1891
GO TO SWITZERLAND AS CONSUL GENERAL--AN OCEAN VOYAGE THEN AND
NOW--A GLIMPSE OF BURNS’ HOME--THE HIGHEST CITY IN EUROPE--
A NOVEL REPUBLIC--LIFE IN THE HIGHER ALPS--HEADQUARTERS FOR
EMBROIDERY--PRINCESS SALM SALM--AN OPEN AIR PARLIAMENT--THE
UPPER RHINE--AT HAMBURG--A SUMMER ON THE BALTIC--INTERVIEW
WITH PRINCE BISMARCK.
In a few weeks I was again in Switzerland; this time away up among the
Alps, for St. Gall is the highest city of any importance in the world.
The sea voyage had been uneventful. The only lion among the passengers
on the “City of New York” was Henry M. Stanley. His wife, a
distinguished looking English lady, was with him.
_April 10, 1891._--This is my fourteenth sea voyage on the Atlantic.
What changes in ships since 1869! First-class steamers of that time
are now all off on second-class lines to South America; or else they
are at the bottom of the sea. Three that I crossed on have since gone
down--“City of London,” “Anglia,” “Deutschland.”
Yet aside from the added speed, the changes in ocean ships are not so
favorable as we try to think them. True, the vessels are more palatial,
but one can be just as seasick on a floating palace as on board a
schooner. Besides, speed and a palace are poor recompense for the
crowds that pack a modern ocean greyhound. Twenty years ago everybody
knew everybody on shipboard, and many of the ship acquaintances
became friends for life. Then, too, few of one’s fellow passengers had
ever been to Europe. There was all the joy of expectation that made the
little crowd happy. Those who fly often across the Atlantic have small
pleasure compared with the delight of those who long ago saw land for
the first time after a long voyage.
The crowds, the blasé character of half the passengers, have robbed a
sea voyage of most of its delights.
_April 20._--We came straight from Liverpool to Scotland, and staid
a week in Ayrshire at the old home of my wife’s father. “Clerkland,”
their old farm place, is there as good as it was centuries since, when
presented by Mary Queen of Scots to Mary Livingstone, one of her maids
of honor. It seems strange to read in the town register the name of
every owner of the Gilmour home for three or four hundred years down to
the present time. We do things differently in America, where we hardly
know where our own fathers were born.
The old-fashioned graveyard back of the kirk at Stewarton, with its
big brown granite slabs, confirms the town register. They are all
there, save an occasional one who wandered beyond the sea and died
among strangers. A pretty memorial window in the same kirk tells of
John Gilmour, my wife’s uncle, a young poet, called the Kirk White of
Ayrshire, who took all the Glasgow University prizes, won fame, and
died at nineteen.
We went to every spot near Ayr, made illustrious by the name of
Burns--Bonny Doon, Kilmarnock, Ellisland, everywhere, and held in
our hands the very Bible the poet gave to Highland Mary as they bade
farewell forever, standing with hands clasped across a little brook.
Our friend and guide was Mr. McKee, the old Burns scholar and
historian, who in his youth had known many of Burns’ friends. He is a
last link with the poet’s day. He gave me a souvenir, his own book on
Burns. I have kept it with one given me later at Edinburgh by a friend
of Walter Scott, who had been an apprentice in the printing house where
Walter Scott was a member. As a messenger for the poet, he carried his
manuscripts from Abbotsford to Edinburgh, and the money for them back
to Scott. He wrote his name in an early edition of “Marmion,” and gave
it to us.
[Illustration: St. Gall.--_Page 306._]
_St. Gall, Switzerland, May Day, 1891._--The Consulate and our home
is at 41 Museum Strasse. The duties here are five times what they
were at Rome. The district sends forty million francs worth of laces
and embroideries to New York in a single year, and a hundred million
francs worth of goods are sent from the country at large. These are all
invoiced and samples examined at the consulates, while to avoid frauds,
copies of the sworn invoices are sent to the shipper, to the Custom
House, and to the Treasury.
There is not another city situated like St. Gall in all the world. It
has 40,000 people, and they live like a little kingdom to themselves,
up here among the Alps. The customs of the people differ from
everything else in Switzerland. The families are as clannish as the old
Scots, and their ways of doing things almost as old as their mountains.
This land of St. Gall was once a Republic by itself, like Venice. Its
history is half forgotten. Napoleon put an end to it after it had
endured five hundred years.
It was modeled on the plan of some of the Greek states. Its founders
had been readers of history, not politicians trying experiments. They
had a good chance to govern wholly for themselves, and to be let alone.
They were isolated in the heart of the beautiful Alps, and their
valleys were three or four thousand feet above sea level. Mountain
scenery of the finest description surrounded them everywhere, just as
it does the land of their children to-day. A thousand feet below them,
lay a beautiful and historic lake.
They had Burgomasters for Presidents, and it was purely a people’s
government. Its type exists in neighboring Appenzell even to-day. There
the parliament meets in meadows, and the people pass laws by the
showing of hands.
Wegelin, the famous historian of Frederick the Great, speaking of this
forgotten government of St. Gall, says: “It is a Republic where a
handful of virtuous citizens accomplish what the greatest monarchs fail
in. They guard their state from disorder and revolution by the simple
grace of homely virtues. An habitual honor prevails there as a happy
instinct.”
To the honor of the modern dwellers in the land of the old Republic,
let it be said, the virtues of their ancestors have not been forgotten.
A great Italian traveler visited the little old Republic once, and
I translate from a letter he wrote home. It is a novel letter: “The
people of the St. Gall Republic are great traders and manufacturers,
and are noted for their integrity. Weaving linen is their great
industry. There are few failures in business, and cheating is a crime.
The merchants and traders are mostly nobles. They travel when young
and learn all languages. Flax is spun here to the fineness of a hair.
The bleaching is wonderful, owing to the pure water of the Alps. The
rich own many estates in the Rhine valley near by, and beautiful
gardens are about the town. The taxes are small, but more than support
the economical government. The surplus in the city treasury is loaned
to citizens at low interest, to insure factories, house building,
etc. Officers are held to terribly strict account. The blessings of
heaven rest on the Republic as a reward for its charities, which are
unbelievably great. No citizen is permitted to live in bitter distress.
The people are extremely pious and the men appear in church (close by)
several times a day, in white collars and black mantles, while women
serve God only in black dresses.”[12]
With some modifications as to taxes, church-going, etc., this
Italian’s letter would be a fair description of the people here
to-day. The manufacturing industry of their fathers, in changed form,
continues, and St. Gall is the first embroidery-making city of the
world.
In its neighborhood, 30,000 people work at hand looms in their pleasant
homes, making curtains, lace edgings, handkerchiefs--the delight of
mankind. Great factories, working steam machines, are also filling
the world’s market with the same articles. Designing these beautiful
articles has become a St. Gall fine art. Nature helps the artist
here, for after a moist day and a cold night in winter, the pines of
the forest, the hedge rows, the lawn trees and the vines put on a
magnificence of frost work absolutely indescribable. Millions of forest
pines, drooping with icicles, snow and frost, resemble an ocean of
Christmas trees glinting in the sunlit gates of paradise.
The people of St. Gall, surrounded as they are, could not help but
make things beautiful. That many have grown rich at it, and live in
beautiful villas on the heights about the city, is not to be wondered
at.
Sometimes, though, a high American tariff, or bitter competition
elsewhere, make hard times for the common embroiderer whose wages are
never high. This very winter starvation stares many of the makers
of the beautiful things in the face, and a franc a day is the poor
pittance for twelve hours’ work. In better times even six francs are
earned. Then the great shippers, who furnish the linen and cotton and
silk to the peasants, and buy their embroideries from them, grow rich.
St. Gall is full of rich people, and it is full of scholars and culture.
Once a year the city itself, at its own expense, gives all the schools
a great festival and banquet on some high, green meadow. The sight of
from five to ten thousand happy boys and girls, all in pretty costumes,
bearing garlands and marching with banners and music, is not to be
forgotten.
* * * * *
The Sirocco or Foehn winds have been blowing for a week. Sunday, the
fine town of Meyringen was burned up, seven hotels and three hundred
houses. Nothing can save a town, once on fire, when this dry scorching
wind blast is in the mountains. It is no longer believed to be a
Sirocco, however, coming from the African desert, but a thing born of
the changeful temperatures in the mountains. It is a disagreeable freak
of nature, and half the people are ill when the Foehn wind blows. But
it brings the mountains out in added grandeur, everything seems nearer,
snow fields and lofty mountains forty miles away seem but five miles
off. Their distinctness then is marvelous, their beauty tenfold.
* * * * *
The scenery everywhere about St. Gall is purely Alpine. The
“Rosenberg,” a long, low mountain close by, is lined with magnificent
villas; nothing like it elsewhere in the world. Back of these villas,
far below them, but still in view, is the Lake of Constance. In front
of them, deep in the valley, sits the city, while beyond the valley
rise the glorious mountains. Nature and man have combined here to make
everything beautiful. The people are kind and hospitable, more so than
elsewhere in Switzerland. Evenings, we are often invited out to homes
where the characteristic St. Gall life is enjoyable.
Many a time we have climbed up the Apfelberg to the homes of Swiss
friends. Sylvester evenings, Christmas evenings, and the like, are
celebrated by family reunions, sparkling Christmas trees and great
dinners. Wine flows like water and the fatted Nüremberg goose takes the
place of the American turkey. A circle is formed around the Christmas
tree and all join hands and dance, father, mother, sister, brother,
friends and servants. As at the country houses in England, for once,
servants and master are on a footing. Everybody taking part gets his
present.
On summer evenings the young ladies of the house sometimes place by
our plates at supper wild Alpine roses that grew in their own garden.
Possibly not another spot in the world, where fine modern homes and
Alpine roses are side by side.
The view of the illuminated city at night from these high villas, is
grand beyond any fireworks ever conceived. On festive occasions, fires
are built on the sides of the opposite mountains, or Bengal lights burn
on villa lawns high up beyond the valley, when the scene reveals all
our imagined pictures of fairyland.
The Americans, together with the Minister and Consuls in Switzerland,
celebrated the Fourth of July at the hotel “Baur au Lac” in Zurich.
Minister Washburn presided. Many were present. The day before, I had
sent cowboys into the higher Alps about St. Gall, to gather Alpine
roses for the occasion. They brought me bushels of them, and the chief
decoration of the table at the banquet was a solid pyramid of Alpine
roses ten feet high.
Few American tourists visit St. Gall, but many New York importers have
agents and factories here. There is a constant business rivalry between
them and the Swiss.
One of the interesting people who came to us this summer was Princess
Salm Salm. She has her home at Bonn on the Rhine. She is one of the
most beautiful women to be met anywhere. A kind heart has kept her
young. She is one of the few Americans who married foreign titles and
were happy. It was a love match--not a buying of a bride. Her life has
been one of extraordinary interest. Her husband, a German Prince on
General Bleeker’s staff in our Civil War, fell in love with the young
beauty at Washington, married her, and when the war was done took her
with him to Mexico, where he was a high officer on the staff of the
Emperor Maximilian. Like the Emperor, he was sentenced to be shot. His
young wife, by extraordinary cleverness and great exertion, saved his
life. History now relates how the Emperor’s life would have been saved
also, had he followed this clever woman’s plans. All was arranged
for his escape. The Emperor hesitated and was lost. The Prince and
Princess went to Germany, where her beauty, talents and rank, brought
her friends among the great people of the country. She and her husband
were favorites of the King of Prussia. When the war with France broke
out the Prince was an officer in the Fourth Guards, or the Queen’s Own
regiment. His wife was one of the titled women of Germany who labored
in the army hospitals. The Prince was shot dead while leading his
command at Gravelotte. The Princess remained, helping the wounded to
the end of the war. A more fascinating book than her story of her life
in three wars, I have not read. Many novels have this interesting woman
for their heroine.
* * * * *
[Illustration: Mer de Glace, Chamouny.--_Page 311._]
Last week, five of us, including my son, started to climb up the
Saentis, the highest mountain in the vicinity. We began the ascent
late. Storm and darkness coming on, we lost our way. Half the night
was spent up there, creeping about on ice and stones. At last we stood
still and yelled all together. We were heard at the little weather hut
on top of the mountain at last, and the guides came down with dogs and
lanterns and helped us out of our dilemma. We were all well used up,
and as for myself, I received an injury that I may never get rid of. We
got home next day, and were off the mountains just in time to escape a
great snowfall that will bury the path till next year.
* * * * *
General Sherman’s daughter, Mrs. Thackera, paid us a long visit, as did
our old friends, the Edmundsons and Frankels.
Together we made excursions, notably to “_The Little Land of
Appenzell_,” described so beautifully by Bayard Taylor. We went to
the meeting of the people’s parliament--a strange spectacle. All the
peasants came, wearing swords as signs of their right to vote. It was a
mass meeting in the open air. Ten to fifteen thousand voters stood and
voted on the laws of the canton. These laws, proposed by the outgoing
officials, had been printed and distributed in the farmhouses weeks
before. These officials in old-time garb now stood before the people
on a raised platform. There was no discussion at the mass meeting. “Do
you want this law--yes or no?” said the President, and that was all
there was to it. In two hours’ time new laws had been adopted. The
canton officials went through the ceremony of transferring their state
mantles to the shoulders of the newly elected officers. Then the vast
crowd were asked to bare their heads, hold up their right hands and
swear new allegiance to the Republic. When that packed mass of humanity
turned their faces to the sun, and held up ten thousand brown hands, it
was the most impressive scene one can imagine. They meant it. The vast
mountains stood around and looked on in silence. Far below we could see
the broad lake shining like a sea of silver. When the oath was over,
the bands played, and the peasant lawmakers returned in silence to
their homes. There had not been a single disturbance, not a rude, loud
word.
For hundreds of years this simple people of Appenzell have met and made
their laws in this way, and, as a historian said of the old Republic of
St. Gall, “They guard their state from disorder and revolution by the
simple grace of homely virtues.”
* * * * *
_September, 1891._--The six hundredth anniversary of the founding of
the Swiss Republic has now been celebrated--the most unique celebration
possibly the world ever saw. Three million people took part in it.
Every man, woman and child in Switzerland understood the significance
of the festival, and contributed to its glory. On every mountain top
joy fires burned, in every valley the bells rang paeans of liberty.
On top of the mighty peak of the Mythen, in sight of the spot where
independence was declared, stood a flaming cross of fire, fifty
feet across and a hundred feet high. It shone like a beacon light to a
million witnesses, who saw it from the heights near and far, over all
the Alps. Illuminations shone in every hamlet, even to the edges of the
snow fields and glaciers. For days Te Deums sounded, masses were said,
and a whole people gave thanks for five hundred years of liberty. The
usual vocations of men in the Republic came to a standstill, so that
employer and employed, high and low, rich and poor, could participate
in the dramatic rehearsal of the country’s history. Near the town of
Schwyz, where Swiss liberty was born, a vast stage and amphitheater
were erected, where amid the applause of multitudes the whole panorama
of Swiss history was reenacted with all the splendor of costume and
scenic effect of past ages. Once more William Tell, Arnold Winkelried
and Stauffacher with all the old Swiss heroes, walked among the people,
in sight of the very lakes and mountains that had witnessed their
heroic deeds. The great museums were emptied of their historic arms
and banners, and Morgarten and Sempach were fought over again with the
same hellebards, morgensterns and battle axes that had been used in the
dreadful encounters of centuries ago. The blood stains of the ancient
heroes were still upon their blades, and the descendants of the Swiss
martyrs for liberty, counting the cost, stood as ready to die for their
country as did ever the men who founded freedom among the Alps.
* * * * *
The river Rhine is close by us here, flowing through Lake Constance.
Every day in summer sees crowds of the St. Gallese rushing down to
the lake by train, to bathe in its waters. The ride down there, with
its glimpses of mountain valleys, blooming orchards, and shining
waterfalls, is one of the most picturesque in Europe. Down by the water
side are villages and walls old as the time of the Romans.
The little valleys and the plains between St. Gall and the lake, are
planted with hundreds of pear orchards. In the spring, when this ocean
of pear trees is in full white blossom, the ride down to the lake is
truly wonderful.
* * * * *
Spelterini is here with his big balloon, to take people traveling
above the mountain tops. Some of our friends went up for a few hours,
repeatedly, and pronounce the view of the lake, mountain and valley as
seen from the sky, something wonderful. He charges 200 francs for a
few hours’ ride among the mist and clouds. He passed close above our
house yesterday morning at a great rate. He has made a thousand ascents
and never had an accident. Riding with his balloon at a height of
15,000 feet, and at an express speed is safer than riding on American
railroads.
_May 13, 1893._--News has come of the appointment of a new Consul
General for Switzerland. The rotating machine has been put to work. I
scarcely dare to complain.
A new administration at Washington can remove me from office, but it
cannot take away from me the pleasure of the past years. Still I have
lived so long among the delightful scenes of Switzerland I leave them
with a pang.
“_Aufwiedersehen_,” our friends call out as they throw us their roses,
the train moves, we are looking for the last time possibly on the
mountains.
Part of this summer of 1893 we spent with our friends, the Witts, at
Hamburg, and then together we went to the Island of Rügen in the Baltic
Sea, where many delightful weeks among novel scenes were ending our
stay in Europe.
Later, our friends offered to take us to see Prince Bismarck, at his
home at “Friedrichsruhe.”
A couple of hours’ ride from Hamburg through an uninteresting country
of sand and pine trees, brought us to the little station not far from
the ex-Chancellor’s house. It seemed like a villa stuck away in the
woods of North Carolina, yet delegations find this hidden spot from
every corner of Germany, and come here by trainfuls, to do homage
to the man who made the empire. He is a greater man here on his farm
than the Emperor is in Berlin on his throne. There is not much about
the rather ill-kept looking estate to attract attention. There are a
thousand handsomer estates all over Germany.
We wait, as directed, under the trees behind the castle (though it is
no castle at all) for pretty soon the great man will come down the
garden walk. Miss Witt, who has an enormous bouquet of flowers for him
(she has given him flowers before), will approach him first, and then
the rest of us. There come his two big Danish dogs down the path now.
In a moment they are followed by a powerful looking old man who carries
a big club of a cane, and wears a great slouch hat of felt. He knows
what the young lady and the flowers mean very quickly, and his strong,
marked face is soon in smiles. We are all presented. I speak to him
in English, but he says, “Please speak German. There was a time when
I spoke English, but that is almost gone.” I looked at him closely,
when others were talking. His great, wrinkled, seamed face looked as
powerful as his herculean frame. I could not help thinking to myself,
here stands the man who overthrew Louis Napoleon, and here is he who
once ruefully said, “The lives of eighty thousand human beings would
have been saved were it not for me.”
He had a few kind words for all of us, and Madame Semper he remembered
well. But he was getting old, and seemed on the point of feebleness;
his great race was done. His dogs rubbed against his legs and looked
at us as if they wanted us to stay away from their master. Shortly
he lifted his great broad hat, saying: “My wife is waiting for me at
breakfast. I bid you good-day.” Then he turned and walked back to the
castle. We had seen Bismarck.
INDEX.
Alabama Claims, 47
Alcott, Bronson and Louise, 201
Alps, 22
Americans, at Zurich, 115, 162
Artists, American at Munich, 157
Astor, W. W, 248
Avalanche, An, 205
Bauer, Caroline, 38
Beer Gardens, 35, 117
Berlin, Visit there, 225
Billingsgate Market, 17
Bismarck, Prince, 314
Black Forest, 165
Blaine, 199
Blanc, Louis, 44
Bocken, 49
Bonner, Kate Sherwood, 121
Boucicault, Dion, 112
Brentano, Lorenzo, 24
Bright, John, 18
Burns, Visit at home of, 305
Byron, Lord, 240
Letters about, 240
Capri, Island of, 266
Chicago Fire, 42
Christmas Night at Sea, 124
Commers of Students at Zurich, 116
Constitution, Swiss, 101
Conway, Hugh, 257
Crawford, Marion, 250
Custom House Frauds, 232
Davis, Winnie, 143
Dennison, 126
Disraeli, Lord Beaconsfield, 18
Duels, 117
Dufour, General, 61;
Letter, 62
Elm Destroyed, 205
Eugenie, French Empress, 83
Favre, Jules, 45
Fick, Professor, 114
Field, Kate, 111
Forney, Col. Jno. W., 122
Fox Hunting, 166
Frederick, Crown Prince, 227
Freeman, Artist, 98
Frey, Emil, 232
Funeral, Swiss, 36
Of a Poet’s Child, 37
Irish, 209
Gambetta, Leon, 45
Garibaldi at Rome, 97
Gladstone, Speech by, 18
Hatred of, 238, 269
Gilmour, John, a Scotch Poet, 305
Grant, Gen. U. S., at White House, 71;
visits Switzerland, 128;
conversations at Lake Luzern, 128;
simplicity of life, 131;
with the Swiss President, 134;
banquet to him at Bern, 134;
and at Zurich, 149;
recollections of him in the War, 145;
at Champion Hills, 145;
his log cabin near St. Louis, 280;
letter from him, 288.
Harrison, President, Interview with, 299
Harte, Bret, 170;
letters from, 171, 172;
visits Bocken, 174;
visit the Rigi together, 177;
and Obstalden, 178;
more letters, 183, 185, 187.
Hauk, Minnie, 107
Holidays at the Consulate, 115
Hortense, Queen of Holland, 80
“Home, Sweet Home,” funeral of author, 230
Humbert, King of Italy, 247
Hurricane at Christmas, 124
Ibsen at Rome, 257
Icebergs, 121
Immigration Difficulties, 195
Indians in Switzerland, 218, 228
Inn, an English, 16
Ireland, a foot trip through, 206
Ischia Destroyed, 250
Kaiser, the Old, 229
Keller, Ferdinand, 241
Keller, Gottfried, 25
King, Horatio, Literary Evenings in Washington, 122
Kinkel, Gottfried, his death and funeral, 219
Letter from Mrs. Kinkel, 220
And from Carl Schurz, 219
Lake Dwellers of Switzerland, 241
Leo XIII., Pope, presented to him, 261
Lions, Baby, 227
Liszt, Franz, at Zurich, 141
At Rome, 260
London, Sunday quiet, fog, 17
Visit in 1875, 111
Longfellow, Henry W., 200
Lucca, Pauline, 142
Lugano, 217
Magazines, Writing for, 139
Margaret, Queen of Italy, 252
McDonald, Geo., at Washington, 72
Miller, Joaquin, at Rome, 99
Moleschott, Roman Senator, 269
Moselle River, Our trip there, 184
Motley, Jno. L., 18
Napoleon III., his boyhood in Switzerland, 80
North American Review, Write articles for, 276
Obstalden, an Alpine Hamlet, 119
Storm in the Alps, 119
Ocean Voyages, then and now, 304
Orsini Café, distinguished people met there, 25
Paris, Horrors of the Commune, 34
Parliament in the Open Air, 311
Pierpont, Edwards, Governor, 268
Pierpont, Secretary of Legation, 265
Polish Patriot and His Castle on Lake Zurich, 38
Pope Leo XIII., 261
Porta Nigra, Ruins of, 185
Rhine, the Source of, 89
Rigi, A Strange Experience, 132
Robert, Christopher, 123
Rogers, Randolph, 264
Rome, Our Life in, 246
St. Bernard, Dogs there, 38
St. Gall, Description of it, 306
Life there, 306
Salm-Salm, Princess, 310
Sargent, A. A., Minister to Berlin, 225
“Schiller,” The Wreck of, 127
Scherr, Johannes, 224
Scotland, Visit to Burns’ Home, 305
“Clerkland”, 305
Sherman, Gen.; see below.
Smalley, Geo. W., 111
Smith, Dr., Author of “America”, 203
Stein on the Rhine, Castle of, 165
Story, W. W., 263
Switzerland, cheap living there, 21;
new Constitution, 101;
I write a book on Switzerland, 108.
Sherman, Gen. W. T., Visit at Zurich, 58;
at Berne, 61;
I visit his home in Washington, 68;
Mrs. Sherman, 67;
letter from her, 104;
takes me to see Mr. Blaine, 300;
invites me to his home in St. Louis, 275;
my article on the March to the Sea, 276;
life in the Sherman home, 277;
conversations with the General, 276;
gives me his army badge, 280;
in New York, 288;
his immense popularity with the people, 289;
death of Mrs. Sherman, 296;
at reunion of Army of Tennessee, 297;
his sickness and death, 301, 302;
speeches in the Senate, 302;
his funeral, 302.
Letters from Gen. Sherman:
Franco-German War, 29
Four letters as to his coming abroad, 54, 76
Loss of the “Atlantic”, 80
Thiers, 87
Letter, 93
Cuba, 96
Too Many Commanders, 102
War Histories, 103, 283, 292
Negro Question, 109
Writing His Memoirs, 109
Prussian Army Maneuvers, 118
Confiscation by Taxes, 147
Confederates More Popular than Union Men, 163
Ready to Surrender, 163
About Italy, 190
Grant and the Presidency, 192
Politics, 193
His Son “Tom”, 198
The Duke of Wellington, 212
Assassination of President Garfield, 213, 214
Science of War, 213
The Mississippi Valley, 222
Himself and the Presidency, 223
Retirement from the army, 233
His “Flaming Sword”, 236
The Presidency, 237
Views of Rome, 258
Politics, 259
Party Stronger than Patriotism, 271
Farms, 272
Taxes, 272, 282
Money Lending and Taxes, 273
“Keep Out of Debt”, 273
Memoirs, 275, 298
Grant’s Book, 283
Newspapers, 285
Exhibited Like a Circus, 289
No Union Man Left in Office Abroad, 290
The Magazines, 289, 291
March to the Sea, 292
General Wolseley, 293
Late Rebels Getting Control, 293
Sheridan Dying, 294
At Columbus, 295
Mrs. Sherman’s Death, 296
Tell, William, 50;
a relic from Tell’s chapel, 50
Terry, C. T., 64
Tilden-Hayes Contest, 125
Tilton, Rollin, 265, 267
Treves, 185
Twain, Mark, in Munich, 160
At the Artists’ Club, 161
Conversations with him, 160
Vedder, Elihu, 265
Victor, Emanuel, 101
Wagner, Richard, Life at Zurich, 141
Walton, Minnie, 113
“Wangensbach”, 106
War between France and Germany, 28
Washburne, E. B., 64
Willi, Dr., 141
Wilson, Senator Jas. F., 299;
Blaine’s regard for him, 300;
secures my reappointment, to Switzerland, 303.
Wood, Shakspeare, 269
Zurich, 20, 21;
Mob at, 32, 114
FOOTNOTES:
[1] “Switzerland and the Swiss.”
[2] A detailed description of the incidents of the adventure within the
lines of the enemy appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, May, 1880, and is
repeated in Mr. Byers’ “Last Man of the Regiment.”
[3] Note.--The second edition of this book was printed under my own
name. It is the volume from which Boyd Winchester, in his “Swiss
Republic,” borrowed so astoundingly, later, forgetting both my name,
and the common use all but literary burglars make of quotation marks.
Hepworth Dixon, though dead, and un-named, lives on in the book of Mr.
Winchester in the same manner.
[4] Details of this incident are related in Mr. Byers’ “Last Man of the
Regiment.”
[5] It was almost his last public performance.
[6] This boy, Hamilton Fish, grew to manhood, and was the first
American soldier killed for his country on Cuban soil.
[7] The State Department also sent me a letter later, thanking me for
my zeal. The publicity I gave to the outrages going on, has also led
the Swiss Parliament to change its regulations as to immigration, while
our own Congress has adopted severe measures against the traffic in
paupers and criminals.
[8] At last Mr. Sargent, tired and disgusted with the situation,
resigned his post.
[9] Harper’s Magazine No. 477.
[10] This refers to the Century Co.’s “Battles and Leaders of the Civil
War,” for which Mr. Byers was also invited to contribute his article
describing Sherman’s Assault at Missionary Ridge, in which he was a
participant.
[11] A few evenings before, Secretary Windom had dropped dead while
addressing a company of banqueters in New York.
[12] A detailed sketch by me of this remarkable little Republic,
appeared in Magazine of American History, December, 1891.
Transcriber’s Notes:
Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant
preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced
quotation marks retained.
Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.
Some illustrations have been moved closer to the pages or passages they
reference.
Page 175: “employe” perhaps should be “employed”.
End of Project Gutenberg's Twenty Years in Europe, by Samuel H. M. Byers