Chapter VI: Life on the Press. 1866-1869 (2)

In the summer Colonel Forney went to Europe with John the junior. When he left he said, "I do not expect you to raise the circulation of the _Press_, but I hope that you will be able to keep it from falling in the dead season." I went to work, and what with enlarging the telegraphic news, and correspondence, and full reports of conventions, I materially increased the sale. It cost a great deal of money, to be sure, but the Colonel did not mind that. At this time there came into our office as associate with me Captain W. W. Nevin. He had been all through the war. I took a great liking to him, and we always remained intimate friends. All in our office except myself were from Lancaster County, the birthplace, I believe, of Fitch and Fulton. It is a Pennsylvania German county, and as I notoriously spoke German openly without shame ours was called a Dutch office. Once when Colonel Forney wrote a letter from Holland describing the windmills, the _Sunday Transcript_ unkindly remarked that "he had better come home and look after his own Dutch windmill at the corner of Seventh and Chestnut Streets."

I had at this time a great deal to do with the operas and theatres, and often wrote the reviews. After a while, as Captain Nevin relieved me of a great deal of work, and I had an able assistant named Norcross, I devoted myself chiefly to dramatic criticism and the weekly, and such work as suited me best. As for the dignity of managership, Captain Nevin and I tossed it from one to the other like a hot potato in jest, but between us we ran the paper very well. There was an opera impresario named Maurice Strakosch, of whom I had heard that he was hard to deal with and irritable. I forget now who the prima donna in his charge was, but there had appeared in our paper a criticism which might be interpreted in some detail unfavourably by a captious critic. One afternoon there came into the office, where I was alone, a gentlemanly- seeming man, who began to manifest anger in regard to the criticism in question. I replied, "I do not know, sir, what your position in the opera troupe may be, but if it be anything which requires a knowledge of English, I am afraid that you are misplaced. There was no intention to offend in the remarks, and so far as the lady is concerned I shall only be too glad to say the very best I can of her. _Comprenez_, _monsieur_, _c'est une bagatelle_." He laughed, and we spoke French, then Italian, then German, and of Patti and Sontag and Lind. Then I asked him what he really was, and he replied, "I do not believe that you even know the name of my native tongue. It is Czech." I stared at him amazed, and said--

"Veliky Bog! Rozprava pochesky? Nekrasneya rejece est."

The Bohemian gentleman drew a handsomely bound book from his pocket. "Sir," he said, "this is my album. It is full of signatures of great artists, even of kings and queens and poets. There is not a name in it which is not that of a distinguished person, and I do not know what your name is, but I beg that you will write it in my book."

Nearly the same scene was repeated soon after, with the same words, when the great actress Fanny Janauschek came to Philadelphia. At that time she played only in German. Her manager, Grau, introduced me to her, and she complimented me on my German, and praised the language as the finest in the world.

"Yes," I replied, "it _is_ certainly very fine. But I know a finer, which goes more nearly to the heart, and with which I can move you more deeply."

"And what is that?" cried the great artist astonished.

"It is," I replied, in her native tongue, "_Bohemian_. That is the language for me."

Madame Janauschek was so affected that she burst out crying, though she was a woman of tremendous nerve. We became great friends, and often met again in after years in England.

I have seen Ristori play for thirty nights in succession, {346} and Rachel and Sarah Bernhardt; but as regards true genius, Janauschek in her earlier days was incomparably their superior; for these all played from nerves and instinct, but Janauschek from her brain and intellect. I often wondered that she did not write plays. It is said of Rachel that there was once a five-act play in which she died at the end of the fourth act. After it had had a long run she casually asked some one _how it ended_. She had never read the fifth act. Such a story could never have been told of Janauschek.

In the summer there were one or two railroad excursions to visit new branch roads in Pennsylvania. While on one of these I visited the celebrated Mauch Chunk coal mines, and rode on the switchback railway, where I had a fearfully narrow escape from death. This switchback is a _montagne Russe_ coming up and down a hill, and six miles in length. Yet, though the rate of speed is appalling, the engineer can stop the car in a few seconds' time with the powerful brake. We were going down headlong, when all at once a cow stepped out of the bushes on the road before us, and if we had struck her we must have gone headlong over the cliff and been killed. But by a miracle the engineer stopped the car just as we got to the cow. We were saved by a second. Something very like it had occurred to my wife and to me in 1859. We were going to Reading by rail, when the train ran off the track and went straight for an embankment where there was a fall of 150 feet. It was stopped just as the locomotive protruded or looked over the precipice. Had there been the _least trifle_ more of steam on at that instant we must all have perished.

In November of this my second year on the _Press_ my father died. One thing occurred on this sad bereavement which alleviated it a little. I had always felt all my life that he had never been satisfied with my want of a fixed career or position. He did not, I think, _very_ much like John Forney, the audacious, reckless politician, but he still respected his power and success, and it astonished him a little, and many others quite as much, to find that I was in many respects Forney's right-hand man, and manager of a bold political paper which had a great influence. A day or two before he died my father expressed himself kindly to the effect that I had at last done well, and that he was satisfied with me. At last, after so many years, he felt that I had _etat_--a calling, a definite position. In fact, in those days it was often said that Forney could make himself President, as he indeed might have done but for certain errors, no greater than have been committed by more successful men, and a stroke of ill-luck such as few can resist.

The winter passed quietly. I was extremely fond of my life and work. Summer came, and with it a great desire for a change and wild life and the West, for I had worked very hard. A very great railway excursion, which was destined to have a great effect, was being organised, and both my wife and I were invited to join it. Mr. John Edgar Thompson, the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, Mr. Hinckley, of the Baltimore road, President Felton, Professor Leidy, Robert Lamborn, and a number of other notables, were to go to Duluth, on Lake Superior, and decide on the terminus of the railroad as a site for a city. Mrs. John E. Thompson had her own private car, which was seventy feet in length, and fitted up with every convenience and luxury. To this was added the same directors' car in which I had travelled to Minnesota. There were to be in all ten or twelve gentlemen and ten ladies. There was such efficient service that one young man, a clerk, was detailed especially to look after our luggage. As we stopped every night at some hotel, he would inquire what we required to be taken to our rooms, and saw that it was brought back in the morning. I went off in such a hurry that I forgot my Indian blanket, nor had I any revolver or gun, all of which, especially the blanket, I sadly missed ere I returned. I got, before I left, a full white flannel or fine white cloth suit, which was then a startling novelty, and wore it to the Falls of the Mississippi. Little did I foresee that ere it gave out I should also have it on at the Cataracts of the Nile!

So we started and after a few hours' travel, stopped at Altona. There I was very much amused by an old darkey at the railway-station hotel, who had, as he declared, "specially the kyar of de ladies an' quality." He had been a slave till the war broke out, and had been wondrously favoured by visions and revelations which guided him to freedom. "De Lawd he 'pear to me in a dream, an' I hyar a vi'ce which cry, 'Simon, arise an' git out of dis, an' put fo' de Norf as fass as you kin travel, fo' de day of de 'pressor is at an end, an' you is to be free.' So I rosed an' fled, hardly a-waitin' to stuff my bag wid some corn-dodgers an' bacon, an' foller de Norf Star till I git confused an' went to sleep agin, wen, lo, an angel expostulated hisself befo' my eyes in a wision, an' say, 'Simon, beholdes' dou dat paff by de riber? Dat's de one fo' you to foller, ole son!' So I follers it till I git on de right trail. Den I met anoder nigger a-'scapin' from the bon's of captivity, an' carryin' a cold ham, an' I jined in wid him--you bet--an' so we come to de Lawd's country."

And so gaily on to Chicago. We went directly to the first hotel, and as soon as I had toiletted and gone below, I saw on the opposite building a sign with the words _Chicago Tribune_. This was an exchange of ours, so I crossed over, and meeting the editor by chance in the doorway, was welcomed and introduced to Governor Desbrosses, who stood by. Then I went to a telegraph office and sent a despatch to the _Press_. The man wanted me to pay. I told him to C. O. D., "collect on delivery." He declined. I said, "Your principal office is in Philadelphia, is it not?--Third and Chestnut Streets. Just send a telegram and ask the name of your landlord. It's Leland, and _I'm the man_. If you make me pay, I'll raise your rent." He laughed heartily and let me off, but not without a parting shot: "You see, Mr. Leland, there are so many scallawags {349} from the East come here, that we are obliged to be a little particular."

I returned to the hotel, and was immediately introduced to some one having authority. I narrated my late experience. He looked at me and said, "How long have you been in Chicago?" I replied, "About thirty minutes." He answered gravely, "I think you'd better _stay_ here. You'll suit the place." I was beginning to feel the moral influence of the genial air of the West. Chicago is emphatically what is termed "a place," and a certain amount of calm confidence in one's self is not in that city to any one's discredit. Once there was an old lady of a "hard" type in the witness-box in an American city. She glared round at the judge, the jury, and the spectators, and then burst out with, "You needn't all be staring at me in that way. I don't keer a --- for you all. I've lived eleven years in Chicago, and ain't affeard of the devil." Chicago is said in Indian to mean the place of skunks, but calling a rose a skunk-cabbage don't make it one.

Walking on the edge of the lake near the city, the waters cast up a good- sized living specimen of that extraordinary fish-lizard, the great _menobranchus_, popularly known as the hell-bender from its extreme ugliness. Owing to the immense size of its spermatozoa, it has rendered great aid to embryology, a science which, when understood _au fond_, will bring about great changes in the human race. We were taken out in a steamboat to the end of the great aqueduct, which was, when built, pronounced, I think by the London _Times_, to be the greatest engineering work of modern times.

In due time we came to St. Paul, Minnesota. We went to a very fair hotel and had a very good dinner. In the West it is very common among the commonalty to drink coffee and milk through dinner, and indeed with all meals, instead of wine or ale, but the custom is considered as vulgar by swells. Having finished dessert, I asked the Irish waiter to bring me a small cup of black coffee and brandy. Drawing himself up stiffly, Pat replied, "We don't serve caafy at dinner in _this_ hotel." There was a grand roar of laughter which the waiter evidently thought was at _my_ expense, as he retreated smiling.

We were kindly received in St. Paul by everybody. There is this immense advantage of English or American hospitality over that of all other countries, that it introduces us to the _home_, and makes us forget that we are strangers. When we were at the end of the fearfully wearisome great moral circus known as the Oriental Congress, held all over Scandinavia in 1890, there came to me one evening in the station a great Norseman with his friends. With much would-be, ox-like dignity he began, "You ha-ave now experienced de glorious haspitality off our country. You will go oom and say--"

"Stop a minute there!" I exclaimed, for I was bored to death with a show which had been engineered to tatters, and to half defeating all the work of the Congress, in order to glorify the King and Count Landberg. "I have been here in your country six weeks, and I had letters of introduction, and have made no end of acquaintances. I have been shown thousands of fireworks, which blind me, and offered dozens of champagne, which I never touch, and public dinners, which I did not attend. But during the whole time I have never once seen the inside of a Swedish or Norwegian house." Which was perfectly true, nor have I ever seen one to this day. There is a kind of "hospitality" which consists of giving yourself a grand treat at a tavern or _cafe_, and inviting your strangers to it to help you to be glorified. But to very domestic people and utter Philistines, _domestic_ life lacks the charm of a brass band, and the mirrors and gilding of a restaurant or hotel; therefore, what they themselves enjoy most, they, with best intent, but most unwisely, inflict on more civilised folk. But in America and England, where home-life is _worth_ living and abounding in every attraction, and public saloons are at a discount, the case is reversed. And in these Western towns, of which many were, so to speak, almost within hearing of the whoop of the savage or the howl of the wolf (as Leavenworth really was), we experienced a refinement of true hospitality in homes--kindness and tact such as I have never known to be equalled save in Great Britain. One evening I was at a house in St. Paul, where I was struck by the beauty, refined manners, and agreeableness of our hostess, who was a real Chippeway or Sioux Indian, and wife of a retired Indian trader. She had been well educated at a Canadian French seminary.

We were taken over to see the rival city of Minneapolis, of which word my brother Henry said it was a vile grinding up together of Greek and Indian. _Minne_ means water; _Minne-sota_, turbid water, and _Minne-haha_ does not signify "laughing," but _falling_ water. This we also visited, and I found it so charming, that I was delighted to think that for once an Indian name had been kept, and that the young ladies of the boarding-schools of St. Paul or Minneapolis had not christened or devilled it "Diana's Bath."

We were received kindly by the Council of the city of Minneapolis. Half of them had come from the East afflicted with consumption, and all had recovered. But it is necessary to remain there to live. My wife's cousin, Mr. Richard Price, who then owned the great saw-mill next the Fall of St. Anthony, came with this affliction from Philadelphia, and got over it. After six years' absence he returned to Philadelphia, and died in six weeks of consumption. Strangely enough, consumption is the chief cause of death among the Indians, but this is due to their careless habits, wearing wet moccasins and the like.

Now a great question arose. It was necessary for the magnates of our party to go to Duluth, and to do this they must make a seven days' journey through the wilderness, either on a very rough military road cut through the woods during the war, or sometimes on no road at all. Houses or post-stations, often of only one or two rooms, were sometimes a day's journey apart. The question was whether delicate ladies, utterly unaccustomed to anything like hard travel could take this trip, during which they must endure clouds of mosquitos, put up with camp-cooking, or often none, and otherwise go through privations such as only an Indian or a frontiersman would care to experience? The entire town of St. Paul, and all the men of our party, vigorously opposed taking the ladies, while I, joining the latter, insisted on it that they could go; for, as I said to all assembled, where the devil is afraid to go he sends a woman; and I had always observed that in travelling, long after men are tired out women are generally all right. They are never more played out _than they want to be_.

"Femme plaint, femme deult,
Femme est malade quand elle veult,
Et par Sainte Marie!
Quand elle veult elle est guerye."

And of course _we_ carried the day. Twelve men, even though backed up by a city council, have no chance against any ten women. To be sure women, like all other savages, require a male leader--I mean to say, just as Goorkha troops, though brave as lions, must have an English captain--so they conquered under my guidance!

Having had experience in fitting out for the wilderness, I was requested to see to the stores--so many hams to so many people for so many days, so much coffee, and so forth. I astonished all by insisting that there should be one _tin cup_ to every traveller. "Every glass you have will soon be broken," I said. And so it was, sooner than I expected. As tin cups could not be found in St. Paul, we bought three or four dozen small tin basins of about six inches diameter at the rim, and when champagne was served out it was, _faute de mieux_, drunk from these eccentric goblets.

In the first waggon were Mr. and Mrs. Thompson and Mrs. Leland. Their driver was a very eccentric Canadian Frenchman named Louis. He was to the last degree polite to the ladies, but subject to attacks of Indian rage at mere trifles, when he would go aside, swear, and destroy something like a lunatic in a fury, and then return quite happy and serene. I was in the second waggon with three ladies, a man being wanted in every vehicle. Our driver was named George, and he was altogether like Brigham, minus the Mexican-Spanish element. George had, however, also lived a great deal among Indians, and been at the great battle of the Chippeways and Sioux, and was full of interesting and naive discourse.

Of course, we of the two leading waggons all talked to Louis in French, who gave himself great airs on it. One morning George asked me in confidence, "Mr. Leland, you're not all French, are you?" "Certainly not," I replied; "we're from Philadelphia." "Well," replied George, "so I told Louis, but he says you _are_ French, like him, and shut me up by askin' me if I hadn't heard you talkin' it. Now what I want to know is, if you're _not_ French, how came the _whole_ of you to know it?" I explained to George, to his astonishment, that in the East it was usual for all well-educated persons, especially ladies, to learn it. I soon became as intimate with George as I had been with Brigham, and began to learn Chippeway of him, and greet the Indians whom we met. One day George said--

"Of course you have no Indian blood in you, Mr. Leland; but weren't you a great deal among 'em when you were young?"

"Why?"

"Because you've got queer little old Injun ways. Whenever you stop by the roadside to talk to anybody and sit down, you always rake the small bits of wood together and pull out a match and make a _smudge_" (a very smoky fire made by casting dust on it), "just like an Indian in an Injun kind of way." (In after years I found this same habit of making fires of small bits of wood peculiar to old English gypsies.)

The smudge is the great summer institution of Minnesota. It is the safeguard against mosquitos. They are all over the State in such numbers that they constitute a plague. We all wore all the time over our faces and necks a kind of guard or veil, shaped exactly like an Egyptian _fanous_ or folding lantern. It is cylindrical, made of _tulle_ or coarse lace, with rings. At every house people sat in the porticos over a tin bucket, in which there was a smudge--that is to say, in smoke. In the evening some one goes with a tin or iron pail containing a smudge, and fills the bedrooms with dense smoke. One evening Mr. Hinckley and another of our party went fishing without veils. They returned with their necks behind swollen up as if with _goitres_ or _Kropfe_. I knew a young Englishman who with friends, somewhere beyond Manitoba, encountered such a storm of mosquitos that their oxen were killed, and the party saved themselves by riding away on horseback. So he told me.

At the stations--all log-houses--the ladies collected pillows and buffalo blankets, and, making a great bed, all slept in one room. We men slept in waggons or under a tent, which was not quite large enough for all. The Indian women cut spruce twigs and laid them over-lapping on the ground for our bed. By preference I took the outside, _al fresco_. One night we stayed at a house which had an upper and a lower storey. The ladies camped upstairs. In the morning, when we men below awoke, all took a drink of whisky. There entered a very tall Indian, clad in a long black blanket, who looked on very approvingly at the drinking. I called to my wife above to hand me down my whisky flask. "There is a big Indian here who wants a drink," I remarked. "I think I know," she replied, "who that big Indian is," but handed down the flask. "Don't waste whisky on an _Indian_" said one of my companions. But I filled the cup with a tremendous slug, and handed it to the Objibway. He took it down like milk, and never a word spoke he, but when it was swallowed he looked at me and winked. Such a wink as that was! I think I see it now--so inspired with gratitude and humour as to render all words needless. He had a rare sense of tact and gratitude. Soon after I was sitting out of doors among a few ladies, when the Indian, who had divined that I was short of Chippeway and wished to learn, stalked up, and pointing to our beauty, said gravely, _squoah_--_i.e._, woman. Then he indicated several other articles, told me the Indian name for each and walked away. It was all he could do. The ladies, who could not imagine why this voluntary lesson was given to me, were much amused at it. But I understood it; he had seen the Injun in me at a glance, and knew what I wanted most!

One night we stopped at a place called Kettle River. It was very picturesque. Over the rushing stream the high rocky banks actually overhung the water. I got into a birch canoe with my wife, and two Indian boys paddled us, while others made a great fire on the cliff above, which illuminated the scene. Other Indian youths jumped into the water and swam about and skylarked, whooping wildly. It reminded me strangely of the Blue Grotto of Capri, where our boatmen jumped in and swam in a sulphur-azure glow, only that this was red in the firelight.

Our whisky ran short--it always does on all such excursions--and our drivers in consequence became very "short" also, or rather unruly. But _bon chemin_, _mal chemin_, we went on, and the ladies, as I had predicted, pulled through merrily.

One day, at a halt, I found, with the ladies, in the woods by a stream, a pretty sight. It was a wigwam, which was very open, and which had been made to look like a bower with green boughs. When I was in the artillery I was the only person who ever thus adorned our tent in Indian style. It is very pleasant on a warm day, and looks artistic. In the wigwam sat a pretty Indian woman with a babe. The ladies were, of course, at once deeply interested, but the Indian could not speak English. One of the ladies had a common Japanese fan, with the picture of a grotesque god, and I at once saw my way to interest our hostess.

I once read in the journal of a missionary's wife in Canada that she had a curious Malay or Cingalese dagger, with a curved blade and wooden sheath, while on the handle was the figure of an idol. One day she showed this to an Indian, and the next day he came with five more, and these again with fifteen, till it seemed as if the whole country had gone wild over it. Very much alarmed at such heathenism, the lady locked it up and would show it no more. Ere she did so, she asked an old Indian how it was possible to make a scabbard of one piece of wood, with a hole in it to fit the blade. This man, who had been one of the most devoted admirers of the deity on the handle, saw no puzzle in this. He explained that the hole was burned in by heating the blade.

I showed the god on the fan to the Indian woman, and said, "_Manitu_--_ktchee manitu_" ("a god--a great god"). She saw at once that it was heathen, and her heart went out unto it with great delight. With a very few Chippeway words and many signs I explained to her that forty days' journey from us was the sea, and forty days beyond another country where the people had this _manitou_. I believe that the lady gave her the fan, and it may be that she worships it to this day. How absurd it is to try to force on such people Catholic or Protestant forms, which they do _not_ understand and never will, while their souls take in with joy the poly-pantheistic developments of supernaturalism, and that which suits their lives. Like the little boy who _thought_ he would like to have a Testament, but _knew_ he wanted a squirt, the Indian, unable to rise to the grandeur of monotheistic trinitarianism, is delighted with goblins, elves, and sorcery. He can manage the squirt.

At Fond-du-Lac I became acquainted with a Mr. Duffy, a very genial and clever man, a son of a former governor of Rhode Island. He had an Indian wife and family, and was looked up to by the Indians as _Kitchimokomon_, "the white man." That he was a gentleman will appear from the following incident. There was one of our party who, to put it mildly, was not remarkable for refinement. A trader at Fond-du-Lac had a very remarkable carved Indian pipe, for which he asked me fifteen dollars. It certainly was rather a high price, so I offered ten. Immediately the man of whom I spoke laid down fifteen dollars and took the pipe. He was _dans son droit_, but the action was churlish. It seemed so to Duffy, who was standing by. After I had returned to Philadelphia, Mr. Duffy sent me a very handsome pipe for a present, which he assured me had been smoked at two grand councils. He was indeed a "white man."

There was an old Indian here whose name in Indian meant "He who changes his position while sitting," but white people called him Martin "for short." He was wont to smoke a very handsome pipe. One day, seeing him smoking a wretched affair rudely hewn, I asked him if he had not a better. He replied, "I had, but I sold it to the _kcheemo-komon iqueh_"--the long-knife woman (_i.e._, to a white lady). Inquiry proved that the "long-knife woman" was Miss Lottie Foster, a very beautiful and delicate young lady from Philadelphia, to whom such a barbaric term seemed strangely applied. As for me, because I always bought every stone pipe which I could get, the Indians called me _Poaugun_ or Pipe. Among the Algonkin of the East in after-days I had a name which means _he who seeks hidden things_ (_i.e._, mysteries).

We came to Duluth. There were in those days exactly six houses and twenty-six Indian wigwams. However, we were all accommodated somehow. Here there were grand conferences of the railroad kings with the authorities of Duluth and Superior City, which was a few miles distant, and as the Dulutherans outbid the Father Superiors, the terminus of the road was fixed at Duluth.

It was arranged that the ladies should remain at Duluth while we, the men, were to go through the woods to examine a situation a day's march distant. We had Indians to carry our luggage. Every man took a blanket and a cord, put his load into it, turned the ends over the cord, and then drew it up like a bag. They carried very easily from 150 to 250 lbs. weight for thirty miles a day over stock and stone, up and down steep banks or amid rotten crumbling trees and moss. Though a good walker, I could not keep up with them.

I had with me a very genial and agreeable man as walking companion. His name was Stewart, and he was mayor, chief physician, and filled half-a- dozen other leading capacities in St. Paul. Our fellow-travellers vanished in the forest. Mayor Stewart and I with one Indian carrier found ourselves at two o'clock very thirsty indeed. The view was beautiful enough. A hundred yards below us by the steep precipice rushed the St. Lawrence, but we could not get at it to drink.

Stewart threw himself on the grass in despair. "Yes," he cried, "we're lost in the wilderness, and I'm going to die of thirst. Remember me to my family." "I say," he suddenly cried, "ask that Injun the name of that river."

I asked of the Indian, "_Wa go nin-iu_?" ("How do you call that?") Thinking I wanted to know the name for a stream, he replied, "_Sebe_." This is the same as _sipi_ in Missis-sippi.

"I knew it," groaned Stewart. "There is no such river as the _Sebe_ laid down on the map. We're lost in an unknown region."

"It occurs to me," I said, "that this is a judgment on me. When I think of the number of times in my life when I have walked past bar-rooms and neglected to go in and take a drink, I must think that it is a retribution."

"And I say," replied Stewart, "that if you ever do get back to civilisation, you'll be the old --- toper that ever was."

When we came to the camp we found there by mere chance a large party of surveyors. As there were thirty or forty of us, it was resolved, as so many white men had never before been in that region, to constitute a township and elect a member to the Legislature, or Congress, or something--I forget what; but it appeared that it was legal, and it was actually done--I voting with the rest as a settler. I, too, am a _Minnesot_.

We railroad people formed one party and sat at our evening meal by ourselves, the surveyors made another, and the Indians a third _table- d'hote_. An open tin of oysters was before us, and somebody said they were not good. One only needs say so to ruin the character of an oyster--and too often of "a human bivalve," as the Indiana orator said. We were about to pitch it away, when I asked the attendant to give it to the Indians. It was gravely passed by them from man to man till it came to the last, who lifted it to his mouth and _drank off the entire quart_, _oysters and all_, as if it had been so much cider. Amazed at this, I asked what it meant, but the only explanation I could get was, "He like um oyster."

This was a charming excursion, all through the grene wode wilde, and I enjoyed it. I had Indian society, and learned Indian talk, and bathed in charming rushing waters, and saw enormous pine trees 300 feet high, and slept _al fresco_, and ate _ad libitum_. To this day its remembrance inspires in me a feeling of deep, true poetry.

I think it was at Duluth that one morning there was brought in an old silver cross which had just been found in an Indian grave on the margin of the lake, not very far away. I went there with some others. It was evidently the grave of some distinguished man who had been buried about a hundred years ago. There were the decayed remains of an old-fashioned gun, and thousands of small beads adhering, still in pattern, to the _tibiae_. I dug up myself--in fact they almost lay on the surface, the sand being blown away--several silver bangles, which at first looked exactly like birch-bark peelings, and, what I very much prized, two or three stone cylinders or tubes, about half an inch in diameter, with a hole through them. Antiquaries have been much puzzled over these, some thinking that they were musical instruments, others implements for gambling. My own theory always was that they were used for smoking tobacco, and as those which I found were actually stuffed full of dried semi-decayed "fine cut," I still hold to it. I also purchased from a boy a red stone pipe-head, which was found in the same grave. I should here say that the pipe which had been bought away from me by the man above mentioned had on it the carving of a _reindeer_, which rendered it to me alone of living men peculiarly valuable, since I have laboured hard, and subsequently set forth in my "Algonkin Legends" the theory that the Algonkin Indians went far to the North and there mingled with the Norsemen of Greenland and Labrador. The man who got the pipe promised to leave it to me when he died, but he departed from life and never kept his word. A frequent source of grief to me has been to see objects of great value, illustrating some point in archaeology, seized as "curiosities" by ignorant wealthy folk. The most detestable form of this folly is the buying of _incunabula_, first editions or uncut copies, and keeping them from publication or reading, and, in short, of worshipping anything, be it a book or a coin, merely because it is _rare_. Men never expatiate on _rariora_ in literature or in china, or talk cookery and wines over-much, without showing themselves prigs. It is not any beauty in the _thing_, but the delightful sense of their own culture or wealth which they cultivate. When there is nothing in a thing but mere _rarity_ and cost to commend it, it is absolutely worthless, as is the learning and connoisseurship thereupon dependent.

Business concluded, we took a steamboat, and were very sea-sick on Lake Superior for twenty-four hours. Then we went to the Isle Royale, and saw the mines, which had been worked even by the ancient Mexicans; also an immense mass of amethysts. The country here abounds in agates. At Marquette there was brought on board a single piece of pure virgin copper from the mine which weighed more than 4,000 pounds. There it was, I think, that we found our cars waiting, and returned in them to Philadelphia.

It was at this time that my brother Henry died, and his loss inflicted on me a terrible mental blow, which went far, subsequently, to bring about a great crisis in my health. My dear brother was the most remarkable illustration of the fact that there are men who, by no fault of their own, and who, despite the utmost honour or integrity, deep intelligence, good education, and varied talents, are overshadowed all their lives by sorrow, and meet ill-luck at every turn. He went at sixteen as _employe_ into a Cuban importing house, where he learned Spanish. His principal failed, and thence he passed to a store in New York, where he worked far too hard for $600 a year. His successor, who did much less, was immediately paid $2,500 per annum. Finding that his employer was being secretly ruined by his partner, he warned the former, but only with the result of being severely reprimanded by the merchant and my father as a mischief-maker. After a while this merchant was absolutely ruined and bankrupted by his partner, as he himself declared to me, but, like many men, still kept his _rancune_ against my poor brother. By this time the eyesight and health of Henry quite gave out for some time. Every effort which he made, whether to get employment, to become artist or writer, failed. He published two volumes of tales, sporting sketches, &c., with Lippincott, in Philadelphia, which are remarkable for originality. One of them was subsequently written out by another distinguished author in another form. I do not say it was after my brother's, for I have known another case in which two men, having heard a story from Barnum, both published it, ignorant that the other had done so. But I would declare, in justice to my brother, that he told this story, which I am sure the reader knows, quite as well as did the other.

He travelled a great deal, was eighteen months in Rome and its vicinity, visited Algeria, Egypt, and Cuba and the West, always spending so little money that my father expressed his amazement at it. I regret to say that in my youth I never astonished him in this way. But this morbid conscientiousness or delicacy as to being dependent did him no good, for he might just as well have been thoroughly comfortable, and my father would never have missed it. The feeling that he could get no foothold in life, which had long troubled me, became a haunting spectre which followed him to the grave. His work "Americans in Rome" is one of the cleverest, most sparkling, and brilliant works of humour, without a trace of vulgarity, ever written in America. It had originally some such title as "Studios and Mountains," but the publisher, thinking that the miserable clap-trap title of "Americans in Rome" would create an impression that there was "gossip," and possibly scandal, in it, insisted on that. It was published in the weary panic of 1862 in the war, and fell dead from the press. Though he never really laughed, and was generally absolutely grave, my brother had an incredibly keen sense of fun, and in conversation could far outmaster or "walk over the head" of any humorist whom I ever met. He was very far, however, from showing off or being a professional wit. He was very fond, when talking with men who considered themselves clever, of making jests or puns in such a manner and in such an unaffected ordinary tone of voice that they took no note of the _quodlibets_. He enjoyed this much more than causing a laugh or being complimented. But taking his life through, he was simply unfortunate in everything, and his worst failures were when he made wisely directed energetic efforts to benefit himself or others. He rarely complained or grieved, having in him a deep _fond_ of what I, for want of a better term, call _Indian nature_, or stoicism, which is common in Americans, and utterly incomprehensible to, or rarely found in, a European.

The death of my father left me a fifth of his property, which was afterwards somewhat augmented by a fourth share of my poor brother's portion. For one year I drew no money from the inheritance, but went on living as before on my earnings, so that my wife remarked it really took me a year to realise that I had any money. After some months I bought a house in Locust Street, just opposite to where my father had lived, and in this house I remained six months previously to going to Europe in 1869. We had coloured servants, and I never in all my life, before or since, lived so well as during this time. The house was well furnished; there was even the great luxury of no piano, which is a great condition of happiness.

This year I was fearfully busy. As I had taken the dramatic criticism in hand, for which alone we had always employed a man, I went during twelve months 140 times to the opera, and every evening to several theatres, _et cetera_. Once I was caught beautifully. There had been an opera bouffe, the "Grande Duchesse" or something, running for two or three weeks, and I had written a criticism on it. This was laid over by "press of matter," but as the same play was announced for the next night with the same performers, we published the critique. But it so chanced that the opera by some accident was not played! The _Evening Bulletin_, my old paper, rallied me keenly on this blunder, and I felt badly. John Forney, jun., however, said it was mere rubbish of no consequence. He was such an arrant Bohemian and hardened son of the press, that he regarded it rather as a joke and a feather in our caps, indicating that we were a bounding lot, and not tied down to close observances. Truly this is a very fine spirit of freedom, but it may be carried too far, as I think it was by a friend of mine, who had but one principle in life, and that was _never_ to write his newspaper correspondence in the place from which it was dated. It came to pass that about three weeks after this retribution overtook the _Bulletin_, for it also published a review of an opera which was not sung, but I meanly passed the occurrence by without comment. When a man hits you, it is far more generous, manly, and fraternal to hit him back a good blow than to degrade him by silent contempt.

The Presidential campaign between Grant and Johnson was beginning to warm up. Colonel Forney was in a cyclone of hard work between Washington, Pennsylvania, and New York, carrying on a thousand plots and finely or coarsely drawn intrigues, raising immense sums, speaking in public, and, not to put it too finely, buying or trading votes in a thousand tortuous or "mud-turtlesome and possum-like ways"--for _non possumus_ was not in his Latin. Never shall I forget the disgust and indignation with which the great Republican champion entered the office one evening, and, flinging himself on a chair, declared that votes in New Jersey had gone up to sixty dollars a head! And I was forced to admit that sixty dollars for a Jerseyman did seem to be an exorbitant price. So he went forth on the war-path with fresh paint and a sharp tomahawk.

It often happened to me in his absence to have very curious and critical decisions in my power. One of these is the "reading in" or "reading out" of a man from his party. This is invariably done by a leading political newspaper. I remember, for instance, a man who had been very prominent in politics, and gone over to the Democrats, imploring me to readmit him to the fold; but, as I regarded him as a mere office-hunter, I refused to do it. _Excommunicatus sit_!

There was a _very_ distinguished and able man in a very high position. To him I had once addressed a letter begging a favour which would have been nothing at all to grant, but which was of great importance to me, and he had taken no notice of it. It came to pass that we had in our hands to publish certain very damaging charges against this great man. He found it out, and, humiliated, I may say agonised with shame and fear, he called with a friend, begging that the imputations might not be published. I believe from my soul that if I had not been so badly treated by him I should have refused his request, but, as it was, I agreed to withdraw the charges. It was the very best course, as I afterwards found. I am happy to say that, in after years, and in other lands, he showed himself very grateful to me. I am by nature as vindictive as an unconverted Indian, and as I am deeply convinced that it is vile and wicked, I fight vigorously against it. In my _Illustrated News_ days in New York I used to keep an old German hymn pasted up before me in the sanctum to remind me not to be revengeful. Out of all such battling of opposing principles come good results. I feel this in another form in the warring within me of superstitious _feelings_ and scientific convictions.

It became apparent that on Pennsylvania depended the election of President. The State had only been prevented from turning Copperhead- Democrat--which was the same as seceding--by the incredible exertions of the Union League, led by George H. Boker, and the untiring aid of Colonel Forney. But even now it was very uncertain, and in fact the election--on which the very existence of the Union virtually depended--was turned by only a few hundred votes; and, as Colonel Forney and George H. Boker admitted, it would have been lost but for what I am going to narrate.

There were many thousand Republican Clubs all through the State, but they had no one established official organ or newspaper. This is of vast importance, because such an organ is sent to doubtful voters in large numbers, and gives the keynote or clue for thousands of speeches and to men stumping or arguing. It occurred to me early to make the _Weekly Press_ this organ. I employed a young man to go to the League and copy all the names and addresses of all the thousands of Republican clubs in the State. Then I had the paper properly endorsed by the League, and sent a copy to every club at cost price or for nothing. This proved to be a _tremendous_ success. It cost us money, but Colonel Forney never cared for that, and he greatly admired the _coup_. I made the politics hot, to suit country customers. I found the gun and Colonel Forney the powder and ball, and between us we made a hit.

One day Frank Wells, of the _Bulletin_ (very active indeed in the Union League), met me and asked if I, since I had lived in New York, could tell them anything as to what kind of a man George Francis Train really was. "He has come over all at once," he said, "from the Democratic party, and wishes to stump Pennsylvania, if we will pay him his expenses." I replied--

"I know Train personally, and understand him better than most men. He is really a very able speaker for a popular American audience, and will be of immense service if rightly managed. But you must get some steady, sensible man to go with him and keep him in hand and regulate expenses, &c."

It was done. After the election I conversed with the one who had been the bear-leader, and he said--

"It was an immense success. Train made thousands of votes, and was a most effective speaker. His mania for speaking was incredible. One day, after addressing two or three audiences at different towns, we stopped at another to dine. While waiting for the soup, I heard a voice as of a public speaker, and looking out, saw Train standing on a load of hay, addressing a thousand admiring auditors."

There are always many men who claim to have carried every Presidential election--the late Mr. Guiteau was one of these geniuses--but it is also true that there are many who would by _not_ working have produced very great changes. Forney was a mighty wire-puller, if not exactly before the Lord, at least before the elections, and he opined that I had secured the success. There were _certainly_ other men--_e.g._, Peacock, who influenced as many votes as the _Weekly Press_, and George Francis Train--without whose aid Pennsylvania and Grant's election would have been lost, but it is something to have been one of the few who did it.

When General Grant came in, he resolved to have nothing to do with "corrupt old politicians," even though they had done him the greatest service. So he took up with a lot of doubly corrupt young ones, who were only inferior to the veterans in ability. Colonel Forney was snubbed cruelly, in order to rob him. Whatever he had done wrongly, he had done his _work_ rightly, and if Grant intended to throw his politicians overboard, he should have informed them of it before availing himself of their services. His conduct was like that of the old lady who got a man to saw three cords of wood for her, and then refused to pay him because he had been divorced.

I had never in my life asked for an office from anybody. Mr. Charles A. Dana once said that the work I did for the Republican party on _Vanity Fair_ alone was worth a foreign mission, and that was a mere trifle to what I did with the _Continental Magazine_, my pamphlet, &c. When Grant was President, I petitioned that a little consulate worth $1,000 (200 pounds) might be given to a poor Episcopal clergyman, but a man accustomed to consular work, who spoke French, and who had been secretary to two commodores. It was for a small French town. It was supported by Forney and George H. Boker; but it was _refused_ because I was "in Forney's set," and the consulate was given to a Western man who did not know French.

If John Forney, instead of using all his immense influence for Grant, had opposed him tooth and nail, he could not have been treated with more scornful neglect. The pretence for this was that Forney had defaulted $40,000! I know every detail of the story, and it is this:--While Forney was in Europe, an agent to whom he had confided his affairs did take money to that amount. As soon as Forney learned this, he promptly raised $40,000 by mortgage on his property, and repaid the deficit. Even his enemy Simon Cameron declared he did not believe the story, and the engine of _his_ revenge was always run by "one hundred Injun power."

I had "met" Grant several times, when one day in London I was introduced to him again. He said that he was very happy to make my acquaintance. I replied, "General Grant, I have had the pleasure of being introduced to you _six times_ already, and I hope for many happy renewals of it." A week or two after, this appeared in _Punch_, adapted to a professor and a duchess.