IV. THE RETURN TO AMERICA. 1848-1862.

Home--Studying law with John Cadwallader--Philadelphia as I found

it--Richard B. Kimball--"Fusang"--Literal reporting in German--First

experiences in magazines and newspapers--Father Matthew--Dr. Rufus

Griswold--Engaged to be married--A journey North--Colonel Cotl and

pistol-practice with him--Alfred Jaell--Editor of Barnum's

_Illustrated News_--Dr. Griswold and his MS.--Bixby's--Mr. Barnum--My

first books--New York society in the early Fifties--Alice and Phoebe

Carey--Washington Irving--Bayard Taylor--N. P. Willis--J. G. Saxe--H.

C. Carey--Emily Schaumberg--I become assistant-editor of the

_Bulletin_--George H. Boker--Cremation--Editorial life--Paternal

enterprise--My father renews his fortune--I am married--The Republican

Convention--First great dissension with the South--Translating

Heine--The lady in the burning hotel--The writing of "Hans Breitmann's

Barty"--Change to New York--Appletons' _Cyclopaedia_--G. W. Ripley and

Charles A. Dana--Foreign editing of _New York Times_--"Vanity

Fair"--The Bohemians--Artemus Ward--Lincoln's election--The Civil

War--My political work in the _Knickerbocker_--Emancipation--I become

sole editor of the _Continental Magazine_--What I did in 1862 and 1863

in aid of the Union cause.

So we arrived in New York, and within an hour or two after my arrival I

was in the train _en route_ for Philadelphia. On the way, I intrusted a

newsboy with an English shilling to go and get me change. I still await

that change. And in Philadelphia the hackman who drove me to my father's

house, as soon as the trunks were removed, departed suddenly, carrying

away with him a small hand-bag containing several valuable objects, which

I never recovered. I began to think that if the object of travel be to

learn to keep one's eyes open and avoid being swindled, that I had better

have remained at home.

My father had removed to another house in Walnut Street, below Twelfth

Street. After this he only changed dwellings once more before his death.

This constant change from one rented house to another, like the changes

from school to school, is very unfortunate, as I have before said, for

any family. It destroys all the feeling and unity of character which

grow up in a settled _home_.

I pass over the joy of again seeing my parents, the dear sisters, and

brother Henry. I was soon settled down, soon visiting friends, going to

evening parties, making morning or afternoon calls, and after a little

while was entered as a law-student in the office of John Cadwallader in

Fourth Street.

I cannot pass over the fact, for it greatly influenced my after life,

that though everybody was very kind to me, and I was even in a small way

a kind of lion, the change from my late life was very hard to bear. I

have read a wonderful story of a boy who while at a severe school had a

marvellous dream. It seemed to last for years, and while it lasted, he

went to the University, graduated, passed into diplomatic life, was a

great man and beloved; when all at once he awoke and found himself at

school again and birchable. After the freedom of student life in

Heidelberg and Munich and Paris, and having been among the few who had

carried out a great revolution, and much familiarity with the most

cosmopolite type of characters in Europe, and existing in literature and

art, I was settled down to live, move, and have all being henceforth and

perhaps for ever in Philadelphia! Of which city, at that time, there was

not one in the world of which so little evil could be said, or so much

good, yet of which so few ever spoke with enthusiasm. Its inhabitants

were all well-bathed, well-clad, well-behaved; all with exactly the same

ideas and the same ideals. A decided degree of refinement was everywhere

perceptible, and they were so fond of flowers that I once ascertained by

careful inquiry that in most respectable families there was annually much

more money expended for bouquets than for books. When a Philadelphian

gave a dinner or supper, his great care was to see that everything _on

the table_ was as good or perfect as possible. I had been accustomed to

first considering what should be placed _around_ it on the chairs as the

main item. The lines of demarcation in "society" were as strongly drawn

as in Europe, or more so, with the enormous difference, however, that

there was not the slightest perceptible shade of difference in the

intellects, culture, or character of the people on either side of the

line, any more than there is among the school-boys on either side of the

mark drawn for a game. Very trifling points of difference, not

perceptible to an outsider, made the whole difference between the

exclusives and the excluded; just as the witch-mark no larger than a

needle-point indicates to the judge the difference between the saved and

the damned.

I had not been long engaged in studying law when I made the acquaintance

of Richard B. Kimball, a lawyer of New York, who had written a few novels

which were very popular, and are still reprinted by Tauchnitz. He knew

everybody, and took a great interest in me, and opened the door for me to

the _Knickerbocker Magazine_. To this I had contributed articles while

at Princeton. I now sent it my translation of Professor Neumann's

"Chinese in Mexico in the Fifth Century." I forget whether this was in

1849 or 1850. In after years I expanded it to a book, of which a certain

Professor said, firstly in a paper read before the American Asiatic

Society, and secondly in a pamphlet, that there was nothing of any

importance in it which had not already appeared in Bancroft's work on the

Pacific. I wrote to him, pointing out the fact that Bancroft's work did

not appear till many years after my article in the _Knickerbocker_. To

which the Sinologist replied very suavely and apologetically indeed that

he was "very sorry," but had never seen the article in the

_Knickerbocker_, &c. But he did not _publish_ the correction, as he

should have done. For which reason I now vindicate myself from the

insinuated accusation that I borrowed from Bancroft. I had, indeed,

almost forgotten this work, "Fusang," when, in 1890, Prince Roland

Bonaparte, at a dinner given by him to the Congres des Traditions

Populaires, startled me by recurring to it and speaking of it with great

praise. For it vindicates the claim of the French that Desguignes first

discovered the fact that the Chinese were the first to discover America.

If any one doubts this, let him read the truly great work of Vinton on

the whole. Prince Roland had been in China and earnestly studied the

subject. Von Eichthal had endorsed my views, and wrote to me on Fusang.

I have been for many years well acquainted with his nephew, Baron von

Eichthal, and his remarkably accomplished wife, who is expert in all the

minor arts.

My father's resources became about this time limited, and I, in fact,

realised that he had taxed himself more than I had supposed to maintain

me abroad. His Congress Hall property did not pay much rent. For my

position in the world, friends, studies, and society, I found myself very

much and very often in great need of money. As at that time we were

supposed to be much richer than we really were, this was an additional

source of trial. I began to see clearly that in the law, as in all

business or professions, I should have to wait for years ere I could make

a living. For the instances are very few and far between in which a

young man, who has not inherited or grown up to a practice, can make one

himself at once.

More than this, I was not fitted for law at all. From my birth I had

absolutely one of those peculiar temperaments which really disqualify men

for "business." If I had entered a law-office in which there was much

office-work or practice, I might have acquired a practical interest in

the profession, but of this there was in ours literally none whatever. I

had a great fondness for copying deeds, &c., but Mr. Cadwallader, though

he very much admired my quaint round hand, being the very soul of honour,

observing that I was eager for such work, would not give me much of it

though it would have been to his profit, because, as he said, "students

who paid should not be employed as clerks only, much less as copying

machines." As it had always been deeply impressed on my mind by every

American friend that I had "no business capacity," and, moreover, as I

greatly dreaded speaking in court, I had from the beginning a great fear

that I could never live by the law. I mention this because there are

many thousands of young men who suffer terribly from such apprehension,

and often ruin life by it. A few months' practice in a mercantile

college will go far to relieve the first apprehension, while as regards

_stage fright_, it can be easily educated out of anybody, as I have since

those days educated it out of myself, so that rising to debate or speak

inspires in me a _gaudium certaminis_, which increases with the certainty

of being attacked. Let the aspirant begin by reading papers before, let

us say, a family or school, and continue to do so frequently and at as

short intervals as possible before such societies or lyceums as will

listen to him. Then let him speak from memory or improvise and debate.

This should form a part of all education whatever, and it should be

_thorough_. It is specially needed for lawyers and divines, yet a great

proportion of both are most insufficiently trained in it; and while I was

studying law it was never mentioned to me. I was never so much as once

taken into court or _practically_ employed in any manner whatever.

I remember an amusing incident in the office. Mr. Cadwallader asked me

one day to call, returning from my lunch, on a certain Mr. Dimpfel, one

of his clients, leave a certain message and his request as follows:--"I

want you, Mr. Leland, to be _very careful_. I have observed that you are

sometimes inaccurate in such matters, therefore be sure that you give me

Mr. Dimpfel's _very words_." Mr. Cadwallader knew French and Spanish

perfectly, but not German, and was not aware that I always conversed with

Mr. Dimpfel in the latter language. When I returned my teacher said--

"Now, Mr. Leland, can you repeat accurately _word for word_ what Mr.

Dimpfel said?" I replied:

"Yes. _Der Herr Dimpfel lasst sich grussen und meldet das er Montag

kommen wird um halb drei_. _Und er sagt weiter_ . . . "

"That will do," cried Mr. Cadwallader; "you must give it in English."

"I beg your pardon," was my grave reply, "but you asked for his very

words."

I began to write for publication in 1849. Mr. John Sartain, a great

engraver, established a magazine, to which I contributed several articles

on art subjects, subsequently many more on all subjects, and finally

every month a certain number of pages of humorous matter. A man named

Manuel Cooke established in Philadelphia a _Drawing-Room Journal_. For

this I wrote a great deal for a year or two. It paid me no money, but

gave me free admission to theatres, operas, etc., and I learned a great

deal as to the practical management of a newspaper.

The first summer after my return we went to Stonington, and thence to

visit our friends in New England, as of yore. At Dedham I had an attack

of cholera; my uncle, Dr. Stimson, gave me during the night two doses of

laudanum of fifty drops each, which cured me. Father Matthew came to

Dedham. I went with a very pretty young cousin of mine named Marie

Lizzie Fisher, since deceased, to hear him preach. After the address,

meeting the Father, I went boldly up and introduced myself to him, and

then Miss Fisher. I think that his address must have deeply affected me,

since I was obliged to stop on my way home to take a drink to steady my

nerves. It was against the law at that time to sell such "poison," so

the hotel-keeper took me and my paternal uncle, George, who treated, down

into the cellar, where he had concealed some Hollands. I can remember

that that pleasant summer in Dedham I, one Sunday morning in the church

during service, composed a poem, which in after years even found its way

into "The Poets and Poetry of America." It began with the words--

"O'er an old ruined doorway

Philosophus hung,

And madly his bell-cap

And bauble he swung."

It was a wild mixture of cosmopolitanism and Hamletism, and it indicates

accurately the true state of my _cor cordium_ at that time. Earnest

thought, or a yearning for truth, and worldly folly, were playing a game

of battledore and shuttlecock, and I was the feathered cork. There is a

song without words by Mendelssohn, which sets forth as clearly as

Shakespeare or Heine could have done in words, deep melancholy or

unavoidable suffering expressing itself merrily and gaily in a manner

which is both touching and beautiful, or sweet and sad. Without any self-

consciousness or display of sentimentalism, I find deep traces of this in

many little poems or sketches which I wrote at that time, and which have

now been forgotten. I had been in Arcadia; I was now in a very pleasant

sunny Philistia; but I could not forget the past. And I never forgot it.

Once in Paris, in the opera, I used in jest emphatically the Russian word

_harrascho_, "good," when a Russian stranger in the next box smiled

joyously, and rising, waved his glove to me. Once in a brilliant soiree

in Philadelphia there was a Hungarian Count, an exile, and talking with

him in English, I let fall for a joke "_Bassama terem-tete_!" He grasped

my hand, and, forgetting all around, entered into a long conversation. It

was like the American who, on finding an American cent in the streets in

Paris, burst into tears. So from time to time something recalled Europe

to me.

I went now and then to New York, which I liked better than Philadelphia.

I was often a guest of Mr. Kimball. He introduced me to Dr. Rufus

Griswold, a strange character and a noted man of letters. He was to his

death so uniformly a friend to me, and so untiring in his efforts to aid

me, that I cannot find words to express his kindness nor the gratitude

which I feel. He became the editor of a literary magazine which was

really far in advance of the time. It did not last long; while it

endured I supplied for it monthly reviews of foreign literature.

There were not many linguists on the American press in those days, and my

reviews of works in half-a-dozen languages induced some one to pay a high

compliment to the editor. It was Bayard Taylor, I believe, who, hearing

this, declared honestly, and as a friend, that I alone deserved the

credit. This was repeated by some one to Dr. Griswold in such a form

that he thought _I_ had been talking against him, though I had never

spoken to a soul about it. The result was that the Doctor promptly

dismissed me, and I felt hurt. Mr. Kimball met me and laughed, saying,

"The next time you meet the Doctor just go resolutely at him and _replace

yourself_. Don't allow him a word." So, meeting Dr. Griswold a few days

after in Philadelphia, I went boldly up and said, "You must come at once

with me and take a drink--immediately!" The Doctor went like a lamb--not

to the slaughter, but to its milk--and when he had drunk a comforting

grog, I attacked him boldly, and declared that I had never spoken a word

to a living soul as to the authorship of the reviews--which was perfectly

true, for I never broke the golden rule of "contributorial anonymity." So

the Doctor put me on the staff again. But to the end of his life I was

always with him a privileged character, and could take, if I chose, the

most extraordinary liberties, though he was one of the most irritable and

vindictive men I ever met, if he fancied that he was in any way too

familiarly treated.

Kossuth came to America, and I was almost squeezed to death--right

against a pretty German girl--in the crowd at his reception in

Philadelphia. At the dinner in New York I met at Kimball's house Franz

Pulszky, and sat by his wife. I have since seen him many times in Buda-

Pest.

There lived in Philadelphia a gentleman named Rodney Fisher. He had been

for many years a partner in an English house in Canton, and also lived in

England. He had long been an intimate friend of Russel Sturgis,

subsequently of "Baring Brothers." He was a grand-nephew of Caesar

Rodney, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and a son

of Judge Fisher, of Delaware. He was a man of refined and agreeable

manners and an admirable relater of his innumerable experiences in Europe

and the East. His wife had been celebrated for her beauty. When I first

met her in her own house she seemed to me to be hardly thirty years of

age, and I believed at first she was one of her own daughters. She was

without exception the most amiable, I may say lovable person whom I ever

met, and I never had a _nuance_ or shade of difference of opinion with

her, or know an instant during which I was not devoted to her. I visited

his house and fell in love with his daughter Belle, to whom I became,

after about a year, engaged. We were not, however, married till five

years after. Thackeray, whom I knew well, said to a Mr. Curtis Raymond,

of Boston, not long before leaving for England, that she was the most

beautiful woman whom he had seen in America. I cannot help recording

this.

I need not say that, notwithstanding my terrible anxiety as to my future,

from this time I led a very happy life. There was in Philadelphia a very

wealthy lady called its Queen. This was Mrs. James Rush. She had built

the finest house in our city, and placed in it sixty thousand dollars'

worth of furniture. "_E un bel palazzo_!" said an Italian tenor one

evening to me at a reception there. This lady, who had read much, had

lived long in Europe and "knew cities and men." To say that she was kind

to me would feebly express her kindness. It is true that we were by much

mutual knowledge rendered congenial. She invited me to attend her weekly

receptions, &c., with Miss Fisher. There we met and were introduced to

all the celebrated people who passed through Philadelphia. One evening I

had there, for instance, a conversation in German with Mme. Sontag, the

great singer, as with Jerome Bonaparte, the nephew.

When the summer came I joined Mr. Fisher and his two daughters--the

second was named Mary--in a tour. We went to New York, thence up the

Hudson, and eastward to Boston. After a day's travel we came to a town

on the frontier line, where we had to stop for two hours. Mr. Fisher and

I, being very thirsty and fatigued, went into a saloon in which were two

bars or counters. Advancing to the second of these, I asked for brandy.

"We don't sell no brandy here," replied the man. "This is in

Massachusetts: go to the other bar--that is in New York." In an instant

we left New England for the Middle States, and refreshed ourselves.

Thence we went to Springfield and saw the armoury, where guns are made.

Thence to Boston, where we stopped at a hotel. I went with Miss Belle

Fisher for a day's excursion to Dedham, where my mother and sisters were

on a visit. It was very pleasant.

From Boston we went to Newport, and stayed at the Ocean House. There I

found Milton Sanford, a connection of mine and a noted character. He had

lived in Florence and known Browning and his wife. He was, I believe,

uncle of Miss Kate Field. He introduced me to Colonel Colt, the

celebrated inventor or re-discoverer of the revolver; to Alf. Jaell, a

very great pianist; and Edward Marshall, a brother of Humphrey Marshall.

Sanford, Colt, Marshall, and I patronised the pistol-gallery every day,

nor did we abstain from mint-juleps. I found that, in shooting, Colonel

Colt could beat me _at the word_, but that I always had the best of it at

a deliberate "take-your-time" shot. There, too, were the two brothers

Burnett, whom I had met long before in Heidelberg. What with drives and

balls and other gaiety, the time passed pleasantly enough.

As I spoke German, I became intimate with Jaell. He could not sing at

all. Once I suggested to him that he should compose variations on an

air, a German popular song. For a day or two he hummed it as well as he

could. On the third morning he took me into a room where there was a

piano, and asked me to sing while he played accompaniments. All at once

he said, "Stop! I have got it!" and then he played the air with

marvellously beautiful variations. He was a great genius, but I never

heard him play in public as he played then. He was in a "high hour." It

was wonderful. I may here say that in after years, while living at a

hotel, I became well acquainted with Thalberg, and especially with Ole

Bull, the violinist, who told me much about Heine.

So time rolled on for three years. I passed my examination and took an

office in Third Street, with a sign proclaiming that I was attorney-at-

law and _Avokat_. During six months I had two clients and made exactly

three pounds. Then, the house being wanted, I left and gave up law. This

was a very disheartening time for me. I had a great many friends who

could easily have put collecting and other business in my hands, but none

of them did it. I felt this very keenly. Quite apart from a young man's

pushing himself, despite every obstacle, there is the great truth that

sometimes the obstacles or bad luck become insuperable. Mine did at this

time.

The author of "Gossip of the Century" has well remarked that "it has been

said that however quickly a clever lad may have run up the ladder,

whether of fame or fortune, it will always be found that he was lucky

enough to find some one who put his foot on the first rung." Which is

perfectly true, as I soon found, if not in law, at least in literature.

I went more than once to New York, hoping to obtain literary employment.

One day Dr. Rufus Griswold came to me in great excitement. Mr.

Barnum--the great showman--and the Brothers Beech were about to establish

a great illustrated weekly newspaper, and he was to be the editor and I

the assistant. It is quite true that he had actually taken the post, for

which he did not care twopence, only to provide a place for me, and he

had tramped all over New York for hours in a fearful storm to find me and

to announce the good news.

Then work began for me in tremendous earnest. Let the reader imagine

such a paper as the London _Illustrated News_ with one editor and one

assistant! Three men could not have read our exchanges, and I was

expected to do that and all the minor casual writing for cuts, or cutting

down and occasional outside work. And yet even Mr. Barnum, who should

have had more sense, one day, on coming in, expressed his amazement on

seeing about a cartload of country exchanges which I had not opened. But

there was something in Philadelphia which made all work seem play to me,

and I long laboured from ten in the morning till midnight. My assiduity

attracted attention.

Dr. Griswold was always a little "queer," and I used to scold and reprove

him for it. He had got himself into great trouble by his remarks on

Edgar A. Poe. Mr. Kimball and others, who knew the Doctor, believed, as

I do, that there was no deliberate evil or envy in those remarks. Poe's

best friends told severe stories of him in those days--_me ipso

teste_--and Griswold, naught extenuating and setting down naught in

malice, wrote incautiously more than he should. These are the words of

another than I. But when Griswold was attacked, then he became savage.

One day I found in his desk, which he had committed to me, a great number

of further material collected to Poe's discredit. I burnt it all up at

once, and told the Doctor what I had done, and scolded him well into the

bargain. He took it all very amiably. There was also much more matter

to other men's discredit--_ascensionem expectans_--awaiting publication,

all of which I burned. It was the result of long research, and evidently

formed the material for a book. Had it ever been published, it would

have made Rome howl! But, as I said, I was angry, and I knew it would

injure Dr. Griswold more than anybody. It is a pity that I had not

always had the Doctor in hand--though I must here again repeat that, as

regards Poe, he is, in my opinion, not so much to blame as a score of

writers have made out. The tales, which were certainly most authentic,

or at least apparently so, during the life of the latter, among his best

friends regarding him, were, to say the least, discreditable, albeit that

is no excuse whatever for publishing them. I have always much disliked

the popular principle of judging men's works entirely by their lives, and

deciding against the literary merit of _Sartor Resartus_ because Carlyle

put his wife's money to his own account _in banco_.

And it is, moreover, cruel that a man, because he has been a poet or

genius or artist, must needs have every weakness (real or conjectured) in

his life served up and grinned at and chatted over, as if he forsooth

were a clergyman or some kind of make-believe saint. However, the more

vulgar a nature is the more it will gloat on gossip; and herein the most

pretentious of the higher classes show themselves no better than the

basest.

I lived at Dan Bixby's, at the corner of Park Place and Broadway, where I

came very near being shot one night by a man who mistook me, or rather my

room, for that of the one below, in which his wife was, or had been, with

another person. Being very tipsy, the injured individual went one storey

too high, and tried to burst in to shoot me with a revolver, but I

repelled him after a severe struggle, in which I had sharp work to avoid

being shot. I would much rather fight a decent duel any time than have

such a "hog-fight." I only had a loaded cane. The worst of it was that

the injured husband, having traced his wife, as he erroneously thought,

to my room, went to Bixby and the clerk, and asked who lived in it. But

as they were my friends, they dismissed him gruffly, yet believed all the

same that _I_ had "a petticoat in my wardrobe." Hence for a week all my

friends kept making cruel allusions in my presence to gay deceivers and

Don Juan _et cetera_, until in a rage I asked what the devil it all

meant, when there was an explanation by a clergyman, and I swore myself

clear. But I thought it was hard lines to have to stand the revolver,

endure all the scandal for a week, and be _innocent_ all the time withal!

That was indeed bitter in the cup!

Apropos of this small affair, I can recall a droll scene, _de eodem

genere_, which I witnessed within a week of the other. There was a

rather first-class saloon, bar, and restaurant on Broadway, kept by a

good-looking pugilistic-associated individual named George Shurragar. As

he had black eyes, and was a shoulder-hitter, and as the name in Romany

means "a captain," I daresay he was partly gypsy. And, when weary with

editorial work, I sometimes dropped in there for refreshment. One night

an elderly, vulgar individual, greatly exalted by many brandies, became

disorderly, and drawing a knife, made a grand Malay charge on all

present, _a la mok_. George Shurragar promptly settled him with a blow,

disarmed him, and "fired him out" into outer darkness. Then George

exhibited the knife. It was such a dirty, disreputable-looking

"pig-sticker," that we were all disgusted, and George cast it with

contempt into the street. Does the reader remember the scene in "The

Bohemian Girl" in which the dandy Count examines the nasty knife left

behind by the gypsy Devilshoof? It was the very counterpart of this, the

difference being that in this case it was the gypsy who despised the

instrument.

Such trivial amusing incidents and rencontres as these were matters of

almost daily occurrence to me in those days, and I fear that I incur the

reproach of padding by narrating these. Yet, as I write this, I have

just read in the "Life of Benvenuto Cellini" that he too omits the

description of a lot of exactly such adventures, as being, like the

darkey's imprisonments for stealing, "not worf mentionin'"--and confess I

felt great regret that he did so; for there is always a great deal of

local and temporal colour in anything whose proper _finale_ should be in

a police-court.

Hawthorne used to stay at Bixby's. He was a moody man, who sat by the

stove and spoke to no one. Bixby had been a publisher, and was proud

that he had first issued Hayward's "Faust" in America. He was also proud

that his hotel was much frequented by literary men and naval officers. He

was very kind to me. Once when I complained to the clerk that the price

of my rooms was too high, he replied, "Mr. Leland, the prices of all the

rooms in the house, excepting yours, were raised long ago, and Mr. Bixby

charged me strictly _not to let you know it_." Uncle Daniel was a

gentleman, and belonged to my club--the Century. When he grew older he

lived on an annuity, and was a great and privileged favourite among

actresses and singers. Thirty years later I called with him in New York

on Ada Cavendish.

After a fortnight or so, Dr. Griswold began to be very erratic. He had a

divorce case going on in Philadelphia. He went off, assuring me that

everything was in order, and never returned. The foreman came to me

saying that there was no copy, and nothing ready, and everything needed.

Here was indeed a pretty kettle of fish! For I at that time absolutely

distrusted my own ability to do all the work. I flew to Kimball, who

said, "Just put it through by strong will, and you'll succeed."

Then I went to Mr. Barnum--Uncle Barnum--who was always "as good as gold"

to me. I burst out into a statement of my griefs, mentioning

incidentally that I really could not go on as full editor, and do such

fearful work on the salary of an office-boy. He listened to it all, I am

sure with amusement, and placing his hand kindly on my shoulder as we

walked up and down the hall of the Museum, said, "You _sha'n't_ go. Don't

get into a funk. I know that you can do the work, and do it _well_. And

the salary shall be doubled--certainly!"

So the paper was brought out after all. I had great trouble for some

time to learn to write editorials. I used to go to the office of a

Sunday morn, and sit sometimes from ten till two turning over the

exchanges, and seeking for ideas. It was a dreadful ordeal. In fact, in

after times it was several years before I could seize a pen, rattle up a

subject and dash off a leader. _Now_ I can write far more easily than I

can talk. And it is a curious fact that soon after I became really

skilled at such extempore work in the opinion of the best judges, such as

Raymond, I no longer had any opportunity to practice it.

I had worked only a week or two when a rather queer, tall, roughish

Yankee was brought into the office. He worked for a while, and in a day

or two took possession of my desk and rudely informed me that he was my

superior editor and master there. He had, as many men do, mistaken

amiable politeness for humility. I replied, knowing that Mr. Beech, out

of sight, was listening to every word, that there was no master there but

Mr. Beech, and that I should keep my desk. We became affable; but I

abode my time, for I found that he was utterly incompetent to do the

work. Very soon he told me that he had an invitation to lecture in

Philadelphia. I told him that if he wished to go I would do all his work

for him. So he went, and Mr. Beech coming in, asked where Mr. --- was. I

replied that he had gone away to lecture, and that I was to do his work

during his absence. This was really too much, and the Yankee was

dismissed "in short order," the Beeches being men who made up their minds

promptly and acted vigorously. As for me, I never, shirked work of any

kind. A gentleman on a newspaper never does. The more of a snob a man

is, the more afraid he is of damaging his dignity, and the more desirous

of being "boss" and captain. But though I have terribly scandalised my

chief or proprietor by reporting a fire, I never found that I was less

respected by the typos, reporters, and subs.

I had before leaving Philadelphia published two books. One was "The

Poetry and Mystery of Dreams," which I dedicated to my fiancee, Miss

Belle Fisher. The other was an odd melange, which had appeared in

chapters in the _Knickerbocker Magazine_. It was titled _Meister Karl's

Sketch-Book_. It had no great success beyond attaining to a second

edition long after; yet Washington Irving praised it to everybody, and

wrote to me that he liked it so much that he kept it by him to nibble

ever and anon, like a Stilton cheese or a _pate de foie gras_; and here

and there I have known men, like the late Nicolas Trubner or E. L.

Bulwer, who found a strange attraction in it, but it was emphatically

caviare to the general reader. It had at least a _style_ of its own,

which found a few imitators. It ranks, I think, about _pari passu_ with

Coryatt's "Crudities," or lower.

There were two or three salons in New York where there were weekly

literary receptions, and where one could meet the principal writers of

the time. I often saw at Kimball's and other places the Misses

Wetherell, who wrote the "Wide, Wide World" and "Queechy." They were

elderly, and had so very little of the "world" in their ways, that they

occurred to me as an example of the fact that people generally write most

on what they know least about. Thus a Lowell factory-girl likes to write

a tale of ducal society in England; and when a Scotchman has less

intelligence of "jocks" and "wut" than any of his countrymen, he

compiles, and comments on, American humorists.

Once there was a grand publishers' dinner to authors where I went with

Alice and Phoebe Carey, who were great friends of mine. There I met and

talked with Washington Irving; I remember Bryant and N. P. Willis, _et

tous les autres_. Just at that time wine, &c., could only be sold in New

York "in the original packages as imported." Alice or Phoebe Carey

lamented that we were to have none at the banquet. There was a large

dish of grapes before her, and I said, "Why, there you have plenty of it

in the original packages!"

At that time very hospitable or genial hosts used to place a bottle of

brandy and glass in the gentlemen's dressing-room at an evening's

reception, and I remember it was considered a scandalous thing when a

certain old retired naval officer once emptied the whole bottle single-

handed.

Of course I was very intimate with Clark of the _Knickerbocker_, Fred

Cozzens, John Godfrey Saxe, and all the company of gay and festive

humorists who circled about that merry magazine. There was never

anything quite like the _Knickerbocker_, and there never will be again.

It required a sunny, genial social atmosphere, such as we had before the

war, and never after; an easy writing of gay and cultivated men for one

another, and not painfully elaborating jocosities or seriosities for the

million as in--But never mind. It sparkled through its summer-time, and

oh! how its readers loved it! I sometimes think that I would like to

hunt up the old title-plate with Diedrich Knickerbocker and his pipe, and

issue it again every month to a few dozen subscribers who loved quaint

odds and ends, till I too should pass away!

It was easy enough to foresee that a great illustrated weekly, with

actually one young man, and generally no more, to do all the literary

work could not last long. And yet the _New York Times_, or some such

journal, said that the work was very well done, and that the paper did

well until I left. Heaven knows that I worked hard enough on it, and,

what was a great deal to boast of in those days, never profited one

farthing beyond free tickets to plays, which I had little time to use.

And yet my pay was simply despicably small. I had great temptations to

write up certain speculative enterprises, and never accepted one. Our

circulation sometimes reached 150,000. And if the publishers (excepting

Barnum) had ever shown me anything like thanks or kindness for gratuitous

zeal and interest which I took, I could have greatly aided them. One

day, for instance, I was asked to write a description of a new ferry. I

went there, and the proprietor intimated that he would pay a large sum

for an article which would point out the advantage or profit which would

accrue from investing in his lots. I told him that if it were really

true that such was the case, I would do it for nothing, but that I never

made money behind my salary. I began to weary of the small Yankee greed

and griping and "thanklessness" which I experienced. There were editors

in New York who, for less work, earned ten times the salary which I

received. I was not sorry when I heard that some utterly inexperienced

New England clergyman had been engaged to take my place. So I returned

to Philadelphia. The paper very soon came to grief. I believe that with

Barnum alone I could have made it a great success. We had Frank Leslie

for chief engraver, and he was very clever and ambitious. I had a

knowledge of art, literature, and foreign life and affairs, which could

have been turned, with Leslie's co-operation, to great advantage. I

needed an office with a few books for reference, at least three or four

literary aids, and other ordinary absolutely necessary facilities for

work. All that I literally had was a space half-portioned off from the

engine-room, where a dozen blackguard boys swore and yelled as it were at

my elbow, a desk, a chair, and a pair of scissors, ink, and paste. This

wretched scrimping prevailed through the whole business, and thus it was

expected to establish a great first-class American illustrated newspaper.

It is sometimes forgotten in the United States that to make a vast

success, something is requisite beyond enterprise and economy, and that

it is a very poor policy to screw your _employes_ down to the last cent,

and overwork them, and make business needlessly irksome, when they have

it in their power to very greatly advance your interests. I dwell on

this because it is a common error everywhere. I have in my mind a case

in which an employer, who lived "like a prince," boasted to me how little

he paid his men, and how in the long-run it turned out bitterly to his

loss in many ways. Those who had no principle robbed him, while the

honest, who would have made his interests their own, left him. I have

seen business after business broken up in this way. While the principal

is in vigour and life, he may succeed with mere servants who are poorly

paid; then, after a time, some younger partner, who has learned his

morals from the master, pushes him out, or he dies, and the business is

worthless, because there is not a soul in it who cares for it, or who has

grown up with any common sense of interest with the heirs.

I remember one day being obliged in New York to listen to a conversation

between two men of business. One owed the other a large sum, honestly

enough--of that there was no question between them; but he thought that

there was a legal way to escape payment, while the other differed from

him. So they argued away for a long time. There was not a word of

reproach; the creditor would have cheated the debtor in the same way if

he could; the only point of difference was whether it could be done. An

_employe_ who can remain in such surroundings and be honest must be

indeed a miracle of integrity, and, if he do not over-reach them in the

long-run, one of stupidity. I might have made "house and land" out of

the newspaper had I been so disposed.

Of all the men whom I met in those days in the way of business, Mr.

Barnum, the great American humbug, was by far the honestest and freest

from guile or deceit, or "ways that were dark, or tricks that were vain."

He was very kind-hearted and benevolent, and gifted with a sense of fun

which was even stronger than his desire for dollars. I have talked very

confidentially with him many times, for he was very fond of me, and

always observed that to engineer some grotesque and startling paradox

into tremendous notoriety, to make something _immensely_ puzzling with a

stupendous _sell_ as postscript, was more of a motive with him than even

the main chance. He was a genius like Rabelais, but one who employed

business and humanity for material instead of literature, just as Abraham

Lincoln, who was a brother of the same band, employed patriotism and

politics. All three of them expressed vast problems, financial,

intellectual, or natural, by the brief arithmetic of a joke. Mr. Barnum

was fearfully busy in those days; what with buying elephants, wooing two-

headed girls for his Grand Combination, laying out towns, chartering

banks, and inventing unheard-of wonders for the unrivalled collection of

one hundred and fifty million unparalleled moral marvels; but he always

found time to act as unpaid contributor to a column of humorous items

which I always published. I have said that I had no assistant; I forgot

that I always had Mr. Barnum as assistant humorous editor for that

department. All at once, when least expected, he would come smiling in

with some curiosity of literature such as the "reverse"--

"Lewd did I live & evil I did dwel,"

or a fresh conundrum or joke, with all his heart and soul full of it, and

he would be as delighted over the proof as if to see himself in print was

a startling novelty. We two had "beautiful times" over that column, for

there was a great deal of "boy" still left in Barnum; nor was I by any

means deficient in it. One thing I set my face against firmly: I never

would in any way whatever write up, aid, or advertise the great show or

museum, or cry up the elephant. I was resolved to leave the paper first.

On that humorous column Barnum always deferred to me, even as a small

school-boy defers to an elder on the question of a game of marbles or hop-

scotch. There was no affectation or play in it; we were both quite in

earnest. I think I see him now, coming smiling in like a harvest-moon,

big with some new joke, and then we sat down at the desk and "edited."

How we would sit and mutually and admiringly read to one another our

beautiful "good things," the world forgetting, by the world forgot! And

yet I declare that never till this instant did the great joke of it all

ever occur to me--that two men of our experiences could be so simply

pleased! Those humorous columns, collected and republished in a book,

might truly bear on the title-page, "By Barnum and Hans Breitmann." And

we were both of the opinion that it really would make a very nice book

indeed. We were indeed both "boys" over it at play.

The entire American press expected, as a matter of course, that the

_Illustrated News_ would be simply an advertisement for the great

showman, and, as I represented to Mr. Barnum, this would ere long utterly

ruin the publication. I do not now really know whether I was quite right

in this, but it is very much to Mr. Barnum's credit that he never

insisted on it, and that in his own paper he was conspicuous by his

absence. And here I will say that, measured by the highest and most

refined standard, there was more of the gentleman in Phineas T. Barnum

than the world imagined, and very much more than there was in a certain

young man in good society who once expressed in my hearing disgust at the

idea of even speaking to "the showman."

Henry Ward Beecher was a great friend of Barnum and the Beaches, of which

some one wrote--

"No wonder Mr. Alfred Beach

Prefers, as noblest preacher,

A man who is not only Beach,

But even more so--Beecher."

He came very frequently into our office; but I cannot recall any saying

of his worth recording.

There was also a brother of H. W. Longfellow, a clergyman, who often

visited me, of whom I retain a most agreeable recollection.

The newsboys who clustered round the outer door were divided in opinion

as to me. One party thought I was Mr. Barnum, and treated me with

profound respect. The other faction cried aloud after me, "Hy! you ---

---!"

Mr. Barnum wanted me to write his Life. This would have been amusing

work and profitable, but I shrunk from the idea of being identified with

it. I might as well have done it, for I believe that Dr. Griswold

performed the task, and the public never knew or cared anything about it.

But my jolly companions at Dan Bixby's used to inquire of me at what hour

we fed the monkeys, and whether the Great Gyascutus ever gave me any

trouble; and I was sensitive to such insinuations.

At this time Mr. Barnum's great moral curiosity was a bearded lady, a

jolly and not bad-looking Frenchwoman, whose beard was genuine enough, as

I know, having pulled it. My own beard has been described by a French

newspaper as _une barbe de Charlemagne_, a very polite pun, but hers was

much fuller. It was soft as floss silk. After a while the capillary

attraction ceased to draw, and Mr. Barnum thought of an admirable plan to

revive it. He got somebody to prosecute him for false pretences and

imposture, on the ground that Madame was a man. Then Mr. Barnum had,

with the greatest unwillingness and many moral apologies, a medical

examination; they might as sensibly have examined Vashishta's cow to find

out if it was an Irish bull. Then came the attack on the impropriety of

the whole thing, and finally Mr. Barnum's triumphant surrebutter, showing

he had most unwillingly been _goaded_ by the attacks of malevolent

wretches into an unavoidable course of defence. Of course, spotless

innocence came out triumphant. Mr. Barnum's system of innocence was

truly admirable. When he had concocted some monstrous cock-and-bull

curiosity, he was wont to advertise that "it was with very great

reluctance that he presented this unprecedented marvel to the world, as

doubts had been expressed as to its genuineness--doubts inspired by the

actually apparently incredible amount of attraction in it. All that we

ask of an enlightened and honest public is, that it will pass a fair

verdict and decide whether it be a humbug or not." So the enlightened

public paid its quarters of a dollar, and decided that it _was_ a humbug,

and Barnum abode by their decision, and then sent it to another city to

be again decided on.

I returned to Philadelphia, and to my father's house, and occupied myself

with such odds and ends of magazine and other writing as came in my way,

and always reading and studying. I was very much depressed at this time,

yet not daunted. My year in New York had familiarised me with

characteristic phases of American life and manners; my father thought I

had gone through a severe mill with rather doubtful characters, and once

remarked that I should not judge too harshly of business men, for I had

been unusually unfortunate in my experience.

A not unfrequent visitor at our house in Philadelphia was our near

neighbour, Henry C. Carey, the distinguished scholar and writer on

political economy, who had been so extensively robbed of ideas by

Bastiat, and who retook his own, not without inflicting punishment. He

was a handsome, black-eyed, white-haired man, with a very piercing

glance. During the war, when men were sad and dull, and indeed till his

death, Mr. Carey's one glorious and friendly extravagance was to assemble

every Sunday afternoon all his intimates, including any distinguished

strangers, at his house, round a table, in rooms magnificently hung with

pictures, and give everybody, _ad libitum_, hock which cost him sixteen

shillings a bottle. I occasionally obliged him by translating for him

German letters, &c., and he in return revised my pamphlet on

Centralization _versus_ State Rights in 1863. H. C. Baird, a very able

writer of his school, was his nephew. The latter had two or three

sisters, whom I recall as charming girls while I was a law-student. There

were many beauties in Philadelphia in those days, and prominent at the

time, though as yet a schoolgirl, was the since far-famed Emily

Schaumberg, albeit I preferred Miss Belle Fisher, a descendant maternally

of the famous Callender beauties, and by her father's side allied to Miss

Vining, the American Queen of Beauty during the Revolution at

Washington's republican court. There was also a Miss Lewis, whose great

future beauty I predicted while as yet a child, to the astonishment of a

few, "which prophecy was marvellously fulfilled." Also a Miss Wharton,

since deceased, on whom George Boker after her death wrote an exquisite

poem. The two were, each of their kind, of a beauty which I have rarely,

if ever, seen equalled, and certainly never surpassed, in Italy. How I

could extend the list of those too good and fair to live, who have passed

away from my knowledge!--Miss Nannie Grigg--Miss Julia Biddle!--_Mais ou

sont les neiges d'antan_?

Thus far my American experiences had not paid well. I reflected that if

I had remained in Paris I should have done far better. When I left, I

knew that the success of Louis Napoleon was inevitable. Three newspapers

devoted to him had appeared on the Boulevards in one day. There was

money at work, and workmen such as lived in the Hotel de Luxembourg,

gentlemen who could not only plan barricades but fight at them, were in

great demand, as _honest_ men always are in revolutions. Louis Napoleon

was very anxious indeed to attach to him the men of February, and many

who had not done one-tenth or one-twentieth of what I had, had the door

of fortune flung wide open to them. My police-_dossier_ would have been

literally a diploma of honour under the new Empire, for, after all, the

men of February, Forty-eight, were the ones who led off, and who all bore

the highest reputation for honour. All that I should have required would

have been some ambitious man of means to aid--and such men abound in

Paris--to have risen fast and high. As it turned out, it was just as

well in the end that I neither went in as a political adventurer under

Louis Napoleon, nor wrote the Life of Barnum. But no one knew in those

days how Louis would turn out.

I have but one word to add to this. The secret of the Revolution of

February had been in very few hands, which was the secret of its success.

Any one of us could have secured fortune and "honours," or at least

"orders," by betraying it. But we would as soon have secured orders for

the pit of hell as done so. This was known to Louis Napoleon, and he

must have realised who these men of iron integrity were for he was very

curious and inquiring on this subject. Now, I here claim it as a great,

as a surpassing honour for France, and as something absolutely without

parallel in history, that several hundred men could be found who could

not only keep this secret, but manage so very wisely as they did. Louis

Blanc was an example of these honest, unselfish men. I came to know him

personally many years after, during his exile in London.

One morning George H. Boker came to me and informed me that there was a

writing editor wanted on the Philadelphia _Evening Bulletin_. Its

proprietor was Alexander Cummings. The actual editor was Gibson

Bannister Peacock, who was going to Europe for a six months' tour, and

some one was wanted to take his place. Mr. Peacock, as I subsequently

found, was an excellent editor, and a person of will and character. He

was skilled in music and a man of culture. I retain grateful

remembrances of him. I was introduced and installed. With all my

experience I had not yet quite acquired the art of extemporaneous

editorial composition. My first few weeks were a severe trial, but I

succeeded. I was expected to write one column of leader every day,

review books, and "paragraph" or condense articles to a brief item of

news. In which I succeeded so well, that some time after, when a work

appeared on writing for the press, the author, who did not know me at

all, cited one of my leaders and one of my paragraphs as models. It

actually made little impression on me at the time--I was so busy.

I had been at work but a short time, when one day Mr. Cummings received a

letter from Mr. Peacock in Europe, which he certainly had hardly glanced

at, which he threw to me to read. I did so, and found in it a passage to

this effect: "I am sorry that you are disappointed as to Mr. Leland, but

I am confident that you will find him perfectly capable in time." This

gave me a bitter pang, but I returned it to Mr. Cummings, who soon after

came into the office and expressed frankly his great regret, saying that

since he had written to Mr. Peacock he had quite changed his opinion.

I enjoyed this new life to the utmost. Mr. Cummings, to tell the truth,

pursued a somewhat tortuous course in politics and religion. He was a

Methodist. One day our clerk expressed himself as to the latter in these

words:--"They say he is a Jumper, but others think he has gone over to

the Holy Rollers." The Jumpers were a sect whose members, when the Holy

Spirit seized them, jumped up and down, while the Holy Rollers under such

circumstances rolled over and over on the floor. We also advocated

Native Americanism and Temperance, which did not prevent Mr. Peacock and

myself and a few _habitues_ of the office from going daily at eleven

o'clock to a neighbouring lager-beer _Wirthschaft_ for a refreshing glass

and lunch. One day the bar-tender, Hermann, a very nice fellow, said to

me, "I remember when you always had a bottle of Rudesheimer every day for

dinner. That was at Herr Lehr's, in Heidelberg. I always waited on

you."

Whoever shall write a history of Philadelphia from the Thirties to the

end of the Fifties will record a popular period of turbulence and

outrages so extensive as to now appear almost incredible. These were so

great as to cause grave doubts in my mind whether the severest despotism,

guided by justice, would not have been preferable to such republican

license as then prevailed in the city of Penn. I refer to the absolute

and uncontrolled rule of the Volunteer Fire Department, which was divided

into companies (each having clumsy old fire apparatus and hose), all of

them at deadly feud among themselves, and fighting freely with pistols,

knives, iron spanners, and slung shot, whenever they met, whether at

fires or in the streets. Of these regular firemen, _fifty thousand_ were

enrolled, and to these might have been added almost as many more, who

were known as runners, bummers, and hangers-on. Among the latter were a

great number of incendiaries, all of whom were well known to and

encouraged by the firemen. Whenever the latter wished to meet some rival

company, either to test their mutual skill or engage in a fight, a fire

was sure to occur; the same always happened when a fire company from some

other city visited Philadelphia.

This gave occasion to an incredible amount of blackmailing, since all

house-owners were frequently called on to contribute money to the

different companies, sometimes as a subscription for ball-tickets or

repairs. It was well understood, and generally pretty plainly expressed,

that those who refused to pay might expect to be burned out or neglected.

The result of it all was a general fear of the firemen, a most degrading

and contemptible subservience to them by politicians of all kinds, a

terrible and general growth and spread of turbulence and coarse vulgarity

among youth, and finally, such a prevalence of conflagration that no one

who owned a house could hear the awful tones of the bell of Independence

Hall without terror. Fires were literally of nightly occurrence, and

that they were invariably by night was due to the incendiary "runner." A

slight examination of the newspapers and cheap broadside literature of

that time will amply confirm all that I here state. "Jakey" was the

typical fireman; he was the brutal hero of a vulgar play, and the ideal

of nineteen youths out of twenty. For a generation or more all society

felt the degrading influences of this rowdyism in almost every circle--for

there were among the vast majority of men not very many who respected,

looked up to, or cared for anything really cultured or refined. I have a

large collection of the popular songs of Philadelphia of that time, in

all of which there is a striving downwards into blackguardism and

brutality, vileness and ignorance, which has no parallel in the

literature of any other nation. The French of the _Pere Duchene_ school

may be nastier, and, as regards aristocrats, as bloody, but for general

all-round _vulgarity_, the state of morals developed among the people at

the time of which I speak was literally without its like. It is very

strange that Pliny also speaks of the turbulence or rowdyism of the

firemen of Rome.

I remember that even in Walnut Street, below Thirteenth Street, before my

father's house (this being then by far the most respectable portion of

Philadelphia), it happened several nights in succession that rival fire-

companies, running side by side, fought as they ran, with torches and

knives, while firing pistols. There was a young lady named Mary Bicking,

who lived near us. I asked her one day if she had ever seen a man shot;

and when she answered "No," I replied, "Why don't you look out of your

window some night and see one?"

The southern part of the city was a favourite battleground, and I can

remember hearing ladies who lived in Pine Street describe how, on Sunday

summer afternoons, they could always hear, singly or in volleys, the

shots of the revolvers and shouts of the firemen as they fought in

Moyamensing.

Every effort to diminish these evils, or to improve the fire department

in any way whatever, was vigorously opposed by the rowdies, who

completely governed the city. The first fire-alarm electric telegraphs

were a great offence to firemen, and were quietly destroyed; the steam-

engines were regarded by them as deadly enemies. But the first great

efficient reform in the Philadelphia fire department, and the most

radical of all, was the establishment of a fire-detective department

under a fire-marshal, whose business it was to investigate and punish all

cases of incendiarism. For it was simply incendiarism, encouraged and

supported by the firemen themselves, which caused nineteen-twentieths of

all these disasters; it was the _fires_ which were the sole support of

the whole system.

I was much indebted for understanding all this, and acting on it boldly,

as I did, to the city editor and chief reporter on the _Evening

Bulletin_, Caspar Souder. The Mayor of the city was Richard Vaux, a man

of good family and education, and one who had seen in his time cities and

men, he having once in his youth, on some great occasion, waltzed with

the Princess--now Queen--Victoria. Being popular, he was called _Vaux

populi_. I wrote very often leaders urging Mayor Vaux by name to

establish a fire-detective department. So great was the indignation

caused among the firemen, that I incurred no small risk in writing them.

But at last, when I published for one week an article every day

clamouring for a reform, Mayor Vaux--as he said directly to Mr. Souder,

"in consequence of my appeals"--vigorously established a fire-marshal

with two aids. By my request, the office was bestowed on a very

intelligent and well-educated person, Dr. Blackburne, who had been a

surgeon in the Mexican war, then a reporter on our journal, and finally a

very clever superior detective. He was really not only a born detective,

but to a marked degree a man of scientific attainments and a skilled

statistician. His anecdotes and comments as to pyromaniacs of different

kinds were as entertaining and curious as anything recorded by Gaboriau.

Some of the most interesting experiences of my life were when I went with

Dr. Blackburne from place to place where efforts had been made to burn

houses, and noted the unerring and Red-Indian skill with which he

distinguished the style of work, and identified the persons and names of

the incendiaries. One of these "fire-bugs" was noted for invariably

setting fire to houses in such a manner as to destroy as many inmates as

possible. If there were an exit, he would block it up. Dr. Blackburne

took me to a wooden house in which the two staircases led to a very small

vestibule about three feet square before the front door. This space had

been filled with diabolical ingenuity with a barrel full of combustibles,

so that every one who tried to escape by the only opening below would be

sure to perish. Fortunately, the combustibles in the barrel went out

after being ignited. "I know that fellow by his style," remarked the

Doctor, "and I shall arrest him at four o'clock this afternoon."

This fire-detective department and the appointment of Blackburne was the

real basis and beginning of all the reforms which soon followed, leading

to the abolition of the volunteer system and the establishment of paid

_employes_. And as I received great credit for it then, my work being

warmly recognised and known to all the newspaper reporters and editors in

the city, who were the best judges of it, as they indeed are of all

municipal matters, I venture to record it here as something worth

mentioning. And though I may truly say that at the time I was so busy

that I made no account of many such things, they now rise up from time to

time as comforting assurances that my life has not been quite wasted.

This reminds me that I had not been very long on the newspaper, and had

just begun to throw out editorials with ease, when Mr. Cummings said to

me one day that I did not realise what a power I held in my hand, but

that I would soon find it out. Almost immediately after, in noticing

some article or book which was for sale at No. 24 Chestnut Street, I

inadvertently made reference to 24 Walnut Street. Very soon came the

proprietor of the latter place, complaining that I had made life a burden

to him, because fifty people had come in one day to buy something which

he had not. I reflected long and deeply on this, with the result of

observing that to influence people it is not at all necessary to argue

with them, but simply be able to place before their eyes such facts as

you choose. It is very common indeed to hear people in England, who

should have more sense, declare that "nobody minds what the newspapers

say." But the truth is, that if any man has an eye to read and memory to

retain, he _must_, willy-nilly, be influenced by reading, and selection

from others by an able editor is often only a most ingenious and artful

method of arguing. It has very often happened to me, when I wanted to

enforce some important point, to clothe it as an anecdote or innocent

"item," and bid the foreman set it in the smallest type in the most

obscure corner. And the reader is influenced by it, utterly

unconsciously, just as we all are, and just as surely as all reflection

follows sensation--as it ever will--into the Ages!

There was much mutual robbing by newspapers of telegraphic news in those

days. Once it befell that just before the _Bulletin_ went to press a

part of the powder-mills of Dupont Brothers in Delaware blew up, and we

received a few lines of telegram, stating that Mr. Dupont himself had

saved the great magazine by actually walking on a burning building with

buckets of water, and preventing the fire from extending, at a most

incredible risk of his life. Having half-an-hour's time, I expanded this

telegram into something dramatic and thrilling. A great New York

newspaper, thinking, from the shortness of time which elapsed in

publishing, that it was all telegraphed to us, printed it as one of its

own from Delaware, just as I had written it out--which I freely forgive,

for verily its review of my last work but one was such as to make me

inquire of myself in utter amazement, "Can this be I?"--"so gloriously

was I exalted to the higher life." The result of this review was a sworn

and firm determination on my part to write another book of the same kind,

in which I should show myself more worthy of such cordial encouragement;

which latter book was the "Etruscan Legends." I ought indeed to have

dedicated it to the _New York Tribune_, a journal which has done more for

human freedom than any other publication in history.

I do not know certainly whether the brave Dupont whom I mentioned was the

Charley Dupont who went to school with me at Jacob Pierce's, nor can I

declare that a very gentlemanly old Frenchman who came to see him in 1832

was his father or grandfather, the famous old Dupont de l'Eure of the

French Revolution. But I suppose it was the latter who carried and

transformed the art of manufacturing moral gunpowder in France to the

making material explosives in America. Yes, moral or physical, we are

all but gunpowder and smoke--_pulvis et umbra sumus_!

There was a morning paper in Philadelphia which grieved me sore by

pilfering my news items as I wrote them. So I one day gave a marvellous

account of the great Volatile Chelidonian or Flying Turtle of Surinam, of

which a specimen had just arrived in New York. It had a shell as of

diamonds blent with emeralds and rubies, and bat-like wings of iridescent

hue surpassing the opal, and a tail like a serpent. Our contemporary,

nothing doubting, at once published this as original matter in a letter

from New York, and had to bear the responsibility. But I did not invest

my inventiveness wisely; I should have shared the idea with Barnum.

There was in Philadelphia at this time a German bookseller named

Christern. It was the thought of honourable and devoted men which

recalled him to my mind. I had made his acquaintance long before in

Munich, where he had been employed in the principal bookseller's shop of

the city. His "store" in Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, became a kind of

club, where I brought such of my friends as were interested in German

literature. We met there and talked German, and examined and discussed

all the latest European works. He had a burly, honest, rather droll

assistant named Ruhl, who had been a student in Munich, then a

Revolutionist and exile, and finally a refugee to America. To this shop,

too, came Andrekovitch, whom I had last known in Paris as a speculator on

the Bourse, wearing a cloak lined with sables. In America he became a

chemical manufacturer. When at last an amnesty was proclaimed, his

brother asked him to return to Poland, promising a support, which he

declined. He too was an honourable, independent man. About this time

the great--I forget his name; or was it Schoffel?--who had been President

of the Frankfort Revolutionary Parliament, opened a lager-beer

establishment in Race Street. I went there several times with Ruhl.

George Boker and Frank Wells, who subsequently succeeded me on the

_Bulletin_, would drop in every day after the first edition had gone to

press, and then there would be a lively time. Frank Wells was, _par

eminence_, the greatest punster Philadelphia ever produced. He was in

this respect appalling. We had a sub-editor or writer named Ernest

Wallace, who was also a clever humorist. One day John Godfrey Saxe came

in. He was accustomed among country auditors and in common sanctums to

carry everything before him with his jokes. In half-an-hour we

extinguished him. Having declared that no one could make a pun on his

name, which he had not heard before, Wallace promptly replied, "It's

_axing_ too much, I presume; but did you ever hear _that_?" Saxe owned

that he had not.

George H. Boker, whose name deserves a very high place in American

literature as a poet, and in history as one who was of incredible

service, quietly performed, in preserving the Union during the war, was

also eminently a wit and humorist. We always read first to one another

all that we wrote. He had so trained himself from boyhood to

self-restraint, calmness, and the _nil admirari_ air, which, as Dallas

said, is "the Corinthian ornament of a gentleman" (I may add especially

when of Corinthian brass), that his admirable jests, while they gained in

clearness and applicability, lost something of that rattle of the

impromptu and headlong which renders Irish and Western humour so easy. I

recorded the _bon mots_ and merry stories which passed among us all in

the _sanctum_ in articles for our weekly newspaper, under the name of

"Social Hall Sketches" (a social hall in the West is a steamboat smoking-

room). Every one of us received a name. Mr. Peacock was Old Hurricane,

and George Boker, being asked what his pseudonym should be, selected that

of Bullfrog. These "Social Hall Sketches" had an extended circulation in

American newspapers, some for many years. One entirely by me, entitled

"Opening Oysters," is to be found in English almanacs, &c., to this day.

It was, I think, or am sure, in 1855 that some German in Pennsylvania,

instead of burying his deceased wife, burned the body. This called forth

a storm of indignant attack in the newspapers. It was called an

irreligious, indecent act. I wrote an editorial in which I warmly

defended it. According to Bulwer in the "Last Days of Pompeii," the

early Christians practised it. Even to this day Urns and torches are

common symbols in Christian burying-grounds, and we speak of "ashes" as

more decent than mouldering corpses. And, finally, I pointed out the

great advantage which it would be to the coal trade of Pennsylvania. A

man of culture said to me that it was the boldest editorial which he had

ever read. Such as it was, I believe that it was the first article

written in modern times advocating cremation. If I am wrong, I am

willing to be corrected.

To those who are unfamiliar with it, the life in an American newspaper

office seems singularly eventful and striking. A friend of mine who

visited a sanctum (ours) for the first time, said, as he left, that he

had never experienced such an interesting hour in his life. _Firstly_,

came our chief city reporter, exulting in the manner in which he had

circumvented the police, and, despite all their efforts, got, by ways

that were dark, at all the secrets of a brand-new horrible murder.

_Secondly_, a messenger with an account of how I, individually, had

kicked up the very devil in the City Councils, and set the Mayor to

condemning us, by a leader discussing certain municipal abuses.

_Thirdly_, another, to tell how I had swept one-half the city by an

article exposing its neglect, and how the sweepers and dirt-carts were

busy where none had been before for weeks, and how the contractor for

cleaning wanted to shoot me. _Fourthly_, a visit from some great

dignitary, who put his dignity very much _a l'abri_ in his pocket, to

solicit a puff. _Fifthly_, a lady who, having written a very feeble

volume of tales which had merely been gently commended in our columns,

came round in a rage to shame me by sarcasm, begging me as a parting shot

to at least _read_ a few lines of her work. _Sixthly_, a communication

from a great New York family, who, having been requested to send a short

description of a remarkable wedding-cake, sent me _one hundred and fifty

pages_ of minute history of all their ancestors and honours, with strict

directions that not a line should be omitted, and the article printed at

once most conspicuously. {225} _Seventhly_, . . . but this is a very

mild specimen of what went on all the time during office-hours. And on

this subject alone I could write a small book.

Now, at this time there came about a very great change in my life, or an

event which ultimately changed it altogether. My father had, for about

two years past, fallen into a very sad state of mind. His large property

between Chestnut and Bank Streets paid very badly, and his means became

limited. I was seriously alarmed as to his health. My dear mother had

become, I may say, paralytic; but, in truth, the physicians could never

explain the disorder. To the last she maintained her intellect, and a

miraculous cheerfulness unimpaired.

All at once a strange spirit, as of new life, came suddenly over my

father. I cannot think of it without awe. He went to work like a young

man, shook off his despair, financiered with marvellous ability, borrowed

money, collected old and long-despaired of debts, tore down the old hotel

and the other buildings, planned and bargained with architects--it was

then that I designed the facade before described--and built six stores,

two of them very handsome granite buildings, on the old site. In short,

he made of it a very valuable estate. And as he superintended with great

skill and ability the smallest details of the building, which was for

that time remarkably well executed, I thought I recognised whence it was

that I derived the strongly developed tendency for architecture which I

have always possessed. I have since made 400 copies of old churches in

England.

This was a happy period, when life was without a cloud, excepting my

mother's trouble. As my father could now well afford it, he made me an

allowance, which, with my earnings from the _Bulletin_ and other

occasional literary work, justified me in getting married. I had had a

long but still very happy engagement. So we were married by the

Episcopal ceremony at the house of my father-in-law in Tenth Street, and

a very happy wedding it was. I remember two incidents. Before the

ceremony, the Reverend Mr., subsequently Bishop Wilmer, took me, with

George Boker, into a room and explained to me the symbolism of the

marriage-ring. Now, if there was a subject on earth which I, the old

friend of Creuzer of Heidelberg, and master of Friedrich's _Symbolik_,

and Durandus, and the work "On Finger-Rings," knew all about, it was

_that_; and I never shall forget the droll look which Boker threw at me

as the discourse proceeded. But I held my peace, though sadly tempted to

set forth my own archaeological views on the subject.

The second was this: Philadelphia, as Mr. Philipps has said, abounds in

folk-lore. Some one suggested that the wedding would be a lucky one

because there was only one clergyman present. But I remarked that among

our coloured waiters there was one who had a congregation (my wife's

cousin, by the way, had a coloured bishop for coachman). However, this

sable cloud did not disturb us.

We went to New York, and were visited by many friends, and returned to

Philadelphia. We lived for the first year at the La Pierre Hotel, where

we met with many pleasant people, such as Thackeray, Thalberg, Ole Bull,

Mr. and Mrs. Choteau, of St. Louis, and others. Of Thalberg I have

already remarked, in my notes to my translation of Heine's _Salon_, that

he impressed me as a very gentlemanly, dignified, and quietly remarkable

man, whom it would be difficult to readily or really understand. "He had

unmistakably the manner peculiar to many great Germans, which, as I have

elsewhere observed, is perceptible in the _maintien_ and features of

Goethe, Humboldt, Bismarck," and Brugsch, of Berlin (whom I learned to

know in later years). Thalberg gave me the impression, which grew on me,

of a man who knew many things besides piano-playing, and that he was born

to a higher specialty. He was dignified but affable. I remember that

one day, when he, or some one present, remarked that his name was not a

common one, I made him laugh by declaring that it occurred in two pieces

in an old German ballad:--

"Ich that am BERGE stehen,

Und sohaute in das THAL;

Da hab' ich sie gesehen,

Zum aller letzten mal."

"I stood upon the _mountain_,

And looked the _valley_ o'er;

There I indeed beheld her,

But saw her never more."

Thalberg's playing was marvellously like his character or himself: Heine

calls it gentlemanly. Thackeray was marked in his manner, and showed

impulse and energy in small utterances. I may err, but I do not think he

could have endured solitude or too much of himself. He was eminently

social, and rather given at times to reckless (not deliberate or

spiteful), sarcastic or "ironic" sallies, in which he did not, with

Americans, generally come off "first best." There was a very beautiful

lady in Boston with whom the great novelist was much struck, and whom he

greatly admired, as he sent her two magnificent bronzes. Having dined

one evening at her house, he remarked as they all entered the

dining-room, "Now I suppose that, according to your American custom, we

shall all put our feet up on the chimney-piece." "Certainly," replied

his hostess, "and as your legs are so much longer than the others, you

may put your feet on top of the looking-glass," which was about ten feet

from the ground. Thackeray, I was told, was offended at this, and showed

it; he being of the "give but not take" kind. One day he said to George

Boker, when both were looking at Durer's etching of "Death, Knight, and

the Devil," of which I possess a fine copy, "Every man has his devil whom

he cannot overcome; I have two--laziness, and love of pleasure." I

remarked, "Then why the devil seek to overcome them? Is it not more

noble and sensible to yield where resistance is in vain, than to fight to

the end? Is it not a maxim of war, that he who strives to defend a

defenceless place must be put to death? Why not give in like a man?"

I had just published my translation of Heine's _Reisebilder_, and Bayard

Taylor had a copy of it. He went in company with Thackeray to New York,

and told me subsequently that they had read the work aloud between them

alternately with roars of laughter till it was finished; that Thackeray

praised my translation to the skies, and that his comments and droll

remarks on the text were delightful. Thackeray was a perfect German

scholar, and well informed as to all in the book.

Apropos of Heine, Ole Bull had known him very well, and described to me

his brilliancy in the most distinguished literary society, where in

French the German wit bore away the palm from all Frenchmen. "He flashed

and sprayed in brilliancy like a fountain." Ole Bull by some chance had

heard much of me, and we became intimate. He told me that I had

unwittingly been to him the cause of great loss. I had, while in London,

become acquainted with an odd and rather scaly fish, a German who had

been a courier, who was the keeper of a small cafe near Leicester Square,

and who enjoyed a certain fame as the inventor of the _poses plastiques_

or living statues, so popular in 1848. This man soon came over to

America, and called on me, wanting to borrow money, whereupon I gave him

the cold shoulder. According to Ole Bull, he went to the great

violinist, represented himself as my friend and as warmly commended by

me, and the heedless artist, instead of referring to me directly, took

him as impresario; the result being that he ere long ran away with the

money, and, what was quite as bad, Ole Bull's prima-donna, who was, as I

understood, specially dear to him. Ole Bull's playing has been, as I

think, much underrated by certain writers of reminiscences. There was in

it a marvellous originality.

While I was there, in the La Pierre Hotel, the first great meeting was

held at which the Republican party was organised. Though not an

_appointed_ delegate from our State, I, as an editor, took some part in

it. Little did we foresee the tremendous results which were to ensue

from that meeting! It was second only to the signing of the Declaration

of Independence, and on it was based the greatest struggle known to

history. I could have, indeed, been inscribed as a constitutional member

of it for the asking or writing my name, but that appeared to me and

others then to be a matter of no consequence compared to the work in

hand. So the _Bulletin_ became Republican; Messrs. Cummings and Peacock

seeing that that was their manifest destiny.

From that day terrible events began to manifest themselves in American

politics. The South attempted to seize Kansas with the aid of border

ruffians; Sumner was caned from behind while seated; the Southern press

became outrageous in its abuse of the North, and the North here and there

retaliated. All my long-suppressed ardent Abolition spirit now found

vent, and for a time I was allowed to write as I pleased. A Richmond

editor paid me the compliment of saying that the articles in the

_Bulletin_ were the bitterest and cleverest published in the North, but

inquired if it was wise to manifest such feeling. I, who felt that the

great strife was imminent, thought it was. Mr. Cummings thought

differently, and I was checked. For years there were many who believed

that the fearfully growing cancer could be cured with rose-water; as, for

instance, Edward Everett.

While on the _Bulletin_ I translated Heine's _Pictures of Travel_. For

it, poetry included, I was to receive three shillings a page. Even this

was never paid me in full; I was obliged to take part of the money in

engravings and books, and the publisher failed. It passed into other

hands, and many thousands of copies were sold; from all of which I, of

course, got nothing. I also became editor of _Graham's Magazine_, which

I filled recklessly with all or any kind of literary matter as I best

could, little or nothing being allowed for contributions. However, I

raised the circulation from almost nothing to 17,000. For this I

received fifty dollars (10 pounds) per month. When I finally left it,

the proprietors were eighteen months in arrears due, and tried to evade

payment, though I had specified a regular settlement every month. Finally

they agreed to pay me in monthly instalments of fifty dollars each, and

fulfilled the engagement.

Talking of the South, I forget now at what time it was that Barnum's

Museum in Philadelphia was burned, but I shall never forget a droll

incident which it occasioned. Opposite it was a hotel, and the heat was

so tremendous that the paint on the hotel was scorched, and it had begun

to burn in places. By the door stood a friend of mine in great distress.

I asked what was the matter. He replied that in the hotel was a Southern

lady who would not leave her trunks, in which there were all her diamonds

and other valuables, and that he could not find a porter to bring them

down. I was strong enough in those days. "What is the number of her

room?" "No. 22." I rushed up--it was scorching hot by this time--burst

into No. 22, and found a beautiful young lady in dire distress. I said

abruptly, "I come from Mr. --- ---; where are your trunks?" She began to

cry confusedly, "Oh, you can do _nothing_; they are very heavy."

Seeing the two large trunks, I at once, without a word, caught one by

each handle, dragged them after me bumping downstairs, the lady

following, to the door, where I found my friend, who had a carriage in

waiting. From the lady's subsequent account, it appeared that I had

occasioned her much more alarm than pleasure. She said that all at once

a great tall gentleman burst into her room, seized her trunks without a

word of apology, and dragged them downstairs like a giant; she was never

so startled in all her life! It was explained to me that, as in the

South only negroes handle trunks, the lady could not regard me exactly as

a gentleman. She was within a short ace of being burnt up, trunks and

all, but could not forget that she was from the "Sa-outh," and must needs

show it.

Apropos of this occurrence, I remember something odd which took place on

the night of the same day. There was a stylish drinking-place, kept by a

man named Guy, in Seventh Street. In the evening, when it was most

crowded, there entered a stranger, described as having been fully _seven_

feet high, and powerful in proportion, who kept very quiet, but who, on

being chaffed as the giant escaped from Barnum's Museum, grew angry, and

ended by clearing out the barroom--driving thirty men before him like

flies. Aghast at such a tremendous feat, one who remained, asked, "Who

in God's wrath are you?--haven't you a name?"

"Yes, I _have_ a name," replied the Berserker; "_I'm_ CHARLES LELAND!"

saying which he vanished.

The next day it was all over Philadelphia that I had cleared out John

Guy's the night before, _sans merci_. True, I am not seven feet high,

but some men (like stories) expand enormously when inflated or mad; so my

denial was attributed to sheer modesty. But I recognised in the Charles

Leland a mysterious cousin of mine, who was really seven feet high, who

had disappeared for many years, and of whom I have never heard since.

While editing _Graham's Magazine_, I had one day a space to fill. In a

hurry I knocked off "Hans Breitmann's Barty" (1856). I gave it no

thought whatever. Soon after, Clark republished it in the

_Knickerbocker_, saying that it was evidently by me. I little dreamed

that in days to come I should be asked in Egypt, and on the blue

Mediterranean, and in every country in Europe, if I was its author. I

wrote in those days a vast number of such anonymous drolleries, many of

them, I daresay, quite as good, in _Graham's Magazine_ and the _Weekly

Bulletin_, &c., but I took no heed of them. They were probably

appropriated in due time by the authors of "Beautiful Snow."

I began to weary of Philadelphia. New York was a wider field and more

congenial to me. Mr. Cummings had once, during a financial crisis,

appealed to my better feelings very touchingly to let my salary be

reduced. I let myself be touched--in the pocket. Better times came, but

my salary did not rise. Mr. Cummings, knowing that my father was

wealthy, wanted me to put a large sum into his paper, assuring me that it

would pay me fifteen per cent. I asked how that could be possible when

he could only afford to pay me so very little for such hard work. He

chuckled, and said, "That is the way we make our money." Then I

determined to leave.

Mr. George Ripley and Charles A. Dana, of the _Tribune_, were then

editing in New York _Appletons' Cyclopaedia_. Mr. Ripley had several

times shown himself my friend; he belonged to the famous old band of

Boston Transcendentalists who were at Brook Farm. I wrote to him asking

if I could earn as much at the _Cyclopaedia_ as I got from the

_Bulletin_. He answered affirmatively; so we packed up and departed. I

had a sister in New York who had married a Princeton College-mate named

Thorp. We went to their house in Twenty-second Street near Broadway, and

arranged it so as to remain there during the winter.

In the _Cyclopaedia_ rooms I found abundance of work, though it was less

profitable than I expected. For after an article was written, it passed

through the hands of six or seven revisers, who revised not always

wisely, and frequently far too well. They made their objections in

writing, and we, the writers, made ours. I often gained a victory, but

the victory cost a great deal of work, and of time which was not paid

for. Altogether, I wrote about two hundred articles, great and small,

for the _Cyclopaedia_. On the other hand, there was pleasant and

congenial society among my fellow-workmen, and the labour itself was

immensely instructive. If any man wishes to be well informed, let him

work on a cyclopaedia. As I could read several languages, I was

additionally useful at times. The greatest conciseness of style is

required for such work. In German cyclopaedias this is carried to a

fault.

After a while I began to find that there was much more money to be made

outside the _Cyclopaedia_ than in it. William H. Hurlbut, whom I had

once seen so nearly shot, had been the "foreign editor" of the _New York

Times_. Mr. Henry Raymond, its proprietor, had engaged a Mr. Hammond to

come after some six months to take his place, and I was asked to fill it

_ad interim_. I did so, so much to Mr. Raymond's satisfaction, that he

much regretted when I left that he had not previously engaged me. He was

always very kind to me. He said that now and then, whenever he wanted a

really superior art criticism, I should write it. He was quite right,

for there were not many reporters in New York who had received such an

education in aesthetics as mine. When Patti made her _debut_ in opera

for the first time, I was the only writer who boldly predicted that she

would achieve the highest lyrical honours or become a "star" of the first

magnitude. Apropos of Hurlbut, I heard many years after, in England,

that a certain well-known _litterateur_, who was not one of his admirers,

having seen him seated in close _tete-a-tete_ with a very notorious and

unpopular character, remarked regretfully, "Just to think that with one

pistol-bullet _both_ might have been settled!" Hurlbut was, even as a

boy, very handsome, with a pale face and black eyes, and extremely

clever, being _facile princeps_, the head of every class, and extensively

read. But there was "a screw loose" somewhere in him. He was subject,

but not very frequently, to such fits of passion or rage, that he

literally became blind while they lasted. I saw him one day in one of

these throw his arms about and stamp on the ground, as if unable to

behold any one. I once heard a young lady in New York profess unbounded

admiration for him, because "he looked so charmingly like the devil." For

many years the _New York Herald_ always described him as the Reverend

Mephistopheles Hurlbut. There was another very beautiful lady who

afterwards died a strange and violent death, as also a friend of mine, an

editor in _New_ York, both of whom narrated to me at very great length "a

grotesque Iliad of the wild career" of this remarkable man.

It never rains but it pours. Frank Leslie, who had been with me on

Barnum's _Illustrated News_, was now publishing half-a-dozen periodicals

and newspapers, and offered me a fair price to give him my mornings. I

did so. Unfortunately, my work was not specified, and he retained his

old editors, who naturally enough did not want me, although they treated

me civilly enough. One of these was Thomas Powell, who had seen a great

deal of all the great English writers of the last generation. But there

was much rather shady, shaky Bohemianism about the frequenters of our

sanctum, and, all things considered, it was a pity that I ever entered

it.

_Und noch weiter_. There was published in New York at that time (1860)

an illustrated comic weekly called _Vanity Fair_. There was also in the

city a kind of irregular club known as the Bohemians, who had been

inspired by Murger's novel of that name to imitate the life of its

heroes. They met every evening at a lager-beer restaurant kept by a

German named Pfaff. For a year or two they made a great sensation in New

York. Their two principal men were Henry Clapp and Fitz-James O'Brien.

Then there were Frank Wood and George Arnold, W. Winter, C. Gardette, and

others. Wood edited _Vanity Fair_, and all the rest contributed to it.

There was some difficulty or other between Wood and Mr. Stephens, the

_gerant_ of the weekly, and Wood left, followed by all the clan. I was

called in in the emergency, and what with writing myself, and the aid of

R. H. Stoddard, T. B. Aldrich, and a few more, we made a very creditable

appearance indeed. Little by little the Bohemians all came back, and all

went well.

Now I must here specify, for good reasons, that I held myself very

strictly aloof from the Bohemians, save in business affairs. This was

partly because I was married, and I never saw the day in my life when to

be regarded as a real Bohemian vagabond, or shiftless person, would not

have given me the horrors. I would have infinitely preferred the poorest

settled employment to such life. I mention this because a very brilliant

and singular article entitled "Charles G. Leland _l'ennemi des

Allemands_" (this title angered me), which appeared in the _Revue des

Deux Mondes_ in 1871, speaks of me by implication as a frequenter of

Pfaff's, declaring that I there introduced Artemus Ward to the Bohemian

brotherhood, and that it was entirely due to me that Mr. Browne was

brought out before the American World. This is quite incorrect. Mr.

Browne had made a name by two or three very popular sketches before I had

ever seen him. But it is very true that I aided him to write, and

suggested and encouraged the series of sketches which made him famous, as

he himself frankly and generously declared, for Charles Browne was at

heart an honest gentleman, if there ever was one; which is the one thing

in life better than success.

Mr. Stephens realising that I needed an assistant, and observing that

Browne's two sketches of the Showman's letter and the Mormons had made

him well known, invited him to take a place in our office. He was a

shrewd, naif, but at the same time modest and unassuming young man. He

was a native of Maine, but familiar with the West. Quiet as he seemed,

in three weeks he had found out everything in New York. I could

illustrate this by a very extraordinary fact, but I have not space for

everything. I proposed to him to continue his sketches. "Write," I

said, "a paper on the Shakers." He replied that he knew nothing about

them. I had been at Lenox, Massachusetts, where I had often gone to New

Lebanon and seen their strange worship and dances, and while on the

_Illustrated News_ had had a conference with their elders on an article

on the Shakers. So I told him what I knew, and he wrote it, making it a

condition that I would correct it. He wrote the sketch, and others. He

was very slow at composition, which seemed strange to me, who was

accustomed to write everything as I now do, _currente calamo_ (having

written all these memoirs, so far, within a month--more or less, and

certainly very little more). From this came his book.

When he wrote the article describing his imprisonment, there was in it a

sentence, "Jailor, I shall die unless you bring me something to eat!" In

the proof we found, "I shall die unless you bring me something to

_talk_." He was just going to correct this, when I cried, "For Heaven's

sake, Browne, let that stand! It's best as it is." He did so, and so

the reader may find it in his work.

Meanwhile the awful storm of war had gathered and was about to burst. I

may here say that there was a kind of literary club or association of

ladies and gentlemen who met once a week of evenings in the Studio

Buildings, where I had many friends, such as Van Brunt, C. Gambrell,

Hazeltine, Bierstadt, Gifford, Church, and Mignot. At this club I

constantly met General Birney, the great Abolitionist, whose famous

charge at Gettysburg did so much to decide the battle. Constant

intercourse with him and with C. A. Dana greatly inspired me in my anti-

slavery views. The manager of _Vanity Fair_ was very much averse to

absolutely committing the journal to Republicanism, and I was determined

on it. I had a delicate and very difficult path to pursue, and I

succeeded, as the publication bears witness. I went several times to Mr.

Dana, and availed myself of his shrewd advice. Browne, too, agreed

pretty fairly with me. I voted for Abraham Lincoln at the first election

in New York. I voted _on principle_, for I confess that every

conceivable thing had been said and done to represent him as an ignorant,

ungainly, silly Western Hoosier, and even the Republican press had little

or nothing to say as to his good qualities. Horace Greeley had "sprung

him" on the Convention at the eleventh hour and fifty-ninth minute as the

only available man, and he had been chosen as our candidate to defeat

Douglas.

Let me here relate two anecdotes. When my brother heard of Lincoln's

"candidacy" he said--

"I don't see why the people shouldn't be allowed to have a President for

once."

A Copperhead friend of mine, who was always aiming at "gentility,"

remarked to me with an air of disgust on the same subject--

"I do _wisht_ we could have a gentleman for President for _oncet_."

The said Copperhead became in due time a Republican office-holder, and is

one yet.

Lincoln was elected. Then came the storm. Our rejoicings were short.

Sumter was fired on. Up to that time everybody, including President

Lincoln, had quite resolved that, if the South was resolved to secede, it

must be allowed to depart in peace. There had been for many years a

conviction that our country was growing to be too large to hold together.

I always despised the contemptible idea. I had been in correspondence

with the Russian Iskander or Alexander Herzen, who was a century in

advance of his time. He was the real abolisher of serfdom in Russia, as

history will yet prove. I once wrote a very long article urging the

Russian Government to throw open the Ural gold mines to foreigners, and

make every effort to annex Chinese territory and open a port on the

Pacific. Herzen translated it into Russian (I have a copy of it), and

circulated twenty thousand copies of it in Russia. The Czar read it.

Herzen wrote to me: "It will be pigeon-holed for forty years, and then

perhaps acted on. The Pacific will be the Mediterranean of the future."

With such ideas I did not believe in the dismemberment of the United

States. {237}

But Sumter was fired on, and the whole North rose in fury. It was the

silliest act ever committed. The South, with one-third of the votes, had

two-thirds of all the civil, military, and naval appointments, and every

other new State, and withal half of the North, ready to lick its boots,

and still was not satisfied. It could not go without giving us a

thrashing. And that was the drop too much. So we fought. And we

conquered; but _how_? It was all expressed in a few words, which I heard

uttered by a common man at a _Bulletin_ board, on the dreadful day when

we first read the news of the retreat at Bull Run: "It's hard--but we

must buckle up and go at it again." It is very strange that the South

never understood that among the mud-sills and toiling slaves and factory

serfs of the North the spirit which had made men enrich barren New

England and colonise the Western wilderness would make them buckle up and

go at it again boldly to the bitter end.

One evening I met C. A. Dana on Broadway. War had fairly begun. "It

will last," he said, "not less than four years, but it may extend to

seven."

Trouble now came thick and fast. _Vanity Fair_ was brought to an end.

Frank Leslie found that he no longer required my services, and paid my

due, which was far in arrears, in his usual manner, that is, by orders on

advertisers for goods which I did not want, and for which I was charged

double prices. Alexander Cummings had a very ingenious method of

"shaving" when obliged to pay his debts. His friend Simon Cameron had a

bank--the Middleton--which, if not a very wild cat, was far from tame, as

its notes were always five or ten per cent. below par, to our loss--for

we were always paid in Middleton. I have often known the clerk to take a

handful of notes at par and send out to buy Middleton wherewith to pay

me. I am sorry to say that such tricks were universal among the very

great majority of proprietors with whom I had dealings. To "do" the

_employes_ to the utmost was considered a matter of course, especially

when the one employed was a "literary fellow" of any kind or an artist.

I should mention that while in New York I saw a great deal of Bayard

Taylor and his wife. I had known him since 1850 and was intimate with

him till his death. He occupied the same house with the distinguished

poet R. H. Stoddard. I experienced from both much kindness. We had

amusing Saturday evenings there, where droll plays were improvised, and

admirable disguises made out of anything. In after years, in London,

Walter H. Pollock, Minto (recently deceased), and myself, did the same.

One night, in the latter circle, we played _Hamlet_, but the chief

character was the Sentinel, who stared at the Ghost with such open-jawed

horror--"_bouche beante_, _rechignez_!"--and so prominently, that poor

Hamlet was under a cloud. Pollock's great capuchon overcoat served for

all kinds of mysterious characters. We were also kindly entertained many

a time and oft in New York by Mr. and Mrs. Charles A. Dana.

My engagement expired on the _Times_--where, by the way, I was paid in

full in good money--and I found myself without employment in a fearful

financial panic. During the spring and early summer we had lived at the

Gramercy Park Hotel; we now went to a very pleasant boarding-house kept

by Mrs. Dunn, on Staten Island. My old friend, George Ward, and G. W.

Curtis, well known in literature and politics (who had been at Mr.

Greene's school), lived at no great distance from us. The steamboats

from New York to Staten Island got to racing, and I enjoyed it very much,

but George Ward and some of the milder sort protested against it, and it

was stopped; which I thought rather hard, for we had very little

amusement in those dismal days. I was once in a steamboat race when our

boat knocked away the paddle-box from the other and smashed the wheel.

From the days of the Romans and Norsemen down to the present time, there

was never any form of amusement discovered so daring, so dangerous, and

so exciting as a steamboat race, and nobody but Americans could have ever

invented or indulged in it.

The old _Knickerbocker Magazine_ had been for a long time running down to

absolutely nothing. A Mr. Gilmore purchased it, and endeavoured to

galvanise it into life. Its sober grey-blue cover was changed to orange.

Mr. Clark left it, to my sorrow; but there was no help for it, for there

was not a penny to pay him. I consented to edit it for half ownership,

for I had an idea. This was, to make it promptly a strong Republican

monthly for the time, which was utterly opposed to all of Mr. Clark's

ideas.

I must here remark that the financial depression in the North at this

time was terrible. I knew many instances in which landlords begged it as

a favour from tenants that they would remain rent-free in their houses. A

friend of mine, Mr. Fales, one day took me over two houses in Fifth

Avenue, of which he had been offered his choice for $15,000 each. Six

months after the house sold for $150,000. Factories and shops were

everywhere closing, and there was a general feeling that far deeper and

more terrible disasters were coming--war in its worst forms--national

disintegration--utter ruin. This spirit of despair was now debilitating

everybody. The Copperheads or Democrats, who were within a fraction as

numerous as the Republicans, continually hissed, "You see to what your

nigger worship has brought the country. This is all your doing. And the

worst is to come." Then there was soon developed a class known as

Croakers, who increased to the end of the war. These were good enough

Union people, but without any hope of any happy issue in anything, and

who were quite sure that everything was for the worst in this our most

unfortunate of all wretched countries. Now it is a law of humanity that

in all great crises, or whenever energy and manliness is needed,

pessimism is a benumbing poison, and the strongest optimism the very

_elixir vitae_ itself. And by a marvellously strange inspiration (though

it was founded on cool, far-sighted calculation), I, at this most

critical and depressing time, rose to extremest hope and confidence,

rejoicing that the great crisis had at length come, and feeling to my

very depths of conviction that, as we were sublimely in the right, we

must conquer, and that the dread portal once passed we should find

ourselves in the fairy palace of prosperity and freedom. But that I was

absolutely for a time alone amid all men round me in this intense hope

and confidence, may be read as clearly as can be in what I and others

published in those days, for all of this was recorded in type.

Bayard Taylor had been down to the front, and remarked carelessly to me

one day that when he found that there was already a discount of 40 per

cent. on Confederate notes, he was sure that the South would yield in the

end. This made me think very deeply. There was no reason, if we could

keep the Copperheads subdued, why we should not hold our own on our own

territory. _Secondly_, as the war went on we should soon win converts.

_Thirdly_, that the North had immense resources--its hay crop alone was

worth more than all the cotton crop of the South. And _fourthly_, that

when manufacturing and contract-making for the army should once begin,

there would be such a spreading or wasting of money and making fortunes

as the world never witnessed, and that while we grew rich, the South,

without commerce or manufactures, must grow poor.

I felt as if inspired, and I wrote an article entitled, "Woe to the

South." At this time, "Woe to the North" was the fear in every heart. I

showed clearly that if we would only keep up our hearts, that the utter

ruin of the South was inevitable, while that for us there was close at

hand such a period of prosperity as no one ever dreamt of--that every

factory would soon double its buildings, and prices rise beyond all

precedent. I followed this article by others, all in a wild,

enthusiastic style of triumph. People thought I was mad, and the _New

York Times_ compared my utterances to the outpourings of a fanatical

Puritan in the time of Cromwell.

But they were fulfilled to the letter. There is no instance that I know

of in which any man ever prophesied so directly in the face of public

opinion and had his predictions so accurately fulfilled. I was _all

alone_ in my opinions. At all times a feeling as of awe at myself comes

over me when I think of what I published. For, with the exception of

Gilmore, who had a kind of vague idea that he kept a prophet--as Moses

the tailor kept a poet--not a soul of my acquaintance believed in all

this.

Then I went a step further. I found that the real block in the way of

Northern union was the disgust which had gathered round the mere _name_

of Abolitionist. It became very apparent that freeing the slaves would,

as General Birney once said to me, be knocking out the bottom of the

basket. And people wanted to abolitionise without being "Abolitionists";

and at this time even the _New York Tribune_ became afraid to advocate

anti-slavery, and the greatest fanatics were dumb with fear.

Then I made a new departure. I advocated emancipation of the slaves _as

a war measure only_, and my cry was "Emancipation for the sake of the

White Man." I urged prompt and vigorous action without any regard to

philanthropy. As publishing such views in the _Knickerbocker_ was like

pouring the wildest of new wine into the weakest of old bottles, Gilmore

resolved to establish at once in Boston a political monthly magazine to

be called the _Continental_, to be devoted to this view of the situation.

It was the only political magazine devoted to the Republican cause

published during the war. That it fully succeeded in rapidly attracting

to the Union party a vast number of those who had held aloof owing to

their antipathy to the mere word abolition, is positively true, and still

remembered by many. {242} Very speedily indeed people at large caught at

the idea. I remember the very first time when one evening I heard

Governor Andrews say of a certain politician that he was not an

Abolitionist but an _Emancipationist_; and it was subsequently declared

by my friends in Boston, and that often, that the very bold course taken

by the _Continental Magazine_, and the creation by it of the

Emancipationist wing, had hastened by several months the emancipation of

the slaves by Abraham Lincoln. It was for this alone that the University

of Cambridge, Massachusetts, afterwards, through its president, gave me

the degree of A. M., "for literary services rendered to the country

during the war," which is as complete a proof of what I assert as could

be imagined, for this was in very truth the one sole literary service

which I performed at that time, and there were many of my great literary

friends who declared their belief in, and sympathy with, the services

which I rendered to the cause. But I will now cite some facts which

fully and further confirm what I have said.

The _Continental Magazine_ was, as I may say, a something more than semi-

official organ. Mr. Seward contributed to it two anonymous articles, or

rather their substance, which were written out and forwarded to me by

Oakey Hall, Esq., of New York. We received from the Cabinet at

Washington continual suggestions, for it was well understood that the

_Continental_ was read by all influential Republicans. A contributor had

sent us a very important article indeed, pointing out that there was all

through the South, from the Mississippi to the sea, a line of mountainous

country in which there were few or no slaves, and very little attachment

to the Confederacy. This article, which was extensively republished,

attracted great attention. It gave great strength and encouragement to

the grand plan of the campaign, afterwards realised by Sherman. By

_official request_, to me directed, the author contributed a second

article on the subject. These articles were extensively circulated in

pamphlet form or widely copied by the press, and created a great

sensation, forming, in fact, one of the great points made in influencing

public opinion. Another of the same kind, but not ours, was the famous

pamphlet by Charles Stille, of Philadelphia, "How a Free People Conduct a

Long War," in which it was demonstrated that the man who can hold out

longest in a fight has the best chance, which simple truth made, however,

an incredible popular impression. Gilmore and our friends succeeded, in

fact, in making the _Continental Magazine_ "respected at court." But I

kept my independence and principles, and thundered away so fiercely for

_immediate_ emancipation that I was confidentially informed that Mr.

Seward once exclaimed in a rage, "Damn Leland and his magazine!" But as

he damned me only officially and in confidence, I took it in the

Pickwickian sense. And at this time I realised that, though I was not

personally very much before the public, I was doing great and good work,

and, as I have said, a great many very distinguished persons expressed to

me by letter or in conversation their appreciation of it; and some on the

other side wrote letters giving it to me _per contra_, and one of these

was Caleb Cushing. Cushing in Chinese means "ancient glory," but Caleb's

renown was extinguished in those days.

I may add that not only did H. W. Longfellow express to me his sympathy

for and admiration of my efforts to aid the Union cause, but at one time

or another all of my literary friends in Boston, who perfectly understood

and showed deep interest in what I was doing. Which can be well believed

of a city in which, above all others in the world, everybody sincerely

aims at culture and knowledge, the first principle of which--inspired by

praiseworthy local patriotism--is to know and take pride in what is done

in Boston by its natives.