Chapter XXI (2)

What character shall I choose as a typical Iowan? Not the occupant of the large brick house with tall evergreens in front which meets my sight whenever I look toward the country. An old woman lives there alone, except for a servant or two, having buried her husband and ten children. She is worth a hundred thousand dollars, but can neither read nor write. Her strong common sense and deep fund of experience supply her lack of education, and one would not think while listening to her that she was ignorant of letters. Her life has been one of toil and sorrow, but her expression is one of brave cheerfulness. She and her husband came to this place forty years ago. They were the first white settlers, and for neighbors they had Indians and wolves. They entered most of the land on which the town now stands, and when other settlers came in and the town was laid out their land became valuable, and thus the foundation of their fortune was laid. But as riches increased, cares also increased: the husband was so weighed down by responsibility and anxiety that his mind gave way, and in a fit of despondency he committed suicide. The sons and daughters who died, with the exception of two or three, were taken away in childhood. So the large mansion, with its richly-furnished rooms, is shut up from the sunlight and rarely echoes to the patter of childish feet. The mistress lives in the back part, but exercises a care over the whole house, which is kept in a state of perfect order and neatness. Not a speck of dirt is to be seen on the painted wood-work or the window-glass, not a stain mars the floor--long as the deck of a ship--of the porch which extends the length of the ell. The plates in the corner cupboard in the sitting-room are freshly arranged every day, the tins in the kitchen shine till you can see your face in them, and in summer the clean flower-beds, bright with pansies, roses, carnations and geraniums, that border the long walk leading to the front gate and adorn the side yards, attest the care and neatness of the mistress. Though she has lived on the prairie for forty years, yet the expressions that savor of her early life in a densely-wooded State still cling to her, and if you find her in her working-dress among her flowers she will beg you to excuse her appearance, adding, "I look as if I was just out of the timber."

But this character, though interesting, is not a typical one. Neither is that of the pinched, hungry-looking little man whose five acres and small dwelling meet my sight when I look toward the country in another direction. His patch of ground is devoted to market-gardening, and from its slender profits he is trying to support himself and wife and four children and pay off a mortgage of several hundred dollars. He has lately invented an ingenious toy for children, and is trying to raise enough money to get it patented, hoping when that is done to reap large profits from the sale of it. He is like a poor trembling little mouse caught and held in the paws of a cruel cat. Sometimes Fate relaxes her grip on him, and he breathes freer and dares to hope for a larger liberty: then she puts her paw on him again, and tosses him and plays with him in very wantonness.

Neither are the three old-maid sisters whose house I often pass types of Iowa character, but I cannot forbear describing them. Their names are Semira, Amanda and Melvina. There is nothing distinctive in their personal appearance, but their character, as expressed in their home and surroundings, is quite interesting. Their little low house is on a corner lot, and as the other three corners are occupied by large two-story houses, it seems lower still by contrast. It is unpainted, and has a little wooden porch over the front door. The floors are covered with homemade carpet, and braided mats are laid before each door and in front of the old-fashioned bureau, which has brass rings for handles on the drawers. A snow tree made of frayed white cotton or linen cloth adorns the table in the best room; woolly dogs with bead eyes and cotton-flannel rabbits with pink ears stand on the mantel; a bead hanging-basket filled with artificial flowers decorates the window; an elaborate air-castle, made of straw and bright worsted, hangs from the middle of the low ceiling; and hung against the wall, between two glaring woodcuts representing "Lady Caroline" in red and "Highland Mary" in blue, is a deep frame filled with worsted flowers, to which a butterfly and a bumble-bee have been pinned. Paper lacework depends from their kitchen-shelves, and common eggshells, artificially colored, decorate the lilac-bushes in the side yard. They are always making new mats or piecing quilts in a new pattern.

As soon as the first bluebird warbles they begin to work in their flower and vegetable garden, and from then until it is time to cover the verbena-beds in the fall I rarely pass without seeing one or more of them, with sunbonnet on head and hoe in hand, busy at work. Besides keeping their little front yard a mass of gorgeous bloom and their vegetable garden free from weed or stone, they raise canary-birds to sell and take care of a dozen hives of bees. Last fall I frequently saw all three of them in the yard, with a neighbor or two called in for conference, and all twittering and chattering like blackbirds in March. Finally, the mystery was solved. Going past one day, I saw a carpenter deliberately cutting out the whole end of the house, and soon a large bay-window made its appearance. When this was completed three rows of shelves were put up inside close to the glass, and immediately filled with plants in pots and tin cans. What endless occupation and entertainment the watering and watching and tending of these must afford the sisters during winter!

Neither does another neighbor of mine supply the type I seek--the old Quaker farmer, who is discontented and changeable in his disposition, having lived in Indiana a while, then in Iowa, then in Indiana again, and who is now in Iowa for the second time. He rents some land which lies just across the railroad, and in summer, when he is ploughing the growing corn, I hear him talking to his horse. He calls her a "contrary old jade," and jerks the lines and saws her mouth, and says, "Get over in that other row, I tell thee!" Once I heard him mutter to her, when he was leading her home after the day's work was done, "I came as near killin' thee to-day as ever I did."

I will take for one type a man whom we met last summer in the country. We had driven for miles along the country roads in search of a certain little glen where the maiden-hair ferns grew waist-high and as broad across as the fronds of palms, and having found it and filled our spring-wagon with the treasures, we set out to return home by another road. We lost our way, but did not regret it, as this mischance made known to us the most stately and graceful tree we had ever seen--one that was certainly worth half a day's ride to see. The road left the treeless uplands, where the sunshine reflected from the bright yellow stubble of the newly-cut wheat-fields beat against our faces with a steady glare, and dipped into a cool, green, shady hollow where cows cropped the rich grass or stood knee-deep in the water of a little stream. Well they might stand in quiet contentment: a king might have envied them their surroundings. Overhead rose a dozen or more of the tallest and finest elms we had ever seen, stretching their thick branches till they met and formed a canopy so dense that only a stray sunbeam or two pierced through and fell upon the smooth green sward. Peerless among them stood an elm of mighty girth and lofty height, its widely-stretching branches as large around, where they left the trunk, as a common tree, and clothed to the farthest twig with luxuriant foliage. And all up and down the mossy trunk and around the branches grew young twigs from a few inches to a foot or two in length, half hiding the shaggy bark with their tender green leaves. It was a combination of tree-majesty and grace that is rarely seen. In a tropical forest I have beheld a lofty tree covered thickly all over its trunk and branches with ferns and parasitic plants, but the sight, though beautiful, was suggestive of morbid, unnatural growth. This royal elm out of its own sap had clothed its trunk as with a thickly-twining vine. When, after gazing our fill, we drove reluctantly out of the shady green hollow into the sunshine, and began to climb a hill, we saw at the top a small house surrounded by fruit trees and shaded in front by a grape-arbor. On reaching it we stopped to ask our way of a man who sat in his shirt-sleeves near the front door, fanning himself with his straw hat. He seemed frank and inclined to talk, and asked us to stop and rest a while in the shade. We did so, and his wife brought us some fresh buttermilk to drink, the children gathering about to look at us as if our advent was the incident of the month. In conversation we learned that he was the owner of forty acres, which he devoted largely to the cultivation of small fruits. The land was paid for, with the exception of a mortgage of three hundred dollars, which he hoped to lift in a season or two if the yield was good.

"We're doing well now," he said, "but when we started, eight years ago, it was truly discouraging. There was no house on the place when we came here. We put up the room we now use as a kitchen, and lived in it for two years and a half. It was so small that it only held a bed, a table, a cook-stove and two or three chairs, and when the table was drawn out for meals my wife had to set the rocking-chair on the bed, because there wasn't room for it on the floor. She helped me on the farm the first year or two. We moved here late in the spring, and I only had time to get the sod broken before corn-planting time. My wife had a lame foot that spring, but I made her a sort of crutch-stilt, and with this she walked over the ground as I ploughed it, making holes in the earth by means of it and dropping in the corn. She also rode the reaper when our wheat was ripe the next year, and I followed, binding and stacking. She has helped me in many other ways on the farm, for she is as ambitious as I am to have a place free from debt which we can call our own. We added these two other rooms in the third year, and when we are out of debt and have money ahead we shall put up another addition: we shall need it as the children grow up. I have a nice lot of small fruit--strawberries, raspberries, currants, gooseberries--and besides these I sell every spring a great many early vegetables. The small fruits pay me more to the acre than anything else I could raise. There is a good market for them in the neighboring towns, and I seldom have to hire any help. My children do most of the picking."

It is only a bit of personal history, to be sure, but it affords an insight into the life of one who, like many others in this State, began with only his bare hands and habits of industry and economy for capital.

Another typical illustration is supplied by a man whose home we visited in the winter. His comfortable farm-house was overflowing with the good things of life: a piano and an organ stood in the parlor, and a well-filled bookcase in the sitting-room; a large bay-window was bright with flowering plants; and base-burner coal-stoves and double-paned windows mocked at the efforts of the wintry winds and kept perpetual summer within. In the large barn were farm-wagons, a carriage, a buggy, a sleigh--a vehicle for every purpose. The farmer invited us one morning to step into a large sled which stood at the door, and took us half a mile to his stock-yards. There we saw fat, sleek cattle by the dozen and fat hogs by the score, great cribs bursting with corn, a windmill pump and other conveniences for watering stock. Besides all these possessions this man owns two or three other good farms, and has money loaned on mortgages; in short, is worth about fifty thousand dollars, every cent of which he has gained by his own exertions in the last twenty years. He said: "When my father died and his estate was divided among his children, each of us received eighty-three dollars as his share. I resolved then that if thrift and energy could avail anything I would have more than that to leave to each of my children when I died. It has required constant hard work and shrewd planning, but I have gained my stake, and am not a very old man yet," passing his hand over his hair, which was thinly sprinkled with gray.

This man gave us a description of a tornado which passed over that portion of the State a number of years ago. It was shortly after he was married and while he was staying at his father-in-law's house. The whole family were away from home that day, and when they returned they found only the cellar. The house had been lifted from its foundation, and carried so far on the mighty wings of the hurricane that nothing pertaining to it was ever found except the rolling-pin and a few boards of the yellow-painted kitchen-floor. Of a new farm-wagon nothing remained but one tire, and that was flattened out straight. The trees that stood in the yard had been broken off at the surface of the ground. The grass lay stretched in the direction of the hurricane as if a flood of water had passed over it. Horses, cattle and human beings had been lifted and carried several rods through the air, then cast violently to earth again. Those who witnessed the course of the tornado said that it seemed to strike the ground, then go up in the air, passing harmlessly over a mile or two of country, then strike again, all the time whirling over and over, and occasionally casting out fragments of the spoils it had gathered up. After passing east to a point beyond the Mississippi it disappeared.

This part of Iowa has rich deposits of coal, and mining is a regular and important business. The coal-mines lying a few miles south of this place are the largest west of the Mississippi River. A thriving little town has grown up around them, composed chiefly of miners' cottages, stores and superintendents' dwellings. A creek winds through it whose banks are shaded by elms and carpeted in spring and early summer with prairie-flowers; and a range of wooded hills in whose depths the richest coal-deposits lie lends a picturesque aspect to the scene, and partly compensates for the dreary look of the town itself, the comfortless appearance of many of the miners' houses and the great heaps of slag and refuse coal at the mouth of the mines. Mules hitched to little cars serve to draw the coal out of several of the mines, but the largest one is provided with an engine, which, by means of an endless rope of twisted wire, pulls long trains of loaded cars out of the depths of the mine and up to a high platform above the railroad, whence the coal is pitched into the waiting cars beneath. Sixty-five railroad cars are sometimes loaded in one day from this single mine. The coal is soft coal, and is sold by retail at from six to seven cents a bushel.

One April day, when the woods were white and pink with the bloom of the wild plum and crab trees and the ground was blue with violets, we rode over to this place, and, hitching our horses to some trees growing over the principal mine, we descended to the entrance. A miner, an intelligent middle-aged man who was off work just then, volunteered to be our guide, and after providing each of us with a little oil lamp like the one he wore in his hat-brim, he led us into the dark opening that yawned in the hillside. The passage was six or seven feet wide, and so low that we could not stand erect. Under our feet was the narrow track, the space between the ties being slippery with mud: over our heads and on either hand were walls of rock, with a thick vein of coal running through them, braced every few feet with heavy timbers. The track began to descend, and soon we lost sight of the daylight and had to depend entirely on the feeble glimmer of our lamps. We occasionally came to smooth-plastered spaces in the walls, the closed-up mouths of old side-tunnels, and placing our hands upon them felt that they were warm. Fires were raging in the abandoned galleries, but, being shut away from the air and from access to the main tunnel, they were not dangerous. The dangers usually dreaded by the miners are the falling of heavy masses of earth and rock from the roof of the gallery and the sudden flow of water into the mine from some of the secret sources in the hillside. After penetrating about a quarter of a mile into the mine and descending one hundred and twenty feet, we reached the end of the main tunnel and saw the great wheel, fixed in the solid rock, on which the endless steel rope turned. A train of loaded cars had passed out just before we entered the mine, and on a switch near the end of the track stood another train of empty cars. The air thus far on our dark journey had been cool and good, for the main tunnel was ventilated by means of air-shafts that pierced the hillside to the daylight above; but now our guide opened the door of what seemed a subterranean dungeon, closed it behind us when we had passed through, lifted a heavy curtain that hung before us, and ushered us into a branch-tunnel where the air was hot and stifling and heavy with the fumes of powder. At the farther end we saw tiny specks of light moving about. As we neared them we found that they were lamps fastened in the hat-bands of the miners at work in this distant tunnel--literally, "the bowels of the earth." Some were using picks and shovels, others were drilling holes in the solid coal and putting in blasts of gunpowder. When these blasts were fired a subterranean thunder shook the place: it seemed as if the hill were falling in upon us. Little cars stood upon the track partly filled with coal, and mules were hitched to them. The forms of these animals loomed large and dark in the dim light: they seemed like some monsters of a previous geologic age. The men themselves, blackened with coal and grimy with powder-smoke, might have seemed like gnomes or trolls had we not seen their homes in the plain, familiar sunlight above, and known that they were working for daily bread for themselves and families. They are paid according to the amount of coal they dig. Some have earned as high as one hundred and thirty dollars a month, but half that sum would be nearer the average.

As we left this shaft and came back into the main tunnel we saw a miner sitting by the track with his small tin bucket open. It was noon and he was eating his dinner. It might just as well have been midnight, so dense was the darkness. We seemed to have been an uncomputable time in the depths, yet, glancing at the bunch of wild flowers in my belt, I saw that they were only beginning to wilt. Did poor Proserpine have the same feeling when she was ravished from the sunshine and the green and flowery earth and carried into the dark underground kingdom of Pluto? Remembering her fate, I whispered to my companion, "We will not eat anything while here--no, not so much as one pomegranate-seed."

There are many smaller coal-mines in this vicinity--hardly a hillside but has a dark doorway leading into it--but they are not all worked regularly or by more than a few hands.

On the road leading from town to the Skunk River one has glimpses of another industry. Limekilns, with uncouth signs announcing lime for sale at twenty-five cents a bushel, thrust themselves almost into the road, and the cabins or neatly-whitewashed board huts of the lime-burners border the way. Some have grass-plots and mounds of flowers around them: others are without ornament, if we except the children with blue eyes, red cheeks and hair like corn-silk that hang on the fence and watch us ride by.

Skunk River is a broad, still stream, with hilly banks heavily wooded with willow, oak, maple, sycamore and bass-wood. Here we find the earliest wild flowers in spring: blue and purple hepaticas blossom among the withered leaves on the ground while the branches above are still bare, and a little later crowds of violets and spring-beauties brighten the tender grass; clusters of diacentra--or "Dutchman's breeches," as the children call them--nod from the shelter of decaying stumps to small yellow lilies with spotted leaves and tufts of fresh green ferns.

The place is equally a favorite bird-haunt. The prairie-chicken, the best-known game-bird of the State, chooses rather the open prairie, but wild-ducks settle and feed here in their migratory journeys, attracting the sportsman by their presence; the fish-hawk makes his nest in the trees on the bank; the small blue heron wades pensively along the margin; and the common wood-birds, such as blackbirds, bluebirds, jays, sparrows and woodpeckers, chatter or warble or scold among the branches. Sometimes the redbird flashes like a living flame through the green tree-tops, or the brilliant orange-and-black plumage of the Baltimore oriole contrasts with the lilac-gray bark of an old tree-trunk.

Besides the small wild flowers there are many shrubs and trees that bloom in spring. The haw tree and wild plum put forth masses of small creamy-white flowers, the redbud tree blooms along the water-courses, the dogwood in the woods and the wild crab-apple upon the open hillside. The crab trees often form dense thickets an acre or two in extent, and when all their branches are thickly set with coral buds or deep-pink blossoms they form a picture upon which the eye delights to rest. Spring redeems even the flat prairie from the blank monotony which wearies the eye in winter. There are few places in this vicinity where the virgin sod has not been broken, consequently few spots where the original, much-praised prairie-flowers grow; but a tender green clothes all the plain, hundreds of meadow-larks sing in the grass, the tints and colors of the sky are lovely beyond words, and the balmy winds breathe airs of Paradise.

Even the town, whose ugliness has offended artistic taste and one's love of neatness all winter, clothes itself in foliage and hides its ungraceful outlines in bowery verdure. Lilacs scent the air, roses crowd through the broken fences, the milky floss of the cottonwood trees is strewed upon the sidewalks or floats like thistledown upon the air. To one sensitive to physical surroundings the change is like that from a sullen face to a smiling one, from a forbidding aspect to a cheerful one. The constant bracing of one's self against the influence of one's surroundings is relaxed: a feeling of relief and contentment comes instead. Our thirst for picturesque beauty may not be satisfied, but we accept with thankful hearts the quiet loveliness of spring. In this, as in deeper experiences, we learn that

At best we gain not happiness,
But peace, friends--peace in the strife.

LOUISE COFFIN JONES.

A FORGOTTEN AMERICAN WORTHY

The pleasant agricultural village of Reading, in Fairfield county, Western Connecticut, presents much that is charming and picturesque in scenery, and is withal replete with historic incidents; but its chief claim to interest rests on the fact that it was the birthplace of Joel Barlow, who has decided claims to the distinction of being the father of American letters. Nearly seventy years have passed since the poet's tragic death, and the story of his life is still untold, while his memory has nearly faded from the minds of the living; nor would it be easy, at this late day, to collect sufficient material for an extended biography if such were demanded. Some pleasant traditions still linger in the sleepy atmosphere of his native village; a few of his letters and papers still remain in his family; contemporary newspapers had much to say both for and against him; the reviewers of his day noticed his poems, sometimes with approbation, sometimes with bitterness. There are fragmentary sketches of him in encyclopaedias and biographical dictionaries, and several pigeonholes in the State Department are filled with musty documents written by him when abroad in his country's diplomatic service. From these sources alone is the scholar of our times to glean his knowledge of one who in his day filled as large a space in the public eye as almost any of his contemporaries, and whose talents, virtues and public services entitled him to as lasting a fame as theirs.

Not from any of these sources, but from the Barlow family register in the ancient records of Fairfield, we learn that the poet was born on March 24, 1754, and not in 1755, as is almost universally stated by the encyclopaedists. His father was Samuel Barlow, a wealthy farmer of the village--his mother, Elizabeth Hull, a connection of the general and commodore of the same name who figured so prominently in the war of 1812. There is little in the early career of the poet of interest to the modern reader. He is first presented to us in the village traditions as a chubby, rosy-faced boy, intent on mastering the Greek and Latin tasks dealt out to him by Parson Bartlett, the Congregational minister of the village, who, like many of the New England clergy of that day, added the duties of schoolmaster to those of the clergyman. In a year or two he was placed at Moor's school for boys in Hanover, New Hampshire, and on completing his preparatory course he entered Dartmouth College in 1774. His father had died the December previous, and, with the view probably of being nearer his mother and family in Reading, he left Dartmouth in his Freshman year and was entered at Yale.

Barlow's college career was marked by close application to study, and won for him the respect and confidence of all with whom he came in contact. During his second year the war of the Revolution broke out, but the young poet, though an ardent patriot, clung to his books, resolutely closing his ears to the clamor of war that invaded his sacred cloisters until the long summer vacation arrived. Then he threw aside books and gown and joined his four brothers in the Continental ranks, where he did yeoman's service for his country. He graduated in 1778, and signalized the occasion by reciting an original poem called the "Prospect of Peace," which, in the quaint language of one of his contemporaries, gained him "a very pretty reputation as a poet."

The next year found him a chaplain in the Continental army, in the same brigade with his friend Dwight, later renowned as the poet-president of Yale College, and with Colonel Humphreys, whom we shall find associated with him in a far different mission. The two young chaplains, not content with the performance of their clerical duties, wrote in connection with Humphreys stirring patriotic lyrics that were set to music and sung by the soldiers around the camp-fires and on the weary march, and aided largely in allaying discontent and in inducing them to bear their hardships patiently.

For four years, or until the peace of 1783, Barlow continued to serve his country in the army: he left the service as poor as when he entered it, and a second time the question of a vocation in life presented itself. He at length chose the law, but before being admitted to practice performed an act which, however foolish it may have seemed to the worldly wise, proved to be one of the most fortunate events of his life. Although poor and possessing none of the qualities of the successful bread-winner, he united his fortunes with those of an amiable and charming young lady--Miss Ruth Baldwin of New Haven, daughter of Michael Baldwin, Esq., and sister of Hon. Abraham C. Baldwin, whom the student will remember as a Senator of note from Georgia. After marriage the young husband settled in Hartford, first in the study, and later in the practice, of the law. In Hartford we find him assuming the duties of lawyer, journalist and bookseller, and in all proving the truth of the fact often noted, that the possession of literary talent generally unfits one for the rough, every-day work of the world. As a lawyer Barlow lacked the smoothness and suavity of the practised advocate, while the petty details and trickeries of the profession disgusted him. As an editor he made his journal, the _American Mercury_, notable for the high literary and moral excellence of its articles, but it was not successful financially, simply because it lacked a constituency sufficiently cultured to appreciate and sustain it. His bookstore, which stood on the quiet, elm-shaded main street of the then provincial village, was opened to dispose of his psalm-book and poems, and was closed when this was accomplished.

As a poet, however, he was more successful, and it was here that the assurance of literary ability, so dear to the heart of the neophyte, first came to him. Dr. Watts's "imitation" of the Psalms, incomplete and inappropriate in many respects, was then the only version within reach of the Puritan churches, and in 1785 the Congregational Association of Connecticut applied to the poet for a revised edition of the work. Barlow readily complied, and published his revision the same year, adding to it several psalms which Dr. Watts had omitted. This work was received with marked favor by the Congregational churches, and was used by them exclusively until rumors of the author's lapse from orthodoxy reached them, when it was superseded by a version prepared by Dr. Dwight.

Two years after, in 1787, Barlow published his _Vision of Columbus_, a poem conceived while in the army and largely written during the poet's summer vacations at Reading. It was received with unbounded favor by his patriotic countrymen, and after passing through several editions at home was republished both in London and Paris, and made its author the best known American in the literary circles of his day. There was in Hartford at this time a coterie of literary spirits whose sprightliness and bonhomie had gained for them the sobriquet of the "Hartford Wits." Dr. Lemuel Hopkins was doubtless the chief factor in the organization of this club: Barlow, John Trumbull, Colonel Humphreys, Richard Alsop and Theodore Dwight--all of whom had gained literary distinction--were its chief members. The principal publications of the club were the _Anarchiad_, a satirical poem, and the _Echo_, which consisted of a series of papers in verse lampooning the social and political follies of the day. To both of these, it is said, Barlow was a prominent contributor. He was also a prominent figure in the organization, about this time, of the Connecticut Cincinnati, a society formed by Revolutionary officers for urging upon Congress their claims for services rendered in the Revolution.

In these varied pursuits and amid such pleasant associations three years passed away, but during all this time the grim spectre of Want had menaced the poet--first at a distance, but with each succeeding month approaching nearer and nearer, until now, in 1788, it stared him in the face. His patrimony had been nearly exhausted in his education; his law-business was unremunerative; his paper, as we have said, was not a success financially; and his poetry brought him much more honor than cash. And thus it happened that at the age of thirty-four he found himself without money or employment. At this trying juncture there came from the West--fruitful parent of such schemes!--the prospectus of the Scioto Land Company, furnished with glaring head-lines and seductive phrases, and parading in its list of stockholders scores of the best-known names in the community. This company claimed to have become the fortunate possessor of unnumbered acres in the valley of the Scioto, and was anxious to share its good fortune--for a consideration--with Eastern and European capitalists. It was desirous of securing an agent to negotiate its sales in Europe, and, quite naturally, its choice fell on Joel Barlow, the only American having a reputation abroad who was at liberty to undertake the mission; and, since the company bore a good repute and offered fair remuneration, the poet very gladly embraced its offer. He does not seem to have met with much success in England, but in France his reception was much more encouraging. An estate in the New World was a veritable _chateau en Espagne_ to the mercurial Frenchmen, and they purchased with some avidity; but just as the agent's ground was prepared for a plenteous harvest news came that the Scioto Company had burst, as bubbles will, leaving to its dupes only a number of well-executed maps, some worthless parchments called deeds, and that valuable experience which comes with a knowledge of the ways of the world. Barlow, being the company's principal agent abroad, came in for his full share of the abuse excited by its operations; and yet it is evident that he was as innocent of its real character as any one, and that he had accepted the position of agent with full confidence in the company's integrity. Its collapse left him as poor as ever, and a stranger in a strange land, notwithstanding he was surrounded here by conditions that assured him the generous and honorable career which had been denied him in the New World.

Of the foreigners who then thronged cosmopolitan Paris, none were so popular as Americans. Benjamin Franklin and Silas Deane, by their courtesy and dignity, joined to republican simplicity, had provided passports for their countrymen to the good graces of all Frenchmen: besides, the name "republican" was a word of magic import in France at that time. Barlow's reputation as a poet was also of great service to him at a time when literature exercised a commanding influence both in society and politics. He was presented at court, admitted to the companionship of wits and savants, and was enabled, by the favor of some financial magnates, to participate in speculations which proved so successful that in a short time he was raised above the pressure of want. But in less than a year after his arrival the Revolution broke out, and involved him in its horrors. His sympathies were entirely with the Girondists--the party of the literati, and the most patriotic and enlightened of the rival factions. He is said to have entered heartily into the advocacy of their cause, writing pamphlets and addresses in their interest and contributing frequently to their journals: he is also said to have figured prominently at the meetings of the Girondist leaders held in the salon of Madame Roland. The atrocities of the Jacobins, however, so shocked and disgusted him that he shortly withdrew and went into retirement outside of the city. The greater part of the years 1791-92 he spent in England, with occasional visits to France. During one of these visits the privileges of French citizenship were conferred on him--an honor that had been previously conferred on but two Americans, Washington and Hamilton.

In 1795 a crisis in his fortunes occurred, and from this date the story of his life becomes an interesting and important one. He had been for some months on a business-tour through the northern provinces, and, returning to Paris early in September, was surprised at receiving a visit from his old friend Colonel David Humphreys, who had been American minister to Portugal for some years, and was now in Paris on a political mission. He was accompanied on this visit by James Monroe, then American minister at the French court. They bore a commission from President Washington naming Barlow consul at Algiers, and their object was to induce him to accept the appointment. The post was one of extreme difficulty and danger, and had Barlow consulted his own wishes and interests he would undoubtedly have declined it. But by appeals to his philanthropy, and by representations that from his knowledge of courts and experience of the world he was well fitted for the performance of the duties assigned to him, he was at length induced to accept the commission. Preparations were at once made for the journey. His business-affairs were arranged and his will made: then, bidding his wife farewell, he set out with Humphreys on the 12th of September, 1795, for Lisbon, _en route_ for the Barbary coast.

At the time of Barlow's mission Algiers was at the height of its power and arrogance. Great Britain, France, Spain, Holland, Denmark, Sweden and Venice were tributaries of this barbarous state, which waged successful war with Russia, Austria, Portugal, Naples, Sardinia, Genoa and Malta. Its first depredation on American commerce was committed on the 25th of July, 1785, when the schooner Maria, Stevens master, owned in Boston, was seized off Cape St. Vincent by a corsair and carried into Algiers. Five days later the ship Dauphin of Philadelphia, Captain O'Brien, was taken and carried into the same port. Other captures quickly followed, so that at the time of Barlow's mission there were one hundred and twenty American citizens in the Algerine prisons, exclusive of some forty that had been liberated by death or ransomed through the private exertions of their friends.

The course pursued by Congress for the liberation of these captives cannot be viewed with complacency even at this late day. After some hesitation it decided to ransom the prisoners, and proceeded to negotiate--first, through Mr. John Lamb, its agent at Algiers, and secondly through the general of the Mathurins, a religious order of France instituted in early times for the redemption of Christian captives from the infidel powers. These negotiations extended through a period of six years, and accomplished nothing, from the fact that the dey invariably demanded double the sum which Congress thought it could afford to pay. In June, 1792, with the hope of negotiating a treaty and rescuing the captives, the celebrated John Paul Jones was appointed consul to Algiers, but died before reaching the scene of his mission. His successor, Mr. Thomas Barclay, died at Lisbon January 19, 1793, while on his way to Algiers. The conduct of Barbary affairs was next confided to Colonel Humphreys, our minister to Portugal, with power to name an agent who should act under him, and Mr. Pierre E. Skjoldebrand, a brother of the Swedish consul, was appointed under this arrangement; but the latter gentleman seems to have been no more successful than his predecessors. Late in 1794, Humphreys returned to America, and while here it was arranged that Joseph Donaldson should accompany him on his return as agent for Tunis and Tripoli, while Barlow, it was hoped, could be induced to accept the mission to Algiers and the general oversight of Barbary affairs.

The two diplomats left America early in April, 1795, and proceeded to Gibraltar, where they separated, Donaldson continuing his journey to Algiers _via_ Alicant, and Humphreys hastening on to Paris in search of Barlow, as has been narrated. Colonel Humphreys and Mr. Barlow did not reach Lisbon until the 17th of November, and when the latter was about prosecuting his journey he was surprised by a visit from Captain O'Brien, who had been despatched by Mr. Donaldson with a newly-signed treaty with Algiers. Mr. Donaldson, it was learned, had reached Algiers on the 3d of September, and finding the dey in a genial mood had forthwith concluded a treaty with him, considering that he had sufficient authority for this under the general instructions of Colonel Humphreys. It was found that some of the conditions of the treaty could not be fulfilled, particularly one stipulating that the first payment of nearly eight hundred thousand dollars should be made by the 5th of January, 1796; and Barlow therefore hastened forward to Algiers to explain the matter to the dey and make such attempts at pacification as were practicable, while Captain O'Brien was sent to London in the brig Sophia for the money. Of his life in Algiers, and of the subsequent fate of the treaty, some particulars are given in a letter from Barlow to Humphreys, dated at Algiers April 5, 1796, and also in a letter to Mrs. Barlow written about the same time. The letter to Humphreys is as follows:

"SIR: We have now what we hope will be more agreeable news to you. For two days past we have been witnesses to a scene of as complete and poignant distress as can be imagined, arising from the total state of despair in which our captives found themselves involved, and we without the power of administering the least comfort or hope. The threat of sending us away had been reiterated with every mark of a fixed and final decision, and the dey went so far as to declare that after the thirty days, if the money did not come, he never would be at peace with the Americans. Bacri the Jew, who has as much art in this sort of management as any man we ever knew, who has more influence with the dey than all the regency put together, and who alone has been able to soothe his impatience on this subject for three months past, now seemed unable to make the least impression, and the dey finally forbade him, under pain of his highest displeasure, to speak to him any more about the Americans. His cruisers are now out, and for some days past he has been occupied with his new war against the Danes. Three days ago the Danish prizes began to come in, and it was thought that this circumstance might put him in good-humor, so that the Jew might find a chance of renewing our subject in some shape or other; and we instructed the Jew that if he could engage him in conversation on his cruisers and prizes he might offer him a new American-built ship of twenty guns which should sail very fast, to be presented to his daughter, on condition that he would wait six months longer for our money. The Jew observed that we had better say a ship of twenty-four guns, to which we agreed. After seeing him three or four times yesterday under pretence of other business, without being able to touch upon this, he went this morning and succeeded.

"The novelty of the proposition gained the dey's attention for a moment, and he consented to see us on the subject; but he told the Jew to tell us that it must be a ship of thirty-six guns or he would not listen to the proposition. We were convinced that we ought not to hesitate an instant. We accordingly went and assented to his demand, and he has agreed to let everything remain as it is for the term of three months from this day, but desired us to remember that not a single day beyond that will be allowed on any account.

"We consider the business as now settled on this footing, and it is the best ground that we could possibly place it upon. You still have it in your power to say peace or no peace: you have an alternative. In the other case war was inevitable, and there would have been no hope of peace during the reign of this dey....

"In order to save the treaty, which has been the subject of infinite anxiety and vexation, we found it necessary some time ago to make an offer to the Jew of ten thousand sequins (eighteen thousand dollars), to be paid eventually if he succeeded, and to be distributed by him among such great officers of state as he thought necessary, and as much of it to be kept for himself as he could keep consistent with success. The whole of this new arrangement will cost the United States about fifty-three thousand dollars. We expect to incur blame, because it is impossible to give you a complete view of the circumstances, but we are perfectly confident of having acted right."

A few weeks later the long-expected ransom arrived: the prison-doors were thrown open, and the captives came out into the sunlight. How pitifully the poet-diplomatist received them, how tenderly he cared for their wants, and how he exerted himself to secure for them a speedy passage to their native land, may be inferred from the character of the man. Having now accomplished the object of his mission, it was to be expected that he would be free to give up his unpleasant post and return to France. But in the adjacent states of Tunis and Tripoli there were other prisons in which American citizens were confined, and until they were liberated he does not seem to have considered his mission as fully performed. Six months or more were spent in effecting this object, and when it was accomplished he very gladly delivered up his credentials to the government and returned to his home and friends in France.

The succeeding eight years were spent in congenial pursuits, chiefly of a literary and philanthropic character. He purchased the large hotel of the count Clermont Tonnere, near Paris, which he transformed into an elegant villa: here he lived during his residence in France, dispensing a broad hospitality and enjoying the friendship of the leading minds of the Empire, as well as the companionship of all Americans of note who visited the capital. But at length, in 1805, after seventeen years of absence, the home-longing which sooner or later comes to every exile seized upon him, and, yielding to its influence, he disposed of his estates in France and with his faithful wife embarked for America.

Great changes had occurred in his native land during these seventeen years. Washington was gone, and with him the power and prestige of Federalism; Jefferson and Burr had led the Republican hosts to victory; Presbyterianism as a political force was dead; and everywhere in society the old order was giving place to the new. This was more markedly the case in New England, where the Puritan crust was being broken and pulverized by the gradual upheaval of the Republican strata. Withal, it was an era of intense political feeling and of partisan bitterness without a parallel.

This will explain, perhaps, the varying manner in which Barlow was received by the different parties among his countrymen. The Republicans greeted him with acclamation as the honored citizen of two republics, the man who had perilled life and health in rescuing his countrymen from slavery. The Federalists, on the other hand, united in traducing him--an assertion which may be gainsaid, but which can be abundantly proved by reference to the Federal newspapers and magazines of the day. In evidence, and as a curious instance of the political bitterness of the times, I will adduce the following article from the _Boston Repertory_, printed in the August after the poet's return:

"JEFFERSON, BARLOW AND PAINE.

"In our last paper was announced, and that with extreme
regret, the return of Joel Barlow, Esq., to this country.
This man, the strong friend of Mr. Jefferson and
confidential companion of his late warm defender, Tom Paine,
is one of the most barefaced infidels that ever appeared in
Christendom. Some facts respecting these distinguished
personages may serve to show the votaries of Christianity
what a band of open enemies (to the faith) is now assembling
in this country.

"Mr. Jefferson, in his famous _Notes on Virginia_, advances
opinions incompatible with Mosaic history. This cannot be
disputed, nor will Mr. Jefferson dare to deny that he has,
since he has been President of the United States, publicly
made the Eucharist a subject of impious ridicule. Tom Paine
has written two books for the express purpose of combating
the Holy Scriptures. His _Age of Reason_ is but too common,
and his letter to the late Samuel Adams still evinces his
perverse adherence to his infidel system.

"Joel Barlow is said to have written the following shocking
letter to his correspondent, John Fellows, dated Hamburg,
May 23, 1805: 'I rejoice at the progress of good sense over
the _damnable imposture_ of _Christian mummery_. I had no
doubt of the effect of Paine's _Age of Reason_: it may be
cavilled at a while, but it must prevail. Though things as
good have been often said, they were never said in so good a
way,' etc. Mr. Barlow can now answer for himself: if this
letter be a forgery, let him inform the public. It has never
yet been contradicted, though it has been four years
published in America."

From which we gather that in the political code of that day the grossest calumnies if uncontradicted were to be accepted as truth. There is not the slightest evidence, however, in his writings or public utterances that the poet ever renounced the faith of his fathers, although it is not probable that he was a very strict Presbyterian at this time.

Barlow seems not to have returned with any hopes of political preferment: at least he made no attempt to enter the field of politics, but after spending several months in travel took up his residence in Washington and devoted himself to philosophical studies and the cultivation of the Muses. He had purchased a beautiful site on the banks of the Potomac within the city limits, and here he erected a mansion whose beauty and elegance made it famous throughout the country. This mansion he called Kalorama, and the wealth and correct taste of its owner were lavishly employed in its adornment. Broad green lawns, shaded by forest trees, surrounded the house, fountains sparkled and gleamed amid the shrubberies, and gay parterres of flowers added their beauty to the scene. Within, French carpets, mirrors, statuary, pictures and bric-a-brac betokened the foreign tastes of the owner. In the library was gathered the most extensive private collection of foreign books which the country then contained. Kalorama was the Holland House of America, where were to be met all the notables of the land, political, literary or philanthropic. The President, heads of departments, Congressmen, foreign ambassadors, poets, authors, reformers, inventors, were all to be seen there. Robert Fulton, the father of steam-navigation, was the poet's firm friend, and received substantial aid from him in his enterprise. Jefferson, throwing off the cares of state, often paid him informal visits, and the two sages had a pet plan which was generally the subject of conversation on these occasions. This was the scheme of a national university, to be modelled after the Institute of France, and to combine a university, a learned society, a naval and military school and an academy of fine arts. The movement had been originated by Washington, and Jefferson and Barlow, with many other leading men of the day, were its warm friends and promoters. In 1806, Barlow, at Jefferson's suggestion, drew up a prospectus, which was printed and circulated throughout the country. So great a public sentiment in favor of the scheme was developed that a bill for its endowment was shortly after introduced in Congress; but New England exerted her influence against it in favor of Yale and Harvard so successfully that it was defeated.

The chief literary work which occupied the poet in this classic retreat was _The Columbiad_, which appeared in 1808. He also busied himself with collecting materials for a general history of the United States--a work which, if he had been permitted to finish it, would have proved no doubt a valuable contribution to this department of literature. But in the midst of this scholarly retirement he was surprised at receiving a note from Mr. Monroe, then Secretary of State, offering him the position of minister to France, and urging his acceptance of it in the strongest terms.