Hastily pulling down the cover, I called a council of

war; the main personages in it being my private secretary,

Professor Crane, since acting president of Cornell

University, and sundry of the more important men in the

expedition. To these I explained the situation. It seemed

bad enough to lose all means of presenting a suitable

appearance at the approaching festivity, but this was

nothing compared with the idea that I had requited the

hospitality of my host by spreading through his house this

hideous entomological collection.

But as I exposed this latter feature of the situation, I

noticed a smile coming over the faces of my Dominican

attendants, and presently one of them remarked that the

cockroaches I had brought would find plenty of companions;

that the house was doubtless already full of them.

This was a great relief to my conscience. The trunk was

removed, and presently the clothing, in which I was to

be arrayed for the evening, was brought in. It seemed in

a fearful condition, but, curiously enough, while boots,

shoes, and, above all, a package of white gloves carefully

reserved for grand ceremonies, had been nearly devoured,

the garments of various sorts had escaped fairly

well.

The next thing in order being the preparation of my

apparel for use, the men proceeded first to deluge it with

carbolic acid; and then, after drying it on the balconies

in front of the vice-president's house, to mitigate the

invincible carbolic odor by copious drenchings of Florida

water. All day long they were thus at work making

ready for the evening ceremony. In due time it arrived;

and, finally, after a sumptuous entertainment, I

stood before the assembled consuls and other magnates.

Probably no one of them remembers a word of my

discourse; but doubtless every survivor will agree that no

speaker, before or since, ever made to him an appeal of

such pungency. I pervaded the whole atmosphere of the

place; indeed, the town itself seemed to me, as long as I

remained in it, to reek of that strange mixture of carbolic

acid and Florida water; and as soon as possible after

reaching the ship, the contents of the trunk were thrown

overboard, and life became less a burden.

Having been duly escorted to the Nantasket, and

received heartily by Commander McCook, I was assigned

his own cabin, but soon thought it expedient to get out of

it and sleep on deck. The fact was that the companions

of my cockroaches had possession of the ship, and, to all

appearance, their headquarters were in the captain's

room. I therefore ordered my bed on deck; and, though

it was February, passed two delightful nights in that

balmy atmosphere of the tropical seas while we skirted

the north side of the island until, at Port-au-Prince, I

rejoined the other commissioners, who had come in the

Tennessee along the southern coast.

At the Haitian capital our commission had interviews

with the president, his cabinet, and others, and afterward

we had time to look about us. Few things could be more

dispiriting. The city had been burned again and again, and

there had arisen a tangle of streets displaying every sort

of cheap absurdity in architecture. The effects of the

recent revolution--the latest in a long series of civic

convulsions, cruel and sterile--were evident on all sides. On

the slope above the city had stood the former residence of

the French governor: it had been a beautiful palace, and,

being so far from the sea, had, until the recent revolution,

escaped unharmed; but during that last effort a squad

of miscreants, howling the praises of liberty, having got

possession of a small armed vessel in the harbor and found

upon it a rifled cannon of long range, had exercised their

monkeyish passion for destruction by wantonly firing

upon this beautiful structure. It now lay in ruins. In its

main staircase an iron ring was pointed out to us, and we

were given the following chronicle.

During the recent revolution the fugitive President

Salnave had been captured, a leathern thong had been

rudely drawn through a gash in his hand, and, attached

by this to a cavalryman, he had been dragged up the hill

to the palace, through the crowd which had but recently

hurrahed for him, but which now jeered and pelted him.

Arriving upon the scene of his former glory, he was

attached by the thong to this iron ring and shot.

Opposite the palace was the ruin of a mausoleum, and

in the street were scattered fragments of marble

sarcophagi beautifully sculptured: these had contained the

bodies of former rulers, but the revolutionists of Haiti,

imitating those of 1793 in France, as apes imitate men,

had torn the corpses out of them and had then scattered

these, with the fragments of their monuments, through the

streets.

In the markets of the city we had ample experience

of the advantage arising from unlimited paper money.

Successive governments had kept themselves afloat by new

issues of currency, until its purchasing power was reduced

almost to nothing. Preposterous sums were demanded for

the simplest articles: hundreds of dollars for a basket of

fruit, and thousands of dollars for a straw hat.

With us as one of our secretaries was Frederick

Douglass, the gifted son of an eminent Virginian and a slave

woman,--one of the two or three most talented men of color I

have ever known. Up to this time he had cherished many

hopes that his race, if set free, would improve; but it was

evident that this experience in Santo Domingo discouraged

and depressed him. He said to one of us, ``If this is

the outcome of self-government by my race, Heaven help us!''

Another curious example bearing on the same subject

was furnished us in Jamaica, whither we went after leav-

ing Haiti. Our wish was to consult, on our way home, the

former president of the Haitian republic, Geffrard,--

who was then living in exile near Kingston. We found

him in a beautiful apartment, elegantly furnished; and in

every way he seemed superior to the officials whom we

had met at Port-au-Prince. He was a light mulatto,

intelligent, quiet, dignified, and able to state his views

without undue emphasis. His wife was very agreeable, and

his daughter, though clearly of a melancholic temperament,

one of the most beautiful young women I have ever

seen. The reason for her melancholy was evident to any

one who knew her father's history. He had gone through

many political storms before he had fled from Haiti, and

in one of these his enemies had fired through the windows

of his house and killed his other daughter.

He calmly discussed with us the condition of the island,

and evidently believed that the only way to save it from

utter barbarism was to put it under the control of some

civilized power.

Interesting as were his opinions, he and his family, as

we saw them in their daily life, were still more so. It

was a revelation to us all of what the colored race might

become in a land where it is under no social ban. For

generations he and his had been the equals of the best

people they had met in France and in Haiti; they had

been guests at the dinners of ministers and at the soir<e'>es

of savants in the French capital; there was nothing about

them of that deprecatory sort which one sees so constantly

in men and women with African blood in their veins in

lands where their race has recently been held in servitude.

And here I may again cite the case of President Baez--

a man to whom it probably never occurred that he was not

the equal socially of the best men he met, and who in any

European country would be at once regarded as a man

of mark, and welcomed at any gathering of notables.

Among our excursions, while in Jamaica, was one to

Spanish Town, the residence of the British governor.

In the drawing-room of His Excellency's wife there was

shown us one rather curious detail. Not long before our

visit, the legislature had been abolished and the island

had been made a crown colony ruled by a royal governor

and council; therefore it was that, there being no further

use for it, the gorgeous chair of ``Mr. Speaker,'' a huge

construction apparently of carved oak, had been transferred

to her ladyship's drawing-room, and we were informed

that in this she received her guests.

From Kingston we came to Key West, and from that

point to Charleston, where, as our frigate was too large to

cross the bar, we were taken off, and thence reached

Washington by rail.

One detail regarding those latter days of our

commission is perhaps worthy of record as throwing light on a

seamy side of American life. From first to last we had

shown every possible civility to the representatives of the

press who had accompanied us on the frigate, constantly

taking them with us in Santo Domingo and elsewhere,

and giving them every facility for collecting information.

But from time to time things occurred which threw a new

and somewhat unpleasant light on the way misinformation

is liberally purveyed to the American public. One day

one of these gentlemen, the representative of a leading

New York daily, talking with me of the sort of news his

paper required, said, ``The managers of our paper don't

care for serious information, such as particulars regarding

the country we visit, its inhabitants, etc., etc.; what they

want, above all, is something of a personal nature, such as

a quarrel or squabble, and when one occurs they expect us

to make the most of it.''

I thought no more of this until I arrived at Port-au-

Prince, where I found that this gentleman had suddenly

taken the mail-steamer for New York on the plea of urgent

business. The real cause of his departure was soon

apparent. His letters to the paper he served now began

to come back to us, and it was found that he had exercised

his imagination vigorously. He had presented a

mass of sensational inventions, but his genius had been

especially exercised in trumping up quarrels which had

never taken place; his masterpiece being an account of a

bitter struggle between Senator Wade and myself. As

a matter of fact, there had never been between us the

slightest ill-feeling; the old senator had been like a father

to me from first to last.

The same sort of thing was done by sundry other press

prostitutes, both during our stay in the West Indies and

at Washington; but I am happy to say that several of the

correspondents were men who took their duties seriously,

and really rendered a service to the American public by

giving information worth having.

Our journey from Charleston to Washington had one

episode perhaps worthy of recording, as showing a peculiarity

of local feeling at that time. Through all the long

day we had little or nothing to eat, and looked forward

ravenously to the dinner on board the Potomac steamer.

But on reaching it and entering the dining-room, we found

that our secretary, Mr. Frederick Douglass, was absolutely

refused admittance. He, a man who had dined

with the foremost statesmen and scholars of our Northern

States and of Europe,--a man who by his dignity, ability,

and elegant manners was fit to honor any company,--was,

on account of his light tinge of African blood, not thought

fit to sit at meat with the motley crowd on a Potomac

steamer. This being the case, Dr. Howe and myself

declined to dine, and so reached Washington, about

midnight, almost starving, thus experiencing, at a low price,

the pangs and glories of martyrdom.

One discovery made by the commission on its return

ought to be mentioned here, for the truth of history. Mr.

Sumner, in his speeches before the Senate, had made a

strong point by contrasting the conduct of the United

States with that of Spain toward Santo Domingo. He

had insisted that the conduct of Spain had been far more

honorable than that of the United States; that Spain had

brought no pressure to bear upon the Dominican republic;

that when Santo Domingo had accepted Spanish rule,

some years before, it had done so of its own free will; and

that ``not a single Spanish vessel was then in its waters,

nor a single Spanish sailor upon its soil.'' On the other

hand, he insisted that the conduct of the United States had

been the very opposite of this; that it had brought pressure

to bear upon the little island republic; and that when

the decision was made in favor of our country, there were

American ships off the coast and American soldiers upon

the island. To prove this statement, he read from a speech

of the Spanish prime minister published in the official

paper of the Spanish government at Madrid. To our

great surprise, we found, on arriving at the island, that

this statement was not correct; that when the action in

favor of annexation to Spain took place, Spanish ships

were upon the coast and Spanish soldiers upon the

island; and that there had been far more appearance

of pressure at that time than afterward, when the little

republic sought admission to the American Union. One

of our first efforts, therefore, on returning, was to

find a copy of this official paper, for the purpose of

discovering how it was that the leader of the Spanish

ministry had uttered so grave an untruth. The Spanish

newspaper was missing from the library of Congress;

but at last Dr. Howe, the third commissioner, a life-

long and deeply attached friend of Mr. Sumner, found it

in the library of the senator. The passage which Mr.

Sumner had quoted was carefully marked; it was simply

to the effect that when the FIRST proceedings looking toward

annexation to Spain were initiated, there were no Spanish

ships in those waters, nor Spanish soldiers on shore. This

was, however, equally true of the United States; for when

proceedings were begun in Santo Domingo looking to

annexation, there was not an American ship off the coast, nor

an American soldier on the island.

But the painful thing in the matter was that, had Mr

Sumner read the sentence immediately following that

which he quoted, it would have shown simply and distinctly

that his contention was unfounded; that, at the time

when the annexation proceedings WERE formally initiated

and accomplished, there were Spanish ships off those

shores and Spanish soldiers on the island.

I recall vividly the deep regret expressed at the time by

Dr. Howe that his friend Senator Sumner had been so

bitter in his opposition to the administration that he had

quoted the first part of the Spanish minister's speech and

suppressed the second part. It was clear that if Mr. Sumner

had read the whole passage to the Senate it would have

shown that the conduct of the United States had not been

less magnanimous than that of Spain in the matter, and

that no argument whatever against the administration

could be founded upon its action in sending ships and

troops to the island.

In drawing up our report after our arrival, an amicable

difference of opinion showed itself. Senator Wade, being

a ``manifest-destiny'' man, wished it expressly to recommend

annexation; Dr. Howe, in his anxiety to raise the

status of the colored race, took a similar view; but I

pointed out to them the fact that Congress had asked, not

for a recommendation, but for facts; that to give them

advice under such circumstances was to expose ourselves to a

snub, and could bring no good to any cause which any of

us might wish to serve; and I stated that if the general

report contained recommendations, I must be allowed to

present one simply containing facts.

The result was that we united in the document presented,

which is a simple statement of facts, and which, as

I believe, remains to this day the best general account of

the resources of Santo Domingo.

The result of our report was what I had expected. The

Spanish part of that island is of great value from an

agricultural and probably from a mining point of view. Its

valleys being swept by the trade-winds, its mountain slopes

offer to a white population summer retreats like those

afforded by similar situations to the British occupants of

India. In winter it might also serve as a valuable

sanatorium. I remember well the answer made to me by a man

from Maine, who had brought his family to the neighborhood

of Samana Bay in order to escape the rigors of the

New England winter. On my asking him about the diseases

prevalent in his neighborhood, he said that his entire

household had gone through a light acclimating fever, but

he added: ``We have all got through it without harm; and

on looking the whole matter over, I am persuaded that, if

you were to divide the people of any New England State

into two halves, leaving one half at home and sending the

other half here, there would in ten years be fewer deaths in

the half sent here, from all the diseases of this country,

than in the half left in New England, from consumption

alone.''

A special element in the question of annexation was the

value of the harbor of Samana in controlling one of the

great passages from Europe to the Isthmus. It is large

enough to hold any fleet, is protected by a mountain-range

from the northern winds, is easily fortified, and is the

natural outlet of the largest and most fertile valley in the

islands. More than this, if the experiment of annexing an

outlying possession was to be tried, that was, perhaps, the

best of opportunities, since the resident population to be

assimilated was exceedingly small.

But the people of the United States, greatly as they

honored General Grant, and much as they respected his

recommendations, could not take his view. They evidently

felt that, with the new duties imposed upon them

by the vast number of men recently set free and admitted

to suffrage in the South, they had quite enough to do

without assuming the responsibility of governing and

developing this new region peopled by blacks and mulattos;

and as a result of this very natural feeling the whole

proposal was dropped, and will doubtless remain in abeyance

until the experiments in dealing with Porto Rico

and the Philippines shall have shown the people of the

United States whether there is any place for such

dependencies under our system.

CHAPTER XXIX

AS COMMISSIONER TO THE PARIS EXPOSITION OF 1878

My next experience was of a quasi-diplomatic sort, in

connection with the Paris Exposition of 1878, and

it needs some preface.

During the Centennial Exposition of 1876 at Philadelphia,

I had been appointed upon the educational jury, and,

as the main part of the work came during the university

long vacation, had devoted myself to it, and had thus been

brought into relations with some very interesting men.

Of these may be named, at the outset, the Emperor Dom

Pedro of Brazil. I first saw him in a somewhat curious

way. He had landed at New York in the morning, and

early in the afternoon he appeared with the Empress and

their gentlemen and ladies in waiting at Booth's Theater.

The attraction was Shakspere's ``Henry V,'' and no sooner

was he seated in his box than he had his Shakspere open

before him. Being in an orchestra stall, I naturally

observed him from time to time, and at one passage light

was thrown upon his idea of his duties as a monarch. The

play was given finely, by the best American company of

recent years, and he was deeply absorbed in it. But

presently there came the words of King Henry--the noted

passage:

``And what have kings, that privates have not too,

Save ceremony, save general ceremony?

And what art thou, thou idol ceremony?''

Whereupon the Emperor and Empress, evidently moved

by the same impression, turned their heads from the stage,

looked significantly at each other, and his majesty very

earnestly nodded to his wife several times, as if

thoroughly assenting.

The feeling thus betrayed was undoubtedly sincere. His

real love was for science, literature, and art; but above

all for science. Some years before, at the founding of

Cornell University, Agassiz had shown me private letters

from him revealing his knowledge of natural history, and

the same thirst for knowledge which he showed then was

evident now. From dawn till dusk he was hard at work,

visiting places of interest and asking questions which,

as various eminent authorities both in the United States

and France have since assured me, showed that he kept

himself well abreast of the most recent scientific

investigations.

On the following morning he invited me to call upon

him, and on my doing so, he saluted me with a multitude

of questions regarding our schools, colleges, and universities,

which I answered as best I could, though many of

them really merited more time than could be given during

a morning interview. His manner was both impressive

and winning. He had clearly thought much on educational

problems, and no man engaged in educational work could

fail to be stimulated by his questions and comments. In

his manner there was nothing domineering or assuming.

I saw him at various times afterward, and remember

especially his kindly and perfectly democratic manner at

a supper given by the late Mr. Drexel of Philadelphia,

when he came among us, moving from group to group,

recognizing here one old friend and there another, and

discussing with each some matter of value.

Republican as I am, it is clear to me that his

constitutional sovereignty was a government far more free,

liberal, and, indeed, republican, than the rule of the

demagogue despots who afterward drove him from his throne

ever has been or ever will be.

Another very interesting person was a Spanish officer,

Don Juan Marin, who has since held high commands both

in his own country and in the West Indies. We were upon

the same jury, and I came to admire him much. One day,

as we sat in our committee-room discussing various subjects

brought before us, there appeared in the street leading

to the main entrance of the grounds a large body

of soldiers with loud drumming and fifing. On his asking

what troops these were, I answered that they were

the most noted of our American militia regiments--the

New York Seventh; and on his expressing a wish to see

them, we both walked out for that purpose. Presently

the gates were thrown open, and in marched the regiment,

trim and brisk, bearing aloft the flag of the United

States and the standard of the State of New York.

At the moment when the standard and flag were abreast

of us, Colonel Marin, who was in civil dress, drew himself

up, removed his hat, and bowed low with simple dignity.

The great crowd, including myself, were impressed by this

action. It had never occurred to any one of the rest of us

to show such a tribute to the flag under which so many

good and true men had fought and died for us; and, as one

of the crowd very justly remarked afterward, ``The Spaniard

cheapened the whole lot of us.'' With a single exception,

it was the finest exhibition of manners I have ever

seen.[11]

[11] See the chapter on my attach<e'>ship in Russia.

Still another delegate was Professor Levasseur, of the

College of France and the French Institute. His quickness

in ascertaining what was of value in a politico-economical

view, and his discussions of geographical matters,

interested and instructed all who had to do with him.

With him was R<e'>n<e'> Millet, an example of the most

attractive qualities of a serious Frenchman--qualities

which have since been recognized in his appointments as

minister and ambassador to Sweden and to Tunis. Both

these gentlemen afterward made me visits at Cornell

which I greatly enjoyed.

At this time, too, I made a friendship which became

precious to me--that of Gardner Hubbard, one of the

best, truest, and most capable men, in whatever he undertook,

that I have ever seen. The matter which interested

him then has since interested the world. His son-in-law

Mr. Alexander Graham Bell, was exhibiting what appeared

to be a toy,--a toy which on one occasion he

showed to Dom Pedro and to others of us, and which

enabled us to hear in one of the buildings of the exposition a

violin played in another building. It was regarded as

an interesting plaything, and nothing more. A controlling

right in its use might have been bought for a very moderate

sum--yet it was the beginning of the telephone!

In connection with these and other interesting men, I

had devoted myself to the educational exhibits of the

exposition; and the result was that, during the following

year, I was appointed by the Governor of the State of

New York one of two honorary commissioners to the Paris

Exposition; the other being Mr. Morton, afterward Minister

to France, Vice-President of the United States, and

Governor of the State of New York.

I was not inclined, at first, to take my appointment very

seriously, but went to Paris simply to visit the exposition,

hoping that my honorary function would give me good

opportunities. But on arriving I found the commissioner-

general of the United States, Governor McCormick, hard

pressed by his duties, and looking about for help. A large

number of regular commissioners had been appointed, but

very few of them were of the slightest use. Hardly one

of them could speak French, and very few of them really

took any interest in the duties assigned them. The main

exception, a very noble one, was my old friend President

Barnard of Columbia College, and he had not yet arrived.

Under these circumstances, I yielded to the earnest

request of Governor McCormick and threw myself heartily

into the work of making our part of the exposition a

success.

The American representation at the Vienna Exposition

a few years before had resulted in a scandal which had

resounded through Europe, and this scandal had arisen

from the fact that a subordinate, who had gained the

confidence of our excellent commissioner-general at that post,

had been charged, and to all appearance justly, with

receiving money for assigning privileges to bar-keepers

and caterers. The result was that the commissioner-general

was cruelly wounded, and that finally he and his

associates were ignominiously removed, and the American

minister to Austria put in his place until a new commission

could be formed. Of course every newspaper in Europe

hostile to republican ideas, and they were very many,

made the most of this catastrophe. One of them in Vienna

was especially virulent; it called attention to the model

of an American school-house in the exposition, and said

that ``it should be carefully observed as part of the

machinery which trains up such mercenary wretches as have

recently disgraced humanity at the exposition.''

To avoid scandals, to negotiate with the French

commissioners on one side, and the crowd of exhibitors on

the other, and especially to see that in all particulars the

representatives of American industry were fully recognized,

was a matter of much difficulty; but happily all

turned out well.

Among the duties of my position was membership of the

upper jury--that which, in behalf of the French Republic,

awarded the highest prizes. Each day, at about nine in

the morning, we met, and a remarkable body it was. At

my right sat Meissonier, then the most eminent of French

painters, and beyond him Quintana, the Spanish poet. Of

the former of these two I possess a curious memento. He

was very assiduous in attendance at our sessions, and the

moment he took his seat he always began drawing, his

materials being the block of letter-paper and the pencils,

pens, and ink lying before him. No matter what was

under discussion, he kept on with his drawing. While

he listened, and even while he talked, his pencil or pen

continued moving over the paper. He seemed to bring

every morning a mass of new impressions caught during

his walk to the exposition, which he made haste to trans-

fer to paper. Sometimes he used a pencil, sometimes, a

quill pen, and not infrequently he would plunge the

feather end of the quill into his inkstand and rapidly put

into his work broader and blacker strokes. As soon as

he had finished a drawing he generally tore it into bits

and threw them upon the floor, but occasionally he would

fold the sketches carefully and put them into his pocket.

This being the case, no one dared ask him for one of them.

But one morning his paper gave out, and for lack of it

he took up a boxwood paper-knife lying near and began

work on it. First he decorated the handle in a sort of

rococo way, and then dashed off on the blade, with his pen,

a very spirited head--a bourgeois physiognomy somewhat

in Gavarni's manner. But as he could not tear the

paper-knife into bits, and did not care to take it away, he

left it upon the table. This was my chance. Immediately

after the session I asked the director-general to allow me

to carry it off as a souvenir; he assented heartily, and so

I possess a picture which I saw begun, continued, and

ended by one of the greatest of French painters.

At my left was Tresca, director of the French National

Conservatory of Arts and Trades; and next him, the

sphinx of the committee--the most silent man I ever saw

the rector of the Portuguese University of Coimbra. During

the three months of our session no one of us ever

heard him utter a word. Opposite was Jules Simon, eminent

as an orator, philosopher, scholar, and man of letters;

an academician who had held positions in various cabinets,

and had even been prime minister of the republic.

On one side of him was Tullo Massarani, a senator of the

Italian kingdom, eminent as a writer on the philosophy of

art; on the other, Boussingault, one of the foremost chemists

of the century; and near him, Wischniegradsky, director

of the Imperial Technical Institute at Moscow, whom I

afterward came to know as minister of finance at St.

Petersburg. Each afternoon we devoted to examining the

greater exhibits which were to come before us in competition

for the grands prix on the following morning.

At one of our sessions a curious difficulty arose. The

committee on the award of these foremost prizes for

advanced work in electricity brought in their report, and, to

my amazement, made no award to my compatriot Edison,

who was then at the height of his reputation. Presently

Tresca, who read the report, and who really lamented the

omission, whispered to me the reason of it. Through the

negligence of persons representing Edison, no proper

exhibition of his inventions had been made to the committee.

They had learned that his agent was employed in showing

the phonograph in a distant hall on the boulevards to

an audience who paid an admission fee; but, although they

had tried two or three times to have his apparatus shown

them, they had been unsuccessful, until at last, from a

feeling of what was due their own self-respect, they passed

the matter over entirely. Of course my duty was to do

what was possible in rectifying this omission, and in as

good French as I could muster I made a speech in Edison's

behalf, describing his career, outlining his work,

and saying that I should really be ashamed to return to

America without some recognition of him and of his

inventions. This was listened to most courteously, but my

success was insured by a remark of a less serious character,

which was that if Edison had not yet made a sufficient

number of inventions to entitle him to a grand prize,

he would certainly, at the rate he was going on, have done

so before the close of the exposition. At this there was a

laugh, and my amendment was unanimously carried.

Many features in my work interested me, but one had

a melancholy tinge. One afternoon, having been summoned

to pass upon certain competing works in sculpture,

we finally stood before the great bronze entrance-

doors of the Cathedral of Strasburg, which, having been

designed before the Franco-Prussian War, had but just

been finished. They were very beautiful; but I could see

that my French associates felt deeply the changed situation

of affairs which this exhibit brought to their minds.

In order to promote the social relations which go for

so much at such times, I had taken the large apartment

temporarily relinquished by our American minister,

Governor Noyes of Ohio, in the Avenue Josephine; and there,

at my own table, brought together from time to time a

considerable number of noted men from various parts of

Europe. Perhaps the most amusing occurrence during

the series of dinners I then gave was the meeting between

Story, the American sculptor at Rome, and Judge Brady

of New York. For years each had been taken for the other,

in various parts of the world, but they had never met.

In fact, so common was it for people to mistake one for

the other that both had, as a rule, ceased to explain the

mistake. I was myself present with Story on one occasion

when a gentleman came up to him, saluted him as Judge

Brady, and asked him about their friends in New York:

Story took no trouble to undeceive his interlocutor, but

remarked that, so far as he knew, they were all well, and

ended the interview with commonplaces.

These two Dromios evidently enjoyed meeting, and

nothing could be more amusing than their accounts of

various instances in which each had been mistaken for the

other. Each had a rich vein of humor, and both presented

the details of these occurrences with especial zest.

Another American, of foreign birth, was not quite so

charming. He was a man of value in his profession; but

his desire for promotion outran his discretion. Having

served as juror at the Vienna Exposition, he had now

been appointed to a similar place in Paris; and after one

of my dinners he came up to a group in which there were

two or three members of the French cabinet, and said:

``Mr. Vite, I vish you vould joost dell dese zhentlemen vat

I am doing vor Vrance. I vas on de dasting gommittee

for vines und peers at Vien, and it 'most killed me; and

now I am here doing de same duty, and my stomach has

nearly gone pack on me. Tell dese zhentlemen dat de

French Government zurely ought to gonfer ubon me de

Legion of Honor.'' This was spoken with the utmost

seriousness, and was embarrassing, since, of all subjects,

that which a French minister least wishes to discuss

publicly is the conferring of the red ribbon.

Embarrassing also was the jubilation of some of our

American exhibitors at our celebration of the Fourth of

July in the Bois de Boulogne. Doubtless they were

excellent citizens, but never was there a better

exemplification of Dr. Arnold's saying that ``a traveller is a

self-constituted outlaw.'' A generous buffet had been

provided, after the French fashion, with a sufficiency of

viands and whatever wine was needed. To my amazement,

these men, who at home were most of them, probably,

steady-going ``temperance men,'' were so overcome with

the idea that champagne was to be served ad libitum, that

the whole thing came near degenerating into an orgy. A

European of the same rank, accustomed to drinking wine

moderately with his dinner, would have simply taken a

glass or two and thought no more of it; but these gentlemen

seemed to see in it the occasion of their lives. Bottles

were seized and emptied, glass after glass, down the

throats of my impulsive fellow-citizens: in many cases

a bottle and more to a man. Then came the worst of it.

It had been arranged that speeches should be made under

a neighboring tent by leading members of the French

cabinet who had accepted invitations to address us. But

when they proceeded to do this difficulties arose. A number

of our compatriots, unduly exhilarated, and understanding

little that was said, first applauded on general

principles, but at the wrong places, and finally broke out

into apostrophes such as ``Speak English, old boy!''

``Talk Yankee fashion!'' ``Remember the glorious

Fourth!'' ``Give it to the British!'' ``Make the eagle

scream!'' and the like. The result was that we were

obliged to make most earnest appeals to these gentlemen,

begging them not to disgrace our country; and, finally, the

proceedings were cut short.

Nor was this the end. As I came down the Champs

<E'>lys<e'>es afterward, I met several groups of these

patriots, who showed by their walk and conversation that

they were decidedly the worse for their celebration of the

day; and the whole thing led me to reflect seriously on the

drink problem, and to ask whether our American solution

of it is the best. I have been present at many large

festive assemblages, in various parts of Europe, where wine

was offered freely as a matter of course; but never have

I seen anything to approach this performance of my

countrymen. I have been one of four thousand people at

the H<o^>tel de Ville in Paris on the occasion of a great

ball, at other entertainments almost as large in other

Continental countries, and at dinner parties innumerable

in every European country; but never, save in one

instance, were the festivities disturbed by any man on

account of drink.

The most eminent of American temperance advocates

during my young manhood, Mr. Delavan, insisted that he

found Italy, where all people, men, women, and children,

drink wine with their meals, if they can get it, the most

temperate country he had ever seen; and, having made

more than twelve different sojourns in Italy, I can confirm

that opinion.

So, too, again and again, when traveling in the old days

on the top of a diligence through village after village in

France, where the people were commemorating the patron

saint of their district, I have passed through crowds of

men, women, and children seated by the roadside drinking

wine, cider, and beer, and, so far as one could see, there

was no drunkenness; certainly none of the squalid, brutal,

swinish sort. It may indeed be said that, in spite of light

stimulants, drunkenness has of late years increased in

France, especially among artisans and day laborers. If

this be so, it comes to strengthen my view. For the main

reason will doubtless be found in the increased prices of

light wines, due to vine diseases and the like, which have

driven the poorer classes to seek far more noxious beverages.

So, too, in Germany. Like every resident in that

country, I have seen great crowds drinking much beer,

and, though I greatly dislike that sort of guzzling, I never

saw anything of the beastly, crazy, drunken exhibitions

which are so common on Independence Day and county-

fair day in many American towns where total abstinence is

loudly preached and ostensibly practised. Least of all do

I admire the beer-swilling propensities of the German

students, and still I must confess that I have never seen

anything so wild, wicked, outrageous, and destructive to soul

and body as the drinking of distilled liquors at bars

which, in my student days, I saw among American students.

But I make haste to say that within the last twenty

or thirty years American students have improved immensely

in this respect. Athletics and greater interest in

study, caused by the substitution of the students' own

aims and tastes for the old cast-iron curriculum, are

doubtless the main reasons for this improvement.[12]

[12] Further reasons for this improvement I have endeavored to

give more in detail elsewhere.

Yet, in spite of this redeeming thing, the fact remains

that one of the greatest curses of American life is the

dram-drinking of distilled liquors at bars; and one key of

the whole misery is the American habit of ``treating,''--a

habit unknown in other countries. For example, in America,

if Tom, Dick, and Harry happen to meet at a hotel,

or in the street, to discuss politics or business, Tom

invites Dick and Harry to drink with him, which, in

accordance with the code existing among large classes of

our fellow-citizens, Dick and Harry feel bound to do.

After a little more talk Dick invites Harry and Tom to

drink; they feel obliged to accept; and finally Harry

invites Tom and Dick, with like result; so that these three

men have poured down their throats several glasses of

burning stimulants, perhaps in the morning, perhaps just

before the midday meal, or at some other especially

unsuitable time, with results more or less injurious to each

of them, physically and morally.

The European, more sensible, takes with his dinner,

as a rule, a glass or two of wine or beer, and is little, if

at all, the worse for it. If he ever takes any distilled

liquor, he sips a very small glass of it after his dinner,

to aid digestion.

It is my earnest conviction, based upon wide observation

in my own country as well as in many others during

about half a century, that the American theory and practice

as regards the drink question are generally more

pernicious than those of any other civilized nation. I

am not now speaking of TOTAL ABSTINENCE--of that, more

presently. But the best TEMPERANCE workers among us

that I know are the men who brew light, pure beer, and

the vine-growers in California who raise and sell at a very

low price wines pleasant and salutary, if any wines can be so.

As to those who have no self-restraint, beer and wine,

like many other things, promote the ``survival of the

fittest,'' and are, like many other things, ``fool-killers,''

aiding to free the next generation from men of vicious

propensities and weak will.

I repeat it, the curse of American social life, among a

very considerable class of our people, is ``perpendicular

drinking''--that is, the pouring down of glass after glass

of distilled spirits, mostly adulterated, at all sorts of

inopportune times, and largely under the system of ``treating.''

The best cure for this, in my judgment, would be for

States to authorize and local authorities to adopt the

``Swedish system,'' which I found doing excellent service

at Gothenburg in Sweden a few years since, and

which I am sorry to see the fanatics there have recently

wrecked. Under this plan the various towns allowed a

company to open a certain number of clean, tidy drinking-

places; obliged them to purchase pure liquors; forbade

them, under penalties, to sell to any man who had already

taken too much; made it also obligatory to sell something

to eat at the same time with something to drink; and, best

of all, restricted the profits of these establishments to a

moderate percentage,--seven or eight per cent., if I re-

member rightly,--all the surplus receipts going to public

purposes, and especially to local charities. The main point

was that the men appointed to dispense the drinks had no

motive to sell adulterated drinks, or any more liquor than

was consistent with the sobriety of the customer.

I may add that, in my opinion, the worst enemies of real

temperance in America, as in other countries, have been

the thoughtless screamers against intemperance, who have

driven vast numbers of their fellow-citizens to drink in

secret or at bars. Of course I shall have the honor of

being railed at and denounced by every fanatic who reads

these lines, but from my heart I believe them true.

I remember that some of these people bitterly attacked

Governor Stanford of California for the endowment of

Stanford University, in part, from the rent of his vineyards.

People who had not a word to say against one

theological seminary for accepting the Daniel Drew

endowment, or against another for accepting the Jay Gould

endowment, were horrified that the Stanford University

should receive revenue from a vineyard. The vineyards

of California, if their product were legally protected from

adulteration, could be made one of the most potent influences

against drunkenness that our country has seen. The

California wines are practically the only pure wines

accessible to Americans. They are so plentiful that there is

no motive to adulterate them, and their use among those

of us who are so unwise as to drink anything except water

ought to be effectively advocated as supplanting the

drinking of beer poisoned with strychnine, whisky poisoned

with fusel-oil, and ``French claret'' poisoned with

salicylic acid and aniline.

The true way to supplant the ``saloon'' and the barroom,

as regards working-men who obey their social instincts

by seeking something in the nature of a club, and

therefore resorting to places where stimulants are sold,

is to take the course so ably advocated by Bishop Potter:

namely, to furnish places of refreshment and amusement

which shall be free from all tendency to beastliness, and

which, with cheerful open fireplaces, games of various

sorts, good coffee and tea, and, if necessary, light beer

and wine, shall be more attractive than the ``saloons''

and ``dives'' which are doing our country such vast harm.

My advice to all men is to drink nothing but water.

That is certainly the wisest way for nine men out of ten

--and probably for all ten. Indeed, one reason why

the great body of our people accomplish so much more in

a given time than those of any other country, and why the

average American working-man ``catches on'' and ``gits

thar'' more certainly and quickly than a man of the same

sort in any other country (and careful comparison between

various other countries and our own has shown that

this is the case), is that a much larger proportion of our

people do not stupefy themselves with stimulants.

In what I have said above I have had in view the

problem as it really stands: namely, the existence of a very

large number of people who WILL have stimulants of

some kind. In such cases common sense would seem to

dictate that, in the case of those who persist in using

distilled liquors, something ought to be done to substitute

those which are pure for those which are absolutely

poisonous and maddening; and, in the case of those who

merely seek a mild stimulant, to substitute for distilled

liquors light fermented beverages; and, in the case of

those who seek merely recreation after toil, to substitute

for beverages which contain alcohol, light beverages like

coffee, tea, and chocolate.

This is a long digression, but liberavi animam meam,

and now I return to my main subject.

The American commissioners were treated with great

kindness by the French authorities. There were exceedingly

interesting receptions by various ministers, and at

these one met the men best worth knowing in France:

the men famous in science, literature, and art, who redeem

France from the disgrace heaped upon her by the wretched

creatures who most noisily represent her through sensational

newspapers.

Of the men who impressed me most was Henri Martin,

the eminent historian. He discussed with me the history

of France in a way which aroused many new trains of

thought. Jules Simon, eminent both as a scholar and a

statesman, did much for me. On one occasion he took

me about Paris, showing me places of special interest

connected with the more striking scenes of the Revolutionary

period; on another, he went with me to the distribution of

prizes at the French Academy--a most striking scene;

and on still another he piloted me through his beautiful

library, pointing out various volumes in which were

embedded bullets which the communards had fired through

his windows from the roof of the Madeleine just opposite.

Another interesting experience was a breakfast with the

eminent chemist Sainte-Claire Deville, at which I met

Pasteur, who afterward took me through his laboratories,

where he was then making some of his most important

experiments. In one part of his domain there were cages

containing dogs, and on my asking about them he said

that he was beginning a course of experiments bearing

on the causes and cure of hydrophobia. Nothing could be

more simple and modest than this announcement of one

of the most fruitful investigations ever made.

Visits to various institutions of learning interested me

much, among these a second visit to the Agricultural

College at Grignon and the wonderful Conservatoire des Arts

et M<e'>tiers, which gave me new ideas for the similar

departments at Cornell, and a morning at the <E'>cole Normale,

where I saw altogether the best teaching of a Latin classic

that I have ever known. As I heard Professor Desjardins

discussing with his class one of Cicero's letters in the

light of modern monuments in the Louvre and of recent

archaeological discoveries, I longed to be a boy again.

Among the statesmen whom I met at that time in France,

a strong impression was made upon me by one who had

played a leading part in the early days of Napoleon III,

but who was at this time living in retirement, M. Drouyn

de Lhuys. He had won distinction as minister of foreign

affairs, but, having retired from politics, had given

himself up in his old age to various good enterprises,

among these, to the great Reform School at Mettray.

This he urged me to visit, and, although it was at a

considerable distance from Paris, I took his advice, and was

much interested in it. The school seemed to me well

deserving thorough study by all especially interested in the

problem of crime in our own country.

There is in France a system under which, when any

young man is evidently going all wrong,--squandering his

patrimony and bringing his family into disgrace,--a family

council can be called, with power to place the wayward

youth under restraint; and here, in one part of the

Mettray establishment, were rooms in which such youths were

detained in accordance with the requests of family councils.

It appeared that some had derived benefit from these

detentions, for there were shown me one or two letters

from them: one, indeed, written by a young man on the

bottom of a drawer, and intended for the eye of his successor

in the apartment, which was the most contrite yet

manly appeal I have ever read.

Another man of great eminence whom I met in those

days was Thiers. I was taken by an old admirer of

his to his famous house in the Place St. Georges, and

there found him, in the midst of his devotees, receiving

homage.

He said but little, and that little was commonplace; but

I was not especially disappointed: my opinion of him was

made up long before, and time has but confirmed it. The

more I have considered his doings as minister or

parliamentarian, and the more I have read his works, whether

his political pamphlet known as the ``History of the

French Revolution,'' which did so much to arouse sterile

civil struggles, or his ``History of the Consulate and of the

Empire,'' which did so much to revive the Napoleonic

legend, or his speeches under the constitutional monarchy

of Louis Philippe, under the Republic, and under the Second

Empire, which did so much to promote confusion and

anarchy, the less I admire him. He seems to me eminently

an architect of ruin.

It is true that when France was wallowing in the misery

into which he and men like him had done so much to

plunge her, he exerted himself wonderfully to accomplish

her rescue; but when the history of that country during

the last century shall be fairly written, his career, brilliant

as it once appeared, will be admired by no thinking patriot.

I came to have far more respect for another statesman

whom I then met--Duruy, the eminent historian of

France and of Rome, who had labored so earnestly under

the Second Empire, both as a historian and a minister of

state, to develop a basis for rational liberty.

Seated next me at dinner, he made a remark which

threw much light on one of the most serious faults of the

French Republic. Said he, ``Monsieur, I was minister of

public instruction under the Empire for seven years; since

my leaving that post six years have elapsed, and in that

time I have had seven successors.''

On another occasion he discoursed with me about the

special difficulties of France; and as I mentioned to him

that I remembered his controversy with Cardinal de

Bonnechose, in which the latter tried to drive him out of

office because he did not fetter scientific teaching in the

University of Paris, he spoke quite freely with me. Although

not at all a radical, and evidently willing to act

in concert with the church as far as possible, he gave

me to understand that the demands made by ecclesiastics

upon every French ministry were absolutely unendurable;

that France never could yield to these demands; and that,

sooner or later, a great break must come between the

church and modern society. His prophecy now seems

nearing fulfilment.

Among the various meetings which were held in

connection with the exposition was a convention of literary

men for the purpose of securing better international

arrangements regarding copyright. Having been elected

a member of this, I had the satisfaction of hearing most

interesting speeches from Victor Hugo, Tourgueneff, and

Edmond About. The latter made the best speech of all,

and by his exquisite wit and pleasing humor fully showed

his right to the name which his enemies had given him--

``the Voltaire of the nineteenth century.''

The proceedings of this convention closed with a banquet

over which Victor Hugo presided; and of all the trying

things in my life, perhaps the most so was the speech

which I then attempted in French, with Victor Hugo looking

at me.

There were also various educational congresses at the

Sorbonne, in which the discussions interested me much;

but sundry receptions at the French Academy were far

more attractive. Of all the exquisite literary performances

I have ever known, the speeches made on those occasions

by M. Charles Blanc, M. Gaston Boissier, and the

members who received them were the most entertaining.

To see these witty Frenchmen attacking each other in the

most pointed way, yet still observing all the forms of

politeness, and even covering their adversaries with

compliments, gives one new conceptions of human ingenuity.

But whether it is calculated to increase respect for the

main actors is another question.

The formal closing of the exposition was a brilliant

pageant. Various inventors and exhibitors received gifts

and decorations from the hand of the President of the

Republic, and, among them, Dr. Barnard, Story, and myself

were given officers' crosses of the Legion of Honor

which none of us has ever thought of wearing; but,

alas! my Swiss-American friend who had pleaded so

pathetically his heroic services in ``Dasting de vines und

peers'' for France did not receive even the chevalier's

ribbon, and the expression of his disappointment was loud

and long.

Nor was he the only disappointed visitor. It was my

fortune one day at the American legation to observe one

difficulty which at the western capitals of Europe has

become very trying, and which may be mentioned to show

that an American representative has sometimes to meet.

As I was sitting with our minister, Governor Noyes of

Ohio, there was shown into the room a lady, very stately,

and dressed in the height of fashion. It was soon evident

that she was on the war-path. She said, ``Mr.

Minister, I have come to ask you why it is that I do not

receive any invitations to balls and receptions given by

the cabinet ministers?'' Governor Noyes answered very

politely, ``Mrs. ----, we have placed your name on the list

of those whom we would especially like to have invited,

and have every hope that it will receive attention.'' She

answered, ``Why is it that you can do so much less than

your predecessor did at the last exposition? THEN I

received a large number of invitations; NOW I receive none.''

The minister answered, ``I am very sorry indeed, madam;

but there are perhaps twenty or thirty thousand Americans

in Paris; the number of them invited on each occasion

cannot exceed fifty or sixty; and the French authorities

are just now giving preference to those who have come

from the United States to take some special part in the

exposition as commissioners or exhibitors.'' At this the

lady was very indignant. She rose and said, ``I will give

you no more trouble, Mr. Minister; but I am going back

to America, and shall tell Senator Conkling, who gave

me my letter of introduction to you, that either he has

very little influence with you, or you have very little

influence with the French Government. Good morning!''

And she flounced out of the room.

This is simply an indication of what is perhaps the

most vexatious plague which afflicts American representatives

in the leading European capitals,--a multitude of

people, more or less worthy, pressing to be presented at

court or to be invited to official functions. The whole

matter has a ridiculous look, and has been used by sundry

demagogues as a text upon which to orate against

the diplomatic service and to arouse popular prejudice

against it. But I think that a patriotic American may

well take the ground that while there is so much snobbery

shown by a certain sort of Americans abroad, it is

not an unwise thing to have in each capital a man who

in the intervals of his more important duties, can keep this

struggling mass of folly from becoming a scandal and a

byword throughout Europe. No one can know, until he

has seen the inner workings of our diplomatic service,

how much duty of this kind is quietly done by our

representatives, and how many things are thus avoided which

would tend to bring scorn upon our country and upon

republican institutions.

CHAPTER XXX

AS MINISTER TO GERMANY--1879-1881

In the spring of 1879 I was a third time brought into

the diplomatic service, and in a way which surprised me.

The President of the United States at that period was Mr.

Hayes of Ohio. I had met him once at Cornell University,

and had an interesting conversation with him, but never

any other communication, directly or indirectly. Great,

then, was my astonishment when, upon the death of Bayard

Taylor just at the beginning of his career as minister

to Germany, there came to me an offer of the post thus

made vacant.

My first duty after accepting it was to visit Washington

and receive instructions. Calling upon the Secretary

of State, Mr. Evarts, and finding his rooms filled with

people, I said: ``Mr. Secretary, you are evidently very

busy; I can come at any other time you may name.''

Thereupon he answered: ``Come in, come in; there are

just two rules at the State Department: one is that no

business is ever done out of office hours; and the other is, that

no business is ever done IN office hours.'' It was soon

evident that this was a phrase to put me at ease, rather

than an exact statement of fact; and, after my conference

with him, several days were given to familiarizing myself

with the correspondence of my immediate predecessors,

and with the views of the department on questions then

pending between the two countries.

Dining at the White House next day, I heard Mr. Evarts

withstand the President on a question which has always

interested me--the admission of cabinet ministers to

take part in the debates of Congress. Mr. Hayes

presented the case in favor of their admission cogently; but

the Secretary of State overmatched his chief. This

greatly pleased me; for I had been long convinced that

next to the power given the Supreme Court, the best

thing in the Constitution of the United States is that

complete separation of the executive from the legislative

power which prevents every Congressional session becoming

a perpetual gladiatorial combat or, say, rather,

a permanent game of foot-ball. Again and again I have

heard European statesmen lament that their constitution-

makers had adopted, in this respect, the British rather

than the American system. What it is in France, with

cabals organized to oust every new minister as soon as he

is appointed, and to provide for a ``new deal'' from the

first instant of an old one, with an average of one or two

changes of ministry every year as a result, we all know;

and, with the exception of the German parliament, Continental

legislatures generally are just about as bad; indeed,

in some respects the Italian parliament is worse.

The British system would have certainly excluded such

admirable Secretaries of State as Thomas Jefferson and

Hamilton Fish; possibly such as John Quincy Adams,

Seward, and John Hay. In Great Britain, having been

evolved in conformity with its environment, it is

successful; but it is successful nowhere else. I have always

looked back with great complacency upon such men as

those above named in the State Department, and such as

Hamilton, Gallatin, Chase, Stanton, and Gage in other

departments, sitting quietly in their offices, giving calm

thought to government business, and allowing the heathen

to rage at their own sweet will in both houses of

Congress. Under the other system, our Republic might

perhaps have become almost as delectable as Venezuela

with its hundred and four revolutions in seventy years[13]

[13] See Lord Lansdowne's speech, December, 1902.

On the day following I dined with the Secretary of

State, and found him in his usual pleasant mood. Noting

on his dinner-service the words, ``Facta non verba,'' I

called his attention to them as a singular motto for an

eminent lawyer and orator; whereupon he said that, two

old members of Congress dining with him recently, one of

them asked the other what those words meant, to which

the reply was given, ``They mean, `Victuals, not talk.' ''

On the way to my post, I stopped in London and was

taken to various interesting places. At the house of my

old friend and Yale classmate, George Washburn Smalley,

I met a number of very interesting people, and among

these was especially impressed by Mr. Meredith Townshend,

whose knowledge of American affairs seemed amazingly

extensive and preternaturally accurate. At the

house of Sir William Harcourt I met Lord Ripon, about

that time Viceroy of India, whose views on dealings with

Orientals interested me much. At the Royal Institution

an old acquaintance was renewed with Tyndall and Huxley;

and during an evening with the eminent painter, Mr.

Alma-Tadema, at his house in the suburbs, and especially

when returning from it, I made a very pleasant acquaintance

with the poet Browning. As his carriage did not

arrive, I offered to take him home in mine; but hardly had

we started when we found ourselves in a dense fog, and

it shortly became evident that our driver had lost his

way. As he wandered about for perhaps an hour, hoping

to find some indication of it, Browning's conversation was

very agreeable. It ran at first on current questions, then

on travel, and finally on art,--all very simply and naturally,

with not a trace of posing or paradox. Remembering

the obscurity of his verse, I was surprised at the

lucidity of his talk. But at last, both of us becoming

somewhat anxious, we called a halt and questioned the

driver, who confessed that he had no idea where he was.

As good, or ill, luck would have it, there just then emerged

from the fog an empty hansom-cab, and finding that its

driver knew more than ours, I engaged him as pilot, first

to Browning's house, and then to my own.

One old friend to whom I was especially indebted was

Sir Charles Reed, who had been my fellow-commissioner

at the Paris and Philadelphia expositions. Thanks to

him, I was invited to the dinner of the lord mayor at the

Guildhall. As we lingered in the library before going

to the table, opportunity was given to study various eminent

guests. First came Cairns, the lord chancellor, in

all the glory of official robes and wig; then Lord Derby;

then Lord Salisbury, who, if I remember rightly, was

minister of foreign affairs; then, after several other

distinguished personages, most interesting of all, Lord

Beaconsfield, the prime minister. He was the last to arrive,

and immediately after his coming he presented his arm to

the lady mayoress, and the procession took its way toward

the great hall. From my seat, which was but a little

way from the high table, I had a good opportunity to

observe these men and to hear their speeches.

All was magnificent. Nothing of its kind could be more

splendid than the massive gold and silver plate piled

upon the lord mayor's table and behind it, nothing more

sumptuous than the dinner, nothing more quaint than

the ceremonial. Near the lord mayor, who was arrayed

in his robes, chain, and all the glories of his office, stood

the toastmaster, who announced the toasts in a manner

fit to make an American think himself dreaming,--something,

in fact, after this sort, in a queer singsong way,

with comical cadences, brought up at the end with a sharp

snap: ``Me lawds, la-a-a-dies and gentleme-e-e-n, by

commawnd of the Right Honorable the Lawrd Marr, I

cha-a-awrge you fill your glawse-e-e-s and drink to the

health of the Right Honorable the Ur-r-rll of Beck'nsfield.''

A main feature of the ceremony was the loving-cup.

Down each long table a large silver tankard containing

a pleasing beverage, of which the foundation seemed to

be claret, was passed; and, as it came, each of us in turn

arose, and, having received it solemnly from his neighbor,

who had drunk to his health, drank in return, and then,

turning to his next neighbor, drank to him; the latter

then received the cup, returned the compliment, and in the

same way passed it on.

During the whole entertainment I had frequently turned

my eyes toward the prime minister, and had been much

impressed by his apparent stolidity. When he presented

his arm to the lady mayoress, when he walked with her, and

during all the time at table, he seemed much like a wooden

image galvanized into temporary life. When he rose to

speak, there was the same wooden stiffness and he went

on in a kind of mechanical way until, suddenly, he darted

out a brilliant statement regarding the policy of the

government that aroused the whole audience; then, after more

of the same wooden manner and mechanical procedure,

another brilliant sentence; and so on to the end of the

speech.

All the speeches were good and to the point. There

were none of those despairing efforts to pump up fun

which so frequently make American public dinners

distressing. The speakers evidently bore in mind the fact

that on the following day their statements would be

pondered in the household of every well-to-do Englishman,

would be telegraphed to foreign nations, and would be

echoed back from friends and foes in all parts of the world.

After the regular speeches came a toast to the diplomatic

corps, and the person selected to respond was our

representative, the Honorable Edwards Pierpont. This

he did exceedingly well, and in less than five minutes.

Sundry American papers had indulged in diatribes

against fulsome speeches at English banquets by some of

Mr. Pierpont's predecessors, and he had evidently

determined that no such charge should be established against

him.

Much was added to my pleasure by my neighbors at

the table--on one side, Sir Frederick Pollock, the eminent

father of the present Sir Frederick; and on the other,

Mr. Rolf, the ``remembrancer'' of the City of London.

This suggests the remark that, in my experience among

Englishmen, I have found very little of the coldness and

stiffness which are sometimes complained of. On the

contrary, whenever I have been thrown among them, whether

in Great Britain or on the Continent, they have generally

proved to be agreeable conversationists. One thing has

seemed to me at times curious and even comical: they will

frequently shut themselves up tightly from their

compatriots,--even from those of their own station,--and yet

be affable, and indeed expansive, to any American they

chance to meet. The reason for this is, to an American,

even more curious than the fact. I may discuss it later.

My arrival in Berlin took place just at the beginning of

the golden-wedding festivities of the old Emperor

William I. There was a wonderful series of pageants: historic

costume balls, gala operas, and the like, at court;

but most memorable to me was the kindly welcome extended

to us by all in authority, from the Emperor and

Empress down. The cordiality of the diplomatic corps

was also very pleasing, and during the presentations to

the ruling family of the empire I noticed one thing especially:

the great care with which they all, from the monarch

to the youngest prince, had prepared themselves to

begin a conversation agreeable to the new-comer. One

of these high personages started a discussion with me upon

American shipping; another, on American art; another, on

scenery in Colorado; another, on our railways and steamers;

still another, on American dentists and dentistry;

and, in case of a lack of other subjects, there was Niagara,

which they could always fall back upon.

The duty of a prince of the house of Hohenzollern is

by no means light; it involves toil. In my time, when

the present emperor, then the young Prince William,

brought his bride home, in addition to their other receptions

of public bodies, day after day and hour after hour,

they received the diplomatic corps, who were arranged

at the palace in a great circle, the ladies forming one half

and the gentlemen the other. The young princess,

accompanied by her train, beginning with the ladies, and

the young prince, with his train, beginning with the gentlemen,

each walked slowly around the interior of the entire

circle, stopping at each foreign representative and

speaking to him, often in the language of his own country,

regarding some subject which might be supposed to

interest him. It was really a surprising feat, for which, no

doubt, they had been carefully prepared, but which would

be found difficult even by many a well-trained scholar.

An American representative, in presenting his letter of

credence from the President of the United States to the

ruler of the German Empire, has one advantage in the fact

that he has an admirable topic ready to his hand, such as

perhaps no other minister has. This boon was given us

by Frederick the Great. He, among the first of Continental

rulers, recognized the American States as an independent

power; and therefore every American minister since,

including myself, has found it convenient, on presenting the

President's autograph letter to the King or Emperor, to

recall this event and to build upon it such an oratorical

edifice as circumstances may warrant. The fact that the

great Frederick recognized the new American Republic,

not from love of it, but on account of his detestation of

England, provoked by her conduct during his desperate

struggle against his Continental enemies, is, of course,

on such occasions diplomatically kept in the background.

The great power in Germany at that time was the

chancellor, Prince Bismarck. Nothing could be more

friendly and simple than his greeting; and however stately

his official entertainments to the diplomatic corps might

be, simplicity reigned at his family dinners, when his

conversation was apparently frank and certainly delightful.

To him I shall devote another chapter.

In those days an American minister at Berlin was

likely to find his personal relations with the German

minister of foreign affairs cordial, but his official

relations continuous war. Hardly a day passed without some

skirmish regarding the rights of ``German-Americans''

in their Fatherland. The old story constantly recurred

in new forms. Generally it was sprung by some man who

had left Germany just at the age for entering the army,

had remained in America just long enough to secure

naturalization, and then, without a thought of discharging

any of his American duties, had come back to claim

exemption from his German duties, and to flaunt his

American citizen papers in the face of the authorities of the

province where he was born. This was very galling

to these authorities, from the fact that such Americans

were often inclined to glory over their old schoolmates

and associates who had not taken this means of escaping

military duty; and it was no wonder that these brand-

new citizens, if their papers were not perfectly regular,

were sometimes held for desertion until the American

representative could intervene.

Still other cases were those where fines had been

imposed upon men of this class for non-appearance when

summoned to military duty, and an American minister

was expected to secure their remission.

In simple justice to Germany, it ought to be said that

there is no foreign matter of such importance so little

understood in the United States as this. The average

American, looking on the surface of things, cannot see

why the young emigrant is not allowed to go and come as

he pleases. The fact is that German policy in this

respect has been evolved in obedience to the instinct of

national self-preservation. The German Empire, the

greatest Continental home of civilization, is an open camp,

perpetually besieged. Speaking in a general way, it has

no natural frontiers of any sort--neither mountains nor

wide expanses of sea. Eastward are one hundred and

thirty millions of people fanatically hostile as regards

race, religion, and imaginary interests; westward is

another great nation of forty millions, with a hatred on all

these points intensified by desire for revenge; northward

is a vigorous race estranged by old quarrels; and south

is a power which is largely hostile on racial, religious, and

historic grounds, and at best a very uncertain reliance.

Under such circumstances, universal military service in

Germany is a condition of its existence, and evasion of

this is naturally looked upon as a sort of treason. The

real wonder is that Germany has been so moderate in her

dealing with this question. The yearly ``budgets of military

cases'' in the archives of the American Embassy bear

ample testimony to her desire to be just and even lenient.

To understand the position of Germany, let us suppose

that our Civil War had left our Union--as at one time

seemed likely--embracing merely a small number of Middle

States and covering a space about as large as Texas,

with a Confederacy on our southern boundary bitterly

hostile, another hostile nation extending from the west

bank of the Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains; a Pacific

confederation jealous and faultfinding; British dominions

to the northward vexed by commercial and personal

grievances; and New England a separate and doubtful

factor in the whole situation. In that case we too would

have established a military system akin to that of Germany;

but whether we would have administered it as

reasonably as Germany has done is very doubtful.

Fortunately for the United States and for me, there was

in the ministry of foreign affairs, when I arrived, one of

the most admirable men I have ever known in such a

position: Baron von B<u:>low. He came of an illustrious

family, had great influence with the old Emperor William,

with Parliament, and in society; was independent, large

in his views, and sincerely devoted to maintaining the

best relations between his country and ours. In cases such

as those just referred to he was very broad-minded; and

in one of the first which I had to present to him, when

I perhaps showed some nervousness, he said, ``Mr.

Minister, don't allow cases of this kind to vex you; I had

rather give the United States two hundred doubtful cases

every year than have the slightest ill-feeling arise between

us.'' This being the fact, it was comparatively easy to

deal with him. Unfortunately, he died early during my

stay, and some of the ministers who succeeded him had

neither his independence nor his breadth of view.

It sometimes seemed to me, while doing duty at the

German capital in those days as minister, and at a more

recent period as ambassador, that I could not enter my

office without meeting some vexatious case. One day it

was an American who, having thought that patriotism

required him, in a crowded railway carriage, roundly to

denounce Germany, the German people, and the imperial

government, had passed the night in a guard-house;

another day, it was one who, feeling called upon, in a

restaurant, to proclaim very loudly and grossly his

unfavorable opinion of the Emperor, had been arrested; on still

another occasion it was one of our fellow-citizens who,

having thought that he ought to be married in Berlin as

easily as in New York, had found himself entangled in a

network of regulations, prescriptions, and prohibitions.

Of this latter sort there were in my time several curious

cases. One morning a man came rushing into the

legation in high excitement and exclaimed, ``Mr. Minister,

I am in the worst fix that any decent man was ever

in; I want you to help me out of it.'' And he then went

on with a bitter tirade against everybody and everything

in the German Empire. When his wrath had effervesced

somewhat, he stated his case as follows: ``Last year, while

traveling through Germany, I fell in love with a young

German lady, and after my return to America became

engaged to her. I have now come for my bride; the wedding

is fixed for next Thursday; our steamer passages are

taken a day or two later; and I find that the authorities

will not allow me to marry unless I present a multitude

of papers such as I never dreamed of; some of them it

will take months to get, and some I can never get. My

intended bride is in distress; her family evidently distrust

me; the wedding is postponed indefinitely; and my business

partner is cabling me to come back to America as

soon as possible. I am asked for a baptismal certificate--

a Taufschein. Now, so far as I know, I was never

baptized. I am required to present a certificate showing the

consent of my parents to my marriage--I, a man thirty

years old and in a large business of my own! I am asked

to give bonds for the payment of my debts in Germany. I

owe no such debts; but I know no one who will give

such a bond. I am notified that the banns must be

published a certain number of times before the wedding.

What kind of a country is this, anyhow?''

We did the best we could. In an interview with the

minister of public worship I was able to secure a

dispensation from the publishing of the banns; then a bond was

drawn up which I signed and thus settled the question

regarding possible debts in Germany. As to the baptismal

certificate, I ordered inscribed, on the largest possible

sheet of official paper, the gentleman's affidavit that, in

the State of Ohio, where he was born, no Taufschein, or

baptismal certificate, was required at the time of his birth,

and to this was affixed the largest seal of the legation, with

plenty of wax. The form of the affidavit may be judged

peculiar; but it was thought best not to startle the

authorities with the admission that the man had not been

baptized at all. They could easily believe that a State like

Ohio, which some of them doubtless regarded as still in

the backwoods and mainly tenanted by the aborigines,

might have omitted, in days gone by, to require a Taufschein;

but that an unbaptized Christian should offer himself

to be married in Germany would perhaps have so

paralyzed their powers of belief that permission for the

marriage could never have been secured.

In this and various other ways we overcame the

difficulties, and, though the wedding did not take place upon

the appointed day, and the return to America had to be

deferred, the couple, at last, after marriage first before

the public authorities, and then in church, were able to

depart in peace.

Another case was typical. One morning a gentleman

came into the legation in the greatest distress; and I soon

learned that this, too, was a marriage case--but very

different from the other. This gentleman, a naturalized

German-American in excellent standing, had come over

to claim his bride. He had gone through all the

formalities perfectly, and, as his business permitted it, had

decided to reside a year abroad in order that he might take

the furniture of his apartment back to America free of

duty. This apartment, a large and beautiful suite of

rooms, he had already rented, had furnished it very fully,

and then, for the few days intervening before his marriage,

had put it under care of his married sister. But, alas! this

sister's husband was a bankrupt, and hardly had she taken

charge of the apartment when the furniture was seized by

her husband's creditors, seals placed upon its doors by

the authorities, ``and,'' said the man, in his distress,

``unless you do something it will take two years to reach the

case on the calendar; meantime I must pay the rent of the

apartment and lose the entire use of it as well as of the

furniture.'' ``But,'' said I, ``what can be done?'' He

answered, ``My lawyer says that if you will ask it as a

favor from the judge, he will grant an order bringing the

case up immediately.'' To this I naturally replied that

I could hardly interfere with a judge in any case before

him; but his answer was pithy. Said he, ``You are the

American minister, and if you are not here to get Americans

out of scrapes, I should like to know what you ARE

here for.'' This was unanswerable, and in the afternoon

I drove in state to the judge, left an official card upon him,

and then wrote, stating the case carefully, and saying that,

while I could not think of interfering in any case before

him, still, that as this matter appeared to me one of especial

hardship, if it could be reached at once the ends of justice

would undoubtedly be furthered thereby. That my

application was successful was shown by the fact that the

man thus rescued never returned to thank his benefactor.

A more important part of a minister's duty is in

connection with the commercial relations between the two

nations. Each country was attempting, by means of its

tariffs, to get all the advantage possible, and there resulted

various German regulations bearing heavily on some

American products. This started questions which had to

be met with especial care, requiring many interviews with

the foreign office and with various members of the

imperial cabinet.

In looking after commercial relations, a general

oversight of the consuls throughout the empire was no small

part of the minister's duty. The consular body was good

--remarkably good when one considers the radically

vicious policy which prevails in the selection and retention

of its members. But the more I saw of it, the stronger

became my conviction that the first thing needed is that,

when our government secures a thoroughly good man in

a consular position, it should keep him there; and, moreover,

that it should establish a full system of promotions

for merit. Under the present system the rule is that, as

soon as a man is fit for the duties, he is rotated out of office

and supplanted by a man who has all his duties to learn.

I am glad to say that of late years there have been many

excellent exceptions to this rule; and one of my most

earnest hopes, as a man loving my country and desirous of its

high standing abroad, is that, more and more, the tendency,

both as regards the consular and diplomatic service,

may be in the direction of sending men carefully fitted for

positions, and of retaining them without regard to changes

in the home administration.

Still another part of the minister's duty was the careful

collection of facts regarding important subjects, and the

transmission of them to the State department. These were

embodied in despatches. Such subjects as railway

management, the organization and administration of city

governments, the growth of various industries, the creation

of new schools of instruction, the development of public

libraries, and the like, as well as a multitude of other

practical matters, were thus dwelt upon.

It was also a duty of the minister to keep a general

oversight of the interests of Americans within his

jurisdiction. There are always a certain number of Americans

in distress,--real, pretended, or imaginary,--and these

must be looked after; then there are American statesmen

seeking introductions or information, American scholars

in quest of similar things in a different field, American

merchants and manufacturers seeking access to men and

establishments which will enable them to build up their

own interests and those of their country, and, most

interesting of all, American students at the university and

other advanced schools in Berlin and throughout

Germany. To advise with these and note their progress

formed a most pleasing relief from strictly official matters.

Least pleasing of all duties was looking after fugitives

from justice or birds of prey evidently seeking new

victims. On this latter point, I recall an experience which

may throw some light on the German mode of watching

doubtful persons. A young American had appeared in

various public places wearing a naval uniform to which

he was not entitled, declaring himself a son of the President

of the United States, and apparently making ready

for a career of scoundrelism. Consulting the minister of

foreign affairs one day, I mentioned this case, asking him

to give me such information as came to him. He

answered, ``Remind me at your next visit, and perhaps I

can show you something.'' On my calling some days later,

the minister handed me a paper on which was inscribed

apparently not only every place the young man had

visited, but virtually everything he had done and said during

the past week, his conversations in the restaurants being

noted with especial care; and while the man was evidently

worthless, he was clearly rather a fool than a

scoundrel. On my expressing surprise at the fullness of

this information, the minister seemed quite as much

surprised at my supposing it possible for any good

government to exist without such complete surveillance of

suspected persons.

Another curious matter which then came up was the

selling of sham diplomas by a pretended American university.

This was brought to my notice in sundry letters, and

finally by calls from one or two young Germans who were

considering the advisability of buying a doctorate from a

man named Buchanan, who claimed to be president of the

``University of Philadelphia.'' Although I demonstrated

to them the worthlessness of such sham degrees of a non-

existent institution, they evidently thought that to obtain

one would aid them in their professions, and were inclined

to make a purchase. From time to time there were slurs

in the German papers upon all American institutions of

learning, based upon advertisements of such diplomas;

and finally my patriotic wrath was brought to a climax

by a comedy at the Royal Theater, in which the rascal of

the piece, having gone through a long career of scoundrelism,

finally secures a diploma from the ``University

of PENNSYLVANIA''!

In view of this, I wrote not only despatches to the Secretary

of State, but private letters to leading citizens of

Philadelphia, calling their attention to the subject, and

especially to the injury that this kind of thing was doing

to the University of Pennsylvania, an institution of which

every Philadelphian, and indeed every American, has a

right to be proud. As a result, the whole thing was broken

up, and, though it has been occasionally revived, it has not

again inflicted such a stigma upon American education.

But perhaps the most annoying business of all arose

from presentations at court. The mania of many of our

fellow-citizens for mingling with birds of the finest feather

has passed into a European proverb which is unjust to the

great body of Americans; but at present there seems to

be no help for it, the reputation of the many suffering for

the bad taste of the few. Nothing could exceed the

pertinacity shown in some cases. Different rules prevail at

different courts, and at the imperial court of Germany

the rule for some years has been that persons eminent

in those walks of life that are especially honored will

always be welcome, and that the proper authority, on being

notified of their presence, will extend such invitations

as may seem warranted. Unfortunately, while some of

the most worthy visitors did not make themselves known,

some persons far less desirable took too much pains to

attract notice. A satirist would find rich material in the

archives of our embassies and legations abroad. I have

found nowhere more elements of true comedy and even

broad farce than in some of the correspondence on this

subject there embalmed.

But while this class of applicants is mainly made up of

women, fairness compels me to say that there is a similar

class of men. These are persons possessed of an insatiate

and at times almost insane desire to be able, on their

return, to say that they have talked with a crowned head.

Should the sovereign see one in ten of the persons from

foreign nations who thus seek him, he would have no time

for anything else. He therefore insists, like any private

person in any country, on his right not to give his time to

those who have no real claim upon him, and some very

good fellow-citizens of ours have seemed almost inclined

to make this feeling of his Majesty a casus belli.

On the other hand there are large numbers of Americans

making demands, and often very serious demands, of time

and labor on their diplomatic representative which it is

an honor and pleasure to render. Of these are such as,

having gained a right to do so by excellent work in their

respective fields at home, come abroad, as legislators

or educators or scientific investigators or engineers or

scholars or managers of worthy business enterprises, to

extend their knowledge for the benefit of their country.

No work has been more satisfactory to my conscience than

the aid which I have been able to render to men and women

of this sort.

Still, one has to make discriminations. I remember

especially a very charming young lady of, say, sixteen

summers, who came to me saying that she had agreed to write

some letters for a Western newspaper, and that she wished

to visit all the leading prisons, reformatory institutions,

and asylums of Germany. I looked into her pretty face,

and soon showed her that the German Government would

never think of allowing a young lady like herself to

inspect such places as those she had named, and that in my

opinion they were quite right; but I suggested a series

of letters on a multitude of things which would certainly

prove interesting and instructive, and which she might

easily study in all parts of Germany. She took my advice,

wrote many such letters, and the selection which she

published proved to be delightful.

But at times zeal for improvements at home goes

perilously far toward turning the activity of an ambassador

or minister from its proper channels. Scores of people

write regarding schools for their children, instructors in

music, cheap boarding-houses, and I have had an excellent

fellow-citizen ask me to send him a peck of turnips.

But if the applications are really from worthy persons,

they can generally be dealt with in ways which require no

especial labor--many of them through our consuls, to

whom they more properly belong.

Those who really ask too much, insisting that the

embassy shall look after their private business, may be

reminded that the rules of the diplomatic service forbid

such investigations, in behalf of individuals, without

previous instructions from the State Department.

Of the lesser troublesome people may be named, first,

those who are looking up their genealogies. A typical

letter made up from various epistles, as a ``composite''

portrait is made out of different photographs, would run

much as follows:

SIR: I have reason to suppose that I am descended from an

old noble family in Germany. My grandfather's name was Max

Schulze. He came, I think, from some part of Austria or Bavaria

or Schleswig-Holstein. Please trace back my ancestry and let me

know the result at your earliest convenience.

Yours truly,

MARY SMITH.

Another more troublesome class is that of people seeking

inheritances. A typical letter, compounded as above,

would run somewhat as follows:

SIR: I am assured that a fortune of several millions of marks

left by one John M<u:>ller, who died in some part of Germany two

or three centuries ago, is held at the imperial treasury awaiting

heirs. My grandmother's name was Miller. Please look the

matter up and inform me as to my rights.

Yours truly,

JOHN MYERS.

P.S. If you succeed in getting the money, I will be glad to pay

you handsomely for your services.

Such letters as this are easily answered. During this

first sojourn of mine at Berlin as minister, I caused a

circular, going over the whole ground, to be carefully

prepared and to be forwarded to applicants. In this occur

the following words: ``We have yearly, from various parts

of the United States, a large number of applications for

information or aid regarding great estates in Germany

supposed to be awaiting heirs. They are all more or less

indefinite, many sad, and some ludicrous. . . . There are

in Germany no large estates, awaiting distribution to

unknown heirs, in the hands of the government or of anybody,

and all efforts to discover such estates that the legation

has ever made or heard of have proved fruitless.''

Among the many odd applications received at that

period, one revealed an American superstition by no means

unusual. The circumstances which led to it were as follows:

An ample fund, said to be forty or fifty thousand

dollars, had been brought together in Philadelphia for the

erection of an equestrian statue to Washington, and it had

been finally decided to intrust the commission to Professor

Siemering, one of the most eminent of modern German

sculptors. One day there came to me a letter from

an American gentleman whom I had met occasionally

many years before, asking me to furnish him with a full

statement regarding Professor Siemering's works and

reputation. As a result, I made inquiries among the leading

authorities on modern art, and, everything being most

favorable, I at last visited his studio, and found a large

number of designs and models of works on which he

was then engaged,--two or three being of the highest

importance, among them the great war monument at

Leipsic.

I also found that, although he had executed and was

executing important works for various other parts of

Germany, he had not yet put up any great permanent

work in Berlin, though the designs of the admirable

temporary statues and decorations on the return of the troops

from the Franco-Prussian War to the metropolis had

been intrusted largely to him.

These facts I stated to my correspondent in a letter, and

in due time received an answer in substance as follows:

SIR: Your letter confirms me in the opinion I had formed.

The intrusting of the great statue of Washington to a man like

Siemering is a job and an outrage. It is clear that he is a mere

pretender, since he has erected no statue as yet in Berlin. That

statue of the Father of our Country ought to have been intrusted

to native talent. I have a son fourteen years old who has

already

greatly distinguished himself. He has modeled a number of

figures in butter and putty which all my friends think are most

remarkable. I am satisfied that he could have produced a work

which, by its originality and power, would have done honor to

our country and to art.

Yours very truly,

---- ----.

Curious, too, was the following: One morning the mail

brought me a large packet filled with little squares of

cheap cotton cloth. I was greatly puzzled to know their

purpose until, a few days later, there came a letter which,

with changes of proper names, ran as follows:

PODUNK, ----, 1880.

SIR: We are going to have a fancy fair for the benefit of the

---- Church in this town, and we are getting ready some autograph

bed-quilts. I have sent you a package of small squares of

cotton cloth, which please take to the Emperor William and his

wife, also to Prince Bismarck and the other princes and leading

persons of Germany, asking them to write their names on them

and send them to me as soon as possible.

Yours truly,

---- ----.

P.S. Tell them to be sure to write their names in the middle

of the pieces, for fear that their autographs may get sewed in.

My associations with the diplomatic corps I found

especially pleasing. The dean, as regarded seniority, was

the Italian ambassador, Count Delaunay, a man of large

experience and kindly manners. He gave me various

interesting reminiscences of his relations with Cavour, and

said that when he was associated with the great Italian

statesman, the latter was never able to get time for him,

except at five o'clock in the morning, and that this was

their usual hour of work.

Another very interesting person was the representative

of Great Britain--Lord Odo Russell. He was full of

interesting reminiscences of his life at Washington, at Rome,

and at Versailles with Bismarck. As to Rome, he gave me

interesting stories of Pope Pius IX, who, he said, was

inclined to be jocose, and even to speak in a sportive way

regarding exceedingly serious subjects.[14] As to Cavour,

he thought him a greater man even than Bismarck; and

this from a man so intimate with the German chancellor

was a testimony of no small value.

[14] One of these reminiscences I have given elsewhere.

As to his recollections of Versailles, he was present at

the proclamation of the Empire in the Galerie des Glaces,

and described the scene to me very vividly.

His relations with Bismarck were very close, and the

latter once paid him a compliment which sped far; saying

that, as a rule, he distrusted an Englishman who spoke

French very correctly, but that there was one exception--

Lord Odo Russell.

At the risk of repeating a twice-told tale, I may refer

here to his visit to Bismarck when the latter complained

that he was bothered to death with bores who took his

most precious time, and asked Lord Odo how he got rid

of them. After making some reply, the latter asked

Bismarck what plan he had adopted. To this the chancellor

answered that he and Johanna (the princess) had hit

upon a plan, which was that when she thought her husband

had been bored long enough, she came in with a bottle

and said, ``Now, Otto, you know that it is time for you

to take your medicine.'' Hardly were the words out of

his mouth, when in came the princess with the bottle and

repeated the very words which her husband had just

given. Both burst into titanic laughter, and parted on

the best of terms.

At court festivities, Lord Odo frequently became very

weary, and as I was often in the same case, we from time

to time went out of the main rooms together and sat

down in some quiet nook for a talk. On one of these

occasions, just after he had been made a peer with the

title of Baron Ampthill, I said to him, ``You must allow

me to use my Yankee privilege of asking questions.''

On his assenting to this pleasantly, I asked, ``Why is it

that you are willing to give up the great historic name

of Russell and take a name which no one ever heard of?''

He answered, ``I have noticed that when men who have

been long in the diplomatic service return to England,

they become in many cases listless and melancholy, and

wander about with no friends and nothing to do. They

have been so long abroad that they are no longer in touch

with leading men at home, and are therefore shelved.

Entrance into the House of Lords gives a man something

to do, with new friends and pleasing relations. As to the

name, I would gladly have retained my own, but had no

choice; in fact, when Lord John Russell was made an

earl, his insisting on retaining his name was not

especially liked. Various places on the Russell estates were

submitted to me for my choice, and I took Ampthill.''

Alas! his plans came to nothing. He died at his post

before his retirement to England.

Among those then connected with the British Embassy

at Berlin, one of the most interesting was Colonel (now

General) Lord Methuen, who, a few years since, took so

honorable a part in the South African War. He was at

that time a tall, awkward man, kindly, genial, who always

reminded me of Thackeray's ``Major Sugarplums.''

He had recently lost his wife, and was evidently in deep

sorrow. One morning there came a curious bit of news

regarding him. A few days before, walking in some

remote part of the Thiergarten, he saw a working-man throw

himself into the river, and instantly jumped into the icy

stream after him, grappled him, pulled him out, laid him

on the bank, and rapidly walked off. When news of

it got out, he was taxed with it by various members of

the diplomatic corps; but he awkwardly and blushingly

pooh-poohed the whole matter.

One evening, not long afterward, I witnessed a very

pleasant scene connected with this rescue. As we were all

assembled at some minor festivity in the private palace

on the Linden, the old Emperor sent for the colonel, and

on his coming up, his Majesty took from his own coat

a medal of honor for life-saving and attached it to the

breast of Methuen, who received it in a very awkward

yet manly fashion.

The French ambassador was the Count de St. Vallier,

one of the most agreeable men I have ever met, who

deserved all the more credit for his amiable qualities

because he constantly exercised them despite the most

wretched health. During his splendid dinners at the

French Embassy, he simply toyed with a bit of bread, not

daring to eat anything.