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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/36720-8.txt b/36720-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..091ac9d --- /dev/null +++ b/36720-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,13891 @@ +Project Gutenberg's Recollections of a Varied Life, by George Cary Eggleston + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Recollections of a Varied Life + +Author: George Cary Eggleston + +Release Date: July 13, 2011 [EBook #36720] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RECOLLECTIONS OF A VARIED LIFE *** + + + + +Produced by David Garcia and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Kentuckiana Digital Library) + + + + + + +[Illustration: (cover)] + +[Illustration: George Cary Eggleston] + + + + + + +RECOLLECTIONS OF A VARIED LIFE + +BY GEORGE CARY EGGLESTON + +[Illustration] + + NEW YORK + HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY + 1910 + + Copyright, 1910 + BY + HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY + +_Published March, 1910_ + + +TO MARION MY WIFE + + I DEDICATE THESE RECOLLECTIONS + OF A LIFE THAT SHE HAS LOYALLY + SHARED, ENCOURAGED, AND INSPIRED + + + + +CONTENTS + + + CHAPTER PAGE + + I. Introductory 1 + + II. The Country as I First Knew It--Intensity of Its + Americanism--The Lure of New Orleans 2 + + III. Provincialism--A Travel Center--Road Conditions-- + Mails--The Estrangement of Communities and Other + Isolating Conditions 4 + + IV. The Composite West--Dialect--The Intellectual Class 7 + + V. The Sturdy Kentuckians and Their Influence 9 + + VI. A Poor Boy's Career 13 + + VII. "Shooting Stock" 14 + + VIII. A Limitless Hospitality 16 + + IX. Industrial Independence and Thrift 18 + + X. Early Railroads--A Precocious Skeptic--Religious + Restriction of Culture 20 + + XI. Culture by Stealth 24 + + XII. Civilization on Wheels 26 + + XIII. A Breakfast Revolution 28 + + XIV. A Bathroom Episode 30 + + XV. Western School Methods 32 + + XVI. "The Hoosier Schoolmaster"--A Bit of Literary History 34 + + XVII. The Biggest Boy--A Vigorous Volunteer + Monitor--Charley Grebe 38 + + XVIII. What's in a Name? 42 + + XIX. A Buttermilk Poet 43 + + XX. Removal to Virginia--Impressions of Life There--The + Contradiction of the Critics in Their Creative + Incredulity 45 + + XXI. The Virginian Life 48 + + XXII. The Virginian Attitude Toward Money--Parson J----'s + Checks--The Charm of Leisureliness 49 + + XXIII. The Courtesy of the Virginians--Sex and + Education--Reading Habits--Virginia Women's Voices 55 + + XXIV. The Story of the West Wing--A Challenge to the + Ghosts--The Yellow-Gray Light--And Breakfast 60 + + XXV. Authors in Richmond--G. P. R. James, John Esten Cooke, + Mrs. Mowatt Ritchie, John R. Thompson, etc.--John Esten + Cooke, Gentleman--How Jeb Stuart Made Him a Major 66 + + XXVI. The Old Life in the Old Dominion and the New--An + Old Fogy's Doubts and Questionings 72 + + XXVII. Under Jeb Stuart's Command--The Legend of the + Mamelukes--The Life of the Cavaliers--Tristram + Shandy Does Bible Duty--The Delights of the War + Game and the Inspiration of It 76 + + XXVIII. Fitz Lee and an Adventure--A Friendly Old Foe 81 + + XXIX. Pestilence 86 + + XXX. Left Behind--A Gratuitous Law Practice Under + Difficulties--The Story of Tom Collins--A Death-Bed + Repentance and Its Prompt Recall 87 + + XXXI. Sharp-Shooter Service--Mortar Service at + Petersburg--The Outcome of a Strange Story 93 + + XXXII. The Beginning of Newspaper Life--Theodore Tilton + and Charles F. Briggs 99 + + XXXIII. Theodore Tilton 107 + + XXXIV. Further Reminiscences of Tilton 111 + + XXXV. The Tilton-Beecher Controversy--A Story as Yet Untold 115 + + XXXVI. My First Libel Suit 116 + + XXXVII. Libel Suit Experiences--The Queerest of Libel + Suits--John Y. McKane's Case 119 + + XXXVIII. Early Newspaper Experiences--Two Interviews with + President Grant--Grant's Method 123 + + XXXIX. Charlton T. Lewis 129 + + XL. Hearth and Home--Mary Mapes Dodge--Frank R. + Stockton--A Whimsical View of Plagiary 131 + + XLI. Some Plagiarists I Have Known--A Peculiar Case of + Plagiary--A Borrower from Stedman 139 + + XLII. The "Hoosier Schoolmaster's" Influence--Hearth and + Home Friendships and Literary Acquaintance--My First + Book--Mr. Howells and "A Rebel's Recollections"--My + First After-Dinner Speech--Mr. Howells, Mark Twain, + and Mr. Sanborn to the Rescue 145 + + XLIII. A Novelist by Accident--"A Man of Honor" and the + Plagiarists of Its Title--A "Warlock" on the Warpath + and a Lot of Fun Lost 151 + + XLIV. John Hay and the Pike County Ballads--His Own Story + of Them and of Incidents Connected with Them 157 + + XLV. A Disappointed Author--George Ripley's Collection + of Applications for His Discharge--Joe Harper's + Masterpiece--Manuscripts and Their Authors--Mr. George + P. Putnam's Story 166 + + XLVI. Joaquin Miller--Dress Reform à la Stedman 172 + + XLVII. Beginnings of Newspaper Illustration--Accident's Part + in the Literary Life--My First Boys' Book--How One + Thing Leads to Another 179 + + XLVIII. The First Time I Was Ever Robbed--The _Evening + Post_ Under Mr. Bryant--An Old-Fashioned Newspaper--Its + Distinguished Outside Staff--Its Regard for + Literature--Newspaper Literary Criticism and the + Critics of That Time--Thomas Bailey Aldrich's Idea + of New York as a Place of Residence--My Own + Appointment and the Strange Manner of It 186 + + XLIX. A Study of Mr. Bryant--The Irving Incident 194 + + L. Mr. Bryant's Tenderness Towards Poets--A Cover + Commendation--How I Grieved a Poet--Anonymous + Literary Criticism 199 + + LI. A Thrifty Poet's Plan--Mr. Bryant and the Poe + Article--The Longfellow Incident--The Tupper + Embarrassment 205 + + LII. Mr Bryant's _Index Expurgatorius_--An Effective + Blunder in English--Mr. Bryant's Dignified + Democracy--Mr. Cleveland's Coarser Method--Mr. + Bryant and British Snobbery 209 + + LIII. The Newspaper Critic's Function--A Literary News + "Beat"--Mr. Bryant and Contemporary Poets--Concerning + Genius--The True Story of "Thanatopsis" 217 + + LIV. An Extraordinary Case of Heterophemy--The Demolition + of a Critic 222 + + LV. Parke Godwin--"A Lion in a Den of Daniels"--The + Literary Shop Again--Literary Piracy--British + and American 227 + + LVI. The Way of Washington Officials--A Historical + Discovery--A Period Out of Place--A Futile Effort + to Make Peace--The "Intelligent Compositor" at His + Worst--Loring Pacha--War Correspondents--The Tourist + Correspondent--Loring's Story of Experience 234 + + LVII. "A Stranded Gold Bug"--Results of a Bit of Humor 247 + + LVIII. Mrs. Custer's "Boots and Saddles"--The Success + and Failure of Books 252 + + LIX. Letters of Introduction--The Disappointment of Lily + Browneyes--Mark Twain's Method--Some Dangerous Letters + of Introduction--Moses and My Green Spectacles 255 + + LX. English Literary Visitors--Mr. Edmund Gosse's + Visit--His Amusing Misconceptions--A Question of + Provincialism--A Literary Vandal 265 + + LXI. The Founding of the Authors' Club--Reminiscences + of Early Club Life--John Hay and Edwin Booth on + Dime Novels 272 + + LXII. The Authors Club--Its Ways and Its Work--Watch-Night + Frolics--Max O'Rell and Mark Twain--The Reckless + Injustice of the Humorists--Bishop Potter's + Opinion--The Club's Contribution of Statesmen and + Diplomats--The Delight of the Authors Club "After + the Authors Have Gone Home"--"Liber Scriptorum," + the Club's Successful Publishing Venture 277 + + LXIII. In Newspaper Life Again--Editing the _Commercial + Advertiser_--John Bigelow's Discouraging + Opinion--Henry Marquand and Some of My + Brilliant "Cubs"--Men Who Have Made Place and + Name for Themselves--The Dread Task of the + Editor-in-Chief--Yachting with Marquand and the + Men I Met on Deck--Parke Godwin--Recollections of + a Great and Good Man--A Mystery of Forgetting 286 + + LXIV. Newspapers Then and Now--The Pulitzer Revolution--The + Lure of the _World_--A Little Dinner to James R. + Osgood 300 + + LXV. Service on the _World_--John A. Cockerill--An + Editorial Perplexity--Editorial Emergencies--In + Praise of the Printers--Donn Piatt--"A Syndicate + of Blackguards"--An Unmeant Crime 307 + + LXVI. First Acquaintance with Joseph Pulitzer--His + Hospitality, Courtesy, Kindliness, and Generosity--His + Intellectual Methods--The Maynard Case--Bryan's + Message and Mr. Pulitzer's Answer--Extraordinary + Political Foresight 319 + + LXVII. A Napoleonic Conception--A Challenge to the + Government--The Power of the Press 327 + + LXVIII. Recollections of Carl Schurz 333 + + LXIX. The End of Newspaper Life 337 + + LXX. My Working Ways--Extemporary Writing--The Strange + Perversity of the People in Fiction--The Novelist's + Sorest Perplexity--Working Hours and Working Ways--My + Two Rules as to Literary Style 339 + + + + +RECOLLECTIONS OF A VARIED LIFE + + + + +I + + +Mr. Howells once said to me: "Every man's life is interesting--to +himself." + +I suppose that is true, though in the cases of some men it seems +a difficult thing to understand. + +At any rate it is not because of personal interest in my own life that +I am writing this book. I was perfectly sincere in wanting to call these +chapters "The Autobiography of an Unimportant Man," but on reflection +I remembered Franklin's wise saying that whenever he saw the phrase +"without vanity I may say," some peculiarly vain thing was sure to +follow. + +I am seventy years old. My life has been one of unusually varied +activity. It has covered half the period embraced in the republic's +existence. It has afforded me opportunity to see and share that +development of physical, intellectual, and moral life conditions, which +has been perhaps the most marvelous recorded in the history of mankind. + +Incidentally to the varied activities and accidents of my life, I have +been brought into contact with many interesting men, and into relation +with many interesting events. It is of these chiefly that I wish to +write, and if I were minded to offer an excuse for this book's +existence, this would be the marrow of it. But a book that needs excuse +is inexcusable. I make no apology. I am writing of the men and things I +remember, because I wish to do so, because my publisher wishes it, and +because he and I think that others will be interested in the result. +We shall see, later, how that is. + +This will be altogether a good-humored book. I have no grudges to +gratify, no revenges to wreak, no debts of wrath to repay in cowardly +ways; and if I had I should put them all aside as unworthy. I have +found my fellow-men in the main kindly, just, and generous. The chief +pleasure I have had in living has been derived from my association with +them in good-fellowship and all kindliness. The very few of them who +have wronged me, I have forgiven. The few who have been offensive to me, +I have forgotten, with conscientiously diligent care. There has seemed +to me no better thing to do with them. + + + + +II + + +It is difficult for any one belonging to this modern time to realize the +conditions of life in this country in the eighteen-forties, the period +at which my recollection begins. + +The country at that time was all American. The great tides of +immigration which have since made it the most cosmopolitan of countries, +had not set in. Foreigners among us were so few that they were regarded +with a great deal of curiosity, some contempt, and not a little pity. +Even in places like my native town of Vevay, Indiana, which had been +settled by a company of Swiss immigrants at the beginning of the +century, the feeling was strong that to be foreign was to be inferior. +Those who survived of the original Swiss settlers were generously +tolerated as unfortunates grown old, and on that account entitled to +a certain measure of respectful deference in spite of their taint. + +[Sidenote: The Lure of New Orleans] + +To us in the West, at least, all foreigners whose mother tongue was +other than English were "Dutchmen." There is reason to believe that +this careless and inattentive grouping prevailed in other parts of the +country as well as in the West. Why, otherwise, were the German speaking +people of Pennsylvania and the mountain regions south universally known +as "Pennsylvania Dutch?" + +And yet, in spite of the prevailing conviction that everything foreign +was inferior, the people of the Ohio valley--who constituted the most +considerable group of Western Americans--looked with unapproving but +ardent admiration upon foreign life, manners, and ways of thinking as +these were exemplified in New Orleans. + +In that early time, when the absence of bridges, the badness of roads, +and the primitive character of vehicular devices so greatly emphasized +overland distances, New Orleans was the one great outlet and inlet of +travel and traffic for all the region beyond the mountain barrier that +made the East seem as remote as far Cathay. Thither the people of the +West sent the produce of their orchards and their fields to find a +market; thence came the goods sold in the "stores," and the very +money--Spanish and French silver coins--that served as a circulating +medium. The men who annually voyaged thither on flat-boats, brought back +wondering tales of the strange things seen there, and especially of the +enormous wickedness encountered among a people who had scarcely heard +of the religious views accepted among ourselves as unquestioned and +unquestionable truth. I remember hearing a whole sermon on the subject +once. The preacher had taken alarm over the eagerness young men showed +to secure employment as "hands" on flat-boats for the sake of seeing +the wonderful city where buying and selling on the Sabbath excited no +comment. He feared contamination of the youth of the land, and with +a zeal that perhaps outran discretion, he urged God-fearing merchants +to abandon the business of shipping the country's produce to market, +declaring that he had rather see all of it go to waste than risk the +loss of a single young man's soul by sending him to a city so +unspeakably wicked that he confidently expected early news of its +destruction after the manner of Sodom and Gomorrah. + +The "power of preaching" was well-nigh measureless in that time and +region, but so were the impulses of "business," and I believe the usual +number of flat-boats were sent out from the little town that year. The +merchants seemed to "take chances" of the loss of souls when certain +gain was the stake on the other side, a fact which strongly suggests +that human nature in that time and country was very much the same in +its essentials as human nature in all other times and countries. + + + + +III + + +[Sidenote: A Travel Center] + +The remoteness of the different parts of the country from each other +in those days is difficult to understand, or even fairly to imagine +nowadays. For all purposes of civilization remoteness is properly +measured, not by miles, but by the difficulty of travel and intercourse. +It was in recognition of this that the founders of the Republic gave +to Congress authority to establish "post offices and post roads," and +that their successors lavished money upon endeavor to render human +intercourse easier, speedier, and cheaper by the construction of the +national road, by the digging of canals, and by efforts to improve the +postal service. In my early boyhood none of these things had come upon +us. There were no railroads crossing the Appalachian chain of mountains, +and no wagon roads that were better than tracks over ungraded hills and +quagmire trails through swamps and morasses. Measured by ease of access, +New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore were at a greater distance from +the dwellers in the West than Hong Kong or Singapore is now, while +Boston was remoter than the mountains of the moon. + +There were no telegraphs available to us; the mails were irregular, +uncertain, and unsafe. The wagons, called stagecoaches, that carried +them, were subject to capture and looting at the hands of robber bands +who infested many parts of the country, having their headquarters +usually at some town where roads converged and lawlessness reigned +supreme. + +One such town was Napoleon, Indiana. In illustration of its character an +anecdote was related in my boyhood. A man from the East made inquiry in +Cincinnati concerning routes to various points in the Hoosier State, and +beyond. + +"If I want to go to Indianapolis, what road do I take?" he asked. + +"Why, you go to Napoleon, and take the road northwest." + +"If I want to go to Madison?" + +"Go to Napoleon, and take the road southwest." + +"Suppose I want to go to St. Louis?" + +"Why, you go to Napoleon, and take the national road west." + +And so on, through a long list, with Napoleon as the starting point of +each reply. At last the man asked in despair: + +"Well now, stranger, suppose I wanted to go to Hell?" + +The stranger answered without a moment's hesitation, "Oh, in that case, +just go to Napoleon, and stay there." + +That is an episode, as the reader has probably discovered. To return +to the mails. It was not until 1845, and after long agitation, that the +rate on letters was reduced to five cents for distances less than three +hundred miles, and ten cents for greater distances. Newspaper postage +was relatively even higher. + +The result of these conditions was that each quarter of the country +was shut out from everything like free communication with the other +quarters. Each section was isolated. Each was left to work out its own +salvation as best it might, without aid, without consultation, without +the chastening or the stimulation of contact and attrition. Each region +cherished its own prejudices, its own dialect, its own ways of living, +its own overweening self-consciousness of superiority to all the rest, +its own narrow bigotries, and its own suspicious contempt of everything +foreign to itself. + +In brief, we had no national life in the eighteen-forties, or for long +afterwards,--no community of thought, or custom, or attitude of mind. +The several parts of the country were a loose bundle of segregated and, +in many ways, antagonistic communities, bound together only by a common +loyalty to the conviction that this was the greatest, most glorious, +most invincible country in the world, God-endowed with a mental, moral, +and physical superiority that put all the rest of earth's nations +completely out of the reckoning. We were all of us Americans--intense, +self-satisfied, self-glorifying Americans--but we had little else in +common. We did not know each other. We had been bred in radically +different ways. We had different ideals, different conceptions of life, +different standards of conduct, different ways of living, different +traditions, and different aspirations. The country was provincial to the +rest of the world, and still more narrowly provincial each region to the +others. + + + + +IV + + +[Sidenote: The Composite West] + +I think, however, that the West was less provincial, probably, and less +narrow in its views and sympathies than were New England, the Middle +States, and the South at that time, and this for a very sufficient +reason. + +The people in New England rarely came into contact with those of the +Middle and Southern States, and never with those of the West. The people +of the Middle States and those of the South were similarly shut within +themselves, having scarcely more than an imaginary acquaintance with the +dwellers in other parts of the country. The West was a common meeting +ground where men from New England, the Middle States, and the South +Atlantic region constituted a varied population, representative of all +the rest of the country, and dwelling together in so close a unity that +each group adopted many of the ways and ideas of the other groups, and +correspondingly modified its own. These were first steps taken toward +homogeneity in the West, such as were taken in no other part of the +country in that time of little travel and scanty intercourse among men. +The Virginians, Carolinians, and New Englanders who had migrated to the +West learned to make and appreciate the apple butter and the sauerkraut +of the Pennsylvanians; the pie of New England found favor with +Southerners in return for their hoecake, hominy, chine, and spareribs. +And as with material things, so also with things of the mind. Customs +were blended, usages were borrowed and modified, opinions were fused +together into new forms, and speech was wrought into something different +from that which any one group had known--a blend, better, richer, and +more forcible than any of its constituent parts had been. + +In numbers the Virginians, Kentuckians, and Carolinians were a strong +majority in the West, and the so-called "Hoosier dialect," which +prevailed there, was nearly identical with that of the Virginian +mountains, Kentucky, and the rural parts of Carolina. But it was +enriched with many terms and forms of speech belonging to other +sections. Better still, it was chastened by the influence of the small +but very influential company of educated men and women who had come from +Virginia and Kentucky, and by the strenuous labors in behalf of good +English of the Yankee school-ma'ams, who taught us by precept to make +our verbs agree with their nominatives, and, per contra, by unconscious +example to say "doo," "noo," and the like, for "dew," "new," etc. + +The prevalence of the dialect among the uneducated classes was indeed, +though indirectly, a ministry to the cause of good English. The educated +few, fearing contamination of their children's speech through daily +contact with the ignorant, were more than usually strict in exacting +correct usage at the hands of their youngsters. I very well remember +how grievously it afflicted my own young soul that I was forbidden, +under penalty, to say "chimbly" and "flanner" for "chimney" and +"flannel," to call inferior things "ornery," to use the compromise term +"'low"--abbreviation of "allow,"--which very generally took the place +of the Yankee "guess" and the Southern "reckon," and above all to call +tomatoes "tomatices." + +It is of interest to recall the fact that this influential class of +educated men and women, included some really scholarly persons, as well +as a good many others who, without being scholarly, were educated and +accustomed to read. Among the scholarly ones, within the purview of +my memory, were such as Judge Algernon S. Stevens, Judge Algernon S. +Sullivan, Judge Miles Cary Eggleston, the Hendrickses, the Stapps, +the Rev. Hiram Wason, my own father, and Mrs. Julia L. Dumont, a very +brilliant woman, who taught school for love of it and wrote books that +in our time would have given her something more than the provincial +reputation she shared with Alice and Phoebe Cary, and some others. + + + + +V + + +[Sidenote: The Sturdy Kentuckians] + +Of still greater consequence, perhaps, so far as influence upon their +time and country was concerned, were the better class of Kentuckians +who had crossed the Ohio to become sharers in the future of the great +Northwest. + +These were mostly men of extraordinary energy--physical and mental--who +had mastered what the Kentucky schoolmasters could teach them, and +had made of their schooling the foundation of a broader education the +dominant characteristic of which was an enlightenment of mind quite +independent of scholarly acquisition. + +These men were thinkers accustomed, by habit and inheritance, to look +facts straight in the face, to form their own opinions untrammeled by +tradition, unbiased by fine-spun equivocation, and wholly unrestrained +in their search for truth by conventional hobbles of any kind. Most +of them had more or less Scotch-Irish blood in their veins, and +were consequently wholesome optimists, full of courage, disposed to +righteousness of life for its own sake, and resolutely bent upon the +betterment of life by means of their own living. + +Most of them numbered one or more Baptist or Methodist preachers among +their ancestry--men of healthy minds and open ones, men to whom religion +was far less a matter of emotion than of conduct, men who did the duty +that lay next to them--be it plowing or praying, preaching or fighting +Indians or Englishmen--with an equal mind. + +Men of such descent were educated by environment in better ways than any +that schools can furnish. From infancy they had lived in an atmosphere +of backwoods culture,--culture drawn in part from such books as were +accessible to them, and in greater part from association with the strong +men who had migrated in early days to conquer the West and make of it a +princely possession of the Republic. + +The books they had were few, but they were the very best that English +literature afforded, and they read them over and over again with +diligence and intelligence until they had made their own every +fecundative thought the books suggested. Then they went away, and +thought for themselves, with untrammeled freedom, of the things thus +presented to their minds. I have sometimes wondered if their method +of education, chiefly by independent thinking, and with comparatively +little reverence for mere "authority," might not have been better, in +its character-building results at least, than our modern, more bookish +process. + +That question does not concern us now. What I wish to point out is the +fact that the country owes much to the influence of these strong men +of affairs and action, whose conviction that every man owes it to his +fellow-men so to live that this may be a better world for other men +to live in because of his having lived in it, gave that impulse to +education which later made Indiana a marvel and a model to the other +states in all that concerns education. Those men believed themselves and +their children entitled to the best in schooling as in everything else, +and from the very beginning they set out to secure it. + +[Sidenote: Early Educational Impulses] + +If a wandering schoolmaster came within call, they gave him a +schoolhouse and a place to live in, and bade him "keep school." +When he had canvassed the region round about for "scholars," and was +ready--with his ox gads--to open his educational institution, the three +or four of these men whose influence pervaded and dominated the region +round about, said a word or two to each other, and made themselves +responsible for the tuition fees of all the boys and girls in the +neighborhood whose parents were too poor to pay. + +In the same spirit, years later, when an effort was made to establish +colleges in the state, these men or their children who had inherited +their impulse, were prompt to furnish the money needed, however hard +pressed they might be for money themselves. I remember that my mother--the +daughter of one of the most conspicuous of the Kentuckians--when she was +a young widow with four children to bring up on an income of about $250 +a year, subscribed $100 to the foundation of Indiana Asbury University, +becoming, in return, the possessor of a perpetual scholarship, entitling +her for all time to maintain a student there free of tuition. It was +with money drawn from such sources that the colleges of Indiana were +founded. + +Under the influence of these Kentuckians, Virginians, and men of +character who in smaller numbers had come out from New England and the +Middle States, there was from the first an impulse of betterment in the +very atmosphere of the West. Even the "poor whites" of the South who +had migrated to the Northwest in pursuit of their traditional dream of +finding a land where one might catch "two 'possums up one 'simmon tree," +were distinctly uplifted by the influence of such men, not as a class, +perhaps, but in a sufficient number of individual cases to raise the +average level of their being. The greater number of these poor whites +continued to be the good-natured, indolent, unthrifty people that their +ancestors had always been. They remained content to be renters in a +region where the acquisition of land in independent ownership was easy. +They continued to content themselves with an inadequate cultivation of +their crops, and a meager living, consequent upon their neglect. They +continued to give to shooting, fishing, and rude social indulgences the +time they ought to have given to work. But their children were learning +to read and write, and, better still, were learning by observation the +advantages of a more industrious living, and when the golden age of +steamboating came, they sought and found profitable employment either +upon the river or about the wharves. The majority of these were content +to remain laborers, as deckhands and the like, but in some of them at +least ambition was born, and they became steamboat mates, pilots, and, +in some cases, the captains and even the owners of steamboats. On the +whole, I think the proportion of the class of people who thus achieved +a higher status, bettering themselves in enduring ways was quite as +large as it ever is in the history of an unfortunate or inferior class +of men. In the generations that have followed some at least of the +descendants of that "poor white" class, whose case had always been +accounted hopeless, have risen to distinction in intellectual ways. One +distinguished judge of our time, a man now of national reputation, is +the grandson of a poor white who negligently cultivated land rented from +a relative of my own. His father was my schoolmate for a season, and was +accounted inferior by those of us who were more fortunately descended. +So much for free institutions in a land of hope, opportunity, and +liberty, where the "pursuit of happiness" and betterment was accounted +an "unalienable right." + + + + +VI + + +[Sidenote: A Poor Boy's Career] + +In another case that comes home to me for reasons, the betterment was +more immediate. My maternal grandfather, the old Kentuckian, George +Craig, whose name is preserved in many ways in the geographical +nomenclature of Southern Indiana, had an abundantly large family of +children. But with generously helpful intent it was his habit to adopt +bright boys and girls whose parents were poverty-stricken, in order to +give them such education as was available in that time and country, or, +in his favorite phrase, to "give them a show in the world." One of these +adopted boys was the child of parents incredibly poor. When he came to +my grandfather the boy had never seen a tablecloth or slept in a bed. He +knew nothing of the uses of a knife and fork. A glass tumbler was to him +a wonder thing. He could neither read nor write, though he was eleven +years of age. The towel given to him for use on his first introduction +to the family was an inscrutable mystery until one of the negro servants +explained its uses to him. + +Less than a score of years later that boy was a lawyer of distinction, a +man of wide influence, a state senator of unusual standing, and chairman +of the committee that investigated and exposed the frauds perpetrated +upon the state in the building of the Madison and Indianapolis +railroad--the first highway of its kind constructed within the state. +In one sense, he owed all this to George Craig. In a truer sense he owed +it to his own native ability, which George Craig was shrewd enough to +discover in the uncouth and ignorant boy, and wise enough to give its +opportunity. + + + + +VII + + +It was a common practice of the thrifty and well-to-do of that time, +thus to adopt the children of their poorer neighbors and bring them up +as members of their own families. Still more common was the practice of +taking destitute orphans as "bound boys" or "bound girls." These were +legally bound to service, instead of being sent to the poorhouse, but in +practical effect they became members of the families to whose heads they +were "bound," and shared in all respects the privileges, the schooling, +and everything else that the children of the family enjoyed. They were +expected to work, when there was work to be done, but so was every +other member of the family, and there was never the least suggestion of +servile obligation involved or implied. I remember well the affection in +which my mother's "bound girls" held her and us children, and the way +in which, when they came to be married, their weddings were provided for +precisely as if they had been veritable daughters of the house. + +On one of those occasions it was rumored in the village, that a +"shiveree"--Hoosier for charivari--was to mark the event. My father, +whose Virginian reverence for womanhood and marriage and personal +dignity, was prompt to resent that sort of insult, went to a neighbor +and borrowed two shotguns. As he carried them homeward through the main +street of the village, on the morning before the wedding, he encountered +the ruffian who had planned the "shiveree," and was arranging to carry +it out. The man asked him, in surprise, for my father was a studious +recluse in his habits, if he were going out after game. + +[Sidenote: "Shooting Stock"] + +"No," my father replied. "It is only that a very worthy young woman, +a member of my family, is to be married at my house to-night. I hear +that certain 'lewd fellows of the baser sort' are planning to insult +her and me and my family with what they call a 'shiveree.' If they do +anything of the kind, _I am going to fire four charges of buckshot +into the crowd_." + +As my father was known to be a man who inflexibly kept his word, there +was no "shiveree" that night. + +That father of mine was a man of the gentlest spirit imaginable, but at +the same time a man of resolute character, who scrupulously respected +the rights and the dignity of others, and insistently demanded a like +respect for his own. Quite episodically, but in illustration of the +manners of the time, I may here intrude an incident, related to me many +years afterwards by Judge Taylor, a venerable jurist of Madison. My +father was looking about him for a place in which to settle himself in +the practice of law. He was temporarily staying in Madison when a client +came to him. The man had been inveigled into a game of cards with some +sharpers, and they had worked off some counterfeit money upon him. He +purposed to sue them. My father explained that the law did not recognize +the obligation of gambling debts, and the man replied that he knew that +very well, but that he wanted to expose the rascals, and was willing to +spend money to that end. The case came before Judge Taylor. My father +made an eloquently bitter speech in exposition of the meanness of men +who--the reader can imagine the rest. It was to make that speech that +the client had employed the young lawyer, and, in Judge Taylor's opinion +he "got his money's worth of gall and vitriol." But while the speech +was in progress, the three rascals became excited and blustering under +the castigation, and he, the judge, overheard talk of "shooting the +fellow"--to wit my father. Just as the judge was meditating measures of +restraint that might be effective at a time when most men were walking +arsenals, he heard one of them hurriedly warn his fellows in this wise: + +"Say--you'd better not talk too much about shooting--they tell me that +young lawyer comes from Virginia, and he _may be of shooting stock_." + +The Virginians had a reputation for quickness on trigger in that region. +The warning was sufficient. The three gamblers took their punishment and +slunk away, and there was no assassination. + + + + +VIII + + +The readiness with which the well-to-do men of that region adopted or +otherwise made themselves responsible for the bringing up of destitute +children, was largely due to the conditions of life that prevailed in +that time and country. There was no considerable expense involved in +such adoption. The thrifty farmer, with more land than he could possibly +cultivate, produced, easily, all the food that even a multitudinous +family could consume. He produced also the wool, the flax, and the +cotton necessary for clothing, and these were carded, spun, woven, and +converted into garments for both sexes by the women folk of the home. +Little, if anything, was bought with actual money, and in the midst +of such abundance an extra mouth to feed and an extra back to clothe +counted for next to nothing, while at that time, when work, on +everybody's part, was regarded quite as a matter of course, the boy or +girl taken into a family was easily able to "earn his keep," as the +phrase was. + +Nevertheless, there was a great-hearted generosity inspiring it all--a +broadly democratic conviction that everybody should have a chance in +life, and that he who had should share with his brother who had not, +freely and without thought of conferring favor. + +[Sidenote: A Limitless Hospitality] + +It was upon that principle, also, that the hospitality of that time +rested. There was always an abundance to eat, and there was always a bed +to spare for the stranger within the gates; or if the beds fell short, +it was always easy to spread a pallet before the fire, or, in extreme +circumstances, to make the stranger comfortable among a lot of quilts +in a corn-house or hay-mow. + +It was my grandfather's rule and that of other men like him, to provide +work of some sort for every one who asked for it. An extra hoe in summer +was always of use, while in winter there was corn to be shelled, there +were apples to be "sorted," tools to be ground, ditches to be dug, stone +fences to be built, wood to be chopped, and a score of other things to +be done, that might employ an extra "hand" profitably. Only once in all +his life did George Craig refuse employment to a man asking for it. On +that occasion he gave supper, lodging, and breakfast to the wayfarer; +but during the evening the man complained that he had been walking all +day with a grain of corn in his shoe, and, as he sat before the fire, he +removed it, to his great relief but also to his undoing as an applicant +for permanent employment. For the energetic old Kentuckian could +conceive of no ground of patience with a man who would walk all day in +pain rather than take the small trouble of sitting down by the roadside +and removing the offending grain of corn from his shoe. + +"I have no use," he said, "for a man as lazy as that." + +Then his conscience came to the rescue. + +"I can't hire a lazy fellow like you for wages," he said; "but I have a +ditch to be dug. There will be fifteen hundred running feet of it, and +if you choose, I'll let you work at it, at so much a foot. Then if you +work you'll make wages, while if you don't there'll be nothing for me +to lose on you but your keep, and I'll give you that." + +The man decided to move on. + + + + +IX + + +The life of that early time differed in every way from American life as +men of the present day know it. + +The isolation in which every community existed, compelled a degree of +local self-dependence the like of which the modern world knows nothing +of. The farmers did most things for themselves, and what they could not +conveniently do for themselves, was done for them in the villages by +independent craftsmen, each cunningly skilled in his trade and dependent +upon factories for nothing. In my native village, Vevay, which was in +nowise different from other Western villages upon which the region +round about depended for supplies, practically everything wanted was +made. There were two tinsmiths, who, with an assistant or two each, +in the persons of boys learning the trade, made every utensil of tin, +sheet-iron, or copper that was needed for twenty-odd miles around. There +were two saddlers and harnessmakers; two or three plasterers; several +brick masons; several carpenters, who knew their trade as no carpenter +does in our time when the planing mill furnishes everything already +shaped to his hand, so that the carpenter need know nothing but how to +drive nails or screws. There was a boot- and shoe-maker who made all +the shoes worn by men, women, and children in all that country, out of +leather bought of the local tanner, to whom all hides were sold by their +producers. There was a hatter who did all his own work, whose vats +yielded all the headgear needed, from the finest to the commonest, +and whose materials were the furs of animals caught or killed by the +farmers' boys and brought to town for sale. There was even a wireworker, +who provided sieves, strainers, and screenings of every kind, and there +was a rope walk where the cordage wanted was made. + +[Sidenote: Industrial Independence] + +In most households the women folk fashioned all the clothes worn by +persons of either sex, but to meet the demand for "Sunday bests" and +that of preachers who must wear broadcloth every day in the week, and +of extravagant young men who wished to dazzle all eyes with "store +clothes," there was a tailor who year after year fashioned garments upon +models learned in his youth and never departed from. No such thing as +ready-made clothing or boots or shoes--except women's slippers--was +known at the time of which I now write. Even socks and stockings were +never sold in the shops, except upon wedding and other infrequent +occasions. For ordinary wear they were knitted at home of home-spun +yarn. The statement made above is scarcely accurate. Both socks and +stockings were occasionally sold in the country stores, but they were +almost exclusively the surplus products of the industry of women on the +farms round about. So were the saddle blankets, and most of the bed +blankets used. + +Local self-dependence was well-nigh perfect. The town depended on the +country and the country on the town, for nearly everything that was +eaten or woven or otherwise consumed. The day of dependence upon +factories had not yet dawned. The man who knew how to fashion any +article of human use, made his living by doing the work he knew how to +do, and was an independent, self-respecting man, usually owning his +comfortable home, and destined by middle age to possess a satisfactory +competence. + +Whether all that was economically or socially better than the system +which has converted the independent, home-owning worker into a factory +hand, living in a tenement and carrying a dinner pail, while tariff +tribute from the consumer makes his employer at once a millionaire +and the more or less despotic master of a multitude of men--is a +question too large and too serious to be discussed in a book of random +recollections such as this. But every "strike" raises that question in +the minds of men who remember the more primitive conditions as lovingly +as I do. + +As a matter of curious historical interest, too, it is worth while to +recall the fact that Henry Clay--before his desire to win the votes of +the Kentucky hemp-growers led him to become the leading advocate of +tariff protection--used to make eloquent speeches in behalf of free +trade, in which he drew horrifying pictures of life conditions in the +English manufacturing centers, and invoked the mercy of heaven to spare +this country from like conditions in which economic considerations +should ride down social ones, trample the life out of personal +independence, and convert the home-owning American workman into a mere +"hand" employed by a company of capitalists for their own enrichment at +cost of his manhood except in so far as the fiat of a trades union might +interpose to save him from slavery to the employing class. + +Those were interesting speeches of Henry Clay's, made before he sacrificed +his convictions and his manhood to his vain desire to become President. + + + + +X + + +[Sidenote: The Early Railroad] + +At the time of my earliest recollections there was not a mile of +railroad in Indiana or anywhere else west of Ohio, while even in Ohio +there were only the crudest beginnings of track construction, on isolated +lines that began nowhere and led no whither, connecting with nothing, +and usually failing to make even that connection. + +He who would journey from the East to the West, soon came to the end of +the rails, and after that he must toilsomely make his way by stagecoach +across the mountains, walking for the most part in mud half-leg deep, +and carrying a fence rail on his shoulder with which to help the stalled +stagecoach out of frequent mires. + +Nevertheless, we heard much of the railroad and its wonders. It was our +mystery story, our marvel, our current Arabian Nights' Entertainment. +We were told, and devoutly believed, that the "railcars" ran at the rate +of "a mile a minute." How or why the liars of that early period, when +lying must have been in its infancy as an art, happened to hit upon +sixty miles an hour as the uniform speed of railroad trains, I am +puzzled to imagine. But so it was. There was probably not in all the +world at that time a single mile of railroad track over which a train +could have been run at such a speed. As for the railroads in the Western +part of this country, they were chiefly primitive constructions, with +tracks consisting of strap iron--wagon tires in effect--loosely spiked +down to timber string pieces, over which it would have been reckless to +the verge of insanity to run a train at more than twelve miles an hour +under the most favorable circumstances. But we were told, over and over +again, till we devoutly believed it--as human creatures always believe +what they have been ceaselessly told without contradiction--that the +"railcars" always ran at the rate of a mile a minute. + +The first railroad in Indiana was opened in 1847. A year or two later, +my brother Edward and I, made our first journey over it, from Madison to +Dupont, a distance of thirteen miles. Edward was at that time a victim +of the faith habit; I was beginning to manifest a skeptical, inquiring +tendency of mind which distressed those responsible for me. When Edward +reminded me that we were to enjoy our first experience of traveling at +the rate of a mile a minute, I borrowed his bull's-eye watch and set +myself to test the thing by timing it. When we reached Dupont, alter the +lapse of ninety-six minutes, in a journey of thirteen miles, I frankly +declared my unbelief in the "mile a minute" tradition. There was no +great harm in that, perhaps, but the skeptical spirit of inquiry that +had prompted me to subject the matter to a time test, very seriously +troubled my elders, who feared that I was destined to become a "free +thinker," as my father had been before me, though I was not permitted to +know that. I was alarmed about my skeptical tendencies myself, because +I believed the theology and demonology taught me at church, having no +means of subjecting them to scientific tests of any kind. I no longer +believed in the "mile a minute" tradition, as everybody around me +continued to do, but I still believed in the existence and malign +activity of a personal devil, and I accepted the assurance given me +that he was always at my side whispering doubts into my ears by way +of securing the damnation of my soul under the doctrine of salvation +by faith. The tortures I suffered on this account were well-nigh +incredible, for in spite of all I might do or say or think, the doubts +continued to arise in my mind, until at last I awoke to the fact that +I was beginning to doubt the doctrine of salvation by faith itself, +as a thing stultifying to the mind, unreasonable in itself, and +utterly unjust in its application to persons like myself, who found +it impossible to believe things which they had every reason to believe +were not true. + +[Sidenote: A Precocious Skeptic] + +Fortunately I was young and perfectly healthy, and so, after a deal +of psychological suffering I found peace by reconciling myself to the +conviction that I was foreordained to be damned in any case, and that +there was no use in making myself unhappy about it. In support of that +comforting assurance I secretly decided to accept the Presbyterian +doctrine of predestination instead of the Methodist theory of free +will in which I had been bred. I had to make this change of doctrinal +allegiance secretly, because its open avowal would have involved a sound +threshing behind the smoke-house, with perhaps a season of fasting and +prayer, designed to make the castigation "take." + +I remember that when I had finally made up my mind that the doctrine +of predestination was true, and that I was clearly one of those who +were foreordained to be damned for incapacity to believe the incredible, +I became for a time thoroughly comfortable in my mind, very much +as I suppose a man of business is when he receives his discharge in +bankruptcy. I felt myself emancipated from many restraints that had sat +heavily on my boyish soul. Having decided, with the mature wisdom of +ten or a dozen years of age, that I was to be damned in any case, I saw +no reason why I should not read the fascinating books that had been +forbidden to me by the discipline of the Methodist Church, to which +I perforce belonged. + +In that early day of strenuous theological requirement, the Methodist +Church disapproved of literature as such, and approved it only in so far +as it was made the instrument of a propaganda. Its discipline required +that each person upon being "received into full membership"--the +Methodist equivalent of confirmation--should take a vow not "to read +such books or sing such songs as do not pertain to the glory of God." I +quote the phrase from memory, but accurately I think. That prohibition, +as interpreted by clerical authority at the time, had completely closed +to me the treasures of the library my scholarly father had collected, +and to which, under his dying instructions, my mother had added many +scores of volumes of the finest English literature, purchased with the +money for which his law books had been sold after his death. + +I had read a little here and there in those books, and had been +fascinated with the new world they opened to my vision, when, at the +ripe age of ten or twelve years, I was compelled by an ill-directed +clerical authority to submit myself to the process of being "received +into full membership," under the assumption that I had "reached the age +of responsibility." + +After that the books I so longed to read were forbidden to me--especially +a set entitled "The British Drama," in which appeared the works of +Ben Jonson, Marlowe, Massinger, Beaumont and Fletcher, and a long list +of other classics, filling five thick volumes. By no ingenuity of +construction could such books be regarded as homilies in disguise, and +so they were Anathema. So was Shakespeare, and so even was Thiers' +"French Revolution," of which I had devoured the first volume in delight, +before the inhibition fell upon me, blasting my blind but eager aspiration +for culture and a larger knowledge of the world and of human nature. + + + + +XI + + +[Sidenote: Culture by Stealth] + +After I made up my mind to accept damnation as my appointed portion, +I felt myself entirely free to revel at will in the reading that so +appealed to my hungry mind; free, that is to say, so far as my own +conscience was concerned, but no freer than before so far as the +restraints of authority could determine the matter. I had no hesitation +in reading the books when I could do so without being caught at it, but +to be caught at it was to be punished for it and, worse still, it was to +have the books placed beyond my reach, a thing I dreaded far more than +mere punishment. Punishment, indeed, seemed to me nothing more than a +small advance upon the damnation I must ultimately suffer in any case. +The thing to be avoided was discovery, because discovery must lead to +the confiscation of my books, the loss of that liberty which my +acceptance of damnation had given to me. + +To that end I practised many deceits and resorted to many subterfuges. +I read late at night when I was supposed to be asleep. I smuggled books +out into the woods and hid them there under the friendly roots of trees, +so that I might go out and read them when I was supposed to be engaged +in a search for ginseng, or in a hunt for the vagrant cow, to whose +unpunctuality in returning to be milked I feel that I owe an appreciable +part of such culture as I have acquired. + +The clerical hostility to literature endured long after the period of +which I have been writing, long after the railroad and other means of +freer intercourse had redeemed the West from its narrow provincialism. +Even in my high school days, when our part of the country had reached +that stage of civilization that hangs lace curtains at its windows, +wears store clothes of week days, and paints garden fences green instead +of white, we who were under Methodist dominance were rigidly forbidden +to read fiction or anything that resembled fiction, with certain +exceptions. The grown folk of our creed permitted themselves to read the +inane novels of the Philadelphia tailor, T. S. Arthur; the few young men +who "went to college," were presumed to be immune to the virus of the +Greek and Latin fictions they must read there--probably because they +never learned enough of Greek or Latin to read them understandingly--and +finally there were certain polemic novels that were generally permitted. + +Among these last the most conspicuous example I remember was a violently +anti-Roman Catholic novel called "Danger in the Dark," which had a vogue +that the "best-sellers" of our later time might envy. It was not only +permitted to us to read that--it was regarded as our religious duty in +order that we might learn to hate the Catholics with increased fervor. + +The religious animosities of that period, with their relentless +intolerance, their unreason, their matchless malevolence, and their +eagerness to believe evil, ought to form an interesting and instructive +chapter in some history of civilization in America, whenever a scholar +of adequate learning and the gift of interpretation shall undertake that +work. But that is a task for some Buckle or Lecky. It does not belong to +a volume of random reminiscences such as this is. + + + + +XII + + +[Sidenote: Civilization on Wheels] + +Though the railroads, when at last they came to us, failed utterly in +their promise of transportation at the rate of "a mile a minute," they +did something else, presently, that was quite as remarkable and far +worthier in its way. They ran down and ran over, and crushed out of +existence a provincialism that had much of evil promise and very little +of present good in it. With their coming, and in some degree in advance +of their coming, a great wave of population poured into the West from +all quarters of the country. The newcomers brought with them their +ideas, their points of view, their convictions, their customs, and +their standards of living. Mingling together in the most intimate ways, +socially and in business pursuits, each lost something of his prejudices +and provincialism, and gained much by contact with men of other ways of +thinking and living. Attrition sharpened the perceptions of all and +smoothed away angles of offense. A spirit of tolerance was awakened +such as had never been known in the Western country before, and as +the West became populous and prosperous, it became also more broadly +and generously American, more truly national in character, and more +accurately representative of all that is best in American thought and +life than any part of the country had ever been. It represented the +whole country and all its parts. + +The New Englanders, the Virginians, the Pennsylvanians, the Carolinians, +the Kentuckians, who were thus brought together into composite +communities with now and then an Irish, a French, a Dutch, or a German +family, a group of Switzers, and a good many Scotchmen for neighbors +and friends, learned much and quickly each from all the others. +Better still, each unlearned the prejudices, the bigotries, and the +narrownesses in which he had been bred, and life in the great West took +on a liberality of mind, a breadth of tolerance and sympathy, a generous +humanity such as had never been known in any of the narrowly provincial +regions that furnished the materials of this composite population. It +seems to me scarcely too much to say that real Americanism, in the broad +sense of the term, had its birth in that new "winning of the West," +which the railroads achieved about the middle of the nineteenth century. + +With the coming of easier and quicker communication, not only was the +West brought into closer relations with the East, but the West itself +became quickly more homogeneous. There was a constant shifting of +population from one place to another, much traveling about, and a free +interchange of thought among a people who were eagerly alert to adopt +new ideas that seemed in any way to be better than the old. As I recall +the rapid changes of that time it seems to me that the betterments came +with a rapidity rarely if ever equaled in human history. A year or +two at that time was sufficient to work a revolution even in the most +conservative centers of activity. Changes of the most radical kind and +involving the most vital affairs, were made over-night, as it were, and +with so little shock to men's minds that they ceased, almost immediately, +to be topics of conversation. The old had scarcely passed away before +it was forgotten, and the new as quickly became the usual, the ordinary, +the familiar order of things. + + + + +XIII + + +I do not mean to suggest that the West, or indeed any other part of the +country, at once put aside all its crudities of custom and adopted the +ways of living that we are familiar with in this later time. All that +has been a thing of gradual accomplishment, far slower in its coming +than most people realize. + +I remember that when Indianapolis became a great railroad center and a +city of enormous proportions--population from 15,000 to 20,000, according +to the creative capacity of the imagination making the estimate--a +wonderful hotel was built there, and called the Bates House. Its splendors +were the subject of wondering comment throughout the West. It had +washstands, with decorated pottery on them, in all its more expensive +rooms, so that a guest sojourning there need not go down to the common +washroom for his morning ablution, and dry his hands and face on a +jack-towel. There were combs and brushes in the rooms, too, so that +if one wanted to smooth his hair he was not obliged to resort to the +appliances of that sort that were hung by chains to the washroom walls. + +[Sidenote: A Breakfast Revolution] + +Moreover, if a man going to the Bates House for a sojourn, chose to pay +a trifle extra he might have a room all to himself, without the prospect +of being waked up in the middle of the night to admit some stranger, +assigned by the hotel authorities to share his room and bed. + +All these things were marvels of pretentious luxury, borrowed from +the more "advanced" hostelries of the Eastern cities, and as such they +became topics of admiring comment everywhere, as illustrations of the +wonderful progress of civilization that was taking place among us. + +But all these subjects of wonderment shrank to nothingness by +comparison, when the proprietors of the Bates House printed on their +breakfast bills of fare, an announcement that thereafter each guest's +breakfast would be cooked after his order for it was given, together +with an appeal for patience on the part of the breakfasters--a patience +that the proprietors promised to reward with hot and freshly prepared +dishes. + +This innovation was so radical that it excited discussion hotter even +than the Bates House breakfasts. Opinions differed as to the right +of a hotel keeper to make his guests wait for the cooking of their +breakfasts. To some minds the thing presented itself as an invasion +of personal liberty and therefore of the constitutional rights of the +citizen. To others it seemed an intolerable nuisance, while by those +who were ambitious of reputation as persons who had traveled and were +familiar with good usage, it was held to be a welcome advance in +civilization. In approving it, they were able to exploit themselves as +persons who had not only traveled as far as the state capital, but while +there had paid the two dollars a day, which the Bates House charged +for entertainment, instead of going to less pretentious taverns where +the customary charge of a dollar or a dollar and a half a day still +prevailed, and where breakfast was put upon the table before the gong +invited guests to rush into the dining room and madly scramble for what +they could get of it. + +In the same way I remember how we all wondered over the manifestation of +luxury made by the owners of a newly built steamboat of the Louisville +and Cincinnati Mail Line, when we heard that the several staterooms +were provided with wash-basins. That was in the fifties. Before that +time, two common washrooms--one for men and the other for women--had +served all the passengers on each steamboat, and, as those washrooms +had set-bowls with running water, they were regarded as marvels of +sumptuousness in travel facilities. It was partly because of such +luxury, I suppose, that we called the steamboats of that time "floating +palaces." They seemed so then. They would not impress us in that way +now. Perhaps fifty years hence the great ocean liners of the present, +over whose perfection of equipment we are accustomed to wonder, will +seem equally unworthy. Such things are comparative and the world +moves fast. + + + + +XIV + + +[Sidenote: A Bathroom Episode] + +The crudities here referred to, however, are not properly to be reckoned +as belonging exclusively to the West, or as specially indicative of the +provincialism of the West. At that time and for long afterward, it was +usual, even in good hotels throughout the country, to assign two men, +wholly unacquainted with each other, to occupy a room in common. It +was expected that the hotel would provide a comb and brush for the use +of guests in each room, as the practice of carrying one's own toilet +appliances of that kind had not yet become general. Hotel rooms with +private bathrooms adjoining, were wholly unknown before the Civil War, +and the practice of taking a daily bath was very uncommon indeed. A hotel +guest asking for such a thing would have been pointed out to bystanders +as a curiosity of effete dandyism. Parenthetically, I may say that as +late as 1886 I engaged for my wife and myself a room with private bath +on the first floor of the Nadeau House, then the best hotel in Los +Angeles, California. The man at the desk explained that the bathroom did +not open directly into the room, but adjoined it and was accessible +from the dead end of the hallway without. We got on very well with this +arrangement until Saturday night came, when, as I estimated the number, +all the unmarried men of the city took turns in bathing in my private +bathroom. When I entered complaint at the desk next morning, the clerk +evidently regarded me as a monster of arrogant selfishness. He explained +that as I had free use of the bathroom every day and night of the week, +I ought not to feel aggrieved at its invasion by other cleanly disposed +persons on "the usual night for taking a bath." + +The experience brought two facts to my attention: first, that in the +opinion of the great majority of my fellow American citizens one bath a +week was quite sufficient, and, second, that the fixed bathtub, with hot +and cold water running directly into it, is a thing of comparatively +modern use. I suppose that in the eighteen-fifties, and quite certainly +in the first half of that decade, there were no such appliances of +luxurious living in any but the very wealthiest houses, if even there. +Persons who wanted an "all-over bath," went to a barber shop for it, if +they lived in a city, and, if they lived elsewhere, went without it, or +pressed a family washtub into friendly service. + +So, too, as late as 1870, in looking for a house in Brooklyn, I found it +difficult to get one of moderate rent cost, that had other water supply +than such as a hydrant in the back yard afforded. + + + + +XV + + +To return to the changes wrought in the West by the construction of +railroads and the influx of immigration from all parts of the country. +In nothing else was the improvement more rapid or more pronounced +than in education. Until the early fifties, and even well into them, +educational endeavors and educational methods were crude, unorganized, +wasteful of effort, and utterly uncertain of result. From the very +beginning the desire for education had been alert and eager in the West, +and the readiness to spend money and effort in that behalf had been +unstinted. But the means were lacking and system was lacking. More +important still there was lack of any well-considered or fairly uniform +conception of what education ought to aim at or achieve. + +In the rural districts schools were sporadic and uncertain. When a +"master" was available "school kept," and its chief activity was to +teach the spelling of the English language. Incidentally it taught +pupils to read and the more advanced ones--ten per cent. of all, +perhaps, to write. As a matter of higher education rudimentary +arithmetic had a place in the curriculum. Now and then a schoolmaster +appeared who essayed other things in a desultory way but without results +of any consequence. In the villages and towns the schools were usually +better, but even there the lack of any well-ordered system was a blight. + +[Sidenote: School Methods] + +The schoolmasters were frequently changed, for one thing, each newcoming +one bringing his own notions to bear upon problems that he was not +destined to remain long enough to solve. Even in the more permanent +schools, kept by very young or superannuated preachers, or by Irish +schoolmasters who conducted them on the "knock down and drag out" system, +there was no attempt to frame a scheme of education that should aim at +well conceived results. In every such school there were two or three +boys taking "the classical course," by which was meant that without the +least question or consideration of their fitness to do so, they had +dropped all ordinary school studies and were slowly plodding along in +rudimentary Latin, in obedience to some inherited belief on the part of +their parents that education consists in studying Latin, that there is +a benediction in a paradigm, and that fitness for life's struggle is +most certainly achieved by the reading of "Historia Sacra," "Cornelius +Nepos," and the early chapters of "Cæsar's Commentaries on the Gallic +War." + +Other pupils, under the impression that they were taking a "scientific +course," were drilled in Comstock's Physiology and Natural Philosophy, +and somebody's "Geography of the Heavens." The rest of the +school--plebeians all--contented themselves with reading, writing, +arithmetic, geography, and a vain attempt to master the mysteries and +mists of Kirkham's Grammar. + +The railroads quickly changed all this. They brought into the West +men and women who knew who Horace Mann was, and whose conceptions of +education in its aims and methods were definite, well ordered, and +aggressive. + +These set to work to organize graded school systems in the larger towns, +and the thing was contagious, in a region where every little town was +confidently ambitious of presently becoming the most important city in +the state, and did not intend in the meantime to permit any other to +outdo it in the frills and furbelows of largeness. + +With preparatory education thus organized and systematized, and with +easy communication daily becoming easier, the ambition of young men +to attend colleges and universities was more and more gratified, so +that within a very few years the higher education--so far as it is +represented by college courses--became common throughout the country, +while for those who could not achieve that, or were not minded to do so, +the teaching of the schools was adapted, as it never had been before, +to the purpose of real, even if meager education. + +Even in the remotest country districts a new impetus was given to +education, and the subjection of the schools there to the supervision +of school boards and professional superintendents worked wonders of +reformation. For one thing the school boards required those who wished +to serve as teachers to pass rigid examinations in test of their +fitness, so that it was no longer the privilege of any ignoramus who +happened to be out of a job to "keep school." In addition to this +the school boards prescribed and regulated the courses of study, the +classification of pupils, and the choice of text-books, even in country +districts where graded schools were not to be thought of, and this +supervision gave a new and larger meaning to school training in the +country. + + + + +XVI + + +It was my fortune to be the first certified teacher under this system +in a certain rural district where the old haphazard system had before +prevailed, and my experience there connects itself interestingly, I +think, with a bit of literary history. It was the instigation of my +brother, Edward Eggleston's, most widely popular story, "The Hoosier +Schoolmaster," which in its turn was the instigation of all the +fascinating literature that has followed it with Hoosier life conditions +for its theme. + +[Sidenote: "The Hoosier Schoolmaster"] + +My school district lay not many miles from the little town in which my +family lived, and as I had a good pair of legs, well used to walking, I +went home every Friday night, returning on Monday morning after a four +o'clock breakfast. On these week-end visits it was my delight to tell of +the queer experiences of the week, and Edward's delight to listen to +them while he fought against the maladies that were then threatening his +brave young life with early extinction. + +Years afterwards he and I were together engaged in an effort to +resuscitate the weekly illustrated newspaper _Hearth and Home_, which +had calamitously failed to win a place for itself, under a number of +highly distinguished editors, whose abilities seemed to compass almost +everything except the art of making a newspaper that people wanted and +would pay for. Of that effort I shall perhaps have more to say in a +future chapter. It is enough now to say that the periodical had a weekly +stagnation--it will not do to call it a circulation--of only five +or six thousand copies, nearly half of them gratuitous, and it had +netted an aggregate loss of many thousands of dollars to the several +publishers who had successively made themselves its sponsors. It was our +task--Edward's and mine--to make the thing "pay," and to that end both +of us were cudgeling our brains by day and by night to devise means. + +One evening a happy thought came to Edward and he hurriedly quitted +whatever he was doing to come to my house and submit it. + +"I have a mind, Geordie," he said, "to write a three number story, +called 'The Hoosier Schoolmaster,' and to found it upon your experience +at Riker's Ridge." + +We talked the matter over. He wrote and published the first of the +three numbers, and its popularity was instant. The publishers pleaded +with him, and so did I, to abandon the three number limitation, and +he yielded. Before the serial publication of the story ended, the +subscription list of _Hearth and Home_ had been many times multiplied +and Edward Eggleston was famous. + +He was far too original a man, and one possessed of an imagination too +fertilely creative to follow at all closely my experiences, which had +first suggested the story to him. He made one or two personages among +my pupils the models from which he drew certain of his characters, but +beyond that the experiences which suggested the story in no way entered +into its construction. Yet in view of the facts it seems to me worth +while to relate something of those suggestive experiences. + +I was sixteen years old when I took the school. Circumstances +had compelled me for the time to quit college, where, despite my +youthfulness, I was in my second year. The Riker's Ridge district +had just been brought under supervision of the school authorities at +Madison. A new schoolhouse had been built and a teacher was wanted +to inaugurate the new system. I applied for the place, stood the +examinations, secured my certificate, and was appointed. + +[Sidenote: The Riker's Ridge District] + +On my first appearance in the neighborhood, the elders there seemed +distinctly disappointed in the selection made. They knew the school +history of the district. They remembered that the last three masters had +been "licked" by stalwart and unruly boys, the last one so badly that +he had abandoned the school in the middle of the term. They strongly +felt the need, therefore, of a master of mature years, strong arms, and +ponderous fists as the person chosen to inaugurate the new system. When +a beardless boy of sixteen presented himself instead, they shook their +heads in apprehension. But the appointment had been made by higher +authority, and they had no choice but to accept it. Appreciating the +nature of their fears, I told the grave and reverend seigniors that my +schoolboy experience had shown my arms to be stronger, my fists heavier, +and my nimbleness greater perhaps than they imagined, but that in the +conduct of the school I should depend far more upon the diplomatic +nimbleness of my wits than upon physical prowess, and that I thought I +should manage to get on. + +There was silence for a time. Then one wise old patriarch said: + +"Well, may be so. But there's Charley Grebe. You wouldn't make a +mouthful for him. Anyhow, we'll see, we'll see." + +Charley Grebe was the youth who had thrashed the last master so +disastrously. + +Thus encouraged, I went to my task. + +The neighborhood was in no sense a bad one. There were none of the +elements in it that gave character to "Flat Creek" as depicted in +"The Hoosier Schoolmaster." The people were all quiet, orderly, entirely +reputable folk, most of them devotedly pious. They were mainly of +"Pennsylvania Dutch" extraction, stolid on the surface but singularly +emotional within. But the school traditions of the region were those +of the old time, when the master was regarded as the common enemy, who +must be thwarted in every possible way, resisted at every point where +resistance was possible, and "thrashed" by the biggest boy in school +if the biggest boy could manage that. + +There was really some justification for this attitude of the young +Americans in every such district. For under the old system, as I very +well remember it, the government of schools was brutal, cruel, inhuman +in a degree that might in many cases have excused if it did not justify +a homicidal impulse on the part of its victims. The boys of the early +time would never have grown into the stalwart Americans who fought the +Civil War if they had submitted to such injustice and so cruel a tyranny +without making the utmost resistance they could. + + + + +XVII + + +I began my work with a little friendly address to the forty or fifty +boys and girls who presented themselves as pupils. I explained to +them that my idea of a school was quite different from that which had +before that time prevailed in that region; that I was employed by the +authorities to teach them all I could, by way of fitting them for life, +and that I was anxious to do that in the case of every boy and girl +present. I expressed the hope that they in their turn were anxious to +learn all I could teach them, and that if any of them found their +studies too difficult, I would gladly give my time out of school hours +to the task of discovering the cause of the difficulty and remedying it. +I explained that in my view government in a school should have no object +beyond that of giving every pupil opportunity to learn all he could, and +the teacher opportunity to teach all he could. I frankly abolished the +arbitrary rule that had before made of whispering a grave moral offense, +and substituted for it a request that every pupil should be careful not +to disturb the work of others in any way, so that we might all make the +most of our time and opportunity. + +It was a new gospel, and in the main it fell upon deaf ears. A few of +the pupils were impressed by its reasonableness and disposed to meet the +new teacher half way. The opinion of the majority was expressed by one +boy whom I overheard at recess when he said to one of his fellows: + +[Sidenote: The Biggest Boy] + +"He's skeered o' Charley Grebe, an' he's a-tryin' to soft-sawder us." + +The first day or two of school were given to the rather perplexing work +of classifying pupils whose previous instruction had been completely at +haphazard. During that process I minutely observed the one foe against +whom I had received more than one warning--Charley Grebe. He was a +young man of nearly twenty-one, six feet, one or two inches high, +broad-shouldered, muscular, and with a jaw that suggested all the +relentless determination that one young man can hold. + +When I questioned him with a view to his classification, he was polite +enough in his uninstructed way, but exceedingly reserved. On the whole +he impressed me as a young man of good natural ability, who had been +discouraged by bad and incapable instruction. After he had told me, +rather grudgingly I thought, what ground his studies had covered, he +suddenly changed places with me and became the questioner. + +"Say," he broke out, interrupting some formal question of mine, "Say, +do you know anything in fact? Do you know Arithmetic an' Algebra an' +Geometry and can you really teach me? or are you just pretending, like +the rest?" + +I thought I understood him and I guessed what his experience had been. I +assured him that there was nothing in Arithmetic that I could not teach +him, that I knew my Algebra, Geometry, and Trigonometry, and could +help him to learn them, if he really desired to do so. Then adopting +something of his own manner I asked: + +"What is it you want me to do, Charley? Say what you have to say, like +a man, and don't go beating about the bush." + +For reply, he said: + +"I want to talk with you. It'll be a long talk. I want you to go home +with me to-night. Father said I might invite you. Will you come?" + +There was eager earnestness in his questions, but there was also a note +of discouragement, if not quite of despair in his tone. I agreed at once +to go with him for the night, and, taking the hand he had not thought of +offering, I added: + +"If there is any way in which I can help you, Charley, I'll do it +gladly." + +Whether it was the unaccustomed courtesy, or the awakening of a new +hope, or something else, I know not, but the awkward, overgrown boy +seemed at once to assume the dignity of manhood, and while he had never +been taught to say "thank you" or to use any other conventionally polite +form of speech, he managed to make me understand by his manner that he +appreciated my offer, and a few minutes later, school having been +dismissed, he and I set out for his home. + +There he explained his case to me. He wanted to become a shipwright--a +trade which, in that time of multitudinous steamboat building on the +Western rivers, was the most inviting occupation open to a young man +of energy. He had discovered that a man who wished to rise to anything +like a mastery in that trade must have a good working knowledge of +Arithmetic, elementary Algebra, Geometry, and at least the rudiments +of Trigonometry. He had wanted to learn these things and some of his +previous schoolmasters had undertaken to teach them, with no result +except presently to reveal to him their own ignorance. His father +permitted him six months more of schooling. He had "sized me up," he +said, and he believed I could teach him what he wanted to learn. But +could he learn it within six months? That was what he wanted me to +tell him. I put him through a close examination in Arithmetic that +night--consuming most of the night--and before morning I had satisfied +myself that he was an apt pupil who, with diligence and such earnest +determination as he manifested, could learn what he really needed of +mathematics within the time named. + +[Sidenote: A Vigorous Volunteer Monitor] + +"You can do it, Charley, if you work hard, and I'll help you, in school +hours and out," was my final verdict. + +"It's a bargain," he said, and that was all he said. But a day or +two later a boy in school--a great, hulking fellow whose ugliness +of disposition I had early discerned--made a nerve-racking noise by +dragging his pencil over his slate in a way that disturbed the whole +school. I bade him cease, but he presently repeated the offense. Again +I rebuked him, but five minutes or so later he defiantly did the thing +again, "just to see if the master dared," he afterward explained. +Thereupon Charley Grebe arose, seized the fellow by the ear, twisted +that member until its owner howled with pain, and then, hurling him +back into his seat, said: + +"_You heard the master! You'll mind him after this or I'll make you._" + +The event fairly appalled the school. The thought that Charley Grebe was +on the master's side, and actively helping him to maintain discipline, +seemed beyond belief. But events soon confirmed it. There was a little +fellow in the school whom everybody loved, and whose quaint, childish +ways afterwards suggested the character of "Shocky" in "The Hoosier +Schoolmaster." There was also a cowardly brute there whose delight it +was to persecute the little fellow on the playground in intolerable +ways. I sought to stop the thing. To that end I devised and inflicted +every punishment I could think of, short of flogging, but all to no +purpose. At last I laid aside my convictions with my patience, and gave +the big bully such a flogging as must have impressed his mind if he had +had anything of the kind about his person. + +That day, at the noon recess, the big bully set to work to beat +the little boy unmercifully in revenge for what I had done for his +protection. I was looking out through a Venetian blind, with intent to +go to the rescue, when suddenly Charley Grebe, who was playing town +ball threw down the bat, seized the fellow, threw him across his knees, +pinioned his legs with one of his own, and literally wore out a dozen or +more thick blue ash shingles over that part of his victim's body which +was made for spanking. + +When at last he released the blubbering object of his wrath he slapped +his jaws soundly and said: + +"Don't you go a-whining to the master about this. If you do it'll be +a good deal wuss for you. I'm a-takin' this here job off the master's +hands." + +I gave no hint that I had seen or heard. But from that hour forth no +boy in the school ever gave me the smallest trouble by misbehavior. The +school perfectly understood that Charley Grebe was "a-takin' this here +job off the master's hands," and the knowledge was sufficient. + +After that only the big girls--most of them older than I was--gave me +trouble. I met it with the explanation that I could never think of +punishing a young woman, and that I must trust to their honor and +courtesy, as girls who expected presently to be ladies, for their +behavior. The appeal was a trifle slow in eliciting a response, but +in the end it answered its purpose. + + + + +XVIII + + +[Sidenote: What's in a Name?] + +While I was enrolling and classifying the pupils, I encountered a +peculiarly puzzling case. There were five John Riddels in the school, +and I found that all of them were sons of the same man, whose name also +was John Riddel. No one of them had a middle name or any other sort +of name by which he might be distinguished from his brothers. On the +playground they were severally known as "Big John Riddel," "John +Riddel," "Johnny Riddel," "Little John Riddel," and "Little Johnny +Riddel," while their father was everywhere known as "Old John Riddel," +though he was a man under fifty, I should say. He lived near, in a +stone house, with stone barns and out-houses, an ingeniously devised +milk-house, and a still more ingeniously constructed device for bringing +water from the spring under the hill into his dwelling. + +In brief his thrift was altogether admirable, and the mechanical devices +by which he made the most of every opportunity, suggested a fertilely +inventive mind on the part of a man whose general demeanor was stolid to +the verge of stupidity. When I was taking supper at his house one night +by special invitation, I asked him why he had named all his sons John. +For reply he said: + +"John is a very good name," and that was all the explanation I ever got +out of him. + + + + +XIX + + +One pupil I had at Riker's Ridge, was Johnny G. His people had some +money and Johnny had always dressed better than the rest of us could +afford to do, when several years before, he and I had been classmates +in the second or third grade of the Grammar School in Madison. Johnny +had never got out of that grade, and even when I was in my second year +in college, he gave no promise of ever making a scholastic step forward. +But he had relatives on Riker's Ridge, and when he heard that I was to +be the teacher there he promised his people that he would really make +an effort if they would let him live with his relatives there and become +my pupil. It was so arranged, and Johnny came to me, with all his +dazzling waistcoats and trousers with the latest style of pockets, and +all the rest of the upholstery with which he delighted to decorate his +person. + +I think he really did make an effort to master the rudimentary school +studies, and I conscientiously endeavored to help him, not only in +school but of evenings. For a time there seemed to be a reasonable +promise of success in lifting Johnny to that level of scholastic +attainment which would permit him to return to Madison and enter the +High School. But presently all this was brought to naught. Johnny was +seized by a literary ambition that completely absorbed what mind he had, +and made his school studies seem to him impertinent intrusions upon the +attention of one absorbed in higher things. + +He told me all about it one afternoon as I walked homeward with him, +intent upon finding out why he had suddenly ceased to get his lessons. + +"I'm going to write a song," he told me, "and it's going to make me +famous. I'm writing it now, and I tell you it's fine." + +"Tell me about it, Johnny," I replied. "What is its theme? And how much +of it have you written?" + +"I don't know what it's to be about," he answered, "if that's what you +mean by its theme. But it's going to be great, and I'm going to make the +tune to it myself." + +"Very well," I replied encouragingly. "Would you mind reciting to me so +much of it as you've written? I'd like to hear it." + +"Why, of course. I tell you it's going to be great, but I haven't got +much of it done yet--only one line, in fact." + +[Sidenote: A Buttermilk Poet] + +Observing a certain discouragement in his tone I responded: + +"Oh, well, even one line is a good deal, if it's good. Many a poem's +fortune has been made by a single line. Tell me what it is." + +"Well, the line runs: 'With a pitcher of buttermilk under her arm.' +Don't you see how it sort o' sings? 'With a pitcher of buttermilk under +her arm'--why, it's great, I tell you. Confound the school books! What's +the use of drudging when a fellow has got it in him to write poetry like +that? 'With a pit-cher of but-termilk un-der her arm'--don't it sing? +'With a _pit_-cher of but-termilk un-der her arm.' 'With a _pit_-cher +of _but_-termilk--un-der her arm.' Whoopee, but it's great!" + +I lost sight of Johnny soon after that, and I have never heard what +became of that buttermilk pitcher, or the fascinating rhythm in which it +presented itself. But in later years I have come into contact with many +literary ambitions that were scarcely better based than this. Indeed, if +I were minded to be cynical--as I am not--I might mention a few magazine +poets whose pitchers of buttermilk seem to me--but all that is foreign +to the purpose of this book. + +Before quitting this chapter and the period and region to which it +relates, I wish to record that Charley Grebe mastered the mathematics +he needed, and entered hopefully upon his apprenticeship to a ship +carpenter. I hope he rose to the top in the trade, but I know nothing +about it. + + + + +XX + + +Not many months after my school-teaching experience came to an end, +circumstances decreed that my life should be changed in the most radical +way possible in this country. I quitted the rapidly developing, +cosmopolitan, kaleidoscopic West, and became a dweller upon the old +family plantation in Virginia, where my race had been bred and nurtured +ever since 1635 when the first man of my name to cross the seas +established himself there and possessed himself of lavishly abundant +acres which subsequent divisions among his descendants had converted +into two adjoining plantations--the ancestral homes of all the +Egglestons, so far, at least, as I knew them or knew of them. + +I suppose I was an imaginative youth at seventeen, and I had read +enough of poetry, romance, and still more romantic history, to develop +that side of my nature somewhat unduly. At any rate it was strongly +dominant, and the contrast between the seething, sordid, aggressive, +and ceaselessly eager life of the West, in which I had been bred and +the picturesquely placid, well-bred, self-possessed, and leisurely life +into which the transfer ushered me, impressed me as nothing else has +ever done. It was like escaping from the turmoil of battle to the +green pastures, and still waters of the Twenty-third Psalm. It was +like passing from the clamor of a stock exchange into the repose of +a library. + +I have written much about that restful, refined, picturesque old +Virginia life in essays and romances, but I must write something more +of it in this place at risk of offending that one of my critics who not +long ago discovered that I had created it all out of my own imagination +for the entertainment of New England readers. He was not born, +I have reason to believe, until long after that old life had passed +into history, but his conviction that it never existed, that it was +_a priori_ impossible, was strong enough to bear down the testimony +of any eye-witness's recollection. + +[Sidenote: Creative Incredulity] + +It has often been a matter of chastening wonder and instruction to me to +observe how much more critics and historians can learn from the intuitions +of their "inner consciousness" than was ever known to the unfortunates +who have had only facts of personal observation and familiar knowledge +to guide them. It was only the other day that a distinguished historian +of the modern introspective, self-illuminating school upset the +traditions of many centuries by assuring us that the romantic story +of Antony and Cleopatra is a baseless myth; that there never was any +love affair between the Roman who has been supposed to have "madly +flung a world away" for worship of a woman, and the "Sorceress of the +Nile"--the "star-eyed Egyptian" who has been accused of tempting him +to his destruction; that Cleopatra merely hired of Antony the services +of certain legions that she needed for her defense, and paid him for +them in the current money of the time and country. + +Thus does the incredulous but infallible intuition of the present +correct the recorded memory of the past. I have no doubt that some day +the country will learn from that sort of superior consciousness that in +the Virginia campaign of the Wilderness, Spottsylvania and Cold Harbor, +where men are now believed to have fought and marched so heroically with +empty bellies and often with unshod feet, there were in fact no such +discomforts incident to the discussion; that Grant and Lee like the +courteous commanders they were, suspended the argument of arms at the +dinner hour each day in order that their men might don evening clothes +and patent leather shoes and sit down to banquets of eleven courses, +with _pousse cafés_ and cigars at the end. Nevertheless, I shall write +of the old Virginia life as I remember it, and let the record stand at +that until such time as it shall be shown by skilled historical criticism +that the story of the Civil War is a sun myth and that the old life which +is pictured as having preceded it was the invention of the romance +writers. + + + + +XXI + + +The first thing that impressed me in that old life, when I was thrust +into it, was its repose, the absence of stress or strain or anxious +anticipation, the appreciation of to-morrow as the equal of to-day for +the doing of things and the getting of things done. My trunks had missed +connection somewhere on the journey, and I thought of telegraphing about +the matter. My uncle, the master of the plantation and head of the +family, discouraged that, and suggested that I should go fishing in a +neighboring creek instead. The telegraph office was six miles away. He +had never sent a telegram in his life. He had no doubt the trunks would +come along to-morrow or next day, and the fish in the creek were just +then biting in encouraging fashion. + +That was my first lesson, and it impressed me strongly. Where I had +come from nobody would have thought of resting under the uncertainty or +calmly contemplating the unwarranted delay. Here nobody thought of doing +anything else, and as the trunks did in fact come the next day without +any telegraphing or hurry or worry, I learned that it was just as well +to go fishing as to go fussing. + +[Sidenote: The Virginian Way] + +The restful leisureliness of the life in Virginia was borne in upon me +on every hand, I suppose my nerves had really been upon a strain during +all the seventeen years that I had lived, and the relief I found in my +new surroundings doubtless had much to do with my appreciation of it +all. I had been used to see hurry in everything and everybody; here +there was no such thing as hurry. Nobody had a "business engagement" +that need interfere with anything else he was minded to do. "Business," +indeed, was regarded as something to be attended to on the next court +day, when all men having affairs to arrange with each other were sure +to meet at the Court-House--as the county seat village was usually +called. Till then it could wait. Nobody was going to move away. +Everybody was "able to owe his debts." Why bother, then, to make a +journey for the settlement of a matter of business which could wait as +well as not for next court day to come round? It was so much pleasanter +to stay at home, to entertain one's friends, to ride over the +plantation, inspecting and directing crop work, to take a gun and go +after squirrels or birds or turkeys, to play backgammon or chess or +dominoes in the porch, to read the new books that everybody was talking +about, or the old ones that Virginians loved more--in brief, there was +no occasion for hurry, and the Virginians wasted none of their vital +force in that way. + +The very houses suggested repose. They had sat still upon their +foundations for generations past, and would go on doing so for +generations to come. The lawns were the growth of long years, with +no touch of recent gardeners' work about them. The trees about the +house grounds had been in undisputed possession there long before the +grandfathers of the present generation were born. There was nowhere any +suggestion of newness, or rawness, of change actual or likely to come. +There were no new people--except the babies--and nobody ever dreamed of +changing his residence. + + + + +XXII + + +Another thing that peculiarly impressed me, coming as I did from a +region where the mart was the center about which all life's activities +circled, was the utter absence of talk about money or the things that +relate to money. Practically there was no money in use among the +planter folk, except when a journey to distant points required the +lining of a purse. Except in the very smallest way the planters never +used money in their daily lives. They rarely bought anything directly, +and they never thought of selling anything except in planter fashion +through accredited agencies. Once a year they shipped the tobacco and +the wheat their fields had produced, to the city, for a commission +merchant to sell. The commission merchant held a considerable part of +the proceeds to the planter's credit, and when the planter wanted +anything of consequence he simply wrote to the commission merchant to +buy it for him. The rest of the money from the sale of the plantation +products was deposited in bank to the planter's account. If the women +folk went to town on a shopping expedition, they bought whatever they +wanted in the stores and had it "charged," for every planter's credit +was limitless in the shops. When the bill was rendered, which was never +in a hurry, the planter drew a check in discharge of it. He had no +"blank check" book. No such thing was known in that community. He simply +wrote his check at top of a sheet of foolscap, stating in it what it was +for, and courteously asking the bank "please" to pay the amount. Then +he carefully cut off the remainder of the sheet and put it away as an +economy of paper. The next time he drew a check or anything of the sort, +he took a fresh sheet of paper for the purpose and carefully laid away +all that was not used of it. Thus was his instinct of economy gratified, +while his lordly sense of liberality in the use of material things was +not offended. When he died, the drawers filled with large and small +fragments of foolscap sheets were cleared out and left for his successor +to fill in his turn. + +[Sidenote: Parson J----'s Checks] + +This custom of paying by check so strongly commended itself to a certain +unworldly parson of my time, that he resorted to it on one occasion in +entire ignorance and innocence of the necessity of having a bank deposit +as a preliminary to the drawing of checks. He went to Richmond and +bought a year's supplies for his little place--it was too small to be +called a plantation--and for each purchase he drew a particularly polite +check. When the banks threw these out, on the ground that their author +had no account, the poor old parson found the situation a difficult one +to understand. He had thought that the very purpose of a bank's being +was to cash checks for persons who happened to be short of money. + +"Why, if I'd had the money in the bank," he explained, "I shouldn't +have written the checks at all; I should have got the money and paid +the bills." + +Fortunately the matter came to the knowledge of a well-to-do and +generous planter who knew parson J. and who happened to be in Richmond +at the time. His indorsement made the checks good, and saved the +unworldly old parson a deal of trouble. + +The planters were not all of them rich by any means. Hardly one of +those in Virginia had possessions that would to-day rank him even among +moderately rich men. But they were scrupulously honorable men, they +were men of reasonable property, and their credit rested firmly upon +the fact that they were able to pay and the equally important fact +that they meant to pay. They lived lavishly, but the plantation itself +furnished most of the materials of the lavishness, so that there was no +extravagance in such living. For the rest they had a sufficient regard +for those who were to come after them to keep the total volume of the +debt upon the estate within such limits as the estate could easily +stand. + +What I wish to emphasize here is that the methods of their monetary +transactions were such as to make of money a very infrequent subject +of consideration in their lives and conversations. + +Economically it would have been better for them if things had been +otherwise, but socially, the utter absence of pecuniary flavor from +their intercourse, lent a peculiar charm to it, especially in the eyes +and mind of a youth brought up as I had been in an atmosphere positively +grimy with the soot of monetary considerations. + +There was hardly one of those plantations whose utterly waste products +were not worth more in the markets near at hand than were the tobacco +and wheat which alone the planters sold. When I came into the practice +of law a few years later, and had charge of the affairs of a number of +estates, I brought this matter of waste to the attention of my clients, +with all the earnestness I could put into my pleading. I showed them +prices current to prove that if they chose to market their surplus +apples, potatoes, sweet potatoes, lambs, pigs, poultry, and dairy +products, all of which they gave away or suffered to go to waste, they +might discharge their hereditary debts at once and build up balances in +bank. They had sagacity enough to understand the facts, but not one of +them would ever consent to apply them practically. It would be "Yankee +farming," was the ready reply, and that was conclusive. It was not the +custom of the planters to sell any but staple products, and they were +planters, not farmers. + +[Sidenote: The Charm of Leisureliness] + +All these things helped, when I first came into relations with them, to +impress my young mind with the poise, the picturesqueness, the restful +leisureliness of the Virginian life, and the utter absence from it of +strenuousness, and still more of sordidness. For the first time in my +life I was living with people who thought of money only on those annual +or other occasions when they were settling their affairs and paying +their debts by giving notes for their sum; people who regarded time not +as something to be economized and diligently utilized for the sake of +its money value, but as a means of grace, if I may so speak without +irreverence; as an opportunity of enjoyment, for themselves and for +others; as a thing to be spent with the utmost lavishness in the doing +of things agreeable, in the reading of books that pleased, in the riding +of horses that put the rider upon his metal to match their tameless +spirit, in the cultivation of flowers, in the improvement of trees by +grafting and budding, and even in the idler pleasures of tossing grace +hoops, or hotly maintaining an indoor contest at battledore and +shuttlecock when it rained heavily. These and a score of other pastimes +seemed good in the eyes of the Virginian men and women. The men went +shooting or fox hunting or hare coursing, or fishing, each in its +season. The women embroidered and knitted nubias, and made fancy work, +and they walked long miles when not riding with escorts, and dug much in +the ground in propagation of the flowers they loved. They kept house, +too, with a vigilance born of the fact that in keeping house they were +also keeping plantation. For they must not only supervise the daily +dispensation of foodstuffs to all the negroes, but they must visit and +personally care for the sick, the aged, the infirm, and the infantile +among the black people. They must put up fruits and jams and pickles +and ketchups and jellies and shrubs and cordials enough to stock a +warehouse, in anticipation of the plantation needs. They must personally +cut out and direct the making of all the clothing to be worn by the +blacks on the plantation, for the reason that the colored maids, +seamstresses and dressmakers who were proud to fashion the gowns of +their young mistresses, simply would not "work for de field +hands,"--meaning the negroes of the plantation. + +Yet with it all these women were never hurried, never scant of time in +which to do anything that might give pleasure to another. I never knew +one of them to plead preoccupation as a reason for not going riding or +walking, or rendering some music, or joining in a game, or doing +anything else that others wanted her to do. + +The reason for all this was simple enough. The young women who kept +house--and it was usually the young women who did so--were up and at +it before the dawn. By the time that the eight-thirty or nine o'clock +breakfast was served, all their necessary work was done for the day; +often it was done in time to let them take a ride before breakfast +if the young man suggesting it happened to be an agreeable fellow. +After all was done upon which that day's conduct of the house and the +plantation depended, the gentlewomen concerned adopted the views of +their masculine mentors and exemplars. They accepted to-morrow as a good +enough stalking horse for to-day, and, having laid out their work well +in advance, they exacted of their servitors that the morrow's morning +should begin with a demonstration of to-day's work well done. + +So they, too, had leisure, just as the meal hours had. I had been +brought up on five or six o'clock breakfasts, eleven-thirty or twelve +o'clock dinners, and early suppers. Here the breakfast hour was eight +thirty at the earliest and nine usually; "snack" was served about one to +those who chose to come to it, dinner at three or four, with no hurry +about it, and supper came at nine--the hour at which most people in the +West habitually went to bed. + +The thing suited me, personally, for I had great ambitions as a student +and habitually dug at my mathematics, Latin, and Greek until two in the +morning. I was always up by daylight, and after a plunge into the cold +water provided for me in a molasses barrel out under the eaves, I +usually took a ride in company with the most agreeable young woman who +happened to be staying in the house at the time. + +Sometimes I had two to escort, but that was rare. Usually there was +another young man in the house, and usually, under such circumstances, I +saw to it that he did not lie long abed. And even when there was no such +recourse, the "other girl" was apt to conjure up some excuse for not +wishing to ride that morning. + + + + +XXIII + + +[Sidenote: The Courtesy of the Virginians] + +Indeed, one of the things that most deeply impressed me among the +Virginians was the delicacy and alert thoughtfulness of their courtesy. +The people of the West were not ill-mannered boors by any means, but +gentle, kindly folk. But they were not versed in those little momentary +courtesies of life which create a roseate atmosphere of active good +will. In all that pertained to courtesy in the larger and more +formal affairs of social life, the people of the West were even more +scrupulously attentive to the requirements of good social usage than +these easy-going Virginians were, with their well-defined social status +and their habit of taking themselves and each other for granted. But in +the little things of life, in their alertness to say the right word or +do the trifling thing that might give pleasure, and their still greater +alertness to avoid the word or act that might offend or incommode, the +Virginians presented to my mind a new and altogether pleasing example +of courtesy. + +In later years I have found something like this agreeably impressed upon +me when I go for a time from New York to Boston. Courtesy could not +be finer or more considerate among people of gentle breeding who know +each other than it is in New York. But in their considerate treatment of +strangers, casually encountered in public places, the Boston people give +a finer, gentler, more delicate flavor to their courtesy, and it is a +delightful thing to encounter. + +In Virginia this quality of courtesy was especially marked in the +intercourse of men and women with each other. The attitude of both was +distinctly chivalrous. To the woman--be she a child of two, a maiden +of twenty, or a gentlewoman so well advanced in years that her age was +unmentionable--the man assumed an attitude of gentle consideration, of +deference due to sex, of willingness to render any service at any cost, +and of a gently protective guardianship that stopped at nothing in the +discharge of its duty. To the man, be he old or young, the woman yielded +that glad obedience that she deemed due to her protector and champion. + +I had never seen anything like this before. In the West I had gone to +school with all the young women I knew. I had competed with them upon +brutally equal terms, in examinations and in struggles for class honors, +and the like. They and we boys had been perfectly good friends and +comrades, of course, and we liked each other in that half-masculine way. +But the association was destructive of romance, of fineness, of delicate +attractiveness. There was no glamor left in the relations of young men +and young women, no sentiment except such as might exist among young +men themselves. The girls were only boys of another sort. Our attitude +toward them was comradely but not chivalric. It was impossible to feel +the roseate glow of romance in association with a young woman who had +studied in the same classes with one, who had stood as a challenge in +the matter of examination marks, and who met one at any hour of the day +on equal terms, with a cheery "good-morning" or "good-evening" that had +no more of sentiment in it than the clatter of a cotton mill. + +[Sidenote: Sex and Education] + +In my judgment, that is the conclusive objection to co-education, +except perhaps among the youngest children. It robs the relations of +the sexes of sentiment, of softness, of delicacy. It makes of girls an +inferior sort of boys, and of boys an inferior sort of girls. It cannot +completely negative sex, but it can and does sufficiently negative it +to rob life of one of its tenderest charms. + +In Virginia for the first time I encountered something different. +There the boys were sent to old field schools where in rough and tumble +fashion, they learned Latin and robust manliness, Greek and a certain +graciousness of demeanor toward others, the absence of which would have +involved them in numberless fights on the playgrounds. The girls were +tenderly dame-nurtured at home, with a gentlewoman for governess, with +tutors to supplement the instruction of the governess, and with a year +or two, perhaps, for finishing, at Le Febre's or Dr. Hoge's, or some +other good school for young women. + +Both the young men and the young women read voluminously--the young men +in part, perhaps, to equip themselves for conversational intercourse +with the young women. They both read polite literature, but they read +history also with a diligence that equipped them with independent +convictions of their own, with regard to such matters as the conduct of +Charlotte Corday, the characters of Mirabeau, Danton, and Robespierre, +the ungentlemanly treatment given by John Knox to Mary, Queen of Scots, +and all that sort of thing. Indeed, among the Virginia women, young and +old, the romantic episodes of history, ancient, mediæval, and modern, +completely took the place, as subjects of conversation, of those gossipy +personalities that make up the staple of conversation among women +generally. + +Let me not be misunderstood. These women did not assume to be "learned +ladies." It was only that they knew their history and loved it and were +fond of talking about it, quite as some other women are fond of talking +about the interesting scandal in the domestic relations of the reigning +matinée hero. + +The intercourse between men and women thus educated was always easy, +gracious, and friendly, but it was always deferential, chivalric, and +imbued with that recognition of sex which, without loss of dignity on +either side, holds man to be the generously willing protector, and woman +the proudly loyal recipient of a protection to which her sex entitles +her, and in return for which she gladly yields a submission that has +nothing of surrender in it. + +There was a fascination to me in all this, that I find it impossible to +describe and exceedingly difficult even to suggest. + +I may add that I think the young women of that time in Virginia were +altogether the best educated young women I have ever encountered in any +time or country. And, best of all, they were thoroughly, +uncompromisingly feminine. + +Of the men I need only say that they were masculine, and fit mates +for such women. I do not at all think they were personally superior +to men of other parts of the country in those things that pertain to +character and conduct, but at least they had the advantage of living +in a community where public opinion was all-dominant, and where that +resistless force insisted upon truth, integrity, and personal courage +as qualities that every man must possess if he expected to live in that +community at all. It was _noblesse oblige_, and it inexorably controlled +the conduct of all men who hoped for recognition as gentlemen. + +The sentiment took quixotic forms at times, perhaps, but no jesting over +these manifestations can obscure the fact that it compelled men to good +behavior in every relation of life and made life sweeter, wholesomer, +and more fruitful of good than it otherwise would have been. + +[Sidenote: The Voices of Virginia Women] + +I must add a word with respect to that most fascinating of all things, +the Virginia girl's voice. This was music of so entrancing a sort that +I have known young men from other parts of the country to fall in love +with a voice before they had seen its possessor and to remain in love +with the owner of it in spite of her distinct lack of beauty when +revealed in person. + +Those girls all dropped the "g"s at the end of their participles; they +habitually used double negatives, and, quite defiantly of dictionaries, +used Virginian locutions not sanctioned by authority. If challenged on +the subject their reply would have been that which John Esten Cooke gave +to an editor who wanted to strike a phrase out of one of his Virginia +romances, on the ground that it was not good English. "It's good +Virginian," he answered, "and for my purpose that is more important." + +But all such defects of speech--due not to ignorance but to a charming +wilfulness--were forgotten in the music of the voices that gave them +utterance. + +There are no such voices now, even in Virginia, I regret to say. +Not of their own fault, but because of contact with strangely altered +conditions, the altogether charming Virginia girls I sometimes meet +nowadays, have voices and intonations not unlike those of women in other +parts of the country, except that they preserve enough of the old lack +of emphasis upon the stronger syllables to render their speech often +difficult to understand. There is compensation for that in the gentle, +laughing readiness with which they repeat utterances not understood on +their first hearing. + + + + +XXIV + + +It was during the roseate years of the old Virginia life not long before +the war that I had my first and only serious experience of what is +variously and loosely called the "occult" and the "supernatural." + +It is only in answer to solicitation that I tell the story here as it +has been only in response to like solicitation that I have orally told +it before. + +In order that I may not be misunderstood, in order that I may not be +unjustly suspected of a credulity that does not belong to me, I wish to +say at the outset that I am by nature and by lifelong habit of mind a +skeptic. I believe in the natural order, in cause and effect, in the +material basis of psychological phenomena. I have no patience with the +mystical or the mysterious. I do not believe in the miraculous, the +supernatural, the occult--call it what you will. + +And yet the experience I am about to relate is literally true, and the +story of it a slavishly faithful record of facts. I make no attempt to +reconcile those facts with my beliefs or unbeliefs. I venture upon no +effort at explanation. I have set forth above my intellectual attitude +toward all such matters; I shall set forth the facts of this experience +with equal candor. If the reader finds the facts irreconcilable with my +intellectual convictions, I must leave him to judge as he may between +the two, without aid of mine. The facts are these: + +I was one of a house party, staying at one of the most hospitable +of Virginia mansions. I was by courtesy of Virginia clannishness +"cousin" to the mistress of the house, and when no house party was in +entertainment I was an intimate there, accustomed to go and come at +will and to reckon myself a member of the family by brevet. + +[Sidenote: The Story of the West Wing] + +At the time now considered, the house was unusually full, when a letter +came announcing the immediate coming of still other guests. In my close +intimacy with the mistress of the plantation I became aware of her +perplexity. She didn't know where and how to bestow the presently coming +guests. I suggested that I and some others should take ourselves away, a +suggestion which her hospitable soul rejected, the more particularly in +my case, perhaps, because I was actively planning certain entertainments +in which she was deeply interested. Suddenly it occurred to me that +during my long intimacy in the house I had never known anybody to occupy +the room or rooms which constituted the second story of the west wing of +the building. I asked why not bring that part of the spacious mansion +into use in this emergency, thinking that its idleness during all the +period of my intimacy there had been due only to the lack of need in a +house so large. + +"Cousin Mary," with a startled look of inquiry upon her face, glanced +at her husband, who sat with us alone on a piazza. + +"You may as well tell him the facts," he said in reply to the look. +"He won't talk." + +Then she told me the history of the room, explaining that she objected +to any talk about it because she dreaded the suspicion of superstition. +Briefly the story was that several generations earlier, an old man +almost blind, had died there; that during his last illness he had had +his lawyer prepare his will there; that he was too feeble, when the +lawyer finished, even to sign the document; that he placed it under his +pillow; that during the night his daughter abstracted and copied it, +changing only one clause in such fashion as to defeat the long cherished +purpose of the dying man; that she placed her new draft under the pillow +where the old one had been and that in the morning the nearly blind old +man executed that instead of the other. + +"Now I'm not superstitious, you know," said Cousin Mary very earnestly, +"but it is a fact that from that day to this there has been something +the matter with that room. During the time of my great uncle, who +brought me up, you know, and from whom I inherited the plantation, many +persons tried to sleep in it but none ever stayed there more than an +hour or two. They always fled in terror from the chamber, until at last +my uncle forbade any further attempt to occupy the room lest this should +come to be called a haunted house. Since I became mistress here three +persons have tried the thing, all of them with the same result." + +"It's stuff and nonsense," I interposed, "but what yarns did they tell?" + +"They one and all related the same singular experience," she answered, +"though neither of them knew what the experience of the others had +been." + +"What was it?" I asked with resolute incredulity. + +"Why, each of them went to the room in full confidence that nothing +would happen. Each went to bed and to sleep. After a while he waked to +find the whole room pervaded by a dim, yellowish gray or grayish yellow +light. Some of them used one combination of words and some the other, +but all agreed that the light had no apparent source, that it was +all-pervasive, that it was very dim at first, but that it steadily +increased until they fled in panic from its nameless terror. For ten +years we permitted no repetition of the experiment, but a year ago my +brother--he's an army officer, you know--insisted upon sleeping in the +room. He remained there longer than anybody else ever had done, but +between two and three o'clock in the morning he came down the stairs +with barely enough strength to cling to the balustrades, and in such +an ague fit as I never saw any one else endure in all my life. He had +served in the Florida swamps and was subject to agues, but for several +months before that he had been free from them. I suppose the terror +attacked his weakest point and brought the chills on again." + +[Sidenote: A Challenge to the Ghosts] + +"Did he have the same experience the rest had had?" I asked. + +"Yes, except that he had stayed longer than any of them and suffered +more." + +"Cousin Mary," I said, "I am going to sleep in that room to-night, with +your permission." + +"You can't have it," she answered. "I've seen too much of the terror to +permit a further trifling with it." + +"Then I'll sleep there without your permission," I answered. "I'll break +in if necessary, and I'll prove by a demonstration that nobody can +question, what nonsense all these imaginings have been." + +Cousin Mary was determined, but so was I, and at last she consented +to let me make the attempt. She and I decided to keep the matter to +ourselves, but of course it leaked out and spread among all the guests +in the house. I suppose the negro servants who were sent to make up the +bed and supply bath water told. At any rate my coming adventure was the +sole topic of conversation at the supper table that night. + +I seized upon the occasion to give a warning. + +"I have borrowed a six-shooter from our host," I announced, "and if I +see anything to shoot at to-night I shall shoot without challenging. So +I strongly advise you fellows not to attempt any practical jokes." + +The response convinced me that nothing of the kind was contemplated, but +to make sure, our host, who perhaps feared tragedy, exacted and secured +from each member of the company, old and young, male and female, a pledge +of honor that there should be no interference with my experiment, no +trespass upon my privacy. + +"With that pledge secured," I said, perhaps a trifle boastfully, "I +shall stay in that room all night no matter what efforts the spooks may +make to drive me out." + +It was about midnight, or nearly that, when I entered the room. It was +raining heavily without, and the wind was rattling the stout shutters of +the eight great windows of the room. + +I went to each of those windows and minutely examined it. They were +hung with heavy curtains of deep red, I remember, for I observed every +detail. Four of them were in the north and four in the south wall of the +wing. The eastern wall of the room was pierced only by the broad doorway +which opened at the head of the great stairs. The door was stoutly built +of oak, and provided with a heavy lock of iron with brass knobs. + +The western side of the room held a great open fireplace, from which a +paneled oaken wainscot extended entirely across the room and up to the +ceiling. Behind the wainscot on either side was a spacious closet which +I carefully explored with two lighted bedroom candles to show me that +the closets were entirely empty. + +Having completed my explorations I disrobed, double-locked the door, and +went to bed, first placing the six-shooter handily under my pillow. I +do not think I was excited even in the smallest degree. My pulses were +calm, my imagination no more active than a young man's must be, and my +brain distinctly sleepy. The great, four-poster bed was inexpressibly +comfortable, and the splash and patter of the rain as it beat upon +the window blinds was as soothing as a lullaby. I forgot all about the +experiment in which I was engaged, all about ghosts and their ways, +and went to sleep. + +[Sidenote: The Yellow-Gray Light] + +After a time I suddenly waked to find the room dimly pervaded by +that yellowish-gray or grayish-yellow light that had so disturbed +the slumbers of others in that apartment. My awakening was so complete +that all my faculties were alert at once. I felt under my pillow and +found my weapon there. I looked to its chambers and found the charges +undisturbed. The caps were in place, and I felt myself armed for any +encounter. + +But I had resolved in advance, to be deliberate, self-possessed, and +calm, whatever might happen, and I kept faith with myself. Instead of +hastily springing from the bed I lay there for a time watching the weird +light as it slowly, almost imperceptibly, increased in intensity, and +trying to decide whether they were right who had described as "yellowish +gray" or they who had called it "grayish yellow." I decided that the +gray distinctly predominated, but in the meanwhile the steady increase +in the light and in its pervasiveness warned me, and I slipped out of +bed, taking my pistol with me, to the dressing case on the other side +of the room--the side on which the great oaken door opened. + +The rain was still beating heavily against the window blinds, and the +strange, yellowish gray light was still slowly but steadily increasing. +I was resolute, however, in my determination not to be disturbed or +hurried by any manifestation. In response to that determination I +glanced at the mirror and decided that the mysterious light was +sufficient for the purpose, and I resolved I would shave. + +Having done so, I bathed--a little hurriedly, perhaps, because of the +rapidly increasing light. I was deliberate, however, in donning my +clothing, and not until I was fully dressed did I turn to leave the +room. Glancing at every object in it--all now clearly visible, though +somewhat shadowy in outline--I decided at last upon my retreat. I turned +the key, and the bolt in the lock shot back with sound enough to startle +calmer nerves than mine. + +I turned the knob, but the door refused to open! + +For a moment I was puzzled. Then I remembered that it was a double lock. +A second later I was out of that chamber, and the oaken door of it was +securely shut behind me. + +I went down the great stairway, slowly, deliberately, in pursuance of my +resolution; I entered the large hallway below, and thence passed into +the oak-wainscoted dining-room, where I sat down to breakfast with the +rest of the company. + +It was nine o'clock of a dark, rainy morning. + + + + +XXV + + +In Virginia at the time of which I am writing, everybody, men, women, +and children, read books and talked about them. The annual output of +the publishers was trifling then, as compared with the present flood of +new books, and as a consequence everybody read all the new books and +magazines, and everybody talked about them as earnestly as of politics +or religion. Still more diligently they read old books, the classics of +the language. Literature was regarded as a vital force in human affairs, +and books which in our time might relieve the tedium of a railway +journey and be forgotten at its end, were read with minute attention and +discussed as earnestly as if vital interests had depended upon an +accurate estimation of their quality. + +As a consequence, authorship was held in strangely glamorous esteem. I +beg pardon of the English language for making that word "glamorous"; it +expresses my thought, as no other term does, and it carries its meaning +on its face. + +[Sidenote: The "Solitary Horseman"] + +I remember that in my student days in Richmond there came a visitor +who had written one little book--about Rufus Choate, I think, though +I can find no trace of it in bibliographies. I suspect that he was a +very small author, indeed, in Boston, whence he came, but he was an +AUTHOR--we always thought that word in capital letters--and so he was +dined and wined, and entertained, and not permitted to pay his own hotel +bills or cab charges, or anything else. + +Naturally a people so disposed made much of their own men of letters, +of whom there was quite a group--if we reckon their qualifications as +generously as the Virginians did. Among them were three at least whose +claim to be regarded as authors was beyond dispute. These were John +Esten Cooke, John R. Thompson, and the English novelist, G. P. R. James, +who at that time was serving as British consul at Richmond. And there +was Mrs. Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie, who played the part of literary queen +right royally. + +Mr. James was a conspicuous figure in Richmond. He was a robust +Englishman in his late fifties, rather short and rather stout. +The latter impression was aided by the fact that in his afternoon +saunterings about the town, he usually wore a sort of roundabout, a +coat that ended at his waist and had no tails to it. To the ribald +and the jocular he was known as "the Solitary Horseman" because of his +habit of introducing novels or chapters with a lonely landscape in which +a "solitary horseman" was the chief or only figure. To those of us who +were disposed to be deferential he was known as "the Prince Regent," +in memory of the jest perpetrated by one of the wits of the town. +Mr. James's three initials, which prompted John G. Saxe to say that +he "got at the font his strongest claims to be reckoned a man of +letters"--stood for "George Payne Rainsford," but he rarely used anything +more than the initials--G. P. R. When a certain voluble gentlewoman asked +Tom August what the initials stood for he promptly replied: + +"Why, George Prince Regent, of course. And his extraordinary courtesy +fully justifies his sponsors in baptism for having given him the name." + +The lady lost no time in telling everybody of the interesting fact--and +the novelist became "Prince Regent James" to all his Richmond friends +from that hour forth. + +John R. Thompson was the editor of the _Southern Literary Messenger_. +Scholar, poet, and man of most gentle mind, it is not surprising that +in later years, when the old life was war-wrecked, Mr. William Cullen +Bryant made him his intimate friend and appointed him to the office of +literary editor of the _Evening Post_, which Mr. Bryant always held to +be the supreme distinction possible to an American man of letters. I +being scarcely more than a boy studying law in the late fifties, knew +him only slightly, but my impression of him at that time was, that with +very good gifts and a certain charm of literary manner, he was not yet +fully grown up in mind. He sought to model himself, I think, upon his +impressions of N. P. Willis, and his aspiration to be recognized as a +brilliant man of society was quite as marked as his literary ambition. +He was sensitive to slights and quite morbidly apprehensive that those +about him might think the less of him because his father was a hatter. +Socially at that time and in that country men in trade of any kind were +regarded as rather inferior to those of the planter class. + +When I knew Thompson better in after years in New York he had outgrown +that sort of nonsense, and was a far more agreeable companion because +of the fact. + +[Sidenote: John Esten Cooke--Gentleman] + +Chief among the literary men of Richmond was John Esten Cooke. His novel +"The Virginia Comedians" had made him famous in his native state, and +about the time I write of--1858-9--he supplemented it with another story +of like kind, "Henry St. John, Gentleman." As I remember them these were +rather immature creations, depending more upon a certain grace of manner +for their attractiveness than upon any more substantial merit. Certainly +they did not compare in vigor or originality with "Surrey of Eagle's +Nest" or any other of the novels their author wrote after his mind had +been matured by strenuous war experience. But at the time of which I +write they gave him a literary status such as no other Virginian of the +time could boast, and for a living he wrote ceaselessly for magazines +and the like. + +The matter of getting a living was a difficult one to him then, for the +reason that with a pride of race which some might think quixotic, he had +burdened his young life with heavy obligations not his own. His father +had died leaving debts that his estate could not pay. As the younger man +got nothing by inheritance, except the traditions of honor that belonged +to his race, he was under no kind of obligation with respect to those +debts. But with a chivalric loyalty such as few men have ever shown, +John Esten Cooke made his dead father's debts his own and little by +little discharged them with the earnings of a toilsome literary +activity. + +His pride was so sensitive that he would accept no help in this, though +friends earnestly pressed loans upon him when he had a payment to meet +and his purse was well-nigh empty. At such times he sometimes made his +dinner on crackers and tea for many days together, although he knew he +would be a more than welcome guest at the lavish tables of his many +friends in Richmond. It was a point of honor with him never to accept +a dinner or other invitation when he was financially unable to dine +abundantly at his own expense. + +The reviewer of one of my own stories of the old Virginia life, not +long ago informed his readers that of course there never were men so +sensitively and self-sacrificingly honorable as those I had described in +the book, though my story presented no such extreme example of the man +of honor as that illustrated in Mr. Cooke's person and career. + +I knew him intimately at that time, his immediate friends being my own +kindred. Indeed, I passed one entire summer in the same hospitable house +with him. + +Some years after the war our acquaintance was renewed, and from that +time until his death he made my house his abiding place whenever he had +occasion to be in New York. Time had wrought no change in his nature. He +remained to the end the high-spirited, duty-loving man of honor that I +had known in my youth; he remained also the gentle, affectionate, and +unfailingly courteous gentleman he had always been. + +He went into the war as an enlisted man in a Richmond battery, but was +soon afterward appointed an officer on the staff of the great cavalier, +J. E. B. Stuart. + +"I wasn't born to be a soldier," he said to me in after years. "Of +course I can stand bullets and shells and all that, without flinching, +just as any man must if he has any manhood in him, and as for hardship +and starvation, why, a man who has self-control can endure them when +duty demands it, but I never liked the business of war. Gold lace on +my coat always made me feel as if I were a child tricked out in red +and yellow calico with turkey feathers in my headgear to add to the +gorgeousness. There is nothing intellectual about fighting. It is the +fit work of brutes and brutish men. And in modern war, where men are +organized in masses and converted into insensate machines, there is +really nothing heroic or romantic or in any way calculated to appeal to +the imagination. As an old soldier, you know how small a part personal +gallantry plays in the machine work of war nowadays." + +[Sidenote: How Jeb Stuart Made a Major] + +Nevertheless, John Esten Cooke was a good soldier and a gallant one. At +Manassas I happened to see him at a gun which he was helping to work and +which we of the cavalry were supporting. He was powder-blackened and he +had lost both his coat and his hat in the eagerness of his service at +the piece; but during a brief pause in the firing he greeted me with a +rammer in his hand and all the old cheeriness in his face and voice. + +On Stuart's staff he distinguished himself by a certain laughing +nonchalance under fire, and by his eager readiness to undertake Stuart's +most perilous missions. It was in recognition of some specially daring +service of that kind that Stuart gave him his promotion, and Cooke used +to tell with delight of the way in which the great boyish cavalier did +it. + +"You're about my size, Cooke," Stuart said, "but you're not so broad in +the chest." + +"Yes, I am," answered Cooke. + +"Let's see if you are," said Stuart, taking off his coat as if stripping +for a boxing match. "Try that on." + +Cooke donned the coat with its three stars on the collar, and found it +a fit. + +"Cut off two of the stars," commanded Stuart, "and wear the coat to +Richmond. Tell the people in the War Department to make you a major and +send you back to me in a hurry. I'll need you to-morrow." + +When I visited him years afterwards at The Briars, his home in the +Shenandoah Valley, that coat which had once been Stuart's, hung upon the +wall, as the centerpiece of a collection of war relics, cherished with +pride of sentiment but without a single memory that savored of animosity. +The gentle, courteous, kindly man of letters who cherished these things +as mementoes of a terrible epoch had as little in his bearing to suggest +the temper of the war time as had his old charger who grazed upon the +lawn, exempt from all work as one who had done his duty in life and was +entitled to ease and comfort as his reward. + + + + +XXVI + + +The old life of the Old Dominion is a thing of the dead past, a memory +merely, and one so different from anything that exists anywhere on earth +now, that every reflection of it seems the fabric of a dream. But its +glamor holds possession of my mind even after the lapse of half a +century of years, and the greatest joy I have known in life has come +from my efforts to depict it in romances that are only a veiled record +of facts. + +It was not a life that our modern notions of economics can approve, but +it ministered to human happiness, to refinement of mind, to culture, and +to the maintenance of high ideals of manhood and womanhood. It bred a +race of men who spoke the truth, lived uprightly, and met every duty +without a shadow of flinching from personal consequences. It reared a +race of women fit to be the wives and mothers of such men. Under its +spell culture was deemed of more account than mere education; living was +held in higher regard than getting a living; refinement meant more than +display; comfort more than costliness, and kindliness in every word and +act more than all else. + +[Sidenote: A Plantation Modernized] + +I know an old plantation where for generations a family of brave men and +fair women dwelt in peace and ministered in gracious, hospitable ways to +the joy of others. Under their governance there was never any thought of +exploiting the resources of the plantation for the sake of a potential +wealth that seemed superfluous to people of contented mind who had +enough. The plantation supported itself and all who dwelt upon it--black +and white. It educated its sons and daughters and enabled them to +maintain a generous hospitality. More than this they did not want or +dream of wanting. + +There are twenty-two families living on that plantation now, most of +them growing rich or well-to-do by the cultivation of the little truck +farms into which the broad acres have been parceled out. The woodlands +that used to shelter the wild flowers and furnish fuel for the great +open fireplaces, have been stripped to furnish kindling wood for kitchen +ranges in Northern cities. Even the stately locust trees that had shaded +the lawns about the old mansion have been converted into policemen's +clubs and the like, and potatoes grow in the soil where greensward used +to carpet the house grounds. + +Economically the change means progress and prosperity, of course, but to +me the price paid for it seems out of proportion to the goods secured. +But then I am old-fashioned, and perhaps, in spite of the strenuous life +I have led, I am a sentimentalist,--and sentiment is scorned as silly in +these days. + +There is another aspect of the matter that deserves a word, and I have a +mind to write that word even at risk of anathema from all the altars of +sociology. At seventy years of age one is less sensitive to criticism +than at thirty. + +All the children of the twenty-two truck farming families on that old +plantation go to school. They are taught enough to make out bills, add +up columns of figures, and write business letters to their commission +merchants. That is what education means now on that plantation and on +hundreds of others that have undergone a like metamorphosis. No thought +or dream of culture enters into the scheme. Under the old system +rudimentary instruction was merely a stepping stone by which to climb +up to the education of culture. Under the theories of economics it is +a great gain thus to substitute rudimentary instruction for all in the +place of real education and culture for a class. But is it gain? Is the +world better off with ten factory hands who can read, write, and cipher, +than with one Thomas Jefferson or George Wythe or Samuel Adams or +Chancellor Livingston who knows how to think? Are ten factory girls or +farmers' wives the full equivalent of one cultured gentlewoman presiding +gracefully and graciously over a household in which the amenities of +life are more considered than its economics? + +Meanwhile the education of the race of men and women who once dwelt +there has correspondingly lost its culture aspect. The young men of that +old family are now bred to be accountants, clerks, men of business, who +have no time to read books and no training that leads to the habit of +thinking; the young women are stenographers, telegraph operators, and +the like. They are estimable young persons, and in their way charming. +But is the world richer or poorer for the change? + +It is not for me to answer; I am prejudiced, perhaps. + +However it may be, the old life is a thing completely dead and done +for, and the only compensation is such as the new affords. Everything +that was distinctive in that old life was burned out by the gunpowder +of the Civil War. Even the voices of the Virginia women--once admired +throughout the land--are changed. They still say "right" for "very," and +"reckon" for "think," and their enunciation is still marked by a certain +lack of emphasis, but it is the voice of the peacock in which they speak, +not that of the dove. + +[Sidenote: An Old Fogy's Questionings] + +Whenever I ask myself the questions set down above, I find it necessary +to the chastening of my mind to recite my creed: + +I believe that every human being born into this world has a right to do +as he pleases, so long as in doing as he pleases he does not interfere +with the equal right of any other human being to do as he pleases; + +I believe in the unalienable right of all men to life, liberty, and the +pursuit of happiness; + +I believe that it is the sole legitimate function of government to +maintain the conditions of liberty and to let men alone. + +Nevertheless, I cannot escape a tender regret when I reflect upon what +we have sacrificed to the god Progress. I suppose it is for the good +of all that we have factories now to do the work that in my boyhood +was done by the village carpenter, tanner, shoemaker, hatter, tailor, +tin-smith, and the rest; but I do not think a group of factory "hands," +dwelling in repulsively ugly tenement buildings and dependent upon +servitude to the trade union as a means of escaping enslavement by an +employing corporation, mean as much of human happiness or signify as +much of helpful citizenship as did the home-owning, independent village +workmen of the past. In the same way I do not think the substitution +of a utilitarian smattering for all for the education and culture +of a class has been altogether a gain. As I see young men flocking by +thousands to our universities, where in earlier times there were scant +hundreds in attendance, I cannot avoid the thought that most of these +thousands have just enough education of the drill sort to pass the +entrance examinations and that they go to the universities, not for +education of the kind that brings enlargement of mind, but for technical +training in arts that promise money as the reward of their practice. +And I cannot help wondering if the change which relegates the Arts +course to a subordinate place in the university scheme is altogether a +change for the better. Economically it is so, of course. But economics, +it seems to me, ought not to be all of human life. Surely men and women +were made for something more than mere earning capacity. + +But all this is blasphemy against the great god Progress and heresy to +the gospel of Success. Its voice should be hushed in a land where fame +is awarded not to those who think but to those who organize and exploit; +where men of great intellect feel that they cannot afford to serve the +country when the corporations offer them so much higher salaries; and +where it is easier to control legislation and administration by purchase +than by pleading. + +The old order changed, both at the North and at the South when the war +came, and if the change is more marked in the South than at the North it +is only because the South lost in the struggle for supremacy and +suffered desolation in its progress. + + + + +XXVII + + +I have elsewhere pointed out in print that Virginia did not want war, +or favor secession. Her people, who had already elected the avowed +emancipationist, John Letcher, to be their governor, voted by heavy +majorities against withdrawal from the Union. In her constitutional +convention, called to consider what the old mother state should do after +the Cotton States had set up a Southern Confederacy, the dominant force +was wielded by such uncompromising opponents of secession as Jubal A. +Early, Williams C. Wickham, Henry A. Wise, and others, who when war came +were among the most conspicuous fighters on the Southern side. It is +important to remember that, as Farragut said, Virginia was "dragooned +out of the Union," in spite of the abiding unwillingness of her people. + +[Sidenote: Under Jeb Stuart's Command] + +I was a young lawyer then, barely twenty-one years of age. I spoke +and voted--my first vote--against the contemplated madness. But in +common with the Virginians generally, I enlisted as soon as war became +inevitable, and from the 9th of April, 1861, to the 9th of April, +1865--the date of Lee's surrender--I was a soldier in active service. + +I was intensely in earnest in the work of the soldier. As I look back +over my seventy years of life, I find that I have been intensely in +earnest in whatever I have had to do. Such things are temperamental, and +one has no more control over his temperament than over the color of his +eyes and hair. + +Being intensely in earnest in the soldier's work, I enjoyed doing it, +just as I have keenly enjoyed doing every other kind of work that has +fallen to me during a life of unusually varied activity. + +I went out in a company of horse, which after brief instruction at +Ashland, was assigned to Stuart's First Regiment of Virginia Cavalry. + +The regiment was composed entirely of young Virginians who, if not +actually "born in the saddle," had climbed into it so early and lived in +it so constantly that it had become the only home they knew. I suppose +there was never gathered together anywhere on earth a body of horsemen +more perfectly masters of their art than were the men of that First +Regiment, the men whom Stuart knew by their names and faces then, +and whose names and faces he never afterward forgot, for the reason, +as he often said to us, that "You First Regiment fellows made me a +Major-General." Even after he rose to higher rank and had scores of +thousands of cavaliers under his command, his habit was, when he wanted +something done of a specially difficult and dangerous sort, to order a +detail from his old First Regiment to do it for him. + +The horsemanship of that regiment remained till the end a model for +emulation by all the other cavalry, and, in view of the demonstrations +of it in the campaign preceding Manassas (Bull Run) it is no wonder that +when the insensate panic seized upon McDowell's army in that battle the +cry went up from the disintegrated mob of fugitives that they could not +be expected to stand against "thirty thousand of the best horsemen since +the days of the Mamelukes." The "thirty thousand" estimate was a gross +exaggeration, Stuart's command numbering in fact only six or seven +hundred, but the likening of its horsemanship to that of the Mamelukes +was justified by the fact. + +As a robust young man who had never known a headache I keenly enjoyed +the life we cavalrymen led that summer. It was ceaselessly active--for +Stuart's vocabulary knew not the word "rest"--and it was all out of +doors in about as perfect a summer climate as the world anywhere +affords. + +We had some tents, in camp, in which to sleep after we got tired of +playing poker for grains of corn; but we were so rarely in camp that +after a little while we forgot that we owned canvas dwellings, and I +cannot remember, if I ever knew, what became of them at last. For the +greater part of the time we slept on the ground out somewhere within +musket shot of the enemy's lines, and our waking hours were passed in +playing "tag" with the enemy's scouting parties, encountered in our +own impertinent intrusions into the lines of our foeman. A saddle was +emptied now and then, but that was only a forfeit of the game, and the +game went on. + +[Sidenote: The Life of the Cavaliers] + +It must have been a healthy life that we led. I well remember that +during that summer my company never had a man on the sick list. When +the extraordinary imbecility of the Confederate commissary department +managed to get rations of flour to us, we wetted it with water from +any stream or brook that might be at hand, added a little salt, if we +happened to have any, to the putty-like mass, fried the paste in bacon +fat, and ate it as bread. According to all the teachings of culinary +science the thing ought to have sent all of us to grass with +indigestions of a violent sort; but in fact we enjoyed it, and went on +our scouting ways utterly unconscious of the fact that we were possessed +of stomachs, until the tempting succulence of half-ripened corn in +somebody's field set appetite a-going again and we feasted upon the +grain without the bother of cooking it at all. + +Of course, we carried no baggage with us during the days and weeks when +we were absent from camp. We had a blanket apiece, somewhere, we didn't +know where. When our shirts were soiled we took them off and washed them +in the nearest brook, and if orders of activity came before they were +dried, we put them on wet and rode away in full confidence that they +would dry on our persons as easily as on a clothesline. + +One advantage that I found in this neglect of impedimenta was that I +could always carry a book or two inside my flannel shirt, and I feel now +that I owe an appreciable part of such culture as I have acquired to the +reading done by bivouac fires at night and in the recesses of friendly +cornfields by day. + +There were many stories current among the good women at home in those +days of men's lives being saved by Bibles carried in their clothes and +opportunely serving as shields against bullets aimed at their wearers' +hearts. I do not know how much truth there may have been in these +interesting narratives, nor have I any trustworthy information upon +which to base an estimate of the comparative armorplate efficacy of +Bibles and other books. But one day, as I well remember, the impact of +a bullet nearly knocked me off my horse, and I found afterward that the +missile had deeply imbedded itself in a copy of "Tristram Shandy" which +lay in the region of my transverse colon. A Bible of equal thickness +would doubtless have served as well, but it was the ribald romance of +Laurence Sterne that stopped a bullet and saved my life that day. + +It may be worth while to add that the young woman from whom I had +borrowed the book never would accept the new copy I offered to provide +in exchange for the wounded one. + +This cavalry service abounded in adventures, most of them of no great +consequence, but all of them interesting at the time to those who shared +in them. It was an exciting game and a fascinating one to a vigorous +young man with enough imagination to appreciate it as I did. I enjoyed +it intensely at the time and, as the memory of it comes back to me now, +I find warmth enough still in my blood to make me wish it were all to do +over again, with youth and health and high spirits as an accompaniment. + +[Sidenote: Delights of the War Game] + +War is "all hell," as General Sherman said, and as a writer during many +years of peace, I have endeavored to do my part in making an end of it. +I have printed much in illustration of the fact that war is a cruel, +barbarous, inhuman device for settling controversies that should be +settled and could be settled by more civilized means; I have shown forth +its excessive costliness and its unspeakable cruelty to the women and +children involved as its victims. I have no word of that to take back. +But, as I remember the delights of the war game, I cannot altogether +regret them. I cannot shut my eyes to the fact that war, with all its +inhuman cruelty, its devastation, and its slaughter, calls forth some of +the noblest qualities of human nature, and breeds among men chivalric +sentiments that it is well worth while to cherish. + +And the inspiration of it is something that is never lost to the soul +that has felt it. When the Spanish-American troubles came, and we all +thought they portended a real war instead of the ridiculous "muss" that +followed, the old spirit was so strong upon me that I enlisted a company +of a hundred and twenty-four men and appealed to both the state and the +national governments for the privilege of sharing in the fighting. + +So much for psychology. + + + + +XXVIII + + +Among my experiences in the cavalry service was one which had a sequel +that interested me. + +Stuart had been promoted and Fitzhugh Lee, or "Fitz Lee" as we called +him, had succeeded to the command of the First Regiment. + +One day he led a party of us on a scouting expedition into the enemy's +lines. In the course of it we charged through a strong infantry picket +numbering forty or fifty men. As our half company dashed through, my +horse was shot through the head and sank under me. My comrades rode on +and I was left alone in the midst of the disturbed but still belligerent +picket men. I had from the first made up my mind that I would never +become a prisoner of war. I had stomach for fighting; I was ready to +endure hardship; I had no shrinking from fatigue, privation, exposure, +or anything else that falls to the lot of the soldier. But I was +resolute in my determination that I would never "go to jail"--a phrase +which fitly represented my conception of capture by the enemy. + +So, when my horse dropped me there in the middle of a strong picket +force, I drew both my pistols, took to a friendly tree, and set to work +firing at every head or body I could see, with intent to sell my life +for the very largest price I could make it command. + +This had lasted for less than two minutes when my comrades, pursued by +a strong body of Federal cavalry, dashed back again through the picket +post. + +As they came on at a full run Fitz Lee saw me, and, slackening speed +slightly, he thrust out his foot and held out his hand--a cavalry trick +in which all of us had been trained. Responding, I seized his hand, +placed my foot upon his and swung to his crupper. A minute later a +supporting company came to our assistance and the pursuing cavalrymen +in blue retired. + +The incident was not at all an unusual one, but the memory of it came +back to me years afterwards under rather peculiar circumstances. In 1889 +there was held in New York a spectacular celebration of the centennial +of Washington's inauguration as president. A little company of us who +had organized ourselves into a society known as "The Virginians," gave +a banquet to the commissioners appointed to represent Virginia on that +occasion. It so fell out that I was called upon to preside at the +banquet, and General Fitzhugh Lee, then Governor of Virginia, sat, of +course, at my right. + +Somewhere between the oysters and the entrée I turned to him and said: + +"It seemed a trifle odd to me, General, and distinctly un-Virginian, to +greet you as a stranger when we were presented to each other a little +while ago. Of course, to you I mean nothing except a name heard in +introduction; but you saved my life once and to me this meeting means +a good deal." + +[Sidenote: Fitz Lee] + +In answer to his inquiries I began to tell the story. Suddenly he +interrupted in his impetuous way, asking: + +"Are you the man I took on my crupper that day down there by +Dranesville?" + +And with that he pushed back his plate and rising nearly crushed my hand +in friendly grasp. Then he told me stories of other meetings with his +old troopers,--stories dramatic, pathetic, humorous,--until I had need +of General Pryor's reminder that I was presiding and that there were +duties for me to do, however interesting I might find Fitzhugh Lee's +conversation to be. + +From that time until his death I saw much of General Lee, and learned +much of his character and impulses, which I imagine are wholly undreamed +of by those who encountered him only in his official capacities. He +had the instincts of the scholar, without the scholar's opportunity to +indulge them. "It is a matter of regret," he said to me in Washington +one day, "that family tradition has decreed that all Lees shall be +soldiers. I have often regretted that I was sent to West Point instead +of being educated in a more scholarly way. You know I have Carter blood +and Mason blood in my veins, and the Carters and Masons have had +intellects worth cultivating." + +I replied by quoting from Byron's "Mazeppa" the lines: + + "'Ill betide + The school wherein I learned to ride.' + Quoth Charles: 'Old Hetman, wherefore so, + Since thou hast learned the art so well?'" + +Instantly he responded by continuing the quotation: + + "''Twere long to tell, + And we have many a league to go + With every now and then a blow;' + +That is to say, I'm still Consul-General at Havana, and I have an +appointment to see the President on official business this morning." + +As we were sitting in my rooms at the Arlington and not in his quarters +at the Shoreham, this was not a hint of dismissal, but an apology for +leaving. + +The conversation awakened surprise in my mind, and ever since I have +wondered how many of the world's great men of action have regretted +that they were not men of thought instead, and how far the regret was +justified. If Fitz Lee had been educated at Yale or Harvard, what place +would he have occupied in the world? Would he have become a Virginian +lawyer and perhaps a judge? or what else? Conjecture in such a case is +futile. "If" is a word of very uncertain significance. + +The story told in the foregoing paragraphs reminds me of another +experience. + +When the war ended it became very necessary that I should go to Indiana +with the least possible delay. But at Richmond I was stopped by a +peremptory military order that forbade ex-Confederates to go North. The +order had been issued in consequence of Mr. Lincoln's assassination, and +the disposition to enforce it rigidly was very strong. + +In my perplexity I made my way into the office of the Federal chief of +staff of that department. There I encountered a stalwart and impressive +officer, six feet, four or five inches high--or perhaps even an inch +or two more than that--who listened with surprising patience while I +explained my necessity to him. When I had done, he placed his hand upon +my shoulder in comradely fashion and said: + +"You didn't have anything to do with Mr. Lincoln's assassination. I'll +give you a special pass to go North as soon as you please." + +I thanked him and took my leave. + +[Sidenote: A Friendly Old Foe] + +In 1907--forty-two years later--some one in the Authors Club introduced +me to "our newest member, Mr. Curtis." + +I glanced at the towering form, and recognized it instantly. + +"_Mr._ Curtis be hanged," I answered, "I know General Newton Martin +Curtis, and I have good reason to remember him. He is the man who let +me out of Richmond." + +Since that time I have learned to know General Curtis well, and to +cherish him as a friend and club comrade as heartily as I honored him +before for his gallantry in war and for his ceaseless and most fruitful +efforts since the war in behalf of reconciliation and brotherhood +between the men who once confronted each other with steel between. +Senator Daniel of Virginia has written of him that no other man has +done so much as he in that behalf, and I have reason to know that the +statement is not an exaggerated one. The kindliness he showed to me in +Richmond when we were utter strangers and had only recently been foemen, +inspired all his relations with the Virginians during all the years +that followed, and there is no man whose name to-day awakens a readier +response of good will among Virginians than does his. + + + + +XXIX + + +Late in the autumn of that first year of war there was reason to +believe that the armies in Virginia were about to retire into the dull +lethargy of winter-quarters' life, and that the scene of active war +was to be transferred to the coast of South Carolina. The Federals +had concentrated heavy forces there and in a preparatory campaign had +seized upon the Sea Islands and their defensive works at Beaufort and +elsewhere. General Lee had already been sent thither to command and +defend the coast, and there seemed no doubt that an active winter +campaign was to occur in that region. I wanted to have a part in it, +and to that end I sought and secured a transfer to a battery of field +artillery which was under orders for the South. + +As a matter of fact, the active campaign never came, and for many moons +we led the very idlest life down there that soldiers in time of war ever +led anywhere. + +But the service, idle as it was, played greater havoc in our ranks than +the most ceaseless battling could have done. + +For example, we were sent one day from Charleston across the Ashley +river, to defend a bridge over Wappoo Cut. We had a hundred and eight +men on duty--all well and vigorous. One week later eight of them were +dead, eight barely able to answer to roll call, and all the rest in +hospital. In the meanwhile we had not fired a gun or caught sight of +an enemy. + +On another occasion we encamped in a delightful but pestilential spot, +and for ten days afterward our men died at the rate of from two to six +every twenty-four hours. + +During the term of our service on that coast we were only once engaged +in what could be called a battle. That was at Pocotaligo on the 22nd of +October, 1862. In point of numbers engaged it was a very small battle, +indeed, but it was the very hottest fight I was ever in, not excepting +any of the tremendous struggles in the campaign of 1864 in Virginia. My +battery went into that fight with fifty-four men and forty-five horses. +We fought at pistol-shot range all day, and came out of the struggle +with a tally of thirty-three men killed and wounded, and with only +eighteen horses alive--all of them wounded but one. + +General Beauregard with his own hand presented the battery a battle +flag and authorized an inscription on it in memory of the event. In all +that we rejoiced with as much enthusiasm as a company of ague-smitten +wretches could command, but it is no wonder that our Virginia +mountaineers took on a new lease of life when at last we were ordered +to rejoin the Army of Northern Virginia, as a part of Longstreet's +artillery. + + + + +XXX + + +[Sidenote: Left Behind] + +At the end of the campaign of 1863 we found ourselves unhorsed. +We had guns that we knew how to use, and caissons full of ammunition, +but we had no horses to draw either the guns or the caissons. So +when Longstreet was ordered south to bear a part in the campaign of +Chickamauga, we were left behind. After a time, during which we were +like the dog in the express car who had "chawed up his tag," we were +assigned for the winter to General Lindsay Walker's command--the +artillery of A. P. Hill's corps. + +We belonged to none of the battalions there, and therefore had no field +officers through whom to apply for decent treatment. For thirteen wintry +days we lay at Lindsay's Turnout, with no rations except a meager dole +of cornmeal. Then one day a yoke of commissary oxen, starved into a +condition of hopeless anemia, became stalled in the mud near our camp. +By some hook or crook we managed to buy those wrecks of what had once +been oxen. We butchered them, and after twenty-four or thirty-six hours +of continual stewing, we had meat again. + +Belonging to no battalion in the corps to which we were attached, we +were a battery "with no rights that anybody was bound to respect," and +presently the fact was emphasized. We were appointed to be the provost +company of the corps. That is to say, we had to build guardhouses and +do all the duties incident to the care of military prisoners. + +The arrangement brought welcome occupation to me. As Sergeant-Major I +had the executive management of the military prisons and of everything +pertaining to them. As a lawyer who could charge no fees without a +breach of military etiquette, I was called upon to defend, before the +courts-martial, all the more desperate criminals under our care. These +included murderers, malingerers, robbers, deserters, and men guilty of +all the other crimes possible in that time and country. They included no +assailants of women. I would not have defended such in any case, and had +there been such our sentinels would have made quick work of their +disposal. + +[Sidenote: A Gratuitous Law Practice] + +The rest, as I was convinced, were guilty, every man of them. But +equally I was convinced that a court-martial, if left to deal with +them in its own way, would condemn them whether guilty or not. To a +court-martial, as a rule, the accusation--in the case of a private +soldier--is conclusive and final. If not, then a very little +evidence--admissible or not--is sufficient to confirm it. It is the +sole function of counsel before a court-martial to do the very little +he can to secure a reasonably fair trial, to persuade the officers +constituting the court that there is a difference between admissible +evidence and testimony that should not be received at all, and finally, +to put in a written plea at the end which may direct the attention of +the reviewing officers higher up to any unfairness or injustice done in +the course of the trial. Theoretically a court-martial is bound by the +accepted rules of evidence and by all other laws relating to the conduct +of criminal trials; but practically the court-martial, in time of war at +least, is bound by nothing. It is a tribunal organized to convict, and +its proceedings closely resemble those of a vigilance committee. + +But the proceedings of every court-martial must be reduced to writing +and approved or disapproved by authorities "higher up." Sometimes those +authorities higher up have some glimmering notion of law and justice, +and it is in reliance upon that chance that lawyers chiefly depend in +defending men before courts-martial. + +But no man is entitled to counsel before a court-martial. It is only +on sufferance that the counsel can appear at all, and he is liable to +peremptory dismissal at any moment during the trial. + +It was under these conditions that I undertook the defense of + + TOM COLLINS + +Tom was an old jailbird. He had been pardoned out of the Virginia +penitentiary on condition that he would enlist--for his age was one +year greater, according to his account of it, than that at which the +conscription law lost its force. Tom had been a trifle less than two +months in service when he was caught trying to desert to the enemy. +Conviction on such a charge at that period of the war meant death. + +In response to a humble request I was permitted to appear before the +court-martial as Tom Collins's counsel. My intrusion was somewhat +resented as a thing that tended to delay in a perfectly clear case, when +the court had a world of business before it, and my request was very +grudgingly granted. + +I managed, unluckily, to antagonize the court still further at the +very outset. I found that Tom Collins's captain--who had preferred the +charges against him--was a member of the court that was to try him. +Against that indecency I protested, and in doing so perhaps I used +stronger language than was advisable. The officer concerned, flushed +and angry, asked me if I meant to impugn his honor and integrity. +I answered, in hot blood: + +"That depends upon whether you continue to sit as judge in a case in +which you are the accuser, or whether you have the decency to retire +from the court until the hearing in this case is ended." + +"Are you a man responsible for his words?" he flashed back in reply. + +"Entirely so," I answered. "When this thing is over I will afford you +any opportunity you like, captain, to avenge your honor and to wreak +satisfaction. At present I have a duty to do toward my client, and a +part of that duty is to insist that you shall withdraw from the court +during his trial and not sit as a judge in a case in which you are the +accuser. After that my captain or any other officer of the battery to +which I belong will act for me and receive any communication you may +choose to send." + +At this point the presiding officer of the court ordered the room +cleared "while the court deliberates." + +Half an hour later I was admitted again to the courtroom to hear the +deliberate judgment of the court that it was entirely legitimate and +proper for Tom's captain to sit in his case. + +[Sidenote: Court Martial Evidence] + +Then we proceeded with the trial. The proof was positive that Tom +Collins had been caught ten miles in front, endeavoring to make his +way into the enemy's lines. + +In answer, I called the court's attention to the absence of any proof +that Tom Collins was a soldier. There are only three ways in which a man +can become a soldier, namely, by voluntary enlistment, by conscription, +or by receiving pay. Tom Collins was above the conscription age and +therefore not a conscript. He had not been two months in service, and by +his captain's admission, had not received soldier's pay. There remained +only voluntary enlistment, and, I pointed out, there was no proof of +that before the court. + +Thereupon the room was cleared again for consultation, and a little +later the court adjourned till the next morning. + +When it reassembled the judge advocate triumphantly presented a telegram +from Governor Letcher, in answer to one sent to him. It read: + +"Yes. I pardoned Collins out of penitentiary on condition of +enlistment." + +Instantly I objected to the reception of the despatch as evidence. There +was no proof that it had in fact come from Governor Letcher; it was not +made under oath; and finally, the accused man was not confronted by his +accuser and permitted to cross-examine him. Clearly that piece of paper +was utterly inadmissible as testimony. + +The court made short work of these "lawyer's quibbles." It found Tom +Collins guilty and condemned him to death. + +I secured leave of the court to set forth my contentions in writing +so that they might go to the reviewing officers as a part of the +proceedings, but I had very little hope of the result. I frankly told +Tom that he was to be shot on the next Saturday but one, and that he +must make up his mind to his fate. + +The good clergyman who acted as chaplain to the military prison then +took Tom in hand and endeavored to "prepare him to meet his God." After +a while the reverend gentleman came to me with tears of joy in his eyes, +to tell me that Tom Collins was "converted"; that never in the course +of his ministry had he encountered "a case in which the repentance was +completer or more sincere, or a case more clearly showing the acceptance +of the sinner by his merciful Saviour." + +My theological convictions were distinctly more hazy than those of +the clerical gentleman, and my ability to think of Tom Collins as a +person saturated with sanctity, was less than his. But I accepted the +clergyman's expert opinion as unquestioningly as I could, and Tom +Collins confirmed it. When I visited him in the guard-house I found +him positively ecstatic in the sunlight of Divine acceptance which +illuminated the Valley of the Shadow of Death. When I mentioned the +possibility that my plea in his behalf might even yet prove effective, +and that the sentence which condemned him to death the next morning +might still be revoked, he replied, with apparent sincerity: + +"Oh, I hope not! For then I must wait before entering into joy! But the +Lord's will be done!" + +The next morning was the one appointed for Tom Collins's death. His +coffin was ready and a shallow grave had been dug to receive his body. + +The chaplain and I mounted with him to the cart, and rode with him to +the place of execution, where three other men were to die that day. +Tom's mood was placidly exultant. And the chaplain alone shed tears in +his behalf. + +[Sidenote: "Death Bed Repentance"] + +When the place of execution was reached, an adjutant came forward and +read three death warrants. Then he held up another paper and read it. +It was a formal document from the War Department, sustaining the legal +points submitted in Tom Collins's case, disapproving the finding and +sentence, and ordering the man formally enlisted and returned to duty. + +The chaplain fell into a collapse of uncontrollable weeping. Tom Collins +came to his relief with the injunction: "Oh, come, now, old snuffy, +cheer up! I'll bet you even money I beat you to Hell yet." + +That clergyman afterward confided to me his doubts of "deathbed +repentances," at least in the case of habitual criminals. + + + + +XXXI + + +In the spring of 1864, the battery to which I belonged mutinied--in an +entirely proper and soldierlike way. Longstreet had returned, and the +Army of Northern Virginia was about to encounter Grant in the most +stupendous campaign of the war. We were old soldiers, and we knew +what was coming. But as we had no horses to draw our guns, and as the +quartermaster's department seemed unable to find horses for us, we +were omitted from the orders for the advance into the region of the +Wilderness, where the fighting was obviously to begin. We were ordered +to Cobham Station, a charming region of verdure-clad hills and brawling +streams, where there was no soldiers' work to do and no prospect of +anything less ignoble than provost duty. + +Against this we revolted, respectfully and loyally. We sent in a protest +and petition asking that if horses could not be furnished for our guns, +we should be armed with Enfield rifles and permitted to march with our +battalion as a sharpshooting support. + +The request was granted and from the Wilderness to Petersburg we marched +and fought and starved right gallantly, usually managing to have a place +between the guns at the points of hottest contest in every action of the +campaign. + +At Petersburg we found artillery work of a new kind to do. No sooner +were the conditions of siege established than our battery, because of +its irregularly armed condition, was chosen to work the mortars which +then for the first time became a part of the offensive and defensive +equipment of the Army of Northern Virginia. + +All the fragments of batteries whose ranks had been broken up and whose +officers had been killed, wounded, or captured during that campaign of +tremendous fighting, were assigned to us for mortar service, so that our +numbers were swelled to 250 or 300 men. The number was fluctuating from +day to day, as the monotonous murder of siege operations daily depleted +our ranks on the one hand while almost daily there were additions made +of men from disintegrated commands. + +I have no purpose here to write a history of that eight months of siege, +during which we were never for one moment out of fire by night or by +day, but there is one story that arose out of it which I have a mind +to tell. + +I had been placed in command of an independent mortar fort, taking my +orders directly from General E. P. Alexander--Longstreet's chief of +artillery--and reporting to nobody else. + +Infantry officers from the lines in front--colonels and such--used +sometimes to come to my little row of gun-pits and give me orders in +utter ignorance of the conditions and limitations of mortar firing. +The orders were not binding upon me and, under General Alexander's +instructions, I paid no heed to them, wherefore I was often in a state +of friction with the intermeddlers. After a little I discovered a short +and easy method of dealing with them. There was a Federal fort known +to us as the Railroad Iron Battery, whose commanding officer seemed a +person very fond of using his guns in an offensive way. He had both +mortars and rifled field guns, and with all of them he soon got my +range so accurately that all his rifle shells cut my parapet at the +moment of exploding, and all his mortar shells fell among my pits with +extraordinary precision. In order to preserve the lives of my men I had +to take my stand on top of the mound over my magazine whenever he began +bombarding me. From that point I watched the course of his mortar +shells, and when one of them seemed destined to fall into one of my +little gun-pits, I called out the number of the pit and the men in it +ran into their bomb-proof till the explosion was over. + +In dealing with the annoyance of intruding infantry officers, I took +advantage of the Railroad Iron Battery's extraordinary readiness to +respond to the smallest attention at my hands. A shell or two hurled in +that direction always brought on a condition of things which prompted +all visitors to my pits to retreat to a covered way and hasten to keep +suddenly remembered engagements on their own lines. + +[Sidenote: Gloaming Visitors] + +Once my little ruse did not produce the intended effect. It was after +sunset of a day late in August. Two officers came out of the gloaming +and saluted me politely. They were in fatigue uniforms. That is to say, +they wore the light blue trousers that were common to both armies, and +white duck fatigue jackets that bore no insignia of rank upon their +collars. + +At the moment I was slowly bombarding something--I forget what or +why--but I remember that I was getting no response. Presently one of +my visitors said: + +"You seem to be having the shelling all to yourself." + +I resented the remark, thinking it a criticism. + +"We'll see," I said. Then turning to my brother, who was my second in +command, I quietly gave the order: + +"Touch up the Railroad Iron Battery, Joe." + +Thirty seconds later the storm was in full fury about us, but my +visitors did not seem to mind it. Instead of retiring to the covered +way, they nonchalantly stood there by my side on the mound of the +magazine. Every now and then, between explosions, one of them would ask +a question as to the geography of the lines to our right and left. + +"What battery is that over there?" + +"What is the Federal work that lies in front of it?" + +"What is the lay of the land," etc., etc. + +Obviously they were officers new to this part of our line and as they +offered no criticism upon the work of my guns, and gave me no orders, +I put aside the antagonism I had felt, and in all good-fellowship +explained the military geography of the region round about. + +Meanwhile, Joe had quietly stopped the fire on the Railroad Iron +Battery, and little by little that work ceased its activity. Finally +my visitors politely bade me good evening and took their leave. + +I asked Joe who they were, but he did not know. I inquired of others, +but nobody knew. Next morning I asked at General Gracie's headquarters +what new troops had been brought to that part of the line, and learned +that there had been no changes. There and at General Bushrod Johnson's +headquarters I minutely described my visitors, but nobody knew anything +about them, and after a few days of futile conjecture I ceased to think +of them or their visit. + +In July, 1865, the war being over, I took passage on the steamer "Lady +Gay," bound from Cairo to New Orleans. There were no women on board, +but there was a passenger list of thirty men or so. Some of us were +ex-Confederates and some had been Federal soldiers. + +[Sidenote: The Outcome of a Strange Story] + +The two groups did not mingle. The members of each were polite upon +accidental occasion to the members of the other, but they did not +fraternize, at least for a time--till something happened. + +I was talking one morning with some of my party when suddenly a man +from the other group approached as if listening to my voice. Presently +he asked: + +"Didn't you command a mortar fort at Petersburg?" + +I answered that I did, whereupon he asked: + +"Do you remember----" and proceeded to outline the incident related +above. + +"Yes," I answered in astonishment, "but how do you happen to know +anything about it?" + +"I was one of your visitors on that occasion. I thought I couldn't +be mistaken in the voice that commanded, 'Touch up the Railroad Iron +Battery, Joe.'" + +"But I don't understand. You were a Federal officer, were you not?" + +"Yes." + +"Then what were you doing there?" + +"That is precisely what my friend and I were trying to find out, while +you kept us for two hours under a fire of hell from our own batteries." + +Then he explained: + +"You remember that to the left of your position, half a mile or so away, +there lay a swamp. It was utterly impassable when the lines were drawn, +and both sides neglected it in throwing up the breastworks. Well, that +swamp slowly dried up during the summer, and it left something like a +gap in both lines, but the gap was so well covered by the batteries on +both sides that neither bothered to extend earthworks across it. My +friend and I were in charge of pickets and rifle-pits that day, and +we went out to inspect them. Somehow--I don't know how--we got lost on +the swamplands, and, losing our bearings, we found ourselves presently +within the Confederate lines. To say that we were embarrassed is to +put it mildly. We were scared. We didn't know how to get back, and we +couldn't even surrender for the reason that we were not in uniform but +in fatigue dress, and therefore technically, at least, in disguise. +There was nothing about us to show to which army we belonged. As an +old soldier, you know what that meant. If we had given ourselves up we +should have been hanged as spies caught in disguise within your lines. +In our desperate strait we went to you and stood there for an hour or +two under the worst fire we ever endured, while we extracted from you +the geographical information that enabled us to make our way back to +our own lines under cover of darkness." + +At that point he grasped my hand warmly and said: + +"Tell me, how is Joe? I hope he is 'touching up' something that responds +as readily as the Railroad Iron Battery did that evening." + +From that hour until we reached New Orleans, four days later, there +was no barrier between the two groups of passengers. We fraternized +completely. We told stories of our several war experiences that had +no touch or trace of antagonism in them. + +Incidentally, we exhausted the steamer "Lady Gay's" supplies of +champagne and cigars, and when we reached New Orleans we had a dinner +together at the St. Charles hotel, no observer of which would have +suspected that a few months before we had been doing our best to +slaughter each other. + + + + +XXXII + + +[Sidenote: The Beginning of Newspaper Life] + +Let me pass hurriedly over the years that immediately followed the end +of the war. I went West in search of a living. In Cairo, Illinois, I +became counsel and attorney "at law and in fact," for a great banking, +mining, steamboating, and mercantile firm, whose widely extending +interests covered the whole West and South. + +The work was uncongenial and by way of escaping from it, after I had +married, I removed to Mississippi and undertook the practice of law +there. + +That work proved still less to my liking and in the summer of 1870 +I abandoned it in the profoundest disgust. + +With a wife, one child, a little household furniture, and no money +at all, I removed to New York and secured work as a reporter on the +Brooklyn _Union_, an afternoon newspaper. + +I knew nothing of the business, art, or mystery of newspaper making, and +I knew nothing of the city. I find it difficult to imagine a man less +well equipped for my new undertaking than I was. But I had an abounding +confidence in my ability to learn anything I wanted to learn, and I +thought I knew how to express myself lucidly in writing. For the rest +I had tireless energy and a good deal of courage of the kind that is +sometimes slangily called "cheek." This was made manifest on the first +day of my service by the fact that while waiting for a petty news +assignment I wrote an editorial article and sent it in to Theodore +Tilton, the editor, for use. I had an impulse of general helpfulness +which was left unrestrained by my utter ignorance of the distinctions +and dignities of a newspaper office. I had a thought which seemed to me +to deserve editorial utterance, and with the mistaken idea that I was +expected to render all the aid I could in the making of the newspaper, +I wrote what I had to say. + +Theodore Tilton was a man of very hospitable mind, and he cared little +for traditions. He read my article, approved it, and printed it as a +leader. Better still, he sent for me and asked me what experience I had +had as a newspaper man. I told him I had had none, whereupon he said +encouragingly: + +"Oh well, it doesn't matter much. I'll have you on the editorial staff +soon. In the meantime, learn all you can about the city, and especially +about the shams and falsities of its 'Society' with a big 'S.' Study +state politics, and equip yourself to comment critically upon such +things. And whenever you have an editorial in your mind write it and +send it to me." + +The _Union_ had been purchased by Mr. Henry C. Bowen, the owner of the +New York _Independent_, then the most widely influential periodical of +its class in America. Theodore Tilton was the editor of both. + +[Sidenote: An Old School Man of Letters] + +Theodore Tilton was at the crest of the wave of success at that time, +and he took himself and his genius very seriously. Concerning him I +shall write more fully a little later on. At present I wish to say only +that with all his self-appreciation he had a keen appreciation of other +men's abilities, and he sought in every way he could to make them +tributary to his own success in whatever he undertook. To that end he +had engaged some strong men and women as members of his staff on the +_Union_, and among these the most interesting to me was Charles F. +Briggs, the "Harry Franco" of an earlier literary time, the associate +and partner of Edgar Allan Poe on the _Broadway Journal_, the personal +friend or enemy of every literary man of consequence in his time, the +associate of George William Curtis and Parke Godwin in the conduct +of _Putnam's Monthly_; the coadjutor of Henry J. Raymond on the +_Times_, the novelist to whom Lowell dedicated "The Fable for Critics," +and whose personal and literary characteristics Lowell set forth with +singular aptitude in that poem. In brief, he was in his own person a +representative and embodiment of the literary life of what I had always +regarded as the golden age of American letters. He talked familiarly of +writers who had been to me cloud-haloed demigods, and made men of them +to my apprehension. + +Let me add that though the literary life of which he had been a part was +a turbulent one, beset by jealousies and vexed by quarrels of a bitter +personal character, such as would be impossible among men of letters in +our time of more gracious manners, I never knew him to say an unjust +thing about any of the men he had known, or to withhold a just measure +of appreciation from the work of those with whom he had most bitterly +quarreled. + +Perhaps no man among Poe's contemporaries had juster reason to feel +bitterness toward the poet's memory than had Mr. Briggs. Yet during my +intimacy with him, extending over many years, I never heard him say +an unkind word of Poe. On the other hand, I never knew him to fail to +contradict upon occasion and in his dogmatic fashion--which was somehow +very convincing--any of the prevalent misapprehensions as to Poe's +character and life which might be mentioned in his presence. + +It was not that he was a meekly forgiving person, for he was, on the +contrary, pugnacious in an unusual degree. But the dominant quality of +his character was a love of truth and justice. Concerning Poe and the +supposed immorality of his life, he once said to me, in words that I +am sure I remember accurately because of the impression they made on +my mind: + +"He was not immoral at all in his personal life or in his work. He +was merely _un_moral. He had no perception of the difference between +right and wrong in the moral sense of those words. His conscience was +altogether artistic. If you had told him you had killed a man who stood +annoyingly in the way of your purposes, he would have thought none the +worse of you for it. He would have reflected that the man ought not to +have put himself in your way. But if you had been guilty of putting +forth a false quantity in verse, he would have held you to be a monster +for whom no conceivable punishment could be adequate." + +Often Mr. Briggs's brusquerie and pugnacity were exaggerated, or +even altogether assumed by way of hiding a sentiment too tender to be +exhibited. Still more frequently the harshest things he said to his +friends--and they were sometimes very bitter--were prompted, not by his +displeasure with those who were their victims, but by some other cause +of "disgruntlement." On such occasions he would repent him of his fault, +and would make amends, but never in any ordinary way or after a fashion +that anybody else would have chosen. + +One morning he came into the editorial room which he and I jointly +occupied. I bade him good-morning as usual, but he made no reply. After +a little while he turned upon me with some bitter, stinging utterance +which, if it had come from a younger man, I should have hotly resented. +Coming from a man of his age and distinction, I resented it only by +turning to my desk and maintaining silence during the entire morning. +When his work was done, he left the office without a word, leaving me to +feel that he meant the break between us--the cause of which I did not at +all understand--to be permanent, as I certainly intended that it should. +But when he entered the room next morning he stood still in the middle +of the floor, facing my back, for I had not turned my face away from +my desk. + +[Sidenote: Mr. Briggs Explains] + +"Good-morning!" he said. "Are you ready to apologize to me?" + +I turned toward him with an involuntary smile at the absurdity of the +suggestion, and answered: + +"I don't know what I should apologize for, Mr. Briggs." + +"Neither do I," he answered. "My question was prompted by curiosity. It +usually happens that apologies come from the person offended, you know. +Are you going to write on this affair in the Senate, or shall I take +it up?" + +From that moment his manner was what it always had been during our +association. Beyond what he had said he made no reference to the matter, +but after our work was finished he, in fact, explained his temper of the +day before, while carefully avoiding every suggestion that he meant to +explain it or that there was any connection between the explanation and +the thing explained. + +"What do you think of servants?" he asked abruptly. I made some answer, +though I did not understand the reason for his question or its occasion. + +"When I was in the Custom House," he resumed, "I had an opportunity to +buy, far below the usual price, some of the finest wines and brandies +ever imported. I bought some Madeira, some sherry, and some brandy--ten +gallons of each, in five-gallon demijohns--and laid them away in my +cellar, thinking the stock sufficient to last me as long as I lived. +I rejoiced in the certainty that however poor I might become, I should +always be able to offer a friend a glass of something really worthy +of a gentleman's attention. Night before last I asked my daughter to +replenish a decanter of sherry which had run low. She went to the cellar +and presently returned with a look on her face that made me think she +had seen a burglar. She reported that there wasn't a drop of anything +left in any of the demijohns. I sent for some detectives, and before +morning they solved the riddle. A servant girl who had resigned from our +service a week or two before had carried all the wine and brandy--two +bottlefuls at a time--to a miserable, disreputable gin mill, and sold +it for what the thievish proprietor saw fit to give. When I learned the +facts I lost my temper, which was a very unprofitable thing to do. I'm +late," looking at his watch, "and must be off." + +Mr. Briggs had a keen sense of humor, which he tried hard to disguise +with a shaggy seeming of dogmatic positiveness. He would say his most +humorous things in the tone and with the manner of a man determined to +make himself as disagreeable as possible. + +I sat with him at a public dinner one evening. He took the wines with +the successive courses, but when later some one, on the other side of +the table, lifted his glass of champagne and asked Mr. Briggs to drink +with him, he excused himself for taking carbonic water instead of the +wine, by saying: + +"I'm a rigid 'temperance' man." + +When we all smiled and glanced at the red and white wine glasses he had +emptied in the course of the meal, he turned upon us savagely, saying: + +"You smile derisively, but I repeat my assertion that I'm a strict +'temperance' man; I never take a drink unless I want it." + +He paused, and then added: + +"Temperance consists solely in never taking a drink unless you want it. +Intemperance consists in taking drinks when some other fellow wants +them." + +[Sidenote: Mr. Briggs's Generosity] + +He was peculiarly generous of encouragement to younger men, when he +thought they deserved it. I may add that he was equally generous of +rebuke under circumstances of an opposite kind. I had entered journalism +without knowing the least thing about the profession, or trade--if that +be the fitter name for it, as I sometimes think it is--and I had not +been engaged in the work long enough to get over my modesty, when one +day I wrote a paragraph of a score or two lines to correct an error into +which the New York _Tribune_ had that morning fallen. Not long before +that time a certain swashbuckler, E. M. Yerger, of Jackson, Mississippi, +had committed a homicide in the nature of a political assassination. The +crime and the assassin's acquittal by reason of political influence had +greatly excited the indignation of the entire North. + +There lived at the same time in Memphis another and a very different +E. M. Yerger, a judge whose learning, uprightness, and high personal +character had made him deservedly one of the best loved and most honored +jurists in the Southwest. At the time of which I now write, this Judge +E. M. Yerger had died, and his funeral had been an extraordinary +manifestation of popular esteem, affection, and profound sorrow. + +The _Tribune_, misled by the identity of their names, had confounded the +two men, and had that morning "improved the occasion" to hurl a deal of +editorial thunder at the Southern people for thus honoring a fire-eating +assassin. + +By way of correcting the error I wrote and printed an editorial +paragraph, setting forth the facts simply, and making no comments. + +When Mr. Briggs next entered the office he took my hand warmly in both +his own, and said: + +"I congratulate you. That paragraph of yours was the best editorial the +_Union_ has printed since I've been on the paper." + +"Why, Mr. Briggs," I protested, "it was only a paragraph----" + +"What of that?" he demanded in his most quarrelsome tone. "The Lord's +Prayer is only a paragraph in comparison with some of the 'graces' I've +heard distinguished clergymen get off at banquets by way of impressing +their eloquence upon the oysters that were growing warm under the +gaslights, while they solemnly prated." + +"But there was nothing in the paragraph," I argued; "it only corrected +an error." + +"Why, sir, do you presume to tell me what is and what isn't in an +article that I've read for myself? You're a novice, a greenhorn in this +business. Don't undertake to instruct my judgment, sir. That paragraph +was excellent editorial writing, because it corrected an error that +did a great injustice; because it gave important and interesting +information; because it set forth facts of public import not known to +our readers generally, and finally, because you put that final period +just where it belonged. Don't contradict me. Don't presume to argue +the matter. I won't stand it." + +With that he left the room as abruptly as he had entered it, and with +the manner of a man who has quarreled and has put his antagonist down. +I smilingly recalled the lines in which Lowell so aptly described and +characterized him in "A Fable for Critics": + + "There comes Harry Franco, and as he draws near, + You find that's a smile which you took for a sneer; + One half of him contradicts t'other; his wont + Is to say very sharp things and do very blunt; + His manner's as hard as his feelings are tender, + And a _sortie_ he'll make when he means to surrender; + He's in joke half the time when he seems to be sternest, + When he seems to be joking be sure he's in earnest; + He has common sense in a way that's uncommon, + Hates humbug and cant, loves his friends like a woman, + Builds his dislikes of cards and his friendships of oak, + Loves a prejudice better than aught but a joke; + Is half upright Quaker, half downright Come-Outer, + Loves Freedom too well to go stark mad about her; + Quite artless himself, is a lover of Art, + Shuts you out of his secrets and into his heart, + And though not a poet, yet all must admire + In his letters of Pinto his skill on the liar." + + + + +XXXIII + + +[Sidenote: Theodore Tilton] + +When I first knew Theodore Tilton as my editor-in-chief, on the +_Union_, he was in his thirty-fifth year. His extraordinary gifts as an +effective writer and speaker had won for him, even at that early age, a +country-wide reputation. He was a recognized force in the thought and +life of the time, and he had full possession of the tools he needed for +his work. The _Independent_ exercised an influence upon the thought and +life of the American people such as no periodical publication of its +class exercises in this later time of cheap paper, cheap illustrations, +and multitudinous magazines. Its circulation of more than three hundred +thousand exceeded that of all the other publications of its class +combined, and, more important still, it was spread all over the country, +from Maine to California. The utterances of the _Independent_ were +determinative of popular thought and conviction in an extraordinary +degree. + +Theodore Tilton had absolute control of that great engine of influence, +with an editorial staff of unusually able men for his assistants, and +with a corps of contributors that included practically all the most +desirable men and women writers of the time. + +In addition to all this, it was the golden age of the lecture system, +and next to Mr. Beecher, Tilton was perhaps the most widely popular of +the lecturers. + +In the midst of such a career, and possessed of such influence over the +minds of men, at the age of thirty-five, it is no wonder that he had a +good conceit of himself, and it was to his credit that he manifested +that conceit only in inoffensive ways. He was never arrogant, dogmatic, +or overbearing in conversation. His courtesy was unfailing, except in +strenuous personal controversy, and even there his manner was polite +almost to deference, however deadly the thrusts of his sarcastic wit +might be. He fought with a rapier always, never with a bludgeon. His +refinement of mind determined that. + +It was an era of "gush," of phrase making, of superlatives, and in +such arts Tilton was peculiarly gifted. In his thinking he was bold +to the limit of audacity, and his aptness in clothing his thought in +captivating forms of speech added greatly to its effectiveness and his +influence. + +Radicalism was rampant at that time when the passions aroused by the +recent Civil War had not yet begun to cool, and Tilton was a radical +of radicals. So extreme was he in his views that during and after the +orgies of the Commune and the petroleuses in Paris, he openly espoused +their cause, justified their resistance to everything like orderly +government, and glorified those of them who suffered death for their +crimes, as martyrs to human liberty. + +He and I were talking of these things one day, when something that was +said prompted me to ask him his views of the great French revolution at +the end of the eighteenth century. He quickly replied: + +"It was a notable movement in behalf of human liberty; it was overborne +by military force at last only because the French people were unworthy +of it. Robespierre was an irresolute weakling who didn't cut off heads +enough." + +[Sidenote: Tilton's Characteristics] + +Added to his other gifts, Tilton had an impressive and attractive +personality. Tall, well formed, graceful in every motion, he had a head +and face so handsome and so unlike the common as to make him a man to be +looked at more than once in every company. His manner accorded with his +appearance and emphasized it. It was a gracious combination of deference +for others with an exalted self-esteem. There was a certain joyousness +in it that was very winning, combined with an insistent but unobtrusive +self-assertion which impressed without offending. + +His wit was always at his command, for offense or for defense, or for +mere entertainment. I remember that in my first association with him I +had a sort of fear at each moment that he would knock me down the next +with an epigram. I have seen him do that repeatedly with men with whom +he was at the time in deadly controversy, but in my own case the fear of +it was soon banished by the uniform kindliness with which he treated me, +and the personal affection with which he seemed to regard me. + +I have often wondered over his attitude toward me. I was an ex-rebel +soldier, and in 1870 he was still mercilessly at war with Southern +men and Southern ideas. My opinions on many subjects were the exact +opposite of his own, and I was young enough then to be insistent in the +expression of my opinions, especially in conversation with one to whom +I knew my views to be _Anathema Maranatha_. + +Yet from the first hour of our meeting Theodore Tilton was always +courteous and genial toward me, and after our acquaintance had ripened +a bit, he became cordial and even enthusiastic in his friendship. + +It was his habit to rise very early, drink a small cup of coffee and, +without other breakfast, walk down to the office of the _Union_. There +he wrote his editorials, marked out the day's work for his subordinates, +and received such callers as might come, after which he would walk +home and take his breakfast at noon. His afternoons were spent in +the doing of another day's work in the _Independent_ office. After our +acquaintance ripened into friendship, he used to insist upon my going +with him to his midday breakfast, whenever my own work in any wise +permitted. As I also was apt to be early at the office, I was usually +able to accept his breakfast invitations, so that we had an hour's +uninterrupted intercourse almost every day. And unlike other editorial +chiefs with whom I have had intimate social relations in their own +homes, Mr. Tilton never thrust editorial or other business matters +into the conversation on these occasions. Indeed, he did not permit +the smallest reference to such subjects. If by accident such things +obtruded, he put them aside as impertinent to the time and place. It +was not that he thought less or cared less for matters of such import +than other great editors do, but rather that he had a well-ordered mind +that instinctively shrank from confusion. When engaged with editorial +problems, he gave his whole attention to their careful consideration +and wise solution. When engaged in social intercourse he put all else +utterly out of his mind. + +I cannot help thinking that his method as to that was a wiser one +than that of some others I have known, who carried the problems and +perplexities of their editorial work with them into their parlors, to +their dinner tables, and even to bed. Certainly it was a method more +agreeable to his associates and guests. + + + + +XXXIV + + +[Sidenote: The Swarm of Gadflies] + +At that time Tilton was "swimming on a sea of glory." His popularity +was at its height, with an apparently assured prospect of lasting +fame to follow. His work so far had necessarily been of an ephemeral +sort--dealing with passing subjects in a passing way--but he had all the +while been planning work of a more permanent character, and diligently +preparing himself for its doing. One day, in more confidential mood than +usual, he spoke to me of this and briefly outlined a part at least of +what he had planned to do. But there was a note of the past tense in +what he said, as if the hope and purpose he had cherished were passing +away. It was the first intimation I had of the fact that those troubles +were upon him which later made an end of his career and sent him into a +saddened exile which endured till the end of his ruined life. + +At that time I knew nothing and he told me nothing of the nature of +his great trouble, and I regarded his despondency as nothing more than +weariness over the petty annoyances inflicted upon him by some who were +jealous of his success and popularity. + +With some of these things I was familiar. His growing liberality of +thought in religious matters, and the absence of asceticism from his +life, had brought a swarm of gadflies round his head, whose stings +annoyed him, even if they inflicted no serious hurt. He was constantly +quizzed and criticised, orally, by personal letter, and in print, +as to his beliefs, his conduct, his tastes, his habits, and even his +employment of terms, quite as if he had been a woman or a clergyman +responsible to his critics and subject to their censure. He maintained +an appearance of good temper under all this carping--most of which was +clearly inspired by "envy, malice, and all uncharitableness"--but, as +I had reason to know, it stung him sorely. He said to me one day: + +"It isn't the criticism that annoys me so much as the fact that I am +supposed to be answerable in such small ways to the bellowings of Tray, +Blanche, and Sweetheart. I seem not to be regarded as a free man, as +other men are." + +I reminded him that something of that kind was the penalty that genius +and popularity were usually required to pay for their privileges. I +illustrated my thought by adding: + +"If Byron had not waked up one morning and found himself famous, he +would never have been hounded out of his native land by what Macaulay +calls British morality in one of its periodic spasms of virtue, and +if Poe had never written 'The Raven,' 'The Bells,' and 'Annabel Lee,' +nobody would ever have bothered to inquire about his drinking habits." + +I strongly urged him to ignore the criticism which was only encouraged +by his replies to it. But in that he was not amenable to counsel, partly +because his over-sensitive nature was more severely stung by such +criticism than that of a better balanced man would have been, but still +more, I think, because his passion for epigrammatic reply could not +resist the temptation of opportunity which these things presented. Often +his replies were effective for the moment, by reason of their wit or +their sparkling audacity, but incidentally they enlarged the circle of +persons offended. + +Thus on one occasion, when he was challenged in print by an adversary, +to say that he did not drink wine, he replied in print: + +"Mr. Tilton does drink wine upon sacramental and other proper +occasions." + +His readers smiled at the smartness of the utterance, but many of the +more sensitive among them were deeply aggrieved by what they regarded +as its well-nigh blasphemous character. + +[Sidenote: The Fulton Controversy] + +I was myself present at one of his most perplexing conferences +concerning these matters, not as a participant in the discussion, but +as a friendly witness. + +The quarrel--for it had developed into the proportions of a quarrel--was +with the Rev. Dr. Fulton, who at that time occupied a large place in +public attention--as a preacher of great eloquence, his friends said, as +a reckless sensationalist and self-advertiser, his enemies contended. + +He had accused Tilton of drinking wine, and had publicly criticised him +for it, with great severity. Tilton had replied in an equally public +way, with the statement that on a certain occasion which he named, he +and Dr. Fulton had walked up street together after a public meeting; +that at Dr. Fulton's suggestion they had gone into a saloon where +between them they had drunk a considerable number of glasses of beer (he +gave the number, but I forget what it was), adding: "Of which I did not +drink the major part." + +Dr. Fulton was furiously angry, of course, and demanded an interview. +Tilton calmly invited him to call at his editorial room in the _Union_ +office. He came at the appointed time, bringing with him the Rev. Dr. +Armitage and two other persons of prominence. I do not now remember who +they were. Tilton at once sent me a message asking me to come to his +room. When I entered he introduced me to his visitors and then said: + +"Mr. Eggleston, Dr. Fulton has called to discuss with me certain +matters of personal import. The discussion may result in some issues of +veracity--discussions with Dr. Fulton often do. It is in view of that +possibility, I suppose," smiling and bowing to Dr. Fulton, who sat stiff +in his chair making no response by word or act, "that Dr. Fulton has +brought with him Dr. Armitage and these other gentlemen, as witnesses +to whatever may be said between us. I have the profoundest respect, +and even reverence for those gentlemen, but it seems to me proper that +I should have at least one witness of my own selection present also. +I have therefore sent for you." + +Instantly Dr. Fulton was on his feet protesting. In a loud voice and +with excited gesticulations, he declared that he would not be drawn +into a trap--that he would abandon the purpose of his visit rather than +discuss the matters at issue with one of Tilton's reporters present to +misrepresent and ridicule him in print. + +Tilton, who never lost his self-possession, waited calmly till the +protest was fully made. Then he said: + +"I have no reporter present. Mr. Eggleston was promoted a week ago to +the editorial writing staff of the paper. He will report nothing. You, +Dr. Fulton, have brought with you three friends who are of your own +selection, to hear the discussion between us. I claim the right to have +one friend of my own present also. It is solely in that capacity that I +have asked Mr. Eggleston to be present." + +"But I will not discuss confidential matters in the presence of any +newspaper man," protested Dr. Fulton. + +"Then in my turn," said Tilton, "I must decline to discuss the questions +between us, in the presence of any clergyman." + +At that point Dr. Armitage and his companions remonstrated with Dr. +Fulton, declaring his position to be unreasonable and unfair, and +telling him that if he persisted in it, they would at once withdraw. + +Fulton yielded, and after an hour's angry sparring on his part and +placidly self-possessed sword play of intellect on Tilton's side, Dr. +Fulton submitted a proposal of arbitration, to which Tilton assented, +with one qualification, namely, that if the finding of the arbitrators +was to be published, in print, from the pulpit, or otherwise, he, +Tilton, should be privileged to publish also a verbatim report of the +_testimony_ upon which it was founded. + +Dr. Fulton rejected this absolutely, on the ground that he did not want +his name to figure in "a newspaper sensation." + +Still cool, self-possessed, and sarcastic, Tilton asked: + +"Do I correctly understand you to mean, Dr. Fulton, that you shrink from +sensationalism?" + +"Yes, sir, that is exactly what I mean." + +"Quite a new attitude of mind to you, isn't it, Doctor? I fear it will +rob your preaching of much of its 'drawing' quality." + +Dr. Fulton's advisers urged him to assent to Tilton's proposal as an +entirely reasonable one, but he persistently refused, and the conference +ended with nothing accomplished. + +I know nothing to this day of the merits of the controversy. I have +given this account of the meeting called to settle it solely because it +serves the purpose of illustrating the methods of the two men. + + + + +XXXV + + +[Sidenote: Later Acquaintance with Tilton] + +About a year later, or a little less, my editorial connection with the +_Union_ ceased, and with it my official association with Mr. Tilton. But +he and I lived not far apart in Brooklyn and from then until the great +trouble broke--two or three years--I saw much of him, at his home and +mine, on the street, and at many places in New York. With the first open +manifestation of the great trouble he began consulting with me about it. +I gave him a deal of good advice in response to his eager demands for +counsel. He seemed to appreciate and value it, but as he never acted +upon it in the smallest degree, I gradually ceased to give it even when +requested. + +I have every reason to believe that in the course of these consultations +I learned, from him and from all the others directly connected with the +terrible affair, the inner and true story of the events that culminated +in the great and widely demoralizing scandal. It is a story that has +never been told. At the time of the trial both sides were careful to +prevent its revelation, and there were certainly most imperative reasons +why they should. + +I have no purpose to tell that story in these pages. I mention it only +because otherwise the abrupt termination of my reminiscences of Mr. +Tilton at this point might seem to lack explanation. + + + + +XXXVI + + +When I joined the staff of the _Union_, in the summer of 1870, I had +had no newspaper experience whatever. I had written for newspapers +occasionally, but only as an amateur. I had published one or two small +things in magazines, but I knew absolutely nothing of professional +newspaper work. Mr. Tilton and his managing editor, Kenward Philp, were +good enough to find in my earliest work as a reporter some capacity for +lucid expression, and a simple and direct narrative habit which pleased +them, so that in spite of my inexperience they were disposed to give me +a share in the best assignments. I may say incidentally that among the +reporters I was very generally pitied as a poor fellow foredoomed to +failure as a newspaper man for the reason that I was what we call +educated. At that time, though not for long afterwards, education and +a tolerable regularity of life were regarded as serious handicaps in +the newsrooms of most newspapers. + +[Sidenote: My First Libel Suit] + +Among my earliest assignments was one which brought me my first +experience of newspaper libel suits, designed not for prosecution but as +a means of intimidating the newspaper concerned. The extent to which the +news of the suit appalled me was a measure of my inexperience, and the +way in which it was met was a lesson to me that has served me well upon +many later occasions of the kind. + +A man whom I will call Amour, as the use of his real name might give +pain to innocent persons even after the lapse of forty years, was +express agent at a railway station in the outskirts of Brooklyn. His +reputation was high in the community and in the church as a man of +exemplary conduct and a public-spirited citizen, notably active in all +endeavors for the betterment of life. + +It was a matter of sensational, popular interest, therefore, when his +wife instituted divorce proceedings, alleging the most scandalous +conduct on his part. + +The _Union_ was alert to make the most of such things and Kenward Philp +set me to explore this case and exploit it. He told me frankly that he +did so because he thought I could "write it up" in an effective way, but +he thought it necessary to caution my inexperience that I must confine +my report rigidly to the matter in hand, and not concern myself with +side issues of any kind. + +In the course of my inquiry, I learned much about Amour that was far +more important than the divorce complications. Two or three business +men of high repute in Brooklyn told me without reserve that he had +abstracted money from express packages addressed to them and passing +through his hands. When detected by them he had made good the losses, +and in answer to his pleadings in behalf of his wife and children, they +had kept silence. But now that he had himself brought ruin and disgrace +upon his family they had no further reason for reserve. I secured +written and signed statements of the facts from each of them, with +permission to publish if need be. But all this was aside from the +divorce matter I had been set to investigate, and, mindful of the +instructions given me, I made no mention of it in the article. + +When I reached the office on the morning after that article was +published, I met Kenward Philp at the entrance door of the building, +manifestly waiting for me in some anxiety. Almost forgetting to say +"good-morning," he eagerly asked: + +"Are you sure of your facts in that Amour story--can they be proved?" + +"Yes, absolutely," I replied. "But why do you ask?" + +"Oh, only because Amour has served papers on us in a libel suit for +fifty thousand dollars damages." + +My heart sank at this, as it had never done before, and has never done +since. I regarded it as certain that my career in the new profession I +had adopted was hopelessly ended at its very beginning, and I thought, +heart-heavily, of the wife and baby for whom I saw no way to provide. + +"Why, yes," I falteringly repeated, "every statement I made can be +supported by unimpeachable testimony. But, believe me, Mr. Philp, I am +sorry I have got the paper into trouble." + +"Oh, that's nothing," he replied, "so long as you're sure of your facts. +One libel suit more or less is a matter of no moment." + +Then, by way of emphasizing the unworthiness of the man I had "libeled" +I briefly outlined the worse things I had learned about him. Philp +fairly shouted with delight: + +"Keno!" he exclaimed. "Hurry upstairs and _libel him some more_! Make it +strong. Skin him and dress the wound with _aqua fortis_--I say--and rub +it in!" + +I obeyed with a will, and the next morning Amour was missing, and the +express company was sending descriptions of him to the police of every +city in the country. It is a fixed rule with the great express companies +to prosecute relentlessly every agent of their own who tampers with +express packages. It is a thing necessary to their own protection. So +ended my first libel suit. + + + + +XXXVII + + +[Sidenote: Later Libel Suit Observations] + +During the many years that I passed in active newspaper work after +that time, observation and experience taught me much, with regard to +newspaper libel suits, which is not generally known. It may be of +interest to suggest some things on the subject here. + +I have never known anybody to get rich by suing newspapers for libel. +The nearest approach to that result that has come within my knowledge +was when Kenward Philp got a verdict for five thousand dollars damages +against a newspaper that had accused him of complicity in the forging of +the celebrated Morey letter which was used to General Garfield's hurt in +his campaign for the Presidency. There have been larger verdicts secured +in a few other cases, but I suspect that none of them seemed so much +like enrichment to those who secured them, as that one did to Philp. +It was not Mr. Philp's habit to have a considerable sum of money in +possession at any time. His temperament strongly militated against that, +and I think all men who knew him well will agree with me in doubting +that he ever had one-half or one-fourth the sum this verdict brought +him, in his possession at any one time in his life, except upon that +occasion. + +In suing newspapers for libel it is the custom of suitors to name large +sums as the measure of the damages claimed, but this is a thing inspired +mainly by vanity and a spirit of ostentation. It emphasizes the value of +the reputation alleged to have been damaged; it is in itself a boastful +threat of the punishment the suitor means to inflict, and is akin to +the vaporings with which men of rougher ways talk of the fights they +contemplate. It is an assurance to the friends of the suitor of his +determined purpose to secure adequate redress and of his confidence in +his ability to do so. Finally, it is a "don't-tread-on-me" warning to +everybody concerned. + +Inspired by such motives men often sue for fifty thousand dollars for +damages done to a fifty-cent reputation. It costs no more to institute +a suit for fifty thousand dollars than to bring one for one or two +thousand. + +In many cases libel suits are instituted without the smallest intention +of bringing them to trial. They are "bluffs," pure and simple. They are +meant to intimidate, and sometimes they accomplish that purpose, but not +often. + +I remember one case with which I had personally to deal. I was in charge +of the editorial page of the New York _World_ at the time, and with a +secure body of facts behind me I wrote a severe editorial concerning the +malefactions of one John Y. McKane, a Coney Island political boss. I +specifically charged him with the crimes he had committed, cataloguing +them and calling each of them by its right name. + +The man promptly served papers in a libel suit against the newspaper. +A timid business manager hurriedly came to me with the news, asking if +I couldn't write another article "softening" the severity of the former +utterance. I showed him the folly of any such attempt in a case where +the libel, if there was any libel, had already been published. + +"But even if the case were otherwise," I added, "the _World_ will do +nothing of that cowardly kind. The man has committed the crimes we have +charged. Otherwise we should not have made the charges. I shall indite +and publish another article specifically reiterating our accusations, +as our reply to his attempt at intimidation." + +I did so at once. I repeated each charge made and emphasized it. +I ended the article by saying that the man had impudently sued the paper +for libel in publishing these truths concerning him, and adding that +"it is not as plaintiff in a libel suit that he will have to meet these +accusations, but as defendant in a criminal prosecution, and long before +his suit for libel can be brought to trial, he will be doing time in +prison stripes with no reputation left for anybody to injure." + +The prediction was fulfilled. The man was prosecuted and sentenced to +a long term in state's prison. So ended that libel suit. + +[Sidenote: The Queerest of Libel Suits] + +The queerest libel proceeding of which I ever had personal knowledge, +was that of Judge Henry Hilton against certain members of the staff of +the New York _World_. It was unusual in its inception, in its character, +and in its outcome. + +The _World_ published a series of articles with regard to Judge Hilton's +relations with the late A. T. Stewart, and with the fortune left by Mr. +Stewart at his death. I remember nothing of the merits of the matter, +and they need not concern us here. The _World_ wanted Judge Hilton to +bring a libel suit against it, in the hope that at the trial he might +take the witness-stand and submit himself to cross-examination. To that +end the paper published many things which were clearly libelous if they +were not true. + +But Judge Hilton was not to be drawn into the snare. He instituted no +libel suit in his own behalf; he asked no redress for statements made +about himself, but he made complaint to the District Attorney, Colonel +John R. Fellows, that the _World_ had criminally libeled the _memory of +A. T. Stewart_, and for that offense Col. Fellows instituted criminal +proceedings against John A. Cockerill and several other members of the +_World's_ staff, who thus learned for the first time that under New +York's queer libel law it is a crime to say defamatory things of +Benedict Arnold, Guy Fawkes, or the late Judas Iscariot himself unless +you can prove the truth of your charges. + +The editors involved in this case were held in bail, but as no effort of +their attorneys to secure their trial could accomplish that purpose, it +seems fair to suppose that the proceedings against them were never +intended to be seriously pressed. + +Finally, when the official term of Colonel Fellows drew near its +end, Mr. De Lancy Nicoll was elected to be his successor as District +Attorney. As Mr. Nicoll had been the attorney of the _World_ and of +its accused editors, the presence of these long dormant cases in the +District Attorney's office threatened him with a peculiarly sore +embarrassment. Should he find them on his calendar upon taking office, +he must either become the prosecutor in cases in which he had been +defendants' counsel, or he must dismiss them at risk of seeming to +use his official authority to shield his own former clients from due +responsibility under the criminal law. + +It was not until the very day before Mr. Nicoll took office that the +embarrassing situation was relieved by Colonel Fellows, who at the end +of his term went into court and asked for the dismissal of the cases. + +One other thing should be said on this subject. There are cases, of +course, in which newspapers of the baser sort do wantonly assail +reputation and should be made to smart for the wrong done. But these +cases are rare. The first and most earnest concern of every reputable +newspaper is to secure truth and accuracy in its news reports, and +every newspaper writer knows that there is no surer way of losing his +employment and with it his chance of securing another than by falsifying +in his reports. The conditions in which newspapers are made render +mistakes and misapprehensions sometimes unavoidable; but every reputable +newspaper holds itself ready to correct and repair such mistakes when +they injure or annoy innocent persons. Usually a printed retraction with +apology in fact repairs the injury. But I have known cases in which +vindictiveness, or the hope of money gain, has prompted the aggrieved +person to persist in suing for damages and rejecting the offer of other +reparation. In such cases the suitors usually secure a verdict carrying +six cents damages. In one case that I remember the jury estimated the +damages at one cent--leaving the plaintiff to pay the costs of the +proceeding. + + + + +XXXVIII + + +[Sidenote: Early Newspaper Experiences] + +During the early days of my newspaper service there came to me an +unusual opportunity, involving a somewhat dramatic experience. + +The internal revenue tax on distilled spirits was then so high as to +make of illicit distilling an enormously profitable species of crime. +The business had grown to such proportions in Brooklyn that its +flourishing existence there, practically without interference by the +authorities, gave rise to a very damaging political scandal. + +In the region round the Navy Yard there were illicit stills by scores, +producing spirits by thousands of gallons daily. They were owned by +influential men of standing, but operated by men of desperate criminal +character to whom homicide itself seemed a matter of indifference so +long as its perpetration could conceal crime or secure protection from +punishment by means of the terror the "gang" held over the heads of all +who might interfere with its members or their nefarious business. + +It was a dangerous thing to meddle with, and the officers of the +law--after some of them had been killed and others severely beaten--were +in fact afraid to meddle with it. There were warrants in the United +States Marshal's office for the arrest of nearly a score of the +offenders, but the papers were not served and there was scarcely a +pretense made of effort to serve them. + +It was made my duty to deal with this matter both in the news columns +and editorially. Every day we published a detailed list of the stills +that had been in operation during the preceding night, together with +the names of the men operating each and detailed information as to the +exact locality of each. Every day we printed editorial articles calling +upon the officers of the law to act, and severely criticising their +cowardice in neglecting to act. At first these editorial utterances were +admonitory and critical. With each day's added demonstration of official +weakness they grew severer and more denunciatory of the official +cowardice or corruption that alone could have inspired the inactivity. +Presently the officer chiefly responsible, whom the newspaper singled +out by name as the subject of its criticism, and daily denounced or +ridiculed, instituted the usual libel suit for purposes of intimidation +only. + +It had no such effect. The newspaper continued its crusade, and the +scandal of official neglect grew daily in the public mind, until +presently it threatened alarming political results. + +I do not know that political corruption was more prevalent then than +now, but it was more open and shameless, and as a consequence men of +upright minds were readier to suspect its existence in high places. +At this time such men began rather insistently to ask why the authorities +at Washington did not interfere to break up the illicit stills and why +the administration retained in office the men whose neglect of that duty +had become so great a scandal. It was freely suggested that somebody at +Washington must be winking at the lawlessness in aid of political +purposes in Brooklyn. + +[Sidenote: An Interview with President Grant] + +It was then that Theodore Tilton, with his constitutional audacity, +decided to send me to Washington to interview President Grant on the +subject. I was provided with letters from Tilton, as the editor of the +Republican newspaper of Brooklyn, from the Republican Postmaster Booth, +and from Silas B. Dutcher and other recognized leaders of the Republican +party in Brooklyn. These letters asked the President, in behalf of +Republicanism in Brooklyn, to give me the desired interview, assuring +him of my integrity, etc. + +So armed I had no difficulty in securing audience. I found General Grant +to be a man of simple, upright mind, unspoiled by fame, careless of +formalities and the frills of official place, in no way nervous about +his dignity--just a plain, honest American citizen, accustomed to go +straight to the marrow of every subject discussed, without equivocation +or reserve and apparently without concern for anything except truth and +justice. + +He received me cordially and dismissed everybody else from the room +while we talked. He offered me a cigar and we had our conference without +formality. + +In presenting my credentials, I was moved by his own frankness of manner +to tell him that I was an ex-Confederate soldier and not a Republican in +politics. I was anxious not to sail under false colors, and he expressed +himself approvingly of my sentiment, assuring me that my personal views +in politics could make no difference in my status on this occasion. + +After I had asked him a good many questions about the matter in hand, +he smilingly asked: + +"Why don't you put the suggestions so vaguely mentioned in these +letters, into a direct question, so that I may answer it?" + +It had seemed to me an impossible impudence to ask the President of +the United States whether or not his administration was deliberately +protecting crime for the sake of political advantage, but at his +suggestion I formulated the question, hurriedly putting it in writing +for the sake of accuracy in reporting it afterwards. He answered it +promptly and directly, adding: + +"I wish you would come to me again a week from today. I may then have +a more conclusive answer to give you. Come at any rate." + +When the interview was published, my good friend, Dr. St. Clair +McKelway, then young in the service on the Brooklyn _Eagle_ which has +since brought fame to him and extraordinary influence to the newspaper +which he still conducts, said to me at a chance meeting: "I think your +putting of that question to General Grant was the coolest and most +colossal piece of impudence I ever heard of." + +So it would have been, if I had done the thing of my own motion or +otherwise without General Grant's suggestion, a thing of which, of +course, no hint was given in the published interview. + +When I saw the President again a week later, he needed no questioning on +my part. He had fully informed himself concerning matters in Brooklyn, +and knew what he wanted to say. Among other things he mentioned that he +had had a meeting with the derelict official whom we had so severely +criticised and who had responded with a libel suit. All that the +President thought it necessary to say concerning him was: + +[Sidenote: Grant's Method] + +"He must go. You may say so from me. Say it in print and positively." + +The publication of that sentence alone would have made the fortune of +my interview, even without the other utterances of interest that I was +authorized to publish as an assurance that the administration intended +to break up the illicit distilling in Brooklyn even if it required the +whole power of the government to do it. + +In relation to that matter the President said to me: + +"Now for your own reassurance, and not for publication, I may tell you +that as soon as proper preparations can be made, the distilling district +will be suddenly surrounded by a cordon of troops issuing from the Navy +Yard, and revenue officers, under command of Jerome B. Wass, whom you +know, I believe, will break up every distillery, carry away every still +and every piece of machinery, empty every mash-tub into the gutters, and +arrest everybody engaged in the business." + +I gave my promise not to refer to this raid in any way in advance of +its making, but asked that I might be permitted to be present with the +revenue officers when it should be made. General Grant immediately sent +for Mr. Wass, who was in the White House at the time, and directed him +to inform me when he should be ready to make the raid, and to let me +accompany him. To this he added: "Don't let any other newspaper man know +of the thing." + +The raid was made not long after that. In the darkness of the end +of a night--a darkness increased by the practice of the distillers of +extinguishing all the street lamps in that region--a strong military +force silently slipped out of a remote gate in the Navy Yard inclosure, +and before the movement was suspected, it had completely surrounded the +district, under orders to allow no human being to pass in or out through +the lines. I had with me an assistant, whom I had found the night before +at a ball that he had been assigned to report, and under the strict rule +laid down for the military, he and I were the only newspaper men within +the lines, or in any wise able to secure news of what was going on--a +matter that was exciting the utmost curiosity throughout the city. On +the other hand, the rigidity of the military cordon threatened to render +our presence within the lines of no newspaper use to us. Ours was an +afternoon newspaper and our "copy," of which we soon made many columns, +must be in the office not very long after midday if it was to be of any +avail. But we were not permitted to pass the lines with it, either in +person or by messenger. At last we secured permission of the Navy Yard +authorities to go down to the water front of the Yard and hail a passing +tug. With our pockets stuffed full of copy, we passed in that way to the +Manhattan shore and made our way thence by Fulton ferry to the office, +where we were greeted as heroes and victors who had secured for the +paper the most important "beat" that had been known in years. + +There are victories, however, that are more disastrous to those who win +them than defeat itself. For a time this one threatened to serve me in +that way. Mr. Bowen, the owner of the paper, whom I had never before +seen at the _Union_ office, presented himself there the next morning, +full of enthusiasm. He was particularly impressed by the way in which I +had secured advance information of the raid and with it the privilege of +being present to report the affair. Unfortunately for me, he said in his +enthusiasm, "that's the sort of man we make a general and not a private +of, in journalism." + +Newspaper employments of the better sort were not easy to get in those +days, and my immediate superiors in the office interpreted Mr. Bowen's +utterance to mean that he contemplated the removal of some one or other +of them, to make a commanding place for me. He had even suggested, in +plain words, that he would like to see me made managing editor. + +In that suggestion he was utterly wrong. I knew myself to be unfit +for the place for the reason that I knew little of the city and almost +nothing of journalism, in which I had been engaged for no more than a +few weeks. Nevertheless, Mr. Bowen's suggestion aroused the jealousy of +my immediate superiors, and they at once began a series of persecutions +intended to drive me off the paper, a thing that would have been +calamitous to a man rather inexperienced and wholly unknown in other +newspaper offices. + +Theodore Tilton solved the problem by removing me from the news +department and promoting me to the editorial writing staff. + + + + +XXXIX + + +[Sidenote: A Free Lance] + +After somewhat more than a year's service on the Brooklyn newspaper my +connection with it was severed, and for a time I was a "free lance," +writing editorials and literary articles of various kinds for the New +York _Evening Post_ in the forenoons, and devoting the afternoons to +newswork on the _Tribune_--writing "on space" for both. + +At that time Mr. William Cullen Bryant was traveling somewhere in the +South, I think, so that I did not then become acquainted with him. That +came later. + +The _Evening Post_ was in charge of the late Charlton T. Lewis, with +whom, during many later years, I enjoyed an intimate acquaintance. Mr. +Lewis was one of the ripest scholars and most diligent students I have +ever known, but he was also a man of broad human sympathies, intensely +interested in public affairs and in all else that involved human +progress. His knowledge of facts and his grasp of principles in +the case of everything that interested him seemed to me not less than +extraordinary, and they seem so still, as I remember the readiness with +which he would turn from consideration of some nice question of Greek +or Latin usage to write of a problem of statesmanship under discussion +at Washington, or of some iniquity in municipal misgovernment which +occupied the popular mind. His eyes were often red after the scholarly +vigils of the midnight, but they were wide open and clear-sighted in +their survey of all human affairs, from the Old Catholic movement +to police abuses. His scholarship in ancient literatures in no way +interfered with his alert interest in the literature of his own +language, his own country, and his own time, or with his comprehensive +acquaintance with it. + +He was as much at home on the rostrum as at the desk, and his readiness +and force in speaking were as marked as the effectiveness of his written +words. More remarkable still, perhaps, was the fact that his oral +utterances, however unexpectedly and extemporaneously he might be called +upon to speak, were as smoothly phrased, as polished, and as perfectly +wrought in every way as if they had been carefully written out and +laboriously committed to memory. + +Personally he was genial, kindly, and courteous, not with the courtesy +of courtliness, which has considerations of self for its impulse, but +with that of good-fellowship, inspired by concern for the happiness of +those with whom he came in contact. + + + + +XL + + +[Sidenote: Hearth and Home] + +The service on the _Evening Post_ interested me particularly. My impulse +was strongly toward the literary side of newspaper work, and it was on +that side chiefly that the _Evening Post_ gave me opportunity. But I was +working there only on space and devoting the greater part of my time to +less congenial tasks. In a little while I gave up both these employments +to accept the position of managing editor of a weekly illustrated +publication called _Hearth and Home_. The paper had been very ambitious +in its projection, very distinguished in the persons of its editors and +contributors, and a financial failure from the beginning. + +There were several reasons for this. The mere making of an illustrated +periodical in those days was excessively expensive. There were no +photographic processes for the reproduction of pictures at that time. +Every illustration must be drawn on wood and engraved by hand at a cost +ten or twenty times as great as that now involved in the production of +a similar result. + +A second difficulty was that _Hearth and Home_ was originally designed +to meet a demand that did not exist. It was meant to be a country +gentleman's newspaper at a time when there were scarcely any country +gentlemen--in the sense intended--in America. Its appeals were largely +to a leisure-class of well-to-do people, pottering with amateur +horticulture and interested in literature and art. + +It had for its first editors Donald G. Mitchell (Ik Marvel), Mrs. +Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Mrs. Mary Mapes Dodge. Mrs. Dodge was the +only one of the company who had the least capacity as an editor, and her +work was confined to the children's pages. The others were brilliant +and distinguished literary folk, but wholly without either experience +or capacity as editors. + +The publication had lost a fortune to its proprietors, when it was +bought by Orange Judd & Company, the publishers of the _American +Agriculturist_. They had changed its character somewhat, but not enough +to make it successful. Its circulation--never large--had shrunk to a few +thousands weekly. Its advertisements were few and unremunerative; and +its total income was insufficient to cover one-half the cost of making +it. + +My brother, Edward, and I were employed to take control of the paper +and, if possible, resuscitate it. We found a number of "Tite Barnacles" +there drawing extravagant salaries for which their services made no +adequate return. To rid the paper of these was Edward's first concern. +We found the pigeonholes stuffed with accepted manuscripts, not one in +ten of which was worth printing. They were the work of amateurs who had +nothing to say and didn't at all know how to say it. These must be paid +for, as they had been accepted, but to print them would have been to +invite continued failure. By my brother's order they were dumped into +capacious waste baskets and better materials secured from writers of +capacity--among them such persons as Dr. Edward Everett Hale, Asa Gray, +George E. Waring, Jr., Charles Barnard, Mrs. Runkle, Helen Hunt, Rebecca +Harding Davis, Sara Orne Jewett, Harriet Prescott Spofford, Rose Terry, +and others of like ability. + +[Sidenote: Mary Mapes Dodge] + +Mrs. Dodge continued her well-nigh matchless work as editor of the +children's pages, until a year or so later, when she left _Hearth and +Home_ to create the new children's magazine, _St. Nicholas_. She was a +woman of real genius--a greatly overworked word, but one fitly applied +in her case. Her editorial instincts were alert and unfailing. Her gift +of discovering kernels of value in masses of chaff was astonishing, and +her skill in revising and reconstructing so as to save the grain and rid +it of the chaff was such as I have never known in any other editor. + +Her industry was at times almost appalling in its tireless energy, yet +it seemed to make no draughts upon her vitality that her singularly +buoyant nature could not meet without apparent strain. + +She had also a rare gift of recognizing ability in others, judging it +accurately, and setting it to do its proper work. One of the greatest +services she rendered _Hearth and Home_ was in suggesting Frank R. +Stockton for employment on the staff when we found ourselves in need +of an assistant. He had not begun to make his reputation then. Such +newspaper work as he had found to do had afforded his peculiar gifts +no adequate opportunity and outside a narrow circle he was wholly +unknown. But Mrs. Dodge was right in her reckoning when she advised +his employment, and equally right in her perception of the kind of +opportunity he needed. + +The friendship between Stockton and myself, which was begun during the +time of our association on _Hearth and Home_, endured and increased to +the end of his life. The fame that those later years brought to him is +a matter of familiar knowledge to all who are likely to read this book. +It is not of that that I wish to write here, or of the character of the +work by which that fame was won. It is only of Stockton the man that +I need set down anything in these pages. + +He was the best of good company always, as I found out early in our +association, in those days when we went out together for our luncheon +every day and enjoyed an hour of relaxation between the long morning's +work and that of the longer afternoon. He never failed to be ready to +go when the luncheon hour came. His work was always in shape and he +carried no care for it with him when we quitted the office together. +He never talked shop. I cannot remember that he ever mentioned anything +respecting his work or asked a question concerning it between the time +of our leaving the office and that of our return. + +Not that he was indifferent to it, for on the contrary I never knew a +more conscientious worker, or one who more faithfully attended to every +detail. When his "copy" was laid on my desk I knew perfectly that every +sentence was as he had intended it to be, that every paragraph break +was made at the point he desired it to be, and that every comma was +marked in its proper place. While engaged in doing his work he gave his +undivided attention to it, but when he went with me to the Crooked Stoop +house in Trinity Alley for his luncheon, he gave equal attention to the +mutton and potatoes, while his conversation was of things light, airy, +and not strenuous. + +I spoke of this to him one day many years after the time of our +editorial association, and for answer he said: + +"I suppose there are men who can part their hair and polish their boots +at the same time, but I am not gifted in that way." + +I never saw Stockton angry. I doubt that he ever was so. I never knew +him to be in the least degree hurried, or to manifest impatience in any +way. On the other hand, I never knew him to manifest enthusiasm of any +kind or to indulge in any but the most moderate and placid rejoicing +over anything. Good or ill fortune seemed to have no effect whatever +upon his spirits or his manner, so far as those who were intimately +acquainted with him were able to discover. Perhaps it was only that +his philosophy taught him the injustice of asking others to share his +sorrows or his rejoicings over events that were indifferent to them. + +[Sidenote: Frank R. Stockton] + +He was always frail in health, but during all the years of my acquaintance +with him I never once heard him mention the fact, or discovered any +complaint of it in his tone or manner. At one time his weakness and +emaciation were so great that he walked with two crutches, not because +of lameness for he had none, but because of sheer physical weakness. +Yet even at that time his face was a smiling one and in answer to all +inquiries concerning his health he declared himself perfectly well. + +His self-possessed repression of enthusiasm is clearly manifest in his +writings. In none of his stories is there a suggestion of anything but +philosophic calm on the part of the man who wrote them. There is humor, +a fascinating fancy, and an abounding tenderness of human sympathy of a +placidly impersonal character, but there is no passion, no strenuosity, +nothing to suggest that the author is anywhere stirred to enthusiasm by +the events related or the situations in which his imaginary personages +are placed. + +He one day said to me that he had never regarded what is called "love +interest" as necessary to a novel, and in fact he never made any very +earnest use of that interest. In "The Late Mrs. Null" he presented the +love story with more of amusement than of warmth in his manner, while in +"Kate Bonnet" the love affair is scarcely more than a casual adjunct to +the pirate story. In "The Hundredth Man" he manifested somewhat greater +sympathy, but even there his tone is gently humorous rather than +passionate. + +Many of the whimsical conceits that Stockton afterward made the +foundations of his books were first used in the more ephemeral writings +of the _Hearth and Home_ period. It has often interested me in reading +the later books to recall my first acquaintance with their germinal +ideas. It has been like meeting interesting men and women whom one +remembers as uncouth boys or as girls in pantalettes. For _Hearth and +Home_ he wrote several playful articles about the character of eating +houses as revealed in what I may call their physiognomies. The subject +seemed to interest and amuse him, as it certainly interested and amused +his readers, but at that time he probably did not dream of making it a +considerable part of the structure of a novel, as he afterwards did in +"The Hundredth Man." + +In the same way in a series of half serious, half humorous articles for +the paper, he wrote of the picturesque features of piracy on the Spanish +Main and along our own Atlantic coast. He gave humor to the historical +facts by looking at them askance--with an intellectual squint as it +were--and attributing to Blackbeard and the rest emotions and sentiments +that would not have been out of place in a Sunday School. These things +he justified in his humorously solemn way, by challenging anybody to +show that the freebooters were not so inspired in fact, and insisting +that men's occupations in life constitute no safe index to their +characters. + +"We do not denounce the novelists and story writers," he one day said, +"and call them untruthful persons merely because they gain their living +by writing things that are not so. In their private lives many of the +fiction writers are really estimable persons who go to church, wear +clean linen, and pay their debts if they succeed in borrowing money +enough for that purpose." + +Here clearly was the thought that afterward grew into the novel of +"Kate Bonnet." + +About that time he wrote a little manual for Putnam's Handy Book Series, +in which he undertook to show how to furnish a home at very small cost. +All his readers remember what fun he made of that performance when he +came to write "Rudder Grange." + +[Sidenote: A Whimsical View of Plagiary] + +I do not think this sort of thing is peculiar to Stockton's work. I find +traces of it in the writings of others, especially of those humorous +writers who have the gift of inventing amusingly whimsical conceits. +It seems easily possible, for example, to find in "The Bab Ballads" the +essential whimsicalities which afterward made the fortunes of Mr. W. S. +Gilbert's most famous comic operas. + +Stockton's whimsical logic was brought to bear upon everything; so much +so that I have often wondered how he would have regarded a "hold up" of +his person for the sake of his purse if such a thing had happened to +him. + +One day a man submitted a manuscript to me for sale. It was an +article on Alice and Phoebe Cary. The subject was interesting and +the article was pleasingly brief, so that I thought it promising. When +I began to read it, the sentences seemed strangely familiar. As I read +on I recognized the thing as an editorial I had myself written for +the _Evening Post_ on the day of Phoebe Cary's funeral. To verify my +impression I went at once to the office of the _Evening Post_, compared +the manuscript with the printed article, and found it to be a verbatim +copy. + +I was perhaps a little severe in my judgments of such things in those +days, and when the plagiarist came back to learn the fate of his +manuscript my language was of a kind that might have been regarded as +severe. After the fellow had left, breathing threats of dire legal +things that he meant to do to me for keeping his manuscript without +paying for it, Stockton remonstrated with me for having lost my temper. + +"It seems to me," he said, "that you do not sufficiently consider the +circumstances of the case. That man has his living to make as a writer, +and nature has denied him the ability to create literature that he +can sell. What is more reasonable, then, than that he should select +marketable things that other people have written and sell them? His +creative ability failing him, what can he do but use his critical +ability in its stead? If he is not equal to the task of producing +salable stuff, he at least knows such stuff when he sees it, and in +the utilization of that knowledge he finds a means of earning an honest +living. + +"Besides in selecting an article of yours to 'convey,' he has paid you +a distinct compliment. He might have taken one of mine instead, but that +his critical judgment saw the superiority of yours. You should recognize +the tribute he has paid you as a writer. + +"Still again what harm would have been done if he had succeeded +in selling the article? It had completely served its purpose as an +editorial in the _Evening Post_, why should it not serve a larger +purpose and entertain a greater company of readers? + +"Finally I am impressed with the illustration the case affords of the +vagaries of chance as a factor in human happenings. There are thousands +of editors in this country to whom that man might have offered the +article. You were the only one of them who could by any possibility have +recognized it as a plagiarism. According to the doctrine of chances he +was perfectly safe in offering the manuscript for sale. The chances +were thousands to one against its recognition. It was his ill-luck to +encounter the one evil chance in the thousands. The moral of that is +that it is unsafe to gamble. Still, now that he knows the one editor who +can recognize it, he will no doubt make another copy of the article and +sell it in safety to some one else." + +This prediction was fulfilled. The article appeared not long afterward +as a contribution to another periodical. In the meanwhile Stockton's +whimsical view of the matter had so amused me as to smooth my temper, +and I did not think it necessary to expose the petty theft. + + + + +XLI + + +[Sidenote: Some Plagiarists I Have Known] + +The view taken by Stockton's perverse humor was much the same as that +entertained by Benjamin Franklin with greater seriousness. He tells us +in his Autobiography that at one time he regularly attended a certain +church whose minister preached able sermons that interested him. When it +was discovered that the sermons were borrowed, without credit, from some +one else, the church dismissed the preacher and put in his place another +whose sermons, all his own, did not interest Franklin, who thereupon +ceased to attend the church, protesting that he preferred good sermons, +plagiarized, to poor ones of the preacher's own. + +I have since learned what I did not know at the time of the incident +related, that there is a considerable company of minor writers hanging +as it were on the skirts of literature and journalism, who make the +better part of their meager incomes by copying the writings of others +and selling them at opportune times. Sometimes these clever pilferers +copy matter as they find it, particularly when its source is one not +likely to be discovered. Sometimes they make slight alterations in it +for the sake of disguise, and sometimes they borrow the substance of +what they want and change its form somewhat by rewriting it. Their +technical name for this last performance is "skinning" an article. + +I have since had a good deal of experience with persons of this sort. +When Horace Greeley died one of them--a woman--sold me a copy of the +text of a very interesting letter from him which she assured me had +never been seen by any one outside the little group that cherished the +original. I learned later that she had simply copied the thing from +the _Home Journal_, where it had been printed many months before. + +One day some years later I had a revelation made to me of the ethics +of plagiarism accepted by a certain class of writers for the minor +periodicals. I found in an obscure magazine a signed article on the +heroism of women, or something of that sort, the first paragraphs of +which were copied verbatim from a book of my own, in which I had written +it as a personal recollection. When the writer of the article was +questioned as to his trespass upon my copyright, he wrote me an +exceedingly gracious letter of apology, saying, by way of explanation, +that he had found the passage in an old scrapbook of his own, with no +memorandum of its authorship attached. He had thought it no harm, he +said, to make the thing his own, a thing, he assured me, he would not +have done had he known whose the passage was. This explanation seemed to +satisfy his conscience completely. I wonder what he would have thought +himself privileged to do with a horse or a cow found wandering along a +lane without the escort of its owner. + +[Sidenote: A Peculiar Case of Plagiary] + +Sometimes the plagiarist is far more daring in his thefts, taking as his +own much greater things and more easily recognized ones than scrapbooks +are apt to hold. The boldest thing of the sort with which I ever came +into personal contact happened in this wise. As literary editor of the +_Evening Post_ during the late seventies it was a part of my duty to +look out for interesting correspondence. One day there came to me a +particularly good thing of the kind--two or three columns of fascinating +description of certain phases of life in the Canadian Northwest. The +writer proposed to furnish us a series of letters of like kind, dealing +with the trading posts of the Hudson Bay Company, life among the +trappers, Indians, and half-breeds, and the like. The letter submitted +was so unusually good, both in its substance and in its literary +quality, that I agreed to take the series on the terms proposed. A +number of the letters followed, and the series attracted the pleased +attention of readers. Presently, in addition to his usual letter our +correspondent sent us a paper relating to the interesting career of +a quaint personage who flourished in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois in +their territorial days. He was known as "Johnny Appleseed," because +of his habit of carrying a bag of apple seeds in his wanderings and +distributing them among the pioneers by way of inducing them to plant +orchards. + +Unfortunately that article had been written by some one other than +our correspondent and published long before in _Harper's Magazine_. +When my suspicion was thus aroused with regard to the integrity of the +correspondent, I instituted an inquiry which revealed the fact that the +letters we had so highly valued were plagiarized from a book which had +been published in England but not reprinted here. + +The daring of the man appalled me, but the limit of his assurance had +not yet been revealed. When I wrote to him telling him of my discovery +of the fraud and declining to send a check for such of the letters as +had been printed and not yet paid for, he responded by sending me a +number of testimonials to the excellence of his character, furnished by +the clergymen, bankers, and leading men generally of the town in which +he lived. Having thus rehabilitated his character, he argued that as +the letters had proved interesting to the readers of the paper, we had +got our money's worth, and that it made no difference in the quality +of the literature furnished whether he had written it himself or had +transcribed it from a book written by another person. Curiously enough +there was a tone of assured sincerity in all this which was baffling to +the understanding. I can explain it only by thinking that he plagiarized +that tone also. + +It was about that time that my work as literary editor of the _Evening +Post_ brought to my attention two cases of what I may call more +distinguished plagiarism. Mrs. Wister, a gifted scholar and writer, was +at that time rendering a marked service to literature by her exceedingly +judicious adaptations of German fiction to the use of American readers. +She took German novels that were utterly too long and in other ways +unfit for American publication, translated them freely, shortened them, +and otherwise saved to American readers all that was attractive in +novels which, if directly translated, would have had no acceptability at +all in this country. The results were quite as much her own as those of +the German authors of the books thus treated. + +I had recently read and reviewed one of the cleverest of these books of +hers, when there came to me for review an English translation of the +same German novel, under another title. That translation was presented +as the work of an English clergyman, well known as one of the most +prolific writers of his time. As I looked over the book I discovered +that with the exception of a few initiatory chapters, it was simply a +copy of Mrs. Wister's work. In answer to the charge of plagiarism the +reverend gentleman explained that he had set out to translate the book, +but that when he had rendered a few chapters of it into English Mrs. +Wister's work fell into his hands and he found her version so good that +he thought it best to adopt it instead of making one of his own. He +omitted, however, to explain the ethical conceptions that had restrained +him from practising common honesty in a matter involving both reputation +and revenue. That was at a time when English complaints of "American +piracy" were loudest. + +[Sidenote: A Borrower from Stedman] + +The other case was a more subtle one, and incidentally more interesting +to me. As literary editor of the _Evening Post_, under the editorship +of Mr. Bryant, who held the literary side of the paper's work to be of +more consequence than all the rest of it put together, I had to read +everything of literary significance that appeared either in England +or in America. One day I found in an English magazine an elaborate +article which in effect charged Tennyson with wholesale plagiary from +Theocritus. The magazinist was disposed to exploit himself as a literary +discoverer, and he presented his discoveries with very little of that +delicacy and moderation which a considerate critic would regard as the +due of so distinguished a poet as Tennyson. I confess that his tone +aroused something like antagonism in my mind, and I rather rejoiced +when, upon a careful reading of his article, I found that he was no +discoverer at all. Practically all that he had to say had been much +better said already by Edmund C. Stedman first in a magazine essay and +afterwards in a chapter of the "Victorian Poets." The chief difference +was that Stedman had written with the impulse and in the tone and manner +of a scholarly gentleman, while the other had exploited himself like a +prosecuting attorney. + +The obvious thing to do was to get Stedman, if that were possible, to +write a signed article on the subject for the _Evening Post_. With that +end in view I went at once to his office in Broad Street. + +I knew him well, in literary and social ways, but I had never before +trespassed upon his banker existence, and the visit mightily interested +me, as one which furnished a view of an unfamiliar side of the +"manyest-sided man"--that phrase I had learned from Mr. Whitelaw +Reid--whom I ever knew. + +It was during Stock Exchange hours that I made my call, and I intended +to remain only long enough to secure an appointment for some other and +less occupied time. But the moment I indicated the matter I wished to +consult with him about, Stedman linked his arm in mine and led me to +his "den," a little room off the banking offices, and utterly unlike +them in every detail. Here were books--not ledgers; here were all the +furnishings of the haunt of a man of letters, without a thing to suggest +that the man of letters knew or cared for anything relating to stocks, +bonds, securities, loans, discounts, dividends, margins, or any other +of the things that are alone considered of any account in Wall Street. + +"This is the daytime home of the literary side of me," he explained. +"When I'm out there"--pointing, "I think of financial things; when I +enter here I forget what a dollar mark looks like." + +"I see," I said. "Minerva in Wall Street--Athene, if you prefer the +older Greek name." + +"Say Apollo instead--for if there is anything I pride myself upon it is +my masculinity. 'Male and female created he them, and God saw that it +was good,' but the garments of one sex do not become the other, and +neither do the qualities and attributes." + +He had a copy of "The Victorian Poets" in the den and together we made a +minute comparison of his study of Tennyson's indebtedness to Theocritus, +Bion, and Moschus with the magazinist's article. For result we found +that beyond a doubt the magazinist had "skinned" his article out of +Stedman's chapter--in other words, that he had in effect plagiarized his +charge of plagiary and the proofs of it. + +Stedman refused to write anything on the subject, deeming it not worth +while, a judgment which I am bound to say was sound, though I did not +like to accept it because my news instinct scented game and I wanted +that article from Stedman's pen. His scholarly criticism was literature +of lasting importance and interest. The magazine assault upon Tennyson's +fame is utterly forgotten of those who read it. + + + + +XLII + + +[Sidenote: "The Hoosier Schoolmaster's" Influence] + +It was early in our effort to achieve a circulation for _Hearth and +Home_ that my brother decided to write for it his novel, "The Hoosier +Schoolmaster." I have elsewhere related the story of the genesis of that +work, and I shall not repeat it here. Its success was immediate and +astonishing. It quickly multiplied the circulation of _Hearth and Home_ +many times over. It was reprinted serially in a dozen or more weekly +newspapers in the West and elsewhere, and yet when it was published in a +peculiarly unworthy and unattractive book form, its sales exceeded fifty +thousand copies during the first month, at a time when the sale of ten +thousand copies all told of any novel was deemed an unusual success. +The popularity of the story did not end even there. Year after year it +continued to sell better than most new novels, and now nearly forty +years later, the demand for it amounts to several thousand copies per +annum. It was translated into several foreign languages--in spite of the +difficulty the translators must have encountered in rendering an uncouth +dialect into languages having no such dialect. It was republished in +England, and the French version of it appeared in the _Revue des Deux +Mondes_. + +But great as its popularity was and still is, I am disposed to regard +that as a matter of less significance and less consequence than the +influence it exercised in stimulating and guiding the literary endeavors +of others. If I may quote a sentence from a book of my own, "The First +of the Hoosiers," Edward Eggleston was "the very first to perceive +and utilize in literature the picturesqueness of the Hoosier life and +character, the first to appreciate the poetic and romantic possibilities +of that life and to invite others to share with him his enjoyment of its +humor and his admiration for its sturdy manliness." + +While Edward was absorbed in the writing of "The Hoosier Schoolmaster" +and its quickly following successor, "The End of the World," he more and +more left the editorial conduct of the paper to me, and presently he +resigned his editorial place, leaving me as his successor. + +The work was of a kind that awakened all my enthusiasm. My tastes were +literary rather than journalistic, whatever may have been the case as to +my capacities, and in the conduct of _Hearth and Home_ my work was far +more literary in character than any that had fallen to me up to that +time in my service on daily newspapers. More important still, it brought +me into contact, both personally and by correspondence, with practically +all the active literary men and women of that time, with many of whom I +formed friendships that have endured to this time in the case of those +who still live, and that ended only with the death of those who are +gone. The experiences and the associations of that time were both +delightful and educative, and I look back upon them after all these +years with a joy that few memories can give me. I was a mere apprentice +to the literary craft, of course, but I was young enough to enjoy and, +I think, not too conceited to feel the need of learning all that such +associations could teach. + +It was during this _Hearth and Home_ period that my first books were +written and published. They were the results of suggestions from others +rather than of my own self-confidence, as indeed most of the thirty-odd +books I have written have been. + +Mr. George P. Putnam, the Nestor of American book publishing, the friend +of Washington Irving and the discoverer of his quality, returned to the +work of publishing about that time. In partnership with his son, George +Haven Putnam, then a young man and now the head of a great house, he +had set up a publishing firm with a meager "list" but with ambition to +increase it to a larger one. + +[Sidenote: My First Book] + +In that behalf the younger member of the firm planned a series of useful +manuals to be called "Putnam's Handy Book Series," and to be sold at +seventy-five cents each. With more of hopefulness than of discretion, +perhaps, he came to me asking if I could not and would not write one or +two of the little volumes. The immediate result was a little book +entitled "How to Educate Yourself." + +In writing it I had the advantage of comparative youth and of that +self-confident omniscience which only youth can have. I knew everything +then better than I know anything now, so much better indeed that for a +score of years past I have not dared open the little book, lest it +rebuke my present ignorance beyond my capacity to endure. + +Crude as the thing was, it was successful, and it seems to have +satisfied a genuine need, if I may judge by the numberless letters sent +to me by persons who felt that it had helped them. Even now, after +the lapse of more than thirty-eight years, such letters come to me +occasionally from men in middle life who say they were encouraged and +helped by it in their youth. I once thought of rewriting it with more +of modesty than I possessed when it had birth, but as that would be to +bring to bear upon it a later-acquired consciousness of ignorance rather +than an enlarged knowledge of the subject, I refrained, lest the new +version should be less helpful than the old. + +The Rev. Dr. Theodore L. Cuyler once said to me: + +"If one gets printer's ink on his fingers when he is young, he can never +get it off while he lives." The thought that suggested that utterance had +prompt illustration in this case. Not long after this poor little first +book was published, I went to Boston to secure literary contributions +for _Hearth and Home_. In those days one had to go to Boston for such +things. Literary activity had not yet transferred its dwelling place to +New York, nor had Indiana developed its "school." + +While I was in Boston Mr. Howells called on me, and in his gentle way +suggested that I should write my reminiscences of Southern army life in +a series of articles for the _Atlantic Monthly_, of which he was then +the editor. + +The suggestion, coming from such a source, almost made me dizzy. I had +vaguely and timidly cherished a secret hope that some day--after years +of preparatory practice in smaller ways--I might have the honor and +the joy of seeing some article of mine in one or other of the great +magazines. But that hope was by no means a confident one, and it looked +to a more or less remote future for its fulfilment. Especially it had +never been bold enough to include the _Atlantic Monthly_ in the list of +its possibilities. That was the magazine of Lowell, Holmes, Whittier, +Longfellow, Charles Eliot Norton, and their kind--the mouthpiece of the +supremely great in our literature. The thought of ever being numbered +among the humblest contributors to that magazine lay far beyond the +utmost daring of my dreams. And the supremacy of the _Atlantic_, in all +that related to literary quality, was at that time very real, so that +I am in nowise astonished even now that I was well-nigh stunned when +Mr. Howells suggested that I should write seven papers for publication +there, and afterward embody them in a book together with two others +reserved from magazine publication for the sake of giving freshness to +the volume. + +I did not accept the suggestion at once. I was too greatly appalled by +it. I had need to go home and cultivate my self-conceit before I could +believe myself capable of writing anything on the high level suggested. +In the end I did the thing with great misgiving, but with results that +were more than satisfactory, both to Mr. Howells and to me. + +[Sidenote: "A Rebel's Recollections"] + +The passions aroused by the war of which I wrote had scarcely begun +to cool at that time and there was a good deal of not very friendly +surprise felt when the _Atlantic's_ constituency learned that the great +exponent of New England's best thought was to publish the war memories +of a Confederate under the seemingly self-assertive title of "A Rebel's +Recollections." + +That feeling seems to have been alert in protest. Soon after the first +paper was published Mr. Howells wrote me that it had "brought a hornets' +nest about his ears," but that he was determined to go on with the +series. After the second paper appeared he wrote me that the hornets +had "begun to sing psalms in his ears" because of the spirit and temper +in which the sensitive subject was handled. On the evening of the +day on which the "Recollections" appeared in book form, there was a +banquet at the Parker House in Boston, given in celebration of the +_Atlantic's_ fifteenth birthday. Without a moment's warning I was toasted +as the author of the latest book from the Riverside Press, and things +were said by the toast-master about the spirit in which the book was +written--things that overwhelmed me with embarrassment, by reason of the +fact that it was my first experience of the kind and I was wholly unused +to the extravagantly complimentary eloquence of presiding officers at +banquets. + +I had never been made the subject of a toast before. I had never before +attempted to make an after-dinner speech, and I was as self-conscious as +a schoolboy on the occasion of his first declamation before an outside +audience. But one always does stumble through such things. I have known +even an Englishman to stammer out his appreciation and sit down without +upsetting more than one or two of his wine glasses. In the same way +I uttered some sort of response in spite of the embarrassing fact that +George Parsons Lathrop, who had been designated as the "historian of +the evening and chronicler of its events," sat immediately opposite me, +manifestly studying me, I thought, as a bugologist might study a new +species of beetle. I didn't know Lathrop then, as I afterward learned to +know him, in all the friendly warmth and good-fellowship of his nature. + +When the brief ordeal was over and I sat down in full conviction that +I had forever put myself to shame by my oratorical failure, Mr. Howells +left his seat and came to say something congratulatory--something that +I attributed to his kindly disposition to help a man up when he is +down--and when he turned away Mark Twain was there waiting to say +something on his own account. + +"When you were called on to speak," he said, "I braced myself up to come +to your rescue and make your speech for you. I thought of half a dozen +good things to say, and now they are all left on my hands, and I don't +knew what on earth to do with them." + +Then came Mr. Frank B. Sanborn to tell me of a plan he and some others +had hurriedly formed to give me a little dinner at Swampscott, at which +there should be nobody present but "original abolitionists" and my rebel +self. + +I was unable to accept this attention, but it ended all doubt in my mind +that I had written my "Recollections" in a spirit likely to be helpful +in the cultivation of good feeling between North and South. The reviews +of the book, especially in the New England newspapers, confirmed this +conviction, and I had every reason to be satisfied. + + + + +XLIII + + +[Sidenote: A Novelist by Accident] + +Before "A Rebel's Recollections" appeared, I had written and published +my first novel, "A Man of Honor." + +That book, like the others, was the result of accident and not of +deliberate purpose. The serial story had become a necessary feature of +_Hearth and Home_, and we had made a contract with a popular novelist +to furnish us with such a story to follow the one that was drawing to a +close. Almost at the last moment the novelist failed us, and I hurriedly +visited or wrote to all the rest of the available writers in search of +a suitable manuscript. There were not so many novelists then as there +are now. The search proved futile, and the editorial council was called +together in something like panic to consider the alarming situation. The +story then running was within a single instalment of its end, and no +other was to be had. It was the unanimous opinion of the council--which +included a member of the publishing firm as its presiding officer--that +it would be disastrous to send out a single number of the paper without +an instalment of a serial in it, and worse still, if it should contain +no announcement of a story to come. The council, in its wisdom, was +fully agreed that "something must be done," but no member of it could +offer any helpful suggestion as to what that "something" should be. +The list of available story writers had been completely exhausted, and +it was hopeless to seek further in that direction. Even my old-time +friend, John Esten Cooke, whose fertility of fiction was supposed to +be limitless, had replied to my earnest entreaties, saying that he was +already under contract for two stories, both of which were then in +course of serial publication, and neither of which he had finished +writing as yet. "Two sets of clamorous printers are at my heels," he +wrote, "and I am less than a week ahead of them in the race between copy +and proof slips." + +As we sat in council, staring at each other in blank despair, I said, +without really meaning it: + +"If worse comes to worst, I'll write the story myself." + +Instantly the member of the publishing firm who presided over the +meeting answered: + +"That settles the whole matter. Mr. Eggleston will write the story. The +council stands adjourned," and without waiting for my remonstrance, +everybody hurried out of the room. + +I had never written a story, long or short. I hadn't the remotest idea +what I should or could write about. I had in my mind neither plot nor +personages, neither scene nor suggestion--nothing whatever out of which +to construct a story. And yet the thing must be done, and the printers +must have the copy of my first instalment within three days. + +I turned the key in my desk and fled from the office. I boarded one +of the steamers that then ran from Fulton Ferry to Harlem. I wanted to +think. I wanted quietude. When the steamer brought me back, I had in my +mind at least a shadowy notion--not of the story as a whole, but of its +first chapter, and I had decided upon a title. + +Hurrying home I set to work to write. About nine o'clock the artist who +had been engaged to illustrate the story called upon me and insisted +upon it that he must decide at once what he should draw as the first +illustration. He reminded me that the drawing must be made on wood, and +that it would take two or three days to engrave it after his work upon +it should be finished. + +I pushed toward him the sheets I had written and bade him read them +while I went on writing. Before he left a telegram came from the office +asking what the title of the story was to be, in order that the paper, +going to press that night, might carry with it a flaming announcement +of its beginning in the next number. + +[Sidenote: "A Man of Honor"] + +From beginning to end the story was written in that hurried way, each +instalment going into type before the next was written. Meanwhile, I had +the editorial conduct of the paper to look after and the greater part of +the editorial page to write each week. + +The necessary result was a crude, ill-considered piece of work, amateurish +in parts, and wholly lacking in finish throughout. Yet it proved +acceptable as a serial, and when it came out in book form ten thousand +copies were sold on advance orders. The publishers were satisfied; the +public seemed satisfied, and as for the author, he had no choice but to +rest content with results for which he could in no way account then, and +cannot account now. + +The nearest approach to an explanation I have ever been able to imagine +is that the title--"A Man of Honor"--was a happy one. Of that there were +many proofs then and afterwards. The story had been scarcely more than +begun as a serial, when Edgar Fawcett brought out a two or three number +story with the same title, in _Appletons' Journal_, I think. Then Dion +Boucicault cribbed the title, attached it to a play he had "borrowed" +from some French dramatist, and presented the whole as his own. + +Finally, about a dozen years later, a curious thing happened. I was +acting at the time as a literary adviser of Harper & Brothers. There was +no international copyright law then, but when a publisher bought advance +sheets of an English book and published it here simultaneously or nearly +so with its issue in England, a certain courtesy of the trade forbade +other reputable publishing houses to trespass. The Harpers kept two +agents in London, one of them to send over advance sheets for purchase, +and the other to send books as they were published. + +One day among the advance sheets sent to me for judgment I found a novel +by Mrs. Stannard, the lady who wrote under the pen name of John Strange +Winter. It was a rather interesting piece of work, but it bore my title, +"A Man of Honor." In advising its purchase I entered my protest against +the use of that title in the proposed American edition. Of course the +protest had no legal force, as our American copyright law affords no +protection to titles, but with an honorable house like the Harpers the +moral aspect of the matter was sufficient. + +The situation was a perplexing one. The Harpers had in effect already +bought the story from Mrs. Stannard for American publication. They must +publish simultaneously with the English appearance of the novel or lose +all claim to the protection of the trade courtesy. There was not time +enough before publication day for them to communicate with the author +and secure a change of title. + +In this perplexity Mr. Joseph W. Harper, then the head of the house and +a personal friend of my own, asked me if I would consent to the use of +the title if he should print a footnote on the first page of the book, +setting forth the fact of my prior claim to it and saying that the firm +was indebted to my courtesy for the privilege of using it. + +I readily consented to this and the book appeared in that way. A little +later, in a letter, Mrs. Stannard sent me some pleasant messages, +saying especially that she had found among her compatriots no such +courteous reasonableness in matters of the kind as I had shown. By +way of illustration she said that some years before, when she published +"Houp-la," she had been compelled to pay heavy damages to an obscure +writer who had previously used the title in some insignificant provincial +publication, never widely known and long ago forgotten. + +In the case of "A Man of Honor" the end was not yet. Mrs. Stannard's +novel with that title and the footnote was still in its early months of +American circulation when one day I found among the recently published +English novels sent to me for examination one by John Strange Winter +(Mrs. Stannard) entitled, "On March." Upon examining it I found it to be +the same that the Harpers had issued with the "Man of Honor" title. I +suppose that after the correspondence above referred to, Mrs. Stannard +had decided to give the English edition of her work this new title, but +had omitted to notify the Harpers of the change. + +[Sidenote: A "Warlock" on the Warpath] + +Mention of this matter of trouble with titles reminds me of a rather +curious case which amused me at the time of its occurrence and may amuse +the reader. In the year 1903 I published a novel entitled "The Master of +Warlock." During the summer of that year I one day received a registered +letter from a man named Warlock, who wrote from somewhere in Brooklyn. +The missive was brief and peremptory. Its writer ordered me to withdraw +the book from circulation instantly, and warned me that no more copies +of it were to be sold. He offered no reason for his commands and +suggested no explanation of his authority to give them. I wrote asking +him upon what ground he assumed to interfere, and for reply he said +briefly: "My grounds are personal and legal." Beyond that he did not +explain. + +He had written in the same way to the publishers of the book, who +answered him precisely as I had done. + +A month later there came another registered letter from him. In it he +said that a month had passed since his demand was made and that as I had +paid no heed to it, he now repeated it. He said he was armed with adequate +proof that many copies of the book had been sold during that month--a +statement which I am glad to say was true. There must now be a prompt +and complete withdrawal of the novel from the market, he said. + +This time the peremptory gentleman graciously gave me at least a hint of +the ground upon which he claimed a right to order the suppression of the +novel. He said I ought to know that I had no right to make use of any +man's surname in fiction, especially when it was a unique name like his +own. + +As I was passing the summer at my Lake George cottage, I sent him a note +saying that I should continue in my course, and giving him the address +of a lawyer in New York who would accept service for me in any action he +might bring. + +For a time thereafter I waited anxiously for the institution of his +suit. I foresaw a great demand for the book as a consequence of it, and +I planned to aid in that. I arranged with some of my newspaper friends +in New York to send their cleverest reporters to write of the trial. +Charles Henry Webb--"John Paul," who wrote the burlesques, "St. +Twelvemo" and "Liffith Lank"--proposed to take up on his own account +Mr. Warlock's contention that the novelist has no right to use any man's +surname in a novel, and make breezy fun of it by writing a novelette +upon those lines. In his preface he purposed to set forth the fact that +there is scarcely any conceivable name that is not to be found in the +New York City directory, and that even a name omitted from that widely +comprehensive work, was pretty sure to belong to somebody somewhere, +so that under the Warlock doctrine its use must involve danger. He +would show that the novelist must therefore designate his personages +as "Thomas Ex Square," "Tabitha Twenty Three," and so on with a +long list of mathematical impersonalities. Then he planned to give +a sample novel written in that way, in which the dashing young cavalier, +Charles Augustus + should make his passionate addresses to the +fascinating Lydia =, only to learn from her tremulous lips that she was +already betrothed to the French nobleman, Compte [Symbol: cube root]y. + +Unhappily Mr. Warlock never instituted his suit; John Paul lost an +opportunity, and the public lost a lot of fun. + +By way of completing the story of this absurdity, it is worth while to +record that the novel complained of had no personage in it bearing the +name of Warlock. In the book that name was merely the designation by +which a certain Virginia plantation was known. + + + + +XLIV + + +[Sidenote: "Pike County Ballads"] + +During our early struggles to secure a place for _Hearth and Home_ in +popular favor, I was seized with a peculiarly vaulting ambition. John +Hay's "Pike County Ballads" were under discussion everywhere. Phrases +from them were the current coin of conversation. Critics were curiously +studying them as a new and effective form of literature, and many pious +souls were in grave alarm over what they regarded as blasphemy in Mr. +Hay's work, especially the phrase "a durned sight better business than +loafin' round the throne," at the end of "Little Breeches." + +I knew Mr. Hay slightly. Having ceased for a time to hold diplomatic +place, he was a working writer then, with his pen as his one source of +income. I made up my mind to secure a Pike County Ballad for _Hearth and +Home_ even though the cost of it should cause our publishers the loss of +some sleep. Knowing that his market was a good one for anything he might +choose to write, I went to him with an offer such as few writers, if any +at that time, had ever received, thinking to outbid all others who might +have designs upon his genius. + +It was of no use. He said that the price offered "fairly took his breath +away," but told me with the emphasis of serious assurance, that he +"could not write a Pike County Ballad to save his life." "That was what +they call a 'pocket mine,'" he added, "and it is completely worked out." + +He went on to tell me the story of the Ballads and the circumstances +in which they were written. As he told me the same thing more in detail +many years later, adding to it a good many little reminiscences, I shall +draw upon the later rather than the earlier memory in writing of the +matter here. + +It was in April, 1902, when he was at the height of his brilliant career +as Secretary of State that I visited him by invitation. In the course of +a conversation I reminded him of what he had told me about thirty years +before, concerning the genesis of the ballads, and said: + +"I wonder if you would let me print that story? It seems to me something +the public is entitled to share." + +He responded without hesitation: + +"Certainly. Print it by all means if you wish, and in order that you +may get it right after all these years, I'll tell it to you again. It +came about in this way: I was staying for a time at a hospitable country +house, and on a hot summer Sunday I went with the rest to church +where I sleepily listened to a sermon. In the course of it the good old +parson--who hadn't a trace of humorous perception in his make-up, droned +out a story substantially the same as that in 'Little Breeches.' + +"As I sat there in the sleepy sultriness of the summer Sunday, in an +atmosphere that seemed redolent of roasting pine pews and scorching +cushion covers, I fell to thinking of Pike County methods of thought, +of what humor a Pike County dialect telling of that story would have, +and of what impression the story itself, as solemnly related by the +preacher, would make upon the Pike County mind. There are two Pike +Counties, you know--one in Illinois and the other confronting it across +the river, in Missouri. But the people of the two Pike Counties are +very much alike--isomeric, as the chemists say--and they have a dialect +speech, a point of view, and an intellectual attitude in common, and all +their own. I have encountered nothing else like it anywhere. + +[Sidenote: John Hay's Own Story of the Ballads] + +"When I left the church that Sunday, I was full to the lips of an +imaginary Pike County version of the preacher's story, and on the train +as I journeyed to New York, I entertained myself by writing 'Little +Breeches.' The thing was done merely for my own amusement, without the +smallest thought of print. But when I showed it to Whitelaw Reid he +seized upon the manuscript and published it in the _Tribune_. + +"By that time the lilt and swing of the Pike County Ballad had taken +possession of me. I was filled with the Pike County spirit, as it +were, and the humorous side of my mind was entertained by its rich +possibilities. Within a week after the appearance of 'Little Breeches' +in print all the Pike County Ballads were written. After that the +impulse was completely gone from me. There was absolutely no possibility +of another thing of the kind. When you asked me for something of that +kind for _Hearth and Home_, I told you truly that I simply could not +produce it. There were no more Pike County Ballads in me, and there +never have been any since. + +"Let me tell you a queer thing about that. From the hour when the last +of the ballads was written until now, I have never been able to feel +that they were mine, that my mind had had anything to do with their +creation, or that they bore any trace of kinship to my thought or my +intellectual impulses. They seem utterly foreign to me--as foreign as if +I had first encountered them in print, as the work of somebody else. It +is a strange feeling. Of course every creative writer feels something of +the sort with regard to much of his work, but I, at least, have never +had the feeling one-tenth so strongly with regard to anything else I +ever did. + +"Now, let me tell you," Mr. Hay continued, "of some rather interesting +experiences I have had with respect to the ballads. One day at the +Gilsey House, in New York, I received the card of a gentleman, and when +he came to my room he said: + +"'I am the son of the man whom you celebrated in one of your ballads as +Jim Bludso, the engineer who stuck to his duty and declared he would +"hold her nozzle agin the bank till the last galoot's ashore."'" + +Mr. Hay added: + +"This gave me an opportunity. Mark Twain had criticised the ballad, +saying that Jim Bludso must have been a pilot, and not an engineer, for +the reason that an engineer, having once set his engines going, could +have no need to stay by them. In view of this criticism, I asked my +visitor concerning it, telling him of what Mark Twain had said. For +answer the caller assured me that the original Jim Bludso was in fact +an engineer. He explained that as a Mississippi River steamboat has two +engines, each turning an independent wheel, and as the current of the +river is enormously swift, it was necessary for the engineer to remain +at his post, working one engine and then the other, backing on one +sometimes and going ahead on the other, if her nozzle was to be held +'agin the bank till the last galoot's ashore.'" + +[Sidenote: Some Anecdotes from John Hay] + +For reply to this I told Mr. Hay that I had seen in a Memphis cemetery a +tombstone erected to a pilot, and inscribed with the story of his heroic +death in precisely Jim Bludso's spirit. At the time that I read the +inscription on it, "Jim Bludso" had not been written, but the matter +interested me and I made inquiry for the exact facts. The story as I +heard it was this: The boat being afire the pilot landed her, head-on +against a bank that offered no facilities for making her fast with +cables. The only way to get the "galoots ashore" was for the pilot +to remain at his post and ring his engine bells for going ahead and +backing, so as to "hold her nozzle agin the bank." But the flames were +by that time licking the rear of the pilot house, and the captain +frantically entreated the pilot to leap from the forward part of the +structure to the deck below. This the heroic fellow refused to do so +long as the safety of the passengers required his presence at his post. +He stood there, calmly smoking his cigar and coolly ringing his bells as +occasion required till at last every other human being on board had been +saved. By that time the flames had completely enveloped the pilot-house, +and there was left no possible way of escape. Then relinquishing his +hold upon the wheel, the pilot folded his arms and stood like a statue +until the floor beneath him gave way and he sank to a cruel death in the +furnace-like fire below. + +The details of the story were related to me by Captain John Cannon, of +the steamer "Robert E. Lee," and the weather-beaten old navigator was +not ashamed of the tears that trickled down his cheeks as he told the +tale. + +When I had finished, Mr. Hay said: + +"That only means that we have two heroes to revere instead of one. Jim +Bludso was an engineer." + +Continuing his talk of coincidences, Mr. Hay said: + +"I once went up to my native village, and as I walked along the street I +accidentally jostled a man. When I apologized, he turned to me and said: + +"'I ought to know you and you ought to know me, for your name's John +Hay and mine's Jim Bludso. But I'm not the fellow you wrote that poetry +about. He's very dead and you see I'm very much alive.'" + +Then Mr. Hay told me of another curious encounter that connected itself +with the Pike County Ballads. + +"You remember," he said, "that it was from the sermon of an old minister +that I got the story told in 'Little Breeches.' Well, when I was in +California in company with President McKinley, I was one day visited by +a venerable man who proved to be none other than the preacher from whose +lips I had heard the original and authoritative prosaic version of that +miracle story. It is curious how these coincidences occur." + +The substance of this conversation with Mr. Hay was embodied in an +article of mine in the New York _Herald_ for April 27, 1902. Proofs of +the interview were sent to Mr. Hay in advance of publication, with my +request that he should make such corrections in them as he saw fit. He +returned the slips to me without an alteration and with a note saying; +"I have no suggestions to make. Your report of our conversation is +altogether accurate. I only wish I might have said something better +worth printing." + +That was the last time I saw John Hay. It was the end of an acquaintance +which had been cordial, though not intimate, and which had extended over +a period of thirty years. As I was leaving he stopped me. He took up a +copy of the pamphlet containing his splendid tribute to the memory of +President McKinley, inscribed it with his autograph, and handed it to +me, saying, with a touch of sadness which was not quite melancholy: + +"You care for my literary work. Perhaps in the coming years you will +care to have, from my own hand, this copy of my latest and probably my +last essay in that department of human endeavor." + +The event verified his prophecy. He soon afterward fell ill, and in the +year 1905 he died, affectionately regretted by every one who had ever +known him personally and by scores of thousands who had known him only +through his work. + +[Sidenote: Mr. Hay's Personality] + +John Hay's personal character was the foundation upon which all his +successes, whether in journalism, literature, or statecraft were built. +He was utterly sincere, as instinctively truthful as a child, and as +gentle of spirit as any woman ever was. Those who knew him personally +were never at a loss to account for the ease with which, in diplomatic +matters, he won men to his wish and persuaded them to his point of +view. Every one who came into contact with him was constrained by his +gentle reasonableness to agree with him. His whole nature was winning +in an extraordinary degree. Strong as he was in his own convictions, +his assertion of them never took the form of antagonism. I really +suppose that John Hay never said a thing in his life which aroused +resentment--and that not because of any hesitation on his part to utter +his thought but because of the transparent justice of the thought, +and of his gently persuasive way of uttering it. His convictions were +strong and there was enough of apostleship in his nature to prompt him +to urge them on all proper occasions: but he urged them soothingly, +convincingly, never by arrogant assertion or with obnoxious insistence. + +Feeling no disposition to quarrel with anybody on his own account, +he was always alert to make an end of other people's quarrels when +opportunity of pacification came to him. + +I remember an instance of this that fell under my own notice. During a +prolonged absence of Mr. Whitelaw Reid from the country, Mr. Hay was +left in control of the _Tribune_. I was not connected with any newspaper +at the time, but was "running a literary shop" of my own, as Mr. Hay +expressed it--writing books of my own, editing other people's books, +advising a publishing firm, and writing for various newspapers and +magazines. Now and then, when some occurrence suggested it, I wrote an +editorial article for the _Tribune_, as I had done occasionally for a +good many years before. + +One day Mr. Hay asked me to call upon him with reference to some work he +wanted me to do. After we had arranged all the rest of it, he picked up +Jefferson Davis's "Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government," which +had just been published. + +"That is a subject," Mr. Hay said, "on which you can write as an expert. +I want you, if you will, to review the book for the _Tribune_." + +I objected that my estimate of Mr. Davis was by no means a flattering +one, and that in a cursory examination which I had already given to his +book, I had discovered some misrepresentations of fact so extraordinary +that they could not be passed over in charitable silence. I cited, as +one of these misrepresentations, Mr. Davis's minute account--expunged +from later editions of the book, I believe--of the final evacuation of +Fort Sumter and the city of Charleston--in which he gave an account of +certain theatrical performances that never occurred, and of impassioned +speeches made by an officer who was not there and had not been there for +eight months before the time of the evacuation. + +"So far as that is concerned," said Mr. Hay, "it makes no difference. As +a reviewer you will know what to say of such things. Mr. Davis has put +forward a book. It is subject to criticism at the hands of any capable +and honest reviewer. Write of it conscientiously, and with as much of +good temper as you can. That is all I desire." + +I then suggested another difficulty. For a considerable time past there +had been some ill feeling between the editor of the _Tribune_ and the +publishers of Mr. Davis's book. The _Tribune_ did not review or in any +way mention books published by that firm. On one occasion, when I had +been asked to review a number of books for the paper, one of them was +withdrawn on that account. I suggested to Mr. Hay that perhaps a review +of Mr. Davis's book by one who had been thus warned of the situation +might be a displeasing impertinence. He replied: + +"I have had no instructions on that head. I know nothing about the ill +feeling. Perhaps you and I may make an end of the trouble by ignoring +it. Write your review and I will publish it." + +[Sidenote: Mr. Hay and "The Breadwinners"] + +One other thing I may mention here as perhaps of interest. When the +anonymous novel, "The Breadwinners," appeared, it excited a good deal of +comment because of the freedom with which the author presented prominent +persons under a disguise too thin to conceal identity. The novel was +commonly and confidently attributed to Mr. Hay, and some of the critics +ventured to censure him for certain features of it. One night at the +Authors Club, at a time when talk of the matter was in everybody's +mouth, and when Mr. Hay's authorship of the work had well-nigh ceased +to be in doubt, he and I were talking of other things, when suddenly he +said to me: + +"I suppose you share the general conviction with regard to the +authorship of 'The Breadwinners.' Let me tell you that I did not write +that book, though I confess that some things in it seem to justify the +popular belief that I did." + +The peculiar form of words in which he couched his denial left me in +doubt as to its exact significance, and to this day that doubt has never +been resolved. Of course I could not subject him to a cross-examination +on the subject. + + + + +XLV + + +I have wandered somewhat from the chronology of my recollections, but +this record is not a statistical table, and so it matters not if I +wander farther still in pursuit of vagrant memories. + +The mention of Mr. Hay's old preacher who had no sense of humor in his +composition reminds me of another of like kind, who was seized with an +ardent desire to contribute--for compensation--a series of instructive +moral essays to _Hearth and Home_. + +When asked by a member of the publishing firm to let him do so, I +replied that I did not think the paper was just then in pressing need of +instructive moral essays, but that the reverend gentlemen might send one +as a sample. He sent it. It began thus: + +"Some philosopher has wisely observed that 'every ugly young woman has +the comforting assurance that she will be a pretty old woman if she +lives long enough.' Doubtless the philosopher meant that a young woman +destitute of physical beauty, with all its temptations, is sure to +cultivate those spiritual qualities which give beauty and more than +beauty to the countenance in later years." + +And so the dear, innocent old gentleman went on for a column or so, +utterly oblivious of the joke he had accepted as profound philosophy. +I had half a mind to print his solemn paper in the humorous column +entitled, "That Reminds Me," but, in deference to his age and dignity, +I forbore. As is often the case in such matters, my forbearance awakened +no gratitude in him. In answer to his earnest request to know why +I thought his essay unworthy, I was foolish enough to point out and +explain the jocular character of his "philosopher's" utterance, +whereupon he wrote to my publishers, strongly urging them to employ a +new editor, for that "the young man you now have is obviously a person +of frivolous mind who sees only jests in utterances of the most solemn +and instructive import." + +As the publishers did not ask for my resignation, I found it easy to +forgive my adversary. + +[Sidenote: The Disappointed Author] + +In view of the multitude of cases in which the writers of rejected +contributions and the victims of adverse criticism are at pains to +advise publishers to change their editors, I have sometimes wondered +that the editorial fraternity is not continually a company of literary +nomads, looking for employment. In one case, I remember, a distinguished +critic reviewing a rather pretentious book, pointed out the fact that +the author had confounded rare old Ben Jonson with Dr. Samuel Johnson +in a way likely to be misleading to careless or imperfectly informed +readers, whereupon not only the author but all his friends sent letters +clamoring for the dismissal of a reviewer so lacking in sympathetic +appreciation of sincere literary endeavor. When I told Mr. George Ripley +of the matter he replied: + +"Oh, that is the usual thing. I am keeping a collection of letters sent +to Mr. Greeley demanding my discharge. I think of bequeathing it to the +Astor Library as historical material, reflecting the literary conditions +of our time." + +In one case of the kind that fell to my share there was a rather +dramatic outcome. I was acting as a literary adviser for Harper & +Brothers, when there came to me for judgment the manuscript of a novel +in which I found more of virility and strong human interest than most +novels possess, together with a well constructed plot, a pleasing +literary style, and some unusually well conceived and well portrayed +characters. The work was so good indeed that it was with very sincere +regret that I found myself obliged to condemn it. I had to do so because +it included, as an inseparable part of its structure, a severe and even +a bitter assault upon the work and the methods of Mr. Moody and all the +other "irregular troops" in the army of religion, not sparing even the +"revival" methods of the Methodists and Baptists. It was a rigid rule +of the Harpers not to publish books of that kind, and I might with +propriety have reported simply that the novel included matters which +rendered it unavailable for the Harper list. But I was so interested in +it and so impressed with its superior quality as a work of fiction that +instead of a brief recommendation of rejection, I sent in an elaborate +critical analysis of it, including a pretty full synopsis of its plot. +The "opinion" filled many pages of manuscript--more than I had ever +before written in that way concerning any book submitted to me. + +A week or so later I happened to call at the Harper establishment, as +it was my custom to do occasionally. Seeing me, Mr. Joseph W. Harper, +Jr.--"Brooklyn Joe" we called him--beckoned to me, and, with a labored +assumption of solemnity which a mirthful twinkle in his eye completely +spoiled, said: + +"I have a matter which I must bring to your attention, greatly to my +regret. Read that." + +With that he handed me a letter from the author of the novel, an +Episcopalian clergyman of some distinction. + +The writer explained that his vanity was in no way offended by the +rejection of his work. That, he said, was to be expected in the case of +an unknown author (a flattering unction with which unsuccessful authorship +always consoles itself), but that he felt it to be his duty as a +clergyman, a moralist, and a good citizen, to report to the house that +their reader was robbing them to the extent of his salary. He had +incontrovertible proof, he said, that the reader had not read a single +page or line of his manuscript before rejecting it. + +"There," said Joe Harper when I had finished the letter. "I really +didn't think you that sort of a person." + +"What did you say to him by way of reply?" I asked. + +[Sidenote: Joe Harper's Masterpiece] + +"I'll show you," he said, taking up his letter-book. "I inclosed a copy +of that intolerably long opinion of yours and wrote this." Then he let +me read the letter. In it he thanked the gentleman for having brought +the dereliction of the reader to the attention of the house, but +suggested that before proceeding to extreme measures in such a case, +he thought it well to be perfectly sure of the facts. To that end, he +wrote, he inclosed an exact copy of the "opinion" on which the novel had +been declined, and asked the author to read it and report whether or not +he still felt certain that the writer of the opinion had condemned the +work unread. + +The entire letter was written in a tone of submissive acceptance of +the rejected author's judgment in the case. As a whole it seemed to me +as withering a piece of sarcasm as I ever read, and in spite of the +injustice he had sought to do me. I was distinctly sorry for the man to +whom it was addressed. I suppose Mr. Harper felt in the same way, but +all that he said, as he put the letter-book upon his desk, was: + +"I hope he prepares his sermon early in the week, for that letter of +mine must have reached him about Friday morning, and it may have created +a greater or less disturbance in his mind." + +A few days later there came a reply. The author said that an examination +of the "opinion" left no room for doubt that the work had been read with +care throughout, but that he had confidently believed otherwise when he +wrote his first letter. He explained that before sending the manuscript +he had tied a peculiar cord around it, inside the wrapper, and that when +it came back to him with the same cord tied about it, he thought it +certain that the package had never been opened. He was sorry he had made +a mistake, of course, but he had been entirely sincere, etc., etc. + +Mr. Harper indulged himself in an answer to all this. If I had not been +permitted to read it, I should never have believed that anything so +caustic could have been uttered by a man so genially good-tempered as +I knew Mr. Harper to be. It was all the more effective because from +beginning to end there was no trace of excitement, no touch of anger, no +word or phrase in it that could be criticised as harsh or intemperate. + +Beneath the complaint made by the clerical author in that case there was +a mistaken assumption with which every publisher and every editor is +familiar--the assumption, namely, that the publisher or editor to whom +unsolicited manuscripts are sent is under some sort of moral obligation +to read them or have them read. Of course no such obligation exists. +When the publisher or editor is satisfied that he does not wish to +purchase a manuscript, it makes no manner of difference by what process +he has arrived at that conclusion. The subject of the book or article +may be one that he does not care to handle; the author's manner, as +revealed in the early pages of his manuscript, may justify rejection +without further reading. Any one of a score of reasons may be conclusive +without the necessity of examining the manuscript in whole or even in +part. I once advised the rejection of a book without reading it, on +the ground that the woman who wrote it used a cambric needle and milk +instead of a pen and ink, so that it would be a gross immorality to put +her manuscript into the hands of printers whose earnings depended upon +the number of ems they could set in a day. + +[Sidenote: Manuscripts and Their Authors] + +But the conviction is general among the amateur authors of unsolicited +manuscripts that the editors or publishers to whom they send their +literary wares are morally bound not only to examine them, but to read +them carefully from beginning to end. They sometimes resort to ingenious +devices by way of detecting the rascally editors in neglect of this +duty. They slenderly stick the corners of two sheets together; or they +turn up the lower corner of a sheet here and there as if by accident but +so carefully as to cover a word or two from sight; or they place a sheet +upside down, or in some other way set a trap that makes the editor smile +if he happens to be in good temper, and causes him to reject the thing +in resentment of the impertinence if his breakfast has not agreed with +him that day. + +I was speaking of these things one day, to Mr. George P. Putnam, +Irving's friend and the most sympathetically literary of publishers then +living, when he suddenly asked me: + +"Do you know the minimum value of a lost manuscript?" + +I professed ignorance, whereupon he said: + +"It is five hundred dollars." Presently, in answer to a question, +he explained: + +"In the old days of _Putnam's Monthly_, one of the multitude of +unsolicited manuscripts sent in would now and then be mislaid. I +never knew a case of the kind in which the author failed to value the +manuscript at five hundred dollars or more, no matter what its subject +or its length or even its worthlessness might be. In one case, when I +refused to pay the price fixed upon by the author, he instituted suit, +and very earnestly protested that his manuscript was worth far more +than the five hundred dollars demanded for it. He even wrote me that he +had a definite offer of more than that sum for it. To his discomfiture +somebody in the office found the manuscript about that time and we +returned it to the author. He sent it back, asking us to accept it. +I declined. He then offered it for two hundred and fifty dollars, then +for two hundred, and finally for seventy-five. I wrote to him that he +needn't trouble to reduce his price further, as the editors did not care +to accept the paper at any price. I have often wondered why he didn't +sell it to the person who, as he asserted, had offered him more than +five hundred dollars for it; but he never did, as the thing has never +yet been published, and that was many years ago." + + + + +XLVI + + +It was during my connection with _Hearth and Home_ that I first met two +men who greatly interested me. One of them was the newest of celebrities +in American literature; the other was old enough to have been lampooned +by Poe in his series of papers called "The Literati." + +The one was Joaquin Miller, the other Thomas Dunn English. + +[Sidenote: Joaquin Miller] + +Joaquin Miller had recently returned in a blaze of glory from his +conquest of London society and British literary recognition. He brought +me a note of introduction from Mr. Richard Watson Gilder of the +_Century_ or _Scribner's Monthly_ as I think the magazine was still +called at that time. He wore a broad-brimmed hat of most picturesque +type. His trousers--London made and obviously costly--were tucked into +the most superior looking pair of high top boots I ever saw, and in +his general make-up he was an interesting cross or combination of the +"untutored child of nature" fresh from the plains, and the tailor-made +man of fashion. More accurately, he seemed a carefully costumed stage +representation of the wild Westerner that he professed to be in fact. +I do not know that all this, or any of it, was affectation in the +invidious sense of the term. I took it to be nothing more than a clever +bit of advertising. He was a genuine poet--as who can doubt who has read +him? He had sagacity and a keen perception both of the weakness and the +strength of human nature. He wanted a hearing, and he knew the shortest, +simplest, surest way to get it. Instead of publishing his poems and +leaving it to his publisher to bring them to attention by the slow +processes of newspaper advertising, he went to London, and made himself +his own advertisement by adopting a picturesque pose, which was not +altogether a pose, though it was altogether picturesque, and trusting +the poems, to which he thus directed attention, to win favor for +themselves. + +In saying that his assumption of the rôle of untutored child of nature +was not altogether an assumption, I mean that although his boyhood was +passed in Indiana schools, and he was for a time a college student +there, he had nevertheless passed the greater part of his young manhood +in the wilds and among the men of the wilderness. If he was not in fact +"untutored," he nevertheless owed very little to the schools, and +scarcely anything to the systematic study of literature. His work was +marked by crudenesses that were not assumed or in any wise fictitious, +while the genuineness of poetic feeling and poetic perception that +inspired it was unquestionably the spontaneous product of his own soul +and mind. + +In my editorial den he seated himself on my desk, though there was a +comfortable chair at hand. Was that a bit of theatrical "business"? I +think not, for the reason that Thomas Bailey Aldrich, the least affected +of men, used nearly always to bestride a reversed chair with his hands +resting upon its back, when he visited me in my office, as he sometimes +did, to smoke a pipe in peace for half an hour and entertain me with his +surprising way of "putting things," before "going off to suffer and be +good by invitation," as he once said with reference to some reception +engagement. + +London had accepted Joaquin Miller's pose without qualification. Even +the London comic journals, in satirizing it, seemed never to doubt its +genuineness. But on this side of the water we had begun to hear rumors +that this son of the plains and the mountains, this dweller in solitudes +whose limitless silence he himself suggested in the lines: + + "A land so lone that you wonder whether + The God would know it should you fall dead," + +was after all a man bred in civilization and acquainted with lands so +far from lone that the coroner would be certain to hear of it promptly +if death came to one without the intervention of a physician. + +As he addressed me by my first name from the beginning, and in other +ways manifested a disposition to put conventionalities completely aside, +I ventured to ask him about one of these rumors, which particularly +interested me. + +"I hear, Mr. Miller," I said, "that you are my compatriot--that you are +a Hoosier by birth, as I am--is it true?" + +He sat in meditation for a time; then he said: + +"George, I've told so many lies about my birth and all that, that there +may be inconsistencies in them. I think I'd better not add to the +inconsistencies." + +I did not press the question. I asked him, instead, to let me have a +poem for _Hearth and Home_. + +[Sidenote: Joaquin Miller's Notions of Dress] + +"I can't," he replied, "I haven't a line of unsold manuscript anywhere +on earth, and just now I am devoting myself to horseback riding in +Central Park. I've got a seven hundred dollar saddle and I must use it, +and you, as an old cavalryman, know how utterly uninspiring a thing it +is to amble around Central Park on a horse trained to regard a policeman +as a person to be respected, not to say feared, in the matter of speed +limits and the proper side of the trail, and all that sort of thing. But +that saddle and these boots must be put to the use for which they were +built, so I must go on riding in the park till they grow shabby, and +I can't think in meter till I get away somewhere where the trees +don't stand in rows like sentinels in front of a string of tents, and +where the people don't all dress alike. Do you know that is the worst +tomfoolery this idiotic world ever gave birth to? It is all right for +British soldiers, because there must be some way in which the officers +can tell in a crowd who is a soldier and who is not, and besides, +regular soldiers aren't men anyhow. They're only ten-pins, to be set +up in regular order by one man and bowled over by another. + +"But what sense is there in men dressing in that way? You and I are tall +and slender, but our complexions are different. We are free American +citizens. Why should anybody who invites us both to dinner, expect that +we shall wear the same sort of clothes? And not only that, why should +they expect us to put on precisely the same sort of garments that the +big-bellied banker, who is to be our fellow-guest, is sure to wear? It's +all nonsense, I tell you. It is an idea born of the uninventive genius +of an inane society whose constituent members are as badly scared at +any suggestion of originality or individuality as a woman is at the +apparition of a mouse in her bedchamber." + +I told him I did not agree with him. + +"The social rule in that respect seems to me a peculiarly sensible and +convenient one," I said. "When a man is invited to anything, he knows +exactly what to wear. If it be a daytime affair he has only to put +on a frock coat with trousers of a lighter color; if it be an evening +function a sparrowtailed coat, black trousers, a low cut vest, and a +white tie equip him as perfectly as a dozen tailors could. In either +case he need not give a thought to his clothes in order to be sure that +his costume will be not only correct but so exactly like everybody's +else that nobody present will think of it at all. It is a great saving +of gray matter, and of money, too, and more important still, it sets +men free. The great majority of us couldn't afford to go to any sort +of function, however interesting, if we had to dress individually and +competitively for it, as women do." + +"Oh, of course," he answered, "the thing has its advantages, but it is +dreadfully monotonous--what the children call 'samey, samey.'" + +"By which you mean that it deprives one of all excuse for making himself +conspicuous by his dress--and that is precisely what most of us do not +want to do in any case. Besides, one needn't submit himself to the +custom if he objects to it." + +"That is so," he answered; "at any rate I don't." + +His practice in the matter was extreme, of course. Even ten years after +that he visited the Authors Club with his trousers in his boots, but at +the time of my first meeting with him the rule of the "dress coat" was +by no means confirmed. It was still a matter of choice with men whether +they should wear it or not at evening functions, and its use at other +times of day was still possible without provoking ridicule. At almost +every banquet, dinner, or other evening function in those days there +were sure to be a number of frock coats worn, and I remember that at the +memorable breakfast given in Boston in celebration of Dr. Oliver Wendell +Holmes's seventieth birthday in 1879, there were a few guests who wore +evening dress, although we sat down to the breakfast at one o'clock and +separated before the sun went down. I observed the same thing at two +of the breakfasts given to Mr. Edmund Gosse in New York in the early +eighties. It was not until near the middle of that decade that the +late William Henry Hurlbut authoritatively laid down the law that +"a gentleman must never appear without evening dress after six o'clock +P.M., and never, _never_ wear it before that hour, even at a wedding--even +at his own wedding." + +[Sidenote: Dress Reform à la Stedman] + +I remember an incident that grew out of this once vexed question, which +is perhaps worth recalling. When the Authors Club was founded in 1882, +our chief concern was to make it and keep it an informal, brotherly +organization of literary men by excluding from its rules and its +practices everything that might impose restraint upon social liberty. We +aimed at the better kind of Bohemianism--the Bohemianism of liberty, not +license; the Bohemianism which disregards all meaningless formalities +but respects the decencies and courtesies of social intercourse. + +Edmund Clarence Stedman was an enthusiastic advocate of this policy. He +was beset, he told me at the time, by a great fear that the club might +go the way of other organizations with which he was connected; that it +might lose its character as an association of authors in sympathy with +each other's work and aspirations, and become merely an agency of +fashion, a giver of banquets and receptions at which men should be +always on dress parade. By way of averting that degeneracy he proposed +for one thing that the members of the club should address each other +always by their first names, as schoolboys do. This proved to be +impracticable in a club which included such men as Dr. Drisler, Dr. +Youmans, President Noah Porter, Bishop Hurst, Parke Godwin, James +Russell Lowell, and others of like dignity--together with a lot of +younger men who made their first acquaintance with these in the club +itself. But another of Stedman's suggestions met with ready acceptance. +He proposed that we should taboo evening dress at our meetings. In +playful humor he suggested that if any member should appear at a meeting +of the club in that conventional garb, he should be required to stand up +before all the company, explain himself, and apologize. + +We laughingly adopted the rule, and the first person who fell a victim +to it was Stedman himself. About ten o'clock one night he entered the +club in full dinner dress. Instantly he was arraigned and, standing +in the midst of what he called "the clamorous mob," entered upon his +explanation. He had come, he said, directly from a philistine dinner at +which the garb he wore was as inexorably necessary as combed hair or +polished boots or washed hands; his home was far away, and he had been +forced to choose between coming to the club in evening dress and not +coming at all. Of the two calamities he had chosen the former as the +primrose path--a path he had always followed instead of the stormy and +thorny one, he said, whenever liberty of choice had been his. Then by +way of "fruits meet for repentance," he drew from his pocket a black +cravat and in the presence of the club substituted it for the white +one he had been wearing. At that time no other than a white cravat was +permitted with evening dress, so that by this substitution of a black +one, he took himself out of the category of the condemned and became +again a companion in good-fellowship over the punch and pipes. + + + + +XLVII + + +[Sidenote: Beginnings of Newspaper Illustration] + +It was during the early seventies that the inevitable happened, or +at least began to happen, with regard to newspaper illustration. The +excessive cost of illustrating periodicals by wood engraving, and the +time required for its slow accomplishment, together with the growing +eagerness of the people for pictures, set a multitude of men of clever +wits at work to devise some cheaper and speedier process of reproducing +drawings and photographic pictures. I myself invented a very crude +and imperfect process of that kind, which I thought susceptible of +satisfactory development. I engaged a certain journalist of irregular +habits and large pretensions, who was clever with his pencil, to join +me in the development and exploitation of the process, he to furnish +such drawings of various kinds as I needed, and I to experiment in +reproduction. Of course I had to explain my process to him, and he, +being a shrewd young man whose moral character was far less admirable +than his always perfect costume, mastered my secret and sold it for a +trifling sum to a man who promptly patented it and, with a few changes +which I had not the cleverness to make, brought it into use as his own. + +I said some ugly things to my dishonest coadjutor, whose manner of +receiving them convinced me that he was well used to hear himself +characterized in that way. Then I laughed at myself, went home and read +about Moses and the green spectacles, in "The Vicar of Wakefield," and +so calmed my spirit. + +But mine was an extremely unsatisfactory process, even after the +inventor who had bought it from my rascally associate had improved it +to the limit of his capacity, and there were far cleverer men at work +upon the same problem. By 1874 one of them had so far succeeded that an +enterprising firm, owning his patents, decided to set up in New York a +daily illustrated newspaper, the _Graphic_. + +The failure of the enterprise was freely predicted from the beginning, +and in the end failure came to it, but not for the reasons given by the +prophets. The _Graphic_ failed chiefly because it never had an editor +or manager who knew how to make a newspaper. An additional cause of its +failure was its inability to get itself into that great news-gathering +trust, the Associated Press, whose agents, local and general, covered +the whole country and the whole world with a minuteness that no single +newspaper could hope to approach. + +But while the projectors of the _Graphic_ enterprise were full of their +first hopefulness, they bought the good will and the subscription list +of _Hearth and Home_, in order to make of that periodical the weekly +edition of their illustrated daily newspaper. + +This left me "out of a job," but altogether happy. I was very tired. I +had had but one week's vacation during my arduous service on _Hearth and +Home_. I had removed to an old Dutch farmhouse in New Jersey because of +the impaired health of one dear to me. I had become a contributor to +all the great magazines of that time, and a writer of successful books. +I was pleased, therefore, to be freed from the Sisyphean labors of the +editorial office. I decided to give up newspaper work in all its forms +and to devote my future years to literature alone. I retired to my +library, the windows of which were overhung by sweet-scented lilacs and +climbing roses, beyond which lay an orchard of varied fruits surrounding +the old farmhouse. There, I thought I would pass the remainder of +my days--that phrase felt good in the mind of a work-weary man of +thirty-four or about that--in quiet literary work, unvexed by intruding +exigencies of any kind. Of course I would write editorials for those +great metropolitan dailies for which I was accustomed to do that sort of +work from time to time as impulse and opportunity permitted, but I was +resolved never again to undertake editorial responsibility of any kind. + +[Sidenote: Accident's Part in Literary Life] + +As illustrative of the part that accident or unforeseen circumstance +plays in determining the career of a working man-of-letters, I may +relate the story of how I became at that time a writer of boys' fiction +as a part of my employment. I was writing at the time for the _Atlantic_, +the _Galaxy_, _Appleton's Journal_, and other magazines, and my time was +fully occupied, when there came to me a letter asking me upon what terms +I would furnish a serial story of adventure for a magazine that made +its appeal to boys and girls. Why the editor had thought of me in that +connection I cannot imagine. I had never written a boys' story--long or +short. I had never written a story of adventure of any sort. I said so +in my reply declining to consider the suggestion. A second letter came +promptly, urging me to reconsider and asking that I should at any rate +name the terms on which I would do the work. Thinking that this opened +an easy and certain road of escape, I decided to name terms that I +was confident my editor-correspondent would regard as wholly beyond +consideration. I wrote him that I would do the story if he would pay +me, for serial rights alone, the same price per thousand words that +the great magazines were paying me, I to retain the right of book +publication, and to have, without charge, the plates of any illustrations +the magazine might make for use with my text. + +Having thus "settled the matter," as I supposed, I dismissed the subject +from my mind as a thing done for. Twenty-four hours later there came a +telegram from the editor, saying: + +"Terms accepted. Write story. Contracts go by mail for execution." + +Those ten telegraphic words determined my career in an important +particular. Also they appalled me. They put me under a contract that +I had never thought of making. They placed me under obligation to do a +species of literary work which I had never dreamed even of trying to +do, and for which I felt myself utterly unfit. It was not only that I +had never written a boys' story or thought of writing one; I had never +acquainted myself with that sort of literature; I "knew not the trick +of it," as the poor fellow in "Hamlet" says when urged to play upon +a pipe. Nevertheless, I must do the thing and that immediately, for the +correspondence had named a date only three weeks off for the delivery +of the first instalment of the manuscript. + +There was no way of escape. I must set to work upon the story. But what +should it be about? Where should its scene be laid? What should be its +plot and who its personages? I had not so much as the shadowy ghost of +an idea, and during the next twenty-four sleepless hours all my efforts +to summon one from the vasty deep or elsewhere brought no result. + +[Sidenote: My First Boys' Book] + +While I was thus searching a mind vacant of suggestion, my two little +boys climbed upon my knees and besought me to tell them "an Injun +story." I was in the habit of entertaining their very juvenile minds +with exceedingly juvenile fictions manufactured on the spur of the +moment, fictions without plot, without beginning or ending of any +recognizable sort. Sometimes these "stories" were wholly imaginary; +sometimes I drew upon some boyish experience of my own for a subject. +This time the specific demand of my exigent little masters for "an Injun +story" led me to think of the Creek War in Alabama and Mississippi. It +so happened that some years before the time of this story telling, I had +lived for a good many weeks among the Cherokees, Muscogees, and Choctaws +in the Indian Territory, hunting with them by day and sleeping with them +around a camp-fire by night. I had in that way become interested in +their very dramatic history, and on my return to civilization I had read +all the literature I could find on the subject of the war in which their +power in our Southern states was overthrown, and they themselves, taken +by the neck and heels, as it were, out of the very hopefully advancing +civilisation they had in part borrowed but in greater part wrought out +for themselves, and thrown back into the half-savage life from which +they had struggled to escape. + +As I told my little fellows the story they wanted, it occurred to me +that here was my subject and inspiration for the larger story I had +agreed to write. Within a week or two "The Big Brother" was done and +its manuscript delivered. + +Its serial publication was never completed. When about half the chapters +had been printed, the new and ambitious juvenile magazine, _St. Nicholas_, +bought and suppressed the periodical that was publishing it. The Putnams +brought my story out in book form, and its success prompted them to ask +me for further boys' books, and as the subject of the Creek War was by +no means exhausted, I drew upon it for the materials of "Captain Sam" +and "The Signal Boys," thus making a trilogy that covered the entire +period between the massacre at Fort Mims and the battle of New Orleans. + +Then I decided that my wholly unintended incursion into the field +of youths' fiction should end there. I had never intended to write +literature of that kind, and now that I had exhausted the subject of +the Creek War, I had no impulse to hunt for other themes for such use. +Besides, I had by that time become absorbed in newspaper work again, and +had no time for the writing of books of any sort. + +It was not until the eighties that I wrote another book of juvenile +fiction, and that also came about by accident rather than intention. I +had again given up newspaper work, again meaning never to return to it. +I was conducting a literary shop of my own in Brooklyn, writing for the +magazines, reading for the Harpers, editing the books of other people +whose work needed that sort of attention, and doing other things of the +kind. + +One night I was entertaining the younger of the two boys who had +suggested the subject of my first work in juvenile fiction. I was +telling him of some adventures of my own and others' on the Carolina +coast, when suddenly he asked: "Why can't we put all that into a story +book?" That evening I received a letter from Mr. George Haven Putnam, +saying that while my three "Big Brother" books were still selling pretty +well, it would stimulate them helpfully if I could add a new one to +the series. In brief, he wanted me to write a new boys' story, and the +proposal fitted in so nicely with the suggestion of my little boy that +I called the child to me and said: + +"I think we'll write that story book, if you'll help me." + +He enthusiastically agreed. I can best tell the rest of that book's +story by quoting here from the brief prefatory dedication I wrote for +it when it was published in 1882, under the title of "The Wreck of the +Redbird": + +"I intended to dedicate this book to my son, Guilford Dudley Eggleston, +to whom it belonged in a peculiar sense. He was only nine years old, +but he was my tenderly loved companion, and was in no small degree the +creator of this story. He gave it the title it bears; he discussed with +me every incident in it; and every page was written with reference to +his wishes and his pleasure. There is not a paragraph here which does +not hold for me some reminder of the noblest, manliest, most unselfish +boy I have ever known. Ah, woe is me! He who was my companion is my dear +dead boy now, and I am sure that I only act for him as he would wish, in +inscribing the story that was so peculiarly his to the boy whom he loved +best, and who loved him as a brother might have done." + +[Sidenote: One Thing Leads to Another] + +It was eighteen years after that that I next wrote a work of fiction for +youth, and again the event was the result of suggestion from without. +"The Wreck of the Redbird" seems to have made a strong impression upon +Elbridge S. Brooks, at that time the literary editor of the Lothrop +Publishing Company of Boston, and in the year 1900 he wrote to me asking +on what terms I would write for that firm "a boys' story as good as 'The +Wreck of the Redbird.'" I had no story in mind at the time. For eighteen +years my attention had been absorbed by newspaper work and by literary +activities of a sort far removed from this. Moreover, I was at the time +working night and day as an editorial writer on the staff of the New +York _World_, with a good deal of executive duty and responsibility +added. But the thought of calling a company of boy readers around me +again and telling them a story appealed to my imagination, and, as the +terms I suggested were accepted, I employed such odd moments as I could +find between other tasks in writing "The Last of the Flatboats." Its +success led to other books of the kind, so that since this accidental +return to activities of that sort, I have produced six books of juvenile +fiction in the intervals of other and more strenuous work. + +Perhaps an apology is needed for this setting forth of affairs purely +personal. If so, it is found in the fact that the illustration given of +the part that accident and external suggestion play in determining the +course and character of a professional writer's work, seems to me likely +to interest readers who have never been brought into close contact with +such things. I have thought it of interest to show visitors through the +literary factory and to explain somewhat its processes. + + + + +XLVIII + + +After a year and a half of leisurely work in the old orchard-framed, New +Jersey farmhouse, I was suddenly jostled out of the comfortable rut in +which I had been traveling. A peculiarly plausible and smooth-tongued +publisher, a gifted liar, and about the most companionable man I ever +knew, had swindled me out of every dollar I had in the world and had +made me responsible for a part at least of his debts to others. I held +his notes and acceptances for what were to me large sums, and I hold +them yet. I held his written assurances, oft-repeated, that whatever +might happen to his business affairs, his debt to me was amply and +effectually secured. I hold those assurances yet--more than thirty-five +years later--and I hold also the showing made by his receiver, to the +effect that he had all the while been using my money to secure a secret +partner of his own, a highly respectable gentleman who in the course of +the settlement proceedings was indicted, convicted, and sent to prison +for fraud. But the conviction did not uncover any money with which the +debt to me might he liquidated in whole or in part, and the man who had +robbed me of all I had in the world had so shrewdly managed matters as +to escape all penalties. The last I heard of him he was conducting one +of the best-known religious newspapers in the country, and winning +laurels as a lecturer on moral and religious subjects, and especially +as a Sunday School worker, gifted in inspiring youth of both sexes with +high ethical principles and aspirations. + +When this calamity befel I had no ready money in possession or within +call, and no property of any kind that I could quickly convert into +money. I was "stripped to the buff" financially, but I knew my trade as +a writer and newspaper man. It was necessary that I should get back to +the city at once, and I had no money with which to make the transfer. In +this strait I sat down and wrote four magazine articles, writing night +and day, and scarcely sleeping at all. The situation was not conducive +to sleep. I sent off the articles as fast as they were written, in +each case asking the editors for an immediate remittance. They were my +personal friends, and I suppose all of them had had experiences not +unlike my own. At any rate they responded promptly, and within a week +I was settling myself in town and doing such immediate work as I could +find to do, while looking for better and more permanent employment. + +[Sidenote: The _Evening Post_ under Mr. Bryant] + +Almost immediately I was summoned to the office of the _Evening Post_, +where I accepted an appointment on the editorial staff. Thus I found +myself again engaged in newspaper work, but it was newspaper work of +a kind that appealed to my tastes and tendencies. Under Mr. Bryant +the _Evening Post_ was an old-fashioned newspaper of uncondescending, +uncompromising dignity. It loathed "sensation" and treated the most +sensational news--when it was obliged to treat it at all--in a dignified +manner, never forgetting its own self-respect or offending that of its +readers. It resolutely adhered to its traditional selling price of +five cents a copy, and I am persuaded that the greater number of its +constituents would have resented any reduction, especially one involving +them in the necessity of giving or taking "pennies" in change. + +It did not at all engage in the scramble for "news." It belonged to the +Associated Press; it had two or three reporters of its own, educated +men and good writers, who could be sent to investigate and report upon +matters of public import. It had a Washington correspondent and such +other news-getting agents as were deemed necessary under its rule of +conduct, which was to regard nothing as published until it was published +in the _Evening Post_. It was the completest realization I have ever +seen of the ideal upon which the _Pall Mall Gazette_ professed to +conduct itself--that of "a newspaper conducted by gentlemen, for +gentlemen." + +It could be trenchant in utterance upon occasion, and when it was so its +voice was effective--the more so because of its habitual moderation and +reserve. Sometimes, when the subject to be discussed was one that appealed +strongly to Mr. Bryant's convictions and feelings, he would write of it +himself. He was an old man and one accustomed to self-control, but when +his convictions were stirred, there was not only fire but white-hot lava +in his utterance. The lava streams flowed calmly and without rage or +turbulence, but they scorched and burned and consumed whatever they +touched. More frequently great questions were discussed by some one or +other of that outer staff of strong men who, without direct and daily +contact with the newspaper, and without salary or pay of any kind, were +still regarded by themselves and by the public as parts of the great +intellectual and scholarly force in conduct and control of the _Evening +Post_--such men, I mean, as Parke Godwin and John Bigelow--men once +members of that newspaper's staff and still having free access to its +columns when they had aught that they wished to say on matters of public +concern. + +[Sidenote: Old-Time Newspaper Standards] + +Best of all, so far as my tastes and inclinations were concerned, the +_Evening Post_, under Mr. Bryant's and later Mr. Parke Godwin's control, +regarded and treated literature and scholarship as among the chief +forces of civilized life and the chief concerns of a newspaper +addressing itself to the educated class in the community. Whatsoever +concerned literature or scholarship, whatsoever was in any wise +related to those things, whatever concerned education, culture, human +advancement, commanded the _Evening Post's_ earnest attention and +sympathy. It discussed grave measures of state pending at Washington +or Albany or elsewhere, but it was at no pains to record the gossip of +great capitals. Personalities had not then completely usurped the place +of principles and policies in the attention of newspapers, and the +_Evening Post_ gave even less attention to such things than most of +its contemporaries did. The time had not yet come among newspapers +when circulation seemed of greater importance than character, when +the details of a divorce scandal or a murder trial seemed of more +consequence than the decisions of the Supreme Court, or when a brutal +slugging match between two low-browed beasts in human form was regarded +as worthy of greater newspaper space than a discussion of the tariff on +art or the appearance of an epoch-making book by Tennyson or Huxley or +Haeckel. + +In brief, the newspapers of that time had not learned the baleful lesson +that human society is a cone, broadest at bottom, and that the lower a +newspaper cuts into it the broader its surface of circulation is. They +had not yet reconciled themselves to the thought of appealing to low +tastes and degraded impulses because that was the short road to +multitudinous "circulation," with its consequent increase in +"advertising patronage." + +Most of the newspapers of that time held high standards, and the +_Evening Post_, under Mr. Bryant's control, was the most exigent of all +in that respect. + +Another thing. The "book notice" had not yet taken the place of the +capable and conscientious review. It had not yet occurred to editors +generally that the purpose of the literary columns was to induce +advertisements from publishers, and that anybody on a newspaper staff +who happened to have nothing else to do, or whose capacities were small, +might be set to reviewing books, whether he happened to know anything +about literature or not. + +It was the custom of the better newspapers then, both in New York +and elsewhere, to employ as their reviewers men eminent for literary +scholarship and eminently capable of literary appreciation. Among +the men so employed at that time--to mention only a few by way of +example--were George Ripley, Richard Henry Stoddard, E. P. Whipple, +Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Charles Dudley Warner, R. R. Bowker, +W. C. Wilkinson, Charles F. Briggs, and others of like gifts and +accomplishments. + +Mr. Bryant himself had exercised this function through long years that +won distinction from his work for his newspaper. As advancing years +compelled him to relinquish that toil, he surrendered it cautiously into +other hands, but in whatever hands it might be, Mr. Bryant followed it +more minutely and with a more solicitous interest than he gave to any +other part of the newspaper. + +At the time when I joined the staff there was a sort of interregnum +in the literary department. John R. Thompson, who had held the place +of literary editor for some years, was dead, and nobody had been found +who could fill the place to Mr. Bryant's satisfaction. There were men +who wrote with grace and discretion, and whose familiarity with current +literature was adequate, but Mr. Bryant objected that they were +altogether men of the present, that they knew little or nothing of the +older literature of our language, and hence, as he contended, had no +adequate standards of comparison in their minds. Of one who essayed the +work he said that his attitude of mind was too flippant, that he cared +more for what he himself wrote about books under review than for what +the authors of those books had written. Another, he said, lacked +generosity of sympathy with halting but sincere literary endeavor, and +so on with others. + +My own editorial work was exigent at the time and there was added to it +the task of finding a satisfactory person to become literary editor. I +knew Mr. Bryant very slightly at the time, and I doubt that he knew me +at all, in person, but he knew how wide my acquaintance among literary +men had become in the course of my experience on _Hearth and Home_, and +he bade the managing editor, Mr. Watson R. Sperry, make use of it in +the search. In common with most other men in the newspaper business, I +regarded the position of literary editor of the _Evening Post_ as the +most desirable one in American journalism. I frankly told Mr. Sperry +that I should myself like the appointment if Mr. Bryant could in any +wise be satisfied of my fitness. I was at the time writing all the more +important book reviews by way of helping in the emergency. + +Mr. Sperry replied that Mr. Bryant had already suggested my appointment, +as he was pleased with my work, but that he, Mr. Sperry, did not want +to spare me from certain other things that I was doing for him, and +further, that he thought the literary editor of the _Evening Post_ +should be a man whose reputation and position as a recognized man of +letters were well established, as mine were not. + +[Sidenote: Aldrich's View of New York] + +I agreed with him in that opinion and went on with my quest. Among those +to whom I wrote was Thomas Bailey Aldrich. I set forth to him as +attractively as I could, the duties of the place, the dignity attaching +to it, the salary it carried, and everything else of a persuasive sort +that I could call to mind. + +For reply Mr. Aldrich wrote that the position was one in every way to be +coveted, and added: + +"But, my dear Eggleston, what can the paper offer to compensate one for +having to live in New York?" + +Years afterward I tried to extract from him some apology to New York for +that fling, but without success. + +One day, while I was still engaged in this fruitless search, Mr. Bryant +entered the library--off which my little den opened--and began climbing +about on a ladder and turning over books, apparently in search of +something. + +I volunteered the suggestion that perhaps I could assist him if he would +tell me what it was he was trying to find. + +"I think not," he answered, taking down another volume from the shelves. +Then, as if conscious that his reply might have seemed ungraciously +curt, he turned toward me and said: + +"I'm looking for a line that I ought to know where to find, but do not." + +He gave me the substance of what he sought and fortunately I recognized +it as a part of a half-remembered passage in one of Abraham Cowley's +poems. I told Mr. Bryant so, and while he sat I found what he wanted. +Apparently his concern for it was gone. Instead of looking at the book +which I had placed in his hands open at the desired page, he turned upon +me and asked: + +"How do you happen to know anything about Cowley?" + +I explained that as a youth, while idling time away on an old Virginia +plantation, where there was a library of old books, as there was on +every other ancestral plantation round about, I had fallen to reading +all I could find at home or in neighboring houses of the old English +literature, of which I had had a maddening taste even as a little boy; +that I had read during those plantation summers every old book I could +find in any of the neglected libraries round about. + +[Sidenote: By Order of Mr. Bryant] + +My work for the day lay unfinished on my desk, but Mr. Bryant gave no +heed to it. He questioned me concerning my views of this and that in +literature, my likes and dislikes, my estimates of classic English +works, and of the men who had produced them. Now and then he challenged +my opinions and set me to defend them. After a while he took his leave +in his usual undemonstrative fashion. + +"Good-afternoon," was absolutely his only word of parting, and after +he had gone I wondered if I had presumed too much in the fearless +expression of my opinions or in combating his own, or whether I had +offended him in some other way. For I knew him very slightly then +and misinterpreted a reticence that was habitual with him--even +constitutional, I think. Still less did I understand that during that +talk of two hours' duration he had been subjecting me to a rigid +examination in English literature. + +The _Evening Post_ of that afternoon published my review of an important +book, which I had tried to treat with the care it deserved. I learned +afterwards that the article pleased Mr. Bryant, but whether or not it +had any influence upon what followed I do not know. What followed was +this: the next day a little before noon, Mr. Sperry came into my den +with a laugh and a frown playing tag on his face. + +"Mr. Bryant has just been in," he said. "He walked into my room and said +to me: 'Mr. Sperry, I have appointed Mr. Eggleston literary editor. +Good-morning, Mr. Sperry.' And with that he left again, giving me no time +to say a word. In a way, I'm glad, but I shall miss you from your other +work." + +I reassured him, telling him I could easily do those parts of that other +work for which he most needed me, and so the matter was "arranged to the +satisfaction of everybody concerned," as the dueling people used to say +when two blustering cowards had apologized instead of shooting each +other. + + + + +XLIX + + +Thus began an acquaintance with Mr. Bryant that quickly became as +intimate as I suppose any acquaintance with him ever did--or at any rate +any acquaintance begun after the midyears of his life. Once in a while I +passed a Sunday with him at his Roslyn home, but chiefly such converse +as I enjoyed with him was held in the office of the _Evening Post_, and +of course it was always of his seeking, as I scrupulously avoided +intruding myself upon his attention. Our interviews usually occurred in +this way: he would enter the library, which communicated with my little +writing room by an open doorway, and after looking over some books, +would enter my room and settle himself in a chair, with some remark or +question. The conversation thus began would continue for such time as he +chose, ten minutes, half an hour, two hours, as his leisure and +inclination might determine. + +It was always gentle, always kindly, always that of two persons +interested in literature and in all that pertains to what in the +culture-slang of this later time is somewhat tiresomely called "uplift." +It was always inspiring and clarifying to my mind, always encouraging to +me, always richly suggestive on his part, and often quietly humorous in +a fashion that is nowhere suggested in any of Mr. Bryant's writings. +I have searched them in vain for the smallest trace of the humor he used +to inject into his talks with me, and I think I discover in its absence, +and in some other peculiarities of his, an explanation of certain +misjudgments of him which prevailed during his life and which endure +still in popular conception. + +[Sidenote: Mr. Bryant's Reserve--Not Coldness] + +The reader may perhaps recall Lowell's criticism of him in "A Fable for +Critics." The substance of it was that Mr. Bryant was intensely cold +of nature and unappreciative of human things. I wish to bear emphatic +witness that nothing could be further from the truth, though Lowell's +judgment is the one everywhere accepted. + +The lack of warmth usually attributed to Mr. Bryant, I found to be +nothing more than the personal reserve common to New Englanders of +culture and refinement, plus an excessive personal modesty and a shyness +of self-revelation, and self-intrusion, which is usually found only in +young girls just budding into womanhood. + +Mr. Bryant shrank from self-assertion even of the most impersonal sort, +as I never knew any other human being to do. He cherished his own +opinions strongly, but he thrust them upon nobody. His dignity was +precious to him, but his only way of asserting it was by withdrawal from +any conversation or company that trespassed upon it. + +Above all, emotion, to him, was a sacred thing, not to be exploited or +even revealed. In ordinary intercourse with his fellow-men he hid it +away as one instinctively hides the privacies of the toilet. He could no +more lay his feelings bare to common scrutiny than he could have taken +his bath in the presence of company. + +In the intimate talks he and I had together during the last half dozen +years of his life, he laid aside his reserve, so far as it was possible +for a man of his sensitive nature to do, and I found him not only warm +in his human sympathies, but even passionate. If we find little of this +in his writings, it is only because in what he wrote he was addressing +the public, and shyly withholding himself from revelation. Yet there is +passion and there is hot blood, even there, as who can deny who has read +"The Song of Marion's Men," or his superb interpretation of Homer? + +There is a bit of literary history connected with "The Song of Marion's +Men," which may be mentioned here as well as anywhere else. The +venerable poet one day told me the facts concerning it. + +When Mr. Bryant issued the first collected edition of his poems, English +publication was very necessary to the success of such a work in America, +which was still provincial. Accordingly Mr. Bryant desired English +publication. Washington Irving was then living in England, and Mr. +Bryant had a slight but friendly acquaintance with him. It was +sufficient to justify the poet in asking the great story teller's +friendly offices. He sent a copy of his poems to Irving, asking him to +secure a London publisher. This Irving did, with no little trouble, and +in the face of many obstacles of prejudice, indifference, and the like. + +When half the book was in type the publisher sent for Irving in +consternation. He had discovered, in "The Song of Marion's Men," the +lines: + + "The British soldier trembles + When Marion's name is told." + +It would never, never do, he explained, for him to publish a book with +even the smallest suggestion in it that the British soldier was a man to +"tremble" at any danger. It would simply ruin him to publish this direct +charge of cowardice against Tommy Atkins. + +[Sidenote: The Irving Incident] + +For the time Irving was at a loss to know what to do. Mr. Bryant was +three thousand miles away and the only way of communicating with him was +by ocean mails, carried by sailing craft at long intervals, low speed, +and uncertain times of arrival. To write to him and get a reply would +require a waste of many weeks--perhaps of several months. In his +perplexed anxiety to serve his friend, Irving decided to take the +liberty of making an entirety innocent alteration in the words, curing +them of their offensiveness to British sensitiveness, without in the +least altering their significance. Instead of: + + "The British soldier trembles + When Marion's name is told," + +he made the lines read: + + "The foeman trembles in his tent + When Marion's name is told." + +"So far as I was concerned," said Mr. Bryant in telling me of +the matter, "what Irving did seemed altogether an act of friendly +intervention, the more so because the acquaintance between him and me +was very slight at that time. He was a warm-hearted man, who in doing a +thing of that kind, reckoned upon a slight friendship for justification, +as confidently as men of natures less generous might reckon upon a +better established acquaintance. He always took comradery for granted, +and where his intentions were friendly and helpful, he troubled +himself very little with formal explanations that seemed to him wholly +unnecessary. I had asked him to secure the publication of my poems +in England, a thing that only his great influence there could have +accomplished at that time. He had been at great pains and no little +trouble to accomplish my desire. Incidentally, it had become necessary +for him either to accept defeat in that purpose or to make that utterly +insignificant alteration in my poem. I was grateful to him for doing so, +but I did not understand his careless neglect to write to me promptly on +the subject. I did not know him then as I afterwards learned to do. The +matter troubled me very little or not at all; but possibly I mentioned +his inattention in some conversation with Coleman, of the _Evening +Post_. I cannot now remember whether I did so or not, but at any rate, +Coleman, who was both quick and hot of temper, and often a trifle +intemperate in criticism, took the matter up and dealt severely with +Irving for having taken the liberty of altering lines of mine without +my authority. + +"The affair gave rise to the report, which you have perhaps heard--for +it persists--that Irving and I quarreled and became enemies. Nothing +could be further from the truth. We were friends to the day of his +death." + +Inasmuch as different versions of the Irving-Bryant affair are extant, +it seems proper to say that immediately after the conversation ended I +put into writing all that I have here directly quoted from Mr. Bryant. +I did not show the record of it to him for verification, for the reason +that I knew him to be sensitive on the subject of what he once referred +to as "the eagerness of a good many persons to become my literary +executors before I am dead." That was said with reference to the irksome +attempts a certain distinguished literary hack was making to draw from +Mr. Bryant the materials for articles that would sell well whenever the +aged poet should die. + +After a séance with that distinguished toady one day, Mr. Bryant came to +me, in some disturbance of mind, to ask for a volume of verse that I had +just reviewed--to soothe his spirit, he said. Then he told me of the +visitation he had had, and said: + +"I tried to be patient, but I fear I was rude to him at the last. There +seemed to be no other way of getting rid of him." + +Alas, even rudeness had not baffled the bore; for when Mr. Bryant died +the pestilent person published a report of that very interview, putting +into the poet's mouth many utterances directly contrary to Mr. Bryant's +oft-expressed opinions. + + + + +L + + +[Sidenote: Mr. Bryant's Tenderness of Poets] + +Exigent and solicitous as he was with reference to every utterance in +the _Evening Post_ concerning literature, Mr. Bryant never interfered +with my perfect liberty as literary editor, except in the one matter of +the treatment of poets and poetry. + +"Deal gently--very gently, with the poets," he said to me at the +time of my assumption of that office. "Remember always, that the very +sensitiveness of soul which makes a man a poet, makes him also peculiarly +and painfully susceptible to wounds of the spirit." + +I promised to bear his admonition in mind, and I did so, sometimes +perhaps to the peril of my soul--certainly at risk of my reputation +for critical acumen and perhaps for veracity. One day, however, I +encountered a volume of verse so ridiculously false in sentiment, +extravagant in utterance, and inane in character, that I could not +refrain from poking a little fun at its absurdity. The next day Mr. +Bryant came to see me. After passing the time of day, he said: + +"Mr. Eggleston, I hope you will not forget my desire that you shall deal +gently with the poets." + +I replied that I had borne it constantly in mind. + +"I don't know," he answered, shaking his head; "what you said yesterday +about X. Y. Z.'s volume did not seem to me very gentle." + +"Considered absolutely," I replied, "perhaps it wasn't. But considered +in the light of the temptation I was under to say immeasurably severer +things, it was mild and gentle in an extreme degree. The man is not a +poet, but a fool. He not only hasn't the smallest appreciation of what +poetry is or means, but he hasn't the ability to entertain a thought of +any kind worthy of presentation in print or in any other way. I should +have stultified myself and the _Evening Post_ if I had written more +favorably of his work than I did. I should never have thought of writing +of it at all, but for the _Evening Post's_ rule that every book offered +here for review must be mentioned in some way in the literary columns. +Here is the book. I wish you would glance at the alleged poems and +tell me how I could have said anything concerning them of a more +considerately favorable character than what in fact I printed." + +He took the book from my hand and looked it over. Then he laid it on my +desk, saying: + +"It is indeed pretty bad. Still, I have always found that it is possible +to find something good to say about a poet's work." + +A little later a still worse case came to my lot. It was a volume of +"verse," with no sense at all in it, without even rhythm to redeem it, +and with an abundance of "rhymes" that were not easily recognizable even +as assonances. It was clumsily printed and "published" at some rural +newspaper office, and doubtless at the expense of the author. Finally +the cover attempt at decoration had resulted in a grotesque combination +of incompatible colors and inconsequent forms. In brief, the thing was +execrably, hopelessly, irredeemably bad all over and clear through. + +I was puzzling over the thing, trying to "find something good to say" of +it, when Mr. Bryant came into my den. I handed him the volume, saying: + +"I wish you would help me with a suggestion, Mr. Bryant. I'm trying to +find something good that I can say of that thing, and I can't--for of +course you do not want me to write lies." + +"Lies? Of course not. But you can always find something good in every +volume of poems, something that can be truthfully commended." + +"In this case I can't regard the sprawlings of ill-directed aspiration +as poems," I replied, "and it seems to me a legitimate function of +criticism to say that they are not poems but idiotic drivel--to +discriminate between poetry in its unworthiest form and things like +that. However, the man calls his stuff poetry. I wish you would help me +find something good that I may say of it without lying." + +[Sidenote: Commending a Cover] + +He took the book and looked through it. Finally he said: + +"It is pretty sorry stuff, to be sure. It is even idiotic, and it +doesn't suggest poetic appreciation or poetic impulse or poetic perception +on the part of its author. Still, the man aspires to recognition as a +poet, and he is doubtless sensitively conscious of his own shortcomings. +Let us deal gently with him." + +"But what can I say, Mr. Bryant?" + +"Well, of course, there is nothing _inside_ the book that you can +praise," he answered, "but you might commend the cover--no, that is an +affront to taste and intelligence,"--looking it over with an expression +of disgust--"but at any rate you can commend the publishers for _putting +it on well_." + +With that--apparently dreading further questioning--he left the room. I +proceeded to review the book by saying simply that the cover was put on +so strongly that even the most persistent and long continued enjoyment +or critical study of the text was not likely to detach or loosen it. + +I am disposed to think that Mr. Bryant's excessive tenderness toward +poets was lavished chiefly upon the weaklings of that order. For a +little while later a poet of genuine inspiration, who afterwards +did notable work, put forward his first volume of verse. I found an +abundance of good things to say about it, but there was one line in one +of his poems that was so ridiculously inconsequent and absurd, that I +could not refrain from poking fun at it. I am convinced that the poet in +question, with his larger experience and the development that afterward +came to his critical faculties, would not have permitted that line to +stand if it had occurred in a poem of a later period. It appealed to +him then by its musical quality, which was distinctly marked, but when +subjected to the simplest analysis it was obvious and arrant nonsense. + +Mr. Bryant was interested in the review I wrote of the volume, and in +talking with me about it, he distinctly chuckled over my destructive +analysis of the offending line. There was no suggestion in what he said, +that he regarded the criticism as in the least a transgression of his +injunction to "deal gently with the poets." + +Unfortunately, the poet criticised seemed less tolerant of the +criticism. He was a personal friend of my own, but when next I saw him +his mood was that of one cruelly injured, and for many years thereafter +he manifested this sense of injury whenever he and I met. I think he +afterward forgave me, for we later became the best of friends, and I am +glad to believe there was no rancor in his heart toward me when he died +a little while ago. + +[Sidenote: Anonymous Criticism] + +In these cases I was at a peculiar disadvantage--though I think it not +at all an unjust one--in every indulgence in anything like adverse +criticism. I may best explain this, perhaps, by telling of an incident +that happened soon after I assumed my position. I had been lucky enough +to secure from Richard Henry Stoddard a very brilliant review of a +certain book which he was peculiarly the fittest man in all the land to +write about. I had the review in type, when I mentioned to Mr. Bryant +my good fortune in securing it. + +"Is it signed?" he asked in his gentlest manner. + +I answered that it was not, for the reason that Stoddard was under a +certain assertion of obligation which he refused to recognize but which +I could not ask him to repudiate, not to write things of that character +for other than a particular publication. + +"Then I request that you shall not use it," said Mr. Bryant. + +"But really, Mr. Bryant, there is not the smallest obligation upon him +in the matter. He is perfectly free----" + +"It is not of that that I was thinking," he interrupted. "That is a +matter between him and his own conscience, and you and I have nothing +whatever to do with it. My objection to your use of the article is +that _I regard an anonymous literary criticism as a thing quite as +despicable, unmanly, and cowardly as an anonymous letter_. It is +something that no honorable man should write, and no honorably conducted +newspaper should publish." + +"But my own reviews in the _Evening Post_ are all of them anonymous," +I suggested. + +"Not at all," he answered. "When you were appointed literary editor the +fact was communicated to every publisher in the country. I directed +that and saw that it was done, so that every publisher and, through the +publishers, every author, should know that every literary criticism in +the _Evening Post_ was your utterance. In veritable effect, therefore, +everything you print in our literary columns is signed, just as every +critical article in the great British reviews is. When Jeffrey ridiculed +'Hours of Idleness,' and later, when he seriously criticised 'Cain,' +Byron had no need to inquire who his critic was. The work was responsibly +done, as such work should be in every case. The reasons seem to me +obvious enough. In the first place, anonymous literary criticism may +easily become a cowardly stabbing in the back under cover of darkness. +In the second place, the reader of such criticism has no means of +knowing what value to place upon it. He cannot know whether the critic +is a person competent or incompetent, one to whose opinions he should +defer or one whose known incapacity would prompt him to dismiss them as +unworthy of consideration because of their source. In the third place, +anonymous literary criticism opens wide the door of malice on the one +hand, and of undue favoritism on the other. It is altogether despicable, +and it is dangerous besides. I will have none of it on the _Evening +Post_." + +I suggested that I had myself read the book that Stoddard had reviewed, +and that I was ready to accept his criticism as my own and to hold +myself responsible for it. + +"Very well," he replied. "In that case you may print it as your own, but +I had much rather you had written it yourself." + +I have often meditated upon these things since, and I have found +abundant reason to adopt Mr. Bryant's view that an anonymous literary +criticism is as despicable as an anonymous letter. About a year ago I +was startled by the utterance of precisely the same thought in nearly +identical words, by Professor Brander Matthews. I was sitting between +him and Mr. Howells at a banquet given by Colonel William C. Church +to the surviving writers for that best and most literary of American +magazines, _The Galaxy_, and when Matthews uttered the thought I turned +to Mr. Howells and asked him what his opinion was. + +"I have never formulated my thought on that question, even in my own +mind," he replied. "I don't know how far it would be just to judge +others in the matter, but for myself, I think I never wrote a literary +criticism that was not avowedly or ascertainably my own. Without having +thought of the ethical question involved, my own impulse is to shrink +from the idea of striking in the dark or from behind a mask." + + + + +LI + + +[Sidenote: A Thrifty Poet's Plan] + +On one occasion Mr. Bryant's desire to "deal gently with the poets" led +to an amusing embarrassment. Concerning a certain volume of verse "made +in Ohio" and published by its author, I had written that "this is the +work of a man who seems to have an alert appreciation of the poetic side +of things, but whose gift of poetic interpretation and literary +expression is distinctly a minus quantity." + +Soon afterward Mr. Bryant entered my den with an open letter in his hand +and a look of pained perplexity on his face. + +"What am I to do with that?" he asked, handing me the letter to read. + +I read it. The poet, knowing Mr. Bryant to be the editor of the _Evening +Post_, evidently supposed that he wrote everything that appeared in +the columns of that newspaper. Assuming that Mr. Bryant had written the +review of his book, he wrote asking that he might be permitted to use +the first half of my sentence as an advertisement, with Mr. Bryant's +name signed to it. To facilitate matters he had prepared, on a separate +sheet, a transcript of the words: + +"This is the work of a man who seems to have an alert appreciation of +the poetic side of things." + +This he asked Mr. Bryant to sign and return to him for use as an +advertisement, explaining that "Your great name will help me to sell +my book, and I need the money. It cost me nearly two hundred dollars +to get the book out, and so far I haven't been able to sell more than +twenty-seven copies of it, though I have canvassed three counties at +considerable expense for food, lodging, and horse-feed." + +I saw how seriously distressed Mr. Bryant was by this appeal, and +volunteered to answer the letter myself, by way of relieving him. I +answered it, but I did not report the nature of my answer to Mr. Bryant, +for the reason that in my personal letter I dealt by no means "gently" +with this particular poet. + +For the further distraction of Mr. Bryant's mind from a matter that +distressed him sorely, I told him of the case in which a thrifty and +shifty London publisher turned to good advertising account one of the +_Saturday Review's_ most murderous criticisms. The _Review_ had written: + +"There is much that is good in this book, and much that is new. But that +which is good is not new, and that which is new is not good." + +The publisher, in his advertisements, made display of the sentence: +"There is much that is good in this book, and much that is +new.--_Saturday Review_." + +One thing leads to another in conversation and I went on--by way of the +further diversion of Mr. Bryant's mind--to illustrate the way in which +the _Saturday Review_, like many other publications, sometimes ruined +its richest utterances by dilution. I cited a case in which that +periodical had begun a column review of a wishy-washy book by saying: + +"This is milk for babes, with water superadded. The milk is pure and the +water is pure, but the diet is not invigorating." + +As a bit of destructive criticism, this was complete and perfect. But +the writer spoiled it by going on to write a column of less trenchant +matter, trampling, as it were, and quite needlessly, upon the corpse of +the already slain offender. + +The habit of assuming that the distinguished editor of a newspaper +writes everything of consequence that appears in its columns, is not +confined to rural poets in Ohio, as three occurrences during my service +on the _Evening Post_ revealed to me. + +[Sidenote: Mr. Bryant and My Poe Article] + +When a great Poe celebration was to be held in Baltimore, on the +occasion of the unveiling of a monument or something of that kind, Mr. +Bryant was earnestly urged to send something to be read on the occasion +and published as a part of the proceedings. He had no stomach for the +undertaking. It was said among those who knew him best that his personal +feelings toward Poe's memory were of a bitterly antagonistic kind. +However that may be--and I do not know whether it was true or not--he +was resolute in his determination to have no part or lot in this Poe +celebration. In reply to the urgent invitations sent him, he wrote a +carefully colorless note, excusing himself on the plea of "advancing +age." + +When the day of the celebration came, however, I wrote a long, critical +appreciation of Poe, with an analysis of his character, borrowed mainly +from what Charles F. Briggs had said to me. My article was published +as an editorial in the _Evening Post_, and straightway half a dozen +prominent newspapers in different cities reprinted it under the headline +of "William Cullen Bryant's Estimate of Poe." + +Fearing that Mr. Bryant might be seriously annoyed at being thus made +responsible for an "estimate of Poe" which he had been at pains not +to write, I went to his room to speak with him about the matter. + +"Don't let it trouble you, my dear boy," he said in his most patient +manner. "We are both paying the penalty of journalistic anonymity. I am +held responsible for utterances not my own, and you are robbed of the +credit due you for a very carefully written article." + +Again, on the occasion of Longfellow's seventieth birthday, Mr. Bryant +resisted all entreaties for any utterance--even the briefest--from him. +I was assigned to write the necessary editorial article, and when it +appeared, one of the foremost newspapers in the country reprinted it as +"One Great Poet's Tribute to Another," and in an introductory paragraph +explained that, while the article was not signed, it was obviously from +Mr. Bryant's pen. + +During the brief time that I remained on the _Evening Post's_ staff after +Mr. Carl Schurz became its editor, I wrote a rather elaborate review of +Colonel Theodore Dodge's book, "The Campaign of Chancellorsville." The +_Springfield Republican_ reprinted it prominently, saying that it had +special importance as "the comment of General Schurz on a campaign in +which he had borne a conspicuous part." + +[Sidenote: A Tupper Trepidation] + +When it was given out that Martin Farquhar Tupper intended to visit +America during the Centennial Exposition of 1876, I wrote a playful +article about the "Proverbial Philosophy" man and handed it to the +managing editor for publication as a humorous editorial. Mr. Sperry was +amused by the article, but distressingly perplexed by apprehensions +concerning it. He told me of the difficulty. It seems that some years +before that time, during a visit to England, Mr. Bryant had been very +hospitably entertained by Tupper, wherefore Sperry feared that Mr. +Bryant might dislike the publication of the article. At the same time +he was reluctant to lose the fun of it. + +"Why not submit the question to Mr. Bryant himself?" I suggested, and +as Mr. Bryant entered at that moment Sperry acted upon the suggestion. + +Mr. Bryant read the article with many manifestations of amusement, but +when he had finished he said: + +"I heartily wish, Mr. Sperry, you had printed this without saying a word +to me about it, for then, when Mr. Tupper becomes my guest, as he will +if he comes to America, I could have explained to him that the thing was +done without my knowledge by one of the flippant young men of my staff. +Now that you have brought the matter to my attention, I can make no +excuse." + +Sperry pleaded that Tupper's coming was not at all a certainty, adding: + +"And at any rate, he will not be here for several months to come, and +he'll never know that the article was published or written." + +"Oh, yes he will," responded Mr. Bryant. "Some damned, good-natured +friend will be sure to bring it to his attention." + +As Mr. Bryant never swore, the phrase was of course a quotation. + + + + +LII + + +There has been a deal of nonsense written and published with respect to +Mr. Bryant's _Index Expurgatorius_, a deal of arrogance, and much cheap +and ill-informed wit of a certain "superior" sort expended upon it. +So far as I have seen these comments, they have all been founded upon +ignorance of the facts and misconception of Mr. Bryant's purpose. + +In the first place, Mr. Bryant never published the index and never +intended it to be an expression of his views with respect to linguistic +usage. He prepared it solely for office use, and it was meant only to +check certain tendencies of the time so far as the _Evening Post_ was +concerned. The reporters on more sensational newspapers had come to call +every big fire a "carnival of flame," every formal dinner a "banquet," +and to indulge in other verbal exaggerations and extravagances of like +sort. Mr. Bryant catalogued these atrocities in his _Index_ and forbade +their use on the _Evening Post_. + +He was an intense conservative as to the English language, and his +conscience was exceedingly alert to preserve it in its purity, so far as +it was within his power to do so. Accordingly he ruled out of _Evening +Post_ usage a number of things that were creeping into the language to +its corruption, as he thought. Among these were the use of "numerous" +where "many" was meant, the use of "people" for "persons," "monthly" for +"monthly magazine," "paper" for "newspaper," and the like. He objected +to the phrase "those who," meaning "those persons who," and above all +his soul revolted against the use of "such" as an adverb--as in the +phrase "such ripe strawberries" which, he contended, should be "so ripe +strawberries" or "strawberries so ripe." The fact that Webster's and +Worcester's dictionaries recognized many of the condemned usages, made +not the smallest impression on his mind. + +"He must be a poor scholar," he once said in my hearing, "who cannot go +behind the dictionaries for his authority." + +We had a copy of Johnson's dictionary in the office, and it was the +only authority of that kind I ever knew Mr. Bryant to consult. Even in +consulting that he gave small attention to the formal definitions. He +searched at once the passages quoted from classic English literature +as illustrations of usage, and if these did not justify the particular +locution under consideration, he rejected and condemned it. + +[Sidenote: Mr. Bryant's "Index"] + +For another thing, the _Index_ as it has been quoted for purposes of +cheap ridicule, held much that Mr. Bryant did not put into it, and for +which he was in no way responsible. The staff of the _Evening Post_ was +composed mainly of educated men, and each of them was free to add to +the _Index_ such prohibitions as seemed to him desirable. Some of these +represented mere crotchets, but they were all intended to aid in that +conservation of English undefiled which was so dear a purpose to Mr. +Bryant. + +In the main the usages condemned by the _Index_ were deserving of +condemnation, but in some respects the prohibitions were too strait-laced, +too negligent of the fact that a living language grows and that usages +unknown to one generation may become altogether good in another. Again +some of the prohibitions were founded upon a too strict regard for +etymology, in forgetfulness of the fact that words often change or +modify and sometimes even reverse their original significance. As an +example, Shakespeare uses the expression "fearful adversaries," meaning +badly scared adversaries, and that is, of course, the etymological +significance of the word. Yet we now universally use it in a precisely +opposite sense, meaning that the things called "fearful" are such as +fill us with fear. + +Finally, it is to be said that Mr. Bryant neither intended nor attempted +to enforce the _Index_ arbitrarily, or even to impose its restrictions +upon any but the least educated and least experienced of the writers who +served his newspaper. I used to violate it freely, and one day I mentioned +the fact to Mr. Bryant. He replied: + +"My dear Mr. Eggleston, the _Index_ was never intended to interfere with +scholarly men who know how to write good English. It is meant only to +restrain the inconsiderate youngsters and start them in right paths." + +His subordinates were less liberal in their interpretation of the matter. +The man whose duty it was to make clippings from other newspapers to +be reprinted in the _Evening Post_, was expected so to edit and alter +them as to bring them within _Index_ requirements, and sometimes the +alterations were so considerable as to make of the extracts positive +misquotations. I have often wondered that none of the newspapers whose +utterances were thus "edited" out of their original forms and still +credited to them ever complained of the liberties taken with the text. +But so far as I know none of them ever did. + +When Mr. Bryant and I were talking of the _Index_ and of the license +I had to violate it judiciously, he smilingly said to me: + +"After all a misuse of words is sometimes strangely effective. In the +old days when I wrote more for the editorial columns than I do now, I +had a friend who was deeply interested in all matters of public concern, +and whose counsel I valued very highly because of the abounding common +sense that always inspired it. His knowledge of our language was +defective, but he was unconscious of the fact, and he boldly used words +as he understood them, without the smallest fear of criticism before +his eyes. Once when some subject of unusual public importance was +under popular consideration, I wrote a long and very careful article +concerning it. I did my best to set forth every consideration that in +any wise bore upon it, and to make clear and emphatic what I regarded +as the marrow of the matter. My friend was deeply interested, and came +to talk with me on the subject. + +[Sidenote: An Effective Blunder in English] + +"'That is a superb article of yours, Mr. Bryant,' he said, 'but it will +do no manner of good.' I asked him why, and he answered: 'Because you +have exhausted the subject, and won't come back to it. That never +accomplishes anything. If you want to produce an effect you must keep +hammering at the thing. I tell you, Mr. Bryant, it is _reirritation_ +that does the business.' + +"I thought the matter over and saw that he was right, not only in +his idea but still more in the word he had mistakenly chosen for its +expression. In such cases it is not only reiteration, but _reirritation_ +that is effective." + +There are other indexes in other newspaper offices. Those of them that +I have seen represent crass ignorance quite as often as scholarship. One +of them absolutely forbids the use of the pronoun "which." Another which +I saw some years ago, put a ban on the conjunctions "and" and "but." +This prohibition, I am informed, was designed to compel the use of short +sentences--a very desirable thing, of course, but one which may easily +be pushed to extremes. Imagine a reporter having to state that "X and Y +were caught in the act of firing a tenement house, and arrested by +two policemen, officers A and B, but that X escaped on the way to the +station-house after knocking policeman B down and seriously if not +fatally injuring him." If the reader will try to make that simple +statement without the use of the four "ands" and the one "but" in the +sentence, he will have a realizing sense of the difficulty the writers +on that newspaper must have had in their efforts to comply with the +requirements of the index. + +In still another case the unscholarly maker of the index, having learned +that it is incorrect to say "on to-day," "on yesterday," and "on +to-morrow," has made a blanket application of what he has mistaken for a +principle, and has decreed that his writers shall not say "on the fourth +of March" or "on Wednesday of next week," or anything else of the kind. +The ignorance shown in that case is not merely a manifestation of a +deficient scholarship; it means that the maker of the index knew so +little of grammar as not to know the difference between an adverb and +a noun. Yet every one of the newspapers enforcing these ignorant index +requirements has made fun of Mr. Bryant's scholarly prohibitions. + +Reserved, dignified, self-conscious as he was, Mr. Bryant was always a +democrat of the proud old conservative sort. He never descended to undue +familiarity with anybody. He patted nobody on the back, and I have never +been able to imagine what would have happened if anybody had taken +familiar liberties of that kind with him. Certainly nobody ever ventured +to find out by practical experiment. He never called even the youngest +man on his staff by his given name or by his surname without the prefix +"Mr." + +In that respect he differed radically and, to my mind, pleasingly from +another distinguished democrat. + +When Mr. Cleveland was for the third time a candidate for the +Presidency, I called on him by Mr. Pulitzer's request just before +sailing for Paris, where Mr. Pulitzer was then living. I entered the +reception room at his hotel quarters and sent in my card. Mr. Cleveland +came out promptly and greeted me with the exclamation: + +"Why, hello, Eggleston! How are you? I'm glad to see you." + +There was no harm in it, I suppose, but it disagreeably impressed me +as the greeting of a politician rather than that of a distinguished +statesman who had been President of the United States and hoped to be +so again. Had I been an intimate personal friend who could say "Hello, +Cleveland!" in response, I should have accepted his greeting as a +manifestation of cordiality and good-fellowship. I was in fact only +slightly acquainted with him, and in view of all the circumstances +his familiarity of address impressed me as boorish. Years afterwards I +learned how easy it was for him to do boorish things--how much restraint, +indeed, he found it necessary to impose upon himself in order to avoid +the doing of boorish things. + +[Sidenote: Mr. Bryant on British Snobbishness] + +But while Mr. Bryant never indulged in undue familiarity with anybody, +he never lost sight of the dignity of those with whom he conversed, +and above all, he never suffered shams to obscure his perception of +realities. One Sunday at his home in Roslyn he told me the story of his +abrupt leaving of England during a journey to Europe. I will tell it +here as nearly as possible in his own words. + +"English society," he said, "is founded upon shams, falsehoods, and +arrogant pretenses, and the falsehoods are in many ways insulting not +only to the persons whom they directly affect, but to the intelligence +and manhood of the casual observer who happens to have an honest and +sincere mind. When I was over there I was for a time the guest of a +wealthy manufacturer, a man of education, refinement, and culture, whose +house in the country was an altogether delightful place to visit and +whose personality I found unusually pleasing. One day as he and I were +walking through his grounds a man came up on horseback and my host +introduced us. It seems he was the head of one of the great 'county +families,' as they call themselves and are called by others. He +explained that he was on his way to my host's house to call upon me, +wherefore we turned back in his company. During the call he asked me to +be his guest at dinner on a day named, and I accepted, he saying that +he would have a number of 'the best county people' to meet me. As the +evening of the dinner day approached, I asked my host: 'When shall we +dress for the dinner?' He looked at his watch and replied: 'It is time +for _you_ to begin dressing now.' I observed the stress he laid upon +the word 'you' and asked: 'Isn't it time for you, also?' + +"'Oh, I am not invited,' he replied. + +"'Not invited? Why, what can you mean?' I asked. + +"'Why, of course I'm not invited. Those are county people and I am only +a manufacturer--a man in trade. They would never think of inviting me to +dinner.' + +"I was surprised and shocked. + +"'Do you mean to tell me,' I asked, 'that that man came into your house +where I am a guest, and invited me to dinner, to meet his friends, +without including you, my host, in the invitation?' + +"'Why, yes, of course,' he replied. 'You must remember that they are +county families, aristocrats, while I am a man in trade. They would not +think of inviting me, and I should never expect it.' + +"I was full of disgust and indignation. I asked my host to let one of +his servants carry a note for me to the great man's house. + +"'But why?' he asked. 'You will be going over there yourself within the +hour.' + +"'I am not going,' I replied. 'I will not be a party to so gross +an affront to my host. I shall send a note, not of apology but of +unexplained declination.' + +"I did so, and as soon thereafter as I could arrange it, I quitted +England in disgust with a social system so false, so arbitrary, and +so arrogant that one may not even behave like a gentleman without +transgressing its most insistent rules of social exclusiveness. + +"The worst of the matter was the meek submissiveness of my host to +the affront put upon him. He was shocked and distressed that I should +decline to go to the dinner. He could not understand that the smallest +slight had been put upon him, and I could not make him understand it. +That showed how completely saturated the English mind is with the virus +of arbitrary caste. I am told that there has been some amelioration of +all this during recent years. I do not know how much it amounts to. +But did you ever hear an English _grande dame_ crush the life out of +a sweet and innocent young girl by calling her 'that young person'? +If not, you cannot imagine what measureless contempt can be put into +a phrase, or how much of cruelty and injustice may be wrought by the +utterance of three words." + + + + +LIII + + +[Sidenote: The Newspaper Critic's Function] + +During my service as a literary editor, I held firmly to the conviction +that the function of the newspaper book reviewer is essentially a news +function; that it is not his business to instruct other people as to how +they should write, or to tell them how they ought to have written, but +rather to tell readers what they have written and how; to show forth the +character of each book reviewed in such fashion that the reader shall be +able to decide for himself whether or not he wishes to buy and read it, +and that in the main this should be done in a helpful and generously +appreciative spirit, and never carpingly, with intent to show the +smartness of the reviewer--a cheap thing at best. The space allotted +to book reviews in any newspaper is at best wholly insufficient for +anything like adequate criticism, and very generally the reviewer is +a person imperfectly equipped for the writing of such criticism. + +In accordance with this conception of my functions, I always held the +news idea in mind. I was alert to secure advance sheets of important +books, in order that the _Evening Post_ might be the first of newspapers +to tell readers about them. + +Usually the publishers were ready and eager to give the _Evening Post_ +these opportunities, though the literary editors of some morning +newspapers bitterly complained of what they regarded as favoritism when +I was able to anticipate them. On one very notable occasion, however, +great pains were taken by the publishers to avoid all grounds of +complaint. When Tennyson's "Harold" was published in 1876, there had +been no previous announcement of its coming. The greatest secrecy, +indeed, had been maintained. Neither in England nor in America had any +hint been given that any poem by Tennyson was presently forthcoming. On +the day of publication, precisely at noon, copies of "Harold" were laid +upon the desks of all the literary editors in England and America. + +My book reviews for that day were already in type and in the forms. One +hour later the first edition of the paper--the latest into which book +reviews could go--must go to press. I knew that my good friends, the +literary editors of the morning newspapers, would exploit this great +literary news the next morning, and that the evening papers would have +it in the afternoon following. I resolved to be ahead of all of them. + +I hurriedly sent for the foreman of the composing room and enlisted his +coöperation. With the aid of my scissors I got two columns of matter +ready, consisting mainly of quotations hastily clipped from the book, +with a connective tissue of comment, and with an introductory paragraph +or two giving the first news of the publication of an important and very +ambitious dramatic poem by Tennyson. + +At one o'clock the _Evening Post_ went to press with this literary +"beat" displayed upon its first page. It proved to be the first +announcement of the poem's publication either in England or in America, +and it appeared twelve or fifteen hours in advance of any other +publication either by advertisement or otherwise. + +[Sidenote: Mr. Bryant and His Contemporaries] + +On that occasion I tried to draw from Mr. Bryant some expression of +opinion regarding Tennyson's work and the place he would probably occupy +among English poets when the last word should be said concerning him. +I thought to use the new poem and a certain coincidence connected with +it--presently to be mentioned--as a means of drawing some utterance +of opinion from him. It was of no avail. In reply to my questioning, +Mr. Bryant said: + +"It is too soon to assign Tennyson to his permanent place in literature. +He may yet do things greater than any that he has done. And besides, we +are too near to judge his work, except tentatively. You remember Solon's +dictum--'Call no man happy until death.' It is especially unsafe to +attempt a final judgment upon the works of a poet while the glamor of +them is still upon us. Moreover, I have never been a critic. I should +distrust any critical judgment of my own." + +That reminded me that I had never heard Mr. Bryant express his opinion +with regard to the work of any modern poet, living or dead. The nearest +approach to anything of the kind that I can recall was in a little +talk I had with him when I was about leaving for Boston to attend the +breakfast given in celebration of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes's seventieth +year. The subject of Holmes's work arose naturally, and in talking of it +Mr. Bryant said: + +"After all, it is as a novelist chiefly that I think of him." + +"You are thinking of 'Elsie Venner'?" I asked. + +"No,--of 'The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table,'" he answered. "Few +persons care for anything in that except the witty wisdom of it, and I +suppose Dr. Holmes wrote it for the sake of that. But there is a sweet +love story in the book--hidden like a bird in a clump of obtrusively +flowering bushes. It is a sweet, wholesome story, and the heroine of it +is a very natural and very lovable young woman." + +The coincidence referred to above was this. Almost exactly at the time +of the publication of Tennyson's "Harold," some American whose name I +have forgotten, to my regret, brought out a dramatic poem on the same +subject, with the same hero, and in a closely similar form. It was +entitled "The Son of Godwin," and, unless my memory plays me a trick, +it was a work of no little merit. It was completely overshadowed, of +course, by Tennyson's greater performance, but it had enough of virility +and poetic quality in it to tempt me to write a carefully studied +comparison of the two works. + +While Mr. Bryant shrank from the delivery of opinions concerning the +moderns, his judgments of the older writers of English literature were +fully formed and very positive. He knew the classic literature of our +language--and especially its poetic literature--more minutely, more +critically, and more appreciatively than any other person I have ever +known, and he often talked instructively and inspiringly on the subject. + +On one of those periodically recurring occasions when the Baconian +authorship of Shakespeare's works is clamorously contended for by +ill-balanced enthusiasts, Mr. Bryant asked me if I had it in mind to +write anything about the controversy. I told him I had not, unless he +particularly wished me to do so. + +"On the contrary," he answered; "I particularly wish otherwise. It is +a sheer waste of good brain tissue to argue with persons who, having +read anything avowedly written by Bacon, are still able to persuade +themselves that the least poetical and most undramatic of writers could +have written the most poetical and most dramatic works that exist in +any language." + +"It seems to me," I answered, "that the trouble with such persons is +that they are futilely bothering their brains in an attempt to account +for the unaccountable. Shakespeare was a genius, and genius is a thing +that can in nowise be measured, or weighed, or accounted for, while +genius itself accounts for anything and everything it may do. It is +subject to no restrictions, amenable to no law, and restrained by no +limitations whatsoever." + +"That is an excellent way of putting an obvious truth," he answered. +"I wish you would write it down precisely as you have uttered it orally, +and print it as the _Evening Post's_ sole comment upon the controversy." + +Then he sat musing for a time, and after a while added: + +"Genius exists in varying degrees in different men. In Shakespeare it +was supreme, all-inspiring, all-controlling. In lesser men it manifests +itself less conspicuously and less constantly, but not less positively. +No other poet who ever lived could have written Coleridge's 'The Rime of +the Ancient Mariner,' yet Coleridge could no more have written 'Hamlet' +or 'Macbeth' or 'The Merry Wives of Windsor' than any child in pinafores +could. When poetry is genuine, it is inspired, as truly as any sacred +Scripture ever was. Without inspiration there may be cleverness, beauty, +and grandeur in metrical composition, but genuine poetry is the result +of inspiration always, and inspiration is genius." + +"Whence comes the inspiration?" I ventured to ask, hoping to draw +something further from him. + +"I do not know," he answered. "Whence comes the color of the rose or +the violet or the dandelion? I am not a theologian, to dogmatize about +things that are beyond the ken of human intelligence. I only know that +the inspiration is there, just as I know that the colors of the flowers +are there--in both cases because the thing perceived is obvious." + +[Sidenote: Genius and "Thanatopsis"] + +One day I asked Mr. Bryant about "Thanatopsis." When I made my first +acquaintance with that poem in a school reader, it was printed with +some introductory lines in smaller type, and I had never been able to +discover the relation of those lines to the poem or to the thought that +inspired it. + +In answer to my questions Mr. Bryant explained that the lines in +question really had no relation to the poem and no possible connection +with it. + +"I was a mere boy," he said, "when 'Thanatopsis' was written. It bore no +title in my manuscript--that was supplied by an editor who knew Greek, +a language of which I did not then know even the alphabet. My father +got possession of the poem, took it to Boston, and had it published, +all without my knowledge. With the manuscript of it he found some other +lines of mine and assumed that they belonged to the poem, as they did +not. The editor printed them at top in smaller type, and they got into +the schoolbooks in that way. That is the whole story." + + + + +LIV + + +During my service on the _Evening Post_, I made a curious blunder which +circumstances rendered it necessary for others to exploit. The thing +grievously annoyed me at the time, but later it only amused me as an +illustration of a psychological principle. + +Mr. Richard Grant White, writing in some newspaper or magazine in +opposition to the proposed adoption of the metric system of weights and +measures, had made an amusing blunder. He wrote that the old system was +so fixed in men's minds as to admit of no possible mistake. He added +something like this: + +"Nobody has any difficulty in remembering that two gills make one pint, +two pints one quart, four quarts one gallon, etc." + +I cannot pretend to quote his utterance exactly, but that is the +substance of it, the marrow of the matter being that in the very act of +showing that nobody could have the least trouble in remembering the table +of liquid measure, he himself got it wrong. + +[Sidenote: A Case of Heterophemy] + +The derisive comments of all the newspapers upon his blunder may be +easily imagined. For reply he invented a word of Greek derivation, +"heterophemy." He contended that it was a common thing for one to speak +or write one thing when quite another thing was in his mind, and when +the speaker or writer perfectly knew the thing he sought to say. He +explained that when the mind has once slipped into an error of that kind +it is usually unable, or at least unlikely, to detect it in the revision +of proofs, or in any other survey of the utterance. His exposition was +very learned, very ingenious, and very interesting, but it had no effect +in silencing the newspaper wags, who at once adopted his newly-coined +word, "heterophemy," and made it the butt of many jests. + +About that time Mr. Alexander H. Stephens published in one of the +more dignified periodicals of the time--the _North American Review_, +perhaps--a very learned essay in which he sought to fix the authorship +of the letters of Junius upon Sir Philip Francis. Mr. Stephens brought +to the discussion a ripe scholarship and a deal of fresh and original +thought that gave importance to his paper, and I reviewed it in the +_Evening Post_ as carefully and as fully as if it had been a book. + +I was deeply concerned to have my review of so important a paper in all +respects the best I could make it, and to that end I read my proofs +twice, with minute attention, as I thought, to every detail. + +The next day, if I remember correctly, was Sunday. At any rate, it was +a day on which I remained at home. When I opened my morning newspapers, +the first thing that attracted my attention was a letter in one of them +from Richard Grant White, of which my article was the subject. Here, he +said, was a conspicuous and unmistakable example of heterophemy, which +could not be attributed to ignorance or inattention or anything else, +except precisely that tendency of the human mind which he had set forth +as the source of mistakes otherwise unaccountable. He went on to say +that mine was an article founded upon adequate scholarship and evidently +written with unusual care; that its writer obviously knew his subject +and had written of it with the utmost attention to accuracy of statement +in every detail; that he had evidently read his proofs carefully as not +a slip appeared in the printed copy of the article, not even so much +as a typographical error; and yet that in two or three instances this +careful critic had written "Sir Philip Sidney" instead of "Sir Philip +Francis." He pointed out that these slips could not have been due to any +possible confusion in my mind of two Sir Philips who lived two hundred +years apart, chronologically, and whose careers were as wholly unlike +as it was possible to conceive; for, he pointed out, my article itself +bore ample witness to my familiarity with Sir Philip Francis's history. +Here, Mr. White insisted, was the clearest possible case of heterophemy, +untainted by even a possible suspicion of ignorance or confusion of mind. +Further, he urged, the case illustrated and confirmed his contention +that, having written a word or name or phrase not intended, the writer +is extremely unlikely to discover the slip even in the most careful +reading of proofs. For in this case every appearance indicated a careful +proofreading on the part of the author of the article. + +When I read Mr. White's letter I simply could not believe that I had +made the slips he attributed to me. Certainly there was no confusion in +my mind of Sir Philip Francis with Sir Philip Sidney. I was familiar +with the very different histories of the two altogether dissimilar men, +and it seemed inconceivable to me that I had written the name of the +one for that of the other even once in an article in which the right +name was written perhaps a dozen times. + +[Sidenote: Richard Grant White's Triumph] + +It was a troubled and unhappy "day off" for me. I had no copy of the +_Evening Post_ of the preceding day in the house, and a diligent inquiry +at all the news-stands in the remote quarter of Brooklyn in which I +then lived, failed to discover one. But as I thought of the matter in +troubled fashion, I became more and more convinced that Mr. White had +misread what I had written, in which case I anticipated a good deal of +fun in exposing and exploiting his error. As the day waned I became +positively certain in my mind that no such mistake had been made, that +no mention of Sir Philip Sidney could by any possibility have crept into +my article concerning Sir Philip Francis. + +But when I arrived at the office of the _Evening Post_ next morning, I +found the facts to be as Mr. White had represented them. I had written +"Sir Philip Francis" throughout the article, except in two or three +places, where the name appeared as "Sir Philip Sidney." I was so +incredulous of the blunder that I went to the composing room and secured +my manuscript. The error was there in the written copy. I asked the +chief proofreader why he had not observed and queried it in view of the +fact that my use of the name had been correct in most instances, but he +was unable to offer any explanation except that his mind had accepted +the one name for the other. The foreman of the composing room, a man of +education and large literary knowledge, had read the proofs merely as a +matter of interest, but he had not observed the error. I had no choice +but to accept Mr. Richard Grant White's interpretation of the matter +and call it a case of heterophemy. + +There are blunders made that are not so easily accounted for. A leading +New York newspaper once complained of Mr. Cleveland's veto messages as +tiresome and impertinent, and asked why he persisted in setting forth +his reasons for disapproving acts of Congress, instead of sending them +back disapproved without reasons. + +The _Evening Post_ found it necessary to direct the newspaper's +attention to the fact that the Constitution of the United States +expressly requires the President, in vetoing a measure, to set forth +his reasons for doing so. In a like forgetfulness of Constitutional +provisions for safeguarding the citizen, the same newspaper complained +of the police, when Tweed escaped and went into hiding, for not +searching every house in New York till the malefactor should be found. +It was Parke Godwin who cited the Constitution in answer to that +manifestation of ignorance, and he did it with the strong hand of a +master to whom forgetfulness of the fundamental law seemed not only +inexcusable, on the part of a newspaper writer, but dangerous to liberty +as well. + +Perhaps the worst case I ever knew of ignorance assuming the critical +functions of expert knowledge, was one which occurred some years later. +William Hamilton Gibson published a superbly illustrated work, which won +commendation everywhere for the exquisite perfection of the drawings, +both in gross and in minute detail. A certain art critic who had made +a good deal of noise in the world by his assaults upon the integrity +of art treasures in the Metropolitan Museum, assailed Gibson's work in +print. Finding nothing in the illustrations that he could criticise, +he accused Gibson of sailing under false colors and claiming credit for +results that were not of his creation. He said that nearly everything +of value in the illustrations of Gibson's book was the work not of the +artist but of the engraver who, he declared, had "added increment after +increment of value" to the crude original drawings. + +[Sidenote: The Demolition of a Critic] + +In a brief letter to the newspaper which had printed this destructive +criticism without its writer's name appended to it, Mr. Gibson had only +to direct attention to the fact that the pictures in question were +not engravings at all, but slavish photographic reproductions of his +original drawings, and that no engraver had had anything whatever to do +with them. + +The criticism to which so conclusive a reply was possible was anonymous, +and its author never acknowledged or in any way sought to atone for the +wanton wrong he had sought to inflict under cover of anonymity. But his +agency in the matter was known to persons "on the inside" of literature, +art, and journalism, and the shame of his deed rankled in the minds of +honest men. He wrote little if anything after that, and the reputation +he had made faded out of men's memory. + + + + +LV + + +When Mr. Bryant died, Mr. Parke Godwin assumed editorial control of the +_Evening Post_, and his attention promptly wrought something like a +miracle in the increased vigor and aggressiveness of its editorial +conduct. Mr. Godwin was well advanced in middle life at that time; he +was comfortably provided with this world's goods, and he was not anxious +to take up again the strenuous journalistic work in which he had already +achieved all there was to achieve of reputation. But in his own interest +and in the interest of Mr. Bryant's heirs, it seemed necessary for him +to step into this breach. Moreover, he had abated none of his interest +in public affairs or in those things that make for culture, enlightenment, +and human betterment. He had never ceased to write for the _Evening +Post_ upon matters of such kind when occasion called for strong, virile +utterance. + +In his declining years Mr. Bryant had not lost interest in these things, +but he had abated somewhat his activity with reference to them. He had +more and more left the conduct of the newspaper to his subordinates, +trusting to what he used to call his "volunteer staff"--Parke Godwin, +John Bigelow, Samuel J. Tilden, and other strong men, to furnish +voluntarily all that was needed of strenuosity in the discussion of +matters closely concerning the public weal. I do not know that Mr. +Tilden was ever known to the public even as an occasional writer for the +_Evening Post_. He was a man of singularly secretive temperament, and +when he wrote anything for the _Evening Post_ its anonymity was guarded +with a jealousy such as I have never known any other person to exercise. +What he wrote--on the infrequent occasions of his writing at all--was +given to Mr. Bryant and by him handed in with instructions for its +publication and without a hint to anybody concerning its authorship. +It was only by accident that I learned whence certain articles came, and +I think that knowledge was not usually shared with any other member of +Mr. Bryant's staff. + +Mr. Godwin pursued a different course. These occasional contributions +did not satisfy his ideas of what the _Evening Post_ should be in its +editorial utterances. He set to work to stimulate a greater aggressiveness +on the part of the staff writers, and he himself brought a strong hand +to bear upon the work. + +[Sidenote: "A Lion in a Den of Daniels"] + +When Mr. Godwin died, a few years ago, Dr. Titus Munson Coan, in an +obituary sketch read before the Authors Club, said with reference to +this part of his career that in the _Evening Post_ office "he was a lion +in a den of Daniels," and the figure of speech was altogether apt. + +He had gifts of an uncommon sort. He knew how to say strong things +in a strong way. He could wield the rapier of subtle sarcasm, and the +bludgeon of denunciation with an equally skilled hand. Sometimes he +brought even a trip-hammer into play with startling effect. + +I remember one conspicuous case of the kind. Sara Bernhardt was playing +one of her earliest and most brilliant engagements in New York. Mr. +Godwin's alert interest in every form of high art led him not only +to employ critics of specially expert quality to write of her work, +but himself now and then to write something of more than ordinary +appreciation of the great Frenchwoman's genius as illustrated in her +performance. + +Presently a certain clergyman of the "sensational" school, who had +denounced the theater as "the door of hell and the open gateway of +damnation," sent to the _Evening Post_ an intemperate protest against +the large space it was giving to Sara Bernhardt and her art. The letter +was entitled "Quite Enough of Sara Bernhardt," and in the course of it +the writer declared the great actress to be a woman of immoral character +and dissolute life, whom it was a shame, a disgrace, and a public +calamity for the _Evening Post_ even to name in its columns. + +Mr. Godwin wrote an answer to the tirade. He entitled it "Quite Enough +of X"--the "X" standing here for the clergyman's name, which he used in +full. It was one of the most effective bits of criticism and destructive +analysis I ever saw in print, and it left the critic of Sara Bernhardt +with not a leg to stand upon, and with no possibility of reply. Mr. +Godwin pointed out that Sara Bernhardt had asked American attention, not +as a woman, but solely as an artist; that it was of her art alone, and +not of her personality that the _Evening Post_ had written; that she had +neither asked admission to American society nor accepted it when pressed +upon her; and that her personal character and mode of life had no more +to do with the duty of considering her art than had the sins of any old +master when one viewed his paintings and sought to interpret the genius +that inspired them. + +So far Mr. Godwin was argumentative and placative. But he had other +arrows in his quiver. He challenged the clergyman to say how he knew +that the actress was a person of immoral character and dissolute life, +and to explain what right he had to make charges of that kind against a +woman without the smallest evidence of their truth. And so on to the end +of a chapter that must have been very bitter reading to the offender if +he had been a person of normal sensitiveness, as he was not. + +I have cited this occurrence merely by way of explaining the fact that +Mr. Godwin had many critics and many enemies. A man of sincere mind and +aggressive temper upon proper occasion, and especially one possessed of +his gift of vigorous expression, must needs make enemies in plenty, if +he edits a newspaper or otherwise writes for publication. But on the +other hand, those who knew him best were all and always his devoted +friends--those who knew his sturdy character, his unflinching honesty +of mind, and his sincere devotion to the right as he saw it. + +My acquaintance with him, before his assumption of control on the +_Evening Post_, was comparatively slight, and in all that I here write +of his character and mind, I am drawing upon my recollection of him +during a later intimacy which, beginning on the _Evening Post_, was +drawn closer during my service on another newspaper, and endured until +his death. + +After a brief period of editorship Mr. Godwin sold a controlling +interest in the _Evening Post_ to a company of men represented by +Messrs. Horace White, E. L. Godkin, and Carl Schurz--Mr. Schurz becoming +the titular editor for a time. When Mr. Godwin learned, after the sale +was agreed upon, that Mr. Godkin was one of the incoming group, he +sought to buy Mr. Godkin's weekly newspaper, _The Nation_, and as the +negotiation seemed for a time to promise well, he arranged to make me +editor of that periodical. This opened to me a prospect of congenial +work, more agreeable to me than any that a daily newspaper could offer. +But in the end Mr. Godkin declined to sell the _Nation_ at any price +that Mr. Godwin thought fair, and made it instead the weekly edition +of the _Evening Post_. + +[Sidenote: The Literary Shop Again] + +Accordingly, I again quitted the newspaper life, fully intending to +enter it no more. Literary work of many kinds was open to me, and it was +my purpose to devote myself exclusively to it, maintaining a literary +workshop in my own home. I became an adviser of the Harper publishing +house, with no office attendance required of me, no working time fixed, +and no interference of any kind with my entire liberty. I was writing +now and then for the editorial pages of the great newspapers, regularly +for a number of magazines, and occasionally writing a book, though that +was infrequent for the reason that in the absence of international +copyright, there was no encouragement to American authors to write books +in competition with reprints that cost their publishers nothing. + +In mentioning this matter of so-called "piracy," I do not mean to accuse +the reputable American publishers of English books of any wrong, +for they were guilty of none. They were victims of the lack of law as +truly as the authors on either side were. They were as eager as the +authors--English or American--could be, for an international copyright +law. For lack of it their profits were cut short and their business +enterprises set awry. The reputable publishing houses in this country +actually purchased the American publishing rights of many English books +with no other protection of what they had purchased than such as was +afforded by the "courtesy of the trade"--a certain gentlemen's agreement +under which no reputable American publisher would reprint a book of +which another publisher had bought the advance sheets. This protection +was uncertain, meager, and often ineffective for the reason that there +were disreputable publishers in plenty who paid no heed to the "courtesy +of the trade" but reprinted whatsoever they thought would sell. + +In the case of such works as those of Herbert Spencer and some others, I +believe I am correctly informed that the American publishers paid larger +royalties to the authors--larger in gross amount, at least--than those +authors received from their English publishers. In the same way American +publishers of the better class paid liberally for advance sheets of the +best foreign fiction, often at heavy loss to themselves because the +books they had bought were promptly reprinted in very cheap form by +their less scrupulous competitors. In the case of fiction of a less +distinguished kind, of which no advance sheets were offered, they had +no choice but to make cheap reprints on their own account. + +It is proper to say also that if this was "piracy," the American +publishers were by no means the worst pirates or the most conspicuous +ones, though the complaints made were chiefly of English origin and were +all directed against the Americans. + +[Sidenote: Piracy--British and American] + +I shall never forget the way in which my brother, Edward Eggleston +--himself an active worker for international copyright--met the complaints +of one English critic who was more lavish and less discriminative in his +criticism in a company of Americans than Edward thought good manners +justified. The critic was the son of an English poet, whose father's +chief work had won considerable popularity in America. The young man was +a guest at one of the receptions of the Authors Club, every member of +which was directly or indirectly a sufferer by reason of the lack of +international copyright. He seized upon the occasion for the delivery of +a tirade against the American dishonesty which, he said, threatened to +cut short his travel year by depriving his father of the money justly +due him as royalty on the American reprints of his books. + +My brother listened in silence for a time. Then that pinch of gunpowder +that lies somewhere in every human make-up "went off." + +"The American publishers of your father's poem," he said, "have paid him +all they could afford to pay in the present state of the law, I believe?" + +"Yes--but what is it? A mere fraction of what they justly owe him," the +young man answered. + +"Now listen," said Edward. "You call that American piracy, and you +overlook the piracy on the other side. Your father's book has sold so +many thousand copies in America"--giving the figures. "The English +reprint of my 'Hoosier Schoolmaster' has sold nearly ten times that +number, according to the figures of the English 'pirates' who reprinted +it and who graciously sent me a 'tip,' as I call it, of one hundred +dollars--less than a fraction, if I may so call it, of what American +publishers have voluntarily paid your father. But dropping that smaller +side of the matter, let me tell you that every man in this company is a +far greater sufferer from the barbaric state of the law than your father +or any other English author ever was. We are denied the opportunity to +practise our profession, except under a paralysing competition with +stolen goods. What chance has an American novel, published at a dollar +or more, in competition with English fiction even of an inferior sort +published at ten cents? We cannot expect the reader who reads only for +amusement to pay a dollar or a dollar and a half for an American novel +when he can fill his satchel with reprints of English novels at ten +cents apiece. But that is the very smallest part of our loss. The whole +American people are inestimably losers because of this thing. They are +deprived of all chance of a national literature, reflecting the life +of our country, its ideas, its inspirations, and its aspirations. You +Englishmen are petty losers in comparison with us. Your losses are +measurable in pounds, shillings, and pence. Ours involve things of +immeasurably greater value." + +I have quoted here, as accurately as memory permits, an utterance that +met the approval of every author present, because I think that in our +appeals to Congress for international copyright only the smaller, lower, +and less worthy commercial aspects of the matter have been presented, +and that as a consequence the American people have been themselves +seriously and hurtfully misled as to the higher importance of a question +involving popular interests of far more consequence than the financial +returns of authorship can ever be. + + + + +LVI + + +In connection with my work for the Harpers it fell to my lot to revise +and edit a good many books. Among these were such books of reference as +Hayden's Dictionary of Dates, which I twice edited for American readers, +putting in the dates of important American affairs, and, more importantly, +correcting English misinterpretations of American happenings. For +example, under the title "New York" I found an entry, "Fall of O'Kelly," +with a date assigned. The thing probably referred to John Kelly, but the +event recorded, with its date, had never occurred within the knowledge +of any American. There were many other such things to cut out and many +important matters to put in, and the Harpers paid me liberally--after +their fashion in dealing with men of letters--for doing the work. In +the course of it I had to spend a considerable amount of their money in +securing the exact information desired. In one case I applied by letter +to one of the executive departments at Washington for exact information +concerning a certain document. For answer I received a letter, written +by a clerk, doubtless, but signed by a chief of bureau, embodying a copy +of the document. In that copy I found a line thrice repeated, and I was +unable to make out whether the repetition was in the original or was the +work of a copying clerk asleep at his post. I wrote to inquire, but the +chief of bureau replied that he had no authority to find out, wherefore +I had to make a journey to Washington at the expense of Harper and +Brothers, to ascertain the facts. I came out of that expedition with +the conviction, which still lingers in my mind, that the system that +gives civil service employees a tenure of office with which their chiefs +have no power to interfere by peremptory discharge for inefficiency or +misconduct, as the managing men of every successful business enterprise +may do, is vicious in principle and bad in outcome. + +[Sidenote: The Way at Washington] + +That and other experiences in dealing with executive departments at +Washington have made an old fogy of me, I suppose. At any rate they have +convinced me that the government's business could and would be better +done by half the force now employed, if that half force worked under a +consciousness of direct responsibility, each man to an immediate chief +who could discharge him for incompetency or inattention. Furthermore, +my experience with clerks in the departments at Washington convinces me +that the method of selection and promotion by competitive examination, +results almost uniformly in the appointment and in the promotion of +inferior and often incompetent men. Certainly no great bank, no great +business enterprise of any kind would ever consent to such a method +of selecting or promoting its employees--a method which excludes from +consideration the knowledge every chief of bureau or department must +necessarily have of the qualifications of his subordinates. The clerk +who repeated that line three times in making an official transcript of +an official document had been for several years in the public service, +and I suppose he is there yet, if he isn't dead. How long would a +bookkeeper in a bank hold his place after making a similar blunder? But +then, banks are charged with an obligation to remain solvent, and must +appoint and discharge employees with due reference to that necessity. +The government is not subject to that requirement, and it recognizes +a certain obligation to heed the vagaries of the theorists who regard +themselves as commissioned--divinely or otherwise--to reform the world +in accordance with the suggestions of their own inner consciousness and +altogether without regard to the practical experience of humankind. + +Mainly, however, the books I was employed to edit were those written +by men whose connection with affairs of consequence rendered their +utterances important, but whose literary qualifications were small. +When such works were presented to the Harpers, it was their practice to +accept the books on condition that the authors of them should pay for +such editing as was necessary, by some person of literary experience +to be selected by the Harpers themselves. + +In every such case, where I was asked to be the editor and see the book +through the press, I stipulated that I was to make no effort to improve +literary style, but was to confine myself to seeing that the English was +correct--whether elegant or otherwise--and that the book as it came from +the hands of its author should be presented with as little editorial +alteration as was possible. I assumed the function of correcting errors +and offering advice, not of writing the books anew or otherwise putting +them into the literary form I thought they should have. Even with this +limitation of function, I found plenty of work to do in every case. + +[Sidenote: A Historical Discovery] + +It was under a contract of this kind that I undertook to see through the +press the volumes published under the title of "The Military Operations +of General Beauregard in the War between the States." + +The work bore the name of Colonel Alfred Roman, as its author, but on +every page of it there was conclusive evidence of its direct and minute +inspiration by General Beauregard himself. It was with him rather than +with Colonel Roman that negotiations were had respecting my editorial +work on the book. He was excessively nervous lest I should make +alterations of substance, a point on which I was the better able to +reassure him because of the fact that my compensation was a sum certain +and in no way dependent upon the amount of time or labor I should give +to the work. I succeeded in convincing him that I was exceedingly +unlikely to undertake more of revision than the contract called for, and +as one man with another, I assured him that I would make no alteration +of substantial consequence in the work without his approval. + +In editing the book I made a discovery which, I think, is of some +historical interest. Throughout the war there was something like a +standing quarrel between General Beauregard and Mr. Jefferson Davis, +emphasized by the antagonism of Mr. Davis's chief adviser, Judah P. +Benjamin to General Beauregard. Into the merits of that quarrel I have +no intention here to inquire. It does not come within the purview of +this volume of reminiscences. But in editing General Beauregard's book +I discovered an easy and certainly correct explanation of the bitterest +phase of it--that phase upon which General Beauregard laid special +stress. + +Sometime after the battle of Shiloh, General Beauregard, whose health +was seriously impaired, decided to take a little furlough for purposes +of recuperation. There was neither prospect nor possibility of active +military operations in that quarter for a considerable time to come, +so that he felt himself free to go away for a few weeks in search of +health, leaving General Bragg in temporary command but himself keeping +in touch with his army and in readiness to return to it immediately in +case of need. + +He notified Mr. Davis of his intended course, by telegraph. Mr. Davis +almost immediately removed him from command and ordered General Bragg to +assume permanent control in that quarter. Mr. Davis's explanation, when +his act was challenged, was that General Beauregard had announced his +purpose to be absent himself "for four months," and that he, Mr. Davis, +could not regard that as anything else than an abandonment of his command. +General Beauregard insisted that he had made no such announcement and +had cherished no such purpose. The thing ultimately resolved itself into +a question of veracity between the two, concerning which each had bitter +things to say of the other in public ways. + +[Sidenote: A Period Out of Place] + +In editing General Beauregard's book, I discovered that there was really +no question of veracity involved, but merely an error of punctuation in +a telegraphic despatch, a thing very easy at all times and particularly +easy in days of military telegraphing when incompetent operators were +the rule rather than the exception. + +The case was this: General Beauregard telegraphed: + +"I am leaving for a while on surgeon's certificate. For four months +I have delayed obeying their urgent recommendations," etc. + +As the despatch reached Mr. Davis it read: + +"I am leaving for a while on surgeon's certificate for four months. +I have delayed," etc. + +The misplacing of a punctuation mark gave the statement, as received +by Mr. Davis, a totally different meaning from that which General +Beauregard had intended. In explaining his action in removing Beauregard +from command, Mr. Davis stated that the General had announced his +purpose to absent himself for four months. General Beauregard denied +that he had done anything of the kind. Hence the issue of veracity, in +which the text of the despatch as sent, sustained General Beauregard's +contention, while the same text as received, with its error of +punctuation, equally sustained the assertions of Mr. Davis. + +With the beatitude of the peacemakers in mind, I brought my discovery to +the attention of both parties to the controversy, in the hope at least +of convincing each that the other had not consciously lied. The attempt +proved futile. When I pointed out to General Beauregard the obvious +origin of the misapprehension, he flushed with suppressed anger and +declared himself unwilling to discuss a matter so exclusively personal. +He did discuss it, however, to the extent of pointing out that his use +of the phrase "for a while" should have enabled Mr. Davis to correct the +telegraph operator's error of punctuation, "if there really was any such +error made--which I am not prepared to believe." + +In answer to my letter to Mr. Davis, some one wrote for him that in his +advancing years he did not care to take up again any of the matters of +controversy that had perplexed his active life. + +I have never since that time made the smallest attempt to reconcile the +quarrels of men who have been engaged in the making of history. I have +learned better. + +So far as Mr. Davis was concerned there was probably another reason for +unwillingness to consider any matter that I might lay before him. He and +I had had a little controversy of our own some years before. + +In one of those chapters of "A Rebel's Recollections," which were first +published in the _Atlantic Monthly_, I made certain statements with +regard to Mr. Davis's conduct at a critical moment. Mr. Davis sent his +secretary to me--or at any rate some one calling himself his secretary +came to me--to assure me that the statements I and others had made +concerning the matter were without foundation in fact, and to ask me not +to include them in the forthcoming book. + +I replied that I had not made the statements thoughtlessly or without +satisfying myself of the correctness of my information; that I could +not, therefore, consent to omit them from the book; but that if Mr. +Davis would send me a categorical denial of them over his own signature, +I would publish it as a part of my text. + +This proposal was rejected, and I let the matter stand as originally +written. I had in my possession at that time a letter from General +Robert E. Lee to John Esten Cooke. It was written in answer to a direct +question of Mr. Cooke's, and in it General Lee stated unequivocally that +the facts were as Mr. Cooke understood them and as I had reported them. +But General Lee forbade the publication of his letter unless Mr. Davis +should at any time publicly deny the reports made. In that case he +authorized the publication "in the interest of truthful history." + +Mr. Cooke had placed that letter in my hands, and had Mr. Davis +furnished me with the suggested denial, it was my purpose to print that +and General Lee's letter in facsimile, leaving it for every reader to +choose between them. To my regret Mr. Davis declined to put his denial +into writing, so that General Lee's letter, which I returned to Mr. +Cooke, has never been published, and now never can be. + +[Sidenote: A Futile Effort to Make Peace] + +On another point I found General Beauregard more amenable to editorial +suggestion, though reluctantly so. In discussing his defense of +Charleston with utterly inadequate means--a defense everywhere +recognized as the sufficient foundation of a military fame--his book +included a chapter or so of masterly military criticism, intended to +show that if the commanders on the other side at Charleston had been as +alert and capable as they should have been, there was no time when they +could not have taken Charleston with ease and certainty. + +I pointed out to him that all this was a discrediting of himself; that +it attributed to the enemy's weakness a success which military criticism +attributed to his own military and engineering strength, thus stripping +him of credit at the very point at which his credit was least open to +dispute or question. I advised the elimination or material alteration of +this part of the book, and after due consideration he consented, though +with sore reluctance, for the reason that the modification made involved +the sacrifice of a very brilliant essay in military criticism, of which +any writer might well have been proud, and which I should have advised +any other writer to publish as a distinguished feature of his work. + +To descend from large things to small ones, it was in seeing this work +through the press that I encountered the most extreme case I have ever +known of dangerous interference with copy on the part of the "intelligent +compositor," passed by the "alert proofreader." The printing department +of the Harpers was as nearly perfect, in its organization and in the +supervision given to it by the two highly-skilled superintendents of its +rival composing rooms, as any printing department well can be. And yet +it was there that the error occurred. + +Of course I could not read the revised proofs of the book "by copy,"--that +is to say with a helper to read the copy aloud while I followed him with +the revises. That would have required the employment of an additional +helper and a considerably increased payment to me. Moreover, all that +was supposed to be attended to in the composing rooms so that revised +proofs should come to me in exact conformity with the "copy" as I had +handed it in. In reading them I was not expected to look out for errors +of the type, but solely for errors in the text. + +In reading a batch of proofs one night--for the man of letters who would +keep his butcher and grocer on good terms with him must work by night as +well as by day--although I was in nowise on the alert to discover errors +of type, my eye fell upon an error which, if it had escaped me, would +forever have ruined my reputation as an editor. Certain of General +Beauregard's official despatches, quoted in the book, were dated +"Fiddle Pond, near Barnwell C. H., South Carolina," the letters "C. H." +standing, of course, for "Court House"--the name given to rural county +seats in the South. The intelligent compositor, instead of "following +copy," had undertaken to interpret and translate the letters out of the +depths of his own intuitions. Instead of "Fiddle Pond, near Barnwell C. +H.," he had set "Fiddle Pond, near Barnwell, Charleston Harbor," thus +playing havoc at once with geography and the text. + +The case was so extreme, and the liberty taken with the text without +notice of any kind, involved so much danger to the accuracy of the work +that I had no choice but to report the matter to the house with a +notification that unless I could be assured that no further liberties of +any kind would be taken with the text, I must decline to go further with +the undertaking. + +This cost a proofreader and a printer or two their employments, and I +regretted that, but they deserved their punishment, and the matter was +one that demanded drastic measures. Without such measures it would have +been dangerous to publish the book at all. + +[Sidenote: Loring Pacha] + +One other ex-Confederate general with whom this sort of editorial work +brought me into association was Loring Pacha--otherwise General W. W. +Loring, a man of extraordinarily varied experiences in life, a man of +the gentlest temper and most genial impulses, who had been, nevertheless, +a fighter all his life, from boyhood up. His fighting, however, had all +been done in the field and professionally, and he carried none of its +animosities into private life. I remember his saying to me once: + +"Of course the war ended as it ought to have done. It was best for +everybody concerned that the Union should be restored. The only thing +is that I don't like the other fellows to 'have the say' on us." + +Loring became a private soldier in the United States Army while yet a +boy. He so far distinguished himself for gallantry in the Florida War +that he was offered a Presidential appointment to West Point, which he +declined. He was appointed to a lieutenancy in the regular army, where +he won rapid promotion and gained a deal of experience, chiefly in +fighting Indians and leading troops on difficult expeditions across the +plains of the far West. In the Mexican War he was several times promoted +and brevetted for conspicuous gallantry, and he lost an arm at one of +the gates of the City of Mexico, as he was leading his regiment as the +head of the column into the town, seizing an opportunity without orders. +On that occasion General Scott visited him in hospital and said to him: + +"Loring, I suppose I ought to court-martial you for rushing into that +breach without orders; but I think I'll recommend you for promotion +instead." + +In the Confederate Army Loring became a Major-General, and a few years +after the close of that struggle he was invited by the Khedive of Egypt +to become his chief of staff. After a military service there which +extended over a number of years, he returned to America and wrote a +book founded upon his experience there and the studies he had made in +Egyptian manners, history, archæology, and the like. I was employed to +edit that book, which was published by Dodd, Mead & Co., I think, and in +the course of my work upon it Loring became not only a valued personal +friend, but an easy-going intimate in my household. At first he came to +see me only for purposes of consultation concerning the work. Later he +used to come "just because he wanted to," he said. His visits were made, +in Southern fashion, at whatever hour he chose, and he took with us +whatever meals were served while he was there. + +In conversation one day I happened to ask Loring something about the +strained relations that frequently exist between commanding officers +in the field and the newspaper war correspondents sent out to report +news of military operations. I think my question was prompted by some +reference to William Swinton's criticisms of General Grant, and General +Grant's peremptory dealing with him. + +"I don't know much about such things," Loring answered. "You see, at the +time of the Mexican War and of all my Indian campaigns, the newspapers +hadn't yet invented the war correspondent. Then in the Confederacy +everybody was a soldier, as you know, and the war correspondents carried +muskets and answered to roll calls. Their newspaper work was an +avocation, not a vocation. You see I am learning English under your +tuition." + +This little jest referred to the fact that a few days before, in running +through the manuscript of a lecture he was preparing, I had changed the +word "avocation" to "vocation," explaining to him the difference in +meaning. + +[Sidenote: Concerning War Correspondents] + +"Then in Egypt we were not much troubled with war +correspondents--perhaps they had the bowstring and sack in mind--but +I have an abiding grudge against another type of correspondent whom I +encountered there. I mean the tourist who has made an arrangement with +some newspaper to pay the expenses of his trip or a part of them in +return for letters to be sent from the places visited. He is always an +objectionable person, particularly when he happens to be a parson out +of a job, and I always fought shy of him so far as possible, usually +by turning him over to my dragoman, to be shown about and 'stuffed' as +only a dragoman can 'stuff' anybody. You see the dragoman has learned +that every Western tourist in the East is hungry for information of +a startling sort, and the dragoman holds himself ready to furnish it +without the smallest regard for truth or any respect at all for facts. +On one occasion one of these scribbling tourists from England visited +me. One of the Khedive's unoccupied palaces had been assigned to me for +my headquarters, and I was exceedingly busy with preparations for a +campaign then in contemplation. Stone Pacha and I were both up to our +eyes in work, trying to mobilize an army that had no mobility in it. +Accordingly I turned the tourist over to my dragoman with orders to +show him everything and give him all the information he wanted. + +"The palace was divided as usual. There was a public part and a part +called the harem--which simply means the home or the family apartments. +During my occupancy of the place that part of it was empty and closed, +as I am a bachelor. But as the dragoman showed him about the tourist +asked to see that part of the palace, whereupon the dragoman replied: + +"'That is the harem. You cannot gain entrance there.' + +"'The harem? But I thought Loring was an American and a Christian,' was +the astonished reply. + +"'He was--but he is a pacha, now,' answered the dragoman with that air +of mysterious reserve which is a part of his stock in trade. Then the +rascal went on to tell the tourist that I now had forty wives--which +would have been a shot with the long bow even if I had been a born +Mohammedan of the highest rank and greatest wealth. + +"When I heard of the affair I asked the dragoman why he had lied so +outrageously and he calmly replied: + +"'Oh, I thought it polite to give the gentleman what he wanted.' + +[Sidenote: A Scribbling Tourist's Mischief-Making] + +"I dismissed the matter and thought no more of it until a month or so +later, when somebody sent me marked copies of the _Manchester Guardian_, +or whatever the religious newspaper concerned was called. The tourist +had told the story of my 'downfall' with all the horrifying particulars, +setting forth in very complimentary phrases my simple, exemplary life +as an American soldier and lamenting the ease with which I and other +Western men, 'nurtured in the purity of Christian family life,' had +fallen victims to the lustful luxury of the East. I didn't give the +matter any attention. I was too busy to bother--too busy with plans and +estimates and commissary problems, and the puzzles of transportation and +all the rest of the things that required attention in preparation for +a campaign in a difficult, inaccessible, and little known country. I +wasn't thinking of myself or of what wandering scribes might be writing +about me in English newspapers. But presently this thing assumed a new +and very serious aspect. Some obscure American religious newspaper, +published down South somewhere, copied the thing, and my good sisters, +who live down that way, read it. It isn't much to say they were +horrified; they were well-nigh killed by the revelation of my infamy and +they suffered almost inconceivable tortures of the spirit on my account. +For it never entered their trustful minds to doubt anything printed +in a great English religious paper over the signature of a dissenting +minister and copied into the American religious journal which to them +seemed an authoritative weekly supplement to the holy scriptures. + +"I managed to straighten the thing out in the minds of my good sisters, +but I have never ceased to regret that that correspondent never turned +up at my headquarters again. If he had I should have made him think he +had fallen in with a herd of the wild jackasses of Abyssinia." + + + + +LVII + + +Mention of Loring's experience reminds me of an amusing one of my own +that occurred a little later. In the autumn of 1886 I made a leisurely +journey with my wife across the continent to California, Oregon, Mexico, +and all parts of the golden West. On an equally leisurely return journey +we took a train at Marshall, Texas, for New Orleans, over the ruins of +the Texas and Pacific Railroad, which Jay Gould had recently "looted to +the limit," as a banker described it. Besides myself, my wife, and our +child, the only passengers on the solitary buffet sleeping car were Mr. +Ziegenfust of the San Francisco _Chronicle_, and a young lady who put +herself under my wife's chaperonage. If Mr. Ziegenfust had not been +there to bear out my statements I should never have told the story of +what happened. + +There was no conductor for the sleeping car--only a negro porter who +acted as factotum. When I undertook to arrange with him for my sleeping +car accommodations, I offered him a gold piece, for in drawing money +from a San Francisco bank for use on the return journey, I had received +only gold. + +The negro seemed startled as I held out the coin. + +"I can't take dat, boss," he said. "'Taint worf nuffin." + +I made an effort to explain to him that American gold coin was not only +the supreme standard by which all values were measured in this country, +but that as mere metal it was worth the sum stamped upon it in any part +of the earth. Mr. Ziegenfust supported me in these statements, but our +combined assurances made no impression upon the porter's mind. He +perfectly knew that gold coin was as worthless as dead forest leaves, +and he simply would not take the twenty-dollar piece offered him. + +We decided that the poor fellow was a fool, and after a search through +all the pockets on the car we managed to get together the necessary +number of dollars in greenbacks with which to pay for my accommodations. +As for what we might want to eat from the buffet--for there were no +dining cars in those days--the porter assured me he would "trust me" +till we should get to New Orleans, and call upon me at my hotel to +receive his pay. + +Next morning we found ourselves stranded at Plaquemine, by reason of a +train wreck a few miles ahead. Plaquemine is the center of the district +to which the banished Acadians of Longfellow's story fled for refuge, +and most of the people there claim descent from Evangeline, in jaunty +disregard of the fact that that young lady of the long ago was never +married. But Plaquemine is a thriving provincial town, and when I +learned that we must lie there, wreck-bound, for at least six hours, +I thought I saw my opportunity. I went out into the town to get some of +my gold pieces converted into greenbacks. + +[Sidenote: "A Stranded Gold Bug"] + +To my astonishment I found everybody there like-minded with the negro +porter of my sleeping car. They were all convinced that American gold +coin was a thing of no value, and for reason they told me that "the +government has went back on it." It was in vain for me to protest that +the government had nothing to do with determining the value of a gold +piece except to certify its weight and fineness; that the piece of gold +was intrinsically worth its face as mere metal, and all the rest of the +obvious facts of the case. These people knew that "the government has +went back on gold"--that was the phrase all of them used--and they would +have none of it. + +In recognition of the superior liberality of mind concerning financial +matters that distinguishes the barkeeper from all other small tradesmen, +I went into the saloon of the principal hotel of the town, and said to +the man of multitudinous bottles: + +"It's rather early in the morning, but some of these gentlemen," waving +my hand toward the loafers on the benches, "may be thirsty. I'll be +glad to 'set 'em up' for the company if you'll take your pay out of a +twenty-dollar gold piece and give me change for it." + +There was an alert and instant response from the "gentlemen" of the +benches, who promptly aligned themselves before the bar and stood ready +to "name their drinks," but the barkeeper shook his head. + +"Stranger," he said, "if you must have a drink you can have it and +welcome. But I can't take gold money. 'Taint worth nothin'. You see the +government has went back on it." + +I declined the gratuitous drink he so generously offered, and took my +departure, leaving the "gentlemen" of the benches thirsty. + +Finally, I went to the principal merchant of the place, feeling certain +that he at least knew the fundamental facts of money values. I explained +my embarrassment and asked him to give me greenbacks for one or more of +my gold pieces. + +He was an exceedingly courteous and kindly person. He said to me in +better English than I had heard that morning: + +"Well, you may not know it, but the government has gone back on +gold, so that we don't know what value it may have. But I can't let a +stranger leave our town under such embarrassment as yours seems to be, +particularly as you have your wife and child with you. I'll give you +currency for one of your gold pieces, and _take my chances of getting +something for the coin_." + +I tried to explain finance to him, and particularly the insignificance +of the government's relation to the intrinsic value of gold coin, but +my words made no impression upon his mind. I could only say, therefore, +that I would accept his hospitable offer to convert one of my coins into +greenbacks, with the assurance that I should not think of doing so if +I did not perfectly know that he took no risk whatever in making the +exchange. + +In New Orleans I got an explanation of this curious scare. When the +Civil War broke out there was a good deal of gold coin in circulation +in the Plaquemine region. During and after the war the coins passed +freely and frequently from hand to hand, particularly in cotton buying +transactions. Not long before the time of my visit, some merchants in +Plaquemine had sent a lot of this badly worn gold to New Orleans in +payment of duties on imported goods--a species of payment which was +then, foolishly, required to be made in gold alone. The customs officers +had rejected this Plaquemine gold, because it was worn to light weight. +Hence the conviction in Plaquemine that the government had "went back" +on gold. + +[Sidenote: Results of a Bit of Humor] + +At that time the principal subject of discussion in Congress and the +newspapers was the question of free silver coinage, the exclusive gold +standard of values, or a double standard, and all the rest of it, and +those who contended for an exclusive gold standard were stigmatized as +"gold bugs." + +I was then editor-in-chief of the _New York Commercial Advertiser_, and +in my absence my brilliant young friend, Henry Marquand, was in charge +of the paper. Thinking to amuse our readers I sent him a playful letter +recounting these Plaquemine experiences, and he published it under the +title of "A Stranded Goldbug." + +The humor of the situation described was so obvious and so timely that +my letter was widely copied throughout the country, and a copy of it +fell into the hands of a good but too serious-minded kinswoman of mine, +an active worker in the W. C. T. U. She was not interested in the humor +of my embarrassment, but she wrote me a grieved and distressed letter, +asking how I could ever have gone into the saloon of that Plaquemine +hotel, or any other place where alcoholic beverages were sold, and much +else to the like effect. I was reminded of Loring's experience, and was +left to wonder how large a proportion of those who had read my letter +had missed the humor of the matter in their shocked distress over the +fact that by entering a hotel café I had lent my countenance to the sale +of beer and the like. + +I had not then learned, as I have since done, how exceedingly and +even exigently sensitive consciences of a certain class are as to such +matters. Not many years ago I published a boys' book about a flat-boat +voyage down the Mississippi. At New Orleans a commission merchant, +anxious to give the country boys as much as he could of enjoyment in the +city, furnished tickets and bade them "go to the opera to-night and hear +some good music." Soon after the book came out my publishers wrote me +that they had a Sunday School Association's order for a thousand copies +of the book, but that it was conditioned upon our willingness to change +the word "opera" to "concert" in the sentence quoted. + + + + +LVIII + + +As a literary adviser of the Harpers, I very earnestly urged them to +publish Mrs. Custer's "Boots and Saddles." In my "opinion" recommending +its acceptance, I said that their other readers would probably be +unanimous in advising its rejection, and would offer excellent reasons +in support of that advice. I added that those very reasons were the +promptings of my advice to the contrary. + +When all the opinions were in--all but mine being adverse--Mr. Joe +Harper sent copies of them to me, asking me to read them carefully and, +after consideration, to report whether or not I still adhered to my +opinion in favor of the book. I promptly replied that I did, giving my +reasons, which were based mainly on the very considerations urged by the +other readers in behalf of rejection. In my earnestness I ventured, as +I had never done before, upon a prediction. I said that in my opinion +the book would reach a sale of twenty thousand copies--a figure then +considered very great for the sale of any current book. + +[Sidenote: "Boots and Saddles"] + +A month after "Boots and Saddles" was published, I happened to be in +the Harper offices, and Mr. Joe Harper beckoned me to him. With a very +solemn countenance, which did not hide the twinkle in his eye, he said: + +"Of course, when you make a cock-sure prediction as to the sale of a +book, and we accept it on the strength of your enthusiastic advice, we +expect you to make the failure good." + +"To what book do you refer?" I asked. + +"Mrs. Custer's. You predicted a sale of twenty thousand for it, and it +has now been out a full month and----" + +"What are the figures for the first month, Mr. Harper?" I interrupted. + +"Well, what do you think? It is the first month that sets the pace, you +know. What's your guess?" + +"Ten thousand," I ventured. + +"What? Of that book? In its first month? Are you a rainbow chaser?" + +I had caught the glint in his eye, and so I responded: + +"Oh, well, if that guess is so badly out I'll double it, and say twenty +thousand." + +"Do you mean that--seriously?" he asked. + +"Yes, quite seriously. So seriously that I'll agree to pay the royalties +on all copies short of twenty thousand, if you'll agree to give me a sum +equal to the royalties on all copies sold in excess of that number." + +He chuckled inwardly but audibly. Then, picking up a paper from his +desk, he passed it to me, saying; + +"Look. There are the figures." + +The sales had amounted to some hundred more than the twenty thousand I +had guessed, and there were no indications of any early falling off of +the orders that were daily and hourly coming in. + +I mention this case of successful prediction because it gives me a text +for saying that ordinarily there is nothing so utterly impossible as +foresight, of any trustworthy sort, concerning the sale of a book. In +this case the fact that "Boots and Saddles" was the very unliterary, and +altogether winning tribute of a loving wife to her dead hero husband, +afforded a secure ground of prediction. The book appealed to sentiments +with which every human heart--coarse or refined, high, low, or middle +class--is in eternal sympathy. Ordinarily there is no such secure ground +upon which to base a prediction of success for any book. The plate-room +of every publisher is the graveyard of a multitude of books that +promised well but died young, and the plates are their headstones. Every +publisher has had experiences that convince him of the impossibility of +discovering beforehand what books will sell well and what will "die +a-borning." Every publisher has had books of his publishing succeed far +beyond his expectations, and other books fail, on the success of which +he had confidently reckoned. And the worst of it is that the quality of +a book seems to have little or nothing to do with the matter, one way or +the other. + +One night at the Authors Club, I sat with a group of prolific and +successful authors, and as a matter of curious interest I asked each of +them to say how far their own and their publishers' anticipations with +respect to the comparative success of their several books had been borne +out by the actual sales. Almost every one of them had a story to tell of +disappointment with the books that were most confidently expected to +succeed, and of the success of other books that had been regarded as +least promising. + +The experience is as old as literature itself, doubtless. Thomas +Campbell came even to hate his "Pleasures of Hope," because its fame +completely overshadowed that of "Gertrude of Wyoming" and some other +poems of his which he regarded as immeasurably superior to that work. +He resented the fact that in introducing him or otherwise mentioning +him everybody added to his name the phrase "Author of the 'Pleasures of +Hope,'" and he bitterly predicted that when he died somebody would carve +that detested legend upon his tombstone. In the event, somebody did. + +A lifelong intimate of George Eliot once told me that bitterness was +mingled with the wine of applause in her cup, because, as she said: +"A stupid public persists in neglecting my poems, which are far superior +to anything I ever wrote in prose." + +In the same way such fame as Thomas Dunn English won, rested mainly upon +the song of "Ben Bolt." Yet one day during his later years I heard him +angrily say in response to some mention of that song: "Oh, damn 'Ben +Bolt.' It rides me like an incubus." + + + + +LIX + + +[Sidenote: Letters of Introduction] + +While I was conducting my literary shop at home, there came to me many +persons bearing letters of introduction which I was in courtesy bound +to honor. Some of these brought literary work of an acceptable sort for +me to do. Through them a number--perhaps a dozen or so--of books were +brought to me to edit, and in the course of the work upon such books +I made a few familiar friends, whose intimacy in my household was a +pleasure to me and my family while the friends in question lived. They +are all dead now--or nearly all. + +But mainly the bearers of letters of introduction who came to me at +that time were very worthy persons who wanted to do literary work, but +had not the smallest qualification for it. Some of them had rejected +manuscripts which they were sure that I, "with my influence," could +easily market to the replenishment of their emaciated purses. For the +conviction that the acceptance of manuscripts goes chiefly by favor +is ineradicable from the amateur literary mind. I have found it quite +useless to explain to such persons that favor has nothing to do with +the matter, that every editor and every publisher is always and eagerly +alert to discern new writers of promise and to exploit them. The persons +to whom these truths are told, simply do not believe them. They _know_ +that their own stories or essays or what not, are far superior to those +accepted and published. Every one of their friends has assured them +of that, and their own consciousness confirms the judgment. Scores of +them have left my library in full assurance that I was a member of some +"literary ring," that was organized to exclude from publication the +writings of all but the members of the ring. It was idle to point out +to them the introduction of Saxe Holm, of Constance Fenimore Woolson, of +Mrs. Custer, of Charles Egbert Craddock, or of any other of a dozen or +more new writers who had recently come to the front. They were assured +that each of these had enjoyed the benefits of "pull" of some sort. + +One charming young lady of the "Society" sort brought me half a dozen +letters of introduction from persons of social prominence, urging her +upon my attention. She had written a "Society novel," she told me, and +she wanted to get it published. She was altogether too well informed +as to publishing conditions, to send her manuscript to any publisher +without first securing "influence" in its behalf. She was perfectly well +aware that I was a person possessed of influence, and so she had come to +me. Wouldn't I, for a consideration, secure the acceptance of her novel +by some reputable house? + +I told her that "for a consideration"--namely, fifty dollars--I would +read her manuscript and give her a judgment upon its merits, after which +she might offer it to any publisher she saw fit, and that that was all +I could do for her. + +[Sidenote: The Disappointment of Lily Browneyes] + +"But you are 'on the inside' at Harpers'," she replied, "and of course +your verdict is conclusive with them." + +"In some cases it is," I answered. "It has proved to be so in one +peculiar case. I recently sold the Harpers a serial story of my own for +their _Young People_. Afterwards a story of Captain Kirk Munroe's came +to me for judgment. It covered so nearly the same ground that mine did, +that both could not be used. But his story seemed to me so much better +than my own, for the use proposed, that I advised the Harpers to accept +it and return to me my own already accepted manuscript. They have acted +upon my advice and I am a good many hundreds of dollars out of pocket in +consequence. Now, my dear Miss Browneyes," I added, "you see upon what +my influence with the Harpers rests. In so far as they accept literary +productions upon my advice, they do so simply because they know that my +advice is honest and represents my real judgment of the merits of things +offered for publication. If I should base my recommendations upon any +other foundation than that of integrity and an absolutely sincere +critical judgment, I should soon have no more influence with the +Harpers than any truckman in the streets can command. I will read your +manuscript and give you my honest opinion of it, for fifty dollars, if +you wish me to do so. But I do not advise you to do that. Judging of it +in advance, from what I have seen of you, and from what I know of the +limitations of the Society life you have led, I strongly advise you +not to waste fifty dollars of your father's money in that way. It is +scarcely conceivable that with your very limited knowledge of life, and +your carefully restricted outlook, you can have written a novel of any +value whatever. You had better save your fifty dollars to help pay for +your next love of a bonnet." + +"I'm awfully disappointed," she said. "You see it would be so nice to +have all my Society friends talking about 'Lily Browneyes's book,' and +perhaps that ought to be considered. You see almost every one of my +Society friends would buy the book 'just to see what that little +chatterbox, Lily Browneyes, has found to write about.' I should think, +that would make the fortune of the book." + +"How many Society friends have you, Miss Browneyes?" I asked. + +"Oh, heaps of them--scores--dead oodles and scads of 'em, as we girls +say." + +"But really, how many?" I persisted. "Suppose your book were published, +how many of your Society friends could you confidently reckon upon as +probable purchasers? Here's paper and a pencil. Suppose you set down +their names and tot them up." + +She eagerly undertook the task, and after half an hour she had a list +of forty-odd persons who would pretty surely buy the book--"if they +couldn't borrow it," she added. + +I explained the matter to her somewhat--dwelling upon the fact that +a sale of two thousand copies would barely reimburse the publisher's +outlay. + +She said I had been "very nice" to her, but on the whole she decided +to accept my advice and not pay me fifty dollars for a futile reading +of the manuscript. I was glad of that. For it seemed like breaking a +butterfly to disappoint so charming a young girl. + +The letters Lily Browneyes brought me had at least the merit of +sincerity. They were meant to help her accomplish her purpose, and +not as so many letters of the kind are, to get rid of importunity by +shifting it to the shoulders of some one else. I remember something +that illustrates my meaning. + +I presided, many years ago, at a banquet given by the Authors Club to +Mr. William Dean Howells. Nothing was prearranged. There was no schedule +of toasts in my hand, no list of speakers primed to respond to them. +With so brilliant a company to draw upon I had no fear as to the results +of calling up the man I wanted, without warning. + +In the course of the haphazard performance, it occurred to me that we +ought to have a speech from some publisher, and accordingly I called +upon Mr. J. Henry Harper--"Harry Harper," we who knew and loved him +called him. + +His embarrassment was positively painful to behold. He made no attempt +whatever to respond but appealed to me to excuse him. + +[Sidenote: Mark Twain's Method] + +At that point Mark Twain came to the rescue by offering to make Mr. +Harper's speech for him. "I'm a publisher myself," he explained, +"and I'll speak for the publishers." + +A roar of applause welcomed the suggestion, and Mr. Clemens proceeded to +make the speech. In the course of it he spoke of the multitude of young +authors who beset every publisher and beseech him for advice after he +has explained that their manuscripts are "not available" for publication +by his own firm, with its peculiar limitations. Most publishers cruelly +refuse, he said, to do anything for these innocents. "I never do that," +he added. "I always give them good advice, and more than that, I always +do something for them--_I give them notes of introduction to Gilder_." + +I am persuaded that many scores of the notes of introduction brought to +me have been written in precisely that spirit of helpless helpfulness. + +Sometimes, however, letters of introduction, given thoughtlessly, are +productive of trouble far more serious than the mere waste of a busy +man's time. It is a curious fact that most persons stand ready to give +letters of introduction upon acquaintance so slender that they would +never think of personally introducing the two concerned, or personally +vouching for the one to whom the letter is given. + +When I was editing _Hearth and Home_ Theodore Tilton gave a young +Indiana woman a letter of introduction to me. He afterwards admitted to +me that he knew nothing whatever about the young woman. + +"But what can one do in such a case?" he asked. "She was charming and +she wanted to know you; she was interested in you as a Hoosier +writer"--the Indiana school of literature had not established itself at +that early day--"and when she learned that I knew you well she asked for +a letter of introduction. What could I do? Could I say to her, 'My dear +young lady, I know very little about you, and my friend, George Cary +Eggleston, is so innocent and unsophisticated a person that I dare not +introduce you to him without some certificate of character?' No. I +could only give her the letter she wanted, trusting you to discount any +commendatory phrases it might contain, in the light of your acquaintance +with the ways of a world in which letters of introduction are taken +with grains of salt. Really, if I mean to commend one person to +another, I always send a private letter to indorse my formal letter +of introduction, and to assure my friend that there are no polite lies +in it." + +[Sidenote: Some Dangerous Letters of Introduction] + +In this case the young woman did nothing very dreadful. Her character +was doubtless above reproach and her reformatory impulses were no more +offensive than reformatory impulses that concern others usually are. +My only complaint of her was that she condemned me without a hearing, +giving me no opportunity to say why sentence should not be pronounced +upon me. + +In her interview, she was altogether charming. She was fairly well +acquainted with literature, and was keenly appreciative of it. We talked +for an hour on such subjects, and then she went away. A week or so +later she sent me a copy of the Indiana newspaper for which she was a +correspondent. In it was a page interview with me in which all that I +had said and a great deal that I had not said was set forth in detail. +There was also a graphic description of my office surroundings. Among +these surroundings was my pipe, which lay "naked and not ashamed" on my +desk. Referring to it, the young woman wrote that one saddening thing +in her visit to me was the discovery that "this gifted young man is a +victim of the tobacco habit." + +Worse still, she emphasized that lamentable discovery in her headlines, +and made so much of her compassionate regret that if I had been an +inmate of a lunatic asylum, demented by the use of absinthe or morphine, +her pity could hardly have been more active. + +I do not know that this exhibition of reformatory ill manners did me any +serious harm, but it annoyed me somewhat. + +When I was serving as literary editor of the _Evening Post_, a very +presentable person came to me bearing a note of introduction from +Richard Henry Stoddard. Mr. Stoddard introduced the gentleman as James +R. Randall, author of "My Maryland" and at that time editor of a +newspaper in Augusta, Georgia. Mr. Randall was a person whom I very +greatly wanted to know, but it was late on a Saturday afternoon, and +I had an absolutely peremptory engagement that compelled me to quit the +office immediately. Accordingly, I invited the visitor to dine with me +at my house the next day, Sunday, and he accepted. + +Sunday came and the dinner was served, but Mr. Randall was not there. +Next morning I learned that on the plea of Saturday afternoon and closed +banks he had borrowed thirty-five dollars from one of my fellow-editors +before leaving. This, taken in connection with his failure to keep his +dinner engagement with me, aroused suspicion. I telegraphed to Augusta, +asking the newspaper with which Mr. Randall was editorially connected +whether or not Mr. Randall was in New York. Mr. Randall himself replied +saying that he was not in New York and requesting me to secure the +arrest of any person trying to borrow money or get checks cashed in his +name. He added: "When I travel I make my financial arrangements in +advance and don't borrow money of friends or strangers." + +When I notified Stoddard of the situation, so that he might not commend +his friend, "Mr. Randall," to others, I expressed the hope that he had +not himself lent the man any money. In reply he said: + +"Lent him money? Why, my dear George Cary Eggleston, what a creative +imagination you must have! 'You'd orter 'a' been a poet.' Still, if +I had had any money, as of course I hadn't, I should have lent it +to him freely. As he didn't ask for it--probably he knew my chronic +impecuniosity too well to do that--I didn't know he was 'on the borrow.' +Anyhow, I'm going to run him to earth." + +[Sidenote: Moses and My Green Spectacles] + +And he did. It appeared in the outcome that the man had called upon +Edmund Clarence Stedman, bearing a letter from Sidney Lanier--forged, of +course. Stedman had taken him out to lunch and then, as he expressed +a wish to meet the literary men of the town, had given him a note of +introduction to Stoddard together with several other such notes to +men of letters, which were never delivered. The man proved to be the +"carpetbag" ex-Governor Moses, who had looted the state of South Carolina +to an extent that threatened the bankruptcy of that commonwealth. He had +saved little if anything out of his plunderings, and, returning to the +North, had entered upon a successful career as a "confidence man." He +was peculiarly well-equipped for the part. Sagacious, well-informed, +educated, and possessed of altogether pleasing manners, he succeeded +in imposing himself upon the unsuspecting for many years. At last, some +years after my first encounter with him, he was "caught in the act" +of swindling, and sent for a term to the Massachusetts state prison. + +On his release, at the end of his sentence, he resumed his old business +of victimizing the unsuspicious--among whom I was one. It was only +a few years ago when he rang my door bell and introduced himself as a +confidential employee of the Lothrop Publishing Company of Boston, who +were my publishers. He had seen me, he said, during the only visit I had +ever made to the offices of the company, but had not had the pleasure +of an introduction. Being in New York he had given himself the pleasure +of calling, the more because he wished to consult me concerning the +artistic make-up of a book I then had in preparation at the Lothrops'. + +His face seemed familiar to me, a fact which I easily accounted for on +the theory that I must have seen him during my visit to the publishing +house. For the rest he was a peculiarly agreeable person, educated, +refined, and possessed of definite ideas. We smoked together, and as +an outcome of the talk about cigars, I gave him something unusual. +An indiscreetly lavish friend of mine had given me a box of gigantic +cigars, each of which was encased in a glass tube, and each of which had +cost a dollar. I was so pleased with my visitor that I gave him one of +these, saying that it didn't often happen to a man who had anything to +do with literature to smoke a dollar cigar. + +At the end of his visit he somewhat casually mentioned the fact that +he and his wife were staying at the Astor House, adding: + +"We were anxious to leave for Boston by a late train to-night but I find +it impracticable to do so. I've suffered myself to run short of money +and my wife has made the matter worse by indulging in an indiscreet +shopping tour to-day. I have telegraphed to Boston for a remittance and +must wait over till it comes to-morrow. It is a very great annoyance, +as I am needed in Boston to-morrow, but there is no help for it." + +I asked him how much money was absolutely necessary to enable him to +leave by the late train, which there was still time to catch, and after +a moment of mental figuring, he fixed upon the sum of sixteen dollars +and fifty cents as sufficient. + +It was Sunday night and I had only a dollar or so in my pocket, but with +a keenly realizing sense of his embarrassment, I drew upon my wife's +little store of household change, and made up the sum required. He +seemed very grateful for the accommodation, but before leaving he asked +me to let him take one of those dollar cigars, to show to a friend in +Boston. + +About half an hour after he had left, I suddenly remembered him and +identified him as Moses--ex-carpetbag governor of South Carolina, +ex-convict, and _never_ ex-swindler. A few calls over the telephone +confirmed my conviction and my memory fully sustained my recollection +of the man. A day or two later he was arrested in connection with an +attempted swindle, but I did not bother to follow him up. I acted upon +the dictum of one of the most successful men I ever knew, that "it's +tomfoolery to send good money after bad." + + + + +LX + + +[Sidenote: English Literary Visitors] + +It was during the period of my withdrawal from newspaper work that Mr. +Edmund Gosse made his first visit to this country. At that time he had +not yet made the reputation he has since achieved for scholarship and +literary accomplishment. As a scholar he was young and promising rather +than a man of established reputation. As a writer he was only beginning +to be known. But he was an Englishman of letters and an agreeable +gentleman, wherefore we proceeded to dine him and wine him and make much +of him--all of which helped the success of his lecture course. + +I interrupt myself at this point to say that we do these things more +generously and more lavishly than our kin beyond sea ever think of +doing them. With the exception of Mark Twain, no living American author +visiting England is ever received with one-half, or one-quarter, or +one-tenth the attention that Americans have lavished upon British +writers of no greater consequence than our own. If Irving Bacheller, or +Charles Egbert Craddock, or Post Wheeler, or R. W. Chambers, or Miss +Johnston, or Will Harben, or Thomas Nelson Page, or James Whitcomb +Riley, or any other of a score that might be easily named should visit +London, does anybody imagine that he or she would receive even a small +fraction of the attention we have given to Sarah Grand, Mr. Yeats, Max +O'Rell, B. L. Farjeon, Mrs. Humphry Ward, Mr. Locke, and others? Would +even Mr. Howells be made to feel that he was appreciated there as much +as many far inferior English writers have been in New York? Are we +helplessly provincial or hopelessly snobbish? Or is it that our English +literary visitors make more skilful use of the press agent's peculiar +gifts? Or is it, perhaps, that we are more generous and hospitable than +the English? + +Mr. Gosse, at any rate, was worthy of all the attention he received, and +his later work has fully justified it, so that nothing in the vagrant +paragraph above is in any way applicable to him. + +Mr. Gosse had himself carefully "coached" before he visited America. +When he came to us he knew what every man of us had done in literature, +art, science, or what not, and so far he made no mistakes either of +ignorance or of misunderstanding. + +"Bless my soul!" said James R. Osgood to me at one of the breakfasts, +luncheons or banquets given to the visitor, "he has committed every +American publishers' catalogue to memory, and knows precisely where each +of you fellows stands." + +Upon one point, however, Mr. Gosse's conceptions were badly awry. He +bore the Civil War in mind, and was convinced that its bitternesses were +still an active force in our social life. One night at the Authors Club +I was talking with him when my brother Edward came up to us and joined +in the conversation. Mr. Gosse seemed surprised and even embarrassed. +Presently he said: + +"It's extremely gratifying, you know, but this is a surprise to me. I +understand that you two gentlemen held opposite views during the war, +and one of the things my mentors in England most strongly insisted upon +was that I should never mention either of you in talking with the other. +It is very gratifying to find that you are on terms with each other." + +"On terms?" said Edward. "Why, Geordie and I have always been twins. +I was born two years earlier than he was, but we've been twin brothers +nevertheless, all our lives. You see, we were born almost exactly on +the line between the North and the South, and one fell over to one side +and the other to the other. But there was never anything but affection +between us." + +[Sidenote: An Amusing Misconception] + +On another occasion Mr. Joe Harper gave a breakfast to Mr. Gosse at +the University Club. There were seventy or eighty guests--too many for +anything like intimate converse. To remedy this Mr. Harper asked about a +dozen of us to remain after the function was over, gather around him at +the head of the table--tell all the stories we could remember, and "give +Mr. Gosse a real insight into our ways of thinking," he said. + +Gordon McCabe and I were in the group, and Mr. Gosse, knowing perfectly +what each of us had written, knew, of course, that McCabe and I had +fought on the Southern side during the Civil War. If he had not known +the fact in that way he must have discovered it from the stories we told +of humorous happenings in the Confederate service. Yet here we were, on +the most cordial terms with men who had been on the other side. It was +all a bewildering mystery to Mr. Gosse, and presently he ventured to ask +about it. + +"Pardon me," he said to Mr. Harper, "it is all very gratifying, I'm +sure, but I don't quite understand. I think Mr. Eggleston and Mr. McCabe +were in active service on the Southern side during the war?" + +"Yes," answered Mr. Harper, "and they have told us all about it in +their books." + +"And the rest of you gentlemen sided with the North?" + +"Yes." + +"Well, it's very gratifying, of course, but it is astonishing to a +stranger to find you all on such terms of friendship again." + +"Isn't it?" broke in Mr. Harper. "Here we are, having champagne together +quite like old friends, while we all know that only a dozen years or so +ago, McCabe and Eggleston were down there at Petersburg trying with all +their might to _kill our substitutes_." + +The company laughed heartily at the witticism. Mr. Gosse smiled and a +little later, in an aside, he asked me to explain just what Mr. Harper +had meant by "substitutes." + +Mr. Gosse left a sweet taste in our mouths when he sailed for home. +The attentions he had received here had in no way spoiled him. From +beginning to end of his stay he never once manifested the least feeling +of superiority, and never once did his manner suggest that British +condescension, which is at once so amusing and so insulting to +Americans. The same thing was true of Matthew Arnold, who, I remember, +made himself a most agreeable guest at a reception the Authors Club +gave him in the days of its extreme poverty. But not all English men +of letters whom I have met have been like-minded with these. A certain +fourth- or fifth-rate English novelist, who was made the guest of honor +at a dinner at the Lotus Club, said to me, as I very well remember: +"Of course you have no literature of your own and you must depend for +your reading matter upon us at home." The use of "at home" meaning +"in England," was always peculiarly offensive in my ears, but my +interlocutor did not recognize its offensiveness. "But really, you know, +your people ought to pay for it." + +He was offering this argument to me in behalf of international +copyright, my interest in which was far greater than his own. For +because of the competition of ten-cent reprints of English books, I was +forbidden to make a living by literature and compelled to serve as a +hired man on a newspaper instead. + +A few of our English literary visitors have come to us with the modest +purposes of the tourist, interested in what our country is and means. +The greater number have come to exploit the country "for what there +is in it," by lecturing. Their lecture managers have been alert and +exceedingly successful in making advertising agencies of our clubs, our +social organizations, and even our private parlors, by way of drawing +money into the purses of their clients. + +[Sidenote: A Question of Provincialism] + +Did anybody ever hear of an American author of equal rank with these +going to England on a lecture or reading tour, and getting himself +advertised by London clubs and in London drawing-rooms in the like +fashion? And if any American author--even one of the highest +rank--should try to do anything of the sort, would his bank account +swell in consequence as those of our British literary visitors do? Are +we, after all, provincial? Have we not yet achieved our intellectual and +social independence? + +I am persuaded that some of us have, though not many. One night at a +club I asked Brander Matthews if I should introduce him to a second-rate +English man of letters who had been made a guest of the evening. He +answered: + +"No--unless you particularly wish it, I'd rather talk to you and the +other good fellows here. He hasn't anything to say that would interest +me, unless it is something he has put into the lectures he's going to +deliver, and he can't afford to waste on us any of that small stock of +interesting things." + +But as a people, have we outgrown our provincialism? Have we achieved +our intellectual independence? Have we learned to value our own +judgments, our own thinking, our own convictions independently of +English approval or disapproval? I fear we have not, even in criticism. +When the novel "Democracy" appeared I wrote a column or two about it in +the _Evening Post_, treating it as a noteworthy reflection of our own +life, political and social--not very great but worthy of attention. +The impulse of my article was that the literature of a country should +be a showing forth of its life, its thought, its inspirations, its +aspirations, its character, its strength, and its weaknesses. That +anonymous novel seemed to me to be a reflection of all these things in +some degree and I said so in print. All the other newspapers of the +country dismissed the book in brief paragraphs, quite as if it had had +no distinctive literary quality of its own. But a year or so later the +English critics got hold of the novel and wrote of it as a thing of +significance and consequence. Thereupon, the American newspapers that +had before given it a paragraph or so of insignificant reference, took +it up again and reviewed it as a book that meant something, evidently +forgetting that they had ever seen it before. + +This is only one of many incidents of criticism that I might relate in +illustration of the hurtful, crippling, paralyzing provincialism that +afflicts and obstructs our literary development. + +A few years ago the principal of a great and very ambitious preparatory +school whose function it was to fit young men for college, sent me his +curriculum "for criticism," he said,--for approval, I interpreted. He +set forth quite an elaborate course in what he called "The Literature of +the English Language." Upon looking it over I found that not one American +book was mentioned in the whole course of it, either as a required study +or as "collateral reading"--a title under which a multitude of second- or +third-rate English works were set down. + +For criticism I suggested that to the American boy who was expected to +become an American man of culture, some slight acquaintance with Irving, +Hawthorne, Emerson, Motley, Prescott, Longfellow, Holmes, Whittier, Poe, +Parkman, Lowell, Mark Twain, Mr. Howells, Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, Paul +Hayne, Sidney Lanier, James Whitcomb Riley, Bret Harte, John Hay, and +some other American writers might really be of greater advantage than +familiarity with many of the English authors named. + +His answer was conclusive and profoundly discouraging. It was his +function, he said, to prepare boys for their entrance examinations in +our great colleges and universities, "and not one of these," he added, +"names an American author in its requirement list." + +I believe the colleges have since that time recognized American +literature in some small degree, at least, though meagerly and with no +adequate recognition of the fact that a nation's literature is the voice +with which it speaks not only to other countries and to posterity but to +its own people in its own time, and that acquaintance with it ministers, +as no other scholarship does, to good, helpful, patriotic citizenship. + +[Sidenote: A Library Vandal] + +One of the English writers who came to this country possibly for his own +country's good, gave me some trouble. I was editing _Hearth and Home_ at +the time, and he brought me for sale a number of unusually good things, +mainly referring to matters French and Italian. He was absolute master +of the languages of both those countries, and his acquaintance with +their literature, classical, medieval, and modern, was so minute that he +knew precisely where to find any literary matter that seemed salable. +With a thrift admirable in itself, though misdirected, it was his +practice to go to the Astor Library, find what he wanted in rare books +or precious foreign newspaper files, translate it, and then tear out and +destroy the pages he had plundered. In that irregular fashion he made +quite a literary reputation for himself, though after detection he had +to retire to Philadelphia, under the orders of Mr. Saunders, Librarian +of the Astor Library, who decreed banishment for him as the alternative +of prosecution for the mutilation of books. + +He carried the thing so far, at last, that I regarded it as my duty +to expose him, and I did so in my capacity as literary editor of the +_Evening Post_. I was instantly threatened with a libel suit, but the +man who was to bring it left at once on a yachting trip to the West +Indies, and so far as I can learn has never reappeared either in America +or in Literature. It is one of the abiding regrets of my life that the +papers in that libel suit were never served upon me. + + + + +LXI + + +In the autumn of 1882 a little group of literary men, assembled around +Richard Watson Gilder's fireside, decided to organize an Authors Club +in New York. They arranged for the drafting of a tentative constitution +and issued invitations for twenty-five of us to meet a little later at +Lawrence Hutton's house in Thirty-fourth Street to organize the club. + +We met there on the 13th of November and, clause by clause, adopted a +constitution. + +It was obvious in that little assemblage itself, that some such +organization of authors was badly needed in New York. For, though there +were only twenty-five of us there, all selected by the originating +company, every man of us had to be introduced to some at least of the +others present. The men of letters in New York did not know each other. +They were beset by unacquaintance, prejudices, senseless antagonisms, +jealousies, amounting in some cases to hatreds. They had need to be +drawn together in a friendly organization, in which they could learn to +know and like and appreciate each other. + +[Sidenote: The Founding of the Authors Club] + +So great were the jealousies and ambitions to which I have referred that +early in the meeting Mr. Gilder--I think it was he--called three or four +of us into a corner and suggested that there was likely to be a fight +for the presidency of the club, and that it might result in the defeat +of the entire enterprise. At Mr. Gilder's suggestion, or that of some +one else--I cannot be sure because all of us in that corner were in +accord--it was decided that there should be no president of the club, +that the government should be vested in an executive council, and that +at each of its meetings the council should choose its own chairman. In +later and more harmonious years, since the men of the club have become +an affectionate brotherhood, it has been the custom for the council to +elect its chairman for a year, and usually to reëlect him for another +year. But at the beginning we had conditions to guard against that no +longer exist--now that the literary men of New York know and mightily +like each other. + +The eligibility clause of the constitution as experimentally drawn up +by the committee, prescribed that in order to be eligible a man must be +the author of "at least one book proper to literature," or--and there +followed a clause covering the case of magazine editors and the like. + +As a reader for a publishing house, I scented danger here. Half in play, +but in earnest also, I suggested that the authorship of at least one +book proper to literature would render pretty nearly the entire adult +male population of the United States eligible to membership in the +club, unless some requirement of publication were added. My manuscript +reading had seemed to me at least to suggest that, and, as a necessary +safeguard, I moved to insert the word "published" before the word +"book," and the motion was carried with the laughter of the knowing +for its accompaniment. + +The club was very modest in its beginnings. As its constituent members +were mainly persons possessed of no money, so the club had none. For a +time our meetings were held at the houses of members--Lawrence Hutton's, +Dr. Youmans's, Richard Grant White's, and so on. But as not all of us +were possessed of homes that lent themselves to such entertainment, we +presently began meeting at Sieghortner's and other restaurants. Then +came a most hospitable invitation from the Tile Club, offering us the +use of their quarters for our meetings. Their quarters consisted, in +fact, of a kitchen in the interior of a block far down town--I forget +the number of the street. The building served Edwin A. Abbey as a +studio--he had not made his reputation as an artist then--and the good +old Irishwoman who cared for the rooms lived above stairs with her +daughter for her sole companion. This daughter was Abbey's model, and +a portrait of her, painted by his hand, hung in the studio, with a +presentation legend attached. The portrait represented one of the most +beautiful girls I have ever seen. It was positively ravishing in its +perfection. One day I had occasion to visit the place to make some +club arrangement, and while there I met the young lady of the portrait. +She was of sandy complexion, freckled, and otherwise commonplace in an +extreme degree. Yet that exquisitely beautiful portrait that hung there +in its frame was an admirably faithful likeness of the girl, when one +studied the two faces closely. Abbey had not painted in the freckles; +he had chosen flesh tints of a more attractive sort than the sandiness +of the girl's complexion; he had put a touch of warmth into the +indeterminate color of her pale red hair; and above all, he had painted +intelligence and soul into her vacuous countenance. Yet the girl and the +portrait were absolutely alike in every physical detail. + +I have not wondered since to learn that the husbands of high-born +English dames, and the fathers of English maidens have been glad to pay +Abbey kings' ransoms for portraits of their womankind. Abbey has the +gift of interpretation, and I do not know of any greater gift. + +[Sidenote: Dime Novels] + +The rear building in which we met by virtue of the Tile Club's +hospitality was approached through an alleyway, or covered gallery +rather, concerning which there was a tradition that two suicides and +a murder had been committed within its confines. + +"How inspiring all that is!" said John Hay one night after the +traditions had been reported in a peculiarly prosaic fashion by a +writer of learned essays in psychology and the like, who had no more +imagination than an oyster brings to bear upon the tray on which it +is served. "It makes one long to write romantic tragedies, and lurid +dramas, and all that sort of thing," Mr. Hay went on. "I'm sorely +tempted to enter upon the career of the dime novelist." + +This set us talking of the dime novel, a little group of us assembled +in front of the fire. Some one started the talk by saying that the dime +novel was an entirely innocent and a very necessary form of literature. +There John Hay broke in, and Edwin Booth, who was also present, +sustained him. + +"The dime novel," Mr. Hay said, "is only a rude form of the story of +adventure. If Scott's novels had been sufficiently condensed to be sold +at the price, they would have been dime novels of the most successful +sort. Your boy wants thrill, heroics, tall talk, and deeds of +derring-do, and these are what the dime novelist gives him in abundance, +and even in lavish superabundance. I remember that the favorite book of +my own boyhood was J. B. Jones's 'Wild Western Scenes.' His 'Sneak' was +to me a hero of romance with whom Ivanhoe could in no way compare." + +"But dime novels corrupt the morals of boys," suggested some one of the +company. + +"Do they?" asked Mr. Hay. Then a moment later he asked: "Did you ever +read one of them?" + +The interrupter admitted that he had not. + +"Till you do," said Mr. Hay, "you should hesitate to pass judgment. The +moral standards of the dime novel are always of the highest. They are +even heroic in their insistence upon honor and self-sacrifice in behalf +of the right. They are as chivalric as the code of honor itself. There +is never anything unclean in the dime novel, never anything that even +squints at toleration of immorality. The man beset by foes is always +gallantly supported by resolute fellows with pistols in their hands +which they are ready to use in behalf of righteousness. The maiden +in trouble has champions galore, whose language may not always square +itself with Sunday School standards, but whose devotion to the task of +protecting innocence is altogether inspiring." + +"What about their literary quality?" asked some one in the group. + +"It is very bad, I suppose," answered Edwin Booth, "but that isn't the +quality they put to the front. I have read dozens, scores, hundreds of +them, and I have never challenged their literary quality, because that +is something to which they lay no claim. Their strength lies in dramatic +situations, and they abound in these. I must say that some of them are +far better, stronger, and more appealing than are many of those that +have made the fortune of successful plays." + +"Do you read them for the sake of the dramatic situations, Mr. Booth?" +some one asked. + +"No. I read them for the sake of sleep," he replied. "I read them just +as I play solitaire--to divert my mind and to bring repose to me." + + + + +LXII + + +[Sidenote: The Authors Club] + +It was not long after that that the Authors Club secured quarters +of its own in Twenty-fourth Street, and became an established social +organization. For it was never a literary club, but always strictly a +social one, having a literary basis of eligibility to membership. From +the beginning we refused to read papers at each other, or in any other +way to "improve our minds" on club evenings by any form of literary +exercise. As the carpenter, who dresses lumber and drives nails and +miters joints for his daily bread does not seek his evening recreation +by doing those things for amusement, so we who were all hard-working men +of letters, earning our living with the pen, had no mind to do as +amateurs that which we were daily and hourly doing as professionals. + +In the same way we decided at the outset to eschew every form of +propagandism. The club has had no cause to advocate, no doctrine to +promulgate, no "movement" to help or hinder. It has been and still is +strictly a social club composed of men of letters, and having for its +guests interesting men of all other professions. Hence it has prospered +and its members have become intimates with no trace or suggestion +of friction between them. I think I am safe in saying that no other +organization has done so much for the amelioration of the literary life, +the removal of prejudices and bitternesses and spites and jealousies, +and for the upbuilding of cordial friendship among writers. I think +there is no man in the club who doesn't count every other man there +his friend. + +The point emphasized above--that the club is a social, not a literary +organization--is important. Neglect of it has led to a good deal of +ill-informed and misdirected criticism. At the very beginning, on the +night of the club's organization, we made up a list of somewhat more than +a score of literary men who should be made members upon the invitation +of our Executive Council without the formality of proposal and election. +From that list we excluded--by unanimous vote--one man whose literary +work abundantly qualified him for membership, but whose cantankerous +self-satisfaction rendered him, in the general opinion, a man not +"clubbable." The trouble with him was not so much that he regarded +himself, as he once avowed in company that he did, as "a greater than +Shakespeare," but that he was disposed to quarrel with everybody who +failed to recognize the assumption as a fact. + +If ours had been a literary club, he must have been admitted to +membership without question. As it was a social club, we didn't want +him, and three several efforts that he afterwards made to secure +admission failed. The like has happened in the cases of two or three +other men whose literary work rendered them eligible, but whose personal +peculiarities did not commend them. + +Chiefly, however, the club has been criticised for its failure to admit +women to membership. Paul Leicester Ford said to me on that subject one +day: + +"I'll have nothing to do with your club. You arrogantly refuse to +admit women, though women are doing quite as much as men in American +literature." + +[Sidenote: Why Women Are Not Eligible] + +I explained several things to him. I reminded him that the Authors +Club set up no pretension to be completely representative of American +literary activity; that it was merely a club formed by gentlemen who +felt the need of it, for the purpose of bringing literary men together +for social intercourse over their pipes and sandwiches; that the +admission of women would of necessity defeat this solitary purpose, and +that their exclusion was no more a slight than that which he put upon +his nearest friends whenever he gave a dinner or a theater party to +which he could not invite everybody on his eligible list. Then I pointed +out another difficulty and a supreme one. If we should admit women on +the same terms of eligibility that we insisted upon in the case of men, +a host of writing women would become eligible, while our own wives and +daughters would in most cases be ineligible. If, in order to cover that +difficulty we should admit the wives and daughters of male members, we +should be obliged to admit also the husbands, sons, and fathers of our +female members, so that presently we should become a mob of men and +women, half or more of whom were ineligible under our original conception +of the club and its reason for being. There is also the consideration +that every club must and does exclude more than it includes; that in +requiring New England birth or descent for membership, the New England +Society excludes perhaps nine-tenths of the people of New York, while +without that requirement the Society would lose its distinctive +character and be no New England Society at all. + +Mr. Ford was so far convinced that he authorized me to propose his name +for membership, but before I had opportunity to do so, the tragedy that +ended his life had befallen. + +The club has found ways of marking its appreciation of the literary +equality of women without destroying its own essential being. In +February and March of each year it gives four afternoon receptions to +women. In so far as it can find them out, the club's Executive Council +invites to all of these receptions, besides the wives and daughters +of its own members, every woman in the land whose literary work would +render her eligible to membership if she were a man. In addition to +this, every member of the club has the privilege of inviting any other +women he pleases. + +I do not think the club is deficient in gallantry, nor do I find any such +thought prevalent among the pleasing throng of gentlewomen who honor us +by accepting our invitations. + +Our first quarters were meagerly furnished, of course. It took every +dollar we had to furnish them even in the plainest way. There was neither +a sofa nor an upholstered chair in our rooms. Cheap, straight-backed, +cane-seated chairs alone were there. One night when General Sherman was +a guest, some one apologized for our inability to offer him a more +comfortable seat. The sturdy old soldier always had an opinion ready +made to suit every emergency. + +"Comfortable?" he responded. "Why, what do you call these chairs if they +are not comfortable? I don't believe in cushions. They are unnatural; +they are devices of self-indulgence and luxury. The law ought to forbid +their existence. They make men limp and flabby when they ought to be +strong and vigorous and virile. The best chair in the world is one with +a raw bull's hide for a seat, and with leathern thongs to tighten it +with when it stretches. Next best is the old-fashioned, wooden-bottomed +kitchen chair that cost forty cents when I was a boy. I don't suppose +they make 'em now. People are too luxurious to know when they are well +off." + +Presently some one spoke to him of his "March to the Sea," and he +instantly replied: + +"It's all romantic nonsense to call it that. The thing was nothing more +nor less than a military change of base--a thing familiar to every +student of tactics; but a poet got hold of it, nicknamed it the 'March +to the Sea,' and that's what everybody will call it, I suppose, till the +crack of doom, unless it is forgotten before that time." + +Perhaps the hard-fighting veteran's appreciation of the romantic aspect +of great achievements was less keen than that of a company of creative +writers. Perhaps his modesty got the better of him. + +[Sidenote: The First "Watch Night"] + +It happened early in the history of the Authors Club that the regular +meeting night fell one year on the thirty-first of December. At first it +was suggested that the date be changed, but some one remembered the old +custom of the Methodists who held "Watch Night" meetings, seeing the old +year out and the new year in with rejoicing and fervent singing. Why +shouldn't we have a "Watch Night" after our own fashion? The suggestion +was eagerly accepted. No programme was arranged, no order of exercises +planned. Nothing was prearranged except that with friendship and jollity +and the telling of stories we should give a farewell to the old year and +a welcome to the new. + +Fortunately, Mark Twain was called upon to begin the story telling, +and he put formality completely out of countenance at the very outset. +Instead of standing as if to address the company, he seized a chair, +straddled it, and with his arms folded across its back, proceeded +to tell one of the most humorous of all his stories. Frank Stockton +followed with his account of the "mislaid corpse" and before the new +year had an hour or two of age, there had been related enough of +exquisitely humorous incident--real or fanciful--to make the fortune +of two or three books of humor. + +At midnight we turned out the gas and sang a stanza or two of "Auld Lang +Syne" by way of farewell to the old year. Then, with lights all ablaze +again, we greeted the new year in the familiar "He's a jolly good +fellow." + +Max O'Rell was my guest on one of these occasions, and in one of his +later books he gave an account of it. After recording the fact that "at +precisely twelve o'clock the lights are turned out," he added a footnote +saying in solemn fashion: "A clock is _borrowed for the occasion_." + +I saw a good deal of that witty Frenchman during his several visits to +America. I wrote an introduction to the American edition of his "John +Bull, Jr.," and it served to protect that work with a copyright entry. + +He never paid me a cent for the service. + +That was because I refused to accept the remuneration he pressed upon me. + +I offer that as a jest which he would have appreciated keenly. + +He was a man of generous mind, whose humor sometimes impressed others +as cynical, a judgment that I always regarded as unjust, for the reason +that the humorist must be allowed a certain privilege of saying severer +things than he really feels, if he is to be a humorist at all. When +Max O'Rell says of a certain type of stupid British boy of the "upper +class," that he ultimately enters the army and fights his country's +enemies, and then adds: "And whether he kills his country's enemy or his +country's enemy kills him, his country is equally benefited," he does +not really mean what he says. He once confessed to me that he had had an +abiding affection for every such boy, but that the temptation to make a +jest at his expense was irresistible in the case of a writer whose bread +and butter were dependent upon his ability to excite smiles. + +In the same way, as everybody must have observed, the humor that has +made the reputation of many newspaper editors is largely leveled at +women in their various relations with men and at the sacred things of +life. Much of it would be cruelly unjust if it were seriously meant, as +ordinarily it is not. + +I have sometimes wondered whether the injustice did not outweigh the +humor--whether the smile excited by the humor was worth the wound +inflicted by the injustice. + +[Sidenote: Habitual Humorists] + +The professional humorist, whether with pen, pencil, or tongue, is the +victim of a false perspective. He is so intent upon his quip or quibble +or jest, that he loses sight of more serious things. He does not +hesitate to sacrifice even truth and justice, or the highest interest of +whatever sort, for the sake of "making his point." He perhaps mistakenly +believes that his reader or the person studying his caricature will +regard his jest lightly and without loss of respect for the more serious +things that lie behind. As a matter of fact, this rarely happens. The +reader of the jest accepts it as a setting forth of truth, or at any +rate is affected by it in some such fashion. + +On the whole, therefore, I cannot help regarding the confirmed humorist +in literature or art as a detrimental force. + +I do not mean to include in this condemnation such genial literary +humorists as Charles Battell Loomis, and Frank R. Stockton, and Charles +Dudley Warner, who made things funny merely by looking at them with an +intellectual squint that deceived nobody and misled nobody. I refer only +to the habitual jokers of the newspapers and the like,--men who, for a +wage, undertake to make a jest of everything that interests the popular +mind, and who, for the sake of their jest, would pervert the Lord's +Prayer itself to a humorous purpose. These people lose all sense of +propriety, proportion, perspective, and even of morality itself. They +make their jests at so much per line, and at all hazards of truth, +justice, and intelligence. + +In literature these mountebanks impress me as detrimental +impertinents--in conversation they seem to me nuisances. I cannot forget +one occasion on which the late Bishop Potter and a distinguished judge +of the Supreme Court were discussing a question of the possibility of +helpful reform in a certain direction. There was a humorist present--a +man whose sole idea of conversation was sparkle. He insisted upon +sparkling. He interrupted the gravest utterances with his puns or his +plays upon words, or his references to humorous things remembered. The +thing became so intolerable that some one present slipped his arms into +those of the Bishop and the Judge, and led them away with the suggestion +that there was a quiet corner in the club where he would like to seat +them and hear the rest of their conversation. As they turned their backs +on the humorist and moved away, the Bishop asked: + +"What did you say the name of that mountebank is?" + +The Judge replied: + +"I knew at the time. I'm glad to have forgotten it." + +"It is just as well," answered the Bishop. "There are many things in +this life that are better forgotten than remembered." + +There is one thing worthy of note in connection with the Authors Club. +Almost from the hour of its inception it has furnished the country +with a very distinguished proportion of its most eminent diplomats and +statesmen. To mention only a few: James Russell Lowell, Andrew D. White, +David Jayne Hill, William L. Wilson, Carl Schurz, General Horace Porter, +John Hay, Theodore Roosevelt, Oscar S. Straus, Edward M. Shepard, and +a dozen others easily mentioned, may be cited as illustrations of +the extent to which a club of only about 180 members in all has been +drawn upon by the national government for its needs in diplomacy and +statesmanship. + +The Authors Club idea of a watch night meeting has been borrowed by a +number of other organizations, but I think in none of them has it become +so well recognized an event of the year. At any rate, it throngs our +rooms to the point of suffocation on the night of every thirty-first of +December. + +Another habit of the club has been for a considerable number of members +and guests to linger after its regular meetings until the small hours +of the morning, telling stories or discussing matters of intellectual +interest. This has become a feature of the club meetings since Charles +Henry Webb--better known in literature as "John Paul"--said one night +at two o'clock: + +"Upon my soul, the Authors Club is one of the very pleasantest places +I know--_after_ the authors have gone home." + +[Sidenote: "Liber Scriptorum"] + +Soon after the club took its quarters in Twenty-fourth Street, three +of us--Rossiter Johnson, John D. Champlin, and myself--were impressed +with the need of more funds and better furnishings. We suggested the +publication of a unique book, as a means of securing the funds and +providing the furnishings. Our plan contemplated a sumptuous volume, +in an edition limited to two hundred and fifty-one copies--one for the +club, and the rest for sale at one hundred dollars a copy. We proposed +that the members of the club should furnish the poems, stories, and +essays needed; that each of them should agree never to publish his +contribution elsewhere, and that each poem, story, or essay should be +signed by its author in pen and ink in each copy of the book. + +We were met with prompt discouragement on every hand. The older men +among the members of the club were confident that we could never secure +the papers desired. Our friends among the publishers simply knew in +advance and positively, that even if we could make the book, we could +never sell it. Mr. Joe Harper offered to bet me a hat that we could +never sell twenty-five of the two hundred and fifty copies. I lived to +wear that hat and rejoice in it, for we not only made the book--"Liber +Scriptorum"--but we realized something more than twenty thousand dollars +on its sale, as a fund with which to provide leather-covered morris +chairs, soft rugs, handsome bookcases, and other luxuries for our friends +the doubters to rejoice in. + +Authors are supposed to be an unbusinesslike set, who do not know enough +of affairs to manage their personal finances in a way to save themselves +from poverty. Perhaps the judgment is correct. But the Authors Club is +the only club I know in New York which has no dollar of debt resting +upon it, and has a comfortable balance to its credit in bank. + +The case is not singular. It has been written of William Pitt that +while he was able to extricate the British exchequer from the sorest +embarrassment it ever encountered, he could not keep the duns from his +own door. + + + + +LXIII + + +I had been operating my little literary shop successfully for three or +four years after quitting the _Evening Post_, when Mr. Parke Godwin came +to me to say that he and some friends were about buying a controlling +interest in the newspaper called _The New York Commercial Advertiser_, +and that he wanted me to join his staff. I told him I had no desire to +return to journalism, that I liked my quiet literary life at home, and +that I was managing to make enough out of it to support my family. + +He replied that at any rate I might undertake the literary editorship of +his newspaper; that it would involve no more than a few hours of office +attendance in each week, and need not interfere in any way with my +literary undertakings of other kinds. + +I had a very great personal regard for Mr. Godwin; a very great +admiration for his character, and an abiding affection for him as a man. +When he pressed this proposal upon me, insisting that its acceptance +would relieve him of a burden, I decided to undertake what he wanted. +I was the readier to do so for a peculiar reason. In those days pretty +nearly all books, American or English, were first offered to the Harpers, +and I had to examine them all, either in manuscript, if they were +American, or in proof sheets if they were English. Consequently, whether +they were published by the Harpers or by some one else, I was thoroughly +familiar with them long before they came from the press. I foresaw that +it would be easy for me to review them from the acquaintance I already +had with their contents. + +[Sidenote: In Newspaper Life Again] + +I was resolutely determined not to be drawn again into the newspaper +life, but I foresaw no danger of that in making the literary arrangement +suggested. + +Accordingly, I became literary editor of the _Commercial Advertiser_ +under Mr. Godwin's administration as the editor-in-chief of that +newspaper. The paper had never been conducted upon the lines he proposed +or upon any other well-defined lines, so far as I could discover, and I +foresaw that he had a hard task before him. All the reputation the paper +had was detrimental rather than helpful. I was eager to help him over +the first hurdles in the race, and so, in addition to my literary duties +I not only wrote editorials each day, but helped in organizing a news +staff that should at least recognize news when it ran up against it in +the street. + +Mr. Godwin was himself editor-in-chief, and the vigor of his utterances +made a quick impression. But his managing editor lacked--well, let us +say some at least of the qualifications that tend to make a newspaper +successful. Mr. Godwin was an exceedingly patient man, but after a while +he wearied of the weekly loss the paper was inflicting upon him. In the +meanwhile, I discovered that my attention to the newspaper was seriously +interfering with my literary work, and that the fifty dollars a week +which the paper paid me did not compensate me for the time I was giving +to it at the expense of my other undertakings. I wrote to Mr. Godwin, +recommending a very capable young man to take my place, and asking to be +released from an engagement that was anything but profitable to me. + +For reply I had a prompt letter from Mr. Godwin asking me to see him at +his home. There he asked and urged me to become managing editor of the +paper from that hour forth. He told me he was losing money in large sums +upon its conduct, and appealed to me to come to his rescue, urging that +he was "too old and too indolent" himself to put life into the +enterprise. + +The question of salary was not mentioned between us. He appealed to me +to help him and I stood ready to do so at any sacrifice of personal +interest or convenience. But when the board of directors of the +corporation met a month later, he moved an adequate salary for me and +suggested that it should be dated back to the day on which I had taken +control. A certain excessively small economist on the board objected to +the dating back on the ground that no bargain had been made to that +effect and that he was "constitutionally opposed to the unnecessary +squandering of money." + +Instantly Mr. Godwin said: + +"The salary arranged for our managing editor is the just reward of the +service he is rendering. He has been giving us that service from the +hour of his entrance upon office. He is as justly entitled to compensation +for that time as for the future. Either the board must pay it or I will +pay it out of my own pocket. We are neither beggars nor robbers, and we +take nothing that we do not pay for." There spoke the great, honest-minded +man that Parke Godwin always was. + +It was a difficult task I had undertaken. There were many obstacles in +the way. The chief of these was pointed out by Mr. John Bigelow when he +said to me: + +"You're going to make yours a newspaper for the educated classes. It is +my opinion that there are already too many newspapers for the educated +classes." + +I am disposed to think the old journalist and statesman had a prophetic +vision of the early coming time when success in newspaper editing would +be measured by the skill of newspaper proprietors in making their appeal +to the uneducated classes--to the million instead of the few thousands. + +[Sidenote: An Editor's Perplexities] + +A more perplexing difficulty beset me, however. I had a definitely fixed +and wholly inadequate sum of money to expend weekly in making the paper, +and when I came to look over my payroll I found that the greater part +of the sum allowed me went to pay the salaries of some very worthy men, +whose capacity to render effective service to a "live" modern newspaper +was exceedingly small. I had sore need of the money these men drew every +week, with which to employ reporters who could get news and editors who +knew how to write. The men in question held their places by virtue of +Mr. Godwin's over-generous desire to provide a living for them. + +I represented the case to him in its nakedness. I told him frankly that +whatever he might be personally able to afford, the newspaper's earnings +at that time did not justify the maintenance of such a pension roll. +Either I must discharge all these men and use the money that went to pay +their salaries in a more fruitful way, or I must decline to go on with +the task I had undertaken. + +He solved the problem by calling the board together, resigning his +editorship, and making me editor-in-chief, with unrestricted authority. + +With all the gentleness I could bring to bear I detached the barnacles +and freed myself to make a newspaper. I had the good fortune in all this +to have the support of Mr. Godwin's two sons, who were large stockholders +in the newspaper, and of Mr. Henry Marquand, who was also the owner of +an important interest. + +I had also the good fortune to secure the services of some reporters +and some editorial assistants whose energies and capacities were of the +utmost value to me. + +Many of them are dead now--as, alas! most other persons are with whom I +have been closely associated. But those of them who are living have made +place and reputation for themselves in a way that justifies the pride I +used to feel in their abilities, their energies, and their conscientious +devotion to duty when they worked with me. Indeed, as I contemplate +the careers of these men, most of whom came to me as "cubs" fresh from +college, I am disposed to plume myself not only upon my sagacity in +discovering their untried abilities, but also upon the tutelage I gave +them in journalism. The eagerness with which other newspapers have since +sought them out for important employments, and the rapidity of their +promotion on those other newspapers have always been a source of pride +to me--pride which is not, I think, vainglorious or unduly personal. + +Perhaps the reader will permit me here to pay tribute to those loyal men +who so willingly stood by me when the most that I was permitted to pay +them was less than one-half--sometimes less than one-third what they +might have earned upon other newspapers. + +[Sidenote: Some of My Brilliant "Cubs"] + +Among them was Charles E. Russell, who has since earned high literary +place for himself. Another was Timothy Shaler Williams, who has since +been lured from literature, for which his gifts were great, to affairs, +and who for many years has been president of the Brooklyn Rapid Transit +Company. I had Earl D. Berry for my managing editor, and I could have +had none more capable. In the news department were De François +Folsom--dead long years ago--Edward Fales Coward, who has since made a +distinguished place for himself; Hewitt, the author of Dixey's song, +"So English, You Know"; Sidney Strother Logan, one of the shrewdest news +explorers I have ever known,--dead years ago, unfortunately,--and George +B. Mallon, who came to me fresh from college and whose work was so good +as to confirm my conviction that even in a newspaper's reporting room +an educated mind has advantages over mere native shrewdness and an +acquaintance with the slang and patter of the time. Mr. Mallon's work +was so good, indeed, that I personally assigned him to tasks of peculiar +difficulty. The New York _Sun_ has since confirmed my judgment of his +ability by making him its city editor, a post that he has held for seven +years or more. + +Another of my "cubs" was Henry Armstrong, whose abilities have since won +for him a place on the brilliant editorial writing staff of the _Sun_. +Still another was Henry Wright, who is now editor-in-chief of the paper +on which he "learned his trade,"--though the paper has since changed its +name to the _Globe_. Another was Nelson Hirsh, who afterwards became +editor of the _Sunday World_. + +On my editorial staff were Henry R. Elliot--dead now,--James Davis, +who carried every detail of a singularly varied scholarship at his +finger-tips, ready for instant use, and whose grace as a writer, +illuminated as it was by an exquisitely subtle humor, ought to have +made him famous, and would have done so, if death had not come to him +too soon. + +Doubtless there were others whom I ought to mention here in grateful +remembrance, but the incessant activities of the score and more of years +that have elapsed since my association with them ended have obliterated +many details from my memory. Let me say that to all of them I render +thanks for loyal and highly intelligent assistance in the difficult task +I then had to wrestle with. + +With a staff like that we were able to get the news and print it, and we +did both in a way that attracted attention in other newspaper offices as +well as among newspaper readers. With such writers as those mentioned +and others, the editorial utterances of the paper attracted an attention +that had never before been accorded to them. + +So far as its books of account gave indication, the _Commercial +Advertiser_ had never earned or paid a dividend. At the end of the first +year under this new régime it paid a dividend of fifty per cent. At the +end of its second year it paid its stockholders one hundred per cent. +The earnings of the third year were wisely expended in the purchase of +new presses and machinery. Before the end of the fourth year I had +resigned its editorship to become an editorial writer on _The World_. + +I intensely enjoyed the work of "making bricks without straw" on the +_Commercial Advertiser_--by which I mean that with a staff of one man to +ten on the great morning newspapers, and with one dollar to expend where +they could squander hundreds, we managed not only to keep step but to +lead them in such news-getting enterprises as those incident to the +prosecution of the boodle Aldermen and Jake Sharp, the Diss de Barr +case, and the other exciting news problems of the time. + +The strain, however, was heart-breaking, and presently my health gave +way under it. A leisurely wandering all over this continent restored +it somewhat, but upon my return the burden seemed heavier than +ever--especially the burden of responsibility that made sleep difficult +and rest impossible to me. + +In the meanwhile, of course, my literary work had been sacrificed to the +Moloch of journalism. I had canceled all my engagements of that sort +and severed connections which I had intended to be lifelong. In a +word, I had been drawn again into the vortex of that daily journalism, +from which I had twice escaped. I was worn, weary, and inexpressibly +oppressed by the duties of responsible editorship--a responsibility I +had never sought, but one which circumstances had twice thrust upon me. + +[Sidenote: The Dread Task of the Editor] + +I wonder if the reader can understand or even faintly imagine what all +this means. I wonder if I can suggest some shadow of it to his mind. +Think of what it means to toil all day in the making of a newspaper, and +to feel, when all is done that the result is utterly inadequate. Think +of what it means to the weary one to go home with the next day's task +upon his mind as a new burden, and with the discouraging consciousness +that all he has done on one day's issue is dead so far as the next day +is concerned. Think what it means to a sensitive man to feel that upon +his discretion, his alertness, his sagacity, depends not only the daily +result of a newspaper's publication, but the prosperity or failure of +other men's investments of hundreds of thousands of dollars. + +For the value of a newspaper depends from day to day upon its conduct. +It is a matter of good will. If the editor pleases his constituency, the +investment of the owners remains a profitable property. If he displeases +that constituency the newspaper has nothing left to sell but its presses +and machinery, representing a small fraction of the sum invested in it. + +That responsibility rested upon me as an incubus. All my life until then +I had been able to sleep. Then came sleeplessness of a sort I could not +shake off. At my usual hour for going to bed, I was overcome by sleep, +but after five minutes on the pillows there came wakefulness. I learned +how to fight it, by going to my library and resolutely sitting in the +dark until sleep came, but the process was a painful one and it left me +next morning crippled for my day's work. + +In the meanwhile, as I have said, I enjoyed my work as I suppose a man +condemned to death enjoys the work of writing his "confessions." I +enjoyed my very intimate association with Henry Marquand, one of the +most companionable men I ever knew, for the reason that his mind was +responsive to every thought one might utter, and that there was always +a gentle humor in all that he had to say. He had a most comfortable +schooner yacht on board which I many times saved my life or my sanity by +passing a Sunday outside on blue water, with nothing more important to +think of than the cob pipes we smoked as we loafed in our pajamas on the +main hatch. + +Marquand had a habit of inviting brilliant men for his guests, such men +as Dr. Halsted, now of Johns Hopkins; Dr. Tuttle, who has since made +fame for himself; Dr. Roosevelt, who died a while ago; James Townsend, +Dr. William Gilman Thompson, then a comparatively young man but now one +of the supreme authorities in medical science, and others of like highly +intellectual quality. Now and then there were "ladies present," but they +were an infrequent interruption. I don't mean that ungallantly. But rest +and women do not usually go together. + +It was our habit to board the yacht down Staten Island way on Saturday +afternoon, sail out to the lightship and back, and anchor in the +Horseshoe for dinner and the night. On Sunday we sailed out toward Fire +Island or down toward Long Branch, or wherever else we chose. We were +intent only upon rest--the rest that the sea alone can give, and that +only the lovers of the sea ever get in this utterly unrestful world of +ours. + +On deck in the afternoon and evening, and in the saloon at dinner and +other meals, we talked, I suppose, of intellectual things. At sea we +rested, and smoked, and were silent, and altogether happy. I have always +enjoyed the sea. I have crossed the ocean many times, and I have sailed +in all sorts of craft over all sorts of seas, with delight in every +breath that the ocean gave to me; but I think I may truly say that no +other voyage I ever made gave me so much pleasure as did those little +yachting trips on the "Ruth" in company with men whose very presence was +an intellectual inspiration. + +[Sidenote: Parke Godwin] + +But the most abiding recollection I have of my service on the +_Commercial Advertiser_ is that which concerns itself with Parke Godwin. +He was a man of great thought impulses, only half expressed. That +which he gave to the world in print was no more than the hem of his +intellectual garment. A certain constitutional indolence, encouraged +by his too early acquisition of sufficient wealth to free him from the +necessity of writing for a living, prevented him from giving to the +world the best that was in him. He would have a great thought and he +would plan to write it. Sometimes he would even begin to write it. But +in the end he preferred to talk it to some appreciative listener. + +I remember one case of the kind. He had several times invited me to +visit him at his Bar Harbor summer home. Always I had been obliged by +the exigencies of my editorial work to forego that delight. One summer +he wrote to me, saying: + +"I wonder if you could forget the _Commercial Advertiser_ long enough +to spend a fortnight with me here at Bar Harbor. You see, I don't like +to issue invitations and have them 'turned down,' so I'm not going to +invite you till you write me that you will come." + +In answer to that invitation I passed a fortnight with him. From +beginning to end of the time he forbade all mention of the newspaper of +which he was chief owner and I the responsible editor. But during that +time he "talked into me," as he said at parting, a deal of high thinking +that he ought to have put into print. + +His mind had one notable quality in common with Emerson's--the capacity +to fecundate every other mind with which it came into close contact. +One came away, from a conference with him, feeling enriched, inspired, +enlarged, not so much by the thought he had expressed as by the thinking +he had instigated in his listener's mind. + +It was so with me on that occasion. I came away full of a thought that +grew and fruited in my mind. Presently--an occasion offering--I wrote +it into a series of articles in the newspaper. These attracted the +attention of Dr. William M. Sloane, now of Columbia University, then +professor of history at Princeton and editor of the _Princeton Review_. +At his instigation I presented the same thought in his _Review_, and a +little later by invitation I addressed the Nineteenth Century Club on +the subject. I called it "The American Idea." In substance it was that +our country had been founded and had grown great upon the idea that +every man born into the world has a right to do as he pleases, so long +as he does not trespass upon the equal right of any other man to do +as he pleases, and that in a free country it is the sole function of +government to maintain the conditions of liberty and to let men alone. + +The idea seemed to be successful in its appeal to men's intelligence at +that time, but many years later--only a year or so ago, in fact--I put +it forward in a commencement address at a Virginia College and found +it sharply though silently antagonized by professors and trustees on +the ground that it seemed to deny to government the right to enact +prohibitory liquor laws, or otherwise to make men moral by statute. The +doctrine was pure Jeffersonianism, of course, and the professors and +trustees sincerely believed themselves to be Jeffersonians. But the +doctrine had gored their pet ox, and that made a difference. + +[Sidenote: Some Recollections of Mr. Godwin] + +One day Mr. Godwin expressed himself as delighted with all I had written +on the American Idea. I responded: + +"That is very natural. The idea is yours, not mine, and in all that I +have written about it, I have merely been reporting what you said to me, +as we stood looking at the surf dashing itself to pieces on the rocks at +Bar Harbor." + +"Not at all," he answered. "No man can expound and elaborate another +man's thought without putting so much of himself into it as to make it +essentially and altogether his own. I may have dropped a seed into your +mind, but I didn't know it or intend it. The fruitage is all your own. +My thinking on the subject was casual, vagrant, unorganized. I had never +formulated it in my own mind. You see we all gather ideas in converse +with others. That is what speech was given to man for. But the value of +the ideas depends upon the use made of them." + +Mr. Godwin had been at one time in his life rather intimately associated +with Louis Kossuth, the Hungarian patriot and statesman. As all old +newspaper men remember, Kossuth had a habit of dying frequently. News +of his death would come and all the newspapers would print extended +obituary articles. Within a day or two the news would be authoritatively +contradicted, and the obituaries would be laid away for use at some +future time. On one of these occasions Mr. Godwin wrote for me a +singularly interesting article, giving his personal reminiscences of +Kossuth. Before I could print it despatches came contradicting the news +of the old Hungarian's death. I put Mr. Godwin's manuscript into a +pigeonhole and both he and I forgot all about it. A year or so later +Kossuth did in fact die, and in looking through my papers to see what I +might have ready for printing on the subject, I discovered Mr. Godwin's +paper. It was not signed, but purported to be the personal recollections +of one who had known the patriot well. + +I hurried it into print, thus gaining twelve or fourteen hours on the +morning newspapers. + +The next morning Mr. Godwin called upon me, declaring that he had come +face to face with the most extraordinary psychological problem he had +ever encountered. + +"The chapter of Kossuth reminiscences that you printed yesterday," he +said, "was as exact a report of my own recollections of the man as I +could have given you if you had sent a reporter to interview me on the +subject; and the strangest part of it is that the article reports many +things which I could have sworn were known only to myself. It is +astonishing, inexplicable." + +"This isn't a case of talking your thought into another person," I +answered, referring to the former incident. "This time you put yourself +down on paper, and what I printed was set from the manuscript you gave +me a year or so ago." + +This solved the psychological puzzle and to that extent relieved his +mind. But there remained the further difficulty that, cudgel his brain +as he might, he could find in it no trace of recollection regarding the +matter. + +[Sidenote: A Mystery of Forgetting] + +"I remember very well," he said, "that I often thought I ought to write +out my recollections of Kossuth, but I can't remember that I ever did +so. I remember taking myself to task many times for my indolence in +postponing a thing that I knew I ought to do, but that only makes the +case the more inexplicable. When I scourged myself for neglecting the +task, why didn't my memory remind me that I had actually discharged the +duty? And now that I have read the reminiscences in print, why am I +unable to recall the fact that I wrote them? The article fills several +columns. Certainly I ought to have some recollection of the labor +involved in writing so much. Are you entirely certain that the +manuscript was mine?" + +I sent to the composing room for the "copy" and showed it to him. As he +looked it over he said: + +"'Strange to say, on Club paper.' You remember Thackeray's Roundabout +paper with that headline? It has a bearing here, for this is written on +paper that the Century Club alone provides for the use of its members. +I must, therefore, have written the thing at the Century Club, and that +ought to resurrect some memory of it in my mind, but it doesn't. No. I +have not the slightest recollection of having put that matter on paper." + +At that point his wonderfully alert mind turned to another thought. + +"Suppose you and I believed in the occult, the mystical, the so-called +supernatural, as we don't," he said, "what a mystery we might make of +this in the way of psychical manifestation--which usually belongs to the +domain of psycho-pathology. Think of it! As I chastised myself in my own +mind for my neglect to put these things on paper, your mind came under +subjection to mine and you wrote them in my stead. So complete was the +possession that your handwriting, which is clear and legible, became an +exact facsimile of mine, which is obscure and difficult. Then you, being +under possession, preserved no memory of having written the thing, while +I, knowing nothing of your unconscious agency in the matter, had nothing +to remember concerning it. Isn't that about the way the mysticists make +up their 'facts' for the misleading of half-baked brains?" + +In later years I related this incident to a distinguished half-believer +in things mystical, adding Mr. Godwin's laughingly conjectural explanation +of it, whereupon the reply came: + +"May not that have been the real explanation, in spite of your own and +Mr. Godwin's skepticism?" + +I was left with the feeling that after all what Mr. Godwin had intended +as an extravagant caricature was a veritable representation of a +credulity that actually exists, even among men commonly accounted sane, +and certainly learned. The reflection was discouraging to one who hopes +for the progress of mankind through sanity of mind. + + + + +LXIV + + +In the days of which I have hitherto written there was a dignity, +reserve, contentment--call it what you will--in the conduct of newspapers +of established reputation. There was rivalry among them in their endeavors +to publish the earliest news of public events, but it was a dignified +rivalry involving comparatively little of that self-glorification which +has since come to be a double-leaded feature in the conduct of many +newspapers. The era of illustration and exploitation by the use of +pictures had not yet been born of cheapened reproductive processes. +Newspapers were usually printed directly from type because stereotyping +was then a costly process and a slow one. As a consequence, newspapers +were printed in regular columns consecutively arranged, and articles +begun in one column were carried forward in the next. There were no such +legends as "continued on page five," and the like. + +Headlines were confined to the column that began the article. The art +of stretching them halfway or all the way across the page and involving +half a dozen of them in gymnastic wrestlings with each other for supremacy +in conspicuity had not then been invented, and in its absence the use of +circus poster type and circus poster exaggeration of phrase was undreamed +of. + +Now and then an advertiser anxious for conspicuity would pay a heavy +price to have column rules cut so that his announcement might stretch +over two or more columns, but the cost of that was so great that +indulgence in it was rare even among ambitious advertisers, while in +the reading columns the practice was wholly unknown. + +[Sidenote: The Price of Newspapers] + +Another thing. It was then thought that when a copy of a newspaper was +sold, the price paid for it ought to be sufficient at least to pay the +cost of its manufacture, plus some small margin of profit. All the great +morning newspapers except the _Sun_ were sold at four cents a copy; the +_Sun_, by virtue of extraordinary literary condensation, used only about +half the amount of paper consumed by the others, and was sold at two +cents. The afternoon newspapers were sold at three cents. + +The publishers of newspapers had not then grasped the idea that is +now dominant, that if a great circulation can be achieved by selling +newspapers for less than the mere paper in them costs, the increase +in the volume and price of advertising will make of them enormously +valuable properties. + +That idea was not born suddenly. Even after the revolution was +established, the cost of the white paper used in making a newspaper +helped to determine the price of it to the public. It was not until the +phenomenal success of cheap newspapers years afterwards tempted even +more reckless adventurers into the field that publishers generally threw +the entire burden of profit-making upon the advertising columns and thus +established the business office in the seat before occupied by the editor +and made business considerations altogether dominant over utterance, +attitude, and conduct. + +There were in the meantime many attempts made to establish a cheaper +form of journalism, but they were inadequately supported by working +capital; they were usually conducted by men of small capacity; they had +no traditions of good will behind them, and above all, they could not +get Associated Press franchises. For the benefit of readers who are +not familiar with the facts, I explain that the Associated Press is an +organization for news-gathering, formed by the great newspapers by way +of securing news that no newspaper could afford to secure for itself. +It maintains bureaus in all the great news centers of the world, and +these collect and distribute to the newspapers concerned a great mass +of routine news that would be otherwise inaccessible to them. If a +president's message, or an inaugural address, or any other public +document of voluminous character is to be given out, it is obvious that +the newspapers concerned cannot wait for telegraphic reports of its +contents. By way of saving time and telegraphic expense, the document +is delivered to the Associated Press, and copies of it are sent to all +the newspapers concerned, with a strict limitation upon the hour of its +publication. Until that hour comes no newspaper in the association is +privileged to print it or in any way, by reference or otherwise, to +reveal any part of its contents. But in the meanwhile they can put it +into type, and with it their editorial comments upon it, so that when +the hour of release comes, they can print the whole thing--text and +comment--without loss of time. The newspaper not endowed with an +Associated Press franchise must wait for twenty-four hours or more +for its copy of the document. + +Hardly less important is the fact that in every city, town, and village +in the country, the Associated Press has its agent--the local editor or +the telegraph operator, or some one else--who is commissioned to report +to it every news happening that may arise within his bailiwick. Often +these reports are interesting; sometimes they are of importance, and in +either case the newspaper not allied with a press association must miss +them. + +At the time of which I am writing, the Associated Press was the only +organization in the country that could render such service, and every +newspaper venture lacking its franchise was foredoomed to failure. + +[Sidenote: The Pulitzer Revolution] + +But a newspaper revolution was impending and presently it broke upon us. + +In 1883 Mr. Joseph Pulitzer bought the _World_ and instituted a totally +new system of newspaper conduct. + +His advent into New York journalism was called an "irruption," and it +was resented not only by the other newspapers, but even more by a large +proportion of the conservative public. + +In its fundamental principle, Mr. Pulitzer's revolutionary method was +based upon an idea identical with that suggested by Mr. John Bigelow +when he told me there were too many newspapers for the educated class. +Mr. Pulitzer undertook to make a newspaper, not for the educated class, +but for all sorts and conditions of men. He did not intend to overlook +the educated class, but he saw clearly how small a part of the community +it was, and he refused to make his appeal to it exclusively or even +chiefly. + +The results were instantaneous and startling. The _World_, which had +never been able to achieve a paying circulation or a paying constituency +of advertisers, suddenly began selling in phenomenal numbers, while its +advertising business became what Mr. Pulitzer once called a "bewildering +chaos of success, yielding a revenue that the business office was +imperfectly equipped to handle." + +It is an interesting fact, that the _World's_ gain in circulation was +not made at the expense of any other newspaper. The books of account +show clearly that while the _World_ was gaining circulation by scores +and hundreds of thousands, no other morning newspaper was losing. The +simple fact was that by appealing to a larger class, the _World_ had +created a great company of newspaper readers who had not before been +newspaper readers at all. Reluctantly, and only by degrees, the other +morning newspapers adopted the _World's_ methods, and won to themselves +a larger constituency than they had ever enjoyed before. + +All this had little effect upon the afternoon newspapers. They had their +constituencies. Their province was quite apart from that of the morning +papers. A circulation of ten or twenty thousand copies seemed to them +satisfactory; any greater circulation was deemed extraordinary, and if +at a time of popular excitement their sales exceeded twenty thousand +they regarded it not only as phenomenal but as a strain upon their +printing and distributing machinery which it would be undesirable to +repeat very often. + +But the revolution was destined to reach them presently. At that time +none of the morning newspapers thought of issuing afternoon editions. +The game seemed not worth the candle. But presently the sagacity of Mr. +William M. Laffan--then a subordinate on the _Sun's_ staff, later the +proprietor and editor of that newspaper--saw and seized an opportunity. +The morning papers had learned their lesson and were making their appeal +to the multitude instead of the select few. The afternoon newspapers +were still addressing themselves solely to "the educated class." Mr. +Laffan decided to make an afternoon appeal to the more multitudinous +audience. Under his inspiration the _Evening Sun_ was established on the +seventeenth day of March, 1887, and it instantly achieved a circulation +of forty thousand--from twice to four times that of its more +conservative competitors. + +[Sidenote: The Lure of the World] + +A little later an evening edition of the _World_ was established. Its +success at first was small, but Mr. Pulitzer quickly saw the reason +for that. The paper was too closely modeled upon the conservative and +dignified pattern of the established afternoon newspapers. To his +subordinates Mr. Pulitzer said: + +"You are making a three-cent newspaper for a one-cent constituency. +I want you to make it a one-cent newspaper." + +What further instructions he gave to that end, I have never heard, but +whatever they were they were carried out with a success that seemed to +me to threaten the very existence of such newspapers as the one I was +editing. I was satisfied that if the newspaper under my control was to +survive it must adopt the new methods of journalism, broaden its appeal +to the people, and reduce its price to the "penny" which alone the +people could be expected to pay when the _Evening Sun_ and the _Evening +World_ could be had for that price. + +The board of directors of the newspaper could not be induced to take +this view, and just then one of the editors of the _World_, acting for +Mr. Pulitzer, asked me to take luncheon with him. He explained to me +that Mr. Pulitzer wanted an editorial writer and that he--my host--had +been commissioned to engage me in that capacity, if I was open to +engagement. In the end he made me a proposal which I could not put aside +in justice to myself and my family. My relations with Mr. Godwin and his +associates were so cordial, and their treatment of me had been always so +generous, that I could not think of leaving them without their hearty +consent and approval. The summer was approaching, when the members of +the board of directors would go away to their summer homes or to Europe. +The last regular meeting of the board for the season had been held, and +nothing had been done to meet the new conditions of competition. I was +discouraged by the prospect of addressing a steadily diminishing +audience throughout the summer, with the possibility of having no +audience at all to address when the fall should come. + +I hastily called the board together in a special meeting. I told them +of the proposal made to me by the _World_ and of my desire to accept +it unless they could be induced to let me adopt the new methods at an +expense much greater than any of the established afternoon newspapers +had ever contemplated, and much greater than my board of directors +was willing to contemplate. I said frankly that without their cordial +consent, I could not quit their service, but that if we were to go on +as before, I earnestly wished to be released from a responsibility that +threatened my health with disaster. + +They decided to release me, after passing some very flattering +resolutions, and in early June, 1889, I went to the _World_ as an +editorial writer free from all responsibility for the news management of +the paper, free from all problems of newspaper finance, and free from +the crushing weight of the thought that other men's property interests +to the extent of many hundreds of thousands of dollars were in hourly +danger of destruction by some fault or failure of judgment on my part. +As I rejoiced in this sense of release, I recalled what James R. Osgood, +one of the princes among publishers, had once said to me, and for the +first time I fully grasped his meaning. At some public banquet or +other he and I were seated side by side and we fell into conversation +regarding certain books he had published. They were altogether worthy +books, but their appeal seemed to me to be to so small a constituency +that I could not understand what had induced him to publish them at all. +I said to him: + +"I sometimes wonder at your courage in putting your money into the +publication of such books." + +He answered: + +"That's the smallest part of the matter. Think of my courage in putting +_other people's money_ into their publication!" + +It was not long after that that Osgood's enterprises failed, and he +retired from business as a publisher to the sorrow of every American who +in any way cared for literature. + +[Sidenote: The Little Dinner to Osgood] + +When Osgood went to London as an agent of the Harpers, some of us gave +him a farewell dinner, for which Thomas Nast designed the menu cards. +When these were passed around for souvenir autographs, Edwin A. Abbey +drew upon each, in connection with his signature, a caricature of +himself which revealed new possibilities in his genius--possibilities +that have come to nothing simply because Mr. Abbey has found a better +use for his gifts than any that the caricaturist can hope for. But those +of us who were present at that little Osgood dinner still cherish our +copies of the dinner card on which, with a few strokes of his pencil, +Abbey revealed an unsuspected aspect of his genius. In view of the +greatness of his more serious work, we rejoice that he went no further +than an after-dinner jest, in the exercise of his gift of caricature. +Had he given comic direction to his work, he might have become a +Hogarth, perhaps; as it is, he is something far better worth while--he +is Abbey. + + + + +LXV + + +I shall write comparatively little here of the eleven years I remained +in the service of the _World_. The experience is too recent to constitute +a proper subject of freehand reminiscence. My relations with Mr. Pulitzer +were too closely personal, too intimate, and in many ways too +confidential to serve a purpose of that kind. + +But of the men with whom my work on the _World_ brought me into contact, +I am free to write. So, too, I am at liberty, I think, to relate certain +dramatic happenings that serve to illustrate the Napoleonic methods +of modern journalism and certain other things, not of a confidential +nature, which throw light upon the character, impulses, and methods of +the man whose genius first discovered the possibilities of journalism +and whose courage, energy, and extraordinary sagacity have made of those +possibilities accomplished facts. + +It has been more than ten years since my term of service on the _World_ +came to an end, but it seems recent to me, except when I begin counting +up the men now dead who were my fellow-workmen there. + +I did not personally know Mr. Pulitzer when I began my duties on the +_World_. He was living in Europe then, and about to start on a long +yachting cruise. John A. Cockerill was managing editor and in control +of the paper, subject, of course, to daily and sometimes hourly +instructions from Paris by cable. For, during my eleven years of service +on the _World_, I never knew the time when Mr. Pulitzer did not himself +actively direct the conduct of his paper wherever he might be. Even when +he made a yachting voyage as far as the East Indies, his hand remained +always on the helm in New York. + +[Sidenote: John A. Cockerill] + +Colonel Cockerill was one of the kindliest, gentlest of men, and at the +same time one of the most irascible. His irascibility was like the froth +that rises to the top of the glass and quickly disappears, when a Seidlitz +powder is dissolved--not at all like the "head" on a glass of champagne +which goes on threateningly rising long after the first effervescence +is gone. When anything irritated him the impulse to break out into +intemperate speech seemed wholly irresistible, but in the very midst of +such utterance the irritation would pass away as suddenly as it had come +and he would become again the kindly comrade he had meant to be all the +while. This was due to the saving grace of his sense of humor. I think +I never knew a man so capable as he of intense seriousness, who was +at the same time so alertly and irresistibly impelled to see the +humorous aspects of things. He would rail violently at an interfering +circumstance, but in the midst of his vituperation he would suddenly see +something ridiculous about it or in his own ill-temper concerning it. +He would laugh at the suggestion in his mind, laugh at himself, and +tell some brief anecdote--of which his quiver was always full--by way +of turning his own irritation and indignation into fun and thus making +an end of them. + +He was an entire stranger to me when I joined the staff of the _World_, +but we soon became comrades and friends. There was so much of robust +manhood in his nature, so much of courage, kindliness, and generous good +will that in spite of the radical differences between his conceptions of +life and mine, we soon learned to find pleasure in each other's company, +to like each other, and above all, to trust each other. I think each of +us recognized in the other a man incapable of lying, deceit, treachery, +or any other form of cowardice. That he was such a man I perfectly knew. +That he regarded me as such I have every reason to believe. + +After our friendship was perfectly established he said to me one day: + +"You know I did all I could to prevent your engagement on the _World_. +I'm glad now I didn't succeed." + +"What was your special objection to me?" I asked. + +"Misconception, pure and simple, together with ill-informed prejudice. +That's tautological, of course, for prejudice is always ill-informed, +isn't it? At any rate, I had an impression that you were a man as +utterly different from what I now know you to be as one can easily +imagine." + +"And yet," I said, "you generously helped me out of my first difficulty +here." + +"No, did I? How was that?" + +"Why, when the news went out that I had been engaged as an editorial +writer on the _World_, a good many newspapers over the country were +curious to know why. The prejudice against the _World_ under its +new management was still rampant, and my appointment seemed to many +newspapers a mystery, for the reason that my work before that time had +always been done on newspapers of a very different kind. Even here on +the _World_ there was curiosity on the subject, for Ballard Smith sent +a reporter to me, before I left the _Commercial Advertiser_, to ask me +about it. The reporter, under instructions, even asked me, flatly, whose +place I was to take on the _World_, as if the _World_ had not been able +to employ a new man without discharging an old one." + +"Yes--I know all about that," said Cockerill. "You see, you were +editor-in-chief of a newspaper, and some of the folks on the _World_ had +a hope born into their minds that you were coming here to replace me as +managing editor. Some others feared you were coming to oust them from +snug berths. Go on. You didn't finish." + +"Well, among the speculative comments made about my transfer, there was +one in a Springfield paper, suggesting that perhaps I had been employed +'to give the _World_ a conscience.' All these things troubled me greatly, +for the reason that I didn't know Mr. Pulitzer then, nor he me, and +I feared he would suspect me of having inspired the utterances in +question--particularly the one last mentioned. I went to you with my +trouble, and I shall never forget what you said to me. 'My dear Mr. +Eggleston, you can trust Joseph Pulitzer to get to windward of things +without any help from me or anybody else.'" + +"You've found it so since, haven't you?" he asked. + +"Yes, but I didn't know it then, and it was a kindly act on your part +to reassure me." + +[Sidenote: An Extraordinary Executive] + +Cockerill's abilities as a newspaper editor were very great, but they +were mainly executive. He had no great creative imagination. He could +never have originated the Napoleonic revolution in journalism which Mr. +Pulitzer's extraordinary genius wrought. But Mr. Pulitzer was fortunate +in having such a man as Cockerill to carry out his plans. His alert +readiness in grasping an idea and translating it into achievement +amounted to genius in its way. But during all the years of my intimate +association with him, I never knew Cockerill to originate a great idea. +With a great idea intrusted to him for execution, his brain was fertile +of suggestions and expedients for its carrying out, and his industry in +translating the ideas of his chief into action was ceaseless, tireless, +sleepless. He would think of a thousand devices for accomplishing the +purpose intended. He would hit upon scores of ways in which a campaign +projected by another mind could be carried out effectively. + +There was at one time a good deal of speculation as to whose brain +had made the phenomenal success of the all-daring _World_ experiment +in journalism. I think I know all about that, and my judgment is +unhesitating. Mr. Pulitzer was often and even generally fortunate in his +multitudinous lieutenants, and that good fortune was chiefly due to his +sagacity in the selection of the men appointed to carry out his plans. +But the plans were his, just as the choice of lieutenants was, and the +creative genius that revolutionized journalism and achieved results +unmatched and even unapproached, was exclusively that of Joseph +Pulitzer. + +I do not mean that every valuable idea or suggestion which contributed +to the result was originally his, though on broad lines that was true. +But it was part and parcel of his genius to induce ideas and call forth +suggestions at the hands of others, to make them his own, and to embody +them in the policy of the _World_. So readily did he himself appreciate +this necessity of getting ideas from whatever source they might come, +that he often offered premiums and rewards for helpful suggestions. +And when any member of his staff voluntarily offered suggestions that +appealed to him, he was always ready and very generous in acknowledging +and rewarding them. + +But it was Joseph Pulitzer's genius that conceived the new journalism; +it was his brain that gave birth to it all; it was his gift of +interpreting, utilizing, and carrying out the ideas of others that made +them fruitful. + +I emphasize this judgment here because there has been much misapprehension +regarding it, and because I knew the facts more intimately and more +definitely perhaps than any other person now living does. I feel myself +free to write of the subject for the reason that it has been more than +a decade of years since my connection with the _World_ ceased, and the +personal friendship I once enjoyed with Mr. Pulitzer became a matter of +mere reminiscence to both of us. + +My relations with Cockerill were not embarrassed by any question of +control or authority. Cockerill had general charge of the newspaper, +but the editorial page was segregated from the other sheets, and so far +as that was concerned, William H. Merrill was in supreme authority. +Whenever he was absent his authority devolved upon me, and for results +I was answerable only to Mr. Pulitzer. + +I shall never forget my introduction to my new duties. It was arranged +between Merrill and me, that I should take a week off, between the +severance of my connection with the _Commercial Advertiser_ and the +beginning of my work on the _World_, in order that I might visit my +family and rest myself at my little place on Lake George. I was to +report for duty on the _World_ on a Sunday morning, when Merrill +would induct me into the methods of the newspaper, preparatory to his +vacation, beginning two or three days later. + +[Sidenote: An Editorial Perplexity] + +Unfortunately, Merrill had greater confidence in my newspaper skill +and experience than I had, and so when I reported for duty on Sunday, +Merrill was already gone on his vacation and I was left responsible for +next day's editorial page. + +I knew nothing of the _World's_ staff or organization or methods. There +were no other editorial writers present in the office and upon inquiry +of the office boys I learned that no others were expected to present +themselves on that day. + +I sent to the foreman of the composing room for the "overproofs"--that +is to say, proofs of editorial matter left over from the day before. +He reported that there were none, for the reason that Merrill, before +leaving on the preceding day, had "killed" every editorial galley in the +office. + +Cockerill was not expected at the office until nine or ten o'clock that +night, and there was nobody else there who could tell me anything about +the matter. + +Obviously, there was only one thing to do. I sat down and wrote an +entire editorial page, for a newspaper whose methods and policy I knew +only from the outside. When I had done that, and had got my matter into +type, and had read my revised proofs, messengers arrived bearing the +manuscripts of what the other editorial writers--men unknown to me--had +written at their homes during the day, after the Sunday custom that then +prevailed but which I abolished a little later when Merrill went to +Europe upon Mr. Pulitzer's invitation and I was left in control of the +editorial page. + +I have related this experience thinking that it may interest readers +unfamiliar with newspaper work, as an exemplification of the emergency +problems with which newspaper men have often to deal. These are of +frequent occurrence and of every conceivable variety. I remember that +once some great utterance seemed necessary, and Mr. Pulitzer telegraphed +it from Bar Harbor. It filled the entire available editorial space, so +that I provided no other editorial articles whatever. I had "made up" +the page and was only waiting for time before going home, when news +despatches came that so completely changed the situation treated in the +editorial as to compel its withdrawal. + +It was after midnight, and I hadn't a line of editorial matter on the +galleys with which to fill the void. The editorial page must go to the +stereotypers at half-past one, and I had no soul to help me even by +writing twaddle with which to fill space. The situation was imperative +and the case was clear. The case was that I must write two or three +columns of editorial matter and get it into type, proof-read, and +corrected, before one-thirty of the clock--or one-forty-five, as the +foreman of the composing room, a royal good fellow, Mr. Jackson, +volunteered to stretch the time limit by some ingenious device of +his own. + +I wish to say here, lest no other opportunity offer, that in the thirty +years of my newspaper service, I have found no better or more loyal +friends than the men of the composing room, whether in high place or +low; that I have never known them to hesitate, in an emergency, to help +out by specially strenuous endeavor and by enduring great inconvenience +on their own part. So great is my gratitude for their comradely +good-fellowship that even now--ten years after a final end came to my +newspaper work--one of the first parts of the establishment I visit when +I have occasion to go to the _World_ office is the composing room, where +old friends greet me cordially on every hand. Great--very great--are +the printers. They do their work under a stress of hurry, noise, and +confusion that would drive less well-made men frantic, and they do it +mightily well. To one who knows, as I do, what the conditions are, every +printed newspaper page is a miracle of human achievement under well-nigh +inconceivable difficulties. + +[Sidenote: Donn Piatt] + +It was soon after my service on the _World_ began that I became +acquainted with a man of brilliant gifts, often erratically employed, +and of singularly interesting personality--Donn Piatt. From that time +until his death I saw much of him in a quiet club-corner way, and +listened with interest while he set forth his views and conclusions, +always with a suggestion of humor in them and often in perverse, +paradoxical ways. + +One day some question arose between us as to the failure of a certain +book to achieve the success we both thought it deserved. Donn Piatt's +explanation was ready: + +"It is because we have altogether too much education in this country," +he said. "You see, our schools are turning out about a million graduates +every year, under the mistaken belief that they are educated. All these +boys and girls have been taught how to read, but they haven't the +smallest notion of what to read, or why to read. They regard reading as +you and I might regard a game of solitaire--as a convenient means of +relaxing the mind, diverting the attention from more serious things--in +brief, they read for amusement only, and have no notion of any other +possible purpose in reading. That's why every sublimated idiot who makes +a mountebank of himself as a 'humorist' wins his public instantly and +easily. The great majority of readers are that way minded, and of course +the publishers must cater to the taste of the multitude. They'd be worse +idiots than their customers if they didn't. It's the same way with +plays. The people who go to the theater want to be amused without the +necessity of doing even a little thinking. Why, a few years ago when +Wallack was running such things as 'She Stoops to Conquer,' 'School for +Scandal,' 'London Assurance,' and the like, in his old Thirteenth Street +theater, with Dion Boucicault, John Brougham, Harry Montague, John +Gilbert, Harry Beckett, and a lot of other really great actors in the +casts, he played to slender houses, while just around the corner there +wasn't standing room when 'Pink Dominoes' was on." + +My acquaintance with Donn Piatt began in a rather curious way. Some time +before, there had appeared in one of the magazines a series of letters +signed "Arthur Richmond." They were political philippics, inspired +chiefly by a reckless, undiscriminating spirit of attack. They were +as mysterious in their origin as the letters of Junius, but otherwise +they bore little if any of the assumed and intended resemblance to +that celebrated series. There was little of judgment, discretion, or +discrimination in them, and still less of conscience. But they attracted +widespread attention and the secret of their authorship was a matter of +a good deal of popular curiosity. A number of very distinguished men +were mentioned as conjectural possibilities in that connection. + +Even after the letters themselves had ceased to be of consequence, a +certain measure of curiosity as to their authorship survived, so that +any newspaper revelation of the secret was exceedingly desirable. One +day somebody told me that Donn Piatt had written them. Personally I did +not know him, but in the freemasonry of literature and journalism every +man in the profession knows every other man in it well enough at least +for purposes of correspondence. So I wrote a half playful letter to Donn +Piatt, saying that somebody had charged him with the authorship of that +"iniquitous trash"--for so I called it--and asking him if I might affirm +or deny the statement in the _World_. He replied in a characteristic +letter, in which he said: + +[Sidenote: "A Syndicate of Blackguards"] + +"I was one of a syndicate of blackguards engaged to write the 'Arthur +Richmond' letters and I did write some of them. You and I ought to know +each other personally and we don't. Why won't you come up to the ---- +Club to-night and help me get rid of one of the infamous table d-hôte +dinners they sell there for seventy-five cents? Then I'll tell you all +about the 'Arthur Richmond' letters and about any other crimes of my +commission that may interest you. Meanwhile, I'm sending you a letter +for publication in answer to your inquiry about that particular +atrocity." + +As we talked that night and on succeeding occasions, Donn Piatt told me +many interesting anecdotes of his career as a newspaper correspondent +much given to getting into difficulty with men in high place by reason +of his freedom in criticism and his vitriolic way of saying what he had +to say in the most effective words he could find. + +"You see the dictionary was my ruin," he said after relating one of +his anecdotes. "I studied it not wisely but too well in my youth, and +it taught me a lot of words that have always seemed to me peculiarly +effective in the expression of thought, but to which generals and +statesmen and the other small fry of what is called public life, seem +to have a rooted objection. By the way, did you ever hear that I once +committed arson?" + +I pleaded ignorance of that incident in his career, and added: + +"I shall be interested to hear of that crime if you're sure it is +protected by the statute of limitations. I shouldn't like to be a +witness to a confession that might send you to the penitentiary." + +"Oh, I don't know that that would be so bad," he interrupted. "I'm +living with my publisher now, you know, and a change might not prove +undesirable. However, the crime is outlawed by time now. And besides, I +didn't myself set fire to the building. I'm guilty only under the legal +maxim 'Qui facit per alium facit per se.' The way of it was this: When I +was a young man trying to get into a law practice out in Ohio, and eager +to advertise myself by appearing in court, a fellow was indicted for +arson. He came to me, explaining that he had no money with which to +pay a lawyer, but that he thought I might like to appear in a case so +important, and that if I would do the best I could for him, he stood +ready to do anything for me that he could, by way of recompense. I took +the case, of course. It was a complex one and it offered opportunities +for browbeating and 'balling up' witnesses--a process that specially +impresses the public with the sagacity of a lawyer who does it +successfully. Then, if by any chance I should succeed in acquitting my +client, my place at the bar would be assured as that of 'a sharp young +feller, who had beaten the prosecuting attorney himself.' + +"But in telling my client I would take his case the demon of humor +betrayed me. Just across the street from my lodging was a negro church, +and there was a 'revival' going on at the time. They 'revived' till +two o'clock or later every night with shoutings that interfered with +my sleep. With playful impulse I said to the accused man: + +"'You seem to be an expert in the arts of arson. If you'll burn that +negro church I'll feel that you have paid me full price for my service +in defending you.' + +"I defended him and, as the witnesses against him were all of shady +character, I succeeded in securing his acquittal. About four o'clock +the next morning a fire broke out under all four corners of that negro +church, and before the local fire department got a quart of water into +action, it was a heap of smouldering ashes--hymn-books and all. A week +or so later I received a letter from my ex-client. He wrote from St. +Louis, 'on his way west,' he said. He expressed the hope that I was +'satisfied with results,' and begged me to believe that he was 'a man +of honor who never failed to repay an obligation or reward a service.'" + +With Donn Piatt's permission I told that story several times. Presently +I read it in brief form in a newspaper where the hero of it was set down +as "Tom Platt." I suppose the reporter in that case confused the closely +similar sounds of "Donn Piatt" and "Tom Platt." At any rate, it seems +proper to say that the venerable ex-Senator from New York never +practiced law in Ohio and never even unintentionally induced the burning +of a church. The story was Donn Piatt's and the experience was his. + + + + +LXVI + + +[Sidenote: First Acquaintance with Mr. Pulitzer] + +I first made Mr. Pulitzer's personal acquaintance in Paris, where he was +living at that time. I had been at work on the _World_ for a comparatively +brief while, when he asked me to visit him there--an invitation which +he several times afterwards repeated, each time with increased pleasure +to me. + +On the occasion of my first visit to him, he said to me one evening +at dinner: + +"I have invited you here with the primary purpose that you shall have +a good time. But secondly, I want to see you as often as I can. We have +luncheon at one o'clock, and dinner at seven-thirty. I wish you'd take +luncheon and dinner with me as often as you can, consistently with my +primary purpose that you shall have a good time. If you've anything else +on hand that interests you more, you are not to come to luncheon or +dinner, and I will understand. But if you haven't anything else on hand, +I sincerely wish you'd come." + +In all my experience--even in Virginia during the old, limitlessly +hospitable plantation days--I think I never knew a hospitality superior +to this--one that left the guest so free to come on the one hand and so +entirely free to stay away without question if he preferred that. I, who +have celebrated hospitality of the most gracious kind in romances of +Virginia, where hospitality bore its most gorgeous blossoms and its +richest fruitage, bear witness that I have known no such exemplar of +that virtue in its perfect manifestation as Joseph Pulitzer. + +Years afterwards, at Bar Harbor, I had been working with him night and +day over editorial problems of consequence, and, as I sat looking on at +a game of chess in which he was engaged one evening, he suddenly ordered +me to bed. + +"You've been overworking," he said. "You are to go to bed now, and you +are not to get up till you feel like getting up--even if it is two days +hence. Go, I tell you, and pay no heed to hours or anything else. You +shall not be interrupted in your sleep." + +I was very weary and I went to bed. The next morning--or I supposed +it to be so--I waked, and looked at my watch. It told me it was six +o'clock. I tried to woo sleep again, but the effort was a failure. I +knew that breakfast would not be served for some hours to come, but +I simply could not remain in bed longer. I knew where a certain dear +little lad of the family kept his fishing tackle and his bait. I decided +that I would get up, take a cold plunge, pilfer the tackle, and spend +an hour or two down on the rocks fishing. + +[Sidenote: Mr. Pulitzer's Kindly Courtesy] + +With this intent I slipped out of my room, making no noise lest I should +wake some one from his morning slumber. The first person I met was +Mr. Pulitzer. He gleefully greeted me with congratulations upon the +prolonged sleep I had had, and after a brief confusion of mind, I found +that it was two o'clock in the afternoon, and that my unwound watch had +misled me. In his anxiety that I should have my sleep out, Mr. Pulitzer +had shut off the entire half of the building in which my bedroom lay, +and had stationed a servant as sentinel to prohibit intrusion upon that +part of the premises and to forbid everything in the nature of noise. + +Mr. Pulitzer himself never rested, in the days of my association with +him. His mind knew no surcease of its activity. He slept little, and +with difficulty. His waking hours, whether up or in bed, were given to a +ceaseless wrestling with the problems that belong to a great newspaper's +conduct. I have known him to make an earnest endeavor to dismiss these +for a time. To that end he would peremptorily forbid all reference to +them in the conversation of those about him. But within the space of +a few minutes he would be in the midst of them again, and completely +absorbed. But he recognized the necessity of rest for brains other than +his own, and in all kindly ways sought to secure and even to compel it. +I remember once at Bar Harbor, when for two or three days and nights in +succession I had been at work on something he greatly wanted done, he +said to me at breakfast: + +"You're tired, and that task is finished. I want you to rest, and, of +course, so long as you and I remain together you can't rest. Your brain +is active and so is mine. If we stay in each other's company we shall +talk, and with us talk means work. In five minutes we'll be planning +some editorial crusade, and you'll get to work again. So I want you to +go away from me. Let Eugene drive you to the village, and there secure +an open carriage and a pair of good horses--the best you can get--and +drive all over this interesting island. Get yourself rested. And when +you come back, don't let me talk newspaper with you, till you've had +a night's sleep." + +It was in that kindly spirit that Mr. Pulitzer always treated his +lieutenants when he invited them to pass a time with him. So long as +he and they were together, he could not help working them almost to +death. But, when he realized their weariness, he sent them off to +rest, on carriage drives or yachting voyages or what not, with generous +consideration of their inability to carry weight as he did night and +day and every day and every night. + +Sometimes his eagerness in work led him to forget his own kindly +purpose. I remember once when I had been writing all day and throughout +most of the night in execution of his prolific inspiration, he suddenly +became aware of the fact that I must be weary. Instantly he said: + +"You must rest. You must take a carriage or a boat and go off somewhere. +Think out where it shall be, for yourself. But you sha'n't do another +thing till you've had a good rest." + +Then, as we strolled out into the porch and thence to the sea wall +against which the breakers were recklessly dashing themselves to pieces, +he suddenly thought of something. In a minute we were engaged in +discussing that something, and half an hour later I was busy in my room, +with books of reference all about me, working out that something, and it +was three o'clock next morning before I finished the writing of what he +wanted written on that theme. At breakfast next morning I was late, and +the fact reminded him of the plans he had formed twenty-four hours +before for a rest for me. He refused even to light a cigar until I should +be gone. + +"If we smoke together," he said, "we shall talk. If we talk we shall +become interested and you'll be set to work again. Get you hence. Let me +see no more of you till dinner to-night. In the meantime, do what you +will to rest yourself. That's my only concern now. Drive, sail, row, +loaf, play billiards--do whatever will best rest you." + +I relate these things by way of showing forth one side of the character +of a man who has wrought a revolution in the world. I have other things +to relate that show forth another side of that interestingly complex +nature. + +[Sidenote: The Maynard Case] + +In his anxiety to secure terseness of editorial utterance he at one time +limited all editorials to fifty lines each. As I had final charge of +the editorial page on four nights of the week, I found myself obliged, +by the rule, to spoil many compact articles written by other men, by +cutting out a line or two from things already compacted "to the limit." + +I said this to Mr. Pulitzer one day, and he replied: + +"Well, just to show you that I have no regard for cast-iron rules, I +am going to ask you now to write four columns on a subject of public +importance." + +The subject was the nomination of Judge Maynard for Justice of +the Court of Appeals. Judge Maynard stood accused of--let us say +questionable--conduct in judicial office in relation to certain election +proceedings. The details have no place here. Judge Maynard had never +been impeached, and his friends indignantly repudiated every suggestion +that his judicial conduct had been in any wise influenced by partisan +considerations. His enemies--and they were many, including men of high +repute in his own party--contended that his judicial course in that +election matter unfitted him for election to the higher office. + +I have every reason to believe--every reason that eleven years of +editorial association can give--that in every case involving the public +welfare, or public morality, or official fitness, Mr. Pulitzer sincerely +desires to ascertain the facts and to govern his editorial course +accordingly. I have never been able to regard him as a Democrat or a +Republican in politics. He has impressed me always as an opportunist, +caring far more for practical results than for doctrinaire dogmas. + +In this Maynard case the contentions were conflicting, the assertions +contradictory, and the facts uncertain so far at least as the _World_ +knew them. + +"I want you to go into the Maynard case," said Mr. Pulitzer to me, "with +an absolutely unprejudiced mind. We hold no brief for or against him, +as you know. I want you to get together all the documents in the case. +I want you to take them home and study them as minutely as if you were +preparing yourself for an examination. I want you to regard yourself +as a judicial officer, oath-bound to justice, and when you shall have +mastered the facts and the law in the case, I want you to set them forth +in a four-column editorial that every reader of the _World_ can easily +understand." + +This was only one of many cases in which he set me or some other +lieutenant to find out facts and determine what justice demanded, in +order that justice might be done. + +In 1896, when the Democratic party made its surrender to populism and +wild-eyed socialism by nominating Bryan, I was at the convention in +Chicago, telegraphing editorial articles. I foreshadowed the nomination +as inevitable, contrary to the predictions of the _World's_ newsgatherers +in the convention. Instantly, and before the nomination was made, Mr. +Pulitzer telegraphed me from Bar Harbor, to come to him at once. By the +time I got there the nomination was a fact accomplished. + +Mr. Pulitzer said to me: + +"I'm not going to tell you what my own views of the situation are, +or what I think ought to be the course of the _World_, as a foremost +Democratic newspaper, under the circumstances. No"--seeing that I +was about to speak--"don't say a word about your own views. They are +necessarily hasty and ill-considered as yet, just as my own are. I want +you to take a full twenty-four hours for careful thought. At the end of +that time I want you to write out your views of the policy the _World_ +ought to adopt, giving your reasons for every conclusion reached." + +Mr. Pulitzer did not adopt precisely the policy I recommended on that +occasion. But the _World_ refused to support the Bryan candidacy with +its fundamental idea of debasing the currency by the free coinage of +silver dollars intrinsically worth only fifty cents apiece or less. + +[Sidenote: Bryan's Message and the Reply] + +While I was still his guest on that mission, there came to Bar Harbor an +emissary from Mr. Bryan, who asked for an interview with Mr. Pulitzer in +Mr. Bryan's behalf. As I happened to know the young man, Mr. Pulitzer +asked me to see him in his stead and to receive his message. Armed with +full credentials as Mr. Pulitzer's accredited representative, I visited +the young ambassador, and made careful notes of the message he had to +deliver. It was to this effect: + +Mr. Bryan was unselfishly anxious to save the reputation of the +newspaper press as a power in public affairs. His election by an +overwhelming majority, he said, was certain beyond all possibility of +doubt or question. But if it should be accomplished without the support +of the _World_ or any other of the supposedly influential Democratic +newspapers, there must be an end to the tradition of press power and +newspaper influence in politics. For the sake of the press, and +especially of so great a newspaper as the _World_, therefore, Mr. +Bryan asked Mr. Pulitzer's attention to this danger to prestige. + +When I delivered this message to Mr. Pulitzer, he laughed. Then he gave +me a truly remarkable exhibition of his masterful knowledge of American +political conditions, and of his sagacious prescience. He asked me to +jot down some figures as he should give them to me. He named the states +that would vote for Bryan with the number of electoral votes belonging +to each. Then he gave me the list of states that would go against Bryan, +with their electoral strength. When I had put it all down, he said: + +"I don't often predict--never unless I know. But you may embody that +table in an editorial, predicting that the result of the election four +months hence will be very nearly, if not exactly, what those lists +foreshadow. Let that be our answer to Mr. Bryan's audacious message." + +The campaign had not yet opened. Mr. Bryan had just been nominated with +positively wild enthusiasm. The movement which afterwards put Palmer in +the field as an opposing Democratic candidate had not yet been thought +of. All conditions suggested uncertainty, and yet, as we sat there in +his little private porch at Bar Harbor, Mr. Pulitzer correctly named +every state that would give its electoral vote to each candidate, +and the returns of the election--four months later--varied from his +prediction of results by only two electoral votes out of four hundred +and forty-seven. And that infinitesimal variation resulted solely from +the fact that by some confusion of ballots in California and Kentucky +each of those states gave one vote to Bryan and the rest to his opponent. + +I have known nothing in the way of exact political prescience, long in +advance of the event, that equaled this or approached it. I record it +as phenomenal. + + + + +LXVII + + +[Sidenote: A Napoleonic Conception] + +Ever since the time when he bought two St. Louis newspapers, both of +which were losing money, combined them, and made of them one of the most +profitable newspaper properties in the country, Mr. Pulitzer's methods +have been Napoleonic both in the brilliancy of their conception and +in the daring of their execution. I may here record as a personal +recollection the story of one of his newspaper achievements. The fact +of it is well enough known; the details of its dramatic execution have +never been told, I think. + +In February, 1895, the government of the United States found it +necessary to issue $62,300,000 in four per cent., thirty-year bonds, to +make good the depletion of the gold reserve in the treasury. The bonds +were sold to a syndicate at the rate of 104-3/4. Once on the market, +they quickly advanced in price until they were sold by the end of that +year at 118, and, if any bank or investor wanted them in considerable +quantities, the price paid was 122 or more. + +At the beginning of the next year it was announced that the treasury +would sell $200,000,000 more of precisely the same bonds, printed +from the same plates, payable at the same time, and in all respects +undistinguishable from those of the year before--at that time in eager +popular demand at 118 to 122. It was also announced that the treasury +had arranged to sell these bonds--worth 118 or more in the open +market--to the same old Morgan syndicate "at about the same price" +(104-3/4), at which the preceding issue had been sold. + +Mr. Pulitzer justly regarded this as a scandalous proposal to give the +syndicate more than twenty-six millions of dollars of the people's money +in return for no service whatever. The banks and the people of the +country wanted these bonds at 118 or more, and banks and bankers in +other countries were equally eager to get them at the same rate. It +seemed to him, as it seemed to every other well-informed person, that +this was a reckless waste of the people's money, the scandalous favoring +of a syndicate of speculators, and a damaging blow to the national +credit. But, unlike most other well-informed persons, Mr. Pulitzer +refused to regard the situation as one beyond saving, although it was +given out from Washington that the bargain with the syndicate was +already irrevocably made. + +Mr. Pulitzer set his editorial writers at work to make the facts of the +case clear to every intelligent mind; to show forth the needlessness of +the proposed squandering; to emphasize the scandal of this dealing in +the dark with a gang of Wall Street bettors upon a certainty; and to +demonstrate the people's readiness and even eagerness to subscribe for +the bonds at a much higher rate than the discrediting one at which the +Treasury had secretly agreed to sell them to the syndicate. + +When all this had been done, to no purpose so far as I could see, +inasmuch as the response from Washington was insistent to the effect +that the sale was already agreed upon, Mr. Pulitzer one afternoon +summoned me to go at once to Lakewood, where he was staying at the time. +The train by which alone I could go was to arrive at Lakewood after the +departure of the last train thence for New York that evening, and I +mentioned that fact over the telephone. For reply I was asked to come +anyhow. + +When I got there night had already fallen, and as I was without even +so much as a handbag, I anticipated a night of makeshift at the hotel. +But as I entered Mr. Pulitzer's quarters he greeted me and said: + +"Come in quickly. We must talk rapidly and to the point. You think +you're to stay here all night, but you're mistaken. As this is your +night to be in charge of the editorial page, you must be in the office +of the _World_ at ten o'clock. I've ordered a special train to take you +back. It will start at eight o'clock and run through in eighty minutes. +Meanwhile, we have much to arrange, so we must get to work." + +[Sidenote: A Challenge to the Government] + +E. O. Chamberlin, the managing editor of the news department of the +_World_, was there and had already received his instructions. To me Mr. +Pulitzer said: + +"We have made our case in this matter of the bond issue. We have +presented the facts clearly, convincingly, conclusively, but the +Administration refuses to heed them. We are now going to compel it to +heed them on pain of facing a scandal that no administration could +survive. + +"What we demand is that these bonds shall be sold to the public at +something like their actual value and not to a Wall Street syndicate +for many millions less. You understand all that. You are to write a +double-leaded article to occupy the whole editorial space to-morrow +morning. You are not to print a line of editorial on any other subject. +You are to set forth, in compact form and in the most effective way +possible, the facts of the case and the considerations that demand a +popular or at least a public loan instead of this deal with a syndicate, +suggestive as it is of the patent falsehood that the United States +Treasury's credit needs 'financing.' You are to declare, with all +possible emphasis that the banks, bankers, and people of the United +States stand ready and eager to lend their government all the money it +wants at three per cent. interest, and to buy its four per cent. bonds +at a premium that will amount to that." + +He went on in this way, outlining the article he wanted me to write. + +"Then, as a guarantee of the sincerity of our conviction you are to say +that the _World_ offers in advance to take one million dollars of the +new bonds at the highest market price, if they are offered to the public +in open market. + +"In the meanwhile, Chamberlin has a staff of men sending out despatches +to every bank and banker in the land, setting forth our demand for a +public loan instead of a syndicate dicker, and asking each for what +amount of the new bonds it or he will subscribe on a three per cent. +basis. To-morrow morning's paper will carry with your editorial its +complete confirmation in their replies, and the proposed loan will +be oversubscribed on a three per cent. basis. Even Mr. Cleveland's +phenomenal self-confidence and Mr. Carlisle's purblind belief in Wall +Street methods will not be able to withstand such a demonstration as +that. It will _compel a public loan_. If it is true that the contract +with the syndicate has already been made, _they must cancel it_. The +voice of the country will be heard in the subscription list we shall +print to-morrow morning, and the voice of the country has compelling +power, even under this excessively self-confident administration. Now, +you're faint with hunger. Hurry over to the hotel and get a bite to eat. +You have thirty minutes before your special train leaves." + +I hurried to the hotel, but I spent that thirty minutes, not in eating +but in making a written report, for my own future use, of Mr. Pulitzer's +instructions. The memorandum thus made is the basis of what I have +written above. + +The climax of the great national drama thus put upon the stage was +worthy of the genius that inspired it. The responses of the banks and +bankers--sent in during the night--showed a tremendous oversubscription +of the proposed loan at a price that would yield to the government many +millions more than the syndicate sale offered, and there remained +unheard from the thousands and tens of thousands of private persons who +were eager to buy the bonds as investment securities. In the face of the +facts thus demonstrated, it would have been political suicide for the +men in control at Washington to refuse a public loan and to sell the +bonds to the syndicate for millions less than the people were eager to +pay for them. The administration yielded to moral force, but it did so +grudgingly and with manifest reluctance. It cut down the proposed loan +to the minimum that the Treasury must have, and it hedged it about with +every annoying device that might embarrass willing investors and prevent +the subscriptions of others than banks and bankers. In spite of all such +efforts to minimize the administration's defeat, the bond issue was +promptly taken up at a price that saved many millions to the Treasury, +and within a brief while the very bonds that Mr. Cleveland and Mr. +Carlisle had so insistently desired to sell to the syndicate at 104-3/4 +were very hard to get in the open market at 133 or more. + +[Sidenote: The Power of the Press] + +I have related this incident with some fullness because I know of no +other case in which the "power of the press"--which being interpreted +means the power of public opinion--to control reluctant political and +governmental forces, has been so dramatically illustrated. + +The only other case comparable with it was that in which not one +newspaper but practically all the newspapers in the land with a united +voice saved the country from chaos and civil war by compelling a wholly +unwilling and very obstinate Congress to find a way out of the electoral +controversy between Tilden and Hayes. No newspaper man who was in +Washington at any time during that controversy doubts or can doubt that +the two Houses of Congress would have adhered obstinately to their +opposing views until the end, with civil war as a necessary consequence, +but for the ceaseless insistence of all the newspapers of both parties +that they should devise and agree upon some peaceful plan by which the +controversy might be adjusted. + +At the time when the prospect seemed darkest I asked Carl Schurz for his +opinion of the outcome. He replied, with that intense earnestness in his +voice and words which his patriotism always gave to them in times of +public danger: + +"If left to the two Houses of Congress to decide--and that is where +the Constitution leaves it--the question will not be decided; on the +contrary, the more they discuss it, the more intense and unyielding +their obstinate determination not to agree will become. If it isn't +settled before the fourth of March, God only knows what the result will +be--civil war and chaos are the only things to be foreseen. But if left +alone, as I say, the two Houses of Congress will to the end refuse to +agree upon any plan of adjustment. The outlook is very gloomy, very +discouraging, very black. Only a tremendous pressure of public opinion +can save us from results more calamitous than any that the human mind +can conceive. If the newspapers can be induced to see the danger and +realize its extent--if they can persuade themselves to put aside their +partisanship and unite in an insistent demand that Congress shall find a +way out, a peaceful result may be compelled. Fortunately, the Southern +men in both houses are eager for the accomplishment of that. They and +their constituents have had enough and to spare of civil war. They may +be easily won to the support of any plan that promises to bring about +a peaceful solution of the controversy. But public opinion, as reflected +in the newspapers, must compel Congress, or nothing will be done." + + + + +LXVIII + + +[Sidenote: Recollections of Carl Schurz] + +This mention of Mr. Schurz reminds me of some other occasions on which +I had intercourse with him. He and I many times served together on +committees that had to do with matters of public interest. We were +members of the same clubs, and we saw much of each other at private +dinners and in other social ways, so that I came to know him well and +to appreciate at its full value that absolute honesty of mind which I +regard as his distinguishing characteristic. Without that quality of +sincerity, and with a conscience less exigent and less resolute than +his, Carl Schurz's political career might have compassed any end that +ambition set before him. That is perhaps a reflection on public life +and the men engaged in it. If so, I cannot help it. As it was, he never +hesitated for a moment to "quarrel with his bread and butter" if his +antagonism to wrong, and especially to everything that militated against +human liberty, called for such quarreling. He was above all things +a patriot in whose estimation considerations of the public welfare +outweighed, overrode, and trampled to earth all other considerations of +what kind soever. Party was to him no more than an implement, a tool for +the accomplishment of patriotic ends, and he gave to party no allegiance +whatever beyond the point at which it ceased to serve such ends. He +was always ready to quarrel with his own party and quit it for cause, +even when it offered him high preferment as the reward of continued +allegiance. + +In the same way, he held the scales true in all his judgments of men. +Mr. Lincoln once wrote him a letter--often quoted by his enemies--which +any "statesman" of the accepted type would have regarded as an +unforgivable affront. Yet in due time Mr. Schurz wrote an appreciative +estimate of Lincoln which has no fit fellow in the whole body of Lincoln +literature. His judgments of men and measures were always the honest +conclusions of an honest mind that held in reverence no other creed than +that of truth and preached no other gospel than that of human liberty. + +One evening I sat with him at a little dinner given by Mr. James Ford +Rhodes, the historian. Paul Leicester Ford sat between him and me, +while on my right sat our hostess and some other gentlewomen. Our +hostess presently asked me what I thought of a certain distinguished +personage whose name was at that time in everybody's mouth, and whose +popularity--chiefly won by genial, humorous, after-dinner speaking--was +wholly unmatched throughout the country. I do not mention his name, +because he still lives and is under a cloud. + +I answered that I thought him one of the worst and most dangerous of +popular public men, adding: + +"He has done more than any other man living to corrupt legislatures and +pervert legislation to the service of iniquitous corporations." + +Mr. Schurz, who was talking to some one at the other end of the table, +caught some hint of what I had said. He instantly turned upon me with +a demand that I should repeat it. I supposed that a controversy was +coming, and by way of challenging the worst, I repeated what I had said, +with added emphasis. Mr. Schurz replied: + +"You are right so far as your criticism goes. The man has done all that +you charge in the way of corrupting legislatures and perverting +legislation. He has made a business of it. But that is the very smallest +part of his offense against morality, good government, and free +institutions. His far greater sin is that he has _made corruption +respectable_, in the eyes of the people. And those who invite him to +banquets and set him to speak there, and noisily applaud him, are all +of them partners in his criminality whether they know it or not." + +[Sidenote: Mr. Schurz's Patriotism] + +One other conversation with Mr. Schurz strongly impressed me with his +exalted character and the memory of it lingers in my mind. In the summer +of the year 1900, when Mr. Bryan was nominated for the second time for +President, on a platform strongly reaffirming his free silver policy and +everything else for which he had stood in 1896, it was given out that +Carl Schurz, who had bitterly and effectively opposed him in 1896, +intended now to support him. I had finally withdrawn from the _World's_ +service, and from newspaper work of every kind, and was passing the +summer in literary work at my cottage on Lake George. But the _World_ +telegraphed me asking me to see Mr. Schurz, who was also a Lake George +cottager, and get from him some statement of his reasons for now +supporting the man and the policies that he had so strenuously opposed +four years before. + +I had no idea that Mr. Schurz would give me any such statement for +publication, but he and I had long been friends, and a call upon him +would occupy a morning agreeably, with the remote chance that I might +incidentally render a service to my friends of the _World_ staff. +Therefore, I went. + +Mr. Schurz told me frankly that he could give me nothing for +publication, just as I had expected that he would do. + +"I am going to make one or two speeches in this campaign," he said, +"and anything I might give you now would simply take the marrow out of +my speeches. But personally I shall be glad to talk the matter over with +you. It seems to me to be one of positively vital importance--not to +parties, for now that I have come to the end of an active life I care +nothing for parties--but to our country and to the cause of human +liberty." + +"You think human liberty is involved?" I asked. + +"Yes, certainly. Those conceptions upon which human liberty rests in +every country in the world had their birth in the colonies out of which +this nation was formed and they were first effectively formulated in +the Declaration of Independence and enacted into fundamental law in +our Constitution. The spectacle of a great, free, rich, and powerful +nation securely built upon those ideas as its foundation has been an +inspiration to all other peoples, and better still, a compulsion upon +all rulers. If that inspiration is lost, and that compulsion withdrawn, +the brutal military force that buttresses thrones will quickly undo all +that our influence has accomplished in teaching men their rights and +warning monarchs of their limitations." + +In answer to further questions he went on to say: + +"The spirit of imperialism--which is the arch-enemy of human liberty--is +rampant in the land, and it seems to me the supreme duty of every man +who loves liberty to oppose it with all his might, at whatever sacrifice +of lesser things he may find to be necessary. I am as antagonistic to +Mr. Bryan's free silver policy and to some other policies of his as I +was four years ago. But the time has come when men on the other side +jeer at the Declaration of Independence and mock at the Constitution +itself. There is danger in this--a danger immeasurably greater +than any that financial folly threatens. It seems to me time for a +revolution--not a revolution of violence or one which seeks overthrow, +but a revolution of public opinion designed to restore the landmarks and +bring the country back to its foundations of principle. Financial folly, +such as Mr. Bryan advocates, threatens us with nothing worse than a +temporary disturbance of business affairs. Imperialism threatens us with +the final destruction of those ideas and principles that have made our +country great in itself and immeasurably greater in its influence upon +thought and upon the welfare of humanity in every country on earth." + +I have recorded Mr. Schurz's words here, as nearly as a trained memory +allows me to do, not with the smallest concern for the political issues +of nine years ago, but solely because his utterances on that occasion +seem to me to have shown forth, as nothing else could have done, the +high inspiration of his patriotism, and to explain what many have +regarded as the inconsistencies of his political attitude at various +periods of his life. That so-called inconsistency was in fact a higher +consistency. His allegiance was at all times given to principles, to +ideas, to high considerations of right and of human liberty, and in +behalf of these he never hesitated to sacrifice his political prospects, +his personal advantage, or anything else that he held to be of less +human consequence. + + + + +LXIX + + +[Sidenote: The End of Newspaper Life] + +In the spring of the year 1900 I finally ceased to be a newspaper +worker. I was weary, almost beyond expression, of the endless grind +of editorial endeavor. My little summer home in the woodlands on Lake +George lured me to the quiet, independent, literary life that I had +always desired. There was an accumulation in my mind of things I +longingly desired to do, and the opportunity to do them came. Above all, +I wanted to be free once more--to be nobody's "hired man," to be subject +to no man's control, however generous and kindly that control might be. + +Life conditions at my place, "Culross," were ideal, with no exacting +social obligations, with plenty of fishing, rowing, and sailing, with my +giant pines, hemlocks, oaks, and other trees for companions, and with +the sweetest air to breathe that human lungs could desire. + +I had just published a boys' book that passed at once into second and +successive editions. The publishers of it had asked me for more books +of that kind, and still more insistently for novels, while with other +publishers the way was open to me for some historical and biographical +writings and for works of other kinds, that I had long planned. + +Under these favorable circumstances I joyously established anew the +literary workshop which had twice before been broken up by that "call +of the wild," the lure of journalism. + +This time, the summer-time shop consisted, and still consists, of a cozy +corner in one of the porches of my rambling, rock-perched cottage. +There, sheltered from the rain when it came and from the fiercer of the +winds, I spread a broad rug on the floor and placed my writing table and +chair upon it, and there for ten years I have done my work in my own +way, at my own times, and in all other ways as it has pleased me to do +it. In that corner, I have only to turn my head in order to view the +most beautiful of all lakes lying almost at my feet and only thirty +or forty feet away. If I am seized with the impulse to go fishing, my +fishing boat with its well-stocked bait wells is there inviting me. If +I am minded to go upon the water for rest and thought--or to be rid of +thought for a time--there are other boats in my dock, boats of several +sorts and sizes, among which I am free to choose. If the weather is +inclement, there are open fireplaces within the house and an ample stock +of wood at hand. + +[Sidenote: Life at Culross] + +For ten years past I have spent all my summers in these surroundings-- +staying at "Culross" four or five or even six months in each year and +returning to town only for the period of winter stress. + +During the ten years in which that corner of the porch has been my chief +workshop, I have added twenty-odd books to the dozen or so published +before, besides doing other literary work amounting to about an equal +product, and if I live, the end is not yet. I make this statistical +statement as an illustration of the stimulating effect of freedom upon +the creative faculty. The man who must do anything else--if it be only +to carry a cane, or wear cuffs, or crease his trousers, or do any other +thing that involves attention and distracts the mind, is seriously +handicapped for creative work of any kind. + +I have worked hard, of course. He who would make a living with his pen +must do that of necessity. But the work has been always a joy to me, and +such weariness as it brings is only that which gives added pleasure to +the rest that follows. + + + + +LXX + + +Every literary worker has his own methods, and I have never known any +one of them to adopt the methods of another with success. Temperament +has a good deal to do with it; habit, perhaps, a good deal more, and +circumstance more than all. + +I have always been an extemporaneous writer, if I may apply the +adjective to writers as we do to speakers. I have never been able to sit +down and "compose" anything before writing it. I have endeavored always +to master the subjects of my writing by study and careful thought, but +I have never known when I wrote a first sentence or a first chapter what +the second was to be. I think from the point of my pen, so far at least +as my thinking formulates itself in written words. + +I suppose this to be a consequence of my thirty-odd years of newspaper +experience. In the giddy, midnight whirl of making a great newspaper +there is no time for "first drafts," "outline sketches," "final +revisions," and all that sort of thing. When the telegraph brings +news at midnight that requires a leader--perhaps in double leads--the +editorial writer has an hour or less, with frequent interruptions, +in which to write his article, get it into type, revise the proofs, +and make up the page that contains it. He has no choice but to write +extemporaneously. He must hurriedly set down on paper what his newspaper +has to say on the subject, and send his sheets at once to the printers, +sometimes keeping messenger boys at his elbow to take the pages from his +hand one after another as fast as they are written. His only opportunity +for revision is on the proof slips, and even in that he is limited by +the necessity of avoiding every alteration that may involve the +overrunning of a line. + +In this and other ways born of necessity, the newspaper writer learns +the art of extemporaneous writing, which is only another way of saying +that he learns how to write at his best in the first instance, without +lazily depending upon revision for smoothness, clearness, terseness, and +force. He does not set down ill-informed or ill-considered judgments. +Every hour of every day of his life is given to the close study of the +subjects upon which he is at last called upon to write under stress of +tremendous hurry. He knows all about his theme. He has all the facts at +his fingers' ends. He is familiar with every argument that has been or +can be made on the questions involved. He knows all his statistics, and +his judgments have been carefully thought out in advance. His art consists +in the ability to select on the instant what phases of the subject +he will treat, and to write down his thought clearly, impressively, +convincingly, and in the best rhetorical form he can give it. + +[Sidenote: Extemporaneous Writing] + +I think that one who has acquired that habit of extemporaneous writing +about things already mastered in thought can never learn to write in any +other way. Both experience and observation have convinced me that men of +that intellectual habit do more harm than good to their work when they +try to improve it by revision. Revision in every such case is apt to +mean elaboration, and elaboration is nearly always a weakening dilution +of thought. + +I am disposed to think that whatever saves trouble to the writer is +purchased at the expense of the reader. The classic dictum that "easy +writing makes hard reading" is as true to-day as it was when Horace made +laborious use of the flat end of his stylus. For myself, at any rate, +I have never been able to "dictate," either "to the machine," or to a +stenographer, with satisfactory results, nor have I ever known anybody +else to do so without some sacrifice to laziness of that which it is +worth a writer's while to toil for. The stenographer and the typewriter +have their place as servants of commerce, but in literature they tend +to diffusion, prolixity, inexactitude, and, above all, to carelessness +in that choice of words that makes the difference between grace and +clumsiness, lucidity and cloud, force and feebleness. + +In the writing of novels, I have always been seriously embarrassed by +the strange perversity of fictitious people. That is a matter that has +puzzled and deeply interested me ever since I became a practising +novelist. + +The most ungrateful people in the world are the brain-children of the +novelist, the male and female folk whose existence is due to the good +will of the writer. Born of the travail of the novelist's brain, and +endowed by him with whatever measure of wit, wisdom, or wealth they +possess; personally conducted by him in their struggles toward the final +happiness he has foreordained for them at the end of the story; cared +for; coddled; listened to and reported even when they talk nonsense, and +not infrequently when they only think it; laboriously brought to the +attention of other people; pushed, if possible, into a fame they could +never have achieved for themselves; they nevertheless obstinately +persist in thwarting their creator's purpose and doing as they wickedly +please to his sore annoyance and vexation of spirit. + +In truth, the author of a story has very little control over its course +after he has once laid its foundations. The novel is not made--it grows, +and the novelist does little more than plant the seed and keep the +growth unchoked by weeds. He is as powerless to make it other than what +it tends to be as the gardener is to grow tomatoes on corn-stalks or +cucumbers on pea-vines. He may create for the story what manner of +people he pleases, just as the gardener may choose the seed he will +plant; but once created these fictitious people will behave according +to their individual natures without heed to the wishes of the author of +their being. + +In other words, the novelist is under bond to his conscience to +represent his personages as talking and acting precisely as such +personages would talk and act under the circumstances in which he has +placed them. It often happens that their sentiments, their utterances, +and their conduct do not fit into the author's preconceived arrangement +of happenings, so that he must alter his entire story or important parts +of it to make it true. + +I have borrowed the last few paragraphs from a playful paper I wrote for +an obscure magazine thirty-odd years ago, because they suggest a trouble +that must come to every conscientious novelist many times during the +writing of every story. There come times when the novelist doesn't know +what happened, and must toilsomely explore his consciousness by way of +finding out. + +[Sidenote: Working Hours and Working Ways] + +My working hours are determined by circumstances--morning, afternoon, +evening, or late at night. When there is a "must" involved, I work when +I must; when I am free I work when I choose or when I feel that I can. + +I never carry my work to bed with me, and I never let it rob me of a +moment's sleep. To avoid that I usually play a game or two of solitaire +--perhaps the least intellectual of all possible occupations--between +work and bedtime; and I usually take a walk in the open air just before +going to bed, whatever the weather may be. But whatever else happens, +I long ago acquired the art of absolutely dismissing the subject of my +work from my mind, whenever I please, and the more difficult art of +refusing to let any other subject of interest take its place. I do that +when I go to bed, and when I do that nothing less than positive physical +pain can keep me from going to sleep. + +I have always been fond of fishing and boating. In summer, at my Lake +George cottage, I have a little fleet of small boats moored within +twenty paces of my porch-placed writing table. If my mind flags at my +work I step into my fishing boat and give an hour or two to a sport that +occupies the attention without fatiguing it. If I am seriously perplexed +by any work-problem, I take a rowboat, with a pair of eight-foot oars, +and go for a ten-mile spin. On my return I find that my problem has +completely wrought itself out in my mind without conscious effort on +my part. + +I am fond of flower gardening and, without the least technical skill +in it, I usually secure astonishingly good results. The plants seem to +respond generously to my uninstructed but kindly attention. + +In my infancy my mother taught me to begin every day with a plunge into +water as cold as I could get, and I have kept up the habit with the +greatest benefit. I find it a perfect tonic as well as a luxurious +delight. + +I have always enforced upon myself two rules with respect to literary +style: First, to utter my thought simply and with entire sincerity, and, +second, never consciously to write or leave a sentence in such form that +even a blundering reader might mistake its meaning. + +Here let me bring to an end these random recollections of a life +which has involved hard work, distressing responsibility, and much of +disappointment, but which has been filled from the beginning with that +joy of success which is the chief reward of endeavor to every man who +loves his work and puts conscience into it. + + +THE END + + + + +INDEX + + +=A= + +Abbey, Edwin A., 274, 307 + +Accident, its part in literary work, 181-185 + +Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, 174, 191, 192 + +Alexander, Gen. E. P., 94 + +America. _See_ United States + +American authors visiting England, 265, 269 + +"American Idea," 296, 297 + +American life, 1840-50, 18-20 + +American literature provincial, 269-271 + +Americanism, birthplace of, 27 + +Amour, 117 + +Anonymous literary criticism, 203-205 + +"Appleseed, Johnny," 141 + +_Appleton's Journal_, 153, 181 + +Armitage, Rev. Dr., 113-115 + +Armstrong, Henry, 291 + +Army of Northern Virginia, 87, 93, 94 + +Arnold, Matthew, 268 + +Arthur, T. S., novels of, 25 + +Ashland, Va., 77 + +Associated Press, 180, 188, 302, 303 + +Astor Library, books mutilated, 271 + +_Atlantic Monthly_, 148, 149, 181 + +Authors, and editors, 167-172; + Virginian, 66-70 + +Authors Club, organized, 272; + presidency, 273; + eligibility, 273; + meeting-places, 274, 275; + in Twenty-fourth Street, 277; + social in character, 277, 278; + women, 278-280; + plainness of quarters, 280; + Watch Night, 281, 284; + diplomats and statesmen, 284; + "Liber Scriptorum," 285, 286. Also 85, 176-178, 228, 232, 254, 258 + +Authorship, esteemed in Virginia, 66, 67 + +"Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," Holmes's, 219 + + +=B= + +"Bab Ballads," Gilbert's, 137 + +Bacon-Shakespeare controversy, 220 + +Bar Harbor, 295, 320-326 + +"Barnwell C. H.," 242 + +Bates House, Indianapolis, 28, 29 + +Bath, American habits as to, 30, 31 + +Beauregard, Gen., 87, 237-241 + +Beecher, Henry Ward, 108 + +"Ben Bolt," 255 + +Benjamin, Judah P., 237 + +Bernhardt, Sara, 229, 230 + +Berry, Earl D., 290 + +"Big Brother, The," 181-183 + +Bigelow, John, 188, 228, 289, 303 + +Bludso, Jim, 160-162 + +Blunders, compositors', 241-243; + literary, 222-227; + telegrapher's, 238, 239 + +Bohemianism, 177 + +Book-editing, 234-237 + +Book notices, 190 + +Book reviewers, 190 + +Book reviewing, newspaper, 217 + +Book sales, predicting, 252-254 + +Book titles, 154-157 + +Books, mutilation of, 271; + in Virginia, 66 + +Booth, Edwin, 275, 276 + +Booth, Postmaster of Brooklyn, 125 + +"Boots and Saddles," Mrs. Custer's, 252-254 + +Boston, literary center, 148 + +Boucicault, Dion, 153 + +Bound boys and girls, 14, 16 + +Bowen, Henry C., 100, 128 + +Boys' stories, 181-185 + +Bragg, Gen., 238 + +"Breadwinners, The," 165 + +Briars, The, 71 + +Briggs, Charles F., 100-107 + +British authors visiting America, 265, 268, 269 + +British condescension, 268 + +_Broadway Journal_, 100 + +Brooklyn. N. Y., 31, 99, 115, 117 + +Brooklyn _Daily Eagle_, 126 + +Brooklyn _Union_, 99, 100, 105, 107, 110, 113, 115, 116, 128 + +Brooks, Elbridge S., 185 + +"Browneyes, Lily," 256-258 + +Bryan, Wm. J., and the _World_ in 1896, 324-326. Also 335-337 + +Bryant, Wm. C., 68, 129, 143; + conduct of the N. Y. _Evening Post_, 187-189; + as a reviewer of books, 190; + appoints G. C. Eggleston literary editor of the _Evening Post_, 192-194; + character, 194-196; + relations with Washington Irving, 196-198; + consideration for poets, 199-202, 205, 206; + views of anonymous literary criticism, 203-205; + estimate of Poe, 207; + _Index Expurgatorius_, 209-213; + his democracy, 214; + opinion of English society, 215-217; + estimate of Tennyson and other modern poets, 219; + his judgment of English literature, 220, 221 + +Bull Run, 78 + +Byron, quoted, 83, 84 + + +=C= + +Cairo, Ills., 96, 99 + +"Campaign of Chancellorsville," Dodge's, 208 + +Campbell, Thomas, 254 + +Cannon, Capt. John, 161 + +"Captain Sam," 183 + +Cary, Alice and Phoebe, 137 + +Carlisle, John G., 330, 331 + +Catholicism, 26 + +Cavalry life, 77-81 + +Chamberlin, E. O., 329, 330 + +Champlin, John D., 285 + +Chance, its part in literary work, 181-185 + +Charleston, S. C., 86, 164, 241 + +Checks, bank, in Virginia, 50 + +Children's stories. _See_ Boys' stories + +Church, Col. Wm. C., 204 + +Civil service system, 235 + +Civil War, changes wrought in Virginia, 73-76 + +Clay, Henry, 20 + +Clemens, Samuel L., 150, 160, 259, 265, 281 + +Cleveland, President, 214, 226, 330, 331 + +Coan, Dr. Titus Munson, quoted, 228 + +Cobham Station, 93 + +Cockerill, John A., 122, 308-312 + +Co-education, 57 + +Colman, Mr., 198 + +Collins, Tom, 89-93 + +_Commercial Advertiser._ _See under_ New York + +Compositors, 314, 315 + +Condescension, British, 268 + +Congress, U. S., in Tilden-Hayes controversy, 331-333 + +Constitution, U. S., 226, 336 + +Conversion, religious, 92 + +Cooke, John Esten, 59, 67, 69-72, 151, 240 + +Copy, following, 241-243 + +Copyright, 153, 154, 231-234, 268 + +Corruption, political, 124-126, 334, 335 + +Courtesy in Boston, New York, Virginia, 55, 56 + +Court-martial, 88, 89 + +Coward, Edward Fales, 291 + +Cowley, Abraham, 192 + +Craig, George, 13, 17 + +Creek War, 183 + +Criticism. _See_ Literary criticism + +"Culross," 338-344 + +Curtis, George William, 100 + +Curtis, Gen. Newton Martin, 85 + +Custer, Mrs., 252-254 + +Cuyler, Dr. Theo. L., quoted, 147 + + +=D= + +"Danger in the Dark," 26 + +Daniel, Senator, of Virginia, 85 + +Davis, James, 291 + +Davis, Jefferson, 164, 165, 237-241 + +Death-bed repentance, 93 + +Democracy, Bryant's, 214; + Cleveland's, 214 + +"Democracy," 269 + +Dictation, 341 + +Dictionaries, 210 + +Dime novel, 275, 276 + +Dodd, Mead, and Co., 244 + +Dodge, Mary Mapes, 131, 132 + +Dodge, Col. Theodore, 208 + +Dranesville, Va., 83 + +Dress, Joaquin Miller on, 175, 176; + men's evening, 175-178 + +Drinking habits. _See_ Temperance + +Dumont, Mrs. Julia L., 9 + +Dupont, Ind., 21 + +Dutcher, Silas B., 125 + +"Dutchmen," 3 + + +=E= + +_Eagle_, Brooklyn. _See under_ Brooklyn + +Early, Jubal A., 76 + +Editorial responsibility, 207-209 + +Editorial writing, 110, 313-315, 323, 340 + +Editors and authors, 167-172 + +Education, backwoods, 9, 10; + modern, 75, 76; + present and past in Virginia, 73-76; + western, in 1850, 32-34. _See also_ Schools and school-teaching + +Eggleston, Edward, 21, 22; + origin of "The Hoosier Schoolmaster," 34-36; + connection with _Hearth and Home_, 132; + first to utilize in literature the Hoosier life, 145, 146; + resigns editorship of _Hearth and Home_, 146; + quoted on copyright, 232-234; + relations with his brother, 266, 267 + +Eggleston, George Cary, + early recollections, life in the West in the eighteen-forties, 1-20; + first railroad journey, 21; + free-thinking, 22; + early theological thought and reading, 22-26; + school-teaching, 34-45; + Virginia life, 46-59; + occultism, experience of, 60-66; + creed, 75; + army life, 77; + cavalry, 77-81; + two experiences, 81-85; + artillery, 86, 87; + Army of Northern Virginia, 87-96; + legal practice, 99; + Brooklyn _Union_, 99-129; + New York _Evening Post_, 129-131; + _Hearth and Home_, 131-135, 145, 146, 148, 151, 180; + first books, 146; + first novel, 151-155; + New Jersey home, 180, 186; + boys' stories, 181-185; + financial troubles, 186, 187; + connection with New York _Evening Post_, 187-231; + acquaintance with W. C. Bryant, 192-228; + adviser of Harper and Brothers, 231, 234, 236; + literary editor of the _Commercial Advertiser_, 287; + managing editor, 288; + editor-in-chief, 289; + health, 292, 306; + editorial writer for the _World_, 306-337; + retires from journalism, 337; + literary habits, 338-344 + +Eggleston, Guilford Dudley, 184 + +Eggleston, Joseph, 96, 98 + +Eggleston, Joseph Cary, 9, 14, 15 + +Eggleston, Mrs. Mary Jane, 11 + +Eggleston, Judge Miles Cary, 8 + +Eggleston family, home of, 46 + +Election results, predicting, 326 + +Eliot, George, 255 + +Elliot, Henry R., 291 + +"End of the World," E. Eggleston's, 146 + +English, Thomas Dunn, 172, 255 + +English authors. _See_ British authors + +English language, N. Y. _Evening Post's_ standard, 210-214; + Virginia usage, 59; + Western usage, 8 + +English society, 215-217 + +_Evening Post, The._ _See under_ New York + +Extemporaneous writing, 339-341 + + +=F= + +"Fable for Critics," 101, 106, 195 + +Familiarity, President Cleveland contrasted with W. C. Bryant, 214 + +Farragut, Admiral, quoted, 77 + +Fawcett, Edgar, 153 + +Fellows, Col. John R., 121, 122 + +Fiction, place in 1840-50, 25, 26; + writing of, 341, 342 + +"First of the Hoosiers," quoted, 145 + +First Regiment of Virginia Cavalry, 77, 78, 81 + +"Flat Creek," 37 + +Florida War, 243 + +Folsom, Dr. François, 291 + +Ford, Paul Leicester, 278, 279, 334 + +Foreigners, American attitude toward, 1840-50, 2, 3 + +Francis, Sir Philip, 223-225 + +"Franco, Harry," 100, 106 + +Franklin, Benj., 1, 139 + +Free-thinking, 22 + +Free-trade and protection, 20 + +French Revolution, 108, 109 + +Fulton, Rev. Dr., 113-115 + + +=G= + +G., Johnny, 43-45 + +_Galaxy_, 181, 204 + +Garfield, Gen., 119 + +George Eliot, 255 + +George, Lake, 335, 337. _See also_ "Culross" + +Ghost story, 60-66 + +Gilbert, W. S., 137 + +Gilder, R. W., 172, 272, 273 + +Godkin, E. L., 230, 231 + +Godwin, Parke, 100, 188, 189, 227-230, 286-289, 295-300, 305 + +Gold coin in Plaquemine in 1886, 248-251 + +Gosse, Edmund, 177, 265-268 + +Gracie, Gen., 96 + +Grant, President, 93, 125, 126, 127, 244 + +_Graphic, The._ _See under_ New York + +Grebe, Charley, 37, 39-45 + +Greeley, Horace, 139, 167 + + +=H= + +Halsted, Dr. Wm. S., 294 + +"Harold," Tennyson's, 218 + +Harper and Brothers, 153, 154, 155, 167, 168, 231, 236, 241, 252, 257, + 287, 307 + +Harper, J. Henry, 259 + +Harper, Joseph W., Jr., 154, 168, 252, 253, 267, 285 + +_Harper's Magazine_, 141 + +Hay, John, 157-166, 275, 276 + +Hayden's "Dictionary of Dates," 234 + +Hayes-Tilden controversy, 332 + +_Hearth and Home_, 35, 36, 131-135, 145, 146, 148, 151, 157, 180 + +Hendrickses, the, 8 + +"Henry St. John, Gentleman," 69 + +_Herald, The._ _See under_ New York + +"Heterophemy," 223-225 + +Hewitt, Mr., 291 + +Hill, A. P., 87 + +Hilton, Judge Henry, 121 + +Hirsh, Nelson, 291 + +Historical intuition, 47 + +Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 177; + Bryant's estimate of, 219 + +_Home Journal_, 140 + +Hoosier dialect, 8, 14 + +Hoosier life, 145, 146 + +"Hoosier Schoolmaster, The," 34-36, 37, 41, 145; + in England, 233 + +Hospitality, 17, 320 + +Hotels in 1840-50, 28-31 + +"Houp-la," Mrs. Stannard's, 154 + +"How to Educate Yourself," 147 + +Howells, Wm. D., 1, 148-150, 204, 258 + +Humor, newspaper, 282-284 + +"Hundredth Man," Stockton's, 135, 136 + +Hurlbut, Wm. Hen., 177 + +Hutton, Laurence, 272, 274 + + +=I= + +Ideas, 297, 312 + +Ignorance in criticism, 226, 227 + +Illicit distilling in Brooklyn, 123-128 + +Illustration, newspaper, 179, 180 + +Imperialism, 336, 337 + +Independence, personal, 1840-50, 18-20 + +_Independent, The._ _See under_ New York + +_Index Expurgatorius_, Bryant's, 209-213 + +Indian Territory, 183 + +Indiana, a model in education, 10, 11 + +Indiana Asbury University, 11 + +Indianapolis, Ind., 28 + +Intolerance, 26, 251 + +Introductions, 255-264 + +Intuition, historian's, 47 + +Irving, Washington, relations with Bryant, 196-198 + + +=J= + +Jackson, Mr., 314 + +James, G. P. R., 67, 68 + +Jeffersonianism, 296 + +John, a good name, 42, 43 + +"John Bull, Jr.," O'Rell's, 282 + +Johnson, Gen. Bushrod, 96 + +Johnson, Rossiter, 285 + +Johnson's Dictionary, 210 + +Jokes. _See_ Humor + +Jones, J. B., 275 + +Journalism, 116, 292, 293. _See also_ Newspapers, Pulitzer + +Judd, Orange, and Co., 132 + +Junius letters, authorship, 223 + + +=K= + +"Kate Bonnet," Stockton's, 135, 136 + +Kelly, John, 234 + +Kentuckians in the Northwest, 9-11 + +Khedive, 244 + +Kossuth, Louis, 297, 298 + + +=L= + +"Lady Gay," steamer, 96-98 + +Laffan, Wm. M., 304 + +Lakewood, 328-330 + +Language. _See_ English language + +Lanier, Sidney, 262 + +"Last of the Flatboats, The," 185 + +"Late Mrs. Null," Stockton's, 135 + +Lathrop, George Parsons, 150 + +Latin, 33 + +Laziness, 17 + +Lecture system, 108 + +Lee, Fitzhugh, 81-84, 86 + +Lee, Gen. Robert E., 240 + +Lee family, 83 + +Letcher, John, 76, 91 + +Letters of introduction, 255-264 + +Lewis, Charlton T., 129, 130 + +Libel, 117-124, 272 + +"Liber Scriptorum," 285 + +Liberty, 296, 336 + +"Liffith Lank," 156 + +Lincoln, President, 84, 85, 334 + +Lindsay's Turnout, 88 + +Literary aspirants, 255-259 + +Literary criticism, anonymous, 203-205; + of the _Saturday Review_, 206; + ignorance displayed in, 226, 227 + +Literary work, 339. _See also_ Editorial writing + +"Literati," Poe's, 172 + +Literature, place in 1840-50, 23-26 + +"Little Breeches," 157-159 + +Local independence, 1840-50, 18 + +Logan, Sidney Strother, 291 + +London, and Joaquin Miller, 173, 174 + +Longfellow, Henry W., 208 + +Longstreet, Gen., 87, 93, 94 + +Loomis, Charles Battell, 283 + +Loring, Gen. W. W., 243-247 + +Los Angeles, Cal., 31 + +Lothrop Publishing Company, 185, 263 + +Louisville and Cincinnati Mail Line, 30 + +Lowell, James Russell, 101, 106, 195 + + +=M= + +McCabe, Gordon, 267 + +McKane, John Y., 120 + +McKelway, Dr. St. Clair, 126 + +McKinley, President, 162 + +Madison, Ind., 15, 21, 36, 43, 44 + +Madison and Indianapolis Railroad, 13 + +Mallon, George B., 291 + +"Man of Honor, A," 151-155 + +"Man of Honor, A," Mrs. Stannard's, 154, 155 + +Manassas, 71, 78 + +Mann, Horace, 33 + +Manufactures, 1840-50, 18-20 + +Manuscripts for publication, 171, 172 + +"Manyest-sided man," 143 + +Marquand, Henry, 251, 290, 294 + +"Master of Warlock, The," 155-157 + +Matthews, Brander, 204, 269 + +Maynard, Judge, 323, 324 + +Mazeppa, quoted, 83, 84 + +Merrill, Wm. M., 312-314 + +Methodism and literature, 23-26 + +Mexican War, 243 + +"Military Operations of General Beauregard in the War between the + States," Roman's, 237 + +Military prisoners, 88 + +Miller, Joaquin, 172-176 + +Mims, Fort, 183 + +Mitchell, Donald G., 131 + +Model, artist's, 274 + +Money, its place in Virginia, 49-52 + +Munroe, Capt. Kirk, 257 + +Moody, Dwight, 168 + +Morey letter, 119 + +Morgan Syndicate, 1895-6, 327-329 + +Mortar service at Petersburg, 94, 95 + +Moses, ex-Governor, 262-264 + +Myths, 47 + + +=N= + +Nadeau House, Los Angeles, 31 + +Napoleon, Ind., 5 + +Nash, Thomas, 307 + +_Nation, The_, 231 + +New Orleans, 3, 4, 96, 98, 183 + +New York authors in 1882, 272 + +New York _Commercial Advertiser_, 251, 286-292 + +New York _Evening Sun_, 304 + +New York _Evening Post_, 68, 129, 131, 137, 140, 142, 143; + character under Bryant and Godwin, 187-189; + G. C. Eggleston literary editor, 192-194; + use of English, 209-213; + book reviews, 217, 218; + Godwin editor, 227; + writers, 228; + change of ownership, 230 + +New York _Graphic_, 180 + +New York _Herald_, 162 + +New York _Independent_, 100, 107, 110 + +New York _Sun_, 291, 301, 304 + +New York _Times_, 101 + +New York _Tribune_, 105, 129, 159, 164, 165 + +New York _World_, 120, 121, 122, 185, 291, 292, 303-331 + +Newspaper book reviews, 217 + +Newspaper correspondents, 245-247 + +Newspaper illustration, 179, 180 + +Newspaper libel suits, 117-124 + +Newspapers, character, 189; + earlier methods, 300-303; + revolution in conducting, 303; + emergency problems, 313-315; + power in politics, 327-332 + +Nicoll, De Lancy, 122 + +Nineteenth Century Club, 296 + +_North American Review_, 223 + +Novels _See_ Fiction, Scott. Dime novel + + +=O= + +Occultism, 60-66, 299 + +"On March," Mrs. Stannard's, 155 + +O'Rell, Max, 287, 282 + +Osgood, James R., 306, 307 + + +=P= + +_Pall Mall Gazette_, 188 + +"Paul, John," 285 + +Personalities in newspapers, 189 + +Petersburg, 94-98 + +Philp, Kenward, 116-119 + +Piatt, Donn, 315-319 + +"Pike County Ballads," 157-159 + +Piracy, of American publishers, 231, 232; + of English publishers, 233 + +Plagiarism, 137-144; + Stockton on, 137, 138; + Franklin on, 139 + +Planter's life in Virginia, 50-53 + +Plaquemine, 248-251 + +Platt, Tom, 319 + +Pocotaligo, 87 + +Poe, Edgar Allan, 100-102, 172, 207 + +Poetic ambition, 44, 45 + +Poetry, bad, 199-202, 205, 206; + genuine, 221 + +Political corruption, 124-126, 334, 335 + +Political prescience, 326 + +"Poor Whites" in the Northwest, 11, 12 + +Potter, Bishop, 283, 284 + +Poverty in Indiana, 1840-50, 13 + +Preachers, stories of, 158, 162, 166, 167 + +Predicting election results, 326 + +Press. _See_ Newspapers, Journalism + +"Prince Regent," 67, 68 + +_Princeton Review_, 296 + +Printers. _See_ Compositors, Copy + +Prisoners, military, 88 + +Progress, 75, 76 + +Prohibition, 296 + +Proof-reading, 241-243 + +"Proverbial Philosophy," Tupper's, 208, 209 + +Provincialism of American literature, 269-271 + +Publishing, uncertainties, 254 + +Pulitzer, Joseph, 214, 303-305, 308, 311, 312, 314, 319-331 + +Punctuation, serious result of error, 238, 239 + +Putnam, George Haven, 147, 184 + +Putnam, George P., 146, 171 + +"Putnam's Handy Book Series," 136, 147 + +_Putnam's Monthly_, 101, 171 + + +=R= + +Radicalism after Civil War, 108 + +Railroad Iron Battery, 95, 96-98 + +Railroads, early, in the West, 20-22, 26, 27, 32-34 + +Randall, James R., 261, 262 + +Raymond, Henry J., 101 + +"Rebel's Recollections," 148-150, 240 + +Reid, Whitelaw, 143, 159, 164 + +"Reirritation," 213 + +Religious intolerance, 1840-50, 26 + +Restfulness of life in Virginia, 48, 49 + +Reviewing. _See under_ Book + +Revision of manuscript, 341 + +Revivals, 168 + +_Revue des Deux Mondes_, publishes "Hoosier Schoolmaster," 145 + +Rhodes, James Ford, 334 + +Richmond, Arthur, 316, 317 + +Richmond, Va., 67, 68, 69, 84, 85 + +Riddel, John, 42, 43 + +Riker's Ridge, 35-45 + +Ripley, George, 167 + +"Rise and fall of the Confederate Government," Davis's, 164, 165 + +Ritchie, Mrs. Anna Cora Mowatt, 67 + +"Robert E. Lee," steamer, 161 + +Roman, Col. Alfred, 237 + +Roman Catholicism. _See_ Catholicism + +Roosevelt, Dr., 294 + +"Rudder Grange," Stockton's, 136 + +Russell, Charles E., 290 + +"Ruth," yacht, 295 + + +=S= + +St. Louis newspapers, 327 + +_St. Nicholas_, 132, 183 + +"St. Twelvemo," 156 + +Sanborn, Frank B., 150 + +_Saturday Review_, 206 + +Schools and school-teaching, 1850, 32-34, 45; + Western, 1840-50, 10, 11 + +Schurz, Carl, 208, 230, 332-337 + +Scotch-Irish, 9 + +Scott's novels, 275 + +Scott, Gen., 243, 244 + +Sexes, relations in Virginia, 53-59 + +Shakespeare, 220, 221 + +Shams of English society, 215-217 + +Sherman, Gen., his March to the Sea, 280; + quoted, on war, 80 + +Shiloh, battle, 238 + +"Shiveree," 14, 15 + +"Shocky," 41 + +Shooting, 14-16 + +Sidney, Sir Philip, 224, 225 + +Sieghortner's, 274 + +"Signal Boys, The," 183 + +"Skinning," 139, 144 + +Sloane, Dr. Wm. M., 296 + +Smith, Ballard, 309 + +Social conditions, 1840-50, 18-20 + +"Solitary Horseman," 67 + +"Son of Godwin, The," 220 + +"Song of Marion's Men," Bryant's, 196 + +_Southern Literary Messenger_, 68 + +Spanish-American War, 81 + +Sperry, Watson R., 191, 193, 208, 209 + +_Springfield Republican_, 208 + +Stannard, Mrs., 154, 155 + +Stapps, the, 8 + +Steamboats, 1850, 30 + +Stedman, E. C., 143, 144, 177, 178, 262 + +Stephens, Alexander H., 223 + +Stevens, Judge Algernon S., 8 + +Stewart, A. T., 121, 122 + +Stockton, Frank R., 133-139, 281, 283 + +Stoddard, Richard Henry, 202, 261, 262 + +Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 131 + +"Stranded Goldbug," 251 + +Stuart, J. E. B., 70, 71, 77, 78, 81 + +Sullivan, Judge Algernon S., 8 + +Sumter, Fort, 164 + +_Sun, The._ _See under_ New York + +Supernatural. _See_ Occultism + +Surnames in fiction, 156 + +"Surrey of Eagle's Nest," 69 + +Swinton, William, 244 + + +=T= + +Tariff. _See_ Free trade and protection + +Taylor, Judge, of Madison, 15 + +Temperance, 104, 112. _See also_ Prohibition + +Tennyson, 143-145, 218 + +"Thanatopsis," Bryant's, 221, 222 + +Thompson, John R., 67, 68, 190 + +Thompson, Wm. Gilman, 294 + +Tilden, Samuel J., 228 + +Tilden-Hayes controversy, 332 + +Tile Club, 274, 275 + +Tilton, Theodore, 99, 100, 107-116, 125, 129, 259 + +_Times, The._ _See under_ New York + +Titles, book, 154-157 + +Travel, 1840-50, 20, 21, 28-30 + +_Tribune, The._ _See under_ New York + +"Tristram Shandy," saves life, 80 + +Tupper, Martin Farquhar, 208, 209 + +Tuttle, Dr., 294 + +Twain, Mark, 150, 160, 259, 265, 281 + +Tweed, Wm. M., 226 + + +=U= + +_Union_, Brooklyn. _See under_ Brooklyn + +United States, lack of nationality, 1840-50, 6, 7 + +United States Government, bond issue, 1895-6, + and the N. Y. _World_, 327-331; + departments, 235, 236 + +United States Treasury, 327-331 + + +=V= + +Vevay, Ind., 2, 18 + +"Victorian Poets," Stedman's, on Tennyson's plagiarism, 143, 144 + +Virginia, home of the Egglestons, 46; + life in, 48, 49, 72; + present conditions, 73-76; + in the Civil War, 76, 77 + +"Virginia Comedians, The," 69 + +Virginian English, 59 + +"Virginians, The," society, 82 + +Voice, Virginia girls', 59 + + +=W= + +Walker, Gen. Lindsay, 87 + +Wappoo Cut, 86 + +War, 70, 71, 80, 81 + +War correspondents, 244, 245 + +Warlock, Mr., 155-157 + +Warner, Charles Dudley, 283 + +Washington executive departments, 235, 236 + +Wason, Rev. Hiram, 8 + +Wass, Jerome B., 127 + +Waste, saving, 52 + +Webb, Charles Henry, 156, 285 + +Wedding customs in Indiana, 1840-50, 14, 15 + +West, the, homogeneity in eighteen-forties, 7; + most representative of the country, 7, 27; + remoteness, 1840-50, 4, 5 + +White, Horace, 230 + +White, Richard Grant, 222-225, 274 + +Wickham, Williams C., 77 + +"Wild Western Scenes," Jones's, 275 + +Wilderness, 93 + +Will, story of a, 61, 62 + +Williams, Timothy Shaler, 290 + +Willis, N. P., 68 + +Winter, John Strange, 154, 155 + +Wise, Henry A., 77 + +Wister, Mrs., 142 + +Women, deference to, 56, 57; + in Virginia, 53-59 + +_World, The._ _See under_ New York + +"Wreck of the Redbird, The," 184, 185 + +Wright, Henry, 291 + + +=Y= + +Yachting, 294 + +Yerger, E. M., of Jackson, Miss., 105 + +Yerger, Judge E. M., of Memphis, Tenn., 105 + +Youmans, Dr., 274 + + +=Z= + +Ziegenfust, Mr., 247, 248 + + * * * * * + + +JANE G. PERKINS'S + +THE LIFE OF THE HONOURABLE MRS. NORTON + +With portrait, 8vo. $3.50 net; by mail, $3.68. + +Mrs. Norton was the great Sheridan's grand-daughter, beautiful and witty, +the author of novels, poems and songs, contesting contemporary popularity +with Mrs. Browning; her influence was potent in politics; Meredith +undoubtedly had her in mind when he drew "Diana of the Crossways." + + "Reads like a novel ... seems like the page from an old romance, + and Miss Perkins has preserved all its romantic charm.... Miss + Perkins has let letters, and letters unusually interesting, tell + much of the story.... Indeed her biography has all the sustained + interest of the novel, almost the irresistible march of fate of + the Greek drama. It is eminently reliable."--_Boston Transcript._ + + "Brilliant, beautiful, unhappy, vehement Caroline Norton.... + Her story is told here with sympathy, but yet fairly enough + ... interesting glimpses ... of the many men and women of note + with whom Mrs. Norton was brought into more or less intimate + association."--_Providence Journal._ + + "The generous space allowed her to tell her own story in the form + of intimate letters is a striking and admirable feature of the + book."--_The Dial._ + + "She was an uncommonly interesting personage and the memoir ... + has no dull spots and speedily wins its way to a welcome."--_New + York Tribune._ + + "So exceptional and vivid a personality ... of unusual quality + ... very well written."--_The Outlook._ + + +YUNG WING'S MY LIFE IN CHINA AND AMERICA + +With portrait, 8vo. $2.50 net; by mail, $2.65. + +The author's account of his early life in China, his education at +Yale, where he graduated in 1854 (LL.D., 1876), his return to China and +adventures during the Taiping rebellion, his intimate association with +Tsang Kwoh Fan and Li Hung Chang, and finally his great work for the +"Chinese Educational Movement" furnish highly interesting and good +reading. + + "It is his native land that is always the great heroic character + on the stage his mind surveys; and his mental grasp is as wide as + his domiciliation. A great life of action and reflection and the + experiences of two hemispheres. It is not so much a knowledge of + isolated facts that is to be got from the book as an understanding + of the character of the Chinese race."--_Hartford Courant._ + + "There is not a dull line in this simply told but fascinating + biography."--_Literary Digest._ + + "He has given Occidental readers an opportunity to behold the + machinery of Chinese custom and the substance of Chinese character + in action. No foreigner could possibly have written a work + so instructive, and no untravelled native could have made it + intelligible to the West ... a most interesting story both in + the telling and in the acting.... Mr. Yung presents each of his + readers with a fragment of China herself."--_Living Age._ + + + HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY + PUBLISHERS NEW YORK + + * * * * * + + +By R. M. 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If any writer of the present era is read a half + century hence, a quarter century, or even a decade, that writer + is William De Morgan."--_Boston Transcript._ + + "It is the Victorian age itself that speaks in those rich, + interesting, over-crowded books.... Will be remembered as + Dickens's novels are remembered."--_Springfield Republican._ + + +WILLIAM DE MORGAN'S JOSEPH VANCE + +A novel of life near London in the 50's. Tenth printing. $1.75. + + "The book of the last decade; the best thing in fiction since + Mr. Meredith and Mr. Hardy; must take its place as the first + great English novel that has appeared in the twentieth + century."--Lewis Melville in _New York Times Saturday Review._ + + "If the reader likes both 'David Copperfield' and 'Peter + Ibbetson,' he can find the two books in this one."--_The + Independent._ + +[Asterism] A twenty-four page illustrated leaflet about Mr. De Morgan, +with complete reviews of his books, sent on request. + + HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY + PUBLISHERS NEW YORK + + * * * * * + + + "_The most important biographic contribution to musical + literature since the beginning of the century, with the + exception of Wagner's Letters to Frau Wesendonck._" + + --H. T. FINCK, in the New York Evening Post. + + (Circular with complete review and sample pages on application.) + + +Personal Recollections of Wagner + +By ANGELO NEUMANN + +Translated from the fourth German edition by EDITH LIVERMORE. + Large 12mo. 318 pp., with portraits and one of Wagner's letters + in facsimile. $2.50 net; by mail $2.65. + + +Probably no man ever did more to make Wagner's music dramas known +than Angelo Neumann, who, with his famous "Wagner Travelling Theatre," +carrying his artists, orchestra, scenery and elaborate mechanical +devices, toured Germany, Holland, Belgium, Italy, Austria and Russia, +and with another organization gave "The Ring" in London. But the account +of this tour, interesting as it is, is not the main feature of his book, +which abounds in intimate glimpses of Wagner at rehearsals, at Wahnfried +and elsewhere, and tells much of the great conductor, Anton Seidl, so +beloved by Americans. Among other striking figures are Nikisch and Muck, +both conductors of the Boston Symphony orchestra, Mottl, the Vogls, +Von Bulow, Materna, Marianna Brandt, Klafsky, and Reicher-Kindermann. + +It is doubtful if any book gives a more vivid and truthful picture of +life and "politics" behind the scenes of various opera houses. Many of +the episodes, such as those of a bearded Brynhild, the comedy writer +and the horn player and the prince and the Rhinedaughter are decidedly +humorous. + +The earlier portions of the book tell of the Leipsic negotiations and +performances, the great struggle with Von Hülsen, the royal intendant at +Berlin, Bayreuth and "Parsifal." Many of Wagner's letters appear here +for the first time. + +_ILLUSTRATIONS._--RICHARD WAGNER: Bust by Anton zur Strassen in the foyer +of the Leipsic Stadttheater.--ANGELO NEUMANN: From a picture in the +Künstlerzimmer of the Leipsic Stadttheater.--ANTON SEIDL: Bas-relief +by Winifred Holt of New York. Replica commissioned by Herr Direktor +Neumann.--HEDWIG REICHER-KINDERMANN--Facsimile of letter from Wagner +to Neumann, received after the news of Wagner's death. + +If the reader will send his name and address the publishers will send +information about their new books as issued. + + HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY + 34 WEST 33RD STREET NEW YORK + + * * * * * + + +RICHARD BURTON'S + MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL + +A study of principles and personalities by the Professor of English +Literature, University of Minnesota, author of "Literary Likings," +"Forces in Fiction," "Rahab" (a Poetic Drama), etc. 12mo, 331 pp. +and index. $1.25 net. + + "Noteworthy American volume of literary criticism ... a + well-balanced, discerning and unhackneyed study ... delightfully + readable.... In his judgment of individual books and authors + Mr. Burton is refreshingly sane and trustworthy ... an inspiring + survey of the whole trend of fiction from Richardson to Howells, + with a valuable intermediary chapter on Stendhal and the French + realists, all presented in a style of genuine charm and rare + flexibility ... may be warranted to interest and inspire any + serious lover of fiction."--_Chicago Record-Herald._ + + "Rare sympathy and scholarly understanding ... book that should + be read and re-read by every lover of the English novel."--_Boston + Transcript._ + + +RICHARD BURTON'S + RAHAB, A DRAMA OF THE FALL OF JERICHO + +119 pp., 12mo. $1.25 net; by mail, $1.33. With cast of characters for +the first performance and pictures of the scenes. + + "A poetic drama of high quality. Plenty of dramatic action."--_New + York Times Review._ + + +WILLIAM MORTON PAYNE'S + THE GREATER ENGLISH POETS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY + +383 pp., large 12mo. $2.00 net; by mail, $2.15. Studies of Keats, +Shelley, Byron, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Landor, Browning, Tennyson, +Arnold, Rossetti, Morris, and Swinburne. Their outlook upon life rather +than their strictly literary achievement is kept mainly in view. + + "The sound and mellow fruits of his long career as a critic.... + There is not a rash, trivial, or dull line in the whole book.... + Its charming sanity has seduced me into reading it to the end, + and anyone who does the same will feel that he has had an + inspiring taste of everything that is finest in nineteenth-century + poetry. Ought to be read and reread by every student of literature, + and most of all by those who have neglected English poetry, + for here one finds its essence in brief compass."--_Chicago + Record-Herald._ + +If the reader will send his name and address, the publishers will send, +from time to time, information regarding their new books. + + HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY + PUBLISHERS NEW YORK + + * * * * * + + +BEULAH MARIE DIX'S + ALLISON'S LAD AND OTHER MARTIAL INTERLUDES + +$1.35 net; by mail, $1.44. + +Allison's Lad, The Hundredth Trick, The Weakest Link, The Snare and the +Fowler, The Captain of the Gate, The Dark of the Dawn. + + These one-act plays, despite their impressiveness, are perfectly + practicable for performance by clever amateurs; at the same time + they make decidedly interesting reading. + + Six stirring war episodes. Five of them occur at night, and most + of them in the dread pause before some mighty conflict. Three are + placed in Cromwellian days (two in Ireland and one in England), + one is at the close of the French Revolution, another at the time + of the Hundred Years' War, and the last during the Thirty Years' + War. The author has most ingeniously managed to give the feeling + of big events, though employing but few players. Courage, + vengeance, devotion and tenderness to the weak, are among the + emotions effectively displayed. + + +CONSTANCE D'ARCY MACKAY'S + THE HOUSE OF THE HEART + +And Other Plays for Children + +Ten well-written one-act plays to be acted by children. A satisfactory +book to fill a real need. $1.10 net; by mail, $1.15. + + "Each play contains a distinct lesson, whether of courage, + gentle manners, or contentment. The settings are simple and + the costumes within the compass of the schoolroom. Full + directions for costumes, scene setting, and dramatic action + are given with each play. All of them have stood the test of + actual production."--_Preface._ + + CONTENTS: + + "The House of the Heart" (Morality Play)--"The Gooseherd and + the Goblin" (Comedy, suitable for June exercises)--"The Enchanted + Garden" (Flower Play, suitable for June exercises)--"Nimble Wit + and Fingerkin" (Industrial Play)--"A Little Pilgrim's Progress" + (Morality Play, suitable for Thanksgiving)--"A Pageant of Hours" + (To be given Out of Doors)--"On Christmas Eve"--"The Elf + Child"--"The Princess and the Pixies"--"The Christmas Guest" + (Miracle Play). + + "An addition to child drama which has been sorely needed."--_Boston + Transcript._ + +[Asterism] If the reader will send his name and address the publishers +will send, from time to time, information regarding their new books. + + HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY + 34 WEST 33D STREET NEW YORK + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Recollections of a Varied Life, by +George Cary Eggleston + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RECOLLECTIONS OF A VARIED LIFE *** + +***** This file should be named 36720-8.txt or 36720-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/6/7/2/36720/ + +Produced by David Garcia and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Kentuckiana Digital Library) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Recollections of a Varied Life + +Author: George Cary Eggleston + +Release Date: July 13, 2011 [EBook #36720] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RECOLLECTIONS OF A VARIED LIFE *** + + + + +Produced by David Garcia and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Kentuckiana Digital Library) + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<div style="height: 2em;"><br /><br /></div> + +<div class="figure"> +<a name="image-0000"><!--IMG--></a> +<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="400" height="647" +alt="(front cover)" /> +</div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<div class="figure"> +<a name="image-0001"><!--IMG--></a> +<a href="images/frontis-f.jpg"><img src="images/frontis-s.jpg" width="400" height="606" +alt="George Cary Eggleston " /></a> +<br /> +George Cary Eggleston +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="pagei" name="pagei"></a>[i]</span></p> + +<div style="height: 6em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h1> + RECOLLECTIONS OF A VARIED LIFE +</h1> + +<div style="height: 2em;"><br /><br /></div> + +<p class="center"> +<big>BY GEORGE CARY EGGLESTON</big> +</p> + +<div style="height: 2em;"><br /><br /></div> + +<div class="figure"> +<a name="image-0002"><!--IMG--></a> +<img src="images/logo.png" width="86" height="105" +alt="(logo)" /> +</div> + +<div style="height: 2em;"><br /><br /></div> + +<p class="center"> +NEW YORK +<br /> +HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY +<br /> +1910 +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="pageii" name="pageii"></a>[ii]</span></p> + +<div style="height: 2em;"><br /><br /></div> + +<p class="center"> +<span class="sc">Copyright</span>, 1910 +<br /> +BY +<br /> +HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY +</p> + +<p class="center"> +<i>Published March, 1910</i> +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="pageiii" name="pageiii"></a>[iii]</span></p> + +<div style="height: 2em;"><br /><br /></div> + +<p class="center"> +<small>TO</small><br /> <big>MARION MY WIFE</big> +</p> + +<p class="center"> +I DEDICATE THESE RECOLLECTIONS +<br /> +OF A LIFE THAT SHE HAS LOYALLY +<br /> +SHARED, ENCOURAGED, AND INSPIRED +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="pageiv" name="pageiv"></a>[iv]</span></p> + +<div style="height: 2em;"><br /><br /></div> + +<p><!--[Blank Page]--><br /></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="pagev" name="pagev"></a>[v]</span></p> + +<div><a name="h2H_TOC" id="h2H_TOC"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + + +<h2> + CONTENTS +</h2> + +<table style="width: 80%;" summary="Table of Contents"> +<tr><td>CHAPTER</td><td></td><td align="right">PAGE</td></tr> + +<tr><td> I. </td><td>Introductory </td><td align="right"><a href="#page1">1</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> II. </td><td>The Country as I First Knew It—Intensity of Its + Americanism—The Lure of New Orleans </td><td align="right"><a href="#page2">2</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> III. </td><td>Provincialism—A Travel Center—Road +Conditions—Mails—The Estrangement of Communities and Other Isolating Conditions </td><td align="right"><a href="#page4">4</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> IV. </td><td>The Composite West—Dialect—The Intellectual Class </td><td align="right"><a href="#page7">7</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> V. </td><td>The Sturdy Kentuckians and Their Influence </td><td align="right"><a href="#page9">9</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> VI. </td><td>A Poor Boy's Career </td><td align="right"><a href="#page13">13</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> VII. </td><td>"Shooting Stock" </td><td align="right"><a href="#page14">14</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> VIII. </td><td>A Limitless Hospitality </td><td align="right"><a href="#page16">16</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> IX. </td><td>Industrial Independence and Thrift </td><td align="right"><a href="#page18">18</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> X. </td><td>Early Railroads—A Precocious Skeptic—Religious + Restriction of Culture </td><td align="right"><a href="#page20">20</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> XI. </td><td>Culture by Stealth </td><td align="right"><a href="#page24">24</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> XII. </td><td>Civilization on Wheels </td><td align="right"><a href="#page26">26</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> XIII. </td><td>A Breakfast Revolution </td><td align="right"><a href="#page28">28</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> XIV. </td><td>A Bathroom Episode </td><td align="right"><a href="#page30">30</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> XV. </td><td>Western School Methods </td><td align="right"><a href="#page32">32</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> XVI. </td><td>"The Hoosier Schoolmaster"—A Bit of Literary History </td><td align="right"><a href="#page34">34</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> XVII. </td><td>The Biggest Boy—A Vigorous Volunteer + Monitor—Charley Grebe </td><td align="right"><a href="#page38">38</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> XVIII. </td><td>What's in a Name? </td><td align="right"><a href="#page42">42</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> XIX. </td><td>A Buttermilk Poet </td><td align="right"><a href="#page43">43</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> XX. </td><td>Removal to Virginia—Impressions of Life There—The + Contradiction of the Critics in Their Creative + Incredulity </td><td align="right"><a href="#page45">45</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> XXI. </td><td>The Virginian Life </td><td align="right"><a href="#page48">48</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> XXII. </td><td>The Virginian Attitude Toward Money—Parson J——'s + Checks—The Charm of Leisureliness </td><td align="right"><a href="#page49">49</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> XXIII. </td><td>The Courtesy of the Virginians—Sex and + Education—Reading Habits—Virginia Women's Voices </td><td align="right"><a href="#page55">55</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> XXIV. </td><td>The Story of the West Wing—A Challenge to the + Ghosts—The Yellow-Gray Light—And Breakfast </td><td align="right"><a href="#page60">60</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> XXV. </td><td>Authors in Richmond—G. P. R. James, John Esten Cooke, + Mrs. Mowatt Ritchie, John R. Thompson, etc.—John Esten + Cooke, Gentleman—How Jeb Stuart Made Him a Major </td><td align="right"><a href="#page66">66</a> </td></tr> + +<!--[page break]--> + +<tr><td> +<span class="pagenum"><a id="pagevi" name="pagevi"></a>[vi]</span> + + XXVI. </td><td>The Old Life in the Old Dominion and the New—An + Old Fogy's Doubts and Questionings </td><td align="right"> <a href="#page72">72</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> XXVII. </td><td>Under Jeb Stuart's Command—The Legend of the + Mamelukes—The Life of the Cavaliers—Tristram + Shandy Does Bible Duty—The Delights of the War + Game and the Inspiration of It </td><td align="right"> <a href="#page76">76</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> XXVIII. </td><td>Fitz Lee and an Adventure—A Friendly Old Foe </td><td align="right"> <a href="#page81">81</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> XXIX. </td><td>Pestilence </td><td align="right"> <a href="#page86">86</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> XXX. </td><td>Left Behind—A Gratuitous Law Practice Under + Difficulties—The Story of Tom Collins—A Death-Bed + Repentance and Its Prompt Recall </td><td align="right"> <a href="#page87">87</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> XXXI. </td><td>Sharp-Shooter Service—Mortar Service at + Petersburg—The Outcome of a Strange Story </td><td align="right"> <a href="#page93">93</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> XXXII. </td><td>The Beginning of Newspaper Life—Theodore Tilton + and Charles F. Briggs </td><td align="right"> <a href="#page99">99</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> XXXIII. </td><td>Theodore Tilton </td><td align="right"><a href="#page107">107</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> XXXIV. </td><td>Further Reminiscences of Tilton </td><td align="right"><a href="#page111">111</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> XXXV. </td><td>The Tilton-Beecher Controversy—A Story as Yet Untold </td><td align="right"><a href="#page115">115</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> XXXVI. </td><td>My First Libel Suit </td><td align="right"><a href="#page116">116</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> XXXVII. </td><td>Libel Suit Experiences—The Queerest of Libel + Suits—John Y. McKane's Case </td><td align="right"><a href="#page119">119</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> XXXVIII.</td><td>Early Newspaper Experiences—Two Interviews with + President Grant—Grant's Method </td><td align="right"><a href="#page123">123</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> XXXIX. </td><td>Charlton T. Lewis </td><td align="right"><a href="#page129">129</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> XL. </td><td>Hearth and Home—Mary Mapes Dodge—Frank R. + Stockton—A Whimsical View of Plagiary </td><td align="right"><a href="#page131">131</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> XLI. </td><td>Some Plagiarists I Have Known—A Peculiar Case of + Plagiary—A Borrower from Stedman </td><td align="right"><a href="#page139">139</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> XLII. </td><td>The "Hoosier Schoolmaster's" Influence—Hearth and + Home Friendships and Literary Acquaintance—My First + Book—Mr. Howells and "A Rebel's Recollections"—My + First After-Dinner Speech—Mr. Howells, Mark Twain, + and Mr. Sanborn to the Rescue </td><td align="right"><a href="#page145">145</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> XLIII. </td><td>A Novelist by Accident—"A Man of Honor" and the + Plagiarists of Its Title—A "Warlock" on the Warpath + and a Lot of Fun Lost </td><td align="right"><a href="#page151">151</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> XLIV. </td><td>John Hay and the Pike County Ballads—His Own Story + of Them and of Incidents Connected with Them </td><td align="right"><a href="#page157">157</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> XLV. </td><td>A Disappointed Author—George Ripley's Collection + of Applications for His Discharge—Joe Harper's + Masterpiece—Manuscripts and Their Authors—Mr. George + P. Putnam's Story </td><td align="right"><a href="#page166">166</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> XLVI. </td><td>Joaquin Miller—Dress Reform à la Stedman </td><td align="right"><a href="#page172">172</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> XLVII. </td><td>Beginnings of Newspaper Illustration—Accident's Part + in the Literary Life—My First Boys' Book—How One + Thing Leads to Another </td><td align="right"><a href="#page179">179</a> </td></tr> + +<!--[page break]--> + +<tr><td> +<span class="pagenum"><a id="pagevii" name="pagevii"></a>[vii]</span> + + XLVIII. </td><td>The First Time I Was Ever Robbed—The <i>Evening + Post</i> Under Mr. Bryant—An Old-Fashioned Newspaper—Its + Distinguished Outside Staff—Its Regard for + Literature—Newspaper Literary Criticism and the + Critics of That Time—Thomas Bailey Aldrich's Idea + of New York as a Place of Residence—My Own + Appointment and the Strange Manner of It </td><td align="right"><a href="#page186">186</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> XLIX. </td><td>A Study of Mr. Bryant—The Irving Incident </td><td align="right"><a href="#page194">194</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> L. </td><td>Mr. Bryant's Tenderness Towards Poets—A Cover + Literary Criticism </td><td align="right"><a href="#page199">199</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> LI. </td><td>A Thrifty Poet's Plan—Mr. Bryant and the Poe + Article—The Longfellow Incident—The Tupper + Embarrassment </td><td align="right"><a href="#page205">205</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> LII. </td><td>Mr Bryant's <i>Index Expurgatorius</i>—An Effective + Blunder in English—Mr. Bryant's Dignified + Democracy—Mr. Cleveland's Coarser Method—Mr. + Bryant and British Snobbery </td><td align="right"><a href="#page209">209</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> LIII. </td><td>The Newspaper Critic's Function—A Literary News + "Beat"—Mr. Bryant and Contemporary Poets—Concerning + Genius—The True Story of "Thanatopsis" </td><td align="right"><a href="#page217">217</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> LIV. </td><td>An Extraordinary Case of Heterophemy—The Demolition + of a Critic </td><td align="right"><a href="#page222">222</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> LV. </td><td>Parke Godwin—"A Lion in a Den of Daniels"—The + Literary Shop Again—Literary Piracy—British + and American </td><td align="right"><a href="#page227">227</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> LVI. </td><td>The Way of Washington Officials—A Historical + Discovery—A Period Out of Place—A Futile Effort + to Make Peace—The "Intelligent Compositor" at His + Worst—Loring Pacha—War Correspondents—The Tourist + Correspondent—Loring's Story of Experience </td><td align="right"><a href="#page234">234</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> LVII. </td><td>"A Stranded Gold Bug"—Results of a Bit of Humor </td><td align="right"><a href="#page247">247</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> LVIII. </td><td>Mrs. Custer's "Boots and Saddles"—The Success + and Failure of Books </td><td align="right"><a href="#page252">252</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> LIX. </td><td>Letters of Introduction—The Disappointment of Lily + Browneyes—Mark Twain's Method—Some Dangerous Letters + of Introduction—Moses and My Green Spectacles </td><td align="right"><a href="#page255">255</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> LX. </td><td>English Literary Visitors—Mr. Edmund Gosse's + Visit—His Amusing Misconceptions—A Question of + Provincialism—A Literary Vandal </td><td align="right"><a href="#page265">265</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> LXI. </td><td>The Founding of the Authors' Club—Reminiscences + of Early Club Life—John Hay and Edwin Booth on + Dime Novels </td><td align="right"><a href="#page272">272</a> </td></tr> + +<!--[page break]--> + +<tr><td> +<span class="pagenum"><a id="pageviii" name="pageviii"></a>[viii]</span> + + LXII. </td><td>The Authors Club—Its Ways and Its Work—Watch-Night + Frolics—Max O'Rell and Mark Twain—The Reckless + Injustice of the Humorists—Bishop Potter's + Opinion—The Club's Contribution of Statesmen and + Diplomats—The Delight of the Authors Club "After + the Authors Have Gone Home"—"Liber Scriptorum," + the Club's Successful Publishing Venture </td><td align="right"><a href="#page277">277</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> LXIII. </td><td>In Newspaper Life Again—Editing the <i>Commercial + Advertiser</i>—John Bigelow's Discouraging + Opinion—Henry Marquand and Some of My + Brilliant "Cubs"—Men Who Have Made Place and + Name for Themselves—The Dread Task of the + Editor-in-Chief—Yachting with Marquand and the + Men I Met on Deck—Parke Godwin—Recollections of + a Great and Good Man—A Mystery of Forgetting </td><td align="right"><a href="#page286">286</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> LXIV. </td><td>Newspapers Then and Now—The Pulitzer Revolution—The + Lure of the <i>World</i>—A Little Dinner to James R. + Osgood </td><td align="right"><a href="#page300">300</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> LXV. </td><td>Service on the <i>World</i>—John A. Cockerill—An + Editorial Perplexity—Editorial Emergencies—In + Praise of the Printers—Donn Piatt—"A Syndicate + of Blackguards"—An Unmeant Crime </td><td align="right"><a href="#page307">307</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> LXVI. </td><td>First Acquaintance with Joseph Pulitzer—His + Hospitality, Courtesy, Kindliness, and Generosity—His + Intellectual Methods—The Maynard Case—Bryan's + Message and Mr. Pulitzer's Answer—Extraordinary + Political Foresight </td><td align="right"><a href="#page319">319</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> LXVII. </td><td>A Napoleonic Conception—A Challenge to the + Government—The Power of the Press </td><td align="right"><a href="#page327">327</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> LXVIII. </td><td>Recollections of Carl Schurz </td><td align="right"><a href="#page333">333</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> LXIX. </td><td>The End of Newspaper Life </td><td align="right"><a href="#page337">337</a> </td></tr> + +<tr><td> LXX. </td><td>My Working Ways—Extemporary Writing—The Strange + Perversity of the People in Fiction—The Novelist's + Sorest Perplexity—Working Hours and Working Ways—My + Two Rules as to Literary Style </td><td align="right"><a href="#page339">339</a> </td></tr> +</table> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page1" name="page1"></a>[1]</span></p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0001" id="h2H_4_0001"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 6em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<p class="center"> +<big><b>RECOLLECTIONS OF A VARIED LIFE</b></big> +</p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0002" id="h2H_4_0002"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + I +</h2> + +<p> +Mr. Howells once said to me: "Every man's life is interesting—to +himself." +</p> +<p> +I suppose that is true, though in the cases of some men it seems +a difficult thing to understand. +</p> +<p> +At any rate it is not because of personal interest in my own life that +I am writing this book. I was perfectly sincere in wanting to call these +chapters "The Autobiography of an Unimportant Man," but on reflection +I remembered Franklin's wise saying that whenever he saw the phrase +"without vanity I may say," some peculiarly vain thing was sure to +follow. +</p> +<p> +I am seventy years old. My life has been one of unusually varied +activity. It has covered half the period embraced in the republic's +existence. It has afforded me opportunity to see and share that +development of physical, intellectual, and moral life conditions, which +has been perhaps the most marvelous recorded in the history of mankind. +</p> +<p> +Incidentally to the varied activities and accidents of my life, I have +been brought into contact with many interesting men, and into relation +with many interesting events. It is of these chiefly that I wish to +write, and if I were minded to offer an excuse for this book's +existence, this would be the marrow of it. But a book that needs excuse +is inexcusable. I make no apology. I am writing of the men and things I +remember, because I + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page2" name="page2"></a>[2]</span> + + wish to do so, because my publisher wishes it, and +because he and I think that others will be interested in the result. +We shall see, later, how that is. +</p> +<p> +This will be altogether a good-humored book. I have no grudges to +gratify, no revenges to wreak, no debts of wrath to repay in cowardly +ways; and if I had I should put them all aside as unworthy. I have +found my fellow-men in the main kindly, just, and generous. The chief +pleasure I have had in living has been derived from my association with +them in good-fellowship and all kindliness. The very few of them who +have wronged me, I have forgiven. The few who have been offensive to me, +I have forgotten, with conscientiously diligent care. There has seemed +to me no better thing to do with them. +</p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0003" id="h2H_4_0003"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + II +</h2> + +<p> +It is difficult for any one belonging to this modern time to realize the +conditions of life in this country in the eighteen-forties, the period +at which my recollection begins. +</p> +<p> +The country at that time was all American. The great tides of +immigration which have since made it the most cosmopolitan of countries, +had not set in. Foreigners among us were so few that they were regarded +with a great deal of curiosity, some contempt, and not a little pity. +Even in places like my native town of Vevay, Indiana, which had been +settled by a company of Swiss immigrants at the beginning of the +century, the feeling was strong that to be foreign was to be inferior. +Those who survived of the original Swiss settlers were generously +tolerated as unfortunates grown old, and on that account entitled to +a certain measure of respectful deference in spite of their taint. +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page3" name="page3"></a>[3]</span></p> + +<p class="side"> +The Lure of New Orleans +</p> +<p> +To us in the West, at least, all foreigners whose mother tongue was +other than English were "Dutchmen." There is reason to believe that +this careless and inattentive grouping prevailed in other parts of the +country as well as in the West. Why, otherwise, were the German speaking +people of Pennsylvania and the mountain regions south universally known +as "Pennsylvania Dutch?" +</p> +<p> +And yet, in spite of the prevailing conviction that everything foreign +was inferior, the people of the Ohio valley—who constituted the most +considerable group of Western Americans—looked with unapproving but +ardent admiration upon foreign life, manners, and ways of thinking as +these were exemplified in New Orleans. +</p> +<p> +In that early time, when the absence of bridges, the badness of roads, +and the primitive character of vehicular devices so greatly emphasized +overland distances, New Orleans was the one great outlet and inlet of +travel and traffic for all the region beyond the mountain barrier that +made the East seem as remote as far Cathay. Thither the people of the +West sent the produce of their orchards and their fields to find a +market; thence came the goods sold in the "stores," and the very +money—Spanish and French silver coins—that served as a circulating +medium. The men who annually voyaged thither on flat-boats, brought back +wondering tales of the strange things seen there, and especially of the +enormous wickedness encountered among a people who had scarcely heard +of the religious views accepted among ourselves as unquestioned and +unquestionable truth. I remember hearing a whole sermon on the subject +once. The preacher had taken alarm over the eagerness young men showed +to secure employment as "hands" on flat-boats for the sake of seeing +the wonderful city where buying and selling on the Sabbath excited no +comment. He feared contamination of the youth of the land, and with +a zeal that perhaps + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page4" name="page4"></a>[4]</span> + + outran discretion, he urged God-fearing merchants +to abandon the business of shipping the country's produce to market, +declaring that he had rather see all of it go to waste than risk the +loss of a single young man's soul by sending him to a city so +unspeakably wicked that he confidently expected early news of its +destruction after the manner of Sodom and Gomorrah. +</p> +<p> +The "power of preaching" was well-nigh measureless in that time and +region, but so were the impulses of "business," and I believe the usual +number of flat-boats were sent out from the little town that year. The +merchants seemed to "take chances" of the loss of souls when certain +gain was the stake on the other side, a fact which strongly suggests +that human nature in that time and country was very much the same in +its essentials as human nature in all other times and countries. +</p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0004" id="h2H_4_0004"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + III +</h2> + +<p class="side"> +A Travel Center +</p> +<p> +The remoteness of the different parts of the country from each other +in those days is difficult to understand, or even fairly to imagine +nowadays. For all purposes of civilization remoteness is properly +measured, not by miles, but by the difficulty of travel and intercourse. +It was in recognition of this that the founders of the Republic gave +to Congress authority to establish "post offices and post roads," and +that their successors lavished money upon endeavor to render human +intercourse easier, speedier, and cheaper by the construction of the +national road, by the digging of canals, and by efforts to improve the +postal service. In my early boyhood none of these things had come upon +us. There were no railroads crossing the Appalachian chain of mountains, +and no wagon roads that were better than tracks over ungraded hills and +quagmire + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page5" name="page5"></a>[5]</span> + + trails through swamps and morasses. Measured by ease of access, +New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore were at a greater distance from +the dwellers in the West than Hong Kong or Singapore is now, while +Boston was remoter than the mountains of the moon. +</p> +<p> +There were no telegraphs available to us; the mails were irregular, +uncertain, and unsafe. The wagons, called stagecoaches, that carried +them, were subject to capture and looting at the hands of robber bands +who infested many parts of the country, having their headquarters +usually at some town where roads converged and lawlessness reigned +supreme. +</p> +<p> +One such town was Napoleon, Indiana. In illustration of its character an +anecdote was related in my boyhood. A man from the East made inquiry in +Cincinnati concerning routes to various points in the Hoosier State, and +beyond. +</p> +<p> +"If I want to go to Indianapolis, what road do I take?" he asked. +</p> +<p> +"Why, you go to Napoleon, and take the road northwest." +</p> +<p> +"If I want to go to Madison?" +</p> +<p> +"Go to Napoleon, and take the road southwest." +</p> +<p> +"Suppose I want to go to St. Louis?" +</p> +<p> +"Why, you go to Napoleon, and take the national road west." +</p> +<p> +And so on, through a long list, with Napoleon as the starting point of +each reply. At last the man asked in despair: +</p> +<p> +"Well now, stranger, suppose I wanted to go to Hell?" +</p> +<p> +The stranger answered without a moment's hesitation, "Oh, in that case, +just go to Napoleon, and stay there." +</p> +<p> +That is an episode, as the reader has probably + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page6" name="page6"></a>[6]</span> + + discovered. To return +to the mails. It was not until 1845, and after long agitation, that the +rate on letters was reduced to five cents for distances less than three +hundred miles, and ten cents for greater distances. Newspaper postage +was relatively even higher. +</p> +<p> +The result of these conditions was that each quarter of the country +was shut out from everything like free communication with the other +quarters. Each section was isolated. Each was left to work out its own +salvation as best it might, without aid, without consultation, without +the chastening or the stimulation of contact and attrition. Each region +cherished its own prejudices, its own dialect, its own ways of living, +its own overweening self-consciousness of superiority to all the rest, +its own narrow bigotries, and its own suspicious contempt of everything +foreign to itself. +</p> +<p> +In brief, we had no national life in the eighteen-forties, or for long +afterwards,—no community of thought, or custom, or attitude of mind. +The several parts of the country were a loose bundle of segregated and, +in many ways, antagonistic communities, bound together only by a common +loyalty to the conviction that this was the greatest, most glorious, +most invincible country in the world, God-endowed with a mental, moral, +and physical superiority that put all the rest of earth's nations +completely out of the reckoning. We were all of us Americans—intense, +self-satisfied, self-glorifying Americans—but we had little else in +common. We did not know each other. We had been bred in radically +different ways. We had different ideals, different conceptions of life, +different standards of conduct, different ways of living, different +traditions, and different aspirations. The country was provincial to the +rest of the world, and still more narrowly provincial each region to the +others. +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page7" name="page7"></a>[7]</span></p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0005" id="h2H_4_0005"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + IV +</h2> + +<p class="side"> +The Composite West +</p> +<p> +I think, however, that the West was less provincial, probably, and less +narrow in its views and sympathies than were New England, the Middle +States, and the South at that time, and this for a very sufficient +reason. +</p> +<p> +The people in New England rarely came into contact with those of the +Middle and Southern States, and never with those of the West. The people +of the Middle States and those of the South were similarly shut within +themselves, having scarcely more than an imaginary acquaintance with the +dwellers in other parts of the country. The West was a common meeting +ground where men from New England, the Middle States, and the South +Atlantic region constituted a varied population, representative of all +the rest of the country, and dwelling together in so close a unity that +each group adopted many of the ways and ideas of the other groups, and +correspondingly modified its own. These were first steps taken toward +homogeneity in the West, such as were taken in no other part of the +country in that time of little travel and scanty intercourse among men. +The Virginians, Carolinians, and New Englanders who had migrated to the +West learned to make and appreciate the apple butter and the sauerkraut +of the Pennsylvanians; the pie of New England found favor with +Southerners in return for their hoecake, hominy, chine, and spareribs. +And as with material things, so also with things of the mind. Customs +were blended, usages were borrowed and modified, opinions were fused +together into new forms, and speech was wrought into something different +from that which any one group had known—a blend, better, richer, and +more forcible than any of its constituent parts had been. +</p> +<p> +In numbers the Virginians, Kentuckians, and Carolinians + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page8" name="page8"></a>[8]</span> + + were a strong +majority in the West, and the so-called "Hoosier dialect," which +prevailed there, was nearly identical with that of the Virginian +mountains, Kentucky, and the rural parts of Carolina. But it was +enriched with many terms and forms of speech belonging to other +sections. Better still, it was chastened by the influence of the small +but very influential company of educated men and women who had come from +Virginia and Kentucky, and by the strenuous labors in behalf of good +English of the Yankee school-ma'ams, who taught us by precept to make +our verbs agree with their nominatives, and, per contra, by unconscious +example to say "doo," "noo," and the like, for "dew," "new," etc. +</p> +<p> +The prevalence of the dialect among the uneducated classes was indeed, +though indirectly, a ministry to the cause of good English. The educated +few, fearing contamination of their children's speech through daily +contact with the ignorant, were more than usually strict in exacting +correct usage at the hands of their youngsters. I very well remember +how grievously it afflicted my own young soul that I was forbidden, +under penalty, to say "chimbly" and "flanner" for "chimney" and +"flannel," to call inferior things "ornery," to use the compromise term +"'low"—abbreviation of "allow,"—which very generally took the place +of the Yankee "guess" and the Southern "reckon," and above all to call +tomatoes "tomatices." +</p> +<p> +It is of interest to recall the fact that this influential class of +educated men and women, included some really scholarly persons, as well +as a good many others who, without being scholarly, were educated and +accustomed to read. Among the scholarly ones, within the purview of +my memory, were such as Judge Algernon S. Stevens, Judge Algernon S. +Sullivan, Judge Miles Cary Eggleston, the Hendrickses, the Stapps, +the Rev. Hiram Wason, my own + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page9" name="page9"></a>[9]</span> + + father, and Mrs. Julia L. Dumont, a very +brilliant woman, who taught school for love of it and wrote books that +in our time would have given her something more than the provincial +reputation she shared with Alice and Phœbe Cary, and some others. +</p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0006" id="h2H_4_0006"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + V +</h2> + +<p class="side"> +The Sturdy Kentuckians +</p> +<p> +Of still greater consequence, perhaps, so far as influence upon their +time and country was concerned, were the better class of Kentuckians +who had crossed the Ohio to become sharers in the future of the great +Northwest. +</p> +<p> +These were mostly men of extraordinary energy—physical and mental—who +had mastered what the Kentucky schoolmasters could teach them, and +had made of their schooling the foundation of a broader education the +dominant characteristic of which was an enlightenment of mind quite +independent of scholarly acquisition. +</p> +<p> +These men were thinkers accustomed, by habit and inheritance, to look +facts straight in the face, to form their own opinions untrammeled by +tradition, unbiased by fine-spun equivocation, and wholly unrestrained +in their search for truth by conventional hobbles of any kind. Most +of them had more or less Scotch-Irish blood in their veins, and +were consequently wholesome optimists, full of courage, disposed to +righteousness of life for its own sake, and resolutely bent upon the +betterment of life by means of their own living. +</p> +<p> +Most of them numbered one or more Baptist or Methodist preachers among +their ancestry—men of healthy minds and open ones, men to whom religion +was far less a matter of emotion than of conduct, men who did the duty +that lay next to them—be it plowing or praying, + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page10" name="page10"></a>[10]</span> + + preaching or fighting +Indians or Englishmen—with an equal mind. +</p> +<p> +Men of such descent were educated by environment in better ways than any +that schools can furnish. From infancy they had lived in an atmosphere +of backwoods culture,—culture drawn in part from such books as were +accessible to them, and in greater part from association with the strong +men who had migrated in early days to conquer the West and make of it a +princely possession of the Republic. +</p> +<p> +The books they had were few, but they were the very best that English +literature afforded, and they read them over and over again with +diligence and intelligence until they had made their own every +fecundative thought the books suggested. Then they went away, and +thought for themselves, with untrammeled freedom, of the things thus +presented to their minds. I have sometimes wondered if their method +of education, chiefly by independent thinking, and with comparatively +little reverence for mere "authority," might not have been better, in +its character-building results at least, than our modern, more bookish +process. +</p> +<p> +That question does not concern us now. What I wish to point out is the +fact that the country owes much to the influence of these strong men +of affairs and action, whose conviction that every man owes it to his +fellow-men so to live that this may be a better world for other men +to live in because of his having lived in it, gave that impulse to +education which later made Indiana a marvel and a model to the other +states in all that concerns education. Those men believed themselves and +their children entitled to the best in schooling as in everything else, +and from the very beginning they set out to secure it. +</p> +<p class="side"> +Early Educational Impulses +</p> +<p> +If a wandering schoolmaster came within call, they gave him a +schoolhouse and a place to live in, and bade + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page11" name="page11"></a>[11]</span> + + him "keep school." +When he had canvassed the region round about for "scholars," and was +ready—with his ox gads—to open his educational institution, the three +or four of these men whose influence pervaded and dominated the region +round about, said a word or two to each other, and made themselves +responsible for the tuition fees of all the boys and girls in the +neighborhood whose parents were too poor to pay. +</p> +<p> +In the same spirit, years later, when an effort was made to establish +colleges in the state, these men or their children who had inherited +their impulse, were prompt to furnish the money needed, however hard +pressed they might be for money themselves. I remember that my mother—the +daughter of one of the most conspicuous of the Kentuckians—when she was +a young widow with four children to bring up on an income of about $250 +a year, subscribed $100 to the foundation of Indiana Asbury University, +becoming, in return, the possessor of a perpetual scholarship, entitling +her for all time to maintain a student there free of tuition. It was +with money drawn from such sources that the colleges of Indiana were +founded. +</p> +<p> +Under the influence of these Kentuckians, Virginians, and men of +character who in smaller numbers had come out from New England and the +Middle States, there was from the first an impulse of betterment in the +very atmosphere of the West. Even the "poor whites" of the South who +had migrated to the Northwest in pursuit of their traditional dream of +finding a land where one might catch "two 'possums up one 'simmon tree," +were distinctly uplifted by the influence of such men, not as a class, +perhaps, but in a sufficient number of individual cases to raise the +average level of their being. The greater number of these poor whites +continued to be the good-natured, indolent, unthrifty people that their +ancestors + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page12" name="page12"></a>[12]</span> + + had always been. They remained content to be renters in a +region where the acquisition of land in independent ownership was easy. +They continued to content themselves with an inadequate cultivation of +their crops, and a meager living, consequent upon their neglect. They +continued to give to shooting, fishing, and rude social indulgences the +time they ought to have given to work. But their children were learning +to read and write, and, better still, were learning by observation the +advantages of a more industrious living, and when the golden age of +steamboating came, they sought and found profitable employment either +upon the river or about the wharves. The majority of these were content +to remain laborers, as deckhands and the like, but in some of them at +least ambition was born, and they became steamboat mates, pilots, and, +in some cases, the captains and even the owners of steamboats. On the +whole, I think the proportion of the class of people who thus achieved +a higher status, bettering themselves in enduring ways was quite as +large as it ever is in the history of an unfortunate or inferior class +of men. In the generations that have followed some at least of the +descendants of that "poor white" class, whose case had always been +accounted hopeless, have risen to distinction in intellectual ways. One +distinguished judge of our time, a man now of national reputation, is +the grandson of a poor white who negligently cultivated land rented from +a relative of my own. His father was my schoolmate for a season, and was +accounted inferior by those of us who were more fortunately descended. +So much for free institutions in a land of hope, opportunity, and +liberty, where the "pursuit of happiness" and betterment was accounted +an "unalienable right." +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page13" name="page13"></a>[13]</span></p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0007" id="h2H_4_0007"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + VI +</h2> + +<p class="side"> +A Poor Boy's Career +</p> +<p> +In another case that comes home to me for reasons, the betterment was +more immediate. My maternal grandfather, the old Kentuckian, George +Craig, whose name is preserved in many ways in the geographical +nomenclature of Southern Indiana, had an abundantly large family of +children. But with generously helpful intent it was his habit to adopt +bright boys and girls whose parents were poverty-stricken, in order to +give them such education as was available in that time and country, or, +in his favorite phrase, to "give them a show in the world." One of these +adopted boys was the child of parents incredibly poor. When he came to +my grandfather the boy had never seen a tablecloth or slept in a bed. He +knew nothing of the uses of a knife and fork. A glass tumbler was to him +a wonder thing. He could neither read nor write, though he was eleven +years of age. The towel given to him for use on his first introduction +to the family was an inscrutable mystery until one of the negro servants +explained its uses to him. +</p> +<p> +Less than a score of years later that boy was a lawyer of distinction, a +man of wide influence, a state senator of unusual standing, and chairman +of the committee that investigated and exposed the frauds perpetrated +upon the state in the building of the Madison and Indianapolis +railroad—the first highway of its kind constructed within the state. +In one sense, he owed all this to George Craig. In a truer sense he owed +it to his own native ability, which George Craig was shrewd enough to +discover in the uncouth and ignorant boy, and wise enough to give its +opportunity. +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page14" name="page14"></a>[14]</span></p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0008" id="h2H_4_0008"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + VII +</h2> + +<p> +It was a common practice of the thrifty and well-to-do of that time, +thus to adopt the children of their poorer neighbors and bring them up +as members of their own families. Still more common was the practice of +taking destitute orphans as "bound boys" or "bound girls." These were +legally bound to service, instead of being sent to the poorhouse, but in +practical effect they became members of the families to whose heads they +were "bound," and shared in all respects the privileges, the schooling, +and everything else that the children of the family enjoyed. They were +expected to work, when there was work to be done, but so was every +other member of the family, and there was never the least suggestion of +servile obligation involved or implied. I remember well the affection in +which my mother's "bound girls" held her and us children, and the way +in which, when they came to be married, their weddings were provided for +precisely as if they had been veritable daughters of the house. +</p> +<p> +On one of those occasions it was rumored in the village, that a +"shiveree"—Hoosier for charivari—was to mark the event. My father, +whose Virginian reverence for womanhood and marriage and personal +dignity, was prompt to resent that sort of insult, went to a neighbor +and borrowed two shotguns. As he carried them homeward through the main +street of the village, on the morning before the wedding, he encountered +the ruffian who had planned the "shiveree," and was arranging to carry +it out. The man asked him, in surprise, for my father was a studious +recluse in his habits, if he were going out after game. +</p> +<p class="side"> +"Shooting Stock" +</p> +<p> +"No," my father replied. "It is only that a very + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page15" name="page15"></a>[15]</span> + + worthy young woman, +a member of my family, is to be married at my house to-night. I hear +that certain 'lewd fellows of the baser sort' are planning to insult +her and me and my family with what they call a 'shiveree.' If they do +anything of the kind, <i>I am going to fire four charges of buckshot +into the crowd</i>." +</p> +<p> +As my father was known to be a man who inflexibly kept his word, there +was no "shiveree" that night. +</p> +<p> +That father of mine was a man of the gentlest spirit imaginable, but at +the same time a man of resolute character, who scrupulously respected +the rights and the dignity of others, and insistently demanded a like +respect for his own. Quite episodically, but in illustration of the +manners of the time, I may here intrude an incident, related to me many +years afterwards by Judge Taylor, a venerable jurist of Madison. My +father was looking about him for a place in which to settle himself in +the practice of law. He was temporarily staying in Madison when a client +came to him. The man had been inveigled into a game of cards with some +sharpers, and they had worked off some counterfeit money upon him. He +purposed to sue them. My father explained that the law did not recognize +the obligation of gambling debts, and the man replied that he knew that +very well, but that he wanted to expose the rascals, and was willing to +spend money to that end. The case came before Judge Taylor. My father +made an eloquently bitter speech in exposition of the meanness of men +who—the reader can imagine the rest. It was to make that speech that +the client had employed the young lawyer, and, in Judge Taylor's opinion +he "got his money's worth of gall and vitriol." But while the speech +was in progress, the three rascals became excited and blustering under +the castigation, and he, the judge, overheard talk of "shooting the +fellow"—to wit my father. Just as the judge was meditating + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page16" name="page16"></a>[16]</span> + + measures of +restraint that might be effective at a time when most men were walking +arsenals, he heard one of them hurriedly warn his fellows in this wise: +</p> +<p> +"Say—you'd better not talk too much about shooting—they tell me that +young lawyer comes from Virginia, and he <i>may be of shooting stock</i>." +</p> +<p> +The Virginians had a reputation for quickness on trigger in that region. +The warning was sufficient. The three gamblers took their punishment and +slunk away, and there was no assassination. +</p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0009" id="h2H_4_0009"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + VIII +</h2> + +<p> +The readiness with which the well-to-do men of that region adopted or +otherwise made themselves responsible for the bringing up of destitute +children, was largely due to the conditions of life that prevailed in +that time and country. There was no considerable expense involved in +such adoption. The thrifty farmer, with more land than he could possibly +cultivate, produced, easily, all the food that even a multitudinous +family could consume. He produced also the wool, the flax, and the +cotton necessary for clothing, and these were carded, spun, woven, and +converted into garments for both sexes by the women folk of the home. +Little, if anything, was bought with actual money, and in the midst +of such abundance an extra mouth to feed and an extra back to clothe +counted for next to nothing, while at that time, when work, on +everybody's part, was regarded quite as a matter of course, the boy or +girl taken into a family was easily able to "earn his keep," as the +phrase was. +</p> +<p> +Nevertheless, there was a great-hearted generosity inspiring it all—a +broadly democratic conviction that everybody should have a chance in +life, and that he who had + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page17" name="page17"></a>[17]</span> + + should share with his brother who had not, +freely and without thought of conferring favor. +</p> +<p class="side"> +A Limitless Hospitality +</p> +<p> +It was upon that principle, also, that the hospitality of that time +rested. There was always an abundance to eat, and there was always a bed +to spare for the stranger within the gates; or if the beds fell short, +it was always easy to spread a pallet before the fire, or, in extreme +circumstances, to make the stranger comfortable among a lot of quilts +in a corn-house or hay-mow. +</p> +<p> +It was my grandfather's rule and that of other men like him, to provide +work of some sort for every one who asked for it. An extra hoe in summer +was always of use, while in winter there was corn to be shelled, there +were apples to be "sorted," tools to be ground, ditches to be dug, stone +fences to be built, wood to be chopped, and a score of other things to +be done, that might employ an extra "hand" profitably. Only once in all +his life did George Craig refuse employment to a man asking for it. On +that occasion he gave supper, lodging, and breakfast to the wayfarer; +but during the evening the man complained that he had been walking all +day with a grain of corn in his shoe, and, as he sat before the fire, he +removed it, to his great relief but also to his undoing as an applicant +for permanent employment. For the energetic old Kentuckian could +conceive of no ground of patience with a man who would walk all day in +pain rather than take the small trouble of sitting down by the roadside +and removing the offending grain of corn from his shoe. +</p> +<p> +"I have no use," he said, "for a man as lazy as that." +</p> +<p> +Then his conscience came to the rescue. +</p> +<p> +"I can't hire a lazy fellow like you for wages," he said; "but I have a +ditch to be dug. There will be fifteen hundred running feet of it, and +if you choose, I'll let you work at it, at so much a foot. Then if you + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page18" name="page18"></a>[18]</span> + + work you'll make wages, while if you don't there'll be nothing for me +to lose on you but your keep, and I'll give you that." +</p> +<p> +The man decided to move on. +</p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0010" id="h2H_4_0010"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + IX +</h2> + +<p> +The life of that early time differed in every way from American life as +men of the present day know it. +</p> +<p> +The isolation in which every community existed, compelled a degree of +local self-dependence the like of which the modern world knows nothing +of. The farmers did most things for themselves, and what they could not +conveniently do for themselves, was done for them in the villages by +independent craftsmen, each cunningly skilled in his trade and dependent +upon factories for nothing. In my native village, Vevay, which was in +nowise different from other Western villages upon which the region +round about depended for supplies, practically everything wanted was +made. There were two tinsmiths, who, with an assistant or two each, +in the persons of boys learning the trade, made every utensil of tin, +sheet-iron, or copper that was needed for twenty-odd miles around. There +were two saddlers and harnessmakers; two or three plasterers; several +brick masons; several carpenters, who knew their trade as no carpenter +does in our time when the planing mill furnishes everything already +shaped to his hand, so that the carpenter need know nothing but how to +drive nails or screws. There was a boot- and shoe-maker who made all +the shoes worn by men, women, and children in all that country, out of +leather bought of the local tanner, to whom all hides were sold by their +producers. There was a hatter who did all his own work, whose vats +yielded all the headgear needed, from the + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page19" name="page19"></a>[19]</span> + + finest to the commonest, +and whose materials were the furs of animals caught or killed by the +farmers' boys and brought to town for sale. There was even a wireworker, +who provided sieves, strainers, and screenings of every kind, and there +was a rope walk where the cordage wanted was made. +</p> +<p class="side"> +Industrial Independence +</p> +<p> +In most households the women folk fashioned all the clothes worn by +persons of either sex, but to meet the demand for "Sunday bests" and +that of preachers who must wear broadcloth every day in the week, and +of extravagant young men who wished to dazzle all eyes with "store +clothes," there was a tailor who year after year fashioned garments upon +models learned in his youth and never departed from. No such thing as +ready-made clothing or boots or shoes—except women's slippers—was +known at the time of which I now write. Even socks and stockings were +never sold in the shops, except upon wedding and other infrequent +occasions. For ordinary wear they were knitted at home of home-spun +yarn. The statement made above is scarcely accurate. Both socks and +stockings were occasionally sold in the country stores, but they were +almost exclusively the surplus products of the industry of women on the +farms round about. So were the saddle blankets, and most of the bed +blankets used. +</p> +<p> +Local self-dependence was well-nigh perfect. The town depended on the +country and the country on the town, for nearly everything that was +eaten or woven or otherwise consumed. The day of dependence upon +factories had not yet dawned. The man who knew how to fashion any +article of human use, made his living by doing the work he knew how to +do, and was an independent, self-respecting man, usually owning his +comfortable home, and destined by middle age to possess a satisfactory +competence. +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page20" name="page20"></a>[20]</span></p> + +<p> +Whether all that was economically or socially better than the system +which has converted the independent, home-owning worker into a factory +hand, living in a tenement and carrying a dinner pail, while tariff +tribute from the consumer makes his employer at once a millionaire +and the more or less despotic master of a multitude of men—is a +question too large and too serious to be discussed in a book of random +recollections such as this. But every "strike" raises that question in +the minds of men who remember the more primitive conditions as lovingly +as I do. +</p> +<p> +As a matter of curious historical interest, too, it is worth while to +recall the fact that Henry Clay—before his desire to win the votes of +the Kentucky hemp-growers led him to become the leading advocate of +tariff protection—used to make eloquent speeches in behalf of free +trade, in which he drew horrifying pictures of life conditions in the +English manufacturing centers, and invoked the mercy of heaven to spare +this country from like conditions in which economic considerations +should ride down social ones, trample the life out of personal +independence, and convert the home-owning American workman into a mere +"hand" employed by a company of capitalists for their own enrichment at +cost of his manhood except in so far as the fiat of a trades union might +interpose to save him from slavery to the employing class. +</p> +<p> +Those were interesting speeches of Henry Clay's, made before he sacrificed +his convictions and his manhood to his vain desire to become President. +</p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0011" id="h2H_4_0011"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + X +</h2> + +<p class="side"> +The Early Railroad +</p> +<p> +At the time of my earliest recollections there was not a mile of +railroad in Indiana or anywhere else west of Ohio, while even in Ohio +there were only the crudest + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page21" name="page21"></a>[21]</span> + + beginnings of track construction, on isolated +lines that began nowhere and led no whither, connecting with nothing, +and usually failing to make even that connection. +</p> +<p> +He who would journey from the East to the West, soon came to the end of +the rails, and after that he must toilsomely make his way by stagecoach +across the mountains, walking for the most part in mud half-leg deep, +and carrying a fence rail on his shoulder with which to help the stalled +stagecoach out of frequent mires. +</p> +<p> +Nevertheless, we heard much of the railroad and its wonders. It was our +mystery story, our marvel, our current Arabian Nights' Entertainment. +We were told, and devoutly believed, that the "railcars" ran at the rate +of "a mile a minute." How or why the liars of that early period, when +lying must have been in its infancy as an art, happened to hit upon +sixty miles an hour as the uniform speed of railroad trains, I am +puzzled to imagine. But so it was. There was probably not in all the +world at that time a single mile of railroad track over which a train +could have been run at such a speed. As for the railroads in the Western +part of this country, they were chiefly primitive constructions, with +tracks consisting of strap iron—wagon tires in effect—loosely spiked +down to timber string pieces, over which it would have been reckless to +the verge of insanity to run a train at more than twelve miles an hour +under the most favorable circumstances. But we were told, over and over +again, till we devoutly believed it—as human creatures always believe +what they have been ceaselessly told without contradiction—that the +"railcars" always ran at the rate of a mile a minute. +</p> +<p> +The first railroad in Indiana was opened in 1847. A year or two later, +my brother Edward and I, made our first journey over it, from Madison to +Dupont, a distance of thirteen miles. Edward was at that time a victim + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page22" name="page22"></a>[22]</span> + + of the faith habit; I was beginning to manifest a skeptical, inquiring +tendency of mind which distressed those responsible for me. When Edward +reminded me that we were to enjoy our first experience of traveling at +the rate of a mile a minute, I borrowed his bull's-eye watch and set +myself to test the thing by timing it. When we reached Dupont, alter the +lapse of ninety-six minutes, in a journey of thirteen miles, I frankly +declared my unbelief in the "mile a minute" tradition. There was no +great harm in that, perhaps, but the skeptical spirit of inquiry that +had prompted me to subject the matter to a time test, very seriously +troubled my elders, who feared that I was destined to become a "free +thinker," as my father had been before me, though I was not permitted to +know that. I was alarmed about my skeptical tendencies myself, because +I believed the theology and demonology taught me at church, having no +means of subjecting them to scientific tests of any kind. I no longer +believed in the "mile a minute" tradition, as everybody around me +continued to do, but I still believed in the existence and malign +activity of a personal devil, and I accepted the assurance given me +that he was always at my side whispering doubts into my ears by way +of securing the damnation of my soul under the doctrine of salvation +by faith. The tortures I suffered on this account were well-nigh +incredible, for in spite of all I might do or say or think, the doubts +continued to arise in my mind, until at last I awoke to the fact that +I was beginning to doubt the doctrine of salvation by faith itself, +as a thing stultifying to the mind, unreasonable in itself, and +utterly unjust in its application to persons like myself, who found +it impossible to believe things which they had every reason to believe +were not true. +</p> +<p class="side"> +A Precocious Skeptic +</p> +<p> +Fortunately I was young and perfectly healthy, and so, after a deal of +psychological suffering I found peace by + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page23" name="page23"></a>[23]</span> + + reconciling myself to the +conviction that I was foreordained to be damned in any case, and that +there was no use in making myself unhappy about it. In support of that +comforting assurance I secretly decided to accept the Presbyterian +doctrine of predestination instead of the Methodist theory of free +will in which I had been bred. I had to make this change of doctrinal +allegiance secretly, because its open avowal would have involved a sound +threshing behind the smoke-house, with perhaps a season of fasting and +prayer, designed to make the castigation "take." +</p> +<p> +I remember that when I had finally made up my mind that the doctrine +of predestination was true, and that I was clearly one of those who +were foreordained to be damned for incapacity to believe the incredible, +I became for a time thoroughly comfortable in my mind, very much +as I suppose a man of business is when he receives his discharge in +bankruptcy. I felt myself emancipated from many restraints that had sat +heavily on my boyish soul. Having decided, with the mature wisdom of +ten or a dozen years of age, that I was to be damned in any case, I saw +no reason why I should not read the fascinating books that had been +forbidden to me by the discipline of the Methodist Church, to which +I perforce belonged. +</p> +<p> +In that early day of strenuous theological requirement, the Methodist +Church disapproved of literature as such, and approved it only in so far +as it was made the instrument of a propaganda. Its discipline required +that each person upon being "received into full membership"—the +Methodist equivalent of confirmation—should take a vow not "to read +such books or sing such songs as do not pertain to the glory of God." I +quote the phrase from memory, but accurately I think. That prohibition, +as interpreted by clerical authority at the time, had completely closed +to me the treasures of the library my scholarly father had collected, +and to which, under his dying + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page24" name="page24"></a>[24]</span> + + instructions, my mother had added many +scores of volumes of the finest English literature, purchased with the +money for which his law books had been sold after his death. +</p> +<p> +I had read a little here and there in those books, and had been +fascinated with the new world they opened to my vision, when, at the +ripe age of ten or twelve years, I was compelled by an ill-directed +clerical authority to submit myself to the process of being "received +into full membership," under the assumption that I had "reached the age +of responsibility." +</p> +<p> +After that the books I so longed to read were forbidden to me—especially +a set entitled "The British Drama," in which appeared the works of +Ben Jonson, Marlowe, Massinger, Beaumont and Fletcher, and a long list +of other classics, filling five thick volumes. By no ingenuity of +construction could such books be regarded as homilies in disguise, and +so they were Anathema. So was Shakespeare, and so even was Thiers' +"French Revolution," of which I had devoured the first volume in delight, +before the inhibition fell upon me, blasting my blind but eager aspiration +for culture and a larger knowledge of the world and of human nature. +</p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0012" id="h2H_4_0012"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + XI +</h2> + +<p class="side"> +Culture by Stealth +</p> +<p> +After I made up my mind to accept damnation as my appointed portion, +I felt myself entirely free to revel at will in the reading that so +appealed to my hungry mind; free, that is to say, so far as my own +conscience was concerned, but no freer than before so far as the +restraints of authority could determine the matter. I had no hesitation +in reading the books when I could do so without being caught at it, but +to be caught at it was to be punished for it and, worse still, it was to +have the books placed + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page25" name="page25"></a>[25]</span> + + beyond my reach, a thing I dreaded far more than +mere punishment. Punishment, indeed, seemed to me nothing more than a +small advance upon the damnation I must ultimately suffer in any case. +The thing to be avoided was discovery, because discovery must lead to +the confiscation of my books, the loss of that liberty which my +acceptance of damnation had given to me. +</p> +<p> +To that end I practised many deceits and resorted to many subterfuges. +I read late at night when I was supposed to be asleep. I smuggled books +out into the woods and hid them there under the friendly roots of trees, +so that I might go out and read them when I was supposed to be engaged +in a search for ginseng, or in a hunt for the vagrant cow, to whose +unpunctuality in returning to be milked I feel that I owe an appreciable +part of such culture as I have acquired. +</p> +<p> +The clerical hostility to literature endured long after the period of +which I have been writing, long after the railroad and other means of +freer intercourse had redeemed the West from its narrow provincialism. +Even in my high school days, when our part of the country had reached +that stage of civilization that hangs lace curtains at its windows, +wears store clothes of week days, and paints garden fences green instead +of white, we who were under Methodist dominance were rigidly forbidden +to read fiction or anything that resembled fiction, with certain +exceptions. The grown folk of our creed permitted themselves to read the +inane novels of the Philadelphia tailor, T. S. Arthur; the few young men +who "went to college," were presumed to be immune to the virus of the +Greek and Latin fictions they must read there—probably because they +never learned enough of Greek or Latin to read them understandingly—and +finally there were certain polemic novels that were generally permitted. +</p> +<p> +Among these last the most conspicuous example I + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page26" name="page26"></a>[26]</span> + + remember was a violently +anti-Roman Catholic novel called "Danger in the Dark," which had a vogue +that the "best-sellers" of our later time might envy. It was not only +permitted to us to read that—it was regarded as our religious duty in +order that we might learn to hate the Catholics with increased fervor. +</p> +<p> +The religious animosities of that period, with their relentless +intolerance, their unreason, their matchless malevolence, and their +eagerness to believe evil, ought to form an interesting and instructive +chapter in some history of civilization in America, whenever a scholar +of adequate learning and the gift of interpretation shall undertake that +work. But that is a task for some Buckle or Lecky. It does not belong to +a volume of random reminiscences such as this is. +</p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0013" id="h2H_4_0013"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + XII +</h2> + +<p class="side"> +Civilization on Wheels +</p> +<p> +Though the railroads, when at last they came to us, failed utterly in +their promise of transportation at the rate of "a mile a minute," they +did something else, presently, that was quite as remarkable and far +worthier in its way. They ran down and ran over, and crushed out of +existence a provincialism that had much of evil promise and very little +of present good in it. With their coming, and in some degree in advance +of their coming, a great wave of population poured into the West from +all quarters of the country. The newcomers brought with them their +ideas, their points of view, their convictions, their customs, and +their standards of living. Mingling together in the most intimate ways, +socially and in business pursuits, each lost something of his prejudices +and provincialism, and gained much by contact with men of other ways of +thinking and living. Attrition sharpened the + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page27" name="page27"></a>[27]</span> + + perceptions of all and +smoothed away angles of offense. A spirit of tolerance was awakened +such as had never been known in the Western country before, and as +the West became populous and prosperous, it became also more broadly +and generously American, more truly national in character, and more +accurately representative of all that is best in American thought and +life than any part of the country had ever been. It represented the +whole country and all its parts. +</p> +<p> +The New Englanders, the Virginians, the Pennsylvanians, the Carolinians, +the Kentuckians, who were thus brought together into composite +communities with now and then an Irish, a French, a Dutch, or a German +family, a group of Switzers, and a good many Scotchmen for neighbors +and friends, learned much and quickly each from all the others. +Better still, each unlearned the prejudices, the bigotries, and the +narrownesses in which he had been bred, and life in the great West took +on a liberality of mind, a breadth of tolerance and sympathy, a generous +humanity such as had never been known in any of the narrowly provincial +regions that furnished the materials of this composite population. It +seems to me scarcely too much to say that real Americanism, in the broad +sense of the term, had its birth in that new "winning of the West," +which the railroads achieved about the middle of the nineteenth century. +</p> +<p> +With the coming of easier and quicker communication, not only was the +West brought into closer relations with the East, but the West itself +became quickly more homogeneous. There was a constant shifting of +population from one place to another, much traveling about, and a free +interchange of thought among a people who were eagerly alert to adopt +new ideas that seemed in any way to be better than the old. As I recall +the rapid changes of that time it seems to me that the betterments came + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page28" name="page28"></a>[28]</span> + + with a rapidity rarely if ever equaled in human history. A year or +two at that time was sufficient to work a revolution even in the most +conservative centers of activity. Changes of the most radical kind and +involving the most vital affairs, were made over-night, as it were, and +with so little shock to men's minds that they ceased, almost immediately, +to be topics of conversation. The old had scarcely passed away before +it was forgotten, and the new as quickly became the usual, the ordinary, +the familiar order of things. +</p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0014" id="h2H_4_0014"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + XIII +</h2> + +<p> +I do not mean to suggest that the West, or indeed any other part of the +country, at once put aside all its crudities of custom and adopted the +ways of living that we are familiar with in this later time. All that +has been a thing of gradual accomplishment, far slower in its coming +than most people realize. +</p> +<p> +I remember that when Indianapolis became a great railroad center and a +city of enormous proportions—population from 15,000 to 20,000, according +to the creative capacity of the imagination making the estimate—a +wonderful hotel was built there, and called the Bates House. Its splendors +were the subject of wondering comment throughout the West. It had +washstands, with decorated pottery on them, in all its more expensive +rooms, so that a guest sojourning there need not go down to the common +washroom for his morning ablution, and dry his hands and face on a +jack-towel. There were combs and brushes in the rooms, too, so that +if one wanted to smooth his hair he was not obliged to resort to the +appliances of that sort that were hung by chains to the washroom walls. +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page29" name="page29"></a>[29]</span></p> + +<p class="side"> +A Breakfast Revolution +</p> +<p> +Moreover, if a man going to the Bates House for a sojourn, chose to pay +a trifle extra he might have a room all to himself, without the prospect +of being waked up in the middle of the night to admit some stranger, +assigned by the hotel authorities to share his room and bed. +</p> +<p> +All these things were marvels of pretentious luxury, borrowed from +the more "advanced" hostelries of the Eastern cities, and as such they +became topics of admiring comment everywhere, as illustrations of the +wonderful progress of civilization that was taking place among us. +</p> +<p> +But all these subjects of wonderment shrank to nothingness by +comparison, when the proprietors of the Bates House printed on their +breakfast bills of fare, an announcement that thereafter each guest's +breakfast would be cooked after his order for it was given, together +with an appeal for patience on the part of the breakfasters—a patience +that the proprietors promised to reward with hot and freshly prepared +dishes. +</p> +<p> +This innovation was so radical that it excited discussion hotter even +than the Bates House breakfasts. Opinions differed as to the right +of a hotel keeper to make his guests wait for the cooking of their +breakfasts. To some minds the thing presented itself as an invasion +of personal liberty and therefore of the constitutional rights of the +citizen. To others it seemed an intolerable nuisance, while by those +who were ambitious of reputation as persons who had traveled and were +familiar with good usage, it was held to be a welcome advance in +civilization. In approving it, they were able to exploit themselves as +persons who had not only traveled as far as the state capital, but while +there had paid the two dollars a day, which the Bates House charged for +entertainment, instead of going to less pretentious taverns where the +customary charge of a dollar or a dollar and a half a day still +prevailed, and where breakfast was put upon the table before + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page30" name="page30"></a>[30]</span> + + the gong +invited guests to rush into the dining room and madly scramble for what +they could get of it. +</p> +<p> +In the same way I remember how we all wondered over the manifestation of +luxury made by the owners of a newly built steamboat of the Louisville +and Cincinnati Mail Line, when we heard that the several staterooms +were provided with wash-basins. That was in the fifties. Before that +time, two common washrooms—one for men and the other for women—had +served all the passengers on each steamboat, and, as those washrooms +had set-bowls with running water, they were regarded as marvels of +sumptuousness in travel facilities. It was partly because of such +luxury, I suppose, that we called the steamboats of that time "floating +palaces." They seemed so then. They would not impress us in that way +now. Perhaps fifty years hence the great ocean liners of the present, +over whose perfection of equipment we are accustomed to wonder, will +seem equally unworthy. Such things are comparative and the world +moves fast. +</p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0015" id="h2H_4_0015"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + XIV +</h2> + +<p class="side"> +A Bathroom Episode +</p> +<p> +The crudities here referred to, however, are not properly to be reckoned +as belonging exclusively to the West, or as specially indicative of the +provincialism of the West. At that time and for long afterward, it was +usual, even in good hotels throughout the country, to assign two men, +wholly unacquainted with each other, to occupy a room in common. It +was expected that the hotel would provide a comb and brush for the use +of guests in each room, as the practice of carrying one's own toilet +appliances of that kind had not yet become general. Hotel rooms with +private bathrooms adjoining, were wholly unknown before the Civil War, +and the practice of taking a daily bath was + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page31" name="page31"></a>[31]</span> + + very uncommon indeed. A hotel +guest asking for such a thing would have been pointed out to bystanders +as a curiosity of effete dandyism. Parenthetically, I may say that as +late as 1886 I engaged for my wife and myself a room with private bath +on the first floor of the Nadeau House, then the best hotel in Los +Angeles, California. The man at the desk explained that the bathroom did +not open directly into the room, but adjoined it and was accessible +from the dead end of the hallway without. We got on very well with this +arrangement until Saturday night came, when, as I estimated the number, +all the unmarried men of the city took turns in bathing in my private +bathroom. When I entered complaint at the desk next morning, the clerk +evidently regarded me as a monster of arrogant selfishness. He explained +that as I had free use of the bathroom every day and night of the week, +I ought not to feel aggrieved at its invasion by other cleanly disposed +persons on "the usual night for taking a bath." +</p> +<p> +The experience brought two facts to my attention: first, that in the +opinion of the great majority of my fellow American citizens one bath a +week was quite sufficient, and, second, that the fixed bathtub, with hot +and cold water running directly into it, is a thing of comparatively +modern use. I suppose that in the eighteen-fifties, and quite certainly +in the first half of that decade, there were no such appliances of +luxurious living in any but the very wealthiest houses, if even there. +Persons who wanted an "all-over bath," went to a barber shop for it, if +they lived in a city, and, if they lived elsewhere, went without it, or +pressed a family washtub into friendly service. +</p> +<p> +So, too, as late as 1870, in looking for a house in Brooklyn, I found it +difficult to get one of moderate rent cost, that had other water supply +than such as a hydrant in the back yard afforded. +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page32" name="page32"></a>[32]</span></p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0016" id="h2H_4_0016"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + XV +</h2> + +<p> +To return to the changes wrought in the West by the construction of +railroads and the influx of immigration from all parts of the country. +In nothing else was the improvement more rapid or more pronounced +than in education. Until the early fifties, and even well into them, +educational endeavors and educational methods were crude, unorganized, +wasteful of effort, and utterly uncertain of result. From the very +beginning the desire for education had been alert and eager in the West, +and the readiness to spend money and effort in that behalf had been +unstinted. But the means were lacking and system was lacking. More +important still there was lack of any well-considered or fairly uniform +conception of what education ought to aim at or achieve. +</p> +<p> +In the rural districts schools were sporadic and uncertain. When a +"master" was available "school kept," and its chief activity was to +teach the spelling of the English language. Incidentally it taught +pupils to read and the more advanced ones—ten per cent. of all, +perhaps, to write. As a matter of higher education rudimentary +arithmetic had a place in the curriculum. Now and then a schoolmaster +appeared who essayed other things in a desultory way but without results +of any consequence. In the villages and towns the schools were usually +better, but even there the lack of any well-ordered system was a blight. +</p> +<p class="side"> +School Methods +</p> +<p> +The schoolmasters were frequently changed, for one thing, each newcoming +one bringing his own notions to bear upon problems that he was not +destined to remain long enough to solve. Even in the more permanent +schools, kept by very young or superannuated preachers, or by Irish +schoolmasters who conducted them on the + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page33" name="page33"></a>[33]</span> + + "knock down and drag out" system, +there was no attempt to frame a scheme of education that should aim at +well conceived results. In every such school there were two or three +boys taking "the classical course," by which was meant that without the +least question or consideration of their fitness to do so, they had +dropped all ordinary school studies and were slowly plodding along in +rudimentary Latin, in obedience to some inherited belief on the part of +their parents that education consists in studying Latin, that there is +a benediction in a paradigm, and that fitness for life's struggle is +most certainly achieved by the reading of "Historia Sacra," "Cornelius +Nepos," and the early chapters of "Cæsar's Commentaries on the Gallic +War." +</p> +<p> +Other pupils, under the impression that they were taking a "scientific +course," were drilled in Comstock's Physiology and Natural Philosophy, +and somebody's "Geography of the Heavens." The rest of the +school—plebeians all—contented themselves with reading, writing, +arithmetic, geography, and a vain attempt to master the mysteries and +mists of Kirkham's Grammar. +</p> +<p> +The railroads quickly changed all this. They brought into the West +men and women who knew who Horace Mann was, and whose conceptions of +education in its aims and methods were definite, well ordered, and +aggressive. +</p> +<p> +These set to work to organize graded school systems in the larger towns, +and the thing was contagious, in a region where every little town was +confidently ambitious of presently becoming the most important city in +the state, and did not intend in the meantime to permit any other to +outdo it in the frills and furbelows of largeness. +</p> +<p> +With preparatory education thus organized and systematized, and with +easy communication daily becoming easier, the ambition of young men +to attend colleges and + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page34" name="page34"></a>[34]</span> + + universities was more and more gratified, so +that within a very few years the higher education—so far as it is +represented by college courses—became common throughout the country, +while for those who could not achieve that, or were not minded to do so, +the teaching of the schools was adapted, as it never had been before, +to the purpose of real, even if meager education. +</p> +<p> +Even in the remotest country districts a new impetus was given to +education, and the subjection of the schools there to the supervision +of school boards and professional superintendents worked wonders of +reformation. For one thing the school boards required those who wished +to serve as teachers to pass rigid examinations in test of their +fitness, so that it was no longer the privilege of any ignoramus who +happened to be out of a job to "keep school." In addition to this +the school boards prescribed and regulated the courses of study, the +classification of pupils, and the choice of text-books, even in country +districts where graded schools were not to be thought of, and this +supervision gave a new and larger meaning to school training in the +country. +</p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0017" id="h2H_4_0017"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + XVI +</h2> + +<p> +It was my fortune to be the first certified teacher under this system +in a certain rural district where the old haphazard system had before +prevailed, and my experience there connects itself interestingly, I +think, with a bit of literary history. It was the instigation of my +brother, Edward Eggleston's, most widely popular story, "The Hoosier +Schoolmaster," which in its turn was the instigation of all the +fascinating literature that has followed it with Hoosier life conditions +for its theme. +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page35" name="page35"></a>[35]</span></p> + +<p class="side"> +"The Hoosier Schoolmaster" +</p> +<p> +My school district lay not many miles from the little town in which my +family lived, and as I had a good pair of legs, well used to walking, I +went home every Friday night, returning on Monday morning after a four +o'clock breakfast. On these week-end visits it was my delight to tell of +the queer experiences of the week, and Edward's delight to listen to +them while he fought against the maladies that were then threatening his +brave young life with early extinction. +</p> +<p> +Years afterwards he and I were together engaged in an effort to +resuscitate the weekly illustrated newspaper <i>Hearth and Home</i>, which +had calamitously failed to win a place for itself, under a number of +highly distinguished editors, whose abilities seemed to compass almost +everything except the art of making a newspaper that people wanted and +would pay for. Of that effort I shall perhaps have more to say in a +future chapter. It is enough now to say that the periodical had a weekly +stagnation—it will not do to call it a circulation—of only five +or six thousand copies, nearly half of them gratuitous, and it had +netted an aggregate loss of many thousands of dollars to the several +publishers who had successively made themselves its sponsors. It was our +task—Edward's and mine—to make the thing "pay," and to that end both +of us were cudgeling our brains by day and by night to devise means. +</p> +<p> +One evening a happy thought came to Edward and he hurriedly quitted +whatever he was doing to come to my house and submit it. +</p> +<p> +"I have a mind, Geordie," he said, "to write a three number story, +called 'The Hoosier Schoolmaster,' and to found it upon your experience +at Riker's Ridge." +</p> +<p> +We talked the matter over. He wrote and published the first of the three +numbers, and its popularity was instant. The publishers pleaded with +him, and so did + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page36" name="page36"></a>[36]</span> + + I, to abandon the three number limitation, and he +yielded. Before the serial publication of the story ended, the +subscription list of <i>Hearth and Home</i> had been many times multiplied +and Edward Eggleston was famous. +</p> +<p> +He was far too original a man, and one possessed of an imagination too +fertilely creative to follow at all closely my experiences, which had +first suggested the story to him. He made one or two personages among +my pupils the models from which he drew certain of his characters, but +beyond that the experiences which suggested the story in no way entered +into its construction. Yet in view of the facts it seems to me worth +while to relate something of those suggestive experiences. +</p> +<p> +I was sixteen years old when I took the school. Circumstances +had compelled me for the time to quit college, where, despite my +youthfulness, I was in my second year. The Riker's Ridge district +had just been brought under supervision of the school authorities at +Madison. A new schoolhouse had been built and a teacher was wanted +to inaugurate the new system. I applied for the place, stood the +examinations, secured my certificate, and was appointed. +</p> +<p class="side"> +The Riker's Ridge District +</p> +<p> +On my first appearance in the neighborhood, the elders there seemed +distinctly disappointed in the selection made. They knew the school +history of the district. They remembered that the last three masters had +been "licked" by stalwart and unruly boys, the last one so badly that +he had abandoned the school in the middle of the term. They strongly +felt the need, therefore, of a master of mature years, strong arms, and +ponderous fists as the person chosen to inaugurate the new system. When +a beardless boy of sixteen presented himself instead, they shook their +heads in apprehension. But the appointment had been made by higher +authority, and they had no choice but to accept it. Appreciating the +nature of their fears, + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page37" name="page37"></a>[37]</span> + + I told the grave and reverend seigniors that my +schoolboy experience had shown my arms to be stronger, my fists heavier, +and my nimbleness greater perhaps than they imagined, but that in the +conduct of the school I should depend far more upon the diplomatic +nimbleness of my wits than upon physical prowess, and that I thought I +should manage to get on. +</p> +<p> +There was silence for a time. Then one wise old patriarch said: +</p> +<p> +"Well, may be so. But there's Charley Grebe. You wouldn't make a +mouthful for him. Anyhow, we'll see, we'll see." +</p> +<p> +Charley Grebe was the youth who had thrashed the last master so +disastrously. +</p> +<p> +Thus encouraged, I went to my task. +</p> +<p> +The neighborhood was in no sense a bad one. There were none of the +elements in it that gave character to "Flat Creek" as depicted in +"The Hoosier Schoolmaster." The people were all quiet, orderly, entirely +reputable folk, most of them devotedly pious. They were mainly of +"Pennsylvania Dutch" extraction, stolid on the surface but singularly +emotional within. But the school traditions of the region were those +of the old time, when the master was regarded as the common enemy, who +must be thwarted in every possible way, resisted at every point where +resistance was possible, and "thrashed" by the biggest boy in school +if the biggest boy could manage that. +</p> +<p> +There was really some justification for this attitude of the young +Americans in every such district. For under the old system, as I very +well remember it, the government of schools was brutal, cruel, inhuman +in a degree that might in many cases have excused if it did not justify +a homicidal impulse on the part of its victims. The boys of the early +time would never have grown into the stalwart + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page38" name="page38"></a>[38]</span> + + Americans who fought the +Civil War if they had submitted to such injustice and so cruel a tyranny +without making the utmost resistance they could. +</p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0018" id="h2H_4_0018"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + XVII +</h2> + +<p> +I began my work with a little friendly address to the forty or fifty +boys and girls who presented themselves as pupils. I explained to +them that my idea of a school was quite different from that which had +before that time prevailed in that region; that I was employed by the +authorities to teach them all I could, by way of fitting them for life, +and that I was anxious to do that in the case of every boy and girl +present. I expressed the hope that they in their turn were anxious to +learn all I could teach them, and that if any of them found their +studies too difficult, I would gladly give my time out of school hours +to the task of discovering the cause of the difficulty and remedying it. +I explained that in my view government in a school should have no object +beyond that of giving every pupil opportunity to learn all he could, and +the teacher opportunity to teach all he could. I frankly abolished the +arbitrary rule that had before made of whispering a grave moral offense, +and substituted for it a request that every pupil should be careful not +to disturb the work of others in any way, so that we might all make the +most of our time and opportunity. +</p> +<p> +It was a new gospel, and in the main it fell upon deaf ears. A few of +the pupils were impressed by its reasonableness and disposed to meet the +new teacher half way. The opinion of the majority was expressed by one +boy whom I overheard at recess when he said to one of his fellows: +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page39" name="page39"></a>[39]</span></p> + +<p class="side"> +The Biggest Boy +</p> +<p> +"He's skeered o' Charley Grebe, an' he's a-tryin' to soft-sawder us." +</p> +<p> +The first day or two of school were given to the rather perplexing work +of classifying pupils whose previous instruction had been completely at +haphazard. During that process I minutely observed the one foe against +whom I had received more than one warning—Charley Grebe. He was a +young man of nearly twenty-one, six feet, one or two inches high, +broad-shouldered, muscular, and with a jaw that suggested all the +relentless determination that one young man can hold. +</p> +<p> +When I questioned him with a view to his classification, he was polite +enough in his uninstructed way, but exceedingly reserved. On the whole +he impressed me as a young man of good natural ability, who had been +discouraged by bad and incapable instruction. After he had told me, +rather grudgingly I thought, what ground his studies had covered, he +suddenly changed places with me and became the questioner. +</p> +<p> +"Say," he broke out, interrupting some formal question of mine, "Say, +do you know anything in fact? Do you know Arithmetic an' Algebra an' +Geometry and can you really teach me? or are you just pretending, like +the rest?" +</p> +<p> +I thought I understood him and I guessed what his experience had been. I +assured him that there was nothing in Arithmetic that I could not teach +him, that I knew my Algebra, Geometry, and Trigonometry, and could +help him to learn them, if he really desired to do so. Then adopting +something of his own manner I asked: +</p> +<p> +"What is it you want me to do, Charley? Say what you have to say, like +a man, and don't go beating about the bush." +</p> +<p> +For reply, he said: +</p> +<p> +"I want to talk with you. It'll be a long talk. I + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page40" name="page40"></a>[40]</span> + + want you to go home +with me to-night. Father said I might invite you. Will you come?" +</p> +<p> +There was eager earnestness in his questions, but there was also a note +of discouragement, if not quite of despair in his tone. I agreed at once +to go with him for the night, and, taking the hand he had not thought of +offering, I added: +</p> +<p> +"If there is any way in which I can help you, Charley, I'll do it +gladly." +</p> +<p> +Whether it was the unaccustomed courtesy, or the awakening of a new +hope, or something else, I know not, but the awkward, overgrown boy +seemed at once to assume the dignity of manhood, and while he had never +been taught to say "thank you" or to use any other conventionally polite +form of speech, he managed to make me understand by his manner that he +appreciated my offer, and a few minutes later, school having been +dismissed, he and I set out for his home. +</p> +<p> +There he explained his case to me. He wanted to become a shipwright—a +trade which, in that time of multitudinous steamboat building on the +Western rivers, was the most inviting occupation open to a young man +of energy. He had discovered that a man who wished to rise to anything +like a mastery in that trade must have a good working knowledge of +Arithmetic, elementary Algebra, Geometry, and at least the rudiments +of Trigonometry. He had wanted to learn these things and some of his +previous schoolmasters had undertaken to teach them, with no result +except presently to reveal to him their own ignorance. His father +permitted him six months more of schooling. He had "sized me up," he +said, and he believed I could teach him what he wanted to learn. But +could he learn it within six months? That was what he wanted me to +tell him. I put him through a close examination in Arithmetic that +night—consuming + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page41" name="page41"></a>[41]</span> + + most of the night—and before morning I had satisfied +myself that he was an apt pupil who, with diligence and such earnest +determination as he manifested, could learn what he really needed of +mathematics within the time named. +</p> +<p class="side"> +A Vigorous Volunteer Monitor +</p> +<p> +"You can do it, Charley, if you work hard, and I'll help you, in school +hours and out," was my final verdict. +</p> +<p> +"It's a bargain," he said, and that was all he said. But a day or +two later a boy in school—a great, hulking fellow whose ugliness +of disposition I had early discerned—made a nerve-racking noise by +dragging his pencil over his slate in a way that disturbed the whole +school. I bade him cease, but he presently repeated the offense. Again +I rebuked him, but five minutes or so later he defiantly did the thing +again, "just to see if the master dared," he afterward explained. +Thereupon Charley Grebe arose, seized the fellow by the ear, twisted +that member until its owner howled with pain, and then, hurling him +back into his seat, said: +</p> +<p> +"<i>You heard the master! You'll mind him after this or I'll make you.</i>" +</p> +<p> +The event fairly appalled the school. The thought that Charley Grebe was +on the master's side, and actively helping him to maintain discipline, +seemed beyond belief. But events soon confirmed it. There was a little +fellow in the school whom everybody loved, and whose quaint, childish +ways afterwards suggested the character of "Shocky" in "The Hoosier +Schoolmaster." There was also a cowardly brute there whose delight it +was to persecute the little fellow on the playground in intolerable +ways. I sought to stop the thing. To that end I devised and inflicted +every punishment I could think of, short of flogging, but all to no +purpose. At last I laid aside my convictions with my patience, and gave +the big bully such a flogging as must have impressed his mind if he had +had anything of the kind about his person. +</p> +<p> +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page42" name="page42"></a>[42]</span> +</p> +<p> +That day, at the noon recess, the big bully set to work to beat +the little boy unmercifully in revenge for what I had done for his +protection. I was looking out through a Venetian blind, with intent to +go to the rescue, when suddenly Charley Grebe, who was playing town +ball threw down the bat, seized the fellow, threw him across his knees, +pinioned his legs with one of his own, and literally wore out a dozen or +more thick blue ash shingles over that part of his victim's body which +was made for spanking. +</p> +<p> +When at last he released the blubbering object of his wrath he slapped +his jaws soundly and said: +</p> +<p> +"Don't you go a-whining to the master about this. If you do it'll be +a good deal wuss for you. I'm a-takin' this here job off the master's +hands." +</p> +<p> +I gave no hint that I had seen or heard. But from that hour forth no +boy in the school ever gave me the smallest trouble by misbehavior. The +school perfectly understood that Charley Grebe was "a-takin' this here +job off the master's hands," and the knowledge was sufficient. +</p> +<p> +After that only the big girls—most of them older than I was—gave me +trouble. I met it with the explanation that I could never think of +punishing a young woman, and that I must trust to their honor and +courtesy, as girls who expected presently to be ladies, for their +behavior. The appeal was a trifle slow in eliciting a response, but +in the end it answered its purpose. +</p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0019" id="h2H_4_0019"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + XVIII +</h2> + +<p class="side"> +What's in a Name? +</p> +<p> +While I was enrolling and classifying the pupils, I encountered a +peculiarly puzzling case. There were five John Riddels in the school, +and I found that all of them + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page43" name="page43"></a>[43]</span> + + were sons of the same man, whose name also +was John Riddel. No one of them had a middle name or any other sort +of name by which he might be distinguished from his brothers. On the +playground they were severally known as "Big John Riddel," "John +Riddel," "Johnny Riddel," "Little John Riddel," and "Little Johnny +Riddel," while their father was everywhere known as "Old John Riddel," +though he was a man under fifty, I should say. He lived near, in a +stone house, with stone barns and out-houses, an ingeniously devised +milk-house, and a still more ingeniously constructed device for bringing +water from the spring under the hill into his dwelling. +</p> +<p> +In brief his thrift was altogether admirable, and the mechanical devices +by which he made the most of every opportunity, suggested a fertilely +inventive mind on the part of a man whose general demeanor was stolid to +the verge of stupidity. When I was taking supper at his house one night +by special invitation, I asked him why he had named all his sons John. +For reply he said: +</p> +<p> +"John is a very good name," and that was all the explanation I ever got +out of him. +</p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0020" id="h2H_4_0020"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + XIX +</h2> + +<p> +One pupil I had at Riker's Ridge, was Johnny G. His people had some +money and Johnny had always dressed better than the rest of us could +afford to do, when several years before, he and I had been classmates +in the second or third grade of the Grammar School in Madison. Johnny +had never got out of that grade, and even when I was in my second year +in college, he gave no promise of ever making a scholastic step forward. +But he had relatives on Riker's Ridge, and when he heard that I was to +be the teacher there he promised his people that + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page44" name="page44"></a>[44]</span> + + he would really make +an effort if they would let him live with his relatives there and become +my pupil. It was so arranged, and Johnny came to me, with all his +dazzling waistcoats and trousers with the latest style of pockets, and +all the rest of the upholstery with which he delighted to decorate his +person. +</p> +<p> +I think he really did make an effort to master the rudimentary school +studies, and I conscientiously endeavored to help him, not only in +school but of evenings. For a time there seemed to be a reasonable +promise of success in lifting Johnny to that level of scholastic +attainment which would permit him to return to Madison and enter the +High School. But presently all this was brought to naught. Johnny was +seized by a literary ambition that completely absorbed what mind he had, +and made his school studies seem to him impertinent intrusions upon the +attention of one absorbed in higher things. +</p> +<p> +He told me all about it one afternoon as I walked homeward with him, +intent upon finding out why he had suddenly ceased to get his lessons. +</p> +<p> +"I'm going to write a song," he told me, "and it's going to make me +famous. I'm writing it now, and I tell you it's fine." +</p> +<p> +"Tell me about it, Johnny," I replied. "What is its theme? And how much +of it have you written?" +</p> +<p> +"I don't know what it's to be about," he answered, "if that's what you +mean by its theme. But it's going to be great, and I'm going to make the +tune to it myself." +</p> +<p> +"Very well," I replied encouragingly. "Would you mind reciting to me so +much of it as you've written? I'd like to hear it." +</p> +<p> +"Why, of course. I tell you it's going to be great, but I haven't got +much of it done yet—only one line, in fact." +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page45" name="page45"></a>[45]</span></p> + +<p class="side"> +A Buttermilk Poet +</p> +<p> +Observing a certain discouragement in his tone I responded: +</p> +<p> +"Oh, well, even one line is a good deal, if it's good. Many a poem's +fortune has been made by a single line. Tell me what it is." +</p> +<p> +"Well, the line runs: 'With a pitcher of buttermilk under her arm.' +Don't you see how it sort o' sings? 'With a pitcher of buttermilk under +her arm'—why, it's great, I tell you. Confound the school books! What's +the use of drudging when a fellow has got it in him to write poetry like +that? 'With a pit-cher of but-termilk un-der her arm'—don't it sing? +'With a <i>pit</i>-cher of but-termilk un-der her arm.' 'With a <i>pit</i>-cher +of <i>but</i>-termilk—un-der her arm.' Whoopee, but it's great!" +</p> +<p> +I lost sight of Johnny soon after that, and I have never heard what +became of that buttermilk pitcher, or the fascinating rhythm in which it +presented itself. But in later years I have come into contact with many +literary ambitions that were scarcely better based than this. Indeed, if +I were minded to be cynical—as I am not—I might mention a few magazine +poets whose pitchers of buttermilk seem to me—but all that is foreign +to the purpose of this book. +</p> +<p> +Before quitting this chapter and the period and region to which it +relates, I wish to record that Charley Grebe mastered the mathematics +he needed, and entered hopefully upon his apprenticeship to a ship +carpenter. I hope he rose to the top in the trade, but I know nothing +about it. +</p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0021" id="h2H_4_0021"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + XX +</h2> + +<p> +Not many months after my school-teaching experience came to an end, +circumstances decreed that my life should be changed in the most radical +way possible in this country. + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page46" name="page46"></a>[46]</span> + + I quitted the rapidly developing, +cosmopolitan, kaleidoscopic West, and became a dweller upon the old +family plantation in Virginia, where my race had been bred and nurtured +ever since 1635 when the first man of my name to cross the seas +established himself there and possessed himself of lavishly abundant +acres which subsequent divisions among his descendants had converted +into two adjoining plantations—the ancestral homes of all the +Egglestons, so far, at least, as I knew them or knew of them. +</p> +<p> +I suppose I was an imaginative youth at seventeen, and I had read +enough of poetry, romance, and still more romantic history, to develop +that side of my nature somewhat unduly. At any rate it was strongly +dominant, and the contrast between the seething, sordid, aggressive, +and ceaselessly eager life of the West, in which I had been bred and +the picturesquely placid, well-bred, self-possessed, and leisurely life +into which the transfer ushered me, impressed me as nothing else has +ever done. It was like escaping from the turmoil of battle to the +green pastures, and still waters of the Twenty-third Psalm. It was +like passing from the clamor of a stock exchange into the repose of +a library. +</p> +<p> +I have written much about that restful, refined, picturesque old +Virginia life in essays and romances, but I must write something more +of it in this place at risk of offending that one of my critics who not +long ago discovered that I had created it all out of my own imagination +for the entertainment of New England readers. He was not born, +I have reason to believe, until long after that old life had passed +into history, but his conviction that it never existed, that it was +<i>a priori</i> impossible, was strong enough to bear down the testimony +of any eye-witness's recollection. +</p> +<p class="side"> +Creative Incredulity +</p> +<p> +It has often been a matter of chastening wonder and instruction to me to +observe how much more critics and + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page47" name="page47"></a>[47]</span> + + historians can learn from the intuitions +of their "inner consciousness" than was ever known to the unfortunates +who have had only facts of personal observation and familiar knowledge +to guide them. It was only the other day that a distinguished historian +of the modern introspective, self-illuminating school upset the +traditions of many centuries by assuring us that the romantic story +of Antony and Cleopatra is a baseless myth; that there never was any +love affair between the Roman who has been supposed to have "madly +flung a world away" for worship of a woman, and the "Sorceress of the +Nile"—the "star-eyed Egyptian" who has been accused of tempting him +to his destruction; that Cleopatra merely hired of Antony the services +of certain legions that she needed for her defense, and paid him for +them in the current money of the time and country. +</p> +<p> +Thus does the incredulous but infallible intuition of the present +correct the recorded memory of the past. I have no doubt that some day +the country will learn from that sort of superior consciousness that in +the Virginia campaign of the Wilderness, Spottsylvania and Cold Harbor, +where men are now believed to have fought and marched so heroically with +empty bellies and often with unshod feet, there were in fact no such +discomforts incident to the discussion; that Grant and Lee like the +courteous commanders they were, suspended the argument of arms at the +dinner hour each day in order that their men might don evening clothes +and patent leather shoes and sit down to banquets of eleven courses, +with <i>pousse cafés</i> and cigars at the end. Nevertheless, I shall write +of the old Virginia life as I remember it, and let the record stand at +that until such time as it shall be shown by skilled historical criticism +that the story of the Civil War is a sun myth and that the old life which +is pictured as having preceded it was the invention of the romance +writers. +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page48" name="page48"></a>[48]</span></p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0022" id="h2H_4_0022"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + XXI +</h2> + +<p> +The first thing that impressed me in that old life, when I was thrust +into it, was its repose, the absence of stress or strain or anxious +anticipation, the appreciation of to-morrow as the equal of to-day for +the doing of things and the getting of things done. My trunks had missed +connection somewhere on the journey, and I thought of telegraphing about +the matter. My uncle, the master of the plantation and head of the +family, discouraged that, and suggested that I should go fishing in a +neighboring creek instead. The telegraph office was six miles away. He +had never sent a telegram in his life. He had no doubt the trunks would +come along to-morrow or next day, and the fish in the creek were just +then biting in encouraging fashion. +</p> +<p> +That was my first lesson, and it impressed me strongly. Where I had +come from nobody would have thought of resting under the uncertainty or +calmly contemplating the unwarranted delay. Here nobody thought of doing +anything else, and as the trunks did in fact come the next day without +any telegraphing or hurry or worry, I learned that it was just as well +to go fishing as to go fussing. +</p> +<p class="side"> +The Virginian Way +</p> +<p> +The restful leisureliness of the life in Virginia was borne in upon me +on every hand, I suppose my nerves had really been upon a strain during +all the seventeen years that I had lived, and the relief I found in my +new surroundings doubtless had much to do with my appreciation of it +all. I had been used to see hurry in everything and everybody; here +there was no such thing as hurry. Nobody had a "business engagement" +that need interfere with anything else he was minded to do. "Business," +indeed, was regarded as something to be attended to on the next court +day, when all men having affairs to arrange + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page49" name="page49"></a>[49]</span> + + with each other were sure +to meet at the Court-House—as the county seat village was usually +called. Till then it could wait. Nobody was going to move away. +Everybody was "able to owe his debts." Why bother, then, to make a +journey for the settlement of a matter of business which could wait as +well as not for next court day to come round? It was so much pleasanter +to stay at home, to entertain one's friends, to ride over the +plantation, inspecting and directing crop work, to take a gun and go +after squirrels or birds or turkeys, to play backgammon or chess or +dominoes in the porch, to read the new books that everybody was talking +about, or the old ones that Virginians loved more—in brief, there was +no occasion for hurry, and the Virginians wasted none of their vital +force in that way. +</p> +<p> +The very houses suggested repose. They had sat still upon their +foundations for generations past, and would go on doing so for +generations to come. The lawns were the growth of long years, with +no touch of recent gardeners' work about them. The trees about the +house grounds had been in undisputed possession there long before the +grandfathers of the present generation were born. There was nowhere any +suggestion of newness, or rawness, of change actual or likely to come. +There were no new people—except the babies—and nobody ever dreamed of +changing his residence. +</p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0023" id="h2H_4_0023"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + XXII +</h2> + +<p> +Another thing that peculiarly impressed me, coming as I did from a +region where the mart was the center about which all life's activities +circled, was the utter absence of talk about money or the things that +relate to money. Practically there was no money in use among the + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page50" name="page50"></a>[50]</span> + + planter folk, except when a journey to distant points required the +lining of a purse. Except in the very smallest way the planters never +used money in their daily lives. They rarely bought anything directly, +and they never thought of selling anything except in planter fashion +through accredited agencies. Once a year they shipped the tobacco and +the wheat their fields had produced, to the city, for a commission +merchant to sell. The commission merchant held a considerable part of +the proceeds to the planter's credit, and when the planter wanted +anything of consequence he simply wrote to the commission merchant to +buy it for him. The rest of the money from the sale of the plantation +products was deposited in bank to the planter's account. If the women +folk went to town on a shopping expedition, they bought whatever they +wanted in the stores and had it "charged," for every planter's credit +was limitless in the shops. When the bill was rendered, which was never +in a hurry, the planter drew a check in discharge of it. He had no +"blank check" book. No such thing was known in that community. He simply +wrote his check at top of a sheet of foolscap, stating in it what it was +for, and courteously asking the bank "please" to pay the amount. Then +he carefully cut off the remainder of the sheet and put it away as an +economy of paper. The next time he drew a check or anything of the sort, +he took a fresh sheet of paper for the purpose and carefully laid away +all that was not used of it. Thus was his instinct of economy gratified, +while his lordly sense of liberality in the use of material things was +not offended. When he died, the drawers filled with large and small +fragments of foolscap sheets were cleared out and left for his successor +to fill in his turn. +</p> +<p class="side"> +Parson J——'s Checks +</p> +<p> +This custom of paying by check so strongly commended itself to a certain +unworldly parson of my time, that he + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page51" name="page51"></a>[51]</span> + + resorted to it on one occasion in +entire ignorance and innocence of the necessity of having a bank deposit +as a preliminary to the drawing of checks. He went to Richmond and +bought a year's supplies for his little place—it was too small to be +called a plantation—and for each purchase he drew a particularly polite +check. When the banks threw these out, on the ground that their author +had no account, the poor old parson found the situation a difficult one +to understand. He had thought that the very purpose of a bank's being +was to cash checks for persons who happened to be short of money. +</p> +<p> +"Why, if I'd had the money in the bank," he explained, "I shouldn't +have written the checks at all; I should have got the money and paid +the bills." +</p> +<p> +Fortunately the matter came to the knowledge of a well-to-do and +generous planter who knew parson J. and who happened to be in Richmond +at the time. His indorsement made the checks good, and saved the +unworldly old parson a deal of trouble. +</p> +<p> +The planters were not all of them rich by any means. Hardly one of +those in Virginia had possessions that would to-day rank him even among +moderately rich men. But they were scrupulously honorable men, they +were men of reasonable property, and their credit rested firmly upon +the fact that they were able to pay and the equally important fact +that they meant to pay. They lived lavishly, but the plantation itself +furnished most of the materials of the lavishness, so that there was no +extravagance in such living. For the rest they had a sufficient regard +for those who were to come after them to keep the total volume of the +debt upon the estate within such limits as the estate could easily +stand. +</p> +<p> +What I wish to emphasize here is that the methods of their monetary +transactions were such as to make of money + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page52" name="page52"></a>[52]</span> + + a very infrequent subject +of consideration in their lives and conversations. +</p> +<p> +Economically it would have been better for them if things had been +otherwise, but socially, the utter absence of pecuniary flavor from +their intercourse, lent a peculiar charm to it, especially in the eyes +and mind of a youth brought up as I had been in an atmosphere positively +grimy with the soot of monetary considerations. +</p> +<p> +There was hardly one of those plantations whose utterly waste products +were not worth more in the markets near at hand than were the tobacco +and wheat which alone the planters sold. When I came into the practice +of law a few years later, and had charge of the affairs of a number of +estates, I brought this matter of waste to the attention of my clients, +with all the earnestness I could put into my pleading. I showed them +prices current to prove that if they chose to market their surplus +apples, potatoes, sweet potatoes, lambs, pigs, poultry, and dairy +products, all of which they gave away or suffered to go to waste, they +might discharge their hereditary debts at once and build up balances in +bank. They had sagacity enough to understand the facts, but not one of +them would ever consent to apply them practically. It would be "Yankee +farming," was the ready reply, and that was conclusive. It was not the +custom of the planters to sell any but staple products, and they were +planters, not farmers. +</p> +<p class="side"> +The Charm of Leisureliness +</p> +<p> +All these things helped, when I first came into relations with them, to +impress my young mind with the poise, the picturesqueness, the restful +leisureliness of the Virginian life, and the utter absence from it of +strenuousness, and still more of sordidness. For the first time in my +life I was living with people who thought of money only on those annual +or other occasions when they were settling their affairs and paying +their debts by giving notes for + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page53" name="page53"></a>[53]</span> + + their sum; people who regarded time not +as something to be economized and diligently utilized for the sake of +its money value, but as a means of grace, if I may so speak without +irreverence; as an opportunity of enjoyment, for themselves and for +others; as a thing to be spent with the utmost lavishness in the doing +of things agreeable, in the reading of books that pleased, in the riding +of horses that put the rider upon his metal to match their tameless +spirit, in the cultivation of flowers, in the improvement of trees by +grafting and budding, and even in the idler pleasures of tossing grace +hoops, or hotly maintaining an indoor contest at battledore and +shuttlecock when it rained heavily. These and a score of other pastimes +seemed good in the eyes of the Virginian men and women. The men went +shooting or fox hunting or hare coursing, or fishing, each in its +season. The women embroidered and knitted nubias, and made fancy work, +and they walked long miles when not riding with escorts, and dug much in +the ground in propagation of the flowers they loved. They kept house, +too, with a vigilance born of the fact that in keeping house they were +also keeping plantation. For they must not only supervise the daily +dispensation of foodstuffs to all the negroes, but they must visit and +personally care for the sick, the aged, the infirm, and the infantile +among the black people. They must put up fruits and jams and pickles +and ketchups and jellies and shrubs and cordials enough to stock a +warehouse, in anticipation of the plantation needs. They must personally +cut out and direct the making of all the clothing to be worn by the +blacks on the plantation, for the reason that the colored maids, +seamstresses and dressmakers who were proud to fashion the gowns of +their young mistresses, simply would not "work for de field +hands,"—meaning the negroes of the plantation. +</p> +<p> +Yet with it all these women were never hurried, never + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page54" name="page54"></a>[54]</span> + + scant of time in +which to do anything that might give pleasure to another. I never knew +one of them to plead preoccupation as a reason for not going riding or +walking, or rendering some music, or joining in a game, or doing +anything else that others wanted her to do. +</p> +<p> +The reason for all this was simple enough. The young women who kept +house—and it was usually the young women who did so—were up and at +it before the dawn. By the time that the eight-thirty or nine o'clock +breakfast was served, all their necessary work was done for the day; +often it was done in time to let them take a ride before breakfast +if the young man suggesting it happened to be an agreeable fellow. +After all was done upon which that day's conduct of the house and the +plantation depended, the gentlewomen concerned adopted the views of +their masculine mentors and exemplars. They accepted to-morrow as a good +enough stalking horse for to-day, and, having laid out their work well +in advance, they exacted of their servitors that the morrow's morning +should begin with a demonstration of to-day's work well done. +</p> +<p> +So they, too, had leisure, just as the meal hours had. I had been +brought up on five or six o'clock breakfasts, eleven-thirty or twelve +o'clock dinners, and early suppers. Here the breakfast hour was eight +thirty at the earliest and nine usually; "snack" was served about one to +those who chose to come to it, dinner at three or four, with no hurry +about it, and supper came at nine—the hour at which most people in the +West habitually went to bed. +</p> +<p> +The thing suited me, personally, for I had great ambitions as a student +and habitually dug at my mathematics, Latin, and Greek until two in the +morning. I was always up by daylight, and after a plunge into the cold +water provided for me in a molasses barrel out under the + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page55" name="page55"></a>[55]</span> + + eaves, I +usually took a ride in company with the most agreeable young woman who +happened to be staying in the house at the time. +</p> +<p> +Sometimes I had two to escort, but that was rare. Usually there was +another young man in the house, and usually, under such circumstances, I +saw to it that he did not lie long abed. And even when there was no such +recourse, the "other girl" was apt to conjure up some excuse for not +wishing to ride that morning. +</p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0024" id="h2H_4_0024"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + XXIII +</h2> + +<p class="side"> +The Courtesy of the Virginians +</p> +<p> +Indeed, one of the things that most deeply impressed me among the +Virginians was the delicacy and alert thoughtfulness of their courtesy. +The people of the West were not ill-mannered boors by any means, but +gentle, kindly folk. But they were not versed in those little momentary +courtesies of life which create a roseate atmosphere of active good +will. In all that pertained to courtesy in the larger and more +formal affairs of social life, the people of the West were even more +scrupulously attentive to the requirements of good social usage than +these easy-going Virginians were, with their well-defined social status +and their habit of taking themselves and each other for granted. But in +the little things of life, in their alertness to say the right word or +do the trifling thing that might give pleasure, and their still greater +alertness to avoid the word or act that might offend or incommode, the +Virginians presented to my mind a new and altogether pleasing example +of courtesy. +</p> +<p> +In later years I have found something like this agreeably impressed upon +me when I go for a time from New York to Boston. Courtesy could not be +finer or more considerate among people of gentle breeding who know + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page56" name="page56"></a>[56]</span> + + each other than it is in New York. But in their considerate treatment of +strangers, casually encountered in public places, the Boston people give +a finer, gentler, more delicate flavor to their courtesy, and it is a +delightful thing to encounter. +</p> +<p> +In Virginia this quality of courtesy was especially marked in the +intercourse of men and women with each other. The attitude of both was +distinctly chivalrous. To the woman—be she a child of two, a maiden +of twenty, or a gentlewoman so well advanced in years that her age was +unmentionable—the man assumed an attitude of gentle consideration, of +deference due to sex, of willingness to render any service at any cost, +and of a gently protective guardianship that stopped at nothing in the +discharge of its duty. To the man, be he old or young, the woman yielded +that glad obedience that she deemed due to her protector and champion. +</p> +<p> +I had never seen anything like this before. In the West I had gone to +school with all the young women I knew. I had competed with them upon +brutally equal terms, in examinations and in struggles for class honors, +and the like. They and we boys had been perfectly good friends and +comrades, of course, and we liked each other in that half-masculine way. +But the association was destructive of romance, of fineness, of delicate +attractiveness. There was no glamor left in the relations of young men +and young women, no sentiment except such as might exist among young +men themselves. The girls were only boys of another sort. Our attitude +toward them was comradely but not chivalric. It was impossible to feel +the roseate glow of romance in association with a young woman who had +studied in the same classes with one, who had stood as a challenge in +the matter of examination marks, and who met one at any hour of the day +on equal terms, with a cheery "good-morning" or "good-evening" + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page57" name="page57"></a>[57]</span> + + that had +no more of sentiment in it than the clatter of a cotton mill. +</p> +<p class="side"> +Sex and Education +</p> +<p> +In my judgment, that is the conclusive objection to co-education, +except perhaps among the youngest children. It robs the relations of +the sexes of sentiment, of softness, of delicacy. It makes of girls an +inferior sort of boys, and of boys an inferior sort of girls. It cannot +completely negative sex, but it can and does sufficiently negative it +to rob life of one of its tenderest charms. +</p> +<p> +In Virginia for the first time I encountered something different. +There the boys were sent to old field schools where in rough and tumble +fashion, they learned Latin and robust manliness, Greek and a certain +graciousness of demeanor toward others, the absence of which would have +involved them in numberless fights on the playgrounds. The girls were +tenderly dame-nurtured at home, with a gentlewoman for governess, with +tutors to supplement the instruction of the governess, and with a year +or two, perhaps, for finishing, at Le Febre's or Dr. Hoge's, or some +other good school for young women. +</p> +<p> +Both the young men and the young women read voluminously—the young men +in part, perhaps, to equip themselves for conversational intercourse +with the young women. They both read polite literature, but they read +history also with a diligence that equipped them with independent +convictions of their own, with regard to such matters as the conduct of +Charlotte Corday, the characters of Mirabeau, Danton, and Robespierre, +the ungentlemanly treatment given by John Knox to Mary, Queen of Scots, +and all that sort of thing. Indeed, among the Virginia women, young and +old, the romantic episodes of history, ancient, mediæval, and modern, +completely took the place, as subjects of conversation, of those gossipy +personalities that make up the staple of conversation among women +generally. +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page58" name="page58"></a>[58]</span></p> + +<p> +Let me not be misunderstood. These women did not assume to be "learned +ladies." It was only that they knew their history and loved it and were +fond of talking about it, quite as some other women are fond of talking +about the interesting scandal in the domestic relations of the reigning +matinée hero. +</p> +<p> +The intercourse between men and women thus educated was always easy, +gracious, and friendly, but it was always deferential, chivalric, and +imbued with that recognition of sex which, without loss of dignity on +either side, holds man to be the generously willing protector, and woman +the proudly loyal recipient of a protection to which her sex entitles +her, and in return for which she gladly yields a submission that has +nothing of surrender in it. +</p> +<p> +There was a fascination to me in all this, that I find it impossible to +describe and exceedingly difficult even to suggest. +</p> +<p> +I may add that I think the young women of that time in Virginia were +altogether the best educated young women I have ever encountered in any +time or country. And, best of all, they were thoroughly, +uncompromisingly feminine. +</p> +<p> +Of the men I need only say that they were masculine, and fit mates +for such women. I do not at all think they were personally superior +to men of other parts of the country in those things that pertain to +character and conduct, but at least they had the advantage of living +in a community where public opinion was all-dominant, and where that +resistless force insisted upon truth, integrity, and personal courage +as qualities that every man must possess if he expected to live in that +community at all. It was <i>noblesse oblige</i>, and it inexorably controlled +the conduct of all men who hoped for recognition as gentlemen. +</p> +<p> +The sentiment took quixotic forms at times, perhaps, + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page59" name="page59"></a>[59]</span> + + but no jesting over +these manifestations can obscure the fact that it compelled men to good +behavior in every relation of life and made life sweeter, wholesomer, +and more fruitful of good than it otherwise would have been. +</p> +<p class="side"> +The Voices of Virginia Women +</p> +<p> +I must add a word with respect to that most fascinating of all things, +the Virginia girl's voice. This was music of so entrancing a sort that +I have known young men from other parts of the country to fall in love +with a voice before they had seen its possessor and to remain in love +with the owner of it in spite of her distinct lack of beauty when +revealed in person. +</p> +<p> +Those girls all dropped the "g"s at the end of their participles; they +habitually used double negatives, and, quite defiantly of dictionaries, +used Virginian locutions not sanctioned by authority. If challenged on +the subject their reply would have been that which John Esten Cooke gave +to an editor who wanted to strike a phrase out of one of his Virginia +romances, on the ground that it was not good English. "It's good +Virginian," he answered, "and for my purpose that is more important." +</p> +<p> +But all such defects of speech—due not to ignorance but to a charming +wilfulness—were forgotten in the music of the voices that gave them +utterance. +</p> +<p> +There are no such voices now, even in Virginia, I regret to say. +Not of their own fault, but because of contact with strangely altered +conditions, the altogether charming Virginia girls I sometimes meet +nowadays, have voices and intonations not unlike those of women in other +parts of the country, except that they preserve enough of the old lack +of emphasis upon the stronger syllables to render their speech often +difficult to understand. There is compensation for that in the gentle, +laughing readiness with which they repeat utterances not understood on +their first hearing. +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page60" name="page60"></a>[60]</span></p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0025" id="h2H_4_0025"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + XXIV +</h2> + +<p> +It was during the roseate years of the old Virginia life not long before +the war that I had my first and only serious experience of what is +variously and loosely called the "occult" and the "supernatural." +</p> +<p> +It is only in answer to solicitation that I tell the story here as it +has been only in response to like solicitation that I have orally told +it before. +</p> +<p> +In order that I may not be misunderstood, in order that I may not be +unjustly suspected of a credulity that does not belong to me, I wish to +say at the outset that I am by nature and by lifelong habit of mind a +skeptic. I believe in the natural order, in cause and effect, in the +material basis of psychological phenomena. I have no patience with the +mystical or the mysterious. I do not believe in the miraculous, the +supernatural, the occult—call it what you will. +</p> +<p> +And yet the experience I am about to relate is literally true, and the +story of it a slavishly faithful record of facts. I make no attempt to +reconcile those facts with my beliefs or unbeliefs. I venture upon no +effort at explanation. I have set forth above my intellectual attitude +toward all such matters; I shall set forth the facts of this experience +with equal candor. If the reader finds the facts irreconcilable with my +intellectual convictions, I must leave him to judge as he may between +the two, without aid of mine. The facts are these: +</p> +<p> +I was one of a house party, staying at one of the most hospitable +of Virginia mansions. I was by courtesy of Virginia clannishness +"cousin" to the mistress of the house, and when no house party was in +entertainment I was an intimate there, accustomed to go and come at + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page61" name="page61"></a>[61]</span> + + will and to reckon myself a member of the family by brevet. +</p> +<p class="side"> +The Story of the West Wing +</p> +<p> +At the time now considered, the house was unusually full, when a letter +came announcing the immediate coming of still other guests. In my close +intimacy with the mistress of the plantation I became aware of her +perplexity. She didn't know where and how to bestow the presently coming +guests. I suggested that I and some others should take ourselves away, a +suggestion which her hospitable soul rejected, the more particularly in +my case, perhaps, because I was actively planning certain entertainments +in which she was deeply interested. Suddenly it occurred to me that +during my long intimacy in the house I had never known anybody to occupy +the room or rooms which constituted the second story of the west wing of +the building. I asked why not bring that part of the spacious mansion +into use in this emergency, thinking that its idleness during all the +period of my intimacy there had been due only to the lack of need in a +house so large. +</p> +<p> +"Cousin Mary," with a startled look of inquiry upon her face, glanced +at her husband, who sat with us alone on a piazza. +</p> +<p> +"You may as well tell him the facts," he said in reply to the look. +"He won't talk." +</p> +<p> +Then she told me the history of the room, explaining that she objected +to any talk about it because she dreaded the suspicion of superstition. +Briefly the story was that several generations earlier, an old man +almost blind, had died there; that during his last illness he had had +his lawyer prepare his will there; that he was too feeble, when the +lawyer finished, even to sign the document; that he placed it under his +pillow; that during the night his daughter abstracted and copied it, +changing only one clause in such fashion as to defeat the long cherished + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page62" name="page62"></a>[62]</span> + + purpose of the dying man; that she placed her new draft under the pillow +where the old one had been and that in the morning the nearly blind old +man executed that instead of the other. +</p> +<p> +"Now I'm not superstitious, you know," said Cousin Mary very earnestly, +"but it is a fact that from that day to this there has been something +the matter with that room. During the time of my great uncle, who +brought me up, you know, and from whom I inherited the plantation, many +persons tried to sleep in it but none ever stayed there more than an +hour or two. They always fled in terror from the chamber, until at last +my uncle forbade any further attempt to occupy the room lest this should +come to be called a haunted house. Since I became mistress here three +persons have tried the thing, all of them with the same result." +</p> +<p> +"It's stuff and nonsense," I interposed, "but what yarns did they tell?" +</p> +<p> +"They one and all related the same singular experience," she answered, +"though neither of them knew what the experience of the others had +been." +</p> +<p> +"What was it?" I asked with resolute incredulity. +</p> +<p> +"Why, each of them went to the room in full confidence that nothing +would happen. Each went to bed and to sleep. After a while he waked to +find the whole room pervaded by a dim, yellowish gray or grayish yellow +light. Some of them used one combination of words and some the other, +but all agreed that the light had no apparent source, that it was +all-pervasive, that it was very dim at first, but that it steadily +increased until they fled in panic from its nameless terror. For ten +years we permitted no repetition of the experiment, but a year ago my +brother—he's an army officer, you know—insisted upon sleeping in the +room. He remained there longer than anybody else ever had done, but +between two and three o'clock in + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page63" name="page63"></a>[63]</span> + + the morning he came down the stairs +with barely enough strength to cling to the balustrades, and in such +an ague fit as I never saw any one else endure in all my life. He had +served in the Florida swamps and was subject to agues, but for several +months before that he had been free from them. I suppose the terror +attacked his weakest point and brought the chills on again." +</p> +<p class="side"> +A Challenge to the Ghosts +</p> +<p> +"Did he have the same experience the rest had had?" I asked. +</p> +<p> +"Yes, except that he had stayed longer than any of them and suffered +more." +</p> +<p> +"Cousin Mary," I said, "I am going to sleep in that room to-night, with +your permission." +</p> +<p> +"You can't have it," she answered. "I've seen too much of the terror to +permit a further trifling with it." +</p> +<p> +"Then I'll sleep there without your permission," I answered. "I'll break +in if necessary, and I'll prove by a demonstration that nobody can +question, what nonsense all these imaginings have been." +</p> +<p> +Cousin Mary was determined, but so was I, and at last she consented +to let me make the attempt. She and I decided to keep the matter to +ourselves, but of course it leaked out and spread among all the guests +in the house. I suppose the negro servants who were sent to make up the +bed and supply bath water told. At any rate my coming adventure was the +sole topic of conversation at the supper table that night. +</p> +<p> +I seized upon the occasion to give a warning. +</p> +<p> +"I have borrowed a six-shooter from our host," I announced, "and if I +see anything to shoot at to-night I shall shoot without challenging. So +I strongly advise you fellows not to attempt any practical jokes." +</p> +<p> +The response convinced me that nothing of the kind was contemplated, but +to make sure, our host, who perhaps feared tragedy, exacted and secured +from each member + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page64" name="page64"></a>[64]</span> + + of the company, old and young, male and female, a pledge +of honor that there should be no interference with my experiment, no +trespass upon my privacy. +</p> +<p> +"With that pledge secured," I said, perhaps a trifle boastfully, "I +shall stay in that room all night no matter what efforts the spooks may +make to drive me out." +</p> +<p> +It was about midnight, or nearly that, when I entered the room. It was +raining heavily without, and the wind was rattling the stout shutters of +the eight great windows of the room. +</p> +<p> +I went to each of those windows and minutely examined it. They were +hung with heavy curtains of deep red, I remember, for I observed every +detail. Four of them were in the north and four in the south wall of the +wing. The eastern wall of the room was pierced only by the broad doorway +which opened at the head of the great stairs. The door was stoutly built +of oak, and provided with a heavy lock of iron with brass knobs. +</p> +<p> +The western side of the room held a great open fireplace, from which a +paneled oaken wainscot extended entirely across the room and up to the +ceiling. Behind the wainscot on either side was a spacious closet which +I carefully explored with two lighted bedroom candles to show me that +the closets were entirely empty. +</p> +<p> +Having completed my explorations I disrobed, double-locked the door, and +went to bed, first placing the six-shooter handily under my pillow. I +do not think I was excited even in the smallest degree. My pulses were +calm, my imagination no more active than a young man's must be, and my +brain distinctly sleepy. The great, four-poster bed was inexpressibly +comfortable, and the splash and patter of the rain as it beat upon +the window blinds was as soothing as a lullaby. I forgot all about the +experiment in which I was engaged, all about ghosts and their ways, +and went to sleep. +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page65" name="page65"></a>[65]</span></p> + +<p class="side"> +The Yellow-Gray Light +</p> +<p> +After a time I suddenly waked to find the room dimly pervaded by +that yellowish-gray or grayish-yellow light that had so disturbed +the slumbers of others in that apartment. My awakening was so complete +that all my faculties were alert at once. I felt under my pillow and +found my weapon there. I looked to its chambers and found the charges +undisturbed. The caps were in place, and I felt myself armed for any +encounter. +</p> +<p> +But I had resolved in advance, to be deliberate, self-possessed, and +calm, whatever might happen, and I kept faith with myself. Instead of +hastily springing from the bed I lay there for a time watching the weird +light as it slowly, almost imperceptibly, increased in intensity, and +trying to decide whether they were right who had described as "yellowish +gray" or they who had called it "grayish yellow." I decided that the +gray distinctly predominated, but in the meanwhile the steady increase +in the light and in its pervasiveness warned me, and I slipped out of +bed, taking my pistol with me, to the dressing case on the other side +of the room—the side on which the great oaken door opened. +</p> +<p> +The rain was still beating heavily against the window blinds, and the +strange, yellowish gray light was still slowly but steadily increasing. +I was resolute, however, in my determination not to be disturbed or +hurried by any manifestation. In response to that determination I +glanced at the mirror and decided that the mysterious light was +sufficient for the purpose, and I resolved I would shave. +</p> +<p> +Having done so, I bathed—a little hurriedly, perhaps, because of the +rapidly increasing light. I was deliberate, however, in donning my +clothing, and not until I was fully dressed did I turn to leave the +room. Glancing at every object in it—all now clearly visible, though +somewhat shadowy in outline—I decided at last upon my + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page66" name="page66"></a>[66]</span> + + retreat. I turned +the key, and the bolt in the lock shot back with sound enough to startle +calmer nerves than mine. +</p> +<p> +I turned the knob, but the door refused to open! +</p> +<p> +For a moment I was puzzled. Then I remembered that it was a double lock. +A second later I was out of that chamber, and the oaken door of it was +securely shut behind me. +</p> +<p> +I went down the great stairway, slowly, deliberately, in pursuance of my +resolution; I entered the large hallway below, and thence passed into +the oak-wainscoted dining-room, where I sat down to breakfast with the +rest of the company. +</p> +<p> +It was nine o'clock of a dark, rainy morning. +</p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0026" id="h2H_4_0026"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + XXV +</h2> + +<p> +In Virginia at the time of which I am writing, everybody, men, women, +and children, read books and talked about them. The annual output of +the publishers was trifling then, as compared with the present flood of +new books, and as a consequence everybody read all the new books and +magazines, and everybody talked about them as earnestly as of politics +or religion. Still more diligently they read old books, the classics of +the language. Literature was regarded as a vital force in human affairs, +and books which in our time might relieve the tedium of a railway +journey and be forgotten at its end, were read with minute attention and +discussed as earnestly as if vital interests had depended upon an +accurate estimation of their quality. +</p> +<p> +As a consequence, authorship was held in strangely glamorous esteem. I +beg pardon of the English language for making that word "glamorous"; it +expresses + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page67" name="page67"></a>[67]</span> + + my thought, as no other term does, and it carries its meaning +on its face. +</p> +<p class="side"> +The "Solitary Horseman" +</p> +<p> +I remember that in my student days in Richmond there came a visitor +who had written one little book—about Rufus Choate, I think, though +I can find no trace of it in bibliographies. I suspect that he was a +very small author, indeed, in Boston, whence he came, but he was an +AUTHOR—we always thought that word in capital letters—and so he was +dined and wined, and entertained, and not permitted to pay his own hotel +bills or cab charges, or anything else. +</p> +<p> +Naturally a people so disposed made much of their own men of letters, +of whom there was quite a group—if we reckon their qualifications as +generously as the Virginians did. Among them were three at least whose +claim to be regarded as authors was beyond dispute. These were John +Esten Cooke, John R. Thompson, and the English novelist, G. P. R. James, +who at that time was serving as British consul at Richmond. And there +was Mrs. Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie, who played the part of literary queen +right royally. +</p> +<p> +Mr. James was a conspicuous figure in Richmond. He was a robust +Englishman in his late fifties, rather short and rather stout. +The latter impression was aided by the fact that in his afternoon +saunterings about the town, he usually wore a sort of roundabout, a +coat that ended at his waist and had no tails to it. To the ribald +and the jocular he was known as "the Solitary Horseman" because of his +habit of introducing novels or chapters with a lonely landscape in which +a "solitary horseman" was the chief or only figure. To those of us who +were disposed to be deferential he was known as "the Prince Regent," +in memory of the jest perpetrated by one of the wits of the town. +Mr. James's three initials, which prompted John G. Saxe to say that +he "got at the font + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page68" name="page68"></a>[68]</span> + + his strongest claims to be reckoned a man of +letters"—stood for "George Payne Rainsford," but he rarely used anything +more than the initials—G. P. R. When a certain voluble gentlewoman asked +Tom August what the initials stood for he promptly replied: +</p> +<p> +"Why, George Prince Regent, of course. And his extraordinary courtesy +fully justifies his sponsors in baptism for having given him the name." +</p> +<p> +The lady lost no time in telling everybody of the interesting fact—and +the novelist became "Prince Regent James" to all his Richmond friends +from that hour forth. +</p> +<p> +John R. Thompson was the editor of the <i>Southern Literary Messenger</i>. +Scholar, poet, and man of most gentle mind, it is not surprising that +in later years, when the old life was war-wrecked, Mr. William Cullen +Bryant made him his intimate friend and appointed him to the office of +literary editor of the <i>Evening Post</i>, which Mr. Bryant always held to +be the supreme distinction possible to an American man of letters. I +being scarcely more than a boy studying law in the late fifties, knew +him only slightly, but my impression of him at that time was, that with +very good gifts and a certain charm of literary manner, he was not yet +fully grown up in mind. He sought to model himself, I think, upon his +impressions of N. P. Willis, and his aspiration to be recognized as a +brilliant man of society was quite as marked as his literary ambition. +He was sensitive to slights and quite morbidly apprehensive that those +about him might think the less of him because his father was a hatter. +Socially at that time and in that country men in trade of any kind were +regarded as rather inferior to those of the planter class. +</p> +<p> +When I knew Thompson better in after years in New York he had outgrown +that sort of nonsense, and was a far more agreeable companion because +of the fact. +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page69" name="page69"></a>[69]</span></p> + +<p class="side"> +John Esten Cooke—Gentleman +</p> +<p> +Chief among the literary men of Richmond was John Esten Cooke. His novel +"The Virginia Comedians" had made him famous in his native state, and +about the time I write of—1858-9—he supplemented it with another story +of like kind, "Henry St. John, Gentleman." As I remember them these were +rather immature creations, depending more upon a certain grace of manner +for their attractiveness than upon any more substantial merit. Certainly +they did not compare in vigor or originality with "Surrey of Eagle's +Nest" or any other of the novels their author wrote after his mind had +been matured by strenuous war experience. But at the time of which I +write they gave him a literary status such as no other Virginian of the +time could boast, and for a living he wrote ceaselessly for magazines +and the like. +</p> +<p> +The matter of getting a living was a difficult one to him then, for the +reason that with a pride of race which some might think quixotic, he had +burdened his young life with heavy obligations not his own. His father +had died leaving debts that his estate could not pay. As the younger man +got nothing by inheritance, except the traditions of honor that belonged +to his race, he was under no kind of obligation with respect to those +debts. But with a chivalric loyalty such as few men have ever shown, +John Esten Cooke made his dead father's debts his own and little by +little discharged them with the earnings of a toilsome literary +activity. +</p> +<p> +His pride was so sensitive that he would accept no help in this, though +friends earnestly pressed loans upon him when he had a payment to meet +and his purse was well-nigh empty. At such times he sometimes made his +dinner on crackers and tea for many days together, although he knew he +would be a more than welcome guest at the lavish tables of his many +friends in Richmond. It was a point of honor with him never to accept +a dinner or other + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page70" name="page70"></a>[70]</span> + + invitation when he was financially unable to dine +abundantly at his own expense. +</p> +<p> +The reviewer of one of my own stories of the old Virginia life, not +long ago informed his readers that of course there never were men so +sensitively and self-sacrificingly honorable as those I had described in +the book, though my story presented no such extreme example of the man +of honor as that illustrated in Mr. Cooke's person and career. +</p> +<p> +I knew him intimately at that time, his immediate friends being my own +kindred. Indeed, I passed one entire summer in the same hospitable house +with him. +</p> +<p> +Some years after the war our acquaintance was renewed, and from that +time until his death he made my house his abiding place whenever he had +occasion to be in New York. Time had wrought no change in his nature. He +remained to the end the high-spirited, duty-loving man of honor that I +had known in my youth; he remained also the gentle, affectionate, and +unfailingly courteous gentleman he had always been. +</p> +<p> +He went into the war as an enlisted man in a Richmond battery, but was +soon afterward appointed an officer on the staff of the great cavalier, +J. E. B. Stuart. +</p> +<p> +"I wasn't born to be a soldier," he said to me in after years. "Of +course I can stand bullets and shells and all that, without flinching, +just as any man must if he has any manhood in him, and as for hardship +and starvation, why, a man who has self-control can endure them when +duty demands it, but I never liked the business of war. Gold lace on +my coat always made me feel as if I were a child tricked out in red +and yellow calico with turkey feathers in my headgear to add to the +gorgeousness. There is nothing intellectual about fighting. It is the +fit work of brutes and brutish men. And in modern war, where men are +organized in masses and converted into + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page71" name="page71"></a>[71]</span> + + insensate machines, there is +really nothing heroic or romantic or in any way calculated to appeal to +the imagination. As an old soldier, you know how small a part personal +gallantry plays in the machine work of war nowadays." +</p> +<p class="side"> +How Jeb Stuart Made a Major +</p> +<p> +Nevertheless, John Esten Cooke was a good soldier and a gallant one. At +Manassas I happened to see him at a gun which he was helping to work and +which we of the cavalry were supporting. He was powder-blackened and he +had lost both his coat and his hat in the eagerness of his service at +the piece; but during a brief pause in the firing he greeted me with a +rammer in his hand and all the old cheeriness in his face and voice. +</p> +<p> +On Stuart's staff he distinguished himself by a certain laughing +nonchalance under fire, and by his eager readiness to undertake Stuart's +most perilous missions. It was in recognition of some specially daring +service of that kind that Stuart gave him his promotion, and Cooke used +to tell with delight of the way in which the great boyish cavalier did +it. +</p> +<p> +"You're about my size, Cooke," Stuart said, "but you're not so broad in +the chest." +</p> +<p> +"Yes, I am," answered Cooke. +</p> +<p> +"Let's see if you are," said Stuart, taking off his coat as if stripping +for a boxing match. "Try that on." +</p> +<p> +Cooke donned the coat with its three stars on the collar, and found it +a fit. +</p> +<p> +"Cut off two of the stars," commanded Stuart, "and wear the coat to +Richmond. Tell the people in the War Department to make you a major and +send you back to me in a hurry. I'll need you to-morrow." +</p> +<p> +When I visited him years afterwards at The Briars, his home in the +Shenandoah Valley, that coat which had once been Stuart's, hung upon the +wall, as the centerpiece + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page72" name="page72"></a>[72]</span> + + of a collection of war relics, cherished with +pride of sentiment but without a single memory that savored of animosity. +The gentle, courteous, kindly man of letters who cherished these things +as mementoes of a terrible epoch had as little in his bearing to suggest +the temper of the war time as had his old charger who grazed upon the +lawn, exempt from all work as one who had done his duty in life and was +entitled to ease and comfort as his reward. +</p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0027" id="h2H_4_0027"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + XXVI +</h2> + +<p> +The old life of the Old Dominion is a thing of the dead past, a memory +merely, and one so different from anything that exists anywhere on earth +now, that every reflection of it seems the fabric of a dream. But its +glamor holds possession of my mind even after the lapse of half a +century of years, and the greatest joy I have known in life has come +from my efforts to depict it in romances that are only a veiled record +of facts. +</p> +<p> +It was not a life that our modern notions of economics can approve, but +it ministered to human happiness, to refinement of mind, to culture, and +to the maintenance of high ideals of manhood and womanhood. It bred a +race of men who spoke the truth, lived uprightly, and met every duty +without a shadow of flinching from personal consequences. It reared a +race of women fit to be the wives and mothers of such men. Under its +spell culture was deemed of more account than mere education; living was +held in higher regard than getting a living; refinement meant more than +display; comfort more than costliness, and kindliness in every word and +act more than all else. +</p> +<p class="side"> +A Plantation Modernized +</p> +<p> +I know an old plantation where for generations a family + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page73" name="page73"></a>[73]</span> + + of brave men and +fair women dwelt in peace and ministered in gracious, hospitable ways to +the joy of others. Under their governance there was never any thought of +exploiting the resources of the plantation for the sake of a potential +wealth that seemed superfluous to people of contented mind who had +enough. The plantation supported itself and all who dwelt upon it—black +and white. It educated its sons and daughters and enabled them to +maintain a generous hospitality. More than this they did not want or +dream of wanting. +</p> +<p> +There are twenty-two families living on that plantation now, most of +them growing rich or well-to-do by the cultivation of the little truck +farms into which the broad acres have been parceled out. The woodlands +that used to shelter the wild flowers and furnish fuel for the great +open fireplaces, have been stripped to furnish kindling wood for kitchen +ranges in Northern cities. Even the stately locust trees that had shaded +the lawns about the old mansion have been converted into policemen's +clubs and the like, and potatoes grow in the soil where greensward used +to carpet the house grounds. +</p> +<p> +Economically the change means progress and prosperity, of course, but to +me the price paid for it seems out of proportion to the goods secured. +But then I am old-fashioned, and perhaps, in spite of the strenuous life +I have led, I am a sentimentalist,—and sentiment is scorned as silly in +these days. +</p> +<p> +There is another aspect of the matter that deserves a word, and I have a +mind to write that word even at risk of anathema from all the altars of +sociology. At seventy years of age one is less sensitive to criticism +than at thirty. +</p> +<p> +All the children of the twenty-two truck farming families on that old +plantation go to school. They are taught enough to make out bills, add +up columns of figures, and + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page74" name="page74"></a>[74]</span> + + write business letters to their commission +merchants. That is what education means now on that plantation and on +hundreds of others that have undergone a like metamorphosis. No thought +or dream of culture enters into the scheme. Under the old system +rudimentary instruction was merely a stepping stone by which to climb +up to the education of culture. Under the theories of economics it is +a great gain thus to substitute rudimentary instruction for all in the +place of real education and culture for a class. But is it gain? Is the +world better off with ten factory hands who can read, write, and cipher, +than with one Thomas Jefferson or George Wythe or Samuel Adams or +Chancellor Livingston who knows how to think? Are ten factory girls or +farmers' wives the full equivalent of one cultured gentlewoman presiding +gracefully and graciously over a household in which the amenities of +life are more considered than its economics? +</p> +<p> +Meanwhile the education of the race of men and women who once dwelt +there has correspondingly lost its culture aspect. The young men of that +old family are now bred to be accountants, clerks, men of business, who +have no time to read books and no training that leads to the habit of +thinking; the young women are stenographers, telegraph operators, and +the like. They are estimable young persons, and in their way charming. +But is the world richer or poorer for the change? +</p> +<p> +It is not for me to answer; I am prejudiced, perhaps. +</p> +<p> +However it may be, the old life is a thing completely dead and done +for, and the only compensation is such as the new affords. Everything +that was distinctive in that old life was burned out by the gunpowder +of the Civil War. Even the voices of the Virginia women—once admired +throughout the land—are changed. They still say "right" for "very," and +"reckon" for "think," and their enunciation is still marked by a certain +lack of + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page75" name="page75"></a>[75]</span> + + emphasis, but it is the voice of the peacock in which they speak, +not that of the dove. +</p> +<p class="side"> +An Old Fogy's Questionings +</p> +<p> +Whenever I ask myself the questions set down above, I find it necessary +to the chastening of my mind to recite my creed: +</p> +<p> +I believe that every human being born into this world has a right to do +as he pleases, so long as in doing as he pleases he does not interfere +with the equal right of any other human being to do as he pleases; +</p> +<p> +I believe in the unalienable right of all men to life, liberty, and the +pursuit of happiness; +</p> +<p> +I believe that it is the sole legitimate function of government to +maintain the conditions of liberty and to let men alone. +</p> +<p> +Nevertheless, I cannot escape a tender regret when I reflect upon what +we have sacrificed to the god Progress. I suppose it is for the good +of all that we have factories now to do the work that in my boyhood +was done by the village carpenter, tanner, shoemaker, hatter, tailor, +tin-smith, and the rest; but I do not think a group of factory "hands," +dwelling in repulsively ugly tenement buildings and dependent upon +servitude to the trade union as a means of escaping enslavement by an +employing corporation, mean as much of human happiness or signify as +much of helpful citizenship as did the home-owning, independent village +workmen of the past. In the same way I do not think the substitution +of a utilitarian smattering for all for the education and culture +of a class has been altogether a gain. As I see young men flocking by +thousands to our universities, where in earlier times there were scant +hundreds in attendance, I cannot avoid the thought that most of these +thousands have just enough education of the drill sort to pass the +entrance examinations and that they go to the universities, not for +education of the kind that brings enlargement of mind, but for technical +training + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page76" name="page76"></a>[76]</span> + + in arts that promise money as the reward of their practice. +And I cannot help wondering if the change which relegates the Arts +course to a subordinate place in the university scheme is altogether a +change for the better. Economically it is so, of course. But economics, +it seems to me, ought not to be all of human life. Surely men and women +were made for something more than mere earning capacity. +</p> +<p> +But all this is blasphemy against the great god Progress and heresy to +the gospel of Success. Its voice should be hushed in a land where fame +is awarded not to those who think but to those who organize and exploit; +where men of great intellect feel that they cannot afford to serve the +country when the corporations offer them so much higher salaries; and +where it is easier to control legislation and administration by purchase +than by pleading. +</p> +<p> +The old order changed, both at the North and at the South when the war +came, and if the change is more marked in the South than at the North it +is only because the South lost in the struggle for supremacy and +suffered desolation in its progress. +</p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0028" id="h2H_4_0028"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + XXVII +</h2> + +<p> +I have elsewhere pointed out in print that Virginia did not want war, +or favor secession. Her people, who had already elected the avowed +emancipationist, John Letcher, to be their governor, voted by heavy +majorities against withdrawal from the Union. In her constitutional +convention, called to consider what the old mother state should do after +the Cotton States had set up a Southern Confederacy, the dominant force +was wielded by such uncompromising opponents of secession as Jubal A. +Early, + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page77" name="page77"></a>[77]</span> + + Williams C. Wickham, Henry A. Wise, and others, who when war came +were among the most conspicuous fighters on the Southern side. It is +important to remember that, as Farragut said, Virginia was "dragooned +out of the Union," in spite of the abiding unwillingness of her people. +</p> +<p class="side"> +Under Jeb Stuart's Command +</p> +<p> +I was a young lawyer then, barely twenty-one years of age. I spoke +and voted—my first vote—against the contemplated madness. But in +common with the Virginians generally, I enlisted as soon as war became +inevitable, and from the 9th of April, 1861, to the 9th of April, +1865—the date of Lee's surrender—I was a soldier in active service. +</p> +<p> +I was intensely in earnest in the work of the soldier. As I look back +over my seventy years of life, I find that I have been intensely in +earnest in whatever I have had to do. Such things are temperamental, and +one has no more control over his temperament than over the color of his +eyes and hair. +</p> +<p> +Being intensely in earnest in the soldier's work, I enjoyed doing it, +just as I have keenly enjoyed doing every other kind of work that has +fallen to me during a life of unusually varied activity. +</p> +<p> +I went out in a company of horse, which after brief instruction at +Ashland, was assigned to Stuart's First Regiment of Virginia Cavalry. +</p> +<p> +The regiment was composed entirely of young Virginians who, if not +actually "born in the saddle," had climbed into it so early and lived in +it so constantly that it had become the only home they knew. I suppose +there was never gathered together anywhere on earth a body of horsemen +more perfectly masters of their art than were the men of that First +Regiment, the men whom Stuart knew by their names and faces then, +and whose names and faces he never afterward forgot, for the reason, +as he often + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page78" name="page78"></a>[78]</span> + + said to us, that "You First Regiment fellows made me a +Major-General." Even after he rose to higher rank and had scores of +thousands of cavaliers under his command, his habit was, when he wanted +something done of a specially difficult and dangerous sort, to order a +detail from his old First Regiment to do it for him. +</p> +<p> +The horsemanship of that regiment remained till the end a model for +emulation by all the other cavalry, and, in view of the demonstrations +of it in the campaign preceding Manassas (Bull Run) it is no wonder that +when the insensate panic seized upon McDowell's army in that battle the +cry went up from the disintegrated mob of fugitives that they could not +be expected to stand against "thirty thousand of the best horsemen since +the days of the Mamelukes." The "thirty thousand" estimate was a gross +exaggeration, Stuart's command numbering in fact only six or seven +hundred, but the likening of its horsemanship to that of the Mamelukes +was justified by the fact. +</p> +<p> +As a robust young man who had never known a headache I keenly enjoyed +the life we cavalrymen led that summer. It was ceaselessly active—for +Stuart's vocabulary knew not the word "rest"—and it was all out of +doors in about as perfect a summer climate as the world anywhere +affords. +</p> +<p> +We had some tents, in camp, in which to sleep after we got tired of +playing poker for grains of corn; but we were so rarely in camp that +after a little while we forgot that we owned canvas dwellings, and I +cannot remember, if I ever knew, what became of them at last. For the +greater part of the time we slept on the ground out somewhere within +musket shot of the enemy's lines, and our waking hours were passed in +playing "tag" with the enemy's scouting parties, encountered in our +own impertinent intrusions into the lines of our foeman. A saddle was + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page79" name="page79"></a>[79]</span> + + emptied now and then, but that was only a forfeit of the game, and the +game went on. +</p> +<p class="side"> +The Life of the Cavaliers +</p> +<p> +It must have been a healthy life that we led. I well remember that +during that summer my company never had a man on the sick list. When +the extraordinary imbecility of the Confederate commissary department +managed to get rations of flour to us, we wetted it with water from +any stream or brook that might be at hand, added a little salt, if we +happened to have any, to the putty-like mass, fried the paste in bacon +fat, and ate it as bread. According to all the teachings of culinary +science the thing ought to have sent all of us to grass with +indigestions of a violent sort; but in fact we enjoyed it, and went on +our scouting ways utterly unconscious of the fact that we were possessed +of stomachs, until the tempting succulence of half-ripened corn in +somebody's field set appetite a-going again and we feasted upon the +grain without the bother of cooking it at all. +</p> +<p> +Of course, we carried no baggage with us during the days and weeks when +we were absent from camp. We had a blanket apiece, somewhere, we didn't +know where. When our shirts were soiled we took them off and washed them +in the nearest brook, and if orders of activity came before they were +dried, we put them on wet and rode away in full confidence that they +would dry on our persons as easily as on a clothesline. +</p> +<p> +One advantage that I found in this neglect of impedimenta was that I +could always carry a book or two inside my flannel shirt, and I feel now +that I owe an appreciable part of such culture as I have acquired to the +reading done by bivouac fires at night and in the recesses of friendly +cornfields by day. +</p> +<p> +There were many stories current among the good women at home in those +days of men's lives being saved by Bibles carried in their clothes and +opportunely serving + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page80" name="page80"></a>[80]</span> + + as shields against bullets aimed at their wearers' +hearts. I do not know how much truth there may have been in these +interesting narratives, nor have I any trustworthy information upon +which to base an estimate of the comparative armorplate efficacy of +Bibles and other books. But one day, as I well remember, the impact of +a bullet nearly knocked me off my horse, and I found afterward that the +missile had deeply imbedded itself in a copy of "Tristram Shandy" which +lay in the region of my transverse colon. A Bible of equal thickness +would doubtless have served as well, but it was the ribald romance of +Laurence Sterne that stopped a bullet and saved my life that day. +</p> +<p> +It may be worth while to add that the young woman from whom I had +borrowed the book never would accept the new copy I offered to provide +in exchange for the wounded one. +</p> +<p> +This cavalry service abounded in adventures, most of them of no great +consequence, but all of them interesting at the time to those who shared +in them. It was an exciting game and a fascinating one to a vigorous +young man with enough imagination to appreciate it as I did. I enjoyed +it intensely at the time and, as the memory of it comes back to me now, +I find warmth enough still in my blood to make me wish it were all to do +over again, with youth and health and high spirits as an accompaniment. +</p> +<p class="side"> +Delights of the War Game +</p> +<p> +War is "all hell," as General Sherman said, and as a writer during many +years of peace, I have endeavored to do my part in making an end of it. +I have printed much in illustration of the fact that war is a cruel, +barbarous, inhuman device for settling controversies that should be +settled and could be settled by more civilized means; I have shown forth +its excessive costliness and its unspeakable cruelty to the women and +children involved + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page81" name="page81"></a>[81]</span> + + as its victims. I have no word of that to take back. +But, as I remember the delights of the war game, I cannot altogether +regret them. I cannot shut my eyes to the fact that war, with all its +inhuman cruelty, its devastation, and its slaughter, calls forth some of +the noblest qualities of human nature, and breeds among men chivalric +sentiments that it is well worth while to cherish. +</p> +<p> +And the inspiration of it is something that is never lost to the soul +that has felt it. When the Spanish-American troubles came, and we all +thought they portended a real war instead of the ridiculous "muss" that +followed, the old spirit was so strong upon me that I enlisted a company +of a hundred and twenty-four men and appealed to both the state and the +national governments for the privilege of sharing in the fighting. +</p> +<p> +So much for psychology. +</p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0029" id="h2H_4_0029"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + XXVIII +</h2> + +<p> +Among my experiences in the cavalry service was one which had a sequel +that interested me. +</p> +<p> +Stuart had been promoted and Fitzhugh Lee, or "Fitz Lee" as we called +him, had succeeded to the command of the First Regiment. +</p> +<p> +One day he led a party of us on a scouting expedition into the enemy's +lines. In the course of it we charged through a strong infantry picket +numbering forty or fifty men. As our half company dashed through, my +horse was shot through the head and sank under me. My comrades rode on +and I was left alone in the midst of the disturbed but still belligerent +picket men. I had from the first made up my mind that I would never +become a prisoner of war. I had stomach for fighting; I was ready to +endure hardship; I had no shrinking from fatigue, + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page82" name="page82"></a>[82]</span> + + privation, exposure, +or anything else that falls to the lot of the soldier. But I was +resolute in my determination that I would never "go to jail"—a phrase +which fitly represented my conception of capture by the enemy. +</p> +<p> +So, when my horse dropped me there in the middle of a strong picket +force, I drew both my pistols, took to a friendly tree, and set to work +firing at every head or body I could see, with intent to sell my life +for the very largest price I could make it command. +</p> +<p> +This had lasted for less than two minutes when my comrades, pursued by +a strong body of Federal cavalry, dashed back again through the picket +post. +</p> +<p> +As they came on at a full run Fitz Lee saw me, and, slackening speed +slightly, he thrust out his foot and held out his hand—a cavalry trick +in which all of us had been trained. Responding, I seized his hand, +placed my foot upon his and swung to his crupper. A minute later a +supporting company came to our assistance and the pursuing cavalrymen +in blue retired. +</p> +<p> +The incident was not at all an unusual one, but the memory of it came +back to me years afterwards under rather peculiar circumstances. In 1889 +there was held in New York a spectacular celebration of the centennial +of Washington's inauguration as president. A little company of us who +had organized ourselves into a society known as "The Virginians," gave +a banquet to the commissioners appointed to represent Virginia on that +occasion. It so fell out that I was called upon to preside at the +banquet, and General Fitzhugh Lee, then Governor of Virginia, sat, of +course, at my right. +</p> +<p> +Somewhere between the oysters and the entrée I turned to him and said: +</p> +<p> +"It seemed a trifle odd to me, General, and distinctly un-Virginian, to +greet you as a stranger when we were presented to each other a little +while ago. Of course, to + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page83" name="page83"></a>[83]</span> + + you I mean nothing except a name heard in +introduction; but you saved my life once and to me this meeting means +a good deal." +</p> +<p class="side"> +Fitz Lee +</p> +<p> +In answer to his inquiries I began to tell the story. Suddenly he +interrupted in his impetuous way, asking: +</p> +<p> +"Are you the man I took on my crupper that day down there by +Dranesville?" +</p> +<p> +And with that he pushed back his plate and rising nearly crushed my hand +in friendly grasp. Then he told me stories of other meetings with his +old troopers,—stories dramatic, pathetic, humorous,—until I had need +of General Pryor's reminder that I was presiding and that there were +duties for me to do, however interesting I might find Fitzhugh Lee's +conversation to be. +</p> +<p> +From that time until his death I saw much of General Lee, and learned +much of his character and impulses, which I imagine are wholly undreamed +of by those who encountered him only in his official capacities. He +had the instincts of the scholar, without the scholar's opportunity to +indulge them. "It is a matter of regret," he said to me in Washington +one day, "that family tradition has decreed that all Lees shall be +soldiers. I have often regretted that I was sent to West Point instead +of being educated in a more scholarly way. You know I have Carter blood +and Mason blood in my veins, and the Carters and Masons have had +intellects worth cultivating." +</p> +<p> +I replied by quoting from Byron's "Mazeppa" the lines: +</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i24"> "'Ill betide </p> +<p class="i2"> The school wherein I learned to ride.' </p> +<p class="i2"> Quoth Charles: 'Old Hetman, wherefore so, </p> +<p class="i2"> Since thou hast learned the art so well?'" </p> +</div> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page84" name="page84"></a>[84]</span></p> + +<p> +Instantly he responded by continuing the quotation: +</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i14"> "''Twere long to tell, </p> +<p class="i2"> And we have many a league to go </p> +<p class="i2"> With every now and then a blow;' </p> +</div> +</div> + +<p> +That is to say, I'm still Consul-General at Havana, and I have an +appointment to see the President on official business this morning." +</p> +<p> +As we were sitting in my rooms at the Arlington and not in his quarters +at the Shoreham, this was not a hint of dismissal, but an apology for +leaving. +</p> +<p> +The conversation awakened surprise in my mind, and ever since I have +wondered how many of the world's great men of action have regretted +that they were not men of thought instead, and how far the regret was +justified. If Fitz Lee had been educated at Yale or Harvard, what place +would he have occupied in the world? Would he have become a Virginian +lawyer and perhaps a judge? or what else? Conjecture in such a case is +futile. "If" is a word of very uncertain significance. +</p> +<p> +The story told in the foregoing paragraphs reminds me of another +experience. +</p> +<p> +When the war ended it became very necessary that I should go to Indiana +with the least possible delay. But at Richmond I was stopped by a +peremptory military order that forbade ex-Confederates to go North. The +order had been issued in consequence of Mr. Lincoln's assassination, and +the disposition to enforce it rigidly was very strong. +</p> +<p> +In my perplexity I made my way into the office of the Federal chief of +staff of that department. There I encountered a stalwart and impressive +officer, six feet, four or five inches high—or perhaps even an inch +or two more than that—who listened with surprising patience while I +explained my necessity to him. When I had done, he + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page85" name="page85"></a>[85]</span> + + placed his hand upon +my shoulder in comradely fashion and said: +</p> +<p> +"You didn't have anything to do with Mr. Lincoln's assassination. I'll +give you a special pass to go North as soon as you please." +</p> +<p> +I thanked him and took my leave. +</p> +<p class="side"> +A Friendly Old Foe +</p> +<p> +In 1907—forty-two years later—some one in the Authors Club introduced +me to "our newest member, Mr. Curtis." +</p> +<p> +I glanced at the towering form, and recognized it instantly. +</p> +<p> +"<i>Mr.</i> Curtis be hanged," I answered, "I know General Newton Martin +Curtis, and I have good reason to remember him. He is the man who let +me out of Richmond." +</p> +<p> +Since that time I have learned to know General Curtis well, and to +cherish him as a friend and club comrade as heartily as I honored him +before for his gallantry in war and for his ceaseless and most fruitful +efforts since the war in behalf of reconciliation and brotherhood +between the men who once confronted each other with steel between. +Senator Daniel of Virginia has written of him that no other man has +done so much as he in that behalf, and I have reason to know that the +statement is not an exaggerated one. The kindliness he showed to me in +Richmond when we were utter strangers and had only recently been foemen, +inspired all his relations with the Virginians during all the years +that followed, and there is no man whose name to-day awakens a readier +response of good will among Virginians than does his. +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page86" name="page86"></a>[86]</span></p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0030" id="h2H_4_0030"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + XXIX +</h2> + +<p> +Late in the autumn of that first year of war there was reason to +believe that the armies in Virginia were about to retire into the dull +lethargy of winter-quarters' life, and that the scene of active war +was to be transferred to the coast of South Carolina. The Federals +had concentrated heavy forces there and in a preparatory campaign had +seized upon the Sea Islands and their defensive works at Beaufort and +elsewhere. General Lee had already been sent thither to command and +defend the coast, and there seemed no doubt that an active winter +campaign was to occur in that region. I wanted to have a part in it, +and to that end I sought and secured a transfer to a battery of field +artillery which was under orders for the South. +</p> +<p> +As a matter of fact, the active campaign never came, and for many moons +we led the very idlest life down there that soldiers in time of war ever +led anywhere. +</p> +<p> +But the service, idle as it was, played greater havoc in our ranks than +the most ceaseless battling could have done. +</p> +<p> +For example, we were sent one day from Charleston across the Ashley +river, to defend a bridge over Wappoo Cut. We had a hundred and eight +men on duty—all well and vigorous. One week later eight of them were +dead, eight barely able to answer to roll call, and all the rest in +hospital. In the meanwhile we had not fired a gun or caught sight of +an enemy. +</p> +<p> +On another occasion we encamped in a delightful but pestilential spot, +and for ten days afterward our men died at the rate of from two to six +every twenty-four hours. +</p> +<p> +During the term of our service on that coast we were + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page87" name="page87"></a>[87]</span> + + only once engaged +in what could be called a battle. That was at Pocotaligo on the 22nd of +October, 1862. In point of numbers engaged it was a very small battle, +indeed, but it was the very hottest fight I was ever in, not excepting +any of the tremendous struggles in the campaign of 1864 in Virginia. My +battery went into that fight with fifty-four men and forty-five horses. +We fought at pistol-shot range all day, and came out of the struggle +with a tally of thirty-three men killed and wounded, and with only +eighteen horses alive—all of them wounded but one. +</p> +<p> +General Beauregard with his own hand presented the battery a battle +flag and authorized an inscription on it in memory of the event. In all +that we rejoiced with as much enthusiasm as a company of ague-smitten +wretches could command, but it is no wonder that our Virginia +mountaineers took on a new lease of life when at last we were ordered +to rejoin the Army of Northern Virginia, as a part of Longstreet's +artillery. +</p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0031" id="h2H_4_0031"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + XXX +</h2> + +<p class="side"> +Left Behind +</p> +<p> +At the end of the campaign of 1863 we found ourselves unhorsed. +We had guns that we knew how to use, and caissons full of ammunition, +but we had no horses to draw either the guns or the caissons. So +when Longstreet was ordered south to bear a part in the campaign of +Chickamauga, we were left behind. After a time, during which we were +like the dog in the express car who had "chawed up his tag," we were +assigned for the winter to General Lindsay Walker's command—the +artillery of A. P. Hill's corps. +</p> +<p> +We belonged to none of the battalions there, and therefore had no field +officers through whom to apply for + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page88" name="page88"></a>[88]</span> + + decent treatment. For thirteen wintry +days we lay at Lindsay's Turnout, with no rations except a meager dole +of cornmeal. Then one day a yoke of commissary oxen, starved into a +condition of hopeless anemia, became stalled in the mud near our camp. +By some hook or crook we managed to buy those wrecks of what had once +been oxen. We butchered them, and after twenty-four or thirty-six hours +of continual stewing, we had meat again. +</p> +<p> +Belonging to no battalion in the corps to which we were attached, we +were a battery "with no rights that anybody was bound to respect," and +presently the fact was emphasized. We were appointed to be the provost +company of the corps. That is to say, we had to build guardhouses and +do all the duties incident to the care of military prisoners. +</p> +<p> +The arrangement brought welcome occupation to me. As Sergeant-Major I +had the executive management of the military prisons and of everything +pertaining to them. As a lawyer who could charge no fees without a +breach of military etiquette, I was called upon to defend, before the +courts-martial, all the more desperate criminals under our care. These +included murderers, malingerers, robbers, deserters, and men guilty of +all the other crimes possible in that time and country. They included no +assailants of women. I would not have defended such in any case, and had +there been such our sentinels would have made quick work of their +disposal. +</p> +<p class="side"> +A Gratuitous Law Practice +</p> +<p> +The rest, as I was convinced, were guilty, every man of them. But +equally I was convinced that a court-martial, if left to deal with +them in its own way, would condemn them whether guilty or not. To a +court-martial, as a rule, the accusation—in the case of a private +soldier—is conclusive and final. If not, then a very little +evidence—admissible or not—is sufficient to confirm it. It is the +sole function of counsel before a court-martial to + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page89" name="page89"></a>[89]</span> + + do the very little +he can to secure a reasonably fair trial, to persuade the officers +constituting the court that there is a difference between admissible +evidence and testimony that should not be received at all, and finally, +to put in a written plea at the end which may direct the attention of +the reviewing officers higher up to any unfairness or injustice done in +the course of the trial. Theoretically a court-martial is bound by the +accepted rules of evidence and by all other laws relating to the conduct +of criminal trials; but practically the court-martial, in time of war at +least, is bound by nothing. It is a tribunal organized to convict, and +its proceedings closely resemble those of a vigilance committee. +</p> +<p> +But the proceedings of every court-martial must be reduced to writing +and approved or disapproved by authorities "higher up." Sometimes those +authorities higher up have some glimmering notion of law and justice, +and it is in reliance upon that chance that lawyers chiefly depend in +defending men before courts-martial. +</p> +<p> +But no man is entitled to counsel before a court-martial. It is only +on sufferance that the counsel can appear at all, and he is liable to +peremptory dismissal at any moment during the trial. +</p> +<p> +It was under these conditions that I undertook the defense of +</p> +<p class="center"> +<span class="sc">Tom Collins</span> +</p> +<p> +Tom was an old jailbird. He had been pardoned out of the Virginia +penitentiary on condition that he would enlist—for his age was one +year greater, according to his account of it, than that at which the +conscription law lost its force. Tom had been a trifle less than two +months in service when he was caught trying to desert to the enemy. +Conviction on such a charge at that period of the war meant death. +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page90" name="page90"></a>[90]</span></p> + +<p> +In response to a humble request I was permitted to appear before the +court-martial as Tom Collins's counsel. My intrusion was somewhat +resented as a thing that tended to delay in a perfectly clear case, when +the court had a world of business before it, and my request was very +grudgingly granted. +</p> +<p> +I managed, unluckily, to antagonize the court still further at the +very outset. I found that Tom Collins's captain—who had preferred the +charges against him—was a member of the court that was to try him. +Against that indecency I protested, and in doing so perhaps I used +stronger language than was advisable. The officer concerned, flushed +and angry, asked me if I meant to impugn his honor and integrity. +I answered, in hot blood: +</p> +<p> +"That depends upon whether you continue to sit as judge in a case in +which you are the accuser, or whether you have the decency to retire +from the court until the hearing in this case is ended." +</p> +<p> +"Are you a man responsible for his words?" he flashed back in reply. +</p> +<p> +"Entirely so," I answered. "When this thing is over I will afford you +any opportunity you like, captain, to avenge your honor and to wreak +satisfaction. At present I have a duty to do toward my client, and a +part of that duty is to insist that you shall withdraw from the court +during his trial and not sit as a judge in a case in which you are the +accuser. After that my captain or any other officer of the battery to +which I belong will act for me and receive any communication you may +choose to send." +</p> +<p> +At this point the presiding officer of the court ordered the room +cleared "while the court deliberates." +</p> +<p> +Half an hour later I was admitted again to the courtroom to hear the +deliberate judgment of the court that it was entirely legitimate and +proper for Tom's captain to sit in his case. +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page91" name="page91"></a>[91]</span></p> + +<p class="side"> +Court Martial Evidence +</p> +<p> +Then we proceeded with the trial. The proof was positive that Tom +Collins had been caught ten miles in front, endeavoring to make his +way into the enemy's lines. +</p> +<p> +In answer, I called the court's attention to the absence of any proof +that Tom Collins was a soldier. There are only three ways in which a man +can become a soldier, namely, by voluntary enlistment, by conscription, +or by receiving pay. Tom Collins was above the conscription age and +therefore not a conscript. He had not been two months in service, and by +his captain's admission, had not received soldier's pay. There remained +only voluntary enlistment, and, I pointed out, there was no proof of +that before the court. +</p> +<p> +Thereupon the room was cleared again for consultation, and a little +later the court adjourned till the next morning. +</p> +<p> +When it reassembled the judge advocate triumphantly presented a telegram +from Governor Letcher, in answer to one sent to him. It read: +</p> +<p> +"Yes. I pardoned Collins out of penitentiary on condition of +enlistment." +</p> +<p> +Instantly I objected to the reception of the despatch as evidence. There +was no proof that it had in fact come from Governor Letcher; it was not +made under oath; and finally, the accused man was not confronted by his +accuser and permitted to cross-examine him. Clearly that piece of paper +was utterly inadmissible as testimony. +</p> +<p> +The court made short work of these "lawyer's quibbles." It found Tom +Collins guilty and condemned him to death. +</p> +<p> +I secured leave of the court to set forth my contentions in writing +so that they might go to the reviewing officers as a part of the +proceedings, but I had very little hope of the result. I frankly told +Tom that he was to be shot + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page92" name="page92"></a>[92]</span> + + on the next Saturday but one, and that he +must make up his mind to his fate. +</p> +<p> +The good clergyman who acted as chaplain to the military prison then +took Tom in hand and endeavored to "prepare him to meet his God." After +a while the reverend gentleman came to me with tears of joy in his eyes, +to tell me that Tom Collins was "converted"; that never in the course +of his ministry had he encountered "a case in which the repentance was +completer or more sincere, or a case more clearly showing the acceptance +of the sinner by his merciful Saviour." +</p> +<p> +My theological convictions were distinctly more hazy than those of +the clerical gentleman, and my ability to think of Tom Collins as a +person saturated with sanctity, was less than his. But I accepted the +clergyman's expert opinion as unquestioningly as I could, and Tom +Collins confirmed it. When I visited him in the guard-house I found +him positively ecstatic in the sunlight of Divine acceptance which +illuminated the Valley of the Shadow of Death. When I mentioned the +possibility that my plea in his behalf might even yet prove effective, +and that the sentence which condemned him to death the next morning +might still be revoked, he replied, with apparent sincerity: +</p> +<p> +"Oh, I hope not! For then I must wait before entering into joy! But the +Lord's will be done!" +</p> +<p> +The next morning was the one appointed for Tom Collins's death. His +coffin was ready and a shallow grave had been dug to receive his body. +</p> +<p> +The chaplain and I mounted with him to the cart, and rode with him to +the place of execution, where three other men were to die that day. +Tom's mood was placidly exultant. And the chaplain alone shed tears in +his behalf. +</p> +<p class="side"> +"Death Bed Repentance" +</p> +<p> +When the place of execution was reached, an adjutant came forward and +read three death warrants. Then he + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page93" name="page93"></a>[93]</span> + + held up another paper and read it. +It was a formal document from the War Department, sustaining the legal +points submitted in Tom Collins's case, disapproving the finding and +sentence, and ordering the man formally enlisted and returned to duty. +</p> +<p> +The chaplain fell into a collapse of uncontrollable weeping. Tom Collins +came to his relief with the injunction: "Oh, come, now, old snuffy, +cheer up! I'll bet you even money I beat you to Hell yet." +</p> +<p> +That clergyman afterward confided to me his doubts of "deathbed +repentances," at least in the case of habitual criminals. +</p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0032" id="h2H_4_0032"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + XXXI +</h2> + +<p> +In the spring of 1864, the battery to which I belonged mutinied—in an +entirely proper and soldierlike way. Longstreet had returned, and the +Army of Northern Virginia was about to encounter Grant in the most +stupendous campaign of the war. We were old soldiers, and we knew +what was coming. But as we had no horses to draw our guns, and as the +quartermaster's department seemed unable to find horses for us, we +were omitted from the orders for the advance into the region of the +Wilderness, where the fighting was obviously to begin. We were ordered +to Cobham Station, a charming region of verdure-clad hills and brawling +streams, where there was no soldiers' work to do and no prospect of +anything less ignoble than provost duty. +</p> +<p> +Against this we revolted, respectfully and loyally. We sent in a protest +and petition asking that if horses could not be furnished for our guns, +we should be armed with Enfield rifles and permitted to march with our +battalion as a sharpshooting support. +</p> +<p> +The request was granted and from the Wilderness to + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page94" name="page94"></a>[94]</span> + + Petersburg we marched +and fought and starved right gallantly, usually managing to have a place +between the guns at the points of hottest contest in every action of the +campaign. +</p> +<p> +At Petersburg we found artillery work of a new kind to do. No sooner +were the conditions of siege established than our battery, because of +its irregularly armed condition, was chosen to work the mortars which +then for the first time became a part of the offensive and defensive +equipment of the Army of Northern Virginia. +</p> +<p> +All the fragments of batteries whose ranks had been broken up and whose +officers had been killed, wounded, or captured during that campaign of +tremendous fighting, were assigned to us for mortar service, so that our +numbers were swelled to 250 or 300 men. The number was fluctuating from +day to day, as the monotonous murder of siege operations daily depleted +our ranks on the one hand while almost daily there were additions made +of men from disintegrated commands. +</p> +<p> +I have no purpose here to write a history of that eight months of siege, +during which we were never for one moment out of fire by night or by +day, but there is one story that arose out of it which I have a mind +to tell. +</p> +<p> +I had been placed in command of an independent mortar fort, taking my +orders directly from General E. P. Alexander—Longstreet's chief of +artillery—and reporting to nobody else. +</p> +<p> +Infantry officers from the lines in front—colonels and such—used +sometimes to come to my little row of gun-pits and give me orders in +utter ignorance of the conditions and limitations of mortar firing. +The orders were not binding upon me and, under General Alexander's +instructions, I paid no heed to them, wherefore I was often in a state +of friction with the intermeddlers. After a + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page95" name="page95"></a>[95]</span> + + little I discovered a short +and easy method of dealing with them. There was a Federal fort known +to us as the Railroad Iron Battery, whose commanding officer seemed a +person very fond of using his guns in an offensive way. He had both +mortars and rifled field guns, and with all of them he soon got my +range so accurately that all his rifle shells cut my parapet at the +moment of exploding, and all his mortar shells fell among my pits with +extraordinary precision. In order to preserve the lives of my men I had +to take my stand on top of the mound over my magazine whenever he began +bombarding me. From that point I watched the course of his mortar +shells, and when one of them seemed destined to fall into one of my +little gun-pits, I called out the number of the pit and the men in it +ran into their bomb-proof till the explosion was over. +</p> +<p> +In dealing with the annoyance of intruding infantry officers, I took +advantage of the Railroad Iron Battery's extraordinary readiness to +respond to the smallest attention at my hands. A shell or two hurled in +that direction always brought on a condition of things which prompted +all visitors to my pits to retreat to a covered way and hasten to keep +suddenly remembered engagements on their own lines. +</p> +<p class="side"> +Gloaming Visitors +</p> +<p> +Once my little ruse did not produce the intended effect. It was after +sunset of a day late in August. Two officers came out of the gloaming +and saluted me politely. They were in fatigue uniforms. That is to say, +they wore the light blue trousers that were common to both armies, and +white duck fatigue jackets that bore no insignia of rank upon their +collars. +</p> +<p> +At the moment I was slowly bombarding something—I forget what or +why—but I remember that I was getting no response. Presently one of +my visitors said: +</p> +<p> +"You seem to be having the shelling all to yourself." +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page96" name="page96"></a>[96]</span></p> + +<p> +I resented the remark, thinking it a criticism. +</p> +<p> +"We'll see," I said. Then turning to my brother, who was my second in +command, I quietly gave the order: +</p> +<p> +"Touch up the Railroad Iron Battery, Joe." +</p> +<p> +Thirty seconds later the storm was in full fury about us, but my +visitors did not seem to mind it. Instead of retiring to the covered +way, they nonchalantly stood there by my side on the mound of the +magazine. Every now and then, between explosions, one of them would ask +a question as to the geography of the lines to our right and left. +</p> +<p> +"What battery is that over there?" +</p> +<p> +"What is the Federal work that lies in front of it?" +</p> +<p> +"What is the lay of the land," etc., etc. +</p> +<p> +Obviously they were officers new to this part of our line and as they +offered no criticism upon the work of my guns, and gave me no orders, +I put aside the antagonism I had felt, and in all good-fellowship +explained the military geography of the region round about. +</p> +<p> +Meanwhile, Joe had quietly stopped the fire on the Railroad Iron +Battery, and little by little that work ceased its activity. Finally +my visitors politely bade me good evening and took their leave. +</p> +<p> +I asked Joe who they were, but he did not know. I inquired of others, +but nobody knew. Next morning I asked at General Gracie's headquarters +what new troops had been brought to that part of the line, and learned +that there had been no changes. There and at General Bushrod Johnson's +headquarters I minutely described my visitors, but nobody knew anything +about them, and after a few days of futile conjecture I ceased to think +of them or their visit. +</p> +<p> +In July, 1865, the war being over, I took passage on the steamer "Lady +Gay," bound from Cairo to New Orleans. There were no women on board, but +there was + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page97" name="page97"></a>[97]</span> + + a passenger list of thirty men or so. Some of us were +ex-Confederates and some had been Federal soldiers. +</p> +<p class="side"> +The Outcome of a Strange Story +</p> +<p> +The two groups did not mingle. The members of each were polite upon +accidental occasion to the members of the other, but they did not +fraternize, at least for a time—till something happened. +</p> +<p> +I was talking one morning with some of my party when suddenly a man +from the other group approached as if listening to my voice. Presently +he asked: +</p> +<p> +"Didn't you command a mortar fort at Petersburg?" +</p> +<p> +I answered that I did, whereupon he asked: +</p> +<p> +"Do you remember——" and proceeded to outline the incident related +above. +</p> +<p> +"Yes," I answered in astonishment, "but how do you happen to know +anything about it?" +</p> +<p> +"I was one of your visitors on that occasion. I thought I couldn't +be mistaken in the voice that commanded, 'Touch up the Railroad Iron +Battery, Joe.'" +</p> +<p> +"But I don't understand. You were a Federal officer, were you not?" +</p> +<p> +"Yes." +</p> +<p> +"Then what were you doing there?" +</p> +<p> +"That is precisely what my friend and I were trying to find out, while +you kept us for two hours under a fire of hell from our own batteries." +</p> +<p> +Then he explained: +</p> +<p> +"You remember that to the left of your position, half a mile or so away, +there lay a swamp. It was utterly impassable when the lines were drawn, +and both sides neglected it in throwing up the breastworks. Well, that +swamp slowly dried up during the summer, and it left something like a +gap in both lines, but the gap was so well covered by the batteries on +both sides that neither bothered to extend earthworks across it. My +friend and I were in charge of pickets and rifle-pits that day, and + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page98" name="page98"></a>[98]</span> + + we went out to inspect them. Somehow—I don't know how—we got lost on +the swamplands, and, losing our bearings, we found ourselves presently +within the Confederate lines. To say that we were embarrassed is to +put it mildly. We were scared. We didn't know how to get back, and we +couldn't even surrender for the reason that we were not in uniform but +in fatigue dress, and therefore technically, at least, in disguise. +There was nothing about us to show to which army we belonged. As an +old soldier, you know what that meant. If we had given ourselves up we +should have been hanged as spies caught in disguise within your lines. +In our desperate strait we went to you and stood there for an hour or +two under the worst fire we ever endured, while we extracted from you +the geographical information that enabled us to make our way back to +our own lines under cover of darkness." +</p> +<p> +At that point he grasped my hand warmly and said: +</p> +<p> +"Tell me, how is Joe? I hope he is 'touching up' something that responds +as readily as the Railroad Iron Battery did that evening." +</p> +<p> +From that hour until we reached New Orleans, four days later, there +was no barrier between the two groups of passengers. We fraternized +completely. We told stories of our several war experiences that had +no touch or trace of antagonism in them. +</p> +<p> +Incidentally, we exhausted the steamer "Lady Gay's" supplies of +champagne and cigars, and when we reached New Orleans we had a dinner +together at the St. Charles hotel, no observer of which would have +suspected that a few months before we had been doing our best to +slaughter each other. +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page99" name="page99"></a>[99]</span></p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0033" id="h2H_4_0033"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + XXXII +</h2> + +<p class="side"> +The Beginning of Newspaper Life +</p> +<p> +Let me pass hurriedly over the years that immediately followed the end +of the war. I went West in search of a living. In Cairo, Illinois, I +became counsel and attorney "at law and in fact," for a great banking, +mining, steamboating, and mercantile firm, whose widely extending +interests covered the whole West and South. +</p> +<p> +The work was uncongenial and by way of escaping from it, after I had +married, I removed to Mississippi and undertook the practice of law +there. +</p> +<p> +That work proved still less to my liking and in the summer of 1870 +I abandoned it in the profoundest disgust. +</p> +<p> +With a wife, one child, a little household furniture, and no money +at all, I removed to New York and secured work as a reporter on the +Brooklyn <i>Union</i>, an afternoon newspaper. +</p> +<p> +I knew nothing of the business, art, or mystery of newspaper making, and +I knew nothing of the city. I find it difficult to imagine a man less +well equipped for my new undertaking than I was. But I had an abounding +confidence in my ability to learn anything I wanted to learn, and I +thought I knew how to express myself lucidly in writing. For the rest +I had tireless energy and a good deal of courage of the kind that is +sometimes slangily called "cheek." This was made manifest on the first +day of my service by the fact that while waiting for a petty news +assignment I wrote an editorial article and sent it in to Theodore +Tilton, the editor, for use. I had an impulse of general helpfulness +which was left unrestrained by my utter ignorance of the distinctions +and dignities of a newspaper office. I had a thought which seemed to me +to deserve editorial utterance, and with the + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page100" name="page100"></a>[100]</span> + + mistaken idea that I was +expected to render all the aid I could in the making of the newspaper, +I wrote what I had to say. +</p> +<p> +Theodore Tilton was a man of very hospitable mind, and he cared little +for traditions. He read my article, approved it, and printed it as a +leader. Better still, he sent for me and asked me what experience I had +had as a newspaper man. I told him I had had none, whereupon he said +encouragingly: +</p> +<p> +"Oh well, it doesn't matter much. I'll have you on the editorial staff +soon. In the meantime, learn all you can about the city, and especially +about the shams and falsities of its 'Society' with a big 'S.' Study +state politics, and equip yourself to comment critically upon such +things. And whenever you have an editorial in your mind write it and +send it to me." +</p> +<p> +The <i>Union</i> had been purchased by Mr. Henry C. Bowen, the owner of the +New York <i>Independent</i>, then the most widely influential periodical of +its class in America. Theodore Tilton was the editor of both. +</p> +<p class="side"> +An Old School Man of Letters +</p> +<p> +Theodore Tilton was at the crest of the wave of success at that time, +and he took himself and his genius very seriously. Concerning him I +shall write more fully a little later on. At present I wish to say only +that with all his self-appreciation he had a keen appreciation of other +men's abilities, and he sought in every way he could to make them +tributary to his own success in whatever he undertook. To that end he +had engaged some strong men and women as members of his staff on the +<i>Union</i>, and among these the most interesting to me was Charles F. +Briggs, the "Harry Franco" of an earlier literary time, the associate +and partner of Edgar Allan Poe on the <i>Broadway Journal</i>, the personal +friend or enemy of every literary man of consequence in his time, the +associate of George William Curtis and Parke Godwin in the conduct + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page101" name="page101"></a>[101]</span> + + of <i>Putnam's Monthly</i>; the coadjutor of Henry J. Raymond on the +<i>Times</i>, the novelist to whom Lowell dedicated "The Fable for Critics," +and whose personal and literary characteristics Lowell set forth with +singular aptitude in that poem. In brief, he was in his own person a +representative and embodiment of the literary life of what I had always +regarded as the golden age of American letters. He talked familiarly of +writers who had been to me cloud-haloed demigods, and made men of them +to my apprehension. +</p> +<p> +Let me add that though the literary life of which he had been a part was +a turbulent one, beset by jealousies and vexed by quarrels of a bitter +personal character, such as would be impossible among men of letters in +our time of more gracious manners, I never knew him to say an unjust +thing about any of the men he had known, or to withhold a just measure +of appreciation from the work of those with whom he had most bitterly +quarreled. +</p> +<p> +Perhaps no man among Poe's contemporaries had juster reason to feel +bitterness toward the poet's memory than had Mr. Briggs. Yet during my +intimacy with him, extending over many years, I never heard him say +an unkind word of Poe. On the other hand, I never knew him to fail to +contradict upon occasion and in his dogmatic fashion—which was somehow +very convincing—any of the prevalent misapprehensions as to Poe's +character and life which might be mentioned in his presence. +</p> +<p> +It was not that he was a meekly forgiving person, for he was, on the +contrary, pugnacious in an unusual degree. But the dominant quality of +his character was a love of truth and justice. Concerning Poe and the +supposed immorality of his life, he once said to me, in words that I +am sure I remember accurately because of the impression they made on +my mind: +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page102" name="page102"></a>[102]</span></p> + +<p> +"He was not immoral at all in his personal life or in his work. He +was merely <i>un</i>moral. He had no perception of the difference between +right and wrong in the moral sense of those words. His conscience was +altogether artistic. If you had told him you had killed a man who stood +annoyingly in the way of your purposes, he would have thought none the +worse of you for it. He would have reflected that the man ought not to +have put himself in your way. But if you had been guilty of putting +forth a false quantity in verse, he would have held you to be a monster +for whom no conceivable punishment could be adequate." +</p> +<p> +Often Mr. Briggs's brusquerie and pugnacity were exaggerated, or +even altogether assumed by way of hiding a sentiment too tender to be +exhibited. Still more frequently the harshest things he said to his +friends—and they were sometimes very bitter—were prompted, not by his +displeasure with those who were their victims, but by some other cause +of "disgruntlement." On such occasions he would repent him of his fault, +and would make amends, but never in any ordinary way or after a fashion +that anybody else would have chosen. +</p> +<p> +One morning he came into the editorial room which he and I jointly +occupied. I bade him good-morning as usual, but he made no reply. After +a little while he turned upon me with some bitter, stinging utterance +which, if it had come from a younger man, I should have hotly resented. +Coming from a man of his age and distinction, I resented it only by +turning to my desk and maintaining silence during the entire morning. +When his work was done, he left the office without a word, leaving me to +feel that he meant the break between us—the cause of which I did not at +all understand—to be permanent, as I certainly intended that it should. +But when he entered the room next morning he stood still in the middle +of the + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page103" name="page103"></a>[103]</span> + + floor, facing my back, for I had not turned my face away from +my desk. +</p> +<p class="side"> +Mr. Briggs Explains +</p> +<p> +"Good-morning!" he said. "Are you ready to apologize to me?" +</p> +<p> +I turned toward him with an involuntary smile at the absurdity of the +suggestion, and answered: +</p> +<p> +"I don't know what I should apologize for, Mr. Briggs." +</p> +<p> +"Neither do I," he answered. "My question was prompted by curiosity. It +usually happens that apologies come from the person offended, you know. +Are you going to write on this affair in the Senate, or shall I take +it up?" +</p> +<p> +From that moment his manner was what it always had been during our +association. Beyond what he had said he made no reference to the matter, +but after our work was finished he, in fact, explained his temper of the +day before, while carefully avoiding every suggestion that he meant to +explain it or that there was any connection between the explanation and +the thing explained. +</p> +<p> +"What do you think of servants?" he asked abruptly. I made some answer, +though I did not understand the reason for his question or its occasion. +</p> +<p> +"When I was in the Custom House," he resumed, "I had an opportunity to +buy, far below the usual price, some of the finest wines and brandies +ever imported. I bought some Madeira, some sherry, and some brandy—ten +gallons of each, in five-gallon demijohns—and laid them away in my +cellar, thinking the stock sufficient to last me as long as I lived. +I rejoiced in the certainty that however poor I might become, I should +always be able to offer a friend a glass of something really worthy +of a gentleman's attention. Night before last I asked my daughter to +replenish a decanter of sherry which had run low. She went to the cellar +and presently returned with a look on + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page104" name="page104"></a>[104]</span> + + her face that made me think she +had seen a burglar. She reported that there wasn't a drop of anything +left in any of the demijohns. I sent for some detectives, and before +morning they solved the riddle. A servant girl who had resigned from our +service a week or two before had carried all the wine and brandy—two +bottlefuls at a time—to a miserable, disreputable gin mill, and sold +it for what the thievish proprietor saw fit to give. When I learned the +facts I lost my temper, which was a very unprofitable thing to do. I'm +late," looking at his watch, "and must be off." +</p> +<p> +Mr. Briggs had a keen sense of humor, which he tried hard to disguise +with a shaggy seeming of dogmatic positiveness. He would say his most +humorous things in the tone and with the manner of a man determined to +make himself as disagreeable as possible. +</p> +<p> +I sat with him at a public dinner one evening. He took the wines with +the successive courses, but when later some one, on the other side of +the table, lifted his glass of champagne and asked Mr. Briggs to drink +with him, he excused himself for taking carbonic water instead of the +wine, by saying: +</p> +<p> +"I'm a rigid 'temperance' man." +</p> +<p> +When we all smiled and glanced at the red and white wine glasses he had +emptied in the course of the meal, he turned upon us savagely, saying: +</p> +<p> +"You smile derisively, but I repeat my assertion that I'm a strict +'temperance' man; I never take a drink unless I want it." +</p> +<p> +He paused, and then added: +</p> +<p> +"Temperance consists solely in never taking a drink unless you want it. +Intemperance consists in taking drinks when some other fellow wants +them." +</p> +<p class="side"> +Mr. Briggs's Generosity +</p> +<p> +He was peculiarly generous of encouragement to younger men, when he +thought they deserved it. I may + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page105" name="page105"></a>[105]</span> + + add that he was equally generous of +rebuke under circumstances of an opposite kind. I had entered journalism +without knowing the least thing about the profession, or trade—if that +be the fitter name for it, as I sometimes think it is—and I had not +been engaged in the work long enough to get over my modesty, when one +day I wrote a paragraph of a score or two lines to correct an error into +which the New York <i>Tribune</i> had that morning fallen. Not long before +that time a certain swashbuckler, E. M. Yerger, of Jackson, Mississippi, +had committed a homicide in the nature of a political assassination. The +crime and the assassin's acquittal by reason of political influence had +greatly excited the indignation of the entire North. +</p> +<p> +There lived at the same time in Memphis another and a very different +E. M. Yerger, a judge whose learning, uprightness, and high personal +character had made him deservedly one of the best loved and most honored +jurists in the Southwest. At the time of which I now write, this Judge +E. M. Yerger had died, and his funeral had been an extraordinary +manifestation of popular esteem, affection, and profound sorrow. +</p> +<p> +The <i>Tribune</i>, misled by the identity of their names, had confounded the +two men, and had that morning "improved the occasion" to hurl a deal of +editorial thunder at the Southern people for thus honoring a fire-eating +assassin. +</p> +<p> +By way of correcting the error I wrote and printed an editorial +paragraph, setting forth the facts simply, and making no comments. +</p> +<p> +When Mr. Briggs next entered the office he took my hand warmly in both +his own, and said: +</p> +<p> +"I congratulate you. That paragraph of yours was the best editorial the +<i>Union</i> has printed since I've been on the paper." +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page106" name="page106"></a>[106]</span></p> + +<p> +"Why, Mr. Briggs," I protested, "it was only a paragraph——" +</p> +<p> +"What of that?" he demanded in his most quarrelsome tone. "The Lord's +Prayer is only a paragraph in comparison with some of the 'graces' I've +heard distinguished clergymen get off at banquets by way of impressing +their eloquence upon the oysters that were growing warm under the +gaslights, while they solemnly prated." +</p> +<p> +"But there was nothing in the paragraph," I argued; "it only corrected +an error." +</p> +<p> +"Why, sir, do you presume to tell me what is and what isn't in an +article that I've read for myself? You're a novice, a greenhorn in this +business. Don't undertake to instruct my judgment, sir. That paragraph +was excellent editorial writing, because it corrected an error that +did a great injustice; because it gave important and interesting +information; because it set forth facts of public import not known to +our readers generally, and finally, because you put that final period +just where it belonged. Don't contradict me. Don't presume to argue +the matter. I won't stand it." +</p> +<p> +With that he left the room as abruptly as he had entered it, and with +the manner of a man who has quarreled and has put his antagonist down. +I smilingly recalled the lines in which Lowell so aptly described and +characterized him in "A Fable for Critics": +</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i2"> "There comes Harry Franco, and as he draws near, </p> +<p class="i2"> You find that's a smile which you took for a sneer; </p> +<p class="i2"> One half of him contradicts t'other; his wont </p> +<p class="i2"> Is to say very sharp things and do very blunt; </p> +<p class="i2"> His manner's as hard as his feelings are tender, </p> +<p class="i2"> And a <i>sortie</i> he'll make when he means to surrender; </p> +<p class="i2"> He's in joke half the time when he seems to be sternest, </p> +<p class="i2"> When he seems to be joking be sure he's in earnest; </p> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="pagenum" style="display:none;"><a id="page107" name="page107"></a>[107]</span> + +<p class="i2"> He has common sense in a way that's uncommon, </p> +<p class="i2"> Hates humbug and cant, loves his friends like a woman, </p> +<p class="i2"> Builds his dislikes of cards and his friendships of oak, </p> +<p class="i2"> Loves a prejudice better than aught but a joke; </p> +<p class="i2"> Is half upright Quaker, half downright Come-Outer, </p> +<p class="i2"> Loves Freedom too well to go stark mad about her; </p> +<p class="i2"> Quite artless himself, is a lover of Art, </p> +<p class="i2"> Shuts you out of his secrets and into his heart, </p> +<p class="i2"> And though not a poet, yet all must admire </p> +<p class="i2"> In his letters of Pinto his skill on the liar." </p> +</div> +</div> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0034" id="h2H_4_0034"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + XXXIII +</h2> + +<p class="side"> +Theodore Tilton +</p> +<p> +When I first knew Theodore Tilton as my editor-in-chief, on the +<i>Union</i>, he was in his thirty-fifth year. His extraordinary gifts as an +effective writer and speaker had won for him, even at that early age, a +country-wide reputation. He was a recognized force in the thought and +life of the time, and he had full possession of the tools he needed for +his work. The <i>Independent</i> exercised an influence upon the thought and +life of the American people such as no periodical publication of its +class exercises in this later time of cheap paper, cheap illustrations, +and multitudinous magazines. Its circulation of more than three hundred +thousand exceeded that of all the other publications of its class +combined, and, more important still, it was spread all over the country, +from Maine to California. The utterances of the <i>Independent</i> were +determinative of popular thought and conviction in an extraordinary +degree. +</p> +<p> +Theodore Tilton had absolute control of that great engine of influence, +with an editorial staff of unusually able men for his assistants, and +with a corps of contributors that included practically all the most +desirable men and women writers of the time. +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page108" name="page108"></a>[108]</span></p> + +<p> +In addition to all this, it was the golden age of the lecture system, +and next to Mr. Beecher, Tilton was perhaps the most widely popular of +the lecturers. +</p> +<p> +In the midst of such a career, and possessed of such influence over the +minds of men, at the age of thirty-five, it is no wonder that he had a +good conceit of himself, and it was to his credit that he manifested +that conceit only in inoffensive ways. He was never arrogant, dogmatic, +or overbearing in conversation. His courtesy was unfailing, except in +strenuous personal controversy, and even there his manner was polite +almost to deference, however deadly the thrusts of his sarcastic wit +might be. He fought with a rapier always, never with a bludgeon. His +refinement of mind determined that. +</p> +<p> +It was an era of "gush," of phrase making, of superlatives, and in +such arts Tilton was peculiarly gifted. In his thinking he was bold +to the limit of audacity, and his aptness in clothing his thought in +captivating forms of speech added greatly to its effectiveness and his +influence. +</p> +<p> +Radicalism was rampant at that time when the passions aroused by the +recent Civil War had not yet begun to cool, and Tilton was a radical +of radicals. So extreme was he in his views that during and after the +orgies of the Commune and the petroleuses in Paris, he openly espoused +their cause, justified their resistance to everything like orderly +government, and glorified those of them who suffered death for their +crimes, as martyrs to human liberty. +</p> +<p> +He and I were talking of these things one day, when something that was +said prompted me to ask him his views of the great French revolution at +the end of the eighteenth century. He quickly replied: +</p> +<p> +"It was a notable movement in behalf of human liberty; it was overborne +by military force at last only + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page109" name="page109"></a>[109]</span> + + because the French people were unworthy +of it. Robespierre was an irresolute weakling who didn't cut off heads +enough." +</p> +<p class="side"> +Tilton's Characteristics +</p> +<p> +Added to his other gifts, Tilton had an impressive and attractive +personality. Tall, well formed, graceful in every motion, he had a head +and face so handsome and so unlike the common as to make him a man to be +looked at more than once in every company. His manner accorded with his +appearance and emphasized it. It was a gracious combination of deference +for others with an exalted self-esteem. There was a certain joyousness +in it that was very winning, combined with an insistent but unobtrusive +self-assertion which impressed without offending. +</p> +<p> +His wit was always at his command, for offense or for defense, or for +mere entertainment. I remember that in my first association with him I +had a sort of fear at each moment that he would knock me down the next +with an epigram. I have seen him do that repeatedly with men with whom +he was at the time in deadly controversy, but in my own case the fear of +it was soon banished by the uniform kindliness with which he treated me, +and the personal affection with which he seemed to regard me. +</p> +<p> +I have often wondered over his attitude toward me. I was an ex-rebel +soldier, and in 1870 he was still mercilessly at war with Southern +men and Southern ideas. My opinions on many subjects were the exact +opposite of his own, and I was young enough then to be insistent in the +expression of my opinions, especially in conversation with one to whom +I knew my views to be <i>Anathema Maranatha</i>. +</p> +<p> +Yet from the first hour of our meeting Theodore Tilton was always +courteous and genial toward me, and after our acquaintance had ripened +a bit, he became cordial and even enthusiastic in his friendship. +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page110" name="page110"></a>[110]</span></p> + +<p> +It was his habit to rise very early, drink a small cup of coffee and, +without other breakfast, walk down to the office of the <i>Union</i>. There +he wrote his editorials, marked out the day's work for his subordinates, +and received such callers as might come, after which he would walk +home and take his breakfast at noon. His afternoons were spent in +the doing of another day's work in the <i>Independent</i> office. After our +acquaintance ripened into friendship, he used to insist upon my going +with him to his midday breakfast, whenever my own work in any wise +permitted. As I also was apt to be early at the office, I was usually +able to accept his breakfast invitations, so that we had an hour's +uninterrupted intercourse almost every day. And unlike other editorial +chiefs with whom I have had intimate social relations in their own +homes, Mr. Tilton never thrust editorial or other business matters +into the conversation on these occasions. Indeed, he did not permit +the smallest reference to such subjects. If by accident such things +obtruded, he put them aside as impertinent to the time and place. It +was not that he thought less or cared less for matters of such import +than other great editors do, but rather that he had a well-ordered mind +that instinctively shrank from confusion. When engaged with editorial +problems, he gave his whole attention to their careful consideration +and wise solution. When engaged in social intercourse he put all else +utterly out of his mind. +</p> +<p> +I cannot help thinking that his method as to that was a wiser one +than that of some others I have known, who carried the problems and +perplexities of their editorial work with them into their parlors, to +their dinner tables, and even to bed. Certainly it was a method more +agreeable to his associates and guests. +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page111" name="page111"></a>[111]</span></p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0035" id="h2H_4_0035"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + XXXIV +</h2> + +<p class="side"> +The Swarm of Gadflies +</p> +<p> +At that time Tilton was "swimming on a sea of glory." His popularity +was at its height, with an apparently assured prospect of lasting +fame to follow. His work so far had necessarily been of an ephemeral +sort—dealing with passing subjects in a passing way—but he had all the +while been planning work of a more permanent character, and diligently +preparing himself for its doing. One day, in more confidential mood than +usual, he spoke to me of this and briefly outlined a part at least of +what he had planned to do. But there was a note of the past tense in +what he said, as if the hope and purpose he had cherished were passing +away. It was the first intimation I had of the fact that those troubles +were upon him which later made an end of his career and sent him into a +saddened exile which endured till the end of his ruined life. +</p> +<p> +At that time I knew nothing and he told me nothing of the nature of +his great trouble, and I regarded his despondency as nothing more than +weariness over the petty annoyances inflicted upon him by some who were +jealous of his success and popularity. +</p> +<p> +With some of these things I was familiar. His growing liberality of +thought in religious matters, and the absence of asceticism from his +life, had brought a swarm of gadflies round his head, whose stings +annoyed him, even if they inflicted no serious hurt. He was constantly +quizzed and criticised, orally, by personal letter, and in print, +as to his beliefs, his conduct, his tastes, his habits, and even his +employment of terms, quite as if he had been a woman or a clergyman +responsible to his critics and subject to their censure. He maintained +an appearance of good temper under all this carping—most of which was +clearly inspired by "envy, malice, and all + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page112" name="page112"></a>[112]</span> + + uncharitableness"—but, as +I had reason to know, it stung him sorely. He said to me one day: +</p> +<p> +"It isn't the criticism that annoys me so much as the fact that I am +supposed to be answerable in such small ways to the bellowings of Tray, +Blanche, and Sweetheart. I seem not to be regarded as a free man, as +other men are." +</p> +<p> +I reminded him that something of that kind was the penalty that genius +and popularity were usually required to pay for their privileges. I +illustrated my thought by adding: +</p> +<p> +"If Byron had not waked up one morning and found himself famous, he +would never have been hounded out of his native land by what Macaulay +calls British morality in one of its periodic spasms of virtue, and +if Poe had never written 'The Raven,' 'The Bells,' and 'Annabel Lee,' +nobody would ever have bothered to inquire about his drinking habits." +</p> +<p> +I strongly urged him to ignore the criticism which was only encouraged +by his replies to it. But in that he was not amenable to counsel, partly +because his over-sensitive nature was more severely stung by such +criticism than that of a better balanced man would have been, but still +more, I think, because his passion for epigrammatic reply could not +resist the temptation of opportunity which these things presented. Often +his replies were effective for the moment, by reason of their wit or +their sparkling audacity, but incidentally they enlarged the circle of +persons offended. +</p> +<p> +Thus on one occasion, when he was challenged in print by an adversary, +to say that he did not drink wine, he replied in print: +</p> +<p> +"Mr. Tilton does drink wine upon sacramental and other proper +occasions." +</p> +<p> +His readers smiled at the smartness of the utterance, + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page113" name="page113"></a>[113]</span> + + but many of the +more sensitive among them were deeply aggrieved by what they regarded +as its well-nigh blasphemous character. +</p> +<p class="side"> +The Fulton Controversy +</p> +<p> +I was myself present at one of his most perplexing conferences +concerning these matters, not as a participant in the discussion, but +as a friendly witness. +</p> +<p> +The quarrel—for it had developed into the proportions of a quarrel—was +with the Rev. Dr. Fulton, who at that time occupied a large place in +public attention—as a preacher of great eloquence, his friends said, as +a reckless sensationalist and self-advertiser, his enemies contended. +</p> +<p> +He had accused Tilton of drinking wine, and had publicly criticised him +for it, with great severity. Tilton had replied in an equally public +way, with the statement that on a certain occasion which he named, he +and Dr. Fulton had walked up street together after a public meeting; +that at Dr. Fulton's suggestion they had gone into a saloon where +between them they had drunk a considerable number of glasses of beer (he +gave the number, but I forget what it was), adding: "Of which I did not +drink the major part." +</p> +<p> +Dr. Fulton was furiously angry, of course, and demanded an interview. +Tilton calmly invited him to call at his editorial room in the <i>Union</i> +office. He came at the appointed time, bringing with him the Rev. Dr. +Armitage and two other persons of prominence. I do not now remember who +they were. Tilton at once sent me a message asking me to come to his +room. When I entered he introduced me to his visitors and then said: +</p> +<p> +"Mr. Eggleston, Dr. Fulton has called to discuss with me certain +matters of personal import. The discussion may result in some issues of +veracity—discussions with Dr. Fulton often do. It is in view of that +possibility, I suppose," smiling and bowing to Dr. Fulton, who sat stiff +in his chair making no response by word or act, "that + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page114" name="page114"></a>[114]</span> + + Dr. Fulton has +brought with him Dr. Armitage and these other gentlemen, as witnesses +to whatever may be said between us. I have the profoundest respect, +and even reverence for those gentlemen, but it seems to me proper that +I should have at least one witness of my own selection present also. +I have therefore sent for you." +</p> +<p> +Instantly Dr. Fulton was on his feet protesting. In a loud voice and +with excited gesticulations, he declared that he would not be drawn +into a trap—that he would abandon the purpose of his visit rather than +discuss the matters at issue with one of Tilton's reporters present to +misrepresent and ridicule him in print. +</p> +<p> +Tilton, who never lost his self-possession, waited calmly till the +protest was fully made. Then he said: +</p> +<p> +"I have no reporter present. Mr. Eggleston was promoted a week ago to +the editorial writing staff of the paper. He will report nothing. You, +Dr. Fulton, have brought with you three friends who are of your own +selection, to hear the discussion between us. I claim the right to have +one friend of my own present also. It is solely in that capacity that I +have asked Mr. Eggleston to be present." +</p> +<p> +"But I will not discuss confidential matters in the presence of any +newspaper man," protested Dr. Fulton. +</p> +<p> +"Then in my turn," said Tilton, "I must decline to discuss the questions +between us, in the presence of any clergyman." +</p> +<p> +At that point Dr. Armitage and his companions remonstrated with Dr. +Fulton, declaring his position to be unreasonable and unfair, and +telling him that if he persisted in it, they would at once withdraw. +</p> +<p> +Fulton yielded, and after an hour's angry sparring on his part and +placidly self-possessed sword play of intellect on Tilton's side, Dr. +Fulton submitted a proposal of arbitration, to which Tilton assented, +with one qualification, + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page115" name="page115"></a>[115]</span> + + namely, that if the finding of the arbitrators +was to be published, in print, from the pulpit, or otherwise, he, +Tilton, should be privileged to publish also a verbatim report of the +<i>testimony</i> upon which it was founded. +</p> +<p> +Dr. Fulton rejected this absolutely, on the ground that he did not want +his name to figure in "a newspaper sensation." +</p> +<p> +Still cool, self-possessed, and sarcastic, Tilton asked: +</p> +<p> +"Do I correctly understand you to mean, Dr. Fulton, that you shrink from +sensationalism?" +</p> +<p> +"Yes, sir, that is exactly what I mean." +</p> +<p> +"Quite a new attitude of mind to you, isn't it, Doctor? I fear it will +rob your preaching of much of its 'drawing' quality." +</p> +<p> +Dr. Fulton's advisers urged him to assent to Tilton's proposal as an +entirely reasonable one, but he persistently refused, and the conference +ended with nothing accomplished. +</p> +<p> +I know nothing to this day of the merits of the controversy. I have +given this account of the meeting called to settle it solely because it +serves the purpose of illustrating the methods of the two men. +</p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0036" id="h2H_4_0036"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + XXXV +</h2> + +<p class="side"> +Later Acquaintance with Tilton +</p> +<p> +About a year later, or a little less, my editorial connection with the +<i>Union</i> ceased, and with it my official association with Mr. Tilton. But +he and I lived not far apart in Brooklyn and from then until the great +trouble broke—two or three years—I saw much of him, at his home and +mine, on the street, and at many places in New York. With the first open +manifestation of the great trouble he began consulting with me about it. +I gave him a deal of good advice in response to his eager + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page116" name="page116"></a>[116]</span> + + demands for +counsel. He seemed to appreciate and value it, but as he never acted +upon it in the smallest degree, I gradually ceased to give it even when +requested. +</p> +<p> +I have every reason to believe that in the course of these consultations +I learned, from him and from all the others directly connected with the +terrible affair, the inner and true story of the events that culminated +in the great and widely demoralizing scandal. It is a story that has +never been told. At the time of the trial both sides were careful to +prevent its revelation, and there were certainly most imperative reasons +why they should. +</p> +<p> +I have no purpose to tell that story in these pages. I mention it only +because otherwise the abrupt termination of my reminiscences of Mr. +Tilton at this point might seem to lack explanation. +</p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0037" id="h2H_4_0037"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + XXXVI +</h2> + +<p> +When I joined the staff of the <i>Union</i>, in the summer of 1870, I had +had no newspaper experience whatever. I had written for newspapers +occasionally, but only as an amateur. I had published one or two small +things in magazines, but I knew absolutely nothing of professional +newspaper work. Mr. Tilton and his managing editor, Kenward Philp, were +good enough to find in my earliest work as a reporter some capacity for +lucid expression, and a simple and direct narrative habit which pleased +them, so that in spite of my inexperience they were disposed to give me +a share in the best assignments. I may say incidentally that among the +reporters I was very generally pitied as a poor fellow foredoomed to +failure as a newspaper man for the reason that I was what we call +educated. At that time, though not for long afterwards, education and +a tolerable regularity of life were regarded + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page117" name="page117"></a>[117]</span> + + as serious handicaps in +the newsrooms of most newspapers. +</p> +<p class="side"> +My First Libel Suit +</p> +<p> +Among my earliest assignments was one which brought me my first +experience of newspaper libel suits, designed not for prosecution but as +a means of intimidating the newspaper concerned. The extent to which the +news of the suit appalled me was a measure of my inexperience, and the +way in which it was met was a lesson to me that has served me well upon +many later occasions of the kind. +</p> +<p> +A man whom I will call Amour, as the use of his real name might give +pain to innocent persons even after the lapse of forty years, was +express agent at a railway station in the outskirts of Brooklyn. His +reputation was high in the community and in the church as a man of +exemplary conduct and a public-spirited citizen, notably active in all +endeavors for the betterment of life. +</p> +<p> +It was a matter of sensational, popular interest, therefore, when his +wife instituted divorce proceedings, alleging the most scandalous +conduct on his part. +</p> +<p> +The <i>Union</i> was alert to make the most of such things and Kenward Philp +set me to explore this case and exploit it. He told me frankly that he +did so because he thought I could "write it up" in an effective way, but +he thought it necessary to caution my inexperience that I must confine +my report rigidly to the matter in hand, and not concern myself with +side issues of any kind. +</p> +<p> +In the course of my inquiry, I learned much about Amour that was far +more important than the divorce complications. Two or three business +men of high repute in Brooklyn told me without reserve that he had +abstracted money from express packages addressed to them and passing +through his hands. When detected by them he had made good the losses, +and in answer to his pleadings in behalf of his wife and children, they +had kept silence. But now that he had himself brought ruin and disgrace + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page118" name="page118"></a>[118]</span> + + upon his family they had no further reason for reserve. I secured +written and signed statements of the facts from each of them, with +permission to publish if need be. But all this was aside from the +divorce matter I had been set to investigate, and, mindful of the +instructions given me, I made no mention of it in the article. +</p> +<p> +When I reached the office on the morning after that article was +published, I met Kenward Philp at the entrance door of the building, +manifestly waiting for me in some anxiety. Almost forgetting to say +"good-morning," he eagerly asked: +</p> +<p> +"Are you sure of your facts in that Amour story—can they be proved?" +</p> +<p> +"Yes, absolutely," I replied. "But why do you ask?" +</p> +<p> +"Oh, only because Amour has served papers on us in a libel suit for +fifty thousand dollars damages." +</p> +<p> +My heart sank at this, as it had never done before, and has never done +since. I regarded it as certain that my career in the new profession I +had adopted was hopelessly ended at its very beginning, and I thought, +heart-heavily, of the wife and baby for whom I saw no way to provide. +</p> +<p> +"Why, yes," I falteringly repeated, "every statement I made can be +supported by unimpeachable testimony. But, believe me, Mr. Philp, I am +sorry I have got the paper into trouble." +</p> +<p> +"Oh, that's nothing," he replied, "so long as you're sure of your facts. +One libel suit more or less is a matter of no moment." +</p> +<p> +Then, by way of emphasizing the unworthiness of the man I had "libeled" +I briefly outlined the worse things I had learned about him. Philp +fairly shouted with delight: +</p> +<p> +"Keno!" he exclaimed. "Hurry upstairs and <i>libel him some more</i>! Make it +strong. Skin him and dress the wound with <i>aqua fortis</i>—I say—and rub +it in!" +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page119" name="page119"></a>[119]</span></p> + +<p> +I obeyed with a will, and the next morning Amour was missing, and the +express company was sending descriptions of him to the police of every +city in the country. It is a fixed rule with the great express companies +to prosecute relentlessly every agent of their own who tampers with +express packages. It is a thing necessary to their own protection. So +ended my first libel suit. +</p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0038" id="h2H_4_0038"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + XXXVII +</h2> + +<p class="side"> +Later Libel Suit Observations +</p> +<p> +During the many years that I passed in active newspaper work after +that time, observation and experience taught me much, with regard to +newspaper libel suits, which is not generally known. It may be of +interest to suggest some things on the subject here. +</p> +<p> +I have never known anybody to get rich by suing newspapers for libel. +The nearest approach to that result that has come within my knowledge +was when Kenward Philp got a verdict for five thousand dollars damages +against a newspaper that had accused him of complicity in the forging of +the celebrated Morey letter which was used to General Garfield's hurt in +his campaign for the Presidency. There have been larger verdicts secured +in a few other cases, but I suspect that none of them seemed so much +like enrichment to those who secured them, as that one did to Philp. +It was not Mr. Philp's habit to have a considerable sum of money in +possession at any time. His temperament strongly militated against that, +and I think all men who knew him well will agree with me in doubting +that he ever had one-half or one-fourth the sum this verdict brought +him, in his possession at any one time in his life, except upon that +occasion. +</p> +<p> +In suing newspapers for libel it is the custom of suitors to name large +sums as the measure of the damages + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page120" name="page120"></a>[120]</span> + + claimed, but this is a thing inspired +mainly by vanity and a spirit of ostentation. It emphasizes the value of +the reputation alleged to have been damaged; it is in itself a boastful +threat of the punishment the suitor means to inflict, and is akin to +the vaporings with which men of rougher ways talk of the fights they +contemplate. It is an assurance to the friends of the suitor of his +determined purpose to secure adequate redress and of his confidence in +his ability to do so. Finally, it is a "don't-tread-on-me" warning to +everybody concerned. +</p> +<p> +Inspired by such motives men often sue for fifty thousand dollars for +damages done to a fifty-cent reputation. It costs no more to institute +a suit for fifty thousand dollars than to bring one for one or two +thousand. +</p> +<p> +In many cases libel suits are instituted without the smallest intention +of bringing them to trial. They are "bluffs," pure and simple. They are +meant to intimidate, and sometimes they accomplish that purpose, but not +often. +</p> +<p> +I remember one case with which I had personally to deal. I was in charge +of the editorial page of the New York <i>World</i> at the time, and with a +secure body of facts behind me I wrote a severe editorial concerning the +malefactions of one John Y. McKane, a Coney Island political boss. I +specifically charged him with the crimes he had committed, cataloguing +them and calling each of them by its right name. +</p> +<p> +The man promptly served papers in a libel suit against the newspaper. +A timid business manager hurriedly came to me with the news, asking if +I couldn't write another article "softening" the severity of the former +utterance. I showed him the folly of any such attempt in a case where +the libel, if there was any libel, had already been published. +</p> +<p> +"But even if the case were otherwise," I added, "the <i>World</i> will do +nothing of that cowardly kind. The man + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page121" name="page121"></a>[121]</span> + + has committed the crimes we have +charged. Otherwise we should not have made the charges. I shall indite +and publish another article specifically reiterating our accusations, +as our reply to his attempt at intimidation." +</p> +<p> +I did so at once. I repeated each charge made and emphasized it. +I ended the article by saying that the man had impudently sued the paper +for libel in publishing these truths concerning him, and adding that +"it is not as plaintiff in a libel suit that he will have to meet these +accusations, but as defendant in a criminal prosecution, and long before +his suit for libel can be brought to trial, he will be doing time in +prison stripes with no reputation left for anybody to injure." +</p> +<p> +The prediction was fulfilled. The man was prosecuted and sentenced to +a long term in state's prison. So ended that libel suit. +</p> +<p class="side"> +The Queerest of Libel Suits +</p> +<p> +The queerest libel proceeding of which I ever had personal knowledge, +was that of Judge Henry Hilton against certain members of the staff of +the New York <i>World</i>. It was unusual in its inception, in its character, +and in its outcome. +</p> +<p> +The <i>World</i> published a series of articles with regard to Judge Hilton's +relations with the late A. T. Stewart, and with the fortune left by Mr. +Stewart at his death. I remember nothing of the merits of the matter, +and they need not concern us here. The <i>World</i> wanted Judge Hilton to +bring a libel suit against it, in the hope that at the trial he might +take the witness-stand and submit himself to cross-examination. To that +end the paper published many things which were clearly libelous if they +were not true. +</p> +<p> +But Judge Hilton was not to be drawn into the snare. He instituted no +libel suit in his own behalf; he asked no redress for statements made +about himself, but he made complaint to the District Attorney, Colonel +John R. Fellows, + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page122" name="page122"></a>[122]</span> + + that the <i>World</i> had criminally libeled the <i>memory of +A. T. Stewart</i>, and for that offense Col. Fellows instituted criminal +proceedings against John A. Cockerill and several other members of the +<i>World's</i> staff, who thus learned for the first time that under New +York's queer libel law it is a crime to say defamatory things of +Benedict Arnold, Guy Fawkes, or the late Judas Iscariot himself unless +you can prove the truth of your charges. +</p> +<p> +The editors involved in this case were held in bail, but as no effort of +their attorneys to secure their trial could accomplish that purpose, it +seems fair to suppose that the proceedings against them were never +intended to be seriously pressed. +</p> +<p> +Finally, when the official term of Colonel Fellows drew near its +end, Mr. De Lancy Nicoll was elected to be his successor as District +Attorney. As Mr. Nicoll had been the attorney of the <i>World</i> and of +its accused editors, the presence of these long dormant cases in the +District Attorney's office threatened him with a peculiarly sore +embarrassment. Should he find them on his calendar upon taking office, +he must either become the prosecutor in cases in which he had been +defendants' counsel, or he must dismiss them at risk of seeming to +use his official authority to shield his own former clients from due +responsibility under the criminal law. +</p> +<p> +It was not until the very day before Mr. Nicoll took office that the +embarrassing situation was relieved by Colonel Fellows, who at the end +of his term went into court and asked for the dismissal of the cases. +</p> +<p> +One other thing should be said on this subject. There are cases, of +course, in which newspapers of the baser sort do wantonly assail +reputation and should be made to smart for the wrong done. But these +cases are rare. The first and most earnest concern of every reputable +newspaper is to secure truth and accuracy in its news reports, and + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page123" name="page123"></a>[123]</span> + +every newspaper writer knows that there is no surer way of losing his +employment and with it his chance of securing another than by falsifying +in his reports. The conditions in which newspapers are made render +mistakes and misapprehensions sometimes unavoidable; but every reputable +newspaper holds itself ready to correct and repair such mistakes when +they injure or annoy innocent persons. Usually a printed retraction with +apology in fact repairs the injury. But I have known cases in which +vindictiveness, or the hope of money gain, has prompted the aggrieved +person to persist in suing for damages and rejecting the offer of other +reparation. In such cases the suitors usually secure a verdict carrying +six cents damages. In one case that I remember the jury estimated the +damages at one cent—leaving the plaintiff to pay the costs of the +proceeding. +</p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0039" id="h2H_4_0039"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + XXXVIII +</h2> + +<p class="side"> +Early Newspaper Experiences +</p> +<p> +During the early days of my newspaper service there came to me an +unusual opportunity, involving a somewhat dramatic experience. +</p> +<p> +The internal revenue tax on distilled spirits was then so high as to +make of illicit distilling an enormously profitable species of crime. +The business had grown to such proportions in Brooklyn that its +flourishing existence there, practically without interference by the +authorities, gave rise to a very damaging political scandal. +</p> +<p> +In the region round the Navy Yard there were illicit stills by scores, +producing spirits by thousands of gallons daily. They were owned by +influential men of standing, but operated by men of desperate criminal +character to whom homicide itself seemed a matter of indifference so +long as its perpetration could conceal crime or secure + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page124" name="page124"></a>[124]</span> + + protection from +punishment by means of the terror the "gang" held over the heads of all +who might interfere with its members or their nefarious business. +</p> +<p> +It was a dangerous thing to meddle with, and the officers of the +law—after some of them had been killed and others severely beaten—were +in fact afraid to meddle with it. There were warrants in the United +States Marshal's office for the arrest of nearly a score of the +offenders, but the papers were not served and there was scarcely a +pretense made of effort to serve them. +</p> +<p> +It was made my duty to deal with this matter both in the news columns +and editorially. Every day we published a detailed list of the stills +that had been in operation during the preceding night, together with +the names of the men operating each and detailed information as to the +exact locality of each. Every day we printed editorial articles calling +upon the officers of the law to act, and severely criticising their +cowardice in neglecting to act. At first these editorial utterances were +admonitory and critical. With each day's added demonstration of official +weakness they grew severer and more denunciatory of the official +cowardice or corruption that alone could have inspired the inactivity. +Presently the officer chiefly responsible, whom the newspaper singled +out by name as the subject of its criticism, and daily denounced or +ridiculed, instituted the usual libel suit for purposes of intimidation +only. +</p> +<p> +It had no such effect. The newspaper continued its crusade, and the +scandal of official neglect grew daily in the public mind, until +presently it threatened alarming political results. +</p> +<p> +I do not know that political corruption was more prevalent then than +now, but it was more open and shameless, and as a consequence men of +upright minds were readier to suspect its existence in high places. +At this time such + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page125" name="page125"></a>[125]</span> + + men began rather insistently to ask why the authorities +at Washington did not interfere to break up the illicit stills and why +the administration retained in office the men whose neglect of that duty +had become so great a scandal. It was freely suggested that somebody at +Washington must be winking at the lawlessness in aid of political +purposes in Brooklyn. +</p> +<p class="side"> +An Interview with President Grant +</p> +<p> +It was then that Theodore Tilton, with his constitutional audacity, +decided to send me to Washington to interview President Grant on the +subject. I was provided with letters from Tilton, as the editor of the +Republican newspaper of Brooklyn, from the Republican Postmaster Booth, +and from Silas B. Dutcher and other recognized leaders of the Republican +party in Brooklyn. These letters asked the President, in behalf of +Republicanism in Brooklyn, to give me the desired interview, assuring +him of my integrity, etc. +</p> +<p> +So armed I had no difficulty in securing audience. I found General Grant +to be a man of simple, upright mind, unspoiled by fame, careless of +formalities and the frills of official place, in no way nervous about +his dignity—just a plain, honest American citizen, accustomed to go +straight to the marrow of every subject discussed, without equivocation +or reserve and apparently without concern for anything except truth and +justice. +</p> +<p> +He received me cordially and dismissed everybody else from the room +while we talked. He offered me a cigar and we had our conference without +formality. +</p> +<p> +In presenting my credentials, I was moved by his own frankness of manner +to tell him that I was an ex-Confederate soldier and not a Republican in +politics. I was anxious not to sail under false colors, and he expressed +himself approvingly of my sentiment, assuring me that my personal views +in politics could make no difference in my status on this occasion. +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page126" name="page126"></a>[126]</span></p> + +<p> +After I had asked him a good many questions about the matter in hand, +he smilingly asked: +</p> +<p> +"Why don't you put the suggestions so vaguely mentioned in these +letters, into a direct question, so that I may answer it?" +</p> +<p> +It had seemed to me an impossible impudence to ask the President of +the United States whether or not his administration was deliberately +protecting crime for the sake of political advantage, but at his +suggestion I formulated the question, hurriedly putting it in writing +for the sake of accuracy in reporting it afterwards. He answered it +promptly and directly, adding: +</p> +<p> +"I wish you would come to me again a week from today. I may then have +a more conclusive answer to give you. Come at any rate." +</p> +<p> +When the interview was published, my good friend, Dr. St. Clair +McKelway, then young in the service on the Brooklyn <i>Eagle</i> which has +since brought fame to him and extraordinary influence to the newspaper +which he still conducts, said to me at a chance meeting: "I think your +putting of that question to General Grant was the coolest and most +colossal piece of impudence I ever heard of." +</p> +<p> +So it would have been, if I had done the thing of my own motion or +otherwise without General Grant's suggestion, a thing of which, of +course, no hint was given in the published interview. +</p> +<p> +When I saw the President again a week later, he needed no questioning on +my part. He had fully informed himself concerning matters in Brooklyn, +and knew what he wanted to say. Among other things he mentioned that he +had had a meeting with the derelict official whom we had so severely +criticised and who had responded with a libel suit. All that the +President thought it necessary to say concerning him was: +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page127" name="page127"></a>[127]</span></p> + +<p class="side"> +Grant's Method +</p> +<p> +"He must go. You may say so from me. Say it in print and positively." +</p> +<p> +The publication of that sentence alone would have made the fortune of +my interview, even without the other utterances of interest that I was +authorized to publish as an assurance that the administration intended +to break up the illicit distilling in Brooklyn even if it required the +whole power of the government to do it. +</p> +<p> +In relation to that matter the President said to me: +</p> +<p> +"Now for your own reassurance, and not for publication, I may tell you +that as soon as proper preparations can be made, the distilling district +will be suddenly surrounded by a cordon of troops issuing from the Navy +Yard, and revenue officers, under command of Jerome B. Wass, whom you +know, I believe, will break up every distillery, carry away every still +and every piece of machinery, empty every mash-tub into the gutters, and +arrest everybody engaged in the business." +</p> +<p> +I gave my promise not to refer to this raid in any way in advance of +its making, but asked that I might be permitted to be present with the +revenue officers when it should be made. General Grant immediately sent +for Mr. Wass, who was in the White House at the time, and directed him +to inform me when he should be ready to make the raid, and to let me +accompany him. To this he added: "Don't let any other newspaper man know +of the thing." +</p> +<p> +The raid was made not long after that. In the darkness of the end +of a night—a darkness increased by the practice of the distillers of +extinguishing all the street lamps in that region—a strong military +force silently slipped out of a remote gate in the Navy Yard inclosure, +and before the movement was suspected, it had completely surrounded the +district, under orders to allow no human being to pass in or out through +the lines. I had with me + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page128" name="page128"></a>[128]</span> + + an assistant, whom I had found the night before +at a ball that he had been assigned to report, and under the strict rule +laid down for the military, he and I were the only newspaper men within +the lines, or in any wise able to secure news of what was going on—a +matter that was exciting the utmost curiosity throughout the city. On +the other hand, the rigidity of the military cordon threatened to render +our presence within the lines of no newspaper use to us. Ours was an +afternoon newspaper and our "copy," of which we soon made many columns, +must be in the office not very long after midday if it was to be of any +avail. But we were not permitted to pass the lines with it, either in +person or by messenger. At last we secured permission of the Navy Yard +authorities to go down to the water front of the Yard and hail a passing +tug. With our pockets stuffed full of copy, we passed in that way to the +Manhattan shore and made our way thence by Fulton ferry to the office, +where we were greeted as heroes and victors who had secured for the +paper the most important "beat" that had been known in years. +</p> +<p> +There are victories, however, that are more disastrous to those who win +them than defeat itself. For a time this one threatened to serve me in +that way. Mr. Bowen, the owner of the paper, whom I had never before +seen at the <i>Union</i> office, presented himself there the next morning, +full of enthusiasm. He was particularly impressed by the way in which I +had secured advance information of the raid and with it the privilege of +being present to report the affair. Unfortunately for me, he said in his +enthusiasm, "that's the sort of man we make a general and not a private +of, in journalism." +</p> +<p> +Newspaper employments of the better sort were not easy to get in those +days, and my immediate superiors in the office interpreted Mr. Bowen's +utterance to mean that + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page129" name="page129"></a>[129]</span> + + he contemplated the removal of some one or other +of them, to make a commanding place for me. He had even suggested, in +plain words, that he would like to see me made managing editor. +</p> +<p> +In that suggestion he was utterly wrong. I knew myself to be unfit +for the place for the reason that I knew little of the city and almost +nothing of journalism, in which I had been engaged for no more than a +few weeks. Nevertheless, Mr. Bowen's suggestion aroused the jealousy of +my immediate superiors, and they at once began a series of persecutions +intended to drive me off the paper, a thing that would have been +calamitous to a man rather inexperienced and wholly unknown in other +newspaper offices. +</p> +<p> +Theodore Tilton solved the problem by removing me from the news +department and promoting me to the editorial writing staff. +</p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0040" id="h2H_4_0040"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + XXXIX +</h2> + +<p class="side"> +A Free Lance +</p> +<p> +After somewhat more than a year's service on the Brooklyn newspaper my +connection with it was severed, and for a time I was a "free lance," +writing editorials and literary articles of various kinds for the New +York <i>Evening Post</i> in the forenoons, and devoting the afternoons to +newswork on the <i>Tribune</i>—writing "on space" for both. +</p> +<p> +At that time Mr. William Cullen Bryant was traveling somewhere in the +South, I think, so that I did not then become acquainted with him. That +came later. +</p> +<p> +The <i>Evening Post</i> was in charge of the late Charlton T. Lewis, with +whom, during many later years, I enjoyed an intimate acquaintance. Mr. +Lewis was one of the ripest scholars and most diligent students I have +ever known, but he was also a man of broad human sympathies, + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page130" name="page130"></a>[130]</span> + + intensely +interested in public affairs and in all else that involved human +progress. His knowledge of facts and his grasp of principles in +the case of everything that interested him seemed to me not less than +extraordinary, and they seem so still, as I remember the readiness with +which he would turn from consideration of some nice question of Greek +or Latin usage to write of a problem of statesmanship under discussion +at Washington, or of some iniquity in municipal misgovernment which +occupied the popular mind. His eyes were often red after the scholarly +vigils of the midnight, but they were wide open and clear-sighted in +their survey of all human affairs, from the Old Catholic movement +to police abuses. His scholarship in ancient literatures in no way +interfered with his alert interest in the literature of his own +language, his own country, and his own time, or with his comprehensive +acquaintance with it. +</p> +<p> +He was as much at home on the rostrum as at the desk, and his readiness +and force in speaking were as marked as the effectiveness of his written +words. More remarkable still, perhaps, was the fact that his oral +utterances, however unexpectedly and extemporaneously he might be called +upon to speak, were as smoothly phrased, as polished, and as perfectly +wrought in every way as if they had been carefully written out and +laboriously committed to memory. +</p> +<p> +Personally he was genial, kindly, and courteous, not with the courtesy +of courtliness, which has considerations of self for its impulse, but +with that of good-fellowship, inspired by concern for the happiness of +those with whom he came in contact. +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page131" name="page131"></a>[131]</span></p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0041" id="h2H_4_0041"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + XL +</h2> + +<p class="side"> +Hearth and Home +</p> +<p> +The service on the <i>Evening Post</i> interested me particularly. My impulse +was strongly toward the literary side of newspaper work, and it was on +that side chiefly that the <i>Evening Post</i> gave me opportunity. But I was +working there only on space and devoting the greater part of my time to +less congenial tasks. In a little while I gave up both these employments +to accept the position of managing editor of a weekly illustrated +publication called <i>Hearth and Home</i>. The paper had been very ambitious +in its projection, very distinguished in the persons of its editors and +contributors, and a financial failure from the beginning. +</p> +<p> +There were several reasons for this. The mere making of an illustrated +periodical in those days was excessively expensive. There were no +photographic processes for the reproduction of pictures at that time. +Every illustration must be drawn on wood and engraved by hand at a cost +ten or twenty times as great as that now involved in the production of +a similar result. +</p> +<p> +A second difficulty was that <i>Hearth and Home</i> was originally designed +to meet a demand that did not exist. It was meant to be a country +gentleman's newspaper at a time when there were scarcely any country +gentlemen—in the sense intended—in America. Its appeals were largely +to a leisure-class of well-to-do people, pottering with amateur +horticulture and interested in literature and art. +</p> +<p> +It had for its first editors Donald G. Mitchell (Ik Marvel), Mrs. +Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Mrs. Mary Mapes Dodge. Mrs. Dodge was the +only one of the company who had the least capacity as an editor, and her +work was confined to the children's pages. The others + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page132" name="page132"></a>[132]</span> + + were brilliant +and distinguished literary folk, but wholly without either experience +or capacity as editors. +</p> +<p> +The publication had lost a fortune to its proprietors, when it was +bought by Orange Judd & Company, the publishers of the <i>American +Agriculturist</i>. They had changed its character somewhat, but not enough +to make it successful. Its circulation—never large—had shrunk to a few +thousands weekly. Its advertisements were few and unremunerative; and +its total income was insufficient to cover one-half the cost of making +it. +</p> +<p> +My brother, Edward, and I were employed to take control of the paper +and, if possible, resuscitate it. We found a number of "Tite Barnacles" +there drawing extravagant salaries for which their services made no +adequate return. To rid the paper of these was Edward's first concern. +We found the pigeonholes stuffed with accepted manuscripts, not one in +ten of which was worth printing. They were the work of amateurs who had +nothing to say and didn't at all know how to say it. These must be paid +for, as they had been accepted, but to print them would have been to +invite continued failure. By my brother's order they were dumped into +capacious waste baskets and better materials secured from writers of +capacity—among them such persons as Dr. Edward Everett Hale, Asa Gray, +George E. Waring, Jr., Charles Barnard, Mrs. Runkle, Helen Hunt, Rebecca +Harding Davis, Sara Orne Jewett, Harriet Prescott Spofford, Rose Terry, +and others of like ability. +</p> +<p class="side"> +Mary Mapes Dodge +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Dodge continued her well-nigh matchless work as editor of the +children's pages, until a year or so later, when she left <i>Hearth and +Home</i> to create the new children's magazine, <i>St. Nicholas</i>. She was a +woman of real genius—a greatly overworked word, but one fitly applied +in her case. Her editorial instincts were alert and unfailing. Her gift +of discovering kernels of value in + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page133" name="page133"></a>[133]</span> + + masses of chaff was astonishing, and +her skill in revising and reconstructing so as to save the grain and rid +it of the chaff was such as I have never known in any other editor. +</p> +<p> +Her industry was at times almost appalling in its tireless energy, yet +it seemed to make no draughts upon her vitality that her singularly +buoyant nature could not meet without apparent strain. +</p> +<p> +She had also a rare gift of recognizing ability in others, judging it +accurately, and setting it to do its proper work. One of the greatest +services she rendered <i>Hearth and Home</i> was in suggesting Frank R. +Stockton for employment on the staff when we found ourselves in need +of an assistant. He had not begun to make his reputation then. Such +newspaper work as he had found to do had afforded his peculiar gifts +no adequate opportunity and outside a narrow circle he was wholly +unknown. But Mrs. Dodge was right in her reckoning when she advised +his employment, and equally right in her perception of the kind of +opportunity he needed. +</p> +<p> +The friendship between Stockton and myself, which was begun during the +time of our association on <i>Hearth and Home</i>, endured and increased to +the end of his life. The fame that those later years brought to him is +a matter of familiar knowledge to all who are likely to read this book. +It is not of that that I wish to write here, or of the character of the +work by which that fame was won. It is only of Stockton the man that +I need set down anything in these pages. +</p> +<p> +He was the best of good company always, as I found out early in our +association, in those days when we went out together for our luncheon +every day and enjoyed an hour of relaxation between the long morning's +work and that of the longer afternoon. He never failed to be ready to +go when the luncheon hour came. His work was always + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page134" name="page134"></a>[134]</span> + + in shape and he +carried no care for it with him when we quitted the office together. +He never talked shop. I cannot remember that he ever mentioned anything +respecting his work or asked a question concerning it between the time +of our leaving the office and that of our return. +</p> +<p> +Not that he was indifferent to it, for on the contrary I never knew a +more conscientious worker, or one who more faithfully attended to every +detail. When his "copy" was laid on my desk I knew perfectly that every +sentence was as he had intended it to be, that every paragraph break +was made at the point he desired it to be, and that every comma was +marked in its proper place. While engaged in doing his work he gave his +undivided attention to it, but when he went with me to the Crooked Stoop +house in Trinity Alley for his luncheon, he gave equal attention to the +mutton and potatoes, while his conversation was of things light, airy, +and not strenuous. +</p> +<p> +I spoke of this to him one day many years after the time of our +editorial association, and for answer he said: +</p> +<p> +"I suppose there are men who can part their hair and polish their boots +at the same time, but I am not gifted in that way." +</p> +<p> +I never saw Stockton angry. I doubt that he ever was so. I never knew +him to be in the least degree hurried, or to manifest impatience in any +way. On the other hand, I never knew him to manifest enthusiasm of any +kind or to indulge in any but the most moderate and placid rejoicing +over anything. Good or ill fortune seemed to have no effect whatever +upon his spirits or his manner, so far as those who were intimately +acquainted with him were able to discover. Perhaps it was only that +his philosophy taught him the injustice of asking others to share his +sorrows or his rejoicings over events that were indifferent to them. +</p> +<p class="side"> +Frank R. Stockton +</p> +<p> +He was always frail in health, but during all the years + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page135" name="page135"></a>[135]</span> + + of my acquaintance +with him I never once heard him mention the fact, or discovered any +complaint of it in his tone or manner. At one time his weakness and +emaciation were so great that he walked with two crutches, not because +of lameness for he had none, but because of sheer physical weakness. +Yet even at that time his face was a smiling one and in answer to all +inquiries concerning his health he declared himself perfectly well. +</p> +<p> +His self-possessed repression of enthusiasm is clearly manifest in his +writings. In none of his stories is there a suggestion of anything but +philosophic calm on the part of the man who wrote them. There is humor, +a fascinating fancy, and an abounding tenderness of human sympathy of a +placidly impersonal character, but there is no passion, no strenuosity, +nothing to suggest that the author is anywhere stirred to enthusiasm by +the events related or the situations in which his imaginary personages +are placed. +</p> +<p> +He one day said to me that he had never regarded what is called "love +interest" as necessary to a novel, and in fact he never made any very +earnest use of that interest. In "The Late Mrs. Null" he presented the +love story with more of amusement than of warmth in his manner, while in +"Kate Bonnet" the love affair is scarcely more than a casual adjunct to +the pirate story. In "The Hundredth Man" he manifested somewhat greater +sympathy, but even there his tone is gently humorous rather than +passionate. +</p> +<p> +Many of the whimsical conceits that Stockton afterward made the +foundations of his books were first used in the more ephemeral writings +of the <i>Hearth and Home</i> period. It has often interested me in reading +the later books to recall my first acquaintance with their germinal +ideas. It has been like meeting interesting men and women whom one +remembers as uncouth boys or as girls in pantalettes. For <i>Hearth and +Home</i> he wrote several playful articles + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page136" name="page136"></a>[136]</span> + + about the character of eating +houses as revealed in what I may call their physiognomies. The subject +seemed to interest and amuse him, as it certainly interested and amused +his readers, but at that time he probably did not dream of making it a +considerable part of the structure of a novel, as he afterwards did in +"The Hundredth Man." +</p> +<p> +In the same way in a series of half serious, half humorous articles for +the paper, he wrote of the picturesque features of piracy on the Spanish +Main and along our own Atlantic coast. He gave humor to the historical +facts by looking at them askance—with an intellectual squint as it +were—and attributing to Blackbeard and the rest emotions and sentiments +that would not have been out of place in a Sunday School. These things +he justified in his humorously solemn way, by challenging anybody to +show that the freebooters were not so inspired in fact, and insisting +that men's occupations in life constitute no safe index to their +characters. +</p> +<p> +"We do not denounce the novelists and story writers," he one day said, +"and call them untruthful persons merely because they gain their living +by writing things that are not so. In their private lives many of the +fiction writers are really estimable persons who go to church, wear +clean linen, and pay their debts if they succeed in borrowing money +enough for that purpose." +</p> +<p> +Here clearly was the thought that afterward grew into the novel of +"Kate Bonnet." +</p> +<p> +About that time he wrote a little manual for Putnam's Handy Book Series, +in which he undertook to show how to furnish a home at very small cost. +All his readers remember what fun he made of that performance when he +came to write "Rudder Grange." +</p> +<p class="side"> +A Whimsical View of Plagiary +</p> +<p> +I do not think this sort of thing is peculiar to Stockton's work. I find +traces of it in the writings of others, especially + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page137" name="page137"></a>[137]</span> + + of those humorous +writers who have the gift of inventing amusingly whimsical conceits. +It seems easily possible, for example, to find in "The Bab Ballads" the +essential whimsicalities which afterward made the fortunes of Mr. W. S. +Gilbert's most famous comic operas. +</p> +<p> +Stockton's whimsical logic was brought to bear upon everything; so much +so that I have often wondered how he would have regarded a "hold up" of +his person for the sake of his purse if such a thing had happened to +him. +</p> +<p> +One day a man submitted a manuscript to me for sale. It was an +article on Alice and Phœbe Cary. The subject was interesting and +the article was pleasingly brief, so that I thought it promising. When +I began to read it, the sentences seemed strangely familiar. As I read +on I recognized the thing as an editorial I had myself written for the +<i>Evening Post</i> on the day of Phœbe Cary's funeral. To verify my +impression I went at once to the office of the <i>Evening Post</i>, compared +the manuscript with the printed article, and found it to be a verbatim +copy. +</p> +<p> +I was perhaps a little severe in my judgments of such things in those +days, and when the plagiarist came back to learn the fate of his +manuscript my language was of a kind that might have been regarded as +severe. After the fellow had left, breathing threats of dire legal +things that he meant to do to me for keeping his manuscript without +paying for it, Stockton remonstrated with me for having lost my temper. +</p> +<p> +"It seems to me," he said, "that you do not sufficiently consider the +circumstances of the case. That man has his living to make as a writer, +and nature has denied him the ability to create literature that he +can sell. What is more reasonable, then, than that he should select +marketable things that other people have written and sell them? His + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page138" name="page138"></a>[138]</span> + + creative ability failing him, what can he do but use his critical +ability in its stead? If he is not equal to the task of producing +salable stuff, he at least knows such stuff when he sees it, and in +the utilization of that knowledge he finds a means of earning an honest +living. +</p> +<p> +"Besides in selecting an article of yours to 'convey,' he has paid you +a distinct compliment. He might have taken one of mine instead, but that +his critical judgment saw the superiority of yours. You should recognize +the tribute he has paid you as a writer. +</p> +<p> +"Still again what harm would have been done if he had succeeded +in selling the article? It had completely served its purpose as an +editorial in the <i>Evening Post</i>, why should it not serve a larger +purpose and entertain a greater company of readers? +</p> +<p> +"Finally I am impressed with the illustration the case affords of the +vagaries of chance as a factor in human happenings. There are thousands +of editors in this country to whom that man might have offered the +article. You were the only one of them who could by any possibility have +recognized it as a plagiarism. According to the doctrine of chances he +was perfectly safe in offering the manuscript for sale. The chances +were thousands to one against its recognition. It was his ill-luck to +encounter the one evil chance in the thousands. The moral of that is +that it is unsafe to gamble. Still, now that he knows the one editor who +can recognize it, he will no doubt make another copy of the article and +sell it in safety to some one else." +</p> +<p> +This prediction was fulfilled. The article appeared not long afterward +as a contribution to another periodical. In the meanwhile Stockton's +whimsical view of the matter had so amused me as to smooth my temper, +and I did not think it necessary to expose the petty theft. +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page139" name="page139"></a>[139]</span></p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0042" id="h2H_4_0042"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + XLI +</h2> + +<p class="side"> +Some Plagiarists I Have Known +</p> +<p> +The view taken by Stockton's perverse humor was much the same as that +entertained by Benjamin Franklin with greater seriousness. He tells us +in his Autobiography that at one time he regularly attended a certain +church whose minister preached able sermons that interested him. When it +was discovered that the sermons were borrowed, without credit, from some +one else, the church dismissed the preacher and put in his place another +whose sermons, all his own, did not interest Franklin, who thereupon +ceased to attend the church, protesting that he preferred good sermons, +plagiarized, to poor ones of the preacher's own. +</p> +<p> +I have since learned what I did not know at the time of the incident +related, that there is a considerable company of minor writers hanging +as it were on the skirts of literature and journalism, who make the +better part of their meager incomes by copying the writings of others +and selling them at opportune times. Sometimes these clever pilferers +copy matter as they find it, particularly when its source is one not +likely to be discovered. Sometimes they make slight alterations in it +for the sake of disguise, and sometimes they borrow the substance of +what they want and change its form somewhat by rewriting it. Their +technical name for this last performance is "skinning" an article. +</p> +<p> +I have since had a good deal of experience with persons of this sort. +When Horace Greeley died one of them—a woman—sold me a copy of the +text of a very interesting letter from him which she assured me had +never been seen by any one outside the little group that cherished the +original. I learned later that she had simply copied + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page140" name="page140"></a>[140]</span> + + the thing from +the <i>Home Journal</i>, where it had been printed many months before. +</p> +<p> +One day some years later I had a revelation made to me of the ethics +of plagiarism accepted by a certain class of writers for the minor +periodicals. I found in an obscure magazine a signed article on the +heroism of women, or something of that sort, the first paragraphs of +which were copied verbatim from a book of my own, in which I had written +it as a personal recollection. When the writer of the article was +questioned as to his trespass upon my copyright, he wrote me an +exceedingly gracious letter of apology, saying, by way of explanation, +that he had found the passage in an old scrapbook of his own, with no +memorandum of its authorship attached. He had thought it no harm, he +said, to make the thing his own, a thing, he assured me, he would not +have done had he known whose the passage was. This explanation seemed to +satisfy his conscience completely. I wonder what he would have thought +himself privileged to do with a horse or a cow found wandering along a +lane without the escort of its owner. +</p> +<p class="side"> +A Peculiar Case of Plagiary +</p> +<p> +Sometimes the plagiarist is far more daring in his thefts, taking as his +own much greater things and more easily recognized ones than scrapbooks +are apt to hold. The boldest thing of the sort with which I ever came +into personal contact happened in this wise. As literary editor of the +<i>Evening Post</i> during the late seventies it was a part of my duty to +look out for interesting correspondence. One day there came to me a +particularly good thing of the kind—two or three columns of fascinating +description of certain phases of life in the Canadian Northwest. The +writer proposed to furnish us a series of letters of like kind, dealing +with the trading posts of the Hudson Bay Company, life among the +trappers, Indians, and half-breeds, and the like. The letter submitted + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page141" name="page141"></a>[141]</span> + + was so unusually good, both in its substance and in its literary +quality, that I agreed to take the series on the terms proposed. A +number of the letters followed, and the series attracted the pleased +attention of readers. Presently, in addition to his usual letter our +correspondent sent us a paper relating to the interesting career of +a quaint personage who flourished in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois in +their territorial days. He was known as "Johnny Appleseed," because +of his habit of carrying a bag of apple seeds in his wanderings and +distributing them among the pioneers by way of inducing them to plant +orchards. +</p> +<p> +Unfortunately that article had been written by some one other than +our correspondent and published long before in <i>Harper's Magazine</i>. +When my suspicion was thus aroused with regard to the integrity of the +correspondent, I instituted an inquiry which revealed the fact that the +letters we had so highly valued were plagiarized from a book which had +been published in England but not reprinted here. +</p> +<p> +The daring of the man appalled me, but the limit of his assurance had +not yet been revealed. When I wrote to him telling him of my discovery +of the fraud and declining to send a check for such of the letters as +had been printed and not yet paid for, he responded by sending me a +number of testimonials to the excellence of his character, furnished by +the clergymen, bankers, and leading men generally of the town in which +he lived. Having thus rehabilitated his character, he argued that as +the letters had proved interesting to the readers of the paper, we had +got our money's worth, and that it made no difference in the quality +of the literature furnished whether he had written it himself or had +transcribed it from a book written by another person. Curiously enough +there was a tone of assured sincerity in all this which was baffling to + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page142" name="page142"></a>[142]</span> + + the understanding. I can explain it only by thinking that he plagiarized +that tone also. +</p> +<p> +It was about that time that my work as literary editor of the <i>Evening +Post</i> brought to my attention two cases of what I may call more +distinguished plagiarism. Mrs. Wister, a gifted scholar and writer, was +at that time rendering a marked service to literature by her exceedingly +judicious adaptations of German fiction to the use of American readers. +She took German novels that were utterly too long and in other ways +unfit for American publication, translated them freely, shortened them, +and otherwise saved to American readers all that was attractive in +novels which, if directly translated, would have had no acceptability at +all in this country. The results were quite as much her own as those of +the German authors of the books thus treated. +</p> +<p> +I had recently read and reviewed one of the cleverest of these books of +hers, when there came to me for review an English translation of the +same German novel, under another title. That translation was presented +as the work of an English clergyman, well known as one of the most +prolific writers of his time. As I looked over the book I discovered +that with the exception of a few initiatory chapters, it was simply a +copy of Mrs. Wister's work. In answer to the charge of plagiarism the +reverend gentleman explained that he had set out to translate the book, +but that when he had rendered a few chapters of it into English Mrs. +Wister's work fell into his hands and he found her version so good that +he thought it best to adopt it instead of making one of his own. He +omitted, however, to explain the ethical conceptions that had restrained +him from practising common honesty in a matter involving both reputation +and revenue. That was at a time when English complaints of "American +piracy" were loudest. +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page143" name="page143"></a>[143]</span></p> + +<p class="side"> +A Borrower from Stedman +</p> +<p> +The other case was a more subtle one, and incidentally more interesting +to me. As literary editor of the <i>Evening Post</i>, under the editorship +of Mr. Bryant, who held the literary side of the paper's work to be of +more consequence than all the rest of it put together, I had to read +everything of literary significance that appeared either in England +or in America. One day I found in an English magazine an elaborate +article which in effect charged Tennyson with wholesale plagiary from +Theocritus. The magazinist was disposed to exploit himself as a literary +discoverer, and he presented his discoveries with very little of that +delicacy and moderation which a considerate critic would regard as the +due of so distinguished a poet as Tennyson. I confess that his tone +aroused something like antagonism in my mind, and I rather rejoiced +when, upon a careful reading of his article, I found that he was no +discoverer at all. Practically all that he had to say had been much +better said already by Edmund C. Stedman first in a magazine essay and +afterwards in a chapter of the "Victorian Poets." The chief difference +was that Stedman had written with the impulse and in the tone and manner +of a scholarly gentleman, while the other had exploited himself like a +prosecuting attorney. +</p> +<p> +The obvious thing to do was to get Stedman, if that were possible, to +write a signed article on the subject for the <i>Evening Post</i>. With that +end in view I went at once to his office in Broad Street. +</p> +<p> +I knew him well, in literary and social ways, but I had never before +trespassed upon his banker existence, and the visit mightily interested +me, as one which furnished a view of an unfamiliar side of the +"manyest-sided man"—that phrase I had learned from Mr. Whitelaw +Reid—whom I ever knew. +</p> +<p> +It was during Stock Exchange hours that I made my call, and I intended +to remain only long enough to secure + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page144" name="page144"></a>[144]</span> + + an appointment for some other and +less occupied time. But the moment I indicated the matter I wished to +consult with him about, Stedman linked his arm in mine and led me to +his "den," a little room off the banking offices, and utterly unlike +them in every detail. Here were books—not ledgers; here were all the +furnishings of the haunt of a man of letters, without a thing to suggest +that the man of letters knew or cared for anything relating to stocks, +bonds, securities, loans, discounts, dividends, margins, or any other +of the things that are alone considered of any account in Wall Street. +</p> +<p> +"This is the daytime home of the literary side of me," he explained. +"When I'm out there"—pointing, "I think of financial things; when I +enter here I forget what a dollar mark looks like." +</p> +<p> +"I see," I said. "Minerva in Wall Street—Athene, if you prefer the +older Greek name." +</p> +<p> +"Say Apollo instead—for if there is anything I pride myself upon it is +my masculinity. 'Male and female created he them, and God saw that it +was good,' but the garments of one sex do not become the other, and +neither do the qualities and attributes." +</p> +<p> +He had a copy of "The Victorian Poets" in the den and together we made a +minute comparison of his study of Tennyson's indebtedness to Theocritus, +Bion, and Moschus with the magazinist's article. For result we found +that beyond a doubt the magazinist had "skinned" his article out of +Stedman's chapter—in other words, that he had in effect plagiarized his +charge of plagiary and the proofs of it. +</p> +<p> +Stedman refused to write anything on the subject, deeming it not worth +while, a judgment which I am bound to say was sound, though I did not +like to accept it because my news instinct scented game and I wanted +that article from Stedman's pen. His scholarly criticism was literature + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page145" name="page145"></a>[145]</span> + + of lasting importance and interest. The magazine assault upon Tennyson's +fame is utterly forgotten of those who read it. +</p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0043" id="h2H_4_0043"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + XLII +</h2> + +<p class="side"> +"The Hoosier Schoolmaster's" Influence +</p> +<p> +It was early in our effort to achieve a circulation for <i>Hearth and +Home</i> that my brother decided to write for it his novel, "The Hoosier +Schoolmaster." I have elsewhere related the story of the genesis of that +work, and I shall not repeat it here. Its success was immediate and +astonishing. It quickly multiplied the circulation of <i>Hearth and Home</i> +many times over. It was reprinted serially in a dozen or more weekly +newspapers in the West and elsewhere, and yet when it was published in a +peculiarly unworthy and unattractive book form, its sales exceeded fifty +thousand copies during the first month, at a time when the sale of ten +thousand copies all told of any novel was deemed an unusual success. +The popularity of the story did not end even there. Year after year it +continued to sell better than most new novels, and now nearly forty +years later, the demand for it amounts to several thousand copies per +annum. It was translated into several foreign languages—in spite of the +difficulty the translators must have encountered in rendering an uncouth +dialect into languages having no such dialect. It was republished in +England, and the French version of it appeared in the <i>Revue des Deux +Mondes</i>. +</p> +<p> +But great as its popularity was and still is, I am disposed to regard +that as a matter of less significance and less consequence than the +influence it exercised in stimulating and guiding the literary endeavors +of others. If I may quote a sentence from a book of my own, "The First +of the Hoosiers," Edward Eggleston was "the very first to perceive +and utilize in literature the picturesqueness + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page146" name="page146"></a>[146]</span> + + of the Hoosier life and +character, the first to appreciate the poetic and romantic possibilities +of that life and to invite others to share with him his enjoyment of its +humor and his admiration for its sturdy manliness." +</p> +<p> +While Edward was absorbed in the writing of "The Hoosier Schoolmaster" +and its quickly following successor, "The End of the World," he more and +more left the editorial conduct of the paper to me, and presently he +resigned his editorial place, leaving me as his successor. +</p> +<p> +The work was of a kind that awakened all my enthusiasm. My tastes were +literary rather than journalistic, whatever may have been the case as to +my capacities, and in the conduct of <i>Hearth and Home</i> my work was far +more literary in character than any that had fallen to me up to that +time in my service on daily newspapers. More important still, it brought +me into contact, both personally and by correspondence, with practically +all the active literary men and women of that time, with many of whom I +formed friendships that have endured to this time in the case of those +who still live, and that ended only with the death of those who are +gone. The experiences and the associations of that time were both +delightful and educative, and I look back upon them after all these +years with a joy that few memories can give me. I was a mere apprentice +to the literary craft, of course, but I was young enough to enjoy and, +I think, not too conceited to feel the need of learning all that such +associations could teach. +</p> +<p> +It was during this <i>Hearth and Home</i> period that my first books were +written and published. They were the results of suggestions from others +rather than of my own self-confidence, as indeed most of the thirty-odd +books I have written have been. +</p> +<p> +Mr. George P. Putnam, the Nestor of American book publishing, the friend +of Washington Irving and the + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page147" name="page147"></a>[147]</span> + + discoverer of his quality, returned to the +work of publishing about that time. In partnership with his son, George +Haven Putnam, then a young man and now the head of a great house, he +had set up a publishing firm with a meager "list" but with ambition to +increase it to a larger one. +</p> +<p class="side"> +My First Book +</p> +<p> +In that behalf the younger member of the firm planned a series of useful +manuals to be called "Putnam's Handy Book Series," and to be sold at +seventy-five cents each. With more of hopefulness than of discretion, +perhaps, he came to me asking if I could not and would not write one or +two of the little volumes. The immediate result was a little book +entitled "How to Educate Yourself." +</p> +<p> +In writing it I had the advantage of comparative youth and of that +self-confident omniscience which only youth can have. I knew everything +then better than I know anything now, so much better indeed that for a +score of years past I have not dared open the little book, lest it +rebuke my present ignorance beyond my capacity to endure. +</p> +<p> +Crude as the thing was, it was successful, and it seems to have +satisfied a genuine need, if I may judge by the numberless letters sent +to me by persons who felt that it had helped them. Even now, after +the lapse of more than thirty-eight years, such letters come to me +occasionally from men in middle life who say they were encouraged and +helped by it in their youth. I once thought of rewriting it with more +of modesty than I possessed when it had birth, but as that would be to +bring to bear upon it a later-acquired consciousness of ignorance rather +than an enlarged knowledge of the subject, I refrained, lest the new +version should be less helpful than the old. +</p> +<p> +The Rev. Dr. Theodore L. Cuyler once said to me: +</p> +<p> +"If one gets printer's ink on his fingers when he is young, he can never +get it off while he lives." The thought + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page148" name="page148"></a>[148]</span> + + that suggested that utterance had +prompt illustration in this case. Not long after this poor little first +book was published, I went to Boston to secure literary contributions +for <i>Hearth and Home</i>. In those days one had to go to Boston for such +things. Literary activity had not yet transferred its dwelling place to +New York, nor had Indiana developed its "school." +</p> +<p> +While I was in Boston Mr. Howells called on me, and in his gentle way +suggested that I should write my reminiscences of Southern army life in +a series of articles for the <i>Atlantic Monthly</i>, of which he was then +the editor. +</p> +<p> +The suggestion, coming from such a source, almost made me dizzy. I had +vaguely and timidly cherished a secret hope that some day—after years +of preparatory practice in smaller ways—I might have the honor and +the joy of seeing some article of mine in one or other of the great +magazines. But that hope was by no means a confident one, and it looked +to a more or less remote future for its fulfilment. Especially it had +never been bold enough to include the <i>Atlantic Monthly</i> in the list of +its possibilities. That was the magazine of Lowell, Holmes, Whittier, +Longfellow, Charles Eliot Norton, and their kind—the mouthpiece of the +supremely great in our literature. The thought of ever being numbered +among the humblest contributors to that magazine lay far beyond the +utmost daring of my dreams. And the supremacy of the <i>Atlantic</i>, in all +that related to literary quality, was at that time very real, so that +I am in nowise astonished even now that I was well-nigh stunned when +Mr. Howells suggested that I should write seven papers for publication +there, and afterward embody them in a book together with two others +reserved from magazine publication for the sake of giving freshness to +the volume. +</p> +<p> +I did not accept the suggestion at once. I was too greatly appalled by +it. I had need to go home and + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page149" name="page149"></a>[149]</span> + + cultivate my self-conceit before I could +believe myself capable of writing anything on the high level suggested. +In the end I did the thing with great misgiving, but with results that +were more than satisfactory, both to Mr. Howells and to me. +</p> +<p class="side"> +"A Rebel's Recollections" +</p> +<p> +The passions aroused by the war of which I wrote had scarcely begun +to cool at that time and there was a good deal of not very friendly +surprise felt when the <i>Atlantic's</i> constituency learned that the great +exponent of New England's best thought was to publish the war memories +of a Confederate under the seemingly self-assertive title of "A Rebel's +Recollections." +</p> +<p> +That feeling seems to have been alert in protest. Soon after the first +paper was published Mr. Howells wrote me that it had "brought a hornets' +nest about his ears," but that he was determined to go on with the +series. After the second paper appeared he wrote me that the hornets +had "begun to sing psalms in his ears" because of the spirit and temper +in which the sensitive subject was handled. On the evening of the +day on which the "Recollections" appeared in book form, there was a +banquet at the Parker House in Boston, given in celebration of the +<i>Atlantic's</i> fifteenth birthday. Without a moment's warning I was toasted +as the author of the latest book from the Riverside Press, and things +were said by the toast-master about the spirit in which the book was +written—things that overwhelmed me with embarrassment, by reason of the +fact that it was my first experience of the kind and I was wholly unused +to the extravagantly complimentary eloquence of presiding officers at +banquets. +</p> +<p> +I had never been made the subject of a toast before. I had never before +attempted to make an after-dinner speech, and I was as self-conscious as +a schoolboy on the occasion of his first declamation before an outside +audience. But one always does stumble through such things. + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page150" name="page150"></a>[150]</span> + + I have known +even an Englishman to stammer out his appreciation and sit down without +upsetting more than one or two of his wine glasses. In the same way +I uttered some sort of response in spite of the embarrassing fact that +George Parsons Lathrop, who had been designated as the "historian of +the evening and chronicler of its events," sat immediately opposite me, +manifestly studying me, I thought, as a bugologist might study a new +species of beetle. I didn't know Lathrop then, as I afterward learned to +know him, in all the friendly warmth and good-fellowship of his nature. +</p> +<p> +When the brief ordeal was over and I sat down in full conviction that +I had forever put myself to shame by my oratorical failure, Mr. Howells +left his seat and came to say something congratulatory—something that +I attributed to his kindly disposition to help a man up when he is +down—and when he turned away Mark Twain was there waiting to say +something on his own account. +</p> +<p> +"When you were called on to speak," he said, "I braced myself up to come +to your rescue and make your speech for you. I thought of half a dozen +good things to say, and now they are all left on my hands, and I don't +knew what on earth to do with them." +</p> +<p> +Then came Mr. Frank B. Sanborn to tell me of a plan he and some others +had hurriedly formed to give me a little dinner at Swampscott, at which +there should be nobody present but "original abolitionists" and my rebel +self. +</p> +<p> +I was unable to accept this attention, but it ended all doubt in my mind +that I had written my "Recollections" in a spirit likely to be helpful +in the cultivation of good feeling between North and South. The reviews +of the book, especially in the New England newspapers, confirmed this +conviction, and I had every reason to be satisfied. +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page151" name="page151"></a>[151]</span></p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0044" id="h2H_4_0044"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + XLIII +</h2> + +<p class="side"> +A Novelist by Accident +</p> +<p> +Before "A Rebel's Recollections" appeared, I had written and published +my first novel, "A Man of Honor." +</p> +<p> +That book, like the others, was the result of accident and not of +deliberate purpose. The serial story had become a necessary feature of +<i>Hearth and Home</i>, and we had made a contract with a popular novelist +to furnish us with such a story to follow the one that was drawing to a +close. Almost at the last moment the novelist failed us, and I hurriedly +visited or wrote to all the rest of the available writers in search of +a suitable manuscript. There were not so many novelists then as there +are now. The search proved futile, and the editorial council was called +together in something like panic to consider the alarming situation. The +story then running was within a single instalment of its end, and no +other was to be had. It was the unanimous opinion of the council—which +included a member of the publishing firm as its presiding officer—that +it would be disastrous to send out a single number of the paper without +an instalment of a serial in it, and worse still, if it should contain +no announcement of a story to come. The council, in its wisdom, was +fully agreed that "something must be done," but no member of it could +offer any helpful suggestion as to what that "something" should be. +The list of available story writers had been completely exhausted, and +it was hopeless to seek further in that direction. Even my old-time +friend, John Esten Cooke, whose fertility of fiction was supposed to +be limitless, had replied to my earnest entreaties, saying that he was +already under contract for two stories, both of which were then in +course of serial publication, and neither of which he had finished +writing as yet. "Two sets of clamorous printers are + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page152" name="page152"></a>[152]</span> + + at my heels," he +wrote, "and I am less than a week ahead of them in the race between copy +and proof slips." +</p> +<p> +As we sat in council, staring at each other in blank despair, I said, +without really meaning it: +</p> +<p> +"If worse comes to worst, I'll write the story myself." +</p> +<p> +Instantly the member of the publishing firm who presided over the +meeting answered: +</p> +<p> +"That settles the whole matter. Mr. Eggleston will write the story. The +council stands adjourned," and without waiting for my remonstrance, +everybody hurried out of the room. +</p> +<p> +I had never written a story, long or short. I hadn't the remotest idea +what I should or could write about. I had in my mind neither plot nor +personages, neither scene nor suggestion—nothing whatever out of which +to construct a story. And yet the thing must be done, and the printers +must have the copy of my first instalment within three days. +</p> +<p> +I turned the key in my desk and fled from the office. I boarded one +of the steamers that then ran from Fulton Ferry to Harlem. I wanted to +think. I wanted quietude. When the steamer brought me back, I had in my +mind at least a shadowy notion—not of the story as a whole, but of its +first chapter, and I had decided upon a title. +</p> +<p> +Hurrying home I set to work to write. About nine o'clock the artist who +had been engaged to illustrate the story called upon me and insisted +upon it that he must decide at once what he should draw as the first +illustration. He reminded me that the drawing must be made on wood, and +that it would take two or three days to engrave it after his work upon +it should be finished. +</p> +<p> +I pushed toward him the sheets I had written and bade him read them +while I went on writing. Before he left + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page153" name="page153"></a>[153]</span> + + a telegram came from the office +asking what the title of the story was to be, in order that the paper, +going to press that night, might carry with it a flaming announcement +of its beginning in the next number. +</p> +<p class="side"> +"A Man of Honor" +</p> +<p> +From beginning to end the story was written in that hurried way, each +instalment going into type before the next was written. Meanwhile, I had +the editorial conduct of the paper to look after and the greater part of +the editorial page to write each week. +</p> +<p> +The necessary result was a crude, ill-considered piece of work, amateurish +in parts, and wholly lacking in finish throughout. Yet it proved +acceptable as a serial, and when it came out in book form ten thousand +copies were sold on advance orders. The publishers were satisfied; the +public seemed satisfied, and as for the author, he had no choice but to +rest content with results for which he could in no way account then, and +cannot account now. +</p> +<p> +The nearest approach to an explanation I have ever been able to imagine +is that the title—"A Man of Honor"—was a happy one. Of that there were +many proofs then and afterwards. The story had been scarcely more than +begun as a serial, when Edgar Fawcett brought out a two or three number +story with the same title, in <i>Appletons' Journal</i>, I think. Then Dion +Boucicault cribbed the title, attached it to a play he had "borrowed" +from some French dramatist, and presented the whole as his own. +</p> +<p> +Finally, about a dozen years later, a curious thing happened. I was +acting at the time as a literary adviser of Harper & Brothers. There was +no international copyright law then, but when a publisher bought advance +sheets of an English book and published it here simultaneously or nearly +so with its issue in England, a certain courtesy of the trade forbade +other reputable publishing houses to trespass. The Harpers kept two +agents in London, one of them to send over advance sheets for + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page154" name="page154"></a>[154]</span> + + purchase, +and the other to send books as they were published. +</p> +<p> +One day among the advance sheets sent to me for judgment I found a novel +by Mrs. Stannard, the lady who wrote under the pen name of John Strange +Winter. It was a rather interesting piece of work, but it bore my title, +"A Man of Honor." In advising its purchase I entered my protest against +the use of that title in the proposed American edition. Of course the +protest had no legal force, as our American copyright law affords no +protection to titles, but with an honorable house like the Harpers the +moral aspect of the matter was sufficient. +</p> +<p> +The situation was a perplexing one. The Harpers had in effect already +bought the story from Mrs. Stannard for American publication. They must +publish simultaneously with the English appearance of the novel or lose +all claim to the protection of the trade courtesy. There was not time +enough before publication day for them to communicate with the author +and secure a change of title. +</p> +<p> +In this perplexity Mr. Joseph W. Harper, then the head of the house and +a personal friend of my own, asked me if I would consent to the use of +the title if he should print a footnote on the first page of the book, +setting forth the fact of my prior claim to it and saying that the firm +was indebted to my courtesy for the privilege of using it. +</p> +<p> +I readily consented to this and the book appeared in that way. A little +later, in a letter, Mrs. Stannard sent me some pleasant messages, saying +especially that she had found among her compatriots no such courteous +reasonableness in matters of the kind as I had shown. By way of +illustration she said that some years before, when she published +"Houp-la," she had been compelled to pay heavy damages to an obscure +writer who had previously + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page155" name="page155"></a>[155]</span> + + used the title in some insignificant provincial +publication, never widely known and long ago forgotten. +</p> +<p> +In the case of "A Man of Honor" the end was not yet. Mrs. Stannard's +novel with that title and the footnote was still in its early months of +American circulation when one day I found among the recently published +English novels sent to me for examination one by John Strange Winter +(Mrs. Stannard) entitled, "On March." Upon examining it I found it to be +the same that the Harpers had issued with the "Man of Honor" title. I +suppose that after the correspondence above referred to, Mrs. Stannard +had decided to give the English edition of her work this new title, but +had omitted to notify the Harpers of the change. +</p> +<p class="side"> +A "Warlock" on the Warpath +</p> +<p> +Mention of this matter of trouble with titles reminds me of a rather +curious case which amused me at the time of its occurrence and may amuse +the reader. In the year 1903 I published a novel entitled "The Master of +Warlock." During the summer of that year I one day received a registered +letter from a man named Warlock, who wrote from somewhere in Brooklyn. +The missive was brief and peremptory. Its writer ordered me to withdraw +the book from circulation instantly, and warned me that no more copies +of it were to be sold. He offered no reason for his commands and +suggested no explanation of his authority to give them. I wrote asking +him upon what ground he assumed to interfere, and for reply he said +briefly: "My grounds are personal and legal." Beyond that he did not +explain. +</p> +<p> +He had written in the same way to the publishers of the book, who +answered him precisely as I had done. +</p> +<p> +A month later there came another registered letter from him. In it he +said that a month had passed since his demand was made and that as I had +paid no heed to it, he now repeated it. He said he was armed with adequate + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page156" name="page156"></a>[156]</span> + + proof that many copies of the book had been sold during that month—a +statement which I am glad to say was true. There must now be a prompt +and complete withdrawal of the novel from the market, he said. +</p> +<p> +This time the peremptory gentleman graciously gave me at least a hint of +the ground upon which he claimed a right to order the suppression of the +novel. He said I ought to know that I had no right to make use of any +man's surname in fiction, especially when it was a unique name like his +own. +</p> +<p> +As I was passing the summer at my Lake George cottage, I sent him a note +saying that I should continue in my course, and giving him the address +of a lawyer in New York who would accept service for me in any action he +might bring. +</p> +<p> +For a time thereafter I waited anxiously for the institution of his +suit. I foresaw a great demand for the book as a consequence of it, and +I planned to aid in that. I arranged with some of my newspaper friends +in New York to send their cleverest reporters to write of the trial. +Charles Henry Webb—"John Paul," who wrote the burlesques, "St. +Twelvemo" and "Liffith Lank"—proposed to take up on his own account +Mr. Warlock's contention that the novelist has no right to use any man's +surname in a novel, and make breezy fun of it by writing a novelette +upon those lines. In his preface he purposed to set forth the fact that +there is scarcely any conceivable name that is not to be found in the +New York City directory, and that even a name omitted from that widely +comprehensive work, was pretty sure to belong to somebody somewhere, so +that under the Warlock doctrine its use must involve danger. He would +show that the novelist must therefore designate his personages as +"Thomas Ex Square," "Tabitha Twenty Three," and so on with a long list +of mathematical impersonalities. Then he + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page157" name="page157"></a>[157]</span> + + planned to give a sample +novel written in that way, in which the dashing young cavalier, +Charles Augustus + should make his passionate addresses to the +fascinating Lydia =, only to learn from her tremulous lips that she +was already betrothed to the French nobleman, Compte [**Symbol: cube +root"]y. +</p> +<p> +Unhappily Mr. Warlock never instituted his suit; John Paul lost an +opportunity, and the public lost a lot of fun. +</p> +<p> +By way of completing the story of this absurdity, it is worth while to +record that the novel complained of had no personage in it bearing the +name of Warlock. In the book that name was merely the designation by +which a certain Virginia plantation was known. +</p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0045" id="h2H_4_0045"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + XLIV +</h2> + +<p class="side"> +"Pike County Ballads" +</p> +<p> +During our early struggles to secure a place for <i>Hearth and Home</i> in +popular favor, I was seized with a peculiarly vaulting ambition. John +Hay's "Pike County Ballads" were under discussion everywhere. Phrases +from them were the current coin of conversation. Critics were curiously +studying them as a new and effective form of literature, and many pious +souls were in grave alarm over what they regarded as blasphemy in Mr. +Hay's work, especially the phrase "a durned sight better business than +loafin' round the throne," at the end of "Little Breeches." +</p> +<p> +I knew Mr. Hay slightly. Having ceased for a time to hold diplomatic +place, he was a working writer then, with his pen as his one source of +income. I made up my mind to secure a Pike County Ballad for <i>Hearth and +Home</i> even though the cost of it should cause our publishers the loss of +some sleep. Knowing that his market was a good one for anything he might +choose to write, + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page158" name="page158"></a>[158]</span> + + I went to him with an offer such as few writers, if any +at that time, had ever received, thinking to outbid all others who might +have designs upon his genius. +</p> +<p> +It was of no use. He said that the price offered "fairly took his breath +away," but told me with the emphasis of serious assurance, that he +"could not write a Pike County Ballad to save his life." "That was what +they call a 'pocket mine,'" he added, "and it is completely worked out." +</p> +<p> +He went on to tell me the story of the Ballads and the circumstances +in which they were written. As he told me the same thing more in detail +many years later, adding to it a good many little reminiscences, I shall +draw upon the later rather than the earlier memory in writing of the +matter here. +</p> +<p> +It was in April, 1902, when he was at the height of his brilliant career +as Secretary of State that I visited him by invitation. In the course of +a conversation I reminded him of what he had told me about thirty years +before, concerning the genesis of the ballads, and said: +</p> +<p> +"I wonder if you would let me print that story? It seems to me something +the public is entitled to share." +</p> +<p> +He responded without hesitation: +</p> +<p> +"Certainly. Print it by all means if you wish, and in order that you +may get it right after all these years, I'll tell it to you again. It +came about in this way: I was staying for a time at a hospitable country +house, and on a hot summer Sunday I went with the rest to church +where I sleepily listened to a sermon. In the course of it the good old +parson—who hadn't a trace of humorous perception in his make-up, droned +out a story substantially the same as that in 'Little Breeches.' +</p> +<p> +"As I sat there in the sleepy sultriness of the summer Sunday, in an +atmosphere that seemed redolent of roasting pine pews and scorching +cushion covers, I fell to thinking + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page159" name="page159"></a>[159]</span> + + of Pike County methods of thought, +of what humor a Pike County dialect telling of that story would have, +and of what impression the story itself, as solemnly related by the +preacher, would make upon the Pike County mind. There are two Pike +Counties, you know—one in Illinois and the other confronting it across +the river, in Missouri. But the people of the two Pike Counties are +very much alike—isomeric, as the chemists say—and they have a dialect +speech, a point of view, and an intellectual attitude in common, and all +their own. I have encountered nothing else like it anywhere. +</p> +<p class="side"> +John Hay's Own Story of the Ballads +</p> +<p> +"When I left the church that Sunday, I was full to the lips of an +imaginary Pike County version of the preacher's story, and on the train +as I journeyed to New York, I entertained myself by writing 'Little +Breeches.' The thing was done merely for my own amusement, without the +smallest thought of print. But when I showed it to Whitelaw Reid he +seized upon the manuscript and published it in the <i>Tribune</i>. +</p> +<p> +"By that time the lilt and swing of the Pike County Ballad had taken +possession of me. I was filled with the Pike County spirit, as it +were, and the humorous side of my mind was entertained by its rich +possibilities. Within a week after the appearance of 'Little Breeches' +in print all the Pike County Ballads were written. After that the +impulse was completely gone from me. There was absolutely no possibility +of another thing of the kind. When you asked me for something of that +kind for <i>Hearth and Home</i>, I told you truly that I simply could not +produce it. There were no more Pike County Ballads in me, and there +never have been any since. +</p> +<p> +"Let me tell you a queer thing about that. From the hour when the last +of the ballads was written until now, I have never been able to feel +that they were mine, that my mind had had anything to do with their +creation, + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page160" name="page160"></a>[160]</span> + + or that they bore any trace of kinship to my thought or my +intellectual impulses. They seem utterly foreign to me—as foreign as if +I had first encountered them in print, as the work of somebody else. It +is a strange feeling. Of course every creative writer feels something of +the sort with regard to much of his work, but I, at least, have never +had the feeling one-tenth so strongly with regard to anything else I +ever did. +</p> +<p> +"Now, let me tell you," Mr. Hay continued, "of some rather interesting +experiences I have had with respect to the ballads. One day at the +Gilsey House, in New York, I received the card of a gentleman, and when +he came to my room he said: +</p> +<p> +"'I am the son of the man whom you celebrated in one of your ballads as +Jim Bludso, the engineer who stuck to his duty and declared he would +"hold her nozzle agin the bank till the last galoot's ashore."'" +</p> +<p> +Mr. Hay added: +</p> +<p> +"This gave me an opportunity. Mark Twain had criticised the ballad, +saying that Jim Bludso must have been a pilot, and not an engineer, for +the reason that an engineer, having once set his engines going, could +have no need to stay by them. In view of this criticism, I asked my +visitor concerning it, telling him of what Mark Twain had said. For +answer the caller assured me that the original Jim Bludso was in fact +an engineer. He explained that as a Mississippi River steamboat has two +engines, each turning an independent wheel, and as the current of the +river is enormously swift, it was necessary for the engineer to remain +at his post, working one engine and then the other, backing on one +sometimes and going ahead on the other, if her nozzle was to be held +'agin the bank till the last galoot's ashore.'" +</p> +<p class="side"> +Some Anecdotes from John Hay +</p> +<p> +For reply to this I told Mr. Hay that I had seen in a Memphis cemetery a +tombstone erected to a pilot, and + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page161" name="page161"></a>[161]</span> + + inscribed with the story of his heroic +death in precisely Jim Bludso's spirit. At the time that I read the +inscription on it, "Jim Bludso" had not been written, but the matter +interested me and I made inquiry for the exact facts. The story as I +heard it was this: The boat being afire the pilot landed her, head-on +against a bank that offered no facilities for making her fast with +cables. The only way to get the "galoots ashore" was for the pilot +to remain at his post and ring his engine bells for going ahead and +backing, so as to "hold her nozzle agin the bank." But the flames were +by that time licking the rear of the pilot house, and the captain +frantically entreated the pilot to leap from the forward part of the +structure to the deck below. This the heroic fellow refused to do so +long as the safety of the passengers required his presence at his post. +He stood there, calmly smoking his cigar and coolly ringing his bells as +occasion required till at last every other human being on board had been +saved. By that time the flames had completely enveloped the pilot-house, +and there was left no possible way of escape. Then relinquishing his +hold upon the wheel, the pilot folded his arms and stood like a statue +until the floor beneath him gave way and he sank to a cruel death in the +furnace-like fire below. +</p> +<p> +The details of the story were related to me by Captain John Cannon, of +the steamer "Robert E. Lee," and the weather-beaten old navigator was +not ashamed of the tears that trickled down his cheeks as he told the +tale. +</p> +<p> +When I had finished, Mr. Hay said: +</p> +<p> +"That only means that we have two heroes to revere instead of one. Jim +Bludso was an engineer." +</p> +<p> +Continuing his talk of coincidences, Mr. Hay said: +</p> +<p> +"I once went up to my native village, and as I walked along the street I +accidentally jostled a man. When I apologized, he turned to me and said: +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page162" name="page162"></a>[162]</span></p> + +<p> +"'I ought to know you and you ought to know me, for your name's John +Hay and mine's Jim Bludso. But I'm not the fellow you wrote that poetry +about. He's very dead and you see I'm very much alive.'" +</p> +<p> +Then Mr. Hay told me of another curious encounter that connected itself +with the Pike County Ballads. +</p> +<p> +"You remember," he said, "that it was from the sermon of an old minister +that I got the story told in 'Little Breeches.' Well, when I was in +California in company with President McKinley, I was one day visited by +a venerable man who proved to be none other than the preacher from whose +lips I had heard the original and authoritative prosaic version of that +miracle story. It is curious how these coincidences occur." +</p> +<p> +The substance of this conversation with Mr. Hay was embodied in an +article of mine in the New York <i>Herald</i> for April 27, 1902. Proofs of +the interview were sent to Mr. Hay in advance of publication, with my +request that he should make such corrections in them as he saw fit. He +returned the slips to me without an alteration and with a note saying; +"I have no suggestions to make. Your report of our conversation is +altogether accurate. I only wish I might have said something better +worth printing." +</p> +<p> +That was the last time I saw John Hay. It was the end of an acquaintance +which had been cordial, though not intimate, and which had extended over +a period of thirty years. As I was leaving he stopped me. He took up a +copy of the pamphlet containing his splendid tribute to the memory of +President McKinley, inscribed it with his autograph, and handed it to +me, saying, with a touch of sadness which was not quite melancholy: +</p> +<p> +"You care for my literary work. Perhaps in the coming years you will +care to have, from my own hand, this + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page163" name="page163"></a>[163]</span> + + copy of my latest and probably my +last essay in that department of human endeavor." +</p> +<p> +The event verified his prophecy. He soon afterward fell ill, and in the +year 1905 he died, affectionately regretted by every one who had ever +known him personally and by scores of thousands who had known him only +through his work. +</p> +<p class="side"> +Mr. Hay's Personality +</p> +<p> +John Hay's personal character was the foundation upon which all his +successes, whether in journalism, literature, or statecraft were built. +He was utterly sincere, as instinctively truthful as a child, and as +gentle of spirit as any woman ever was. Those who knew him personally +were never at a loss to account for the ease with which, in diplomatic +matters, he won men to his wish and persuaded them to his point of +view. Every one who came into contact with him was constrained by his +gentle reasonableness to agree with him. His whole nature was winning +in an extraordinary degree. Strong as he was in his own convictions, +his assertion of them never took the form of antagonism. I really +suppose that John Hay never said a thing in his life which aroused +resentment—and that not because of any hesitation on his part to utter +his thought but because of the transparent justice of the thought, +and of his gently persuasive way of uttering it. His convictions were +strong and there was enough of apostleship in his nature to prompt him +to urge them on all proper occasions: but he urged them soothingly, +convincingly, never by arrogant assertion or with obnoxious insistence. +</p> +<p> +Feeling no disposition to quarrel with anybody on his own account, +he was always alert to make an end of other people's quarrels when +opportunity of pacification came to him. +</p> +<p> +I remember an instance of this that fell under my own notice. During a +prolonged absence of Mr. Whitelaw + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page164" name="page164"></a>[164]</span> + + Reid from the country, Mr. Hay was +left in control of the <i>Tribune</i>. I was not connected with any newspaper +at the time, but was "running a literary shop" of my own, as Mr. Hay +expressed it—writing books of my own, editing other people's books, +advising a publishing firm, and writing for various newspapers and +magazines. Now and then, when some occurrence suggested it, I wrote an +editorial article for the <i>Tribune</i>, as I had done occasionally for a +good many years before. +</p> +<p> +One day Mr. Hay asked me to call upon him with reference to some work he +wanted me to do. After we had arranged all the rest of it, he picked up +Jefferson Davis's "Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government," which +had just been published. +</p> +<p> +"That is a subject," Mr. Hay said, "on which you can write as an expert. +I want you, if you will, to review the book for the <i>Tribune</i>." +</p> +<p> +I objected that my estimate of Mr. Davis was by no means a flattering +one, and that in a cursory examination which I had already given to his +book, I had discovered some misrepresentations of fact so extraordinary +that they could not be passed over in charitable silence. I cited, as +one of these misrepresentations, Mr. Davis's minute account—expunged +from later editions of the book, I believe—of the final evacuation of +Fort Sumter and the city of Charleston—in which he gave an account of +certain theatrical performances that never occurred, and of impassioned +speeches made by an officer who was not there and had not been there for +eight months before the time of the evacuation. +</p> +<p> +"So far as that is concerned," said Mr. Hay, "it makes no difference. As +a reviewer you will know what to say of such things. Mr. Davis has put +forward a book. It is subject to criticism at the hands of any capable +and honest reviewer. Write of it conscientiously, and + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page165" name="page165"></a>[165]</span> + + with as much of +good temper as you can. That is all I desire." +</p> +<p> +I then suggested another difficulty. For a considerable time past there +had been some ill feeling between the editor of the <i>Tribune</i> and the +publishers of Mr. Davis's book. The <i>Tribune</i> did not review or in any +way mention books published by that firm. On one occasion, when I had +been asked to review a number of books for the paper, one of them was +withdrawn on that account. I suggested to Mr. Hay that perhaps a review +of Mr. Davis's book by one who had been thus warned of the situation +might be a displeasing impertinence. He replied: +</p> +<p> +"I have had no instructions on that head. I know nothing about the ill +feeling. Perhaps you and I may make an end of the trouble by ignoring +it. Write your review and I will publish it." +</p> +<p class="side"> +Mr. Hay and "The Breadwinners" +</p> +<p> +One other thing I may mention here as perhaps of interest. When the +anonymous novel, "The Breadwinners," appeared, it excited a good deal of +comment because of the freedom with which the author presented prominent +persons under a disguise too thin to conceal identity. The novel was +commonly and confidently attributed to Mr. Hay, and some of the critics +ventured to censure him for certain features of it. One night at the +Authors Club, at a time when talk of the matter was in everybody's +mouth, and when Mr. Hay's authorship of the work had well-nigh ceased +to be in doubt, he and I were talking of other things, when suddenly he +said to me: +</p> +<p> +"I suppose you share the general conviction with regard to the +authorship of 'The Breadwinners.' Let me tell you that I did not write +that book, though I confess that some things in it seem to justify the +popular belief that I did." +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page166" name="page166"></a>[166]</span></p> + +<p> +The peculiar form of words in which he couched his denial left me in +doubt as to its exact significance, and to this day that doubt has never +been resolved. Of course I could not subject him to a cross-examination +on the subject. +</p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0046" id="h2H_4_0046"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + XLV +</h2> + +<p> +I have wandered somewhat from the chronology of my recollections, but +this record is not a statistical table, and so it matters not if I +wander farther still in pursuit of vagrant memories. +</p> +<p> +The mention of Mr. Hay's old preacher who had no sense of humor in his +composition reminds me of another of like kind, who was seized with an +ardent desire to contribute—for compensation—a series of instructive +moral essays to <i>Hearth and Home</i>. +</p> +<p> +When asked by a member of the publishing firm to let him do so, I +replied that I did not think the paper was just then in pressing need of +instructive moral essays, but that the reverend gentlemen might send one +as a sample. He sent it. It began thus: +</p> +<p> +"Some philosopher has wisely observed that 'every ugly young woman has +the comforting assurance that she will be a pretty old woman if she +lives long enough.' Doubtless the philosopher meant that a young woman +destitute of physical beauty, with all its temptations, is sure to +cultivate those spiritual qualities which give beauty and more than +beauty to the countenance in later years." +</p> +<p> +And so the dear, innocent old gentleman went on for a column or so, +utterly oblivious of the joke he had accepted as profound philosophy. +I had half a mind to print his solemn paper in the humorous column +entitled, "That Reminds Me," but, in deference to his age and dignity, +I forbore. As is often the case in such matters, + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page167" name="page167"></a>[167]</span> + + my forbearance awakened +no gratitude in him. In answer to his earnest request to know why +I thought his essay unworthy, I was foolish enough to point out and +explain the jocular character of his "philosopher's" utterance, +whereupon he wrote to my publishers, strongly urging them to employ a +new editor, for that "the young man you now have is obviously a person +of frivolous mind who sees only jests in utterances of the most solemn +and instructive import." +</p> +<p> +As the publishers did not ask for my resignation, I found it easy to +forgive my adversary. +</p> +<p class="side"> +The Disappointed Author +</p> +<p> +In view of the multitude of cases in which the writers of rejected +contributions and the victims of adverse criticism are at pains to +advise publishers to change their editors, I have sometimes wondered +that the editorial fraternity is not continually a company of literary +nomads, looking for employment. In one case, I remember, a distinguished +critic reviewing a rather pretentious book, pointed out the fact that +the author had confounded rare old Ben Jonson with Dr. Samuel Johnson +in a way likely to be misleading to careless or imperfectly informed +readers, whereupon not only the author but all his friends sent letters +clamoring for the dismissal of a reviewer so lacking in sympathetic +appreciation of sincere literary endeavor. When I told Mr. George Ripley +of the matter he replied: +</p> +<p> +"Oh, that is the usual thing. I am keeping a collection of letters sent +to Mr. Greeley demanding my discharge. I think of bequeathing it to the +Astor Library as historical material, reflecting the literary conditions +of our time." +</p> +<p> +In one case of the kind that fell to my share there was a rather +dramatic outcome. I was acting as a literary adviser for Harper & +Brothers, when there came to me for judgment the manuscript of a novel +in which I + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page168" name="page168"></a>[168]</span> + + found more of virility and strong human interest than most +novels possess, together with a well constructed plot, a pleasing +literary style, and some unusually well conceived and well portrayed +characters. The work was so good indeed that it was with very sincere +regret that I found myself obliged to condemn it. I had to do so because +it included, as an inseparable part of its structure, a severe and even +a bitter assault upon the work and the methods of Mr. Moody and all the +other "irregular troops" in the army of religion, not sparing even the +"revival" methods of the Methodists and Baptists. It was a rigid rule +of the Harpers not to publish books of that kind, and I might with +propriety have reported simply that the novel included matters which +rendered it unavailable for the Harper list. But I was so interested in +it and so impressed with its superior quality as a work of fiction that +instead of a brief recommendation of rejection, I sent in an elaborate +critical analysis of it, including a pretty full synopsis of its plot. +The "opinion" filled many pages of manuscript—more than I had ever +before written in that way concerning any book submitted to me. +</p> +<p> +A week or so later I happened to call at the Harper establishment, as +it was my custom to do occasionally. Seeing me, Mr. Joseph W. Harper, +Jr.—"Brooklyn Joe" we called him—beckoned to me, and, with a labored +assumption of solemnity which a mirthful twinkle in his eye completely +spoiled, said: +</p> +<p> +"I have a matter which I must bring to your attention, greatly to my +regret. Read that." +</p> +<p> +With that he handed me a letter from the author of the novel, an +Episcopalian clergyman of some distinction. +</p> +<p> +The writer explained that his vanity was in no way offended by the +rejection of his work. That, he said, was to be expected in the case of +an unknown author (a flattering + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page169" name="page169"></a>[169]</span> + + unction with which unsuccessful authorship +always consoles itself), but that he felt it to be his duty as a +clergyman, a moralist, and a good citizen, to report to the house that +their reader was robbing them to the extent of his salary. He had +incontrovertible proof, he said, that the reader had not read a single +page or line of his manuscript before rejecting it. +</p> +<p> +"There," said Joe Harper when I had finished the letter. "I really +didn't think you that sort of a person." +</p> +<p> +"What did you say to him by way of reply?" I asked. +</p> +<p class="side"> +Joe Harper's Masterpiece +</p> +<p> +"I'll show you," he said, taking up his letter-book. "I inclosed a copy +of that intolerably long opinion of yours and wrote this." Then he let +me read the letter. In it he thanked the gentleman for having brought +the dereliction of the reader to the attention of the house, but +suggested that before proceeding to extreme measures in such a case, +he thought it well to be perfectly sure of the facts. To that end, he +wrote, he inclosed an exact copy of the "opinion" on which the novel had +been declined, and asked the author to read it and report whether or not +he still felt certain that the writer of the opinion had condemned the +work unread. +</p> +<p> +The entire letter was written in a tone of submissive acceptance of +the rejected author's judgment in the case. As a whole it seemed to me +as withering a piece of sarcasm as I ever read, and in spite of the +injustice he had sought to do me. I was distinctly sorry for the man to +whom it was addressed. I suppose Mr. Harper felt in the same way, but +all that he said, as he put the letter-book upon his desk, was: +</p> +<p> +"I hope he prepares his sermon early in the week, for that letter of +mine must have reached him about Friday morning, and it may have created +a greater or less disturbance in his mind." +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page170" name="page170"></a>[170]</span></p> + +<p> +A few days later there came a reply. The author said that an examination +of the "opinion" left no room for doubt that the work had been read with +care throughout, but that he had confidently believed otherwise when he +wrote his first letter. He explained that before sending the manuscript +he had tied a peculiar cord around it, inside the wrapper, and that when +it came back to him with the same cord tied about it, he thought it +certain that the package had never been opened. He was sorry he had made +a mistake, of course, but he had been entirely sincere, etc., etc. +</p> +<p> +Mr. Harper indulged himself in an answer to all this. If I had not been +permitted to read it, I should never have believed that anything so +caustic could have been uttered by a man so genially good-tempered as +I knew Mr. Harper to be. It was all the more effective because from +beginning to end there was no trace of excitement, no touch of anger, no +word or phrase in it that could be criticised as harsh or intemperate. +</p> +<p> +Beneath the complaint made by the clerical author in that case there was +a mistaken assumption with which every publisher and every editor is +familiar—the assumption, namely, that the publisher or editor to whom +unsolicited manuscripts are sent is under some sort of moral obligation +to read them or have them read. Of course no such obligation exists. +When the publisher or editor is satisfied that he does not wish to +purchase a manuscript, it makes no manner of difference by what process +he has arrived at that conclusion. The subject of the book or article +may be one that he does not care to handle; the author's manner, as +revealed in the early pages of his manuscript, may justify rejection +without further reading. Any one of a score of reasons may be conclusive +without the necessity of examining the manuscript in whole or even in +part. I once advised the rejection of a book without + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page171" name="page171"></a>[171]</span> + + reading it, on +the ground that the woman who wrote it used a cambric needle and milk +instead of a pen and ink, so that it would be a gross immorality to put +her manuscript into the hands of printers whose earnings depended upon +the number of ems they could set in a day. +</p> +<p class="side"> +Manuscripts and Their Authors +</p> +<p> +But the conviction is general among the amateur authors of unsolicited +manuscripts that the editors or publishers to whom they send their +literary wares are morally bound not only to examine them, but to read +them carefully from beginning to end. They sometimes resort to ingenious +devices by way of detecting the rascally editors in neglect of this +duty. They slenderly stick the corners of two sheets together; or they +turn up the lower corner of a sheet here and there as if by accident but +so carefully as to cover a word or two from sight; or they place a sheet +upside down, or in some other way set a trap that makes the editor smile +if he happens to be in good temper, and causes him to reject the thing +in resentment of the impertinence if his breakfast has not agreed with +him that day. +</p> +<p> +I was speaking of these things one day, to Mr. George P. Putnam, +Irving's friend and the most sympathetically literary of publishers then +living, when he suddenly asked me: +</p> +<p> +"Do you know the minimum value of a lost manuscript?" +</p> +<p> +I professed ignorance, whereupon he said: +</p> +<p> +"It is five hundred dollars." Presently, in answer to a question, +he explained: +</p> +<p> +"In the old days of <i>Putnam's Monthly</i>, one of the multitude of +unsolicited manuscripts sent in would now and then be mislaid. I +never knew a case of the kind in which the author failed to value the +manuscript at five hundred dollars or more, no matter what its subject +or its length or even its worthlessness might be. In one + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page172" name="page172"></a>[172]</span> + + case, when I +refused to pay the price fixed upon by the author, he instituted suit, +and very earnestly protested that his manuscript was worth far more +than the five hundred dollars demanded for it. He even wrote me that he +had a definite offer of more than that sum for it. To his discomfiture +somebody in the office found the manuscript about that time and we +returned it to the author. He sent it back, asking us to accept it. +I declined. He then offered it for two hundred and fifty dollars, then +for two hundred, and finally for seventy-five. I wrote to him that he +needn't trouble to reduce his price further, as the editors did not care +to accept the paper at any price. I have often wondered why he didn't +sell it to the person who, as he asserted, had offered him more than +five hundred dollars for it; but he never did, as the thing has never +yet been published, and that was many years ago." +</p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0047" id="h2H_4_0047"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + XLVI +</h2> + +<p> +It was during my connection with <i>Hearth and Home</i> that I first met two +men who greatly interested me. One of them was the newest of celebrities +in American literature; the other was old enough to have been lampooned +by Poe in his series of papers called "The Literati." +</p> +<p> +The one was Joaquin Miller, the other Thomas Dunn English. +</p> +<p class="side"> +Joaquin Miller +</p> +<p> +Joaquin Miller had recently returned in a blaze of glory from his +conquest of London society and British literary recognition. He brought +me a note of introduction from Mr. Richard Watson Gilder of the +<i>Century</i> or <i>Scribner's Monthly</i> as I think the magazine was still +called at that time. He wore a broad-brimmed hat of most picturesque +type. His trousers—London made and obviously + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page173" name="page173"></a>[173]</span> + + costly—were tucked into +the most superior looking pair of high top boots I ever saw, and in +his general make-up he was an interesting cross or combination of the +"untutored child of nature" fresh from the plains, and the tailor-made +man of fashion. More accurately, he seemed a carefully costumed stage +representation of the wild Westerner that he professed to be in fact. +I do not know that all this, or any of it, was affectation in the +invidious sense of the term. I took it to be nothing more than a clever +bit of advertising. He was a genuine poet—as who can doubt who has read +him? He had sagacity and a keen perception both of the weakness and the +strength of human nature. He wanted a hearing, and he knew the shortest, +simplest, surest way to get it. Instead of publishing his poems and +leaving it to his publisher to bring them to attention by the slow +processes of newspaper advertising, he went to London, and made himself +his own advertisement by adopting a picturesque pose, which was not +altogether a pose, though it was altogether picturesque, and trusting +the poems, to which he thus directed attention, to win favor for +themselves. +</p> +<p> +In saying that his assumption of the rôle of untutored child of nature +was not altogether an assumption, I mean that although his boyhood was +passed in Indiana schools, and he was for a time a college student +there, he had nevertheless passed the greater part of his young manhood +in the wilds and among the men of the wilderness. If he was not in fact +"untutored," he nevertheless owed very little to the schools, and +scarcely anything to the systematic study of literature. His work was +marked by crudenesses that were not assumed or in any wise fictitious, +while the genuineness of poetic feeling and poetic perception that +inspired it was unquestionably the spontaneous product of his own soul +and mind. +</p> +<p> +In my editorial den he seated himself on my desk, + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page174" name="page174"></a>[174]</span> + + though there was a +comfortable chair at hand. Was that a bit of theatrical "business"? I +think not, for the reason that Thomas Bailey Aldrich, the least affected +of men, used nearly always to bestride a reversed chair with his hands +resting upon its back, when he visited me in my office, as he sometimes +did, to smoke a pipe in peace for half an hour and entertain me with his +surprising way of "putting things," before "going off to suffer and be +good by invitation," as he once said with reference to some reception +engagement. +</p> +<p> +London had accepted Joaquin Miller's pose without qualification. Even +the London comic journals, in satirizing it, seemed never to doubt its +genuineness. But on this side of the water we had begun to hear rumors +that this son of the plains and the mountains, this dweller in solitudes +whose limitless silence he himself suggested in the lines: +</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i2"> "A land so lone that you wonder whether </p> +<p class="i2"> The God would know it should you fall dead," </p> +</div> +</div> + +<p> +was after all a man bred in civilization and acquainted with lands so +far from lone that the coroner would be certain to hear of it promptly +if death came to one without the intervention of a physician. +</p> +<p> +As he addressed me by my first name from the beginning, and in other +ways manifested a disposition to put conventionalities completely aside, +I ventured to ask him about one of these rumors, which particularly +interested me. +</p> +<p> +"I hear, Mr. Miller," I said, "that you are my compatriot—that you are +a Hoosier by birth, as I am—is it true?" +</p> +<p> +He sat in meditation for a time; then he said: +</p> +<p> +"George, I've told so many lies about my birth and + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page175" name="page175"></a>[175]</span> + + all that, that there +may be inconsistencies in them. I think I'd better not add to the +inconsistencies." +</p> +<p> +I did not press the question. I asked him, instead, to let me have a +poem for <i>Hearth and Home</i>. +</p> +<p class="side"> +Joaquin Miller's Notions of Dress +</p> +<p> +"I can't," he replied, "I haven't a line of unsold manuscript anywhere +on earth, and just now I am devoting myself to horseback riding in +Central Park. I've got a seven hundred dollar saddle and I must use it, +and you, as an old cavalryman, know how utterly uninspiring a thing it +is to amble around Central Park on a horse trained to regard a policeman +as a person to be respected, not to say feared, in the matter of speed +limits and the proper side of the trail, and all that sort of thing. But +that saddle and these boots must be put to the use for which they were +built, so I must go on riding in the park till they grow shabby, and +I can't think in meter till I get away somewhere where the trees +don't stand in rows like sentinels in front of a string of tents, and +where the people don't all dress alike. Do you know that is the worst +tomfoolery this idiotic world ever gave birth to? It is all right for +British soldiers, because there must be some way in which the officers +can tell in a crowd who is a soldier and who is not, and besides, +regular soldiers aren't men anyhow. They're only ten-pins, to be set +up in regular order by one man and bowled over by another. +</p> +<p> +"But what sense is there in men dressing in that way? You and I are tall +and slender, but our complexions are different. We are free American +citizens. Why should anybody who invites us both to dinner, expect that +we shall wear the same sort of clothes? And not only that, why should +they expect us to put on precisely the same sort of garments that the +big-bellied banker, who is to be our fellow-guest, is sure to wear? It's +all nonsense, I tell you. It is an idea born of the uninventive genius +of an inane society whose constituent members are as badly + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page176" name="page176"></a>[176]</span> + + scared at +any suggestion of originality or individuality as a woman is at the +apparition of a mouse in her bedchamber." +</p> +<p> +I told him I did not agree with him. +</p> +<p> +"The social rule in that respect seems to me a peculiarly sensible and +convenient one," I said. "When a man is invited to anything, he knows +exactly what to wear. If it be a daytime affair he has only to put +on a frock coat with trousers of a lighter color; if it be an evening +function a sparrowtailed coat, black trousers, a low cut vest, and a +white tie equip him as perfectly as a dozen tailors could. In either +case he need not give a thought to his clothes in order to be sure that +his costume will be not only correct but so exactly like everybody's +else that nobody present will think of it at all. It is a great saving +of gray matter, and of money, too, and more important still, it sets +men free. The great majority of us couldn't afford to go to any sort +of function, however interesting, if we had to dress individually and +competitively for it, as women do." +</p> +<p> +"Oh, of course," he answered, "the thing has its advantages, but it is +dreadfully monotonous—what the children call 'samey, samey.'" +</p> +<p> +"By which you mean that it deprives one of all excuse for making himself +conspicuous by his dress—and that is precisely what most of us do not +want to do in any case. Besides, one needn't submit himself to the +custom if he objects to it." +</p> +<p> +"That is so," he answered; "at any rate I don't." +</p> +<p> +His practice in the matter was extreme, of course. Even ten years after +that he visited the Authors Club with his trousers in his boots, but at +the time of my first meeting with him the rule of the "dress coat" was +by no means confirmed. It was still a matter of choice with men whether +they should wear it or not at evening functions, + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page177" name="page177"></a>[177]</span> + + and its use at other +times of day was still possible without provoking ridicule. At almost +every banquet, dinner, or other evening function in those days there +were sure to be a number of frock coats worn, and I remember that at the +memorable breakfast given in Boston in celebration of Dr. Oliver Wendell +Holmes's seventieth birthday in 1879, there were a few guests who wore +evening dress, although we sat down to the breakfast at one o'clock and +separated before the sun went down. I observed the same thing at two +of the breakfasts given to Mr. Edmund Gosse in New York in the early +eighties. It was not until near the middle of that decade that the +late William Henry Hurlbut authoritatively laid down the law that +"a gentleman must never appear without evening dress after six o'clock +P.M., and never, <i>never</i> wear it before that hour, even at a wedding—even +at his own wedding." +</p> +<p class="side"> +Dress Reform à la Stedman +</p> +<p> +I remember an incident that grew out of this once vexed question, which +is perhaps worth recalling. When the Authors Club was founded in 1882, +our chief concern was to make it and keep it an informal, brotherly +organization of literary men by excluding from its rules and its +practices everything that might impose restraint upon social liberty. We +aimed at the better kind of Bohemianism—the Bohemianism of liberty, not +license; the Bohemianism which disregards all meaningless formalities +but respects the decencies and courtesies of social intercourse. +</p> +<p> +Edmund Clarence Stedman was an enthusiastic advocate of this policy. He +was beset, he told me at the time, by a great fear that the club might +go the way of other organizations with which he was connected; that it +might lose its character as an association of authors in sympathy with +each other's work and aspirations, and become merely an agency of +fashion, a giver of banquets and receptions at which men should be +always on dress parade. By way + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page178" name="page178"></a>[178]</span> + + of averting that degeneracy he proposed +for one thing that the members of the club should address each other +always by their first names, as schoolboys do. This proved to be +impracticable in a club which included such men as Dr. Drisler, Dr. +Youmans, President Noah Porter, Bishop Hurst, Parke Godwin, James +Russell Lowell, and others of like dignity—together with a lot of +younger men who made their first acquaintance with these in the club +itself. But another of Stedman's suggestions met with ready acceptance. +He proposed that we should taboo evening dress at our meetings. In +playful humor he suggested that if any member should appear at a meeting +of the club in that conventional garb, he should be required to stand up +before all the company, explain himself, and apologize. +</p> +<p> +We laughingly adopted the rule, and the first person who fell a victim +to it was Stedman himself. About ten o'clock one night he entered the +club in full dinner dress. Instantly he was arraigned and, standing +in the midst of what he called "the clamorous mob," entered upon his +explanation. He had come, he said, directly from a philistine dinner at +which the garb he wore was as inexorably necessary as combed hair or +polished boots or washed hands; his home was far away, and he had been +forced to choose between coming to the club in evening dress and not +coming at all. Of the two calamities he had chosen the former as the +primrose path—a path he had always followed instead of the stormy and +thorny one, he said, whenever liberty of choice had been his. Then by +way of "fruits meet for repentance," he drew from his pocket a black +cravat and in the presence of the club substituted it for the white +one he had been wearing. At that time no other than a white cravat was +permitted with evening dress, so that by this substitution of a black +one, he took himself out of the category of the condemned + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page179" name="page179"></a>[179]</span> + + and became +again a companion in good-fellowship over the punch and pipes. +</p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0048" id="h2H_4_0048"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + XLVII +</h2> + +<p class="side"> +Beginnings of Newspaper Illustration +</p> +<p> +It was during the early seventies that the inevitable happened, or +at least began to happen, with regard to newspaper illustration. The +excessive cost of illustrating periodicals by wood engraving, and the +time required for its slow accomplishment, together with the growing +eagerness of the people for pictures, set a multitude of men of clever +wits at work to devise some cheaper and speedier process of reproducing +drawings and photographic pictures. I myself invented a very crude +and imperfect process of that kind, which I thought susceptible of +satisfactory development. I engaged a certain journalist of irregular +habits and large pretensions, who was clever with his pencil, to join +me in the development and exploitation of the process, he to furnish +such drawings of various kinds as I needed, and I to experiment in +reproduction. Of course I had to explain my process to him, and he, +being a shrewd young man whose moral character was far less admirable +than his always perfect costume, mastered my secret and sold it for a +trifling sum to a man who promptly patented it and, with a few changes +which I had not the cleverness to make, brought it into use as his own. +</p> +<p> +I said some ugly things to my dishonest coadjutor, whose manner of +receiving them convinced me that he was well used to hear himself +characterized in that way. Then I laughed at myself, went home and read +about Moses and the green spectacles, in "The Vicar of Wakefield," and +so calmed my spirit. +</p> +<p> +But mine was an extremely unsatisfactory process, even after the +inventor who had bought it from my rascally + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page180" name="page180"></a>[180]</span> + + associate had improved it +to the limit of his capacity, and there were far cleverer men at work +upon the same problem. By 1874 one of them had so far succeeded that an +enterprising firm, owning his patents, decided to set up in New York a +daily illustrated newspaper, the <i>Graphic</i>. +</p> +<p> +The failure of the enterprise was freely predicted from the beginning, +and in the end failure came to it, but not for the reasons given by the +prophets. The <i>Graphic</i> failed chiefly because it never had an editor +or manager who knew how to make a newspaper. An additional cause of its +failure was its inability to get itself into that great news-gathering +trust, the Associated Press, whose agents, local and general, covered +the whole country and the whole world with a minuteness that no single +newspaper could hope to approach. +</p> +<p> +But while the projectors of the <i>Graphic</i> enterprise were full of their +first hopefulness, they bought the good will and the subscription list +of <i>Hearth and Home</i>, in order to make of that periodical the weekly +edition of their illustrated daily newspaper. +</p> +<p> +This left me "out of a job," but altogether happy. I was very tired. I +had had but one week's vacation during my arduous service on <i>Hearth and +Home</i>. I had removed to an old Dutch farmhouse in New Jersey because of +the impaired health of one dear to me. I had become a contributor to +all the great magazines of that time, and a writer of successful books. +I was pleased, therefore, to be freed from the Sisyphean labors of the +editorial office. I decided to give up newspaper work in all its forms +and to devote my future years to literature alone. I retired to my +library, the windows of which were overhung by sweet-scented lilacs and +climbing roses, beyond which lay an orchard of varied fruits surrounding +the old farmhouse. There, I thought I would pass the + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page181" name="page181"></a>[181]</span> + + remainder of +my days—that phrase felt good in the mind of a work-weary man of +thirty-four or about that—in quiet literary work, unvexed by intruding +exigencies of any kind. Of course I would write editorials for those +great metropolitan dailies for which I was accustomed to do that sort of +work from time to time as impulse and opportunity permitted, but I was +resolved never again to undertake editorial responsibility of any kind. +</p> +<p class="side"> +Accident's Part in Literary Life +</p> +<p> +As illustrative of the part that accident or unforeseen circumstance +plays in determining the career of a working man-of-letters, I may +relate the story of how I became at that time a writer of boys' fiction +as a part of my employment. I was writing at the time for the <i>Atlantic</i>, +the <i>Galaxy</i>, <i>Appleton's Journal</i>, and other magazines, and my time was +fully occupied, when there came to me a letter asking me upon what terms +I would furnish a serial story of adventure for a magazine that made +its appeal to boys and girls. Why the editor had thought of me in that +connection I cannot imagine. I had never written a boys' story—long or +short. I had never written a story of adventure of any sort. I said so +in my reply declining to consider the suggestion. A second letter came +promptly, urging me to reconsider and asking that I should at any rate +name the terms on which I would do the work. Thinking that this opened +an easy and certain road of escape, I decided to name terms that I +was confident my editor-correspondent would regard as wholly beyond +consideration. I wrote him that I would do the story if he would pay +me, for serial rights alone, the same price per thousand words that +the great magazines were paying me, I to retain the right of book +publication, and to have, without charge, the plates of any illustrations +the magazine might make for use with my text. +</p> +<p> +Having thus "settled the matter," as I supposed, I dismissed the subject +from my mind as a thing done for. + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page182" name="page182"></a>[182]</span> + + Twenty-four hours later there came a +telegram from the editor, saying: +</p> +<p> +"Terms accepted. Write story. Contracts go by mail for execution." +</p> +<p> +Those ten telegraphic words determined my career in an important +particular. Also they appalled me. They put me under a contract that +I had never thought of making. They placed me under obligation to do a +species of literary work which I had never dreamed even of trying to +do, and for which I felt myself utterly unfit. It was not only that I +had never written a boys' story or thought of writing one; I had never +acquainted myself with that sort of literature; I "knew not the trick +of it," as the poor fellow in "Hamlet" says when urged to play upon +a pipe. Nevertheless, I must do the thing and that immediately, for the +correspondence had named a date only three weeks off for the delivery +of the first instalment of the manuscript. +</p> +<p> +There was no way of escape. I must set to work upon the story. But what +should it be about? Where should its scene be laid? What should be its +plot and who its personages? I had not so much as the shadowy ghost of +an idea, and during the next twenty-four sleepless hours all my efforts +to summon one from the vasty deep or elsewhere brought no result. +</p> +<p class="side"> +My First Boys' Book +</p> +<p> +While I was thus searching a mind vacant of suggestion, my two little +boys climbed upon my knees and besought me to tell them "an Injun +story." I was in the habit of entertaining their very juvenile minds +with exceedingly juvenile fictions manufactured on the spur of the +moment, fictions without plot, without beginning or ending of any +recognizable sort. Sometimes these "stories" were wholly imaginary; +sometimes I drew upon some boyish experience of my own for a subject. +This time the specific demand of my exigent little masters for "an Injun + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page183" name="page183"></a>[183]</span> + + story" led me to think of the Creek War in Alabama and Mississippi. It +so happened that some years before the time of this story telling, I had +lived for a good many weeks among the Cherokees, Muscogees, and Choctaws +in the Indian Territory, hunting with them by day and sleeping with them +around a camp-fire by night. I had in that way become interested in +their very dramatic history, and on my return to civilization I had read +all the literature I could find on the subject of the war in which their +power in our Southern states was overthrown, and they themselves, taken +by the neck and heels, as it were, out of the very hopefully advancing +civilisation they had in part borrowed but in greater part wrought out +for themselves, and thrown back into the half-savage life from which +they had struggled to escape. +</p> +<p> +As I told my little fellows the story they wanted, it occurred to me +that here was my subject and inspiration for the larger story I had +agreed to write. Within a week or two "The Big Brother" was done and +its manuscript delivered. +</p> +<p> +Its serial publication was never completed. When about half the chapters +had been printed, the new and ambitious juvenile magazine, <i>St. Nicholas</i>, +bought and suppressed the periodical that was publishing it. The Putnams +brought my story out in book form, and its success prompted them to ask +me for further boys' books, and as the subject of the Creek War was by +no means exhausted, I drew upon it for the materials of "Captain Sam" +and "The Signal Boys," thus making a trilogy that covered the entire +period between the massacre at Fort Mims and the battle of New Orleans. +</p> +<p> +Then I decided that my wholly unintended incursion into the field +of youths' fiction should end there. I had never intended to write +literature of that kind, and now that I had exhausted the subject of +the Creek War, I had + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page184" name="page184"></a>[184]</span> + + no impulse to hunt for other themes for such use. +Besides, I had by that time become absorbed in newspaper work again, and +had no time for the writing of books of any sort. +</p> +<p> +It was not until the eighties that I wrote another book of juvenile +fiction, and that also came about by accident rather than intention. I +had again given up newspaper work, again meaning never to return to it. +I was conducting a literary shop of my own in Brooklyn, writing for the +magazines, reading for the Harpers, editing the books of other people +whose work needed that sort of attention, and doing other things of the +kind. +</p> +<p> +One night I was entertaining the younger of the two boys who had +suggested the subject of my first work in juvenile fiction. I was +telling him of some adventures of my own and others' on the Carolina +coast, when suddenly he asked: "Why can't we put all that into a story +book?" That evening I received a letter from Mr. George Haven Putnam, +saying that while my three "Big Brother" books were still selling pretty +well, it would stimulate them helpfully if I could add a new one to +the series. In brief, he wanted me to write a new boys' story, and the +proposal fitted in so nicely with the suggestion of my little boy that +I called the child to me and said: +</p> +<p> +"I think we'll write that story book, if you'll help me." +</p> +<p> +He enthusiastically agreed. I can best tell the rest of that book's +story by quoting here from the brief prefatory dedication I wrote for +it when it was published in 1882, under the title of "The Wreck of the +Redbird": +</p> +<p> +"I intended to dedicate this book to my son, Guilford Dudley Eggleston, +to whom it belonged in a peculiar sense. He was only nine years old, +but he was my tenderly loved companion, and was in no small degree the +creator of this story. He gave it the title it bears; he discussed with + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page185" name="page185"></a>[185]</span> + + me every incident in it; and every page was written with reference to +his wishes and his pleasure. There is not a paragraph here which does +not hold for me some reminder of the noblest, manliest, most unselfish +boy I have ever known. Ah, woe is me! He who was my companion is my dear +dead boy now, and I am sure that I only act for him as he would wish, in +inscribing the story that was so peculiarly his to the boy whom he loved +best, and who loved him as a brother might have done." +</p> +<p class="side"> +One Thing Leads to Another +</p> +<p> +It was eighteen years after that that I next wrote a work of fiction for +youth, and again the event was the result of suggestion from without. +"The Wreck of the Redbird" seems to have made a strong impression upon +Elbridge S. Brooks, at that time the literary editor of the Lothrop +Publishing Company of Boston, and in the year 1900 he wrote to me asking +on what terms I would write for that firm "a boys' story as good as 'The +Wreck of the Redbird.'" I had no story in mind at the time. For eighteen +years my attention had been absorbed by newspaper work and by literary +activities of a sort far removed from this. Moreover, I was at the time +working night and day as an editorial writer on the staff of the New +York <i>World</i>, with a good deal of executive duty and responsibility +added. But the thought of calling a company of boy readers around me +again and telling them a story appealed to my imagination, and, as the +terms I suggested were accepted, I employed such odd moments as I could +find between other tasks in writing "The Last of the Flatboats." Its +success led to other books of the kind, so that since this accidental +return to activities of that sort, I have produced six books of juvenile +fiction in the intervals of other and more strenuous work. +</p> +<p> +Perhaps an apology is needed for this setting forth of affairs purely +personal. If so, it is found in the fact that the illustration given of +the part that accident and external + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page186" name="page186"></a>[186]</span> + + suggestion play in determining the +course and character of a professional writer's work, seems to me likely +to interest readers who have never been brought into close contact with +such things. I have thought it of interest to show visitors through the +literary factory and to explain somewhat its processes. +</p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0049" id="h2H_4_0049"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + XLVIII +</h2> + +<p> +After a year and a half of leisurely work in the old orchard-framed, New +Jersey farmhouse, I was suddenly jostled out of the comfortable rut in +which I had been traveling. A peculiarly plausible and smooth-tongued +publisher, a gifted liar, and about the most companionable man I ever +knew, had swindled me out of every dollar I had in the world and had +made me responsible for a part at least of his debts to others. I held +his notes and acceptances for what were to me large sums, and I hold +them yet. I held his written assurances, oft-repeated, that whatever +might happen to his business affairs, his debt to me was amply and +effectually secured. I hold those assurances yet—more than thirty-five +years later—and I hold also the showing made by his receiver, to the +effect that he had all the while been using my money to secure a secret +partner of his own, a highly respectable gentleman who in the course of +the settlement proceedings was indicted, convicted, and sent to prison +for fraud. But the conviction did not uncover any money with which the +debt to me might he liquidated in whole or in part, and the man who had +robbed me of all I had in the world had so shrewdly managed matters as +to escape all penalties. The last I heard of him he was conducting one +of the best-known religious newspapers in the country, and winning +laurels as a lecturer on moral and religious subjects, + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page187" name="page187"></a>[187]</span> + + and especially +as a Sunday School worker, gifted in inspiring youth of both sexes with +high ethical principles and aspirations. +</p> +<p> +When this calamity befel I had no ready money in possession or within +call, and no property of any kind that I could quickly convert into +money. I was "stripped to the buff" financially, but I knew my trade as +a writer and newspaper man. It was necessary that I should get back to +the city at once, and I had no money with which to make the transfer. In +this strait I sat down and wrote four magazine articles, writing night +and day, and scarcely sleeping at all. The situation was not conducive +to sleep. I sent off the articles as fast as they were written, in +each case asking the editors for an immediate remittance. They were my +personal friends, and I suppose all of them had had experiences not +unlike my own. At any rate they responded promptly, and within a week +I was settling myself in town and doing such immediate work as I could +find to do, while looking for better and more permanent employment. +</p> +<p class="side"> +The <i>Evening Post</i> under Mr. Bryant +</p> +<p> +Almost immediately I was summoned to the office of the <i>Evening Post</i>, +where I accepted an appointment on the editorial staff. Thus I found +myself again engaged in newspaper work, but it was newspaper work of +a kind that appealed to my tastes and tendencies. Under Mr. Bryant +the <i>Evening Post</i> was an old-fashioned newspaper of uncondescending, +uncompromising dignity. It loathed "sensation" and treated the most +sensational news—when it was obliged to treat it at all—in a dignified +manner, never forgetting its own self-respect or offending that of its +readers. It resolutely adhered to its traditional selling price of +five cents a copy, and I am persuaded that the greater number of its +constituents would have resented any reduction, especially one involving +them in the necessity of giving or taking "pennies" in change. +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page188" name="page188"></a>[188]</span></p> + +<p> +It did not at all engage in the scramble for "news." It belonged to the +Associated Press; it had two or three reporters of its own, educated +men and good writers, who could be sent to investigate and report upon +matters of public import. It had a Washington correspondent and such +other news-getting agents as were deemed necessary under its rule of +conduct, which was to regard nothing as published until it was published +in the <i>Evening Post</i>. It was the completest realization I have ever +seen of the ideal upon which the <i>Pall Mall Gazette</i> professed to +conduct itself—that of "a newspaper conducted by gentlemen, for +gentlemen." +</p> +<p> +It could be trenchant in utterance upon occasion, and when it was so its +voice was effective—the more so because of its habitual moderation and +reserve. Sometimes, when the subject to be discussed was one that appealed +strongly to Mr. Bryant's convictions and feelings, he would write of it +himself. He was an old man and one accustomed to self-control, but when +his convictions were stirred, there was not only fire but white-hot lava +in his utterance. The lava streams flowed calmly and without rage or +turbulence, but they scorched and burned and consumed whatever they +touched. More frequently great questions were discussed by some one or +other of that outer staff of strong men who, without direct and daily +contact with the newspaper, and without salary or pay of any kind, were +still regarded by themselves and by the public as parts of the great +intellectual and scholarly force in conduct and control of the <i>Evening +Post</i>—such men, I mean, as Parke Godwin and John Bigelow—men once +members of that newspaper's staff and still having free access to its +columns when they had aught that they wished to say on matters of public +concern. +</p> +<p class="side"> +Old-Time Newspaper Standards +</p> +<p> +Best of all, so far as my tastes and inclinations were concerned, the +<i>Evening Post</i>, under Mr. Bryant's and + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page189" name="page189"></a>[189]</span> + + later Mr. Parke Godwin's control, +regarded and treated literature and scholarship as among the chief +forces of civilized life and the chief concerns of a newspaper +addressing itself to the educated class in the community. Whatsoever +concerned literature or scholarship, whatsoever was in any wise +related to those things, whatever concerned education, culture, human +advancement, commanded the <i>Evening Post's</i> earnest attention and +sympathy. It discussed grave measures of state pending at Washington +or Albany or elsewhere, but it was at no pains to record the gossip of +great capitals. Personalities had not then completely usurped the place +of principles and policies in the attention of newspapers, and the +<i>Evening Post</i> gave even less attention to such things than most of +its contemporaries did. The time had not yet come among newspapers +when circulation seemed of greater importance than character, when +the details of a divorce scandal or a murder trial seemed of more +consequence than the decisions of the Supreme Court, or when a brutal +slugging match between two low-browed beasts in human form was regarded +as worthy of greater newspaper space than a discussion of the tariff on +art or the appearance of an epoch-making book by Tennyson or Huxley or +Haeckel. +</p> +<p> +In brief, the newspapers of that time had not learned the baleful lesson +that human society is a cone, broadest at bottom, and that the lower a +newspaper cuts into it the broader its surface of circulation is. They +had not yet reconciled themselves to the thought of appealing to low +tastes and degraded impulses because that was the short road to +multitudinous "circulation," with its consequent increase in +"advertising patronage." +</p> +<p> +Most of the newspapers of that time held high standards, and the +<i>Evening Post</i>, under Mr. Bryant's control, was the most exigent of all +in that respect. +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page190" name="page190"></a>[190]</span></p> + +<p> +Another thing. The "book notice" had not yet taken the place of the +capable and conscientious review. It had not yet occurred to editors +generally that the purpose of the literary columns was to induce +advertisements from publishers, and that anybody on a newspaper staff +who happened to have nothing else to do, or whose capacities were small, +might be set to reviewing books, whether he happened to know anything +about literature or not. +</p> +<p> +It was the custom of the better newspapers then, both in New York +and elsewhere, to employ as their reviewers men eminent for literary +scholarship and eminently capable of literary appreciation. Among +the men so employed at that time—to mention only a few by way of +example—were George Ripley, Richard Henry Stoddard, E. P. Whipple, +Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Charles Dudley Warner, R. R. Bowker, +W. C. Wilkinson, Charles F. Briggs, and others of like gifts and +accomplishments. +</p> +<p> +Mr. Bryant himself had exercised this function through long years that +won distinction from his work for his newspaper. As advancing years +compelled him to relinquish that toil, he surrendered it cautiously into +other hands, but in whatever hands it might be, Mr. Bryant followed it +more minutely and with a more solicitous interest than he gave to any +other part of the newspaper. +</p> +<p> +At the time when I joined the staff there was a sort of interregnum +in the literary department. John R. Thompson, who had held the place +of literary editor for some years, was dead, and nobody had been found +who could fill the place to Mr. Bryant's satisfaction. There were men +who wrote with grace and discretion, and whose familiarity with current +literature was adequate, but Mr. Bryant objected that they were +altogether men of the present, that they knew little or nothing of the +older literature of our language, and hence, as he contended, + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page191" name="page191"></a>[191]</span> + + had no +adequate standards of comparison in their minds. Of one who essayed the +work he said that his attitude of mind was too flippant, that he cared +more for what he himself wrote about books under review than for what +the authors of those books had written. Another, he said, lacked +generosity of sympathy with halting but sincere literary endeavor, and +so on with others. +</p> +<p> +My own editorial work was exigent at the time and there was added to it +the task of finding a satisfactory person to become literary editor. I +knew Mr. Bryant very slightly at the time, and I doubt that he knew me +at all, in person, but he knew how wide my acquaintance among literary +men had become in the course of my experience on <i>Hearth and Home</i>, and +he bade the managing editor, Mr. Watson R. Sperry, make use of it in +the search. In common with most other men in the newspaper business, I +regarded the position of literary editor of the <i>Evening Post</i> as the +most desirable one in American journalism. I frankly told Mr. Sperry +that I should myself like the appointment if Mr. Bryant could in any +wise be satisfied of my fitness. I was at the time writing all the more +important book reviews by way of helping in the emergency. +</p> +<p> +Mr. Sperry replied that Mr. Bryant had already suggested my appointment, +as he was pleased with my work, but that he, Mr. Sperry, did not want +to spare me from certain other things that I was doing for him, and +further, that he thought the literary editor of the <i>Evening Post</i> +should be a man whose reputation and position as a recognized man of +letters were well established, as mine were not. +</p> +<p class="side"> +Aldrich's View of New York +</p> +<p> +I agreed with him in that opinion and went on with my quest. Among those +to whom I wrote was Thomas Bailey Aldrich. I set forth to him as +attractively as I could, the duties of the place, the dignity attaching +to + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page192" name="page192"></a>[192]</span> + + it, the salary it carried, and everything else of a persuasive sort +that I could call to mind. +</p> +<p> +For reply Mr. Aldrich wrote that the position was one in every way to be +coveted, and added: +</p> +<p> +"But, my dear Eggleston, what can the paper offer to compensate one for +having to live in New York?" +</p> +<p> +Years afterward I tried to extract from him some apology to New York for +that fling, but without success. +</p> +<p> +One day, while I was still engaged in this fruitless search, Mr. Bryant +entered the library—off which my little den opened—and began climbing +about on a ladder and turning over books, apparently in search of +something. +</p> +<p> +I volunteered the suggestion that perhaps I could assist him if he would +tell me what it was he was trying to find. +</p> +<p> +"I think not," he answered, taking down another volume from the shelves. +Then, as if conscious that his reply might have seemed ungraciously +curt, he turned toward me and said: +</p> +<p> +"I'm looking for a line that I ought to know where to find, but do not." +</p> +<p> +He gave me the substance of what he sought and fortunately I recognized +it as a part of a half-remembered passage in one of Abraham Cowley's +poems. I told Mr. Bryant so, and while he sat I found what he wanted. +Apparently his concern for it was gone. Instead of looking at the book +which I had placed in his hands open at the desired page, he turned upon +me and asked: +</p> +<p> +"How do you happen to know anything about Cowley?" +</p> +<p> +I explained that as a youth, while idling time away on an old Virginia +plantation, where there was a library of old books, as there was on +every other ancestral plantation round about, I had fallen to reading +all I could + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page193" name="page193"></a>[193]</span> + + find at home or in neighboring houses of the old English +literature, of which I had had a maddening taste even as a little boy; +that I had read during those plantation summers every old book I could +find in any of the neglected libraries round about. +</p> +<p class="side"> +By Order of Mr. Bryant +</p> +<p> +My work for the day lay unfinished on my desk, but Mr. Bryant gave no +heed to it. He questioned me concerning my views of this and that in +literature, my likes and dislikes, my estimates of classic English +works, and of the men who had produced them. Now and then he challenged +my opinions and set me to defend them. After a while he took his leave +in his usual undemonstrative fashion. +</p> +<p> +"Good-afternoon," was absolutely his only word of parting, and after +he had gone I wondered if I had presumed too much in the fearless +expression of my opinions or in combating his own, or whether I had +offended him in some other way. For I knew him very slightly then +and misinterpreted a reticence that was habitual with him—even +constitutional, I think. Still less did I understand that during that +talk of two hours' duration he had been subjecting me to a rigid +examination in English literature. +</p> +<p> +The <i>Evening Post</i> of that afternoon published my review of an important +book, which I had tried to treat with the care it deserved. I learned +afterwards that the article pleased Mr. Bryant, but whether or not it +had any influence upon what followed I do not know. What followed was +this: the next day a little before noon, Mr. Sperry came into my den +with a laugh and a frown playing tag on his face. +</p> +<p> +"Mr. Bryant has just been in," he said. "He walked into my room and said +to me: 'Mr. Sperry, I have appointed Mr. Eggleston literary editor. +Good-morning, Mr. Sperry.' And with that he left again, giving me + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page194" name="page194"></a>[194]</span> + + no time +to say a word. In a way, I'm glad, but I shall miss you from your other +work." +</p> +<p> +I reassured him, telling him I could easily do those parts of that other +work for which he most needed me, and so the matter was "arranged to the +satisfaction of everybody concerned," as the dueling people used to say +when two blustering cowards had apologized instead of shooting each +other. +</p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0050" id="h2H_4_0050"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + XLIX +</h2> + +<p> +Thus began an acquaintance with Mr. Bryant that quickly became as +intimate as I suppose any acquaintance with him ever did—or at any rate +any acquaintance begun after the midyears of his life. Once in a while I +passed a Sunday with him at his Roslyn home, but chiefly such converse +as I enjoyed with him was held in the office of the <i>Evening Post</i>, and +of course it was always of his seeking, as I scrupulously avoided +intruding myself upon his attention. Our interviews usually occurred in +this way: he would enter the library, which communicated with my little +writing room by an open doorway, and after looking over some books, +would enter my room and settle himself in a chair, with some remark or +question. The conversation thus began would continue for such time as he +chose, ten minutes, half an hour, two hours, as his leisure and +inclination might determine. +</p> +<p> +It was always gentle, always kindly, always that of two persons +interested in literature and in all that pertains to what in the +culture-slang of this later time is somewhat tiresomely called "uplift." +It was always inspiring and clarifying to my mind, always encouraging to +me, always richly suggestive on his part, and often quietly humorous in +a fashion that is nowhere suggested in any + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page195" name="page195"></a>[195]</span> + + of Mr. Bryant's writings. +I have searched them in vain for the smallest trace of the humor he used +to inject into his talks with me, and I think I discover in its absence, +and in some other peculiarities of his, an explanation of certain +misjudgments of him which prevailed during his life and which endure +still in popular conception. +</p> +<p class="side"> +Mr. Bryant's Reserve—Not Coldness +</p> +<p> +The reader may perhaps recall Lowell's criticism of him in "A Fable for +Critics." The substance of it was that Mr. Bryant was intensely cold +of nature and unappreciative of human things. I wish to bear emphatic +witness that nothing could be further from the truth, though Lowell's +judgment is the one everywhere accepted. +</p> +<p> +The lack of warmth usually attributed to Mr. Bryant, I found to be +nothing more than the personal reserve common to New Englanders of +culture and refinement, plus an excessive personal modesty and a shyness +of self-revelation, and self-intrusion, which is usually found only in +young girls just budding into womanhood. +</p> +<p> +Mr. Bryant shrank from self-assertion even of the most impersonal sort, +as I never knew any other human being to do. He cherished his own +opinions strongly, but he thrust them upon nobody. His dignity was +precious to him, but his only way of asserting it was by withdrawal from +any conversation or company that trespassed upon it. +</p> +<p> +Above all, emotion, to him, was a sacred thing, not to be exploited or +even revealed. In ordinary intercourse with his fellow-men he hid it +away as one instinctively hides the privacies of the toilet. He could no +more lay his feelings bare to common scrutiny than he could have taken +his bath in the presence of company. +</p> +<p> +In the intimate talks he and I had together during the last half dozen +years of his life, he laid aside his reserve, so far as it was possible +for a man of his sensitive nature to do, and I found him not only warm +in his human sympathies, but even passionate. If we find little of this + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page196" name="page196"></a>[196]</span> + + in his writings, it is only because in what he wrote he was addressing +the public, and shyly withholding himself from revelation. Yet there is +passion and there is hot blood, even there, as who can deny who has read +"The Song of Marion's Men," or his superb interpretation of Homer? +</p> +<p> +There is a bit of literary history connected with "The Song of Marion's +Men," which may be mentioned here as well as anywhere else. The +venerable poet one day told me the facts concerning it. +</p> +<p> +When Mr. Bryant issued the first collected edition of his poems, English +publication was very necessary to the success of such a work in America, +which was still provincial. Accordingly Mr. Bryant desired English +publication. Washington Irving was then living in England, and Mr. +Bryant had a slight but friendly acquaintance with him. It was +sufficient to justify the poet in asking the great story teller's +friendly offices. He sent a copy of his poems to Irving, asking him to +secure a London publisher. This Irving did, with no little trouble, and +in the face of many obstacles of prejudice, indifference, and the like. +</p> +<p> +When half the book was in type the publisher sent for Irving in +consternation. He had discovered, in "The Song of Marion's Men," the +lines: +</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i2"> "The British soldier trembles </p> +<p class="i2"> When Marion's name is told." </p> +</div> +</div> + +<p> +It would never, never do, he explained, for him to publish a book with +even the smallest suggestion in it that the British soldier was a man to +"tremble" at any danger. It would simply ruin him to publish this direct +charge of cowardice against Tommy Atkins. +</p> +<p class="side"> +The Irving Incident +</p> +<p> +For the time Irving was at a loss to know what to do. Mr. Bryant was +three thousand miles away and the only way of communicating with him was +by ocean mails, carried + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page197" name="page197"></a>[197]</span> + + by sailing craft at long intervals, low speed, +and uncertain times of arrival. To write to him and get a reply would +require a waste of many weeks—perhaps of several months. In his +perplexed anxiety to serve his friend, Irving decided to take the +liberty of making an entirety innocent alteration in the words, curing +them of their offensiveness to British sensitiveness, without in the +least altering their significance. Instead of: +</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i2"> "The British soldier trembles </p> +<p class="i2"> When Marion's name is told," </p> +</div> +</div> + +<p> +he made the lines read: +</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i2"> "The foeman trembles in his tent </p> +<p class="i2"> When Marion's name is told." </p> +</div> +</div> + +<p> +"So far as I was concerned," said Mr. Bryant in telling me of +the matter, "what Irving did seemed altogether an act of friendly +intervention, the more so because the acquaintance between him and me +was very slight at that time. He was a warm-hearted man, who in doing a +thing of that kind, reckoned upon a slight friendship for justification, +as confidently as men of natures less generous might reckon upon a +better established acquaintance. He always took comradery for granted, +and where his intentions were friendly and helpful, he troubled +himself very little with formal explanations that seemed to him wholly +unnecessary. I had asked him to secure the publication of my poems +in England, a thing that only his great influence there could have +accomplished at that time. He had been at great pains and no little +trouble to accomplish my desire. Incidentally, it had become necessary +for him either to accept defeat in that purpose or to make that utterly +insignificant alteration in my poem. I was grateful to him for doing so, +but I did not understand + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page198" name="page198"></a>[198]</span> + + his careless neglect to write to me promptly on +the subject. I did not know him then as I afterwards learned to do. The +matter troubled me very little or not at all; but possibly I mentioned +his inattention in some conversation with Coleman, of the <i>Evening +Post</i>. I cannot now remember whether I did so or not, but at any rate, +Coleman, who was both quick and hot of temper, and often a trifle +intemperate in criticism, took the matter up and dealt severely with +Irving for having taken the liberty of altering lines of mine without +my authority. +</p> +<p> +"The affair gave rise to the report, which you have perhaps heard—for +it persists—that Irving and I quarreled and became enemies. Nothing +could be further from the truth. We were friends to the day of his +death." +</p> +<p> +Inasmuch as different versions of the Irving-Bryant affair are extant, +it seems proper to say that immediately after the conversation ended I +put into writing all that I have here directly quoted from Mr. Bryant. +I did not show the record of it to him for verification, for the reason +that I knew him to be sensitive on the subject of what he once referred +to as "the eagerness of a good many persons to become my literary +executors before I am dead." That was said with reference to the irksome +attempts a certain distinguished literary hack was making to draw from +Mr. Bryant the materials for articles that would sell well whenever the +aged poet should die. +</p> +<p> +After a séance with that distinguished toady one day, Mr. Bryant came to +me, in some disturbance of mind, to ask for a volume of verse that I had +just reviewed—to soothe his spirit, he said. Then he told me of the +visitation he had had, and said: +</p> +<p> +"I tried to be patient, but I fear I was rude to him at the last. There +seemed to be no other way of getting rid of him." +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page199" name="page199"></a>[199]</span></p> + +<p> +Alas, even rudeness had not baffled the bore; for when Mr. Bryant died +the pestilent person published a report of that very interview, putting +into the poet's mouth many utterances directly contrary to Mr. Bryant's +oft-expressed opinions. +</p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0051" id="h2H_4_0051"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + L +</h2> + +<p class="side"> +Mr. Bryant's Tenderness of Poets +</p> +<p> +Exigent and solicitous as he was with reference to every utterance in +the <i>Evening Post</i> concerning literature, Mr. Bryant never interfered +with my perfect liberty as literary editor, except in the one matter of +the treatment of poets and poetry. +</p> +<p> +"Deal gently—very gently, with the poets," he said to me at the +time of my assumption of that office. "Remember always, that the very +sensitiveness of soul which makes a man a poet, makes him also peculiarly +and painfully susceptible to wounds of the spirit." +</p> +<p> +I promised to bear his admonition in mind, and I did so, sometimes +perhaps to the peril of my soul—certainly at risk of my reputation +for critical acumen and perhaps for veracity. One day, however, I +encountered a volume of verse so ridiculously false in sentiment, +extravagant in utterance, and inane in character, that I could not +refrain from poking a little fun at its absurdity. The next day Mr. +Bryant came to see me. After passing the time of day, he said: +</p> +<p> +"Mr. Eggleston, I hope you will not forget my desire that you shall deal +gently with the poets." +</p> +<p> +I replied that I had borne it constantly in mind. +</p> +<p> +"I don't know," he answered, shaking his head; "what you said yesterday +about X. Y. Z.'s volume did not seem to me very gentle." +</p> +<p> +"Considered absolutely," I replied, "perhaps it wasn't. But considered +in the light of the temptation I was under + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page200" name="page200"></a>[200]</span> + + to say immeasurably severer +things, it was mild and gentle in an extreme degree. The man is not a +poet, but a fool. He not only hasn't the smallest appreciation of what +poetry is or means, but he hasn't the ability to entertain a thought of +any kind worthy of presentation in print or in any other way. I should +have stultified myself and the <i>Evening Post</i> if I had written more +favorably of his work than I did. I should never have thought of writing +of it at all, but for the <i>Evening Post's</i> rule that every book offered +here for review must be mentioned in some way in the literary columns. +Here is the book. I wish you would glance at the alleged poems and +tell me how I could have said anything concerning them of a more +considerately favorable character than what in fact I printed." +</p> +<p> +He took the book from my hand and looked it over. Then he laid it on my +desk, saying: +</p> +<p> +"It is indeed pretty bad. Still, I have always found that it is possible +to find something good to say about a poet's work." +</p> +<p> +A little later a still worse case came to my lot. It was a volume of +"verse," with no sense at all in it, without even rhythm to redeem it, +and with an abundance of "rhymes" that were not easily recognizable even +as assonances. It was clumsily printed and "published" at some rural +newspaper office, and doubtless at the expense of the author. Finally +the cover attempt at decoration had resulted in a grotesque combination +of incompatible colors and inconsequent forms. In brief, the thing was +execrably, hopelessly, irredeemably bad all over and clear through. +</p> +<p> +I was puzzling over the thing, trying to "find something good to say" of +it, when Mr. Bryant came into my den. I handed him the volume, saying: +</p> +<p> +"I wish you would help me with a suggestion, Mr. + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page201" name="page201"></a>[201]</span> + + Bryant. I'm trying to +find something good that I can say of that thing, and I can't—for of +course you do not want me to write lies." +</p> +<p> +"Lies? Of course not. But you can always find something good in every +volume of poems, something that can be truthfully commended." +</p> +<p> +"In this case I can't regard the sprawlings of ill-directed aspiration +as poems," I replied, "and it seems to me a legitimate function of +criticism to say that they are not poems but idiotic drivel—to +discriminate between poetry in its unworthiest form and things like +that. However, the man calls his stuff poetry. I wish you would help me +find something good that I may say of it without lying." +</p> +<p class="side"> +Commending a Cover +</p> +<p> +He took the book and looked through it. Finally he said: +</p> +<p> +"It is pretty sorry stuff, to be sure. It is even idiotic, and it +doesn't suggest poetic appreciation or poetic impulse or poetic perception +on the part of its author. Still, the man aspires to recognition as a +poet, and he is doubtless sensitively conscious of his own shortcomings. +Let us deal gently with him." +</p> +<p> +"But what can I say, Mr. Bryant?" +</p> +<p> +"Well, of course, there is nothing <i>inside</i> the book that you can +praise," he answered, "but you might commend the cover—no, that is an +affront to taste and intelligence,"—looking it over with an expression +of disgust—"but at any rate you can commend the publishers for <i>putting +it on well</i>." +</p> +<p> +With that—apparently dreading further questioning—he left the room. I +proceeded to review the book by saying simply that the cover was put on +so strongly that even the most persistent and long continued enjoyment +or critical study of the text was not likely to detach or loosen it. +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page202" name="page202"></a>[202]</span></p> + +<p> +I am disposed to think that Mr. Bryant's excessive tenderness toward +poets was lavished chiefly upon the weaklings of that order. For a +little while later a poet of genuine inspiration, who afterwards +did notable work, put forward his first volume of verse. I found an +abundance of good things to say about it, but there was one line in one +of his poems that was so ridiculously inconsequent and absurd, that I +could not refrain from poking fun at it. I am convinced that the poet in +question, with his larger experience and the development that afterward +came to his critical faculties, would not have permitted that line to +stand if it had occurred in a poem of a later period. It appealed to +him then by its musical quality, which was distinctly marked, but when +subjected to the simplest analysis it was obvious and arrant nonsense. +</p> +<p> +Mr. Bryant was interested in the review I wrote of the volume, and in +talking with me about it, he distinctly chuckled over my destructive +analysis of the offending line. There was no suggestion in what he said, +that he regarded the criticism as in the least a transgression of his +injunction to "deal gently with the poets." +</p> +<p> +Unfortunately, the poet criticised seemed less tolerant of the +criticism. He was a personal friend of my own, but when next I saw him +his mood was that of one cruelly injured, and for many years thereafter +he manifested this sense of injury whenever he and I met. I think he +afterward forgave me, for we later became the best of friends, and I am +glad to believe there was no rancor in his heart toward me when he died +a little while ago. +</p> +<p class="side"> +Anonymous Criticism +</p> +<p> +In these cases I was at a peculiar disadvantage—though I think it not +at all an unjust one—in every indulgence in anything like adverse +criticism. I may best explain this, perhaps, by telling of an incident +that happened soon after I assumed my position. I had been lucky enough +to secure from Richard Henry Stoddard a very + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page203" name="page203"></a>[203]</span> + + brilliant review of a +certain book which he was peculiarly the fittest man in all the land to +write about. I had the review in type, when I mentioned to Mr. Bryant +my good fortune in securing it. +</p> +<p> +"Is it signed?" he asked in his gentlest manner. +</p> +<p> +I answered that it was not, for the reason that Stoddard was under a +certain assertion of obligation which he refused to recognize but which +I could not ask him to repudiate, not to write things of that character +for other than a particular publication. +</p> +<p> +"Then I request that you shall not use it," said Mr. Bryant. +</p> +<p> +"But really, Mr. Bryant, there is not the smallest obligation upon him +in the matter. He is perfectly free——" +</p> +<p> +"It is not of that that I was thinking," he interrupted. "That is a +matter between him and his own conscience, and you and I have nothing +whatever to do with it. My objection to your use of the article is +that <i>I regard an anonymous literary criticism as a thing quite as +despicable, unmanly, and cowardly as an anonymous letter</i>. It is +something that no honorable man should write, and no honorably conducted +newspaper should publish." +</p> +<p> +"But my own reviews in the <i>Evening Post</i> are all of them anonymous," +I suggested. +</p> +<p> +"Not at all," he answered. "When you were appointed literary editor the +fact was communicated to every publisher in the country. I directed +that and saw that it was done, so that every publisher and, through the +publishers, every author, should know that every literary criticism in +the <i>Evening Post</i> was your utterance. In veritable effect, therefore, +everything you print in our literary columns is signed, just as every +critical article in the great British reviews is. When Jeffrey ridiculed +'Hours of Idleness,' and later, when he seriously criticised 'Cain,' +Byron had no need to inquire who his critic was. The + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page204" name="page204"></a>[204]</span> + + work was responsibly +done, as such work should be in every case. The reasons seem to me +obvious enough. In the first place, anonymous literary criticism may +easily become a cowardly stabbing in the back under cover of darkness. +In the second place, the reader of such criticism has no means of +knowing what value to place upon it. He cannot know whether the critic +is a person competent or incompetent, one to whose opinions he should +defer or one whose known incapacity would prompt him to dismiss them as +unworthy of consideration because of their source. In the third place, +anonymous literary criticism opens wide the door of malice on the one +hand, and of undue favoritism on the other. It is altogether despicable, +and it is dangerous besides. I will have none of it on the <i>Evening +Post</i>." +</p> +<p> +I suggested that I had myself read the book that Stoddard had reviewed, +and that I was ready to accept his criticism as my own and to hold +myself responsible for it. +</p> +<p> +"Very well," he replied. "In that case you may print it as your own, but +I had much rather you had written it yourself." +</p> +<p> +I have often meditated upon these things since, and I have found +abundant reason to adopt Mr. Bryant's view that an anonymous literary +criticism is as despicable as an anonymous letter. About a year ago I +was startled by the utterance of precisely the same thought in nearly +identical words, by Professor Brander Matthews. I was sitting between +him and Mr. Howells at a banquet given by Colonel William C. Church +to the surviving writers for that best and most literary of American +magazines, <i>The Galaxy</i>, and when Matthews uttered the thought I turned +to Mr. Howells and asked him what his opinion was. +</p> +<p> +"I have never formulated my thought on that question, even in my own +mind," he replied. "I don't know how + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page205" name="page205"></a>[205]</span> + + far it would be just to judge +others in the matter, but for myself, I think I never wrote a literary +criticism that was not avowedly or ascertainably my own. Without having +thought of the ethical question involved, my own impulse is to shrink +from the idea of striking in the dark or from behind a mask." +</p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0052" id="h2H_4_0052"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + LI +</h2> + +<p class="side"> +A Thrifty Poet's Plan +</p> +<p> +On one occasion Mr. Bryant's desire to "deal gently with the poets" led +to an amusing embarrassment. Concerning a certain volume of verse "made +in Ohio" and published by its author, I had written that "this is the +work of a man who seems to have an alert appreciation of the poetic side +of things, but whose gift of poetic interpretation and literary +expression is distinctly a minus quantity." +</p> +<p> +Soon afterward Mr. Bryant entered my den with an open letter in his hand +and a look of pained perplexity on his face. +</p> +<p> +"What am I to do with that?" he asked, handing me the letter to read. +</p> +<p> +I read it. The poet, knowing Mr. Bryant to be the editor of the <i>Evening +Post</i>, evidently supposed that he wrote everything that appeared in +the columns of that newspaper. Assuming that Mr. Bryant had written the +review of his book, he wrote asking that he might be permitted to use +the first half of my sentence as an advertisement, with Mr. Bryant's +name signed to it. To facilitate matters he had prepared, on a separate +sheet, a transcript of the words: +</p> +<p> +"This is the work of a man who seems to have an alert appreciation of +the poetic side of things." +</p> +<p> +This he asked Mr. Bryant to sign and return to him + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page206" name="page206"></a>[206]</span> + + for use as an +advertisement, explaining that "Your great name will help me to sell +my book, and I need the money. It cost me nearly two hundred dollars +to get the book out, and so far I haven't been able to sell more than +twenty-seven copies of it, though I have canvassed three counties at +considerable expense for food, lodging, and horse-feed." +</p> +<p> +I saw how seriously distressed Mr. Bryant was by this appeal, and +volunteered to answer the letter myself, by way of relieving him. I +answered it, but I did not report the nature of my answer to Mr. Bryant, +for the reason that in my personal letter I dealt by no means "gently" +with this particular poet. +</p> +<p> +For the further distraction of Mr. Bryant's mind from a matter that +distressed him sorely, I told him of the case in which a thrifty and +shifty London publisher turned to good advertising account one of the +<i>Saturday Review's</i> most murderous criticisms. The <i>Review</i> had written: +</p> +<p> +"There is much that is good in this book, and much that is new. But that +which is good is not new, and that which is new is not good." +</p> +<p> +The publisher, in his advertisements, made display of the sentence: +"There is much that is good in this book, and much that is +new.—<i>Saturday Review</i>." +</p> +<p> +One thing leads to another in conversation and I went on—by way of the +further diversion of Mr. Bryant's mind—to illustrate the way in which +the <i>Saturday Review</i>, like many other publications, sometimes ruined +its richest utterances by dilution. I cited a case in which that +periodical had begun a column review of a wishy-washy book by saying: +</p> +<p> +"This is milk for babes, with water superadded. The milk is pure and the +water is pure, but the diet is not invigorating." +</p> +<p> +As a bit of destructive criticism, this was complete and + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page207" name="page207"></a>[207]</span> + + perfect. But +the writer spoiled it by going on to write a column of less trenchant +matter, trampling, as it were, and quite needlessly, upon the corpse of +the already slain offender. +</p> +<p> +The habit of assuming that the distinguished editor of a newspaper +writes everything of consequence that appears in its columns, is not +confined to rural poets in Ohio, as three occurrences during my service +on the <i>Evening Post</i> revealed to me. +</p> +<p class="side"> +Mr. Bryant and My Poe Article +</p> +<p> +When a great Poe celebration was to be held in Baltimore, on the +occasion of the unveiling of a monument or something of that kind, Mr. +Bryant was earnestly urged to send something to be read on the occasion +and published as a part of the proceedings. He had no stomach for the +undertaking. It was said among those who knew him best that his personal +feelings toward Poe's memory were of a bitterly antagonistic kind. +However that may be—and I do not know whether it was true or not—he +was resolute in his determination to have no part or lot in this Poe +celebration. In reply to the urgent invitations sent him, he wrote a +carefully colorless note, excusing himself on the plea of "advancing +age." +</p> +<p> +When the day of the celebration came, however, I wrote a long, critical +appreciation of Poe, with an analysis of his character, borrowed mainly +from what Charles F. Briggs had said to me. My article was published +as an editorial in the <i>Evening Post</i>, and straightway half a dozen +prominent newspapers in different cities reprinted it under the headline +of "William Cullen Bryant's Estimate of Poe." +</p> +<p> +Fearing that Mr. Bryant might be seriously annoyed at being thus made +responsible for an "estimate of Poe" which he had been at pains not +to write, I went to his room to speak with him about the matter. +</p> +<p> +"Don't let it trouble you, my dear boy," he said in + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page208" name="page208"></a>[208]</span> + + his most patient +manner. "We are both paying the penalty of journalistic anonymity. I am +held responsible for utterances not my own, and you are robbed of the +credit due you for a very carefully written article." +</p> +<p> +Again, on the occasion of Longfellow's seventieth birthday, Mr. Bryant +resisted all entreaties for any utterance—even the briefest—from him. +I was assigned to write the necessary editorial article, and when it +appeared, one of the foremost newspapers in the country reprinted it as +"One Great Poet's Tribute to Another," and in an introductory paragraph +explained that, while the article was not signed, it was obviously from +Mr. Bryant's pen. +</p> +<p> +During the brief time that I remained on the <i>Evening Post's</i> staff after +Mr. Carl Schurz became its editor, I wrote a rather elaborate review of +Colonel Theodore Dodge's book, "The Campaign of Chancellorsville." The +<i>Springfield Republican</i> reprinted it prominently, saying that it had +special importance as "the comment of General Schurz on a campaign in +which he had borne a conspicuous part." +</p> +<p class="side"> +A Tupper Trepidation +</p> +<p> +When it was given out that Martin Farquhar Tupper intended to visit +America during the Centennial Exposition of 1876, I wrote a playful +article about the "Proverbial Philosophy" man and handed it to the +managing editor for publication as a humorous editorial. Mr. Sperry was +amused by the article, but distressingly perplexed by apprehensions +concerning it. He told me of the difficulty. It seems that some years +before that time, during a visit to England, Mr. Bryant had been very +hospitably entertained by Tupper, wherefore Sperry feared that Mr. +Bryant might dislike the publication of the article. At the same time +he was reluctant to lose the fun of it. +</p> +<p> +"Why not submit the question to Mr. Bryant + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page209" name="page209"></a>[209]</span> + + himself?" I suggested, and +as Mr. Bryant entered at that moment Sperry acted upon the suggestion. +</p> +<p> +Mr. Bryant read the article with many manifestations of amusement, but +when he had finished he said: +</p> +<p> +"I heartily wish, Mr. Sperry, you had printed this without saying a word +to me about it, for then, when Mr. Tupper becomes my guest, as he will +if he comes to America, I could have explained to him that the thing was +done without my knowledge by one of the flippant young men of my staff. +Now that you have brought the matter to my attention, I can make no +excuse." +</p> +<p> +Sperry pleaded that Tupper's coming was not at all a certainty, adding: +</p> +<p> +"And at any rate, he will not be here for several months to come, and +he'll never know that the article was published or written." +</p> +<p> +"Oh, yes he will," responded Mr. Bryant. "Some damned, good-natured +friend will be sure to bring it to his attention." +</p> +<p> +As Mr. Bryant never swore, the phrase was of course a quotation. +</p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0053" id="h2H_4_0053"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + LII +</h2> + +<p> +There has been a deal of nonsense written and published with respect to +Mr. Bryant's <i>Index Expurgatorius</i>, a deal of arrogance, and much cheap +and ill-informed wit of a certain "superior" sort expended upon it. +So far as I have seen these comments, they have all been founded upon +ignorance of the facts and misconception of Mr. Bryant's purpose. +</p> +<p> +In the first place, Mr. Bryant never published the index and never +intended it to be an expression of his views with respect to linguistic +usage. He prepared it solely for office use, and it was meant only to +check certain + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page210" name="page210"></a>[210]</span> + + tendencies of the time so far as the <i>Evening Post</i> was +concerned. The reporters on more sensational newspapers had come to call +every big fire a "carnival of flame," every formal dinner a "banquet," +and to indulge in other verbal exaggerations and extravagances of like +sort. Mr. Bryant catalogued these atrocities in his <i>Index</i> and forbade +their use on the <i>Evening Post</i>. +</p> +<p> +He was an intense conservative as to the English language, and his +conscience was exceedingly alert to preserve it in its purity, so far as +it was within his power to do so. Accordingly he ruled out of <i>Evening +Post</i> usage a number of things that were creeping into the language to +its corruption, as he thought. Among these were the use of "numerous" +where "many" was meant, the use of "people" for "persons," "monthly" for +"monthly magazine," "paper" for "newspaper," and the like. He objected +to the phrase "those who," meaning "those persons who," and above all +his soul revolted against the use of "such" as an adverb—as in the +phrase "such ripe strawberries" which, he contended, should be "so ripe +strawberries" or "strawberries so ripe." The fact that Webster's and +Worcester's dictionaries recognized many of the condemned usages, made +not the smallest impression on his mind. +</p> +<p> +"He must be a poor scholar," he once said in my hearing, "who cannot go +behind the dictionaries for his authority." +</p> +<p> +We had a copy of Johnson's dictionary in the office, and it was the +only authority of that kind I ever knew Mr. Bryant to consult. Even in +consulting that he gave small attention to the formal definitions. He +searched at once the passages quoted from classic English literature +as illustrations of usage, and if these did not justify the particular +locution under consideration, he rejected and condemned it. +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page211" name="page211"></a>[211]</span></p> + +<p class="side"> +Mr. Bryant's "Index" +</p> +<p> +For another thing, the <i>Index</i> as it has been quoted for purposes of +cheap ridicule, held much that Mr. Bryant did not put into it, and for +which he was in no way responsible. The staff of the <i>Evening Post</i> was +composed mainly of educated men, and each of them was free to add to +the <i>Index</i> such prohibitions as seemed to him desirable. Some of these +represented mere crotchets, but they were all intended to aid in that +conservation of English undefiled which was so dear a purpose to Mr. +Bryant. +</p> +<p> +In the main the usages condemned by the <i>Index</i> were deserving of +condemnation, but in some respects the prohibitions were too strait-laced, +too negligent of the fact that a living language grows and that usages +unknown to one generation may become altogether good in another. Again +some of the prohibitions were founded upon a too strict regard for +etymology, in forgetfulness of the fact that words often change or +modify and sometimes even reverse their original significance. As an +example, Shakespeare uses the expression "fearful adversaries," meaning +badly scared adversaries, and that is, of course, the etymological +significance of the word. Yet we now universally use it in a precisely +opposite sense, meaning that the things called "fearful" are such as +fill us with fear. +</p> +<p> +Finally, it is to be said that Mr. Bryant neither intended nor attempted +to enforce the <i>Index</i> arbitrarily, or even to impose its restrictions +upon any but the least educated and least experienced of the writers who +served his newspaper. I used to violate it freely, and one day I mentioned +the fact to Mr. Bryant. He replied: +</p> +<p> +"My dear Mr. Eggleston, the <i>Index</i> was never intended to interfere with +scholarly men who know how to write good English. It is meant only to +restrain the inconsiderate youngsters and start them in right paths." +</p> +<p> +His subordinates were less liberal in their interpretation + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page212" name="page212"></a>[212]</span> + + of the matter. +The man whose duty it was to make clippings from other newspapers to +be reprinted in the <i>Evening Post</i>, was expected so to edit and alter +them as to bring them within <i>Index</i> requirements, and sometimes the +alterations were so considerable as to make of the extracts positive +misquotations. I have often wondered that none of the newspapers whose +utterances were thus "edited" out of their original forms and still +credited to them ever complained of the liberties taken with the text. +But so far as I know none of them ever did. +</p> +<p> +When Mr. Bryant and I were talking of the <i>Index</i> and of the license +I had to violate it judiciously, he smilingly said to me: +</p> +<p> +"After all a misuse of words is sometimes strangely effective. In the +old days when I wrote more for the editorial columns than I do now, I +had a friend who was deeply interested in all matters of public concern, +and whose counsel I valued very highly because of the abounding common +sense that always inspired it. His knowledge of our language was +defective, but he was unconscious of the fact, and he boldly used words +as he understood them, without the smallest fear of criticism before +his eyes. Once when some subject of unusual public importance was +under popular consideration, I wrote a long and very careful article +concerning it. I did my best to set forth every consideration that in +any wise bore upon it, and to make clear and emphatic what I regarded +as the marrow of the matter. My friend was deeply interested, and came +to talk with me on the subject. +</p> +<p class="side"> +An Effective Blunder in English +</p> +<p> +"'That is a superb article of yours, Mr. Bryant,' he said, 'but it will +do no manner of good.' I asked him why, and he answered: 'Because you +have exhausted the subject, and won't come back to it. That never +accomplishes anything. If you want to produce an effect + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page213" name="page213"></a>[213]</span> + + you must keep +hammering at the thing. I tell you, Mr. Bryant, it is <i>reirritation</i> +that does the business.' +</p> +<p> +"I thought the matter over and saw that he was right, not only in +his idea but still more in the word he had mistakenly chosen for its +expression. In such cases it is not only reiteration, but <i>reirritation</i> +that is effective." +</p> +<p> +There are other indexes in other newspaper offices. Those of them that +I have seen represent crass ignorance quite as often as scholarship. One +of them absolutely forbids the use of the pronoun "which." Another which +I saw some years ago, put a ban on the conjunctions "and" and "but." +This prohibition, I am informed, was designed to compel the use of short +sentences—a very desirable thing, of course, but one which may easily +be pushed to extremes. Imagine a reporter having to state that "X and Y +were caught in the act of firing a tenement house, and arrested by +two policemen, officers A and B, but that X escaped on the way to the +station-house after knocking policeman B down and seriously if not +fatally injuring him." If the reader will try to make that simple +statement without the use of the four "ands" and the one "but" in the +sentence, he will have a realizing sense of the difficulty the writers +on that newspaper must have had in their efforts to comply with the +requirements of the index. +</p> +<p> +In still another case the unscholarly maker of the index, having learned +that it is incorrect to say "on to-day," "on yesterday," and "on +to-morrow," has made a blanket application of what he has mistaken for a +principle, and has decreed that his writers shall not say "on the fourth +of March" or "on Wednesday of next week," or anything else of the kind. +The ignorance shown in that case is not merely a manifestation of a +deficient scholarship; it means that the maker of the index knew so +little + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page214" name="page214"></a>[214]</span> + + of grammar as not to know the difference between an adverb and +a noun. Yet every one of the newspapers enforcing these ignorant index +requirements has made fun of Mr. Bryant's scholarly prohibitions. +</p> +<p> +Reserved, dignified, self-conscious as he was, Mr. Bryant was always a +democrat of the proud old conservative sort. He never descended to undue +familiarity with anybody. He patted nobody on the back, and I have never +been able to imagine what would have happened if anybody had taken +familiar liberties of that kind with him. Certainly nobody ever ventured +to find out by practical experiment. He never called even the youngest +man on his staff by his given name or by his surname without the prefix +"Mr." +</p> +<p> +In that respect he differed radically and, to my mind, pleasingly from +another distinguished democrat. +</p> +<p> +When Mr. Cleveland was for the third time a candidate for the +Presidency, I called on him by Mr. Pulitzer's request just before +sailing for Paris, where Mr. Pulitzer was then living. I entered the +reception room at his hotel quarters and sent in my card. Mr. Cleveland +came out promptly and greeted me with the exclamation: +</p> +<p> +"Why, hello, Eggleston! How are you? I'm glad to see you." +</p> +<p> +There was no harm in it, I suppose, but it disagreeably impressed me +as the greeting of a politician rather than that of a distinguished +statesman who had been President of the United States and hoped to be +so again. Had I been an intimate personal friend who could say "Hello, +Cleveland!" in response, I should have accepted his greeting as a +manifestation of cordiality and good-fellowship. I was in fact only +slightly acquainted with him, and in view of all the circumstances +his familiarity of address impressed me as boorish. Years afterwards I +learned how easy it was for him to do boorish things—how much + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page215" name="page215"></a>[215]</span> + + restraint, +indeed, he found it necessary to impose upon himself in order to avoid +the doing of boorish things. +</p> +<p class="side"> +Mr. Bryant on British Snobbishness +</p> +<p> +But while Mr. Bryant never indulged in undue familiarity with anybody, +he never lost sight of the dignity of those with whom he conversed, +and above all, he never suffered shams to obscure his perception of +realities. One Sunday at his home in Roslyn he told me the story of his +abrupt leaving of England during a journey to Europe. I will tell it +here as nearly as possible in his own words. +</p> +<p> +"English society," he said, "is founded upon shams, falsehoods, and +arrogant pretenses, and the falsehoods are in many ways insulting not +only to the persons whom they directly affect, but to the intelligence +and manhood of the casual observer who happens to have an honest and +sincere mind. When I was over there I was for a time the guest of a +wealthy manufacturer, a man of education, refinement, and culture, whose +house in the country was an altogether delightful place to visit and +whose personality I found unusually pleasing. One day as he and I were +walking through his grounds a man came up on horseback and my host +introduced us. It seems he was the head of one of the great 'county +families,' as they call themselves and are called by others. He +explained that he was on his way to my host's house to call upon me, +wherefore we turned back in his company. During the call he asked me to +be his guest at dinner on a day named, and I accepted, he saying that +he would have a number of 'the best county people' to meet me. As the +evening of the dinner day approached, I asked my host: 'When shall we +dress for the dinner?' He looked at his watch and replied: 'It is time +for <i>you</i> to begin dressing now.' I observed the stress he laid upon +the word 'you' and asked: 'Isn't it time for you, also?' +</p> +<p> +"'Oh, I am not invited,' he replied. +</p> +<p> +"'Not invited? Why, what can you mean?' I asked. +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page216" name="page216"></a>[216]</span></p> + +<p> +"'Why, of course I'm not invited. Those are county people and I am only +a manufacturer—a man in trade. They would never think of inviting me to +dinner.' +</p> +<p> +"I was surprised and shocked. +</p> +<p> +"'Do you mean to tell me,' I asked, 'that that man came into your house +where I am a guest, and invited me to dinner, to meet his friends, +without including you, my host, in the invitation?' +</p> +<p> +"'Why, yes, of course,' he replied. 'You must remember that they are +county families, aristocrats, while I am a man in trade. They would not +think of inviting me, and I should never expect it.' +</p> +<p> +"I was full of disgust and indignation. I asked my host to let one of +his servants carry a note for me to the great man's house. +</p> +<p> +"'But why?' he asked. 'You will be going over there yourself within the +hour.' +</p> +<p> +"'I am not going,' I replied. 'I will not be a party to so gross +an affront to my host. I shall send a note, not of apology but of +unexplained declination.' +</p> +<p> +"I did so, and as soon thereafter as I could arrange it, I quitted +England in disgust with a social system so false, so arbitrary, and +so arrogant that one may not even behave like a gentleman without +transgressing its most insistent rules of social exclusiveness. +</p> +<p> +"The worst of the matter was the meek submissiveness of my host to +the affront put upon him. He was shocked and distressed that I should +decline to go to the dinner. He could not understand that the smallest +slight had been put upon him, and I could not make him understand it. +That showed how completely saturated the English mind is with the virus +of arbitrary caste. I am told that there has been some amelioration of +all this during recent years. I do not know how much it amounts to. +But did you ever hear an English <i>grande dame</i> crush the life out of + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page217" name="page217"></a>[217]</span> + + a sweet and innocent young girl by calling her 'that young person'? +If not, you cannot imagine what measureless contempt can be put into +a phrase, or how much of cruelty and injustice may be wrought by the +utterance of three words." +</p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0054" id="h2H_4_0054"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + LIII +</h2> + +<p class="side"> +The Newspaper Critic's Function +</p> +<p> +During my service as a literary editor, I held firmly to the conviction +that the function of the newspaper book reviewer is essentially a news +function; that it is not his business to instruct other people as to how +they should write, or to tell them how they ought to have written, but +rather to tell readers what they have written and how; to show forth the +character of each book reviewed in such fashion that the reader shall be +able to decide for himself whether or not he wishes to buy and read it, +and that in the main this should be done in a helpful and generously +appreciative spirit, and never carpingly, with intent to show the +smartness of the reviewer—a cheap thing at best. The space allotted +to book reviews in any newspaper is at best wholly insufficient for +anything like adequate criticism, and very generally the reviewer is +a person imperfectly equipped for the writing of such criticism. +</p> +<p> +In accordance with this conception of my functions, I always held the +news idea in mind. I was alert to secure advance sheets of important +books, in order that the <i>Evening Post</i> might be the first of newspapers +to tell readers about them. +</p> +<p> +Usually the publishers were ready and eager to give the <i>Evening Post</i> +these opportunities, though the literary editors of some morning +newspapers bitterly complained of what they regarded as favoritism when +I was able to anticipate them. On one very notable occasion, however, +great pains were taken by the publishers to avoid all + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page218" name="page218"></a>[218]</span> + + grounds of +complaint. When Tennyson's "Harold" was published in 1876, there had +been no previous announcement of its coming. The greatest secrecy, +indeed, had been maintained. Neither in England nor in America had any +hint been given that any poem by Tennyson was presently forthcoming. On +the day of publication, precisely at noon, copies of "Harold" were laid +upon the desks of all the literary editors in England and America. +</p> +<p> +My book reviews for that day were already in type and in the forms. One +hour later the first edition of the paper—the latest into which book +reviews could go—must go to press. I knew that my good friends, the +literary editors of the morning newspapers, would exploit this great +literary news the next morning, and that the evening papers would have +it in the afternoon following. I resolved to be ahead of all of them. +</p> +<p> +I hurriedly sent for the foreman of the composing room and enlisted his +coöperation. With the aid of my scissors I got two columns of matter +ready, consisting mainly of quotations hastily clipped from the book, +with a connective tissue of comment, and with an introductory paragraph +or two giving the first news of the publication of an important and very +ambitious dramatic poem by Tennyson. +</p> +<p> +At one o'clock the <i>Evening Post</i> went to press with this literary +"beat" displayed upon its first page. It proved to be the first +announcement of the poem's publication either in England or in America, +and it appeared twelve or fifteen hours in advance of any other +publication either by advertisement or otherwise. +</p> +<p class="side"> +Mr. Bryant and His Contemporaries +</p> +<p> +On that occasion I tried to draw from Mr. Bryant some expression of +opinion regarding Tennyson's work and the place he would probably occupy +among English poets when the last word should be said concerning him. +I thought to use the new poem and a certain coincidence + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page219" name="page219"></a>[219]</span> + + connected with +it—presently to be mentioned—as a means of drawing some utterance +of opinion from him. It was of no avail. In reply to my questioning, +Mr. Bryant said: +</p> +<p> +"It is too soon to assign Tennyson to his permanent place in literature. +He may yet do things greater than any that he has done. And besides, we +are too near to judge his work, except tentatively. You remember Solon's +dictum—'Call no man happy until death.' It is especially unsafe to +attempt a final judgment upon the works of a poet while the glamor of +them is still upon us. Moreover, I have never been a critic. I should +distrust any critical judgment of my own." +</p> +<p> +That reminded me that I had never heard Mr. Bryant express his opinion +with regard to the work of any modern poet, living or dead. The nearest +approach to anything of the kind that I can recall was in a little +talk I had with him when I was about leaving for Boston to attend the +breakfast given in celebration of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes's seventieth +year. The subject of Holmes's work arose naturally, and in talking of it +Mr. Bryant said: +</p> +<p> +"After all, it is as a novelist chiefly that I think of him." +</p> +<p> +"You are thinking of 'Elsie Venner'?" I asked. +</p> +<p> +"No,—of 'The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table,'" he answered. "Few +persons care for anything in that except the witty wisdom of it, and I +suppose Dr. Holmes wrote it for the sake of that. But there is a sweet +love story in the book—hidden like a bird in a clump of obtrusively +flowering bushes. It is a sweet, wholesome story, and the heroine of it +is a very natural and very lovable young woman." +</p> +<p> +The coincidence referred to above was this. Almost exactly at the time +of the publication of Tennyson's "Harold," some American whose name I +have forgotten, to + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page220" name="page220"></a>[220]</span> + + my regret, brought out a dramatic poem on the same +subject, with the same hero, and in a closely similar form. It was +entitled "The Son of Godwin," and, unless my memory plays me a trick, +it was a work of no little merit. It was completely overshadowed, of +course, by Tennyson's greater performance, but it had enough of virility +and poetic quality in it to tempt me to write a carefully studied +comparison of the two works. +</p> +<p> +While Mr. Bryant shrank from the delivery of opinions concerning the +moderns, his judgments of the older writers of English literature were +fully formed and very positive. He knew the classic literature of our +language—and especially its poetic literature—more minutely, more +critically, and more appreciatively than any other person I have ever +known, and he often talked instructively and inspiringly on the subject. +</p> +<p> +On one of those periodically recurring occasions when the Baconian +authorship of Shakespeare's works is clamorously contended for by +ill-balanced enthusiasts, Mr. Bryant asked me if I had it in mind to +write anything about the controversy. I told him I had not, unless he +particularly wished me to do so. +</p> +<p> +"On the contrary," he answered; "I particularly wish otherwise. It is +a sheer waste of good brain tissue to argue with persons who, having +read anything avowedly written by Bacon, are still able to persuade +themselves that the least poetical and most undramatic of writers could +have written the most poetical and most dramatic works that exist in +any language." +</p> +<p> +"It seems to me," I answered, "that the trouble with such persons is +that they are futilely bothering their brains in an attempt to account +for the unaccountable. Shakespeare was a genius, and genius is a thing +that can in nowise be measured, or weighed, or accounted for, while +genius itself accounts for anything and everything + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page221" name="page221"></a>[221]</span> + + it may do. It is +subject to no restrictions, amenable to no law, and restrained by no +limitations whatsoever." +</p> +<p> +"That is an excellent way of putting an obvious truth," he answered. +"I wish you would write it down precisely as you have uttered it orally, +and print it as the <i>Evening Post's</i> sole comment upon the controversy." +</p> +<p> +Then he sat musing for a time, and after a while added: +</p> +<p> +"Genius exists in varying degrees in different men. In Shakespeare it +was supreme, all-inspiring, all-controlling. In lesser men it manifests +itself less conspicuously and less constantly, but not less positively. +No other poet who ever lived could have written Coleridge's 'The Rime of +the Ancient Mariner,' yet Coleridge could no more have written 'Hamlet' +or 'Macbeth' or 'The Merry Wives of Windsor' than any child in pinafores +could. When poetry is genuine, it is inspired, as truly as any sacred +Scripture ever was. Without inspiration there may be cleverness, beauty, +and grandeur in metrical composition, but genuine poetry is the result +of inspiration always, and inspiration is genius." +</p> +<p> +"Whence comes the inspiration?" I ventured to ask, hoping to draw +something further from him. +</p> +<p> +"I do not know," he answered. "Whence comes the color of the rose or +the violet or the dandelion? I am not a theologian, to dogmatize about +things that are beyond the ken of human intelligence. I only know that +the inspiration is there, just as I know that the colors of the flowers +are there—in both cases because the thing perceived is obvious." +</p> +<p class="side"> +Genius and "Thanatopsis" +</p> +<p> +One day I asked Mr. Bryant about "Thanatopsis." When I made my first +acquaintance with that poem in a school reader, it was printed with +some introductory lines in smaller type, and I had never been able to +discover the relation of those lines to the poem or to the thought that +inspired it. +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page222" name="page222"></a>[222]</span></p> + +<p> +In answer to my questions Mr. Bryant explained that the lines in +question really had no relation to the poem and no possible connection +with it. +</p> +<p> +"I was a mere boy," he said, "when 'Thanatopsis' was written. It bore no +title in my manuscript—that was supplied by an editor who knew Greek, +a language of which I did not then know even the alphabet. My father +got possession of the poem, took it to Boston, and had it published, +all without my knowledge. With the manuscript of it he found some other +lines of mine and assumed that they belonged to the poem, as they did +not. The editor printed them at top in smaller type, and they got into +the schoolbooks in that way. That is the whole story." +</p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0055" id="h2H_4_0055"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + LIV +</h2> + +<p> +During my service on the <i>Evening Post</i>, I made a curious blunder which +circumstances rendered it necessary for others to exploit. The thing +grievously annoyed me at the time, but later it only amused me as an +illustration of a psychological principle. +</p> +<p> +Mr. Richard Grant White, writing in some newspaper or magazine in +opposition to the proposed adoption of the metric system of weights and +measures, had made an amusing blunder. He wrote that the old system was +so fixed in men's minds as to admit of no possible mistake. He added +something like this: +</p> +<p> +"Nobody has any difficulty in remembering that two gills make one pint, +two pints one quart, four quarts one gallon, etc." +</p> +<p> +I cannot pretend to quote his utterance exactly, but that is the +substance of it, the marrow of the matter being that in the very act of +showing that nobody could have + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page223" name="page223"></a>[223]</span> + + the least trouble in remembering the table +of liquid measure, he himself got it wrong. +</p> +<p class="side"> +A Case of Heterophemy +</p> +<p> +The derisive comments of all the newspapers upon his blunder may be +easily imagined. For reply he invented a word of Greek derivation, +"heterophemy." He contended that it was a common thing for one to speak +or write one thing when quite another thing was in his mind, and when +the speaker or writer perfectly knew the thing he sought to say. He +explained that when the mind has once slipped into an error of that kind +it is usually unable, or at least unlikely, to detect it in the revision +of proofs, or in any other survey of the utterance. His exposition was +very learned, very ingenious, and very interesting, but it had no effect +in silencing the newspaper wags, who at once adopted his newly-coined +word, "heterophemy," and made it the butt of many jests. +</p> +<p> +About that time Mr. Alexander H. Stephens published in one of the +more dignified periodicals of the time—the <i>North American Review</i>, +perhaps—a very learned essay in which he sought to fix the authorship +of the letters of Junius upon Sir Philip Francis. Mr. Stephens brought +to the discussion a ripe scholarship and a deal of fresh and original +thought that gave importance to his paper, and I reviewed it in the +<i>Evening Post</i> as carefully and as fully as if it had been a book. +</p> +<p> +I was deeply concerned to have my review of so important a paper in all +respects the best I could make it, and to that end I read my proofs +twice, with minute attention, as I thought, to every detail. +</p> +<p> +The next day, if I remember correctly, was Sunday. At any rate, it was +a day on which I remained at home. When I opened my morning newspapers, +the first thing that attracted my attention was a letter in one of them +from Richard Grant White, of which my article was the subject. Here, he +said, was a conspicuous and unmistakable + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page224" name="page224"></a>[224]</span> + + example of heterophemy, which +could not be attributed to ignorance or inattention or anything else, +except precisely that tendency of the human mind which he had set forth +as the source of mistakes otherwise unaccountable. He went on to say +that mine was an article founded upon adequate scholarship and evidently +written with unusual care; that its writer obviously knew his subject +and had written of it with the utmost attention to accuracy of statement +in every detail; that he had evidently read his proofs carefully as not +a slip appeared in the printed copy of the article, not even so much +as a typographical error; and yet that in two or three instances this +careful critic had written "Sir Philip Sidney" instead of "Sir Philip +Francis." He pointed out that these slips could not have been due to any +possible confusion in my mind of two Sir Philips who lived two hundred +years apart, chronologically, and whose careers were as wholly unlike +as it was possible to conceive; for, he pointed out, my article itself +bore ample witness to my familiarity with Sir Philip Francis's history. +Here, Mr. White insisted, was the clearest possible case of heterophemy, +untainted by even a possible suspicion of ignorance or confusion of mind. +Further, he urged, the case illustrated and confirmed his contention +that, having written a word or name or phrase not intended, the writer +is extremely unlikely to discover the slip even in the most careful +reading of proofs. For in this case every appearance indicated a careful +proofreading on the part of the author of the article. +</p> +<p> +When I read Mr. White's letter I simply could not believe that I had +made the slips he attributed to me. Certainly there was no confusion in +my mind of Sir Philip Francis with Sir Philip Sidney. I was familiar +with the very different histories of the two altogether dissimilar men, +and it seemed inconceivable to me that I had written + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page225" name="page225"></a>[225]</span> + + the name of the +one for that of the other even once in an article in which the right +name was written perhaps a dozen times. +</p> +<p class="side"> +Richard Grant White's Triumph +</p> +<p> +It was a troubled and unhappy "day off" for me. I had no copy of the +<i>Evening Post</i> of the preceding day in the house, and a diligent inquiry +at all the news-stands in the remote quarter of Brooklyn in which I +then lived, failed to discover one. But as I thought of the matter in +troubled fashion, I became more and more convinced that Mr. White had +misread what I had written, in which case I anticipated a good deal of +fun in exposing and exploiting his error. As the day waned I became +positively certain in my mind that no such mistake had been made, that +no mention of Sir Philip Sidney could by any possibility have crept into +my article concerning Sir Philip Francis. +</p> +<p> +But when I arrived at the office of the <i>Evening Post</i> next morning, I +found the facts to be as Mr. White had represented them. I had written +"Sir Philip Francis" throughout the article, except in two or three +places, where the name appeared as "Sir Philip Sidney." I was so +incredulous of the blunder that I went to the composing room and secured +my manuscript. The error was there in the written copy. I asked the +chief proofreader why he had not observed and queried it in view of the +fact that my use of the name had been correct in most instances, but he +was unable to offer any explanation except that his mind had accepted +the one name for the other. The foreman of the composing room, a man of +education and large literary knowledge, had read the proofs merely as a +matter of interest, but he had not observed the error. I had no choice +but to accept Mr. Richard Grant White's interpretation of the matter +and call it a case of heterophemy. +</p> +<p> +There are blunders made that are not so easily accounted + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page226" name="page226"></a>[226]</span> + + for. A leading +New York newspaper once complained of Mr. Cleveland's veto messages as +tiresome and impertinent, and asked why he persisted in setting forth +his reasons for disapproving acts of Congress, instead of sending them +back disapproved without reasons. +</p> +<p> +The <i>Evening Post</i> found it necessary to direct the newspaper's +attention to the fact that the Constitution of the United States +expressly requires the President, in vetoing a measure, to set forth +his reasons for doing so. In a like forgetfulness of Constitutional +provisions for safeguarding the citizen, the same newspaper complained +of the police, when Tweed escaped and went into hiding, for not +searching every house in New York till the malefactor should be found. +It was Parke Godwin who cited the Constitution in answer to that +manifestation of ignorance, and he did it with the strong hand of a +master to whom forgetfulness of the fundamental law seemed not only +inexcusable, on the part of a newspaper writer, but dangerous to liberty +as well. +</p> +<p> +Perhaps the worst case I ever knew of ignorance assuming the critical +functions of expert knowledge, was one which occurred some years later. +William Hamilton Gibson published a superbly illustrated work, which won +commendation everywhere for the exquisite perfection of the drawings, +both in gross and in minute detail. A certain art critic who had made +a good deal of noise in the world by his assaults upon the integrity +of art treasures in the Metropolitan Museum, assailed Gibson's work in +print. Finding nothing in the illustrations that he could criticise, +he accused Gibson of sailing under false colors and claiming credit for +results that were not of his creation. He said that nearly everything +of value in the illustrations of Gibson's book was the work not of the +artist but of the engraver who, he declared, had "added + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page227" name="page227"></a>[227]</span> + + increment after +increment of value" to the crude original drawings. +</p> +<p class="side"> +The Demolition of a Critic +</p> +<p> +In a brief letter to the newspaper which had printed this destructive +criticism without its writer's name appended to it, Mr. Gibson had only +to direct attention to the fact that the pictures in question were +not engravings at all, but slavish photographic reproductions of his +original drawings, and that no engraver had had anything whatever to do +with them. +</p> +<p> +The criticism to which so conclusive a reply was possible was anonymous, +and its author never acknowledged or in any way sought to atone for the +wanton wrong he had sought to inflict under cover of anonymity. But his +agency in the matter was known to persons "on the inside" of literature, +art, and journalism, and the shame of his deed rankled in the minds of +honest men. He wrote little if anything after that, and the reputation +he had made faded out of men's memory. +</p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0056" id="h2H_4_0056"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + LV +</h2> + +<p> +When Mr. Bryant died, Mr. Parke Godwin assumed editorial control of the +<i>Evening Post</i>, and his attention promptly wrought something like a +miracle in the increased vigor and aggressiveness of its editorial +conduct. Mr. Godwin was well advanced in middle life at that time; he +was comfortably provided with this world's goods, and he was not anxious +to take up again the strenuous journalistic work in which he had already +achieved all there was to achieve of reputation. But in his own interest +and in the interest of Mr. Bryant's heirs, it seemed necessary for him +to step into this breach. Moreover, he had abated none of his interest +in public affairs or in those things that make for culture, enlightenment, + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page228" name="page228"></a>[228]</span> + + and human betterment. He had never ceased to write for the <i>Evening +Post</i> upon matters of such kind when occasion called for strong, virile +utterance. +</p> +<p> +In his declining years Mr. Bryant had not lost interest in these things, +but he had abated somewhat his activity with reference to them. He had +more and more left the conduct of the newspaper to his subordinates, +trusting to what he used to call his "volunteer staff"—Parke Godwin, +John Bigelow, Samuel J. Tilden, and other strong men, to furnish +voluntarily all that was needed of strenuosity in the discussion of +matters closely concerning the public weal. I do not know that Mr. +Tilden was ever known to the public even as an occasional writer for the +<i>Evening Post</i>. He was a man of singularly secretive temperament, and +when he wrote anything for the <i>Evening Post</i> its anonymity was guarded +with a jealousy such as I have never known any other person to exercise. +What he wrote—on the infrequent occasions of his writing at all—was +given to Mr. Bryant and by him handed in with instructions for its +publication and without a hint to anybody concerning its authorship. +It was only by accident that I learned whence certain articles came, and +I think that knowledge was not usually shared with any other member of +Mr. Bryant's staff. +</p> +<p> +Mr. Godwin pursued a different course. These occasional contributions +did not satisfy his ideas of what the <i>Evening Post</i> should be in its +editorial utterances. He set to work to stimulate a greater aggressiveness +on the part of the staff writers, and he himself brought a strong hand +to bear upon the work. +</p> +<p class="side"> +"A Lion in a Den of Daniels" +</p> +<p> +When Mr. Godwin died, a few years ago, Dr. Titus Munson Coan, in an +obituary sketch read before the Authors Club, said with reference to +this part of his career that in the <i>Evening Post</i> office "he was a lion +in a den of Daniels," and the figure of speech was altogether apt. +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page229" name="page229"></a>[229]</span></p> + +<p> +He had gifts of an uncommon sort. He knew how to say strong things +in a strong way. He could wield the rapier of subtle sarcasm, and the +bludgeon of denunciation with an equally skilled hand. Sometimes he +brought even a trip-hammer into play with startling effect. +</p> +<p> +I remember one conspicuous case of the kind. Sara Bernhardt was playing +one of her earliest and most brilliant engagements in New York. Mr. +Godwin's alert interest in every form of high art led him not only +to employ critics of specially expert quality to write of her work, +but himself now and then to write something of more than ordinary +appreciation of the great Frenchwoman's genius as illustrated in her +performance. +</p> +<p> +Presently a certain clergyman of the "sensational" school, who had +denounced the theater as "the door of hell and the open gateway of +damnation," sent to the <i>Evening Post</i> an intemperate protest against +the large space it was giving to Sara Bernhardt and her art. The letter +was entitled "Quite Enough of Sara Bernhardt," and in the course of it +the writer declared the great actress to be a woman of immoral character +and dissolute life, whom it was a shame, a disgrace, and a public +calamity for the <i>Evening Post</i> even to name in its columns. +</p> +<p> +Mr. Godwin wrote an answer to the tirade. He entitled it "Quite Enough +of X"—the "X" standing here for the clergyman's name, which he used in +full. It was one of the most effective bits of criticism and destructive +analysis I ever saw in print, and it left the critic of Sara Bernhardt +with not a leg to stand upon, and with no possibility of reply. Mr. +Godwin pointed out that Sara Bernhardt had asked American attention, not +as a woman, but solely as an artist; that it was of her art alone, and +not of her personality that the <i>Evening Post</i> had written; that she had +neither asked admission to American society nor accepted it when pressed +upon her; + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page230" name="page230"></a>[230]</span> + + and that her personal character and mode of life had no more +to do with the duty of considering her art than had the sins of any old +master when one viewed his paintings and sought to interpret the genius +that inspired them. +</p> +<p> +So far Mr. Godwin was argumentative and placative. But he had other +arrows in his quiver. He challenged the clergyman to say how he knew +that the actress was a person of immoral character and dissolute life, +and to explain what right he had to make charges of that kind against a +woman without the smallest evidence of their truth. And so on to the end +of a chapter that must have been very bitter reading to the offender if +he had been a person of normal sensitiveness, as he was not. +</p> +<p> +I have cited this occurrence merely by way of explaining the fact that +Mr. Godwin had many critics and many enemies. A man of sincere mind and +aggressive temper upon proper occasion, and especially one possessed of +his gift of vigorous expression, must needs make enemies in plenty, if +he edits a newspaper or otherwise writes for publication. But on the +other hand, those who knew him best were all and always his devoted +friends—those who knew his sturdy character, his unflinching honesty +of mind, and his sincere devotion to the right as he saw it. +</p> +<p> +My acquaintance with him, before his assumption of control on the +<i>Evening Post</i>, was comparatively slight, and in all that I here write +of his character and mind, I am drawing upon my recollection of him +during a later intimacy which, beginning on the <i>Evening Post</i>, was +drawn closer during my service on another newspaper, and endured until +his death. +</p> +<p> +After a brief period of editorship Mr. Godwin sold a controlling +interest in the <i>Evening Post</i> to a company of men represented by +Messrs. Horace White, E. L. Godkin, and Carl Schurz—Mr. Schurz becoming +the titular editor for a time. When Mr. Godwin learned, after the + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page231" name="page231"></a>[231]</span> + + sale +was agreed upon, that Mr. Godkin was one of the incoming group, he +sought to buy Mr. Godkin's weekly newspaper, <i>The Nation</i>, and as the +negotiation seemed for a time to promise well, he arranged to make me +editor of that periodical. This opened to me a prospect of congenial +work, more agreeable to me than any that a daily newspaper could offer. +But in the end Mr. Godkin declined to sell the <i>Nation</i> at any price +that Mr. Godwin thought fair, and made it instead the weekly edition +of the <i>Evening Post</i>. +</p> +<p class="side"> +The Literary Shop Again +</p> +<p> +Accordingly, I again quitted the newspaper life, fully intending to +enter it no more. Literary work of many kinds was open to me, and it was +my purpose to devote myself exclusively to it, maintaining a literary +workshop in my own home. I became an adviser of the Harper publishing +house, with no office attendance required of me, no working time fixed, +and no interference of any kind with my entire liberty. I was writing +now and then for the editorial pages of the great newspapers, regularly +for a number of magazines, and occasionally writing a book, though that +was infrequent for the reason that in the absence of international +copyright, there was no encouragement to American authors to write books +in competition with reprints that cost their publishers nothing. +</p> +<p> +In mentioning this matter of so-called "piracy," I do not mean to accuse +the reputable American publishers of English books of any wrong, +for they were guilty of none. They were victims of the lack of law as +truly as the authors on either side were. They were as eager as the +authors—English or American—could be, for an international copyright +law. For lack of it their profits were cut short and their business +enterprises set awry. The reputable publishing houses in this country +actually purchased the American publishing rights of many English books +with no other protection of what they had + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page232" name="page232"></a>[232]</span> + + purchased than such as was +afforded by the "courtesy of the trade"—a certain gentlemen's agreement +under which no reputable American publisher would reprint a book of +which another publisher had bought the advance sheets. This protection +was uncertain, meager, and often ineffective for the reason that there +were disreputable publishers in plenty who paid no heed to the "courtesy +of the trade" but reprinted whatsoever they thought would sell. +</p> +<p> +In the case of such works as those of Herbert Spencer and some others, I +believe I am correctly informed that the American publishers paid larger +royalties to the authors—larger in gross amount, at least—than those +authors received from their English publishers. In the same way American +publishers of the better class paid liberally for advance sheets of the +best foreign fiction, often at heavy loss to themselves because the +books they had bought were promptly reprinted in very cheap form by +their less scrupulous competitors. In the case of fiction of a less +distinguished kind, of which no advance sheets were offered, they had +no choice but to make cheap reprints on their own account. +</p> +<p> +It is proper to say also that if this was "piracy," the American +publishers were by no means the worst pirates or the most conspicuous +ones, though the complaints made were chiefly of English origin and were +all directed against the Americans. +</p> +<p class="side"> +Piracy—British and American +</p> +<p> +I shall never forget the way in which my brother, Edward Eggleston +—himself an active worker for international copyright—met the complaints +of one English critic who was more lavish and less discriminative in his +criticism in a company of Americans than Edward thought good manners +justified. The critic was the son of an English poet, whose father's +chief work had won considerable popularity in America. The young man was +a guest at one of the receptions of the Authors Club, every + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page233" name="page233"></a>[233]</span> + + member of +which was directly or indirectly a sufferer by reason of the lack of +international copyright. He seized upon the occasion for the delivery of +a tirade against the American dishonesty which, he said, threatened to +cut short his travel year by depriving his father of the money justly +due him as royalty on the American reprints of his books. +</p> +<p> +My brother listened in silence for a time. Then that pinch of gunpowder +that lies somewhere in every human make-up "went off." +</p> +<p> +"The American publishers of your father's poem," he said, "have paid him +all they could afford to pay in the present state of the law, I believe?" +</p> +<p> +"Yes—but what is it? A mere fraction of what they justly owe him," the +young man answered. +</p> +<p> +"Now listen," said Edward. "You call that American piracy, and you +overlook the piracy on the other side. Your father's book has sold so +many thousand copies in America"—giving the figures. "The English +reprint of my 'Hoosier Schoolmaster' has sold nearly ten times that +number, according to the figures of the English 'pirates' who reprinted +it and who graciously sent me a 'tip,' as I call it, of one hundred +dollars—less than a fraction, if I may so call it, of what American +publishers have voluntarily paid your father. But dropping that smaller +side of the matter, let me tell you that every man in this company is a +far greater sufferer from the barbaric state of the law than your father +or any other English author ever was. We are denied the opportunity to +practise our profession, except under a paralysing competition with +stolen goods. What chance has an American novel, published at a dollar +or more, in competition with English fiction even of an inferior sort +published at ten cents? We cannot expect the reader who reads only for +amusement to pay a dollar or a dollar and + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page234" name="page234"></a>[234]</span> + + a half for an American novel +when he can fill his satchel with reprints of English novels at ten +cents apiece. But that is the very smallest part of our loss. The whole +American people are inestimably losers because of this thing. They are +deprived of all chance of a national literature, reflecting the life +of our country, its ideas, its inspirations, and its aspirations. You +Englishmen are petty losers in comparison with us. Your losses are +measurable in pounds, shillings, and pence. Ours involve things of +immeasurably greater value." +</p> +<p> +I have quoted here, as accurately as memory permits, an utterance that +met the approval of every author present, because I think that in our +appeals to Congress for international copyright only the smaller, lower, +and less worthy commercial aspects of the matter have been presented, +and that as a consequence the American people have been themselves +seriously and hurtfully misled as to the higher importance of a question +involving popular interests of far more consequence than the financial +returns of authorship can ever be. +</p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0057" id="h2H_4_0057"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + LVI +</h2> + +<p> +In connection with my work for the Harpers it fell to my lot to revise +and edit a good many books. Among these were such books of reference as +Hayden's Dictionary of Dates, which I twice edited for American readers, +putting in the dates of important American affairs, and, more importantly, +correcting English misinterpretations of American happenings. For +example, under the title "New York" I found an entry, "Fall of O'Kelly," +with a date assigned. The thing probably referred to John Kelly, but the +event recorded, with its date, had never occurred within the knowledge +of any American. There + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page235" name="page235"></a>[235]</span> + + were many other such things to cut out and many +important matters to put in, and the Harpers paid me liberally—after +their fashion in dealing with men of letters—for doing the work. In +the course of it I had to spend a considerable amount of their money in +securing the exact information desired. In one case I applied by letter +to one of the executive departments at Washington for exact information +concerning a certain document. For answer I received a letter, written +by a clerk, doubtless, but signed by a chief of bureau, embodying a copy +of the document. In that copy I found a line thrice repeated, and I was +unable to make out whether the repetition was in the original or was the +work of a copying clerk asleep at his post. I wrote to inquire, but the +chief of bureau replied that he had no authority to find out, wherefore +I had to make a journey to Washington at the expense of Harper and +Brothers, to ascertain the facts. I came out of that expedition with +the conviction, which still lingers in my mind, that the system that +gives civil service employees a tenure of office with which their chiefs +have no power to interfere by peremptory discharge for inefficiency or +misconduct, as the managing men of every successful business enterprise +may do, is vicious in principle and bad in outcome. +</p> +<p class="side"> +The Way at Washington +</p> +<p> +That and other experiences in dealing with executive departments at +Washington have made an old fogy of me, I suppose. At any rate they have +convinced me that the government's business could and would be better +done by half the force now employed, if that half force worked under a +consciousness of direct responsibility, each man to an immediate chief +who could discharge him for incompetency or inattention. Furthermore, +my experience with clerks in the departments at Washington convinces me +that the method of selection and promotion by competitive examination, +results almost uniformly in the + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page236" name="page236"></a>[236]</span> + + appointment and in the promotion of +inferior and often incompetent men. Certainly no great bank, no great +business enterprise of any kind would ever consent to such a method +of selecting or promoting its employees—a method which excludes from +consideration the knowledge every chief of bureau or department must +necessarily have of the qualifications of his subordinates. The clerk +who repeated that line three times in making an official transcript of +an official document had been for several years in the public service, +and I suppose he is there yet, if he isn't dead. How long would a +bookkeeper in a bank hold his place after making a similar blunder? But +then, banks are charged with an obligation to remain solvent, and must +appoint and discharge employees with due reference to that necessity. +The government is not subject to that requirement, and it recognizes +a certain obligation to heed the vagaries of the theorists who regard +themselves as commissioned—divinely or otherwise—to reform the world +in accordance with the suggestions of their own inner consciousness and +altogether without regard to the practical experience of humankind. +</p> +<p> +Mainly, however, the books I was employed to edit were those written +by men whose connection with affairs of consequence rendered their +utterances important, but whose literary qualifications were small. +When such works were presented to the Harpers, it was their practice to +accept the books on condition that the authors of them should pay for +such editing as was necessary, by some person of literary experience +to be selected by the Harpers themselves. +</p> +<p> +In every such case, where I was asked to be the editor and see the book +through the press, I stipulated that I was to make no effort to improve +literary style, but was to confine myself to seeing that the English was +correct—whether elegant or otherwise—and that the book as it + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page237" name="page237"></a>[237]</span> + + came from +the hands of its author should be presented with as little editorial +alteration as was possible. I assumed the function of correcting errors +and offering advice, not of writing the books anew or otherwise putting +them into the literary form I thought they should have. Even with this +limitation of function, I found plenty of work to do in every case. +</p> +<p class="side"> +A Historical Discovery +</p> +<p> +It was under a contract of this kind that I undertook to see through the +press the volumes published under the title of "The Military Operations +of General Beauregard in the War between the States." +</p> +<p> +The work bore the name of Colonel Alfred Roman, as its author, but on +every page of it there was conclusive evidence of its direct and minute +inspiration by General Beauregard himself. It was with him rather than +with Colonel Roman that negotiations were had respecting my editorial +work on the book. He was excessively nervous lest I should make +alterations of substance, a point on which I was the better able to +reassure him because of the fact that my compensation was a sum certain +and in no way dependent upon the amount of time or labor I should give +to the work. I succeeded in convincing him that I was exceedingly +unlikely to undertake more of revision than the contract called for, and +as one man with another, I assured him that I would make no alteration +of substantial consequence in the work without his approval. +</p> +<p> +In editing the book I made a discovery which, I think, is of some +historical interest. Throughout the war there was something like a +standing quarrel between General Beauregard and Mr. Jefferson Davis, +emphasized by the antagonism of Mr. Davis's chief adviser, Judah P. +Benjamin to General Beauregard. Into the merits of that quarrel I have +no intention here to inquire. It does not come within the purview of +this volume of reminiscences. + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page238" name="page238"></a>[238]</span> + + But in editing General Beauregard's book +I discovered an easy and certainly correct explanation of the bitterest +phase of it—that phase upon which General Beauregard laid special +stress. +</p> +<p> +Sometime after the battle of Shiloh, General Beauregard, whose health +was seriously impaired, decided to take a little furlough for purposes +of recuperation. There was neither prospect nor possibility of active +military operations in that quarter for a considerable time to come, +so that he felt himself free to go away for a few weeks in search of +health, leaving General Bragg in temporary command but himself keeping +in touch with his army and in readiness to return to it immediately in +case of need. +</p> +<p> +He notified Mr. Davis of his intended course, by telegraph. Mr. Davis +almost immediately removed him from command and ordered General Bragg to +assume permanent control in that quarter. Mr. Davis's explanation, when +his act was challenged, was that General Beauregard had announced his +purpose to be absent himself "for four months," and that he, Mr. Davis, +could not regard that as anything else than an abandonment of his command. +General Beauregard insisted that he had made no such announcement and +had cherished no such purpose. The thing ultimately resolved itself into +a question of veracity between the two, concerning which each had bitter +things to say of the other in public ways. +</p> +<p class="side"> +A Period Out of Place +</p> +<p> +In editing General Beauregard's book, I discovered that there was really +no question of veracity involved, but merely an error of punctuation in +a telegraphic despatch, a thing very easy at all times and particularly +easy in days of military telegraphing when incompetent operators were +the rule rather than the exception. +</p> +<p> +The case was this: General Beauregard telegraphed: +</p> +<p> +"I am leaving for a while on surgeon's certificate. For + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page239" name="page239"></a>[239]</span> + + four months +I have delayed obeying their urgent recommendations," etc. +</p> +<p> +As the despatch reached Mr. Davis it read: +</p> +<p> +"I am leaving for a while on surgeon's certificate for four months. +I have delayed," etc. +</p> +<p> +The misplacing of a punctuation mark gave the statement, as received +by Mr. Davis, a totally different meaning from that which General +Beauregard had intended. In explaining his action in removing Beauregard +from command, Mr. Davis stated that the General had announced his +purpose to absent himself for four months. General Beauregard denied +that he had done anything of the kind. Hence the issue of veracity, in +which the text of the despatch as sent, sustained General Beauregard's +contention, while the same text as received, with its error of +punctuation, equally sustained the assertions of Mr. Davis. +</p> +<p> +With the beatitude of the peacemakers in mind, I brought my discovery to +the attention of both parties to the controversy, in the hope at least +of convincing each that the other had not consciously lied. The attempt +proved futile. When I pointed out to General Beauregard the obvious +origin of the misapprehension, he flushed with suppressed anger and +declared himself unwilling to discuss a matter so exclusively personal. +He did discuss it, however, to the extent of pointing out that his use +of the phrase "for a while" should have enabled Mr. Davis to correct the +telegraph operator's error of punctuation, "if there really was any such +error made—which I am not prepared to believe." +</p> +<p> +In answer to my letter to Mr. Davis, some one wrote for him that in his +advancing years he did not care to take up again any of the matters of +controversy that had perplexed his active life. +</p> +<p> +I have never since that time made the smallest attempt + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page240" name="page240"></a>[240]</span> + + to reconcile the +quarrels of men who have been engaged in the making of history. I have +learned better. +</p> +<p> +So far as Mr. Davis was concerned there was probably another reason for +unwillingness to consider any matter that I might lay before him. He and +I had had a little controversy of our own some years before. +</p> +<p> +In one of those chapters of "A Rebel's Recollections," which were first +published in the <i>Atlantic Monthly</i>, I made certain statements with +regard to Mr. Davis's conduct at a critical moment. Mr. Davis sent his +secretary to me—or at any rate some one calling himself his secretary +came to me—to assure me that the statements I and others had made +concerning the matter were without foundation in fact, and to ask me not +to include them in the forthcoming book. +</p> +<p> +I replied that I had not made the statements thoughtlessly or without +satisfying myself of the correctness of my information; that I could +not, therefore, consent to omit them from the book; but that if Mr. +Davis would send me a categorical denial of them over his own signature, +I would publish it as a part of my text. +</p> +<p> +This proposal was rejected, and I let the matter stand as originally +written. I had in my possession at that time a letter from General +Robert E. Lee to John Esten Cooke. It was written in answer to a direct +question of Mr. Cooke's, and in it General Lee stated unequivocally that +the facts were as Mr. Cooke understood them and as I had reported them. +But General Lee forbade the publication of his letter unless Mr. Davis +should at any time publicly deny the reports made. In that case he +authorized the publication "in the interest of truthful history." +</p> +<p> +Mr. Cooke had placed that letter in my hands, and had Mr. Davis +furnished me with the suggested denial, it was my purpose to print that +and General Lee's letter + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page241" name="page241"></a>[241]</span> + + in facsimile, leaving it for every reader to +choose between them. To my regret Mr. Davis declined to put his denial +into writing, so that General Lee's letter, which I returned to Mr. +Cooke, has never been published, and now never can be. +</p> +<p class="side"> +A Futile Effort to Make Peace +</p> +<p> +On another point I found General Beauregard more amenable to editorial +suggestion, though reluctantly so. In discussing his defense of +Charleston with utterly inadequate means—a defense everywhere +recognized as the sufficient foundation of a military fame—his book +included a chapter or so of masterly military criticism, intended to +show that if the commanders on the other side at Charleston had been as +alert and capable as they should have been, there was no time when they +could not have taken Charleston with ease and certainty. +</p> +<p> +I pointed out to him that all this was a discrediting of himself; that +it attributed to the enemy's weakness a success which military criticism +attributed to his own military and engineering strength, thus stripping +him of credit at the very point at which his credit was least open to +dispute or question. I advised the elimination or material alteration of +this part of the book, and after due consideration he consented, though +with sore reluctance, for the reason that the modification made involved +the sacrifice of a very brilliant essay in military criticism, of which +any writer might well have been proud, and which I should have advised +any other writer to publish as a distinguished feature of his work. +</p> +<p> +To descend from large things to small ones, it was in seeing this work +through the press that I encountered the most extreme case I have ever +known of dangerous interference with copy on the part of the "intelligent +compositor," passed by the "alert proofreader." The printing department +of the Harpers was as nearly perfect, in its organization and in the +supervision given to it by the + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page242" name="page242"></a>[242]</span> + + two highly-skilled superintendents of its +rival composing rooms, as any printing department well can be. And yet +it was there that the error occurred. +</p> +<p> +Of course I could not read the revised proofs of the book "by copy,"—that +is to say with a helper to read the copy aloud while I followed him with +the revises. That would have required the employment of an additional +helper and a considerably increased payment to me. Moreover, all that +was supposed to be attended to in the composing rooms so that revised +proofs should come to me in exact conformity with the "copy" as I had +handed it in. In reading them I was not expected to look out for errors +of the type, but solely for errors in the text. +</p> +<p> +In reading a batch of proofs one night—for the man of letters who would +keep his butcher and grocer on good terms with him must work by night as +well as by day—although I was in nowise on the alert to discover errors +of type, my eye fell upon an error which, if it had escaped me, would +forever have ruined my reputation as an editor. Certain of General +Beauregard's official despatches, quoted in the book, were dated +"Fiddle Pond, near Barnwell C. H., South Carolina," the letters "C. H." +standing, of course, for "Court House"—the name given to rural county +seats in the South. The intelligent compositor, instead of "following +copy," had undertaken to interpret and translate the letters out of the +depths of his own intuitions. Instead of "Fiddle Pond, near Barnwell C. +H.," he had set "Fiddle Pond, near Barnwell, Charleston Harbor," thus +playing havoc at once with geography and the text. +</p> +<p> +The case was so extreme, and the liberty taken with the text without +notice of any kind, involved so much danger to the accuracy of the work +that I had no choice but to report the matter to the house with a +notification + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page243" name="page243"></a>[243]</span> + + that unless I could be assured that no further liberties of +any kind would be taken with the text, I must decline to go further with +the undertaking. +</p> +<p> +This cost a proofreader and a printer or two their employments, and I +regretted that, but they deserved their punishment, and the matter was +one that demanded drastic measures. Without such measures it would have +been dangerous to publish the book at all. +</p> +<p class="side"> +Loring Pacha +</p> +<p> +One other ex-Confederate general with whom this sort of editorial work +brought me into association was Loring Pacha—otherwise General W. W. +Loring, a man of extraordinarily varied experiences in life, a man of +the gentlest temper and most genial impulses, who had been, nevertheless, +a fighter all his life, from boyhood up. His fighting, however, had all +been done in the field and professionally, and he carried none of its +animosities into private life. I remember his saying to me once: +</p> +<p> +"Of course the war ended as it ought to have done. It was best for +everybody concerned that the Union should be restored. The only thing +is that I don't like the other fellows to 'have the say' on us." +</p> +<p> +Loring became a private soldier in the United States Army while yet a +boy. He so far distinguished himself for gallantry in the Florida War +that he was offered a Presidential appointment to West Point, which he +declined. He was appointed to a lieutenancy in the regular army, where +he won rapid promotion and gained a deal of experience, chiefly in +fighting Indians and leading troops on difficult expeditions across the +plains of the far West. In the Mexican War he was several times promoted +and brevetted for conspicuous gallantry, and he lost an arm at one of +the gates of the City of Mexico, as he was leading his regiment as the +head of the column into the town, seizing an opportunity without orders. +On that occasion General Scott visited him in hospital and said to him: +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page244" name="page244"></a>[244]</span></p> + +<p> +"Loring, I suppose I ought to court-martial you for rushing into that +breach without orders; but I think I'll recommend you for promotion +instead." +</p> +<p> +In the Confederate Army Loring became a Major-General, and a few years +after the close of that struggle he was invited by the Khedive of Egypt +to become his chief of staff. After a military service there which +extended over a number of years, he returned to America and wrote a +book founded upon his experience there and the studies he had made in +Egyptian manners, history, archæology, and the like. I was employed to +edit that book, which was published by Dodd, Mead & Co., I think, and in +the course of my work upon it Loring became not only a valued personal +friend, but an easy-going intimate in my household. At first he came to +see me only for purposes of consultation concerning the work. Later he +used to come "just because he wanted to," he said. His visits were made, +in Southern fashion, at whatever hour he chose, and he took with us +whatever meals were served while he was there. +</p> +<p> +In conversation one day I happened to ask Loring something about the +strained relations that frequently exist between commanding officers +in the field and the newspaper war correspondents sent out to report +news of military operations. I think my question was prompted by some +reference to William Swinton's criticisms of General Grant, and General +Grant's peremptory dealing with him. +</p> +<p> +"I don't know much about such things," Loring answered. "You see, at the +time of the Mexican War and of all my Indian campaigns, the newspapers +hadn't yet invented the war correspondent. Then in the Confederacy +everybody was a soldier, as you know, and the war correspondents carried +muskets and answered to roll calls. Their newspaper work was an +avocation, not a vocation. You see I am learning English under your +tuition." +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page245" name="page245"></a>[245]</span></p> + +<p> +This little jest referred to the fact that a few days before, in running +through the manuscript of a lecture he was preparing, I had changed the +word "avocation" to "vocation," explaining to him the difference in +meaning. +</p> +<p class="side"> +Concerning War Correspondents +</p> +<p> +"Then in Egypt we were not much troubled with war +correspondents—perhaps they had the bowstring and sack in mind—but +I have an abiding grudge against another type of correspondent whom I +encountered there. I mean the tourist who has made an arrangement with +some newspaper to pay the expenses of his trip or a part of them in +return for letters to be sent from the places visited. He is always an +objectionable person, particularly when he happens to be a parson out +of a job, and I always fought shy of him so far as possible, usually +by turning him over to my dragoman, to be shown about and 'stuffed' as +only a dragoman can 'stuff' anybody. You see the dragoman has learned +that every Western tourist in the East is hungry for information of +a startling sort, and the dragoman holds himself ready to furnish it +without the smallest regard for truth or any respect at all for facts. +On one occasion one of these scribbling tourists from England visited +me. One of the Khedive's unoccupied palaces had been assigned to me for +my headquarters, and I was exceedingly busy with preparations for a +campaign then in contemplation. Stone Pacha and I were both up to our +eyes in work, trying to mobilize an army that had no mobility in it. +Accordingly I turned the tourist over to my dragoman with orders to +show him everything and give him all the information he wanted. +</p> +<p> +"The palace was divided as usual. There was a public part and a part +called the harem—which simply means the home or the family apartments. +During my occupancy of the place that part of it was empty and closed, +as I am a bachelor. But as the dragoman showed him + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page246" name="page246"></a>[246]</span> + + about the tourist +asked to see that part of the palace, whereupon the dragoman replied: +</p> +<p> +"'That is the harem. You cannot gain entrance there.' +</p> +<p> +"'The harem? But I thought Loring was an American and a Christian,' was +the astonished reply. +</p> +<p> +"'He was—but he is a pacha, now,' answered the dragoman with that air +of mysterious reserve which is a part of his stock in trade. Then the +rascal went on to tell the tourist that I now had forty wives—which +would have been a shot with the long bow even if I had been a born +Mohammedan of the highest rank and greatest wealth. +</p> +<p> +"When I heard of the affair I asked the dragoman why he had lied so +outrageously and he calmly replied: +</p> +<p> +"'Oh, I thought it polite to give the gentleman what he wanted.' +</p> +<p> +Sidenote: A Scribbling Tourist's Mischief-Making] +</p> +<p> +"I dismissed the matter and thought no more of it until a month or so +later, when somebody sent me marked copies of the <i>Manchester Guardian</i>, +or whatever the religious newspaper concerned was called. The tourist +had told the story of my 'downfall' with all the horrifying particulars, +setting forth in very complimentary phrases my simple, exemplary life +as an American soldier and lamenting the ease with which I and other +Western men, 'nurtured in the purity of Christian family life,' had +fallen victims to the lustful luxury of the East. I didn't give the +matter any attention. I was too busy to bother—too busy with plans and +estimates and commissary problems, and the puzzles of transportation and +all the rest of the things that required attention in preparation for +a campaign in a difficult, inaccessible, and little known country. I +wasn't thinking of myself or of what wandering scribes might be writing +about me in English newspapers. But presently this thing assumed a new +and very serious aspect. Some obscure American religious newspaper, +published + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page247" name="page247"></a>[247]</span> + + down South somewhere, copied the thing, and my good sisters, +who live down that way, read it. It isn't much to say they were +horrified; they were well-nigh killed by the revelation of my infamy and +they suffered almost inconceivable tortures of the spirit on my account. +For it never entered their trustful minds to doubt anything printed +in a great English religious paper over the signature of a dissenting +minister and copied into the American religious journal which to them +seemed an authoritative weekly supplement to the holy scriptures. +</p> +<p> +"I managed to straighten the thing out in the minds of my good sisters, +but I have never ceased to regret that that correspondent never turned +up at my headquarters again. If he had I should have made him think he +had fallen in with a herd of the wild jackasses of Abyssinia." +</p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0058" id="h2H_4_0058"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + LVII +</h2> + +<p> +Mention of Loring's experience reminds me of an amusing one of my own +that occurred a little later. In the autumn of 1886 I made a leisurely +journey with my wife across the continent to California, Oregon, Mexico, +and all parts of the golden West. On an equally leisurely return journey +we took a train at Marshall, Texas, for New Orleans, over the ruins of +the Texas and Pacific Railroad, which Jay Gould had recently "looted to +the limit," as a banker described it. Besides myself, my wife, and our +child, the only passengers on the solitary buffet sleeping car were Mr. +Ziegenfust of the San Francisco <i>Chronicle</i>, and a young lady who put +herself under my wife's chaperonage. If Mr. Ziegenfust had not been +there to bear out my statements I should never have told the story of +what happened. +</p> +<p> +There was no conductor for the sleeping car—only a + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page248" name="page248"></a>[248]</span> + + negro porter who +acted as factotum. When I undertook to arrange with him for my sleeping +car accommodations, I offered him a gold piece, for in drawing money +from a San Francisco bank for use on the return journey, I had received +only gold. +</p> +<p> +The negro seemed startled as I held out the coin. +</p> +<p> +"I can't take dat, boss," he said. "'Taint worf nuffin." +</p> +<p> +I made an effort to explain to him that American gold coin was not only +the supreme standard by which all values were measured in this country, +but that as mere metal it was worth the sum stamped upon it in any part +of the earth. Mr. Ziegenfust supported me in these statements, but our +combined assurances made no impression upon the porter's mind. He +perfectly knew that gold coin was as worthless as dead forest leaves, +and he simply would not take the twenty-dollar piece offered him. +</p> +<p> +We decided that the poor fellow was a fool, and after a search through +all the pockets on the car we managed to get together the necessary +number of dollars in greenbacks with which to pay for my accommodations. +As for what we might want to eat from the buffet—for there were no +dining cars in those days—the porter assured me he would "trust me" +till we should get to New Orleans, and call upon me at my hotel to +receive his pay. +</p> +<p> +Next morning we found ourselves stranded at Plaquemine, by reason of a +train wreck a few miles ahead. Plaquemine is the center of the district +to which the banished Acadians of Longfellow's story fled for refuge, +and most of the people there claim descent from Evangeline, in jaunty +disregard of the fact that that young lady of the long ago was never +married. But Plaquemine is a thriving provincial town, and when I +learned that we must lie there, wreck-bound, for at least six hours, +I thought I saw my opportunity. I went out into the town + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page249" name="page249"></a>[249]</span> + + to get some of +my gold pieces converted into greenbacks. +</p> +<p class="side"> +"A Stranded Gold Bug" +</p> +<p> +To my astonishment I found everybody there like-minded with the negro +porter of my sleeping car. They were all convinced that American gold +coin was a thing of no value, and for reason they told me that "the +government has went back on it." It was in vain for me to protest that +the government had nothing to do with determining the value of a gold +piece except to certify its weight and fineness; that the piece of gold +was intrinsically worth its face as mere metal, and all the rest of the +obvious facts of the case. These people knew that "the government has +went back on gold"—that was the phrase all of them used—and they would +have none of it. +</p> +<p> +In recognition of the superior liberality of mind concerning financial +matters that distinguishes the barkeeper from all other small tradesmen, +I went into the saloon of the principal hotel of the town, and said to +the man of multitudinous bottles: +</p> +<p> +"It's rather early in the morning, but some of these gentlemen," waving +my hand toward the loafers on the benches, "may be thirsty. I'll be +glad to 'set 'em up' for the company if you'll take your pay out of a +twenty-dollar gold piece and give me change for it." +</p> +<p> +There was an alert and instant response from the "gentlemen" of the +benches, who promptly aligned themselves before the bar and stood ready +to "name their drinks," but the barkeeper shook his head. +</p> +<p> +"Stranger," he said, "if you must have a drink you can have it and +welcome. But I can't take gold money. 'Taint worth nothin'. You see the +government has went back on it." +</p> +<p> +I declined the gratuitous drink he so generously offered, and took my +departure, leaving the "gentlemen" of the benches thirsty. +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page250" name="page250"></a>[250]</span></p> + +<p> +Finally, I went to the principal merchant of the place, feeling certain +that he at least knew the fundamental facts of money values. I explained +my embarrassment and asked him to give me greenbacks for one or more of +my gold pieces. +</p> +<p> +He was an exceedingly courteous and kindly person. He said to me in +better English than I had heard that morning: +</p> +<p> +"Well, you may not know it, but the government has gone back on +gold, so that we don't know what value it may have. But I can't let a +stranger leave our town under such embarrassment as yours seems to be, +particularly as you have your wife and child with you. I'll give you +currency for one of your gold pieces, and <i>take my chances of getting +something for the coin</i>." +</p> +<p> +I tried to explain finance to him, and particularly the insignificance +of the government's relation to the intrinsic value of gold coin, but +my words made no impression upon his mind. I could only say, therefore, +that I would accept his hospitable offer to convert one of my coins into +greenbacks, with the assurance that I should not think of doing so if +I did not perfectly know that he took no risk whatever in making the +exchange. +</p> +<p> +In New Orleans I got an explanation of this curious scare. When the +Civil War broke out there was a good deal of gold coin in circulation +in the Plaquemine region. During and after the war the coins passed +freely and frequently from hand to hand, particularly in cotton buying +transactions. Not long before the time of my visit, some merchants in +Plaquemine had sent a lot of this badly worn gold to New Orleans in +payment of duties on imported goods—a species of payment which was +then, foolishly, required to be made in gold alone. The customs officers +had rejected this Plaquemine gold, because it was worn to light weight. +Hence the conviction in + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page251" name="page251"></a>[251]</span> + + Plaquemine that the government had "went back" +on gold. +</p> +<p class="side"> +Results of a Bit of Humor +</p> +<p> +At that time the principal subject of discussion in Congress and the +newspapers was the question of free silver coinage, the exclusive gold +standard of values, or a double standard, and all the rest of it, and +those who contended for an exclusive gold standard were stigmatized as +"gold bugs." +</p> +<p> +I was then editor-in-chief of the <i>New York Commercial Advertiser</i>, and +in my absence my brilliant young friend, Henry Marquand, was in charge +of the paper. Thinking to amuse our readers I sent him a playful letter +recounting these Plaquemine experiences, and he published it under the +title of "A Stranded Goldbug." +</p> +<p> +The humor of the situation described was so obvious and so timely that +my letter was widely copied throughout the country, and a copy of it +fell into the hands of a good but too serious-minded kinswoman of mine, +an active worker in the W. C. T. U. She was not interested in the humor +of my embarrassment, but she wrote me a grieved and distressed letter, +asking how I could ever have gone into the saloon of that Plaquemine +hotel, or any other place where alcoholic beverages were sold, and much +else to the like effect. I was reminded of Loring's experience, and was +left to wonder how large a proportion of those who had read my letter +had missed the humor of the matter in their shocked distress over the +fact that by entering a hotel café I had lent my countenance to the sale +of beer and the like. +</p> +<p> +I had not then learned, as I have since done, how exceedingly and +even exigently sensitive consciences of a certain class are as to such +matters. Not many years ago I published a boys' book about a flat-boat +voyage down the Mississippi. At New Orleans a commission merchant, +anxious to give the country boys as much as he could of + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page252" name="page252"></a>[252]</span> + + enjoyment in the +city, furnished tickets and bade them "go to the opera to-night and hear +some good music." Soon after the book came out my publishers wrote me +that they had a Sunday School Association's order for a thousand copies +of the book, but that it was conditioned upon our willingness to change +the word "opera" to "concert" in the sentence quoted. +</p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0059" id="h2H_4_0059"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + LVIII +</h2> + +<p> +As a literary adviser of the Harpers, I very earnestly urged them to +publish Mrs. Custer's "Boots and Saddles." In my "opinion" recommending +its acceptance, I said that their other readers would probably be +unanimous in advising its rejection, and would offer excellent reasons +in support of that advice. I added that those very reasons were the +promptings of my advice to the contrary. +</p> +<p> +When all the opinions were in—all but mine being adverse—Mr. Joe +Harper sent copies of them to me, asking me to read them carefully and, +after consideration, to report whether or not I still adhered to my +opinion in favor of the book. I promptly replied that I did, giving my +reasons, which were based mainly on the very considerations urged by the +other readers in behalf of rejection. In my earnestness I ventured, as +I had never done before, upon a prediction. I said that in my opinion +the book would reach a sale of twenty thousand copies—a figure then +considered very great for the sale of any current book. +</p> +<p class="side"> +"Boots and Saddles" +</p> +<p> +A month after "Boots and Saddles" was published, I happened to be in +the Harper offices, and Mr. Joe Harper beckoned me to him. With a very +solemn countenance, which did not hide the twinkle in his eye, he said: +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page253" name="page253"></a>[253]</span></p> + +<p> +"Of course, when you make a cock-sure prediction as to the sale of a +book, and we accept it on the strength of your enthusiastic advice, we +expect you to make the failure good." +</p> +<p> +"To what book do you refer?" I asked. +</p> +<p> +"Mrs. Custer's. You predicted a sale of twenty thousand for it, and it +has now been out a full month and——" +</p> +<p> +"What are the figures for the first month, Mr. Harper?" I interrupted. +</p> +<p> +"Well, what do you think? It is the first month that sets the pace, you +know. What's your guess?" +</p> +<p> +"Ten thousand," I ventured. +</p> +<p> +"What? Of that book? In its first month? Are you a rainbow chaser?" +</p> +<p> +I had caught the glint in his eye, and so I responded: +</p> +<p> +"Oh, well, if that guess is so badly out I'll double it, and say twenty +thousand." +</p> +<p> +"Do you mean that—seriously?" he asked. +</p> +<p> +"Yes, quite seriously. So seriously that I'll agree to pay the royalties +on all copies short of twenty thousand, if you'll agree to give me a sum +equal to the royalties on all copies sold in excess of that number." +</p> +<p> +He chuckled inwardly but audibly. Then, picking up a paper from his +desk, he passed it to me, saying; +</p> +<p> +"Look. There are the figures." +</p> +<p> +The sales had amounted to some hundred more than the twenty thousand I +had guessed, and there were no indications of any early falling off of +the orders that were daily and hourly coming in. +</p> +<p> +I mention this case of successful prediction because it gives me a text +for saying that ordinarily there is nothing so utterly impossible as +foresight, of any trustworthy sort, concerning the sale of a book. In +this case the fact that "Boots and Saddles" was the very unliterary, and +altogether winning tribute of a loving wife to her dead hero + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page254" name="page254"></a>[254]</span> + + husband, +afforded a secure ground of prediction. The book appealed to sentiments +with which every human heart—coarse or refined, high, low, or middle +class—is in eternal sympathy. Ordinarily there is no such secure ground +upon which to base a prediction of success for any book. The plate-room +of every publisher is the graveyard of a multitude of books that +promised well but died young, and the plates are their headstones. Every +publisher has had experiences that convince him of the impossibility of +discovering beforehand what books will sell well and what will "die +a-borning." Every publisher has had books of his publishing succeed far +beyond his expectations, and other books fail, on the success of which +he had confidently reckoned. And the worst of it is that the quality of +a book seems to have little or nothing to do with the matter, one way or +the other. +</p> +<p> +One night at the Authors Club, I sat with a group of prolific and +successful authors, and as a matter of curious interest I asked each of +them to say how far their own and their publishers' anticipations with +respect to the comparative success of their several books had been borne +out by the actual sales. Almost every one of them had a story to tell of +disappointment with the books that were most confidently expected to +succeed, and of the success of other books that had been regarded as +least promising. +</p> +<p> +The experience is as old as literature itself, doubtless. Thomas +Campbell came even to hate his "Pleasures of Hope," because its fame +completely overshadowed that of "Gertrude of Wyoming" and some other +poems of his which he regarded as immeasurably superior to that work. +He resented the fact that in introducing him or otherwise mentioning +him everybody added to his name the phrase "Author of the 'Pleasures of +Hope,'" and he bitterly predicted that when he died somebody would carve +that + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page255" name="page255"></a>[255]</span> + + detested legend upon his tombstone. In the event, somebody did. +</p> +<p> +A lifelong intimate of George Eliot once told me that bitterness was +mingled with the wine of applause in her cup, because, as she said: +"A stupid public persists in neglecting my poems, which are far superior +to anything I ever wrote in prose." +</p> +<p> +In the same way such fame as Thomas Dunn English won, rested mainly upon +the song of "Ben Bolt." Yet one day during his later years I heard him +angrily say in response to some mention of that song: "Oh, damn 'Ben +Bolt.' It rides me like an incubus." +</p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0060" id="h2H_4_0060"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + LIX +</h2> + +<p class="side"> +Letters of Introduction +</p> +<p> +While I was conducting my literary shop at home, there came to me many +persons bearing letters of introduction which I was in courtesy bound +to honor. Some of these brought literary work of an acceptable sort for +me to do. Through them a number—perhaps a dozen or so—of books were +brought to me to edit, and in the course of the work upon such books +I made a few familiar friends, whose intimacy in my household was a +pleasure to me and my family while the friends in question lived. They +are all dead now—or nearly all. +</p> +<p> +But mainly the bearers of letters of introduction who came to me at +that time were very worthy persons who wanted to do literary work, but +had not the smallest qualification for it. Some of them had rejected +manuscripts which they were sure that I, "with my influence," could +easily market to the replenishment of their emaciated purses. For the +conviction that the acceptance of manuscripts goes chiefly by favor is +ineradicable from the amateur literary + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page256" name="page256"></a>[256]</span> + + mind. I have found it quite +useless to explain to such persons that favor has nothing to do with +the matter, that every editor and every publisher is always and eagerly +alert to discern new writers of promise and to exploit them. The persons +to whom these truths are told, simply do not believe them. They <i>know</i> +that their own stories or essays or what not, are far superior to those +accepted and published. Every one of their friends has assured them +of that, and their own consciousness confirms the judgment. Scores of +them have left my library in full assurance that I was a member of some +"literary ring," that was organized to exclude from publication the +writings of all but the members of the ring. It was idle to point out +to them the introduction of Saxe Holm, of Constance Fenimore Woolson, of +Mrs. Custer, of Charles Egbert Craddock, or of any other of a dozen or +more new writers who had recently come to the front. They were assured +that each of these had enjoyed the benefits of "pull" of some sort. +</p> +<p> +One charming young lady of the "Society" sort brought me half a dozen +letters of introduction from persons of social prominence, urging her +upon my attention. She had written a "Society novel," she told me, and +she wanted to get it published. She was altogether too well informed +as to publishing conditions, to send her manuscript to any publisher +without first securing "influence" in its behalf. She was perfectly well +aware that I was a person possessed of influence, and so she had come to +me. Wouldn't I, for a consideration, secure the acceptance of her novel +by some reputable house? +</p> +<p> +I told her that "for a consideration"—namely, fifty dollars—I would +read her manuscript and give her a judgment upon its merits, after which +she might offer it to any publisher she saw fit, and that that was all +I could do for her. +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page257" name="page257"></a>[257]</span></p> + +<p class="side"> +The Disappointment of Lily Browneyes +</p> +<p> +"But you are 'on the inside' at Harpers'," she replied, "and of course +your verdict is conclusive with them." +</p> +<p> +"In some cases it is," I answered. "It has proved to be so in one +peculiar case. I recently sold the Harpers a serial story of my own for +their <i>Young People</i>. Afterwards a story of Captain Kirk Munroe's came +to me for judgment. It covered so nearly the same ground that mine did, +that both could not be used. But his story seemed to me so much better +than my own, for the use proposed, that I advised the Harpers to accept +it and return to me my own already accepted manuscript. They have acted +upon my advice and I am a good many hundreds of dollars out of pocket in +consequence. Now, my dear Miss Browneyes," I added, "you see upon what +my influence with the Harpers rests. In so far as they accept literary +productions upon my advice, they do so simply because they know that my +advice is honest and represents my real judgment of the merits of things +offered for publication. If I should base my recommendations upon any +other foundation than that of integrity and an absolutely sincere +critical judgment, I should soon have no more influence with the +Harpers than any truckman in the streets can command. I will read your +manuscript and give you my honest opinion of it, for fifty dollars, if +you wish me to do so. But I do not advise you to do that. Judging of it +in advance, from what I have seen of you, and from what I know of the +limitations of the Society life you have led, I strongly advise you +not to waste fifty dollars of your father's money in that way. It is +scarcely conceivable that with your very limited knowledge of life, and +your carefully restricted outlook, you can have written a novel of any +value whatever. You had better save your fifty dollars to help pay for +your next love of a bonnet." +</p> +<p> +"I'm awfully disappointed," she said. "You see it + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page258" name="page258"></a>[258]</span> + + would be so nice to +have all my Society friends talking about 'Lily Browneyes's book,' and +perhaps that ought to be considered. You see almost every one of my +Society friends would buy the book 'just to see what that little +chatterbox, Lily Browneyes, has found to write about.' I should think, +that would make the fortune of the book." +</p> +<p> +"How many Society friends have you, Miss Browneyes?" I asked. +</p> +<p> +"Oh, heaps of them—scores—dead oodles and scads of 'em, as we girls +say." +</p> +<p> +"But really, how many?" I persisted. "Suppose your book were published, +how many of your Society friends could you confidently reckon upon as +probable purchasers? Here's paper and a pencil. Suppose you set down +their names and tot them up." +</p> +<p> +She eagerly undertook the task, and after half an hour she had a list +of forty-odd persons who would pretty surely buy the book—"if they +couldn't borrow it," she added. +</p> +<p> +I explained the matter to her somewhat—dwelling upon the fact that +a sale of two thousand copies would barely reimburse the publisher's +outlay. +</p> +<p> +She said I had been "very nice" to her, but on the whole she decided +to accept my advice and not pay me fifty dollars for a futile reading +of the manuscript. I was glad of that. For it seemed like breaking a +butterfly to disappoint so charming a young girl. +</p> +<p> +The letters Lily Browneyes brought me had at least the merit of +sincerity. They were meant to help her accomplish her purpose, and +not as so many letters of the kind are, to get rid of importunity by +shifting it to the shoulders of some one else. I remember something +that illustrates my meaning. +</p> +<p> +I presided, many years ago, at a banquet given by the Authors Club to +Mr. William Dean Howells. Nothing + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page259" name="page259"></a>[259]</span> + + was prearranged. There was no schedule +of toasts in my hand, no list of speakers primed to respond to them. +With so brilliant a company to draw upon I had no fear as to the results +of calling up the man I wanted, without warning. +</p> +<p> +In the course of the haphazard performance, it occurred to me that we +ought to have a speech from some publisher, and accordingly I called +upon Mr. J. Henry Harper—"Harry Harper," we who knew and loved him +called him. +</p> +<p> +His embarrassment was positively painful to behold. He made no attempt +whatever to respond but appealed to me to excuse him. +</p> +<p class="side"> +Mark Twain's Method +</p> +<p> +At that point Mark Twain came to the rescue by offering to make Mr. +Harper's speech for him. "I'm a publisher myself," he explained, +"and I'll speak for the publishers." +</p> +<p> +A roar of applause welcomed the suggestion, and Mr. Clemens proceeded to +make the speech. In the course of it he spoke of the multitude of young +authors who beset every publisher and beseech him for advice after he +has explained that their manuscripts are "not available" for publication +by his own firm, with its peculiar limitations. Most publishers cruelly +refuse, he said, to do anything for these innocents. "I never do that," +he added. "I always give them good advice, and more than that, I always +do something for them—<i>I give them notes of introduction to Gilder</i>." +</p> +<p> +I am persuaded that many scores of the notes of introduction brought to +me have been written in precisely that spirit of helpless helpfulness. +</p> +<p> +Sometimes, however, letters of introduction, given thoughtlessly, are +productive of trouble far more serious than the mere waste of a busy +man's time. It is a curious fact that most persons stand ready to give +letters of + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page260" name="page260"></a>[260]</span> + + introduction upon acquaintance so slender that they would +never think of personally introducing the two concerned, or personally +vouching for the one to whom the letter is given. +</p> +<p> +When I was editing <i>Hearth and Home</i> Theodore Tilton gave a young +Indiana woman a letter of introduction to me. He afterwards admitted to +me that he knew nothing whatever about the young woman. +</p> +<p> +"But what can one do in such a case?" he asked. "She was charming and +she wanted to know you; she was interested in you as a Hoosier +writer"—the Indiana school of literature had not established itself at +that early day—"and when she learned that I knew you well she asked for +a letter of introduction. What could I do? Could I say to her, 'My dear +young lady, I know very little about you, and my friend, George Cary +Eggleston, is so innocent and unsophisticated a person that I dare not +introduce you to him without some certificate of character?' No. I +could only give her the letter she wanted, trusting you to discount any +commendatory phrases it might contain, in the light of your acquaintance +with the ways of a world in which letters of introduction are taken +with grains of salt. Really, if I mean to commend one person to +another, I always send a private letter to indorse my formal letter +of introduction, and to assure my friend that there are no polite lies +in it." +</p> +<p class="side"> +Some Dangerous Letters of Introduction +</p> +<p> +In this case the young woman did nothing very dreadful. Her character +was doubtless above reproach and her reformatory impulses were no more +offensive than reformatory impulses that concern others usually are. +My only complaint of her was that she condemned me without a hearing, +giving me no opportunity to say why sentence should not be pronounced +upon me. +</p> +<p> +In her interview, she was altogether charming. She was fairly well +acquainted with literature, and was keenly + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page261" name="page261"></a>[261]</span> + + appreciative of it. We talked +for an hour on such subjects, and then she went away. A week or so +later she sent me a copy of the Indiana newspaper for which she was a +correspondent. In it was a page interview with me in which all that I +had said and a great deal that I had not said was set forth in detail. +There was also a graphic description of my office surroundings. Among +these surroundings was my pipe, which lay "naked and not ashamed" on my +desk. Referring to it, the young woman wrote that one saddening thing +in her visit to me was the discovery that "this gifted young man is a +victim of the tobacco habit." +</p> +<p> +Worse still, she emphasized that lamentable discovery in her headlines, +and made so much of her compassionate regret that if I had been an +inmate of a lunatic asylum, demented by the use of absinthe or morphine, +her pity could hardly have been more active. +</p> +<p> +I do not know that this exhibition of reformatory ill manners did me any +serious harm, but it annoyed me somewhat. +</p> +<p> +When I was serving as literary editor of the <i>Evening Post</i>, a very +presentable person came to me bearing a note of introduction from +Richard Henry Stoddard. Mr. Stoddard introduced the gentleman as James +R. Randall, author of "My Maryland" and at that time editor of a +newspaper in Augusta, Georgia. Mr. Randall was a person whom I very +greatly wanted to know, but it was late on a Saturday afternoon, and +I had an absolutely peremptory engagement that compelled me to quit the +office immediately. Accordingly, I invited the visitor to dine with me +at my house the next day, Sunday, and he accepted. +</p> +<p> +Sunday came and the dinner was served, but Mr. Randall was not there. +Next morning I learned that on the plea of Saturday afternoon and closed +banks he had + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page262" name="page262"></a>[262]</span> + + borrowed thirty-five dollars from one of my fellow-editors +before leaving. This, taken in connection with his failure to keep his +dinner engagement with me, aroused suspicion. I telegraphed to Augusta, +asking the newspaper with which Mr. Randall was editorially connected +whether or not Mr. Randall was in New York. Mr. Randall himself replied +saying that he was not in New York and requesting me to secure the +arrest of any person trying to borrow money or get checks cashed in his +name. He added: "When I travel I make my financial arrangements in +advance and don't borrow money of friends or strangers." +</p> +<p> +When I notified Stoddard of the situation, so that he might not commend +his friend, "Mr. Randall," to others, I expressed the hope that he had +not himself lent the man any money. In reply he said: +</p> +<p> +"Lent him money? Why, my dear George Cary Eggleston, what a creative +imagination you must have! 'You'd orter 'a' been a poet.' Still, if +I had had any money, as of course I hadn't, I should have lent it +to him freely. As he didn't ask for it—probably he knew my chronic +impecuniosity too well to do that—I didn't know he was 'on the borrow.' +Anyhow, I'm going to run him to earth." +</p> +<p class="side"> +Moses and My Green Spectacles +</p> +<p> +And he did. It appeared in the outcome that the man had called upon +Edmund Clarence Stedman, bearing a letter from Sidney Lanier—forged, of +course. Stedman had taken him out to lunch and then, as he expressed +a wish to meet the literary men of the town, had given him a note of +introduction to Stoddard together with several other such notes to +men of letters, which were never delivered. The man proved to be the +"carpetbag" ex-Governor Moses, who had looted the state of South Carolina +to an extent that threatened the bankruptcy of that commonwealth. He had +saved little if anything out of + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page263" name="page263"></a>[263]</span> + + his plunderings, and, returning to the +North, had entered upon a successful career as a "confidence man." He +was peculiarly well-equipped for the part. Sagacious, well-informed, +educated, and possessed of altogether pleasing manners, he succeeded +in imposing himself upon the unsuspecting for many years. At last, some +years after my first encounter with him, he was "caught in the act" +of swindling, and sent for a term to the Massachusetts state prison. +</p> +<p> +On his release, at the end of his sentence, he resumed his old business +of victimizing the unsuspicious—among whom I was one. It was only +a few years ago when he rang my door bell and introduced himself as a +confidential employee of the Lothrop Publishing Company of Boston, who +were my publishers. He had seen me, he said, during the only visit I had +ever made to the offices of the company, but had not had the pleasure +of an introduction. Being in New York he had given himself the pleasure +of calling, the more because he wished to consult me concerning the +artistic make-up of a book I then had in preparation at the Lothrops'. +</p> +<p> +His face seemed familiar to me, a fact which I easily accounted for on +the theory that I must have seen him during my visit to the publishing +house. For the rest he was a peculiarly agreeable person, educated, +refined, and possessed of definite ideas. We smoked together, and as +an outcome of the talk about cigars, I gave him something unusual. +An indiscreetly lavish friend of mine had given me a box of gigantic +cigars, each of which was encased in a glass tube, and each of which had +cost a dollar. I was so pleased with my visitor that I gave him one of +these, saying that it didn't often happen to a man who had anything to +do with literature to smoke a dollar cigar. +</p> +<p> +At the end of his visit he somewhat casually mentioned + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page264" name="page264"></a>[264]</span> + + the fact that +he and his wife were staying at the Astor House, adding: +</p> +<p> +"We were anxious to leave for Boston by a late train to-night but I find +it impracticable to do so. I've suffered myself to run short of money +and my wife has made the matter worse by indulging in an indiscreet +shopping tour to-day. I have telegraphed to Boston for a remittance and +must wait over till it comes to-morrow. It is a very great annoyance, +as I am needed in Boston to-morrow, but there is no help for it." +</p> +<p> +I asked him how much money was absolutely necessary to enable him to +leave by the late train, which there was still time to catch, and after +a moment of mental figuring, he fixed upon the sum of sixteen dollars +and fifty cents as sufficient. +</p> +<p> +It was Sunday night and I had only a dollar or so in my pocket, but with +a keenly realizing sense of his embarrassment, I drew upon my wife's +little store of household change, and made up the sum required. He +seemed very grateful for the accommodation, but before leaving he asked +me to let him take one of those dollar cigars, to show to a friend in +Boston. +</p> +<p> +About half an hour after he had left, I suddenly remembered him and +identified him as Moses—ex-carpetbag governor of South Carolina, +ex-convict, and <i>never</i> ex-swindler. A few calls over the telephone +confirmed my conviction and my memory fully sustained my recollection +of the man. A day or two later he was arrested in connection with an +attempted swindle, but I did not bother to follow him up. I acted upon +the dictum of one of the most successful men I ever knew, that "it's +tomfoolery to send good money after bad." +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page265" name="page265"></a>[265]</span></p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0061" id="h2H_4_0061"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + LX +</h2> + +<p class="side"> +English Literary Visitors +</p> +<p> +It was during the period of my withdrawal from newspaper work that Mr. +Edmund Gosse made his first visit to this country. At that time he had +not yet made the reputation he has since achieved for scholarship and +literary accomplishment. As a scholar he was young and promising rather +than a man of established reputation. As a writer he was only beginning +to be known. But he was an Englishman of letters and an agreeable +gentleman, wherefore we proceeded to dine him and wine him and make much +of him—all of which helped the success of his lecture course. +</p> +<p> +I interrupt myself at this point to say that we do these things more +generously and more lavishly than our kin beyond sea ever think of +doing them. With the exception of Mark Twain, no living American author +visiting England is ever received with one-half, or one-quarter, or +one-tenth the attention that Americans have lavished upon British +writers of no greater consequence than our own. If Irving Bacheller, or +Charles Egbert Craddock, or Post Wheeler, or R. W. Chambers, or Miss +Johnston, or Will Harben, or Thomas Nelson Page, or James Whitcomb +Riley, or any other of a score that might be easily named should visit +London, does anybody imagine that he or she would receive even a small +fraction of the attention we have given to Sarah Grand, Mr. Yeats, Max +O'Rell, B. L. Farjeon, Mrs. Humphry Ward, Mr. Locke, and others? Would +even Mr. Howells be made to feel that he was appreciated there as much +as many far inferior English writers have been in New York? Are we +helplessly provincial or hopelessly snobbish? Or is it that our English +literary visitors make more skilful use of the press agent's peculiar +gifts? Or is it, perhaps, + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page266" name="page266"></a>[266]</span> + + that we are more generous and hospitable than +the English? +</p> +<p> +Mr. Gosse, at any rate, was worthy of all the attention he received, and +his later work has fully justified it, so that nothing in the vagrant +paragraph above is in any way applicable to him. +</p> +<p> +Mr. Gosse had himself carefully "coached" before he visited America. +When he came to us he knew what every man of us had done in literature, +art, science, or what not, and so far he made no mistakes either of +ignorance or of misunderstanding. +</p> +<p> +"Bless my soul!" said James R. Osgood to me at one of the breakfasts, +luncheons or banquets given to the visitor, "he has committed every +American publishers' catalogue to memory, and knows precisely where each +of you fellows stands." +</p> +<p> +Upon one point, however, Mr. Gosse's conceptions were badly awry. He +bore the Civil War in mind, and was convinced that its bitternesses were +still an active force in our social life. One night at the Authors Club +I was talking with him when my brother Edward came up to us and joined +in the conversation. Mr. Gosse seemed surprised and even embarrassed. +Presently he said: +</p> +<p> +"It's extremely gratifying, you know, but this is a surprise to me. I +understand that you two gentlemen held opposite views during the war, +and one of the things my mentors in England most strongly insisted upon +was that I should never mention either of you in talking with the other. +It is very gratifying to find that you are on terms with each other." +</p> +<p> +"On terms?" said Edward. "Why, Geordie and I have always been twins. +I was born two years earlier than he was, but we've been twin brothers +nevertheless, all our lives. You see, we were born almost exactly on + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page267" name="page267"></a>[267]</span> + + the line between the North and the South, and one fell over to one side +and the other to the other. But there was never anything but affection +between us." +</p> +<p class="side"> +An Amusing Misconception +</p> +<p> +On another occasion Mr. Joe Harper gave a breakfast to Mr. Gosse at +the University Club. There were seventy or eighty guests—too many for +anything like intimate converse. To remedy this Mr. Harper asked about a +dozen of us to remain after the function was over, gather around him at +the head of the table—tell all the stories we could remember, and "give +Mr. Gosse a real insight into our ways of thinking," he said. +</p> +<p> +Gordon McCabe and I were in the group, and Mr. Gosse, knowing perfectly +what each of us had written, knew, of course, that McCabe and I had +fought on the Southern side during the Civil War. If he had not known +the fact in that way he must have discovered it from the stories we told +of humorous happenings in the Confederate service. Yet here we were, on +the most cordial terms with men who had been on the other side. It was +all a bewildering mystery to Mr. Gosse, and presently he ventured to ask +about it. +</p> +<p> +"Pardon me," he said to Mr. Harper, "it is all very gratifying, I'm +sure, but I don't quite understand. I think Mr. Eggleston and Mr. McCabe +were in active service on the Southern side during the war?" +</p> +<p> +"Yes," answered Mr. Harper, "and they have told us all about it in +their books." +</p> +<p> +"And the rest of you gentlemen sided with the North?" +</p> +<p> +"Yes." +</p> +<p> +"Well, it's very gratifying, of course, but it is astonishing to a +stranger to find you all on such terms of friendship again." +</p> +<p> +"Isn't it?" broke in Mr. Harper. "Here we are, having champagne together +quite like old friends, while we all know that only a dozen years or so +ago, McCabe + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page268" name="page268"></a>[268]</span> + + and Eggleston were down there at Petersburg trying with all +their might to <i>kill our substitutes</i>." +</p> +<p> +The company laughed heartily at the witticism. Mr. Gosse smiled and a +little later, in an aside, he asked me to explain just what Mr. Harper +had meant by "substitutes." +</p> +<p> +Mr. Gosse left a sweet taste in our mouths when he sailed for home. +The attentions he had received here had in no way spoiled him. From +beginning to end of his stay he never once manifested the least feeling +of superiority, and never once did his manner suggest that British +condescension, which is at once so amusing and so insulting to +Americans. The same thing was true of Matthew Arnold, who, I remember, +made himself a most agreeable guest at a reception the Authors Club +gave him in the days of its extreme poverty. But not all English men +of letters whom I have met have been like-minded with these. A certain +fourth- or fifth-rate English novelist, who was made the guest of honor +at a dinner at the Lotus Club, said to me, as I very well remember: +"Of course you have no literature of your own and you must depend for +your reading matter upon us at home." The use of "at home" meaning +"in England," was always peculiarly offensive in my ears, but my +interlocutor did not recognize its offensiveness. "But really, you know, +your people ought to pay for it." +</p> +<p> +He was offering this argument to me in behalf of international +copyright, my interest in which was far greater than his own. For +because of the competition of ten-cent reprints of English books, I was +forbidden to make a living by literature and compelled to serve as a +hired man on a newspaper instead. +</p> +<p> +A few of our English literary visitors have come to us with the modest +purposes of the tourist, interested in what our country is and means. +The greater number have + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page269" name="page269"></a>[269]</span> + + come to exploit the country "for what there +is in it," by lecturing. Their lecture managers have been alert and +exceedingly successful in making advertising agencies of our clubs, our +social organizations, and even our private parlors, by way of drawing +money into the purses of their clients. +</p> +<p class="side"> +A Question of Provincialism +</p> +<p> +Did anybody ever hear of an American author of equal rank with these +going to England on a lecture or reading tour, and getting himself +advertised by London clubs and in London drawing-rooms in the like +fashion? And if any American author—even one of the highest +rank—should try to do anything of the sort, would his bank account +swell in consequence as those of our British literary visitors do? Are +we, after all, provincial? Have we not yet achieved our intellectual and +social independence? +</p> +<p> +I am persuaded that some of us have, though not many. One night at a +club I asked Brander Matthews if I should introduce him to a second-rate +English man of letters who had been made a guest of the evening. He +answered: +</p> +<p> +"No—unless you particularly wish it, I'd rather talk to you and the +other good fellows here. He hasn't anything to say that would interest +me, unless it is something he has put into the lectures he's going to +deliver, and he can't afford to waste on us any of that small stock of +interesting things." +</p> +<p> +But as a people, have we outgrown our provincialism? Have we achieved +our intellectual independence? Have we learned to value our own +judgments, our own thinking, our own convictions independently of +English approval or disapproval? I fear we have not, even in criticism. +When the novel "Democracy" appeared I wrote a column or two about it in +the <i>Evening Post</i>, treating it as a noteworthy reflection of our own +life, political and social—not very great but worthy of attention. +The impulse of my article was that the literature of a country should + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page270" name="page270"></a>[270]</span> + + be a showing forth of its life, its thought, its inspirations, its +aspirations, its character, its strength, and its weaknesses. That +anonymous novel seemed to me to be a reflection of all these things in +some degree and I said so in print. All the other newspapers of the +country dismissed the book in brief paragraphs, quite as if it had had +no distinctive literary quality of its own. But a year or so later the +English critics got hold of the novel and wrote of it as a thing of +significance and consequence. Thereupon, the American newspapers that +had before given it a paragraph or so of insignificant reference, took +it up again and reviewed it as a book that meant something, evidently +forgetting that they had ever seen it before. +</p> +<p> +This is only one of many incidents of criticism that I might relate in +illustration of the hurtful, crippling, paralyzing provincialism that +afflicts and obstructs our literary development. +</p> +<p> +A few years ago the principal of a great and very ambitious preparatory +school whose function it was to fit young men for college, sent me his +curriculum "for criticism," he said,—for approval, I interpreted. He +set forth quite an elaborate course in what he called "The Literature of +the English Language." Upon looking it over I found that not one American +book was mentioned in the whole course of it, either as a required study +or as "collateral reading"—a title under which a multitude of second- +or third-rate English works were set down. +</p> +<p> +For criticism I suggested that to the American boy who was expected to +become an American man of culture, some slight acquaintance with Irving, +Hawthorne, Emerson, Motley, Prescott, Longfellow, Holmes, Whittier, Poe, +Parkman, Lowell, Mark Twain, Mr. Howells, Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, Paul +Hayne, Sidney Lanier, James Whitcomb Riley, Bret Harte, John Hay, and +some other American + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page271" name="page271"></a>[271]</span> + + writers might really be of greater advantage than +familiarity with many of the English authors named. +</p> +<p> +His answer was conclusive and profoundly discouraging. It was his +function, he said, to prepare boys for their entrance examinations in +our great colleges and universities, "and not one of these," he added, +"names an American author in its requirement list." +</p> +<p> +I believe the colleges have since that time recognized American +literature in some small degree, at least, though meagerly and with no +adequate recognition of the fact that a nation's literature is the voice +with which it speaks not only to other countries and to posterity but to +its own people in its own time, and that acquaintance with it ministers, +as no other scholarship does, to good, helpful, patriotic citizenship. +</p> +<p class="side"> +A Library Vandal +</p> +<p> +One of the English writers who came to this country possibly for his own +country's good, gave me some trouble. I was editing <i>Hearth and Home</i> at +the time, and he brought me for sale a number of unusually good things, +mainly referring to matters French and Italian. He was absolute master +of the languages of both those countries, and his acquaintance with +their literature, classical, medieval, and modern, was so minute that he +knew precisely where to find any literary matter that seemed salable. +With a thrift admirable in itself, though misdirected, it was his +practice to go to the Astor Library, find what he wanted in rare books +or precious foreign newspaper files, translate it, and then tear out and +destroy the pages he had plundered. In that irregular fashion he made +quite a literary reputation for himself, though after detection he had +to retire to Philadelphia, under the orders of Mr. Saunders, Librarian +of the Astor Library, who decreed banishment for him as the alternative +of prosecution for the mutilation of books. +</p> +<p> +He carried the thing so far, at last, that I regarded it + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page272" name="page272"></a>[272]</span> + + as my duty +to expose him, and I did so in my capacity as literary editor of the +<i>Evening Post</i>. I was instantly threatened with a libel suit, but the +man who was to bring it left at once on a yachting trip to the West +Indies, and so far as I can learn has never reappeared either in America +or in Literature. It is one of the abiding regrets of my life that the +papers in that libel suit were never served upon me. +</p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0062" id="h2H_4_0062"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + LXI +</h2> + +<p> +In the autumn of 1882 a little group of literary men, assembled around +Richard Watson Gilder's fireside, decided to organize an Authors Club +in New York. They arranged for the drafting of a tentative constitution +and issued invitations for twenty-five of us to meet a little later at +Lawrence Hutton's house in Thirty-fourth Street to organize the club. +</p> +<p> +We met there on the 13th of November and, clause by clause, adopted a +constitution. +</p> +<p> +It was obvious in that little assemblage itself, that some such +organization of authors was badly needed in New York. For, though there +were only twenty-five of us there, all selected by the originating +company, every man of us had to be introduced to some at least of the +others present. The men of letters in New York did not know each other. +They were beset by unacquaintance, prejudices, senseless antagonisms, +jealousies, amounting in some cases to hatreds. They had need to be +drawn together in a friendly organization, in which they could learn to +know and like and appreciate each other. +</p> +<p class="side"> +The Founding of the Authors Club +</p> +<p> +So great were the jealousies and ambitions to which I have referred that +early in the meeting Mr. Gilder—I think it was he—called three or four +of us into a corner + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page273" name="page273"></a>[273]</span> + + and suggested that there was likely to be a fight +for the presidency of the club, and that it might result in the defeat +of the entire enterprise. At Mr. Gilder's suggestion, or that of some +one else—I cannot be sure because all of us in that corner were in +accord—it was decided that there should be no president of the club, +that the government should be vested in an executive council, and that +at each of its meetings the council should choose its own chairman. In +later and more harmonious years, since the men of the club have become +an affectionate brotherhood, it has been the custom for the council to +elect its chairman for a year, and usually to reëlect him for another +year. But at the beginning we had conditions to guard against that no +longer exist—now that the literary men of New York know and mightily +like each other. +</p> +<p> +The eligibility clause of the constitution as experimentally drawn up +by the committee, prescribed that in order to be eligible a man must be +the author of "at least one book proper to literature," or—and there +followed a clause covering the case of magazine editors and the like. +</p> +<p> +As a reader for a publishing house, I scented danger here. Half in play, +but in earnest also, I suggested that the authorship of at least one +book proper to literature would render pretty nearly the entire adult +male population of the United States eligible to membership in the +club, unless some requirement of publication were added. My manuscript +reading had seemed to me at least to suggest that, and, as a necessary +safeguard, I moved to insert the word "published" before the word +"book," and the motion was carried with the laughter of the knowing +for its accompaniment. +</p> +<p> +The club was very modest in its beginnings. As its constituent members +were mainly persons possessed of no + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page274" name="page274"></a>[274]</span> + + money, so the club had none. For a +time our meetings were held at the houses of members—Lawrence Hutton's, +Dr. Youmans's, Richard Grant White's, and so on. But as not all of us +were possessed of homes that lent themselves to such entertainment, we +presently began meeting at Sieghortner's and other restaurants. Then +came a most hospitable invitation from the Tile Club, offering us the +use of their quarters for our meetings. Their quarters consisted, in +fact, of a kitchen in the interior of a block far down town—I forget +the number of the street. The building served Edwin A. Abbey as a +studio—he had not made his reputation as an artist then—and the good +old Irishwoman who cared for the rooms lived above stairs with her +daughter for her sole companion. This daughter was Abbey's model, and +a portrait of her, painted by his hand, hung in the studio, with a +presentation legend attached. The portrait represented one of the most +beautiful girls I have ever seen. It was positively ravishing in its +perfection. One day I had occasion to visit the place to make some +club arrangement, and while there I met the young lady of the portrait. +She was of sandy complexion, freckled, and otherwise commonplace in an +extreme degree. Yet that exquisitely beautiful portrait that hung there +in its frame was an admirably faithful likeness of the girl, when one +studied the two faces closely. Abbey had not painted in the freckles; +he had chosen flesh tints of a more attractive sort than the sandiness +of the girl's complexion; he had put a touch of warmth into the +indeterminate color of her pale red hair; and above all, he had painted +intelligence and soul into her vacuous countenance. Yet the girl and the +portrait were absolutely alike in every physical detail. +</p> +<p> +I have not wondered since to learn that the husbands of high-born +English dames, and the fathers of English maidens have been glad to pay +Abbey kings' ransoms for + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page275" name="page275"></a>[275]</span> + + portraits of their womankind. Abbey has the +gift of interpretation, and I do not know of any greater gift. +</p> +<p class="side"> +Dime Novels +</p> +<p> +The rear building in which we met by virtue of the Tile Club's +hospitality was approached through an alleyway, or covered gallery +rather, concerning which there was a tradition that two suicides and +a murder had been committed within its confines. +</p> +<p> +"How inspiring all that is!" said John Hay one night after the +traditions had been reported in a peculiarly prosaic fashion by a +writer of learned essays in psychology and the like, who had no more +imagination than an oyster brings to bear upon the tray on which it +is served. "It makes one long to write romantic tragedies, and lurid +dramas, and all that sort of thing," Mr. Hay went on. "I'm sorely +tempted to enter upon the career of the dime novelist." +</p> +<p> +This set us talking of the dime novel, a little group of us assembled +in front of the fire. Some one started the talk by saying that the dime +novel was an entirely innocent and a very necessary form of literature. +There John Hay broke in, and Edwin Booth, who was also present, +sustained him. +</p> +<p> +"The dime novel," Mr. Hay said, "is only a rude form of the story of +adventure. If Scott's novels had been sufficiently condensed to be sold +at the price, they would have been dime novels of the most successful +sort. Your boy wants thrill, heroics, tall talk, and deeds of +derring-do, and these are what the dime novelist gives him in abundance, +and even in lavish superabundance. I remember that the favorite book of +my own boyhood was J. B. Jones's 'Wild Western Scenes.' His 'Sneak' was +to me a hero of romance with whom Ivanhoe could in no way compare." +</p> +<p> +"But dime novels corrupt the morals of boys," suggested some one of the +company. +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page276" name="page276"></a>[276]</span></p> + +<p> +"Do they?" asked Mr. Hay. Then a moment later he asked: "Did you ever +read one of them?" +</p> +<p> +The interrupter admitted that he had not. +</p> +<p> +"Till you do," said Mr. Hay, "you should hesitate to pass judgment. The +moral standards of the dime novel are always of the highest. They are +even heroic in their insistence upon honor and self-sacrifice in behalf +of the right. They are as chivalric as the code of honor itself. There +is never anything unclean in the dime novel, never anything that even +squints at toleration of immorality. The man beset by foes is always +gallantly supported by resolute fellows with pistols in their hands +which they are ready to use in behalf of righteousness. The maiden +in trouble has champions galore, whose language may not always square +itself with Sunday School standards, but whose devotion to the task of +protecting innocence is altogether inspiring." +</p> +<p> +"What about their literary quality?" asked some one in the group. +</p> +<p> +"It is very bad, I suppose," answered Edwin Booth, "but that isn't the +quality they put to the front. I have read dozens, scores, hundreds of +them, and I have never challenged their literary quality, because that +is something to which they lay no claim. Their strength lies in dramatic +situations, and they abound in these. I must say that some of them are +far better, stronger, and more appealing than are many of those that +have made the fortune of successful plays." +</p> +<p> +"Do you read them for the sake of the dramatic situations, Mr. Booth?" +some one asked. +</p> +<p> +"No. I read them for the sake of sleep," he replied. "I read them just +as I play solitaire—to divert my mind and to bring repose to me." +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page277" name="page277"></a>[277]</span></p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0063" id="h2H_4_0063"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + LXII +</h2> + +<p class="side"> +The Authors Club +</p> +<p> +It was not long after that that the Authors Club secured quarters +of its own in Twenty-fourth Street, and became an established social +organization. For it was never a literary club, but always strictly a +social one, having a literary basis of eligibility to membership. From +the beginning we refused to read papers at each other, or in any other +way to "improve our minds" on club evenings by any form of literary +exercise. As the carpenter, who dresses lumber and drives nails and +miters joints for his daily bread does not seek his evening recreation +by doing those things for amusement, so we who were all hard-working men +of letters, earning our living with the pen, had no mind to do as +amateurs that which we were daily and hourly doing as professionals. +</p> +<p> +In the same way we decided at the outset to eschew every form of +propagandism. The club has had no cause to advocate, no doctrine to +promulgate, no "movement" to help or hinder. It has been and still is +strictly a social club composed of men of letters, and having for its +guests interesting men of all other professions. Hence it has prospered +and its members have become intimates with no trace or suggestion +of friction between them. I think I am safe in saying that no other +organization has done so much for the amelioration of the literary life, +the removal of prejudices and bitternesses and spites and jealousies, +and for the upbuilding of cordial friendship among writers. I think +there is no man in the club who doesn't count every other man there +his friend. +</p> +<p> +The point emphasized above—that the club is a social, not a literary +organization—is important. Neglect of it has led to a good deal of +ill-informed and misdirected criticism. At the very beginning, on the +night of the club's + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page278" name="page278"></a>[278]</span> + + organization, we made up a list of somewhat more than +a score of literary men who should be made members upon the invitation +of our Executive Council without the formality of proposal and election. +From that list we excluded—by unanimous vote—one man whose literary +work abundantly qualified him for membership, but whose cantankerous +self-satisfaction rendered him, in the general opinion, a man not +"clubbable." The trouble with him was not so much that he regarded +himself, as he once avowed in company that he did, as "a greater than +Shakespeare," but that he was disposed to quarrel with everybody who +failed to recognize the assumption as a fact. +</p> +<p> +If ours had been a literary club, he must have been admitted to +membership without question. As it was a social club, we didn't want +him, and three several efforts that he afterwards made to secure +admission failed. The like has happened in the cases of two or three +other men whose literary work rendered them eligible, but whose personal +peculiarities did not commend them. +</p> +<p> +Chiefly, however, the club has been criticised for its failure to admit +women to membership. Paul Leicester Ford said to me on that subject one +day: +</p> +<p> +"I'll have nothing to do with your club. You arrogantly refuse to +admit women, though women are doing quite as much as men in American +literature." +</p> +<p class="side"> +Why Women Are Not Eligible +</p> +<p> +I explained several things to him. I reminded him that the Authors +Club set up no pretension to be completely representative of American +literary activity; that it was merely a club formed by gentlemen who +felt the need of it, for the purpose of bringing literary men together +for social intercourse over their pipes and sandwiches; that the +admission of women would of necessity defeat this solitary purpose, and +that their exclusion was no more a slight than that which he put upon +his nearest friends whenever he gave a dinner or a theater party to +which + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page279" name="page279"></a>[279]</span> + + he could not invite everybody on his eligible list. Then I pointed +out another difficulty and a supreme one. If we should admit women on +the same terms of eligibility that we insisted upon in the case of men, +a host of writing women would become eligible, while our own wives and +daughters would in most cases be ineligible. If, in order to cover that +difficulty we should admit the wives and daughters of male members, we +should be obliged to admit also the husbands, sons, and fathers of our +female members, so that presently we should become a mob of men and +women, half or more of whom were ineligible under our original conception +of the club and its reason for being. There is also the consideration +that every club must and does exclude more than it includes; that in +requiring New England birth or descent for membership, the New England +Society excludes perhaps nine-tenths of the people of New York, while +without that requirement the Society would lose its distinctive +character and be no New England Society at all. +</p> +<p> +Mr. Ford was so far convinced that he authorized me to propose his name +for membership, but before I had opportunity to do so, the tragedy that +ended his life had befallen. +</p> +<p> +The club has found ways of marking its appreciation of the literary +equality of women without destroying its own essential being. In +February and March of each year it gives four afternoon receptions to +women. In so far as it can find them out, the club's Executive Council +invites to all of these receptions, besides the wives and daughters +of its own members, every woman in the land whose literary work would +render her eligible to membership if she were a man. In addition to +this, every member of the club has the privilege of inviting any other +women he pleases. +</p> +<p> +I do not think the club is deficient in gallantry, nor + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page280" name="page280"></a>[280]</span> + + do I find any such +thought prevalent among the pleasing throng of gentlewomen who honor us +by accepting our invitations. +</p> +<p> +Our first quarters were meagerly furnished, of course. It took every +dollar we had to furnish them even in the plainest way. There was neither +a sofa nor an upholstered chair in our rooms. Cheap, straight-backed, +cane-seated chairs alone were there. One night when General Sherman was +a guest, some one apologized for our inability to offer him a more +comfortable seat. The sturdy old soldier always had an opinion ready +made to suit every emergency. +</p> +<p> +"Comfortable?" he responded. "Why, what do you call these chairs if they +are not comfortable? I don't believe in cushions. They are unnatural; +they are devices of self-indulgence and luxury. The law ought to forbid +their existence. They make men limp and flabby when they ought to be +strong and vigorous and virile. The best chair in the world is one with +a raw bull's hide for a seat, and with leathern thongs to tighten it +with when it stretches. Next best is the old-fashioned, wooden-bottomed +kitchen chair that cost forty cents when I was a boy. I don't suppose +they make 'em now. People are too luxurious to know when they are well +off." +</p> +<p> +Presently some one spoke to him of his "March to the Sea," and he +instantly replied: +</p> +<p> +"It's all romantic nonsense to call it that. The thing was nothing more +nor less than a military change of base—a thing familiar to every +student of tactics; but a poet got hold of it, nicknamed it the 'March +to the Sea,' and that's what everybody will call it, I suppose, till the +crack of doom, unless it is forgotten before that time." +</p> +<p> +Perhaps the hard-fighting veteran's appreciation of the romantic aspect +of great achievements was less keen than + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page281" name="page281"></a>[281]</span> + + that of a company of creative +writers. Perhaps his modesty got the better of him. +</p> +<p class="side"> +The First "Watch Night" +</p> +<p> +It happened early in the history of the Authors Club that the regular +meeting night fell one year on the thirty-first of December. At first it +was suggested that the date be changed, but some one remembered the old +custom of the Methodists who held "Watch Night" meetings, seeing the old +year out and the new year in with rejoicing and fervent singing. Why +shouldn't we have a "Watch Night" after our own fashion? The suggestion +was eagerly accepted. No programme was arranged, no order of exercises +planned. Nothing was prearranged except that with friendship and jollity +and the telling of stories we should give a farewell to the old year and +a welcome to the new. +</p> +<p> +Fortunately, Mark Twain was called upon to begin the story telling, +and he put formality completely out of countenance at the very outset. +Instead of standing as if to address the company, he seized a chair, +straddled it, and with his arms folded across its back, proceeded +to tell one of the most humorous of all his stories. Frank Stockton +followed with his account of the "mislaid corpse" and before the new +year had an hour or two of age, there had been related enough of +exquisitely humorous incident—real or fanciful—to make the fortune +of two or three books of humor. +</p> +<p> +At midnight we turned out the gas and sang a stanza or two of "Auld Lang +Syne" by way of farewell to the old year. Then, with lights all ablaze +again, we greeted the new year in the familiar "He's a jolly good +fellow." +</p> +<p> +Max O'Rell was my guest on one of these occasions, and in one of his +later books he gave an account of it. After recording the fact that "at +precisely twelve o'clock the lights are turned out," he added a footnote +saying in solemn fashion: "A clock is <i>borrowed for the occasion</i>." +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page282" name="page282"></a>[282]</span></p> + +<p> +I saw a good deal of that witty Frenchman during his several visits to +America. I wrote an introduction to the American edition of his "John +Bull, Jr.," and it served to protect that work with a copyright entry. +</p> +<p> +He never paid me a cent for the service. +</p> +<p> +That was because I refused to accept the remuneration he pressed upon me. +</p> +<p> +I offer that as a jest which he would have appreciated keenly. +</p> +<p> +He was a man of generous mind, whose humor sometimes impressed others +as cynical, a judgment that I always regarded as unjust, for the reason +that the humorist must be allowed a certain privilege of saying severer +things than he really feels, if he is to be a humorist at all. When +Max O'Rell says of a certain type of stupid British boy of the "upper +class," that he ultimately enters the army and fights his country's +enemies, and then adds: "And whether he kills his country's enemy or his +country's enemy kills him, his country is equally benefited," he does +not really mean what he says. He once confessed to me that he had had an +abiding affection for every such boy, but that the temptation to make a +jest at his expense was irresistible in the case of a writer whose bread +and butter were dependent upon his ability to excite smiles. +</p> +<p> +In the same way, as everybody must have observed, the humor that has +made the reputation of many newspaper editors is largely leveled at +women in their various relations with men and at the sacred things of +life. Much of it would be cruelly unjust if it were seriously meant, as +ordinarily it is not. +</p> +<p> +I have sometimes wondered whether the injustice did not outweigh the +humor—whether the smile excited by the humor was worth the wound +inflicted by the injustice. +</p> +<p class="side"> +Habitual Humorists +</p> +<p> +The professional humorist, whether with pen, pencil, or tongue, is the +victim of a false perspective. He is so + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page283" name="page283"></a>[283]</span> + + intent upon his quip or quibble +or jest, that he loses sight of more serious things. He does not +hesitate to sacrifice even truth and justice, or the highest interest of +whatever sort, for the sake of "making his point." He perhaps mistakenly +believes that his reader or the person studying his caricature will +regard his jest lightly and without loss of respect for the more serious +things that lie behind. As a matter of fact, this rarely happens. The +reader of the jest accepts it as a setting forth of truth, or at any +rate is affected by it in some such fashion. +</p> +<p> +On the whole, therefore, I cannot help regarding the confirmed humorist +in literature or art as a detrimental force. +</p> +<p> +I do not mean to include in this condemnation such genial literary +humorists as Charles Battell Loomis, and Frank R. Stockton, and Charles +Dudley Warner, who made things funny merely by looking at them with an +intellectual squint that deceived nobody and misled nobody. I refer only +to the habitual jokers of the newspapers and the like,—men who, for a +wage, undertake to make a jest of everything that interests the popular +mind, and who, for the sake of their jest, would pervert the Lord's +Prayer itself to a humorous purpose. These people lose all sense of +propriety, proportion, perspective, and even of morality itself. They +make their jests at so much per line, and at all hazards of truth, +justice, and intelligence. +</p> +<p> +In literature these mountebanks impress me as detrimental +impertinents—in conversation they seem to me nuisances. I cannot forget +one occasion on which the late Bishop Potter and a distinguished judge +of the Supreme Court were discussing a question of the possibility of +helpful reform in a certain direction. There was a humorist present—a +man whose sole idea of conversation was sparkle. He insisted upon +sparkling. He interrupted + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page284" name="page284"></a>[284]</span> + + the gravest utterances with his puns or his +plays upon words, or his references to humorous things remembered. The +thing became so intolerable that some one present slipped his arms into +those of the Bishop and the Judge, and led them away with the suggestion +that there was a quiet corner in the club where he would like to seat +them and hear the rest of their conversation. As they turned their backs +on the humorist and moved away, the Bishop asked: +</p> +<p> +"What did you say the name of that mountebank is?" +</p> +<p> +The Judge replied: +</p> +<p> +"I knew at the time. I'm glad to have forgotten it." +</p> +<p> +"It is just as well," answered the Bishop. "There are many things in +this life that are better forgotten than remembered." +</p> +<p> +There is one thing worthy of note in connection with the Authors Club. +Almost from the hour of its inception it has furnished the country +with a very distinguished proportion of its most eminent diplomats and +statesmen. To mention only a few: James Russell Lowell, Andrew D. White, +David Jayne Hill, William L. Wilson, Carl Schurz, General Horace Porter, +John Hay, Theodore Roosevelt, Oscar S. Straus, Edward M. Shepard, and +a dozen others easily mentioned, may be cited as illustrations of +the extent to which a club of only about 180 members in all has been +drawn upon by the national government for its needs in diplomacy and +statesmanship. +</p> +<p> +The Authors Club idea of a watch night meeting has been borrowed by a +number of other organizations, but I think in none of them has it become +so well recognized an event of the year. At any rate, it throngs our +rooms to the point of suffocation on the night of every thirty-first of +December. +</p> +<p> +Another habit of the club has been for a considerable number of members +and guests to linger after its regular + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page285" name="page285"></a>[285]</span> + + meetings until the small hours +of the morning, telling stories or discussing matters of intellectual +interest. This has become a feature of the club meetings since Charles +Henry Webb—better known in literature as "John Paul"—said one night +at two o'clock: +</p> +<p> +"Upon my soul, the Authors Club is one of the very pleasantest places +I know—<i>after</i> the authors have gone home." +</p> +<p class="side"> +"Liber Scriptorum" +</p> +<p> +Soon after the club took its quarters in Twenty-fourth Street, three +of us—Rossiter Johnson, John D. Champlin, and myself—were impressed +with the need of more funds and better furnishings. We suggested the +publication of a unique book, as a means of securing the funds and +providing the furnishings. Our plan contemplated a sumptuous volume, +in an edition limited to two hundred and fifty-one copies—one for the +club, and the rest for sale at one hundred dollars a copy. We proposed +that the members of the club should furnish the poems, stories, and +essays needed; that each of them should agree never to publish his +contribution elsewhere, and that each poem, story, or essay should be +signed by its author in pen and ink in each copy of the book. +</p> +<p> +We were met with prompt discouragement on every hand. The older men +among the members of the club were confident that we could never secure +the papers desired. Our friends among the publishers simply knew in +advance and positively, that even if we could make the book, we could +never sell it. Mr. Joe Harper offered to bet me a hat that we could +never sell twenty-five of the two hundred and fifty copies. I lived to +wear that hat and rejoice in it, for we not only made the book—"Liber +Scriptorum"—but we realized something more than twenty thousand dollars +on its sale, as a fund with which to provide leather-covered morris +chairs, soft rugs, + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page286" name="page286"></a>[286]</span> + + handsome bookcases, and other luxuries for our friends +the doubters to rejoice in. +</p> +<p> +Authors are supposed to be an unbusinesslike set, who do not know enough +of affairs to manage their personal finances in a way to save themselves +from poverty. Perhaps the judgment is correct. But the Authors Club is +the only club I know in New York which has no dollar of debt resting +upon it, and has a comfortable balance to its credit in bank. +</p> +<p> +The case is not singular. It has been written of William Pitt that +while he was able to extricate the British exchequer from the sorest +embarrassment it ever encountered, he could not keep the duns from his +own door. +</p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0064" id="h2H_4_0064"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + LXIII +</h2> + +<p> +I had been operating my little literary shop successfully for three or +four years after quitting the <i>Evening Post</i>, when Mr. Parke Godwin came +to me to say that he and some friends were about buying a controlling +interest in the newspaper called <i>The New York Commercial Advertiser</i>, +and that he wanted me to join his staff. I told him I had no desire to +return to journalism, that I liked my quiet literary life at home, and +that I was managing to make enough out of it to support my family. +</p> +<p> +He replied that at any rate I might undertake the literary editorship of +his newspaper; that it would involve no more than a few hours of office +attendance in each week, and need not interfere in any way with my +literary undertakings of other kinds. +</p> +<p> +I had a very great personal regard for Mr. Godwin; a very great +admiration for his character, and an abiding affection for him as a man. +When he pressed this proposal upon me, insisting that its acceptance +would relieve + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page287" name="page287"></a>[287]</span> + + him of a burden, I decided to undertake what he wanted. +I was the readier to do so for a peculiar reason. In those days pretty +nearly all books, American or English, were first offered to the Harpers, +and I had to examine them all, either in manuscript, if they were +American, or in proof sheets if they were English. Consequently, whether +they were published by the Harpers or by some one else, I was thoroughly +familiar with them long before they came from the press. I foresaw that +it would be easy for me to review them from the acquaintance I already +had with their contents. +</p> +<p class="side"> +In Newspaper Life Again +</p> +<p> +I was resolutely determined not to be drawn again into the newspaper +life, but I foresaw no danger of that in making the literary arrangement +suggested. +</p> +<p> +Accordingly, I became literary editor of the <i>Commercial Advertiser</i> +under Mr. Godwin's administration as the editor-in-chief of that +newspaper. The paper had never been conducted upon the lines he proposed +or upon any other well-defined lines, so far as I could discover, and I +foresaw that he had a hard task before him. All the reputation the paper +had was detrimental rather than helpful. I was eager to help him over +the first hurdles in the race, and so, in addition to my literary duties +I not only wrote editorials each day, but helped in organizing a news +staff that should at least recognize news when it ran up against it in +the street. +</p> +<p> +Mr. Godwin was himself editor-in-chief, and the vigor of his utterances +made a quick impression. But his managing editor lacked—well, let us +say some at least of the qualifications that tend to make a newspaper +successful. Mr. Godwin was an exceedingly patient man, but after a while +he wearied of the weekly loss the paper was inflicting upon him. In the +meanwhile, I discovered that my attention to the newspaper was seriously +interfering with my literary work, and that the fifty dollars a week + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page288" name="page288"></a>[288]</span> + + which the paper paid me did not compensate me for the time I was giving +to it at the expense of my other undertakings. I wrote to Mr. Godwin, +recommending a very capable young man to take my place, and asking to be +released from an engagement that was anything but profitable to me. +</p> +<p> +For reply I had a prompt letter from Mr. Godwin asking me to see him at +his home. There he asked and urged me to become managing editor of the +paper from that hour forth. He told me he was losing money in large sums +upon its conduct, and appealed to me to come to his rescue, urging that +he was "too old and too indolent" himself to put life into the +enterprise. +</p> +<p> +The question of salary was not mentioned between us. He appealed to me +to help him and I stood ready to do so at any sacrifice of personal +interest or convenience. But when the board of directors of the +corporation met a month later, he moved an adequate salary for me and +suggested that it should be dated back to the day on which I had taken +control. A certain excessively small economist on the board objected to +the dating back on the ground that no bargain had been made to that +effect and that he was "constitutionally opposed to the unnecessary +squandering of money." +</p> +<p> +Instantly Mr. Godwin said: +</p> +<p> +"The salary arranged for our managing editor is the just reward of the +service he is rendering. He has been giving us that service from the +hour of his entrance upon office. He is as justly entitled to compensation +for that time as for the future. Either the board must pay it or I will +pay it out of my own pocket. We are neither beggars nor robbers, and we +take nothing that we do not pay for." There spoke the great, honest-minded +man that Parke Godwin always was. +</p> +<p> +It was a difficult task I had undertaken. There were + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page289" name="page289"></a>[289]</span> + + many obstacles in +the way. The chief of these was pointed out by Mr. John Bigelow when he +said to me: +</p> +<p> +"You're going to make yours a newspaper for the educated classes. It is +my opinion that there are already too many newspapers for the educated +classes." +</p> +<p> +I am disposed to think the old journalist and statesman had a prophetic +vision of the early coming time when success in newspaper editing would +be measured by the skill of newspaper proprietors in making their appeal +to the uneducated classes—to the million instead of the few thousands. +</p> +<p class="side"> +An Editor's Perplexities +</p> +<p> +A more perplexing difficulty beset me, however. I had a definitely fixed +and wholly inadequate sum of money to expend weekly in making the paper, +and when I came to look over my payroll I found that the greater part +of the sum allowed me went to pay the salaries of some very worthy men, +whose capacity to render effective service to a "live" modern newspaper +was exceedingly small. I had sore need of the money these men drew every +week, with which to employ reporters who could get news and editors who +knew how to write. The men in question held their places by virtue of +Mr. Godwin's over-generous desire to provide a living for them. +</p> +<p> +I represented the case to him in its nakedness. I told him frankly that +whatever he might be personally able to afford, the newspaper's earnings +at that time did not justify the maintenance of such a pension roll. +Either I must discharge all these men and use the money that went to pay +their salaries in a more fruitful way, or I must decline to go on with +the task I had undertaken. +</p> +<p> +He solved the problem by calling the board together, resigning his +editorship, and making me editor-in-chief, with unrestricted authority. +</p> +<p> +With all the gentleness I could bring to bear I detached the barnacles +and freed myself to make a newspaper. I + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page290" name="page290"></a>[290]</span> + + had the good fortune in all this +to have the support of Mr. Godwin's two sons, who were large stockholders +in the newspaper, and of Mr. Henry Marquand, who was also the owner of +an important interest. +</p> +<p> +I had also the good fortune to secure the services of some reporters +and some editorial assistants whose energies and capacities were of the +utmost value to me. +</p> +<p> +Many of them are dead now—as, alas! most other persons are with whom I +have been closely associated. But those of them who are living have made +place and reputation for themselves in a way that justifies the pride I +used to feel in their abilities, their energies, and their conscientious +devotion to duty when they worked with me. Indeed, as I contemplate +the careers of these men, most of whom came to me as "cubs" fresh from +college, I am disposed to plume myself not only upon my sagacity in +discovering their untried abilities, but also upon the tutelage I gave +them in journalism. The eagerness with which other newspapers have since +sought them out for important employments, and the rapidity of their +promotion on those other newspapers have always been a source of pride +to me—pride which is not, I think, vainglorious or unduly personal. +</p> +<p> +Perhaps the reader will permit me here to pay tribute to those loyal men +who so willingly stood by me when the most that I was permitted to pay +them was less than one-half—sometimes less than one-third what they +might have earned upon other newspapers. +</p> +<p class="side"> +Some of My Brilliant "Cubs" +</p> +<p> +Among them was Charles E. Russell, who has since earned high literary +place for himself. Another was Timothy Shaler Williams, who has since +been lured from literature, for which his gifts were great, to affairs, +and who for many years has been president of the Brooklyn Rapid Transit +Company. I had Earl D. Berry for my managing editor, and I could have +had none more capable. + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page291" name="page291"></a>[291]</span> + + In the news department were De François +Folsom—dead long years ago—Edward Fales Coward, who has since made a +distinguished place for himself; Hewitt, the author of Dixey's song, +"So English, You Know"; Sidney Strother Logan, one of the shrewdest news +explorers I have ever known,—dead years ago, unfortunately,—and George +B. Mallon, who came to me fresh from college and whose work was so good +as to confirm my conviction that even in a newspaper's reporting room +an educated mind has advantages over mere native shrewdness and an +acquaintance with the slang and patter of the time. Mr. Mallon's work +was so good, indeed, that I personally assigned him to tasks of peculiar +difficulty. The New York <i>Sun</i> has since confirmed my judgment of his +ability by making him its city editor, a post that he has held for seven +years or more. +</p> +<p> +Another of my "cubs" was Henry Armstrong, whose abilities have since won +for him a place on the brilliant editorial writing staff of the <i>Sun</i>. +Still another was Henry Wright, who is now editor-in-chief of the paper +on which he "learned his trade,"—though the paper has since changed its +name to the <i>Globe</i>. Another was Nelson Hirsh, who afterwards became +editor of the <i>Sunday World</i>. +</p> +<p> +On my editorial staff were Henry R. Elliot—dead now,—James Davis, +who carried every detail of a singularly varied scholarship at his +finger-tips, ready for instant use, and whose grace as a writer, +illuminated as it was by an exquisitely subtle humor, ought to have +made him famous, and would have done so, if death had not come to him +too soon. +</p> +<p> +Doubtless there were others whom I ought to mention here in grateful +remembrance, but the incessant activities of the score and more of years +that have elapsed since my association with them ended have obliterated +many details + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page292" name="page292"></a>[292]</span> + + from my memory. Let me say that to all of them I render +thanks for loyal and highly intelligent assistance in the difficult task +I then had to wrestle with. +</p> +<p> +With a staff like that we were able to get the news and print it, and we +did both in a way that attracted attention in other newspaper offices as +well as among newspaper readers. With such writers as those mentioned +and others, the editorial utterances of the paper attracted an attention +that had never before been accorded to them. +</p> +<p> +So far as its books of account gave indication, the <i>Commercial +Advertiser</i> had never earned or paid a dividend. At the end of the first +year under this new régime it paid a dividend of fifty per cent. At the +end of its second year it paid its stockholders one hundred per cent. +The earnings of the third year were wisely expended in the purchase of +new presses and machinery. Before the end of the fourth year I had +resigned its editorship to become an editorial writer on <i>The World</i>. +</p> +<p> +I intensely enjoyed the work of "making bricks without straw" on the +<i>Commercial Advertiser</i>—by which I mean that with a staff of one man to +ten on the great morning newspapers, and with one dollar to expend where +they could squander hundreds, we managed not only to keep step but to +lead them in such news-getting enterprises as those incident to the +prosecution of the boodle Aldermen and Jake Sharp, the Diss de Barr +case, and the other exciting news problems of the time. +</p> +<p> +The strain, however, was heart-breaking, and presently my health gave +way under it. A leisurely wandering all over this continent restored +it somewhat, but upon my return the burden seemed heavier than +ever—especially the burden of responsibility that made sleep difficult +and rest impossible to me. +</p> +<p> +In the meanwhile, of course, my literary work had been sacrificed to the +Moloch of journalism. I had canceled + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page293" name="page293"></a>[293]</span> + + all my engagements of that sort +and severed connections which I had intended to be lifelong. In a +word, I had been drawn again into the vortex of that daily journalism, +from which I had twice escaped. I was worn, weary, and inexpressibly +oppressed by the duties of responsible editorship—a responsibility I +had never sought, but one which circumstances had twice thrust upon me. +</p> +<p class="side"> +The Dread Task of the Editor +</p> +<p> +I wonder if the reader can understand or even faintly imagine what all +this means. I wonder if I can suggest some shadow of it to his mind. +Think of what it means to toil all day in the making of a newspaper, and +to feel, when all is done that the result is utterly inadequate. Think +of what it means to the weary one to go home with the next day's task +upon his mind as a new burden, and with the discouraging consciousness +that all he has done on one day's issue is dead so far as the next day +is concerned. Think what it means to a sensitive man to feel that upon +his discretion, his alertness, his sagacity, depends not only the daily +result of a newspaper's publication, but the prosperity or failure of +other men's investments of hundreds of thousands of dollars. +</p> +<p> +For the value of a newspaper depends from day to day upon its conduct. +It is a matter of good will. If the editor pleases his constituency, the +investment of the owners remains a profitable property. If he displeases +that constituency the newspaper has nothing left to sell but its presses +and machinery, representing a small fraction of the sum invested in it. +</p> +<p> +That responsibility rested upon me as an incubus. All my life until then +I had been able to sleep. Then came sleeplessness of a sort I could not +shake off. At my usual hour for going to bed, I was overcome by sleep, +but after five minutes on the pillows there came wakefulness. I learned +how to fight it, by going to my library and resolutely sitting in the +dark until sleep came, but the process + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page294" name="page294"></a>[294]</span> + + was a painful one and it left me +next morning crippled for my day's work. +</p> +<p> +In the meanwhile, as I have said, I enjoyed my work as I suppose a man +condemned to death enjoys the work of writing his "confessions." I +enjoyed my very intimate association with Henry Marquand, one of the +most companionable men I ever knew, for the reason that his mind was +responsive to every thought one might utter, and that there was always +a gentle humor in all that he had to say. He had a most comfortable +schooner yacht on board which I many times saved my life or my sanity by +passing a Sunday outside on blue water, with nothing more important to +think of than the cob pipes we smoked as we loafed in our pajamas on the +main hatch. +</p> +<p> +Marquand had a habit of inviting brilliant men for his guests, such men +as Dr. Halsted, now of Johns Hopkins; Dr. Tuttle, who has since made +fame for himself; Dr. Roosevelt, who died a while ago; James Townsend, +Dr. William Gilman Thompson, then a comparatively young man but now one +of the supreme authorities in medical science, and others of like highly +intellectual quality. Now and then there were "ladies present," but they +were an infrequent interruption. I don't mean that ungallantly. But rest +and women do not usually go together. +</p> +<p> +It was our habit to board the yacht down Staten Island way on Saturday +afternoon, sail out to the lightship and back, and anchor in the +Horseshoe for dinner and the night. On Sunday we sailed out toward Fire +Island or down toward Long Branch, or wherever else we chose. We were +intent only upon rest—the rest that the sea alone can give, and that +only the lovers of the sea ever get in this utterly unrestful world of +ours. +</p> +<p> +On deck in the afternoon and evening, and in the saloon at dinner and +other meals, we talked, I suppose, of intellectual things. At sea we +rested, and smoked, and + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page295" name="page295"></a>[295]</span> + + were silent, and altogether happy. I have always +enjoyed the sea. I have crossed the ocean many times, and I have sailed +in all sorts of craft over all sorts of seas, with delight in every +breath that the ocean gave to me; but I think I may truly say that no +other voyage I ever made gave me so much pleasure as did those little +yachting trips on the "Ruth" in company with men whose very presence was +an intellectual inspiration. +</p> +<p class="side"> +Parke Godwin +</p> +<p> +But the most abiding recollection I have of my service on the +<i>Commercial Advertiser</i> is that which concerns itself with Parke Godwin. +He was a man of great thought impulses, only half expressed. That +which he gave to the world in print was no more than the hem of his +intellectual garment. A certain constitutional indolence, encouraged +by his too early acquisition of sufficient wealth to free him from the +necessity of writing for a living, prevented him from giving to the +world the best that was in him. He would have a great thought and he +would plan to write it. Sometimes he would even begin to write it. But +in the end he preferred to talk it to some appreciative listener. +</p> +<p> +I remember one case of the kind. He had several times invited me to +visit him at his Bar Harbor summer home. Always I had been obliged by +the exigencies of my editorial work to forego that delight. One summer +he wrote to me, saying: +</p> +<p> +"I wonder if you could forget the <i>Commercial Advertiser</i> long enough +to spend a fortnight with me here at Bar Harbor. You see, I don't like +to issue invitations and have them 'turned down,' so I'm not going to +invite you till you write me that you will come." +</p> +<p> +In answer to that invitation I passed a fortnight with him. From +beginning to end of the time he forbade all mention of the newspaper of +which he was chief owner and I the responsible editor. But during that +time he + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page296" name="page296"></a>[296]</span> + + "talked into me," as he said at parting, a deal of high thinking +that he ought to have put into print. +</p> +<p> +His mind had one notable quality in common with Emerson's—the capacity +to fecundate every other mind with which it came into close contact. +One came away, from a conference with him, feeling enriched, inspired, +enlarged, not so much by the thought he had expressed as by the thinking +he had instigated in his listener's mind. +</p> +<p> +It was so with me on that occasion. I came away full of a thought that +grew and fruited in my mind. Presently—an occasion offering—I wrote +it into a series of articles in the newspaper. These attracted the +attention of Dr. William M. Sloane, now of Columbia University, then +professor of history at Princeton and editor of the <i>Princeton Review</i>. +At his instigation I presented the same thought in his <i>Review</i>, and a +little later by invitation I addressed the Nineteenth Century Club on +the subject. I called it "The American Idea." In substance it was that +our country had been founded and had grown great upon the idea that +every man born into the world has a right to do as he pleases, so long +as he does not trespass upon the equal right of any other man to do +as he pleases, and that in a free country it is the sole function of +government to maintain the conditions of liberty and to let men alone. +</p> +<p> +The idea seemed to be successful in its appeal to men's intelligence at +that time, but many years later—only a year or so ago, in fact—I put +it forward in a commencement address at a Virginia College and found +it sharply though silently antagonized by professors and trustees on +the ground that it seemed to deny to government the right to enact +prohibitory liquor laws, or otherwise to make men moral by statute. The +doctrine was pure Jeffersonianism, of course, and the professors and +trustees sincerely believed themselves to be Jeffersonians. But the + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page297" name="page297"></a>[297]</span> + + doctrine had gored their pet ox, and that made a difference. +</p> +<p class="side"> +Some Recollections of Mr. Godwin +</p> +<p> +One day Mr. Godwin expressed himself as delighted with all I had written +on the American Idea. I responded: +</p> +<p> +"That is very natural. The idea is yours, not mine, and in all that I +have written about it, I have merely been reporting what you said to me, +as we stood looking at the surf dashing itself to pieces on the rocks at +Bar Harbor." +</p> +<p> +"Not at all," he answered. "No man can expound and elaborate another +man's thought without putting so much of himself into it as to make it +essentially and altogether his own. I may have dropped a seed into your +mind, but I didn't know it or intend it. The fruitage is all your own. +My thinking on the subject was casual, vagrant, unorganized. I had never +formulated it in my own mind. You see we all gather ideas in converse +with others. That is what speech was given to man for. But the value of +the ideas depends upon the use made of them." +</p> +<p> +Mr. Godwin had been at one time in his life rather intimately associated +with Louis Kossuth, the Hungarian patriot and statesman. As all old +newspaper men remember, Kossuth had a habit of dying frequently. News +of his death would come and all the newspapers would print extended +obituary articles. Within a day or two the news would be authoritatively +contradicted, and the obituaries would be laid away for use at some +future time. On one of these occasions Mr. Godwin wrote for me a +singularly interesting article, giving his personal reminiscences of +Kossuth. Before I could print it despatches came contradicting the news +of the old Hungarian's death. I put Mr. Godwin's manuscript into a +pigeonhole and both he and I forgot all about it. A year or so later + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page298" name="page298"></a>[298]</span> + + Kossuth did in fact die, and in looking through my papers to see what I +might have ready for printing on the subject, I discovered Mr. Godwin's +paper. It was not signed, but purported to be the personal recollections +of one who had known the patriot well. +</p> +<p> +I hurried it into print, thus gaining twelve or fourteen hours on the +morning newspapers. +</p> +<p> +The next morning Mr. Godwin called upon me, declaring that he had come +face to face with the most extraordinary psychological problem he had +ever encountered. +</p> +<p> +"The chapter of Kossuth reminiscences that you printed yesterday," he +said, "was as exact a report of my own recollections of the man as I +could have given you if you had sent a reporter to interview me on the +subject; and the strangest part of it is that the article reports many +things which I could have sworn were known only to myself. It is +astonishing, inexplicable." +</p> +<p> +"This isn't a case of talking your thought into another person," I +answered, referring to the former incident. "This time you put yourself +down on paper, and what I printed was set from the manuscript you gave +me a year or so ago." +</p> +<p> +This solved the psychological puzzle and to that extent relieved his +mind. But there remained the further difficulty that, cudgel his brain +as he might, he could find in it no trace of recollection regarding the +matter. +</p> +<p class="side"> +A Mystery of Forgetting +</p> +<p> +"I remember very well," he said, "that I often thought I ought to write +out my recollections of Kossuth, but I can't remember that I ever did +so. I remember taking myself to task many times for my indolence in +postponing a thing that I knew I ought to do, but that only makes the +case the more inexplicable. When I scourged myself for neglecting the +task, why didn't my memory remind me that I had actually discharged the +duty? And now that I have read the reminiscences in print, why am I + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page299" name="page299"></a>[299]</span> + + unable to recall the fact that I wrote them? The article fills several +columns. Certainly I ought to have some recollection of the labor +involved in writing so much. Are you entirely certain that the +manuscript was mine?" +</p> +<p> +I sent to the composing room for the "copy" and showed it to him. As he +looked it over he said: +</p> +<p> +"'Strange to say, on Club paper.' You remember Thackeray's Roundabout +paper with that headline? It has a bearing here, for this is written on +paper that the Century Club alone provides for the use of its members. +I must, therefore, have written the thing at the Century Club, and that +ought to resurrect some memory of it in my mind, but it doesn't. No. I +have not the slightest recollection of having put that matter on paper." +</p> +<p> +At that point his wonderfully alert mind turned to another thought. +</p> +<p> +"Suppose you and I believed in the occult, the mystical, the so-called +supernatural, as we don't," he said, "what a mystery we might make of +this in the way of psychical manifestation—which usually belongs to the +domain of psycho-pathology. Think of it! As I chastised myself in my own +mind for my neglect to put these things on paper, your mind came under +subjection to mine and you wrote them in my stead. So complete was the +possession that your handwriting, which is clear and legible, became an +exact facsimile of mine, which is obscure and difficult. Then you, being +under possession, preserved no memory of having written the thing, while +I, knowing nothing of your unconscious agency in the matter, had nothing +to remember concerning it. Isn't that about the way the mysticists make +up their 'facts' for the misleading of half-baked brains?" +</p> +<p> +In later years I related this incident to a distinguished half-believer +in things mystical, adding Mr. Godwin's + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page300" name="page300"></a>[300]</span> + + laughingly conjectural explanation +of it, whereupon the reply came: +</p> +<p> +"May not that have been the real explanation, in spite of your own and +Mr. Godwin's skepticism?" +</p> +<p> +I was left with the feeling that after all what Mr. Godwin had intended +as an extravagant caricature was a veritable representation of a +credulity that actually exists, even among men commonly accounted sane, +and certainly learned. The reflection was discouraging to one who hopes +for the progress of mankind through sanity of mind. +</p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0065" id="h2H_4_0065"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + LXIV +</h2> + +<p> +In the days of which I have hitherto written there was a dignity, +reserve, contentment—call it what you will—in the conduct of newspapers +of established reputation. There was rivalry among them in their endeavors +to publish the earliest news of public events, but it was a dignified +rivalry involving comparatively little of that self-glorification which +has since come to be a double-leaded feature in the conduct of many +newspapers. The era of illustration and exploitation by the use of +pictures had not yet been born of cheapened reproductive processes. +Newspapers were usually printed directly from type because stereotyping +was then a costly process and a slow one. As a consequence, newspapers +were printed in regular columns consecutively arranged, and articles +begun in one column were carried forward in the next. There were no such +legends as "continued on page five," and the like. +</p> +<p> +Headlines were confined to the column that began the article. The art +of stretching them halfway or all the way across the page and involving +half a dozen of them in gymnastic wrestlings with each other for supremacy + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page301" name="page301"></a>[301]</span> + + in conspicuity had not then been invented, and in its absence the use of +circus poster type and circus poster exaggeration of phrase was undreamed +of. +</p> +<p> +Now and then an advertiser anxious for conspicuity would pay a heavy +price to have column rules cut so that his announcement might stretch +over two or more columns, but the cost of that was so great that +indulgence in it was rare even among ambitious advertisers, while in +the reading columns the practice was wholly unknown. +</p> +<p class="side"> +The Price of Newspapers +</p> +<p> +Another thing. It was then thought that when a copy of a newspaper was +sold, the price paid for it ought to be sufficient at least to pay the +cost of its manufacture, plus some small margin of profit. All the great +morning newspapers except the <i>Sun</i> were sold at four cents a copy; the +<i>Sun</i>, by virtue of extraordinary literary condensation, used only about +half the amount of paper consumed by the others, and was sold at two +cents. The afternoon newspapers were sold at three cents. +</p> +<p> +The publishers of newspapers had not then grasped the idea that is +now dominant, that if a great circulation can be achieved by selling +newspapers for less than the mere paper in them costs, the increase +in the volume and price of advertising will make of them enormously +valuable properties. +</p> +<p> +That idea was not born suddenly. Even after the revolution was +established, the cost of the white paper used in making a newspaper +helped to determine the price of it to the public. It was not until the +phenomenal success of cheap newspapers years afterwards tempted even +more reckless adventurers into the field that publishers generally threw +the entire burden of profit-making upon the advertising columns and thus +established the business office in the seat before occupied by the editor +and made business considerations altogether dominant over utterance, +attitude, and conduct. +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page302" name="page302"></a>[302]</span></p> + +<p> +There were in the meantime many attempts made to establish a cheaper +form of journalism, but they were inadequately supported by working +capital; they were usually conducted by men of small capacity; they had +no traditions of good will behind them, and above all, they could not +get Associated Press franchises. For the benefit of readers who are +not familiar with the facts, I explain that the Associated Press is an +organization for news-gathering, formed by the great newspapers by way +of securing news that no newspaper could afford to secure for itself. +It maintains bureaus in all the great news centers of the world, and +these collect and distribute to the newspapers concerned a great mass +of routine news that would be otherwise inaccessible to them. If a +president's message, or an inaugural address, or any other public +document of voluminous character is to be given out, it is obvious that +the newspapers concerned cannot wait for telegraphic reports of its +contents. By way of saving time and telegraphic expense, the document +is delivered to the Associated Press, and copies of it are sent to all +the newspapers concerned, with a strict limitation upon the hour of its +publication. Until that hour comes no newspaper in the association is +privileged to print it or in any way, by reference or otherwise, to +reveal any part of its contents. But in the meanwhile they can put it +into type, and with it their editorial comments upon it, so that when +the hour of release comes, they can print the whole thing—text and +comment—without loss of time. The newspaper not endowed with an +Associated Press franchise must wait for twenty-four hours or more +for its copy of the document. +</p> +<p> +Hardly less important is the fact that in every city, town, and village +in the country, the Associated Press has its agent—the local editor or +the telegraph operator, or some one else—who is commissioned to report +to it + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page303" name="page303"></a>[303]</span> + + every news happening that may arise within his bailiwick. Often +these reports are interesting; sometimes they are of importance, and in +either case the newspaper not allied with a press association must miss +them. +</p> +<p> +At the time of which I am writing, the Associated Press was the only +organization in the country that could render such service, and every +newspaper venture lacking its franchise was foredoomed to failure. +</p> +<p class="side"> +The Pulitzer Revolution +</p> +<p> +But a newspaper revolution was impending and presently it broke upon us. +</p> +<p> +In 1883 Mr. Joseph Pulitzer bought the <i>World</i> and instituted a totally +new system of newspaper conduct. +</p> +<p> +His advent into New York journalism was called an "irruption," and it +was resented not only by the other newspapers, but even more by a large +proportion of the conservative public. +</p> +<p> +In its fundamental principle, Mr. Pulitzer's revolutionary method was +based upon an idea identical with that suggested by Mr. John Bigelow +when he told me there were too many newspapers for the educated class. +Mr. Pulitzer undertook to make a newspaper, not for the educated class, +but for all sorts and conditions of men. He did not intend to overlook +the educated class, but he saw clearly how small a part of the community +it was, and he refused to make his appeal to it exclusively or even +chiefly. +</p> +<p> +The results were instantaneous and startling. The <i>World</i>, which had +never been able to achieve a paying circulation or a paying constituency +of advertisers, suddenly began selling in phenomenal numbers, while its +advertising business became what Mr. Pulitzer once called a "bewildering +chaos of success, yielding a revenue that the business office was +imperfectly equipped to handle." +</p> +<p> +It is an interesting fact, that the <i>World's</i> gain in circulation was +not made at the expense of any other newspaper. + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page304" name="page304"></a>[304]</span> + + The books of account +show clearly that while the <i>World</i> was gaining circulation by scores +and hundreds of thousands, no other morning newspaper was losing. The +simple fact was that by appealing to a larger class, the <i>World</i> had +created a great company of newspaper readers who had not before been +newspaper readers at all. Reluctantly, and only by degrees, the other +morning newspapers adopted the <i>World's</i> methods, and won to themselves +a larger constituency than they had ever enjoyed before. +</p> +<p> +All this had little effect upon the afternoon newspapers. They had their +constituencies. Their province was quite apart from that of the morning +papers. A circulation of ten or twenty thousand copies seemed to them +satisfactory; any greater circulation was deemed extraordinary, and if +at a time of popular excitement their sales exceeded twenty thousand +they regarded it not only as phenomenal but as a strain upon their +printing and distributing machinery which it would be undesirable to +repeat very often. +</p> +<p> +But the revolution was destined to reach them presently. At that time +none of the morning newspapers thought of issuing afternoon editions. +The game seemed not worth the candle. But presently the sagacity of Mr. +William M. Laffan—then a subordinate on the <i>Sun's</i> staff, later the +proprietor and editor of that newspaper—saw and seized an opportunity. +The morning papers had learned their lesson and were making their appeal +to the multitude instead of the select few. The afternoon newspapers +were still addressing themselves solely to "the educated class." Mr. +Laffan decided to make an afternoon appeal to the more multitudinous +audience. Under his inspiration the <i>Evening Sun</i> was established on the +seventeenth day of March, 1887, and it instantly achieved a circulation +of forty thousand—from twice to four times that of its more +conservative competitors. +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page305" name="page305"></a>[305]</span></p> + +<p class="side"> +The Lure of the World +</p> +<p> +A little later an evening edition of the <i>World</i> was established. Its +success at first was small, but Mr. Pulitzer quickly saw the reason +for that. The paper was too closely modeled upon the conservative and +dignified pattern of the established afternoon newspapers. To his +subordinates Mr. Pulitzer said: +</p> +<p> +"You are making a three-cent newspaper for a one-cent constituency. +I want you to make it a one-cent newspaper." +</p> +<p> +What further instructions he gave to that end, I have never heard, but +whatever they were they were carried out with a success that seemed to +me to threaten the very existence of such newspapers as the one I was +editing. I was satisfied that if the newspaper under my control was to +survive it must adopt the new methods of journalism, broaden its appeal +to the people, and reduce its price to the "penny" which alone the +people could be expected to pay when the <i>Evening Sun</i> and the <i>Evening +World</i> could be had for that price. +</p> +<p> +The board of directors of the newspaper could not be induced to take +this view, and just then one of the editors of the <i>World</i>, acting for +Mr. Pulitzer, asked me to take luncheon with him. He explained to me +that Mr. Pulitzer wanted an editorial writer and that he—my host—had +been commissioned to engage me in that capacity, if I was open to +engagement. In the end he made me a proposal which I could not put aside +in justice to myself and my family. My relations with Mr. Godwin and his +associates were so cordial, and their treatment of me had been always so +generous, that I could not think of leaving them without their hearty +consent and approval. The summer was approaching, when the members of +the board of directors would go away to their summer homes or to Europe. +The last regular meeting of the board for the season had been held, and +nothing had been done to meet + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page306" name="page306"></a>[306]</span> + + the new conditions of competition. I was +discouraged by the prospect of addressing a steadily diminishing +audience throughout the summer, with the possibility of having no +audience at all to address when the fall should come. +</p> +<p> +I hastily called the board together in a special meeting. I told them +of the proposal made to me by the <i>World</i> and of my desire to accept +it unless they could be induced to let me adopt the new methods at an +expense much greater than any of the established afternoon newspapers +had ever contemplated, and much greater than my board of directors +was willing to contemplate. I said frankly that without their cordial +consent, I could not quit their service, but that if we were to go on +as before, I earnestly wished to be released from a responsibility that +threatened my health with disaster. +</p> +<p> +They decided to release me, after passing some very flattering +resolutions, and in early June, 1889, I went to the <i>World</i> as an +editorial writer free from all responsibility for the news management of +the paper, free from all problems of newspaper finance, and free from +the crushing weight of the thought that other men's property interests +to the extent of many hundreds of thousands of dollars were in hourly +danger of destruction by some fault or failure of judgment on my part. +As I rejoiced in this sense of release, I recalled what James R. Osgood, +one of the princes among publishers, had once said to me, and for the +first time I fully grasped his meaning. At some public banquet or +other he and I were seated side by side and we fell into conversation +regarding certain books he had published. They were altogether worthy +books, but their appeal seemed to me to be to so small a constituency +that I could not understand what had induced him to publish them at all. +I said to him: +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page307" name="page307"></a>[307]</span></p> + +<p> +"I sometimes wonder at your courage in putting your money into the +publication of such books." +</p> +<p> +He answered: +</p> +<p> +"That's the smallest part of the matter. Think of my courage in putting +<i>other people's money</i> into their publication!" +</p> +<p> +It was not long after that that Osgood's enterprises failed, and he +retired from business as a publisher to the sorrow of every American who +in any way cared for literature. +</p> +<p class="side"> +The Little Dinner to Osgood +</p> +<p> +When Osgood went to London as an agent of the Harpers, some of us gave +him a farewell dinner, for which Thomas Nast designed the menu cards. +When these were passed around for souvenir autographs, Edwin A. Abbey +drew upon each, in connection with his signature, a caricature of +himself which revealed new possibilities in his genius—possibilities +that have come to nothing simply because Mr. Abbey has found a better +use for his gifts than any that the caricaturist can hope for. But those +of us who were present at that little Osgood dinner still cherish our +copies of the dinner card on which, with a few strokes of his pencil, +Abbey revealed an unsuspected aspect of his genius. In view of the +greatness of his more serious work, we rejoice that he went no further +than an after-dinner jest, in the exercise of his gift of caricature. +Had he given comic direction to his work, he might have become a +Hogarth, perhaps; as it is, he is something far better worth while—he +is Abbey. +</p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0066" id="h2H_4_0066"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + LXV +</h2> + +<p> +I shall write comparatively little here of the eleven years I remained +in the service of the <i>World</i>. The experience is too recent to constitute +a proper subject of freehand + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page308" name="page308"></a>[308]</span> + + reminiscence. My relations with Mr. Pulitzer +were too closely personal, too intimate, and in many ways too +confidential to serve a purpose of that kind. +</p> +<p> +But of the men with whom my work on the <i>World</i> brought me into contact, +I am free to write. So, too, I am at liberty, I think, to relate certain +dramatic happenings that serve to illustrate the Napoleonic methods +of modern journalism and certain other things, not of a confidential +nature, which throw light upon the character, impulses, and methods of +the man whose genius first discovered the possibilities of journalism +and whose courage, energy, and extraordinary sagacity have made of those +possibilities accomplished facts. +</p> +<p> +It has been more than ten years since my term of service on the <i>World</i> +came to an end, but it seems recent to me, except when I begin counting +up the men now dead who were my fellow-workmen there. +</p> +<p> +I did not personally know Mr. Pulitzer when I began my duties on the +<i>World</i>. He was living in Europe then, and about to start on a long +yachting cruise. John A. Cockerill was managing editor and in control +of the paper, subject, of course, to daily and sometimes hourly +instructions from Paris by cable. For, during my eleven years of service +on the <i>World</i>, I never knew the time when Mr. Pulitzer did not himself +actively direct the conduct of his paper wherever he might be. Even when +he made a yachting voyage as far as the East Indies, his hand remained +always on the helm in New York. +</p> +<p class="side"> +John A. Cockerill +</p> +<p> +Colonel Cockerill was one of the kindliest, gentlest of men, and at the +same time one of the most irascible. His irascibility was like the froth +that rises to the top of the glass and quickly disappears, when a Seidlitz +powder is dissolved—not at all like the "head" on a glass of champagne +which goes on threateningly rising long after the first effervescence +is gone. When anything irritated him + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page309" name="page309"></a>[309]</span> + + the impulse to break out into +intemperate speech seemed wholly irresistible, but in the very midst of +such utterance the irritation would pass away as suddenly as it had come +and he would become again the kindly comrade he had meant to be all the +while. This was due to the saving grace of his sense of humor. I think +I never knew a man so capable as he of intense seriousness, who was +at the same time so alertly and irresistibly impelled to see the +humorous aspects of things. He would rail violently at an interfering +circumstance, but in the midst of his vituperation he would suddenly see +something ridiculous about it or in his own ill-temper concerning it. +He would laugh at the suggestion in his mind, laugh at himself, and +tell some brief anecdote—of which his quiver was always full—by way +of turning his own irritation and indignation into fun and thus making +an end of them. +</p> +<p> +He was an entire stranger to me when I joined the staff of the <i>World</i>, +but we soon became comrades and friends. There was so much of robust +manhood in his nature, so much of courage, kindliness, and generous good +will that in spite of the radical differences between his conceptions of +life and mine, we soon learned to find pleasure in each other's company, +to like each other, and above all, to trust each other. I think each of +us recognized in the other a man incapable of lying, deceit, treachery, +or any other form of cowardice. That he was such a man I perfectly knew. +That he regarded me as such I have every reason to believe. +</p> +<p> +After our friendship was perfectly established he said to me one day: +</p> +<p> +"You know I did all I could to prevent your engagement on the <i>World</i>. +I'm glad now I didn't succeed." +</p> +<p> +"What was your special objection to me?" I asked. +</p> +<p> +"Misconception, pure and simple, together with ill-informed prejudice. +That's tautological, of course, for + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page310" name="page310"></a>[310]</span> + + prejudice is always ill-informed, +isn't it? At any rate, I had an impression that you were a man as +utterly different from what I now know you to be as one can easily +imagine." +</p> +<p> +"And yet," I said, "you generously helped me out of my first difficulty +here." +</p> +<p> +"No, did I? How was that?" +</p> +<p> +"Why, when the news went out that I had been engaged as an editorial +writer on the <i>World</i>, a good many newspapers over the country were +curious to know why. The prejudice against the <i>World</i> under its +new management was still rampant, and my appointment seemed to many +newspapers a mystery, for the reason that my work before that time had +always been done on newspapers of a very different kind. Even here on +the <i>World</i> there was curiosity on the subject, for Ballard Smith sent +a reporter to me, before I left the <i>Commercial Advertiser</i>, to ask me +about it. The reporter, under instructions, even asked me, flatly, whose +place I was to take on the <i>World</i>, as if the <i>World</i> had not been able +to employ a new man without discharging an old one." +</p> +<p> +"Yes—I know all about that," said Cockerill. "You see, you were +editor-in-chief of a newspaper, and some of the folks on the <i>World</i> had +a hope born into their minds that you were coming here to replace me as +managing editor. Some others feared you were coming to oust them from +snug berths. Go on. You didn't finish." +</p> +<p> +"Well, among the speculative comments made about my transfer, there was +one in a Springfield paper, suggesting that perhaps I had been employed +'to give the <i>World</i> a conscience.' All these things troubled me greatly, +for the reason that I didn't know Mr. Pulitzer then, nor he me, and +I feared he would suspect me of having inspired the utterances in +question—particularly the one last mentioned. I went to you with my +trouble, + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page311" name="page311"></a>[311]</span> + + and I shall never forget what you said to me. 'My dear Mr. +Eggleston, you can trust Joseph Pulitzer to get to windward of things +without any help from me or anybody else.'" +</p> +<p> +"You've found it so since, haven't you?" he asked. +</p> +<p> +"Yes, but I didn't know it then, and it was a kindly act on your part +to reassure me." +</p> +<p class="side"> +An Extraordinary Executive +</p> +<p> +Cockerill's abilities as a newspaper editor were very great, but they +were mainly executive. He had no great creative imagination. He could +never have originated the Napoleonic revolution in journalism which Mr. +Pulitzer's extraordinary genius wrought. But Mr. Pulitzer was fortunate +in having such a man as Cockerill to carry out his plans. His alert +readiness in grasping an idea and translating it into achievement +amounted to genius in its way. But during all the years of my intimate +association with him, I never knew Cockerill to originate a great idea. +With a great idea intrusted to him for execution, his brain was fertile +of suggestions and expedients for its carrying out, and his industry in +translating the ideas of his chief into action was ceaseless, tireless, +sleepless. He would think of a thousand devices for accomplishing the +purpose intended. He would hit upon scores of ways in which a campaign +projected by another mind could be carried out effectively. +</p> +<p> +There was at one time a good deal of speculation as to whose brain +had made the phenomenal success of the all-daring <i>World</i> experiment +in journalism. I think I know all about that, and my judgment is +unhesitating. Mr. Pulitzer was often and even generally fortunate in his +multitudinous lieutenants, and that good fortune was chiefly due to his +sagacity in the selection of the men appointed to carry out his plans. +But the plans were his, just as the choice of lieutenants was, and the +creative genius that revolutionized journalism and achieved results + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page312" name="page312"></a>[312]</span> + + unmatched and even unapproached, was exclusively that of Joseph +Pulitzer. +</p> +<p> +I do not mean that every valuable idea or suggestion which contributed +to the result was originally his, though on broad lines that was true. +But it was part and parcel of his genius to induce ideas and call forth +suggestions at the hands of others, to make them his own, and to embody +them in the policy of the <i>World</i>. So readily did he himself appreciate +this necessity of getting ideas from whatever source they might come, +that he often offered premiums and rewards for helpful suggestions. +And when any member of his staff voluntarily offered suggestions that +appealed to him, he was always ready and very generous in acknowledging +and rewarding them. +</p> +<p> +But it was Joseph Pulitzer's genius that conceived the new journalism; +it was his brain that gave birth to it all; it was his gift of +interpreting, utilizing, and carrying out the ideas of others that made +them fruitful. +</p> +<p> +I emphasize this judgment here because there has been much misapprehension +regarding it, and because I knew the facts more intimately and more +definitely perhaps than any other person now living does. I feel myself +free to write of the subject for the reason that it has been more than +a decade of years since my connection with the <i>World</i> ceased, and the +personal friendship I once enjoyed with Mr. Pulitzer became a matter of +mere reminiscence to both of us. +</p> +<p> +My relations with Cockerill were not embarrassed by any question of +control or authority. Cockerill had general charge of the newspaper, +but the editorial page was segregated from the other sheets, and so far +as that was concerned, William H. Merrill was in supreme authority. +Whenever he was absent his authority devolved upon me, and for results +I was answerable only to Mr. Pulitzer. +</p> +<p> +I shall never forget my introduction to my new duties. + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page313" name="page313"></a>[313]</span> + + It was arranged +between Merrill and me, that I should take a week off, between the +severance of my connection with the <i>Commercial Advertiser</i> and the +beginning of my work on the <i>World</i>, in order that I might visit my +family and rest myself at my little place on Lake George. I was to +report for duty on the <i>World</i> on a Sunday morning, when Merrill +would induct me into the methods of the newspaper, preparatory to his +vacation, beginning two or three days later. +</p> +<p class="side"> +An Editorial Perplexity +</p> +<p> +Unfortunately, Merrill had greater confidence in my newspaper skill +and experience than I had, and so when I reported for duty on Sunday, +Merrill was already gone on his vacation and I was left responsible for +next day's editorial page. +</p> +<p> +I knew nothing of the <i>World's</i> staff or organization or methods. There +were no other editorial writers present in the office and upon inquiry +of the office boys I learned that no others were expected to present +themselves on that day. +</p> +<p> +I sent to the foreman of the composing room for the "overproofs"—that +is to say, proofs of editorial matter left over from the day before. +He reported that there were none, for the reason that Merrill, before +leaving on the preceding day, had "killed" every editorial galley in the +office. +</p> +<p> +Cockerill was not expected at the office until nine or ten o'clock that +night, and there was nobody else there who could tell me anything about +the matter. +</p> +<p> +Obviously, there was only one thing to do. I sat down and wrote an +entire editorial page, for a newspaper whose methods and policy I knew +only from the outside. When I had done that, and had got my matter into +type, and had read my revised proofs, messengers arrived bearing the +manuscripts of what the other editorial writers—men unknown to me—had +written at their homes during the + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page314" name="page314"></a>[314]</span> + + day, after the Sunday custom that then +prevailed but which I abolished a little later when Merrill went to +Europe upon Mr. Pulitzer's invitation and I was left in control of the +editorial page. +</p> +<p> +I have related this experience thinking that it may interest readers +unfamiliar with newspaper work, as an exemplification of the emergency +problems with which newspaper men have often to deal. These are of +frequent occurrence and of every conceivable variety. I remember that +once some great utterance seemed necessary, and Mr. Pulitzer telegraphed +it from Bar Harbor. It filled the entire available editorial space, so +that I provided no other editorial articles whatever. I had "made up" +the page and was only waiting for time before going home, when news +despatches came that so completely changed the situation treated in the +editorial as to compel its withdrawal. +</p> +<p> +It was after midnight, and I hadn't a line of editorial matter on the +galleys with which to fill the void. The editorial page must go to the +stereotypers at half-past one, and I had no soul to help me even by +writing twaddle with which to fill space. The situation was imperative +and the case was clear. The case was that I must write two or three +columns of editorial matter and get it into type, proof-read, and +corrected, before one-thirty of the clock—or one-forty-five, as the +foreman of the composing room, a royal good fellow, Mr. Jackson, +volunteered to stretch the time limit by some ingenious device of +his own. +</p> +<p> +I wish to say here, lest no other opportunity offer, that in the thirty +years of my newspaper service, I have found no better or more loyal +friends than the men of the composing room, whether in high place or +low; that I have never known them to hesitate, in an emergency, to help +out by specially strenuous endeavor and by enduring great + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page315" name="page315"></a>[315]</span> + + inconvenience +on their own part. So great is my gratitude for their comradely +good-fellowship that even now—ten years after a final end came to my +newspaper work—one of the first parts of the establishment I visit when +I have occasion to go to the <i>World</i> office is the composing room, where +old friends greet me cordially on every hand. Great—very great—are +the printers. They do their work under a stress of hurry, noise, and +confusion that would drive less well-made men frantic, and they do it +mightily well. To one who knows, as I do, what the conditions are, every +printed newspaper page is a miracle of human achievement under well-nigh +inconceivable difficulties. +</p> +<p class="side"> +Donn Piatt +</p> +<p> +It was soon after my service on the <i>World</i> began that I became +acquainted with a man of brilliant gifts, often erratically employed, +and of singularly interesting personality—Donn Piatt. From that time +until his death I saw much of him in a quiet club-corner way, and +listened with interest while he set forth his views and conclusions, +always with a suggestion of humor in them and often in perverse, +paradoxical ways. +</p> +<p> +One day some question arose between us as to the failure of a certain +book to achieve the success we both thought it deserved. Donn Piatt's +explanation was ready: +</p> +<p> +"It is because we have altogether too much education in this country," +he said. "You see, our schools are turning out about a million graduates +every year, under the mistaken belief that they are educated. All these +boys and girls have been taught how to read, but they haven't the +smallest notion of what to read, or why to read. They regard reading as +you and I might regard a game of solitaire—as a convenient means of +relaxing the mind, diverting the attention from more serious things—in +brief, they read for amusement only, and have no notion of any other +possible purpose in reading. That's why every sublimated idiot who makes +a mountebank of himself as + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page316" name="page316"></a>[316]</span> + + a 'humorist' wins his public instantly and +easily. The great majority of readers are that way minded, and of course +the publishers must cater to the taste of the multitude. They'd be worse +idiots than their customers if they didn't. It's the same way with +plays. The people who go to the theater want to be amused without the +necessity of doing even a little thinking. Why, a few years ago when +Wallack was running such things as 'She Stoops to Conquer,' 'School for +Scandal,' 'London Assurance,' and the like, in his old Thirteenth Street +theater, with Dion Boucicault, John Brougham, Harry Montague, John +Gilbert, Harry Beckett, and a lot of other really great actors in the +casts, he played to slender houses, while just around the corner there +wasn't standing room when 'Pink Dominoes' was on." +</p> +<p> +My acquaintance with Donn Piatt began in a rather curious way. Some time +before, there had appeared in one of the magazines a series of letters +signed "Arthur Richmond." They were political philippics, inspired +chiefly by a reckless, undiscriminating spirit of attack. They were +as mysterious in their origin as the letters of Junius, but otherwise +they bore little if any of the assumed and intended resemblance to +that celebrated series. There was little of judgment, discretion, or +discrimination in them, and still less of conscience. But they attracted +widespread attention and the secret of their authorship was a matter of +a good deal of popular curiosity. A number of very distinguished men +were mentioned as conjectural possibilities in that connection. +</p> +<p> +Even after the letters themselves had ceased to be of consequence, a +certain measure of curiosity as to their authorship survived, so that +any newspaper revelation of the secret was exceedingly desirable. One +day somebody told me that Donn Piatt had written them. Personally I did +not know him, but in the freemasonry of literature + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page317" name="page317"></a>[317]</span> + + and journalism every +man in the profession knows every other man in it well enough at least +for purposes of correspondence. So I wrote a half playful letter to Donn +Piatt, saying that somebody had charged him with the authorship of that +"iniquitous trash"—for so I called it—and asking him if I might affirm +or deny the statement in the <i>World</i>. He replied in a characteristic +letter, in which he said: +</p> +<p class="side"> +"A Syndicate of Blackguards" +</p> +<p> +"I was one of a syndicate of blackguards engaged to write the 'Arthur +Richmond' letters and I did write some of them. You and I ought to know +each other personally and we don't. Why won't you come up to the —— +Club to-night and help me get rid of one of the infamous table d-hôte +dinners they sell there for seventy-five cents? Then I'll tell you all +about the 'Arthur Richmond' letters and about any other crimes of my +commission that may interest you. Meanwhile, I'm sending you a letter +for publication in answer to your inquiry about that particular +atrocity." +</p> +<p> +As we talked that night and on succeeding occasions, Donn Piatt told me +many interesting anecdotes of his career as a newspaper correspondent +much given to getting into difficulty with men in high place by reason +of his freedom in criticism and his vitriolic way of saying what he had +to say in the most effective words he could find. +</p> +<p> +"You see the dictionary was my ruin," he said after relating one of +his anecdotes. "I studied it not wisely but too well in my youth, and +it taught me a lot of words that have always seemed to me peculiarly +effective in the expression of thought, but to which generals and +statesmen and the other small fry of what is called public life, seem +to have a rooted objection. By the way, did you ever hear that I once +committed arson?" +</p> +<p> +I pleaded ignorance of that incident in his career, and added: +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page318" name="page318"></a>[318]</span></p> + +<p> +"I shall be interested to hear of that crime if you're sure it is +protected by the statute of limitations. I shouldn't like to be a +witness to a confession that might send you to the penitentiary." +</p> +<p> +"Oh, I don't know that that would be so bad," he interrupted. "I'm +living with my publisher now, you know, and a change might not prove +undesirable. However, the crime is outlawed by time now. And besides, I +didn't myself set fire to the building. I'm guilty only under the legal +maxim 'Qui facit per alium facit per se.' The way of it was this: When I +was a young man trying to get into a law practice out in Ohio, and eager +to advertise myself by appearing in court, a fellow was indicted for +arson. He came to me, explaining that he had no money with which to +pay a lawyer, but that he thought I might like to appear in a case so +important, and that if I would do the best I could for him, he stood +ready to do anything for me that he could, by way of recompense. I took +the case, of course. It was a complex one and it offered opportunities +for browbeating and 'balling up' witnesses—a process that specially +impresses the public with the sagacity of a lawyer who does it +successfully. Then, if by any chance I should succeed in acquitting my +client, my place at the bar would be assured as that of 'a sharp young +feller, who had beaten the prosecuting attorney himself.' +</p> +<p> +"But in telling my client I would take his case the demon of humor +betrayed me. Just across the street from my lodging was a negro church, +and there was a 'revival' going on at the time. They 'revived' till +two o'clock or later every night with shoutings that interfered with +my sleep. With playful impulse I said to the accused man: +</p> +<p> +"'You seem to be an expert in the arts of arson. If you'll burn that +negro church I'll feel that you have paid me full price for my service +in defending you.' +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page319" name="page319"></a>[319]</span></p> + +<p> +"I defended him and, as the witnesses against him were all of shady +character, I succeeded in securing his acquittal. About four o'clock +the next morning a fire broke out under all four corners of that negro +church, and before the local fire department got a quart of water into +action, it was a heap of smouldering ashes—hymn-books and all. A week +or so later I received a letter from my ex-client. He wrote from St. +Louis, 'on his way west,' he said. He expressed the hope that I was +'satisfied with results,' and begged me to believe that he was 'a man +of honor who never failed to repay an obligation or reward a service.'" +</p> +<p> +With Donn Piatt's permission I told that story several times. Presently +I read it in brief form in a newspaper where the hero of it was set down +as "Tom Platt." I suppose the reporter in that case confused the closely +similar sounds of "Donn Piatt" and "Tom Platt." At any rate, it seems +proper to say that the venerable ex-Senator from New York never +practiced law in Ohio and never even unintentionally induced the burning +of a church. The story was Donn Piatt's and the experience was his. +</p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0067" id="h2H_4_0067"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + LXVI +</h2> + +<p class="side"> +First Acquaintance with Mr. Pulitzer +</p> +<p> +I first made Mr. Pulitzer's personal acquaintance in Paris, where he was +living at that time. I had been at work on the <i>World</i> for a comparatively +brief while, when he asked me to visit him there—an invitation which +he several times afterwards repeated, each time with increased pleasure +to me. +</p> +<p> +On the occasion of my first visit to him, he said to me one evening +at dinner: +</p> +<p> +"I have invited you here with the primary purpose that you shall have +a good time. But secondly, I want to see you as often as I can. We have +luncheon at one o'clock, + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page320" name="page320"></a>[320]</span> + + and dinner at seven-thirty. I wish you'd take +luncheon and dinner with me as often as you can, consistently with my +primary purpose that you shall have a good time. If you've anything else +on hand that interests you more, you are not to come to luncheon or +dinner, and I will understand. But if you haven't anything else on hand, +I sincerely wish you'd come." +</p> +<p> +In all my experience—even in Virginia during the old, limitlessly +hospitable plantation days—I think I never knew a hospitality superior +to this—one that left the guest so free to come on the one hand and so +entirely free to stay away without question if he preferred that. I, who +have celebrated hospitality of the most gracious kind in romances of +Virginia, where hospitality bore its most gorgeous blossoms and its +richest fruitage, bear witness that I have known no such exemplar of +that virtue in its perfect manifestation as Joseph Pulitzer. +</p> +<p> +Years afterwards, at Bar Harbor, I had been working with him night and +day over editorial problems of consequence, and, as I sat looking on at +a game of chess in which he was engaged one evening, he suddenly ordered +me to bed. +</p> +<p> +"You've been overworking," he said. "You are to go to bed now, and you +are not to get up till you feel like getting up—even if it is two days +hence. Go, I tell you, and pay no heed to hours or anything else. You +shall not be interrupted in your sleep." +</p> +<p> +I was very weary and I went to bed. The next morning—or I supposed +it to be so—I waked, and looked at my watch. It told me it was six +o'clock. I tried to woo sleep again, but the effort was a failure. I +knew that breakfast would not be served for some hours to come, but +I simply could not remain in bed longer. I knew where a certain dear +little lad of the family kept his fishing tackle and his bait. I decided +that I would get up, take + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page321" name="page321"></a>[321]</span> + + a cold plunge, pilfer the tackle, and spend +an hour or two down on the rocks fishing. +</p> +<p class="side"> +Mr. Pulitzer's Kindly Courtesy +</p> +<p> +With this intent I slipped out of my room, making no noise lest I should +wake some one from his morning slumber. The first person I met was +Mr. Pulitzer. He gleefully greeted me with congratulations upon the +prolonged sleep I had had, and after a brief confusion of mind, I found +that it was two o'clock in the afternoon, and that my unwound watch had +misled me. In his anxiety that I should have my sleep out, Mr. Pulitzer +had shut off the entire half of the building in which my bedroom lay, +and had stationed a servant as sentinel to prohibit intrusion upon that +part of the premises and to forbid everything in the nature of noise. +</p> +<p> +Mr. Pulitzer himself never rested, in the days of my association with +him. His mind knew no surcease of its activity. He slept little, and +with difficulty. His waking hours, whether up or in bed, were given to a +ceaseless wrestling with the problems that belong to a great newspaper's +conduct. I have known him to make an earnest endeavor to dismiss these +for a time. To that end he would peremptorily forbid all reference to +them in the conversation of those about him. But within the space of +a few minutes he would be in the midst of them again, and completely +absorbed. But he recognized the necessity of rest for brains other than +his own, and in all kindly ways sought to secure and even to compel it. +I remember once at Bar Harbor, when for two or three days and nights in +succession I had been at work on something he greatly wanted done, he +said to me at breakfast: +</p> +<p> +"You're tired, and that task is finished. I want you to rest, and, of +course, so long as you and I remain together you can't rest. Your brain +is active and so is mine. If we stay in each other's company we shall +talk, and with us talk means work. In five minutes we'll be + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page322" name="page322"></a>[322]</span> + + planning +some editorial crusade, and you'll get to work again. So I want you to +go away from me. Let Eugene drive you to the village, and there secure +an open carriage and a pair of good horses—the best you can get—and +drive all over this interesting island. Get yourself rested. And when +you come back, don't let me talk newspaper with you, till you've had +a night's sleep." +</p> +<p> +It was in that kindly spirit that Mr. Pulitzer always treated his +lieutenants when he invited them to pass a time with him. So long as +he and they were together, he could not help working them almost to +death. But, when he realized their weariness, he sent them off to +rest, on carriage drives or yachting voyages or what not, with generous +consideration of their inability to carry weight as he did night and +day and every day and every night. +</p> +<p> +Sometimes his eagerness in work led him to forget his own kindly +purpose. I remember once when I had been writing all day and throughout +most of the night in execution of his prolific inspiration, he suddenly +became aware of the fact that I must be weary. Instantly he said: +</p> +<p> +"You must rest. You must take a carriage or a boat and go off somewhere. +Think out where it shall be, for yourself. But you sha'n't do another +thing till you've had a good rest." +</p> +<p> +Then, as we strolled out into the porch and thence to the sea wall +against which the breakers were recklessly dashing themselves to pieces, +he suddenly thought of something. In a minute we were engaged in +discussing that something, and half an hour later I was busy in my room, +with books of reference all about me, working out that something, and it +was three o'clock next morning before I finished the writing of what he +wanted written on that theme. At breakfast next morning I was late, and +the fact reminded him of the plans he had formed twenty-four + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page323" name="page323"></a>[323]</span> + + hours +before for a rest for me. He refused even to light a cigar until I should +be gone. +</p> +<p> +"If we smoke together," he said, "we shall talk. If we talk we shall +become interested and you'll be set to work again. Get you hence. Let me +see no more of you till dinner to-night. In the meantime, do what you +will to rest yourself. That's my only concern now. Drive, sail, row, +loaf, play billiards—do whatever will best rest you." +</p> +<p> +I relate these things by way of showing forth one side of the character +of a man who has wrought a revolution in the world. I have other things +to relate that show forth another side of that interestingly complex +nature. +</p> +<p class="side"> +The Maynard Case +</p> +<p> +In his anxiety to secure terseness of editorial utterance he at one time +limited all editorials to fifty lines each. As I had final charge of +the editorial page on four nights of the week, I found myself obliged, +by the rule, to spoil many compact articles written by other men, by +cutting out a line or two from things already compacted "to the limit." +</p> +<p> +I said this to Mr. Pulitzer one day, and he replied: +</p> +<p> +"Well, just to show you that I have no regard for cast-iron rules, I +am going to ask you now to write four columns on a subject of public +importance." +</p> +<p> +The subject was the nomination of Judge Maynard for Justice of +the Court of Appeals. Judge Maynard stood accused of—let us say +questionable—conduct in judicial office in relation to certain election +proceedings. The details have no place here. Judge Maynard had never +been impeached, and his friends indignantly repudiated every suggestion +that his judicial conduct had been in any wise influenced by partisan +considerations. His enemies—and they were many, including men of high +repute in his own party—contended that his judicial course in that + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page324" name="page324"></a>[324]</span> + + election matter unfitted him for election to the higher office. +</p> +<p> +I have every reason to believe—every reason that eleven years of +editorial association can give—that in every case involving the public +welfare, or public morality, or official fitness, Mr. Pulitzer sincerely +desires to ascertain the facts and to govern his editorial course +accordingly. I have never been able to regard him as a Democrat or a +Republican in politics. He has impressed me always as an opportunist, +caring far more for practical results than for doctrinaire dogmas. +</p> +<p> +In this Maynard case the contentions were conflicting, the assertions +contradictory, and the facts uncertain so far at least as the <i>World</i> +knew them. +</p> +<p> +"I want you to go into the Maynard case," said Mr. Pulitzer to me, "with +an absolutely unprejudiced mind. We hold no brief for or against him, +as you know. I want you to get together all the documents in the case. +I want you to take them home and study them as minutely as if you were +preparing yourself for an examination. I want you to regard yourself +as a judicial officer, oath-bound to justice, and when you shall have +mastered the facts and the law in the case, I want you to set them forth +in a four-column editorial that every reader of the <i>World</i> can easily +understand." +</p> +<p> +This was only one of many cases in which he set me or some other +lieutenant to find out facts and determine what justice demanded, in +order that justice might be done. +</p> +<p> +In 1896, when the Democratic party made its surrender to populism and +wild-eyed socialism by nominating Bryan, I was at the convention in +Chicago, telegraphing editorial articles. I foreshadowed the nomination +as inevitable, contrary to the predictions of the <i>World's</i> newsgatherers +in the convention. Instantly, and before the nomination was made, Mr. +Pulitzer telegraphed me from Bar Harbor, to + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page325" name="page325"></a>[325]</span> + + come to him at once. By the +time I got there the nomination was a fact accomplished. +</p> +<p> +Mr. Pulitzer said to me: +</p> +<p> +"I'm not going to tell you what my own views of the situation are, +or what I think ought to be the course of the <i>World</i>, as a foremost +Democratic newspaper, under the circumstances. No"—seeing that I +was about to speak—"don't say a word about your own views. They are +necessarily hasty and ill-considered as yet, just as my own are. I want +you to take a full twenty-four hours for careful thought. At the end of +that time I want you to write out your views of the policy the <i>World</i> +ought to adopt, giving your reasons for every conclusion reached." +</p> +<p> +Mr. Pulitzer did not adopt precisely the policy I recommended on that +occasion. But the <i>World</i> refused to support the Bryan candidacy with +its fundamental idea of debasing the currency by the free coinage of +silver dollars intrinsically worth only fifty cents apiece or less. +</p> +<p class="side"> +Bryan's Message and the Reply +</p> +<p> +While I was still his guest on that mission, there came to Bar Harbor an +emissary from Mr. Bryan, who asked for an interview with Mr. Pulitzer in +Mr. Bryan's behalf. As I happened to know the young man, Mr. Pulitzer +asked me to see him in his stead and to receive his message. Armed with +full credentials as Mr. Pulitzer's accredited representative, I visited +the young ambassador, and made careful notes of the message he had to +deliver. It was to this effect: +</p> +<p> +Mr. Bryan was unselfishly anxious to save the reputation of the +newspaper press as a power in public affairs. His election by an +overwhelming majority, he said, was certain beyond all possibility of +doubt or question. But if it should be accomplished without the support +of the <i>World</i> or any other of the supposedly influential Democratic +newspapers, there must be an end to the tradition + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page326" name="page326"></a>[326]</span> + + of press power and +newspaper influence in politics. For the sake of the press, and +especially of so great a newspaper as the <i>World</i>, therefore, Mr. +Bryan asked Mr. Pulitzer's attention to this danger to prestige. +</p> +<p> +When I delivered this message to Mr. Pulitzer, he laughed. Then he gave +me a truly remarkable exhibition of his masterful knowledge of American +political conditions, and of his sagacious prescience. He asked me to +jot down some figures as he should give them to me. He named the states +that would vote for Bryan with the number of electoral votes belonging +to each. Then he gave me the list of states that would go against Bryan, +with their electoral strength. When I had put it all down, he said: +</p> +<p> +"I don't often predict—never unless I know. But you may embody that +table in an editorial, predicting that the result of the election four +months hence will be very nearly, if not exactly, what those lists +foreshadow. Let that be our answer to Mr. Bryan's audacious message." +</p> +<p> +The campaign had not yet opened. Mr. Bryan had just been nominated with +positively wild enthusiasm. The movement which afterwards put Palmer in +the field as an opposing Democratic candidate had not yet been thought +of. All conditions suggested uncertainty, and yet, as we sat there in +his little private porch at Bar Harbor, Mr. Pulitzer correctly named +every state that would give its electoral vote to each candidate, +and the returns of the election—four months later—varied from his +prediction of results by only two electoral votes out of four hundred +and forty-seven. And that infinitesimal variation resulted solely from +the fact that by some confusion of ballots in California and Kentucky +each of those states gave one vote to Bryan and the rest to his opponent. +</p> +<p> +I have known nothing in the way of exact political + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page327" name="page327"></a>[327]</span> + + prescience, long in +advance of the event, that equaled this or approached it. I record it +as phenomenal. +</p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0068" id="h2H_4_0068"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + LXVII +</h2> + +<p class="side"> +A Napoleonic Conception +</p> +<p> +Ever since the time when he bought two St. Louis newspapers, both of +which were losing money, combined them, and made of them one of the most +profitable newspaper properties in the country, Mr. Pulitzer's methods +have been Napoleonic both in the brilliancy of their conception and +in the daring of their execution. I may here record as a personal +recollection the story of one of his newspaper achievements. The fact +of it is well enough known; the details of its dramatic execution have +never been told, I think. +</p> +<p> +In February, 1895, the government of the United States found it +necessary to issue $62,300,000 in four per cent., thirty-year bonds, to +make good the depletion of the gold reserve in the treasury. The bonds +were sold to a syndicate at the rate of 104-¾. Once on the market, +they quickly advanced in price until they were sold by the end of that +year at 118, and, if any bank or investor wanted them in considerable +quantities, the price paid was 122 or more. +</p> +<p> +At the beginning of the next year it was announced that the treasury +would sell $200,000,000 more of precisely the same bonds, printed +from the same plates, payable at the same time, and in all respects +undistinguishable from those of the year before—at that time in eager +popular demand at 118 to 122. It was also announced that the treasury +had arranged to sell these bonds—worth 118 or more in the open +market—to the same old Morgan syndicate "at about the same price" +(104-¾), at which the preceding issue had been sold. +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page328" name="page328"></a>[328]</span></p> + +<p> +Mr. Pulitzer justly regarded this as a scandalous proposal to give the +syndicate more than twenty-six millions of dollars of the people's money +in return for no service whatever. The banks and the people of the +country wanted these bonds at 118 or more, and banks and bankers in +other countries were equally eager to get them at the same rate. It +seemed to him, as it seemed to every other well-informed person, that +this was a reckless waste of the people's money, the scandalous favoring +of a syndicate of speculators, and a damaging blow to the national +credit. But, unlike most other well-informed persons, Mr. Pulitzer +refused to regard the situation as one beyond saving, although it was +given out from Washington that the bargain with the syndicate was +already irrevocably made. +</p> +<p> +Mr. Pulitzer set his editorial writers at work to make the facts of the +case clear to every intelligent mind; to show forth the needlessness of +the proposed squandering; to emphasize the scandal of this dealing in +the dark with a gang of Wall Street bettors upon a certainty; and to +demonstrate the people's readiness and even eagerness to subscribe for +the bonds at a much higher rate than the discrediting one at which the +Treasury had secretly agreed to sell them to the syndicate. +</p> +<p> +When all this had been done, to no purpose so far as I could see, +inasmuch as the response from Washington was insistent to the effect +that the sale was already agreed upon, Mr. Pulitzer one afternoon +summoned me to go at once to Lakewood, where he was staying at the time. +The train by which alone I could go was to arrive at Lakewood after the +departure of the last train thence for New York that evening, and I +mentioned that fact over the telephone. For reply I was asked to come +anyhow. +</p> +<p> +When I got there night had already fallen, and as I + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page329" name="page329"></a>[329]</span> + + was without even +so much as a handbag, I anticipated a night of makeshift at the hotel. +But as I entered Mr. Pulitzer's quarters he greeted me and said: +</p> +<p> +"Come in quickly. We must talk rapidly and to the point. You think +you're to stay here all night, but you're mistaken. As this is your +night to be in charge of the editorial page, you must be in the office +of the <i>World</i> at ten o'clock. I've ordered a special train to take you +back. It will start at eight o'clock and run through in eighty minutes. +Meanwhile, we have much to arrange, so we must get to work." +</p> +<p class="side"> +A Challenge to the Government +</p> +<p> +E. O. Chamberlin, the managing editor of the news department of the +<i>World</i>, was there and had already received his instructions. To me Mr. +Pulitzer said: +</p> +<p> +"We have made our case in this matter of the bond issue. We have +presented the facts clearly, convincingly, conclusively, but the +Administration refuses to heed them. We are now going to compel it to +heed them on pain of facing a scandal that no administration could +survive. +</p> +<p> +"What we demand is that these bonds shall be sold to the public at +something like their actual value and not to a Wall Street syndicate +for many millions less. You understand all that. You are to write a +double-leaded article to occupy the whole editorial space to-morrow +morning. You are not to print a line of editorial on any other subject. +You are to set forth, in compact form and in the most effective way +possible, the facts of the case and the considerations that demand a +popular or at least a public loan instead of this deal with a syndicate, +suggestive as it is of the patent falsehood that the United States +Treasury's credit needs 'financing.' You are to declare, with all +possible emphasis that the banks, bankers, and people of the United +States stand ready and eager to lend their government all the money it +wants at three + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page330" name="page330"></a>[330]</span> + + per cent. interest, and to buy its four per cent. bonds +at a premium that will amount to that." +</p> +<p> +He went on in this way, outlining the article he wanted me to write. +</p> +<p> +"Then, as a guarantee of the sincerity of our conviction you are to say +that the <i>World</i> offers in advance to take one million dollars of the +new bonds at the highest market price, if they are offered to the public +in open market. +</p> +<p> +"In the meanwhile, Chamberlin has a staff of men sending out despatches +to every bank and banker in the land, setting forth our demand for a +public loan instead of a syndicate dicker, and asking each for what +amount of the new bonds it or he will subscribe on a three per cent. +basis. To-morrow morning's paper will carry with your editorial its +complete confirmation in their replies, and the proposed loan will +be oversubscribed on a three per cent. basis. Even Mr. Cleveland's +phenomenal self-confidence and Mr. Carlisle's purblind belief in Wall +Street methods will not be able to withstand such a demonstration as +that. It will <i>compel a public loan</i>. If it is true that the contract +with the syndicate has already been made, <i>they must cancel it</i>. The +voice of the country will be heard in the subscription list we shall +print to-morrow morning, and the voice of the country has compelling +power, even under this excessively self-confident administration. Now, +you're faint with hunger. Hurry over to the hotel and get a bite to eat. +You have thirty minutes before your special train leaves." +</p> +<p> +I hurried to the hotel, but I spent that thirty minutes, not in eating +but in making a written report, for my own future use, of Mr. Pulitzer's +instructions. The memorandum thus made is the basis of what I have +written above. +</p> +<p> +The climax of the great national drama thus put upon + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page331" name="page331"></a>[331]</span> + + the stage was +worthy of the genius that inspired it. The responses of the banks and +bankers—sent in during the night—showed a tremendous oversubscription +of the proposed loan at a price that would yield to the government many +millions more than the syndicate sale offered, and there remained +unheard from the thousands and tens of thousands of private persons who +were eager to buy the bonds as investment securities. In the face of the +facts thus demonstrated, it would have been political suicide for the +men in control at Washington to refuse a public loan and to sell the +bonds to the syndicate for millions less than the people were eager to +pay for them. The administration yielded to moral force, but it did so +grudgingly and with manifest reluctance. It cut down the proposed loan +to the minimum that the Treasury must have, and it hedged it about with +every annoying device that might embarrass willing investors and prevent +the subscriptions of others than banks and bankers. In spite of all such +efforts to minimize the administration's defeat, the bond issue was +promptly taken up at a price that saved many millions to the Treasury, +and within a brief while the very bonds that Mr. Cleveland and Mr. +Carlisle had so insistently desired to sell to the syndicate at 104-¾ +were very hard to get in the open market at 133 or more. +</p> +<p class="side"> +The Power of the Press +</p> +<p> +I have related this incident with some fullness because I know of no +other case in which the "power of the press"—which being interpreted +means the power of public opinion—to control reluctant political and +governmental forces, has been so dramatically illustrated. +</p> +<p> +The only other case comparable with it was that in which not one +newspaper but practically all the newspapers in the land with a united +voice saved the country from chaos and civil war by compelling a wholly +unwilling and very obstinate Congress to find a way out of + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page332" name="page332"></a>[332]</span> + + the electoral +controversy between Tilden and Hayes. No newspaper man who was in +Washington at any time during that controversy doubts or can doubt that +the two Houses of Congress would have adhered obstinately to their +opposing views until the end, with civil war as a necessary consequence, +but for the ceaseless insistence of all the newspapers of both parties +that they should devise and agree upon some peaceful plan by which the +controversy might be adjusted. +</p> +<p> +At the time when the prospect seemed darkest I asked Carl Schurz for his +opinion of the outcome. He replied, with that intense earnestness in his +voice and words which his patriotism always gave to them in times of +public danger: +</p> +<p> +"If left to the two Houses of Congress to decide—and that is where +the Constitution leaves it—the question will not be decided; on the +contrary, the more they discuss it, the more intense and unyielding +their obstinate determination not to agree will become. If it isn't +settled before the fourth of March, God only knows what the result will +be—civil war and chaos are the only things to be foreseen. But if left +alone, as I say, the two Houses of Congress will to the end refuse to +agree upon any plan of adjustment. The outlook is very gloomy, very +discouraging, very black. Only a tremendous pressure of public opinion +can save us from results more calamitous than any that the human mind +can conceive. If the newspapers can be induced to see the danger and +realize its extent—if they can persuade themselves to put aside their +partisanship and unite in an insistent demand that Congress shall find a +way out, a peaceful result may be compelled. Fortunately, the Southern +men in both houses are eager for the accomplishment of that. They and +their constituents have had enough and to spare of civil war. They may +be easily won to the support of any plan that + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page333" name="page333"></a>[333]</span> + + promises to bring about +a peaceful solution of the controversy. But public opinion, as reflected +in the newspapers, must compel Congress, or nothing will be done." +</p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0069" id="h2H_4_0069"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + LXVIII +</h2> + +<p class="side"> +Recollections of Carl Schurz +</p> +<p> +This mention of Mr. Schurz reminds me of some other occasions on which +I had intercourse with him. He and I many times served together on +committees that had to do with matters of public interest. We were +members of the same clubs, and we saw much of each other at private +dinners and in other social ways, so that I came to know him well and +to appreciate at its full value that absolute honesty of mind which I +regard as his distinguishing characteristic. Without that quality of +sincerity, and with a conscience less exigent and less resolute than +his, Carl Schurz's political career might have compassed any end that +ambition set before him. That is perhaps a reflection on public life +and the men engaged in it. If so, I cannot help it. As it was, he never +hesitated for a moment to "quarrel with his bread and butter" if his +antagonism to wrong, and especially to everything that militated against +human liberty, called for such quarreling. He was above all things +a patriot in whose estimation considerations of the public welfare +outweighed, overrode, and trampled to earth all other considerations of +what kind soever. Party was to him no more than an implement, a tool for +the accomplishment of patriotic ends, and he gave to party no allegiance +whatever beyond the point at which it ceased to serve such ends. He +was always ready to quarrel with his own party and quit it for cause, +even when it offered him high preferment as the reward of continued +allegiance. +</p> +<p> +In the same way, he held the scales true in all his judgments + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page334" name="page334"></a>[334]</span> + + of men. +Mr. Lincoln once wrote him a letter—often quoted by his enemies—which +any "statesman" of the accepted type would have regarded as an +unforgivable affront. Yet in due time Mr. Schurz wrote an appreciative +estimate of Lincoln which has no fit fellow in the whole body of Lincoln +literature. His judgments of men and measures were always the honest +conclusions of an honest mind that held in reverence no other creed than +that of truth and preached no other gospel than that of human liberty. +</p> +<p> +One evening I sat with him at a little dinner given by Mr. James Ford +Rhodes, the historian. Paul Leicester Ford sat between him and me, +while on my right sat our hostess and some other gentlewomen. Our +hostess presently asked me what I thought of a certain distinguished +personage whose name was at that time in everybody's mouth, and whose +popularity—chiefly won by genial, humorous, after-dinner speaking—was +wholly unmatched throughout the country. I do not mention his name, +because he still lives and is under a cloud. +</p> +<p> +I answered that I thought him one of the worst and most dangerous of +popular public men, adding: +</p> +<p> +"He has done more than any other man living to corrupt legislatures and +pervert legislation to the service of iniquitous corporations." +</p> +<p> +Mr. Schurz, who was talking to some one at the other end of the table, +caught some hint of what I had said. He instantly turned upon me with +a demand that I should repeat it. I supposed that a controversy was +coming, and by way of challenging the worst, I repeated what I had said, +with added emphasis. Mr. Schurz replied: +</p> +<p> +"You are right so far as your criticism goes. The man has done all that +you charge in the way of corrupting legislatures and perverting +legislation. He has made + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page335" name="page335"></a>[335]</span> + + a business of it. But that is the very smallest +part of his offense against morality, good government, and free +institutions. His far greater sin is that he has <i>made corruption +respectable</i>, in the eyes of the people. And those who invite him to +banquets and set him to speak there, and noisily applaud him, are all +of them partners in his criminality whether they know it or not." +</p> +<p class="side"> +Mr. Schurz's Patriotism +</p> +<p> +One other conversation with Mr. Schurz strongly impressed me with his +exalted character and the memory of it lingers in my mind. In the summer +of the year 1900, when Mr. Bryan was nominated for the second time for +President, on a platform strongly reaffirming his free silver policy and +everything else for which he had stood in 1896, it was given out that +Carl Schurz, who had bitterly and effectively opposed him in 1896, +intended now to support him. I had finally withdrawn from the <i>World's</i> +service, and from newspaper work of every kind, and was passing the +summer in literary work at my cottage on Lake George. But the <i>World</i> +telegraphed me asking me to see Mr. Schurz, who was also a Lake George +cottager, and get from him some statement of his reasons for now +supporting the man and the policies that he had so strenuously opposed +four years before. +</p> +<p> +I had no idea that Mr. Schurz would give me any such statement for +publication, but he and I had long been friends, and a call upon him +would occupy a morning agreeably, with the remote chance that I might +incidentally render a service to my friends of the <i>World</i> staff. +Therefore, I went. +</p> +<p> +Mr. Schurz told me frankly that he could give me nothing for +publication, just as I had expected that he would do. +</p> +<p> +"I am going to make one or two speeches in this campaign," he said, +"and anything I might give you now would simply take the marrow out of +my speeches. But + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page336" name="page336"></a>[336]</span> + + personally I shall be glad to talk the matter over with +you. It seems to me to be one of positively vital importance—not to +parties, for now that I have come to the end of an active life I care +nothing for parties—but to our country and to the cause of human +liberty." +</p> +<p> +"You think human liberty is involved?" I asked. +</p> +<p> +"Yes, certainly. Those conceptions upon which human liberty rests in +every country in the world had their birth in the colonies out of which +this nation was formed and they were first effectively formulated in +the Declaration of Independence and enacted into fundamental law in +our Constitution. The spectacle of a great, free, rich, and powerful +nation securely built upon those ideas as its foundation has been an +inspiration to all other peoples, and better still, a compulsion upon +all rulers. If that inspiration is lost, and that compulsion withdrawn, +the brutal military force that buttresses thrones will quickly undo all +that our influence has accomplished in teaching men their rights and +warning monarchs of their limitations." +</p> +<p> +In answer to further questions he went on to say: +</p> +<p> +"The spirit of imperialism—which is the arch-enemy of human liberty—is +rampant in the land, and it seems to me the supreme duty of every man +who loves liberty to oppose it with all his might, at whatever sacrifice +of lesser things he may find to be necessary. I am as antagonistic to +Mr. Bryan's free silver policy and to some other policies of his as I +was four years ago. But the time has come when men on the other side +jeer at the Declaration of Independence and mock at the Constitution +itself. There is danger in this—a danger immeasurably greater +than any that financial folly threatens. It seems to me time for a +revolution—not a revolution of violence or one which seeks overthrow, +but a revolution of public opinion designed to restore the landmarks and + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page337" name="page337"></a>[337]</span> + +bring the country back to its foundations of principle. Financial folly, +such as Mr. Bryan advocates, threatens us with nothing worse than a +temporary disturbance of business affairs. Imperialism threatens us with +the final destruction of those ideas and principles that have made our +country great in itself and immeasurably greater in its influence upon +thought and upon the welfare of humanity in every country on earth." +</p> +<p> +I have recorded Mr. Schurz's words here, as nearly as a trained memory +allows me to do, not with the smallest concern for the political issues +of nine years ago, but solely because his utterances on that occasion +seem to me to have shown forth, as nothing else could have done, the +high inspiration of his patriotism, and to explain what many have +regarded as the inconsistencies of his political attitude at various +periods of his life. That so-called inconsistency was in fact a higher +consistency. His allegiance was at all times given to principles, to +ideas, to high considerations of right and of human liberty, and in +behalf of these he never hesitated to sacrifice his political prospects, +his personal advantage, or anything else that he held to be of less +human consequence. +</p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0070" id="h2H_4_0070"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + LXIX +</h2> + +<p class="side"> +The End of Newspaper Life +</p> +<p> +In the spring of the year 1900 I finally ceased to be a newspaper +worker. I was weary, almost beyond expression, of the endless grind +of editorial endeavor. My little summer home in the woodlands on Lake +George lured me to the quiet, independent, literary life that I had +always desired. There was an accumulation in my mind of things I +longingly desired to do, and the opportunity to do them came. Above all, +I wanted to be free once more—to be nobody's "hired man," to be subject + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page338" name="page338"></a>[338]</span> + + to no man's control, however generous and kindly that control might be. +</p> +<p> +Life conditions at my place, "Culross," were ideal, with no exacting +social obligations, with plenty of fishing, rowing, and sailing, with my +giant pines, hemlocks, oaks, and other trees for companions, and with +the sweetest air to breathe that human lungs could desire. +</p> +<p> +I had just published a boys' book that passed at once into second and +successive editions. The publishers of it had asked me for more books +of that kind, and still more insistently for novels, while with other +publishers the way was open to me for some historical and biographical +writings and for works of other kinds, that I had long planned. +</p> +<p> +Under these favorable circumstances I joyously established anew the +literary workshop which had twice before been broken up by that "call +of the wild," the lure of journalism. +</p> +<p> +This time, the summer-time shop consisted, and still consists, of a cozy +corner in one of the porches of my rambling, rock-perched cottage. +There, sheltered from the rain when it came and from the fiercer of the +winds, I spread a broad rug on the floor and placed my writing table and +chair upon it, and there for ten years I have done my work in my own +way, at my own times, and in all other ways as it has pleased me to do +it. In that corner, I have only to turn my head in order to view the +most beautiful of all lakes lying almost at my feet and only thirty +or forty feet away. If I am seized with the impulse to go fishing, my +fishing boat with its well-stocked bait wells is there inviting me. If +I am minded to go upon the water for rest and thought—or to be rid of +thought for a time—there are other boats in my dock, boats of several +sorts and sizes, among which I am free to choose. If the weather is +inclement, there are open + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page339" name="page339"></a>[339]</span> + + fireplaces within the house and an ample stock +of wood at hand. +</p> +<p class="side"> +Life at Culross +</p> +<p> +For ten years past I have spent all my summers in these surroundings— +staying at "Culross" four or five or even six months in each year and +returning to town only for the period of winter stress. +</p> +<p> +During the ten years in which that corner of the porch has been my chief +workshop, I have added twenty-odd books to the dozen or so published +before, besides doing other literary work amounting to about an equal +product, and if I live, the end is not yet. I make this statistical +statement as an illustration of the stimulating effect of freedom upon +the creative faculty. The man who must do anything else—if it be only +to carry a cane, or wear cuffs, or crease his trousers, or do any other +thing that involves attention and distracts the mind, is seriously +handicapped for creative work of any kind. +</p> +<p> +I have worked hard, of course. He who would make a living with his pen +must do that of necessity. But the work has been always a joy to me, and +such weariness as it brings is only that which gives added pleasure to +the rest that follows. +</p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0071" id="h2H_4_0071"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + LXX +</h2> + +<p> +Every literary worker has his own methods, and I have never known any +one of them to adopt the methods of another with success. Temperament +has a good deal to do with it; habit, perhaps, a good deal more, and +circumstance more than all. +</p> +<p> +I have always been an extemporaneous writer, if I may apply the +adjective to writers as we do to speakers. I have never been able to sit +down and "compose" anything before writing it. I have endeavored always +to master the subjects of my writing by study and careful + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page340" name="page340"></a>[340]</span> + + thought, but +I have never known when I wrote a first sentence or a first chapter what +the second was to be. I think from the point of my pen, so far at least +as my thinking formulates itself in written words. +</p> +<p> +I suppose this to be a consequence of my thirty-odd years of newspaper +experience. In the giddy, midnight whirl of making a great newspaper +there is no time for "first drafts," "outline sketches," "final +revisions," and all that sort of thing. When the telegraph brings +news at midnight that requires a leader—perhaps in double leads—the +editorial writer has an hour or less, with frequent interruptions, +in which to write his article, get it into type, revise the proofs, +and make up the page that contains it. He has no choice but to write +extemporaneously. He must hurriedly set down on paper what his newspaper +has to say on the subject, and send his sheets at once to the printers, +sometimes keeping messenger boys at his elbow to take the pages from his +hand one after another as fast as they are written. His only opportunity +for revision is on the proof slips, and even in that he is limited by +the necessity of avoiding every alteration that may involve the +overrunning of a line. +</p> +<p> +In this and other ways born of necessity, the newspaper writer learns +the art of extemporaneous writing, which is only another way of saying +that he learns how to write at his best in the first instance, without +lazily depending upon revision for smoothness, clearness, terseness, and +force. He does not set down ill-informed or ill-considered judgments. +Every hour of every day of his life is given to the close study of the +subjects upon which he is at last called upon to write under stress of +tremendous hurry. He knows all about his theme. He has all the facts at +his fingers' ends. He is familiar with every argument that has been or +can be made on the questions involved. He knows all his statistics, and +his judgments + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page341" name="page341"></a>[341]</span> + + have been carefully thought out in advance. His art consists +in the ability to select on the instant what phases of the subject +he will treat, and to write down his thought clearly, impressively, +convincingly, and in the best rhetorical form he can give it. +</p> +<p class="side"> +Extemporaneous Writing +</p> +<p> +I think that one who has acquired that habit of extemporaneous writing +about things already mastered in thought can never learn to write in any +other way. Both experience and observation have convinced me that men of +that intellectual habit do more harm than good to their work when they +try to improve it by revision. Revision in every such case is apt to +mean elaboration, and elaboration is nearly always a weakening dilution +of thought. +</p> +<p> +I am disposed to think that whatever saves trouble to the writer is +purchased at the expense of the reader. The classic dictum that "easy +writing makes hard reading" is as true to-day as it was when Horace made +laborious use of the flat end of his stylus. For myself, at any rate, +I have never been able to "dictate," either "to the machine," or to a +stenographer, with satisfactory results, nor have I ever known anybody +else to do so without some sacrifice to laziness of that which it is +worth a writer's while to toil for. The stenographer and the typewriter +have their place as servants of commerce, but in literature they tend +to diffusion, prolixity, inexactitude, and, above all, to carelessness +in that choice of words that makes the difference between grace and +clumsiness, lucidity and cloud, force and feebleness. +</p> +<p> +In the writing of novels, I have always been seriously embarrassed by +the strange perversity of fictitious people. That is a matter that has +puzzled and deeply interested me ever since I became a practising +novelist. +</p> +<p> +The most ungrateful people in the world are the brain-children of the +novelist, the male and female folk whose existence is due to the good +will of the writer. Born of + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page342" name="page342"></a>[342]</span> + + the travail of the novelist's brain, and +endowed by him with whatever measure of wit, wisdom, or wealth they +possess; personally conducted by him in their struggles toward the final +happiness he has foreordained for them at the end of the story; cared +for; coddled; listened to and reported even when they talk nonsense, and +not infrequently when they only think it; laboriously brought to the +attention of other people; pushed, if possible, into a fame they could +never have achieved for themselves; they nevertheless obstinately +persist in thwarting their creator's purpose and doing as they wickedly +please to his sore annoyance and vexation of spirit. +</p> +<p> +In truth, the author of a story has very little control over its course +after he has once laid its foundations. The novel is not made—it grows, +and the novelist does little more than plant the seed and keep the +growth unchoked by weeds. He is as powerless to make it other than what +it tends to be as the gardener is to grow tomatoes on corn-stalks or +cucumbers on pea-vines. He may create for the story what manner of +people he pleases, just as the gardener may choose the seed he will +plant; but once created these fictitious people will behave according +to their individual natures without heed to the wishes of the author of +their being. +</p> +<p> +In other words, the novelist is under bond to his conscience to +represent his personages as talking and acting precisely as such +personages would talk and act under the circumstances in which he has +placed them. It often happens that their sentiments, their utterances, +and their conduct do not fit into the author's preconceived arrangement +of happenings, so that he must alter his entire story or important parts +of it to make it true. +</p> +<p> +I have borrowed the last few paragraphs from a playful paper I wrote for +an obscure magazine thirty-odd years ago, because they suggest a trouble +that must come to + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page343" name="page343"></a>[343]</span> + + every conscientious novelist many times during the +writing of every story. There come times when the novelist doesn't know +what happened, and must toilsomely explore his consciousness by way of +finding out. +</p> +<p class="side"> +Working Hours and Working Ways +</p> +<p> +My working hours are determined by circumstances—morning, afternoon, +evening, or late at night. When there is a "must" involved, I work when +I must; when I am free I work when I choose or when I feel that I can. +</p> +<p> +I never carry my work to bed with me, and I never let it rob me of a +moment's sleep. To avoid that I usually play a game or two of solitaire +—perhaps the least intellectual of all possible occupations—between +work and bedtime; and I usually take a walk in the open air just before +going to bed, whatever the weather may be. But whatever else happens, +I long ago acquired the art of absolutely dismissing the subject of my +work from my mind, whenever I please, and the more difficult art of +refusing to let any other subject of interest take its place. I do that +when I go to bed, and when I do that nothing less than positive physical +pain can keep me from going to sleep. +</p> +<p> +I have always been fond of fishing and boating. In summer, at my Lake +George cottage, I have a little fleet of small boats moored within +twenty paces of my porch-placed writing table. If my mind flags at my +work I step into my fishing boat and give an hour or two to a sport that +occupies the attention without fatiguing it. If I am seriously perplexed +by any work-problem, I take a rowboat, with a pair of eight-foot oars, +and go for a ten-mile spin. On my return I find that my problem has +completely wrought itself out in my mind without conscious effort on +my part. +</p> +<p> +I am fond of flower gardening and, without the least technical skill in +it, I usually secure astonishingly good + +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page344" name="page344"></a>[344]</span> + + results. The plants seem to +respond generously to my uninstructed but kindly attention. +</p> +<p> +In my infancy my mother taught me to begin every day with a plunge into +water as cold as I could get, and I have kept up the habit with the +greatest benefit. I find it a perfect tonic as well as a luxurious +delight. +</p> +<p> +I have always enforced upon myself two rules with respect to literary +style: First, to utter my thought simply and with entire sincerity, and, +second, never consciously to write or leave a sentence in such form that +even a blundering reader might mistake its meaning. +</p> +<p> +Here let me bring to an end these random recollections of a life +which has involved hard work, distressing responsibility, and much of +disappointment, but which has been filled from the beginning with that +joy of success which is the chief reward of endeavor to every man who +loves his work and puts conscience into it. +</p> + +<h3> +THE END +</h3> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page345" name="page345"></a>[345]</span></p> + +<div style="height: 2em;"><br /><br /></div> + +<p class="center"> +INDEX +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page346" name="page346"></a>[346]</span></p> + +<div style="height: 2em;"><br /><br /></div> + +<p><!--[Blank Page]--><br /></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page347" name="page347"></a>[347]</span></p> + +<div><a name="h2H_4_0072" id="h2H_4_0072"><!-- H2 anchor --></a></div> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + + +<h2> + INDEX +</h2> + +<p class="center"> +A +</p> + +<ul> +<li>Abbey, Edwin A., <a href="#page274">274</a>, <a href="#page307">307</a></li> +<li>Accident, its part in literary work, <a href="#page181">181</a>-<a href="#page185">185</a></li> +<li>Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, <a href="#page174">174</a>, <a href="#page191">191</a>, <a href="#page192">192</a></li> +<li>Alexander, Gen. E. P., <a href="#page94">94</a></li> +<li>America. <i>See</i> United States</li> +<li>American authors visiting England, <a href="#page265">265</a>, <a href="#page269">269</a></li> +<li>"American Idea," <a href="#page296">296</a>, <a href="#page297">297</a></li> +<li>American life, 1840-50, <a href="#page18">18</a>-<a href="#page20">20</a></li> +<li>American literature provincial, <a href="#page269">269</a>-<a href="#page271">271</a></li> +<li>Americanism, birthplace of, <a href="#page27">27</a></li> +<li>Amour, <a href="#page117">117</a></li> +<li>Anonymous literary criticism, <a href="#page203">203</a>-<a href="#page205">205</a></li> +<li>"Appleseed, Johnny," <a href="#page141">141</a></li> +<li><i>Appleton's Journal</i>, <a href="#page153">153</a>, <a href="#page181">181</a></li> +<li>Armitage, Rev. Dr., <a href="#page113">113</a>-<a href="#page115">115</a></li> +<li>Armstrong, Henry, <a href="#page291">291</a></li> +<li>Army of Northern Virginia, <a href="#page87">87</a>, <a href="#page93">93</a>, <a href="#page94">94</a></li> +<li>Arnold, Matthew, <a href="#page268">268</a></li> +<li>Arthur, T. S., novels of, <a href="#page25">25</a></li> +<li>Ashland, Va., <a href="#page77">77</a></li> +<li>Associated Press, <a href="#page180">180</a>, <a href="#page188">188</a>, <a href="#page302">302</a>, <a href="#page303">303</a></li> +<li>Astor Library, books mutilated, <a href="#page271">271</a></li> +<li><i>Atlantic Monthly</i>, <a href="#page148">148</a>, <a href="#page149">149</a>, <a href="#page181">181</a></li> +<li>Authors, and editors, <a href="#page167">167</a>-<a href="#page172">172</a>; +<ul> + <li>Virginian, <a href="#page66">66</a>-<a href="#page70">70</a></li> +</ul> +</li> + +<li>Authors Club, organized, <a href="#page272">272</a>; +<ul> +<li>presidency, <a href="#page273">273</a>;</li> +<li>eligibility, <a href="#page273">273</a>;</li> +<li>meeting-places, <a href="#page274">274</a>, <a href="#page275">275</a>;</li> +<li>in Twenty-fourth Street, <a href="#page277">277</a>;</li> +<li>social in character, <a href="#page277">277</a>, <a href="#page278">278</a>;</li> +<li>women, <a href="#page278">278</a>-<a href="#page280">280</a>;</li> +<li>plainness of quarters, <a href="#page280">280</a>;</li> +<li>Watch Night, <a href="#page281">281</a>, <a href="#page284">284</a>;</li> +<li>diplomats and statesmen, <a href="#page284">284</a>;</li> +<li>"Liber Scriptorum," <a href="#page285">285</a>, <a href="#page286">286</a>. Also <a href="#page85">85</a>, <a href="#page176">176</a>-<a href="#page178">178</a>, <a href="#page228">228</a>, <a href="#page232">232</a>, <a href="#page254">254</a>, <a href="#page258">258</a></li> +</ul> +</li> + +<li>Authorship, esteemed in Virginia, <a href="#page66">66</a>, <a href="#page67">67</a></li> +<li>"Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," Holmes's, <a href="#page219">219</a></li> +</ul> + +<p class="center"> +B +</p> + +<ul> +<li>"Bab Ballads," Gilbert's, <a href="#page137">137</a></li> +<li>Bacon-Shakespeare controversy, <a href="#page220">220</a></li> +<li>Bar Harbor, <a href="#page295">295</a>, <a href="#page320">320</a>-<a href="#page326">326</a></li> +<li>"Barnwell C. H.," <a href="#page242">242</a></li> +<li>Bates House, Indianapolis, <a href="#page28">28</a>, <a href="#page29">29</a></li> +<li>Bath, American habits as to, <a href="#page30">30</a>, <a href="#page31">31</a></li> +<li>Beauregard, Gen., <a href="#page87">87</a>, <a href="#page237">237</a>-<a href="#page241">241</a></li> +<li>Beecher, Henry Ward, <a href="#page108">108</a></li> +<li>"Ben Bolt," <a href="#page255">255</a></li> +<li>Benjamin, Judah P., <a href="#page237">237</a></li> +<li>Bernhardt, Sara, <a href="#page229">229</a>, <a href="#page230">230</a></li> +<li>Berry, Earl D., <a href="#page290">290</a></li> +<li>"Big Brother, The," <a href="#page181">181</a>-<a href="#page183">183</a></li> +<li>Bigelow, John, <a href="#page188">188</a>, <a href="#page228">228</a>, <a href="#page289">289</a>, <a href="#page303">303</a></li> +<li>Bludso, Jim, <a href="#page160">160</a>-<a href="#page162">162</a></li> + +<li>Blunders, compositors', <a href="#page241">241</a>-<a href="#page243">243</a>; +<ul> +<li> literary, <a href="#page222">222</a>-<a href="#page227">227</a>;</li> +<li> telegrapher's, <a href="#page238">238</a>, <a href="#page239">239</a></li> +</ul> +</li> + +<li>Bohemianism, <a href="#page177">177</a></li> +<li>Book-editing, <a href="#page234">234</a>-<a href="#page237">237</a></li> +<li>Book notices, <a href="#page190">190</a></li> +<li>Book reviewers, <a href="#page190">190</a></li> +<li>Book reviewing, newspaper, <a href="#page217">217</a></li> +<li>Book sales, predicting, <a href="#page252">252</a>-<a href="#page254">254</a></li> +<li>Book titles, <a href="#page154">154</a>-<a href="#page157">157</a></li> + +<li>Books, mutilation of, <a href="#page271">271</a>; +<ul> +<li> in Virginia, <a href="#page66">66</a></li> +</ul> +</li> + +<li>Booth, Edwin, <a href="#page275">275</a>, <a href="#page276">276</a></li> +<li>Booth, Postmaster of Brooklyn, <a href="#page125">125</a></li> +<li>"Boots and Saddles," Mrs. Custer's, <a href="#page252">252</a>-<a href="#page254">254</a></li> +<li>Boston, literary center, <a href="#page148">148</a></li> +<li>Boucicault, Dion, <a href="#page153">153</a></li> +<li>Bound boys and girls, <a href="#page14">14</a>, <a href="#page16">16</a></li> +<li>Bowen, Henry C., <a href="#page100">100</a>, <a href="#page128">128</a></li> +<li>Boys' stories, <a href="#page181">181</a>-<a href="#page185">185</a></li> + +<!--[page break]--> + +<li> +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page348" name="page348"></a>[348]</span> + Bragg, Gen., <a href="#page238">238</a></li> +<li>"Breadwinners, The," <a href="#page165">165</a></li> +<li>Briars, The, <a href="#page71">71</a></li> +<li>Briggs, Charles F., <a href="#page100">100</a>-<a href="#page107">107</a></li> +<li>British authors visiting America, <a href="#page265">265</a>, <a href="#page268">268</a>, <a href="#page269">269</a></li> +<li>British condescension, <a href="#page268">268</a></li> +<li><i>Broadway Journal</i>, <a href="#page100">100</a></li> +<li>Brooklyn. N. Y., <a href="#page31">31</a>, <a href="#page99">99</a>, <a href="#page115">115</a>, <a href="#page117">117</a></li> +<li>Brooklyn <i>Daily Eagle</i>, <a href="#page126">126</a></li> +<li>Brooklyn <i>Union</i>, <a href="#page99">99</a>, <a href="#page100">100</a>, <a href="#page105">105</a>, <a href="#page107">107</a>, <a href="#page110">110</a>, <a href="#page113">113</a>, <a href="#page115">115</a>, <a href="#page116">116</a>, <a href="#page128">128</a></li> +<li>Brooks, Elbridge S., <a href="#page185">185</a></li> +<li>"Browneyes, Lily," <a href="#page256">256</a>-<a href="#page258">258</a></li> +<li>Bryan, Wm. J., and the <i>World</i> in 1896, <a href="#page324">324</a>-<a href="#page326">326</a>. Also <a href="#page335">335</a>-<a href="#page337">337</a></li> + +<li>Bryant, Wm. C., <a href="#page68">68</a>, <a href="#page129">129</a>, <a href="#page143">143</a>; +<ul> +<li> conduct of the N. Y. <i>Evening Post</i>, <a href="#page187">187</a>-<a href="#page189">189</a>;</li> +<li> as a reviewer of books, <a href="#page190">190</a>;</li> +<li> appoints G. C. Eggleston literary editor of the <i>Evening Post</i>, <a href="#page192">192</a>-<a href="#page194">194</a>;</li> +<li> character, <a href="#page194">194</a>-<a href="#page196">196</a>;</li> +<li> relations with Washington Irving, <a href="#page196">196</a>-<a href="#page198">198</a>;</li> +<li> consideration for poets, <a href="#page199">199</a>-<a href="#page202">202</a>, <a href="#page205">205</a>, <a href="#page206">206</a>;</li> +<li> views of anonymous literary criticism, <a href="#page203">203</a>-<a href="#page205">205</a>;</li> +<li> estimate of Poe, <a href="#page207">207</a>;</li> +<li> <i>Index Expurgatorius</i>, <a href="#page209">209</a>-<a href="#page213">213</a>;</li> +<li> his democracy, <a href="#page214">214</a>;</li> +<li> opinion of English society, <a href="#page215">215</a>-<a href="#page217">217</a>;</li> +<li> estimate of Tennyson and other modern poets, <a href="#page219">219</a>;</li> +<li> his judgment of English literature, <a href="#page220">220</a>, <a href="#page221">221</a></li> +</ul> +</li> + +<li>Bull Run, <a href="#page78">78</a></li> +<li>Byron, quoted, <a href="#page83">83</a>, <a href="#page84">84</a></li></ul> + +<p class="center"> +C +</p> + +<ul> +<li>Cairo, Ills., <a href="#page96">96</a>, <a href="#page99">99</a></li> +<li>"Campaign of Chancellorsville," Dodge's, <a href="#page208">208</a></li> +<li>Campbell, Thomas, <a href="#page254">254</a></li> +<li>Cannon, Capt. John, <a href="#page161">161</a></li> +<li>"Captain Sam," <a href="#page183">183</a></li> +<li>Cary, Alice and Phœbe, <a href="#page137">137</a></li> +<li>Carlisle, John G., <a href="#page330">330</a>, <a href="#page331">331</a></li> +<li>Catholicism, <a href="#page26">26</a></li> +<li>Cavalry life, <a href="#page77">77</a>-<a href="#page81">81</a></li> +<li>Chamberlin, E. O., <a href="#page329">329</a>, <a href="#page330">330</a></li> +<li>Champlin, John D., <a href="#page285">285</a></li> +<li>Chance, its part in literary work, <a href="#page181">181</a>-<a href="#page185">185</a></li> +<li>Charleston, S. C., <a href="#page86">86</a>, <a href="#page164">164</a>, <a href="#page241">241</a></li> +<li>Checks, bank, in Virginia, <a href="#page50">50</a></li> +<li>Children's stories. <i>See</i> Boys' stories</li> +<li>Church, Col. Wm. C., <a href="#page204">204</a></li> +<li>Civil service system, <a href="#page235">235</a></li> +<li>Civil War, changes wrought in Virginia, <a href="#page73">73</a>-<a href="#page76">76</a></li> +<li>Clay, Henry, <a href="#page20">20</a></li> +<li>Clemens, Samuel L., <a href="#page150">150</a>, <a href="#page160">160</a>, <a href="#page259">259</a>, <a href="#page265">265</a>, <a href="#page281">281</a></li> +<li>Cleveland, President, <a href="#page214">214</a>, <a href="#page226">226</a>, <a href="#page330">330</a>, <a href="#page331">331</a></li> +<li>Coan, Dr. Titus Munson, quoted, <a href="#page228">228</a></li> +<li>Cobham Station, <a href="#page93">93</a></li> +<li>Cockerill, John A., <a href="#page122">122</a>, <a href="#page308">308</a>-<a href="#page312">312</a></li> +<li>Co-education, <a href="#page57">57</a></li> +<li>Colman, Mr., <a href="#page198">198</a></li> +<li>Collins, Tom, <a href="#page89">89</a>-<a href="#page93">93</a></li> +<li><i>Commercial Advertiser.</i> <i>See under</i> New York</li> +<li>Compositors, <a href="#page314">314</a>, <a href="#page315">315</a></li> +<li>Condescension, British, <a href="#page268">268</a></li> +<li>Congress, U. S., in Tilden-Hayes controversy, <a href="#page331">331</a>-<a href="#page333">333</a></li> +<li>Constitution, U. S., <a href="#page226">226</a>, <a href="#page336">336</a></li> +<li>Conversion, religious, <a href="#page92">92</a></li> +<li>Cooke, John Esten, <a href="#page59">59</a>, <a href="#page67">67</a>, <a href="#page69">69</a>-<a href="#page72">72</a>, <a href="#page151">151</a>, <a href="#page240">240</a></li> +<li>Copy, following, <a href="#page241">241</a>-<a href="#page243">243</a></li> +<li>Copyright, <a href="#page153">153</a>, <a href="#page154">154</a>, <a href="#page231">231</a>-<a href="#page234">234</a>, <a href="#page268">268</a></li> +<li>Corruption, political, <a href="#page124">124</a>-<a href="#page126">126</a>, <a href="#page334">334</a>, <a href="#page335">335</a></li> +<li>Courtesy in Boston, New York, Virginia, <a href="#page55">55</a>, <a href="#page56">56</a></li> +<li>Court-martial, <a href="#page88">88</a>, <a href="#page89">89</a></li> +<li>Coward, Edward Fales, <a href="#page291">291</a></li> +<li>Cowley, Abraham, <a href="#page192">192</a></li> +<li>Craig, George, <a href="#page13">13</a>, <a href="#page17">17</a></li> +<li>Creek War, <a href="#page183">183</a></li> +<li>Criticism. <i>See</i> Literary criticism</li> +<li>"Culross," <a href="#page338">338</a>-<a href="#page344">344</a></li> +<li>Curtis, George William, <a href="#page100">100</a></li> +<li>Curtis, Gen. Newton Martin, <a href="#page85">85</a></li> +<li>Custer, Mrs., <a href="#page252">252</a>-<a href="#page254">254</a></li> +<li>Cuyler, Dr. Theo. L., quoted, <a href="#page147">147</a></li> +</ul> + +<p class="center"> +D +</p> + +<ul> +<li>"Danger in the Dark," <a href="#page26">26</a></li> + +<li>Daniel, Senator, of Virginia, <a href="#page85">85</a></li> + +<li>Davis, James, <a href="#page291">291</a></li> + +<li>Davis, Jefferson, <a href="#page164">164</a>, <a href="#page165">165</a>, <a href="#page237">237</a>-<a href="#page241">241</a></li> + +<li>Death-bed repentance, <a href="#page93">93</a></li> + +<li>Democracy, Bryant's, <a href="#page214">214</a>; +<ul> +<li> Cleveland's, <a href="#page214">214</a></li> +</ul> +</li> + +<li>"Democracy," <a href="#page269">269</a></li> + +<!--[page break]--> + +<li> +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page349" name="page349"></a>[349]</span> + Dictation, <a href="#page341">341</a></li> +<li>Dictionaries, <a href="#page210">210</a></li> +<li>Dime novel, <a href="#page275">275</a>, <a href="#page276">276</a></li> +<li>Dodd, Mead, and Co., <a href="#page244">244</a></li> +<li>Dodge, Mary Mapes, <a href="#page131">131</a>, <a href="#page132">132</a></li> +<li>Dodge, Col. Theodore, <a href="#page208">208</a></li> +<li>Dranesville, Va., <a href="#page83">83</a></li> + +<li>Dress, Joaquin Miller on, <a href="#page175">175</a>, <a href="#page176">176</a>; +<ul> +<li> men's evening, <a href="#page175">175</a>-<a href="#page178">178</a></li> +</ul> +</li> + +<li>Drinking habits. <i>See</i> Temperance</li> +<li>Dumont, Mrs. Julia L., <a href="#page9">9</a></li> +<li>Dupont, Ind., <a href="#page21">21</a></li> +<li>Dutcher, Silas B., <a href="#page125">125</a></li> +<li>"Dutchmen," <a href="#page3">3</a></li> +</ul> + +<p class="center"> +E +</p> + +<ul> +<li><i>Eagle</i>, Brooklyn. <i>See under</i> Brooklyn</li> +<li>Early, Jubal A., <a href="#page76">76</a></li> +<li>Editorial responsibility, <a href="#page207">207</a>-<a href="#page209">209</a></li> +<li>Editorial writing, <a href="#page110">110</a>, <a href="#page313">313</a>-<a href="#page315">315</a>, <a href="#page323">323</a>, <a href="#page340">340</a></li> +<li>Editors and authors, <a href="#page167">167</a>-<a href="#page172">172</a></li> + +<li>Education, backwoods, <a href="#page9">9</a>, <a href="#page10">10</a>; +<ul> +<li> modern, <a href="#page75">75</a>, <a href="#page76">76</a>;</li> +<li> present and past in Virginia, <a href="#page73">73</a>-<a href="#page76">76</a>;</li> +<li> western, in 1850, <a href="#page32">32</a>-<a href="#page34">34</a>. <i>See also</i> Schools and school-teaching</li> +</ul> +</li> + +<li>Eggleston, Edward, <a href="#page21">21</a>, <a href="#page22">22</a>; +<ul> +<li> origin of "The Hoosier Schoolmaster," <a href="#page34">34</a>-<a href="#page36">36</a>;</li> +<li> connection with <i>Hearth and Home</i>, <a href="#page132">132</a>;</li> +<li> first to utilize in literature the Hoosier life, <a href="#page145">145</a>, <a href="#page146">146</a>;</li> +<li> resigns editorship of <i>Hearth and Home</i>, <a href="#page146">146</a>;</li> +<li> quoted on copyright, <a href="#page232">232</a>-<a href="#page234">234</a>;</li> +<li> relations with his brother, <a href="#page266">266</a>, <a href="#page267">267</a></li> +</ul> +</li> + +<li>Eggleston, George Cary, early recollections, life in the West in the eighteen-forties, <a href="#page1">1</a>-<a href="#page20">20</a>; +<ul> +<li> first railroad journey, <a href="#page21">21</a>;</li> +<li> free-thinking, <a href="#page22">22</a>;</li> +<li> early theological thought and reading, <a href="#page22">22</a>-<a href="#page26">26</a>;</li> +<li> school-teaching, <a href="#page34">34</a>-<a href="#page45">45</a>;</li> +<li> Virginia life, <a href="#page46">46</a>-<a href="#page59">59</a>;</li> +<li> occultism, experience of, <a href="#page60">60</a>-<a href="#page66">66</a>;</li> +<li> creed, <a href="#page75">75</a>;</li> +<li> army life, <a href="#page77">77</a>;</li> +<li> cavalry, <a href="#page77">77</a>-<a href="#page81">81</a>;</li> +<li> two experiences, <a href="#page81">81</a>-<a href="#page85">85</a>;</li> +<li> artillery, <a href="#page86">86</a>, <a href="#page87">87</a>;</li> +<li> Army of Northern Virginia, <a href="#page87">87</a>-<a href="#page96">96</a>;</li> +<li> legal practice, <a href="#page99">99</a>;</li> +<li> Brooklyn <i>Union</i>, <a href="#page99">99</a>-<a href="#page129">129</a>;</li> +<li> New York <i>Evening Post</i>, <a href="#page129">129</a>-<a href="#page131">131</a>;</li> +<li> <i>Hearth and Home</i>, <a href="#page131">131</a>-<a href="#page135">135</a>, <a href="#page145">145</a>, <a href="#page146">146</a>, <a href="#page148">148</a>, <a href="#page151">151</a>, <a href="#page180">180</a>;</li> +<li> first books, <a href="#page146">146</a>;</li> +<li> first novel, <a href="#page151">151</a>-<a href="#page155">155</a>;</li> +<li> New Jersey home, <a href="#page180">180</a>, <a href="#page186">186</a>;</li> +<li> boys' stories, <a href="#page181">181</a>-<a href="#page185">185</a>;</li> +<li> financial troubles, <a href="#page186">186</a>, <a href="#page187">187</a>;</li> +<li> connection with New York <i>Evening Post</i>, <a href="#page187">187</a>-<a href="#page231">231</a>;</li> +<li> acquaintance with W. C. Bryant, <a href="#page192">192</a>-<a href="#page228">228</a>;</li> +<li> adviser of Harper and Brothers, <a href="#page231">231</a>, <a href="#page234">234</a>, <a href="#page236">236</a>;</li> +<li> literary editor of the <i>Commercial Advertiser</i>, <a href="#page287">287</a>;</li> +<li> managing editor, <a href="#page288">288</a>;</li> +<li> editor-in-chief, <a href="#page289">289</a>;</li> +<li> health, <a href="#page292">292</a>, <a href="#page306">306</a>;</li> +<li> editorial writer for the <i>World</i>, <a href="#page306">306</a>-<a href="#page337">337</a>;</li> +<li> retires from journalism, <a href="#page337">337</a>;</li> +<li> literary habits, <a href="#page338">338</a>-<a href="#page344">344</a></li> +</ul> +</li> + +<li>Eggleston, Guilford Dudley, <a href="#page184">184</a></li> +<li>Eggleston, Joseph, <a href="#page96">96</a>, <a href="#page98">98</a></li> +<li>Eggleston, Joseph Cary, <a href="#page9">9</a>, <a href="#page14">14</a>, <a href="#page15">15</a></li> +<li>Eggleston, Mrs. Mary Jane, <a href="#page11">11</a></li> +<li>Eggleston, Judge Miles Cary, <a href="#page8">8</a></li> +<li>Eggleston family, home of, <a href="#page46">46</a></li> +<li>Election results, predicting, <a href="#page326">326</a></li> +<li>Eliot, George, <a href="#page255">255</a></li> +<li>Elliot, Henry R., <a href="#page291">291</a></li> +<li>"End of the World," E. Eggleston's, <a href="#page146">146</a></li> +<li>English, Thomas Dunn, <a href="#page172">172</a>, <a href="#page255">255</a></li> +<li>English authors. <i>See</i> British authors</li> + +<li>English language, N. Y. <i>Evening Post's</i> standard, <a href="#page210">210</a>-<a href="#page214">214</a>; +<ul> +<li> Virginia usage, <a href="#page59">59</a>; </li> +<li> Western usage, <a href="#page8">8</a></li> +</ul> +</li> + +<li>English society, <a href="#page215">215</a>-<a href="#page217">217</a></li> +<li><i>Evening Post, The.</i> <i>See under</i> New York</li> +<li>Extemporaneous writing, <a href="#page339">339</a>-<a href="#page341">341</a></li></ul> + +<p class="center"> +F +</p> + +<ul> +<li>"Fable for Critics," <a href="#page101">101</a>, <a href="#page106">106</a>, <a href="#page195">195</a></li> +<li>Familiarity, President Cleveland contrasted with W. C. Bryant, <a href="#page214">214</a></li> +<li>Farragut, Admiral, quoted, <a href="#page77">77</a></li> +<li>Fawcett, Edgar, <a href="#page153">153</a></li> +<li>Fellows, Col. John R., <a href="#page121">121</a>, <a href="#page122">122</a></li> + +<li>Fiction, place in 1840-50, <a href="#page25">25</a>, <a href="#page26">26</a>; +<ul> +<li> writing of, <a href="#page341">341</a>, <a href="#page342">342</a></li> +</ul> +</li> + +<li>"First of the Hoosiers," quoted, <a href="#page145">145</a></li> +<li>First Regiment of Virginia Cavalry, <a href="#page77">77</a>, <a href="#page78">78</a>, <a href="#page81">81</a></li> +<li>"Flat Creek," <a href="#page37">37</a></li> +<li>Florida War, <a href="#page243">243</a></li> + +<!--[page break]--> + +<li> +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page350" name="page350"></a>[350]</span> + Folsom, Dr. François, <a href="#page291">291</a></li> +<li>Ford, Paul Leicester, <a href="#page278">278</a>, <a href="#page279">279</a>, <a href="#page334">334</a></li> +<li>Foreigners, American attitude toward, 1840-50, <a href="#page2">2</a>, <a href="#page3">3</a></li> +<li>Francis, Sir Philip, <a href="#page223">223</a>-<a href="#page225">225</a></li> +<li>"Franco, Harry," <a href="#page100">100</a>, <a href="#page106">106</a></li> +<li>Franklin, Benj., <a href="#page1">1</a>, <a href="#page139">139</a></li> +<li>Free-thinking, <a href="#page22">22</a></li> +<li>Free-trade and protection, <a href="#page20">20</a></li> +<li>French Revolution, <a href="#page108">108</a>, <a href="#page109">109</a></li> +<li>Fulton, Rev. Dr., <a href="#page113">113</a>-<a href="#page115">115</a></li></ul> + +<p class="center"> +G +</p> + +<ul> +<li>G., Johnny, <a href="#page43">43</a>-<a href="#page45">45</a></li> +<li><i>Galaxy</i>, <a href="#page181">181</a>, <a href="#page204">204</a></li> +<li>Garfield, Gen., <a href="#page119">119</a></li> +<li>George Eliot, <a href="#page255">255</a></li> +<li>George, Lake, <a href="#page335">335</a>, <a href="#page337">337</a>. <i>See also</i> "Culross"</li> +<li>Ghost story, <a href="#page60">60</a>-<a href="#page66">66</a></li> +<li>Gilbert, W. S., <a href="#page137">137</a></li> +<li>Gilder, R. W., <a href="#page172">172</a>, <a href="#page272">272</a>, <a href="#page273">273</a></li> +<li>Godkin, E. L., <a href="#page230">230</a>, <a href="#page231">231</a></li> +<li>Godwin, Parke, <a href="#page100">100</a>, <a href="#page188">188</a>, <a href="#page189">189</a>, <a href="#page227">227</a>-<a href="#page230">230</a>, <a href="#page286">286</a>-<a href="#page289">289</a>, <a href="#page295">295</a>-<a href="#page300">300</a>, <a href="#page305">305</a></li> +<li>Gold coin in Plaquemine in 1886, <a href="#page248">248</a>-<a href="#page251">251</a></li> +<li>Gosse, Edmund, <a href="#page177">177</a>, <a href="#page265">265</a>-<a href="#page268">268</a></li> +<li>Gracie, Gen., <a href="#page96">96</a></li> +<li>Grant, President, <a href="#page93">93</a>, <a href="#page125">125</a>, <a href="#page126">126</a>, <a href="#page127">127</a>, <a href="#page244">244</a></li> +<li><i>Graphic, The.</i> <i>See under</i> New York</li> +<li>Grebe, Charley, <a href="#page37">37</a>, <a href="#page39">39</a>-<a href="#page45">45</a></li> +<li>Greeley, Horace, <a href="#page139">139</a>, <a href="#page167">167</a></li> +</ul> + +<p class="center"> +H +</p> + +<ul> +<li>Halsted, Dr. Wm. S., <a href="#page294">294</a></li> +<li>"Harold," Tennyson's, <a href="#page218">218</a></li> +<li>Harper and Brothers, <a href="#page153">153</a>, <a href="#page154">154</a>, <a href="#page155">155</a>, <a href="#page167">167</a>, <a href="#page168">168</a>, <a href="#page231">231</a>, <a href="#page236">236</a>, <a href="#page241">241</a>, <a href="#page252">252</a>, <a href="#page257">257</a>, <a href="#page287">287</a>, <a href="#page307">307</a></li> +<li>Harper, J. Henry, <a href="#page259">259</a></li> +<li>Harper, Joseph W., Jr., <a href="#page154">154</a>, <a href="#page168">168</a>, <a href="#page252">252</a>, <a href="#page253">253</a>, <a href="#page267">267</a>, <a href="#page285">285</a></li> +<li><i>Harper's Magazine</i>, <a href="#page141">141</a></li> +<li>Hay, John, <a href="#page157">157</a>-<a href="#page166">166</a>, <a href="#page275">275</a>, <a href="#page276">276</a></li> +<li>Hayden's "Dictionary of Dates," <a href="#page234">234</a></li> +<li>Hayes-Tilden controversy, <a href="#page332">332</a></li> +<li><i>Hearth and Home</i>, <a href="#page35">35</a>, <a href="#page36">36</a>, <a href="#page131">131</a>-<a href="#page135">135</a>, <a href="#page145">145</a>, <a href="#page146">146</a>, <a href="#page148">148</a>, <a href="#page151">151</a>, <a href="#page157">157</a>, <a href="#page180">180</a></li> +<li>Hendrickses, the, <a href="#page8">8</a></li> +<li>"Henry St. John, Gentleman," <a href="#page69">69</a></li> +<li><i>Herald, The.</i> <i>See under</i> New York</li> +<li>"Heterophemy," <a href="#page223">223</a>-<a href="#page225">225</a></li> +<li>Hewitt, Mr., <a href="#page291">291</a></li> +<li>Hill, A. P., <a href="#page87">87</a></li> +<li>Hilton, Judge Henry, <a href="#page121">121</a></li> +<li>Hirsh, Nelson, <a href="#page291">291</a></li> +<li>Historical intuition, <a href="#page47">47</a></li> + +<li>Holmes, Oliver Wendell, <a href="#page177">177</a>; +<ul> +<li> Bryant's estimate of, <a href="#page219">219</a></li> +</ul> +</li> + +<li><i>Home Journal</i>, <a href="#page140">140</a></li> +<li>Hoosier dialect, <a href="#page8">8</a>, <a href="#page14">14</a></li> +<li>Hoosier life, <a href="#page145">145</a>, <a href="#page146">146</a></li> + +<li>"Hoosier Schoolmaster, The," <a href="#page34">34</a>-<a href="#page36">36</a>, <a href="#page37">37</a>, <a href="#page41">41</a>, <a href="#page145">145</a>; +<ul> +<li> in England, <a href="#page233">233</a></li> +</ul> +</li> + +<li>Hospitality, <a href="#page17">17</a>, <a href="#page320">320</a></li> +<li>Hotels in 1840-50, <a href="#page28">28</a>-<a href="#page31">31</a></li> +<li>"Houp-la," Mrs. Stannard's, <a href="#page154">154</a></li> +<li>"How to Educate Yourself," <a href="#page147">147</a></li> +<li>Howells, Wm. D., <a href="#page1">1</a>, <a href="#page148">148</a>-<a href="#page150">150</a>, <a href="#page204">204</a>, <a href="#page258">258</a></li> +<li>Humor, newspaper, <a href="#page282">282</a>-<a href="#page284">284</a></li> +<li>"Hundredth Man," Stockton's, <a href="#page135">135</a>, <a href="#page136">136</a></li> +<li>Hurlbut, Wm. Hen., <a href="#page177">177</a></li> +<li>Hutton, Laurence, <a href="#page272">272</a>, <a href="#page274">274</a></li> +</ul> + +<p class="center"> +I +</p> + +<ul> +<li>Ideas, <a href="#page297">297</a>, <a href="#page312">312</a></li> +<li>Ignorance in criticism, <a href="#page226">226</a>, <a href="#page227">227</a></li> +<li>Illicit distilling in Brooklyn, <a href="#page123">123</a>-<a href="#page128">128</a></li> +<li>Illustration, newspaper, <a href="#page179">179</a>, <a href="#page180">180</a></li> +<li>Imperialism, <a href="#page336">336</a>, <a href="#page337">337</a></li> +<li>Independence, personal, 1840-50, <a href="#page18">18</a>-<a href="#page20">20</a></li> +<li><i>Independent, The.</i> <i>See under</i> New York</li> +<li><i>Index Expurgatorius</i>, Bryant's, <a href="#page209">209</a>-<a href="#page213">213</a></li> +<li>Indian Territory, <a href="#page183">183</a></li> +<li>Indiana, a model in education, <a href="#page10">10</a>, <a href="#page11">11</a></li> +<li>Indiana Asbury University, <a href="#page11">11</a></li> +<li>Indianapolis, Ind., <a href="#page28">28</a></li> +<li>Intolerance, <a href="#page26">26</a>, <a href="#page251">251</a></li> +<li>Introductions, <a href="#page255">255</a>-<a href="#page264">264</a></li> +<li>Intuition, historian's, <a href="#page47">47</a></li> +<li>Irving, Washington, relations with Bryant, <a href="#page196">196</a>-<a href="#page198">198</a></li> +</ul> + +<p class="center"> +J +</p> + +<ul> +<li>Jackson, Mr., <a href="#page314">314</a></li> +<li>James, G. P. R., <a href="#page67">67</a>, <a href="#page68">68</a></li> + +<!--[page break]--> + +<li> +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page351" name="page351"></a>[351]</span> + Jeffersonianism, <a href="#page296">296</a></li> +<li>John, a good name, <a href="#page42">42</a>, <a href="#page43">43</a></li> +<li>"John Bull, Jr.," O'Rell's, <a href="#page282">282</a></li> +<li>Johnson, Gen. Bushrod, <a href="#page96">96</a></li> +<li>Johnson, Rossiter, <a href="#page285">285</a></li> +<li>Johnson's Dictionary, <a href="#page210">210</a></li> +<li>Jokes. <i>See</i> Humor</li> +<li>Jones, J. B., <a href="#page275">275</a></li> +<li>Journalism, <a href="#page116">116</a>, <a href="#page292">292</a>, <a href="#page293">293</a>. <i>See also</i> Newspapers, Pulitzer</li> +<li>Judd, Orange, and Co., <a href="#page132">132</a></li> +<li>Junius letters, authorship, <a href="#page223">223</a></li> +</ul> + +<p class="center"> +K +</p> + +<ul> +<li>"Kate Bonnet," Stockton's, <a href="#page135">135</a>, <a href="#page136">136</a></li> +<li>Kelly, John, <a href="#page234">234</a></li> +<li>Kentuckians in the Northwest, <a href="#page9">9</a>-<a href="#page11">11</a></li> +<li>Khedive, <a href="#page244">244</a></li> +<li>Kossuth, Louis, <a href="#page297">297</a>, <a href="#page298">298</a></li> +</ul> + +<p class="center"> +L +</p> + +<ul> +<li>"Lady Gay," steamer, <a href="#page96">96</a>-<a href="#page98">98</a></li> +<li>Laffan, Wm. M., <a href="#page304">304</a></li> +<li>Lakewood, <a href="#page328">328</a>-<a href="#page330">330</a></li> +<li>Language. <i>See</i> English language</li> +<li>Lanier, Sidney, <a href="#page262">262</a></li> +<li>"Last of the Flatboats, The," <a href="#page185">185</a></li> +<li>"Late Mrs. Null," Stockton's, <a href="#page135">135</a></li> +<li>Lathrop, George Parsons, <a href="#page150">150</a></li> +<li>Latin, <a href="#page33">33</a></li> +<li>Laziness, <a href="#page17">17</a></li> +<li>Lecture system, <a href="#page108">108</a></li> +<li>Lee, Fitzhugh, <a href="#page81">81</a>-<a href="#page84">84</a>, <a href="#page86">86</a></li> +<li>Lee, Gen. Robert E., <a href="#page240">240</a></li> +<li>Lee family, <a href="#page83">83</a></li> +<li>Letcher, John, <a href="#page76">76</a>, <a href="#page91">91</a></li> +<li>Letters of introduction, <a href="#page255">255</a>-<a href="#page264">264</a></li> +<li>Lewis, Charlton T., <a href="#page129">129</a>, <a href="#page130">130</a></li> +<li>Libel, <a href="#page117">117</a>-<a href="#page124">124</a>, <a href="#page272">272</a></li> +<li>"Liber Scriptorum," <a href="#page285">285</a></li> +<li>Liberty, <a href="#page296">296</a>, <a href="#page336">336</a></li> +<li>"Liffith Lank," <a href="#page156">156</a></li> +<li>Lincoln, President, <a href="#page84">84</a>, <a href="#page85">85</a>, <a href="#page334">334</a></li> +<li>Lindsay's Turnout, <a href="#page88">88</a></li> +<li>Literary aspirants, <a href="#page255">255</a>-<a href="#page259">259</a></li> + +<li>Literary criticism, anonymous, <a href="#page203">203</a>-<a href="#page205">205</a>; +<ul> +<li> of the <i>Saturday Review</i>, <a href="#page206">206</a>;</li> +<li> ignorance displayed in, <a href="#page226">226</a>, <a href="#page227">227</a></li> +</ul> +</li> + +<li>Literary work, <a href="#page339">339</a>. <i>See also</i> Editorial writing</li> +<li>"Literati," Poe's, <a href="#page172">172</a></li> +<li>Literature, place in 1840-50, <a href="#page23">23</a>-<a href="#page26">26</a></li> +<li>"Little Breeches," <a href="#page157">157</a>-<a href="#page159">159</a></li> +<li>Local independence, 1840-50, <a href="#page18">18</a></li> +<li>Logan, Sidney Strother, <a href="#page291">291</a></li> +<li>London, and Joaquin Miller, <a href="#page173">173</a>, <a href="#page174">174</a></li> +<li>Longfellow, Henry W., <a href="#page208">208</a></li> +<li>Longstreet, Gen., <a href="#page87">87</a>, <a href="#page93">93</a>, <a href="#page94">94</a></li> +<li>Loomis, Charles Battell, <a href="#page283">283</a></li> +<li>Loring, Gen. W. W., <a href="#page243">243</a>-<a href="#page247">247</a></li> +<li>Los Angeles, Cal., <a href="#page31">31</a></li> +<li>Lothrop Publishing Company, <a href="#page185">185</a>, <a href="#page263">263</a></li> +<li>Louisville and Cincinnati Mail Line, <a href="#page30">30</a></li> +<li>Lowell, James Russell, <a href="#page101">101</a>, <a href="#page106">106</a>, <a href="#page195">195</a></li> +</ul> + +<p class="center"> +M +</p> + +<ul> +<li>McCabe, Gordon, <a href="#page267">267</a></li> +<li>McKane, John Y., <a href="#page120">120</a></li> +<li>McKelway, Dr. St. Clair, <a href="#page126">126</a></li> +<li>McKinley, President, <a href="#page162">162</a></li> +<li>Madison, Ind., <a href="#page15">15</a>, <a href="#page21">21</a>, <a href="#page36">36</a>, <a href="#page43">43</a>, <a href="#page44">44</a></li> +<li>Madison and Indianapolis Railroad, <a href="#page13">13</a></li> +<li>Mallon, George B., <a href="#page291">291</a></li> +<li>"Man of Honor, A," <a href="#page151">151</a>-<a href="#page155">155</a></li> +<li>"Man of Honor, A," Mrs. Stannard's, <a href="#page154">154</a>, <a href="#page155">155</a></li> +<li>Manassas, <a href="#page71">71</a>, <a href="#page78">78</a></li> +<li>Mann, Horace, <a href="#page33">33</a></li> +<li>Manufactures, 1840-50, <a href="#page18">18</a>-<a href="#page20">20</a></li> +<li>Manuscripts for publication, <a href="#page171">171</a>, <a href="#page172">172</a></li> +<li>"Manyest-sided man," <a href="#page143">143</a></li> +<li>Marquand, Henry, <a href="#page251">251</a>, <a href="#page290">290</a>, <a href="#page294">294</a></li> +<li>"Master of Warlock, The," <a href="#page155">155</a>-<a href="#page157">157</a></li> +<li>Matthews, Brander, <a href="#page204">204</a>, <a href="#page269">269</a></li> +<li>Maynard, Judge, <a href="#page323">323</a>, <a href="#page324">324</a></li> +<li>Mazeppa, quoted, <a href="#page83">83</a>, <a href="#page84">84</a></li> +<li>Merrill, Wm. M., <a href="#page312">312</a>-<a href="#page314">314</a></li> +<li>Methodism and literature, <a href="#page23">23</a>-<a href="#page26">26</a></li> +<li>Mexican War, <a href="#page243">243</a></li> +<li>"Military Operations of General Beauregard in the War between the States," Roman's, <a href="#page237">237</a></li> +<li>Military prisoners, <a href="#page88">88</a></li> +<li>Miller, Joaquin, <a href="#page172">172</a>-<a href="#page176">176</a></li> +<li>Mims, Fort, <a href="#page183">183</a></li> +<li>Mitchell, Donald G., <a href="#page131">131</a></li> +<li>Model, artist's, <a href="#page274">274</a></li> +<li>Money, its place in Virginia, <a href="#page49">49</a>-<a href="#page52">52</a></li> + +<!--[page break]--> + +<li> +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page352" name="page352"></a>[352]</span> + Munroe, Capt. Kirk, <a href="#page257">257</a></li> +<li>Moody, Dwight, <a href="#page168">168</a></li> +<li>Morey letter, <a href="#page119">119</a></li> +<li>Morgan Syndicate, 1895-6, <a href="#page327">327</a>-<a href="#page329">329</a></li> +<li>Mortar service at Petersburg, <a href="#page94">94</a>, <a href="#page95">95</a></li> +<li>Moses, ex-Governor, <a href="#page262">262</a>-<a href="#page264">264</a></li> +<li>Myths, <a href="#page47">47</a></li> +</ul> + +<p class="center"> +N +</p> + +<ul> +<li>Nadeau House, Los Angeles, <a href="#page31">31</a></li> +<li>Napoleon, Ind., <a href="#page5">5</a></li> +<li>Nash, Thomas, <a href="#page307">307</a></li> +<li><i>Nation, The</i>, <a href="#page231">231</a></li> +<li>New Orleans, <a href="#page3">3</a>, <a href="#page4">4</a>, <a href="#page96">96</a>, <a href="#page98">98</a>, <a href="#page183">183</a></li> +<li>New York authors in 1882, <a href="#page272">272</a></li> +<li>New York <i>Commercial Advertiser</i>, <a href="#page251">251</a>, <a href="#page286">286</a>-<a href="#page292">292</a></li> +<li>New York <i>Evening Sun</i>, <a href="#page304">304</a></li> + +<li>New York <i>Evening Post</i>, <a href="#page68">68</a>, <a href="#page129">129</a>, <a href="#page131">131</a>, <a href="#page137">137</a>, <a href="#page140">140</a>, <a href="#page142">142</a>, <a href="#page143">143</a>; +<ul> +<li> character under Bryant and Godwin, <a href="#page187">187</a>-<a href="#page189">189</a>;</li> +<li> G. C. Eggleston literary editor, <a href="#page192">192</a>-<a href="#page194">194</a>;</li> +<li> use of English, <a href="#page209">209</a>-<a href="#page213">213</a>;</li> +<li> book reviews, <a href="#page217">217</a>, <a href="#page218">218</a>;</li> +<li> Godwin editor, <a href="#page227">227</a>;</li> +<li> writers, <a href="#page228">228</a>;</li> +<li> change of ownership, <a href="#page230">230</a></li> +</ul> +</li> + +<li>New York <i>Graphic</i>, <a href="#page180">180</a></li> +<li>New York <i>Herald</i>, <a href="#page162">162</a></li> +<li>New York <i>Independent</i>, <a href="#page100">100</a>, <a href="#page107">107</a>, <a href="#page110">110</a></li> +<li>New York <i>Sun</i>, <a href="#page291">291</a>, <a href="#page301">301</a>, <a href="#page304">304</a></li> +<li>New York <i>Times</i>, <a href="#page101">101</a></li> +<li>New York <i>Tribune</i>, <a href="#page105">105</a>, <a href="#page129">129</a>, <a href="#page159">159</a>, <a href="#page164">164</a>, <a href="#page165">165</a></li> +<li>New York <i>World</i>, <a href="#page120">120</a>, <a href="#page121">121</a>, <a href="#page122">122</a>, <a href="#page185">185</a>, <a href="#page291">291</a>, <a href="#page292">292</a>, <a href="#page303">303</a>-<a href="#page331">331</a></li> +<li>Newspaper book reviews, <a href="#page217">217</a></li> +<li>Newspaper correspondents, <a href="#page245">245</a>-<a href="#page247">247</a></li> +<li>Newspaper illustration, <a href="#page179">179</a>, <a href="#page180">180</a></li> +<li>Newspaper libel suits, <a href="#page117">117</a>-<a href="#page124">124</a></li> + +<li>Newspapers, character, <a href="#page189">189</a>; +<ul> +<li> earlier methods, <a href="#page300">300</a>-<a href="#page303">303</a>;</li> +<li> revolution in conducting, <a href="#page303">303</a>;</li> +<li> emergency problems, <a href="#page313">313</a>-<a href="#page315">315</a>;</li> +<li> power in politics, <a href="#page327">327</a>-<a href="#page332">332</a></li> +</ul> +</li> + +<li>Nicoll, De Lancy, <a href="#page122">122</a></li> +<li>Nineteenth Century Club, <a href="#page296">296</a></li> +<li><i>North American Review</i>, <a href="#page223">223</a></li> +<li>Novels <i>See</i> Fiction, Scott. Dime novel</li> +</ul> + + + +<p class="center"> +O +</p> + +<ul> +<li>Occultism, <a href="#page60">60</a>-<a href="#page66">66</a>, <a href="#page299">299</a></li> +<li>"On March," Mrs. Stannard's, <a href="#page155">155</a></li> +<li>O'Rell, Max, <a href="#page287">287</a>, <a href="#page282">282</a></li> +<li>Osgood, James R., <a href="#page306">306</a>, <a href="#page307">307</a></li> +</ul> + +<p class="center"> +P +</p> + +<ul> +<li><i>Pall Mall Gazette</i>, <a href="#page188">188</a></li> +<li>"Paul, John," <a href="#page285">285</a></li> +<li>Personalities in newspapers, <a href="#page189">189</a></li> +<li>Petersburg, <a href="#page94">94</a>-<a href="#page98">98</a></li> +<li>Philp, Kenward, <a href="#page116">116</a>-<a href="#page119">119</a></li> +<li>Piatt, Donn, <a href="#page315">315</a>-<a href="#page319">319</a></li> +<li>"Pike County Ballads," <a href="#page157">157</a>-<a href="#page159">159</a></li> + +<li>Piracy, of American publishers, <a href="#page231">231</a>, <a href="#page232">232</a>; +<ul> +<li> of English publishers, <a href="#page233">233</a></li> +</ul> +</li> + +<li>Plagiarism, <a href="#page137">137</a>-<a href="#page144">144</a>; +<ul> +<li> Stockton on, <a href="#page137">137</a>, <a href="#page138">138</a>; </li> +<li> Franklin on, <a href="#page139">139</a></li> +</ul> +</li> + +<li>Planter's life in Virginia, <a href="#page50">50</a>-<a href="#page53">53</a></li> +<li>Plaquemine, <a href="#page248">248</a>-<a href="#page251">251</a></li> +<li>Platt, Tom, <a href="#page319">319</a></li> +<li>Pocotaligo, <a href="#page87">87</a></li> +<li>Poe, Edgar Allan, <a href="#page100">100</a>-<a href="#page102">102</a>, <a href="#page172">172</a>, <a href="#page207">207</a></li> +<li>Poetic ambition, <a href="#page44">44</a>, <a href="#page45">45</a></li> + +<li>Poetry, bad, <a href="#page199">199</a>-<a href="#page202">202</a>, <a href="#page205">205</a>, <a href="#page206">206</a>; +<ul> +<li> genuine, <a href="#page221">221</a></li> +</ul> +</li> + +<li>Political corruption, <a href="#page124">124</a>-<a href="#page126">126</a>, <a href="#page334">334</a>, <a href="#page335">335</a></li> +<li>Political prescience, <a href="#page326">326</a></li> +<li>"Poor Whites" in the Northwest, <a href="#page11">11</a>, <a href="#page12">12</a></li> +<li>Potter, Bishop, <a href="#page283">283</a>, <a href="#page284">284</a></li> +<li>Poverty in Indiana, 1840-50, <a href="#page13">13</a></li> +<li>Preachers, stories of, <a href="#page158">158</a>, <a href="#page162">162</a>, <a href="#page166">166</a>, <a href="#page167">167</a></li> +<li>Predicting election results, <a href="#page326">326</a></li> +<li>Press. <i>See</i> Newspapers, Journalism</li> +<li>"Prince Regent," <a href="#page67">67</a>, <a href="#page68">68</a></li> +<li><i>Princeton Review</i>, <a href="#page296">296</a></li> +<li>Printers. <i>See</i> Compositors, Copy</li> +<li>Prisoners, military, <a href="#page88">88</a></li> +<li>Progress, <a href="#page75">75</a>, <a href="#page76">76</a></li> +<li>Prohibition, <a href="#page296">296</a></li> +<li>Proof-reading, <a href="#page241">241</a>-<a href="#page243">243</a></li> +<li>"Proverbial Philosophy," Tupper's, <a href="#page208">208</a>, <a href="#page209">209</a></li> +<li>Provincialism of American literature, <a href="#page269">269</a>-<a href="#page271">271</a></li> +<li>Publishing, uncertainties, <a href="#page254">254</a></li> + +<!--[page break]--> + +<li> +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page353" name="page353"></a>[353]</span> + Pulitzer, Joseph, <a href="#page214">214</a>, <a href="#page303">303</a>-<a href="#page305">305</a>, <a href="#page308">308</a>, <a href="#page311">311</a>, <a href="#page312">312</a>, <a href="#page314">314</a>, <a href="#page319">319</a>-<a href="#page331">331</a></li> +<li>Punctuation, serious result of error, <a href="#page238">238</a>, <a href="#page239">239</a></li> +<li>Putnam, George Haven, <a href="#page147">147</a>, <a href="#page184">184</a></li> +<li>Putnam, George P., <a href="#page146">146</a>, <a href="#page171">171</a></li> +<li>"Putnam's Handy Book Series," <a href="#page136">136</a>, <a href="#page147">147</a></li> +<li><i>Putnam's Monthly</i>, <a href="#page101">101</a>, <a href="#page171">171</a></li> +</ul> + +<p class="center"> +R +</p> + +<ul> +<li>Radicalism after Civil War, <a href="#page108">108</a></li> +<li>Railroad Iron Battery, <a href="#page95">95</a>, <a href="#page96">96</a>-<a href="#page98">98</a></li> +<li>Railroads, early, in the West, <a href="#page20">20</a>-<a href="#page22">22</a>, <a href="#page26">26</a>, <a href="#page27">27</a>, <a href="#page32">32</a>-<a href="#page34">34</a></li> +<li>Randall, James R., <a href="#page261">261</a>, <a href="#page262">262</a></li> +<li>Raymond, Henry J., <a href="#page101">101</a></li> +<li>"Rebel's Recollections," <a href="#page148">148</a>-<a href="#page150">150</a>, <a href="#page240">240</a></li> +<li>Reid, Whitelaw, <a href="#page143">143</a>, <a href="#page159">159</a>, <a href="#page164">164</a></li> +<li>"Reirritation," <a href="#page213">213</a></li> +<li>Religious intolerance, 1840-50, <a href="#page26">26</a></li> +<li>Restfulness of life in Virginia, <a href="#page48">48</a>, <a href="#page49">49</a></li> +<li>Reviewing. <i>See under</i> Book</li> +<li>Revision of manuscript, <a href="#page341">341</a></li> +<li>Revivals, <a href="#page168">168</a></li> +<li><i>Revue des Deux Mondes</i>, publishes "Hoosier Schoolmaster," <a href="#page145">145</a></li> +<li>Rhodes, James Ford, <a href="#page334">334</a></li> +<li>Richmond, Arthur, <a href="#page316">316</a>, <a href="#page317">317</a></li> +<li>Richmond, Va., <a href="#page67">67</a>, <a href="#page68">68</a>, <a href="#page69">69</a>, <a href="#page84">84</a>, <a href="#page85">85</a></li> +<li>Riddel, John, <a href="#page42">42</a>, <a href="#page43">43</a></li> +<li>Riker's Ridge, <a href="#page35">35</a>-<a href="#page45">45</a></li> +<li>Ripley, George, <a href="#page167">167</a></li> +<li>"Rise and fall of the Confederate Government," Davis's, <a href="#page164">164</a>, <a href="#page165">165</a></li> +<li>Ritchie, Mrs. Anna Cora Mowatt, <a href="#page67">67</a></li> +<li>"Robert E. Lee," steamer, <a href="#page161">161</a></li> +<li>Roman, Col. Alfred, <a href="#page237">237</a></li> +<li>Roman Catholicism. <i>See</i> Catholicism</li> +<li>Roosevelt, Dr., <a href="#page294">294</a></li> +<li>"Rudder Grange," Stockton's, <a href="#page136">136</a></li> +<li>Russell, Charles E., <a href="#page290">290</a></li> +<li>"Ruth," yacht, <a href="#page295">295</a></li> +</ul> + +<p class="center"> +S +</p> + +<ul> +<li>St. Louis newspapers, <a href="#page327">327</a></li> +<li><i>St. Nicholas</i>, <a href="#page132">132</a>, <a href="#page183">183</a></li> +<li>"St. Twelvemo," <a href="#page156">156</a></li> +<li>Sanborn, Frank B., <a href="#page150">150</a></li> +<li><i>Saturday Review</i>, <a href="#page206">206</a></li> + +<li>Schools and school-teaching, 1850, <a href="#page32">32</a>-<a href="#page34">34</a>, <a href="#page45">45</a>; +<ul> +<li> Western, 1840-50, <a href="#page10">10</a>, <a href="#page11">11</a></li> +</ul> +</li> + +<li>Schurz, Carl, <a href="#page208">208</a>, <a href="#page230">230</a>, <a href="#page332">332</a>-<a href="#page337">337</a></li> +<li>Scotch-Irish, <a href="#page9">9</a></li> +<li>Scott's novels, <a href="#page275">275</a></li> +<li>Scott, Gen., <a href="#page243">243</a>, <a href="#page244">244</a></li> +<li>Sexes, relations in Virginia, <a href="#page53">53</a>-<a href="#page59">59</a></li> +<li>Shakespeare, <a href="#page220">220</a>, <a href="#page221">221</a></li> +<li>Shams of English society, <a href="#page215">215</a>-<a href="#page217">217</a></li> + +<li>Sherman, Gen., his March to the Sea, <a href="#page280">280</a>; +<ul> +<li> quoted, on war, <a href="#page80">80</a></li> +</ul> +</li> + +<li>Shiloh, battle, <a href="#page238">238</a></li> +<li>"Shiveree," <a href="#page14">14</a>, <a href="#page15">15</a></li> +<li>"Shocky," <a href="#page41">41</a></li> +<li>Shooting, <a href="#page14">14</a>-<a href="#page16">16</a></li> +<li>Sidney, Sir Philip, <a href="#page224">224</a>, <a href="#page225">225</a></li> +<li>Sieghortner's, <a href="#page274">274</a></li> +<li>"Signal Boys, The," <a href="#page183">183</a></li> +<li>"Skinning," <a href="#page139">139</a>, <a href="#page144">144</a></li> +<li>Sloane, Dr. Wm. M., <a href="#page296">296</a></li> +<li>Smith, Ballard, <a href="#page309">309</a></li> +<li>Social conditions, 1840-50, <a href="#page18">18</a>-<a href="#page20">20</a></li> +<li>"Solitary Horseman," <a href="#page67">67</a></li> +<li>"Son of Godwin, The," <a href="#page220">220</a></li> +<li>"Song of Marion's Men," Bryant's, <a href="#page196">196</a></li> +<li><i>Southern Literary Messenger</i>, <a href="#page68">68</a></li> +<li>Spanish-American War, <a href="#page81">81</a></li> +<li>Sperry, Watson R., <a href="#page191">191</a>, <a href="#page193">193</a>, <a href="#page208">208</a>, <a href="#page209">209</a></li> +<li><i>Springfield Republican</i>, <a href="#page208">208</a></li> +<li>Stannard, Mrs., <a href="#page154">154</a>, <a href="#page155">155</a></li> +<li>Stapps, the, <a href="#page8">8</a></li> +<li>Steamboats, 1850, <a href="#page30">30</a></li> +<li>Stedman, E. C., <a href="#page143">143</a>, <a href="#page144">144</a>, <a href="#page177">177</a>, <a href="#page178">178</a>, <a href="#page262">262</a></li> +<li>Stephens, Alexander H., <a href="#page223">223</a></li> +<li>Stevens, Judge Algernon S., <a href="#page8">8</a></li> +<li>Stewart, A. T., <a href="#page121">121</a>, <a href="#page122">122</a></li> +<li>Stockton, Frank R., <a href="#page133">133</a>-<a href="#page139">139</a>, <a href="#page281">281</a>, <a href="#page283">283</a></li> +<li>Stoddard, Richard Henry, <a href="#page202">202</a>, <a href="#page261">261</a>, <a href="#page262">262</a></li> +<li>Stowe, Harriet Beecher, <a href="#page131">131</a></li> +<li>"Stranded Goldbug," <a href="#page251">251</a></li> +<li>Stuart, J. E. B., <a href="#page70">70</a>, <a href="#page71">71</a>, <a href="#page77">77</a>, <a href="#page78">78</a>, <a href="#page81">81</a></li> +<li>Sullivan, Judge Algernon S., <a href="#page8">8</a></li> +<li>Sumter, Fort, <a href="#page164">164</a></li> +<li><i>Sun, The.</i> <i>See under</i> New York</li> +<li>Supernatural. <i>See</i> Occultism</li> +<li>Surnames in fiction, <a href="#page156">156</a></li> + +<!--[page break]--> + +<li> +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page354" name="page354"></a>[354]</span> + "Surrey of Eagle's Nest," <a href="#page69">69</a></li> +<li>Swinton, William, <a href="#page244">244</a></li> +</ul> + +<p class="center"> +T +</p> + +<ul> +<li>Tariff. <i>See</i> Free trade and protection</li> +<li>Taylor, Judge, of Madison, <a href="#page15">15</a></li> +<li>Temperance, <a href="#page104">104</a>, <a href="#page112">112</a>. <i>See also</i> Prohibition</li> +<li>Tennyson, <a href="#page143">143</a>-<a href="#page145">145</a>, <a href="#page218">218</a></li> +<li>"Thanatopsis," Bryant's, <a href="#page221">221</a>, <a href="#page222">222</a></li> +<li>Thompson, John R., <a href="#page67">67</a>, <a href="#page68">68</a>, <a href="#page190">190</a></li> +<li>Thompson, Wm. Gilman, <a href="#page294">294</a></li> +<li>Tilden, Samuel J., <a href="#page228">228</a></li> +<li>Tilden-Hayes controversy, <a href="#page332">332</a></li> +<li>Tile Club, <a href="#page274">274</a>, <a href="#page275">275</a></li> +<li>Tilton, Theodore, <a href="#page99">99</a>, <a href="#page100">100</a>, <a href="#page107">107</a>-<a href="#page116">116</a>, <a href="#page125">125</a>, <a href="#page129">129</a>, <a href="#page259">259</a></li> +<li><i>Times, The.</i> <i>See under</i> New York</li> +<li>Titles, book, <a href="#page154">154</a>-<a href="#page157">157</a></li> +<li>Travel, 1840-50, <a href="#page20">20</a>, <a href="#page21">21</a>, <a href="#page28">28</a>-<a href="#page30">30</a></li> +<li><i>Tribune, The.</i> <i>See under</i> New York</li> +<li>"Tristram Shandy," saves life, <a href="#page80">80</a></li> +<li>Tupper, Martin Farquhar, <a href="#page208">208</a>, <a href="#page209">209</a></li> +<li>Tuttle, Dr., <a href="#page294">294</a></li> +<li>Twain, Mark, <a href="#page150">150</a>, <a href="#page160">160</a>, <a href="#page259">259</a>, <a href="#page265">265</a>, <a href="#page281">281</a></li> +<li>Tweed, Wm. M., <a href="#page226">226</a></li> +</ul> + +<p class="center"> +U +</p> + +<ul><li><i>Union</i>, Brooklyn. <i>See under</i> Brooklyn</li> +<li>United States, lack of nationality, 1840-50, <a href="#page6">6</a>, <a href="#page7">7</a></li> + +<li>United States Government, bond issue, 1895-6, and the N. Y. <i>World</i>, <a href="#page327">327</a>-<a href="#page331">331</a>; +<ul> +<li> departments, <a href="#page235">235</a>, <a href="#page236">236</a></li> +</ul> +</li> + +<li>United States Treasury, <a href="#page327">327</a>-<a href="#page331">331</a></li></ul> + +<p class="center"> +V +</p> + +<ul> +<li>Vevay, Ind., <a href="#page2">2</a>, <a href="#page18">18</a></li> +<li>"Victorian Poets," Stedman's, on Tennyson's plagiarism, <a href="#page143">143</a>, <a href="#page144">144</a></li> + +<li>Virginia, home of the Egglestons, <a href="#page46">46</a>; +<ul> +<li> life in, <a href="#page48">48</a>, <a href="#page49">49</a>, <a href="#page72">72</a>;</li> +<li> present conditions, <a href="#page73">73</a>-<a href="#page76">76</a>;</li> +<li> in the Civil War, <a href="#page76">76</a>, <a href="#page77">77</a></li> +</ul> +</li> + +<li>"Virginia Comedians, The," <a href="#page69">69</a></li> +<li>Virginian English, <a href="#page59">59</a></li> +<li>"Virginians, The," society, <a href="#page82">82</a></li> +<li>Voice, Virginia girls', <a href="#page59">59</a></li> +</ul> + +<p class="center"> +W +</p> + +<ul> +<li>Walker, Gen. Lindsay, <a href="#page87">87</a></li> +<li>Wappoo Cut, <a href="#page86">86</a></li> +<li>War, <a href="#page70">70</a>, <a href="#page71">71</a>, <a href="#page80">80</a>, <a href="#page81">81</a></li> +<li>War correspondents, <a href="#page244">244</a>, <a href="#page245">245</a></li> +<li>Warlock, Mr., <a href="#page155">155</a>-<a href="#page157">157</a></li> +<li>Warner, Charles Dudley, <a href="#page283">283</a></li> +<li>Washington executive departments, <a href="#page235">235</a>, <a href="#page236">236</a></li> +<li>Wason, Rev. Hiram, <a href="#page8">8</a></li> +<li>Wass, Jerome B., <a href="#page127">127</a></li> +<li>Waste, saving, <a href="#page52">52</a></li> +<li>Webb, Charles Henry, <a href="#page156">156</a>, <a href="#page285">285</a></li> +<li>Wedding customs in Indiana, 1840-50, <a href="#page14">14</a>, <a href="#page15">15</a></li> + +<li>West, the, homogeneity in eighteen-forties, <a href="#page7">7</a>; +<ul> +<li> most representative of the country, <a href="#page7">7</a>, <a href="#page27">27</a>;</li> +<li> remoteness, 1840-50, <a href="#page4">4</a>, <a href="#page5">5</a></li> +</ul> +</li> + +<li>White, Horace, <a href="#page230">230</a></li> +<li>White, Richard Grant, <a href="#page222">222</a>-<a href="#page225">225</a>, <a href="#page274">274</a></li> +<li>Wickham, Williams C., <a href="#page77">77</a></li> +<li>"Wild Western Scenes," Jones's, <a href="#page275">275</a></li> +<li>Wilderness, <a href="#page93">93</a></li> +<li>Will, story of a, <a href="#page61">61</a>, <a href="#page62">62</a></li> +<li>Williams, Timothy Shaler, <a href="#page290">290</a></li> +<li>Willis, N. P., <a href="#page68">68</a></li> +<li>Winter, John Strange, <a href="#page154">154</a>, <a href="#page155">155</a></li> +<li>Wise, Henry A., <a href="#page77">77</a></li> +<li>Wister, Mrs., <a href="#page142">142</a></li> + +<li>Women, deference to, <a href="#page56">56</a>, <a href="#page57">57</a>; +<ul> +<li> in Virginia, <a href="#page53">53</a>-<a href="#page59">59</a></li> +</ul> +</li> + +<li><i>World, The.</i> <i>See under</i> New York</li> +<li>"Wreck of the Redbird, The," <a href="#page184">184</a>, <a href="#page185">185</a></li> +<li>Wright, Henry, <a href="#page291">291</a></li> +</ul> + +<p class="center"> +Y +</p> + +<ul> +<li>Yachting, <a href="#page294">294</a></li> +<li>Yerger, E. M., of Jackson, Miss., <a href="#page105">105</a></li> +<li>Yerger, Judge E. M., of Memphis, Tenn., <a href="#page105">105</a></li> +<li>Youmans, Dr., <a href="#page274">274</a></li> +</ul> + +<p class="center"> +Z +</p> + +<ul> +<li>Ziegenfust, Mr., <a href="#page247">247</a>, <a href="#page248">248</a></li> +</ul> + +<hr class="full" /><!--[page break]--> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<p class="center"> +JANE G. PERKINS'S +</p> +<p class="center"> +<big>THE LIFE OF THE HONOURABLE MRS. NORTON</big> +</p> +<p> +With portrait, 8vo. $3.50 net; by mail, $3.68. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Norton was the great Sheridan's grand-daughter, beautiful and witty, +the author of novels, poems and songs, contesting contemporary popularity +with Mrs. Browning; her influence was potent in politics; Meredith +undoubtedly had her in mind when he drew "Diana of the Crossways." +</p> +<p class="quote"> + "Reads like a novel ... seems like the page from an old romance, + and Miss Perkins has preserved all its romantic charm.... Miss + Perkins has let letters, and letters unusually interesting, tell + much of the story.... Indeed her biography has all the sustained + interest of the novel, almost the irresistible march of fate of + the Greek drama. It is eminently reliable."—<i>Boston Transcript.</i> +</p> +<p class="quote"> + "Brilliant, beautiful, unhappy, vehement Caroline Norton.... + Her story is told here with sympathy, but yet fairly enough + ... interesting glimpses ... of the many men and women of note + with whom Mrs. Norton was brought into more or less intimate + association."—<i>Providence Journal.</i> +</p> +<p class="quote"> + "The generous space allowed her to tell her own story in the form + of intimate letters is a striking and admirable feature of the + book."—<i>The Dial.</i> +</p> +<p class="quote"> + "She was an uncommonly interesting personage and the memoir ... + has no dull spots and speedily wins its way to a welcome."—<i>New + York Tribune.</i> +</p> +<p class="quote"> + "So exceptional and vivid a personality ... of unusual quality + ... very well written."—<i>The Outlook.</i> +</p> +<p class="center"> +YUNG WING'S<br /> <big>MY LIFE IN CHINA AND AMERICA</big> +</p> +<p> +With portrait, 8vo. $2.50 net; by mail, $2.65. +</p> +<p> +The author's account of his early life in China, his education at +Yale, where he graduated in 1854 (LL.D., 1876), his return to China and +adventures during the Taiping rebellion, his intimate association with +Tsang Kwoh Fan and Li Hung Chang, and finally his great work for the +"Chinese Educational Movement" furnish highly interesting and good +reading. +</p> +<p class="quote"> + "It is his native land that is always the great heroic character + on the stage his mind surveys; and his mental grasp is as wide as + his domiciliation. A great life of action and reflection and the + experiences of two hemispheres. It is not so much a knowledge of + isolated facts that is to be got from the book as an understanding + of the character of the Chinese race."—<i>Hartford Courant.</i> +</p> +<p class="quote"> + "There is not a dull line in this simply told but fascinating + biography."—<i>Literary Digest.</i> +</p> +<p class="quote"> + "He has given Occidental readers an opportunity to behold the + machinery of Chinese custom and the substance of Chinese character + in action. No foreigner could possibly have written a work + so instructive, and no untravelled native could have made it + intelligible to the West ... a most interesting story both in + the telling and in the acting.... Mr. Yung presents each of his + readers with a fragment of China herself."—<i>Living Age.</i> +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="center"> +HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY +<br /> +PUBLISHERS NEW YORK +</p> + +<hr class="full" /><!--[page break]--> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<p class="center"> +By R. M. JOHNSTON +</p> +<p class="center"> +<i>Assistant Professor in Harvard University</i> +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="center"> +<big>THE FRENCH REVOLUTION</big> +</p> +<p> +A Short History. 12mo, 278 pp., with special bibliographies following +each chapter, and index. $1.25 net; by mail, $1.37. +</p> +<p class="quote"> + "An almost ideal book of its kind and within its scope ... a + clear idea of the development and of the really significant men + of events of that cardinal epoch in the history of France and + Europe is conveyed to readers, many of whom will have been + bewildered by the anecdotal fulness or the rhetorical romancing of + Professor Johnston's most conspicuous predecessors."—<i>Churchman.</i> +</p> +<p class="quote"> + "Deserves to take rank as a little classic and as such to be given + a place in all libraries. Not only is this admirably written, but + it singles out the persons and events best worth understanding, + viewing the great social upheaval from a long perspective."—<i>San + Francisco Chronicle.</i> +</p> +<p class="center"> +<big>NAPOLEON</big> +</p> +<p> +A Short Biography. 12mo. 248 pp., with special bibliographies following +each chapter, and index. $1.25 net; by mail, $1.37. +</p> +<p class="quote"> + "Scholarly, readable, and acute."—<i>Nation.</i> +</p> +<p class="quote"> + "It is difficult to speak with moderation of a work so pleasant + to read, so lucid, so skillful."—<i>Boston Transcript.</i> +</p> +<p class="quote"> + "A quite admirable book."—<i>London Spectator.</i> +</p> +<p class="quote"> + "The style is clear, concise and readable."—<i>London Athenæum.</i> +</p> +<p class="quote"> + "In a small volume of less than 250 pages he gives us a valuable + key to the history of the European Continent from the Reign of + Terror to the present day."—<i>London Morning Post.</i> +</p> +<p class="center"> +<big>LEADING AMERICAN SOLDIERS</big> +</p> +<p> +Biographies of Washington, Greene, Taylor, Scott, Andrew Jackson, Grant, +Sherman, Sheridan, McClellan, Meade, Lee, "Stonewall" Jackson, Joseph E. +Johnston. With portraits. 1 vol. $1.75 net; by mail $1.88. +</p> +<p> +In the "Leading Americans" series. Prospectus of the series on request. +</p> +<p class="quote"> + "Performs a real service in preserving the essentials."—<i>Review + of Reviews.</i> +</p> +<p class="quote"> + "Very interesting.... Much sound originality of treatment, and + the style is clear."—<i>Springfield Republican.</i> +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +⁂ If the reader will send his name and address, the +publishers will send, from time to time, information regarding their +new books. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY +<br /> +PUBLISHERS NEW YORK +</p> + +<hr class="full" /><!--[page break]--> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<p class="center"> +WILLIAM DE MORGAN'S<br /> <big>IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN</big> +</p> +<p> +The story of the great love of "Blind Jim" and his little girl, and +of the affairs of a successful novelist. Fourth printing. $1.75. +</p> +<p class="quote"> + "William De Morgan at his very best."—<i>Independent.</i> +</p> +<p class="quote"> + "Another long delightful voyage with the best English company. + The story of a child certainly not less appealing to our generation + than Little Nell was to hers."—<i>New York Times Saturday Review.</i> +</p> +<p class="center"> +WILLIAM DE MORGAN'S<br /> <big>SOMEHOW GOOD</big> +</p> +<p> +The dramatic story of some modern English people in a strange situation. +Fourth printing. $1.75. +</p> +<p class="quote"> + "A book as sound, as sweet, as wholesome, as wise, as any in the + range of fiction."—<i>The Nation.</i> +</p> +<p class="quote"> + "Our older novelists (Dickens and Thackeray) will have to look to + their laurels, for the new one is fast proving himself their equal. + A higher quality of enjoyment than is derivable from the work of + any other novelist now living and active in either England or + America."—<i>The Dial.</i> +</p> +<p class="center"> +WILLIAM DE MORGAN'S<br /> <big>ALICE-FOR-SHORT</big> +</p> +<p> +The story of a London waif, a friendly artist, his friends and family. +Seventh printing. $1.75. +</p> +<p class="quote"> + "Really worth reading and praising ... will be hailed as a + masterpiece. If any writer of the present era is read a half + century hence, a quarter century, or even a decade, that writer + is William De Morgan."—<i>Boston Transcript.</i> +</p> +<p class="quote"> + "It is the Victorian age itself that speaks in those rich, + interesting, over-crowded books.... Will be remembered as + Dickens's novels are remembered."—<i>Springfield Republican.</i> +</p> +<p class="center"> +WILLIAM DE MORGAN'S<br /> <big>JOSEPH VANCE</big> +</p> +<p> +A novel of life near London in the 50's. Tenth printing. $1.75. +</p> +<p class="quote"> + "The book of the last decade; the best thing in fiction since + Mr. Meredith and Mr. Hardy; must take its place as the first + great English novel that has appeared in the twentieth + century."—Lewis Melville in <i>New York Times Saturday Review.</i> +</p> +<p class="quote"> + "If the reader likes both 'David Copperfield' and 'Peter + Ibbetson,' he can find the two books in this one."—<i>The + Independent.</i> +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +⁂ A twenty-four page illustrated leaflet about Mr. +De Morgan, with complete reviews of his books, sent on request. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY +<br /> +PUBLISHERS NEW YORK +</p> + +<hr class="full" /><!--[page break]--> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<p class="quote"> + "<i>The most important biographic contribution to musical + literature since the beginning of the century, with the + exception of Wagner's Letters to Frau Wesendonck.</i>" +</p> +<p class="quote"> + —<span class="sc">H. T. Finck, in the New York Evening Post.</span> +</p> +<p class="center"> + (Circular with complete review and sample pages on application.) +</p> + +<p class="center"> +<big>Personal Recollections of Wagner</big> +</p> +<p class="center"> +<span class="sc">By</span> ANGELO NEUMANN +</p> + +<p class="quote"> +Translated from the fourth German edition by <span class="sc">Edith Livermore</span>. +Large 12mo. 318 pp., with portraits and one of Wagner's letters +in facsimile. $2.50 net; by mail $2.65. +</p> + +<p> +Probably no man ever did more to make Wagner's music dramas known +than Angelo Neumann, who, with his famous "Wagner Travelling Theatre," +carrying his artists, orchestra, scenery and elaborate mechanical +devices, toured Germany, Holland, Belgium, Italy, Austria and Russia, +and with another organization gave "The Ring" in London. But the account +of this tour, interesting as it is, is not the main feature of his book, +which abounds in intimate glimpses of Wagner at rehearsals, at Wahnfried +and elsewhere, and tells much of the great conductor, Anton Seidl, so +beloved by Americans. Among other striking figures are Nikisch and Muck, +both conductors of the Boston Symphony orchestra, Mottl, the Vogls, +Von Bulow, Materna, Marianna Brandt, Klafsky, and Reicher-Kindermann. +</p> +<p> +It is doubtful if any book gives a more vivid and truthful picture of +life and "politics" behind the scenes of various opera houses. Many of +the episodes, such as those of a bearded Brynhild, the comedy writer +and the horn player and the prince and the Rhinedaughter are decidedly +humorous. +</p> +<p> +The earlier portions of the book tell of the Leipsic negotiations and +performances, the great struggle with Von Hülsen, the royal intendant at +Berlin, Bayreuth and "Parsifal." Many of Wagner's letters appear here +for the first time. +</p> +<p> +<i>ILLUSTRATIONS.</i>—<span class="sc">Richard Wagner</span>: Bust by Anton zur Strassen in the foyer +of the Leipsic Stadttheater.—<span class="sc">Angelo Neumann</span>: From a picture in the +Künstlerzimmer of the Leipsic Stadttheater.—<span class="sc">Anton Seidl</span>: Bas-relief by +Winifred Holt of New York. Replica commissioned by Herr Direktor +Neumann.—<span class="sc">Hedwig Reicher-Kindermann</span>—Facsimile of letter from Wagner +to Neumann, received after the news of Wagner's death. +</p> + +<hr /> +<p> +If the reader will send his name and address the publishers will send +information about their new books as issued. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY +<br /> +<span class="sc">34 WEST 33rd STREET</span> NEW YORK +</p> + +<hr class="full" /><!--[page break]--> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<p class="center"> +RICHARD BURTON'S +<br /> +<big>MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL</big> +</p> + +<p> +A study of principles and personalities by the Professor of English +Literature, University of Minnesota, author of "Literary Likings," +"Forces in Fiction," "Rahab" (a Poetic Drama), etc. 12mo, 331 pp. +and index. $1.25 net. +</p> +<p class="quote"> + "Noteworthy American volume of literary criticism ... a + well-balanced, discerning and unhackneyed study ... delightfully + readable.... In his judgment of individual books and authors + Mr. Burton is refreshingly sane and trustworthy ... an inspiring + survey of the whole trend of fiction from Richardson to Howells, + with a valuable intermediary chapter on Stendhal and the French + realists, all presented in a style of genuine charm and rare + flexibility ... may be warranted to interest and inspire any + serious lover of fiction."—<i>Chicago Record-Herald.</i> +</p> +<p class="quote"> + "Rare sympathy and scholarly understanding ... book that should + be read and re-read by every lover of the English novel."—<i>Boston + Transcript.</i> +</p> + +<p class="center"> +RICHARD BURTON'S +<br /> +<big>RAHAB, A DRAMA OF THE FALL OF JERICHO</big> +</p> + +<p> +119 pp., 12mo. $1.25 net; by mail, $1.33. With cast of characters for +the first performance and pictures of the scenes. +</p> +<p class="quote"> + "A poetic drama of high quality. Plenty of dramatic action."—<i>New + York Times Review.</i> +</p> + +<p class="center"> +WILLIAM MORTON PAYNE'S +<br /> +<big>THE GREATER ENGLISH POETS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY</big> +</p> + +<p> +383 pp., large 12mo. $2.00 net; by mail, $2.15. Studies of Keats, +Shelley, Byron, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Landor, Browning, Tennyson, +Arnold, Rossetti, Morris, and Swinburne. Their outlook upon life rather +than their strictly literary achievement is kept mainly in view. +</p> +<p class="quote"> + "The sound and mellow fruits of his long career as a critic.... + There is not a rash, trivial, or dull line in the whole book.... + Its charming sanity has seduced me into reading it to the end, + and anyone who does the same will feel that he has had an + inspiring taste of everything that is finest in nineteenth-century + poetry. Ought to be read and reread by every student of literature, + and most of all by those who have neglected English poetry, + for here one finds its essence in brief compass."—<i>Chicago + Record-Herald.</i> +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +If the reader will send his name and address, the publishers will send, +from time to time, information regarding their new books. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY +<br /> +PUBLISHERS NEW YORK +</p> + +<hr class="full" /><!--[page break]--> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<p class="center"> +BEULAH MARIE DIX'S +<br /> +<big>ALLISON'S LAD AND OTHER MARTIAL INTERLUDES</big> +</p> + +<p> +$1.35 net; by mail, $1.44. +</p> +<p> +<span class="sc">Allison's Lad</span>, <span class="sc">The Hundredth Trick</span>, <span class="sc">The Weakest +Link</span>, <span class="sc">The Snare and the Fowler</span>, <span class="sc">The Captain of the +Gate</span>, <span class="sc">The Dark of the Dawn</span>. +</p> +<p class="quote"> + These one-act plays, despite their impressiveness, are perfectly + practicable for performance by clever amateurs; at the same time + they make decidedly interesting reading. +</p> +<p class="quote"> + Six stirring war episodes. Five of them occur at night, and most + of them in the dread pause before some mighty conflict. Three are + placed in Cromwellian days (two in Ireland and one in England), + one is at the close of the French Revolution, another at the time + of the Hundred Years' War, and the last during the Thirty Years' + War. The author has most ingeniously managed to give the feeling + of big events, though employing but few players. Courage, + vengeance, devotion and tenderness to the weak, are among the + emotions effectively displayed. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +CONSTANCE D'ARCY MACKAY'S +<br /> +<big>THE HOUSE OF THE HEART</big> +<br /> +And Other Plays for Children +</p> + +<p> +Ten well-written one-act plays to be acted by children. A satisfactory +book to fill a real need. $1.10 net; by mail, $1.15. +</p> +<p class="quote"> + "Each play contains a distinct lesson, whether of courage, + gentle manners, or contentment. The settings are simple and + the costumes within the compass of the schoolroom. Full + directions for costumes, scene setting, and dramatic action + are given with each play. All of them have stood the test of + actual production."—<i>Preface.</i> +</p> +<p class="center"> +CONTENTS: +</p> +<p> + "The House of the Heart" (Morality Play)—"The Gooseherd and + the Goblin" (Comedy, suitable for June exercises)—"The Enchanted + Garden" (Flower Play, suitable for June exercises)—"Nimble Wit + and Fingerkin" (Industrial Play)—"A Little Pilgrim's Progress" + (Morality Play, suitable for Thanksgiving)—"A Pageant of Hours" + (To be given Out of Doors)—"On Christmas Eve"—"The Elf + Child"—"The Princess and the Pixies"—"The Christmas Guest" + (Miracle Play). +</p> +<p class="quote"> + "An addition to child drama which has been sorely needed."—<i>Boston + Transcript.</i> +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +⁂ If the reader will send his name and address the +publishers will send, from time to time, information regarding their +new books. +</p> +<p class="center"> +HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY +<br /> +34 WEST 33D STREET NEW YORK +</p> + +<div style="height: 6em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Recollections of a Varied Life, by +George Cary Eggleston + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RECOLLECTIONS OF A VARIED LIFE *** + +***** This file should be named 36720-h.htm or 36720-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/6/7/2/36720/ + +Produced by David Garcia and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Kentuckiana Digital Library) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Recollections of a Varied Life + +Author: George Cary Eggleston + +Release Date: July 13, 2011 [EBook #36720] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RECOLLECTIONS OF A VARIED LIFE *** + + + + +Produced by David Garcia and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Kentuckiana Digital Library) + + + + + + +[Illustration: (cover)] + +[Illustration: George Cary Eggleston] + + + + + + +RECOLLECTIONS OF A VARIED LIFE + +BY GEORGE CARY EGGLESTON + +[Illustration] + + NEW YORK + HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY + 1910 + + Copyright, 1910 + BY + HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY + +_Published March, 1910_ + + +TO MARION MY WIFE + + I DEDICATE THESE RECOLLECTIONS + OF A LIFE THAT SHE HAS LOYALLY + SHARED, ENCOURAGED, AND INSPIRED + + + + +CONTENTS + + + CHAPTER PAGE + + I. Introductory 1 + + II. The Country as I First Knew It--Intensity of Its + Americanism--The Lure of New Orleans 2 + + III. Provincialism--A Travel Center--Road Conditions-- + Mails--The Estrangement of Communities and Other + Isolating Conditions 4 + + IV. The Composite West--Dialect--The Intellectual Class 7 + + V. The Sturdy Kentuckians and Their Influence 9 + + VI. A Poor Boy's Career 13 + + VII. "Shooting Stock" 14 + + VIII. A Limitless Hospitality 16 + + IX. Industrial Independence and Thrift 18 + + X. Early Railroads--A Precocious Skeptic--Religious + Restriction of Culture 20 + + XI. Culture by Stealth 24 + + XII. Civilization on Wheels 26 + + XIII. A Breakfast Revolution 28 + + XIV. A Bathroom Episode 30 + + XV. Western School Methods 32 + + XVI. "The Hoosier Schoolmaster"--A Bit of Literary History 34 + + XVII. The Biggest Boy--A Vigorous Volunteer + Monitor--Charley Grebe 38 + + XVIII. What's in a Name? 42 + + XIX. A Buttermilk Poet 43 + + XX. Removal to Virginia--Impressions of Life There--The + Contradiction of the Critics in Their Creative + Incredulity 45 + + XXI. The Virginian Life 48 + + XXII. The Virginian Attitude Toward Money--Parson J----'s + Checks--The Charm of Leisureliness 49 + + XXIII. The Courtesy of the Virginians--Sex and + Education--Reading Habits--Virginia Women's Voices 55 + + XXIV. The Story of the West Wing--A Challenge to the + Ghosts--The Yellow-Gray Light--And Breakfast 60 + + XXV. Authors in Richmond--G. P. R. James, John Esten Cooke, + Mrs. Mowatt Ritchie, John R. Thompson, etc.--John Esten + Cooke, Gentleman--How Jeb Stuart Made Him a Major 66 + + XXVI. The Old Life in the Old Dominion and the New--An + Old Fogy's Doubts and Questionings 72 + + XXVII. Under Jeb Stuart's Command--The Legend of the + Mamelukes--The Life of the Cavaliers--Tristram + Shandy Does Bible Duty--The Delights of the War + Game and the Inspiration of It 76 + + XXVIII. Fitz Lee and an Adventure--A Friendly Old Foe 81 + + XXIX. Pestilence 86 + + XXX. Left Behind--A Gratuitous Law Practice Under + Difficulties--The Story of Tom Collins--A Death-Bed + Repentance and Its Prompt Recall 87 + + XXXI. Sharp-Shooter Service--Mortar Service at + Petersburg--The Outcome of a Strange Story 93 + + XXXII. The Beginning of Newspaper Life--Theodore Tilton + and Charles F. Briggs 99 + + XXXIII. Theodore Tilton 107 + + XXXIV. Further Reminiscences of Tilton 111 + + XXXV. The Tilton-Beecher Controversy--A Story as Yet Untold 115 + + XXXVI. My First Libel Suit 116 + + XXXVII. Libel Suit Experiences--The Queerest of Libel + Suits--John Y. McKane's Case 119 + + XXXVIII. Early Newspaper Experiences--Two Interviews with + President Grant--Grant's Method 123 + + XXXIX. Charlton T. Lewis 129 + + XL. Hearth and Home--Mary Mapes Dodge--Frank R. + Stockton--A Whimsical View of Plagiary 131 + + XLI. Some Plagiarists I Have Known--A Peculiar Case of + Plagiary--A Borrower from Stedman 139 + + XLII. The "Hoosier Schoolmaster's" Influence--Hearth and + Home Friendships and Literary Acquaintance--My First + Book--Mr. Howells and "A Rebel's Recollections"--My + First After-Dinner Speech--Mr. Howells, Mark Twain, + and Mr. Sanborn to the Rescue 145 + + XLIII. A Novelist by Accident--"A Man of Honor" and the + Plagiarists of Its Title--A "Warlock" on the Warpath + and a Lot of Fun Lost 151 + + XLIV. John Hay and the Pike County Ballads--His Own Story + of Them and of Incidents Connected with Them 157 + + XLV. A Disappointed Author--George Ripley's Collection + of Applications for His Discharge--Joe Harper's + Masterpiece--Manuscripts and Their Authors--Mr. George + P. Putnam's Story 166 + + XLVI. Joaquin Miller--Dress Reform a la Stedman 172 + + XLVII. Beginnings of Newspaper Illustration--Accident's Part + in the Literary Life--My First Boys' Book--How One + Thing Leads to Another 179 + + XLVIII. The First Time I Was Ever Robbed--The _Evening + Post_ Under Mr. Bryant--An Old-Fashioned Newspaper--Its + Distinguished Outside Staff--Its Regard for + Literature--Newspaper Literary Criticism and the + Critics of That Time--Thomas Bailey Aldrich's Idea + of New York as a Place of Residence--My Own + Appointment and the Strange Manner of It 186 + + XLIX. A Study of Mr. Bryant--The Irving Incident 194 + + L. Mr. Bryant's Tenderness Towards Poets--A Cover + Commendation--How I Grieved a Poet--Anonymous + Literary Criticism 199 + + LI. A Thrifty Poet's Plan--Mr. Bryant and the Poe + Article--The Longfellow Incident--The Tupper + Embarrassment 205 + + LII. Mr Bryant's _Index Expurgatorius_--An Effective + Blunder in English--Mr. Bryant's Dignified + Democracy--Mr. Cleveland's Coarser Method--Mr. + Bryant and British Snobbery 209 + + LIII. The Newspaper Critic's Function--A Literary News + "Beat"--Mr. Bryant and Contemporary Poets--Concerning + Genius--The True Story of "Thanatopsis" 217 + + LIV. An Extraordinary Case of Heterophemy--The Demolition + of a Critic 222 + + LV. Parke Godwin--"A Lion in a Den of Daniels"--The + Literary Shop Again--Literary Piracy--British + and American 227 + + LVI. The Way of Washington Officials--A Historical + Discovery--A Period Out of Place--A Futile Effort + to Make Peace--The "Intelligent Compositor" at His + Worst--Loring Pacha--War Correspondents--The Tourist + Correspondent--Loring's Story of Experience 234 + + LVII. "A Stranded Gold Bug"--Results of a Bit of Humor 247 + + LVIII. Mrs. Custer's "Boots and Saddles"--The Success + and Failure of Books 252 + + LIX. Letters of Introduction--The Disappointment of Lily + Browneyes--Mark Twain's Method--Some Dangerous Letters + of Introduction--Moses and My Green Spectacles 255 + + LX. English Literary Visitors--Mr. Edmund Gosse's + Visit--His Amusing Misconceptions--A Question of + Provincialism--A Literary Vandal 265 + + LXI. The Founding of the Authors' Club--Reminiscences + of Early Club Life--John Hay and Edwin Booth on + Dime Novels 272 + + LXII. The Authors Club--Its Ways and Its Work--Watch-Night + Frolics--Max O'Rell and Mark Twain--The Reckless + Injustice of the Humorists--Bishop Potter's + Opinion--The Club's Contribution of Statesmen and + Diplomats--The Delight of the Authors Club "After + the Authors Have Gone Home"--"Liber Scriptorum," + the Club's Successful Publishing Venture 277 + + LXIII. In Newspaper Life Again--Editing the _Commercial + Advertiser_--John Bigelow's Discouraging + Opinion--Henry Marquand and Some of My + Brilliant "Cubs"--Men Who Have Made Place and + Name for Themselves--The Dread Task of the + Editor-in-Chief--Yachting with Marquand and the + Men I Met on Deck--Parke Godwin--Recollections of + a Great and Good Man--A Mystery of Forgetting 286 + + LXIV. Newspapers Then and Now--The Pulitzer Revolution--The + Lure of the _World_--A Little Dinner to James R. + Osgood 300 + + LXV. Service on the _World_--John A. Cockerill--An + Editorial Perplexity--Editorial Emergencies--In + Praise of the Printers--Donn Piatt--"A Syndicate + of Blackguards"--An Unmeant Crime 307 + + LXVI. First Acquaintance with Joseph Pulitzer--His + Hospitality, Courtesy, Kindliness, and Generosity--His + Intellectual Methods--The Maynard Case--Bryan's + Message and Mr. Pulitzer's Answer--Extraordinary + Political Foresight 319 + + LXVII. A Napoleonic Conception--A Challenge to the + Government--The Power of the Press 327 + + LXVIII. Recollections of Carl Schurz 333 + + LXIX. The End of Newspaper Life 337 + + LXX. My Working Ways--Extemporary Writing--The Strange + Perversity of the People in Fiction--The Novelist's + Sorest Perplexity--Working Hours and Working Ways--My + Two Rules as to Literary Style 339 + + + + +RECOLLECTIONS OF A VARIED LIFE + + + + +I + + +Mr. Howells once said to me: "Every man's life is interesting--to +himself." + +I suppose that is true, though in the cases of some men it seems +a difficult thing to understand. + +At any rate it is not because of personal interest in my own life that +I am writing this book. I was perfectly sincere in wanting to call these +chapters "The Autobiography of an Unimportant Man," but on reflection +I remembered Franklin's wise saying that whenever he saw the phrase +"without vanity I may say," some peculiarly vain thing was sure to +follow. + +I am seventy years old. My life has been one of unusually varied +activity. It has covered half the period embraced in the republic's +existence. It has afforded me opportunity to see and share that +development of physical, intellectual, and moral life conditions, which +has been perhaps the most marvelous recorded in the history of mankind. + +Incidentally to the varied activities and accidents of my life, I have +been brought into contact with many interesting men, and into relation +with many interesting events. It is of these chiefly that I wish to +write, and if I were minded to offer an excuse for this book's +existence, this would be the marrow of it. But a book that needs excuse +is inexcusable. I make no apology. I am writing of the men and things I +remember, because I wish to do so, because my publisher wishes it, and +because he and I think that others will be interested in the result. +We shall see, later, how that is. + +This will be altogether a good-humored book. I have no grudges to +gratify, no revenges to wreak, no debts of wrath to repay in cowardly +ways; and if I had I should put them all aside as unworthy. I have +found my fellow-men in the main kindly, just, and generous. The chief +pleasure I have had in living has been derived from my association with +them in good-fellowship and all kindliness. The very few of them who +have wronged me, I have forgiven. The few who have been offensive to me, +I have forgotten, with conscientiously diligent care. There has seemed +to me no better thing to do with them. + + + + +II + + +It is difficult for any one belonging to this modern time to realize the +conditions of life in this country in the eighteen-forties, the period +at which my recollection begins. + +The country at that time was all American. The great tides of +immigration which have since made it the most cosmopolitan of countries, +had not set in. Foreigners among us were so few that they were regarded +with a great deal of curiosity, some contempt, and not a little pity. +Even in places like my native town of Vevay, Indiana, which had been +settled by a company of Swiss immigrants at the beginning of the +century, the feeling was strong that to be foreign was to be inferior. +Those who survived of the original Swiss settlers were generously +tolerated as unfortunates grown old, and on that account entitled to +a certain measure of respectful deference in spite of their taint. + +[Sidenote: The Lure of New Orleans] + +To us in the West, at least, all foreigners whose mother tongue was +other than English were "Dutchmen." There is reason to believe that +this careless and inattentive grouping prevailed in other parts of the +country as well as in the West. Why, otherwise, were the German speaking +people of Pennsylvania and the mountain regions south universally known +as "Pennsylvania Dutch?" + +And yet, in spite of the prevailing conviction that everything foreign +was inferior, the people of the Ohio valley--who constituted the most +considerable group of Western Americans--looked with unapproving but +ardent admiration upon foreign life, manners, and ways of thinking as +these were exemplified in New Orleans. + +In that early time, when the absence of bridges, the badness of roads, +and the primitive character of vehicular devices so greatly emphasized +overland distances, New Orleans was the one great outlet and inlet of +travel and traffic for all the region beyond the mountain barrier that +made the East seem as remote as far Cathay. Thither the people of the +West sent the produce of their orchards and their fields to find a +market; thence came the goods sold in the "stores," and the very +money--Spanish and French silver coins--that served as a circulating +medium. The men who annually voyaged thither on flat-boats, brought back +wondering tales of the strange things seen there, and especially of the +enormous wickedness encountered among a people who had scarcely heard +of the religious views accepted among ourselves as unquestioned and +unquestionable truth. I remember hearing a whole sermon on the subject +once. The preacher had taken alarm over the eagerness young men showed +to secure employment as "hands" on flat-boats for the sake of seeing +the wonderful city where buying and selling on the Sabbath excited no +comment. He feared contamination of the youth of the land, and with +a zeal that perhaps outran discretion, he urged God-fearing merchants +to abandon the business of shipping the country's produce to market, +declaring that he had rather see all of it go to waste than risk the +loss of a single young man's soul by sending him to a city so +unspeakably wicked that he confidently expected early news of its +destruction after the manner of Sodom and Gomorrah. + +The "power of preaching" was well-nigh measureless in that time and +region, but so were the impulses of "business," and I believe the usual +number of flat-boats were sent out from the little town that year. The +merchants seemed to "take chances" of the loss of souls when certain +gain was the stake on the other side, a fact which strongly suggests +that human nature in that time and country was very much the same in +its essentials as human nature in all other times and countries. + + + + +III + + +[Sidenote: A Travel Center] + +The remoteness of the different parts of the country from each other +in those days is difficult to understand, or even fairly to imagine +nowadays. For all purposes of civilization remoteness is properly +measured, not by miles, but by the difficulty of travel and intercourse. +It was in recognition of this that the founders of the Republic gave +to Congress authority to establish "post offices and post roads," and +that their successors lavished money upon endeavor to render human +intercourse easier, speedier, and cheaper by the construction of the +national road, by the digging of canals, and by efforts to improve the +postal service. In my early boyhood none of these things had come upon +us. There were no railroads crossing the Appalachian chain of mountains, +and no wagon roads that were better than tracks over ungraded hills and +quagmire trails through swamps and morasses. Measured by ease of access, +New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore were at a greater distance from +the dwellers in the West than Hong Kong or Singapore is now, while +Boston was remoter than the mountains of the moon. + +There were no telegraphs available to us; the mails were irregular, +uncertain, and unsafe. The wagons, called stagecoaches, that carried +them, were subject to capture and looting at the hands of robber bands +who infested many parts of the country, having their headquarters +usually at some town where roads converged and lawlessness reigned +supreme. + +One such town was Napoleon, Indiana. In illustration of its character an +anecdote was related in my boyhood. A man from the East made inquiry in +Cincinnati concerning routes to various points in the Hoosier State, and +beyond. + +"If I want to go to Indianapolis, what road do I take?" he asked. + +"Why, you go to Napoleon, and take the road northwest." + +"If I want to go to Madison?" + +"Go to Napoleon, and take the road southwest." + +"Suppose I want to go to St. Louis?" + +"Why, you go to Napoleon, and take the national road west." + +And so on, through a long list, with Napoleon as the starting point of +each reply. At last the man asked in despair: + +"Well now, stranger, suppose I wanted to go to Hell?" + +The stranger answered without a moment's hesitation, "Oh, in that case, +just go to Napoleon, and stay there." + +That is an episode, as the reader has probably discovered. To return +to the mails. It was not until 1845, and after long agitation, that the +rate on letters was reduced to five cents for distances less than three +hundred miles, and ten cents for greater distances. Newspaper postage +was relatively even higher. + +The result of these conditions was that each quarter of the country +was shut out from everything like free communication with the other +quarters. Each section was isolated. Each was left to work out its own +salvation as best it might, without aid, without consultation, without +the chastening or the stimulation of contact and attrition. Each region +cherished its own prejudices, its own dialect, its own ways of living, +its own overweening self-consciousness of superiority to all the rest, +its own narrow bigotries, and its own suspicious contempt of everything +foreign to itself. + +In brief, we had no national life in the eighteen-forties, or for long +afterwards,--no community of thought, or custom, or attitude of mind. +The several parts of the country were a loose bundle of segregated and, +in many ways, antagonistic communities, bound together only by a common +loyalty to the conviction that this was the greatest, most glorious, +most invincible country in the world, God-endowed with a mental, moral, +and physical superiority that put all the rest of earth's nations +completely out of the reckoning. We were all of us Americans--intense, +self-satisfied, self-glorifying Americans--but we had little else in +common. We did not know each other. We had been bred in radically +different ways. We had different ideals, different conceptions of life, +different standards of conduct, different ways of living, different +traditions, and different aspirations. The country was provincial to the +rest of the world, and still more narrowly provincial each region to the +others. + + + + +IV + + +[Sidenote: The Composite West] + +I think, however, that the West was less provincial, probably, and less +narrow in its views and sympathies than were New England, the Middle +States, and the South at that time, and this for a very sufficient +reason. + +The people in New England rarely came into contact with those of the +Middle and Southern States, and never with those of the West. The people +of the Middle States and those of the South were similarly shut within +themselves, having scarcely more than an imaginary acquaintance with the +dwellers in other parts of the country. The West was a common meeting +ground where men from New England, the Middle States, and the South +Atlantic region constituted a varied population, representative of all +the rest of the country, and dwelling together in so close a unity that +each group adopted many of the ways and ideas of the other groups, and +correspondingly modified its own. These were first steps taken toward +homogeneity in the West, such as were taken in no other part of the +country in that time of little travel and scanty intercourse among men. +The Virginians, Carolinians, and New Englanders who had migrated to the +West learned to make and appreciate the apple butter and the sauerkraut +of the Pennsylvanians; the pie of New England found favor with +Southerners in return for their hoecake, hominy, chine, and spareribs. +And as with material things, so also with things of the mind. Customs +were blended, usages were borrowed and modified, opinions were fused +together into new forms, and speech was wrought into something different +from that which any one group had known--a blend, better, richer, and +more forcible than any of its constituent parts had been. + +In numbers the Virginians, Kentuckians, and Carolinians were a strong +majority in the West, and the so-called "Hoosier dialect," which +prevailed there, was nearly identical with that of the Virginian +mountains, Kentucky, and the rural parts of Carolina. But it was +enriched with many terms and forms of speech belonging to other +sections. Better still, it was chastened by the influence of the small +but very influential company of educated men and women who had come from +Virginia and Kentucky, and by the strenuous labors in behalf of good +English of the Yankee school-ma'ams, who taught us by precept to make +our verbs agree with their nominatives, and, per contra, by unconscious +example to say "doo," "noo," and the like, for "dew," "new," etc. + +The prevalence of the dialect among the uneducated classes was indeed, +though indirectly, a ministry to the cause of good English. The educated +few, fearing contamination of their children's speech through daily +contact with the ignorant, were more than usually strict in exacting +correct usage at the hands of their youngsters. I very well remember +how grievously it afflicted my own young soul that I was forbidden, +under penalty, to say "chimbly" and "flanner" for "chimney" and +"flannel," to call inferior things "ornery," to use the compromise term +"'low"--abbreviation of "allow,"--which very generally took the place +of the Yankee "guess" and the Southern "reckon," and above all to call +tomatoes "tomatices." + +It is of interest to recall the fact that this influential class of +educated men and women, included some really scholarly persons, as well +as a good many others who, without being scholarly, were educated and +accustomed to read. Among the scholarly ones, within the purview of +my memory, were such as Judge Algernon S. Stevens, Judge Algernon S. +Sullivan, Judge Miles Cary Eggleston, the Hendrickses, the Stapps, +the Rev. Hiram Wason, my own father, and Mrs. Julia L. Dumont, a very +brilliant woman, who taught school for love of it and wrote books that +in our time would have given her something more than the provincial +reputation she shared with Alice and Phoebe Cary, and some others. + + + + +V + + +[Sidenote: The Sturdy Kentuckians] + +Of still greater consequence, perhaps, so far as influence upon their +time and country was concerned, were the better class of Kentuckians +who had crossed the Ohio to become sharers in the future of the great +Northwest. + +These were mostly men of extraordinary energy--physical and mental--who +had mastered what the Kentucky schoolmasters could teach them, and +had made of their schooling the foundation of a broader education the +dominant characteristic of which was an enlightenment of mind quite +independent of scholarly acquisition. + +These men were thinkers accustomed, by habit and inheritance, to look +facts straight in the face, to form their own opinions untrammeled by +tradition, unbiased by fine-spun equivocation, and wholly unrestrained +in their search for truth by conventional hobbles of any kind. Most +of them had more or less Scotch-Irish blood in their veins, and +were consequently wholesome optimists, full of courage, disposed to +righteousness of life for its own sake, and resolutely bent upon the +betterment of life by means of their own living. + +Most of them numbered one or more Baptist or Methodist preachers among +their ancestry--men of healthy minds and open ones, men to whom religion +was far less a matter of emotion than of conduct, men who did the duty +that lay next to them--be it plowing or praying, preaching or fighting +Indians or Englishmen--with an equal mind. + +Men of such descent were educated by environment in better ways than any +that schools can furnish. From infancy they had lived in an atmosphere +of backwoods culture,--culture drawn in part from such books as were +accessible to them, and in greater part from association with the strong +men who had migrated in early days to conquer the West and make of it a +princely possession of the Republic. + +The books they had were few, but they were the very best that English +literature afforded, and they read them over and over again with +diligence and intelligence until they had made their own every +fecundative thought the books suggested. Then they went away, and +thought for themselves, with untrammeled freedom, of the things thus +presented to their minds. I have sometimes wondered if their method +of education, chiefly by independent thinking, and with comparatively +little reverence for mere "authority," might not have been better, in +its character-building results at least, than our modern, more bookish +process. + +That question does not concern us now. What I wish to point out is the +fact that the country owes much to the influence of these strong men +of affairs and action, whose conviction that every man owes it to his +fellow-men so to live that this may be a better world for other men +to live in because of his having lived in it, gave that impulse to +education which later made Indiana a marvel and a model to the other +states in all that concerns education. Those men believed themselves and +their children entitled to the best in schooling as in everything else, +and from the very beginning they set out to secure it. + +[Sidenote: Early Educational Impulses] + +If a wandering schoolmaster came within call, they gave him a +schoolhouse and a place to live in, and bade him "keep school." +When he had canvassed the region round about for "scholars," and was +ready--with his ox gads--to open his educational institution, the three +or four of these men whose influence pervaded and dominated the region +round about, said a word or two to each other, and made themselves +responsible for the tuition fees of all the boys and girls in the +neighborhood whose parents were too poor to pay. + +In the same spirit, years later, when an effort was made to establish +colleges in the state, these men or their children who had inherited +their impulse, were prompt to furnish the money needed, however hard +pressed they might be for money themselves. I remember that my mother--the +daughter of one of the most conspicuous of the Kentuckians--when she was +a young widow with four children to bring up on an income of about $250 +a year, subscribed $100 to the foundation of Indiana Asbury University, +becoming, in return, the possessor of a perpetual scholarship, entitling +her for all time to maintain a student there free of tuition. It was +with money drawn from such sources that the colleges of Indiana were +founded. + +Under the influence of these Kentuckians, Virginians, and men of +character who in smaller numbers had come out from New England and the +Middle States, there was from the first an impulse of betterment in the +very atmosphere of the West. Even the "poor whites" of the South who +had migrated to the Northwest in pursuit of their traditional dream of +finding a land where one might catch "two 'possums up one 'simmon tree," +were distinctly uplifted by the influence of such men, not as a class, +perhaps, but in a sufficient number of individual cases to raise the +average level of their being. The greater number of these poor whites +continued to be the good-natured, indolent, unthrifty people that their +ancestors had always been. They remained content to be renters in a +region where the acquisition of land in independent ownership was easy. +They continued to content themselves with an inadequate cultivation of +their crops, and a meager living, consequent upon their neglect. They +continued to give to shooting, fishing, and rude social indulgences the +time they ought to have given to work. But their children were learning +to read and write, and, better still, were learning by observation the +advantages of a more industrious living, and when the golden age of +steamboating came, they sought and found profitable employment either +upon the river or about the wharves. The majority of these were content +to remain laborers, as deckhands and the like, but in some of them at +least ambition was born, and they became steamboat mates, pilots, and, +in some cases, the captains and even the owners of steamboats. On the +whole, I think the proportion of the class of people who thus achieved +a higher status, bettering themselves in enduring ways was quite as +large as it ever is in the history of an unfortunate or inferior class +of men. In the generations that have followed some at least of the +descendants of that "poor white" class, whose case had always been +accounted hopeless, have risen to distinction in intellectual ways. One +distinguished judge of our time, a man now of national reputation, is +the grandson of a poor white who negligently cultivated land rented from +a relative of my own. His father was my schoolmate for a season, and was +accounted inferior by those of us who were more fortunately descended. +So much for free institutions in a land of hope, opportunity, and +liberty, where the "pursuit of happiness" and betterment was accounted +an "unalienable right." + + + + +VI + + +[Sidenote: A Poor Boy's Career] + +In another case that comes home to me for reasons, the betterment was +more immediate. My maternal grandfather, the old Kentuckian, George +Craig, whose name is preserved in many ways in the geographical +nomenclature of Southern Indiana, had an abundantly large family of +children. But with generously helpful intent it was his habit to adopt +bright boys and girls whose parents were poverty-stricken, in order to +give them such education as was available in that time and country, or, +in his favorite phrase, to "give them a show in the world." One of these +adopted boys was the child of parents incredibly poor. When he came to +my grandfather the boy had never seen a tablecloth or slept in a bed. He +knew nothing of the uses of a knife and fork. A glass tumbler was to him +a wonder thing. He could neither read nor write, though he was eleven +years of age. The towel given to him for use on his first introduction +to the family was an inscrutable mystery until one of the negro servants +explained its uses to him. + +Less than a score of years later that boy was a lawyer of distinction, a +man of wide influence, a state senator of unusual standing, and chairman +of the committee that investigated and exposed the frauds perpetrated +upon the state in the building of the Madison and Indianapolis +railroad--the first highway of its kind constructed within the state. +In one sense, he owed all this to George Craig. In a truer sense he owed +it to his own native ability, which George Craig was shrewd enough to +discover in the uncouth and ignorant boy, and wise enough to give its +opportunity. + + + + +VII + + +It was a common practice of the thrifty and well-to-do of that time, +thus to adopt the children of their poorer neighbors and bring them up +as members of their own families. Still more common was the practice of +taking destitute orphans as "bound boys" or "bound girls." These were +legally bound to service, instead of being sent to the poorhouse, but in +practical effect they became members of the families to whose heads they +were "bound," and shared in all respects the privileges, the schooling, +and everything else that the children of the family enjoyed. They were +expected to work, when there was work to be done, but so was every +other member of the family, and there was never the least suggestion of +servile obligation involved or implied. I remember well the affection in +which my mother's "bound girls" held her and us children, and the way +in which, when they came to be married, their weddings were provided for +precisely as if they had been veritable daughters of the house. + +On one of those occasions it was rumored in the village, that a +"shiveree"--Hoosier for charivari--was to mark the event. My father, +whose Virginian reverence for womanhood and marriage and personal +dignity, was prompt to resent that sort of insult, went to a neighbor +and borrowed two shotguns. As he carried them homeward through the main +street of the village, on the morning before the wedding, he encountered +the ruffian who had planned the "shiveree," and was arranging to carry +it out. The man asked him, in surprise, for my father was a studious +recluse in his habits, if he were going out after game. + +[Sidenote: "Shooting Stock"] + +"No," my father replied. "It is only that a very worthy young woman, +a member of my family, is to be married at my house to-night. I hear +that certain 'lewd fellows of the baser sort' are planning to insult +her and me and my family with what they call a 'shiveree.' If they do +anything of the kind, _I am going to fire four charges of buckshot +into the crowd_." + +As my father was known to be a man who inflexibly kept his word, there +was no "shiveree" that night. + +That father of mine was a man of the gentlest spirit imaginable, but at +the same time a man of resolute character, who scrupulously respected +the rights and the dignity of others, and insistently demanded a like +respect for his own. Quite episodically, but in illustration of the +manners of the time, I may here intrude an incident, related to me many +years afterwards by Judge Taylor, a venerable jurist of Madison. My +father was looking about him for a place in which to settle himself in +the practice of law. He was temporarily staying in Madison when a client +came to him. The man had been inveigled into a game of cards with some +sharpers, and they had worked off some counterfeit money upon him. He +purposed to sue them. My father explained that the law did not recognize +the obligation of gambling debts, and the man replied that he knew that +very well, but that he wanted to expose the rascals, and was willing to +spend money to that end. The case came before Judge Taylor. My father +made an eloquently bitter speech in exposition of the meanness of men +who--the reader can imagine the rest. It was to make that speech that +the client had employed the young lawyer, and, in Judge Taylor's opinion +he "got his money's worth of gall and vitriol." But while the speech +was in progress, the three rascals became excited and blustering under +the castigation, and he, the judge, overheard talk of "shooting the +fellow"--to wit my father. Just as the judge was meditating measures of +restraint that might be effective at a time when most men were walking +arsenals, he heard one of them hurriedly warn his fellows in this wise: + +"Say--you'd better not talk too much about shooting--they tell me that +young lawyer comes from Virginia, and he _may be of shooting stock_." + +The Virginians had a reputation for quickness on trigger in that region. +The warning was sufficient. The three gamblers took their punishment and +slunk away, and there was no assassination. + + + + +VIII + + +The readiness with which the well-to-do men of that region adopted or +otherwise made themselves responsible for the bringing up of destitute +children, was largely due to the conditions of life that prevailed in +that time and country. There was no considerable expense involved in +such adoption. The thrifty farmer, with more land than he could possibly +cultivate, produced, easily, all the food that even a multitudinous +family could consume. He produced also the wool, the flax, and the +cotton necessary for clothing, and these were carded, spun, woven, and +converted into garments for both sexes by the women folk of the home. +Little, if anything, was bought with actual money, and in the midst +of such abundance an extra mouth to feed and an extra back to clothe +counted for next to nothing, while at that time, when work, on +everybody's part, was regarded quite as a matter of course, the boy or +girl taken into a family was easily able to "earn his keep," as the +phrase was. + +Nevertheless, there was a great-hearted generosity inspiring it all--a +broadly democratic conviction that everybody should have a chance in +life, and that he who had should share with his brother who had not, +freely and without thought of conferring favor. + +[Sidenote: A Limitless Hospitality] + +It was upon that principle, also, that the hospitality of that time +rested. There was always an abundance to eat, and there was always a bed +to spare for the stranger within the gates; or if the beds fell short, +it was always easy to spread a pallet before the fire, or, in extreme +circumstances, to make the stranger comfortable among a lot of quilts +in a corn-house or hay-mow. + +It was my grandfather's rule and that of other men like him, to provide +work of some sort for every one who asked for it. An extra hoe in summer +was always of use, while in winter there was corn to be shelled, there +were apples to be "sorted," tools to be ground, ditches to be dug, stone +fences to be built, wood to be chopped, and a score of other things to +be done, that might employ an extra "hand" profitably. Only once in all +his life did George Craig refuse employment to a man asking for it. On +that occasion he gave supper, lodging, and breakfast to the wayfarer; +but during the evening the man complained that he had been walking all +day with a grain of corn in his shoe, and, as he sat before the fire, he +removed it, to his great relief but also to his undoing as an applicant +for permanent employment. For the energetic old Kentuckian could +conceive of no ground of patience with a man who would walk all day in +pain rather than take the small trouble of sitting down by the roadside +and removing the offending grain of corn from his shoe. + +"I have no use," he said, "for a man as lazy as that." + +Then his conscience came to the rescue. + +"I can't hire a lazy fellow like you for wages," he said; "but I have a +ditch to be dug. There will be fifteen hundred running feet of it, and +if you choose, I'll let you work at it, at so much a foot. Then if you +work you'll make wages, while if you don't there'll be nothing for me +to lose on you but your keep, and I'll give you that." + +The man decided to move on. + + + + +IX + + +The life of that early time differed in every way from American life as +men of the present day know it. + +The isolation in which every community existed, compelled a degree of +local self-dependence the like of which the modern world knows nothing +of. The farmers did most things for themselves, and what they could not +conveniently do for themselves, was done for them in the villages by +independent craftsmen, each cunningly skilled in his trade and dependent +upon factories for nothing. In my native village, Vevay, which was in +nowise different from other Western villages upon which the region +round about depended for supplies, practically everything wanted was +made. There were two tinsmiths, who, with an assistant or two each, +in the persons of boys learning the trade, made every utensil of tin, +sheet-iron, or copper that was needed for twenty-odd miles around. There +were two saddlers and harnessmakers; two or three plasterers; several +brick masons; several carpenters, who knew their trade as no carpenter +does in our time when the planing mill furnishes everything already +shaped to his hand, so that the carpenter need know nothing but how to +drive nails or screws. There was a boot- and shoe-maker who made all +the shoes worn by men, women, and children in all that country, out of +leather bought of the local tanner, to whom all hides were sold by their +producers. There was a hatter who did all his own work, whose vats +yielded all the headgear needed, from the finest to the commonest, +and whose materials were the furs of animals caught or killed by the +farmers' boys and brought to town for sale. There was even a wireworker, +who provided sieves, strainers, and screenings of every kind, and there +was a rope walk where the cordage wanted was made. + +[Sidenote: Industrial Independence] + +In most households the women folk fashioned all the clothes worn by +persons of either sex, but to meet the demand for "Sunday bests" and +that of preachers who must wear broadcloth every day in the week, and +of extravagant young men who wished to dazzle all eyes with "store +clothes," there was a tailor who year after year fashioned garments upon +models learned in his youth and never departed from. No such thing as +ready-made clothing or boots or shoes--except women's slippers--was +known at the time of which I now write. Even socks and stockings were +never sold in the shops, except upon wedding and other infrequent +occasions. For ordinary wear they were knitted at home of home-spun +yarn. The statement made above is scarcely accurate. Both socks and +stockings were occasionally sold in the country stores, but they were +almost exclusively the surplus products of the industry of women on the +farms round about. So were the saddle blankets, and most of the bed +blankets used. + +Local self-dependence was well-nigh perfect. The town depended on the +country and the country on the town, for nearly everything that was +eaten or woven or otherwise consumed. The day of dependence upon +factories had not yet dawned. The man who knew how to fashion any +article of human use, made his living by doing the work he knew how to +do, and was an independent, self-respecting man, usually owning his +comfortable home, and destined by middle age to possess a satisfactory +competence. + +Whether all that was economically or socially better than the system +which has converted the independent, home-owning worker into a factory +hand, living in a tenement and carrying a dinner pail, while tariff +tribute from the consumer makes his employer at once a millionaire +and the more or less despotic master of a multitude of men--is a +question too large and too serious to be discussed in a book of random +recollections such as this. But every "strike" raises that question in +the minds of men who remember the more primitive conditions as lovingly +as I do. + +As a matter of curious historical interest, too, it is worth while to +recall the fact that Henry Clay--before his desire to win the votes of +the Kentucky hemp-growers led him to become the leading advocate of +tariff protection--used to make eloquent speeches in behalf of free +trade, in which he drew horrifying pictures of life conditions in the +English manufacturing centers, and invoked the mercy of heaven to spare +this country from like conditions in which economic considerations +should ride down social ones, trample the life out of personal +independence, and convert the home-owning American workman into a mere +"hand" employed by a company of capitalists for their own enrichment at +cost of his manhood except in so far as the fiat of a trades union might +interpose to save him from slavery to the employing class. + +Those were interesting speeches of Henry Clay's, made before he sacrificed +his convictions and his manhood to his vain desire to become President. + + + + +X + + +[Sidenote: The Early Railroad] + +At the time of my earliest recollections there was not a mile of +railroad in Indiana or anywhere else west of Ohio, while even in Ohio +there were only the crudest beginnings of track construction, on isolated +lines that began nowhere and led no whither, connecting with nothing, +and usually failing to make even that connection. + +He who would journey from the East to the West, soon came to the end of +the rails, and after that he must toilsomely make his way by stagecoach +across the mountains, walking for the most part in mud half-leg deep, +and carrying a fence rail on his shoulder with which to help the stalled +stagecoach out of frequent mires. + +Nevertheless, we heard much of the railroad and its wonders. It was our +mystery story, our marvel, our current Arabian Nights' Entertainment. +We were told, and devoutly believed, that the "railcars" ran at the rate +of "a mile a minute." How or why the liars of that early period, when +lying must have been in its infancy as an art, happened to hit upon +sixty miles an hour as the uniform speed of railroad trains, I am +puzzled to imagine. But so it was. There was probably not in all the +world at that time a single mile of railroad track over which a train +could have been run at such a speed. As for the railroads in the Western +part of this country, they were chiefly primitive constructions, with +tracks consisting of strap iron--wagon tires in effect--loosely spiked +down to timber string pieces, over which it would have been reckless to +the verge of insanity to run a train at more than twelve miles an hour +under the most favorable circumstances. But we were told, over and over +again, till we devoutly believed it--as human creatures always believe +what they have been ceaselessly told without contradiction--that the +"railcars" always ran at the rate of a mile a minute. + +The first railroad in Indiana was opened in 1847. A year or two later, +my brother Edward and I, made our first journey over it, from Madison to +Dupont, a distance of thirteen miles. Edward was at that time a victim +of the faith habit; I was beginning to manifest a skeptical, inquiring +tendency of mind which distressed those responsible for me. When Edward +reminded me that we were to enjoy our first experience of traveling at +the rate of a mile a minute, I borrowed his bull's-eye watch and set +myself to test the thing by timing it. When we reached Dupont, alter the +lapse of ninety-six minutes, in a journey of thirteen miles, I frankly +declared my unbelief in the "mile a minute" tradition. There was no +great harm in that, perhaps, but the skeptical spirit of inquiry that +had prompted me to subject the matter to a time test, very seriously +troubled my elders, who feared that I was destined to become a "free +thinker," as my father had been before me, though I was not permitted to +know that. I was alarmed about my skeptical tendencies myself, because +I believed the theology and demonology taught me at church, having no +means of subjecting them to scientific tests of any kind. I no longer +believed in the "mile a minute" tradition, as everybody around me +continued to do, but I still believed in the existence and malign +activity of a personal devil, and I accepted the assurance given me +that he was always at my side whispering doubts into my ears by way +of securing the damnation of my soul under the doctrine of salvation +by faith. The tortures I suffered on this account were well-nigh +incredible, for in spite of all I might do or say or think, the doubts +continued to arise in my mind, until at last I awoke to the fact that +I was beginning to doubt the doctrine of salvation by faith itself, +as a thing stultifying to the mind, unreasonable in itself, and +utterly unjust in its application to persons like myself, who found +it impossible to believe things which they had every reason to believe +were not true. + +[Sidenote: A Precocious Skeptic] + +Fortunately I was young and perfectly healthy, and so, after a deal +of psychological suffering I found peace by reconciling myself to the +conviction that I was foreordained to be damned in any case, and that +there was no use in making myself unhappy about it. In support of that +comforting assurance I secretly decided to accept the Presbyterian +doctrine of predestination instead of the Methodist theory of free +will in which I had been bred. I had to make this change of doctrinal +allegiance secretly, because its open avowal would have involved a sound +threshing behind the smoke-house, with perhaps a season of fasting and +prayer, designed to make the castigation "take." + +I remember that when I had finally made up my mind that the doctrine +of predestination was true, and that I was clearly one of those who +were foreordained to be damned for incapacity to believe the incredible, +I became for a time thoroughly comfortable in my mind, very much +as I suppose a man of business is when he receives his discharge in +bankruptcy. I felt myself emancipated from many restraints that had sat +heavily on my boyish soul. Having decided, with the mature wisdom of +ten or a dozen years of age, that I was to be damned in any case, I saw +no reason why I should not read the fascinating books that had been +forbidden to me by the discipline of the Methodist Church, to which +I perforce belonged. + +In that early day of strenuous theological requirement, the Methodist +Church disapproved of literature as such, and approved it only in so far +as it was made the instrument of a propaganda. Its discipline required +that each person upon being "received into full membership"--the +Methodist equivalent of confirmation--should take a vow not "to read +such books or sing such songs as do not pertain to the glory of God." I +quote the phrase from memory, but accurately I think. That prohibition, +as interpreted by clerical authority at the time, had completely closed +to me the treasures of the library my scholarly father had collected, +and to which, under his dying instructions, my mother had added many +scores of volumes of the finest English literature, purchased with the +money for which his law books had been sold after his death. + +I had read a little here and there in those books, and had been +fascinated with the new world they opened to my vision, when, at the +ripe age of ten or twelve years, I was compelled by an ill-directed +clerical authority to submit myself to the process of being "received +into full membership," under the assumption that I had "reached the age +of responsibility." + +After that the books I so longed to read were forbidden to me--especially +a set entitled "The British Drama," in which appeared the works of +Ben Jonson, Marlowe, Massinger, Beaumont and Fletcher, and a long list +of other classics, filling five thick volumes. By no ingenuity of +construction could such books be regarded as homilies in disguise, and +so they were Anathema. So was Shakespeare, and so even was Thiers' +"French Revolution," of which I had devoured the first volume in delight, +before the inhibition fell upon me, blasting my blind but eager aspiration +for culture and a larger knowledge of the world and of human nature. + + + + +XI + + +[Sidenote: Culture by Stealth] + +After I made up my mind to accept damnation as my appointed portion, +I felt myself entirely free to revel at will in the reading that so +appealed to my hungry mind; free, that is to say, so far as my own +conscience was concerned, but no freer than before so far as the +restraints of authority could determine the matter. I had no hesitation +in reading the books when I could do so without being caught at it, but +to be caught at it was to be punished for it and, worse still, it was to +have the books placed beyond my reach, a thing I dreaded far more than +mere punishment. Punishment, indeed, seemed to me nothing more than a +small advance upon the damnation I must ultimately suffer in any case. +The thing to be avoided was discovery, because discovery must lead to +the confiscation of my books, the loss of that liberty which my +acceptance of damnation had given to me. + +To that end I practised many deceits and resorted to many subterfuges. +I read late at night when I was supposed to be asleep. I smuggled books +out into the woods and hid them there under the friendly roots of trees, +so that I might go out and read them when I was supposed to be engaged +in a search for ginseng, or in a hunt for the vagrant cow, to whose +unpunctuality in returning to be milked I feel that I owe an appreciable +part of such culture as I have acquired. + +The clerical hostility to literature endured long after the period of +which I have been writing, long after the railroad and other means of +freer intercourse had redeemed the West from its narrow provincialism. +Even in my high school days, when our part of the country had reached +that stage of civilization that hangs lace curtains at its windows, +wears store clothes of week days, and paints garden fences green instead +of white, we who were under Methodist dominance were rigidly forbidden +to read fiction or anything that resembled fiction, with certain +exceptions. The grown folk of our creed permitted themselves to read the +inane novels of the Philadelphia tailor, T. S. Arthur; the few young men +who "went to college," were presumed to be immune to the virus of the +Greek and Latin fictions they must read there--probably because they +never learned enough of Greek or Latin to read them understandingly--and +finally there were certain polemic novels that were generally permitted. + +Among these last the most conspicuous example I remember was a violently +anti-Roman Catholic novel called "Danger in the Dark," which had a vogue +that the "best-sellers" of our later time might envy. It was not only +permitted to us to read that--it was regarded as our religious duty in +order that we might learn to hate the Catholics with increased fervor. + +The religious animosities of that period, with their relentless +intolerance, their unreason, their matchless malevolence, and their +eagerness to believe evil, ought to form an interesting and instructive +chapter in some history of civilization in America, whenever a scholar +of adequate learning and the gift of interpretation shall undertake that +work. But that is a task for some Buckle or Lecky. It does not belong to +a volume of random reminiscences such as this is. + + + + +XII + + +[Sidenote: Civilization on Wheels] + +Though the railroads, when at last they came to us, failed utterly in +their promise of transportation at the rate of "a mile a minute," they +did something else, presently, that was quite as remarkable and far +worthier in its way. They ran down and ran over, and crushed out of +existence a provincialism that had much of evil promise and very little +of present good in it. With their coming, and in some degree in advance +of their coming, a great wave of population poured into the West from +all quarters of the country. The newcomers brought with them their +ideas, their points of view, their convictions, their customs, and +their standards of living. Mingling together in the most intimate ways, +socially and in business pursuits, each lost something of his prejudices +and provincialism, and gained much by contact with men of other ways of +thinking and living. Attrition sharpened the perceptions of all and +smoothed away angles of offense. A spirit of tolerance was awakened +such as had never been known in the Western country before, and as +the West became populous and prosperous, it became also more broadly +and generously American, more truly national in character, and more +accurately representative of all that is best in American thought and +life than any part of the country had ever been. It represented the +whole country and all its parts. + +The New Englanders, the Virginians, the Pennsylvanians, the Carolinians, +the Kentuckians, who were thus brought together into composite +communities with now and then an Irish, a French, a Dutch, or a German +family, a group of Switzers, and a good many Scotchmen for neighbors +and friends, learned much and quickly each from all the others. +Better still, each unlearned the prejudices, the bigotries, and the +narrownesses in which he had been bred, and life in the great West took +on a liberality of mind, a breadth of tolerance and sympathy, a generous +humanity such as had never been known in any of the narrowly provincial +regions that furnished the materials of this composite population. It +seems to me scarcely too much to say that real Americanism, in the broad +sense of the term, had its birth in that new "winning of the West," +which the railroads achieved about the middle of the nineteenth century. + +With the coming of easier and quicker communication, not only was the +West brought into closer relations with the East, but the West itself +became quickly more homogeneous. There was a constant shifting of +population from one place to another, much traveling about, and a free +interchange of thought among a people who were eagerly alert to adopt +new ideas that seemed in any way to be better than the old. As I recall +the rapid changes of that time it seems to me that the betterments came +with a rapidity rarely if ever equaled in human history. A year or +two at that time was sufficient to work a revolution even in the most +conservative centers of activity. Changes of the most radical kind and +involving the most vital affairs, were made over-night, as it were, and +with so little shock to men's minds that they ceased, almost immediately, +to be topics of conversation. The old had scarcely passed away before +it was forgotten, and the new as quickly became the usual, the ordinary, +the familiar order of things. + + + + +XIII + + +I do not mean to suggest that the West, or indeed any other part of the +country, at once put aside all its crudities of custom and adopted the +ways of living that we are familiar with in this later time. All that +has been a thing of gradual accomplishment, far slower in its coming +than most people realize. + +I remember that when Indianapolis became a great railroad center and a +city of enormous proportions--population from 15,000 to 20,000, according +to the creative capacity of the imagination making the estimate--a +wonderful hotel was built there, and called the Bates House. Its splendors +were the subject of wondering comment throughout the West. It had +washstands, with decorated pottery on them, in all its more expensive +rooms, so that a guest sojourning there need not go down to the common +washroom for his morning ablution, and dry his hands and face on a +jack-towel. There were combs and brushes in the rooms, too, so that +if one wanted to smooth his hair he was not obliged to resort to the +appliances of that sort that were hung by chains to the washroom walls. + +[Sidenote: A Breakfast Revolution] + +Moreover, if a man going to the Bates House for a sojourn, chose to pay +a trifle extra he might have a room all to himself, without the prospect +of being waked up in the middle of the night to admit some stranger, +assigned by the hotel authorities to share his room and bed. + +All these things were marvels of pretentious luxury, borrowed from +the more "advanced" hostelries of the Eastern cities, and as such they +became topics of admiring comment everywhere, as illustrations of the +wonderful progress of civilization that was taking place among us. + +But all these subjects of wonderment shrank to nothingness by +comparison, when the proprietors of the Bates House printed on their +breakfast bills of fare, an announcement that thereafter each guest's +breakfast would be cooked after his order for it was given, together +with an appeal for patience on the part of the breakfasters--a patience +that the proprietors promised to reward with hot and freshly prepared +dishes. + +This innovation was so radical that it excited discussion hotter even +than the Bates House breakfasts. Opinions differed as to the right +of a hotel keeper to make his guests wait for the cooking of their +breakfasts. To some minds the thing presented itself as an invasion +of personal liberty and therefore of the constitutional rights of the +citizen. To others it seemed an intolerable nuisance, while by those +who were ambitious of reputation as persons who had traveled and were +familiar with good usage, it was held to be a welcome advance in +civilization. In approving it, they were able to exploit themselves as +persons who had not only traveled as far as the state capital, but while +there had paid the two dollars a day, which the Bates House charged +for entertainment, instead of going to less pretentious taverns where +the customary charge of a dollar or a dollar and a half a day still +prevailed, and where breakfast was put upon the table before the gong +invited guests to rush into the dining room and madly scramble for what +they could get of it. + +In the same way I remember how we all wondered over the manifestation of +luxury made by the owners of a newly built steamboat of the Louisville +and Cincinnati Mail Line, when we heard that the several staterooms +were provided with wash-basins. That was in the fifties. Before that +time, two common washrooms--one for men and the other for women--had +served all the passengers on each steamboat, and, as those washrooms +had set-bowls with running water, they were regarded as marvels of +sumptuousness in travel facilities. It was partly because of such +luxury, I suppose, that we called the steamboats of that time "floating +palaces." They seemed so then. They would not impress us in that way +now. Perhaps fifty years hence the great ocean liners of the present, +over whose perfection of equipment we are accustomed to wonder, will +seem equally unworthy. Such things are comparative and the world +moves fast. + + + + +XIV + + +[Sidenote: A Bathroom Episode] + +The crudities here referred to, however, are not properly to be reckoned +as belonging exclusively to the West, or as specially indicative of the +provincialism of the West. At that time and for long afterward, it was +usual, even in good hotels throughout the country, to assign two men, +wholly unacquainted with each other, to occupy a room in common. It +was expected that the hotel would provide a comb and brush for the use +of guests in each room, as the practice of carrying one's own toilet +appliances of that kind had not yet become general. Hotel rooms with +private bathrooms adjoining, were wholly unknown before the Civil War, +and the practice of taking a daily bath was very uncommon indeed. A hotel +guest asking for such a thing would have been pointed out to bystanders +as a curiosity of effete dandyism. Parenthetically, I may say that as +late as 1886 I engaged for my wife and myself a room with private bath +on the first floor of the Nadeau House, then the best hotel in Los +Angeles, California. The man at the desk explained that the bathroom did +not open directly into the room, but adjoined it and was accessible +from the dead end of the hallway without. We got on very well with this +arrangement until Saturday night came, when, as I estimated the number, +all the unmarried men of the city took turns in bathing in my private +bathroom. When I entered complaint at the desk next morning, the clerk +evidently regarded me as a monster of arrogant selfishness. He explained +that as I had free use of the bathroom every day and night of the week, +I ought not to feel aggrieved at its invasion by other cleanly disposed +persons on "the usual night for taking a bath." + +The experience brought two facts to my attention: first, that in the +opinion of the great majority of my fellow American citizens one bath a +week was quite sufficient, and, second, that the fixed bathtub, with hot +and cold water running directly into it, is a thing of comparatively +modern use. I suppose that in the eighteen-fifties, and quite certainly +in the first half of that decade, there were no such appliances of +luxurious living in any but the very wealthiest houses, if even there. +Persons who wanted an "all-over bath," went to a barber shop for it, if +they lived in a city, and, if they lived elsewhere, went without it, or +pressed a family washtub into friendly service. + +So, too, as late as 1870, in looking for a house in Brooklyn, I found it +difficult to get one of moderate rent cost, that had other water supply +than such as a hydrant in the back yard afforded. + + + + +XV + + +To return to the changes wrought in the West by the construction of +railroads and the influx of immigration from all parts of the country. +In nothing else was the improvement more rapid or more pronounced +than in education. Until the early fifties, and even well into them, +educational endeavors and educational methods were crude, unorganized, +wasteful of effort, and utterly uncertain of result. From the very +beginning the desire for education had been alert and eager in the West, +and the readiness to spend money and effort in that behalf had been +unstinted. But the means were lacking and system was lacking. More +important still there was lack of any well-considered or fairly uniform +conception of what education ought to aim at or achieve. + +In the rural districts schools were sporadic and uncertain. When a +"master" was available "school kept," and its chief activity was to +teach the spelling of the English language. Incidentally it taught +pupils to read and the more advanced ones--ten per cent. of all, +perhaps, to write. As a matter of higher education rudimentary +arithmetic had a place in the curriculum. Now and then a schoolmaster +appeared who essayed other things in a desultory way but without results +of any consequence. In the villages and towns the schools were usually +better, but even there the lack of any well-ordered system was a blight. + +[Sidenote: School Methods] + +The schoolmasters were frequently changed, for one thing, each newcoming +one bringing his own notions to bear upon problems that he was not +destined to remain long enough to solve. Even in the more permanent +schools, kept by very young or superannuated preachers, or by Irish +schoolmasters who conducted them on the "knock down and drag out" system, +there was no attempt to frame a scheme of education that should aim at +well conceived results. In every such school there were two or three +boys taking "the classical course," by which was meant that without the +least question or consideration of their fitness to do so, they had +dropped all ordinary school studies and were slowly plodding along in +rudimentary Latin, in obedience to some inherited belief on the part of +their parents that education consists in studying Latin, that there is +a benediction in a paradigm, and that fitness for life's struggle is +most certainly achieved by the reading of "Historia Sacra," "Cornelius +Nepos," and the early chapters of "Caesar's Commentaries on the Gallic +War." + +Other pupils, under the impression that they were taking a "scientific +course," were drilled in Comstock's Physiology and Natural Philosophy, +and somebody's "Geography of the Heavens." The rest of the +school--plebeians all--contented themselves with reading, writing, +arithmetic, geography, and a vain attempt to master the mysteries and +mists of Kirkham's Grammar. + +The railroads quickly changed all this. They brought into the West +men and women who knew who Horace Mann was, and whose conceptions of +education in its aims and methods were definite, well ordered, and +aggressive. + +These set to work to organize graded school systems in the larger towns, +and the thing was contagious, in a region where every little town was +confidently ambitious of presently becoming the most important city in +the state, and did not intend in the meantime to permit any other to +outdo it in the frills and furbelows of largeness. + +With preparatory education thus organized and systematized, and with +easy communication daily becoming easier, the ambition of young men +to attend colleges and universities was more and more gratified, so +that within a very few years the higher education--so far as it is +represented by college courses--became common throughout the country, +while for those who could not achieve that, or were not minded to do so, +the teaching of the schools was adapted, as it never had been before, +to the purpose of real, even if meager education. + +Even in the remotest country districts a new impetus was given to +education, and the subjection of the schools there to the supervision +of school boards and professional superintendents worked wonders of +reformation. For one thing the school boards required those who wished +to serve as teachers to pass rigid examinations in test of their +fitness, so that it was no longer the privilege of any ignoramus who +happened to be out of a job to "keep school." In addition to this +the school boards prescribed and regulated the courses of study, the +classification of pupils, and the choice of text-books, even in country +districts where graded schools were not to be thought of, and this +supervision gave a new and larger meaning to school training in the +country. + + + + +XVI + + +It was my fortune to be the first certified teacher under this system +in a certain rural district where the old haphazard system had before +prevailed, and my experience there connects itself interestingly, I +think, with a bit of literary history. It was the instigation of my +brother, Edward Eggleston's, most widely popular story, "The Hoosier +Schoolmaster," which in its turn was the instigation of all the +fascinating literature that has followed it with Hoosier life conditions +for its theme. + +[Sidenote: "The Hoosier Schoolmaster"] + +My school district lay not many miles from the little town in which my +family lived, and as I had a good pair of legs, well used to walking, I +went home every Friday night, returning on Monday morning after a four +o'clock breakfast. On these week-end visits it was my delight to tell of +the queer experiences of the week, and Edward's delight to listen to +them while he fought against the maladies that were then threatening his +brave young life with early extinction. + +Years afterwards he and I were together engaged in an effort to +resuscitate the weekly illustrated newspaper _Hearth and Home_, which +had calamitously failed to win a place for itself, under a number of +highly distinguished editors, whose abilities seemed to compass almost +everything except the art of making a newspaper that people wanted and +would pay for. Of that effort I shall perhaps have more to say in a +future chapter. It is enough now to say that the periodical had a weekly +stagnation--it will not do to call it a circulation--of only five +or six thousand copies, nearly half of them gratuitous, and it had +netted an aggregate loss of many thousands of dollars to the several +publishers who had successively made themselves its sponsors. It was our +task--Edward's and mine--to make the thing "pay," and to that end both +of us were cudgeling our brains by day and by night to devise means. + +One evening a happy thought came to Edward and he hurriedly quitted +whatever he was doing to come to my house and submit it. + +"I have a mind, Geordie," he said, "to write a three number story, +called 'The Hoosier Schoolmaster,' and to found it upon your experience +at Riker's Ridge." + +We talked the matter over. He wrote and published the first of the +three numbers, and its popularity was instant. The publishers pleaded +with him, and so did I, to abandon the three number limitation, and +he yielded. Before the serial publication of the story ended, the +subscription list of _Hearth and Home_ had been many times multiplied +and Edward Eggleston was famous. + +He was far too original a man, and one possessed of an imagination too +fertilely creative to follow at all closely my experiences, which had +first suggested the story to him. He made one or two personages among +my pupils the models from which he drew certain of his characters, but +beyond that the experiences which suggested the story in no way entered +into its construction. Yet in view of the facts it seems to me worth +while to relate something of those suggestive experiences. + +I was sixteen years old when I took the school. Circumstances +had compelled me for the time to quit college, where, despite my +youthfulness, I was in my second year. The Riker's Ridge district +had just been brought under supervision of the school authorities at +Madison. A new schoolhouse had been built and a teacher was wanted +to inaugurate the new system. I applied for the place, stood the +examinations, secured my certificate, and was appointed. + +[Sidenote: The Riker's Ridge District] + +On my first appearance in the neighborhood, the elders there seemed +distinctly disappointed in the selection made. They knew the school +history of the district. They remembered that the last three masters had +been "licked" by stalwart and unruly boys, the last one so badly that +he had abandoned the school in the middle of the term. They strongly +felt the need, therefore, of a master of mature years, strong arms, and +ponderous fists as the person chosen to inaugurate the new system. When +a beardless boy of sixteen presented himself instead, they shook their +heads in apprehension. But the appointment had been made by higher +authority, and they had no choice but to accept it. Appreciating the +nature of their fears, I told the grave and reverend seigniors that my +schoolboy experience had shown my arms to be stronger, my fists heavier, +and my nimbleness greater perhaps than they imagined, but that in the +conduct of the school I should depend far more upon the diplomatic +nimbleness of my wits than upon physical prowess, and that I thought I +should manage to get on. + +There was silence for a time. Then one wise old patriarch said: + +"Well, may be so. But there's Charley Grebe. You wouldn't make a +mouthful for him. Anyhow, we'll see, we'll see." + +Charley Grebe was the youth who had thrashed the last master so +disastrously. + +Thus encouraged, I went to my task. + +The neighborhood was in no sense a bad one. There were none of the +elements in it that gave character to "Flat Creek" as depicted in +"The Hoosier Schoolmaster." The people were all quiet, orderly, entirely +reputable folk, most of them devotedly pious. They were mainly of +"Pennsylvania Dutch" extraction, stolid on the surface but singularly +emotional within. But the school traditions of the region were those +of the old time, when the master was regarded as the common enemy, who +must be thwarted in every possible way, resisted at every point where +resistance was possible, and "thrashed" by the biggest boy in school +if the biggest boy could manage that. + +There was really some justification for this attitude of the young +Americans in every such district. For under the old system, as I very +well remember it, the government of schools was brutal, cruel, inhuman +in a degree that might in many cases have excused if it did not justify +a homicidal impulse on the part of its victims. The boys of the early +time would never have grown into the stalwart Americans who fought the +Civil War if they had submitted to such injustice and so cruel a tyranny +without making the utmost resistance they could. + + + + +XVII + + +I began my work with a little friendly address to the forty or fifty +boys and girls who presented themselves as pupils. I explained to +them that my idea of a school was quite different from that which had +before that time prevailed in that region; that I was employed by the +authorities to teach them all I could, by way of fitting them for life, +and that I was anxious to do that in the case of every boy and girl +present. I expressed the hope that they in their turn were anxious to +learn all I could teach them, and that if any of them found their +studies too difficult, I would gladly give my time out of school hours +to the task of discovering the cause of the difficulty and remedying it. +I explained that in my view government in a school should have no object +beyond that of giving every pupil opportunity to learn all he could, and +the teacher opportunity to teach all he could. I frankly abolished the +arbitrary rule that had before made of whispering a grave moral offense, +and substituted for it a request that every pupil should be careful not +to disturb the work of others in any way, so that we might all make the +most of our time and opportunity. + +It was a new gospel, and in the main it fell upon deaf ears. A few of +the pupils were impressed by its reasonableness and disposed to meet the +new teacher half way. The opinion of the majority was expressed by one +boy whom I overheard at recess when he said to one of his fellows: + +[Sidenote: The Biggest Boy] + +"He's skeered o' Charley Grebe, an' he's a-tryin' to soft-sawder us." + +The first day or two of school were given to the rather perplexing work +of classifying pupils whose previous instruction had been completely at +haphazard. During that process I minutely observed the one foe against +whom I had received more than one warning--Charley Grebe. He was a +young man of nearly twenty-one, six feet, one or two inches high, +broad-shouldered, muscular, and with a jaw that suggested all the +relentless determination that one young man can hold. + +When I questioned him with a view to his classification, he was polite +enough in his uninstructed way, but exceedingly reserved. On the whole +he impressed me as a young man of good natural ability, who had been +discouraged by bad and incapable instruction. After he had told me, +rather grudgingly I thought, what ground his studies had covered, he +suddenly changed places with me and became the questioner. + +"Say," he broke out, interrupting some formal question of mine, "Say, +do you know anything in fact? Do you know Arithmetic an' Algebra an' +Geometry and can you really teach me? or are you just pretending, like +the rest?" + +I thought I understood him and I guessed what his experience had been. I +assured him that there was nothing in Arithmetic that I could not teach +him, that I knew my Algebra, Geometry, and Trigonometry, and could +help him to learn them, if he really desired to do so. Then adopting +something of his own manner I asked: + +"What is it you want me to do, Charley? Say what you have to say, like +a man, and don't go beating about the bush." + +For reply, he said: + +"I want to talk with you. It'll be a long talk. I want you to go home +with me to-night. Father said I might invite you. Will you come?" + +There was eager earnestness in his questions, but there was also a note +of discouragement, if not quite of despair in his tone. I agreed at once +to go with him for the night, and, taking the hand he had not thought of +offering, I added: + +"If there is any way in which I can help you, Charley, I'll do it +gladly." + +Whether it was the unaccustomed courtesy, or the awakening of a new +hope, or something else, I know not, but the awkward, overgrown boy +seemed at once to assume the dignity of manhood, and while he had never +been taught to say "thank you" or to use any other conventionally polite +form of speech, he managed to make me understand by his manner that he +appreciated my offer, and a few minutes later, school having been +dismissed, he and I set out for his home. + +There he explained his case to me. He wanted to become a shipwright--a +trade which, in that time of multitudinous steamboat building on the +Western rivers, was the most inviting occupation open to a young man +of energy. He had discovered that a man who wished to rise to anything +like a mastery in that trade must have a good working knowledge of +Arithmetic, elementary Algebra, Geometry, and at least the rudiments +of Trigonometry. He had wanted to learn these things and some of his +previous schoolmasters had undertaken to teach them, with no result +except presently to reveal to him their own ignorance. His father +permitted him six months more of schooling. He had "sized me up," he +said, and he believed I could teach him what he wanted to learn. But +could he learn it within six months? That was what he wanted me to +tell him. I put him through a close examination in Arithmetic that +night--consuming most of the night--and before morning I had satisfied +myself that he was an apt pupil who, with diligence and such earnest +determination as he manifested, could learn what he really needed of +mathematics within the time named. + +[Sidenote: A Vigorous Volunteer Monitor] + +"You can do it, Charley, if you work hard, and I'll help you, in school +hours and out," was my final verdict. + +"It's a bargain," he said, and that was all he said. But a day or +two later a boy in school--a great, hulking fellow whose ugliness +of disposition I had early discerned--made a nerve-racking noise by +dragging his pencil over his slate in a way that disturbed the whole +school. I bade him cease, but he presently repeated the offense. Again +I rebuked him, but five minutes or so later he defiantly did the thing +again, "just to see if the master dared," he afterward explained. +Thereupon Charley Grebe arose, seized the fellow by the ear, twisted +that member until its owner howled with pain, and then, hurling him +back into his seat, said: + +"_You heard the master! You'll mind him after this or I'll make you._" + +The event fairly appalled the school. The thought that Charley Grebe was +on the master's side, and actively helping him to maintain discipline, +seemed beyond belief. But events soon confirmed it. There was a little +fellow in the school whom everybody loved, and whose quaint, childish +ways afterwards suggested the character of "Shocky" in "The Hoosier +Schoolmaster." There was also a cowardly brute there whose delight it +was to persecute the little fellow on the playground in intolerable +ways. I sought to stop the thing. To that end I devised and inflicted +every punishment I could think of, short of flogging, but all to no +purpose. At last I laid aside my convictions with my patience, and gave +the big bully such a flogging as must have impressed his mind if he had +had anything of the kind about his person. + +That day, at the noon recess, the big bully set to work to beat +the little boy unmercifully in revenge for what I had done for his +protection. I was looking out through a Venetian blind, with intent to +go to the rescue, when suddenly Charley Grebe, who was playing town +ball threw down the bat, seized the fellow, threw him across his knees, +pinioned his legs with one of his own, and literally wore out a dozen or +more thick blue ash shingles over that part of his victim's body which +was made for spanking. + +When at last he released the blubbering object of his wrath he slapped +his jaws soundly and said: + +"Don't you go a-whining to the master about this. If you do it'll be +a good deal wuss for you. I'm a-takin' this here job off the master's +hands." + +I gave no hint that I had seen or heard. But from that hour forth no +boy in the school ever gave me the smallest trouble by misbehavior. The +school perfectly understood that Charley Grebe was "a-takin' this here +job off the master's hands," and the knowledge was sufficient. + +After that only the big girls--most of them older than I was--gave me +trouble. I met it with the explanation that I could never think of +punishing a young woman, and that I must trust to their honor and +courtesy, as girls who expected presently to be ladies, for their +behavior. The appeal was a trifle slow in eliciting a response, but +in the end it answered its purpose. + + + + +XVIII + + +[Sidenote: What's in a Name?] + +While I was enrolling and classifying the pupils, I encountered a +peculiarly puzzling case. There were five John Riddels in the school, +and I found that all of them were sons of the same man, whose name also +was John Riddel. No one of them had a middle name or any other sort +of name by which he might be distinguished from his brothers. On the +playground they were severally known as "Big John Riddel," "John +Riddel," "Johnny Riddel," "Little John Riddel," and "Little Johnny +Riddel," while their father was everywhere known as "Old John Riddel," +though he was a man under fifty, I should say. He lived near, in a +stone house, with stone barns and out-houses, an ingeniously devised +milk-house, and a still more ingeniously constructed device for bringing +water from the spring under the hill into his dwelling. + +In brief his thrift was altogether admirable, and the mechanical devices +by which he made the most of every opportunity, suggested a fertilely +inventive mind on the part of a man whose general demeanor was stolid to +the verge of stupidity. When I was taking supper at his house one night +by special invitation, I asked him why he had named all his sons John. +For reply he said: + +"John is a very good name," and that was all the explanation I ever got +out of him. + + + + +XIX + + +One pupil I had at Riker's Ridge, was Johnny G. His people had some +money and Johnny had always dressed better than the rest of us could +afford to do, when several years before, he and I had been classmates +in the second or third grade of the Grammar School in Madison. Johnny +had never got out of that grade, and even when I was in my second year +in college, he gave no promise of ever making a scholastic step forward. +But he had relatives on Riker's Ridge, and when he heard that I was to +be the teacher there he promised his people that he would really make +an effort if they would let him live with his relatives there and become +my pupil. It was so arranged, and Johnny came to me, with all his +dazzling waistcoats and trousers with the latest style of pockets, and +all the rest of the upholstery with which he delighted to decorate his +person. + +I think he really did make an effort to master the rudimentary school +studies, and I conscientiously endeavored to help him, not only in +school but of evenings. For a time there seemed to be a reasonable +promise of success in lifting Johnny to that level of scholastic +attainment which would permit him to return to Madison and enter the +High School. But presently all this was brought to naught. Johnny was +seized by a literary ambition that completely absorbed what mind he had, +and made his school studies seem to him impertinent intrusions upon the +attention of one absorbed in higher things. + +He told me all about it one afternoon as I walked homeward with him, +intent upon finding out why he had suddenly ceased to get his lessons. + +"I'm going to write a song," he told me, "and it's going to make me +famous. I'm writing it now, and I tell you it's fine." + +"Tell me about it, Johnny," I replied. "What is its theme? And how much +of it have you written?" + +"I don't know what it's to be about," he answered, "if that's what you +mean by its theme. But it's going to be great, and I'm going to make the +tune to it myself." + +"Very well," I replied encouragingly. "Would you mind reciting to me so +much of it as you've written? I'd like to hear it." + +"Why, of course. I tell you it's going to be great, but I haven't got +much of it done yet--only one line, in fact." + +[Sidenote: A Buttermilk Poet] + +Observing a certain discouragement in his tone I responded: + +"Oh, well, even one line is a good deal, if it's good. Many a poem's +fortune has been made by a single line. Tell me what it is." + +"Well, the line runs: 'With a pitcher of buttermilk under her arm.' +Don't you see how it sort o' sings? 'With a pitcher of buttermilk under +her arm'--why, it's great, I tell you. Confound the school books! What's +the use of drudging when a fellow has got it in him to write poetry like +that? 'With a pit-cher of but-termilk un-der her arm'--don't it sing? +'With a _pit_-cher of but-termilk un-der her arm.' 'With a _pit_-cher +of _but_-termilk--un-der her arm.' Whoopee, but it's great!" + +I lost sight of Johnny soon after that, and I have never heard what +became of that buttermilk pitcher, or the fascinating rhythm in which it +presented itself. But in later years I have come into contact with many +literary ambitions that were scarcely better based than this. Indeed, if +I were minded to be cynical--as I am not--I might mention a few magazine +poets whose pitchers of buttermilk seem to me--but all that is foreign +to the purpose of this book. + +Before quitting this chapter and the period and region to which it +relates, I wish to record that Charley Grebe mastered the mathematics +he needed, and entered hopefully upon his apprenticeship to a ship +carpenter. I hope he rose to the top in the trade, but I know nothing +about it. + + + + +XX + + +Not many months after my school-teaching experience came to an end, +circumstances decreed that my life should be changed in the most radical +way possible in this country. I quitted the rapidly developing, +cosmopolitan, kaleidoscopic West, and became a dweller upon the old +family plantation in Virginia, where my race had been bred and nurtured +ever since 1635 when the first man of my name to cross the seas +established himself there and possessed himself of lavishly abundant +acres which subsequent divisions among his descendants had converted +into two adjoining plantations--the ancestral homes of all the +Egglestons, so far, at least, as I knew them or knew of them. + +I suppose I was an imaginative youth at seventeen, and I had read +enough of poetry, romance, and still more romantic history, to develop +that side of my nature somewhat unduly. At any rate it was strongly +dominant, and the contrast between the seething, sordid, aggressive, +and ceaselessly eager life of the West, in which I had been bred and +the picturesquely placid, well-bred, self-possessed, and leisurely life +into which the transfer ushered me, impressed me as nothing else has +ever done. It was like escaping from the turmoil of battle to the +green pastures, and still waters of the Twenty-third Psalm. It was +like passing from the clamor of a stock exchange into the repose of +a library. + +I have written much about that restful, refined, picturesque old +Virginia life in essays and romances, but I must write something more +of it in this place at risk of offending that one of my critics who not +long ago discovered that I had created it all out of my own imagination +for the entertainment of New England readers. He was not born, +I have reason to believe, until long after that old life had passed +into history, but his conviction that it never existed, that it was +_a priori_ impossible, was strong enough to bear down the testimony +of any eye-witness's recollection. + +[Sidenote: Creative Incredulity] + +It has often been a matter of chastening wonder and instruction to me to +observe how much more critics and historians can learn from the intuitions +of their "inner consciousness" than was ever known to the unfortunates +who have had only facts of personal observation and familiar knowledge +to guide them. It was only the other day that a distinguished historian +of the modern introspective, self-illuminating school upset the +traditions of many centuries by assuring us that the romantic story +of Antony and Cleopatra is a baseless myth; that there never was any +love affair between the Roman who has been supposed to have "madly +flung a world away" for worship of a woman, and the "Sorceress of the +Nile"--the "star-eyed Egyptian" who has been accused of tempting him +to his destruction; that Cleopatra merely hired of Antony the services +of certain legions that she needed for her defense, and paid him for +them in the current money of the time and country. + +Thus does the incredulous but infallible intuition of the present +correct the recorded memory of the past. I have no doubt that some day +the country will learn from that sort of superior consciousness that in +the Virginia campaign of the Wilderness, Spottsylvania and Cold Harbor, +where men are now believed to have fought and marched so heroically with +empty bellies and often with unshod feet, there were in fact no such +discomforts incident to the discussion; that Grant and Lee like the +courteous commanders they were, suspended the argument of arms at the +dinner hour each day in order that their men might don evening clothes +and patent leather shoes and sit down to banquets of eleven courses, +with _pousse cafes_ and cigars at the end. Nevertheless, I shall write +of the old Virginia life as I remember it, and let the record stand at +that until such time as it shall be shown by skilled historical criticism +that the story of the Civil War is a sun myth and that the old life which +is pictured as having preceded it was the invention of the romance +writers. + + + + +XXI + + +The first thing that impressed me in that old life, when I was thrust +into it, was its repose, the absence of stress or strain or anxious +anticipation, the appreciation of to-morrow as the equal of to-day for +the doing of things and the getting of things done. My trunks had missed +connection somewhere on the journey, and I thought of telegraphing about +the matter. My uncle, the master of the plantation and head of the +family, discouraged that, and suggested that I should go fishing in a +neighboring creek instead. The telegraph office was six miles away. He +had never sent a telegram in his life. He had no doubt the trunks would +come along to-morrow or next day, and the fish in the creek were just +then biting in encouraging fashion. + +That was my first lesson, and it impressed me strongly. Where I had +come from nobody would have thought of resting under the uncertainty or +calmly contemplating the unwarranted delay. Here nobody thought of doing +anything else, and as the trunks did in fact come the next day without +any telegraphing or hurry or worry, I learned that it was just as well +to go fishing as to go fussing. + +[Sidenote: The Virginian Way] + +The restful leisureliness of the life in Virginia was borne in upon me +on every hand, I suppose my nerves had really been upon a strain during +all the seventeen years that I had lived, and the relief I found in my +new surroundings doubtless had much to do with my appreciation of it +all. I had been used to see hurry in everything and everybody; here +there was no such thing as hurry. Nobody had a "business engagement" +that need interfere with anything else he was minded to do. "Business," +indeed, was regarded as something to be attended to on the next court +day, when all men having affairs to arrange with each other were sure +to meet at the Court-House--as the county seat village was usually +called. Till then it could wait. Nobody was going to move away. +Everybody was "able to owe his debts." Why bother, then, to make a +journey for the settlement of a matter of business which could wait as +well as not for next court day to come round? It was so much pleasanter +to stay at home, to entertain one's friends, to ride over the +plantation, inspecting and directing crop work, to take a gun and go +after squirrels or birds or turkeys, to play backgammon or chess or +dominoes in the porch, to read the new books that everybody was talking +about, or the old ones that Virginians loved more--in brief, there was +no occasion for hurry, and the Virginians wasted none of their vital +force in that way. + +The very houses suggested repose. They had sat still upon their +foundations for generations past, and would go on doing so for +generations to come. The lawns were the growth of long years, with +no touch of recent gardeners' work about them. The trees about the +house grounds had been in undisputed possession there long before the +grandfathers of the present generation were born. There was nowhere any +suggestion of newness, or rawness, of change actual or likely to come. +There were no new people--except the babies--and nobody ever dreamed of +changing his residence. + + + + +XXII + + +Another thing that peculiarly impressed me, coming as I did from a +region where the mart was the center about which all life's activities +circled, was the utter absence of talk about money or the things that +relate to money. Practically there was no money in use among the +planter folk, except when a journey to distant points required the +lining of a purse. Except in the very smallest way the planters never +used money in their daily lives. They rarely bought anything directly, +and they never thought of selling anything except in planter fashion +through accredited agencies. Once a year they shipped the tobacco and +the wheat their fields had produced, to the city, for a commission +merchant to sell. The commission merchant held a considerable part of +the proceeds to the planter's credit, and when the planter wanted +anything of consequence he simply wrote to the commission merchant to +buy it for him. The rest of the money from the sale of the plantation +products was deposited in bank to the planter's account. If the women +folk went to town on a shopping expedition, they bought whatever they +wanted in the stores and had it "charged," for every planter's credit +was limitless in the shops. When the bill was rendered, which was never +in a hurry, the planter drew a check in discharge of it. He had no +"blank check" book. No such thing was known in that community. He simply +wrote his check at top of a sheet of foolscap, stating in it what it was +for, and courteously asking the bank "please" to pay the amount. Then +he carefully cut off the remainder of the sheet and put it away as an +economy of paper. The next time he drew a check or anything of the sort, +he took a fresh sheet of paper for the purpose and carefully laid away +all that was not used of it. Thus was his instinct of economy gratified, +while his lordly sense of liberality in the use of material things was +not offended. When he died, the drawers filled with large and small +fragments of foolscap sheets were cleared out and left for his successor +to fill in his turn. + +[Sidenote: Parson J----'s Checks] + +This custom of paying by check so strongly commended itself to a certain +unworldly parson of my time, that he resorted to it on one occasion in +entire ignorance and innocence of the necessity of having a bank deposit +as a preliminary to the drawing of checks. He went to Richmond and +bought a year's supplies for his little place--it was too small to be +called a plantation--and for each purchase he drew a particularly polite +check. When the banks threw these out, on the ground that their author +had no account, the poor old parson found the situation a difficult one +to understand. He had thought that the very purpose of a bank's being +was to cash checks for persons who happened to be short of money. + +"Why, if I'd had the money in the bank," he explained, "I shouldn't +have written the checks at all; I should have got the money and paid +the bills." + +Fortunately the matter came to the knowledge of a well-to-do and +generous planter who knew parson J. and who happened to be in Richmond +at the time. His indorsement made the checks good, and saved the +unworldly old parson a deal of trouble. + +The planters were not all of them rich by any means. Hardly one of +those in Virginia had possessions that would to-day rank him even among +moderately rich men. But they were scrupulously honorable men, they +were men of reasonable property, and their credit rested firmly upon +the fact that they were able to pay and the equally important fact +that they meant to pay. They lived lavishly, but the plantation itself +furnished most of the materials of the lavishness, so that there was no +extravagance in such living. For the rest they had a sufficient regard +for those who were to come after them to keep the total volume of the +debt upon the estate within such limits as the estate could easily +stand. + +What I wish to emphasize here is that the methods of their monetary +transactions were such as to make of money a very infrequent subject +of consideration in their lives and conversations. + +Economically it would have been better for them if things had been +otherwise, but socially, the utter absence of pecuniary flavor from +their intercourse, lent a peculiar charm to it, especially in the eyes +and mind of a youth brought up as I had been in an atmosphere positively +grimy with the soot of monetary considerations. + +There was hardly one of those plantations whose utterly waste products +were not worth more in the markets near at hand than were the tobacco +and wheat which alone the planters sold. When I came into the practice +of law a few years later, and had charge of the affairs of a number of +estates, I brought this matter of waste to the attention of my clients, +with all the earnestness I could put into my pleading. I showed them +prices current to prove that if they chose to market their surplus +apples, potatoes, sweet potatoes, lambs, pigs, poultry, and dairy +products, all of which they gave away or suffered to go to waste, they +might discharge their hereditary debts at once and build up balances in +bank. They had sagacity enough to understand the facts, but not one of +them would ever consent to apply them practically. It would be "Yankee +farming," was the ready reply, and that was conclusive. It was not the +custom of the planters to sell any but staple products, and they were +planters, not farmers. + +[Sidenote: The Charm of Leisureliness] + +All these things helped, when I first came into relations with them, to +impress my young mind with the poise, the picturesqueness, the restful +leisureliness of the Virginian life, and the utter absence from it of +strenuousness, and still more of sordidness. For the first time in my +life I was living with people who thought of money only on those annual +or other occasions when they were settling their affairs and paying +their debts by giving notes for their sum; people who regarded time not +as something to be economized and diligently utilized for the sake of +its money value, but as a means of grace, if I may so speak without +irreverence; as an opportunity of enjoyment, for themselves and for +others; as a thing to be spent with the utmost lavishness in the doing +of things agreeable, in the reading of books that pleased, in the riding +of horses that put the rider upon his metal to match their tameless +spirit, in the cultivation of flowers, in the improvement of trees by +grafting and budding, and even in the idler pleasures of tossing grace +hoops, or hotly maintaining an indoor contest at battledore and +shuttlecock when it rained heavily. These and a score of other pastimes +seemed good in the eyes of the Virginian men and women. The men went +shooting or fox hunting or hare coursing, or fishing, each in its +season. The women embroidered and knitted nubias, and made fancy work, +and they walked long miles when not riding with escorts, and dug much in +the ground in propagation of the flowers they loved. They kept house, +too, with a vigilance born of the fact that in keeping house they were +also keeping plantation. For they must not only supervise the daily +dispensation of foodstuffs to all the negroes, but they must visit and +personally care for the sick, the aged, the infirm, and the infantile +among the black people. They must put up fruits and jams and pickles +and ketchups and jellies and shrubs and cordials enough to stock a +warehouse, in anticipation of the plantation needs. They must personally +cut out and direct the making of all the clothing to be worn by the +blacks on the plantation, for the reason that the colored maids, +seamstresses and dressmakers who were proud to fashion the gowns of +their young mistresses, simply would not "work for de field +hands,"--meaning the negroes of the plantation. + +Yet with it all these women were never hurried, never scant of time in +which to do anything that might give pleasure to another. I never knew +one of them to plead preoccupation as a reason for not going riding or +walking, or rendering some music, or joining in a game, or doing +anything else that others wanted her to do. + +The reason for all this was simple enough. The young women who kept +house--and it was usually the young women who did so--were up and at +it before the dawn. By the time that the eight-thirty or nine o'clock +breakfast was served, all their necessary work was done for the day; +often it was done in time to let them take a ride before breakfast +if the young man suggesting it happened to be an agreeable fellow. +After all was done upon which that day's conduct of the house and the +plantation depended, the gentlewomen concerned adopted the views of +their masculine mentors and exemplars. They accepted to-morrow as a good +enough stalking horse for to-day, and, having laid out their work well +in advance, they exacted of their servitors that the morrow's morning +should begin with a demonstration of to-day's work well done. + +So they, too, had leisure, just as the meal hours had. I had been +brought up on five or six o'clock breakfasts, eleven-thirty or twelve +o'clock dinners, and early suppers. Here the breakfast hour was eight +thirty at the earliest and nine usually; "snack" was served about one to +those who chose to come to it, dinner at three or four, with no hurry +about it, and supper came at nine--the hour at which most people in the +West habitually went to bed. + +The thing suited me, personally, for I had great ambitions as a student +and habitually dug at my mathematics, Latin, and Greek until two in the +morning. I was always up by daylight, and after a plunge into the cold +water provided for me in a molasses barrel out under the eaves, I +usually took a ride in company with the most agreeable young woman who +happened to be staying in the house at the time. + +Sometimes I had two to escort, but that was rare. Usually there was +another young man in the house, and usually, under such circumstances, I +saw to it that he did not lie long abed. And even when there was no such +recourse, the "other girl" was apt to conjure up some excuse for not +wishing to ride that morning. + + + + +XXIII + + +[Sidenote: The Courtesy of the Virginians] + +Indeed, one of the things that most deeply impressed me among the +Virginians was the delicacy and alert thoughtfulness of their courtesy. +The people of the West were not ill-mannered boors by any means, but +gentle, kindly folk. But they were not versed in those little momentary +courtesies of life which create a roseate atmosphere of active good +will. In all that pertained to courtesy in the larger and more +formal affairs of social life, the people of the West were even more +scrupulously attentive to the requirements of good social usage than +these easy-going Virginians were, with their well-defined social status +and their habit of taking themselves and each other for granted. But in +the little things of life, in their alertness to say the right word or +do the trifling thing that might give pleasure, and their still greater +alertness to avoid the word or act that might offend or incommode, the +Virginians presented to my mind a new and altogether pleasing example +of courtesy. + +In later years I have found something like this agreeably impressed upon +me when I go for a time from New York to Boston. Courtesy could not +be finer or more considerate among people of gentle breeding who know +each other than it is in New York. But in their considerate treatment of +strangers, casually encountered in public places, the Boston people give +a finer, gentler, more delicate flavor to their courtesy, and it is a +delightful thing to encounter. + +In Virginia this quality of courtesy was especially marked in the +intercourse of men and women with each other. The attitude of both was +distinctly chivalrous. To the woman--be she a child of two, a maiden +of twenty, or a gentlewoman so well advanced in years that her age was +unmentionable--the man assumed an attitude of gentle consideration, of +deference due to sex, of willingness to render any service at any cost, +and of a gently protective guardianship that stopped at nothing in the +discharge of its duty. To the man, be he old or young, the woman yielded +that glad obedience that she deemed due to her protector and champion. + +I had never seen anything like this before. In the West I had gone to +school with all the young women I knew. I had competed with them upon +brutally equal terms, in examinations and in struggles for class honors, +and the like. They and we boys had been perfectly good friends and +comrades, of course, and we liked each other in that half-masculine way. +But the association was destructive of romance, of fineness, of delicate +attractiveness. There was no glamor left in the relations of young men +and young women, no sentiment except such as might exist among young +men themselves. The girls were only boys of another sort. Our attitude +toward them was comradely but not chivalric. It was impossible to feel +the roseate glow of romance in association with a young woman who had +studied in the same classes with one, who had stood as a challenge in +the matter of examination marks, and who met one at any hour of the day +on equal terms, with a cheery "good-morning" or "good-evening" that had +no more of sentiment in it than the clatter of a cotton mill. + +[Sidenote: Sex and Education] + +In my judgment, that is the conclusive objection to co-education, +except perhaps among the youngest children. It robs the relations of +the sexes of sentiment, of softness, of delicacy. It makes of girls an +inferior sort of boys, and of boys an inferior sort of girls. It cannot +completely negative sex, but it can and does sufficiently negative it +to rob life of one of its tenderest charms. + +In Virginia for the first time I encountered something different. +There the boys were sent to old field schools where in rough and tumble +fashion, they learned Latin and robust manliness, Greek and a certain +graciousness of demeanor toward others, the absence of which would have +involved them in numberless fights on the playgrounds. The girls were +tenderly dame-nurtured at home, with a gentlewoman for governess, with +tutors to supplement the instruction of the governess, and with a year +or two, perhaps, for finishing, at Le Febre's or Dr. Hoge's, or some +other good school for young women. + +Both the young men and the young women read voluminously--the young men +in part, perhaps, to equip themselves for conversational intercourse +with the young women. They both read polite literature, but they read +history also with a diligence that equipped them with independent +convictions of their own, with regard to such matters as the conduct of +Charlotte Corday, the characters of Mirabeau, Danton, and Robespierre, +the ungentlemanly treatment given by John Knox to Mary, Queen of Scots, +and all that sort of thing. Indeed, among the Virginia women, young and +old, the romantic episodes of history, ancient, mediaeval, and modern, +completely took the place, as subjects of conversation, of those gossipy +personalities that make up the staple of conversation among women +generally. + +Let me not be misunderstood. These women did not assume to be "learned +ladies." It was only that they knew their history and loved it and were +fond of talking about it, quite as some other women are fond of talking +about the interesting scandal in the domestic relations of the reigning +matinee hero. + +The intercourse between men and women thus educated was always easy, +gracious, and friendly, but it was always deferential, chivalric, and +imbued with that recognition of sex which, without loss of dignity on +either side, holds man to be the generously willing protector, and woman +the proudly loyal recipient of a protection to which her sex entitles +her, and in return for which she gladly yields a submission that has +nothing of surrender in it. + +There was a fascination to me in all this, that I find it impossible to +describe and exceedingly difficult even to suggest. + +I may add that I think the young women of that time in Virginia were +altogether the best educated young women I have ever encountered in any +time or country. And, best of all, they were thoroughly, +uncompromisingly feminine. + +Of the men I need only say that they were masculine, and fit mates +for such women. I do not at all think they were personally superior +to men of other parts of the country in those things that pertain to +character and conduct, but at least they had the advantage of living +in a community where public opinion was all-dominant, and where that +resistless force insisted upon truth, integrity, and personal courage +as qualities that every man must possess if he expected to live in that +community at all. It was _noblesse oblige_, and it inexorably controlled +the conduct of all men who hoped for recognition as gentlemen. + +The sentiment took quixotic forms at times, perhaps, but no jesting over +these manifestations can obscure the fact that it compelled men to good +behavior in every relation of life and made life sweeter, wholesomer, +and more fruitful of good than it otherwise would have been. + +[Sidenote: The Voices of Virginia Women] + +I must add a word with respect to that most fascinating of all things, +the Virginia girl's voice. This was music of so entrancing a sort that +I have known young men from other parts of the country to fall in love +with a voice before they had seen its possessor and to remain in love +with the owner of it in spite of her distinct lack of beauty when +revealed in person. + +Those girls all dropped the "g"s at the end of their participles; they +habitually used double negatives, and, quite defiantly of dictionaries, +used Virginian locutions not sanctioned by authority. If challenged on +the subject their reply would have been that which John Esten Cooke gave +to an editor who wanted to strike a phrase out of one of his Virginia +romances, on the ground that it was not good English. "It's good +Virginian," he answered, "and for my purpose that is more important." + +But all such defects of speech--due not to ignorance but to a charming +wilfulness--were forgotten in the music of the voices that gave them +utterance. + +There are no such voices now, even in Virginia, I regret to say. +Not of their own fault, but because of contact with strangely altered +conditions, the altogether charming Virginia girls I sometimes meet +nowadays, have voices and intonations not unlike those of women in other +parts of the country, except that they preserve enough of the old lack +of emphasis upon the stronger syllables to render their speech often +difficult to understand. There is compensation for that in the gentle, +laughing readiness with which they repeat utterances not understood on +their first hearing. + + + + +XXIV + + +It was during the roseate years of the old Virginia life not long before +the war that I had my first and only serious experience of what is +variously and loosely called the "occult" and the "supernatural." + +It is only in answer to solicitation that I tell the story here as it +has been only in response to like solicitation that I have orally told +it before. + +In order that I may not be misunderstood, in order that I may not be +unjustly suspected of a credulity that does not belong to me, I wish to +say at the outset that I am by nature and by lifelong habit of mind a +skeptic. I believe in the natural order, in cause and effect, in the +material basis of psychological phenomena. I have no patience with the +mystical or the mysterious. I do not believe in the miraculous, the +supernatural, the occult--call it what you will. + +And yet the experience I am about to relate is literally true, and the +story of it a slavishly faithful record of facts. I make no attempt to +reconcile those facts with my beliefs or unbeliefs. I venture upon no +effort at explanation. I have set forth above my intellectual attitude +toward all such matters; I shall set forth the facts of this experience +with equal candor. If the reader finds the facts irreconcilable with my +intellectual convictions, I must leave him to judge as he may between +the two, without aid of mine. The facts are these: + +I was one of a house party, staying at one of the most hospitable +of Virginia mansions. I was by courtesy of Virginia clannishness +"cousin" to the mistress of the house, and when no house party was in +entertainment I was an intimate there, accustomed to go and come at +will and to reckon myself a member of the family by brevet. + +[Sidenote: The Story of the West Wing] + +At the time now considered, the house was unusually full, when a letter +came announcing the immediate coming of still other guests. In my close +intimacy with the mistress of the plantation I became aware of her +perplexity. She didn't know where and how to bestow the presently coming +guests. I suggested that I and some others should take ourselves away, a +suggestion which her hospitable soul rejected, the more particularly in +my case, perhaps, because I was actively planning certain entertainments +in which she was deeply interested. Suddenly it occurred to me that +during my long intimacy in the house I had never known anybody to occupy +the room or rooms which constituted the second story of the west wing of +the building. I asked why not bring that part of the spacious mansion +into use in this emergency, thinking that its idleness during all the +period of my intimacy there had been due only to the lack of need in a +house so large. + +"Cousin Mary," with a startled look of inquiry upon her face, glanced +at her husband, who sat with us alone on a piazza. + +"You may as well tell him the facts," he said in reply to the look. +"He won't talk." + +Then she told me the history of the room, explaining that she objected +to any talk about it because she dreaded the suspicion of superstition. +Briefly the story was that several generations earlier, an old man +almost blind, had died there; that during his last illness he had had +his lawyer prepare his will there; that he was too feeble, when the +lawyer finished, even to sign the document; that he placed it under his +pillow; that during the night his daughter abstracted and copied it, +changing only one clause in such fashion as to defeat the long cherished +purpose of the dying man; that she placed her new draft under the pillow +where the old one had been and that in the morning the nearly blind old +man executed that instead of the other. + +"Now I'm not superstitious, you know," said Cousin Mary very earnestly, +"but it is a fact that from that day to this there has been something +the matter with that room. During the time of my great uncle, who +brought me up, you know, and from whom I inherited the plantation, many +persons tried to sleep in it but none ever stayed there more than an +hour or two. They always fled in terror from the chamber, until at last +my uncle forbade any further attempt to occupy the room lest this should +come to be called a haunted house. Since I became mistress here three +persons have tried the thing, all of them with the same result." + +"It's stuff and nonsense," I interposed, "but what yarns did they tell?" + +"They one and all related the same singular experience," she answered, +"though neither of them knew what the experience of the others had +been." + +"What was it?" I asked with resolute incredulity. + +"Why, each of them went to the room in full confidence that nothing +would happen. Each went to bed and to sleep. After a while he waked to +find the whole room pervaded by a dim, yellowish gray or grayish yellow +light. Some of them used one combination of words and some the other, +but all agreed that the light had no apparent source, that it was +all-pervasive, that it was very dim at first, but that it steadily +increased until they fled in panic from its nameless terror. For ten +years we permitted no repetition of the experiment, but a year ago my +brother--he's an army officer, you know--insisted upon sleeping in the +room. He remained there longer than anybody else ever had done, but +between two and three o'clock in the morning he came down the stairs +with barely enough strength to cling to the balustrades, and in such +an ague fit as I never saw any one else endure in all my life. He had +served in the Florida swamps and was subject to agues, but for several +months before that he had been free from them. I suppose the terror +attacked his weakest point and brought the chills on again." + +[Sidenote: A Challenge to the Ghosts] + +"Did he have the same experience the rest had had?" I asked. + +"Yes, except that he had stayed longer than any of them and suffered +more." + +"Cousin Mary," I said, "I am going to sleep in that room to-night, with +your permission." + +"You can't have it," she answered. "I've seen too much of the terror to +permit a further trifling with it." + +"Then I'll sleep there without your permission," I answered. "I'll break +in if necessary, and I'll prove by a demonstration that nobody can +question, what nonsense all these imaginings have been." + +Cousin Mary was determined, but so was I, and at last she consented +to let me make the attempt. She and I decided to keep the matter to +ourselves, but of course it leaked out and spread among all the guests +in the house. I suppose the negro servants who were sent to make up the +bed and supply bath water told. At any rate my coming adventure was the +sole topic of conversation at the supper table that night. + +I seized upon the occasion to give a warning. + +"I have borrowed a six-shooter from our host," I announced, "and if I +see anything to shoot at to-night I shall shoot without challenging. So +I strongly advise you fellows not to attempt any practical jokes." + +The response convinced me that nothing of the kind was contemplated, but +to make sure, our host, who perhaps feared tragedy, exacted and secured +from each member of the company, old and young, male and female, a pledge +of honor that there should be no interference with my experiment, no +trespass upon my privacy. + +"With that pledge secured," I said, perhaps a trifle boastfully, "I +shall stay in that room all night no matter what efforts the spooks may +make to drive me out." + +It was about midnight, or nearly that, when I entered the room. It was +raining heavily without, and the wind was rattling the stout shutters of +the eight great windows of the room. + +I went to each of those windows and minutely examined it. They were +hung with heavy curtains of deep red, I remember, for I observed every +detail. Four of them were in the north and four in the south wall of the +wing. The eastern wall of the room was pierced only by the broad doorway +which opened at the head of the great stairs. The door was stoutly built +of oak, and provided with a heavy lock of iron with brass knobs. + +The western side of the room held a great open fireplace, from which a +paneled oaken wainscot extended entirely across the room and up to the +ceiling. Behind the wainscot on either side was a spacious closet which +I carefully explored with two lighted bedroom candles to show me that +the closets were entirely empty. + +Having completed my explorations I disrobed, double-locked the door, and +went to bed, first placing the six-shooter handily under my pillow. I +do not think I was excited even in the smallest degree. My pulses were +calm, my imagination no more active than a young man's must be, and my +brain distinctly sleepy. The great, four-poster bed was inexpressibly +comfortable, and the splash and patter of the rain as it beat upon +the window blinds was as soothing as a lullaby. I forgot all about the +experiment in which I was engaged, all about ghosts and their ways, +and went to sleep. + +[Sidenote: The Yellow-Gray Light] + +After a time I suddenly waked to find the room dimly pervaded by +that yellowish-gray or grayish-yellow light that had so disturbed +the slumbers of others in that apartment. My awakening was so complete +that all my faculties were alert at once. I felt under my pillow and +found my weapon there. I looked to its chambers and found the charges +undisturbed. The caps were in place, and I felt myself armed for any +encounter. + +But I had resolved in advance, to be deliberate, self-possessed, and +calm, whatever might happen, and I kept faith with myself. Instead of +hastily springing from the bed I lay there for a time watching the weird +light as it slowly, almost imperceptibly, increased in intensity, and +trying to decide whether they were right who had described as "yellowish +gray" or they who had called it "grayish yellow." I decided that the +gray distinctly predominated, but in the meanwhile the steady increase +in the light and in its pervasiveness warned me, and I slipped out of +bed, taking my pistol with me, to the dressing case on the other side +of the room--the side on which the great oaken door opened. + +The rain was still beating heavily against the window blinds, and the +strange, yellowish gray light was still slowly but steadily increasing. +I was resolute, however, in my determination not to be disturbed or +hurried by any manifestation. In response to that determination I +glanced at the mirror and decided that the mysterious light was +sufficient for the purpose, and I resolved I would shave. + +Having done so, I bathed--a little hurriedly, perhaps, because of the +rapidly increasing light. I was deliberate, however, in donning my +clothing, and not until I was fully dressed did I turn to leave the +room. Glancing at every object in it--all now clearly visible, though +somewhat shadowy in outline--I decided at last upon my retreat. I turned +the key, and the bolt in the lock shot back with sound enough to startle +calmer nerves than mine. + +I turned the knob, but the door refused to open! + +For a moment I was puzzled. Then I remembered that it was a double lock. +A second later I was out of that chamber, and the oaken door of it was +securely shut behind me. + +I went down the great stairway, slowly, deliberately, in pursuance of my +resolution; I entered the large hallway below, and thence passed into +the oak-wainscoted dining-room, where I sat down to breakfast with the +rest of the company. + +It was nine o'clock of a dark, rainy morning. + + + + +XXV + + +In Virginia at the time of which I am writing, everybody, men, women, +and children, read books and talked about them. The annual output of +the publishers was trifling then, as compared with the present flood of +new books, and as a consequence everybody read all the new books and +magazines, and everybody talked about them as earnestly as of politics +or religion. Still more diligently they read old books, the classics of +the language. Literature was regarded as a vital force in human affairs, +and books which in our time might relieve the tedium of a railway +journey and be forgotten at its end, were read with minute attention and +discussed as earnestly as if vital interests had depended upon an +accurate estimation of their quality. + +As a consequence, authorship was held in strangely glamorous esteem. I +beg pardon of the English language for making that word "glamorous"; it +expresses my thought, as no other term does, and it carries its meaning +on its face. + +[Sidenote: The "Solitary Horseman"] + +I remember that in my student days in Richmond there came a visitor +who had written one little book--about Rufus Choate, I think, though +I can find no trace of it in bibliographies. I suspect that he was a +very small author, indeed, in Boston, whence he came, but he was an +AUTHOR--we always thought that word in capital letters--and so he was +dined and wined, and entertained, and not permitted to pay his own hotel +bills or cab charges, or anything else. + +Naturally a people so disposed made much of their own men of letters, +of whom there was quite a group--if we reckon their qualifications as +generously as the Virginians did. Among them were three at least whose +claim to be regarded as authors was beyond dispute. These were John +Esten Cooke, John R. Thompson, and the English novelist, G. P. R. James, +who at that time was serving as British consul at Richmond. And there +was Mrs. Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie, who played the part of literary queen +right royally. + +Mr. James was a conspicuous figure in Richmond. He was a robust +Englishman in his late fifties, rather short and rather stout. +The latter impression was aided by the fact that in his afternoon +saunterings about the town, he usually wore a sort of roundabout, a +coat that ended at his waist and had no tails to it. To the ribald +and the jocular he was known as "the Solitary Horseman" because of his +habit of introducing novels or chapters with a lonely landscape in which +a "solitary horseman" was the chief or only figure. To those of us who +were disposed to be deferential he was known as "the Prince Regent," +in memory of the jest perpetrated by one of the wits of the town. +Mr. James's three initials, which prompted John G. Saxe to say that +he "got at the font his strongest claims to be reckoned a man of +letters"--stood for "George Payne Rainsford," but he rarely used anything +more than the initials--G. P. R. When a certain voluble gentlewoman asked +Tom August what the initials stood for he promptly replied: + +"Why, George Prince Regent, of course. And his extraordinary courtesy +fully justifies his sponsors in baptism for having given him the name." + +The lady lost no time in telling everybody of the interesting fact--and +the novelist became "Prince Regent James" to all his Richmond friends +from that hour forth. + +John R. Thompson was the editor of the _Southern Literary Messenger_. +Scholar, poet, and man of most gentle mind, it is not surprising that +in later years, when the old life was war-wrecked, Mr. William Cullen +Bryant made him his intimate friend and appointed him to the office of +literary editor of the _Evening Post_, which Mr. Bryant always held to +be the supreme distinction possible to an American man of letters. I +being scarcely more than a boy studying law in the late fifties, knew +him only slightly, but my impression of him at that time was, that with +very good gifts and a certain charm of literary manner, he was not yet +fully grown up in mind. He sought to model himself, I think, upon his +impressions of N. P. Willis, and his aspiration to be recognized as a +brilliant man of society was quite as marked as his literary ambition. +He was sensitive to slights and quite morbidly apprehensive that those +about him might think the less of him because his father was a hatter. +Socially at that time and in that country men in trade of any kind were +regarded as rather inferior to those of the planter class. + +When I knew Thompson better in after years in New York he had outgrown +that sort of nonsense, and was a far more agreeable companion because +of the fact. + +[Sidenote: John Esten Cooke--Gentleman] + +Chief among the literary men of Richmond was John Esten Cooke. His novel +"The Virginia Comedians" had made him famous in his native state, and +about the time I write of--1858-9--he supplemented it with another story +of like kind, "Henry St. John, Gentleman." As I remember them these were +rather immature creations, depending more upon a certain grace of manner +for their attractiveness than upon any more substantial merit. Certainly +they did not compare in vigor or originality with "Surrey of Eagle's +Nest" or any other of the novels their author wrote after his mind had +been matured by strenuous war experience. But at the time of which I +write they gave him a literary status such as no other Virginian of the +time could boast, and for a living he wrote ceaselessly for magazines +and the like. + +The matter of getting a living was a difficult one to him then, for the +reason that with a pride of race which some might think quixotic, he had +burdened his young life with heavy obligations not his own. His father +had died leaving debts that his estate could not pay. As the younger man +got nothing by inheritance, except the traditions of honor that belonged +to his race, he was under no kind of obligation with respect to those +debts. But with a chivalric loyalty such as few men have ever shown, +John Esten Cooke made his dead father's debts his own and little by +little discharged them with the earnings of a toilsome literary +activity. + +His pride was so sensitive that he would accept no help in this, though +friends earnestly pressed loans upon him when he had a payment to meet +and his purse was well-nigh empty. At such times he sometimes made his +dinner on crackers and tea for many days together, although he knew he +would be a more than welcome guest at the lavish tables of his many +friends in Richmond. It was a point of honor with him never to accept +a dinner or other invitation when he was financially unable to dine +abundantly at his own expense. + +The reviewer of one of my own stories of the old Virginia life, not +long ago informed his readers that of course there never were men so +sensitively and self-sacrificingly honorable as those I had described in +the book, though my story presented no such extreme example of the man +of honor as that illustrated in Mr. Cooke's person and career. + +I knew him intimately at that time, his immediate friends being my own +kindred. Indeed, I passed one entire summer in the same hospitable house +with him. + +Some years after the war our acquaintance was renewed, and from that +time until his death he made my house his abiding place whenever he had +occasion to be in New York. Time had wrought no change in his nature. He +remained to the end the high-spirited, duty-loving man of honor that I +had known in my youth; he remained also the gentle, affectionate, and +unfailingly courteous gentleman he had always been. + +He went into the war as an enlisted man in a Richmond battery, but was +soon afterward appointed an officer on the staff of the great cavalier, +J. E. B. Stuart. + +"I wasn't born to be a soldier," he said to me in after years. "Of +course I can stand bullets and shells and all that, without flinching, +just as any man must if he has any manhood in him, and as for hardship +and starvation, why, a man who has self-control can endure them when +duty demands it, but I never liked the business of war. Gold lace on +my coat always made me feel as if I were a child tricked out in red +and yellow calico with turkey feathers in my headgear to add to the +gorgeousness. There is nothing intellectual about fighting. It is the +fit work of brutes and brutish men. And in modern war, where men are +organized in masses and converted into insensate machines, there is +really nothing heroic or romantic or in any way calculated to appeal to +the imagination. As an old soldier, you know how small a part personal +gallantry plays in the machine work of war nowadays." + +[Sidenote: How Jeb Stuart Made a Major] + +Nevertheless, John Esten Cooke was a good soldier and a gallant one. At +Manassas I happened to see him at a gun which he was helping to work and +which we of the cavalry were supporting. He was powder-blackened and he +had lost both his coat and his hat in the eagerness of his service at +the piece; but during a brief pause in the firing he greeted me with a +rammer in his hand and all the old cheeriness in his face and voice. + +On Stuart's staff he distinguished himself by a certain laughing +nonchalance under fire, and by his eager readiness to undertake Stuart's +most perilous missions. It was in recognition of some specially daring +service of that kind that Stuart gave him his promotion, and Cooke used +to tell with delight of the way in which the great boyish cavalier did +it. + +"You're about my size, Cooke," Stuart said, "but you're not so broad in +the chest." + +"Yes, I am," answered Cooke. + +"Let's see if you are," said Stuart, taking off his coat as if stripping +for a boxing match. "Try that on." + +Cooke donned the coat with its three stars on the collar, and found it +a fit. + +"Cut off two of the stars," commanded Stuart, "and wear the coat to +Richmond. Tell the people in the War Department to make you a major and +send you back to me in a hurry. I'll need you to-morrow." + +When I visited him years afterwards at The Briars, his home in the +Shenandoah Valley, that coat which had once been Stuart's, hung upon the +wall, as the centerpiece of a collection of war relics, cherished with +pride of sentiment but without a single memory that savored of animosity. +The gentle, courteous, kindly man of letters who cherished these things +as mementoes of a terrible epoch had as little in his bearing to suggest +the temper of the war time as had his old charger who grazed upon the +lawn, exempt from all work as one who had done his duty in life and was +entitled to ease and comfort as his reward. + + + + +XXVI + + +The old life of the Old Dominion is a thing of the dead past, a memory +merely, and one so different from anything that exists anywhere on earth +now, that every reflection of it seems the fabric of a dream. But its +glamor holds possession of my mind even after the lapse of half a +century of years, and the greatest joy I have known in life has come +from my efforts to depict it in romances that are only a veiled record +of facts. + +It was not a life that our modern notions of economics can approve, but +it ministered to human happiness, to refinement of mind, to culture, and +to the maintenance of high ideals of manhood and womanhood. It bred a +race of men who spoke the truth, lived uprightly, and met every duty +without a shadow of flinching from personal consequences. It reared a +race of women fit to be the wives and mothers of such men. Under its +spell culture was deemed of more account than mere education; living was +held in higher regard than getting a living; refinement meant more than +display; comfort more than costliness, and kindliness in every word and +act more than all else. + +[Sidenote: A Plantation Modernized] + +I know an old plantation where for generations a family of brave men and +fair women dwelt in peace and ministered in gracious, hospitable ways to +the joy of others. Under their governance there was never any thought of +exploiting the resources of the plantation for the sake of a potential +wealth that seemed superfluous to people of contented mind who had +enough. The plantation supported itself and all who dwelt upon it--black +and white. It educated its sons and daughters and enabled them to +maintain a generous hospitality. More than this they did not want or +dream of wanting. + +There are twenty-two families living on that plantation now, most of +them growing rich or well-to-do by the cultivation of the little truck +farms into which the broad acres have been parceled out. The woodlands +that used to shelter the wild flowers and furnish fuel for the great +open fireplaces, have been stripped to furnish kindling wood for kitchen +ranges in Northern cities. Even the stately locust trees that had shaded +the lawns about the old mansion have been converted into policemen's +clubs and the like, and potatoes grow in the soil where greensward used +to carpet the house grounds. + +Economically the change means progress and prosperity, of course, but to +me the price paid for it seems out of proportion to the goods secured. +But then I am old-fashioned, and perhaps, in spite of the strenuous life +I have led, I am a sentimentalist,--and sentiment is scorned as silly in +these days. + +There is another aspect of the matter that deserves a word, and I have a +mind to write that word even at risk of anathema from all the altars of +sociology. At seventy years of age one is less sensitive to criticism +than at thirty. + +All the children of the twenty-two truck farming families on that old +plantation go to school. They are taught enough to make out bills, add +up columns of figures, and write business letters to their commission +merchants. That is what education means now on that plantation and on +hundreds of others that have undergone a like metamorphosis. No thought +or dream of culture enters into the scheme. Under the old system +rudimentary instruction was merely a stepping stone by which to climb +up to the education of culture. Under the theories of economics it is +a great gain thus to substitute rudimentary instruction for all in the +place of real education and culture for a class. But is it gain? Is the +world better off with ten factory hands who can read, write, and cipher, +than with one Thomas Jefferson or George Wythe or Samuel Adams or +Chancellor Livingston who knows how to think? Are ten factory girls or +farmers' wives the full equivalent of one cultured gentlewoman presiding +gracefully and graciously over a household in which the amenities of +life are more considered than its economics? + +Meanwhile the education of the race of men and women who once dwelt +there has correspondingly lost its culture aspect. The young men of that +old family are now bred to be accountants, clerks, men of business, who +have no time to read books and no training that leads to the habit of +thinking; the young women are stenographers, telegraph operators, and +the like. They are estimable young persons, and in their way charming. +But is the world richer or poorer for the change? + +It is not for me to answer; I am prejudiced, perhaps. + +However it may be, the old life is a thing completely dead and done +for, and the only compensation is such as the new affords. Everything +that was distinctive in that old life was burned out by the gunpowder +of the Civil War. Even the voices of the Virginia women--once admired +throughout the land--are changed. They still say "right" for "very," and +"reckon" for "think," and their enunciation is still marked by a certain +lack of emphasis, but it is the voice of the peacock in which they speak, +not that of the dove. + +[Sidenote: An Old Fogy's Questionings] + +Whenever I ask myself the questions set down above, I find it necessary +to the chastening of my mind to recite my creed: + +I believe that every human being born into this world has a right to do +as he pleases, so long as in doing as he pleases he does not interfere +with the equal right of any other human being to do as he pleases; + +I believe in the unalienable right of all men to life, liberty, and the +pursuit of happiness; + +I believe that it is the sole legitimate function of government to +maintain the conditions of liberty and to let men alone. + +Nevertheless, I cannot escape a tender regret when I reflect upon what +we have sacrificed to the god Progress. I suppose it is for the good +of all that we have factories now to do the work that in my boyhood +was done by the village carpenter, tanner, shoemaker, hatter, tailor, +tin-smith, and the rest; but I do not think a group of factory "hands," +dwelling in repulsively ugly tenement buildings and dependent upon +servitude to the trade union as a means of escaping enslavement by an +employing corporation, mean as much of human happiness or signify as +much of helpful citizenship as did the home-owning, independent village +workmen of the past. In the same way I do not think the substitution +of a utilitarian smattering for all for the education and culture +of a class has been altogether a gain. As I see young men flocking by +thousands to our universities, where in earlier times there were scant +hundreds in attendance, I cannot avoid the thought that most of these +thousands have just enough education of the drill sort to pass the +entrance examinations and that they go to the universities, not for +education of the kind that brings enlargement of mind, but for technical +training in arts that promise money as the reward of their practice. +And I cannot help wondering if the change which relegates the Arts +course to a subordinate place in the university scheme is altogether a +change for the better. Economically it is so, of course. But economics, +it seems to me, ought not to be all of human life. Surely men and women +were made for something more than mere earning capacity. + +But all this is blasphemy against the great god Progress and heresy to +the gospel of Success. Its voice should be hushed in a land where fame +is awarded not to those who think but to those who organize and exploit; +where men of great intellect feel that they cannot afford to serve the +country when the corporations offer them so much higher salaries; and +where it is easier to control legislation and administration by purchase +than by pleading. + +The old order changed, both at the North and at the South when the war +came, and if the change is more marked in the South than at the North it +is only because the South lost in the struggle for supremacy and +suffered desolation in its progress. + + + + +XXVII + + +I have elsewhere pointed out in print that Virginia did not want war, +or favor secession. Her people, who had already elected the avowed +emancipationist, John Letcher, to be their governor, voted by heavy +majorities against withdrawal from the Union. In her constitutional +convention, called to consider what the old mother state should do after +the Cotton States had set up a Southern Confederacy, the dominant force +was wielded by such uncompromising opponents of secession as Jubal A. +Early, Williams C. Wickham, Henry A. Wise, and others, who when war came +were among the most conspicuous fighters on the Southern side. It is +important to remember that, as Farragut said, Virginia was "dragooned +out of the Union," in spite of the abiding unwillingness of her people. + +[Sidenote: Under Jeb Stuart's Command] + +I was a young lawyer then, barely twenty-one years of age. I spoke +and voted--my first vote--against the contemplated madness. But in +common with the Virginians generally, I enlisted as soon as war became +inevitable, and from the 9th of April, 1861, to the 9th of April, +1865--the date of Lee's surrender--I was a soldier in active service. + +I was intensely in earnest in the work of the soldier. As I look back +over my seventy years of life, I find that I have been intensely in +earnest in whatever I have had to do. Such things are temperamental, and +one has no more control over his temperament than over the color of his +eyes and hair. + +Being intensely in earnest in the soldier's work, I enjoyed doing it, +just as I have keenly enjoyed doing every other kind of work that has +fallen to me during a life of unusually varied activity. + +I went out in a company of horse, which after brief instruction at +Ashland, was assigned to Stuart's First Regiment of Virginia Cavalry. + +The regiment was composed entirely of young Virginians who, if not +actually "born in the saddle," had climbed into it so early and lived in +it so constantly that it had become the only home they knew. I suppose +there was never gathered together anywhere on earth a body of horsemen +more perfectly masters of their art than were the men of that First +Regiment, the men whom Stuart knew by their names and faces then, +and whose names and faces he never afterward forgot, for the reason, +as he often said to us, that "You First Regiment fellows made me a +Major-General." Even after he rose to higher rank and had scores of +thousands of cavaliers under his command, his habit was, when he wanted +something done of a specially difficult and dangerous sort, to order a +detail from his old First Regiment to do it for him. + +The horsemanship of that regiment remained till the end a model for +emulation by all the other cavalry, and, in view of the demonstrations +of it in the campaign preceding Manassas (Bull Run) it is no wonder that +when the insensate panic seized upon McDowell's army in that battle the +cry went up from the disintegrated mob of fugitives that they could not +be expected to stand against "thirty thousand of the best horsemen since +the days of the Mamelukes." The "thirty thousand" estimate was a gross +exaggeration, Stuart's command numbering in fact only six or seven +hundred, but the likening of its horsemanship to that of the Mamelukes +was justified by the fact. + +As a robust young man who had never known a headache I keenly enjoyed +the life we cavalrymen led that summer. It was ceaselessly active--for +Stuart's vocabulary knew not the word "rest"--and it was all out of +doors in about as perfect a summer climate as the world anywhere +affords. + +We had some tents, in camp, in which to sleep after we got tired of +playing poker for grains of corn; but we were so rarely in camp that +after a little while we forgot that we owned canvas dwellings, and I +cannot remember, if I ever knew, what became of them at last. For the +greater part of the time we slept on the ground out somewhere within +musket shot of the enemy's lines, and our waking hours were passed in +playing "tag" with the enemy's scouting parties, encountered in our +own impertinent intrusions into the lines of our foeman. A saddle was +emptied now and then, but that was only a forfeit of the game, and the +game went on. + +[Sidenote: The Life of the Cavaliers] + +It must have been a healthy life that we led. I well remember that +during that summer my company never had a man on the sick list. When +the extraordinary imbecility of the Confederate commissary department +managed to get rations of flour to us, we wetted it with water from +any stream or brook that might be at hand, added a little salt, if we +happened to have any, to the putty-like mass, fried the paste in bacon +fat, and ate it as bread. According to all the teachings of culinary +science the thing ought to have sent all of us to grass with +indigestions of a violent sort; but in fact we enjoyed it, and went on +our scouting ways utterly unconscious of the fact that we were possessed +of stomachs, until the tempting succulence of half-ripened corn in +somebody's field set appetite a-going again and we feasted upon the +grain without the bother of cooking it at all. + +Of course, we carried no baggage with us during the days and weeks when +we were absent from camp. We had a blanket apiece, somewhere, we didn't +know where. When our shirts were soiled we took them off and washed them +in the nearest brook, and if orders of activity came before they were +dried, we put them on wet and rode away in full confidence that they +would dry on our persons as easily as on a clothesline. + +One advantage that I found in this neglect of impedimenta was that I +could always carry a book or two inside my flannel shirt, and I feel now +that I owe an appreciable part of such culture as I have acquired to the +reading done by bivouac fires at night and in the recesses of friendly +cornfields by day. + +There were many stories current among the good women at home in those +days of men's lives being saved by Bibles carried in their clothes and +opportunely serving as shields against bullets aimed at their wearers' +hearts. I do not know how much truth there may have been in these +interesting narratives, nor have I any trustworthy information upon +which to base an estimate of the comparative armorplate efficacy of +Bibles and other books. But one day, as I well remember, the impact of +a bullet nearly knocked me off my horse, and I found afterward that the +missile had deeply imbedded itself in a copy of "Tristram Shandy" which +lay in the region of my transverse colon. A Bible of equal thickness +would doubtless have served as well, but it was the ribald romance of +Laurence Sterne that stopped a bullet and saved my life that day. + +It may be worth while to add that the young woman from whom I had +borrowed the book never would accept the new copy I offered to provide +in exchange for the wounded one. + +This cavalry service abounded in adventures, most of them of no great +consequence, but all of them interesting at the time to those who shared +in them. It was an exciting game and a fascinating one to a vigorous +young man with enough imagination to appreciate it as I did. I enjoyed +it intensely at the time and, as the memory of it comes back to me now, +I find warmth enough still in my blood to make me wish it were all to do +over again, with youth and health and high spirits as an accompaniment. + +[Sidenote: Delights of the War Game] + +War is "all hell," as General Sherman said, and as a writer during many +years of peace, I have endeavored to do my part in making an end of it. +I have printed much in illustration of the fact that war is a cruel, +barbarous, inhuman device for settling controversies that should be +settled and could be settled by more civilized means; I have shown forth +its excessive costliness and its unspeakable cruelty to the women and +children involved as its victims. I have no word of that to take back. +But, as I remember the delights of the war game, I cannot altogether +regret them. I cannot shut my eyes to the fact that war, with all its +inhuman cruelty, its devastation, and its slaughter, calls forth some of +the noblest qualities of human nature, and breeds among men chivalric +sentiments that it is well worth while to cherish. + +And the inspiration of it is something that is never lost to the soul +that has felt it. When the Spanish-American troubles came, and we all +thought they portended a real war instead of the ridiculous "muss" that +followed, the old spirit was so strong upon me that I enlisted a company +of a hundred and twenty-four men and appealed to both the state and the +national governments for the privilege of sharing in the fighting. + +So much for psychology. + + + + +XXVIII + + +Among my experiences in the cavalry service was one which had a sequel +that interested me. + +Stuart had been promoted and Fitzhugh Lee, or "Fitz Lee" as we called +him, had succeeded to the command of the First Regiment. + +One day he led a party of us on a scouting expedition into the enemy's +lines. In the course of it we charged through a strong infantry picket +numbering forty or fifty men. As our half company dashed through, my +horse was shot through the head and sank under me. My comrades rode on +and I was left alone in the midst of the disturbed but still belligerent +picket men. I had from the first made up my mind that I would never +become a prisoner of war. I had stomach for fighting; I was ready to +endure hardship; I had no shrinking from fatigue, privation, exposure, +or anything else that falls to the lot of the soldier. But I was +resolute in my determination that I would never "go to jail"--a phrase +which fitly represented my conception of capture by the enemy. + +So, when my horse dropped me there in the middle of a strong picket +force, I drew both my pistols, took to a friendly tree, and set to work +firing at every head or body I could see, with intent to sell my life +for the very largest price I could make it command. + +This had lasted for less than two minutes when my comrades, pursued by +a strong body of Federal cavalry, dashed back again through the picket +post. + +As they came on at a full run Fitz Lee saw me, and, slackening speed +slightly, he thrust out his foot and held out his hand--a cavalry trick +in which all of us had been trained. Responding, I seized his hand, +placed my foot upon his and swung to his crupper. A minute later a +supporting company came to our assistance and the pursuing cavalrymen +in blue retired. + +The incident was not at all an unusual one, but the memory of it came +back to me years afterwards under rather peculiar circumstances. In 1889 +there was held in New York a spectacular celebration of the centennial +of Washington's inauguration as president. A little company of us who +had organized ourselves into a society known as "The Virginians," gave +a banquet to the commissioners appointed to represent Virginia on that +occasion. It so fell out that I was called upon to preside at the +banquet, and General Fitzhugh Lee, then Governor of Virginia, sat, of +course, at my right. + +Somewhere between the oysters and the entree I turned to him and said: + +"It seemed a trifle odd to me, General, and distinctly un-Virginian, to +greet you as a stranger when we were presented to each other a little +while ago. Of course, to you I mean nothing except a name heard in +introduction; but you saved my life once and to me this meeting means +a good deal." + +[Sidenote: Fitz Lee] + +In answer to his inquiries I began to tell the story. Suddenly he +interrupted in his impetuous way, asking: + +"Are you the man I took on my crupper that day down there by +Dranesville?" + +And with that he pushed back his plate and rising nearly crushed my hand +in friendly grasp. Then he told me stories of other meetings with his +old troopers,--stories dramatic, pathetic, humorous,--until I had need +of General Pryor's reminder that I was presiding and that there were +duties for me to do, however interesting I might find Fitzhugh Lee's +conversation to be. + +From that time until his death I saw much of General Lee, and learned +much of his character and impulses, which I imagine are wholly undreamed +of by those who encountered him only in his official capacities. He +had the instincts of the scholar, without the scholar's opportunity to +indulge them. "It is a matter of regret," he said to me in Washington +one day, "that family tradition has decreed that all Lees shall be +soldiers. I have often regretted that I was sent to West Point instead +of being educated in a more scholarly way. You know I have Carter blood +and Mason blood in my veins, and the Carters and Masons have had +intellects worth cultivating." + +I replied by quoting from Byron's "Mazeppa" the lines: + + "'Ill betide + The school wherein I learned to ride.' + Quoth Charles: 'Old Hetman, wherefore so, + Since thou hast learned the art so well?'" + +Instantly he responded by continuing the quotation: + + "''Twere long to tell, + And we have many a league to go + With every now and then a blow;' + +That is to say, I'm still Consul-General at Havana, and I have an +appointment to see the President on official business this morning." + +As we were sitting in my rooms at the Arlington and not in his quarters +at the Shoreham, this was not a hint of dismissal, but an apology for +leaving. + +The conversation awakened surprise in my mind, and ever since I have +wondered how many of the world's great men of action have regretted +that they were not men of thought instead, and how far the regret was +justified. If Fitz Lee had been educated at Yale or Harvard, what place +would he have occupied in the world? Would he have become a Virginian +lawyer and perhaps a judge? or what else? Conjecture in such a case is +futile. "If" is a word of very uncertain significance. + +The story told in the foregoing paragraphs reminds me of another +experience. + +When the war ended it became very necessary that I should go to Indiana +with the least possible delay. But at Richmond I was stopped by a +peremptory military order that forbade ex-Confederates to go North. The +order had been issued in consequence of Mr. Lincoln's assassination, and +the disposition to enforce it rigidly was very strong. + +In my perplexity I made my way into the office of the Federal chief of +staff of that department. There I encountered a stalwart and impressive +officer, six feet, four or five inches high--or perhaps even an inch +or two more than that--who listened with surprising patience while I +explained my necessity to him. When I had done, he placed his hand upon +my shoulder in comradely fashion and said: + +"You didn't have anything to do with Mr. Lincoln's assassination. I'll +give you a special pass to go North as soon as you please." + +I thanked him and took my leave. + +[Sidenote: A Friendly Old Foe] + +In 1907--forty-two years later--some one in the Authors Club introduced +me to "our newest member, Mr. Curtis." + +I glanced at the towering form, and recognized it instantly. + +"_Mr._ Curtis be hanged," I answered, "I know General Newton Martin +Curtis, and I have good reason to remember him. He is the man who let +me out of Richmond." + +Since that time I have learned to know General Curtis well, and to +cherish him as a friend and club comrade as heartily as I honored him +before for his gallantry in war and for his ceaseless and most fruitful +efforts since the war in behalf of reconciliation and brotherhood +between the men who once confronted each other with steel between. +Senator Daniel of Virginia has written of him that no other man has +done so much as he in that behalf, and I have reason to know that the +statement is not an exaggerated one. The kindliness he showed to me in +Richmond when we were utter strangers and had only recently been foemen, +inspired all his relations with the Virginians during all the years +that followed, and there is no man whose name to-day awakens a readier +response of good will among Virginians than does his. + + + + +XXIX + + +Late in the autumn of that first year of war there was reason to +believe that the armies in Virginia were about to retire into the dull +lethargy of winter-quarters' life, and that the scene of active war +was to be transferred to the coast of South Carolina. The Federals +had concentrated heavy forces there and in a preparatory campaign had +seized upon the Sea Islands and their defensive works at Beaufort and +elsewhere. General Lee had already been sent thither to command and +defend the coast, and there seemed no doubt that an active winter +campaign was to occur in that region. I wanted to have a part in it, +and to that end I sought and secured a transfer to a battery of field +artillery which was under orders for the South. + +As a matter of fact, the active campaign never came, and for many moons +we led the very idlest life down there that soldiers in time of war ever +led anywhere. + +But the service, idle as it was, played greater havoc in our ranks than +the most ceaseless battling could have done. + +For example, we were sent one day from Charleston across the Ashley +river, to defend a bridge over Wappoo Cut. We had a hundred and eight +men on duty--all well and vigorous. One week later eight of them were +dead, eight barely able to answer to roll call, and all the rest in +hospital. In the meanwhile we had not fired a gun or caught sight of +an enemy. + +On another occasion we encamped in a delightful but pestilential spot, +and for ten days afterward our men died at the rate of from two to six +every twenty-four hours. + +During the term of our service on that coast we were only once engaged +in what could be called a battle. That was at Pocotaligo on the 22nd of +October, 1862. In point of numbers engaged it was a very small battle, +indeed, but it was the very hottest fight I was ever in, not excepting +any of the tremendous struggles in the campaign of 1864 in Virginia. My +battery went into that fight with fifty-four men and forty-five horses. +We fought at pistol-shot range all day, and came out of the struggle +with a tally of thirty-three men killed and wounded, and with only +eighteen horses alive--all of them wounded but one. + +General Beauregard with his own hand presented the battery a battle +flag and authorized an inscription on it in memory of the event. In all +that we rejoiced with as much enthusiasm as a company of ague-smitten +wretches could command, but it is no wonder that our Virginia +mountaineers took on a new lease of life when at last we were ordered +to rejoin the Army of Northern Virginia, as a part of Longstreet's +artillery. + + + + +XXX + + +[Sidenote: Left Behind] + +At the end of the campaign of 1863 we found ourselves unhorsed. +We had guns that we knew how to use, and caissons full of ammunition, +but we had no horses to draw either the guns or the caissons. So +when Longstreet was ordered south to bear a part in the campaign of +Chickamauga, we were left behind. After a time, during which we were +like the dog in the express car who had "chawed up his tag," we were +assigned for the winter to General Lindsay Walker's command--the +artillery of A. P. Hill's corps. + +We belonged to none of the battalions there, and therefore had no field +officers through whom to apply for decent treatment. For thirteen wintry +days we lay at Lindsay's Turnout, with no rations except a meager dole +of cornmeal. Then one day a yoke of commissary oxen, starved into a +condition of hopeless anemia, became stalled in the mud near our camp. +By some hook or crook we managed to buy those wrecks of what had once +been oxen. We butchered them, and after twenty-four or thirty-six hours +of continual stewing, we had meat again. + +Belonging to no battalion in the corps to which we were attached, we +were a battery "with no rights that anybody was bound to respect," and +presently the fact was emphasized. We were appointed to be the provost +company of the corps. That is to say, we had to build guardhouses and +do all the duties incident to the care of military prisoners. + +The arrangement brought welcome occupation to me. As Sergeant-Major I +had the executive management of the military prisons and of everything +pertaining to them. As a lawyer who could charge no fees without a +breach of military etiquette, I was called upon to defend, before the +courts-martial, all the more desperate criminals under our care. These +included murderers, malingerers, robbers, deserters, and men guilty of +all the other crimes possible in that time and country. They included no +assailants of women. I would not have defended such in any case, and had +there been such our sentinels would have made quick work of their +disposal. + +[Sidenote: A Gratuitous Law Practice] + +The rest, as I was convinced, were guilty, every man of them. But +equally I was convinced that a court-martial, if left to deal with +them in its own way, would condemn them whether guilty or not. To a +court-martial, as a rule, the accusation--in the case of a private +soldier--is conclusive and final. If not, then a very little +evidence--admissible or not--is sufficient to confirm it. It is the +sole function of counsel before a court-martial to do the very little +he can to secure a reasonably fair trial, to persuade the officers +constituting the court that there is a difference between admissible +evidence and testimony that should not be received at all, and finally, +to put in a written plea at the end which may direct the attention of +the reviewing officers higher up to any unfairness or injustice done in +the course of the trial. Theoretically a court-martial is bound by the +accepted rules of evidence and by all other laws relating to the conduct +of criminal trials; but practically the court-martial, in time of war at +least, is bound by nothing. It is a tribunal organized to convict, and +its proceedings closely resemble those of a vigilance committee. + +But the proceedings of every court-martial must be reduced to writing +and approved or disapproved by authorities "higher up." Sometimes those +authorities higher up have some glimmering notion of law and justice, +and it is in reliance upon that chance that lawyers chiefly depend in +defending men before courts-martial. + +But no man is entitled to counsel before a court-martial. It is only +on sufferance that the counsel can appear at all, and he is liable to +peremptory dismissal at any moment during the trial. + +It was under these conditions that I undertook the defense of + + TOM COLLINS + +Tom was an old jailbird. He had been pardoned out of the Virginia +penitentiary on condition that he would enlist--for his age was one +year greater, according to his account of it, than that at which the +conscription law lost its force. Tom had been a trifle less than two +months in service when he was caught trying to desert to the enemy. +Conviction on such a charge at that period of the war meant death. + +In response to a humble request I was permitted to appear before the +court-martial as Tom Collins's counsel. My intrusion was somewhat +resented as a thing that tended to delay in a perfectly clear case, when +the court had a world of business before it, and my request was very +grudgingly granted. + +I managed, unluckily, to antagonize the court still further at the +very outset. I found that Tom Collins's captain--who had preferred the +charges against him--was a member of the court that was to try him. +Against that indecency I protested, and in doing so perhaps I used +stronger language than was advisable. The officer concerned, flushed +and angry, asked me if I meant to impugn his honor and integrity. +I answered, in hot blood: + +"That depends upon whether you continue to sit as judge in a case in +which you are the accuser, or whether you have the decency to retire +from the court until the hearing in this case is ended." + +"Are you a man responsible for his words?" he flashed back in reply. + +"Entirely so," I answered. "When this thing is over I will afford you +any opportunity you like, captain, to avenge your honor and to wreak +satisfaction. At present I have a duty to do toward my client, and a +part of that duty is to insist that you shall withdraw from the court +during his trial and not sit as a judge in a case in which you are the +accuser. After that my captain or any other officer of the battery to +which I belong will act for me and receive any communication you may +choose to send." + +At this point the presiding officer of the court ordered the room +cleared "while the court deliberates." + +Half an hour later I was admitted again to the courtroom to hear the +deliberate judgment of the court that it was entirely legitimate and +proper for Tom's captain to sit in his case. + +[Sidenote: Court Martial Evidence] + +Then we proceeded with the trial. The proof was positive that Tom +Collins had been caught ten miles in front, endeavoring to make his +way into the enemy's lines. + +In answer, I called the court's attention to the absence of any proof +that Tom Collins was a soldier. There are only three ways in which a man +can become a soldier, namely, by voluntary enlistment, by conscription, +or by receiving pay. Tom Collins was above the conscription age and +therefore not a conscript. He had not been two months in service, and by +his captain's admission, had not received soldier's pay. There remained +only voluntary enlistment, and, I pointed out, there was no proof of +that before the court. + +Thereupon the room was cleared again for consultation, and a little +later the court adjourned till the next morning. + +When it reassembled the judge advocate triumphantly presented a telegram +from Governor Letcher, in answer to one sent to him. It read: + +"Yes. I pardoned Collins out of penitentiary on condition of +enlistment." + +Instantly I objected to the reception of the despatch as evidence. There +was no proof that it had in fact come from Governor Letcher; it was not +made under oath; and finally, the accused man was not confronted by his +accuser and permitted to cross-examine him. Clearly that piece of paper +was utterly inadmissible as testimony. + +The court made short work of these "lawyer's quibbles." It found Tom +Collins guilty and condemned him to death. + +I secured leave of the court to set forth my contentions in writing +so that they might go to the reviewing officers as a part of the +proceedings, but I had very little hope of the result. I frankly told +Tom that he was to be shot on the next Saturday but one, and that he +must make up his mind to his fate. + +The good clergyman who acted as chaplain to the military prison then +took Tom in hand and endeavored to "prepare him to meet his God." After +a while the reverend gentleman came to me with tears of joy in his eyes, +to tell me that Tom Collins was "converted"; that never in the course +of his ministry had he encountered "a case in which the repentance was +completer or more sincere, or a case more clearly showing the acceptance +of the sinner by his merciful Saviour." + +My theological convictions were distinctly more hazy than those of +the clerical gentleman, and my ability to think of Tom Collins as a +person saturated with sanctity, was less than his. But I accepted the +clergyman's expert opinion as unquestioningly as I could, and Tom +Collins confirmed it. When I visited him in the guard-house I found +him positively ecstatic in the sunlight of Divine acceptance which +illuminated the Valley of the Shadow of Death. When I mentioned the +possibility that my plea in his behalf might even yet prove effective, +and that the sentence which condemned him to death the next morning +might still be revoked, he replied, with apparent sincerity: + +"Oh, I hope not! For then I must wait before entering into joy! But the +Lord's will be done!" + +The next morning was the one appointed for Tom Collins's death. His +coffin was ready and a shallow grave had been dug to receive his body. + +The chaplain and I mounted with him to the cart, and rode with him to +the place of execution, where three other men were to die that day. +Tom's mood was placidly exultant. And the chaplain alone shed tears in +his behalf. + +[Sidenote: "Death Bed Repentance"] + +When the place of execution was reached, an adjutant came forward and +read three death warrants. Then he held up another paper and read it. +It was a formal document from the War Department, sustaining the legal +points submitted in Tom Collins's case, disapproving the finding and +sentence, and ordering the man formally enlisted and returned to duty. + +The chaplain fell into a collapse of uncontrollable weeping. Tom Collins +came to his relief with the injunction: "Oh, come, now, old snuffy, +cheer up! I'll bet you even money I beat you to Hell yet." + +That clergyman afterward confided to me his doubts of "deathbed +repentances," at least in the case of habitual criminals. + + + + +XXXI + + +In the spring of 1864, the battery to which I belonged mutinied--in an +entirely proper and soldierlike way. Longstreet had returned, and the +Army of Northern Virginia was about to encounter Grant in the most +stupendous campaign of the war. We were old soldiers, and we knew +what was coming. But as we had no horses to draw our guns, and as the +quartermaster's department seemed unable to find horses for us, we +were omitted from the orders for the advance into the region of the +Wilderness, where the fighting was obviously to begin. We were ordered +to Cobham Station, a charming region of verdure-clad hills and brawling +streams, where there was no soldiers' work to do and no prospect of +anything less ignoble than provost duty. + +Against this we revolted, respectfully and loyally. We sent in a protest +and petition asking that if horses could not be furnished for our guns, +we should be armed with Enfield rifles and permitted to march with our +battalion as a sharpshooting support. + +The request was granted and from the Wilderness to Petersburg we marched +and fought and starved right gallantly, usually managing to have a place +between the guns at the points of hottest contest in every action of the +campaign. + +At Petersburg we found artillery work of a new kind to do. No sooner +were the conditions of siege established than our battery, because of +its irregularly armed condition, was chosen to work the mortars which +then for the first time became a part of the offensive and defensive +equipment of the Army of Northern Virginia. + +All the fragments of batteries whose ranks had been broken up and whose +officers had been killed, wounded, or captured during that campaign of +tremendous fighting, were assigned to us for mortar service, so that our +numbers were swelled to 250 or 300 men. The number was fluctuating from +day to day, as the monotonous murder of siege operations daily depleted +our ranks on the one hand while almost daily there were additions made +of men from disintegrated commands. + +I have no purpose here to write a history of that eight months of siege, +during which we were never for one moment out of fire by night or by +day, but there is one story that arose out of it which I have a mind +to tell. + +I had been placed in command of an independent mortar fort, taking my +orders directly from General E. P. Alexander--Longstreet's chief of +artillery--and reporting to nobody else. + +Infantry officers from the lines in front--colonels and such--used +sometimes to come to my little row of gun-pits and give me orders in +utter ignorance of the conditions and limitations of mortar firing. +The orders were not binding upon me and, under General Alexander's +instructions, I paid no heed to them, wherefore I was often in a state +of friction with the intermeddlers. After a little I discovered a short +and easy method of dealing with them. There was a Federal fort known +to us as the Railroad Iron Battery, whose commanding officer seemed a +person very fond of using his guns in an offensive way. He had both +mortars and rifled field guns, and with all of them he soon got my +range so accurately that all his rifle shells cut my parapet at the +moment of exploding, and all his mortar shells fell among my pits with +extraordinary precision. In order to preserve the lives of my men I had +to take my stand on top of the mound over my magazine whenever he began +bombarding me. From that point I watched the course of his mortar +shells, and when one of them seemed destined to fall into one of my +little gun-pits, I called out the number of the pit and the men in it +ran into their bomb-proof till the explosion was over. + +In dealing with the annoyance of intruding infantry officers, I took +advantage of the Railroad Iron Battery's extraordinary readiness to +respond to the smallest attention at my hands. A shell or two hurled in +that direction always brought on a condition of things which prompted +all visitors to my pits to retreat to a covered way and hasten to keep +suddenly remembered engagements on their own lines. + +[Sidenote: Gloaming Visitors] + +Once my little ruse did not produce the intended effect. It was after +sunset of a day late in August. Two officers came out of the gloaming +and saluted me politely. They were in fatigue uniforms. That is to say, +they wore the light blue trousers that were common to both armies, and +white duck fatigue jackets that bore no insignia of rank upon their +collars. + +At the moment I was slowly bombarding something--I forget what or +why--but I remember that I was getting no response. Presently one of +my visitors said: + +"You seem to be having the shelling all to yourself." + +I resented the remark, thinking it a criticism. + +"We'll see," I said. Then turning to my brother, who was my second in +command, I quietly gave the order: + +"Touch up the Railroad Iron Battery, Joe." + +Thirty seconds later the storm was in full fury about us, but my +visitors did not seem to mind it. Instead of retiring to the covered +way, they nonchalantly stood there by my side on the mound of the +magazine. Every now and then, between explosions, one of them would ask +a question as to the geography of the lines to our right and left. + +"What battery is that over there?" + +"What is the Federal work that lies in front of it?" + +"What is the lay of the land," etc., etc. + +Obviously they were officers new to this part of our line and as they +offered no criticism upon the work of my guns, and gave me no orders, +I put aside the antagonism I had felt, and in all good-fellowship +explained the military geography of the region round about. + +Meanwhile, Joe had quietly stopped the fire on the Railroad Iron +Battery, and little by little that work ceased its activity. Finally +my visitors politely bade me good evening and took their leave. + +I asked Joe who they were, but he did not know. I inquired of others, +but nobody knew. Next morning I asked at General Gracie's headquarters +what new troops had been brought to that part of the line, and learned +that there had been no changes. There and at General Bushrod Johnson's +headquarters I minutely described my visitors, but nobody knew anything +about them, and after a few days of futile conjecture I ceased to think +of them or their visit. + +In July, 1865, the war being over, I took passage on the steamer "Lady +Gay," bound from Cairo to New Orleans. There were no women on board, +but there was a passenger list of thirty men or so. Some of us were +ex-Confederates and some had been Federal soldiers. + +[Sidenote: The Outcome of a Strange Story] + +The two groups did not mingle. The members of each were polite upon +accidental occasion to the members of the other, but they did not +fraternize, at least for a time--till something happened. + +I was talking one morning with some of my party when suddenly a man +from the other group approached as if listening to my voice. Presently +he asked: + +"Didn't you command a mortar fort at Petersburg?" + +I answered that I did, whereupon he asked: + +"Do you remember----" and proceeded to outline the incident related +above. + +"Yes," I answered in astonishment, "but how do you happen to know +anything about it?" + +"I was one of your visitors on that occasion. I thought I couldn't +be mistaken in the voice that commanded, 'Touch up the Railroad Iron +Battery, Joe.'" + +"But I don't understand. You were a Federal officer, were you not?" + +"Yes." + +"Then what were you doing there?" + +"That is precisely what my friend and I were trying to find out, while +you kept us for two hours under a fire of hell from our own batteries." + +Then he explained: + +"You remember that to the left of your position, half a mile or so away, +there lay a swamp. It was utterly impassable when the lines were drawn, +and both sides neglected it in throwing up the breastworks. Well, that +swamp slowly dried up during the summer, and it left something like a +gap in both lines, but the gap was so well covered by the batteries on +both sides that neither bothered to extend earthworks across it. My +friend and I were in charge of pickets and rifle-pits that day, and +we went out to inspect them. Somehow--I don't know how--we got lost on +the swamplands, and, losing our bearings, we found ourselves presently +within the Confederate lines. To say that we were embarrassed is to +put it mildly. We were scared. We didn't know how to get back, and we +couldn't even surrender for the reason that we were not in uniform but +in fatigue dress, and therefore technically, at least, in disguise. +There was nothing about us to show to which army we belonged. As an +old soldier, you know what that meant. If we had given ourselves up we +should have been hanged as spies caught in disguise within your lines. +In our desperate strait we went to you and stood there for an hour or +two under the worst fire we ever endured, while we extracted from you +the geographical information that enabled us to make our way back to +our own lines under cover of darkness." + +At that point he grasped my hand warmly and said: + +"Tell me, how is Joe? I hope he is 'touching up' something that responds +as readily as the Railroad Iron Battery did that evening." + +From that hour until we reached New Orleans, four days later, there +was no barrier between the two groups of passengers. We fraternized +completely. We told stories of our several war experiences that had +no touch or trace of antagonism in them. + +Incidentally, we exhausted the steamer "Lady Gay's" supplies of +champagne and cigars, and when we reached New Orleans we had a dinner +together at the St. Charles hotel, no observer of which would have +suspected that a few months before we had been doing our best to +slaughter each other. + + + + +XXXII + + +[Sidenote: The Beginning of Newspaper Life] + +Let me pass hurriedly over the years that immediately followed the end +of the war. I went West in search of a living. In Cairo, Illinois, I +became counsel and attorney "at law and in fact," for a great banking, +mining, steamboating, and mercantile firm, whose widely extending +interests covered the whole West and South. + +The work was uncongenial and by way of escaping from it, after I had +married, I removed to Mississippi and undertook the practice of law +there. + +That work proved still less to my liking and in the summer of 1870 +I abandoned it in the profoundest disgust. + +With a wife, one child, a little household furniture, and no money +at all, I removed to New York and secured work as a reporter on the +Brooklyn _Union_, an afternoon newspaper. + +I knew nothing of the business, art, or mystery of newspaper making, and +I knew nothing of the city. I find it difficult to imagine a man less +well equipped for my new undertaking than I was. But I had an abounding +confidence in my ability to learn anything I wanted to learn, and I +thought I knew how to express myself lucidly in writing. For the rest +I had tireless energy and a good deal of courage of the kind that is +sometimes slangily called "cheek." This was made manifest on the first +day of my service by the fact that while waiting for a petty news +assignment I wrote an editorial article and sent it in to Theodore +Tilton, the editor, for use. I had an impulse of general helpfulness +which was left unrestrained by my utter ignorance of the distinctions +and dignities of a newspaper office. I had a thought which seemed to me +to deserve editorial utterance, and with the mistaken idea that I was +expected to render all the aid I could in the making of the newspaper, +I wrote what I had to say. + +Theodore Tilton was a man of very hospitable mind, and he cared little +for traditions. He read my article, approved it, and printed it as a +leader. Better still, he sent for me and asked me what experience I had +had as a newspaper man. I told him I had had none, whereupon he said +encouragingly: + +"Oh well, it doesn't matter much. I'll have you on the editorial staff +soon. In the meantime, learn all you can about the city, and especially +about the shams and falsities of its 'Society' with a big 'S.' Study +state politics, and equip yourself to comment critically upon such +things. And whenever you have an editorial in your mind write it and +send it to me." + +The _Union_ had been purchased by Mr. Henry C. Bowen, the owner of the +New York _Independent_, then the most widely influential periodical of +its class in America. Theodore Tilton was the editor of both. + +[Sidenote: An Old School Man of Letters] + +Theodore Tilton was at the crest of the wave of success at that time, +and he took himself and his genius very seriously. Concerning him I +shall write more fully a little later on. At present I wish to say only +that with all his self-appreciation he had a keen appreciation of other +men's abilities, and he sought in every way he could to make them +tributary to his own success in whatever he undertook. To that end he +had engaged some strong men and women as members of his staff on the +_Union_, and among these the most interesting to me was Charles F. +Briggs, the "Harry Franco" of an earlier literary time, the associate +and partner of Edgar Allan Poe on the _Broadway Journal_, the personal +friend or enemy of every literary man of consequence in his time, the +associate of George William Curtis and Parke Godwin in the conduct +of _Putnam's Monthly_; the coadjutor of Henry J. Raymond on the +_Times_, the novelist to whom Lowell dedicated "The Fable for Critics," +and whose personal and literary characteristics Lowell set forth with +singular aptitude in that poem. In brief, he was in his own person a +representative and embodiment of the literary life of what I had always +regarded as the golden age of American letters. He talked familiarly of +writers who had been to me cloud-haloed demigods, and made men of them +to my apprehension. + +Let me add that though the literary life of which he had been a part was +a turbulent one, beset by jealousies and vexed by quarrels of a bitter +personal character, such as would be impossible among men of letters in +our time of more gracious manners, I never knew him to say an unjust +thing about any of the men he had known, or to withhold a just measure +of appreciation from the work of those with whom he had most bitterly +quarreled. + +Perhaps no man among Poe's contemporaries had juster reason to feel +bitterness toward the poet's memory than had Mr. Briggs. Yet during my +intimacy with him, extending over many years, I never heard him say +an unkind word of Poe. On the other hand, I never knew him to fail to +contradict upon occasion and in his dogmatic fashion--which was somehow +very convincing--any of the prevalent misapprehensions as to Poe's +character and life which might be mentioned in his presence. + +It was not that he was a meekly forgiving person, for he was, on the +contrary, pugnacious in an unusual degree. But the dominant quality of +his character was a love of truth and justice. Concerning Poe and the +supposed immorality of his life, he once said to me, in words that I +am sure I remember accurately because of the impression they made on +my mind: + +"He was not immoral at all in his personal life or in his work. He +was merely _un_moral. He had no perception of the difference between +right and wrong in the moral sense of those words. His conscience was +altogether artistic. If you had told him you had killed a man who stood +annoyingly in the way of your purposes, he would have thought none the +worse of you for it. He would have reflected that the man ought not to +have put himself in your way. But if you had been guilty of putting +forth a false quantity in verse, he would have held you to be a monster +for whom no conceivable punishment could be adequate." + +Often Mr. Briggs's brusquerie and pugnacity were exaggerated, or +even altogether assumed by way of hiding a sentiment too tender to be +exhibited. Still more frequently the harshest things he said to his +friends--and they were sometimes very bitter--were prompted, not by his +displeasure with those who were their victims, but by some other cause +of "disgruntlement." On such occasions he would repent him of his fault, +and would make amends, but never in any ordinary way or after a fashion +that anybody else would have chosen. + +One morning he came into the editorial room which he and I jointly +occupied. I bade him good-morning as usual, but he made no reply. After +a little while he turned upon me with some bitter, stinging utterance +which, if it had come from a younger man, I should have hotly resented. +Coming from a man of his age and distinction, I resented it only by +turning to my desk and maintaining silence during the entire morning. +When his work was done, he left the office without a word, leaving me to +feel that he meant the break between us--the cause of which I did not at +all understand--to be permanent, as I certainly intended that it should. +But when he entered the room next morning he stood still in the middle +of the floor, facing my back, for I had not turned my face away from +my desk. + +[Sidenote: Mr. Briggs Explains] + +"Good-morning!" he said. "Are you ready to apologize to me?" + +I turned toward him with an involuntary smile at the absurdity of the +suggestion, and answered: + +"I don't know what I should apologize for, Mr. Briggs." + +"Neither do I," he answered. "My question was prompted by curiosity. It +usually happens that apologies come from the person offended, you know. +Are you going to write on this affair in the Senate, or shall I take +it up?" + +From that moment his manner was what it always had been during our +association. Beyond what he had said he made no reference to the matter, +but after our work was finished he, in fact, explained his temper of the +day before, while carefully avoiding every suggestion that he meant to +explain it or that there was any connection between the explanation and +the thing explained. + +"What do you think of servants?" he asked abruptly. I made some answer, +though I did not understand the reason for his question or its occasion. + +"When I was in the Custom House," he resumed, "I had an opportunity to +buy, far below the usual price, some of the finest wines and brandies +ever imported. I bought some Madeira, some sherry, and some brandy--ten +gallons of each, in five-gallon demijohns--and laid them away in my +cellar, thinking the stock sufficient to last me as long as I lived. +I rejoiced in the certainty that however poor I might become, I should +always be able to offer a friend a glass of something really worthy +of a gentleman's attention. Night before last I asked my daughter to +replenish a decanter of sherry which had run low. She went to the cellar +and presently returned with a look on her face that made me think she +had seen a burglar. She reported that there wasn't a drop of anything +left in any of the demijohns. I sent for some detectives, and before +morning they solved the riddle. A servant girl who had resigned from our +service a week or two before had carried all the wine and brandy--two +bottlefuls at a time--to a miserable, disreputable gin mill, and sold +it for what the thievish proprietor saw fit to give. When I learned the +facts I lost my temper, which was a very unprofitable thing to do. I'm +late," looking at his watch, "and must be off." + +Mr. Briggs had a keen sense of humor, which he tried hard to disguise +with a shaggy seeming of dogmatic positiveness. He would say his most +humorous things in the tone and with the manner of a man determined to +make himself as disagreeable as possible. + +I sat with him at a public dinner one evening. He took the wines with +the successive courses, but when later some one, on the other side of +the table, lifted his glass of champagne and asked Mr. Briggs to drink +with him, he excused himself for taking carbonic water instead of the +wine, by saying: + +"I'm a rigid 'temperance' man." + +When we all smiled and glanced at the red and white wine glasses he had +emptied in the course of the meal, he turned upon us savagely, saying: + +"You smile derisively, but I repeat my assertion that I'm a strict +'temperance' man; I never take a drink unless I want it." + +He paused, and then added: + +"Temperance consists solely in never taking a drink unless you want it. +Intemperance consists in taking drinks when some other fellow wants +them." + +[Sidenote: Mr. Briggs's Generosity] + +He was peculiarly generous of encouragement to younger men, when he +thought they deserved it. I may add that he was equally generous of +rebuke under circumstances of an opposite kind. I had entered journalism +without knowing the least thing about the profession, or trade--if that +be the fitter name for it, as I sometimes think it is--and I had not +been engaged in the work long enough to get over my modesty, when one +day I wrote a paragraph of a score or two lines to correct an error into +which the New York _Tribune_ had that morning fallen. Not long before +that time a certain swashbuckler, E. M. Yerger, of Jackson, Mississippi, +had committed a homicide in the nature of a political assassination. The +crime and the assassin's acquittal by reason of political influence had +greatly excited the indignation of the entire North. + +There lived at the same time in Memphis another and a very different +E. M. Yerger, a judge whose learning, uprightness, and high personal +character had made him deservedly one of the best loved and most honored +jurists in the Southwest. At the time of which I now write, this Judge +E. M. Yerger had died, and his funeral had been an extraordinary +manifestation of popular esteem, affection, and profound sorrow. + +The _Tribune_, misled by the identity of their names, had confounded the +two men, and had that morning "improved the occasion" to hurl a deal of +editorial thunder at the Southern people for thus honoring a fire-eating +assassin. + +By way of correcting the error I wrote and printed an editorial +paragraph, setting forth the facts simply, and making no comments. + +When Mr. Briggs next entered the office he took my hand warmly in both +his own, and said: + +"I congratulate you. That paragraph of yours was the best editorial the +_Union_ has printed since I've been on the paper." + +"Why, Mr. Briggs," I protested, "it was only a paragraph----" + +"What of that?" he demanded in his most quarrelsome tone. "The Lord's +Prayer is only a paragraph in comparison with some of the 'graces' I've +heard distinguished clergymen get off at banquets by way of impressing +their eloquence upon the oysters that were growing warm under the +gaslights, while they solemnly prated." + +"But there was nothing in the paragraph," I argued; "it only corrected +an error." + +"Why, sir, do you presume to tell me what is and what isn't in an +article that I've read for myself? You're a novice, a greenhorn in this +business. Don't undertake to instruct my judgment, sir. That paragraph +was excellent editorial writing, because it corrected an error that +did a great injustice; because it gave important and interesting +information; because it set forth facts of public import not known to +our readers generally, and finally, because you put that final period +just where it belonged. Don't contradict me. Don't presume to argue +the matter. I won't stand it." + +With that he left the room as abruptly as he had entered it, and with +the manner of a man who has quarreled and has put his antagonist down. +I smilingly recalled the lines in which Lowell so aptly described and +characterized him in "A Fable for Critics": + + "There comes Harry Franco, and as he draws near, + You find that's a smile which you took for a sneer; + One half of him contradicts t'other; his wont + Is to say very sharp things and do very blunt; + His manner's as hard as his feelings are tender, + And a _sortie_ he'll make when he means to surrender; + He's in joke half the time when he seems to be sternest, + When he seems to be joking be sure he's in earnest; + He has common sense in a way that's uncommon, + Hates humbug and cant, loves his friends like a woman, + Builds his dislikes of cards and his friendships of oak, + Loves a prejudice better than aught but a joke; + Is half upright Quaker, half downright Come-Outer, + Loves Freedom too well to go stark mad about her; + Quite artless himself, is a lover of Art, + Shuts you out of his secrets and into his heart, + And though not a poet, yet all must admire + In his letters of Pinto his skill on the liar." + + + + +XXXIII + + +[Sidenote: Theodore Tilton] + +When I first knew Theodore Tilton as my editor-in-chief, on the +_Union_, he was in his thirty-fifth year. His extraordinary gifts as an +effective writer and speaker had won for him, even at that early age, a +country-wide reputation. He was a recognized force in the thought and +life of the time, and he had full possession of the tools he needed for +his work. The _Independent_ exercised an influence upon the thought and +life of the American people such as no periodical publication of its +class exercises in this later time of cheap paper, cheap illustrations, +and multitudinous magazines. Its circulation of more than three hundred +thousand exceeded that of all the other publications of its class +combined, and, more important still, it was spread all over the country, +from Maine to California. The utterances of the _Independent_ were +determinative of popular thought and conviction in an extraordinary +degree. + +Theodore Tilton had absolute control of that great engine of influence, +with an editorial staff of unusually able men for his assistants, and +with a corps of contributors that included practically all the most +desirable men and women writers of the time. + +In addition to all this, it was the golden age of the lecture system, +and next to Mr. Beecher, Tilton was perhaps the most widely popular of +the lecturers. + +In the midst of such a career, and possessed of such influence over the +minds of men, at the age of thirty-five, it is no wonder that he had a +good conceit of himself, and it was to his credit that he manifested +that conceit only in inoffensive ways. He was never arrogant, dogmatic, +or overbearing in conversation. His courtesy was unfailing, except in +strenuous personal controversy, and even there his manner was polite +almost to deference, however deadly the thrusts of his sarcastic wit +might be. He fought with a rapier always, never with a bludgeon. His +refinement of mind determined that. + +It was an era of "gush," of phrase making, of superlatives, and in +such arts Tilton was peculiarly gifted. In his thinking he was bold +to the limit of audacity, and his aptness in clothing his thought in +captivating forms of speech added greatly to its effectiveness and his +influence. + +Radicalism was rampant at that time when the passions aroused by the +recent Civil War had not yet begun to cool, and Tilton was a radical +of radicals. So extreme was he in his views that during and after the +orgies of the Commune and the petroleuses in Paris, he openly espoused +their cause, justified their resistance to everything like orderly +government, and glorified those of them who suffered death for their +crimes, as martyrs to human liberty. + +He and I were talking of these things one day, when something that was +said prompted me to ask him his views of the great French revolution at +the end of the eighteenth century. He quickly replied: + +"It was a notable movement in behalf of human liberty; it was overborne +by military force at last only because the French people were unworthy +of it. Robespierre was an irresolute weakling who didn't cut off heads +enough." + +[Sidenote: Tilton's Characteristics] + +Added to his other gifts, Tilton had an impressive and attractive +personality. Tall, well formed, graceful in every motion, he had a head +and face so handsome and so unlike the common as to make him a man to be +looked at more than once in every company. His manner accorded with his +appearance and emphasized it. It was a gracious combination of deference +for others with an exalted self-esteem. There was a certain joyousness +in it that was very winning, combined with an insistent but unobtrusive +self-assertion which impressed without offending. + +His wit was always at his command, for offense or for defense, or for +mere entertainment. I remember that in my first association with him I +had a sort of fear at each moment that he would knock me down the next +with an epigram. I have seen him do that repeatedly with men with whom +he was at the time in deadly controversy, but in my own case the fear of +it was soon banished by the uniform kindliness with which he treated me, +and the personal affection with which he seemed to regard me. + +I have often wondered over his attitude toward me. I was an ex-rebel +soldier, and in 1870 he was still mercilessly at war with Southern +men and Southern ideas. My opinions on many subjects were the exact +opposite of his own, and I was young enough then to be insistent in the +expression of my opinions, especially in conversation with one to whom +I knew my views to be _Anathema Maranatha_. + +Yet from the first hour of our meeting Theodore Tilton was always +courteous and genial toward me, and after our acquaintance had ripened +a bit, he became cordial and even enthusiastic in his friendship. + +It was his habit to rise very early, drink a small cup of coffee and, +without other breakfast, walk down to the office of the _Union_. There +he wrote his editorials, marked out the day's work for his subordinates, +and received such callers as might come, after which he would walk +home and take his breakfast at noon. His afternoons were spent in +the doing of another day's work in the _Independent_ office. After our +acquaintance ripened into friendship, he used to insist upon my going +with him to his midday breakfast, whenever my own work in any wise +permitted. As I also was apt to be early at the office, I was usually +able to accept his breakfast invitations, so that we had an hour's +uninterrupted intercourse almost every day. And unlike other editorial +chiefs with whom I have had intimate social relations in their own +homes, Mr. Tilton never thrust editorial or other business matters +into the conversation on these occasions. Indeed, he did not permit +the smallest reference to such subjects. If by accident such things +obtruded, he put them aside as impertinent to the time and place. It +was not that he thought less or cared less for matters of such import +than other great editors do, but rather that he had a well-ordered mind +that instinctively shrank from confusion. When engaged with editorial +problems, he gave his whole attention to their careful consideration +and wise solution. When engaged in social intercourse he put all else +utterly out of his mind. + +I cannot help thinking that his method as to that was a wiser one +than that of some others I have known, who carried the problems and +perplexities of their editorial work with them into their parlors, to +their dinner tables, and even to bed. Certainly it was a method more +agreeable to his associates and guests. + + + + +XXXIV + + +[Sidenote: The Swarm of Gadflies] + +At that time Tilton was "swimming on a sea of glory." His popularity +was at its height, with an apparently assured prospect of lasting +fame to follow. His work so far had necessarily been of an ephemeral +sort--dealing with passing subjects in a passing way--but he had all the +while been planning work of a more permanent character, and diligently +preparing himself for its doing. One day, in more confidential mood than +usual, he spoke to me of this and briefly outlined a part at least of +what he had planned to do. But there was a note of the past tense in +what he said, as if the hope and purpose he had cherished were passing +away. It was the first intimation I had of the fact that those troubles +were upon him which later made an end of his career and sent him into a +saddened exile which endured till the end of his ruined life. + +At that time I knew nothing and he told me nothing of the nature of +his great trouble, and I regarded his despondency as nothing more than +weariness over the petty annoyances inflicted upon him by some who were +jealous of his success and popularity. + +With some of these things I was familiar. His growing liberality of +thought in religious matters, and the absence of asceticism from his +life, had brought a swarm of gadflies round his head, whose stings +annoyed him, even if they inflicted no serious hurt. He was constantly +quizzed and criticised, orally, by personal letter, and in print, +as to his beliefs, his conduct, his tastes, his habits, and even his +employment of terms, quite as if he had been a woman or a clergyman +responsible to his critics and subject to their censure. He maintained +an appearance of good temper under all this carping--most of which was +clearly inspired by "envy, malice, and all uncharitableness"--but, as +I had reason to know, it stung him sorely. He said to me one day: + +"It isn't the criticism that annoys me so much as the fact that I am +supposed to be answerable in such small ways to the bellowings of Tray, +Blanche, and Sweetheart. I seem not to be regarded as a free man, as +other men are." + +I reminded him that something of that kind was the penalty that genius +and popularity were usually required to pay for their privileges. I +illustrated my thought by adding: + +"If Byron had not waked up one morning and found himself famous, he +would never have been hounded out of his native land by what Macaulay +calls British morality in one of its periodic spasms of virtue, and +if Poe had never written 'The Raven,' 'The Bells,' and 'Annabel Lee,' +nobody would ever have bothered to inquire about his drinking habits." + +I strongly urged him to ignore the criticism which was only encouraged +by his replies to it. But in that he was not amenable to counsel, partly +because his over-sensitive nature was more severely stung by such +criticism than that of a better balanced man would have been, but still +more, I think, because his passion for epigrammatic reply could not +resist the temptation of opportunity which these things presented. Often +his replies were effective for the moment, by reason of their wit or +their sparkling audacity, but incidentally they enlarged the circle of +persons offended. + +Thus on one occasion, when he was challenged in print by an adversary, +to say that he did not drink wine, he replied in print: + +"Mr. Tilton does drink wine upon sacramental and other proper +occasions." + +His readers smiled at the smartness of the utterance, but many of the +more sensitive among them were deeply aggrieved by what they regarded +as its well-nigh blasphemous character. + +[Sidenote: The Fulton Controversy] + +I was myself present at one of his most perplexing conferences +concerning these matters, not as a participant in the discussion, but +as a friendly witness. + +The quarrel--for it had developed into the proportions of a quarrel--was +with the Rev. Dr. Fulton, who at that time occupied a large place in +public attention--as a preacher of great eloquence, his friends said, as +a reckless sensationalist and self-advertiser, his enemies contended. + +He had accused Tilton of drinking wine, and had publicly criticised him +for it, with great severity. Tilton had replied in an equally public +way, with the statement that on a certain occasion which he named, he +and Dr. Fulton had walked up street together after a public meeting; +that at Dr. Fulton's suggestion they had gone into a saloon where +between them they had drunk a considerable number of glasses of beer (he +gave the number, but I forget what it was), adding: "Of which I did not +drink the major part." + +Dr. Fulton was furiously angry, of course, and demanded an interview. +Tilton calmly invited him to call at his editorial room in the _Union_ +office. He came at the appointed time, bringing with him the Rev. Dr. +Armitage and two other persons of prominence. I do not now remember who +they were. Tilton at once sent me a message asking me to come to his +room. When I entered he introduced me to his visitors and then said: + +"Mr. Eggleston, Dr. Fulton has called to discuss with me certain +matters of personal import. The discussion may result in some issues of +veracity--discussions with Dr. Fulton often do. It is in view of that +possibility, I suppose," smiling and bowing to Dr. Fulton, who sat stiff +in his chair making no response by word or act, "that Dr. Fulton has +brought with him Dr. Armitage and these other gentlemen, as witnesses +to whatever may be said between us. I have the profoundest respect, +and even reverence for those gentlemen, but it seems to me proper that +I should have at least one witness of my own selection present also. +I have therefore sent for you." + +Instantly Dr. Fulton was on his feet protesting. In a loud voice and +with excited gesticulations, he declared that he would not be drawn +into a trap--that he would abandon the purpose of his visit rather than +discuss the matters at issue with one of Tilton's reporters present to +misrepresent and ridicule him in print. + +Tilton, who never lost his self-possession, waited calmly till the +protest was fully made. Then he said: + +"I have no reporter present. Mr. Eggleston was promoted a week ago to +the editorial writing staff of the paper. He will report nothing. You, +Dr. Fulton, have brought with you three friends who are of your own +selection, to hear the discussion between us. I claim the right to have +one friend of my own present also. It is solely in that capacity that I +have asked Mr. Eggleston to be present." + +"But I will not discuss confidential matters in the presence of any +newspaper man," protested Dr. Fulton. + +"Then in my turn," said Tilton, "I must decline to discuss the questions +between us, in the presence of any clergyman." + +At that point Dr. Armitage and his companions remonstrated with Dr. +Fulton, declaring his position to be unreasonable and unfair, and +telling him that if he persisted in it, they would at once withdraw. + +Fulton yielded, and after an hour's angry sparring on his part and +placidly self-possessed sword play of intellect on Tilton's side, Dr. +Fulton submitted a proposal of arbitration, to which Tilton assented, +with one qualification, namely, that if the finding of the arbitrators +was to be published, in print, from the pulpit, or otherwise, he, +Tilton, should be privileged to publish also a verbatim report of the +_testimony_ upon which it was founded. + +Dr. Fulton rejected this absolutely, on the ground that he did not want +his name to figure in "a newspaper sensation." + +Still cool, self-possessed, and sarcastic, Tilton asked: + +"Do I correctly understand you to mean, Dr. Fulton, that you shrink from +sensationalism?" + +"Yes, sir, that is exactly what I mean." + +"Quite a new attitude of mind to you, isn't it, Doctor? I fear it will +rob your preaching of much of its 'drawing' quality." + +Dr. Fulton's advisers urged him to assent to Tilton's proposal as an +entirely reasonable one, but he persistently refused, and the conference +ended with nothing accomplished. + +I know nothing to this day of the merits of the controversy. I have +given this account of the meeting called to settle it solely because it +serves the purpose of illustrating the methods of the two men. + + + + +XXXV + + +[Sidenote: Later Acquaintance with Tilton] + +About a year later, or a little less, my editorial connection with the +_Union_ ceased, and with it my official association with Mr. Tilton. But +he and I lived not far apart in Brooklyn and from then until the great +trouble broke--two or three years--I saw much of him, at his home and +mine, on the street, and at many places in New York. With the first open +manifestation of the great trouble he began consulting with me about it. +I gave him a deal of good advice in response to his eager demands for +counsel. He seemed to appreciate and value it, but as he never acted +upon it in the smallest degree, I gradually ceased to give it even when +requested. + +I have every reason to believe that in the course of these consultations +I learned, from him and from all the others directly connected with the +terrible affair, the inner and true story of the events that culminated +in the great and widely demoralizing scandal. It is a story that has +never been told. At the time of the trial both sides were careful to +prevent its revelation, and there were certainly most imperative reasons +why they should. + +I have no purpose to tell that story in these pages. I mention it only +because otherwise the abrupt termination of my reminiscences of Mr. +Tilton at this point might seem to lack explanation. + + + + +XXXVI + + +When I joined the staff of the _Union_, in the summer of 1870, I had +had no newspaper experience whatever. I had written for newspapers +occasionally, but only as an amateur. I had published one or two small +things in magazines, but I knew absolutely nothing of professional +newspaper work. Mr. Tilton and his managing editor, Kenward Philp, were +good enough to find in my earliest work as a reporter some capacity for +lucid expression, and a simple and direct narrative habit which pleased +them, so that in spite of my inexperience they were disposed to give me +a share in the best assignments. I may say incidentally that among the +reporters I was very generally pitied as a poor fellow foredoomed to +failure as a newspaper man for the reason that I was what we call +educated. At that time, though not for long afterwards, education and +a tolerable regularity of life were regarded as serious handicaps in +the newsrooms of most newspapers. + +[Sidenote: My First Libel Suit] + +Among my earliest assignments was one which brought me my first +experience of newspaper libel suits, designed not for prosecution but as +a means of intimidating the newspaper concerned. The extent to which the +news of the suit appalled me was a measure of my inexperience, and the +way in which it was met was a lesson to me that has served me well upon +many later occasions of the kind. + +A man whom I will call Amour, as the use of his real name might give +pain to innocent persons even after the lapse of forty years, was +express agent at a railway station in the outskirts of Brooklyn. His +reputation was high in the community and in the church as a man of +exemplary conduct and a public-spirited citizen, notably active in all +endeavors for the betterment of life. + +It was a matter of sensational, popular interest, therefore, when his +wife instituted divorce proceedings, alleging the most scandalous +conduct on his part. + +The _Union_ was alert to make the most of such things and Kenward Philp +set me to explore this case and exploit it. He told me frankly that he +did so because he thought I could "write it up" in an effective way, but +he thought it necessary to caution my inexperience that I must confine +my report rigidly to the matter in hand, and not concern myself with +side issues of any kind. + +In the course of my inquiry, I learned much about Amour that was far +more important than the divorce complications. Two or three business +men of high repute in Brooklyn told me without reserve that he had +abstracted money from express packages addressed to them and passing +through his hands. When detected by them he had made good the losses, +and in answer to his pleadings in behalf of his wife and children, they +had kept silence. But now that he had himself brought ruin and disgrace +upon his family they had no further reason for reserve. I secured +written and signed statements of the facts from each of them, with +permission to publish if need be. But all this was aside from the +divorce matter I had been set to investigate, and, mindful of the +instructions given me, I made no mention of it in the article. + +When I reached the office on the morning after that article was +published, I met Kenward Philp at the entrance door of the building, +manifestly waiting for me in some anxiety. Almost forgetting to say +"good-morning," he eagerly asked: + +"Are you sure of your facts in that Amour story--can they be proved?" + +"Yes, absolutely," I replied. "But why do you ask?" + +"Oh, only because Amour has served papers on us in a libel suit for +fifty thousand dollars damages." + +My heart sank at this, as it had never done before, and has never done +since. I regarded it as certain that my career in the new profession I +had adopted was hopelessly ended at its very beginning, and I thought, +heart-heavily, of the wife and baby for whom I saw no way to provide. + +"Why, yes," I falteringly repeated, "every statement I made can be +supported by unimpeachable testimony. But, believe me, Mr. Philp, I am +sorry I have got the paper into trouble." + +"Oh, that's nothing," he replied, "so long as you're sure of your facts. +One libel suit more or less is a matter of no moment." + +Then, by way of emphasizing the unworthiness of the man I had "libeled" +I briefly outlined the worse things I had learned about him. Philp +fairly shouted with delight: + +"Keno!" he exclaimed. "Hurry upstairs and _libel him some more_! Make it +strong. Skin him and dress the wound with _aqua fortis_--I say--and rub +it in!" + +I obeyed with a will, and the next morning Amour was missing, and the +express company was sending descriptions of him to the police of every +city in the country. It is a fixed rule with the great express companies +to prosecute relentlessly every agent of their own who tampers with +express packages. It is a thing necessary to their own protection. So +ended my first libel suit. + + + + +XXXVII + + +[Sidenote: Later Libel Suit Observations] + +During the many years that I passed in active newspaper work after +that time, observation and experience taught me much, with regard to +newspaper libel suits, which is not generally known. It may be of +interest to suggest some things on the subject here. + +I have never known anybody to get rich by suing newspapers for libel. +The nearest approach to that result that has come within my knowledge +was when Kenward Philp got a verdict for five thousand dollars damages +against a newspaper that had accused him of complicity in the forging of +the celebrated Morey letter which was used to General Garfield's hurt in +his campaign for the Presidency. There have been larger verdicts secured +in a few other cases, but I suspect that none of them seemed so much +like enrichment to those who secured them, as that one did to Philp. +It was not Mr. Philp's habit to have a considerable sum of money in +possession at any time. His temperament strongly militated against that, +and I think all men who knew him well will agree with me in doubting +that he ever had one-half or one-fourth the sum this verdict brought +him, in his possession at any one time in his life, except upon that +occasion. + +In suing newspapers for libel it is the custom of suitors to name large +sums as the measure of the damages claimed, but this is a thing inspired +mainly by vanity and a spirit of ostentation. It emphasizes the value of +the reputation alleged to have been damaged; it is in itself a boastful +threat of the punishment the suitor means to inflict, and is akin to +the vaporings with which men of rougher ways talk of the fights they +contemplate. It is an assurance to the friends of the suitor of his +determined purpose to secure adequate redress and of his confidence in +his ability to do so. Finally, it is a "don't-tread-on-me" warning to +everybody concerned. + +Inspired by such motives men often sue for fifty thousand dollars for +damages done to a fifty-cent reputation. It costs no more to institute +a suit for fifty thousand dollars than to bring one for one or two +thousand. + +In many cases libel suits are instituted without the smallest intention +of bringing them to trial. They are "bluffs," pure and simple. They are +meant to intimidate, and sometimes they accomplish that purpose, but not +often. + +I remember one case with which I had personally to deal. I was in charge +of the editorial page of the New York _World_ at the time, and with a +secure body of facts behind me I wrote a severe editorial concerning the +malefactions of one John Y. McKane, a Coney Island political boss. I +specifically charged him with the crimes he had committed, cataloguing +them and calling each of them by its right name. + +The man promptly served papers in a libel suit against the newspaper. +A timid business manager hurriedly came to me with the news, asking if +I couldn't write another article "softening" the severity of the former +utterance. I showed him the folly of any such attempt in a case where +the libel, if there was any libel, had already been published. + +"But even if the case were otherwise," I added, "the _World_ will do +nothing of that cowardly kind. The man has committed the crimes we have +charged. Otherwise we should not have made the charges. I shall indite +and publish another article specifically reiterating our accusations, +as our reply to his attempt at intimidation." + +I did so at once. I repeated each charge made and emphasized it. +I ended the article by saying that the man had impudently sued the paper +for libel in publishing these truths concerning him, and adding that +"it is not as plaintiff in a libel suit that he will have to meet these +accusations, but as defendant in a criminal prosecution, and long before +his suit for libel can be brought to trial, he will be doing time in +prison stripes with no reputation left for anybody to injure." + +The prediction was fulfilled. The man was prosecuted and sentenced to +a long term in state's prison. So ended that libel suit. + +[Sidenote: The Queerest of Libel Suits] + +The queerest libel proceeding of which I ever had personal knowledge, +was that of Judge Henry Hilton against certain members of the staff of +the New York _World_. It was unusual in its inception, in its character, +and in its outcome. + +The _World_ published a series of articles with regard to Judge Hilton's +relations with the late A. T. Stewart, and with the fortune left by Mr. +Stewart at his death. I remember nothing of the merits of the matter, +and they need not concern us here. The _World_ wanted Judge Hilton to +bring a libel suit against it, in the hope that at the trial he might +take the witness-stand and submit himself to cross-examination. To that +end the paper published many things which were clearly libelous if they +were not true. + +But Judge Hilton was not to be drawn into the snare. He instituted no +libel suit in his own behalf; he asked no redress for statements made +about himself, but he made complaint to the District Attorney, Colonel +John R. Fellows, that the _World_ had criminally libeled the _memory of +A. T. Stewart_, and for that offense Col. Fellows instituted criminal +proceedings against John A. Cockerill and several other members of the +_World's_ staff, who thus learned for the first time that under New +York's queer libel law it is a crime to say defamatory things of +Benedict Arnold, Guy Fawkes, or the late Judas Iscariot himself unless +you can prove the truth of your charges. + +The editors involved in this case were held in bail, but as no effort of +their attorneys to secure their trial could accomplish that purpose, it +seems fair to suppose that the proceedings against them were never +intended to be seriously pressed. + +Finally, when the official term of Colonel Fellows drew near its +end, Mr. De Lancy Nicoll was elected to be his successor as District +Attorney. As Mr. Nicoll had been the attorney of the _World_ and of +its accused editors, the presence of these long dormant cases in the +District Attorney's office threatened him with a peculiarly sore +embarrassment. Should he find them on his calendar upon taking office, +he must either become the prosecutor in cases in which he had been +defendants' counsel, or he must dismiss them at risk of seeming to +use his official authority to shield his own former clients from due +responsibility under the criminal law. + +It was not until the very day before Mr. Nicoll took office that the +embarrassing situation was relieved by Colonel Fellows, who at the end +of his term went into court and asked for the dismissal of the cases. + +One other thing should be said on this subject. There are cases, of +course, in which newspapers of the baser sort do wantonly assail +reputation and should be made to smart for the wrong done. But these +cases are rare. The first and most earnest concern of every reputable +newspaper is to secure truth and accuracy in its news reports, and +every newspaper writer knows that there is no surer way of losing his +employment and with it his chance of securing another than by falsifying +in his reports. The conditions in which newspapers are made render +mistakes and misapprehensions sometimes unavoidable; but every reputable +newspaper holds itself ready to correct and repair such mistakes when +they injure or annoy innocent persons. Usually a printed retraction with +apology in fact repairs the injury. But I have known cases in which +vindictiveness, or the hope of money gain, has prompted the aggrieved +person to persist in suing for damages and rejecting the offer of other +reparation. In such cases the suitors usually secure a verdict carrying +six cents damages. In one case that I remember the jury estimated the +damages at one cent--leaving the plaintiff to pay the costs of the +proceeding. + + + + +XXXVIII + + +[Sidenote: Early Newspaper Experiences] + +During the early days of my newspaper service there came to me an +unusual opportunity, involving a somewhat dramatic experience. + +The internal revenue tax on distilled spirits was then so high as to +make of illicit distilling an enormously profitable species of crime. +The business had grown to such proportions in Brooklyn that its +flourishing existence there, practically without interference by the +authorities, gave rise to a very damaging political scandal. + +In the region round the Navy Yard there were illicit stills by scores, +producing spirits by thousands of gallons daily. They were owned by +influential men of standing, but operated by men of desperate criminal +character to whom homicide itself seemed a matter of indifference so +long as its perpetration could conceal crime or secure protection from +punishment by means of the terror the "gang" held over the heads of all +who might interfere with its members or their nefarious business. + +It was a dangerous thing to meddle with, and the officers of the +law--after some of them had been killed and others severely beaten--were +in fact afraid to meddle with it. There were warrants in the United +States Marshal's office for the arrest of nearly a score of the +offenders, but the papers were not served and there was scarcely a +pretense made of effort to serve them. + +It was made my duty to deal with this matter both in the news columns +and editorially. Every day we published a detailed list of the stills +that had been in operation during the preceding night, together with +the names of the men operating each and detailed information as to the +exact locality of each. Every day we printed editorial articles calling +upon the officers of the law to act, and severely criticising their +cowardice in neglecting to act. At first these editorial utterances were +admonitory and critical. With each day's added demonstration of official +weakness they grew severer and more denunciatory of the official +cowardice or corruption that alone could have inspired the inactivity. +Presently the officer chiefly responsible, whom the newspaper singled +out by name as the subject of its criticism, and daily denounced or +ridiculed, instituted the usual libel suit for purposes of intimidation +only. + +It had no such effect. The newspaper continued its crusade, and the +scandal of official neglect grew daily in the public mind, until +presently it threatened alarming political results. + +I do not know that political corruption was more prevalent then than +now, but it was more open and shameless, and as a consequence men of +upright minds were readier to suspect its existence in high places. +At this time such men began rather insistently to ask why the authorities +at Washington did not interfere to break up the illicit stills and why +the administration retained in office the men whose neglect of that duty +had become so great a scandal. It was freely suggested that somebody at +Washington must be winking at the lawlessness in aid of political +purposes in Brooklyn. + +[Sidenote: An Interview with President Grant] + +It was then that Theodore Tilton, with his constitutional audacity, +decided to send me to Washington to interview President Grant on the +subject. I was provided with letters from Tilton, as the editor of the +Republican newspaper of Brooklyn, from the Republican Postmaster Booth, +and from Silas B. Dutcher and other recognized leaders of the Republican +party in Brooklyn. These letters asked the President, in behalf of +Republicanism in Brooklyn, to give me the desired interview, assuring +him of my integrity, etc. + +So armed I had no difficulty in securing audience. I found General Grant +to be a man of simple, upright mind, unspoiled by fame, careless of +formalities and the frills of official place, in no way nervous about +his dignity--just a plain, honest American citizen, accustomed to go +straight to the marrow of every subject discussed, without equivocation +or reserve and apparently without concern for anything except truth and +justice. + +He received me cordially and dismissed everybody else from the room +while we talked. He offered me a cigar and we had our conference without +formality. + +In presenting my credentials, I was moved by his own frankness of manner +to tell him that I was an ex-Confederate soldier and not a Republican in +politics. I was anxious not to sail under false colors, and he expressed +himself approvingly of my sentiment, assuring me that my personal views +in politics could make no difference in my status on this occasion. + +After I had asked him a good many questions about the matter in hand, +he smilingly asked: + +"Why don't you put the suggestions so vaguely mentioned in these +letters, into a direct question, so that I may answer it?" + +It had seemed to me an impossible impudence to ask the President of +the United States whether or not his administration was deliberately +protecting crime for the sake of political advantage, but at his +suggestion I formulated the question, hurriedly putting it in writing +for the sake of accuracy in reporting it afterwards. He answered it +promptly and directly, adding: + +"I wish you would come to me again a week from today. I may then have +a more conclusive answer to give you. Come at any rate." + +When the interview was published, my good friend, Dr. St. Clair +McKelway, then young in the service on the Brooklyn _Eagle_ which has +since brought fame to him and extraordinary influence to the newspaper +which he still conducts, said to me at a chance meeting: "I think your +putting of that question to General Grant was the coolest and most +colossal piece of impudence I ever heard of." + +So it would have been, if I had done the thing of my own motion or +otherwise without General Grant's suggestion, a thing of which, of +course, no hint was given in the published interview. + +When I saw the President again a week later, he needed no questioning on +my part. He had fully informed himself concerning matters in Brooklyn, +and knew what he wanted to say. Among other things he mentioned that he +had had a meeting with the derelict official whom we had so severely +criticised and who had responded with a libel suit. All that the +President thought it necessary to say concerning him was: + +[Sidenote: Grant's Method] + +"He must go. You may say so from me. Say it in print and positively." + +The publication of that sentence alone would have made the fortune of +my interview, even without the other utterances of interest that I was +authorized to publish as an assurance that the administration intended +to break up the illicit distilling in Brooklyn even if it required the +whole power of the government to do it. + +In relation to that matter the President said to me: + +"Now for your own reassurance, and not for publication, I may tell you +that as soon as proper preparations can be made, the distilling district +will be suddenly surrounded by a cordon of troops issuing from the Navy +Yard, and revenue officers, under command of Jerome B. Wass, whom you +know, I believe, will break up every distillery, carry away every still +and every piece of machinery, empty every mash-tub into the gutters, and +arrest everybody engaged in the business." + +I gave my promise not to refer to this raid in any way in advance of +its making, but asked that I might be permitted to be present with the +revenue officers when it should be made. General Grant immediately sent +for Mr. Wass, who was in the White House at the time, and directed him +to inform me when he should be ready to make the raid, and to let me +accompany him. To this he added: "Don't let any other newspaper man know +of the thing." + +The raid was made not long after that. In the darkness of the end +of a night--a darkness increased by the practice of the distillers of +extinguishing all the street lamps in that region--a strong military +force silently slipped out of a remote gate in the Navy Yard inclosure, +and before the movement was suspected, it had completely surrounded the +district, under orders to allow no human being to pass in or out through +the lines. I had with me an assistant, whom I had found the night before +at a ball that he had been assigned to report, and under the strict rule +laid down for the military, he and I were the only newspaper men within +the lines, or in any wise able to secure news of what was going on--a +matter that was exciting the utmost curiosity throughout the city. On +the other hand, the rigidity of the military cordon threatened to render +our presence within the lines of no newspaper use to us. Ours was an +afternoon newspaper and our "copy," of which we soon made many columns, +must be in the office not very long after midday if it was to be of any +avail. But we were not permitted to pass the lines with it, either in +person or by messenger. At last we secured permission of the Navy Yard +authorities to go down to the water front of the Yard and hail a passing +tug. With our pockets stuffed full of copy, we passed in that way to the +Manhattan shore and made our way thence by Fulton ferry to the office, +where we were greeted as heroes and victors who had secured for the +paper the most important "beat" that had been known in years. + +There are victories, however, that are more disastrous to those who win +them than defeat itself. For a time this one threatened to serve me in +that way. Mr. Bowen, the owner of the paper, whom I had never before +seen at the _Union_ office, presented himself there the next morning, +full of enthusiasm. He was particularly impressed by the way in which I +had secured advance information of the raid and with it the privilege of +being present to report the affair. Unfortunately for me, he said in his +enthusiasm, "that's the sort of man we make a general and not a private +of, in journalism." + +Newspaper employments of the better sort were not easy to get in those +days, and my immediate superiors in the office interpreted Mr. Bowen's +utterance to mean that he contemplated the removal of some one or other +of them, to make a commanding place for me. He had even suggested, in +plain words, that he would like to see me made managing editor. + +In that suggestion he was utterly wrong. I knew myself to be unfit +for the place for the reason that I knew little of the city and almost +nothing of journalism, in which I had been engaged for no more than a +few weeks. Nevertheless, Mr. Bowen's suggestion aroused the jealousy of +my immediate superiors, and they at once began a series of persecutions +intended to drive me off the paper, a thing that would have been +calamitous to a man rather inexperienced and wholly unknown in other +newspaper offices. + +Theodore Tilton solved the problem by removing me from the news +department and promoting me to the editorial writing staff. + + + + +XXXIX + + +[Sidenote: A Free Lance] + +After somewhat more than a year's service on the Brooklyn newspaper my +connection with it was severed, and for a time I was a "free lance," +writing editorials and literary articles of various kinds for the New +York _Evening Post_ in the forenoons, and devoting the afternoons to +newswork on the _Tribune_--writing "on space" for both. + +At that time Mr. William Cullen Bryant was traveling somewhere in the +South, I think, so that I did not then become acquainted with him. That +came later. + +The _Evening Post_ was in charge of the late Charlton T. Lewis, with +whom, during many later years, I enjoyed an intimate acquaintance. Mr. +Lewis was one of the ripest scholars and most diligent students I have +ever known, but he was also a man of broad human sympathies, intensely +interested in public affairs and in all else that involved human +progress. His knowledge of facts and his grasp of principles in +the case of everything that interested him seemed to me not less than +extraordinary, and they seem so still, as I remember the readiness with +which he would turn from consideration of some nice question of Greek +or Latin usage to write of a problem of statesmanship under discussion +at Washington, or of some iniquity in municipal misgovernment which +occupied the popular mind. His eyes were often red after the scholarly +vigils of the midnight, but they were wide open and clear-sighted in +their survey of all human affairs, from the Old Catholic movement +to police abuses. His scholarship in ancient literatures in no way +interfered with his alert interest in the literature of his own +language, his own country, and his own time, or with his comprehensive +acquaintance with it. + +He was as much at home on the rostrum as at the desk, and his readiness +and force in speaking were as marked as the effectiveness of his written +words. More remarkable still, perhaps, was the fact that his oral +utterances, however unexpectedly and extemporaneously he might be called +upon to speak, were as smoothly phrased, as polished, and as perfectly +wrought in every way as if they had been carefully written out and +laboriously committed to memory. + +Personally he was genial, kindly, and courteous, not with the courtesy +of courtliness, which has considerations of self for its impulse, but +with that of good-fellowship, inspired by concern for the happiness of +those with whom he came in contact. + + + + +XL + + +[Sidenote: Hearth and Home] + +The service on the _Evening Post_ interested me particularly. My impulse +was strongly toward the literary side of newspaper work, and it was on +that side chiefly that the _Evening Post_ gave me opportunity. But I was +working there only on space and devoting the greater part of my time to +less congenial tasks. In a little while I gave up both these employments +to accept the position of managing editor of a weekly illustrated +publication called _Hearth and Home_. The paper had been very ambitious +in its projection, very distinguished in the persons of its editors and +contributors, and a financial failure from the beginning. + +There were several reasons for this. The mere making of an illustrated +periodical in those days was excessively expensive. There were no +photographic processes for the reproduction of pictures at that time. +Every illustration must be drawn on wood and engraved by hand at a cost +ten or twenty times as great as that now involved in the production of +a similar result. + +A second difficulty was that _Hearth and Home_ was originally designed +to meet a demand that did not exist. It was meant to be a country +gentleman's newspaper at a time when there were scarcely any country +gentlemen--in the sense intended--in America. Its appeals were largely +to a leisure-class of well-to-do people, pottering with amateur +horticulture and interested in literature and art. + +It had for its first editors Donald G. Mitchell (Ik Marvel), Mrs. +Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Mrs. Mary Mapes Dodge. Mrs. Dodge was the +only one of the company who had the least capacity as an editor, and her +work was confined to the children's pages. The others were brilliant +and distinguished literary folk, but wholly without either experience +or capacity as editors. + +The publication had lost a fortune to its proprietors, when it was +bought by Orange Judd & Company, the publishers of the _American +Agriculturist_. They had changed its character somewhat, but not enough +to make it successful. Its circulation--never large--had shrunk to a few +thousands weekly. Its advertisements were few and unremunerative; and +its total income was insufficient to cover one-half the cost of making +it. + +My brother, Edward, and I were employed to take control of the paper +and, if possible, resuscitate it. We found a number of "Tite Barnacles" +there drawing extravagant salaries for which their services made no +adequate return. To rid the paper of these was Edward's first concern. +We found the pigeonholes stuffed with accepted manuscripts, not one in +ten of which was worth printing. They were the work of amateurs who had +nothing to say and didn't at all know how to say it. These must be paid +for, as they had been accepted, but to print them would have been to +invite continued failure. By my brother's order they were dumped into +capacious waste baskets and better materials secured from writers of +capacity--among them such persons as Dr. Edward Everett Hale, Asa Gray, +George E. Waring, Jr., Charles Barnard, Mrs. Runkle, Helen Hunt, Rebecca +Harding Davis, Sara Orne Jewett, Harriet Prescott Spofford, Rose Terry, +and others of like ability. + +[Sidenote: Mary Mapes Dodge] + +Mrs. Dodge continued her well-nigh matchless work as editor of the +children's pages, until a year or so later, when she left _Hearth and +Home_ to create the new children's magazine, _St. Nicholas_. She was a +woman of real genius--a greatly overworked word, but one fitly applied +in her case. Her editorial instincts were alert and unfailing. Her gift +of discovering kernels of value in masses of chaff was astonishing, and +her skill in revising and reconstructing so as to save the grain and rid +it of the chaff was such as I have never known in any other editor. + +Her industry was at times almost appalling in its tireless energy, yet +it seemed to make no draughts upon her vitality that her singularly +buoyant nature could not meet without apparent strain. + +She had also a rare gift of recognizing ability in others, judging it +accurately, and setting it to do its proper work. One of the greatest +services she rendered _Hearth and Home_ was in suggesting Frank R. +Stockton for employment on the staff when we found ourselves in need +of an assistant. He had not begun to make his reputation then. Such +newspaper work as he had found to do had afforded his peculiar gifts +no adequate opportunity and outside a narrow circle he was wholly +unknown. But Mrs. Dodge was right in her reckoning when she advised +his employment, and equally right in her perception of the kind of +opportunity he needed. + +The friendship between Stockton and myself, which was begun during the +time of our association on _Hearth and Home_, endured and increased to +the end of his life. The fame that those later years brought to him is +a matter of familiar knowledge to all who are likely to read this book. +It is not of that that I wish to write here, or of the character of the +work by which that fame was won. It is only of Stockton the man that +I need set down anything in these pages. + +He was the best of good company always, as I found out early in our +association, in those days when we went out together for our luncheon +every day and enjoyed an hour of relaxation between the long morning's +work and that of the longer afternoon. He never failed to be ready to +go when the luncheon hour came. His work was always in shape and he +carried no care for it with him when we quitted the office together. +He never talked shop. I cannot remember that he ever mentioned anything +respecting his work or asked a question concerning it between the time +of our leaving the office and that of our return. + +Not that he was indifferent to it, for on the contrary I never knew a +more conscientious worker, or one who more faithfully attended to every +detail. When his "copy" was laid on my desk I knew perfectly that every +sentence was as he had intended it to be, that every paragraph break +was made at the point he desired it to be, and that every comma was +marked in its proper place. While engaged in doing his work he gave his +undivided attention to it, but when he went with me to the Crooked Stoop +house in Trinity Alley for his luncheon, he gave equal attention to the +mutton and potatoes, while his conversation was of things light, airy, +and not strenuous. + +I spoke of this to him one day many years after the time of our +editorial association, and for answer he said: + +"I suppose there are men who can part their hair and polish their boots +at the same time, but I am not gifted in that way." + +I never saw Stockton angry. I doubt that he ever was so. I never knew +him to be in the least degree hurried, or to manifest impatience in any +way. On the other hand, I never knew him to manifest enthusiasm of any +kind or to indulge in any but the most moderate and placid rejoicing +over anything. Good or ill fortune seemed to have no effect whatever +upon his spirits or his manner, so far as those who were intimately +acquainted with him were able to discover. Perhaps it was only that +his philosophy taught him the injustice of asking others to share his +sorrows or his rejoicings over events that were indifferent to them. + +[Sidenote: Frank R. Stockton] + +He was always frail in health, but during all the years of my acquaintance +with him I never once heard him mention the fact, or discovered any +complaint of it in his tone or manner. At one time his weakness and +emaciation were so great that he walked with two crutches, not because +of lameness for he had none, but because of sheer physical weakness. +Yet even at that time his face was a smiling one and in answer to all +inquiries concerning his health he declared himself perfectly well. + +His self-possessed repression of enthusiasm is clearly manifest in his +writings. In none of his stories is there a suggestion of anything but +philosophic calm on the part of the man who wrote them. There is humor, +a fascinating fancy, and an abounding tenderness of human sympathy of a +placidly impersonal character, but there is no passion, no strenuosity, +nothing to suggest that the author is anywhere stirred to enthusiasm by +the events related or the situations in which his imaginary personages +are placed. + +He one day said to me that he had never regarded what is called "love +interest" as necessary to a novel, and in fact he never made any very +earnest use of that interest. In "The Late Mrs. Null" he presented the +love story with more of amusement than of warmth in his manner, while in +"Kate Bonnet" the love affair is scarcely more than a casual adjunct to +the pirate story. In "The Hundredth Man" he manifested somewhat greater +sympathy, but even there his tone is gently humorous rather than +passionate. + +Many of the whimsical conceits that Stockton afterward made the +foundations of his books were first used in the more ephemeral writings +of the _Hearth and Home_ period. It has often interested me in reading +the later books to recall my first acquaintance with their germinal +ideas. It has been like meeting interesting men and women whom one +remembers as uncouth boys or as girls in pantalettes. For _Hearth and +Home_ he wrote several playful articles about the character of eating +houses as revealed in what I may call their physiognomies. The subject +seemed to interest and amuse him, as it certainly interested and amused +his readers, but at that time he probably did not dream of making it a +considerable part of the structure of a novel, as he afterwards did in +"The Hundredth Man." + +In the same way in a series of half serious, half humorous articles for +the paper, he wrote of the picturesque features of piracy on the Spanish +Main and along our own Atlantic coast. He gave humor to the historical +facts by looking at them askance--with an intellectual squint as it +were--and attributing to Blackbeard and the rest emotions and sentiments +that would not have been out of place in a Sunday School. These things +he justified in his humorously solemn way, by challenging anybody to +show that the freebooters were not so inspired in fact, and insisting +that men's occupations in life constitute no safe index to their +characters. + +"We do not denounce the novelists and story writers," he one day said, +"and call them untruthful persons merely because they gain their living +by writing things that are not so. In their private lives many of the +fiction writers are really estimable persons who go to church, wear +clean linen, and pay their debts if they succeed in borrowing money +enough for that purpose." + +Here clearly was the thought that afterward grew into the novel of +"Kate Bonnet." + +About that time he wrote a little manual for Putnam's Handy Book Series, +in which he undertook to show how to furnish a home at very small cost. +All his readers remember what fun he made of that performance when he +came to write "Rudder Grange." + +[Sidenote: A Whimsical View of Plagiary] + +I do not think this sort of thing is peculiar to Stockton's work. I find +traces of it in the writings of others, especially of those humorous +writers who have the gift of inventing amusingly whimsical conceits. +It seems easily possible, for example, to find in "The Bab Ballads" the +essential whimsicalities which afterward made the fortunes of Mr. W. S. +Gilbert's most famous comic operas. + +Stockton's whimsical logic was brought to bear upon everything; so much +so that I have often wondered how he would have regarded a "hold up" of +his person for the sake of his purse if such a thing had happened to +him. + +One day a man submitted a manuscript to me for sale. It was an +article on Alice and Phoebe Cary. The subject was interesting and +the article was pleasingly brief, so that I thought it promising. When +I began to read it, the sentences seemed strangely familiar. As I read +on I recognized the thing as an editorial I had myself written for +the _Evening Post_ on the day of Phoebe Cary's funeral. To verify my +impression I went at once to the office of the _Evening Post_, compared +the manuscript with the printed article, and found it to be a verbatim +copy. + +I was perhaps a little severe in my judgments of such things in those +days, and when the plagiarist came back to learn the fate of his +manuscript my language was of a kind that might have been regarded as +severe. After the fellow had left, breathing threats of dire legal +things that he meant to do to me for keeping his manuscript without +paying for it, Stockton remonstrated with me for having lost my temper. + +"It seems to me," he said, "that you do not sufficiently consider the +circumstances of the case. That man has his living to make as a writer, +and nature has denied him the ability to create literature that he +can sell. What is more reasonable, then, than that he should select +marketable things that other people have written and sell them? His +creative ability failing him, what can he do but use his critical +ability in its stead? If he is not equal to the task of producing +salable stuff, he at least knows such stuff when he sees it, and in +the utilization of that knowledge he finds a means of earning an honest +living. + +"Besides in selecting an article of yours to 'convey,' he has paid you +a distinct compliment. He might have taken one of mine instead, but that +his critical judgment saw the superiority of yours. You should recognize +the tribute he has paid you as a writer. + +"Still again what harm would have been done if he had succeeded +in selling the article? It had completely served its purpose as an +editorial in the _Evening Post_, why should it not serve a larger +purpose and entertain a greater company of readers? + +"Finally I am impressed with the illustration the case affords of the +vagaries of chance as a factor in human happenings. There are thousands +of editors in this country to whom that man might have offered the +article. You were the only one of them who could by any possibility have +recognized it as a plagiarism. According to the doctrine of chances he +was perfectly safe in offering the manuscript for sale. The chances +were thousands to one against its recognition. It was his ill-luck to +encounter the one evil chance in the thousands. The moral of that is +that it is unsafe to gamble. Still, now that he knows the one editor who +can recognize it, he will no doubt make another copy of the article and +sell it in safety to some one else." + +This prediction was fulfilled. The article appeared not long afterward +as a contribution to another periodical. In the meanwhile Stockton's +whimsical view of the matter had so amused me as to smooth my temper, +and I did not think it necessary to expose the petty theft. + + + + +XLI + + +[Sidenote: Some Plagiarists I Have Known] + +The view taken by Stockton's perverse humor was much the same as that +entertained by Benjamin Franklin with greater seriousness. He tells us +in his Autobiography that at one time he regularly attended a certain +church whose minister preached able sermons that interested him. When it +was discovered that the sermons were borrowed, without credit, from some +one else, the church dismissed the preacher and put in his place another +whose sermons, all his own, did not interest Franklin, who thereupon +ceased to attend the church, protesting that he preferred good sermons, +plagiarized, to poor ones of the preacher's own. + +I have since learned what I did not know at the time of the incident +related, that there is a considerable company of minor writers hanging +as it were on the skirts of literature and journalism, who make the +better part of their meager incomes by copying the writings of others +and selling them at opportune times. Sometimes these clever pilferers +copy matter as they find it, particularly when its source is one not +likely to be discovered. Sometimes they make slight alterations in it +for the sake of disguise, and sometimes they borrow the substance of +what they want and change its form somewhat by rewriting it. Their +technical name for this last performance is "skinning" an article. + +I have since had a good deal of experience with persons of this sort. +When Horace Greeley died one of them--a woman--sold me a copy of the +text of a very interesting letter from him which she assured me had +never been seen by any one outside the little group that cherished the +original. I learned later that she had simply copied the thing from +the _Home Journal_, where it had been printed many months before. + +One day some years later I had a revelation made to me of the ethics +of plagiarism accepted by a certain class of writers for the minor +periodicals. I found in an obscure magazine a signed article on the +heroism of women, or something of that sort, the first paragraphs of +which were copied verbatim from a book of my own, in which I had written +it as a personal recollection. When the writer of the article was +questioned as to his trespass upon my copyright, he wrote me an +exceedingly gracious letter of apology, saying, by way of explanation, +that he had found the passage in an old scrapbook of his own, with no +memorandum of its authorship attached. He had thought it no harm, he +said, to make the thing his own, a thing, he assured me, he would not +have done had he known whose the passage was. This explanation seemed to +satisfy his conscience completely. I wonder what he would have thought +himself privileged to do with a horse or a cow found wandering along a +lane without the escort of its owner. + +[Sidenote: A Peculiar Case of Plagiary] + +Sometimes the plagiarist is far more daring in his thefts, taking as his +own much greater things and more easily recognized ones than scrapbooks +are apt to hold. The boldest thing of the sort with which I ever came +into personal contact happened in this wise. As literary editor of the +_Evening Post_ during the late seventies it was a part of my duty to +look out for interesting correspondence. One day there came to me a +particularly good thing of the kind--two or three columns of fascinating +description of certain phases of life in the Canadian Northwest. The +writer proposed to furnish us a series of letters of like kind, dealing +with the trading posts of the Hudson Bay Company, life among the +trappers, Indians, and half-breeds, and the like. The letter submitted +was so unusually good, both in its substance and in its literary +quality, that I agreed to take the series on the terms proposed. A +number of the letters followed, and the series attracted the pleased +attention of readers. Presently, in addition to his usual letter our +correspondent sent us a paper relating to the interesting career of +a quaint personage who flourished in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois in +their territorial days. He was known as "Johnny Appleseed," because +of his habit of carrying a bag of apple seeds in his wanderings and +distributing them among the pioneers by way of inducing them to plant +orchards. + +Unfortunately that article had been written by some one other than +our correspondent and published long before in _Harper's Magazine_. +When my suspicion was thus aroused with regard to the integrity of the +correspondent, I instituted an inquiry which revealed the fact that the +letters we had so highly valued were plagiarized from a book which had +been published in England but not reprinted here. + +The daring of the man appalled me, but the limit of his assurance had +not yet been revealed. When I wrote to him telling him of my discovery +of the fraud and declining to send a check for such of the letters as +had been printed and not yet paid for, he responded by sending me a +number of testimonials to the excellence of his character, furnished by +the clergymen, bankers, and leading men generally of the town in which +he lived. Having thus rehabilitated his character, he argued that as +the letters had proved interesting to the readers of the paper, we had +got our money's worth, and that it made no difference in the quality +of the literature furnished whether he had written it himself or had +transcribed it from a book written by another person. Curiously enough +there was a tone of assured sincerity in all this which was baffling to +the understanding. I can explain it only by thinking that he plagiarized +that tone also. + +It was about that time that my work as literary editor of the _Evening +Post_ brought to my attention two cases of what I may call more +distinguished plagiarism. Mrs. Wister, a gifted scholar and writer, was +at that time rendering a marked service to literature by her exceedingly +judicious adaptations of German fiction to the use of American readers. +She took German novels that were utterly too long and in other ways +unfit for American publication, translated them freely, shortened them, +and otherwise saved to American readers all that was attractive in +novels which, if directly translated, would have had no acceptability at +all in this country. The results were quite as much her own as those of +the German authors of the books thus treated. + +I had recently read and reviewed one of the cleverest of these books of +hers, when there came to me for review an English translation of the +same German novel, under another title. That translation was presented +as the work of an English clergyman, well known as one of the most +prolific writers of his time. As I looked over the book I discovered +that with the exception of a few initiatory chapters, it was simply a +copy of Mrs. Wister's work. In answer to the charge of plagiarism the +reverend gentleman explained that he had set out to translate the book, +but that when he had rendered a few chapters of it into English Mrs. +Wister's work fell into his hands and he found her version so good that +he thought it best to adopt it instead of making one of his own. He +omitted, however, to explain the ethical conceptions that had restrained +him from practising common honesty in a matter involving both reputation +and revenue. That was at a time when English complaints of "American +piracy" were loudest. + +[Sidenote: A Borrower from Stedman] + +The other case was a more subtle one, and incidentally more interesting +to me. As literary editor of the _Evening Post_, under the editorship +of Mr. Bryant, who held the literary side of the paper's work to be of +more consequence than all the rest of it put together, I had to read +everything of literary significance that appeared either in England +or in America. One day I found in an English magazine an elaborate +article which in effect charged Tennyson with wholesale plagiary from +Theocritus. The magazinist was disposed to exploit himself as a literary +discoverer, and he presented his discoveries with very little of that +delicacy and moderation which a considerate critic would regard as the +due of so distinguished a poet as Tennyson. I confess that his tone +aroused something like antagonism in my mind, and I rather rejoiced +when, upon a careful reading of his article, I found that he was no +discoverer at all. Practically all that he had to say had been much +better said already by Edmund C. Stedman first in a magazine essay and +afterwards in a chapter of the "Victorian Poets." The chief difference +was that Stedman had written with the impulse and in the tone and manner +of a scholarly gentleman, while the other had exploited himself like a +prosecuting attorney. + +The obvious thing to do was to get Stedman, if that were possible, to +write a signed article on the subject for the _Evening Post_. With that +end in view I went at once to his office in Broad Street. + +I knew him well, in literary and social ways, but I had never before +trespassed upon his banker existence, and the visit mightily interested +me, as one which furnished a view of an unfamiliar side of the +"manyest-sided man"--that phrase I had learned from Mr. Whitelaw +Reid--whom I ever knew. + +It was during Stock Exchange hours that I made my call, and I intended +to remain only long enough to secure an appointment for some other and +less occupied time. But the moment I indicated the matter I wished to +consult with him about, Stedman linked his arm in mine and led me to +his "den," a little room off the banking offices, and utterly unlike +them in every detail. Here were books--not ledgers; here were all the +furnishings of the haunt of a man of letters, without a thing to suggest +that the man of letters knew or cared for anything relating to stocks, +bonds, securities, loans, discounts, dividends, margins, or any other +of the things that are alone considered of any account in Wall Street. + +"This is the daytime home of the literary side of me," he explained. +"When I'm out there"--pointing, "I think of financial things; when I +enter here I forget what a dollar mark looks like." + +"I see," I said. "Minerva in Wall Street--Athene, if you prefer the +older Greek name." + +"Say Apollo instead--for if there is anything I pride myself upon it is +my masculinity. 'Male and female created he them, and God saw that it +was good,' but the garments of one sex do not become the other, and +neither do the qualities and attributes." + +He had a copy of "The Victorian Poets" in the den and together we made a +minute comparison of his study of Tennyson's indebtedness to Theocritus, +Bion, and Moschus with the magazinist's article. For result we found +that beyond a doubt the magazinist had "skinned" his article out of +Stedman's chapter--in other words, that he had in effect plagiarized his +charge of plagiary and the proofs of it. + +Stedman refused to write anything on the subject, deeming it not worth +while, a judgment which I am bound to say was sound, though I did not +like to accept it because my news instinct scented game and I wanted +that article from Stedman's pen. His scholarly criticism was literature +of lasting importance and interest. The magazine assault upon Tennyson's +fame is utterly forgotten of those who read it. + + + + +XLII + + +[Sidenote: "The Hoosier Schoolmaster's" Influence] + +It was early in our effort to achieve a circulation for _Hearth and +Home_ that my brother decided to write for it his novel, "The Hoosier +Schoolmaster." I have elsewhere related the story of the genesis of that +work, and I shall not repeat it here. Its success was immediate and +astonishing. It quickly multiplied the circulation of _Hearth and Home_ +many times over. It was reprinted serially in a dozen or more weekly +newspapers in the West and elsewhere, and yet when it was published in a +peculiarly unworthy and unattractive book form, its sales exceeded fifty +thousand copies during the first month, at a time when the sale of ten +thousand copies all told of any novel was deemed an unusual success. +The popularity of the story did not end even there. Year after year it +continued to sell better than most new novels, and now nearly forty +years later, the demand for it amounts to several thousand copies per +annum. It was translated into several foreign languages--in spite of the +difficulty the translators must have encountered in rendering an uncouth +dialect into languages having no such dialect. It was republished in +England, and the French version of it appeared in the _Revue des Deux +Mondes_. + +But great as its popularity was and still is, I am disposed to regard +that as a matter of less significance and less consequence than the +influence it exercised in stimulating and guiding the literary endeavors +of others. If I may quote a sentence from a book of my own, "The First +of the Hoosiers," Edward Eggleston was "the very first to perceive +and utilize in literature the picturesqueness of the Hoosier life and +character, the first to appreciate the poetic and romantic possibilities +of that life and to invite others to share with him his enjoyment of its +humor and his admiration for its sturdy manliness." + +While Edward was absorbed in the writing of "The Hoosier Schoolmaster" +and its quickly following successor, "The End of the World," he more and +more left the editorial conduct of the paper to me, and presently he +resigned his editorial place, leaving me as his successor. + +The work was of a kind that awakened all my enthusiasm. My tastes were +literary rather than journalistic, whatever may have been the case as to +my capacities, and in the conduct of _Hearth and Home_ my work was far +more literary in character than any that had fallen to me up to that +time in my service on daily newspapers. More important still, it brought +me into contact, both personally and by correspondence, with practically +all the active literary men and women of that time, with many of whom I +formed friendships that have endured to this time in the case of those +who still live, and that ended only with the death of those who are +gone. The experiences and the associations of that time were both +delightful and educative, and I look back upon them after all these +years with a joy that few memories can give me. I was a mere apprentice +to the literary craft, of course, but I was young enough to enjoy and, +I think, not too conceited to feel the need of learning all that such +associations could teach. + +It was during this _Hearth and Home_ period that my first books were +written and published. They were the results of suggestions from others +rather than of my own self-confidence, as indeed most of the thirty-odd +books I have written have been. + +Mr. George P. Putnam, the Nestor of American book publishing, the friend +of Washington Irving and the discoverer of his quality, returned to the +work of publishing about that time. In partnership with his son, George +Haven Putnam, then a young man and now the head of a great house, he +had set up a publishing firm with a meager "list" but with ambition to +increase it to a larger one. + +[Sidenote: My First Book] + +In that behalf the younger member of the firm planned a series of useful +manuals to be called "Putnam's Handy Book Series," and to be sold at +seventy-five cents each. With more of hopefulness than of discretion, +perhaps, he came to me asking if I could not and would not write one or +two of the little volumes. The immediate result was a little book +entitled "How to Educate Yourself." + +In writing it I had the advantage of comparative youth and of that +self-confident omniscience which only youth can have. I knew everything +then better than I know anything now, so much better indeed that for a +score of years past I have not dared open the little book, lest it +rebuke my present ignorance beyond my capacity to endure. + +Crude as the thing was, it was successful, and it seems to have +satisfied a genuine need, if I may judge by the numberless letters sent +to me by persons who felt that it had helped them. Even now, after +the lapse of more than thirty-eight years, such letters come to me +occasionally from men in middle life who say they were encouraged and +helped by it in their youth. I once thought of rewriting it with more +of modesty than I possessed when it had birth, but as that would be to +bring to bear upon it a later-acquired consciousness of ignorance rather +than an enlarged knowledge of the subject, I refrained, lest the new +version should be less helpful than the old. + +The Rev. Dr. Theodore L. Cuyler once said to me: + +"If one gets printer's ink on his fingers when he is young, he can never +get it off while he lives." The thought that suggested that utterance had +prompt illustration in this case. Not long after this poor little first +book was published, I went to Boston to secure literary contributions +for _Hearth and Home_. In those days one had to go to Boston for such +things. Literary activity had not yet transferred its dwelling place to +New York, nor had Indiana developed its "school." + +While I was in Boston Mr. Howells called on me, and in his gentle way +suggested that I should write my reminiscences of Southern army life in +a series of articles for the _Atlantic Monthly_, of which he was then +the editor. + +The suggestion, coming from such a source, almost made me dizzy. I had +vaguely and timidly cherished a secret hope that some day--after years +of preparatory practice in smaller ways--I might have the honor and +the joy of seeing some article of mine in one or other of the great +magazines. But that hope was by no means a confident one, and it looked +to a more or less remote future for its fulfilment. Especially it had +never been bold enough to include the _Atlantic Monthly_ in the list of +its possibilities. That was the magazine of Lowell, Holmes, Whittier, +Longfellow, Charles Eliot Norton, and their kind--the mouthpiece of the +supremely great in our literature. The thought of ever being numbered +among the humblest contributors to that magazine lay far beyond the +utmost daring of my dreams. And the supremacy of the _Atlantic_, in all +that related to literary quality, was at that time very real, so that +I am in nowise astonished even now that I was well-nigh stunned when +Mr. Howells suggested that I should write seven papers for publication +there, and afterward embody them in a book together with two others +reserved from magazine publication for the sake of giving freshness to +the volume. + +I did not accept the suggestion at once. I was too greatly appalled by +it. I had need to go home and cultivate my self-conceit before I could +believe myself capable of writing anything on the high level suggested. +In the end I did the thing with great misgiving, but with results that +were more than satisfactory, both to Mr. Howells and to me. + +[Sidenote: "A Rebel's Recollections"] + +The passions aroused by the war of which I wrote had scarcely begun +to cool at that time and there was a good deal of not very friendly +surprise felt when the _Atlantic's_ constituency learned that the great +exponent of New England's best thought was to publish the war memories +of a Confederate under the seemingly self-assertive title of "A Rebel's +Recollections." + +That feeling seems to have been alert in protest. Soon after the first +paper was published Mr. Howells wrote me that it had "brought a hornets' +nest about his ears," but that he was determined to go on with the +series. After the second paper appeared he wrote me that the hornets +had "begun to sing psalms in his ears" because of the spirit and temper +in which the sensitive subject was handled. On the evening of the +day on which the "Recollections" appeared in book form, there was a +banquet at the Parker House in Boston, given in celebration of the +_Atlantic's_ fifteenth birthday. Without a moment's warning I was toasted +as the author of the latest book from the Riverside Press, and things +were said by the toast-master about the spirit in which the book was +written--things that overwhelmed me with embarrassment, by reason of the +fact that it was my first experience of the kind and I was wholly unused +to the extravagantly complimentary eloquence of presiding officers at +banquets. + +I had never been made the subject of a toast before. I had never before +attempted to make an after-dinner speech, and I was as self-conscious as +a schoolboy on the occasion of his first declamation before an outside +audience. But one always does stumble through such things. I have known +even an Englishman to stammer out his appreciation and sit down without +upsetting more than one or two of his wine glasses. In the same way +I uttered some sort of response in spite of the embarrassing fact that +George Parsons Lathrop, who had been designated as the "historian of +the evening and chronicler of its events," sat immediately opposite me, +manifestly studying me, I thought, as a bugologist might study a new +species of beetle. I didn't know Lathrop then, as I afterward learned to +know him, in all the friendly warmth and good-fellowship of his nature. + +When the brief ordeal was over and I sat down in full conviction that +I had forever put myself to shame by my oratorical failure, Mr. Howells +left his seat and came to say something congratulatory--something that +I attributed to his kindly disposition to help a man up when he is +down--and when he turned away Mark Twain was there waiting to say +something on his own account. + +"When you were called on to speak," he said, "I braced myself up to come +to your rescue and make your speech for you. I thought of half a dozen +good things to say, and now they are all left on my hands, and I don't +knew what on earth to do with them." + +Then came Mr. Frank B. Sanborn to tell me of a plan he and some others +had hurriedly formed to give me a little dinner at Swampscott, at which +there should be nobody present but "original abolitionists" and my rebel +self. + +I was unable to accept this attention, but it ended all doubt in my mind +that I had written my "Recollections" in a spirit likely to be helpful +in the cultivation of good feeling between North and South. The reviews +of the book, especially in the New England newspapers, confirmed this +conviction, and I had every reason to be satisfied. + + + + +XLIII + + +[Sidenote: A Novelist by Accident] + +Before "A Rebel's Recollections" appeared, I had written and published +my first novel, "A Man of Honor." + +That book, like the others, was the result of accident and not of +deliberate purpose. The serial story had become a necessary feature of +_Hearth and Home_, and we had made a contract with a popular novelist +to furnish us with such a story to follow the one that was drawing to a +close. Almost at the last moment the novelist failed us, and I hurriedly +visited or wrote to all the rest of the available writers in search of +a suitable manuscript. There were not so many novelists then as there +are now. The search proved futile, and the editorial council was called +together in something like panic to consider the alarming situation. The +story then running was within a single instalment of its end, and no +other was to be had. It was the unanimous opinion of the council--which +included a member of the publishing firm as its presiding officer--that +it would be disastrous to send out a single number of the paper without +an instalment of a serial in it, and worse still, if it should contain +no announcement of a story to come. The council, in its wisdom, was +fully agreed that "something must be done," but no member of it could +offer any helpful suggestion as to what that "something" should be. +The list of available story writers had been completely exhausted, and +it was hopeless to seek further in that direction. Even my old-time +friend, John Esten Cooke, whose fertility of fiction was supposed to +be limitless, had replied to my earnest entreaties, saying that he was +already under contract for two stories, both of which were then in +course of serial publication, and neither of which he had finished +writing as yet. "Two sets of clamorous printers are at my heels," he +wrote, "and I am less than a week ahead of them in the race between copy +and proof slips." + +As we sat in council, staring at each other in blank despair, I said, +without really meaning it: + +"If worse comes to worst, I'll write the story myself." + +Instantly the member of the publishing firm who presided over the +meeting answered: + +"That settles the whole matter. Mr. Eggleston will write the story. The +council stands adjourned," and without waiting for my remonstrance, +everybody hurried out of the room. + +I had never written a story, long or short. I hadn't the remotest idea +what I should or could write about. I had in my mind neither plot nor +personages, neither scene nor suggestion--nothing whatever out of which +to construct a story. And yet the thing must be done, and the printers +must have the copy of my first instalment within three days. + +I turned the key in my desk and fled from the office. I boarded one +of the steamers that then ran from Fulton Ferry to Harlem. I wanted to +think. I wanted quietude. When the steamer brought me back, I had in my +mind at least a shadowy notion--not of the story as a whole, but of its +first chapter, and I had decided upon a title. + +Hurrying home I set to work to write. About nine o'clock the artist who +had been engaged to illustrate the story called upon me and insisted +upon it that he must decide at once what he should draw as the first +illustration. He reminded me that the drawing must be made on wood, and +that it would take two or three days to engrave it after his work upon +it should be finished. + +I pushed toward him the sheets I had written and bade him read them +while I went on writing. Before he left a telegram came from the office +asking what the title of the story was to be, in order that the paper, +going to press that night, might carry with it a flaming announcement +of its beginning in the next number. + +[Sidenote: "A Man of Honor"] + +From beginning to end the story was written in that hurried way, each +instalment going into type before the next was written. Meanwhile, I had +the editorial conduct of the paper to look after and the greater part of +the editorial page to write each week. + +The necessary result was a crude, ill-considered piece of work, amateurish +in parts, and wholly lacking in finish throughout. Yet it proved +acceptable as a serial, and when it came out in book form ten thousand +copies were sold on advance orders. The publishers were satisfied; the +public seemed satisfied, and as for the author, he had no choice but to +rest content with results for which he could in no way account then, and +cannot account now. + +The nearest approach to an explanation I have ever been able to imagine +is that the title--"A Man of Honor"--was a happy one. Of that there were +many proofs then and afterwards. The story had been scarcely more than +begun as a serial, when Edgar Fawcett brought out a two or three number +story with the same title, in _Appletons' Journal_, I think. Then Dion +Boucicault cribbed the title, attached it to a play he had "borrowed" +from some French dramatist, and presented the whole as his own. + +Finally, about a dozen years later, a curious thing happened. I was +acting at the time as a literary adviser of Harper & Brothers. There was +no international copyright law then, but when a publisher bought advance +sheets of an English book and published it here simultaneously or nearly +so with its issue in England, a certain courtesy of the trade forbade +other reputable publishing houses to trespass. The Harpers kept two +agents in London, one of them to send over advance sheets for purchase, +and the other to send books as they were published. + +One day among the advance sheets sent to me for judgment I found a novel +by Mrs. Stannard, the lady who wrote under the pen name of John Strange +Winter. It was a rather interesting piece of work, but it bore my title, +"A Man of Honor." In advising its purchase I entered my protest against +the use of that title in the proposed American edition. Of course the +protest had no legal force, as our American copyright law affords no +protection to titles, but with an honorable house like the Harpers the +moral aspect of the matter was sufficient. + +The situation was a perplexing one. The Harpers had in effect already +bought the story from Mrs. Stannard for American publication. They must +publish simultaneously with the English appearance of the novel or lose +all claim to the protection of the trade courtesy. There was not time +enough before publication day for them to communicate with the author +and secure a change of title. + +In this perplexity Mr. Joseph W. Harper, then the head of the house and +a personal friend of my own, asked me if I would consent to the use of +the title if he should print a footnote on the first page of the book, +setting forth the fact of my prior claim to it and saying that the firm +was indebted to my courtesy for the privilege of using it. + +I readily consented to this and the book appeared in that way. A little +later, in a letter, Mrs. Stannard sent me some pleasant messages, +saying especially that she had found among her compatriots no such +courteous reasonableness in matters of the kind as I had shown. By +way of illustration she said that some years before, when she published +"Houp-la," she had been compelled to pay heavy damages to an obscure +writer who had previously used the title in some insignificant provincial +publication, never widely known and long ago forgotten. + +In the case of "A Man of Honor" the end was not yet. Mrs. Stannard's +novel with that title and the footnote was still in its early months of +American circulation when one day I found among the recently published +English novels sent to me for examination one by John Strange Winter +(Mrs. Stannard) entitled, "On March." Upon examining it I found it to be +the same that the Harpers had issued with the "Man of Honor" title. I +suppose that after the correspondence above referred to, Mrs. Stannard +had decided to give the English edition of her work this new title, but +had omitted to notify the Harpers of the change. + +[Sidenote: A "Warlock" on the Warpath] + +Mention of this matter of trouble with titles reminds me of a rather +curious case which amused me at the time of its occurrence and may amuse +the reader. In the year 1903 I published a novel entitled "The Master of +Warlock." During the summer of that year I one day received a registered +letter from a man named Warlock, who wrote from somewhere in Brooklyn. +The missive was brief and peremptory. Its writer ordered me to withdraw +the book from circulation instantly, and warned me that no more copies +of it were to be sold. He offered no reason for his commands and +suggested no explanation of his authority to give them. I wrote asking +him upon what ground he assumed to interfere, and for reply he said +briefly: "My grounds are personal and legal." Beyond that he did not +explain. + +He had written in the same way to the publishers of the book, who +answered him precisely as I had done. + +A month later there came another registered letter from him. In it he +said that a month had passed since his demand was made and that as I had +paid no heed to it, he now repeated it. He said he was armed with adequate +proof that many copies of the book had been sold during that month--a +statement which I am glad to say was true. There must now be a prompt +and complete withdrawal of the novel from the market, he said. + +This time the peremptory gentleman graciously gave me at least a hint of +the ground upon which he claimed a right to order the suppression of the +novel. He said I ought to know that I had no right to make use of any +man's surname in fiction, especially when it was a unique name like his +own. + +As I was passing the summer at my Lake George cottage, I sent him a note +saying that I should continue in my course, and giving him the address +of a lawyer in New York who would accept service for me in any action he +might bring. + +For a time thereafter I waited anxiously for the institution of his +suit. I foresaw a great demand for the book as a consequence of it, and +I planned to aid in that. I arranged with some of my newspaper friends +in New York to send their cleverest reporters to write of the trial. +Charles Henry Webb--"John Paul," who wrote the burlesques, "St. +Twelvemo" and "Liffith Lank"--proposed to take up on his own account +Mr. Warlock's contention that the novelist has no right to use any man's +surname in a novel, and make breezy fun of it by writing a novelette +upon those lines. In his preface he purposed to set forth the fact that +there is scarcely any conceivable name that is not to be found in the +New York City directory, and that even a name omitted from that widely +comprehensive work, was pretty sure to belong to somebody somewhere, +so that under the Warlock doctrine its use must involve danger. He +would show that the novelist must therefore designate his personages +as "Thomas Ex Square," "Tabitha Twenty Three," and so on with a +long list of mathematical impersonalities. Then he planned to give +a sample novel written in that way, in which the dashing young cavalier, +Charles Augustus + should make his passionate addresses to the +fascinating Lydia =, only to learn from her tremulous lips that she was +already betrothed to the French nobleman, Compte [Symbol: cube root]y. + +Unhappily Mr. Warlock never instituted his suit; John Paul lost an +opportunity, and the public lost a lot of fun. + +By way of completing the story of this absurdity, it is worth while to +record that the novel complained of had no personage in it bearing the +name of Warlock. In the book that name was merely the designation by +which a certain Virginia plantation was known. + + + + +XLIV + + +[Sidenote: "Pike County Ballads"] + +During our early struggles to secure a place for _Hearth and Home_ in +popular favor, I was seized with a peculiarly vaulting ambition. John +Hay's "Pike County Ballads" were under discussion everywhere. Phrases +from them were the current coin of conversation. Critics were curiously +studying them as a new and effective form of literature, and many pious +souls were in grave alarm over what they regarded as blasphemy in Mr. +Hay's work, especially the phrase "a durned sight better business than +loafin' round the throne," at the end of "Little Breeches." + +I knew Mr. Hay slightly. Having ceased for a time to hold diplomatic +place, he was a working writer then, with his pen as his one source of +income. I made up my mind to secure a Pike County Ballad for _Hearth and +Home_ even though the cost of it should cause our publishers the loss of +some sleep. Knowing that his market was a good one for anything he might +choose to write, I went to him with an offer such as few writers, if any +at that time, had ever received, thinking to outbid all others who might +have designs upon his genius. + +It was of no use. He said that the price offered "fairly took his breath +away," but told me with the emphasis of serious assurance, that he +"could not write a Pike County Ballad to save his life." "That was what +they call a 'pocket mine,'" he added, "and it is completely worked out." + +He went on to tell me the story of the Ballads and the circumstances +in which they were written. As he told me the same thing more in detail +many years later, adding to it a good many little reminiscences, I shall +draw upon the later rather than the earlier memory in writing of the +matter here. + +It was in April, 1902, when he was at the height of his brilliant career +as Secretary of State that I visited him by invitation. In the course of +a conversation I reminded him of what he had told me about thirty years +before, concerning the genesis of the ballads, and said: + +"I wonder if you would let me print that story? It seems to me something +the public is entitled to share." + +He responded without hesitation: + +"Certainly. Print it by all means if you wish, and in order that you +may get it right after all these years, I'll tell it to you again. It +came about in this way: I was staying for a time at a hospitable country +house, and on a hot summer Sunday I went with the rest to church +where I sleepily listened to a sermon. In the course of it the good old +parson--who hadn't a trace of humorous perception in his make-up, droned +out a story substantially the same as that in 'Little Breeches.' + +"As I sat there in the sleepy sultriness of the summer Sunday, in an +atmosphere that seemed redolent of roasting pine pews and scorching +cushion covers, I fell to thinking of Pike County methods of thought, +of what humor a Pike County dialect telling of that story would have, +and of what impression the story itself, as solemnly related by the +preacher, would make upon the Pike County mind. There are two Pike +Counties, you know--one in Illinois and the other confronting it across +the river, in Missouri. But the people of the two Pike Counties are +very much alike--isomeric, as the chemists say--and they have a dialect +speech, a point of view, and an intellectual attitude in common, and all +their own. I have encountered nothing else like it anywhere. + +[Sidenote: John Hay's Own Story of the Ballads] + +"When I left the church that Sunday, I was full to the lips of an +imaginary Pike County version of the preacher's story, and on the train +as I journeyed to New York, I entertained myself by writing 'Little +Breeches.' The thing was done merely for my own amusement, without the +smallest thought of print. But when I showed it to Whitelaw Reid he +seized upon the manuscript and published it in the _Tribune_. + +"By that time the lilt and swing of the Pike County Ballad had taken +possession of me. I was filled with the Pike County spirit, as it +were, and the humorous side of my mind was entertained by its rich +possibilities. Within a week after the appearance of 'Little Breeches' +in print all the Pike County Ballads were written. After that the +impulse was completely gone from me. There was absolutely no possibility +of another thing of the kind. When you asked me for something of that +kind for _Hearth and Home_, I told you truly that I simply could not +produce it. There were no more Pike County Ballads in me, and there +never have been any since. + +"Let me tell you a queer thing about that. From the hour when the last +of the ballads was written until now, I have never been able to feel +that they were mine, that my mind had had anything to do with their +creation, or that they bore any trace of kinship to my thought or my +intellectual impulses. They seem utterly foreign to me--as foreign as if +I had first encountered them in print, as the work of somebody else. It +is a strange feeling. Of course every creative writer feels something of +the sort with regard to much of his work, but I, at least, have never +had the feeling one-tenth so strongly with regard to anything else I +ever did. + +"Now, let me tell you," Mr. Hay continued, "of some rather interesting +experiences I have had with respect to the ballads. One day at the +Gilsey House, in New York, I received the card of a gentleman, and when +he came to my room he said: + +"'I am the son of the man whom you celebrated in one of your ballads as +Jim Bludso, the engineer who stuck to his duty and declared he would +"hold her nozzle agin the bank till the last galoot's ashore."'" + +Mr. Hay added: + +"This gave me an opportunity. Mark Twain had criticised the ballad, +saying that Jim Bludso must have been a pilot, and not an engineer, for +the reason that an engineer, having once set his engines going, could +have no need to stay by them. In view of this criticism, I asked my +visitor concerning it, telling him of what Mark Twain had said. For +answer the caller assured me that the original Jim Bludso was in fact +an engineer. He explained that as a Mississippi River steamboat has two +engines, each turning an independent wheel, and as the current of the +river is enormously swift, it was necessary for the engineer to remain +at his post, working one engine and then the other, backing on one +sometimes and going ahead on the other, if her nozzle was to be held +'agin the bank till the last galoot's ashore.'" + +[Sidenote: Some Anecdotes from John Hay] + +For reply to this I told Mr. Hay that I had seen in a Memphis cemetery a +tombstone erected to a pilot, and inscribed with the story of his heroic +death in precisely Jim Bludso's spirit. At the time that I read the +inscription on it, "Jim Bludso" had not been written, but the matter +interested me and I made inquiry for the exact facts. The story as I +heard it was this: The boat being afire the pilot landed her, head-on +against a bank that offered no facilities for making her fast with +cables. The only way to get the "galoots ashore" was for the pilot +to remain at his post and ring his engine bells for going ahead and +backing, so as to "hold her nozzle agin the bank." But the flames were +by that time licking the rear of the pilot house, and the captain +frantically entreated the pilot to leap from the forward part of the +structure to the deck below. This the heroic fellow refused to do so +long as the safety of the passengers required his presence at his post. +He stood there, calmly smoking his cigar and coolly ringing his bells as +occasion required till at last every other human being on board had been +saved. By that time the flames had completely enveloped the pilot-house, +and there was left no possible way of escape. Then relinquishing his +hold upon the wheel, the pilot folded his arms and stood like a statue +until the floor beneath him gave way and he sank to a cruel death in the +furnace-like fire below. + +The details of the story were related to me by Captain John Cannon, of +the steamer "Robert E. Lee," and the weather-beaten old navigator was +not ashamed of the tears that trickled down his cheeks as he told the +tale. + +When I had finished, Mr. Hay said: + +"That only means that we have two heroes to revere instead of one. Jim +Bludso was an engineer." + +Continuing his talk of coincidences, Mr. Hay said: + +"I once went up to my native village, and as I walked along the street I +accidentally jostled a man. When I apologized, he turned to me and said: + +"'I ought to know you and you ought to know me, for your name's John +Hay and mine's Jim Bludso. But I'm not the fellow you wrote that poetry +about. He's very dead and you see I'm very much alive.'" + +Then Mr. Hay told me of another curious encounter that connected itself +with the Pike County Ballads. + +"You remember," he said, "that it was from the sermon of an old minister +that I got the story told in 'Little Breeches.' Well, when I was in +California in company with President McKinley, I was one day visited by +a venerable man who proved to be none other than the preacher from whose +lips I had heard the original and authoritative prosaic version of that +miracle story. It is curious how these coincidences occur." + +The substance of this conversation with Mr. Hay was embodied in an +article of mine in the New York _Herald_ for April 27, 1902. Proofs of +the interview were sent to Mr. Hay in advance of publication, with my +request that he should make such corrections in them as he saw fit. He +returned the slips to me without an alteration and with a note saying; +"I have no suggestions to make. Your report of our conversation is +altogether accurate. I only wish I might have said something better +worth printing." + +That was the last time I saw John Hay. It was the end of an acquaintance +which had been cordial, though not intimate, and which had extended over +a period of thirty years. As I was leaving he stopped me. He took up a +copy of the pamphlet containing his splendid tribute to the memory of +President McKinley, inscribed it with his autograph, and handed it to +me, saying, with a touch of sadness which was not quite melancholy: + +"You care for my literary work. Perhaps in the coming years you will +care to have, from my own hand, this copy of my latest and probably my +last essay in that department of human endeavor." + +The event verified his prophecy. He soon afterward fell ill, and in the +year 1905 he died, affectionately regretted by every one who had ever +known him personally and by scores of thousands who had known him only +through his work. + +[Sidenote: Mr. Hay's Personality] + +John Hay's personal character was the foundation upon which all his +successes, whether in journalism, literature, or statecraft were built. +He was utterly sincere, as instinctively truthful as a child, and as +gentle of spirit as any woman ever was. Those who knew him personally +were never at a loss to account for the ease with which, in diplomatic +matters, he won men to his wish and persuaded them to his point of +view. Every one who came into contact with him was constrained by his +gentle reasonableness to agree with him. His whole nature was winning +in an extraordinary degree. Strong as he was in his own convictions, +his assertion of them never took the form of antagonism. I really +suppose that John Hay never said a thing in his life which aroused +resentment--and that not because of any hesitation on his part to utter +his thought but because of the transparent justice of the thought, +and of his gently persuasive way of uttering it. His convictions were +strong and there was enough of apostleship in his nature to prompt him +to urge them on all proper occasions: but he urged them soothingly, +convincingly, never by arrogant assertion or with obnoxious insistence. + +Feeling no disposition to quarrel with anybody on his own account, +he was always alert to make an end of other people's quarrels when +opportunity of pacification came to him. + +I remember an instance of this that fell under my own notice. During a +prolonged absence of Mr. Whitelaw Reid from the country, Mr. Hay was +left in control of the _Tribune_. I was not connected with any newspaper +at the time, but was "running a literary shop" of my own, as Mr. Hay +expressed it--writing books of my own, editing other people's books, +advising a publishing firm, and writing for various newspapers and +magazines. Now and then, when some occurrence suggested it, I wrote an +editorial article for the _Tribune_, as I had done occasionally for a +good many years before. + +One day Mr. Hay asked me to call upon him with reference to some work he +wanted me to do. After we had arranged all the rest of it, he picked up +Jefferson Davis's "Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government," which +had just been published. + +"That is a subject," Mr. Hay said, "on which you can write as an expert. +I want you, if you will, to review the book for the _Tribune_." + +I objected that my estimate of Mr. Davis was by no means a flattering +one, and that in a cursory examination which I had already given to his +book, I had discovered some misrepresentations of fact so extraordinary +that they could not be passed over in charitable silence. I cited, as +one of these misrepresentations, Mr. Davis's minute account--expunged +from later editions of the book, I believe--of the final evacuation of +Fort Sumter and the city of Charleston--in which he gave an account of +certain theatrical performances that never occurred, and of impassioned +speeches made by an officer who was not there and had not been there for +eight months before the time of the evacuation. + +"So far as that is concerned," said Mr. Hay, "it makes no difference. As +a reviewer you will know what to say of such things. Mr. Davis has put +forward a book. It is subject to criticism at the hands of any capable +and honest reviewer. Write of it conscientiously, and with as much of +good temper as you can. That is all I desire." + +I then suggested another difficulty. For a considerable time past there +had been some ill feeling between the editor of the _Tribune_ and the +publishers of Mr. Davis's book. The _Tribune_ did not review or in any +way mention books published by that firm. On one occasion, when I had +been asked to review a number of books for the paper, one of them was +withdrawn on that account. I suggested to Mr. Hay that perhaps a review +of Mr. Davis's book by one who had been thus warned of the situation +might be a displeasing impertinence. He replied: + +"I have had no instructions on that head. I know nothing about the ill +feeling. Perhaps you and I may make an end of the trouble by ignoring +it. Write your review and I will publish it." + +[Sidenote: Mr. Hay and "The Breadwinners"] + +One other thing I may mention here as perhaps of interest. When the +anonymous novel, "The Breadwinners," appeared, it excited a good deal of +comment because of the freedom with which the author presented prominent +persons under a disguise too thin to conceal identity. The novel was +commonly and confidently attributed to Mr. Hay, and some of the critics +ventured to censure him for certain features of it. One night at the +Authors Club, at a time when talk of the matter was in everybody's +mouth, and when Mr. Hay's authorship of the work had well-nigh ceased +to be in doubt, he and I were talking of other things, when suddenly he +said to me: + +"I suppose you share the general conviction with regard to the +authorship of 'The Breadwinners.' Let me tell you that I did not write +that book, though I confess that some things in it seem to justify the +popular belief that I did." + +The peculiar form of words in which he couched his denial left me in +doubt as to its exact significance, and to this day that doubt has never +been resolved. Of course I could not subject him to a cross-examination +on the subject. + + + + +XLV + + +I have wandered somewhat from the chronology of my recollections, but +this record is not a statistical table, and so it matters not if I +wander farther still in pursuit of vagrant memories. + +The mention of Mr. Hay's old preacher who had no sense of humor in his +composition reminds me of another of like kind, who was seized with an +ardent desire to contribute--for compensation--a series of instructive +moral essays to _Hearth and Home_. + +When asked by a member of the publishing firm to let him do so, I +replied that I did not think the paper was just then in pressing need of +instructive moral essays, but that the reverend gentlemen might send one +as a sample. He sent it. It began thus: + +"Some philosopher has wisely observed that 'every ugly young woman has +the comforting assurance that she will be a pretty old woman if she +lives long enough.' Doubtless the philosopher meant that a young woman +destitute of physical beauty, with all its temptations, is sure to +cultivate those spiritual qualities which give beauty and more than +beauty to the countenance in later years." + +And so the dear, innocent old gentleman went on for a column or so, +utterly oblivious of the joke he had accepted as profound philosophy. +I had half a mind to print his solemn paper in the humorous column +entitled, "That Reminds Me," but, in deference to his age and dignity, +I forbore. As is often the case in such matters, my forbearance awakened +no gratitude in him. In answer to his earnest request to know why +I thought his essay unworthy, I was foolish enough to point out and +explain the jocular character of his "philosopher's" utterance, +whereupon he wrote to my publishers, strongly urging them to employ a +new editor, for that "the young man you now have is obviously a person +of frivolous mind who sees only jests in utterances of the most solemn +and instructive import." + +As the publishers did not ask for my resignation, I found it easy to +forgive my adversary. + +[Sidenote: The Disappointed Author] + +In view of the multitude of cases in which the writers of rejected +contributions and the victims of adverse criticism are at pains to +advise publishers to change their editors, I have sometimes wondered +that the editorial fraternity is not continually a company of literary +nomads, looking for employment. In one case, I remember, a distinguished +critic reviewing a rather pretentious book, pointed out the fact that +the author had confounded rare old Ben Jonson with Dr. Samuel Johnson +in a way likely to be misleading to careless or imperfectly informed +readers, whereupon not only the author but all his friends sent letters +clamoring for the dismissal of a reviewer so lacking in sympathetic +appreciation of sincere literary endeavor. When I told Mr. George Ripley +of the matter he replied: + +"Oh, that is the usual thing. I am keeping a collection of letters sent +to Mr. Greeley demanding my discharge. I think of bequeathing it to the +Astor Library as historical material, reflecting the literary conditions +of our time." + +In one case of the kind that fell to my share there was a rather +dramatic outcome. I was acting as a literary adviser for Harper & +Brothers, when there came to me for judgment the manuscript of a novel +in which I found more of virility and strong human interest than most +novels possess, together with a well constructed plot, a pleasing +literary style, and some unusually well conceived and well portrayed +characters. The work was so good indeed that it was with very sincere +regret that I found myself obliged to condemn it. I had to do so because +it included, as an inseparable part of its structure, a severe and even +a bitter assault upon the work and the methods of Mr. Moody and all the +other "irregular troops" in the army of religion, not sparing even the +"revival" methods of the Methodists and Baptists. It was a rigid rule +of the Harpers not to publish books of that kind, and I might with +propriety have reported simply that the novel included matters which +rendered it unavailable for the Harper list. But I was so interested in +it and so impressed with its superior quality as a work of fiction that +instead of a brief recommendation of rejection, I sent in an elaborate +critical analysis of it, including a pretty full synopsis of its plot. +The "opinion" filled many pages of manuscript--more than I had ever +before written in that way concerning any book submitted to me. + +A week or so later I happened to call at the Harper establishment, as +it was my custom to do occasionally. Seeing me, Mr. Joseph W. Harper, +Jr.--"Brooklyn Joe" we called him--beckoned to me, and, with a labored +assumption of solemnity which a mirthful twinkle in his eye completely +spoiled, said: + +"I have a matter which I must bring to your attention, greatly to my +regret. Read that." + +With that he handed me a letter from the author of the novel, an +Episcopalian clergyman of some distinction. + +The writer explained that his vanity was in no way offended by the +rejection of his work. That, he said, was to be expected in the case of +an unknown author (a flattering unction with which unsuccessful authorship +always consoles itself), but that he felt it to be his duty as a +clergyman, a moralist, and a good citizen, to report to the house that +their reader was robbing them to the extent of his salary. He had +incontrovertible proof, he said, that the reader had not read a single +page or line of his manuscript before rejecting it. + +"There," said Joe Harper when I had finished the letter. "I really +didn't think you that sort of a person." + +"What did you say to him by way of reply?" I asked. + +[Sidenote: Joe Harper's Masterpiece] + +"I'll show you," he said, taking up his letter-book. "I inclosed a copy +of that intolerably long opinion of yours and wrote this." Then he let +me read the letter. In it he thanked the gentleman for having brought +the dereliction of the reader to the attention of the house, but +suggested that before proceeding to extreme measures in such a case, +he thought it well to be perfectly sure of the facts. To that end, he +wrote, he inclosed an exact copy of the "opinion" on which the novel had +been declined, and asked the author to read it and report whether or not +he still felt certain that the writer of the opinion had condemned the +work unread. + +The entire letter was written in a tone of submissive acceptance of +the rejected author's judgment in the case. As a whole it seemed to me +as withering a piece of sarcasm as I ever read, and in spite of the +injustice he had sought to do me. I was distinctly sorry for the man to +whom it was addressed. I suppose Mr. Harper felt in the same way, but +all that he said, as he put the letter-book upon his desk, was: + +"I hope he prepares his sermon early in the week, for that letter of +mine must have reached him about Friday morning, and it may have created +a greater or less disturbance in his mind." + +A few days later there came a reply. The author said that an examination +of the "opinion" left no room for doubt that the work had been read with +care throughout, but that he had confidently believed otherwise when he +wrote his first letter. He explained that before sending the manuscript +he had tied a peculiar cord around it, inside the wrapper, and that when +it came back to him with the same cord tied about it, he thought it +certain that the package had never been opened. He was sorry he had made +a mistake, of course, but he had been entirely sincere, etc., etc. + +Mr. Harper indulged himself in an answer to all this. If I had not been +permitted to read it, I should never have believed that anything so +caustic could have been uttered by a man so genially good-tempered as +I knew Mr. Harper to be. It was all the more effective because from +beginning to end there was no trace of excitement, no touch of anger, no +word or phrase in it that could be criticised as harsh or intemperate. + +Beneath the complaint made by the clerical author in that case there was +a mistaken assumption with which every publisher and every editor is +familiar--the assumption, namely, that the publisher or editor to whom +unsolicited manuscripts are sent is under some sort of moral obligation +to read them or have them read. Of course no such obligation exists. +When the publisher or editor is satisfied that he does not wish to +purchase a manuscript, it makes no manner of difference by what process +he has arrived at that conclusion. The subject of the book or article +may be one that he does not care to handle; the author's manner, as +revealed in the early pages of his manuscript, may justify rejection +without further reading. Any one of a score of reasons may be conclusive +without the necessity of examining the manuscript in whole or even in +part. I once advised the rejection of a book without reading it, on +the ground that the woman who wrote it used a cambric needle and milk +instead of a pen and ink, so that it would be a gross immorality to put +her manuscript into the hands of printers whose earnings depended upon +the number of ems they could set in a day. + +[Sidenote: Manuscripts and Their Authors] + +But the conviction is general among the amateur authors of unsolicited +manuscripts that the editors or publishers to whom they send their +literary wares are morally bound not only to examine them, but to read +them carefully from beginning to end. They sometimes resort to ingenious +devices by way of detecting the rascally editors in neglect of this +duty. They slenderly stick the corners of two sheets together; or they +turn up the lower corner of a sheet here and there as if by accident but +so carefully as to cover a word or two from sight; or they place a sheet +upside down, or in some other way set a trap that makes the editor smile +if he happens to be in good temper, and causes him to reject the thing +in resentment of the impertinence if his breakfast has not agreed with +him that day. + +I was speaking of these things one day, to Mr. George P. Putnam, +Irving's friend and the most sympathetically literary of publishers then +living, when he suddenly asked me: + +"Do you know the minimum value of a lost manuscript?" + +I professed ignorance, whereupon he said: + +"It is five hundred dollars." Presently, in answer to a question, +he explained: + +"In the old days of _Putnam's Monthly_, one of the multitude of +unsolicited manuscripts sent in would now and then be mislaid. I +never knew a case of the kind in which the author failed to value the +manuscript at five hundred dollars or more, no matter what its subject +or its length or even its worthlessness might be. In one case, when I +refused to pay the price fixed upon by the author, he instituted suit, +and very earnestly protested that his manuscript was worth far more +than the five hundred dollars demanded for it. He even wrote me that he +had a definite offer of more than that sum for it. To his discomfiture +somebody in the office found the manuscript about that time and we +returned it to the author. He sent it back, asking us to accept it. +I declined. He then offered it for two hundred and fifty dollars, then +for two hundred, and finally for seventy-five. I wrote to him that he +needn't trouble to reduce his price further, as the editors did not care +to accept the paper at any price. I have often wondered why he didn't +sell it to the person who, as he asserted, had offered him more than +five hundred dollars for it; but he never did, as the thing has never +yet been published, and that was many years ago." + + + + +XLVI + + +It was during my connection with _Hearth and Home_ that I first met two +men who greatly interested me. One of them was the newest of celebrities +in American literature; the other was old enough to have been lampooned +by Poe in his series of papers called "The Literati." + +The one was Joaquin Miller, the other Thomas Dunn English. + +[Sidenote: Joaquin Miller] + +Joaquin Miller had recently returned in a blaze of glory from his +conquest of London society and British literary recognition. He brought +me a note of introduction from Mr. Richard Watson Gilder of the +_Century_ or _Scribner's Monthly_ as I think the magazine was still +called at that time. He wore a broad-brimmed hat of most picturesque +type. His trousers--London made and obviously costly--were tucked into +the most superior looking pair of high top boots I ever saw, and in +his general make-up he was an interesting cross or combination of the +"untutored child of nature" fresh from the plains, and the tailor-made +man of fashion. More accurately, he seemed a carefully costumed stage +representation of the wild Westerner that he professed to be in fact. +I do not know that all this, or any of it, was affectation in the +invidious sense of the term. I took it to be nothing more than a clever +bit of advertising. He was a genuine poet--as who can doubt who has read +him? He had sagacity and a keen perception both of the weakness and the +strength of human nature. He wanted a hearing, and he knew the shortest, +simplest, surest way to get it. Instead of publishing his poems and +leaving it to his publisher to bring them to attention by the slow +processes of newspaper advertising, he went to London, and made himself +his own advertisement by adopting a picturesque pose, which was not +altogether a pose, though it was altogether picturesque, and trusting +the poems, to which he thus directed attention, to win favor for +themselves. + +In saying that his assumption of the role of untutored child of nature +was not altogether an assumption, I mean that although his boyhood was +passed in Indiana schools, and he was for a time a college student +there, he had nevertheless passed the greater part of his young manhood +in the wilds and among the men of the wilderness. If he was not in fact +"untutored," he nevertheless owed very little to the schools, and +scarcely anything to the systematic study of literature. His work was +marked by crudenesses that were not assumed or in any wise fictitious, +while the genuineness of poetic feeling and poetic perception that +inspired it was unquestionably the spontaneous product of his own soul +and mind. + +In my editorial den he seated himself on my desk, though there was a +comfortable chair at hand. Was that a bit of theatrical "business"? I +think not, for the reason that Thomas Bailey Aldrich, the least affected +of men, used nearly always to bestride a reversed chair with his hands +resting upon its back, when he visited me in my office, as he sometimes +did, to smoke a pipe in peace for half an hour and entertain me with his +surprising way of "putting things," before "going off to suffer and be +good by invitation," as he once said with reference to some reception +engagement. + +London had accepted Joaquin Miller's pose without qualification. Even +the London comic journals, in satirizing it, seemed never to doubt its +genuineness. But on this side of the water we had begun to hear rumors +that this son of the plains and the mountains, this dweller in solitudes +whose limitless silence he himself suggested in the lines: + + "A land so lone that you wonder whether + The God would know it should you fall dead," + +was after all a man bred in civilization and acquainted with lands so +far from lone that the coroner would be certain to hear of it promptly +if death came to one without the intervention of a physician. + +As he addressed me by my first name from the beginning, and in other +ways manifested a disposition to put conventionalities completely aside, +I ventured to ask him about one of these rumors, which particularly +interested me. + +"I hear, Mr. Miller," I said, "that you are my compatriot--that you are +a Hoosier by birth, as I am--is it true?" + +He sat in meditation for a time; then he said: + +"George, I've told so many lies about my birth and all that, that there +may be inconsistencies in them. I think I'd better not add to the +inconsistencies." + +I did not press the question. I asked him, instead, to let me have a +poem for _Hearth and Home_. + +[Sidenote: Joaquin Miller's Notions of Dress] + +"I can't," he replied, "I haven't a line of unsold manuscript anywhere +on earth, and just now I am devoting myself to horseback riding in +Central Park. I've got a seven hundred dollar saddle and I must use it, +and you, as an old cavalryman, know how utterly uninspiring a thing it +is to amble around Central Park on a horse trained to regard a policeman +as a person to be respected, not to say feared, in the matter of speed +limits and the proper side of the trail, and all that sort of thing. But +that saddle and these boots must be put to the use for which they were +built, so I must go on riding in the park till they grow shabby, and +I can't think in meter till I get away somewhere where the trees +don't stand in rows like sentinels in front of a string of tents, and +where the people don't all dress alike. Do you know that is the worst +tomfoolery this idiotic world ever gave birth to? It is all right for +British soldiers, because there must be some way in which the officers +can tell in a crowd who is a soldier and who is not, and besides, +regular soldiers aren't men anyhow. They're only ten-pins, to be set +up in regular order by one man and bowled over by another. + +"But what sense is there in men dressing in that way? You and I are tall +and slender, but our complexions are different. We are free American +citizens. Why should anybody who invites us both to dinner, expect that +we shall wear the same sort of clothes? And not only that, why should +they expect us to put on precisely the same sort of garments that the +big-bellied banker, who is to be our fellow-guest, is sure to wear? It's +all nonsense, I tell you. It is an idea born of the uninventive genius +of an inane society whose constituent members are as badly scared at +any suggestion of originality or individuality as a woman is at the +apparition of a mouse in her bedchamber." + +I told him I did not agree with him. + +"The social rule in that respect seems to me a peculiarly sensible and +convenient one," I said. "When a man is invited to anything, he knows +exactly what to wear. If it be a daytime affair he has only to put +on a frock coat with trousers of a lighter color; if it be an evening +function a sparrowtailed coat, black trousers, a low cut vest, and a +white tie equip him as perfectly as a dozen tailors could. In either +case he need not give a thought to his clothes in order to be sure that +his costume will be not only correct but so exactly like everybody's +else that nobody present will think of it at all. It is a great saving +of gray matter, and of money, too, and more important still, it sets +men free. The great majority of us couldn't afford to go to any sort +of function, however interesting, if we had to dress individually and +competitively for it, as women do." + +"Oh, of course," he answered, "the thing has its advantages, but it is +dreadfully monotonous--what the children call 'samey, samey.'" + +"By which you mean that it deprives one of all excuse for making himself +conspicuous by his dress--and that is precisely what most of us do not +want to do in any case. Besides, one needn't submit himself to the +custom if he objects to it." + +"That is so," he answered; "at any rate I don't." + +His practice in the matter was extreme, of course. Even ten years after +that he visited the Authors Club with his trousers in his boots, but at +the time of my first meeting with him the rule of the "dress coat" was +by no means confirmed. It was still a matter of choice with men whether +they should wear it or not at evening functions, and its use at other +times of day was still possible without provoking ridicule. At almost +every banquet, dinner, or other evening function in those days there +were sure to be a number of frock coats worn, and I remember that at the +memorable breakfast given in Boston in celebration of Dr. Oliver Wendell +Holmes's seventieth birthday in 1879, there were a few guests who wore +evening dress, although we sat down to the breakfast at one o'clock and +separated before the sun went down. I observed the same thing at two +of the breakfasts given to Mr. Edmund Gosse in New York in the early +eighties. It was not until near the middle of that decade that the +late William Henry Hurlbut authoritatively laid down the law that +"a gentleman must never appear without evening dress after six o'clock +P.M., and never, _never_ wear it before that hour, even at a wedding--even +at his own wedding." + +[Sidenote: Dress Reform a la Stedman] + +I remember an incident that grew out of this once vexed question, which +is perhaps worth recalling. When the Authors Club was founded in 1882, +our chief concern was to make it and keep it an informal, brotherly +organization of literary men by excluding from its rules and its +practices everything that might impose restraint upon social liberty. We +aimed at the better kind of Bohemianism--the Bohemianism of liberty, not +license; the Bohemianism which disregards all meaningless formalities +but respects the decencies and courtesies of social intercourse. + +Edmund Clarence Stedman was an enthusiastic advocate of this policy. He +was beset, he told me at the time, by a great fear that the club might +go the way of other organizations with which he was connected; that it +might lose its character as an association of authors in sympathy with +each other's work and aspirations, and become merely an agency of +fashion, a giver of banquets and receptions at which men should be +always on dress parade. By way of averting that degeneracy he proposed +for one thing that the members of the club should address each other +always by their first names, as schoolboys do. This proved to be +impracticable in a club which included such men as Dr. Drisler, Dr. +Youmans, President Noah Porter, Bishop Hurst, Parke Godwin, James +Russell Lowell, and others of like dignity--together with a lot of +younger men who made their first acquaintance with these in the club +itself. But another of Stedman's suggestions met with ready acceptance. +He proposed that we should taboo evening dress at our meetings. In +playful humor he suggested that if any member should appear at a meeting +of the club in that conventional garb, he should be required to stand up +before all the company, explain himself, and apologize. + +We laughingly adopted the rule, and the first person who fell a victim +to it was Stedman himself. About ten o'clock one night he entered the +club in full dinner dress. Instantly he was arraigned and, standing +in the midst of what he called "the clamorous mob," entered upon his +explanation. He had come, he said, directly from a philistine dinner at +which the garb he wore was as inexorably necessary as combed hair or +polished boots or washed hands; his home was far away, and he had been +forced to choose between coming to the club in evening dress and not +coming at all. Of the two calamities he had chosen the former as the +primrose path--a path he had always followed instead of the stormy and +thorny one, he said, whenever liberty of choice had been his. Then by +way of "fruits meet for repentance," he drew from his pocket a black +cravat and in the presence of the club substituted it for the white +one he had been wearing. At that time no other than a white cravat was +permitted with evening dress, so that by this substitution of a black +one, he took himself out of the category of the condemned and became +again a companion in good-fellowship over the punch and pipes. + + + + +XLVII + + +[Sidenote: Beginnings of Newspaper Illustration] + +It was during the early seventies that the inevitable happened, or +at least began to happen, with regard to newspaper illustration. The +excessive cost of illustrating periodicals by wood engraving, and the +time required for its slow accomplishment, together with the growing +eagerness of the people for pictures, set a multitude of men of clever +wits at work to devise some cheaper and speedier process of reproducing +drawings and photographic pictures. I myself invented a very crude +and imperfect process of that kind, which I thought susceptible of +satisfactory development. I engaged a certain journalist of irregular +habits and large pretensions, who was clever with his pencil, to join +me in the development and exploitation of the process, he to furnish +such drawings of various kinds as I needed, and I to experiment in +reproduction. Of course I had to explain my process to him, and he, +being a shrewd young man whose moral character was far less admirable +than his always perfect costume, mastered my secret and sold it for a +trifling sum to a man who promptly patented it and, with a few changes +which I had not the cleverness to make, brought it into use as his own. + +I said some ugly things to my dishonest coadjutor, whose manner of +receiving them convinced me that he was well used to hear himself +characterized in that way. Then I laughed at myself, went home and read +about Moses and the green spectacles, in "The Vicar of Wakefield," and +so calmed my spirit. + +But mine was an extremely unsatisfactory process, even after the +inventor who had bought it from my rascally associate had improved it +to the limit of his capacity, and there were far cleverer men at work +upon the same problem. By 1874 one of them had so far succeeded that an +enterprising firm, owning his patents, decided to set up in New York a +daily illustrated newspaper, the _Graphic_. + +The failure of the enterprise was freely predicted from the beginning, +and in the end failure came to it, but not for the reasons given by the +prophets. The _Graphic_ failed chiefly because it never had an editor +or manager who knew how to make a newspaper. An additional cause of its +failure was its inability to get itself into that great news-gathering +trust, the Associated Press, whose agents, local and general, covered +the whole country and the whole world with a minuteness that no single +newspaper could hope to approach. + +But while the projectors of the _Graphic_ enterprise were full of their +first hopefulness, they bought the good will and the subscription list +of _Hearth and Home_, in order to make of that periodical the weekly +edition of their illustrated daily newspaper. + +This left me "out of a job," but altogether happy. I was very tired. I +had had but one week's vacation during my arduous service on _Hearth and +Home_. I had removed to an old Dutch farmhouse in New Jersey because of +the impaired health of one dear to me. I had become a contributor to +all the great magazines of that time, and a writer of successful books. +I was pleased, therefore, to be freed from the Sisyphean labors of the +editorial office. I decided to give up newspaper work in all its forms +and to devote my future years to literature alone. I retired to my +library, the windows of which were overhung by sweet-scented lilacs and +climbing roses, beyond which lay an orchard of varied fruits surrounding +the old farmhouse. There, I thought I would pass the remainder of +my days--that phrase felt good in the mind of a work-weary man of +thirty-four or about that--in quiet literary work, unvexed by intruding +exigencies of any kind. Of course I would write editorials for those +great metropolitan dailies for which I was accustomed to do that sort of +work from time to time as impulse and opportunity permitted, but I was +resolved never again to undertake editorial responsibility of any kind. + +[Sidenote: Accident's Part in Literary Life] + +As illustrative of the part that accident or unforeseen circumstance +plays in determining the career of a working man-of-letters, I may +relate the story of how I became at that time a writer of boys' fiction +as a part of my employment. I was writing at the time for the _Atlantic_, +the _Galaxy_, _Appleton's Journal_, and other magazines, and my time was +fully occupied, when there came to me a letter asking me upon what terms +I would furnish a serial story of adventure for a magazine that made +its appeal to boys and girls. Why the editor had thought of me in that +connection I cannot imagine. I had never written a boys' story--long or +short. I had never written a story of adventure of any sort. I said so +in my reply declining to consider the suggestion. A second letter came +promptly, urging me to reconsider and asking that I should at any rate +name the terms on which I would do the work. Thinking that this opened +an easy and certain road of escape, I decided to name terms that I +was confident my editor-correspondent would regard as wholly beyond +consideration. I wrote him that I would do the story if he would pay +me, for serial rights alone, the same price per thousand words that +the great magazines were paying me, I to retain the right of book +publication, and to have, without charge, the plates of any illustrations +the magazine might make for use with my text. + +Having thus "settled the matter," as I supposed, I dismissed the subject +from my mind as a thing done for. Twenty-four hours later there came a +telegram from the editor, saying: + +"Terms accepted. Write story. Contracts go by mail for execution." + +Those ten telegraphic words determined my career in an important +particular. Also they appalled me. They put me under a contract that +I had never thought of making. They placed me under obligation to do a +species of literary work which I had never dreamed even of trying to +do, and for which I felt myself utterly unfit. It was not only that I +had never written a boys' story or thought of writing one; I had never +acquainted myself with that sort of literature; I "knew not the trick +of it," as the poor fellow in "Hamlet" says when urged to play upon +a pipe. Nevertheless, I must do the thing and that immediately, for the +correspondence had named a date only three weeks off for the delivery +of the first instalment of the manuscript. + +There was no way of escape. I must set to work upon the story. But what +should it be about? Where should its scene be laid? What should be its +plot and who its personages? I had not so much as the shadowy ghost of +an idea, and during the next twenty-four sleepless hours all my efforts +to summon one from the vasty deep or elsewhere brought no result. + +[Sidenote: My First Boys' Book] + +While I was thus searching a mind vacant of suggestion, my two little +boys climbed upon my knees and besought me to tell them "an Injun +story." I was in the habit of entertaining their very juvenile minds +with exceedingly juvenile fictions manufactured on the spur of the +moment, fictions without plot, without beginning or ending of any +recognizable sort. Sometimes these "stories" were wholly imaginary; +sometimes I drew upon some boyish experience of my own for a subject. +This time the specific demand of my exigent little masters for "an Injun +story" led me to think of the Creek War in Alabama and Mississippi. It +so happened that some years before the time of this story telling, I had +lived for a good many weeks among the Cherokees, Muscogees, and Choctaws +in the Indian Territory, hunting with them by day and sleeping with them +around a camp-fire by night. I had in that way become interested in +their very dramatic history, and on my return to civilization I had read +all the literature I could find on the subject of the war in which their +power in our Southern states was overthrown, and they themselves, taken +by the neck and heels, as it were, out of the very hopefully advancing +civilisation they had in part borrowed but in greater part wrought out +for themselves, and thrown back into the half-savage life from which +they had struggled to escape. + +As I told my little fellows the story they wanted, it occurred to me +that here was my subject and inspiration for the larger story I had +agreed to write. Within a week or two "The Big Brother" was done and +its manuscript delivered. + +Its serial publication was never completed. When about half the chapters +had been printed, the new and ambitious juvenile magazine, _St. Nicholas_, +bought and suppressed the periodical that was publishing it. The Putnams +brought my story out in book form, and its success prompted them to ask +me for further boys' books, and as the subject of the Creek War was by +no means exhausted, I drew upon it for the materials of "Captain Sam" +and "The Signal Boys," thus making a trilogy that covered the entire +period between the massacre at Fort Mims and the battle of New Orleans. + +Then I decided that my wholly unintended incursion into the field +of youths' fiction should end there. I had never intended to write +literature of that kind, and now that I had exhausted the subject of +the Creek War, I had no impulse to hunt for other themes for such use. +Besides, I had by that time become absorbed in newspaper work again, and +had no time for the writing of books of any sort. + +It was not until the eighties that I wrote another book of juvenile +fiction, and that also came about by accident rather than intention. I +had again given up newspaper work, again meaning never to return to it. +I was conducting a literary shop of my own in Brooklyn, writing for the +magazines, reading for the Harpers, editing the books of other people +whose work needed that sort of attention, and doing other things of the +kind. + +One night I was entertaining the younger of the two boys who had +suggested the subject of my first work in juvenile fiction. I was +telling him of some adventures of my own and others' on the Carolina +coast, when suddenly he asked: "Why can't we put all that into a story +book?" That evening I received a letter from Mr. George Haven Putnam, +saying that while my three "Big Brother" books were still selling pretty +well, it would stimulate them helpfully if I could add a new one to +the series. In brief, he wanted me to write a new boys' story, and the +proposal fitted in so nicely with the suggestion of my little boy that +I called the child to me and said: + +"I think we'll write that story book, if you'll help me." + +He enthusiastically agreed. I can best tell the rest of that book's +story by quoting here from the brief prefatory dedication I wrote for +it when it was published in 1882, under the title of "The Wreck of the +Redbird": + +"I intended to dedicate this book to my son, Guilford Dudley Eggleston, +to whom it belonged in a peculiar sense. He was only nine years old, +but he was my tenderly loved companion, and was in no small degree the +creator of this story. He gave it the title it bears; he discussed with +me every incident in it; and every page was written with reference to +his wishes and his pleasure. There is not a paragraph here which does +not hold for me some reminder of the noblest, manliest, most unselfish +boy I have ever known. Ah, woe is me! He who was my companion is my dear +dead boy now, and I am sure that I only act for him as he would wish, in +inscribing the story that was so peculiarly his to the boy whom he loved +best, and who loved him as a brother might have done." + +[Sidenote: One Thing Leads to Another] + +It was eighteen years after that that I next wrote a work of fiction for +youth, and again the event was the result of suggestion from without. +"The Wreck of the Redbird" seems to have made a strong impression upon +Elbridge S. Brooks, at that time the literary editor of the Lothrop +Publishing Company of Boston, and in the year 1900 he wrote to me asking +on what terms I would write for that firm "a boys' story as good as 'The +Wreck of the Redbird.'" I had no story in mind at the time. For eighteen +years my attention had been absorbed by newspaper work and by literary +activities of a sort far removed from this. Moreover, I was at the time +working night and day as an editorial writer on the staff of the New +York _World_, with a good deal of executive duty and responsibility +added. But the thought of calling a company of boy readers around me +again and telling them a story appealed to my imagination, and, as the +terms I suggested were accepted, I employed such odd moments as I could +find between other tasks in writing "The Last of the Flatboats." Its +success led to other books of the kind, so that since this accidental +return to activities of that sort, I have produced six books of juvenile +fiction in the intervals of other and more strenuous work. + +Perhaps an apology is needed for this setting forth of affairs purely +personal. If so, it is found in the fact that the illustration given of +the part that accident and external suggestion play in determining the +course and character of a professional writer's work, seems to me likely +to interest readers who have never been brought into close contact with +such things. I have thought it of interest to show visitors through the +literary factory and to explain somewhat its processes. + + + + +XLVIII + + +After a year and a half of leisurely work in the old orchard-framed, New +Jersey farmhouse, I was suddenly jostled out of the comfortable rut in +which I had been traveling. A peculiarly plausible and smooth-tongued +publisher, a gifted liar, and about the most companionable man I ever +knew, had swindled me out of every dollar I had in the world and had +made me responsible for a part at least of his debts to others. I held +his notes and acceptances for what were to me large sums, and I hold +them yet. I held his written assurances, oft-repeated, that whatever +might happen to his business affairs, his debt to me was amply and +effectually secured. I hold those assurances yet--more than thirty-five +years later--and I hold also the showing made by his receiver, to the +effect that he had all the while been using my money to secure a secret +partner of his own, a highly respectable gentleman who in the course of +the settlement proceedings was indicted, convicted, and sent to prison +for fraud. But the conviction did not uncover any money with which the +debt to me might he liquidated in whole or in part, and the man who had +robbed me of all I had in the world had so shrewdly managed matters as +to escape all penalties. The last I heard of him he was conducting one +of the best-known religious newspapers in the country, and winning +laurels as a lecturer on moral and religious subjects, and especially +as a Sunday School worker, gifted in inspiring youth of both sexes with +high ethical principles and aspirations. + +When this calamity befel I had no ready money in possession or within +call, and no property of any kind that I could quickly convert into +money. I was "stripped to the buff" financially, but I knew my trade as +a writer and newspaper man. It was necessary that I should get back to +the city at once, and I had no money with which to make the transfer. In +this strait I sat down and wrote four magazine articles, writing night +and day, and scarcely sleeping at all. The situation was not conducive +to sleep. I sent off the articles as fast as they were written, in +each case asking the editors for an immediate remittance. They were my +personal friends, and I suppose all of them had had experiences not +unlike my own. At any rate they responded promptly, and within a week +I was settling myself in town and doing such immediate work as I could +find to do, while looking for better and more permanent employment. + +[Sidenote: The _Evening Post_ under Mr. Bryant] + +Almost immediately I was summoned to the office of the _Evening Post_, +where I accepted an appointment on the editorial staff. Thus I found +myself again engaged in newspaper work, but it was newspaper work of +a kind that appealed to my tastes and tendencies. Under Mr. Bryant +the _Evening Post_ was an old-fashioned newspaper of uncondescending, +uncompromising dignity. It loathed "sensation" and treated the most +sensational news--when it was obliged to treat it at all--in a dignified +manner, never forgetting its own self-respect or offending that of its +readers. It resolutely adhered to its traditional selling price of +five cents a copy, and I am persuaded that the greater number of its +constituents would have resented any reduction, especially one involving +them in the necessity of giving or taking "pennies" in change. + +It did not at all engage in the scramble for "news." It belonged to the +Associated Press; it had two or three reporters of its own, educated +men and good writers, who could be sent to investigate and report upon +matters of public import. It had a Washington correspondent and such +other news-getting agents as were deemed necessary under its rule of +conduct, which was to regard nothing as published until it was published +in the _Evening Post_. It was the completest realization I have ever +seen of the ideal upon which the _Pall Mall Gazette_ professed to +conduct itself--that of "a newspaper conducted by gentlemen, for +gentlemen." + +It could be trenchant in utterance upon occasion, and when it was so its +voice was effective--the more so because of its habitual moderation and +reserve. Sometimes, when the subject to be discussed was one that appealed +strongly to Mr. Bryant's convictions and feelings, he would write of it +himself. He was an old man and one accustomed to self-control, but when +his convictions were stirred, there was not only fire but white-hot lava +in his utterance. The lava streams flowed calmly and without rage or +turbulence, but they scorched and burned and consumed whatever they +touched. More frequently great questions were discussed by some one or +other of that outer staff of strong men who, without direct and daily +contact with the newspaper, and without salary or pay of any kind, were +still regarded by themselves and by the public as parts of the great +intellectual and scholarly force in conduct and control of the _Evening +Post_--such men, I mean, as Parke Godwin and John Bigelow--men once +members of that newspaper's staff and still having free access to its +columns when they had aught that they wished to say on matters of public +concern. + +[Sidenote: Old-Time Newspaper Standards] + +Best of all, so far as my tastes and inclinations were concerned, the +_Evening Post_, under Mr. Bryant's and later Mr. Parke Godwin's control, +regarded and treated literature and scholarship as among the chief +forces of civilized life and the chief concerns of a newspaper +addressing itself to the educated class in the community. Whatsoever +concerned literature or scholarship, whatsoever was in any wise +related to those things, whatever concerned education, culture, human +advancement, commanded the _Evening Post's_ earnest attention and +sympathy. It discussed grave measures of state pending at Washington +or Albany or elsewhere, but it was at no pains to record the gossip of +great capitals. Personalities had not then completely usurped the place +of principles and policies in the attention of newspapers, and the +_Evening Post_ gave even less attention to such things than most of +its contemporaries did. The time had not yet come among newspapers +when circulation seemed of greater importance than character, when +the details of a divorce scandal or a murder trial seemed of more +consequence than the decisions of the Supreme Court, or when a brutal +slugging match between two low-browed beasts in human form was regarded +as worthy of greater newspaper space than a discussion of the tariff on +art or the appearance of an epoch-making book by Tennyson or Huxley or +Haeckel. + +In brief, the newspapers of that time had not learned the baleful lesson +that human society is a cone, broadest at bottom, and that the lower a +newspaper cuts into it the broader its surface of circulation is. They +had not yet reconciled themselves to the thought of appealing to low +tastes and degraded impulses because that was the short road to +multitudinous "circulation," with its consequent increase in +"advertising patronage." + +Most of the newspapers of that time held high standards, and the +_Evening Post_, under Mr. Bryant's control, was the most exigent of all +in that respect. + +Another thing. The "book notice" had not yet taken the place of the +capable and conscientious review. It had not yet occurred to editors +generally that the purpose of the literary columns was to induce +advertisements from publishers, and that anybody on a newspaper staff +who happened to have nothing else to do, or whose capacities were small, +might be set to reviewing books, whether he happened to know anything +about literature or not. + +It was the custom of the better newspapers then, both in New York +and elsewhere, to employ as their reviewers men eminent for literary +scholarship and eminently capable of literary appreciation. Among +the men so employed at that time--to mention only a few by way of +example--were George Ripley, Richard Henry Stoddard, E. P. Whipple, +Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Charles Dudley Warner, R. R. Bowker, +W. C. Wilkinson, Charles F. Briggs, and others of like gifts and +accomplishments. + +Mr. Bryant himself had exercised this function through long years that +won distinction from his work for his newspaper. As advancing years +compelled him to relinquish that toil, he surrendered it cautiously into +other hands, but in whatever hands it might be, Mr. Bryant followed it +more minutely and with a more solicitous interest than he gave to any +other part of the newspaper. + +At the time when I joined the staff there was a sort of interregnum +in the literary department. John R. Thompson, who had held the place +of literary editor for some years, was dead, and nobody had been found +who could fill the place to Mr. Bryant's satisfaction. There were men +who wrote with grace and discretion, and whose familiarity with current +literature was adequate, but Mr. Bryant objected that they were +altogether men of the present, that they knew little or nothing of the +older literature of our language, and hence, as he contended, had no +adequate standards of comparison in their minds. Of one who essayed the +work he said that his attitude of mind was too flippant, that he cared +more for what he himself wrote about books under review than for what +the authors of those books had written. Another, he said, lacked +generosity of sympathy with halting but sincere literary endeavor, and +so on with others. + +My own editorial work was exigent at the time and there was added to it +the task of finding a satisfactory person to become literary editor. I +knew Mr. Bryant very slightly at the time, and I doubt that he knew me +at all, in person, but he knew how wide my acquaintance among literary +men had become in the course of my experience on _Hearth and Home_, and +he bade the managing editor, Mr. Watson R. Sperry, make use of it in +the search. In common with most other men in the newspaper business, I +regarded the position of literary editor of the _Evening Post_ as the +most desirable one in American journalism. I frankly told Mr. Sperry +that I should myself like the appointment if Mr. Bryant could in any +wise be satisfied of my fitness. I was at the time writing all the more +important book reviews by way of helping in the emergency. + +Mr. Sperry replied that Mr. Bryant had already suggested my appointment, +as he was pleased with my work, but that he, Mr. Sperry, did not want +to spare me from certain other things that I was doing for him, and +further, that he thought the literary editor of the _Evening Post_ +should be a man whose reputation and position as a recognized man of +letters were well established, as mine were not. + +[Sidenote: Aldrich's View of New York] + +I agreed with him in that opinion and went on with my quest. Among those +to whom I wrote was Thomas Bailey Aldrich. I set forth to him as +attractively as I could, the duties of the place, the dignity attaching +to it, the salary it carried, and everything else of a persuasive sort +that I could call to mind. + +For reply Mr. Aldrich wrote that the position was one in every way to be +coveted, and added: + +"But, my dear Eggleston, what can the paper offer to compensate one for +having to live in New York?" + +Years afterward I tried to extract from him some apology to New York for +that fling, but without success. + +One day, while I was still engaged in this fruitless search, Mr. Bryant +entered the library--off which my little den opened--and began climbing +about on a ladder and turning over books, apparently in search of +something. + +I volunteered the suggestion that perhaps I could assist him if he would +tell me what it was he was trying to find. + +"I think not," he answered, taking down another volume from the shelves. +Then, as if conscious that his reply might have seemed ungraciously +curt, he turned toward me and said: + +"I'm looking for a line that I ought to know where to find, but do not." + +He gave me the substance of what he sought and fortunately I recognized +it as a part of a half-remembered passage in one of Abraham Cowley's +poems. I told Mr. Bryant so, and while he sat I found what he wanted. +Apparently his concern for it was gone. Instead of looking at the book +which I had placed in his hands open at the desired page, he turned upon +me and asked: + +"How do you happen to know anything about Cowley?" + +I explained that as a youth, while idling time away on an old Virginia +plantation, where there was a library of old books, as there was on +every other ancestral plantation round about, I had fallen to reading +all I could find at home or in neighboring houses of the old English +literature, of which I had had a maddening taste even as a little boy; +that I had read during those plantation summers every old book I could +find in any of the neglected libraries round about. + +[Sidenote: By Order of Mr. Bryant] + +My work for the day lay unfinished on my desk, but Mr. Bryant gave no +heed to it. He questioned me concerning my views of this and that in +literature, my likes and dislikes, my estimates of classic English +works, and of the men who had produced them. Now and then he challenged +my opinions and set me to defend them. After a while he took his leave +in his usual undemonstrative fashion. + +"Good-afternoon," was absolutely his only word of parting, and after +he had gone I wondered if I had presumed too much in the fearless +expression of my opinions or in combating his own, or whether I had +offended him in some other way. For I knew him very slightly then +and misinterpreted a reticence that was habitual with him--even +constitutional, I think. Still less did I understand that during that +talk of two hours' duration he had been subjecting me to a rigid +examination in English literature. + +The _Evening Post_ of that afternoon published my review of an important +book, which I had tried to treat with the care it deserved. I learned +afterwards that the article pleased Mr. Bryant, but whether or not it +had any influence upon what followed I do not know. What followed was +this: the next day a little before noon, Mr. Sperry came into my den +with a laugh and a frown playing tag on his face. + +"Mr. Bryant has just been in," he said. "He walked into my room and said +to me: 'Mr. Sperry, I have appointed Mr. Eggleston literary editor. +Good-morning, Mr. Sperry.' And with that he left again, giving me no time +to say a word. In a way, I'm glad, but I shall miss you from your other +work." + +I reassured him, telling him I could easily do those parts of that other +work for which he most needed me, and so the matter was "arranged to the +satisfaction of everybody concerned," as the dueling people used to say +when two blustering cowards had apologized instead of shooting each +other. + + + + +XLIX + + +Thus began an acquaintance with Mr. Bryant that quickly became as +intimate as I suppose any acquaintance with him ever did--or at any rate +any acquaintance begun after the midyears of his life. Once in a while I +passed a Sunday with him at his Roslyn home, but chiefly such converse +as I enjoyed with him was held in the office of the _Evening Post_, and +of course it was always of his seeking, as I scrupulously avoided +intruding myself upon his attention. Our interviews usually occurred in +this way: he would enter the library, which communicated with my little +writing room by an open doorway, and after looking over some books, +would enter my room and settle himself in a chair, with some remark or +question. The conversation thus began would continue for such time as he +chose, ten minutes, half an hour, two hours, as his leisure and +inclination might determine. + +It was always gentle, always kindly, always that of two persons +interested in literature and in all that pertains to what in the +culture-slang of this later time is somewhat tiresomely called "uplift." +It was always inspiring and clarifying to my mind, always encouraging to +me, always richly suggestive on his part, and often quietly humorous in +a fashion that is nowhere suggested in any of Mr. Bryant's writings. +I have searched them in vain for the smallest trace of the humor he used +to inject into his talks with me, and I think I discover in its absence, +and in some other peculiarities of his, an explanation of certain +misjudgments of him which prevailed during his life and which endure +still in popular conception. + +[Sidenote: Mr. Bryant's Reserve--Not Coldness] + +The reader may perhaps recall Lowell's criticism of him in "A Fable for +Critics." The substance of it was that Mr. Bryant was intensely cold +of nature and unappreciative of human things. I wish to bear emphatic +witness that nothing could be further from the truth, though Lowell's +judgment is the one everywhere accepted. + +The lack of warmth usually attributed to Mr. Bryant, I found to be +nothing more than the personal reserve common to New Englanders of +culture and refinement, plus an excessive personal modesty and a shyness +of self-revelation, and self-intrusion, which is usually found only in +young girls just budding into womanhood. + +Mr. Bryant shrank from self-assertion even of the most impersonal sort, +as I never knew any other human being to do. He cherished his own +opinions strongly, but he thrust them upon nobody. His dignity was +precious to him, but his only way of asserting it was by withdrawal from +any conversation or company that trespassed upon it. + +Above all, emotion, to him, was a sacred thing, not to be exploited or +even revealed. In ordinary intercourse with his fellow-men he hid it +away as one instinctively hides the privacies of the toilet. He could no +more lay his feelings bare to common scrutiny than he could have taken +his bath in the presence of company. + +In the intimate talks he and I had together during the last half dozen +years of his life, he laid aside his reserve, so far as it was possible +for a man of his sensitive nature to do, and I found him not only warm +in his human sympathies, but even passionate. If we find little of this +in his writings, it is only because in what he wrote he was addressing +the public, and shyly withholding himself from revelation. Yet there is +passion and there is hot blood, even there, as who can deny who has read +"The Song of Marion's Men," or his superb interpretation of Homer? + +There is a bit of literary history connected with "The Song of Marion's +Men," which may be mentioned here as well as anywhere else. The +venerable poet one day told me the facts concerning it. + +When Mr. Bryant issued the first collected edition of his poems, English +publication was very necessary to the success of such a work in America, +which was still provincial. Accordingly Mr. Bryant desired English +publication. Washington Irving was then living in England, and Mr. +Bryant had a slight but friendly acquaintance with him. It was +sufficient to justify the poet in asking the great story teller's +friendly offices. He sent a copy of his poems to Irving, asking him to +secure a London publisher. This Irving did, with no little trouble, and +in the face of many obstacles of prejudice, indifference, and the like. + +When half the book was in type the publisher sent for Irving in +consternation. He had discovered, in "The Song of Marion's Men," the +lines: + + "The British soldier trembles + When Marion's name is told." + +It would never, never do, he explained, for him to publish a book with +even the smallest suggestion in it that the British soldier was a man to +"tremble" at any danger. It would simply ruin him to publish this direct +charge of cowardice against Tommy Atkins. + +[Sidenote: The Irving Incident] + +For the time Irving was at a loss to know what to do. Mr. Bryant was +three thousand miles away and the only way of communicating with him was +by ocean mails, carried by sailing craft at long intervals, low speed, +and uncertain times of arrival. To write to him and get a reply would +require a waste of many weeks--perhaps of several months. In his +perplexed anxiety to serve his friend, Irving decided to take the +liberty of making an entirety innocent alteration in the words, curing +them of their offensiveness to British sensitiveness, without in the +least altering their significance. Instead of: + + "The British soldier trembles + When Marion's name is told," + +he made the lines read: + + "The foeman trembles in his tent + When Marion's name is told." + +"So far as I was concerned," said Mr. Bryant in telling me of +the matter, "what Irving did seemed altogether an act of friendly +intervention, the more so because the acquaintance between him and me +was very slight at that time. He was a warm-hearted man, who in doing a +thing of that kind, reckoned upon a slight friendship for justification, +as confidently as men of natures less generous might reckon upon a +better established acquaintance. He always took comradery for granted, +and where his intentions were friendly and helpful, he troubled +himself very little with formal explanations that seemed to him wholly +unnecessary. I had asked him to secure the publication of my poems +in England, a thing that only his great influence there could have +accomplished at that time. He had been at great pains and no little +trouble to accomplish my desire. Incidentally, it had become necessary +for him either to accept defeat in that purpose or to make that utterly +insignificant alteration in my poem. I was grateful to him for doing so, +but I did not understand his careless neglect to write to me promptly on +the subject. I did not know him then as I afterwards learned to do. The +matter troubled me very little or not at all; but possibly I mentioned +his inattention in some conversation with Coleman, of the _Evening +Post_. I cannot now remember whether I did so or not, but at any rate, +Coleman, who was both quick and hot of temper, and often a trifle +intemperate in criticism, took the matter up and dealt severely with +Irving for having taken the liberty of altering lines of mine without +my authority. + +"The affair gave rise to the report, which you have perhaps heard--for +it persists--that Irving and I quarreled and became enemies. Nothing +could be further from the truth. We were friends to the day of his +death." + +Inasmuch as different versions of the Irving-Bryant affair are extant, +it seems proper to say that immediately after the conversation ended I +put into writing all that I have here directly quoted from Mr. Bryant. +I did not show the record of it to him for verification, for the reason +that I knew him to be sensitive on the subject of what he once referred +to as "the eagerness of a good many persons to become my literary +executors before I am dead." That was said with reference to the irksome +attempts a certain distinguished literary hack was making to draw from +Mr. Bryant the materials for articles that would sell well whenever the +aged poet should die. + +After a seance with that distinguished toady one day, Mr. Bryant came to +me, in some disturbance of mind, to ask for a volume of verse that I had +just reviewed--to soothe his spirit, he said. Then he told me of the +visitation he had had, and said: + +"I tried to be patient, but I fear I was rude to him at the last. There +seemed to be no other way of getting rid of him." + +Alas, even rudeness had not baffled the bore; for when Mr. Bryant died +the pestilent person published a report of that very interview, putting +into the poet's mouth many utterances directly contrary to Mr. Bryant's +oft-expressed opinions. + + + + +L + + +[Sidenote: Mr. Bryant's Tenderness of Poets] + +Exigent and solicitous as he was with reference to every utterance in +the _Evening Post_ concerning literature, Mr. Bryant never interfered +with my perfect liberty as literary editor, except in the one matter of +the treatment of poets and poetry. + +"Deal gently--very gently, with the poets," he said to me at the +time of my assumption of that office. "Remember always, that the very +sensitiveness of soul which makes a man a poet, makes him also peculiarly +and painfully susceptible to wounds of the spirit." + +I promised to bear his admonition in mind, and I did so, sometimes +perhaps to the peril of my soul--certainly at risk of my reputation +for critical acumen and perhaps for veracity. One day, however, I +encountered a volume of verse so ridiculously false in sentiment, +extravagant in utterance, and inane in character, that I could not +refrain from poking a little fun at its absurdity. The next day Mr. +Bryant came to see me. After passing the time of day, he said: + +"Mr. Eggleston, I hope you will not forget my desire that you shall deal +gently with the poets." + +I replied that I had borne it constantly in mind. + +"I don't know," he answered, shaking his head; "what you said yesterday +about X. Y. Z.'s volume did not seem to me very gentle." + +"Considered absolutely," I replied, "perhaps it wasn't. But considered +in the light of the temptation I was under to say immeasurably severer +things, it was mild and gentle in an extreme degree. The man is not a +poet, but a fool. He not only hasn't the smallest appreciation of what +poetry is or means, but he hasn't the ability to entertain a thought of +any kind worthy of presentation in print or in any other way. I should +have stultified myself and the _Evening Post_ if I had written more +favorably of his work than I did. I should never have thought of writing +of it at all, but for the _Evening Post's_ rule that every book offered +here for review must be mentioned in some way in the literary columns. +Here is the book. I wish you would glance at the alleged poems and +tell me how I could have said anything concerning them of a more +considerately favorable character than what in fact I printed." + +He took the book from my hand and looked it over. Then he laid it on my +desk, saying: + +"It is indeed pretty bad. Still, I have always found that it is possible +to find something good to say about a poet's work." + +A little later a still worse case came to my lot. It was a volume of +"verse," with no sense at all in it, without even rhythm to redeem it, +and with an abundance of "rhymes" that were not easily recognizable even +as assonances. It was clumsily printed and "published" at some rural +newspaper office, and doubtless at the expense of the author. Finally +the cover attempt at decoration had resulted in a grotesque combination +of incompatible colors and inconsequent forms. In brief, the thing was +execrably, hopelessly, irredeemably bad all over and clear through. + +I was puzzling over the thing, trying to "find something good to say" of +it, when Mr. Bryant came into my den. I handed him the volume, saying: + +"I wish you would help me with a suggestion, Mr. Bryant. I'm trying to +find something good that I can say of that thing, and I can't--for of +course you do not want me to write lies." + +"Lies? Of course not. But you can always find something good in every +volume of poems, something that can be truthfully commended." + +"In this case I can't regard the sprawlings of ill-directed aspiration +as poems," I replied, "and it seems to me a legitimate function of +criticism to say that they are not poems but idiotic drivel--to +discriminate between poetry in its unworthiest form and things like +that. However, the man calls his stuff poetry. I wish you would help me +find something good that I may say of it without lying." + +[Sidenote: Commending a Cover] + +He took the book and looked through it. Finally he said: + +"It is pretty sorry stuff, to be sure. It is even idiotic, and it +doesn't suggest poetic appreciation or poetic impulse or poetic perception +on the part of its author. Still, the man aspires to recognition as a +poet, and he is doubtless sensitively conscious of his own shortcomings. +Let us deal gently with him." + +"But what can I say, Mr. Bryant?" + +"Well, of course, there is nothing _inside_ the book that you can +praise," he answered, "but you might commend the cover--no, that is an +affront to taste and intelligence,"--looking it over with an expression +of disgust--"but at any rate you can commend the publishers for _putting +it on well_." + +With that--apparently dreading further questioning--he left the room. I +proceeded to review the book by saying simply that the cover was put on +so strongly that even the most persistent and long continued enjoyment +or critical study of the text was not likely to detach or loosen it. + +I am disposed to think that Mr. Bryant's excessive tenderness toward +poets was lavished chiefly upon the weaklings of that order. For a +little while later a poet of genuine inspiration, who afterwards +did notable work, put forward his first volume of verse. I found an +abundance of good things to say about it, but there was one line in one +of his poems that was so ridiculously inconsequent and absurd, that I +could not refrain from poking fun at it. I am convinced that the poet in +question, with his larger experience and the development that afterward +came to his critical faculties, would not have permitted that line to +stand if it had occurred in a poem of a later period. It appealed to +him then by its musical quality, which was distinctly marked, but when +subjected to the simplest analysis it was obvious and arrant nonsense. + +Mr. Bryant was interested in the review I wrote of the volume, and in +talking with me about it, he distinctly chuckled over my destructive +analysis of the offending line. There was no suggestion in what he said, +that he regarded the criticism as in the least a transgression of his +injunction to "deal gently with the poets." + +Unfortunately, the poet criticised seemed less tolerant of the +criticism. He was a personal friend of my own, but when next I saw him +his mood was that of one cruelly injured, and for many years thereafter +he manifested this sense of injury whenever he and I met. I think he +afterward forgave me, for we later became the best of friends, and I am +glad to believe there was no rancor in his heart toward me when he died +a little while ago. + +[Sidenote: Anonymous Criticism] + +In these cases I was at a peculiar disadvantage--though I think it not +at all an unjust one--in every indulgence in anything like adverse +criticism. I may best explain this, perhaps, by telling of an incident +that happened soon after I assumed my position. I had been lucky enough +to secure from Richard Henry Stoddard a very brilliant review of a +certain book which he was peculiarly the fittest man in all the land to +write about. I had the review in type, when I mentioned to Mr. Bryant +my good fortune in securing it. + +"Is it signed?" he asked in his gentlest manner. + +I answered that it was not, for the reason that Stoddard was under a +certain assertion of obligation which he refused to recognize but which +I could not ask him to repudiate, not to write things of that character +for other than a particular publication. + +"Then I request that you shall not use it," said Mr. Bryant. + +"But really, Mr. Bryant, there is not the smallest obligation upon him +in the matter. He is perfectly free----" + +"It is not of that that I was thinking," he interrupted. "That is a +matter between him and his own conscience, and you and I have nothing +whatever to do with it. My objection to your use of the article is +that _I regard an anonymous literary criticism as a thing quite as +despicable, unmanly, and cowardly as an anonymous letter_. It is +something that no honorable man should write, and no honorably conducted +newspaper should publish." + +"But my own reviews in the _Evening Post_ are all of them anonymous," +I suggested. + +"Not at all," he answered. "When you were appointed literary editor the +fact was communicated to every publisher in the country. I directed +that and saw that it was done, so that every publisher and, through the +publishers, every author, should know that every literary criticism in +the _Evening Post_ was your utterance. In veritable effect, therefore, +everything you print in our literary columns is signed, just as every +critical article in the great British reviews is. When Jeffrey ridiculed +'Hours of Idleness,' and later, when he seriously criticised 'Cain,' +Byron had no need to inquire who his critic was. The work was responsibly +done, as such work should be in every case. The reasons seem to me +obvious enough. In the first place, anonymous literary criticism may +easily become a cowardly stabbing in the back under cover of darkness. +In the second place, the reader of such criticism has no means of +knowing what value to place upon it. He cannot know whether the critic +is a person competent or incompetent, one to whose opinions he should +defer or one whose known incapacity would prompt him to dismiss them as +unworthy of consideration because of their source. In the third place, +anonymous literary criticism opens wide the door of malice on the one +hand, and of undue favoritism on the other. It is altogether despicable, +and it is dangerous besides. I will have none of it on the _Evening +Post_." + +I suggested that I had myself read the book that Stoddard had reviewed, +and that I was ready to accept his criticism as my own and to hold +myself responsible for it. + +"Very well," he replied. "In that case you may print it as your own, but +I had much rather you had written it yourself." + +I have often meditated upon these things since, and I have found +abundant reason to adopt Mr. Bryant's view that an anonymous literary +criticism is as despicable as an anonymous letter. About a year ago I +was startled by the utterance of precisely the same thought in nearly +identical words, by Professor Brander Matthews. I was sitting between +him and Mr. Howells at a banquet given by Colonel William C. Church +to the surviving writers for that best and most literary of American +magazines, _The Galaxy_, and when Matthews uttered the thought I turned +to Mr. Howells and asked him what his opinion was. + +"I have never formulated my thought on that question, even in my own +mind," he replied. "I don't know how far it would be just to judge +others in the matter, but for myself, I think I never wrote a literary +criticism that was not avowedly or ascertainably my own. Without having +thought of the ethical question involved, my own impulse is to shrink +from the idea of striking in the dark or from behind a mask." + + + + +LI + + +[Sidenote: A Thrifty Poet's Plan] + +On one occasion Mr. Bryant's desire to "deal gently with the poets" led +to an amusing embarrassment. Concerning a certain volume of verse "made +in Ohio" and published by its author, I had written that "this is the +work of a man who seems to have an alert appreciation of the poetic side +of things, but whose gift of poetic interpretation and literary +expression is distinctly a minus quantity." + +Soon afterward Mr. Bryant entered my den with an open letter in his hand +and a look of pained perplexity on his face. + +"What am I to do with that?" he asked, handing me the letter to read. + +I read it. The poet, knowing Mr. Bryant to be the editor of the _Evening +Post_, evidently supposed that he wrote everything that appeared in +the columns of that newspaper. Assuming that Mr. Bryant had written the +review of his book, he wrote asking that he might be permitted to use +the first half of my sentence as an advertisement, with Mr. Bryant's +name signed to it. To facilitate matters he had prepared, on a separate +sheet, a transcript of the words: + +"This is the work of a man who seems to have an alert appreciation of +the poetic side of things." + +This he asked Mr. Bryant to sign and return to him for use as an +advertisement, explaining that "Your great name will help me to sell +my book, and I need the money. It cost me nearly two hundred dollars +to get the book out, and so far I haven't been able to sell more than +twenty-seven copies of it, though I have canvassed three counties at +considerable expense for food, lodging, and horse-feed." + +I saw how seriously distressed Mr. Bryant was by this appeal, and +volunteered to answer the letter myself, by way of relieving him. I +answered it, but I did not report the nature of my answer to Mr. Bryant, +for the reason that in my personal letter I dealt by no means "gently" +with this particular poet. + +For the further distraction of Mr. Bryant's mind from a matter that +distressed him sorely, I told him of the case in which a thrifty and +shifty London publisher turned to good advertising account one of the +_Saturday Review's_ most murderous criticisms. The _Review_ had written: + +"There is much that is good in this book, and much that is new. But that +which is good is not new, and that which is new is not good." + +The publisher, in his advertisements, made display of the sentence: +"There is much that is good in this book, and much that is +new.--_Saturday Review_." + +One thing leads to another in conversation and I went on--by way of the +further diversion of Mr. Bryant's mind--to illustrate the way in which +the _Saturday Review_, like many other publications, sometimes ruined +its richest utterances by dilution. I cited a case in which that +periodical had begun a column review of a wishy-washy book by saying: + +"This is milk for babes, with water superadded. The milk is pure and the +water is pure, but the diet is not invigorating." + +As a bit of destructive criticism, this was complete and perfect. But +the writer spoiled it by going on to write a column of less trenchant +matter, trampling, as it were, and quite needlessly, upon the corpse of +the already slain offender. + +The habit of assuming that the distinguished editor of a newspaper +writes everything of consequence that appears in its columns, is not +confined to rural poets in Ohio, as three occurrences during my service +on the _Evening Post_ revealed to me. + +[Sidenote: Mr. Bryant and My Poe Article] + +When a great Poe celebration was to be held in Baltimore, on the +occasion of the unveiling of a monument or something of that kind, Mr. +Bryant was earnestly urged to send something to be read on the occasion +and published as a part of the proceedings. He had no stomach for the +undertaking. It was said among those who knew him best that his personal +feelings toward Poe's memory were of a bitterly antagonistic kind. +However that may be--and I do not know whether it was true or not--he +was resolute in his determination to have no part or lot in this Poe +celebration. In reply to the urgent invitations sent him, he wrote a +carefully colorless note, excusing himself on the plea of "advancing +age." + +When the day of the celebration came, however, I wrote a long, critical +appreciation of Poe, with an analysis of his character, borrowed mainly +from what Charles F. Briggs had said to me. My article was published +as an editorial in the _Evening Post_, and straightway half a dozen +prominent newspapers in different cities reprinted it under the headline +of "William Cullen Bryant's Estimate of Poe." + +Fearing that Mr. Bryant might be seriously annoyed at being thus made +responsible for an "estimate of Poe" which he had been at pains not +to write, I went to his room to speak with him about the matter. + +"Don't let it trouble you, my dear boy," he said in his most patient +manner. "We are both paying the penalty of journalistic anonymity. I am +held responsible for utterances not my own, and you are robbed of the +credit due you for a very carefully written article." + +Again, on the occasion of Longfellow's seventieth birthday, Mr. Bryant +resisted all entreaties for any utterance--even the briefest--from him. +I was assigned to write the necessary editorial article, and when it +appeared, one of the foremost newspapers in the country reprinted it as +"One Great Poet's Tribute to Another," and in an introductory paragraph +explained that, while the article was not signed, it was obviously from +Mr. Bryant's pen. + +During the brief time that I remained on the _Evening Post's_ staff after +Mr. Carl Schurz became its editor, I wrote a rather elaborate review of +Colonel Theodore Dodge's book, "The Campaign of Chancellorsville." The +_Springfield Republican_ reprinted it prominently, saying that it had +special importance as "the comment of General Schurz on a campaign in +which he had borne a conspicuous part." + +[Sidenote: A Tupper Trepidation] + +When it was given out that Martin Farquhar Tupper intended to visit +America during the Centennial Exposition of 1876, I wrote a playful +article about the "Proverbial Philosophy" man and handed it to the +managing editor for publication as a humorous editorial. Mr. Sperry was +amused by the article, but distressingly perplexed by apprehensions +concerning it. He told me of the difficulty. It seems that some years +before that time, during a visit to England, Mr. Bryant had been very +hospitably entertained by Tupper, wherefore Sperry feared that Mr. +Bryant might dislike the publication of the article. At the same time +he was reluctant to lose the fun of it. + +"Why not submit the question to Mr. Bryant himself?" I suggested, and +as Mr. Bryant entered at that moment Sperry acted upon the suggestion. + +Mr. Bryant read the article with many manifestations of amusement, but +when he had finished he said: + +"I heartily wish, Mr. Sperry, you had printed this without saying a word +to me about it, for then, when Mr. Tupper becomes my guest, as he will +if he comes to America, I could have explained to him that the thing was +done without my knowledge by one of the flippant young men of my staff. +Now that you have brought the matter to my attention, I can make no +excuse." + +Sperry pleaded that Tupper's coming was not at all a certainty, adding: + +"And at any rate, he will not be here for several months to come, and +he'll never know that the article was published or written." + +"Oh, yes he will," responded Mr. Bryant. "Some damned, good-natured +friend will be sure to bring it to his attention." + +As Mr. Bryant never swore, the phrase was of course a quotation. + + + + +LII + + +There has been a deal of nonsense written and published with respect to +Mr. Bryant's _Index Expurgatorius_, a deal of arrogance, and much cheap +and ill-informed wit of a certain "superior" sort expended upon it. +So far as I have seen these comments, they have all been founded upon +ignorance of the facts and misconception of Mr. Bryant's purpose. + +In the first place, Mr. Bryant never published the index and never +intended it to be an expression of his views with respect to linguistic +usage. He prepared it solely for office use, and it was meant only to +check certain tendencies of the time so far as the _Evening Post_ was +concerned. The reporters on more sensational newspapers had come to call +every big fire a "carnival of flame," every formal dinner a "banquet," +and to indulge in other verbal exaggerations and extravagances of like +sort. Mr. Bryant catalogued these atrocities in his _Index_ and forbade +their use on the _Evening Post_. + +He was an intense conservative as to the English language, and his +conscience was exceedingly alert to preserve it in its purity, so far as +it was within his power to do so. Accordingly he ruled out of _Evening +Post_ usage a number of things that were creeping into the language to +its corruption, as he thought. Among these were the use of "numerous" +where "many" was meant, the use of "people" for "persons," "monthly" for +"monthly magazine," "paper" for "newspaper," and the like. He objected +to the phrase "those who," meaning "those persons who," and above all +his soul revolted against the use of "such" as an adverb--as in the +phrase "such ripe strawberries" which, he contended, should be "so ripe +strawberries" or "strawberries so ripe." The fact that Webster's and +Worcester's dictionaries recognized many of the condemned usages, made +not the smallest impression on his mind. + +"He must be a poor scholar," he once said in my hearing, "who cannot go +behind the dictionaries for his authority." + +We had a copy of Johnson's dictionary in the office, and it was the +only authority of that kind I ever knew Mr. Bryant to consult. Even in +consulting that he gave small attention to the formal definitions. He +searched at once the passages quoted from classic English literature +as illustrations of usage, and if these did not justify the particular +locution under consideration, he rejected and condemned it. + +[Sidenote: Mr. Bryant's "Index"] + +For another thing, the _Index_ as it has been quoted for purposes of +cheap ridicule, held much that Mr. Bryant did not put into it, and for +which he was in no way responsible. The staff of the _Evening Post_ was +composed mainly of educated men, and each of them was free to add to +the _Index_ such prohibitions as seemed to him desirable. Some of these +represented mere crotchets, but they were all intended to aid in that +conservation of English undefiled which was so dear a purpose to Mr. +Bryant. + +In the main the usages condemned by the _Index_ were deserving of +condemnation, but in some respects the prohibitions were too strait-laced, +too negligent of the fact that a living language grows and that usages +unknown to one generation may become altogether good in another. Again +some of the prohibitions were founded upon a too strict regard for +etymology, in forgetfulness of the fact that words often change or +modify and sometimes even reverse their original significance. As an +example, Shakespeare uses the expression "fearful adversaries," meaning +badly scared adversaries, and that is, of course, the etymological +significance of the word. Yet we now universally use it in a precisely +opposite sense, meaning that the things called "fearful" are such as +fill us with fear. + +Finally, it is to be said that Mr. Bryant neither intended nor attempted +to enforce the _Index_ arbitrarily, or even to impose its restrictions +upon any but the least educated and least experienced of the writers who +served his newspaper. I used to violate it freely, and one day I mentioned +the fact to Mr. Bryant. He replied: + +"My dear Mr. Eggleston, the _Index_ was never intended to interfere with +scholarly men who know how to write good English. It is meant only to +restrain the inconsiderate youngsters and start them in right paths." + +His subordinates were less liberal in their interpretation of the matter. +The man whose duty it was to make clippings from other newspapers to +be reprinted in the _Evening Post_, was expected so to edit and alter +them as to bring them within _Index_ requirements, and sometimes the +alterations were so considerable as to make of the extracts positive +misquotations. I have often wondered that none of the newspapers whose +utterances were thus "edited" out of their original forms and still +credited to them ever complained of the liberties taken with the text. +But so far as I know none of them ever did. + +When Mr. Bryant and I were talking of the _Index_ and of the license +I had to violate it judiciously, he smilingly said to me: + +"After all a misuse of words is sometimes strangely effective. In the +old days when I wrote more for the editorial columns than I do now, I +had a friend who was deeply interested in all matters of public concern, +and whose counsel I valued very highly because of the abounding common +sense that always inspired it. His knowledge of our language was +defective, but he was unconscious of the fact, and he boldly used words +as he understood them, without the smallest fear of criticism before +his eyes. Once when some subject of unusual public importance was +under popular consideration, I wrote a long and very careful article +concerning it. I did my best to set forth every consideration that in +any wise bore upon it, and to make clear and emphatic what I regarded +as the marrow of the matter. My friend was deeply interested, and came +to talk with me on the subject. + +[Sidenote: An Effective Blunder in English] + +"'That is a superb article of yours, Mr. Bryant,' he said, 'but it will +do no manner of good.' I asked him why, and he answered: 'Because you +have exhausted the subject, and won't come back to it. That never +accomplishes anything. If you want to produce an effect you must keep +hammering at the thing. I tell you, Mr. Bryant, it is _reirritation_ +that does the business.' + +"I thought the matter over and saw that he was right, not only in +his idea but still more in the word he had mistakenly chosen for its +expression. In such cases it is not only reiteration, but _reirritation_ +that is effective." + +There are other indexes in other newspaper offices. Those of them that +I have seen represent crass ignorance quite as often as scholarship. One +of them absolutely forbids the use of the pronoun "which." Another which +I saw some years ago, put a ban on the conjunctions "and" and "but." +This prohibition, I am informed, was designed to compel the use of short +sentences--a very desirable thing, of course, but one which may easily +be pushed to extremes. Imagine a reporter having to state that "X and Y +were caught in the act of firing a tenement house, and arrested by +two policemen, officers A and B, but that X escaped on the way to the +station-house after knocking policeman B down and seriously if not +fatally injuring him." If the reader will try to make that simple +statement without the use of the four "ands" and the one "but" in the +sentence, he will have a realizing sense of the difficulty the writers +on that newspaper must have had in their efforts to comply with the +requirements of the index. + +In still another case the unscholarly maker of the index, having learned +that it is incorrect to say "on to-day," "on yesterday," and "on +to-morrow," has made a blanket application of what he has mistaken for a +principle, and has decreed that his writers shall not say "on the fourth +of March" or "on Wednesday of next week," or anything else of the kind. +The ignorance shown in that case is not merely a manifestation of a +deficient scholarship; it means that the maker of the index knew so +little of grammar as not to know the difference between an adverb and +a noun. Yet every one of the newspapers enforcing these ignorant index +requirements has made fun of Mr. Bryant's scholarly prohibitions. + +Reserved, dignified, self-conscious as he was, Mr. Bryant was always a +democrat of the proud old conservative sort. He never descended to undue +familiarity with anybody. He patted nobody on the back, and I have never +been able to imagine what would have happened if anybody had taken +familiar liberties of that kind with him. Certainly nobody ever ventured +to find out by practical experiment. He never called even the youngest +man on his staff by his given name or by his surname without the prefix +"Mr." + +In that respect he differed radically and, to my mind, pleasingly from +another distinguished democrat. + +When Mr. Cleveland was for the third time a candidate for the +Presidency, I called on him by Mr. Pulitzer's request just before +sailing for Paris, where Mr. Pulitzer was then living. I entered the +reception room at his hotel quarters and sent in my card. Mr. Cleveland +came out promptly and greeted me with the exclamation: + +"Why, hello, Eggleston! How are you? I'm glad to see you." + +There was no harm in it, I suppose, but it disagreeably impressed me +as the greeting of a politician rather than that of a distinguished +statesman who had been President of the United States and hoped to be +so again. Had I been an intimate personal friend who could say "Hello, +Cleveland!" in response, I should have accepted his greeting as a +manifestation of cordiality and good-fellowship. I was in fact only +slightly acquainted with him, and in view of all the circumstances +his familiarity of address impressed me as boorish. Years afterwards I +learned how easy it was for him to do boorish things--how much restraint, +indeed, he found it necessary to impose upon himself in order to avoid +the doing of boorish things. + +[Sidenote: Mr. Bryant on British Snobbishness] + +But while Mr. Bryant never indulged in undue familiarity with anybody, +he never lost sight of the dignity of those with whom he conversed, +and above all, he never suffered shams to obscure his perception of +realities. One Sunday at his home in Roslyn he told me the story of his +abrupt leaving of England during a journey to Europe. I will tell it +here as nearly as possible in his own words. + +"English society," he said, "is founded upon shams, falsehoods, and +arrogant pretenses, and the falsehoods are in many ways insulting not +only to the persons whom they directly affect, but to the intelligence +and manhood of the casual observer who happens to have an honest and +sincere mind. When I was over there I was for a time the guest of a +wealthy manufacturer, a man of education, refinement, and culture, whose +house in the country was an altogether delightful place to visit and +whose personality I found unusually pleasing. One day as he and I were +walking through his grounds a man came up on horseback and my host +introduced us. It seems he was the head of one of the great 'county +families,' as they call themselves and are called by others. He +explained that he was on his way to my host's house to call upon me, +wherefore we turned back in his company. During the call he asked me to +be his guest at dinner on a day named, and I accepted, he saying that +he would have a number of 'the best county people' to meet me. As the +evening of the dinner day approached, I asked my host: 'When shall we +dress for the dinner?' He looked at his watch and replied: 'It is time +for _you_ to begin dressing now.' I observed the stress he laid upon +the word 'you' and asked: 'Isn't it time for you, also?' + +"'Oh, I am not invited,' he replied. + +"'Not invited? Why, what can you mean?' I asked. + +"'Why, of course I'm not invited. Those are county people and I am only +a manufacturer--a man in trade. They would never think of inviting me to +dinner.' + +"I was surprised and shocked. + +"'Do you mean to tell me,' I asked, 'that that man came into your house +where I am a guest, and invited me to dinner, to meet his friends, +without including you, my host, in the invitation?' + +"'Why, yes, of course,' he replied. 'You must remember that they are +county families, aristocrats, while I am a man in trade. They would not +think of inviting me, and I should never expect it.' + +"I was full of disgust and indignation. I asked my host to let one of +his servants carry a note for me to the great man's house. + +"'But why?' he asked. 'You will be going over there yourself within the +hour.' + +"'I am not going,' I replied. 'I will not be a party to so gross +an affront to my host. I shall send a note, not of apology but of +unexplained declination.' + +"I did so, and as soon thereafter as I could arrange it, I quitted +England in disgust with a social system so false, so arbitrary, and +so arrogant that one may not even behave like a gentleman without +transgressing its most insistent rules of social exclusiveness. + +"The worst of the matter was the meek submissiveness of my host to +the affront put upon him. He was shocked and distressed that I should +decline to go to the dinner. He could not understand that the smallest +slight had been put upon him, and I could not make him understand it. +That showed how completely saturated the English mind is with the virus +of arbitrary caste. I am told that there has been some amelioration of +all this during recent years. I do not know how much it amounts to. +But did you ever hear an English _grande dame_ crush the life out of +a sweet and innocent young girl by calling her 'that young person'? +If not, you cannot imagine what measureless contempt can be put into +a phrase, or how much of cruelty and injustice may be wrought by the +utterance of three words." + + + + +LIII + + +[Sidenote: The Newspaper Critic's Function] + +During my service as a literary editor, I held firmly to the conviction +that the function of the newspaper book reviewer is essentially a news +function; that it is not his business to instruct other people as to how +they should write, or to tell them how they ought to have written, but +rather to tell readers what they have written and how; to show forth the +character of each book reviewed in such fashion that the reader shall be +able to decide for himself whether or not he wishes to buy and read it, +and that in the main this should be done in a helpful and generously +appreciative spirit, and never carpingly, with intent to show the +smartness of the reviewer--a cheap thing at best. The space allotted +to book reviews in any newspaper is at best wholly insufficient for +anything like adequate criticism, and very generally the reviewer is +a person imperfectly equipped for the writing of such criticism. + +In accordance with this conception of my functions, I always held the +news idea in mind. I was alert to secure advance sheets of important +books, in order that the _Evening Post_ might be the first of newspapers +to tell readers about them. + +Usually the publishers were ready and eager to give the _Evening Post_ +these opportunities, though the literary editors of some morning +newspapers bitterly complained of what they regarded as favoritism when +I was able to anticipate them. On one very notable occasion, however, +great pains were taken by the publishers to avoid all grounds of +complaint. When Tennyson's "Harold" was published in 1876, there had +been no previous announcement of its coming. The greatest secrecy, +indeed, had been maintained. Neither in England nor in America had any +hint been given that any poem by Tennyson was presently forthcoming. On +the day of publication, precisely at noon, copies of "Harold" were laid +upon the desks of all the literary editors in England and America. + +My book reviews for that day were already in type and in the forms. One +hour later the first edition of the paper--the latest into which book +reviews could go--must go to press. I knew that my good friends, the +literary editors of the morning newspapers, would exploit this great +literary news the next morning, and that the evening papers would have +it in the afternoon following. I resolved to be ahead of all of them. + +I hurriedly sent for the foreman of the composing room and enlisted his +cooperation. With the aid of my scissors I got two columns of matter +ready, consisting mainly of quotations hastily clipped from the book, +with a connective tissue of comment, and with an introductory paragraph +or two giving the first news of the publication of an important and very +ambitious dramatic poem by Tennyson. + +At one o'clock the _Evening Post_ went to press with this literary +"beat" displayed upon its first page. It proved to be the first +announcement of the poem's publication either in England or in America, +and it appeared twelve or fifteen hours in advance of any other +publication either by advertisement or otherwise. + +[Sidenote: Mr. Bryant and His Contemporaries] + +On that occasion I tried to draw from Mr. Bryant some expression of +opinion regarding Tennyson's work and the place he would probably occupy +among English poets when the last word should be said concerning him. +I thought to use the new poem and a certain coincidence connected with +it--presently to be mentioned--as a means of drawing some utterance +of opinion from him. It was of no avail. In reply to my questioning, +Mr. Bryant said: + +"It is too soon to assign Tennyson to his permanent place in literature. +He may yet do things greater than any that he has done. And besides, we +are too near to judge his work, except tentatively. You remember Solon's +dictum--'Call no man happy until death.' It is especially unsafe to +attempt a final judgment upon the works of a poet while the glamor of +them is still upon us. Moreover, I have never been a critic. I should +distrust any critical judgment of my own." + +That reminded me that I had never heard Mr. Bryant express his opinion +with regard to the work of any modern poet, living or dead. The nearest +approach to anything of the kind that I can recall was in a little +talk I had with him when I was about leaving for Boston to attend the +breakfast given in celebration of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes's seventieth +year. The subject of Holmes's work arose naturally, and in talking of it +Mr. Bryant said: + +"After all, it is as a novelist chiefly that I think of him." + +"You are thinking of 'Elsie Venner'?" I asked. + +"No,--of 'The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table,'" he answered. "Few +persons care for anything in that except the witty wisdom of it, and I +suppose Dr. Holmes wrote it for the sake of that. But there is a sweet +love story in the book--hidden like a bird in a clump of obtrusively +flowering bushes. It is a sweet, wholesome story, and the heroine of it +is a very natural and very lovable young woman." + +The coincidence referred to above was this. Almost exactly at the time +of the publication of Tennyson's "Harold," some American whose name I +have forgotten, to my regret, brought out a dramatic poem on the same +subject, with the same hero, and in a closely similar form. It was +entitled "The Son of Godwin," and, unless my memory plays me a trick, +it was a work of no little merit. It was completely overshadowed, of +course, by Tennyson's greater performance, but it had enough of virility +and poetic quality in it to tempt me to write a carefully studied +comparison of the two works. + +While Mr. Bryant shrank from the delivery of opinions concerning the +moderns, his judgments of the older writers of English literature were +fully formed and very positive. He knew the classic literature of our +language--and especially its poetic literature--more minutely, more +critically, and more appreciatively than any other person I have ever +known, and he often talked instructively and inspiringly on the subject. + +On one of those periodically recurring occasions when the Baconian +authorship of Shakespeare's works is clamorously contended for by +ill-balanced enthusiasts, Mr. Bryant asked me if I had it in mind to +write anything about the controversy. I told him I had not, unless he +particularly wished me to do so. + +"On the contrary," he answered; "I particularly wish otherwise. It is +a sheer waste of good brain tissue to argue with persons who, having +read anything avowedly written by Bacon, are still able to persuade +themselves that the least poetical and most undramatic of writers could +have written the most poetical and most dramatic works that exist in +any language." + +"It seems to me," I answered, "that the trouble with such persons is +that they are futilely bothering their brains in an attempt to account +for the unaccountable. Shakespeare was a genius, and genius is a thing +that can in nowise be measured, or weighed, or accounted for, while +genius itself accounts for anything and everything it may do. It is +subject to no restrictions, amenable to no law, and restrained by no +limitations whatsoever." + +"That is an excellent way of putting an obvious truth," he answered. +"I wish you would write it down precisely as you have uttered it orally, +and print it as the _Evening Post's_ sole comment upon the controversy." + +Then he sat musing for a time, and after a while added: + +"Genius exists in varying degrees in different men. In Shakespeare it +was supreme, all-inspiring, all-controlling. In lesser men it manifests +itself less conspicuously and less constantly, but not less positively. +No other poet who ever lived could have written Coleridge's 'The Rime of +the Ancient Mariner,' yet Coleridge could no more have written 'Hamlet' +or 'Macbeth' or 'The Merry Wives of Windsor' than any child in pinafores +could. When poetry is genuine, it is inspired, as truly as any sacred +Scripture ever was. Without inspiration there may be cleverness, beauty, +and grandeur in metrical composition, but genuine poetry is the result +of inspiration always, and inspiration is genius." + +"Whence comes the inspiration?" I ventured to ask, hoping to draw +something further from him. + +"I do not know," he answered. "Whence comes the color of the rose or +the violet or the dandelion? I am not a theologian, to dogmatize about +things that are beyond the ken of human intelligence. I only know that +the inspiration is there, just as I know that the colors of the flowers +are there--in both cases because the thing perceived is obvious." + +[Sidenote: Genius and "Thanatopsis"] + +One day I asked Mr. Bryant about "Thanatopsis." When I made my first +acquaintance with that poem in a school reader, it was printed with +some introductory lines in smaller type, and I had never been able to +discover the relation of those lines to the poem or to the thought that +inspired it. + +In answer to my questions Mr. Bryant explained that the lines in +question really had no relation to the poem and no possible connection +with it. + +"I was a mere boy," he said, "when 'Thanatopsis' was written. It bore no +title in my manuscript--that was supplied by an editor who knew Greek, +a language of which I did not then know even the alphabet. My father +got possession of the poem, took it to Boston, and had it published, +all without my knowledge. With the manuscript of it he found some other +lines of mine and assumed that they belonged to the poem, as they did +not. The editor printed them at top in smaller type, and they got into +the schoolbooks in that way. That is the whole story." + + + + +LIV + + +During my service on the _Evening Post_, I made a curious blunder which +circumstances rendered it necessary for others to exploit. The thing +grievously annoyed me at the time, but later it only amused me as an +illustration of a psychological principle. + +Mr. Richard Grant White, writing in some newspaper or magazine in +opposition to the proposed adoption of the metric system of weights and +measures, had made an amusing blunder. He wrote that the old system was +so fixed in men's minds as to admit of no possible mistake. He added +something like this: + +"Nobody has any difficulty in remembering that two gills make one pint, +two pints one quart, four quarts one gallon, etc." + +I cannot pretend to quote his utterance exactly, but that is the +substance of it, the marrow of the matter being that in the very act of +showing that nobody could have the least trouble in remembering the table +of liquid measure, he himself got it wrong. + +[Sidenote: A Case of Heterophemy] + +The derisive comments of all the newspapers upon his blunder may be +easily imagined. For reply he invented a word of Greek derivation, +"heterophemy." He contended that it was a common thing for one to speak +or write one thing when quite another thing was in his mind, and when +the speaker or writer perfectly knew the thing he sought to say. He +explained that when the mind has once slipped into an error of that kind +it is usually unable, or at least unlikely, to detect it in the revision +of proofs, or in any other survey of the utterance. His exposition was +very learned, very ingenious, and very interesting, but it had no effect +in silencing the newspaper wags, who at once adopted his newly-coined +word, "heterophemy," and made it the butt of many jests. + +About that time Mr. Alexander H. Stephens published in one of the +more dignified periodicals of the time--the _North American Review_, +perhaps--a very learned essay in which he sought to fix the authorship +of the letters of Junius upon Sir Philip Francis. Mr. Stephens brought +to the discussion a ripe scholarship and a deal of fresh and original +thought that gave importance to his paper, and I reviewed it in the +_Evening Post_ as carefully and as fully as if it had been a book. + +I was deeply concerned to have my review of so important a paper in all +respects the best I could make it, and to that end I read my proofs +twice, with minute attention, as I thought, to every detail. + +The next day, if I remember correctly, was Sunday. At any rate, it was +a day on which I remained at home. When I opened my morning newspapers, +the first thing that attracted my attention was a letter in one of them +from Richard Grant White, of which my article was the subject. Here, he +said, was a conspicuous and unmistakable example of heterophemy, which +could not be attributed to ignorance or inattention or anything else, +except precisely that tendency of the human mind which he had set forth +as the source of mistakes otherwise unaccountable. He went on to say +that mine was an article founded upon adequate scholarship and evidently +written with unusual care; that its writer obviously knew his subject +and had written of it with the utmost attention to accuracy of statement +in every detail; that he had evidently read his proofs carefully as not +a slip appeared in the printed copy of the article, not even so much +as a typographical error; and yet that in two or three instances this +careful critic had written "Sir Philip Sidney" instead of "Sir Philip +Francis." He pointed out that these slips could not have been due to any +possible confusion in my mind of two Sir Philips who lived two hundred +years apart, chronologically, and whose careers were as wholly unlike +as it was possible to conceive; for, he pointed out, my article itself +bore ample witness to my familiarity with Sir Philip Francis's history. +Here, Mr. White insisted, was the clearest possible case of heterophemy, +untainted by even a possible suspicion of ignorance or confusion of mind. +Further, he urged, the case illustrated and confirmed his contention +that, having written a word or name or phrase not intended, the writer +is extremely unlikely to discover the slip even in the most careful +reading of proofs. For in this case every appearance indicated a careful +proofreading on the part of the author of the article. + +When I read Mr. White's letter I simply could not believe that I had +made the slips he attributed to me. Certainly there was no confusion in +my mind of Sir Philip Francis with Sir Philip Sidney. I was familiar +with the very different histories of the two altogether dissimilar men, +and it seemed inconceivable to me that I had written the name of the +one for that of the other even once in an article in which the right +name was written perhaps a dozen times. + +[Sidenote: Richard Grant White's Triumph] + +It was a troubled and unhappy "day off" for me. I had no copy of the +_Evening Post_ of the preceding day in the house, and a diligent inquiry +at all the news-stands in the remote quarter of Brooklyn in which I +then lived, failed to discover one. But as I thought of the matter in +troubled fashion, I became more and more convinced that Mr. White had +misread what I had written, in which case I anticipated a good deal of +fun in exposing and exploiting his error. As the day waned I became +positively certain in my mind that no such mistake had been made, that +no mention of Sir Philip Sidney could by any possibility have crept into +my article concerning Sir Philip Francis. + +But when I arrived at the office of the _Evening Post_ next morning, I +found the facts to be as Mr. White had represented them. I had written +"Sir Philip Francis" throughout the article, except in two or three +places, where the name appeared as "Sir Philip Sidney." I was so +incredulous of the blunder that I went to the composing room and secured +my manuscript. The error was there in the written copy. I asked the +chief proofreader why he had not observed and queried it in view of the +fact that my use of the name had been correct in most instances, but he +was unable to offer any explanation except that his mind had accepted +the one name for the other. The foreman of the composing room, a man of +education and large literary knowledge, had read the proofs merely as a +matter of interest, but he had not observed the error. I had no choice +but to accept Mr. Richard Grant White's interpretation of the matter +and call it a case of heterophemy. + +There are blunders made that are not so easily accounted for. A leading +New York newspaper once complained of Mr. Cleveland's veto messages as +tiresome and impertinent, and asked why he persisted in setting forth +his reasons for disapproving acts of Congress, instead of sending them +back disapproved without reasons. + +The _Evening Post_ found it necessary to direct the newspaper's +attention to the fact that the Constitution of the United States +expressly requires the President, in vetoing a measure, to set forth +his reasons for doing so. In a like forgetfulness of Constitutional +provisions for safeguarding the citizen, the same newspaper complained +of the police, when Tweed escaped and went into hiding, for not +searching every house in New York till the malefactor should be found. +It was Parke Godwin who cited the Constitution in answer to that +manifestation of ignorance, and he did it with the strong hand of a +master to whom forgetfulness of the fundamental law seemed not only +inexcusable, on the part of a newspaper writer, but dangerous to liberty +as well. + +Perhaps the worst case I ever knew of ignorance assuming the critical +functions of expert knowledge, was one which occurred some years later. +William Hamilton Gibson published a superbly illustrated work, which won +commendation everywhere for the exquisite perfection of the drawings, +both in gross and in minute detail. A certain art critic who had made +a good deal of noise in the world by his assaults upon the integrity +of art treasures in the Metropolitan Museum, assailed Gibson's work in +print. Finding nothing in the illustrations that he could criticise, +he accused Gibson of sailing under false colors and claiming credit for +results that were not of his creation. He said that nearly everything +of value in the illustrations of Gibson's book was the work not of the +artist but of the engraver who, he declared, had "added increment after +increment of value" to the crude original drawings. + +[Sidenote: The Demolition of a Critic] + +In a brief letter to the newspaper which had printed this destructive +criticism without its writer's name appended to it, Mr. Gibson had only +to direct attention to the fact that the pictures in question were +not engravings at all, but slavish photographic reproductions of his +original drawings, and that no engraver had had anything whatever to do +with them. + +The criticism to which so conclusive a reply was possible was anonymous, +and its author never acknowledged or in any way sought to atone for the +wanton wrong he had sought to inflict under cover of anonymity. But his +agency in the matter was known to persons "on the inside" of literature, +art, and journalism, and the shame of his deed rankled in the minds of +honest men. He wrote little if anything after that, and the reputation +he had made faded out of men's memory. + + + + +LV + + +When Mr. Bryant died, Mr. Parke Godwin assumed editorial control of the +_Evening Post_, and his attention promptly wrought something like a +miracle in the increased vigor and aggressiveness of its editorial +conduct. Mr. Godwin was well advanced in middle life at that time; he +was comfortably provided with this world's goods, and he was not anxious +to take up again the strenuous journalistic work in which he had already +achieved all there was to achieve of reputation. But in his own interest +and in the interest of Mr. Bryant's heirs, it seemed necessary for him +to step into this breach. Moreover, he had abated none of his interest +in public affairs or in those things that make for culture, enlightenment, +and human betterment. He had never ceased to write for the _Evening +Post_ upon matters of such kind when occasion called for strong, virile +utterance. + +In his declining years Mr. Bryant had not lost interest in these things, +but he had abated somewhat his activity with reference to them. He had +more and more left the conduct of the newspaper to his subordinates, +trusting to what he used to call his "volunteer staff"--Parke Godwin, +John Bigelow, Samuel J. Tilden, and other strong men, to furnish +voluntarily all that was needed of strenuosity in the discussion of +matters closely concerning the public weal. I do not know that Mr. +Tilden was ever known to the public even as an occasional writer for the +_Evening Post_. He was a man of singularly secretive temperament, and +when he wrote anything for the _Evening Post_ its anonymity was guarded +with a jealousy such as I have never known any other person to exercise. +What he wrote--on the infrequent occasions of his writing at all--was +given to Mr. Bryant and by him handed in with instructions for its +publication and without a hint to anybody concerning its authorship. +It was only by accident that I learned whence certain articles came, and +I think that knowledge was not usually shared with any other member of +Mr. Bryant's staff. + +Mr. Godwin pursued a different course. These occasional contributions +did not satisfy his ideas of what the _Evening Post_ should be in its +editorial utterances. He set to work to stimulate a greater aggressiveness +on the part of the staff writers, and he himself brought a strong hand +to bear upon the work. + +[Sidenote: "A Lion in a Den of Daniels"] + +When Mr. Godwin died, a few years ago, Dr. Titus Munson Coan, in an +obituary sketch read before the Authors Club, said with reference to +this part of his career that in the _Evening Post_ office "he was a lion +in a den of Daniels," and the figure of speech was altogether apt. + +He had gifts of an uncommon sort. He knew how to say strong things +in a strong way. He could wield the rapier of subtle sarcasm, and the +bludgeon of denunciation with an equally skilled hand. Sometimes he +brought even a trip-hammer into play with startling effect. + +I remember one conspicuous case of the kind. Sara Bernhardt was playing +one of her earliest and most brilliant engagements in New York. Mr. +Godwin's alert interest in every form of high art led him not only +to employ critics of specially expert quality to write of her work, +but himself now and then to write something of more than ordinary +appreciation of the great Frenchwoman's genius as illustrated in her +performance. + +Presently a certain clergyman of the "sensational" school, who had +denounced the theater as "the door of hell and the open gateway of +damnation," sent to the _Evening Post_ an intemperate protest against +the large space it was giving to Sara Bernhardt and her art. The letter +was entitled "Quite Enough of Sara Bernhardt," and in the course of it +the writer declared the great actress to be a woman of immoral character +and dissolute life, whom it was a shame, a disgrace, and a public +calamity for the _Evening Post_ even to name in its columns. + +Mr. Godwin wrote an answer to the tirade. He entitled it "Quite Enough +of X"--the "X" standing here for the clergyman's name, which he used in +full. It was one of the most effective bits of criticism and destructive +analysis I ever saw in print, and it left the critic of Sara Bernhardt +with not a leg to stand upon, and with no possibility of reply. Mr. +Godwin pointed out that Sara Bernhardt had asked American attention, not +as a woman, but solely as an artist; that it was of her art alone, and +not of her personality that the _Evening Post_ had written; that she had +neither asked admission to American society nor accepted it when pressed +upon her; and that her personal character and mode of life had no more +to do with the duty of considering her art than had the sins of any old +master when one viewed his paintings and sought to interpret the genius +that inspired them. + +So far Mr. Godwin was argumentative and placative. But he had other +arrows in his quiver. He challenged the clergyman to say how he knew +that the actress was a person of immoral character and dissolute life, +and to explain what right he had to make charges of that kind against a +woman without the smallest evidence of their truth. And so on to the end +of a chapter that must have been very bitter reading to the offender if +he had been a person of normal sensitiveness, as he was not. + +I have cited this occurrence merely by way of explaining the fact that +Mr. Godwin had many critics and many enemies. A man of sincere mind and +aggressive temper upon proper occasion, and especially one possessed of +his gift of vigorous expression, must needs make enemies in plenty, if +he edits a newspaper or otherwise writes for publication. But on the +other hand, those who knew him best were all and always his devoted +friends--those who knew his sturdy character, his unflinching honesty +of mind, and his sincere devotion to the right as he saw it. + +My acquaintance with him, before his assumption of control on the +_Evening Post_, was comparatively slight, and in all that I here write +of his character and mind, I am drawing upon my recollection of him +during a later intimacy which, beginning on the _Evening Post_, was +drawn closer during my service on another newspaper, and endured until +his death. + +After a brief period of editorship Mr. Godwin sold a controlling +interest in the _Evening Post_ to a company of men represented by +Messrs. Horace White, E. L. Godkin, and Carl Schurz--Mr. Schurz becoming +the titular editor for a time. When Mr. Godwin learned, after the sale +was agreed upon, that Mr. Godkin was one of the incoming group, he +sought to buy Mr. Godkin's weekly newspaper, _The Nation_, and as the +negotiation seemed for a time to promise well, he arranged to make me +editor of that periodical. This opened to me a prospect of congenial +work, more agreeable to me than any that a daily newspaper could offer. +But in the end Mr. Godkin declined to sell the _Nation_ at any price +that Mr. Godwin thought fair, and made it instead the weekly edition +of the _Evening Post_. + +[Sidenote: The Literary Shop Again] + +Accordingly, I again quitted the newspaper life, fully intending to +enter it no more. Literary work of many kinds was open to me, and it was +my purpose to devote myself exclusively to it, maintaining a literary +workshop in my own home. I became an adviser of the Harper publishing +house, with no office attendance required of me, no working time fixed, +and no interference of any kind with my entire liberty. I was writing +now and then for the editorial pages of the great newspapers, regularly +for a number of magazines, and occasionally writing a book, though that +was infrequent for the reason that in the absence of international +copyright, there was no encouragement to American authors to write books +in competition with reprints that cost their publishers nothing. + +In mentioning this matter of so-called "piracy," I do not mean to accuse +the reputable American publishers of English books of any wrong, +for they were guilty of none. They were victims of the lack of law as +truly as the authors on either side were. They were as eager as the +authors--English or American--could be, for an international copyright +law. For lack of it their profits were cut short and their business +enterprises set awry. The reputable publishing houses in this country +actually purchased the American publishing rights of many English books +with no other protection of what they had purchased than such as was +afforded by the "courtesy of the trade"--a certain gentlemen's agreement +under which no reputable American publisher would reprint a book of +which another publisher had bought the advance sheets. This protection +was uncertain, meager, and often ineffective for the reason that there +were disreputable publishers in plenty who paid no heed to the "courtesy +of the trade" but reprinted whatsoever they thought would sell. + +In the case of such works as those of Herbert Spencer and some others, I +believe I am correctly informed that the American publishers paid larger +royalties to the authors--larger in gross amount, at least--than those +authors received from their English publishers. In the same way American +publishers of the better class paid liberally for advance sheets of the +best foreign fiction, often at heavy loss to themselves because the +books they had bought were promptly reprinted in very cheap form by +their less scrupulous competitors. In the case of fiction of a less +distinguished kind, of which no advance sheets were offered, they had +no choice but to make cheap reprints on their own account. + +It is proper to say also that if this was "piracy," the American +publishers were by no means the worst pirates or the most conspicuous +ones, though the complaints made were chiefly of English origin and were +all directed against the Americans. + +[Sidenote: Piracy--British and American] + +I shall never forget the way in which my brother, Edward Eggleston +--himself an active worker for international copyright--met the complaints +of one English critic who was more lavish and less discriminative in his +criticism in a company of Americans than Edward thought good manners +justified. The critic was the son of an English poet, whose father's +chief work had won considerable popularity in America. The young man was +a guest at one of the receptions of the Authors Club, every member of +which was directly or indirectly a sufferer by reason of the lack of +international copyright. He seized upon the occasion for the delivery of +a tirade against the American dishonesty which, he said, threatened to +cut short his travel year by depriving his father of the money justly +due him as royalty on the American reprints of his books. + +My brother listened in silence for a time. Then that pinch of gunpowder +that lies somewhere in every human make-up "went off." + +"The American publishers of your father's poem," he said, "have paid him +all they could afford to pay in the present state of the law, I believe?" + +"Yes--but what is it? A mere fraction of what they justly owe him," the +young man answered. + +"Now listen," said Edward. "You call that American piracy, and you +overlook the piracy on the other side. Your father's book has sold so +many thousand copies in America"--giving the figures. "The English +reprint of my 'Hoosier Schoolmaster' has sold nearly ten times that +number, according to the figures of the English 'pirates' who reprinted +it and who graciously sent me a 'tip,' as I call it, of one hundred +dollars--less than a fraction, if I may so call it, of what American +publishers have voluntarily paid your father. But dropping that smaller +side of the matter, let me tell you that every man in this company is a +far greater sufferer from the barbaric state of the law than your father +or any other English author ever was. We are denied the opportunity to +practise our profession, except under a paralysing competition with +stolen goods. What chance has an American novel, published at a dollar +or more, in competition with English fiction even of an inferior sort +published at ten cents? We cannot expect the reader who reads only for +amusement to pay a dollar or a dollar and a half for an American novel +when he can fill his satchel with reprints of English novels at ten +cents apiece. But that is the very smallest part of our loss. The whole +American people are inestimably losers because of this thing. They are +deprived of all chance of a national literature, reflecting the life +of our country, its ideas, its inspirations, and its aspirations. You +Englishmen are petty losers in comparison with us. Your losses are +measurable in pounds, shillings, and pence. Ours involve things of +immeasurably greater value." + +I have quoted here, as accurately as memory permits, an utterance that +met the approval of every author present, because I think that in our +appeals to Congress for international copyright only the smaller, lower, +and less worthy commercial aspects of the matter have been presented, +and that as a consequence the American people have been themselves +seriously and hurtfully misled as to the higher importance of a question +involving popular interests of far more consequence than the financial +returns of authorship can ever be. + + + + +LVI + + +In connection with my work for the Harpers it fell to my lot to revise +and edit a good many books. Among these were such books of reference as +Hayden's Dictionary of Dates, which I twice edited for American readers, +putting in the dates of important American affairs, and, more importantly, +correcting English misinterpretations of American happenings. For +example, under the title "New York" I found an entry, "Fall of O'Kelly," +with a date assigned. The thing probably referred to John Kelly, but the +event recorded, with its date, had never occurred within the knowledge +of any American. There were many other such things to cut out and many +important matters to put in, and the Harpers paid me liberally--after +their fashion in dealing with men of letters--for doing the work. In +the course of it I had to spend a considerable amount of their money in +securing the exact information desired. In one case I applied by letter +to one of the executive departments at Washington for exact information +concerning a certain document. For answer I received a letter, written +by a clerk, doubtless, but signed by a chief of bureau, embodying a copy +of the document. In that copy I found a line thrice repeated, and I was +unable to make out whether the repetition was in the original or was the +work of a copying clerk asleep at his post. I wrote to inquire, but the +chief of bureau replied that he had no authority to find out, wherefore +I had to make a journey to Washington at the expense of Harper and +Brothers, to ascertain the facts. I came out of that expedition with +the conviction, which still lingers in my mind, that the system that +gives civil service employees a tenure of office with which their chiefs +have no power to interfere by peremptory discharge for inefficiency or +misconduct, as the managing men of every successful business enterprise +may do, is vicious in principle and bad in outcome. + +[Sidenote: The Way at Washington] + +That and other experiences in dealing with executive departments at +Washington have made an old fogy of me, I suppose. At any rate they have +convinced me that the government's business could and would be better +done by half the force now employed, if that half force worked under a +consciousness of direct responsibility, each man to an immediate chief +who could discharge him for incompetency or inattention. Furthermore, +my experience with clerks in the departments at Washington convinces me +that the method of selection and promotion by competitive examination, +results almost uniformly in the appointment and in the promotion of +inferior and often incompetent men. Certainly no great bank, no great +business enterprise of any kind would ever consent to such a method +of selecting or promoting its employees--a method which excludes from +consideration the knowledge every chief of bureau or department must +necessarily have of the qualifications of his subordinates. The clerk +who repeated that line three times in making an official transcript of +an official document had been for several years in the public service, +and I suppose he is there yet, if he isn't dead. How long would a +bookkeeper in a bank hold his place after making a similar blunder? But +then, banks are charged with an obligation to remain solvent, and must +appoint and discharge employees with due reference to that necessity. +The government is not subject to that requirement, and it recognizes +a certain obligation to heed the vagaries of the theorists who regard +themselves as commissioned--divinely or otherwise--to reform the world +in accordance with the suggestions of their own inner consciousness and +altogether without regard to the practical experience of humankind. + +Mainly, however, the books I was employed to edit were those written +by men whose connection with affairs of consequence rendered their +utterances important, but whose literary qualifications were small. +When such works were presented to the Harpers, it was their practice to +accept the books on condition that the authors of them should pay for +such editing as was necessary, by some person of literary experience +to be selected by the Harpers themselves. + +In every such case, where I was asked to be the editor and see the book +through the press, I stipulated that I was to make no effort to improve +literary style, but was to confine myself to seeing that the English was +correct--whether elegant or otherwise--and that the book as it came from +the hands of its author should be presented with as little editorial +alteration as was possible. I assumed the function of correcting errors +and offering advice, not of writing the books anew or otherwise putting +them into the literary form I thought they should have. Even with this +limitation of function, I found plenty of work to do in every case. + +[Sidenote: A Historical Discovery] + +It was under a contract of this kind that I undertook to see through the +press the volumes published under the title of "The Military Operations +of General Beauregard in the War between the States." + +The work bore the name of Colonel Alfred Roman, as its author, but on +every page of it there was conclusive evidence of its direct and minute +inspiration by General Beauregard himself. It was with him rather than +with Colonel Roman that negotiations were had respecting my editorial +work on the book. He was excessively nervous lest I should make +alterations of substance, a point on which I was the better able to +reassure him because of the fact that my compensation was a sum certain +and in no way dependent upon the amount of time or labor I should give +to the work. I succeeded in convincing him that I was exceedingly +unlikely to undertake more of revision than the contract called for, and +as one man with another, I assured him that I would make no alteration +of substantial consequence in the work without his approval. + +In editing the book I made a discovery which, I think, is of some +historical interest. Throughout the war there was something like a +standing quarrel between General Beauregard and Mr. Jefferson Davis, +emphasized by the antagonism of Mr. Davis's chief adviser, Judah P. +Benjamin to General Beauregard. Into the merits of that quarrel I have +no intention here to inquire. It does not come within the purview of +this volume of reminiscences. But in editing General Beauregard's book +I discovered an easy and certainly correct explanation of the bitterest +phase of it--that phase upon which General Beauregard laid special +stress. + +Sometime after the battle of Shiloh, General Beauregard, whose health +was seriously impaired, decided to take a little furlough for purposes +of recuperation. There was neither prospect nor possibility of active +military operations in that quarter for a considerable time to come, +so that he felt himself free to go away for a few weeks in search of +health, leaving General Bragg in temporary command but himself keeping +in touch with his army and in readiness to return to it immediately in +case of need. + +He notified Mr. Davis of his intended course, by telegraph. Mr. Davis +almost immediately removed him from command and ordered General Bragg to +assume permanent control in that quarter. Mr. Davis's explanation, when +his act was challenged, was that General Beauregard had announced his +purpose to be absent himself "for four months," and that he, Mr. Davis, +could not regard that as anything else than an abandonment of his command. +General Beauregard insisted that he had made no such announcement and +had cherished no such purpose. The thing ultimately resolved itself into +a question of veracity between the two, concerning which each had bitter +things to say of the other in public ways. + +[Sidenote: A Period Out of Place] + +In editing General Beauregard's book, I discovered that there was really +no question of veracity involved, but merely an error of punctuation in +a telegraphic despatch, a thing very easy at all times and particularly +easy in days of military telegraphing when incompetent operators were +the rule rather than the exception. + +The case was this: General Beauregard telegraphed: + +"I am leaving for a while on surgeon's certificate. For four months +I have delayed obeying their urgent recommendations," etc. + +As the despatch reached Mr. Davis it read: + +"I am leaving for a while on surgeon's certificate for four months. +I have delayed," etc. + +The misplacing of a punctuation mark gave the statement, as received +by Mr. Davis, a totally different meaning from that which General +Beauregard had intended. In explaining his action in removing Beauregard +from command, Mr. Davis stated that the General had announced his +purpose to absent himself for four months. General Beauregard denied +that he had done anything of the kind. Hence the issue of veracity, in +which the text of the despatch as sent, sustained General Beauregard's +contention, while the same text as received, with its error of +punctuation, equally sustained the assertions of Mr. Davis. + +With the beatitude of the peacemakers in mind, I brought my discovery to +the attention of both parties to the controversy, in the hope at least +of convincing each that the other had not consciously lied. The attempt +proved futile. When I pointed out to General Beauregard the obvious +origin of the misapprehension, he flushed with suppressed anger and +declared himself unwilling to discuss a matter so exclusively personal. +He did discuss it, however, to the extent of pointing out that his use +of the phrase "for a while" should have enabled Mr. Davis to correct the +telegraph operator's error of punctuation, "if there really was any such +error made--which I am not prepared to believe." + +In answer to my letter to Mr. Davis, some one wrote for him that in his +advancing years he did not care to take up again any of the matters of +controversy that had perplexed his active life. + +I have never since that time made the smallest attempt to reconcile the +quarrels of men who have been engaged in the making of history. I have +learned better. + +So far as Mr. Davis was concerned there was probably another reason for +unwillingness to consider any matter that I might lay before him. He and +I had had a little controversy of our own some years before. + +In one of those chapters of "A Rebel's Recollections," which were first +published in the _Atlantic Monthly_, I made certain statements with +regard to Mr. Davis's conduct at a critical moment. Mr. Davis sent his +secretary to me--or at any rate some one calling himself his secretary +came to me--to assure me that the statements I and others had made +concerning the matter were without foundation in fact, and to ask me not +to include them in the forthcoming book. + +I replied that I had not made the statements thoughtlessly or without +satisfying myself of the correctness of my information; that I could +not, therefore, consent to omit them from the book; but that if Mr. +Davis would send me a categorical denial of them over his own signature, +I would publish it as a part of my text. + +This proposal was rejected, and I let the matter stand as originally +written. I had in my possession at that time a letter from General +Robert E. Lee to John Esten Cooke. It was written in answer to a direct +question of Mr. Cooke's, and in it General Lee stated unequivocally that +the facts were as Mr. Cooke understood them and as I had reported them. +But General Lee forbade the publication of his letter unless Mr. Davis +should at any time publicly deny the reports made. In that case he +authorized the publication "in the interest of truthful history." + +Mr. Cooke had placed that letter in my hands, and had Mr. Davis +furnished me with the suggested denial, it was my purpose to print that +and General Lee's letter in facsimile, leaving it for every reader to +choose between them. To my regret Mr. Davis declined to put his denial +into writing, so that General Lee's letter, which I returned to Mr. +Cooke, has never been published, and now never can be. + +[Sidenote: A Futile Effort to Make Peace] + +On another point I found General Beauregard more amenable to editorial +suggestion, though reluctantly so. In discussing his defense of +Charleston with utterly inadequate means--a defense everywhere +recognized as the sufficient foundation of a military fame--his book +included a chapter or so of masterly military criticism, intended to +show that if the commanders on the other side at Charleston had been as +alert and capable as they should have been, there was no time when they +could not have taken Charleston with ease and certainty. + +I pointed out to him that all this was a discrediting of himself; that +it attributed to the enemy's weakness a success which military criticism +attributed to his own military and engineering strength, thus stripping +him of credit at the very point at which his credit was least open to +dispute or question. I advised the elimination or material alteration of +this part of the book, and after due consideration he consented, though +with sore reluctance, for the reason that the modification made involved +the sacrifice of a very brilliant essay in military criticism, of which +any writer might well have been proud, and which I should have advised +any other writer to publish as a distinguished feature of his work. + +To descend from large things to small ones, it was in seeing this work +through the press that I encountered the most extreme case I have ever +known of dangerous interference with copy on the part of the "intelligent +compositor," passed by the "alert proofreader." The printing department +of the Harpers was as nearly perfect, in its organization and in the +supervision given to it by the two highly-skilled superintendents of its +rival composing rooms, as any printing department well can be. And yet +it was there that the error occurred. + +Of course I could not read the revised proofs of the book "by copy,"--that +is to say with a helper to read the copy aloud while I followed him with +the revises. That would have required the employment of an additional +helper and a considerably increased payment to me. Moreover, all that +was supposed to be attended to in the composing rooms so that revised +proofs should come to me in exact conformity with the "copy" as I had +handed it in. In reading them I was not expected to look out for errors +of the type, but solely for errors in the text. + +In reading a batch of proofs one night--for the man of letters who would +keep his butcher and grocer on good terms with him must work by night as +well as by day--although I was in nowise on the alert to discover errors +of type, my eye fell upon an error which, if it had escaped me, would +forever have ruined my reputation as an editor. Certain of General +Beauregard's official despatches, quoted in the book, were dated +"Fiddle Pond, near Barnwell C. H., South Carolina," the letters "C. H." +standing, of course, for "Court House"--the name given to rural county +seats in the South. The intelligent compositor, instead of "following +copy," had undertaken to interpret and translate the letters out of the +depths of his own intuitions. Instead of "Fiddle Pond, near Barnwell C. +H.," he had set "Fiddle Pond, near Barnwell, Charleston Harbor," thus +playing havoc at once with geography and the text. + +The case was so extreme, and the liberty taken with the text without +notice of any kind, involved so much danger to the accuracy of the work +that I had no choice but to report the matter to the house with a +notification that unless I could be assured that no further liberties of +any kind would be taken with the text, I must decline to go further with +the undertaking. + +This cost a proofreader and a printer or two their employments, and I +regretted that, but they deserved their punishment, and the matter was +one that demanded drastic measures. Without such measures it would have +been dangerous to publish the book at all. + +[Sidenote: Loring Pacha] + +One other ex-Confederate general with whom this sort of editorial work +brought me into association was Loring Pacha--otherwise General W. W. +Loring, a man of extraordinarily varied experiences in life, a man of +the gentlest temper and most genial impulses, who had been, nevertheless, +a fighter all his life, from boyhood up. His fighting, however, had all +been done in the field and professionally, and he carried none of its +animosities into private life. I remember his saying to me once: + +"Of course the war ended as it ought to have done. It was best for +everybody concerned that the Union should be restored. The only thing +is that I don't like the other fellows to 'have the say' on us." + +Loring became a private soldier in the United States Army while yet a +boy. He so far distinguished himself for gallantry in the Florida War +that he was offered a Presidential appointment to West Point, which he +declined. He was appointed to a lieutenancy in the regular army, where +he won rapid promotion and gained a deal of experience, chiefly in +fighting Indians and leading troops on difficult expeditions across the +plains of the far West. In the Mexican War he was several times promoted +and brevetted for conspicuous gallantry, and he lost an arm at one of +the gates of the City of Mexico, as he was leading his regiment as the +head of the column into the town, seizing an opportunity without orders. +On that occasion General Scott visited him in hospital and said to him: + +"Loring, I suppose I ought to court-martial you for rushing into that +breach without orders; but I think I'll recommend you for promotion +instead." + +In the Confederate Army Loring became a Major-General, and a few years +after the close of that struggle he was invited by the Khedive of Egypt +to become his chief of staff. After a military service there which +extended over a number of years, he returned to America and wrote a +book founded upon his experience there and the studies he had made in +Egyptian manners, history, archaeology, and the like. I was employed to +edit that book, which was published by Dodd, Mead & Co., I think, and in +the course of my work upon it Loring became not only a valued personal +friend, but an easy-going intimate in my household. At first he came to +see me only for purposes of consultation concerning the work. Later he +used to come "just because he wanted to," he said. His visits were made, +in Southern fashion, at whatever hour he chose, and he took with us +whatever meals were served while he was there. + +In conversation one day I happened to ask Loring something about the +strained relations that frequently exist between commanding officers +in the field and the newspaper war correspondents sent out to report +news of military operations. I think my question was prompted by some +reference to William Swinton's criticisms of General Grant, and General +Grant's peremptory dealing with him. + +"I don't know much about such things," Loring answered. "You see, at the +time of the Mexican War and of all my Indian campaigns, the newspapers +hadn't yet invented the war correspondent. Then in the Confederacy +everybody was a soldier, as you know, and the war correspondents carried +muskets and answered to roll calls. Their newspaper work was an +avocation, not a vocation. You see I am learning English under your +tuition." + +This little jest referred to the fact that a few days before, in running +through the manuscript of a lecture he was preparing, I had changed the +word "avocation" to "vocation," explaining to him the difference in +meaning. + +[Sidenote: Concerning War Correspondents] + +"Then in Egypt we were not much troubled with war +correspondents--perhaps they had the bowstring and sack in mind--but +I have an abiding grudge against another type of correspondent whom I +encountered there. I mean the tourist who has made an arrangement with +some newspaper to pay the expenses of his trip or a part of them in +return for letters to be sent from the places visited. He is always an +objectionable person, particularly when he happens to be a parson out +of a job, and I always fought shy of him so far as possible, usually +by turning him over to my dragoman, to be shown about and 'stuffed' as +only a dragoman can 'stuff' anybody. You see the dragoman has learned +that every Western tourist in the East is hungry for information of +a startling sort, and the dragoman holds himself ready to furnish it +without the smallest regard for truth or any respect at all for facts. +On one occasion one of these scribbling tourists from England visited +me. One of the Khedive's unoccupied palaces had been assigned to me for +my headquarters, and I was exceedingly busy with preparations for a +campaign then in contemplation. Stone Pacha and I were both up to our +eyes in work, trying to mobilize an army that had no mobility in it. +Accordingly I turned the tourist over to my dragoman with orders to +show him everything and give him all the information he wanted. + +"The palace was divided as usual. There was a public part and a part +called the harem--which simply means the home or the family apartments. +During my occupancy of the place that part of it was empty and closed, +as I am a bachelor. But as the dragoman showed him about the tourist +asked to see that part of the palace, whereupon the dragoman replied: + +"'That is the harem. You cannot gain entrance there.' + +"'The harem? But I thought Loring was an American and a Christian,' was +the astonished reply. + +"'He was--but he is a pacha, now,' answered the dragoman with that air +of mysterious reserve which is a part of his stock in trade. Then the +rascal went on to tell the tourist that I now had forty wives--which +would have been a shot with the long bow even if I had been a born +Mohammedan of the highest rank and greatest wealth. + +"When I heard of the affair I asked the dragoman why he had lied so +outrageously and he calmly replied: + +"'Oh, I thought it polite to give the gentleman what he wanted.' + +[Sidenote: A Scribbling Tourist's Mischief-Making] + +"I dismissed the matter and thought no more of it until a month or so +later, when somebody sent me marked copies of the _Manchester Guardian_, +or whatever the religious newspaper concerned was called. The tourist +had told the story of my 'downfall' with all the horrifying particulars, +setting forth in very complimentary phrases my simple, exemplary life +as an American soldier and lamenting the ease with which I and other +Western men, 'nurtured in the purity of Christian family life,' had +fallen victims to the lustful luxury of the East. I didn't give the +matter any attention. I was too busy to bother--too busy with plans and +estimates and commissary problems, and the puzzles of transportation and +all the rest of the things that required attention in preparation for +a campaign in a difficult, inaccessible, and little known country. I +wasn't thinking of myself or of what wandering scribes might be writing +about me in English newspapers. But presently this thing assumed a new +and very serious aspect. Some obscure American religious newspaper, +published down South somewhere, copied the thing, and my good sisters, +who live down that way, read it. It isn't much to say they were +horrified; they were well-nigh killed by the revelation of my infamy and +they suffered almost inconceivable tortures of the spirit on my account. +For it never entered their trustful minds to doubt anything printed +in a great English religious paper over the signature of a dissenting +minister and copied into the American religious journal which to them +seemed an authoritative weekly supplement to the holy scriptures. + +"I managed to straighten the thing out in the minds of my good sisters, +but I have never ceased to regret that that correspondent never turned +up at my headquarters again. If he had I should have made him think he +had fallen in with a herd of the wild jackasses of Abyssinia." + + + + +LVII + + +Mention of Loring's experience reminds me of an amusing one of my own +that occurred a little later. In the autumn of 1886 I made a leisurely +journey with my wife across the continent to California, Oregon, Mexico, +and all parts of the golden West. On an equally leisurely return journey +we took a train at Marshall, Texas, for New Orleans, over the ruins of +the Texas and Pacific Railroad, which Jay Gould had recently "looted to +the limit," as a banker described it. Besides myself, my wife, and our +child, the only passengers on the solitary buffet sleeping car were Mr. +Ziegenfust of the San Francisco _Chronicle_, and a young lady who put +herself under my wife's chaperonage. If Mr. Ziegenfust had not been +there to bear out my statements I should never have told the story of +what happened. + +There was no conductor for the sleeping car--only a negro porter who +acted as factotum. When I undertook to arrange with him for my sleeping +car accommodations, I offered him a gold piece, for in drawing money +from a San Francisco bank for use on the return journey, I had received +only gold. + +The negro seemed startled as I held out the coin. + +"I can't take dat, boss," he said. "'Taint worf nuffin." + +I made an effort to explain to him that American gold coin was not only +the supreme standard by which all values were measured in this country, +but that as mere metal it was worth the sum stamped upon it in any part +of the earth. Mr. Ziegenfust supported me in these statements, but our +combined assurances made no impression upon the porter's mind. He +perfectly knew that gold coin was as worthless as dead forest leaves, +and he simply would not take the twenty-dollar piece offered him. + +We decided that the poor fellow was a fool, and after a search through +all the pockets on the car we managed to get together the necessary +number of dollars in greenbacks with which to pay for my accommodations. +As for what we might want to eat from the buffet--for there were no +dining cars in those days--the porter assured me he would "trust me" +till we should get to New Orleans, and call upon me at my hotel to +receive his pay. + +Next morning we found ourselves stranded at Plaquemine, by reason of a +train wreck a few miles ahead. Plaquemine is the center of the district +to which the banished Acadians of Longfellow's story fled for refuge, +and most of the people there claim descent from Evangeline, in jaunty +disregard of the fact that that young lady of the long ago was never +married. But Plaquemine is a thriving provincial town, and when I +learned that we must lie there, wreck-bound, for at least six hours, +I thought I saw my opportunity. I went out into the town to get some of +my gold pieces converted into greenbacks. + +[Sidenote: "A Stranded Gold Bug"] + +To my astonishment I found everybody there like-minded with the negro +porter of my sleeping car. They were all convinced that American gold +coin was a thing of no value, and for reason they told me that "the +government has went back on it." It was in vain for me to protest that +the government had nothing to do with determining the value of a gold +piece except to certify its weight and fineness; that the piece of gold +was intrinsically worth its face as mere metal, and all the rest of the +obvious facts of the case. These people knew that "the government has +went back on gold"--that was the phrase all of them used--and they would +have none of it. + +In recognition of the superior liberality of mind concerning financial +matters that distinguishes the barkeeper from all other small tradesmen, +I went into the saloon of the principal hotel of the town, and said to +the man of multitudinous bottles: + +"It's rather early in the morning, but some of these gentlemen," waving +my hand toward the loafers on the benches, "may be thirsty. I'll be +glad to 'set 'em up' for the company if you'll take your pay out of a +twenty-dollar gold piece and give me change for it." + +There was an alert and instant response from the "gentlemen" of the +benches, who promptly aligned themselves before the bar and stood ready +to "name their drinks," but the barkeeper shook his head. + +"Stranger," he said, "if you must have a drink you can have it and +welcome. But I can't take gold money. 'Taint worth nothin'. You see the +government has went back on it." + +I declined the gratuitous drink he so generously offered, and took my +departure, leaving the "gentlemen" of the benches thirsty. + +Finally, I went to the principal merchant of the place, feeling certain +that he at least knew the fundamental facts of money values. I explained +my embarrassment and asked him to give me greenbacks for one or more of +my gold pieces. + +He was an exceedingly courteous and kindly person. He said to me in +better English than I had heard that morning: + +"Well, you may not know it, but the government has gone back on +gold, so that we don't know what value it may have. But I can't let a +stranger leave our town under such embarrassment as yours seems to be, +particularly as you have your wife and child with you. I'll give you +currency for one of your gold pieces, and _take my chances of getting +something for the coin_." + +I tried to explain finance to him, and particularly the insignificance +of the government's relation to the intrinsic value of gold coin, but +my words made no impression upon his mind. I could only say, therefore, +that I would accept his hospitable offer to convert one of my coins into +greenbacks, with the assurance that I should not think of doing so if +I did not perfectly know that he took no risk whatever in making the +exchange. + +In New Orleans I got an explanation of this curious scare. When the +Civil War broke out there was a good deal of gold coin in circulation +in the Plaquemine region. During and after the war the coins passed +freely and frequently from hand to hand, particularly in cotton buying +transactions. Not long before the time of my visit, some merchants in +Plaquemine had sent a lot of this badly worn gold to New Orleans in +payment of duties on imported goods--a species of payment which was +then, foolishly, required to be made in gold alone. The customs officers +had rejected this Plaquemine gold, because it was worn to light weight. +Hence the conviction in Plaquemine that the government had "went back" +on gold. + +[Sidenote: Results of a Bit of Humor] + +At that time the principal subject of discussion in Congress and the +newspapers was the question of free silver coinage, the exclusive gold +standard of values, or a double standard, and all the rest of it, and +those who contended for an exclusive gold standard were stigmatized as +"gold bugs." + +I was then editor-in-chief of the _New York Commercial Advertiser_, and +in my absence my brilliant young friend, Henry Marquand, was in charge +of the paper. Thinking to amuse our readers I sent him a playful letter +recounting these Plaquemine experiences, and he published it under the +title of "A Stranded Goldbug." + +The humor of the situation described was so obvious and so timely that +my letter was widely copied throughout the country, and a copy of it +fell into the hands of a good but too serious-minded kinswoman of mine, +an active worker in the W. C. T. U. She was not interested in the humor +of my embarrassment, but she wrote me a grieved and distressed letter, +asking how I could ever have gone into the saloon of that Plaquemine +hotel, or any other place where alcoholic beverages were sold, and much +else to the like effect. I was reminded of Loring's experience, and was +left to wonder how large a proportion of those who had read my letter +had missed the humor of the matter in their shocked distress over the +fact that by entering a hotel cafe I had lent my countenance to the sale +of beer and the like. + +I had not then learned, as I have since done, how exceedingly and +even exigently sensitive consciences of a certain class are as to such +matters. Not many years ago I published a boys' book about a flat-boat +voyage down the Mississippi. At New Orleans a commission merchant, +anxious to give the country boys as much as he could of enjoyment in the +city, furnished tickets and bade them "go to the opera to-night and hear +some good music." Soon after the book came out my publishers wrote me +that they had a Sunday School Association's order for a thousand copies +of the book, but that it was conditioned upon our willingness to change +the word "opera" to "concert" in the sentence quoted. + + + + +LVIII + + +As a literary adviser of the Harpers, I very earnestly urged them to +publish Mrs. Custer's "Boots and Saddles." In my "opinion" recommending +its acceptance, I said that their other readers would probably be +unanimous in advising its rejection, and would offer excellent reasons +in support of that advice. I added that those very reasons were the +promptings of my advice to the contrary. + +When all the opinions were in--all but mine being adverse--Mr. Joe +Harper sent copies of them to me, asking me to read them carefully and, +after consideration, to report whether or not I still adhered to my +opinion in favor of the book. I promptly replied that I did, giving my +reasons, which were based mainly on the very considerations urged by the +other readers in behalf of rejection. In my earnestness I ventured, as +I had never done before, upon a prediction. I said that in my opinion +the book would reach a sale of twenty thousand copies--a figure then +considered very great for the sale of any current book. + +[Sidenote: "Boots and Saddles"] + +A month after "Boots and Saddles" was published, I happened to be in +the Harper offices, and Mr. Joe Harper beckoned me to him. With a very +solemn countenance, which did not hide the twinkle in his eye, he said: + +"Of course, when you make a cock-sure prediction as to the sale of a +book, and we accept it on the strength of your enthusiastic advice, we +expect you to make the failure good." + +"To what book do you refer?" I asked. + +"Mrs. Custer's. You predicted a sale of twenty thousand for it, and it +has now been out a full month and----" + +"What are the figures for the first month, Mr. Harper?" I interrupted. + +"Well, what do you think? It is the first month that sets the pace, you +know. What's your guess?" + +"Ten thousand," I ventured. + +"What? Of that book? In its first month? Are you a rainbow chaser?" + +I had caught the glint in his eye, and so I responded: + +"Oh, well, if that guess is so badly out I'll double it, and say twenty +thousand." + +"Do you mean that--seriously?" he asked. + +"Yes, quite seriously. So seriously that I'll agree to pay the royalties +on all copies short of twenty thousand, if you'll agree to give me a sum +equal to the royalties on all copies sold in excess of that number." + +He chuckled inwardly but audibly. Then, picking up a paper from his +desk, he passed it to me, saying; + +"Look. There are the figures." + +The sales had amounted to some hundred more than the twenty thousand I +had guessed, and there were no indications of any early falling off of +the orders that were daily and hourly coming in. + +I mention this case of successful prediction because it gives me a text +for saying that ordinarily there is nothing so utterly impossible as +foresight, of any trustworthy sort, concerning the sale of a book. In +this case the fact that "Boots and Saddles" was the very unliterary, and +altogether winning tribute of a loving wife to her dead hero husband, +afforded a secure ground of prediction. The book appealed to sentiments +with which every human heart--coarse or refined, high, low, or middle +class--is in eternal sympathy. Ordinarily there is no such secure ground +upon which to base a prediction of success for any book. The plate-room +of every publisher is the graveyard of a multitude of books that +promised well but died young, and the plates are their headstones. Every +publisher has had experiences that convince him of the impossibility of +discovering beforehand what books will sell well and what will "die +a-borning." Every publisher has had books of his publishing succeed far +beyond his expectations, and other books fail, on the success of which +he had confidently reckoned. And the worst of it is that the quality of +a book seems to have little or nothing to do with the matter, one way or +the other. + +One night at the Authors Club, I sat with a group of prolific and +successful authors, and as a matter of curious interest I asked each of +them to say how far their own and their publishers' anticipations with +respect to the comparative success of their several books had been borne +out by the actual sales. Almost every one of them had a story to tell of +disappointment with the books that were most confidently expected to +succeed, and of the success of other books that had been regarded as +least promising. + +The experience is as old as literature itself, doubtless. Thomas +Campbell came even to hate his "Pleasures of Hope," because its fame +completely overshadowed that of "Gertrude of Wyoming" and some other +poems of his which he regarded as immeasurably superior to that work. +He resented the fact that in introducing him or otherwise mentioning +him everybody added to his name the phrase "Author of the 'Pleasures of +Hope,'" and he bitterly predicted that when he died somebody would carve +that detested legend upon his tombstone. In the event, somebody did. + +A lifelong intimate of George Eliot once told me that bitterness was +mingled with the wine of applause in her cup, because, as she said: +"A stupid public persists in neglecting my poems, which are far superior +to anything I ever wrote in prose." + +In the same way such fame as Thomas Dunn English won, rested mainly upon +the song of "Ben Bolt." Yet one day during his later years I heard him +angrily say in response to some mention of that song: "Oh, damn 'Ben +Bolt.' It rides me like an incubus." + + + + +LIX + + +[Sidenote: Letters of Introduction] + +While I was conducting my literary shop at home, there came to me many +persons bearing letters of introduction which I was in courtesy bound +to honor. Some of these brought literary work of an acceptable sort for +me to do. Through them a number--perhaps a dozen or so--of books were +brought to me to edit, and in the course of the work upon such books +I made a few familiar friends, whose intimacy in my household was a +pleasure to me and my family while the friends in question lived. They +are all dead now--or nearly all. + +But mainly the bearers of letters of introduction who came to me at +that time were very worthy persons who wanted to do literary work, but +had not the smallest qualification for it. Some of them had rejected +manuscripts which they were sure that I, "with my influence," could +easily market to the replenishment of their emaciated purses. For the +conviction that the acceptance of manuscripts goes chiefly by favor +is ineradicable from the amateur literary mind. I have found it quite +useless to explain to such persons that favor has nothing to do with +the matter, that every editor and every publisher is always and eagerly +alert to discern new writers of promise and to exploit them. The persons +to whom these truths are told, simply do not believe them. They _know_ +that their own stories or essays or what not, are far superior to those +accepted and published. Every one of their friends has assured them +of that, and their own consciousness confirms the judgment. Scores of +them have left my library in full assurance that I was a member of some +"literary ring," that was organized to exclude from publication the +writings of all but the members of the ring. It was idle to point out +to them the introduction of Saxe Holm, of Constance Fenimore Woolson, of +Mrs. Custer, of Charles Egbert Craddock, or of any other of a dozen or +more new writers who had recently come to the front. They were assured +that each of these had enjoyed the benefits of "pull" of some sort. + +One charming young lady of the "Society" sort brought me half a dozen +letters of introduction from persons of social prominence, urging her +upon my attention. She had written a "Society novel," she told me, and +she wanted to get it published. She was altogether too well informed +as to publishing conditions, to send her manuscript to any publisher +without first securing "influence" in its behalf. She was perfectly well +aware that I was a person possessed of influence, and so she had come to +me. Wouldn't I, for a consideration, secure the acceptance of her novel +by some reputable house? + +I told her that "for a consideration"--namely, fifty dollars--I would +read her manuscript and give her a judgment upon its merits, after which +she might offer it to any publisher she saw fit, and that that was all +I could do for her. + +[Sidenote: The Disappointment of Lily Browneyes] + +"But you are 'on the inside' at Harpers'," she replied, "and of course +your verdict is conclusive with them." + +"In some cases it is," I answered. "It has proved to be so in one +peculiar case. I recently sold the Harpers a serial story of my own for +their _Young People_. Afterwards a story of Captain Kirk Munroe's came +to me for judgment. It covered so nearly the same ground that mine did, +that both could not be used. But his story seemed to me so much better +than my own, for the use proposed, that I advised the Harpers to accept +it and return to me my own already accepted manuscript. They have acted +upon my advice and I am a good many hundreds of dollars out of pocket in +consequence. Now, my dear Miss Browneyes," I added, "you see upon what +my influence with the Harpers rests. In so far as they accept literary +productions upon my advice, they do so simply because they know that my +advice is honest and represents my real judgment of the merits of things +offered for publication. If I should base my recommendations upon any +other foundation than that of integrity and an absolutely sincere +critical judgment, I should soon have no more influence with the +Harpers than any truckman in the streets can command. I will read your +manuscript and give you my honest opinion of it, for fifty dollars, if +you wish me to do so. But I do not advise you to do that. Judging of it +in advance, from what I have seen of you, and from what I know of the +limitations of the Society life you have led, I strongly advise you +not to waste fifty dollars of your father's money in that way. It is +scarcely conceivable that with your very limited knowledge of life, and +your carefully restricted outlook, you can have written a novel of any +value whatever. You had better save your fifty dollars to help pay for +your next love of a bonnet." + +"I'm awfully disappointed," she said. "You see it would be so nice to +have all my Society friends talking about 'Lily Browneyes's book,' and +perhaps that ought to be considered. You see almost every one of my +Society friends would buy the book 'just to see what that little +chatterbox, Lily Browneyes, has found to write about.' I should think, +that would make the fortune of the book." + +"How many Society friends have you, Miss Browneyes?" I asked. + +"Oh, heaps of them--scores--dead oodles and scads of 'em, as we girls +say." + +"But really, how many?" I persisted. "Suppose your book were published, +how many of your Society friends could you confidently reckon upon as +probable purchasers? Here's paper and a pencil. Suppose you set down +their names and tot them up." + +She eagerly undertook the task, and after half an hour she had a list +of forty-odd persons who would pretty surely buy the book--"if they +couldn't borrow it," she added. + +I explained the matter to her somewhat--dwelling upon the fact that +a sale of two thousand copies would barely reimburse the publisher's +outlay. + +She said I had been "very nice" to her, but on the whole she decided +to accept my advice and not pay me fifty dollars for a futile reading +of the manuscript. I was glad of that. For it seemed like breaking a +butterfly to disappoint so charming a young girl. + +The letters Lily Browneyes brought me had at least the merit of +sincerity. They were meant to help her accomplish her purpose, and +not as so many letters of the kind are, to get rid of importunity by +shifting it to the shoulders of some one else. I remember something +that illustrates my meaning. + +I presided, many years ago, at a banquet given by the Authors Club to +Mr. William Dean Howells. Nothing was prearranged. There was no schedule +of toasts in my hand, no list of speakers primed to respond to them. +With so brilliant a company to draw upon I had no fear as to the results +of calling up the man I wanted, without warning. + +In the course of the haphazard performance, it occurred to me that we +ought to have a speech from some publisher, and accordingly I called +upon Mr. J. Henry Harper--"Harry Harper," we who knew and loved him +called him. + +His embarrassment was positively painful to behold. He made no attempt +whatever to respond but appealed to me to excuse him. + +[Sidenote: Mark Twain's Method] + +At that point Mark Twain came to the rescue by offering to make Mr. +Harper's speech for him. "I'm a publisher myself," he explained, +"and I'll speak for the publishers." + +A roar of applause welcomed the suggestion, and Mr. Clemens proceeded to +make the speech. In the course of it he spoke of the multitude of young +authors who beset every publisher and beseech him for advice after he +has explained that their manuscripts are "not available" for publication +by his own firm, with its peculiar limitations. Most publishers cruelly +refuse, he said, to do anything for these innocents. "I never do that," +he added. "I always give them good advice, and more than that, I always +do something for them--_I give them notes of introduction to Gilder_." + +I am persuaded that many scores of the notes of introduction brought to +me have been written in precisely that spirit of helpless helpfulness. + +Sometimes, however, letters of introduction, given thoughtlessly, are +productive of trouble far more serious than the mere waste of a busy +man's time. It is a curious fact that most persons stand ready to give +letters of introduction upon acquaintance so slender that they would +never think of personally introducing the two concerned, or personally +vouching for the one to whom the letter is given. + +When I was editing _Hearth and Home_ Theodore Tilton gave a young +Indiana woman a letter of introduction to me. He afterwards admitted to +me that he knew nothing whatever about the young woman. + +"But what can one do in such a case?" he asked. "She was charming and +she wanted to know you; she was interested in you as a Hoosier +writer"--the Indiana school of literature had not established itself at +that early day--"and when she learned that I knew you well she asked for +a letter of introduction. What could I do? Could I say to her, 'My dear +young lady, I know very little about you, and my friend, George Cary +Eggleston, is so innocent and unsophisticated a person that I dare not +introduce you to him without some certificate of character?' No. I +could only give her the letter she wanted, trusting you to discount any +commendatory phrases it might contain, in the light of your acquaintance +with the ways of a world in which letters of introduction are taken +with grains of salt. Really, if I mean to commend one person to +another, I always send a private letter to indorse my formal letter +of introduction, and to assure my friend that there are no polite lies +in it." + +[Sidenote: Some Dangerous Letters of Introduction] + +In this case the young woman did nothing very dreadful. Her character +was doubtless above reproach and her reformatory impulses were no more +offensive than reformatory impulses that concern others usually are. +My only complaint of her was that she condemned me without a hearing, +giving me no opportunity to say why sentence should not be pronounced +upon me. + +In her interview, she was altogether charming. She was fairly well +acquainted with literature, and was keenly appreciative of it. We talked +for an hour on such subjects, and then she went away. A week or so +later she sent me a copy of the Indiana newspaper for which she was a +correspondent. In it was a page interview with me in which all that I +had said and a great deal that I had not said was set forth in detail. +There was also a graphic description of my office surroundings. Among +these surroundings was my pipe, which lay "naked and not ashamed" on my +desk. Referring to it, the young woman wrote that one saddening thing +in her visit to me was the discovery that "this gifted young man is a +victim of the tobacco habit." + +Worse still, she emphasized that lamentable discovery in her headlines, +and made so much of her compassionate regret that if I had been an +inmate of a lunatic asylum, demented by the use of absinthe or morphine, +her pity could hardly have been more active. + +I do not know that this exhibition of reformatory ill manners did me any +serious harm, but it annoyed me somewhat. + +When I was serving as literary editor of the _Evening Post_, a very +presentable person came to me bearing a note of introduction from +Richard Henry Stoddard. Mr. Stoddard introduced the gentleman as James +R. Randall, author of "My Maryland" and at that time editor of a +newspaper in Augusta, Georgia. Mr. Randall was a person whom I very +greatly wanted to know, but it was late on a Saturday afternoon, and +I had an absolutely peremptory engagement that compelled me to quit the +office immediately. Accordingly, I invited the visitor to dine with me +at my house the next day, Sunday, and he accepted. + +Sunday came and the dinner was served, but Mr. Randall was not there. +Next morning I learned that on the plea of Saturday afternoon and closed +banks he had borrowed thirty-five dollars from one of my fellow-editors +before leaving. This, taken in connection with his failure to keep his +dinner engagement with me, aroused suspicion. I telegraphed to Augusta, +asking the newspaper with which Mr. Randall was editorially connected +whether or not Mr. Randall was in New York. Mr. Randall himself replied +saying that he was not in New York and requesting me to secure the +arrest of any person trying to borrow money or get checks cashed in his +name. He added: "When I travel I make my financial arrangements in +advance and don't borrow money of friends or strangers." + +When I notified Stoddard of the situation, so that he might not commend +his friend, "Mr. Randall," to others, I expressed the hope that he had +not himself lent the man any money. In reply he said: + +"Lent him money? Why, my dear George Cary Eggleston, what a creative +imagination you must have! 'You'd orter 'a' been a poet.' Still, if +I had had any money, as of course I hadn't, I should have lent it +to him freely. As he didn't ask for it--probably he knew my chronic +impecuniosity too well to do that--I didn't know he was 'on the borrow.' +Anyhow, I'm going to run him to earth." + +[Sidenote: Moses and My Green Spectacles] + +And he did. It appeared in the outcome that the man had called upon +Edmund Clarence Stedman, bearing a letter from Sidney Lanier--forged, of +course. Stedman had taken him out to lunch and then, as he expressed +a wish to meet the literary men of the town, had given him a note of +introduction to Stoddard together with several other such notes to +men of letters, which were never delivered. The man proved to be the +"carpetbag" ex-Governor Moses, who had looted the state of South Carolina +to an extent that threatened the bankruptcy of that commonwealth. He had +saved little if anything out of his plunderings, and, returning to the +North, had entered upon a successful career as a "confidence man." He +was peculiarly well-equipped for the part. Sagacious, well-informed, +educated, and possessed of altogether pleasing manners, he succeeded +in imposing himself upon the unsuspecting for many years. At last, some +years after my first encounter with him, he was "caught in the act" +of swindling, and sent for a term to the Massachusetts state prison. + +On his release, at the end of his sentence, he resumed his old business +of victimizing the unsuspicious--among whom I was one. It was only +a few years ago when he rang my door bell and introduced himself as a +confidential employee of the Lothrop Publishing Company of Boston, who +were my publishers. He had seen me, he said, during the only visit I had +ever made to the offices of the company, but had not had the pleasure +of an introduction. Being in New York he had given himself the pleasure +of calling, the more because he wished to consult me concerning the +artistic make-up of a book I then had in preparation at the Lothrops'. + +His face seemed familiar to me, a fact which I easily accounted for on +the theory that I must have seen him during my visit to the publishing +house. For the rest he was a peculiarly agreeable person, educated, +refined, and possessed of definite ideas. We smoked together, and as +an outcome of the talk about cigars, I gave him something unusual. +An indiscreetly lavish friend of mine had given me a box of gigantic +cigars, each of which was encased in a glass tube, and each of which had +cost a dollar. I was so pleased with my visitor that I gave him one of +these, saying that it didn't often happen to a man who had anything to +do with literature to smoke a dollar cigar. + +At the end of his visit he somewhat casually mentioned the fact that +he and his wife were staying at the Astor House, adding: + +"We were anxious to leave for Boston by a late train to-night but I find +it impracticable to do so. I've suffered myself to run short of money +and my wife has made the matter worse by indulging in an indiscreet +shopping tour to-day. I have telegraphed to Boston for a remittance and +must wait over till it comes to-morrow. It is a very great annoyance, +as I am needed in Boston to-morrow, but there is no help for it." + +I asked him how much money was absolutely necessary to enable him to +leave by the late train, which there was still time to catch, and after +a moment of mental figuring, he fixed upon the sum of sixteen dollars +and fifty cents as sufficient. + +It was Sunday night and I had only a dollar or so in my pocket, but with +a keenly realizing sense of his embarrassment, I drew upon my wife's +little store of household change, and made up the sum required. He +seemed very grateful for the accommodation, but before leaving he asked +me to let him take one of those dollar cigars, to show to a friend in +Boston. + +About half an hour after he had left, I suddenly remembered him and +identified him as Moses--ex-carpetbag governor of South Carolina, +ex-convict, and _never_ ex-swindler. A few calls over the telephone +confirmed my conviction and my memory fully sustained my recollection +of the man. A day or two later he was arrested in connection with an +attempted swindle, but I did not bother to follow him up. I acted upon +the dictum of one of the most successful men I ever knew, that "it's +tomfoolery to send good money after bad." + + + + +LX + + +[Sidenote: English Literary Visitors] + +It was during the period of my withdrawal from newspaper work that Mr. +Edmund Gosse made his first visit to this country. At that time he had +not yet made the reputation he has since achieved for scholarship and +literary accomplishment. As a scholar he was young and promising rather +than a man of established reputation. As a writer he was only beginning +to be known. But he was an Englishman of letters and an agreeable +gentleman, wherefore we proceeded to dine him and wine him and make much +of him--all of which helped the success of his lecture course. + +I interrupt myself at this point to say that we do these things more +generously and more lavishly than our kin beyond sea ever think of +doing them. With the exception of Mark Twain, no living American author +visiting England is ever received with one-half, or one-quarter, or +one-tenth the attention that Americans have lavished upon British +writers of no greater consequence than our own. If Irving Bacheller, or +Charles Egbert Craddock, or Post Wheeler, or R. W. Chambers, or Miss +Johnston, or Will Harben, or Thomas Nelson Page, or James Whitcomb +Riley, or any other of a score that might be easily named should visit +London, does anybody imagine that he or she would receive even a small +fraction of the attention we have given to Sarah Grand, Mr. Yeats, Max +O'Rell, B. L. Farjeon, Mrs. Humphry Ward, Mr. Locke, and others? Would +even Mr. Howells be made to feel that he was appreciated there as much +as many far inferior English writers have been in New York? Are we +helplessly provincial or hopelessly snobbish? Or is it that our English +literary visitors make more skilful use of the press agent's peculiar +gifts? Or is it, perhaps, that we are more generous and hospitable than +the English? + +Mr. Gosse, at any rate, was worthy of all the attention he received, and +his later work has fully justified it, so that nothing in the vagrant +paragraph above is in any way applicable to him. + +Mr. Gosse had himself carefully "coached" before he visited America. +When he came to us he knew what every man of us had done in literature, +art, science, or what not, and so far he made no mistakes either of +ignorance or of misunderstanding. + +"Bless my soul!" said James R. Osgood to me at one of the breakfasts, +luncheons or banquets given to the visitor, "he has committed every +American publishers' catalogue to memory, and knows precisely where each +of you fellows stands." + +Upon one point, however, Mr. Gosse's conceptions were badly awry. He +bore the Civil War in mind, and was convinced that its bitternesses were +still an active force in our social life. One night at the Authors Club +I was talking with him when my brother Edward came up to us and joined +in the conversation. Mr. Gosse seemed surprised and even embarrassed. +Presently he said: + +"It's extremely gratifying, you know, but this is a surprise to me. I +understand that you two gentlemen held opposite views during the war, +and one of the things my mentors in England most strongly insisted upon +was that I should never mention either of you in talking with the other. +It is very gratifying to find that you are on terms with each other." + +"On terms?" said Edward. "Why, Geordie and I have always been twins. +I was born two years earlier than he was, but we've been twin brothers +nevertheless, all our lives. You see, we were born almost exactly on +the line between the North and the South, and one fell over to one side +and the other to the other. But there was never anything but affection +between us." + +[Sidenote: An Amusing Misconception] + +On another occasion Mr. Joe Harper gave a breakfast to Mr. Gosse at +the University Club. There were seventy or eighty guests--too many for +anything like intimate converse. To remedy this Mr. Harper asked about a +dozen of us to remain after the function was over, gather around him at +the head of the table--tell all the stories we could remember, and "give +Mr. Gosse a real insight into our ways of thinking," he said. + +Gordon McCabe and I were in the group, and Mr. Gosse, knowing perfectly +what each of us had written, knew, of course, that McCabe and I had +fought on the Southern side during the Civil War. If he had not known +the fact in that way he must have discovered it from the stories we told +of humorous happenings in the Confederate service. Yet here we were, on +the most cordial terms with men who had been on the other side. It was +all a bewildering mystery to Mr. Gosse, and presently he ventured to ask +about it. + +"Pardon me," he said to Mr. Harper, "it is all very gratifying, I'm +sure, but I don't quite understand. I think Mr. Eggleston and Mr. McCabe +were in active service on the Southern side during the war?" + +"Yes," answered Mr. Harper, "and they have told us all about it in +their books." + +"And the rest of you gentlemen sided with the North?" + +"Yes." + +"Well, it's very gratifying, of course, but it is astonishing to a +stranger to find you all on such terms of friendship again." + +"Isn't it?" broke in Mr. Harper. "Here we are, having champagne together +quite like old friends, while we all know that only a dozen years or so +ago, McCabe and Eggleston were down there at Petersburg trying with all +their might to _kill our substitutes_." + +The company laughed heartily at the witticism. Mr. Gosse smiled and a +little later, in an aside, he asked me to explain just what Mr. Harper +had meant by "substitutes." + +Mr. Gosse left a sweet taste in our mouths when he sailed for home. +The attentions he had received here had in no way spoiled him. From +beginning to end of his stay he never once manifested the least feeling +of superiority, and never once did his manner suggest that British +condescension, which is at once so amusing and so insulting to +Americans. The same thing was true of Matthew Arnold, who, I remember, +made himself a most agreeable guest at a reception the Authors Club +gave him in the days of its extreme poverty. But not all English men +of letters whom I have met have been like-minded with these. A certain +fourth- or fifth-rate English novelist, who was made the guest of honor +at a dinner at the Lotus Club, said to me, as I very well remember: +"Of course you have no literature of your own and you must depend for +your reading matter upon us at home." The use of "at home" meaning +"in England," was always peculiarly offensive in my ears, but my +interlocutor did not recognize its offensiveness. "But really, you know, +your people ought to pay for it." + +He was offering this argument to me in behalf of international +copyright, my interest in which was far greater than his own. For +because of the competition of ten-cent reprints of English books, I was +forbidden to make a living by literature and compelled to serve as a +hired man on a newspaper instead. + +A few of our English literary visitors have come to us with the modest +purposes of the tourist, interested in what our country is and means. +The greater number have come to exploit the country "for what there +is in it," by lecturing. Their lecture managers have been alert and +exceedingly successful in making advertising agencies of our clubs, our +social organizations, and even our private parlors, by way of drawing +money into the purses of their clients. + +[Sidenote: A Question of Provincialism] + +Did anybody ever hear of an American author of equal rank with these +going to England on a lecture or reading tour, and getting himself +advertised by London clubs and in London drawing-rooms in the like +fashion? And if any American author--even one of the highest +rank--should try to do anything of the sort, would his bank account +swell in consequence as those of our British literary visitors do? Are +we, after all, provincial? Have we not yet achieved our intellectual and +social independence? + +I am persuaded that some of us have, though not many. One night at a +club I asked Brander Matthews if I should introduce him to a second-rate +English man of letters who had been made a guest of the evening. He +answered: + +"No--unless you particularly wish it, I'd rather talk to you and the +other good fellows here. He hasn't anything to say that would interest +me, unless it is something he has put into the lectures he's going to +deliver, and he can't afford to waste on us any of that small stock of +interesting things." + +But as a people, have we outgrown our provincialism? Have we achieved +our intellectual independence? Have we learned to value our own +judgments, our own thinking, our own convictions independently of +English approval or disapproval? I fear we have not, even in criticism. +When the novel "Democracy" appeared I wrote a column or two about it in +the _Evening Post_, treating it as a noteworthy reflection of our own +life, political and social--not very great but worthy of attention. +The impulse of my article was that the literature of a country should +be a showing forth of its life, its thought, its inspirations, its +aspirations, its character, its strength, and its weaknesses. That +anonymous novel seemed to me to be a reflection of all these things in +some degree and I said so in print. All the other newspapers of the +country dismissed the book in brief paragraphs, quite as if it had had +no distinctive literary quality of its own. But a year or so later the +English critics got hold of the novel and wrote of it as a thing of +significance and consequence. Thereupon, the American newspapers that +had before given it a paragraph or so of insignificant reference, took +it up again and reviewed it as a book that meant something, evidently +forgetting that they had ever seen it before. + +This is only one of many incidents of criticism that I might relate in +illustration of the hurtful, crippling, paralyzing provincialism that +afflicts and obstructs our literary development. + +A few years ago the principal of a great and very ambitious preparatory +school whose function it was to fit young men for college, sent me his +curriculum "for criticism," he said,--for approval, I interpreted. He +set forth quite an elaborate course in what he called "The Literature of +the English Language." Upon looking it over I found that not one American +book was mentioned in the whole course of it, either as a required study +or as "collateral reading"--a title under which a multitude of second- or +third-rate English works were set down. + +For criticism I suggested that to the American boy who was expected to +become an American man of culture, some slight acquaintance with Irving, +Hawthorne, Emerson, Motley, Prescott, Longfellow, Holmes, Whittier, Poe, +Parkman, Lowell, Mark Twain, Mr. Howells, Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, Paul +Hayne, Sidney Lanier, James Whitcomb Riley, Bret Harte, John Hay, and +some other American writers might really be of greater advantage than +familiarity with many of the English authors named. + +His answer was conclusive and profoundly discouraging. It was his +function, he said, to prepare boys for their entrance examinations in +our great colleges and universities, "and not one of these," he added, +"names an American author in its requirement list." + +I believe the colleges have since that time recognized American +literature in some small degree, at least, though meagerly and with no +adequate recognition of the fact that a nation's literature is the voice +with which it speaks not only to other countries and to posterity but to +its own people in its own time, and that acquaintance with it ministers, +as no other scholarship does, to good, helpful, patriotic citizenship. + +[Sidenote: A Library Vandal] + +One of the English writers who came to this country possibly for his own +country's good, gave me some trouble. I was editing _Hearth and Home_ at +the time, and he brought me for sale a number of unusually good things, +mainly referring to matters French and Italian. He was absolute master +of the languages of both those countries, and his acquaintance with +their literature, classical, medieval, and modern, was so minute that he +knew precisely where to find any literary matter that seemed salable. +With a thrift admirable in itself, though misdirected, it was his +practice to go to the Astor Library, find what he wanted in rare books +or precious foreign newspaper files, translate it, and then tear out and +destroy the pages he had plundered. In that irregular fashion he made +quite a literary reputation for himself, though after detection he had +to retire to Philadelphia, under the orders of Mr. Saunders, Librarian +of the Astor Library, who decreed banishment for him as the alternative +of prosecution for the mutilation of books. + +He carried the thing so far, at last, that I regarded it as my duty +to expose him, and I did so in my capacity as literary editor of the +_Evening Post_. I was instantly threatened with a libel suit, but the +man who was to bring it left at once on a yachting trip to the West +Indies, and so far as I can learn has never reappeared either in America +or in Literature. It is one of the abiding regrets of my life that the +papers in that libel suit were never served upon me. + + + + +LXI + + +In the autumn of 1882 a little group of literary men, assembled around +Richard Watson Gilder's fireside, decided to organize an Authors Club +in New York. They arranged for the drafting of a tentative constitution +and issued invitations for twenty-five of us to meet a little later at +Lawrence Hutton's house in Thirty-fourth Street to organize the club. + +We met there on the 13th of November and, clause by clause, adopted a +constitution. + +It was obvious in that little assemblage itself, that some such +organization of authors was badly needed in New York. For, though there +were only twenty-five of us there, all selected by the originating +company, every man of us had to be introduced to some at least of the +others present. The men of letters in New York did not know each other. +They were beset by unacquaintance, prejudices, senseless antagonisms, +jealousies, amounting in some cases to hatreds. They had need to be +drawn together in a friendly organization, in which they could learn to +know and like and appreciate each other. + +[Sidenote: The Founding of the Authors Club] + +So great were the jealousies and ambitions to which I have referred that +early in the meeting Mr. Gilder--I think it was he--called three or four +of us into a corner and suggested that there was likely to be a fight +for the presidency of the club, and that it might result in the defeat +of the entire enterprise. At Mr. Gilder's suggestion, or that of some +one else--I cannot be sure because all of us in that corner were in +accord--it was decided that there should be no president of the club, +that the government should be vested in an executive council, and that +at each of its meetings the council should choose its own chairman. In +later and more harmonious years, since the men of the club have become +an affectionate brotherhood, it has been the custom for the council to +elect its chairman for a year, and usually to reelect him for another +year. But at the beginning we had conditions to guard against that no +longer exist--now that the literary men of New York know and mightily +like each other. + +The eligibility clause of the constitution as experimentally drawn up +by the committee, prescribed that in order to be eligible a man must be +the author of "at least one book proper to literature," or--and there +followed a clause covering the case of magazine editors and the like. + +As a reader for a publishing house, I scented danger here. Half in play, +but in earnest also, I suggested that the authorship of at least one +book proper to literature would render pretty nearly the entire adult +male population of the United States eligible to membership in the +club, unless some requirement of publication were added. My manuscript +reading had seemed to me at least to suggest that, and, as a necessary +safeguard, I moved to insert the word "published" before the word +"book," and the motion was carried with the laughter of the knowing +for its accompaniment. + +The club was very modest in its beginnings. As its constituent members +were mainly persons possessed of no money, so the club had none. For a +time our meetings were held at the houses of members--Lawrence Hutton's, +Dr. Youmans's, Richard Grant White's, and so on. But as not all of us +were possessed of homes that lent themselves to such entertainment, we +presently began meeting at Sieghortner's and other restaurants. Then +came a most hospitable invitation from the Tile Club, offering us the +use of their quarters for our meetings. Their quarters consisted, in +fact, of a kitchen in the interior of a block far down town--I forget +the number of the street. The building served Edwin A. Abbey as a +studio--he had not made his reputation as an artist then--and the good +old Irishwoman who cared for the rooms lived above stairs with her +daughter for her sole companion. This daughter was Abbey's model, and +a portrait of her, painted by his hand, hung in the studio, with a +presentation legend attached. The portrait represented one of the most +beautiful girls I have ever seen. It was positively ravishing in its +perfection. One day I had occasion to visit the place to make some +club arrangement, and while there I met the young lady of the portrait. +She was of sandy complexion, freckled, and otherwise commonplace in an +extreme degree. Yet that exquisitely beautiful portrait that hung there +in its frame was an admirably faithful likeness of the girl, when one +studied the two faces closely. Abbey had not painted in the freckles; +he had chosen flesh tints of a more attractive sort than the sandiness +of the girl's complexion; he had put a touch of warmth into the +indeterminate color of her pale red hair; and above all, he had painted +intelligence and soul into her vacuous countenance. Yet the girl and the +portrait were absolutely alike in every physical detail. + +I have not wondered since to learn that the husbands of high-born +English dames, and the fathers of English maidens have been glad to pay +Abbey kings' ransoms for portraits of their womankind. Abbey has the +gift of interpretation, and I do not know of any greater gift. + +[Sidenote: Dime Novels] + +The rear building in which we met by virtue of the Tile Club's +hospitality was approached through an alleyway, or covered gallery +rather, concerning which there was a tradition that two suicides and +a murder had been committed within its confines. + +"How inspiring all that is!" said John Hay one night after the +traditions had been reported in a peculiarly prosaic fashion by a +writer of learned essays in psychology and the like, who had no more +imagination than an oyster brings to bear upon the tray on which it +is served. "It makes one long to write romantic tragedies, and lurid +dramas, and all that sort of thing," Mr. Hay went on. "I'm sorely +tempted to enter upon the career of the dime novelist." + +This set us talking of the dime novel, a little group of us assembled +in front of the fire. Some one started the talk by saying that the dime +novel was an entirely innocent and a very necessary form of literature. +There John Hay broke in, and Edwin Booth, who was also present, +sustained him. + +"The dime novel," Mr. Hay said, "is only a rude form of the story of +adventure. If Scott's novels had been sufficiently condensed to be sold +at the price, they would have been dime novels of the most successful +sort. Your boy wants thrill, heroics, tall talk, and deeds of +derring-do, and these are what the dime novelist gives him in abundance, +and even in lavish superabundance. I remember that the favorite book of +my own boyhood was J. B. Jones's 'Wild Western Scenes.' His 'Sneak' was +to me a hero of romance with whom Ivanhoe could in no way compare." + +"But dime novels corrupt the morals of boys," suggested some one of the +company. + +"Do they?" asked Mr. Hay. Then a moment later he asked: "Did you ever +read one of them?" + +The interrupter admitted that he had not. + +"Till you do," said Mr. Hay, "you should hesitate to pass judgment. The +moral standards of the dime novel are always of the highest. They are +even heroic in their insistence upon honor and self-sacrifice in behalf +of the right. They are as chivalric as the code of honor itself. There +is never anything unclean in the dime novel, never anything that even +squints at toleration of immorality. The man beset by foes is always +gallantly supported by resolute fellows with pistols in their hands +which they are ready to use in behalf of righteousness. The maiden +in trouble has champions galore, whose language may not always square +itself with Sunday School standards, but whose devotion to the task of +protecting innocence is altogether inspiring." + +"What about their literary quality?" asked some one in the group. + +"It is very bad, I suppose," answered Edwin Booth, "but that isn't the +quality they put to the front. I have read dozens, scores, hundreds of +them, and I have never challenged their literary quality, because that +is something to which they lay no claim. Their strength lies in dramatic +situations, and they abound in these. I must say that some of them are +far better, stronger, and more appealing than are many of those that +have made the fortune of successful plays." + +"Do you read them for the sake of the dramatic situations, Mr. Booth?" +some one asked. + +"No. I read them for the sake of sleep," he replied. "I read them just +as I play solitaire--to divert my mind and to bring repose to me." + + + + +LXII + + +[Sidenote: The Authors Club] + +It was not long after that that the Authors Club secured quarters +of its own in Twenty-fourth Street, and became an established social +organization. For it was never a literary club, but always strictly a +social one, having a literary basis of eligibility to membership. From +the beginning we refused to read papers at each other, or in any other +way to "improve our minds" on club evenings by any form of literary +exercise. As the carpenter, who dresses lumber and drives nails and +miters joints for his daily bread does not seek his evening recreation +by doing those things for amusement, so we who were all hard-working men +of letters, earning our living with the pen, had no mind to do as +amateurs that which we were daily and hourly doing as professionals. + +In the same way we decided at the outset to eschew every form of +propagandism. The club has had no cause to advocate, no doctrine to +promulgate, no "movement" to help or hinder. It has been and still is +strictly a social club composed of men of letters, and having for its +guests interesting men of all other professions. Hence it has prospered +and its members have become intimates with no trace or suggestion +of friction between them. I think I am safe in saying that no other +organization has done so much for the amelioration of the literary life, +the removal of prejudices and bitternesses and spites and jealousies, +and for the upbuilding of cordial friendship among writers. I think +there is no man in the club who doesn't count every other man there +his friend. + +The point emphasized above--that the club is a social, not a literary +organization--is important. Neglect of it has led to a good deal of +ill-informed and misdirected criticism. At the very beginning, on the +night of the club's organization, we made up a list of somewhat more than +a score of literary men who should be made members upon the invitation +of our Executive Council without the formality of proposal and election. +From that list we excluded--by unanimous vote--one man whose literary +work abundantly qualified him for membership, but whose cantankerous +self-satisfaction rendered him, in the general opinion, a man not +"clubbable." The trouble with him was not so much that he regarded +himself, as he once avowed in company that he did, as "a greater than +Shakespeare," but that he was disposed to quarrel with everybody who +failed to recognize the assumption as a fact. + +If ours had been a literary club, he must have been admitted to +membership without question. As it was a social club, we didn't want +him, and three several efforts that he afterwards made to secure +admission failed. The like has happened in the cases of two or three +other men whose literary work rendered them eligible, but whose personal +peculiarities did not commend them. + +Chiefly, however, the club has been criticised for its failure to admit +women to membership. Paul Leicester Ford said to me on that subject one +day: + +"I'll have nothing to do with your club. You arrogantly refuse to +admit women, though women are doing quite as much as men in American +literature." + +[Sidenote: Why Women Are Not Eligible] + +I explained several things to him. I reminded him that the Authors +Club set up no pretension to be completely representative of American +literary activity; that it was merely a club formed by gentlemen who +felt the need of it, for the purpose of bringing literary men together +for social intercourse over their pipes and sandwiches; that the +admission of women would of necessity defeat this solitary purpose, and +that their exclusion was no more a slight than that which he put upon +his nearest friends whenever he gave a dinner or a theater party to +which he could not invite everybody on his eligible list. Then I pointed +out another difficulty and a supreme one. If we should admit women on +the same terms of eligibility that we insisted upon in the case of men, +a host of writing women would become eligible, while our own wives and +daughters would in most cases be ineligible. If, in order to cover that +difficulty we should admit the wives and daughters of male members, we +should be obliged to admit also the husbands, sons, and fathers of our +female members, so that presently we should become a mob of men and +women, half or more of whom were ineligible under our original conception +of the club and its reason for being. There is also the consideration +that every club must and does exclude more than it includes; that in +requiring New England birth or descent for membership, the New England +Society excludes perhaps nine-tenths of the people of New York, while +without that requirement the Society would lose its distinctive +character and be no New England Society at all. + +Mr. Ford was so far convinced that he authorized me to propose his name +for membership, but before I had opportunity to do so, the tragedy that +ended his life had befallen. + +The club has found ways of marking its appreciation of the literary +equality of women without destroying its own essential being. In +February and March of each year it gives four afternoon receptions to +women. In so far as it can find them out, the club's Executive Council +invites to all of these receptions, besides the wives and daughters +of its own members, every woman in the land whose literary work would +render her eligible to membership if she were a man. In addition to +this, every member of the club has the privilege of inviting any other +women he pleases. + +I do not think the club is deficient in gallantry, nor do I find any such +thought prevalent among the pleasing throng of gentlewomen who honor us +by accepting our invitations. + +Our first quarters were meagerly furnished, of course. It took every +dollar we had to furnish them even in the plainest way. There was neither +a sofa nor an upholstered chair in our rooms. Cheap, straight-backed, +cane-seated chairs alone were there. One night when General Sherman was +a guest, some one apologized for our inability to offer him a more +comfortable seat. The sturdy old soldier always had an opinion ready +made to suit every emergency. + +"Comfortable?" he responded. "Why, what do you call these chairs if they +are not comfortable? I don't believe in cushions. They are unnatural; +they are devices of self-indulgence and luxury. The law ought to forbid +their existence. They make men limp and flabby when they ought to be +strong and vigorous and virile. The best chair in the world is one with +a raw bull's hide for a seat, and with leathern thongs to tighten it +with when it stretches. Next best is the old-fashioned, wooden-bottomed +kitchen chair that cost forty cents when I was a boy. I don't suppose +they make 'em now. People are too luxurious to know when they are well +off." + +Presently some one spoke to him of his "March to the Sea," and he +instantly replied: + +"It's all romantic nonsense to call it that. The thing was nothing more +nor less than a military change of base--a thing familiar to every +student of tactics; but a poet got hold of it, nicknamed it the 'March +to the Sea,' and that's what everybody will call it, I suppose, till the +crack of doom, unless it is forgotten before that time." + +Perhaps the hard-fighting veteran's appreciation of the romantic aspect +of great achievements was less keen than that of a company of creative +writers. Perhaps his modesty got the better of him. + +[Sidenote: The First "Watch Night"] + +It happened early in the history of the Authors Club that the regular +meeting night fell one year on the thirty-first of December. At first it +was suggested that the date be changed, but some one remembered the old +custom of the Methodists who held "Watch Night" meetings, seeing the old +year out and the new year in with rejoicing and fervent singing. Why +shouldn't we have a "Watch Night" after our own fashion? The suggestion +was eagerly accepted. No programme was arranged, no order of exercises +planned. Nothing was prearranged except that with friendship and jollity +and the telling of stories we should give a farewell to the old year and +a welcome to the new. + +Fortunately, Mark Twain was called upon to begin the story telling, +and he put formality completely out of countenance at the very outset. +Instead of standing as if to address the company, he seized a chair, +straddled it, and with his arms folded across its back, proceeded +to tell one of the most humorous of all his stories. Frank Stockton +followed with his account of the "mislaid corpse" and before the new +year had an hour or two of age, there had been related enough of +exquisitely humorous incident--real or fanciful--to make the fortune +of two or three books of humor. + +At midnight we turned out the gas and sang a stanza or two of "Auld Lang +Syne" by way of farewell to the old year. Then, with lights all ablaze +again, we greeted the new year in the familiar "He's a jolly good +fellow." + +Max O'Rell was my guest on one of these occasions, and in one of his +later books he gave an account of it. After recording the fact that "at +precisely twelve o'clock the lights are turned out," he added a footnote +saying in solemn fashion: "A clock is _borrowed for the occasion_." + +I saw a good deal of that witty Frenchman during his several visits to +America. I wrote an introduction to the American edition of his "John +Bull, Jr.," and it served to protect that work with a copyright entry. + +He never paid me a cent for the service. + +That was because I refused to accept the remuneration he pressed upon me. + +I offer that as a jest which he would have appreciated keenly. + +He was a man of generous mind, whose humor sometimes impressed others +as cynical, a judgment that I always regarded as unjust, for the reason +that the humorist must be allowed a certain privilege of saying severer +things than he really feels, if he is to be a humorist at all. When +Max O'Rell says of a certain type of stupid British boy of the "upper +class," that he ultimately enters the army and fights his country's +enemies, and then adds: "And whether he kills his country's enemy or his +country's enemy kills him, his country is equally benefited," he does +not really mean what he says. He once confessed to me that he had had an +abiding affection for every such boy, but that the temptation to make a +jest at his expense was irresistible in the case of a writer whose bread +and butter were dependent upon his ability to excite smiles. + +In the same way, as everybody must have observed, the humor that has +made the reputation of many newspaper editors is largely leveled at +women in their various relations with men and at the sacred things of +life. Much of it would be cruelly unjust if it were seriously meant, as +ordinarily it is not. + +I have sometimes wondered whether the injustice did not outweigh the +humor--whether the smile excited by the humor was worth the wound +inflicted by the injustice. + +[Sidenote: Habitual Humorists] + +The professional humorist, whether with pen, pencil, or tongue, is the +victim of a false perspective. He is so intent upon his quip or quibble +or jest, that he loses sight of more serious things. He does not +hesitate to sacrifice even truth and justice, or the highest interest of +whatever sort, for the sake of "making his point." He perhaps mistakenly +believes that his reader or the person studying his caricature will +regard his jest lightly and without loss of respect for the more serious +things that lie behind. As a matter of fact, this rarely happens. The +reader of the jest accepts it as a setting forth of truth, or at any +rate is affected by it in some such fashion. + +On the whole, therefore, I cannot help regarding the confirmed humorist +in literature or art as a detrimental force. + +I do not mean to include in this condemnation such genial literary +humorists as Charles Battell Loomis, and Frank R. Stockton, and Charles +Dudley Warner, who made things funny merely by looking at them with an +intellectual squint that deceived nobody and misled nobody. I refer only +to the habitual jokers of the newspapers and the like,--men who, for a +wage, undertake to make a jest of everything that interests the popular +mind, and who, for the sake of their jest, would pervert the Lord's +Prayer itself to a humorous purpose. These people lose all sense of +propriety, proportion, perspective, and even of morality itself. They +make their jests at so much per line, and at all hazards of truth, +justice, and intelligence. + +In literature these mountebanks impress me as detrimental +impertinents--in conversation they seem to me nuisances. I cannot forget +one occasion on which the late Bishop Potter and a distinguished judge +of the Supreme Court were discussing a question of the possibility of +helpful reform in a certain direction. There was a humorist present--a +man whose sole idea of conversation was sparkle. He insisted upon +sparkling. He interrupted the gravest utterances with his puns or his +plays upon words, or his references to humorous things remembered. The +thing became so intolerable that some one present slipped his arms into +those of the Bishop and the Judge, and led them away with the suggestion +that there was a quiet corner in the club where he would like to seat +them and hear the rest of their conversation. As they turned their backs +on the humorist and moved away, the Bishop asked: + +"What did you say the name of that mountebank is?" + +The Judge replied: + +"I knew at the time. I'm glad to have forgotten it." + +"It is just as well," answered the Bishop. "There are many things in +this life that are better forgotten than remembered." + +There is one thing worthy of note in connection with the Authors Club. +Almost from the hour of its inception it has furnished the country +with a very distinguished proportion of its most eminent diplomats and +statesmen. To mention only a few: James Russell Lowell, Andrew D. White, +David Jayne Hill, William L. Wilson, Carl Schurz, General Horace Porter, +John Hay, Theodore Roosevelt, Oscar S. Straus, Edward M. Shepard, and +a dozen others easily mentioned, may be cited as illustrations of +the extent to which a club of only about 180 members in all has been +drawn upon by the national government for its needs in diplomacy and +statesmanship. + +The Authors Club idea of a watch night meeting has been borrowed by a +number of other organizations, but I think in none of them has it become +so well recognized an event of the year. At any rate, it throngs our +rooms to the point of suffocation on the night of every thirty-first of +December. + +Another habit of the club has been for a considerable number of members +and guests to linger after its regular meetings until the small hours +of the morning, telling stories or discussing matters of intellectual +interest. This has become a feature of the club meetings since Charles +Henry Webb--better known in literature as "John Paul"--said one night +at two o'clock: + +"Upon my soul, the Authors Club is one of the very pleasantest places +I know--_after_ the authors have gone home." + +[Sidenote: "Liber Scriptorum"] + +Soon after the club took its quarters in Twenty-fourth Street, three +of us--Rossiter Johnson, John D. Champlin, and myself--were impressed +with the need of more funds and better furnishings. We suggested the +publication of a unique book, as a means of securing the funds and +providing the furnishings. Our plan contemplated a sumptuous volume, +in an edition limited to two hundred and fifty-one copies--one for the +club, and the rest for sale at one hundred dollars a copy. We proposed +that the members of the club should furnish the poems, stories, and +essays needed; that each of them should agree never to publish his +contribution elsewhere, and that each poem, story, or essay should be +signed by its author in pen and ink in each copy of the book. + +We were met with prompt discouragement on every hand. The older men +among the members of the club were confident that we could never secure +the papers desired. Our friends among the publishers simply knew in +advance and positively, that even if we could make the book, we could +never sell it. Mr. Joe Harper offered to bet me a hat that we could +never sell twenty-five of the two hundred and fifty copies. I lived to +wear that hat and rejoice in it, for we not only made the book--"Liber +Scriptorum"--but we realized something more than twenty thousand dollars +on its sale, as a fund with which to provide leather-covered morris +chairs, soft rugs, handsome bookcases, and other luxuries for our friends +the doubters to rejoice in. + +Authors are supposed to be an unbusinesslike set, who do not know enough +of affairs to manage their personal finances in a way to save themselves +from poverty. Perhaps the judgment is correct. But the Authors Club is +the only club I know in New York which has no dollar of debt resting +upon it, and has a comfortable balance to its credit in bank. + +The case is not singular. It has been written of William Pitt that +while he was able to extricate the British exchequer from the sorest +embarrassment it ever encountered, he could not keep the duns from his +own door. + + + + +LXIII + + +I had been operating my little literary shop successfully for three or +four years after quitting the _Evening Post_, when Mr. Parke Godwin came +to me to say that he and some friends were about buying a controlling +interest in the newspaper called _The New York Commercial Advertiser_, +and that he wanted me to join his staff. I told him I had no desire to +return to journalism, that I liked my quiet literary life at home, and +that I was managing to make enough out of it to support my family. + +He replied that at any rate I might undertake the literary editorship of +his newspaper; that it would involve no more than a few hours of office +attendance in each week, and need not interfere in any way with my +literary undertakings of other kinds. + +I had a very great personal regard for Mr. Godwin; a very great +admiration for his character, and an abiding affection for him as a man. +When he pressed this proposal upon me, insisting that its acceptance +would relieve him of a burden, I decided to undertake what he wanted. +I was the readier to do so for a peculiar reason. In those days pretty +nearly all books, American or English, were first offered to the Harpers, +and I had to examine them all, either in manuscript, if they were +American, or in proof sheets if they were English. Consequently, whether +they were published by the Harpers or by some one else, I was thoroughly +familiar with them long before they came from the press. I foresaw that +it would be easy for me to review them from the acquaintance I already +had with their contents. + +[Sidenote: In Newspaper Life Again] + +I was resolutely determined not to be drawn again into the newspaper +life, but I foresaw no danger of that in making the literary arrangement +suggested. + +Accordingly, I became literary editor of the _Commercial Advertiser_ +under Mr. Godwin's administration as the editor-in-chief of that +newspaper. The paper had never been conducted upon the lines he proposed +or upon any other well-defined lines, so far as I could discover, and I +foresaw that he had a hard task before him. All the reputation the paper +had was detrimental rather than helpful. I was eager to help him over +the first hurdles in the race, and so, in addition to my literary duties +I not only wrote editorials each day, but helped in organizing a news +staff that should at least recognize news when it ran up against it in +the street. + +Mr. Godwin was himself editor-in-chief, and the vigor of his utterances +made a quick impression. But his managing editor lacked--well, let us +say some at least of the qualifications that tend to make a newspaper +successful. Mr. Godwin was an exceedingly patient man, but after a while +he wearied of the weekly loss the paper was inflicting upon him. In the +meanwhile, I discovered that my attention to the newspaper was seriously +interfering with my literary work, and that the fifty dollars a week +which the paper paid me did not compensate me for the time I was giving +to it at the expense of my other undertakings. I wrote to Mr. Godwin, +recommending a very capable young man to take my place, and asking to be +released from an engagement that was anything but profitable to me. + +For reply I had a prompt letter from Mr. Godwin asking me to see him at +his home. There he asked and urged me to become managing editor of the +paper from that hour forth. He told me he was losing money in large sums +upon its conduct, and appealed to me to come to his rescue, urging that +he was "too old and too indolent" himself to put life into the +enterprise. + +The question of salary was not mentioned between us. He appealed to me +to help him and I stood ready to do so at any sacrifice of personal +interest or convenience. But when the board of directors of the +corporation met a month later, he moved an adequate salary for me and +suggested that it should be dated back to the day on which I had taken +control. A certain excessively small economist on the board objected to +the dating back on the ground that no bargain had been made to that +effect and that he was "constitutionally opposed to the unnecessary +squandering of money." + +Instantly Mr. Godwin said: + +"The salary arranged for our managing editor is the just reward of the +service he is rendering. He has been giving us that service from the +hour of his entrance upon office. He is as justly entitled to compensation +for that time as for the future. Either the board must pay it or I will +pay it out of my own pocket. We are neither beggars nor robbers, and we +take nothing that we do not pay for." There spoke the great, honest-minded +man that Parke Godwin always was. + +It was a difficult task I had undertaken. There were many obstacles in +the way. The chief of these was pointed out by Mr. John Bigelow when he +said to me: + +"You're going to make yours a newspaper for the educated classes. It is +my opinion that there are already too many newspapers for the educated +classes." + +I am disposed to think the old journalist and statesman had a prophetic +vision of the early coming time when success in newspaper editing would +be measured by the skill of newspaper proprietors in making their appeal +to the uneducated classes--to the million instead of the few thousands. + +[Sidenote: An Editor's Perplexities] + +A more perplexing difficulty beset me, however. I had a definitely fixed +and wholly inadequate sum of money to expend weekly in making the paper, +and when I came to look over my payroll I found that the greater part +of the sum allowed me went to pay the salaries of some very worthy men, +whose capacity to render effective service to a "live" modern newspaper +was exceedingly small. I had sore need of the money these men drew every +week, with which to employ reporters who could get news and editors who +knew how to write. The men in question held their places by virtue of +Mr. Godwin's over-generous desire to provide a living for them. + +I represented the case to him in its nakedness. I told him frankly that +whatever he might be personally able to afford, the newspaper's earnings +at that time did not justify the maintenance of such a pension roll. +Either I must discharge all these men and use the money that went to pay +their salaries in a more fruitful way, or I must decline to go on with +the task I had undertaken. + +He solved the problem by calling the board together, resigning his +editorship, and making me editor-in-chief, with unrestricted authority. + +With all the gentleness I could bring to bear I detached the barnacles +and freed myself to make a newspaper. I had the good fortune in all this +to have the support of Mr. Godwin's two sons, who were large stockholders +in the newspaper, and of Mr. Henry Marquand, who was also the owner of +an important interest. + +I had also the good fortune to secure the services of some reporters +and some editorial assistants whose energies and capacities were of the +utmost value to me. + +Many of them are dead now--as, alas! most other persons are with whom I +have been closely associated. But those of them who are living have made +place and reputation for themselves in a way that justifies the pride I +used to feel in their abilities, their energies, and their conscientious +devotion to duty when they worked with me. Indeed, as I contemplate +the careers of these men, most of whom came to me as "cubs" fresh from +college, I am disposed to plume myself not only upon my sagacity in +discovering their untried abilities, but also upon the tutelage I gave +them in journalism. The eagerness with which other newspapers have since +sought them out for important employments, and the rapidity of their +promotion on those other newspapers have always been a source of pride +to me--pride which is not, I think, vainglorious or unduly personal. + +Perhaps the reader will permit me here to pay tribute to those loyal men +who so willingly stood by me when the most that I was permitted to pay +them was less than one-half--sometimes less than one-third what they +might have earned upon other newspapers. + +[Sidenote: Some of My Brilliant "Cubs"] + +Among them was Charles E. Russell, who has since earned high literary +place for himself. Another was Timothy Shaler Williams, who has since +been lured from literature, for which his gifts were great, to affairs, +and who for many years has been president of the Brooklyn Rapid Transit +Company. I had Earl D. Berry for my managing editor, and I could have +had none more capable. In the news department were De Francois +Folsom--dead long years ago--Edward Fales Coward, who has since made a +distinguished place for himself; Hewitt, the author of Dixey's song, +"So English, You Know"; Sidney Strother Logan, one of the shrewdest news +explorers I have ever known,--dead years ago, unfortunately,--and George +B. Mallon, who came to me fresh from college and whose work was so good +as to confirm my conviction that even in a newspaper's reporting room +an educated mind has advantages over mere native shrewdness and an +acquaintance with the slang and patter of the time. Mr. Mallon's work +was so good, indeed, that I personally assigned him to tasks of peculiar +difficulty. The New York _Sun_ has since confirmed my judgment of his +ability by making him its city editor, a post that he has held for seven +years or more. + +Another of my "cubs" was Henry Armstrong, whose abilities have since won +for him a place on the brilliant editorial writing staff of the _Sun_. +Still another was Henry Wright, who is now editor-in-chief of the paper +on which he "learned his trade,"--though the paper has since changed its +name to the _Globe_. Another was Nelson Hirsh, who afterwards became +editor of the _Sunday World_. + +On my editorial staff were Henry R. Elliot--dead now,--James Davis, +who carried every detail of a singularly varied scholarship at his +finger-tips, ready for instant use, and whose grace as a writer, +illuminated as it was by an exquisitely subtle humor, ought to have +made him famous, and would have done so, if death had not come to him +too soon. + +Doubtless there were others whom I ought to mention here in grateful +remembrance, but the incessant activities of the score and more of years +that have elapsed since my association with them ended have obliterated +many details from my memory. Let me say that to all of them I render +thanks for loyal and highly intelligent assistance in the difficult task +I then had to wrestle with. + +With a staff like that we were able to get the news and print it, and we +did both in a way that attracted attention in other newspaper offices as +well as among newspaper readers. With such writers as those mentioned +and others, the editorial utterances of the paper attracted an attention +that had never before been accorded to them. + +So far as its books of account gave indication, the _Commercial +Advertiser_ had never earned or paid a dividend. At the end of the first +year under this new regime it paid a dividend of fifty per cent. At the +end of its second year it paid its stockholders one hundred per cent. +The earnings of the third year were wisely expended in the purchase of +new presses and machinery. Before the end of the fourth year I had +resigned its editorship to become an editorial writer on _The World_. + +I intensely enjoyed the work of "making bricks without straw" on the +_Commercial Advertiser_--by which I mean that with a staff of one man to +ten on the great morning newspapers, and with one dollar to expend where +they could squander hundreds, we managed not only to keep step but to +lead them in such news-getting enterprises as those incident to the +prosecution of the boodle Aldermen and Jake Sharp, the Diss de Barr +case, and the other exciting news problems of the time. + +The strain, however, was heart-breaking, and presently my health gave +way under it. A leisurely wandering all over this continent restored +it somewhat, but upon my return the burden seemed heavier than +ever--especially the burden of responsibility that made sleep difficult +and rest impossible to me. + +In the meanwhile, of course, my literary work had been sacrificed to the +Moloch of journalism. I had canceled all my engagements of that sort +and severed connections which I had intended to be lifelong. In a +word, I had been drawn again into the vortex of that daily journalism, +from which I had twice escaped. I was worn, weary, and inexpressibly +oppressed by the duties of responsible editorship--a responsibility I +had never sought, but one which circumstances had twice thrust upon me. + +[Sidenote: The Dread Task of the Editor] + +I wonder if the reader can understand or even faintly imagine what all +this means. I wonder if I can suggest some shadow of it to his mind. +Think of what it means to toil all day in the making of a newspaper, and +to feel, when all is done that the result is utterly inadequate. Think +of what it means to the weary one to go home with the next day's task +upon his mind as a new burden, and with the discouraging consciousness +that all he has done on one day's issue is dead so far as the next day +is concerned. Think what it means to a sensitive man to feel that upon +his discretion, his alertness, his sagacity, depends not only the daily +result of a newspaper's publication, but the prosperity or failure of +other men's investments of hundreds of thousands of dollars. + +For the value of a newspaper depends from day to day upon its conduct. +It is a matter of good will. If the editor pleases his constituency, the +investment of the owners remains a profitable property. If he displeases +that constituency the newspaper has nothing left to sell but its presses +and machinery, representing a small fraction of the sum invested in it. + +That responsibility rested upon me as an incubus. All my life until then +I had been able to sleep. Then came sleeplessness of a sort I could not +shake off. At my usual hour for going to bed, I was overcome by sleep, +but after five minutes on the pillows there came wakefulness. I learned +how to fight it, by going to my library and resolutely sitting in the +dark until sleep came, but the process was a painful one and it left me +next morning crippled for my day's work. + +In the meanwhile, as I have said, I enjoyed my work as I suppose a man +condemned to death enjoys the work of writing his "confessions." I +enjoyed my very intimate association with Henry Marquand, one of the +most companionable men I ever knew, for the reason that his mind was +responsive to every thought one might utter, and that there was always +a gentle humor in all that he had to say. He had a most comfortable +schooner yacht on board which I many times saved my life or my sanity by +passing a Sunday outside on blue water, with nothing more important to +think of than the cob pipes we smoked as we loafed in our pajamas on the +main hatch. + +Marquand had a habit of inviting brilliant men for his guests, such men +as Dr. Halsted, now of Johns Hopkins; Dr. Tuttle, who has since made +fame for himself; Dr. Roosevelt, who died a while ago; James Townsend, +Dr. William Gilman Thompson, then a comparatively young man but now one +of the supreme authorities in medical science, and others of like highly +intellectual quality. Now and then there were "ladies present," but they +were an infrequent interruption. I don't mean that ungallantly. But rest +and women do not usually go together. + +It was our habit to board the yacht down Staten Island way on Saturday +afternoon, sail out to the lightship and back, and anchor in the +Horseshoe for dinner and the night. On Sunday we sailed out toward Fire +Island or down toward Long Branch, or wherever else we chose. We were +intent only upon rest--the rest that the sea alone can give, and that +only the lovers of the sea ever get in this utterly unrestful world of +ours. + +On deck in the afternoon and evening, and in the saloon at dinner and +other meals, we talked, I suppose, of intellectual things. At sea we +rested, and smoked, and were silent, and altogether happy. I have always +enjoyed the sea. I have crossed the ocean many times, and I have sailed +in all sorts of craft over all sorts of seas, with delight in every +breath that the ocean gave to me; but I think I may truly say that no +other voyage I ever made gave me so much pleasure as did those little +yachting trips on the "Ruth" in company with men whose very presence was +an intellectual inspiration. + +[Sidenote: Parke Godwin] + +But the most abiding recollection I have of my service on the +_Commercial Advertiser_ is that which concerns itself with Parke Godwin. +He was a man of great thought impulses, only half expressed. That +which he gave to the world in print was no more than the hem of his +intellectual garment. A certain constitutional indolence, encouraged +by his too early acquisition of sufficient wealth to free him from the +necessity of writing for a living, prevented him from giving to the +world the best that was in him. He would have a great thought and he +would plan to write it. Sometimes he would even begin to write it. But +in the end he preferred to talk it to some appreciative listener. + +I remember one case of the kind. He had several times invited me to +visit him at his Bar Harbor summer home. Always I had been obliged by +the exigencies of my editorial work to forego that delight. One summer +he wrote to me, saying: + +"I wonder if you could forget the _Commercial Advertiser_ long enough +to spend a fortnight with me here at Bar Harbor. You see, I don't like +to issue invitations and have them 'turned down,' so I'm not going to +invite you till you write me that you will come." + +In answer to that invitation I passed a fortnight with him. From +beginning to end of the time he forbade all mention of the newspaper of +which he was chief owner and I the responsible editor. But during that +time he "talked into me," as he said at parting, a deal of high thinking +that he ought to have put into print. + +His mind had one notable quality in common with Emerson's--the capacity +to fecundate every other mind with which it came into close contact. +One came away, from a conference with him, feeling enriched, inspired, +enlarged, not so much by the thought he had expressed as by the thinking +he had instigated in his listener's mind. + +It was so with me on that occasion. I came away full of a thought that +grew and fruited in my mind. Presently--an occasion offering--I wrote +it into a series of articles in the newspaper. These attracted the +attention of Dr. William M. Sloane, now of Columbia University, then +professor of history at Princeton and editor of the _Princeton Review_. +At his instigation I presented the same thought in his _Review_, and a +little later by invitation I addressed the Nineteenth Century Club on +the subject. I called it "The American Idea." In substance it was that +our country had been founded and had grown great upon the idea that +every man born into the world has a right to do as he pleases, so long +as he does not trespass upon the equal right of any other man to do +as he pleases, and that in a free country it is the sole function of +government to maintain the conditions of liberty and to let men alone. + +The idea seemed to be successful in its appeal to men's intelligence at +that time, but many years later--only a year or so ago, in fact--I put +it forward in a commencement address at a Virginia College and found +it sharply though silently antagonized by professors and trustees on +the ground that it seemed to deny to government the right to enact +prohibitory liquor laws, or otherwise to make men moral by statute. The +doctrine was pure Jeffersonianism, of course, and the professors and +trustees sincerely believed themselves to be Jeffersonians. But the +doctrine had gored their pet ox, and that made a difference. + +[Sidenote: Some Recollections of Mr. Godwin] + +One day Mr. Godwin expressed himself as delighted with all I had written +on the American Idea. I responded: + +"That is very natural. The idea is yours, not mine, and in all that I +have written about it, I have merely been reporting what you said to me, +as we stood looking at the surf dashing itself to pieces on the rocks at +Bar Harbor." + +"Not at all," he answered. "No man can expound and elaborate another +man's thought without putting so much of himself into it as to make it +essentially and altogether his own. I may have dropped a seed into your +mind, but I didn't know it or intend it. The fruitage is all your own. +My thinking on the subject was casual, vagrant, unorganized. I had never +formulated it in my own mind. You see we all gather ideas in converse +with others. That is what speech was given to man for. But the value of +the ideas depends upon the use made of them." + +Mr. Godwin had been at one time in his life rather intimately associated +with Louis Kossuth, the Hungarian patriot and statesman. As all old +newspaper men remember, Kossuth had a habit of dying frequently. News +of his death would come and all the newspapers would print extended +obituary articles. Within a day or two the news would be authoritatively +contradicted, and the obituaries would be laid away for use at some +future time. On one of these occasions Mr. Godwin wrote for me a +singularly interesting article, giving his personal reminiscences of +Kossuth. Before I could print it despatches came contradicting the news +of the old Hungarian's death. I put Mr. Godwin's manuscript into a +pigeonhole and both he and I forgot all about it. A year or so later +Kossuth did in fact die, and in looking through my papers to see what I +might have ready for printing on the subject, I discovered Mr. Godwin's +paper. It was not signed, but purported to be the personal recollections +of one who had known the patriot well. + +I hurried it into print, thus gaining twelve or fourteen hours on the +morning newspapers. + +The next morning Mr. Godwin called upon me, declaring that he had come +face to face with the most extraordinary psychological problem he had +ever encountered. + +"The chapter of Kossuth reminiscences that you printed yesterday," he +said, "was as exact a report of my own recollections of the man as I +could have given you if you had sent a reporter to interview me on the +subject; and the strangest part of it is that the article reports many +things which I could have sworn were known only to myself. It is +astonishing, inexplicable." + +"This isn't a case of talking your thought into another person," I +answered, referring to the former incident. "This time you put yourself +down on paper, and what I printed was set from the manuscript you gave +me a year or so ago." + +This solved the psychological puzzle and to that extent relieved his +mind. But there remained the further difficulty that, cudgel his brain +as he might, he could find in it no trace of recollection regarding the +matter. + +[Sidenote: A Mystery of Forgetting] + +"I remember very well," he said, "that I often thought I ought to write +out my recollections of Kossuth, but I can't remember that I ever did +so. I remember taking myself to task many times for my indolence in +postponing a thing that I knew I ought to do, but that only makes the +case the more inexplicable. When I scourged myself for neglecting the +task, why didn't my memory remind me that I had actually discharged the +duty? And now that I have read the reminiscences in print, why am I +unable to recall the fact that I wrote them? The article fills several +columns. Certainly I ought to have some recollection of the labor +involved in writing so much. Are you entirely certain that the +manuscript was mine?" + +I sent to the composing room for the "copy" and showed it to him. As he +looked it over he said: + +"'Strange to say, on Club paper.' You remember Thackeray's Roundabout +paper with that headline? It has a bearing here, for this is written on +paper that the Century Club alone provides for the use of its members. +I must, therefore, have written the thing at the Century Club, and that +ought to resurrect some memory of it in my mind, but it doesn't. No. I +have not the slightest recollection of having put that matter on paper." + +At that point his wonderfully alert mind turned to another thought. + +"Suppose you and I believed in the occult, the mystical, the so-called +supernatural, as we don't," he said, "what a mystery we might make of +this in the way of psychical manifestation--which usually belongs to the +domain of psycho-pathology. Think of it! As I chastised myself in my own +mind for my neglect to put these things on paper, your mind came under +subjection to mine and you wrote them in my stead. So complete was the +possession that your handwriting, which is clear and legible, became an +exact facsimile of mine, which is obscure and difficult. Then you, being +under possession, preserved no memory of having written the thing, while +I, knowing nothing of your unconscious agency in the matter, had nothing +to remember concerning it. Isn't that about the way the mysticists make +up their 'facts' for the misleading of half-baked brains?" + +In later years I related this incident to a distinguished half-believer +in things mystical, adding Mr. Godwin's laughingly conjectural explanation +of it, whereupon the reply came: + +"May not that have been the real explanation, in spite of your own and +Mr. Godwin's skepticism?" + +I was left with the feeling that after all what Mr. Godwin had intended +as an extravagant caricature was a veritable representation of a +credulity that actually exists, even among men commonly accounted sane, +and certainly learned. The reflection was discouraging to one who hopes +for the progress of mankind through sanity of mind. + + + + +LXIV + + +In the days of which I have hitherto written there was a dignity, +reserve, contentment--call it what you will--in the conduct of newspapers +of established reputation. There was rivalry among them in their endeavors +to publish the earliest news of public events, but it was a dignified +rivalry involving comparatively little of that self-glorification which +has since come to be a double-leaded feature in the conduct of many +newspapers. The era of illustration and exploitation by the use of +pictures had not yet been born of cheapened reproductive processes. +Newspapers were usually printed directly from type because stereotyping +was then a costly process and a slow one. As a consequence, newspapers +were printed in regular columns consecutively arranged, and articles +begun in one column were carried forward in the next. There were no such +legends as "continued on page five," and the like. + +Headlines were confined to the column that began the article. The art +of stretching them halfway or all the way across the page and involving +half a dozen of them in gymnastic wrestlings with each other for supremacy +in conspicuity had not then been invented, and in its absence the use of +circus poster type and circus poster exaggeration of phrase was undreamed +of. + +Now and then an advertiser anxious for conspicuity would pay a heavy +price to have column rules cut so that his announcement might stretch +over two or more columns, but the cost of that was so great that +indulgence in it was rare even among ambitious advertisers, while in +the reading columns the practice was wholly unknown. + +[Sidenote: The Price of Newspapers] + +Another thing. It was then thought that when a copy of a newspaper was +sold, the price paid for it ought to be sufficient at least to pay the +cost of its manufacture, plus some small margin of profit. All the great +morning newspapers except the _Sun_ were sold at four cents a copy; the +_Sun_, by virtue of extraordinary literary condensation, used only about +half the amount of paper consumed by the others, and was sold at two +cents. The afternoon newspapers were sold at three cents. + +The publishers of newspapers had not then grasped the idea that is +now dominant, that if a great circulation can be achieved by selling +newspapers for less than the mere paper in them costs, the increase +in the volume and price of advertising will make of them enormously +valuable properties. + +That idea was not born suddenly. Even after the revolution was +established, the cost of the white paper used in making a newspaper +helped to determine the price of it to the public. It was not until the +phenomenal success of cheap newspapers years afterwards tempted even +more reckless adventurers into the field that publishers generally threw +the entire burden of profit-making upon the advertising columns and thus +established the business office in the seat before occupied by the editor +and made business considerations altogether dominant over utterance, +attitude, and conduct. + +There were in the meantime many attempts made to establish a cheaper +form of journalism, but they were inadequately supported by working +capital; they were usually conducted by men of small capacity; they had +no traditions of good will behind them, and above all, they could not +get Associated Press franchises. For the benefit of readers who are +not familiar with the facts, I explain that the Associated Press is an +organization for news-gathering, formed by the great newspapers by way +of securing news that no newspaper could afford to secure for itself. +It maintains bureaus in all the great news centers of the world, and +these collect and distribute to the newspapers concerned a great mass +of routine news that would be otherwise inaccessible to them. If a +president's message, or an inaugural address, or any other public +document of voluminous character is to be given out, it is obvious that +the newspapers concerned cannot wait for telegraphic reports of its +contents. By way of saving time and telegraphic expense, the document +is delivered to the Associated Press, and copies of it are sent to all +the newspapers concerned, with a strict limitation upon the hour of its +publication. Until that hour comes no newspaper in the association is +privileged to print it or in any way, by reference or otherwise, to +reveal any part of its contents. But in the meanwhile they can put it +into type, and with it their editorial comments upon it, so that when +the hour of release comes, they can print the whole thing--text and +comment--without loss of time. The newspaper not endowed with an +Associated Press franchise must wait for twenty-four hours or more +for its copy of the document. + +Hardly less important is the fact that in every city, town, and village +in the country, the Associated Press has its agent--the local editor or +the telegraph operator, or some one else--who is commissioned to report +to it every news happening that may arise within his bailiwick. Often +these reports are interesting; sometimes they are of importance, and in +either case the newspaper not allied with a press association must miss +them. + +At the time of which I am writing, the Associated Press was the only +organization in the country that could render such service, and every +newspaper venture lacking its franchise was foredoomed to failure. + +[Sidenote: The Pulitzer Revolution] + +But a newspaper revolution was impending and presently it broke upon us. + +In 1883 Mr. Joseph Pulitzer bought the _World_ and instituted a totally +new system of newspaper conduct. + +His advent into New York journalism was called an "irruption," and it +was resented not only by the other newspapers, but even more by a large +proportion of the conservative public. + +In its fundamental principle, Mr. Pulitzer's revolutionary method was +based upon an idea identical with that suggested by Mr. John Bigelow +when he told me there were too many newspapers for the educated class. +Mr. Pulitzer undertook to make a newspaper, not for the educated class, +but for all sorts and conditions of men. He did not intend to overlook +the educated class, but he saw clearly how small a part of the community +it was, and he refused to make his appeal to it exclusively or even +chiefly. + +The results were instantaneous and startling. The _World_, which had +never been able to achieve a paying circulation or a paying constituency +of advertisers, suddenly began selling in phenomenal numbers, while its +advertising business became what Mr. Pulitzer once called a "bewildering +chaos of success, yielding a revenue that the business office was +imperfectly equipped to handle." + +It is an interesting fact, that the _World's_ gain in circulation was +not made at the expense of any other newspaper. The books of account +show clearly that while the _World_ was gaining circulation by scores +and hundreds of thousands, no other morning newspaper was losing. The +simple fact was that by appealing to a larger class, the _World_ had +created a great company of newspaper readers who had not before been +newspaper readers at all. Reluctantly, and only by degrees, the other +morning newspapers adopted the _World's_ methods, and won to themselves +a larger constituency than they had ever enjoyed before. + +All this had little effect upon the afternoon newspapers. They had their +constituencies. Their province was quite apart from that of the morning +papers. A circulation of ten or twenty thousand copies seemed to them +satisfactory; any greater circulation was deemed extraordinary, and if +at a time of popular excitement their sales exceeded twenty thousand +they regarded it not only as phenomenal but as a strain upon their +printing and distributing machinery which it would be undesirable to +repeat very often. + +But the revolution was destined to reach them presently. At that time +none of the morning newspapers thought of issuing afternoon editions. +The game seemed not worth the candle. But presently the sagacity of Mr. +William M. Laffan--then a subordinate on the _Sun's_ staff, later the +proprietor and editor of that newspaper--saw and seized an opportunity. +The morning papers had learned their lesson and were making their appeal +to the multitude instead of the select few. The afternoon newspapers +were still addressing themselves solely to "the educated class." Mr. +Laffan decided to make an afternoon appeal to the more multitudinous +audience. Under his inspiration the _Evening Sun_ was established on the +seventeenth day of March, 1887, and it instantly achieved a circulation +of forty thousand--from twice to four times that of its more +conservative competitors. + +[Sidenote: The Lure of the World] + +A little later an evening edition of the _World_ was established. Its +success at first was small, but Mr. Pulitzer quickly saw the reason +for that. The paper was too closely modeled upon the conservative and +dignified pattern of the established afternoon newspapers. To his +subordinates Mr. Pulitzer said: + +"You are making a three-cent newspaper for a one-cent constituency. +I want you to make it a one-cent newspaper." + +What further instructions he gave to that end, I have never heard, but +whatever they were they were carried out with a success that seemed to +me to threaten the very existence of such newspapers as the one I was +editing. I was satisfied that if the newspaper under my control was to +survive it must adopt the new methods of journalism, broaden its appeal +to the people, and reduce its price to the "penny" which alone the +people could be expected to pay when the _Evening Sun_ and the _Evening +World_ could be had for that price. + +The board of directors of the newspaper could not be induced to take +this view, and just then one of the editors of the _World_, acting for +Mr. Pulitzer, asked me to take luncheon with him. He explained to me +that Mr. Pulitzer wanted an editorial writer and that he--my host--had +been commissioned to engage me in that capacity, if I was open to +engagement. In the end he made me a proposal which I could not put aside +in justice to myself and my family. My relations with Mr. Godwin and his +associates were so cordial, and their treatment of me had been always so +generous, that I could not think of leaving them without their hearty +consent and approval. The summer was approaching, when the members of +the board of directors would go away to their summer homes or to Europe. +The last regular meeting of the board for the season had been held, and +nothing had been done to meet the new conditions of competition. I was +discouraged by the prospect of addressing a steadily diminishing +audience throughout the summer, with the possibility of having no +audience at all to address when the fall should come. + +I hastily called the board together in a special meeting. I told them +of the proposal made to me by the _World_ and of my desire to accept +it unless they could be induced to let me adopt the new methods at an +expense much greater than any of the established afternoon newspapers +had ever contemplated, and much greater than my board of directors +was willing to contemplate. I said frankly that without their cordial +consent, I could not quit their service, but that if we were to go on +as before, I earnestly wished to be released from a responsibility that +threatened my health with disaster. + +They decided to release me, after passing some very flattering +resolutions, and in early June, 1889, I went to the _World_ as an +editorial writer free from all responsibility for the news management of +the paper, free from all problems of newspaper finance, and free from +the crushing weight of the thought that other men's property interests +to the extent of many hundreds of thousands of dollars were in hourly +danger of destruction by some fault or failure of judgment on my part. +As I rejoiced in this sense of release, I recalled what James R. Osgood, +one of the princes among publishers, had once said to me, and for the +first time I fully grasped his meaning. At some public banquet or +other he and I were seated side by side and we fell into conversation +regarding certain books he had published. They were altogether worthy +books, but their appeal seemed to me to be to so small a constituency +that I could not understand what had induced him to publish them at all. +I said to him: + +"I sometimes wonder at your courage in putting your money into the +publication of such books." + +He answered: + +"That's the smallest part of the matter. Think of my courage in putting +_other people's money_ into their publication!" + +It was not long after that that Osgood's enterprises failed, and he +retired from business as a publisher to the sorrow of every American who +in any way cared for literature. + +[Sidenote: The Little Dinner to Osgood] + +When Osgood went to London as an agent of the Harpers, some of us gave +him a farewell dinner, for which Thomas Nast designed the menu cards. +When these were passed around for souvenir autographs, Edwin A. Abbey +drew upon each, in connection with his signature, a caricature of +himself which revealed new possibilities in his genius--possibilities +that have come to nothing simply because Mr. Abbey has found a better +use for his gifts than any that the caricaturist can hope for. But those +of us who were present at that little Osgood dinner still cherish our +copies of the dinner card on which, with a few strokes of his pencil, +Abbey revealed an unsuspected aspect of his genius. In view of the +greatness of his more serious work, we rejoice that he went no further +than an after-dinner jest, in the exercise of his gift of caricature. +Had he given comic direction to his work, he might have become a +Hogarth, perhaps; as it is, he is something far better worth while--he +is Abbey. + + + + +LXV + + +I shall write comparatively little here of the eleven years I remained +in the service of the _World_. The experience is too recent to constitute +a proper subject of freehand reminiscence. My relations with Mr. Pulitzer +were too closely personal, too intimate, and in many ways too +confidential to serve a purpose of that kind. + +But of the men with whom my work on the _World_ brought me into contact, +I am free to write. So, too, I am at liberty, I think, to relate certain +dramatic happenings that serve to illustrate the Napoleonic methods +of modern journalism and certain other things, not of a confidential +nature, which throw light upon the character, impulses, and methods of +the man whose genius first discovered the possibilities of journalism +and whose courage, energy, and extraordinary sagacity have made of those +possibilities accomplished facts. + +It has been more than ten years since my term of service on the _World_ +came to an end, but it seems recent to me, except when I begin counting +up the men now dead who were my fellow-workmen there. + +I did not personally know Mr. Pulitzer when I began my duties on the +_World_. He was living in Europe then, and about to start on a long +yachting cruise. John A. Cockerill was managing editor and in control +of the paper, subject, of course, to daily and sometimes hourly +instructions from Paris by cable. For, during my eleven years of service +on the _World_, I never knew the time when Mr. Pulitzer did not himself +actively direct the conduct of his paper wherever he might be. Even when +he made a yachting voyage as far as the East Indies, his hand remained +always on the helm in New York. + +[Sidenote: John A. Cockerill] + +Colonel Cockerill was one of the kindliest, gentlest of men, and at the +same time one of the most irascible. His irascibility was like the froth +that rises to the top of the glass and quickly disappears, when a Seidlitz +powder is dissolved--not at all like the "head" on a glass of champagne +which goes on threateningly rising long after the first effervescence +is gone. When anything irritated him the impulse to break out into +intemperate speech seemed wholly irresistible, but in the very midst of +such utterance the irritation would pass away as suddenly as it had come +and he would become again the kindly comrade he had meant to be all the +while. This was due to the saving grace of his sense of humor. I think +I never knew a man so capable as he of intense seriousness, who was +at the same time so alertly and irresistibly impelled to see the +humorous aspects of things. He would rail violently at an interfering +circumstance, but in the midst of his vituperation he would suddenly see +something ridiculous about it or in his own ill-temper concerning it. +He would laugh at the suggestion in his mind, laugh at himself, and +tell some brief anecdote--of which his quiver was always full--by way +of turning his own irritation and indignation into fun and thus making +an end of them. + +He was an entire stranger to me when I joined the staff of the _World_, +but we soon became comrades and friends. There was so much of robust +manhood in his nature, so much of courage, kindliness, and generous good +will that in spite of the radical differences between his conceptions of +life and mine, we soon learned to find pleasure in each other's company, +to like each other, and above all, to trust each other. I think each of +us recognized in the other a man incapable of lying, deceit, treachery, +or any other form of cowardice. That he was such a man I perfectly knew. +That he regarded me as such I have every reason to believe. + +After our friendship was perfectly established he said to me one day: + +"You know I did all I could to prevent your engagement on the _World_. +I'm glad now I didn't succeed." + +"What was your special objection to me?" I asked. + +"Misconception, pure and simple, together with ill-informed prejudice. +That's tautological, of course, for prejudice is always ill-informed, +isn't it? At any rate, I had an impression that you were a man as +utterly different from what I now know you to be as one can easily +imagine." + +"And yet," I said, "you generously helped me out of my first difficulty +here." + +"No, did I? How was that?" + +"Why, when the news went out that I had been engaged as an editorial +writer on the _World_, a good many newspapers over the country were +curious to know why. The prejudice against the _World_ under its +new management was still rampant, and my appointment seemed to many +newspapers a mystery, for the reason that my work before that time had +always been done on newspapers of a very different kind. Even here on +the _World_ there was curiosity on the subject, for Ballard Smith sent +a reporter to me, before I left the _Commercial Advertiser_, to ask me +about it. The reporter, under instructions, even asked me, flatly, whose +place I was to take on the _World_, as if the _World_ had not been able +to employ a new man without discharging an old one." + +"Yes--I know all about that," said Cockerill. "You see, you were +editor-in-chief of a newspaper, and some of the folks on the _World_ had +a hope born into their minds that you were coming here to replace me as +managing editor. Some others feared you were coming to oust them from +snug berths. Go on. You didn't finish." + +"Well, among the speculative comments made about my transfer, there was +one in a Springfield paper, suggesting that perhaps I had been employed +'to give the _World_ a conscience.' All these things troubled me greatly, +for the reason that I didn't know Mr. Pulitzer then, nor he me, and +I feared he would suspect me of having inspired the utterances in +question--particularly the one last mentioned. I went to you with my +trouble, and I shall never forget what you said to me. 'My dear Mr. +Eggleston, you can trust Joseph Pulitzer to get to windward of things +without any help from me or anybody else.'" + +"You've found it so since, haven't you?" he asked. + +"Yes, but I didn't know it then, and it was a kindly act on your part +to reassure me." + +[Sidenote: An Extraordinary Executive] + +Cockerill's abilities as a newspaper editor were very great, but they +were mainly executive. He had no great creative imagination. He could +never have originated the Napoleonic revolution in journalism which Mr. +Pulitzer's extraordinary genius wrought. But Mr. Pulitzer was fortunate +in having such a man as Cockerill to carry out his plans. His alert +readiness in grasping an idea and translating it into achievement +amounted to genius in its way. But during all the years of my intimate +association with him, I never knew Cockerill to originate a great idea. +With a great idea intrusted to him for execution, his brain was fertile +of suggestions and expedients for its carrying out, and his industry in +translating the ideas of his chief into action was ceaseless, tireless, +sleepless. He would think of a thousand devices for accomplishing the +purpose intended. He would hit upon scores of ways in which a campaign +projected by another mind could be carried out effectively. + +There was at one time a good deal of speculation as to whose brain +had made the phenomenal success of the all-daring _World_ experiment +in journalism. I think I know all about that, and my judgment is +unhesitating. Mr. Pulitzer was often and even generally fortunate in his +multitudinous lieutenants, and that good fortune was chiefly due to his +sagacity in the selection of the men appointed to carry out his plans. +But the plans were his, just as the choice of lieutenants was, and the +creative genius that revolutionized journalism and achieved results +unmatched and even unapproached, was exclusively that of Joseph +Pulitzer. + +I do not mean that every valuable idea or suggestion which contributed +to the result was originally his, though on broad lines that was true. +But it was part and parcel of his genius to induce ideas and call forth +suggestions at the hands of others, to make them his own, and to embody +them in the policy of the _World_. So readily did he himself appreciate +this necessity of getting ideas from whatever source they might come, +that he often offered premiums and rewards for helpful suggestions. +And when any member of his staff voluntarily offered suggestions that +appealed to him, he was always ready and very generous in acknowledging +and rewarding them. + +But it was Joseph Pulitzer's genius that conceived the new journalism; +it was his brain that gave birth to it all; it was his gift of +interpreting, utilizing, and carrying out the ideas of others that made +them fruitful. + +I emphasize this judgment here because there has been much misapprehension +regarding it, and because I knew the facts more intimately and more +definitely perhaps than any other person now living does. I feel myself +free to write of the subject for the reason that it has been more than +a decade of years since my connection with the _World_ ceased, and the +personal friendship I once enjoyed with Mr. Pulitzer became a matter of +mere reminiscence to both of us. + +My relations with Cockerill were not embarrassed by any question of +control or authority. Cockerill had general charge of the newspaper, +but the editorial page was segregated from the other sheets, and so far +as that was concerned, William H. Merrill was in supreme authority. +Whenever he was absent his authority devolved upon me, and for results +I was answerable only to Mr. Pulitzer. + +I shall never forget my introduction to my new duties. It was arranged +between Merrill and me, that I should take a week off, between the +severance of my connection with the _Commercial Advertiser_ and the +beginning of my work on the _World_, in order that I might visit my +family and rest myself at my little place on Lake George. I was to +report for duty on the _World_ on a Sunday morning, when Merrill +would induct me into the methods of the newspaper, preparatory to his +vacation, beginning two or three days later. + +[Sidenote: An Editorial Perplexity] + +Unfortunately, Merrill had greater confidence in my newspaper skill +and experience than I had, and so when I reported for duty on Sunday, +Merrill was already gone on his vacation and I was left responsible for +next day's editorial page. + +I knew nothing of the _World's_ staff or organization or methods. There +were no other editorial writers present in the office and upon inquiry +of the office boys I learned that no others were expected to present +themselves on that day. + +I sent to the foreman of the composing room for the "overproofs"--that +is to say, proofs of editorial matter left over from the day before. +He reported that there were none, for the reason that Merrill, before +leaving on the preceding day, had "killed" every editorial galley in the +office. + +Cockerill was not expected at the office until nine or ten o'clock that +night, and there was nobody else there who could tell me anything about +the matter. + +Obviously, there was only one thing to do. I sat down and wrote an +entire editorial page, for a newspaper whose methods and policy I knew +only from the outside. When I had done that, and had got my matter into +type, and had read my revised proofs, messengers arrived bearing the +manuscripts of what the other editorial writers--men unknown to me--had +written at their homes during the day, after the Sunday custom that then +prevailed but which I abolished a little later when Merrill went to +Europe upon Mr. Pulitzer's invitation and I was left in control of the +editorial page. + +I have related this experience thinking that it may interest readers +unfamiliar with newspaper work, as an exemplification of the emergency +problems with which newspaper men have often to deal. These are of +frequent occurrence and of every conceivable variety. I remember that +once some great utterance seemed necessary, and Mr. Pulitzer telegraphed +it from Bar Harbor. It filled the entire available editorial space, so +that I provided no other editorial articles whatever. I had "made up" +the page and was only waiting for time before going home, when news +despatches came that so completely changed the situation treated in the +editorial as to compel its withdrawal. + +It was after midnight, and I hadn't a line of editorial matter on the +galleys with which to fill the void. The editorial page must go to the +stereotypers at half-past one, and I had no soul to help me even by +writing twaddle with which to fill space. The situation was imperative +and the case was clear. The case was that I must write two or three +columns of editorial matter and get it into type, proof-read, and +corrected, before one-thirty of the clock--or one-forty-five, as the +foreman of the composing room, a royal good fellow, Mr. Jackson, +volunteered to stretch the time limit by some ingenious device of +his own. + +I wish to say here, lest no other opportunity offer, that in the thirty +years of my newspaper service, I have found no better or more loyal +friends than the men of the composing room, whether in high place or +low; that I have never known them to hesitate, in an emergency, to help +out by specially strenuous endeavor and by enduring great inconvenience +on their own part. So great is my gratitude for their comradely +good-fellowship that even now--ten years after a final end came to my +newspaper work--one of the first parts of the establishment I visit when +I have occasion to go to the _World_ office is the composing room, where +old friends greet me cordially on every hand. Great--very great--are +the printers. They do their work under a stress of hurry, noise, and +confusion that would drive less well-made men frantic, and they do it +mightily well. To one who knows, as I do, what the conditions are, every +printed newspaper page is a miracle of human achievement under well-nigh +inconceivable difficulties. + +[Sidenote: Donn Piatt] + +It was soon after my service on the _World_ began that I became +acquainted with a man of brilliant gifts, often erratically employed, +and of singularly interesting personality--Donn Piatt. From that time +until his death I saw much of him in a quiet club-corner way, and +listened with interest while he set forth his views and conclusions, +always with a suggestion of humor in them and often in perverse, +paradoxical ways. + +One day some question arose between us as to the failure of a certain +book to achieve the success we both thought it deserved. Donn Piatt's +explanation was ready: + +"It is because we have altogether too much education in this country," +he said. "You see, our schools are turning out about a million graduates +every year, under the mistaken belief that they are educated. All these +boys and girls have been taught how to read, but they haven't the +smallest notion of what to read, or why to read. They regard reading as +you and I might regard a game of solitaire--as a convenient means of +relaxing the mind, diverting the attention from more serious things--in +brief, they read for amusement only, and have no notion of any other +possible purpose in reading. That's why every sublimated idiot who makes +a mountebank of himself as a 'humorist' wins his public instantly and +easily. The great majority of readers are that way minded, and of course +the publishers must cater to the taste of the multitude. They'd be worse +idiots than their customers if they didn't. It's the same way with +plays. The people who go to the theater want to be amused without the +necessity of doing even a little thinking. Why, a few years ago when +Wallack was running such things as 'She Stoops to Conquer,' 'School for +Scandal,' 'London Assurance,' and the like, in his old Thirteenth Street +theater, with Dion Boucicault, John Brougham, Harry Montague, John +Gilbert, Harry Beckett, and a lot of other really great actors in the +casts, he played to slender houses, while just around the corner there +wasn't standing room when 'Pink Dominoes' was on." + +My acquaintance with Donn Piatt began in a rather curious way. Some time +before, there had appeared in one of the magazines a series of letters +signed "Arthur Richmond." They were political philippics, inspired +chiefly by a reckless, undiscriminating spirit of attack. They were +as mysterious in their origin as the letters of Junius, but otherwise +they bore little if any of the assumed and intended resemblance to +that celebrated series. There was little of judgment, discretion, or +discrimination in them, and still less of conscience. But they attracted +widespread attention and the secret of their authorship was a matter of +a good deal of popular curiosity. A number of very distinguished men +were mentioned as conjectural possibilities in that connection. + +Even after the letters themselves had ceased to be of consequence, a +certain measure of curiosity as to their authorship survived, so that +any newspaper revelation of the secret was exceedingly desirable. One +day somebody told me that Donn Piatt had written them. Personally I did +not know him, but in the freemasonry of literature and journalism every +man in the profession knows every other man in it well enough at least +for purposes of correspondence. So I wrote a half playful letter to Donn +Piatt, saying that somebody had charged him with the authorship of that +"iniquitous trash"--for so I called it--and asking him if I might affirm +or deny the statement in the _World_. He replied in a characteristic +letter, in which he said: + +[Sidenote: "A Syndicate of Blackguards"] + +"I was one of a syndicate of blackguards engaged to write the 'Arthur +Richmond' letters and I did write some of them. You and I ought to know +each other personally and we don't. Why won't you come up to the ---- +Club to-night and help me get rid of one of the infamous table d-hote +dinners they sell there for seventy-five cents? Then I'll tell you all +about the 'Arthur Richmond' letters and about any other crimes of my +commission that may interest you. Meanwhile, I'm sending you a letter +for publication in answer to your inquiry about that particular +atrocity." + +As we talked that night and on succeeding occasions, Donn Piatt told me +many interesting anecdotes of his career as a newspaper correspondent +much given to getting into difficulty with men in high place by reason +of his freedom in criticism and his vitriolic way of saying what he had +to say in the most effective words he could find. + +"You see the dictionary was my ruin," he said after relating one of +his anecdotes. "I studied it not wisely but too well in my youth, and +it taught me a lot of words that have always seemed to me peculiarly +effective in the expression of thought, but to which generals and +statesmen and the other small fry of what is called public life, seem +to have a rooted objection. By the way, did you ever hear that I once +committed arson?" + +I pleaded ignorance of that incident in his career, and added: + +"I shall be interested to hear of that crime if you're sure it is +protected by the statute of limitations. I shouldn't like to be a +witness to a confession that might send you to the penitentiary." + +"Oh, I don't know that that would be so bad," he interrupted. "I'm +living with my publisher now, you know, and a change might not prove +undesirable. However, the crime is outlawed by time now. And besides, I +didn't myself set fire to the building. I'm guilty only under the legal +maxim 'Qui facit per alium facit per se.' The way of it was this: When I +was a young man trying to get into a law practice out in Ohio, and eager +to advertise myself by appearing in court, a fellow was indicted for +arson. He came to me, explaining that he had no money with which to +pay a lawyer, but that he thought I might like to appear in a case so +important, and that if I would do the best I could for him, he stood +ready to do anything for me that he could, by way of recompense. I took +the case, of course. It was a complex one and it offered opportunities +for browbeating and 'balling up' witnesses--a process that specially +impresses the public with the sagacity of a lawyer who does it +successfully. Then, if by any chance I should succeed in acquitting my +client, my place at the bar would be assured as that of 'a sharp young +feller, who had beaten the prosecuting attorney himself.' + +"But in telling my client I would take his case the demon of humor +betrayed me. Just across the street from my lodging was a negro church, +and there was a 'revival' going on at the time. They 'revived' till +two o'clock or later every night with shoutings that interfered with +my sleep. With playful impulse I said to the accused man: + +"'You seem to be an expert in the arts of arson. If you'll burn that +negro church I'll feel that you have paid me full price for my service +in defending you.' + +"I defended him and, as the witnesses against him were all of shady +character, I succeeded in securing his acquittal. About four o'clock +the next morning a fire broke out under all four corners of that negro +church, and before the local fire department got a quart of water into +action, it was a heap of smouldering ashes--hymn-books and all. A week +or so later I received a letter from my ex-client. He wrote from St. +Louis, 'on his way west,' he said. He expressed the hope that I was +'satisfied with results,' and begged me to believe that he was 'a man +of honor who never failed to repay an obligation or reward a service.'" + +With Donn Piatt's permission I told that story several times. Presently +I read it in brief form in a newspaper where the hero of it was set down +as "Tom Platt." I suppose the reporter in that case confused the closely +similar sounds of "Donn Piatt" and "Tom Platt." At any rate, it seems +proper to say that the venerable ex-Senator from New York never +practiced law in Ohio and never even unintentionally induced the burning +of a church. The story was Donn Piatt's and the experience was his. + + + + +LXVI + + +[Sidenote: First Acquaintance with Mr. Pulitzer] + +I first made Mr. Pulitzer's personal acquaintance in Paris, where he was +living at that time. I had been at work on the _World_ for a comparatively +brief while, when he asked me to visit him there--an invitation which +he several times afterwards repeated, each time with increased pleasure +to me. + +On the occasion of my first visit to him, he said to me one evening +at dinner: + +"I have invited you here with the primary purpose that you shall have +a good time. But secondly, I want to see you as often as I can. We have +luncheon at one o'clock, and dinner at seven-thirty. I wish you'd take +luncheon and dinner with me as often as you can, consistently with my +primary purpose that you shall have a good time. If you've anything else +on hand that interests you more, you are not to come to luncheon or +dinner, and I will understand. But if you haven't anything else on hand, +I sincerely wish you'd come." + +In all my experience--even in Virginia during the old, limitlessly +hospitable plantation days--I think I never knew a hospitality superior +to this--one that left the guest so free to come on the one hand and so +entirely free to stay away without question if he preferred that. I, who +have celebrated hospitality of the most gracious kind in romances of +Virginia, where hospitality bore its most gorgeous blossoms and its +richest fruitage, bear witness that I have known no such exemplar of +that virtue in its perfect manifestation as Joseph Pulitzer. + +Years afterwards, at Bar Harbor, I had been working with him night and +day over editorial problems of consequence, and, as I sat looking on at +a game of chess in which he was engaged one evening, he suddenly ordered +me to bed. + +"You've been overworking," he said. "You are to go to bed now, and you +are not to get up till you feel like getting up--even if it is two days +hence. Go, I tell you, and pay no heed to hours or anything else. You +shall not be interrupted in your sleep." + +I was very weary and I went to bed. The next morning--or I supposed +it to be so--I waked, and looked at my watch. It told me it was six +o'clock. I tried to woo sleep again, but the effort was a failure. I +knew that breakfast would not be served for some hours to come, but +I simply could not remain in bed longer. I knew where a certain dear +little lad of the family kept his fishing tackle and his bait. I decided +that I would get up, take a cold plunge, pilfer the tackle, and spend +an hour or two down on the rocks fishing. + +[Sidenote: Mr. Pulitzer's Kindly Courtesy] + +With this intent I slipped out of my room, making no noise lest I should +wake some one from his morning slumber. The first person I met was +Mr. Pulitzer. He gleefully greeted me with congratulations upon the +prolonged sleep I had had, and after a brief confusion of mind, I found +that it was two o'clock in the afternoon, and that my unwound watch had +misled me. In his anxiety that I should have my sleep out, Mr. Pulitzer +had shut off the entire half of the building in which my bedroom lay, +and had stationed a servant as sentinel to prohibit intrusion upon that +part of the premises and to forbid everything in the nature of noise. + +Mr. Pulitzer himself never rested, in the days of my association with +him. His mind knew no surcease of its activity. He slept little, and +with difficulty. His waking hours, whether up or in bed, were given to a +ceaseless wrestling with the problems that belong to a great newspaper's +conduct. I have known him to make an earnest endeavor to dismiss these +for a time. To that end he would peremptorily forbid all reference to +them in the conversation of those about him. But within the space of +a few minutes he would be in the midst of them again, and completely +absorbed. But he recognized the necessity of rest for brains other than +his own, and in all kindly ways sought to secure and even to compel it. +I remember once at Bar Harbor, when for two or three days and nights in +succession I had been at work on something he greatly wanted done, he +said to me at breakfast: + +"You're tired, and that task is finished. I want you to rest, and, of +course, so long as you and I remain together you can't rest. Your brain +is active and so is mine. If we stay in each other's company we shall +talk, and with us talk means work. In five minutes we'll be planning +some editorial crusade, and you'll get to work again. So I want you to +go away from me. Let Eugene drive you to the village, and there secure +an open carriage and a pair of good horses--the best you can get--and +drive all over this interesting island. Get yourself rested. And when +you come back, don't let me talk newspaper with you, till you've had +a night's sleep." + +It was in that kindly spirit that Mr. Pulitzer always treated his +lieutenants when he invited them to pass a time with him. So long as +he and they were together, he could not help working them almost to +death. But, when he realized their weariness, he sent them off to +rest, on carriage drives or yachting voyages or what not, with generous +consideration of their inability to carry weight as he did night and +day and every day and every night. + +Sometimes his eagerness in work led him to forget his own kindly +purpose. I remember once when I had been writing all day and throughout +most of the night in execution of his prolific inspiration, he suddenly +became aware of the fact that I must be weary. Instantly he said: + +"You must rest. You must take a carriage or a boat and go off somewhere. +Think out where it shall be, for yourself. But you sha'n't do another +thing till you've had a good rest." + +Then, as we strolled out into the porch and thence to the sea wall +against which the breakers were recklessly dashing themselves to pieces, +he suddenly thought of something. In a minute we were engaged in +discussing that something, and half an hour later I was busy in my room, +with books of reference all about me, working out that something, and it +was three o'clock next morning before I finished the writing of what he +wanted written on that theme. At breakfast next morning I was late, and +the fact reminded him of the plans he had formed twenty-four hours +before for a rest for me. He refused even to light a cigar until I should +be gone. + +"If we smoke together," he said, "we shall talk. If we talk we shall +become interested and you'll be set to work again. Get you hence. Let me +see no more of you till dinner to-night. In the meantime, do what you +will to rest yourself. That's my only concern now. Drive, sail, row, +loaf, play billiards--do whatever will best rest you." + +I relate these things by way of showing forth one side of the character +of a man who has wrought a revolution in the world. I have other things +to relate that show forth another side of that interestingly complex +nature. + +[Sidenote: The Maynard Case] + +In his anxiety to secure terseness of editorial utterance he at one time +limited all editorials to fifty lines each. As I had final charge of +the editorial page on four nights of the week, I found myself obliged, +by the rule, to spoil many compact articles written by other men, by +cutting out a line or two from things already compacted "to the limit." + +I said this to Mr. Pulitzer one day, and he replied: + +"Well, just to show you that I have no regard for cast-iron rules, I +am going to ask you now to write four columns on a subject of public +importance." + +The subject was the nomination of Judge Maynard for Justice of +the Court of Appeals. Judge Maynard stood accused of--let us say +questionable--conduct in judicial office in relation to certain election +proceedings. The details have no place here. Judge Maynard had never +been impeached, and his friends indignantly repudiated every suggestion +that his judicial conduct had been in any wise influenced by partisan +considerations. His enemies--and they were many, including men of high +repute in his own party--contended that his judicial course in that +election matter unfitted him for election to the higher office. + +I have every reason to believe--every reason that eleven years of +editorial association can give--that in every case involving the public +welfare, or public morality, or official fitness, Mr. Pulitzer sincerely +desires to ascertain the facts and to govern his editorial course +accordingly. I have never been able to regard him as a Democrat or a +Republican in politics. He has impressed me always as an opportunist, +caring far more for practical results than for doctrinaire dogmas. + +In this Maynard case the contentions were conflicting, the assertions +contradictory, and the facts uncertain so far at least as the _World_ +knew them. + +"I want you to go into the Maynard case," said Mr. Pulitzer to me, "with +an absolutely unprejudiced mind. We hold no brief for or against him, +as you know. I want you to get together all the documents in the case. +I want you to take them home and study them as minutely as if you were +preparing yourself for an examination. I want you to regard yourself +as a judicial officer, oath-bound to justice, and when you shall have +mastered the facts and the law in the case, I want you to set them forth +in a four-column editorial that every reader of the _World_ can easily +understand." + +This was only one of many cases in which he set me or some other +lieutenant to find out facts and determine what justice demanded, in +order that justice might be done. + +In 1896, when the Democratic party made its surrender to populism and +wild-eyed socialism by nominating Bryan, I was at the convention in +Chicago, telegraphing editorial articles. I foreshadowed the nomination +as inevitable, contrary to the predictions of the _World's_ newsgatherers +in the convention. Instantly, and before the nomination was made, Mr. +Pulitzer telegraphed me from Bar Harbor, to come to him at once. By the +time I got there the nomination was a fact accomplished. + +Mr. Pulitzer said to me: + +"I'm not going to tell you what my own views of the situation are, +or what I think ought to be the course of the _World_, as a foremost +Democratic newspaper, under the circumstances. No"--seeing that I +was about to speak--"don't say a word about your own views. They are +necessarily hasty and ill-considered as yet, just as my own are. I want +you to take a full twenty-four hours for careful thought. At the end of +that time I want you to write out your views of the policy the _World_ +ought to adopt, giving your reasons for every conclusion reached." + +Mr. Pulitzer did not adopt precisely the policy I recommended on that +occasion. But the _World_ refused to support the Bryan candidacy with +its fundamental idea of debasing the currency by the free coinage of +silver dollars intrinsically worth only fifty cents apiece or less. + +[Sidenote: Bryan's Message and the Reply] + +While I was still his guest on that mission, there came to Bar Harbor an +emissary from Mr. Bryan, who asked for an interview with Mr. Pulitzer in +Mr. Bryan's behalf. As I happened to know the young man, Mr. Pulitzer +asked me to see him in his stead and to receive his message. Armed with +full credentials as Mr. Pulitzer's accredited representative, I visited +the young ambassador, and made careful notes of the message he had to +deliver. It was to this effect: + +Mr. Bryan was unselfishly anxious to save the reputation of the +newspaper press as a power in public affairs. His election by an +overwhelming majority, he said, was certain beyond all possibility of +doubt or question. But if it should be accomplished without the support +of the _World_ or any other of the supposedly influential Democratic +newspapers, there must be an end to the tradition of press power and +newspaper influence in politics. For the sake of the press, and +especially of so great a newspaper as the _World_, therefore, Mr. +Bryan asked Mr. Pulitzer's attention to this danger to prestige. + +When I delivered this message to Mr. Pulitzer, he laughed. Then he gave +me a truly remarkable exhibition of his masterful knowledge of American +political conditions, and of his sagacious prescience. He asked me to +jot down some figures as he should give them to me. He named the states +that would vote for Bryan with the number of electoral votes belonging +to each. Then he gave me the list of states that would go against Bryan, +with their electoral strength. When I had put it all down, he said: + +"I don't often predict--never unless I know. But you may embody that +table in an editorial, predicting that the result of the election four +months hence will be very nearly, if not exactly, what those lists +foreshadow. Let that be our answer to Mr. Bryan's audacious message." + +The campaign had not yet opened. Mr. Bryan had just been nominated with +positively wild enthusiasm. The movement which afterwards put Palmer in +the field as an opposing Democratic candidate had not yet been thought +of. All conditions suggested uncertainty, and yet, as we sat there in +his little private porch at Bar Harbor, Mr. Pulitzer correctly named +every state that would give its electoral vote to each candidate, +and the returns of the election--four months later--varied from his +prediction of results by only two electoral votes out of four hundred +and forty-seven. And that infinitesimal variation resulted solely from +the fact that by some confusion of ballots in California and Kentucky +each of those states gave one vote to Bryan and the rest to his opponent. + +I have known nothing in the way of exact political prescience, long in +advance of the event, that equaled this or approached it. I record it +as phenomenal. + + + + +LXVII + + +[Sidenote: A Napoleonic Conception] + +Ever since the time when he bought two St. Louis newspapers, both of +which were losing money, combined them, and made of them one of the most +profitable newspaper properties in the country, Mr. Pulitzer's methods +have been Napoleonic both in the brilliancy of their conception and +in the daring of their execution. I may here record as a personal +recollection the story of one of his newspaper achievements. The fact +of it is well enough known; the details of its dramatic execution have +never been told, I think. + +In February, 1895, the government of the United States found it +necessary to issue $62,300,000 in four per cent., thirty-year bonds, to +make good the depletion of the gold reserve in the treasury. The bonds +were sold to a syndicate at the rate of 104-3/4. Once on the market, +they quickly advanced in price until they were sold by the end of that +year at 118, and, if any bank or investor wanted them in considerable +quantities, the price paid was 122 or more. + +At the beginning of the next year it was announced that the treasury +would sell $200,000,000 more of precisely the same bonds, printed +from the same plates, payable at the same time, and in all respects +undistinguishable from those of the year before--at that time in eager +popular demand at 118 to 122. It was also announced that the treasury +had arranged to sell these bonds--worth 118 or more in the open +market--to the same old Morgan syndicate "at about the same price" +(104-3/4), at which the preceding issue had been sold. + +Mr. Pulitzer justly regarded this as a scandalous proposal to give the +syndicate more than twenty-six millions of dollars of the people's money +in return for no service whatever. The banks and the people of the +country wanted these bonds at 118 or more, and banks and bankers in +other countries were equally eager to get them at the same rate. It +seemed to him, as it seemed to every other well-informed person, that +this was a reckless waste of the people's money, the scandalous favoring +of a syndicate of speculators, and a damaging blow to the national +credit. But, unlike most other well-informed persons, Mr. Pulitzer +refused to regard the situation as one beyond saving, although it was +given out from Washington that the bargain with the syndicate was +already irrevocably made. + +Mr. Pulitzer set his editorial writers at work to make the facts of the +case clear to every intelligent mind; to show forth the needlessness of +the proposed squandering; to emphasize the scandal of this dealing in +the dark with a gang of Wall Street bettors upon a certainty; and to +demonstrate the people's readiness and even eagerness to subscribe for +the bonds at a much higher rate than the discrediting one at which the +Treasury had secretly agreed to sell them to the syndicate. + +When all this had been done, to no purpose so far as I could see, +inasmuch as the response from Washington was insistent to the effect +that the sale was already agreed upon, Mr. Pulitzer one afternoon +summoned me to go at once to Lakewood, where he was staying at the time. +The train by which alone I could go was to arrive at Lakewood after the +departure of the last train thence for New York that evening, and I +mentioned that fact over the telephone. For reply I was asked to come +anyhow. + +When I got there night had already fallen, and as I was without even +so much as a handbag, I anticipated a night of makeshift at the hotel. +But as I entered Mr. Pulitzer's quarters he greeted me and said: + +"Come in quickly. We must talk rapidly and to the point. You think +you're to stay here all night, but you're mistaken. As this is your +night to be in charge of the editorial page, you must be in the office +of the _World_ at ten o'clock. I've ordered a special train to take you +back. It will start at eight o'clock and run through in eighty minutes. +Meanwhile, we have much to arrange, so we must get to work." + +[Sidenote: A Challenge to the Government] + +E. O. Chamberlin, the managing editor of the news department of the +_World_, was there and had already received his instructions. To me Mr. +Pulitzer said: + +"We have made our case in this matter of the bond issue. We have +presented the facts clearly, convincingly, conclusively, but the +Administration refuses to heed them. We are now going to compel it to +heed them on pain of facing a scandal that no administration could +survive. + +"What we demand is that these bonds shall be sold to the public at +something like their actual value and not to a Wall Street syndicate +for many millions less. You understand all that. You are to write a +double-leaded article to occupy the whole editorial space to-morrow +morning. You are not to print a line of editorial on any other subject. +You are to set forth, in compact form and in the most effective way +possible, the facts of the case and the considerations that demand a +popular or at least a public loan instead of this deal with a syndicate, +suggestive as it is of the patent falsehood that the United States +Treasury's credit needs 'financing.' You are to declare, with all +possible emphasis that the banks, bankers, and people of the United +States stand ready and eager to lend their government all the money it +wants at three per cent. interest, and to buy its four per cent. bonds +at a premium that will amount to that." + +He went on in this way, outlining the article he wanted me to write. + +"Then, as a guarantee of the sincerity of our conviction you are to say +that the _World_ offers in advance to take one million dollars of the +new bonds at the highest market price, if they are offered to the public +in open market. + +"In the meanwhile, Chamberlin has a staff of men sending out despatches +to every bank and banker in the land, setting forth our demand for a +public loan instead of a syndicate dicker, and asking each for what +amount of the new bonds it or he will subscribe on a three per cent. +basis. To-morrow morning's paper will carry with your editorial its +complete confirmation in their replies, and the proposed loan will +be oversubscribed on a three per cent. basis. Even Mr. Cleveland's +phenomenal self-confidence and Mr. Carlisle's purblind belief in Wall +Street methods will not be able to withstand such a demonstration as +that. It will _compel a public loan_. If it is true that the contract +with the syndicate has already been made, _they must cancel it_. The +voice of the country will be heard in the subscription list we shall +print to-morrow morning, and the voice of the country has compelling +power, even under this excessively self-confident administration. Now, +you're faint with hunger. Hurry over to the hotel and get a bite to eat. +You have thirty minutes before your special train leaves." + +I hurried to the hotel, but I spent that thirty minutes, not in eating +but in making a written report, for my own future use, of Mr. Pulitzer's +instructions. The memorandum thus made is the basis of what I have +written above. + +The climax of the great national drama thus put upon the stage was +worthy of the genius that inspired it. The responses of the banks and +bankers--sent in during the night--showed a tremendous oversubscription +of the proposed loan at a price that would yield to the government many +millions more than the syndicate sale offered, and there remained +unheard from the thousands and tens of thousands of private persons who +were eager to buy the bonds as investment securities. In the face of the +facts thus demonstrated, it would have been political suicide for the +men in control at Washington to refuse a public loan and to sell the +bonds to the syndicate for millions less than the people were eager to +pay for them. The administration yielded to moral force, but it did so +grudgingly and with manifest reluctance. It cut down the proposed loan +to the minimum that the Treasury must have, and it hedged it about with +every annoying device that might embarrass willing investors and prevent +the subscriptions of others than banks and bankers. In spite of all such +efforts to minimize the administration's defeat, the bond issue was +promptly taken up at a price that saved many millions to the Treasury, +and within a brief while the very bonds that Mr. Cleveland and Mr. +Carlisle had so insistently desired to sell to the syndicate at 104-3/4 +were very hard to get in the open market at 133 or more. + +[Sidenote: The Power of the Press] + +I have related this incident with some fullness because I know of no +other case in which the "power of the press"--which being interpreted +means the power of public opinion--to control reluctant political and +governmental forces, has been so dramatically illustrated. + +The only other case comparable with it was that in which not one +newspaper but practically all the newspapers in the land with a united +voice saved the country from chaos and civil war by compelling a wholly +unwilling and very obstinate Congress to find a way out of the electoral +controversy between Tilden and Hayes. No newspaper man who was in +Washington at any time during that controversy doubts or can doubt that +the two Houses of Congress would have adhered obstinately to their +opposing views until the end, with civil war as a necessary consequence, +but for the ceaseless insistence of all the newspapers of both parties +that they should devise and agree upon some peaceful plan by which the +controversy might be adjusted. + +At the time when the prospect seemed darkest I asked Carl Schurz for his +opinion of the outcome. He replied, with that intense earnestness in his +voice and words which his patriotism always gave to them in times of +public danger: + +"If left to the two Houses of Congress to decide--and that is where +the Constitution leaves it--the question will not be decided; on the +contrary, the more they discuss it, the more intense and unyielding +their obstinate determination not to agree will become. If it isn't +settled before the fourth of March, God only knows what the result will +be--civil war and chaos are the only things to be foreseen. But if left +alone, as I say, the two Houses of Congress will to the end refuse to +agree upon any plan of adjustment. The outlook is very gloomy, very +discouraging, very black. Only a tremendous pressure of public opinion +can save us from results more calamitous than any that the human mind +can conceive. If the newspapers can be induced to see the danger and +realize its extent--if they can persuade themselves to put aside their +partisanship and unite in an insistent demand that Congress shall find a +way out, a peaceful result may be compelled. Fortunately, the Southern +men in both houses are eager for the accomplishment of that. They and +their constituents have had enough and to spare of civil war. They may +be easily won to the support of any plan that promises to bring about +a peaceful solution of the controversy. But public opinion, as reflected +in the newspapers, must compel Congress, or nothing will be done." + + + + +LXVIII + + +[Sidenote: Recollections of Carl Schurz] + +This mention of Mr. Schurz reminds me of some other occasions on which +I had intercourse with him. He and I many times served together on +committees that had to do with matters of public interest. We were +members of the same clubs, and we saw much of each other at private +dinners and in other social ways, so that I came to know him well and +to appreciate at its full value that absolute honesty of mind which I +regard as his distinguishing characteristic. Without that quality of +sincerity, and with a conscience less exigent and less resolute than +his, Carl Schurz's political career might have compassed any end that +ambition set before him. That is perhaps a reflection on public life +and the men engaged in it. If so, I cannot help it. As it was, he never +hesitated for a moment to "quarrel with his bread and butter" if his +antagonism to wrong, and especially to everything that militated against +human liberty, called for such quarreling. He was above all things +a patriot in whose estimation considerations of the public welfare +outweighed, overrode, and trampled to earth all other considerations of +what kind soever. Party was to him no more than an implement, a tool for +the accomplishment of patriotic ends, and he gave to party no allegiance +whatever beyond the point at which it ceased to serve such ends. He +was always ready to quarrel with his own party and quit it for cause, +even when it offered him high preferment as the reward of continued +allegiance. + +In the same way, he held the scales true in all his judgments of men. +Mr. Lincoln once wrote him a letter--often quoted by his enemies--which +any "statesman" of the accepted type would have regarded as an +unforgivable affront. Yet in due time Mr. Schurz wrote an appreciative +estimate of Lincoln which has no fit fellow in the whole body of Lincoln +literature. His judgments of men and measures were always the honest +conclusions of an honest mind that held in reverence no other creed than +that of truth and preached no other gospel than that of human liberty. + +One evening I sat with him at a little dinner given by Mr. James Ford +Rhodes, the historian. Paul Leicester Ford sat between him and me, +while on my right sat our hostess and some other gentlewomen. Our +hostess presently asked me what I thought of a certain distinguished +personage whose name was at that time in everybody's mouth, and whose +popularity--chiefly won by genial, humorous, after-dinner speaking--was +wholly unmatched throughout the country. I do not mention his name, +because he still lives and is under a cloud. + +I answered that I thought him one of the worst and most dangerous of +popular public men, adding: + +"He has done more than any other man living to corrupt legislatures and +pervert legislation to the service of iniquitous corporations." + +Mr. Schurz, who was talking to some one at the other end of the table, +caught some hint of what I had said. He instantly turned upon me with +a demand that I should repeat it. I supposed that a controversy was +coming, and by way of challenging the worst, I repeated what I had said, +with added emphasis. Mr. Schurz replied: + +"You are right so far as your criticism goes. The man has done all that +you charge in the way of corrupting legislatures and perverting +legislation. He has made a business of it. But that is the very smallest +part of his offense against morality, good government, and free +institutions. His far greater sin is that he has _made corruption +respectable_, in the eyes of the people. And those who invite him to +banquets and set him to speak there, and noisily applaud him, are all +of them partners in his criminality whether they know it or not." + +[Sidenote: Mr. Schurz's Patriotism] + +One other conversation with Mr. Schurz strongly impressed me with his +exalted character and the memory of it lingers in my mind. In the summer +of the year 1900, when Mr. Bryan was nominated for the second time for +President, on a platform strongly reaffirming his free silver policy and +everything else for which he had stood in 1896, it was given out that +Carl Schurz, who had bitterly and effectively opposed him in 1896, +intended now to support him. I had finally withdrawn from the _World's_ +service, and from newspaper work of every kind, and was passing the +summer in literary work at my cottage on Lake George. But the _World_ +telegraphed me asking me to see Mr. Schurz, who was also a Lake George +cottager, and get from him some statement of his reasons for now +supporting the man and the policies that he had so strenuously opposed +four years before. + +I had no idea that Mr. Schurz would give me any such statement for +publication, but he and I had long been friends, and a call upon him +would occupy a morning agreeably, with the remote chance that I might +incidentally render a service to my friends of the _World_ staff. +Therefore, I went. + +Mr. Schurz told me frankly that he could give me nothing for +publication, just as I had expected that he would do. + +"I am going to make one or two speeches in this campaign," he said, +"and anything I might give you now would simply take the marrow out of +my speeches. But personally I shall be glad to talk the matter over with +you. It seems to me to be one of positively vital importance--not to +parties, for now that I have come to the end of an active life I care +nothing for parties--but to our country and to the cause of human +liberty." + +"You think human liberty is involved?" I asked. + +"Yes, certainly. Those conceptions upon which human liberty rests in +every country in the world had their birth in the colonies out of which +this nation was formed and they were first effectively formulated in +the Declaration of Independence and enacted into fundamental law in +our Constitution. The spectacle of a great, free, rich, and powerful +nation securely built upon those ideas as its foundation has been an +inspiration to all other peoples, and better still, a compulsion upon +all rulers. If that inspiration is lost, and that compulsion withdrawn, +the brutal military force that buttresses thrones will quickly undo all +that our influence has accomplished in teaching men their rights and +warning monarchs of their limitations." + +In answer to further questions he went on to say: + +"The spirit of imperialism--which is the arch-enemy of human liberty--is +rampant in the land, and it seems to me the supreme duty of every man +who loves liberty to oppose it with all his might, at whatever sacrifice +of lesser things he may find to be necessary. I am as antagonistic to +Mr. Bryan's free silver policy and to some other policies of his as I +was four years ago. But the time has come when men on the other side +jeer at the Declaration of Independence and mock at the Constitution +itself. There is danger in this--a danger immeasurably greater +than any that financial folly threatens. It seems to me time for a +revolution--not a revolution of violence or one which seeks overthrow, +but a revolution of public opinion designed to restore the landmarks and +bring the country back to its foundations of principle. Financial folly, +such as Mr. Bryan advocates, threatens us with nothing worse than a +temporary disturbance of business affairs. Imperialism threatens us with +the final destruction of those ideas and principles that have made our +country great in itself and immeasurably greater in its influence upon +thought and upon the welfare of humanity in every country on earth." + +I have recorded Mr. Schurz's words here, as nearly as a trained memory +allows me to do, not with the smallest concern for the political issues +of nine years ago, but solely because his utterances on that occasion +seem to me to have shown forth, as nothing else could have done, the +high inspiration of his patriotism, and to explain what many have +regarded as the inconsistencies of his political attitude at various +periods of his life. That so-called inconsistency was in fact a higher +consistency. His allegiance was at all times given to principles, to +ideas, to high considerations of right and of human liberty, and in +behalf of these he never hesitated to sacrifice his political prospects, +his personal advantage, or anything else that he held to be of less +human consequence. + + + + +LXIX + + +[Sidenote: The End of Newspaper Life] + +In the spring of the year 1900 I finally ceased to be a newspaper +worker. I was weary, almost beyond expression, of the endless grind +of editorial endeavor. My little summer home in the woodlands on Lake +George lured me to the quiet, independent, literary life that I had +always desired. There was an accumulation in my mind of things I +longingly desired to do, and the opportunity to do them came. Above all, +I wanted to be free once more--to be nobody's "hired man," to be subject +to no man's control, however generous and kindly that control might be. + +Life conditions at my place, "Culross," were ideal, with no exacting +social obligations, with plenty of fishing, rowing, and sailing, with my +giant pines, hemlocks, oaks, and other trees for companions, and with +the sweetest air to breathe that human lungs could desire. + +I had just published a boys' book that passed at once into second and +successive editions. The publishers of it had asked me for more books +of that kind, and still more insistently for novels, while with other +publishers the way was open to me for some historical and biographical +writings and for works of other kinds, that I had long planned. + +Under these favorable circumstances I joyously established anew the +literary workshop which had twice before been broken up by that "call +of the wild," the lure of journalism. + +This time, the summer-time shop consisted, and still consists, of a cozy +corner in one of the porches of my rambling, rock-perched cottage. +There, sheltered from the rain when it came and from the fiercer of the +winds, I spread a broad rug on the floor and placed my writing table and +chair upon it, and there for ten years I have done my work in my own +way, at my own times, and in all other ways as it has pleased me to do +it. In that corner, I have only to turn my head in order to view the +most beautiful of all lakes lying almost at my feet and only thirty +or forty feet away. If I am seized with the impulse to go fishing, my +fishing boat with its well-stocked bait wells is there inviting me. If +I am minded to go upon the water for rest and thought--or to be rid of +thought for a time--there are other boats in my dock, boats of several +sorts and sizes, among which I am free to choose. If the weather is +inclement, there are open fireplaces within the house and an ample stock +of wood at hand. + +[Sidenote: Life at Culross] + +For ten years past I have spent all my summers in these surroundings-- +staying at "Culross" four or five or even six months in each year and +returning to town only for the period of winter stress. + +During the ten years in which that corner of the porch has been my chief +workshop, I have added twenty-odd books to the dozen or so published +before, besides doing other literary work amounting to about an equal +product, and if I live, the end is not yet. I make this statistical +statement as an illustration of the stimulating effect of freedom upon +the creative faculty. The man who must do anything else--if it be only +to carry a cane, or wear cuffs, or crease his trousers, or do any other +thing that involves attention and distracts the mind, is seriously +handicapped for creative work of any kind. + +I have worked hard, of course. He who would make a living with his pen +must do that of necessity. But the work has been always a joy to me, and +such weariness as it brings is only that which gives added pleasure to +the rest that follows. + + + + +LXX + + +Every literary worker has his own methods, and I have never known any +one of them to adopt the methods of another with success. Temperament +has a good deal to do with it; habit, perhaps, a good deal more, and +circumstance more than all. + +I have always been an extemporaneous writer, if I may apply the +adjective to writers as we do to speakers. I have never been able to sit +down and "compose" anything before writing it. I have endeavored always +to master the subjects of my writing by study and careful thought, but +I have never known when I wrote a first sentence or a first chapter what +the second was to be. I think from the point of my pen, so far at least +as my thinking formulates itself in written words. + +I suppose this to be a consequence of my thirty-odd years of newspaper +experience. In the giddy, midnight whirl of making a great newspaper +there is no time for "first drafts," "outline sketches," "final +revisions," and all that sort of thing. When the telegraph brings +news at midnight that requires a leader--perhaps in double leads--the +editorial writer has an hour or less, with frequent interruptions, +in which to write his article, get it into type, revise the proofs, +and make up the page that contains it. He has no choice but to write +extemporaneously. He must hurriedly set down on paper what his newspaper +has to say on the subject, and send his sheets at once to the printers, +sometimes keeping messenger boys at his elbow to take the pages from his +hand one after another as fast as they are written. His only opportunity +for revision is on the proof slips, and even in that he is limited by +the necessity of avoiding every alteration that may involve the +overrunning of a line. + +In this and other ways born of necessity, the newspaper writer learns +the art of extemporaneous writing, which is only another way of saying +that he learns how to write at his best in the first instance, without +lazily depending upon revision for smoothness, clearness, terseness, and +force. He does not set down ill-informed or ill-considered judgments. +Every hour of every day of his life is given to the close study of the +subjects upon which he is at last called upon to write under stress of +tremendous hurry. He knows all about his theme. He has all the facts at +his fingers' ends. He is familiar with every argument that has been or +can be made on the questions involved. He knows all his statistics, and +his judgments have been carefully thought out in advance. His art consists +in the ability to select on the instant what phases of the subject +he will treat, and to write down his thought clearly, impressively, +convincingly, and in the best rhetorical form he can give it. + +[Sidenote: Extemporaneous Writing] + +I think that one who has acquired that habit of extemporaneous writing +about things already mastered in thought can never learn to write in any +other way. Both experience and observation have convinced me that men of +that intellectual habit do more harm than good to their work when they +try to improve it by revision. Revision in every such case is apt to +mean elaboration, and elaboration is nearly always a weakening dilution +of thought. + +I am disposed to think that whatever saves trouble to the writer is +purchased at the expense of the reader. The classic dictum that "easy +writing makes hard reading" is as true to-day as it was when Horace made +laborious use of the flat end of his stylus. For myself, at any rate, +I have never been able to "dictate," either "to the machine," or to a +stenographer, with satisfactory results, nor have I ever known anybody +else to do so without some sacrifice to laziness of that which it is +worth a writer's while to toil for. The stenographer and the typewriter +have their place as servants of commerce, but in literature they tend +to diffusion, prolixity, inexactitude, and, above all, to carelessness +in that choice of words that makes the difference between grace and +clumsiness, lucidity and cloud, force and feebleness. + +In the writing of novels, I have always been seriously embarrassed by +the strange perversity of fictitious people. That is a matter that has +puzzled and deeply interested me ever since I became a practising +novelist. + +The most ungrateful people in the world are the brain-children of the +novelist, the male and female folk whose existence is due to the good +will of the writer. Born of the travail of the novelist's brain, and +endowed by him with whatever measure of wit, wisdom, or wealth they +possess; personally conducted by him in their struggles toward the final +happiness he has foreordained for them at the end of the story; cared +for; coddled; listened to and reported even when they talk nonsense, and +not infrequently when they only think it; laboriously brought to the +attention of other people; pushed, if possible, into a fame they could +never have achieved for themselves; they nevertheless obstinately +persist in thwarting their creator's purpose and doing as they wickedly +please to his sore annoyance and vexation of spirit. + +In truth, the author of a story has very little control over its course +after he has once laid its foundations. The novel is not made--it grows, +and the novelist does little more than plant the seed and keep the +growth unchoked by weeds. He is as powerless to make it other than what +it tends to be as the gardener is to grow tomatoes on corn-stalks or +cucumbers on pea-vines. He may create for the story what manner of +people he pleases, just as the gardener may choose the seed he will +plant; but once created these fictitious people will behave according +to their individual natures without heed to the wishes of the author of +their being. + +In other words, the novelist is under bond to his conscience to +represent his personages as talking and acting precisely as such +personages would talk and act under the circumstances in which he has +placed them. It often happens that their sentiments, their utterances, +and their conduct do not fit into the author's preconceived arrangement +of happenings, so that he must alter his entire story or important parts +of it to make it true. + +I have borrowed the last few paragraphs from a playful paper I wrote for +an obscure magazine thirty-odd years ago, because they suggest a trouble +that must come to every conscientious novelist many times during the +writing of every story. There come times when the novelist doesn't know +what happened, and must toilsomely explore his consciousness by way of +finding out. + +[Sidenote: Working Hours and Working Ways] + +My working hours are determined by circumstances--morning, afternoon, +evening, or late at night. When there is a "must" involved, I work when +I must; when I am free I work when I choose or when I feel that I can. + +I never carry my work to bed with me, and I never let it rob me of a +moment's sleep. To avoid that I usually play a game or two of solitaire +--perhaps the least intellectual of all possible occupations--between +work and bedtime; and I usually take a walk in the open air just before +going to bed, whatever the weather may be. But whatever else happens, +I long ago acquired the art of absolutely dismissing the subject of my +work from my mind, whenever I please, and the more difficult art of +refusing to let any other subject of interest take its place. I do that +when I go to bed, and when I do that nothing less than positive physical +pain can keep me from going to sleep. + +I have always been fond of fishing and boating. In summer, at my Lake +George cottage, I have a little fleet of small boats moored within +twenty paces of my porch-placed writing table. If my mind flags at my +work I step into my fishing boat and give an hour or two to a sport that +occupies the attention without fatiguing it. If I am seriously perplexed +by any work-problem, I take a rowboat, with a pair of eight-foot oars, +and go for a ten-mile spin. On my return I find that my problem has +completely wrought itself out in my mind without conscious effort on +my part. + +I am fond of flower gardening and, without the least technical skill +in it, I usually secure astonishingly good results. The plants seem to +respond generously to my uninstructed but kindly attention. + +In my infancy my mother taught me to begin every day with a plunge into +water as cold as I could get, and I have kept up the habit with the +greatest benefit. I find it a perfect tonic as well as a luxurious +delight. + +I have always enforced upon myself two rules with respect to literary +style: First, to utter my thought simply and with entire sincerity, and, +second, never consciously to write or leave a sentence in such form that +even a blundering reader might mistake its meaning. + +Here let me bring to an end these random recollections of a life +which has involved hard work, distressing responsibility, and much of +disappointment, but which has been filled from the beginning with that +joy of success which is the chief reward of endeavor to every man who +loves his work and puts conscience into it. + + +THE END + + + + +INDEX + + +=A= + +Abbey, Edwin A., 274, 307 + +Accident, its part in literary work, 181-185 + +Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, 174, 191, 192 + +Alexander, Gen. E. P., 94 + +America. _See_ United States + +American authors visiting England, 265, 269 + +"American Idea," 296, 297 + +American life, 1840-50, 18-20 + +American literature provincial, 269-271 + +Americanism, birthplace of, 27 + +Amour, 117 + +Anonymous literary criticism, 203-205 + +"Appleseed, Johnny," 141 + +_Appleton's Journal_, 153, 181 + +Armitage, Rev. Dr., 113-115 + +Armstrong, Henry, 291 + +Army of Northern Virginia, 87, 93, 94 + +Arnold, Matthew, 268 + +Arthur, T. S., novels of, 25 + +Ashland, Va., 77 + +Associated Press, 180, 188, 302, 303 + +Astor Library, books mutilated, 271 + +_Atlantic Monthly_, 148, 149, 181 + +Authors, and editors, 167-172; + Virginian, 66-70 + +Authors Club, organized, 272; + presidency, 273; + eligibility, 273; + meeting-places, 274, 275; + in Twenty-fourth Street, 277; + social in character, 277, 278; + women, 278-280; + plainness of quarters, 280; + Watch Night, 281, 284; + diplomats and statesmen, 284; + "Liber Scriptorum," 285, 286. Also 85, 176-178, 228, 232, 254, 258 + +Authorship, esteemed in Virginia, 66, 67 + +"Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," Holmes's, 219 + + +=B= + +"Bab Ballads," Gilbert's, 137 + +Bacon-Shakespeare controversy, 220 + +Bar Harbor, 295, 320-326 + +"Barnwell C. H.," 242 + +Bates House, Indianapolis, 28, 29 + +Bath, American habits as to, 30, 31 + +Beauregard, Gen., 87, 237-241 + +Beecher, Henry Ward, 108 + +"Ben Bolt," 255 + +Benjamin, Judah P., 237 + +Bernhardt, Sara, 229, 230 + +Berry, Earl D., 290 + +"Big Brother, The," 181-183 + +Bigelow, John, 188, 228, 289, 303 + +Bludso, Jim, 160-162 + +Blunders, compositors', 241-243; + literary, 222-227; + telegrapher's, 238, 239 + +Bohemianism, 177 + +Book-editing, 234-237 + +Book notices, 190 + +Book reviewers, 190 + +Book reviewing, newspaper, 217 + +Book sales, predicting, 252-254 + +Book titles, 154-157 + +Books, mutilation of, 271; + in Virginia, 66 + +Booth, Edwin, 275, 276 + +Booth, Postmaster of Brooklyn, 125 + +"Boots and Saddles," Mrs. Custer's, 252-254 + +Boston, literary center, 148 + +Boucicault, Dion, 153 + +Bound boys and girls, 14, 16 + +Bowen, Henry C., 100, 128 + +Boys' stories, 181-185 + +Bragg, Gen., 238 + +"Breadwinners, The," 165 + +Briars, The, 71 + +Briggs, Charles F., 100-107 + +British authors visiting America, 265, 268, 269 + +British condescension, 268 + +_Broadway Journal_, 100 + +Brooklyn. N. Y., 31, 99, 115, 117 + +Brooklyn _Daily Eagle_, 126 + +Brooklyn _Union_, 99, 100, 105, 107, 110, 113, 115, 116, 128 + +Brooks, Elbridge S., 185 + +"Browneyes, Lily," 256-258 + +Bryan, Wm. J., and the _World_ in 1896, 324-326. Also 335-337 + +Bryant, Wm. C., 68, 129, 143; + conduct of the N. Y. _Evening Post_, 187-189; + as a reviewer of books, 190; + appoints G. C. Eggleston literary editor of the _Evening Post_, 192-194; + character, 194-196; + relations with Washington Irving, 196-198; + consideration for poets, 199-202, 205, 206; + views of anonymous literary criticism, 203-205; + estimate of Poe, 207; + _Index Expurgatorius_, 209-213; + his democracy, 214; + opinion of English society, 215-217; + estimate of Tennyson and other modern poets, 219; + his judgment of English literature, 220, 221 + +Bull Run, 78 + +Byron, quoted, 83, 84 + + +=C= + +Cairo, Ills., 96, 99 + +"Campaign of Chancellorsville," Dodge's, 208 + +Campbell, Thomas, 254 + +Cannon, Capt. John, 161 + +"Captain Sam," 183 + +Cary, Alice and Phoebe, 137 + +Carlisle, John G., 330, 331 + +Catholicism, 26 + +Cavalry life, 77-81 + +Chamberlin, E. O., 329, 330 + +Champlin, John D., 285 + +Chance, its part in literary work, 181-185 + +Charleston, S. C., 86, 164, 241 + +Checks, bank, in Virginia, 50 + +Children's stories. _See_ Boys' stories + +Church, Col. Wm. C., 204 + +Civil service system, 235 + +Civil War, changes wrought in Virginia, 73-76 + +Clay, Henry, 20 + +Clemens, Samuel L., 150, 160, 259, 265, 281 + +Cleveland, President, 214, 226, 330, 331 + +Coan, Dr. Titus Munson, quoted, 228 + +Cobham Station, 93 + +Cockerill, John A., 122, 308-312 + +Co-education, 57 + +Colman, Mr., 198 + +Collins, Tom, 89-93 + +_Commercial Advertiser._ _See under_ New York + +Compositors, 314, 315 + +Condescension, British, 268 + +Congress, U. S., in Tilden-Hayes controversy, 331-333 + +Constitution, U. S., 226, 336 + +Conversion, religious, 92 + +Cooke, John Esten, 59, 67, 69-72, 151, 240 + +Copy, following, 241-243 + +Copyright, 153, 154, 231-234, 268 + +Corruption, political, 124-126, 334, 335 + +Courtesy in Boston, New York, Virginia, 55, 56 + +Court-martial, 88, 89 + +Coward, Edward Fales, 291 + +Cowley, Abraham, 192 + +Craig, George, 13, 17 + +Creek War, 183 + +Criticism. _See_ Literary criticism + +"Culross," 338-344 + +Curtis, George William, 100 + +Curtis, Gen. Newton Martin, 85 + +Custer, Mrs., 252-254 + +Cuyler, Dr. Theo. L., quoted, 147 + + +=D= + +"Danger in the Dark," 26 + +Daniel, Senator, of Virginia, 85 + +Davis, James, 291 + +Davis, Jefferson, 164, 165, 237-241 + +Death-bed repentance, 93 + +Democracy, Bryant's, 214; + Cleveland's, 214 + +"Democracy," 269 + +Dictation, 341 + +Dictionaries, 210 + +Dime novel, 275, 276 + +Dodd, Mead, and Co., 244 + +Dodge, Mary Mapes, 131, 132 + +Dodge, Col. Theodore, 208 + +Dranesville, Va., 83 + +Dress, Joaquin Miller on, 175, 176; + men's evening, 175-178 + +Drinking habits. _See_ Temperance + +Dumont, Mrs. Julia L., 9 + +Dupont, Ind., 21 + +Dutcher, Silas B., 125 + +"Dutchmen," 3 + + +=E= + +_Eagle_, Brooklyn. _See under_ Brooklyn + +Early, Jubal A., 76 + +Editorial responsibility, 207-209 + +Editorial writing, 110, 313-315, 323, 340 + +Editors and authors, 167-172 + +Education, backwoods, 9, 10; + modern, 75, 76; + present and past in Virginia, 73-76; + western, in 1850, 32-34. _See also_ Schools and school-teaching + +Eggleston, Edward, 21, 22; + origin of "The Hoosier Schoolmaster," 34-36; + connection with _Hearth and Home_, 132; + first to utilize in literature the Hoosier life, 145, 146; + resigns editorship of _Hearth and Home_, 146; + quoted on copyright, 232-234; + relations with his brother, 266, 267 + +Eggleston, George Cary, + early recollections, life in the West in the eighteen-forties, 1-20; + first railroad journey, 21; + free-thinking, 22; + early theological thought and reading, 22-26; + school-teaching, 34-45; + Virginia life, 46-59; + occultism, experience of, 60-66; + creed, 75; + army life, 77; + cavalry, 77-81; + two experiences, 81-85; + artillery, 86, 87; + Army of Northern Virginia, 87-96; + legal practice, 99; + Brooklyn _Union_, 99-129; + New York _Evening Post_, 129-131; + _Hearth and Home_, 131-135, 145, 146, 148, 151, 180; + first books, 146; + first novel, 151-155; + New Jersey home, 180, 186; + boys' stories, 181-185; + financial troubles, 186, 187; + connection with New York _Evening Post_, 187-231; + acquaintance with W. C. Bryant, 192-228; + adviser of Harper and Brothers, 231, 234, 236; + literary editor of the _Commercial Advertiser_, 287; + managing editor, 288; + editor-in-chief, 289; + health, 292, 306; + editorial writer for the _World_, 306-337; + retires from journalism, 337; + literary habits, 338-344 + +Eggleston, Guilford Dudley, 184 + +Eggleston, Joseph, 96, 98 + +Eggleston, Joseph Cary, 9, 14, 15 + +Eggleston, Mrs. Mary Jane, 11 + +Eggleston, Judge Miles Cary, 8 + +Eggleston family, home of, 46 + +Election results, predicting, 326 + +Eliot, George, 255 + +Elliot, Henry R., 291 + +"End of the World," E. Eggleston's, 146 + +English, Thomas Dunn, 172, 255 + +English authors. _See_ British authors + +English language, N. Y. _Evening Post's_ standard, 210-214; + Virginia usage, 59; + Western usage, 8 + +English society, 215-217 + +_Evening Post, The._ _See under_ New York + +Extemporaneous writing, 339-341 + + +=F= + +"Fable for Critics," 101, 106, 195 + +Familiarity, President Cleveland contrasted with W. C. Bryant, 214 + +Farragut, Admiral, quoted, 77 + +Fawcett, Edgar, 153 + +Fellows, Col. John R., 121, 122 + +Fiction, place in 1840-50, 25, 26; + writing of, 341, 342 + +"First of the Hoosiers," quoted, 145 + +First Regiment of Virginia Cavalry, 77, 78, 81 + +"Flat Creek," 37 + +Florida War, 243 + +Folsom, Dr. Francois, 291 + +Ford, Paul Leicester, 278, 279, 334 + +Foreigners, American attitude toward, 1840-50, 2, 3 + +Francis, Sir Philip, 223-225 + +"Franco, Harry," 100, 106 + +Franklin, Benj., 1, 139 + +Free-thinking, 22 + +Free-trade and protection, 20 + +French Revolution, 108, 109 + +Fulton, Rev. Dr., 113-115 + + +=G= + +G., Johnny, 43-45 + +_Galaxy_, 181, 204 + +Garfield, Gen., 119 + +George Eliot, 255 + +George, Lake, 335, 337. _See also_ "Culross" + +Ghost story, 60-66 + +Gilbert, W. S., 137 + +Gilder, R. W., 172, 272, 273 + +Godkin, E. L., 230, 231 + +Godwin, Parke, 100, 188, 189, 227-230, 286-289, 295-300, 305 + +Gold coin in Plaquemine in 1886, 248-251 + +Gosse, Edmund, 177, 265-268 + +Gracie, Gen., 96 + +Grant, President, 93, 125, 126, 127, 244 + +_Graphic, The._ _See under_ New York + +Grebe, Charley, 37, 39-45 + +Greeley, Horace, 139, 167 + + +=H= + +Halsted, Dr. Wm. S., 294 + +"Harold," Tennyson's, 218 + +Harper and Brothers, 153, 154, 155, 167, 168, 231, 236, 241, 252, 257, + 287, 307 + +Harper, J. Henry, 259 + +Harper, Joseph W., Jr., 154, 168, 252, 253, 267, 285 + +_Harper's Magazine_, 141 + +Hay, John, 157-166, 275, 276 + +Hayden's "Dictionary of Dates," 234 + +Hayes-Tilden controversy, 332 + +_Hearth and Home_, 35, 36, 131-135, 145, 146, 148, 151, 157, 180 + +Hendrickses, the, 8 + +"Henry St. John, Gentleman," 69 + +_Herald, The._ _See under_ New York + +"Heterophemy," 223-225 + +Hewitt, Mr., 291 + +Hill, A. P., 87 + +Hilton, Judge Henry, 121 + +Hirsh, Nelson, 291 + +Historical intuition, 47 + +Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 177; + Bryant's estimate of, 219 + +_Home Journal_, 140 + +Hoosier dialect, 8, 14 + +Hoosier life, 145, 146 + +"Hoosier Schoolmaster, The," 34-36, 37, 41, 145; + in England, 233 + +Hospitality, 17, 320 + +Hotels in 1840-50, 28-31 + +"Houp-la," Mrs. Stannard's, 154 + +"How to Educate Yourself," 147 + +Howells, Wm. D., 1, 148-150, 204, 258 + +Humor, newspaper, 282-284 + +"Hundredth Man," Stockton's, 135, 136 + +Hurlbut, Wm. Hen., 177 + +Hutton, Laurence, 272, 274 + + +=I= + +Ideas, 297, 312 + +Ignorance in criticism, 226, 227 + +Illicit distilling in Brooklyn, 123-128 + +Illustration, newspaper, 179, 180 + +Imperialism, 336, 337 + +Independence, personal, 1840-50, 18-20 + +_Independent, The._ _See under_ New York + +_Index Expurgatorius_, Bryant's, 209-213 + +Indian Territory, 183 + +Indiana, a model in education, 10, 11 + +Indiana Asbury University, 11 + +Indianapolis, Ind., 28 + +Intolerance, 26, 251 + +Introductions, 255-264 + +Intuition, historian's, 47 + +Irving, Washington, relations with Bryant, 196-198 + + +=J= + +Jackson, Mr., 314 + +James, G. P. R., 67, 68 + +Jeffersonianism, 296 + +John, a good name, 42, 43 + +"John Bull, Jr.," O'Rell's, 282 + +Johnson, Gen. Bushrod, 96 + +Johnson, Rossiter, 285 + +Johnson's Dictionary, 210 + +Jokes. _See_ Humor + +Jones, J. B., 275 + +Journalism, 116, 292, 293. _See also_ Newspapers, Pulitzer + +Judd, Orange, and Co., 132 + +Junius letters, authorship, 223 + + +=K= + +"Kate Bonnet," Stockton's, 135, 136 + +Kelly, John, 234 + +Kentuckians in the Northwest, 9-11 + +Khedive, 244 + +Kossuth, Louis, 297, 298 + + +=L= + +"Lady Gay," steamer, 96-98 + +Laffan, Wm. M., 304 + +Lakewood, 328-330 + +Language. _See_ English language + +Lanier, Sidney, 262 + +"Last of the Flatboats, The," 185 + +"Late Mrs. Null," Stockton's, 135 + +Lathrop, George Parsons, 150 + +Latin, 33 + +Laziness, 17 + +Lecture system, 108 + +Lee, Fitzhugh, 81-84, 86 + +Lee, Gen. Robert E., 240 + +Lee family, 83 + +Letcher, John, 76, 91 + +Letters of introduction, 255-264 + +Lewis, Charlton T., 129, 130 + +Libel, 117-124, 272 + +"Liber Scriptorum," 285 + +Liberty, 296, 336 + +"Liffith Lank," 156 + +Lincoln, President, 84, 85, 334 + +Lindsay's Turnout, 88 + +Literary aspirants, 255-259 + +Literary criticism, anonymous, 203-205; + of the _Saturday Review_, 206; + ignorance displayed in, 226, 227 + +Literary work, 339. _See also_ Editorial writing + +"Literati," Poe's, 172 + +Literature, place in 1840-50, 23-26 + +"Little Breeches," 157-159 + +Local independence, 1840-50, 18 + +Logan, Sidney Strother, 291 + +London, and Joaquin Miller, 173, 174 + +Longfellow, Henry W., 208 + +Longstreet, Gen., 87, 93, 94 + +Loomis, Charles Battell, 283 + +Loring, Gen. W. W., 243-247 + +Los Angeles, Cal., 31 + +Lothrop Publishing Company, 185, 263 + +Louisville and Cincinnati Mail Line, 30 + +Lowell, James Russell, 101, 106, 195 + + +=M= + +McCabe, Gordon, 267 + +McKane, John Y., 120 + +McKelway, Dr. St. Clair, 126 + +McKinley, President, 162 + +Madison, Ind., 15, 21, 36, 43, 44 + +Madison and Indianapolis Railroad, 13 + +Mallon, George B., 291 + +"Man of Honor, A," 151-155 + +"Man of Honor, A," Mrs. Stannard's, 154, 155 + +Manassas, 71, 78 + +Mann, Horace, 33 + +Manufactures, 1840-50, 18-20 + +Manuscripts for publication, 171, 172 + +"Manyest-sided man," 143 + +Marquand, Henry, 251, 290, 294 + +"Master of Warlock, The," 155-157 + +Matthews, Brander, 204, 269 + +Maynard, Judge, 323, 324 + +Mazeppa, quoted, 83, 84 + +Merrill, Wm. M., 312-314 + +Methodism and literature, 23-26 + +Mexican War, 243 + +"Military Operations of General Beauregard in the War between the + States," Roman's, 237 + +Military prisoners, 88 + +Miller, Joaquin, 172-176 + +Mims, Fort, 183 + +Mitchell, Donald G., 131 + +Model, artist's, 274 + +Money, its place in Virginia, 49-52 + +Munroe, Capt. Kirk, 257 + +Moody, Dwight, 168 + +Morey letter, 119 + +Morgan Syndicate, 1895-6, 327-329 + +Mortar service at Petersburg, 94, 95 + +Moses, ex-Governor, 262-264 + +Myths, 47 + + +=N= + +Nadeau House, Los Angeles, 31 + +Napoleon, Ind., 5 + +Nash, Thomas, 307 + +_Nation, The_, 231 + +New Orleans, 3, 4, 96, 98, 183 + +New York authors in 1882, 272 + +New York _Commercial Advertiser_, 251, 286-292 + +New York _Evening Sun_, 304 + +New York _Evening Post_, 68, 129, 131, 137, 140, 142, 143; + character under Bryant and Godwin, 187-189; + G. C. Eggleston literary editor, 192-194; + use of English, 209-213; + book reviews, 217, 218; + Godwin editor, 227; + writers, 228; + change of ownership, 230 + +New York _Graphic_, 180 + +New York _Herald_, 162 + +New York _Independent_, 100, 107, 110 + +New York _Sun_, 291, 301, 304 + +New York _Times_, 101 + +New York _Tribune_, 105, 129, 159, 164, 165 + +New York _World_, 120, 121, 122, 185, 291, 292, 303-331 + +Newspaper book reviews, 217 + +Newspaper correspondents, 245-247 + +Newspaper illustration, 179, 180 + +Newspaper libel suits, 117-124 + +Newspapers, character, 189; + earlier methods, 300-303; + revolution in conducting, 303; + emergency problems, 313-315; + power in politics, 327-332 + +Nicoll, De Lancy, 122 + +Nineteenth Century Club, 296 + +_North American Review_, 223 + +Novels _See_ Fiction, Scott. Dime novel + + +=O= + +Occultism, 60-66, 299 + +"On March," Mrs. Stannard's, 155 + +O'Rell, Max, 287, 282 + +Osgood, James R., 306, 307 + + +=P= + +_Pall Mall Gazette_, 188 + +"Paul, John," 285 + +Personalities in newspapers, 189 + +Petersburg, 94-98 + +Philp, Kenward, 116-119 + +Piatt, Donn, 315-319 + +"Pike County Ballads," 157-159 + +Piracy, of American publishers, 231, 232; + of English publishers, 233 + +Plagiarism, 137-144; + Stockton on, 137, 138; + Franklin on, 139 + +Planter's life in Virginia, 50-53 + +Plaquemine, 248-251 + +Platt, Tom, 319 + +Pocotaligo, 87 + +Poe, Edgar Allan, 100-102, 172, 207 + +Poetic ambition, 44, 45 + +Poetry, bad, 199-202, 205, 206; + genuine, 221 + +Political corruption, 124-126, 334, 335 + +Political prescience, 326 + +"Poor Whites" in the Northwest, 11, 12 + +Potter, Bishop, 283, 284 + +Poverty in Indiana, 1840-50, 13 + +Preachers, stories of, 158, 162, 166, 167 + +Predicting election results, 326 + +Press. _See_ Newspapers, Journalism + +"Prince Regent," 67, 68 + +_Princeton Review_, 296 + +Printers. _See_ Compositors, Copy + +Prisoners, military, 88 + +Progress, 75, 76 + +Prohibition, 296 + +Proof-reading, 241-243 + +"Proverbial Philosophy," Tupper's, 208, 209 + +Provincialism of American literature, 269-271 + +Publishing, uncertainties, 254 + +Pulitzer, Joseph, 214, 303-305, 308, 311, 312, 314, 319-331 + +Punctuation, serious result of error, 238, 239 + +Putnam, George Haven, 147, 184 + +Putnam, George P., 146, 171 + +"Putnam's Handy Book Series," 136, 147 + +_Putnam's Monthly_, 101, 171 + + +=R= + +Radicalism after Civil War, 108 + +Railroad Iron Battery, 95, 96-98 + +Railroads, early, in the West, 20-22, 26, 27, 32-34 + +Randall, James R., 261, 262 + +Raymond, Henry J., 101 + +"Rebel's Recollections," 148-150, 240 + +Reid, Whitelaw, 143, 159, 164 + +"Reirritation," 213 + +Religious intolerance, 1840-50, 26 + +Restfulness of life in Virginia, 48, 49 + +Reviewing. _See under_ Book + +Revision of manuscript, 341 + +Revivals, 168 + +_Revue des Deux Mondes_, publishes "Hoosier Schoolmaster," 145 + +Rhodes, James Ford, 334 + +Richmond, Arthur, 316, 317 + +Richmond, Va., 67, 68, 69, 84, 85 + +Riddel, John, 42, 43 + +Riker's Ridge, 35-45 + +Ripley, George, 167 + +"Rise and fall of the Confederate Government," Davis's, 164, 165 + +Ritchie, Mrs. Anna Cora Mowatt, 67 + +"Robert E. Lee," steamer, 161 + +Roman, Col. Alfred, 237 + +Roman Catholicism. _See_ Catholicism + +Roosevelt, Dr., 294 + +"Rudder Grange," Stockton's, 136 + +Russell, Charles E., 290 + +"Ruth," yacht, 295 + + +=S= + +St. Louis newspapers, 327 + +_St. Nicholas_, 132, 183 + +"St. Twelvemo," 156 + +Sanborn, Frank B., 150 + +_Saturday Review_, 206 + +Schools and school-teaching, 1850, 32-34, 45; + Western, 1840-50, 10, 11 + +Schurz, Carl, 208, 230, 332-337 + +Scotch-Irish, 9 + +Scott's novels, 275 + +Scott, Gen., 243, 244 + +Sexes, relations in Virginia, 53-59 + +Shakespeare, 220, 221 + +Shams of English society, 215-217 + +Sherman, Gen., his March to the Sea, 280; + quoted, on war, 80 + +Shiloh, battle, 238 + +"Shiveree," 14, 15 + +"Shocky," 41 + +Shooting, 14-16 + +Sidney, Sir Philip, 224, 225 + +Sieghortner's, 274 + +"Signal Boys, The," 183 + +"Skinning," 139, 144 + +Sloane, Dr. Wm. M., 296 + +Smith, Ballard, 309 + +Social conditions, 1840-50, 18-20 + +"Solitary Horseman," 67 + +"Son of Godwin, The," 220 + +"Song of Marion's Men," Bryant's, 196 + +_Southern Literary Messenger_, 68 + +Spanish-American War, 81 + +Sperry, Watson R., 191, 193, 208, 209 + +_Springfield Republican_, 208 + +Stannard, Mrs., 154, 155 + +Stapps, the, 8 + +Steamboats, 1850, 30 + +Stedman, E. C., 143, 144, 177, 178, 262 + +Stephens, Alexander H., 223 + +Stevens, Judge Algernon S., 8 + +Stewart, A. T., 121, 122 + +Stockton, Frank R., 133-139, 281, 283 + +Stoddard, Richard Henry, 202, 261, 262 + +Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 131 + +"Stranded Goldbug," 251 + +Stuart, J. E. B., 70, 71, 77, 78, 81 + +Sullivan, Judge Algernon S., 8 + +Sumter, Fort, 164 + +_Sun, The._ _See under_ New York + +Supernatural. _See_ Occultism + +Surnames in fiction, 156 + +"Surrey of Eagle's Nest," 69 + +Swinton, William, 244 + + +=T= + +Tariff. _See_ Free trade and protection + +Taylor, Judge, of Madison, 15 + +Temperance, 104, 112. _See also_ Prohibition + +Tennyson, 143-145, 218 + +"Thanatopsis," Bryant's, 221, 222 + +Thompson, John R., 67, 68, 190 + +Thompson, Wm. Gilman, 294 + +Tilden, Samuel J., 228 + +Tilden-Hayes controversy, 332 + +Tile Club, 274, 275 + +Tilton, Theodore, 99, 100, 107-116, 125, 129, 259 + +_Times, The._ _See under_ New York + +Titles, book, 154-157 + +Travel, 1840-50, 20, 21, 28-30 + +_Tribune, The._ _See under_ New York + +"Tristram Shandy," saves life, 80 + +Tupper, Martin Farquhar, 208, 209 + +Tuttle, Dr., 294 + +Twain, Mark, 150, 160, 259, 265, 281 + +Tweed, Wm. M., 226 + + +=U= + +_Union_, Brooklyn. _See under_ Brooklyn + +United States, lack of nationality, 1840-50, 6, 7 + +United States Government, bond issue, 1895-6, + and the N. Y. _World_, 327-331; + departments, 235, 236 + +United States Treasury, 327-331 + + +=V= + +Vevay, Ind., 2, 18 + +"Victorian Poets," Stedman's, on Tennyson's plagiarism, 143, 144 + +Virginia, home of the Egglestons, 46; + life in, 48, 49, 72; + present conditions, 73-76; + in the Civil War, 76, 77 + +"Virginia Comedians, The," 69 + +Virginian English, 59 + +"Virginians, The," society, 82 + +Voice, Virginia girls', 59 + + +=W= + +Walker, Gen. Lindsay, 87 + +Wappoo Cut, 86 + +War, 70, 71, 80, 81 + +War correspondents, 244, 245 + +Warlock, Mr., 155-157 + +Warner, Charles Dudley, 283 + +Washington executive departments, 235, 236 + +Wason, Rev. Hiram, 8 + +Wass, Jerome B., 127 + +Waste, saving, 52 + +Webb, Charles Henry, 156, 285 + +Wedding customs in Indiana, 1840-50, 14, 15 + +West, the, homogeneity in eighteen-forties, 7; + most representative of the country, 7, 27; + remoteness, 1840-50, 4, 5 + +White, Horace, 230 + +White, Richard Grant, 222-225, 274 + +Wickham, Williams C., 77 + +"Wild Western Scenes," Jones's, 275 + +Wilderness, 93 + +Will, story of a, 61, 62 + +Williams, Timothy Shaler, 290 + +Willis, N. P., 68 + +Winter, John Strange, 154, 155 + +Wise, Henry A., 77 + +Wister, Mrs., 142 + +Women, deference to, 56, 57; + in Virginia, 53-59 + +_World, The._ _See under_ New York + +"Wreck of the Redbird, The," 184, 185 + +Wright, Henry, 291 + + +=Y= + +Yachting, 294 + +Yerger, E. M., of Jackson, Miss., 105 + +Yerger, Judge E. M., of Memphis, Tenn., 105 + +Youmans, Dr., 274 + + +=Z= + +Ziegenfust, Mr., 247, 248 + + * * * * * + + +JANE G. PERKINS'S + +THE LIFE OF THE HONOURABLE MRS. NORTON + +With portrait, 8vo. $3.50 net; by mail, $3.68. + +Mrs. Norton was the great Sheridan's grand-daughter, beautiful and witty, +the author of novels, poems and songs, contesting contemporary popularity +with Mrs. Browning; her influence was potent in politics; Meredith +undoubtedly had her in mind when he drew "Diana of the Crossways." + + "Reads like a novel ... seems like the page from an old romance, + and Miss Perkins has preserved all its romantic charm.... Miss + Perkins has let letters, and letters unusually interesting, tell + much of the story.... Indeed her biography has all the sustained + interest of the novel, almost the irresistible march of fate of + the Greek drama. It is eminently reliable."--_Boston Transcript._ + + "Brilliant, beautiful, unhappy, vehement Caroline Norton.... + Her story is told here with sympathy, but yet fairly enough + ... interesting glimpses ... of the many men and women of note + with whom Mrs. Norton was brought into more or less intimate + association."--_Providence Journal._ + + "The generous space allowed her to tell her own story in the form + of intimate letters is a striking and admirable feature of the + book."--_The Dial._ + + "She was an uncommonly interesting personage and the memoir ... + has no dull spots and speedily wins its way to a welcome."--_New + York Tribune._ + + "So exceptional and vivid a personality ... of unusual quality + ... very well written."--_The Outlook._ + + +YUNG WING'S MY LIFE IN CHINA AND AMERICA + +With portrait, 8vo. $2.50 net; by mail, $2.65. + +The author's account of his early life in China, his education at +Yale, where he graduated in 1854 (LL.D., 1876), his return to China and +adventures during the Taiping rebellion, his intimate association with +Tsang Kwoh Fan and Li Hung Chang, and finally his great work for the +"Chinese Educational Movement" furnish highly interesting and good +reading. + + "It is his native land that is always the great heroic character + on the stage his mind surveys; and his mental grasp is as wide as + his domiciliation. A great life of action and reflection and the + experiences of two hemispheres. It is not so much a knowledge of + isolated facts that is to be got from the book as an understanding + of the character of the Chinese race."--_Hartford Courant._ + + "There is not a dull line in this simply told but fascinating + biography."--_Literary Digest._ + + "He has given Occidental readers an opportunity to behold the + machinery of Chinese custom and the substance of Chinese character + in action. No foreigner could possibly have written a work + so instructive, and no untravelled native could have made it + intelligible to the West ... a most interesting story both in + the telling and in the acting.... Mr. Yung presents each of his + readers with a fragment of China herself."--_Living Age._ + + + HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY + PUBLISHERS NEW YORK + + * * * * * + + +By R. M. JOHNSTON + +_Assistant Professor in Harvard University_ + + +THE FRENCH REVOLUTION + +A Short History. 12mo, 278 pp., with special bibliographies following +each chapter, and index. $1.25 net; by mail, $1.37. + + "An almost ideal book of its kind and within its scope ... a + clear idea of the development and of the really significant men + of events of that cardinal epoch in the history of France and + Europe is conveyed to readers, many of whom will have been + bewildered by the anecdotal fulness or the rhetorical romancing of + Professor Johnston's most conspicuous predecessors."--_Churchman._ + + "Deserves to take rank as a little classic and as such to be given + a place in all libraries. Not only is this admirably written, but + it singles out the persons and events best worth understanding, + viewing the great social upheaval from a long perspective."--_San + Francisco Chronicle._ + + +NAPOLEON + +A Short Biography. 12mo. 248 pp., with special bibliographies following +each chapter, and index. $1.25 net; by mail, $1.37. + + "Scholarly, readable, and acute."--_Nation._ + + "It is difficult to speak with moderation of a work so pleasant + to read, so lucid, so skillful."--_Boston Transcript._ + + "A quite admirable book."--_London Spectator._ + + "The style is clear, concise and readable."--_London Athenaeum._ + + "In a small volume of less than 250 pages he gives us a valuable + key to the history of the European Continent from the Reign of + Terror to the present day."--_London Morning Post._ + + +LEADING AMERICAN SOLDIERS + +Biographies of Washington, Greene, Taylor, Scott, Andrew Jackson, Grant, +Sherman, Sheridan, McClellan, Meade, Lee, "Stonewall" Jackson, Joseph E. +Johnston. With portraits. 1 vol. $1.75 net; by mail $1.88. + +In the "Leading Americans" series. Prospectus of the series on request. + + "Performs a real service in preserving the essentials."--_Review + of Reviews._ + + "Very interesting.... Much sound originality of treatment, and + the style is clear."--_Springfield Republican._ + +[Asterism] If the reader will send his name and address, the publishers +will send, from time to time, information regarding their new books. + + HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY + PUBLISHERS NEW YORK + + * * * * * + + +WILLIAM DE MORGAN'S IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN + +The story of the great love of "Blind Jim" and his little girl, and +of the affairs of a successful novelist. Fourth printing. $1.75. + + "William De Morgan at his very best."--_Independent._ + + "Another long delightful voyage with the best English company. + The story of a child certainly not less appealing to our generation + than Little Nell was to hers."--_New York Times Saturday Review._ + + +WILLIAM DE MORGAN'S SOMEHOW GOOD + +The dramatic story of some modern English people in a strange situation. +Fourth printing. $1.75. + + "A book as sound, as sweet, as wholesome, as wise, as any in the + range of fiction."--_The Nation._ + + "Our older novelists (Dickens and Thackeray) will have to look to + their laurels, for the new one is fast proving himself their equal. + A higher quality of enjoyment than is derivable from the work of + any other novelist now living and active in either England or + America."--_The Dial._ + + +WILLIAM DE MORGAN'S ALICE-FOR-SHORT + +The story of a London waif, a friendly artist, his friends and family. +Seventh printing. $1.75. + + "Really worth reading and praising ... will be hailed as a + masterpiece. If any writer of the present era is read a half + century hence, a quarter century, or even a decade, that writer + is William De Morgan."--_Boston Transcript._ + + "It is the Victorian age itself that speaks in those rich, + interesting, over-crowded books.... Will be remembered as + Dickens's novels are remembered."--_Springfield Republican._ + + +WILLIAM DE MORGAN'S JOSEPH VANCE + +A novel of life near London in the 50's. Tenth printing. $1.75. + + "The book of the last decade; the best thing in fiction since + Mr. Meredith and Mr. Hardy; must take its place as the first + great English novel that has appeared in the twentieth + century."--Lewis Melville in _New York Times Saturday Review._ + + "If the reader likes both 'David Copperfield' and 'Peter + Ibbetson,' he can find the two books in this one."--_The + Independent._ + +[Asterism] A twenty-four page illustrated leaflet about Mr. De Morgan, +with complete reviews of his books, sent on request. + + HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY + PUBLISHERS NEW YORK + + * * * * * + + + "_The most important biographic contribution to musical + literature since the beginning of the century, with the + exception of Wagner's Letters to Frau Wesendonck._" + + --H. T. FINCK, in the New York Evening Post. + + (Circular with complete review and sample pages on application.) + + +Personal Recollections of Wagner + +By ANGELO NEUMANN + +Translated from the fourth German edition by EDITH LIVERMORE. + Large 12mo. 318 pp., with portraits and one of Wagner's letters + in facsimile. $2.50 net; by mail $2.65. + + +Probably no man ever did more to make Wagner's music dramas known +than Angelo Neumann, who, with his famous "Wagner Travelling Theatre," +carrying his artists, orchestra, scenery and elaborate mechanical +devices, toured Germany, Holland, Belgium, Italy, Austria and Russia, +and with another organization gave "The Ring" in London. But the account +of this tour, interesting as it is, is not the main feature of his book, +which abounds in intimate glimpses of Wagner at rehearsals, at Wahnfried +and elsewhere, and tells much of the great conductor, Anton Seidl, so +beloved by Americans. Among other striking figures are Nikisch and Muck, +both conductors of the Boston Symphony orchestra, Mottl, the Vogls, +Von Bulow, Materna, Marianna Brandt, Klafsky, and Reicher-Kindermann. + +It is doubtful if any book gives a more vivid and truthful picture of +life and "politics" behind the scenes of various opera houses. Many of +the episodes, such as those of a bearded Brynhild, the comedy writer +and the horn player and the prince and the Rhinedaughter are decidedly +humorous. + +The earlier portions of the book tell of the Leipsic negotiations and +performances, the great struggle with Von Huelsen, the royal intendant at +Berlin, Bayreuth and "Parsifal." Many of Wagner's letters appear here +for the first time. + +_ILLUSTRATIONS._--RICHARD WAGNER: Bust by Anton zur Strassen in the foyer +of the Leipsic Stadttheater.--ANGELO NEUMANN: From a picture in the +Kuenstlerzimmer of the Leipsic Stadttheater.--ANTON SEIDL: Bas-relief +by Winifred Holt of New York. Replica commissioned by Herr Direktor +Neumann.--HEDWIG REICHER-KINDERMANN--Facsimile of letter from Wagner +to Neumann, received after the news of Wagner's death. + +If the reader will send his name and address the publishers will send +information about their new books as issued. + + HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY + 34 WEST 33RD STREET NEW YORK + + * * * * * + + +RICHARD BURTON'S + MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL + +A study of principles and personalities by the Professor of English +Literature, University of Minnesota, author of "Literary Likings," +"Forces in Fiction," "Rahab" (a Poetic Drama), etc. 12mo, 331 pp. +and index. $1.25 net. + + "Noteworthy American volume of literary criticism ... a + well-balanced, discerning and unhackneyed study ... delightfully + readable.... In his judgment of individual books and authors + Mr. Burton is refreshingly sane and trustworthy ... an inspiring + survey of the whole trend of fiction from Richardson to Howells, + with a valuable intermediary chapter on Stendhal and the French + realists, all presented in a style of genuine charm and rare + flexibility ... may be warranted to interest and inspire any + serious lover of fiction."--_Chicago Record-Herald._ + + "Rare sympathy and scholarly understanding ... book that should + be read and re-read by every lover of the English novel."--_Boston + Transcript._ + + +RICHARD BURTON'S + RAHAB, A DRAMA OF THE FALL OF JERICHO + +119 pp., 12mo. $1.25 net; by mail, $1.33. With cast of characters for +the first performance and pictures of the scenes. + + "A poetic drama of high quality. Plenty of dramatic action."--_New + York Times Review._ + + +WILLIAM MORTON PAYNE'S + THE GREATER ENGLISH POETS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY + +383 pp., large 12mo. $2.00 net; by mail, $2.15. Studies of Keats, +Shelley, Byron, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Landor, Browning, Tennyson, +Arnold, Rossetti, Morris, and Swinburne. Their outlook upon life rather +than their strictly literary achievement is kept mainly in view. + + "The sound and mellow fruits of his long career as a critic.... + There is not a rash, trivial, or dull line in the whole book.... + Its charming sanity has seduced me into reading it to the end, + and anyone who does the same will feel that he has had an + inspiring taste of everything that is finest in nineteenth-century + poetry. Ought to be read and reread by every student of literature, + and most of all by those who have neglected English poetry, + for here one finds its essence in brief compass."--_Chicago + Record-Herald._ + +If the reader will send his name and address, the publishers will send, +from time to time, information regarding their new books. + + HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY + PUBLISHERS NEW YORK + + * * * * * + + +BEULAH MARIE DIX'S + ALLISON'S LAD AND OTHER MARTIAL INTERLUDES + +$1.35 net; by mail, $1.44. + +Allison's Lad, The Hundredth Trick, The Weakest Link, The Snare and the +Fowler, The Captain of the Gate, The Dark of the Dawn. + + These one-act plays, despite their impressiveness, are perfectly + practicable for performance by clever amateurs; at the same time + they make decidedly interesting reading. + + Six stirring war episodes. Five of them occur at night, and most + of them in the dread pause before some mighty conflict. Three are + placed in Cromwellian days (two in Ireland and one in England), + one is at the close of the French Revolution, another at the time + of the Hundred Years' War, and the last during the Thirty Years' + War. The author has most ingeniously managed to give the feeling + of big events, though employing but few players. Courage, + vengeance, devotion and tenderness to the weak, are among the + emotions effectively displayed. + + +CONSTANCE D'ARCY MACKAY'S + THE HOUSE OF THE HEART + +And Other Plays for Children + +Ten well-written one-act plays to be acted by children. A satisfactory +book to fill a real need. $1.10 net; by mail, $1.15. + + "Each play contains a distinct lesson, whether of courage, + gentle manners, or contentment. The settings are simple and + the costumes within the compass of the schoolroom. Full + directions for costumes, scene setting, and dramatic action + are given with each play. All of them have stood the test of + actual production."--_Preface._ + + CONTENTS: + + "The House of the Heart" (Morality Play)--"The Gooseherd and + the Goblin" (Comedy, suitable for June exercises)--"The Enchanted + Garden" (Flower Play, suitable for June exercises)--"Nimble Wit + and Fingerkin" (Industrial Play)--"A Little Pilgrim's Progress" + (Morality Play, suitable for Thanksgiving)--"A Pageant of Hours" + (To be given Out of Doors)--"On Christmas Eve"--"The Elf + Child"--"The Princess and the Pixies"--"The Christmas Guest" + (Miracle Play). + + "An addition to child drama which has been sorely needed."--_Boston + Transcript._ + +[Asterism] If the reader will send his name and address the publishers +will send, from time to time, information regarding their new books. + + HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY + 34 WEST 33D STREET NEW YORK + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Recollections of a Varied Life, by +George Cary Eggleston + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RECOLLECTIONS OF A VARIED LIFE *** + +***** This file should be named 36720.txt or 36720.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/6/7/2/36720/ + +Produced by David Garcia and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Kentuckiana Digital Library) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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