Chapter IV: The Return to America. 1848-1862 (2)

I have but one word to add to this. The secret of the Revolution of February had been in very few hands, which was the secret of its success. Any one of us could have secured fortune and "honours," or at least "orders," by betraying it. But we would as soon have secured orders for the pit of hell as done so. This was known to Louis Napoleon, and he must have realised who these men of iron integrity were for he was very curious and inquiring on this subject. Now, I here claim it as a great, as a surpassing honour for France, and as something absolutely without parallel in history, that several hundred men could be found who could not only keep this secret, but manage so very wisely as they did. Louis Blanc was an example of these honest, unselfish men. I came to know him personally many years after, during his exile in London.

One morning George H. Boker came to me and informed me that there was a writing editor wanted on the Philadelphia _Evening Bulletin_. Its proprietor was Alexander Cummings. The actual editor was Gibson Bannister Peacock, who was going to Europe for a six months' tour, and some one was wanted to take his place. Mr. Peacock, as I subsequently found, was an excellent editor, and a person of will and character. He was skilled in music and a man of culture. I retain grateful remembrances of him. I was introduced and installed. With all my experience I had not yet quite acquired the art of extemporaneous editorial composition. My first few weeks were a severe trial, but I succeeded. I was expected to write one column of leader every day, review books, and "paragraph" or condense articles to a brief item of news. In which I succeeded so well, that some time after, when a work appeared on writing for the press, the author, who did not know me at all, cited one of my leaders and one of my paragraphs as models. It actually made little impression on me at the time--I was so busy.

I had been at work but a short time, when one day Mr. Cummings received a letter from Mr. Peacock in Europe, which he certainly had hardly glanced at, which he threw to me to read. I did so, and found in it a passage to this effect: "I am sorry that you are disappointed as to Mr. Leland, but I am confident that you will find him perfectly capable in time." This gave me a bitter pang, but I returned it to Mr. Cummings, who soon after came into the office and expressed frankly his great regret, saying that since he had written to Mr. Peacock he had quite changed his opinion.

I enjoyed this new life to the utmost. Mr. Cummings, to tell the truth, pursued a somewhat tortuous course in politics and religion. He was a Methodist. One day our clerk expressed himself as to the latter in these words:--"They say he is a Jumper, but others think he has gone over to the Holy Rollers." The Jumpers were a sect whose members, when the Holy Spirit seized them, jumped up and down, while the Holy Rollers under such circumstances rolled over and over on the floor. We also advocated Native Americanism and Temperance, which did not prevent Mr. Peacock and myself and a few _habitues_ of the office from going daily at eleven o'clock to a neighbouring lager-beer _Wirthschaft_ for a refreshing glass and lunch. One day the bar-tender, Hermann, a very nice fellow, said to me, "I remember when you always had a bottle of Rudesheimer every day for dinner. That was at Herr Lehr's, in Heidelberg. I always waited on you."

Whoever shall write a history of Philadelphia from the Thirties to the end of the Fifties will record a popular period of turbulence and outrages so extensive as to now appear almost incredible. These were so great as to cause grave doubts in my mind whether the severest despotism, guided by justice, would not have been preferable to such republican license as then prevailed in the city of Penn. I refer to the absolute and uncontrolled rule of the Volunteer Fire Department, which was divided into companies (each having clumsy old fire apparatus and hose), all of them at deadly feud among themselves, and fighting freely with pistols, knives, iron spanners, and slung shot, whenever they met, whether at fires or in the streets. Of these regular firemen, _fifty thousand_ were enrolled, and to these might have been added almost as many more, who were known as runners, bummers, and hangers-on. Among the latter were a great number of incendiaries, all of whom were well known to and encouraged by the firemen. Whenever the latter wished to meet some rival company, either to test their mutual skill or engage in a fight, a fire was sure to occur; the same always happened when a fire company from some other city visited Philadelphia.

This gave occasion to an incredible amount of blackmailing, since all house-owners were frequently called on to contribute money to the different companies, sometimes as a subscription for ball-tickets or repairs. It was well understood, and generally pretty plainly expressed, that those who refused to pay might expect to be burned out or neglected. The result of it all was a general fear of the firemen, a most degrading and contemptible subservience to them by politicians of all kinds, a terrible and general growth and spread of turbulence and coarse vulgarity among youth, and finally, such a prevalence of conflagration that no one who owned a house could hear the awful tones of the bell of Independence Hall without terror. Fires were literally of nightly occurrence, and that they were invariably by night was due to the incendiary "runner." A slight examination of the newspapers and cheap broadside literature of that time will amply confirm all that I here state. "Jakey" was the typical fireman; he was the brutal hero of a vulgar play, and the ideal of nineteen youths out of twenty. For a generation or more all society felt the degrading influences of this rowdyism in almost every circle--for there were among the vast majority of men not very many who respected, looked up to, or cared for anything really cultured or refined. I have a large collection of the popular songs of Philadelphia of that time, in all of which there is a striving downwards into blackguardism and brutality, vileness and ignorance, which has no parallel in the literature of any other nation. The French of the _Pere Duchene_ school may be nastier, and, as regards aristocrats, as bloody, but for general all-round _vulgarity_, the state of morals developed among the people at the time of which I speak was literally without its like. It is very strange that Pliny also speaks of the turbulence or rowdyism of the firemen of Rome.

I remember that even in Walnut Street, below Thirteenth Street, before my father's house (this being then by far the most respectable portion of Philadelphia), it happened several nights in succession that rival fire- companies, running side by side, fought as they ran, with torches and knives, while firing pistols. There was a young lady named Mary Bicking, who lived near us. I asked her one day if she had ever seen a man shot; and when she answered "No," I replied, "Why don't you look out of your window some night and see one?"

The southern part of the city was a favourite battleground, and I can remember hearing ladies who lived in Pine Street describe how, on Sunday summer afternoons, they could always hear, singly or in volleys, the shots of the revolvers and shouts of the firemen as they fought in Moyamensing.

Every effort to diminish these evils, or to improve the fire department in any way whatever, was vigorously opposed by the rowdies, who completely governed the city. The first fire-alarm electric telegraphs were a great offence to firemen, and were quietly destroyed; the steam- engines were regarded by them as deadly enemies. But the first great efficient reform in the Philadelphia fire department, and the most radical of all, was the establishment of a fire-detective department under a fire-marshal, whose business it was to investigate and punish all cases of incendiarism. For it was simply incendiarism, encouraged and supported by the firemen themselves, which caused nineteen-twentieths of all these disasters; it was the _fires_ which were the sole support of the whole system.

I was much indebted for understanding all this, and acting on it boldly, as I did, to the city editor and chief reporter on the _Evening Bulletin_, Caspar Souder. The Mayor of the city was Richard Vaux, a man of good family and education, and one who had seen in his time cities and men, he having once in his youth, on some great occasion, waltzed with the Princess--now Queen--Victoria. Being popular, he was called _Vaux populi_. I wrote very often leaders urging Mayor Vaux by name to establish a fire-detective department. So great was the indignation caused among the firemen, that I incurred no small risk in writing them. But at last, when I published for one week an article every day clamouring for a reform, Mayor Vaux--as he said directly to Mr. Souder, "in consequence of my appeals"--vigorously established a fire-marshal with two aids. By my request, the office was bestowed on a very intelligent and well-educated person, Dr. Blackburne, who had been a surgeon in the Mexican war, then a reporter on our journal, and finally a very clever superior detective. He was really not only a born detective, but to a marked degree a man of scientific attainments and a skilled statistician. His anecdotes and comments as to pyromaniacs of different kinds were as entertaining and curious as anything recorded by Gaboriau. Some of the most interesting experiences of my life were when I went with Dr. Blackburne from place to place where efforts had been made to burn houses, and noted the unerring and Red-Indian skill with which he distinguished the style of work, and identified the persons and names of the incendiaries. One of these "fire-bugs" was noted for invariably setting fire to houses in such a manner as to destroy as many inmates as possible. If there were an exit, he would block it up. Dr. Blackburne took me to a wooden house in which the two staircases led to a very small vestibule about three feet square before the front door. This space had been filled with diabolical ingenuity with a barrel full of combustibles, so that every one who tried to escape by the only opening below would be sure to perish. Fortunately, the combustibles in the barrel went out after being ignited. "I know that fellow by his style," remarked the Doctor, "and I shall arrest him at four o'clock this afternoon."

This fire-detective department and the appointment of Blackburne was the real basis and beginning of all the reforms which soon followed, leading to the abolition of the volunteer system and the establishment of paid _employes_. And as I received great credit for it then, my work being warmly recognised and known to all the newspaper reporters and editors in the city, who were the best judges of it, as they indeed are of all municipal matters, I venture to record it here as something worth mentioning. And though I may truly say that at the time I was so busy that I made no account of many such things, they now rise up from time to time as comforting assurances that my life has not been quite wasted.

This reminds me that I had not been very long on the newspaper, and had just begun to throw out editorials with ease, when Mr. Cummings said to me one day that I did not realise what a power I held in my hand, but that I would soon find it out. Almost immediately after, in noticing some article or book which was for sale at No. 24 Chestnut Street, I inadvertently made reference to 24 Walnut Street. Very soon came the proprietor of the latter place, complaining that I had made life a burden to him, because fifty people had come in one day to buy something which he had not. I reflected long and deeply on this, with the result of observing that to influence people it is not at all necessary to argue with them, but simply be able to place before their eyes such facts as you choose. It is very common indeed to hear people in England, who should have more sense, declare that "nobody minds what the newspapers say." But the truth is, that if any man has an eye to read and memory to retain, he _must_, willy-nilly, be influenced by reading, and selection from others by an able editor is often only a most ingenious and artful method of arguing. It has very often happened to me, when I wanted to enforce some important point, to clothe it as an anecdote or innocent "item," and bid the foreman set it in the smallest type in the most obscure corner. And the reader is influenced by it, utterly unconsciously, just as we all are, and just as surely as all reflection follows sensation--as it ever will--into the Ages!

There was much mutual robbing by newspapers of telegraphic news in those days. Once it befell that just before the _Bulletin_ went to press a part of the powder-mills of Dupont Brothers in Delaware blew up, and we received a few lines of telegram, stating that Mr. Dupont himself had saved the great magazine by actually walking on a burning building with buckets of water, and preventing the fire from extending, at a most incredible risk of his life. Having half-an-hour's time, I expanded this telegram into something dramatic and thrilling. A great New York newspaper, thinking, from the shortness of time which elapsed in publishing, that it was all telegraphed to us, printed it as one of its own from Delaware, just as I had written it out--which I freely forgive, for verily its review of my last work but one was such as to make me inquire of myself in utter amazement, "Can this be I?"--"so gloriously was I exalted to the higher life." The result of this review was a sworn and firm determination on my part to write another book of the same kind, in which I should show myself more worthy of such cordial encouragement; which latter book was the "Etruscan Legends." I ought indeed to have dedicated it to the _New York Tribune_, a journal which has done more for human freedom than any other publication in history.

I do not know certainly whether the brave Dupont whom I mentioned was the Charley Dupont who went to school with me at Jacob Pierce's, nor can I declare that a very gentlemanly old Frenchman who came to see him in 1832 was his father or grandfather, the famous old Dupont de l'Eure of the French Revolution. But I suppose it was the latter who carried and transformed the art of manufacturing moral gunpowder in France to the making material explosives in America. Yes, moral or physical, we are all but gunpowder and smoke--_pulvis et umbra sumus_!

There was a morning paper in Philadelphia which grieved me sore by pilfering my news items as I wrote them. So I one day gave a marvellous account of the great Volatile Chelidonian or Flying Turtle of Surinam, of which a specimen had just arrived in New York. It had a shell as of diamonds blent with emeralds and rubies, and bat-like wings of iridescent hue surpassing the opal, and a tail like a serpent. Our contemporary, nothing doubting, at once published this as original matter in a letter from New York, and had to bear the responsibility. But I did not invest my inventiveness wisely; I should have shared the idea with Barnum.

There was in Philadelphia at this time a German bookseller named Christern. It was the thought of honourable and devoted men which recalled him to my mind. I had made his acquaintance long before in Munich, where he had been employed in the principal bookseller's shop of the city. His "store" in Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, became a kind of club, where I brought such of my friends as were interested in German literature. We met there and talked German, and examined and discussed all the latest European works. He had a burly, honest, rather droll assistant named Ruhl, who had been a student in Munich, then a Revolutionist and exile, and finally a refugee to America. To this shop, too, came Andrekovitch, whom I had last known in Paris as a speculator on the Bourse, wearing a cloak lined with sables. In America he became a chemical manufacturer. When at last an amnesty was proclaimed, his brother asked him to return to Poland, promising a support, which he declined. He too was an honourable, independent man. About this time the great--I forget his name; or was it Schoffel?--who had been President of the Frankfort Revolutionary Parliament, opened a lager-beer establishment in Race Street. I went there several times with Ruhl.

George Boker and Frank Wells, who subsequently succeeded me on the _Bulletin_, would drop in every day after the first edition had gone to press, and then there would be a lively time. Frank Wells was, _par eminence_, the greatest punster Philadelphia ever produced. He was in this respect appalling. We had a sub-editor or writer named Ernest Wallace, who was also a clever humorist. One day John Godfrey Saxe came in. He was accustomed among country auditors and in common sanctums to carry everything before him with his jokes. In half-an-hour we extinguished him. Having declared that no one could make a pun on his name, which he had not heard before, Wallace promptly replied, "It's _axing_ too much, I presume; but did you ever hear _that_?" Saxe owned that he had not.

George H. Boker, whose name deserves a very high place in American literature as a poet, and in history as one who was of incredible service, quietly performed, in preserving the Union during the war, was also eminently a wit and humorist. We always read first to one another all that we wrote. He had so trained himself from boyhood to self-restraint, calmness, and the _nil admirari_ air, which, as Dallas said, is "the Corinthian ornament of a gentleman" (I may add especially when of Corinthian brass), that his admirable jests, while they gained in clearness and applicability, lost something of that rattle of the impromptu and headlong which renders Irish and Western humour so easy. I recorded the _bon mots_ and merry stories which passed among us all in the _sanctum_ in articles for our weekly newspaper, under the name of "Social Hall Sketches" (a social hall in the West is a steamboat smoking- room). Every one of us received a name. Mr. Peacock was Old Hurricane, and George Boker, being asked what his pseudonym should be, selected that of Bullfrog. These "Social Hall Sketches" had an extended circulation in American newspapers, some for many years. One entirely by me, entitled "Opening Oysters," is to be found in English almanacs, &c., to this day.

It was, I think, or am sure, in 1855 that some German in Pennsylvania, instead of burying his deceased wife, burned the body. This called forth a storm of indignant attack in the newspapers. It was called an irreligious, indecent act. I wrote an editorial in which I warmly defended it. According to Bulwer in the "Last Days of Pompeii," the early Christians practised it. Even to this day Urns and torches are common symbols in Christian burying-grounds, and we speak of "ashes" as more decent than mouldering corpses. And, finally, I pointed out the great advantage which it would be to the coal trade of Pennsylvania. A man of culture said to me that it was the boldest editorial which he had ever read. Such as it was, I believe that it was the first article written in modern times advocating cremation. If I am wrong, I am willing to be corrected.

To those who are unfamiliar with it, the life in an American newspaper office seems singularly eventful and striking. A friend of mine who visited a sanctum (ours) for the first time, said, as he left, that he had never experienced such an interesting hour in his life. _Firstly_, came our chief city reporter, exulting in the manner in which he had circumvented the police, and, despite all their efforts, got, by ways that were dark, at all the secrets of a brand-new horrible murder. _Secondly_, a messenger with an account of how I, individually, had kicked up the very devil in the City Councils, and set the Mayor to condemning us, by a leader discussing certain municipal abuses. _Thirdly_, another, to tell how I had swept one-half the city by an article exposing its neglect, and how the sweepers and dirt-carts were busy where none had been before for weeks, and how the contractor for cleaning wanted to shoot me. _Fourthly_, a visit from some great dignitary, who put his dignity very much _a l'abri_ in his pocket, to solicit a puff. _Fifthly_, a lady who, having written a very feeble volume of tales which had merely been gently commended in our columns, came round in a rage to shame me by sarcasm, begging me as a parting shot to at least _read_ a few lines of her work. _Sixthly_, a communication from a great New York family, who, having been requested to send a short description of a remarkable wedding-cake, sent me _one hundred and fifty pages_ of minute history of all their ancestors and honours, with strict directions that not a line should be omitted, and the article printed at once most conspicuously. {225} _Seventhly_, . . . but this is a very mild specimen of what went on all the time during office-hours. And on this subject alone I could write a small book.

Now, at this time there came about a very great change in my life, or an event which ultimately changed it altogether. My father had, for about two years past, fallen into a very sad state of mind. His large property between Chestnut and Bank Streets paid very badly, and his means became limited. I was seriously alarmed as to his health. My dear mother had become, I may say, paralytic; but, in truth, the physicians could never explain the disorder. To the last she maintained her intellect, and a miraculous cheerfulness unimpaired.

All at once a strange spirit, as of new life, came suddenly over my father. I cannot think of it without awe. He went to work like a young man, shook off his despair, financiered with marvellous ability, borrowed money, collected old and long-despaired of debts, tore down the old hotel and the other buildings, planned and bargained with architects--it was then that I designed the facade before described--and built six stores, two of them very handsome granite buildings, on the old site. In short, he made of it a very valuable estate. And as he superintended with great skill and ability the smallest details of the building, which was for that time remarkably well executed, I thought I recognised whence it was that I derived the strongly developed tendency for architecture which I have always possessed. I have since made 400 copies of old churches in England.

This was a happy period, when life was without a cloud, excepting my mother's trouble. As my father could now well afford it, he made me an allowance, which, with my earnings from the _Bulletin_ and other occasional literary work, justified me in getting married. I had had a long but still very happy engagement. So we were married by the Episcopal ceremony at the house of my father-in-law in Tenth Street, and a very happy wedding it was. I remember two incidents. Before the ceremony, the Reverend Mr., subsequently Bishop Wilmer, took me, with George Boker, into a room and explained to me the symbolism of the marriage-ring. Now, if there was a subject on earth which I, the old friend of Creuzer of Heidelberg, and master of Friedrich's _Symbolik_, and Durandus, and the work "On Finger-Rings," knew all about, it was _that_; and I never shall forget the droll look which Boker threw at me as the discourse proceeded. But I held my peace, though sadly tempted to set forth my own archaeological views on the subject.

The second was this: Philadelphia, as Mr. Philipps has said, abounds in folk-lore. Some one suggested that the wedding would be a lucky one because there was only one clergyman present. But I remarked that among our coloured waiters there was one who had a congregation (my wife's cousin, by the way, had a coloured bishop for coachman). However, this sable cloud did not disturb us.

We went to New York, and were visited by many friends, and returned to Philadelphia. We lived for the first year at the La Pierre Hotel, where we met with many pleasant people, such as Thackeray, Thalberg, Ole Bull, Mr. and Mrs. Choteau, of St. Louis, and others. Of Thalberg I have already remarked, in my notes to my translation of Heine's _Salon_, that he impressed me as a very gentlemanly, dignified, and quietly remarkable man, whom it would be difficult to readily or really understand. "He had unmistakably the manner peculiar to many great Germans, which, as I have elsewhere observed, is perceptible in the _maintien_ and features of Goethe, Humboldt, Bismarck," and Brugsch, of Berlin (whom I learned to know in later years). Thalberg gave me the impression, which grew on me, of a man who knew many things besides piano-playing, and that he was born to a higher specialty. He was dignified but affable. I remember that one day, when he, or some one present, remarked that his name was not a common one, I made him laugh by declaring that it occurred in two pieces in an old German ballad:--

"Ich that am BERGE stehen,
Und sohaute in das THAL;
Da hab' ich sie gesehen,
Zum aller letzten mal."

"I stood upon the _mountain_,
And looked the _valley_ o'er;
There I indeed beheld her,
But saw her never more."

Thalberg's playing was marvellously like his character or himself: Heine calls it gentlemanly. Thackeray was marked in his manner, and showed impulse and energy in small utterances. I may err, but I do not think he could have endured solitude or too much of himself. He was eminently social, and rather given at times to reckless (not deliberate or spiteful), sarcastic or "ironic" sallies, in which he did not, with Americans, generally come off "first best." There was a very beautiful lady in Boston with whom the great novelist was much struck, and whom he greatly admired, as he sent her two magnificent bronzes. Having dined one evening at her house, he remarked as they all entered the dining-room, "Now I suppose that, according to your American custom, we shall all put our feet up on the chimney-piece." "Certainly," replied his hostess, "and as your legs are so much longer than the others, you may put your feet on top of the looking-glass," which was about ten feet from the ground. Thackeray, I was told, was offended at this, and showed it; he being of the "give but not take" kind. One day he said to George Boker, when both were looking at Durer's etching of "Death, Knight, and the Devil," of which I possess a fine copy, "Every man has his devil whom he cannot overcome; I have two--laziness, and love of pleasure." I remarked, "Then why the devil seek to overcome them? Is it not more noble and sensible to yield where resistance is in vain, than to fight to the end? Is it not a maxim of war, that he who strives to defend a defenceless place must be put to death? Why not give in like a man?"

I had just published my translation of Heine's _Reisebilder_, and Bayard Taylor had a copy of it. He went in company with Thackeray to New York, and told me subsequently that they had read the work aloud between them alternately with roars of laughter till it was finished; that Thackeray praised my translation to the skies, and that his comments and droll remarks on the text were delightful. Thackeray was a perfect German scholar, and well informed as to all in the book.

Apropos of Heine, Ole Bull had known him very well, and described to me his brilliancy in the most distinguished literary society, where in French the German wit bore away the palm from all Frenchmen. "He flashed and sprayed in brilliancy like a fountain." Ole Bull by some chance had heard much of me, and we became intimate. He told me that I had unwittingly been to him the cause of great loss. I had, while in London, become acquainted with an odd and rather scaly fish, a German who had been a courier, who was the keeper of a small cafe near Leicester Square, and who enjoyed a certain fame as the inventor of the _poses plastiques_ or living statues, so popular in 1848. This man soon came over to America, and called on me, wanting to borrow money, whereupon I gave him the cold shoulder. According to Ole Bull, he went to the great violinist, represented himself as my friend and as warmly commended by me, and the heedless artist, instead of referring to me directly, took him as impresario; the result being that he ere long ran away with the money, and, what was quite as bad, Ole Bull's prima-donna, who was, as I understood, specially dear to him. Ole Bull's playing has been, as I think, much underrated by certain writers of reminiscences. There was in it a marvellous originality.

While I was there, in the La Pierre Hotel, the first great meeting was held at which the Republican party was organised. Though not an _appointed_ delegate from our State, I, as an editor, took some part in it. Little did we foresee the tremendous results which were to ensue from that meeting! It was second only to the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and on it was based the greatest struggle known to history. I could have, indeed, been inscribed as a constitutional member of it for the asking or writing my name, but that appeared to me and others then to be a matter of no consequence compared to the work in hand. So the _Bulletin_ became Republican; Messrs. Cummings and Peacock seeing that that was their manifest destiny.

From that day terrible events began to manifest themselves in American politics. The South attempted to seize Kansas with the aid of border ruffians; Sumner was caned from behind while seated; the Southern press became outrageous in its abuse of the North, and the North here and there retaliated. All my long-suppressed ardent Abolition spirit now found vent, and for a time I was allowed to write as I pleased. A Richmond editor paid me the compliment of saying that the articles in the _Bulletin_ were the bitterest and cleverest published in the North, but inquired if it was wise to manifest such feeling. I, who felt that the great strife was imminent, thought it was. Mr. Cummings thought differently, and I was checked. For years there were many who believed that the fearfully growing cancer could be cured with rose-water; as, for instance, Edward Everett.

While on the _Bulletin_ I translated Heine's _Pictures of Travel_. For it, poetry included, I was to receive three shillings a page. Even this was never paid me in full; I was obliged to take part of the money in engravings and books, and the publisher failed. It passed into other hands, and many thousands of copies were sold; from all of which I, of course, got nothing. I also became editor of _Graham's Magazine_, which I filled recklessly with all or any kind of literary matter as I best could, little or nothing being allowed for contributions. However, I raised the circulation from almost nothing to 17,000. For this I received fifty dollars (10 pounds) per month. When I finally left it, the proprietors were eighteen months in arrears due, and tried to evade payment, though I had specified a regular settlement every month. Finally they agreed to pay me in monthly instalments of fifty dollars each, and fulfilled the engagement.

Talking of the South, I forget now at what time it was that Barnum's Museum in Philadelphia was burned, but I shall never forget a droll incident which it occasioned. Opposite it was a hotel, and the heat was so tremendous that the paint on the hotel was scorched, and it had begun to burn in places. By the door stood a friend of mine in great distress. I asked what was the matter. He replied that in the hotel was a Southern lady who would not leave her trunks, in which there were all her diamonds and other valuables, and that he could not find a porter to bring them down. I was strong enough in those days. "What is the number of her room?" "No. 22." I rushed up--it was scorching hot by this time--burst into No. 22, and found a beautiful young lady in dire distress. I said abruptly, "I come from Mr. --- ---; where are your trunks?" She began to cry confusedly, "Oh, you can do _nothing_; they are very heavy."

Seeing the two large trunks, I at once, without a word, caught one by each handle, dragged them after me bumping downstairs, the lady following, to the door, where I found my friend, who had a carriage in waiting. From the lady's subsequent account, it appeared that I had occasioned her much more alarm than pleasure. She said that all at once a great tall gentleman burst into her room, seized her trunks without a word of apology, and dragged them downstairs like a giant; she was never so startled in all her life! It was explained to me that, as in the South only negroes handle trunks, the lady could not regard me exactly as a gentleman. She was within a short ace of being burnt up, trunks and all, but could not forget that she was from the "Sa-outh," and must needs show it.

Apropos of this occurrence, I remember something odd which took place on the night of the same day. There was a stylish drinking-place, kept by a man named Guy, in Seventh Street. In the evening, when it was most crowded, there entered a stranger, described as having been fully _seven_ feet high, and powerful in proportion, who kept very quiet, but who, on being chaffed as the giant escaped from Barnum's Museum, grew angry, and ended by clearing out the barroom--driving thirty men before him like flies. Aghast at such a tremendous feat, one who remained, asked, "Who in God's wrath are you?--haven't you a name?"

"Yes, I _have_ a name," replied the Berserker; "_I'm_ CHARLES LELAND!" saying which he vanished.

The next day it was all over Philadelphia that I had cleared out John Guy's the night before, _sans merci_. True, I am not seven feet high, but some men (like stories) expand enormously when inflated or mad; so my denial was attributed to sheer modesty. But I recognised in the Charles Leland a mysterious cousin of mine, who was really seven feet high, who had disappeared for many years, and of whom I have never heard since.

While editing _Graham's Magazine_, I had one day a space to fill. In a hurry I knocked off "Hans Breitmann's Barty" (1856). I gave it no thought whatever. Soon after, Clark republished it in the _Knickerbocker_, saying that it was evidently by me. I little dreamed that in days to come I should be asked in Egypt, and on the blue Mediterranean, and in every country in Europe, if I was its author. I wrote in those days a vast number of such anonymous drolleries, many of them, I daresay, quite as good, in _Graham's Magazine_ and the _Weekly Bulletin_, &c., but I took no heed of them. They were probably appropriated in due time by the authors of "Beautiful Snow."

I began to weary of Philadelphia. New York was a wider field and more congenial to me. Mr. Cummings had once, during a financial crisis, appealed to my better feelings very touchingly to let my salary be reduced. I let myself be touched--in the pocket. Better times came, but my salary did not rise. Mr. Cummings, knowing that my father was wealthy, wanted me to put a large sum into his paper, assuring me that it would pay me fifteen per cent. I asked how that could be possible when he could only afford to pay me so very little for such hard work. He chuckled, and said, "That is the way we make our money." Then I determined to leave.

Mr. George Ripley and Charles A. Dana, of the _Tribune_, were then editing in New York _Appletons' Cyclopaedia_. Mr. Ripley had several times shown himself my friend; he belonged to the famous old band of Boston Transcendentalists who were at Brook Farm. I wrote to him asking if I could earn as much at the _Cyclopaedia_ as I got from the _Bulletin_. He answered affirmatively; so we packed up and departed. I had a sister in New York who had married a Princeton College-mate named Thorp. We went to their house in Twenty-second Street near Broadway, and arranged it so as to remain there during the winter.

In the _Cyclopaedia_ rooms I found abundance of work, though it was less profitable than I expected. For after an article was written, it passed through the hands of six or seven revisers, who revised not always wisely, and frequently far too well. They made their objections in writing, and we, the writers, made ours. I often gained a victory, but the victory cost a great deal of work, and of time which was not paid for. Altogether, I wrote about two hundred articles, great and small, for the _Cyclopaedia_. On the other hand, there was pleasant and congenial society among my fellow-workmen, and the labour itself was immensely instructive. If any man wishes to be well informed, let him work on a cyclopaedia. As I could read several languages, I was additionally useful at times. The greatest conciseness of style is required for such work. In German cyclopaedias this is carried to a fault.

After a while I began to find that there was much more money to be made outside the _Cyclopaedia_ than in it. William H. Hurlbut, whom I had once seen so nearly shot, had been the "foreign editor" of the _New York Times_. Mr. Henry Raymond, its proprietor, had engaged a Mr. Hammond to come after some six months to take his place, and I was asked to fill it _ad interim_. I did so, so much to Mr. Raymond's satisfaction, that he much regretted when I left that he had not previously engaged me. He was always very kind to me. He said that now and then, whenever he wanted a really superior art criticism, I should write it. He was quite right, for there were not many reporters in New York who had received such an education in aesthetics as mine. When Patti made her _debut_ in opera for the first time, I was the only writer who boldly predicted that she would achieve the highest lyrical honours or become a "star" of the first magnitude. Apropos of Hurlbut, I heard many years after, in England, that a certain well-known _litterateur_, who was not one of his admirers, having seen him seated in close _tete-a-tete_ with a very notorious and unpopular character, remarked regretfully, "Just to think that with one pistol-bullet _both_ might have been settled!" Hurlbut was, even as a boy, very handsome, with a pale face and black eyes, and extremely clever, being _facile princeps_, the head of every class, and extensively read. But there was "a screw loose" somewhere in him. He was subject, but not very frequently, to such fits of passion or rage, that he literally became blind while they lasted. I saw him one day in one of these throw his arms about and stamp on the ground, as if unable to behold any one. I once heard a young lady in New York profess unbounded admiration for him, because "he looked so charmingly like the devil." For many years the _New York Herald_ always described him as the Reverend Mephistopheles Hurlbut. There was another very beautiful lady who afterwards died a strange and violent death, as also a friend of mine, an editor in _New_ York, both of whom narrated to me at very great length "a grotesque Iliad of the wild career" of this remarkable man.

It never rains but it pours. Frank Leslie, who had been with me on Barnum's _Illustrated News_, was now publishing half-a-dozen periodicals and newspapers, and offered me a fair price to give him my mornings. I did so. Unfortunately, my work was not specified, and he retained his old editors, who naturally enough did not want me, although they treated me civilly enough. One of these was Thomas Powell, who had seen a great deal of all the great English writers of the last generation. But there was much rather shady, shaky Bohemianism about the frequenters of our sanctum, and, all things considered, it was a pity that I ever entered it.

_Und noch weiter_. There was published in New York at that time (1860) an illustrated comic weekly called _Vanity Fair_. There was also in the city a kind of irregular club known as the Bohemians, who had been inspired by Murger's novel of that name to imitate the life of its heroes. They met every evening at a lager-beer restaurant kept by a German named Pfaff. For a year or two they made a great sensation in New York. Their two principal men were Henry Clapp and Fitz-James O'Brien. Then there were Frank Wood and George Arnold, W. Winter, C. Gardette, and others. Wood edited _Vanity Fair_, and all the rest contributed to it. There was some difficulty or other between Wood and Mr. Stephens, the _gerant_ of the weekly, and Wood left, followed by all the clan. I was called in in the emergency, and what with writing myself, and the aid of R. H. Stoddard, T. B. Aldrich, and a few more, we made a very creditable appearance indeed. Little by little the Bohemians all came back, and all went well.

Now I must here specify, for good reasons, that I held myself very strictly aloof from the Bohemians, save in business affairs. This was partly because I was married, and I never saw the day in my life when to be regarded as a real Bohemian vagabond, or shiftless person, would not have given me the horrors. I would have infinitely preferred the poorest settled employment to such life. I mention this because a very brilliant and singular article entitled "Charles G. Leland _l'ennemi des Allemands_" (this title angered me), which appeared in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ in 1871, speaks of me by implication as a frequenter of Pfaff's, declaring that I there introduced Artemus Ward to the Bohemian brotherhood, and that it was entirely due to me that Mr. Browne was brought out before the American World. This is quite incorrect. Mr. Browne had made a name by two or three very popular sketches before I had ever seen him. But it is very true that I aided him to write, and suggested and encouraged the series of sketches which made him famous, as he himself frankly and generously declared, for Charles Browne was at heart an honest gentleman, if there ever was one; which is the one thing in life better than success.

Mr. Stephens realising that I needed an assistant, and observing that Browne's two sketches of the Showman's letter and the Mormons had made him well known, invited him to take a place in our office. He was a shrewd, naif, but at the same time modest and unassuming young man. He was a native of Maine, but familiar with the West. Quiet as he seemed, in three weeks he had found out everything in New York. I could illustrate this by a very extraordinary fact, but I have not space for everything. I proposed to him to continue his sketches. "Write," I said, "a paper on the Shakers." He replied that he knew nothing about them. I had been at Lenox, Massachusetts, where I had often gone to New Lebanon and seen their strange worship and dances, and while on the _Illustrated News_ had had a conference with their elders on an article on the Shakers. So I told him what I knew, and he wrote it, making it a condition that I would correct it. He wrote the sketch, and others. He was very slow at composition, which seemed strange to me, who was accustomed to write everything as I now do, _currente calamo_ (having written all these memoirs, so far, within a month--more or less, and certainly very little more). From this came his book.

When he wrote the article describing his imprisonment, there was in it a sentence, "Jailor, I shall die unless you bring me something to eat!" In the proof we found, "I shall die unless you bring me something to _talk_." He was just going to correct this, when I cried, "For Heaven's sake, Browne, let that stand! It's best as it is." He did so, and so the reader may find it in his work.

Meanwhile the awful storm of war had gathered and was about to burst. I may here say that there was a kind of literary club or association of ladies and gentlemen who met once a week of evenings in the Studio Buildings, where I had many friends, such as Van Brunt, C. Gambrell, Hazeltine, Bierstadt, Gifford, Church, and Mignot. At this club I constantly met General Birney, the great Abolitionist, whose famous charge at Gettysburg did so much to decide the battle. Constant intercourse with him and with C. A. Dana greatly inspired me in my anti- slavery views. The manager of _Vanity Fair_ was very much averse to absolutely committing the journal to Republicanism, and I was determined on it. I had a delicate and very difficult path to pursue, and I succeeded, as the publication bears witness. I went several times to Mr. Dana, and availed myself of his shrewd advice. Browne, too, agreed pretty fairly with me. I voted for Abraham Lincoln at the first election in New York. I voted _on principle_, for I confess that every conceivable thing had been said and done to represent him as an ignorant, ungainly, silly Western Hoosier, and even the Republican press had little or nothing to say as to his good qualities. Horace Greeley had "sprung him" on the Convention at the eleventh hour and fifty-ninth minute as the only available man, and he had been chosen as our candidate to defeat Douglas.

Let me here relate two anecdotes. When my brother heard of Lincoln's "candidacy" he said--

"I don't see why the people shouldn't be allowed to have a President for once."

A Copperhead friend of mine, who was always aiming at "gentility," remarked to me with an air of disgust on the same subject--

"I do _wisht_ we could have a gentleman for President for _oncet_."

The said Copperhead became in due time a Republican office-holder, and is one yet.

Lincoln was elected. Then came the storm. Our rejoicings were short. Sumter was fired on. Up to that time everybody, including President Lincoln, had quite resolved that, if the South was resolved to secede, it must be allowed to depart in peace. There had been for many years a conviction that our country was growing to be too large to hold together. I always despised the contemptible idea. I had been in correspondence with the Russian Iskander or Alexander Herzen, who was a century in advance of his time. He was the real abolisher of serfdom in Russia, as history will yet prove. I once wrote a very long article urging the Russian Government to throw open the Ural gold mines to foreigners, and make every effort to annex Chinese territory and open a port on the Pacific. Herzen translated it into Russian (I have a copy of it), and circulated twenty thousand copies of it in Russia. The Czar read it. Herzen wrote to me: "It will be pigeon-holed for forty years, and then perhaps acted on. The Pacific will be the Mediterranean of the future." With such ideas I did not believe in the dismemberment of the United States. {237}

But Sumter was fired on, and the whole North rose in fury. It was the silliest act ever committed. The South, with one-third of the votes, had two-thirds of all the civil, military, and naval appointments, and every other new State, and withal half of the North, ready to lick its boots, and still was not satisfied. It could not go without giving us a thrashing. And that was the drop too much. So we fought. And we conquered; but _how_? It was all expressed in a few words, which I heard uttered by a common man at a _Bulletin_ board, on the dreadful day when we first read the news of the retreat at Bull Run: "It's hard--but we must buckle up and go at it again." It is very strange that the South never understood that among the mud-sills and toiling slaves and factory serfs of the North the spirit which had made men enrich barren New England and colonise the Western wilderness would make them buckle up and go at it again boldly to the bitter end.

One evening I met C. A. Dana on Broadway. War had fairly begun. "It will last," he said, "not less than four years, but it may extend to seven."

Trouble now came thick and fast. _Vanity Fair_ was brought to an end. Frank Leslie found that he no longer required my services, and paid my due, which was far in arrears, in his usual manner, that is, by orders on advertisers for goods which I did not want, and for which I was charged double prices. Alexander Cummings had a very ingenious method of "shaving" when obliged to pay his debts. His friend Simon Cameron had a bank--the Middleton--which, if not a very wild cat, was far from tame, as its notes were always five or ten per cent. below par, to our loss--for we were always paid in Middleton. I have often known the clerk to take a handful of notes at par and send out to buy Middleton wherewith to pay me. I am sorry to say that such tricks were universal among the very great majority of proprietors with whom I had dealings. To "do" the _employes_ to the utmost was considered a matter of course, especially when the one employed was a "literary fellow" of any kind or an artist.

I should mention that while in New York I saw a great deal of Bayard Taylor and his wife. I had known him since 1850 and was intimate with him till his death. He occupied the same house with the distinguished poet R. H. Stoddard. I experienced from both much kindness. We had amusing Saturday evenings there, where droll plays were improvised, and admirable disguises made out of anything. In after years, in London, Walter H. Pollock, Minto (recently deceased), and myself, did the same. One night, in the latter circle, we played _Hamlet_, but the chief character was the Sentinel, who stared at the Ghost with such open-jawed horror--"_bouche beante_, _rechignez_!"--and so prominently, that poor Hamlet was under a cloud. Pollock's great capuchon overcoat served for all kinds of mysterious characters. We were also kindly entertained many a time and oft in New York by Mr. and Mrs. Charles A. Dana.

My engagement expired on the _Times_--where, by the way, I was paid in full in good money--and I found myself without employment in a fearful financial panic. During the spring and early summer we had lived at the Gramercy Park Hotel; we now went to a very pleasant boarding-house kept by Mrs. Dunn, on Staten Island. My old friend, George Ward, and G. W. Curtis, well known in literature and politics (who had been at Mr. Greene's school), lived at no great distance from us. The steamboats from New York to Staten Island got to racing, and I enjoyed it very much, but George Ward and some of the milder sort protested against it, and it was stopped; which I thought rather hard, for we had very little amusement in those dismal days. I was once in a steamboat race when our boat knocked away the paddle-box from the other and smashed the wheel. From the days of the Romans and Norsemen down to the present time, there was never any form of amusement discovered so daring, so dangerous, and so exciting as a steamboat race, and nobody but Americans could have ever invented or indulged in it.