Chapter LXVII: A Napoleonic Conception--A Challenge to the (9)

When Mr. Bryant died, Mr. Parke Godwin assumed editorial control of the _Evening Post_, and his attention promptly wrought something like a miracle in the increased vigor and aggressiveness of its editorial conduct. Mr. Godwin was well advanced in middle life at that time; he was comfortably provided with this world's goods, and he was not anxious to take up again the strenuous journalistic work in which he had already achieved all there was to achieve of reputation. But in his own interest and in the interest of Mr. Bryant's heirs, it seemed necessary for him to step into this breach. Moreover, he had abated none of his interest in public affairs or in those things that make for culture, enlightenment, and human betterment. He had never ceased to write for the _Evening Post_ upon matters of such kind when occasion called for strong, virile utterance.

In his declining years Mr. Bryant had not lost interest in these things, but he had abated somewhat his activity with reference to them. He had more and more left the conduct of the newspaper to his subordinates, trusting to what he used to call his "volunteer staff"--Parke Godwin, John Bigelow, Samuel J. Tilden, and other strong men, to furnish voluntarily all that was needed of strenuosity in the discussion of matters closely concerning the public weal. I do not know that Mr. Tilden was ever known to the public even as an occasional writer for the _Evening Post_. He was a man of singularly secretive temperament, and when he wrote anything for the _Evening Post_ its anonymity was guarded with a jealousy such as I have never known any other person to exercise. What he wrote--on the infrequent occasions of his writing at all--was given to Mr. Bryant and by him handed in with instructions for its publication and without a hint to anybody concerning its authorship. It was only by accident that I learned whence certain articles came, and I think that knowledge was not usually shared with any other member of Mr. Bryant's staff.

Mr. Godwin pursued a different course. These occasional contributions did not satisfy his ideas of what the _Evening Post_ should be in its editorial utterances. He set to work to stimulate a greater aggressiveness on the part of the staff writers, and he himself brought a strong hand to bear upon the work.

[Sidenote: "A Lion in a Den of Daniels"]

When Mr. Godwin died, a few years ago, Dr. Titus Munson Coan, in an obituary sketch read before the Authors Club, said with reference to this part of his career that in the _Evening Post_ office "he was a lion in a den of Daniels," and the figure of speech was altogether apt.

He had gifts of an uncommon sort. He knew how to say strong things in a strong way. He could wield the rapier of subtle sarcasm, and the bludgeon of denunciation with an equally skilled hand. Sometimes he brought even a trip-hammer into play with startling effect.

I remember one conspicuous case of the kind. Sara Bernhardt was playing one of her earliest and most brilliant engagements in New York. Mr. Godwin's alert interest in every form of high art led him not only to employ critics of specially expert quality to write of her work, but himself now and then to write something of more than ordinary appreciation of the great Frenchwoman's genius as illustrated in her performance.

Presently a certain clergyman of the "sensational" school, who had denounced the theater as "the door of hell and the open gateway of damnation," sent to the _Evening Post_ an intemperate protest against the large space it was giving to Sara Bernhardt and her art. The letter was entitled "Quite Enough of Sara Bernhardt," and in the course of it the writer declared the great actress to be a woman of immoral character and dissolute life, whom it was a shame, a disgrace, and a public calamity for the _Evening Post_ even to name in its columns.

Mr. Godwin wrote an answer to the tirade. He entitled it "Quite Enough of X"--the "X" standing here for the clergyman's name, which he used in full. It was one of the most effective bits of criticism and destructive analysis I ever saw in print, and it left the critic of Sara Bernhardt with not a leg to stand upon, and with no possibility of reply. Mr. Godwin pointed out that Sara Bernhardt had asked American attention, not as a woman, but solely as an artist; that it was of her art alone, and not of her personality that the _Evening Post_ had written; that she had neither asked admission to American society nor accepted it when pressed upon her; and that her personal character and mode of life had no more to do with the duty of considering her art than had the sins of any old master when one viewed his paintings and sought to interpret the genius that inspired them.

So far Mr. Godwin was argumentative and placative. But he had other arrows in his quiver. He challenged the clergyman to say how he knew that the actress was a person of immoral character and dissolute life, and to explain what right he had to make charges of that kind against a woman without the smallest evidence of their truth. And so on to the end of a chapter that must have been very bitter reading to the offender if he had been a person of normal sensitiveness, as he was not.

I have cited this occurrence merely by way of explaining the fact that Mr. Godwin had many critics and many enemies. A man of sincere mind and aggressive temper upon proper occasion, and especially one possessed of his gift of vigorous expression, must needs make enemies in plenty, if he edits a newspaper or otherwise writes for publication. But on the other hand, those who knew him best were all and always his devoted friends--those who knew his sturdy character, his unflinching honesty of mind, and his sincere devotion to the right as he saw it.

My acquaintance with him, before his assumption of control on the _Evening Post_, was comparatively slight, and in all that I here write of his character and mind, I am drawing upon my recollection of him during a later intimacy which, beginning on the _Evening Post_, was drawn closer during my service on another newspaper, and endured until his death.

After a brief period of editorship Mr. Godwin sold a controlling interest in the _Evening Post_ to a company of men represented by Messrs. Horace White, E. L. Godkin, and Carl Schurz--Mr. Schurz becoming the titular editor for a time. When Mr. Godwin learned, after the sale was agreed upon, that Mr. Godkin was one of the incoming group, he sought to buy Mr. Godkin's weekly newspaper, _The Nation_, and as the negotiation seemed for a time to promise well, he arranged to make me editor of that periodical. This opened to me a prospect of congenial work, more agreeable to me than any that a daily newspaper could offer. But in the end Mr. Godkin declined to sell the _Nation_ at any price that Mr. Godwin thought fair, and made it instead the weekly edition of the _Evening Post_.

[Sidenote: The Literary Shop Again]

Accordingly, I again quitted the newspaper life, fully intending to enter it no more. Literary work of many kinds was open to me, and it was my purpose to devote myself exclusively to it, maintaining a literary workshop in my own home. I became an adviser of the Harper publishing house, with no office attendance required of me, no working time fixed, and no interference of any kind with my entire liberty. I was writing now and then for the editorial pages of the great newspapers, regularly for a number of magazines, and occasionally writing a book, though that was infrequent for the reason that in the absence of international copyright, there was no encouragement to American authors to write books in competition with reprints that cost their publishers nothing.

In mentioning this matter of so-called "piracy," I do not mean to accuse the reputable American publishers of English books of any wrong, for they were guilty of none. They were victims of the lack of law as truly as the authors on either side were. They were as eager as the authors--English or American--could be, for an international copyright law. For lack of it their profits were cut short and their business enterprises set awry. The reputable publishing houses in this country actually purchased the American publishing rights of many English books with no other protection of what they had purchased than such as was afforded by the "courtesy of the trade"--a certain gentlemen's agreement under which no reputable American publisher would reprint a book of which another publisher had bought the advance sheets. This protection was uncertain, meager, and often ineffective for the reason that there were disreputable publishers in plenty who paid no heed to the "courtesy of the trade" but reprinted whatsoever they thought would sell.

In the case of such works as those of Herbert Spencer and some others, I believe I am correctly informed that the American publishers paid larger royalties to the authors--larger in gross amount, at least--than those authors received from their English publishers. In the same way American publishers of the better class paid liberally for advance sheets of the best foreign fiction, often at heavy loss to themselves because the books they had bought were promptly reprinted in very cheap form by their less scrupulous competitors. In the case of fiction of a less distinguished kind, of which no advance sheets were offered, they had no choice but to make cheap reprints on their own account.

It is proper to say also that if this was "piracy," the American publishers were by no means the worst pirates or the most conspicuous ones, though the complaints made were chiefly of English origin and were all directed against the Americans.

[Sidenote: Piracy--British and American]

I shall never forget the way in which my brother, Edward Eggleston --himself an active worker for international copyright--met the complaints of one English critic who was more lavish and less discriminative in his criticism in a company of Americans than Edward thought good manners justified. The critic was the son of an English poet, whose father's chief work had won considerable popularity in America. The young man was a guest at one of the receptions of the Authors Club, every member of which was directly or indirectly a sufferer by reason of the lack of international copyright. He seized upon the occasion for the delivery of a tirade against the American dishonesty which, he said, threatened to cut short his travel year by depriving his father of the money justly due him as royalty on the American reprints of his books.

My brother listened in silence for a time. Then that pinch of gunpowder that lies somewhere in every human make-up "went off."

"The American publishers of your father's poem," he said, "have paid him all they could afford to pay in the present state of the law, I believe?"

"Yes--but what is it? A mere fraction of what they justly owe him," the young man answered.

"Now listen," said Edward. "You call that American piracy, and you overlook the piracy on the other side. Your father's book has sold so many thousand copies in America"--giving the figures. "The English reprint of my 'Hoosier Schoolmaster' has sold nearly ten times that number, according to the figures of the English 'pirates' who reprinted it and who graciously sent me a 'tip,' as I call it, of one hundred dollars--less than a fraction, if I may so call it, of what American publishers have voluntarily paid your father. But dropping that smaller side of the matter, let me tell you that every man in this company is a far greater sufferer from the barbaric state of the law than your father or any other English author ever was. We are denied the opportunity to practise our profession, except under a paralysing competition with stolen goods. What chance has an American novel, published at a dollar or more, in competition with English fiction even of an inferior sort published at ten cents? We cannot expect the reader who reads only for amusement to pay a dollar or a dollar and a half for an American novel when he can fill his satchel with reprints of English novels at ten cents apiece. But that is the very smallest part of our loss. The whole American people are inestimably losers because of this thing. They are deprived of all chance of a national literature, reflecting the life of our country, its ideas, its inspirations, and its aspirations. You Englishmen are petty losers in comparison with us. Your losses are measurable in pounds, shillings, and pence. Ours involve things of immeasurably greater value."

I have quoted here, as accurately as memory permits, an utterance that met the approval of every author present, because I think that in our appeals to Congress for international copyright only the smaller, lower, and less worthy commercial aspects of the matter have been presented, and that as a consequence the American people have been themselves seriously and hurtfully misled as to the higher importance of a question involving popular interests of far more consequence than the financial returns of authorship can ever be.

LVI

In connection with my work for the Harpers it fell to my lot to revise and edit a good many books. Among these were such books of reference as Hayden's Dictionary of Dates, which I twice edited for American readers, putting in the dates of important American affairs, and, more importantly, correcting English misinterpretations of American happenings. For example, under the title "New York" I found an entry, "Fall of O'Kelly," with a date assigned. The thing probably referred to John Kelly, but the event recorded, with its date, had never occurred within the knowledge of any American. There were many other such things to cut out and many important matters to put in, and the Harpers paid me liberally--after their fashion in dealing with men of letters--for doing the work. In the course of it I had to spend a considerable amount of their money in securing the exact information desired. In one case I applied by letter to one of the executive departments at Washington for exact information concerning a certain document. For answer I received a letter, written by a clerk, doubtless, but signed by a chief of bureau, embodying a copy of the document. In that copy I found a line thrice repeated, and I was unable to make out whether the repetition was in the original or was the work of a copying clerk asleep at his post. I wrote to inquire, but the chief of bureau replied that he had no authority to find out, wherefore I had to make a journey to Washington at the expense of Harper and Brothers, to ascertain the facts. I came out of that expedition with the conviction, which still lingers in my mind, that the system that gives civil service employees a tenure of office with which their chiefs have no power to interfere by peremptory discharge for inefficiency or misconduct, as the managing men of every successful business enterprise may do, is vicious in principle and bad in outcome.

[Sidenote: The Way at Washington]

That and other experiences in dealing with executive departments at Washington have made an old fogy of me, I suppose. At any rate they have convinced me that the government's business could and would be better done by half the force now employed, if that half force worked under a consciousness of direct responsibility, each man to an immediate chief who could discharge him for incompetency or inattention. Furthermore, my experience with clerks in the departments at Washington convinces me that the method of selection and promotion by competitive examination, results almost uniformly in the appointment and in the promotion of inferior and often incompetent men. Certainly no great bank, no great business enterprise of any kind would ever consent to such a method of selecting or promoting its employees--a method which excludes from consideration the knowledge every chief of bureau or department must necessarily have of the qualifications of his subordinates. The clerk who repeated that line three times in making an official transcript of an official document had been for several years in the public service, and I suppose he is there yet, if he isn't dead. How long would a bookkeeper in a bank hold his place after making a similar blunder? But then, banks are charged with an obligation to remain solvent, and must appoint and discharge employees with due reference to that necessity. The government is not subject to that requirement, and it recognizes a certain obligation to heed the vagaries of the theorists who regard themselves as commissioned--divinely or otherwise--to reform the world in accordance with the suggestions of their own inner consciousness and altogether without regard to the practical experience of humankind.

Mainly, however, the books I was employed to edit were those written by men whose connection with affairs of consequence rendered their utterances important, but whose literary qualifications were small. When such works were presented to the Harpers, it was their practice to accept the books on condition that the authors of them should pay for such editing as was necessary, by some person of literary experience to be selected by the Harpers themselves.

In every such case, where I was asked to be the editor and see the book through the press, I stipulated that I was to make no effort to improve literary style, but was to confine myself to seeing that the English was correct--whether elegant or otherwise--and that the book as it came from the hands of its author should be presented with as little editorial alteration as was possible. I assumed the function of correcting errors and offering advice, not of writing the books anew or otherwise putting them into the literary form I thought they should have. Even with this limitation of function, I found plenty of work to do in every case.

[Sidenote: A Historical Discovery]

It was under a contract of this kind that I undertook to see through the press the volumes published under the title of "The Military Operations of General Beauregard in the War between the States."

The work bore the name of Colonel Alfred Roman, as its author, but on every page of it there was conclusive evidence of its direct and minute inspiration by General Beauregard himself. It was with him rather than with Colonel Roman that negotiations were had respecting my editorial work on the book. He was excessively nervous lest I should make alterations of substance, a point on which I was the better able to reassure him because of the fact that my compensation was a sum certain and in no way dependent upon the amount of time or labor I should give to the work. I succeeded in convincing him that I was exceedingly unlikely to undertake more of revision than the contract called for, and as one man with another, I assured him that I would make no alteration of substantial consequence in the work without his approval.

In editing the book I made a discovery which, I think, is of some historical interest. Throughout the war there was something like a standing quarrel between General Beauregard and Mr. Jefferson Davis, emphasized by the antagonism of Mr. Davis's chief adviser, Judah P. Benjamin to General Beauregard. Into the merits of that quarrel I have no intention here to inquire. It does not come within the purview of this volume of reminiscences. But in editing General Beauregard's book I discovered an easy and certainly correct explanation of the bitterest phase of it--that phase upon which General Beauregard laid special stress.

Sometime after the battle of Shiloh, General Beauregard, whose health was seriously impaired, decided to take a little furlough for purposes of recuperation. There was neither prospect nor possibility of active military operations in that quarter for a considerable time to come, so that he felt himself free to go away for a few weeks in search of health, leaving General Bragg in temporary command but himself keeping in touch with his army and in readiness to return to it immediately in case of need.

He notified Mr. Davis of his intended course, by telegraph. Mr. Davis almost immediately removed him from command and ordered General Bragg to assume permanent control in that quarter. Mr. Davis's explanation, when his act was challenged, was that General Beauregard had announced his purpose to be absent himself "for four months," and that he, Mr. Davis, could not regard that as anything else than an abandonment of his command. General Beauregard insisted that he had made no such announcement and had cherished no such purpose. The thing ultimately resolved itself into a question of veracity between the two, concerning which each had bitter things to say of the other in public ways.

[Sidenote: A Period Out of Place]

In editing General Beauregard's book, I discovered that there was really no question of veracity involved, but merely an error of punctuation in a telegraphic despatch, a thing very easy at all times and particularly easy in days of military telegraphing when incompetent operators were the rule rather than the exception.

The case was this: General Beauregard telegraphed:

"I am leaving for a while on surgeon's certificate. For four months I have delayed obeying their urgent recommendations," etc.

As the despatch reached Mr. Davis it read:

"I am leaving for a while on surgeon's certificate for four months. I have delayed," etc.

The misplacing of a punctuation mark gave the statement, as received by Mr. Davis, a totally different meaning from that which General Beauregard had intended. In explaining his action in removing Beauregard from command, Mr. Davis stated that the General had announced his purpose to absent himself for four months. General Beauregard denied that he had done anything of the kind. Hence the issue of veracity, in which the text of the despatch as sent, sustained General Beauregard's contention, while the same text as received, with its error of punctuation, equally sustained the assertions of Mr. Davis.

With the beatitude of the peacemakers in mind, I brought my discovery to the attention of both parties to the controversy, in the hope at least of convincing each that the other had not consciously lied. The attempt proved futile. When I pointed out to General Beauregard the obvious origin of the misapprehension, he flushed with suppressed anger and declared himself unwilling to discuss a matter so exclusively personal. He did discuss it, however, to the extent of pointing out that his use of the phrase "for a while" should have enabled Mr. Davis to correct the telegraph operator's error of punctuation, "if there really was any such error made--which I am not prepared to believe."

In answer to my letter to Mr. Davis, some one wrote for him that in his advancing years he did not care to take up again any of the matters of controversy that had perplexed his active life.

I have never since that time made the smallest attempt to reconcile the quarrels of men who have been engaged in the making of history. I have learned better.

So far as Mr. Davis was concerned there was probably another reason for unwillingness to consider any matter that I might lay before him. He and I had had a little controversy of our own some years before.

In one of those chapters of "A Rebel's Recollections," which were first published in the _Atlantic Monthly_, I made certain statements with regard to Mr. Davis's conduct at a critical moment. Mr. Davis sent his secretary to me--or at any rate some one calling himself his secretary came to me--to assure me that the statements I and others had made concerning the matter were without foundation in fact, and to ask me not to include them in the forthcoming book.

I replied that I had not made the statements thoughtlessly or without satisfying myself of the correctness of my information; that I could not, therefore, consent to omit them from the book; but that if Mr. Davis would send me a categorical denial of them over his own signature, I would publish it as a part of my text.

This proposal was rejected, and I let the matter stand as originally written. I had in my possession at that time a letter from General Robert E. Lee to John Esten Cooke. It was written in answer to a direct question of Mr. Cooke's, and in it General Lee stated unequivocally that the facts were as Mr. Cooke understood them and as I had reported them. But General Lee forbade the publication of his letter unless Mr. Davis should at any time publicly deny the reports made. In that case he authorized the publication "in the interest of truthful history."

Mr. Cooke had placed that letter in my hands, and had Mr. Davis furnished me with the suggested denial, it was my purpose to print that and General Lee's letter in facsimile, leaving it for every reader to choose between them. To my regret Mr. Davis declined to put his denial into writing, so that General Lee's letter, which I returned to Mr. Cooke, has never been published, and now never can be.

[Sidenote: A Futile Effort to Make Peace]

On another point I found General Beauregard more amenable to editorial suggestion, though reluctantly so. In discussing his defense of Charleston with utterly inadequate means--a defense everywhere recognized as the sufficient foundation of a military fame--his book included a chapter or so of masterly military criticism, intended to show that if the commanders on the other side at Charleston had been as alert and capable as they should have been, there was no time when they could not have taken Charleston with ease and certainty.

I pointed out to him that all this was a discrediting of himself; that it attributed to the enemy's weakness a success which military criticism attributed to his own military and engineering strength, thus stripping him of credit at the very point at which his credit was least open to dispute or question. I advised the elimination or material alteration of this part of the book, and after due consideration he consented, though with sore reluctance, for the reason that the modification made involved the sacrifice of a very brilliant essay in military criticism, of which any writer might well have been proud, and which I should have advised any other writer to publish as a distinguished feature of his work.

To descend from large things to small ones, it was in seeing this work through the press that I encountered the most extreme case I have ever known of dangerous interference with copy on the part of the "intelligent compositor," passed by the "alert proofreader." The printing department of the Harpers was as nearly perfect, in its organization and in the supervision given to it by the two highly-skilled superintendents of its rival composing rooms, as any printing department well can be. And yet it was there that the error occurred.

Of course I could not read the revised proofs of the book "by copy,"--that is to say with a helper to read the copy aloud while I followed him with the revises. That would have required the employment of an additional helper and a considerably increased payment to me. Moreover, all that was supposed to be attended to in the composing rooms so that revised proofs should come to me in exact conformity with the "copy" as I had handed it in. In reading them I was not expected to look out for errors of the type, but solely for errors in the text.

In reading a batch of proofs one night--for the man of letters who would keep his butcher and grocer on good terms with him must work by night as well as by day--although I was in nowise on the alert to discover errors of type, my eye fell upon an error which, if it had escaped me, would forever have ruined my reputation as an editor. Certain of General Beauregard's official despatches, quoted in the book, were dated "Fiddle Pond, near Barnwell C. H., South Carolina," the letters "C. H." standing, of course, for "Court House"--the name given to rural county seats in the South. The intelligent compositor, instead of "following copy," had undertaken to interpret and translate the letters out of the depths of his own intuitions. Instead of "Fiddle Pond, near Barnwell C. H.," he had set "Fiddle Pond, near Barnwell, Charleston Harbor," thus playing havoc at once with geography and the text.

The case was so extreme, and the liberty taken with the text without notice of any kind, involved so much danger to the accuracy of the work that I had no choice but to report the matter to the house with a notification that unless I could be assured that no further liberties of any kind would be taken with the text, I must decline to go further with the undertaking.

This cost a proofreader and a printer or two their employments, and I regretted that, but they deserved their punishment, and the matter was one that demanded drastic measures. Without such measures it would have been dangerous to publish the book at all.

[Sidenote: Loring Pacha]

One other ex-Confederate general with whom this sort of editorial work brought me into association was Loring Pacha--otherwise General W. W. Loring, a man of extraordinarily varied experiences in life, a man of the gentlest temper and most genial impulses, who had been, nevertheless, a fighter all his life, from boyhood up. His fighting, however, had all been done in the field and professionally, and he carried none of its animosities into private life. I remember his saying to me once:

"Of course the war ended as it ought to have done. It was best for everybody concerned that the Union should be restored. The only thing is that I don't like the other fellows to 'have the say' on us."

Loring became a private soldier in the United States Army while yet a boy. He so far distinguished himself for gallantry in the Florida War that he was offered a Presidential appointment to West Point, which he declined. He was appointed to a lieutenancy in the regular army, where he won rapid promotion and gained a deal of experience, chiefly in fighting Indians and leading troops on difficult expeditions across the plains of the far West. In the Mexican War he was several times promoted and brevetted for conspicuous gallantry, and he lost an arm at one of the gates of the City of Mexico, as he was leading his regiment as the head of the column into the town, seizing an opportunity without orders. On that occasion General Scott visited him in hospital and said to him:

"Loring, I suppose I ought to court-martial you for rushing into that breach without orders; but I think I'll recommend you for promotion instead."

In the Confederate Army Loring became a Major-General, and a few years after the close of that struggle he was invited by the Khedive of Egypt to become his chief of staff. After a military service there which extended over a number of years, he returned to America and wrote a book founded upon his experience there and the studies he had made in Egyptian manners, history, archaeology, and the like. I was employed to edit that book, which was published by Dodd, Mead & Co., I think, and in the course of my work upon it Loring became not only a valued personal friend, but an easy-going intimate in my household. At first he came to see me only for purposes of consultation concerning the work. Later he used to come "just because he wanted to," he said. His visits were made, in Southern fashion, at whatever hour he chose, and he took with us whatever meals were served while he was there.

In conversation one day I happened to ask Loring something about the strained relations that frequently exist between commanding officers in the field and the newspaper war correspondents sent out to report news of military operations. I think my question was prompted by some reference to William Swinton's criticisms of General Grant, and General Grant's peremptory dealing with him.

"I don't know much about such things," Loring answered. "You see, at the time of the Mexican War and of all my Indian campaigns, the newspapers hadn't yet invented the war correspondent. Then in the Confederacy everybody was a soldier, as you know, and the war correspondents carried muskets and answered to roll calls. Their newspaper work was an avocation, not a vocation. You see I am learning English under your tuition."

This little jest referred to the fact that a few days before, in running through the manuscript of a lecture he was preparing, I had changed the word "avocation" to "vocation," explaining to him the difference in meaning.

[Sidenote: Concerning War Correspondents]

"Then in Egypt we were not much troubled with war correspondents--perhaps they had the bowstring and sack in mind--but I have an abiding grudge against another type of correspondent whom I encountered there. I mean the tourist who has made an arrangement with some newspaper to pay the expenses of his trip or a part of them in return for letters to be sent from the places visited. He is always an objectionable person, particularly when he happens to be a parson out of a job, and I always fought shy of him so far as possible, usually by turning him over to my dragoman, to be shown about and 'stuffed' as only a dragoman can 'stuff' anybody. You see the dragoman has learned that every Western tourist in the East is hungry for information of a startling sort, and the dragoman holds himself ready to furnish it without the smallest regard for truth or any respect at all for facts. On one occasion one of these scribbling tourists from England visited me. One of the Khedive's unoccupied palaces had been assigned to me for my headquarters, and I was exceedingly busy with preparations for a campaign then in contemplation. Stone Pacha and I were both up to our eyes in work, trying to mobilize an army that had no mobility in it. Accordingly I turned the tourist over to my dragoman with orders to show him everything and give him all the information he wanted.

"The palace was divided as usual. There was a public part and a part called the harem--which simply means the home or the family apartments. During my occupancy of the place that part of it was empty and closed, as I am a bachelor. But as the dragoman showed him about the tourist asked to see that part of the palace, whereupon the dragoman replied:

"'That is the harem. You cannot gain entrance there.'

"'The harem? But I thought Loring was an American and a Christian,' was the astonished reply.

"'He was--but he is a pacha, now,' answered the dragoman with that air of mysterious reserve which is a part of his stock in trade. Then the rascal went on to tell the tourist that I now had forty wives--which would have been a shot with the long bow even if I had been a born Mohammedan of the highest rank and greatest wealth.

"When I heard of the affair I asked the dragoman why he had lied so outrageously and he calmly replied:

"'Oh, I thought it polite to give the gentleman what he wanted.'

[Sidenote: A Scribbling Tourist's Mischief-Making]

"I dismissed the matter and thought no more of it until a month or so later, when somebody sent me marked copies of the _Manchester Guardian_, or whatever the religious newspaper concerned was called. The tourist had told the story of my 'downfall' with all the horrifying particulars, setting forth in very complimentary phrases my simple, exemplary life as an American soldier and lamenting the ease with which I and other Western men, 'nurtured in the purity of Christian family life,' had fallen victims to the lustful luxury of the East. I didn't give the matter any attention. I was too busy to bother--too busy with plans and estimates and commissary problems, and the puzzles of transportation and all the rest of the things that required attention in preparation for a campaign in a difficult, inaccessible, and little known country. I wasn't thinking of myself or of what wandering scribes might be writing about me in English newspapers. But presently this thing assumed a new and very serious aspect. Some obscure American religious newspaper, published down South somewhere, copied the thing, and my good sisters, who live down that way, read it. It isn't much to say they were horrified; they were well-nigh killed by the revelation of my infamy and they suffered almost inconceivable tortures of the spirit on my account. For it never entered their trustful minds to doubt anything printed in a great English religious paper over the signature of a dissenting minister and copied into the American religious journal which to them seemed an authoritative weekly supplement to the holy scriptures.

"I managed to straighten the thing out in the minds of my good sisters, but I have never ceased to regret that that correspondent never turned up at my headquarters again. If he had I should have made him think he had fallen in with a herd of the wild jackasses of Abyssinia."

LVII

Mention of Loring's experience reminds me of an amusing one of my own that occurred a little later. In the autumn of 1886 I made a leisurely journey with my wife across the continent to California, Oregon, Mexico, and all parts of the golden West. On an equally leisurely return journey we took a train at Marshall, Texas, for New Orleans, over the ruins of the Texas and Pacific Railroad, which Jay Gould had recently "looted to the limit," as a banker described it. Besides myself, my wife, and our child, the only passengers on the solitary buffet sleeping car were Mr. Ziegenfust of the San Francisco _Chronicle_, and a young lady who put herself under my wife's chaperonage. If Mr. Ziegenfust had not been there to bear out my statements I should never have told the story of what happened.

There was no conductor for the sleeping car--only a negro porter who acted as factotum. When I undertook to arrange with him for my sleeping car accommodations, I offered him a gold piece, for in drawing money from a San Francisco bank for use on the return journey, I had received only gold.

The negro seemed startled as I held out the coin.

"I can't take dat, boss," he said. "'Taint worf nuffin."

I made an effort to explain to him that American gold coin was not only the supreme standard by which all values were measured in this country, but that as mere metal it was worth the sum stamped upon it in any part of the earth. Mr. Ziegenfust supported me in these statements, but our combined assurances made no impression upon the porter's mind. He perfectly knew that gold coin was as worthless as dead forest leaves, and he simply would not take the twenty-dollar piece offered him.

We decided that the poor fellow was a fool, and after a search through all the pockets on the car we managed to get together the necessary number of dollars in greenbacks with which to pay for my accommodations. As for what we might want to eat from the buffet--for there were no dining cars in those days--the porter assured me he would "trust me" till we should get to New Orleans, and call upon me at my hotel to receive his pay.

Next morning we found ourselves stranded at Plaquemine, by reason of a train wreck a few miles ahead. Plaquemine is the center of the district to which the banished Acadians of Longfellow's story fled for refuge, and most of the people there claim descent from Evangeline, in jaunty disregard of the fact that that young lady of the long ago was never married. But Plaquemine is a thriving provincial town, and when I learned that we must lie there, wreck-bound, for at least six hours, I thought I saw my opportunity. I went out into the town to get some of my gold pieces converted into greenbacks.

[Sidenote: "A Stranded Gold Bug"]

To my astonishment I found everybody there like-minded with the negro porter of my sleeping car. They were all convinced that American gold coin was a thing of no value, and for reason they told me that "the government has went back on it." It was in vain for me to protest that the government had nothing to do with determining the value of a gold piece except to certify its weight and fineness; that the piece of gold was intrinsically worth its face as mere metal, and all the rest of the obvious facts of the case. These people knew that "the government has went back on gold"--that was the phrase all of them used--and they would have none of it.

In recognition of the superior liberality of mind concerning financial matters that distinguishes the barkeeper from all other small tradesmen, I went into the saloon of the principal hotel of the town, and said to the man of multitudinous bottles:

"It's rather early in the morning, but some of these gentlemen," waving my hand toward the loafers on the benches, "may be thirsty. I'll be glad to 'set 'em up' for the company if you'll take your pay out of a twenty-dollar gold piece and give me change for it."

There was an alert and instant response from the "gentlemen" of the benches, who promptly aligned themselves before the bar and stood ready to "name their drinks," but the barkeeper shook his head.

"Stranger," he said, "if you must have a drink you can have it and welcome. But I can't take gold money. 'Taint worth nothin'. You see the government has went back on it."

I declined the gratuitous drink he so generously offered, and took my departure, leaving the "gentlemen" of the benches thirsty.

Finally, I went to the principal merchant of the place, feeling certain that he at least knew the fundamental facts of money values. I explained my embarrassment and asked him to give me greenbacks for one or more of my gold pieces.

He was an exceedingly courteous and kindly person. He said to me in better English than I had heard that morning:

"Well, you may not know it, but the government has gone back on gold, so that we don't know what value it may have. But I can't let a stranger leave our town under such embarrassment as yours seems to be, particularly as you have your wife and child with you. I'll give you currency for one of your gold pieces, and _take my chances of getting something for the coin_."

I tried to explain finance to him, and particularly the insignificance of the government's relation to the intrinsic value of gold coin, but my words made no impression upon his mind. I could only say, therefore, that I would accept his hospitable offer to convert one of my coins into greenbacks, with the assurance that I should not think of doing so if I did not perfectly know that he took no risk whatever in making the exchange.

In New Orleans I got an explanation of this curious scare. When the Civil War broke out there was a good deal of gold coin in circulation in the Plaquemine region. During and after the war the coins passed freely and frequently from hand to hand, particularly in cotton buying transactions. Not long before the time of my visit, some merchants in Plaquemine had sent a lot of this badly worn gold to New Orleans in payment of duties on imported goods--a species of payment which was then, foolishly, required to be made in gold alone. The customs officers had rejected this Plaquemine gold, because it was worn to light weight. Hence the conviction in Plaquemine that the government had "went back" on gold.

[Sidenote: Results of a Bit of Humor]

At that time the principal subject of discussion in Congress and the newspapers was the question of free silver coinage, the exclusive gold standard of values, or a double standard, and all the rest of it, and those who contended for an exclusive gold standard were stigmatized as "gold bugs."

I was then editor-in-chief of the _New York Commercial Advertiser_, and in my absence my brilliant young friend, Henry Marquand, was in charge of the paper. Thinking to amuse our readers I sent him a playful letter recounting these Plaquemine experiences, and he published it under the title of "A Stranded Goldbug."

The humor of the situation described was so obvious and so timely that my letter was widely copied throughout the country, and a copy of it fell into the hands of a good but too serious-minded kinswoman of mine, an active worker in the W. C. T. U. She was not interested in the humor of my embarrassment, but she wrote me a grieved and distressed letter, asking how I could ever have gone into the saloon of that Plaquemine hotel, or any other place where alcoholic beverages were sold, and much else to the like effect. I was reminded of Loring's experience, and was left to wonder how large a proportion of those who had read my letter had missed the humor of the matter in their shocked distress over the fact that by entering a hotel cafe I had lent my countenance to the sale of beer and the like.

I had not then learned, as I have since done, how exceedingly and even exigently sensitive consciences of a certain class are as to such matters. Not many years ago I published a boys' book about a flat-boat voyage down the Mississippi. At New Orleans a commission merchant, anxious to give the country boys as much as he could of enjoyment in the city, furnished tickets and bade them "go to the opera to-night and hear some good music." Soon after the book came out my publishers wrote me that they had a Sunday School Association's order for a thousand copies of the book, but that it was conditioned upon our willingness to change the word "opera" to "concert" in the sentence quoted.

LVIII

As a literary adviser of the Harpers, I very earnestly urged them to publish Mrs. Custer's "Boots and Saddles." In my "opinion" recommending its acceptance, I said that their other readers would probably be unanimous in advising its rejection, and would offer excellent reasons in support of that advice. I added that those very reasons were the promptings of my advice to the contrary.

When all the opinions were in--all but mine being adverse--Mr. Joe Harper sent copies of them to me, asking me to read them carefully and, after consideration, to report whether or not I still adhered to my opinion in favor of the book. I promptly replied that I did, giving my reasons, which were based mainly on the very considerations urged by the other readers in behalf of rejection. In my earnestness I ventured, as I had never done before, upon a prediction. I said that in my opinion the book would reach a sale of twenty thousand copies--a figure then considered very great for the sale of any current book.

[Sidenote: "Boots and Saddles"]

A month after "Boots and Saddles" was published, I happened to be in the Harper offices, and Mr. Joe Harper beckoned me to him. With a very solemn countenance, which did not hide the twinkle in his eye, he said:

"Of course, when you make a cock-sure prediction as to the sale of a book, and we accept it on the strength of your enthusiastic advice, we expect you to make the failure good."

"To what book do you refer?" I asked.

"Mrs. Custer's. You predicted a sale of twenty thousand for it, and it has now been out a full month and----"

"What are the figures for the first month, Mr. Harper?" I interrupted.

"Well, what do you think? It is the first month that sets the pace, you know. What's your guess?"

"Ten thousand," I ventured.

"What? Of that book? In its first month? Are you a rainbow chaser?"

I had caught the glint in his eye, and so I responded:

"Oh, well, if that guess is so badly out I'll double it, and say twenty thousand."

"Do you mean that--seriously?" he asked.

"Yes, quite seriously. So seriously that I'll agree to pay the royalties on all copies short of twenty thousand, if you'll agree to give me a sum equal to the royalties on all copies sold in excess of that number."

He chuckled inwardly but audibly. Then, picking up a paper from his desk, he passed it to me, saying;

"Look. There are the figures."

The sales had amounted to some hundred more than the twenty thousand I had guessed, and there were no indications of any early falling off of the orders that were daily and hourly coming in.

I mention this case of successful prediction because it gives me a text for saying that ordinarily there is nothing so utterly impossible as foresight, of any trustworthy sort, concerning the sale of a book. In this case the fact that "Boots and Saddles" was the very unliterary, and altogether winning tribute of a loving wife to her dead hero husband, afforded a secure ground of prediction. The book appealed to sentiments with which every human heart--coarse or refined, high, low, or middle class--is in eternal sympathy. Ordinarily there is no such secure ground upon which to base a prediction of success for any book. The plate-room of every publisher is the graveyard of a multitude of books that promised well but died young, and the plates are their headstones. Every publisher has had experiences that convince him of the impossibility of discovering beforehand what books will sell well and what will "die a-borning." Every publisher has had books of his publishing succeed far beyond his expectations, and other books fail, on the success of which he had confidently reckoned. And the worst of it is that the quality of a book seems to have little or nothing to do with the matter, one way or the other.

One night at the Authors Club, I sat with a group of prolific and successful authors, and as a matter of curious interest I asked each of them to say how far their own and their publishers' anticipations with respect to the comparative success of their several books had been borne out by the actual sales. Almost every one of them had a story to tell of disappointment with the books that were most confidently expected to succeed, and of the success of other books that had been regarded as least promising.

The experience is as old as literature itself, doubtless. Thomas Campbell came even to hate his "Pleasures of Hope," because its fame completely overshadowed that of "Gertrude of Wyoming" and some other poems of his which he regarded as immeasurably superior to that work. He resented the fact that in introducing him or otherwise mentioning him everybody added to his name the phrase "Author of the 'Pleasures of Hope,'" and he bitterly predicted that when he died somebody would carve that detested legend upon his tombstone. In the event, somebody did.

A lifelong intimate of George Eliot once told me that bitterness was mingled with the wine of applause in her cup, because, as she said: "A stupid public persists in neglecting my poems, which are far superior to anything I ever wrote in prose."

In the same way such fame as Thomas Dunn English won, rested mainly upon the song of "Ben Bolt." Yet one day during his later years I heard him angrily say in response to some mention of that song: "Oh, damn 'Ben Bolt.' It rides me like an incubus."

LIX

[Sidenote: Letters of Introduction]

While I was conducting my literary shop at home, there came to me many persons bearing letters of introduction which I was in courtesy bound to honor. Some of these brought literary work of an acceptable sort for me to do. Through them a number--perhaps a dozen or so--of books were brought to me to edit, and in the course of the work upon such books I made a few familiar friends, whose intimacy in my household was a pleasure to me and my family while the friends in question lived. They are all dead now--or nearly all.