* * * * *

Before I visited Lexington, my cousin, Little Emily, duly wrote me that on no account, when I was in Kentucky, must I offer any criticisms on the character of Henry Clay; for if I grew reckless and compared him with another to his slightest disadvantage, I should have to fight.

That he was absolutely the greatest statesman America has produced is, to all Kentuckians, a fact so sure that they doubt the honesty or the sanity of any one who hints otherwise. He is their ideal, the perfect man, the model for all youths to imitate, and the standard by which all other statesmen are gauged. Clay to Kentucky scores one hundred. And as he was at the last defeated for the highest office, which they say was his God-given right, there is a flavor of martyrdom in his history that is the needed crown for every hero.

Complete success alienates man from his fellows, but suffering makes kinsmen of us all. So the South loves Henry Clay.

He is so well loved that he is apotheosized, and thus the real man to many is lost in the clouds. With his name, song and legend have worked their miracles, and to very many Southern people he is a being separate and apart, like Hector or Achilles.

With my cousin, Little Emily, I am always very frank—and you can be honest and frank with so few in this world of expediency, you know! We are so frank in expression that we usually quarrel very shortly. And so I explained to Emily just what I have written here, as to the real Henry Clay being lost.

She contradicted me flatly and said, "To love a person is not to lose him—you never lose except through indifference or hate!" I started to explain and had gotten as far as, "It is just like this," when the conversation was interrupted by the arrival of General Bellicose, who had come to take us riding behind a spanking pair of geldings, that I was assured were standard bred.

In Lexington you never use the general term "horse." You speak of a mare, a gelding, a horse, a four-year-old, a weanling or a sucker. To refer to a trotter as a thoroughbred is to suffer social ostracism, and to obfuscate a side-wheeler with a single-footer is proof of degeneracy. This applies equally to the ethics of the ballroom or the livery-stable. In Kentucky they read Richard's famous lines thus: "A saddler! a saddler! my kingdom for a saddler!" So when I complimented General Bellicose on his geldings and noted that they went square without boots or weights, and that he used no blinders, it thawed the social ice, and we were as brothers. Then I led the way cautiously to Henry Clay, and the General assured me that in his opinion the Henry Clays were even better than the George Wilkes. To be sure, Wilkes had more in the 'thirty list, but the Clays had brains, and were cheerful; they neither lugged nor hung back, whereas you always had to lay whip to a Wilkes in order to get along a bit, or else use a gag and overcheck.

I pressed Little Emily's hand under the lap-robe and asked her if all Kentuckians were believers in metempsychosis. "Colonel Littlejourneys is making fun of you, General," said Little Emily; "the Colonel is talking about the man, and you are discussing trotters!"

And then I apologized, but the General said it was he who should make the apology, and raising the carriage-seat brought out a box of genuine Henry Clay Havanas, in proof of amity.

It's a very foolish thing to smile at a man who rides a hobby. Once there was a man who rode a hobby all his life, to the great amusement of his enemies and the mortification of his wife; and when the man was dead they found it was a real live horse and had carried the man many long miles.

General Bellicose loves a horse; so does Little Emily and so do I. But Little Emily and the General know history and have sounded politics in a way that puts me in the kindergarten; and I found before the day was over that what one did not know about the political history of America the other did. And mixed up in it all we discussed the merits of the fox-trot versus the single-foot.

We saw the famous Clay monument, built by the State at a cost of nearly a hundred thousand dollars, and with uncovered heads gazed through the gratings into the crypt where lies the dust of the great man. Then we saw the statue of John C. Breckinridge in the public square, and visited various old ebb-tide mansions where the "quarters" had fallen into decay, and the erstwhile inhabitants had moved to the long row of tenements down by the cotton-mill. My train whistled and we were half a mile from the station, but the General said we would get there in time—and we did. I bade my friends good-by and quite forgot to thank them for all their kindness, although down in my heart I felt that it had been a time rare as a day in June. I believe they felt my gratitude, too, for where there is such a feast of wit and flow of soul, such kindness, such generosity, the spirit understands.

When I arrived home I found a box awaiting me, bearing the express mark of Lexington, Kentucky. On opening the case I found six quart-bottles of "Henry Clay—1881"; and a card with the compliments of Little Emily and General Bellicose. On the outside of the case was neatly stenciled the legend, "Thackeray, Full sett, 14 vol., half Levant." I do not know why the box was so marked, but I suppose it was in honor of my literary proclivities. I went out and blew four merry blasts on a ram's horn, and the Philistines assembled.



JOHN JAY

Calm repose and the sweets of undisturbed retirement appear more distant than a peace with Britain.

It gives me pleasure, however, to reflect that the period is approaching when we shall be citizens of a better ordered State, and the spending of a few troublesome years of our eternity in doing good to this and future generations is not to be avoided nor regretted. Things will come right, and these States will yet be great and flourishing. —Letter to Washington



America should feel especially charitable towards Louis the Great, called by Carlyle, Louis the Little, for banishing the Huguenots from France. What France lost America gained. Tyranny and intolerance always drive from their homes the best: those who have ability to think, courage to act, and a pride that can not be coerced.

The merits possessed by the Huguenots are exactly those which every man and nation needs. And these are simple virtues, too, whose cultivation stands within the reach of all. These are the virtues of the farmers and peasants and plain people who do the work of the world, and give good government its bone and sinew. To a great degree, so-called society is made up of parasites who fasten and feed upon the industrious and methodical.

If you have read history you know that the men who go quietly about their business have been cajoled, threatened, driven, and often, when they have been guilty of doing a little independent thinking on their own account, banished. And further than this, when you read the story of nations dead and gone you will see that their decline began when the parasites got too numerous and flauntingly asserted their supposed power. That contempt for the farmer, and indifference to the rights of the man with tin pail and overalls, which one often sees in America, are portents that mark disintegrating social bacilli. If the Republic of the United States ever becomes but a memory, like Carthage, Athens and Rome, drifting off into senile decay like Italy and Spain or France, where a man may yet be tried and sentenced without the right of counsel or defense, it will be because we forgot—we forgot!

In moral fiber and general characteristics the Huguenots and the Puritans were one. The Huguenots had, however, the added virtue of a dash of the Frenchman's love of beauty. By their excellent habits and loyalty to truth, as they saw it, they added a vast share to the prosperity and culture of the United States.

Of seven men who acted as presiding officer over the deliberations of Congress during the Revolutionary Period, three were of Huguenot parentage: Laurens, Boudinot and Jay. John Jay was a typical Huguenot, just as Samuel Adams was a typical Puritan. In his life there was no glamour of romance. Stern, studious and inflexibly honest, he made his way straight to the highest positions of trust and honor. Good men who are capable are always needed. The world wants them now more than ever. We have an overplus of clever individuals; but for the faithful men who are loyal to a trust there is a crying demand.

The life of Jay quite disproves the oft-found myth that a dash of Mephisto in a young man is a valuable adjunct. John Jay was neither precocious nor bad. It is further a refreshing fact to find that he was no prig, simply a good, healthy youngster who took to his books kindly and gained ground—made head upon the whole by grubbing.

His father was a hard-headed, prosperous merchant, who did business in New York, and moved his big family up to the little village of Rye because life in the country was simple and cheap. Thus did Peter Jay prove his commonsense.

Peter Jay copied every letter he wrote, and we now have these copy-books, revealing what sort of man he was. Religious he was, and scrupulously exact in all things. We see that he ordered Bibles from England, "and also six groce of Church Wardens," which I am told is a long clay pipe, "that hath a goodly flavor and doth not bite the tongue." He also at one time ordered a chest of tea, and then countermanded the order, having taken the resolve to "use no tea in my family while that rascally Tax is on—having a spring of good, pure water near my house." Which shows that a man can be very much in earnest and still joke.

John was the baby, scarcely a year old, when the Jay family moved up to Rye. He was the eighth child, and as he grew up he was taught by the older ones. He took part in all the fun and hardships of farm life—going to school in Winter, working in Summer, and on Sundays hearing long sermons at church.

We find by Peter Jay's letter-book that: "Johnny is about our brightest child. We have great hopes of him, and believe it will be wise to educate him for a preacher." In order to educate boys then, they were sent to live in the family of some man of learning. And so we find "Johnny" at twelve years of age installed in the parsonage at New Rochelle, the Huguenot settlement. The pastor was a Huguenot, and as only French was spoken in the household, the boy acquired the language, which afterwards stood him in good stead.

The pastor reported favorably, and when fifteen, young Jay was sent to King's College, which is now Columbia University, kings not being popular in America.

Doctor Samuel Johnson, who nowise resembled Ursa Major, was the president of the College at that time. He was also the faculty, for there were just thirty students and he did all the teaching himself. Doctor Johnson, true to his name, dearly loved a good book, and when teaching mathematics would often forget the topic and recite Ossian by the page, instead. Jay caught it, for the book craze is contagious and not sporadic. We take it by being exposed.

And thus it was while under the tutelage of Doctor Johnson that Jay began to acquire the ability to turn a terse sentence; and this gained him admittance into the world of New York letters, whose special guardians were Dickinson and William Livingston.

Livingston invited the boy to his house, and very soon we find the young man calling without special invitation, for Livingston had a beautiful daughter about John's age, who was fond of Ossian, too, or said she was.

And as this is not a serial love-story, there is no need of keeping the gentle reader in suspense, so I will explain that some years later John married the girl, and the mating was a very happy one.

After John had been to King's College two years we find in the faded and yellow old letter-book an item written by the father to the effect that: "Our Johnny is doing well at College. He seems sedate and intent on gaining knowledge; but rather inclines to Law instead of the Ministry."

Doctor Johnson was succeeded by Doctor Myles Cooper, a Fellow of Oxford, who used to wear his mortarboard cap and scholar's gown up Broadway. In young Jay's veins there was not a drop of British blood. Of his eight great-grandparents, five were French and three Dutch, a fact he once intimated in the Oxonian's presence. And then it was explained to the youth that if such were the truth it would be as well to conceal it.

Alexander Hamilton got along very well with Doctor Cooper, but John Jay found himself rusticated shortly before graduation. Some years after this Doctor Cooper hastily climbed the back fence, leaving a sample of his gown on a picket, while Alexander Hamilton held the Whig mob at bay at the front door.

Cooper sailed very soon for England, anathematizing "the blarsted country" in classic Latin as the ship passed out of the Narrows.

"England is a good place for him," said the laconic John Jay.

So John Jay was to be a lawyer. And the only way to be a lawyer in those days was to work in a lawyer's office. A goodly source of income to all established lawyers was the sums they derived for taking embryo Blackstones into their keeping. The greater a man's reputation as a lawyer, the higher he placed his fee for taking a boy in.

In those days there were no printed blanks, and a simple lease was often a day's work to write out; so it was not difficult to keep the boys busy. Besides that, they took care of the great man's horse, blacked his boots, swept the office, and ran errands. During the third year of apprenticeship, if all went well, the young man was duly admitted to the Bar. A stiff examination kept out the rank outsiders, but the nomination by a reputable attorney was equivalent to admittance, for all members knew that if you opposed an attorney today, tomorrow he might oppose you.

To such an extent was this system of taking students carried that, in Seventeen Hundred Sixty-eight, we find New York lawyers alarmed "by the awful influx of young Barristers upon this Province." So steps were taken to make all attorneys agree not to have more than two apprentices in their office at one time. About the same time the Boston newspaper, called the "Centinel," shows there was a similar state of overproduction in Boston. Only the trouble there was principally with the doctors, for doctors were then turned loose in the same way, carrying a diploma from the old physician with whom they had matriculated and duly graduated.

Law schools and medical colleges, be it known, are comparatively modern institutions—not quite so new, however, as business colleges, but pretty nearly so. And now in Chicago there is a "Barbers' University," which issues diplomas to men who can manipulate a razor and shears, whereas, until yesterday, boys learned to be barbers by working in a barber's shop. The good old way was to pass a profession along from man to man.

And it is so yet in a degree, for no man is allowed to practise either medicine or law until he has spent some time in the office of a practitioner in good standing.

In the Catholic Church, and also in the Episcopal, the novitiate is expected to serve for a time under an older clergyman; but all the other denominations have broken away, and now spring the fledgling on the world straight from the factory.

Several other of his children having sorely disappointed him, Peter Jay seemed to center his ambitions on his boy John. So we find him paying Benjamin Kissam, the eminent lawyer, two hundred pounds in good coin of the Colony to take John Jay as a 'prentice for five years. John went at it and began copying those endless, wordy documents in which the old-time attorney used to delight. John sat at one end of a table, and at the other was seated one Lindley Murray, at the mention of whose name terror used to seize my soul.

Murray has written some good, presentable English to the effect that young Jay, even at that time, had the inclination and ability to focus his mind upon the subject in hand. "He used to work just as steadily when his employer was away as when he was in the office," a fact which the grammarian seemed to regard as rather strange.

In a year we find that when Mr. Kissam went away he left the keys of the safe in John Jay's hands, with orders what to do in case of emergencies. Thus does responsibility gravitate to him who can shoulder it, and trust to the man who deserves it.

It was in Kissam's office that Jay acquired that habit of reticence and serene poise which, becoming fixed in character, made his words carry such weight in later years. He never gave snapshot opinions, or talked at random, or voiced any sentiment for which he could not give a reason.

His companions were usually men much older than he. At the "Moot Club" he took part with James Duane, who was to be New York's first continental mayor; Gouverneur Morris, who had not at that time acquired the wooden leg which he once snatched off and brandished with happy effect before a Paris mob; and Samuel Jones, who was to take as 'prentice and drill that strong man, De Witt Clinton.

Before his years of apprenticeship were over, John Jay, the quiet, the modest, the reticent, was known as a safe and competent lawyer—Kissam having pushed him forward as associate counsel in various difficult cases.

Meantime, certain chests of tea had been dumped into Boston Harbor, and the example had been followed by the "Mohawks" in New York. British oppression had made many Tories lukewarm, and then English rapacity had transformed these Tories into Whigs. Jay was one of these; and in newspapers and pamphlets, and from the platform, he had pleaded the cause of the Colonies. Opposition crystallized his reasons, and threats only served to make him reaffirm the truths he had stated.

So prominent had his utterances made his name, that one fine day he was nominated to attend the first Congress of the Colonies to be held in Philadelphia.

In August, Seventeen Hundred Seventy-four, we find him leaving his office in New York in charge of a clerk, and riding horseback over to the town of Elizabeth, there joining his father-in-law, and the two starting for Philadelphia. On the road they fell in with John Adams, who kept a diary. That night at the tavern where they stopped, the sharp-eyed Yankee recorded the fact of meeting these new friends and added, "Mr. Jay is a young gentleman of the law ... and Mr. Scott says a hard student and a very good speaker."

And so they journeyed on across the State to Trenton and down the Delaware River to Philadelphia, visiting, and cautiously discussing great issues as they went. Samuel Adams, too, was in the party, as reticent as Jay. Jay was twenty-nine and Samuel Adams fifty-two years old, but they became good friends, and Samuel once quietly said to John Adams, "That man Jay is young in years, but he has an old head."

Jay was the youngest man of the Convention, save one.

When the Second Congress met, Jay was again a delegate. He served on several important committees, and drew up a statement that was addressed to the people of England; but he was recalled to New York before the supreme issue was reached, and thus, through accident, the Declaration of Independence does not contain the signature of John Jay.

* * * * *

In Seventeen Hundred Seventy-eight, Jay was chosen president of the Continental Congress to succeed that other patriotic Huguenot, Laurens. The following year he was selected as the man to go to Spain, to secure from that country certain friendly favors.

His reception there was exceedingly frosty, and the mention of his two years on the ragged edge of court life at Madrid, in later years brought to his face a grim smile.

Spain's diplomatic policy was smooth hypocrisy and rank untruth, and all her promises, it seems, were made but to be broken. Jay's negotiations were only partially successful, but he came to know the language, the country and the people in a way that made his knowledge very valuable to America.

By Seventeen Hundred Eighty-one, England had begun to see that to compel the absolute submission of the Colonies was more of a job than she had anticipated. News of victories was duly sent to the "mother country" at regular intervals, but with these glad tidings were requests for more troops, and requisitions for ships and arms.

The American army was a very hard thing to find. It would fight one day, to retreat the next, and had a way of making midnight attacks and flank movements that, to say the least, were very confusing. Then it would separate, to come together—Lord knows where! This made Lord Cornwallis once write to the Home Secretary: "I could easily defeat the enemy, if I could find him and engage him in a fair fight." He seemed to think it was "no fair," forgetting the old proverb which has something to say about love and war.

Finally, Cornwallis got the thing his soul desired—a fair fight. He was then acting on the defensive. The fight was short and sharp; and Colonel Alexander Hamilton, who led the charge, in ten minutes planted the Stars and Stripes on his ramparts.

That night Cornwallis was the "guest" of Washington, and the next day a dinner was given in his honor.

He was then obliged to write to the Home Secretary, "We have met the enemy, and we are theirs"—but of course he did not express it just exactly that way. Then it was that King George, for the first time, showed a disposition to negotiate for peace.

As peace commissioners, America named Franklin, John Adams, Laurens, Jay and Jefferson.

Jefferson refused to leave his wife, who was in delicate health. Adams was at The Hague, just closing up a very necessary loan. Laurens had been sent to Holland on a diplomatic mission, and his ship having been overhauled by a British man-of-war, he was safely in that historic spot, the Tower of London.

So Jay and Franklin alone met the English commissioners, and Jay stated to them the conditions of peace.

In a few weeks Adams arrived, still keeping a diary. In that diary is found this item: "The French call me 'Le Washington de la Negociation': a very flattering compliment indeed, to which I have no right, but sincerely think it belongs to Mr. Jay."

Jay quitted Paris in May, Seventeen Hundred Eighty-four, having been gone from his native land eight years. When he reached New York there was a great demonstration in his honor. Triumphal arches were erected across Broadway, houses and stores were decorated with bunting, cannons boomed, and bells rang. The freedom of the city was presented to him in a gold box, with an exceedingly complimentary address, engrossed on parchment, and signed by one hundred of the leading citizens.

Jay spent just one day in New York, and then rode on horseback up to the old farm at Rye, Westchester County, to see his father. That evening there was a service of thanksgiving at the village church, after which the citizens repaired to the Jay mansion, one story high and eighty feet long, where a barrel of cider was tapped, and "a groce of Church Wardens" passed around, with free tobacco for all.

John Jay stood on the front porch and made a modest speech just five minutes long, among other things saying he had come home to be a neighbor to them, having quit public life for good. But he refused to talk about his own experiences in Europe. His reticence, however, was made up for by good old Peter Jay, who assured the people that John Jay was America's foremost citizen; and in this statement he was backed up by the village preacher, with not a dissenting voice from the assembled citizens.

It is rather curious (or it isn't, I'm not sure which) how most statesmen have quit public life several times during their careers, like the prima donnas who make farewell tours. The ingratitude of republics is proverbial, but to limit ingratitude to republics shows a lack of experience. The progeny of the men who tired of hearing Aristides called The Just are very numerous. Of course it is easy to say that he who expects gratitude does not deserve it; but the fact remains that the men who know it are yet stung by calumny when it comes their way.

That fine demonstration in Jay's honor was in great part to overwhelm and stamp out the undertone of growl and snarl that filled the air. Many said that peace had been gained at awful cost, that Jay had deferred to royalty and trifled with the wishes of the people in making terms.

And now Jay had got home, back to his family and farm, back to quiet and rest. The long, hard fight had been won and America was free. For eight years had he toiled and striven and planned: much had been accomplished—not all he hoped, but much.

He had done his best for his country, his own affairs were in bad shape, Congress had paid him meagerly, and now he would turn public life over to others and live his own life.

All through life men reach these places where they say, "Here will we build three tabernacles"; but out of the silence comes the imperative Voice, "Arise, and get thee hence, for this is not thy rest."

And now the war was over, peace was concluded; but war leaves a country in chaos. The long, slow work of reconstruction and of binding up a nation's wounds must follow. America was independent, but she had yet to win from the civilized world the recognition that she must have in order to endure.

Jay was importuned by Washington to take the position of Secretary of Foreign Affairs, one of the most important offices to be filled.

He accepted, and discharged the exacting duties of the place for five years.

Then came the adoption of the Federal Constitution, and the election of Washington as President of the United States.

Washington wrote to Jay: "There must be a Court, perpetual and Supreme, to which all questions of internal dispute between States or people be referred. This Court must be greater than the Executive, greater than any individual State, separated and apart from any political party. You must be the first official head of the Executive."

And Jay, as every schoolboy knows, was the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. By his sagacity, his dignity, his knowledge of men, and love of order and uprightness, he gave it that high place which it yet holds, and which it must hold; for when the decisions of the Supreme Court are questioned by a State or people, the fabric of our government is but a spider's web through which anarchy and unreason will stalk.

In Seventeen Hundred Ninety-four, came serious complications with Great Britain, growing out of the construction of terms of peace made in Paris eleven years before.

Some one must go to Great Britain and make a new treaty in order to preserve our honor and save us from another war.

Franklin was dead; Adams as Vice-President could not be spared; Hamilton's fiery temper was dangerous—no one could accomplish the delicate mission so well as Jay.

Jay, self-centered and calm, said little; but in compliance with Washington's wish resigned his office, and set sail with full powers to use his own judgment in everything, and the assurance that any treaty he made would be ratified.

Arriving in England, he at once opened negotiations with Lord Grenville, and in five months the new treaty was signed.

It provided for the payment to American citizens for losses of private shipping during the war; and over ten million dollars were paid to citizens of the United States under this agreement.

It fixed the boundary-line between the State of Maine and Canada; provided for the surrender of British posts in the Far West; that neither nation was to allow enlistments within its territory by a third nation at war with another; arranged for the surrender of fugitives charged with murder or forgery; and made definite terms as to various minor, but none the less important, questions.

A storm of opposition greeted the treaty when its terms were made known in America. Jay was accused of bartering away the rights of America, and indignation meetings were held, because Jay had not insisted on apologies, and set sums of indemnity on this, that and the other.

Nevertheless, Washington ratified the treaty; and when Jay arrived in America there was a greeting fully as cordial and generous as that on the occasion of his other homecoming.

In fact, while he was absent, his friends had put him in nomination as Governor of New York. His election to that office occurred just two days before he arrived, and when he landed his senses were mystified by hearing loud hurrahs for "Governor Jay."

When his term of office expired he was re-elected, so he served as Governor, in all, six years. The most important measure carried out during that time was the abolition of slavery in the State of New York, an act he had strenuously insisted on for twenty years, but which was not made possible until he had the power of Governor, and crowded the measure upon the Legislature.

Over a quarter of a century had passed since John Adams and John Jay had met on horseback out there on the New Jersey turnpike. Their intimacy had been continuous and their labors as important as ever engrossed the minds of men, but in it all there was neither jealousy nor bickering. They were friends.

At the close of Jay's gubernatorial term, President Adams nominated him for the office of Chief Justice, made vacant by the resignation of Oliver Ellsworth. The Senate unanimously confirmed the nomination, but Jay refused to accept the place.

For twenty-eight years he had served his country—served it in its most trying hours. He was not an old man in years, but the severity and anxiety of his labors had told on his health, and the elasticity of youth had gone from his brain forever. He knew this, and feared the danger of continued exertion. "My best work is done," he said; "if I continue I may undo the good I have accomplished. I have earned a rest."

He retired to the ancestral farm at Bedford, Westchester County, to enjoy his vacation. In a year his wife died, and the shock told on his already shattered nerves.

"The habit of reticence grew upon him," says one writer, "until he could not be tricked into giving an opinion even about the weather."

And so he lived out his days as a partial recluse, deep in problems of "raising watermelons, and sheep that would not jump fences." He worked with his hands, wore blue jeans, voted at every town election, but to a great degree lived only in the past. The problems of church and village politics and farm life filled his declining days.

To a great degree his physical health came back, but the problems of statecraft he left to other heads and hands.

His religious nature manifested itself in various philanthropic schemes, and the Bible Society he founded endures even unto this day. These things afforded a healthful exercise for that tireless brain which refused to run down.

His daughters made his home ideal, their love and gentleness soothing his declining years.

Death to him was kindly, gathering him as Autumn, the messenger of Winter, reaps the leaves.

* * * * *

No one has ever made the claim that Jay possessed genius. He had something which is better, though, for most of the affairs of life, and that is commonsense. In his intellect there was not the flash of Hamilton, nor the creative quality possessed by Jefferson, nor the large all-roundness of Franklin.

He was the average man who has trained and educated and made the best use of every faculty and every opportunity. He was genuine; he was honest; and if he never surprised his friends by his brilliancy, he surely never disappointed them through duplicity.

He made no promises that he could not keep; he held out no vain hopes.

As a diplomat he seems nearly the ideal. We have been taught that the line of demarcation between diplomacy and untruth is very shadowy. But truth is very good policy and in the main answers the purpose much better than the other thing. I am quite willing to leave the matter to those who have tried both.

We can not say that Jay was "magnetic," for magnetic men win the rabble; but Jay did better: he won the confidence and admiration of the strong and discerning. His manner was gentle and pleasing; his words few, and as a listener he set a pace that all novitiates in the school of diplomacy would do well to follow.

To talk well is a talent, but to listen is a fine art. If I really wished to win the love of a man I'd practise the art of listening. Even dull people often talk well when there is some one near who cultivates the receptive mood; and to please a man you must give him an opportunity to be both wise and witty. Men are pleased with their friends when they are pleased with themselves, and no man is ever so pleased with himself as when he has expressed himself well.

The sympathetic listener at a lecture or sermon is the only one who gets his money's worth. If you would get good, lend your sympathy to a speaker, and if, accidentally, you imbibe heresy, you can easily throw it overboard when you get home.

John Jay was quiet and undemonstrative in speech, cultivating a fine reserve. In debate he never fired all his guns, and his best battles were won with the powder that was never exploded. "You had always better keep a small balance to your credit," he once advised a young attorney.

When the first Congress met, Jay was not in favor of complete independence from England. He asked only for simple justice, and said, "The middle course is best." He listened to John Adams and Patrick Henry and quietly discussed the matter with Samuel Adams; but it was some time before he saw that the density of King George was hopeless, and that the work of complete separation was being forced upon the Colonies by the blindness and stupidity of the British Parliament.

He then accepted the issue.

During those first days of the Revolution, New York did not stand firm, as did Boston, for the cause of independence. "The foes at home are the only ones I really fear," once wrote Hamilton.

First to pacify and placate, then to win and hold those worse than neutrals, was the work of John Jay. While Washington was in the field, Jay, with tireless pen, upheld the cause, and by his speech and presence kept anarchy at bay.

As president of the Committee of Safety he showed he could do something more than talk and write. When Tories refused to take the oath of allegiance he quietly wrote the order to imprison or banish; and with friend, foe or kinsman there was neither dalliance nor turning aside. His heart was in the cause—his property, his life. The time for argument had passed.

In the gloom that followed the defeat of Washington at Brooklyn, Jay issued an address to the people that is a classic in its fine, stern spirit of hope and strength. Congress had the address reprinted and sent broadcast, and also translated and printed in German.

His work divides itself by a strange coincidence into three equal parts. Twenty-eight years were passed in youth and education; twenty-eight years in continuous public work; and twenty-eight years in retirement and rest.

As one of that immortal ten, mentioned by a great English statesman, who gave order, dignity, stability and direction to the cause of American Independence, the name of John Jay is secure.



WILLIAM H. SEWARD

I avow my adherence to the Union, with my friends, with my party, with my State; or without either, as they may determine; in every event of peace or war, with every consequence of honor or dishonor, of life or death. —Speech in the United States Senate, 1860



When I was a freshman at the Little Red Schoolhouse, the last exercise in the afternoon was spelling. The larger pupils stood in a line that ran down one aisle and curled clear around the stove. Well do I remember one Winter when the biggest boy in the school stood at the tail-end of the class most of the time, while at the head of the line, or always very near it, was a freckled, check-aproned girl, who once at a spellin'-bee had defeated even the teacher. This girl was ten years older than myself, and I was then too small to spell with this first grade, but I watched the daily fight of wrestling with such big words as "un-in-ten-tion-al-ly" and "mis-un-der-stand-ing," and longed for a day when I, too, should take part and possibly stand next to this fine, smart girl, who often smiled at me approvingly. And I planned how I would hold her hand as we would stand there in line and mentally dare the master to come on with his dictionary. We two would be the smartest scholars of the school and always help each other in our "sums."

Yet when time had pushed me into the line, she of the check apron was not there, and even if she had been I should not have dared to hold her hand.

But I must not digress—the particular thing I wish to explain is that one day at recess the best scholar was in tears, and I went to her and asked what was the matter, and she told me that some of the big girls had openly declared that she—my fine, freckled girl, the check-aproned, the invincible—held her place at the head of the school only through favoritism.

I burned with rage and resentment and proposed fight; then I burst out crying and together we mingled our tears.

All this was long ago. Since then I have been in many climes, and met many men, and read history a bit—I hope not without profit. And this I have learned: that the person who stands at the head of his class (be he country lad or presidential candidate) is always the target for calumny and the unkindness of contemporaries who can neither appreciate nor understand.

Not long ago I spent several days at Auburn, New York, so named by some pioneer who, when the Nineteenth Century was very young, journeyed thitherward with a copy of Goldsmith's "Deserted Village" in his pack.

Auburn is a flourishing city of thirty thousand inhabitants. It has beautiful wide streets, lined with elms that in places form an archway. There are churches to spare and schools galore and handsome residences. Then there are electric cars and electric lights and dynamos, with which men electricute other men in the wink of an eye. I saw the "fin-de-siecle" guillotine and sat in the chair, and the jubilant patentee told me that it was the quickest scheme for extinguishing life ever invented—patented Anno Christi Eighteen Hundred Ninety-five. Verily we live in the age of the Push-Button! And as I sat there I heard a laugh that was a quaver, and the sound of a stout cane emphasizing a jest struck against the stone floor.

"We didn't have such things when I was a boy!" came the tremulous voice.

And then the newcomer explained to me that he was eighty-seven years old last May, and that he well remembered a time when a plain oaken gallows and a strong rope were good enough for Auburn—"provided Bill Seward didn't get the fellow free," added my new-found friend.

Then the old man explained that he used to be a guard on the walls, and now he had a grandson who occupied the same office, and in answer to my question said he knew Seward as though he were a brother. "Bill, he was the luckiest man ever in Auburn—he married rich and tumbled over bags of money if he just walked on the street. He believed in neither God nor devil and had a pompous way o' makin' folks think he knew all about everything. To make folks think you know is just as well as to know, I s'pose!" and the old man laughed and struck his cane on the echoing floor of the cell.

The sound and the place and the company gave me a creepy feeling, and I excused myself and made my way out past armed guards, through doorways where iron bars clicked and snapped, and steel bolts that held in a thousand men shot back to let me out, out into a freer air and a better atmosphere. And as I passed through the last overhanging arch where a one-armed guard wearing a G.A.R. badge turned a needlessly big key, there came unbeckoned across my inward sight a vision of a check-aproned girl in tears, sobbing with head on desk. And I said to myself: "Yes, yes! country girl or statesman, you shall drink the bitter potion that is the penalty of success—drink it to the very dregs. If you would escape moral and physical assassination, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing—court obscurity, for only in oblivion does safety lie."

All mud sticks, but no mud is immortal, and that senile fling at the name of Seward is the last flickering, dying word of detraction that can be heard in the town that was his home for full half a century, or in the land he served so well. And yet it was in Auburn that mob spirit once found a voice; and when Seward was Lincoln's most helpful adviser, and his sons were at the front serving the country's cause, cries of "Burn his house! Burn his house!" came to the distracted ears of wife and daughter.

But all that has gone now. In fact, denial that calumny was ever offered to the name of Seward springs quickly to the lips of Auburn men, as they point with pride to that beautiful old home where he lived, and where now his son resides; and then they lead you, with a reverence that nearly uncovers, to the stately bronze standing on the spot that was once his garden—now a park belonging to the people.

Time marks wondrous changes; and the city where William Lloyd Garrison lived in "a rat-hole," as reported by Boston's Mayor, now honors Commonwealth Avenue with his statue. And so the sons of Seward's enemies have devoted willing dollars to preserving "that classic face and spindling form" in deathless bronze.

And they do well, for Seward's name and fame are Auburn's glory.

* * * * *

I may be mistaken, but it seems to me that all the worry of the world is quite useless. And on no subject affecting mortals is there so much worry as on that of (no, not love!) parents' ambitions for their children. When the dimpled darling toddles and lisps and chatters, the satisfaction he gives is unalloyed; for he is so small and insignificant, his demands so imperious, that the entire household dance attendance on the wee tyrant, and count it joy. But by and by the things at which we used to laugh become presumptuous, and that which was once funny is now perverse. And the more practical a man is, the larger his stock of Connecticut commonsense, the greater his disillusionment as his children grow to manhood. When he beholds dawdling inanity and dowdy vanity growing lush as jimson, where yesterday, with strained prophetic vision, he saw budding excellence and worth, his soul is wrung by a worry that knows no peace. The matter is so poignantly personal that he dare not share it with another in confessional, and so he hugs his grief to his heart, and tries to hide it even from himself.

And thus does many a mother scrub the kitchen-floor on her knees, rather than face the irony of maternity and ask the assistance of the seventeen-year-old pert chit with bangs, who strums a mandolin in the little front parlor, gay with its paper flowers, six plush-covered chairs and a "company" sofa.

The late Commodore Vanderbilt is reported to have said, "I have over a dozen sons, and not one is worth a damn." I fear me that every father with sons grown to manhood has at some time voiced the same sentiment, curtailed, possibly, only as to numbers, and softened by another expletive, which does not mitigate the anguish of his cry, as he sees the dreams he had for his baby boys fade away into a mist of agonizing tears.

And is all this worry the penalty that Nature exacts for dreaming dreams that can not in their very nature come true? Jean Jacques Rousseau, who wrote so beautifully on child-study, avoided the risk of failure by putting his children into an asylum; several "Communities" since have set apart certain women to be mothers to all, and bring up and care for the young, and strangely, with no apparent loss to the children; and Bellamy prophesies a day when the worries of parenthood will all be transferred to a "committee."

But the worry is futile and senseless, being born often of a blindness that will not wait. Man has not only "Seven Ages," but many more, and he must pass through this one before the next arrives. The Commodore certainly possessed what is called horse-sense, and if his conceptions of character had been clearer, he might have realized that in more ways than one the abilities of his sons were going to be greater than his own. His eldest son was, nevertheless, banished to a Long Island farm on a pension, "because he could not be trusted to do business." The same son once modestly asked the Commodore if he would allow him to have the compost that had been for a year accumulating outside the Fifth Avenue barns. "Just one load, and no more," said pater. William thereupon took twenty teams and as many men, and transferred the entire pile to a barge moored in the river. It was a barge-load. And when pater saw what had been done, he said, "The boy is not so big a fool as I thought." The boy was forty-five ere death put him in possession of the gold that the father no longer had use for, there being no pockets in a shroud, and he then showed that as a financier he could have given his father points, for in a few years he doubled the millions and drove horses faster without a break than his father had ever ridden.

Seward's father was a doctor, justice of the peace, merchant, and the general first citizen of the village of Florida, Orange County, New York. And he had no more confidence in his boy William than Vanderbilt had in his. He educated him only because the lad was not strong enough to work, and it seems to have been the firm belief that the boy would come to no good end. In order to discipline him, the father put the youngster in college on such a scanty allowance that the lad was obliged to run away and go to teaching school in order to be free from financial humiliation. Here was the best possible proof that the young man had the germs of excellence in him; but the father took it as a proof of depravity, and sent warning letters to the young school-teacher's friends threatening them "not to harbor the scapegrace."

The years went by and the parental distrust slackened very little. The boy was slim and slender and his hair was tow-colored and his head too big for his body. He had gotten a goodly smattering of education some way and was intent on being a lawyer. He seemed to know that if he was to succeed he must get well away from the parent nest, and out of the reach of daily advice.

His desire was to go "Out West," and the particular objective point was Auburn, New York.

The father gave him fifty dollars as a starter, with the final word, "I expect you'll be back all too soon."

And so young Seward started away, with high hopes and a firm determination that he would agreeably disappoint his parents by not going back.

He reached Albany by steamboat, and embarked on a sumptuous canal packet that bore a waving banner on which were the words woven in gold, "Westward Ho!"

And he has slyly told us how, as he stepped aboard that "inland palace," he bethought him of having written a thesis, three years before, proving that De Witt Clinton's chimera of joining the Hudson and Lake Erie was an idea both fictile and fibrous. But the inland palace carried him safely and surely. He reached Auburn, and instead of writing home for more money, returned that which he had borrowed. The father, who was a pretty good man in every way, quite beyond the average in intellect, lived to see his son in the United States Senate.

And the moral for parents is: Don't worry about your children. You were young once, even if you have forgotten the fact. Boys will be boys and girls will be girls—but not forever. Have patience, and remember that this present brood is not the first generation that has been brought forth. There have been others, and each has been very much like the one that passed before. The sentiment of "Pippa Passes" holds: "God's in His Heaven, all's right with the world."

* * * * *

In Eighteen Hundred Thirty-four, Seward was the Whig candidate for Governor of New York. He was defeated by W.L. Marcy. Four years later he was again a candidate against Marcy and defeated him by ten thousand majority.

Seward was then thirty-six years of age, and was counted one of the very first among the lawyers of the State, and in accepting the office of Governor he made decided financial sacrifices.

Seward was a man of positive ideas, and, although not arbitrary in manner, yet had a silken strength of will that made great rents in the mesh of other men's desires. Before a court, his quiet but firm persistence along a certain line often dictated the verdict. The faculty of grasping a point firmly and securely was his in a marked measure. And any man who can quietly override the wishes and ambitions of other men is first well feared, and then thoroughly hated.

One of Seward's first efforts on becoming Governor was to insure a common-school education among the children of every class, and especially among the foreign population of large cities. To this end he advocated a distribution of public funds among all schools established with that object; and if he were alive today it is quite needless to say he would not belong to the A.P.A. nor to any other secret society. He knew too much of all religions to have complete faith in any, yet his appreciation of the fact that the Catholics minister to the needs of a class that no other denomination reaches or can control was outspoken and plain. This, with his connection with the Anti-Masonic Party, brought upon his name a stigma that was at last to defeat him for the Presidency. Seward's clear insight into practical things, backed by the quiet working energy of his nature, brought about many changes, and the changes he effected and the reforms he inaugurated must ever rank his name high among statesmen.

By his influence the law's delay in the courts of chancery was curtailed, and this prepared the way for radical changes in the Constitution. He inaugurated the geological survey that led to making "Potsdam outcrop" classic, and "Medina sandstone" a product that is so known wherever a man goes forth in the fields of earth carrying a geologist's hammer.

Largely through his efforts, a safe and general banking system was brought about; and the establishment of a lunatic asylum was one of the best items to his credit during that first term as Governor. But there was one philological change that proved too great even for his generalship. The word "lunacy," as we know, comes from "luna," the belief in the good old days being that the moon exercised a profound influence on the wits of sundry people. I'm told that the idea still holds good in certain quarters, and that if the wind is east and the moon shows a horn on which you can hang a flatiron, certain persons are looked upon askance and the children cautioned to avoid them.

Seward said that insane people were simply those who were mentally ill, and that "Hospital" was the proper term. But the classicists retorted, "Nay, nay, William Henry, you have had your way in many things and here we will now have ours." It has taken us full a century officially to make the change, and the plain folks from the hills still refuse to ratify it, and will for many a lustrum.

It was during Seward's administration that the "debtors' prison" was done away with, and it was, too, through his earnest recommendation that the last trace of law for slaveholding was wiped from the statute-books of the State of New York.

The question of slavery was taken up most exhaustively in what was known as the "Virginia Controversy." This interesting correspondence can be seen in a stout volume in most public libraries. It is a series of letters that passed between Governor Seward of New York and the Governor of Virginia, as to the requisition of two persons in New York charged by the Governor of Virginia with abducting slaves. Seward made the patent point, and backed it up with a forest of reasons in politest English, that the accused persons being charged with abducting slaves, and there being no such thing as slaves known in New York, no person in New York could be apprehended for stealing slaves—for slaves were things that had no existence.

Then did the Governor of Virginia admit that slaves could not be abducted in New York; but he proceeded to explain in lusty tomes that slavery legally existed in Virginia, and that if slaves were abducted in Virginia, the criminal nature of the act could not be shaken off because the accused changed his geographical base. Seward was a prince of logicians: the subtleties of reasoning and the smoke of rhetoric were to his fancy, and although there is not a visible smile in the whole "Virginia Controversy," I can not but think that his sleeves were puffed with laughter as he searched the universe for reasons to satisfy the haughty First Families of Virginia. And all the while, please note that he held the alleged abductors safe and secure 'gainst harm's way.

In this correspondence he placed himself on record as an Abolitionist of the Abolitionists; and the name of Seward became listed then and there for vengeance—or immortality. The subject had been forced upon him, and he then expressed the sentiment that he continued to voice until Eighteen Hundred Sixty-five, that America could not exist half-free and half-slave. It must be a land of slaveholders and slaves, or a land of free-men—he was fully and irrevocably committed to the cause.

In Eighteen Hundred Forty, he was re-elected Governor. The second administration was marked, as was the first, by a vigorous policy of pushing forward public improvements.

At the close of his second term Seward found his personal affairs in rather an unsettled condition, the expenses of official position having exceeded his income. He had had a goodly taste of the ingratitude of republics, and philosopher though he was, he was yet too young to know that his experience in well-doing was not unique, a fact he came to comprehend full well, in later years. And so he did that very human thing—declared his intention of retiring permanently from public life.

Once back at Auburn, clients flocked to him, and he took his pick of business. And yet we find that public affairs were in his mind. Vexed questions of State policy were brought to him to decide, and journeys were made to Ohio and Michigan in the interests of men charged with slave-stealing. There was little money in such practise and small honors, but his heart was in the work.

In Eighteen Hundred Forty-four, Seward entered with much zest into the canvass in behalf of Henry Clay for President, as he thought Clay's election would surely lead the way to general emancipation.

In Eighteen Hundred Forty-eight, he supported General Taylor with equal energy. When Taylor was elected, there proved to be a great deal of opposition to him among the members from the South, in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. The administration felt the need of being backed by strong men in the Senate—men who could think on their feet, and carry a point when necessary against the opposition that sought to confuse and embarrass the friends of the administration with tireless windmill elocution.

From Washington came the urgent request that Seward should be sent to the United States Senate. In Eighteen Hundred Forty-nine, he was chosen senator and from the first became the trusted leader of the administration party.

The year after Seward's election to the Senate, President Taylor died and Vice-President Fillmore (who had the happiness to live in the village of East Aurora, New York) succeeded to the office, but Seward still remained leader of the Anti-Slavery Party.

Seward's second term as United States Senator closed in Eighteen Hundred Sixty-one. In Eighteen Hundred Fifty-five, when his first term expired, there was a very strenuous effort made against his re-election. His strong and continued anti-slavery position had caused him to be thoroughly hated both North and South. He was spoken of as "a seditious agitator and a dangerous man."

But in spite of opposition he was again sent back to Washington. Small, slim, gentle, modest and low-voiced, he was pointed out in Pennsylvania Avenue as "one who reads much and sees quite through the deeds of men."

Men who are well traduced and hotly denounced are usually pretty good quality. No better encomium is needed than the detraction of some people. And men who are well hated also have friends who love them well. Thus does the law of compensation ever live.

In Eighteen Hundred Fifty-six, there was a goodly little demonstration in favor of Seward for President, but the idea of running such a radical for the chief office of the people was quickly downed; and Seward himself knew the temper of the times too well to take the matter very seriously.

But the years between Eighteen Hundred Fifty-six and Eighteen Hundred Sixty were years of agitation and earnest thought, and the idea that slavery was merely a local question was getting both depolarized and dehorned. The non-slaveholding North was rubbing its sleepy eyes, and asking, Who is this man Seward, anyway? The belief was growing that Seward, Garrison, Sumner and Phillips were something more than self-seeking agitators, and many declared them true patriots. In every town and city, in every Northern State, political clubs sprang into being and their battle-cry was "Seward!" It seemed to be a foregone conclusion that Seward would be the next President. When the convention met, the first ballot showed one hundred seventy-three votes for Seward and one hundred two for Lincoln, the rest, scattering. But Seward's friends had marshaled their entire strength—all the rest was opposition—while Lincoln was an unknown quantity.

When the news went forth that Lincoln was nominated, Seward received the tidings in his library at Auburn; and the myth-makers have told us that he cried aloud, and that the carved lions on his gateposts shed salty tears. But Seward knew the opposition to his name, and was of too stern a moral fiber to fix his heart upon the result of a wire-pulling convention. The motto of his life had been: Be prepared for the unexpected. It may be that the lions on the gateposts shed tears, and it is possible there was weeping in the Seward household—but not by Seward.

He entered upon a hearty and vigorous campaign in support of Lincoln—making a tour through the West and being greeted everywhere with an enthusiasm that rivaled that shown for the candidate.

Seward said to his wife, when the news came that Lincoln was nominated: "He will be elected, but he will have to face the greatest difficulties and carry the greatest burdens that ever a man has been called to bear. He will need me, but look you, my dear, I will not serve under him. I must be at the head or nowhere."

Lincoln knew Seward, and Seward didn't knew Lincoln. And so after the Convention Lincoln journeyed down East. It took two days to go from Chicago to Buffalo, and there were no sleeping-cars; and then Lincoln went on from Buffalo to Auburn—another day's journey. Lincoln wore his habitual duster and the tall hat, a little the worse for wear. He telegraphed Seward he was coming, and, of course, Seward met him at the station in Auburn. Lincoln got off the car alone, unattended, carrying his carpetbag, homemade, with the initials "A.L." embroidered on the side by the fair hands of Fannie Anna Rebecca Todd.

Seward and his two sons—William and Frederick—met the coming President, and the boys laughed at the dusty, uncouth, sad and awkward individual, six feet five, who disembarked.

The carriage was waiting, but Lincoln refused to ride, saying, "Boys, let's walk," and so they walked up the hill, in through past the stone gateposts where the lions stood that shed tears. Seward ran ahead into the house and said to his wife: "Look you, my dear, we have misjudged this man. Do not laugh. He is the greatest man in the world!"

Three months later, Seward met Lincoln by appointment in Chicago; and from that time on, to the day of Lincoln's death, Seward served his chief with hands and feet, with eyes and ears, and with brain and soul. When Lincoln was elected, his wisdom was at once manifest in securing Seward as Secretary of State. The record of those troublous times and the masterly way in which Seward served his country are too vivid in the minds of men to need reviewing here, but the regard of Lincoln for this man, who so well complemented his own needs, is worthy of our remembrance. Seward was the only member of Lincoln's first Cabinet who stood by him straight through and entered the second.

Early in April, Eighteen Hundred Sixty-five, Seward met with a serious accident by being thrown from his carriage and dashed against the curbstone. One arm and both jaws were fractured, and besides he was badly bruised in other parts of his body. On April Thirteenth, Lincoln returned from his trip to Richmond, where he had had an interview with Grant. That evening he walked over from the White House to Seward's residence. The stricken man was totally unable to converse, but Lincoln, sitting on the edge of the bed and holding the old man's thin hands, told in solemn, serious monotone of the ending of the war; of what he had seen and heard; of the plans he had made for sending soldiers home and providing for an army whipped and vanquished, and of what was best to do to bind up a nation's wounds.

Five years before, these men had stood before the world as rivals. Then they joined hands as friends, and during the four years of strife and blood had met each day and advised and counseled concerning every great detail. Their opinions often differed widely, but there was always frank expression and, in the main, their fears and doubts and hopes had all been one.

But now at last the smoke had cleared away, and they had won. The victory had been too dearly bought for proud boast or vain exultation, but victory still it was.

And as the strong and homely Lincoln told the tale the stricken man could answer back only by pressure of a hand.

At last the presence of the nurse told Lincoln it was time to go; in grave jest he half-apologized for his long stay, and told of a man in Sangamon County who used to say there is no medicine like good news. And rumor has it that he then stooped and kissed the sick man's cheek. And then he went his way.

The next night at the same hour a man entered the Seward home, saying that he had been sent with messages by the doctor. Being refused admittance to the sick-chamber, he drew a pistol and endeavored to shoot Seward's son who guarded the door; but being foiled in this he crushed the young man's skull with the heavy weapon, and springing over his body dashed at the emaciated figure of Seward with uplifted dagger. A dozen times he struck at the face and throat and breast of the almost dying man, and then thinking he had done his work made rapidly away.

At the same time, linked by Fate in a sort of poetic justice, with the thought that if one deserved death so did the other, Hate had with surer aim sent an assassin's bullet home—and Lincoln died.

Weeks passed and the strong vitality that had served Seward in such good stead did not forsake him. Men of his stamp are hard to kill.

On a beautiful May-day, Seward, so reduced that a woman carried him, was taken out on the veranda of his house and watched that solid mass of glittering steel and faded blue that moved through Pennsylvania Avenue in triumphal march. Sherman with head uncovered rode down to Seward's home, saluted, and then back to join his goodly company, and many others of lesser note did the same.

Health and strength came slowly back, and happy was the day when he was carried to the office of Secretary of State and, propped in his chair, again began his work. Another President had come, but meet it was that the Secretary of State should still hold his place.

Seward lived full eleven years after that, seemingly dragging with unquenched spirit that slashed and broken form. But the glint did not fade from his eye, nor did the proud head lose its poise.

He died in his office among his books and papers, sane and sensible up to the very moment when his spirit took its flight.



ABRAHAM LINCOLN

The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to the cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth. —Speech at Gettysburg



No, dearie, I do not think my childhood differed much from that of other good healthy country youngsters. I've heard folks say that childhood has its sorrows and all that, but the sorrows of country children do not last long. The young rustic goes out and tells his troubles to the birds and flowers, and the flowers nod in recognition, and the robin that sings from the top of a tall poplar-tree when the sun goes down says plainly it has sorrows of its own—and understands.

I feel a pity for all those folks who were born in a big city, and thus got cheated out of their childhood. Zealous ash-box inspectors in gilt braid, prying policemen with clubs, and signs reading, "Keep Off the Grass," are woeful things to greet the gaze of little souls fresh from God.

Last Summer six "Fresh Airs" were sent out to my farm, from the Eighth Ward. Half an hour after their arrival, one of them, a little girl five years old, who had constituted herself mother of the party, came rushing into the house exclaiming, "Say, Mister, Jimmy Driscoll he's walkin' on de grass!"

I well remember the first Keep-Off-the-Grass sign I ever saw. It was in a printed book; it wasn't exactly a sign, only a picture of a sign, and the single excuse I could think of for such a notice was that the field was full of bumblebee-nests, and the owner, being a good man and kind, did not want barefoot boys to add bee-stings to stone-bruises. And I never now see one of those signs but that I glance at my feet to make sure that I have shoes on.

Given the liberty of the country, the child is very near to Nature's heart; he is brother to the tree and calls all the dumb, growing things by name. He is sublimely superstitious. His imagination, as yet untouched by disillusion, makes good all that earth lacks, and habited in a healthy body the soul sings and soars.

In childhood, magic and mystery lie close around us. The world in which we live is a panorama of constantly unfolding delights, our faith in the Unknown is limitless, and the words of Job, uttered in mankind's early morning, fit our wondering mood: "He stretcheth out the north over empty space, and hangeth the earth upon nothing."

I am old, dearie, very old. In my childhood much of the State of Illinois was a prairie, where wild grass waved and bowed before the breeze, like the tide of a summer sea. I remember when "relatives" rode miles and miles in springless farm-wagons to visit cousins, taking the whole family and staying two nights and a day; when books were things to be read; when the beaver and the buffalo were not extinct; when wild pigeons came in clouds that shadowed the sun; when steamboats ran on the Sangamon; when Bishop Simpson preached; when Hell was a place, not a theory, and Heaven a locality whose fortunate inhabitants had no work to do; when Chicago newspapers were ten cents each; when cotton cloth was fifty cents a yard, and my shirt was made from a flour-sack, with the legend, "Extra XXX," across my proud bosom, and just below the words in flaming red, "Warranted Fifty Pounds!"

The mornings usually opened with smothered protests against getting up, for country folks then were extremists in the matter of "early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise." We hadn't much wealth, nor were we very wise, but we had health to burn. But aside from the unpleasantness of early morning, the day was full of possibilities of curious things to be found in the barn and under spreading gooseberry-bushes, or if it rained, the garret was an Alsatia unexplored.

The evolution of the individual mirrors the evolution of the race. In the morning of the world man was innocent and free; but when self-consciousness crept in and he possessed himself of that disturbing motto, "Know Thyself," he took a fall.

Yet knowledge usually comes to us with a shock, just as the mixture crystallizes when the chemist gives the jar a tap. We grow by throes.

I well remember the day when I was put out of my Eden.

My father and mother had gone away in the one-horse wagon, taking the baby with them, leaving me in care of my elder sister. It was a stormy day and the air was full of fog and mist. It did not rain very much, only in gusts, but great leaden clouds chased each other angrily across the sky. It was very quiet there in the little house on the prairie, except when the wind came and shook the windows and rattled at the doors. The morning seemed to drag and wouldn't pass, just out of contrariness; and I wanted it to go fast because in the afternoon my sister was to take me somewhere, but where I did not know, but that we should go somewhere was promised again and again.

As the day wore on we went up into the little garret and strained our eyes across the stretching prairie to see if some one was coming. There had been much rain, for on the prairie there was always too much rain or else too little. It was either drought or flood. Dark swarms of wild ducks were in all the ponds; V-shaped flocks of geese and brants screamed overhead, and down in the slough cranes danced a solemn minuet.

Again and again we looked for the coming something, and I began to cry, fearing we had been left there, forgotten of Fate.

At last we went out by the barn and, with much boosting, I climbed to the top of the haystack and my sister followed. And still we watched.

"There they come!" exclaimed my sister.

"There they come!" I echoed, and clapped two red, chapped hands for joy.

Away across the prairie, miles and miles away, was a winding string of wagons, a dozen perhaps, one right behind another. We watched until we could make out our own white horse, Bob, and then we slid down the hickory pole that leaned against the stack, and made our way across the spongy sod to the burying-ground that stood on a knoll half a mile away.

We got there before the procession, and saw a great hole, with square corners, dug in the ground. It was half-full of water, and a man in bare feet, with trousers rolled to his knees, was working industriously to bail it out.

The wagons drove up and stopped. And out of one of them four men lifted a long box and set it down beside the hole where the man still bailed and dipped. The box was opened and in it was Si Johnson. Si lay very still, and his face was very blue, and his clothes were very black, save for his shirt, which was very white, and his hands were folded across his breast, just so, and held awkwardly in the stiff fingers was a little New Testament. We all looked at the blue face, and the women cried softly. The men took off their hats while the preacher prayed, and then we sang, "There'll be no more parting there."

The lid of the box was nailed down, lines were taken from the harness of one of the teams standing by and were placed around the long box, and it was lowered with a splash into the hole. Then several men seized spades and the clods fell with clatter and echo. The men shoveled very hard, filling up the hole, and when it was full and heaped up, they patted it all over with the backs of their spades.

Everybody remained until this was done, and then we got into the wagons and drove away.

Nearly a dozen of the folks came over to our house for dinner, including the preacher, and they all talked of the man who was dead and how he came to die.

Only two days before, this man, Si Johnson, stood in the doorway of his house and looked out at the falling rain. It had rained for three days, so that they could not plow, and Si was angry. Besides this, his two brothers had enlisted and gone away to the War and left him all the work to do. He did not go to War because he was a "Copperhead"; and as he stood there in the doorway looking at the rain, he took a chew of tobacco, and then he swore a terrible oath.

And ere the swear-words had escaped from his lips, there came a blinding flash of lightning, and the man fell all in a heap like a sack of oats.

And he was dead.

Whether he died because he was a Copperhead, or because he took a chew of tobacco, or because he swore, I could not exactly understand. I waited for a convenient lull in the conversation and asked the preacher why the man died, and he patted me on the head and told me it was "the vengeance of God," and that he hoped I would grow up and be a good man and never chew tobacco nor swear.

The preacher is alive now. He is an old, old man with long, white whiskers, and I never see him but that I am tempted to ask for the exact truth as to why Si Johnson was struck by lightning.

Yet I suppose it was because he was a Copperhead: all Copperheads chewed tobacco and swore, and that his fate was merited no one but the living Copperheads in that community doubted.

That was an eventful day to me. Like men whose hair turns from black to gray in a night, I had left babyhood behind at a bound, and the problems of the world were upon me, clamoring for solution.

* * * * *

There was war in the land. When it began I did not know, but that it was something terrible I could guess. I thought of it all the rest of the day and dreamed of it at night. Many men had gone away; and every day men in blue straggled by, all going south, forever south.

And all the men straggling along that road stopped to get a drink at our well, drawing the water with the sweep, and drinking out of the bucket, and squirting a mouthful of water over each other. They looked at my father's creaking doctor's sign, and sang, "Old Mother Hubbard, she went to the cupboard."

They all sang that. They were very jolly, just as though they were going to a picnic. Some of them came back that way a few years later and they were not so jolly. And some there were who never came back at all.

Freight-trains passed southward, blue with men in the cars, and on top of the cars, and in the caboose, and on the cowcatcher, always going south and never north. For "Down South" were many Rebels, and all along the way south were Copperheads, and they all wanted to come north and kill us, so soldiers had to go down there and fight them.

And I marveled much that if God hated Copperheads, as our preacher said He did, why He didn't send lightning and kill them, just in a second, as He had Si Johnson. And then all that would have to be done would be to send for a doctor to see that they were surely dead, and a preacher to pray, and the neighbors would dress them in their best Sunday suits of black, folding their hands very carefully across their breasts, then we would bury them deep, filling in the dirt and heaping it up, patting it all down very carefully with the back of a spade, and then go away and leave them until Judgment-Day.

Copperheads were simply men who hated Lincoln. The name came from copperhead-snakes, which are worse than rattlers, for rattlers rattle and give warning. A rattler is an open enemy, but you never know that a copperhead is around until he strikes. He lies low in the swale and watches his chance. "He is the worstest snake that am."

It was Abe Lincoln of Springfield who was fighting the Rebels that were trying to wreck the country and spread red ruin. The Copperheads were wicked folks at the North who sided with the Rebels. Society was divided into two classes: those who favored Abe Lincoln, and those who told lies about him. All the people I knew and loved, loved Abe Lincoln.

I was born at Bloomington, Illinois, through no choosing of my own, and Bloomington is further famous as being the birthplace of the Republican party. When a year old I persuaded my parents to move seven miles north to the village of Hudson, that then had five houses, a church, a store and a blacksmith-shop. Many of the people I knew, knew Lincoln, for he used to come to Bloomington several times a year "on the circuit" to try cases, and at various times made speeches there. When he came he would tell stories at the Ashley House, and when he was gone these stories would be repeated by everybody. Some of these stories must have been peculiar, for I once heard my mother caution my father not to tell any more "Lincoln stories" at the dinner-table when we had company.

And once Lincoln gave a lecture at the Presbyterian Church on the "Progress of Man," when no one was there but the preacher, my Aunt Hannah and the sexton.

My Uncle Elihu and Aunt Hannah knew Abe Lincoln well. So did Jesse Fell, James C. Conklin, Judge Davis, General Orme, Leonard Swett, Dick Yates and lots of others I knew. They never called him "Mister Lincoln," but it was always Abe, or Old Abe, or just plain Abe Lincoln. In that newly settled country you always called folks by their first names, especially when you liked them. And when they spoke the name, "Abe Lincoln," there was something in the voice that told of confidence, respect and affection.

Once when I was at my Aunt Hannah's, Judge Davis was there and I sat on his lap. Years afterward I boasted to Robert Ingersoll that when I wore trousers buttoned to a calico waist I used to sit on the lap of David Davis, and Colonel Ingersoll laughed and said, "Now I know you are a liar, for David Davis didn't have any lap." The only thing about the interview I remember was that the Judge really didn't have any lap to speak of.

After Judge Davis had gone, Aunt Hannah said, "You must always remember Judge Davis, for he is the man who made Abe Lincoln!"

And when I said, "Why, I thought God made Lincoln," they all laughed.

After a little pause my inquiring mind caused me to ask, "Who made Judge Davis?" And Uncle Elihu answered, "Abe Lincoln."

Then they all laughed more than ever.

* * * * *

Many volunteers were being called for. Neighbors and neighbors' boys were enlisting—going to the support of Abe Lincoln.

Then one day my father went away, too. Many of the neighbors went with us to the station when he took the four-o'clock train, and we all cried, except mother—she didn't cry until she got home. My father had gone to Springfield to enlist as a surgeon. In three days he came back and told us he had enlisted, and was to be assigned his regiment in a week, and go at once to the front. He was always a kind man, but during that week when he was waiting to be told where to go, he was very gentle and more kind than ever. He told me I must be the man of the house while he was away, and take care of my mother and sisters, and not forget to feed the chickens every morning; and I promised.

At the end of the week a big envelope came from Springfield marked in the corner, "Official."

My mother would not open it, and so it lay on the table until the doctor's return. We all looked at it curiously, and my eldest sister gazed on it long with lack-luster eye and then rushed from the room with her check apron over her head.

When my father rode up on horseback I ran to tell him that the envelope had come.

We all stood breathless and watched him break the seals. He took out the letter and read it silently and passed it to my mother.

I have the letter before me now, and it says: "The Department is still of the opinion that it does not care to accept men having varicose veins, which make the wearing of bandages necessary. Your name, however, has been filed and should we be able to use your services, will advise."

Then we were all very glad about the varicose veins, and I am afraid I went out and boasted to my play-fellows about our family possessions.

It was not so very long after, that there was a Big Meeting in the "timber." People came from all over the county to attend it. The chief speaker was a man by the name of Ingersoll, a colonel in the army, who was back home for just a day or two on furlough. Folks said he was the greatest orator in Peoria County.

Early in the morning the wagons began to go by our house, and all along the four roads that led to the grove we could see great clouds of dust that stretched away for miles and miles and told that the people were gathering by the thousands. They came in wagons and on horseback, carrying babies; two boys on one horse were common sights; and there were various four-horse teams with wagons filled with girls all dressed in white, carrying flags.

All our folks went. My mother fastened the back door of our house with a bolt on the inside, and then locked the front door with a key, and hid the key under the doormat.

At the grove there was much hand-shaking and visiting and asking after the folks and for the news. Several soldiers were present, among them a man who lived near us, called "Little Ramsey." Three one-armed men were there, and a man named Al Sweetser, who had only one leg. These men wore blue, and were seated on the big platform that was all draped with flags. Plank seats were arranged, and every plank held its quota. Just outside the seats hundred of men stood, and beyond these were wagons filled with people. Every tree in the woods seemed to have a horse tied to it, and the trees over the speakers' platform were black with men and boys. I never knew before that there were so many horses and people in the world.

When the speaking began, the people cheered, and then they became very quiet, and only the occasional squealing and stamping of the horses could be heard. Our preacher spoke first, and then the lawyer from Bloomington, and then came the great man from Peoria. The people cheered more than ever when he stood up, and kept hurrahing so long I thought they were not going to let him speak at all.

At last they quieted down, and the speaker began. His first sentence contained a reference to Abe Lincoln. The people applauded, and some one proposed three cheers for "Honest Old Abe." Everybody stood up and cheered, and I, perched on my father's shoulder, cheered too. And beneath the legend, "Warranted Fifty Pounds," my heart beat proudly. Silence came at last—a silence filled only by the neighing and stamping of horses and the rapping of a woodpecker in a tall tree. Every ear was strained to catch the orator's first words.

The speaker was just about to begin. He raised one hand, but ere his lips moved, a hoarse, guttural shout echoed through the woods, "Hurrah'h'h for Jeff Davis!!!"

"Kill that man!" rang a sharp, clear voice in instant answer.

A rumble like an awful groan came from the vast crowd. My father was standing on a seat, and I had climbed to his shoulder. The crowd surged like a monster animal toward a tall man standing alone in a wagon. He swung a blacksnake whip around him, and the lash fell savagely on two gray horses. At a lunge, the horses, the wagon and the tall man had cleared the crowd, knocking down several people in their flight. One man clung to the tailboard. The whip wound with a hiss and a crack across his face, and he fell stunned in the roadway.

A clear space of full three hundred feet now separated the man in the wagon from the great throng, which with ten thousand hands seemed ready to tear him limb from limb. Revolver shots rang out, women screamed, and trampled children cried for help. Above it all was the roar of the mob. The orator, in vain pantomime, implored order.

I saw Little Ramsey drop off the limb of a tree astride of a horse that was tied beneath, then lean over, and with one stroke of a knife sever the halter.

At the same time fifty other men seemed to have done the same thing, for flying horses shot out from different parts of the woods, all on the instant. The man in the wagon was half a mile away now, still standing erect. The gray horses were running low, with noses and tails outstretched.

The spread-out riders closed in a mass and followed at terrific speed. The crowd behind seemed to grow silent. We heard the patter-patter of barefoot horses ascending the long, low hill. One rider on a sorrel horse fell behind. He drew his horse to one side, and sitting over with one foot in the long stirrup, plied the sorrel across the flank with a big, white-felt hat. The horse responded, and crept around to the front of the flying mass.

The wagon had disappeared over a gentle rise of ground, and then we lost the horsemen, too. Still we watched, and two miles across the prairie we got a glimpse of running horses in a cloud of dust, and into another valley they settled, and then we lost them for good.

The speaking began again and went on amid applause and tears, with laughter set between.

I do not remember what was said, but after the speaking, as we made our way homeward, we met Little Ramsey and the young man who rode the sorrel horse.

They told us that they had caught the Copperhead after a ten-mile chase, and that he was badly hurt, for the wagon had upset and the fellow was beneath it. Ramsey asked my father to go at once to see what could be done for him.

The man, however, was quite dead when my father reached him. There was a purple mark around his neck: and the opinion seemed to be that he had got tangled up in the harness or something.

* * * * *

The war-time months went dragging by, and the burden of gloom in the air seemed to lift; for when the Chicago "Tribune" was read each evening in the post-office it told of victories on land and sea. Yet it was a joy not untinged with black; for in the church across from our house, funerals had been held for farmer boys who had died in prison-pens and been buried in Georgia trenches.

One youth there was, I remember, who had stopped to get a drink at our pump, and squirted a mouthful of water over me because I was handy.

One night the postmaster was reading aloud the names of the killed at Gettysburg, and he ran right on to the name of this boy. The boy's father sat there on a nail-keg, chewing a straw. The postmaster tried to shuffle over the name and on to the next.

"Hi! Wha—what's that you said?"

"Killed in honorable battle—Snyder, Hiram," said the postmaster with a forced calmness.

The boy's father stood up with a jerk. Then he sat down. Then he stood up again and staggered his way to the door and fumbled for the latch like a blind man.

"God help him! he's gone to tell the old woman," said the postmaster as he blew his nose on a red handkerchief.

The preacher preached a funeral sermon for the boy, and on the little pyramid that marked the family lot in the burying-ground they carved the words: "Killed in honorable battle, Hiram Snyder, aged nineteen." Not long after, strange, yellow, bearded men in faded blue began to arrive. Great welcomes were given them; and at the regular Wednesday evening prayer-meeting thanksgivings were poured out for their safe return, with names of company and regiment duly mentioned for the Lord's better identification. Bees were held for some of these returned farmers, where twenty teams and fifty men, old and young, did a season's farm-work in a day, and split enough wood for a year. At such times the women would bring big baskets of provisions, and long tables would be set, and there were very jolly times, with cracking of many jokes that were veterans, and the day would end with pitching horseshoes, and at last with singing "Auld Lang Syne."

It was at one such gathering that a ghost appeared—a lank, saffron ghost, ragged as a scarecrow—wearing a foolish smile and the cape of a cavalryman's overcoat with no coat beneath it. The apparition was a youth of about twenty, with a downy beard all over his face, and countenance well mellowed with coal-soot, as though he had ridden several days on top of a freight-car that was near the engine.

This ghost was Hiram Snyder.

All forgave him the shock of surprise he caused us—all except the minister who had preached his funeral sermon. Years after I heard this minister remark in a solemn, grieved tone: "Hiram Snyder is a man who can not be relied on."

* * * * *

As the years pass, the miracle of the seasons means less to us. But what country boy can forget the turning of the leaves from green to gold, and the watchings and waitings for the first hard frost that ushers in the nutting season! And then the first fall of snow, with its promise of skates and sleds and tracks of rabbits, and mayhap bears, and strange animals that only come out at night, and that no human eye has ever seen!

Beautiful are the seasons; and glad I am that I have not yet quite lost my love for each. But now they parade past with a curious swiftness! They look at me out of wistful eyes, and sometimes one calls to me as she goes by and asks, "Why have you done so little since I saw you last?" And I can only answer, "I was thinking of you."

I do not need another incarnation to live my life over again. I can do that now, and the resurrection of the past, through memory, that sees through closed eyes, is just as satisfactory as the thing itself.

Were we talking of the seasons? Very well, dearie, the seasons it shall be. They are all charming, but if I were to wed any it would be Spring. How well I remember the gentle perfume of her comings, and her warm, languid breath!

There was a time when I would go out of the house some morning, and the snow would be melting, and Spring would kiss my cheek, and then I would be all aglow with joy and would burst into the house, and cry: "Spring is here! Spring is here!" For you know we always have to divide our joy with some one. One can bear grief, but it takes two to be glad.

And then my mother would smile and say, "Yes, my son, but do not wake the baby!"

Then I would go out and watch the snow turn to water, and run down the road in little rivulets to the creek, that would swell until it became a regular Mississippi, so that when we waded the horse across, the water would come to the saddlegirth.

Then once, I remember, the bridge was washed away, and all the teams had to go around and through the water, and some used to get stuck in the mud on the other bank. It was great fun!

The first "Spring beauties" bloomed very early in that year; violets came out on the south side of rotting logs, and cowslips blossomed in the slough as they never had done before. Over on the knoll, prairie-chickens strutted pompously and proudly drummed. The war was over! Lincoln had won, and the country was safe!