CHAPTER V

A STUDENT'S EXPERIENCE IN THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR

We rememberers lie under certain suspicion. "Uncle Mose," said an inquirer, his intonation betraying scepticism, "they say you remember General Washington." "Yaas, Boss," replied Uncle Mose, "I used to 'member Gen'l Washington, but sence I jined de church I done forgot." Not having joined Uncle Mose's church, my memory has not experienced the ecclesiastical discouragement that befell him. I humbly trust, however, it needs no chastening, and aver that I do not go for my facts to my imagination. I am now in foreign parts dealing with personages of especial dignity and splendour and must establish my memory firmly in the reader's confidence.

I was a student in Germany in 1870. In the spring at Berlin, passing by the not very conspicuous royal palace on Unter den Linden, one day I studied the front with some interest. The two sentinels stood in the door saluting with clock-work precision the officers who frequently passed. A watchful policeman was on the corner, but there was little other sign that an important personage was within the walls. With some shock I suddenly caught sight, in a window close at hand, of a tall, robust figure with a rugged but not ungenial face surmounted by grizzled hair, in uniform with decorations hanging upon the broad breast, who, as I glanced up, saluted me with an unlooked-for nod. I knew at once it was the King of Prussia, who before the year was ended was to be crowned as Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse at Versailles. I was thoroughly scared, as I did not know that it was the habit of the King to stand in the window and good-naturedly greet the passer-by.

That was my first sight of a real king. But there is another figure which I contemplate with more interest. The 31st of May of 1870 was a day sent from heaven, brilliant sunshine after a period of cloud; the spring lording it in the air, the trees and grass in their freshest luxuriance. I was at Potsdam that day; in the wide-stretching gardens that surround the New Palace. As I walked, I came to a cord drawn across the path, indicating that visitors were to go no farther. Close by stood a tall young grenadier on duty as a sentinel, but willing to chat. Looking beyond the cord into the reserved space I presently saw coming up from a secluded path, a low carriage drawn by a pony led by a groom in which was seated a lady dressed in white. She was not of distinguished appearance but my grenadier told me that it was the Crown Princess of Prussia, the daughter of the Queen of England. From the screen of the bush I watched her with natural interest. The carriage paused and a group of little boys and girls came running out from the thicket attended by a governess or two and a tutor. The little girls had their hands full of flowers, which, running forward, they threw into the carriage. The boys, too, ran up with pretty demonstrations, and a straight little fellow of ten years or so hurried to the groom and began to pat the pony's nose. These, I learned, were the princes and princesses of the royal family. The little fellow patting the pony's nose was the eldest and destined to emerge into history as Kaiser Wilhelm the Second.

And now, from a door of the palace, not far distant, came striding a notable figure, tall and stalwart, in the undress uniform of a Prussian General. Under his fatigue cap the blond hair was abundant; a wave of brown beard swept flown upon his breast. The face was full of intelligence and authority, but at that moment most kindly as his blue eyes sought the group that stood in the foreground. It was the Crown Prince of Prussia, destined at length to be the Emperor Friedrich. The carriage passed on, the Crown Prince walking, with his hand on the side, while the Princess held her parasol over his head, laughing at the idea evidently, that so sturdy a soldier needed that kind of a screen.

The Crown Prince Friedrich was unpopular in those days as too domestic, standing too much withdrawn from the bustling world, but there was no failure when the stress came. Only a few weeks passed before the stout soldier, whom I had seen throwing lilies and sheltered from the sun by his wife's parasol, was at the head of a great army corps, crushing the power of France at Worth and Weissembourg; but the report was that he had said, "I do not like war, and if I am ever King I shall never make war."

A few weeks after the Potsdam incident I was in the city of Vienna. One morning, like thunder out of a clear sky, news came of the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war. I read the paper, but, not feeling that the news need interfere with my sight-seeing, went to the Hofbourg, the old palace, in the heart of the city, of the Imperial family of Austria. The building is extensive; the streets of the city at that time running under it here and there in tunnels. I visited the Schatz Kammer, the treasure-room, and saw men go almost demented at the spectacle of the gold and jewels heaped up in the cases. The sight of the splendour, the heaped-up jewels, the batons, the faded, and sometimes bloody, garments, the trinkets and decorations, associated with towering personalities of the past, attuned my spirit for some adventure above the commonplace. As I came down into the street, narrow and overhung by the confining arch, a soldier passed me on the run into an open space just beyond, where instantly a battalion hurried out to stand at present. Then in the distance I heard galloping of horses and an open carriage rapidly approached, in which were seated four figures, protected from the light rain by grey overcoats, wearing the chapeaux which have come down from Napoleonic times. The carriage passed so near that I was obliged to press back against the wall to save my feet from the wheels, and a figure on the back seat, who, for the moment, was within arm's reach, I recognised as Francis Joseph.

He was then a man in his best years, a strong, sensible if not impressive face, and a well-knit frame. He had driven in from Schoenbrunn to attend a council meeting, and the day for him was no doubt a most critical one. War had come. It was only four years after Koeniggraetz. His old enemy, Prussia, was about to hurl herself, with who could tell what allies, against France. What stand should Austria take? If the Kaiser was agitated, his face did not show it; it was significant of quiet, cool poise. Excitement was repressed, while good sense weighed and determined. Few sovereigns have been obliged to face so often situations of the utmost difficulty. I can believe that with similar imperturbability Francis Joseph has confronted the series of perplexities which make up the tangled story of his long career, and I count it good fortune that I witnessed, in a moment of supreme embarrassment, the balance and resolution with which the good ruler went to his task. Austria, as the world knows, decided that day to be neutral in the Franco-Prussian quarrel.

The disorder in the land made me feel that I must get nearer to my base, so I hurriedly left Vienna for Munich, which I found seething with agitation, for, like Austria, Bavaria had only a few years before been Prussia's enemy, and so far as the populace was concerned all was in doubt as to what course would now be taken. The rumour was that McMahon had crossed the Rhine at Strassburg with 150,000 men, and was marching to interpose between Northern and Southern Germany.

At the Ober-Pollinger I heard in the inn, amid the stormy discussion of the crisis, something quite out of harmony with the spirit of the hour. The first performance was to be given in the Royal Opera House of a work of Richard Wagner, the Rheingold. Wagner in those days had not attained his great fame, and, to a man like me, who had no especial interest in music, was a name almost unknown, but I went with the crowd, thinking to help out a dreary evening rather than to enjoy a masterpiece. The house was crowded. In the centre before the stage an ample space was occupied by the royal box, richly carved and draped. Presently the King entered, a slender, graceful figure in a dress suit, his dark rather melancholy face looking handsome in the gorgeous setting of the theatre. The crowded audience rose to their feet in a tumult of enthusiasm. The air resounded with "Hoch! Hoch!" the German cheer, and handkerchiefs waved like a snow-storm. The King bowed right and left in acknowledgment of the plaudits, and the performance of the evening was kept long in waiting. The line of Bavarian kings has perhaps little title to our respect. The Ludwig of fifty years ago was a voluptuary, vacillating, like another Louis Quinze, between debauchery and a weak pietism. He probably merited the cuts of the relentless scourge of Heine than which no instrument of chastisement was ever more unsparing, and which in his case was put to its most merciless use; but he loved art and lavished his revenues upon pictures, statues, and churches, which the world admires, imparting a benefit, though his subjects groaned. His successor, whom I saw, was a man morbid and without force, who early came to a sorrowful end. His redeeming quality was a fine aesthetic taste, which he had no doubt through heredity, together with a sad burden of disease. The world remembers kindly that he was a prodigal patron of art.

I went to Heidelberg in February, 1870, bent upon a quiet year of study in Germany and France. Fate had a different programme for me. My plans were badly interfered with but to see Europe in such a turmoil was an experience well worth having. Heidelberg that spring was very peaceful. The ice in the Neckar on which skaters were disporting on my arrival passed out in due course of time to the Rhine, the foliage broke forth in glory on the noble hills and the nightingales came back to sing in the ivy about the storied ruins. There was no suggestion in the air of cannon thunder. At Berlin, however, as I have described, I found things wearing a warlike air. I was eager to perfect my German and sought chances to talk with all whom I met, and often had pleasant converse with the young soldiers who when off duty numerously flocked to the gardens and street corners. I recall in particular three young soldiers whose subsequent fate I should like to know. The first was a handsome young grenadier who had talked with me affably as we stood together screened by the bush in the garden of the New Palace at Potsdam watching the family of the Crown Prince, that beautiful forenoon in May.... When I told him I had myself mitgemacht the Civil War in America he at once accorded me respect as a veteran. I think he was a Freiwilliger, one of the class, who, having reached a high status in the Gymnasium, enjoyed the privilege of a shorter term of service. He had the bearing of a cultivated gentleman and there was strength in his firm young face which I have no doubt made him a good soldier in the time of stress. We shook hands at last in the friendliest way and I saw him no more. A few days later the train in which I was riding stopped at Erfurt and among the groups at the station was one that interested me much. In the centre stood a sturdy young Uhlan gaudy in full dress which I fancied he had only lately assumed, his stature was increased by his lofty horse-hair plume and he wore his corselet over a uniform in which there was many a dye. A bevy of pretty girls thronged around him, freshly beautiful after the German type, blond and blue-eyed in attractive summer draperies, and I speculated pleasantly as to which among them were sisters and which sweethearts. As the train departed the young Uhlan climbed into my compartment and we sat vis-a-vis as we rode on through the country. He was a frank ingenuous boy of twenty with eyes that danced with life, and a mobile play of features. My claim that I had seen service in the tented field again served me in good stead as an introduction; it was a passport to his confidence and I had a pleasant hour or two with him until he left me at length at his rendezvous.

Best of all I remember a third encounter. When I stepped from my car at Weimar I asked a direction from a young grenadier off duty who stood at hand on the platform. He too possessed the usual Teutonic vigour and strength. A conversation sprang up in which I explained that I was an American and desired to see as well as I could in a few hours the interesting things in that little city so quiet and renowned. I had found out by this time that my small veteranship was a good asset and paraded it for all it was worth and as usual it told. He was off duty for a few hours and had never visited the shrines of Weimar, and if I had no objection he would like to go with me on my tour of inspection, so together we walked through those shadowed streets, which seemed to be haunted even in that bright sunshine by the ghosts of the great men who have walked in them. We saw the homes of Goethe and Schiller, the noble statues of the Dichter-Paar, and the old theatre behind it in which were first performed the masterpieces of the German drama. We went together to the cemetery and descending into the crypt of the mausoleum stood by the coffins of Goethe and Schiller, the men most illustrious in German letters. It was a memorable day of my life, the outward conditions perfect, the June sunshine, the wealth of lovely foliage, the bird songs, and right at hand the homes and haunts of the inspired singers whom I especially reverenced. I was most fortunate in my companionship, the bearing of the youth was marked by no flippancy, he venerated as I did the lofty spirits into whose retreats we had penetrated. He was familiar with their masterpieces and we felt for them a like appreciation. His soldierly garb accorded perhaps ill with the peaceful suggestions of the hour and place, but in his mind plainly the sentiment lay deep, a warm recognition of what gave his country its best title to greatness. We took thought too of Wieland and looked in silence at the fine statue of Herder standing before the church in which he long ministered; but the supreme personages for us were Goethe and Schiller. What became of my sympathetic young soldier I have never known. If he escaped from Mars-la-Tour and Gravelotte and Sedan I am sure that he must have matured into a high-souled man.

I had an opportunity, during a visit to Strassburg in the spring, to see the soldiery of France. At the time the prestige of the Second Empire was at its height, Magenta and Solferino were considerable battles and the French had won them. Turcos and Zouaves had long passed in the world as soldiers of the best type and in our Civil War we had copied zealously their fantastic apparel and drill. When the Franco-Prussian War broke out the world felt that Germany had the hardest of nuts to crack and in many a mind the forecast was that France would be the victor, but even to my limited judgment the shortcomings of the French troops were plain. They were inferior in physique, lacking in trimness and even in cleanliness, and imperfectly disciplined. I wondered if the rather slovenly ill-trained battalions of small pale men could stand up against the prompt rigid alignment of the broad-shouldered six-footers I had seen manoeuvring on the other side of the Rhine.

I had received word in the spring from my bankers in Paris that my letter of credit was not in regular shape and they advised me to draw at Berlin a sum of money sufficient for present needs and transmit the letter to them, promising to adjust the matter in such a way that both they and I would be relieved of some inconvenience. In June I drew a small sum and sent my letter to Paris in accordance with their instructions, the agreement being that I was to call a month or so later on the correspondents at Munich of the Paris bankers and receive from them the corrected letter. I then travelled as far as Vienna where all unforeseen the news startled me of the outbreak of the war. I hurried to Munich, my little store of money being by that time much depleted. At the banking house I learned to my consternation that they had heard nothing of me or my letter of credit. Still worse, there was no prospect of hearing, communication with Paris was completely broken off. The rumour was that McMahon had crossed the Rhine at Strassburg with one hundred and fifty thousand men on the march to interpose between Southern and Northern Germany. The house had not heard from Paris and could not expect to hear. Acting on their advice I sent a distressful telegram roundabout through Switzerland to Paris. There was a possibility that such a message might go through; otherwise there was no hope. I then spent at Munich one of the most anxious weeks of my life. I was nearer the pavement than I have ever been before or since. There was a charming German family at the inn at which I stopped, gentle, courteous people, father, mother, and a little blue-eyed daughter. When the little girl found I was from America I can now see her innocent wide-open eyes as she asked me if I had ever seen an Indian. I could tell her some good stories of Indians for in boyhood I had lived near a reservation of Senecas, at that time to a large extent, in their primitive state. When I ventured one day to tell the polite father of my present embarrassment I at once noticed a sudden cooling off. The little girl no longer came to talk with me and the family held aloof. Plainly I had become an object of suspicion, I was now penniless, my story might be true or perhaps I was paving the way for asking a loan. How could he tell that I was not a dead-beat? I was really in a strait. The Americans had very generally left the city in consequence of the turmoil. I could hear of no one excepting our Consul who was still at his post. Calling upon him and telling my story, I found him cool to the point of rudeness. I had excellent letters from Bancroft and others which I showed him and which ought to have secured me a respectful hearing. I asked only for sympathy and counsel but I received neither, and could not have been treated worse if I had been a proved swindler. The Consul afterwards wrote a book in which he told of experiences with inconvenient countrymen who had recourse to him in their straits, and possibly I myself may have figured as one of his examples. My feeling is that he was a man not fit for his place, for in the circumstances he might certainly have shown some kindness. My few pieces of silver jingled drearily in my pocket; perhaps my best course would be to enlist in the German army. I thought the cause a just one for the atmosphere had made me a good German, and as a soldier I might at least earn my bread. To my joy, however, in one of my daily visits to the banking house the courteous young partner told me that a telegram had come in some roundabout way from Paris and they were prepared to pay me the full amount on my letter of credit. I clutched the money, two pretty cylinders of gold coin done up in white paper, which I sewed securely into the waist-band of my trousers and felt an instant strengthening of nerve and self-respect.

I departed then for Switzerland where I enjoyed a delightful fortnight. The rebound from my depression imparted a fine morale. Switzerland was practically deserted, no French or Germans were there for they had enough to do with the war; the English for the most part stayed at home, for Europe could only be crossed with difficulty, and the crowd from America too was deterred by the danger. Instead of the throngs at the great points of interest, the visitors counted by twos and threes. The guides and landlords were obsequious. We few strangers had the Alps to ourselves and they were as lavish of their splendours to the handful as to the multitude. At Geneva at last I found letters from home which caused me anxiety; I was referred for later news to letters which were to be sent to Paris; so there was nothing for it but for me to cross France, though by that time France had become a camp. Fortunately I had met in Switzerland an American friend who was proficient in French as I was not and who likewise found it necessary to go to Paris, and we two started together. After crossing the frontier we found no regular trains; those that ran were taken up for the most part by the multitudes of conscripts hurrying into armies that were undergoing disaster in the neighbourhood of Metz. The case of two American strangers was a precarious one involved in such a mass, with food even very uncertain and the likelihood of being side-tracked at any station, but we were both strong and light-hearted and I felt at my waist-band the comfortable contact of my bright yellow Napoleons which would pull us through. Constantly we beheld scenes of the greatest interest. The August landscape smiled its best about us, we passed Dijon and many another old storied city famous in former wars, and now again humming with the military life with which they had been so many times familiar. The Mobiles came thronging to every depot from the vineyards and fields and the remoter villages. As yet they were usually in picturesque peasant attire, young farmers in blouses or with bretelles crossing in odd fashion the queer shirts they wore. Careless happy-go-lucky boys chattering in the excitement of the new life which they were entering, only half-informed as to the catastrophes which were taking place, but the mothers and sisters, plain country women in short skirts, quaint bodices and caps, looked upon their departure with anxious faces. I was familiar enough with such scenes in our own Civil War; thousands of those boys were never to return.

Reaching Paris we found an atmosphere of depression. A week or two before the streets had resounded with the Marseillaise and echoed with the fierce cry, "A Berlin! A Berlin!" That confidence had all passed, I heard the Marseillaise sung only once, and that in disheartened perfunctory fashion, perhaps by order of the authorities in a futile attempt to stimulate courage that was waning. Rage and mortification over the fast-accumulating German successes possessed the hearts of men. In the squares companies of civilians were industriously drilling, often in the public places men wearing hospital badges extended salvers to the passers-by asking for contributions, "Pour les blesses, monsieur, pour les blesses!" Now and then well-disciplined divisions crossed the Place de la Concorde, the regiments stacking arms for a brief halt. I studied them close at hand; these at least looked as might have looked the soldiers of the First Empire, strong and resolute, with an evident capacity for taking care of themselves even in the small matter of cooking their soup, and providing for their needs there on the asphalt. Their officers were soldierly figures on horseback, dressed for rough work, and the gaitered legs, with the stout shoes below dusty already from long marching, were plainly capable of much more. There was a pathos about it all, however, a marked absence of elan and enthusiasm, the faces under the kepis were firm and strong enough but they had little hope. Nothing so paralyses a soldier as want of confidence in the leadership and these poor fellows had lost that. The regiments passed on in turn, the sunlight glittering on their arms. Through the vista of the boulevard the eagles of the Second Empire rose above, the grave colonels were conspicuous at the head, and the drum-beats, choked by the towering buildings, sounded a melancholy muffled march that was befitting. It was the scene pictured by Detaille in Le Regiment qui Passe. Could he have been with us on the curbstone making his studies? It was indeed for them a funeral march, for they were on they way to Sedan. The Prussians, it was said, were within four days' march of the city, and the barrier at Metz had been completely broken down.

In most minds Paris is associated with gayety, my Paris, on the other hand, is a solemn spot darkened by an impending shadow of calamity. The theatres were closed. No one was admitted to the Invalides, so that I could not see the tomb of Napoleon. The Madeleine was open for service, but deep silence prevailed. In the great spaces of the temple the robed priests bowed before the altar and noiseless groups of worshippers knelt on the pavement. It was a time for earnest prayers. The Louvre was still open and I was fortunate enough to see the Venus of Milo, though a day or two after I believe it was taken from its pedestal and carefully concealed. The expectation was of something dreadful and still the city did not take in the sorrow which lay before it. "Do you think the Prussians will bombard Paris?" I heard a man exclaim, his voice and manner indicating that such a thing was incredible, but the Prussian cannon were close at hand. For our part, my companion and I thought we were in no especial danger. We quartered ourselves comfortably at a pension, walked freely about the streets, and saw what could be seen with the usual zest of healthy young travellers. The little steamboats were still plying on the Seine and we took one at last for the trip that opens to one so much that is beautiful and interesting in architecture and history. It was a lovely afternoon even for summer and we passed in and out under the superb arches of the bridges, beholding the noble apse of Notre Dame with the twin towers rising beyond, structures associated with grim events of the Revolution, the masonry of the quays and the master work of Haussmann who was then putting a new face upon the old city. Now all was bright and no thought of danger entered our minds as we revelled in the pleasures of such an excursion. At length as we stood on the deck we became aware that we were undergoing careful scrutiny from a considerable group who for the most part made up our fellow-passengers. We had had no thought of ourselves as especially marked. My clothes, however, had been made in Germany and had peculiarities no doubt which indicated as much. I was fairly well grounded in French but had no practice in speaking. In trying to talk French, my tongue in spite of me ran into German, which I had been speaking constantly for six months. This was particularly the case if I was at all embarrassed; my face and figure, moreover, were plainly Teutonic and not Latin. The French ascribed their disasters largely to the fact that German spies were everywhere prying into the conditions, and reporting every assailable point and element of weakness. This belief was well grounded; the Germans probably knew France better than the French themselves and skilfully adapted their attacks to the lacks and negligences which the swarming spies laid bare. The group, of whose scrutiny we had become aware, was made up of ouvriers and ouvrieres, the men in the invariable blouse, with dark matted hair and black eyes, sometimes with a ratlike keenness of glance as they surveyed us. The women were roughly dressed, sometimes in sabots, with heads bare or surmounted by conical caps. They belonged to the proletariat, the class out of which had come in the Reign of Terror the sans-culottes of evil memory and the tricoteuses who had sat knitting about the guillotine, the class which, within a few months, was again to set the world aghast as the mob of La Commune. As we stood disconcerted by their intent gaze, they put their heads together and talked in low and rapid tones; then their spokesman approached us, a man of polite bearing but ominously stern. He was not a clumsy fellow, but darkly forceful and direct, a man capable of a quick, desperate deed. At the moment there was the grim tiger in their eyes and from the soft paw the swift protrusion of the cruel claw. One thought of the wild revolutionary song, "Ca ca, ca ira, les aristocrats a la lanterne!" They were the children of the mob that had sung that song. With a bow, the spokesman said: "Messieurs, we think you are Germans and we wish to know if we are right." We protested that we were Americans, but the spokesman said he was unconvinced, and as he pressed for further evidence I gave way to my companion whose readier French could deal better with the situation. He demanded to see our passports with which fortunately we were both provided; I had not thought of a passport as a necessity, and almost by chance had procured one the week before from our Minister in Switzerland, a careful description, vouching for my American citizenship, signed and sealed by the United States official. This perhaps saved my life. We surrendered our passports to our interrogator; he carried them back to the throng behind him who were now glowering angrily at us, as they chattered among themselves. Half-amused and half-alarmed, we waited while the documents were passed from hand to hand, carefully conned and inspected. We could not believe that we were in danger, here in the bright day in beautiful Paris, with the sacred towers of Notre Dame soaring close at hand. There were no gendarmes on the boat or on the quays, but how could it he that we needed protection? After a quarter of an hour's suspense, during which there had been a voluble counselling among the group, the spokesman came forth again with our passports in hand carefully folded, these he returned to us, touching his hat with a stiff and formal bow. "We have persuaded ourselves," said he, "that you are what you claim to be, Americans, and it is fortunate for you that it is so, for we had intended to throw you into the Seine as Prussian spies." Here was a surprise indeed! The group then dispersed about the boat apparently satisfied. Still rather amused than alarmed we pocketed our passports. Under the arch of one of the stately bridges close by, the Seine flowed in heavy shadows on its way, and we looked down upon the dark waters. Throbbing with life as we were, could it be possible that we had just escaped a grave in its watery embrace? Presently we landed light-hearted, and were again in the streets, but in days that followed immediately my heart was often in my throat, as I read in the papers of the corpses of men taken out of the river who undoubtedly had been thrown in under suspicion of being German spies. After a sojourn of not quite a week in Paris we made up our minds it was no place for us. My plans for study were quite broken up, it was scarcely possible to get back to Germany and nothing could be done in France. I had letters which in a time of peace would have opened the way for me to many a pleasant circle. My intention had been to study for some time in France, but under the circumstances it would be a comfortable thing to have the Atlantic rolling between me and Europe, and therefore, I prepared to depart for home. At the pension, on the day I had fixed for departure, while coming down the staircase waxed and highly polished, I slipped and fell heavily, so bruising my knee that I was nearly crippled. Fortunately no bones were broken and with much pain I managed to hobble to the official from whom I must obtain a pass to leave the city. I set out for the North, on almost the last train that left the city, at the end of August. The sights were gloomy, the towns which we passed seemed associated with ancient bloodshed. We touched St. Quentin and crossed the field of Malplaquet, and finally near Mons passed the Belgian frontier. Marlborough and the names associated with former wars were suggested to my thoughts by these historic spots. I was heartily glad when at length in cheerful Brussels I was beyond danger. On the fateful day when the Second Empire went down at Sedan, I was on the field of Waterloo where half a century before the First Empire had perished. The news of the morning made it plain that on that day the great debacle was to culminate. We listened all day for cannon thunder; under certain conditions of the atmosphere the sound of heavy guns may reverberate as far perhaps, as from Sedan to Waterloo. That day, however, there was no ominous grumble from the eastward, the sky was cloudless, the flowers bloomed about the Chateau d'Hougomont, and the birds twittered in peace at the point before La Haie-Sainte to which the First Napoleon advanced in the evening and where for the last time he heard the shout then so long familiar but forever after unheard, "Vive l'Empereur!" Humiliation now after half a century had overwhelmed in turn his unhappy successor.



CHAPTER VI

AMERICAN HISTORIANS

As a Harvard undergraduate I roomed for a time in Hollis 8, a room occupied in turn by William H. Prescott and James Schouler, and perhaps I may attribute to some contagion caught as a transmittendum in that apartment, an itch for writing history which has brought some trouble to me and to the rather limited circle of readers whom I have reached. I remember debating, as a boy, whether the more desirable fame fell to the hero in a conflict or to the scribe who told the story. Whose place would one rather have? That of Timoleon and Nicias or of Plutarch and Thucydides their celebrants? But the celebrants, no doubt, seemed to their contemporaries very insignificant figures compared to the champions whose fame they perpetuated. The historians of America are a goodly company, scarcely less worthy than the champions whose deeds they have chronicled. With most men who, during the last seventy-five years, have written history in America, I have had contact, sometimes a mere glimpse, sometimes intimacy. Washington Irving and Prescott I never saw, though as to the latter I have just been making him responsible to some extent for my own little proclivity, Parkman, I only saw sitting with his handsome Grecian face relieved against a dignified background as he sat on the stage among the Corporation of Harvard University. Motley I have only seen as he stood with iron-grey curls over a ruddy, strenuous countenance topping a figure of vigorous symmetry as he spoke with animation at a scholars' dinner. But George Bancroft, Justin Winsor, and John Fiske I knew well, the last being in particular one of my best friends. I could tell stories too, of the living lights, but am concerned here with the ghosts and not with men still red-blooded.

I first saw George Bancroft when he was Minister at Berlin. He had read a little book of mine, The Color Guard, my diary as a Corporal of the Nineteenth Army Corps, scribbled off on my cap-top, my gun-stock, or indeed my shoe-sole, or whatever desk I could extemporise as we marched and fought. That book gave me some claim to his notice, but a better claim was that his wife was Elizabeth Davis, whom more than a hundred years ago my grandfather of the ancient First Parish in Plymouth had baptised and who as a girl had been my mother's playmate in gardens near Plymouth Rock. I did not presume upon such credentials as these to obtrude myself, and was pleasantly surprised one day by a note inviting me to the Embassy. It was a retired house near the Thiergarten. I found Mr. Bancroft embarrassed with duties which in those days gave trouble. German emigrants returning after prosperous years to the Fatherland were often pounced upon, the validity of their American citizenship denied, and taxes and military service demanded. It was tough work to straighten out such knots and the Minister was in the midst of such a tangle. But his high, broad forehead smoothed presently, and his grey eyes grew genial, while the vivacious features spoke with the very cordial impulse with which he greeted one who had heard the bullets of the Civil War whistle and was the son of his wife's old friend. Another tie was that his father, Dr. Aaron Bancroft of Worcester, and my grandfather, had stood shoulder to shoulder in the controversy of a century ago which rent apart New England Congregationalism. Presently we sat down to lunch, a party of three, for the board was graced by the presence of Mrs. Bancroft, a woman of fine accomplishments polished through contact with high society in many lands, and a gifted talker. Many readers have found her published letters charming. The talk was largely of the Civil War and Bancroft's words were in the best sense patriotic. During and before that period his course had been much disapproved. He had been Collector of Boston under Democratic auspices and had served under Polk as Secretary of the Navy, where he laid the country lastingly under debt by establishing the Naval Academy at Annapolis. I do not approve or condemn, but I felt him wisely and warmly patriotic, deeply concerned that the outcome of our long national agony should be worthy of the sacrifice. The breath of a pleasant spring day pervaded the elegant apartment while the birds sang in the tall trees stretching out toward the forest of the Thiergarten. I especially associate with the Bancrofts their beautiful outdoor environment. Another day I drove with the Minister, our companions in the carriage being the wife and the daughter of Ernst Curtius, to visit the rose gardens about Berlin. I have met few men readier or more agreeable in conversation. With a pleasant smile and intonation he touched gracefully on this and that, sometimes in reminiscence. I remember in particular a vivid setting forth of an interview with Goethe which he had enjoyed as a boy fifty years before. Sometimes his talk was of poetry in general and I was much struck with his frequent happy application of quotations to the little events of the drive and phases of feeling that came up as the day went on. The sun set gloriously, "So stirbt ein Held," said Bancroft, as he burst with feeling into the beautiful lyric of which these words are a line. The best German poetry seemed to be at his tongue's end and he recited it with sympathy and accuracy which called out much admiration from the cultivated German ladies with whom we were driving. Most interesting of all was Bancroft's evident passion for roses. The gardeners, as we stopped, were plainly surprised at his knowledge of their varieties and the best methods of cultivation. He was so well versed in the lore of the rose and so devoted to its cultivation one might well have thought it his horse and not his hobby. He possessed at Newport a rose garden far famed for the number of its varieties and the perfection of the flowers, and it was an interesting sight at Washington to see Bancroft, even when nearing ninety, busy in his garden in H Street, one attendant shielding his light figure with a sun umbrella, while another held at hand, hoe, shears, and twine, the implements to train and cull. Is there a subtle connection between roses and history? Parkman wrote an elaborate book upon rose culture which I believe is still of authority, and John Fiske had a conservatory opening out of his library and the rose of all flowers was the one he prized. Here is a neat turn of McMaster. At a dinner given in his honour a big bunch of American Beauties was opposite to him as he sat. It fell to me to make a welcoming speech. Catching at the occasion, I suggested a connection between roses and history and referred to McMaster close behind his American Beauties as an instance in point, at the same time expressing with earnestness my strong admiration of that good writer's work. McMaster rose, his face glowing in response to my emphatic compliment. His speech consisted of only one sentence, "I have one bond with the rose, I blush."

I owe many favours to Bancroft; the greatest perhaps that he allowed me to consult to my heart's content the papers of Samuel Adams, a priceless collection which he possessed. For this he gave me carte blanche to use his library in Washington, though he himself was absent, a favour which he said he had never accorded to an investigator before. It was an inspiring place for a student, the shelves burdened with treasures in manuscript as well as print. The most interesting portrait of Bancroft presents him as a nonagenarian, against this impressive background, at work to the last. The critics of our day minimise Bancroft and his school. History in that time walked in garments quite too flowing, it is said, and with an overdisplay of the Horatian purple patch. Our grandsons may feel that the history of our time walks in garments too sad-coloured and scant. Research and accuracy are, of course, primary requisites in this field, but there should be some employment of the picturesque. The world was beautiful in the old days and human life was vivid. Ought we to deny to all this a warm and graphic setting forth? If we do we shall do it to our cost. Is it the proper attitude of the historian simply to write, without thought of anything so irrelevant as a reader? Bancroft was a pioneer, breaking the way ponderously perhaps, but he delved faithfully. If the orotund rolls too sonorously in his periods it was an excess in which his age upheld him. He was a good path-breaker and ought not to be lightly esteemed by those who now go to and fro with ease through the roads he opened.

My first touch with Justin Winsor was in my Freshman year at Cambridge. We both had rooms under the roof of an uncle of mine. His room was afterwards occupied, I believe, by Theodore Roosevelt. It had been rubbed into me by many snubs that a vast gulf interposed between the Freshman and upper-class man. I used to pass his door with reverence, for the story went that, even as a boy, he had written a history of Duxbury, Massachusetts. Once during his temporary absence, his door standing open, I dared to step into the apartment and surveyed with awe the well-filled shelves and scribbled papers; but in later years when I had won some small title to notice I found him most kind and approachable. The abundance of the Harvard Library and still better the rich accumulations in the cells of his own memory he held for general use. He loaned me once for months at St. Louis a rarely precious seventeenth-century book, which had belonged to Carlyle, and whose margins were sometimes filled with Carlyle's notes. He imparted freely from his own vast information and it was pleasant indeed to hold a chair for an hour or two in his hospitable home. In our last interview the prose and the solemn romance of life were strangely blended. We had just heard the burial service in Appleton Chapel read by Phillips Brooks over the coffin of James Russell Lowell; then we rode together on the crowded platform of a street-car to the grave at Mount Auburn; a rough and jostling company on the platform, and in my mind a throng of deep and melancholy thoughts. I never saw him again. In his calling he was a master of research extracting with unlimited toil the last fragment of evidence from the blindest scribblings of earlier times. These results, painfully accumulated, he set down with absolute faithfulness; his bibliographies supplementing his own contributions and also those of the many writers whom he inspired and guided in like labours are exhaustive. Rarely is there a wisp to be gleaned where Winsor has garnered. If he was deficient in the power of vivid and picturesque presentment, it is only that like all men he had his limitations.

John Fiske I met soon after his graduation at Cambridge. It is odd to recall him when one thinks of his later physique, as a youth with fresh ruddy face, tall and not broad, a rather slender pillar of a man, corniced with an abundant pompadour of brown hair. He was just then making fame for himself in the domain of philosophy, contributing to the New York World papers well charged with revolutionary ideas which were then causing consternation, so lucidly and attractively formulated that they interested the most cursory reader. Perhaps John Fiske ought always to have kept to philosophy. Mrs. Mary Hemenway, that princess among Ladies Bountiful, told me once the story of his change. He made to her a frank statement of his situation. He was conscious of power to do service; he was married, had children, and was embarrassed with care about their bread, butter, and education after the usual fashion of the scholar. John Fiske said in those days the difficult problem of his life was to get enough corn-beef for dinner to have hash for breakfast the next day. Must he descend to desk and courtroom work to make a way, or could a way be found by which he might do his proper task and at the same time be a bread-winner? "Write American history," said Mrs. Hemenway, "and I will stand behind you." She was inspired with the idea of making America in the high sense American and saw in the young genius a good ally. The chance was embraced and John Fiske after that dipped only fitfully into philosophical themes, writing, however, The Destiny of Man, The Idea of God, Cosmic Roots of Loveland Self-sacrifice, and Life Everlasting. He gave his main strength, to a thing worth while, the establishment in America of Anglo-Saxon freedom. Would he have served the world better had he adhered to profound speculations? As the patriarch in a household into which have been born a dozen children and grandchildren, I have had good opportunity for study. What so feeble as the feebleness of the babe! It depends upon its mother for its sustenance, almost for its breath and its heart-beats. The sheltering arms and the loving breast must always be at hand as the very conditions of its existence. I have watched in wife and daughters, as what grandsire has not, the persistent sleepless care which alone kept the baby alive, and noted the sweet effusion of affection which the need and constant care made to flow abundantly, nor do the care and consequent outflow of love cease with babyhood. The child must ever be fed, clothed, trained, and counselled; and the youth, too, of which the baby is father, must be watchfully guided till the stature is completed. The rod of Moses smiting the rock evoked the beneficent water, the unremitting parent-care striking the indifferent heart evokes the beautiful mother and father love which grows abroad. We cannot love children well without loving others, their companions, and at last the great worldly environment in which they and we all are placed. Hence, from the extension of infancy, through a period of long years, proceeds at last from the hearts which are subjected to its influence the noble thing which we call altruism: love for others than ourselves and the other high spiritual instincts which are the crown of human nature. The recognition of the extension of infancy as the source from which in our slow evolution comes the brightest thing in the universe belongs to our own time. It is perhaps the climax of our philosophic speculation. What more feeble than the snowflakes! But accumulated and compressed they become the glacier which may carapace an entire zone and determine its configuration into mountain and valley. What more feeble than the feebleness of the babe! And yet that multiplied by the million through aeons of time and over continents of space fashions humanity after the sublime pattern shown on the Mount. If to John Fiske belongs the credit of first recognising in the scheme of evolution the significance of this mighty factor, the extension of infancy (he himself so believed and I do not think it can be questioned that he was the first to recognise it), what philosophic thinker has to a greater extent laid the world in debt? This I shall not further discuss. I am touching in these papers only upon light and exterior things, nor am I competent to deal with philosophical problems and controversies. John Fiske gave his strength to the writing of history, where, too, there are controversies into which I do not propose to enter. I will only say that I resent the account of him which makes him to have been a mere populariser whose merit lies solely or for the most part in the fact that, while appropriating materials accumulated by others, he had only Goldsmith's faculty of making them graceful and attractive to the mass of readers. His philosophical instinct, on the other hand, discovered, as few writers have done, the subtle links through which in history facts are related to facts and are weighed wisely, in the protagonists, the motives and qualities which make them foremost figures. He saw unerringly where emphasis should be put, what should be salient, what subordinate. Too many writers, German especially, perhaps, have the fault of "writing a subject to its dregs," giving to the unimportant undue place. In Fiske's estimation of facts there is no failure of proper proportion, the great thing is always in the foreground, the trifle in shadow or quite unnoticed. To do this accurately is a fine power. He delved more deeply himself perhaps than many of his critics have been willing to acknowledge, but I incline to say that his main service to history was in detecting with unusual insight the subtle relations of cause and effect, links which other and sometimes very able men failed adequately to recognise. In a high sense he was indeed a populariser. He wore upon himself like an ample garment a splendid erudition under which he moved, however, not at all oppressed or trammelled. Much of the lore of Greece, Rome, the Orient, and also of modern peoples was as familiar to him as the contents of the morning papers. With acumen he selected and his memory retained; the cells of his capacious brain somehow held it ready for instant use. With good discrimination he could touch lightly or discourse profoundly as occasion required, his learning and insight always telling effectively, either at the breakfast-table of the plain citizen, or in the pages of the school text-book. "John," said such a plain man the other day to a friend who also had been in touch with Fiske, "the biggest thing that ever came into your life or mine was when that broad thinker familiarly darkened our doors." The two men stood reverently under John Fiske's portrait, the autograph signature underneath seeming in a way to connect the living with the dead, acknowledging the force of the personality which had made real to them as nothing else had ever done the deepest and finest things.

John Fiske was often a guest in my home and I have sat, though less frequently, with him in his library in Berkeley Street in Cambridge, the flowers from the conservatory sending their perfumes among the crowded books and the south wind breathing pleasantly from the garden which had been Longfellow's, in the rear, to the garden of Howells in front. His passion for music was scarcely less than his interest in speculation and history. He knew well the great composers, and had himself composed. Though the master of no instrument, he could touch the piano with feeling. He had a pleasant baritone voice, and nothing gave him more refreshment after a week of study or lecturing than to pour himself out in song. His accompanist had need not only of great technical skill but of stout vertebrae, and strong wrists; for hours at a time the piano stool must be occupied while the difficult melodies of various lands were unriddled and interpreted. Those were interesting afternoons when, dropping his pen, he plunged into music as a strong confident swimmer plunges into the stream which he especially loves, interpreting with warm feeling Mendelssohn and Beethoven, wandering unlost in the vocal labyrinths of Dvorak and Wagner, but never happier than when interpreting the emotions of simple folk-songs, or some noble Shakespearian lyrics like "Who is Sylvia, what is she, that all the swains commend her?" Music stimulated him to vivacity and in the pauses would come outbursts of abandon. One day the pet dog of a daughter of mine ensconced himself unawares under the sofa and was disrespectfully napping while John Fiske sang. In a pause the philosopher broke into an animated declamation over some matter while standing near the sofa, whereat the pug thinking himself challenged tore out to the front with sudden violent barks. The two confronted each other, the pug frantically vindicating his dignity while the philosopher on his side fixing his eye upon the interrupter declaimed and gesticulated. As to volubility and sonorousness they stood about equal. I am bound to say the pug prevailed. John Fiske retired in discomfiture while the pug was carried off in triumph in the arms of his little mistress. He had fairly barked the great man down. I once shared with him the misery of being a butt. In St. Louis in those days the symposium was held in honour, and particularly N.O. Nelson, the well-known profit-sharing captain of industry, was the entertainer of select groups whose geniality was stimulated by modest potations of Anheuser-Bush, in St. Louis always the Castor and Pollux in every convivial firmament. Such a symposium was once held in special honour of Dr. Edward Waldo Emerson, a transient visitor. "Dr. Emerson," said a guest, "in the diary of your father just edited by you occurs a passage which needs illumination. 'Edward and I tried this morning for three quarters of an hour to get the calf into the barn without success. The Irish girl stuck her finger into his mouth and got the calf in in two minutes. I like folks that can do things.' Now," said the guest, "we all know what became of Emerson, we all know what became of Edward, for you are here to-night, but what became of the Irish girl and the calf?" Dr. Emerson laughingly explained the probable fate of the girl and the calf, and in the hilarity that followed, the question arose as to why the Irish girl's finger had been so persuasive. I, city-bred and green as grass as to country lore, rashly attempted to explain; the inserted finger gave a good purchase on the calf which in its pain became at once tractable, but the men present who had been farm-boys, with loud laughter ridiculed the suggestion. Did I not know that nature had provided a conduit through which the needed sustenance was conveyed from the maternal udder, and that it was quite possible to delude the unsuspecting calf into the belief that the slyly inserted finger was that conduit? The triumph of the Irish girl was explained, and I sank back, covered with confusion. Fiske, however, blurted out: "Why, I never should have thought of that in all my life," whereat he too became the target of ridicule.

I never saw John Fiske happier than once at Concord. Our host had invited us for a day and had prepared a programme that only Concord could furnish. The prelude was a performance of the Andante to a Sonata of Rubinstein, Opus 12, rendered exquisitely by the daughter of our host. I saw the great frame of my fellow-guest heave with emotion while his breath came almost in sobs as his spirit responded to the music. Then came a canoe-trip on the river to which John Fiske joyfully assented though some of the rest of us were not without apprehension. Fiske in a canoe was a ticklish proposition, but there he was at last, comfortably recumbent, his head propped up on cushions, serenely at ease though a very narrow margin intervened between water-line and gunwale. The performer of the Sonata, who was as deft at the paddle as she was at the piano, served as his pilot and propeller while the rest of us formed an escort which could be turned into a rescue party if occasion required. A stout, capacious rowboat followed immediately in the wake of the canoe. We went down the dark, placid current in the fine summer weather to the Battleground, and then looked into the solemn forest aisle which arches over the narrow Assabeth. The day was perfect, the flowers and birds were at their best, the pleasant nature was all about us. All this John Fiske drank in to the full but still more was he touched by the great associations of the environment. From the bank yonder had been "fired the shot heard round the world." The hill-tops, meadows, the gentle river had been loved and frequented by Hawthorne, Thoreau, and Emerson; in these surroundings had bloomed forth the finest flowering of American literature. No heart could be more sensitive than was his to influences of this kind. As we moved cautiously about him, anxious about the equilibrium, though he was calm, he discoursed with animation. The afternoon waned gloriously into the dusk of the happy day.

The little hill-town of Petersham in the back of Worcester County was John Fiske's summer home, a spot he tenderly loved. It is a retired place made very attractive in later years through the agency of his brother-in-law, who with wise and kindly art has added to the natural beauty. I saw John Fiske here in his home of homes to which his heart clung more and more fondly as his end approached. The weight of his great body, accumulating morbidly in a way which could not be counteracted, fairly overwhelmed at last his bright and noble life. As the doctors put it, a heart made for a frame of one hundred and sixty pounds could not do the work for three hundred. When, in his weakness, death was suggested to him as probably near, "Death!" said he simply and sweetly, "why, that only means going to Petersham to stay!" and there among the flowers and fields, remote from the world, though his spirit remains widely and solemnly pervasive, he has gone to stay.



CHAPTER VII

ENGLISH AND GERMAN HISTORIANS

When I went to England in 1886 to collect materials for a life of Young Sir Henry Vane, John Fiske gave me a letter to Dr. Richard Garnett, then Superintendent of the Reading Room in the British Museum. He afterwards became Sir Richard Garnett and was promoted to be Keeper of Printed Books, perhaps the highest position among the librarians of the world, a post to which he did honour. Dr. Garnett, slender and alert, the heaped-up litter of volumes and manuscripts in his study telling at a glance where his tastes lay, was nevertheless as he needed to be most practical and business-like. Though an accomplished litterateur touching with versatility poetry, criticism, history, philosophy, and still other fields, this was his hobby only, his main work being when I knew him to make available for readers crowding from all lands seeking information of all kinds, the treasures of this wonderful store-house. He treated me with the kindest courtesy, but I have no reason to feel that I was an exception. He stood on that threshold, a welcomer of all scholars, for his good nature was no more marked than the comprehensiveness of his information and the dexterity with which without the least delay, he put into the hands of each searcher the needed books. Perhaps it was an unusual favour that, influenced no doubt, by my good introduction, he took a half-hour out of his busy morning to conduct me himself through the Egyptian collection. We passed rapidly among statues and hieroglyphics, his abundant knowledge appearing transiently as he touched upon object after object while at the same time in an incisive and witty vein he spoke of America and the events of the day. Pausing at last before the great scarabaeus of polished syenite whose huge size required a place in the centre of the corridor, he said with a twinkle, "I must tell you a story about this of which one of your countrymen is the hero. I was walking with him here in the collection and expected from him some expression of awe, but like so many of you Americans, he wouldn't admit that he saw anything that couldn't be paralleled in the United States until we stood before the scarabaeus. Here his mood changed; his face fell, he slowly walked around the scarabaeus three times and then exclaimed, 'It's the all-firedest, biggest bug I ever saw in all my born days'"! I palliated patriotically the over-breezy nonchalance of my countryman and thought I had got at the bottom of the joke, but that evening at a little tea I was undeceived. A small company were present of men and women, talk flowed easily and when it came my turn I told the story of the Yankee and the scarabaeus which I had heard that day. As I brought out with emphasis the "all-firedest, biggest bug," I noticed that a frost fell on the mirth, silence reigned for a moment interrupted only by gasps from the ladies. What impropriety had I committed? Presently a little man behind the coffee-urn at the far end of the table, whom I had heard was a bit of a scientist, piped up: "Perhaps the Professor doesn't know that in England, when we talk about bugs, we mean that cimex which makes intolerable even the most comfortable bed." At last I had Dr. Garnett's story in its full force.

When I explained to Dr. Garnett my errand, an elaborate investigation of an historic figure, said he: "You must know Samuel Rawson Gardiner, the best living authority for the period of the English Civil War. Now Dr. Gardiner is peculiar. His great history of that period as yet takes in nothing later than 1642. Up to that date he will have all the information and help you generously. Of the time beyond that date he will have nothing to say, be mute as a dumb man. He has not finished his investigations and has a morbid caution about making any suggestion based on incomplete data." A day or two afterward I was in the Public Record Office in Fetter Lane, the roomy fire-proof structure which holds the archives of England. You sit in the Search Room, a most interesting place. Rolls and dusty tomes lie heaped about you, the attendants go back and forth with long strips of parchment knotted together by thongs, hanging down to the floor before and behind, written-over by the fingers of scribes in the mediaeval days and sometimes in the Dark Ages. The past becomes very real to you as you scan Domes Day Book which once was constantly under the eye of William the Conqueror, or the documents of kings who reigned before the Plantagenets. As I sat busy with some original letters of Henry Vane, written by him when a boy in Germany in the heart of the Thirty Years' War, a vigorous brown-haired man came up to me with a pleasant smile and introduced himself as Samuel Rawson Gardiner. Dr. Garnett had told him about me and about my especial quest, and with rare kindness, he offered to give me hints. It was for me a fortunate encounter, for no other man knew, as Gardiner did, the ground I desired to cover. He put into my hands old books, unprinted diaries, scraps of paper inscribed by great figures in historic moments, the solid sources, and also the waifs and strays from which proper history must be built up. He would look in upon me time after time in the Search Room; in the Reading Room of the British Museum we sat side by side under the great dome. We were working in the same field and the experienced master passed over to the neophyte the yellow papers and mildewed volumes in, which he was digging, with suggestions as to how I might get out of the chaff the wheat that I wanted. He invited me to his home at Bromley in Kent, where he allowed me to read the proofs of the volume in his own great series which was just then in press. It related to matters that were vital to my purpose and I had the rare pleasure of reading a masterly work and seeing how the workman built, inserting into his draft countless marginal emendations, the application of sober second thought to the original conception. I spent the best part of the night in review and it was for me a training well worth the sacrifice of sleep. In the pleasant July afternoon we sat down to tea in the little shaded garden where I met the son and daughter of my host and also Mrs. Gardiner, an accomplished writer and his associate in his labours. The interval between tea and dinner we filled up with a long walk over the fields of Kent during which appeared the social side of the man. He told me with modesty that he was descended from Cromwell through Ireton, and the vigour of his stride, with which I found it sometimes hard to keep up, made it plain that he was of stalwart stock and might have marched with the Ironsides. A day or two later he bade me good-bye; he and his wife departing for the continent for a long bicycle tour. The indefatigable scholar was no less capable in the fields and on the high road than in alcoves and the Search Room.

Lecky was not in England at the time of my visit and I can only claim to have had with him an epistolary acquaintance. To some extent I have worked on the same themes with him, and preserve among my treasures certain letters in which he made me feel that he regarded my accomplishment as not unworthy. Sir Charles Dilke and the Bishop of Oxford, William Stubbs, author of the great Constitutional History, I also never met, but I have letters from them which I keep with those of Lecky as things which my children will prize. With Edward A. Freeman, however, I came into cordial relations, a character well worthy of a sketch. He once came to America where with his fine English distinction behind him he met a good reception. He deported himself after the fashion of many another great Englishman, somewhat clumsily. At St. Louis he amusingly misapprehended conditions. Remembering the origin of the city he took it for granted that the audience which greeted him was for the most part of French descent, whereas probably not a dozen persons present had a trace of French blood in their veins. Because backwoodsmen a few generations before had possessed that region he took it for granted that we were backwoodsmen still. He addressed us under these misconceptions, the result being a "talking down" to a company of supposedly Latin extraction and quite illiterate. The fact was that the crowd, Anglo-Saxon with a strong infusion of German, was made up of people of high intelligence, the best whom the city could furnish, a city at the time noted for its interest in philosophical pursuits and the home of a highly educated class. Freeman's well-meant remarks would have seemed elementary to an audience of school-children. The address was quite inadequate and the unfortunate visitor had a rather cool reception. Freeman was only one of many in all this. The astronomer R.A. Proctor came to similar grief for a similar gaucherie, and even so famous a man as Lord Kelvin suffered in like manner. I have been told that at Yale University when addressing a college audience zealous for their own institution, he stumbled badly on the threshold by enlarging on the great privilege he was enjoying in speaking to the students of Cornell, proceeding blandly under the conviction that he was at Ithaca instead of under the elms of New Haven. But this clumsiness in Freeman and in others was only a surface blemish. He was a great writer treating with profound learning the story of Greece and Rome and South-western Europe in general, and illuminating as probably no other man has done the distant Saxon and early Norman dimnesses that lie in the background of our own past. I held him in thorough respect and when, following an article I had prepared in London for the Pall Mall Gazette, I received a polite note from him inviting me to come to see him at Somerleaze near Wells, I was much rejoiced. I went thither, passing through the beautiful green heart of England. In Wiltshire from the car-window I caught sight of a distant down on which, the substratum of chalk showing through the turf skilfully cut away, appeared the figure of a gigantic white horse, the memorial of an old Saxon battle; thence passing near Glastonbury and skirting the haunts of ancient Druids in the Mendip Hills, I was attuned for a meeting with a scholar who more than any other man of the time had aroused interest in the old life of England. I alighted at Wells where a trap was waiting, and drove between hedgerows for two miles to the secluded mansion. It lay back from the road, a roomy manor house thickly surrounded by groves and gardens. I was put at ease at once by the friendly welcome of Mrs. Freeman, a charming hostess who met me at the door. Freeman soon entered, a veteran of sixty, his florid English face set off by a long beard, and hair rather dishevelled, tawny, and streaked with gray. Like Gardiner he was of vigorous mould and we presently strode off together through the lanes of the estate with the sweet landscape all about us. His talk was animated and related for the most part to the objects which we passed and the points that came into view on the more distant hills. It was rather the talk of a local antiquary than of a historian in a comprehensive sense, though now and then a quickly uttered phrase linked a trifling detail with the great world movement; the spirit was most kindly. Returning to the house he stooped to the ground and picked up a handsome peacock's feather which he gave with a bow as a souvenir of the walk. At dinner we met Miss Freeman, an accomplished daughter. There was only one guest besides myself, a man whom I felt it was good fortune to meet. It was the Rev. William Hunt, since that time well known as a large contributor to Leslie Stephen's great Dictionary of National Biography, President of the English Historical Society, and author of many valuable works. It so happened that a few weeks before, my Life of Samuel Adams had come under his notice and gained his approval, which he had expressed in a cordial fashion in the Saturday Review by an article which had caused me much satisfaction. An evening followed full of interesting things. Miss Freeman played the piano for us with much skill, and then came a most animated talk which, though genial, was critically pungent. The United States was often sharply attacked and I was put to all my resources to parry the prods that were directed at our weak places. I did not escape some personal banter. Feeling that I was in a congenial atmosphere I announced with warmth my persistent love for England, though my stock had been fixed in America since 1635. I spoke of a cherished tradition of my family. The chronicler, Florence of Worcester, describes an ancient battle in the year of 1016 between Edmond Ironside and the Danes. The battle was close and the Danes at one point had taken captive a Saxon champion who looked very much like the king. By cutting off his head and holding it up before the Saxon army they well-nigh produced a panic, for the Saxons believed that their king was slain, and Edmond had a lively quarter of an hour in correcting the error and restoring order. He finally did so and won victory at last. The chronicler gave the name of the Saxon who thus suffered untimely decapitation as Hosmer. I told the story and Freeman at once insisted that it should be confirmed. He sent his daughter to the library, who returned bearing a huge tome containing the chronicle of Florence of Worcester. Freeman turned at once to the date, 1016, and there was the passage in the quaint mediaeval Latin. It was indeed a Hosmer who unwittingly had so nearly brought Edmond Ironside to grief. "Was I descended from the man?" queried Freeman. Quite proud that my story had been substantiated and perhaps a bit vainglorious over the fact that a man of my name had looked like a king, I was not slow in saying that I probably was, that my line for six hundred years after that date, honest yeomen, had lived near the spot, in the fields of Kent. Freeman assented to the probability, but it was suggested by others present that there was a further tradition. The Hosmer of 1016 had lost his head, the Hosmers since that day had been constantly losing theirs, in fact, there had been no man of that name since that time in England who had any head worth speaking of, indeed they were said to be born without heads. Had this curious heredity been transmitted to the American line? I was forced to admit with confusion that I could cite no circumstances to rebut the suspicion, but all was good-natured though pungent, and when we broke up I retired to the guest chamber in a pleasant excitement. Freeman, who conducted me himself, brought the guest-book, calling my attention to the fact that the chamber had shortly before been occupied by Gladstone. The next morning we drove to Wells where, under the guidance of Freeman and Mr. Hunt, I studied for some hours the beautiful cathedral. It is not so large as many cathedrals, but few of them are more interesting. The front is finely impressive; a curious, inverted arch in the choir which descends from the ceiling to meet an arch rising from the floor at a point midway between the roof and pavement is a unique thing in architecture, a master-stroke of the mediaeval builder who solved a problem of construction and at the same time produced a thing of beauty. I remember, too, in a chapel, an example of a central column rising like a slender stem of a lily and foliating at the top into a graceful tracery, springing from the columns which surround and enclose the space. All this is elaborated with exquisite detail in the white stone. My guides, who were full of feeling for the architectural perfection, knew well the story of the builders and the interesting events with which through the centuries a masterpiece had been associated. It was a charming visit closed, appropriately, by this inspection under Freeman's guidance, of the cathedral of Wells.

Goldwin Smith was a cosmopolite; a citizen as much of Canada and the United States as of England; a man indeed who would have preferred to call himself a citizen of the world. But in England he was born and bred and began his career; under the Union Jack he died, and he may rightly be classed as an English historian. My acquaintance with Goldwin Smith began a quarter of a century back, in the interchange of notes and books. I was interested in the same fields which he had illustrated. I looked upon him as more than any other writer, perhaps, my master. I was in love with his spirit from the first and thought that no other man had considered so well topics connected with the unity of English-speaking men in a broad bond of brotherhood. I did not set eyes on him until 1903, being for that year President of the American Library Association which was to meet at Niagara Falls. I invited Goldwin Smith to give the principal address. The librarians of Canada, as well as the United States, were to assemble on the frontier between the two countries, and it seemed desirable that a man standing under two flags should be spokesman and this character fitted Goldwin Smith precisely. But that year he became eighty years old. In the spring he was ill and did not dare to undertake in June an elaborate address. When we assembled at Niagara Falls, however, I found him there. He had come from Toronto to show his good-will and he spoke several times in our meetings; deliverances which, while neither long nor formal, were well worth hearing. He was a stately presence, tall, slender, and erect even at eighty, with a commanding face and head which had every trait of dignity. I had several opportunities for private talk and it appeared that his natural force was by no means abated. It would no doubt be more just to class him as a critic in politics, literature, and philosophy rather than an historian, but in the latter capacity, too, his service was great. His talk was fluent, incisive, and put forward without reference to what might be the prejudices or indeed the well-based principles of his listeners. He lashed bitterly the Congress of the United States for refusing through fear of Irish disapproval to do honour to John Bright. His tongue was a sword and cut sharply, and while he won respect always, often excited opposition and sometimes hatred. Napoleon in particular was a bete noire, to whom he denied even the possession of military genius. His courage was serene and he was quite indifferent as to whether he were hissed or applauded. He moved in a lofty atmosphere and the praise and blame of men counted for little with him, as on his high plane he discussed and judged. But it was impossible to entertain for Goldwin Smith any other feeling than profound respect, his accomplishments were vast, his memory unfailing, his ideals the highest, his sense of justice the keenest. His was a nature perhaps to evoke veneration rather than affection, and yet to men worthy of it he could be heartily cordial and friendly. The inscription on the stone erected to his memory at Cornell University is "Above all nations is humanity." In his thought any limitation of the sympathies within the comparatively narrow bounds of one country was a vice rather than a virtue, and no nation was worthy to endure which did not stand for the good of the world at large; into love for all humanity narrower affections should emerge. He invited me to spend some days at the Grange at Toronto in his beautiful home, but circumstances made it impossible. I am glad to have seen Goldwin Smith at Niagara; that majestic environment befitted the subduing stateliness of his presence, his intellect, power, and elevation of view. He was one of the most exalted men I have ever known.

Of my friend Bishop Phillips Brooks, I hope to say something by-and-by. I only mention now that when I asked him in 1886 for a letter or two to friends in England, whither I was going to collect material for a life of the colonial governor, he heartily said, "I will give you a letter to the best Englishman I know, and that is James Bryce."

Arriving one July day in London, I posted my letter and received at once an invitation from Mr. Bryce to call upon him in Downing Street, where, as Under Secretary of State, he then made his official home.

Mark Twain's tears over the grave of Adam, a relative buried in a strange land, all will recall. On a basis as good perhaps, I walked through Downing Street with a certain sense of proprietorship, for did it not bear the name and had it not been the home of my brother in the pleasant Harvard bond, Sir George Downing, of the class of 1642? In the ante-room with its upholstery of dark-green leather I mused for a few minutes alone, over diplomatic conferences of which it had probably been the scene, but Mr. Bryce quickly entered, slight and sinewy, in his best years, kindly, courteous to the man sent by a friend whom he held among the closest. Bryce at that time was on the threshold of his fame. He had written The Holy Roman Empire which I knew well. He had been Regius Professor at Oxford, whose shades he had not long before forsaken for politics. That he had a special interest in and knowledge of America, the world did not know. He apologised for turning me off briefly then, but "Come to dinner," said he, "at my house to-night in Bryanstone Square." I was prompt to keep the appointment. A drizzle filtered through the night as the cab arrived at the door, but there was a cheery light in the windows and a warm welcome to the entering guest. There were three or four besides myself; a young officer just home from the campaign in the Soudan, Dr. Richter the authority in music and art, and the brother and sister of the host. I felt it a high distinction that I handed out to dinner the stately lady, the mother of my host. The conversation was general. Bits of African experience from the young soldier, glimpses into Richter's special fields, and a contribution or two from the Mississippi Valley, from me. In the talk that followed the dinner Mr. Bryce showed himself at home in German as much as in English, but what surprised me most was his puzzling curiosity about minutiae of our own politics. Why did the Mayor of Oshkosh on such and such dates veto the propositions of the aldermen as to the gas supply? And why did the supervisors of Pike County, Missouri, pass such and such ordinances as regards the keeping of dogs? These, or similar questions were fired at me rapidly, uttered with a keen attention as to my reply. I was quite confused and lame on what was supposedly my own ground. How queer, I thought, was the interest and the knowledge of this stranger. But in a few months I felt better. The American Commonwealth appeared, revealing Bryce as a man who had set foot in almost our every State and Territory, and who had an intimacy with America such as no American even possessed.

I am speaking here of historians, but may appropriately give a little space to an account of that wonderful acre or two of ground at Westminster, where for so many centuries the history of the English-speaking race has been to such an extent focused.

In looking up Young Sir Henry Vane, it seemed fitting to have some knowledge of Parliament, and I welcomed the chance when, on the 19th of August, 1886, Parliament convened. It was a time of agitation. At the election just previous the Liberals, with Gladstone at the head of the Cabinet, had undergone defeat and the Conservatives had come in with Lord Randolph Churchill as Chancellor of the Exchequer. The first night was sure to be full of turmoil and excitement. Through Mr. Bryce's good offices I had a seat in the Strangers' Gallery. The student of history must always tread the precincts of Westminster with awe. There attached to the Abbey is the Chapter House. The central column divides overhead into the groins that form the arched ceiling, the stones at its base still bearing a stain from the rubbing elbows of mediaeval legislators, the floor worn by their hurrying feet, for from the time of Edward I. the Chapter House remained for centuries the legislative meeting-place. The old St. Stephen's Chapel to which Parliament at length removed was burned some eighty years since, but Westminster Hall, its attachment—the great hall of William Rufus, escaped and the new buildings of Parliament stand on the site of its former home. The present House of Commons occupies the ground of the old Chapel and in size and arrangement differs little from it. The Hall is small. The seven hundred members seated on the benches which slope up from the centre, crowd the floor space, while the galleries for the press at one end, for strangers at the other, and for the use of the Lords and the Diplomatic corps at the sides give only meagre accommodation. I passed into the building at nightfall, getting soul-stirring glimpses into the great area of Westminster Hall, in which burned only one far-away light. Its grandeur was more impressive in the dimness than in the glare. The lofty associations of the spot, coronations of kings, the reverberations of eloquence, the illustrious victims that had gone out from its tribunal to the scaffold thronged in my thought as I momentarily paused. But time pressed and I passed on to the central Hall where I stood in a jostling crowd, absorbed in the present with little thought of the fine frescoes that lined the walls or of the history that had been made in that environment. I was to send in my card to Mr. Bryce and while I stood puzzled as to what course to take, a good friend came to my side in the person of Sir Henry Norman. He had not then received his knightly title but was simply assistant to W.T. Stead on the Pall Mall Gazette, pushing his way, but already marked for a distinguished and eccentric career. He came to America as a youth and entered the Harvard Theological School. Inverting his pyramid, after beginning with the cone, he put in the base, taking up the work of undergraduate, and studying for an A.B. At Harvard he is best remembered as Creon in the Oedipus Tyrannus, where his handsome face and figure and mellifluous Greek won much admiration. Soon after, he cast to the winds both his Greek and theology and was in London fighting his way in the Press. Since then he has become famous for Oriental travel and observation, in which field he is an authority, and also as a member of Parliament. A friendship with him had been conciliated for me by a good letter from Edwin D. Mead, and I was glad to have him by my side that night. Through his help I soon was in the hands of Mr. Bryce and under his guidance found the way to my appointed seat. The House was in an uproar as I entered and from my point of vantage I looked down upon the scene, undignified, but full of most virile life. At the opposite end of the Hall sat Speaker Peel, in gown and wig, his sonorous cries of "Order! order!" availing little it seemed, to quiet the assembly. In the centre of the Chamber stood the famous table, the mace reposing at the end, the symbol that the House was in formal session. On one side sat the members of the new Cabinet, the foremost and most interesting figure, Lord Randolph Churchill. Opposite to them across the width of the table were the leaders of the opposition, Gladstone at the fore. The benches were densely crowded with members. Under my feet where I could not see them were the Irish members, not visible but noisily audible. Many men of note were in their seats that night. A powerful voice was ringing through the Chamber as I took my seat, which I soon found was that of Bradlaugh. His utterance was a sustained declamation. But there were ejaculations, sometimes mere hoots and cat-calls, sometimes crisply-shouted sentences rose into the air. "I belong to a society for the abolition of the House of Lords," came thundering up. It was from Sir Wilfred Lawson, the radical from Carlisle, whose statue now stands on the Thames Embankment. Lord Randolph Churchill made that night what I suppose was the great speech of his life, for some two hours facing the Irish members waging a forensic battle, memorable for even the House of Commons. From my perch I looked directly into his face at a distance of not many feet as he confronted the Irish crowd. Rather short of stature, he was a compact figure, and his face had in it combative energy as the marked characteristic. He outlined the policy of the new government with serene indifference to the stormy disapproval which almost every sentence evoked. When the outcry became deafening, he paused with a grim smile on his bull-dog face until the interruption wore itself out. "This disturbance makes no difference to me," he would quietly say, "I am only sorry to have the time of the House wasted in such unreasonable fashion." Then would come another prod and a new chorus of howls rolling thunderously from the cavern under my feet. It is not in line with my present plan to describe this speech; that may be found in Hansard under the date. I touch only on the outside manner as he fought his fight. It was a fine example of cool, imperturbable, unshrinking assault, and I thought that in some such way his ancestor, the great Duke of Marlboro, might have ruled the hour at Blenheim and Malplaquet. Many years after it fell to me to introduce to an audience his son Winston Churchill who, when his father was Chancellor of the Exchequer, was a schoolboy at Harrow. I took occasion to describe briefly the battle I had seen his father wage at Westminster. It pleased Winston Churchill then fresh from the fields of South Africa. "That was indeed a great speech of my father's," he said. Since then the son has developed into a combatant probably not less formidable than his forebears.