OUT INTO THE WORLD AND HOME AGAIN.
In my first lecturing winter I spoke in the Hall of Representatives, St.
Paul, to a large audience, and succeeded past all my hopes. I spoke
there again in the winter of '61 and '62, on the anti-slavery question,
and in a public hall on "Woman's Legal Disabilities." Both were very
successful, and I was invited to give the latter lecture before the
Senate, which I did. The hall was packed and the lecture received with
profound attention, interrupted by hearty applause.
The Senate was in session, and Gen. Lowrie occupied his seat as a
member. It was a great fall for him to tumble from his dictatorship to
so small an honor. He sat and looked at me like one in a dream, and I
could not but see that he was breaking. I hoped he would come up with
others when they began to crowd around me, but he did not.
I had come to be the looked-at of all lookers; the talked-of of all
talkers; was the guest of Geo. A. Nurse, the U.S. Attorney, dined with
the Governor, and was praised by the press. I was dubbed the "Fanny
Kemble of America," and reminded critics of the then greatest Shylock of
the stage. A judge from Ohio said there was "not a man in the State who
could have presented that case (Woman's Legal Disabilities) so well."
Indeed, I was almost as popular as if I were about to be hanged!
A responsible Eastern lecture-agent offered me one hundred dollars each
for three lectures, one in Milwaukee, one in Chicago and one in
Cleveland. I wanted to accept, but was overruled by friends, who thought
me too feeble to travel alone, and that I would make more by employing
an agent. They selected a pious gentleman, whose name I have forgotten,
and we left St. Paul at four o'clock one winter morning, in a prairie
schooner on bob-sleds, to ride to La Crosse.
One of the passengers was a pompous Southerner, who kept boasting of the
"buck niggers" he had sold and the "niggers" he had caught, and his
delight in that sort of work. His talk was aimed at me, but he did not
address me, and for hours I took no notice; then, after an unusual
explosion, I said quietly:
"Can you remember, sir, just exactly how many niggers you have killed
and eaten in your day?"
He looked out on the river and seemed to begin a calculation, but must
have found the lists of his exploits too long for utterance, for he had
spoken not another word when we reached La Crosse, where we took cars
for Madison, Wisconsin.
We reached that beautiful city of lakes in time to meet news of the Ft.
Donelson fatal victory; that victory made so much worse than a hundred
defeats by the return to their masters of the slaves who remained in
the fort and claimed the protection of our flag--the victory which
converted the great loyal army of the North into a gang of
slave-catchers. Alas, my native land! All hope for the preservation of
the government died out in my heart. What could a just God want with
such a people? What could he do but destroy them?
That victory was celebrated in Madison with appropriate ceremonies. Men
got drunk and cursed "niggers and abolitionists," sat up all night in
noisy orgies drinking health and success to him who was the synonym of
American glory.
The excitement and sudden revulsion against abolitionists with the total
incompetence of my agent, caused a financial failure of my lecture, but
I made pleasant friendships with Gov. Harvey, Prof. Carr and their
wives.
I started along the route we had come, and everywhere, in cars, hotels,
men were hurrahing for Grant and cursing "niggers and abolitionists."
The hero had healed the breach between the loving brothers of the North
and South, who were to rush into each others arms across the prostrate
form of Liberty. Thank God for the madness of the South; for that
sublime universal government which maketh "the wrath of man to praise
him." Even in that hour of triumph for despotism, I did not doubt but
Freedom would march on until no slave contaminated the earth; but before
that march this degraded government must share the fate of that other
Babylon, which once dealt "in slaves and souls of men."
My first small town lecture was another financial failure, and in the
hall I paid and dismissed that highly respectable incubus--my agent.
That night I slept in a hotel, and going to a bed which had not been
properly ventilated, wondered if it could be my duty to breast that
storm of popular frenzy. Could I at any time be required to drink tea
out of a coarse delf cup and sleep in such a bed? Luxuries I wanted
none; but a china cup, silver spoon and soft blankets were necessaries
of life. As I lay, uncertain always whether I slept, I seemed to sit on
a projecting rock on the side of a precipice draped with poisonous
vines. There was no spot on which I could place my feet, while out of
holes, snakes hissed at me, and on ledges panthers glared at me with
their green fiery eyes, and the tips of their tails wagging. Far below
lay a lovely green valley, walled on both sides by these haunted
precipitous banks, but stretching up and down until lost in vista. I
knew that to the right was north--the direction of home; and to the
left, south--the way out into the great unknown. If I could only reach
that lovely valley and the clear stream which ran through it; but this
was a vain longing, until there appeared in it a young man in a grey
suit and soft broad-brimmed black felt hat. He came up the precipice
toward me, and a way made itself before him, until he held up his hand,
and said:
"Come down!"
I saw his face, and knew it was Christ. After seeing that face, all the
conceptions of all the artists are an offense. Moreover, the Christ of
to-day, in the person of his follower, has often come to me in the garb
of a working man, but never in priestly robes. He led me down the
precipice without a word, pointed northward and said:
"Walk in the valley and you will be safe." He was gone, and I became
conscious that I had been seeking popularity, money, and these were not
for me; I must go home, but first I would try to repair the loss
incurred by that agent. I lectured in a small town, a nucleus of a Seven
Day Baptist settlement, and was the guest of the proprietor, who had
built a great many concrete walls. Coming out into a heavy wind, I took
acute inflammation of the lungs. My hostess gave me every attention; but
I must go home for my symptoms were alarming, so took the train the next
morning, with my chest in wet compresses, a viol of aconite in my
pocket, and was better when by rail and schooner I reached the house of
the good Samaritan, Judge Wilson, of Winona.
Here I was made whole, lectured in Winona and other towns, and got back
to St. Paul with more money than when I left. I started for home one
morning in a schooner. At one the next morning our craft settled down
and refused to go farther. The snow was three feet deep; it had been
raining steadily for twelve hours, and when the men got out to pry out
the runners, they went down, down, far over their knees. The driver and
express agent were booted for such occasions, but the two Germans were
not. Myself, "these four and no more," were down in the book of fate for
a struggle with inertia. It was muscle and mind against matter. To the
muscle I contributed nothing, but might add something to the common
stock of mind. The agent, and driver concluded that he should take a
horse and go to the nearest house, two miles back, to get shovels to dig
us out. I asked if there were fresh horses and men at the house.
"No."
"How far is it to St. Cloud?"
"Six miles."
"Are there fresh horses and men there?"
"Oh, plenty."
"If you dig us out here, how long will it be before we go in again?"
This they did not know.
"Then had not the driver better go to St. Cloud with both horses? The
horse left here would be ruined standing in that slush."
"But, madam," said the agent, "if we do that we will have to leave you
here all night."
"Well," I said, "I do not see how you are going to get rid of me."
So the driver started with the two horses on that dreadful journey; had
I known how dreadful, I should have tried to keep him till morning. As
he left, I made the Germans draw off their boots and pour out the water,
rub their chilled feet and roll them up in a buffalo robe. The agent lay
on his box, I cuddled in a corner, and we all went to sleep to the music
of the patter of the soft rain on our canvas cover. At sunrise we were
waked by a little army of men and horses and another schooner, into
which we passed by bridge. We reached St. Cloud in time for breakfast,
and were greeted by the news that General Lowrie had been sent home
insane. He was confined in his own house, and his much envied young
wife, with her two babies, had become an object of pity.