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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Talking of the South, I forget now at what time it was that Barnum's Museum in Philadelphia was burned, but I shall never forget a droll incident which it occasioned. Opposite it was a hotel, and the heat was so tremendous that the paint on the hotel was scorched, and it had begun to burn in places. By the door stood a friend of mine in great distress. I asked what was the matter. He replied that in the hotel was a Southern lady who would not leave her trunks, in which there were all her diamonds and other valuables, and that he could not find a porter to bring them down. I was strong enough in those days. "What is the number of her room?" "No. 22." I rushed up—it was scorching hot by this time—burst into No. 22, and found a beautiful young lady in dire distress. I said abruptly, "I come from Mr. —- —-; where are your trunks?" She began to cry confusedly, "Oh, you can do nothing; they are very heavy."

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

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

"Yes, I have a name," replied the Berserker; "I'm CHARLES LELAND!" saying which he vanished.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I do wisht we could have a gentleman for President for oncet."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The old Knickerbocker Magazine had been for a long time running down to absolutely nothing. A Mr. Gilmore purchased it, and endeavoured to galvanise it into life. Its sober grey-blue cover was changed to orange. Mr. Clark left it, to my sorrow; but there was no help for it, for there was not a penny to pay him. I consented to edit it for half ownership, for I had an idea. This was, to make it promptly a strong Republican monthly for the time, which was utterly opposed to all of Mr. Clark's ideas.

I must here remark that the financial depression in the North at this time was terrible. I knew many instances in which landlords begged it as a favour from tenants that they would remain rent-free in their houses. A friend of mine, Mr. Fales, one day took me over two houses in Fifth Avenue, of which he had been offered his choice for $15,000 each. Six months after the house sold for $150,000. Factories and shops were everywhere closing, and there was a general feeling that far deeper and more terrible disasters were coming—war in its worst forms—national disintegration—utter ruin. This spirit of despair was now debilitating everybody. The Copperheads or Democrats, who were within a fraction as numerous as the Republicans, continually hissed, "You see to what your nigger worship has brought the country. This is all your doing. And the worst is to come." Then there was soon developed a class known as Croakers, who increased to the end of the war. These were good enough Union people, but without any hope of any happy issue in anything, and who were quite sure that everything was for the worst in this our most unfortunate of all wretched countries. Now it is a law of humanity that in all great crises, or whenever energy and manliness is needed, pessimism is a benumbing poison, and the strongest optimism the very elixir vitae itself. And by a marvellously strange inspiration (though it was founded on cool, far-sighted calculation), I, at this most critical and depressing time, rose to extremest hope and confidence, rejoicing that the great crisis had at length come, and feeling to my very depths of conviction that, as we were sublimely in the right, we must conquer, and that the dread portal once passed we should find ourselves in the fairy palace of prosperity and freedom. But that I was absolutely for a time alone amid all men round me in this intense hope and confidence, may be read as clearly as can be in what I and others published in those days, for all of this was recorded in type.

Bayard Taylor had been down to the front, and remarked carelessly to me one day that when he found that there was already a discount of 40 per cent. on Confederate notes, he was sure that the South would yield in the end. This made me think very deeply. There was no reason, if we could keep the Copperheads subdued, why we should not hold our own on our own territory. Secondly, as the war went on we should soon win converts. Thirdly, that the North had immense resources—its hay crop alone was worth more than all the cotton crop of the South. And fourthly, that when manufacturing and contract-making for the army should once begin, there would be such a spreading or wasting of money and making fortunes as the world never witnessed, and that while we grew rich, the South, without commerce or manufactures, must grow poor.

I felt as if inspired, and I wrote an article entitled, "Woe to the South." At this time, "Woe to the North" was the fear in every heart. I showed clearly that if we would only keep up our hearts, that the utter ruin of the South was inevitable, while that for us there was close at hand such a period of prosperity as no one ever dreamt of—that every factory would soon double its buildings, and prices rise beyond all precedent. I followed this article by others, all in a wild, enthusiastic style of triumph. People thought I was mad, and the New York Times compared my utterances to the outpourings of a fanatical Puritan in the time of Cromwell.

But they were fulfilled to the letter. There is no instance that I know of in which any man ever prophesied so directly in the face of public opinion and had his predictions so accurately fulfilled. I was all alone in my opinions. At all times a feeling as of awe at myself comes over me when I think of what I published. For, with the exception of Gilmore, who had a kind of vague idea that he kept a prophet—as Moses the tailor kept a poet—not a soul of my acquaintance believed in all this.

Then I went a step further. I found that the real block in the way of Northern union was the disgust which had gathered round the mere name of Abolitionist. It became very apparent that freeing the slaves would, as General Birney once said to me, be knocking out the bottom of the basket. And people wanted to abolitionise without being "Abolitionists"; and at this time even the New York Tribune became afraid to advocate anti-slavery, and the greatest fanatics were dumb with fear.

Then I made a new departure. I advocated emancipation of the slaves as a war measure only, and my cry was "Emancipation for the sake of the White Man." I urged prompt and vigorous action without any regard to philanthropy. As publishing such views in the Knickerbocker was like pouring the wildest of new wine into the weakest of old bottles, Gilmore resolved to establish at once in Boston a political monthly magazine to be called the Continental, to be devoted to this view of the situation. It was the only political magazine devoted to the Republican cause published during the war. That it fully succeeded in rapidly attracting to the Union party a vast number of those who had held aloof owing to their antipathy to the mere word abolition, is positively true, and still remembered by many. {242} Very speedily indeed people at large caught at the idea. I remember the very first time when one evening I heard Governor Andrews say of a certain politician that he was not an Abolitionist but an Emancipationist; and it was subsequently declared by my friends in Boston, and that often, that the very bold course taken by the Continental Magazine, and the creation by it of the Emancipationist wing, had hastened by several months the emancipation of the slaves by Abraham Lincoln. It was for this alone that the University of Cambridge, Massachusetts, afterwards, through its president, gave me the degree of A. M., "for literary services rendered to the country during the war," which is as complete a proof of what I assert as could be imagined, for this was in very truth the one sole literary service which I performed at that time, and there were many of my great literary friends who declared their belief in, and sympathy with, the services which I rendered to the cause. But I will now cite some facts which fully and further confirm what I have said.

The Continental Magazine was, as I may say, a something more than semi- official organ. Mr. Seward contributed to it two anonymous articles, or rather their substance, which were written out and forwarded to me by Oakey Hall, Esq., of New York. We received from the Cabinet at Washington continual suggestions, for it was well understood that the Continental was read by all influential Republicans. A contributor had sent us a very important article indeed, pointing out that there was all through the South, from the Mississippi to the sea, a line of mountainous country in which there were few or no slaves, and very little attachment to the Confederacy. This article, which was extensively republished, attracted great attention. It gave great strength and encouragement to the grand plan of the campaign, afterwards realised by Sherman. By official request, to me directed, the author contributed a second article on the subject. These articles were extensively circulated in pamphlet form or widely copied by the press, and created a great sensation, forming, in fact, one of the great points made in influencing public opinion. Another of the same kind, but not ours, was the famous pamphlet by Charles Stille, of Philadelphia, "How a Free People Conduct a Long War," in which it was demonstrated that the man who can hold out longest in a fight has the best chance, which simple truth made, however, an incredible popular impression. Gilmore and our friends succeeded, in fact, in making the Continental Magazine "respected at court." But I kept my independence and principles, and thundered away so fiercely for immediate emancipation that I was confidentially informed that Mr. Seward once exclaimed in a rage, "Damn Leland and his magazine!" But as he damned me only officially and in confidence, I took it in the Pickwickian sense. And at this time I realised that, though I was not personally very much before the public, I was doing great and good work, and, as I have said, a great many very distinguished persons expressed to me by letter or in conversation their appreciation of it; and some on the other side wrote letters giving it to me per contra, and one of these was Caleb Cushing. Cushing in Chinese means "ancient glory," but Caleb's renown was extinguished in those days.

I may add that not only did H. W. Longfellow express to me his sympathy for and admiration of my efforts to aid the Union cause, but at one time or another all of my literary friends in Boston, who perfectly understood and showed deep interest in what I was doing. Which can be well believed of a city in which, above all others in the world, everybody sincerely aims at culture and knowledge, the first principle of which—inspired by praiseworthy local patriotism—is to know and take pride in what is done in Boston by its natives.



V. LIFE DURING THE CIVIL WAR AND ITS SEQUENCE. 1862-1866.

Boston in 1862—Kind friends—Literary circles—Emerson, O. W. Holmes, Lowell, E. P. Whipple, Agassiz, &c.—The Saturday dinners—The printed autograph—The days of the Dark Shadow—Lowell and Hosea Biglow—I am assured that the Continental Magazine advanced the period of Emancipation—I return to Philadelphia—My pamphlet on "Centralisation versus States Rights"—Its Results—Books—Ping-Wing—The Emergency—I enter an artillery company—Adventures and comrades—R. W. Gilder—I see rebel scouts near Harrisburg—The shelling of Carlisle—Incidents—My brother receives his death-wound at my side—Theodore Fassitt—Stewart Patterson—Exposure and hunger—The famous bringing-up of the cannon—Picturesque scenery—The battle of Gettysburg—The retreat of Lee—Incidents—Return home—Cape May—The beautiful Miss Vining—Solomon the Sadducee—General Carrol Tevis—The Sanitary Fair—The oil mania—The oil country—Colonel H. Olcott, the theosophist—Adventures and odd incidents in Oil-land—Nashville—Dangers of the road—A friend in need—I act as unofficial secretary and legal adviser to General Whipple—Freed slaves—Inter arma silent leges—Horace Harrison—Voodoo—Captain Joseph R. Paxton—Scouting for oil and shooting a brigand—Indiana in winter—Charleston, West Virginia—Back and forth from Providence to the debated land—The murder of A. Lincoln—Goshorn—Up Elk River in a dug- out—A charmed life—Sam Fox—A close shot—Meteorological sorcery—A wild country—Marvellous scenery—I bore a well—Robert Hunt—Horse adventures—The panther—I am suspected of being a rebel spy—The German apology—Cincinnati—Niagara—A summer at Lenox, Mass.—A MS. burnt.

We went to Boston early in December, 1861, and during that winter lived pleasantly at the Winthrop House on the Common. I had already many friends, and took letters to others who became our friends. We were very kindly received. Among those whom we knew best were Mrs. and Mr. H. Ritchie, Mrs. and Mr. T. Perkins, Mrs. H. G. Otis, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Ward—but I must really stop, for there was no end to the list. Among my literary friends or acquaintances, or "people whom I have very often met," were Emerson, Longfellow, Dr. O. W. Holmes, J. R. Lowell, E. P. Whipple, Palfrey, G. Ticknor, Agassiz, E. Everett—in a word, all that brilliant circle which shone when Boston was at its brightest in 1862. I was often invited to the celebrated Saturday dinners, where I more than once sat by Emerson and Holmes. As I had been editor of the free lance Vanity Fair, and was now conducting the Continental with no small degree of audacity, regardless of friend or foe, it was expected—and no wonder—that I would be beautifully cheeky and New Yorky; and truly my education and antecedents in America, beginning with my training under Barnum, were not such as to inspire faith in my modesty. But in the society of the Saturday Club, and in the very general respect manifested in all circles in Boston for culture or knowledge in every form—in which respect it is certainly equalled by no city on earth—I often forgot newspapers and politics and war, and lived again in memory at Heidelberg and Munich, recalling literature and art. I heard, a day or two after my first Saturday, that I had passed the grand ordeal successfully, or summa cum magna laude, and that Dr. Holmes, in enumerating divers good qualities, had remarked that I was modest. Every stranger coming to Boston has a verdict or judgment passed on him—he is numbered and labelled at once—and it is really wonderful how in a few days the whole town knows it.

I had met with Emerson many years before in Philadelphia, where I had attracted his attention by remarking in Mrs. James Rush's drawing-room that a vase in a room was like a bridge in a landscape, which he recalled twenty years later. With Dr. Holmes I had corresponded. Lowell! "that reminds me of a little story."

There was some "genius of freedom"—i.e., one who takes liberties—who collected autographs, and had not even the politeness to send a written request. He forwarded to me this printed circular:

"DEAR SIR: As I am collecting the autographs of distinguished Americans, I would be much obliged to you for your signature. Yours truly, —- —-"

While I was editing Vanity Fair I received one of these circulars. I at once wrote:—

"DEAR SIR: It gives me great pleasure to comply with your request. CHARLES G. LELAND."

I called the foreman, and said, "Mr. Chapin, please to set this up and pull half-a-dozen proofs." It was done, and I sent one to the autograph- chaser. He was angry, and answered impertinently. Others I sent to Holmes and Lowell. The latter thought that the applicant was a great fool not to understand that such a printed document was far more of a curiosity than a mere signature. I met with Chapin afterwards, when in the war. He had with him a small company of printers, all of whom had set up my copy many a time. Printers are always polite men. They all called on me, and having no cards, left cigars, which were quite as acceptable at that time of tobacco-famine.

Amid all the horrors and anxieties of that dreadful year, while my old school-mate, General George B. McClellan, was delaying and demanding more men—mas y mas y mas—I still had as many happy hours as had ever come into any year of my life. If I made no money, and had to wear my old gloves (I had fortunately a good stock gathered from one of Frank Leslie's debtors), and had to sail rather close to the wind, I still found the sailing very pleasant, and the wind fair and cool, though I was pauper in aere.

Mrs. Harrison Gray Otis held a ladies' sewing-circle to make garments for the soldiers, at which my wife worked zealously. There were many social receptions, readings, etc., where we met everybody. It was very properly considered bad form in those early days of the war to dance or give grand dinners or great "parties." It was, in fact, hardly decent for a man to dress up and appear as a swell at all anywhere. Death was beginning to strike fast into families through siege and battle, and crape to blacken the door-bells. There was a dark shadow over every life. I had been assured by an officer that my magazine was doing the work of two regiments, yet I was tormented with the feeling that I ought to be in the war, as my grandfather would surely have been at my age. The officer alluded to wrote to me that he on one occasion had read one of my articles by camp-fire to his regiment, who gave at the end three tremendous cheers, which were replied to by the enemy, who were not far away, with shouts of defiance. As for minor incidents of the war-time, I could fill a book with them. One day a young gentleman, a perfect stranger, came to my office, as many did, and asked for advice. He said, "Where I live in the country we have raised a regiment, and they want me to be colonel, but I have no knowledge whatever of military matters. What shall I do?" I looked at him, and saw that he "had it in him," and replied, "New York is full of Hungarian and German military adventurers seeking employment. Get one, and let him teach you and the men; but take good care that he does not supplant you. Let that be understood." After some months he returned in full uniform to thank me. He had got his man, had fought in the field—all had gone well.

I remember, as an incident worth noting, that one evening while visiting Jas. R. Lowell at his house in Cambridge, awaiting supper, there came a great bundle of proofs. They were the second series of the Biglow Papers adapted to the new struggle, and as I was considered in Boston at that time as being in my degree a literary political authority or one of some general experience, he was anxious to have my opinion of them, and had invited me for that purpose. He read them to me, manifested great interest as to my opinion, and seemed to be very much delighted or relieved when I praised them and predicted a success. I do not exaggerate in this in the least; his expression was plainly and unmistakably that of a man from whom some doubt had been banished.

My brother Henry had at once entered a training-school for officers in Philadelphia, distinguished himself as a pupil, and gone out to the war in 1862. The terrible ill-luck which attended his every effort in life overtook him speedily, and, owing to his extreme zeal and over-work, he had a sunstroke, which obliged him to return home. He was a first-lieutenant. The next year he went as sergeant, and was again invalided. What further befell him will appear in the course of my narrative.

The Continental Magazine had done its work and was evidently dying. I had never received a cent from it, and it had just met the expenses of publication. It had done much good and rendered great service to the Union cause. Gilmore had very foolishly yielded half the ownership to Robert J. Walker, of whom I confess I have no very agreeable recollections. So it began to die. But I have the best authority for declaring that, ere it died, it had advanced the time of the Declaration of Emancipation, which was the turning-point of the whole struggle, and all my friends in Boston were of that opinion. This I can fully prove.

The summer of 1862 I passed in Dedham, going every day to my office in Boston. We lived at the Phoenix Hotel, and occupied the same rooms which my father and mother had inhabited thirty-five years before. We had many very kind and hospitable friends. I often found time to roam about the country, to sit by Wigwam Lake, to fish in the river Charles, and explore the wild woods. I have innumerable pleasant recollections of that summer.

I returned in the autumn with my wife to Philadelphia, and to my father's house in Locust Street. The first thing which I did was to write a pamphlet on "Centralisation versus States Rights." In it I set forth clearly enough the doctrine that the Constitution of the United States could not be interpreted so as to sanction secession, and that as the extremities or limbs grew in power, so there should be a strengthening of the brain or greater power bestowed on the central Government. I also advocated the idea of a far greater protection of general and common industries and interests being adopted by the Government.

There was in the Senate a truly great man, of German extraction, named Gottlieb Orth, from Indiana. He was absolutely the founder of the Bureaus of Education, &c., which are now nourishing in Washington. He wrote to me saying that he had got the idea of Industrial bureaus from my pamphlet. In this pamphlet I had opposed the commonly expressed opinion that we must do nothing to "aggravate the South." That is, we should burn the powder up by degrees, as the old lady did who was blown to pieces by the experiment. "Do not drive them to extremes." I declared that the South would go to extremes in any case, and that we had better anticipate it. This brought forth strange fruit in after years, long after the war.

While I was in Boston in 1862, I published by Putnam in New York a book entitled "Sunshine in Thought," which had, however, been written long before. It was all directed against the namby-pamby pessimism, "lost Edens and buried Lenores," and similar weak rubbish, which had then begun to manifest itself in literature, and which I foresaw was in future to become a great curse, as it has indeed done. Only five hundred copies of it were printed.

I was very busy during the first six months of 1863. I wrote a work entitled "The Art of Conversation, or Hints for Self-Education," which was at once accepted and published by Carleton, of New York. It had, I am assured, a very large sale indeed. I also wrote and illustrated, with the aid of my brother, a very eccentric pamphlet, "The Book of Copperheads." When Abraham Lincoln died two books were found in his desk. One was the "Letters of Petroleum V. Nasby," by Dr. R. Locke, and my "Book of Copperheads," which latter was sent to me to see and return. It was much thumbed, showing that it had been thoroughly read by Father Abraham.

I also translated Heine's "Book of Songs." Most of these had already been published in the "Pictures of Travel." I restored them to their original metres. I also translated the "Memoirs of a Good-for-Nothing" from the German, and finished up, partially illustrated, and published two juvenile works. One of these was "Mother Pitcher," a collection of original nursery rhymes for children, which I had written many years before expressly for my youngest sister, Emily, now Mrs. John Harrison of Philadelphia. In this work occurs my original poem of "Ping-Wing the Pieman's Son." Of this Poem Punch said, many years after, that it was "the best thing of the kind which had ever crossed the Atlantic." Ping- Wing appeared in 1891 as a full-page cartoon by Tenniel in Punch, and as burning up the Treaty. I may venture to say that Ping-Wing—once improvised to amuse dear little Emily—has become almost as well known in American nurseries as "Little Boy Blue," at any rate his is a popular type, and when Mrs. Vanderbilt gave her famous masked ball in New York, there was in the Children's Quadrille a little Ping-Wing. Ping travelled far and wide, for in after years I put him into Pidgin-English, and gave him a place in the "Pidgin-English Ballads," which have always been read in Canton, I daresay by many a heathen Chinese learning that childlike tongue. I also translated the German "Mother Goose."

And now terrible times came on, followed, for me, by a sad event. The rebels, led by General Lee, had penetrated into Pennsylvania, and Philadelphia was threatened. This period was called the "Emergency." I could easily have got a command as officer. I had already obtained for my brother an appointment as major with secretary's duty on Fremont's staff, which he promptly declined. But it was no time to stand on dignity, and I was rather proud, as was my brother, to go as "full private" in an artillery company known as "Chapman Biddle's," though he did not take command of it on this occasion. {252} Our captain was a dealer in cutlery named Landis.

After some days' delay we were marched forth. Even during those few days, while going about town in my private's uniform, I realised in a droll new way what it was to be a common man. Maid-servants greeted me like a friend, other soldiers and the humbler class talked familiarly to me. I had, however, no excuse to think myself any better than my comrades, for among the hundred were nearly twenty lawyers or law-students, and all were gentlemen as regards position in society. Among them was R. W. Gilder, now the editor of the Century, who was quite a youth then, and in whose appearance there was something which deeply interested me. I certainly have a strange Gypsy faculty for divining character, and I divined a genius in him. He was very brave and uncomplaining in suffering, but also very sensitive and emotional. Once it happened, at a time when we were all nearly starved to death and worn out with want of sleep and fatigue, that I by some chance got a loaf of bread and some molasses. I cut it into twelve slices and sweetened them, intending to give one to every man of our gun. But I could only find eleven, and, remembering Gilder, went about a long mile to find him; and when I gave it to him he was so touched that the tears came into his fine dark eyes. Trivial as the incident was, it moved me. Another was Theodore Fassitt, a next-door neighbour of mine, whose mother had specially commended him to me, and who told me that once or twice he had stolen ears of maize from the horses to keep himself alive. Also Edward Penington, and James Biddle, a gentleman of sixty; but I really cannot give the roll-call. However, they all showed themselves to be gallant gentlemen and true ere they returned home. The first night we slept in a railroad station, packed like sardines, and I lay directly across a rail. Then we were in camp near Harrisburg for a week—dans la pluie et la misere.

We knew that the rebels were within six miles of us, at Shooter's Hill—in fact, two of our guns went there. Penington was with them, and had a small skirmish, wherein two of the foemen were slain, the corporal being, however, called off before he could secure their scalps. That afternoon, as I was on guard, I saw far down below a few men who appeared to be scouting very cautiously, and hiding as they did so. They seemed mere specks, but I was sure they were rebels. I called on Lieutenant Perkins, who had a glass, but neither he nor others present thought they were of the enemy. Long after, this incident had a droll sequel.

Hearing that the rebels were threatening Carlisle, we were sent thither on a forced march of sixteen miles. They had been before us, and partially burned the barracks. We rested in the town. There was a large open space, for all the world like a stage. Ladies and others brought us refreshments; the scene became theatrical indeed. The soldiers, wearied with a long march, were resting or gossipping, when all at once—whizz- bang—a shell came flying over our heads and burst. There were cries—the ladies fled like frightened wild-fowl! The operatic effect was complete!

About ten thousand rebel regulars, hearing that we had occupied Carlisle, had returned, and if they had known that there were only two or three thousand raw recruits, they might have captured us all. From this fate we were saved by a good strong tremendous lie, well and bravely told. There was a somewhat ungainly, innocent, rustic-looking youth in our company, from whose eyes simple truth peeped out like two country girls at two Sunday-school windows. He, having been sent to the barracks to get some fodder, with strict injunction to return immediately, of course lay down at once in the hay and had a good long nap. The rebels came and roused him out, but promised to let him go free on condition that he would tell the sacred truth as to how many of us Federal troops were in Carlisle. And he, moved by sympathy for his kind captors, and swearing by the Great Copperhead Serpent, begged them to fly for their lives; "for twenty regiments of regulars, and Heaven only knew how many, volunteers, had come in that afternoon, and the whole North was rising, and trains running, and fresh levies pouring in."

The rebels believed him, but they would not depart without giving us a touch of their quality, and so fired shell and grape in on us till two in the morning. There were two regiments of "common fellows," or valiant city roughs, with us, who all hid themselves in terror wherever they could. But our company, though unable to fire more than a few shots, were kept under fire, and, being all gentlemen, not a man flinched.

I did not, to tell the truth, like our captain; but whatever his faults were, and he had some, cowardice was not among them. Some men are reckless of danger; he seemed to be absolutely insensible to it, as I more than once observed, to my great admiration. He was but a few feet from me, giving orders to a private, when a shell burst immediately over or almost between them. Neither was hurt, but the young man naturally shied, when Landis gruffly cried, "Never mind the shells, sir; they'll not hurt you till they hit you."

I was leaning against a lamp-post when a charge of grape went through the lamp. Remembering the story in "Peter Simple," and that "lightning never strikes twice in the same place," I remained quiet, when there came at once another, smashing what was left of the glass about two feet above my head.

Long after the war, when I was one day walking with Theodore Fassitt, I told him the tale of how I had awakened the family at the fire in Munich. And Theodore dolefully exclaimed, "I don't see why it is that I can never do anything heroic or fine like that!" Then I said, "Theodore, I will tell you a story. Once upon a time there was a boy only eighteen years of age, and it happened in the war that he was in a town, and the rebels shelled it. Now this boy had charge of four horses, and the general had told him to stay in one place, before a church; and he obeyed. The shells came thick and fast—I saw it all myself—and by-and- bye one came and took off a leg from one of the horses. Then he was in a bad way with his horses, but he stayed. After a while the general came along, and asked him 'why the devil he was stopping there.' And he replied, 'I was ordered to, sir!' Then the general told him to get behind the church at once."

"Why!" cried Theodore in amazement, "I was that boy!"

"Yes," I replied; "and the famous Roman sentinel who remained at his post in Pompeii was no braver, and I don't think he had so hard a time of it as you had with that horse."

I was put on guard. The others departed or lay down to sleep on the ground. The fire slackened, and only now and then a shell came with its diabolical scream like a dragon into the town. All at last was quiet, when there came shambling to me an odd figure. There had been some slight attempt by him to look like a soldier—he had a feather in his hat—but he carried his rifle as if after deer or raccoons, and as if he were used to it.

"Say, Cap!" he exclaimed, "kin you tell me where a chap could get some ammynition?"

"Go to your quartermaster," I replied.

"Ain't got no quartermaster."

"Well, then to your commanding officer—to your regiment."

"Ain't got no commanding officer nowher' this side o' God, nor no regiment."

"Then who the devil are you, and where do you belong?"

"Don't belong nowher'. I'll jest tell you, Cap, how it is. I live in the south line of New York State, and when I heard that the rebs had got inter Pennsylvany, forty of us held a meetin' and 'pinted me Cap'n. So we came down here cross country, and 'rived this a'ternoon, and findin' fightin' goin' on, went straight for the bush. And gettin' cover, we shot the darndest sight of rebels you ever did see. And now all our ammynition is expended, I've come to town for more, for ther's some of 'em still left—who want killin' badly."

"See here, my friend," I replied. "You don't know it, but you're nothing but a bushwhacker, and anybody has a right to hang or shoot you out of hand. Do you see that great square tent?" Here I pointed to the general's marquee. "Go in there and report yourself and get enrolled." And the last I saw of him he was stumbling over the sticks in the right direction. This was my first experience of a real guerillo—a character with whom I was destined to make further experience in after days.

An earlier incident was to me extremely curious. There was in our battery a young gentleman named Stewart Patterson, noted for his agreeable, refined manners. He was the gunner of our cannon No. Two. We had brass Napoleons. At the distance of about one mile the rebels were shelling us. Patterson brought his gun to bear on theirs, and the two exchanged shots at the same instant. Out of the smoke surrounding Patterson's gun I saw a sword-blade fly perhaps thirty feet, and then himself borne by two or three men, blood flowing profusely. The four fingers of his right hand had been cut away clean by a piece of shell.

At the instant I saw the blade flash in its flight, I recalled seeing precisely the same thing long before in Heidelberg. There was a famous duellist who had fought sixty or seventy times and never received a scratch. One day he was acting as second, when the blade of his principal, becoming broken at the hilt by a violent blow, flew across the room, rebounded, and cut the second's lip entirely open. It was remarkable that I should twice in my life have seen such a thing, in both instances accompanied by wounds. Long after I met Patterson in Philadelphia, I think, in 1883. He did not recognise me, and gave me his left hand. I said, "Not that hand, Patterson, but the other. You've no reason to be ashamed of it. I saw the fingers shot off."

But on that night there occurred an event which, in the end, after years of suffering, caused the deepest sorrow of my life. As we were not firing, I and the rest of the men of the gun were lying on the ground to escape the shells, but my brother, who was nothing if not soldierly and punctilious, stood upright in his place just beside me. There came a shell which burst immediately, and very closely over our heads, and a piece of it struck my brother exactly on the brass buckle in his belt on the spine. The blow was so severe that the buckle was bent in two. It cut through his coat and shirt, and inflicted a slight wound two inches in length. But the blow on the spine had produced a concussion or disorganisation of the brain, which proved, after years of suffering, the cause of his death. At first he was quite senseless, but as he came to, and I asked him anxiously if he was hurt, he replied sternly, "Go back immediately to your place by the gun!" He was like grandfather Leland.

A day or two after, while we were on a forced march to intercept a party of rebels, the effect of the wound on my brother's brain manifested itself in a terrible hallucination. He had become very gloomy and reserved. Taking me aside, he informed me that as he had a few days before entered a country-house, contrary to an order issued, to buy food, he was sure that Captain Landis meant as soon as possible to have him shot, but that he intended, the instant he saw any sign of this, at once to attack and kill the captain! Knowing his absolute determined and inflexibly truthful character, and seeing a fearful expression in his eyes, I was much alarmed. Reflecting in the first place that he was half- starved, I got him a meal. I had brought from Philadelphia two pounds of dried beef, and this, carefully hoarded, had eked out many a piece of bread for a meal. I begged some bread, gave my brother some beef with it, and I think succeeded in getting him some coffee. Then I went to Lieutenant Perkins—a very good man—and begged leave to take my brother's guard and to let him sleep. He consented, and my brother gradually came to his mind, or at least to a better one. But he was never the same person afterwards, his brain having been permanently affected, and he died in consequence five years after.

I may note as characteristic of my brother, that, twelve years after his death, Walt Whitman, who always gravely spoke the exact truth, told me that there was one year of his life during which he had received no encouragement as a poet, and so much ridicule that he was in utter despondency. At that time he received from Henry, who was unknown to him, a cheering letter, full of admiration, which had a great effect on him, and inspired him to renewed effort. He sent my brother a copy of the first edition of his "Leaves of Grass," with his autograph, which I still possess. I knew nothing of this till Whitman told me of it. The poet declared to me very explicitly that he had been much influenced by my brother's letter, which was like a single star in a dark night of despair, and I have indeed no doubt that the world owes more to it than will ever be made known.

During the same week in which this occurred my wife's only brother, Rodney Fisher, a young man, and captain in the regular cavalry, met with a remarkably heroic death at Aldie, Virginia. He was leading what was described as "the most magnificent and dashing charge of the whole campaign," when he was struck by a bullet. He was carried to a house, where he died within a week. He was of the stock of the Delaware Rodneys, and of the English Admiral's, or of the best blood of the Revolution, and well worthy of it. It was all in a great cause, but these deaths entered into the soul of the survivors, and we grieve for them to this day.

Our sufferings as soldiers during this Emergency were very great. I heard an officer who had been through the whole war, and through the worst of it in Virginia, declare that he had never suffered as he did with us this summer. And our unfortunate artillery company endured far more than the rest, for while pains were taken by commanding officers of other regiments, especially the regulars, to obtain food, our captain, either because they had the advance on him, or because he considered starving us as a part of the military drama, took little pains to feed us, and indeed neglected his men very much. As we had no doctor, and many of our company suffered from cholera morbus, I, having some knowledge of medicine, succeeded in obtaining some red pepper, a bottle of Jamaica ginger, and whisky, and so relieved a great many patients. One morning our captain forbade my attending to the invalids any more. "Proper medical attendance," he said, "would be provided." It was not; only now and then on rare occasions was a surgeon borrowed for a day. What earthly difference it could make in discipline (where there was no show or trace of it) whether I looked after the invalids or not was not perceptible. But our commander, though brave, was unfortunately one of those men who are also gifted with a great deal of "pure cussedness," and think that the exhibiting it is a sign of bravery. Although we had no tents, only a miserably rotten old gun-cover, and not always that, to sleep under (I generally slept in the open air, frequently in the rain), and often no issue of food for days, we were strictly prohibited from foraging or entering the country houses to buy food. This, which was a great absurdity, was about the only point of military discipline strictly enforced.

At one time during the war, when men were not allowed to sleep in the country houses (to protect their owners), the soldiers would very often burn these houses down, in order that, when the family had fled, they might use the fireplace and chimney for cooking; and so our men, forbidden to enter the country houses to buy or beg food, stole it.

I can recall one very remarkable incident. We had six guns, heavy old brass Napoleons. One afternoon we had to go uphill—in many cases it was terribly steep—by a road like those in Devonshire, resembling a ditch. It rained in torrents and the water was knee-deep. The poor mules had to be urged and aided in every way, and half the pulling and pushing was done by us. All of us worked like navvies. So we went onwards and upwards for sixteen miles! When we got to the top of the hill, out of one hundred privates, Henry, I, and four others alone remained. R. W. Gilder was one of these, besides Landis and Lieutenant Perkins—that is to say, we alone had not given out from fatigue; but the rest soon followed. This exploit was long after cited as one of the most extraordinary of the war—and so it was. We were greatly complimented on it. Old veterans marvelled at it. But what was worse, I had to lie all night on sharp flints—i.e., the slag or debris of an iron smeltery or old forge out of doors—in a terrible rain, and, though tired to death, got very little sleep; nor had we any food whatever even then or the next day. Commissariat there was none, and very little at any time.

From all that I learned from many intimate friends who were in the war, I believe that we in the battery suffered to the utmost all that men can suffer in the field, short of wounds and death. Yet it is a strange thing, that had I not received at this time most harassing and distressing news from home, and been in constant fear as regards my brother, I should have enjoyed all this Emergency like a picnic. We often marched and camped in the valley of the Cumberland and in Maryland, in deep valleys, by roaring torrents or "on the mountains high," in scenery untrodden by any artist or tourist, of marvellous grandeur and beauty. One day we came upon a scene which may be best described by the fact that my brother and I both stopped, and both cried out at once, "Switzerland!" The beauty of Nature was to me a constant source of delight. Another was the realisation of the sense of duty and the pleasure of war for a noble cause. It was once declared by a reviewer that in my Breitmann poems the true gaudium certaminis, or enjoyment of battle, is more sincerely expressed than by any modern poet, because there is no deliberate or conscious effort to depict it seriously. And I believe that I deserved this opinion, because the order to march, the tramp and rattle and ring of cavalry and artillery, and the roar of cannon, always exhilarated me; and sometimes the old days of France would recur to me. One day, at some place where we were awaiting an attack and I was on guard, General Smith, pausing, asked me something of which all I could distinguish was "Fire—before." Thinking he had said, "Were you ever under fire before?" and much surprised at this interest in my biography, I replied, "Yes, General—in Paris—at the barricades in Forty- eight." He looked utterly amazed, and inquired, "What the devil did you think I said?" I explained, when he laughed heartily, and told me that his question was, "Has there been any firing here before?"

Two very picturesque scenes occur to me. One was a night before the battle of Gettysburg. The country was mountain and valley, and the two opposing armies were camped pretty generally in sight of one another. There was, I suppose, nearly half a cord of wood burning for every twelve men, and these camp-fires studded the vast landscape like countless reflections of the stars above, or rather as if all were stars, high or low. It was one of the most wonderful sights conceivable, and I said at the time that it was as well worth seeing as Vesuvius in eruption.

Henry had studied for eighteen months in the British Art School in Rome, and passed weeks in sketching the Alhambra, and, till he received his wound, took great joy in the picturesque scenery and "points" of military life. But it is incredible how little we ate or got to eat, and how hard we worked. It is awful to be set to digging ditches in a soil nine-tenths stone, when starving.

As we were raw recruits, we were not put under fire at Gettysburg, but kept in Smith's reserve. But on the night after the defeat, when Lee retreated in such mad and needless haste across the Potomac, we were camped perhaps the nearest of any troops to the improvised bridge, I think within a mile. That night I was on guard, and all night long I heard the sound of cavalry, the ring and rattle of arms, and all that indicates an army in headlong flight. I say that they went in needless haste. I may be quite in the wrong, but I have always believed that Meade acted on the prudent policy of making a bridge of gold for a retreating enemy; and I always believed, too, that at heart he did not at all desire to inflict extreme suffering on the foe. Had he been a General Birney, he would have smote them then and there hip and thigh, and so ended the war "for good and all," like a Cromwell, with such a slaughter as was never seen. I base all this on one fact. At two o'clock on the afternoon before that night I went to a farmhouse to borrow an axe wherewith to cut some fuel; and I was told that the rebels had carried away every axe in great haste from every house, in order to make a bridge. Now, if I knew that at two o'clock, General Meade, if he had any scouts at all, must have known it. But—qui vult decipi, decipiatur.

That ended the Emergency. The next day, I think, we received the welcome news that we were no longer needed and would soon be sent home. On the way we encamped for a week at some place, I forget where. There was no drill now—we seldom had any—no special care of us, and no "policing" or keeping clean. Symptoms of typhoid fever soon appeared; forty of our hundred were more or less ill. My brother and I knew very well that the only way to avert this was to exercise vigorously. On waking in the morning we all experienced languor and lassitude. Those who yielded to it fell ill. Henry was always so ready to work, that once our sergeant, Mr. Bullard, interposed and gave the duty to another, saying it was not fair. I always remembered it with gratitude. But this feverish languor passed away at once with a little chopping of wood, bringing water, or cooking.

One more reminiscence. Our lieutenant, Perkins, was a pious man, and on Sunday mornings held religious service, which we were obliged to attend. One day, when we had by good fortune rations of fresh meat, it was cooked for dinner and put by in two large kettles. During the service two hungry pigs came, and in our full sight overturned the kettles, and, after rooting over the food, escaped with large pieces. I did not care to dine, like St. Antonio, on pigs' leavings. My brother finding me, asked why I looked so glum. I replied that I was hungry. "Is that all?" he replied. "Come with me!" We went some distance until we came to a farmhouse in the forest. He entered, and, to my amazement, was greeted as an old friend. He had been there in the campaign of the previous year. I was at once supplied with a meal. My brother was asked to send them newspapers after his return. He never sought for mysteries and despised dramatic effects, but his life was full of them. Once, when in Naples, he was accustomed to meet by chance every day, in some retired walk, a young lady. They spoke, and met and met again, till they became like friends. One day he saw her in a court procession, and learned for the first time that she was a younger daughter of the King. But he never met her again.

There were two or three boys of good family, none above sixteen, who had sworn themselves in as of age—recruiting officers were not particular—and who soon developed brilliant talents for "foraging," looting, guerilla warfare, horse-stealing, pot-hunting rebels, and all those little accomplishments which appear so naturally and pleasingly in youth when in the field. For bringing out the art of taking care of yourself, a camp in time of war is superior even to "sleeping about in the markets," as recommended by Mr. Weller. Other talents may be limited, but the amount of "devil" which can be developed out of a "smart" boy as a soldier is absolutely infinite. College is a Sunday- school to it. One of these youths had "obtained" a horse somewhere, which he contrived to carry along. Many of our infantry regiments gradually converted themselves into cavalry by this process of "obtaining" steeds; and as the officers found that their men could walk better on horses' legs, they permitted it. This promising youngster was one day seated on a caisson or ammunition waggon full of shells, &c., when it blew up. By a miracle he rose in the air, fell on the ground unhurt, and marching immediately up to the lieutenant and touching his hat, exclaimed, "Please, sir, caisson No. Two is blown to hell; please appoint me to another!" That oath was not recorded. Poor boy! he died in the war.

There was one man in our corps, a good-natured, agreeable person, a professional politician, who astonished me by the fact that however starved we might be, he had always a flask of whisky wherewith to treat his friends! Where or how he always got it I never could divine. But in America every politician always has whisky or small change wherewith to treat. Always. Money was generally of little use, for there was rarely anything to buy anywhere. I soon developed here and there an Indian-like instinct in many things, and this is indeed deep in my nature. I cannot explain it, but it is there. I became expert when we approached a house at divining, by the look of waggons or pails or hencoops, whether there was meal or bread or a mill anywhere near. One day I informed our lieutenant that a detachment of rebel cavalry had recently passed. He asked me how I knew it. I replied that rebel horses, being from mountainous Virginia, had higher cocks and narrower to their shoes, and one or two more nails than ours, which is perfectly true. And where did I learn that? Not from anybody. I had noticed the difference as soon as I saw the tracks, and guessed the cause. One day, in after years in England, I noticed that in coursing, or with beagles, the track of a gypsy was exactly like mine, or that of all Americans—that is, Indian-like and straight-forward. I never found a Saxon-Englishman who had this step, nor one who noticed such a thing, which I or an Indian would observe at once. Once, in Rome, Mr. Story showed me a cast of a foot, and asked me what it was. I replied promptly, "Either an Indian girl's or an American young lady's, whose ancestors have been two hundred years in the country." It was the latter. Such feet lift or leap, as if raised every time to go over entangled grass or sticks. Like an Indian, I instinctively observe everybody's ears, which are unerring indices of character. I can sustain, and always could endure, incredible fasts, but for this I need coffee in the morning. "Mark Twain"—whom I saw yesterday at his villa, as I correct this proof—also has this peculiar Indian-like or American faculty of observing innumerable little things which no European would ever think of. There is, I think, a great deal of "hard old Injun" in him. The most beautiful of his works are the three which are invariably bound in silk or muslin. They are called "The Three Daughters, or the Misses Clemens."