1877
GENERAL GRANT VISITS LAKE LUZERN--CONVERSATIONS WITH HIM--
HOW I BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS OF SHERMAN’S SUCCESSES IN THE
CAROLINAS TO GENERAL GRANT AT RICHMOND--GRANT’S SIMPLICITY IN
HIS TRAVELS--A STRANGE EXPERIENCE ON THE RIGI--LONDON PAPERS
AMAZED AT THE POPULATION OF THE UNITED STATES--FIRST TELEPHONE.
_July 1, 1877._--Last week there was some talk among the prominent
people here, including the few Americans, of having a public reception
for General Grant. Knowing that he was stopping at Luzern, I went to
see him for the committee. In a little lake-excursion near to the Rigi,
it happened that I was on the same boat with him. The seats on the
deck of the steamer were filled with tourists, gazing in wonder at the
inspiring scenery we were passing in the bay of Uri. The water is two
thousand feet deep, the lake a wonderful blue, and the dark, majestic
mountains near by, a contrast to the slopes of snow and the ice fields
a little further off.
It was summer, but the day was dark and cool. “Where is the General?” I
said to General Badeau, who was traveling with him.
[Illustration: Lake Luzern--Tell’s Chapel.--_Pages 49 and 128._]
“Do you see that man sitting down there at the right, alone, with his
coat collar turned up?” I went nearer, and recognized the familiar
features. But to me, he looked none at all like the General Grant of
war times, the one I had seen on critical battlefields. He wore a black
cylinder hat, his overcoat collar, turned up, hid half his face, he
sat earnest and speechless with arms folded, apparently barely glancing
at the mighty scenes the vessel was hurrying past--scenes that were
exciting exclamations of wonder from half the people on the deck.
General Badeau pronounced my name, but General Grant did not, at
first, remember me. When I recalled the time I brought the dispatches
from Sherman to City Point, and the long talk we had together in the
little back room of his cabin, about Sherman’s army, he brightened up,
interested himself, and seemed glad to talk of old war days.
I think not one reference was made to the scenery we were passing. I
must think, too, he was getting tired of all the attentions heaped upon
him by European cities, for he preferred, when I spoke of it, that the
Zurich people should do nothing in the way of receiving him.
“Look at that great, foolish lot of people hurrying to be first at the
gangway,” he remarked to me, as the steamer turned landwards at Luzern.
“They might as well sit still; nine times out of ten, hurry helps
nobody--the boat stays at the landing, everybody will get off, and
to-morrow it will be all the same who is off first.”
I have often thought of that remark. His taking time for things may
have been one of the keys to his success.
We were the very last to go ashore. That evening at the Schweizerhof, I
had some pleasant conversation with him again.
He regretted that he was not at the White House, just a few hours,
to put the deserved quietus on the strikers in Pennsylvania who were
shamelessly destroying other people’s property. One hundred and
twenty-five locomotives and ten million dollars worth of railroad stock
were destroyed at Pittsburg in one night. “That is what an army will be
wanted for yet, in our country,” he added, “an army to make ourselves
behave.”
He spoke of silver and free coinage. I admitted my ignorance of the
whole subject. “I don’t understand subjects on which the experts
themselves differ,” I said. “It is simple enough,” he replied. “I can
explain some things that will make it clear to you;” and he asked me to
come and be seated on a garden bench, on the terrace overlooking that
wonderful lake.
It was 9 o’clock at night. Behind us, in zigzag lines, were the
picturesque city walls and towers, built in the Middle Ages. The lights
from the quays and bridges reflected themselves on the lake; not far
away stood the eternal mountains. The scene, the time, seemed all out
of keeping with talks on politics. But General Grant lighted a cigar
and gave me more clear-headed notions about what makes money than I
had learned from listening to, or reading, the buncombe of half the
politicians in the country. It was because he was simple, and honest,
and sincere, and because he knew what he was talking about. I had, in
some way, long before concluded that Grant was only a military man.
That night’s conversation led me to think him also a statesman. Any
way, he was sincere.
After smoking quite a little time in silence, he said, abruptly: “I was
just thinking of the letters you brought me that time from Sherman.
How did you get to me at City Point? Sherman must have been entirely
cut off from the North.” I told him, in a few words, how I had long
been a prisoner of war, how I had escaped my captors at Macon, and my
experiences in the Rebel Army at the battle of Atlanta; my recapture,
my escape again at Columbia, South Carolina, and my being appointed to
a place on General Sherman’s staff at the time; how one morning General
Sherman ordered me to get ready to run down the Cape Fear River in the
night, to carry dispatches to General Grant and the President; how half
a dozen of us got aboard a tug, covered its lights and its engine with
cotton bales, and passed down the river in the darkness, without a shot
being fired at us; how I reached City Point in a quick ocean steamer,
and his reception of me in the little back room; the excitement of
General Ord at the news I brought. It was the first news that the North
had of Sherman, after he entered the swamps of the Carolinas.
All at once, the whole incident came back to General Grant’s mind, for
there in his cabin that time, many years before, he had questioned
me about the details of my final escape from prison, and my means of
reaching him in the North.[4]
“Yes,” he said, “I remember it all now. You had a letter, too, from
Sherman to Mr. Lincoln, who came down from Washington that very night.
We were all tremendously moved and gratified by the news you brought of
Sherman’s constant successes.
“Many of my generals feared always that Lee might slip away from me,
and jump on to Sherman down about Raleigh. I had, myself, more fears of
that, than I had about my ability to take Richmond, if Lee would only
stay there and fight me.”
Pretty soon, a steamer landed with a lot of passengers, and I walked
with the General back into the hotel. We found General Badeau deep in
newspapers, and Jesse, the General’s son, playing billiards and smoking.
The next morning, after an early breakfast, I visited Mrs. Grant and
the General in their rooms. Mrs. Grant was as kindly mannered as
the General himself. One would not have thought them fresh from the
attentions of princes and potentates. They told me in an enjoyable
way, much about their travels. The General dropped some remarks, too,
showing me that the grand scenery he had passed the day before had been
noticed very closely by him, silent though he had been.
The contrast between these simple, great people, upstairs in the
hotel, and some of the great people downstairs, was very impressive to
me. There was not one particle of stiffness or formality in General and
Mrs. Grant’s reception of me. It was as if his rank were no greater
in the world than my own; simply as if he and his wife had met an
unpretentious man to whom they liked to talk, and who would go away
feeling that they were friends.
All over Europe, I understand, General Grant and his wife have
impressed people in the same way. In every sense, they were preserving
their unostentatious, homely American ways.
“Certain comforts and things, I want in traveling, just as at home,”
said the General. “I want my little sitting room. I want my ham and
eggs for breakfast--and nothing is so hard to get cooked right in
Europe, as just these ham and eggs.”
* * * * *
I had a strange trip down the Rigi last Monday morning. I had been
staying at the Staffel over Sunday. At ten of Monday, I was to be in
Luzern, as an official, to help marry a couple, one of whom was an
American. Long before daylight, I was starting down the steep path.
It was starlight overhead, and a warm summer morning. Down below,
however, the whole valley and all the lakes and hills seemed hidden
by a mantle of fog. Every few moments we heard a clap of thunder away
down there, or saw a flash of lightning dart along the gray surface.
My wife urged me not to descend into clouds that looked so dangerous;
but my presence in Luzern was a necessity, and I went ahead. For half
an hour my path down the mountain side was dry and beautiful. It was
just breaking dawn, when suddenly, and within a few feet distance, I
stepped down into a cloud full of water. Instantly I was in a perfect
Noah’s flood, and yet I knew a hundred feet above me the stars were
shining. The peals of thunder soon seemed to shake the mountains, and
the lightning became terrific. A few moments’ walk had brought me out
of a dry atmosphere and a quiet morning, into this storm of the Alps. I
tried to get back and up the mountain, but I was fairly washed from my
feet and the path. In five minutes I was completely lost, and, fearing
to tumble off some precipice, I stood stock still. I had reached what
seemed a level plateau of tall grass. There I stood till daylight came,
and the storm went partly by, when, to my horror, I saw that had I
walked another dozen steps I would have gone over a cliff and fallen a
thousand feet.
I caught a steamer, however, and reached the city, where the groom
divided some of his drier garments with me, and the wedding went
merrily on.
* * * * *
Some of the London newspapers are in great wonder over the United
States census. A country only a hundred years old, and yet mustering
thirty-eight and a half millions of people!! Few European states so
large, and none of them so rich and great.
* * * * *
Our friend, Mr. Witt, had a telephone put up in his house yesterday. It
is probably the first one in the country. Great curiosity and interest
is manifested here in this invention of a talking apparatus, by which
the human voice may be carried a hundred miles.