[Illustration: Henry Watterson (About 1908)] "Marse Henry" An Autobiography By Henry Watterson TO MY FRIEND ALEXANDER KONTA WITH AFFECTIONATE SALUTATION "Mansfield, " 1919 A mound of earth a little higher graded: Perhaps upon a stone a chiselled name: A dab of printer's ink soon blurred and faded-- And then oblivion--that--that is fame! --HENRY WATTERSON Contents Chapter the First I Am Born and Begin to Take Notice--John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson--James K. Polk and Franklin Pierce--Jack Dade and "Beau Hickman"--Old Times in Washington Chapter the Second Slavery the Trouble-Maker--Break-Up of the Whig Party and Rise of the Republican--The Key--Sickle's Tragedy--Brooks and Sumner--Life at Washington in the Fifties Chapter the Third The Inauguration of Lincoln--I Quit Washington and Return to Tennessee--A Run-a-bout with Forest--Through the Federal Lines and a Dangerous Adventure--Good Luck at Memphis Chapter the Fourth I Go to London--Am Introduced to a Notable Set--Huxley, Spencer, Mill and Tyndall--Artemus Ward Comes to Town--The Savage Club Chapter the Fifth Mark Twain--The Original of Colonel Mulberry Sellers--The "Earl of Durham"--Some Noctes Ambrosianæ--A Joke on Murat Halstead Chapter the Sixth Houston and Wigfall of Texas--Stephen A. Douglas--The Twaddle about Puritans and Cavaliers--Andrew Johnson and John C. Breckenridge Chapter the Seventh An Old Newspaper Rookery--Reactionary Sectionalism in Cincinnati and Louisville--_The Courier-Journal_ Chapter the Eighth Feminism and Woman Suffrage--The Adventures in Politics and Society--A Real Heroine Chapter the Ninth Dr. Norvin Green--Joseph Pulitzer--Chester A. Arthur--General Grant--The Case of Fitz-John Porter Chapter the Tenth Of Liars and Lying--Woman Suffrage and Feminism--The Professional Female--Parties, Politics, and Politicians in America Chapter the Eleventh Andrew Johnson--The Liberal Convention in 1872--Carl Schurz--The "Quadrilateral"--Sam Bowles, Horace White and Murat Halstead--A Queer Composite of Incongruities Chapter the Twelfth The Ideal in Public Life--Politicians, Statesmen and Philosophers-- The Disputed Presidency in 1876--The Persona and Character of Mr. Tilden--His Election and Exclusion by a Partisan Tribunal Chapter the Thirteenth Charles Eames and Charles Sumner-Schurzand Lamar--I Go to Congress--A Heroic Kentuckian--Stephen Foster and His Songs--Music and Theodore Thomas Chapter the Fourteenth Henry Adams and the Adams Family--John Hay and Frank Mason--The Three _Mousquetaires_ of Culture--Paris--"The Frenchman"--The South of France Chapter the Fifteenth Still the Gay Capital of France--Its Environs--Walewska and De Morny--Thackeray in Paris--A _Pension_ Adventure Chapter the Sixteenth Monte Carlo--The European Shrine of Sport and Fashion--Apocryphal Gambling Stories--Leopold, King of the Belgians--An Able and Picturesque Man of Business Chapter the Seventeenth A Parisian _Pension_--The Widow of Walewska--Napoleon's Daughter-in-Law--The Changeless--A Moral and Orderly City Chapter the Eighteenth The Grover Cleveland Period--President Arthur and Mr. Blaine--John Chamberlin--The Decrees of Destiny Chapter the Nineteenth Mr. Cleveland in the White House--Mr. Bayard in the Department of State--Queer Appointments to Office--The One-Party Power--The End of North and South Sectionalism Chapter the Twentieth The Real Grover Cleveland--Two Clevelands Before and After Marriage--A Correspondence and a Break of Personal Relations Chapter the Twenty-First Stephen Foster, the Song-Writer--A Friend Comes to the Rescu His Originality--"My Old Kentucky Home" and the "Old Folks at Home"--General Sherman and "Marching Through Georgia" Chapter the Twenty-Second Theodore Roosevelt--His Problematic Character--He Offers Me an Appointment--His _Bonhomie_ and Chivalry--Proud of His Rebel Kin Chapter the Twenty-Third The Actor and the Journalist--The Newspaper and the State--Joseph Jefferson--His Personal and Artistic Career--Modest Character and Religious Belief Chapter the Twenty-Fourth The Writing of Memoirs--Some Characteristics of Carl Shurz--Sam Bowles--Horace White and the Mugwumps Chapter the Twenty-Fifth Every Trade Has Its Tricks--I Play One on William McKinley--Far Away Party Politics and Political Issues Chapter the Twenty-Sixth A Libel on Mr. Cleveland--His Fondness for Cards--Some Poker Stories--The "Senate Game"--Tom Ochiltree, Senator Allison and General Schenck Chapter the Twenty-Seventh The Profession of Journalism--Newspapers and Editors in America--Bennett, Greeley and Raymond--Forney and Dana--The Education of a Journalist Chapter the Twenty-Eighth Bullies and Braggarts--Some Kentucky Illustrations--The Old Galt House--The Throckmortons--A Famous Sugeon--"Old Hell's Delight" Chapter the Twenty-Ninth About Political Conventions, State and National--"Old Ben Butler"--His Appearance as a Trouble-Maker in the Democratic National Convention of 1892--Tarifa and the Tariff--Spain as a Frightful Example Chapter the Thirtieth The Makers of the Republic--Lincoln, Jefferson, Clay and Webster--The Proposed League of Nations--The Wilsonian Incertitude--The "New Freedom" Chapter the Thirty-First The Age of Miracles--A Story of Franklin Pierce--Simon Suggs Billy Sunday--Jefferson Davis and Aaron Burr--Certain Constitutional Shortcomings Chapter the Thirty-Second A War Episode--I Meet my Fater--I Marry and Make a Home--The Ups and Downs of Life Lead to a Happy Old Age Illustrations Henry Watterson (About 1908) Henry Clay--Painted at Ashland by Dodge for The Hon. Andrew Ewing ofTennessee-The Original Hangs in Mr. Watterson's Library at "Mansfield" W. P. Hardee, Lieutenant General C. S. A. John Bell of Tennessee--In 1860 Presidential Candidate "UnionParty"--"Bell and Everett" Ticket Artemus Ward General Leonidas Polk--Lieutenant General C. S. A. Killed in Georgia, June14, 1864--P. E. Bishop of Louisiana Mr. Watterson's Editorial Staff in 1868 When the Three Daily Newspapersof Louisville Were United into the _Courier-Journal_. Mr. George D. Prentice and Mr. Watterson Are in the Center Abraham Lincoln in 1861. From a Photograph by M. B. Brady Mrs. Lincoln in 1861 Henry Watterson--Fifty Years Ago Henry Woodfire Grady--One of Mr. Watterson's "Boys" Mr. Watterson's Library at "Mansfield" A Corner of "Mansfield"--Home of Mr. Watterson Henry Watterson (Photograph Taken in Florida) Henry Watterson. From a painting by Louis Mark in the Manhattan Club, New York "MARSE HENRY" Chapter the First I Am Born and Begin to Take Notice--John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson--James K. Polk and Franklin Pierce--Jack Dade and "Beau Hickman"--Old Times in Washington I I am asked to jot down a few autobiographic odds and ends from such dataof record and memory as I may retain. I have been something of a studentof life; an observer of men and women and affairs; an appraiser of theircharacter, their conduct, and, on occasion, of their motives. Thus, akind of instinct, which bred a tendency and grew to a habit, has led meinto many and diverse companies, the lowest not always the meanest. Circumstance has rather favored than hindered this bent. I was born in aparty camp and grew to manhood on a political battlefield. I have livedthrough stirring times and in the thick of events. In a vein colloquialand reminiscential, not ambitious, let me recall some impressions whichthese have left upon the mind of one who long ago reached and turned thecorner of the Scriptural limitation; who, approaching fourscore, doesnot yet feel painfully the frost of age beneath the ravage of time'sdefacing waves. Assuredly they have not obliterated his sense either ofvision or vista. Mindful of the adjuration of Burns, Keep something to yourself, Ye scarcely tell to ony, I shall yet hold little in reserve, having no state secrets or mysteriesof the soul to reveal. It is not my purpose to be or to seem oracular. I shall not write afterthe manner of Rousseau, whose Confessions had been better honored in thebreach than the observance, and in any event whose sincerity will bearquestion; nor have I tales to tell after the manner of Paul Barras, whose Memoirs have earned him an immortality of infamy. Neither shallI emulate the grandiose volubility and self-complacent posing ofMetternich and Talleyrand, whose pretentious volumes rest for the mostpart unopened upon dusty shelves. I aspire to none of the honors of thehistorian. It shall be my aim as far as may be to avoid the garrulity ofthe raconteur and to restrain the exaggerations of the ego. But neitherfear of the charge of self-exploitation nor the specter of a modestyoft too obtrusive to be real shall deter me from a proper freedom ofnarration, where, though in the main but a humble chronicler, I mustneeds appear upon the scene and speak of myself; for I at least have notalways been a dummy and have sometimes in a way helped to make history. In my early life--as it were, my salad days--I aspired to becoming whatold Simon Cameron called "one of those damned literary fellows" andThomas Carlyle less profanely described as "a leeterary celeebrity. "But some malign fate always sat upon my ambitions in this regard. It waseasy to become The National Gambler in Nast's cartoons, and yet easierThe National Drunkard through the medium of the everlasting mint-julepjoke; but the phantom of the laurel crown would never linger upon myfair young brow. Though I wrote verses for the early issues of Harper's Weekly--happilyno one can now prove them on me, for even at that jejune period I hadthe prudence to use an anonym--the Harpers, luckily for me, declined topublish a volume of my poems. I went to London, carrying with me "thegreat American novel. " It was actually accepted by my ever too partialfriend, Alexander Macmillan. But, rest his dear old soul, he diedand his successors refused to see the transcendent merit of thatperformance, a view which my own maturing sense of belles-lettres valuessubsequently came to verify. When George Harvey arrived at the front I "'ad 'opes. " But, Lord, thatcast-iron man had never any bookish bowels of compassion--or politicaleither for the matter of that!--so that finally I gave up fiction andresigned myself to the humble category of the crushed tragi-comedians ofliterature, who inevitably drift into journalism. Thus my destiny has been casual. A great man of letters quite thwarted, I became a newspaper reporter--a voluminous space writer for thepress--now and again an editor and managing editor--until, when I wasnearly thirty years of age, I hit the Kentucky trail and set up for ajournalist. I did this, however, with a big "J, " nursing for a whilesome faint ambitions of statesmanship--even office--but in the enddiscarding everything that might obstruct my entire freedom, for I cameinto the world an insurgent, or, as I have sometimes described myself inthe Kentucky vernacular, "a free nigger and not a slave nigger. " II Though born in a party camp and grown to manhood on a politicalbattlefield my earlier years were most seriously influenced by thereligious spirit of the times. We passed to and fro between Washingtonand the two family homesteads in Tennessee, which had cradledrespectively my father and mother, Beech Grove in Bedford County, andSpring Hill in Maury County. Both my grandfathers were devout churchmenof the Presbyterian faith. My Grandfather Black, indeed, was the sonof a Presbyterian clergyman, who lived, preached and died in MadisonCounty, Kentucky. He was descended, I am assured, in a straight linefrom that David Black, of Edinburgh, who, as Burkle tells us, havingdeclared in a sermon that Elizabeth of England was a harlot, and hercousin, Mary Queen of Scots, little better, went to prison for it--allhonor to his memory. My Grandfather Watterson was a man of mark in his day. He was decidedlya constructive--the projector and in part the builder of an importantrailway line--an early friend and comrade of General Jackson, whowas all too busy to take office, and, indeed, who throughout his lifedisdained the ephemeral honors of public life. The Wattersons hadmigrated directly from Virginia to Tennessee. The two families were prosperous, even wealthy for those days, and myfather had entered public life with plenty of money, and General Jacksonfor his sponsor. It was not, however, his ambitions or his career thatinterested me--that is, not until I was well into my teens--but the campmeetings and the revivalist preachers delivering the Word of God withmore or less of ignorant yet often of very eloquent and convincingfervor. The wave of the great Awakening of 1800 had not yet subsided. Bascomwas still alive. I have heard him preach. The people were filled withthoughts of heaven and hell, of the immortality of the soul and the lifeeverlasting, of the Redeemer and the Cross of Calvary. The camp groundwitnessed an annual muster of the adjacent countryside. The revival wasa religious hysteria lasting ten days or two weeks. The sermons wereappeals to the emotions. The songs were the outpourings of the soulin ecstacy. There was no fanaticism of the death-dealing, proscriptivesort; nor any conscious cant; simplicity, childlike belief in futurerewards and punishments, the orthodox Gospel the universal rule. Therewas a good deal of doughty controversy between the churches, as betweenthe parties; but love of the Union and the Lord was the bedrock of everyconfession. Inevitably an impressionable and imaginative mind opening to such sightsand sounds as it emerged from infancy must have been deeply affected. Until I was twelve years old the enchantment of religion had completepossession of my understanding. With the loudest, I could sing all thehymns. Being early taught in music I began to transpose them into manysorts of rhythmic movement for the edification of my companions. Theirwords, aimed directly at the heart, sank, never to be forgotten, into mymemory. To this day I can repeat the most of them--though not withouta break of voice--while too much dwelling upon them would stir me to apitch of feeling which a life of activity in very different walks andways and a certain self-control I have been always able to command wouldscarcely suffice to restrain. The truth is that I retain the spiritual essentials I learned then andthere. I never had the young man's period of disbelief. There has neverbeen a time when if the Angel of Death had appeared upon the scene--nomatter how festal--I would not have knelt with adoration and welcome;never a time on the battlefield or at sea when if the elements hadopened to swallow me I would not have gone down shouting! Sectarianism in time yielded to universalism. Theology came to seemto my mind more and more a weapon in the hands of Satan to embroil anddivide the churches. I found in the Sermon on the Mount leading enoughfor my ethical guidance, in the life and death of the Man of Galileeinspiration enough to fulfill my heart's desire; and though I have reada great deal of modern inquiry--from Renan and Huxley through Newmanand Döllinger, embracing debates before, during and after the Englishupheaval of the late fifties and the Ecumenical Council of 1870, including the various raids upon the Westminster Confession, especiallythe revision of the Bible, down to writers like Frederic Harrison andDoctor Campbell--I have found nothing to shake my childlike faith in thesimple rescript of Christ and Him crucified. III From their admission into the Union, the States of Kentucky andTennessee have held a relation to the politics of the country somewhatdisproportioned to their population and wealth. As between the twoparties from the Jacksonian era to the War of Sections, each was closelyand hotly contested. If not the birthplace of what was called "stumporatory, " in them that picturesque form of party warfare flourishedmost and lasted longest. The "barbecue" was at once a rustic feast anda forum of political debate. Especially notable was the presidentialcampaign of 1840, the year of my birth, "Tippecanoe and Tyler, " forthe Whig slogan--"Old Hickory" and "the battle of New Orleans, " theDemocratic rallying cry--Jackson and Clay, the adored party chieftains. I grew up in the one State, and have passed the rest of my life in theother, cherishing for both a deep affection, and, maybe, over-estimatingtheir hold upon the public interest. Excepting General Jackson, who wasa fighter and not a talker, their public men, with Henry Clay and FelixGrundy in the lead, were "stump orators. " He who could not relate andimpersonate an anecdote to illustrate and clinch his argument, nor "makethe welkin ring" with the clarion tones of his voice, was politicallygood for nothing. James K. Polk and James C. Jones led the van ofstump orators in Tennessee, Ben Hardin, John J. Crittenden and John C. Breckenridge in Kentucky. Tradition still has stories to tell of theirexploits and prowess, their wit and eloquence, even their commonplacesayings and doings. They were marked men who never failed to captivatetheir audiences. The system of stump oratory had many advantages as apublic force and was both edifying and educational. There were afew conspicuous writers for the press, such as Ritchie, Greeley andPrentice. But the day of personal journalism and newspaper influencecame later. I was born at Washington--February 16, 1840--"a bad year for Democrats, "as my father used to say, adding: "I am afraid the boy will grow up tobe a Whig. " In those primitive days there were only Whigs and Democrats. Men tooktheir politics, as their liquor, "straight"; and this father of mine wasan undoubting Democrat of the schools of Jefferson and Jackson. Hehad succeeded James K. Polk in Congress when the future President waselected governor of Tennessee; though when nominated he was littlebeyond the age required to qualify as a member of the House. To the end of his long life he appeared to me the embodiment of wisdom, integrity and courage. And so he was--a man of tremendous force ofcharacter, yet of surpassing sweetness of disposition; singularlydisdainful of office, and indeed of preferment of every sort; a profusemaker and a prodigal spender of money; who, his needs and recognitionassured, cared nothing at all for what he regarded as the costly gloriesof the little great men who rattled round in places often much too bigfor them. Immediately succeeding Mr. Polk, and such a youth in appearance, heattracted instant attention. His father, my grandfather, allowed him alarger income than was good for him--seeing that the per diem then paidCongressmen was altogether insufficient--and during the earlier days ofhis sojourn in the national capital he cut a wide swath; his principalyokemate in the pleasures and dissipations of those times being FranklinPierce, at first a representative and then a senator from New Hampshire. Fortunately for both of them, they were whisked out of Washington bytheir families in 1843; my father into the diplomatic service and Mr. Pierce to the seclusion of his New England home. They kept in closetouch, however, the one with the other, and ten years later, in 1853, were back again upon the scene of their rather conspicuous frivolity, Pierce as President of the United States, my father, who had precededhim a year or two, as editor of the Washington Union, the organ of theAdministration. When I was a boy the national capital was still rife with stories oftheir escapades. One that I recall had it that on a certain occasionreturning from an excursion late at night my father missed his footingand fell into the canal that then divided the city, and that Pierce, after many fruitless efforts, unable to assist him to dry land, exclaimed, "Well, Harvey, I can't get you out, but I'll get in withyou, " suiting the action to the word. And there they were found andrescued by a party of passers, very well pleased with themselves. My father's absence in South America extended over two years. Mymother's health, maybe her aversion to a long overseas journey, kepther at home, and very soon he tired of life abroad without her and cameback. A committee of citizens went on a steamer down the river to meethim, the wife and child along, of course, and the story was told that, seated on the paternal knee curiously observant of every detail, thebrat suddenly exclaimed, "Ah ha, pa! Now you've got on your storeclothes. But when ma gets you up at Beech Grove you'll have to lay offyour broadcloth and put on your jeans, like I do. " Being an only child and often an invalid, I was a pet in the family andmany tales were told of my infantile precocity. On one occasion I had afight with a little colored boy of my own age and I need not say got theworst of it. My grandfather, who came up betimes and separated us, said, "he has blackened your eye and he shall black your boots, " thereaftermaking me a deed to the lad. We grew up together in the greatest amityand in due time I gave him his freedom, and again to drop into thevernacular--"that was the only nigger I ever owned. " I should add thatin the "War of Sections" he fell in battle bravely fighting for thefreedom of his race. It is truth to say that I cannot recall the time when I was notpassionately opposed to slavery, a crank on the subject of personalliberty, if I am a crank about anything. IV In those days a less attractive place than the city of Washington couldhardly be imagined. It was scattered over an ill-paved and half-filledoblong extending east and west from the Capitol to the White House, and north and south from the line of the Maryland hills to the PotomacRiver. One does not wonder that the early Britishers, led by Tom Moore, made game of it, for it was both unpromising and unsightly. Private carriages were not numerous. Hackney coaches had to beespecially ordered. The only public conveyance was a rickety old omnibuswhich, making hourly trips, plied its lazy journey between the Navy Yardand Georgetown. There was a livery stable--Kimball's--having "stalls, "as the sleeping apartments above came to be called, thus literallyserving man and beast. These stalls often lodged very distinguishedpeople. Kimball, the proprietor, a New Hampshire Democrat of imposingappearance, was one of the last Washingtonians to wear knee breeches anda ruffled shirt. He was a great admirer of my father and his place was aresort of my childhood. One day in the early April of 1852 I was humped in a chair upon one sideof the open entrance reading a book--Mr. Kimball seated on the otherside reading a newspaper--when there came down the street a tall, greasy-looking person, who as he approached said: "Kimball, I haveanother letter here from Frank. " "Well, what does Frank say?" Then the letter was produced, read and discussed. It was all about the coming National Democratic Convention and itsprospective nominee for President of the United States, "Frank" seemingto be a principal. To me it sounded very queer. But I took it all in, and as soon as I reached home I put it up to my father: "How comes it, " I asked, "that a big old loafer gets a letter from acandidate for President and talks it over with the keeper of a liverystable? What have such people to do with such things?" My father said: "My son, Mr. Kimball is an estimable man. He has beenan important and popular Democrat in New Hampshire. He is not withoutinfluence here. The Frank they talked about is Gen. Franklin Pierce, ofNew Hampshire, an old friend and neighbor of Mr. Kimball. General Pierceserved in Congress with me and some of us are thinking that we maynominate him for President. The 'big old loafer, ' as you call him, was Mr. John C. Rives, a most distinguished and influential Democratindeed. " Three months later, when the event came to pass, I could tell all aboutGen. Franklin Pierce. His nomination was no surprise to me, thoughto the country at large it was almost a shock. He had been nowhereseriously considered. In illustration of this a funny incident recurs to me. At Nashville thenight of the nomination a party of Whigs and Democrats had gathered infront of the principal hotel waiting for the arrival of the news, amongthe rest Sam Bugg and Chunky Towles, two local gamblers, both undoubtingDemocrats. At length Chunky Towles, worn out, went off to bed. Theresult was finally flashed over the wires. The crowd was nonplused. "Whothe hell is Franklin Pierce?" passed from lip to lip. Sam Bugg knew his political catechism well. He proceeded at length totell all about Franklin Pierce, ending with the opinion that he wasthe man wanted and would be elected hands down, and he had a thousanddollars to bet on it. Then he slipped away to tell his pal. "Wake up, Chunky, " he cried. "We got a candidate--Gen. Franklin Pierce, of New Hampshire. " "Who the----" "Chunky, " says Sam. "I am ashamed of your ignorance. Gen. FranklinPierce is the son of Gen. Benjamin Pierce, of Revolutionary fame. He hasserved in both houses of Congress. He declined a seat in Polk's Cabinet. He won distinction in the Mexican War. He is the very candidate we'vebeen after. " "In that case, " says Chunky, "I'll get up. " When he reappeared Petway, the Whig leader of the gathering, who had been deriding the convention, the candidate and all things else Democratic, exclaimed: "Here comes Chunky Towles. He's a good Democrat; and I'll bet ten to onehe never heard of Franklin Pierce in his life before. " Chunky Towles was one of the handsomest men of his time. His strong suitwas his unruffled composure and cool self-control. "Mr. Petway, " sayshe, "you would lose your money, and I won't take advantage of any man'signorance. Besides, I never gamble on a certainty. Gen. Franklin Pierce, sir, is a son of Gen. Benjamin Pierce of Revolutionary memory. He servedin both houses of Congress, sir--refused a seat in Polk's Cabinet, sir--won distinction in the Mexican War, sir. He has been from the firstmy choice, and I've money to bet on his election. " Franklin Pierce had an only son, named Benny, after his grandfather, theRevolutionary hero. He was of my own age. I was planning the good timewe were going to have in the White House when tidings came that he hadbeen killed in a railway accident. It was a grievous blow, from whichthe stricken mother never recovered. One of the most vivid memories andaltogether the saddest episode of my childhood is that a few weeks laterI was carried up to the Executive Mansion, which, all formality andmarble, seemed cold enough for a mausoleum, where a lady in black tookme in her arms and convulsively held me there, weeping as if her heartwould break. V Sometimes a fancy, rather vague, comes to me of seeing the soldiersgo off to the Mexican War and of making flags striped with pokeberryjuice--somehow the name of the fruit was mingled with that of thePresident--though a visit quite a year before to The Hermitage, which adjoined the farm of an uncle, to see General Jackson is stilluneffaced. I remember it vividly. The old hero dandled me in his arms, saying "Sothis is Harvey's boy, " I looking the while in vain for the "hickory, " ofwhich I had heard so much. On the personal side history owes General Jackson reparation. Hispersonality needs indeed complete reconstruction in the popular mind, which misconceives him a rough frontiersman having few or none of thesocial graces. In point of fact he came into the world a gentleman, aleader, a knight-errant who captivated women and dominated men. I shared when a young man the common belief about him. But there isample proof of the error of this. From middle age, though he ever likeda horse race, he was a regular if not a devout churchman. He did notswear at all, "by the Eternal" or any other oath. When he reached NewOrleans in 1814 to take command of the army, Governor Claiborne gave hima dinner; and after he had gone Mrs. Claiborne, who knew European courtsand society better than any other American woman, said to her husband:"Call that man a backwoodsman? He is the finest gentleman I ever met!" There is another witness--Mr. Buchanan, afterward President--who tellshow he took a distinguished English lady to the White House whenOld Hickory was President; how he went up to the general's privateapartment, where he found him in a ragged _robe-de-chambre_, smoking hispipe; how, when he intimated that the President might before coming downslick himself a bit, he received the half-laughing rebuke: "Buchanan, I once knew a man in Virginia who made himself independently richby minding his own business"; how, when he did come down, he was _enrègle_; and finally how, after a half hour of delightful talk, theEnglish lady as they regained the street broke forth with enthusiasm, using almost the selfsame words of Mrs. Claiborne: "He is the finestgentleman I ever met in the whole course of my life. " VI The Presidential campaign of 1848--and the concurrent return of theMexican soldiers--seems but yesterday. We were in Nashville, where thecamp fires of the two parties burned fiercely day and night, Tennessee adebatable, even a pivotal state. I was an enthusiastic politician onthe Cass and Butler side, and was correspondingly disappointed whenthe election went against us for Taylor and Fillmore, though a littlemollified when, on his way to Washington, General Taylor graspinghis old comrade, my grandfather, by the hand, called him "Billy, " andpaternally stroked my curls. Though the next winter we passed in Washington I never saw him inthe White House. He died in July, 1850, and was succeeded by MillardFillmore. It is common to speak of Old Rough and Ready as an ignoramus. I don't think this. He may not have been very courtly, but he was agentleman. Later in life I came to know Millard Fillmore well and to esteem himhighly. Once he told me that Daniel Webster had said to him: "Fillmore, I like Clay--I like Clay very much--but he rides rough, sir; damnedrough!" I was fond of going to the Capitol and of playing amateur page inthe House, of which my father had been a member and where he had manyfriends, though I was never officially a page. There was in particulara little old bald-headed gentleman who was good to me and would put hisarm about me and stroll with me across the rotunda to the Library ofCongress and get me books to read. I was not so young as not to knowthat he was an ex-President of the United States, and to realize themeaning of it. He had been the oldest member of the House when my fatherwas the youngest. He was John Quincy Adams. By chance I was on the floorof the House when he fell in his place, and followed the excited andtearful throng when they bore him into the Speaker's Room, kneeling bythe side of the sofa with an improvised fan and crying as if my heartwould break. One day in the spring of 1851 my father took me to a little hotel onPennsylvania Avenue near the Capitol and into a stuffy room, where asnuffy old man wearing an ill-fitting wig was busying himself over apile of documents. He turned about and was very hearty. "Aha, you've brought the boy, " said he. And my father said: "My son, you wanted to see General Cass, and here heis. " My enthusiasm over the Cass and Butler campaign had not subsided. Inevitably General Cass was to me the greatest of heroes. My father hadbeen and always remained his close friend. Later along we dwelt togetherat Willard's Hotel, my mother a chaperon for Miss Belle Cass, afterwardMadame Von Limbourg, and I came into familiar intercourse with thefamily. The general made me something of a pet and never ceased to be a hero tome. I still think he was one of the foremost statesmen of his timeand treasure a birthday present he made me when I was just entering myteens. The hour I passed with him that afternoon I shall never forget. As we were about taking our leave my father said: "Well, my son, youhave seen General Cass; what do you think of him?" And the general patting me affectionately on the head laughingly said:"He thinks he has seen a pretty good-looking old fogy--that is what hethinks!" VII There flourished in the village life of Washington two old blokes--noother word can properly describe them--Jack Dade, who signed himself"the Honorable John W. Dade, of Virginia;" and Beau Hickman, who hailedfrom nowhere and acquired the pseudonym through sheer impudence. In oneway and another they lived by their wits, the one all dignity, the otherall cheek. Hickman fell very early in his career of sponge and beggar, but Dade lived long and died in office--indeed, toward the close anoffice was actually created for him. Dade had been a schoolmate of John Tyler--so intimate they were that atcollege they were called "the two Jacks"--and when the death of Harrisonmade Tyler President, the "off Jack, " as he dubbed himself, went up tothe White House and said: "Jack Tyler, you've had luck and I haven't. You must do something for me and do it quick. I'm hard up and I want anoffice. " "You old reprobate, " said Tyler, "what office on earth do you think youare fit to fill?" "Well, " said Dade, "I have heard them talking round here of a place theycall a sine-cu-ree--big pay and no work--and if there is one of themleft and lying about loose I think I could fill it to a T. " "All right, " said the President good naturedly, "I'll see what can bedone. Come up to-morrow. " The next day "Col. John W. Dade, of Virginia, " was appointed keeper ofthe Federal prison of the District of Columbia. He assumed his postwith _empressement_, called the prisoners before him and made them anaddress. "Ladies and gentlemen, " said he; "I have been chosen by my friend, thePresident of the United States, as superintendent of this eleemosynaryinstitution. It is my intention to treat you all as a Virginia gentlemanshould treat a body of American ladies and gentlemen gathered herefrom all parts of our beloved Union, and I shall expect the sameconsideration in return. Otherwise I will turn you all out upon the coldmercies of a heartless world and you will have to work for your living. " There came to Congress from Alabama a roistering blade by the name ofMcConnell. He was something of a wit. During his brief sojourn in thenational capital he made a noisy record for himself as an all-round, all-night man about town, a dare-devil and a spendthrift. His firstencounter with Col. John W. Dade, of Virginia, used to be one of thestandard local jokes. Colonel Dade was seated in the barroom of Brown'sHotel early one morning, waiting for someone to come in and invite himto drink. Presently McConnell arrived. It was his custom when he entered a saloonto ask the entire roomful, no matter how many, "to come up and licker, "and, of course, he invited the solitary stranger. When the glasses were filled Dade pompously said: "With whom have I thehonor of drinking?" "My name, " answered McConnell, "is Felix Grundy McConnell, begad! I am amember of Congress from Alabama. My mother is a justice of the peace, my aunt keeps a livery stable, and my grandmother commanded a company inthe Revolution and fit the British, gol darn their souls!" Dade pushed his glass aside. "Sir, " said he, "I am a man of high aspirations and peregrinations andcan have nothing to do with such low-down scopangers as yourself. Goodmorning, sir!" It may be presumed that both spoke in jest, because they becameinseparable companions and the best of friends. McConnell had a tragic ending. In James K. Polk's diary I find twoentries under the dates, respectively, of September 8 and September 10, 1846. The first of these reads as follows: "Hon. Felix G. McConnell, arepresentative in Congress from Alabama called. He looked very badlyand as though he had just recovered from a fit of intoxication. He wassober, but was pale, his countenance haggard and his system nervous. Heapplied to me to borrow one hundred dollars and said he would return itto me in ten days. "Though I had no idea that he would do so I had a sympathy for him evenin his dissipation. I had known him in his youth and had not the moralcourage to refuse. I gave him the one hundred dollars in gold and tookhis note. His hand was so tremulous that he could scarcely write hisname to the note legibly. I think it probable that he will never pay me. He informed me he was detained at Washington attending to some businessin the Indian Office. I supposed he had returned home at the adjournmentof Congress until he called to-day. I doubt whether he has any businessin Washington, but fear he has been detained by dissipation. " The second of Mr. Polk's entries is a corollary of the first and reads:"About dark this evening I learned from Mr. Voorhies, who is acting asmy private secretary during the absence of J. Knox Walker, that Hon. Felix G. McConnell, a representative in Congress from the state ofAlabama, had committed suicide this afternoon at the St. Charles Hotel, where he boarded. On Tuesday last Mr. McConnell called on me and Iloaned him one hundred dollars. [See this diary of that day. ] I learnthat but a short time before the horrid deed was committed he was in thebarroom of the St. Charles Hotel handling gold pieces and stating thathe had received them from me, and that he loaned thirty-five dollars ofthem to the barkeeper, that shortly afterward he had attempted to writesomething, but what I have not learned, but he had not written much whenhe said he would go to his room. "In the course of the morning I learn he went into the city and paid ahackman a small amount which he owed him. He had locked his room door, and when found he was stretched out on his back with his hands extended, weltering in his blood. He had three wounds in the abdomen and histhroat was cut. A hawkbill knife was found near him. A jury of inquestwas held and found a verdict that he had destroyed himself. It was amelancholy instance of the effects of intemperance. Mr. McConnell whena youth resided at Fayetteville in my congressional district. Shortlyafter he grew up to manhood he was at my instance appointed postmasterof that town. He was a true Democrat and a sincere friend of mine. "His family in Tennessee are highly respectable and quite numerous. Theinformation as to the manner and particulars of his death I learned fromMr. Voorhies, who reported it to me as he had heard it in the streets. Mr. McConnell removed from Tennessee to Alabama some years ago, and Ilearn he has left a wife and three or four children. " Poor Felix Grundy McConnell! At a school in Tennessee he was a roommateof my father, who related that one night Felix awakened with a screamfrom a bad dream he had, the dream being that he had cut his own throat. "Old Jack Dade, " as he was always called, lived on, from hand to mouth, I dare say--for he lost his job as keeper of the district prison--yetnever wholly out-at-heel, scrupulously neat in his person no matter howseedy the attire. On the completion of the new wings of the Capitol andthe removal of the House to its more commodious quarters he was madecustodian of the old Hall of Representatives, a post he held until hedied. VIII Between the idiot and the man of sense, the lunatic and the man ofgenius, there are degrees--streaks--of idiocy and lunacy. How manyexpectant politicians elected to Congress have entered Washington allhope, eager to dare and do, to come away broken in health, fame andfortune, happy to get back home--sometimes unable to get away, to lingeron in obscurity and poverty to a squalid and wretched old age. I have lived long enough to have known many such: Senators who havefilled the galleries when they rose to speak; House heroes living whilethey could on borrowed money, then hanging about the hotels begging formoney to buy drink. There was a famous statesman and orator who came to this at last, ofwhom the typical and characteristic story was told that the holder of aclaim against the Government, who dared not approach so great a man withso much as the intimation of a bribe, undertook by argument to interesthim in the merit of the case. The great man listened and replied: "I have noticed you scattering yourmeans round here pretty freely but you haven't said 'turkey' to me. " Surprised but glad and unabashed the claimant said "I was comingto that, " produced a thousand-dollar bank roll and entered into anunderstanding as to what was to be done next day, when the bill was dueon the calendar. The great man took the money, repaired to a gambling house, hadan extraordinary run of luck, won heavily, and playing all night, forgetting about his engagement, went to bed at daylight, not appearingin the House at all. The bill was called, and there being nobody torepresent it, under the rule it went over and to the bottom of thecalendar, killed for that session at least. The day after the claimant met his recreant attorney on the avenue faceto face and took him to task for his delinquency. "Ah, yes, " said the great man, "you are the little rascal who tried tobribe me the other day. Here is your dirty money. Take it and be offwith you. I was just seeing how far you would go. " The comment made by those who best knew the great man was that ifinstead of winning in the gambling house he had lost he would have beenup betimes at his place in the House, and doing his utmost to pass theclaimant's bill and obtain a second fee. Another memory of those days has to do with music. This was thecoming of Jenny Lind to America. It seemed an event. When she reachedWashington Mr. Barnum asked at the office of my father's newspaper fora smart lad to sell the programs of the concert--a new thing in artisticshowmanry. "I don't want a paper carrier, or a newsboy, " said he, "buta young gentleman, three or four young gentlemen. " I was sent to him. We readily agreed upon the commission to be received--five cents oneach twenty-five cent program--the oldest of old men do not forget suchtransactions. But, as an extra percentage for "organizing the force, "I demanded a concert seat. Choice seats were going at a fabulous figureand Barnum at first demurred. But I told him I was a musical student, stood my ground, and, perhaps seeing something unusual in the eagerspirit of a little boy, he gave in and the bargain was struck. Two of my pals became my assistants. But my sales beat both of themhollow. Before the concert began I had sold my programs and was in myseat. I recall that my money profit was something over five dollars. The bell-like tones of the Jenny Lind voice in "Home, Sweet Home, " and"The Last Rose of Summer" still come back to me, but too long afterfor me to make, or imagine, comparisons between it and the vocalism ofGrisi, Sontag and Parepa-Rosa. Meeting Mr. Barnum at Madison Square Garden in New York, when he wasrunning one of his entertainments there, I told him the story, and wehad a hearty laugh, both of us very much pleased, he very much surprisedto find in me a former employee. One of my earliest yearnings was for a home. I cannot recall the timewhen I was not sick and tired of our migrations between Washington Cityand the two grand-paternal homesteads in Tennessee. The travel countedfor much of my aversion to the nomadic life we led. The stage-coachis happier in the contemplation than in the actuality. Even when therailways arrived there were no sleeping cars, the time of transit threeor four days and nights. In the earlier journeys it had been ten ortwelve days. Chapter the Second Slavery the Trouble-Maker--Break-Up of the Whig Party and Rise of the Republican--The Key--Sickle's Tragedy--Brooks and Sumner--Life at Washington in the Fifties I Whether the War of Sections--as it should be called, because, except inEastern Tennessee and in three of the Border States, Maryland, Kentuckyand Missouri, it was nowise a civil war--could have been averted mustever remain a question of useless speculation. In recognizing theinstitution of African slavery, with no provision for its ultimateremoval, the Federal Union set out embodying the seeds of certaintrouble. The wiser heads of the Constitutional Convention perceived thisplainly enough; its dissonance to the logic of their movement; on thesentimental side its repugnancy; on the practical side its doubtfuleconomy; and but for the tobacco growers and the cotton planters it hadgone by the board. The North soon found slave labor unprofitable and riditself of slavery. Thus, restricted to the South, it came to representin the Southern mind a "right" which the South was bound to defend. Mr. Slidell told me in Paris that Louis Napoleon had once said to him inanswer to his urgency for the recognition of the Southern Confederacy:"I have talked the matter over with Lord Palmerston and we are both ofthe opinion that as long as African slavery exists at the South, Franceand England cannot recognize the Confederacy. They do not demand itsinstant abolition. But if you put it in course of abatement and finalabolishment through a term of years--I do not care how many--we canintervene to some purpose. As matters stand we dare not go before aEuropean congress with such a proposition. " Mr. Slidell passed it up to Richmond. Mr. Davis passed it on to thegenerals in the field. The response he received on every hand was thestatement that it would disorganize and disband the Confederate Armies. Yet we are told, and it is doubtless true, that scarcely one Confederatesoldier in ten actually owned a slave. Thus do imaginings become theories, and theories resolve themselvesinto claims; and interests, however mistaken, rise to the dignity ofprerogatives. II The fathers had rather a hazy view of the future. I was witness to thedecline and fall of the old Whig Party and the rise of the RepublicanParty. There was a brief lull in sectional excitement after theCompromise Measures of 1850, but the overwhelming defeat of the Whigsin 1852 and the dominancy of Mr. Jefferson Davis in the cabinet of Mr. Pierce brought the agitation back again. Mr. Davis was a follower of Mr. Calhoun--though it may be doubted whether Mr. Calhoun would ever havebeen willing to go to the length of secession--and Mr. Pierce being bytemperament a Southerner as well as in opinions a pro-slavery Democrat, his Administration fell under the spell of the ultra Southern wing ofthe party. The Kansas-Nebraska Bill was originally harmless enough, butthe repeal of the Missouri Compromise, which on Mr. Davis' insistencewas made a part of it, let slip the dogs of war. In Stephen A. Douglas was found an able and pliant instrument. LikeClay, Webster and Calhoun before him, Judge Douglas had the presidentialbee in his bonnet. He thought the South would, as it could, nominate andelect him President. Personally he was a most lovable man--rather too convivial--and for awhile in 1852 it looked as though he might be the Democratic nominee. His candidacy was premature, his backers overconfident and indiscreet. "I like Douglas and am for him, " said Buck Stone, a member of Congressand delegate to the National Democratic Convention from Kentucky, "though I consider him a good deal of a damn fool. " Pressed for a reasonhe continued; "Why, think of a man wanting to be President at fortyyears of age, and obliged to behave himself for the rest of his life! Iwouldn't take the job on any such terms. " The proposed repeal of the Missouri Compromise opened up the slaverydebate anew and gave it increased vitality. Hell literally broke looseamong the political elements. The issues which had divided Whigsand Democrats went to the rear, while this one paramount issue tookpossession of the stage. It was welcomed by the extremists of bothsections, a very godsend to the beaten politicians led by Mr. Seward. Rampant sectionalism was at first kept a little in the background. Therewere on either side concealments and reserves. Many patriotic menput the Union above slavery or antislavery. But the two sets of rivalextremists had their will at last, and in seven short years deepened andembittered the contention to the degree that disunion and war seemed, certainly proved, the only way out of it. The extravagance of the debates of those years amazes the modernreader. Occasionally when I have occasion to recur to them I am myselfnonplussed, for they did not sound so terrible at the time. My fatherwas a leader of the Union wing of the Democratic Party--headed in 1860the Douglas presidential ticket in Tennessee--and remained a Unionistduring the War of Sections. He broke away from Pierce and retired fromthe editorship of the Washington Union upon the issue of the repealof the Missouri Compromise, to which he was opposed, refusing theappointment of Governor of Oregon, with which the President sought toplacate him, though it meant his return to the Senate of the UnitedStates in a year or two, when he and Oregon's delegate in Congress, Gen. Joseph Lane--the Lane of the Breckenridge and Lane ticket of 1860--hadbrought the territory of Oregon in as a state. I have often thought just where I would have come in and what might havehappened to me if he had accepted the appointment and I had grownto manhood on the Pacific Coast. As it was I attended a school inPhiladelphia--the Protestant Episcopal Academy--came home to Tennesseein 1856, and after a season with private tutors found myself back in thenational capital in 1858. It was then that I began to nurse some ambitions of my own. I was goingto be a great man of letters. I was going to write histories and dramasand romances and poetry. But as I had set up for myself I felt in honorbound meanwhile to earn my own living. III I take it that the early steps of every man to get a footing may be ofinterest when fairly told. I sought work in New York with indifferentsuccess. Mr. Raymond of the Times, hearing me play the piano at whichfrom childhood I had received careful instruction, gave me a job as"musical critic" during the absence of Mr. Seymour, the regular critic. I must have done my work acceptably, since I was not fired. It includeda report of the debut of my boy-and-girl companion, Adelina Patti, whenshe made her first appearance in opera at the Academy of Music. But, as the saying is, I did not "catch on. " There might be a more promisingopening in Washington, and thither I repaired. The Daily States had been established there by John P. Heiss, who withThomas Ritchie had years before established the Washington Union. RogerA. Pryor was its nominal editor. But he soon took himself home to hisbeloved Virginia and came to Congress, and the editorial writing on theStates was being done by Col. A. Dudley Mann, later along Confederatecommissioner to France, preceding Mr. Slidell. Colonel Mann wished to work incognito. I was taken on as a kind ofgo-between and, as I may say, figurehead, on the strength of being myfather's son and a very self-confident young gentleman, and began to getmy newspaper education in point of fact as a kind of fetch-and-carry forMajor Heiss. He was a practical newspaper man who had started the Unionat Nashville as well as the Union at Washington and the Crescent--maybeit was the Delta--at New Orleans; and for the rudiments of newspaperwork I could scarcely have had a better teacher. Back of Colonel Mann as a leader writer on the States was a remarkablewoman. She was Mrs. Jane Casneau, the wife of Gen. George Casneau, ofTexas, who had a claim before Congress. Though she was unknown to fame, Thomas A. Benton used to say that she had more to do with making andending the Mexican War than anybody else. Somewhere in the early thirties she had gone with her newly weddedhusband, an adventurous Yankee by the name of Storm, to the Rio Grandeand started a settlement they called Eagle Pass. Storm died, the Texasoutbreak began, and the young widow was driven back to San Antonio, where she met and married Casneau, one of Houston's lieutenants, likeherself a New Yorker. She was sent by Polk with Pillow and Trist tothe City of Mexico and actually wrote the final treaty. It was she whodubbed William Walker "the little gray-eyed man of destiny, " and putthe nickname "Old Fuss and Feathers" on General Scott, whom she heartilydisliked. [Illustration: Henry Clay--Painted at Ashland by Dodge for the Hon. Andrew Ewing of Tennessee--The Original Hangs in Mr. Watterson's Libraryat "Mansfield"] A braver, more intellectual woman never lived. She must have beena beauty in her youth; was still very comely at fifty; but a borninsurrecto and a terror with her pen. God made and equipped her fora filibuster. She possessed infinite knowledge of Spanish-Americanaffairs, looked like a Spanish woman, and wrote and spoke the Spanishlanguage fluently. Her obsession was the bringing of Central Americainto the Federal Union. But she was not without literary aspirationsand had some literary friends. Among these was Mrs. Southworth, thenovelist, who had a lovely home in Georgetown, and, whatever may be saidof her works and articles, was a lovely woman. She used to take me tovisit this lady. With Major Heiss she divided my newspaper education, her part of it being the writing part. Whatever I may have attainedin that line I largely owe to her. She took great pains with me andmothered me in the absence of my own mother, who had long been her verydear friend. To get rid of her, or rather her pen, Mr. Buchanan gaveGeneral Casneau, when the Douglas schism was breaking out, a CentralAmerican mission, and she and he were lost by shipwreck on their way tothis post, somewhere in Caribbean waters. My immediate yokemate on the States was John Savage, "Jack, " as he wascommonly called; a brilliant Irishman, who with Devin Reilley and JohnMitchel and Thomas Francis Meagher, his intimates, and Joseph Brennan, his brother-in-law, made a pretty good Irishman of me. They were '48men, with literary gifts of one sort and another, who certainly helpedme along with my writing, but, as matters fell out, did not go farenough to influence my character, for they were a wild lot, fullof taking enthusiasm and juvenile decrepitude of judgment, ripe foradventures and ready for any enterprise that promised fun and fighting. Between John Savage and Mrs. Casneau I had the constant spur ofcommendation and assistance as well as affection. I passed all my sparetime in the Library of Congress and knew its arrangements at least aswell as Mr. Meehan, the librarian, and Robert Kearon, the assistant, much to the surprise of Mr. Spofford, who in 1861 succeeded Mr. Meehanas librarian. Not long after my return to Washington Col. John W. Forney picked meup, and I was employed in addition to my not very arduous duties on theStates to write occasional letters from Washington to the PhiladelphiaPress. Good fortune like ill fortune rarely comes singly. Withoutanybody's interposition I was appointed to a clerkship, a real"sinecure, " in the Interior Department by Jacob Thompson, the secretary, my father's old colleague in Congress. When the troubles of 1860-61 roseI was literally doing "a land-office business, " with money galore and tospare. Somehow, I don't know how, I contrived to spend it, though Ihad no vices, and worked like a hired man upon my literary hopes andnewspaper obligations. Life in Washington under these conditions was delightful. I did not knowhow my heart was wrapped up in it until I had to part from it. My fatherstood high in public esteem. My mother was a leader in society. Alldoors were open to me. I had many friends. Going back to Tennessee inthe midsummer of 1861, via Pittsburgh and Cincinnati, there happened arailway break and a halt of several hours at a village on the Ohio. I strolled down to the river and sat myself upon the brink, almostdespairing--nigh heartbroken--when I began to feel an irresistiblefascination about the swift-flowing stream. I leaped to my feet and ranaway; and that is the only thought of suicide that I can recall. IV Mrs. Clay, of Alabama, in her "Belle of the Fifties" has given a graphicpicture of life in the national capital during the administrations ofPierce and Buchanan. The South was very much in the saddle. Pierce, asI have said, was Southern in temperament, and Buchanan, who to those hedid not like or approve had, as Arnold Harris said, "a winning way ofmaking himself hateful, " was an aristocrat under Southern and feminineinfluence. I was fond of Mr. Pierce, but I could never endure Mr. Buchanan. Hisvery voice gave offense to me. Directed by a periodical publication tomake a sketch of him to accompany an engraving, I did my best on it. Jacob Thompson, the Secretary of the Interior, said to me: "Now, Henry, here's your chance for a foreign appointment. " I now know that my writing was clumsy enough and my attempt to playthe courtier clumsier still. Nevertheless, as a friend of my father andmother "Old Buck" might have been a little more considerate than he waswith a lad trying to please and do him honor. I came away from the WhiteHouse my _amour propre_ wounded, and though I had not far to go wentstraight into the Douglas camp. Taking nearly sixty years to think it over I have reached the conclusionthat Mr. Buchanan was the victim of both personal and historicinjustice. With secession in sight his one aim was to get out ofthe White House before the scrap began. He was of course on terms ofintimacy with all the secession leaders, especially Mr. Slidell, of Louisiana, like himself a Northerner by birth, and Mr. Mason, athick-skulled, ruffle-shirted Virginian. It was not in him or in Mr. Pierce, with their antecedents and associations, to be uncompromisingFederalists. There was no clear law to go on. Moderate men were in amuck of doubt just what to do. With Horace Greeley Mr. Buchanan wasready to say "Let the erring sisters go. " This indeed was the extent ofMr. Pierce's pacifism during the War of Sections. A new party risen upon the remains of the Whig Party--the RepublicanParty--was at the door and coming into power. Lifelong pro-slaveryDemocrats could not look on with equanimity, still less withcomplaisance, and doubtless Pierce and Buchanan to the end of theirdays thought less of the Republicans than of the Confederates. As aconsequence Republican writers have given quarter to neither of them. It will not do to go too deeply into the account of those days. Thetimes were out of joint. I knew of two Confederate generals who firsttried for commissions in the Union Army; gallant and good fellowstoo; but they are both dead and their secret shall die with me. I knewlikewise a famous Union general who was about to resign his commissionin the army to go with the South but was prevented by his wife, a Northern woman, who had obtained of Mr. Lincoln a brigadier'scommission. V In 1858 a wonderful affair came to pass. It was Mrs. Senator Gwin'sfancy dress ball, written of, talked of, far and wide. I did not get toattend this. My costume was prepared--a Spanish cavalier, Mrs. Casneau'sdoing--when I fell ill and had with bitter disappointment to read aboutit next day in the papers. I was living at Willard's Hotel, and one ofmy volunteer nurses was Mrs. Daniel E. Sickles, a pretty young thing whowas soon to become the victim of a murder and world scandal. Herhusband was a member of the House from New York, and during hisfrequent absences I used to take her to dinner. Mr. Sickles had been Mr. Buchanan's Secretary of Legation in London, and both she and he were athome in the White House. She was an innocent child. She never knew what she was doing, and when ayear later Sickles, having killed her seducer--a handsome, unscrupulous fellow who understood how to take advantage of a husband'sneglect--forgave her and brought her home in the face of much obloquy, in my heart of hearts I did homage to his courage and generosity, forshe was then as he and I both knew a dying woman. She did die but afew months later. He was by no means a politician after my fancy orapproval, but to the end of his days I was his friend and could neverbring myself to join in the repeated public outcries against him. Early in the fifties Willard's Hotel became a kind of headquarters forthe two political extremes. During a long time their social intercoursewas unrestrained--often joyous. They were too far apart, figurativelyspeaking, to come to blows. Truth to say, their aims were after all notso far apart. They played to one another's lead. Many a time have I seenKeitt, of South Carolina, and Burlingame, of Massachusetts, hobnob inthe liveliest manner and most public places. It is certainly true that Brooks was not himself when he attackedSumner. The Northern radicals were wont to say, "Let the South go, " themore profane among them interjecting "to hell!" The Secessionists likedto prod the New Englanders with what the South was going to do when theygot to Boston. None of them really meant it--not even Toombs when hetalked about calling the muster roll of his slaves beneath Bunker HillMonument; nor Hammond, the son of a New England schoolmaster, when hespoke of the "mudsills of the North, " meaning to illustrate what he wassaying by the underpinning of a house built on marshy ground, and notthe Northern work people. Toombs, who was a rich man, not quite impoverished by the war, banishedhimself in Europe for a number of years. At length he came home, andpassing the White House at Washington he called and sent his card to thePresident. General Grant, the most genial and generous of men, had himcome directly up. [Illustration: W. P. Hardee, Lieutenant General C. S. A. ] "Mr. President, " said Toombs, "in my European migrations I have made ita rule when arriving in a city to call first and pay my respects to theChief of Police. " The result was a most agreeable hour and an invitation to dinner. Notlong after this at the hospitable board of a Confederate general, thenan American senator, Toombs began to prod Lamar about his speech in theHouse upon the occasion of the death of Charles Sumner. Lamar was notquick to quarrel, though when aroused a man of devilish temper andcourage. The subject had become distasteful to him. He was growingobviously restive under Toombs' banter. The ladies of the householdapprehending what was coming left the table. Then Lamar broke forth. He put Toombs' visit to Grant, "crawling at theseat of power, " against his eulogy of a dead enemy. I have never heardsuch a scoring from one man to another. It was magisterial in itsdignity, deadly in its diction. Nothing short of a duel could havesettled it in the olden time. But when Lamar, white with rage, hadfinished, Toombs without a ruffle said, "Lamar, you surprise me, " andthe host, with the rest of us, took it as a signal to rise from tableand rejoin the ladies in the drawing-room. Of course nothing came of it. Toombs was as much a humorist as an extremist. I have ridden withhim under fire and heard him crack jokes with Minié balls flyinguncomfortably about. Some one spoke kindly of him to old Ben Wade. "Yes, yes, " said Wade; "I never did believe in the doctrine of totaldepravity. " But I am running ahead in advance of events. VI There came in 1853 to the Thirty-third Congress a youngish, dapperand graceful man notable as the only Democrat in the Massachusettsdelegation. It was said that he had been a dancing master, his wife awork girl. They brought with them a baby in arms with the wife's sisterfor its nurse--a mis-step which was quickly corrected. I cannot now telljust how I came to be very intimate with them except that they lived atWillard's Hotel. His name had a pretty sound to it--Nathaniel PrentissBanks. A schoolmate of mine and myself, greatly to the mirth of those about us, undertook Mr. Banks' career. We were going to elect him Speaker ofthe next House and then President of the United States. This wasparticularly laughable to my mother and Mrs. Linn Boyd, the wife of thecontemporary Speaker, who had very solid presidential aspirations of hisown. The suggestion perhaps originated with Mrs. Banks, to whom we two wereardently devoted. I have not seen her since those days, more than sixtyyears ago. But her beauty, which then charmed me, still lingers in mymemory--a gentle, sweet creature who made much of us boys--and two yearslater when Mr. Banks was actually elected Speaker I was greatly elatedand took some of the credit to myself. Twenty years afterwards GeneralBanks and I had our seats close together in the Forty-fourth Congress, and he did not recall me at all or the episode of 1853. Nevertheless Iwarmed to him, and when during Cleveland's first term he came to me witha hard-luck story I was glad to throw myself into the breach. He hadbeen a Speaker of the House, a general in the field and a Governor ofMassachusetts, but was a faded old man, very commonplace, and except forthe little post he held under Government pitiably helpless. Colonel George Walton was one of my father's intimates and an imposingand familiar figure about Washington. He was the son of a signer of theDeclaration of Independence, a distinction in those days, had been mayorof Mobile and was an unending raconteur. To my childish mind he appearedto know everything that ever had been or ever would be. He would tell mestories by the hour and send me to buy him lottery tickets. I afterwardlearned that that form of gambling was his mania. I also learned thatmany of his stories were apocryphal or very highly colored. One of these stories especially took me. It related how when he was ona yachting cruise in the Gulf of Mexico the boat was overhauled bypirates, and how he being the likeliest of the company was tied up andwhipped to make him disgorge, or tell where the treasure was. "Colonel Walton, " said I, "did the whipping hurt you much?" "Sir, " he replied, as if I were a grown-up, "they whipped me until I wasperfectly disgusted. " An old lady in Philadelphia, whilst I was at school, heard me mentionColonel Walton--a most distinguished, religious old lady--and said tome, "Henry, my son, you should be ashamed to speak of that old villainor confess that you ever knew him, " proceeding to give me his awful, blood-curdling history. It was mainly a figment of her fancy and prejudice, and I repeated itto Colonel Walton the next time I went to the hotel where he was thenliving--I have since learned, with a lady not his wife, though he wasthen three score and ten--and he cried, "That old hag! Good Lord! Don'tthey ever die!" Seeing every day the most distinguished public men of the country, and with many of them brought into direct acquaintance by the easyintercourse of hotel life, destroyed any reverence I might have acquiredfor official station. Familiarity may not always breed contempt, butit is a veritable eye opener. To me no divinity hedged the brow ofa senator. I knew the White House too well to be impressed by itsarchitectural grandeur without and rather bizarre furnishments within. VII I have declaimed not a little in my time about the ignoble trade ofpolitics, the collective dishonesty of parties and the vulgarities ofthe self-exploiting professional office hunters. Parties are parties. Professional politics and politicians are probably neither worse norbetter--barring their pretensions--than other lines of human endeavor. The play actor must be agreeable on the stage of the playhouse; thepolitician on the highways and the hustings, which constitute hisplayhouse--all the world a stage--neither to be seriously blamed forthe dissimulation which, being an asset, becomes, as it were, a secondnature. The men who between 1850 and 1861 might have saved the Union and avertedthe War of Sections were on either side professional politicians, with here and there an unselfish, far-seeing, patriotic man, whoseadmonitions were not heeded by the people ranging on opposing sides ofparty lines. The two most potential of the party leaders were Mr. Davisand Mr. Seward. The South might have seen and known that the one hope ofthe institution of slavery lay in the Union. However it ended, disunionled to abolition. The world--the whole trend of modern thought--wasset against slavery. But politics, based on party feeling, is a game ofblindman's buff. And then--here I show myself a son of Scotland--thereis a destiny. "What is to be, " says the predestinarian Mother Goose, "will be, though it never come to pass. " That was surely the logic of the irrepressible conflict--only itdid come to pass--and for four years millions of people, the mosthomogeneous, practical and intelligent, fought to a finish a fight overa quiddity; both devoted to liberty, order and law, neither seeking anyreal change in the character of its organic contract. Human nature remains ever the same. These days are very like those days. We have had fifty years of a restored Union. The sectional fires havequite gone out. Yet behold the schemes of revolution claiming theregenerative. Most of them call themselves the "uplift!" Let us agree at once that all government is more or less a failure;society as fraudulent as the satirists describe it; yet, when we turnto the uplift--particularly the professional uplift--what do we find butthe same old tunes, hypocrisy and empiricism posing as "friends of thepeople, " preaching the pussy gospel of "sweetness and light?" "Words, words, words, " says Hamlet. Even as veteran writers for thepress have come through disheartening experience to a realizing sense ofthe futility of printer's ink must our academic pundits begin to suspectthe futility of art and letters. Words however cleverly writ on paperare after all but words. "In a nation of blind men, " we are told, "theone-eyed man is king. " In a nation of undiscriminating voters the noiseof the agitator is apt to drown the voice of the statesman. We have beenteaching everybody to read, nobody to think; and as aconsequence--the rule of numbers the law of the land, partyism in thesaddle--legislation, state and Federal, becomes largely a matter ofriding to hounds and horns. All this, which was true in the fifties, istrue to-day. Under the pretense of "liberalizing" the Government the politiciansare sacrificing its organic character to whimsical experimentation; itschecks and balances wisely designed to promote and protect libertyare being loosened by schemes of reform more or less visionary;while nowhere do we find intelligence enlightened by experience, and conviction supported by self-control, interposing to save therepresentative system of the Constitution from the onward march of theproletariat. One cynic tells us that "A statesman is a politician who is dead, " andanother cynic varies the epigram to read "A politician out of a job. "Patriotism cries "God give us men, " but the parties say "Give usvotes and offices, " and Congress proceeds to create a commission. Thusresponsibilities are shirked and places are multiplied. Assuming, since many do, that the life of nations is mortal even as isthe life of man--in all things of growth and decline assimilating--hasnot our world reached the top of the acclivity, and pausing for a momentmay it not be about to take the downward course into another abyss ofcollapse and oblivion? The miracles of electricity the last word of science, what is left forman to do? With wireless telegraphy, the airplane and the automobileannihilating time and space, what else? Turning from the material to theethical it seems of the very nature of the human species to meddle andmuddle. On every hand we see the organization of societies for makingmen and women over again according to certain fantastic images existingin the minds of the promoters. "_Mon Dieu_!" exclaimed the visitingFrenchman. "Fifty religions and only one soup!" Since then both thesoups and the religions have multiplied until there is scarce a culinaryor moral conception which has not some sect or club to represent it. Theuplift is the keynote of these. Chapter the Third The Inauguration of Lincoln--I Quit Washington and Return to Tennessee--A Run-a-bout with Forest--Through the Federal Lines and a Dangerous Adventure--Good Luck at Memphis I It may have been Louis the Fifteenth, or it may have been Madame dePompadour, who said, "After me the deluge;" but whichever it was, verymuch that thought was in Mr. Buchanan's mind in 1861 as the time forhis exit from the White House approached. At the North there had beena political ground-swell; at the South, secession, half accomplished bythe Gulf States, yawned in the Border States. Curiously enough, very fewbelieved that war was imminent. As a reporter for the States I met Mr. Lincoln immediately on hisarrival in Washington. He came in unexpectedly ahead of the hourannounced, to escape, as was given out, a well-laid plan to assassinatehim as he passed through Baltimore. I did not believe at the time, andI do not believe now, that there was any real ground for thisapprehension. All through that winter there had been a deal of wild talk. One storyhad it that Mr. Buchanan was to be kidnapped and made off with so thatVice President Breckenridge might succeed and, acting as _de facto_President, throw the country into confusion and revolution, defeatingthe inauguration of Lincoln and the coming in of the Republicans. It wasa figment of drink and fancy. There was never any such scheme. If therehad been Breckenridge would not have consented to be party to it. Hewas a man of unusual mental as well as personal dignity and bothtemperamentally and intellectually a thorough conservative. I had been engaged by Mr. L. A. Gobright, the agent of what becamelater the Associated Press, to help with the report of the inaugurationceremonies the 4th of March, 1861, and in the discharge of this duty Ikept as close to Mr. Lincoln as I could get, following after him fromthe senate chamber to the east portico of the capitol and standing byhis side whilst he delivered his inaugural address. Perhaps I shall not be deemed prolix if I dwell with some particularityupon an occasion so historic. I had first encountered the newly electedPresident the afternoon of the day in the early morning of which hehad arrived in Washington. It was a Saturday, I think. He came tothe capitol under the escort of Mr. Seward, and among the rest I waspresented to him. His appearance did not impress me as fantastically asit had impressed some others. I was familiar with the Western type, andwhilst Mr. Lincoln was not an Adonis, even after prairie ideals, therewas about him a dignity that commanded respect. I met him again the next Monday forenoon in his apartment at Willard'sHotel as he was preparing to start to his inauguration, and was struckby his unaffected kindness, for I came with a matter requiring hisattention. This was, in point of fact, to get from him a copy of theinauguration speech for the Associated Press. I turned it over toBen Perley Poore, who, like myself, was assisting Mr. Gobright. ThePresident that was about to be seemed entirely self-possessed; not asign of nervousness, and very obliging. As I have said, I accompaniedthe cortège that passed from the senate chamber to the east portico. When Mr. Lincoln removed his hat to face the vast throng in front andbelow, I extended my hand to take it, but Judge Douglas, just behind me, reached over my outstretched arm and received it, holding it during thedelivery of the address. I stood just near enough the speaker's elbownot to obstruct any gestures he might make, though he made but few; andthen I began to get a suspicion of the power of the man. He delivered that inaugural address as if he had been deliveringinaugural addresses all his life. Firm, resonant, earnest, it announcedthe coming of a man, of a leader of men; and in its tone and stylethe gentlemen whom he had invited to become members of his politicalfamily--each of whom thought himself a bigger man than his chief--mighthave heard the voice and seen the hand of one born to rule. Whether theydid or not, they very soon ascertained the fact. From the hour AbrahamLincoln crossed the threshold of the White House to the hour he wentthence to his death, there was not a moment when he did not dominate thepolitical and military situation and his official subordinates. The ideathat he was overtopped at any time by anybody is contradicted by allthat actually happened. I was a young Democrat and of course not in sympathy with Mr. Lincolnor his opinions. Judge Douglas, however, had taken the edge off myhostility. He had said to me upon his return in triumph to Washingtonafter the famous Illinois campaign of 1868: "Lincoln is a good man; infact, a great man, and by far the ablest debater I have ever met, "and now the newcomer began to verify this opinion both in his privateconversation and in his public attitude. II I had been an undoubting Union boy. Neither then nor afterward couldI be fairly classified as a Secessionist. Circumstance rather thanconviction or predilection threw me into the Confederate service, and, being in, I went through with it. The secession leaders I held in distrust; especially Yancey, Mason, Slidell, Benjamin and Iverson, Jefferson Davis and Isham G. Harris werenot favorites of mine. Later along I came into familiar association withmost of them, and relations were established which may be described asconfidential and affectionate. Lamar and I were brought together oddlyenough in 1869 by Carl Schurz, and thenceforward we were the mostdevoted friends. Harris and I fell together in 1862 in the field, first with Forrest and later with Johnston and Hood, and we remained asbrothers to the end, when he closed a great career in the upper houseof Congress, and by Republican votes, though he was a Democrat, aspresident of the Senate. He continued in the Governorship of Tennessee through the war. He at notime lost touch with the Tennessee troops, and though not always in thefield, never missed a forward movement. In the early spring of 1864, just before the famous Johnston-Sherman campaign opened, GeneralJohnston asked him to go around among the boys and "stir 'em up a bit. "The Governor invited me to ride with him. Together we visited everysector in the army. Threading the woods of North Georgia on thisround, if I heard it once I heard it fifty times shouted from a distantclearing: "Here comes Gov-ner Harris, fellows; g'wine to be a fight. "His appearance at the front had always preceded and been long ago takenas a signal for battle. [Illustration: John Bell of Tennessee--In 1860 Presidential Candidate"Union Party"--"Bell and Everett" Ticket. ] My being a Washington correspondent of the Philadelphia Press and havinglived since childhood at Willard's Hotel, where the Camerons also lived, will furnish the key to my becoming an actual and active rebel. A fewdays after the inauguration of Mr. Lincoln, Colonel Forney came to myquarters and, having passed the time of day, said: "The Secretary ofWar wishes you to be at the department to-morrow morning as near nineo'clock as you can make it. " "What does he want, Colonel Forney?" I asked. "He is going to offer you the position of private secretary to theSecretary of War, with the rank of lieutenant colonel, and I am verydesirous that you accept it. " He went away leaving me rather upset. I did not sleep very soundly thatnight. "So, " I argued to myself, "it has come to this, that Forney andCameron, lifelong enemies, have made friends and are going to rob theGovernment--one clerk of the House, the other Secretary of War--and I, amutual choice, am to be the confidential middle man. " I still had a homein Tennessee and I rose from my bed, resolved to go there. I did not keep the proposed appointment for next day. As soon as I couldmake arrangements I quitted Washington and went to Tennessee, stillunchanged in my preconceptions. I may add, since they were verified byevents, that I have not modified them from that day to this. I could not wholly believe with either extreme. I had perpetrated nowrong, but in my small way had done my best for the Union and againstsecession. I would go back to my books and my literary ambitions and letthe storm blow over. It could not last very long; the odds against theSouth were too great. Vain hope! As well expect a chip on the surface ofthe ocean to lie quiet as a lad of twenty-one in those days to keep outof one or the other camp. On reaching home I found myself alone. Theboys were all gone to the front. The girls were--well, they were allcrazy. My native country was about to be invaded. Propinquity. Sympathy. So, casting opinions to the winds in I went on feeling. And that is howI became a rebel, a case of "first endure and then embrace, " because Isoon got to be a pretty good rebel and went the limit, changing my coatas it were, though not my better judgment, for with a gray jacket onmy back and ready to do or die, I retained my belief that secession wastreason, that disunion was the height of folly and that the South wasbound to go down in the unequal strife. I think now, as an academic proposition, that, in the doctrine ofsecession, the secession leaders had a debatable, if not a logical case;but I also think that if the Gulf States had been allowed to go outby tacit consent they would very soon have been back again seekingreadmission to the Union. Man proposes and God disposes. The ways of Deity to man are indeed pastfinding out. Why, the long and dreadful struggle of a kindred people, the awful bloodshed and havoc of four weary years, leaving us at theclose measurably where we were at the beginning, is one of the mysterieswhich should prove to us that there is a world hereafter, since no greatcreative principle could produce one with so dire, with so short a spanand nothing beyond. III The change of parties wrought by the presidential election of 1860and completed by the coming in of the Republicans in 1861 was indeedrevolutionary. When Mr. Lincoln had finished his inaugural address andthe crowd on the east portico began to disperse, I reentered therotunda between Mr. Reverdy Johnson, of Maryland, and Mr. John Bell, ofTennessee, two old friends of my family, and for a little we sat upon abench, they discussing the speech we had just heard. Both were sure there would be no war. All would be well, they thought, each speaking kindly of Mr. Lincoln. They were among the most eminentmen of the time, I a boy of twenty-one; but to me war seemed acertainty. Recalling the episode, I have often realized how theintuitions of youth outwit the wisdom and baffle the experience of age. I at once resigned my snug sinecure in the Interior Department and, closing my accounts of every sort, was presently ready to turn my backupon Washington and seek adventures elsewhere. They met me halfway and came in plenty. I tried staff duty with GeneralPolk, who was making an expedition into Western Kentucky. In a fewweeks illness drove me into Nashville, where I passed the next winter indesultory newspaper work. Then Nashville fell, and, as I was making myway out of town afoot and trudging the Murfreesboro pike, Forrest, withhis squadron just escaped from Fort Donelson, came thundering by, andI leaped into an empty saddle. A few days later Forrest, promoted tobrigadier general, attached me to his staff, and the next six months itwas mainly guerilla service, very much to my liking. But Fate, if notNature, had decided that I was a better writer than fighter, and theBank of Tennessee having bought a newspaper outfit at Chattanooga, I wassent there to edit The Rebel--my own naming--established as the organ ofthe Tennessee state government. I made it the organ of the army. It is not the purpose of these pages to retell the well-known story ofthe war. My life became a series of ups and downs--mainlydowns--the word being from day to day to fire and fall back; in theJohnston-Sherman campaign, I served as chief of scouts; then as an aidto General Hood through the siege of Atlanta, sharing the beginning ofthe chapter of disasters that befell that gallant soldier and his army. I was spared the last and worst of these by a curious piece of specialduty, taking me elsewhere, to which I was assigned in the autumn of 1864by the Confederate government. This involved a foreign journey. It was no less than to go to England tosell to English buyers some hundred thousand bales of designated cottonto be thus rescued from spoliation, acting under the supervision andindeed the orders of the Confederate fiscal agency at Liverpool. Of course I was ripe for this; but it proved a bigger job than I hadconceived or dreamed. The initial step was to get out of the country. But how? That was the question. To run the blockade had been easy enougha few months earlier. All our ports were now sealed by Federal cruisersand gunboats. There was nothing for it but to slip through the North andto get either a New York or a Canadian boat. This involved chances anddisguises. IV In West Tennessee, not far from Memphis, lived an aunt of mine. ThitherI repaired. My plan was to get on a Mississippi steamer calling at oneof the landings for wood. This proved impracticable. I wandered manydays and nights, rather ill mounted, in search of some kind--anykind--of exit, when one afternoon, quite worn out, I sat by a logheap in a comfortable farmhouse. It seemed that I was at the end of mytether; I did not know what to do. Presently there was an arrival--a brisk gentleman right out of Memphis, which I then learned was only ten miles distant--bringing with him amorning paper. In this I saw appended to various army orders the name of"N. B. Dana, General Commanding. " That set me to thinking. Was not Dana the name of a certain captain, astepson of Congressman Peaslee, of New Hampshire, who had lived with usat Willard's Hotel--and were there not two children, Charley and Mamie, and a dear little mother, and--I had been listening to the talk of thenewcomer. He was a licensed cotton buyer with a pass to come and go atwill through the lines, and was returning next day. "I want to get into Memphis--I am a nephew of Mrs. General Dana. Can youtake me in?" I said to this person. After some hesitation he consented to try, it being agreed that my mountand outfit should be his if he got me through; no trade if he failed. Clearly the way ahead was brightening. I soon ascertained that I waswith friends, loyal Confederates. Then I told them who I was, and allbecame excitement for the next day's adventure. We drove down to the Federal outpost. Crenshaw--that was the name of thecotton buyer--showed his pass to the officer in command, who then turnedto me. "Captain, " I said, "I have no pass, but I am a nephew of Mrs. General Dana. Can you not pass me in without a pass?" He was verypolite. It was a chain picket, he said; his orders were very strict, andso on. "Well, " I said, "suppose I were a member of your own command and wererun in here by guerillas. What do you think would it be your duty todo?" "In that case, " he answered, "I should send you to headquarters with aguard. " "Good!" said I. "Can't you send me to headquarters with a guard?" He thought a moment. Then he called a cavalryman from the outpost. "Britton, " he said, "show this gentleman in to General Dana'sheadquarters. " Crenshaw lashed his horse and away we went. "That boy thinks he is aguide, not a guard, " said he. "You are all right. We can easily get ridof him. " This proved true. We stopped by a saloon and bought a bottle of whisky. When we reached headquarters the lad said, "Do you gentlemen want meany more?" We did not. Then we gave him the bottle of whisky and hedisappeared round the corner. "Now you are safe, " said Crenshaw. "Maketracks. " But as I turned away and out of sight I began to consider the situation. Suppose that picket on the outpost reported to the provost marshalgeneral that he had passed a relative of Mrs. Dana? What then? Provostguard. Drumhead court-martial. Shot at daylight. It seemed best to playout the hand as I had dealt it. After all, I could make a case if Ifaced it out. The guard at the door refused me access to General Dana. Driven by anearby hackman to the General's residence, and, boldly asking for Mrs. Dana, I was more successful. I introduced myself as a teacher of musicseeking to return to my friends in the North, working in a word aboutthe old Washington days, not forgetting "Charley" and "Mamie. " Thedear little woman was heartily responsive. Both were there, including apretty girl from Philadelphia, and she called them down. "Here is yourold friend, Henry Waterman, " she joyfully exclaimed. Then guests beganto arrive. It was a reception evening. My hope fell. Some one wouldsurely recognize me. Presently a gentleman entered, and Mrs. Dana said:"Colonel Meehan, this is my particular friend, Henry Waterman, who hasbeen teaching music out in the country, and wants to go up the river. You will give him a pass, I am sure. " It was the provost marshal, whoanswered, "certainly. " Now was my time for disappearing. But Mrs. Danawould not listen to this. General Dana would never forgive her if shelet me go. Besides, there was to be a supper and a dance. I sat downagain very much disconcerted. The situation was becoming awkward. ThenMrs. Dana spoke. "You say you have been teaching music. What is yourinstrument?" Saved! "The piano, " I answered. The girls escorted me tothe rear drawing-room. It was a new Steinway Grand, just set up, and Iplayed for my life. If the black bombazine covering my gray uniform didnot break, all would be well. I was having a delightfully good time, the girls on either hand, when Mrs. Dana, still enthusiastic, ran in andsaid, "General Dana is here. Remembers you perfectly. Come and see him. " He stood by a table, tall, sardonic, and as I approached he put out hishand and said: "You have grown a bit, Henry, my boy, since I saw youlast. How did you leave my friend Forrest?" I was about making some awkward reply, when, the room already fillingup, he said: "We have some friends for supper. I am glad you are here. Mamie, mydaughter, take Mr. Watterson to the table!" Lord! That supper! Canvasback! Terrapin! Champagne! The general hadseated me at his right. Somewhere toward the close those expressive grayeyes looked at me keenly, and across his wine glass he said: "I think I understand this. You want to get up the river. You want tosee your mother. Have you money enough to carry you through? If you havenot don't hesitate, for whatever you need I will gladly let you have. " I thanked him. I had quite enough. All was well. We had more music andsome dancing. At a late hour he called the provost marshal. "Meehan, " said he, "take this dangerous young rebel round to the hotel, register him as Smith, Brown, or something, and send him with a pass upthe river by the first steamer. " I was in luck, was I not? But I made no impression on those girls. Many years after, meeting MamieDana, as the wife of an army officer at Fortress Monroe, I related theMemphis incident. She did not in the least recall it. V I had one other adventure during the war that may be worth telling. Itwas in 1862. Forrest took it into his inexperienced fighting headto make a cavalry attack upon a Federal stockade, and, repulsed withconsiderable loss, the command had to disperse--there were not morethan two hundred of us--in order to escape capture by the newly-arrivedreinforcements that swarmed about. We were to rendezvous later at acertain point. Having some time to spare, and being near the familyhomestead at Beech Grove, I put in there. It was midnight when I reached my destination. I had been erroneouslyinformed that the Union Army was on the retreat--quite gone from theneighborhood; and next day, believing the coast was clear, I donned asummer suit and with a neighbor boy who had been wounded at Shiloh andinvalided home, rode over to visit some young ladies. We had scarcelybeen welcomed and were taking a glass of wine when, looking acrossthe lawn, we saw that the place was being surrounded by a body ofblue-coats. The story of their departure had been a mistake. They werenot all gone. There was no chance of escape. We were placed in a hollow square andmarched across country into camp. Before we got there I had ascertainedthat they were Indianians, and I was further led rightly to surmise whatwe called in 1860 Douglas Democrats. My companion, a husky fellow, who looked and was every inch a soldier, was first questioned by the colonel in command. His examination wasbrief. He said he was as good a rebel as lived, that he was only waitingfor his wound to heal to get back into the Confederate Army, and that ifthey wanted to hang him for a spy to go ahead. I was aghast. It was not he that was in danger of hanging, but myself, a soldier in citizen's apparel within the enemy's lines. The colonelturned to me. With what I took for a sneer he said: "I suppose you are a good Union man?" This offered me a chance. "That depends upon what you call a good Union man, " I answered. "I usedto be a very good Union man--a Douglas Democrat--and I am not consciousof having changed my political opinions. " That softened him and we had an old-fashioned, friendly talk about thesituation, in which I kept the Douglas Democratic end of it well to thefore. He, too, had been a Douglas Democrat. I soon saw that it was mycompanion and not myself whom they were after. Presently Colonel Shook, that being the commandant's name, went into the adjacent stockade andthe boys about began to be hearty and sympathetic. I made them a regularDouglas Democratic speech. They brought some "red licker" and I askedfor some sugar for a toddy, not failing to cite the familiar SutLovingood saying that "there were about seventeen round the door whosaid they'd take sugar in their'n. " The drink warmed me to my work, making me quicker, if not bolder, in invention. Then the colonel notreappearing as soon as I hoped he would, for all along my fear was thewires, I went to him. "Colonel Shook, " I said, "you need not bother about this friend ofmine. He has no real idea of returning to the Confederate service. Heis teaching school over here at Beech Grove and engaged to be married toone of the--girls. If you carry him off a prisoner he will be exchangedback into the fighting line, and we make nothing by it. There is a hotluncheon waiting for us at the ----'s. Leave him to me and I will beanswerable. " Then I left him. Directly he came out and said: "I may be doing wrong, and don't feelentirely sure of my ground, but I am going to let you gentlemen go. " We thanked him and made off amid the cheery good-bys of the assembledblue-coats. No lunch for us. We got to our horses, rode away, and that night Iwas at our rendezvous to tell the tale to those of my comrades who hadarrived before me. Colonel Shook and I met after the war at a Grand Army reunion where Iwas billed to speak and to which he introduced me, relating the incidentand saying, among other things: "I do believe that when he told me nearWartrace that day twenty years ago that he was a good Union man he toldat least half the truth. " Chapter the Fourth I Go to London--Am Introduced to a Notable Set--Huxley, Spencer, Mill and Tyndall--Artemus Ward Comes to Town--The Savage Club I The fall of Atlanta after a siege of nearly two months was, in theopinion of thoughtful people, the sure precursor of the fall of thedoomed Confederacy. I had an affectionate regard for General Hood, butit was my belief that neither he nor any other soldier could save theday, and being out of commission and having no mind for what I conceivedaimless campaigning through another winter--especially an advance intoTennessee upon Nashville--I wrote to an old friend of mine, who ownedthe Montgomery Mail, asking for a job. He answered that if I would comeright along and take the editorship of the paper he would make mea present of half of it--a proposal so opportune and tempting thatforty-eight hours later saw me in the capital of Alabama. I was accompanied by my fidus Achates, Albert Roberts. The morning afterour arrival, by chance I came across a printed line which advertised aroom and board for two "single gentlemen, " with the curious affix forthose times, "references will be given and required. " This latter caughtme. When I rang the visitors' bell of a pretty dwelling upon one of thenearby streets a distinguished gentleman in uniform came to the door, and, acquainted with my business, he said, "Ah, that is an affair of mywife, " and invited me within. He was obviously English. Presently there appeared a beautiful lady, likewise English and as obviously a gentlewoman, and an hour later myfriend Roberts and I moved in. The incident proved in many ways fateful. The military gentleman proved to be Doctor Scott, the post surgeon. Hewas, when we came to know him, the most interesting of men, a son ofthat Captain Scott who commanded Byron's flagship at Missolonghi in1823; had as a lad attended the poet and he in his last illness and beenin at the death, seeing the club foot when the body was prepared forburial. His wife was adorable. There were two girls and two boys. Tomake a long story short, Albert Roberts married one of the daughters, his brother the other; the lads growing up to be successful anddistinguished men--one a naval admiral, the other a railway president. When, just after the war, I was going abroad, Mrs. Scott said: "I have abrother living in London to whom I will be glad to give you a letter. " II Upon the deck of the steamer bound from New York to London direct, aswe, my wife and I newly married, were taking a last look at the recedingAmerican shore, there appeared a gentleman who seemed by the cut ofhis jib startlingly French. We had under our escort a French governessreturning to Paris. In a twinkle she and this gentleman had struck upan acquaintance, and much to my displeasure she introduced him to meas "Monsieur Mahoney. " I was somewhat mollified when later we were madeacquainted with Madame Mahoney. I was not at all preconceived in his favor, nor did Monsieur Mahoney, upon nearer approach, conciliate my simple taste. In person, manners andapparel he was quite beyond me. Mrs. Mahoney, however, as we soon calledher, was a dear, whole-souled, traveled, unaffected New England woman. But Monsieur! Lord! There was no holding him at arm's length. He brookednot resistance. I was wearing a full beard. He said it would never do, carried me perforce below, and cut it as I have worn it ever since. Theday before we were to dock he took me aside and said: "Mee young friend"--he had a brogue which thirty years in Algiers, wherehe had been consul, and a dozen in Paris as a gentleman of leisure, hadnot wholly spoiled--"Mee young friend, I observe that you are shyof strangers, but my wife and I have taken a shine to you and the'Princess', " as he called Mrs. Watterson, "and if you will allow us, wecan be of some sarvis to you when we get to town. " Certainly there was no help for it. I was too ill of the long crossingto oppose him. At Blackwall we took the High Level for Fenchurch Street, at Fenchurch Street a cab for the West End--Mr. Mahoney bossing thejob--and finally, in most comfortable and inexpensive lodgings, we weresettled in Jermyn Street. The Mahoneys were visiting Lady Elmore, widowof a famous surgeon and mother of the President of the Royal Academy. Thus we were introduced to quite a distinguished artistic set. It was great. It was glorious. At last we were in London--the dream ofmy literary ambitions. I have since lived much in this wondrous city andin many parts of it between Hyde Park Corner, the heart of May Fair, tothe east end of Bloomsbury under the very sound of Bow Bells. All theway as it were from Tyburn Tree that was, and the Marble Arch that is, to Charing Cross and the Hay Market. This were not to mention casualsojourns along Piccadilly and the Strand. In childhood I was obsessed by the immensity, the atmosphere andthe mystery of London. Its nomenclature embedded itself in my fancy;Hounsditch and Shoreditch, Billingsgate and Blackfriars;Bishopgate, within, and Bishopgate, without; Threadneedle Street andWapping-Old-Stairs; the Inns of Court where Jarndyce struggled withJarndyce, and the taverns where the Mark Tapleys, the Captain Costigansand the Dolly Vardens consorted. Alike in winter fog and summer haze, I grew to know and love it, and those that may be called its dramatis personae, especially itstatterdemalions, the long procession led by Jack Sheppard, Dick Turpinand Jonathan Wild the Great. Inevitably I sought their haunts--and theywere not all gone in those days; the Bull-and-Gate in Holborn, whitherMr. Tom Jones repaired on his arrival in town, and the White HartTavern, where Mr. Pickwick fell in with Mr. Sam Weller; the regionsabout Leicester Fields and Russell Square sacred to the memory ofCaptain Booth and the lovely Amelia and Becky Sharp; where Garrick dranktea with Dr. Johnson and Henry Esmond tippled with Sir Richard Steele. There was yet a Pump Court, and many places along Oxford Street whereMantalini and De Quincy loitered: and Covent Garden and Drury Lane. Evans' Coffee House, or shall I say the Cave of Harmony, and TheCock and the Cheshire Cheese were near at hand for refreshment inthe agreeable society of Daniel Defoe and Joseph Addison, with OliverGoldsmith and Dick Swiveller and Colonel Newcome to clink ghostlyglasses amid the punch fumes and tobacco smoke. In short I knewLondon when it was still Old London--the knowledge of Temple Bar andCheapside--before the vandal horde of progress and the pickaxe of thebuilder had got in their nefarious work. III Not long after we began our sojourn in London, I recurred--by chance, I am ashamed to say--to Mrs. Scott's letter of introduction to herbrother. The address read "Mr. Thomas H. Huxley, School of Mines, JermynStreet. " Why, it was but two or three blocks away, and being so near Icalled, not knowing just who Mr. Thomas H. Huxley might be. I was conducted to a dark, stuffy little room. The gentleman who met mewas exceedingly handsome and very agreeable. He greeted me cordially andwe had some talk about his relatives in America. Of course my wife andI were invited at once to dinner. I was a little perplexed. There was noone to tell me about Huxley, or in what way he might be connected withthe School of Mines. It was a good dinner. There sat at table a gentleman by the nameof Tyndall and another by the name of Mill--of neither I had everheard--but there was still another of the name of Spencer, whom Ifancied must be a literary man, for I recalled having reviewed a cleverbook on Education some four years agone by a writer of that name; acertain Herbert Spencer, whom I rightly judged might he be. The dinner, I repeat, was a very good dinner indeed--the Huxleys, I tookit, must be well to do--the company agreeable; a bit pragmatic, however, I thought. The gentleman by the name of Spencer said he loved music andwished to hear Mrs. Watterson sing, especially Longfellow's Rainy Day, and left the others of us--Huxley, Mill, Tyndall and myself--at table. Finding them a little off on the Irish question as well as Americanaffairs, I set them right as to both with much particularity and a greatdeal of satisfaction to myself. Whatever Huxley's occupation, it turned out that he had at least onebook-publishing acquaintance, Mr. Alexander Macmillan, to whom heintroduced me next day, for I had brought with me a novel--the greatAmerican romance--too good to be wasted on New York, Philadelphia orBoston, but to appear simultaneously in England and the United States, to be translated, of course, into French, Italian and German. This wasactually accepted. It was held for final revision. We were to pass the winter in Italy. An event, however, called mesuddenly home. Politics and journalism knocked literature sky high, andthe novel--it was entitled "One Story's Good Till Another Is Told"--waslaid by and quite forgotten. Some twenty years later, at a moment when Iwas being lashed from one end of the line to the other, my wife said: "Let us drop the nasty politics and get back to literature. " She hadpreserved the old manuscript, two thousand pages of it. "Fetch it, " I said. She brought it with effulgent pride. Heavens! The stuff it was! Not agleam, never a radiance. I had been teaching myself to write--I had beenwriting for the English market--perpendicular! The Lord has surely beengood to me. If the "boys" had ever got a peep at that novel, I had beenlost indeed! IV Yea, verily we were in London. Presently Artemus Ward and "the show"arrived in town. He took a lodging over an apothecary's just across theway from Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly, where he was to lecture. We hadbeen the best of friends, were near of an age, and only round-the-cornerapart we became from the first inseparable. I introduced him to thedistinguished scientific set into which chance had thrown me, and heintroduced me to a very different set that made a revel of life at theSavage Club. I find by reference to some notes jotted down at the time that the lastI saw of him was the evening of the 21st of December, 1866. He had dinedwith my wife and myself, and, accompanied by Arthur Sketchley, who haddropped in after dinner, he bade us good-by and went for his nightlygrind, as he called it. We were booked to take our departure the nextmorning. His condition was pitiable. He was too feeble to walk alone, and was continually struggling to breathe freely. His surgeon hadforbidden the use of wine or liquor of any sort. Instead he drankquantities of water, eating little and taking no exercise at all. Nevertheless, he stuck to his lecture and contrived to keep upappearances before the crowds that flocked to hear him, and even inLondon his critical state of health was not suspected. Early in September, when I had parted from him to go to Paris, I lefthim methodically and industriously arranging for his début. He hadbrought some letters, mainly to newspaper people, and was already makingprogress toward what might be called the interior circles of the press, which are so essential to the success of a newcomer in London. CharlesReade and Andrew Haliday became zealous friends. It was to the latterthat he owed his introduction to the Savage Club. Here he soon madehimself at home. His manners, even his voice, were half English, albeit he possessed a most engaging disposition--a ready tact and keendiscernment, very un-English, --and these won him an efficient corps ofclaquers and backers throughout the newspapers and periodicals of themetropolis. Thus his success was assured from the first. The raw November evening when he opened at Egyptian Hall the room wascrowded with an audience of literary men and women, great and small, from Swinburne and Edmund Yates to the trumpeters and reporters of themorning papers. The next day most of these contained glowing accounts. The Times was silent, but four days later The Thunderer, seeing how thewind blew, came out with a column of eulogy, and from this onward, each evening proved a kind of ovation. Seats were engaged for a weekin advance. Up and down Piccadilly, from St. James Church to St. JamesStreet, carriages bearing the first arms in the kingdom were parkednight after night; and the evening of the 21st of December, six weeksafter, there was no falling off. The success was complete. As to anAmerican, London had never seen the like. All this while the poor author of the sport was slowly dying. Thedemands upon his animal spirits at the Savage Club, the bodily fatigueof "getting himself up to it, " the "damnable iteration" of the lectureitself, wore him out. George, his valet, whom he had brought fromAmerica, had finally to lift him about his bedroom like a child. Hisquarters in Picadilly, as I have said, were just opposite the Hall, buthe could not go backward and forward without assistance. It was painfulin the extreme to see the man who was undergoing tortures behind thecurtain step lightly before the audience amid a burst of merriment, andfor more than an hour sustain the part of jester, tossing his cap andjingling his bells, a painted death's head, for he had to rouge his faceto hide the pallor. His buoyancy forsook him. He was occasionally nervous and fretful. Thefog, he declared, felt like a winding sheet, enwrapping and stranglinghim. At one of his entertainments he made a grim, serio-comic allusionto this. "But, " cried he as he came off the stage, "that was not a hit, was it? The English are scary about death. I'll have to cut it out. " He had become a contributor to Punch, a lucky rather than smart businessstroke, for it was not of his own initiation. He did not continuehis contributions after he began to appear before the public, and thediscontinuance was made the occasion of some ill-natured remarks incertain American papers, which very much wounded him. They were largelycirculated and credited at the time, the charge being that Messrs. Bradbury and Evans, the publishers of the English charivari, had brokenwith him because the English would not have him. The truth is that theiroriginal proposal was made to him, not by him to them, the price namedbeing fifteen guineas a letter. He asked permission to duplicate thearrangement with some New York periodical, so as to secure an Americancopyright. This they refused. I read the correspondence at the time. "Our aim, " they said, "in making the engagement, had reference toour own circulation in the United States, which exceeds twenty-seventhousand weekly. " I suggested to Artemus that he enter his book, "Artemus Ward in London, "in advance, and he did write to Oakey Hall, his New York lawyer, tothat effect. Before he received an answer from Hall he got Carleton'sadvertisement announcing the book. Considering this a piratical designon the part of Carleton, he addressed that enterprising publishera savage letter, but the matter was ultimately cleared up to hissatisfaction, for he said just before we parted: "It was all a mistakeabout Carleton. I did him an injustice and mean to ask his pardon. He has behaved very handsomely to me. " Then the letters reappeared inPunch. V Whatever may be thought of them on this side of the Atlantic, theirsuccess in England was undeniable. They were more talked about than anycurrent literary matter; never a club gathering or dinner party at whichthey were not discussed. There did seem something both audaciousand grotesque in this ruthless Yankee poking in among the reveredantiquities of Britain, so that the beef-eating British themselves couldnot restrain their laughter. They took his jokes in excellent part. The letters on the Tower and Chawsir were palpable hits, and it wasgenerally agreed that Punch had contained nothing better since the daysof Yellow-plush. This opinion was not confined to the man in the street. It was shared by the high-brows of the reviews and the appreciative ofsociety, and gained Artemus the entrée wherever he cared to go. Invitations pursued him and he was even elected to two or threefashionable clubs. But he had a preference for those which were lessconventional. His admission to the Garrick, which had been at first"laid over, " affords an example of London club fastidiousness. Thegentleman who proposed him used his pseudonym, Artemus Ward, instead ofhis own name, Charles F. Browne. I had the pleasure of introducing himto Mr. Alexander Macmillan, the famous book publisher of Oxford andCambridge, a leading member of the Garrick. We dined together at theGarrick clubhouse, when the matter was brought up and explained. Theresult was that Charles F. Browne was elected at the next meeting, whereArtemus Ward, had been made to stand aside. Before Christmas, Artemus received invitations from distinguishedpeople, nobility and gentry as well as men of letters, to spend theweek-end with them. But he declined them all. He needed his vacation, he said, for rest. He had neither the strength nor the spirit for theseason. Yet was he delighted with the English people and with English life. Hiswas one of those receptive natures which enjoy whatever is wholesomeand sunny. In spite of his bodily pain, he entertained a lively hope ofcoming out of it in the spring, and did not realize his true condition. He merely said, "I have overworked myself, and must lay by or I shallbreak down altogether. " He meant to remain in London as long as hiswelcome lasted, and when he perceived a falling off in his audience, would close his season and go to the continent. His receipts averagedabout three hundred dollars a night, whilst his expenses were not fiftydollars. "This, mind you, " he used to say, "is in very hard cash, anarticle altogether superior to that of my friend Charles Reade. " [Illustration: Artemas Ward] His idea was to set aside out of his earnings enough to make himindependent, and then to give up "this mountebank business, " as hecalled it. He had a great respect for scholarly culture and personalrespectability, and thought that if he could get time and health hemight do something "in the genteel comedy line. " He had a humorous novelin view, and a series of more aspiring comic essays than any he hadattempted. Often he alluded to the opening for an American magazine, "not quite sohighfalutin as the Atlantic nor so popular as Harper's. " His mind wasbeginning to soar above the showman and merrymaker. His manners hadalways been captivating. Except for the nervous worry of ill-health, hewas the kind-hearted, unaffected Artemus of old, loving as a girl andliberal as a prince. He once showed me his daybook in which were noteddown over five hundred dollars lent out in small sums to indigentAmericans. "Why, " said I, "you will never get half of it back. " "Of course not, " he said, "but do you think I can afford to have a lotof loose fellows black-guarding me at home because I wouldn't let themhave a sovereign or so over here?" There was no lack of independence, however, about him. The benefit whichhe gave Mrs. Jefferson Davis in New Orleans, which was denounced atthe North as toadying to the Rebels, proceeded from a wholly differentmotive. He took a kindly interest in the case because it was representedto him as one of suffering, and knew very well at the time that hisbounty would meet with detraction. He used to relate with gusto an interview he once had with MuratHalstead, who had printed a tart paragraph about him. He went into theoffice of the Cincinnati editor, and began in his usual jocose wayto ask for the needful correction. Halstead resented the profferedfamiliarity, when Artemus told him flatly, suddenly changing front, thathe "didn't care a d--n for the Commercial, and the whole establishmentmight go to hell. " Next day the paper appeared with a handsome amende, and the two became excellent friends. "I have no doubt, " said Artemus, "that if I had whined or begged, I should have disgusted Halstead, andhe would have put it to me tighter. As it was, he concluded that I wasnot a sneak, and treated me like a gentleman. " Artemus received many tempting offers from book publishers in London. Several of the Annuals for 1866-67 contain sketches, some of themanonymous, written by him, for all of which he was well paid. He wrotefor Fun--the editor of which, Mr. Tom Hood, son of the great humorist, was an intimate friend--as well as for Punch; his contributions to theformer being printed without his signature. If he had been permitted toremain until the close of his season, he would have earned enough, withwhat he had already, to attain the independence which was his aim andhope. His best friends in London were Charles Reade, Tom Hood, TomRobertson, the dramatist, Charles Mathews, the comedian, Tom Taylorand Arthur Sketchley. He did not meet Mr. Dickens, though Mr. AndrewHaliday, Dickens' familiar, was also his intimate. He was muchpersecuted by lion hunters, and therefore had to keep his lodgingssomething of a mystery. So little is known of Artemus Ward that some biographic particulars maynot in this connection be out of place or lacking in interest. Charles F. Browne was born at Waterford, Maine, the 15th of July, 1833. His father was a state senator, a probate judge, and at one time awealthy citizen; but at his death, when his famous son was yet a lad, left his family little or no property. Charles apprenticed himself toa printer, and served out his time, first in Springfield and then inBoston. In the latter city he made the acquaintance of Shilaber, BenPerley Poore, Halpine, and others, and tried his hand as a "sketchist"for a volume edited by Mrs. Partington. His early effusions bore thesignature of "Chub. " From the Hub he emigrated to the West. AtToledo, Ohio, he worked as a "typo" and later as a "local" on a Toledonewspaper. Then he went to Cleveland, where as city editor of the PlainDealer he began the peculiar vein from which still later he worked sosuccessfully. The soubriquet "Artemus Ward, " was not taken from the Revolutionarygeneral. It was suggested by an actual personality. In an adjoining townto Cleveland there was a snake charmer who called himself Artemus Ward, an ignorant witling or half-wit, the laughing stock of the countryside. Browne's first communication over the signature of Artemus Wardpurported to emanate from this person, and it succeeded so well that hekept it up. He widened the conception as he progressed. It was notlong before his sketches began to be copied and he became a newspaperfavorite. He remained in Cleveland from 1857 to 1860, when he was calledto New York to take the editorship of a venture called Vanity Fair. Thisdied soon after. But he did not die with it. A year later, in the fallof 1861, he made his appearance as a lecturer at New London, andmet with encouragement. Then he set out _en tour_, returned to themetropolis, hired a hall and opened with "the show. " Thence onward allwent well. The first money he made was applied to the purchase of the old familyhomestead in Maine, which he presented to his mother. The payments onthis being completed, he bought himself a little nest on the Hudson, meaning, as he said, to settle down and perhaps to marry. But his dreamswere not destined to be fulfilled. Thus, at the outset of a career from which much was to be expected, aman, possessed of rare and original qualities of head and heart, sankout of the sphere in which at that time he was the most prominentfigure. There was then no Mark Twain or Bret Harte. His rivals were suchhumorists as Orpheus C. Kerr, Nasby, Asa Hartz, The Fat Contributor, John Happy, Mrs. Partington, Bill Arp and the like, who are now mostlyforgotten. Artemus Ward wrote little, but he made good and left his mark. Alongwith the queer John Phoenix his writings survived the deluge thatfollowed them. He poured out the wine of life in a limpid stream. It maybe fairly said that he did much to give permanency and respectability tothe style of literature of which he was at once a brilliant illustratorand illustration. His was a short life indeed, though a merry one, and asad death. In a strange land, yet surrounded by admiring friends, aboutto reach the coveted independence he had looked forward to so long, he sank to rest, his dust mingling with that of the great Thomas Hood, alongside of whom he was laid in Kensal Green. Chapter the Fifth Mark Twain--The Original of Colonel Mulberry Sellers--The "Earl of Durham"--Some Noctes Ambrosianæ--A Joke on Murat Halstead I Mark Twain came down to the footlights long after Artemus Ward hadpassed from the scene; but as an American humorist with whom duringhalf a century I was closely intimate and round whom many of my Londonexperiences revolve, it may be apropos to speak of him next after hiselder. There was not lacking a certain likeness between them. Samuel L. Clemens and I were connected by a domestic tie, though beforeeither of us were born the two families on the maternal side had beenneighbors and friends. An uncle of his married an aunt of mine--thechildren of this marriage cousins in common to us--albeit, this apart, we were life-time cronies. He always contended that we were "bloodkin. " Notwithstanding that when Mark Twain appeared east of the Alleghaniesand north of the Blue Ridge he showed the weather-beating of the west, the bizarre alike of the pilot house and the mining camp very muchin evidence, he came of decent people on both sides of the house. TheClemens and the Lamptons were of good old English stock. Toward themiddle of the eighteenth century three younger scions of the Manorof Durham migrated from the County of Durham to Virginia and thencebranched out into Tennessee, Kentucky and Missouri. His mother was the loveliest old aristocrat with a taking drawl, a drawlthat was high-bred and patrician, not rustic and plebeian, which herfamous son inherited. All the women of that ilk were gentlewomen. Theliterary and artistic instinct which attained its fruition in him hadpercolated through the veins of a long line of silent singers, of poetsand painters, unborn to the world of expression till he arrived upon thescene. These joint cousins of ours embraced an exceedingly large, varied andpicturesque assortment. Their idiosyncrasies were a constant source ofamusement to us. Just after the successful production of his play, TheGilded Age, and the uproarious hit of the comedian, Raymond, in theleading role, I received a letter from him in which he told me he hadmade in Colonel Mulberry Sellers a close study of one of these kinsmenand thought he had drawn him to the life. "But for the love o' God, " hesaid, "don't whisper it, for he would never understand or forgive me, ifhe did not thrash me on sight. " The pathos of the part, and not its comic aspects, had most impressedhim. He designed and wrote it for Edwin Booth. From the first and alwayshe was disgusted by the Raymond portrayal. Except for its popularity andmoney-making, he would have withdrawn it from the stage as, in a fit ofpique, Raymond himself did while it was still packing the theaters. The original Sellers had partly brought him up and had been very good tohim. A second Don Quixote in appearance and not unlike the knight ofLa Mancha in character, it would have been safe for nobody to laugh atJames Lampton, or by the slightest intimation, look or gesture to treathim with inconsideration, or any proposal of his, however preposterous, with levity. He once came to visit me upon a public occasion and during a function. I knew that I must introduce him, and with all possible ceremony, tomy colleagues. He was very queer; tall and peaked, wearing a black, swallow-tailed suit, shiny with age, and a silk hat, bound with blackcrepe to conceal its rustiness, not to indicate a recent death; buthis linen as spotless as new-fallen snow. I had my fears. Happily thecompany, quite dazed by the apparition, proved decorous to solemnity, and the kind old gentleman, pleased with himself and proud of his"distinguished young kinsman, " went away highly gratified. Not long after this one of his daughters--pretty girls they were, too, and in charm altogether worthy of their Cousin Sam Clemens--was to bemarried, and Sellers wrote me a stately summons, all-embracing, thoughstiff and formal, such as a baron of the Middle Ages might have inditedto his noble relative, the field marshal, bidding him bring his goodlady and his retinue and abide within the castle until the festivitieswere ended, though in this instance the castle was a suburban cottagescarcely big enough to accommodate the bridal couple. I showed thebombastic but hospitable and genuine invitation to the actor Raymond, who chanced to be playing in Louisville when it reached me. He read itthrough with care and reread it. "Do you know, " said he, "it makes me want to cry. That is not the man Iam trying to impersonate at all. " Be sure it was not; for there was nothing funny about the spiritualbeing of Mark Twain's Colonel Mulberry Sellers; he was as brave as alion and as upright as Sam Clemens himself. When a very young man, living in a woodland cabin down in the Pennyrileregion of Kentucky, with a wife he adored and two or three smallchildren, he was so carried away by an unexpected windfall that helingered overlong in the nearby village, dispensing a royal hospitality;in point of fact, he "got on a spree. " Two or three days passed beforehe regained possession of himself. When at last he reached home, hefound his wife ill in bed and the children nearly starved for lack offood. He said never a word, but walked out of the cabin, tied himselfto a tree, and was wildly horsewhipping himself when the cries of thefrightened family summoned the neighbors and he was brought to reason. He never touched an intoxicating drop from that day to his death. II Another one of our fantastic mutual cousins was the "Earl of Durham. "I ought to say that Mark Twain and I grew up on old wives' tales ofestates and titles, which, maybe due to a kindred sense of humor inboth of us, we treated with shocking irreverence. It happened some fiftyyears ago that there turned up, first upon the plains and afterwardin New York and Washington, a lineal descendant of the oldest of theVirginia Lamptons--he had somehow gotten hold of or had fabricated abundle of documents--who was what a certain famous American would havecalled a "corker. " He wore a sombrero with a rattlesnake for a band, anda belt with a couple of six-shooters, and described himself and claimedto be the Earl of Durham. "He touched me for a tenner the first time I ever saw him, " drawled Markto me, "and I coughed it up and have been coughing them up, wheneverhe's around, with punctuality and regularity. " The "Earl" was indeed a terror, especially when he had been drinking. His belief in his peerage was as absolute as Colonel Sellers' in hismillions. All he wanted was money enough "to get over there" and "statehis case. " During the Tichborne trial Mark Twain and I were in London, and one day he said to me: "I have investigated this Durham business down at the Herald's office. There's nothing to it. The Lamptons passed out of the Demesne of Durhama hundred years ago. They had long before dissipated the estates. Whatever the title, it lapsed. The present earldom is a new creation, not the same family at all. But, I tell you what, if you'll put up fivehundred dollars I'll put up five hundred more, we'll fetch our chapacross and set him in as a claimant, and, my word for it, Kenealy's fatboy won't be a marker to him!" He was so pleased with his conceit that later along he wrote a novel andcalled it The Claimant. It is the only one of his books, though I nevertold him so, that I could not enjoy. Many years after, I happened to seeupon a hotel register in Rome these entries: "The Earl of Durham, " andin the same handwriting just below it, "Lady Anne Lambton" and "The Hon. Reginald Lambton. " So the Lambtons--they spelled it with a b insteadof a p--were yet in the peerage. A Lambton was Earl of Durham. The nexttime I saw Mark I rated him on his deception. He did not defend himself, said something about its being necessary to perfect the joke. "Did you ever meet this present peer and possible usurper?" I asked. "No, " he answered, "I never did, but if he had called on me, I wouldhave had him come up. " III His mind turned ever to the droll. Once in London I was living with myfamily at 103 Mount Street. Between 103 and 102 there was the parochialworkhouse, quite a long and imposing edifice. One evening, upon comingin from an outing, I found a letter he had written on the sitting-roomtable. He had left it with his card. He spoke of the shock he hadreceived upon finding that next to 102--presumably 103--was theworkhouse. He had loved me, but had always feared that I would end bydisgracing the family--being hanged or something--but the "work'us, "that was beyond him; he had not thought it would come to that. And soon through pages of horseplay; his relief on ascertaining the truth andlearning his mistake, his regret at not finding me at home, closing witha dinner invitation. It was at Geneva, Switzerland, that I received a long, overflowingletter, full of flamboyant oddities, written from London. Two or threehours later came a telegram. "Burn letter. Blot it from your memory. Susie is dead. " How much of melancholy lay hidden behind the mask of his humour it wouldbe hard to say. His griefs were tempered by a vein of stoicism. He wasa medley of contradictions. Unconventional to the point of eccentricity, his sense of his proper dignity was sound and sufficient. Though lavishin the use of money, he had a full realization of its value and madeclose contracts for his work. Like Sellers, his mind soared when itsailed financial currents. He lacked acute business judgment in thelarger things, while an excellent economist in the lesser. His marriage was the most brilliant stroke of his life. He got the womanof all the world he most needed, a truly lovely and wise helpmate, whokept him in bounds and headed him straight and right while shelived. She was the best of housewives and mothers, and the safest ofcounsellors and critics. She knew his worth; she appreciated his genius;she understood his limitations and angles. Her death was a grievousdisaster as well as a staggering blow. He never wholly recovered fromit. IV It was in the early seventies that Mark Twain dropped into New York, where there was already gathered a congenial group to meet and greethim. John Hay, quoting old Jack Dade's description of himself, was wontto speak of this group as "of high aspirations and peregrinations. "It radiated between Franklin Square, where Joseph W. Harper--"JoeBrooklyn, " we called him--reigned in place of his uncle, FletcherHarper, the man of genius among the original Harper Brothers, and theLotos Club, then in Irving Place, and Delmonico's, at the corner ofFifth Avenue and Fourteenth Street, with Sutherland's in Liberty Streetfor a downtown place of luncheon resort, not to forget Dorlon's inFulton Market. [Illustration: General Leonidas Polk--Lieutenant General C. S. A. --Killedin Georgia June 14, 1864--P. E. Bishop of Louisiana] The Harper contingent, beside its chief, embraced Tom Nast and WilliamA. Seaver, whom John Russell Young named "Papa Pendennis, " and picturedas "a man of letters among men of the world and a man of the world amongmen of letters, " a very apt phrase appropriated from Doctor Johnson, andMajor Constable, a giant, who looked like a dragoon and not a bookman, yet had known Sir Walter Scott and was sprung from the family ofEdinburgh publishers. Bret Harte had but newly arrived from California. Whitelaw Reid, though still subordinate to Greeley, was beginning tomake himself felt in journalism. John Hay played high priest to therevels. Occasionally I made a pious pilgrimage to the delightful shrine. Truth to tell, it emulated rather the gods than the graces, though allof us had literary leanings of one sort and another, especially lateat night; and Sam Bowles would come over from Springfield and MuratHalstead from Cincinnati to join us. Howells, always something of aprig, living in Boston, held himself at too high account; but often wehad Joseph Jefferson, then in the heyday of his career, with once in awhile Edwin Booth, who could not quite trust himself to go our gait. The fine fellows we caught from oversea were innumerable, from the elderSothern and Sala and Yates to Lord Dufferin and Lord Houghton. Timeswent very well those days, and whilst some looked on askance, notablyCurtis and, rather oddly, Stedman, and thought we were wasting timeand convivializing more than was good for us, we were mostly young andhearty, ranging from thirty to five and forty years of age, with amazingcapabilities both for work and play, and I cannot recall that any hurtto any of us came of it. Although robustious, our fribbles were harmless enough--ebullitions ofanimal spirit, sometimes perhaps of gaiety unguarded--though each shade, treading the Celestian way, as most of them do, and recurring tothose Noctes Ambrosianæ, might e'en repeat to the other the words on amemorable occasion addressed by Curran to Lord Avonmore: _"We spent them not in toys or lust or wine; But search of deep philosophy, Wit, eloquence and poesy-- Arts which I loved, for they, my friend, were thine. "_ V Mark Twain was the life of every company and all occasions. I remember apractical joke of his suggestion played upon Murat Halstead. A party ofus were supping after the theater at the old Brevoort House. A card wasbrought to me from a reporter of the World. I was about to deny myself, when Mark Twain said: "Give it to me, I'll fix it, " and left the table. Presently he came to the door and beckoned me out. "I represented myself as your secretary and told this man, " said he, "that you were not here, but that if Mr. Halstead would answer just aswell I would fetch him. The fellow is as innocent as a lamb and doesn'tknow either of you. I am going to introduce you as Halstead and we'llhave some fun. " No sooner said than done. The reporter proved to be a little bald-headedcherub newly arrived from the isle of dreams, and I lined out to him acolumn or more of very hot stuff, reversing Halstead in every opinion. I declared him in favor of paying the national debt in greenbacks. Touching the sectional question, which was then the burning issue of thetime, I made the mock Halstead say: "The 'bloody shirt' is only a kindof Pickwickian battle cry. It is convenient during political campaignsand on election day. Perhaps you do not know that I am myself ofdyed-in-the-wool Southern and secession stock. My father and grandfathercame to Ohio from South Carolina just before I was born. NaturallyI have no sectional prejudices, but I live in Cincinnati and I am aRepublican. " There was not a little more of the same sort. Just how it passed throughthe World office I know not; but it actually appeared. On returningto the table I told the company what Mark Twain and I had done. Theythought I was joking. Without a word to any of us, next day Halsteadwrote a note to the World repudiating the interview, and the Worldprinted his disclaimer with a line which said: "When Mr. Halsteadconversed with our reporter he had dined. " It was too good to keep. Aday or two later, John Hay wrote an amusing story for the Tribune, whichset Halstead right. Mark Twain's place in literature is not for me to fix. Some one hascalled him "The Lincoln of letters. " That is striking, suggestive andapposite. The genius of Clemens and the genius of Lincoln possessed akinship outside the circumstances of their early lives; the common lackof tools to work with; the privations and hardships to be endured and toovercome; the way ahead through an unblazed and trackless forest; everyfootstep over a stumbling block and each effort saddled with a handicap. But they got there, both of them, they got there, and mayhap somewherebeyond the stars the light of their eyes is shining down upon us evenas, amid the thunders of a world tempest, we are not wholly forgetful ofthem. Chapter the Sixth Houston and Wigfall of Texas--Stephen A. Douglas--The Twaddle about Puritans and Cavaliers--Andrew Johnson and John C. Breckenridge I The National Capitol--old men's fancies fondly turn to thoughts ofyouth--was picturesque in its personalities if not in its architecture. By no means the least striking of these was General and Senator SamHouston, of Texas. In his life of adventure truth proved very muchstranger than fiction. The handsomest of men, tall and stately, he could pass no way withoutattracting attention; strangers in the Senate gallery first asked tohave him pointed out to them, and seeing him to all appearance idlinghis time with his jacknife and bits of soft wood which he whittled intovarious shapes of hearts and anchors for distribution among his ladyacquaintances, they usually went away thinking him a queer old man. Soinded he was; yet on his feet and in action singularly impressive, and, when he chose, altogether the statesman and orator. There united in him the spirits of the troubadour and the spearman. Ivanhoe was not more gallant nor Bois-Guilbert fiercer. But the valorand the prowess were tempered by humor. Below the surging subterraneanflood that stirred and lifted him to high attempt, he was a comedianwho had tales to tell, and told them wondrous well. On a lazy summerafternoon on the shady side of Willard's Hotel--the Senate not insession--he might be seen, an admiring group about him, spinningthese yarns, mostly of personal experience--rarely if ever repeatinghimself--and in tone, gesture and grimace reproducing the drolleries ofthe backwoods, which from boyhood had been his home. He spared not himself. According to his own account he had been in theearly days of his Texas career a drunkard. "Everybody got drunk, " I onceheard him say, referring to the beginning of the Texas revolution, ashe gave a side-splitting picture of that bloody episode, "and I realizedthat somebody must get sober and keep sober. " From the hour of that realization, when he "swore off, " to the hour ofhis death he never touched intoxicants of any sort. He had fought under Jackson, had served two terms in Congress and hadbeen elected governor of Tennessee before he was forty. Then he fellin love. The young lady was a beautiful girl, well-born and highlyeducated, a schoolmate of my mother's elder sister. She was persuaded byher family to throw over an obscure young man whom she preferred, and tomarry a young man so eligible and distinguished. He took her to Nashville, the state capital. There were rounds ofgayety. Three months passed. Of a sudden the little town woke to thestartling rumor, which proved to be true, that the brilliant youngcouple had come to a parting of the ways. The wife had returned to herpeople. The husband had resigned his office and was gone, no one knewwhere. A few years later Mrs. Houston applied for a divorce, which in thosedays had to be granted by the state legislature. Inevitably reportsderogatory to her had got abroad. Almost the first tidings of GovernorHouston's whereabouts were contained in a letter he wrote from somewherein the Indian country to my father, a member of the legislature to whomMrs. Houston had applied, in which he said that these reports had cometo his ears. "They are, " he wrote, "as false as hell. If they be notstopped I will return to Tennessee and have the heart's blood of him whorepeats them. A nobler, purer woman never lived. She should be promptlygiven the divorce she asks. I alone am to blame. " She married again, though not the lover she had discarded. I knew herin her old age--a gentle, placid lady, in whose face I used to fancyI could read lines of sorrow and regret. He, to close this chapter, likewise married again a wise and womanly woman who bore him manychildren and with whom he lived happy ever after. Meanwhile, however, hehad dwelt with the Indians and had become an Indian chief. "Big Drunk, they called me, " he said to his familiars. His enemies averred that hebrought into the world a whole tribe of half-breeds. II Houston was a rare performer before a popular audience. His speechabounded with argumentative appeal and bristled with illustrativeanecdote, and, when occasion required, with apt repartee. Once an Irishman in the crowd bawled out, "ye were goin' to sell Texasto England. " Houston paused long enough to center attention upon the quibble andthen said: "My friend, I first tried, unsuccessfully, to have the UnitedStates take Texas as a gift. Not until I threatened to turn Texas overto England did I finally succeed. There may be within the sound of myvoice some who have knowledge of sheep culture. They have doubtless seena motherless lamb put to the breast of a cross old ewe who refusedit suck. Then the wise shepherd calls his dog and there is no furthertrouble. My friend, England was my dog. " He was inveighing against the New York Tribune. Having described HoraceGreeley as the sum of all villainy--"whose hair is white, whose skin iswhite, whose eyes are white, whose clothes are white, and whose liver isin my opinion of the same color"--he continued: "The assistant editor ofthe Try-bune is Robinson--Solon Robinson. He is an Irishman, an OrangeIrishman, a redhaired Irishman!" Casting his eye over the audienceand seeing quite a sprinkling of redheads, and realizing that he hadperpetrated a slip of tongue, he added: "Fellow citizens, when I saythat Robinson is a red-haired Irishman I mean no disrespect to personswhose hair is of that color. I have been a close observer of men andwomen for thirty years, and I never knew a red-haired man who was not anhonest man, nor a red-headed woman who was not a virtuous woman; and Igive it you as my candid opinion that had it not been for Robinson's redhair he would have been hanged long ago. " His pathos was not far behind his humor--though he used it sparingly. At a certain town in Texas there lived a desperado who had threatened tokill him on sight. The town was not on the route of his speaking datesbut he went out of his way to include it. A great concourse assembledto hear him. He spoke in the open air and, as he began, observed his manleaning against a tree armed to the teeth and waiting for him to finish. After a few opening remarks, he dropped into the reminiscential. Hetalked of the old times in Texas. He told in thrilling terms of theAlamo and of Goliad. There was not a dry eye in earshot. Then he grewpersonal. "I see Tom Gilligan over yonder. A braver man never lived than TomGilligan. He fought by my side at San Jacinto. Together we buried poorBill Holman. But for his skill and courage I should not be here to-day. He--" There was a stir in front. Gilligan had thrown away his knife and gunand was rushing unarmed through the crowd, tears streaming down hisface. "For God's sake, Houston, " he cried, "don't say another word and forgiveme my cowardly intention. " From that time to his death Tom Gilligan was Houston's devoted friend. General Houston voted against the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, and as aconsequence lost his seat in the Senate. It was thought, and freelysaid, that for good and all he was down and out. He went home andannounced himself a candidate for governor of Texas. The campaign that followed was of unexampled bitterness. The secessionwave was already mounting high. Houston was an uncompromising Unionist. His defeat was generally expected. But there was no beating such a manin a fair and square contest before the people. When the votes werecounted he led his competitor by a big majority. As governor he refusedtwo years later to sign the ordinance of secession and was deposed fromoffice by force. He died before the end of the war which so signallyvindicated his wisdom and verified his forecast. III Stephen Arnold Douglas was the Charles James Fox of American politics. He was not a gambler as Fox was. But he went the other gaits and waspossessed of a sweetness of disposition which made him, like Fox, lovedwhere he was personally known. No one could resist the _bonhomie_ ofDouglas. They are not all Puritans in New England. Catch a Yankee off his base, quite away from home, and he can be as gay as anybody. Boston andCharleston were in high party times nearest alike of any two Americancities. Douglas was a Green Mountain boy. He was born in Vermont. As SeargentPrentiss had done he migrated beyond the Alleghanies before he came ofage, settling in Illinois as Prentiss had settled in Mississippi, togrow into a typical Westerner as Prentiss into a typical Southerner. There was never a more absurd theory than that, begot of sectionalaims and the sectional spirit, which proposed a geographic alignment ofCavalier and Puritan. When sectionalism had brought a kindred people toblows over the institution of African slavery there were Puritans whofought on the Southern side and Cavaliers who fought on the Northernside. What was Stonewall Jackson but a Puritan? What were Custer, Stoneman and Kearny but Cavaliers? Wadsworth was as absolute anaristocrat as Hampton. In the old days before the war of sections the South was full of typicalSoutherners of Northern birth. John A. Quitman, who went from New York, and Robert J. Walker, who went from Pennsylvania to Mississippi; JamesH. Hammond, whose father, a teacher, went from Massachusetts to SouthCarolina. John Slidell, born and bred in New York, was thirty yearsold when he went to Louisiana. Albert Sidney Johnston, the roseand expectancy of the young Confederacy--the most typical of rebelsoldiers--had not a drop of Southern blood in his veins, born inKentucky a few months after his father and mother had arrived there fromConnecticut. The list might be extended indefinitely. Climate, which has something to do with temperament, has not so much todo with character as is often imagined. All of us are more or lessthe creatures of environment. In the South after a fashion the duelloflourished. Because it had not flourished in the North there rose anotion that the Northerners would not fight. It proved to those whothought it a costly mistake. Down to the actual secession of 1860-61 the issue of issues--the issuebehind all issues--was the preservation of the Union. Between 1820 and1850, by a series of compromises, largely the work of Mr. Clay, itsthreatened disruption had been averted. The Kansas-Nebraska Bill put asore strain upon conservative elements North and South. The Whig Partywent to pieces. Mr. Clay passed from the scene. Had he lived untilthe presidential election of 1852 he would have given his support toFranklin Pierce, as Daniel Webster did. Mr. Buchanan was not a GeneralJackson. Judge Douglas, who sought to play the rôle of Mr. Clay, was toolate. The secession leaders held the whip hand in the Gulf States. SouthCarolina was to have her will at last. Crash came the shot in CharlestonHarbor and the fall of Sumter. Curiously enough two persons of Kentuckybirth--Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis--led the rival hosts of warinto which an untenable and indefensible system of slave labor, forwhich the two sections were equally responsible, had precipitated anunwilling people. Had Judge Douglas lived he would have been Mr. Lincoln's main reliancein Congress. As a debater his resources and prowess were rarely equaledand never surpassed. His personality, whether in debate or privateconversation, was attractive in the highest degree. He possessed a full, melodious voice, convincing fervor and ready wit. He had married for his second wife the reigning belle of the NationalCapital, a great-niece of Mrs. Madison, whose very natural ambitionsquickened and spurred his own. It was fated otherwise. Like Clay, Webster, Calhoun and Blaine he was tobe denied the Presidency. The White House was barred to him. He was notyet fifty when he died. Tidings of his death took the country by surprise. But already thesectional battle was on and it produced only a momentary impression, tobe soon forgotten amid the overwhelming tumult of events. He has lain inhis grave now nearly sixty years. Upon the legislation of his time hisname was writ first in water and then in blood. He received less thanhis desert in life and the historic record has scarcely done justice tohis merit. He was as great a party leader as Clay. He could hold his ownin debate with Webster and Calhoun. He died a very poor man, though hisopportunity for enrichment by perfectly legitimate means were many. Itis enough to say that he lacked the business instinct and set no valueupon money; scrupulously upright in his official dealing; holding hissenatorial duties above all price and beyond the suspicion of dirt. Touching a matter which involved a certain outlay in the winter of 1861, he laughingly said to me: "I haven't the wherewithal to pay for a bottleof whisky and shall have to borrow of Arnold Harris the wherewithal totake me home. " His wife was a glorious creature. Early one morning calling at theirhome to see Judge Douglas I was ushered into the library, where she wasengaged setting things to rights. My entrance took her by surprise. Ihad often seen her in full ballroom regalia and in becoming out-of-doorcostume, but as, in gingham gown and white apron, she turned, a littlestartled by my sudden appearance, smiles and blushes in spite ofherself, I thought I had never seen any woman so beautiful before. Shemarried again--the lover whom gossip said she had thrown over to marryJudge Douglas--and the story went that her second marriage was not veryhappy. IV In the midsummer of 1859 the burning question among the newsmen ofWashington was the Central American Mission. England and France haddisplayed activity in that quarter and it was deemed important that theUnited States should sit up and take notice. An Isthmian canal was beingconsidered. Speculation was rife whom Mr. Buchanan would send to represent us. Thepress gang of the National Capital was all at sea. There was scarcely aDemocratic leader of national prominence whose name was not mentionedin that connection, though speculation from day to day eddied round Mr. James S. Rollins, of Missouri, an especial friend of the President and amost accomplished public man. At the height of excitement I happened to be in the library of the StateDepartment. I was on a step-ladder in quest of a book when I heard amessenger say to the librarian: "The President is in the Secretary'sroom and wants to have Mr. Dimitry come there right away. " Aninspiration shot through me like a flash. They had chosen AlexanderDimitry for the Central American Mission. He was the official translator of the Department of State. Thoughan able and learned man he was not in the line of preferment. He waswithout political standing or backing of any sort. At first blush a moreunlikely, impossible appointment could hardly be suggested. But--so onthe instant I reasoned--he was peculiarly fitted in his own person forthe post in question. Though of Greek origin he looked like a Spaniard. He spoke the Spanish language fluently. He had the procedure of theState Department at his finger's ends. He was the head of a charmingdomestic fabric--his daughters the prettiest girls in Washington. Whynot? I climbed down from my stepladder and made tracks for the office of theafternoon newspaper for which I was doing all-round work. I was barelyon time, the last forms being locked when I got there. I had theeditorial page opened and inserted at the top of the leading column adouble-leaded paragraph announcing that the agony was over--that theGordian knot was cut--that Alexander Dimitry had been selected as EnvoyExtraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Central AmericanStates. It proved a veritable sensation as well as a notable scoop. To increasemy glory the correspondents of the New York dailies scouted it. But ina day or two it was officially confirmed. General Cass, the Secretaryof State, sent for me, having learned that I had been in the departmentabout the time of the consultation between the President, himself andMr. Dimitry. "How did you get this?" he asked rather sharply. "Out of my inner consciousness, " I answered with flippant familiarity. "Didn't you know that I have what they call second sight?" The old gentleman laughed amiably. "It would seem so, " he said, and sentme about my business without further inquiry. V In the National Capital the winter of 1860-61 was both stormy andnebulous. Parties were at sea. The Northerners in Congress had learnedthe trick of bullying from the Southerners. In the Senate, Chandler wasa match for Toombs; and in the House, Thaddeus Stevens for Keitt andLamar. All of them, more or less, were playing a game. If sectional war, which was incessantly threatened by the two extremes, had been keenlyrealized and seriously considered it might have been averted. Very fewbelieved that it would come to actual war. A convention of Border State men, over which ex-President John Tylerpresided, was held in Washington. It might as well have been held atthe North Pole. Moderate men were brushed aside, their counsels whistleddown the wind. There was a group of Senators, headed by Wigfall ofTexas, who meant disunion and war, and another group, headed by Seward, Hale and Chase, who had been goaded up to this. Reading contemporaryhistory and, seeing the high-mightiness with which the Germans beganwhat we conceive their raid upon humanity, we are wont to regard itas evidence of incredible stupidity, whereas it was, in point of fact, rather a miscalculation of forces. That was the error of the secessionleaders. They refused to count the cost. Yancey firmly believed thatEngland would be forced to intervene. The mills of Lancashire he thoughtcould not get on without Southern cotton. He was sent abroad. He foundEurope solid against slavery and therefore set against the Confederacy. He came home with what is called a broken heart--the dreams of alifetime shattered--and, in a kind of dazed stupor, laid himself down todie. With Richmond in flames and the exultant shouts of the detested yetvictorious Yankees in his ears, he did die. Wigfall survived but a few years. He was less a dreamer than Yancey. A man big of brain and warm of heart he had gone from the ironcladprovincialism of South Carolina to the windswept vagaries of Texas. Hebelieved wholly the Yancey confession of faith; that secession was aconstitutional right; that African slavery was ordained of God; that theSouth was paramount, the North inferior. Yet in worldly knowledge he hadlearned more than Yancey--was an abler man than Jefferson Davis--andbut for his affections and generous habits he would have made a largerfigure in the war, having led the South's exit from the Senate. VI I do not think that either Hammond or Chestnut, the Senators fromSouth Carolina, both men of parts, had at bottom much belief in thepracticability of the Confederate movement. Neither had the Senatorsfrom Arkansas and Alabama, nor Brown, of Mississippi, the colleague ofJefferson Davis. Mason, of Virginia, a dogged old donkey, and Iverson, of Georgia, another, were the kind of men whom Wigfall dominated. One of the least confident of those who looked on and afterward fell inline was the Vice President, John C. Breckenridge, of Kentucky. Hewas the Beau Sabreur among statesmen as Albert Sidney Johnston, amongsoldiers. Never man handsomer in person or more winning in manners. Sprung from a race of political aristocrats, he was born to earlyand shining success in public life. Of moderate opinions, winning andprudent, wherever he appeared he carried his audience with him. He hadbeen elected on the ticket with Buchanan to the second office underthe Government, when he was but five and thirty years of age. There wasnothing for him to gain from a division of the Union; the Presidency, perhaps, if the Union continued undivided. But he could not resist theonrush of disunionism, went with the South, which he served first in thefield and later as Confederate Secretary of War, and after a few yearsof self-imposed exile in Europe returned to Kentucky to die at four andfifty, a defeated and disappointed old man. The adjoining state of Tennessee was represented in the Senate by one ofthe most problematic characters in American history. With my father, whoremained his friend through life, he had entered the state legislaturein 1835, and having served ten years in the lower House of Congress, andfour years as governor of Tennessee he came back in 1857 to the NationalCapital, a member of the Upper House. He was Andrew Johnson. I knew him from my childhood. Thrice that I can recall I saw him weep;never did I see him laugh. Life had been very serious, albeit verysuccessful, to him. Of unknown parentage, the wife he had married beforehe was one and twenty had taught him to read. Yet at six and twentyhe was in the Tennessee General Assembly and at four and thirty inCongress. There was from first to last not a little about him to baffleconjecture. I should call him a cross between Jack Cade and Aaron Burr. His sympathies were easily stirred by rags in distress. But he wasuncompromising in his detestation of the rich. It was said that hehated "a biled shirt. " He would have nothing to do "with people who worebroadcloth, " though he carefully dressed himself. When, as governor ofTennessee, he came to Nashville he refused many invitations to take hisfirst New Year's dinner with a party of toughs at the house of a riverroustabout. There was nothing of the tough about him, however. His language wascareful and exact. I never heard him utter an oath or tell a risquéstory. He passed quite fifteen years in Washington, a total abstainerfrom the use of intoxicants. He fell into the occasional-drink habitduring the dark days of the War. But after some costly experience hedropped it and continued a total abstainer to the end of his days. He had, indeed, admirable self-control. I do not believe a moreconscientious man ever lived. His judgments were sometimes peculiar, butthey were upright and sincere, having reasons, which he could give withpower and effect, behind them. Yet was he a born politician, crafty toa degree, and always successful, relying upon a popular following whichnever failed him. In 1860 he supported the quasi-secession Breckenridge and LanePresidential ticket, but in 1861 he stood true to the Union, retaininghis seat in the Senate until he was appointed military governor ofTennessee. Nominated for Vice President on the ticket with Lincoln, in1864, he was elected, and upon the assassination of Lincoln succeeded tothe Presidency. Having served out his term as President he returned toTennessee to engage in the hottest kind of politics, and though at theoutset defeated finally regained his seat in the Senate of the UnitedStates. He hated Grant with a holy hate. His first act on reëntering the Senatewas to deliver an implacably bitter speech against the President. Itwas his last public appearance. He went thence to his home in EastTennessee, gratified and happy, to die in a few weeks. VII There used to be a story about Raleigh, in North Carolina, where AndrewJohnson was born, which whispered that he was a natural son of WilliamRuffin, an eminent jurist in the earlier years of the nineteenthcentury. It was analogous to the story that Lincoln was the natural sonof various paternities from time to time assigned to him. I had my sharein running that calumny to cover. It was a lie out of whole cloth withnothing whatever to support or excuse it. I reached the bottom of it todiscover proof of its baselessness abundant and conclusive. In Johnson'scase I take it that the story had nothing other to rest on than theobscurity of his birth and the quality of his talents. Late in lifeJohnson went to Raleigh and caused to be erected a modest tablet overthe spot pointed out as the grave of his progenitor, saying, I was toldby persons claiming to have been present, "I place this stone over thelast earthly abode of my alleged father. " Johnson, in the saying of the countryside, "out-married himself. " Hiswife was a plain woman, but came of good family. One day, when a child, so the legend ran, she saw passing through the Greenville street inwhich her people lived, a woman, a boy and a cow, the boy carrying apack over his shoulder. They were obviously weary and hungry. Extremepoverty could present no sadder picture. "Mother, " cried the girl, "there goes the man I am going to marry. " She was thought to be in jest. But a few years later she made her banter good and lived to see herhusband President of the United States and with him to occupy the WhiteHouse at Washington. Much has been written of the humble birth and iron fortune of AbrahamLincoln. He had no such obstacles to overcome as either Andrew Jacksonor Andrew Johnson. Jackson, a prisoner of war, was liberated, a ladof sixteen, from the British pen at Charleston, without a relative, afriend or a dollar in the world, having to make his way upward throughthe most aristocratic community of the country and the time. Johnson, equally friendless and penniless, started as a poor tailor in a rusticvillage. Lincoln must therefore, take third place among our self-madePresidents. The Hanks family were not paupers. He had a wise and helpfulstepmother. He was scarcely worse off than most young fellows of hisneighborhood, first in Indiana and then in Illinois. On this sidejustice has never been rendered to Jackson and Johnson. In the case ofJackson the circumstance was forgotten, while Johnson too often dweltupon it and made capital out of it. Under date of the 23rd of May, 1919, the Hon. Josephus Daniels, Secretary of the Navy, writes me the following letter, which I violateno confidence in reproducing in this connection: MY DEAR MARSE HENRY:-- I can't tell you how much delight and pleasure your reminiscences in theSaturday Evening Post have given me, as well as the many others who havefollowed them, and I suppose you will put them in a volume when they arefinished, so that we may have the pleasure of reading them in connectedorder. As you know, I live in Raleigh and I was very much interested in yourarticle in the issue of April 5, 1919, with reference to Andrew Johnson, in which you quote a story that "used to be current in Raleigh, thathe was the son of William Ruffin, an eminent jurist of the ninetenthcentury. " I had never heard this story, but the story that was gossipedthere was that he was the son of a certain Senator Haywood. I ran thatstory down and found that it had no foundation whatever, because if hehad been the son of the Senator reputed to be his father, the Senatorwas of the age of twelve years when Andrew Johnson was born. My own information is, for I have made some investigation of it, thatthe story about Andrew Johnson's having a father other than the husbandof his mother, is as wanting in foundation as the story about AbrahamLincoln. You did a great service in running that down and exposingit, and I trust before you finish your book that you will make furtherinvestigation and be able to do a like service in repudiating theunjust, idle gossip with reference to Andrew Johnson. In your articleyou say that persons who claim to have been present when Johnson cameto Raleigh and erected a monument over the grave of his father, declarethat Johnson said he placed this stone over the last earthly abode of"my alleged father. " That is one phase of the gossip, and the other isthat he said "my reputed father, " both equally false. The late Mr. Pulaski Cowper, who was private secretary to GovernorBragg, of our State, just prior to the war, and who was afterwardspresident of our leading life insurance company, a gentleman of highcharacter, and of the best memory, was present at the time that Johnsonmade the address from which you quote the rumor. Mr. Cowper wrote anarticle for The News and Observer, giving the story and relating thatJohnson said that "he was glad to come to Raleigh to erect a tablet tohis father. " The truth is that while his father was a man of little orno education, he held the position of janitor at the State Capitol, andhe was not wanting in qualities which made him superior to his humbleposition. If he had been living in this day he would have been given alifesaving medal, for upon the occasion of a picnic near Raleigh whenthe cry came that children were drowning he was the first to leap in andendanger his life to save them. Andrew Johnson's mother was related to the Chappell family, of whichthere are a number of citizens of standing and character near Raleigh, several of them having been ministers of the Gospel, and one at leasthaving gained distinction as a missionary in China. I am writing you because I know that your story will be read andaccepted and I thought you would be glad to have this story, based upona study and investigation and personal knowledge of Mr. Cowper, whosecharacter and competency are well known in North Carolina. Chapter the Seventh An Old Newspaper Rookery--Reactionary Sectionalism in Cincinnati and Louisville--_The Courier-Journal_ I My dream of wealth through my commission on the Confederate cotton I wasto sell to English buyers was quickly shattered. The cotton was burnedand I found myself in the early spring of 1865 in the little villageof Glendale, a suburb of Cincinnati, where the future Justice StanleyMatthews had his home. His wife was a younger sister of my mother. Mygrandmother was still alive and lived with her daughter and son-in-law. I was received with open arms. A few days later the dear old lady saidto me: "I suppose, my son, you are rather a picked bird after youradventures in the South. You certainly need better clothing. I have somemoney in bank and it is freely yours. " I knew that my Uncle Stanley had put her up to this, and out of sheercuriosity I asked her how much she could let me have. She named whatseemed to me a stupendous sum. I thanked her, told her I had quite asufficiency for the time being, slipped into town and pawned mywatch; that is, as I made light of it afterward in order to escape thehumiliation of borrowing from an uncle whose politics I did not approve, I went with my collateral to an uncle who had no politics at all andgot fifty dollars on it! Before the money was gone I had found, throughJudge Matthews, congenial work. There was in Cincinnati but one afternoon newspaper--the EveningTimes--owned by Calvin W. Starbuck. He had been a practical printer butwas grown very rich. He received me kindly, said the editorial force wasquite full--must always be, on a daily newspaper--"but, " he added, "mybrother, Alexander Starbuck, who has been running the amusements, wantsto go a-fishing in Canada--to be gone a month--and, if you wish, you canduring his absence sub for him. " It was just to my hand and liking. Before Alexander Starbuck returnedthe leading editor of the paper fell from a ferryboat crossing the OhioRiver and was drowned. The next day General Starbuck sent for me andoffered me the vacant place. "Why, general, " I said, "I am an outlawed man: I do not agree with yourpolitics. I do not see how I can undertake a place so conspicuous andresponsible. " He replied: "I propose to engage you as an editorial manager. It is asif building a house you should be head carpenter, I the architect. Thedifference in salary will be seventy-five dollars a week against fifteendollars a week. " I took the place. II The office of the Evening Times was a queer old curiosity shop. I set toand turned it inside out. I had very pronounced journalistic notionsof my own and applied them in every department of the sleepy oldmoney-maker. One afternoon a week later I put forth a paper whose oldestreader could not have recognized it. The next morning'sCincinnati Commercial contained a flock of paragraphs to which theChattanooga-Cincinnati-Rebel Evening Times furnished the keynote. They made funny reading, but they threw a dangerous flare upon my "past"and put me at a serious disadvantage. It happened that when Artemus Wardhad been in town a fortnight before he gave me a dinner and had some ofhis friends to meet me. Among these was a young fellow of the name ofHalstead, who, I was told, was the coming man on the Commercial. Round to the Commercial office I sped, and being conducted to thisperson, who received me very blandly, I said: "Mr. Halstead, I am ajourneyman day laborer in your city--the merest bird of passage, withmy watch at the pawnbroker's. As soon as I am able to get out of town Imean to go--and I came to ask if you can think the personal allusions tome in to-day's paper, which may lose me my job but can nowise hurt theTimes, are quite fair--even--since I am without defense--quite manly. " He looked at me with that quizzical, serio-comic stare which sobecame him, and with great heartiness replied: "No--they were damnedmean--though I did not realize how mean. The mark was so obvious andtempting I could not resist, but--there shall be no more of them. Come, let us go and have a drink. " That was the beginning of a friendship which brought happiness to bothof us and lasted nearly half a century, to the hour of his death, when, going from Louisville to Cincinnati, I helped to lay him away in SpringGrove Cemetery. I had no thought of remaining in Cincinnati. My objective was Nashville, where the young woman who was to become my wife, and whom I had not seenfor nearly two years, was living with her family. During the summer Mr. Francisco, the business manager of the Evening Times, had a scheme tobuy the Toledo Commercial, in conjunction with Mr. Comly, of Columbus, and to engage me as editor conjointly with Mr. Harrison Gray Otis aspublisher. It looked very good. Toledo threatened Cleveland and Detroitas a lake port. But nothing could divert me. As soon as Parson Brownlow, who was governor of Tennessee and making things lively for the returningrebels, would allow, I was going to Nashville. About the time the way was cleared my two pals, or bunkies, of theConfederacy, Albert Roberts and George Purvis, friends from boyhood, putin an appearance. They were on their way to the capital of Tennessee. The father of Albert Roberts was chief owner of the Republican Banner, an old and highly respectable newspaper, which had for nearly fouryears lain in a state of suspension. Their plan now was to revive itspublication, Purvis to be business manager, and Albert and I to beeditors. We had no cash. Nobody on our side of the line had any cash. But John Roberts owned a farm he could mortgage for money enough tostart us. What had I to say? Less than a week later saw us back at home winnowing the town forsubscribers and advertising. We divided it into districts, each taking aspecified territory. The way we boys hustled was a sight to see. But theway the community warmed to us was another. When the familiar headline, The Republican Banner, made its appearance there was a popularhallelujah, albeit there were five other dailies ahead of us. A yearlater there was only one, and it was nowise a competitor. Albert Roberts had left his girl, Edith Scott, the niece of Huxley, whomI have before mentioned, in Montgomery, Alabama. Purvis' girl, SophieSearcy, was in Selma. Their hope was to have enough money by Christmaseach to pay a visit to those distant places. My girl was on the spot, and we had resolved, money or no money, to be married without delay. Before New Year's the three of us were wedded and comfortably settled, with funds galore, for the paper had thrived consumingly. It had thrivedso consumingly that after a little I was able to achieve the wish of myheart and to go to London, taking my wife and my "great American novel"with me. I have related elsewhere what came of this and what happened tome. III That bread cast upon the waters--"'dough' put out at usance, " as JosephJefferson used to phrase it--shall return after many days has beenI dare say discovered by most persons who have perpetrated acts ofkindness, conscious or unconscious. There was a poor, broken-downEnglish actor with a passion for Chaucer, whom I was wont to encounterin the Library of Congress. His voice was quite gone. Now and again Ihad him join me in a square meal. Once in a while I paid his room rent. I was loath to leave him when the break came in 1861, though he declaredhe had "expectations, " and made sure he would not starve. I was passing through Regent Street in London, when a smart broughamdrove up to the curb and a wheezy voice called after me. It was my oldfriend, Newton. His "expectations" had not failed him, he had come intoa property and was living in affluence. He knew London as only a Bohemian native and to the manner born couldknow it. His sense of bygone obligation knew no bounds. Between him andJohn Mahoney and Artemus Ward I was made at home in what might be calledthe mysteries and eccentricities of differing phases of life in theBritish metropolis not commonly accessible to the foreign casual. Inmany after visits this familiar knowledge has served me well. But Newtondid not live to know of some good fortune that came to me and to feelmy gratitude to him, as dear old John Mahoney did. When I was next inLondon he was gone. It was not, however, the actor, Newton, whom I had in mind in offeringa bread-upon-the-water moral, but a certain John Hatcher, the memory ofwhom in my case illustrates it much better. He was a wit and a poet. Hehad been State Librarian of Tennessee. Nothing could keep him out ofthe service, though he was a sad cripple and wholly unequal to itsrequirements. He fell ill. I had the opportunity to care for him. Whenthe war was over his old friend, George D. Prentice, called him toLouisville to take an editorial place on the Journal. About the same time Mr. Walter Haldeman returned from the South andresumed the suspended publication of the Louisville Courier. He was inthe prime of life, a man of surpassing energy, enterprise and industry, and had with him the popular sympathy. Mr. Prentice was nearly threescore and ten. The stream had passed him by. The Journal was not onlybeginning to feel the strain but was losing ground. In this emergencyHatcher came to the rescue. I was just back from London and was doingnoticeable work on the Nashville Banner. "Here is your man, " said Hatcher to Mr. Prentice and Mr. Henderson, theowners of the Journal; and I was invited to come to Louisville. After I had looked over the field and inspected the Journal's books Iwas satisfied that a union with the Courier was the wisest solution ofthe newspaper situation, and told them so. Meanwhile Mr. Haldeman, whomI had known in the Confederacy, sent for me. He offered me the sameterms for part ownership and sole editorship of the Courier, which theJournal people had offered me. This I could not accept, but proposed asan alternative the consolidation of the two on an equal basis. He waswilling enough for the consolidation, but not on equal terms. There wasnothing for it but a fight. I took the Journal and began to hammer theCourier. A dead summer was before us, but Mr. Henderson had plenty of moneyand was willing to spend it. During the contest not an unkind word wasprinted on either side. After stripping the Journal to its heels ithad very little to go on or to show for what had once been a prosperousbusiness. But circulation flowed in. From eighteen hundred daily itquickly mounted to ten thousand; from fifteen hundred weekly to fiftythousand. The middle of October it looked as if we had a straight roadbefore us. But I knew better. I had discovered that the field, no matter howworked, was not big enough to support two rival dailies. There wastoward the last of October on the edge of town a real-estate sale whichMr. Haldeman and I attended. Here was my chance for a play. I must havebid up to a hundred thousand dollars and did actually buy nearly tenthousand dollars of the lots put up at auction, relying upon some moneypresently coming to my wife. I could see that it made an impression on Mr. Haldeman. Returning in thecarriage which had brought us out I said: "Mr. Haldeman, I am going toruin you. But I am going to run up a money obligation to Isham HendersonI shall never be able to discharge. You need an editor. I need apublisher. Let us put these two newspapers together, buy the Democrat, and, instead of cutting one another's throats, go after Cincinnati andSt. Louis. You will recall that I proposed this to you in the beginning. What is the matter with it now?" Nothing was the matter with it. He agreed at once. The details were soonadjusted. Ten days later there appeared upon the doorsteps of the cityin place of the three familiar visitors, a double-headed stranger, calling itself the Courier-Journal. Our exclusive possession of thefield thus acquired lasted two years. At the end of these we found thatat least the appearance of competition was indispensable and willinglyaccepted an offer from a proposed Republican organ for a division of thePress dispatches which we controlled. Then and there the real prosperityof the Courier-Journal began, the paper having made no money out of itsmonopoly. IV Reconstruction, as it was called--ruin were a fitter name for it--hadjust begun. The South was imprisoned, awaiting the executioner. TheConstitution of the United States hung in the balance. The Federal Unionfaced the threat of sectional despotism. The spirit of the time wasmartial law. The gospel of proscription ruled in Congress. Radicalism, vitalized by the murder of Abraham Lincoln and inflamed by theinadequate effort of Andrew Johnson to carry out the policies ofLincoln, was in the saddle riding furiously toward a carpetbag Polandand a negroized Ireland. The Democratic Party, which, had it been stronger, might haveinterposed, lay helpless. It, too, was crushed to earth. Even theBorder States, which had not been embraced by the military agenciesand federalized machinery erected over the Gulf States, were seriouslymenaced. Never did newspaper enterprise set out under gloomier auspices. There was a party of reaction in Kentucky, claiming to be Democratic, playing to the lead of the party of repression at the North. It refusedto admit that the head of the South was in the lion's mouth and thatthe first essential was to get it out. The Courier-Journal proposed tostroke the mane, not twist the tail of the lion. Thus it stood betweentwo fires. There arose a not unnatural distrust of the journalisticmonopoly created by the consolidation of the three former dailies intoa single newspaper, carrying an unfamiliar hyphenated headline. Touchingits policy of sectional conciliation it picked its way perilouslythrough the cross currents of public opinion. There was scarcelya sinister purpose that was not alleged against it by its enemies;scarcely a hostile device that was not undertaken to put it down anddrive it out. Its constituency represented an unknown quantity. In any event it had tobe created. Meanwhile, it must rely upon its own resources, sustainedby the courage of the venture, by the integrity of its convictions andaims, and by faith in the future of the city, the state and the country. Still, to be precise, it was the morning of Sunday, November 8, 1868. The night before the good people of Louisville had gone to bed expectingnothing unusual to happen. They awoke to encounter an uninvited guestarrived a little before the dawn. No hint of its coming had got abroad;and thus the surprise was the greater. Truth to say, it was not apleased surprise, because, as it flared before the eye of the startledcitizen in big Gothic letters, The Courier-Journal, there issued thencean aggressive self-confidence which affronted the _amour propre_ of thesleepy villagers. They were used to a very different style of newspaperapproach. Nor was the absence of a timorous demeanor its only offense. The Courierhad its partisans, the Journal and the Democrat had their friends. The trio stood as ancient landmarks, as recognized and familiarinstitutions. Here was a double-headed monster which, without saying"by your leave" or "blast your eyes" or any other politeness, had takenpossession of each man's doorstep, looking very like it had brought itsknitting and was come to stay. The Journal established by Mr. Prentice, the Courier by Mr. Haldeman andthe Democrat by Mr. Harney, had been according to the standards ofthose days successful newspapers. But the War of Sections had mademany changes. At its close new conditions appeared on every side. A revolution had come into the business and the spirit of Americanjournalism. In Louisville three daily newspapers had for a generation struggledfor the right of way. Yet Louisville was a city of the tenth or twelfthclass, having hardly enough patronage to sustain one daily newspaperof the first or second class. The idea of consolidating the three thuscontending to divide a patronage so insufficient, naturally suggesteditself during the years immediately succeeding the war. But it did nottake definite shape until 1868. Mr. Haldeman had returned from a somewhat picturesque and not altogetherprofitable pursuit of his "rights in the territories" and had resumedthe suspended publication of the Courier with encouraging prospects. Ihad succeeded Mr. Prentice in the editorship and part ownership of theJournal. Both Mr. Haldeman and I were newspaper men to the manner bornand bred; old and good friends; and after our rivalry of six monthsmaintained with activity on both sides, but without the publication ofan unkind word on either, a union of forces seemed exigent. To practicalmen the need of this was not a debatable question. All that was requiredwas an adjustment of the details. Beginning with the simple project ofjoining the Courier and the Journal, it ended by the purchase of theDemocrat, which it did not seem safe to leave outside. V The political conditions in Kentucky were anomalous. The RepublicanParty had not yet definitely taken root. Many of the rich old Whigs, whohad held to the Government--to save their slaves--resenting Lincoln'sEmancipation Proclamation, had turned Democrats. Most of thebefore-the-war Democrats had gone with the Confederacy. The party inpower called itself Democratic, but was in fact a body of reactionarynondescripts claiming to be Unionists and clinging, or pretending tocling, to the hard-and-fast prejudices of other days. The situation may be the better understood when I add that "negrotestimony"--the introduction to the courts of law of the newly madefreedmen as witnesses--barred by the state constitution, was the burningissue. A murder committed in the presence of a thousand negroes couldnot be lawfully proved in court. Everything from a toothbrush to a cakeof soap might be cited before a jury, but not a human being if his skinhappened to be black. [Illustration: Mr. Watterson's Editorial Staff in 1868, When the ThreeDaily Newspapers of Louisville Were United into the "_Courier-Journal_. "Mr. George D. Prentice and Mr. Watterson Are in the Center. ] To my mind this was monstrous. From my cradle I had detested slavery. The North will never know how many people at the South did so. I couldnot go with the Republican Party, however, because after the death ofAbraham Lincoln it had intrenched itself in the proscription of Southernmen. The attempt to form a third party had shown no strength and hadbroken down. There was nothing for me, and the Confederates who werewith me, but the ancient label of a Democracy worn by a riffraff ofopportunists, Jeffersonian principles having quite gone to seed. ButI proposed to lead and reform it, not to follow and fall in behindthe selfish and short-sighted time servers who thought the people hadlearned nothing and forgot nothing; and instant upon finding myselfin the saddle I sought to ride down the mass of ignorance which wasat least for the time being mainly what I had to look to for aconstituency. Mr. Prentice, who knew the lay of the ground better than I did, advisedagainst it. The personal risk counted for something. Very early inthe action I made a direct fighting issue, which--the combatinterdicted--gave me the opportunity to declare--with something of thebully in the tone--that I might not be able to hit a barn door atten paces, but could shoot with any man in Kentucky across a pockethandkerchief, holding myself at all times answerable and accessible. I had a fairly good fighting record in the army and it was not doubtedthat I meant what I said. But it proved a bitter, hard, uphill struggle, for a long while againstodds, before negro testimony was carried. A generation of politicianswere sent to the rear. Finally, in 1876, a Democratic State Conventionput its mark upon me as a Democrat by appointing me a Delegate at largeto the National Democratic Convention of that year called to meet at St. Louis to put a Presidential ticket in the field. The Courier-Journal having come to represent all three of the Englishdailies of the city the public began to rebel. It could not see thatinstead of three newspapers of the third or fourth class Louisville wasgiven one newspaper of the first class; that instead of dividing thelocal patronage in three inadequate portions, wasted upon a triplecompetition, this patronage was combined, enabling the one newspaper toengage in a more equal competition with the newspapers of such rivaland larger cities as Cincinnati and St. Louis; and that one of thecontracting parties needing an editor, the other a publisher, in comingtogether the two were able to put their trained faculties to the bestaccount. Nevertheless, during thirty-five years Mr. Haldeman and I labored sideby side, not the least difference having arisen between us. The attacksto which we were subjected from time to time drew us together thecloser. These attacks were sometimes irritating and sometimes comical, but they had one characteristic feature: Each started out apparentlyunder a high state of excitement. Each seemed to have some profoundcause of grief, to be animated by implacable hate and to aim at nothingshort of annihilation. Frequently the assailants would lie in wait tosee how the Courier-Journal's cat was going to jump, in order that theymight take the other side; and invariably, even if the Courier-Journalstood for the reforms they affected to stand for, they began a system ofmisrepresentation and abuse. In no instance did they attain any success. Only once, during the Free Silver craze of 1896, and the dark and tragicdays that followed it the three or four succeeding years, the paperhaving stood, as it had stood during the Greenback craze, for soundmoney, was the property in danger. It cost more of labor and patienceto save it from destruction than it had cost to create it thirty yearsbefore. Happily Mr. Haldeman lived to see the rescue complete, the tideturned and the future safe. VI A newspaper, like a woman, must not only be honest, but must seem to behonest; acts of levity, loose unbecoming expressions or behavior--thoughnever so innocent--tending in the one and in the other to lowerreputation and discredit character. During my career I have proceededunder a confident belief in this principle of newspaper ethics and anunfailing recognition of its mandates. I truly believe that next afterbusiness integrity in newspaper management comes disinterestedness inthe public service, and next after disinterestedness come moderation andintelligence, cleanliness and good feeling, in dealing with affairs andits readers. From that blessed Sunday morning, November 8, 1868, to this good day, Ihave known no other life and had no other aim. Those were indeed parloustimes. It was an era of transition. Upon the field of battle, after fouryears of deadly but unequal combat, the North had vanquished the South. The victor stood like a giant, with blood aflame, eyes dilate and handsuplifted again to strike. The victim lay prostrate. Save self-respectand manhood all was lost. Clasping its memories to its bosom the Southsank helpless amid the wreck of its fortunes, whilst the North, thebenign influence of the great Lincoln withdrawn, proceeded to decide itsfate. To this ghastly end had come slavery and secession, and all thepomp, pride and circumstance of the Confederacy. To this bitter end hadcome the soldiership of Lee and Jackson and Johnston and the myriads ofbrave men who followed them. The single Constitutional barrier that had stood between the people ofthe stricken section and political extinction was about to be removed bythe exit of Andrew Johnson from the White House. In his place a manof blood and iron--for such was the estimate at that time placed uponGrant--had been elected President. The Republicans in Congress, checkedfor a time by Johnson, were at length to have entire sway under ThaddeusStevens. Reconstruction was to be thorough and merciless. To meet theseconditions was the first requirement of the Courier-Journal, a newspaperconducted by outlawed rebels and published on the sectional border line. The task was not an easy one. There is never a cause so weak that it does not stir into ill-timedactivity some wild, unpractical zealots who imagine it strong. Thereis never a cause so just but that the malevolent and the mercenary willseek to trade upon it. The South was helpless; the one thing needful wasto get it on its feet, and though the bravest and the wisest saw thisplainly enough there came to the front--particularly in Kentucky--asmall but noisy body of politicians who had only worked themselvesinto a state of war when it was too late, and who with more or less ofaggression, insisted that "the states lately in rebellion" still hadrights, which they were able to maintain and which the North could beforced to respect. I was of a different opinion. It seemed to me that whatever of rightmight exist the South was at the mercy of the North; that the radicalparty led by Stevens and Wade dominated the North and could dictate itsown terms; and that the shortest way round lay in that course which wasbest calculated to disarm radicalism by an intelligent appeal to thebusiness interests and conservative elements of Northern society, supported by a domestic policy of justice alike to whites and blacks. Though the institution of African slavery was gone the negro continuedthe subject of savage contention. I urged that he be taken out of thearena of agitation, and my way of taking him out was to concede him hislegal and civil rights. The lately ratified Constitutional Amendments, I contended, were the real Treaty of Peace between the North and South. The recognition of these Amendments in good faith by the white people ofthe South was indispensable to that perfect peace which was desiredby the best people of both sections. The political emancipation of theblacks was essential to the moral emancipation of the whites. With thedisappearance of the negro question as cause of agitation, I argued, radicalism of the intense, proscriptive sort would die out; theliberty-loving, patriotic people of the North would assert themselves;and, this one obstacle to a better understanding removed, therestoration of Constitutional Government would follow, being a matter ofmomentous concern to the body of the people both North and South. Such a policy of conciliation suited the Southern extremists as littleas it suited the Northern extremists. It took from the politicians theirbest card. South no less than North, "the bloody shirt" was trumps. Itcould always be played. It was easy to play it and it never failedto catch the unthinking and to arouse the excitable. What cared theperennial candidate so he got votes enough? What cared the professionalagitator so his appeals to passion brought him his audience? It is a fact that until Lamar delivered his eulogy on Sumner not aSouthern man of prominence used language calculated to placate theNorth, and between Lamar and Grady there was an interval of fifteenyears. There was not a Democratic press worthy the name either North orSouth. During those evil days the Courier-Journal stood alone, havingno party or organized following. At length it was joined on the Northernside by Greeley. Then Schurz raised his mighty voice. Then came thegreat liberal movement of 1871-72, with its brilliant but ill-starredcampaign and its tragic finale; and then there set in what, for aseason, seemed the deluge. But the cause of Constitutional Government was not dead. It had beenmerely dormant. Champions began to appear in unexpected quarters. Newmen spoke up, North and South. In spite of the Republican landslide of1872, in 1874 the Democrats swept the Empire State. They carried thepopular branch of Congress by an overwhelming majority. In the Senatethey had a respectable minority, with Thurman and Bayard to lead it. Inthe House Randall and Kerr and Cox, Lamar, Beck and Knott were aboutto be reënforced by Hill and Tucker and Mills and Gibson. The logic ofevents was at length subduing the rodomontade of soap-box oratory. Empty rant was to yield to reason. For all its mischances and melancholyending the Greeley campaign had shortened the distance across the bloodychasm. Chapter the Eighth Feminism and Woman Suffrage--The Adventures in Politics and Society--A Real Heroine I It would not be the writer of this narrative if he did not interjectcertain opinions of his own which parties and politicians, even hisnewspaper colleagues, have been wont to regard as peculiar. By commonrepute he has been an all-round old-line Democrat of the regulationsort. Yet on the three leading national questions of the last fiftyyears--the Negro question, the Greenback question and the Free Silverquestion--he has challenged and antagonized the general direction ofthat party. He takes some pride to himself that in each instance theresult vindicated alike his forecast and his insubordination. To one who witnessed the break-up of the Whig party in 1853 and of theDemocratic Party in 1860 the plight in which parties find themselves atthis time may be described as at least, suggestive. The feeling is atonce to laugh and to whistle. Too much "fuss and feathers" in WinfieldScott did the business for the Whigs. Too much "bearded lady" in CharlesEvans Hughes perhaps cooked the goose of the Republicans. Too muchWilson--but let me not fall into _lèse majesté_. The Whigs went intoKnow-Nothingism and Free Soilism. Will the Democrats go into Prohibitionand paternalism? And the Republicans-- The old sectional alignment of North and South has been changed to Eastand West. For the time being the politicians of both parties are in something of afunk. It is the nature of parties thus situate to fancy that there isno hereafter, riding in their dire confusion headlong for a fall. Littleother than the labels being left, nobody can tell what will happen toeither. Progressivism seems the cant of the indifferent. Accentuated by theindecisive vote in the elections and heralded by an ambitious Presidentwho writes Humanity bigger than he writes the United States, and isaccused of aspiring to world leadership, democracy unterrified andundefiled--the democracy of Jefferson, Jackson and Tilden ancienthistory--has become a back number. Yet our officials still swear to aConstitution. We have not eliminated state lines. State rights are notwholly dead. The fight between capital and labor is on. No one can predict where itwill end. Shall it prove another irrepressible conflict? Are its issuesirreconcilable? Must the alternative of the future lie between Socialismand Civil War, or both? Progress! Progress! Shall there be nostability in either actualities or principles? And--and--what about theBolsheviki? II Parties, like men, have their ups and downs. Like machines they get outof whack and line. First it was the Federalists, then the Whigs, andthen the Democrats. Then came the Republicans. And then, after a longinterruption, the Democrats again. English political experience repeatsitself in America. A taking label is as valuable to a party as it is to a nostrum. Itbecomes in time an asset. We are told that a fool is born every minute, and, the average man being something of a fool, the label easily catcheshim. Hence the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. The old Whig Party went to pieces on the rocks of sectionalism. Theinstitution of African slavery arrived upon the scene at length as theparamount political issue. The North, which brought the Africans herein its ships, finding slave labor unprofitable, sold its slaves to theSouth at a good price, and turned pious. The South took the bait andwent crazy. Finally, we had a pretty kettle of fish. Just as the Prohibitionists aregoing to convert mortals into angels overnight by act of assembly--orstill better, by Constitutional amendment--were the short-haired womenand the long-haired men of Boston going to make a white man out of theblack man by Abolition. The Southern Whigs could not see it and wouldnot stand for it. So they fell in behind the Democrats. The NorthernWhigs, having nowhere else to go, joined the Republicans. The wise men of both sections saw danger ahead. The North was warnedthat the South would fight, the South, that if it did it went againstincredible odds. Neither would take the warning. Party spirit ranwild. Extremism had its fling. Thus a long, bloody and costly Warof Sections--a fraternal war if ever there was one--brought on byalternating intolerance, the politicians of both sides gambling upon thecredulity and ignorance of the people. Hindsight is readier, certainly surer, than foresight. It comes easierand shows clearer. Anybody can now see that the slavery problem mighthave had a less ruinous solution; that the moral issue might have beencompromised from time to time and in the end disposed of. Slave laboreven at the South had shown itself illusory, costly and clumsy. Theinstitution untenable, modern thought against it, from the first it wasdoomed. But the extremists would not have it. Each played to the lead of theother. Whilst Wendell Phillips was preaching the equality of races, death to the slaveholders and the brotherhood of man at the North, William Lowndes Yancey was exclaiming that cotton was king at the South, and, to establish these false propositions, millions of good Americansproceeded to cut one another's throats. There were agitators and agitators in those days as there are in these. The agitator, like the poor, we have always with us. It used to be saideven at the North that Wendell Phillips was just a clever comedian. William Lowndes Yancey was scarcely that. He was a serious, sincere, untraveled provincial, possessing unusual gifts of oratory. He had themisfortune to kill a friend in a duel when a young man, and the tragedyshadowed his life. He clung to his plantation and rarely went away fromhome. When sent to Europe by the South as its Ambassador in 1861, hediscovered the futility of his scheme of a Southern confederacy, and, seeing the cornerstone of the philosophy on which he had constructed hispretty fabric, overthrown, he came home despairing, to die of a brokenheart. The moral alike for governments and men is: Keep the middle of the road. III Which brings us to Feminism. I will not write Woman Suffrage, for thatis an accomplished fact--for good or evil we shall presently be betterable to determine. Life is an adventure and all of us adventurers--saving that the wordpresses somewhat harder upon the woman than the man--most things do infact, whereby she is given greater endurance--leaving to men the dutyof caring for the women; and, if need be, looking death squarely anddefiantly in the face. The world often puts the artificial before the actual; but underthe dispensation of the Christian civilization--derived from theHebraic--the family requiring a head, headship is assigned to the male. This male is commonly not much to speak of for beauty of form or decencyof behavior. He is made purposely tough for work and fight. He getstoughened by outer contact. But back of all are the women, the childrenand the home. I have been fighting the woman's battle for equality in the thingsthat count, all my life. I would despise myself if I had not been. Incontesting precipitate universal suffrage for women, I conceived that Iwas still fighting the woman's battle. We can escape none of Nature's laws. But we need not handicap ourselveswith artificial laws. At best, life is an experiment, Death the finaladventure. Feminism seems to me its next of kin; still we may not callthe woman who assails the soap boxes--even those that antic about theWhite House gates--by the opprobrious terms of adventuress. Where such aone is not a lunatic she is a nuisance. There are women and women. We may leave out of account the shady ladies of history. Neither Aspasianor Lucrezia Borgia nor the Marquise de Brinvilliers could with accuracybe called an adventuress. The term is of later date. Its origin andgrowth have arisen out of the complexities of modern society. In fiction Milady and Madame Marneffe come in for first honors--ineach the leopard crossed on the serpent and united under a petticoat, beautiful and wicked--but since the Balzac and Dumas days thestory-tellers and stage-mongers have made exceeding free with thetype, and we have between Herman Merivale's Stephanie de Mohrivartand Victorien Sardou's Zica a very theater--or shall we say a charnelhouse--of the woman with the past; usually portrayed as the victim ofcircumstance; unprincipled through cruel experience; insensible throughlack of conscience; sexless in soul, but a siren in seductive arts; coldas ice; hard as iron; implacable as the grave, pursuing her ends withforce of will, intellectual audacity and elegance of manner, yet, beneath this brilliant depravity, capable of self-pity, yielding anonin moments of depression to a sudden gleam of human tenderness and acertain regret for the innocence she has lost. Such a one is sometimes, though seldom, met in real life. But manypretenders may be encountered at Monte Carlo and other European resorts. They range from the Parisian cocotte, signalized by her chic apparel, to the fashionable divorcée who in trying her luck at the tables keepsa sharp lookout for the elderly gent with the wad, often fooled by theenterprising sport who has been there before. These are out and out professional adventuresses. There are otheradventuresses, however, than those of the story and the stage, thecasino and the cabaret. The woman with the past becomes the girl withthe future. Curiously enough this latter is mainly, almost exclusively, recruitedfrom our countrywomen, who to an abnormal passion for foreign titlesjoin surpassing ignorance of foreign society. Thus she is ready tothe hand of the Continental fortune seeker masquerading as anobleman--occasionally but not often the black sheep of some noblefamily--carrying not a bona fide but a courtesy title--the count andthe no-account, the lord and the Lord knows who! The Yankee girl with a_dot_ had become before the world war a regular quarry for impecuniousaristocrats and clever crooks, the matrimonial results tragic in theirfrequency and squalor. Another curious circumstance is the readiness with which the Americannewspaper tumbles to these frauds. The yellow press especiallyluxuriates in them; woodcuts the callow bedizened bride, the jadedgame-worn groom; dilates upon the big money interchanged; glows over thetin-plate stars and imaginary garters and pinchbeck crowns; and keepingthe pictorial paraphernalia in cold but not forgotten storage waits forthe inevitable scandal, and then, with lavish exaggeration, works theold story over again. These newspapers ring all the sensational changes. Now it is thewondrous beauty with the cool million, who, having married someillegitimate of a minor royal house, will probably be the next Queenof Rigmarolia, and now--ever increasing the dose--it is theten-million-dollar widow who is going to marry the King of Pontarabia'sbrother, and may thus aspire to be one day Empress of Sahara. Old European travelers can recall many funny and sometimes melancholyincidents--episodes--histories--of which they have witnessed thebeginning and the end, carrying the self-same dénouement and lesson. IV As there are women and women there are many kinds of adventuresses;not all of them wicked and detestable. But, good or bad, the lot ofthe adventuress is at best a hard lot. Be she a girl with a future or awoman with a past she is still a woman, and the world can never be tookind to its women--the child bearers, the home makers, the moral lightof the universe as they meet the purpose of God and Nature and seek notto thwart it by unsexing themselves in order that they may keep stepwith man in ways of self-indulgent dalliance. The adventuress of fictionalways comes to grief. But the adventuress in real life--the prudentadventuress who draws the line at adultery--the would-be leader ofsociety without the wealth--the would-be political leader without themasculine fiber--is sure of disappointment in the end. Take the agitation over Suffragism. What is it that the womansuffragette expects to get? No one of them can, or does, clearly tellus. It is feminism, rather than suffragism, which is dangerous. Now thatthey have it, my fear is that the leaders will not stop with the ballotfor women. They are too fond of the spotlight. It has become a necessityfor them. If all women should fall in with them there would be nothingof womanhood left, and the world bereft of its women will become amasculine harlotocracy. Let me repeat that I have been fighting woman's battles in one way andanother all my life. I am not opposed to Votes for Women. But I woulddiscriminate and educate, and even at that rate I would limit thefranchise to actual taxpayers, and, outside of these, confine it tocharities, corrections and schools, keeping woman away from the dirt ofpolitics. I do not believe the ballot will benefit woman and cannot helpthinking that in seeking unlimited and precipitate suffrage the womenwho favor it are off their reckoning! I doubt the performances got upto exploit it, though somehow, when the hikers started from New York toAlbany, and afterward from New York to Washington, the inspiring thoughtof Bertha von Hillern came back to me. I am sure the reader never heard of her. As it makes a pretty story letme tell it. Many years ago--don't ask me how many--there was a youngwoman, Bertha von Hillern by name, a poor art student seeking moneyenough to take her abroad, who engaged with the management of a hall inLouisville to walk one hundred miles around a fixed track in twenty-fourconsecutive hours. She did it. Her share of the gate money, I was told, amounted to three thousand dollars. I shall never forget the closing scenes of the wondrous test of courageand endurance. She was a pretty, fair-haired thing, a trifle undersized, but shapely and sinewy. The vast crowd that without much diminution, though with intermittent changes, had watched her from start to finish, began to grow tense with the approach to the end, and the last hour theenthusiasm was overwhelming. Wave upon wave of cheering followed everyfootstep of the plucky girl, rising to a storm of exultation as thefinal lap was reached. More dead than alive, but game to the core, the little heroine wascarried off the field, a winner, every heart throbbing with humansympathy, every eye wet with proud and happy tears. It is not possibleadequately to describe all that happened. One must have been there andseen it fully to comprehend the glory of it. Touching the recent Albany and Washington hikes and hikers let me sayat once that I cannot approve the cause of Votes for women as I hadapproved the cause of Bertha von Hillern. Where she showed heroic, mostof the suffragettes appear to me grotesque. Where her aim was rational, their aim has been visionary. To me the younger of them seem as childrenwho need to be spanked and kissed. There has been indeed about the wholeSuffrage business something pitiful and comic. Often I have felt like swearing "You idiots!" and then like crying"Poor dears!" But I have kept on with them, and had I been in Albany orWashington I would have caught Rosalie Jones in my arms, and before shecould say "Jack Robinson" have exclaimed: "You ridiculous child, go andget a bath and put on some pretty clothes and come and join us at dinnerin the State Banquet Hall, duly made and provided for you and the restof you delightful sillies. " Chapter the Ninth Dr. Norvin Green--Joseph Pulitzer--Chester A. Arthur--General Grant--The Case of Fitz-John Porter I Truth we are told is stranger than fiction. I have found it so in theknowledge which has variously come to me of many interesting men andwomen. Of these Dr. Norvin Green was a striking example. To have sprungfrom humble parentage in the wilds of Kentucky and to die at the headof the most potential corporation in the world--to have held this placeagainst all comers by force of abilities deemed indispensable to itswelfare--to have gone the while his ain gait, disdaining the preceptsof Doctor Franklin--who, by the way, did not trouble overmuch to followthem himself--seems so unusual as to rival the most stirring stories ofthe novel mongers. When I first met Doctor Green he was president of a Kentucky railwaycompany. He had been, however, one of the organizers of the WesternUnion Telegraph Company. He deluded himself for a little by politicalambitions. He wanted to go to the Senate of the United States, andduring a legislative session of prolonged balloting at Frankfort hemissed his election by a single vote. It may be doubted whether he would have cut a considerable figure atWashington. His talents were constructive rather than declamatory. Hewas called to a greater field--though he never thought it so--and wasforemost among those who developed the telegraph system of the countryalmost from its infancy. He possessed the daring of the typicalKentuckian, with the dead calm of the stoic philosopher; imperturbable;never vexed or querulous or excited; denying himself none of theindulgences of the gentleman of leisure. We grew to be constant comradesand friends, and when he returned to New York to take the important postwhich to the end of his days he filled so completely his office in theWestern Union Building became my downtown headquarters. There I met Jay Gould familiarly; and resumed acquaintance with RussellSage, whom I had known when a lad in Washington, he a hayseed member ofCongress; and occasionally other of the Wall Street leaders. In a smallway--though not for long--I caught the stock-gambling fever. But Iwas on the "inside, " and it was a cold day when I did not "clean up" agoodly amount to waste uptown in the evening. I may say that I gavethis over through sheer disgust of acquiring so much and such easy anduseless money, for, having no natural love of money--no aptitude formaking money breed--no taste for getting it except to spend it--earningby my own accustomed and fruitful toil always a sufficiency--thedistractions and dissipations it brought to my annual vacations andoccasional visits, affronted in a way my self-respect, and palled uponmy rather eager quest of pleasure. Money is purely relative. The root ofall evil, too. Too much of it may bring ills as great as not enough. At the outset of my stock-gambling experience I was one day in theoffice of President Edward H. Green, of the Louisville and NashvilleRailway, no relation of Dr. Norvin Green, but the husband of the famousHetty Green. He said to me, "How are you in stocks?" "What do you mean?" said I. "Why, " he said, "do you buy long, or short? Are you lucky or unlucky?" "You are talking Greek to me, " I answered. "Didn't you ever put up any money on a margin?" "Never. " "Bless me! You are a virgin. I want to try your luck. Look over thisstock list and pick a stock. I will take a crack at it. All I make we'lldivide, and all we lose I'll pay. " "Will you leave this open for an hour or two?" "What is the matter with it--is it not liberal enough?" "The matter is that I am going over to the Western Union to lunch. TheGould party is to sit in with the Orton-Green party for the first timeafter their fight, and I am asked especially to be there. I may pick upsomething. " Big Green, as he was called, paused a moment reflectively. "I don'twant any tip--especially from that bunch, " said he. "I want to try yourvirgin luck. But, go ahead, and let me know this afternoon. " At luncheon I sat at Doctor Green's right, Jay Gould at his left. Forthe first and last time in its history wine was served at this board;Russell Sage was effusive in his demonstrations of affection and went onwith his stories of my boyhood; every one sought to take the chill offthe occasion; and we had a most enjoyable time instead of what promisedto be rather a frosty formality. When the rest had departed, leavingDoctor Green, Mr. Gould and myself at table, mindful of what I had comefor, in a bantering way I said to Doctor Green: "Now that I am a WallStreet ingénu, why don't you tell me something?" Gould leaned across the table and said in his velvet voice: "Buy TexasPacific. " Two or three days after, Texas Pacific fell off sixty points or more. I did not see Big Green again. Five or six months later I received fromhim a statement of account which I could never have unraveled, with acheck for some thousands of dollars, my one-half profit on such and suchan operation. Texas Pacific had come back again. Two or three years later I sat at Doctor Green's table with Mr. Gould, just as we had sat the first day. Mr. Gould recalled the circumstance. "I did not think I could afford to have you lose on my suggestion andI went to cover your loss, when I found five thousand shares of TexasPacific transferred on the books of the company in your name. I knewthese could not be yours. I thought the buyer was none other than theman I was after, and I began hammering the stock. I have been curiousever since to make sure whether I was right. " "Whom did you suspect, Mr. Gould?" I asked. "My suspect was Victor Newcomb, " he replied. I then told him what had happened. "Dear, dear, " he cried. "Ned Green!Big Green. Well, well! You do surprise me. I would rather have done hima favor than an injury. I am rejoiced to learn that no harm was done andthat, after all, you and he came out ahead. " It was about this time Jay Gould had bought of the Thomas A. Scottestate a New York daily newspaper which, in spite of brilliantwriters like Manton Marble and William Henry Hurlbut, had never beena moneymaker. This was the _World_. He offered me the editorship withforty-nine of the hundred shares of stock on very easy terms, whichnowise tempted me. But two or three years after, I daresay both wearyand hopeless of putting up so much money on an unyielding investment, hewas willing to sell outright, and Joseph Pulitzer became the purchaser. His career is another illustration of the saying that truth is strangerthan fiction. II Joseph Pulitzer and I came together familiarly at the Liberal RepublicanConvention, which met at Cincinnati in 1872--the convocation of cranks, as it was called--and nominated Horace Greeley for President. He wasa delegate from Missouri. Subsequent events threw us much together. Hebegan his English newspaper experience after a kind of apprenticeship ona German daily with Stilson Hutchins, another interesting character ofthose days. It was from Stilson Hutchins that I learned something ofPulitzer's origin and beginnings, for he never spoke much of himself. According to this story he was the offspring of a runaway marriagebetween a subaltern officer in the Austrian service and a Hungarian ladyof noble birth. In some way he had got across the Atlantic, and being inBoston, a wizened youth not speaking a word of English, he was spiritedon board a warship. Watching his chance of escape he leaped overboardin the darkness of night, though it was the dead of winter, and swamashore. He was found unconscious on the beach by some charitablepersons, who cared for him. Thence he tramped it to St. Louis, where heheard there was a German colony, and found work on a coal barge. It was here that the journalistic instinct dawned upon him. He began tocarry river news items to the Westliche Post, which presently took himon its staff of regular reporters. The rest was easy. He learned to speak and write English, wastransferred to the paper of which Hutchins was the head, and before hewas five-and-twenty became a local figure. When he turned up in New York with an offer to purchase the World we metas old friends. During the interval between 1872 and 1883 we had hada runabout in Europe and I was able to render him assistance in thepurchase proceeding he was having with Gould. When this was completed hesaid to me: "You are at entire leisure; you are worse than that, you arewasting your time about the clubs and watering places, doing no goodfor yourself, or anybody else. I must first devote myself to thereorganization of the business end of it. Here is a blank check. Fill itfor whatever amount you please and it will be honored. I want you to goupstairs and organize my editorial force for me. " Indignantly I replied: "Go to the devil--you have not moneyenough--there is not money enough in the universe--to buy an hour of myseason's loaf. " A year later I found him occupying with his family a splendid mansion upthe Hudson, with a great stable of carriages and horses, living like acountry gentleman, going to the World office about time for luncheon andcoming away in the early afternoon. I passed a week-end with him. To meit seemed the precursor of ruin. His second payment was yet to be made. Had I been in his place I would have been taking my meals in an adjacenthotel, sleeping on a cot in one of the editorial rooms and workingfifteen hours out of the twenty-four. To me it seemed dollars todoughnuts that he would break down and go to smash. But he didnot--another case of destiny. I was abiding with my family at Monte Carlo, when in his floatingpalace, the Liberty, he came into the harbor of Mentone. Then he boughta shore palace at Cap Martin. That season, and the next two or threeseasons, we made voyages together from one end to the other of theMediterranean, visiting the islands, especially Corsica and Elba, shrines of Napoleon whom he greatly admired. He was a model host. He had surrounded himself with every luxury, including some agreeable retainers, and lived like a prince aboard. Hisblindness had already overtaken him. Other physical ailments assailedhim. But no word of complaint escaped his lips and he rarely failed tosit at the head of his table. It was both splendid and pitiful. Absolute authority made Pulitzer a tyrant. He regarded his newspaperownership as an autocracy. There was nothing gentle in his domination, nor, I might say, generous either. He seriously lacked the sense ofhumor, and even among his familiars could never take a joke. His loveof money was by no means inordinate. He spent it freely though notwastefully or joyously, for the possession of it rather flattered hisvanity than made occasion for pleasure. Ability of varying kinds anddegrees he had, a veritable genius for journalism and a real capacityfor affection. He held his friends at good account and liked to havethem about him. During the early days of his success he was disposed tooverindulgence, not to say conviviality. He was fond of Rhine wines andan excellent judge of them, keeping a varied assortment always at hand. Once, upon the Liberty, he observed that I preferred a certain vintage. "You like this wine?" he said inquiringly. I assented, and he said, "Ihave a lot of it at home, and when I get back I will send you some. " Ihad quite forgotten when, many months after, there came to me a cratecontaining enough to last me a life-time. He had a retentive memory and rarely forgot anything. I could recallmany pleasurable incidents of our prolonged and varied intimacy. We wereone day wandering about the Montmartre region of Paris when we cameinto a hole-in-the-wall where they were playing a piece called "LesBrigands. " It was melodrama to the very marrow of the bones of theApaches that gathered and glared about. In those days, the "indemnity"paid and the "military occupation" withdrawn, everything Frenchpre-figured hatred of the German, and be sure "Les Brigands" madethe most of this; each "brigand" a beer-guzzling Teuton; each heroa dare-devil Gaul; and, when Joan the Maid, heroine, sent Goetz vonBerlichingen, the Vandal Chieftain, sprawling in the saw-dust, there wasno end to the enthusiasm. "We are all 'brigands', " said Pulitzer as we came away, "differingaccording to individual character, to race and pursuit. Now, if I werewriting that play, I should represent the villain as a tyrannous CityEditor, meanly executing the orders of a niggardly proprietor. " "And the heroine?" I said. "She should be a beautiful and rich young lady, " he replied, "who buysthe newspaper and marries the cub--rescuing genius from poverty andpersecution. " He was not then the owner of the World. He had not created thePost-Dispatch, or even met the beautiful woman who became his wife. Hewas a youngster of five or six and twenty, revisiting the scenes of hisboyhood on the beautiful blue Danube, and taking in Paris for a lark. III I first met General Grant in my own house. I had often been invitedto his house. As far back as 1870 John Russell Young, a friend fromboyhood, came with an invitation to pass the week-end as the President'sguest at Long Branch. Many of my friends had cottages there. Ofafternoons and evenings they played an infinitesimal game of draw poker. "John, " my answer was, "I don't dare to do so. I know that I shall fallin love with General Grant. We are living in rough times--particularlyin rough party times. We have a rough presidential campaign ahead of us. If I go down to the seashore and go in swimming and play penny-ante withGeneral Grant I shall not be able to do my duty. " It was thus that after the general had gone out of office and madethe famous journey round the world, and had come to visit relativesin Kentucky, that he accepted a dinner invitation from me, and I had anumber of his friends to meet him. Among these were Dr. Richardson, his early schoolmaster when the Grantfamily lived at Maysville, and Walter Haldeman, my business partner, aMaysville boy, who had been his schoolmate at the Richardson Academy, and General Cerro Gordo Williams, then one of Kentucky's Senators inCongress, and erst his comrade and chum when both were lieutenants inthe Mexican War. The bars were down, the windows were shut and therewas no end of hearty hilarity. Dr. Richardson had been mentioned byMr. Haldeman as "the only man that ever licked Grant, " and the generalpromptly retorted "he never licked me, " when the good old doctor said, "No, Ulysses, I never did--nor Walter, either--for you two were the bestboys in school. " I said "General Grant, why not give up this beastly politics, buy ablue-grass farm, and settle down to horse-raising and tobacco growing inKentucky?" And, quick as a flash--for both he and the company perceivedthat it was "a leading question"--he replied, "Before I can buy a farmin Kentucky I shall have to sell a farm in Missouri, " which left nothingfurther to be said. There was some sparring between him and General Williams over theiryouthful adventures. Finally General Williams, one of the readiest andmost amusing of talkers, returned one of General Grant's sallies with, "Anyhow, I know of a man whose life you took unknown to yourself. " Thenhe told of a race he and Grant had outside of Galapa in 1846. "Don'tyou remember, " he said, "that riding ahead of me you came upon a Mexicanloaded with a lot of milk cans piled above his head and that you knockedhim over as you swept by him?" "Yes, " said Grant, "I believed if I stopped or questioned or evendeflected it would lose me the race. I have not thought of it since. Butnow that you mention it I recall it distinctly. " "Well, " Williams continued, "you killed him. Your horse's hoof struckhim. When, seeing I was beaten, I rode back, his head was split wideopen. I did not tell you at the time because I knew it would cause youpain, and a dead greaser more or less made no difference. " Later on General Grant took desk room in Victor Newcomb's private officein New York. There I saw much of him, and we became good friends. He wasthe most interesting of men. Soldierlike--monosyllabic--in his officialand business dealings he threw aside all formality and reserve in hissocial intercourse, delightfully reminiscential, indeed a capital storyteller. I do not wonder that he had constant and disinterested friendswho loved him sincerely. IV It has always been my opinion that if Chester A. Arthur had been namedby the Republicans as their candidate in 1884 they would have carriedthe election, spite of what Mr. Blaine, who defeated Arthur in theconvention, had said and thought about the nomination of GeneralSherman. Arthur, like Grant, belonged to the category of lovable men inpublic life. There was a gallant captain in the army who had slapped his colonel inthe face on parade. Morally, as man to man, he had the right of it. Butmilitary law is inexorable. The verdict was dismissal from the service. I went with the poor fellow's wife and her sister to see General Hancockat Governor's Island. It was a most affecting meeting--the general, tears rolling down his cheeks, taking them into his arms, and, when hecould speak, saying: "I can do nothing but hold up the action of thecourt till Monday. Your recourse is the President and a pardon; I willrecommend it, but"--putting his hand upon my shoulder--"here is the manto get the pardon if the President can be brought to see the case asmost of us see it. " At once I went over to Washington, taking Stephen French with me. Whenwe entered the President's apartment in the White House he advancedsmiling to greet us, saying: "I know what you boys are after; youmean--" "Yes, Mr. President, " I answered, "we do, and if ever--" "I have thought over it, sworn over it, and prayed over it, " he said, "and I am going to pardon him!" V Another illustrative incident happened during the Arthur Administration. The dismissal of Gen. Fitz-John Porter from the army had been thesubject of more or less acrimonious controversy. During nearly twodecades this had raged in army circles. At length the friends of Porter, led by Curtin and Slocum, succeeded in passing a relief measure throughCongress. They were in ecstasies. That there might be a presidentialobjection had not crossed their minds. Senator McDonald, of Indiana, a near friend of General Porter, and a manof rare worldly wisdom, knew better. Without consulting them he came tome. "You are personally close to the President, " said he, "and you mustknow that if this bill gets to the White House he will veto it. With theRepublican National Convention directly ahead he is bound to veto it. Itmust not be allowed to get to him; and you are the man to stop it. Theywill listen to you and will not listen to me. " First of all, I went to the White House. "Mr. President, " I said, "I want you to authorize me to tell Curtin andSlocum not to send the Fitz-John Porter bill to you. " "Why?" he answered. "Because, " said I, "you will have to veto it; and, with theFrelinghuysens wild for it, as well as others of your nearest friends, Iam sure you don't want to be obliged to do that. With your word to me Ican stop it, and have it for the present at least held up. " His answer was, "Go ahead. " Then I went to the Capitol. Curtin and Slocum were in a state of mind. It was hard to make them understand or believe what I told them. "Now, gentlemen, " I continued, "I don't mean to argue the case. It isnot debatable. I am just from the White House, and I am authorized bythe President to say that if you send this bill to him he will veto it. " That, of course, settled it. They held it up. But after the presidentialelection it reached Arthur, and he did veto it. Not till Cleveland camein did Porter obtain his restoration. Curiously enough General Grant approved this. I had listened to thedebate in the House--especially the masterly speech of William WalterPhelps--without attaining a clear understanding of the many points atissue. I said as much to General Grant. "Why, " he replied, "the case is as simple as A, B, C. Let me show you. " Then, with a pencil he traced the Second Bull Run battlefield, thelocation of troops, both Federal and Confederate, and the exact passagein the action which had compromised General Porter. "If Porter had done what he was ordered to do, " he went on, "Pope andhis army would have been annihilated. In point of fact Porter savedPope's Army. " Then he paused and added: "I did not at the outset knowthis. I was for a time of a different opinion and on the other side. Itwas Longstreet's testimony--which had not been before the first Court ofInquiry that convicted Porter--which vindicated him and convinced me. " Chapter the Tenth Of Liars and Lying--Woman Suffrage and Feminism--The Professional Female--Parties, Politics, and Politicians in America I All is fair in love and war, the saying hath it. "Lord!" cried the mostdelightful of liars, "How this world is given to lying. " Yea, and howexigency quickens invention and promotes deceit. Just after the war of sections I was riding in a train with SamuelBowles, who took a great interest in things Southern. He had beenimpressed by a newspaper known as The Chattanooga Rebel and, as Ihad been its editor, put innumerable questions to me about it andits affairs. Among these he asked how great had been its circulation. Without explaining that often an entire company, in some cases an entireregiment, subscribed for a few copies, or a single copy, I answered: "Idon't know precisely, but somewhere near a hundred thousand, I take it. "Then he said: "Where did you get your press power?" This was, of course, a poser, but it did not embarrass me in the least. I was committed, and without a moment's thought I proceeded with animaginary explanation which he afterward declared had been altogethersatisfying. The story was too good to keep--maybe consciencepricked--and in a chummy talk later along I laughingly confessed. "You should tell that in your dinner speech tonight, " he said. "If youtell it as you have just told it to me, it will make a hit, " and I did. I give it as the opinion of a long life of experience and observationthat the newspaper press, whatever its delinquencies, is not a commonliar, but the most habitual of truth tellers. It is growing on itseditorial page I fear a little vapid and colorless. But there is ageneral and ever-present purpose to print the facts and give the publicthe opportunity to reach its own conclusions. There are liars and liars, lying and lying. It is, with a singleexception, the most universal and venial of human frailties. We have atleast three kinds of lying and species, or types, of liars--first, thecommon, ordinary, everyday liar, who lies without rime or reason, ruleor compass, aim, intent or interest, in whose mind the partition betweentruth and falsehood has fallen down; then the sensational, imaginativeliar, who has a tale to tell; and, finally, the mean, malicious liar, who would injure his neighbor. This last is, indeed, but rare. Human nature is at its base amicable, because if nothing hinders it wants to please. All of us, however, aremore or less its unconscious victims. Competition is not alone the life of trade; it is the life of life;for each of us is in one way, or another, competitive. There is but onedisinterested person in the world, the mother who whether of the humanor animal kingdom, will die for her young. Yet, after all, hers, too, isa kind of selfishness. The woman is becoming over much a professional female. It is ofimportance that we begin to consider her as a new species, havingenjoyed her beauty long enough. Is the world on the way to organicrevolution? If I were a young man I should not care to be the lover of aprofessional female. As an old man I have affectionate relations witha number of suffragettes, as they dare not deny; that is to say, I longago accepted woman suffrage as inevitable, whether for good or evil, depending upon whether the woman's movement is going to stop withsuffrage or run into feminism, changing the character of woman and herrelations to men and with man. II I have never made party differences the occasion of personal quarrelor estrangement. On the contrary, though I have been always calleda Democrat, I have many near and dear friends among the Republicans. Politics is not war. Politics would not be war even if the politicianswere consistent and honest. But there are among them so manychangelings, cheats and rogues. Then, in politics as elsewhere, circumstances alter cases. I have as arule thought very little of parties as parties, professional politiciansand party leaders, and I think less of them as I grow older. Thepolitician and the auctioneer might be described like the lunatic, the lover and the poet, as "of imagination all compact. " One sees moremares' nests than would fill a book; the other pure gold in pinchbeckwares; and both are out for gudgeons. It is the habit--nay, the business--of the party speaker when he mountsthe raging stump to roar his platitudes into the ears of those who havethe simplicity to listen, though neither edified nor enlightened; toaver that the horse he rides is sixteen feet high; that the candidate hesupports is a giant; and that he himself is no small figure of a man. Thus he resembles the auctioneer. But it is the mock auctioneer whomhe resembles; his stock in trade being largely, if not altogether, fraudulent. The success which at the outset of party welfare attendedthis legalized confidence game drew into it more and more players. Fora long time they deceived themselves almost as much as the voters. Theyhad not become professional. They were amateur. Many of them played forsheer love of the gamble. There were rules to regulate the play. But astime passed and voters multiplied, the popular preoccupation increasedthe temptations and opportunities for gain, inviting the enterprising, the skillful and the corrupt to reconstitute patriotism into a commodityand to organize public opinion into a bill of lading. Thus politics asa trade, parties as trademarks, the politicians, like harlots, plyingtheir vocation. Now and again an able, honest and brave man, who aims at better things, appears. In the event that fortune favors him and he attains highstation, he finds himself surrounded and thwarted by men less able andcourageous, who, however equal to discovering right from wrong, yet wearthe party collar, owe fealty to the party machine, are sometimes actualslaves of the party boss. In the larger towns we hear of the City Hallring; out in the counties of the Court House ring. We rarely anywhereencounter clean, responsible administration and pure, disinterested, public service. The taxpayers are robbed before their eyes. The evil grows greater aswe near the centers of population. But there is scarcely a village orhamlet where graft does not grow like weeds, the voters as gullibleand helpless as the infatuated victims of bunko tricks, ingeniouslycontrived by professional crooks to separate the fool and his money. Isself-government a failure? None of us would allow the votaries of the divine right of kings totell us so, albeit we are ready enough to admit the imperfections ofuniversal suffrage, too often committing affairs of pith and moment, even of life and death, to the arbitrament of the mob, and costing morein cash outlay than royal establishments. The quadrennial period in American politics, set apart and dedicatedto the election of presidents, magnifies these evil features in anotherwise admirable system of government. That the whipper-snappers ofthe vicinage should indulge their propensities comes as the order oftheir nature. But the party leaders are not far behind them. Each sideconstrues every occurrence as an argument in its favor, assuring itcertain victory. Take, for example, the latest state election anywhere. In point of fact, it foretold nothing. It threw no light upon comingevents, not even upon current events. It leaves the future as hazy asbefore. Yet the managers of either party affect to be equally confidentthat it presages the triumph of their ticket in the next nationalelection. The wonder is that so many of the voters will believe and beinfluenced by such transparent subterfuge. Is there any remedy for all this? I much fear that there is not. Government, like all else, is impossible of perfection. It is as manis--good, bad and indifferent; which is but another way of saying welive in a world of cross purposes. We in America prefer republicanism. But would despotism be so demurrable under a wise unselfish despot? III Contemplating the contrasts between foreign life and foreign historywith our own one cannot help reflecting upon the yet more startlingcontrasts of ancient and modern religion and government. I have wanderednot a little over Europe at irregular intervals for more thanfifty years. Always a devotee to American institutions, I have beenstrengthened in my beliefs by what I have encountered. The mood in our countrymen has been overmuch to belittle thingsAmerican. The commercial spirit in the United States, which affectsto be nationalistic, is in reality cosmopolitan. Money being its god, French money, English money, anything that calls itself money, is wealthto it. It has no time to waste on theories or to think of generics. "Putmoney in thy purse" has become its motto. Money constitutes the reasonof its being. The organic law of the land is Greek to it, as are thoselaws of God which obstruct it. It is too busy with its greed and gain tothink, or to feel, on any abstract subject. That which does not appealto it in the concrete is of no interest at all. Just as in the days of Charles V and Philip II, all things yielded tothe theologian's misconception of the spiritual life so in these daysof the Billionaires all things spiritual and abstract yield to what theycall the progress of the universe and the leading of the times. Undertheir rule we have had extraordinary movement just as under the lordsof the Palatinate and the Escurial--the medieval union of the devilsof bigotry and power--Europe, which was but another name for Spain, hadextraordinary movement. We know where it ended with Spain. Whither is itleading us? Are we traveling the same road? Let us hope not. Let us believe not. Yet, once strolling along throughthe crypt of the Church of the Escurial near Madrid, I could not repressthe idea of a personal and physical resemblance between the effigies inmarble and bronze looking down upon me whichever way I turned, to someof our contemporary public men and seeming to say: "My love to thePresident when you see him next, " and "Don't forget to remember mekindly, please, to the chairmen of both your national committees!" IV In a world of sin, disease and death--death inevitable--what may man doto drive out sin and cure disease, to the end that, barring accident, old age shall set the limit on mortal life? The quack doctor equally in ethics and in physics has played a leadingpart in human affairs. Only within a relatively brief period has sciencemade serious progress toward discovery. Though Nature has perhaps anantidote for all her poisons many of them continue to defy approach. They lie concealed, leaving the astutest to grope in the dark. That which is true of material things is truer yet of spiritual things. The ideal about which we hear so much, is as unattained as thefabled bag of gold at the end of the rainbow. Nor is the doctrine ofperfectability anywhere one with itself. It speaks in diverse tongues. Its processes and objects are variant. It seems but an iridescent dreamwhich lends itself equally to the fancies of the impracticable and thescheming of the self-seeking, breeding visionaries and pretenders. Easily assumed and asserted, too often it becomes tyrannous, dealingwith things outer and visible while taking little if any account of theinner lights of the soul. Thus it imposes upon credulity and ignorance;makes fakers of some and fanatics of others; in politics where notan engine of oppression, a corrupt influence; in religion where nota zealot, a promoter of cant. In short the self-appointed apostle ofuplift, who disregarding individual character would make virtue a matterof statute law and ordain uniformity of conduct by act of conventicle orassembly, is likelier to produce moral chaos than to reach the sublimestate he claims to seek. The bare suggestion is full of startling possibilities. Individualismwas the discovery of the fathers of the American Republic. It is thebedrock of our political philosophy. Human slavery was assuredly anindefensible institution. But the armed enforcement of freedom did notmake a black man a white man. Nor will the wave of fanaticism seeking tocontrol the food and drink and dress of the people make men better men. Danger lurks and is bound to come with the inevitable reaction. The levity of the men is recruited by the folly of the women. Theleaders of feminism would abolish sex. To what end? The pessimistanswers what easier than the demolition of a sexless world gone entirelymad? How simple the engineries of destruction. Civil war in America;universal hara-kiri in Europe; the dry rot of wealth wasting itselfin self-indulgence. Then a thousand years of total eclipse. FinallyMacaulay's Australian surveying the ruins of St. Paul's Cathedral froma broken parapet of London Bridge; and a Moslem conqueror of Americalooking from the hill of the Capitol at Washington upon the desolationof what was once the District of Columbia. Shall the end be an Orientalrenaissance with the philosophies of Buddha, Mohammed and Confuciuswelded into a new religion describing itself as the last word ofscience, reason and common sense? Alas, and alack the day! In those places where the suffering rich mostdo congregate the words of Watts' hymn have constant application: _For Satan finds some mischief still For idle hands to do. _ When they have not gone skylarking or grown tired of bridge they devotetheir leisure to organizing clubs other than those of the uplift. Thereare all sorts, from the Society for the Abrogation of Bathing Suits atthe seaside resorts to the League at Mewville for the Care of DisabledCats. Most of these clubs are all officers and no privates. That is whatmany of them are got up for. Do they advance the world in grace? One whosurveys the scene can scarcely think so. But the whirl goes on; the yachts sweep proudly out to sea; the autocars dash madly through the streets; more and darker and deeper do thecontrasts of life show themselves. How long shall it be when the mudsillmillions take the upper ten thousand by the throat and rend them asthe furiosos of the Terror in France did the aristocrats of the _RégimeAncien_? The issue between capital and labor, for example, is full ofgenerating heat and hate. Who shall say that, let loose in the crowdedcenters of population, it may not one day engulf us all? Is this rank pessimism or merely the vagaries of an old man droppingback into second childhood, who does not see that the world is wiserand better than ever it was, mankind and womankind, surely on the way toperfection? V One thing is certain: We are not standing still. Since "Adam delved andEve span"--if they ever did--in the Garden of Eden, "somewhere in Asia, "to the "goings on" in the Garden of the Gods directly under Pike'sPeak--the earth we inhabit has at no time and nowhere wanted forliveliness--but surely it was never livelier than it now is; as thespace-writer says, more "dramatic"; indeed, to quote the guidebooks, quite so "picturesque and interesting. " Go where one may, on land or sea, he will come upon activities of onesort and another. Were Timon of Athens living, he might be awakened fromhis misanthrophy and Jacques, the forest cynic, stirred to somethinglike enthusiasm. Is the world enduring the pangs of a second birth whichshall recreate all things anew, supplementing the miracles of moderninvention with a corresponding development of spiritual life; or hasit reached the top of the hill, and, mortal, like the human atoms thatcompose it, is it starting downward on the other side into an abysswhich the historians of the future will once again call "the dark ages?" We know not, and there is none to tell us. That which is actuallyhappening were unbelievable if we did not see it, from hour to hour, from day to day. Horror succeeding horror has in some sort blunted oursensibilities. Not only are our sympathies numbed by the immensity ofthe slaughter and the sorrow, but patriotism itself is chilled by theselfish thought that, having thus far measurably escaped, we may pullthrough without paying our share. This will account for a certainindifferentism we now and again encounter. At the moment we are felicitating ourselves--or, is it merely confusingourselves?--over the revolution in Russia. It seems of good augury. Tobegin with, for Russia. Then the murder war fairly won for the Allies, we are promised by the optimists a wise and lasting peace. The bells that rang out in Petrograd and Moscow sounded, we are told, the death knell of autocracy in Berlin and Vienna. The clarion tonesthat echoed through the Crimea and Siberia, albeit to the ear of themasses muffled in the Schwarzwald and along the shores of the NorthSea, and up and down the Danube and the Rhine, yet conveyed a whisperedmessage which may presently break into song; the glad song of freedomwith it glorious refrain: "The Romanoffs gone! Perdition having reachedthe Hohenzollerns and the Hapsburgs, all will be well!" Anyhow, freedom; self-government; for whilst a scrutinizing andsolicitous pessimism, observing and considering many abuses, administrative and political, federal and local, in our republicansystem--abuses which being very visible are most lamentable--maysometimes move us to lose heart of hope in democracy, we know of nonebetter. So, let us stand by it; pray for it; fight for it. Let us byour example show the Russians how to attain it. Let us by the same tokenshow the Germans how to attain it when they come to see, if they everdo, the havoc autocracy has made for Germany. That should constitute thebed rock of our politics and our religion. It is the true religion. Loveof country is love of God. Patriotism is religion. It is also Christianity. The pacifist, let me parenthetically observe, is scarcely a Christian. There be technical Christians and there beChristians. The technical Christian sees nothing but the blurred letterof the law, which he misconstrues. The Christian, animated by its holyspirit and led by its rightful interpretation, serves the Lord alike ofheaven and hosts when he flies the flag of his country and smites itsenemies hip and thigh! Chapter the Eleventh Andrew Johnson--The Liberal Convention in 1872--Carl Schurz--The "Quadrilateral"--Sam Bowles, Horace White and Murat Halstead--A Queer Composite of Incongruities I Among the many misconceptions and mischances that befell the slaveryagitation in the United States and finally led a kindred peopleinto actual war the idea that got afloat after this war that everyConfederate was a Secessionist best served the ends of the radicalismwhich sought to reduce the South to a conquered province, and as suchto reconstruct it by hostile legislation supported wherever needed byforce. Andrew Johnson very well understood that a great majority of the menwho were arrayed on the Southern side had taken the field against theirbetter judgment through pressure of circumstance. They were Union menwho had opposed secession and clung to the old order. Not merely inthe Border States did this class rule but in the Gulf States it held arespectable minority until the shot fired upon Sumter drew the call fortroops from Lincoln. The Secession leaders, who had staked their allupon the hazard, knew that to save their movement from collapse it wasnecessary that blood be sprinkled in the faces of the people. Hence themessage from Charleston: _With cannon, mortar and petard We tender you our Beauregard_-- with the response from Washington precipitating the conflict of theoriesinto a combat of arms for which neither party was prepared. The debate ended, battle at hand, Southern men had to choose between theNorth and the South, between their convictions and predilections on oneside and expatriation on the other side--resistance to invasion, notsecession, the issue. But four years later, when in 1865 all that theyhad believed and feared in 1861 had come to pass, these men required nodrastic measures to bring them to terms. Events more potent than acts ofCongress had already reconstructed them. Lincoln with a forecast ofthis had shaped his ends accordingly. Johnson, himself a Southern man, understood it even better than Lincoln, and backed by the legacy ofLincoln he proceeded not very skillfully to build upon it. The assassination of Lincoln, however, had played directly into thehands of the radicals, led by Ben Wade in the Senate and ThaddeusStevens in the House. Prior to that baleful night they had fallen behindthe marching van. The mad act of Booth put them upon their feet andbrought them to the front. They were implacable men, politicians equallyof resolution and ability. Events quickly succeeding favored them andtheir plans. It was not alone Johnson's lack of temper and tact thatgave them the whip hand. His removal from office would have openedthe door of the White House to Wade, so that strategically Johnson'sposition was from the beginning beleaguered and came perilously nearbefore the close to being untenable. Grant, a political nondescript, not Wade, the uncompromising extremist, came after; and inevitably four years of Grant had again divided thetriumphant Republicans. This was the situation during the winter of1871-72, when the approaching Presidential election brought the countryface to face with a most extraordinary state of affairs. The South wasin irons. The North was growing restive. Thinking people everywhere feltthat conditions so anomalous to our institutions could not and shouldnot endure. II Johnson had made a bungling attempt to carry out the policies of Lincolnand had gone down in the strife. The Democratic Party had reached theebb tide of its disastrous fortunes. It seemed the merest reactionary. A group of influential Republicans, dissatisfied for one cause and another with Grant, held a caucus andissued a call for what they described as a Liberal Republican Conventionto assemble in Cincinnati May 1, 1872. A Southern man and a Confederate soldier, a Democrat by convictionand inheritance, I had been making in Kentucky an uphill fight for theacceptance of the inevitable. The line of cleavage between the oldand the new South I had placed upon the last three amendments to theConstitution, naming them the Treaty of Peace between the Sections. The negro must be invested with the rights conferred upon him by theseamendments, however mistaken and injudicious the South might thinkthem. The obsolete Black Laws instituted during the slave régime must beremoved from the statute books. The negro, like Mohammed's coffin, swungin midair. He was neither fish, flesh nor fowl, nor good red herring. For our own sake we must habilitate him, educate and elevate him, makehim, if possible, a contented and useful citizen. Failing of this, freegovernment itself might be imperiled. I had behind me the intelligence of the Confederate soldiers almost toa man. They at least were tired of futile fighting, and to them the warwas over. But--and especially in Kentucky--there was an element thatwanted to fight when it was too late; old Union Democrats and UnionWhigs who clung to the hull of slavery when the kernel was gone, andproposed to win in politics what had been lost in battle. The leaders of this belated element were in complete control of thepolitical machinery of the state. They regarded me as an impudentupstart--since I had come to Kentucky from Tennessee--as little betterthan a carpet-bagger; and had done their uttermost to put me down anddrive me out. [Illustration: Abraham Lincoln in 1861 _From a Photograph by M B Brady_] I was a young fellow of two and thirty, of boundless optimism and myfull share of self-confidence, no end of physical endurance and mentalvitality, having some political as well as newspaper experience. Itnever crossed my fancy that I could fail. I met resistance with aggression, answered attempts at bullying withscorn, generally irradiated by laughter. Yet was I not wholly blind toconsequences and the admonitions of prudence; and when the call for aLiberal Republican Convention appeared I realized that if I expected toremain a Democrat in a Democratic community, and to influence and lead aDemocratic following, I must proceed warily. Though many of those proposing the new movement were familiaracquaintances--some of them personal friends--the scheme was in the air, as it were. Its three newspaper bellwethers--Samuel Bowles, Horace Whiteand Murat Halstead--were especially well known to me; so were HoraceGreeley, Carl Schurz and Charles Sumner, Stanley Matthews being mykinsman, George Hoadley and Cassius M. Clay next-door neighbors. Butthey were not the men I had trained with--not my "crowd"--and it was aquestion how far I might be able to reconcile myself, not to mentionmy political associates, to such company, even conceding that theyproceeded under good fortune with a good plan, offering the Southextrication from its woes and the Democratic Party an entering wedgeinto a solid and hitherto irresistible North. Nevertheless, I resolved to go a little in advance to Cincinnati, tohave a look at the stalking horse there to be displayed, free to take itor leave it as I liked, my bridges and lines of communication quite openand intact. III A livelier and more variegated omnium-gatherum was never assembled. Theyhad already begun to straggle in when I arrived. There were long-hairedand spectacled doctrinaires from New England, spliced by short-hairedand stumpy emissaries from New York--mostly friends of Horace Greeley, as it turned out. There were brisk Westerners from Chicago andSt. Louis. If Whitelaw Reid, who had come as Greeley's personalrepresentative, had his retinue, so had Horace White and Carl Schurz. There were a few rather overdressed persons from New Orleans brought upby Governor Warmouth, and a motely array of Southerners of everysort, who were ready to clutch at any straw that promised relief tointolerable conditions. The full contingent of Washington correspondentswas there, of course, with sharpened eyes and pens to make the most ofwhat they had already begun to christen a conclave of cranks. Bowles and Halstead met me at the station, and we drove to the St. Nicholas Hotel, where Schurz and White were awaiting us. Then andthere was organized a fellowship which in the succeeding campaign cuta considerable figure and went by the name of the Quadrilateral. Weresolved to limit the Presidential nominations of the convention toCharles Francis Adams, Bowles' candidate, and Lyman Trumbull, White'scandidate, omitting altogether, because of specific reasons urged byWhite, the candidacy of B. Gratz Brown, who because of his Kentuckyconnections had better suited my purpose. The very next day the secret was abroad, and Whitelaw Reid came to meto ask why in a newspaper combine of this sort the New York Tribune hadbeen left out. To my mind it seemed preposterous that it had been or should be, and Istated as much to my new colleagues. They offered objection which tome appeared perverse if not childish. They did not like Reid, to beginwith. He was not a principal like the rest of us, but a subordinate. Greeley was this, that and the other. He could never be relied uponin any coherent practical plan of campaign. To talk about him as acandidate was ridiculous. I listened rather impatiently and finally I said: "Now, gentlemen, inthis movement we shall need the New York Tribune. If we admit Reidwe clinch it. You will all agree that Greeley has no chance of anomination, and so by taking him in we both eat our cake and have it. " On this view of the case Reid was invited to join us, and that verynight he sat with us at the St. Nicholas, where from night tonight until the end we convened and went over the performances anddevelopments of the day and concerted plans for the morrow. As I recall these symposiums some amusing and some plaintive memoriesrise before me. The first serious business that engaged us was the killing of the boomfor Judge David Davis, of the Supreme Court, which was assuming definiteand formidable proportions. The preceding winter it had been incubatingat Washington under the ministration of some of the most astutepoliticians of the time, mainly, however, Democratic members ofCongress. A party of these had brought it to Cincinnati, opening headquarters wellprovided with the requisite commissaries. Every delegate who camein that could be reached was laid hold of and conducted to Davis'headquarters. We considered it flat burglary. It was a gross infringement upon ourcopyrights. What business had the professional politicians with a greatreform movement? The influence and dignity of journalism were at stake. The press was imperilled. We, its custodians, could brook no suchdeflection, not to say defiance, from intermeddling office seekers, especially from broken-down Democratic office seekers. The inner sanctuary of our proceedings was a common drawing-room betweentwo bedchambers, occupied by Schurz and myself. Here we repaired aftersupper to smoke the pipe of fraternity and reform, and to save thecountry. What might be done to kill off "D. Davis, " as we irreverentlycalled the eminent and learned jurist, the friend of Lincoln and theonly aspirant having a "bar'l"? That was the question. We addressedourselves to the task with earnest purpose, but characteristically. Thepower of the press must be invoked. It was our chief if not our onlyweapon. Seated at the same table each of us indited a leading editorialfor his paper, to be wired to its destination and printed next morning, striking D. Davis at a prearranged and varying angle. Copies of thesewere made for Halstead, who having with the rest of us read and comparedthe different scrolls indited one of his own in general commentationand review for Cincinnati consumption. In next day's Commercial, blazingunder vivid headlines, these leading editorials, dated "Chicago" and"New York, " "Springfield, Mass. , " and "Louisville, Ky. , " appeared withthe explaining line "The Tribune of to-morrow morning will say--" "TheCourier-Journal--and the Republican--will say to-morrow morning--" Wondrous consensus of public opinion! The Davis boom went down beforeit. The Davis boomers were paralyzed. The earth seemed to have risen andhit them midships. The incoming delegates were arrested and forewarned. Six months of adroit scheming was set at naught, and little more washeard of "D. Davis. " We were, like the Mousquetaires, equally in for fighting andfoot-racing, the point with us being to get there, no matter how; theend--the defeat of the rascally machine politicians and the reform ofthe public service--justifying the means. I am writing this nearly fiftyyears after the event and must be forgiven the fling of my wisdom at myown expense and that of my associates in harmless crime. Some ten years ago I wrote: "Reid and White and I the sole survivors;Reid a great Ambassador, White and I the virtuous ones, still able tosit up and take notice, with three meals a day for which we arethankful and able to pay; no one of us recalcitrant. We were whollyserious--maybe a trifle visionary, but as upright and patriotic in ourintentions and as loyal to our engagements as it was possible for olderand maybe better men to be. For my part I must say that if I have neveranything on my conscience worse than the massacre of that not veryedifying yet promising combine I shall be troubled by no remorse, but tothe end shall sleep soundly and well. " Alas, I am not the sole survivor. In this connection an amusing incidentthrowing some light upon the period thrusts itself upon my memory. TheQuadrilateral, including Reid, had just finished its consolidationof public opinion before related, when the cards of Judge Craddock, chairman of the Kentucky Democratic Committee, and of Col. StoddardJohnston, editor of the Frankfort Yeoman, the organ of the KentuckyDemocracy, were brought from below. They had come to look after me--thatwas evident. By no chance could they find me in more equivocal company. In addition to ourselves--bad enough, from the Kentucky point ofview--Theodore Tilton, Donn Piatt and David A. Wells were in the room. When the Kentuckians crossed the threshold and were presented seriatimthe face of each was a study. Even a proper and immediate application ofwhisky and water did not suffice to restore their lost equilibrium andbring them to their usual state of convivial self-possession. ColonelJohnston told me years after that when they went away they walked insilence a block or two, when the old judge, a model of the learned andsedate school of Kentucky politicians and jurists, turned to him andsaid: "It is no use, Stoddart, we cannot keep up with that young man orwith these times. 'Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace!'" IV The Jupiter Tonans of reform in attendance upon the convention was Col. Alexander K. McClure. He was one of the handsomest and most imposing ofmen; Halstead himself scarcely more so. McClure was personally unknownto the Quadrilateral. But this did not stand in the way of our askinghim to dine with us as soon as his claims to fellowship in the goodcause of reform began to make themselves apparent through the need ofbringing the Pennsylvania delegation to a realizing sense. He looked like a god as he entered the room; nay, he acted like one. Schurz first took him in hand. With a lofty courtesy I have never seenequalled he tossed his inquisitor into the air. Halstead came next, and tried him upon another tack. He fared no better than Schurz. Andhurrying to the rescue of my friends, McClure, looking now a bit boredand resentful, landed me somewhere near the ceiling. It would have been laughable if it had not been ignominious. I took mydiscomfiture with the bad grace of silence throughout the stiff, formaland brief meal which was then announced. But when it was over and theparty, risen from table, was about to disperse I collected my energiesand resources for a final stroke. I was not willing to remain so crushednor to confess myself so beaten, though I could not disguise from myselfa feeling that all of us had been overmatched. "McClure, " said I with the cool and quiet resolution of despair, drawinghim aside, "what in the ---- do you want anyhow?" He looked at me with swift intelligence and a sudden show of sympathy, and then over at the others with a withering glance. "What? With those cranks? Nothing. " Jupiter descended to earth. I am afraid we actually took a glass of winetogether. Anyhow, from that moment to the hour of his death we were thebest of friends. Without the inner circle of the Quadrilateral, which had takenmatters into their own hands, were a number of persons, some of themdisinterested and others simple curiosity and excitement seekers, whomight be described as merely lookers-on in Vienna. The Sunday afternoonbefore the convention was to meet we, the self-elect, fell in with aparty of these in a garden "over the Rhine, " as the German quarter ofCincinnati is called. There was first general and rather aimless talk. Then came a great deal of speech making. Schurz started it with a fewpungent observations intended to suggest and inspire some common groundof opinion and sentiment. Nobody was inclined to dispute his leadership, but everybody was prone to assert his own. It turned out that eachregarded himself and wished to be regarded as a man with a mission, having a clear idea how things were not to be done. There were CivilService Reform Protectionists and Civil Service Reform Free Traders. There were a few politicians, who were discovered to be spoilsmen, theunforgivable sin, and quickly dismissed as such. Coherence was the missing ingredient. Not a man jack of them was willingto commit or bind himself to anything. Edward Atkinson pulled one wayand William Dorsheimer exactly the opposite way. David A. Wells soughtto get the two together; it was not possible. Sam Bowles shook his headin diplomatic warning. Horace White threw in a chunk or so of a ratheragitating newspaper independency, and Halstead was in an inflamed stateof jocosity to the more serious-minded. It was nuts to the Washington Correspondents--story writers andsatirists who were there to make the most out of an occasion in whichthe bizarre was much in excess of the conventional--with George AlfredTownsend and Donn Piatt to set the pace. Hyde had come from St. Louisto keep especial tab on Grosvenor. Though rival editors facing our way, they had not been admitted to the Quadrilateral. McCullagh and Nixonarrived with the earliest from Chicago. The lesser lights of the guildwere innumerable. One might have mistaken it for an annual meeting ofthe Associated Press. V The convention assembled. It was in Cincinnati's great Music Hall. Schurz presided. Who that was there will ever forget his opening words:"This is moving day. " He was just turned forty-two; in his physiognomy ascholarly _Herr Doktor_; in his trim lithe figure a graceful athlete; inthe tones of his voice an orator. Even the bespectacled doctrinaires of the East, whence, since the dayswhen the Star of Bethlehem shone over the desert, wisdom and wise menhave had their emanation, were moved to something like enthusiasm. Therest of us were fervid and aglow. Two days and a night and a half theQuadrilateral had the world in a sling and things its own way. It hadbeen agreed, as I have said, to limit the field to Adams, Trumbull andGreeley; Greeley being out of it, as having no chance, still furtherabridged it to Adams and Trumbull; and, Trumbull not developing verystrong, Bowles, Halstead and I, even White, began to be sure of Adams onthe first ballot; Adams the indifferent, who had sailed away for Europe, observing that he was not a candidate for the nomination and otherwiseintimating his disdain of us and it. Matters thus apparently cocked and primed, the convention adjourned overthe first night of its session with everybody happy except the D. Daviscontingent, which lingered on the scene, but knew its "cake was dough. "If we had forced a vote that night, as we might have done, we shouldhave nominated Adams. But inspired by the bravery of youth andinexperience we let the golden opportunity slip. The throng of delegatesand the audience dispersed. In those days, it being the business of my life to turn day into nightand night into day, it was not my habit to seek my bed much before thepresses began to thunder below, and this night proving no exception, andbeing tempted by a party of Kentuckians, who had come, some to back meand some to watch me, I did not quit their agreeable society until the"wee short hours ayont the twal. " Before turning in I glanced at theearly edition of the Commercial, to see that something--I was too tiredto decipher precisely what--had happened. It was, in point of fact, the arrival about midnight of Gen. Frank P. Blair and Governor B. GratzBrown. I had in my possession documents that would have induced at least one ofthem to pause before making himself too conspicuous. The Quadrilateral, excepting Reid, knew this. We had separated upon the adjournment ofthe convention. I being across the river in Covington, their search wasunavailing. I was not to be found. They were in despair. When having hada few hours of rest I reached the convention hall toward noon it was toolate. I got into the thick of it in time to see the close, not without anangry collision with that one of the newly arrived actors whose cominghad changed the course of events, with whom I had lifelong relations ofaffectionate intimacy. Sailing but the other day through Mediterraneanwaters with Joseph Pulitzer, who, then a mere youth, was yet thesecretary of the convention, he recalled the scene; the unexpected andnot over attractive appearance of the governor of Missouri; his notvery pleasing yet ingenious speech; the stoical, almost lethargicindifference of Schurz. "Carl Schurz, " said Pulitzer, "was the most industrious and the leastenergetic man I have ever worked with. A word from him at that crisiswould have completely routed Blair and squelched Brown. It was simplynot in him to speak it. " Greeley was nominated amid a whirl of enthusiasm, his workers, withWhitelaw Reid at their head, having maintained an admirable andeffective organization and being thoroughly prepared to take advantageof the opportune moment. It was the logic of the event that B. GratzBrown should be placed on the ticket with him. The Quadrilateral was nowhere. It was done for. The impossible had cometo pass. There rose thereafter a friendly issue of veracity betweenSchurz and myself, which illustrates our state of mind. My version isthat we left the convention hall together with an immaterial train ofafter incidents, his that we had not met after the adjournment--he quitesure of this because he had looked for me in vain. "Schurz was right, " said Joseph Pulitzer upon the occasion of ouryachting cruise just mentioned, "I know, for he and I went directly fromthe hall with Judge Stallo to his home on Walnut Hills, where we dinedand passed the afternoon. " [Illustration: Mrs. Lincoln in 1861 _From a Photograph by M. B. Brady_] The Quadrilateral had been knocked into a cocked hat. Whitelaw Reid wasthe only one of us who clearly understood the situation and thoroughlyknew what he was about. He came to me and said: "I have won, and youpeople have lost. I shall expect that you stand by the agreement andmeet me as my guests at dinner to-night. But if you do not personallylook after this the others will not be there. " I was as badly hurt as any, but a bond is a bond and I did as hedesired, succeeding partly by coaxing and partly by insisting, though itwas devious work. Frostier conviviality I have never sat down to than Reid's dinner. Horace White looked more than ever like an iceberg, Sam Bowles wasdiplomatic but ineffusive, Schurz was as a death's head at the board;Halstead and I through sheer bravado tried to enliven the feast. But they would none of us, nor it, and we separated early and sadly, reformers hoist by their own petard. VI The reception by the country of the nomination of Horace Greeley wasas inexplicable to the politicians as the nomination itself had beenunexpected by the Quadrilateral. The people rose to it. The sentimental, the fantastic and the paradoxical in human nature had to do with this. At the South an ebullition of pleased surprise grew into positiveenthusiasm. Peace was the need if not the longing of the Southern heart, and Greeley's had been the first hand stretched out to the South fromthe enemy's camp--very bravely, too, for he had signed the bail bondof Jefferson Davis--and quick upon the news flashed the response fromgenerous men eager for the chance to pay something upon a recognizeddebt of gratitude. Except for this spontaneous uprising, which continued unabated in July, the Democratic Party could not have been induced at Baltimore toratify the proceedings at Cincinnati and formally to make Greeley itscandidate. The leaders dared not resist it. Some of them halted, a fewheld out, but by midsummer the great body of them came to the front tohead the procession. He was a queer old man; a very medley of contradictions; shrewd andsimple; credulous and penetrating; a master penman of the school ofSwift and Cobbett; even in his odd picturesque personality whimsicallyattractive; a man to be reckoned with where he chose to put his powersforth, as Seward learned to his cost. What he would have done with the Presidency had he reached it is noteasy to say or surmise. He was altogether unsuited for official life, for which nevertheless he had a passion. But he was not so readilydeceived in men or misled in measures as he seemed and as most peoplethought him. His convictions were emotional, his philosophy was experimental; butthere was a certain method in their application to public affairs. Hegave bountifully of his affection and his confidence to the few whoenjoyed his familiar friendship--accessible and sympathetic thoughnot indiscriminating to those who appealed to his impressionablesensibilities and sought his help. He had been a good party man and wasby nature and temperament a partisan. To him place was not a badge of servitude; it was adecoration--preferment, promotion, popular recognition. He had alwaysyearned for office as the legitimate destination of public life and thehonorable award of party service. During the greater part of his careerthe conditions of journalism had been rather squalid and servile. He wasreally great as a journalist. He was truly and highly fit for nothingelse, but seeing less deserving and less capable men about him advancedfrom one post of distinction to another he wondered why his turn provedso tardy in coming, and when it would come. It did come with a rush. What more natural than that he should believe it real instead of theempty pageant of a vision? It had taken me but a day and a night to pull myself together after thefirst shock and surprise and to plunge into the swim to help fetch thewaterlogged factions ashore. This was clearly indispensable to forcingthe Democratic organization to come to the rescue of what would havebeen otherwise but a derelict upon a stormy sea. Schurz was deeplydisgruntled. Before he could be appeased a bridge, found in what wascalled the Fifth Avenue Hotel Conference, had to be constructed in orderto carry him across the stream which flowed between his disappointedhopes and aims and what appeared to him an illogical and repulsivealternative. He had taken to his tent and sulked like another Achilles. He was harder to deal with than any of the Democratic file leaders, buthe finally yielded and did splendid work in the campaign. His was a stubborn spirit not readily adjustable. He was a nobly giftedman, but from first to last an alien in an alien land. He once saidto me, "If I should live a thousand years they would still call me aDutchman. " No man of his time spoke so well or wrote to better purpose. He was equally skillful in debate, an overmatch for Conkling and Morton, whom--especially in the French arms matter--he completely dominated andoutshone. As sincere and unselfish, as patriotic and as courageous asany of his contemporaries, he could never attain the full measure of thepopular heart and confidence, albeit reaching its understanding directlyand surely; within himself a man of sentiment who was not the cause ofsentiment in others. He knew this and felt it. The Nast cartoons, which as to Greeley and Sumner were unsparing inthe last degree, whilst treating Schurz with a kind of consideratequalifying humor, nevertheless greatly offended him. I do not thinkGreeley minded them much if at all. They were very effective; notablythe "Pirate Ship, " which represented Greeley leaning over the taffrailof a vessel carrying the Stars and Stripes and waving his handkerchiefat the man-of-war Uncle Sam in the distance, the political leaders ofthe Confederacy dressed in true corsair costume crouched below ready tospring. Nothing did more to sectionalize Northern opinion and fire theNorthern heart, and to lash the fury of the rank and file of those whowere urged to vote as they had shot and who had hoisted above them theBloody Shirt for a banner. The first half of the canvass the bulge waswith Greeley; the second half began in eclipse, to end in something verylike collapse. The old man seized his flag and set out upon his own account for a tourof the country. Right well he bore himself. If speech-making ever doesany good toward the shaping of results Greeley's speeches surely shouldhave elected him. They were marvels of impromptu oratory, mostly homelyand touching appeals to the better sense and the magnanimity of apeople not ripe or ready for generous impressions; convincing in theirsimplicity and integrity; unanswerable from any standpoint of sagaciousstatesmanship or true patriotism if the North had been in any mood tolisten and to reason. I met him at Cincinnati and acted as his escort to Louisville and thenceto Indianapolis, where others were waiting to take him in charge. He wasin a state of querulous excitement. Before the vast and noisy audienceswhich we faced he stood apparently pleased and composed, delivering hiswords as he might have dictated them to a stenographer. As soon as wewere alone he would break out into a kind of lamentation, punctuatedby occasional bursts of objurgation. He especially distrusted theQuadrilateral, making an exception in my case, as well he might, becausehowever his nomination had jarred my judgment I had a real affection forhim, dating back to the years immediately preceding the war when I waswont to encounter him in the reporters' galleries at Washington, whichhe preferred to using his floor privilege as an ex-member of Congress. It was mid-October. We had heard from Maine; Indiana and Ohio had voted. He was for the first time realizing the hopeless nature of the contest. The South in irons and under military rule and martial law sure forGrant, there had never been any real chance. Now it was obvious thatthere was to be no compensating ground swell at the North. That heshould pour forth his chagrin to one whom he knew so well and evenregarded as one of his boys was inevitable. Much of what he said wasfounded on a basis of fact, some of it was mere suspicion and surmise, all of it came back to the main point that defeat stared us in the face. I was glad and yet loath to part with him. If ever a man needed a strongfriendly hand and heart to lean upon he did during those dark days--theend in darkest night nearer than anyone could divine. He showed strongermettle than had been allowed him: bore a manlier part than was commonlyascribed to the slovenly slipshod habiliments and the aspects in whichbenignancy and vacillation seemed to struggle for the ascendancy. Abroadthe elements conspired against him. At home his wife lay ill, as itproved, unto death. The good gray head he still carried like a hero, butthe worn and tender heart was beginning to break. Overwhelming defeatwas followed by overwhelming affliction. He never quitted his dear one'sbeside until the last pulsebeat, and then he sank beneath the load ofgrief. "The Tribune is gone and I am gone, " he said, and spoke no more. The death of Greeley fell upon the country with a sudden shock. Itroused a universal sense of pity and sorrow and awe. All hearts werehushed. In an instant the bitterness of the campaign was forgotten, though the huzzas of the victors still rent the air. The President, hislate antagonist, with his cabinet and the leading members of the twoHouses of Congress, attended his funeral. As he lay in his coffin hewas no longer the arch rebel, leading a combine of buccaneers andinsurgents, which the Republican orators and newspapers had depictedhim, but the brave old apostle of freedom who had done more than allothers to make the issues upon which a militant and triumphant party hadrisen to power. The multitude remembered only the old white hat and the sweet old babyface beneath it, heart of gold, and hand wielding the wizard pen; theincarnation of probity and kindness, of steadfast devotion to his dutyas he saw it, and to the needs of the whole human family. A tragedy intruth it was; and yet as his body was lowered into its grave there roseabove it, invisible, unnoted, a flower of matchless beauty--the flowerof peace and love between the sections of the Union to which his lifehad been a sacrifice. The crank convention had builded wiser than it knew. That the DemocraticParty could ever have been brought to the support of Horace Greeleyfor President of the United States reads even now like a page out of anonsense book. That his warmest support should have come from the Southseems incredible and was a priceless fact. His martyrdom shortened thedistance across the bloody chasm; his coffin very nearly filled it. The candidacy of Charles Francis Adams or of Lyman Trumbull meant amathematical formula, with no solution of the problem and as certaindefeat at the end of it. His candidacy threw a flood of light and warmthinto the arena of deadly strife; it made a more equal and reasonabledivision of parties possible; it put the Southern half of the countryin a position to plead its own case by showing the Northern half thatit was not wholly recalcitrant or reactionary; and it made way for realissues of pith and moment relating to the time instead of pigments ofbellicose passion and scraps of ante-bellum controversy. In a word Greeley did more by his death to complete the work of Lincolnthan he could have done by a triumph at the polls and the term in theWhite House he so much desired. Though but sixty-one years of age, hisrace was run. Of him it may be truly written that he lived a lifefull of inspiration to his countrymen and died not in vain, "our laterFranklin" fittingly inscribed upon his tomb. Chapter the Twelfth The Ideal in Public Life--Politicians, Statesmen and Philosophers--The Disputed Presidency in 1876--The Personality and Character of Mr. Tilden--His Election and Exclusion by a Partisan Tribunal I The soul of journalism is disinterestedness. But neither as a principlenor an asset had this been generally discovered fifty years ago. Most ofmy younger life I was accused of ulterior motives of political ambition, whereas I had seen too much of preferment not to abhor it. To me, as tomy father, office has seemed ever a badge of servitude. For a long time, indeed, I nursed the delusions of the ideal. The love of the ideal hasnot in my old age quite deserted me. But I have seen the claim of itso much abused that when a public man calls it for a witness I begin tosuspect his sincerity. A virile old friend of mine--who lived in Texas, though he went therefrom Rhode Island--used to declare with sententious emphasis that war isthe state of man. "Sir, " he was wont to observe, addressing me as if Iwere personally accountable, "you are emasculating the human species. You are changing men into women and women into men. You are teachingeverybody to read, nobody to think; and do you know where you will end, sir? Extermination, sir--extermination! On the north side of the NorthPole there is another world peopled by giants; ten thousand millions atthe very least; every giant of them a hundred feet high. Now about thetime you have reduced your universe to complete effeminacy some foolwith a pick-axe will break through the thin partition--the mere icecurtain--separating these giants from us, and then they will sweepthrough and swoop down and swallow you, sir, and the likes of you, withyour topsy-turvy civilization, your boasted literature and science andart!" This old friend of mine had a sure recipe for success in public life. "Whenever you get up to make a speech, " said he, "begin by proclaimingyourself the purest, the most disinterested of living men, and endby intimating that you are the bravest;" and then with the charminginconsistency of the dreamer he would add: "If there be anything on thisearth that I despise it is bluster. " Decidedly he was not a disciple of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Yet he, too, inhis way was an idealist, and for all his oddity a man of intellectualintegrity, a trifle exaggerated perhaps in its methods andillustrations, but true to his convictions of right and duty, as Emersonwould have had him be. For was it not Emerson who exclaimed, "We willwalk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak ourown minds?" II In spite of our good Woodrow and our lamented Theodore I have quitemade up my mind that there is no such thing as the ideal in public life, construing public life to refer to political transactions. The ideal mayexist in art and letters, and sometimes very young men imagine that itexists in very young women. But here we must draw the line. As societyis constituted the ideal has no place, not even standing room, in thearena of civics. If we would make a place for it we must begin by realizing this. The painter, like the lover, is a law unto himself, with his littlepicture--the poet, also, with his little rhyme--his atelier hisuniverse, his attic his field of battle, his weapons the utensils ofhis craft--he himself his own Providence. It is not so in the world ofaction, where the conditions are directly reversed; where the one playercontends against many players, seen and unseen; where each move is metby some counter-move; where the finest touches are often unnoted ofmen or rudely blotted out by a mysterious hand stretched forth from thedarkness. "I wish I could be as sure of anything, " said Melbourne, "as TomMacaulay is of everything. " Melbourne was a man of affairs, Macaulay aman of books; and so throughout the story the men of action have beenfatalists, from Cæsar to Napoleon and Bismarck, nothing certain exceptthe invisible player behind the screen. Of all human contrivances the most imperfect is government. In spite ofthe essays of Bentham and Mill the science of government has yet to bediscovered. The ideal statesman can only exist in the ideal state, whichhas never existed. The politician, like the poor, we have always with us. As long as mendelegate to other men the function of acting for them, of thinking forthem, we shall continue to have him. He is a variable quantity. In the crowded centers his distinguishingmarks are short hair and cunning; upon the frontier, sentiment and thesix-shooter! In New York he becomes a boss; in Kentucky and Texas, afighter and an orator. But the statesman--the ideal statesman--in themind's eye, Horatio! Bound by practical limitations such an anomalywould be a statesman minus a party, a statesman who never gets any votesor anywhere--a statesman perpetually out of a job. We have had someimitation ideal statesmen who have been more or less successful inpalming off their pinchbeck wares for the real; but looking backwardover the history of the country we shall find the greatest among ourpublic men--measuring greatness by real and useful service--to have beenwhile they lived least regarded as idealists; for they were men of fleshand blood, who amid the rush of events and the calls to duty could notstop to paint pictures, to consider sensibilities, to put forth thedeft hand where life and death hung upon the stroke of a bludgeon or theswinging of a club. Washington was not an ideal statesman, nor Hamilton, nor Jefferson, norLincoln, though each of them conceived grandly and executed nobly. Theyloved truth for truth's sake, even as they loved their country. Yet noone of them ever quite attained his conception of it. Truth indeed is ideal. But when we come to adapt and apply it, how manyfaces it shows us, what varying aspects, so that he is fortunate who isable to catch and hold a single fleeting expression. To bridle this andsaddle it, and, as we say in Kentucky, to ride it a turn or twoaround the paddock or, still better, down the home-stretch of thingsaccomplished, is another matter. The real statesman must often do as hecan, not as he would; the ideal statesman existing only in the credulityof those simple souls who are captivated by appearances or deceived byprofessions. The nearest approach to the ideal statesman I have known was mostgrossly stigmatized while he lived. I have Mr. Tilden in mind. If everman pursued an ideal life he did. From youth to age he dwelt amid hisfancies. He was truly a man of the world among men of letters and aman of letters among men of the world. A philosopher pure and simple--alover of books, of pictures, of all things beautiful and elevating--heyet attained great riches, and being a doctrinaire and having a passionfor affairs he was able to gratify the aspirations to eminence and theyearning to be of service to the State which had filled his heart. He seemed a medley of contradiction. Without the artifices usual tothe practical politician he gradually rose to be a power in his party;thence to become the leader of a vast following, his name a shibbolethto millions of his countrymen, who enthusiastically supported him andwho believed that he was elected Chief Magistrate of the United States. He was an idealist; he lost the White House because he was so, thoughrepresented while he lived by his enemies as a scheming spider weavinghis web amid the coil of mystification in which he hid himself. For hewas personally known to few in the city where he had made his abode; agreat lawyer and jurist who rarely appeared in court; a great politicalleader to whom the hustings were mainly a stranger; a thinker, and yeta dreamer, who lived his own life a little apart, as a poet might;uncorrupting and incorruptible; least of all were his politicalcompanions moved by the loss of the presidency, which had seemed in hisgrasp. And finally he died--though a master of legal lore--to have hislast will and testament successfully assailed. Except as news venders the newspapers--especially newspaperworkers--should give politics a wide berth. Certainly they should haveno party politics. True to say, journalism and literature and politicsare as wide apart as the poles. From Bolingbroke, the most splendidof the world's failures, to Thackeray, one of its greatest masters ofletters--who happily did not get the chance he sought in parliamentarylife to fall--both English history and American history are full ofillustrations to this effect. Except in the comic opera of Frenchpolitics the poet, the artist, invested with power, seems to lose hisefficiency in the ratio of his genius; the literary gift, instead ofaiding, actually antagonizing the aptitude for public business. The statesman may not be fastidious. The poet, the artist, must bealways so. If the party leader preserve his integrity--if he keephimself disinterested and clean--if his public influence be inspiringto his countrymen and his private influence obstructive of cheats androgues among his adherents--he will have done well. We have left behind us the gibbet and the stake. No further need of theVoltaires, the Rousseaus and the Diderots to declaim against kingcraftand priestcraft. We have done something more than mark time. We reportprogress. Yet despite the miracles of modern invention how far in thearts of government has the world traveled from darkness to light sincethe old tribal days, and what has it learned except to enlarge the area, to amplify and augment the agencies, to multiply and complicate theforms and processes of corruption? By corruption I mean the dishonestadvantage of the few over the many. The dreams of yesterday, we are told, become the realities of to-morrow. In these despites I am an optimist. Much truly there needs still to belearned, much to be unlearned. Advanced as we consider ourselves we areyet a long way from the most rudimentary perception of the civilizationwe are so fond of parading. The eternal verities--where shall we seekthem? Little in religious affairs, less still in commercial affairs, hardly any at all in political affairs, that being right whichrepresents each organism. Still we progress. The pulpit begins to turnfrom the sinister visage of theology and to teach the simple lessons ofChrist and Him crucified. The press, which used to be omniscient, is nowonly indiscriminate--a clear gain, emitting by force of publicity, if not of shine, a kind of light through whose diverse rays and foggyluster we may now and then get a glimpse of truth. III The time is coming, if it has not already arrived, when amongfair-minded and intelligent Americans there will not be two opinionstouching the Hayes-Tilden contest for the presidency in 1876-77--thatboth by the popular vote and a fair count of the electoral vote Tildenwas elected and Hayes was defeated; but the whole truth underlyingthe determinate incidents which led to the rejection of Tilden and theseating of Hayes will never be known. "All history is a lie, " observed Sir Robert Walpole, the corruptionist, mindful of what was likely to be written about himself; and "What ishistory, " asked Napoleon, the conqueror, "but a fable agreed upon?" In the first administration of Mr. Cleveland there were present ata dinner table in Washington, the President being of the party, two leading Democrats and two leading Republicans who had sustainedconfidential relations to the principals and played important parts inthe drama of the Disputed Succession. These latter had been long uponterms of personal intimacy. The occasion was informal and joyous, thegood fellowship of the heartiest. Inevitably the conversation drifted to the Electoral Commission, whichhad counted Tilden out and Hayes in, and of which each of the four hadsome story to tell. Beginning in banter with interchanges of badinageit presently fell into reminiscence, deepening as the interest ofthe listeners rose to what under different conditions might have beendescribed as unguarded gayety if not imprudent garrulity. The littleaudience was rapt. Finally Mr. Cleveland raised both hands and exclaimed, "What would thepeople of this country think if the roof could be lifted from this houseand they could hear these men?" And then one of the four, a gentlemannoted for his wealth both of money and humor, replied, "But the roof isnot going to be lifted from this house, and if any one repeats what Ihave said I will denounce him as a liar. " Once in a while the world is startled by some revelation of the unknownwhich alters the estimate of a historic event or figure; but it ismeasurably true, as Metternich declares, that those who make historyrarely have time to write it. It is not my wish in recurring to the events of nearly five-and-fortyyears ago to invoke and awaken any of the passions of that time, nor mypurpose to assail the character or motives of any of the leading actors. Most of them, including the principals, I knew well; to many of theirsecrets I was privy. As I was serving, in a sense, as Mr. Tilden'spersonal representative in the Lower House of the Forty-fourth Congress, and as a member of the joint Democratic Advisory or Steering Committeeof the two Houses, all that passed came more or less, if not under mysupervision, yet to my knowledge; and long ago I resolved that certainmatters should remain a sealed book in my memory. I make no issue of veracity with the living; the dead should besacred. The contradictory promptings, not always crooked; the doubleconstructions possible to men's actions; the intermingling of ambitionand patriotism beneath the lash of party spirit; often wrong unconsciousof itself; sometimes equivocation deceiving itself--in short, thetangled web of good and ill inseparable from great affairs of lossand gain made debatable ground for every step of the Hayes-Tildenproceeding. I shall bear sure testimony to the integrity of Mr. Tilden. I directlyknow that the presidency was offered to him for a price, and that herefused it; and I indirectly know and believe that two other offers cameto him, which also he declined. The accusation that he was willing tobuy, and through the cipher dispatches and other ways tried to buy, rests upon appearance supporting mistaken surmise. Mr. Tilden knewnothing of the cipher dispatches until they appeared in the New York_Tribune_. Neither did Mr. George W. Smith, his private secretary, andlater one of the trustees of his will. It should be sufficient to say that so far as they involved No. 15Gramercy Park they were the work solely of Colonel Pelton, acting on hisown responsibility, and as Mr. Tilden's nephew exceeding his authorityto act; that it later developed that during this period Colonel Peltonhad not been in his perfect mind, but was at least semi-irresponsible;and that on two occasions when the vote or votes sought seemed withinreach Mr. Tilden interposed to forbid. Directly and personally I knowthis to be true. The price, at least in patronage, which the Republicans actually paidfor possession is of public record. Yet I not only do not question theintegrity of Mr. Hayes, but I believe him and most of those immediatelyabout him to have been high-minded men who thought they were doing forthe best in a situation unparalleled and beset with perplexity. Whatthey did tends to show that men will do for party and in concertwhat the same men never would be willing to do each on his ownresponsibility. In his "Life of Samuel J. Tilden, " John Bigelow says: "Why persons occupying the most exalted positions should have venturedto compromise their reputations by this deliberate consummation of aseries of crimes which struck at the very foundations of the republic isa question which still puzzles many of all parties who have no charityfor the crimes themselves. I have already referred to the terrors anddesperation with which the prospect of Tilden's election inspired thegreat army of office-holders at the close of Grant's administration. That army, numerous and formidable as it was, was comparativelylimited. There was a much larger and justly influential class who wereapprehensive that the return of the Democratic party to power threateneda reactionary policy at Washington, to the undoing of some or all theimportant results of the war. These apprehensions were inflamed bythe party press until they were confined to no class, but more or lesspervaded all the Northern States. The Electoral Tribunal, consistingmainly of men appointed to their positions by Republican Presidentsor elected from strong Republican States, felt the pressure of thisfeeling, and from motives compounded in more or less varying proportionsof dread of the Democrats, personal ambition, zeal for their partyand respect for their constituents, reached the conclusion that theexclusion of Tilden from the White House was an end which justifiedwhatever means were necessary to accomplish it. They regarded it, likethe emancipation of the slaves, as a war measure. " IV The nomination of Horace Greeley in 1872 and the overwhelming defeatthat followed left the Democratic party in an abyss of despair. The oldWhig party, after the disaster that overtook it in 1852, had been notmore demoralized. Yet in the general elections of 1874 the Democratsswept the country, carrying many Northern States and sending a greatmajority to the Forty-fourth Congress. Reconstruction was breaking down of its very weight and rottenness. Thepanic of 1873 reacted against the party in power. Dissatisfaction withGrant, which had not sufficed two years before to displace him, wasgrowing apace. Favoritism bred corruption and corruption grew more andmore flagrant. Succeeding scandals cast their shadows before. Chickensof carpetbaggery let loose upon the South were coming home to roostat the North. There appeared everywhere a noticeable subsidence of thesectional spirit. Reform was needed alike in the State Governments andthe National Government, and the cry for reform proved something otherthan an idle word. All things made for Democracy. Yet there were many and serious handicaps. The light and leading ofthe historic Democratic party which had issued from the South werein obscurity and abeyance, while most of those surviving who had beendistinguished in the party conduct and counsels were disabled by actof Congress. Of the few prominent Democrats left at the North many weretainted by what was called Copperheadism--sympathy with the Confederacy. To find a chieftain wholly free from this contamination, Democracy, having failed of success in presidential campaigns, not only withGreeley but with McClellan and Seymour, was turning to such Republicansas Chase, Field and Davis. At last heaven seemed to smile from theclouds upon the disordered ranks and to summon thence a man meeting therequirements of the time. This was Samuel Jones Tilden. To his familiars Mr. Tilden was a dear old bachelor who lived in a fineold mansion in Gramercy Park. Though 60 years old he seemed in the primeof his manhood; a genial and overflowing scholar; a trained and earnestdoctrinaire; a public-spirited, patriotic citizen, well known and highlyesteemed, who had made fame and fortune at the bar and had alwaysbeen interested in public affairs. He was a dreamer with a genius forbusiness, a philosopher yet an organizer. He pursued the tenor of hislife with measured tread. His domestic fabric was disfigured by none of the isolation and squalorwhich so often attend the confirmed celibate. His home life was a modelof order and decorum, his home as unchallenged as a bishopric, itshospitality, though select, profuse and untiring. An elder sisterpresided at his board, as simple, kindly and unostentatious, but asmethodical as himself. He was a lover of books rather than music andart, but also of horses and dogs and out-of-door activity. He was fond of young people, particularly of young girls; he drew themabout him, and was a veritable Sir Roger de Coverley in his gallantriestoward them and his zeal in amusing them and making them happy. Histastes were frugal and their indulgence was sparing. He took his winenot plenteously, though he enjoyed it--especially his "blue seal" whileit lasted--and sipped his whisky-and-water on occasion with a pleasedcomposure redolent of discursive talk, of which, when he cared to leadthe conversation, he was a master. He had early come into a great legalpractice and held a commanding professional position. His judgment wasbelieved to be infallible; and it is certain that after 1871 he rarelyappeared in the courts of law except as counsellor, settling in chambersmost of the cases that came to him. It was such a man whom, in 1874, the Democrats nominated for Governorof New York. To say truth, it was not thought by those making thenomination that he had any chance to win. He was himself so much betteradvised that months ahead he prefigured very near the exact vote. Theafternoon of the day of election one of the group of friends, whoeven thus early had the Presidency in mind, found him in his libraryconfident and calm. "What majority will you have?" he asked cheerily. "Any, " replied the friend sententiously. "How about fifteen thousand?" "Quite enough. " "Twenty-five thousand?" "Still better. " "The majority, " he said, "will be a little in excess of fifty thousand. " It was 53, 315. His estimate was not guesswork. He had organized hiscampaign by school districts. His canvass system was perfect, hiscanvassers were as penetrating and careful as census takers. He hadbefore him reports from every voting precinct in the State. They werecorroborated by the official returns. He had defeated Gen. John A. Dix, thought to be invincible by a majority very nearly the same as that bywhich Governor Dix had been elected two years before. V The time and the man had met. Though Mr. Tilden had not before heldexecutive office he was ripe and ready for the work. His experiencein the pursuit and overthrow of the Tweed Ring in New York, the greatmetropolis, had prepared and fitted him to deal with the Canal Ring atAlbany, the State capital. Administrative reform was now uppermost inthe public mind, and here in the Empire State of the Union had cometo the head of affairs a Chief Magistrate at once exact and exacting, deeply versed not only in legal lore but in a knowledge of the methodsby which political power was being turned to private profit and ofthe men--Democrats as well as Republicans--who were preying upon thesubstance of the people. The story of the two years that followed relates to investigations thatinvestigated, to prosecutions that convicted, to the overhauling ofpopular censorship, to reduced estimates and lower taxes. The campaign for the Presidential nomination began as early as theautumn of 1875. The Southern end of it was easy enough. A committee ofSoutherners residing in New York was formed. Never a leading Southernman came to town who was not "seen. " If of enough importance he wastaken to No. 15 Gramercy Park. Mr. Tilden measured to the Southernstandard of the gentleman in politics. He impressed the disfranchisedSouthern leaders as a statesman of the old order and altogether aftertheir own ideas of what a President ought to be. The South came to St. Louis, the seat of the National Convention, represented by its foremost citizens, and almost a unit for the Governorof New York. The main opposition sprang from Tammany Hall, of which JohnKelly was then the chief. Its very extravagance proved an advantage toTilden. Two days before the meeting of the convention I sent this message to Mr. Tilden: "Tell Blackstone"--his favorite riding horse--"that he wins in awalk. " The anti-Tilden men put up the Hon. S. S. --"Sunset"--Cox for temporarychairman. It was a clever move. Mr. Cox, though sure for Tammany, waspopular everywhere and especially at the South. His backers thought thatwith him they could count a majority of the National Committee. The night before the assembling Mr. Tilden's two or three leadingfriends on the committee came to me and said: "We can elect you chairmanover Cox, but no one else. " I demurred at once. "I don't know one rule of parliamentary law fromanother, " I said. "We will have the best parliamentarian on the continent right by you allthe time, " they said. "I can't see to recognize a man on the floor of the convention, " I said. "We'll have a dozen men at hand to tell you, " they replied. So it wasarranged, and thus at the last moment I was chosen. I had barely time to write the required keynote speech, but not enoughto commit it to memory; nor sight to read it, even had I been willingto adopt that mode of delivery. It would not do to trust toextemporization. A friend, Col. J. Stoddard Johnston, who was familiarwith my penmanship, came to the rescue. Concealing my manuscript behindhis hat he lined the words out to me between the cheering, I havingmastered a few opening sentences. Luck was with me. It went with a bang--not, however, wholly withoutdetection. The Indianans, devoted to Hendricks, were very wroth. "See that fat man behind the hat telling him what to say, " said one tohis neighbor, who answered, "Yes, and wrote it for him, too, I'll bebound!" One might as well attempt to drive six horses by proxy as preside overa national convention by hearsay. I lost my parliamentarian at once. Ijust made my parliamentary law as we went. Never before or since did anydeliberate body proceed under manual so startling and original. ButI delivered each ruling with a resonance--it were better called animpudence--which had an air of authority. There was a good deal of quietlaughter on the floor among the knowing ones, though I knew the mass wasas ignorant as I was myself; but realizing that I meant to be just andwas expediting business the convention soon warmed to me, and feelingthis I began to be perfectly at home. I never had a better day's sportin all my life. One incident was particularly amusing. Much against my will and over myprotest I was brought to promise that Miss Phoebe Couzins, who bore aWoman's Rights Memorial, should at some opportune moment be given thefloor to present it. I foresaw what a row it was bound to occasion. Toward noon, when there was a lull in the proceedings, I said with anemphasis meant to carry conviction: "Gentlemen of the convention, MissPhoebe Couzins, a representative of the Woman's Association of America, has a memorial from that body, and in the absence of other business thechair will now recognize her. " Instantly and from every part of the hall arose cries of "No!" These putsome heart into me. Many a time as a schoolboy I had proudly declaimedthe passage from John Home's tragedy, "My Name is Norval. " Again I stoodupon "the Grampian hills. " The committee was escorting Miss Couzins downthe aisle. When she came within the radius of my poor vision I saw thatshe was a beauty and dressed to kill. That was reassurance. Gaining a little time while the hall fairly rockedwith its thunder of negation I laid the gavel down and stepped to theedge of the platform and gave Miss Couzins my hand. As she appeared above the throng there was a momentary "Ah!" and then alull, broken by a single voice: "Mister Chairman. I rise to a point of order. " Leading Miss Couzins to the front of the stage I took up the gavel andgave a gentle rap, saying: "The gentleman will take his seat. " "But, Mister Chairman, I rose to a point of order, " he vociferated. "The gentleman will take his seat instantly, " I answered in a tone ofone about to throw the gavel at his head. "No point of order is in orderwhen a lady has the floor. " After that Miss Couzins received a positive ovation and having deliveredher message retired in a blaze of glory. VI Mr. Tilden was nominated on the second ballot. The campaign thatfollowed proved one of the most memorable in our history. When itcame to an end the result showed on the face of the returns 196 in theElectoral College, eleven more than a majority; and in the popular vote4, 300, 316, a majority of 264, 300 for Tilden over Hayes. How this came to be first contested and then complicated so asultimately to be set aside has been minutely related by its authors. The newspapers, both Republican and Democratic, of November 8, 1876, themorning after the election, conceded an overwhelming victory for Tildenand Hendricks. There was, however, a single exception. The New YorkTimes had gone to press with its first edition, leaving the result indoubt but inclining toward the success of the Democrats. In its latereditions this tentative attitude was changed to the statement that Mr. Hayes lacked the vote of Florida--"claimed by the Republicans"--to besure of the required votes in the Electoral College. The story of this surprising discrepancy between midnight and daylightreads like a chapter of fiction. After the early edition of the Times had gone to press certain membersof the editorial staff were at supper, very much cast down by thereturns, when a messenger brought a telegram from Senator Barnum, ofConnecticut, financial head of the Democratic National Committee, askingfor the Times' latest news from Oregon, Louisiana, Florida and SouthCarolina. But for that unlucky telegram Tilden would probably have beeninaugurated President of the United States. The Times people, intense Republican partisans, at once saw anopportunity. If Barnum did not know, why might not a doubt be raised? Atonce the editorial in the first edition was revised to take a decisivetone and declare the election of Hayes. One of the editorial council, Mr. John C. Reid, hurried to Republican headquarters in the Fifth AvenueHotel, which he found deserted, the triumph of Tilden having longbefore sent everybody to bed. Mr. Reid then sought the room of SenatorZachariah Chandler, chairman of the National Republican Committee. While upon this errand he encountered in the hotel corridor "a smallman wearing an enormous pair of goggles, his hat drawn over his ears, a greatcoat with a heavy military cloak, and carrying a gripsackand newspaper in his hand. The newspaper was the New York Tribune, "announcing the election of Tilden and the defeat of Hayes. The newcomerwas Mr. William E. Chandler, even then a very prominent Republicanpolitician, just arrived from New Hampshire and very much exasperated bywhat he had read. Mr. Reid had another tale to tell. The two found Mr. Zachariah Chandler, who bade them leave him alone and do whatever they thought best. Theydid so, consumingly, sending telegrams to Columbia, Tallahassee and NewOrleans, stating to each of the parties addressed that the result of theelection depended upon his State. To these was appended the signature ofZachariah Chandler. Later in the day Senator Chandler, advised of what had been set on footand its possibilities, issued from National Republican headquarters thislaconic message: "Hayes has 185 electoral votes and is elected. " Thus began and was put in motion the scheme to confuse the returns andmake a disputed count of the vote. VII The day after the election I wired Mr. Tilden suggesting that asGovernor of New York he propose to Mr. Hayes, the Governor of Ohio, that they unite upon a committee of eminent citizens, composed in equalnumbers of the friends of each, who should proceed at once to Louisiana, which appeared to be the objective point of greatest moment to thealready contested result. Pursuant to a telegraphic correspondence whichfollowed, I left Louisville that night for New Orleans. I was joined enroute by Mr. Lamar and General Walthal, of Mississippi, and together wearrived in the Crescent City Friday morning. It has since transpired that the Republicans were promptly advised bythe Western Union Telegraph Company of all that had passed over itswires, my dispatches to Mr. Tilden being read in Republican headquartersat least as soon as they reached Gramercy Park. Mr. Tilden did not adopt the plan of a direct proposal to Mr. Hayes. Instead he chose a body of Democrats to go to the "seat of war. " Butbefore any of them had arrived General Grant, the actual President, anticipating what was about to happen, appointed a body of Republicansfor the like purpose, and the advance guard of these appeared on thescene the following Monday. Within a week the St. Charles Hotel might have been mistaken for acaravansary of the national capital. Among the Republicans were JohnSherman, Stanley Matthews, Garfield, Evarts, Logan, Kelley, Stoughton, and many others. Among the Democrats, besides Lamar, Walthal and myself, came Lyman Trumbull, Samuel J. Randall, William R. Morrison, McDonald, of Indiana, and many others. A certain degree of personal intimacy existed between the members of thetwo groups, and the "entente" was quite as unrestrained as might haveexisted between rival athletic teams. A Kentucky friend sent me ademijohn of what was represented as very old Bourbon, and I dividedit with "our friends the enemy. " New Orleans was new to most of the"visiting statesmen, " and we attended the places of amusement, livedin the restaurants, and saw the sights as if we had been tourists in aforeign land and not partisans charged with the business of adjusting aPresidential election from implacable points of view. My own relations were especially friendly with John Sherman and JamesA. Garfield, a colleague on the Committee of Ways and Means, and withStanley Matthews, a near kinsman by marriage, who had stood as an elderbrother to me from my childhood. Corruption was in the air. That the Returning Board was for sale andcould be bought was the universal impression. Every day some one turnedup with pretended authority and an offer to sell. Most of these were, ofcourse, the merest adventurers. It was my own belief that the ReturningBoard was playing for the best price it could get from the Republicansand that the only effect of any offer to buy on our part would be toassist this scheme of blackmail. The Returning Board consisted of two white men, Wells and Anderson;and two negroes, Kenner and Casanave. One and all they were withoutcharacter. I was tempted through sheer curiosity to listen to a proposalwhich seemed to come direct from the board itself, the messenger being awell-known State Senator. As if he were proposing to dispose of a horseor a dog he stated his errand. "You think you can deliver the goods?" said I. "I am authorized to make the offer, " he answered. "And for how much?" I asked. "Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, " he replied. "One hundredthousand each for Wells and Anderson, and twenty-five thousand apiecefor the niggers. " To my mind it was a joke. "Senator, " said I, "the terms are as cheap asdirt. I don't happen to have the amount about me at the moment, but Iwill communicate with my principal and see you later. " Having no thought of entertaining the proposal, I had forgotten theincident, when two or three days later my man met me in the lobby of thehotel and pressed for a definite reply. I then told him I had found thatI possessed no authority to act and advised him to go elsewhere. It is asserted that Wells and Anderson did agree to sell and were turneddown by Mr. Hewitt; and, being refused their demands for cash by theDemocrats, took their final pay, at least in patronage, from their ownparty. VIII I passed the Christmas week of 1876 in New York with Mr. Tilden. OnChristmas day we dined alone. The outlook, on the whole, was cheering. With John Bigelow and Manton Marble, Mr. Tilden had been busily engagedcompiling the data for a constitutional battle to be fought bythe Democrats in Congress, maintaining the right of the House ofRepresentatives to concurrent jurisdiction with the Senate in thecounting of the electoral vote, pursuant to an unbroken lineof precedents established by that method of proceeding in everypresidential election between 1793 and 1872. There was very great perplexity in the public mind. Both partiesappeared to be at sea. The dispute between the Democratic House and theRepublican Senate made for thick weather. Contests of the vote of threeStates--Louisiana, South Carolina and Florida, not to mention singlevotes in Oregon and Vermont--which presently began to blow a gale, hadalready spread menacing clouds across the political sky. Except Mr. Tilden, the wisest among the leaders knew not precisely what to do. From New Orleans, on the Saturday night succeeding the presidentialelection, I had telegraphed to Mr. Tilden detailing the exact conditionsthere and urging active and immediate agitation. The chance had beenlost. I thought then and I still think that the conspiracy of a few mento use the corrupt returning boards of Louisiana, South Carolina andFlorida to upset the election and make confusion in Congress might byprompt exposure and popular appeal have been thwarted. Be this asit may, my spirit was depressed and my confidence discouraged by theintense quietude on our side, for I was sure that beneath the surfacethe Republicans, with resolute determination and multiplied resources, were as busy as bees. Mr. Robert M. McLane, later Governor of Maryland and later stillMinister to France--a man of rare ability and large experience, whohad served in Congress and in diplomacy, and was an old friend of Mr. Tilden--had been at a Gramercy Park conference when my New Orleansreport arrived, and had then and there urged the agitation recommendedby me. He was now again in New York. When a lad he had been in Englandwith his father, Lewis McLane, then American Minister to the Court ofSt. James, during the excitement over the Reform Bill of 1832. He hadwitnessed the popular demonstrations and had been impressed by thedirect force of public opinion upon law-making and law-makers. Ananalogous situation had arrived in America. The Republican Senate was asthe Tory House of Lords. We must organize a movement such as had beenso effectual in England. Obviously something was going amiss with us andsomething had to be done. It was agreed that I should return to Washington and make a speech"feeling the pulse" of the country, with the suggestion that in theNational Capital should assemble "a mass convention of at least 100, 000peaceful citizens, " exercising "the freeman's right of petition. " The idea was one of many proposals of a more drastic kind and was themerest venture. I myself had no great faith in it. But I prepared thespeech, and after much reading and revising, it was held by Mr. Tildenand Mr. McLane to cover the case and meet the purpose, Mr. Tildenwriting Mr. Randall, Speaker of the House of Representatives, a letter, carried to Washington by Mr. McLane, instructing him what to do in theevent that the popular response should prove favorable. Alack the day! The Democrats were equal to nothing affirmative. TheRepublicans were united and resolute. I delivered the speech, not inthe House, as had been intended, but at a public meeting which seemedopportune. The Democrats at once set about denying the sinister andviolent purpose ascribed to it by the Republicans, who, fully advisedthat it had emanated from Gramercy Park and came by authority, started acounter agitation of their own. I became the target for every kind of ridicule and abuse. Nast drew agrotesque cartoon of me, distorting my suggestion for the assembling of100, 000 citizens, which was both offensive and libellous. Being on friendly terms with the Harpers, I made my displeasure soresonant in Franklin Square--Nast himself having no personal ill willtoward me--that a curious and pleasing opportunity which came to passwas taken to make amends. A son having been born to me, Harper's Weeklycontained an atoning cartoon representing the child in its father'sarms, and, above, the legend "10, 000 sons from Kentucky alone. " Some wagsaid that the son in question was "the only one of the 100, 000 in armswho came when he was called. " For many years afterward I was pursued by this unlucky speech, or ratherby the misinterpretation given to it alike by friend and foe. Nast'sfirst cartoon was accepted as a faithful portrait, and I was accordinglysatirized and stigmatized, though no thought of violence ever hadentered my mind, and in the final proceedings I had voted for theElectoral Commission Bill and faithfully stood by its decisions. JosephPulitzer, who immediately followed me on the occasion named, declaredthat he wanted my "one hundred thousand" to come fully armed andready for business; yet he never was taken to task or reminded of histemerity. IX The Electoral Commission Bill was considered with great secrecy bythe joint committees of the House and Senate. Its terms were in directcontravention of Mr. Tilden's plan. This was simplicity itself. Hewas for asserting by formal resolution the conclusive right of the twoHouses acting concurrently to count the electoral vote and determinewhat should be counted as electoral votes; and for denying, also byformal resolution, the pretension set up by the Republicans that thePresident of the Senate had lawful right to assume that function. He wasfor urging that issue in debate in both Houses and before the country. He thought that if the attempt should be made to usurp for the presidentof the Senate a power to make the count, and thus practically to controlthe Presidential election, the scheme would break down in process ofexecution. Strange to say, Mr. Tilden was not consulted by the party leaders inCongress until the fourteenth of January, and then only by Mr. Hewitt, the extra constitutional features of the electoral-tribunal measurehaving already received the assent of Mr. Bayard and Mr. Thurman, theDemocratic members of the Senate committee. Standing by his original plan and answering Mr. Hewitt's statement thatMr. Bayard and Mr. Thurman were fully committed, Mr. Tilden said: "Is itnot, then, rather late to consult me?" To which Mr. Hewitt replied: "They do not consult you. They are publicmen, and have their own duties and responsibilities. I consult you. " In the course of the discussion with Mr. Hewitt which followed Mr. Tilden said: "If you go into conference with your adversary, and can'tbreak off because you feel you must agree to something, you cannotnegotiate--you are not fit to negotiate. You will be beaten upon everydetail. " Replying to the apprehension of a collision of force between the partiesMr. Tilden thought it exaggerated, but said: "Why surrender now? You canalways surrender. Why surrender before the battle for fear you may haveto surrender after the battle?" In short, Mr. Tilden condemned the proceeding as precipitate. It wasa month before the time for the count, and he saw no reason whyopportunity should not be given for consideration and consultation byall the representatives of the people. He treated the state of mind ofBayard and Thurman as a panic in which they were liable to act in hasteand repent at leisure. He stood for publicity and wider discussion, distrusting a scheme to submit such vast interests to a small bodysitting in the Capitol as likely to become the sport of intrigue andfraud. Mr. Hewitt returned to Washington and without communicating to Mr. Tilden's immediate friends in the House his attitude and objection, united with Mr. Thurman and Mr. Bayard in completing the bill andreporting it to the Democratic Advisory Committee, as, by a caucus rule, had to be done with all measures relating to the great issue then beforeus. No intimation had preceded it. It fell like a bombshell upon themembers of the committee. In the debate that followed Mr. Bayard was very insistent, answering theobjections at once offered by me, first aggressively and then angrily, going the length of saying, "If you do not accept this plan I shallwash my hands of the whole business, and you can go ahead and seat yourPresident in your own way. " Mr. Randall, the Speaker, said nothing, but he was with me, as were amajority of my colleagues. It was Mr. Hunton, of Virginia, who pouredoil on the troubled waters, and somewhat in doubt as to whether thechanged situation had changed Mr. Tilden I yielded my better judgment, declaring it as my opinion that the plan would seat Hayes; and therebeing no other protestant the committee finally gave a reluctant assent. In open session a majority of Democrats favored the bill. Many of themmade it their own. They passed it. There was belief that Justice DavidDavis, who was expected to become a member of the commission, wassure for Tilden. If, under this surmise, he had been, the politicalcomplexion of "8 to 7" would have been reversed. Elected to the United States Senate from Illinois, Judge Davis declinedto serve, and Mr. Justice Bradley was chosen for the commission in hisplace. The day after the inauguration of Hayes my kinsman, Stanley Matthews, said to me: "You people wanted Judge Davis. So did we. I tell you what Iknow, that Judge Davis was as safe for us as Judge Bradley. We preferredhim because he carried more weight. " The subsequent career of Judge Davis in the Senate gave conclusive proofthat this was true. When the consideration of the disputed votes before the commissionhad proceeded far enough to demonstrate the likelihood that its finaldecision would be for Hayes a movement of obstruction and delay, afilibuster, was organized by about forty Democratic members of theHouse. It proved rather turbulent than effective. The South stood verynearly solid for carrying out the agreement in good faith. Toward the close the filibuster received what appeared formidablereinforcement from the Louisiana delegation. This was in reality merelya bluff, intended to induce the Hayes people to make certain concessionstouching their State government. It had the desired effect. Satisfactoryassurances having been given, the count proceeded to the end--a verybitter end indeed for the Democrats. The final conference between the Louisianans and the accreditedrepresentatives of Mr. Hayes was held at Wormley's Hotel and came to becalled "the Wormley Conference. " It was the subject of uncommon interestand heated controversy at the time and long afterward. Without knowingwhy or for what purpose, I was asked to be present by my colleague, Mr. Ellis, of Louisiana, and later in the day the same invitation came to mefrom the Republicans through Mr. Garfield. Something was said about myserving as a referee. Just before the appointed hour Gen. M. C. Butler, of South Carolina, afterward so long a Senator in Congress, said to me: "This meeting iscalled to enable Louisiana to make terms with Hayes. South Carolina isas deeply concerned as Louisiana, but we have nobody to represent us inCongress and hence have not been invited. South Carolina puts herself inyour hands and expects you to secure for her whatever terms are given toLouisiana. " So of a sudden I found myself invested with responsibility equally as anagent and a referee. It is hardly worth while repeating in detail all that passed at thisWormley Conference, made public long ago by Congressional investigation. When I entered the apartment of Mr. Evarts at Wormley's I found, besidesMr. Evarts, Mr. John Sherman, Mr. Garfield, Governor Dennison, and Mr. Stanley Matthews, of the Republicans; and Mr. Ellis, Mr. Levy, and Mr. Burke, Democrats of Louisiana. Substantially the terms had been agreedupon during the previous conferences--that is, the promise that if Hayescame in the troops should be withdrawn and the people of Louisiana beleft free to set their house in order to suit themselves. The actualorder withdrawing the troops was issued by President Grant two or threedays later, just as he was going out of office. "Now, gentlemen, " said I, half in jest, "I am here to represent SouthCarolina; and if the terms given to Louisiana are not equally applied toSouth Carolina I become a filibuster myself to-morrow morning. " There was some chaffing as to what right I had there and how I got in, when with great earnestness Governor Dennison, who had been the bearerof a letter from Mr. Hayes, which he had read to us, put his hand on myshoulder and said: "As a matter of course the Southern policy to whichMr. Hayes has here pledged himself embraces South Carolina as well asLouisiana. " Mr. Sherman, Mr. Garfield and Mr. Evarts concurred warmly in this, and immediately after we separated I communicated the fact to GeneralButler. In the acrimonious discussion which subsequently sought to make"bargain, intrigue and corruption" of this Wormley Conference, and toinvolve certain Democratic members of the House who were nowise party toit but had sympathized with the purpose of Louisiana and South Carolinato obtain some measure of relief from intolerable local conditions, I never was questioned or assailed. No one doubted my fidelity toMr. Tilden, who had been promptly advised of all that passed and whoapproved what I had done. Though "conscripted, " as it were, and rather a passive agent, I couldsee no wrong in the proceeding. I had spoken and voted in favor of theElectoral Tribunal Bill, and losing, had no thought of repudiatingits conclusions. Hayes was already as good as seated. If the States ofLouisiana and South Carolina could save their local autonomy out of thegeneral wreck there seemed no good reason to forbid. On the other hand, the Republican leaders were glad of an opportunity tomake an end of the corrupt and tragic farce of Reconstruction; to unloadtheir party of a dead weight which had been burdensome and was growingdangerous; mayhap to punish their Southern agents, who had demanded somuch for doctoring the returns and making an exhibit in favor of Hayes. X Mr. Tilden accepted the result with equanimity. "I was at his house, " says John Bigelow, "when his exclusion wasannounced to him, and also on the fourth of March when Mr. Hayes wasinaugurated, and it was impossible to remark any change in his manner, except perhaps that he was less absorbed than usual and more interestedin current affairs. " His was an intensely serious mind; and he had come to regard thepresidency as rather a burden to be borne--an opportunity for publicusefulness--involving a life of constant toil and care, than as anoccasion for personal exploitation and rejoicing. How much of captivation the idea of the presidency may have had forhim when he was first named for the office I cannot say, for he was asunexultant in the moment of victory as he was unsubdued in the hour ofdefeat; but it is certainly true that he gave no sign of disappointmentto any of his friends. He lived nearly ten years longer, at Greystone, in a noble homestead hehad purchased for himself overlooking the Hudson River, the same ideallife of the scholar and gentleman that he had passed in Gramercy Park. Looking back over these untoward and sometimes mystifying events, I haveoften asked myself: Was it possible, with the elements what they were, and he himself what he was, to seat Mr. Tilden in the office to which hehad been elected? The missing ingredient in a character intellectuallyand morally great and a personality far from unimpressive, was the touchof the dramatic discoverable in most of the leaders of men; even in suchleaders as William of Orange and Louis XI; as Cromwell and Washington. There was nothing spectacular about Mr. Tilden. Not wanting the senseof humor, he seldom indulged it. In spite of his positiveness of opinionand amplitude of knowledge he was always courteous and deferential indebate. He had none of the audacious daring, let us say, of Mr. Elaine, the energetic self-assertion of Mr. Roosevelt. Either in his place wouldhave carried all before him. I repeat that he was never a subtle schemer--sitting behind the screenand pulling his wires--which his political and party enemies discoveredhim to be as soon as he began to get in the way of the machine andobstruct the march of the self-elect. His confidences were not effusive, nor their subjects numerous. His deliberation was unfailing andsometimes it carried the idea of indecision, not to say actual love ofprocrastination. But in my experience with him I found that he usuallyended where he began, and it was nowise difficult for those whom hetrusted to divine the bias of his mind where he thought it best toreserve its conclusions. I do not think in any great affair he ever hesitated longer thanthe gravity of the case required of a prudent man or that he had apreference for delays or that he clung tenaciously to both horns ofthe dilemma, as his training and instinct might lead him to do, and didcertainly expose him to the accusation of doing. He was a philosopher and took the world as he found it. He rarelycomplained and never inveighed. He had a discriminating way of balancingmen's good and bad qualities and of giving each the benefit of agenerous accounting, and a just way of expecting no more of a man thanit was in him to yield. As he got into deeper water his stature roseto its level, and from his exclusion from the presidency in 1877 to hisrenunciation of public affairs in 1884 and his death in 1886 his walksand ways might have been a study for all who would learn life's truestlessons and know the real sources of honor, happiness and fame. Chapter the Thirteenth Charles Eames and Charles Sumner-Schurzand Lamar--I Go to Congress--A Heroic Kentuckian--Stephen Foster and His Songs--Music and Theodore Thomas I Swift's definition of "conversation" did not preside over or direct thedaily intercourse between Charles Sumner, Charles Eames and Robert J. Walker in the old days in the National Capital. They did not converse. They discoursed. They talked sententiously in portentous essays andlearned dissertations. I used to think it great, though I nursed nolittle dislike of Sumner. Charles Eames was at the outset of his career a ne'er-do-well NewEnglander--a Yankee Jack-of-all-trades--kept at the front by anexceedingly clever wife. Through the favor she enjoyed at court hereceived from Pierce and Buchanan unimportant diplomatic appointments. During their sojourns in Washington their home was a kind of politicaland literary headquarters. Mrs. Eames had established a salon--the firstattempt of the kind made there; and it was altogether a success. HerSundays evenings were notable, indeed. Whoever was worth seeing, if intown, might usually be found there. Charles Sumner led the procession. He was a most imposing person. Both handsome and distinguishedin appearance, he possessed in an eminent degree the Harvardpragmatism--or, shall I say, affectation?--and seemed never happy excepton exhibition. He had made a profitable political and personal issue ofthe Preston Brooks attack. Brooks was an exceeding light weight, but hedid for Sumner more than Sumner could ever have done for himself. In the Charles Eames days Sumner was exceedingly disagreeable to me. Many people, indeed, thought him so. Many years later, in the Greeleycampaign of 1872, Schurz brought us together--they had become as verybrothers in the Senate--and I found him the reverse of my boyish illconceptions. He was a great old man. He was a delightful old man, every inch astatesman, much of a scholar, and something of a hero. I grew in time tobe actually fond of him, passed with him entire afternoons and eveningsin his library, mourned sincerely when he died, and went with Schurz toBoston, on the occasion when that great German-American delivered thememorial address in honor of the dead Abolitionist. Of all the public men of that period Carl Schurz most captivated me. When we first came into personal relations, at the Liberal Convention, which assembled at Cincinnati and nominated Greeley and Brown as apresidential ticket, he was just turned forty-three; I, two and thirty. The closest intimacy followed. Our tastes were much alike. Both of ushad been educated in music. He played the piano with intelligence andfeeling--especially Schumann, Brahms and Mendelssohn, neither of us everhaving quite reached the "high jinks" of Wagner. To me his oratory was wonderful. He spoke to an audience of five or tenthousand as he would have talked to a party of three or six. His stylewas simple, natural, unstrained; the lucid statement and cogent argumentnow and again irradiated by a salient passage of satire or a burst ofnot too eloquent rhetoric. He was quite knocked out by the nomination of Horace Greeley. For a longtime he could not reconcile himself to support the ticket. Horace Whiteand I addressed ourselves to the task of "fetching him into camp"--therebeing in point of fact nowhere else for him to go--though we had to getup what was called The Fifth Avenue Conference to make a bridge. Truth to say, Schurz never wholly adjusted himself to politicalconditions in the United States. He once said to me in one of thequerulous moods that sometimes overcame him: "If I should live a hundredyears my enemies would still call me a--Dutchman!" It was Schurz, as I have said, who brought Lamar and me together. TheMississippian had been a Secession Member of Congress when I was aUnionist scribe in the reporters' gallery. I was a furious partisan inthose days and disliked the Secessionists intensely. Of them, Lamarwas most aggressive. I later learned that he was very many-sided andaccomplished, the most interesting and lovable of men. He and Schurz"froze together, " as, brought together by Schurz, he and I "frozetogether. " On one side he was a sentimentalist and on the other aphilosopher, but on all sides a fighter. They called him a dreamer. He sprang from a race of chevaliers andscholars. Oddly enough, albeit in his moods a recluse, he was a man ofthe world; a favorite in society; very much at home in European courts, especially in that of England; the friend of Thackeray, at whose house, when in London, he made his abode. Lady Ritchie--Anne Thackeray--told memany amusing stories of his whimsies. He was a man among brainy men anda lion among clever women. We had already come to be good friends and constant comrades when thewhirligig of time threw us together for a little while in the lowerhouse of Congress. One day he beckoned me over to his seat. He wasleaning backward with his hands crossed behind his head. As I stood in front of him he said: "On the eighth of February, 1858, Mrs. Gwin, of California, gave a fancy dress ball. Mr. Lamar, ofMississippi, a member of Congress, was there. Also a glorious youngwoman--a vision of beauty and grace--with whom the handsome anddistinguished young statesman danced--danced once, twice, thrice, takingher likewise down to supper. He went to bed, turned his face to thewall and dreamed of her. That was twenty years ago. To-day this same Mr. Lamar, after an obscure interregnum, was with Mrs. Lamar looking overWashington for an apartment. In quest of cheap lodging they came toa mean house in a mean quarter, where a poor, wizened, ill-clad womanshowed them through the meanly furnished rooms. Of course they would notsuffice. "As they were coming away the great Mr. Lamar said to the poor landlady, 'Madam, have you lived long in Washington?' She said all her life. 'Madam, ' he continued, 'were you at a fancy dress ball given by Mrs. Senator Gwin of California, the eighth of February, 1858?' She said shewas. 'Do you remember, ' the statesman, soldier and orator continued, 'ayoung and handsome Mississippian, a member of Congress, by the name ofLamar?' She said she didn't. " I rather think that Lamar was the biggest brained of all the men Ihave met in Washington. He possessed the courage of his convictions. Adoctrinaire, there was nothing of the typical doctrinaire, or theorist, about him. He really believed that cotton was king and would compelEngland to espouse the cause of the South. Despite his wealth of experience and travel he was not overmuch of araconteur, but he once told me a good story about his friend Thackeray. The two were driving to a banquet of the Literary Fund, where Dickenswas to preside. "Lamar, " said Thackeray, "they say I can't speak. But ifI want to I can speak. I can speak every bit as good as Dickens, and Iam going to show you to-night that I can speak almost as good as you. "When the moment arrived Thackeray said never a word. Returning in thecab, both silent, Thackeray suddenly broke forth. "Lamar, " he exclaimed, "don't you think you have heard the greatest speech to-night that wasnever delivered?" II Holding office, especially going to Congress, had never entered any wishor scheme of mine. Office seemed to me ever a badge of bondage. I knewtoo much of the national capital to be allured by its evanescentand lightsome honors. When the opportunity sought me out none of itsillusions appealed to me. But after a long uphill fight for personal andpolitical recognition in Kentucky an election put a kind of sealupon the victory I had won and enabled me in a way to triumph over myenemies. I knew that if I accepted the nomination offered me I would geta big popular vote--as I did--and so, one full term, and half a term, incident to the death of the sitting member for the Louisville districtbeing open to me, I took the short term, refusing the long term. Though it was midsummer and Congress was about to adjourn I went toWashington and was sworn in. A friend of mine, Col. Wake Holman, hadmade a bet with one of our pals I would be under arrest before I hadbeen twenty-four hours in town, and won it. It happened in this wise:The night of the day when I took my seat there was an all-night session. I knew too well what that meant, and, just from a long tiresome journey, I went to bed and slept soundly till sunrise. Just as I was up anddressing for a stroll about the old, familiar, dearly loved quarter ofthe town there came an imperative rap upon the door and a voice said:"Get up, colonel, quick! This is a sergeant at arms. There has been acall of the House and I am after you. Everybody is drunk, more or less, and they are noisy to have some fun with you. " It was even as he said. Everybody, more or less, was drunk--especiallythe provisional speaker whom Mr. Randall had placed in the chair--andwhen we arrived and I was led a prisoner down the center aislepandemonium broke loose. They had all sorts of fun with me, such as it was. It was moved that Ibe fined the full amount of my mileage. Then a resolution was offeredsuspending my membership and sending me under guard to the old Capitolprison. Finally two or three of my friends rescued me and business wasallowed to proceed. It was the last day of a very long session and thosewho were not drunk were worn out. When I returned home there was a celebration in honor of the bet WakeHolman had won at my expense. Wake was the most attractive and lovableof men, by nature a hero, by profession a "filibuster" and soldier offortune. At two and twenty he was a private in Col. Humphrey Marshall'sRegiment of Kentucky Riflemen, which reached the scene of hostilitiesupon the Rio Grande in the midsummer of 1846. He had enlisted from Owencounty--"Sweet Owen, " as it used to be called--and came of good stock, his father, Col. Harry Holman, in the days of aboriginal fighting andjournalism, a frontier celebrity. Wake's company, out on a scout, waspicked off by the Mexicans, and the distinction between United Statessoldiers and Texan rebels not being yet clearly established, a drumheadcourt-martial ordered "the decimation. " This was a decree that one of every ten of the Yankee captives should beshot. There being a hundred of Marshall's men, one hundred beans--ninetywhite and ten black--were put in a hat. Then the company was mustered ason dress parade. Whoso drew a white bean was to be held prisoner of war;whoso drew a black bean was to die. In the early part of the drawing Wake drew a white bean. Toward theclose the turn of a neighbor and comrade from Owen county who had lefta wife and baby at home was called. He and Wake were standing together, Holman brushed him aside, walked out in his place and drew his bean. It turned out to be a white one. Twice within the half hour death hadlooked him in the eye and found no blinking there. I have seen quite a deal of hardihood, endurance, suffering, inboth women and men; splendid courage on the field of action; perfectself-possession in the face of danger; but I rather think that WakeHolman's exploit that day--next to actually dying for a friend, whatcan be nobler than being willing to die for him?--is the bravest thing Iknow or have ever been told of mortal man. Wake Holman went to Cuba in the Lopez Rebellion of 1851, and foughtunder Pickett at the Battle of Cardenas. In 1855-56 he was in Nicaragua, with Walker. He commanded a Kentucky regiment of cavalry on the Unionside in our War of Sections. After the war he lived the life of a hunterand fisher at his home in Kentucky; a cheery, unambitious, big-brainedand big-hearted cherub, whom it would not do to "projeck" with, albeitwith entire safety you could pick his pocket; the soul of simplicity andamiability. To have known him was an education in primal manhood. To sit at hishospitable board, with him at the head of the table, was an inspirationin the genius of life and the art of living. One of his familiarsstarted the joke that when Wake drew the second white bean "he got apeep. " He took it kindly; though in my intimacy with him, extendingover thirty years, I never heard him refer to any of his adventures as asoldier. It was not possible that such a man should provide for his old age. He had little forecast. He knew not the value of money. He had humor, affection and courage. I held him in real love and honor. When theMexican War Pension Act was passed by Congress I took his papers toGeneral Black, the Commissioner of Pensions, and related this story. "I have promised Gen. Cerro Gordo Williams, " said General Black, referring to the then senior United States Senator from Kentucky, "that his name shall go first on the roll of these Mexican pensioners. But"--and the General looked beamingly in my face, a bit tearful, andsays he: "Wake Holman's name shall come right after. " And there it is. III I was very carefully and for those times not ignorantly taught in music. Schell, his name was, and they called him "Professor. " He lived over inGeorgetown, where he had organized a little group of Prussian refugeesinto a German club, and from my tenth to my fifteenth year--at firstregularly, and then in a desultory way as I came back to WashingtonCity from my school in Philadelphia, he hammered Bach and Handel andMozart--nothing so modern as Mendelssohn--into my not unwilling norunreceptive mind, for my bent was in the beginning to compose dramas, and in the end operas. Adelina Patti was among my child companions. Once in the nationalcapital, when I was 12 years old and Adelina 9, we played together ata charity concert. She had sung "The Last Rose of Summer, " and I hadplayed her brother-in-law's variation upon "Home, Sweet Home. " Theaudience was enthusiastic. We were called out again and again. Then wecame on the stage together, and the applause increasing I sat down atthe keyboard and played an accompaniment with my own interpolations upon"Old Folks At Home, " which I had taught Adelina, and she sang the words. Then they fairly took the roof off. Once during a sojourn in Paris I was thrown with Christine Nilsson. She was in the heyday of her success at the Theater Lyrique under thepatronage of Madame Miolan-Carvalho. One day I said to her: "Thetime may come when you will be giving concerts. " She was indignant. "Nevertheless, " I continued, "let me teach you a sure encore. " I playedher Stephen Foster's immortal ditty. She was delighted. The sequel wasthat it served her even a better turn than it had served Adelina Patti. I played and transposed for the piano most of the melodies of Foster asthey were published, they being first produced in public by Christy'sMinstrels. IV Stephen Foster was the ne'er-do-well of a good Pennsylvania family. Asister of his had married a brother of James Buchanan. There were twodaughters of this marriage, nieces of the President, and when they werevisiting the White House we had--shall I dare write it?--high jinks withour nigger-minstrel concerts on the sly. Will S. Hays, the rival of Foster as a song writer and one of myreporters on the Courier-Journal, told me this story: "Foster, " said he, "was a good deal of what you might call a barroom loafer. He possessed asweet tenor voice before it was spoiled by drink, and was fond of music, though technically he knew nothing about it. He had a German friend whowhen he died left him a musical scrapbook, of all sorts of odds andends of original text. There is where Foster got his melodies. When thescrapbook gave out he gave out. " I took it as merely the spleen of a rival composer. But many years afterin Vienna I heard a concert given over exclusively to the performanceof certain posthumous manuscripts of Schubert. Among the rest wereselections from an unfinished opera--"Rosemonde, " I think it wascalled--in which the whole rhythm and movements and parts of the scoreof Old Folks at Home were the feature. It was something to have grown up contemporary, as it were, with thesesongs. Many of them were written in the old Rowan homestead, justoutside of Bardstown, Ky. , where Louis Philippe lived and taught, andfor a season Talleyrand made his abode. The Rowans were notable people. John Rowan, the elder, head of the house, was a famous lawyer, whodivided oratorical honors with Henry Clay, and like Clay, was a Senatorin Congress; his son, "young John, " as he was called, Stephen Foster'spal, went as minister to Naples, and fought duels, and was as BobAcres wanted to be, "a devil of a fellow. " He once told me he had beenintimate with Thackeray when they were wild young men in Paris, and thatthey had both of them known the woman whom Thackeray had taken for theoriginal of Becky Sharp. The Foster songs quite captivated my boyhood. I could sing a little, aswell as play, and learned each of them--especially Old Folks at Homeand My Old Kentucky Home--as they appeared. Their contemporary vogue wastremendous. Nothing has since rivalled the popular impression they made, except perhaps the Arthur Sullivan melodies. Among my ambitions to be a great historian, dramatist, soldier andwriter of romance I desired also to be a great musician, especially agreat pianist. The bone-felon did the business for this later. But allmy life I have been able to thumb the keyboard at least for the childrento dance, and it has been a recourse and solace sometimes duringintervals of embittered journalism and unprosperous statesmanship. V Theodore Thomas and I used to play duos together. He was a master of theviolin before he took to orchestration. We remained the best of friendsto the end of his days. On the slightest provocation, or none, we passed entire nights together. Once after a concert he suddenly exclaimed: "Don't you think Wagner wasa ---- fraud?" A little surprised even by one of his outbreaks, I said: "Wagner mayhave written some trick music but I hardly think that he was a fraud. " He reflected a moment. "Well, " he continued, "it may not lie in mymouth to say it--and perhaps I ought not to say it--I know I am mostresponsible for the Wagner craze--but I consider him a ---- fraud. " He had just come from a long "classic entertainment, " was worn out withtravel and worry, and meant nothing of the sort. After a very tiresome concert when he was railing at the hard lines ofa peripatetic musician I said: "Come with me and I will give you asoothing quail and as dry a glass of champagne as you ever had in yourlife. " The wine was poured out and he took a sip. "I don't call that dry wine, " he crossly said, and took another sip. "MyGod, " without a pause he continued, "isn't that great?" Of course he was impulsive, even impetuous. Beneath his seeming coldexterior and admirable self-control--the discipline of the masterartist--lay the moods and tenses of the musical temperament. He knewlittle or nothing outside of music and did not care to learn. I triedto interest him in politics. It was of no use. First he laughed mysuggestions to scorn and then swore like a trooper. German he was, through and through. It was well that he passed away before the worldwar. Pat Gilmore--"Patrick Sarsfield, " we always called him--was aborn politician, and if he had not been a musician he would have beena statesman. I kept the peace between him and Theodore Thomas by aningenious system of telling all kinds of kind things each had said ofthe other, my "repetitions" being pure inventions of my own. Chapter the Fourteenth Henry Adams and the Adams Family--John Hay and Frank Mason--The Three _Mousquetaires_ of Culture--Paris--"The Frenchman"--The South of France I I have been of late reading The Education of Henry Adams, and it recallsmany persons and incidents belonging to the period about which I am nowwriting. I knew Henry Adams well; first in London, then in Boston andfinally throughout his prolonged residence in Washington City. He was anAdams; very definitely an Adams, but, though his ghost may revisit theglimpses of the moon and chide me for saying so, with an English "cut tohis jib. " No three brothers could be more unlike than Charles Francis, John Quincyand Henry Adams. Brooks Adams I did not know. They represented thefourth generation of the brainiest pedigree--that is in continuousline--known to our family history. Henry thought he was a philosopherand tried to be one. He thought he was a man of the world and wanted tobe one. He was, in spite of himself, a provincial. Provincialism is not necessarily rustic, even suburban. There is noprovincial quite so provincial as he who has passed his life in greatcities. The Parisian boulevardier taken away from the asphalt, thecockney a little off Clapham Common and the Strand, is lost. Henry Adamsknew his London and his Paris, his Boston and his Quincy--we must notforget Quincy--well. But he had been born, and had grown up, between thelids of history, and for all his learning and travel he never got veryfar outside them. In manner and manners, tone and cast of thought he wasEnglish--delightfully English--though he cultivated the cosmopolite. His house in the national capital, facing the Executive Mansion acrossLafayette Square--especially during the life of his wife, an adorablewoman, who made up in sweetness and tact for some of the qualitieslacking in her husband--was an intellectual and high-bred center, arendezvous for the best ton and the most accepted people. The Adamsesmay be said to have succeeded the Eameses as leaders in semi-social, semi-literary and semi-political society. There was a trio--I used to call them the Three Musketeers ofCulture--John Hay, Henry Cabot Lodge and Henry Adams. They made aninteresting and inseparable trinity--Caleb Cushing, Robert J. Walker andCharles Sumner not more so--and it was worth while to let them have thefloor and to hear them talk; Lodge, cool and wary as a politician shouldbe; Hay, helterskelter, the real man of the world crossed on a Westernstock; and Adams, something of a litératteur, a statesman and a cynic. John Randolph Tucker, who when he was in Congress often met Henry atdinners and the like, said to him on the appearance of the early volumesof his History of the United States: "I am not disappointed, for howcould an Adams be expected to do justice to a Randolph?" While he was writing this history Adams said to me: "There is an oldvillain--next to Andrew Jackson the greatest villain of his time--aKentuckian--don't say he was a kinsman of yours!--whose papers, if heleft any, I want to see. " "To whom are you referring?" I asked with mock dignity. "To John Adair, " he answered. "Well, " said I, "John Adair married my grandmother's sister and I canput you in the way of getting whatever you require. " I have spoken of John Hay as Master of the Revels in the oldSutherland-Delmonico days. Even earlier than that--in London andParis--an intimacy had been established between us. He married inCleveland, Ohio, and many years passed before I came up with him again. One day in Whitelaw Reid's den in the Tribune Building he reappeared, strangely changed--no longer the rosy-cheeked, buoyant boy--anoverserious, prematurely old man. I was shocked, and when he had goneReid, observing this, said: "Oh, Hay will come round all right. He isjust now in one of his moods. I picked him up in Piccadilly the otherday and by sheer force brought him over. " When we recall the story of Hay's life--one weird tragedy after another, from the murder of Lincoln to the murder of McKinley, including thetragic end of two members of his immediate family--there rises in spiteof the grandeur that pursued him a single exclamation: "The pity of it!" This is accentuated by Henry Adams' Education. Yet the silent couragewith which Hay met disaster after disaster must increase both thesympathy and the respect of those who peruse the melancholy pages ofthat vivid narrative. Toward the end, meeting him on a public occasion, I said: "You work too hard--you are not looking well. " "I am dying, " said he. "Yes, " I replied in the way of banter, "you are dying of fame andfortune. " But I went no further. He was in no mood for the old verbal horseplay. He looked wan and wizened. Yet there were still several years beforehim. When he came from Mannheim to Paris it was clear that the end wasnigh. I did not see him--he was too ill to see any one--but Frank Masonkept me advised from day to day, and when, a month or two later, havingreached home, the news came to us that he was dead we were nowisesurprised, and almost consoled by the thought that rest had come atlast. Frank Mason and his wife--"the Masons, " they were commonly called, forMrs. Mason made a wondrous second to her husband--were from Cleveland, Ohio, she a daughter of Judge Birchard--Jennie Birchard--he a risingyoung journalist caught in the late seventies by the glitter of aforeign appointment. They ran the gamut of the consular service, beginning with Basel and Marseilles and ending with Frankfurt, Berlinand Paris. Wherever they were their house was a very home--a kind ofYankee shrine--of visiting Americans and militant Americanism. Years before he was made consul general--in point of fact when he wasplain consul at Marseilles--he ran over to Paris for a lark. One day hesaid to me, "A rich old hayseed uncle of mine has come to town. He hasmoney to burn and he wants to meet you. I have arranged for us to dinewith him at the Anglaise to-night and we are to order the dinner--carteblanche. " The rich old uncle to whom I was presented did not havethe appearance of a hayseed. On the contrary he was a mostdistinguished-looking old gentleman. The dinner we ordered was"stunning"--especially the wines. When the bill was presented ourhost scanned it carefully, scrutinizing each item and making his ownaddition, altogether "like a thoroughbred. " Frank and I watched him notwithout a bit of anxiety mixed with contrition. When he had paid thescore he said with a smile: "That was rather a steep bill, but we havehad rather a good dinner, and now, if you boys know of as good a dancehall we'll go there and I'll buy the outfit. " II First and last I have lived much in the erstwhile gay capital of France. It was gayest when the Duke de Morny flourished as King of the Bourse. He was reputed the Emperor's natural half-brother. The breakdown of theMexican adventure, which was mostly his, contributed not a little to thefinal Napoleonic fall. He died of dissipation and disappointment, andunder the pseudonym of the Duke de Morra, Daudet celebrated him in "TheNabob. " De Morny did not live to see the tumble of the house of cards he hadbuilt. Next after I saw Paris it was a pitiful wreck indeed; the Hotelde Ville and the Tuileries in flames; the Column gone from the PlaceVendôme; but later the rise of the Third Republic saw the revival of theunquenchable spirit of the irrepressible French. Nevertheless I should scarcely be taken for a Parisian. Once, whenwandering aimlessly, as one so often does through the Paris streets, one of the touts hanging round the Cafe de la Paix to catch the unwarystranger being a little more importunate than usual, I ordered him to goabout his business. "This is my business, " he impudently answered. "Get away, I tell you!" I thundered, "I am a Parisian myself!" He drew a little out of reach of the umbrella I held in my hand, andwith a drawl of supreme and very American contempt, exclaimed, "Well, you don't look it, " and scampered off. Paris, however, is not all of France. Sometimes I have thought not thebest part of it. There is the south of France, with Avignon, the heartof Provence, seat of the French papacy six hundred years ago, themetropolis of Christendom before the Midi was a region--Paris yet avillage, and Rome struggling out of the debris of the ages--with Arlesand Nîmes, and, above all, Tarascon, the home of the immortal Tartarin, for next-door neighbors. They are all hard by Marseilles. But Avignonever most caught my fancy, for there the nights seem peopled with theghosts of warriors and cardinals, and there on festal mornings thespirits of Petrarch and his Laura walk abroad, the ramparts, which badedefiance to Goth and Vandal and Saracen hordes, now giving shelter tobats and owls, but the atmosphere laden with legend _"... Tasting of Flora and the country green, Dance and Provençal song and sun-burnt mirth. "_ Something too much of this! Let me not yield to the spell of thepicturesque. To recur to matters of fact and get down to prose and thetimes we live in let us halt a moment on this southerly journey andhave a look in upon Lyons, the industrial capital of France, which isdirectly on the way. The idiosyncrasy of Lyons is silk. There are two schools of introductionin the art of silk weaving, one of them free to any lad in the city, theother requiring a trifle of matriculation. The first of these witnessesthe whole process of fabrication from the reeling of threads to thefinishing of dress goods, and the loom painting of pictures. It is mostinteresting of course, the painstaking its most obvious feature, theindividual weaver living with his family upon a wage representing thecost of the barest necessities of life. Again, and ever and ever again, the inequalities of fortune! Where will it end? The world has tried revolution and it has tried anarchy. Always thesurvival of the strong, nicknamed by Spencer and his ilk the "fittest. "Ten thousand heads were chopped off during the Terror in France to makeroom for whom? Not for the many, but the few; though it must be allowedthat in some ways the conditions were improved. Yet here after a hundred years, here in Lyons, faithful, intelligentmen struggle for sixty, for forty cents a day, with never a hope beyond!What is to be done about it? Suppose the wealth of the universe weredivided per capita, how long would it remain out of the clutches of theNapoleons of finance, only a percentage of whom find ultimately theirWaterloo, little to the profit of the poor who spin and delve, who fightand die, in the Grand Army of the Wretched! III We read a deal that is amusing about the southerly Frenchman. He isindeed _sui generis_. Some five and twenty years ago there appeared inLouisville a dapper gentleman, who declared himself a Marseillais, and who subsequently came to be known variously as The Major andThe Frenchman. I shall not mention him otherwise in this veraciouschronicle, but, looking through the city directory of Marseilles I foundan entire page devoted to his name, though all the entries may not havebeen members of his family. There is no doubt that he was a Marseillais. Wandering through the streets of the old city, now in a café of LaCannebière and now along a quay of the Old Port, his ghost has oftencrossed my path and dogged my footsteps, though he has lain in his gravethis many a day. I grew to know him very well, to be first amused byhim, then to be interested, and in the end to entertain an affection forhim. The Major was a delightful composite of Tartarin of Tarascon and theBrigadier Gerard, with a dash of the Count of Monte Cristo; for when hewas flush--which by some odd coincidence happened exactly four times ayear--he was as liberal a spendthrift as one could wish to meet anywherebetween the little principality of Monaco and the headwaters of theNile; transparent as a child; idiosyncratic to a degree. I understand Marseilles better and it has always seemed nearer to mesince he was born there and lived there when a boy, and, I much fear me, was driven away, the scapegrace of excellent and wealthy people; not, I feel sure, for any offense that touched the essential parts of hismanhood. A gentler, a more upright and harmless creature I never knew inall my life. I very well recall when he first arrived in the Kentucky metropolis. His attire and raiment were faultless. He wore a rose in his coat, hecarried a delicate cane, and a most beautiful woman hung upon his arm. She was his wife. It was a circumstance connected with this lady whichled to the after intimacy between him and me. She fell dangerously ill. I had casually met her husband as an all-round man-about-town, and bythis token, seeking sympathy on lines of least resistance, he came to mewith his sorrow. I have never seen grief more real and fervid. He swore, on his kneesand with tears in his eyes, that if she recovered, if God would giveher back to him, he would never again touch a card; for gambling washis passion, and even among amateurs he would have been accounted thesoftest of soft things. His prayer was answered, she did recover, and heproceeded to fulfill his vow. But what was he to do? He had been taught, or at least he had learned, to do nothing, not even to play poker! I suggested that as runninga restaurant was a French prerogative and that as he knew less aboutcooking than about anything else--we had had a contest or two over themysteries of a pair of chafing dishes--and as there was not a reallygood eating place in Louisville, he should set up a restaurant. It wassaid rather in jest than in earnest; but I was prepared to lend him themoney. The next thing I knew, and without asking for a dollar, he hadopened The Brunswick. In those days I saw the Courier-Journal to press, turning night intoday, and during a dozen years I took my twelve o'clock supper there. Itwas thus and from these beginnings that the casual acquaintance betweenus ripened into intimacy, and that I gradually came into a knowledgeof the reserves behind The Major's buoyant optimism and occasionalgasconnade. He ate and drank sparingly; but he was not proof against the seductionof good company, and he had plenty of it, from William Preston to JosephJefferson, with such side lights as Stoddard Johnston, Boyd Winchester, Isaac Caldwell and Proctor Knott, of the Home Guard--very nearly all thecelebrities of the day among the outsiders--myself the humble witnessand chronicler. He secured an excellent chef, and of course we livedexceedingly well. The Major's most obvious peculiarity was that he knew everything and hadbeen everywhere. If pirates were mentioned he flowered out at onceinto an adventure upon the sea; if bandits, on the land. If it was WallStreet he had a reminiscence and a scheme; if gambling, a hard-luckstory and a system. There was no quarter of the globe of which he hadnot been an inhabitant. Once the timbered riches of Africa being mentioned, at once the Majorgave us a most graphic account of how "the old house"--for thus hedesignated some commercial establishment, which either had no existenceor which he had some reason for not more particularly indicating--hadsent him in charge of a rosewood saw mill on the Ganges, and, after manyups and downs, of how the floods had come and swept the plant away; andRudolph Fink, who was of the party, immediately said, "I can attestthe truth of The Major's story, because my brother Albert and I werein charge of some fishing camps at the mouth of the Ganges at the exactdate of the floods, and we caught many of those rosewood logs in ournets as they floated out to sea. " Augustine's Terrapin came to be for a while the rage in Philadelphia, and even got as far as New York and Washington, and straightway, TheMajor declared he could and would make Augustine and his terrapin look"like a monkey. " He proposed to give a dinner. There were great preparations and expectancy. None of us ate much atluncheon that day. At the appointed hour, we assembled at The Brunswick. I will dismiss the decorations and the preludes except to say that theywere Parisian. After a while in full regalia The Major appeared, a trainof servants following with a silver tureen. The lid was lifted. "_Voilà!_" says he. The vision disclosed to our startled eyes was an ocean that looked likebean soup flecked by a few strands of black crape! The explosion duly arrived from the assembled gourmets, I, myself, I amsorry to say, leading the rebellion. "I put seeks terrapin in zat soup!" exclaimed The Frenchman, quitelosing his usual good English in his excitement. We reproached him. We denounced him. He was driven from the field. Buthe bore us no malice. Ten days later he invited us again, and this timeSam Ward himself could have found no fault with the terrapin. Next afternoon, when I knew The Major was asleep, I slipped back intothe kitchen and said to Louis Garnier, the chef: "Is there any of thatterrapin left over from last night?" All unconscious of his treason Louis took me into the pantry andtriumphantly showed me three jars bearing the Augustine label and thePhiladelphia express tags! On another occasion a friend of The Major's, passing The Brunswick andobserving some diamond-back shells in the window said, "Major, have youany real live terrapins?" [Illustration: Henry Woodfin Grady One of Mr. Watterson's "Boys". ] "Live!" cried The Frenchman. "Only this morning I open the ice box andthey were all dancing the cancan. " "Major, " persisted the friend, "I'll go you a bottle of Veuve Cliquot, you cannot show me an actual living terrapin. " "What do you take me for--confidence man?" The Major retorted. "How youexpect an old sport like me to bet upon a certainty?" "Never mind your ethics. The wager is drink, not money. In any event weshall have the wine. " "Oh, well, " says The Frenchman, with a shrug and a droll grimace, "ifyou insist on paying for a bottle of wine come with me. " He took a lighted candle, and together they went back to the ice box. It was literally filled with diamond backs, and my friend thought he wasgone for sure. "Là!" says The Major with triumph, rummaging among the mass of shellswith his cane as he held the candle aloft. "But, " says my friend, ready to surrender, yet taking a last chance, "you told me they were dancing the cancan!" The Major picked up a terrapin and turned it over in his hand. Quitenumb and frozen, the animal within made no sign. Then he stirred theshells about in the box with his cane. Still not a show of life. Of asudden he stopped, reflected a moment, then looked at his watch. "Ah, " he murmured. "I quite forget. The terrapin, they are asleep. It isten-thirty, and the terrapin he regularly go to sleep at ten o'clockby the watch every night. " And without another word he reached for theVeuve Cliquot! For all his volubility in matters of romance and sentiment The Majorwas exceeding reticent about his immediate self and his own affairs. His legends referred to the distant of time and place. A certain dignitycould not be denied him, and, on occasion, a proper reserve; he rarelymentioned his business--though he worked like a slave, and could nothave been making much or any profit--so that there rose the query howhe contrived to make both ends meet. Little by little I came into theknowledge that there was a money supply from somewhere; finally, itmatters not how, that he had an annuity of forty thousand francs, paidin quarterly installments of ten thousand francs each. Occasionally he mentioned "the Old House, " and in relating the famousSophonisba episode late at night, and only in the very fastnesses ofthe wine cellar, as it were, at the most lachrymose passage he spoke of"l'Oncle Célestin, " with the deepest feeling. "Did you ever hear The Frenchman tell that story about Sophonisba?"Doctor Stoic, whom on account of his affectation of insensibility wewere wont to call Old Adamant, once asked me. "Well, sir, the othernight he told it to me, and he was drunk, and he cried, sir; and I wasdrunk, and I cried too!" I had known The Frenchman now ten or a dozen years. That he camefrom Marseilles, that he had served on the Confederate side in theTrans-Mississippi, that he possessed an annuity, that he must have beenwell-born and reared, that he was simple, yet canny, and in his moneydealings scrupulously honest--was all I could be sure of. What had hedone to be ashamed about or wish to conceal? In what was he a blacksheep, for that he had been one seemed certain? Had the beautiful woman, his wife--a tireless church and charity worker, who lived the life of arecluse and a saint--had she reclaimed him from his former self? I knewthat she had been the immediate occasion of his turning over a new leaf. But before her time what had he been, what had he done? Late one night, when the rain was falling and the streets were empty, Ientered The Brunswick. It was empty too. In the farthest corner of thelittle dining room The Major, his face buried in his hands, laid uponthe table in front of him, sat silently weeping. He did not observemy entrance and I seated myself on the opposite side of the table. Presently he looked up, and seeing me, without a word passed me a letterwhich, all blistered with tears, had brought him to this distressfulstate. It was a formal French burial summons, with its long list offamily names--his among the rest--the envelope, addressed in a lady'shand--his sister's, the wife of a nobleman in high military command--thepostmark "Lyon. " Uncle Celestin was dead. Thereafter The Frenchman told me much which I may not recall and mustnot repeat; for, included in that funeral list were some of the bestnames in France, Uncle Célestin himself not the least of them. At last he died, and as mysteriously as he had come his body was takenaway, nobody knew when, nobody where, and with it went the beautifulwoman, his wife, of whom from that day to this I have never heard aword. Chapter the Fifteenth Still the Gay Capital of France--Its Environs--Walewska and De Morny--Thackeray in Paris--A _Pension_ Adventure I Each of the generations thinks itself commonplace. Familiarity breedsequally indifference and contempt. Yet no age of the world has witnessedso much of the drama of life--of the romantic and picturesque--as theage we live in. The years betwixt Agincourt and Waterloo were not moredelightfully tragic than the years between Serajevo and Senlis. The gay capital of France remains the center of the stage and retainsthe interest of the onlooking universe. All roads lead to Paris as allroads led to Rome. In Dickens' day "a tale of two cities" could onlymean London and Paris then, and ever so unalike. To be brought to datethe title would have now to read "three, " or even "four, " cities, NewYork and Chicago putting in their claims for mundane recognition. I have been not only something of a traveller, but a diligent studentof history and a voracious novel reader, and, once-in-a-while, I get myhistory and my fiction mixed. This has been especially the case when thehum-drum of the Boulevards has driven me from the fascinations of theBeau Quartier into the by-ways of the Marais and the fastnesses ofwhat was once the Latin Quarter. More than fifty years of intimacy haveenabled me to learn many things not commonly known, among them thatParis is the most orderly and moral city in the world, except when, onrare and brief occasions, it has been stirred to its depths. I have crossed the ocean many times--have lived, not sojourned, on thebanks of the Seine, and, as I shall never see the other side again--donot want to see it in its time of sorrow and garb of mourning--I may beforgiven a retrospective pause in this egotistic chronicle. Or, shall Inot say, a word or two of affectionate retrogression, though perchanceit leads me after the manner of Silas Wegg to drop into poetry and takea turn with a few ghosts into certain of their haunts, when you, dearsir, or madame, or miss, as the case may be, and I were living that"other life, " whereof we remember so little that we cannot recall who wewere, or what name we went by, howbeit now-and-then we get a glimpsein dreams, or a "hunch" from the world of spirits, or spirts-and-water, which makes us fancy we might have been Julius Caesar, or Cleopatra--asmaybe we were!--or at least Joan of Arc, or Jean Valjean! II Let me repeat that upon no spot of earth has the fable we call existencehad so rare a setting and rung up its curtain upon such a succession ofperformances; has so concentrated human attention upon mundane affairs;has called such a muster roll of stage favorites; has contributed toromance so many heroes and heroines, to history so many signal episodesand personal exploits, to philosophy so much to kindle the craving forvital knowledge, to stir sympathy and to awaken reflection. Greece and Rome seem but myths of an Age of Fable. They live for usas pictures live, as statues live. What was it I was saying aboutstatues--that they all look alike to me? There are too many of them. They bring the ancients down to us in marble and bronze, not in fleshand blood. We do not really laugh with Terence and Horace, nor weep withÆschylus and Homer. The very nomenclature has a ticket air like tags ona collection of curios in an auction room, droning the dull iteration ofa catalogue. There is as little to awaken and inspire in the system ofreligion and ethics of the pagan world they lived in as in the eyes ofthe stone effigies that stare blankly upon us in the British Museum, theUffizi and the Louvre. We walk the streets of the Eternal City with wonderment, not with pity, the human side quite lost in the archaic. What is Cæsar to us, or we toCæsar? Jove's thunder no longer terrifies, and we look elsewhere thanthe Medici Venus for the lights o' love. Not so with Paris. There the unbroken line of five hundredyears--semi-modern years, marking a longer period than we commonlyascribe to Athens or Rome--beginning with the exit of this our ownworld from the dark ages into the partial light of the middle ages, andcontinuing thence through the struggle of man toward achievement--tellsus a tale more consecutive and thrilling, more varied and instructive, than may be found in all the pages of all the chroniclers and poets ofthe civilizations which vibrated between the Bosphorus and the Tiber, toyield at last to triumphant Barbarism swooping down from Tyrol cragand Alpine height, from the fastnesses of the Rhine and the Rhone, toswallow luxury and culture. Refinement had done its perfect work. Ithad emasculated man and unsexed woman and brought her to the front as apolitical force, even as it is trying to do now. The Paris of Balzac and Dumas, of De Musset and Hugo--even ofThackeray--could still be seen when I first went there. Though our ageis as full of all that makes for the future of poetry and romance, itdoes not contemporaneously lend itself to sentimental abstraction. Yetit is hard to separate fact and fiction here; to decide between thetrue and the false; to pluck from the haze with which time has envelopedthem, and to distinguish the puppets of actual flesh and blood who livedand moved and had their being, and the phantoms of imagination calledinto life and given each its local habitation and its name by the poet'spen working its immemorial spell upon the reader's credulity. To me D'Artagnan is rather more vital than Richelieu. Hugo's impsand Balzac's bullies dance down the stage and shut from the view thetax-collectors and the court favorites. The mousquetaires crowd thefield marshals off the scene. There is something real in Quasimodo, inCæsar de Birotteau, in Robert Macaire, something mythical in Mazarin, inthe Regent and in Jean Lass. Even here, in faraway Kentucky, I can shutmy eyes and see the Lady of Dreams as plainly as if she were coming outof the Bristol or the Ritz to step into her automobile, while the GrandeMademoiselle is merely a cloud of clothes and words that for me meannothing at all. I once passed a week, day by day, roaming through the Musee Carnavalet. Madame de Sevigne had an apartment and held her salon there for nearlytwenty years. Hard by is the house where the Marquise de Brinvilliers--agentle, blue-eyed thing they tell us--a poor, insane creature she musthave been--disseminated poison and death, and, just across and beyondthe Place des Vosges, the Hotel de Sens, whither Queen Margot took herdoll-rags and did her spriting after she and Henri Quatre had agreedno longer to slide down the same cellar door. There is in the Museuma death-mask, colored and exceeding life-like, taken the dayafter Ravaillac delivered the finishing knife-thrust in the Rue deFerronnerie, which represents the Bèarnais as anything but a tamer ofhearts. He was a fighter, however, from Wayback, and I dare say Dumas'narrative is quite as authentic as any. One can scarce wonder that men like Hugo and Balzac chose this quarterof the town to live in--and Rachael, too!--it having given such frequentshelter to so many of their fantastic creations, having been the realabode of a train of gallants and bravos, of saints and harlots from thedays of Diane de Poitiers to the days of Pompadour and du Barry, and ofstatesmen and prelates likewise from Sully to Necker, from Colbert toTurgot. III I speak of the Marais as I might speak of Madison Square, or HydePark--as a well-known local section--yet how few Americans who have goneto Paris have ever heard of it. It is in the eastern division of thetown. One finds it a curious circumstance that so many if not most ofthe great cities somehow started with the rising, gradually to migratetoward the setting sun. When I first wandered about Paris there was little west of the Archof Stars except groves and meadows. Neuilly and Passy were distantvillages. Auteuil was a safe retreat for lovers and debtors, with comicopera villas nestled in high-walled gardens. To Auteuil Armand Duval andhis Camille hied away for their short-lived idyl. In those days therewas a lovely lane called Marguerite Gautier, with a dovecote pointed outas the very "rustic dwelling" so pathetically sung in Verdi's tunefulscore and tenderly described in the original Dumas text. The BoulevardMontmorenci long ago plowed the shrines of romance out of the knowledgeof the living, and a part of the Longchamps racecourse occupies the spotwhither impecunious poets and adventure-seeking wives repaired toescape the insistence of cruel bailiffs and the spies of suspicious andmonotonous husbands. Tempus fugit! I used to read Thackeray's Paris Sketches with a kindof awe. The Thirties and the Forties, reincarnated and inspired by hisglowing spirit, seemed clad in translucent garments, like the figures inthe Nibelungenlied, weird, remote, glorified. I once lived in the street"for which no rhyme our language yields, " next door to a pastry shopthat claimed to have furnished the mise en scène for the "Balladof Bouillabaisse, " and I often followed the trail of Louis DominicCartouche "down that lonely and crooked byway that, setting forth froma palace yard, led finally to the rear gate of a den of thieves. " Ah, well-a-day! I have known my Paris now twice as long as Thackeray knewhis Paris, and my Paris has been as interesting as his Paris, for itincludes the Empire, the Siege and the Republic. I knew and sat for months at table with Comtesse Walewska, widow of thebastard son of Napoleon Bonaparte. The Duke de Morny was rather a personin his way and Gambetta was no slouch, as Titmarsh would himself agree. I knew them both. The Mexican scheme, which was going to make everyFrenchman rich, was even more picturesque and tragical than theMississippi bubble. There were lively times round about the last of theSixties and the early Seventies. The Terror lasted longer, but itwas not much more lurid than the Commune; the Hotel de Ville and theTuileries in flames, the column gone from the Place Vendôme, when I gotthere just after the siege. The regions of the beautiful Opera House andof the venerable Notre Dame they told me had been but yesterday runningstreams of blood. At the corner of the Rue de la Paix and the Rue Dannou(they called it then the Rue St. Augustine) thirty men, women, and boyswere one forenoon stood against the wall and shot, volley upon volley, to death. In the Sacristy of the Cathedral over against the Morgueand the Hotel Dieu, they exhibit the gore-stained vestments of threearchbishops of Paris murdered within as many decades. IV Thackeray came to Paris when a very young man. He was for paintingpictures, not for writing books, and he retained his artistic yearningsif not ambitions long after he had become a great and famous man ofletters. It was in Paris that he married his wife, and in Paris that themelancholy finale came to pass; one of the most heartbreaking chaptersin literary history. His little girls lived here with their grandparents. The elder of themrelates how she was once taken up some flights of stairs by the CountessX to the apartment of a frail young man to whom the Countess wascarrying a basket of fruit; and how the frail young man insisted, against the protest of the Countess, upon sitting at the piano andplaying; and of how they came out again, the eyes of the Countessstreaming with tears, and of her saying, as they drove away, "Never, never forget, my child, as long as you live, that you have heard Chopinplay. " It was in one of the lubberly houses of the Place Vendôme thatthe poet of the keyboard died a few days later. Just around the corner, in the Rue du Mont Thabor, died Alfred de Musset. A brass plate marksthe house. May I not here transcribe that verse of the famous "Ballad ofBouillabaisse, " which I have never been able to recite, or read aloud, and part of which I may at length take to myself: _"Ah me, how quick the days are flitting! I mind me of a time that's gone, When here I'd sit, as now I'm sitting In this same place--but not alone-- A fair young form was nestled near me, A dear, dear face looked fondly up, And sweetly spoke and smiled to hear me, There's no one now to share my cup. "_ The writer of these lines a cynic! Nonsense. When will the world learnto discriminate? V It is impossible to speak of Paris without giving a foremost place inthe memorial retrospect to the Bois de Boulogne, the Parisian's ConeyIsland. I recall that I passed the final Sunday of my last Parisiansojourn just before the outbreak of the World War with a beloved familyparty in the joyous old Common. There is none like it in the world, uniting the urban to the rural with such surpassing grace as perpetuallyto convey a double sensation of pleasure; primal in its simplicity, superb in its setting; in the variety and brilliancy of the life which, upon sunny afternoons, takes possession of it and makes it a crossbetween a parade and a paradise. There was a time when, rather far away for foot travel, the Bois mightbe considered a driving park for the rich. It fairly blazed with theostentatious splendor of the Second Empire; the shoddy Duke with hisshady retinue, in gilded coach-and-four; the world-famous courtesan, bedizened with costly jewels and quite as well known as the Empress; thefavorites of the Tuileries, the Comédie Française, the Opera, the JardinMabille, forming an unceasing and dazzling line of many-sided frivolityfrom the Port de Ville to the Port St. Cloud, circling round LaBagatelle and ranging about the Cafe Cascade, a human tiara of diamonds, a moving bouquet of laces and rubies, of silks and satins and emeraldsand sapphires. Those were the days when the Due de Morny, half if notfull brother of the Emperor, ruled as king of the Bourse, and CoraPearl, a clever and not at all good-looking Irish girl gone wrong, reigned as Queen of the Demimonde. All this went by the board years ago. Everywhere, more or less, electricity has obliterated distinctions of rank and wealth. It hascircumvented lovers and annihilated romance. The Republic ousted thebogus nobility. The subways and the tram cars connect the Bois deBoulogne and the Bois de Vincennes so closely that the poorest may makehimself at home in either or both. The automobile, too, oddly enough, is proving a very leveller. Thecrowd recognizes nobody amid the hurly-burly of coupes, pony-carts, and taxicabs, each trying to pass the other. The conglomeration ofpersonalities effaces the identity alike of the statesman and theartist, the savant and the cyprian. No six-inch rules hedge the shade ofthe trees and limit the glory of the grass. The _ouvrier_ can bring hisbrood and his basket and have his picnic where he pleases. The pastrycook and his chére amie, the coiffeur and his grisette can spoon by thelake-side as long as the moonlight lasts, and longer if they list, withnever a gendarme to say them nay, or a rude voice out of the depthshoarsely to declaim, "allez!" The Bois de Boulogne is literally andabsolutely a playground, the playground of the people, and this lastSunday of mine, not fewer than half a million of Parisians were makingit their own. Half of these encircled the Longchamps racecourse. The other half wereshared by the boats upon the lagoons and the bosky dells under thesummer sky and the cafés and the restaurants with which the Boisabounds. Our party, having exhausted the humors of the drive, repairedto Pré Catalan. Aside from the "two old brides" who are always inevidence on such occasions, there was a veritable "young couple, "exceedingly pretty to look at, and delightfully in love! That sort ofthing is not so uncommon in Paris as cynics affect to think. If it be true, as the witty Frenchman observes, that "gambling is therecreation of gentlemen and the passion of fools, " it is equally truethat love is a game where every player wins if he sticks to it and isloyal to it. Just as credit is the foundation of business is love boththe asset and the trade-mark of happiness. To see it is to believe it, and--though a little cash in hand is needful to both--where either iswanting, look out for sheriffs and scandals. Pré Catalan, once a pasture for cows with a pretty kiosk for the saleof milk, has latterly had a tea-room big enough to seat a thousand, notcounting the groves which I have seen grow up about it thickly dottedwith booths and tables, where some thousands more may regale themselves. That Sunday it was never so glowing with animation and color. As itmakes one happy to see others happy it makes one adore his own land towitness that which makes other lands great. I have not loved Paris as a Parisian, but as an American; perhaps itis a stretch of words to say I love Paris at all. I used to love to gothere and to behold the majesty of France. I have always liked to markthe startling contrasts of light and shade. I have always known what allthe world now knows, that beneath the gayety of the French there burnsa patriotic and consuming fire, a high sense of public honor; a finespirit of self-sacrifice along with the sometimes too aggressive spiritof freedom. In 1873 I saw them two blocks long and three files deep uponthe Rue St. Honore press up to the Bank of France, old women and old menwith their little all tied in handkerchiefs and stockings to take upthe tribute required by Bismarck to rid the soil of the detested German. They did it. Alone they did it--the French people--the hard-working, frugal, loyal commonalty of France--without asking the loan of a soufrom the world outside. VI Writing of that last Sunday in the Bois de Boulogne, I find by recurringto the record that I said: "There is a deal more of good than bad inevery Nation. I take off my hat to the French. But, I have had my flingand I am quite ready to go home. Even amid the gayety and the glare, thesplendor of color and light, the Hungarian band wafting to the greeneryand the stars the strains of the delicious waltz, La Veuve Joyeuse hervery self--yea, many of her--tapping the time at many adjacent tables, the song that fills my heart is 'Hame, Hame, Hame!--Hame to my aincountree. ' Yet, to come again, d'ye mind? I should be loath to saygood-by forever to the Bois de Boulogne. I want to come back to Paris. I always want to come back to Paris. One needs not to make an apology orgive a reason. "We turn rather sadly away from Pré Catalan and the Café Cascade. We glide adown the flower-bordered path and out from the clusters ofChinese lanterns, and leave the twinkling groves to their music andmerry-making. Yonder behind us, like a sentinel, rises Mont Valerien. Before us glimmer the lamps of uncountable coaches, as our own, veeringtoward the city, the moon just topping the tower of St. Jacques de laBoucherie and silver-plating the bronze figures upon the Arch of Stars. "We enter the Port Maillot. We turn into the Avenue du Bois. Presentlywe shall sweep with the rest through the Champs Èlysées and on to theocean of the infinite, the heart of the mystery we call Life, nowhere socondensed, so palpable, so appealing. Roll the screen away! The shadesof Clovis and Genevieve may be seen hand-in-hand with the shades ofMartel and Pepin, taking the round of the ghost-walk between St. Denisand St. Germain, now le Balafré and again Navarre, now the assassins ofthe Ligue and now the assassins of the Terror, to keep them company. Noryet quite all on murder bent, some on pleasure; the Knights and Ladiesof the Cloth of Gold and the hosts of the Renaissance: Cyrano deBergerac and François Villon leading the ragamuffin procession; thejades of the Fronde, Longueville, Chevreuse and fair-haired Anne ofAustria; and Ninon, too, and Manon; and the never-to-be-forgotten Four, 'one for all and all for one;' Cagliostro and Monte Cristo; on the side, Rabelais taking notes and laughing under his cowl. Catherine de Mediciand Robespierre slinking away, poor, guilty things, into the paletwilight of the Dawn! "Names! Names! Only names? I am not just so sure about that. In anyevent, what a roll call! We are such stuff as dreams are made of, andour little life is rounded by a sleep; the selfsame sleep which these, our living dead men and women in steel armor and gauzy muslins, insilken hose and sock and buskin, epaulettes and top boots, brocades andbuff facings, have endured so long and know so well! "If I should die in Paris I should expect them--or some of them--to meetme at the barriers and to say, 'Behold, the wickedness that was done inthe world, the cruelty and the wrong, dwelt in the body, not in the soulof man, which freed from its foul incasement, purified and made eternalby the hand of death, shall see both the glory and the hand of God!'" It was not to be. I shall not die in Paris. I shall never come again. Neither shall I make apology for this long quotation by myself frommyself, for am I not inditing an autobiography, so called? Chapter the Sixteenth Monte Carlo--The European Shrine of Sport and Fashion--Apocryphal Gambling Stories--Leopold, King of the Belgians--An Able and Picturesque Man of Business I Having disported ourselves in and about Paris, next in order comes ajourney to the South of France--that is to the Riviera--by geography themain circle of the Mediterranean Sea, by proclamation Cannes, Nice, andMentone, by actual fact and count, Monte Carlo--even the swells adoptinga certain hypocrisy as due to virtue. Whilst Monte Carlo is chiefly, I might say exclusively, identifiedin the general mind with gambling, and was indeed at the outset but agambling resort, it long ago outgrew the limits of the Casino, becominga Mecca of the world of fashion as well as the world of sport. Half theruling sovereigns of Europe and all the leaders of European swelldom, the more prosperous of the demi-mondaines and no end of the merelyrich of every land, congregate there and thereabouts. At the top of theseason the show of opulence and impudence is bewildering. The little principality of Monaco is hardly bigger than the CabbagePatch of the renowned Mrs. Wiggs. It is, however, more happily situate. Nestled under the heights of La Condamine and Tête de Chien and lookingacross a sheltered bay upon the wide and blue Mediterranean, it hasbetter protection against the winds of the North than Nice, orCannes, or Mentone. It is an appanage--in point of fact the onlyestate--remaining to the once powerful Grimaldi family. In the early days of land-piracy Old Man Grimaldi held his own with OldMan Hohenzollern and Old Man Hapsburg. The Savoys and the Bourbons werekith and kin. But in the long run of Freebooting the Grimaldis did notkeep up with the procession. How they retained even this remnant ofinherited brigandage and self-appointed royalty, I do not know. They arehere under leave of the Powers and the especial protection, strange tosay, of the French Republic. Something over fifty years ago, being hard-up for cash, the Grimaldiof the period fell under the wiles of an ingenious Alsatian gambler, Guerlac by name, who foresaw that Baden-Baden and Hombourg wereapproaching their finish and that the sports must look elsewhere fortheir living, the idle rich for their sport. This tiny "enclave" inFrench territory presented many advantages over the German Dukedoms. Itwas an independent sovereignty issuing its own coins and postage stamps. It was in proud possession of a half-dozen policemen which it called its"army. " It was paradisaic in beauty and climate. Its "ruler" was as pooras Job's turkey, but by no means as proud as Lucifer. The bargain was struck. The gambler smote the rock of Monte Carlo aswith a wand of enchantment and a stream of plenty burst forth. Themountain-side responded to the touch. It chortled in its glee andblossomed as the rose. II The region known as the Riviera comprises, as I have said, the wholeland-circle of the Mediterranean Sea. But, as generally written andunderstood, it stands for the shoreline between Marseilles and Genoa. The two cities are connected by the Corniche Road, built by the FirstNapoleon, who learned the need of it when he made his Italian campaign, and the modern railway, the distance 260 miles, two-thirds of the waythrough France, the residue through Italy, and all of it surpassingfine. The climate is very like that of Southern Florida. But as in Floridathey have the "Nor'westers" and the "Nor'easters, " on the Riviera theyhave the "mistral. " In Europe there is no perfect winter weather northof Spain, as in the United States none north of Cuba. I have often thought that Havana might be made a dangerous rival ofMonte Carlo under the one-man power, exercising its despotism withbenignant intelligence and spending its income honestly upon thedevelopment of both the city and the island. The motley populace wouldprobably be none the worse for it. The Government could upon a liberaltariff collect not less than thirty-five millions of annual revenue. Twenty-five of these millions would suffice for its own support. Ten millions a year laid out upon harbors, roadways and internalimprovements in general would within ten years make the Queen of theAntilles the garden spot and playground of Christendom. They would builda Casino to outshine even the architectural miracles of Charles Garnier. Then would Havana put Cairo out of business and give the Prince ofMonaco a run for his money. With the opening of every Monte Carlo season the newspapers used totell of the colossal winnings of purely imaginary players. Sometimesthe favored child of chance was a Russian, sometimes an Englishman, sometimes an American. He was usually a myth, of course. As Mrs. Prigobserved to Mrs. Camp, "there never was no sich person. " III Charles Garnier, the Parisian architect, came and built the Casino, nextto the Library of Congress at Washington and the Grand Opera Houseat Paris the most beautiful building in the world, with incomparablegardens and commanding esplanades to set it off and display it. Around it palatial hotels and private mansions and villas sprang intoexistence. Within it a gold-making wheel of fortune fabricated thewherewithal. Old Man Grimaldi in his wildest dreams of land-piracy--evenOld Man Hohenzollern, or Old Man Hapsburg--never conceived the like. There is no poverty, no want, no taxes--not any sign of dilapidationor squalor anywhere in the principality of Monaco. Yet the "people, "so called, have been known to lapse into a state of discontent. Theysometimes "yearned for freedom. " Too well fed and cared for, too rid ofdirt and debt, too flourishing, they "riz. " Prosperity grew monotonous. They even had the nerve to demand a "Constitution. " The reigning Prince was what Yellowplush would call "a scientific gent. "His son and heir, however, had not his head in the clouds, being inpoint of fact of the earth earthly, and, of consequence, more popularthan his father. He came down from the Castle on the hill to themarketplace in the town and says he: "What do you galoots want, anyhow?" First, their "rights. " Then a change in the commander-in-chief of thearmy, which had grown from six to sixteen. Finally, a Board of Aldermenand a Common Council. "Is that all?" says his Royal Highness. They said it was. "Then, " sayshe, "take it, mes enfants, and bless you!" So, all went well again. The toy sovereignty began to rattle aroundin its own conceit, the "people" regarded themselves, and wished to beregarded, as a chartered Democracy. The little gim-crack economic systemexperienced the joys of reform. A "New Nationalism" was established inthe brewery down by the railway station and a reciprocity treatywas negotiated between the Casino and Vanity Fair, witnessing theintroduction of two roulette tables and an extra brazier for cigarstumps. But the Prince of Monaco stood on one point. He would have no Committeeon Credentials. He told me once that he had heard of Tom Reed and ChampClark and Uncle Joe Cannon, but that he preferred Uncle Joe. He would, and he did, name his own committees both in the Board of Aldermen andthe Common Council. Thus, for the time being, "insurgency" was quelled. And once more serenely sat the Castle on the hill hard by the Cathedral. Calmly again flowed the waters in the harbor. More and more the autoshonked outside the Casino. Within "the little ball ever goes merrilyround, " and according to the croupiers and the society reporters "thegentleman wins and the poor gambler loses!" IV To illustrate, I recall when on a certain season the lucky sport ofprint and fancy was an Englishman. In one of those farragos of stupidityand inaccuracy which are syndicated and sent from abroad to America, Ifound the following piece with the stuff and nonsense habitually workedoff on the American press as "foreign correspondence": "Now and then the newspapers report authentic instances of large sumshaving been won at the gaming tables at Monte Carlo. One of the mostfortunate players at Monte Carlo for a long time past has been a Mr. Darnbrough, an Englishman, whose remarkable run of luck had furnishedthe morsels of gossip in the capitals of Continental Europe recently. "If reports are true, he left the place with the snug sum of more than1, 000, 000 francs to the good as the result of a month's play. But this, I hear, did not represent all of Mr. Darnbrough's winnings. The storygoes that on the opening day of his play he staked 24, 000 francs, winning all along the line. Emboldened by his success, he continuedplaying, winning again and again with marvelous luck. At one period, itis said, his credit balance amounted to no less than 1, 850, 000 francs;but from that moment Dame Fortune ceased to smile upon him. He loststeadily from 200, 000 to 300, 000 francs a day, until, recognizing thatluck had turned against him, he had sufficient strength of will to turnhis back on the tables and strike for home with the very substantialwinnings that still remained. "On another occasion a well-known London stock broker walked off withlittle short of £40, 000. This remarkable performance occasioned no smallamount of excitement in the gambling rooms, as such an unusual incidentdoes invariably. "Bent on making a 'plunge, ' he went from one table to another, placingthe maximum stake on the same number. Strange to relate, at each tablethe same number won, and it was his number. Recognizing that thisperhaps might be his lucky day, the player wended his way to thetrente-et-quarante room and put the maximum on three of the tablesthere. To his amazement, he discovered that there also he had been sofortunate as to select the winning number. "The head croupier confided to a friend of the writer who happened tobe present that that day had been the worst in the history of the Monacobank for years. He it was also who mentioned the amount won by thefortunate Londoner, as given above. " It is prudent of the space-writers to ascribe such "information" as thisto "the head croupier, " because it is precisely the like that such anauthority would give out. People upon the spot know that nothing of thekind happened, and that no person of that name had appeared uponthe scene. The story on the face of it bears to the knowing its ownrefutation, being absurd in every detail. As if conscious of this, theauthor proceeds to quality it in the following: "It is a well-known fact that one of the most successful players at theMonte Carlo tables was Wells, who as the once popular music-hall songput it, 'broke the bank' there. He was at the zenith of his fame, abouttwenty years ago, when his escapades--and winnings--were talked aboutwidely and envied in European sporting circles and among the demi-monde. "In ten days, it was said, he made upward of £35, 000 clear winnings atthe tables after starting with the modest capital of £400. It mustnot be forgotten, however, that at his trial later Wells denied this, stating that all he had made was £7, 000 at four consecutive sittings. Hemade the statement that, even so, he had been a loser in the end. "The reader may take his choice of the two statements, but amongfrequenters of the rooms at Monte Carlo it is generally consideredimpossible to amass large winnings without risking large stakes. Eventhen the chances are 1, 000 to 1 in favor of the bank. Yet occasionallythere are winnings running into four or five figures, and tohuman beings the possibility of chance constitutes an irresistiblefascination. "Only a few years ago a young American was credited with having risenfrom the tables $75, 000 richer than when first he had sat down. It washis first visit to Monte Carlo and he had not come with any system tobreak the bank or with any 'get-rich-quick' idea. For the novelty of thething he risked about $4, 000, and lost it all in one fell swoop withoutturning a hair. Then he 'plunged' with double that amount, but the bestpart of that, too, went the same way. Nothing daunted, he next ventured$10, 000. This time fickle fortune favored him. He played on with growingconfidence and when his winnings amounted to the respectable sum of$75, 000 he had the good sense to quit and to leave the place despite thetemptation to continue. " V The "man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo, " and gave occasion for thesong, was not named "Wells" and he was not an Englishman. He was anAmerican. I knew him well and soon after the event had from his own lipsthe whole story. He came to Monte Carlo with a good deal of money won at draw-poker ina club at Paris and went away richer by some 100, 000 francs (about$20, 000) than he came. The catch-line of the song is misleading. There is no such thing as"breaking the bank at Monte Carlo. " This particular player won so fastupon two or three "spins" that the table at which he played had tosuspend until it could be replenished by another "bank, " perhaps tenminutes in point of time. There used to be some twenty tables. Justhow one man could play at more than one of them at one time a "foreigncorrespondent, " but only a "foreign correspondent, " might explain to thesatisfaction of the horse-marines. I very much doubt whether any player ever won more than 100, 000 francsat a single sitting. To do even that he must plunge like a ship in ahurricane. There is, of course, a saving limit set by the Casino Companyupon the play. It is to the interest of the Casino to cultivate theidea, and the letter writers are willing tools. Not only at Monte Carlo, but everywhere, in dearth of news, gambling stories come cheap and easy. And the cheaper the story the bigger the play. "The Jedge raised him twothousand dollars. The Colonel raised him back ten thousand more. Both of'em stood pat. The Jedge bet him a hundred thousand. The Colonel called. 'What you got?' says he. 'Ace high, ' says the Jedge; 'what you got?''Pair o' deuces, ' says the Colonel. " Assuredly the "play" in the Casino is entirely fair. It could hardly beotherwise with such crowds of players at the tables, often covering thewhole "layout. " But there is no such thing as "honest gambling. " The"house" must have "the best of it. " A famous American gambler, whenI had referred to one of his guild, lately deceased, as "an honestgambler, " said to me: "What do you mean by 'an honest gambler'?" "A gambler who will not take unfair advantage!" I answered. "Well, " said he, "the gambler must have his advantage, because gamblingis his livelihood. He must fit himself for its profitable pursuit bylearning all the tricks of trade like other artists and artificers. Withhim it is win or starve. " Among the variegate crowds that thronged the highways and byways ofMonte Carlo in those days there was no single figure more observed andstriking than that of Leopold the Second, King of the Belgians. He hada bungalow overlooking the sea where he lived three months of the yearlike a country gentleman. Although I have made it a rule to avoid courtsand courtiers, an event brought me into acquaintance with this bestabused man in Europe, enabling me to form my own estimate of his veryinteresting personality. He was not at all what his enemies represented him to be, a sot, agambler and a roué. In appearance a benignant burgomaster, tall andstalwart; in manner and voice very gentle, he should be described asfirst of all a man of business. His weakness was rather for money thanwomen. Speaking of the most famous of the Parisian dancers with whom hisname had been scandalously associated, he told me that he had never mether but once in his life, and that after the newspaper gossips had beenbusy for years with their alleged love affair. "I kissed her hand, " herelated, "and bade her adieu, saying, 'Ah, ma'mselle, you and I haveindeed reason to congratulate ourselves. '" It was the Congo business that lay at the bottom of the abuse ofLeopold. Henry Stanley had put him up to this. It turned out a goldmine, and then two streams of defamation were let loose; one from thecovetous commercial standpoint and the other from the humanitarian. Between them, seeking to drive him out, they depicted him as a monsterof cruelty and depravity. A King must be an anchorite to escape calumny, and Leopold was not ananchorite. I asked him why I never saw him in the Casino. "Play, " heanswered, "does not interest me. Besides, I do not enjoy being talkedabout. Nor do I think the game they play there quite fair. " "In what way do you consider it unfair, your Majesty?" I asked. "In the zero, " he replied. "At the Brussels Casino I do not allow themto have a zero. Come and see me and I will show you a perfectly equalchance for your money, to win or lose. " Years after I was in Brussels. Leopold had gone to his account and hisnephew, Albert, had come to the throne. There was not a roulette tablein the Casino, but there was one conveniently adjacent thereto, managedby a clique of New York gamblers, which had both a single "and a doubleO, " and, as appeared when the municipality made a descent upon theplace, was ingeniously wired to throw the ball wherever the presidingcoupier wanted it to go. I do not believe, however, that Leopold was a party to this, or couldhave had any knowledge of it. He was a skillful, not a dishonest, business man, who showed his foresight when he listened to Stanley andtook him under his wing. If the Congo had turned out worthless nobodywould ever have heard of the delinquencies of the King of the Belgians. Chapter the Seventeenth A Parisian _Pension_--The Widow of Walewska--Napoleon's Daughter-in-Law--The Changeless--A Moral and Orderly City I I have said that I knew the widow of Walewska, the natural son ofNapoleon Bonaparte by the Polish countess he picked up in Warsaw, whofollowed him to Paris; and thereby hangs a tale which may not be withoutinterest. In each of our many sojourns in Paris my wife and I had taken anapartment, living the while in the restaurants, at first the cheaper, like the Café de Progress and the Duval places; then the Boeuf à laMode, the Café Voisin and the Café Anglais, with Champoux's, in thePlace de la Bourse, for a regular luncheon resort. At length, the children something more than half grown, I said: "We havenever tried a Paris _pension_. " So with a half dozen recommended addresses we set out on a house hunt. We had not gone far when our search was rewarded by a veritable find. This was on the Avenue de Courcelles, not far from the Pare Monceau;newly furnished; reasonable charges; the lady manager a beautifulwell-mannered woman, half Scotch and half French. We moved in. When dinner was called the boarders assembled in the veryelegant drawing-room. Madame presented us to Baron ----. Then followedintroductions to Madame la Duchesse and Madame la Princesse and Madamela Comtesse. Then the folding doors opened and dinner was announced. The baron sat at the center of the table. The meal consisted of eight orten courses, served as if at a private house, and of surpassing quality. During the three months that we remained there was no evidence of aboarding house. It appeared an aristocratic family into which we hadbeen hospitably admitted. The baron was a delightful person. Madame laDuchesse was the mother of Madame la Princesse, and both were charming. The Comtesse, the Napoleonic widow, was at first a little formal, but she came round after we had got acquainted, and, when we took ourdeparture, it was like leaving a veritable domestic circle. Years after we had the sequel. The baron, a poor young nobleman, hadcome into a little money. He thought to make it breed. He had an equallypoor Scotch cousin, who undertook to play hostess. Both the Duchess andthe Countess were his kinswomen. How could such a ménage last? He lost his all. What became of our fellow-lodgers I never learned, but the venture coming to naught, the last I heard of the beautifulhigh-bred lady manager, she was serving as a stewardess on an oceanliner. Nothing, however, could exceed the luxury, the felicity andthe good company of those memorable three months _chez l'Avenue deCourcelles, Pare Monceau_. We never tried a _pension_ again. We chose a delightful hotel in theRue de Castiglione off the Rue de Rivoli, and remained there as fixturesuntil we were reckoned the oldest inhabitants. But we never desertedthe dear old Boeuf à la Mode, which we lived to see one of the mostflourishing and popular places in Paris. II In the old days there was a little hotel on the Rue Dannou, midwaybetween the Rue de la Paix and what later along became the Avenue del'Opéra, called the Hôtel d'Orient. It was conducted by a certain MadameHougenin, whose family had held the lease for more than a hundred years, and was typical of what the comfort-seeking visitor, somewhat initiate, might find before the modern tourist onrush overflowed all bounds andeffaced the ancient landmarks--or should I say townmarks?--making aresort instead of a home of the gay French capital. The d'Orient wasdelightfully comfortable and fabulously cheap. The wayfarer entered a darksome passage that led to an inner court. There were on the four sides of this seven or eight stories piercedby many windows. There was never a lift, or what we Americans call anelevator. If you wanted to go up you walked up; and after darkyour single illuminant was candlelight. The service could hardly berecommended, but cleanliness herself could find no fault with thebeds and bedding; nor any queer people about; changeless; as still andstationary as a nook in the Rockies. A young girl might dwell there year in and year out in perfectsafety--many young girls did so--madame a kind of duenna. The food--forit was a _pension_--was all a gourmet could desire. And the wine! I was lunching with an old Parisian friend. "What do you think of this vintage?" says he. "Very good, " I answered. "Come and dine with me to-morrow and I willgive you the mate to it. " "What--at the d'Orient?" "Yes, at the d'Orient. " "Preposterous!" Nevertheless, he came. When the wine was poured out he took a sip. "By ----!" he exclaimed. "That is good, isn't it? I wonder where theygot it? And how?" During the week after we had it every day. Then no more. The headwaiter, with many apologies, explained that he had found those few bottles in aforgotten bin, where they had lain for years, and he begged a thousandpardons of monsieur, but we had drunk them all--_rien du plus_--no more. I might add that precisely the same thing happened to me at the HôtelContinental. Indeed, it is not uncommon with the French caravansariesto keep a little extra good wine in stock for those who can distinguishbetween an _ordinaire_ and a _supérieur_, and are willing to pay theprice. III "See Naples and die, " say the Italians. "See Paris and live, " say theFrench. Old friends, who have been over and back, have been of latetelling me that Paris, having woefully suffered, is nowise the Paris itwas, and as the provisional offspring of four years of desolating warI can well believe them. But a year or two of peace, and the city willrise again, as after the Franco-Prussian War and the Commune, which laidupon it a sufficiently blighting hand. In spite of fickle fortuneand its many ups and downs it is, and will ever remain, "Paris, theChangeless. " I never saw the town so much itself as just before the beginning of theworld war. I took my departure in the early summer of that fateful yearand left all things booming--not a sign or trace that there had everbeen aught but boundless happiness and prosperity. It is hard, thesaying has it, to keep a squirrel on the ground, and surely Paris isthe squirrel among cities. The season just ended had been, everybodydeclared, uncommonly successful from the standpoints alike of the hotelsand cafés, the shop folk and their patrons, not to mention the purelypleasure-seeking throng. People seemed loaded with money and giddy tospend it. The headwaiter at Voisin's told me this: "Mr. Barnes, of New York, ordered a dinner, carte blanche, for twelve. "'Now, ' says he, 'garçon, have everything bang up, and here'sseventy-five francs for a starter. ' "The dinner was bang up. Everybody hilarious. Mr. Barnes immenselypleased. When he came to pay his bill, which was a corker, he made noobjection. "'Garçon, ' says he, 'if I ask you a question will you tell me thetruth?' "'_Oui, monsieur; certainement. _' "Well, how much was the largest tip you ever received?" "Seventy-five francs, monsieur. " "'Very well; here are 100 francs. ' "Then, after a pause for the waiter to digest his joy and express aproper sense of gratitude and wonder, Mr. Barnes came to time with: 'Doyou remember who was the idiot that paid you the seventy-five francs?' "'Oh, yes, monsieur. It was you. '" IV It has occurred to me that of late years--I mean the years immediatelybefore 1914--Paris has been rather more bent upon adapting itself tohuman and moral as well as scientific progress. There has certainlybeen less debauchery visible to the naked eye. I was assured thatthe patronage had so fallen away from the Moulin Rouge that they wereplanning to turn it into a decent theater. Nor during my sojourn didanybody in my hearing so much as mention the Dead Rat. I doubt whetherit is still in existence. The last time I was in Maxim's--quite a dozen years ago now--a youngwoman sat next to me whose story could be read in her face. She was apretty thing not five and twenty, still blooming, with iron-grayhair. It had turned in a night, I was told. She had recently comefrom Baltimore and knew no more what she was doing or whither she wasdrifting than a baby. The old, old story: a comfortable home and a goodhusband; even a child or two; a scoundrel, a scandal, an elopement, andthe inevitable desertion. Left without a dollar in the streets of Paris. She was under convoy of a noted procuress. "A duke or the morgue, " she whimpered, "in six months. " Three months sufficed. They dragged all that remained of her out of theSeine, and then the whole of the pitiful disgrace and tragedy came out. V If ever I indite a volume to be entitled Adventures in Paris it willcontain not a line to feed any prurient fancy, but will embrace therecord of many little journeys between the Coiffeur and the Marchédes Fleurs, with maybe an excursion among the cemeteries and therestaurants. Each city is as one makes it for himself. Paris has contributed greatlyto my appreciation, and perhaps my knowledge, of history and literatureand art and life. I have seen it in all its aspects; under the empire, when the Due de Morny was king of the Bourse and Mexico was to makeevery Frenchman rich; after the commune and the siege, when the Hôtel deVille was in ruins, the palace of the Tuileries still aflame, the columngone from the Place Vendôme, and everything a blight and waste; and Ihave marked it rise from its ashes, grandly, proudly, and like aqueen come to her own again, resume its primacy as the only completemetropolis in all the universe. There is no denying it. No city can approach Paris in structural unityand regality, in things brilliant and beautiful, in buoyancy, variety, charm and creature comfort. Drunkenness, of the kind familiar to Londonand New York, is invisible to Paris. The brandy and absinthe habit hasbeen greatly exaggerated. In truth, everywhere in Europe the use ofintoxicants is on the decline. They are, for the first time in France, stimulated partly by the alarming adulteration of French wines, rigorously applying and enforcing the pure-food laws. As a consequence, there is a palpable and decided improvement of thevintage of the Garonne and the Champagne country. One may get a goodglass of wine now without impoverishing himself. As men drink wine, andas the wine is pure, they fall away from stronger drink. I havealways considered, with Jefferson, the brewery in America an excellenttemperance society. That which works otherwise is the dive which toooften the brewery fathers. They are drinking more beer in France--evenmaking a fairly good beer. And then-- But gracious, this is getting upon things controversial, and if there isanything in this world that I do hybominate, it is controversy! Few of the wondrous changes which the Age of Miracles has wrought in myday and generation exceeded those of ocean travel. The modern liner isbut a moving palace. Between the ports of the Old World and the ports ofthe new the transit is so uneventful as to grow monotonous. There areno more adventures on the high seas. The ocean is a thoroughfare, thecrossing a ferry. My experience forty years ago upon one of the ancienttubs which have been supplanted by these liners would make queer readingto the latter-day tourist, taking, let us say, any one of the steamersof any one of the leading transatlantic companies. The difference in theappointments of the William Penn of 1865 and the star boats of 1914 isindescribable. It seems a fairy tale to think of a palm garden where theladies dress for dinner, a Hungarian band which plays for them whilstthey dine, and a sky parlor where they go after dinner for theircoffee and what not; a tea-room for the five-o'clockers; and except inexcessive weather scarcely any motion at all. It is this palm gardenwhich most appeals to a certain lady of my very intimate acquaintancewho had made many crossings and never gone to her meals--sick from shoreto shore--until the gods ordained for her a watery, winery, floweryparadise--where the billows ceased from troubling and a woman couldappear at her best. Since then she has sailed many times, lodged àla Waldorf-Astoria to eat her victuals and sip her wine with perfectcontentment. Coming ashore from our last crossing a friend found herin the Red Room of that hostel just as she had been sitting the eveningbefore on shipboard. "Seems hardly any motion at all, " she said, looking about her andfancying herself still at sea, as well she might. Chapter the Eighteenth The Grover Cleveland Period--President Arthur and Mr. Blaine--John Chamberlin--The Decrees of Destiny I What may be called the Grover Cleveland period of American politicsbegan with the election of that extraordinary person--another man ofdestiny--to the governorship of New York. Nominated, as it were, bychance, he carried the State by an unprecedented majority. That was notbecause of his popularity, but that an incredible number of Republicanvoters refused to support their party ticket and stayed away from thepolls. The Blaine-Conkling feud, inflamed by the murder of Garfield, hadrent the party of Lincoln and Grant asunder. Arthur, a Conkling leader, had succeeded to the presidency. If any human agency could have sealed the breach he might have done it. No man, however, can achieve the impossible. The case was hopeless. Arthur was a man of surpassing sweetness and grace. As handsome asPierce, as affable as McKinley, he was a more experienced and dextrouspolitician than either. He had been put on the ticket with Garfield toplacate Conkling. All sorts of stories to his discredit were told duringthe ensuing campaign. The Democrats made him out a tricky andtypical "New York politician. " In point of fact he was a many-sided, accomplished man who had a taking way of adjusting all conditions andadapting himself to all companies. With a sister as charming and tactful as he for head of his domesticfabric, the White House bloomed again. He possessed the knack ofsurrounding himself with all sorts of agreeable people. FrederickFrelinghuysen was Secretary of State and Robert Lincoln, continuedfrom the Garfield Cabinet, Secretary of War. Then there were threeirresistibles: Walter Gresham, Frank Hatton and "Ben" Brewster. His homecontingent--"Clint" Wheeler, "Steve" French, and "Jake" Hess--picturedas "ward heelers"--were, in reality, efficient and all-around, companionable men, capable and loyal. I was sent by the Associated Press to Washington on a fool'serrand--that is, to get an act of Congress extending copyright to thenews of the association--and, remaining the entire session, my businessto meet the official great and to make myself acceptable, I came intoa certain intimacy with the Administration circle, having long hadfriendly relations with the President. In all my life I have neverpassed so delightful and useless a winter. Very early in the action I found that my mission involved a serious andvexed question--nothing less than the creation of a new property--and Iproceeded warily. Through my uncle, Stanley Matthews, I interested themembers of the Supreme Court. The Attorney General, a great lawyer andan old Philadelphia friend, was at my call and elbow. The Joint LibraryCommittee of Congress, to which the measure must go, was with me. Yetsomehow the scheme lagged. I could not account for this. One evening at a dinner Mr. Blaineenlightened me. We sat together at table and suddenly he turned andsaid: "How are you getting on with your bill?" And my reply being ratherhalting, he continued, "You won't get a vote in either House, " and heproceeded very humorously to improvise the average member's argumentagainst it as a dangerous power, a perquisite to the great newspapersand an imposition upon the little ones. To my mind this was somethingmore than the post-prandial levity it was meant to be. Not long after a learned but dissolute old lawyer said to me, "You needno act of Congress to protect your news service. There are at least two, and I think four or five, English rulings that cover the case. Let meshow them to you. " He did so and I went no further with the business, quite agreeing with Mr. Blaine, and nothing further came of it. To arecent date the Associated Press has relied on these decisions under thecommon law of England. Curiously enough, quite a number of newspapersin whose actual service I was engaged, opened fire upon me and roundlyabused me. II There appeared upon the scene in Washington toward the middle of theseventies one of those problematical characters the fiction-mongersdelight in. This was John Chamberlin. During two decades "Chamberlin's, "half clubhouse and half chophouse, was all a rendezvous. "John" had been a gambler; first an underling and then a partner of thefamous Morrissy-McGrath racing combination at Saratoga and Long Branch. There was a time when he was literally rolling in wealth. Then he wentbroke--dead broke. Black Friday began it and the panic of '73 finishedit. He came over to Washington and his friends got him the restaurantprivileges of the House of Representatives. With this for a startingpoint, he was able to take the Fernando Wood residence, in the heart ofthe fashionable quarter, to add to it presently the adjoining dwellingof Governor Swann, of Maryland, and next to that, finally, the Blainemansion, making a suite, as it were, elegant yet cozy. "Welcker's, " ersta fashionable resort, and long the best eating-place in town, had beenruined by a scandal, and "Chamberlin's" succeeded it, having thefield to itself, though, mindful of the "scandal" which had made itsopportunity, ladies were barred. There was a famous cook--Emeline Simmons--a mulatto woman, whowas equally at home in French dishes and Maryland-Virginia kitchenmysteries--a very wonder with canvasback and terrapin--who later refuseda great money offer to he chef at the White House--whom John was ableto secure. Nothing could surpass--could equal--her preparations. Thecharges, like the victuals, were sky-high and tip-top. The service washandled by three "colored gentlemen, " as distinguished in manners as inappearance, who were known far and wide by name and who dominated allabout them, including John and his patrons. No such place ever existed before, or will ever exist again. It wasthe personality of John Chamberlin, pervasive yet invisible, exhalinga silent, welcoming radiance. General Grant once said to me, "During myeight years in the White House, John Chamberlin once in a while--once ina great while--came over. He did not ask for anything. He just told mewhat to do, and I did it. " I mentioned this to President Arthur. "Well, "he laughingly said, "that has been my experience with John Chamberlin. It never crosses my mind to say him 'nay. ' Often I have turned this overin my thought to reach the conclusion that being a man of sound judgmentand worldly knowledge, he has fully considered the case--his case and mycase--leaving me no reasonable objection to interpose. " John obtained an act of Congress authorizing him to build a hotel on theGovernment reservation at Fortress Monroe, and another of the VirginiaLegislature confirming this for the State. Then he came to me. It was atthe moment when I was flourishing as "a Wall Street magnate. " He said:"I want to sell this franchise to some man, or company, rich enoughto carry it through. All I expect is a nest egg for Emily and thegirls"--he had married the beautiful Emily Thorn, widow of GeorgeJordan, the actor, and there were two daughters--"you are hand-and-glovewith the millionaires. Won't you manage it for me?" Like Grant andArthur, I never thought of refusing. Upon the understanding that Iwas to receive no commission, I agreed, first ascertaining that it wasreally a most valuable franchise. I began with the Willards, in whose hotel I had grown up. They were richand going out of business. Then I laid it before Hitchcock and Darling, of the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York. They, rich like the Willards, were also retiring. Then a bright thought occurred to me. I went to thePrince Imperial of Standard Oil. "Mr. Flagler, " I said, "you have hotelsat St. Augustine and you have hotels at Palm Beach. Here is a halfwaypoint between New York and Florida, " and more of the same sort. "My dearfriend, " he answered, "every man has the right to make a fool of himselfonce in his life. This I have already done. Never again for me. I haveput up my last dollar south of the Potomac. " Then I went to the King ofthe transcontinental railways. "Mr. Huntington, " I said, "you own aroad extending from St. Louis to Newport News, having a terminal in acornfield just out of Hampton Roads. Here is a franchise which gives youa magnificent site at Hampton Roads itself. Why not?" He gazed uponme with a blank stare--such I fancy as he usually turned upon hissuppliants--and slowly replied: "I would not spend another dollar inVirginia if the Lord commanded me. In the event that some supernaturalpower should take the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway by the nape of theneck and the seat of the breeches and pitch it out in the middle of theAtlantic Ocean it would be doing me a favor. " So I returned John his franchise marked "nothing doing. " Afterward heput it in the hands of a very near friend, a great capitalist, who hadno better luck with it. Finally, here and there, literally by piecemeal, he got together money enough to build and furnish the Hotel Chamberlin, had a notable opening with half of Congress there to see, and gentlylaid himself down and died, leaving little other than friends and debts. III Macaulay tells us that the dinner-table is a wondrous peacemaker, miracle worker, social solvent; and many were the quarrels composedand the plans perfected under the Chamberlin roof. It became a kind ofCongressional Exchange with a close White House connection. If those oldwalls, which by the way are still standing, could speak, what talesthey might tell, what testimonies refute, what new lights throw into thevacant corners and dark places of history! Coming away from Chamberlin's with Mr. Blaine for an after-dinner strollduring the winter of 1883-4, referring to the approaching NationalRepublican Convention, he said: "I do not want the nomination. In myopinion there is but one nominee the Republicans can elect this year andthat is General Sherman. I have written him to tell him so and urgeit upon him. In default of him the time of you people has come. " Hesubsequently showed me this letter and General Sherman's reply. Myrecollection is that the General declared that he would not take thepresidency if it were offered him, earnestly invoking Mr. Elaine tosupport his brother, John Sherman. This would seem clear refutation that Mr. Blaine was party to his ownnomination that year. It assuredly reveals keen political instinct andforesight. The capital prize in the national lottery was not for him. I did not meet him until two years later, when he gave me a minuteaccount of what had happened immediately thereafter; the swing aroundthe circle; Belshazzar's feast, as a fatal New York banquet was called;the far-famed Burchard incident. "I did not hear the words, 'Rum, Romanism and Rebellion, '" he told me, "else, as you must know, I wouldhave fittingly disposed of them. " I said: "Mr. Blaine, you may as well give it up. The doom of Webster, Clay, and Douglas is upon you. If you are nominated again, with anassured election, you will die before the day of election. If yousurvive the day and are elected, you'll die before the 4th of March. " Hesmiled grimly and replied: "It really looks that way. " My own opinion has always been that if the Republicans had nominatedMr. Arthur in 1884 they would have elected him. The New York vote wouldscarcely have been so close. In the count of the vote the Arthur end ofit would have had some advantage--certainly no disadvantage. Cleveland'snearly 200, 000 majority had dwindled to the claim of a beggarly fewhundred, and it was charged that votes which belonged to Butler, who ranas an independent labor candidate, were actually counted for Cleveland. When it was over an old Republican friend of mine said: "Now we areeven. History will attest that we stole it once and you stole it once. Turn about may be fair play; but, all the same, neither of us likes it. " So Grover Cleveland, unheard of outside of Buffalo two years before, wasto be President of the United States. The night preceding his nominationfor the governorship of New York, General Slocum seemed in the Stateconvention sure of that nomination. Had he received it he would havecarried the State as Cleveland did, and Slocum, not Cleveland, wouldhave been the Chief Magistrate. It cost Providence a supreme effort topull Cleveland through. But in his case, as in many another, Providence"got there" in fulfilment of a decree of Destiny. Chapter the Nineteenth Mr. Cleveland in the White House--Mr. Bayard in the Department of State--Queer Appointments to Office--The One-Party Power--The End of North and South Sectionalism I The futility of political as well as of other human reckoning was setforth by the result of the presidential election of 1884. With a kindof prescience, as I have related, Mr. Blaine had foreseen it. He wasa sagacious as well as a lovable and brilliant man. He looked backaffectionately upon the days he had passed in Kentucky, when a poorschool-teacher, and was especially cordial to the Kentuckians. Inthe House he and Beck were sworn friends, and they continued theirfriendship when both of them had reached the Senate. I inherited Mr. Blaine's desk in the Ways and Means Committee room. Inone of the drawers of this he had left a parcel of forgotten papers, which I returned to him. He made a joke of the secrets they coveredand the fortunate circumstance that they had fallen into the hands of afriend and not of an enemy. No man of his time could hold a candle to Mr. Blaine in what we callmagnetism--that is, in manly charm, supported by facility and brainpower. Clay and Douglas had set the standard of party leadership beforehis time. He made a good third to them. I never knew Mr. Clay, but withJudge Douglas I was well acquainted, and the difference between him andMr. Blaine in leadership might be called negligible. Both were intellectually aggressive and individually amiable. Theyat least seemed to love their fellow men. Each had been tried by manyadventures. Each had gone, as it were, "through the flint mill. " Bornto good conditions--Mr. Blaine sprang from aristocratic forebears--eachknew by early albeit brief experience the seamy side of life; as each, like Clay, nursed a consuming passion for the presidency. Neither hadbeen made for a subaltern, and they chafed under the subaltern yoke towhich fate had condemned them. II In Grover Cleveland a total stranger had arrived at the front ofaffairs. The Democrats, after a rule of more than half a century, hadbeen out of power twenty-four years. They could scarce realize at firstthat they were again in power. The new chieftain proved more ofan unknown quantity than had been suspected. William Dorsheimer, alife-long crony, had brought the two of us together before Cleveland'selection to the governorship of the Empire State as one of a group ofattractive Buffalo men, most of whom might be said to have been croniesof mine, Buffalo being a delightful halfway stop-over in my frequentmigrations between Kentucky and the Eastern seaboard. As in the endwe came to a parting of the ways I want to write of Mr. Cleveland as ahistorian and not as a critic. He said to Mr. Carlisle after one of our occasional tiffs: "Henry willnever like me until God makes me over again. " The next time we met, referring to this, I said: "Mr. President, I like you very much--verymuch indeed--but sometimes I don't like some of your ways. " There were in point of fact two Clevelands--before marriage and aftermarriage--the intermediate Cleveland rather unequal and indeterminate. Assuredly no one of his predecessors had entered the White House sowholly ignorant of public men and national affairs. Stories used to betold assigning to Zachary Taylor this equivocal distinction. But GeneralTaylor had grown up in the army and advanced in the military service toa chief command, was more or less familiar with the party leaders of histime, and was by heredity a gentleman. The same was measurably true ofGrant. Cleveland confessed himself to have had no social training, andhe literally knew nobody. Five or six weeks after his inauguration I went to Washington to ask adiplomatic appointment for my friend, Boyd Winchester. Ill health hadcut short a promising career in Congress, but Mr. Winchester was nowwell on to recovery, and there seemed no reason why he should not anddid not stand in the line of preferment. My experience may be worthrecording because it is illustrative. In my quest I had not thought of going beyond Mr. Bayard, the newSecretary of State. I did go to him, but the matter seemed to make noheadway. There appeared a hitch somewhere. It had not crossed my mindthat it might be the President himself. What did the President know orcare about foreign appointments? He said to me on a Saturday when I was introducing a party of Kentuckyfriends: "Come up to-morrow for luncheon. Come early, for Rose"--hissister, for the time being mistress of the White House--"will be atchurch and we can have an old-fashioned talk-it-out. " The next day we passed the forenoon together. He was full of homelyand often whimsical talk. He told me he had not yet realized what hadhappened to him. "Sometimes, " he said, "I wake at night and rub my eyes and wonder if itis not all a dream. " He asked an infinite number of questions about this, that and theother Democratic politician. He was having trouble with the KentuckyCongressmen. He had appointed a most unlikely scion of a well-knownfamily to a foreign mission, and another young Kentuckian, the son of aNew York magnate, to a leading consul generalship, without consultationwith any one. He asked me about these. In a way one of them was one ofmy boys, and I was glad to see him get what he wanted, though he aspiredto nothing so high. He was indeed all sorts of a boy, and his elevationto such a post was so grotesque that the nomination, like that of hismate, was rejected by the Senate. I gave the President a serio-comic butkindly account, at which he laughed heartily, and ended by my asking howhe had chanced to make two such appointments. "Hewitt came over here, " he answered, "and then Dorsheimer. The fatheris the only Democrat we have in that great corporation. As to the other, he struck me as a likely fellow. It seemed good politics to gratify themand their friends. " I suggested that such backing was far afield and not very safe to go by, when suddenly he said: "I have been told over and over again by you andby others that you will not take office. Too much of a lady, I suppose!What are you hanging round Washington for anyhow? What do you want?" Here was my opportunity to speak of Winchester, and I did so. When I had finished he said: "What are you doing about Winchester?" "Relying on the Secretary of State, who served in Congress with him andknows him well. " Then he asked: "What do you want for Winchester?" I answered: "Belgium or Switzerland. " He said: "I promised Switzerland for a friend of Corning's. He broughthim over here yesterday and he is an out-and-out Republican who votedfor Blaine, and I shall not appoint him. If you want the place forWinchester, Winchester it is. " Next day, much to Mr. Bayard's surprise, the commission was made out. Mr. Cleveland had a way of sudden fancies to new and sometimes queerpeople. Many of his appointments were eccentric and fell like bombshellsupon the Senate, taking the appointee's home people completely bysurprise. The recommendation of influential politicians seemed to have little ifany weight with him. There came to Washington from Richmond a gentleman by the name ofKeiley, backed by the Virginia delegation for a minor consulship. ThePresident at once fell in love with him. [Illustration: Mr. Watterson's Library at "Mansfield"] "Consul be damned, " he said. "He is worth more than that, " and named himAmbassador to Vienna. It turned out that Mrs. Keiley was a Jewess and would not be receivedat court. Then he named him Ambassador to Italy, when it appearedthat Keiley was an intense Roman Catholic, who had made at least oneultramontane speech, and would be _persona non grata_ at the Quirinal. Then Cleveland dropped him. Meanwhile poor Keiley had closed out bagand baggage at Richmond and was at his wit's end. After much ado thePresident was brought to a realizing sense and a place was found forKeiley as consul general and diplomatic agent at Cairo, whither herepaired. At the end of the four years he came to Paris and one day, crossing the Place de la Concorde, he was run over by a truck andkilled. He deserved a longer career and a better fate, for he was a manof real capacity. III Taken to task by thick and thin Democratic partisans for my criticismof the only two Democratic Presidents we have had since the War ofSections, Cleveland and Wilson, I have answered by asserting the rightand duty of the journalist to talk out in meeting, flatly repudiatingthe claims as well as the obligations of the organ grinder they hadsought to put upon me, and closing with the knife grinder's retort-- _Things have come to a hell of a pass When a man can't wallop his own jackass_. In the case of Mr. Cleveland the break had come over the tariff issue. Reading me his first message to Congress the day before he sent it in, he had said: "I know nothing about the tariff, and I thought I had bestleave it where you and Morrison had put it in the platform. " We had indeed had a time in the Platform Committee of the Chicagoconvention of 1884. After an unbroken session of fifty hours a straddlewas all that the committee could be brought to agree upon. The leadingrecalcitrant had been General Butler, who was there to make trouble andwho later along bolted the ticket and ran as an independent candidate. One aim of the Democrats was to get away from the bloody shirt as anissue. Yet, as the sequel proved, it was long after Cleveland's daybefore the bloody shirt was laid finally to rest. It required apatriot and a hero like William McKinley to do this. When he signed thecommissions of Joseph Wheeler and Fitzhugh Lee, Confederate generals andgraduates of the West Point Military Academy, to be generals in theArmy of the United States, he made official announcement that the Warof Sections was over and gave complete amnesty to the people and thesoldiers of the South. Yet the bloody shirt lingered long as a troublemaker, and was invoked byboth parties. IV That chance gathering of heedless persons, stirred by the bombast ofself-exploiting orators eager for notoriety or display--loose mobsof local nondescripts led by pension sharks so aptly described bythe gallant General Bragg, of Wisconsin, as coffee coolers and campfollowers--should tear their passion to tatters with the thought thatVirginia, exercising an indisputable right and violating no reasonablesensibility, should elect to send memorials of Washington and Lee forthe Hall of Statues in the nation's Capitol, came in the accustomed wayof bloody-shirt agitation. It merely proved how easily men are led whentaken in droves and stirred by partyism. Such men either bore no part inthe fighting when fighting was the order of the time, or else they weretoo ignorant and therefore too unpatriotic to comprehend the meaning ofthe intervening years and the glory these had brought with theexpanse of national progress and prowess. In spite of their lack ofrepresentative character it was not easy to repress impatience atebullitions of misguided zeal so ignoble; and of course it was notpossible to dissuade or placate them. All the while never a people more eager to get together than the peopleof the United States after the War of Sections, as never a people soaverse to getting into that war. A very small group of extremists anddoctrinaires had in the beginning made a War of Sections possible. Enough of these survived in the days of Cleveland and McKinley to keepsectionalism alive. It was mainly sectional clamor out for partisan advantage. But it madethe presidential campaigns lurid in certain quarters. There was noend of objurgation, though it would seem that even the most embitteredNortherner and ultra Republican who could couple the names of Robert E. Lee and Benedict Arnold, as was often done in campaign lingo, would nothesitate, if his passions were roused or if he fancied he saw in itsome profit to himself or his party, to liken George Washington to JudasIscariot. The placing of Lee's statue in the Capitol at Washington made theoccasion for this. It is true that long before Confederate officers had sat in both Housesof Congress and in Republican and Democratic cabinets and upon thebench of the Supreme Court, and had served as ambassadors and envoysextraordinary in foreign lands. But McKinley's doing was the crowningstroke of union and peace. There had been a weary and varied interim. Sectionalism proved a sturdyplant. It died hard. We may waive the reconstruction period as ancienthistory. There followed it intense party spirit. Yet, in spite ofextremists and malignants on both sides of the line, the South ralliedequally with the North to the nation's drumbeat after the Maine wentdown in the harbor of Havana. It fought as bravely and as loyally atSantiago and Manila. Finally, by the vote of the North, there came intothe Chief Magistracy one who gloried in the circumstance that on thematernal side he came of fighting Southern stock; who, amid universalapplause, declared that no Southerner could be prouder than he of RobertE. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, apotheosizing an uncle, his mother'sbrother, who had stood at the head of the Confederate navalestablishment in Europe and had fitted out the Confederate cruisers, as the noblest and purest man he had ever known, a composite of ColonelNewcome and Henry Esmond. Meanwhile the process of oblivion had gone on. The graven effigyof Jefferson Davis at length appeared upon the silver service of anAmerican battleship. This told the Mississippi's guests, whereverand whenever they might meet round her hospitable board, of nationalunification and peace, giving the lie to sectional malignancy. In themost famous and conspicuous of the national cemeteries now stands themonument of a Confederate general not only placed there by consent ofthe Government, but dedicated with fitting ceremonies supervised by theDepartment of War, which sent as its official representative the son ofGrant, himself an army officer of rank and distinction. The world has looked on, incredulous and amazed, whilst our countryhas risen to each successive act in the drama of reconciliation withincreasing enthusiasm. I have been all my life a Constitutional Nationalist; first the nationand then the state. The episode of the Confederacy seems already faraway. It was an interlude, even as matters stood in the Sixties andSeventies, and now he who would thwart the unification of the countryon the lines of oblivion, of mutual and reciprocal forgiveness, throwshimself across the highway of his country's future, and is a traitorequally to the essential principles of free government and the spirit ofthe age. If sectionalism be not dead it should have no place in popularconsideration. The country seems happily at last one with itself. TheSouth, like the East and the West, has come to be the merest geographicexpression. Each of its states is in the Union, precisely like thestates of the East and the West, all in one and one in all. Interchangesof every sort exist. These exchanges underlie and interlace our social, domestic and businessfabric. That the arrangement and relation after half a century of strifethus established should continue through all time is the hope and prayerof every thoughtful, patriotic American. There is no greater dissonanceto that sentiment in the South than in the North. To what end, therefore, except ignominious recrimination and ruinous dissension, could a revival of old sectional and partisan passions--if it werepossible--be expected to reach? V Humor has played no small part in our politics. It was Col. MulberrySellers, Mark Twain's hero, who gave currency to the conceit andenunciated the principle of "the old flag and an appropriation. " Hedid not claim the formula as his own, however. He got it, he said, ofSenator Dillworthy, his patriotic file leader and ideal of Christianstatesmanship. The original of Senator Dillworthy was recognized the country over asSenator Pomeroy, of Kansas, "Old Pom, " as he had come to be called, whose oleaginous piety and noisy patriotism, adjusting themselveswith equal facility to the purloining of subsidies and the roasting ofrebels, to prayer and land grants, had impressed themselves upon theSatirist of the Gilded Age as upon his immediate colleagues in Congress. He was a ruffle-shirted Pharisee, who affected the airs of a bishop, andresembled Cruikshank's pictures of Pecksniff. There have not been many "Old Poms" in our public life; or, for thatmatter Aaron Burrs either, and but one Benedict Arnold. That thechosen people of God did not dwell amid the twilight of the ages andin far-away Judea, but were reserved to a later time, and a region thenundiscovered of men, and that the American republic was ordained of Godto illustrate upon the theater of the New World the possibilitiesof free government in contrast with the failures and tyrannies andcorruptions of the Old, I do truly believe. That is the first article inmy confession of faith. And the second is like unto it, that Washingtonwas raised up by God to create it, and that Lincoln was raised up byGod to save it; else why the militia colonel of Virginia and the railsplitter of Illinois, for no reason that was obvious at the time, beforeall other men? God moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform. Thestar of the sublime destiny that hung over the manager of our blessedSavior hung over the cradle of our blessed Union. Thus far it has weathered each historic danger which has gone before tomark the decline and fall of nations; the struggle for existence; theforeign invasion; the internecine strife; the disputed succession;religious bigotry and racial conflict. One other peril confrontsit--the demoralization of wealth and luxury; too great prosperity; theconcentration and the abuse of power. Shall we survive the lures withwhich the spirit of evil, playing upon our self-love, seeks to tripour wayward footsteps, purse-pride and party spirit, mistaken zeal andperverted religion, fanaticism seeking to abridge liberty and libertyrunning to license, greed masquerading as a patriot and ambition makinga commodity of glory--or under the process of a divine evolution shallwe be able to mount and ride the waves which swallowed the tribes ofIsrael, which engulfed the phalanxes of Greece and the legions of Rome, and which still beat the sides and sweep the decks of Europe? The one-party power we have escaped; the one-man power we have escaped. The stars in their courses fight for us; the virtue and intelligence ofthe people are still watchful and alert. Truth is mightier thanever, and justice, mounting guard even in the Hall of Statues, walkseverywhere the battlements of freedom! Chapter the Twentieth The Real Grover Cleveland--Two Clevelands Before and After Marriage--A Correspondence and a Break of Personal Relations I There were, as I have said, two Grover Clevelands--before and aftermarriage--and, it might be added, between his defeat in 1888 and hiselection in 1892. He was so sure of his election in 1888 that he couldnot be induced to see the danger of the situation in his own Stateof New York, where David Bennett Hill, who had succeeded him in thegovernorship, was a candidate for reelection, and whom he personallydetested, had become the ruling party force. He lost the State, andwith it the election, while Hill won, and thereby arose an ugly factionfight. I did not believe as the quadrennial period approached in 1892 thatMr. Cleveland could be elected. I still think he owed his election, and Harrison his defeat, to the Homestead riots of the midsummer, whichtransferred the labor vote bodily from the Republicans to the Democrats. Mainly on account of this belief I opposed his nomination that year. In the Kentucky State Convention I made my opposition resonant, ifnot effective. "I understand, " I said in an address to the assembleddelegates, "that you are all for Grover Cleveland?" There came an affirmative roar. "Well, " I continued, "I am not, and if you send me to the NationalConvention I will not vote for his nomination, if his be the only namepresented, because I firmly believe that his nomination will mean themarching through a slaughter-house to an open grave, and I refuse to beparty to such a folly. " The answer of the convention was my appointment by acclamation, but itwas many a day before I heard the last of my unlucky figure of speech. Notwithstanding this splendid indorsement, I went to the NationalConvention feeling very like the traditional "poor boy at a frolic. " Allseemed to me lost save honor and conviction. I had become the embodimentof my own epigram, "a tariff for revenue only. " Mr. Cleveland, in thebeginning very much taken by it, had grown first lukewarm and thenfrightened. His "Free Trade" message of 1887 had been regarded by theparty as an answering voice. But I knew better. In the national platform, over the protest of Whitney, his organizer, and Vilas, his spokesman, I had forced him to stand on that gospel. He flew into a rage and threatened to modify, if not to repudiate, theplank in his letter of acceptance. We were still on friendly terms and, upon reaching home, I wrote him the following letter. It reads likeancient history, but, as the quarrel which followed cut a certain figurein the political chronicle of the time, the correspondence may not behistorically out of date, or biographically uninteresting: II MR. WATTERSON TO MR. CLEVELAND Courier-Journal Office, Louisville, July 9, 1892. --My DearMr. President: I inclose you two editorial articles from theCourier-Journal, and, that their spirit and purpose may not bemisunderstood by you, I wish to add a word or two of a kind directly andentirely personal. To a man of your robust understanding and strong will, opposition andcriticism are apt to be taken as more or less unfriendly; and, as youare at present advised, I can hardly expect that any words of mine willbe received by you with sentiments either of confidence or favor. I was admonished by a certain distrust, if not disdain, visited upon thehonest challenge I ventured to offer your Civil Service policy, when youwere actually in office, that you did not differ from some other greatmen I have known in an unwillingness, or at least an inability, to accept, without resentment, the question of your infallibility. Nevertheless, I was then, as I am now, your friend, and not your enemy, animated by the single purpose to serve the country, through you, as, wanting your great opportunities, I could not serve it through myself. During the four years when you were President, I asked you but for onething that lay near my heart. You granted that handsomely; and, if youhad given me all you had to give beside, you could not have laid meunder greater obligation. It is a gratification to me to know, and itought to be some warrant both of my intelligence and fidelity for you toremember that that matter resulted in credit to the Administration andbenefit to the public service. But to the point; I had at St. Louis in 1888 and at Chicago, the presentyear, to oppose what was represented as your judgment and desire in theadoption of a tariff plank in our national platform; successfully inboth cases. The inclosed articles set forth the reasons forcing uponme a different conclusion from yours, in terms that may appear to youbluntly specific, but I hope not personally offensive; certainly not byintention, for, whilst I would not suppress the truth to please you orany man, I have a decent regard for the sensibilities and the rightsof all men, particularly of men so eminent as to be beyond the reach ofanything except insolence and injustice. Assuredly in your case, I amincapable of even so much as the covert thought of either, entertainingfor you absolute respect and regard. But, my dear Mr. President, I donot think that you appreciate the overwhelming force of the revenuereform issue, which has made you its idol. [Illustration: A Corner of "Mansfield"--Home of Henry Watterson] If you will allow me to say so, in perfect frankness and withoutintending to be rude or unkind, the gentlemen immediately about you, gentlemen upon whom you rely for material aid and energetic partymanagement, are not, as to the Tariff, Democrats at all; and havelittle conception of the place in the popular mind and heart held by theRevenue Reform idea, or, indeed of any idea, except that of organizationand money. Of the need of these latter, no man has a more realizing sense, orlarger information and experience, than I have. But they are merely thebrakes and wheels of the engine, to which principles and inspirationsare, and must always be, the elements of life and motion. It is toentreat you therefore, in your coming letter and address, not tounderestimate the tremendous driving power of this Tariff issue, and tobeg you, not even to seem to qualify it, or to abridge its terms in amistaken attempt to seem to be conservative. You cannot escape your great message of 1887 if you would. I know it byheart, and I think that I perfectly apprehend its scope and tenor. Takeit as your guiding star. Stand upon it. Reiterate it. Emphasize it, amplify it, but do not subtract a thought, do not erase a word. Forevery vote which a bold front may lose you in the East you will gain twovotes in the West. In the East, particularly in New York, enemies lurkin your very cupboard, and strike at you from behind your chair attable. There is more than a fighting chance for Illinois, Iowa, andMinnesota, and next to a certainty in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Indiana, if you put yourself personally at the head of the column which is movingin your name, supposing it to be another name for reduced taxes andfreer exchanges. Discouraged as I was by the condition of things in New York and Indianaprior to the Chicago Convention, depressed and almost hopeless by yournomination, I can see daylight, if you will relax your grip somewhatupon the East and throw yourself confidently upon the West. I write warmly because I feel warmly. If you again occupy the WhiteHouse, and it is my most constant and earnest prayer that you may, besure that you will not be troubled by me. I cannot hope that my motivesin opposing your nomination, consistent as you know them to have been, or that my conduct during the post-convention discussion and canvass, free as I know it to have been of ill-feeling, or distemper, has escapedmisrepresentation and misconception. I could not, without the loss of myself-respect, approach you on any private matter whatever; though it maynot be amiss for me to say to you, that three weeks before the meetingof the National Convention, I wrote to Mr. Gorman and Mr. Brice urgingthe withdrawal of any opposition, and declaring that I would be a partyto no movement to work the two-thirds rule to defeat the will of themajority. This is all I have to say, Mr. President, and you can believe it or not, as you please; though you ought to know that I would write you nothingexcept in sincere conviction, nor speak to you, or of you, except in acandid and kindly spirit. Trusting that this will find you hale, hearty, and happy, I am, dear sir, your fellow democrat and most faithfulfriend, HENRY WATTERSON. The Honorable Grover Cleveland. III MR. CLEVELAND TO MR. WATTERSON By return mail I received this answer: Gray Gables, Buzzards Bay, Mass. , July 15, 1892. MY DEAR MR. WATTERSON: I have received your letter and the clippings you inclosed. I am not sure that I understand perfectly all that they mean. One thingthey demonstrate beyond any doubt, to-wit: that you have not--I thinkI may say--the slightest conception of my disposition. It may be that Iknow as little about yours. I am surprised by the last paragraph ofThe Courier-Journal article of July 8 and amazed to read the statementscontained in your letter, that you know the message of 1887 by heart. It is a matter of very small importance, but I hope you will allow me tosay, that in all the platform smashing you ever did, you never injurednor inspired me that I have ever seen or heard of, except that of 1888. I except that, so I may be exactly correct when I write, "seen or heardof, "--for I use the words literally. I would like very much to present some views to you relating to thetariff position, but I am afraid to do so. I will, however, venture to say this: If we are defeated this year, Ipredict a Democratic wandering in the dark wilds of discouragement fortwenty-five years. I do not purpose to be at all responsible for such aresult. I hope all others upon whom rests the least responsibility willfully appreciate it. The world will move on when both of us are dead. While we stay, andespecially while we are in any way concerned in political affairs andwhile we are members of the same political brotherhood, let us bothresolve to be just and modest and amiable. Yours very sincerely, GROVER CLEVELAND. Hon. Henry Watterson, Louisville, Ky. IV MR. WATTERSON TO MR. CLEVELAND I said in answer: Louisville, July 22, 1892. --My Dear Sir: I do not see how you couldmisunderstand the spirit in which I wrote, or be offended by my plainwords. They were addressed as from one friend to another, as from oneDemocrat to another. If you entertain the idea that this is a false viewof our relative positions, and that your eminence lifts you above bothcomradeship and counsels, I have nothing to say except to regret that, in underestimating your breadth of character I exposed myself toocontumely. You do, indeed, ride a wave of fortune and favor. You are quite beyondthe reach of insult, real or fancied. You could well afford to be moretolerant. In answer to the ignorance of my service to the Democratic party, whichyou are at such pains to indicate--and, particularly, with reference tothe sectional issue and the issue of tariff reform--I might, if Iwanted to be unamiable, suggest to you a more attentive perusal of theproceedings of the three national conventions which nominated you forPresident. But I purpose nothing of the sort. In the last five national conventionsmy efforts were decisive in framing the platform of the party. Ineach of them I closed the debate, moved the previous question and wassustained by the convention. In all of them, except the last, I was amaker, not a smasher. Touching what happened at Chicago, the presentyear, I had a right, in common with good Democrats, to be anxious;and out of that sense of anxiety alone I wrote you. I am sorry that mytemerity was deemed by you intrusive and, entering a respectful protestagainst a ban which I cannot believe to be deserved by me, and assuringyou that I shall not again trouble you in that way, I am, your obedientservant, HENRY WATTERSON. The Hon. Grover Cleveland. V This ended my personal relations with Mr. Cleveland. Thereafter wedid not speak as we passed by. He was a hard man to get on with. Overcredulous, though by no means excessive, in his likes, verytenacious in his dislikes, suspicious withal, he grew during his secondterm in the White House, exceedingly "high and mighty, " suggestingsomewhat the "stuffed prophet, " of Mr. Dana's relentless lambasting andverifying my insistence that he posed rather as an idol to be worshiped, than a leader to be trusted and loved. He was in truth a strong man, who, sufficiently mindful of his limitations in the beginning, grew byunexampled and continued success overconfident and overconscious in hisown conceit. He had a real desire to serve the country. But he was aptto think that he alone could effectively serve it. In one of our spatsI remember saying to him, "You seem, Mr. President, to think you are theonly pebble on the beach--the one honest and brave man in the party--hutlet me assure you of my own knowledge that there are others. " His answerwas, "Oh, you go to ----!" He split his party wide open. The ostensible cause was the money issue. But, underlying this, there was a deal of personal embitterment. Had hebeen a man of foresight--or even of ordinary discernment--he might haveheld it together and with it behind him have carried the gold standard. I had contended for a sound currency from the outset of the fiscalcontention, fighting first the green-back craze and then the free silvercraze against an overwhelming majority in the West and South, nowheremore radically relentless than in Kentucky. Both movements had theirorigin on economic fallacies and found their backing in dishonestpurpose to escape honest indebtedness. Through Mr. Cleveland the party of Jefferson, Jackson, and Tilden wasconverted from a Democrat into a Populist, falling into the arms of Mr. Bryan, whose domination proved as baleful in one way as Mr. Cleveland'shad been in another, the final result shipwreck, with the extinguishmentof all but the label. Mr. Bryan was a young man of notable gifts of speech and boundlessself-assertion. When he found himself well in the saddle he beganto rule despotically and to ride furiously. A party leader moreshort-sighted could hardly be imagined. None of his judgments came true. As a consequence the Republicans for a long time had everything theirown way, and, save for the Taft-Roosevelt quarrel, might have held theirpower indefinitely. All history tells us that the personal equation mustbe reckoned with in public life. Assuredly it cuts no mean figure inhuman affairs. And, when politicians fall out--well--the other sidecomes in. Chapter the Twenty-First Stephen Foster, the Song-Writer--A Friend Comes to the Rescu His Originality--"My Old Kentucky Home" and the "Old Folks at Home"--General Sherman and "Marching Through Georgia" I have received many letters touching what I said a little while ago ofStephen Collins Foster, the song writer. In that matter I had, andcould have had, no unkindly thought or purpose. The story of the musicalscrapbook rested not with me, but as I stated, upon the averment of WillS. Hays, a rival song writer. But that the melody of Old Folks atHome may be found in Schubert's posthumous Rosemonde admits not ofcontradiction for there it is, and this would seem to be in some sortcorroborative evidence of the truth of Hays' story. Among these letters comes one from Young E. Allison which is entitled toserious consideration. Mr. Allison is a gentleman of the first orderof character and culture, an editor and a musician, and what he writescannot fail to carry with it very great weight. I need make no apologyfor quoting him at length. "I have long been collecting material about Foster from his birth tohis death, " says Mr. Allison, "and aside from his weak and fatal loveof drink, which developed after he was twenty-five, and had married, hislife was one continuous devotion to the study of music, of painting, ofpoetry and of languages; in point of fact, of all the arts that appealto one who feels within him the stir of the creative. He was, quitesingularly enough, a fine mathematician, which undoubtedly aided him inthe study of music as a science, to which time and balance play such animportant part. In fact, I believe it was the mathematical devil inhis brain that came to hold him within such bare and primitive forms ofcomposition and so, to some extent, to delimit the wider development ofhis genius. "Now as to Foster's drinking habits, however unfortunate they proved tohim they did not affect the quality of his art as he bequeathed it tous. No one cares to recall the unhappy fortunes of Burns, De Musset, Chopin or--even in our own time--of O. Henry, and others who mightbe named. In none of their productions does the hectic fever ofover-stimulation show itself. No purer, gentler or simpler aspirationswere ever expressed in the varying forms of music and verse than flowedfrom Foster's pen, even as penetrating benevolence came from the pen ofO. Henry, embittered and solitary as his life had been. Indeed when wecome to regard what the drinkers of history have done for the world inspite of the artificial stimulus they craved, we may say with Lincoln asLincoln said of Grant, 'Send the other generals some of the same brand. ' "Foster was an aristocrat of aristocrats, both by birth and gifts. Heinherited the blood of Richard Steele and of the Kemble family, noted inEnglish letters and dramatic annals. To these artistic strains headded undoubtedly the musical temperament of an Italian grandmother orgreat-grand-mother. He was a cousin of John Rowan, the distinguishedKentucky lawyer and senator. Of Foster's family, his father, hisbrothers, his sisters were all notable as patriots, as pioneers inengineering, in commerce and in society. One of his brothers designedand built the early Pennsylvania Railroad system and died executivevice-president of that great corporation. Thus he was born to thearts and to social distinction. But, like many men of the creativetemperament, he was born a solitary, destined to live in a land ofdreams. The singular beauty and grace of his person and countenance, the charm of his voice, manner and conversation, were for the most partfamiliar to the limited circle of his immediate family and friends. Toothers he was reticent, with a certain hauteur of timidity, avoidingsociety and public appearances to the day of his death. "Now those are the facts about Foster. They certainly do not describethe 'ne'er-do-well of a good family' who hung round barrooms, colored-minstrel haunts and theater entrances. I can find only oneincident to show that Foster ever went to hear his own songs sung inpublic. He was essentially a solitary, who, while keenly observant ofand entering sympathizingly into the facts of life, held himself alooffrom immediate contact with its crowded stream. He was solitary fromsensitivity, not from bitterness or indifference. He made a largefortune for his day with his songs and was a popular idol. "Let us come now to the gravamen of my complaint. You charge on theauthority of mere gossip from the late Will S. Hays, that Foster didnot compose his own music, but that he had obtained a collection ofunpublished manuscripts by an unnamed old 'German musician and thusdishonestly, by pilfering and suppression' palmed off upon the publicthemes and compositions which he could not himself have originated. Something like this has been said about every composer and writer, bigand little, whose personality and habits did not impress his immediateneighbors as implying the possession of genius. The world usuallyexpects direct inheritance and a theatric impressiveness of genius inits next-door neighbor before it accepts the proof of his works alone. For that reason Napoleon's paternity in Corsica was ascribed to GeneralMaboeuf, and Henry Clay's in early Kentucky to Patrick Henry. Thatlegend of the 'poor, unknown German musician' who composed in povertyand secrecy the deathless songs that have obsessed the world of musiclovers, has been told of numberless young composers on their way tofame, but died out in the blaze of their later work. I have no doubtthey told it of Foster, as they did also of Hays. And Colonel Haysdoubtless repeated it to you as the intimate gossip about Foster. "I have an article written by Colonel Hays and published in and cut fromThe Courier-Journal some twelve years after the composer's death, inwhich he sketches the life and work of Stephen Collins Foster. In thatarticle he lays especial stress upon the surprising originality of theFoster themes and of their musical setting. He praises their distinctAmerican or rather native inspiration and flavor, and describes fromhis own knowledge of Foster how they were 'written from his heart. ' Nomention or suggestion in it of any German or other origin for any ofthose melodies that the world then and now cherishes as American incostume, but universal in appeal. While you may have heard something inSchubert's compositions that suggested something in Foster's most famoussong, still I venture to say it was only a suggestion, such as oftenarises from the works of composers of the same general type. Schubertand Foster were both young sentimentalists and dreamers who must havehad similar dreams that found expression in their similar progressions. "The German musicians from whom Foster got inspiration to work wereBeethoven, Glück, Weber, Mozart. He was a student of all of them and ofthe Italian school also, as some of his songs show. Foster's first andonly music teacher--except in the 'do-re-mi' exercises in his schoolboylife--testifies that Foster's musical apprehension was so quick, hisintuitive grasp of its science so complete that after a short time therewas nothing he could teach him of the theory of composition; that hispupil went straight to the masters and got illustration and disciplinefor himself. "This was to be expected of a precocious genius who had written aconcerted piece for flutes at thirteen, who was trying his wings on lovesongs at sixteen, and before he was twenty-one had composed several ofthe most famous of his American melodies, among them Oh Susannah, OldDog Tray and Old Uncle Ned. As in other things he taught himself music, but he studied it ardently at the shrines of the masters. He became amaster of the art of song writing. If anybody cares to hunt up the pianoscores that Verdi made of songs from his operas in the days of Foster hewill find that the great Italian composer's settings were quite as thinas Foster's and exhibited not much greater art. It was the fault of thetimes on the piano, not of the composers. It was not till long afterwardthat the color capacities of the piano were developed. As Foster was nopianist, but rather a pure melodist, he could not be expected to surpasshis times in the management of the piano, the only 'orchestra' he had. It will not do to regard Foster as a crude musician. His own scoresreveal him as the most artful of 'artless' composers. "It is not even presumption to speak of him in the same breath withVerdi. The breadth and poignancy of Foster's melodies entitle themto the highest critical respect, as they have received worldwideappreciation from great musicians and plain music lovers. Wherever hehas gone he has reached the popular heart. Here in the United Stateshe has quickened the pulse beats of four generations. But this mastercreator of a country's only native songs has invariably here at homebeen apologized for as a sort of 'cornfield musician, ' a mere banjostrummer, a hanger-on at barrooms where minstrel quartets renderedhis songs and sent the hat round. The reflection will react upon hiscountry; it will not detract from the real Foster when the constructivecritic appears to write his brief and unfortunate life. I am notcontending that he was a genius of the highest rank, although he hadthe distinction that great genius nearly always achieves, of creatinga school that produced many imitators and established a place apartfor itself in the world's estimation. In ballad writing he did for theUnited States what Watteau did for painting in France. As Watteau founda Flemish school in France and left a French school stamped forever, soFoster found the United States a home for imitations of English, Irish, German and Italian songs, and left a native ballad form and melodicstrain forever impressed upon it as pure American. "He was like Watteau in more than that. Watteau took the elegancies andfripperies of the corrupt French court and fixed them in art immortal, as if the moment had been arrested and held in actual motion. Fostertook the curious and melancholy spectacle of African slavery at itsheight, superimposed by the most elegant and picturesque social mannersthis country has known, at the moment the institution was at its zenith. He saw the glamor, the humor, the tragedy, the contrasts, the emotionaldepths--that lay unplumbed beneath it all. He fixed it there for alltime, for all hearts and minds everywhere. His songs are not only thepictorial canvas of that time, they are the emotional history of thetimes. It was done by a boy who was not prophet enough to foresee theend, or philosopher enough to demonstrate the conditions, but who wasborn with the intuition to feel it all and set it forth deeply and trulyfrom every aspect. "While Foster wrote many comic songs there is ever in them something ofthe melancholy undercurrent that has been detected under the laces andarabesques of Chopin's nominally frivolous dances. Foster's balladform was extremely attenuated, but the melodic content filled it socompletely that it seems to strain at the bounds and must be repeatedand repeated to furnish full gratification to the ear. His form whencompared with the modern ballad's amplitude seems like a Tanagrafigurine beside a Michelangelo statue--but the figurine is as fine inits scope as the statue is in the greater. "I hope you will think Foster over and revise him 'upward. '" All of us need to be admonished to speak no evil of the dead. I amtrying in Looking Backward to square the adjuration with the truth. Perhaps I should speak only of that which is known directly to myself. It costs me nothing to accept this statement of Mr. Allison and toincorporate it as an essential part of the record as far as it relatesto the most famous and in his day the most beloved of American songwriters. Once at a Grand Army encampment General Sherman and I were seatedtogether on the platform when the band began to play Marching ThroughGeorgia, when the general said rather impatiently: "I wish I had adollar for every time I have had to listen to that blasted tune. " And I answered: "Well, there is another tune about which I might say thesame thing, " meaning My Old Kentucky Home. Neither of us was quite sincere. Both were unconsciously pleased to hearthe familiar strains. At an open-air fiesta in Barcelona some Americanfriends who made their home there put the bandmaster up to breakingforth with the dear old melody as I came down the aisle, and I wasmightily pleased. Again at a concert in Lucerne, the band, playing apotpourri of Swiss songs, interpolated Kentucky's national anthem andthe group of us stood up and sang the chorus. I do not wonder that men march joyously to battle and death to drum andfife squeaking and rattling The Girl I Left Behind Me. It may be a longway to Tipperary, but it is longer to the end of the tether that bindsthe heart of man to the cradle songs of his nativity. With the cradlesongs of America the name of Stephen Collins Foster "is immortal bound, "and I would no more dishonor his memory than that of Robert Burns or theauthor of The Star-Spangled Banner. Chapter the Twenty-Second Theodore Roosevelt--His Problematic Character--He Offers Me an Appointment--His _Bonhomie_ and Chivalry--Proud of His Rebel Kin I It is not an easy nor yet a wholly congenial task to write--truthfully, intelligently and frankly to write--about Theodore Roosevelt. Hebelonged to the category of problematical characters. A born aristocrat, he at no time took the trouble to pose as a special friend of thepeople; a born leader, he led with a rough unsparing hand. He was thesoul of controversy. To one who knew him from his childhood as I did, always loving him and rarely agreeing with him, it was plain to see howhis most obvious faults commended him to the multitude and made for apopularity that never quite deserted him. As poorly as I rate the reign of majorities I prefer it to the one-manpower, either elective or dynastic. The scheme of a third term in thepresidency for General Grant seemed to me a conspiracy though with manyof its leaders I was on terms of affectionate intimacy. I fought andhelped to kill in 1896 the unborn scheme to give Mr. Cleveland a thirdterm. Inevitably as the movement for the retention of Theodore Rooseveltbeyond the time already fixed began to show itself in 1907, my pen wasprimed against it and I wrote variously and voluminously. There appeared in one of the periodicals for January, 1908, a sketch ofmine which but for a statement issued concurrently from the White Housewould have attracted more attention than it did. In this I related howat Washington just before the War of Sections I had a musical pal--theniece of a Southern senator--who had studied in Paris, been a protégéeof the Empress Eugénie and become an out-and-out imperialist. LouisNapoleon was her ideal statesman. She not only hated the North butaccepted as gospel truth all the misleading theories of the South: thatcotton was king; that slavery was a divine institution; that in anyenterprise one Southern man was a match for six Northern men. On these points we had many contentions. When the break came she wentSouth with her family. The last I saw of her was crossing Long Bridge ina lumbering family carriage waving a tiny Confederate flag. Forty-five years intervened. I had heard of her from time to timewandering aimlessly over Europe, but had not met her until the precedingwinter in a famous Southern homestead. There she led me into a rosegarden, and seated beneath its clustered greeneries she said with an airof triumph, "Now you see, my dear old friend, that I was right and youwere wrong all the time. " Startled, and altogether forgetful, I asked in what way. "Why, " she answered, "at last the South is coming to its own. " Still out of rapport with her thought I said something about theobliteration of sectionalism and the arrival of political freedom andgeneral prosperity. She would none of this. [Illustration: Henry Watterson (Photograph taken in Florida)] "I mean, " she abruptly interposed, "that the son of Martha Bullock hascome to his own and he will rescue us from the mudsills of the North. " She spoke as if our former discussions had been but yesterday. Then Igave her the right of way, interjecting a query now and then to giveemphasis to her theme, while she unfolded the plan which seemed to herso simple and easy; God's own will; the national destiny, first a thirdterm, and then life tenure à la Louis Napoleone for Theodore Roosevelt, the son of Martha Bullock, the nephew of our great admiral, who was toredress all the wrongs of the South and bring the Yankees to their justdeserts at last. "If, " I ended my sketch, "out of the mouths of babes and sucklings, whynot out of the brain of this crazed old woman of the South?" Early in the following April I came from my winter home in Florida tothe national capital, and the next day was called by the President tothe White House. "The first thing I want to ask, " said he, "is whether that old woman wasa real person or a figment of your imagination?" "She was a figment of my imagination, " I answered, "but you put her outof business with a single punch. Why didn't you hold back your statementa bit? If you had done so there was room for lots of sport ahead. " He was in no mood for joking. "Henry Watterson, " he said, "I want totalk to you seriously about this third-term business. I will not denythat I have thought of the thing--thought of it a great deal. " Then heproceeded to relate from his point of view the state of the country andthe immediate situation. He spoke without reserve of his relations tothe nearest associated public men, of what were and what were nothis personal and party obligations, his attitude toward the politicalquestions of the moment, and ended by saying, "What do you make of allthis?" "Mr. President, " I replied, "you know that I am your friend, and as yourfriend I tell you that if you go out of here the fourth of next Marchplacing your friend Taft in your place you will make a good third toWashington and Lincoln; but if you allow these wild fellows willy-nillyto induce you, in spite of your declaration, to accept the nomination, substantially for a third term, all issues will be merged in that issue, and in my judgment you will not carry a state in the Union. " As if much impressed and with a show of feeling he said: "It may beso. At any rate I will not do it. If the convention nominates me I willpromptly send my declination. If it nominates me and adjourns I willcall it together again and it will have to name somebody else. " As an illustration of the implacability which pursued him I may mentionthat among many leading Republicans to whom I related the incidentmost of them discredited his sincerity, one of them--a man of nationalimportance--expressing the opinion that all along he was artfullyplaying for the nomination. This I do not believe. Perhaps he was neverquite fixed in his mind. The presidency is a wondrous lure. Once out ofthe White House--what else and what----? II Upon his return from one of his several foreign journeys a party of somehundred or more of his immediate personal friends gave him a privatedinner at a famous uptown restaurant. I was placed next him at table. Itgoes without saying that we had all sorts of a good time--he Cæsar and IBrutus--the prevailing joke the entente between the two. "I think, " he began his very happy speech, "that I am the bravest manthat ever lived, for here I have been sitting three hours by the side ofBrutus--have repeatedly seen him clutch his knife--without the blink ofan eye or the turn of a feature. " To which in response when my turn came I said: "You gentlemen seem to besurprised that there should be so perfect an understanding between ourguest and myself. But there is nothing new or strange in that. It goesback, indeed, to his cradle and has never been disturbed throughout theintervening years of political discussion--sometimes acrimonious. At thetop of the acclivity of his amazing career--in the very plenitude of hiseminence and power--let me tell you that he offered me one of the mosthonorable and distinguished appointments within his gift. " "Tell them about that, Marse Henry, " said he. "With your permission, Mr. President, I will, " I said, and continued:"The centenary of the West Point Military Academy was approaching. I wasat dinner with my family at a hotel in Washington when General Corbinjoined us. 'Will you, ' he abruptly interjected, 'accept the chairmanshipof the board of visitors to the academy this coming June?' "'What do you want of me?' I asked. "'It is the academy's centenary, which we propose to celebrate, and wewant an orator. ' "'General Corbin, ' said I, 'you are coming at me in a most enticing way. I know all about West Point. Here at Washington I grew up with it. Ihave been fighting legislative battles for the Army all my life. Thatyou Yankees should come to a ragged old rebel like me for such a serviceis a distinction indeed, and I feel immensely honored. But which page ofthe court calendar made you a plural? Whom do you mean by "we"?' "'Why, ' he replied in serio-comic vein, 'the President, the Secretary ofWar and Me, myself. ' "I promised him to think it over and give him an answer. Next day Ireceived a letter from the President, making the formal official tenderand expressing the hope that I would not decline it. Yet how could Iaccept it with the work ahead of me? It was certain that if I becamea part of the presidential junket and passed a week in the delightfulcompany promised me, I would be unfit for the loyal duty I owed mybelongings and my party, and so reluctantly--more reluctantly than I cantell you--I declined, obliging them to send for Gen. Horace Porterand bring him over from across the ocean, where he was ably serving asAmbassador to France. I need not add how well that gifted and versatilegentleman discharged the distinguished and pleasing duty. " III The last time I met Theodore Roosevelt was but a little while before hisdeath. A small party of us, Editor Moore, of Pittsburgh, and Mr. Riggs, of the New York Central, at his invitation had a jolly midday breakfast, extending far into the afternoon. I never knew him happier or heartier. His jocund spirit rarely failed him. He enjoyed life and wasted no timeon trivial worries, hit-or-miss, the keynote to his thought. The Dutch blood of Holland and the cavalier blood of England mingled inhis veins in fair proportion. He was especially proud of the uncle, hismother's brother, the Southern admiral, head of the Confederate navalorganization in Europe, who had fitted out the rebel cruisers and sentthem to sea. And well he might be, for a nobler American never lived. Atthe close of the War of Sections Admiral Bullock had in his possessionsome half million dollars of Confederate money. Instead of appropriatingthis to his own use, as without remark or hindrance he might have done, he turned it over to the Government of the United States, and died apoor man. The inconsistencies and quarrels in which Theodore Roosevelt was now andagain involved were largely temperamental. His mind was of that orderwhich is prone to believe what it wants to believe. He did not takemuch time to think. He leaped at conclusions, and from his premise hisconclusion was usually sound. His tastes were domestic, his pastime, when not at his books, field sports. He was not what might be called convivial, though fond of goodcompany--very little wine affecting him--so that a certain self-controlbecame second nature to him. To be sure, he had no conscientious or doctrinal scruples about a thirdterm. He had found the White House a congenial abode, had accepted theliteral theory that his election in 1908 would not imply a third buta second term, and he wanted to remain. In point of fact I have animpression that, barring Jackson and Polk, most of those who have gotthere were loath to give it up. We know that Grant was, and I am surethat Cleveland was. We owe a great debt to Washington, because if athird why not a fourth term? And then life tenure after the mannerof the Caesars and Cromwells of history, and especially theLatin-Americans--Bolivar, Rosas and Diaz? Away back in 1873, after a dinner, Mr. Blaine took me into his den andtold me that it was no longer a surmise but a fact that the group aboutGeneral Grant, who had just been reflected by an overwhelming majority, was maneuvering for a third term. To me this was startling, incredible. Returning to my hotel I saw a light still burning in the room of SenatorMorton, of Indiana, and rapping at the door I was bidden to enter. Without mentioning how it had reached me, I put the proposition to him. "Certainly, " he said, "it is true. " The next day, in a letter to the Courier-Journal, I reduced what I hadheard to writing. Reading this over it seemed so sensational that Iadded a closing paragraph, meant to qualify what I had written and toimply that I had not gone quite daft. "These things, " I wrote, "may sound queer to the ear of the country. They may have visited me in my dreams; they may, indeed, have come tome betwixt the sherry and the champagne, but nevertheless I do aver thatthey are buzzing about here in the minds of many very serious and notunimportant persons. " Never was a well-intentioned scribe so berated and ridiculed as I, never a simple news gatherer so discredited. Democratic and Republicannewspapers vied with one another which could say crossest things andlaugh loudest. One sentence especially caught the newspaper risibilitiesof the time, and it was many a year before the phrase "between thesherry and the champagne" ceased to pursue me. That any patrioticAmerican, twice elevated to the presidency, could want a third term, could have the hardihood to seek one was inconceivable. My letter wasan insult to General Grant and proof of my own lack of intelligenceand restraint. They lammed me, laughed at me, good and strong. On eachsuccessive occasion of recurrence I have encountered the same criticism. Chapter the Twenty-Third The Actor and the Journalist--The Newspaper and the State--Joseph Jefferson--His Personal and Artistic Career--Modest Character and Religious Belief I The journalist and the player have some things in common. Eachturns night into day. I have known rather intimately all the eminentEnglish-speaking actors of my time from Henry Irving and Charles Wyndhamto Edwin Booth and Joseph Jefferson, from Charlotte Cushman to HelenaModjeska. No people are quite so interesting as stage people. During nearly fifty years my life and the life of Joseph Jefferson ranclose upon parallel lines. He was eleven years my senior; but afterthe desultory acquaintance of a man and a boy we came together undercircumstances which obliterated the disparity of age and establishedbetween us a lasting bond of affection. His wife, Margaret, had died, and he was passing through Washington with the little brood of childrenshe had left him. It made the saddest spectacle I had ever seen. As I recall it aftermore than sixty years, the scene of silent grief, of unutterablehelplessness, has still a haunting power over me, the oldest lad noteight years of age, the youngest a girl baby in arms, the young fatheraghast before the sudden tragedy which had come upon him. There musthave been something in my sympathy which drew him toward me, for on hisreturn a few months later he sought me out and we fell into the easyintercourse of established relations. I was recovering from an illness, and every day he would come andread by my bedside. I had not then lost the action of one of my hands, putting an end to a course of musical study I had hoped to develop intoa career. He was infinitely fond of music and sufficiently familiar withthe old masters to understand and enjoy them. He was an artist throughand through, possessing a sweet nor yet an uncultivated voice--a blendbetween a low tenor and a high baritone--I was almost about to write a"contralto, " it was so soft and liquid. Its tones in speech retained tothe last their charm. Who that heard them shall ever forget them? Early in 1861 my friend Jefferson came to me and said: "There isgoing to be a war of the sections. I am not a warrior. I am neithera Northerner nor a Southerner. I cannot bring myself to engage inbloodshed, or to take sides. I have near and dear ones North and South. I am going away and I shall stay away until the storm blows over. It mayseem to you unpatriotic, and it is, I know, unheroic. I am not a hero; Iam, I hope, an artist. My world is the world of art, and I must be trueto that; it is my patriotism, my religion. I can do no manner of goodhere, and I am going away. " II At that moment statesmen were hopefully estimating the chances of apeaceful adjustment and solution of the sectional controversy. With theprophet instinct of the artist he knew better. Though at no time takingan active interest in politics or giving expression to party bias of anykind, his personal associations led him into a familiar knowledge of thetrend of political opinion and the portent of public affairs, and I cantruly say that during the fifty years that passed thereafter I neverdiscussed any topic of current interest or moment with him that he didnot throw upon it the side lights of a luminous understanding, and atthe same time an impartial and intelligent judgment. His mind was both reflective and radiating. His humor though perennialwas subdued; his wit keen and spontaneous, never acrid or wounding. Hisspeech abounded with unconscious epigram. He had his beliefs and stoodby them; but he was never aggressive. Cleaner speech never fell from thelips of man. I never heard him use a profanity. We once agreed betweenourselves to draw a line across the salacious stories so much in vogueduring our day; the wit must exceed the dirt; where the dirt exceededthe wit we would none of it. He was a singularly self-respecting man; genuinely a modest man. Theactor is supposed to be so familiar with the pubic as to be proofagainst surprises. Before his audience he must be master of himself, holding the situation and his art by the firmest grip. He must simulate, not experience emotion, the effect referable to the seeming, never tothe actuality involving the realization. Mr. Jefferson held to this doctrine and applied it rigorously. On acertain occasion he was playing Caleb Plummer. In the scene betweenthe old toy-maker and his blind daughter, when the father discovers thedreadful result of his dissimulation--an awkward hitch; and, the climaxquite thwarted, the curtain came down. I was standing at the wings. "Did you see that?" he said as he brushed by me, going to hisdressing-room. "No, " said I, following him. "What was it?" He turned, his eyes still wet and his voice choked. "I broke down, " saidhe; "completely broke down. I turned away from the audience to recovermyself. But I failed and had the curtain rung. " The scene had been spoiled because the actor had been overcome by asudden flood of real feeling, whereas he was to render by his art thefeeling of a fictitious character and so to communicate this to hisaudience. Caleb's cue was tears, but not Jefferson's. On another occasion I saw his self-possession tried in a differentway. We were dining with a gentleman who had overpartaken of his ownhospitality. Mr. Murat Halstead was of the company. There was also aGerman of distinction, whose knowledge of English was limited. The RipVan Winkle craze was at its height. After sufficiently impressing theGerman with the rare opportunity he was having in meeting a man sofamous as Mr. Jefferson, our host, encouraged by Mr. Halstead, and I amafraid not discouraged by me, began to urge Mr. Jefferson to give us, ashe said, "a touch of his mettle, " and failing to draw the great comedianout he undertook himself to give a few descriptive passages from thedrama which was carrying the town by storm. Poor Jefferson! He sat likean awkward boy, helpless and blushing, the German wholly unconscious ofthe fun or even comprehending just what was happening--Halstead and Imaliciously, mercilessly enjoying it. III I never heard Mr. Jefferson make a recitation or, except in the singingof a song before his voice began to break, make himself a part of anyprivate entertainment other than that of a spectator and guest. He shrank from personal displays of every sort. Even in his younger dayshe rarely "gagged, " or interpolated, upon the stage. Yet he did notlack for a ready wit. One time during the final act of Rip Van Winkle, a young countryman in the gallery was so carried away that he quite losthis bearings and seemed to be about to climb over the outer railing. Theaudience, spellbound by the actor, nevertheless saw the rustic, and itsattention was being divided between the two when Jefferson reached thatpoint in the action of the piece where Rip is amazed by the docilityof his wife under the ill usage of her second husband. He took in thesituation at a glance. Casting his eye directly upon the youth in the gallery, he uttered thelines as if addressing them directly to him, "Well, I would never havebelieved it if I had not seen it. " The poor fellow, startled, drew back from his perilous position, and theaudience broke into a storm of applause. Joseph Jefferson was a Swedenborgian in his religious belief. At onetime too extreme a belief in spiritualism threatened to cloud his sound, wholesome understanding. As he grew older and happier and passed outfrom the shadow of his early tragedy he fell away from the more sinisterinfluence the supernatural had attained over his imagination. One timein Washington I had him to breakfast to meet the Chief Justice and Mr. Justice Matthews and Mr. Carlisle, the newly-elected Speaker of theHouse. It was a rainy Sunday, and it was in my mind to warn him that ourcompany was made up of hard-headed lawyers not apt to be impressedby fairy tales and ghost stories, and to suggest that he cut thespiritualism in case the conversation fell, as was likely, into thespeculative. I forgot, or something hindered, and, sure enough, thequestion of second sight and mind reading came up, and I said to myself:"Lord, now we'll have it. " But it was my kinsman, Stanley Matthews, wholed off with a clairvoyant experience in his law practice. I began tobe reassured. Mr. Carlisle followed with a most mathematical accountof some hobgoblins he had encountered in his law practice. Finally theChief Justice, Mr. Waite, related a series of incidents so fantastic andincredible, yet detailed with the precision and lucidity of a master ofplain statement, as fairly to stagger the most believing ghostseer. ThenI said to myself again: "Let her go, Joe, no matter what you tell nowyou will fall below the standard set by these professional perfectersof pure reason, and are safe to do your best, or your worst. " I think heheld his own, however. IV Joseph Jefferson came to his artistic spurs slowly but surely, beingnearly thirty years of age when he got his chance, and therefore whollyequal to it and prepared for it. William E. Burton stood and had stood for twenty-five years therecognized, the reigning king of comedy in America. He was a master ofhis craft as well as a leader in society and letters. To look at himwhen he came upon the stage was to laugh; yet he commanded tears almostas readily as laughter. In New York City particularly he ruled theroost, and could and did do that which had cost another his place. Hebegan to take too many liberties with the public favor and, truth tosay, was beginning to be both coarse and careless. People were growingrestive under ministrations which were at times little less thanimpositions upon their forbearance. They wanted something if possible asstrong, but more refined, and in the person of the leading comedy man ofLaura Keene's company, a young actor by the name of Jefferson, they gotit. Both Mr. Sothern and Mr. Jefferson have told the story of Tom Taylor'sextravaganza, "Our American Cousin, " in which the one as Dundreary, theother as Asa Trenchard, rose to almost instant popularity and fame. Ishall not repeat it except to say that Jefferson's Asa Trenchard wasunlike any other the English or American stage has known. He playedthe raw Yankee boy, not in low comedy at all, but made him innocent andignorant as a well-born Green Mountain lad might be, never a bumpkin;and in the scene when Asa tells his sweetheart the bear story and whilstpretending to light his cigar burns the will, he left not a dry eye inthe house. New York had never witnessed, never divined anything in pathos andhumor so exquisite. Burton and his friends struggled for a season, butJefferson completely knocked them out. Even had Burton lived, and hadthere been no diverting war of sections to drown all else, Jeffersonwould have come to his growth and taken his place as the firstserio-comic actor of his time. Rip Van Winkle was an evolution. Jefferson's half-brother, CharlesBurke, had put together a sketchy melodrama in two acts and had playedin it, was playing in it when he died. After his Trenchard, Jeffersonturned himself loose in all sorts of parts, from Diggory to Mazeppa, afamous burlesque, which he did to a turn, imitating the mock heroics ofthe feminine horse marines, so popular in the equestrian drama of theperiod, Adah Isaacs Menken, the beautiful and ill-fated, at their head. Then he produced a version of Nicholas Nickleby, in which his NewmanNoggs took a more ambitious flight. These, however, were but theavant-couriers of the immortal Rip. Charles Burke's piece held close to the lines of Irving's legend. Whenthe vagabond returns from the mountains after the twenty years' sleepGretchen is dead. The apex is reached when the old man, sitting dazedat a table in front of the tavern in the village of Falling Water, asksafter Derrick Van Beekman and Nick Vedder and other of his cronies. Atlast, half twinkle of humor and half glimmer of dread, he gets himselfto the point of asking after Dame Van Winkle, and is told that shehas been dead these ten years. Then like a flash came that wonderfulJeffersonian change of facial expression, and as the white head dropsupon the arms stretched before him on the table he says: "Well, she ledme a hard life, a hard life, but she was the wife of my bosom, she was_meine frau!_" I did not see the revised, or rather the newly-created and written, RipVan Winkle until Mr. Jefferson brought it to America and was playingit at Niblo's Garden in New York. Between himself and Dion Boucicault adrama carrying all the possibilities, all the lights and shadows of hisgenius had been constructed. In the first act he sang a drinking song toa wing accompaniment delightfully, adding much to the tone and color ofthe situation. The exact reversal of the Lear suggestion in the last actwas an inspiration, his own and not Boucicault's. The weird scene in themountains fell in admirably with a certain weird note in the Jeffersongenius, and supplied the needed element of variety. I always thought it a good acting play under any circumstances, but, inhis hands, matchless. He thought himself that the piece, as a piece, andregardless of his own acting, deserved better of the critics thanthey were always willing to give it. Assuredly, no drama that ever waswritten, as he played it, ever took such a hold upon the public. Herendered it to three generations, and to a rising, not a falling, popularity, drawing to the very last undiminished audiences. Because of this unexampled run he was sometimes described by unthinkingpeople as a one-part actor. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Hepossessed uncommon versatility. That after twenty years of the new RipVan Winkle, when he was past fifty years of age, he could come back tosuch parts as Caleb Plummer and Acres is proof of this. He need nothave done so at all. Carrying a pension roll of dependents aggregatingfifteen or twenty thousand a year for more than a quarter of a century, Rip would still have sufficed his requirements. It was his love forhis art that took him to The Cricket and The Rivals, and at noinconsiderable cost to himself. I have heard ill-natured persons, some of them envious actors, say thathe did nothing for the stage. He certainly did not make many contributions to its upholstery. He wasin no position to emulate Sir Henry Irving in forcing and directing thepublic taste. But he did in America quite as much as Sir Charles Wyndhamand Sir Henry Irving in England to elevate the personality, the socialand intellectual standing of the actor and the stage, effecting in alifetime a revolution in the attitude of the people and the clergy ofboth countries to the theater and all things in it. This was surelyenough for one man in any craft or country. He was always a good stage speaker. Late in life he began to speakelsewhere, and finally to lecture. His success pleased him immensely. The night of the Sunday afternoon charity for the Newsboys' Home inLouisville, when the promise of a talk from him had filled the house tooverflowing, he was like a boy who had come off from a college occasionwith all the honors. Indeed, the degrees of Harvard and Yale, which hadreached him both unexpectedly and unsolicited, gave him a pleasure quiteapart from the vanity they might have gratified in another; he regardedthem, and justly, as the recognition at once of his profession and ofhis personal character. I never knew a man whose moral sensibilities were more acute. He lovedthe respectable. He detested the unclean. He was just as attractiveoff the stage as upon it, because he was as unaffected and real inhis personality as he was sincere and conscientious in his publicrepresentations, his lovely nature showing through his art in spite ofhim. His purpose was to fill the scene and forget himself. V The English newspapers accompanied the tidings of Mr. Jefferson's deathwith rather sparing estimates of his eminence and his genius, thoughhis success in London, where he was well known, had been unequivocal. Indeed, himself, alone with Edwin Booth and Mary Anderson, may be saidto complete the list of those Americans who have attained any realrecognition in the British metropolis. The Times spoke of him as "anable if not a great actor. " If Joseph Jefferson was not a great actorI should like some competent person to tell me what actor of our timecould be so described. Two or three of the journals of Paris referred to him as "the AmericanCoquelin. " It had been apter to describe Coquelin as the FrenchJefferson. I never saw Frederic Lemaître. But, him apart, I have seenall the eccentric comedians, the character actors of the last fiftyyears, and, in spell power, in precision and deftness of touch, inacute, penetrating, all-embracing and all-embodying intelligence andgrasp, I should place Joseph Jefferson easily at their head. Shakespeare was his Bible. The stage had been his cradle. He continuedall his days a student. In him met the meditative and the observingfaculties. In his love of fishing, his love of painting, his love ofmusic we see the brooding, contemplative spirit joined to the alert inmental force and foresight when he addressed himself to the activitiesand the objectives of the theater. He was a thorough stage manager, skillful, patient and upright. His company was his family. He was notgentler with the children and grandchildren he ultimately drew abouthim than he had been with the young men and young women who had precededthem in his employment and instruction. He was nowise ashamed of his calling. On the contrary, he was proudof it. His mother had lived and died an actress. He preferred that hisprogeny should follow in the footsteps of their forebears even as he haddone. It is beside the purpose to inquire, as was often done, what mighthave happened had he undertaken the highest flights of tragedy; onemight as well discuss the relation of a Dickens to a Shakespeare. SirHenry Irving and Sir Charles Wyndham in England, M. Coquelin in France, his contemporaries--each had his _métier_. They were perfect in theirart and unalike in their art. No comparison between them can be justlydrawn. I was witness to the rise of all three of them, and have followedthem in their greatest parts throughout their most brilliant and eminentand successful careers, and can say of each as of Mr. Jefferson: _More than King can no man be--Whether he rule in Cyprus or in Dreams. _ There shall be Kings of Thule after kings are gone. The actor dies andleaves no copy; his deeds are writ in water, only his name survives upontradition's tongue, and yet, from Betterton and Garrick to Irving, fromMacklin and Quin to Wyndham and Jefferson, how few! Chapter the Twenty-Fourth The Writing of Memoirs--Some Characteristics of Carl Shurz--Sam Bowles--Horace White and the Mugwumps I Talleyrand was so impressed by the world-compelling character of thememoirs he had prepared for posterity that he fixed an interdict of morethan fifty years upon the date set for their publication, and when atlast the bulky tomes made their appearance, they excited no especialinterest--certainly created no sensation--and lie for the most partdusty upon the shelves of the libraries that contain them. For adifferent reason, Henry Ward Beecher put a time limit upon the volume, or volumes, which will tell us, among other things, all about one of thegreatest scandals of modern times; and yet how few people now recallit or care anything about the dramatis personæ and the actual facts!Metternich, next after Napoleon and Talleyrand, was an important figurein a stirring epoch. He, too, indicted an autobiography, which isequally neglected among the books that are sometimes quoted andextolled, but rarely read. Rousseau, the half insane, and Barras, thewholly vicious, have twenty readers where Talleyrand and Metternich haveone. From this point of view, the writing of memoirs, excepting those ofthe trivial French School or gossiping letters and diaries of thePepys-Walpole variety, would seem an unprofitable task for a great man'sundertaking. Boswell certainly did for Johnson what the thunderous olddoctor could not have done for himself. Nevertheless, from the daysof Cæsar to the days of Sherman and Lee, the captains of military andsenatorial and literary industry have regaled themselves, if they havenot edified the public, by the narration of their own stories; and, Idare say, to the end of time, interest in one's self, and the mortaldesire to linger yet a little longer on the scene--now and again, asin the case of General Grant, the assurance of honorable remunerationmaking needful provision for others--will move those who have cut somefigure in the world to follow the wandering Celt in the wistful hope-- _Around my fire an evening group to draw, And tell of all I felt and all I saw. _ Something like this occurs to me upon a reperusal of the unfinishedmemoirs of my old and dear friend, Carl Schurz. Assuredly few men hadbetter warrant for writing about themselves or a livelier tale to tellthan the famous German-American, who died leaving that tale unfinished. No man in life was more misunderstood and maligned. There was nothingeither erratic or conceited about Schurz, nor was he more pragmatic thanis common to the possessor of positive opinions along with the power tomake their expression effectual. The actual facts of his public life do not anywhere show that hispolitics shifted with his own interests. On the contrary, he wassingularly regardless of his interests where his convictions interposed. Though an alien, and always an alien, he possessed none of the shiftytraits of the soldier of fortune. Never in his career did he crookthe pregnant hinges of the knee before any worldly throne of grace orflatter any mob that place might follow fawning. His great talents hadonly to lend themselves to party uses to get their full requital. Herefused them equally to Grant in the White House and the multitude inMissouri, going his own gait, which could be called erratic only bythe conventional, to whom regularity is everything and individualitynothing. Schurz was first of all and above all an orator. His achievements onthe platform and in the Senate were undeniable. He was unsurpassed indebate. He had no need to exploit himself. The single chapter in hislife on which light was desirable was the military episode. The crueland false saying, "I fight mit Sigel und runs mit Schurz, " obviouslythe offspring of malignity, did mislead many people, reënforced by theknowledge that Schurz was not an educated soldier. How thoroughly hedisposes of this calumny his memoirs attest. Fuller, more convincingvindication could not be asked of any man; albeit by those familiar withthe man himself it could not be doubted that he had both courage andaptitude for military employment. II A philosopher and an artist, he was drawn by circumstance into thevortex of affairs. Except for the stirring events of 1848, he might havelived and died a professor at Bonn or Heidelberg. If he had pursued hismusical studies at Leipsic he must have become a master of the pianokeyboard. As it was, he played Schumann and Chopin creditably. Therescue of Kinkel, the flight from the fatherland, the mild Bohemianizingin Paris and London awakened within him the spirit of action rather thanof adventure. There was nothing of the Dalgetty about him; too reflective and tooaccomplished. His early marriage attests a domestic trend, from which henever departed; though an idealist in his public aspirations and aimshe was a sentimentalist in his home life and affections. Genial intemperament and disposition, his personal habit was moderation itself. He was a German. Never did a man live so long in a foreign countryand take on so few of its thoughts and ways. He threw himself intothe anti-slavery movement upon the crest of the wave; the flowing seacarried him quickly from one distinction to another; the ebb tide, whichfound him in the Senate of the United States, revealed to his startledsenses the creeping, crawling things beneath the surface; partyismrampant, tyrannous and corrupt; a self-willed soldier in the WhiteHouse; a Blaine, a Butler and a Garfield leading the Representatives, a Cameron and a Conkling leading the Senate; single-mindeddisinterestedness, pure unadulterated conviction, nowhere. Jobs and jobbing flourished on every side. An impossible scheme ofreconstruction was trailing its slow, putrescent length along. Therevenue service was thick with thieves, the committees of Congress werepacked with mercenaries. Money-making in high places had become theorder of the day. Was it for this that oceans of patriotism, of treasureand of blood had been poured out? Was it for this that he had foughtwith tongue and pen and sword? There was Sumner--the great Sumner--who had quarreled with Grant andFish, to keep him company and urge him on. There was the Tribune, the puissant Tribune--two of them, one in New York and the other inChicago--to give him countenance. There was need of liberalizing andloosening things in Missouri, for which he sat in the Senate--they couldnot go on forever half the best elements in the State disfranchised. Thus the Liberal Movement of 1872. Schurz went to Cincinnati elate with hope. He was an idealist--not quiteyet a philosopher. He had his friends about him. Sam Bowles--the firstnewspaper politician of his day, with none of the handicaps carriedby Raymond and Forney--a man keen of insight and foresight, fertile ofresources, and not afraid--stood foremost among them. Next came HoraceWhite. Doric in his simplicity like a marble shaft, and to the outer eyeas cold as marble, but below a man of feeling, conviction and tenacity, a working journalist and a doughty doctrinaire. A little group of suchmen formed itself about Schurz--then only forty-three years old--to whatend? Why, Greeley, Horace Greeley, the bellwether of abolitionism, theking bee of protectionism, the man of fads and isms and the famous "oldwhite hat. " To some of us it was laughable. To Schurz it was tragical. A bridgehad to be constructed for him to pass--for retrace his steps he couldnot--and, as it were, blindfolded, he had to be backed upon this like amule aboard a train of cars. I sometimes wonder what might have happenedif Schurz had then and there resigned his seat in the Senate, got hisbrood together and returned to Germany. I dare say he would have beenwelcomed by Bismarck. Certainly there was no lodgment for him thenceforward in Americanpolitics. The exigencies of 1876-77 made him a provisional place in theHayes Administration; but, precisely as the Democrats of Missouri couldput such a man to no use, the Republicans at large could find no use forhim. He seemed a bull in a china shop to the political organization hehonored with a preference wholly intellectual, and having no stomach foreither extreme, he became a Mugwump. III He was a German. He was an artist. By nature a doctrinaire, he hadbecome a philosopher. He could never wholly adjust himself to hisenvironment. He lectured Lincoln, and Lincoln, perceiving his earnesttruthfulness and genuine qualities, forgave him his impertinence, norceased to regard him with the enduring affection one might have for anardent, aspiring and lovable boy. He was repellant to Grant, whocould not and perhaps did not desire to understand him.... To him theSoutherners were always the red-faced, swashbuckling slave-drivers hehad fancied and pictured them in the days of his abolition oratory. More and more he lived in a rut of his own fancies, wise in booksand counsels, gentle in his relations with the few who enjoyed hisconfidence; to the last a most captivating personality. Though fastidious, Schurz was not intolerant. Yet he was hard toconvince--tenacious of his opinions--courteous but insistent in debate. He was a German; a German Herr Doktor of Music, of Letters and of CommonLaw. During an intimacy of more than thirty years we scarcely everwholly agreed about any public matter; differing about even the civilservice and the tariff. But I admired him hugely and loved him heartily. I had once a rather amusing encounter with him. There was a dinner atDelmonico's, from whose program of post-prandial oratory I had purposelycaused my own name to be omitted. Indeed, I had had with a lady a wagerI very much wished to win that I would not speak. General Grant and Iwent in together, and during the repast he said that the only five humanbeings in the world whom he detested were actually here at table. Of course, Schurz was one of these. He was the last on the list ofspeakers and, curiously enough--the occasion being the considerationof certain ways and means for the development of the South--and manyleading Southerners present--he composed his speech out of an editorialtour de force he was making in the Evening Post on The Homicidal Side ofSouthern Life. Before he had proceeded half through General Grant, who knew of my wager, said, "You'll lose your bet, " and, it being oneo'clock in the morning, I thought so too, and did not care whether Iwon or lost it. When he finished, the call on me was spontaneous anduniversal. "Now give it to him good, " said General Grant. And I did; I declared--the reporters were long since gone--that therehad not been a man killed amiss in Kentucky since the war; that whereone had been killed two should have been; and, amid roars of laughterwhich gave me time to frame some fresh absurdity, I delivered a prosepaean to murder. Nobody seemed more pleased than Schurz himself, and as we cameaway--General Grant having disappeared--he put his arm about me likea schoolboy and said: "Well, well, I had no idea you were sobloody-minded. " Chapter the Twenty-Fifth Every Trade Has Its Tricks--I Play One on William McKinley--Far Away Party Politics and Political Issues I There are tricks in every trade. The tariff being the paramount issue ofthe day, I received a tempting money offer from Philadelphia to presentmy side of the question, but when the time fixed was about to arrive Ifound myself billed for a debate with no less an adversary than WilliamMcKinley, protectionist leader in the Lower House of Congress. We werethe best of friends and I much objected to a joint meeting. The parties, however, would take no denial, and it was arranged that we should begiven alternate dates. Then it appeared that the designated thesis read:"Which political party offers for the workingman the best solution ofthe tariff problem?" Here was a poser. It required special preparation, for which I hadnot the leisure. I wanted the stipend, but was not willing--scarcelyable--to pay so much for it. I was about to throw the engagement overwhen a lucky thought struck me. I had a cast-off lecture entitled Moneyand Morals. It had been rather popular. Why might I not put a head andtail to this--a foreword and a few words in conclusion--and make it meetthe purpose and serve the occasion? When the evening arrived there was a great audience. Half of the peoplehad come to applaud, the other half to antagonize. I was received, however, with what seemed a united acclaim. When the cheering hadceased, with the blandest air I began: "In that chapter of the history of Ireland which was reserved for theconsideration of snakes, the historian, true to the solecism as wellas the brevity of Irish wit, informs us that 'there are no snakes inIreland. ' "I am afraid that on the present occasion I shall have to emulate thisflight of the Celtic imagination. I find myself billed to speak from aDemocratic standpoint as to which party offers the best practical meansfor the benefit of the workingmen of the country. If I am to dischargewith fidelity the duty thus assigned me, I must begin by repudiatingthe text in toto, because the Democratic Party recognizes no politicalagency for one class which is not equally open to all classes. Thebulwark and belltower of its faith, the source and resource of itsstrength are laid in the declaration, 'Freedom for all, specialprivileges to none, ' which applied to practical affairs would denyto self-styled workingmen, organized into a coöperative society, any political means not enjoyed by every other organized coöperativesociety, and by each and every citizen, individually, to himself and hisheirs and assigns, forever. "But in a country like ours, what right has any body of men to gettogether and, labelling themselves workingmen, to talk about politicalmeans and practical ends exclusive to themselves? Who among us has thesingle right to claim for himself, and the likes of him, the divinetitle of a workingman? We are all workingmen, the earnest ploddingscholar in his library, surrounded by the luxury and comfort whichhis learning and his labor have earned for him, no less than the poorcollier in the mine, with darkness and squalor closing him round about, and want maybe staring him in the face, yet--if he be a true man--witha little bird singing ever in his heart the song of hope and cheer whichcradled the genius of Stephenson and Arkwright and the long processionof inventors, lowly born, to whom the world owes the gloriousachievements of this, the greatest of the centuries. We are allworkingmen--the banker, the minister, the lawyer, the doctor--toilingfrom day to day, and it may be we are well paid for our toil, torepresent and to minister to the wants of the time no less than thefarmer and the farmer's boy, rising with the lark to drive the teamafield, and to dally with land so rich it needs to be but tickled with ahoe to laugh a harvest. "Having somewhat of an audacious fancy, I have sometimes in momentsof exuberance ventured upon the conceit that our Jupiter Tonans, theAmerican editor, seated upon his three-legged throne and enveloped bythe majesty and the mystery of his pretentious 'we, ' is a workingman noless than the poor reporter, who year in and year out braves the perilsof the midnight rounds through the slums of the city, yea in the moreperilous temptations of the town, yet carries with him into the darkestdens the love of work, the hope of reward and the fear only of dishonor. "Why, the poor officeseeker at Washington begging a bit of that pie, which, having got his own slice, a cruel, hard-hearted President wouldeliminate from the bill of fare, he likewise is a workingman, and Ican tell you a very hard-working man with a tough job of work, and werebetter breaking rock upon a turnpike in Dixie or splitting rails on aquarter section out in the wild and woolly West. "It is true that, as stated on the program, I am a Democrat--as ArtemusWard once said of the horses in his panorama, I can conceal it nolonger--at least I am as good a Democrat as they have nowadays. Butfirst of all, I am an American, and in America every man who is nota policeman or a dude is a workingman. So, by your leave, my friends, instead of sticking very closely to the text, and treating it froma purely party point of view, I propose to take a ramble through thehighways and byways of life and thought in our beloved country and tocast a balance if I can from an American point of view. "I want to say in the beginning that no party can save any man or anyset of men from the daily toil by which all of us live and move and haveour being. " Then I worked in my old lecture. It went like hot cakes. When next I met William McKinley he saidjocosely: "You are a mean man, Henry Watterson!" "How so?" I asked. "I accepted the invitation to answer you because I wanted and needed themoney. Of course I had no time to prepare a special address. My idea wasto make my fee by ripping you up the back. But when I read the verbatimreport which had been prepared for me there was not a word with which Icould take issue, and that completely threw me out. " Then I told him how it had happened and we had a hearty laugh. He wasthe most lovable of men. That such a man should have fallen a victimto the blow of an assassin defies explanation, as did the murders ofLincoln and Garfield, like McKinley, amiable, kindly men giving nevercause of personal offense. II The murderer is past finding out. In one way and another I fancy thatI am well acquainted with the assassins of history. Of those who slewCæsar I learned in my schooldays, and between Ravaillac, who did thebusiness for Henry of Navarre, and Booth and Guiteau, my familiarknowledge seems almost at first hand. One night at Chamberlin's, inWashington, George Corkhill, the district attorney who was prosecutingthe murderer of Garfield, said to me: "You will never fully understandthis case until you have sat by me through one day's proceedings incourt. " Next day I did this. Never have I passed five hours in a theater so filled with thrills. Ioccupied a seat betwixt Corkhill and Scoville, Guiteau's brother-in-lawand voluntary attorney. I say "voluntary" because from the first Guiteaurejected him and vilely abused him, vociferously insisting upon beinghis own lawyer. From the moment Guiteau entered the trial room it was a theatricalextravaganza. He was in irons, sandwiched between two deputy sheriffs, came in shouting like a madman, and began at once railing at the judge, the jury and the audience. A very necessary rule had been establishedthat when he interposed, whatever was being said or done automaticallystopped. Then, when he ceased, the case went on again as if nothing hadhappened. Only Scoville intervened between me and Guiteau and I had an excellentopportunity to see, hear and size him up. In visage and voice he was themeanest creature I have, either in life or in dreams, encountered. He had the face and intonations of a demon. Everything about him wasloathsome. I cannot doubt that his criminal colleagues of history wereof the same description. Charlotte Corday was surely a lunatic. Wilkes Booth I knew. He wasdrunk, had been drunk all that winter, completely muddled and pervertedby brandy, the inheritant of mad blood. Czolgosz, the slayer ofMcKinley, and the assassin of the Empress Elizabeth were clearly insane. III McKinley and Protectionism, Cleveland, Carlisle and Free Trade--how faraway they seem! With the passing of the old issues that divided parties new issues havecome upon the scene. The alignment of the future will turn upon these. But underlying all issues of all time are fundamental ideas which liveforever and aye, and may not be forgotten or ignored. It used to be claimed by the followers of Jefferson that Democracy wasa fixed quantity, rising out of the bedrock of the Constitution, whileFederalism, Whiggism and Republicanism were but the chimeras of someprevailing fancy drawing their sustenance rather from temporizingexpediency and current sentiment than from basic principles and profoundconviction. To make haste slowly, to look before leaping, to takecounsel of experience--were Democratic axioms. Thus the fathers ofDemocracy, while fully conceiving the imperfections of government andmeeting as events required the need alike of movement and reform, putthe visionary and experimental behind them to aim at things visible, attainable, tangible, the written Constitution the one safe precedent, the morning star and the evening star of their faith and hope. What havoc the parties and the politicians have made of all these loftypretenses! Where must an old-line Democrat go to find himself? Twoissues, however, have come upon the scene which for the time being areparamount and which seem organic. They are set for the determination ofthe twentieth century: The sex question and the drink question. I wonder if it be possible to consider them in a catholic spirit froma philosophic standpoint. I can truly say that the enactment ofprohibition laws, state or national, is personally nothing to me. Ilong ago reached an age when the convivialism of life ceased to cut anyfigure in the equation of my desires and habits. It is the never-failingrecourse of the intolerant, however, to ascribe an individual, and, ofcourse, an unworthy, motive to contrariwise opinions, and I have notescaped that kind of criticism. The challenge underlying prohibition is twofold: Does prohibitionprohibit, and, if it does, may it not generate evils peculiarly its own? The question hinges on what are called "sumptuary laws"; that is, statutes regulating the food and drink, the habits and apparel of theindividual citizen. This in turn harks back to the issue of paternalgovernment. That, once admitted and established, becomes in timeall-embracing. Bigotry is a disease. The bigot pursuing his narrow round is like thebedridden possessed by his disordered fancy. Bigotry sees nothing butitself, which it mistakes for wisdom and virtue. But Bigotry begetshypocrisy. When this spreads over a sufficient area and counts avoting majority it sends its agents abroad, and thus we acquire cantingapostles and legislators at once corrupt and despotic. They are now largely in evidence in the national capital and in thevarious state capitals, where the poor-dog, professional politiciansmost do congregate and disport themselves. The worst of it is that there seems nowhere any popularrealization--certainly any popular outcry. Do the people growdegenerate? Are they willfully dense? Chapter the Twenty-Sixth A Libel on Mr. Cleveland--His Fondness for Cards--Some Poker Stories--The "Senate Game"--Tom Ochiltree, Senator Allison and General Schenck I Not long after Mr. Cleveland's marriage, being in Washington, I made abox party embracing Mrs. Cleveland, and the Speaker and Mrs. Carlisle, at one of the theaters where Madame Modjeska was appearing. The ladiesexpressing a desire to meet the famous Polish actress who had so charmedthem, I took them after the play behind the scenes. Thereafter wereturned to the White House where supper was awaiting us, the Presidentamused and pleased when told of the agreeable incident. The next day there began to buzz reports to the contrary. At firstcovert, they gained in volume and currency until a distinguishedRepublican party leader put his imprint upon them in an after-dinnerspeech, going the length of saying the newly-wedded Chief Magistrate hadactually struck his wife and forbidden me the Executive Mansion, thoughI had been there every day during the week that followed. Mr. Cleveland believed the matter too preposterous to be given anycredence and took it rather stoically. But naturally Mrs. Cleveland wasshocked and outraged, and I made haste to stigmatize it as a lie out ofwhole cloth. Yet though this was sent away by the Associated Press andpublished broadcast I have occasionally seen it referred to by personsover eager to assail a man incapable of an act of rudeness to a woman. II Mr. Cleveland was fond--not overfond--of cards. He liked to play thenoble game at, say, a dollar limit--even once in a while for a littlemore--but not much more. And as Dr. Norvin Green was wont to observe ofCommodore Vanderbilt, "he held them exceeding close to his boo-som. " Mr. Whitney, Secretary of the Navy in his first administration, equallyrich and hospitable, had often "the road gang, " as a certain group, mainly senators, was called, to dine, with the inevitable after-dinnersoirée or séance. I was, when in Washington, invited to these parties. At one of them I chanced to sit between the President and Senator DonCameron. Mr. Carlisle, at the time Speaker of the House--who handledhis cards like a child and, as we all knew, couldn't play a little--wasseated on the opposite side of the table. After a while Mr. Cameron and I began "bluffing" the game--I recallthat the limit was five dollars--that is, raising and back-raising eachother, and whoever else happened to be in, without much or any regard tothe cards we held. It chanced on a deal that I picked up a pat flush, Mr. Cleveland a patfull. The Pennsylvania senator and I went to the extreme, the Presidentof course willing enough for us to play his hand for him. But theSpeaker of the House persistently stayed with us and could not be drivenout. When it came to a draw Senator Cameron drew one card. Mr. Cleveland andI stood pat. But Mr. Carlisle drew four cards. At length, after muchbanter and betting, it reached a show-down and, _mirabile dictu_, theSpeaker held four kings! "Take the money, Carlisle; take the money, " exclaimed the President. "Ifever I am President again you shall be Secretary of the Treasury. Butdon't you make that four-card draw too often. " He was President again, and Mr. Carlisle was Secretary of the Treasury. III There had arisen a disagreeable misunderstanding between General Schenckand myself during the period when the general was Minister at the Courtof St. James. In consequence of this we did not personally meet. Oneevening at Chamberlin's years after, a party of us--mainly the Ohiostatesman's old colleagues in Congress--were playing poker. He came inand joined us. Neither of us knew the other even by sight and there wasno presentation when he sat in. At length a direct play between the newcomer and me arose. There was amoment's pause. Obviously we were strangers. Then it was that SenatorAllison, of Iowa, who had in his goodness of heart purposely broughtabout this very situation, introduced us. The general reddened. I wastaken aback. But there was no escape, and carrying it off amiably weshook hands. It is needless to say that then and there we dropped ourgroundless feud and remained the rest of his life very good friends. In this connection still another poker story. Sam Bugg, the Nashvillegambler, was on a Mississippi steamer bound for New Orleans. He cameupon a party of Tennesseeans whom a famous card sharp had inveigled andwas flagrantly robbing. Sam went away, obtained a pack of cards, andstacked them to give the gambler four kings and the brightest one of theNashville boys four aces. After two or three failures to bring the colddeck into action Sam Bugg brushed a spider--an imaginary spider, ofcourse--from the gambler's coat collar, for an instant distracting hisattention--and in the momentary confusion the stacked cards were dulydealt and the betting began, the gambler confident and aggressive. Finally, all the money up, the four aces beat the four kings, and for agreater amount than the Nashvillians had lost and the gambler had won. Whereupon, without change of muscle, the gambler drawled: "Mr. Bugg, thenext time you see a spider biting me let him bite on!" I was told that the Senate Game had been played during the War ofSections and directly after for large sums. With the arrival of therebel brigadiers it was perforce reduced to a reasonable limit. The "road gang" was not unknown at the White House. Sometimes itassembled at private houses, but its accustomed place of meetingwas first Welcker's and then Chamberlin's. I do not know whether itcontinues to have abiding place or even an existence. In spite of thereputation given me by the pert paragraphers I have not been on a racecourse or seen a horse race or played for other than immaterial stakesfor more than thirty years. IV As an all-round newspaper writer and reporter many sorts of people, high and low, little and big, queer and commonplace, fell in my way;statesmen and politicians, artists and athletes, circus riders and prizefighters; the riffraff and the élite; the professional and dilettante ofthe world polite and the underworld. I knew Mike Walsh and Tim Campbell. I knew John Morrissey. I have seenHeenan--one of the handsomest men of his time--and likewise Adah IsaacsMenken, his inamorata--many said his wife--who went into mourningfor him and thereafter hied away to Paris, where she lived underthe protection of Alexandre Dumas, the elder, who buried her in PèreLachaise under a handsome monument bearing two words, "Thou knowest, "beneath a carved hand pointed to heaven. I did draw the line, however, at Cora Pearl and Marcus Cicero Stanley. The Parisian courtesan was at the zenith of her extraordinary celebritywhen I became a rustic boulevardier. She could be seen everywhere and onall occasions. Her gowns were the showiest, her equipage the smartest;her entourage, loud though it was and vulgar, yet in its way wasundeniable. She reigned for a long time the recognized queen of thedemi-monde. I have beheld her in her glory on her throne--her twothrones, for she had two--one on the south side of the river, the otherat the east end--not to mention the race course--surrounded by a retinueof the disreputable. She did not awaken in me the least curiosity, and Ideclined many opportunities to meet her. Marcus Cicero Stanley was sprung from an aristocratic, even adistinguished, North Carolina family. He came to New York and set up fora swell. How he lived I never cared to find out, though he was believedto be what the police call a "fence. " He seemed a cross between a "con"and a "beat. " Yet for a while he flourished at Delmonico's, which hemade his headquarters, and cut a kind of dash with the unknowing. He wasa handsome, mannerly brute who knew how to dress and carry himself likea gentleman. Later there came to New York another Southerner--a Far Southerner of avery different quality--who attracted no little attention. This wasTom Ochiltree. He, too, was well born, his father an eminent jurist ofTexas; he, himself, a wit, _bon homme_ and raconteur. Travers once said:"We have three professional liars in America--Tom Ochiltree is one andGeorge Alfred Townsend is the other two. " The stories told of Tom would fill a book. He denied none, howeverpreposterous--was indeed the author of many of the most amusing--of how, when the old judge proposed to take him into law partnership he causedto be painted an office sign: Thomas P. Ochiltree and Father; of hisreply to General Grant, who had made him United States Marshal of Texas, and later suggested that it would be well for Tom to pay less attentionto the race course: "Why, Mr. President, all that turf publicity relatesto a horse named after me, not to me, " it being that the horse of theday had been so called; and of General Grant's reply: "Nevertheless, itwould be well, Tom, for you to look in upon Texas once in a while"--inshort, of his many sayings and exploits while a member of Congressfrom the Galveston district; among the rest, that having brought in aresolution tendering sympathy to the German Empire on the death of HerrLaska, the most advanced and distinguished of Radical Socialists, whichbecame for the moment a _cause célébre_. Tom remarked, "Not that I carea damn about it, except for the prominence it gives to Bismarck. " He lived when in Washington at Chamberlin's. He and John Chamberlin wereclose friends. Once when he was breakfasting with John a mutual friendcame in. He was in doubt what to order. Tom suggested beefsteak andonions. "But, " objected the newcomer, "I am about to call on some ladies, andthe smell of onions on my breath, you know!" "Don't let that trouble you, " said Tom; "you have the steak and onionsand when you get your bill that will take your breath away!" Under an unpromising exterior--a stocky build and fiery red head--thereglowed a brave, generous and tender spirit. The man was a _preuxchevalier_. He was a knight-errant. All women--especially all good anddiscerning women who knew him and who could intuitively readbeneath that clumsy personality his fine sense of respect--even ofadoration--loved Tom Ochiltree. The equivocal celebrity he enjoyed was largely fostered by himself, hisstories mostly at his own expense. His education had been but casual. But he had a great deal of it and a varied assortment. He knew everybodyon both sides of the Atlantic, his friends ranging from the Princeof Wales, afterward Edward VII, Gladstone and Disraeli, Gambetta andThiers, to the bucks of the jockey clubs. There were two of Tom--Tom thenoisy on exhibition, and Tom the courtier in society. How he lived when out of office was the subject of unflatteringconjecture. Many thought him the stipendiary of Mr. Mackay, themultimillionaire, with whom he was intimate, who told me he couldnever induce Tom to take money except for service rendered. Among hisfamiliars was Colonel North, the English money magnate, who said thesame thing. He had a widowed sister in Texas to whom he regularly sentan income sufficient for herself and family. And when he died, to thesurprise of every one, he left his sister quite an accumulation. He hadnever been wholly a spendthrift. Though he lived well at Chamberlin's inWashington and the Waldorf in New York he was careful of his credit andhis money. I dare say he was not unfortunate in the stock market. Henever married and when he died, still a youngish man as modern ages go, all sorts of stories were told of him, and the space writers, having acongenial subject, disported themselves voluminously. Inevitably most oftheir stories were apocryphal. I wonder shall we ever get any real truth out of what is called history?There are so many sides to it and such a confusing din of voices. Howmuch does old Sam Johnson owe of the fine figure he cuts to Boswell, and, minus Boswell, how much would be left of him? For nearly a centurythe Empress Josephine was pictured as the effigy of the faithful andsuffering wife sacrificed upon the altar of unprincipled and selfishambition--lovelorn, deserted, heartbroken. It was Napoleon, notJosephine, except in her pride, who suffered. Who shall tell us thetruth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, about Hamilton; aboutBurr; about Cæsar, Caligula and Cleopatra? Did Washington, when he wasangry, swear like a trooper? What was the matter with Nero? IV One evening Edward King and I were dining in the Champs Elysées whenhe said: "There is a new coon--a literary coon--come to town. He is aScotchman and his name is Robert Louis Stevenson. " Then he told me ofDr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. At that moment the subject of our talk wasliving in a kind of self-imposed penury not half a mile away. Had weknown this we could have ended the poor fellow's struggle with his prideand ambition then and there; have put him in the way of sure work andplenty of it; perhaps have lengthened, certainly have sweetened, hisdays, unless it be true that he was one of the impossibles, as he mayeasily be conceived to have been from reading his wayward biography andvoluminous correspondence. To a young Kentuckian, one of "my boys, " was given the opportunity tosee the last of him and to bury him in far-away Samoa, whither he hadtaken himself for the final adventure and where he died, having attainedsome measure of the dreams he had cherished, and, let us hope, happy inthe consciousness of the achievement. I rather think Stevenson should be placed at the head of the latter-dayfictionists. But fashions in literature as in dress are ever changing. Washington Irving was the first of our men of letters to obtain foreignrecognition. While the fires of hate between Great Britain and Americawere still burning he wrote kindly and elegantly of England and theEnglish, and was accepted on both sides of the ocean. Taking his stylefrom Addison and Goldsmith, he emulated their charity and humor; he wentto Spain and in the same deft way he pictured the then unknown byways ofthe land of dreams; and coming home again he peopled the region of theHudson with the beings of legend and fancy which are dear to us. He became our national man of letters. He stood quite at the head of ourliterature, giving the lie to the scornful query, "Who reads an Americanbook?" As a pioneer he will always be considered; as a simple and vividwriter of things familiar and entertaining he will probably always beread; but as an originator literary history will hardly place him veryhigh. There Bret Harte surely led him. The Tales of the Argonauts asworks of creative fancy exceed the Sketches of Washington Irving alikein wealth of color and humor, in pathos and dramatic action. Some writers make an exception of the famous Sleepy Hollow story. Butthey have in mind the Rip Van Winkle of Jefferson and Boucicault, notthe rather attenuated story of Irving, which--as far as the twenty yearsof sleep went--was borrowed from an old German legend. Mark Twain and Bret Harte, however, will always be bracketed withWashington Irving. Of the three I incline to the opinion that Mark Twaindid the broadest and strongest work. His imagination had wider reachthan Irving's. There is nowhere, as there is in Harte, the suspicioneither of insincerity or of artificiality. Irving's humor was the humorof Sir Roger de Coverley and the Vicar of Wakefield. It is old English. Mark Twain's is his own--American through and through to the bone. I amnot unmindful of Cooper and Hawthorne, of Longfellow, of Lowell and ofPoe, but speak of Irving as the pioneer American man of letters, and ofMark Twain and Bret Harte as American literature's most conspicuous andoriginal modern examples. Chapter the Twenty-Seventh The Profession of Journalism--Newspapers and Editors in America--Bennett, Greeley and Raymond--Forney and Dana--The Education of a Journalist I The American newspaper has had, even in my time, three separate anddistinct epochs; the thick-and-thin, more or less servile partyorgan; the personal, one-man-controlled, rather blatant and would-beindependent; and the timorous, corporation, or family-owned billboard ofsuch news as the ever-increasing censorship of a constantly centralizingFederal Government will allow. This latter appears to be its present state. Neither its individualitynor its self-exploitation, scarcely its grandiose pretension, remains. There continues to be printed in large type an amount of shallow stuffthat would not be missed if it were omitted altogether. But, except as abulletin of yesterday's doings, limited, the daily newspaper countsfor little, the single advantage of the editor--in case there isan editor--that is, one clothed with supervising authority who"edits"--being that he reaches the public with his lucubrations first, the sanctity that once hedged the editorial "we" long since departed. The editor dies, even as the actor, and leaves no copy. Editorialreputations have been as ephemeral as the publications which gave themcontemporary importance. Without going as far back as the Freneaus andthe Callenders, who recalls the names of Mordecai Mannasseh Noah, ofEdwin Crosswell and of James Watson Webb? In their day and generationthey were influential and distinguished journalists. There are dozensof other names once famous but now forgotten; George Wilkins Kendall;Gerard Hallock; Erastus Brooks; Alexander Bullitt; Barnwell Rhett;Morton McMichael; George William Childs, even Thomas Ritchie, Duff Greenand Amos Kendall. "Gales and Seaton" sounds like a trade-mark; but itstood for not a little and lasted a long time in the National Capital, where newspaper vassalage and the public printing went hand-in-hand. For a time the duello flourished. There were frequent "affairs ofhonor"--notably about Richmond in Virginia and Charleston in SouthCarolina--sometimes fatal meetings, as in the case of John H. Pleasantsand one of the sons of Thomas Ritchie in which Pleasants was killed, andthe yet more celebrated affair between Graves, of Kentucky, and Cilley, of Maine, in which Cilley was killed; Bladensburg the scene, and therefusal of Cilley to recognize James Watson Webb the occasion. I once had an intimate account of this duel with all the cruel incidentsfrom Henry A. Wise, a party to it, and a blood-curdling narrative itmade. They fought with rifles at thirty paces, and Cilley fell on thethird fire. It did much to discredit duelling in the South. The story, however, that Graves was so much affected that thereafter he could neversleep in a darkened chamber had no foundation whatever, a fact Ilearned from my associate in the old Louisville Journal and later in TheCourier-Journal, Mr. Isham Henderson, who was a brother-in-law of Mr. Graves, his sister, Mrs. Graves, being still alive. The duello died atlength. There was never sufficient reason for its being. It was both avanity and a fad. In Hopkinson Smith's "Col. Carter of Cartersville, "its real character is hit off to the life. II When very early, rather too early, I found myself in the saddle, Bennettand Greeley and Raymond in New York, and Medill and Storey in Chicago, were yet alive and conspicuous figures in the newspaper life of thetime. John Bigelow, who had retired from the New York Evening Post, was Minister to France. Halstead was coming on, but, except as acorrespondent, Whitelaw Reid had not "arrived. " The like was true of"Joe" McCullagh, who, in the same character, divided the newspaperreading attention of the country with George Alfred Townsend and DonnPiatt. Joseph Medill was withdrawing from the Chicago Tribune in favorof Horace White, presently to return and die in harness--a man ofsterling intellect and character--and Wilbur F. Storey, his local rival, who was beginning to show signs of the mental malady that, developedinto monomania, ultimately ended his life in gloom and despair, wreckingone of the finest newspaper properties outside of New York. William R. Nelson, who was to establish a really great newspaper in Kansas City, was still a citizen of Ft. Wayne. James Gordon Bennett, the elder, seemed then to me, and has alwaysseemed, the real founder of the modern newspaper as a vehicle of popularinformation, and, in point of apprehension, at least, James GordonBennett, the younger, did not fall behind his father. What was, andmight have been regarded and dismissed as a trivial slander drove himout of New York and made him the greater part of his life a resident ofParis, where I was wont to meet and know much of him. The New York Herald, under father and son, attained enormous prosperity, prestige and real power. It suffered chiefly from what they call inIreland "absentee landlordism. " Its "proprietor, " for he never describedhimself as its "editor, " was a man of exquisite sensibilities--a"despot" of course--whom nature created for a good citizen, a goodhusband and the head of a happy domestic fabric. He should have marriedthe woman of his choice, for he was deeply in love with her and neverceased to love her, forty years later leaving her in his will a handsomelegacy. Crossing the ocean with the "Commodore, " as he was called by hisfamiliars, not long after he had taken up his residence abroad, naturally we fell occasionally into shop talk. "What would you do, " heonce said, "if you owned the Herald?" "Why, " I answered, "I would stayin New York and edit it;" and then I proceeded, "but you mean to ask mewhat I think you ought to do with it?" "Yes, " he said, "that is aboutthe size of it. " "Well, Commodore, " I answered, "if I were you, when we get in I wouldsend for John Cockerill and make him managing editor, and for JohnYoung, and put him in charge of the editorial page, and then I would goand lose myself in the wilds of Africa. " He adopted the first two of these suggestions. John A. Cockerill wasstill under contract with Joseph Pulitzer and could not accept for ayear or more. He finally did accept and died in the Bennett service. John Russell Young took the editorial page and was making it "hum"when a most unaccountable thing happened. I was amazed to receive aninvitation to a dinner he had tendered and was about to give to thequondam Virginian and just elected New York Justice Roger A. Pryor. "IsYoung gone mad, " I said to myself, "or can he have forgotten that theone man of all the world whom the House of Bennett can never forget, orforgive, is Roger A. Pryor?" The Bennett-Pry or quarrel had been a _cause célèbre_ when JohnYoung was night editor of the Philadelphia Press and I was one of itsWashington correspondents. Nothing so virulent had ever passed betweenan editor and a Congressman. In one of his speeches Pryor had actuallygone the length of rudely referring to Mrs. James Gordon Bennett. The dinner was duly given. But it ended John's connection with theHerald and his friendly relations with the owner of the Herald. Theincident might be cited as among "The Curiosities of Journalism, " ifever a book with that title is written. John's "break" was so bad that Inever had the heart to ask him how he could have perpetrated it. III The making of an editor is a complex affair. Poets and painters are saidto be born. Editors and orators are made. Many essential elementsenter into the editorial fabrication; need to be concentrated upon andembodied by a single individual, and even, with these, environment isleft to supply the opportunity and give the final touch. Aptitude, as the first ingredient, goes without saying of every line ofhuman endeavor. We have the authority of the adage for the belief thatit is not possible to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Yet have Iknown some unpromising tyros mature into very capable workmen. The modern newspaper, as we know it, may be fairly said to have beenthe invention of James Gordon Bennett, the elder. Before him there werejournals, not newspapers. When he died he had developed the newsscheme in kind, though not in the degree that we see so elaborate andresplendent in New York and other of the leading centers of population. Mr. Bennett had led a vagrant and varied life when he started theHerald. He had been many things by turns, including a writer of versesand stories, but nothing very successful nor very long. At lengthhe struck a central idea--a really great, original idea--the idea ofprinting the news of the day, comprising the History of Yesterday, fully and fairly, without fear or favor. He was followed by Greeleyand Raymond--making a curious and very dissimilar triumvirate--and, atlonger range, by Prentice and Forney, by Bowles and Dana, Storey, Medilland Halstead. All were marked men; Greeley a writer and propagandist;Raymond a writer, declaimer and politician; Prentice a wit and partisan;Dana a scholar and an organizer; Bowles a man both of letters andaffairs. The others were men of all work, writing and fighting theirway to the front, but possessing the "nose for news, " using the Bennettformula and rescript as the basis of their serious efforts, and neverlosing sight of it. Forney had been a printer. Medill and Storey werecaught young by the lure of printer's ink. Bowles was born and rearedin the office of the Springfield Republican, founded by his father, andHalstead, a cross betwixt a pack horse and a race horse, was broken toharness before he was out of his teens. Assuming journalism, equally with medicine and law, to be a profession, it is the only profession in which versatility is not a disadvantage. Specialism at the bar, or by the bedside, leads to perfection andattains results. The great doctor is the great surgeon or the greatprescriptionist--he cannot be great in both--and the great lawyer israrely great, if ever, as counselor and orator. [Illustration: Henry Watterson--From a painting by Louis Mark in theManhattan Club, New York] The great editor is by no means the great writer. But he ought to beable to write and must be a judge of writing. The newspaper office is alittle kingdom. The great editor needs to know and does know every rangeof it between the editorial room, the composing room and the pressroom. He must hold well in hand everybody and every function, having risen, as it were, step-by-step from the ground floor to the roof. He should belevel-headed, yet impressionable; sympathetic, yet self-possessed;able quickly to sift, detect and discriminate; of various knowledge, experience and interest; the cackle of the adjacent barnyard the noiseof the world to his eager mind and pliant ear. Nothing too small for himto tackle, nothing too great, he should keep to the middle of the roadand well in rear of the moving columns; loving his art--for suchit is--for art's sake; getting his sufficiency, along with itsindependence, in the public approval and patronage, seeking neveranything further for himself. Disinterestedness being the soul ofsuccessful journalism, unselfish devotion to every noble purpose inpublic and private life, he should say to preferment, as to bribers, "get behind me, Satan. " Whitelaw Reid, to take a ready and conspicuousexample, was a great journalist, but rather early in life he abandonedjournalism for office and became a figure in politics and diplomacy sothat, as in the case of Franklin, whose example and footsteps in themain he followed, he will be remembered rather as the Ambassador than asthe Editor. More and more must these requirements be fulfilled by the aspiringjournalist. As the world passes from the Rule of Force--force ofprowess, force of habit, force of convention--to the Rule of Numbers, the daily journal is destined, if it survives as a power, to become theteacher--the very Bible--of the people. The people are already beginningto distinguish between the wholesome and the meretricious in theirnewspapers. Newspaper owners, likewise, are beginning to realizethe value of character. Instances might be cited where the public, discerning some sinister but unseen power behind its press, has slowlyyet surely withdrawn its confidence and support. However impersonal itpretends to be, with whatever of mystery it affects to envelop itself, the public insists upon some visible presence. In some States the lawrequires it. Thus "personal journalism" cannot be escaped, and whetherthe "one-man power" emanates from the Counting Room or the EditorialRoom, as they are called, it must be clear and answerable, responsive tothe common weal, and, above all, trustworthy. IV John Weiss Forney was among the most conspicuous men of his time. He waslikewise one of the handsomest. By nature and training a journalist, heplayed an active, not to say an equivocal, part in public life-at theoutset a Democratic and then a Republican leader. Born in the little town of Lancaster, it was his mischance to haveattached himself early in life to the fortunes of Mr. Buchanan, whom helong served with fidelity and effect. But when Mr. Buchanan came to thePresidency, Forney, who aspired first to a place in the Cabinet, whichwas denied him, and then to a seat in the Senate, for which he wasbeaten--through flagrant bribery, as the story ran--was left out in thecold. Thereafter he became something of a political adventurer. The days of the newspaper "organ" approached their end. Forney'soccupation, like Othello's, was gone, for he was nothing if not anorgan grinder. Facile with pen and tongue, he seemed a born courtier--averitable Dalgetty, whose loyal devotion to his knight-at-arms deservedbetter recognition than the cold and wary Pennsylvania chieftainwas willing to give. It is only fair to say that Forney's characterfurnished reasonable excuse for this neglect and apparent ingratitude. The row between them, however, was party splitting. As the friend andbacker of Douglas, and later along a brilliant journalistic soldier offortune, Forney did as much as any other man to lay the Democratic partylow. I can speak of him with a certain familiarity and authority, for I wasone of his "boys. " I admired him greatly and loved him dearly. Most ofthe young newspaper men about Philadelphia and Washington did so. He wasan all-around modern journalist of the first class. Both as a newspaperwriter and creator and manager, he stood upon the front line, ratingwith Bennett and Greeley and Raymond. He first entertained and thencultivated the thirst for office, which proved the undoing of Greeleyand Raymond, and it proved his undoing. He had a passion for politics. He would shine in public life. If he could not play first fiddle hewould take any other instrument. Thus failing of a Senatorship, he wasglad to get the Secretaryship of the Senate, having been Clerk of theHouse. He was bound to be in the orchestra. In those days newspaperindependence was little known. Mr. Greeley was willing to playbottle-holder to Mr. Seward, Mr. Prentice to Mr. Clay. James GordonBennett, the elder, and later his son, James Gordon Bennett, theyounger, challenged this kind of servility. The Herald stood at theoutset of its career manfully in the face of unspeakable obloquy againstit. The public understood it and rose to it. The time came when theelder Bennett was to attain official as well as popular recognition. Mr. Lincoln offered him the French mission and Mr. Bennett declined it. He was rich and famous, and to another it might have seemed a kindof crowning glory. To him it seemed only a coming down--a badge ofservitude--a lowering of the flag of independent journalism under which, and under which alone, he had fought all his life. Charles A. Dana was not far behind the Bennetts in his independence. He well knew what parties and politicians are. The most scholarly andaccomplished of American journalists, he made the Sun "shine for all, "and, during the years of his active management, a most prosperousproperty. It happened that whilst I was penny-a-lining in New YorkI took a piece of space work--not very common in those days--to theTribune and received a few dollars for it. Ten years later, meeting Mr. Dana at dinner, I recalled the circumstance, and thenceforward we becamethe best of friends. Twice indeed we had runabouts together in foreignlands. His house in town, and the island home called Dorsoris, which hehad made for himself, might not inaptly be described as very shrinesof hospitality and art, the master of the house a virtuoso in music andpainting no less than in letters. One might meet under his roof the mostdiverse people, but always interesting and agreeable people. Perhaps attimes he carried his aversions a little too far. But he had reasons forthem, and a man of robust temperament and habit, it was not in himto sit down under an injury, or fancied injury. I never knew a moreefficient journalist. What he did not know about a newspaper, wasscarcely worth knowing. In my day Journalism has made great strides. It has become a recognizedprofession. Schools of special training are springing up here and there. Several of the universities have each its College of Journalism. Thetendency to discredit these, which was general and pronounced at thestart, lowers its tone and grows less confident. Assuredly there is room for special training toward the making of aneditor. Too often the newspaper subaltern obtaining promotion throughaptitudes peculiarly his own, has failed to acquire even the mostrudimentary knowledge of his art. He has been too busy seeking "scoops"and doing "stunts" to concern himself about perspectives, principles, causes and effects, probable impressions and consequences, or evento master the technical details which make such a difference in thepreparation of matter intended for publication and popular perusal. The School of Journalism may not be always able to give him the needfulinstruction. But it can set him in the right direction and betterprepare him to think and act for himself. Chapter the Twenty-Eighth Bullies and Braggarts--Some Kentucky Illustrations--The Old Galt House--The Throckmortons--A Famous Sugeon--"Old Hell's Delight" I I do not believe that the bully and braggart is more in evidence inKentucky and Texas than in other Commonwealths of the Union, except thateach is by the space writers made the favorite arena of his exploitsand adopted as the scene of the comic stories told at his expense. Theson-of-a-gun from Bitter Creek, like the "elegant gentleman" from theDark and Bloody Ground, represents a certain type to be found more orless developed in each and every State of the Union. He is not always acoward. Driven, as it were, to the wall, he will often make good. He is as a rule in quest of adventures. He enters the village from thecountryside and approaches the mêlée. "Is it a free fight?" says he. Assured that it is, "Count me in, " says he. Ten minutes later, "Is itstill a free fight?" he says, and, again assured in the affirmative, says he, "Count me out. " Once the greatest of bullies provoked old Aaron Pennington, "thestrongest man in the world, " who struck out from the shoulder and landedhis victim in the middle of the street. Here he lay in a helpless heapuntil they carted him off to the hospital, where for a day or two heflickered between life and death. "Foh God, " said Pennington, "I barelyteched him. " This same bully threatened that when a certain mountain man came to townhe would "finish him. " The mountain man came. He was enveloped in anold-fashioned cloak, presumably concealing his armament, and walkedabout ostentatiously in the proximity of his boastful foeman, whoremained as passive as a lamb. When, having failed to provoke a fight, he had taken himself off, an onlooker said: "Bill, I thought you weregoing to do him up?" "But, " says Bill, "did you see him?" "Yes, I saw him. What of that?" "Why, " exclaimed the bully, "that man was a walking arsenal. " Aaron Pennington, the strong man just mentioned, was, in his youngerdays, a river pilot. Billy Hite, a mite of a man, was clerk. They hada disagreement, when Aaron told Billy that if he caught him on "theharrican deck, " he would pitch him overboard. The next day Billyappeared whilst Aaron, off duty, was strolling up and down outsidethe pilot-house, and strolled offensively in his wake. Never a hostileglance or a word from Aaron. At last, tired of dumb show, Billy brokeforth with a torrent of imprecation closing with "When are you going topitch me off the boat, you blankety-blank son-of-a-gun and coward?" Aaron Pennington was a brave man. He was both fearless andself-possessed. He paused, gazed quizzically at his little tormentor, and says he: "Billy, you got a pistol, and you want to get a pretext toshoot me, and I ain't going to give it to you. " II Among the hostels of Christendom the Galt House, of Louisville, for along time occupied a foremost place and held its own. It was burned tothe ground fifty years ago and a new Galt House was erected, notupon the original site, but upon the same street, a block above, and, although one of the most imposing buildings in the world, it could neverbe made to thrive. It stands now a rather useless encumbrance--a whitedsepulchre--a marble memorial of the Solid South and the Kentucky thatwas, on whose portal might truthfully appear the legend: "_A jolly place it was in days of old, But something ails it now_" Aris Throckmorton, its manager in the Thirties, the Forties and theFifties, was a personality and a personage. The handsomest of menand the most illiterate, he exemplified the characteristics andpeculiarities of the days of the river steamer and the stage coach, when"mine host" felt it his duty to make the individual acquaintance of hispatrons and each and severally to look after their comfort. Many storiesare told at his expense; of how he made a formal call upon Dickens--itwas, in point of fact, Marryatt--in his apartment, to be coolly toldthat when its occupant wanted him he would ring for him; and of how, investigating a strange box which had newly arrived from Florida, theprevailing opinion being that the live animal within was an alligator, he exclaimed, "Alligator, hell; it's a scorponicum. " He died at length, to be succeeded by his son John, a very different character. And therebyhangs a tale. John Throckmorton, like Aris, his father, was one of the handsomestof men. Perhaps because he was so he became the victim of one of thestrangest of feminine whimsies and human freaks. There was a young girlin Louisville, named Ellen Godwin. Meeting him at a public ball she fellviolently in love with him. As Throckmorton did not reciprocate this, and refused to pursue the acquaintance, she began to dog his footsteps. She dressed herself in deep black and took up a position in front of theGalt House, and when he came out and wherever he went she followed him. No matter how long he stayed, when he reappeared she was on the spot andwatch. He took himself away to San Francisco. It was but the matter of afew weeks when she was there, too. He hied him thence to Liverpool, andas he stepped upon the dock there she was. She had got wind of his goingand, having caught an earlier steamer, preceded him. Finally the War of Sections arrived. John Throckmorton became aConfederate officer, and, being able to keep her out of the lines, he had a rest of four years. But, when after the war he returned toLouisville, the quarry began again. He was wont to call her "Old Hell's Delight. " Finally, one night, as hewas passing the market, she rushed out and rained upon him blow afterblow with a frozen rabbit. Then the authorities took a hand. She was arraigned for disorderlyconduct and brought before the Court of Police. Then the town, whichknew nothing of the case and accepted her goings on as proof of wrong, rose; and she had a veritable ovation, coming away with flying colors. This, however, served to satisfy her. Thenceforward she desisted andleft poor John Throckmorton in peace. I knew her well. She used once in a while to come and see me, havingsome story or other to tell. On one occasion I said to her: "Ellen, whydo you pursue this man in this cruel way? What possible good can it doyou?" She looked me straight in the eye and slowly replied: "Because Ilove him. " I investigated the case closely and thoroughly and was assured, as hehad assured me, that he had never done her the slightest wrong. She had, on occasion, told me the same thing, and this I fully believed. He was a man, every inch of him, and a gentleman through andthrough--the very soul of honor in his transactions of every sort--mosthighly respected and esteemed wherever he was known--yet his life wasmade half a failure and wholly unhappy by this "crazy Jane, " the generalpublic taking appearances for granted and willing to believe nothinggood of one who, albeit proud and honorable, held defiantly aloof, disdaining self-defense. On the whole I have not known many men more unfortunate than JohnThrockmorton, who, but for "Old Hell's Delight, " would have encounteredlittle obstacle to the pursuit of prosperity and happiness. III Another interesting Kentuckian of this period was John Thompson Gray. He was a Harvard man--a wit, a scholar, and, according to old Southernstandards, a chevalier. Handsome and gifted, he had the disastrousmisfortune just after leaving college to kill his friend in a duel--amortal affair growing, as was usual in those days, out of a trivialcause--and this not only saddened his life, but, in its ambitious aims, shadowed and defeated it. His university comrades had fully counted onhis making a great career. Being a man of fortune, he was able to livelike a gentleman without public preferment, and this he did, except tohis familiars aloof and sensitive to the last. William Preston, the whilom Minister to Spain and Confederate General, and David Yandell, the eminent surgeon, were his devoted friends, and anotable trio they made. Stoddard Johnston, Boyd Winchester and I--verymuch younger men--sat at their feet and immensely enjoyed theirbrilliant conversation. Dr. Yandell was not only as proclaimed by Dr. Gross and Dr. Sayrethe ablest surgeon of his day, but he was also a gentleman of variedexperience and great social distinction. He had studied long in Parisand was the pal of John Howard Payne, the familiar friend of Lamartine, Dumas and Lemaître. He knew Béranger, Hugo and Balzac. It would be hardto find three Kentuckians less provincial, more unaffected, scintillantand worldly wise than he and William Preston and John Thompson Gray. Indeed the list of my acquaintances--many of them intimates--some ofthem friends--would be, if recounted, a long one, not mentioning theforeigners, embracing a diverse company all the way from Chunkey Towlesto Grover Cleveland, from Wake Holman to John Pierpont Morgan, from JohnChamberlin to Thomas Edison. I once served as honorary pall-bearer to aprofessional gambler who was given a public funeral; a man who had beena gallant Confederate soldier; whom nature intended for an artist, andcircumstance diverted into a sport; but who retained to the last thepoetic fancy and the spirit of the gallant, leaving behind him, when hedied, like a veritable cavalier, chiefly debts and friends. He was nota bad sort in business, as the English say, nor in conviviality. But infighting he was "a dandy. " The goody-goody philosophy of the namby-pambytakes an extreme and unreal view of life. It flies to extremes. Thereare middle men. Travers used to describe one of these, whom he did notwish particularly to emphasize, as "a fairly clever son-of-a-gun. " Chapter the Twenty-Ninth About Political Conventions, State and National--"Old Ben Butler"--His Appearance as a Trouble-Maker in the Democratic National Convention of 1892--Tarifa and the Tariff--Spain as a Frightful Example I I have had a liberal education in party convocations, State andnational. In those of 1860 I served as an all-around newspaper reporter. A member of each National Democratic Convention from 1876 to 1892, presiding over the first, and in those of 1880 and 1888 chosen chairmanof the Resolutions Committee, I wrote many of the platforms and had adecisive voice in all of them. In 1880 I had stood for the renomination of "the Old Ticket, " that is, Tilden and Hendricks, making the eight-to-seven action of the ElectoralTribunal of 1877 in favor of Hayes and Wheeler the paramount issue. Itseems strange now that any one should have contested this. Yet it wasstoutly contested. Mr. Tilden settled all dispute by sending a letter tothe convention declining to be a candidate. In answer to this I prepareda resolution of regret to be incorporated in the platform. It raisedstubborn opposition. David A. Wells and Joseph Pulitzer, who werefellow members of the committee, were with me in my contention, but theobjection to making it a part of the platform grew so pronounced thatthey thought I had best not insist upon it. The day wore on and the latent opposition seemed to increase. I had beennamed chairman of the committee and had at a single sitting that morningwritten a completed platform. Each plank of this was severally andclosely scrutinized. It was well into the afternoon before we reachedthe plank I chiefly cared about. When I read this the storm broke. Halfthe committee rose against it. At the close, with more heat than waseither courteous or tactful, I said: "Gentlemen, I wish to do no morethan bid farewell to a leader who four years ago took the Democraticparty at its lowest fortunes and made it a power again. He is well onhis way to the grave. I would place a wreath of flowers on that grave. I ask only this of you. Refuse me, and by God, I will go to that mobyonder and, dead or alive, nominate him, and you will be powerless toprevent!" Mr. Barksdale, of Mississippi, a suave gentleman, who had led thedissenters, said, "We do not refuse you. But you say that we 'regret'Mr. Tilden's withdrawal. Now I do not regret it, nor do those who agreewith me. Could you not substitute some other expression?" "I don't stand on words, " I answered. "What would you suggest?" Mr. Barksdale said: "Would not the words 'We have received with thedeepest sensibility Mr. Tilden's letter of withdrawal, ' answer yourpurpose?" "Certainly, " said I, and the plank in the platform, as it was amended, was adopted unanimously. Mr. Tilden did not die. He outlived all his immediate rivals. Four yearslater, in 1884, his party stood ready again to put him at its head. In nominating Mr. Cleveland it thought it was accepting his dictationreënforced by the enormous majority--nearly 200, 000--by which Mr. Cleveland, as candidate for Governor, had carried New York in thepreceding State election. Yet, when the votes in the presidentialelection came to be counted, he carried it, if indeed he carried it atall, by less than 1, 100 majority, the result hanging in the balance fornearly a week. II In the convention of 1884, which met at Chicago, we had a veritablemonkey-and-parrot time. It was next after the schism in Congress betweenthe Democratic factions led respectively by Carlisle and Randall, Carlisle having been chosen Speaker of the House over Randall. Converse, of Ohio, appeared in the Platform Committee representingRandall, and Morrison, of Illinois, and myself, representing Carlisle. I was bent upon making Morrison chairman of the committee. But itwas agreed that the chairmanship should be held in abeyance until theplatform had been formulated and adopted. The subcommittee to whom thetask was delegated sat fifty-one hours without a break before itswork was completed. Then Morrison was named chairman. It was arrangedthereafter between Converse, Morrison and myself that when the agreedreport was made, Converse and I should have each what time he requiredto say what was desired in explanation, I to close the debate and movethe previous question. At this point General Butler sidled up. "Where doI come in?" he asked. "You don't get in at all, you blasted old sinner, " said Morrison. "I have scriptural warrant, " General Butler said. "Thou shalt not muzzlethe ox that treadeth the corn. " "All right, old man, " said Morrison, good-humoredly, "take all the timeyou want. " In his speech before the convention General Butler was not at hishappiest, and in closing he gave me a particularly good opening. "If youadopt this platform of my friend Watterson, " he said, "God may help you, but I can't. " I was standing by his side, and, it being my turn, he made way for me, and I said: "During the last few days and nights of agreeable, thoughrather irksome, intercourse, I have learned to love General Butler, butI must declare that in an option between him and the Almighty I have aprejudice in favor of God. " In his personal intercourse, General Butler was the most genial of men. The subcommittee in charge of the preparation of a platform heldits meetings in the drawing-room of his hotel apartment, and he hadconstituted himself our host as well as our colleague. I had notpreviously met him. It was not long after we came together before hebegan to call me by my Christian name. At one stage of the proceedingswhen by substituting one word for another it looked as though we mightreach an agreement, he said to me: "Henry, what is the differencebetween 'exclusively for public purposes' and 'a tariff for revenueonly'?" "I know of none, " I answered. "Do you think that the committee have found you out?" "No, I scarcely think so. " "Then I will see that they do, " and he proceeded in his peculiarlysubtle way to undo all that we had done, prolonging the sessiontwenty-four hours. He was an able man and a lovable man. The missing ingredient wasserious belief. Just after the nomination of the Breckinridge and LanePresidential ticket in 1860, I heard him make an ultra-Southern speechfrom Mr. Breckinridge's doorway. "What do you think of that?" I askedAndrew Johnson, who stood by me, and Johnson answered sharply, with anoath: "I never like a man to be for me more than I am for myself. " Ihave been told that even at home General Butler could never acquire thepublic confidence. In spite of his conceded mentality and manliness hegave the impression of being something of an intellectual sharper. He was charitable, generous and amiable. The famous New Orleans orderwhich had made him odious to the women of the South he had issued towarn bad women and protect good women. Assuredly he did not foresee theinterpretation that would be put upon it. He was personally popular inCongress. When he came to Washington he dispensed a lavish hospitality. Such radical Democrats as Beck and Knott did not disdain his company, became, indeed, his familiars. Yet, curious to relate, a KentuckyCongressman of the period lost his seat because it was charged andproven that he had ridden in a carriage to the White House with theYankee Boanerges on a public occasion. III Mere party issues never counted with me. I have read too much and seentoo much. At my present time of life they count not at all. I used tothink that there was a principle involved between the dogmas ofFree Trade and Protection as they were preached by their respectiveattorneys. Yet what was either except the ancient, everlasting scheme-- --"_The good old rôle--the simple plan, That they should take who have the power And they should keep who can_. " How little wisdom one man may get from another man's counsels, onenation may get from another nation's history, can be partly computedwhen we reflect how often our personal experience has failed in warningadmonition. Temperament and circumstance do indeed cut a prodigious figure in life. Traversing the older countries, especially Spain, the most illustrative, the wayfarer is met at all points by what seems not merely the logic ofevents, but the common law of the inevitable. The Latin of the Sixteenthcentury was a recrudescence of the Roman of the First. He had not, likethe Mongolian, lived long enough to become a stoic. He was mainly acynic and an adventurer. Thence he flowered into a sybarite. Comingto great wealth with the discoveries of Columbus and the conquests ofPizarro and Cortes, he proceeded to enjoy its fruits according to hisfancy and the fashion of the times. He erected massive shrines to his deities. He reared noble palaces. Hebuilt about his cathedrals and his castles what were then thought to begreat cities, walled and fortified. He was, for all his self-sufficiencyand pride, short-sighted; and yet, until they arrived, how could heforesee the developments of artillery? They were as hidden from him asthree centuries later the wonders of electricity were hidden from us. I was never a Free Trader. I stood for a tariff for revenue as the leastoppressive and safest support of Government. The protective system inthe United States, responsible for our unequal distribution of wealth, took at least its name from Spain, and the Robber Barons, as I used tocall the Protectionists of Pennsylvania, were not of immediate Germanorigin. Truth to say, both on land and water Spain has made a deal of history, and the front betwixt Gibraltar and the Isle of San Fernando--Tangier onone side and the Straits of Tarifa on the other--Cape Trafalgar, whereNelson fought the famous battle, midway between them--has had its share. Tarifa! What memories it invokes! In the olden and golden days ofprimitive man, before corporation lawyers had learned how to framepillaging statutes, and rascally politicians to bamboozle confidingconstituencies--thus I used to put it--the gentle pirates of Tarifa laidbroad and deep the foundations for the Protective System in the UnitedStates. It was a fruitful as well as a congenial theme, and I rang all thechanges on it. To take by law from one man what is his and give it toanother man who has not earned it and has no right to it, I showed to bean invention of the Moors, copied by the Spaniards and elevated thenceinto political economy by the Americans. Tarifa took its name fromTarif-Ben-Malik, the most enterprising Robber Baron of his day, and thusthe Lords of Tarifa were the progenitors of the Robber Barons of theBlack Forest, New England and Pittsburgh. Tribute was the name the Moorsgave their robbery, which was open and aboveboard. The Coal Kings, theSteel Kings and the Oil Kings of the modern world have contrived tohide the process; but in Spain the palaces of their forefathers rise inlonely and solemn grandeur just as a thousand years hence the palacesupon the Fifth Avenue side of Central Park and along Riverside Drive, not to mention those of the Schuylkill and the Delaware, may becomebut roosts for bats and owls, and the chronicler of the Anthropophagi, "whose heads do reach the skies, " may tell how the voters of the GreatRepublic were bought and sold with their own money, until "Heavenreleased the legions north of the North Pole, and they swooped down andcrushed the pulpy mass beneath their avenging snowshoes. " The gold that was gathered by the Spaniards and fought over so valiantlyis scattered to the four ends of the earth. It may be as potent to-dayas then; but it does not seem nearly so heroic. A good deal of it hasfound its way to London, which a short century and a half ago "had not, "according to Adam Smith, "sufficient wealth to compete with Cadiz. " Wehave had our full share without fighting for it. Thus all things come tohim who contrives and waits. Meanwhile, there are "groups" and "rings. " And, likewise, "leaders" and"bosses. " What do they know or care about the origins of wealth; aboutVenice; about Cadiz; about what is said of Wall Street? The Spanish Mainwas long ago stripped of its pillage. The buccaneers took themselves offto keep company with the Vikings. Yet, away down in those money chests, once filled with what were pieces of eight and ducats and doubloons, whoshall say that spirits may not lurk and ghosts walk, one old freebooterwheezing to another old freebooter: "They order these things better inthe 'States. '" IV I have enjoyed hugely my several sojourns in Spain. The Spaniard isunlike any other European. He may not make you love him. But you arebound to respect him. There is a mansion in Seville known as The House of Pontius Pilatebecause part of the remains of the abode of the Roman Governor wasbrought from Jerusalem and used in a building suited to the dignity of aSpanish grandee who was also a Lord of Tarifa. The Duke of Medina Celi, its present owner, is a lineal scion of the old piratical crew. Themansion is filled with the fruits of many a foray. There are plunderfrom Naples, where one ancestor was Viceroy, and treasures from thetemples of the Aztecs and the Incas, where two other ancestors ruled. Every coping stone and pillar cost some mariner of the Tarifa Straits apot of money. Its owner is a pauper. A carekeeper shows it for a peseta a head. Tosuch base uses may we come at last. Yet Seville basks in the sun andsmiles on the flashing waters of the Guadalquivir, and Cadiz sits sereneupon the green hillsides of San Sebastian, just as if nothing had everhappened; neither the Barber and Carmen, nor Nelson and Byron; the pastbut a phantom; the present the prosiest of prose-poems. There are canny Spaniards even as there are canny Scots, who grow richand prosper; but there is never a Spaniard who does not regard thepolitical fabric, and the laws, as fair game, the rule being always"devil take the hindmost, " community of interests nowhere. "The good oldvices of Spain, " that is, the robbing of the lesser rogue by the greaterin regulated gradations all the way from the King to the beggar, areas prevalent and as vital as ever they were. Curiously enough, a tinystream of Hebraic blood and Moorish blood still trickles through theSpanish coast towns. It may be traced through the nomenclature in spiteof its Castilian prefigurations and appendices, which would account forsome of the enterprise and activity that show themselves, albeit only byfits and starts. Chapter the Thirtieth The Makers of the Republic--Lincoln, Jefferson, Clay and Webster--The Proposed League of Nations--The Wilsonian Incertitude--The "New Freedom" I The makers of the American Republic range themselves in twogroups--Washington, Franklin and Jefferson--Clay, Webster andLincoln--each of whom, having a genius peculiarly his own, gave himselfand his best to the cause of national unity and independence. In a general way it may be said that Washington created and Lincolnsaved the Union. But along with Washington and Lincoln, Clay makes agood historic third, for it was the masterful Kentuckian who, joiningrare foresight to surpassing eloquence and leading many eminent men, including Webster, was able to hold the legions of unrest at bay duringthe formative period. There are those who call these great men "back numbers, " who tell us wehave left the past behind us and entered an epoch of more enlightenedprogress--who would displace the example of the simple lives they ledand the homely truths they told, to set up a school of philosophy whichhad made Athens stare and Rome howl, and, I dare say, is causing the OldContinentals to turn over in their graves. The self-exploiting spectacleand bizarre teaching of this school passes the wit of man to fathom. Professing the ideal and proposing to recreate the Universe, the NewFreedom, as it calls itself, would standardize it. The effect of thatwould be to desiccate the human species in human conceit. It wouldcheapen the very harps and halos in Heaven and convert the Day ofJudgment into a moving picture show. I protest that I am not of its kidney. In point of fact, its platitudes"stick in my gizzard. " I belong the rather to those old-fashioned ones-- "Who love their land because it is their own, And scorn to give aught other reason why; Who'd shake hands with a king upon his throne, And think it kindness to his majesty. " I have many rights--birthrights--to speak of Kentucky as a Kentuckian, beside that of more than fifty years' service upon what may be fairlycalled the battle-line of the Dark and Bloody Ground. My grandmother's father, William Mitchell Morrison, had raised a companyof riflemen in the War of the Revolution, and, after the War, marched itwestward. He commanded the troops in the old fort at Harrodsburg, wheremy grandmother was born in 1784. He died a general. My grandfather, James Black's father, the Rev. James Black, was chaplain of the fort. Heremembered the birth of the baby girl who was to become his wife. He wasa noble stalwart--a perfect type of the hunters of Kentucky--who couldbring down a squirrel from the highest bough and hit a bull's eye at ahundred yards after he was three score and ten. It was he who delighted my childhood with bear stories and properlylurid narrations of the braves in buckskin and the bucks in paint andfeathers, with now and then a red-coat to give pungency and variety tothe tale. He would sing me to sleep with hunting songs. He would takeme with him afield to carry the game bag, and I was the only one of manygrandchildren to be named in his will. In my thoughts and in my dreamshe has been with me all my life, a memory and an example, and an everglorious inspiration. Daniel Boone and Simon Kenton were among my earliest heroes. II Born in a Democratic camp, and growing to manhood on the Democraticside of a political battlefield, I did not accept, as I came later torealize, the transcendent personal merit and public service of HenryClay. Being of Tennessee parentage, perhaps the figure of Andrew Jacksoncame between; perhaps the rhetoric of Daniel Webster. Once hearing memake some slighting remark of the Great Commoner, my father, a life-longDemocrat, who, on opposing sides, had served in Congress with Mr. Clay, gently rebuked me. "Do not express such opinions, my son, " he said, "they discredit yourself. Mr. Clay was a very great man--a born leaderof men. " It was certainly he, more than any other man, who held the Uniontogether until the time arrived for Lincoln to save it. I made no such mistake, however, with respect to Abraham Lincoln. Fromthe first he appeared to me a great man, a born leader of men. His deathproved a blow to the whole country--most of all to the Southern sectionof it. If he had lived there would have been no Era of Reconstruction, with its repressive agencies and oppressive legislation; there wouldhave been wanting to the extremism of the time the bloody cue of histaking off to mount the steeds and spur the flanks of vengeance. ForLincoln entertained, with respect to the rehabilitation of theUnion, the single wish that the Southern States--to use his homelyphraseology--"should come back home and behave themselves, " and if hehad lived he would have made this wish effectual as he made everythingelse effectual to which he addressed himself. His was the genius of common sense. Of perfect intellectual acutenessand aplomb, he sprang from a Virginia pedigree and was born in Kentucky. He knew all about the South, its institutions, its traditions and itspeculiarities. He was an old-line Whig of the school of Henry Clay, withstrong Emancipation leaning, never an Abolitionist. "If slavery be notwrong, " he said, "nothing is wrong, " but he also said and reiterated ittime and again, "I have no prejudice against the Southern people. Theyare just what we would be in their situation. If slavery did not nowexist among them they would not introduce it. If it did now exist amongus, we would not instantly give it up. " From first to last throughout the angry debates preceding the War ofSections, amid the passions of the War itself, not one vindictive, prescriptive word fell from his tongue or pen, whilst during itsprogress there was scarcely a day when he did not project his greatpersonality between some Southern man or woman and danger. III There has been much discussion about what did and what did not occur atthe famous Hampton Roads Conference. That Mr. Lincoln met and conferredwith the official representatives of the Confederate Government, ledby the Vice President of the Confederate States, when it must have beenknown to him that the Confederacy was nearing the end of its resources, is sufficient proof of the breadth both of his humanity and hispatriotism. Yet he went to Fortress Monroe prepared not only to makewhatever concessions toward the restoration of Union and Peace he hadthe lawful authority to make, but to offer some concessions which couldin the nature of the case go no further at that time than his personalassurance. His constitutional powers were limited. But he was in himselfthe embodiment of great moral power. The story that he offered payment for the slaves--so often affirmed anddenied--is in either case but a quibble with the actual facts. He couldnot have made such an offer except tentatively, lacking the means tocarry it out. He was not given the opportunity to make it, because theConfederate Commissioners were under instructions to treat solely onthe basis of the recognition of the independence of the Confederacy. Theconference came to nought. It ended where it began. But there is ampleevidence that he went to Hampton Roads resolved to commit himself tothat proposition. He did, according to the official reports, refer to itin specific terms, having already formulated a plan of procedure. Thisplan exists and may be seen in his own handwriting. It embraced ajoint resolution to be submitted by the President to the two Houses ofCongress appropriating $400, 000, 000 to be distributed among the SouthernStates on the basis of the slave population of each according tothe Census of 1860, and a proclamation to be issued by himself, asPresident, when the joint resolution had been passed by Congress. There can be no controversy among honest students of history on thispoint. That Mr. Lincoln said to Mr. Stephens, "Let me write Union at thetop of this page and you may write below it whatever else you please, "is referable to Mr. Stephens' statement made to many friends andattested by a number of reliable persons. But that he meditated themost liberal terms, including payment for the slaves, rests neither uponconjecture nor hearsay, but on documentary proof. It may be argued thathe could not have secured the adoption of any such plan; but of hispurpose, and its genuineness, there can be no question and there oughtto be no equivocation. Indeed, payment for the slaves had been all along in his mind. Hebelieved the North equally guilty with the South for the originalexistence of slavery. He clearly understood that the IrrepressibleConflict was a Conflict of systems, not a merely sectional and partisanquarrel. He was a just man, abhorring proscription: an old ConscienceWhig, indeed, who stood in awe of the Constitution and his oath ofoffice. He wanted to leave the South no right to claim that the North, finding slave labor unremunerative, had sold its negroes to the Southand then turned about and by force of arms confiscated what it hadunloaded at a profit. He fully recognized slavery as property. TheProclamation of Emancipation was issued as a war measure. In his messageto Congress of December, 1862, he proposed payment for the slaves, elaborating a scheme in detail and urging it with copious and cogentargument. "The people of the South, " said he, addressing a Congress atthat moment in the throes of a bloody war with the South, "are not moreresponsible for the original introduction of this property than are thepeople of the North, and, when it is remembered how unhesitatingly weall use cotton and sugar and share the profits of dealing in them, itmay not be quite safe to say that the South has been more responsiblethan the North for its continuance. " IV It has been my rule, aim and effort in my newspaper career to printnothing of a man which I would not say to his face; to print nothingof a man in malice; to look well and think twice before consigning asuspect to the ruin of printer's ink; to respect the old and defend theweak; and, lastly, at work and at play, daytime and nighttime, to begood to the girls and square with the boys, for hath it not been writtenof such is the kingdom of Heaven? There will always be in a democracy two or more sets of rival leadersto two or more differing groups of followers. Hitherto history hasclassified these as conservatives and radicals. But as society hasbecome more and more complex the groups have had their subdivisions. Asa consequence speculative doctrinaries and adventurous politicians areenabled to get in their work of confusing the issues and exploitingthemselves. "'What are these fireworks for?' asks the rustic in the parable. 'Toblind the eyes of the people, ' answers the cynic. " I would not say aught in a spirit of hostility to the President of theUnited States. Woodrow Wilson is a clever speaker and writer. Yet theusual trend and phrase of his observations seem to be those of a specialpleader, rather than those of a statesman. Every man, each of thenations, is for peace as an abstract proposition. That much goes withoutsaying. But Mr. Wilson proposes to bind the hands of a giant and takelottery chances on the future. This, I think, the country will contest. He is obsessed by the idea of a League of Nations. If not his owndiscovery he has yet made himself its leader. He talks flippantly about"American ideals" that have won the war against Germany, as if therewere no English ideals and French ideals. "In all that he does we can descry the school-master who arrived at thefront rather late in life. One needs only to go over the record andmark how often he has reversed himself to detect a certain mental andtemperamental instability clearly indicating a lack of fixed or resoluteintellectual purpose. This is characteristic of an excess in education;of the half baked mind overtrained. The overeducated mind fancieshimself a doctrinaire when he is in point of fact only a disciple. " Woodrow Wilson was born to the rather sophisticated culture of the too, too solid South. Had he grown up in England a hundred years ago he wouldhave been a follower of the Della Cruscans. He has what is called afacile pen, though it sometimes runs away with him. It seems to havedone so in the matter of the League of Nations. Inevitably such a schemewould catch the fancy of one ever on the alert for the fanciful. I cannot too often repeat that the world we inhabit is a world of sin, disease and death. Men will fight whenever they want to fight, and noartificial scheme or process is likely to restrain them. It is mainlythe costliness of war that makes most against it. But, as we have seenthe last four years, it will not quell the passions of men or dullnational and racial ambitions. All that Mr. Wilson and his proposed League of Nations can do will beto revamp, and maybe for a while to reimpress the minds of the rank andfile, until the bellowing followers of Bellona are ready to spring. Eternal peace, universal peace, was not the purpose of the Deity in thecreation of the universe. Nevertheless, it would seem to be the duty of men in great place, as ofus all, to proclaim the gospel of good will and cultivate the arts offraternity. I have no quarrel with the President on this score. WhatI contest is the self-exploitation to which he is prone, so lacking indignity and open to animadversion. V Thus it was that instant upon the appearance of the proposed League ofNations I made bold to challenge it, as but a pretty conceit having noreal value, a serious assault upon our national sovereignty. Its argument seemed to me full of copybook maxims, easier recited thanapplied. As what I wrote preceded the debates and events of the last sixmonths, I may not improperly make the following quotation from a screedof mine appearing in The Courier-Journal of the 5th of March, 1919: "The League of Nations is a fad. Politics, like society and letters, has its fads. In society they call them fashion and in literatureoriginality. Politics gives the name of 'issues' to its fads. A takingissue is as a stunning gown, or 'a best seller. ' The President's mindwears a coat of many colors, and he can change it at will, his moodbeing the objective point, not always too far ahead, or clear of vision. Carl Schurz was wont to speak of Gratz Brown as 'a man of thoughtsrather than of ideas. ' I wonder if that can be justly said of thePresident? 'Gentlemen will please not shoot at the pianiste, ' adjuredthe superscription over the music stand in the Dakota dive; 'she isdoing the best that she knows how. ' "Already it is being proclaimed that Woodrow Wilson can have a thirdnomination for the presidency if he wants it, and nobody seems shockedby it, which proves that the people grow degenerate and foreshadows thatone of these nights some fool with a spyglass will break into Marsand let loose the myriads of warlike gyascutes who inhabit that freakluminary, thence to slide down the willing moonbeam and swallow us everyone! "In a sense the Monroe Doctrine was a fad. Oblivious to Canada, andBritish Columbia and the Spanish provinces, it warned the despots ofEurope off the grass in America. We actually went to war with Mexico, having enjoyed two wars with England, and again and again we threatenedto annex the Dominion. Everything betwixt hell and Halifax was Yankeepreëmpted. "Truth to say, your Uncle Samuel was ever a jingo. But your CousinWoodrow, enlarging on the original plan, would stretch our spiritualboundaries to the ends of the earth and make of us the moral custodianof the universe. This much, no less, he got of the school of sweetnessand light in which he grew up. "I am a jingo myself. But a wicked material jingo, who wants facts, nottheories. If I thought it possible and that it would pay, I would annexthe North Pole and colonize the Equator. It is, after the manner ofthe lady in the play, that the President 'doth protest too much, ' whichdispleases me and where, in point of fact, I 'get off the reservation. ' "That, being a politician and maybe a candidate, he is keenly alive tovotes goes without saying. On the surface this League of Nations havingthe word 'peace' in big letters emblazoned both upon its forehead andthe seat of its trousers--or, should I say, woven into the hem of itspetticoat?--seems an appeal for votes. I do not believe it will beardiscussion. In a way, it tickles the ear without convincing the sense. There is nothing sentimental about the actualities of Government, muchas public men seek to profit by arousing the passions of the people. Government is a hard and fast and dry reality. At best statesmanship canonly half do the things it would. Its aims are most assured when tendinga little landward; its footing safest on its native heath. We haveplenty to do on our own continent without seeking to right thingson other continents. Too many of us--the President among the rest, Ifear--miscalculate the distance between contingency and desire. "'We figure to ourselves The thing we like: and then we build it up: As chance will have it on the rock or sand-- When thought grows tired of wandering o'er the world, And homebound Fancy runs her bark ashore. '" I am sorry to see the New York World fly off at a tangent about thislatest of the Wilsonian hobbies. Frank Irving Cobb, the editor of theWorld, is, as I have often said, the strongest writer on the NewYork press since Horace Greeley. But he can hardly be called asentimentalist, as Greeley was, and there is nothing but sentiment--gushand gammon--in the proposed League of Nations. It may be all right for England. There are certainly no flies on it forFrance. But we don't need it. Its effects can only be to tie our hands, not keep the dogs away, and even at the worst, in stress of weather, weare strong enough to keep the dogs away ourselves. We should say to Europe: "Shinny on your own side of the water and wewill shinny on our side. " It may be that Napoleon's opinion will cometrue that ultimately Europe will be "all Cossack or all republican. "Part of it has come true already. Meanwhile it looks as though theUnited States, having exhausted the reasonable possibilities ofdemocracy, is beginning to turn crank. Look at woman suffrage byFederal edict; look at prohibition by act of Congress and constitutionalamendment; tobacco next to walk on the plank; and then!--Lord, how gladI feel that I am nearly a hundred years old and shall not live to seeit! Chapter the Thirty-First The Age of Miracles--A Story of Franklin Pierce--Simon Suggs Billy Sunday--Jefferson Davis and Aaron Burr--Certain Constitutional Shortcomings I The years intervening between 1865 and 1919 may be accounted the mostmomentous in all the cycles of the ages. The bells that something morethan half a century ago rang forth to welcome peace in America have beenfrom that day to this jangled out of tune and harsh with the sounding ofwar's alarms in every other part of the world. We flatter ourselves withthe thought that our tragedy lies behind us. Whether this be true ornot, the tragedy of Europe is at hand and ahead. The miracles of moderninvention, surpassing those of old, have made for strife, not for peace. Civilization has gone backward, not forward. Rulers, intoxicated bythe lust of power and conquest, have lost their reason, and nations, following after, like cattle led to slaughter, seem as the bereft ofHeaven "that knew not God. " We read the story of our yesterdays as it unfolds itself in the currentchronicle; the ascent to the bank-house, the descent to the mad-house, and, over the glittering paraphernalia that follows to the tomb, wereflect upon the money-zealot's progress; the dizzy height, the dazzlingarray, the craze for more and more and more; then the temptation andfall, millions gone, honor gone, reason gone--the innocent and thegentle, with the guilty, dragged through the mire of the prison, and thecourt--and we draw back aghast. Yet, if we speak of these things we arecalled pessimists. I have always counted myself an optimist. I know that I do not lie awakenights musing on the ingratitude either of my stars or my countrymen. Ipity the man who does. Looking backward, I have sincere compassion forWebster and for Clay! What boots it to them, now that they lie beneaththe mold, and that the drums and tramplings of nearly seventy years ofthe world's strifes and follies and sordid ambitions and mean repinings, and longings, and laughter, and tears, have passed over their graves, what boots it to them, now, that they failed to get all they wanted?There is indeed snug lying in the churchyard; but the flowers smell assweet and the birds sing as merry, and the stars look down as lovingupon the God-hallowed mounds of the lowly and the poor, as upon theman-bedecked monuments of the Kings of men. All of us, the least withthe greatest, let us hope and believe shall attain immortal life atlast. What was there for Webster, what was there for Clay to quibbleabout? I read with a kind of wonder, and a sickening sense of thelittleness of great things, those passages in the story of their liveswhere it is told how they stormed and swore, when tidings reached themthat they had been balked of their desires. Yet they might have been so happy; so happy in their daily toil, withits lofty aims and fair surroundings; so happy in the sense of dutydone; so happy, above all, in their own Heaven-sent genius, with itsnoble opportunities and splendid achievements. They should have emulatedthe satisfaction told of Franklin Pierce. It is related that an enemywas inveighing against him, when an alleged friend spoke up and said:"You should not talk so about the President, I assure you that he is notat all the man you describe him to be. On the contrary, he is a man ofthe rarest gifts and virtues. He has long been regarded as the greatestorator in New England, and the greatest lawyer in New England, andsurely no one of his predecessors ever sent such state papers toCongress. " "How are you going to prove it, " angrily retorted the first speaker. "I don't need to prove it, " coolly replied the second. "He admits it. " I cannot tell just how I should feel if I were President, though, on thewhole, I fancy fairly comfortable, but I am quite certain that I wouldnot exchange places with any of the men who have been President, and Ihave known quite a number of them. II I am myself accused sometimes of being a "pessimist. " Assuredly I amno optimist of the Billy Sunday sort, who fancies the adoption of theprohibition amendment the coming of "de jubilo. " Early in life, whileyet a recognized baseball authority, Mr. Sunday discovered "pay dirt" inwhat Col. Mulberry Sellers called "piousness. " He made it an assetand began to issue celestial notes, countersigned by himself and maderedeemable in Heaven. From that day to this he has been following thelead of the renowned Simon Suggs, who, having in true camp meeting styleacquired "the grace of God, " turned loose as an exhorter shouting "Stepup to the mourner's bench, my brethering, step up lively, and be saved!I come in on na 'er par, an' see what I draw'd! Religion's the only gamewhar you can't lose. Him that trusts the Lord holds fo' aces!" The Billy Sunday game has made Billy Sunday rich. Having exhaustedHell-fire-and-brimstone, the evangel turns to the Demon Rum. Satan, withhide and horns, has had his day. Prohibition is now the trick card. The fanatic is never either very discriminating or very particular. Asa rule, for him any taking "ism" will suffice. To-day, it happens to be"whisky. " To-morrow it will be tobacco. Finally, having established thespy system and made house-to-house espionage a rule of conventicle, itwill become a misdemeanor for a man to kiss his wife. From fakers who have cards up their sleeves, not to mention snakes intheir boots, we hear a great deal about "the people, " pronounced by themas if it were spelled "pee-pul. " It is the unfailing recourse of theprofessional politician in quest of place. Yet scarcely any reference, or referee, were faultier. The people en masse constitute what we call the mob. Mobs have rarelybeen right--never except when capably led. It was the mob of Jerusalemthat did the unoffending Jesus of Nazareth to death. It was the mob inParis that made the Reign of Terror. Mobs have seldom been tempted, evenhad a chance to go wrong, that they have not gone wrong. The "people" is a fetish. It was the people, misled, who precipitatedthe South into the madness of secession and the ruin of a hopelesslyunequal war of sections. It was the people backing if not compellingthe Kaiser, who committed hari-kari for themselves and their empire inGermany. It is the people leaderless who are making havoc in Russia. Throughout the length and breadth of Christendom, in all lands and ages, the people, when turned loose, have raised every inch of hell to thesquare foot they were able to raise, often upon the slightest pretext, or no pretext at all. This is merely to note the mortal fallibility of man, most fallible whenherded in groups and prone to do in the aggregate what he would hesitateto do when left to himself and his individual accountability. Under a wise dispensation of power, despotism, we are told embodiesthe best of all government. The trouble is that despotism is seldom, if ever, wise. It is its nature to be inconsiderate, being essentiallyselfish, grasping and tyrannous. As a rule therefore revolution--usuallyof force--has been required to change or reform it. Perfectibilitywas not designed for mortal man. That indeed furnishes the strongestargument in favor of the immortality of the soul, life on earth but theante-chamber of eternal life. It would be a cruel Deity that condemnedman to the brief and vexed span of human existence with nothing beyondthe grave. We know not whence we came, or whither we go; but it is a fair guessthat we shall in the end get better than we have known. III Historic democracy is dead. This is not to say that a Democratic party organization has ceased toexist. Nor does it mean that there are no more Democrats and that theDemocratic party is dead in the sense that the Federalist party isdead or the Whig party is dead, or the Greenback party is dead, or thePopulist party is dead. That which has died is the Democratic party ofJefferson and Jackson and Tilden. The principles of government whichthey laid down and advocated have been for the most part obliterated. What slavery and secession were unable to accomplish has been broughtabout by nationalizing sumptuary laws and suffrage. The death-blow to Jeffersonian democracy was delivered by the DemocraticSenators and Representatives from the South and West who carried throughthe prohibition amendment. The _coup de grâce_ was administered by aPresident of the United States elected as a Democrat when he approvedthe Federal suffrage amendment to the Constitution. The kind of government for which the Jeffersonian democracy successfullybattled for more than a century was thus repudiated; centralization wasinvited; State rights were assassinated in the very citadel of Staterights. The charter of local self-government become a scrap of paper, the way is open for the obliteration of the States in all theiressential functions and the erection of a Federal Government morepowerful than anything of which Alexander Hamilton dared to dream. When the history of these times comes to be written it may be said ofWoodrow Wilson: he rose to world celebrity by circumstance ratherthan by character. He was favored of the gods. He possessed a bright, forceful mind. His achievements were thrust upon him. Though itsometimes ran away with him, his pen possessed extraordinary facility. Thus he was ever able to put his best foot foremost. Never in the largersense a leader of men as were Chatham and Fox, as were Washington, Clayand Lincoln; nor of ideas as were Rousseau, Voltaire and Franklin, he had the subtle tenacity of Louis the Eleventh of France, the keenforesight of Richelieu with a talent for the surprising which would haveraised him to eminence in journalism. In short he was an opportunistvoid of conviction and indifferent to consistency. The pen is mightier than the sword only when it has behind it a heart aswell as a brain. He who wields it must be brave, upright and steadfast. We are giving our Chief Executive enormous powers. As a rule his wishesprevail. His name becomes the symbol of party loyalty. Yet it is afterall a figure of speech not a personality that appeals to our sense ofduty without necessarily engaging our affection. Historic Republicanism is likewise dead, as dead as historic Democracy, only in both cases the labels surviving. IV We are told by Herbert Spencer that the political superstition of thepast having been the divine right of kings, the political superstitionof the present is the divine right of parliaments and he might havesaid of peoples. The oil of anointing seems unawares, he thinks, to havedripped from the head of the one upon the heads of the many, and givensacredness to them also, and to their decrees. That the Proletariat, the Bolsheviki, the People are on the way seemsplain enough. How far they will go, and where they will end, is not soclear. With a kind of education--most men taught to read, very few tothink--the masses are likely to demand yet more and more for themselves. They will continue strenuously and effectively to resent the startlingcontrasts of fortune which aptitude and opportunity have created ina social and political structure claiming to rest upon the formula"equality for all, special privilege for none. " The law of force will yield to the rule of numbers. Socialism, disappointed of its Utopia, may then repeat the familiar lesson andreproduce the man-on-horseback, or the world may drop into anotherabyss, and, after the ensuing "dark ages, " like those that swallowedBabylon and Tyre, Greece and Rome, emerge with a new civilization andreligion. "Man never is, but always to be blessed. " We know not whence we came, or whither we go. Hope that springs eternal in the human breast tells usnothing. History seems, as Napoleon said, a series of lies agreed upon, yet not without dispute. V I read in an ultra-sectional non-partisan diatribe that "Jefferson Davismade Aaron Burr respectable, " a sentence which clearly indicates thatthe writer knew nothing either of Jefferson Davis or Aaron Burr. Both have been subjected to unmeasured abuse. They are variouslymisunderstood. Their chief sin was failure; the one to establish animpossible confederacy laid in human slavery, the other to achievecertain vague schemes of empire in Mexico and the far Southwest, which, if not visionary, were premature. The final collapse of the Southern Confederacy can be laid at the doorof no man. It was doomed the day of its birth. The wonder is that saneleaders could invoke such odds against them and that a sane people couldbe induced to follow. The single glory of the South is that it was ableto stand out so long against such odds. Jefferson Davis was a high-minded and well-intentioned man. He waschosen to lead the South because he was, in addition, an accomplishedsoldier. As one who consistently opposed him in his public policies, Ican specify no act to the discredit of his character, his one seriousmistake being his failure to secure the peace offered by Abraham Lincolntwo short months before Appomattox. Taking account of their personalities and the lives they led, thereis little to suggest comparison, except that they were soldiers andSenators, who, each in his day, filled a foremost place in publicaffairs. Aaron Burr, though well born and highly educated, was perhaps arudely-minded man. But he was no traitor. If the lovely woman, TheodosiaPrevost, whom he married, had lived, there is reason to believe that thewhole course and tenor of his career would have been altered. Herdeath was an irreparable blow, as it were, a prelude to the seriesof mischances that followed. The death of their daughter, the lovelyTheodosia Alston, completed the tragedy of his checkered life. Born a gentleman and attaining soldierly distinction and high place, he fell a victim to the lure of a soaring ambition and the deviousexperience of a man about town. The object of political proscription for all his intellectual andpersonal resources, he could not successfully meet and stand against it. There was nothing in the affair with Hamilton actually to damn and ruinhim. Neither morally nor politically was Hamilton the better man of thetwo. Nor was there treason in his Mexican scheme. He meant no more withuniversal acclaim than Houston did three decades later. To couple hisname with that of Benedict Arnold is historic sacrilege. Jefferson pursued him relentlessly. But even Jefferson could not havedestroyed him. When, after an absence of four years abroad, he returnedto America, there was still a future for him had he stood up like a man, but, instead, like one confessing defeat, he sank down, whilst the waveof obloquy rolled over him. His is one of the few pathetic figures in our national history. Mr. Davis has had plenty of defenders. Poor Burr has had scarcely anapologist. His offense, whatever it was, has been overpaid. Even the Warof Sections begins to fade into the mist and become dreamlike even tothose who bore an actual part in it. The years are gliding swiftly by. Only a little while, and there shallnot be one man living who saw service on either side of that greatstruggle of systems and ideas. Its passions long ago vanished from manlybosoms. That has come to pass within a single generation in Americawhich in Europe required ages to accomplish. There is no disputing the verdict of events. Let us relate them trulyand interpret them fairly. If the South would have the North do justiceto its heroes, the South must do justice to the heroes of the North. Each must render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's even as eachwould render unto God the things that are God's. As living men, standingerect in the presence of Heaven and the world, the men of the South havegrown gray without being ashamed; and they need not fear that Historywill fail to vindicate their integrity. When those are gone that fought the battle, and Posterity comes tostrike the balance, it will be shown that the makers of the Constitutionleft the relation of the States to the Federal Government and of theFederal Government to the States open to a double construction. It willbe told how the mistaken notion that slave labor was requisite to theprofitable cultivation of sugar, rice and cotton, raised a paramountproperty interest in the Southern section of the Union, whilst in theNorthern section, responding to the trend of modern thought and theouter movements of mankind, there arose a great moral sentimentagainst slavery. The conflict thus established, gradually but surelysectionalizing party lines, was as inevitable as it was irrepressible. It was fought out to its bitter and logical conclusion at Appomattox. It found us a huddle of petty sovereignties, held together by a rope ofsand. It made and it left us a Nation. Chapter the Thirty-Second A War Episode--I Meet my Fater--I Marry and Make a Home--The Ups and Downs of Life Lead to a Happy Old Age I In bringing these desultory--perhaps too fragmentary--recollections to aclose the writer may not be denied his final word. This shall neither beself-confident nor overstated; the rather a confession of faithsomewhat in rejection of political and religious pragmatism. In both hisexperience has been ample if not exhaustive. During the period of theirserial publication he has received many letters--suggestive, informatoryand critical--now and again querulous--which he has not failed toconsider, and, where occasion seemed to require, to pursue to originalsources in quest of accuracy. In no instance has he found any essentialerror in his narrative. Sometimes he has been charged with omissions--asif he were writing a history of his own times--whereas he has beenonly, and he fears, most imperfectly, relating his immediate personalexperience. I was born in the Presbyterian Church, baptized in the Roman CatholicChurch, educated in the Church of England in America and married intothe Church of the Disciples. The Roman Catholic baptism happened inthis way: It was my second summer; my parents were sojourning in thehousehold of a devout Catholic family; my nurse was a fond, affectionateIrish Catholic; the little life was almost despaired of, so one sunnyday, to rescue me from that form of theologic controversy known asinfant damnation, the baby carriage was trundled round the corner toSaint Matthew's Church--it was in the national capital--and the babybrow was touched with holy water out of a font blessed of the VirginMary. Surely I have never felt or been the worse for it. Whilst I was yet too young to understand I witnessed an old-fashionedbaptism of the countryside. A person who had borne a very bad characterin the neighborhood was being immersed. Some one, more humorous thanreverent, standing near me, said as the man came to the surface, "Therego his sins, men and brethren, there go his sins"; and having but pooreyesight I thought I saw them passing down the stream never to troublehim, or anybody, more. I can see them still floating, floating down thestream, out and away from the sight of men. Does this make me a Baptist, I wonder? I fear not, I fear not; because I am unable to rid myself of theimpression that there are many roads leading to heaven, and I have neverbelieved in what is called close communion. I have not hated and amunable to hate any man because either in political or in religiousopinion he differs from me and insists upon voting his party ticket andworshiping his Creator according to his conscience. Perfect freedom ofconscience and thought has been my lifelong contention. I suppose I must have been born an insurrecto. Pursuing the story of thedark ages when men were burnt at the stake for the heresy of refusing tobow to the will of the majority, it is not the voice of the Protestantor the Catholic that issues from the flames and reaches my heart, butthe cry of suffering man, my brother. To me a saint is a saint whetherhe wears wooden shoes or goes barefoot, whether he gets his baptismsilently out of a font of consecrated water or comes dripping fromthe depths of the nearest brook, shouting, "Glory hallelujah!" From myboyhood the persecution of man for opinion's sake--and no matter forwhat opinion's sake--has roused within me the only devil I have everpersonally known. My reading has embraced not a few works which seek or which affect todeal with the mystery of life and death. Each and every one of themleaves a mystery still. For all their learning and research--theirpositivity and contradiction--none of the writers know more than I thinkI know myself, and all that I think I know myself may be abridged tothe simple rescript, I know nothing. The wisest of us reck not whence wecame or whither we go; the human mind is unable to conceive the eternalin either direction; the soul of man inscrutable even to himself. _The night has a thousand eyes, The day but one; Yet the light of the bright world dies With the dying sun. _ _The mind has a thousand eyes, The heart but one; Yet the light of a whole life dies When love is done. _ All that there is to religion, therefore, is faith; not much more inpolitics. We are variously told that the church is losing its holdupon men. If it be true it is either that it gives itself over totheology--the pride of opinion--or yields itself to the celebration ofthe mammon of unrighteousness. I do not believe that it is true. Never in the history of the worldwas Jesus of Nazareth so interesting and predominant. Between Buddha, teaching the blessing of eternal sleep, and Christ, teaching theblessing of eternal life, mankind has been long divided, but slowly, surely, the influence of the Christ has overtaken that of the Buddhauntil that portion of the world which has advanced most by process ofevolution from the primal state of man now worships at the shrine ofChrist and him risen from the dead, not at the sign of Buddha and totaloblivion. The blessed birthright from God, the glory of heaven, the teaching andexample of the Prince of Peace--have been engulfed beneath oceans ofignorance and superstition through two thousand years of embitteredcontroversy. During the dark ages coming down even to our own time thevery light of truth was shut out from the eyes and hearts and minds ofmen. The blood of the martyrs we were assured in those early dayswas the seed of the church. The blood of the martyrs was the blood ofman--weak, cruel, fallible man, who, whether he got his inspiration fromthe Tiber or the Rhine, from Geneva, from Edinburgh or from Rome, didequally the devil's work in God's name. None of the viceregents ofheaven, as they claimed to be, knew much or seemed to care much aboutthe word of the Gentle One of Bethlehem, whom they had adopted as theirtitular divinity much as men in commerce adopt a trade-mark. II It was knock-down and drag-out theology, the ruthless machinery oforganized churchism--the rank materialism of things temporal--not theteachings of Christ and the spirit of the Christian religion--which solong filled the world with blood and tears. I have often in talking with intelligent Jews expressed a wonder thatthey should stigmatize the most illustrious Jew as an impostor, saying to them: "What matters it whether Jesus was of divine orhuman parentage--a human being or an immortal spirit? He was a Jew:a glorious, unoffending Jew, done to death by a mob of hoodlums inJerusalem. Why should not you and I call him Master and kneel togetherin love and pity at his feet?" Never have I received any satisfying answer. Partyism--churchism--willever stick to its fetish. Too many churches--or, shall I say, churchfabrics--breeding controversy where there should be agreement, each sectand subdivision fighting phantoms of its fancy. In the city that onceproclaimed itself eternal there is war between the Quirinal and theVatican, the government of Italy and the papal hierarchy. In France thegovernment of the republic and the Church of Rome are at daggers-drawn. Before the world-war England and Germany--each claiming to beProtestant--were looking on askance, irresolute, not as to which sidemight be right and which wrong, but on which side "is my bread to bebuttered?" In America, where it was said by the witty Frenchmen we havefifty religions and only one soup, there are people who think we shouldbegin to organize to stop the threatened coming of the Pope, and suchlike! "O Liberty, " cried Madame Roland, "how many crimes are committedin thy name!" "O Churchism, " may I not say, "how much nonsense istrolled off in thy name!" I would think twice before trusting the wisest and best of men withabsolute power; but I would trust never any body of men--never anySanhedrim, consistory, church congress or party convention--withabsolute power. Honest men are often led to do or to assent, inassociation, what they would disdain upon their conscience andresponsibility as individuals. _En masse_ extremism generally prevails, and extremism is always wrong; it is the more wrong and the moredangerous because it is rarely wanting for plausible sophistries, furnishing congenial and convincing argument to the mind of theunthinking for whatever it has to propose. III Too many churches and too much partyism! It is love--love through graceof God--truth where we can find it--which shall irradiate the life thatis. If when we have prepared ourselves for the life to come love bewanting, nothing else is much worth while. Not alone the love of man forwoman, but the love of woman for woman and of man for man; the divinefraternity taught us by the Sermon on the Mount; the religion of giving, not of getting; of whole-hearted giving; of joy in the love and the joyof others. _Who giveth himself with his alms feeds three-- Himself, his hungering neighbor and Me_. For myself I can truthfully subscribe to the formula: "I believe in Godthe Father Almighty; Maker of heaven and earth. And Jesus Christ, hisonly Son, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the VirginMary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried;He descended into hell, the third day He rose again from the dead; Heascended into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God, the FatherAlmighty; from thence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead. " That is my faith. It is my religion. It was my cradle song. It may notbe, dear ones of contrariwise beliefs, your cradle song or your belief, or your religion. What boots it? Can you discover another in word anddeed, in luminous, far-reaching power of speech and example, to walk bythe side of this the Anointed One of your race and of my belief? As the Irish priest said to the British prelate touching the doctrine ofpurgatory: "You may go further and fare worse, my lord, " so may I say tomy Jewish friends--"Though the stars in their courses lied to the WiseMen of the desert, the bloody history of your Judea, altogether equalin atrocity to the bloody history of our Christendom, has yet to fulfillthe promise of a Messiah--and were it not well for those who proclaimthemselves God's people to pause and ask, 'Has He not arisen already?'" I would not inveigh against either the church or its ministry; I wouldnot stigmatize temporal preaching; I would have ministers of religionas free to discuss the things of this world as the statesmen and thejournalists; but with this difference: That the objective point withthem shall be the regeneration of man through grace of God and notthe winning of office or the exploitation of parties and newspapers. Journalism is yet too unripe to do more than guess at truth from asingle side. The statesman stands mainly for political organism. Untilhe dies he is suspect. The pulpit remains therefore still the moral hopeof the universe and the spiritual light of mankind. It must be nonpartisan. It must be nonprofessional. It must be manlyand independent. But it must also be worldy-wise, not artificial, sympathetic, broad-minded and many-sided, equally ready to smite wrongin high places and to kneel by the bedside of the lowly and the poor. I have so found most of the clergymen I have known, the exceptions toofew to remember. In spite of the opulence we see about us let us nottake to ourselves too much conceit. May every pastor emulate the virtuesof that village preacher of whom it was written that: _Truth from his lips prevailed with double sway, And fools who came to scoff, remained to pray. _ * * * * * _A man he was to all the country dear, And passing rich with forty pounds a year. _ * * * * * _His house was known to all the vagrant train, He chid their wanderings, but relieved their pain; The long-remembered beggar was his guest, Whose beard descending swept his aged breast; The ruined spendthrift, now no longer proud, Claimed kindred there, and had his claims allowed; The broken soldier, kindly bade to stay, Sate by the fire, and talked the night away; Wept o'er his wounds, or, tales of sorrow done, Shouldered his crutch, and showed how fields were won. Pleased with his guests, the good man learned to glow, And quite forgot their vices in their woe; Careless their merits or their faults to scan, His pity gave ere charity began. _ IV I have lived a long life--rather a happy and a busy than a merryone--enjoying where I might, but, let me hope I may fairly claim, shirking no needful labor or duty. The result is some accretions tomy credit. It were, however, ingratitude and vanity in me to set upexclusive ownership of these. They are the joint products and propertyof my dear wife and myself. I do not know just what had befallen if love had failed me, for as farback as I can remember love has been to me the bedrock of all that isworth living for, striving for or possessing in this cross-patch of aworld of ours. I had realized the meaning of it in the beautiful concert of affectionbetween my father and mother, who lived to celebrate their goldenwedding. My wife and I have enjoyed now the like conjugal felicityfifty-four--counted to include two years of betrothal, fifty-six years. Never was a young fellow more in love than I--never has love been morerichly rewarded--yet not without some heartbreaking bereavements. I met the woman who was to become my wife during the War ofSections--amid its turmoil and peril--and when at its close we weremarried, at Nashville, Tennessee, all about us was in mourning, thefuture an adventure. It was at Chattanooga, the winter of 1862-63, that fate brought us together and riveted our destinies. She had a finecontralto voice and led the church choir. Doctor Palmer, of New Orleans, was on a certain Sunday well into the long prayer of the Presbyterianservice. Bragg's army was still in middle Tennessee. There was nothought of an attack. Bang! Bang! Then the bursting of a shell too closefor comfort. Bang! Bang! Then the rattle of shell fragments on the roof. On the other side of the river the Yankees were upon us. The man of God gave no sign that anything unusual was happening. He didnot hurry. He did not vary the tones of his voice. He kept on praying. Nor was there panic in the congregation, which did not budge. That was the longest long prayer I ever heard. When it was finallyended, and still without changing a note the preacher delivered thebenediction, the crowded church in the most orderly manner moved to theseveral doorways. I was quick to go for my girl. By the time we reached the street thefiring had become general. We had to traverse quite half a mile of itbefore attaining a place of safety. Two weeks later we were separatedfor nearly two years, when, the war over, we found ourselves at homeagain. In the meantime her father had fallen in the fight, and in the far SouthI had buried him. He was one of the most eminent and distinguishedand altogether the best beloved of the Tennesseeans of his day, AndrewEwing, who, though a Democrat, had in high party times represented theWhig Nashville district in Congress and in the face of assured electiondeclined the Democratic nomination for governor of the state. A foremostUnion leader in the antecedent debate, upon the advent of actual war hehad reluctantly but resolutely gone with his state and section. V The intractable Abolitionists of the North and the radical Secessionistsof the South have much historically to answer for. The racial warpand woof in the United States were at the outset of our nationalbeing substantially homogeneous. That the country should have beengeographically divided and sectionally set by the ears over theinstitution of African slavery was the work of agitation that might haveattained its ends by less costly agencies. How often human nature seeking its bent prefers the crooked to thestraight way ahead! The North, having in its ships brought the negroesfrom Africa and sold them to the planters of the South, putting themoney it got for them in its pocket, turned philanthropist. The South, having bought its slaves from the slave traders of the North under thebelief that slave labor was requisite to the profitable production ofsugar, rice and cotton, stood by property-rights lawfully acquired, recognized and guaranteed by the Constitution. Thence arose anirrepressible conflict of economic forces and moral ideas whose doubtfuladjustment was scarcely worth what it cost the two sections in treasureand blood. On the Northern side the issue was made to read freedom, on the Southernside, self-defense. Neither side had any sure law to coerce the other. Upon the simple right and wrong of it each was able to establish a caseconvincing to itself. Thus the War of Sections, fought to a finish sogallantly by the soldiers of both sides, was in its origination largelya game of party politics. The extremists and doctrinaires who started the agitation that broughtit about were relatively few in number. The South was at least defendingits own. That what it considered its rights in the Union and theTerritories being assailed it should fight for aggressively lay in thenature of the situation and the character of the people. Aggressionbegot aggression, the unoffending negro, the provoking cause, a passiveagent. Slavery is gone. The negro we still have with us. To what end? Life indeed is a mystery--a hopelessly unsolved problem. Could there bea stronger argument in favor of a world to come than may be found in thebrevity and incertitude of the world that is? Where this side of heavenshall we look for the court of last resort? Who this side of the graveshall be sure of anything? At this moment the world having reached what seems the apex of humanachievement is topsy-turvy and all agog. Yet have we the record of anymoment when it was not so? That to keep what we call the middle of theroad is safest most of us believe. But which among us keeps or has everkept the middle of the road? What else and what next? It is with nationsas with men. Are we on the way to another terrestrial collapse, and soon ad infinitum to the end of time? VI The home which I pictured in my dreams and projected in my hopes came tome at last. It arrived with my marriage. Then children to bless it. Butit was not made complete and final--a veritable Kentucky home--until theall-round, all-night work which had kept my nose to the grindstonehad been shifted to younger shoulders I was able to buy a few acres ofarable land far out in the county--the County of Jefferson!--and someancient brick walls, which the feminine genius to which I owe so muchcould convert to itself and tear apart and make over again. Here "thesun shines bright" as in the song, and-- _The corn tops ripe and the meadows in the bloom The birds make music all the day. _ They waken with the dawn--a feathered orchestra--incessant, fearless--for each of its pieces--from the sweet trombone of the doveto the shrill clarionet of the jay--knows that it is safe. There are noguns about. We have with us, and have had for five and twenty years, afamily of colored people who know our ways and meet them intelligentlyand faithfully. When we go away--as we do each winter and sometimesduring the other seasons--and come again--dinner is on the table, andeverybody--even to Tigue and Bijou, the dogs--is glad to see us. Couldmortal ask for more? And so let me close with the wish of my father'sold song come true--the words sufficiently descriptive of the reality: _In the downhill of life when I find I'm declining, May my fate no less fortunate be Than a snug elbow chair can afford for reclining And a cot that o'erlooks the wide sea-- A cow for my dairy, a dog for my game. And a purse when my friend needs to borrow; I'll envy no nabob his riches, nor fame, Nor the honors that wait him to-morrow. _ _And when at the close I throw off this frail cov'ring Which I've worn for three-score years and ten-- On the brink of the grave I'll not seek to keep hov'ring Nor my thread wish to spin o'er again. But my face in the glass I'll serenely survey, And with smiles count each wrinkle and furrow-- That this worn-out old stuff which is thread-bare to-day_