VAGABOND ADVENTURES. RALPH ^^-Tj BOSTON: FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO. 1870. <1 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, BY RALPH KEELER, i the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. UNIVERSITY PRESS: WELCH, BIGELOW, & Co., CAMBRIDGE. Librae* TO oiti JFrunfc EDWARD P. BASSETT, ESQ., This book is affectionately inscribed, with the wish, which is hardly a hope, that the public may take my Life half as easily and good-naturedly as he takes his own. R. K. CONTENTS. BOOK I. AMONG WHARVES AND CABINS. CHAPTER I. PREFATORY .......... n CHAPTER II. FAMILY MATTERS ........ 14 CHAPTER III. A FUGITIVE ......... 23 CHAPTER IV. A STORMY TIME ........ 34 CHAPTER V. A BOY'S PARADISE . ..... ... 47 CHAPTER VI. THE CONTUMELY OF CAPTAINS ...... 54 vi Contents. CHAPTER VII. ALMOST A TRAGEDY . . 62 CHAPTER VIII. TAKEN PRISONER 7 1 CHAPTER IX. SQUALOR ^ 80 CHAPTER X. A FINAL TRIUMPH go BOOK II. THREE YEARS AS A NEGRO-MINSTREL. Mr. 12-15. CHAPTER I. MY FIRST COMPANY 101 CHAPTER II. I BECOME A BENEFICIARY 108 CHAPTER III. THE FATE OF THE SERENADERS 116 CHAPTER IV. THE TRIALS AND TRIUMPHS OF THE "BOOKER TROUPE" 129 Contents. vii CHAPTER v. THE LAST OF THE " BOOKER TROUPE " . . . . 145 CHAPTER VI. " THE MITCHELLS " 156 CHAPTER VII. ON THE FLOATING PALACE 173 CHAPTER VIII. WILD LIFE 187 CHAPTER IX. THE PERFORMER SOCIALLY 205 CHAPTER X. ADIEU TO THE STAGE 214 BOOK III. THE TOUR OF EUROPE FOR $181 CURRENCY. CHAPTER I. STARTING ON A CATTLE-TRAIN 223 CHAPTER II. TAKING TO EUROPEAN WAYS . * 230 viii Contents. CHAPTER III. STUDENT LIFE AND WANDERINGS 242 CHAPTER IV. A FIGHT WITH FAMINE ' . . 254 CHAPTER V. THE CONCLUSION 266 BOOK I. AMONG WHARVES AND CABINS. i* CHAPTER I. PREFATORY. T T is an odd sort of fortune to have lived an * out-of-the-way or adventurous life. There is always a temptation to tell of it, and not always a reasonable surety that others share the interest in it of the contcur himself. It would, indeed, be a nice problem in the descriptive geometry of narrative to determine the exact point where the lines of the two interests meet, that of the nar- rator and that of the people who have to endure the narration. I cannot say that I ever hope to solve this problem ; and in the present instance, especially, I would with due respect submit its solution to the acuter intellects of others. This little book is intended to contain a plain sketch of my personal history up to the close of my twenty-second year. The autobiographical form is used, not because of any supposed in- terest of the public in the writer himself, but 12 Vagabond Adventures. because there does not seem to be any other way in which a connected account of the ad- ventures can well be given. No one, I think, can be more sensible than I am that my story is nothing if not true. Hume has wisely said, "A man cannot speak long of himself without vanity." I should like to be allowed to add that I have never known or conceived of a person except probably the reader and writer of these pages who could talk five minutes about himself without lying. That is, to be sure, reducing the thing to math- ematical exactness. An overestimating smile, or an underestimating shrug of the shoulders, or a tone of the voice even, will always though sometimes inadvertently " leave it still unsaid in part, Or say it in too great excess." While this is not so applicable to written history, still in the face of hyperbolic and bathetic possi- bilities I owe it to myself to premise that I am going to be more than ordinarily truthful in this autobiography. And there is certainly some merit in telling the truth, for it is hard work when one is his Prefatory. 1 3 own hero, and not what is sometimes termed a moral hero at that. I can too, I may add, claim this single merit from the start, with a meekness almost bordering on honesty ; since it happens that I am forced to be veracious by the fact that there are scores of people yet in the prime of life who are cognizant of the main events of the ensuing narrative. CHAPTER II. FAMILY MATTERS. T T may be laid down as a general principle, to -* start with, that a boy had better not run away from home. Good and pious reasons are not wanting, and might be here adduced, in sub- stantiation of this general principle. Some trite moralizing might be done just now, in a grave statement that an urchin needs not run away into the world after its troubles, since they will come running to him soon enough, and that a home is the last fortress weary men build (and oftentimes place in their wives' names) against the slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune. Why, there- fore, it may be asked, with overwhelming convic- tion to the adult, who, by the way, is not sup- posed to be one of the congregation of the present preaching, why, therefore, should the juvenile fugitive hasten unduly to leave what all the effort of his after life will be to regain ? Family Matters. 15 Thus having done my duty by any boy of a restless disposition who may chance to read these memoirs and be influenced by my vagrant exam- ple, I proceed to state that I ran away from home at the mature age of eleven, and have not been back, to stay over night, from that remote period to this present writing. It is due, however, to both of us, the home and myself, to observe that it was not a very attractive hearth that I ran from. My father and mother were dead, and no brothers or sisters of mine were there, nothing at all, indeed, like affection, but something very much like its oppo- site. On the whole, I think, under exactly the same circumstances, I would run away again. But I hope this remark will not lead the thoughtless reader to assume that I am not of a respectable family ; no well-regulated memoir could be written without one. A " respectable family " has long since become the acknowledged . starting-point, and not unfrequently the scape- goat, of your conventional autobiography. A posteriori, therefore, our respectability is estab- lished from the very fact that there is an auto- biographer in the family. 1 6 Vagabond Adventures. When, however, a great truth has once been discovered, it is always easy to find many paths of proof converging toward it. When Kepler, for instance, by some strange guess or inspira- tion, hit upon the colossal fact that the planets move in elliptical orbits, it was comparatively an easy thing, or should have been, to make this scientific parallel correct, to come at half a dozen proofs of it in the simple properties of the conic sections. Thus, too, fortunately for us, the respectability of our family can be proved in many ways, and even, like Kepler's Laws, by mathe- matics itself. Nay, our proofs can be, and indeed are, established by common arithmetical nota- tion and numeration ; because the members of our family are generally rich. This is manifestly an unusual advantage for an autobiographer, since, as is well known, he almost invariably comes of " poor but honest parents. " And there is no little pride mixed with the candor with which I boast, that I am to this day, pecuniarily, the poorest of my race. The devious course of my wanderings, as a youthful negro-minstrel and as the European tourist of one hundred and eighty-one paper dol- Family Matters. 17 lars, left me in the early part of my life no time or inclination to look into such commonplaces as the matters of my inheritance. It was but a week ago that I rode over the broad Ohio prairie where I was born, and passed by the pleasant farms which, with the broad prairie, were the pat- rimony left to me, or, I should say, to the kind gentlemen who administered them for me. That property has never been any care to me. It was so thoroughly administered during my minority that I have never since had the trouble even of collecting rents. Now there may be people, of a recklessly im- aginative type, who suppose it would excite a pleasurable thrill to ride thus over a great prairie which bears one's own name, but no more tan- gible emolument for the quondam heir; and there may be people of so aspiring mental constitutions as to think it a grateful, rollicking piece of vanity to pass unrecognized through a town which was once sold by one's own administrator for fifty-two dollars : but I am free to confess that I have endured these honors within the past week, and have carried nothing away with me, in the matter of gratification or sentiment, but a dash of the B 1 8 Vagabond Adventures. sadness which has settled about the wreck and ruin of the old homestead. Nothing seems to thrive there but the cold- spring at the foot of the sand-ridge, and' the poplar and weeping-willow which grow above it. These trees had and have for me a plaintive un- dertone to the rhythm of their rustling leaves which I do not hope to make others hear. The willow was the whip with which a friend rode twenty miles from the county-seat to visit my father, in the early times, and it was stuck in the ground there, on the margin of the spring, by my little sister ; the poplar was planted beside it by my mother. They are both tall trees now, and a sprig from one of them has been growing a long time over the graves of father, mother, and sister. At an early stage of my existence and of my orphanage I was introduced to a species of in transitu life, being passed from one natural guar- dian to another very much as wood is loaded upon Mississippi steamboats. It was, indeed, rather a rough passage of short stages, each, however, more remote from my Ohio birthplace ; Family Matters. 19 and I have always thought there would not have been so many figurative slivers left behind in the hands through which I passed, if the passage had not been so rough and headlong. Finally, at the age of eight or nine years, I was shipped away to Buffalo, N. Y., to be placed at school. I was sent thither down Lake Erie from To- ledo, on board the old steamer Indiana, Captain Appleby commanding. Many are yet living, I suppose, who will remember this craft, the first of the kind upon which I ever embarked. For my part, at least, I think I shall forget every- thing else before I forget the noble sheet-iron Indian who stood astride of her solitary smoke- stack, and bent his bow and pointed his arrow at the lake breezes. A meagre brass-band, too, as was the generous custom of those days, was attached to the steamer, and discoursed thin, gratuitous music during the voyage. To a more sophisticated gaze the attenuated, besmoked brave of my juvenile rapture would, alas ! have looked more like an indifferent silhouette plas- tered belligerently against the sky ; but it was the first piece of statuary I ever saw, as that exe- crable brass band made the first concert I ever 2O Vagabond Adventures. heard, and the Apollo Belvedere, at Rome, or Strauss's own orchestra, led by himself, at Vienna, has never since excited in me such honest thrills of admiration. It was many and many a month before that swarthy sheet-iron Indian ceased occasionally to sail at night through a mingled cloud of coal-smoke and brass music, in my boyish dreams. The lake was remarkably calm, and the entire passage to Buffalo was for years one of my pleas- antest memories. On that first voyage, undoubt- edly, was engendered the early love of steam- boats, the fruit of which ripened soon afterward into the adventures I am about to relate. Noth- ing, I am convinced, but this boundless affection for the species of craft in question enables me to remember, as shall be seen directly, the names of all the old lake steamers I had to do with in my boyhood. And this, by the way, is no small internal evi- dence of the truth of what follows. But I should not have called your attention to the fact, and I should not have been forced to parade my con- scientiousness here again, if I had not come already to the most embarrassing period in all my history. Family Matters. 21 Without seeming to manifest a feeling which I am sure I do not now entertain, I cannot write about the two or three miserable years I passed in Buffalo ; and, if I omit to write about them, a great share of the dramatic flavor of my story is lost. I cannot, therefore, convey to you even the regret with which I am compelled to pass over this period of my life, because you cannot know, as I think I do, that exactly such a childish ex- perience of unlovely restraint has never yet got into literature. N. Every time I pass the old Public School-house No. 7, in Buffalo, I stop and gaze at it with a queer sort of interest. Yet I cannot confess to any sentimental regard for it ; since it was, after a manner, the innocent cause of my enduring, at least, the last six months of my unpleasant life in its neighborhood. If I had not been so inter- ested by day in the Principal and duties of that school, I am sure I should have fled much sooner than I did from the roof which sheltered me of nights. Finally, however, one domestic misunderstand- ing, greater than many others, brought me to a 22 Vagabond Adventures. conclusion which was certainly as comprehen- sive in its wrath as it may have been lacking in a premise or two of its logic. At this temperate re- move from that exciting period I am led, at least, to doubt in the interest of certain kin of mine, who could hardly have been responsible for facts they knew not of whether I was not guilty of that poetic fallacy, placed in its first utterance, I believe, in the mouth of an illustrious Trojan, and worn very threadbare ever since in the mouth and practice of almost every one, whether I did not, that is, learn a great deal too much from one to judge very unjustly of all. At any rate, in the domestic crisis just alluded to, I rebelled against authority whose insignia were fasces of disagreeable beech-whips, and, at the mature age of eleven years, took a solemn vow that I would have nothing more to do with the people of my home circle in Buffalo, or with any whatsoever of my relatives, some of whom had placed me there ; and I ran away. CHAPTER III. A FUGITIVE. T7 SCAPING from the house at night, I did -* - ' not have time or presence of mind to take anything with me but what I carried on my back. One of my school-fellows, who had been fore- warned of my design, met me by appointment on the neighboring corner, and smuggled me into his father's stable. Here, it had been agreed, I was to lodge on the hay. My friend was a doughty, reassuring sort of hero, who was a great comfort to me at that ner- vous moment when. I entered the darkness of the hay-mow. I would not for the world have betrayed any fraction of the fear which his swaggering manner may have failed to dispel. He would assuredly have laughed at me ; and I believe now, moreover, he would have taken that, or any shadow of an excuse, for joining me in my flight. So strong, indeed, was the romantic instinct 24 Vagabond Adventures. upon that young gentleman that he lingered long about the spot where I had crawled into the hay and covered up my head, before he could prevail upon himself to go back to the house and to his regular bed. He had assured me before we came into the stable, out of the pleasant moonlight of that late spring evening, that he envied me very much, as I was going to have lots of fun ; he only wished he had a good reason to run away from home too ; but then, he added thoughtfully, as he looked up at the lights in the window of the fam- ily sitting-room, his mother was so "dernedkind," and his father so " blamed good," that he did n't see how he could leave them just now. The next morning my friend found me sleeping very comfortably, with my head and one arm pro- truding limply out of the hay. Awaking me, he proceeded to draw from his trousers pocket sev- eral pieces of bread-and-butter for my breakfast ; which was none the less toothsome from its some- what dishevelled state, consequent upon the man- ner of its previous stowage. While munching that surreptitious meal, my thoughts very naturally wandered to the breakfast- table, where I should that morning probably be A Fugitive. 25 missed for the first time by the people from whom I had fled ; and I amused myself, as well as my romantic caterer, with what we both of us, no doubt, considered a highly humorous account of the grievous commotion which would ensue at that ordinarily so solemn victualling. Emboldened by the lively appreciation of my school-fellow, and by the reviving influence of the bread-and-butter, I grew imaginative and gro- tesque in my daring pleasantry. I went so far as to describe the scene at that breakfast-table when Bridget came to the dining-room door with wild eyes, and the announcement that my room had not been occupied on the night before ; how the pater-familias, at that dramatic moment, had dropped a surprised spoon into the splattering gravy of the stewed meat ; and how his wife op- posite, then in the act of pouring chiccory, had whether in dismay at the overwhelming news or at the sudden soiling of her tablecloth upset the coffee-pot. These and many more very brilliant and mirth- provoking feats of boyish humor very brilliant and mirth-provoking, of course, I mean, to my friend and myself did I perform that morning 26 Vagabond Adventures. in the hay-mow; all bearing upon the assumed utter discomfiture of the bereaved people about that breakfast-table. But, alas ! even a precocious autobiographer, with his mouth full of bread-and- butter, may make the mistake, so common to the adult of his species, of over-estimating his own importance. I have since learned that there was no sensation of any consequence at the breakfast- table in question, and that my subsequent perma- nent loss was taken with remarkable equanimity and resignation. It was an expressive, nay, eloquent, look of envy and admiration that my friend gave me, when it came time for him to leave me to my own devices for the forenoon, while he went reluctant- ly to school. Even to this moment I cannot say that I covet the amount of knowledge he carried away from his books that day, or, indeed, the succeeding three days. I sallied stealthily forth to amuse myself in the by-streets till he came back at noon to bring my dinner ; which consisted of a repetition of the breakfast, with the added dessert of an apple. This latter he carried carefully in his hand, but the bread-and-butter he invariably bore stowed A Fugitive. 27 away in his trousers pocket ; I say invariably, for I lived two or three days thus on his secret bounty. About dusk of the second evening he came to me with in addition to the bread-and-butter for my supper the startling news, that he was go- ing to take me to the theatre. I do not remem- ber how we got in, it was not, certainly, by paying our way. I incline to the opinion that my friend had some secret understanding with the door-tender. I know merely that, by some means, we achieved our entrance to the pit of the old Eagle Street Theatre. I have heard good citizens of Buffalo complain that, since Lola Montez burned down that seat of the histrionic Muse, the drama has languished in their city. Of course I am riot competent to decide in such matters ; but, that being the first playhouse of any kind I ever entered, I am glad to be able to say that I have never since seen anything in the theatrical line so absorbingly thrilling, or so gorgeously magnificent, as the old Eagle Street Theatre was to me that night. The name and plot of the play I have forgotten ; but the dark frown of that smooth villain in the third 28 Vagabond Adventures. act where his villany first began to show itself to my unpractised comprehension will never fade from my remembrance. I do not know how it was, but up to that time I recollect I was under the juvenile impres- sion that virtue and correct grammar always went together. I can therefore convey no idea of the shock with which I learned so late in the play, that the splendidly dressed man who could talk such eloquent, persuasive language, and withal in such scrupulous conformity to that most difficult of rules which keeps the verb un- der the regimental discipline of it subject-nomi- native, that the man whose plaintive periods sometimes rose to the iambic majesty of blank verse, and who never got a case or tense wrong, howsoever wild, ecstatic, or dithyrambic his ut- terances of devotion to that innocent, long-suffer- ing angel, the walking-lady, that this man, I say, should nevertheless turn out to be a monster, whom, to borrow a little from his style of phrase- ology, it were mild flattery to call the greatest and vilest of rogues. My memory of the whole evening is swal- lowed up in the overwhelming shock of that A Fugitive. 29 sad surprise. The grammatical Arcadia of my boyish belief was laid waste as with an earth- quake. The next morning, after I had eaten my usual bread-and-butter with more than usual appetite* I received a few choice friends at my lodgings in the hay-mow, and we had a consultation. It was suggested that I was too near my for- mer haunts to be safe. Indeed, rumors of an act- ual search for me had reached the ears of one boy, of whom, oddly enough, I can recall nothing more now than that those ears of his were re- markably large ones, and stood out prominently from each side of his head ; that the best and most picturesque view of those ears was, in my opinion, to be had from my desk just behind him at school ; and that I was especially attracted and edified by my observations upon them im- mediately after he had had his hair clipped short. Those are grotesque pranks, by the way, which the memory sometimes plays us when we attempt to grope back too far. Another one of those dar- ing spirits, for instance, who was loudest, and therefore, I fear, most influential, with his coun- 30 Vagabond Adventures. sels that morning in the hay-mow has faded, as to body, name, and station, wholly from my mind, and exists to me now literally as a cherub with a mammoth straw hat for wings. From anything that I can positively remember, I -would not be prepared to take my oath that he ever had any arms, legs, or trunk at all. I can recall only his big, round, staring eyes, which stood out at the tops of his puffy cheeks like a couple of glass knobs, and his red hair, whose decisive, precip- itate ending all around his head left a queer im- pression that rats, or some larger and more fero- cious animal, had been his barber. I forget now whether it was in sport or earnest that I used to say to myself, that boy's hair had been " chawed off." It must have been that his facial aspect, height- ened, of course, by his winged straw hat, aided him materially in the expression of his fears with regard to my safety ; for this cherubic Agamem- non carried every point in that council of war ; and it was unanimously resolved that I should change my quarters. Accordingly, the next night, ^1 was entertained in the stable of another of my school-fellows, A Fugitive. 31 residing at the remotest corner of the district. Now I do not want to be considered fastidious or luxurious in my tastes ; but I must own to a very loud complaint, entered the morning afterward, against the comparative discomforts of this new lodging. There was very little hay in the stable to which I had been transferred ; and the boards, moreover, were very hard indeed. It may have been an improper spirit in which I made the re- mark ; but I went back again to the first school- fellow who has figured in this narrative, and told him if a boy had n't a respectable barn to invite a friend to, he need n't think / was going to be his guest, that's all! After watching, for a moment, the impres- sion of my words upon my friend, I said fur- thermore, that I was going to strike out for myself, as I was growing tired of the monotony of hay-mows and bread-and-butter, anyways. I wanted a change. Then came one of the most impressive mo- ments that I shall have to chronicle in these memoirs ; for, as soon as I had finished speaking, my friend slapped me vigorously on the back, making at the same time, with excited shrillness, 32 Vagabond Adventures. this observation, " Hey ! " which, being a com- mon juvenile exclamation, had, of course, no jocose allusion to the principal subject of my discourse. " Hey ! bully for you ! " continued my en- thusiastic friend and school-fellow, as soon as he could get his breath, which the suddenness of his lucky thought had evidently taken away. " Hey ! that 's just what 7'd do. I 'd go out into the world, and seek my fortune, like the boys in the story-books ; and," said he, suddenly chan- ging his tone and manner to those of the most excessive gravity and deliberation, "and, that you need n't be without means to help you along, take these ! " Whereupon he drew forth from his capacious trousers pocket, and placed in my hand, five large copper cents, which at first had the appear- ance of so many oysters fried in batter, so girt about and covered were they with fragments of bread-and-butter, deposited, I suppose, in the course of my friend's entire catering. It was, indeed, as he assured me, his whole cash capital ; but he would not hear to my scruples at taking it. More earnest or impres- A Fugitive. 33 sive about it, or, under the circumstances, more .self-denying and truly generous, he could not have been if he had been giving the world away. So, that morning, we parted, he wending his way, by no means con amore, to school ; and I, with a queer, uncertain feeling in the region of my small waistcoat, going forth, my five coppers in my pocket, to seek my fortune. CHAPTER IV. A STORMY TIME. ESERTING entirely the haunts of my play- fellows, I stole down to the wharves. Here the sight of the crowded shipping brought back, more strongly than ever, the memory of that ex- hilarating trip on the old Indiana, with her sub- lime brass-band and warlike sheet-iron Indian ; and I tried to " hire out " on a steamboat. The people to whom I made application eyed ' me suspiciously, for I was very small of my age. They also asked me a great many disagreeable questions, and generally ended by advising me to go home to my friends, if I had any. .My size was manifestly against me. Vainly I assured them I was eleven years old, and my own master. They shook their heads, and told me brusquely to " go ashore." At last I went on board of a steamer called the Diamond, and, after a little inquiry, found A Stormy Time. 35 the steward, a man with a face like the old steamer itself, with just seams enough in it, from long battling with the take breezes, to give hints of sturdy timbers, or, I should say, of hidden strength. His determined mouth ran across his face like one of the bolted arches across the hur- ricane-deck, large, strong, firm. His hair may be thin and gray now, and his back bent with the years, if they have not beached him as they have the old steamer, and carried him away alto- gether ; but so great was the impression this man made on me then, that I think I should still rec- ognize him whenever or wherever we might chance to meet. Having, I remember, gone through the usual colloquy with him as a steward, I assured him as a man, that I did not know where to go if I did go ashore, that I had no home and no friends, and, in a word, so played upon his good nature that he told me to go into the pantry and go to work. I obeyed ; that is, I went into the pantry, and went to work upon the heartiest meal that I had ever partaken of up to that date. The steward meant that I should help a greasy- looking fellow, whom I found washing dishes 36 Vagabond Adventures. there when I entered. Overcome, however, by the savory smell of meats and other remains of dinner, which had not yet gone down again to the kitchen, the first words I said to the succu- lent pantryman were framed into a demand for something to eat. As soon as he recovered his equanimity and his dish-cloth, which latter he had dropped in sheer surprise at what he evidently consid- ered my stupendous impudence, the pantry- man wanted to know, bluntly, what I was doing there ; the while he gave his foot such a pre- liminary flourish as plainly indicated his intention to accelerate my motion thence. I informed him, in considerable haste, that I came by the stew- ard's order. This .straightway altered the case in the opinion of the obsequious menial. He now pointed at a row of chafing-dishes, and said, " There it is ; pitch in ! " A few moments afterward the steward found me so absorbed in my " work " that I did not notice his entrance into the pantry. Bread-and- butter in small quantities, and at irregular inter- vals, had been, it must be owned, rather poor sat- isfaction to the appetite of a growing boy. The A Stormy Time. 37 steward must have watched me some time in silence ; for my eyes, happening to float away at random in an ecstasy of pleased and vigorous mastication, encountered him, standing not far from my side gazing at me earnestly. I dropped my knife and fork in fear, as he had talked to me like a rough, surly fellow. His voice was wholly changed now, when he spoke ; and I noticed it. " Why," he asked, " did n't you tell me you was hungry ? " My only answer was to let my eyes fall from his face to the roast beef and potatoes yet unde- voured before me. " There, eat as much as you want," said the steward, in a softer voice still. " Come to think," he added, " you need n't wash dishes : I '11 use you in the cabin." For some reason, I had gained a friend in that gruff fellow. Three days later he knocked that same greasy pantryman down for abusing me. Indeed* he fought for me many times afterward as I would gladly fight for him now if I knew where to find him, and if I were sure of the success which always attended him as my cham- pion. 38 Vagabond Adventures. On this craft I must have been working for general results, or for the amateur delight of forming one of a steamboat's crew. I do not re- member that anything was ever said about wages, either by myself or the steward. If, in fact, I were called upon to-morrow to make out such a bill for my services as should claim conscien- tiously just what I earned, I think I should be very much embarrassed ; and it would, too, I fancy be a fine piece of mental balancing to decide whether the amateur delight alluded to above was at all equal to the utter sea-sick misery I was called upon to ^ndure. My duties in the cabin were bounded only by my capacity. I had to help set the table, wait on it, and clear it away ; sweep, dust, and make my- self generally useful. I did well enough, I sup- pose, so long as we were in port ; but out on the lake, if the waves were at all turbulent, I was much worse than useless. It took me longer to get my sea-legs on than almost any one I have ever known. Some allowance was made for me the first trip ; I was permitted, that is, to be as miserable as I could be, and take to my berth as often as I liked. A Stormy Time. 39 In the course of time and it seemed a very long time we arrived at Cleveland, where part of bur freight and passengers were landed. No sooner had the steamer touched the wharf than I sprang ashore, as the best means of curing my nausea. By the time I had reached what I take now to have been Superior Street, I was congrat- ulating myself on my sudden restoration to a bet- ter understanding with my rebellious stomach ; and for the next hour I was at liberty, in the lan- guage of an admired poet of our day, to "lean and loaf at my ease, " flattening my nose against shop- windows. In connection with my sanitary stroll through the pretty city of Cleveland, I may mention a phenomenon both physical and metaphysical which occurred to me, with some of the surprise, if not the delight, of a discovery. And I look up- on it still as a striking instance of the power, not only of association, but of the mind over the body. Happening, in a short, narrow street, on my re- turn toward the wharves, to pass a sort of junk- shop and second-hand clothing-store combined, my nose became cognizant of a stale, tarry, water- logged smell, at the same moment that my eyes 4O Vagabond Adventures. lighted upon a sailor hat, shirt, and pantaloons dangling from a hoop at the door; and be it be- lieved or not I am telling the truth, when I say that I became instantly as sea-sick as ever ! Whether the relapse came from the kelpy scent of the shop and neighborhood, or from the sight of the suit of clothes relict of the mariner, or from the mental and stomachic association of both with scenes I had just passed through on the lake, I cannot of course, at this distance of time, presume to determine. I recollect, how- ever, I had a droll, boyish impression, for a long while afterward, in connection with those second- hand, sail-cloth trousers. There was, indeed, as I recall them even now, something strangely sug- gestive of hopeless infirmity about them. As they flapped and bulged wearily in the tar-laden zephyrs, the knees would become full and, in some inexplicable way, would give ghostly hints of the knock-kneed idiosyncrasies of the late wearer. Then the whole garment would become myste- riously distended, as if some poor mariner were being hanged by the neck, and the choking and plethora had reached even to the very ends of his pantaloons ; reminding me quite vividly, the A Stormy Time. 41 while, of a pair of piratical legs which a sailor in the forecastle of our steamer, the Diamond, had shown me in the frontispiece of a very greasy book dangling pictorially from the gib- bet of the lamented Captain Kidd. Well, what I set out to say is, that for a long time afterward I held the juvenile opinion that those same second-hand sailor trousers, big at the bottom, and little at the top, like the churn in the venerable riddle, were alone what made me then so suddenly and so mysteriously sea-sick. I did not, however, think much about it at the time, or of anything else, but getting back with all possible expedition to the steamer and to bed. Sea-sickness, you may have observed, is very much like first love. While it lasts, you rarely get any sympathy from those not affected like your- self; and when it is over, you are the first to laugh at it. And there is always likely to be something ludicrous about it in the memory ; but, durante bello, it is serious enough, in all con- science. Now the second voyage of our steamer Diamond was a remarkably calm one ; and I, true to the instincts of your convalescent, whether 42 Vagabond Adventures.- of nausea or erotomania, ridiculed my previous troubles. But on the third voyage the lake was rougher than ever. I fought my weakness val- iantly ; yet it seemed a battle against all visible Nature, the water, the sky, and the crazy old steamboat, to say nothing of my own recalcitrant little 'body. I was forced to yield. I had, however, been a sailor too long for any faint show of sympathy. The steward, too, was short of help ; and there was no escape for me. I was accordingly called out to do duty at the din- ner-table, where I staggered about under plates and platters to the terror of all immediate behold- ers. I had little or no control of my legs and hands ; and my head, if I retnember correctly now, was engaged in framing and passing silent reso- lutions of want of confidence in my stomach. Having emptied a dish of stewed chicken into the lap of an uncomplaining lady-passenger, who was nearly as sick as I was, but who was ashamed to own it, I planted my back violently against the side of the cabin, in the inane endeavor to steady the rolling ship or my rolling head, I did not know or care exactly which. While thus em- ployed, I heard the grating voice of the captain, A Stormy Time. 43 who was, if possible, always as ill-natured as he looked. " Here, boy ! " he called. I went to him, staggering and trembling, and apprehending all manner of vengeance. " What are you staring at, you lubber ? Why don't you turn me a glass of water ? " From which comparatively amiable speech of my commander, I was left in doubt whether he was aware of my late exploit with the stewed chicken. I seized an unwieldy water-pitcher ; and, just as I had it well elevated, the boat gave a perverse lunge, and I proceeded, dizzier than ever, to pour the entire contents of the jug into the captain's ear, and down his neck. Everything for a yard or so around, excepting only his goblet, received some share of the water. I did not tarry long to observe the rage of the captain ; but what I did see, and more especially hear of it, was certainly as intense and loud and blasphemous as anything of the kind that has since come within the range of my perception. The pitcher broke on the floor where I dropped it ; and I fled back to my berth, and covered up my head. 44 Vagabond Advent^tres. My commander did not pursue me ; but about an hour afterward the steward came to me with a very long face, as I observed with the one eye which I uncovered long enough to ask him if the captain had seen me deposit the stewed chicken in the lap of that lady. No : I was told the cap- tain had not heard of that, but was sufficiently wroth about the wetting he had received at my hands ; and the steward ended by saying that I- would have to go ashore at the next landing. He was very sorry, he assured me ; but the captain was inexorable. I hastened to inform my friend and protector that I would be glad to set my foot on any dry land whatsoever, and that I never wanted to go on a steamboat any more ; for the vessel, now in the trough of the sea, was rolling and creaking more violently every minute, and my nausea had in- creased in proportion. The next landing, the steward gave me to understand, was Conneaut, Ohio, which was his own home. He comforted me, furthermore, with the assurance that his wife would be down at the wharf to get the linen, which she washed for the steamer ; and that she should take me home with her. A Stormy Time. 45 The pier of Conneaut, where we finally arrived, was now invested with absorbing interest to me. I wondered which of the tanned faces that looked up from the dock belonged to my future mistress ; and I wondered, too, which of the weather-beaten fishermen's huts along the shore about the only habitations in sight was to be my future home. I hoped it was the one with the little boats before it on the beach, and the long fish-nets spread out to dry ; where the white gulls seemed to make their head-quarters, wheeling about the little roof, or sliding up against' the sky, or swooping the surf, and skimming along the billows of the lake. I was thus musing, in grateful convalescence, on the upper-deck, when the steward approached, and pointed me out to his wife. She was, as I remember her, a chubby, black-eyed little person, with a pleasant voice. At her woman's question as to whether I had my things all packed and ready, I became embarrassed ; but the steward helped me out by answering for me, " Yes, he has 'em on his back." The knowledge of my forlorn condition, and a sudden choking sensation in the throat, came upon the good little woman at one and the same 46 Vagabond Adventures. time, as I was made aware by an attempt to speak, which she abandoned, substituting very much to the lowering of my boyish pride a fear- less and vigorous hugging, together with a hearty, loud-sounding kiss, right before the passengers, the greasy pantryman, and others of the crew. Then the steward's wife, without another word, hurried me ashore into a one-horse wagon, with the soiled linen, and drove away up to the village, which was a mile or two from the lake. CHAPTER V, A BOY'S PARADISE. NEAR the end of a quiet street we alighted at a little frame-house, all embowered in peach and plum trees. This was the steward's home, and soon was as much mine as if I held the title-deed. They had no children, and the steward's wife was not long in growing won- derfully fond of me, so fond, indeed, that she humored me in everything. When tired of the house and little yard, I amused myself in strolling alone to the lake and taking amateur voyages in the fishermen's boats, without their permission ; and in swimming and fishing and hunting clams in Conneaut Creek, or River, whichever it is called. My favorite bathing- place was beneath the high bridge which the curious reader can cross any day on the Lake Shore Railroad. When the steamer arrived, the steward's wife 48 Vagabond Adventures. and I went down to the pier, in the one-horse wagon, with the clean clothes of the last washing, and brought away the money for it, together with a new load of soiled linen. This one-horse equipage, by the way, must have belonged to some neighbor, for I do not remember that we ever brought it into requisi- tion, except for laundry purposes. Nor do I remember 'that I ever imperilled my neck, or the horse's, with it alone, as would surely have been the case if it had been our property. Our practice was, invariably, to spend the money for the last washing before the next one was begun ; and this was the routine to which we scrupulously adhered : The steward's wife, namely, would use the first day after the steamer had gone in baking all manner of bread, pies, and cakes ; enough, in fact, to last us until the good ship Diamond should come round again. Then, on the second day, we would go to the village livery-stable, and get a horse and buggy, with which we would ride five miles out in the country, and "visit" at the farm-house of her father and mother. Having thus exhausted all her earnings, we A Boys Paradise. 49 would return home on the third day, and the steward's wife would go very contentedly about her washing. This may not have been the best sort of econ- omy for a poor washerwoman, but it was cer- tainly a most delightful way for a thoughtless boy to pass his time. Counting out an occasional tendency to biliousness consequent upon over- doses of the good things of her regular first-day's baking, I must say, the weeks I spent with that good, simple-hearted creature were very happy ones indeed. Her kindness extended even to the tattered places of my scanty wardrobe. Everything was made whole and clean. She bought me, I. re- member, a shirt for fifty cents, and made over a pair of her husband's summer pantaloons to fit me ; so that I was not, as formerly, confined to the house while my solitary piece of linen was in laundry. There was only one grievous alloy, thereafter, in my complete happiness, and that was in the shape of some much larger boys than myself, who diverted their minds by whipping me whenever and wherever they could lay hands on me. I 3 D 50 Vagabond Adventures. fought them at first, but I always came off beaten; and so I gave it up, and it is due to the nimble- ness of my 'legs, or to the exceeding elasticity inherent in terror, to add that they rarely or never caught me after that. Still the grievance was all the same. On one occasion, however, the steward stopped over at home a trip, and, being informed of the persecutions to which I had been subjected, he gave a sound drubbing to every one of my enemies, and threatened them with the repetition .of the same as often as I should complain. I had the satisfaction of witnessing this castigation, which, though somewhat informal, being administered when each of my foes was "down," as I may say, across my champion's knee, in a species of " chancery " not yet introduced, I believe, into the prize ring, had, nevertheless, the desired effect. The peace was preserved, and I was happy. But perfect happiness is short-lived, after all. It was not many weeks later when we were startled in our little home by a call in the interest of my relatives, conveying the intelligence that my whereabout was known, and that I should be sent for soon. A Boys Paradise. 51 Now. it happened that the steamer Diamond was due at the pier the afternoon succeeding the one on which we had heard this appalling piece of news. I said nothing to my benefac- tress of my design, formed almost instantane- ously ; for I knew she would not consent to its carrying out. But, when the steamer had left, I was not to be found in any of the fishermen's boats on the lake, or throwing stones at the gulls along the shore, or afterward beneath the high bridge, or in any of my usual haunts in the village. I had, in fact, stowed myself away in the old Diamond's forecastle, where I was not dis- covered till Conneaut was well out of sight. Un- fortunately, my new shirt and pantaloons were both in the wash at the time; and I have never seen them since. Thus I came away with the same well-worn clothes and solitary piece of linen in which I had first fled from Buffalo. The five coppers I still had in my pocket, kept, I know not by what queer inspiration, against future needs. I never heard from her lips how much the 52 Vagabond Adventures. steward's wife grieved at my sudden disappear- ance, for I never saw the good soul afterward ; but, from what I have since learned, I scarcely hope ever again, by anything that I may do, or that may happen to me, to produce such a void in the heart of any living being. I had taken the place, I suppose, in her childless bosom, of that strongest and purest of all affections, the mother's for her offspring. Several years afterward she "nearly killed with kindness" a friend of mine to use the language of the friend herself who gave her news from me. I should hardly mention this now, were it not for the sequel, which further illustrates, I think, though in a sad way, the real goodness and constancy of the poor crea- ture's heart, while going to show at the same time what a warm place was won in it by a graceless vagabond. Later in her life some great sorrow the exact nature of which I never learned un- hinged her intellect; and her insanity took the mild form of always expecting me back, the same homeless urchin, unchanged by the years. It was, as I have intimated, in the afternoon A Boys Paradise. 53 when I left her ; and, until she was moved from that part of the country to an asylum where she was cared for in comfort till she died, she used to go regularly every afternoon to the friend above mentioned and ask about her " lost boy," as she called me. CHAPTER VI. THE CONTUMELY OF CAPTAINS. captain of the steamer Diamond, never -- in the habit of looking pleased at anything, did not depart from his habit, but rather carried it to an unwonted degree of frowning and dark- ling excess, when he saw me at work again about the table, at the next meal after leaving Conneaut. He said nothing to me, however, but, calling up the steward, had a long, stormy talk with him. The steward in self-defence was, of course, obliged to tell how I had stowed myself away in the forecastle, which, I need not say, did not enhance the commander's opinion of me. What that irate gentleman would have done with me whether he would not have thrown me bodily into the lake if it had not been for the earnest deprecation of the steward is even yet, in quiet, reflective moments, an interesting problem to my mind. The Contumely of Captains. 55 At last the captain's unwilling consent was obtained to take me back to Buffalo, where, as my intercessor said, I had friends. It happened that the steamer was bound up the lake to To- ledo, where, also, I had relatives, a fact which I did not make known to the steward. I was now compassed about, it will be seen, by prospects of capture on every hand. I had my reasons, never- theless, for wishing to be left at Buffalo instead of Toledo. The latter city was so small that my relatives would easily lay hold of me there ; and the former, being not only a larger city, but so much farther away, I should stand a much better chance of concealment, and, what was of almost equal importance, I should be sure of an addi- tional week's board before the steamer reached there. At Toledo, therefore, I scarcely went ashore at all. During the return trip to Buffalo my mind was exceeding busy with daring and mighty schemes of escape from the steward, whom cir- cumstances had now metamorphosed into a walk- ing terror to me. That honest fellow had con- fided to me that he considered it his duty, and for my interests, to have an interview with the people 56 Vagabond Adventures. from whom I had fled, and to do I know not what other appalling things toward providing me with a suitable, permanent home. I did not, however, think it prudent to express my demurrer at his prospective proceedings, choosing secretly to trust the hope of sustaining it rather to my legs than to my eloquence. Ac- cordingly, when we had arrived at Buffalo, I watched my opportunities, and, seizing the right moment, fled precipitately up the docks, unob- served by my well-meaning, self-imposed guar- dian. Two hours subsequently, deeming myself safe, I walked boldly on board of the old steamer Baltic. Here, by a wonderful freak of fortune, it was not ten minutes till I had " shipped " as cabin-boy, at the marvellous salary of ten dollars a month. Surely, I have never felt so rich or independent since. I went to work with a will, inspired to undertake anything, in any weather, by a calm sense of security, and by the princely guerdon which loomed high in my imagination at the end of the month. In the course of time, too, . I am happy to say here incidentally, I over- The Contumely of Captains. 57 came completely my remarkable tendency to sea- sickness. The Baltic, then having seen her best days, did not belong to any regular line, but went roll- ing and creaking about on roaming commissions for freight and passengers all over the lakes. Up to the time of the inglorious denouement in which my life as one of her crew ended, I can remember nothing of moment which happened, except that the sense of my own importance and of my accumulating wealth grew daily in strict proportion ; and that her captain was a perpet- ual mountain to me, bearing down very hard on my expansive spirit, but never quite crushing it. With a few exceptions, indeed, my experiences with captains were strikingly disagreeable, but not, I think, peculiar. From actual brutality, or a mistaken sense of duty, applying especially to boys and common sailors, your ordinary cap- tain, on lake or ocean, has often seemed to me, in some respects, less human than the ship over which he tyrannizes. With regard to this cold autocrat of the venerable steamer Baltic I rec- ollect a queer, boyish fancy I entertained, I for- get whether in earnest or in sportive retribution ; 3* 58 Vagabond Adventures. namely, that the Nor'westers had not only piled up the breakers which threatened continually in the hard, wrinkled folds and lines of his face, but had also blown the warmth, and, in a word, all the heart out of his voice and manner. As the month drew near its close, however, and the ten dollars earned by my own hands were soon to be mine, the contumely of my com- mander had little weight against the buoyancy and growing independence of my spirit. I had been in the Baltic just three weeks and four days on the eventful morning when she was to leave Toledo. It had been my habit, "once a week, to wash my only shirt in the pantry and to wait about the kitchen till it dried, with my coat buttoned up to my chin. Now, on this same morning, I had just issued from the latter place with my clean shirt in my hand, when the captain told me to do something, I forget what. I assured him I would as soon as I could put on my shirt. He told me to do it right away, at the same time coupling me and my garment blasphemously to- gether, and consigning us, figuratively, to a port where, for aught I know, there may be many col- lectors but no custom-houses. The Contumely of Captains. 59 .1 gave the captain to understand, still more bluntly, that I would do nothing till I had made my toilet ; and, inspired by a memory of former wrongs, as well as a consciousness of prospective opulence, I used to my superior officer other lan- guage of a saucy and independent kind. Where- upon the captain, in sailor phrase, " tacked " for me, and I " tacked " for the shore. Here, then, I demanded my pay ; but the enraged command- er solemnly averred that he would see me first in that tropical port just alluded to, and then I should never have a cent. Shortly after, the boat pushed off into the stream. A sympathizing friend threw me a paper of crackers from the pantry on the upper deck ; and, as the Baltic got under way, there I stood on the wharf, with my paper of crackers in one hand, and my only shirt in the other, clamoring for my wages. I stood leaning against the splintered pile, which had been one of her hitching-posts, and watched the Baltic as she faded slowly out of sight. My courage seemed to fade with her. It was not the loss of my place and probably of my 60 Vagabond Adventures. dinner that crushed me, but after so many wealthy dreams this utter financial ruin ! What were my five coppers, still jingling loosely in my pocket, to the dollars I had lost, or to the combined capital of my relatives in that very city ? The contest was plainly hopeless. For as much as a half-hour I considered myself delivered bound into the hands of my pursuers. Indeed, the dock on which I was making this mental soliloquy happened to be but a short distance from the warehouse of an uncle of mine, then a commission-merchant and ship-owner in Toledo. At last, I betook myself despondently to a neighboring shed and donned my shirt, and then, as under some desperate spell, walked straight toward my uncle's office. I crossed the thresh- old and saw him in conversation with some gen- tlemen. While waiting till he should notice me, I beheld, through the office window, the little steamer Arrow, almost ready to start for Detroit. I knew that the Baltic was also going to Detroit, and thought that I might possibly get my money if I followed her thither. Only those unfortunate persons who have been suddenly prevented from committing suicide when in the very act will The Contiimely of Captains. 61 thoroughly understand, I think, the feeling with which I hailed this thought. Instantly my com- prehensive vow to have nothing more to do with relatives flashed across my mind. Seeing that my uncle had not yet observed me, I turned quickly on my heel, and made hastily for the dock of the steamer Arrow. I concealed my- self on board of her till she was under way, when, making my case known to the steward, I was allowed to work my passage in the cabin' to Detroit. It was that season when, as many dwellers by the Western lakes will remember, the Arrow was the fastest boat on those waters. We passed the other steamer somewhere off Monroe lighthouse ; and on the same afternoon, therefore, as the old Baltic came up to the wharf at Detroit, there I stood before the astonished eyes of her captain, again clamoring for my wages, with this differ- ence only, that my shirt was now on my back, and my crackers carefully stowed away in my pocket with my five coppers. CHAPTER VII. ALMOST A TRAGEDY. . AS soon as the Baltic was made fast, and the captain had sufficiently recovered from his astonishment, he stalked toward me, denoun- cing vengeance. I took to my heels as soon as he reached the wharf. Finding that he could not catch me, he stopped, shook his fist, and swore he would arrest me if he saw or heard anything more of me. I, of course, knew nothing of the law but its terrors, and, though I really had the better side in the case, gave the matter up. It may have been that the joy to be in a strange city, out of the way of capture, helped me materially, but it seems a little remarkable now how soon this mighty disappointment and defeat vanished wholly from my thoughts. I cannot remember that the circumstance ever crossed my mind again till I was called upon, months subse- quently, to recount my adventures to admiring school-fellows. Almost a Tragedy. 63 It could not, I am ,sure, have been twenty minutes after my Parthian contest with the irate captain for, if the truth must be told, I shot him a scathing epithet or so in my flight when I was amusing myself after the manner of the "light and heavy balancer," rolling myself about upon the tops of some white-fish barrels, at a neighboring dock, as contented and happy as a thoughtless boy only can be. Tied to this dock was a little sloop-rigged scow, used in bringing sand from Hog Isl- and in the Detroit River. There was a small boat, with a solitary oar and scull-hole belong- ing to this sand-scow, tugging lazily at the rope by which it was attached, as it floated dreamily astern in the current. A youngish fellow, with a good-natured face, was engaged in unloading the larger craft when I espied the smaller one. Now, if there was any one thing in which much practice and a boundless love had lent me any degree of skill, it was risking my life in amateur navigation. I need scarcely tell you, therefore, how I ceased my acrobatics with the white-fish barrels, and came and gazed wistfully at that lit- tle boat ; how I varied this employment by star- 64 Vagabond Adventures. ing inquiringly into the mild face of that enviable young man who had control of its destinies ; how, when he paused in his work to regard me in turn, I thrust my hands unconcernedly into my pock- ets, and looked studiously away from him and the little boat, at the far windings of the broad river ; how, when he had resumed his work, my eyes also resumed their longing pilgrimage from the little boat to his face ; and how, having repeated this process several times, my mind tugging fitfully and dreamily at its purpose, as the little boat at its rope, I. finally turned and asked, in an abrupt voice, for the loan of the one-oared craft. The young man was startled into a smile, per- haps of sheer good-nature, and perhaps of pleased surprise at so brief a petition overtoppled by so lengthy an enacted preamble. Certainly, he said, I might take his little boat, and I embarked. Pushing boldly into the stream, which runs there three or four miles an hour, I sculled vigor- ously for the Canadian shore. Even at this early period, I may remark, I had an overpowering de- sire to visit foreign lands ; and I resolved to take that opportune occasion to go abroad. Those most familiar with the swift, deep river will best Almost a Tragedy. 65 understand that the probability of my reaching the British shore was only less than the possibil- ity of my ever getting back again ; and that the project, under the circumstances, was utterly mad and perilous. I sculled out well toward the middle of the stream, exulting, boy-like, in the wild freedom of the voyage ; heading diagonally against the current, but, otherwise, taking very little heed whither the prow of my boat was pointing. Sud- denly I noticed a commotion on the shor I had left, and looked curiously among the people there for the cause. Every one seemed now pointing and hallooing at me. It must be, I con- cluded, they were applauding my skill and dar- ing ; and, thus encouraged, I sculled more lustily than ever, with my back still toward the bow of my boat. Not many moments afterward I heard, rising above the other noises of the busy life around and on the river, a queer, rumbling sound in the water ahead of me. I turned to find a large steamboat making directly toward me, under full speed, and not more than two or three rods away. I dropped my oar and stood paralyzed with the 66 Vagabond Adventures. sudden danger and the utter hopelessness of escape. The people on the steamer seemed nearly as terrified as myself, for they shouted and waved their hands and arms in the wildest man- ner. The bow of the large vessel just grazed that of my little one when the great paddle- wheels were stopped. The swell caused by the motion of the steamer struck the small craft and threw it clear of the wheel ; and the Niagara, for that was her name, passed by on her voyage. If the wheel had been stopped twenty seconds later, my boat and myself would most certainly have been drawn into it, and circumstances over which I could have had no control would, in all probability, have prevented me from writing out this faithful account of my adventures. I now put my boat about and sculled for shore, abandoning my scheme of foreign travel and ex- ploration. The long and difficult struggle with the current which ensued should have been enough, without the terrible fright I had "experi- enced, to bring me, I think, to a realizing sense of the wildness and madness of my undertaking. Finally reaching the dock and malting the yawl Almost a Tragedy. 67 fast to the sand-scow, I exchanged a very sheep- ish sort of smile for the good-humored or sym- pathetic one of the young man, her captain, and strolled off leisurely over the wharf, out of the way of the curious people who had been the wit- nesses of my exploit. In a remarkably short time thereafter I was engaged again in rolling myself about on the top of the white-fish barrels ; thinking no more of my hairbreadth escape, or of what was to become of me in the immediate future. Twenty minutes, as nearly as I can recollect, were about as long as any direst misfortune, at that period, could cloud the brightness of my young hope. This utter recklessness I can scarcely understand now. It requires, I suppose, more years and experience than I had then to learn the knack of despairing. At least, I know I was in the full delight of my first freedom, and, in all these boyish wan- derings, the fact that I was in need of a meal or a night's lodging would occur to me, almost always, as a sudden inspiration, and only at the usual hour for the meal or for going to bed. The joy of my solitary, Robinson-Crusoe life, on 68 Vagabond Adventures. the wharves and among the white-fish barrels, was so strong upon me that I suffered much less than would at first be imagined from the hunger which sometimes filled the long intervals between one meal and the next. I have just used the words " solitary life," and I have used them advisedly ; for I can remember only one juvenile friend whom I ever picked up as a companion in my vagrancy, and that was an urchin of Irish descent. We met on the wharf, at Detroit, if my memory does not fail me, some days after the events just chronicled. He was the first and last whom I took into my boyish confi- dence, for the companionship was not harmonious, and ended in the disaster of a bloody nose, which he inflicted on me at parting. This, with the black eye which I bestowed in turn upon him, was, I believe, the only ceremony observed on the occasion of our mutual leave-taking. Toward evening of the day of my narrow escape in the yawl of the sand-scow, I drew from my pocket the crackers thrown to me that morning, at Toledo, from the pantry of the Baltic, and seated myself on the wharf overlooking the clear Almost a Tragedy. 69 river to- eat them, feeding the minnows with the crumbs. When it began to be dark, it suddenly occurred to me that I had no place to sleep. I am sure that up to that moment the subject of my prospective lodgings had not crossed my mind. I arose, and, brushing the last fragments of my crackers down to my fellow- vagabonds, the min- nows, I walked toward the place where the sand- scow was moored. I remembered now the good-natured face of the young fellow who had so willingly loaned me his small boat and never scolded me for the peril to which I had exposed it, as well as myself. Arrived in the little cabin of the scow, I found him already retired. I had conscientious scruples about begging, and imagined I was doing nothing of the kind when I made the simple affirmative statement of my case. Indeed, I would not have had time to append any request to my first sen- tence, for the young man, in his prompt kindness, told me, as soon as he had heard I had no lodging of my own, that I was welcome to share his, making for me, while he spoke, a place on the loose hay which formed his bed. A solitary pillow-case of coarse sheeting, stuffed 7 On a hot day I am afraid we were sometimes a trifle cruel in the way we hurried up fleshy peo- ple. From our point of view on the roof, and generally behind a shady chimney, the effect was, in truth, not unlike that of a diorama. But espe- cially was this the case when some stout old gen- tleman, whom we had precipitated along a whole block at a very lively, perspiring rate through a hot sun, would, as if melted or absolved in the white light, disappear suddenly from our gaze, as a brisk and fiery execution of "The girl I left behind me" would carry him steaming around a corner. In short, our martial music was an endless amusement to us when time hung heavy on the hands of the more dignified members of our com- pany. By some accident, I forget what, we lost our small drum, and were afterward confined to a fife and a bass-drum. This, I think, only made the effect of our music more ludicrous in develop- ing the peculiarities of individual pedestrians. The Fate of the Serenaders. 123 Lynch seemed, I remember, more than ever satis- fied in this exigency, for he stoutly maintained that any two faces are more alike than any two "gaits," and that, for his part, he always wanted the top of a house, a fife, and at least a bass-drum to read character. Lynch and I were together in another troupe afterward. I never knew him, in all the time of our association, to talk ten minutes without tell- ing some story, and that always about something which had happened to him personally in the show business. In the long nights, when we had to wait for cars or steamboats, he would sit down, and, taking up one theme, would string all his stories on that, and that alone, for hours. His manner would make the merest commonplace amusing. We had been together a year or more, I think, when Barnum's Autobiography came out. I shall never forget my comrade's indignation when he read that passage of the book which runs some- thing in this way : " Here I picked up one Francis. Lynch, an orphan vagabond,'* &c., &c. It was really dangerous after that for a man to own, in his presence, to having read the life of the great 124 Vagabond Adventures. showman. Henceforth, Lynch omitted all his stories about the time when he and P. T. Barnum used to black their faces together. Lynch professed to live in Boston, though he had not been there in fifteen years. During all this time he had been earnestly trying to get back to his home. He would often spend money enough in a night to take him to Boston from almost any place in the broad Union, and back again, and then lament his folly for the next week. Once he left our company at Cleveland, Ohio, for the express purpose of going back to Boston. Unfortunately a night intervened, and in the mid- dle of it the whole Weddell House was aroused from its slumbers by poor Lynch, in the last stage of intoxication, vociferating at the top of his lungs that he had been robbed of the money with which he was going back to Boston. By some means he had got hold of a lighted candle without a candlestick, and with this he purposed to search the house. The clerks and porters were called out of bed, and, led by Lynch with his flickering taper, came in melancholy pro- cession up the long stairs to the rooms occupied The Fate of the Serenaders, 125 by our troupe. Lynch insisted that we should all be searched, a whim in which, under the cir- cumstances, we thought it best to humor him. This having been done without finding his lost treasure, he bolted the doors and proceeded to examine the surprised clerks and porters. Meet- ing with the same ill success, he finally threw himself in despair upon his bed, and wailed him- self to sleep. The next morning he found all the money which he had not spent in the side pocket of his overcoat, where he had carelessly thrust it him- self. And his joy was so great at this, and his sorrow so lively when told that he had searched us all, that he insisted on spending what money- was left to celebrate his good luck and the tri- umph of our honesty. Lynch never got back to Boston. He died sev- eral years ago somewhere out in the far West. Since then it has transpired that Barnum was wrong in calling him an orphan, at least ; for his . father sought him a long time before hearing of his death, to bestow upon the poor fellow a con- siderable fortune that had been left him by some relative. * 126 Vagabond Adventures. Johnny Booker was the stage-manager of the company with which I left Toledo. Our first business-manager and proprietor was a noble- hearted fellow, who has since distinguished him- self as a colonel in the late war ; but the manager- ship changed hands after a while, and we finally arrived at Pittsburg. Here we played a week to poor houses, and, one morning, awoke to find that our manager had decamped without paying our hotel bills. When this became known, through the papers or *in some other way, the landlord, got out an attachment on our baggage. The troupe was disbanded, of course. When, therefore, I desired 'to take my trunk and go home, the hotel-keeper told me that I could do so as soon as I paid the bills of the whole company. This was appal- ling. After a great deal of wrangling, the landlord was convinced at last that he could hold us re- sponsible only for our individual indebtedness. Accordingly Mr. Booker, Mr. Kneeland, a violin- ist, and myself were allowed to pay our bills and depart with our baggage. I never learned exactly how the greater part of The Fate of the Serenaders. 127 the company escaped, but it certainly could not have been by discharging their accounts ; for they were generally of that reckless disposition which scorns to have any cash on hand, or to remember where it has been deposited. The sentimental ballad-singer, the one who was the most careful of his scarfs, the set of his attire, and the combing and curling of his hair ; and who used to volunteer to stand at the door in the early part of the evening, and pass pro- grammes to the ladies as they came into the hall, this languishing fellow, I am sorry to say, was obliged to leave his trunks and the greater part of his wardrobe behind him in the hands of the inexorable landlord. Frank Lynch had led this nomadic life so long that he never carried any trunk with him. He had already sacrificed too much, he averred, to the rapaciousness of hotel-keepers and the villany of fly-by-night managers. He contented himself, therefore, with two champagne-baskets, one of which, containing his stage wardrobe, always went directly to the hall where we were to play, while the other, containing his linen, went to the hotel, where, in company with the baggage of the whole troupe, it excited no suspicion. 128 Vagabond Adventures. Whether or not Lynch left one of his cham- pagne-baskets with the Pittsburg landlord I can-- not say. I am sure, however, when we met after- ward, I could not detect that his wardrobe had diminished in the least. Indeed, there was this remarkable quality about the two champagne- baskets, in which the convivial peripatetic may be said to have lived, that their contents never seemed either to diminish or increase. CHAPTER IV. THE TRIALS AND TRIUMPHS OF THE "BOOKER TROUPE." / nr*HE two gentlemen with whom I left Pitts- -* burg accompanied me to Toledo, \yhere Mr. Booker set to work to get up another company. It was not long till we heard of Lynch at Cin- cinnati in search of an engagement,* and he was accordingly sent for. Mr. Edwin Deaves, also a member of the defunct " Serenaders," and now, by the way, a gray-haired wood-engraver and scenic artist at San Francisco, was brought from some other place, and the " Booker Troupe " set out on its travels. This company prided itself on its sobriety and gentlemanly conduct. It was the business of the four other members to keep poor Lynch straight, and if, in the endeavor, some of them occasionally fell themselves, it was put down to the reckless good-fellowship of the merry veteran, and hushed up as expeditiously as possible. 130 Vagabond Adventures. There were so few of us that we could afford to go to smaller towns than the other troupe had ever visited. It was deemed a goed advertisement, as well as in some metaphysical way conducive to the morale of the company, to dress as nearly alike as we could when off the stage. This had the effect, as will be readily understood, of pointing me out more prominently than ever as the juve- nile prodigy whose portrait and assumed name were plastered about over the walls of the towns and cities through which we took our triumphal- march. The first part of our performances we gave with white faces, and I had so improved my opportuni- ties that I was now able to appear as the Scotch girl in plaid petticoats, who executes the inevitable Highland Fling in such exhibitions. By practis- ing in my room through many tedious days, I learned to knock and spin and toss about the tambourine on the end of my forefinger ; and, having rehearsed a budget of stale jokes, I was promoted to be one of the " end-men " in the first part of the negro performances. Lynch, who could do anything, from a solo on the penny trumpet to an obligato on the double- The " Booker JTroupe? 131 bass, was at the same time advanced to play the second violin, as this made more music and helped fill up the stage. In addition to my jig, I now appeared in all sorts of pas de deux, took the principal lady part in negro ballets, and danced " Lucy Long." I am told that I looked the wench admirably. Indeed, I have always considered it a substantiation of this fact, rather than an evidence of his maudlin condition, that a year or so subsequently a planter in one of the Southern States insisted on * purchasing me from the door-tender, at one of our exhibitions. The price he offered and the ear- nestness and apparent good faith in which he offered it were so flattering that I have always regretted the necessity in which the door-tender at last considered himself, of kicking that planter down stairs. The "Booker Troupe" wandered all over the Western country, travelling at all hours of night and day and in all manner of conveyances, from the best to the worst. The life was so exciting, and I was so young, that I was probably as happy as an itinerant mortal can be in this world of 132 Vagabond Adventures. belated railway-trains, steamboat explosions and collisions, and runaway stage-horses. In the smaller cities and towns we would some- times, " by particular request," end up the evening with a ball. While we were washing the burnt cork from our faces, the ushers would remove the seats, and for a certain fee those ladies anA gen- tlemen who delighted in the dance were read- mitted to the hall. Then the four adults of the troupe, attired in their very best " citizens' dress," as they called it, would discourse music for the dancers. My musical incompetency was at these times a signal advantage to me, for I was left- free to go into society. I danced a great deal and with considerable falat, on such occasions. My salary, which increased gradually with my progress in the "profession," was at this period squandered almost entirely upon my back. I was under the impression that my importation of metropolitan cuts and fashions into those provincial places was something- altogether killing. My jewelry, if I remember well, was just simply astonishing foi a boy of my age. From these towns where we had dancing-par- The "Booker Troupe? 133 ties I always went away with love-affairs on my hands. The amount of gold rings which I exchanged with young ladies between the ages of eleven and thirteen years was, to say the least, extraordinary. Sunday in a small city is generally a heavy day with your minstrel. He writes to his wife, if he has any, or, if he has none, he practises solos on the bass-viol or some other instrument that ought never to be played solo, or yawns or lounges about the common room of the company. I used to pass these days, I am sorry to say, in replying to voluminous, ill-spelt correspondence from young persons with whom I had danced, a week or so back ; and if I happened to have a flame in the same town, I would go to church with the very reprehensible motive of seeing her, or walking home with her. I ought to have known that this was highly improper conduct, even if the simple appearance of a negro-minstrel at church had not almost invariably produced great scandal to the congre- gation. I am glad, however, to be able to add that my toilet and behavior in such places were always scrupulously careful. 134 Vagabond Adventures. I do not know whether it is quite seemly in me to tell of it, but during the past winter I had occa- sion to lecture in a town which had once been the scene of one of these erotic exploits ; and there were sitting in a row on a front seat in the audi- ence not only the quondam heroine and the gen- tleman who has for many years been her husband, but her father and mother, and, worst of all, that brother of hers who intercepted our letters and who had threatened profanely to " punch " my "head." Now, although our attachment had been of the most harmlessly juvenile kind, the reader will imagine my embarrassment when I had the honor of an introduction to this whole family, and when the past was talked over by them in the most ruthlessly philosophical manner. At a certain county-seat in Michigan the " Booker Troupe " had a remarkable bout with a moral editor. There- must be many persons in that county, especially of the legal fraternity, who yet remember at least the catastrophe of the strange affair. This is the way it happened, as nearly as I can recall it : There were two weekly papers published in The "Booker Troupe? 135 that town at the time. Our agent had given our advertisement to one of these papers, and the other without authority had copied it. When the bills were brought to be paid, that of the paper which had printed our advertisement without warrant was about three times as much as the regular price, or as the other paper had charged. To Mr. Booker's remonstrance it was answered that the exorbitant bill must be paid, that shows were' immoral things anyway, and that it was the pur- pose of that particular weekly newspaper to put them down. This was the moral editor who spoke. Mr. Booker offered him the same amount 'that the other paper had charged, and bluntly refused to give a cent more. The moral editor would not take a cent less than his first charges, and, in default of immediate payment, would get out an attachment. Now the constable, in common with most of the citizens, sympathized with Mr. Booker. In fact, the red nose and generally dissipated air of the moral editor made decidedly against the honesty of his intentions as a missionary of reform. And thus it happened, by some intentional delay in the 136 Vagabond Adventures. making out of the papers, that the constable and the creditor arrived at the station to attach our baggage just at the time when it was all careful- ly stowed away in the baggage-car, and when the train was moving off with us on board. The editor in great rage, notwithstanding his mission as moral censor, indulged in a great deal of profanity, by way of making it the better under- ' stood that he would follow us to the ends of the earth, as soon as he could get the proper war- rant made out. Our next stopping-place was a brisk little town which chanced to be in the same county. We exhibited there and slipped away to our next point on a midnight train, leaving Mr. Booker behind to encounter the attachment/which, from private advices, we were led to expect the follow- ing morning. The officer accosted Mr. Booker as he was getting on the train, and asked him if an old weather-beaten valise which he carried in his hand was his. It was ; and that was all the baggage he had with him, the rest having gone on, of course, with us by the night train. With imposing formality the old weather-beaten valise was attached. The key was also given up, The "Booker Troupe'" 137 I do not know whether to the officer or to a lawyer who had come up from the county-seat to advise us 'in the matter. The lawyer then and there, in the presence of the officer and of the interested spectators, was intrusted formally with the case ; and, Mr. Booker joining us in a few hours there- after, we proceeded unmolested on our travels. The justice and the counsel on both sides seem to have entered into the affair with the design of getting all the sport they could out of it. On the day of the trial the court-room was thronged. In the absence of witnesses for the defence, and I suppose also by collusion, the case went against the " Booker Troupe." The editor, who was of course present, was in great glee. At this stage of the proceedings it has been related I know not how truly the Justice arose, and in the most solemn manner spoke of the case as peculiarly aggressive on the part of a company of itinerant showmen ; and inas- much as their fellow-citizen had taken it upon himself, single-handed, to drive this growing evil out of the land, therefore the magistrate ordered, although it was a little informal, that the consta- ble without further delay, which had in the tardy 138 Vagabond Adventures. course of justice been too long already, should in the presence of that court open the valise and proceed to the sale of its contents. The face of the moral editor is reported to have beamed more brightly than ever at this stage of his triumph. With much pomp and circumstance the key was produced, and the ragged valise brought forward and opened. As nearly as I can remem- ber, from having been present at the packing, and from an account of the affair sent to us afterward, the constable then began with grave deliberation to draw forth from that discouraged old portman- teau the following articles, to wit :- i large brick, i quart of beans, I silk hat, without rim or lining, 3 Ibs. potatoes, which latter had sprouted in the delays of justice, i old boot, i letter of congratulation to the moral editor, which was read in open court, And, worst of all, i life-size wood-cut represen- tation of Mr. Booker himself, with an old valise in one hand and a superannuated umbrella in the The "Booker Troupe" 139 other, as he was wont to appear in his wonderful plantation act of " The Smoke-house Reel." During the slow exposure of each of these arti- cles, one after the other, there was some attempt to keep order in court, but by the time the last one was reached even the attempt was aban- doned. The scene became uproarious, and the court was adjourned! The moral editor never heard the last of it. He was forced to sell out his reformatory news- paper and leave the town. We were on our way east from Chicago, exhib- iting at the towns along the line of the Michigan Central Railroad, when Ephraim came to us. Ephraim was one of the most comical specimens of the negro species. We were playing at Mar- shall, Michigan, -when he introduced himself to our notice by bringing water into the dressing- room, blacking our boots, and in other ways making himself useful. He had the blackest face, largest mouth, and whitest teeth imaginable. He said there was nothing in the world which he would like so well as to travel with a show. What could he do ? 140 Vagabond Adventures. Why, he could fetch water, black our boots, and take care of our baggage. We assured him that we could not afford to have a servant travel with us. Ephraim rejoined that he did not want any pay ; he just wanted to go with the show. We told him it was simply impossible ; and Ephraim went away, as we thought, discouraged. The next morning, as we Were getting into the railway-car, whom should we discover there before us but Ephraim, with his baggage under his arm, a glazed travelling-bag of so attenuated an appearance that it could not possibly have had anything in it but its lining. To the question as to whither he was bound he replied, "Why/bless you, I 's goin 1 wid de show." Again he was told that it could not be, and made to get out of the car. * This occurrence gave Mr. Lynch the theme for a long series of stories about people he had met, who were what he called " show-struck " ; and with these narratives our time was beguiled till we reached the town at which we were to perform that night. As we walked out towards the bag- gage-car, what was our surprise to see Ephraim there, picking out and piling up our trunks, and The "Booker Troupe"' 141 bestowing sundry loud and expressive epithets upon the baggage-master, who had let a property- box fall upon the platform. I think we laughed louder now than we had at any ,of Mr. Lynch's stories. Ephraim deigned not to notice us or our mirth, but, having picked out the baggage that went to the hall where we were to exhibit, he called a dray and' rode away with it. * He made himself of great use during our stay in that place, in return for which his slight hotel expenses were paid ; but he was told positively " that he could go no farther. We knew that he had no money, yet did not dare to give him any, lest he should be enabled to follow us to the next town. So, when we came to go away, we ex- pressed our regrets to the ingenuous darky, and once more bade him good by. He disappeared in the crowd, and the train moved off. . When we arrived at the next town, however, there again was Ephraim, at the baggage-car, giving his stentorian commands about our trunks and properties, and taking not the least notice of the surprise depicted on our faces. The discharge and mysterious reappearance of ii p 142 Vagabond Adventures. Ephraim occurred in about the same manner at every town along the road until we reached De- troit. We never could find out how he got from place to place on the cars ; but where our bag- gage was, there was Ephraim also. We had to succumb. His persistency and faithfulness and perfect good-nature carried the point ; and he be- came a regular attache of the " Booker Troupe." The story of the fights and beatings that poor Ephraim sustained in his jealous care of our lug- gage woulcl alone make a long chapter. He was always at fisticuffs with the Irish porters of the hotels. On one occasion, when remonstrated with < for his excessive pugnacity, Ephraim explained himself in this way : ack in such a cordial and stalwart manner, that as soon as I could get my breath I took it all as a good augury. And so it was. I wish I could reproduce more of the dialogue which took place between this honest Westerner and myself, at that first interview. Some of it, at least, I never shall forget, it impressed me as so extraordinary at the time. I can, however, convey no idea of the contrast between his mild kindly face and his harsh bovine voice. It may help you to a kind of silhouette view of the situ- ation, if you will take the pains to imagine the frequent excursions of my puzzled attention from his face to his voice, during the scene which im- mediately followed. Starting on a Cattle-Train. 227 H had given me to understand that he had eight car-loads of" live stock, and that he was entitled to a drover's pass for every four car-loads. Then he suddenly paused, thrust both hands into the pockets of his long-skirted coat, and, feeling about in those spacious alcoves for a silent mo- ment as if in search of something, he asked, in an abrupt bass which seemed to issue . from the depths of the coat-tails themselves, "How air you on cattle?" That was before the days of Mr. Bergh and his excellent society ; but, having consulted the speaker's benevolent face and not his voice, as the last authority on the meaning of his question, I answered that I was very kind to cattle as a general thing. That, he assured me, was not exactly what he meant ; he wanted to know whether I had ever done any "droving." On my intimating that, although I had not had much experience, I was perfectly willing to be of service, " Never mind, never mind," he said ; " but can you play cards ? " " No," was my ingenuous reply. "Now that's bad," and he scratched his head vigorously. "Can you smoke, then?" 228 Vagabond Adventures. "A little," faltered I. My new-made friend seemed much pleased by this response, and continued, "All right ; you jist git a lot of clay pipes and some tobaccy, and I '11 git you a pass ! " As I was turning in utter bewilderment to have his strange prescription filled, " I say, look a here," he said; "take off all that nice harness, or you can't pass for no cattle-man ! I '11 lend you some old clothes and a pair of big boots. These stock conductors is right peert, they air. You'll have to smoke a heap, and lay around careless in the caboose, or they'll find you out." The next morning I took my seat in what he called the "caboose," a sort of passenger-car at the end of the train. When we had been under way about an hour, the burden of my own con- science, or of my friend's boots, or the contem- plation of my unsightly disguise, or the amount of tobacco I had smoked, made me deathly sick, which, on the whole, was rather a fortunate circumstance. It explained to the conductor why I did not get out at the way-stations to tend my cattle, and it also enabled me to hide my face Starting on a Cattle-Train. 229 > from the conductor, to whom *I happened to be known. I found, as most boys do, that I could smoke better the farther I got from home. What with stopping to let our cattle rest and other delays, it took us nearly a week to reach New York; but before three days had passed I could perform the astonishing feat of putting my friend's boots out of the car window, and of smoking serenely the while, without touching my pipe with my hands. All the hotels at which we stopped along the route seemed, like the cremeries of Paris, to ex- ult in the importance of a spfcialitt ; and that was that they were supported almost entirely by drovers, and assumed, without a single exception that I can call to mind, the device and title of "The Bull's Head." There was a smack of old times in the homely comforts as well as in the moderate charges of these quiet taverns. My expenses on the whole journey from Toledo to the sea were, if I recol- lect aright, a little over three dollars. CHAPTER II. TAKING TO EUROPEAN WAYS. . A T New York I found that I should be obliged -^** to pay 130 for exchange on my money. This I did, after buying a through third-class ticket to London for thirty-three dollars in currency. My memories of a steerage passage across the Atlantic are rather vivid than agreeable. Among all my fellow-passengers in that unsavory precinct I found only one philosopher. He was a British officer who took a third-class ticket that he might spend the difference between that and a cabin fare for English porter, which he imbibed from morning to night. He announced as his firm be- lief, after much observation upon the high cheek- bones of our countrymen, that the Americans in a few years would degenerate to Indians, the natural human types of this continent. It was during the World's Fair that I arrived in London. My whole life there might be writ- Taking to European Ways. 231 ten down under the general title of " The Adven- tures of a Straw Hat," for the one which I wore was the signal for all the sharpers of that great city to practise their arts upon me. They took me for some country youth come up to see the Exhibition, and the number of skittle-alleys and thief dens into which they enticed me was, to say the least, remarkable. Through the friendly advice of a police detec- tive, I was finally prevailed upon to purchase a new English hat, and with this, as a sort of aegis, I passed out of the British dominions, without being robbed, and, indeed, without much of which to be robbed. At Paris I witnessed the magnificent fetes of the Emperor, and took the third-class cars for Strasbourg and Heidelberg. At this latter city, with a sum equal to nearly eighty dollars in gold, I proposed for an indefinite series of years, to become a student of the far-famed Karl-Rupert University. I was not happy in Heidelberg, therefore, till I had experienced the mystery of academic matric- ulation. All I can recall of that long ceremony now is, that I had the honor of shaking hands 232 Vagabond Adventures. sancte dataque dextra pollicitus est is the language in which my diploma speaks of me, commemo- rating, I believe, that impressive moment over my passport with a large-moustached German official ; and that I furthermore had the privilege of paying a fee of eleven guldens and twenty-six kreutzers, a little over four and a half dollars. After much search and many unintelligible ap- peals in bad German, through wellnigh every din- gy street of Heidelberg, I finally secured a room for two guldens eighty cents a month : and such a room ! It was on the story next to the clouds. It seemed to be cut into the high gable of the gray old German house by some freak or after- thought of the architect. It was reached by in- terminable staircases and through a long hall, or passage-way, whose unplastered walls were hung with the rubbish of many generations. It was just large enough to permit of my turning round, after furnishing nooks and corners for a bed, book- case, wash-stand, and small, semicircular table ; but all was neat and clean, for my room was sub- ject, like the rest of the German world, to the regular Saturday's inundation of soap and water. Directly opposite, on the other side of the nar- Taking to European Ways. 233 row street, but far, far below, was the shop of a sausage-maker. If I had been an enthusiast in mechanics, I should have found much consolation in this fact, as well as a great d^al "to lead hope on " ; because a sausage-maker's apprentice is really, if not perpetual motion itself, a strong in- ductive argument in favor of its future discovery. The one to whom I have alluded kept up a con- tinual hacking, day and night, week-day and Sun- day. The sound of his meat-axe met my ears the first thing in the morning and the last thing at night ; it was, in fact, my matin and my angelus bell. But, by a principle of compensation, which is one of the kindliest things in nature, this little nook had advantages of which prouder apartments could not boast. I never had, before or since, a room in which I could apply myself to study so assiduously or with so great a zest. It seemed to be haunted with the great spirits of those who have trimmed their lamps in garrets and left the world better for their toils. This may have been a boyish hallucination, but I shall always believe that the most glorious view of the famous Heidelberg castle, the Mol- 234 Vagabond Adventures. kenkur, and the lofty peak of the Kaiserstuhl, is to be had from the one narrow window of my aerial niche in the dark German gable. The old castle frowned down upon me from the brow of the mountain just above my head; and often of an evening have I leaned upon my little window-sill, and gazed up at its ruined bat- tlements and ivy-mantled towers. As they grew dimmer and grayer in the waning light, the rents and seams of centuries disappeared, and the palace of the old Electors used to stand be- fore me in its ancient pride. It may not be generally known that the day- laborer of America has better food and more of it than many a wealthy burgher of Central Europe. Only the very few, in Germany, can in- dulge in beefsteaks for breakfast. I soon learned to conform myself to the cup of coffee and piece of dry bread of the German's morning repast. But as I became better acquainted, and grad- ually more impecunious, I left the cafe where I had before partaken of these luxuries, and betook my- self to a baker's shop, where a breakfast of the same kind was furnished me, in company with market-women and others, for four kreutzers, Taking to European Ways. 235 about three cents. If I could sometimes have wished for a more liberal allowance of sugar in my coffee, in this humble refectory, I never could complain of a lack of sweetness in the morning gossip of the baker's red-cheeked daughter. The search for*the very cheapest place to get my dinner was not the work of one day, .or unat- tended with some difficulty and much skirmishing. I bethought myself of my sausage-making friend across the way. Indeed, it was a long while be- fore I became so used to the staccato music of his meat-axe as to keep from thinking of him most of the time. Engaged as he was in the active production of food, he must certainly, I argued, know something of cheap dinners. I therefore made a descent on the meat-shop one day. No notice whatever was taken of my knock ; so, pushing the door open, I stood before a dwarfed, long-aproned, pale-faced boy, who turned his hun- gry eyes upon me, but did not cease" his hack- ing. I launched forth in the kind I may say, the peculiar kind of colloquial German I had learned in my three weeks' sojourn in his country. 236 Vagabond Adventures. After I had talked some time, the boy, giving no rest to his meat-axe, but every once in a while looking furtively over his shoulder, asked, " Do you want any Wurst?" " Sausage ? No, no.", And I began again, in my original German, and explained at greater length that I was in search of a place to get a cheap dinner. The boy laid down his meat-axe, eyed me a few seconds in aw- ful silence, then glanced apprehensively over his shoulder, took up his meat-axe again, and went to work more lustily than ever. There was this much about it : either the boy was deaf, or we stood somewhat iix the relation of the two English girls in Hood's story, he could speak German and did not understand it, and I could understand German and not speak it. Still, rather pleased than otherwise at such a chance to air my newly acquired speech, and on the whole not a little gratified with my quick mastery of the language, I began in a higher key, and, approaching nearer and nearer, demanded in the sausage-maker's ear whether he knew of a place to get a chfeap dinner. Down went the meat-axe again, and, with eyes Taking to E^lropean Ways. 237 and mouth wide open, the boy stood speechless before me. Thus we were both inanely staring at each other when the back door flew open, and a burly lump of tumid humanity stumbled through it with a curse, wanting to know why the boy was not at work. The poor apprentice caught up his cleaver again, and I faced the man who had just entered. " Do you want any Wurst ? " he asked. " No, no." And I went over the whole story once more with such perspicuity as shipwrecked patience would naturally inspire in a person thor- oughly at sea in a language. In the thick of my oration I detected a cloudy gleam of intelligence spreading itself over the red face of my hearer. My eloquence had touched him. at last. I had not quite reached my peroration when " Dock ! " interrupted my fat friend, as he pulled me briskly to the door. " You see that shop, three houses farther down the street ? " " Yes," said I. " You are sure you see the right one ? " "Yes, yes." " Well, you go right down there. There is a 238 Vagabond Adventures. Frenchman down there. His wife is from Italy. I think, maybe, he can understand the Russian language : / can't ! " fc It was at that moment, I think, I learned to make the distinction between the degrees of benefit one derives from a book-knowledge of a language : it may help you to understand others, but it can hardly be said to help others to understand you. While on this subject I may be pardoned, I hope, for telling of the more expeditious way I adopted to acquire the other modern tongues, which my subsequent poverty rather than any extraordinary ambition induced me to learn, in order to preserve the disguise of which I shall tell you presently. On going into an unfamiliar country for the first time, I shut myself up in some cheap garret, with' a grammar, for a couple of weeks. Then I sallied forth with a pocket-dictionary, and captured some worthless young fellow without friends or employment. To this luckless person I cleaved without mercy. I followed him if I could not make him follow me everywhere, Taking to European Ways. 239 and talked at him and made him talk. I argued with him over his three sous' worth of chocolate, if we were in France, or over his boiled beans and olive-oil, if we were in Italy. I asked him questions about everything, if we walked together in the streets ; and, by the way, is it not truly wonderful how much one has' to say when he has a difficulty in saying it ? You may have noticed that a man who stutters, or has a hair-lip, is always talking. He who learns a new language is invariably troubled with the same fruitful suggestiveness, and often, too, with a more distressful execution. If, therefore, the patience of my friendless tutor would sometimes flag, I would attempt to make him understand my glowing accounts of the comparative wealth of such vagrants as he was in my own prosperous, poor man's country, advising him to immigrate. This occasionally would have the effect of restoring him to a feeble interest in life. But if he would still persist in his low spirits, and find himself on the verge of asking me why I did not myself go back to my Eldorado of good- for-nothings, where he, no doubt z heartily wished 240 Vagabond Adventures. me, then, at that last critical stage of his gloom, , I would soothe and cheer him with a penny cigar. . Generally speaking, this will not fail thoroughly to overcome your Old World vagabond. He will talk, and even listen, after that. The only diffi- culty is to know just when to administer to him the cigar: he must not be pampered or spoiled by undue indulgence and luxury. At first, when I commenced my experiments on these unfortunate beings, and I could see them wince under my laceration of their helpless mother-tongue, I had slight qualms of conscience. Learning to quiet these at last, however, I fast- ened myself on the most intelligent vagrant at hand, with an almost faultless pre-calculation of my man, and subjected him to my tortures with a triumphant sense of virtue in the act, far tran- scending, I fancy, that experienced by your en- thusiastic savant when substantiating some pet theory on a living criminal. Nothing, I am sure, ever before impressed me so highly with the modest merit that may lie con- cealed in vagrancy. It would be positively sur- prising to any one who has not enjoyed the advantage of this desperate method of mastering Taking to European Ways. 241 the colloquial speech of a country, if I should tell how soon I was enabled by it to drop my humble tutor, and, moving out of his neighbor- hood to some other city in the same state, to utilize and practise upon more pretending per- sons, in a higher grade of society. ii CHAPTER III. STUDENT LIFE AND WANDERINGS. "OUT I must get back to Heidelberg, where *-* the sympathetic reader will not, I trust, have imagined that I went all this time without dinners because the search for one which should be the ultima Thule of cheapness was embarrass- ing and adventurous. I found a place, at last, where a homely abundant midday meal was fur- nished me in a private family, for one gulden and twenty-six kreutzers per week, a fraction over eight cents a day. My supper I took at a Cast- haus, in company with some theological students, at the cost of about four cents. Many of my countrymen, who have spent large sums in endeavoring to live cheaply in the same city, will of course believe nothing of this. They have paid dearly for the privilege of being Americans. They date their experiences from hotels supplied with waiters who speak our Student Life and Wanderings. 243 language, and have dealt at shops on whose windows they have seen blazoned in golden let- ters, " ENGLISH SPOKEN." They have, in reality, paid the teacher who taught these waiters and those shop-keepers to murder our own vernac- ular. By matriculating at the great University of Heidelberg, I became endowed with all the time- honored privileges of students. I could not-be arrested or taken through the streets, if I had been guilty of an ordinary crime ; I could not be confined in a common prison or go to a com- mon hospital, the University having those insti- tutions for its own particular benefit. And poverty seemed there to have lost its curse. The very fact of my being a student put me on a social scale above that of the wealthy merchant. This, however, may have been only in the estimation of the collegians themselves. A fellow-student thought some of going to America, and propounded the following question : " But when I arrive, I shall not have any money, and I shall know nothing of the language of the country ; what shall I do ?" " Go to work ! " said I. 244 Vagabond Adventures. " What ? manual labor ! I am too aristo- cratic ! " That young man, let me add, was then living on an income of one hundred and ten dollars a year. The German student must have his pipe, his beer, and a life of pleasure at whatever sacrifice. If he is rich, he pays some attention to his person- al appearance. You will see him adorned with boots of immense length ; corps caps and ribbons ; the number of his duels scored on his red face in ungainly sword-scars ; and followed by a retinue of sinecurists, in the shape of great ugly worth- less dogs. His life is a continued sacrifice to the merry gods. He is rarely seen at lectures. Indeed, there is one society or club at the Uni- versity, the first article of whose constitution reads, " No member shall at any time, or on any pretence whatever, after matriculation, be seen in the University building." On the other hand, if the student is poor, he pays very slight attention to what he wears. He does not the less, however, devote a great portion of his time to beer, tobacco, and the pursuit Student Life and Wanderings. 245 of pleasure. You will see him at the most fre- quented beer-houses every night. If you go to the opera, you will observe him also stalking thither, shiveringly, through the wind, his tight pantaloons striking his crane-like legs about midships be- tween his feet and knees, and his shoulders shrugged up in the vain attempt to get more warmth out of an extremely short coat. He looks more like the impersonation of Famine, striding about among men, than the good, honest-hearted fellow that he is. For with all his faults, as our more Puritanical education may lead us to call them, the German student is an honest, generous, noble-hearted fellow. He sees beyond the smoke of his own pipe, and has deeper thoughts than those inspired by beer. His heart swells beyond the bounds of his petty state. His sympathies are as broad as the old German Empire. It is too true, perhaps, that when, in maturer manhood, he becomes angestellt in some life-office in the gift of his little prince, his liberalism slum- bers or dies out ; but that does not affect the sincerity of his youthful sentiment. I am sure that I never spoke with one of them, on the sub- 246 Vagabond Adventures* ject, who had not some dream of a great united Germany. There was no more interested watcher of our late civil strife than the German student. He felt that the battle then waging for the right of self-government had a connection with his hopes for the future of his own severed land. Ger- many's wrongs and the sigh for universal liberty are the burden of his many songs. No higher and no more appropriate eulogy on the German student can be pronounced than to say that, in his university days at least, he is true to the spirit of one of his most beautiful and most popular melodies, "To the bold deed, the free word, the generous action, woman's love, and the father- land." By the laws of German universities, a matricu- lated student is not obliged to pay for more than the lectures of one professor during a semester, that is, six months. I managed, therefore, to pay for the cheapest, and attended as many more as I liked ; so about ten dollars a year were my collegiate expenses. To confess the truth, my calendar and that of Student Life and Wanderings. 247 the University did not always agree. I often took vacations in session time, in the shape of long ex- cursions on foot, and sometimes disappeared from Heidelberg for weeks together. My Hausfrau she that received the princely income of eighty cents a month for my room at first showed symptoms of anxiety about me ; but she soon learned to be surprised at no wild freak of her aerial lodger. By these tours on foot, the only philosophi- cal way of travelling, and by the occasional aid of the cheap third-class cars of that country, I visited all parts of Germany, and learned more of the language, character, and habits of its odd, warm-souled people than I ever could have learned at the great hotels and in the first-class, railway carriages. During the long vacations, and especially after leaving Heidelberg altogether, I extended my explorations into remoter parts, into the Tyrol, Switzerland, Italy, and France. I travelled in a way in which probably no American has ever travelled before or since, namely, disguised as a Handwerksbursche, a wandering tradesman. Any one who has been in Europe will not ask why a stranger in that 248 Vagabond Adventures. land should need to pass himself off as a poor native, if he wants to save money. On the Continent, as a general rule, a man in broad- cloth, not personally known to the shop or ho- tel keeper, pays two prices ; whereas a person speaking English, even if clad in fustian, pays three prices ; and I should like to see him help himself. The English language has come to be mistaken for a gold-mine all through Europe. These wandering tradesmen, these Hand- werksburschen, let me say, for they are un- known to nations under free, constitutional gov- ernments, are a sort of fossil remains of feudalism. They are young fellows, half jour- neymen, half apprentices, who are obliged to wander for two or three years from city to city, working at their trades. They finally return to their homes, weary and poor ; having learned little but the rough side of the world, to make what is called their " masterpiece." If this pass muster, they are entitled to style them- selves masters of their trades. They grow out of that old illiberal principle which compels the son to follow in the footsteps of his father and his grandfather. Yet, for all Student Life and Wanderings. 249 the narrow-minded enactments and regulations to crush their spirit and make them miserable, they always walk on the sunny side of nature. They are a jovial set of vagabonds, who have rarely the chance to be dishonest, if they had the inclination. Disguised in the blouse of their class, something like our Western "warmus," except that it is of thin blue stuff, I have spent many a jiappy hour, toiling along the same road with them, listening to their stories and merry songs. If I meet one of them on the highway, he stops, offers me his hand, and ex- changes a kindly word. He takes out his pipe, asks me to fill mine from his tobacco-pouch, and tells me all he knows of the road passed over. He never lodges in a city, unless he has work there. The village inn is his castle ; here he obtains his bed at night and his breakfast in the morning for seven kreutzers, not quite five cents ; and trudges on, smoking and singing, through all Europe. This is the Handwerks- bursche, poor, but merry ; the knight-errant of the bundle and staff; the troubadour and min- nesinger of the nineteenth century. 250 Vagabond Adventures. In Switzerland, for instance, where almost every one travels as a pedestrian, and where hundreds of our countrymen every year blister their inexperienced feet at the rates of from ten to thirty francs a day, I have journeyed sump- tuously thanks to my disguise for thirty sous. When addressed in French, if my broken speech was noticed, it was supposed that I was from one of the German cantons ; and, in the same manner, if my bad German was detected, I was set down as from one of the French cantons. This gratuitous naturalization on one day and expatriation on the next had no bad effect what- ever on my health, whereas it had the best possible result on my purse. My blouse was a protection, not only to the respectable suit of clothes which I wore under it, but against all the impositions practised upon travellers. When I arrived at a large city or watering-place, I generally hired a little room for a week, found a cheap place to get my meals, and, after settling prices for everything in advance, divested myself of my . disguise, and "did" the galleries and promenades, to the accompaniment of kid gloves and immaculate linen. Student Life and Wanderings. 251 But the glory of pedestrianism is not in cities ; it is in the broad highway, on the banks of mighty rivers, or in the narrow footpath winding over mountains. There is such pleasure and pride in the consciousness that one can go where and when one will, without waiting on coaches or trains. Thirty, forty, or fifty good miles left behind in one day, by the means of locomotion nature has given to every one, are not only a consolation to sleep upon at a village inn, but make the sleep sounder and sweeter. I defy any man not to be proud of his strength, when he finds as almost every one will, after a little practice that he can make thirty miles on foot, day after day, with perfect ease. It is, however, just to state that village inns are not always paradises. The hostess sometimes has more lodgers in her beds than she receives money for ; but a practised eye generally detects such places at a glance, and rarely exposes the body to their perils. Every village has at least one respectable inn. Before my personal history had taught me this wisdom by excruciating ex- ample, I had good reason to believe that the tortures of the Vehmgericht, the old secret tri- 252 Vagabond Adventures. bunal of Germany, were not the things of the past which the world thought them. I had frequent occasion, too, for what might be called an equanimity of stomach. I arrived one evening, for instance, at a small desolate village in the remote eastern part of Ba- varia, near the Austrian border. I was weary and hungry, but before mine host of the inn would have anything to do with me, he sent me on a wild chase through innumerable narrow, crooked alleys, in search of the burgomaster to deliver my passport into his hands and obtain his gracious permission to remain over night in the place. The entrance to the mansion of that dignitary was through a cattle-yard.' He had probably never before in his life heard of the language of my passport, but that did not prevent his looking at it with an official air of infinite wisdom. I returned to the inn at last, fortified with the requisite credentials. The hostess now appeared, and asked me what I would eat, addressing me familiarly in the sec- ond person singular. Her long lank frame was attired in the abominable costume of the Bavarian peasantry. I could compare her to nothing but Student Life and Wanderings. 253 a giant specimen of the Hungarian heron, which I need hardly say is not a pretty bird. The same room served as parlor and kitchen. I sat patiently and watched her kindling the fire in the great earthen stove, indulging my mind as hungry people are wont to do, with rich visions of imaginary banquets. What was my horror to see her take the eggs, which I had ordered, break them one by one into her greasy leathern apron, and commence beating them vigorously with a pewter spoon ! . As soon as I recovered my presence of mind, I considered the folly of remonstrating with her, and, with a great effort, I mildly remarked that she had misunderstood me ; I wanted my eggs boiled. By this stratagem, I preserved my dis- guise and achieved a cleanly meal in defiance of the leathern apron. CHAPTER IV. A FIGHT WITH FAMINE. T N the mean time, the condition of my finances -* was becoming hourly more desperate. I had written to innumerable American news- papers, offering to produce a letter a day for five dollars a week, and making all sorts of strug- gling tenders of brain-work, from which, as a general rule, I heard nothing at all. At last Christmas came, and found me back at Heidelberg, utterly penniless ; over five thou- sand miles from home, in a country where for a stranger to obtain work was simply hopeless ; since the boys in that densely populated land have to pay for the privilege of learning to carry bundles, a pursuit which is there for three years a necessary introduction to becoming a salesman of the smallest wares. To obtain a situation as beggar was still more hopeless, the competition of native dwarfs and cripples being A Fight with Famine. 255 altogether too powerful for an able-bodied alien. So here was the end of my one hundred and eighty-one dollars in currency. I had made what is called the tour of Europe ; and I now had the prospect of immediate starvation for my pains. And yet that Christmas day was, by all odds, the happiest day of my life. For, just at fifteen minutes past eleven o'clock, A. M., the postman knocked at the door and handed me very unex- pectedly a letter, containing about twenty-five dollars in our money. It came from an Ameri- can paper, to which I had written, at least, twenty letters for publication, and twenty-five letters asking for money ; so it was undoubtedly the twenty-five dunning letters that were paid for. And I shall never be so rich or happy again. So much has been written about the holidays in Germany, that I cannot be expected . to say anything new on the subject. It may, however, have been forgotten by some that the Weinachten of the fatherland commence on what we call 256 Vagabond Adventures. "Christmas eve." This is the great night for children. It is their feast. It is the time they have been looking forward to with such wild, glad, gorgeous anticipation. It is the night of the Christmas-tree ; and, in all Germany there is no child so poor as not to get something from its green boughs. Besides this night, Christmas has two whole days, to which respectively there seems to be a logical apportionment of two very important kinds of enjoyment. The first day is assigned to boundless eating, and the second mildly speak- ing to getting drunk ; and it is due to the zeal of the Southern Germans, at least, to say that they observe this order of ceremonies with scru- pulous exactness. Now, it may be sentimental, or something worse, but I confess I like to dwell upon the time when twenty-five dollars made me perfectly happy. Memory, you may have observed, has a way of painting frescos with the clouds of distant skies that are even prettier than the lay-figures and life-forms which served for the real models. It was, for instance, a quiet little scene of domestic joy, that Christmas of my student life in Ger- A Fight with Famine. 257 many ; yet, somehow, it has grouped itself in my remembrance, like the masterpiece of Cornelius, the largest fresco of them all. Frau Hirtei was the domestic little body of whom I rented my airy apartment. Fraulem Anna was her rosy daughter, and this little sun- beam in the house was the only child of the family that I had ever seen ; though many and many a time, the name of Karl, the only son and brother, was upon their lips. Karl was a Handwerks- bursche, one of those houseless tradesmen, before dwelt upon ; and on this Christmas Karl was expected home from his long, long wander- ings. The illuminated tree on the night before had been laden with many a gift of affectionate re- membrance for the absent Karl. As we sat down to the Christmas dinner, there was a vacant place at the table, and in the hearts of the dis- appointed mother and sister. They could not touch a morsel. "Are you sure he will come, mamma ?" asked the little Anna, after a long silence. "Yes, my child, unless something has hap- pened ; for the way is long from Frankfort, and Q 258 Vagabond Adventures. the poor boy's feet must be sore with his long, long journey." " What, mamma, if he should n't come ? " Frau Hirtel's face became very pale, whether at the little Anna's question or at the sudden ring- ing of the shop-bell, as the door swung open and shut. The next instant Karl was in the middle of the room. His pack and staff fell at his feet, and Frau Hirtel and the Fraulein Anna sprang into his arms. It was not the merry dinner that succeeded, or the Glilhwein that made the evening glad, but this one picture which dwells most in my memory. The joy that shone on the careworn and dust- stained face of the returned wanderer, reflected in those of his mother and sister as they stood in that long embrace, has no parallel that I know of in the history of the return of exiled kings. With my twenty-five dollars I lived cheaper than ever, and for some months longer continued my studies at the University. But one morning I received a letter from the same generous Ameri- can newspaper, enclosing a draft for fifty dollars, together with a very earnest request that the ed- A Fight with Famine. 259 itor should hear no more from me on any account whatever. This good fortune was too much for my mental equilibrium. Heidelberg was too small for me. I started the next day for a trip down the Rhine, deck passage. At Rotterdam I betook myself again to the third-class cars, and occasionally to the bundle and staff. Thus I went through Holland and Bel- gium, walking leisurely one day over the historic dead of Waterloo. Arriving finally at Paris, I resolved there to take up my residence. By means of a cheap lodging in the old Latin Quarter, and of a cheaper restaurant on the Boulevard Sevastopol, I man- aged to subsist for several months. It was here in Paris that I first met my good friend, George Alfred Townsend, the well-known war-correspondent. To him I was afterward in- debted for a short, romantic sketch of my life, in which he says, I believe, among other complimen- tary things, that the faculty of Heidelberg gave me my tuition for nothing, but that I would not stay with them and study, because I thought it too dear! 260 Vagabond Adventures. But, seriously, I owe Mr. Town send a real debt of gratitude, for it was he who suggested that I should write an account of certain of my experi- ences for one of the London magazines. After the questionable success of my multifarious at- tempts with American newspapers, I trembled at the temerity of the idea. Yet my money was becoming daily and by no means beautifully less. Neither Mr. Townsend nor anybody else but myself was aware that, at the time of his sugges- tion, my cash capital consisted of one gold na- poleon, a silver five-franc piece, and some three or four sous ; and even this sum had dwindled considerably before I could muster courage to make the attempt. At last, in a fit of desperation, I sat down one morning, with the equivalent of about two dol- lars in my pocket, and commenced my article. In three days more it was on its way to London with an enclosure of British stamps, enough to pay for the letter which should tell me whether it was accepted or rejected. I shall not dwell longer than I can help upon the painful suspense of the succeeding five or six days ; though I do not remember now my A Fight with Famine. 261 grounds for expecting an answer in so short a period. Up to that time I will venture to say there was not a happier person in the gay capital of France than I had been ; for it is one of the peculiar charms of Paris that it affords abun- dant amusement for him who spends forty francs a month, as I did, or forty thousand a month, as some do. I cannot explain now, any more than you can believe in, my happiness then. I know only that the beautiful city was delightful, and that I was delighted. The palaces, the galleries, the gardens, the parks, the music, and the wonder- ful diorama of the evening Boulevards were free, as free to me, the vagabond stranger, as they were to the greatest prince ; and I had the additional, though not necessarily comfort- able, assurance that I always carried away from them a better appetite for the next meal than did even his inscrutable majesty, the Emperor himself. But now that I had the growing cares of au- thorship on my mind, it dwelt more and more upon the waning disks of my franc-pieces, as 262 Vagabond Adventures. they swelled for a time illusively into sous, and then tapered into centimes and disappeared from my gaze forever. At this period I found myself occasionally strolling down to the Seine, and looking over from Pont Neuf at the flood below, swollen with the late rains, and listening to the strange sound it made in the wake of the old stone arches, as it rushed on toward the Morgue, the famous dead-house, where hundreds of suicides are dis- played every year. Have you ever heard the last " bubbling groan " of a drowning man ? If you have, you will un- derstand the feeling with which, after listening long and steadily to the low rumble of the eddy- ing water, I have received the impression more than once on that old bridge, that I heard the same fatal gurgling sound in the river beneath ; and yon will understand the feeling, also, I think, with which, at such times, I cast a hasty glance at the Morgue, not far distant, and hurried on to the more cheerful neighborhood of the garden of the Tuileries. I would not have you believe that the idea of suicide ever crossed my mind. I merely went A Fight with Famine. 263 and looked into the Seine, on that queer, un- explained principle which impels miserable people, the world over, to haunt wharves and bridges, and to gaze listlessly into water. I have some- times thought, when I saw servant-girls and others out of employ looking, for instance, from the bridge of boats at Manheim into the Rhine, as into the window of an intelligence-office, I have sometimes thought, I say, that if dogs do go mad from gazing into water, as I think was once believed, they are vefy miserable dogs, and very much disgusted with the world, before they do it. One day, the fourth of my suspense, if I*re- member, when I was more despondent and hungry than usual, I went and looked in through the grating of the Morgue itself. If I had ever had the least thought of throwing myself into the Seine, this horrible sight would have cured me as thoroughly of it as it did of my appetite for the rest of that day. I feel some diffidence about mentioning a plan happily abandoned, as you shall see, before put into further execution which suggested itself to my mind during that hungry week, namely, to visit the Morgue once a day for pur- 264 Vagabond Adventures. poses of economy ; but, luckily, I discovered about this time that the smoking of cigarettes made of cheap French tobacco would perform the same service of taking away the appetite, and I adopted the latter more agreeable means to that end. The fifth and sixth days after sending my arti- cle I did scarcely anything but wait about the office for my letter. Finally, a note arrived from Paternoster Row, with just one line of the worst penmanship in it that has ever yet met my eyes ; and the painful suspense was only intensified. The writer evidently said some- thing about my article, but what I despaired of making out. I took the note to my friends, and they were divided about it ; some said that the article was rejected, and some that it was accepted. The majority, however,' favored the latter opinion, to which, at last, myself was brought, and I was happy. Not long afterward I received a draft from the publishers for a sum which seemed to me at that time almost fabulous, for the amount of work done. After a hearty meal, and as soon as I A Fight with Famine. 265 had time to think, I considered my fortune made. I was now arrived at the appalling dignity of magazinist, contributor to the widest-circulated periodical in the language. I packed my trunk immediately, and started for Italy. 12 CHAPTER V. THE CONCLUSION. T STAYED at Florence all winter, living on -* the cheapest of food, indeed, but with the very best of company. I haunted the galleries and studios so much that the artists took me for a devotee of art, and never asked me how I lived. At dusk it was my custom to steal away to- ward my dinner, passing Michael Angelo's David, forever about to throw the stone across the famous old Piazza, and gliding down a by-street till I came to 'the market. There, in a little cook-shop, amid the filth and noise of the very raggedest of Florence, I partook of my maca- roni, or, if I was fastidious, of my boiled beans and olive-oil, for seven centesimi, one cent and two fifths of a cent ; my bread made of chest- nuts for two centesimi, two fifths of a cent ; and my half-glass of wine for seven centesimi, The Conclusion. 267 my dinner, with a scrap of meat, averaging five cents, and rarely exceeding ten. My glass of wine may be considered an ex- travagance. It was not. I could stand the bus- tle, the uncleanliness, and even the staring at a passably well-dressed person in such an unaccus- tomed place ; but I could not stand the positive amazement expressed by young men and old women, old men and young women, beggars and organ artists, trie day when I omitted wine. It was too much for endurance. Public opinion was against me. I pretended to have forgotten to order my wine, and turned off the, whole affair with a laugh. Many and many a time I have seen a poor old creature, who was often my next neighbor at table, pay two centesimi for bread and seven centesimi for wine, and that was her whole meal. Bancroft Ubrwry This experience has always helped me to be- lieve the account of th^t strange incident in the history of the Florentines, given, I think, by Macchiavelli, in which it is related that during the Republican days of Florence, when there was a hostile army making an inroad on their 268 Vagabond Adventures. territories, the doughty republicans, having gone out to meet it, lay encamped some time not far from Lucca ; and that, suddenly, when the enemy was almost upon them, they revolted, turned around, and marched home again, to let their territory and the fortunes of their city take care of themselves, because the Florentine army had unfortunately got out of wine ! Sometimes I spent my evenings at the cafe, where I always took my breakfast, and where for three soldi, three cents, invested in coffee or chocolate, I could sit as long as I liked, reading the papers, or listening to the talk of my artist friends. It was always cheaper for me to go to the opera taking a very high seat, by the way than to have a light and a fire in my room. I have seen an opera with a hundred or more peo- ple on the stage at a time, in a theatre as large as, and some say larger than, there is in London or Paris, and all it cost me was eight cents. Thus I lived on in the city of art and olives. When my money began to give out again, I thought I would condescend to transmit another article to the London magazine which had made The Conclusion. 269 my fortune before. I transmitted another article ; and at the time when I ought to have heard from it I was reduced to the sum of forty francs. Receiving, at last, an envelope with the Pater- noster mark upon it, I restrained my joy, and opened it leisurely, making merely the mental res- olution that I would dine in state that day ; for this was a longer article than the first one, and the sum which it would bring must be simply enor- mous. Then I proceeded to read the following letter-: " DEAR SIR, Your article entitled is respectfully declined " ! This time starvation was sure ; but I had set my heart on seeing Rome. I thought there would be a sort of melancholy satisfaction in having vis- ited the capital of the ancient world before going to any other new one. I therefore took the next open-topped car for the sea-shore, having previ- ously put my first rough draft of my unfortunate article into a new wrapper, and shipped it off to the editor of a less pretending periodical, pub- lished at Edinburgh. I do not remember how or why, but the night 270 Vagabond Adventures. after I left Florence I had to lie over at Pisa, where I came near being robbed of what little money I had at a miserable, cheap trattoria, not far from the famous Leaning Tower. I found a fierce-moustached bandit of a fellow in my room in the middle of the night, stealthily approaching the head of my bed, and scared him away, I shall always Relieve, by the bad Anglo-Italian in which I expressed my sense of surprise and concern at his untimely and extraordinary conduct. Two days afterward I took a fourth-class, that is, deck passage on the French 'steamer, sailing down' the Mediterranean from Leghorn. I stayed a week at Rome, and came very near staying much longer. It was, indeed, by a miraculous chance that I ever left the Eternal City. I had not money enough to pay the Pontifical tax on departing travellers. It is too long a story to tell here, but I slipped through the fingers of the police, and, arriving at Leghorn again, I had not the ten cents to pay the boatman to take me ashore from the steamer. My trunk, by the way, I had left at Leghorn before starting for Rome ; so that was out of danger, and came properly to hand afterward. The Conclusion. 271 As my lucky star would have it, an American bark was lying at anchor in the bay. It was the first time I had seen the " star-spangled banner " for two years, and I flew to it for protection. I directed the boatman to take me to the American ship. Standing in the bow of the smaller craft, as soon as she reached the greater one I sprang up the side, and the boatman sprang after me. He detained half of my coat, but I reached the deck, where I kept him at bay with a belaying-pin till some one on the ship was roused ; for it was early in the morning. The ten cents were paid over to the clamorous Italian by a hearty tar, who was moved to see an American in distress, " with his mainsail carried away," I think that is the way the tar phrased it. The captain of the ship was a warm-hearted old fellow from down in Maine. He offered to take me home before I asked him. I had a boyish love of independence, and proposed to work. He said he would n't be bothered with me ; he would take me as his only passenger. We settled the matter at last by my contracting grandly to owe him fifty dollars in " greenbacks." 272 Vagabond Adventures. Our vessel was about twenty years old, and laden with rags and great blocks of marble. We had a terrible storm in the Mediterranean, in which we came near going down. The old craft seemed, however, to have some secret under- standing with fate ; for, having shifted her cargo, she floated, wellnigh on her beam-ends, the rest of that desolate ten weeks through the Mediter- ranean and across the Atlantic. I arrived at Boston finally, without a cent. I had directed that all letters should be forwarded from my address at Florence to the care of the merchant to whom our ship was consigned. What was my surprise, then, to be handed by that gentleman an envelope enclosing a draft on London, in pay for the almost-forgotten article which I had sent in sheer desperation, if not in comprehensive revenge, to that Edinburgh maga- zine ! Greenbacks were then at their heaviest dis- count, and English exchange at its highest pre- mium. And thus it happened that I sold my draft for American money enough to pay the good-hearted captain and the patriotic tar, and to take me back to Toledo, my starting-place, after The Concision. 273 an absence of over two years, at the total expense of a little more than three hundred dollars. Here, at the proper end of my pilgrimage and of this book, while I am figuratively taking off my sandal shoon and hanging up my pilgrim staff, let me say that, although I did not set out with any higher purpose than to tell just such a story as I might tell under oath, still I think I discern in these European adventures what I may term an ex post facto moral. Let not the reader, however, practise and amuse his ingenuity by at- tempting to detect this in the earlier chapters of the present work, or by any manner of means in the pilgrim himself; for, personally, he feels as free from a moral as any pilgrim he has ever seen has been free from superfluous linen. While, therefore, I would not advise any young man to follow directly in my footsteps, yet I hope I have shown that there are means and modes of travel unknown to the guide-books ; that there are cheap ways for the student and man of lim- ited means to see and learn much for little money. The sight of a sunrise from the Righi is cer- tainly more than compensation for putting up 12* R 274 Vagabond A dventures. with a poor breakfast. And the candid traveller, however light his purse, needs never return dys- peptic or misanthropic. Pure air and hearty ex- ercise in the Alps and on the Danube cannot fail to do him physical good ; while he will find in the human nature with which he comes in contact' in every land the sum of the good invariably pre- ponderating over that of the evil. THE END. Cambridge : Printed by Welch, Bigelow, and Company.