AT HAPHAZARD
In 1887, in pleasant June weather I left St. Louis with my family on
the capacious river-packet _Saint Paul_, for a trip up-stream to
the city for which the boat was named. The flood was at the full as we
ploughed on, stopping at landings on either side, the reaches between
presenting long perspectives of summer beauty. We paused in due course
at a little Iowa town, and among the passengers who took the boat here
were two men who excited our attention at the landing. One was a
tall handsome fellow in early manhood, well-dressed and mannered,
completely blind. The other was his companion, a rather dishevelled
figure with neglected beard and hair setting off a face that looked
out somewhat helplessly into a world strange to it, an attire of loose
white wool, plainly made by some tailor who knew nothing of recent
fashion-plates. A close-fitting cap of the same material surmounted
his head. The attire was whole and neat, but the air of the man was
slouchy and bespoke one who must have lately come from the outskirts
into the life of America. The young blindman at once aroused earnest
sympathy. Of the other some one remarked, "Plainly a globe-trotting
Englishman, who has lost his Baedeker and by chance got in here."
Presently the boat was on its way, and as I sat facing the changing
scene, I heard a shuffling, hesitating step behind, and a drawling
somewhat uncertain voice asked me about the country. I replied that it
was my first trip and I was ignorant. Turning full upon the querist,
no other than the globe-trotter, I said: "You are an Englishman I see.
I was in England last year. I have spent some time in London, and I
know other parts of your country." A conversation followed which soon
became to me interesting. My companion had education and intelligence,
and before the afternoon ended we were agreeably in touch. He handed
me his card on which was engraved the name, "Mr. William Grey." I told
him I was a Harvard man, a professor in Washington University, St.
Louis. He was of Exeter College, Oxford, and for some years had been a
professor in Codrington College, Barbadoes, in the West Indies, whence
he had lately come. To my natural surprise that he should be so far
astray, he said he had been visiting a fellow Exeter man, a clergyman
of the English Church, who was the rector of an Iowa parish. It
further developed that his young blind companion belonged to a family
in the parish, and that Mr. Grey had good-heartedly assumed the care
of him during an outing on the river.
A trip from St. Louis to St. Paul by river is longer now than a trip
across the Atlantic. I was nearly a week in my new companionship, and
acquaintance grew and deepened fast. The young blindman, whose manners
were agreeable, became a general favourite, and Mr. Grey and I found
we had much in common. I mentioned to him that my errand in England
the year before had been to find material for a life of Young Sir
Henry Vane, the statesman and martyr of the English Commonwealth, and
in his young days a governor of the province of Massachusetts Bay.
This touched in him a responsive chord. He was familiar with the
period and the character. He was a friend of Shorthouse whose novel,
_John Inglesant_ was a widely-read book of those days. He had
helped Shorthouse in his researches for the book, and knew well
the story of Charles I., and his friends and foes. He was himself
a staunch Churchman, but mentioned with some pleasure that his name
appeared among the Non-conformists. A sturdy noble of those days was
Lord Grey of Groby, who opposed the King to the last, standing at the
right hand of the redoubtable Colonel Pride at the famous "Pride's
Purge," pointing out to him the Presbyterians whom the Ironside was to
turn out of Parliament, in the thick of the crisis. To my inquiry as
to whether Lord Grey of Groby was an ancestor, he was reticent, merely
saying that the name was the same. I had begun to surmise that my new
friend was allied with the Greys who in so many periods of English
history have borne a famous part. Some years before, while sojourning
in a little town on the Ohio River, a stroll carried me to a coal-mine
in the neighbourhood. As I peered down two hundred feet into the dark
shaft, a bluff, peremptory voice called to me to look out for my head.
I drew back in time to escape the cage as it descended with a group
of miners from a higher plane to the lower deeps. I thanked my bluff
friend, who had saved my head from a bump. A pleasant acquaintance
followed which led to his taking me down into the mine, a thrilling
experience. He was an adventurous Englishman who had put money into a
far-away enterprise, and come with his wife and children to take care
of it. His wife was a lady well-born, a sister of Sir George Grey,
twice governor of New Zealand, and at the time High Commissioner and
governor of Cape Colony, one of the most interesting of the great
English nation-makers of the South Seas. I came to know the lady,
and naturally followed the career of her brother, who earned a noble
reputation. Later I corresponded with him, and received from him his
portrait and books. Referring to Sir George Grey in my talk with Mr.
William Grey, I found that he knew him well and not long before, in
a voyage of which he had made many into many seas, had visited New
Zealand, and been a guest of Sir George Grey at his island-home in
the harbour of Auckland. Was he related to Sir George? was my natural
query. Again there was reticence. The name was the same, but the Greys
were numerous.
The journey wore on. The resource of the steamer's company was to sit
on the upper deck, watch the swollen river with its waifs of uprooted
trees and the banks green with the summer, chatting ourselves
into intimacy. The young blindman made good and very good, and
his guardian, while keeping a lookout on his charge from under his
well-worn traveller's cap, which I now knew had sheltered its owner
in tropic hurricanes and icy Arctic blasts, discussed with me matters
various and widely related. Nearing our journey's end, we sat in the
moonlight, the Mississippi opening placidly before us between hazy
hills. We had grown to be chums, and next morning we were to part. It
was a time for confidences. "Well," said Mr. Grey, "I am going to
get a good look at America, then I mean to return home and go into
Parliament." I suggested there might be difficulties about that.
English elections were uncertain, and how could he be at all sure that
any constituency would want him. "Ah," said he, this time no longer
reticent. "I am going into the House of Lords." "Indeed," said I in
surprise, "and who are you really, Mr. William Grey?" At last he
was outspoken. He was heir to the earldom of Stamford, his uncle the
present earl, a man past eighty, childless, and in infirm health,
must soon lay down the title. He was preparing himself for the
responsibilities of the high position and believed it well to make a
study of America. His father, a younger son, had been a clergyman in
Canada, and he, though with an Oxford training, knew the world outside
of England better than the old home. His direct ancestor was Lord Grey
of Groby, whose father, an earl of Stamford, had been a Parliamentary
commander in the years of the Civil War, and in the century before
that, a flower of the house had been the Lady Jane Grey, who had
perished in her youth on the scaffold, a possible heir to the English
crown. So this _outré_ personage, good-heartedly helping the
blindman to an outing, and in a shy apologetic way getting into touch
with an environment strange to him, was a high-born nobleman fitting
himself for his dignities.
I had before invited Mr. Grey to visit me in St. Louis, for his
seeming helplessness appealed to me from the first. He had met some
hard rebuffs in his American contacts. I thought I might aid him in
making his way. Returning in the autumn to my home, I heard from Mr.
Grey that he was coming to be my guest, and in due time he arrived. I
missed him at the station, but he presently appeared at our door in an
express-waggon, sitting on the seat with the driver, in the midst of
his belongings. He spent a week with us in the first American home he
had known, and we found him an amiable and unobtrusive gentleman.
He was a vigorous walker and explored the city well. His listless,
seemingly inattentive eyes somehow scanned everything, and he judged
well what he witnessed. He was an accomplished scholar and had a quiet
humour. A little daughter half-playfully and half-wilfully, announced
her intention to follow her own pleasure in a certain case. "Milicent
is a Hedonist," said the guest, and the Oxford scholar brought
Aristippus and Epicurus into odd conjunction with a Mississippi Valley
breakfast-table. He laid aside his white woollen suit, but his attire
remained unconventional, not to say _outré_. Even the wrinkled
dress-suit in which he appeared at dinner, I think was the achievement
of a tailor in the island of Barbadoes. His opera-hat was a wonder. He
was, or was soon to be, a belted earl, but his belt only appeared on
his pajamas, raiment of which I heard then for the first time. It had
early appeared in our intercourse that the main interest of Mr. Grey
lay in humane and religious work. He also was a devoted member of the
Church of England. On Sunday morning we started early for the leading
Episcopal Church but on the way he inquired as to the place of worship
of the negro congregation of that faith. I confessed my ignorance
of it, but he had in some way ascertained it, and I presently found
myself following his lead down a rather squalid street where at last
we came to the humble temple. Instead of hearing the bishop, a famous
and eloquent man, he preferred to sit on a bare bench in the obscure
little meeting-house, where he fraternised cordially with the dusky
company we found there. He was more interested in our charities than
in our politics and business, and in his quiet way during the week
learned the story well. I introduced him to Southern friends who gave
him letters to persons in the South. Provided with these he bade us
good-bye at last, and went far and wide through what had been
the Confederacy. He visited Jefferson Davis and many soldiers and
politicians of note, getting at first-hand their point of view. I also
gave him letters to some eminent men in the East, which he presented,
meeting with a good reception. He made a wide and shrewd study of the
United States, and I am glad to think I helped him. When I met him
he was unfriended and without credentials, and his singularities
were exposing him to some inconvenient jostling in our rough world.
I opened some doors to him through which he pushed his way into much
that was best worth seeing in American life. An old friend, a radical
man of letters, wrote me afterwards that he enjoyed Mr. Grey, and he
thought Mr. Grey enjoyed him although he believed that if he had been
a pauper, a criminal, or even a bishop, Mr. Grey would have enjoyed
him much more.
He returned to England and did not forget me, writing from time to
time how his affairs progressed. Soon he entered into his own, the
earldom of Stamford, finding about the same time his countess in an
English vicarage. In the House of Lords he was not prominent, though
the papers occasionally mentioned brief addresses by him. His main
interest continued to be charitable work. He was a lay-preacher, and
worked much in the east end of London, throwing the weight of his
culture and high position into alleviating ignorance and poverty. He
sent me interesting literature relating to the efforts of well-placed
men and women to carry into slums and hovels sweetness and light.
In due time a daughter was born to him, whom he named Jane Grey; and
later a son, Lord Grey of Groby. I saw once in the London Graphic, or
perhaps in the Illustrated News, charming pictures of these children
with their interesting historic names. Though rigidly a Churchman he
was not narrow. Lord Stamford sent me a handsome picture of himself,
to which is affixed his signature as an earl and an elaborate seal. In
an accompanying note he wrote that the seal was a careful facsimile of
the one which an ancestor of his had affixed to the death-warrant of
Charles I. He seemed to take pride in the fact that his forbear had
borne a part in the ancient Non-conformist strivings. He came to
America more than once afterward, as a delegate to charitable and
peace Congresses. My dear friend Robert Treat Paine, President of the
Peace Society and eminent philanthropist of Boston, knew him well and
esteemed him highly--and he was the fellow of workers like him.
It is a picturesque moment in my life that I in this way came into
association with a nobleman of the bluest blood. To outward appearance
as I stumbled upon him so unexpectedly, he seemed effete. His odd
shuffle and limp whiskers were dundrearily suggestive of a personality
a bit mildewed. But I felt that what ineptitude there was, was only
superficial; good, strong manhood lay underneath. His death took place
some years since.
Burke's _Peerage_ states that the family was ennobled by Richard
Coeur de Lion, and has maintained itself in a high place for eight
centuries. Privilege is a bough of the social tree from which we
expect mere dead sea-fruit rather than a wholesome yield, but now and
then the product holds something better than ashes. As we trace this
stock through the ages, apples of Sodom, no doubt, will be found in
abundance, but now and then it flowers into heroic manhood and lovely
womanhood. My chance comrade of the _St. Paul_ was a refined,
high-purposed man, certainly a product of the worthier kind, and I am
glad to count among my friends, William Grey, Ninth Earl of Stamford.
* * * * *
As a student of German, anxious to gain fluency of expression, and to
train my ear to catch readily the popular idioms, I found that I must
fill out my writing and reading by contact with men. After roving the
streets of German cities, I packed a knapsack and set out upon the
country-roads. I was, as the Germans say, _gut zu Fuss_, a
stout walker, and I learned to employ for my longer expeditions
the _Bummel-Zug_, an institution I commend highly to all in my
situation. The _Bummel-Zug_ is simply a "way" freight-train, to
which in my time was attached a car for third-class passengers.
It stopped at every village, and the fare was very low. It was
convenient, therefore, for those too poor to be in a hurry, and for
travellers like me whose purpose could be better served by loitering
than by haste. The train proceeded leisurely, giving ample time for
deliberate survey of the land, and the frequent pauses of indefinite
length afforded opportunity for walks through the streets of remote
hamlets and even into the country about, where the peasants with
true Teuton _Gemüthlichkeit_ always welcomed a man who came from
America.
Thus on my legs and by _Bummel-Zug_ I wandered far, arriving one
pleasant day at the ancient city of Salzburg, close to the Bavarian
Alps. I was anxious to see something of the Tyrol, and had been told
that the _Königs-See_ offered the finest and most characteristic
scenery of that region. Salzburg was a suitable point of departure.
The sky darkened and it began to rain heavily. Berchtesgaden, in
the mountains, the nearest village to the Königs-See, was only to be
reached by _Eilwagen_, a modification of the _diligence_,
which forty years ago still held its place on the Alpine roads. I
stood at the door of the inn, observing the company who were to be
my fellow-passengers. There were two or three from the outside world,
like myself, a few mountaineers with suggestions of the Tyrol in their
garb, and one figure in a high degree picturesque, a Franciscan friar
in guise as mediaeval as possible. His coarse, brown robe wrapped him
from head to foot. A knotted cord bound his waist, the ends depending
toward the pavement and swinging with his rosary. His feet were shod
with sandals, and his head was bare, though an ample cowl was at hand
to shelter it. His head needed no tonsure for age had made him nearly
bald. His shaven face was kind and strong and he was in genial touch
with the by-standers, to whom no doubt such a figure was not novel.
Incongruously enough, the friar held over his head in the pouring rain
a modern umbrella, his only concession to the storm and to modernity.
Presently we climbed in for the journey, and I was a trifle taken
aback when the monk by chance followed me directly, and as we settled
into our seats was my close _vis-à-vis_. As we bumped along
the rough road our legs became dove-tailed together, I as well as
he wrapped in the coarse folds of his monkish robe, the rosary as
convenient to my hand as to his, and as the vehicle swayed our heads
dodged each other as we rocked back and forth. Thrown thus, as it were
into the embrace of the past, I made the most of it and got as far
as might be into the mediaeval. I found my friar charmingly
companionable. His Bavarian _patois_ was not easy to follow, nor
could he catch readily the speech I had been learning in the schools.
But we made shift and had much talk as we drove through the storm
into the highlands. He was a brother in the monastery at Salzburg,
but being out of health, was making his way to a hospice of his order
above the valley. He had heard of America, and knew there were houses
of his order in that strange land. He was doubtful of its location,
and possibly an American was a creature with whom he had never till
then been in touch. Under the scrutiny of his mild eyes I was being
studied as a queer outlandish specimen, as he certainly was to me. We
parted at last as good friends, his head now enveloped in the cowl,
his sandals pattering off in the dusk toward the little cell that
awaited him in the hospice, while I sought a place by the fire in the
inn of Berchtesgaden. I learned afterward that he was well known and
much venerated in Salzburg.
I came into the mountain-nook oddly companioned, and my exit thence
was equally so, though greatly in contrast. For a day or two I was
storm-bound, and felt the depression natural in a remote solitude,
wrapped in by rain and fog, with no society but an unintelligible
mountaineer or two. At last it cleared and the revulsion was
inspiring. I found myself in a little green vale hemmed in
by magnificent heights whose rocky summits were covered with
freshly-fallen snow. Close at hand rose the Watzmann, a soaring
pyramid whose summit was cleft into two sharp peaks inclined into some
semblance of a bishop's mitre. My recent association with the monk had
made vivid the thought of the old church, and it seemed fitting that
there should be lifted high in air such a symbol of the domination
under which the region lay. But my Protestant eyes regarded it
cheerfully, glad to have within range an object so picturesque. I
forthwith strapped on my knapsack, buckled my belt, and strode out for
the Königs-See, which lay not far beyond. I walked briskly for a mile
or two, stimulated by the abounding oxygen of the highland air, but
presently found myself where the road forked and there was nothing to
indicate which was my right path. The solitude seemed complete, but as
I stood hesitating, I was relieved by the appearance of a pedestrian
who emerged from a by-way. As I framed an inquiry I was deterred by a
certain augustness in the stranger. I had rarely seen a man of finer
bearing. His stature was commanding, his figure, even in the rough,
loose walking-dress he wore, was full of symmetry. His elastic step
showed vigour, and his face under his broad-brimmed Tyrolese hat had
much manly beauty. Was he perhaps a prince in disguise? His friendly
salutation, given in deep masculine tones with a good-natured smile,
put me at ease as I told him my strait. He said in good German, which
I was glad once more to hear after my experience of the mountain
_patois_, that he was on the way to the Königs-See, that he knew
the road, and we would walk on together. I accommodated myself to his
stride and we settled into a pace which carried us rapidly toward
our goal, meanwhile talking cheerfully. I had found it usually a good
passport to say I was an American and I withheld nothing as to my
antecedents and my present errand in Germany. He was more reticent.
He lived in Prussia and was at the moment taking an outing. His
affability did not go the length of revealing his true character. If
he were a high personage _incognito_, I was not to know it.
We reached at last the shore of the Königs-See, a blue, deep lake at
a high elevation, encircled by lofty peaks, splintered, storm-beaten,
and capped by snow which never melts, far above the range of grass and
trees. A group of women on the beach had ready two or three broad and
rudely-built boats, and noisily clamoured for our patronage. We
chose what seemed the best, and the women rowers with stout arms soon
propelled us far from shore into the midst of the Alpine sublimity. A
silence fell, broken only by the oar-beats. Then, where the precipices
rose highest we paused. Suddenly a gun was fired. It broke upon
the silence startlingly loud, and after an interval the report
reverberated in a series of crashes from height after height, dying
down into a dull murmur from the steep most distant. I was awed by the
sight and the sound, and awed too, by my companion. He had thrown off
his hat and knapsack and stood with his fine stature at the bow. His
classic face was turned upward to the peaks, and with a look as if he
felt their power. He waved his arms toward them as if in a salutation
to things sentient. The man seemed to befit the environment, majestic
though it was.
We returned sooner than we desired from our excursion on the water,
the boat-women being over eager for new passengers. My companion
resumed his knapsack and it was time to part. To his question as to
my plan I replied that I was there simply for the scenery, that I
purposed to make my way back to Salzburg on foot by the paths that
promised most, and should be guided by whatever I might learn. He said
that he, too, was bound for Salzburg, walking for pleasure; and when I
thereupon suggested that we might go on together, he readily fell in,
and we trudged forward. Comradeship grew strong as the day passed,
then a night in an unfrequented inn, then another day. We discussed
things near and far, ancient and recent, I talking most but he was
always genial and quietly responsive, and my confidence was invited.
I told him of the little fresh-water college in the West with which
I was associated, my functions being partly pedagogic and partly
pastoral, of the embarrassments of co-education as we found them, the
difficulty in the uplift of too frivolous youth to a high moral and
spiritual plane, the embarrassment in curbing characters too reckless
into decorum and propriety. He listened sympathetically, with no
discoverable cynicism in the rather grave smile he usually wore. As to
whom he might be, he remained constantly reticent, though my curiosity
increased as the hours flew. We passed not far from two or three
mountain resorts, where tourists were gathered. Near such my companion
showed some nervousness. There might be people there who knew him, and
it suited him for the time to remain by himself. This I took as some
small confirmation of my suspicion that he was a great personage.
Physically certainly he was superbly endowed. The roads were rough and
often steep, and I found the tramp fatiguing; but when I asked if he,
too, were not tired, he laughed at the idea, tossing his burden or
taking an extra climb as fresh as at the start. At night our cots were
in the same room. As he stripped off his shirt and stood with head
pillared upon a most stately neck, and massive, well-moulded chest and
shoulders, he was statuesque indeed.
At last Salzburg came in sight. Though we had become quite intimate I
had made no progress in penetrating to my comrade's true character.
I had laid many an innocent little trap to induce him to speak more
openly, but no slip on his part ever betrayed him. We entered the city
and sat down together at a table in a public garden, near the castle
of the old Bishops of Salzburg, ordering for each a glass of light
wine, the parting-cup. Already, since our entrance into the city
things had occurred which partly confirmed the theory I had formed as
to the distinction of my comrade, and also aroused in my mind
doubts not quite comfortable. He was an object of interest in the
well-dressed crowd. That he was a conspicuously handsome man in
a measure explained that, but there were signs, too, that some
recognised him as a person well-known. When we were seated in the
garden actual acquaintances began to appear, agile athletic young
men, who were deferential but familiar. There were ladies, too, modest
enough, but certainly unconventional, nimble free-footed beings, with
feathers and ribbons streaming airily as they flitted. These, like the
men, were deferential to my comrade, yet familiar. There seemed to be
a renewing of some old tie that all were glad to reconnect. The young
men were actively demonstrative, the ladies wove in and out smilingly,
and my comrade in the midst beamed and grew voluble. Was it an
environment into which a quiet American college functionary could
properly fit? No due bounds were transgressed, but the atmosphere was
certainly very Bohemian. My prince _incognito_, was he perhaps
the Prince of Pilsen? While this happy mingling was going forward
I sat somewhat aloof, disconcerted that my cloud-capped towers and
gorgeous palaces were thus crumbling into comic opera. But now my
comrade approached me, aglow with social excitement, and, with a
franker look in his eyes than he had before shown, addressed me: "Mein
lieber Herr Professor, we have had a good ramble together and talked
about many things. You have been confidential with me, and hoped that
I would be with you. I have preferred to hold back, but now as we part
I ought to tell you who I am. I am the _prémier danseur_ in the
ballet of the Royal Opera House in Berlin. Worn with the heavy work in
_Fantasca_, which we produced elaborately and which ran long,
I came down here when the season closed, for change and rest,
and so fell in with you. These young _Herren_ and _Damen_ are
the _coryphés_ and _figurantes_, who in Berlin or in other
cities have taken part with me in productions. Good people they are
and unsurpassed as a _corps de ballet_." We touched glasses,
shook hands, and I went my way leaving Comus with his rout, guileless,
I hope, as Milton's innocent "Lady," but such scales never fell from
her starry eyes as fell from mine. I knew well about _Fantasca_.
During my last weeks in Berlin it had been much talked about, a
splendid theatrical spectacle put on with consummate art, and
lavish expenditure. I had not seen it. Heredity from eight Puritan
generations reinforced by impecuniosity had kept me from that. But I
had heard of the wonderful visions of beauty and grace. My handsome
comrade of the Bavarian Alps had been at the centre of it all, the god
Apollo, or whatever glittering divinity or genius it was that swayed
the enchantments and led in the rhythmic circlings. Good cause indeed
I had had to admire his physical beauty. He had been picked out for
that no doubt among thousands, then painfully trained for years until
in figure and frame he was a model.
The gay pleasure garden in which we had parted lay close to a gloomy
monastic structure, centuries old, that from a height dominated the
little town. The garden and the structure were symbols of what was
most salient in that country--the ancient church braced against
progress, with its power broken in no way, and on the other hand of
a life interpenetrated with things graceful and refined, with art,
music, and poetry, but seamed, too, with frivolity and what makes
for the pleasures of sense. My two friends also were in their way
types,--the cowled Franciscan, aloof in a mediaeval seclusion though
he breathed nineteenth-century air, and the dancer whom I encountered
in the vale, above which the Watzmann upholds forever its solemn
mitre. But they were good fellows both, my comrade in and my comrade
out. The monk's heart was not too shrivelled to flow with human
kindness, and the dancer had not unlearned in the glare of the
foot-lights the graces of a gentleman.
I profess to be a man of peace. Through training, environment, and
calling I ought to be so, and yet there is a fibre in any make-up
which has always throbbed strangely to the drum. Is it perhaps
a streak of heredity? In almost every noteworthy war since the
foundation of the country, men of my line have borne a part. I count
ancestors who stood among the minute-men at Concord bridge.
Another was in the redoubt at Bunker Hill. In the earlier time two
great-great-grandfathers went out against Montcalm and were good
soldiers in the Old French War. Still earlier a progenitor, whose name
I bear, faced the Indian peril in King Philip's War, and was among
the slain in the gloomy Sudbury fight Perhaps it is a trace from these
ancient forbears still lingering in my blood that will respond when
the trumpets blow, however I strive to repress it, and it has given me
qualms.
I was not easy in mind when I stood on the tower of St. Stephen's
Church, in Vienna more than forty years ago, to find that what
I sought most eagerly in the superb landscape was not the steep
Kahlenberg, not the plumy woods of Schönbrunn, not the Danube pouring
grandly eastward, nor the picturesque city at my feet; but the little
hamlets just outside the suburbs, and the wide-stretching grain-field
close by, turning yellow under the July sun, where Napoleon fought the
battles of Aspern and Wagram. Nor was I quite easy when I set out to
climb the St. Gotthard Pass, to find that although the valley below
Airolo was so green with fertile pasture, and from the glaciers above
me the heavens were pricked so boldly by the splintered peaks, I was
thinking most where it was precisely that old Suwarrow dug the grave
and threatened to bury himself, when his army refused to follow him;
then how he must have looked when he had subdued them, riding forward
in his sheepskin, or whatever rude Russian dress he wore, this uncouth
hero who needed no scratching to be proved Tartar, while his loving
host pressed after him into every death-yielding terror that man or
nature could throw across his path.
That I had good reason for my uneasiness, on second thoughts, I do not
believe. Nor do I believe it is just for you, high-toned friend, to
censure me as somewhat low and brutal, when I confess that of all
one can see in Europe, nothing thrilled me quite so much as the great
historic battle-fields. Nothing deserves so to interest man as man
himself; and what spots, after all, are so closely and nobly connected
with man as the spots where he has fought? That we are what we are,
indeed that we are at all,--that any race is what it is or is at
all,--was settled on certain great fields of decision to which we as
well as every race can point back. And then nothing absorbs us like a
spectacle of pain and pathos! Tragedy enchants, while it shocks. The
field of battle is tragedy the most shocking; is it doing indignity to
our puzzling nature to say it is tragedy most absorbing? And there is
another side. Once at midnight, in the light of our bivouac-fire, our
captain told us in low tones that next day we were to go into battle.
He was a rude fellow, but the word or two he spoke to us was about
duty. And I well remember what the men said, as we looked by the
fire-light to see if the rifles were in order. They would go into
fire because duty said, "Save the country!" and when, soon after, the
steeply-sloping angle of the enemy's works came into view, ominously
red in the morning light, and crowned with smoke and fire, while the
air hummed about our ears as if swarming with angry bees, and this one
and that one fell, there was scarcely one who, as he pulled his cap
close down and pushed ahead in the skirmish-line, was not thinking of
duty. They were boys from farm and factory, not greatly better, to say
the most, than their fellows anywhere; and we may be sure that thought
of duty has always much to do with the going forward of weaponed men
amongst the weapons. Men do fight, no doubt, from mere recklessness,
from hope of plunder or glory; and sometimes they have been scourged
to it. But more often, where one in four or five is likely to
fall, the nobler motive is uppermost with men and felt with burning
earnestness too, which only the breath of the near-at-hand death can
fan up. No! there is reason enough why battle-fields should be, as
they are, places of pilgrimage. The remoteness of the struggle hardly
diminishes the interest with which we visit the scene; Marathon is as
sacred as if the Greeks conquered there last year. Nor, on the other
hand, do we need poetic haze from a century or two of intervening
time: Gettysburg was a consecrated spot to all the world before its
dead were buried. There need be no charm of nature; there are tracts
of mere sand in dreary Brandenburg, where old Frederick, with Prussia
in his hand, supple and tough as if plaited into a nation out of
whip-cord, scourged the world; and these tracts are precious. On the
other hand, the grandest natural features seem almost dwarfed and
paltry beside this overmastering interest. On the top of the Grimsel
Pass there is a melancholy, lonely lake which touches the spirit as
much as the Rhone glacier close by, or the soaring Finster-Aarhorn,
the Todten See (Sea of the Dead), beneath whose waters are buried
soldiers who fell in battle there on the Alpine crags. Had I defined
all this, I need not have felt uneasy on St. Stephen's spire or the
St. Gotthard. We are not necessarily brutal if our feet turn with
especial willingness toward battle-fields. There man is most in
earnest; his sense of duty perhaps at its best; the sacrifice
greatest, for it is life. Theirs are the most momentous decisions
for weal or woe; theirs the tragedy beyond all other tremendous and
solemn. It is right that the sacrifice they have witnessed should
possess an alchemy to make their acres golden.
The humane, and I hope I may be counted among the number, have long
wished that some milder arbitrament than that of arms might intervene
to settle the disagreements of men. No such arbitrament has as yet
come into being. We settle our disputes in this way, and history must
record the struggles, however reluctantly. As an historical writer, it
has been my function to deal with times of conflict in various periods
and lands. When I was seventy years old I began writing a history of
our Civil War. To have at hand the literature of the period I went to
Washington, where the most kind officials of the Library of Congress
assigned to me a roomy alcove in the north curtain with a desk and
ample surrounding shelves. These were filled for me by expert hands
with whatever I might require for my task, and a screen shut off
my corner from the corridor through which at times perambulated
Roosevelt, and other secluded delvers, intent on early Gaelic
literature and what not. Here I spent the most of two years, finding
it an ideal spot, but my task required more than an examination, under
the quiet light of my great window, of books and documents. The fields
themselves must also be surveyed, so I travelled far until I had
visited the scene of nearly every important conflict and traced the
lines of march in the great campaigns. I was already a haunter of old
battle-fields, that thread of heredity, from a line of forbears very
martial in their humble way, asserting itself in whatever lands I
wandered. I had been at Hastings, and had traced the Ironsides to
Marston Moor and Naseby. I had stood by the _Schweden-Stein_ at
Lützen, and tramped the sod of Leipsic and Waterloo. It was for me
now to see our own fields of decision, fields ennobled by a courage as
great and a purpose as high as soldiers have ever shown.
To mark Waterloo the Belgians reared a mound of huge dimensions,
scraping the _terrain_ far and near to obtain the earth.
Wellington is said to have remarked that the features of the ground
had been so far obliterated by this that he could not recognise
his own positions. One wonders whether the future may not blame our
generation for transformations almost as disguising. Gettysburg,
Chickamauga, Vicksburg, and Shiloh are now elaborate parks. No mounds
have been reared, but the old roads are smooth boulevards, trim lawns
are on the ragged heights, the landscape-gardener has barbered the
grim rough face of the country-side into something very handsome no
doubt, but the imagination must be set to work to call back the arena
as it was on the battle-day. From various points of vantage
memorials make appeal, statues, obelisks, Greek temples, and porches,
bewildering in their number, and now and then making doubtful claims.
"This general," some scrutiniser will tell you, "never held the line
ascribed to him and that pompous pile falsely does honour to troops
who really wavered in the crisis." I know I run counter to prevailing
sentiment in saying that I prefer a field unchanged, not with features
blurred by an overlaying of ornamental and commemorative accretions.
A few markers of the simplest, and a plain tablet now and then where
a hero fell or valour was unusually conspicuous, should suffice, for
a field is more impressive that lies for the most part in its original
rudeness and solitude. At Antietam I found little obtrusive. Sherman's
fields on the way to and about Atlanta have not been marred; nor at
Franklin and Nashville are the plains parked and obelisked out
of recognition. At Bull Run I climbed with a veteran of the
signal-service into the top of a high tree, an old war-time station,
on the hill near the Henry House. The precarious platform remained.
From such an eyrie in the same grove, perhaps from this same tree, a
Southern friend of mine, on the battle-day, caught sight more than two
leagues away of the glint of sunlight on cannon and bayonets toward
Sudley Springs, and sent timely notice to Beauregard that a Federal
column was turning his left. Under my eye the landscape was unchanged,
with no smoothings or intrusions to embarrass the imagination in
making the scene real. But it was in the Wilderness that I felt
especially grateful that the wild thickets for the most part had
been let alone. I found at Fredericksburg an old Confederate, one
of Mahone's command, and hiring an excellent roadster, we drove on
a perfect autumn day first to Spottsylvania Court House, then across
country to the Brock road, then home by the Wilderness church and
Chancellorsville. On the area we traversed were fought four of our
most memorable battles, an area now scarcely less tangled and lonely
than when the Federals poured across the Rappahannock into its
thickets by the thousand, and were so memorably met. My veteran knew
the pikes and the by-paths, and we fraternised with the warmth usual
among foemen who at last have become friends. He knew the story well
of every wood-path and cross-roads. Certainly I was glad that the
rugged acres had undergone no "improvement," and that the eye fell
so nearly on what the old-time soldiers saw. It so happened it
was election-day. There were polling-places at the court-houses of
Fredericksburg and Spottsylvania, at Todd's Tavern, and the Chancellor
house, names bearing solemn associations. The neighbourhoods had come
out to vote, and introduced by my comrade, I had some interesting
encounters. It was a good climax, when toward the end, near
the Chancellor House, we met in the road a patriarchal figure,
whitebearded and sturdy, on his way home from the polls. It was old
Talley, whose log-house, in 1862, was the point from which Stonewall
Jackson began his sudden rush upon Hooker's right. Talley, then a
young farmer, had walked at the General's stirrup pointing out the
way. He had interesting things to tell of Stonewall Jackson at that
moment when his career culminated. "What did he seem like?" I queried.
"He was as cool and business-like as an old farmer looking after
his fences." On an old battle-field which had been illustrated by an
achievement of the Stonewall division especially brilliant, I chanced
to meet a grey veteran who had taken part in it, a North Carolinian
who had come back to review the scene. We fraternised, of course.
"What did Stonewall Jackson look like?" I said. Stepping close to
me, the "Tarheel" extended his two gnarled forefingers, and pressed
between the tips my cheek-bones on either side. "He had the broadest
face across here I ever saw," he said. Such a physiognomical trait is
perhaps indicative of power of brain and will, but I do not recall it
among the usual descriptions of Jackson.
Naturally, after surveying much Virginia country once war-swept, as I
came to the head of the Shenandoah Valley, I could not miss a visit
to Lexington, where repose in honoured graves two such protagonists as
Lee and Stonewall Jackson. It is a beautiful town among low mountains
green to the summit, and in the streets not a few lovely homes of the
Virginia colonial type, draped with ivy and wisteria. There stand the
buildings of Washington and Lee University, in the chapel of which
lies buried Robert E. Lee, and a short mile beyond is the Virginia
Military Institute, from which Stonewall Jackson went forth to his
fame. The memorial at Jackson's grave is appropriate, a figure in
bronze, rugged as he was in face and attire, the image of him as he
fought and fell. Different, but more impressive is the memorial of
Lee. You enter through the chapel where the students gather daily,
then passing the chancel, stand in a mausoleum, where nobly conceived
in marble the soldier lies as if asleep. He bears his symbols as
champion in chief of the "Lost Cause," but the light on his face is
not that of battle. It is serene, benignant, at peace. I was deeply
moved as I stood before it, but soon after I was to experience a
deeper thrill. The afternoon was waning when I walked on to the
Military Institute. Stonewall Jackson had been for ten years a teacher
there. The turf of the parade I was crossing had perhaps felt no
footfall more often than his. Two or three hundred pupils, the flower
of Virginia youth, were assembled in battalion, and I witnessed from
a favourable point their almost perfect drill. As the sun was about to
set, they formed in a far-extending line, with each piece at present.
They were saluting the flag, which now began slowly to descend from,
its staff. Lo, it was the flag of the Union. The band played, I
thought, with unusual sweetness, the Star-Spangled Banner, and to
the music those picked youths of the South, sons and grandsons of the
upholders of the right to sever, did all possible honour, on the sod
which Stonewall Jackson trod, hard by the grave of Lee, to the symbol
of a country united, states now and hereafter in a brotherhood not to
be broken! It was a scene to evoke tears of deep emotion, for never
before or since has it come home to me so powerfully that the Union
had been preserved.
Closing as I do now my record of memories, I feel that the most
momentous of the crises through which it has been my lot to pass
is that attending the maintenance of the Federal bond in the United
States. Assemblies of veterans of the Confederacy and those who
address them scout the idea that they fought to preserve negro
bondage. A late historian of our Civil War, Professor Paxon, of
Wisconsin, holds it to be "reasonably certain" that in another
generation slavery would have disappeared of itself, a contention
surely open to dispute. Here I neither dispute nor approve, but
only say, if the claim can be made good, what a vindication would it
constitute of men, who looked for the quiet dying out of an inveterate
evil, deprecating passionate attack upon a thing moribund? And what an
indictment of the John Browns, whose impatient consciences pressed
for instant abolition careless of whatever cataclysm it might involve!
Certainly the two prime champions whose graves I saw at Lexington did
not fight to sustain slavery. Their principle was that a State could
not be coerced,--and that therefore sovereignty lay in the scattered
constituents and not at the centre. The arbitrament of the sword was
sharp and swift, and happily for the world it went against them. I
well recall the map of Germany I studied when a boy, a page blotched
and seamed with bewildering spots of colour. The effort was to portray
the position of some three hundred independent political units,
duchies, principalities, bishoprics, free cities, and what not, among
electorates and kingdoms of a larger sort, but still minute. It
seemed like a pathological chart presenting a face broken out with an
unseemly tetter. The land indeed, in those days, was afflicted by a
sad political disease. The Germans call it "_Particularismus_" or
"_Vielstaaterei_," the breaking up of a nationality into a mass
of fragments. Some on the map were scarcely larger than pinheads, and
in actual area hardly exceeded a fair-sized farm. In that time Heine
laughed at one of them after this fashion, while describing a journey
over it in bad weather:
"Of Bückeburg's principality
Full half on my boots I carried.
Such muddy roads I've never beheld
Since here in the world I've tarried."
The consequences of this disintegration were disastrous to the dignity
of Germany and the character of her people. She had no place among
the real powers of the world politically, and her masses, lacking the
stimulus of a noble national atmosphere, were dwarfed and shrivelled
into narrow and timid provincialism, split as they were into their
little segregations. Patriotism languished in dot-like States
oppressively administered, without associations to awaken pride, or
generous interests to evoke devotion. Spirits like Leasing and Goethe,
all but derided patriotism. It scarcely held a place among the proper
virtues. The small units were forever unsympathetic and inharmonious,
jealous over a petty "balance of power" and always liable to war. The
disease which the face of the map suggested to the boy's imagination
was indeed a real one, inveterate, deep-seated, and prostrating to all
that is best in human nature. For a few years, before the adoption of
the Constitution, America seemed likely to fall a prey to it, each of
the thirteen States standing aloof on its own little dignity in a bond
scarcely more than nominal, of the weakest and coolest. In 1787
came the beneficent change. The thirteen and those that followed the
thirteen were made one, and it was the beginning of a grand unifying
in many lands. Following an instinct at first only faintly manifest
but which soon gathered strength, disintegrated Germany became one.
Italy, too, became one, and in our old home the "Little Englanders,"
once a noteworthy company, succumbed to a conquering sentiment that
England should become a "great world-Venice," and the seas no longer
barriers, but the highways, through which the parent-state and her
brood of dominions, though flung far into many zones, should yet
go easily to and fro, not separate nations, nor yet a company bound
together by a mere rope of sand, but one. Great nations replaced
little states.
Had the South prevailed in the Civil War, there would have been a
distinct and calamitous set-back in the world movement. It would have
been a reaction toward particularism, and how far might it not have
gone? Into what granulations might not our society have crumbled? The
South's principle once recognised, there could have been no valid
or lasting tie between States. Counties even might have assumed to
nullify, and towns to stand apart sufficient unto themselves. When
the thing was doubtful with us, the North by no means escaped the
infection. The New York City of Fernando Wood contemplated isolation
not only from the Union but from the State of which it was a part. Had
the spirit then so rife really prevailed, the map of America
to-day might have been no less blotched with the morbid tetter
of particularism than that of the Germany of sixty years ago.
Centralisation may no doubt go too far, but in the other extreme may
lie the gravest danger, and rushing thitherward the South was blind
to the risk. I stood with all reverence by the graves of the two great
men at Lexington. Perhaps no Americans have been in their way more
able, forceful, and really high-purposed. But they were misguided, and
their perverted swords all but brought to pass for us and the future
the profoundest calamity. I am proud to have been in the generation
that fought them down, believing that upholding the country was doing
a service to the world. I think of that lofty sentence inscribed
upon the memorial of Goldwin Smith at Ithaca, "Above all nations is
Humanity." Patriotism is not the highest of virtues. It is indeed a
vice if it limits the sympathies to a part. Love for the whole is
the sovereign virtue, and the patriotism is unworthy which is not
subordinate to this, recognising that its only fitting work is to lead
up to a love which embraces all.
And now I toss the "Last Leaf" on my probably over-large accumulation
of printed pages. What I have set down is in no way an autobiography.
It is simply the presentment of the panorama of nearly fourscore
momentous years as unrolled before one pair of eyes. Whether the eyes
have served their owner well or ill the gentle reader will judge. I
hope I have not obtruded myself unduly, and that I may be pardoned as
I close, if I am for a moment personal. My eyes have given me notice
that they have done work enough and I do not blame them for insisting
upon rest. As to organs in general I have scarcely known that I had
any. They have maintained such peace among themselves, and been so
quiet and deferential as they have performed their functions that I
have taken no note of them, having rarely experienced serious illness.
Had Aesop possessed my anatomy, he would have had small data for
inditing his fable as to the discord between the "Members" and their
commissariat, and the long generations might have lacked that famous
incentive to harmony and co-operation. I venture to say this in
explanation of my stubborn optimism, which is due much less to any
tranquil philosophy I may have imbibed than to my inveterate eupepsia.
My optimism has not decreased as I have grown old, and I record here
as the last word, my faith that the world grows better. I recall with
vividness nineteen Presidential campaigns, and believe that in no one
has the outlook been so hopeful as now. Never have the leaders at the
fore in all parties been more able and high-minded. I have purposed
in this book to speak of the dead and not the living. Were it in
place for me to speak of men who are still strivers, I could give good
reason, derived from personal touch, for the faith I put in men whose
names now resound. However the nation moves, strong and good hands
will receive it, and it will survive and make its way. Agitation,
the meeting of crises, the anxious application of expedients to
threatening dangers,--these we are in the midst of, we always have
been and always shall be. Turmoil is a condition of life, beneficently
so, for through turmoil comes the education that leads man on and up.
We encounter shocks that will seem seismic. But it will only be the
settling of society to firmer bases of justice. In our confusions
England is our fellow, but a better world is shaping there, though
in the earthquake crash of old strata so much seems to totter. And
farther east in France, Germany, and Russia are better things, and
signs of still better. Levant and Orient rock with violence, but they
are rocking to happier and humaner order. What greater miracle than
the coming to the front among nations of Japan! Will her people
perhaps distance their western teachers and models. Shall we reverse
the poet's line to read "Better fifty years of China than a cycle of
the West?" Society proceeds toward betterment, and not catastrophe,
as individuals may proceed on stepping-stones of their dead selves to
higher things. The troubles of the child, the broken toy, the slight
from a friend, the failure of an expected holiday, are mole-hills
to be sure, but in his circumscribed horizon they take an Alpine
magnitude. His strength for climbing is in the gristle, nor has he
philosophy to console him when blocked by the inevitable. When the
child becomes a man his troubles are larger, but to surmount them he
has an increment of spiritual vigour, which should swell with passing
years. He lives in vain who fails to learn to bear and forbear
serenely. For human society, and for the individuals that compose it,
the happy time lies not behind but before, and I invite the gentle
reader to accept with me the wise and kind thought of Rabbi Ben Ezra,
now growing trite on the lips of men because we feel it to be true:
"Grow old along with me.
The best is yet to be,--
The last of life for which the first was made.
Our times are in His hand
Who saith a whole is planned.
Youth shows but half. Trust God; see all;
Nor be afraid."
INDEX
A
Agassiz, Alexander, in college, 287; leads to the adoption
of crimson as the Harvard colour, 289; as captain of
industry, 289; as scientist, 290; as philanthropist, 293
Agassiz, Louis, in 1851, 283; as scientist and teacher, 284;
his strength and limitations, 287
Alcott, A. Bronson, at Concord, 249
Alcott, Louisa M., in young womanhood, 237; as writer for
children, 238
Andrew, John A., Governor of Massachusetts, 22; his
speech to the selectmen, 24
Antioch College, in the sixties, 67; dramatics at, 71
B
Bancroft, George, at Berlin, 162; his love for roses, 165;
at Washington, 166; as a historical path-breaker, 167
Banks, N.P., a pathetic figure, his rise and fall, 38
Barlow, Francis C., in college, 57; as a soldier, 61; after
the war, 65
Bartlett, W.P., as a soldier, 54
Battle-fields, as places of interest, 316
Berlin, in 1870, 110
Brooks, Phillips, as a youth, 255; in comic opera, 257; at
the Harvard Commemoration, 260; his breadth of
spirit, 261; at Lowell's funeral, 262
Bryce, James, his home in London, 194
Buffalo, in 1840, 1
Bunsen, the chemist, at Heidelberg, 266
Butler, B.F., at New Orleans, 41
C
Churchill, Lord Randolph, 198
Churchill, Winston, 200
Clark, James B., of Mississippi, 54
Concord, the town of, 233
Cox, Jacob D., 34
Curtius, Ernst, at Berlin, 206
D
Dancer, the, at the Königs-See, 310; at Salzburg, 313
Douglas, Stephen A., in his prime, 6; supports Lincoln in
1861, 8
Dramatics, at Antioch College, 71; in the schools of England, 80
in the schools of France, 76; in the schools of Germany, 72
E
Eliot, President C.W., as an oarsman, 223
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, in his prime, 246; his hospitality,
248; and Walt Whitman, 250; in old age, 253
Eupeptic musings, 332
Everett, Edward, his conservatism, 16; as an off-hand
speaker, 17
F
Fillmore, Millard, as a friend, 2; signs the Fugitive Slave
Bill, 3; effects of the measure, 3; his home-life, 4;
with Lincoln at church, 5
Fiske, John, in youth, 168 and Mary Hemenway, 169; the
"Extension of Infancy," 170; his love for music, 174;
in social life, 175; at Petersham, 178
France, in war-time, 151
Francis Joseph, the Emperor, 141
Franciscan, the, at Salzburg, 307
Frederick, the Emperor, 139
Frederick the Great, his statue, 110; his sepulchre, 131
Freeman, Edward A., in America, 185; at Somerleaze, 186
G
Gardiner, Samuel R., in London, 181; at Bromley, 183
Garnett, Sir Richard, at the British Museum, 179
Germany, in 1870, 108
Gladstone, W.E., in 1886, 200
Goethe and Schiller, their graves, 129
Grant, U.S., his greatest conquest, 28
Gray, Asa, in the Botanic Garden, 278; in the class-room,
279; as a lecturer, 281; his services to science, 282
Grenadier, the young, of Potsdam, 144; of Weimar, 145
Grey, Mr. William, see Stamford.
Grimm, the brothers, their graves, 128
Grimm, Hermann, at Berlin, 212
H
Harrison, W.H., the campaign of 1840,1
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, at Concord, 239; at Brook Farm,
240; as a ghost-seer, 242; as literary artist, 243
Heidelberg, in 1870, 204
Helmholtz, the scientist, at Heidelberg, 268
Hohenzollern, the line of, 132
Hollis, 8; at Harvard, 161
Holmes, O.W., as an oarsman, 223; his versatility and
wit, 224; his deeper moods, 226
Home-life, in Germany in 1870, 124
Howard, O.O., at Gettysburg, 47
K
Kirchoff, the physicist, at Heidelberg, 265
L
Lepsius, the Egyptologist, 209
Lexington, Va., graves of R.E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson
at, 325
Lincoln, Abraham, at church, 5
Longfellow, H.W., in 1851, 218; the incubation of Hiawatha, 225;
memorial service for, 221
Lowell, Charles R., as a soldier, 55
Lowell, James Russell, in his prime, 227; his Yankee story,
227; his Commemoration Ode, 229; his funeral, 232
Ludwig, King of Bavaria, 143
Luther, Martin, his grave at Wittenberg, 130
M
Mann, Horace, as an inspirer, 67
Meade, George G., at the Harvard Commemoration, 29
Militarism, in Germany, 111
Mommsen, Theodor, at Berlin, 209
Munich, in 1870, 148
Museum, the Royal, at Berlin, 121
N
New Wrinkle at Sweetbrier, 71
Newcomb, Simon, as a youth, 271; his parentage, 272; as
an astronomer, 274; his last years, 276
Norman, Sir Henry, 197
P
Paris, in war-time, 152
Parliament, in 1886, 195
Pope, John, a pathetic figure, 42
R
Ranke, Leopold von, 207
S
Saxton, Rufus, at Port Royal, S.C., 48
Schenkel, Daniel, 211
Schools, in Russia, 116
Sedan, The _débâcle_ at, 159
Seward, William H., his Plymouth oration, 13; his too
careless cigar, 14; the Alaska purchase, 15
Sheridan, Philip H., 28
Sherman, T.W., at Port Royal, S.C., 50
Sherman, W.T., in private life, 30; at dinner with, 31;
and John Fiske, 32; his funeral, 34
Slocum, Henry W., and Samuel J. May, 45
Smith, Goldwin, at Niagara, 191; his memorial stone at
Cornell, 192
Stamford, the Earl of, encountered on the Mississippi,
296; as a household guest, 301; a high-born
philanthropist, 304
Stevens, Isaac I., 52
Sumner, Charles, his fine presence, 18; as a youth, 19; a
conversation with, 21; and John A. Andrew, 24; his
strength and weakness, 26
Switzerland, in 1870, 150
T
Taft, W.H., in boyhood, 34
Thoreau, Henry D., in his early time, 235
"Tippecanoe and Tyler too," 2
Treitschke, von, at Heidelberg, 205
U
Uhlan, the young, of Erfurt, 145
Union, value of its triumph in the Civil War, 327
Universities, of Germany, in 1870, 119
V
Victoria, Crown Princess of Prussia, 139
W
Webster, Daniel, his last speech in Faneuil Hall, 10; his
"big way," 11; his "Liberty and Union, now and
forever," 12
Weimar, the young grenadier of, 145
West Pointers and civilians in the Civil War, 33
Whitman, Walt, and Emerson, 250
Wilhelm der Grosse, Kaiser, 138
Wilhelm II., Kaiser, 139
Wilson, James H., 49
Winsor, Justin, as youth and man, 167
Winthrop, Robert C., his ability and conservatism, 17; as
master of the feast, 18
Wright, H.G., 57