And here I would say that every memory which I have of Missouri (and
there are more by far than this book indicates), as of Missourians, is
extremely pleasant. The State is very beautiful, and I have found among
my friends there born such culture and kindness and genial hospitality as
I have never seen surpassed. To the names of Mary A. Owen, {334} Blow,
Mark Twain, and the Choteaus I could add many more.
So we jogged on homeward. I resumed my work. I had written out all the
details of our trip in letters to the _Press_. They had excited
attention. The Pennsylvania Railroad Company suggested that they should
be published in a pamphlet. I did so, and called it "Three Thousand
Miles in a Railroad Car." They offered to pay me a very good sum for my
trouble in so doing. I declined it, because I felt that I had been amply
paid by the pleasure which I had derived from the journey. But I
received grateful recognition subsequently in another form. The pamphlet
was most singular of its kind. It was a full report of all the
statistics and vast advantages of the Kansas Pacific Road. It contained
very valuable facts and figures; and it was all served up with jokes,
songs, buffalo-hunting, Indians, and Brigham. It was a marvellous
farrago, and it "took." It was sent to every member of Congress and
"every other man."
Before it appeared, a friend of mine named Ringwalt, who was both a
literary man and owner of a printing-office, offered me $200 if I would
secure him the printing of it. I said that I would not take the money,
but that I would get him the printing, which I easily did; but being a
very honourable man, he was led to discharge the obligation. One day he
said to me, "Why don't you publish your 'Breitmann Ballads?' Everybody
is quoting them now." I replied, "There is not a publisher in America
who would accept them." And I was quite right, for there was not. He
answered, "I will print them for you." I accepted the offer, but when
they were set up an idea occurred to me by which I could save my friend
his expenses. I went to a publisher named T. B. Peterson, who said
effectively this--"The book will not sell more than a thousand copies.
There will be about a thousand people who will buy it, even for fifty
cents, so I shall charge that, though it would be, as books go, only as a
twenty-five cent work." He took it and paid my friend for the
composition. I was not to receive any money or share in the profits till
all the expenses had been paid.
Mr. Peterson immediately sold 2,000--4,000--I know not how many
thousands--at fifty cents a copy. It was republished in Canada and
Australia, to my loss. An American publisher who owned a magazine asked
me, through his editor, to write for it a long Breitmann poem. I did so,
making, however, an explicit verbal arrangement _that it should not be
republished as a book_. It was, however, immediately republished as
such, with a title to the effect that it was the "Breitmann Ballads." I
appealed to the editor, and it was withdrawn, but I know not how many
were issued, to my loss.
I had transferred the whole right of publication in England to my friend
Nicolas Trubner, whom I had met when he had visited America, and I wrote
specially for his edition certain poems. John "Camden" Hotten wrote to
me modestly asking me to give _him_ the sole right to republish the work.
He said, "I hardly know what to say about the price. Suppose we say _ten
pounds_!" I replied, "Sir, I have given the whole right of publication
to Mr. Trubner, and I would not take it from him for ten thousand
pounds." Hotten at once published an edition which was a curiosity of
ignorance and folly. There was a blunder on an average to every page. He
had annotated it! He explained that _Knasterbart_ meant "a nasty
fellow," and that the French _garce_ was _gare_, "a railway station!"
Trubner had sold 5,000 copies before this precious affair appeared. After
Hotten's death the British public were informed in an obituary that he
had "_first_ introduced me" to their knowledge!
Hans Breitmann became a type. I never heard of but one German who ever
reviled the book, and that was a Democratic editor in Philadelphia. But
the Germans themselves recognised that the pen which poked fun at them
was no poisoned stiletto. Whenever there was a grand German procession,
Hans was in it--the indomitable old _Degen_ hung with _loot_--and he
appeared in every fancy ball. Nor were the Confederates offended. One
of the most genial, searching, and erudite reviews of the work, which
appeared in a Southern magazine (De Bow's), declared that I had truly
written the Hudibras of the Civil War. What struck this writer most was
the fact that I had opened a _new_ field of humour. And here he was
quite right. With the exception of Dan Rice's circus song of "Der goot
oldt Sherman shentleman," and a rather flat parody of "Jessie, the Flower
of Dumblane," I had never seen or heard of any specimen of Anglo-German
poetry. To be _merely original_ in language is not to excel in
everything--a fact very generally ignored--else my Pidgin-English ballads
would take precedence of Tennyson's poems! On the other hand, very great
poets have often not made a new _form_. The Yankee type, both as regards
spirit and language, had become completely common and familiar in prose
and poetry, before Lowell revived it in the clever _Biglow Papers_. Bret
Harte's "Heathen Chinee," and several other poems, are, however, _both_
original and admirable. Whatever the merits or demerits of mine were--and
it was years ere I ever gave them a thought--the public, which is always
eager for something new, took to them at once.
I say that for years I never gave them a thought. All of the principal
poems except the "Barty" and "Breitmann as a Politician," were merely
written to fill up letters to C. A. Bristed, of New York, and I kept no
copies of them--in fact, utterly _forgot_ them. _Weingeist_ was first
written in a letter to a sister of Captain Colton, with the remark that
it was easier to write such a ballad than any prose. But Bristed
published them _a mon insu_ in a sporting paper. Years after I learned
that I published one called "Breitmann's Sermon" in _Leslie's Magazine_.
This I have never recovered. If I write so much about these poems now, I
certainly was not vain of them when written. The public found them out
long before I did, and it is not very often that it gets ahead of a poet
in appreciating his own works.
However, I was "awful busy" in those days. I had hardly begun on the
_Press_ ere I found that it had a weekly paper, made up from the daily
type transferred, which only just paid its expenses. Secondly, I
discovered that there was not a soul on the staff except myself who had
had any experience of weekly full editing. I at once made out a
schedule, showing that by collecting and grouping agricultural and
industrial items, putting in two or three columns of original matter, and
bringing in a story to go through the daily first, the weekly could be
vastly improved at very little expense.
Colonel Forney admired the scheme, but asked "who was to carry it out." I
replied that I would. He remonstrated, very kindly, urging that I had
all I could do as it was. I answered, "Colonel Forney, this is not a
matter of time, but _method_. There is always time for the man who knows
how to lay it out." So I got up a very nice paper. But for a very long
time I could not get an agent to solicit advertisements who knew the
business. The weekly paid its expenses and nothing more. But one day
there came to me a young man named M. T. Wolf. He was of Pennsylvania
German stock. He had lost a small fortune in the patent medicine
business and wanted employment badly. I suggested that, until something
else could be found, he should try his hand at collecting "advers."
Now, be it observed, as Mozart was born to music, and some men have a
powerful instinct to study medicine, and others are so unnatural as to
take to mathematics, Wolf had a grand undeveloped genius beyond all
belief for collecting advertisements. He had tried many pursuits and
failed, but the first week he went into this business he brought in $200
(40 pounds), which gave him forty dollars, and he never afterwards fell
below it, but often rose above. "Advers." for him meant not adversity.
It was very characteristic of Colonel Forney, who was too much absorbed
in politics to attend much to business, that long after the _Weekly
Press_ was yielding him $10,000 a year _clear profit_, he said to me one
day, "Mr. Leland, you must not be discouraged as to the weekly; the
clerks tell me in the office that it _meets its expenses_!"
There was abundance of life and incident on the newspaper in those days,
especially during election times in the autumn. I have known fights,
night after night, to be going on in the street below, at the corner of
Seventh and Chestnut, between Republicans and Democrats, with revolver
shots and flashes at the rate of fifty to a second, when I was literally
so occupied with pressing telegrams that I could not look out to see the
fun. One night, however, when there were death-shots falling thick and
fast, I saw a young man make a most _incredible_ leap. He had received a
bullet under the shoulder, and when a man or a deer is hit there he
always leaps. I heard afterwards that he recovered, though this is a
vital place.
It happened once that for a week the Republicans were kept from resisting
or retaliating by their leaders, until the Democrats began to disgrace
themselves by excesses. Then all at once the Republicans boiled over,
thrashed their foes, and attacking the Copperhead clubs, threw their
furniture out of the window, and--inadvertently perhaps--also a few
Copperheads. Just before they let their angry passions rise in this
fashion there came one night a delegation to serenade Colonel Forney at
the office. The Colonel was grand on such occasions. He was a fine,
tall, portly man, with a lion-like mien and a powerful voice. He began--
"My friends, fellow-citizens and Republicans, you have this week acted
nobly."