can not find a pore to penetrate. 
 Marvels of an art that has never yet been analyzed or transferred; 
 Dolores, a century old, has yet an older secret than itself, the secret 
 of their weaving. 
 
 Shelby's discipline was now sensibly increasing. As the men 
 marched into the south, and as the soft airs blew for them, and the 
 odorous blossoms opened for them, and the dusky beauties were 
 gay and gracious for them, they began to chafe under the iron rule 
 of the camp, and the inexorable logic of guard and picquet duty. 
 Once a detachment of ten, told off for the grand guards, refused 
 to stir from the mess-fire about which an elegant supper was being 
 prepared. 
 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAP OF THE WAR. 329 
 
 And in such guise did the word come to Shelby. 
 
 " They refuse? " he asked. 
 
 "Peremptorily, General." 
 
 ' ' Ah ! And for what reason ? " 
 
 " They say it is unnecessary." 
 
 " And so, in addition to rank mutiny, they would justify them- 
 selves? Call out the guard " 
 
 The guard came, Jo. Macey at its head twenty determined 
 men, fit for any work a soldier might do. Shelby rose up and went 
 with it to where the ten mutineers were feasting and singing. 
 They knew what was coming, and their leader, brave even to des- 
 peration, laid his hand upon his revolver. There was murder in 
 his eyes, that wicked and wanton murder which must have been 
 in Sampson's heart when he laid hold of the pillar of the Temple 
 and felt the throes of the crushing edifice as it swayed and toppled 
 and buried all in a common ruin. 
 
 Jo. Macey halted his detachment within five feet of the mess 
 fire. He had first whispered to Shelby: 
 
 " When you want me speak. I shall kill nine of the ten the first 
 broadside." 
 
 It can do no good to write the name of the leader of the muti 
 neers. He sleeps to-day in the golden sands of a Sonora stream; 
 sleeps forgiven by all whose lives he might have given away 
 given away without cause or grievance. When he dared to disobey, 
 either this man or the Expedition had to be sacrificed. Happily, 
 both were saved. 
 
 Shelby walked into the midst of the mutineers, looking into the 
 eyes of all. His voice was deep and very grave. 
 
 " Men, go back to your duty. I am among you all, an ad- 
 venturer like yourself, but I have been charged to carry you 
 through to Mexico City in safety, and this I will do, so surely as the 
 good God rules the universe. I don't seek to know the cause of this 
 thing. I ask no reason for it, no excuse for it, no regrets nor apolo- 
 gies for it. I only want your soldierly promise to obey." 
 
 No man spoke. The leader mistook the drift of things and tried 
 to advance a little. Shelby stopped him instantly. 
 
 "Not another word," he almost shouted; " but if within fifteen 
 seconds by the watch you are not in line for duty, you shall be shot 
 like the meanest Mexican dog in all the Empire. Cover these men, 
 Macey, with your carbines." 
 
 Twenty gaping muzzles crept straight to the front, waiting. The 
 seconds seemed as hours. In that supreme moment of unpitying 
 danger the young mutineer, if left to himself, would have dared the 
 worst, dying as he had lived; but the others could not look full into 
 the face of the grim skeleton and take the venture for a cause so 
 disgraceful. They yielded to the inevitable, and went forth to 
 
330 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO ; 
 
 their duty bearing their leader with them. Thereafter no more 
 faithful and honorable soldiers could be found in the ranks of all 
 the Expedition. 
 
 The column had gone southward from Dolores a long day's 
 journey. The whole earth smelt sweet with spring. In the air was 
 the noise of many wings, on the trees the purple and pink of many 
 blossoms. Summer lay with bare breast upon all the fields a 
 queen whose rule had never known an hour of storm or overthrow. 
 It was a glorious land filled full of the sun and of the things that 
 love the sun. 
 
 Late one afternoon, tired, hot and dusty, Dick Collins and Ik 
 Berry halted by the wayside for a little rest and a little gossip. 
 In violation of orders this thing had been done, and Mars is a jealous 
 and a vengeful god. They tarried long, smoking a bit and talking 
 a bit, and finally fell asleep. 
 
 A sudden scout of guerrillas awoke the gentlemen, using upon 
 Collins the back of a saber, and upon Berry, who was larger and 
 sounder of slumber, the butt of a musquetoon. There were six of 
 them swart, soldierly fellows, who wore gilded spurs and bedecked 
 sombreros. 
 
 " Francaisces, eh! " they muttered one to another. 
 
 Berry knew considerable Spanish Collins not so much. To lie 
 under the imputation of being French was to lie within the shadow 
 of sudden death. Berry tried to keep away from that. He 
 answered: 
 
 " No, no, Senors, not Francaisces but Americanos." 
 
 The Mexicans looked at each other and shrugged their shoulders. 
 
 Berry had revealed to them that he spoke Spanish enough to be 
 dangerous. 
 
 Their pistols were taken from them; their carbines, their horses, 
 and whatever else could be found, including a few pieces of silver 
 in Berry's pocket. Then they felt of Collins* pantaloons. It had 
 been so long since they echoed to the jingle of either silver or 
 gold, that even the pockets issued a protest at the imputation. 
 Afterward the two men were marched across the country to a 
 group of adobe buildings among a range of hills, far enough 
 removed from the route of travel to be safe from rescue. They 
 were cast into a filthy room where there was neither bed nor 
 blanket, and bade to rest there. Two of the guard, with musque- 
 toons in hand and revolvers at waist, occupied the same room. With 
 them, the dirt and the fleas were congenial companions. 
 
 Collins fell a musing. 
 
 " What are you thinking about, Dick? " Berry asked. 
 
 " Escape. And you? " 
 
 " Of something to eat." 
 
 Here was a Hercules who was always hungry. 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 331 
 
 A Mexican, in his normal condition must have drink. A stone 
 ewer of fiery Catalan was brought in, and as the night deepened, so 
 did their potations. Before midnight the two guards were drunk. 
 An hour later, and one of them was utterly oblivious to all earthly 
 objects. The other amused himself by pointing his cocked gun at 
 the Americans, laughing low and savagely when they would 
 endeavor to screen themselves from his comic mirth. 
 
 His drunken comrade was lying on his back, with a scarf 
 around his waist, in which a knife was sticking. 
 
 Collins looked at it until his eyes glittered. He found time to 
 whisper to Berry: 
 
 " You are as strong as an ox. Stand by me when I seize that 
 knife and plunge it in the other Mexican's breast. I may not kill 
 him the first time, and if I do not, then grapple with him. The 
 second stab shall be more fatal." 
 
 " Unto death," replied Berry. " Make haste." 
 
 For one instant the guard took his eyes from the movements of 
 the Americans. Collins seized the knife and rose up stealthy, 
 menacing, terrible. They advanced upon the Mexican. He turned 
 as they came across the room and threw out his gun. Too late. 
 Aiming at the left side, Collins' blow swerved aside, the knife enter- 
 ing just below the breast bone and cutting a dreadful gash. With 
 the spring of a tiger-cat Berry leaped upon him and hurled him to 
 the floor. Again the knife arose there was a dull, penetrating 
 thud, a quiver of relaxing limbs, a groan that sounded like a curse, 
 and beside the drunken man there lay another who would never 
 touch Catalan again this side eternity. 
 
 Instant flight was entered into. Stripping the arms from the 
 living and the dead, the Americans hurried out. They found their 
 horses unguarded ; the wretched village was in unbroken sleep, and 
 not anywhere did wakeful or vigilant sentinel rise up to question or 
 restrain. By the noon of the next day they had reported to Shelby, 
 and for many days thereafter a shadow was seen on Collins' face 
 that told of the desperate blow struck in the name of self-defense 
 and liberty. After that the two men never straggled again. 
 
 Crosses are common in Mexico. Lifting up their penitential 
 arms, however, by the wayside, and in forlorn and gloomy places, 
 if they do not affright one, they at least put one to thinking. There 
 where they stand, ghastly and weather-beaten under the sky, and 
 alone with the stars and the night, murder has been done. There 
 at the feet of them in the yellow dust of the roadway innocent, it 
 may be, and true, and too young to die a dead man has lain with 
 his face in a pool of blood. Sometimes flowers adorn the crosses, 
 and votive offerings, and many a rare and quaint conceit to lighten 
 the frown on the face of death, and fashion a few links in the chain 
 of memory that shall make even the dead claim kinship with all the 
 glad and sweet-growing things of the wonderful summer weather. 
 
332 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO ; 
 
 Over beyond Dolores Hidalgo, a pleasant two-days' journey, 
 there was a high hill that held a castle. On either side of this there 
 were heavy masses of timber. Below the fall of the woodlands a 
 meadow stretched itself out, bounded on the hither side by a stream 
 that was limpid and musical. Beyond this stream a broken way 
 began, narrowing down at last to a rugged defile, and opening once 
 more into a country fruitful as Paradise and filled as full of the 
 sun. 
 
 Just where the defile broke away from the shade of the great 
 oaks a cross stood, whose history had a haunting memory that was 
 sorrowful even in that sinful and sorrowful land. There was a 
 young girl who lived in this castle, very fair for a Mexican, and very 
 steadfast and true. The interval is short between seedtime and 
 harvest, and she ripened early. In the full glory of her beauty and 
 her womanhood she was plighted to a young commandante from 
 Dolores, heir of many fertile acres, a soldier and an Imperialist. 
 Maybe the wooing was sweet, for what came after had in it enough 
 of bitterness and tears. The girl had a brother who was a guerrilla 
 chief, devoted, first to his profession and next to the fortunes of 
 Juarez. Spies were everywhere, and even from his own household 
 news was carried of the courtship and the approaching marriage. 
 
 For days and days he watched by the roadside, scanning all 
 faces that hurried by, seeking alone for the face that might 
 have been told for its happiness. One night there was a trampling 
 of horsemen, and a low voice singing tenderly under the moon. 
 The visit had been long, and the parting 1 passionate and pure. Only 
 a little ways with love at his heart and the future so near with its 
 outstretched hands as to reach up almost to the marriage-ring. No 
 murmur ran along the lips of the low-lying grasses, and no sentinel 
 angel rose up betwixt fate and its victim. His uniform carried 
 death in its yellow and gold. Not to his own alone had the fair- 
 haired Austrian brought broken hearts and stained and sundered 
 marriage vows. Only the clear, long ring of a sudden musket, and 
 thedead Imperialist lay with his face in the dust and his spirit going 
 the dark way all alone. From such an interview why ride to such 
 an ending? No tenderness availed him, no caress consoled him, no 
 fond farewell gave him staff and script for the journey. He died 
 where the woods and the meadows met for a love by manhood and 
 faith anointed. 
 
 In the morning there had been lifted up a cross. It was standing 
 there still in the glorious weather. The same flowers were bloom- 
 ing still, the same stream swept on by the castle gates, the same 
 splendid sweep of woodland and meadow spread itself out as 
 God's land loved of the sky but the gallant Commandante, where 
 was he? Ask of the masses that the pitying angels heard and car- 
 ried on their wings to heaven. 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 333 
 
 One tall spire, like the mighty standard of a king, arose through 
 the lances of the sunset. San Miguel was in sight, a city built upon 
 a hill. Around its forbidding base the tide of battle had ebbed and 
 flowed, and there had grim old Carterac called out, the cloud of the 
 cannon's smoke and the cloud of his beard white together. 
 
 "My children, the Third know how to die. One more victory 
 and one more cross for all of you. Forward!" 
 
 This to the Third Zouaves as they were fixing bayonets on the 
 crest of a charge with which all the empire rang. Afterward, 
 when Carterac was buried, shot foremost in the breach, the natives 
 came to view the grave and turned away wondering what manner 
 of a giant had been interred therein. He had gone but a little way 
 in advance of his children. What San Miguel had spared Grave- 
 lotte finished. Verily war has its patriarchs no less renowned than 
 Israel's. 
 
 From out the gates of the town, and down the long paven way 
 leading northward, a gallant regiment came gaily forth to welcome 
 Shelby. The music of the sabers ran through the valley. Pennons 
 floated wide and free, the burnished guns rose and fell in the dim, 
 undulating swing of perfect horsemen, and the rays of the setting 
 sun shone upon the gold of the epaulettes until, as with fire, they 
 blazed in the delicious haze of the evening. 
 
 Some paces forward of all the goodly company rode one who 
 looked a soldier. Mark him well. That regiment there is known 
 as the Empress' Own. The arms of Carlota are on the blue of the 
 uniforms. That silken flag, though all unbaptized by blood or battle, 
 was wrought by her gentle hands hands that wove into the tapestry 
 of time a warp and woof sadder than aught of any tragedy ever 
 known before the king-craft or conquest. She was standing by a 
 little altar in the palace of Chepultepec on an afternoon in May. 
 The city of Montezuma was at her feet in the delicious sleep of its 
 siesta. 
 
 " Swear," she said, putting forth the unfolded standard until the 
 sweep of its heavy fringes canopied the long, lustrous hair of the 
 Colonel, " swear to be true to king and country." 
 
 The man knelt down. 
 
 " To king and queen and country," he cried, " while a sword can 
 be drawn or a squadron mustered." 
 
 She smiled upon him and gave him her hand as he arose. This 
 he stooped low to kiss, repeating again his oath, and pledging again 
 all a soldier's faith to the precious burden laid upon his honor. 
 
 Look at him once more as he rides up from the town through 
 .the sunset. At his back is the regiment of Carlota, and over this 
 regiment the stainless banner of Carlota is floating. The face is very 
 fair for a Mexican's, and a little Norman in its handsome outlines. 
 Some curls were in thelustrous hair, not masculine curls, but royal 
 
334 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO JIUXICO; 
 
 enough, perhaps, to recall the valorous deeds that were done at Flod- 
 den, when from over seas the beautiful Queen of France, beloved of 
 all gallant gentlemen, sent to the Scottish monarch 
 
 " A turquoise ring and glove, 
 And charged him as her knight and love, 
 To march three miles on English land, 
 And strike three strokes with Scottish brand, 
 And bid the banners of his band 
 In English breeees dance." 
 
 He gave Shelby cordial greeting, and made him welcome to San 
 Miguel in the name of the Empire. His eyes, large and penetrating, 
 wore yet a sinister look that marred somewhat the smile that 
 should have come not so often to the face of a Spaniard. He spoke 
 English well, talked much of New York which he had visited, 
 predicted peace and prosperity to Maximilian and his reign after a 
 few evil days, and bowed low in salute when he separated. 
 
 That man was Col Leonardo Lopez, the traitor of Queretero, the 
 spy of Escobedo, the wretch who sold his flag, the coward who 
 betrayed his regiment, the false knight who denied his mistress, and 
 the decorated and ennobled thing who gave up his emperor to a 
 dog's death. And the price thirty thousand dollars in gold. Is it 
 any wonder that his wife forsook him, that his children turned their 
 faces away from him, that the church refused him asylum, that a 
 righteous soldier of the Liberal cause smote him upon either cheek 
 in presence of an army on parade, and that even the very lazzaroni 
 of the streets pointed at him as he passed, and shouted in voluble 
 derision : 
 
 " The Traitor ! the Traitor ! " 
 
 And yet did all these things happen to the handsome horseman 
 who rode up quietly to the Expedition in front of San Miguel, and 
 bade it welcome in the name of hospitality and the Empire. 
 
 Gen. Felix Douay held San Luis Potosi, the great granary of 
 Mexico. It was the brother of this Douay who, surrounded and 
 abandoned at Weissembourg, marched alone and on foot toward 
 the enemy, until a Prussian bullet found his heart. Older and 
 calmer and wiser, perhaps, than his brother, Gen. Felix Douay 
 was the strong right arm of Bazaine and Maximilian. Past sixty, 
 gray-bearded and gaunt, he knew war as the Indian knows a trail. 
 After assigning quarters to the men, he sent at once for Shelby. 
 
 "You have come among us for an object," he commenced in per- 
 fect English, "and as I am a man of few words, please state to me 
 frankly what that object is. " 
 
 "To take service under Maximilian," was the prompt reply. 
 
 "What are your facilities for recruiting a corps of Americans?" 
 
 "So ample, General, that if authority is given me, I can pledge 
 to you the services of fifty thousand in six months." 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 335 
 
 Some other discourse was bad between tbem, and Douay fell to 
 musing a little. When he was done he called an aide to his side, wrote 
 a lenghty communication, bade the staff officer take it and ride rap- 
 idly to the City of Mexico, returning with the same speed when he 
 had received his answer. 
 
 As he extended his hand to Shelby in parting, he said to him: 
 
 "You will remain here until further orders. It may be that there 
 shall be work for your hands sooner than either of us expect." 
 
 Southward from San Luis Potosi, and running far down to the 
 Gulf, even unto Tampico, was a low, level sweep of land, where 
 marshes abounded and retreats that were almost unknown and well 
 nigh inaccessible. In the ffever months, the fatal months of August 
 and September these dismal fens and swamps were alive with guer- 
 rillas. Vomito lurked in the long lagoons, and lassitude, emaciation 
 and death peered out from behind every palm tree and cypress root. 
 Foreigners there were none who could abide that dull greyish 
 exhalation which wrought for the morning a winding sheet, andforthe 
 French it was not only the valley, but the Valley of the Shadow of 
 Death. Bazaine's light troops, his Voltigeurs and his Chasseurs of 
 Vincennes, had penetrated there and died. Most of the Foreign 
 Legion had gone in there and perished. Two battalions of Zouaves 
 great, bearded, medaled fellows, bronzed by Syrian night winds, 
 and tempered to steel in the sap and siege of Sebastopol had borne 
 their eagles backward from the mist, famishing because of a fever 
 came with the morning and the fog. 
 
 No matter how, the guerrillas fattened. Reptiles need little 
 beside the ooze and the fretid vegetation of the lowlande, and so 
 when the rains came and the roads grew wearisome and long, they 
 rose upon the convoys night after night, massacting all that fell 
 into their hands, even the women and the live stock. 
 
 Figueroa was the fell spirit of the marshes a Mexican past 
 forty-five, one-eyed from the bullet of an American's revolver, tall 
 for his race, and so bitter and unrelenting in his hatred of all foreign- 
 ers, especially Americans, that when he dies he will be canonized. If 
 in all his life he ever knew an hour of mercy or relenting, no record 
 in story or tradition stands as its monument. Backward across the 
 Rio Grande there have been borne many tales of Escobedo andCara- 
 bajal, Martinez and Cortina, Lozado the Indian and Rodriguez the 
 renegade priest ; but for deeds of desperate butchery and vengeance, 
 the fame of all these is as the leaves that fell last autumn. 
 
 No matter his crimes, however, he fought as few of them do for 
 his native land, and dreaded but two things on earth Dupin and 
 his Contre-Guerrillas. Twice they had brought him to bay, and 
 twice he had retired deeper and deeper into his jungles, sacrificing 
 all the flower of his following, and pressed so furiously and fast 
 that at no time thereafter could he turn as a hunted tiger and 
 rend the foremost of his pursuers. 
 
336 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO ; 
 
 Figueroa lay close to the high national road running from San 
 Luis Potosi to Tampico, levying such tribute as he could collect hy 
 night and in a manner that left none on the morrow to demand 
 recompense or reckoning. Because it was a post in possession of 
 the French it was necessary for Douay to have safe and constant 
 intercourse with Tampico. This was impossible so long as Figue- 
 roa lived in the marshes and got fat on the fog that brought only 
 fever and death to the Frenchman and the foreigner Three expe- 
 ditions had been sent down into the Valley of the Shadow of Death 
 and had returned; those that were left of them soldiers no longer, 
 but skeletons whose uniforms served only to make the contrast 
 ghastly. The road was still covered with ambushments, and creep- 
 ing and crawling forms that murdered when they should have 
 slept. 
 
 With the arrival of Shelby a sudden resolution had come to 
 Douay. He meant to give him service in the French army, send 
 him down first to fight the fog and Figueroa, and afterward well, 
 the . future gives generally but small concern to a Frenchman 
 but afterward there could have been no doubt of Douay's good 
 Intentions, and of a desire to reward all liberally who did his bidding 
 and who came out of the swamps alive. For permission to do this 
 he had sent forward to consult Bazaine, and had halted Shelby long 
 enough to know the Marshal's wishes. 
 
 The aid-de-camp returned speedily, but he brought with him only 
 a short, curt order : 
 
 " Bid the Americans march immediately to Mexico." 
 
 There was no appeal. Douay marshaled the expedition, served 
 it with rations and wine, spoke some friendly and soldierly words 
 to all of its officers, and bade them a pleasant and a prosperous 
 journey. Because he possessed no baton is no reason why he should 
 not have interpreted aright the future, and seen that the auspicious 
 hours were fast hastening away when it would be no longer possible 
 to recruit an army and attach to the service of Maximilian a power- 
 ful corps of Americans. Bazaine had mistrusted their motives from 
 the first, and had been more than misinformed of their movements 
 and their numbers since the expedition had entered the Empire. As 
 for the Emperor his mind had been poisoned by his Mexican coun- 
 selors, and he was too busy then with his botany and his butterflies 
 to heed the sullen murmurings of the gathering storm in the north, 
 and to understand all the harsh, indomitable depths of that stoical 
 Indian character which was so soon to rush down from Chihuahua 
 and gratify its ferocious appetite in the blood of the uptorn and 
 uprooted dynasty. They laughed at Juarez then, the low, squat 
 Indian, his sinister face scarred with the small pox like Mirabeau's, 
 and his sleuth-hound ways that followed the trail of the Republic, 
 though in the scent there was pestilence and famine and death. 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 337 
 
 One day the French lines began to contract as a wave that is baffled 
 and broken. The cliff followed up the wave, and mariners like 
 Douay and Jeanningros, looking cut from the quarter-deck, 
 saw not only the granite, but the substance, the granite 
 typified; they saw Juarez and his forty thousand ragged 
 followers, hungry, brutal, speaking all dialects, grasping bright 
 American muskets, having here and there an American officer in 
 uniform, unappeasable, [oncoming murderous. Again the waves 
 receded and again there was Jaurez. From El Paso to Chihua- 
 hua, from Chihuahua to Matamoras, from Matamoras to Monterey, 
 to Matehuala, to Dolores Hidalgo, to San Miguel, to the very spot 
 on which Douay stood at parting, his bronzed face saddened and 
 his white hair waving in the winds of the summer morning. 
 
 It was no war of his, however. "What he was sent to do he did. 
 Others planned, Douay executed. It might have been better if 
 the fair-haired sovereign had thought more and asked more of the 
 gray haired subject. 
 
 It was on the third day's march from San Luis Potosi that an 
 ambulance broke down, having in its keeping two wounded soldiers 
 of the Expedition. The accident was near the summit of the Madre 
 mountains an extended rang between San Luis Potosi and Pena- 
 mason and within a mile of the village of Sumapetla. The rear 
 guard came within without it. In reporting, before being dismissed 
 for the night, Shelby asked the officer of the ambulance. 
 
 " It is in Sumapetla," the Captain answered. 
 
 "And the wounded?" 
 
 " At a house with one attendant." 
 
 His face darkened. The whole Madre range was filled with rob- 
 bers, and two of his best men, wounded and abandoned, were at the 
 mercy of the murderers. 
 
 " If a hair of either head is touched," he cried out to the officer, 
 *'it will be better that you had never crossed the Rio Grande. 
 What avails all the lessons you have learned of this treacherous and 
 deceitful land that you should desert comrades in distress and ride 
 up to tell me the pleasant story of your own arrival and safety? 
 Order Kirtley to report instantly with twenty men." 
 
 Capt. James B. Kirtley came a young, smooth-faced, daunt- 
 less officer, tried in the front of fifty battles, a veteran and yet a 
 boy. The men had ridden thirty miles that day, but what mattered 
 it? Had the miles been sixty, the same unquestioned obedience 
 would have been yielded, the same soldierly spirit manifested of 
 daring and adventure. 
 
 "Return to Sumapetla," Shelby said, "and find my wounded. 
 Stay with them, wait for them, fight for them, get killed, if need 
 be, for them, but whatever you do, bring or send them back to me. 
 I shall wait for you a day and a night." 
 
338 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO' 
 
 A pale-faced man, with his eyes drooping and his form bent, 
 rode up to Shelby. He plucked him by the sleeve and pleaded. 
 
 " General, let me go too. I did not think when I left them. I 
 can fight. Try me, General. Tell Kirtley to take me. It is a lit- 
 tle thing I am asking of you, but I have followed you for four 
 years, and I think, small as it is, it will save me." 
 
 All Shelby's face lit up with a pity and tenderness that was abso- 
 lutely winning. He grasped his poor, tried soldier's hand, and 
 spoke to him low and softly: 
 
 "Go, and come back again. I was harsh, I know, and over cruel, 
 but between us two there is neither cloud nor shadow of feeling. I 
 do forgive you from my soul." 
 
 There were tears in the man's eyes as he road away, and a heart 
 beneath his uniform that was worth a diadem. 
 
 It was ten long miles to Sumapetla, and the night had fallen. 
 The long, swinging trot that Kirtley struck would carry him there 
 in two hours at farthest, and if needs be, the trot would grow 
 into a gallop. 
 
 He rode along his ranks and spoke to his men: 
 
 " Keep quiet, be ready, be loaded. You heard the orders. I 
 shall obey them or be even beyond the need of the ambulance we 
 have been sent back to succor." 
 
 Sumapetla was reached in safety. It was a miserable squalid 
 village, filled full of Indians and beggars and dogs. In the largest 
 house the wounded men were found not well cared for, but com- 
 fortable from pain. Their attendant, a blacksmith, was busy with 
 the broken ambulance. 
 
 Kirtley threw forward picquets and set about seeking for supper. 
 While active in its preparation a sudden volley came from the front 
 keen, dogged, vicious. From the roar of the guns Kirtly knew 
 that his men had fired at close range and all together. It was a clear 
 night, yet still quite dark in the mountains. Directly a picquet rode 
 rapidly up, not the least excited yet very positive. 
 
 " There is a large body in front of us and well armed. They 
 tried a surprise and lost five. We did not think it well to charge, 
 and I have come back for orders. Please say what they are quick, 
 for the boys may need me before I can reach them again." 
 
 This was the volunteer who had commanded the rear guard of 
 the day's march. 
 
 Skirmishing shots now broke out ominously. There were fifteen 
 men in the village and five on outpost. 
 
 "Mount, all," cried Kirtley, "and follow me." 
 
 The relief took the road at a gallop. 
 
 The space between the robbers and their prey was scarcely large 
 enough for Kirtley to array his men upon. From all sides there 
 came the steady roar of musketry, telling how complete the ambus- 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 339 
 
 <iade, and how serviceable the guns. Some fifty paces in the rear of 
 the outpost the road made a sudden turn, leaving at the apex of 
 the acute angle a broken zig-zag piece of rock-work capable of 
 much sturdy defense, and not flanked without a rush and a moment 
 or two of desperate in-fighting that is rarely the choice of the guer- 
 rillas. This Kirtley had noticed with the eye of a soldier and the 
 quickness of a man who meant to do a soldier's duty first and a com- 
 rade's duty afterward. Because the wounded men had to be saved 
 was no reason why those who were unwounded should be sacrificed. 
 
 He fell back to the rocky ledge facing the robbers. Word sent 
 to the blacksmith in the village to hurry, to make rapid and zealous 
 haste, for the danger was pressing and dire, got for an answer in 
 return : 
 
 "Captain Kirtley, I am doing my best. A Mexican's black- 
 smith shop is an anvil without a hammer, a forge without a bel- 
 lows, a wheel without its felloes ; and I have to make, instead of 
 one thing, a dozen things. It will be two hours before the ambu- 
 lance is mended." 
 
 Very laconic and very true. Kirtley never thought a second 
 time, during all the long two hours, of the smithy in the village, 
 and the swart, patient smith who, within full sound of the strug- 
 gling musketry, wrought and delved and listened now and then in 
 the intervals of his toil to the rising and falling of the fight, laugh- 
 ing, perhaps, low to himself, as his practiced ear caught the various 
 volleys, and knew that neither backward nor forward did the 
 Americns recede nor advance a stone's throw. 
 
 The low reach of rock, holding fast to the roots of the trees that 
 grew up from it, and bristling with rugged and stunted shrubs, 
 transformed itself into a citadel. The road ran by it like an arm 
 that encircles a waist. Where the elbow was the Americans stood 
 at bay. They had dismounted and led their horses still further to 
 the rear far enough to be safe, yet near at hand. From the 
 unknown it was impossible to tell what spectres might issue forth. 
 The robbers held on. From the volume of fire their numbers were 
 known as two hundred desperate odds, but it was night, and the 
 night is always in league with the weakest. 
 
 Disposed among the rocks, about the roots and the trunks of the 
 trees, the Americans fired in skirmishing order and at will. Three 
 rapid and persistent times the rush of the guerrillas came as a great 
 wave upon the little handful, a lurid wreath of light all along its 
 front, and a noise that was appalling in the darkness. Nothing so 
 terrifies as the oscillation and the roar of a hurricane that is invis- 
 ible. Hard by the road, Kirtley kept his grasp upon the rock. 
 Nothing shook that nothing shook the tension of its grim en- 
 durance. 
 
 The last volley beat full into the faces of all. A soldier fell for- 
 ward into the darkness. 
 
340 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION' TO MEXICO; 
 
 " Who's hurt?" and the clear voice of Kirtley rang out "with- 
 out a tremor. 
 
 " It's me, Jim; it's Walker. Hard hit in the shoulder; but thank 
 God for the breech loader, a fellow can load and fire with one sound 
 arm left." 
 
 Bleeding through the few rags stuffed into the wound, and faint 
 from much weakness and pain, Walker mounted again to his post 
 and fought on till the struggle was ended. 
 
 Time passed, but lengthily. Nine of the twenty were wounded, 
 all slightly, however, save Walker thanks to the darkness and the 
 ledge that seemed planted there by a Providence that meant to 
 succor steadfast courage and devotion. The ambulance was done 
 and the wounded were placed therein. 
 
 " It can travel but slowly in the night," said Kirtley, to William 
 Fell, who had stood by his side through all the bitter battle, "and 
 we must paralyze pursuit a little." 
 
 " Paralyze it how ? " 
 
 " By a sudden blow, such as a prize fighter gives when he strikes 
 below the belt. By a charge some good hundred paces in the midst 
 of them." 
 
 Fell answered laconically : 
 
 " Desperate but reasonable. I have seen such things done. Will 
 it take long ? " 
 
 " Twenty minutes all told, and there will be but eleven of us. 
 The nine who are wounded must go back." 
 
 The horses were brought and mounted. Walker could scarcely 
 sit in his saddle. As he rode to the rear, two of his comrades sup- 
 ported him. The parting was ominous the living, perhaps, taking 
 leave of the dead. 
 
 Far into the night and the unknown the desperate venture held 
 its way. Two deep the handful darted out from behind the barri- 
 cade, tiring at the invisible. Specter answered specter, and only 
 the ringing of the revolvers was real. The impetus of the charge 
 was such that the line of the robbers' fire was passed before, reined 
 up and countermarching, the forlorn hope could recede as a wave 
 that carried the undertow. The reckless gallop bore its planted 
 fruit. Back through the pass unharmed the men rode, and on by 
 the ledge, and into Sumapetla. No pursuit came after. The fire 
 of the guerrillas ceased ere the charge had been spent, and when 
 the morning came there was the camp, and a thousand blessings for 
 the bold young leader who had held his own so well, and kept his 
 faith as he had kept the fort on its perch among the mountains. 
 
 It was a large city set upon a hill that loomed up through the 
 mists of the evening a city seen from afar and musical with many 
 vesper bells. Peace stood in the ranks of the sentinel corn, and 
 fed with the cattle that browsed by the streams in the meadows. 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 341 
 
 Peace came on the wings of the twilight and peopled the grasses 
 with songs that soothed, and many toned voices that made for the 
 earth a symphony. Days of short parade and longer merry-mak- 
 ing dawned for the happy soldiery. The sweet, unbroken south wind 
 brought no dust of battle from the palms and the orange blossoms 
 by the sea. Couriers came and went, and told of peace throughout 
 the realm ; of robber bands surrendering to the law ; of railroads 
 pknned and parks adorned ; of colonists arriving and foreign ships 
 in all l he ports ; of roads made safe for travel, and public virtue 
 placed at premium in the marketlists ; of prophecies that brightened 
 all the future, and to the Empire promised an Augustan age. The 
 night and the sky were at peace as the city grew larger and larger 
 on its hill, and a silence came to the ranks of the Expedition that 
 was not broken until the camp became a bivouac with the goddess 
 of plenty to make men sing of fealty and obeisance. 
 
 It was the City of Queretaro. 
 
 Yonder ruined convent, its gateway crumbling to decay, its 
 fountains strewn with bits of broken shrubs and flowers, held the 
 sleeping Emperor the night the traitor Lopez surrendered all to an 
 Indian vengeance and compassion. When that Emperor awoke he 
 ha^ been dreaming. Was it of Miramar and "poor Carlota?" 
 
 The convent was at peace then, and the fountains were all at 
 play. Two bearded Zouaves stood in its open door, looking out 
 curiously upon the serried ranks of the Americans as they rode 
 slowly by. 
 
 Yonder, on the left where a hill arises, the capture was made; 
 yonder the Austrian cried out in the agony of this last desertion 
 and betrayal: 
 
 " Is there then no bullet for me?" 
 
 Later, when the bullets found his heart, they found an image 
 there that entered with his spirit into heaven the image of "Poor 
 Carlota." 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 QUITE a large concentration of Americans had taken place in 
 the City of Mexico. Many of these were penniless ; all of them 
 were soldiers. As long as they believed in the luck, or the fortune, 
 or the good destiny of Shelby and that, being a born soldier, the 
 Empire must needs see and recognize those qualities which even 
 his enemies had described as magnificent they were content to 
 wait for Shelby's arrival, living no man knew how, hungry always, 
 sometimes sad, frequently in want of a roll or a bed but turning 
 ever their faces fair to the sunrise, saying, it may be a little 
 reproachfully, to the sun: " What hast thou in store for us this day, 
 oh! King?" 
 
 Maximilian was like a man who had a desperate race before 
 him, and who had started out to win it. The pace in the beginning 
 was therefore terrible. So firm was the stride, so tense were the 
 muscles, so far in the rear were all competitiors, that opposition had 
 well-nigh abandoned the contest and resistance had become so 
 enfeebled as to be almost an absolute mockery. 
 
 In the noonday of the struggle a halt was had. There were so 
 many sweet and odorous flowers, so many nights that were almost 
 divine, so much of shade and luxury and ease, so much of music 
 by the wayside, and so many hands that were held out to him for 
 the grasping, that the young Austrian, schooled in the luxuries of 
 literature and the pursuits of science, sat himself down just when 
 the need was sorest and smoked and dreamed and planned and 
 wrote and died. 
 
 Maximilian was never a soldier. Perhaps he was no statesman 
 as well. Most certainly all the elements of a politician were want- 
 ing in his character, which was singularly sweet, trusting and affec- 
 tionate. To sign a death warrant gave him nights of solitude and 
 remorse. Alone with his confessor he would beseech in prayer the 
 merciful God to show to him that mercy he had denied to others. 
 On the eve of an execution he had been known to flee from his cap- 
 ital as if pursued by some horrible nightmare. He could not kill, 
 when, to reign as a foreigner, it was necessary to kill, as said Will- 
 iam the Conqueror, until the balance is about even between those 
 who came over with you and those whom you found upon your 
 arrival . 
 
 The Emperor had given shelter to some honored and august 
 Americans. Commodore M. F. Maury, who had preceded the 
 Expedition, and who had brought his great fame and his transcend- 
 
 343 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 343 
 
 ent abilities to the support of the Empire, had been made the 
 Imperial Commissioner of Immigration. Entering at once upon an 
 energetic discharge of his duties, lie had secured a large and valua- 
 ble grant of land near the city of Cordova, which, even as early as 
 September, 1865, was being rapidly surveyed and opened up for 
 civilization. Agents of colonization had been sent to the United 
 States, and reports were constantly being received of their cordial 
 and sometimes enthusiastic reception by the people, from New 
 Orleans to Dubuque, Iowa, and from New York westward to San 
 Antonio, Texas. There was a world of people ready to emigrate. 
 One in five of all the thousands would have been a swart, strapping 
 fellow, fit for any service but best for the service of a soldier. 
 
 Therefore, when these things were told to Shelby, riding down 
 from the highlands about Queretero to the lowlands about Mexico, 
 he rubbed his hands as one who feels a steady flame by the bivouac- 
 fire of a winter's night, and spoke out gleefully to Langhorne 
 
 "We can get forty thousand and take our pick. Young men 
 for war, and only young men emigrate. This Commodore Maury 
 seems to sail as well upon the land as upon the water. It appears 
 to me that we shall soon see the sky again. What do you say, 
 Captain?" 
 
 Langhorne answered him laconically: 
 
 "The French are not friendly that is to say, they want no sol- 
 diers from among us. You will not be permitted to recruit even so 
 much as a front and a rear rank; and if this is what you mean by 
 seeing the sky, then the sky is as far away as ever." 
 
 It was npt long before the sequel proved which of the two was 
 right. 
 
 Gen. John B. Magruder, who had also preceded the Expedition, 
 and who had known Marshal Bazaine well in the Crimea, was com- 
 missioned Surveyor-General of the Empire through French influ- 
 ence, and assigned to duty with Commodore Maury. He had 
 spoken twice to the Marshal in behalf of Shelby, and spoken 
 frankly and boldly at that. He got in reply what Jeanningros had 
 got and Depreuil and Douay and all of them. He got this sen- 
 tentious order: 
 
 "Bid Shelby march immediately to Mexico." 
 
 General Preston, who through much peril and imminent risk by 
 night and day had penetrated to the Capital, even from Piedras 
 Negras, had begged and pleaded for permission to return with such 
 authority vouchsafed to Shelby as would enable him to recruit 
 his corps. Preston fared like the rest. For answer he also got 
 the order: 
 
 "Bid Shelby march immediately to Mexico " 
 
 And so he marched on into the glorious land between Queretaro 
 and the Capital, and into the glorious weather, no guerrillas now to 
 
344 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO ; 
 
 keep watch against, no robbers anywhere about the hills or the 
 fords. The French were everywhere in the sunshine. Their 
 picquets were upon all the roads. The villages contained their can- 
 tonments. There was peace and prosperity and a great rest among 
 all the people. The women laughed in the glad land, and the voices 
 of many children told of peaceful days and of the fatness of the 
 field and the vine of the streams that ran to the sea, and uplands 
 green with leaf or gray with ripening grain. 
 
 Maybe Fate rests its head upon its two hands at times, and thinks 
 of what little things it shall employ to make or mar a character 
 save or lose a life banish beyond the light or enter into and possess 
 forevermore a Paradise. 
 
 The march was running by meadow and river, and the swelling 
 of billowy wheat, and great groves of orange tflees wherein the sun- 
 shine hid itself at noon with the breeze and the mocking birds. 
 
 It was far into the evening that John Thrailkill sat by the fire of 
 his mess, smoking and telling brave stories of the brave days that 
 were dead. Others were grouped about in dreaming indolence or 
 silent fancy thinking, it may be, of the northern land with its 
 pines and firs of great rolling waves of prairie and plain, of forests 
 where cabins were and white-haired children all at play. 
 
 Thrailkill was a guerrilla who never slept that is to say who 
 never knew the length or breadth of a bed from Sumter to Appo- 
 mattox. Some woman in Platte county had made him a little black 
 flag, under which he fought. This, worked in the crown of his 
 hat, satisfied him with his loyalty to his lady-love. In addition to 
 all this, he was one among the best pistol shots in a command where 
 all were excellent. 
 
 Perhaps neither before nor since the circumstance here related 
 has anything so quaint in recklessness or bravado been recorded this 
 side of the Crusades. Thrailkill talked much, but then he had 
 fought much, and fighting men love to talk now and then. Some 
 border story of broil or battle, wherein, at desperate odds, he had 
 done a desperate deed, came uppermost as the night deepened, and 
 the quaint and scarred guerrilla was overgenerous in the share he 
 took of the killing and the plunder. 
 
 A comrade by his side, Anthony West, doubted the story and 
 ridiculed its narration. Thrailkill was not swift to anger for one so 
 thoroughly reckless, but on this night he arose, every hair in his 
 bushy beard bristling. 
 
 " You disbelieve me, it seems," he said, bending over the other 
 until he could look into his eyes, " and for the skeptic there is only 
 the logic of a blow. Is this real, and this?" and Thrailkill smote 
 West twice in the face with his open hand once on either cheek. 
 No insult could be more studied, open and unpardonable. 
 
 Comrades interfered instantly, or there would have been blood 
 shed in the heart of the camp and by the flames of the bivouac fire. 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 345 
 
 Each was very cool each knew what the morrow would bring 
 forth, without a miracle. 
 
 The camp was within easy reach of a town that was more of a vil- 
 lage than a town. It had a church and a priest, and a regular Don 
 of an Alcalde who owned leagues of arable land and two hundred 
 game cocks besides. For Shelby's especial amusement a huge main 
 was organized and a general invitation given to all who desired to 
 attend. 
 
 The contest was to begin at noon. Before the sun had risen 
 Capt. James H. Gillette came to Thrailkill, who was wrapped up in 
 his blankets, and said to him: 
 '* I have a message for you." 
 " It is not long, I hope." 
 " Not very long, but very plain." 
 
 "Yes, yes, they are all alike. I have seen such before. Wait 
 'or me a few minutes." 
 
 Thrailkill found Isaac Berry, and Berry in turn soon found 
 illette. 
 
 The note was a challenge, brief and peremptory. Some confer- 
 nces followed, and the terms were agreed upon. These were sav- 
 ge enough for an Indian. Colt's pistols, dragoon size, were the 
 weapons, but only one of them was to be loaded. The other, empty 
 in every chamber, was to be placed alongside the loaded one. Then 
 a blanket was to cover both, leaving the butt of each exposed. He 
 who won the toss was to make the first selection and Thrailkill won. 
 The loaded and the unloaded pistol lay hidden beneath the blanket, 
 the two handles so nearly alike that there was noappreciable differ- 
 ence. Thrailkill walked up to the tent whistling a tune. West 
 d behind him, watching with a face that was set as a flint. The 
 rst drew, cast his eyes along the cylinder, saw that it was loaded, 
 smiled. The last drew every chamber was empty. Death 
 as his portion as absolutely and as certainly as if death already 
 by his side. Yet he made no sign other than to look up to 
 e sky. Was it to be his last look? 
 
 The terms were ferocious, yet neither second had protested 
 ainst them. It seemed as if one man was to murder another 
 ause one had been lucky in the toss of a silver dollar. As the 
 ase stood, Thrailkill had the right to fire six sTwts at West before 
 West had the right to grasp even so much as a loaded pistol, and 
 Thrailkill was known for his deadly skill throughout the ranks of 
 the whole Expedition. 
 
 The two were to meet just at sunset, and the great cock main 
 was at noon. To this each principal went, and each second, and 
 before the main was over the life of a man stood as absolutely upon 
 the prowess of a bird as the spring and its leaves upon the rain and 
 the sunshine. 
 
346 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO; 
 
 And thus it came about : 
 
 In Mexico cock-fighting is a national recreation, perhaps it is a 
 national blessing as well. Men engage in it when they would be 
 robbing else, and waylaying couriers bearing specie, and haunting 
 the mountain gorges until the heavy trains of merchandise entered 
 slowly in to be swallowed up. 
 
 The priests fight there, and the fatter the padre the finer his 
 chicken. From the prayer-book to the pit is an easy transition, and 
 no matter the aves so only the odds are in favor of the church. It is 
 upon the Sundays that all the pitched battles begin. After the 
 matin bells the matches. When it is vespers, for some there has 
 been a stricken and for some a victorious field. No matter again for 
 all there is absolution. 
 
 The Alcalde of the town of Linares was a jolly, good-conditioned 
 Mexican, who knew a bit of English, picked up in California, and 
 who liked the Americans but for two things their hard drinking 
 and their hard swearing. Finding any ignorant of these accom- 
 plishments, there flowed never any more for them a stream of friend- 
 ship from the Alcalde's fountain. It became dry as suddenly as a 
 spring in the desert. 
 
 Shelby won his heart by sending him a case of elegant cognac 
 a present from Douay and therefore was the main improvised 
 which was to begin at noon. 
 
 The pit was a great circle in the midst of a series of seats that 
 arose the one above the other. Over the entrance, which was a 
 gateway opening like the lids of a book, was a chair of state, an 
 official seat occupied by the Alcalde. Beside him sat a bugler in 
 uniform. At the beginning and the end of a battle this bugler, 
 watching the gestures of the Alcalde, blew triumphant or penitential 
 strains acordingly as the Alcalde's favorite lost or won. As the 
 main progressed the notes of gladness outnumbered those of sorrow. 
 
 A born cavalryman is always suspicious. He looks askance at 
 the woods, the fences, the ponds, the morning fogs, the road that 
 forks and crosses, and the road that runs into the 'rear of a halted 
 column, or into either flank at rest in bivouac. It tries one's nerves 
 so to fumble at uncertain girths in the darkness, a rain of bullets 
 pouring down at the outposts and no shelter anywhere for a long 
 week's marching. 
 
 And never at any time did Shelby put aught of faith in Mexican 
 friendship, or aught of trust in Mexican welcome and politeness. 
 His guard was perpetual, and his intercourse like his marching, was 
 always in skirmishing order. Hence one-half the forces of the 
 expedition were required to remain in camp under arms, pre- 
 pared for any emergency, while the other half, free of restraint, 
 could accept the Alcalde's invitation or not as they saw fit. The 
 most of them attended. With the crowd went Thrailkill and West, 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 347 
 
 Gillette and Berry. All the village was there. The pit had no 
 caste. Benevolent priests mingled with their congregations and 
 bet their pesos on their favorites. Lords of many herds and acres, 
 and mighty men of the country round about, the Dons of the haci- 
 endas pulled off their hats to the peons, and staked their gold against 
 the greasy silver palm to palm. Fair senoritas shot furtive glances 
 along the ranks of the soldiers glances that lingered long upon the 
 Saxon outline of their faces and retreated only when to the light of 
 curiosity there had been added that of unmistakable admiration. 
 
 The bugle sounded and the weighing began. The sport was new 
 to many of the spectators to a few it was a sealed book. Twenty- 
 five cocks were 'matched all magnificent birds, not so large as those 
 fought in America but as pure in game and as rich in plumage. 
 There, too, the fighting is more deadly, that is to say, it is more 
 rapid and fatal. The heels used have been almost thrown aside 
 here. In the north and west absolutely, in New Orleans very 
 nearly so. These heels, wrought of the most perfect steel and 
 curved like a scimitar, have an edge almost exquisite in its keen- 
 ness. They cut asunder like a sword-blade. Failing in instant 
 death, they inflict mortal wounds. Before there is mutilation there 
 is murder. 
 
 To the savage reality of combat there was added the atoning 
 insincerities of music. These diverted the drama of its premedita- 
 tion, and gave to it an air of surprise that, in the light of an accom- 
 modating conscience, passed unchallenged for innocence. In 
 Mexico the natives rarely ask questions the strangers never. 
 
 Shelby seated himself by the side of the Alcalde, the first five or 
 six notes of a charge were sounded and the battle began. There- 
 after with varying fortunes it ebbed and flowed through all the long 
 afternoon. Aroused into instant championship, the Americans 
 espoused the side of this or that bird, and lost or won as the fates 
 decreed. There was but scant gold among them, all counted, but 
 twenty dollars or twenty thousand, it would have been the same. A 
 nation of born gamblers, it needed not a cock fight to bring all the 
 old national traits uppermost. A dozen or more were on the eve of 
 wagering their carbines and revolvers, when a sign from Shelby 
 checked the unsoldierly impulse and brought them back instantly to 
 a realization of duty. 
 
 Thrailkill had lost heavily that is to say every dollar he owned on 
 earth. West had won without cessation won in spite of his judg- 
 ment, which was often adverse to the wagers he laid. In this, 
 maybe, Fate was but flattering him. Of what use would all his 
 winnings be after the sunset ? 
 
 It was the eighteenth battle, and a magnificent cock was 
 brought forth who had the crest of an eagle and the eye of a basilisk. 
 More sonorous than the bugle, his voice had blended war and mel- 
 
348 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO; 
 
 odyinit. The glossy ebony of his plumage needed only the sun- 
 light to make it a mirror where courage might have arrayed itself. 
 In an instant he was everybody's favorite in his favor all the odds 
 were laid. Some few clustered about his antagonist among them a 
 sturdy old priest who did what he could to stem the tide rising in 
 favor of the bird of the beautiful plumage. 
 
 Infatuated like the rest, Thrailkill would have staked a crown 
 upon the combat ; he did not have even so much as one real. The 
 man was miserable. Once he walked to the door and looked out. 
 If at that time he had gone forth, the life of West would have gone 
 with him, but he did not go. As he returned he met Gillette, who 
 spoke to him : 
 
 " You do not bet, and the battle is about to begin." 
 
 "I do not bet because I have not won. The pitcher that goes 
 eternally to a well is certain to be broken at last." 
 
 "And yet you are fortunate." 
 
 Thrailkill shrugged his shoulders and looked at his watch. It 
 wanted an hour yet of the sunset. The tempter still tempted him. 
 
 "You have no money, then. Would you like to borrow ? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 Gilette mused awhile. They were tieing on the last blades, and 
 the old priest had cried out: 
 
 " A doubloon to a doubloon against the black cock ! " 
 
 Thrailkill's eyes glistened. Gillette took him by the arm. He 
 spoke rapidly, but so low and distinct that every word was a thrust: 
 
 " You do not want to kill West the terms are murderous you 
 have been soldiers together you can take the priest's bet here is 
 the money. But," he looked him fair in the face, " if you win you 
 pay me if you lose I have absolute disposal of your fire." 
 
 " Ah ! " and the guerrilla straightened himself up all of a sud- 
 den," what would you do with my fire? " 
 
 ' ' Keep your hands clean from innocent blood, John Thrailkill. 
 Is not that enough?" 
 
 The money was accepted, the wager with the priest was laid, and 
 the battle began. When it was over the beautiful black cock lay 
 dead on the sands of the arena, slain by the sweep of one terrific 
 blow, while over him, in pitiless defiance, his antagonist, dun in 
 plumage and ragged in crest and feather, stood a victor, conscious 
 of his triumph and his prowess. 
 
 The sun was setting, and two men stood face to face in the glow 
 of the crimson sky. On either flank of them a second took his 
 place, a look of sorrow on the bold bronzed face of Berry, the light 
 of anticipation in the watchful eyes of the calm Gillette. Well 
 kept, indeed, had been the secret of the tragedy. The group who 
 stood alone on the golden edge of the evening were all who knew 
 the ways and the means of the work before them. West took his 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 349 
 
 place as a man who had shaken hands with life and knew how to 
 die. Thrailkill had never been merciful, and this day of all days 
 were the chances dead against a moment of pity or forgiveness. 
 
 The ground was a little patch of grass beside a stream, having 
 trees in the rear of it, and trees over beyond the reach of the waters 
 running musically to the sea. In the distance there were houses 
 from which peaceful smoke ascended. Through the haze of the 
 gathering twilight the sound of bells came from the homeward-plod- 
 ding herds, and from the fields the happy voices of the reapers. 
 
 West stood full front to his adversary certain of death. He 
 expected nothing beyond a quick and speedy bullet, one which 
 would kill without inflicting needless pain. 
 
 The word was given. Thrailkill threw his pistol out, covered 
 his antagonist once fairly, looked once into his eyes, and saw that 
 they did not quail, and then, with a motion as instantaneous as it 
 was unexpected, lifted it up overhead and fired in the air. 
 
 Gillette had won his wager. 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 THE city of all men's hopes and fears and aspirations; the city 
 of the swart cavaliers of Cortez and the naked warriors of Monte- 
 zuma, who rushed with bare bosom on lance and sword-blade; the 
 city under the shadow of the old-world Huasco, that volcano, it 
 may be, that was in its youth when Ararat bore aloft the ark as a 
 propitiation to the God alike of the rainbow and the deluge, and 
 that when the floods subsided sent its lava waves to the Pacific 
 Ocean; the city which had seen the cold glitter of Northern steel 
 flash along the broken way of Conteras, and wind itself up, striped 
 thick with blood, into the heart of Chepultepec; the city filled now 
 with Austrians and Belgians and Frenchmen and an Emperor 
 newly crowned with manhood and valor, and an Empress, royal 
 with an imperial youth and beauty the city of Mexico was reached 
 at last. 
 
 For many the long march was about to end, for others to begin 
 again longer, drearier, sterner than any march ever yet taken for 
 king or country the march down into the Valley of the Shadow, 
 and over beyond the River and into the unknown and eternal. 
 
 Marshal Bazaine was a soldier who had seen service in Algeria, 
 in the Crimea', in Italy especially at Magenta and he had won the 
 baton at last in Mexico, that baton the First Napoleon declared 
 might be in the knapsack of every soldier. The character of the 
 man was a study some student of history may love to stumble upon 
 in the future. Past fifty, white-haired where there was hair, bald 
 over the forehead as one sees all Frenchmen who have served in 
 Algeria, he made a fine figure on horseback, because from the waist 
 up his body was long, lithe and perfectly trained; but not such a 
 fine figure on foot, because the proportion was illy preserved between 
 the two extremities. He was ambitious, brave to utter recklessness, 
 crafty, yet outspoken and frank, a savage aristocrat who had mar- 
 ried a fair- faced Spaniard and a million, merciless in discipline, 
 beloved of his troops, adored by his miltiary family, a gambler who 
 had been known to win a thousand ounces on a single card, a specu- 
 lator and the owner of ships, a husband whom even the French 
 called true, a father and a judge who, after he had caressed his 
 infant, voted death at the court-martial so often that one officer began 
 to say to another: 
 
 "He shoots them all." 
 
 Bazaine was a skillful soldier. As long as it was war with 
 Juarez, he kept Juarez starving and running sometimes across the 
 Rio Grande into Texas, where the Federals fed him, and sometimes 
 
 SCO 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAP OP THE WAR. 351 
 
 in the mountains about El Paso, never despondent, it is true, yet 
 never well filled in either commissariat or cartridge-box. After the 
 visit of General Castelneau, an aid-de-camp of Napoleon, and the 
 reception of positive orders of evacuation, the Marshal let the Lib- 
 erals have pretty much their own way, so that they neither injured 
 nor interrupted the French soldiers coming and going about the 
 country at will. As the French waves receded the waves of the 
 Juaristas advanced. Bazaine sold them cannon and muskets and 
 much ammunition, it is said, and even siege guns with which to bat- 
 ter down the very walls of Maximilian's palace itself. Those who 
 have accused him of this have slandered and a*bused the man. He 
 may have known much of many things, of ingratitude not one 
 heart-throb. Not his the aggravation of evacuation, the sudden 
 rending asunder of the whole frame-work of Imperial society, the 
 great fear that fell upon all, the patriotic uprisings that had infec- 
 tion and jubilee in them, the massacre of Mexicans who had favored 
 the Austrian, the breaking up of all schemes for emigration and 
 colonization, and the ending of a day that was to bring the cold, 
 long night of Queretaro. 
 
 Rudolph, Emperor of Germany, who was born in 1218, and who 
 was the son of Albert IV. , Count of Hapsburg, was the founder of 
 that family to which Maximilian belonged. In 1282 Rudolph 
 placed his son Albert on the throne of Austria, and thus begins the 
 history of that house which has swayed the destinies of a large por- 
 tion of Europe for nearly eight hundred years, a house which, 
 through many terrible struggles, has gained and lost and fought on 
 and ruled on, sometimes wisely and sometimes not, yet ever ruling 
 in the name of divine right and of the House of Hapsburg. 
 
 Through the force of marriage, purchase and inheritance, the 
 State of Austria grew in extent beyond that of any other in the 
 German Empire. In 1359 Rudolph IV. assumed the title of Arch- 
 duke Palatine, and in 1363 his reign was made notorious by the val- 
 uable acquisition of the Tyrol. This was the commencement of the 
 history of the Archdukes, who were thereafter assigned to the high 
 position of Emperor, the first taken from among them being Alfred 
 II. , who was chosen in 1438. The marriage of the bold, unscrupu- 
 lous and ambitious Maximilian I., at the age of eighteen, to Mary, 
 daughter of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, in 1477, added to 
 Austria's territorial claim largely, and embraced Flanders, Franche 
 Comte 4 and all the Low Countries. In 1521 Ferdinand I. married 
 Ann, sister of Louis, King of Hungary and Bohemia, who waskilled 
 at the battle of Mohaez, in 1526, his empire being absorbed and 
 incorporated with Austria. Upon the events of the fifteenth cen- 
 tury, Charles V. left an immortal impress, and the blood of this 
 great Emperor was in the veins of Maximilian of Mexico. 
 
 In 1618 Europe, alarmed at the increasing territorial aggrandize- 
 ment of Austria, and torn by feuds between Protestants and Catho- 
 
352 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO ,' 
 
 lies, saw the commencement of the thirty years' war. It terminated 
 in the treaty of Westphalia in 1648, which accomplished the inde- 
 pendence of the German States. In 1713 Austria gained the Italian 
 provinces by the treaty of Utrecht, and in 1726, the last male of the 
 House of Hapsburg, Charles II., died, the succession falling upon 
 his daughter, Maria Theresa. She was succeeded by her son, 
 Joseph II., and in 1792, at the age of twenty -two, Francis II. suc- 
 ceeded his father, Leopold II., and became Emperor of Germany, 
 King of Bohemia, Hungaria, etc. His reign was unusually stormy, 
 and in three campaigns against the French he lost much of his terri- 
 tory and was forced 'into the unfortunate treaty of Presburg. In 
 1804 he assumed the title of Francis I., Emperor of Austria, and in 
 1806 yielded up that of Emperor of Germany. Thus, through an 
 unbroken line, male and female, did the House of Hapsburg hold 
 the title of Emperor of Germany from 1437 to 1806. Maria Louisa, 
 the daughter of this Francis, was married to the great Napoleon in 
 1810, and in 1813 her father was in arms against France, and in 
 the alliance with Russia, Prussia and England. In 1815 he had 
 regained much of his lost territory, and had succeeded in cementing 
 more firmly than ever the contending elements of the Austrian empire. 
 
 Francis I. died in 1835, leaving the throne to his son Ferdinand 
 I., who, in consequence of the political revolution of 1848, the 
 fatigue of state affairs, and a wretched condition of health, abdicated 
 in the same year, in favor of his brother, Archduke Francis Charles, 
 who, on the same day, transferred his right to the throne to his 
 eldest son, the present Emperor, who was declared of age at eight- 
 een. Hungary refused to recognize the new monarch, and consti- 
 tuted a republic under Kossuth, April 14, 1849. Bloody and 
 short-lived, the republic was conquered and crushed under the feet 
 of the Cossack and the Croat. 
 
 And in such guise is this history given of one who, inheriting 
 many of the splendid virtues of his race, was to inherit some of its 
 sorrows and "tragedies as well. 
 
 Ferdinand Maximilian, Emperor of Mexico, was born in the 
 palace of Schonbrun, near Vienna, on the 10th day of July, A. D. 
 1832. He was the second son of Francis Charles, Archduke of Aus- 
 tria, and of the Archduchess Frederica Sophia. His eldest brother 
 was Francis Joseph I., the present Emperor of the Austrian Empire. 
 Two younger brothers embraced the family and among the whol 
 there was a tenderness and affection so true and so rare in statecraft 
 that in remarking it to the mother of the princes, Marshal McMahoi 
 is reported to have said: 
 
 " Madam, these are young men such as you seldom see, am 
 princes such as you never see." 
 
 In height Maximilian was six feet two inches. His eyes were bli 
 and penetrating, a little sad at times, and often introspective. Per- 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 353 
 
 haps never in all his, life had there ever come to them a look of craft 
 or cruelty. His forehead was broad and high, prominent where 
 ideality should abound, wanting a little in firmness, if phrenology 
 is true, yet compact enough and well enough proportioned to indi- 
 cate resources in reserve and abilities latent and easily aroused. To 
 a large mouth was given the Hapsburg lip, that thick, protruding, 
 semi-clef t under lip, too heavy for beauty, too immobile for features 
 that, under the iron destiny that ruled the hour, should have sug- 
 gested Caesar or Napoleon. A great yellow beard fell in a wave to 
 his waist. At times this was parted at the chin, and descended in 
 two separate streams, as it were, silkier, glossier, heavier than any 
 yellow beard of any yellow-haired Hun or Hungarian that had fol- 
 lowed him from the Rhine and the Danube. 
 
 He said pleasant and courtly things in German, in English, Hun- 
 garian, Slavonic, French, Italian and Spanish. In natural kindness 
 of temper, and in elegance and refinement of deportment, he sur- 
 passed all who surrounded him and all with whom he came in con- 
 tact. Noblemen of great learning and cosmopolitan reputation were 
 his teachers. Prince Esteraze taught him the Hungarian language; 
 Count de Schnyder taught him mathematics; Thomas Zerman 
 taught him naval tactics and the Italian language. A splendid 
 horseman, he excelled also in athletic sports. With the broadsword 
 or the rapier few men could broak down his guard or touch him with 
 the steel's point. 
 
 At the age of sixteen he visited Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, 
 Madeira and Africa. He was a poet who wrote sonnets that were 
 set to music, a botanist, a book-maker, the captain of a frigate, an 
 admiral. He did not love to see men die. All his nature was 
 tenderly human. He loved flowers and music and statuary and 
 the repose of the home circle and the fireside. He had a palace 
 called Miramar, which was a paradise. Here the messengers found 
 him when they came bearing in their hands the crown of Mexico 
 a gentle, lovable prince adored by the Italians over whom he had 
 ruled, the friend of the Third Napoleon, a possible heir to the 
 throne of Austria, a chivalrous, elegant, polished gentleman. 
 
 How he died the world knows betrayed, butchered, shot by a 
 dead wall, thinking of Carlotta. 
 
 France never thoroughly understood the war between the States. 
 Up to the evacuation of Richmond by Lee, Louis Napoleon 
 believed religiously in the success of the Southern Confederacy. 
 An alliance offensive and defensive with President Davis was 
 proposed to him by Minister Slidell, an alliance which guaranteed 
 to him the absolute possession of Mexico and the undisturbed 
 erection of an empire within its borders. For this he was asked to 
 raise the blockade at Charleston and New Orleans, and furnish for 
 offensive operations a corps of 75,000 French soldiers. He declined 
 
354 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO; 
 
 the alliance because he believed it unnecessary. Of what use to 
 hasten a result, hear gued, which in the end would be inevitable? 
 
 After Appomattox Court House he awoke to something like a 
 realization of the drama in which he was the chief actor. The 
 French nation clamored against the occupation. Its cost was enor- 
 mous in blood and treasure. America, sullen and vicious, and victor 
 in a gigantic war, looked across the Rio Grande with her hand upon 
 her sword. Diplomacy could do nothing against a million of men in 
 arms. It is probable that in this supreme moment Mr. Seward 
 revenged on France the degradation forced upon him by the Trent 
 affair, and used language so plain to the Imperial minister that all 
 ideas of further foothold or aggrandizement in the new world were 
 abandoned at once and for ever. 
 
 When Shelby arrived in.. Mexico the situation was peculiar. 
 Ostensibly Emperor, Maximilian had scarcely anymore real author- 
 ity than the Grand Chamberlain of his household. Bazaine was the 
 military autocrat. The mints, the mines and the custom houses 
 were in his possession. His soldiers occupied all the ports where 
 exporting and importing were done. Divided first into military 
 departments, and next into civil departments, a French general, or 
 colonel, or officer of the line of some grade, commanded each of the 
 first, and an Imperial Mexican of some kind, generally half Juar- 
 ista and half robber, commanded each of the last. For their allies 
 the French had a most supreme and sovereign contempt a contempt 
 as natural as it was undisguised. Conflicts, therefore, necessarily 
 occurred. Civil law, even in sections where civil law might have 
 been made beneficial, rarely ever lifted its head above the barricade 
 of bayonets, and its officers finding the French supreme in every- 
 thing, especially in their contempt surrendered whatever of dig- 
 nity or official appreciation belonged to them, and without resign- 
 ing or resisting, were content to plunder their friends or traffic with 
 the enemy. 
 
 Perhaps France had a reason or two for dealing thus harshly 
 with the civil administration of affairs. Maximilian was one of 
 the most unsuspecting and confiding of men. He actually believed 
 in Mexican faith and devotion in such things as Mexican patriot- 
 ism and love of peace and order. He would listen to their prom- 
 ises and become enthusiastic; to their plans and grow convinced; 
 to their oaths and their pledges, and take no thought for to-morrow, 
 when the oaths were to become false and the pledges violated. 
 France wished to arouse him from his unnatural dream of trusting 
 goodness and gentleness, and put in lieu of the fatal narcotic more 
 of iron and blood. 
 
 France had indeed scattered lives freely in Mexico. At first 
 England and Spain had joined with France in an invasion for cer- 
 tain feasible and specified purposes, none of which purposes, how- 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAK. 355 
 
 ever, were to establish an empire, enthrone a foreign prince, sup- 
 port him by a foreign army, seize possession of the whole Mexican 
 country, govern it as part or the royal possessions, make of it in 
 time, probably, a great menace, but certain whatever the future 
 might be to ruffle the feathers pretty roughly upon that winged 
 relation of the great American eagle, the Monroe Doctrine. 
 
 Before the occupation, however, Mexico was divided into two 
 parties that of the Liberals, led by Juarez, and that of the church, 
 its political management in the hands of the Archbishop, its mili- 
 tary management in the hands of Miramon. Comonfort, an Uto- 
 pian dreamer and Socialist, yet a liberal for all that, renounced the 
 presidency in 1858. Thereupon the Capital of the nation was seized 
 by the church party, Miramon at its head, and much wrong was 
 done to foreigners, so much wrong,,, indeed, that from it the alli- 
 ance sprung that was to sow all over the country a terrible crop of 
 armed men. 
 
 In 1861 England, France and Spain united to demand from 
 Mexico the payment of all claims owed by her, and to demand still 
 further and stronger some absolute guarantee against future murders 
 and spoliations. 
 
 England's demands were based upon the assertion that on the 
 16th day of November, 1860, Miramon unlawfully took from Eng- 
 lish residents one hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterling. This 
 money was in the house of the British Legation. The house was 
 attacked, stoned, fired into, some of its domestics killed and 
 wounded, and the Minister himself saved with difficulty. After- 
 ward, at Tacubaya, an outlying village of the capital, seventy-three 
 Englishmen were brutally murdered shot at midnight in a ditch, 
 and to appease, it is thought, a moment of savage superstition and 
 cruelty. To this day it is not known even in Mexico why Miramon 
 gave his consent to this horrid butchery. In other portions of the 
 country, and indeed in every portion of it where there were English- 
 men, they were insulted with impunity, robbed of their .possessions, 
 often imprisoned, sometimes murdered, and frequently driven forth 
 penniless from among their tormentors. 
 
 A treaty had been made in Paris, in 1859, between Spain and the 
 Church party, which provided for the payment of the Spanish 
 claims. This treaty was annulled when Juarez came into power, 
 and the refusal was peremptory to pay a single dollar to Spain. The 
 somewhat novel declaration was also made that the Republic of 
 Mexico owed to its own citizens about as much as it could pay, and 
 that when discriminations had to be made they should be made 
 against the foreigner. Spain became furiously indignant, and joined 
 in with England in the alliance. 
 
 France had also her grievances. A Swiss banker named Jecker, 
 who had been living in Mexico a few years prior to the Expedition of 
 
356 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO ; 
 
 the three great powers, had made a fortune high up among the mill- 
 ions. Miramon looked upon Jecker with awe and admiration, and 
 from friends the two men soon became to be partners. A decree 
 was issued by Miramon on the 29th of October, 1859, providing for 
 the issuance of three millions pounds sterling in bonds. These 
 bonds were to be taken for taxes and import duties, were to bear 
 six per cent, interest, and were to have the interest paid for five 
 years by the house of Jecker. As this was considerably above the 
 average life of the average Mexican Government, Miramon felt safe 
 in taking no thought of the interest after Jecker had paid for the 
 first five years. Certain regulations also provided that the holders 
 of these bonds might transfer them and receive in their stead 
 Jecker's bonds, paying a certain percentage for the privilege c f the 
 transfer. Jecker was to issue the bonds and to receive five per cent, 
 on the issue. He did not, however, consummate the arracgement 
 as the provisions of the decree required, and at his own suggestion 
 the contract was modified. At last the result narrowed itself down 
 to this: the Church part stood bound for three millions seven hun- 
 dred and twenty thousand pounds sterling, and Jecker found him- 
 self in a position where it was impossible to comply with his con- 
 tract. In May, 1860, his house suspended payment. His creditors 
 got the bonds, the Church party gave place to the Liberal party, 
 and then a general repudiation came. This party refused to 
 acknowledge any debt based upon the Miramon Jecker transaction, 
 just as it had refused to carry out the stipulations of a sovereign 
 treaty made with Spain. 
 
 The most of Jecker's creditors were Frenchmen, and France- 
 resolved to collect not only this debt, but claims to the amount of 
 twelve millions of dollars besides. Failing to obtain a peaceful set- 
 tlement, late in the year 1860, the French Minister left the Capital 
 after this significant speech : 
 
 " If there shall be a war between us it shall be a war of destruc- 
 tion." 
 
 And it was. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 THE three complaining powers England, France and Spain 
 met in London, October,186l, and agreed that each should send upon 
 the Expedition an equal naval force, and that the number of troops 
 to be furnished by each should be regulated accordiu ho to the num 
 her of subjects which the respective powers had in Mexico. It was 
 further expressed and stipulated that the intervention should only 
 be for the purpose of enforcing the payment of the claims assumed 
 to be due, and that in no particular was any movement to be made 
 looking to an occupation of the country. England, however, was 
 jdts satisfied with a portion of France's claim, and Spain coincided 
 with England. Notwithstanding this fact, however, a joint fleet 
 was sent to Vera Cruz, which reached its destination January 6, 
 1862. On the 7th, six thousand three hundred Spanish, two thou- 
 sand eight hundred French, and eight hundred English troops were 
 disembarked, and by a treaty made with Juarez at Soledad, and 
 signed February 19, 1862, these troops were permitted to leave the 
 fever marshes about Vera Cruz, and march to the glorious regions 
 about Orizava. 
 
 Orizava, on the National Road midway between Cordova and 
 Puebla, is a city whose climate and whose surroundings might recall 
 to any mind the Garden of Eden. Its skies are always blue, its air 
 is always balmy, its women are always beautiful, its fruit is always 
 ripe, and its sweet repose but rarely broken by the clamor of 
 marauding bands, or the graver warfare of more ferocious 
 revolutionists. 
 
 To admit the strangers into such a land, sick from the tossings 
 of the sea, and weak from the poison of the low lagoons, was worse 
 for Juarez than a pitched battle wherein the victory rested with the 
 invaders. Some of them at least would lay hands upon it for its 
 beauty alone, if other and more plausible reasons could not be 
 found. At an early day, however, the ambitious designs of Napo- 
 leon began to manifest themselves, There were some protests 
 made, some sharp correspondence had, not a few diplomatic quar- 
 rels indulged in, and at last, to cut a knot they could not untie, the 
 English and Spanish troops were ordered back peremptorily to 
 Vera Cruz, the two nations abandoning the alliance, and withdraw- 
 ing their forces entirely from the country. This left the French 
 alone and unsupported. The treaty of Soledad expired, and they 
 were ordered by Juarez to return to their original position. For 
 answer there was an immediate attack. 
 
 The city of Peublo, ninety miles north from Orizava, strong by 
 nature, had been still more strongly fortified, and was held by a 
 
358 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO ; 
 
 garrison of twenty thousand Liberals, under the command of Sara- 
 gosa, an ardent and impassioned young Mexican, as brave as he 
 was patriotic. General Lorencez, who commanded the French, 
 without waiting for reinforcements, and being destitute of a siege 
 train, dashed his two thousand soldiers against the ramparts of 
 Pueblo, and had them shattered and repulsed. The battle lasted a 
 whole day through, and thrice the Third Zouaves passed the ditch, 
 and thrice they were driven back. At nightfall a retreat was had, 
 and after sore marching and fighting Lorencez regained Orizava, for- 
 tifying in turn, and waiting as best he could for succor from France. 
 
 It came speedily in the shape of General Forey and twelve 
 thousand men. Pueblo was besieged and captured, and without 
 further resistance and without waiting to give Juarez time to repair 
 his losses, he hurried on to the City of Mexico, meeting everywhere 
 an enthusiastic reception from the Imperial Mexicans, who believed 
 that the work of subjugation had been finished. 
 
 What the French do is generally done quickly. On the 17th of 
 May, 1863, Pueblo surrendered; on the 13th of May Juarez evacu- 
 ated the Capital; on the 10th of June the French took possession, 
 and on the 16th General Forey issued a decree for the formation of 
 a provisional government. This new government assembled with 
 great solemnity on the 25th of June. On the 2d of July they pub- 
 lished an edict containing a list of two hundred and fifteen persons 
 who were declared to constitute the Assembly of Notables, intrusted 
 with the duty of providing a plan for a permanent government. 
 On the 8th of July this body was installed in the presence of the 
 French Commander-in-chief, and Count Dubois de Saligny, Minister 
 Plenipotentiary of France. A committee was next appointed to 
 draft a form of government, and on the 10th this committee sub- 
 mitted their plan to the Assembly, which was unanimously adopted. 
 
 These were its chief points': 
 
 1st The Mexican Nation adopts for its form of government a 
 limited, hereditary monarchy, with a Catholic Prince. 
 
 2d The Sovereign will take the title of Emperor of Mexico. 
 
 3d The Imperial Crown of Mexico is offered to His Imperial 
 Highness, Prince Fedinand Maximilian, Archduke of Austria, for 
 him and his descendants 
 
 4th In case of any circumstances impossible to foresee, tl 
 Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian should not take possession of tl 
 throne which is offered him, the Mexican Nation submits to th< 
 benevolence of Napoleon III., Emperor of the French, to indicate 
 to her another Catholic Prince. 
 
 And thus was that Government created which was so soon to i 
 in misery and tears. 
 
 It is not generally known, but it is true, however, that as carl: 
 as October 30, 1861, Maximilian was offered the throne of Mexu 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 359 
 
 and declined it. While expressing himself extremely grateful for 
 the confidence reposed in his wisdom and moderation, and for the 
 many sentiments of respect embraced in the letter containing the 
 offer, he declared that he would first have to be assured of the will 
 and co-operation of the country. And even when the French had 
 conquered and occupied every important place in the Empire, 
 and after the Assembly of Notables had created a government and 
 sent its deputation to notify Maximilian of his unanimous election 
 as Emperor, he still lingered as if unwilling to tempt the unknown. 
 Did some good angel come to him in dreams and whisper of the 
 future? Who knows? He at least deserved such a heavenly visit. 
 
 After he had accepted the second offer of the throne, and before 
 his departure from Miramar, Maximilian sent a special messenger 
 to Mexico, bearing a communication to Juarez, which was written 
 by Baron de Pont, his counselor. It was dated Bellevue Hotel, 
 Brussels, March 16, 1864, and contained propositions to the 
 effect that Maximilian did not wish to force himself upon the Mexi- 
 cans by the aid of foreign troopS, against the will of the people; 
 that he did not wish to change or make for them any political sys- 
 tem of government contrary to an express wish of a majority of 
 the Mexicans; that he wished the bearer of the letter to say to 
 President Juarez, that he, Maximilian, was willing to meet Presi- 
 dent Juarez in any convenient place, on Mexican soil, which Pres- 
 ident Juarez might designate, for the purpose of discussing the 
 affairs of Mexico, in an amicable manner; and that doubtless an 
 understanding and conclusion might be reached wholly in unison 
 with the will of the people. 
 
 The gentleman bearing the letter went to Mexico, saw Pres- 
 ident Juarez, stated his mission, and gave him a copy of the com- 
 munication. The President cooly answered that he could not con- 
 sent to any meeting with Maximilian. 
 
 This was in March. In April, 1864, the newly chosen Emperor 
 sailed away from Trieste, from his beautiful home by the blue 
 Medeterranean; from the Old World with its luxury and its art; from 
 a thousand memories fresh with the dawn of youth and sparkling 
 in the sunshine of happiness; from the broad aegis of an Empire 
 whose monarch he might have been; from a proud fleet created and 
 made formidable by his genius; from the tombs of his ancestors 
 and the graves of his kindred and for what ? To attempt an im- 
 possible thing. Instead of a civilized and Christian monarch, the 
 Mexicans needed missionaries. Instead of tfie graces and virtues of 
 European culture and education, the barbarians required grap-shot 
 and canister. Instead of plans for all kinds of improvements, for 
 works of usefulness and adornment, the destroying vandals could 
 be happy only with a despotism and the simple austerity of martial 
 law. Poor Austrian and poor Emperor ! Attempting to rule 
 
360 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO -MEXICO; 
 
 through justice and compassion, he seemed never to have known 
 that for the work of regeneration he needed one hundred thousand 
 foreign soldiers. 
 
 There can be no doubt of the enthusiasm with which Maximilian 
 and his beautiful Empress where greeted when they landed at Vera 
 Cruz. Indeed, from the sea to the great lakes about the Capital, it 
 was an ovation such as one seldom sees in a country where all is 
 treachery, stolidity, brutality and ignorance. The fires of a joyous 
 welcome that were lit at Vera Cruz blazed all along the route, and 
 flared up like a conflagration in Paso del Macho, in Cordova, in 
 Pueblo, smoking yet from the terrible bombardment, and on the 
 lone mountain Rio Frio where, looking away to the north, they 
 for the first time might have almost seen the great cathedral spire 
 of Mexico looming up through the mist that hoary and august pile, 
 as old as Cortez, and bearing high up, under the image of a saint, 
 Montezuma's sacrificial stone, having yet upon it the blood of the 
 foreigner. 
 
 The omen was unheeded. 
 
 When Shelby arrived in Mexico, Maximilian had been reigning 
 over a year. The French held all the country that was worth hold- 
 ing certainly all the cities, the large towns, the mining districts, 
 and the seaports. Besides the French troops, the Emperor had in 
 his service a corps of Imperial Mexicans, and a small body of Aus- 
 trian and Belgian auxiliaries. The first was capable of infinite 
 augmentation, but they were uncertain, unreliable, and apt at any 
 time to desert in a body to the Liberals. The last were slowly 
 wasting away being worn out as it were by sickness and severe 
 attrition. The treasury was empty. Brigandage, a plant of indig- 
 enous growth, still flourished and grew luxuriantly outside every 
 garrisoned town or city. The French could not root it up, although 
 the French shot everything upon which they got their hands that 
 looked a little wild or startled. No matter for a trial. The order 
 of an officer was as good as a decree from Bazaine. Thousands were 
 thus offered up as a propitiation to the god of good order many of 
 them innocent all of them shot without a hearing. 
 
 This displeased the Emperor greatly. His heart was really with 
 his Mexicans, and he sorrowed over a f usilade for a whole week 
 through. At times he remonstrated vigorously with Bazaine, but 
 the imperturbable Marshal listened patiently and signed the death 
 warrants as fast as they were presented. These futile discussions 
 at last ended in an estrangement, and while Maximilian was Em- 
 peror in name, Bazaine was Emperor in reality. 
 
 With a soldier's quickness and power of analysis, Shelby saw 
 and understood all these things and treasured them up against the 
 day of interview. This was speedily arranged by Commodore 
 Maury and General Magruder. Maximilian met him without cere- 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 361 
 
 mony, and with great sincerity and frankness. Marshal Bazaine 
 was present. Count de Noue, the son-in-law of General Harney, and 
 chief of Bazaine's civil staff, was the interpreter. The Emperor, 
 while understanding English, yet preferred to converse in French 
 and to hold all his intercourse with the Americans in that language. 
 
 Shelby laid his plans before him at once. These were to take 
 immediate service in his Empire, recruit a corps of forty thousand 
 Americans, supercede as far as possible the native troops in his* 
 army, consolidate the Government against the time of the withdrawal 
 of the French soldiers, encourage emigration in every possible man- 
 ner, develop the resources of the country, and hold it, until the 
 people became reconciled to the change, with a strong and well- 
 organized army. 
 
 Every proposition was faithfully rendered to the Emperor, who 
 merely bowed and inclined his head forward as if he would hear 
 more. 
 
 Shelby continued, in his straightforward, soldierly manner: 
 
 " It is only a question of time, Your Majesty, before the French 
 soldiers are withdrawn. " 
 
 Marshal Bazaine smiled a little sarcastically, it seemed, but said 
 nothing. 
 
 " Why do you think so? " inquired the Emperor. 
 
 " Because the war between the States is at an end, and Mr. Sew- 
 ard will insist on the rigorous enforcement of the Monroe Doctrine. 
 France does not desire a conflict with the United States. It would 
 neither be popular nor profitable. I left behind me a million men 
 in arms, not one of whom has yet been discharged from the service. 
 The nation is sore over this occupation, and the presence of the 
 French is a perpetual menance. I hope your Majesty will pardon 
 me, but in order to speak the truth it is necessary to speak 
 plainly." 
 
 "Go on," said the Emperor, greatly interested. 
 
 " The matter whereof I have spoken to you is perfectly feasible. 
 I have authority for saying that the American Government would not 
 be ad verse to the enlistment of as many soldiers in your army as 
 might wish to take service, and the number need only be limited by 
 the exigencies of the Empire. Thrown upon your own resources, 
 you would find no difliculty, I think, in establishing the most friendly 
 relations with the United States. In order to put yourself in a 
 position to do this, and in order to sustain yourself sufficiently long 
 to consolidate your occupation of Mexico and make your Govern- 
 ment a strong one, I think it absolutely necessary that you should 
 have a corps of foreign soldiers devoted to you personally, and relia- 
 ble in any emergency." 
 
 On being appealed to, Commodore Maury and General Magruder 
 sustained his view of the case, and Shelby continued; 
 
362 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO; 
 
 " I have under my command at present about 1,000 tried and 
 experienced troops. All of them have seen much severe and actual 
 service, and all of them are anxious to enlist in support of the 
 Empire. With your permission, and authorized in your name to 
 increase my forces, and in a few months all the promises given here 
 to day could be made good." 
 
 The Emperor still remained silent. It appeared as if Shelby was 
 an eoigma he was trying to make out one which interested him at 
 the same time that it puzzled him. In the habit of having full and 
 free conversations with Commodore Maury, and of reposing in him 
 the most unlimited confidence, he would look first at Shelby and 
 then at Maury, as if appealing from the blunt frankness of the one 
 to the polished sincerity and known sound judgment of the other. 
 Perhaps Marshal Bazaine knew better than any man at the inter view 
 how keenly incisive had been Shelby's analysis of the situation ; and 
 how absolutely certain were events, neither he nor his master could 
 control, to push the last of his soldiers beyond the ocean. At inter- 
 vals the calm, immobile face would flush a little, and once or twice 
 he folded and unfolded a printed despatch he held in his hands. 
 Beyond these evidences of attention, it was not known that Bazaine 
 was even listening. His own judgment was strongly in favor of the 
 employment of the Americans, and had the bargain been left to him, 
 the bargain would have been made before the end of the interview. 
 He was a soldier, and reasoned from a soldier's standpoint. Maxi- 
 milian was a Christian ruler, and shrank within himself, all his 
 nature in revolt, when the talk was of bloodshed and provinces held 
 by the bayonet. His mind was convinced from the first that Shelby's 
 policy was the best for him, and he leant to it as to something he 
 desired near him for support when the crisis came. He did not 
 embrace it, however, and make it part and parcel of his heart and 
 his affections. Therein began the descent that ended only at Quere- 
 taro. After the French left he had scarcely so much as a bundle of 
 reeds to rest upon. Those of his Austrians and Belgians spared by 
 pestilence and war died about him in dogged and desperate despair. 
 They did not care to die, only they knew they could do no good, and 
 as Lieutenant Karnak said, when speaking for all the little handful, 
 they saw the end plainer, perhaps, than any removed yet a stone's 
 throw further from the finale. 
 
 " This last charge will soon be over, boys, and there won't be 
 many of us killed, because there are so few of us to kill; but (and 
 he whispered it while the bugles were blowing) although we die 
 for our Emperor to-day, he will die for us to-morrow." 
 
 When the rally sounded Karnak's squadron of seventy came 
 back with six. Karnak was not among them. 
 
 The Emperor did not reply directly to Shelby. He rose up, beck- 
 oned De Noue to one side, spoke to him quietly and earnestly for some 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 363 
 
 brief moments, dismissed liis visitors pleasantly and withdrew. His 
 mind, however, it appears, had been made up from the first. He was 
 not willing to trust the Americans in an organization so large and so 
 complete an organization composed of forty thousand skilled and 
 veteran soldiers, commanded by officers of known valor, and anxious 
 for any enterprise, no matter how daring or desperate. Besides he 
 had other plans in view. 
 
 As De Noue passed out he spoke to Shelby: 
 
 "It's no use. The Emperor is firm on the point of diplomacy. 
 He means to try negotiation and correspondence with the United 
 States. He thinks Mr. Seward is favorably disposed toward him, 
 and that the spirit of the dominant party will not be adverse to his 
 experiment with the Mexicans. His sole desire is to give them a 
 good government, lenient yet restraining laws, and to develop the 
 country and educate the people. He believes that he can do this 
 with native troops, and that it will be greatly to the interest of the 
 American Government to recognize him, and to cultivate with him 
 the most friendly relations. At any rate," and De Noue lowered 
 his voice, " at any rate, His Majesty is an enthusiast, and you know 
 that an enthusiast reasons ever from the heart instead of the head. 
 He will not succeed. He does not understand the people over whom 
 he rules, nor any of the dangers which beset him. You know he 
 once governed in Lombardy and Yenitia, when they were Austrian 
 provinces, and he made so many friends there for a young prince 
 that he might well suppose he had some divine right to reign suc- 
 cessfully. There is no similarity, however, between the two posi- 
 tions. A powerful army was behind him when he was in Italy, 
 and a singularly ferocious campaign, wherein the old Austrian, 
 Marshal Radetsky, manifested all the fire and vigorof his youth, had 
 crushed Italian resistance to the earth. It was the season for the 
 physician and the peace-maker, and the Emperor came in with his 
 salves and his healing ointments. Singularly fitted for the part he 
 had been called upon to perform, he won the hearts of all with 
 whom he came in contact, and left at last universally loved and 
 regretted. It is no use I say again, General, the Emperor will not 
 give you employment." 
 
 " I knew it," replied Shelby. 
 
 "How?" and DeNoue shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 " From his countenance. Not once could I bring the blood to 
 his calm benignant face. He has faith, but no enthusiasm, and 
 enthusiasm such as he needs would be but another name for audacity. 
 I say to you in all frankness, Count De Koue .Maximilian will 
 fail in his diplomacy." 
 
 "Your reasons, General." 
 
 " Because he will not have time to work the problem out. I 
 have traveled slowly and in my own fashion from Predras Negras to 
 
364 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO; 
 
 the City of Mexico traveled by easy stages when the need was, and 
 by forced marches when the need was, fighting a little at times and 
 resting a little at ease at times, but always on guard, and watching 
 upon the right hand, and upon the left. Save the ground held by 
 your cantonments and your garrisons, and the ground your cannon 
 can hold in range, and your cavalry can patrol and scour, you have 
 not one foot in sympathy with you, with the Emperor, with the 
 Empire, with anything that promises to be respectable in govern- 
 ment or reliable in administration. Juraez lives as surely in the 
 hearts of the people as the snow is eternal on the brow of Popocat- 
 apetl, and ere an answer could come from Seward to the Emperor's 
 Minister of State, the Emperor will have no Minister of State. 
 That's all, Count. I thank you very much for your kind offices 
 to-day, and would have given a good account of my Americans if 
 king-craft had seen the wisdom of their employment. I must go 
 back to my men now, They expect me early." 
 
 Thus terminated an interview that had more of destiny in it, 
 perhaps, than the seeming indifference and disinclination to talk on 
 the part of the Emperor might indicate. The future settled the 
 question of policy that alone kept the ruler and his subject apart. 
 When the struggle came that Shelby had so plainly and bluntly 
 depicted, Maximilian was in the midst of eight million of savages, 
 without an army, with scarcely a guard, with none upon whom 
 he could rely, abandoned, deserted and betrayed. Was it any 
 wonder, therefore, that the end of the Empire should be the dead 
 wall at Queretaro ? 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 THE annunciation of Maximilian's emphatic resolution bore 
 heavily upon the Americans for some brief hours, and they 
 gathered about their barracks in squads and groups to talk over the 
 matter as philosophers and look the future full in the face like men. 
 A soldier is most generally a fatalist. Some few of them have 
 presentiments, and some that abounding reverence for the Script- 
 ures that makes them Christians even in the vengeful passions of 
 pursuit; but to the masses rarely ever comes any thought of the 
 invisible, any care for what lies out of sight, and out of reach, 
 and under the shadows of the sunset world. Sufficient unto the day 
 is indeed for them the evil thereof. 
 
 These Americans, however, of Shelby's had moralized much 
 about the future, and had dreamed, it may be, many useless and 
 unprofitable dreams about the conquests that were to give to tlurr a 
 home, a flag, a country a portion of a new land filled full of the 
 richness of the mines and the tropics. And many times in dream- 
 ing these dreams they went hungry for bread. Silver had become 
 almost invisible of late, and if all the purses of the men had been 
 emptied into the lap of a woman, the dollars that might have been 
 gathered up would scarcely have paid the price of a bridal veil. 
 Still they were cheerful. When every other resource failed, they 
 knew they were in aland of robbers, and that for horses and arms 
 none surpassed them in all the Empire. Hence when Shelby called 
 them around him after his interview with the Emperor, it was with 
 something of apathy, or at least of indifference that they listened to 
 his report. 
 
 "We are not wanted, "he commenced, "and perhaps it is best so. 
 Those who have fought as you have for a principle have nothing 
 more to gain in a war for occupation or conquest. Our neccessities 
 aregrievious, it is true, and there is no work for us in the line of our 
 profession; but to-day, as upon the first day I took command of you, 
 I stand ready to abide your decision in the matter of our destiny. 
 If you say we shall march to the headquarters of Juarez, then we 
 shall march, although all of you will bear me witness that at Pie- 
 dras Negras I counseled immediate and earnest service in his gov- 
 ernment. You refused then as you will refuse to-day. Why? 
 Because you are all Imperialists at heart just as I am, and because, 
 poor simpletons, you imagined that France and the United States 
 might come to blows at last. Bah! the day for that has gone by. 
 Louis Napoleon slept too long. The only foreigner who ever under- 
 stood our war, who ever looked across the ocean with anything of 
 
 365 
 
366 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO; 
 
 a prophet's vision, who ever said yes when he meant yes and no 
 when he said no, was Palmerston, and he was an Abolitionist 
 per se. " 
 
 Here Shelby checked himself suddenly. The old ironical fit 
 had taken possession of him, one which always came on him on 
 the eve of the battle or the morning of the conflict. 
 
 " I find myself quoting Latin when I do not even understand 
 Spanish. How many of you know enough Spanish to get you a 
 Spanish wife with an acre of bread fruit, twenty -five tobacco plants 
 and a handful of corn? We can not starve, boys." 
 
 The men laughed long and loud. They had been gloomy at 
 first and a little resolved, some of them, to take to the highway. As 
 poor as the poorest there, Shelby came among them with his badi- 
 nage and his laughter, and in an hour the forces of the expedition 
 were as a happy family again. Plans for the future were presented, 
 discussed and abandoned. Perhaps there would be no longer any 
 further unity of action. A great cohesive power had been sud- 
 denly taken away, and there was danger of the band breaking up 
 a band that had been winnowed in the fierce winds of battle, and 
 made to act as with one impulse, by the iron influences of discipline 
 and disaster. Many came solely for the service they expected to 
 take. If they had tot dig in the ground, or suffer chances in the 
 raising of cotton or corn, they preferred to do it where it was not 
 necessary to plow by day and stand guard over the mules and oxen 
 at night to get a bed at the end of the furrows instead of a fusilade. 
 
 To do anything, however, or to move in any direction, it was 
 necessary first to have a little money. Governor Reynolds, with 
 the same zeal and devotion that had always characterized his efforts 
 in behalf of Missourians during the war in his own country, sought 
 now to obtain a little favor for the men at the hands of Marshal 
 Bazaine. In conjunction with General Magruder, he sought an 
 interview with the Marshal and represented to him that at Parras 
 the Expedition had been turned from its original course, and forced 
 to march into the interior by his own positive orders. This move- 
 ment necessarily cut it off from all communication with friends 
 at home, and rendered it impossible for those who composed it to 
 receive either letters or supplies. Had it been otherwise, and had 
 the march to the Pacific been permitted, in conformity with the 
 original intention, access to California was easy, and the trips of the 
 incoming and outgoing steamers to and from Guaymasand Mazatlan 
 regular and reliable. In their view, therefore, the Marshal, they 
 thought, should at least take the matter under consideration, and 
 act in the premises as one soldier should in dealing with another 
 
 Bazaine was generous to extravagance, as most French officers 
 are who hold power in their hands, and whose whole lives have 
 been spent in barrack and field. He took from his military chest 
 
 a 
 
 ; 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OP THE WAR. 367 
 
 fifty dollars apiece for the men and officers, share and share alike, 
 and this amount came to each as a rain to a field that the sun is 
 parching. It put into their hands in a moment, as it were, the 
 choosing of their own destiny. Thereafter every man went the 
 way that suited him best. 
 
 Commodore Maury had, several months before, been made 
 Imperial Commissioner of Emigration, and was at work upon his 
 duties with the ambition of a sailor and the intelligence of a savant. 
 All NYho came in contact with him loved the simple, frugal, gentle 
 Christian of the spiritual church and the church militant. Some 
 of his family were with him. His son was there, Col. Richard 
 H. Maury, and his son's wife, and other Americans who had fami- 
 lies, and who were at work in his office. These formed a little 
 society of themselves a light, as it were, in the night of the 
 exiles. The Commodore gave the entire energies of his massive 
 mind to the work before him. He knew well the exhausted and 
 discontented condition of the South, and he believed that a large 
 emigration could be secured with but little exertion. He dispatched 
 agents to the United States charged with the duty of representing 
 properly the advantages and resources of the country, and of lay- 
 ing before the people the exact condition of Mexican affairs. This 
 some of them did in a most satisfactory manner, and as a result a 
 great excitement arose. By one mail from New York he received 
 over seven hundred letters asking for circulars descriptive of the 
 country, and of the way to reach it. 
 
 Maury's renown had filled the old world as well as the new. His 
 "Physical Geography of the Sea" saw itself adorned in the graces of 
 eleven separate languages. It also brought him fame, medals, 
 crosses, broad ribbons of appreciation and purses well filled with 
 gold, these last being the offerings sea captains and shippers made 
 to the genius who laid his hand upon the ocean as upon a slate, 
 and traced thereon the routes that the winds favored, and the 
 routes that had in ambush upon them shipwreck and disaster. His 
 calm, benevolent face, set in a framework of iron gray hair, was 
 one which the women and the children loved a picture that had 
 over it the aureole of a saint. No gentler man ever broke bread at 
 the table of a court. Much of the crispness and the sparkle of the 
 salt water ran through his conversation. He was epigrammatic to 
 a degree only attained on board a man-of-war. His mind had the 
 logic of instinct. He divined while other men delved. Always a 
 student, the brilliance of his imagination required at his hands the 
 most constant curbing. Who that has read that book of all sea 
 books has forgotten his reference to the gulf stream when he says: 
 "There is a river in the midst of the ocean." Destiny gave him a 
 long life that he might combat against the treachery of the sea. 
 When he died he was a conqueror. 
 
368 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO ; 
 
 General Magmder was the Imperial Commissioner of the Land 
 Office, and he, too, had gathered his family around him, and taken 
 into his service other Americans weary of degradation at home, and 
 exiles in a land that might to-day have been Maximilian's. Magru- 
 der had once before entered Mexico as a conqueror. All its ways 
 and its moods were known to him, and often in the sunshiny 
 weather, when the blue air blessed the glad earth with its blessings 
 of freshness and fragrance, those who were dreaming of the past 
 followed him hour after hour about Chepultepec, and over the 
 broken way of Cerro Gordo, and in amid the ruins of Molino de- 
 Rey, and there where the Belen gate stood yet in ghastly and scat- 
 tered fragments, and yonder in its pedregraland under the shadow 
 of Huasco, about the crest of Churubusco, green now in the gar- 
 ments of summer, and asleep so peacefully in the arms of the sun- 
 set that the younger loiterers think the old man strange when he 
 tells of the storm and the massacre, the wounded that were bayo- 
 neted and the dead that were butchered after all life had fled. There 
 are no specters there, and no graves among the ruins, and no 
 splotches as of blood upon the velvet leaves. Yes, surely the old rn#n 
 wanders, for but yesterday, it seems to them, the battle was fought. 
 
 Soldiers never repine. Destiny with them has a name which is 
 called April. One day it is gracious in sunshiny things, and the 
 next ruinous with rainstorms and cloudy weather. As it comes 
 they take it, laughing always and at peace with the world and the 
 things of the world. Some faces lengthened, it may be, and some 
 hopes fell in the hey-day and the morning of their life, when Shelby 
 told briefly the story of the interview, but beyond the expressions of 
 a certain vague regret, no man went. Another separation was near 
 at hand, one which, forthemost of them there, would be the last and 
 irrevocable. 
 
 In the vicinity of Cordova there was a large extent of unculti- 
 vated land which had once belonged to the church, and which had 
 been rudely and unscrupulously confiscated by Juarez. When 
 Maximilian came into possession of the Government, it was confi- 
 dently believed that he would restore to the church its revenues and 
 territory, and more especially that portion of the ecclesiastical 
 domain so eminently valuable as that about Cordova. It embraced, 
 probably, some half a million acres of cotton and sugar and coffee 
 land, well watered, and lying directly upon the great national road 
 from Vera Cruz to the Capital, and upon the Mexican Imperial Rail- 
 way, then finished, to Paso del Macho, twenty-five miles southward 
 from Cordova. 
 
 Maximilian, however, confirmed the decree of confiscation issued 
 by Juarez, and set all this land apart for the benefit of Ameri( 
 emigrants who, as actual settlers, desired to locate upon it an< 
 begin at once the work of cultivation. Men having familit 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAP OF THE WAR. 359 
 
 'received six hundred and forty acres of land, at the stipulated 
 price of one dollar and a quarter per acre, and men without 
 families three hundred and twenty acres at the same price. Com- 
 missioner Maury, remembering his schooling and the experience of 
 his Washington days when he ruled the National Observatory so 
 much to the glory of his country and the honor of science : adopted 
 the American plan of division, and thereby secured the establish- 
 ment of a system that was as familiar to the new comers as it was 
 satisfactory. 
 
 Many settlers arrived and went at once to the colony, which 
 in honor of the most perfect woman of the nineteenth century, was 
 named Carlota. A village sprung up almost in a night The men 
 were happy and sung at their toil. Birds of beautiful plumage flew 
 ;nearand nearer to them while they plowed, and in the heat of the 
 afternoons they reposed for comfort under orange trees that were 
 white with bloom and golden with fruit at the same time. So ira- 
 ;patient is life in that tropical land that there is no death. . Before 
 it is night over the eyes the sun again has peopled all the groves 
 with melody and perfume. The village had begun to put on the 
 garments of a town. Emigration increased. The fame of Carlota 
 went abroad, and what had before appeared only a thin stream of 
 'settlers, now took the form of an inundation. 
 
 Shelby told his men all he knew about Carlota, and advised them 
 briefly to pre-empt the legal quantity of land and give up at once any 
 further idea of service in the ranks of Maximilian's army. Many 
 'accepted his advice-and entered at once and heartily upon the duties 
 of this new life. Others, unwilling to remain in the Empire as 
 colonists, received permission from Bazaiue to march to the Pacific. 
 On the long and dangerous road some died, some were kilted, and 
 eome took shipping for California, for China, for Japan, and for 
 the Sandwich Islands. A few, hearing wonderful stories of the 
 treasures Kidd, the pirate, had buried on an island in the Pacific 
 Ocean, got aboard a schooner at Mazatlan and sailed away in quest 
 of gold. Those that survived the adventure returned starving, and 
 for bread joined the Imperial army in Sonora. Perhaps fifty took 
 service in the Third Zouaves. A singular incident determined the 
 regiment of their choice. After authority had been received from 
 the Marshal for the enlistment, a dozen or more strolled into the 
 Almeda where, of evenings the bands played and the soldiers of all 
 arms promenaded. In each corps a certain standard of height had to 
 be complied with. The grenadiers had need to be six feet, the 
 artillery men six feet and an inch, the cuirassiers six feet, and the 
 hussars six feet. Not all being of the same stature, and, not wishing 
 to be separated, the choice of the Americans was reduced to the 
 infantry regiments. It is further obligatory in the French service, 
 that when soldiers are on duty, the private in addressing an officer 
 
370 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO; 
 
 shall remove his cap and remain with it in his hand until the con- 
 versation is finished. This was a species of discipline the Americans 
 had never learned, and they stood watching the various groups as 
 they passed to and fro, complying scrupulously with the regulations 
 of the service. At last a squad of Zouaves sauntered nonchalantly 
 by great bearded, medaled fellows, bronzed by African suns and 
 swarthy of brow and cheek as any Arab of the desert. The pictur- 
 esque uniform attracted all eyes. It was war dramatized it was 
 campaigning expressed in poetry. An officer called to one of the 
 Zouaves, and he went forward saluting. This was done by bringing 
 the right hand up against the turban, with the palm extended in 
 token of respect, but the turban itself was not removed. The sub- 
 ordinate did not uncover to his superior, and therefore would the 
 Americans put on turbans, and make Zouaves of themselves. Cap- 
 tain Pierron, more of an American than a Frenchman, supervised 
 the metamorphosis, and when the toilette was complete even Shelby 
 hiinseif, with his accurate cavalry eyes, scarcely recognized his old 
 Confederates of the four years' war. At daylight the next morning 
 they were marching away to Monterey at the double quick. 
 
 General Sterling Price, of Missouri, with a remnant of his body 
 guard and a few personal friends, built himself a bamboo house in 
 the town of Carlota, and commenced in good earnest the life of a 
 farmer. Emigration was active now both from Texas overland and 
 by water from the gulf. General Slaughter and Captain Price 
 established a large saw-mill at Orizava. General Bee engaged 
 extensively in the raising of cotton, as, also did Cap- 
 tains Cundiff and Hodge. General Hindman, having mas- 
 tered the Spanish language in the short space of three months, com- 
 menced the practice of law in Cordova. General Stevens, the chief 
 engineer of General Lee's staff, was made chief engineer of the 
 Mexican Imperial Railway. Governor Reynolds was appointed 
 superintendent of two short-line railroads running out from the 
 city. General Shelby and Major McMurty, with headquarters at 
 Cordova, became large freight contractors, and established a line 
 of wagons from Paso del Macho to the Capital. Ex-Governor 
 Allen, of Louisiana, assisted by the Emperor, founded the Mexican 
 Times, a paper printed in English, and devoted to the interests of 
 colonization. Generals Lyon, of Kentucky, and McCausland, of 
 Virginia, were appointed Government surveyors. General Wat- 
 kins was taken into the diplomatic service, and sent to Washington 
 on a special mission. Everywhere the Americans were honored 
 and promoted, but the army, to any considerable number of them, 
 was as a sealed book. Where they could have done the most good 
 they were forbidden to enter. 
 
 To the superficial observer the conditon of affairs in Mexico in 
 the latter part of the year 1865 seemed most favorable, indeed, to 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OP THE WAR. 871 
 
 the ultimate and successful establishment of the Empire. The 
 French troops occupied the entire country. M Lauglais, one of 
 Napoleon's most favored ministers, had charge of the finances. 
 Under his experienced hands order was rapidly lifting itself above 
 the waves of chaos. The Church party, always jealous and suspi- 
 cious, still yielded a kind of sullen and ungracious allegiance. Max- 
 imilian was a devout Catholic, and his Empress was a devotee in all 
 spiritual matters, but theirs was the enlightened Catholicism of 
 Europe, which preferred to march with events and to develop 
 instead of attempting to thwart and retard the inevitable advance 
 of destiny. They desired to throw off the superstition of a century 
 of ignorance and degradation and let a flood of light pour itself over 
 the nation. An impoverished people had not only mortgaged their 
 lands to the clergy but their labor as well. The revenues were 
 divided equally between the bishops and the commandantes of the 
 districts. Among the Indians the influence of the monks was 
 supreme. In their hands at any hour was peace or war. They 
 began by asserting their right to control the Emperor, they ended 
 in undisguised and open revolt. Desiring above all things the con- 
 fidence and support of the church, Maximilian found himself sud- 
 denly in an unfortunate and embarrassing position. He was be- 
 tween two fires as it were, either of which was most formidable, 
 and in avoiding the one he only made the accuracy of the other all 
 the more deadly. Without the revenue derived from the seques- 
 trated lands the church had owned in enormous quantities, he could 
 not for a month have paid the expenses of his Government. Had he 
 believed a restoration advisable he would have found it simply im- 
 possible. The ArchBishop was inexorable. Excommunication 
 was threatened. For weeks and weeks there were conferences and 
 attempted compromises. Bazaine, never very punctual in his relig- 
 ous duties, and over apt to cut knots that he could not untie, had 
 always the same ultimatum. 
 
 -"Our necessities are great," he would say, "and we must have 
 money. You do not cultivate your lands, and will not sell them, 
 you are opposed to railroads, to emigration, to public improve- 
 ments, to education, to a new life of any kind, form or fashion, 
 and w,e must advance somehow and build up as we go. Not a foot 
 shall ibe returned while a French soldier can shoot a chassapot." 
 
 The blunt logic of the soldier bruised while it wounded. Maxi- 
 milian, more conservative, tried entreaties and expostulations 
 but with the same effect. A breach had been opened up which was 
 to increase in width and destruction until the whole fabric fell in 
 ruins. When in his direst extremity, the Emperor was abandoned 
 by the party which of all others had the most to lose and expiate 
 by his overthrow. 
 
CHAPTER XX. 
 
 THE Empress Charlotte was a woman who had been twice 
 crowned once with a crown of gold, earthly and perishable, and 
 once with a crown of beauty as radiant as the morning. When she 
 arrived in Mexico, this beauty, then in its youthful splendor, 
 dazzled all beholders. Her dark auburn hair was heavy, long and 
 silken. Her eyes were of that lustrous brown which were blue and 
 dreamy at times, and at times full of a clear, penetrating light that 
 revealed a thought almost before the thought was uttered. Her 
 face was oval, although the forehead a little high and projecting, 
 was united at the temples by those fine curves which give so much 
 delicacy and expression to the soul of women. Her mouth was 
 large and firm, and her teeth were of the most perfect whiteness. 
 About the lower face there were those lines of firmness which told 
 of unbending will and great moral force and decision of character. 
 Beneath the dignity of the Queen, however, she carried the ardor 
 and the joyfulness of a school girl. He nose was acquiline, the 
 nostrils open and slightly projecting, recording, as if upon a page, 
 the emotions of her heart, and the dauntless courage which filled 
 her whole being. At times her beautiful face wore an expression 
 impossible to describe an expression made up of smiles, divinations 
 questionings, the extreme and blended loveliness of the ideal ai 
 the real the calmness and gravity which became the Queen- 
 the softness and pensiveness which bespoke the woman. 
 
 The gallery that contained the portrait of Maximilian would 
 incomplete without that of his devoted and heroic wife. She was 
 descendant of Henry IV. of France, the hero of Ivry, a ruler 
 in goodness and greatness to Louis IX, and the victim of the fan* 
 ical assassin Ravaillac. Her father was Leopold I., of Belgiui 
 one of the wisest and most enlightened monarchs of Europe. 
 Englishman by naturalization, he married the Princess Chariot! 
 Augusta, daughter of George IV., the 2d of May, 1816. Hi 
 English wife dying in childbirth, in 1817, Leopold again marri( 
 in 1832, uniting himself with Louise Maria Theresa Charlotte Isi 
 bella de Orleans, daughter of Louis Philippe, King of France, 
 this marriage was the Empress Carlota born on the 7th of June 
 1840, and who received at her christening the names of Maria Chai 
 lotte Amelia Auguste Victoire Clementine Leopoldino. Her fathe 
 was called the Nestor of Kings, and her mother the Hob 
 Queen, such being her charity, her purity and her religious devotior 
 The first died in 1865, while the Empress was in Mexico, and tl 
 last in 1850. At the time when she most needed the watchfulnt 
 
 312 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 373 
 
 and advice of a father, she was suddenly bereft of both his support 
 and his protection. 
 
 No monarch on earth ever had a more ambitious and devoted 
 consort. The daughter of a king, and reared amid thrones and the 
 intense personal loyalty of European subjects, she believed an 
 empire might be established in the West greater than any ever 
 founded, after long years of battle and statecraft, and she entered 
 upon the struggle with all the impassioned ardor of her singularly 
 hopeful and confiding nature. Her unrivaled beauty won the 
 enthusiasm of cities, and her unostentatious and Christian charity 
 erected for her a throne in the hearts of the suffering and unfortnate. 
 When the yellow fever was at its height in Vera Cruz, and when all 
 who were wealthy and well-to-do had fled to the higher and healthier 
 uplands, she journeyed almost alone to the stricken seaport, visited 
 the hospitals, ministered unto the plague-stricken, ordered physi- 
 cians from the fleet, encouraged the timid, inspired the brave, paid 
 for masses for the dead, and came away wan and weary, but safe 
 and heaven-guarded. The fever touched not even the hem of her 
 garments. Fate, that sent the east wind and the epidemic, may, 
 like the stricken sufferers, have thought her an angel. 
 
 There were pestilence and famine and insurrection in Yucatan. 
 The Indians there, naturally warlike and enterprising, rose upon 
 the Government and cast off its authority. Tribes revolted and 
 warred with one another. The French, holding the large towns, 
 fortified and looked on in sullen apathy, sallying out at times to 
 decimate a province or lay waste a farming district. In a few weeks 
 the insurrection would be civil war. It was decreed in council that 
 the Emperor's presence was needed in Yucatan. His affairs at 
 home, however, were not promising, and he tarried a little to 
 arrange them better before leaving. Of a sudden the Empress 
 besought leave to go in his stead. It was refused. She persevered 
 day 'after day, and would not be denied. Inspired with more than 
 a woman's faith, and heroic in all the grandeur of accepted sacrifice, 
 she made the perilous journey, taking with her only an escort and a 
 confessor. Her arrival at Merida was like a coronation. All the 
 State arose to do her homage. She went among the tribes and 
 pacified them. She redressed their wrongs, brought back the 
 rebellious leaders to a strict allegiance, cast herself into the midst of 
 pestilence, opened the churches, recalled the proscribed and 
 scattered priests, and came away again an angel. Unto the end the 
 faith she founded in her husband's empire remained unshaken. 
 After Queretaro, Yucatan relapsed into barbarism. 
 
 The year 1865 was spent by the iEmperor and Marshal Bazaine in 
 vigorous attempts to pacify the country and consolidate its power. 
 The Liberal cause seemed hopeless. Nowhere did Juarez hold a sea- 
 port, an outlying mine, a foot of grain-growing territory, a ship, an 
 
374 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO ; 
 
 arsenal, a field large enough to encamp an army. Yet he held on. 
 That sluggish, tenacious, ferocious Indian nature of his was aroused 
 at last, and while he starved he schemed. A sudden dash of cavalry 
 upon his winter quarters at El Paso drove him into the United 
 States. He went to San Antonio a fugitive President without a 
 dollar or a regiment, and waited patiently until the force of the 
 blow had spent itself. As the French retired he advanced. Scarcely 
 had his adieu been forgotten in El Paso when his good day greeted 
 its good people again. Everywhere, also, were his guerrillas at 
 work. Once in a speech upon the annexation of San Domingo,^ 
 Carl Schurz exclaimed: "Beware of the tropics." And why? 
 Because the tropics breed guerrillas. They do not die in war times. 
 Malaria does not kill them. To eradicate them it is first necessary 
 to find and to capture them. They can not be found and fought. All 
 nature is in league with them the heat, the bread-fruit, the bananas, 
 the orange-groves, the zepotas, the mangos, the coco-nuts, the mon- 
 keys. These last sentinels through imitation, chatter volubly at thfc 
 pursuers and cry out in soldier fashion and in words of warning : 
 " Quien vivef" Wherever the Spanish blood is found there is found 
 also an obstinacy of purpose impossible to subdue a singularly 
 ferocious and untamable resolution that dies only with annihilation. 
 It will never make peace, never cease from the trail, never let go 
 its hold upon the roads, never spare a captive, never yield a life to 
 mercy, never forgive the ruler who would rule as a Christian and 
 make humanity the law of the land. 
 
 All the following that Juarez had now was one of guerrillas. 
 Porfino Diaz lived by his wits and his prestamos . Escobedo, con- 
 stitutionally a coward and nationally a robber, preyed alone upon 
 his friends. Try how they would, the French found him always a 
 runaway or a thief. Negrete, with six thousand blanketed ladroncs, 
 abandoned a captured train and fled as a stampeded buffalo herd 
 before a battalion of Zouaves. Lozado preserved in the mountains 
 c f Nayarit an armed neutrality. Corona, in the delightful posses- 
 sion of his beautiful American wife, sat himself down in Sonora 
 and waited for the tide to turn. For his country he never so much 
 as lifted his hand. Cortina prayed to the good Lord and the good 
 devil, and went alternately to mass and the monte bank. 
 
 They all held on, however. An unorganized commune the goods 
 of other people were their goods, the money of other people was 
 their money. As long as the rains fell, the crops matured, the cat- 
 tle kept clear of the murrain, and bread-fruit got ripe, and the mag- 
 uey made mescal, they were safe from pestilence or famine. The 
 days with them meant so many belly fulls of tortillas and frijoles. 
 
 With the French it is different. Red tape has a dynasty of its 
 own a caste, a throne, an army of field and staff officers. Each 
 day represented so many rations, so many bottles of wine, so many 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 375 
 
 ounces of tobacco, so many cigars, so much soup and bread and 
 meat. Failing in any of these, red tape stepped in with its money 
 commutation in lieu of rations. Then for each decoration there 
 was an annuity. Some Zouaves drew more pay than generals of 
 brigade. The Malakoff medal so much, the Inkermann medal so 
 much, the Chinese Emperor's Palace medal so much, the Fort Con- 
 stantine medal so much, the Magenta and Solferino medals so much, 
 the Pueblo medal so much, and so much for all the rest of the medals 
 these many laureled and magnificent soldiers wore. When they 
 . were paid off they had monthly a saturnalia, 
 
 To make both ends meet, Napoleon's great finance minister, 
 Langlais loaned as an especial favor to Maximilian did the work 
 of a giant. One day he died . Apoplexy, that ally and avenger of the 
 best-abused brain, laid hands on him between the Palace of Chepul- 
 tepec and the office of the treasury. In two hours he was dead. 
 All that he had done died with him. Of his financial fabric, reared 
 after so many nights of torture and trouble, there was left scarcely 
 enough of pillar or post to drape with mourning for the single- 
 minded, sincere and gifted architect. In the dearth of specie the 
 church was called upon. The church had no money, at least none 
 for the despoiler of its revenues and the colonizer of its lands. 
 Excommunication was again threatened, and thus over the thresh- 
 hold of the altar as well as the treasury, there crept the appalling 
 shadow of bankruptcy. 
 
 Bazaine threatened, the Emperor prayed, the Empress threw 
 into the scale all her private fortune at her command. Outside the 
 cabinet walls, however, everything appeared fair. Brilliant reviews 
 made the capital gorgeous and enchanting. There were operas, and 
 fetes, and bull-fights, and great games of monte in the public square, 
 and duels at intervals, and one unbroken tide of French successes 
 everywhere. Napoleon sent over in the supreme agony of the crisis 
 two shirj loads of specie, and there was a brief breathing time again. 
 Meanwhile they would see, for when it is darkest it is the nearest 
 to the morning. 
 
 Inez Walker, the rescued maiden of Encarnacion, was too 
 beautiful to have been lightly forgotten. Free once more, and with 
 the terrors of that terrible night attack all gone from her eager eyes, 
 she had continued with the Expedition to the capital, courteously 
 attended each day by an escort of honor furnished as regularly as 
 the guards were furnished. 
 
 In the City of Mexico, at the time of her arrival, there was an 
 American woman who had married a Prussian prince, and who was 
 known as the Princess Salm Salm. Once when she was younger, 
 she had ridden in a circus, several of them, and as Miss Agnes 
 Le Clerc was noted for her accomplished equestrianism, her magnifi- 
 cent physique, a beauty that was dark and over-bold, a devil-may- 
 
376 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO ; 
 
 care abandon which won well with those who sat low by the foot- 
 lights and felt the glamour of the whirling music and the red flames, 
 that flashed on golden and gaudy trappings of acrobat or actor. 
 
 Miss Le Clere had met the Prussian in Mobile after the American 
 war was over. The Prince had been a Federal General of brigade 
 whose reputation was none of the best for soldierly deeds, although 
 it is not recorded that he either shunned or shirked a fight. Still he: 
 was not what these parvenu Americans of ours think a prince should 
 be he did not clothe himself in silver, or gold, in purple or fine, 
 linen, and conquer armies as Rarey might have conquered a horse. 
 There were some stories told, too, of unnecessary cruelty to prison- 
 ers whom the fortunes of war cast upon his hands helpless, but 
 these did not follow him into Mexico with his American wife, who 
 had married him in Mobile, and who had got thus far on her way in 
 search of a coronet. 
 
 She was told the history of Inez Walker, and she was a brave, 
 sympathetic, tender-hearted woman, who loved her sex as all women 
 do whom the world looks upon as having already unsexed them- 
 selves. They became fast friends speedily, and were much together 
 at the opera and upon the passeo during those last brief yet brilliant 
 days of the Empire. 
 
 The Prince Salm Salm was on duty with a brigade at Apam, in 
 the mountains toward Tampico. Guerrillas had been at work 
 there lately, a little more savage than usual, and Bazaine sent for- 
 ward Salm Salm to shoot such as he could lay hands upon and dis- 
 perse those that could not be caught. He acted with but little of" 
 energy, and with scarcely anything of ambition. He was recalled 
 finally, but not until his wife had been grossly insulted and a Con-, 
 federate had avenged her. 
 
 One day, in &cafe, several groups of Belgian officers were at the 
 tables sipping their wine, and jesting and talking of much that was 
 bad and useless. At other places there were Austrians and French, 
 and a few Spaniards, who even then were beginning to avoid the 
 foreigners, and a single American, who was sitting alone and at his. 
 leisure. 
 
 Dr. Hazel was a young physician from South Carolina, who. 
 had gone through the siege of Sumter with a devotion and a con- 
 stancy that had found their way into general orders, and that had 
 returned in the shape of a rain more precious to a soldier than sun- 
 light to flowers the rain of official recognition. In addition to the 
 compliments received he was promoted. As he sipped his claret,, 
 several ladies entered, some attended and some unattended. French, 
 custom makes a cafe as cosmopolitan as the street All sexes con- 
 gregate there, and all stratas of society; custom simply insists that 
 the common laws of society shall be obeyed that those of the 
 demi-monde shall not advertise their profession, that the gambler. 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 377 
 
 shall not display his cards, the guerrilla uncoil his lasso, the grand 
 dame exhibit her prude y, the detective his insincerity and the 
 priest liis protests and his confessional. Appetite admits of no 
 divided sovereignty, and hence, at meal time, the French recognize 
 only one class in society, that of the superlatively hungry. 
 
 The Princess Salm Salm returned the salutation of several 
 French officers as she entered, and bowed once or twice in acknowl- 
 edgment of salutes rendered by the Austrians of her husband's 
 brigade. Beyond these she seemed to prefer isolation and privacy. 
 Among the Belgians there was a Major who had a huge yellow 
 beard, a great coarse voice, a depth of chest like an ox, a sword-belt 
 whose extent would girth a hogshead. In French cafes, gentlemen 
 very rarely speak above the low conversational tone of the drawing 
 room. To be boisterous is to be either drunk or a blackguard. 
 This Belgian, Major Medomark of the Foreign Legation, did not 
 seem to be drunk, and yet as he looked at the Princess Salm Salm, 
 his voice would change its intonation and deepen harshly and grat- 
 ingly. If he meant to be offensive he succeeded first rate. 
 
 The Princess pushed back her plate and arose as one who felt 
 that she was the subject of conversation without understanding the 
 words of it. As she passed through the door, Medomark boister- 
 ously and in great glee, called out a slang term of the circus, and 
 shouted : 
 
 "Hoopla!" 
 
 The Agnes LeClere that was of the sawdust and tights, the 
 Princess Salm Salm that is now of the titles and diamonds, heard 
 the brutal cry and felt to her heart the studied insult. Turning 
 instantly, she came again half into the cafe her eyes full and dis- 
 colored with passion, and her face so white that it appeared as if the 
 woman was in mortal pain. She could not speak, though she tried 
 hard, poor thing, but she looked once at Medomark as if to crush 
 him where he sat, and once to Hazel, who understood it all now, 
 and arose as she again retired. 
 
 He went straight to his American countrywoman. At the cow- 
 ardly inference of the Belgian, the French officers had laughed and 
 the Austrians had applauded. Even those of her husband's own 
 brigade had not uttered protest or demanded apology. Hazel found 
 her in tears. 
 
 "You have been insulted," he said. "I know it, pr rather, I 
 may say I saw it. Not understanding German, if, indeed, the Bel- 
 gians speak German, I have to rely for my opinion more upon the 
 manner than the matter of the insult. Your husband is away, you 
 are an American lady, you are a countrywoman of mine, you are in 
 trouble and you need a protector. Will you trust your honor in my 
 hands? " 
 
 This actress was a brave, proud woman, born, perhaps, to rule 
 men as much by the force of her will as the bizarre style of her 
 
378 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO ; 
 
 beauty and her physical development. She took Hazel's hand and 
 thanked him, and bade him chastise the insolent bully. She knew 
 very well what chastisement meant in the language of a soldier, and 
 she was a soldier's wife. She never referred to the future, how- 
 ever. She did not even evince interest enough to be curious. Per- 
 haps her passion kept her from this at least her champion bowed 
 low to her as he entered, thinking her the coldest woman.a man 
 ever put his life in jeopardy for. Cold she was not. She simply 
 considered what was done for her as being done because of her 
 inalienable right to have it done. She was not familiar, she only 
 tolerated. 
 
 Hazel, in stature, was very slight. As he stood up before 
 Medomark the huge Belgian glowered upon him as Goliah of Gath 
 might have done upon David. 
 
 " Do you speak English ? " he asked of the Major. 
 
 "A little." 
 
 "Enough to understand the truth when I tell it to you ? " 
 
 ' ' Perhaps, if it is not so plain that for the telling I will have to 
 break every bone in your body. " 
 
 Medomark's voice was one of that uncontrollable kind that ran 
 away with a subject in spite of itself. He meant to be quiet so as 
 not to attract attention, but he was so rude that many of the specta- 
 tors quit eating to look on. 
 
 " That lady, " Hazel continued, "who has just gone out is a 
 country-woman of mine. She may have been an actress just as you 
 may have been a hangman's son, but whatever she has been she is a 
 woman. We do not insult women in the country where I once 
 lived, nor do we permit it to be done elsewhere. Will you apologize 
 to her?" 
 
 "I will not." 
 
 " Will you accept this card and let me send a friend to you ?" 
 
 "I will with pleasure." 
 
 " Then, I wish you good day, gentlemen, " and Hazel bowed to 
 all as he went out, like a man who had just finished his dinner. 
 
 Medomark was brave, besides, he was an officer. There were, 
 therefore, but two courses left to him, but two things to do to 
 accept Hazel's cartel or to refuse it. In preference to disgrace he 
 chose the duello. Hazel found his second speedily. He, too, was 
 a soldier one of Shelby's best, James Wood who would go to any 
 extreme on earth for a friend. 
 
 When two men mean business, the final arrangements are simply 
 matters of form. On the morning after Medomark's insult in 
 the cafe, Wood called upon him early. During the day the pre. 
 liminaries were all amicably agreed upon, and at sunrise the next 
 morning, about a quarter of a mile southeast of the American bury- 
 ing ground, Hazel and Medomark met at ten paces with duelling 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 379 
 
 pistols. The Belgian's second was a young French Lieutenant 
 named Massac, who won both the position and the word. When the 
 men took their places, Hazel had the sun in his eyes, and this 
 annoyed him at first, for it was very hot and penetrating. They 
 fired twice at each other. The first time both missed, the sec- 
 ond time Hazel struck Medomark upon the outside point of the 
 right shoulder, injuring the bone greatly and severing an artery that 
 bled as if the man would bleed to death. Prompt and efficient 
 surgical skill, however, saved his life. The duel ended after the 
 second fire, and the Princess Salm Salm, so splendidly vindicated at 
 the hands of her young countryman, was the toast thereafter of the 
 officers of the garrison. The Prince on his return could not render 
 thanks enough, nor seek to show his appreciation of the chivalrous 
 act by too many evidences of a more substantial gratitude. The city 
 being under martial law, a court-martial was soon convened for the 
 trial of all who were engaged in the duel. A sentence, however/ 
 was never reached. Upon the request of Bazaine, the court was dis- 
 missed and the prisoners set at liberty. Medomark recovered fully 
 only to be desperately wounded again at Queretaro, where, after 
 long and devoted attention on the part of Dr. Hazel, a suigeon in 
 the Republican army, he was restored to both health and liberty. 
 From this little episode a friendship sprung up which has remained 
 unbroken to this day. * * 
 
 The colony at Carlota grew apace and was prosperous. The 
 men began to cultivate coffee and sugar, and from a jungle the plan- 
 tations soon bloomed and blossomed like another Paradise. As an 
 especial favor from Maximilian, Shelby was permitted to pre empt 
 the hacienda of Santa Anna, not a hacienda, however, that had 
 belonged to this prince and chief of conspirators, but one that had 
 been named for him. Spaniards once owned it, but in the massa- 
 cres of the revolution all had perished. About the ruins of the 
 fortress which still abounded, there were signs which told of the 
 fury of the onslaught and the scorching of the flames that fol- 
 lowed when the rapine and the ravishments were done. Situated 
 two miles from Cordova, and in the very purple heart of the tropics, 
 it might have been made at once into a farm and a flower garden. 
 Twelve acres were put in coffee, and coffee well cultivated and per- 
 mitted to grow in a land where there is law and protection pays to 
 the raiser a minimum price per acre of $1,500. It seems, however, 
 that nature is never perfect in the equilibrium of her gifts. There, 
 where the soil is so deep, the air so soft, the climate so delicious, the 
 trade winds so cool and delightful, the men alone are idle, and come 
 in the night to the plantations of the foreigners to break down their 
 coffee trees, poison their spring water, wound their dumb stock, and 
 damage everything that can be damaged and that comes in their 
 way. 
 
380 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO; 
 
 In the mountains in the rear of Shelby's plantation a robber band 
 renchzvoused. Its. chief, Don Manuel Rodriguez, was a daring 
 leader, who descended to the plains at intervals with a reckless fol- 
 lowing, and made headway for hours at a time in his work of 
 gathering up supplies and levying prestamos. In a month after 
 Shelby's arrival a friendly relationship was established, and there- 
 after, until the end, Rodriguez protected Santa Anna, and lived at 
 peace with all who were settled round about. Just how the nego- 
 tiations were commenced and consummated which led to a truce so 
 satisfactory and so necessary, none ever knew, but true it is that 
 in the cool of the evenings, and when the French drums had beaten 
 tattoo at the fort only half a mile away, Rodriguez would come down 
 from his fastnesses as a peaceful visitor, acd sit for hours among the 
 Americans, asking of the Yankee country, and the ups and the 
 downs of the Yankee war, for, to a Mexican everything is Yankee 
 which is American. 
 
 Ex Governor Isham G. Harris, of Tennessee, also a settler, might 
 have been designated the Alcalde of Carlota. The Confederates 
 looked upon him with a kind of reverence. By the side of Albert 
 Sidney Johnston when he got his death wound, he had taken him in 
 his arms and held him there until the mist came into Us sad, pro- 
 phetic eyes, and until the brave, fond heart, broken by his country's 
 ingratitude, and the clamor of despicable and cowardly politiciaEs, 
 had ceased to beat. Brownlow especially wanted Harris, and so 
 Harris had come to Mexico. He knew Brownlow well a bitter, 
 unrelenting, merciless fanatic, and a fanatic, too, who had come in 
 on the crest of the wave that had drowned the cause for which 
 Harris fought. He believed that if the old Pagan failed to find a 
 law for his capital punishment, he would succeed certainly through 
 the influence of gold and political power over an assassin. Unwill- 
 ing at all events to risk the tyrant, he found penniless asylum at 
 Cordova, poor only in pocket, however, and courageous and proud 
 to the last. He was a cool, silent, contemplative man, with a heavy 
 lower jaw, projecting forehead, and iron gray hair. In his princi- 
 ples he was an Ironside of the Cromwellian type. Perhaps the 
 intense faith of his devotion gave to his character a touch of fatal- 
 ism, for when the ship stranded be was cast adrift utterly wrecked 
 in everything but his undying confidence in the success of the Con- 
 federacy. He believed in Providence as an ally, and rejected con- 
 stantly the idea that Providence takes very little hand in wars that 
 come about between families or States, if, indeed, in wars of any 
 kind. With his great energy, his calm courage, his shrewd, prac- 
 tical intercourse with the natives, his record as a governor and a 
 soldier, he exerted immense influence for good with the soldier-set- 
 tlers and added much to the strength and stability of the colony, 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 381 
 
 Colonel Perkins, of Louisiana, a judge of great fame and ability, 
 and a lawyer as rich in triumphs at the bar as he was possessed of 
 slaves and cotton bales upon his plantation, abandoned everything 
 at home but his honor, and isolated himself among his coffee trees 
 and bananas. When the war closed he took a week to speak his 
 farewells and burn his dwelling house, his cotton presses, his 
 stables, barns, out-houses, and to make in fact of his vast possessions 
 a desert. He had a residence rich in everything that could amuse, 
 instruct, delight, gratify. Painting, statuary, flowers, curiosities, 
 rare plants, elegant objects of vertu and art were there in abun- 
 dance, and when from the war he returned crushed in spiiitand 
 broken in health, he rested one night brooding amid all the luxury 
 and magnificence of his home. He arose the next morning a stoic. 
 "With a torch in his hand he fired everything that would burn, 
 leaving nowhere one stone upon another to tell of what had once 
 been the habitation of elegance and refinement. In his Mexican 
 solitude he was an aristocratic philosopher, complaining of nothing 
 and looking back with regret upon nothing. Sufficient unto the 
 day for him had been the evil thereof. ^ 
 
 General Sterling Price was another settler. Many of his escort 
 company had taken lands around him. The patriarch chief in a 
 new country, he sat much in the shade about his tent, telling the 
 stories of the war and hoping in his heart for the tide of persecution 
 and proscription in Missouri to run itself out. Politics v- as as 
 necessary to his mental equilibrium as sleep to his physical. In the 
 old days he had succeeded well. Nature gave him a fine voice, a 
 portly frame, a commanding front, agracefuland dignified carriage, 
 an aplomb that never descended into nervousness, and hence as the 
 speaker of a legislative body he was unexcelled. He dreamed of a 
 speakership again, of a governorship, of a senatorship, acd he, 
 therefore, cultivated more corn than he did coffee, for it takes three 
 years for coffee to grow and bear, and three years might well, he 
 did not choose to put himself into the hands of three years and wait. 
 
 It would at least be curious, if it were not interesting, to go in 
 among these colonists in Carlota and learn their histories while dis- 
 playing the individuality of each. A common misfortune bound 
 them all together in the strength of a recognized and yet unwritten 
 covenant. The pressure of circumstances from without kept them 
 indissolubly united. Poverty, that dangerous drug which stimu- 
 lates when it does not stupefy, lost its narcotism over men whom 
 war had chastised and discipline made strong and reflective. They 
 strove for but one purpose to get a home and occupy it. 
 
 The privateer Shenandoah, that mysterious cruiser whidi was 
 seen rarely at sea, yet which left upon the waves of the South 
 Pacific a monstrous trail of fire and smoke, sent her officers into 
 the colony with their ship money and their cosmopolitan hardi- 
 
382 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO : 
 
 hood. Lieutenants Chew and Scales took valuable land and went 
 enthusiastically to work. Around the hacienda of Santa Anna 
 there was a cordon of strange pioneers who had histories written in 
 characters impossible to decipher. The hieroglyphics were their 
 scars. 
 
 And so affairs prospered about Carlota, and the long, sunshiny 
 days went on, in which the trade winds blew and the orange blos- 
 soms scented all the air. It was near three days' long journey to the 
 Capital, but rumors travel fast when every ear is listening for them, 
 and a report deepened all along the route from Mexico to Vera Cruz 
 that a staff officer of the French Emperor had left Paris for the 
 headquarters of Marshal Bazaine. A multitude of reasons were 
 assigned for the visit. Napoleon might desire, for the purposes of 
 information, the direct observations of one who was intimately 
 acquainted with his views and intentions. It might be, again, with 
 a view to increasing the forces of the Expedition, or to the^mploy- 
 ment of more active and rigorous measures in the pacification of the 
 country. Accordingly, as men were hopeful or depressed, they rea- 
 soned concerning this visit of the French staff officer, even before 
 the officer himself was half across the Atlantic. 
 
 From first to last, the treasury of Maximilian had been compara- 
 tively empty. He curtailed his own personal expenses, abandoned 
 the civil list, lived like a plain and frugal farmer, set everywLerean 
 example of retrenchment and economy, but it availed nothing. 
 Mexico, with all of her immense mineral resources, is, and has been, 
 usually poverty stricken. There is no agriculture, and, conse- 
 quently, no middle class. At one extreme is immense wealth, at 
 the other immense misery Ignorance and superstition do the rest. 
 
 His exertions to pay his soldiers and carry forward a few vitally 
 necessary internal improvements, were gigantic. Pendingthe arrival 
 of the French envoy extraordinary, he had negotiated a loan at 
 home, which was taken by patriotism a strange word for a Mexi- 
 can and which had already begun to flow into his empty coffers. 
 
 Things, therefore, were not so dark as they had been when Gen- 
 eral Castelnau, personal aid-de-camp of the Emperor Napoleon, 
 arrived at Vera Cruz. 
 
 General Castelnau kept his own secret well, which was also the 
 secret of his master, Napoleon III. A magnificent review was held 
 in the city of Mexico at which he was present. Soldiers of all arms 
 were there, and a great outpouring of the people. Everything 
 looked like war, nothing like evacuation, and yet General Castelnau 
 brought with him definite and final orders for the absolute and 
 unconditional withdrawal of the French troops. 
 
 The Empress penetrated the purpose of his mission first and 
 again came forward to demand a last supreme effort in behalf of 
 the tottering throne. She would go to Europe and appeal to its 
 
AN UNWRITTEX LEAF OF THE WAR. 383 
 
 chivalry. The daughter of a king, it would be to monarchs to 
 whom she would address herself face to face. She was young, and 
 beautiful, and pleading, for her crown, and why would not armies 
 arise at her bidding and march either to avenge or reinstate her? 
 Poor, heroic woman, she tried as never woman tried before to stem 
 the tide of fate, but fate was against her. First the heart and then 
 the head, until with hope, faith, ambition, reason all gone, she 
 staggered out from the presence of Napoleon dead in all things but 
 a love that even yet comes to her fitfully in the night time as dreams 
 come, bringing images of the trees about the Alameda, of the palace 
 where she dwelt, of Miramar and Maximilian. 
 
 In the summer of 1866 she sailed for Europe. She knew Castel- 
 nau's mission, and she determined to thwart it. There was yellow 
 fever at Vera Cruz and pestilence on the ocean. Some of her 
 attendants were stricken down by her side and died at Cordova, 
 others on board the ship that carried her from port. She bore up 
 wonderfully while the mind held out. Nothing affrighted her. 
 The escort marching in the rear of her carriage was attacked by 
 guerrillas. She alighted from it, bade a soldier dismount, got upon 
 the back of his horse and galloped into the fight. Here was an 
 Amazon of the nineteenth century who had a waist like a willow 
 wand, who painted rare pictures, who had a husband whom she 
 adored, who sang the ballads of her own exquisite making, who was 
 struggling for a kingdom and a crown, and who never in all her 
 life saw a drop of blood or a man die. 
 
 The fight was simply a guerrilla fight, however, and from an 
 Amazon the woman was transformed into an Empress again ten- 
 der, considerate, desperate in the wild emergency upon her, and 
 joyous with the fierce eagerness of her longings and her despair. 
 
 Never any more in life did the blue eyes of her husband and her 
 lover gaze upon that fair Norman face, almost colorless now and set 
 as a flint in the stormy sunset of the night when she sailed away to 
 her destiny. 
 
 Bazaine took his time to obey his orders indeed, he had margin 
 enough and leisure enough to contract his lines pleasantly. Not 
 always overbold in retreat, the French had learned well the nature 
 of Mexican warfare and would turn sometimes viciously when 
 galled to wincing on flank or rear, and deal a few parting blows 
 that unto this day are recalled with shudderings or impotent vows 
 of vengeance. 
 
 One at Matamoras is worth a mention. The Sixty-second of the 
 line did garrison duty there under Colonel Lascolat. He was to 
 Dupin what the needle-gun is to the smooth-bore. Dupin destroyed 
 singly, at short range, in ambushments, by lonesome roads, in sud- 
 den and unmerciful hours from the depths of isolation and the 
 unknown. Lascolat, an Algerian officer of singular ferocity, 
 
384 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO ; 
 
 hunted in regiments. Even the physique of his men was angular, 
 akish, undulatory like the movements of a greyhound. They 
 would march thirty miles a day fighting, bivouac anywhere, sleep if 
 they could; very well, if they could not, still very well. With 
 them was a priest who wore five medals he had won in battle. When 
 he had time he shrived all alike. In his hands the cross was good 
 enough for the dying who spoke Spanish and the dying who spoke 
 French. In the presence of the specter he took no .thought of 
 nationality. 
 
 As Lascolat came out from Matamoras, a portion of Escobedo's 
 forces pressed him inconveniently. His orders from Bazaire weie 
 to take his time, fight only when forced, be dignified, patient and dia- 
 creet, but to make sure of his egress out with everything that 
 belonged to him or his. Lascolat had under him two battalions of 
 1,000 men each. The third battalion composing the regiment of the 
 Sixty-second had already been sent forward to Jeanningros at 
 Monterey. Escobedo attacked with 5,000. He knew of Lascolat's 
 ferocity, of his terrible doings about and along the Rio Grande, and 
 he meant to take a farewell, the memories of which would last even 
 unto Algeria again. 
 
 One afternoon late the line of Lascolat's march led through a 
 ravine, which commenced broad like the mouth of a funnel and 
 tapered down to a point, as a funnel would taper. Near the outlet 
 Escobedo fortified the road with loose boulders. Behind these and 
 upon the sides of the acclivities on either side he placed his men in 
 ambush. He had no artillery, for he so shaped the fight as to make 
 it face to face and deadly. Lascolat entered into the trap listlessly. 
 If he knew what had been prepared for him he made no sign. Sud- 
 denly the loose, disjointed, impassive wall outlined itself. Some 
 sharp skirmishing shots came from the front. The shadows of the 
 twilight had begun to gather. It looked ugly and ominous where 
 the stones were. 
 
 Lascolat called a halt and rode back along the ranks of his men 
 They were weary, and they had seated themselves upon the ground 
 to rest. His presence fired them as a torch passing across a line of 
 ready gas-lights. He spoke to them pleasantly in his Algerian 
 vernacular: 
 
 "The Arabs are ahead. We are hungry, we are tired ; we want 
 to go into camp ; we have no time to make a flank movement. 
 Shall we make quick work of the job, that we may get some supper 
 and some sleep?" 
 
 The men answered him with a shout. The charge commenced. 
 It was a hurricane. The barricade of rocks was not even so much 
 as a fringe of bulrushes. Those who held it died there. The hill 
 slopes, covered with prickly pear and dagger- trees, hid a massacre. 
 The Sixty-second swarmed to the attack like bees about a hive in 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 385 
 
 danger. Paralyzed, routed, decimated, torn as a tempest tears 
 Escobedo's forces fired butane fair volley, and fled as shadows flee 
 when the wind pursues. The dead were never counted. Lascolat's 
 farewell was taken, but those who came out well from the hand- 
 shaking slackened march not a step until the route had passed into 
 Matamoras, and over against a river that might be crossed for the 
 wading. Thereafter the Sixty-second foraged as it pleased, and 
 took its own time toward the coast. 
 
 Colonel Depreuil was in danger Shelby's old antagonist of Parras 
 and it remained for Shelby to save him. In the marchings and 
 countermarchings of the evacuation, Depreuil, commanding six 
 hundred men of the Foreign Legion, was holding a post twenty 
 leagues northwest of San Luis Potosi. Douay, with inadequate 
 cavalry, was keeping fast hold upon this most important strategical 
 point, awaiting the detachments from the extreme north. Shelby 
 was a freighter now, and had come from the City of Mexico with a 
 strong guard of Americans, and eighty wagons laden with supplies 
 for the French. After reporting to Douay he was sent forward with 
 twenty men and ten wagons to Cesnola; the outlying post garrisoned 
 by Depreuil. The guerrillas, emboldened by the absence of cavalry, 
 had risen up some two thousand strong, and were between San Luis 
 and Cesnola. As Shelby marched on into the open country his 
 advance, under James Kirtley, was fired upon, and two soldiers, 
 James Ward and Sandy Jones, severly wounded. He countermarched 
 to an abandoned hacienda, encamped his wagons within the walls, 
 fortified as best he could, and sent Kirtley back with two men to 
 report the condition of affairs to General Douay. Kirtley was not 
 well mounted, he had served awhile in the Third Zouaves, the 
 hostile Mexicans were swarming about all the roads, it looked like 
 death to go on, it certainly was death to be taken, and so he started 
 when the night fell, having with him two comrades, tried and true 
 George Hall and Thomas Boswell. 
 
 It was thirty good miles to San Luis Potosi, and those who wny- 
 laid the roads had eyes that saw in the night and were not baffled. 
 
 Captain James Kirtley, burnt almost brown by exposure, and by 
 four long years of struggle with the wind and the sun, had the face 
 of a Mexican and the heart of an English lancer who rode down to 
 the guns with Cardigan and the Light Brigade. Peril affected his 
 spirits as wine might. Ambition and adventure with him were twin 
 mistresses blonde to his eyes, beautiful, full of all passionate love, 
 fit to be worshiped, and they were worshiped. Always brave, he 
 had need to be always generous. Danger, when it does not deter, 
 sometimes gives to those who fear it least a certain kind of pensive- 
 ness that is often mistaken for indifference. When aroused, how- 
 ever, this kind of a pensive man rides harder and faster, fights longer 
 and more desperately, will hold on and hang on under greater stress, 
 
386 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO ; 
 
 reach out his life in his open hand oftener, and die, if so the fates 
 desire, with less of murmur and regret than a regiment of great 
 roystering soldiers whose voices are heard in songs in the night with 
 the mighty roll and volume of the wind among the pines. 
 
 Kirtley, even under the tawny paint the sun had put upon h.'i 
 face, would blush like a girl when, to some noted deed of soldierlj 
 daring, public attention directed the eyes of appreciation. Praise 
 only made him more reticent and retired. As he never talked of 
 himself, one could not hear ought of his valorous deeds from his 
 own lips, for these were a part of himself. To compliment him 
 was to give him pain to natter was to offend; and yet this young 
 hero, not yet a man, surrounded by all things that were hostile, 
 even to the langnage, known to have been a soldier in the Third 
 Zouaves, the terror of the Empire, badly mounted for pursuit or 
 escape, came with a smile upon his face for the perilous venture, 
 and rode away and into the night and the unknown, in quest of 
 succor for Depreuil and his beleaguered garrison. 
 
 It was a long thirty miles he had to go, the three men, Kirtley, 
 Hall and Boswell. On every side there were guerrillas. The night 
 was dark, although the road was plain, for it was the great national 
 highway which ran from Monterey to the Capital. The danger, 
 however, came from the fact that it was too plain. Others knew 
 of it, and rode along it, and crouched in ambushment upon it, and 
 made it a torment for small parties by day as well as by night. 
 
 Kirtley, even in the darkness, advanced in skirmishing order. 
 First, he of the three went alone in advance, behind him was Hall, 
 and in the rear of Hall, Boswell. Between eac h was the distance of 
 twenty yards. It was necessary to get word through to Douay, and 
 Kirtleyargued the less risk taken the greater chance therewould be 
 for one of the party getting through. 
 
 " We must keep apart, "he said, "just far enough to succor each 
 other, but not too close to be killed by the discharge of a shot-gun, 
 as out of a flock of partridges one might kill a bag full." 
 
 The ride was a silent and grimly tenacious one. Three times 
 they turned from the high road to avoid a scouting party of guerril- 
 las, and once, in going past a little group of four or five huts by the 
 wayside a place, indeed, where mescal is sold, and where, upon all 
 the roads in Mexico, huts are concentrated for this purpose alone 
 Kirtley, who had kept his position fixedly in front the whole night 
 through, was fired upon from an angle of a house. The bullet 
 missed his left thigh barely, and imbedded itself in the flank of his 
 poor, tired horse that had borne himself stanchly through it all. 
 One drop of blood was more really than the weary animal could 
 afford to give up, but this wound bled freely, and the horse stag- 
 gered as he went. It was yet three leagues to San Luis Potosi, 
 and the night had turned. By dint of much coaxing and walking 
 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 387 
 
 to relieve him, Kirtley managed to get over some further ground 
 slowly. He felt for his horse, as all cavalry soldiers do, and from 
 the wound to his abandonment he never struck him once with the 
 spur, though it might be that his life hung upon the gait the horse 
 went, weak and crippled as it was. The wound was deeper than 
 any one of the three thought, and so, when nearer the bottom of an 
 abrupt descent, the gallant steed lurched forward suddenly, caught 
 as it were by his fore feet, reeled blindly, and fell forward, too help- 
 less to arise again, too far gone for leech or surgeon -craft. 
 
 Kirtley murmured not. Looking once at his faithful companion, 
 as if in infinite pity, he strode on under the stars on foot, keeping his 
 place still in the advance, and keeping his pensive face fixed in the 
 iron mold of its energy and determination. 
 
 It was daylight when the three dauntless scouts reached the 
 French outposts at San Luis Potosi tired, safe, proud of the perils 
 passed, ready to return at a word and to carry back the succor 
 Shelby so much needed at this time himself, and the succor 
 Depreuil had needed, without knowing it, for a week. 
 
 Douay gave to the three soldiers a soldier's welcome. His old 
 gray head, inclined a little forward, heard all the report through 
 that Shelby had sent, and it was brief enough even for him who 
 dealt mostly in gestures or monosyllables. 
 
 "You have ridden all night," he said, "and you need food, 
 sleep, brandy, horses. Captain." 
 
 An aide came. 
 
 " Your pardon one moment, General," said Kirtley, "while I 
 correct you. We do not need any sleep. As we return we can 
 sleep as we ride. That was once part of our drill. We left our 
 General in danger, and he in turn sent us forward to notify you of 
 the danger of your Colonel. We will take the food, the brandy 
 and the horses, but the sleep, no, General, with many thanks." 
 
 Douay's keen brown eyes opened wide at this frank and ingen- 
 uous speech. It pleased him more than he cared to say, more than 
 he admitted then. Afterward, when a soldier led up a magnificent 
 Arab stallion to the meson where Kirtley was eating and presented 
 it to him in the name of Douay, the young American felt in his 
 heart the gratified pride of one whose perils and frankness had mer- 
 ited recognition at the hands of him who had fought in the four 
 quarters of the world, and who had grown up from childhood to 
 old age a hero beloved by the army and revered by a nation. 
 
 Before the sun rose three squadrons of Chasseurs, a section of 
 flying artillery, and the three Americans thrown forward as guides, 
 were galloping back toward the hacienda at which Shelby was for- 
 tified and fighting. Each American had been supplied with a splen- 
 did horse by Douay, and althought they had ridden ten leagues the 
 night before, they pressed on indifferent to fatigue and impervious 
 to the demands of sleep. 
 
388 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO ; 
 
 It was time. Shelby, of his whole force of twenty men, had 
 only fifteen left: Two had been wounded, and three had been sent 
 back to San Luis Potosi for succor. Of the wagons he had formed 
 a corral. Between the wheels and in front and rear he had piled up 
 sand-bags. Among the freight destined for Dupreuil's outpost weie 
 several hundred sacks of corn. These were emptied, filled up again 
 with sand, and laid two deep all about the wagons. No musket 
 ball could penetrate them, and the guerrillas had no artillery. 
 
 A summons came to him for surrender. 
 
 Shelby parleyed all he could. He dreaded a charge where, 
 from sheer momentum, five hundred sheep might overrun, and, 
 perhaps, crush fifteen men. A renegade priest named Ramon 
 Guitierrez, having the name of a blood-thirsty priest and the 
 fa ne of a cowardly one, too, commanded the besiegers. Before 
 Shelby would talk of surrender he wanted to see some show of 
 force. His honor did not permit a capitulation without his reason 
 was convinced that to resist would be madness. In other words, he 
 wanted on his side the logic and reasonableness of war. 
 
 Guitierrez took a look at the sand bags, and thought Shelby's 
 propositions very fair. He took another and a closer look, having in 
 his vision this time the gleaming of fifteen rifle barrels and the ris- 
 ing and falling of rough, hairy faces above the parapets of the 
 hastily constructed fort, and he concluded to accept it. To be very 
 certain of passing in review all the men he had, he marched about 
 in various directions and in the most conspicuous places for several 
 hours precious hours theywere, too, and worth a week of ordinary 
 time to those who never meant to surrender, but who expected to 
 fight desperately, maybe unavailingly, before the friendly succor 
 came. 
 
 When the parade was over Guitierrez sent word to ask if Shelby 
 would surrender. 
 
 No, he would not. He had counted some five hundred illy 
 armed rancheros, and he meant to fight them to the death. Firing 
 at long range commenced. The 'Americans did not reply to it. 
 The sun was too hot for the kind of work that did not pay in 
 corpses. Emboldened by this silence, the Mexicans crept closer 
 and closer. Here and there a bullet found its way into the fort. 
 Volley answered volley now, and then the noise died out into calm, 
 cold, cautious skirmishing. Shelby had mounted two dark looking 
 logs at either angle of the corral, and these, from a distance, looked 
 like cannon. It might not be best to charge them, and so Guitierrez, 
 crept backward and forward until the day wore well on its way. 
 Suddenly he gathered together his followers and made a little 
 speech to them. It was about four o'clock in the afternoon. Both 
 Ward and Jones, who had been wounded the day before, had 
 Insisted on holding an embrasure between them. They had strength 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 389 
 
 enough to load and fire their breech-loaders, and they were not 
 refused. Every bullet counted in the desperate melee. 
 
 With a shrill, short yell the Mexicans dashed forward to the 
 attack. Had the wave held on its course it would have inundated 
 the earthwork. It broke, however, before it reached half way 
 across the open space behind which it had gathered for the onset. 
 Those in front began to fire too soon, and those in the rear, not 
 seeing from the smoke what was really in front, fired, too, and 
 without aim or object. With unloaded guns they dared not go on 
 the fire of the Americans was distressing beyond endurance the 
 wave broke itself into fragments, and the sun sunk lower and 
 lower. 
 
 "Nearly out of the wilderness, boys," Shelby said; as his wary 
 and experienced eyes took in the outline of the spent charge as it 
 made itself clear against the range of hills in rear of it. 
 
 "We need water greatly," Ras Woods ejaculated, his mouth 
 parched and his face black with powder smoke. 
 
 " In an hour you shall drink your fill," replied Shelby, *' for in 
 an hour the French will be here." 
 
 "But if Kirtley has fallen." 
 
 "He will not fall. Luck goes with him everywhere. What's 
 that ?" 
 
 He pointed as he spoke to a sudden agitation and fluttering 
 among the masses of the besiegers, who were now galloping furi- 
 ously to and fro, utterly without a head and heedless of all threat 
 or command. 
 
 " Ah !" and Shelby's face cleared up all at once, as he returned 
 to Woods, " you can go out for water now, the fight is over." 
 
 Before he had finished, the full, ringing notes of the French 
 bugles were heard, and in a moment more the squadrons emerged 
 from the trees, galloping straight and in beautiful order toward the 
 guerrillas. 
 
 There was no combat after the French appeared. What killing 
 was done was done solely upon those who were too slow in the 
 race, and who could not reach the rocks in time that rose up on 
 three sides as a series of walls that had once been laid with much 
 symmetry and had fallen in rugged yet regular masses in some great 
 convulsion or upheaval of nature. Nowhere in fair fight was a 
 Mexican cut down, nor at ho single time did even a squad rally 
 among the rocks and fire back upon the pursuing cavalry. The 
 panic at last degenerated into a stampede, while the impenetrable 
 groves of cactus shrubs and the broken and uninhabitable country 
 swallowed up the fugitives. The chase soon ended and the French 
 returned. 
 
 These two rescuing squadrons were led by Captain Mesillon, 
 whose orders were very full and explicit, He was first to cut 
 
390 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO ; 
 
 Shelby out from the hostile forces which surrounded him, and next 
 to report to Shelby and march whithersoever Shelby directed. 
 
 The French rarely put faith in foreign officers. Their vanity 
 a kind of national inheritance recognized no merit like French 
 merit, no superiority in war, politics, diplomacy, love or religion 
 like French superiority. Hence, where Frenchmen are concerned, 
 they invariably insist that Frenchmen shall alone be responsible. 
 In this instance, however, Douay wrote this manner of a note to 
 Shelby: 
 
 "To complete the conquest of Colonel Depreuil, of whose bear- 
 ing toward you at Parras I have been duly informed by General 
 Jeanningros, I chose that he shall owe his life to you. Captain Mes- 
 illon awaits your orders. I need not advise you to be ' circumspect, 
 and to tell you to take your own time and way to reach Cesnola and 
 bring my Frenchmen back to me, for whom, I imagine, there is no 
 great love in the hearts of its inhabitants." 
 
 Mesillon reported, and Shelby put himself at the head of the 
 Cuirassiers. 
 
 "Since Depreuil has to come out from Cesnola," Shelby remarked 
 to the young French Captain, "and since General Douay expects 
 us to make haste and bring him out, there is no need to take our 
 wagons further. Guitierrez has been too badly frightened to return 
 here much under a month, and beyond his forces I can hear of no 
 others in the mountains round about. We will let the wagons, there- 
 fore, remain where they are, forage and rest here until the night 
 falls, and then strengthened and refreshed cut through, ride down 
 or ride around everything that opposes us. So make these reso- 
 lutions known, Captain." 
 
 The Frenchman bowed and retired. He saw in a moment that 
 the soldier who was talking to him knew more of the warfare ahead 
 in a moment than he had ever seen in his life. He knew, further- 
 more, that if the worst come to the worst, it would not be the fault 
 of the commander if Depreuil was not rescued. 
 
 The night came and the column started. Between the road where 
 the wagons were left, and Cesnola, the entire country was alive with 
 guerrillas. Beyond Cesnola there were no Imperial troops of any 
 kind, and between Cesnola and San Luis Potosi there was neither 
 garrisoned town nor fortified village. It was a stretch of ambusli 
 sixty miles long. 
 
 When the night came Shelby put himself at the head of his 
 detachment and never drew rein until Cesnola was reached. The 
 column was ambushed seven separate and distinct times, and fired 
 upon from hedges-rows, from behind houses in villages through 
 which it passed, and from a variety of places that were inaccessible 
 to the sudden dash of cavalry. Twenty-eight French soldiers were 
 killed and wounded. Twice the Captain solicited the privilege of 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 391 
 
 4 
 
 making a charge upon the unseen enemy crouching by the roadside, 
 and twice he was refused. 
 
 "You lay too much to heart these mosquito bites," Shelby said 
 to him kindly, "when there is danger of centipedes and tarantulas 
 before we are done with it. A man is bound to fall out here and 
 there, hard hit and may be killed, but the balance will be enough to 
 get through. When one gets surrounded as Depreuil has done, one 
 must expect to pay the penalty of the rescue. Sometimes it is 
 extremely costly, but the night favors us, and there is no moon. 
 Keep with your men, Captain, encourage them, expose yourself 
 freely in front of them, talk to them calmly, and my word for it you 
 shall reich Cesnola with fewer depletions in your ranks than if you 
 charged into the unknown every time a musket volley came from it." 
 
 Depreuil did not know of his danger. The succoring party 
 appeared to him as an apparition. Well fortified at Cesnola, and 
 having at his command no cavalry with which to ascertain what 
 existed beyond the range of his cannon, he eat, and slept, and drank 
 absinthe with the same nonchalance his life in Parras manifested. 
 Safe for the day, he took no thought of the morrow. He was one 
 of those officers who believed that one French battalion was stronger 
 than destiny more powerful than fate. 
 
 Mesillon awoke his reverie rudely. When there had been 
 explained to him all the risk Shelby had run in getting cavalry to 
 him, how he had fought, and marched, and planned, and endured 
 solely for his sake and for the sake of humanity. Depreuil's heart 
 softened quickly. He came to Shelby as one who felt that he had 
 a great debt of gratitude to repay, and took his hands in both of his. 
 
 " Never mind the past," he commenced, "nor the rude things 
 said and done in Parras. I see it all now. Perhaps I owe my life 
 to you certainly the lives of many of my soldiers, for whom I am 
 responsible. In future let us remember each other only as brave 
 men and soldiers. I, too, like Captain Mesillon, put myself under 
 your orders. When shall we evacuate Cesnola? " 
 
 Shelby had his revenge at last that kind of revenge which is 
 always sweet to noble minds the revenge of returning good for 
 evil. He answered him: 
 
 "Would you take your .heavy cannon with you?" 
 
 " I don't know. Would you?" 
 
 " In my military life I never left a trophy in the hands of my 
 enemies. Were I a Frenchman I would surely carry off my French 
 guns." 
 
 " Then in a day we can march." 
 
 "Let it be so, but make haste, Colonel. This country breeds 
 guerrillas as the marshes do miasma." 
 
 Still leading, Shelby came away from Cesnola in command of 
 the whole French force. Depreuil's men wondered a little, but 
 
392 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO ; 
 
 Dupreuil, in the height of his gratitude, thought no compliment 
 sufficiently high to pay the rough-clad, quiet American fighter, who 
 did not even have so much as a red sash around him as an insignia 
 of rank or authority. 
 
 Fighting commenced almost as soon as the evacuation of Cesnola 
 took place. Heading always the Americans and Cuirassiers in 
 parson, however, Shelby was enabled by several sudden and bloody 
 repulses to put such a wholesome fear of punishment in the minds 
 of the pursuers that they gave him ample time to carve out for the 
 train a safe road in front while protecting amply the perilous road 
 in the rear. 
 
 For three days and nights he held on his course, fighting con- 
 stantly and caring alike for his'dead and his wounded. The morn- 
 ing of the fourth day brought him to the French lines of San Luis 
 Potosi and to an ovation. General Douay turned out the whole 
 garrison under arms, and, as the detachment which had been doing 
 garrison duty at Cesnola marched in worn by much fighting 
 weary from long marching dusty and faint, yet safe and victorious 
 it was saluted with sloping standards, presented arms, and the 
 long exultant roll of triumphant music. 
 
 In the evening Douay called upon Shelby. 
 
 "I have come to reward you," he said, in his usual bluff and 
 sententious manner, "and would be glad to know your price." 
 
 ' ' Your friendship, simply," was the reply of the proud Amer- 
 ican. 
 
 " That you already have," the good old General continued, " but 
 you are poor, you are an exile, you can have no refuge more in this 
 country when it is known that you rescued a French garrison, you 
 have been turned aside from your business as freighter, and I 
 demand the privilege of paying you at least for your time, and for 
 your losses in mules and wagons." 
 
 " Very well, General," Shelby replied, " but as you are leaving 
 the country you must wait until we meet again in the City of Mex- 
 ico, Until then remember your promise." 
 
CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 In the short space of time accorded to him between the reception 
 of the orders brought for the withdrawal of the French troops and 
 their actual accomplishment, Maximilian did the work of one who 
 meant to fight a good fight for his kingdom and his cause. And yet 
 for the great superstructure he tried so hard to rear and decorate, the 
 poor man had never considered a moment about its foundation. 
 He had no standing army nothing to rely upon when the French 
 left that was real and tangible nothing that was frank and manly 
 and that would take him boldly by the hand and say: " Sire, we are 
 here; trust us as you would yourself." 
 
 When that sudden dash of cavalry, which drove Juarez across 
 the Rio Grande and into Texas, had spent itself, and when it was 
 believed that there was no longer in the land either a regularly 
 armed or regularly organized force of Liberal soldiers, the cele- 
 brated black flag order was promulgated. This law based upon the 
 declaration that Juarez had left the country, and that consequently 
 there could be no longer in existence any regularly constituted gov- 
 ernment required all Mexicans captured with arms in their hands 
 after the date of the decree October 3d, 1865 to be summarily put 
 to death. Maximilian resisted its passage to the last, but Bazaine 
 was inexorable. He appeared before the Council of State and 
 declared upon his official honor that Juarez had left the territory of 
 Mexico. He complained of the leniency shown to the guerrillas, 
 and cited numerous instances to prove how French soldiers, cap- 
 tured on detached service, had been first tortured and then most 
 brutally murdered, while those Mexican prisoners tried under the 
 ordinary forms of a court-martial, had either been punished lightly 
 or suffered to escape altogether. 
 
 Bazaine triumphed, as he always did when brought in contact 
 with the soft, pliable nature of the Emperor, and almost immediately 
 after the decree was issued, there was enacted under it a fearful 
 obedience. General Mendez, one of the few Mexicans really and 
 sincerely devoted to Maximilian, was holding the enemy in awe in 
 the State of Morelia. Of a sudden he turned upon a guerrilla force, 
 routed it, captured well on to a hundred, shot them all, and pro- 
 claimed in triumphant language tlaat such should be the fate of all 
 who came within reach of his hands. Among the slain were Gen- 
 eral Arteaga and Colonel Salasa. Arteaga was what was rare in 
 Mexico, a genuine humorist. Corpulent, fair though born in the 
 tropics, fond of laughter and wine, in no wise cruel or vindictive, a 
 soldier from necessity rather than inclination, a judge whose decisions 
 
394 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO ; 
 
 were always in favor of the guilty, it did seem a sin to shoot the 
 great, harmless, laughing gourmand, who told his jokes much 
 of tener than his beads, and had a whole regiment of friends in the 
 very ranks of the French army itself. Other executions took place 
 in other portions of the Empire, and when the Emperor found that 
 he could no longer resist the tide of blood that had set in, he quar- 
 reled with Bazaine. The Marshal was firm, however, and the Em- 
 peror fled to Cuernavaca. This was a small town forty miles south- 
 west from the City of Mexico. It had the deliciously blended cli- 
 mate of the tropical and the temperate latitudes. It was summer in the 
 day, and antumn in the night-time. Maximilian had a retreat here, 
 and thither he would go when State cares pressed too heavily from 
 without, and little spites and pitiful envies and jealousies from with- 
 in. He had a house there and a garden, and among his books and 
 his flowers he held loving con verse with the past and the present 
 the great who had passed away from earth and the beautiful which 
 still remained. From these communions and reveries he would 
 return a more patient and a more gentle man. 
 
 The shooting wect on, however, and Mendez and Miramon 
 obeyed the decree with a persistence characteristic solely of the 
 Spanish blood. 
 
 As the French lines contracted, the skeleton regiments and brig- 
 ades of Juarez weref ully recruited. In many places those Mexican 
 troops who were in the service of the Empire were turned upon and 
 and beaten. At other times they ran without a fight, throwing 
 away their arms and disbanding in hopeless and helpless confusion. 
 Nowhere in the whole Imperial army was there an organization 
 worth its uniform save and alone those few Austrians and Hunga- 
 rians personally devoted to the Emperor and calmly resolved to die. 
 If at any time Shelby's conversation ever recurred to him, he made 
 no sign. He saw probabty, and felt more keenly than any one there 
 the need of the American corps Shelby could and would have 
 recruiting for the asking, but even in the death hour, and in front of 
 the ruined wall at Queretaro, he died as he had lived a martyr to 
 his belief in the sincerity of Mexican professions. 
 
 Of a sudden, and at one merciless blow, Sonora was wrenched 
 from the grasp of the Empire. The French had already abandoned 
 it, but an Austrian, devoted to the Empire, General Landberg, held it 
 for his Majesty. The f orces under his command werecomposed almost 
 exclusively of Mexicans. Some few companies of these had Ameri- 
 can officers. One in particular was commanded by a young Confed- 
 erate, Captain W. M. Burwell, who was from the Valley of Vir- 
 ginia, and who had won high honor in Pelham's memorable artil- 
 lery. He was only twenty, and had a face like a school girl. Tall, 
 gentle in aspect and manner, with deep blue eyes and raven hair 
 that curled and shone, he came into the Empire a boy adventurer, 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 395 
 
 seeking fame and service in a foreign land. The Princess Iturbide, 
 when the Valley of Virginia was a Paradise, had visited at his fath- 
 er's house and had looked in admiration into the blue eyes of the 
 beautiful boy. This boy, not yet a man and the smoke of Virginia 
 battle-fields not yet gonefrem his long black hair, came to the coun- 
 try of the Princess, and to her palace by the Alameda. When he 
 came out from her presence he was a Captain. He put on his uni- 
 form and came among his comrades in those few brief days, before 
 the marching, a young Adonis lithe, superb, a little Norman in 
 feature, having red in his cheeks and dark in his hair. 
 
 All day had the battle ebbed and flowed about the port of 
 Guaymas. A swart, fierce southern sun, coming in red from the 
 ocean, got hotter and hotter, and by high noon it was blistering in 
 among the foot hills that held the thin handful 6f Landberg's dis- 
 solving army. Beautiful on the crest of the darkening conflict 
 stood the young Virginian, no air brave enough anywhere to blow 
 out the curls of his clustering hair, no succor anywhere near enough 
 to saved the flushed cheeks from the gray and the pallor of the 
 death that was near. Landberg fell in the thick of the fight, cheer- 
 ing on his men who had fought well for Mexicans, but who had 
 fought for all that as men'who had no hope. A Frenchman, Colonel 
 De Marsang, rode to the front. The army was falling to pieces. 
 On watch in the port of Guaymas two French frigates had been 
 waiting since the sunrise. There stood safety and refuge for the 
 shivered remnants when once well extricated from the coil that 
 Landberg had failed to break, but how get through. De Marsang 
 spoke to Burwell, saluting: 
 
 " Will your men charge? " 
 
 " It may be, Colonel. Your orders." 
 
 " Yonder is a battery on a hill," pointing as he spoke to four six- 
 teen pounders massed upon an eminence that commanded the only 
 road of retreat to Guaymas, " and it is scant of supporters. Silence 
 it for a brief half hour and what is left of Landberg's loyal follow- 
 ers shall be saved." 
 
 Burwell drew his sword. He spoke to his men very gently. He 
 put himself at their head. There was a sudden rush of some fifty 
 or sixty desparate soldiers a mass of blue and flame and dust and 
 f ul y the great roar of the guns broke hoarse and loud above the 
 shrill, fierce cheer of the men, and the road was clear. 
 
 They brought him back from the rout of the cannoniers with a 
 film on the blue eyes and white on the pallid cheeks. He spoke not, 
 neither did he make moan. To-day in Guaymas there are yet those 
 who cross themselves and tell with bated breath about the charge of 
 the muy bonita Americano. 
 
 Sonora was thus lost to Maximilian, and all the coast bordering 
 upon the Pacific, In the north, department after department was 
 
396 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO; 
 
 abandoned by the French, and at Matamoras, after a bloody siege 
 and a desperate combat at the end, Mejia an Indian of pure blood 
 and truer and braver than all the multitude of Castilian flatteries 
 who blessed the Emperor and fled from him when the darkness came 
 cut his way out from environment and fell back wearily and hard 
 bestead toward Monterey. In the passage out through the lines of 
 Escobedo's army, an American squadron died nearly to a man. It 
 had been recruited upon the Rio Grande, and was composed equally 
 of those who had served in either the Federal or Confederate army. 
 Its Captain, Hardcastle, was one of Hooker's best scouts ; one Lieu- 
 tenant, Inge, had made himself a name with Mosby ; another, Sars- 
 field, an Irishman from Memphis, had killed a comrade in a duel 
 in Georgia, and had fled as it were from a spectre which pursued 
 hiaa; seven of the privates had but an arm apiece; all had seen long 
 and desperate service all were soldiers who seemed to have no 
 home and no country. 
 
 Children of the war, what a life history many of them had. It is 
 related of the little band that, the night before Mejia began the work 
 that had need to be ended speedily, they exchanged with one another 
 the secret of each heart. Sorrows had come to the most of them, 
 and memories that were too sad for repining, too bitter for tender- 
 ness or tears. A boy was there not yet twenty. He had been a 
 soldier under Lee and had loved a woman older and wiser than 
 himself. One day he told her all and she laughed in his beardless 
 face, a laugh that went deeper than any word of cold contempt or 
 stern refusal. He was too young, she said. He knew she meant 
 too poor. The morning after the interview, while it was yet dusky 
 and dim in the east, a firm, set face was turned fair to the south, 
 and James Randolph had left his native land forever. Among the 
 foremost in the charge, and when the force of the squadron had 
 spent itself, he was taken up dead from among the feet of the 
 horses, happier than he had been, perhaps, since the parting months 
 agone. 
 
 One was there because a life of peace had become intolerable. 
 Hardcastle, a born soldier, fought for the love of the strife; Inge, to 
 better his fortune ; Sarsfield, to exorcise a memory that made his 
 sensitive life a burden; a few for greed and gain; not anyone for 
 hatred or revenge. 
 
 Mejia loved his Americans, and had done a General's part by 
 them. None rode finer horses, none displayed more serviceable 
 arms. What they had to do they did, so terribly that none ever 
 rose up to question the act. On guard they were never surprised; 
 on their honor, they never betrayed; on duty, they never knew an 
 hour of rest; on the for'ay, they kept a rank no stress had ever yet 
 destroyed, and in the fight, when others halted or went forward, as 
 those who grope, these grim, silent, impassible as fate rode 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 397 
 
 Straight on; resisted, very well; verpowered, still very well; 
 cut to pieces that might be. Having shaken hands with life, what 
 meant a few days more or less to all who saw the end approaching. 
 
 Escobedo had surrounded Matamoras with about 25,000 troops, 
 not good troops, however, but hard to dislodge from the fortifica- 
 tions in which they had encased themselves. To get out, Mejia had 
 to cut his way through. The American squadron went first. There 
 was a heavy fog that had blown in from the gulf on the morning of 
 the venture, so heavy, indeed, that the first files could not seethe 
 third files, nor the third the fifth, nor the Captain his Lieutenants in 
 their places behind him. 
 
 No matter; a squadron like this did not need the sunlight in 
 which to die. 
 
 It took an hour of furious work to open the only road between 
 Mejia and Monterey between a massacre as ferocious as the nature 
 of the bandit, Escobedo, and the succor of Jeanningros' Zouaves 
 marching twenty leagues in twenty hours to the rescue. Out of 
 seventy-two, rank and file, only eleven escaped free and scathless. 
 Afterward, in relating the story of the escape, General Mejia 
 remarked sententiously to Governor Reynolds : 
 
 " To maintain an empire it is necessary only for a score of 
 regiments, such as the squadron that charged at my command nine 
 separate times, losing always and always closing up." 
 
 To-day it is doubtful if any man knows where even one of the 
 heroes lies buried, nor aught of his inner life, nor anything of why 
 or how he died. 
 
 " So much the leaden dice of war 
 Do make or mar of character." 
 
 In the height of the tide of evacuation, Maximilian turned his 
 eyes once more in the direction of the colonists. A French Baron, 
 Sauvage by name, and an Englishman in finance and education, 
 obtained from the Emperor a grant of land as large about as the 
 State of Delaware. It was rare and valuable land. It grew India- 
 rubber trees and mahogany trees. It was in the tropics, and it was 
 fertile beyond all comparison. The Tuspan river ran through the 
 grant diagonally from northwest to southeast. It had a seaport 
 Tampico where the largest vessels might ride at anchor, and where 
 only in the unusually sickly years did the yellow fever come at all. 
 
 Several tribes of Indians inhabited this section of the Empire, 
 mostly ignorant and unknown Indians, yet supposed to be friendly 
 and well disposed. At least the death of no white man had been 
 laid at the door of any of the tribes, probably from the fact that no 
 white man had evef been among them. 
 
 Sauvage dreaded Indians because he had never dea with them. 
 He was a cultivated and elegant gentleman. He loved to linger 
 long at dinner and late over the wine, to take his ease in his own 
 
398 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO ; 
 
 way and to protect his person. He wanted a partner who, used to 
 peril and privation, would not object to the life of a pioneer. 
 Shelby was recommended. Freighting was no longer pleasant or 
 profitable. Concentrated now principally in the cities, the French 
 did not attempt to patrol the roads nor to afford protection to those 
 who lived away from he garrisoned towns and who needed protec- 
 tion. As a consequence, Shelby and his partner, Major McMurty, 
 disposed of such stock as was left to them after the rigors of the 
 rainy season and cast about for other work neither so difficult nor 
 so uncertain. 
 
 Shelby met Sauvage, and when the interview was over a scheme 
 of colonization was formed which needed only time to have added 
 to the Empire a bulwark that might have proved impregnable. Sur- 
 veyors under the charge of Major R. J. Lawrence, once a resident 
 of Kansas City, were dispatched immediately to the granted lands. 
 A railroad from Tampico to Vera Cruz was projected and a subsidy 
 at the rate of $20,000 per mile pledged by the Emperor. With 
 Shelby to plan was to execute. Two hundred men were employed 
 before the ink of the alliance between himself and Sauvage was 
 scarcely dry. Taking passage in a rickety schooner to Havana, 
 Shelby bought a seaworthy sail-boat there and loaded the boat at 
 once with American plows, harrows, railroad tools of all kinds, and 
 staple provisions enough for a summer's campaign. At the same 
 time he also flooded Texas and Arkansas with his circulars setting 
 forth the advantages of the Tuspan country, its immense resources, 
 the benefits a colonist might receive from a location there, and giving 
 also the nature and quality of the soil, its products and the average 
 price per acre under the Imperial decree confirming the grant. The 
 circular soon begot an interestthat was intense. Twenty familiesin a 
 neighborhood would unite and send an agent forward to investigate 
 the prospects of the colony. Meanwhile the railroad was com- 
 menced. From Havana Shelby went to Vera Cruz, where he pur- 
 chased another schooner belonging to the French fleet of observa- 
 tion in the harbor. Bazaine was in the city when he arrived in 
 port. He went straight up to his hotel and spoke to him thus: 
 
 "Marshal, we have taken upon our hands much work. "We 
 have farming implements of all kinds, but we have no guns. Give 
 us arms and ammunition. Your army of occupation has recently 
 been supplied with Chassepots, and it is not your intention to take 
 your old muskets back to France. Some you will sell, some you 
 will destroy, and some you will give away. Give me, therefore, 
 five hundred of your most serviceable, and ball cartridges enough 
 for a six month's siege, and when you hear of our colony again you 
 will hear of a place as promising as the scheme of your Emperor 
 in Africa." 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 399 
 
 Bazaine listened to this frank volubility as one does to some- 
 thing he has but rarely heard in his life, smiled, shrugged his 
 shoulders, but gave the order just the same. Before the sun set, 
 Shelby was sailing out from the harbor and past the dark battle- 
 ments of San Juan d'Ulloa, the owner of half a thousand elegant 
 guns, a great store of ammunition, and a faith in the future that 
 amounted with him to an inspiration. 
 
 The Americans flocked to him from every direction. His name 
 and his fame seemed a talisman. As fast as they arrived he armed 
 them, and it was well that he did so. A tribe of Indians, the Tolucas, 
 owning lands directly on the northern boundary of the grant, grew 
 jealous of a sudden at the growing colony, and sought to extermi- 
 nate it. There were bad Mexicans among them who did the schem- 
 ing and the plotting, and one rainy night a foray of eleven hundred 
 dashed down upon the outposts. Shelby was with his surveying 
 party at the time, a little detachment scarcely thirty strong. These 
 fortified themselves behind a breastwork of logs, and fought until 
 the settlement could be aroused. When the reinforcements were 
 all up, Shelby massed them compactly together, and dashed down 
 upon the invaders. They fought badly, and soon broke and fled. 
 For thirty long and weary miles he followed them through swamp 
 and chaparal, over ravines and rivers, by day and by night, killing 
 what came to him, sparing naught that fell in his way. Weary, 
 the men declared the work done well enough. He ordered them 
 forward fiercely. 
 
 " What," he cried out, " is the necessity of doing to-morrow or 
 the next day what could be so well done to-day? The colony is 
 young, it is hated, it has been in perpetual ambush; it must have 
 over it a mantle of blood. Forward, and spare not." 
 
 The blow dealt the Tolucas was a terrible one, but it was neces- 
 sary. Thereafter they traded in peace with the whites, and main- 
 tained the alliance unbroken until the colony itself was destroyed, 
 and the Americans driven out from all part or lot in the country. 
 
 Through no fault of any American there, however, the colony 
 did not live. Shelby did the work of a giant. He was alcalde, 
 magistrate, patriarch, contractor, surveyor, physician, interpreter, 
 soldier, lawgiver, mediator, benefactor, autocrat, everything. All 
 things that were possible were accomplished. Settlers came in and 
 had lands given them. The schooners were loaded with tropical 
 fruits and sent to New Orleans. When they returned they were 
 filled with emigrants. The railroad took unto itself length and 
 breadth and crept slowly through morass and jungle toward Vcra 
 Cruz. Disease also decimated. The rank forests, the tropical sun. 
 the hardships and exposures of the new and laborious life told 
 heavily against the men, and many whom the bullet had spared 
 the fever finished. The living, however, took the place of the 
 dead, and the work went on. 
 
400 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO; 
 
 One day news came that the French garrison at Correzetla had 
 marched at sunset for the Capital. Of all the good five hundred foot 
 and horse not even so much as a saber or a sabertash remained to 
 hold the mountain line between the guerrillas of the south and the 
 little handful of pioneers hewing away in the wilderness of mahog- 
 any, toiling by day and standing guard by night. It could not be 
 far to the end. A. sudden irruption of robbers, quite two thousand 
 strong, poured through the gaps in the broken and higher country, 
 and drove rapidly in all the outlying posts along the frontier. If 
 any settler there, tarrying late to save from the wreck whatever was 
 valuable or dear to him, fell into their hands, it was a rope, a dog's 
 death, and a grave that hid in it neither coffin nor shroud. Death 
 to the Gringo came on every breeze that swept to the sea. 
 
 Shelby knew that the beginning of the end was at hand, and that 
 he had great need to bring back from the overthrow all that was 
 worth a stroke for rescue. He met this last danger as he had met 
 all others, with arms in his hand. He massed once more his mov- 
 able columns and fought as he fell back in front of his sick and his 
 helpless, dealing such blows as became one who fel that the sun had 
 been turned away from him, and that thereafter it would be neither 
 a cloudless sky nor a peaceful twilight. 
 
 The citizens rose in the town of Tampico when it was knpwn 
 that the French had retired, and seized upon the schooners at 
 anchor off the bar. Some among their crew made battle and died 
 in vain and in discharge of a duty that had neither country nor cause 
 to remember and reward it. When the vessels were burned their 
 corpses were thrown headlong into the sea. Nothing survived the 
 inundation. The fields were all laid waste the habitations were all 
 pillaged and destroyed, what remained of the farming implements 
 were broken to pieces, the luxuriant growth of the tropics sprang up 
 in a night as it were, and hid the work of the devoted colonists. 
 There was a moment of savage exultation over the wreck and the 
 ruin of the beautiful valley and to-day all the magnificent land 
 watered by the Tuspan river lies out under the sun, a waste place 
 and a wilderness. Worn by long marching and fighting, the sur- 
 vivors found refuge at last in Cordova, homeless, penniless, and 
 strangers in a strange land. 
 
 And death came, too, to one among the exiles who had cast in 
 his lot in their midst as a Christian hero, and who had fought the 
 fight the hero always fights. Henry Watkins Allen, ex-Governor 
 of Louisiana, and a general of brigade in the Confederate army, was 
 carried up from the lowlands of the Gulf to die. Shattered by 
 wounds, and broken in health and fortune, he bore so bravely up 
 that none knew, not even those who knew him best, how weak was 
 the poor tried frame, and how clearly outlined to his own vision 
 was the invisible angel of the somber wings. 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 401 
 
 Selected by the Emperor to publish a newspaper in the English 
 language and in the interest of the Empire and colonization, he had 
 founded the Mexican Times, and had labored faithfully for the 
 stability of the Government and the development of its mineral 
 resources. Singularly gentle and lovable for one so desperately 
 brave, he gave his whole time to the labors of his position, and toiled 
 faithfully on in the work taken upon his hands to do. The Ameri- 
 cans looked upon him as an adviser and friend. Marshal Bazaine 
 counseled with him and bestowed upon him his confidence, and 
 Maximilian trusted him as he would a household officer or aide. 
 His charities were unostentatious and manifold. He delighted in 
 giving his scanty means, and in keepiDg from his left hand what 
 his right hand contributed. He wrote boldly and to the point. In 
 the army his record had been one of extraordinary daring in a corps 
 where all had been brave. Badly wounded at Shiloh, he kept his 
 saddle until the battle was over, and led his troops the long day 
 through, as though impervious to human weakness or physical 
 pain. Later, at Baton Rouge, under Breckenridge, he had made a 
 charge upon a battery, the fame of which filled the West. The guns 
 were taken in the terrible contest, but Allen was lifted up from 
 among his horse's feet, maimed, inert, speechless, almost dead. 
 Three bullets from a canister shot had penetrated both legs, shat- 
 tered the bones of one of them, and wounded him so desperately 
 that for five months it was an almost hopeless struggle for life. To 
 the last he was a sufferer and an invalid. 
 
 Having occasion to visit Vera Cruz on business during the height 
 of the yellow fever, the hand of death was laid gently and silently 
 upon him, and he returned to the City of Mexico to die. The con- 
 flict did not last long. What could the emaciated soldier do in the 
 grasp of one so relentless and so fierce? The old wound bled 
 afresh, and the old weakness had never left him. Bazaine sent to 
 him his own physician. All that skill could do was done; all that 
 tenderness or affection could suggest was performed. In vain. The 
 good man died as he had lived, in peace with the world and with 
 the good God who had afflicted him sorely in His own wise way, and 
 who carried his soul straight to heaven. 
 
 The work of evacuation went steadily on. As the French 
 retired, city after city received the Liberals with many demonstra- 
 tions of joy. In some of these, also, those Mexicans who had sym- 
 pathized with the Empire were cruelly treated; in others they were 
 imprisoned or shot*. The armies of Juarez were recruited by a levy 
 en masse of all capable of bearing arms in the territory overrun by 
 his ragamuffins. American sympathy was not wanting. Whatever 
 in the way of arms, ammunition, supplies or clothing was needed, 
 was bountifully supplied. A picked detachment of Californians, 
 three squadrons strong, formed a desperate bodyguard for. the 
 
402 SHELB\ 'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO ; 
 
 President. Unquestioning as fate, they did his bidding even to 
 torture and to massacre. They were feared and hated of the 
 nation. 
 
 A blow fell now, an/1 fell suddenly, upon the colony of Carlota. 
 The name itself, of all names, was the most fatal, and it appeased 
 somewhat the fierce hatred of the born robbers and traitors, who 
 hated everything noble or true, to plunder all who were unresislirg 
 or defenseless, and who had over them the blessing of the stricken 
 woman of Miramar. 
 
 In a night the labor and toil of a long year were utterly broken 
 up and destroyed. A band of freebooters from the mountains, 
 nearly two thousand strong, poured down through the gap the 
 French had left unprotected, and the pillage was utter and com- 
 plete. Quite an hundred colonists, males all of them, were cap- 
 tured in the night and marched far into the gloomy places and 
 recesses of the mountains. Their sufferings were terrible. Bare- 
 footed, days without food, beaten with sabers and pricked with 
 lances, some few died and the rest, after a month of barbarous cap- 
 tivity, made their way back to the French lines, scarcely more than 
 alive. All had been robbed, many had been stripped. Those who 
 survived the blow and the thrust were but few those who were 
 naked were the most numerous. 
 
 The blow finished the colony. The farming implements were 
 destroyed, the stock was slaughtered in the fields, the cabins were 
 burnt, the growing crops beaten down under the feet of the horses, 
 and what the hurrying cavalry spared the winds and the torches 
 finished. Nobody pitied the Americans. In the upheaval of all 
 stable things, and in the ever-increasing contraction of the Imperial 
 circle, what mattered a robbery more or less. The days of the col- 
 onists were numbered when the French vessel that bore Castelnau 
 anchored off the mole at Vera Cruz. 
 
 Still, however, the Americans were here and there in demand. 
 An English company owning valuable silver mines at Pachuca, felt 
 the terror of the French withdrawal, and sought for something 
 stronger to rely upon than Mexican manhood. Colonel Robert C. 
 Wood was in the City of Mexico at the time and was called upon to 
 take command of the Company's forces. These were peons and 
 miners. He recruited in addition a dozen Americans and went 
 down to Pachuca to look after the silver deposits entrusted to his 
 keeping. Vast masses of enormously rich ore, cut off from the 
 seaports because of the revolution going on in tne land, were piled 
 up in huge heaps awaiting shipment Wood took a look at it all 
 and turned to its owner, an old Englishman, nervous but brave: 
 
 " How much is it all worth?" 
 
 " Well on to a million." 
 
 " They will come for it strong, then the robbers?" 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAP OF THE WAR. 403 
 
 " Ko, not for the silver ore, but fora ransom. I could stand one, 
 or two, or three among the chiefs and pay them all well, but up 
 among the hundreds it is impossible." 
 
 Wood took command and went to fortifying. The third day he 
 found himself surrounded. A summons to surrender came. Before 
 firing a gun a Mexican always seeks to arrange a capitulation. 
 Palaver, from his own strong term palabres, means after all nothing 
 but words, words, words, in the rugged old Spanish. Since the com- 
 mander was not influenced to surrender, he had but one thing to do 
 he fought like a tiger. In the end the first robber chief was driven 
 away, for the Englishman's habitation was a fort, an arsenal, a store- 
 house, and a silver mine . Others advanced to the attack, but Wood 
 held on for three weeks, fighting every day, and keeping his own 
 right royally. The siege might have lasted longer, but Mendez, an 
 Imperial Mexican, swept down from the Capitol and drove before 
 him like chaff the robber bands, preying alike upoa the innocent and 
 the guilty. Colonel Wood marched out with the honors of war, the 
 Englishman made his voyage sure to Vera Cruz ; there was no more 
 fighting about Pachuca, but there was no more silver ore as well. 
 
 As the news of reverse after reverse came to Maximilian, he 
 turned once more his despairing eyes toward the Americans, and 
 sought among them for the nucleus of a corps. He sent for Shelby, 
 who was at'Cordova, and had him to come post haste. Feeling that 
 it was too late, Shelby yet answered the summons with alacrity, and 
 presented himself to the Emperor. 
 
 The interview was brief, but, brief as it was, it was almost sad. 
 
 " Kow many Americans are yet in the country? " the Emperor 
 inquired. 
 
 "Not enough for a corporal's guard," was Shelby's frank reply; 
 " and the few who are left can not be utilized. Your Majesty has 
 put off too long the inauguration of a plan which, while it might 
 not have given you as many soldiers as France, would at least have 
 restored a formidable rallying point, and stayed for a time the 
 tide of reverses that is rising all over Mexico. I don't know of 200 
 effective men among my countrymen who could be got together 
 before the evacuation is complete." 
 
 "I need 20,000," the Emperor rejoined, as one who talked 
 mechanically. 
 
 "Yes, 40,000. Of all the Imperial regiments in your service, 
 you cannot count upon one that will stand fast to the end. What 
 are the tidings? In Gaudalajara, desertion; in Colima, desertion; 
 in Durango, Zecatecas, San Luis Potosi, Matehuala it is nothing 
 but desertion, desertion. As I came in 1 .saw the Regiment of the 
 Empress marching out. You will pardon me if I speak the truth, 
 but as devoted as that Regiment should be, I would call upon your 
 Majesty to beware of it. When the need is greatest its loyalty will 
 
404 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO; 
 
 bo most iii doubt. Keep with you constantly all the household troops 
 that yet belong to the Empire. Do not waste them in doubtful bat- 
 tles. Do not divide them among important towns. The hour is at 
 hand when instead of numbers you will have to rely upon devotion. 
 I am but as one man, but whatever a single subject can do that thing 
 shall be done to the utmost." 
 
 Tii3 E.nperor mused some little time in silence. When he spoke 
 again it was in a voice so sad as to be almost pitiful. 
 
 " It is so refreshing to hear the truth," he said, "and I feel that 
 yo-i have told it to me as one who neither fears nor flatters. Take 
 this in parting, and remember that circumstances never render impos- 
 sible the right to die for a great principle." 
 
 As the Emperor spoke he detached the golden cross of the Order 
 of Guadalupe from his breast and gave it into the hands of Shelby. 
 
 He has it yet, a precious souvenir the sole memento of a part- 
 ing that for both was the last on earth. 
 
CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 IT was in these last days of the Empire that General J. A. Early, 
 a noble Southern Tacitus, came over from Havana to Mexico. His 
 journey from the United States had been a romantic one. After 
 Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House, General Early, with 
 the keen eye of a thorough sportsman, had selected a horse in Vir- 
 ginia that in everyway suited his ideas of a horse. Above all 
 thi ngs he wanted one full of action and endurance. The ride before 
 him was from ocean to ocean, as it were, from the Atlantic to the 
 Pacific. Having on nothing that would stand in the shape of the 
 uniform of a soldier, and a good enough looking citizen in all 
 except the bronze of his rough campaigning, he rode through Vir- 
 ginia and North Carolina, through Tennessee and Mississippi, into 
 Arkansas, and across it into Texas, and on through outlying bands 
 of guerrillas and robbers to the port of Matamoras. Sometimes he 
 went hungry for bread. For days together he had no shelter. He 
 spoke but two words of Spanish, and those contemptuously, 
 because the words themselves expressed so aptly the Mexican's idea 
 of eternal procrastination. He got along somehow, however, and 
 made his appearance to the few who were left among the Mexicans, 
 as full of the fire of war, and as indifferent to either extreme of 
 fortune as when amid the echoes of the long and perilous battle he 
 had seen victory come and go, at one time his hand maiden, at 
 another his Delilah. 
 
 General Early, even then, had written his book reviewing the 
 military campaigns of Sheridan in the Valley of Virginia. Some 
 articles had appeared in the American press not exactly between 
 them, but about them. Each had written freely of each. Each 
 was a man who followed up his words, if need be, with blows. He 
 disliked skirmishing very much, that was only skirmishing, so he 
 concluded to go over to Havana and challenge Sheridan. He 
 argued that Sheridan was an Irishman, that he probably would not 
 be averse to the operations of the code, that he was personally 
 braveand that a shot or two between them, while it might not 
 settle a single point at issue, would at least clear up the 
 atmosphere of the correspondence a little, and round off some of 
 the angularities of the two antagonistic natures. He was over- 
 psrsuaded, however, and did not send the challenge. He returned 
 to Canada, published his book, told some very necessary yet unpal- 
 atable truths, and has remaiced on duty ever since, a watchful sen- 
 tinel over Southern honor as amplified and exemplified by Southern 
 history. 
 
 405 
 
406 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO ; 
 
 Foreigners of all nations now began to put each his house in 
 order. None had faith in the Empire, none believed that it could 
 survive the shock of the French withdrawal three months. Max- 
 imilian had no money. He was suspicioned of the church. The 
 Archbishop was his enemy. His wife, really and truly his better 
 half, his noble, self sacrificing, heroic Carlota, was dead to him, to 
 his love, to whatever of triumph or despair the future had in store 
 for him. The dark hour was upon Saul. Shrouded in the mental 
 blackness of a great darkness, Maximilian, as he always did when 
 he was hard hunted, fled to Cuernavaca. He remained three days, 
 the prey of conflicting emotions, and the one isolated and deso- 
 late figure in a land that had in it the birds and the odors of Para- 
 dise. 
 
 When he returned he had taken upon himself a sudden resolution. 
 He would leave the country, too, he had said to some of his nearest 
 followers. The Emperor Napoleon had urged him to retire with the 
 French. The Emperor of Austria had done the same, so had the 
 Queen of England, so had Bazaine, so had everybody, who knew how 
 the scholar, and the gentleman would at last be destroyed in a contact 
 with brute force, ignorance and cupidity. There can be no doubt 
 whatever of the Emperor's intention at this time to abandon Mexico. 
 The condition of his wife's health, the attitude of the Catholic 
 Church, his empty treasury, the mutiny and disaffection among his 
 native regiments, the baseness, corruption and falsehood on every 
 hand, so impressed him at last that a great reaction came and a 
 great disgust for the people whose cause he had espoused and 
 whose country he had endeavored to pacify and redeem. He retired 
 suddenly to Orizava, a city two days' journey toward Vera Cruz. 
 The movement was ominous, and a great fear fell upon those among 
 the Imperialists who had yet the manhood and the decency to thus 
 preserve the semblance of affection. Generals Miramon and 
 Marquez went to him at once. Long consultations followed, and 
 the result arrived at was a decree on the part of the Emperor 
 convoking a national Congress, on the most ample and liberal 
 basis, wherein all political parties might participate. On the 12th 
 of October, 1866, the Emperor returned to Pueblo, one day's 
 journey toward the Capital, one day's journey farther from the soa- 
 coast. The Imperialists again took courage. On the 5th of January, 
 1867, the Emperor returned again to Mexico. 
 
 During his stay in Orizaba, his Majesty had a long and confi- 
 dential interview with Governor Thomas C. Reynolds. He had 
 been in the habit of consulting him upon various occasions, and had 
 in more than one instance followed the advice given by this remark- 
 able, clearh-eaded and conscientious man. To Reynolds he 
 unbosomed himself fully and without reserve. He dwelt upon the 
 condition of the country and the apparent hopelessness of the effort 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 407 
 
 he was making to maintain himself . He complained that he had no 
 advisers who understood the nature of the surroundings, and who 
 could give a sensible and patriotic reason for anything. He wanted 
 sympathy really as much as he did advice, and Reynolds gave him 
 both. He urged upon him the necessity of remaining in Mexico 
 and of dying, if needs be, for his kingdom and his crown. Reynolds 
 also recalled briefly the history of his ancestors, the names great 
 among the greatest of his race, and reminded him as delicately as 
 possible, yet very firmly, that, Hapsburg as he was, he had need but 
 of two things to perish or succeed. There was a sacred duty he 
 owed, first to his name, and then to those other young and daunt- 
 less spirits who had followed him across the ocean and who could 
 not be abandoned to be destroyed. Men of the Hapsburg race 
 either conquered destiny or were conquered by it in war harness and 
 in front of the fight. Standing or falling, he should head his armies 
 and trust himself, as his ancestors had done before him, to the God 
 of battles and the sword. 
 
 Maximilian returned to the City of Mexico, as has been already 
 stated, on the 5th of January, 1866. On the 6th of February, of the 
 same year, the French troops left the Capital. The Congress pro- 
 vided for at the Council of Orizava, owing to the deplorable condi- 
 tion of the country, did not meet. War was in the land, and rapine, 
 and the slaughter of those who did not resist, nor yet had any arms 
 in their hands. Bazaine, the night before the evacuation of the 
 city, sought a private interview with the Emperor, and had it 
 granted far into the morning. As a soldier he reasoned with the 
 Emperor simply as a soldier. Treating the whole question at issue 
 as one of men and means entirely, he demonstrated how futile all 
 resistance would be, and how utterly impossible it was to maintaia 
 an alien government without an army. Having his mind made up, 
 however, with the fixedness of desperation, Maximilian took no 
 heed of Bazaine's inexorable logic. The two parted coldly, never 
 to meet again, but not as enemies. The Marshal pitied the Emperor, 
 the Emperor smiled upon the Marshal. In the presence of death, 
 the man who can smile and forgive upon earth, is already forgiven 
 in heaven. 
 
 If there were any Mexicans now in the Empire really devoted to 
 Maximilian they made no effort to sustain him. As the French 
 lines receded the lines of Juarez moved up and occupied every- 
 thing. Regiments deserted in a body, garrisoned towns were given 
 up, the native troops would not fight agains native troops all cohe- 
 siveness was gone. There was no discipline ; it was dark in every 
 quarter, and the time for giants to arise was near at hand. In this 
 condition of the country Maximilian took the field. 
 
 From the first he led a forlorn hope. The whole Imperial fabric, 
 unsupported by French bayonets, literally fell to pieces. Miramqn 
 
408 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO ; 
 
 was defeated in Durango; Mendez had to retreat from the South; 
 Marquez lost Pueblo and the outlying towns about the Capital; 
 from a force amounting to fifty thousand men on paper, Maximilian, 
 all told, and when every General and every detachment was in at 
 Queretaro, could not, if he had tried, have counted nine thousand 
 soldiers, who had faith in the destiny of the Empire, and who knew 
 how to die for it. 
 
 On the 13th of February, 1866, the Emperor, leaving Marquez 
 in command of the City of Mexico, concluded to take command of 
 the army in the field. Accordingly , on that day he marched north- 
 ward. The force under him numbered barely eighteen hundred, 
 and was composed equally of the three arms, infantry, cavalry and 
 artillery. 
 
 The first day's march brought slight skirmishing; on the fourth 
 day the skirmishing grew suddenly heavy and hot; the Hungarians 
 of his body guard made a splendid charge, the road was tolerably 
 well cleared, and on the morning of the 19th, amid the ringing of 
 innumerable bells and the noisy demonstrations of a vast multitude, 
 the Emperor entered the city of Queretaro. 
 
 It was an historical city, this of Queretaro. Fifty-seven leagues 
 from the Capital, it had been founded about the year 1445, and was 
 a part of the empire of Montezuma I. A Spaniard, Fernando de 
 Tapia, conquered it in 1531, and conferred upon it the name of 
 Santiago de Queretaro or, in the Tarasco idiom, a place where ball* 
 was played. 
 
 Ominous christening! The ball now about to be played was with 
 those iron ones men play with death when death, must win. 
 
 The population of Queretaro was fully fifty thousand, and dur- 
 ing the war with the United States the Mexican Congress held its 
 sessions there. Afterward, in 1848, the commissioners of peace 
 assembled there and signed the famous treaty of Hidalgo. 
 
 The Emperor was no soldier, and yet he believed some fortifica- 
 tions were necessary to protect his inferior force from the greatly 
 superior force he knew was rushing to overwhelm him from every 
 portion of the Empire. From the 1st of March to the 16th he worked 
 like a grenadier He rarely slept. He ate as the men did, fared 
 alike with his soldiers, he appealed to them as a comrade, led them 
 forward as a king, and was beloved beyond all. 
 
 On the 14th of March General Escobedo, at the head of thirty 
 thousand Mexicans, moved down from the north and invested the 
 city. Here was one who had never known an hour of mercy; who 
 had iron gray hair; who was angular and gaunt; who lived much 
 alone, suspicioned all men; who had been known to have rivals poi- 
 soned; who hated the French worse than the Austrians, the Ameri- 
 cans worse than the French, and who was a coward. 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 409 
 
 On the 14th of March the city was attacked thirty thousand 
 against nine thousand. All day long the Emperor was under fire. 
 At night he took no rest. Brave, modest, gentle, no exposure was 
 too great for him no personal hazard accounted a feather's weight 
 in the scale of the day's doubtful fortunes. 
 
 Not yet satisfied of his grip upon the town, Escobedo retired worst- 
 ed. The grim lines of circumvallation, however, grew stronger day 
 by day, and to the siege of the place a tide of soldiers poured con- 
 stantly in, armed in all fashions, ragged, hungry for food, ravenous. 
 It mattered not for guns. They had strength, and they could dig to 
 keep well at bay those who, sooner or later, had to come out or 
 starve. 
 
 Succor was needed, and on the 22d of March, at the head of one 
 thousand mounted men. General Marquez, at the command of the 
 Emperor, started to the Capital. He was to procure men, provisions 
 and munitions of war, aad^he was to return within fifteen days. All 
 his orders were explicit. If he had not men enough to garrison and 
 defend the City of Mexico, and also to increase his force sufficiently 
 for tae defense of Qucretaro, then he was to abandon Mexico, and 
 return with every soldier and every round of ammunition he could 
 raise to the headquarters of the Emperor. The Emperor also con- 
 ferred upon Marquez the title of Lugar Teniente, or what is usually 
 translated as meaning Lieutenant General. It does mean this, and 
 nrich more. Such an officer, in the absence of the sovereign, takes 
 his place, and is recognized and obeyed accordingly. He has the 
 absolute power of life and death in his hands, can declare war, appro- 
 priate money, make treaties, act, in short, as an absolute and unques- 
 tioned autocrat, and then in the end explain nothing. 
 Marquez never returned to Queretaro. "Was he a traitor? In 
 the peculiarly expressive language of the race to which he belonged, 
 the answer is only a shrug of the shoulders and a quien sabe. In a 
 nation of traitors, what matters one or two more or less ? Marquez 
 not only did not report, but such were the infamies of his reign in 
 Mexico, and such the outrages and oppressions he put upon the 
 p30ple, that many, even in the last sad days of the Empire many, 
 indeed, who were faithful and pure of heart rose up to curse Maxi- 
 milUn, and to rejoice when the couriers came ridingi southward, 
 telling of how the work was done. 
 
 On the 27th of March a passable sortie was made. Two hundred 
 Aiutriin Hussars, of the household troops, and a squadron or so of 
 Hungarians, dashed across an open field at the charge, capturing 
 two pieces of artillery and two hundred men. 
 
 No succor came from the Capital. Marquez reached the City of 
 Mexico in safety and increased his forces to four thousand soldiers, 
 eight hundred of whom were Europeans. Instead of marching 
 immediately northward to Queretaro^ he marched directly south- 
 
410 SIIELEY'S E.YPLDITION TO MEXICO; 
 
 ward to Pueblo, then held by an Imperial garrison, but closely 
 besieged by General Purfirio Diaz. As Marquez approached, Diaz 
 stormed the city, enlisted a large proportion of its defenders in his 
 own ranks and turned savagely upon Marquez. He retreated at first 
 without a battle. Diaz pressed him fiercely, some heavy skirmishing 
 ensued, but in the end all opposition ceased, and the remnant of 
 Maximilian's army cooped itself up within the walls of Mexico and 
 surrendered later at discretion. 
 
 On the 14th of April, at Queretaro, the Emperor's forces made 
 another sortie, taking nineteen guns and six hundred prisoners. It 
 was then his intention to abandon this position and reach Mexico 
 by forced and incessant marches. But upon ascertaining fully the 
 results of the victory, and becoming thoroughly acquainted with its 
 magnitude and effect, he countermanded the order of execution and 
 tarried yet a while longer, hoping to hear something that would 
 reassure him from other quarters. Finally abandoning all idea of 
 succor from the movements of Marquez, he ordered Prince Salm 
 Salm, on the night of the 17th, to go in quest of him, ascertain 
 exactly his intentions, arrest and iron him if the need was, and 
 bring back with him every available soldier possible under his com- 
 mand. 
 
 Prince Salm Salm, at the head of five hundred cavalry, sallied 
 out precisely at midnight and advanced probably half a league. 
 Suddenly a tremendous fire was opened upon him from artillery and 
 infantry. Severely wounded in the foot himself, and satisfied frcm 
 the force in position across his only road of exit that he could not 
 get through, he returned within the lines, baffled and demoralized. 
 
 On the 1st of May still another sortie was attempted. Miramon 
 led this, and led it badly. Two hours of desperate fighting gave 
 him no advantage, and when at last he was forced back, it was with 
 a precipitancy so great as to appear like a rout. 
 
 The cloud of disaster now became darker and nearer. Maximil- 
 ian bore up bravely. As long as his private funds lasted, he divided 
 them among the sick and the wounded. Constantly in the front of 
 the fight, and dauntless in the discharge of every duty, he com- 
 manded, inspired, toiled and faced the inevitable as became the 
 greatness o$ his nature and the magnitude of the interests at stake. 
 He commanded scarcely nine thousand men. Foremost in the sor- 
 ties, forming all the forlorn hopes, lookirg forward to the future 
 only as those who had no future, his Europeans died and mar'c no 
 moan. Many near and dear to him had fallen. Some who had fol- 
 lowed his fortunes in other lands and on seas full of wonderand 
 peril, fell where could come to them neither friendly hand nor 
 sepulchre. Those the enemy got they mutilated those who dragged 
 themselves back from the battle's wreck, slowly and painfully, had 
 the prayer of the priest and the last warm grasp of a kingly hand. 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 411 
 
 These were all but to these poor, faithful, simple-minded soldiers, 
 these were a great deal. 
 
 On the morning of the 13th of May, Maximilian determined, 
 when the night came, to abandon the city of Queretaro. Having 
 yet, however, to arm some three thousand citizens, the evacu- 
 ation was postponed. On the evening of the 14th, Miramon came 
 to the Emperor and suggested to him the importance of calling 
 a council composed of all the Generals of the army. Above 
 all things it was necessary to have unity of action, and this could 
 best be done after a full and free interchange of opinion was 
 indulged in. The Emperor consented, and in consenting signed 
 his death warrant. 
 
 Before the consultation was had, the Emperor turned his honest, 
 clear blue eyes upon the face of Colonel Lopez, commander of the 
 Empress' Regiment, and said to him very gently, as he laid his hand, 
 comrade fashion, upon his shoulder, decorated with the epaulettes 
 the Empress herself had braided : 
 
 " You need take no concern about the march. Your regiment 
 has been detailed as my especial escort." 
 
 The Judas smiled as all Judases have done for six thousand 
 years, and went his way to betray him. 
 
 The Generals met during the day of the 14th, and resolved to 
 march out from Queretaro at eleven o'clock that night. When the 
 time came the volunteers were still unarmed, and some of the Gen- 
 erals asked the delay of another day. General Mendez, also, a 
 gallant and devoted officer, being quite unwell and unable to ride, 
 sent Colonel Redonet to the Emperor with a petition asking for 
 further time that he might conquer his malady and lead his old 
 brigade in person. 
 
 Maximilian yielded to these urgent solicitations and fixed at 
 last positively upon the night of the 15th. 
 
 Full fifty thousand men now invested Queretaro. Corona, a 
 General of more than ordinary Mexican ability, came down from 
 Durango and joined his forces to those of Escobedo. The lines of 
 investment were complete fifty thousand besieging nine thousacd. 
 
 About the headquarters of Maximilian all was silence and 
 expectancy. General Castillo, of the Imperial staff, conveyed to 
 the various officers, secretly and verbally, the orders for the night. 
 Nowhere did the gleaming of camp fires appear. The infantry 
 were to carry their cartridges and blankets, the cannon upon the 
 fortifications were to be spiked and the magazines flooded. Some 
 eight and ten- pounders, dismounted and packed on mules, together 
 with light supplies of grape and canister, completed the arm of 
 resistance in the way of artillery. 
 
 On the west and directly in front of the lines held by Corona the 
 entire garrison was to be concentrated. Thence pouring out through 
 
412 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO ; 
 
 the night surprising, stabbing, bayoneting, gaining the rugged 
 defiles of the Sierra Gorda there was slight work thereafter in 
 laying hands upon succor and safety. 
 
 Twelve hundred armed citizens of Queretaro were to remain 
 behind and protect the people and the property of the city as far as 
 might be. These, after twenty -four hours had passed, were to sur- 
 render to General Escobedo. The Emperor retired at eight o'clock 
 and slept until one. Prince Salm Salm, until twelve o'clock, was 
 busy in arranging the private papers of Maximilian and in packing 
 them in small canvas sacks that might be strapped to the saddles of 
 the escort company. Many were busy in writing words of tender- 
 ness and farewell. As there were no lights, the staff officer 3 assisted 
 each other by smoking cigarettes close to the paper that a few words 
 might be scribbled by the fleeting and uncertain light. 
 
 The sortie might have won. It was the last and only resort of 
 nine thousand desperate men who had been starving, who in eleven 
 days had only scant allowances of mule or horse meat, and who had 
 been under fire long enough to be acclimated. 
 
 It was not to be, however. Between one and two o'clock the 
 traitor Lopez, having previously communicated with Escobedo, 
 crept silently from his quarters and took his way through the dark 
 and narrow streets of Queretaro. Colonel Garza, commanding the 
 advance outposts of the investing army, met him first. Garza was 
 an honorable soldier who despised the work he was engaged in, and 
 the man who came to him in the midnight, a coward and a traitor. 
 As he advanced to meet him he did not extend his hand, but said 
 curtly: 
 
 " You are expected. Such work as this needs to be done quickly." 
 
 Garza reported with Lopez to General Veliz, a division comman-^ 
 der. The three together visited Escobedo and returned almost 
 directly, Garza having been ordered to follow the traitor with his 
 command and do as he was bidden. 
 
 There was a large church on the south called La Cruz, and near 
 this church a hole in the wall of defense. Thither went Lopez, 
 Veliz and Garza. Here Veliz halted, but Garza and Lopez went on. 
 Be it remembered, also, that Lopez had been the officer of the day, 
 that he was the highest just then in authority in the city, and that 
 having the pass word, he could arrange the forces at pleasure, and 
 transpose or withdraw posts and outposts as the exigencies of his 
 terrible treason might demand. 
 
 Whan the nearest station of Imperial troops was reached, Garza 
 halted his command. Lopez rode forward and asked of the officer 
 on duty if there was any news. 
 
 "None," was the reply. 
 
 "Then parade your men and call the roll." 
 
 This was done with military accuracy and speed. Afterward 
 the detachment was marched to the rear of Garza, leaving him in 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 413 
 
 possession of the fort. The Liberals were in Queretaro. The 
 beginning of the end was at hand. Other Liberal officers were put 
 in possession of other posts, and before an hour had passed the 
 treachery was complete. As the Liberal forces entered the city, 
 quite a number of the Imperial officers were awake. As they saw 
 Colonel Rincon's regiment a Liberal regiment of some celebrity 
 march by their barracks, they looked out carelessly and took no 
 note. Some of their own troops, they imagined, were going by or 
 getting ready for the sortie. 
 
 By half past three o'clock fully two-thirds of the city was in 
 possession of the Liberals. Suddenly and with great force all the 
 church bells began to ring. The streets were filled with bodies of 
 armed men. Aides galloped hither and thither. Skirmishing shots 
 broke out in every direction. There were cries, shouts, the blare 
 of bugles, and from afar the heavy rumbling and dragging of 
 artillery. 
 
 Great confusion fell upon the Imperialists. Some thought that 
 Marquez had returned, and had attacked and defeated Escobedo. 
 Others, that it was only a fight at the outposts many, that the short, 
 hot work of the sortie had actually begun. And so it had, with the 
 lines reversed. Lopez had an adjutant, a Pole named Yablonski, 
 who was with him in his treasonable plot, but who yet sought to 
 save the Emperor. Feigning sleep, he had not yet closed his eyes 
 in slumber. All his senses were on the gui mve for the ringing of 
 the bells that were to usher in the tragedy. The first echo brought 
 him to his feet erect, nervous, vigorous. 
 
 Maximilian occupied the convent of La Cruz, and next to the 
 room of the Emperor was that of his private secretary, Jose Blasio. 
 Yablonski went close up to Blasio and whispered : 
 
 " The enemy are in the garden; get up!" 
 
 Half dressed and heavy with the deep sleep of exhaustion, Blasio 
 staggered into the apartment of the Emperor. In a few moments 
 Maximilian knew all. He was the coolest man there, and so sad 
 and so gentle that it seemed as if he did not care to live. The con- 
 vent was surrounded. Castillo, Guzman, Salm Salm and Padillo, 
 all officers who were quartered near the Emperor, walked into his 
 presence. Padillo informed him that the enemy were in possession 
 of the convent ; that ten pieces of artillery had been taken in its very 
 plaza, and that all defense of the mere building itself was useless. 
 Maximilian very quietly took up a brace of revolvers, handed one 
 to Padillo, and went to the door of his room, followed by Padillo, 
 Blasio and Salm Salm. " To go out here or to die is the only way," 
 he said, and they crossed the corridor. 
 
 A sentinel at the head of the steps halted them. Maximilian 
 leveled his revolver. An officer of the Liberal army a brave, 
 chivalrous and heroic Mexican, supposed to be Col. Rincon 
 
414 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO ; 
 
 struck -with a strange and generous pity, cried out to the sen- 
 tinel: 
 
 "Let them pass; they are citizens." 
 
 In the Plaza a line of leveled muskets again came up in front of 
 them. Capture was imminent or death unknown and ignominious. 
 Again Rincon spoke to the soldiers: 
 
 " Let them pass; they are civilians." 
 
 The lines opened and the Emperor, followed by his little escort, 
 reached the regiment of the Empress. Lopez, its Colonel and its 
 betrayer, was at its head, mounted and ready for orders. A huge 
 hill, El Cerro de las Campanas, was the rallying point now of 
 Maximilian's confused, scattered and demoralized forces. Thither 
 he hurried with what was left of this chosen body of his very house- 
 hold's troops. On the way Castillo was met, who cried out: 
 
 "All is lost. See, your Majesty, the enemy's force is coming very 
 near." 
 
 Just then a body of infantry was entering the Plaza. Mis- 
 taken in their uniforms, and not aware of the extent and nature of 
 the surprise, Maximilian exclaimed : 
 
 "Thank God, our battalion of Municipal Guards are coming." 
 
 The error, however, was soon discovered and the little party 
 started again for the hill, El Cerro. Maximilian was on foot. A 
 horse, however, was brought to him which he mounted, reigning it 
 in and keeping pace with his companions. Lopez remained close to 
 his side. Passing the house of one Rubio, a rich Mexican, though 
 not an Imperialist, Lopez said to the Emperor: 
 
 " Your majesty should enter here. In this way alone can you 
 save yourself." 
 
 Maximilian refused peremptorily, and issued his orders with 
 singular calmness and clearness. Meeting Captain Jenero, General 
 Castillo's adjutant, he bade him seek Miramon at once and order 
 him to concentrate every available soldier upon El Cerro de las 
 Campanas. To another officer he cried out: 
 
 "Go among your men and talk to them. Expose your person 
 and teach them how to die." 
 
 On the summit of the hill there were only about one hundred and 
 fifty men gathered. These, belonging principally to the infantry 
 regiments, had strayed there more because of the observation the 
 elevation afforded than of a knowledge that it was the rallying 
 point. Not all of them had ammunition. Some, roused suddenly 
 from sleep, had snatched up only their guns and rushed out alarmed 
 into the night. Soon the cavalry of the Empress arrived, and, 
 recognizing the Emperor, cheered for him bravely. This devotion 
 touched him, and under the light of the stars he was seen to lift up 
 his hat and bow his head. 
 
 Was he thinking of Carlota? 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OP THE WAR. 415 
 
 Miramon did not come. The firing grew heavier in every direc- 
 tion. Mejia rallying a few men in the Plaza del Ayuntamiento fol- 
 lowed the regiment of the Empress. ^ As they approached Maxi- 
 milian spoke to Salm Salm. 
 
 "Ride forward and see if Miramon can not be distinguished 
 among those who are coming up." 
 
 General Mendez, a lion in combat, and so weak from illness as 
 to be put with difficulty upon his horse, was surprised in the Ala- 
 meda, and surrounded. Would he surrender? Never: and the bat- 
 tle began. It was a carnage a massacre. His men fell fearfully 
 fast shot down, helpless, by an unseen and protected foe. A ball 
 broke his left arm. He swayed in the saddle, but he held fast. 
 
 "Bring here a strap!" he shouted, and strap me fast. I want 
 to die in the harness." 
 
 He tried to cut through to El Cerro. Met half way, and caught 
 in a dreadful ambuscade, the slaughter was renewed. Another 
 ball carried away the point of his chin, and yet a third disabled his 
 right shoulder, and yet a fourth killed his horse. Scarcely alive, 
 he was dragged out insensible. Reviving a little toward daylight, 
 at six in the morning a fusilade finished him Among all the 
 soldiers of Maximilian, he was the noblest, the bravest and the best. 
 
 How fared it with Miramon, sound asleep when the traitor Lopez 
 stole in through the battered wall at the head of an insatiable tide 
 swallowing up the tottering and dissolving fabric of Imperialism? 
 
CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 AWAKENED by the ringing of bells, the broken rattle of irregular 
 musketry, and now and then a cannon shot, Miramon half arose in 
 his bed, cleared his eyes from the heaviness of sleep, and spoke 
 calmly to his aid-de-camp. 
 
 "I fear that we are lost. Inside the walls a traitor has surely 
 been at work." 
 
 He dressed himself speedily, and descended into the street. It 
 was full of soldiers. He imagined that they were his own. He 
 spoke to them and announced his name and rank. An officer on 
 horseback rushed upon him, put a carbine to his cheek and fired. 
 Miramon, his jaw-bone shattered and his flesh blackened and 
 powder burnt, swayed backward nearly from his feet, caught 
 himself, lifted himself upright, and killed the officer dead in his 
 saddle who had shot him. 
 
 Miramon had a devoted body-guard, and it rallied around him. 
 In the darkness the fight became furious. Striving in vain to reach 
 the hill where he supposed the Emperor was making a desperate 
 stand, and weak from the lss of blood, Miramon staggered upon an 
 open door and entered a house. It was the house of Dr. Samanie- 
 gos, who hid him and kissed him, and, Mexican like, went out into 
 the streets to give his life away. He proclaimed aloud to the 
 Liberals that Miramon was alone in his house, and that the time 
 was opportune to lay hands upon him. A band rushed in and 
 bound and gagged him, and dragged him away suffering excruciat- 
 ing torture to the convent of Terrecitas. 
 
 The Emperor, therefore, waited in vain for Miramon waited in 
 agony and uncertainty until two batteries of San Gregorio and 
 Celaya opened a tremendous fire upon his position. Turning to 
 Prince Salm Salm, he was heard to exclaim from the depths of his 
 despair : 
 
 " Oh, my friend, would that one of these shells would end it all 
 now, and speedily." 
 
 Alas! he was reserved for Mexican bullets. 
 
 Directly, Colonel Gonzales galloped up with a portion of a regi- 
 ment, saluted, and reported the condition of Miramon. Maximilian 
 sighed heavily, rested his head upon his hands for a few moments, 
 and then demanded suddenly of Castillo and Mejia if it were pos- 
 sible to break through the lines of the enemy. 
 
 Old Mejia, the small, cool, devoted Indian fatalist and fighter, 
 turned his glass toward the enemy and surveyed them accurately 
 through the night. When he had finished, he merely shrugged his 
 shoulders and replied : 
 
 416 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 417 
 
 " Sire, it is impossible. If you order it we will try it. For my 
 part, I am ready to die. For fifty years I have waited for this." 
 
 Maximilian then took Padillo by the arm and spoke to him 
 briefly : 
 
 " It is necessary to make a quick determination in order to avoid 
 greater misfortunes. Is it surrender ? " 
 
 "Yes, sire," said Castillo, Padillo, Gonzales, and "Yes, sire," 
 said Mejia, in a sad whisper, his head drooping upon his breast. 
 
 Immediately a white flag was lifted up from the top of the hill, 
 and messengers were sent at once to Escobedo asking an interview 
 upon the following basis : 
 
 "First To make Maximilian alone the victim of the war. 
 
 "Second The men of the army to be treated with the soldierly 
 consideration merited by their valor and devotion. 
 
 " Third The lives and liberty of those who were immediately 
 in the Emperor's personal services." 
 
 Before an answer was returned, Maximilian saw in the dis- 
 tance a small squadron of soldiers, dressed in scarlet, and riding at 
 a rapid speed toward the Campanas. He mistook them for his 
 own Hussars, and cried out, his voice heavy with emotion : 
 
 "It is too late they come too late, but see what a fearful risk 
 they run to reach me. Look how they endure the fire of the bat- 
 teries. Who would not be proud of such soldiers ? " 
 
 Alas ! they were not even a portion of his own decimated yet 
 devoted foreign followers. They were the advance of Trevina's 
 robber cavalry, coming to hunt the Emperor. 
 
 As they drew near, the fire slackened, and suddenly ceased alto- 
 gether. An officer, a captain, rode forward, and with a vulgar and 
 cowardly epithet, demanded Maximilian. His Majesty, calm as a 
 gi snadier on guard, stepped outside the fortification, and replied 
 with much sweetness and dignity: 
 
 "I am he." 
 
 "Mendezhas been shot," this officer continued brutally, "and 
 Miramon, and by and by it will come Maximilian's and Mejia's 
 turn." 
 
 The Emperor did not answer. He pitied the coward who did 
 
 not know how to treat misfortune. Sternly bidding his subordinate 
 
 to go to the rear, General Echegarry, a Liberal officer of some 
 
 humanity, rode to the front and demanded courteously the surrender 
 
 % of Maximilian and his officers. This was at once accorded, the 
 
 Emperor again exclaiming, "If you should require anybody's life, 
 
 : take mine, but do not harm my officers. I am willing to die if you 
 
 | require it, but intercede with General Escobedo for the life of my 
 
 officers." 
 
 Presently General Corona rode up, and again the Emperor inter- 
 ceded for his personal adherents -. 
 
418 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO ; 
 
 "If you want another victim, I am prepared to go. Do not 
 harm those whose only crime in your eyes. is their devotion to me." 
 
 Corona replied coldly: 
 
 " It does not belong to me to make promises. Until you are deliv- 
 ered to the General-in-chief in person, your own life and that of your 
 officers will be safe." 
 
 Horses were furnished, and the Imperialist Generals, Costello, 
 Mejia and Salm Salm, together with the Emperor, and the Liberal 
 Generals, Corona and Echegarry, mounted and rode down the hill 
 toward the city. It was not long before General Escobedo was 
 met, when a countermarch was had, and they all returned to the hill 
 again, and into the fort where they dismounted. 
 
 After dismounting, Maximilian extended his hand to Escobedo. 
 His own safety never, for a single instant, seemed to have entered 
 - his mind. His talk was ever of his followers. 
 
 "If you wish more blood," he remarked to Escobedo, "take 
 mine. I ask at your hands good treatment for the officers who 
 have been true to me. Do not let them be insulted or maltreated." 
 
 "All shall be treated as prisoners of war, even your Majesty," 
 was the significant reply of the Mexican butcher. 
 
 In an hour, with a heavy guard over him homeless, crownless, 
 sceptreless Maximilian was a close prisoner in the convent of La 
 Cruz. At his special request the officers of his household, Prince 
 Salm Salm, Colonel Guzman, Minister Aguirre, Colonel Padillo, Dr. 
 Basch, and Don Jose Blasio, his Secretary, were permitted to be 
 imprisoned in the same building. They remained four days there 
 three of which the Emperor remained in bed, seriously sick of a 
 dysentery. On the fifth day they were removed to the Convent of 
 Terrecitas. After enduring seven days of rigorous captivity in this 
 gloomy abode, they were taken to the Convent of Capuchinas, 
 where were also imprisoned all the Generals of the Imperial army. 
 For four days they all remained together on the first floor. On 
 the fifth, Maximilian, Mejia and Miramon were separated from the 
 rest and imprisoned in the second story. The work of winnowing 
 had already commenced so soon and yet so ominous. 
 
 Here the Emperor had leisure to review the past, and answer to 
 his own heart the question : Had he done his duty. In his con- 
 science, perhaps, there was little of upbraiding. True, he had com- 
 mitted mistakes here and grievous errors of judgment yonder; but 
 who is infallible ? He had tried to do right, and he had nothing to 
 reproach himself with. No form of speech could express his aston- 
 ishment at the betrayal of Lopez. He had trusted him in all things, 
 confided in him, leaned upon him, lifted him up and promoted him, 
 brought him to the flattery and friendship of his beautiful Empress 
 and in the one supreme moment of his destiny, in the very hour of 
 the desperate crisis of his life and his reign, this Lopez; this tawny, 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 419 
 
 fawning, creeping, cowardly thing, surrendered himself without so 
 much as a quickened pulse-beat, or a guilty and accusing blush. He 
 had been the godfather to Lopez's child. He had laid bare to Lopez 
 the inmost recesses of his heart, and in his last and most terrible 
 hour to be betrayed when the struggle he was making was not even 
 for himself, was too bad. 
 
 Nor did Lopez lay himself down on a bed of roses when the 
 black treachery was done. His beautiful wife deserted him, and 
 published to all Mexico the story of his infamy and ingratitude. 
 His children abandoned his household and sought shelter and pro- 
 tection with the mother. On dress parade one day, when an army 
 was on review, a Juarista Colonel smote him upon either cheek, the 
 lazzaroni hooted at him and cried out " el triador! el triador! " as he 
 passed along, the very beggars turned away their eyes from him 
 without asking for alms, and nowhere could he find pity and 
 charity except in the bosom of that church which, no matter how 
 dark are the stains of blood upon the hands of the sinners, prays 
 always that they may be made white as snow. 
 
 The captivity of Maximilian continued. It was rigid, gloomy, 
 foreboding a little darker than Spanish captivity generally, 
 because to the cruelty of the original Spaniard, there had been added 
 the cunning and selfish craftiness of the Indian. He was denied all 
 intercourse with his fellows except that which the officials had. His 
 food was coarse, his water not plenty, his sunlight barred out, and 
 his pure air made pestilential because of the filth with which they 
 delighted to surround him. 
 
 Physical deprivations, however, made no way to subdue the lofty 
 pride and the Christian heroism and fortitude of his kingly charac- 
 ter. His head was yet borne splendidly erect, and in the day or the 
 night-time, in a room that was like a dungeon, or in the vestibule 
 where the naked and unwashed animals of sentinels slept, he was the 
 same patient, kindly, courteous gentleman true to his name, his 
 lineage, and his manhood. 
 
 The half-breed butchers, however, who were soon to try him, 
 and to sit with sandalled feet about the table where military justice 
 was to declare itself, tried^first, in Indian fashion, to degrade the 
 victim they meant to torture alive. A proclamation, purporting to 
 have been written by Maximilian, was printed in every newspaper 
 in the Empire. It bore no date. It was abject, cowardly, plausible 
 if a Mexican had written it, a paltry forgery when ascribed to a 
 Hapsburg, and it was as follows : 
 
 " The Archduke Ferdinard Maximilian, of Hapsburg, ex-Emperor 
 of Mexico, to all of its inhabitants : 
 
 " COMPATRIOTS : 
 
 "After the valor and the patriotism of the Republican armies 
 have brought about the end of my reign in this city, the obstinate 
 
420 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO ; 
 
 defense of which was indispensable to save the honor of my cause 
 and of my race ; after this bloody siege, in irhich have rivaled in 
 abnegation and bravery the soldiers of the Empire *with those of the 
 Republic, I am going to explain myself to you. 
 
 "Compatriots : I came to Mexico animated not only with a firm 
 hope of making you, and every one of you, individually happy, but 
 also protected and called to the throne of Montezuma and Iturbide 
 by the Emperor of France, Napoleon III. He has abandoned us 
 cowardly and infamously, through the fear of the United States, 
 placing in ridicule France itself, and making it spend uselessly its 
 treasures, and shedding the blood of its sons and your own. When 
 the news of my fall and death will reach Europe, all its monarchs, 
 and the land of Charlemange, will ask an account of my blood, and 
 that of the Germans, Belgians and French shed in Mexico, from 
 the Napoleon dynasty. Then will be the end. 
 
 " The whole world will soon see Napoleon covered with shame 
 from head to foot. 
 
 " Now the world sees his Majesty, the Emperor of Austria, my 
 august brother, supplicating for my life before the United States, 
 and me a prisoner of war at the disposition of the Republican gov- 
 ernment, with my crown and heart torn to pieces. 
 
 " Compatriots: My last words to you are these: I ardently desire 
 that my blood may regenerate Mexico; and that as a warning to all 
 ambitious and incautious persons, you may know how, with pru- 
 dence and true patriotism, to take advantage of your triumph, and 
 through your virtues ennoble the political cause, the banner of 
 which you sustain. May Providence save you, and make me worthy 
 of myself. * ' MAXIMILIAN. " 
 
 The vile forgery went everywhere. The soldiers on guard that 
 could read, read it aloud and laughed long and derisively in the 
 hearing of the Emperor. A copy was brought to him. He wrote 
 upon the back, in pencil, this: 
 
 "I authorize Colonel and Aid-de-Camp Prince Salm Salm to 
 deny in my name this last effort to disgrace me before posterity. 
 This proclamation is not mine, its sentiments are not mine, its 
 declarations are not true, and these, therefore, certainly can not be 
 mine. Should Colonel and Aid-de-Camp Prince Salm Salm escape 
 the fate certainly in store for me, he will publish in Europe this my 
 earnest declaration." 
 
 . Salm Salm did survive him, and history has given the lie fully 
 to the black plot worthy of the nation that concocted it. 
 
 The trial was a farce. Since the work of the traitor Lopez, there 
 had been no hope for Maximilian. 
 
 On Tuesday morning, May 28, 1867, the friends of the Emperor 
 began to bestir themselves in his behalf. Mr. Bansen, the Hamburg 
 Consul, resident at San LuisPotosi, the wife of Prince Salm Salm, 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 421 
 
 Baron Magnus, the Prussian Minister, and Frederick Hall, an 
 American lawyer, concentrated themselves at Queretaro and laid 
 plans for the acquittal of his Majesty. 
 
 Maximilian talked much before his trial the broken and uncon- 
 nected talk of one who felt without seeing it, the shadow of approach- 
 ing death. He declared that he came to Mexico with the sincere 
 belief that he was called to the government by the great masses of 
 the people. After his reception at Vera Cruz he had remarked to 
 the Empress: " Surely the deputation were right when they said a 
 majority of the Mexicans were in favor of our coming to be their 
 ruler. I never in all Europe saw a sovereign received with such 
 enthusiasm as greeted us." 
 
 He put upon Bazaine the responsibility of the decree of October 
 3, 1865, that decree which required the execution of all Liberals 
 caught with arms in their hands. Bazaine, he said, appeared before 
 the Council of State and declared that decree to be a military neces- 
 sity. Juarez was in Texas, although Juarez had always denied hav- 
 ing been driven out of the country. On this point he was exceed- 
 ingly sensitive, and because of the statement made by the Emperor 
 that Juarez was no longer in the territory he professed to rule over 
 as President, he, the Emperor, was clearly of the opinion that 
 Juarez most heartily despised him. 
 
 Maximilian might have gone further and said to his hatred there 
 had been added ferocity. 
 
 The Emperor held the Americans in high estimation. He said: 
 "The Americans are a great people for improvements, and are great 
 lovers of justice. They pay such respect to the laws that I admire 
 them. And if God should spare my life, I intend to visit the United 
 States and travel through' them. You can always rely on the word 
 of an American gentleman." 
 
 Efforts were made to bring the trial before the Mexican Congress, 
 but it failed. The cruel Indian, Juarez, dared not trust any tribu- 
 nal other than the court martial, one organized to convict, and one 
 that would, therefore, be deaf, blind and unsparing. 
 
 On the morning of June 4th, Maximilian remarked gayly to one 
 of his counsellors : 
 
 "We must hurry with business. I have been talking with 
 Miramon. He has counted up the time and says that he thinks they 
 will shoot us on Friday morning. " 
 
 This was on Tuesday that he spoke so, and while under the 
 impression that the lawyers he had sent for to the City of Mexico 
 would not be permitted to come through the lines and defend him. 
 
 Still the lawyers did not come, and the Princess Salm Salm 
 determined to go alone to look for them. She had a carriage but 
 no horses, and an application was made to a Liberal General to 
 furnish just two animals to take her to the nearest stage station. 
 
422 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO ; 
 
 The General replied that if he had a thousand to spare, he would 
 not let one go for any such purpose. This kind of spirit prevailed, 
 with here and there an exception, the entire army. In such spirit 
 was the Court Martial selected, and in such spirit did Escobedo 
 declare to Juarez that unless Maximilian was shot he could not 
 hold his troops together. 
 
 In these early days of June some thoughts of escape presented 
 themselves to the Emperor's mind, and a plan to save him had been 
 agreed upon. A slippery Italian rascal, one Henry B. del Borgo, a 
 Captain in the Liberal army, had received two thousand dollars from 
 Maximilian to purchase six horses, saddles, equipments and pistols. 
 Of this amount the Italian spent six hundred dollars in horses and 
 accoutrements, which were to be ready at a designated spot on a 
 certain night. The three prisoners were f uthermore to be let out at 
 the proper time, when a Quick rush was to take place, and a desper- 
 ate gallop for the mountains. Mejia knew all the country, the plan 
 was a most feasible one, but to the surprise of every one, the Italian 
 after divulging all the particulars of the plot, including his own 
 actions was permitted to retire upon the balance of the money and 
 take with him the compliments of Escobedo for the patriotism and 
 ability he had manifested in thus finding out and exposing the 
 schemes of the traitors. 
 
 After this betrayal on the part of the miserable little Italian, all 
 the foreigners were ordered to leave Queretaro. Escobedo would 
 make no exceptions. Maximilian's American counsel had to go 
 with the rest, and all of the Austrian and Belgian officers and 
 soldiers who were not to be tried for their lives immediately. 
 
 The Government of Mexico recognized Maximilian only as the 
 Archduke of Austria, and his Generals, Miramon and Mejia, only 
 as so-called Generals. As such the court martial proceeded to try 
 them a court composed as follows: Lieutenant-Colonel Platon San- 
 chez, President; Captains Jose Vincente Ramirez, Emilio Lojero, 
 Ignacio Jurado, Juan Rueday Auza, Jose Verastigui, and Lucas 
 Villagran. It held its first session on the 27th day of May, 1867, 
 and on the 14th of June, of the same year, at midnight, the three 
 prisoners, Maximilian, Mejia, and Miramon, were sentenced to 
 death. On the 16th, Escobedo telegraphed to Juarez as follows: 
 " CITIZEN PKESIDENT: 
 
 "The sentence which the Council of War pronounced on the 
 14th instant, has been confirmed at these headquarters, and to-day, 
 at ten o'clock of the morning the prisoners were notified thereof, 
 and at three o'clock this afternoon they will be shot. 
 
 "ESCOBBDO." 
 
 A petition, asking Maximilian's life, signed by his Mexican law- 
 yers, Messrs. Mariane Riva Palacio and Rafael Martinez de la Torre, 
 was peremptorily denied. Again they sought the President, and 
 
AN" UNWRITTEN" LEAF OF THE WAR. 423 
 
 begged at his hands a brief respite. Five days were' granted, and 
 an order sent by telegraph to Escobedo to stay the execution until 
 the 19th. 
 
 Juarez had his headquarters during the trial at San Luis Potosi. 
 Hither came Baron Von A. V. Magnus, the Prussian Minister near 
 the Imperial Government of Mexico. He came to intercede in behalf 
 of Maximilian, and to do all that was possible to be done in his 
 behalf. He, too, visited Juarez, represented to him the uselessness 
 of the sacrifice, pointed out the impossibility of any further foreign 
 intervention in the future, and in the name of mercy, and for the 
 sake of Christian charity and forgiveness, asked the life of Max- 
 imilian at the hands of the President of the Republic. 
 
 It was of no avail. As cold as the snow upon the summit of 
 Popocatapetl was the heart of Juarez. 
 
 Baron Magnus abandoned the effort and went from San Luis to 
 Queretaro. On the 15th news came that the Empress Carlota was 
 dead. General Mejia was chosen to convey this information to the 
 Emperor, which he did gently and delicately. Maximilian wept a 
 little, went away alone for a few brief moments, and came back a 
 king again. In his last hours he meant to be strong to every fate. 
 
 In the afternoon he wrote to Baron Largo, a member of his per- 
 sonal staff, and one who had been banished by General Escobedo on 
 the 14th of March : 
 
 " I have just learned that my poor wife has died, and though 
 the news affects my heart, yet, on the other hand and under the 
 present circumstances, it is a consolation. I have but one wish on 
 earth, and that is that my body may be buried next to that of my poor 
 wife. I entrust you with this, as the representative of Austria. I 
 ask you that my legal heirs will take the same care of those who 
 surrounded me and my servants, as though the Empress and I had 
 lived." 
 
 On the 18th Baron Magnus arrived in Queretaro, and imme- 
 diately visited the Emperor. Still hoping against hope, he again 
 put himself in communication with Juarez. Maximilian was to 
 be shot on the 19th, and at midnight on the 18th Baron Magnus sent 
 the following message: 
 " His EXCELLENCY SENOK LERDO DE TEJADA: 
 
 " Having reached Queretaro to-day, I am sure that the three 
 persons condemned on the 14th died morally last Sunday, and 
 that the world so estimates it, as they had made every disposition 
 to die, and expected every instant, for an hour, to be carried to the 
 .place where they were to receive death, before it was possible to 
 communicate to them the order suspending the act. 
 
 "The humane customs of our epoch do not permit that, after 
 having suffered that horrible punishment, they should be made to 
 die the second time to-morrow. 
 
4C4 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO; 
 
 " In the name, then, of humanity and heaven, I conjure you to 
 order their lives not to be taken; and I repeat to you again that I am 
 sure that my Sovereign, his Majesty the King of Prussia, and all the 
 monarchs of Europe united by the ties of blood with the imprisoned 
 Prince, namely, his brother, the Emperor of Austria; his cousin, the 
 Queen of the British Empire; his brother-in-law, the King of the 
 Belgians, and his cousins, the Queen of Spain and the Kings of Italy 
 and Sweden, will easily understand how to give His Excellency 
 Senor Don Benito Juarez all the requisite securities that none of the 
 three prisoners will ever return to walk on the Mexican Territory. 
 
 "A. V. MAGNUS." 
 
 To this appeal the present President of the Republic, then 
 Juarez's Secretary of State, sent the following reply: 
 " SENOR BARON A. V. MAGNUS : 
 
 " I am pained to tell you, in answer to the telegram which you 
 have been pleased to send to me to-night, that, as I declared to you 
 day before yesterday, in this city, the President of the Republic 
 does not believe it possible to grant the pardon of the Archduke 
 Maximilian, through the gravest considerations of justice, and of 
 the necessity of assuring peace to the Republic. 
 
 " SEBASTIAN LERDO DE TEJADA." 
 
 No hope. Maximilian knew and felt it from the first, and so he 
 had long ago made up his mind to die. He made one more effort 
 however, to save the lives of his companions. On the 18th, the day 
 before his execution, he sent the following dispatch to the Presi- 
 dent : 
 " SENOR BENITO JUAREZ: 
 
 " I desire that you may preserve the lives of Don Miguel Mir- 
 amon and Don Tomas Mejia, who day before yesterday suffered all 
 the tortures and bitterness of death ; and, as I manifested on being 
 taken prisoner, I should be the only victim. 
 
 "MAXIMILIAN." 
 
 To this touching appeal there never came an answer. The sullen 
 and savage Indian was losing caste in this contrast with the chival- 
 rous and Christian European, and to escape further humiliation, he 
 added to his cruelty the natural national characteristic of stoicism. 
 
 At about half past eleven o'clock on the night of the 18th, Esco- 
 bedo visited Maximilian. The interview was very brief. He asked 
 the Emperor for his photograph, which was given him, shook hands 
 with him at parting, and strode away a guilty, swarthy, conscience- 
 less murderer, not daring to look back upon the young, dauntless 
 face, so fair and so fresh in its nobleness and beauty. 
 
 The Emperor next prepared himself for death. He took from ' 
 his finger his marriage ring, and gave it to his physician, Dr. Samuel 
 Basch, requesting him to carry it to the Archduchess his mother. 
 He still supposed his wife to be dead, and God in His mercy let him 
 die so. 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 425 
 
 There were yet some letters to write. The first was to Baron 
 Largo: 
 
 " I have nothing to look for in this world ; and my last wishes 
 are limited to my mortal remains, which soon will be free from 
 suffering and under the favor of those who outlive me. My physi- 
 cian, Dr. Basch, will have my body transported to Vera Cruz. 
 Two servants, Gull and Tudas, will be the only ones who will ac- 
 company him. I have given orders that my body be carried to Vera 
 Cruz without any pomp, and no extraordinary ceremony be made on 
 board. I await death calmly, and I equally wish to enjoy calmness 
 in the coffin. So arrange it, dear Baron, that Dr. Basch and my 
 two servants be transported to Europe in one of the two war vessels. 
 
 " I wish to be buried by the side of my poor wife. If the report 
 of the death of my poor wife has no foundation, my body should be 
 deposited in some place until the Empress may meet me through 
 death. 
 
 "Have the goodness to transmit the necessary orders to the 
 Captain of the ship de Groeller. Have likewise the goodness to do 
 all you can to have the widow of my faithful companion in arms, 
 Miramon, go to Europe in one of the two war vessels. I rely the 
 more upon this wish being complied with, inasmuch as I have rec- 
 ommended her to place herself under my mother at Vienna. 
 
 "Yours, 
 
 "MAXIMILIAN. 
 Queretaro, in the Prison of the Capuchinas, 18th of June, 1867. 
 
 The second letter was again to Juarez: 
 
 " QUERETARO, June 19, 1867. 
 " SENOR BENITO JUAREZ : 
 
 " About to receive death in consequence of having wished to 
 prove whether new political institutions could succeed in putting an 
 end to the bloody civil war, which has devastated for so many years 
 this unfortunate country, I shall lose my life with pleasure if its 
 sacrifice can contribute to the peace and prosperity of my new 
 country. Fully persuaded that nothing solid can be founded on a 
 soil drenched in blood and agitated by violent commotions, I 
 conjure you, in the most solemn manner and with the true sincerity 
 of the moments in which I find myself, that my blood may be the 
 last to be spilt ; that the same perseverance, which I was pleased to 
 recognize and esteem in the midst of prosperity that with which 
 you have defended the cause which has just triumphed, may 
 consecrate that blood to the most noble task of reconciling the minds 
 of the people, and in founding in a stable and durable manner the 
 peace and tranquility of this unfortunate country. 
 
 " MAXIMILIAN." 
 
 This was all. The morning broke fair and white in the sky, and 
 at half past six three carriages drew up in front of the main gate of 
 
426 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO ; 
 
 the Convent of the Capuchinas. The bells rang in all the steeples, 
 there were soldiers everywhere, and long lines of glittering steel 
 that rose and fell in yet the soft, sweet hush of the morning. 
 
 Into the first carriage got Maximilian and Father Soria, a priest. 
 The Emperor's dress was very plain. He wore a single-breasted 
 black frock coat, with all the buttons buttoned except the last one, 
 a black vest, neck-tie and pantaloons, plain cavalry boots and a 
 wide-brimmed hat, or sombrero. 
 
 In the second carriage there came Miramon and his priest, in 
 the third, Mejia and his. Then the solemn cortege started. In the 
 extreme advance five cavalry rode, the one behind the other, with 
 an interval between of twenty paces, and yet further in front of the 
 five there rode a solitary Corporal. A company of infantry, eighty 
 rank and file, came after the cavalry. Then followed the carriages, 
 escorted by a battalion of sharpshooters, one-half of whom flanked 
 each side of the road, marching parallel with the vehicles. A rear 
 guard of 250 mounted men closed the mournful procession. 
 
 The sun arose and poured its unclouded rays over the city. All 
 the people were in the streets. On the faces of the multitude there 
 were evidences of genuine and unaffected sorrow. Someamong the 
 crowd lifted their hats as the victims passed along, some turned 
 away their heads and wept, and some, even amid the soldiers and 
 amid the hostile ranks of the Liberals, fell upon their knees and 
 wept. 
 
 The place of surrender was to be the place of execution. North- 
 west of the city a mile or more, the Hill of the Bells, El Cerro de las 
 Campanas, upreared itself. It was enclosed on three sides by six 
 thousand soldiers of all arms, leaving the rear or uncovered side 
 resting upon a wall. 
 
 It was half past 7 o'clock when the carriages halted at the place 
 of execution. Maximilian was the first to alight. He stepped 
 proudly down, took a handkerchief from his pocket and his hat from 
 his head, and beckoned for one of his Mexican servants to approach. 
 
 The man came. 
 
 " Take these," the Emperor said. " They are all I have to give." 
 
 The faithful Indian took them, kissed them, cried over them, fell 
 upon his knees a few moments in prayer to the good God for the 
 good master, and arose a hero. 
 
 In front of the dead wall three crosses had been firmly imbedded 
 in the ground. On each side was a placard bearing the name of the 
 victims to be immolated there. That upon the right was where the 
 Emperor was to be shot, that in the center was Miramon, that upon 
 the left for the grim old stoic and fighter, Mejia. 
 
 Maximilian stroked down the luxuriant growth of his long yellow 
 beard, as it was his constant habit to do, and walked firmly to his 
 place-, 
 
AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR. 427 
 
 The three men embraced each other three times. To Mejia he 
 said: 
 
 " We will meet in heaven." 
 
 Mejia bowed, smiled, and laid his hand upon his heart. 
 
 To Miramon he said: 
 
 " Brave men are respected by sovereigns permit me to give you 
 the place of honor." 
 
 As he said this he took Miramon gently by the arm and led him 
 to the center cross, embracing him as he left him for the last time. 
 
 Escobedo was not on the ground: An aide de-camp, however, 
 brought permission for each of the victims to deliver a farewell 
 address. The Emperor spoke briefly: 
 
 "Persons of my rank and birth are brought into the world either 
 to insure the welfare of the people, or to die as martyrs. I did not 
 come to Mexico from motives of ambition. I came at the earnest 
 entreaty of those who desired the welfare of our country. Mexicans, 
 I pray that my blood may be the last to be shed for our unhappy 
 country, and may it insure the happiness of the nation. Mexicans ! 
 Long live Mexico ! " 
 
 Mejia drew himself up as a soldier on duty, looked up once at 
 the unclouded sky, and around upon all the fragrant and green- 
 growing things, and bowed his head without speaking. 
 
 Miramon drew from his pocket a small piece of paper and read 
 as follows: 
 
 "Mexicans! behold me, condemned by a Council of War, and 
 condemned to death as a traitor. In these moments which do not 
 belong to me, in which my life is already that of the Supreme 
 Being, before the entire world I proclaim that I have never been a 
 traitor to my country. I have defended my opinions, but my chil- 
 dren will never be ashamed of their father. I have not the stain of 
 treason, neither will it pass to my children. Mexicans! Long 
 live Mexico! Long live the Emperor!" 
 
 When Miramon ceased reading, Maximilian placed his hand on 
 his breast, threw up his head, and cried out in a singularly calm 
 and penetrating voice, "Fire!" 
 
 Eighteen muskets were discharged as one musket. Mejia and 
 Miramon died instantly. Four bullets struck the Emperor, three in 
 the left and one in the right breast. Three of these bullets passed 
 entirely through his body, coming out high up on the left shoulder, 
 the other remained imbedded in the right lung. The Emperor fell 
 a little sideways and upon his right side, exclaiming almost gently 
 and sadly: 
 
 " Oh ! Hombre! Hombre ! Oh ! man ! Oh ! man 1" 
 
 He was not yet dead. A soldier went close up to him and fired 
 into his stomach. The Emperor moved slightly as if still sensible to 
 pain. Another came out from the firing party, and, putting the 
 
428 SHELBY'S EXPEDITITION TO MEXICO; 
 
 muzzle of his musket close up to his breast, shot him fairly through 
 the heart. 
 
 The tragedy was ended; Mexican vengeance was satisfied; the 
 soul of the unfortunate prince was with its God, and until the 
 judgment day the blood of one who was too young and too gentle 
 to die, will cry out from the ground, even as the blood of Abel. 
 Too generous to desert his comrades, too pure in heart to rule as 
 he should have ruled, too confiding to keep a crown bestowed by a 
 race bred to revolution, and too merciful in all the ways and walks 
 of life to maintain fast hold upon a throne carved out from conquest 
 and military power, he died as he had lived, imperial in manhood 
 and heroic in the discharge of every duty. 
 
 THE END.